Thiers' indictment that
Napoleon
in 1866 had allowed the
Empire of Charles v.
Empire of Charles v.
Robertson - Bismarck
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? 208
BISMARCK
wrong thing, and it is certain that Napoleon now
did it. 1
Bismarck was in a very ugly temper, with his back to the
wall, fighting both with his sovereign and the military
chiefs. 'Louis shall pay for it,' he exclaimed, when
Napoleon's ambassador, Benedetti, unexpectedly appeared.
For he neither forgave nor forgot those who acted on his
own principle of applying the thumbscrews to an adversary
in difficulties. Bismarck, indeed, at first, and not un-
naturally, exaggerated both Napoleon's military readiness
and his desire to press mediation at the point of the sword.
The unfortunate Benedetti, however, was in no position
to apply the thumbscrews. Bismarck made it quite
plain that, first, he would not tolerate mediation in the
sense of definition of the terms of peace by Napoleon;
secondly, that no matter what the terms with Austria were,
Napoleon could not have one inch of German territory as
compensation; thirdly, that if Napoleon persisted in the
idea of an armed mediation Prussia would take up the
challenge. Moltke was ready with his plan of campaign.
He would close the march on Vienna, assume the defen-
sive in Bohemia, face front to the Rhine, and take the
offensive on that line. The Chief of the Staff was confident
that he could open the western offensive with a victorious
Prussian army before Napoleon had mobilised and de-
ployed the French army, and the Chief of the Staff did not
promise what he could not perform. Incidentally the
transference of the major forces of Prussia to the western
theatre would crush the South German States into pulp.
Bismarck went further. He warned Paris that he was
1 On July 4 he telegraphed to King William announcing that Venetia had
been placed in his hands by Austria, and demanding an armistice and negotia-
tions, under his mediation, invited by Austria. On July 5 he rescinded his
decision to summon the chambers and intervene as an armed mediator. On
July 6 he formally requested Great Britain and Russia to support ' avec force'
the proposed French mediation. On July 7 he ordered Benedetti to go to the
Prussian headquarters and demand an answer to the telegram of July 4. From
July 7 to July 14 Napoleon wavered between doing nothing, mobilising,
negotiating between Austria and her German allies, despatching a French
squadron to the North Sea, and harassing Victor Emmanuel with requests. On
July 13 he received Goltz, and on the 14th accepted his terms. Cest m cochon!
said Victor Emmanuel when he received the telegram of July 4.
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
ready to call out revolution in Hungary,1 even make peace
on any terms with Austria, and then not crush the South
German States, but demand their aid in a war of a united
Germany against France? France that asked for the left
bank of the Rhine alike from Bavaria and Prussia. This
was not diplomatic rhodomontade, nor the exuberant
defiance of Prussian Junkertum. Bismarck had not
plunged Prussia into war merely to defeat Austria, but to
lay the basis of a unified Germany under Prussian leader-
ship. The scheme of June 10 presented to the dissolved
Federal Diet and modelled on the revolutionary Liberalism
of 1849 was not Prussian blackmail to a German democracy
whom he intended to dupe. Through the smoke of
Koniggratz the eyes of faith could see already the dim
fines and shadowy shapes of a united Germany to come--
with dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.
Prussia, however, must not now embrace more of Ger-
many than she could assimilate. The postponement of
the ideal unity would assure to Germany within and with-
out the driving power and the inspiration necessary to
overcome the cold reaction that would certainly follow the
war of 1866. Bismarck could probably have written out
on June 1 his idea of a settlement--the exclusion of
Austria from Germany, the annexation of Schleswig and
Holstein, the formation of a Federal system under Prussia
north of the Main, incorporating ' enemy territories' (and
the extinction of their dynasties) sufficient to secure an
assured Prussian preponderance, the separation of the
South German States, in an organisation of their own, but
connected with the North by treaty arrangements, the
'gift' of Venetia to Italy which would make Austria a
purely Danubian State, and- facilitate her dependence on
the central German State. It was not by pure chance or
for wholly military reasons that Hesse-Cassel, Saxony, and
Hanover were selected for ultimatums on June 15. Their
'conquest' was a political necessity to Prussia. Details
1 On June to (before war was declared) he had seen at Berlin General Tiirr
from Hungary and discussed the possibility of a Hungarian insurrection.
They knew this at Paris, because Bismarck on June 11 suggested Tiirr should
go to Paris and discuss the matter with the Emperor, through the mediation of
Prince Napoleon.
B. 0
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? 210
BISMARCK
could be left to the stage of negotiations, but the broad
framework was in his mind before the war, and he adhered
to it in all the complicated discussions of peace.
King William at General Headquarters was in a fine moral
and military indignation. The uric acid of Prussianism
inherited by every Hohenzollern sovereign had attacked
both his head and his heart. God was on his side; and it
was his duty to chastise Austria and the German princes
for their presumption and wickedness in forcing war on
geace-loving Prussia. The soldier chiefs--Moltke and
. oon perhaps to a less extent--desired to make a clean
business of the job and to keep Bismarck 'in his place. '
But Bismarck would not be kept 'in his place. ' He sub-
mitted a programme of peace--not a yard of Austrian
territory, no annexations north of the Main, no depositions
save in the territories necessary to secure a Prussian hege-
mony of the North. The proposal angered the King and
the military chiefs. On July 7 the march on Vienna was
resumed. Bismarck had threatened his sovereign with
European complications to no purpose. He now opened
a discussion with Austria; but--a more decisive stroke--
proceeded to threaten Napoleon with William 1. Goltz
conveyed to the Emperor the substance of Bismarck's
scheme, with the veiled menace that mediation would be
rejected unless the terms were accepted at once. Austria
was to be expelled from Germany; Prussia was to have
a free hand in the North; France would not be faced and
hemmed in by a united German Empire, for the Southern
States were to be excluded from the new confederation;
Prussia in the north would be balanced by an intact Austria
(save for the cession of Venetia to Italy) and Southern
Germany. The Prussian annexations were not specifically
mentioned. Napoleon, to the indignation of his ministers,
special concession to Napoleon, Saxony was not to be
annexed, but to enter the new North German Confedera-
tion intact. Napoleon meekly accepted the proposals
(July 14) and then transmitted them as his own to Austria
and to Bismarck, who had inspired Goltz. M. Paul
Matter's comment puts it concisely: 'Napol6on prSten-
matters of detail. ' As a
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 211
dant jouer le r61e de m6diateur, il s'agissait de dresser un
acte de mediation . . . Napoleon h1. , Empereur des
Francais, en laissa le soin a l'ambassadeur prussien. "C'est
un fait rare dans les annales de la diplomatic" constate
l'histoire officiel de l'Empire allemand: nul jugement
ne peut ? tre plus severe que cette froide constatation. '
Drouyn de Lhuys' comment was no less to the point.
'Maintenant il ne nous reste plus qu'a pleurer. '
Armed with this surrender of Napoleon, Bismarck was
able to withdraw from Austria the more favourable terms
he had previously (July 15) suggested. The Austrian
acceptance had come just an hour too late. Better still,
he now presented his royal master with an ultimatum.
Acceptance of 'Napoleon's terms' would secure peace at
once; refusal meant the prolongation of the war, the
possibility of French and neutral intervention and the
hazarding of all gains of any kind. William consented,1
after a prolonged struggle, in which Bismarck insisted on
resigning, if his policy was rejected. Military head-
quarters was on the King's side, but Bismarck found an
unexpected ally in the Crown Prince. On July 22 an
armistice was arranged; on July 26 the preliminaries were
signed, and ratified on the 28th.
It remained to settle with Napoleon. Hard pressed
by Drouyn de Lhuys, the Emperor consented to renew
the demand for compensation. The episode is instruc-
tive, not so much in Napoleon's amazing weakness as in
1 The dramatic narrative in Bismarck's Memoirs has been severely criticised
by German and French scholars. Lenz, Marcks, Oncken, Philippson, Egel-
haaf and Matter have pointed out the impossibility of reconciling the dates
and assertions of Bismarck with the documentary and other evidence, and it is
certain that Bismarck has both misdated and transposed in notable particulars
the order of events. It is difficult to believe that he can have invented the
famous scene in which the Crown Prince intervened. It is no less certain
from the contemporary evidence of Bismarck's and Roon's correspondence,
from the Memoirs of Stosch, Govone, Bernhardi, Abeken, Ernest of Coburg
and other sources, that (a) Bismarck had prolonged difficulties lasting over a
fortnight with the King and the military chiefs; (A) that the King consented
with great reluctance j (r) the intervention of the Crown Prince on Bismarck's
side was very influential. William and the soldiers desired in particular
the capture of, or entry into, Vienna, and the annexation of all or most of
Royal Saxony (demanded and refused in 1814), together with Franconia, the
cradle of the Hohenzollerns, to be ceded by Bavaria, and a heavier chastisement
of Austria.
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? 212
BISMARCK
Bismarck's methods. Benedetti was foolish enough to write
(August s) to Bismarck, adding to his letter the projet of
a secret convention. Bismarck then refused point blank
(August 6) any concessions of German territory, and re-
vealed the substance of the demand--the Rhenish pro-
vinces lost in 1815--and the explicit refusal to the French
journal Le Siecle. Its publication proclaimed a fresh
affront to the unhappy Emperor, prostrated at Vichy.
Drouyn de Lhuys resigned; the Southern States were
furious, and Russia promptly abandoned the suggestion of
a Congress. It would have been well had Napoleon re-
mained content with the two severe rebuffs received since
July 4. But encouraged by Goltz at Paris and other
German agents of Bismarck's, the Emperor decided to
demand Belgium--a demand Goltz asserted as' legitimate
in principle. ' Once again the unfortunate Benedetti
was instructed to submit in writing the project of a
secret Convention (August 16) providing for the acquisi-
tion of Luxemburg and the armed aid of Prussia ' should
the Emperor be required by circumstances to invade or
conquer Belgium. ' The document in Benedetti's hand-
writing was discussed in an interview with Bismarck, and
amended (August 20). Nothing came of the demand,
except that Bismarck carefully retained Benedetti's original
draft with the corrections inserted. The damning docu-
ment now in his possession would be very useful some day,
when it was necessary to deprive France of the sympathies
of Europe. And its subsequent reproduction in facsimile
(July 25, 1870) in the official Gazette must have satisfied
even Bismarck's implacable determination to punish those
whom he had so completely duped. Napoleon in 1866
could only fall back on a circular to France extolling her
unity, moderation, and generosity in the crisis. 'C'est bon,'
said a French agent,' a calmer les estaminets de province. '
While the formal peace with Austria was being made,
Bismarck--a comparatively easy matter--was cleaning
up the business by settling a series of peaces with the
'enemy' German States. On August 2 hostilities were
suspended in Germany and in Italy. Wurttemberg
(August 13), Baden (August 17), Bavaria (August 22),
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
Hesse-Darmstadt (September 3), obtained peace and the
integrity of their territories on payment of an indemnity,
except that the northern portion of Hesse was incorporated
in the new Northern Confederation. Severally the
Southern States agreed to renew the Tariff Union; and
to arrange in common with the north their railway system.
Nothing seemed more generous or fair. But the gener-
osity had been purchased by separate and secret treaties
(Schutz- und Triitzbundnis). These provided for mutual
guarantees of territory, while in the event of war the troops
of the contracting parties were to be united for common
purposes, and placed under the command of the King of
Prussia. In these negotiations Bismarck had confronted
the Southern States with a confidential revelation, not
minimised in the communication, of Napoleon's demands
for compensation. He could satisfy Napoleon, if he chose,
by acquiescing in the cession of Bavarian and Hessian
territories to a France which the South had hoped to play
off as a protector against Hohenzollern tyranny. The
alternative was still more simple. Prussia in return for
the signature of the secret military conventions would re-
sist the cession of a single yard of German territory; and
if Napoleon, now or in the future, threatened Germany the
Southern-States would join with the Northern Confedera-
tion in a united resistance. The argument was irresistible.
With the military conventions signed, sealed, and delivered,
and Napoleon definitely disposed of, Bismarck could with
an easy mind complete the formal treaty of peace that em-
bodied the preliminaries of Nikolsburg.
The Treaty of Prague (August 23) opened a new chapter
in the history of Prussia, of Austria, of Germany and of
Europe. Austria agreed that the old Confederation
should be dissolved and a new one, from which she was
excluded, formed under Prussian leadership. The line of
the river Main was fixed as the southern boundary of the
new organisation. With the exception of Venetia, trans-
ferred, through Napoleon, to Italy, the integrity of the
Austrian Empire was maintained. Schleswig-Holstein
and Lauenburg were annexed by Prussia, while the Duke
of Augustenburg subsequently abandoned his claims aud
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? 2I4
BISMARCK
released his 'subjects' from their allegiance. Napoleon
secured certain concessions. The kingdom of Saxony,
included in the Northern Confederation, retained its terri-
torial integrity, and dynastic crown. The three Southern
States--Baden, Wurttemberg, Bavaria--and the southern
portion of Hesse-Darmstadt, were prohibited from enter-
ing the Northern Confederation, with which they could
make arrangements by treaty; retaining severally their
'international independence' they were free to unite in
a separate confederation of their own. On the other
hand, Prussia was given a free hand in the North; and she
promptly prepared to annex Hanover, Nassau, Hesse-
Cassel, the northern portion of Hesse-Darmstadt, and the
former free city of Frankfurt, and to depose their several
ruling houses and governments. These annexations were
justified on the ground that the States in question had
made war as Prussia's enemies, and that' by reason of their
geographical position they could embarrass Prussia beyond
fiie measure of their natural power. ' In reality their
territories were required for military and strategic reasons,
and in order to secure for Prussia in the new Bund an over-
whelming military, political, and economic predominance.
Bismarck desired also to teach a drastic lesson to dynastic
Particularism. Saxony had been spared to humour Napo-
leon, Austria and Russia, but the rulers of Hanover, Hesse,
and Nassau must be punished by extirpation. The new
League would contain no dynasty, other than the Saxon,
with either the tradition or the power of independence, and
Saxony after this object-lesson would give no trouble in the
future. In a word, Prussia emerged from the war enlarged
to the extent of some twenty-seven thousand square miles,
and four and a quarter million inhabitants. She had not
merely tightened her grip on the Rhine and consolidated
the connection between Berlin and her Rhenish acqui-
sitions of 1815, but had secured an outlet to the North
Sea and the Baltic of supreme importance for the future.
The harbour of Kiel, in itself, was worth a king's ransom,
and the acquisition of Schleswig-Holstein with Lauenburg
would enable the canal from the Baltic to the North Sea--
so often planned in the middle of the century--to be
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
carried out as a Prussian enterprise. The sea-faring popu-
lation of the Duchies would provide a splendid nucleus
for the naval and mercantile marine that would complete
Prussia's ambition to be a European Power on terms of
equality with Great Britain and France.
The treaty was a signal triumph for Bismarck's state-
craft of 'blood and iron. ' Bismarck the man and
Bismarck the statesman were now the foremost figures on
the European stage, and behind Bismarck stood the new
Prussia conscious of its strength. Prussia and the world
were continuously reminded that fidelity to Prussian
ideals was the secret of success. Prussia had saved herself
by her efforts and Germany by her example. In 1867
Treitschke at Heidelberg as editor of the Preussische Jahr-
bilcher, could begin to teach the lesson, driven home by his
professoriate at Berlin (1874), that the Empire to come
must be an extended Prussia. The clauses in the treaty
which permitted the Southern States to form a separate
union, and forbade the incorporation of that union or any
member of it with the Northern Confederation were
worthless. No treaty could destroy the intellectual, moral,
and material bridges across the Main that a common
German civilisation, embedded in a common speech, the
intellectual fraternity of great German universities, and
the economic bonds of an increasing trade aided by the
tariff union, so richly provided, and the military bridges
were already laid by the secret conventions. A German
Empire was practically made by the Treaty of Prague. Its
complete realisation in the future could only be prevented
by destroying the framework which the Treaty of Prague
had created. The first of these conditions was Prussia
and Prussianism as Bismarck interpreted them.
But if the Treaty of Prague had gone a long way towards
stamping on Germany a particular solution of the German
problem--a solution which in 1862 had seemed so im-
probable as to be regarded as the fantasy of a political
gambler--it had not solved the two formidable problems
in foreign relations that the guaranteed form of German
unification at once raised.
The new Germany, whether federal or unitary, whether
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? 2l6
BISMARCK
divided by an arbitrary line of demarcation, the river Main,
or not, had to determine its attitude and policy towards
a new Austria and an old France--an Austria, severed as
the penalty of defeat from its historic membership in the
German organisation, and with no historical or practical
experience to inspire and direct either its policy, its status
in the world of Europe, or its internal polity and frame-
work--the old and undefeated France, whose flag flew at
Metz and Strasburg, in whose heart the two most abiding
and cherished convictions were the supremacy of France
in Europe, and the peril embodied in a unified Germany.
Thiers' indictment that Napoleon in 1866 had allowed the
Empire of Charles v. to be revived was the phrase of a
great phrase-maker, but it crystallised the fears of France
in an epigram. For the Treaty of Prague, while most
assuredly it did not threaten Europe with a revival of the
Empire of Charles v. , no less assuredly re-created for
Germany and its neighbours the problem of Central
Europe. On what principles, with what objects, and on
what system of State life ought the territory between the
Rhine and the Vistula, the Vosges and the Carpathians, to
be politically organised?
The Empire of Charles v. had attempted to solve that
recurring riddle by the effort to re-adapt to the conditions
of the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery the great
mediaeval conception of the unity of secular European
Christendom under the continuance of the Holy Roman
Empire of the German nation. The effort had collapsed
with the rupture of the spiritual and moral unity of
Europe, effected by the Reformation, and aggravated by the
pressure of the territorial national State of which sixteenth-
century France was the most potent expression on the
Continent. Napoleon--the heir both of the Bourbons
and the Revolution--had attempted to solve it by the
practical abolition of Central Europe, the establishment
of the Grand Empire Francais of the West/resting on the
alliance with the Eastern Empire of Russia and the'allot-
ment of the central area to a dismembered Prussia, an
Austria expelled from Germany and cut off from the sea,
and a League of the Rhine, militarily, economically, and
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 217
politically dependent on the Empire of the West. Napo-
leon's structure was destroyed by Nationalism and sea-
power in combination. The Congress of Vienna aimed
at frustrating both Westernism and Centralism by a return
to a modernised interpretation of the old theory of the
Balance of Power. It remade a Germany that mirrored
the European equilibrium; it sustained the hegemony of
a decentralised Austria, with a sub-centre of gravity at
Berlin, as an effective counterpoise alike to Paris in the
west and Petersburg in the east, and it revived the Concert
of Europe. But the separation of Holland and Belgium,
the unification of Italy, the renaissance of Prussia and the
defeat of Austria had now wrecked the system of 1815.
The problem re-emerged. What after Koniggratz was
to be the new political framework of Central Europe?
The Treaty of Prague did not register merely the substi-
tution of Berlin for Vienna as the new nodal point of an
old political system. That old system had explicitly re-
jected the unified national State as the framework of
Central Europe. The unification of Italy was a victory
for the national State; and it was with the aid of the Italy
made by Cavour and Napoleon, that Bismarck adminis-
tered the coup de grclce to the wounded Austria of 1859.
The removal of Austria left the central site clear for the
erection of a national German State, the essence of which
lay in the assumption that Central Europe belonged to
the German race and must be so organised as to put the
claim beyond question. The Italy of Cavour's policy
combined Liberalism--government through represen-
tative institutions, ministerial responsibility, and a consti-
tutional monarchy--with Nationalism--Nationalism as the
foundation of the State that is Law and Right. But the
Prussia that had annexed Schleswig-Holstein, absorbed
Hanover, Nassau, and electoral Hesse, and defeated
Austria was the State that is Power, whose organ is Force.
And in the profound difference between these two ex-
pressions of Nationalism--the Italian and the Prussian--lay
the deep significance of the emergence of the old problem
of Central Europe. The doctrine of race in Germany had
combined not with the gospel of Law but with the gospel
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? 2l8
BISMARCK
of Power. The problem for Bismarck--the problem of
Central Europe--was how to impose the new national
German State, based on power, on the European system,
and how to remodel that system to admit the new Ger-
many. There now lay before him the task of internal
reconstruction--the making of the new confederation--
and the task of reconstructing Europe on the results of the
victory of 1866.
The constitution of the new Germany must assist
the solution of the problem imposed on foreign policy.
The new Germany must be national in form and structure,
but it could not be constitutional, parliamentary, or
liberal, as England or Italy interpreted constitutional and
realise its ambitions without a new orientation for Austria
and a drastic alteration in the status and power of France.
Not until Austria had transferred its centre of gravity (as
he had predicted in 1864) to Buda-Pesth and accepted the
role of a Danubian State, with a front facing to the south-
east of Europe; not until France had been reduced to
subordination in the west could the new Central Europe,
with Berlin as its capital, be completed. Such a solution
would be a fresh and decisive victory for the principles,
enshrined in Prussian Nationalism, and the final defeat of
the principles antagonistic to the State as Power.
If there was one certainty in 1866 it was that France
would not allow without a struggle the North German
Confederation to absorb the Southern States and ring
France in with a German Empire stretching from the
Memel and the Eider to the Alps. The claims of the old
France could not be reconciled with the ambitions of the
new Germany.
The interest therefore of the next three years in Bis-
marck's statesmanship lies in two directions: first, his
determination to secure such a constitution for the North
German Confederation as would practically ensure a State
of the same character and under a similar irresponsible
political control to those existent in Prussia; secondly, an
ultimate settlement with France that would establish the
German Empire to come--a unified national State--as the
liberal government.
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 219
dominating power in Central Europe. The connection
between the character of tin North German Confederation
and the final victory of the Bismarckian solution of the
German problem was vital. It provides an illuminating
interpretation of the deeper issues and ideals of Bismarck's
statecraft.
An ultimate reconciliation with Austria was clearly fore-
shadowed in 1866. But reconciliation with France. was
impossible in 1867, nor was it desired. Bismarck's policy re-
quired the defeat of France. The danger from France was
not purely political or military--in the union of an undefeated
France with a defeated Austria, a revival of the system of
Kaunitz and the Bourbon monarchy of 1756. Rome and
the papacy brought into the political conflict the battle of
ideas. The syllabus of 1864 led logically to the Vatican
Decrees of 1870. Papal infallibility was a victory of Ultra-
montanism. Against the sovereignty of the modern State,
over all causes and persons, ecclesiastical as well as civil,
throughout its dominions supreme, it arrayed the theory
that in spheres of thought and action, defined not by the
State but by the Church, the competence of civil authority
ceased, and that the jus dirigendi and ihejuscoercendi passed
to spiritual power, intrinsically and in the divine order of
things, superior. France, Austria, and the patrimony of
Peter, were the political strongholds of this creed and
party. The defeat of Austria and France transferred the
struggle to the floors of the Prussian Landtag and the
Imperial Reichstag. What would have been the issue
of this tremendous struggle of principles, cutting down to
the bone of civil life and the fundamentals of society, if
France had won in 1870?
For the present Bismarck had to reckon with French
and German national sentiment. On both sides of the
frontier the high explosive of national passion was stored
up in embarassing plenitude, and any political trifle might
detonate the magazines. Napoleon's repeated and vary-
ing demands had proved not so much what the Emperor
himself desired as what he knew France expected him to
extort. The extreme irritability of French public opinion
was caused by anger, humiliation, and fear, and the danger
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? 220
BISMARCK
was all the greater because Napoleon's failure in Mexico
and in European combination with the internal discontent,
imperilled the dynasty and made it imperative for the
Tuileries to re-gild its tarnished prestige with a striking
success in foreign policy. France was corroded with the
worst form of ignorance that can sap a nation's strength,
the ignorance that is steeped in vanity. The boulevards
of Paris and the estaminets de province did not know
Prussia, and they refused to recognise the profound changes
that had made the Germany of 1867 as different from the
Germany of 1815 as that Germany was from the Germany
of 1789. The France of 1867 was inspired with the
axiomatic conviction that it was still the first country of
Europe, the foyer de civilisation, first in science, letters,
the arts and arms.
The irritability of German public opinion was due co
pride and the consciousness of strength. Great things
had been accomplished, but they were only the beginning.
The supremacy in Europe was at last passing into German
hands. The injuries of the past were not yet obliterated,
and the one veto which German Nationalism was not pre-
pared to tolerate was a French veto on the completion of
German unity. After 1866 any French or German states-
man could have made a war with ease in twenty-four hours.
For things simply could not remain as they were in 1866.
Neither Napoleon nor Bismarck could postpone indefin-
itely the collision without abandoning what neither could
abandon. The maintenance of the French Empire and
the imperial dynasty on the throne was Napoleon's, the
completion of German unification was Bismarck's, task.
For Napoleon the tragedy was summed up in the impossi-
bility of refusing war if it was thrust upon him, since refusal
meant another humiliation, and that spelled ruin. The
Treaty of Prague placed the initiative in Bismarck's hands.
Obedient to the opportunism on which his statecraft rested,
he already willed the end in 1866; the means and the
moment would be revealed by circumstances that could
not be predicted in advance but might be made. It
was Bismarck's deepest conviction that true opportunism
consisted as much in creating opportunities as in seizing
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 221
them when they occurred. But as in 1864 or in 1866 the
war that lay ' in the logic of history '--a logic not made by
chance or a blind caprice, but created by statecraft--must
be strictly and essentially ' defensive. ' War must secure,
since policy could not, the conditions on which a German
Central Europe could live for the future with its neigh-
bours. The achievement of these conditions could on
Bismarclrian principles alone prove its justifiability and
necessity.
v
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? CHAPTER V
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE NORTH GERMAN
CONFEDERATION
The Making of the North German Confederation--The War
with France, 1866-1870--The Treaty of Frankfurt--The
Unification of Germany, 1870-1871.
The conclusion of the treaties which established peace was
only part of the complicated and exhausting burden of
work that Bismarck had to shoulder. This enormous pres-
sure of business could not be delegated, except in its de-
tails; and even if delegation had been possible Bismarck
was not the man to permit, in so critical a situation, the
interference of colleagues, military or civil. The gigantic
labour fell on a man already worn out, living on shattered
nerves and an adamantine will. He had returned to
Berlin on August 4, and when on September 20 he took
part in the triumphal entry of the army, every one ob-
served with concern the weary exhaustion in his face and
figure. He had in fact dragged himself from a sick bed
to ride with the generals, Moltke, Roon, Herwarth von
Bittenfeld, Steinmetz, and Vogel von Falkenstein, to re-
ceive the homage of a crowd, delirious with enthusiasm,
and the roses of the girls at the Brandenburg Gate. He
was, and he knew it, the arresting figure in the cavalcade;
men and women along the route had their eyes on the
civilian in the cuirassier uniform, merely a titular general
of brigade, for he was the magician who had achieved the
miracle. To-day it was roses--roses, roses all the way
past the statue of. his master, Frederick the Great--but
had the Crown Prince arrived too late at Koniggratz, it
would not have been even the besoms of the old women
or the stones of a duped democracy. He would have been
lying, face downwards, after the last charge.
222
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 223
The Landtag had been dissolved at the outbreak of war,
and the elections of July 8 reflected the victories. One
hundred and forty Conservatives had been returned, and
had the dissolution been deferred till the end of July it is
probable that the defeat of the opposition would have been
decisive. Junkertum was jubilant. Now was the time to
teach these pestilent Radicals a lesson. The King shared
their views. But Bismarck thought otherwise. It was the
hour for the olive branch that he had plucked at Avignon
in September 1862. The opposition had had their lesson.
National Liberalism--not Junkertum--was the true ally
in the work of unification to come. Not even in his deal-
ings with Austria and the defeated German South did
Bismarck show himself more convincingly a masterly
realist--the statesman who appreciates realities and bends
them to his will--than in his treatment of the Landtag.
'I was in a position to carry out the boldest and most in-
cisive policy of reaction,' he told the Reichstag in 1879,
'with the success and iclat which still attached to me from
Koniggratz . . . if I had thought that absolutism in
Prussia would have better promoted the work of German
unity, I should most decidedly have counselled recourse
to it. ' For himself and for his policy the triumph would
be all the more enduring if he could now hypnotise
National Liberalism into servitude as a loyal agent of his
will. The King, not unnaturally, resisted, supported by
his military advisers, and Bismarck had a hard task, assisted
by the Crown Prince, in persuading his sovereign to accept
what he regarded as a personal humiliation and a public
surrender. Bismarck wrote to his wife (August 3) :--
'Great controversy over the speech from the Throne
. . . these folk see nothing but their own nose and practice
their swimming in the stormy flood of phrases. With
our enemies we can settle up, but our Friends! They all
wear blinkers and see only a speck of the world,'
The Landtag opened on August 5, and the royal speech
indicated that the government would throw a white sheet
over the blue uniform with the red facings. The bill,
introduced by Bismarck, provided an indemnification for
the absence of a legal budget since 1862, and additional
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? 224
BISMARCK
credits for 1866. The Budget for 1867 would be sub-
mitted to the Lower House. It was a frank admission that
the government had acted illegally, but the Minister-
President invited the House to close the constitutional
controversy, and to recognise that if the government had
been ' technically' wrong it could not have acted other-
wise under the circumstances, and that peace and pardon
were now necessary in order to proceed with the great
duties that awaited Prussia. Let bygones be bygones;
neither Crown nor Landtag in the future would assail each
other's rights. The era of conflict was over--never to
return. 'The government,' he said, later, 'has gladly
grasped the opportunity to bring the conflict to an end,
in the conviction that it serves no purpose in constitutional
life to drive matters to extremities. Constitutional
fovernment cannot be judged by mathematical, nor even
y juristic, rules. It is a continuous compromise . . .
the making of peace never satisfies every wish, never fulfils
every calculation. '
L. von Gerlach pronounced the bill a blow in the face of
Bismarck's best friends. The Conservatives received the
measure in morose silence, but it passed the Lower House
by 230 to 75 votes, and the Upper House without a
division. The irreconcilables of both camps refused the
olive branch, and from the Indemnity Bill dates a re-
grouping of Prussian and German parties which the or-
ganisation of the new Confederation definitely confirmed.
In September 1866 the Progressive party (Fortschritts-
Partei), which had been the core of the opposition, split up.
Fifteen of its important members, with eight from the
left centre, founded a new party, under Bennigsen's leader-
ship, which on the dissolution of the Nationalverein,
became the powerful National Liberal party. Its raison
d'Hre was to give the new government firm support in its
foreign policy, and to work for complete unity with free-
dom. 'Der deutsche Staat und die deutsche Freiheit
miissen gleichzeitig mit denselben Mitteln errungen
werden. ' A similar split took place in the Conserva-
tive ranks. On October 27, 1867, the Free Conservative
party was founded on the principle that Prussia had
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 225
now entered 'the class of constitutional States. ' 'The
Time of Absolutism had passed. ' The Free Conser-
vatives pledged themselves to support and work for the
'Constitutional monarchy' defined in the Constitution
of 1867. How active political thought and movement
had become under the influence of the years 1866 and 1867
can be best judged by two other party manifestations:
first, the notable Eisenach Programme which founded the
Social Democrats in August 1869; secondly, the German
Popular Party (Deutsche Volkspartet) of South Germany
in September 1868, with its ideal of the complete demo-
cratic State and responsible parliamentary government.
The Eisenach Programme, of which much was to be heard
later, aimed amongst other ends at direct legislation by a
popular legislature, substitution of a national militia for
the standing army, separation of Church and State, aboli-
tion of ecclesiastical teaching in the elementary schools,
complete independence of the judiciary, abolition of all
press laws, legal recognition of trades unions, abolition of
all indirect taxation, substitution of a single progressive
income-tax, and regulation by law of the hours, remunera-
tion, and conditions of labour.
During the short autumn session of 1866 Bismarck, ex-
hausted as he was, astonished the Landtag by his persua-
sive geniality. The old rasping irritability and explosions
of anger were reserved for the ministers of the South and
for Benedetti; it was ail the more remarkable, as he was in
daily pain and tortured by insomnia. But with Bismarck,
as with the great Napoleon, anger, insolence, and menaces
were storm-cones indicating that the situation was critical;
they were intended to drive an adversary into indiscretions.
? 208
BISMARCK
wrong thing, and it is certain that Napoleon now
did it. 1
Bismarck was in a very ugly temper, with his back to the
wall, fighting both with his sovereign and the military
chiefs. 'Louis shall pay for it,' he exclaimed, when
Napoleon's ambassador, Benedetti, unexpectedly appeared.
For he neither forgave nor forgot those who acted on his
own principle of applying the thumbscrews to an adversary
in difficulties. Bismarck, indeed, at first, and not un-
naturally, exaggerated both Napoleon's military readiness
and his desire to press mediation at the point of the sword.
The unfortunate Benedetti, however, was in no position
to apply the thumbscrews. Bismarck made it quite
plain that, first, he would not tolerate mediation in the
sense of definition of the terms of peace by Napoleon;
secondly, that no matter what the terms with Austria were,
Napoleon could not have one inch of German territory as
compensation; thirdly, that if Napoleon persisted in the
idea of an armed mediation Prussia would take up the
challenge. Moltke was ready with his plan of campaign.
He would close the march on Vienna, assume the defen-
sive in Bohemia, face front to the Rhine, and take the
offensive on that line. The Chief of the Staff was confident
that he could open the western offensive with a victorious
Prussian army before Napoleon had mobilised and de-
ployed the French army, and the Chief of the Staff did not
promise what he could not perform. Incidentally the
transference of the major forces of Prussia to the western
theatre would crush the South German States into pulp.
Bismarck went further. He warned Paris that he was
1 On July 4 he telegraphed to King William announcing that Venetia had
been placed in his hands by Austria, and demanding an armistice and negotia-
tions, under his mediation, invited by Austria. On July 5 he rescinded his
decision to summon the chambers and intervene as an armed mediator. On
July 6 he formally requested Great Britain and Russia to support ' avec force'
the proposed French mediation. On July 7 he ordered Benedetti to go to the
Prussian headquarters and demand an answer to the telegram of July 4. From
July 7 to July 14 Napoleon wavered between doing nothing, mobilising,
negotiating between Austria and her German allies, despatching a French
squadron to the North Sea, and harassing Victor Emmanuel with requests. On
July 13 he received Goltz, and on the 14th accepted his terms. Cest m cochon!
said Victor Emmanuel when he received the telegram of July 4.
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
ready to call out revolution in Hungary,1 even make peace
on any terms with Austria, and then not crush the South
German States, but demand their aid in a war of a united
Germany against France? France that asked for the left
bank of the Rhine alike from Bavaria and Prussia. This
was not diplomatic rhodomontade, nor the exuberant
defiance of Prussian Junkertum. Bismarck had not
plunged Prussia into war merely to defeat Austria, but to
lay the basis of a unified Germany under Prussian leader-
ship. The scheme of June 10 presented to the dissolved
Federal Diet and modelled on the revolutionary Liberalism
of 1849 was not Prussian blackmail to a German democracy
whom he intended to dupe. Through the smoke of
Koniggratz the eyes of faith could see already the dim
fines and shadowy shapes of a united Germany to come--
with dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.
Prussia, however, must not now embrace more of Ger-
many than she could assimilate. The postponement of
the ideal unity would assure to Germany within and with-
out the driving power and the inspiration necessary to
overcome the cold reaction that would certainly follow the
war of 1866. Bismarck could probably have written out
on June 1 his idea of a settlement--the exclusion of
Austria from Germany, the annexation of Schleswig and
Holstein, the formation of a Federal system under Prussia
north of the Main, incorporating ' enemy territories' (and
the extinction of their dynasties) sufficient to secure an
assured Prussian preponderance, the separation of the
South German States, in an organisation of their own, but
connected with the North by treaty arrangements, the
'gift' of Venetia to Italy which would make Austria a
purely Danubian State, and- facilitate her dependence on
the central German State. It was not by pure chance or
for wholly military reasons that Hesse-Cassel, Saxony, and
Hanover were selected for ultimatums on June 15. Their
'conquest' was a political necessity to Prussia. Details
1 On June to (before war was declared) he had seen at Berlin General Tiirr
from Hungary and discussed the possibility of a Hungarian insurrection.
They knew this at Paris, because Bismarck on June 11 suggested Tiirr should
go to Paris and discuss the matter with the Emperor, through the mediation of
Prince Napoleon.
B. 0
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? 210
BISMARCK
could be left to the stage of negotiations, but the broad
framework was in his mind before the war, and he adhered
to it in all the complicated discussions of peace.
King William at General Headquarters was in a fine moral
and military indignation. The uric acid of Prussianism
inherited by every Hohenzollern sovereign had attacked
both his head and his heart. God was on his side; and it
was his duty to chastise Austria and the German princes
for their presumption and wickedness in forcing war on
geace-loving Prussia. The soldier chiefs--Moltke and
. oon perhaps to a less extent--desired to make a clean
business of the job and to keep Bismarck 'in his place. '
But Bismarck would not be kept 'in his place. ' He sub-
mitted a programme of peace--not a yard of Austrian
territory, no annexations north of the Main, no depositions
save in the territories necessary to secure a Prussian hege-
mony of the North. The proposal angered the King and
the military chiefs. On July 7 the march on Vienna was
resumed. Bismarck had threatened his sovereign with
European complications to no purpose. He now opened
a discussion with Austria; but--a more decisive stroke--
proceeded to threaten Napoleon with William 1. Goltz
conveyed to the Emperor the substance of Bismarck's
scheme, with the veiled menace that mediation would be
rejected unless the terms were accepted at once. Austria
was to be expelled from Germany; Prussia was to have
a free hand in the North; France would not be faced and
hemmed in by a united German Empire, for the Southern
States were to be excluded from the new confederation;
Prussia in the north would be balanced by an intact Austria
(save for the cession of Venetia to Italy) and Southern
Germany. The Prussian annexations were not specifically
mentioned. Napoleon, to the indignation of his ministers,
special concession to Napoleon, Saxony was not to be
annexed, but to enter the new North German Confedera-
tion intact. Napoleon meekly accepted the proposals
(July 14) and then transmitted them as his own to Austria
and to Bismarck, who had inspired Goltz. M. Paul
Matter's comment puts it concisely: 'Napol6on prSten-
matters of detail. ' As a
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 211
dant jouer le r61e de m6diateur, il s'agissait de dresser un
acte de mediation . . . Napoleon h1. , Empereur des
Francais, en laissa le soin a l'ambassadeur prussien. "C'est
un fait rare dans les annales de la diplomatic" constate
l'histoire officiel de l'Empire allemand: nul jugement
ne peut ? tre plus severe que cette froide constatation. '
Drouyn de Lhuys' comment was no less to the point.
'Maintenant il ne nous reste plus qu'a pleurer. '
Armed with this surrender of Napoleon, Bismarck was
able to withdraw from Austria the more favourable terms
he had previously (July 15) suggested. The Austrian
acceptance had come just an hour too late. Better still,
he now presented his royal master with an ultimatum.
Acceptance of 'Napoleon's terms' would secure peace at
once; refusal meant the prolongation of the war, the
possibility of French and neutral intervention and the
hazarding of all gains of any kind. William consented,1
after a prolonged struggle, in which Bismarck insisted on
resigning, if his policy was rejected. Military head-
quarters was on the King's side, but Bismarck found an
unexpected ally in the Crown Prince. On July 22 an
armistice was arranged; on July 26 the preliminaries were
signed, and ratified on the 28th.
It remained to settle with Napoleon. Hard pressed
by Drouyn de Lhuys, the Emperor consented to renew
the demand for compensation. The episode is instruc-
tive, not so much in Napoleon's amazing weakness as in
1 The dramatic narrative in Bismarck's Memoirs has been severely criticised
by German and French scholars. Lenz, Marcks, Oncken, Philippson, Egel-
haaf and Matter have pointed out the impossibility of reconciling the dates
and assertions of Bismarck with the documentary and other evidence, and it is
certain that Bismarck has both misdated and transposed in notable particulars
the order of events. It is difficult to believe that he can have invented the
famous scene in which the Crown Prince intervened. It is no less certain
from the contemporary evidence of Bismarck's and Roon's correspondence,
from the Memoirs of Stosch, Govone, Bernhardi, Abeken, Ernest of Coburg
and other sources, that (a) Bismarck had prolonged difficulties lasting over a
fortnight with the King and the military chiefs; (A) that the King consented
with great reluctance j (r) the intervention of the Crown Prince on Bismarck's
side was very influential. William and the soldiers desired in particular
the capture of, or entry into, Vienna, and the annexation of all or most of
Royal Saxony (demanded and refused in 1814), together with Franconia, the
cradle of the Hohenzollerns, to be ceded by Bavaria, and a heavier chastisement
of Austria.
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? 212
BISMARCK
Bismarck's methods. Benedetti was foolish enough to write
(August s) to Bismarck, adding to his letter the projet of
a secret convention. Bismarck then refused point blank
(August 6) any concessions of German territory, and re-
vealed the substance of the demand--the Rhenish pro-
vinces lost in 1815--and the explicit refusal to the French
journal Le Siecle. Its publication proclaimed a fresh
affront to the unhappy Emperor, prostrated at Vichy.
Drouyn de Lhuys resigned; the Southern States were
furious, and Russia promptly abandoned the suggestion of
a Congress. It would have been well had Napoleon re-
mained content with the two severe rebuffs received since
July 4. But encouraged by Goltz at Paris and other
German agents of Bismarck's, the Emperor decided to
demand Belgium--a demand Goltz asserted as' legitimate
in principle. ' Once again the unfortunate Benedetti
was instructed to submit in writing the project of a
secret Convention (August 16) providing for the acquisi-
tion of Luxemburg and the armed aid of Prussia ' should
the Emperor be required by circumstances to invade or
conquer Belgium. ' The document in Benedetti's hand-
writing was discussed in an interview with Bismarck, and
amended (August 20). Nothing came of the demand,
except that Bismarck carefully retained Benedetti's original
draft with the corrections inserted. The damning docu-
ment now in his possession would be very useful some day,
when it was necessary to deprive France of the sympathies
of Europe. And its subsequent reproduction in facsimile
(July 25, 1870) in the official Gazette must have satisfied
even Bismarck's implacable determination to punish those
whom he had so completely duped. Napoleon in 1866
could only fall back on a circular to France extolling her
unity, moderation, and generosity in the crisis. 'C'est bon,'
said a French agent,' a calmer les estaminets de province. '
While the formal peace with Austria was being made,
Bismarck--a comparatively easy matter--was cleaning
up the business by settling a series of peaces with the
'enemy' German States. On August 2 hostilities were
suspended in Germany and in Italy. Wurttemberg
(August 13), Baden (August 17), Bavaria (August 22),
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
Hesse-Darmstadt (September 3), obtained peace and the
integrity of their territories on payment of an indemnity,
except that the northern portion of Hesse was incorporated
in the new Northern Confederation. Severally the
Southern States agreed to renew the Tariff Union; and
to arrange in common with the north their railway system.
Nothing seemed more generous or fair. But the gener-
osity had been purchased by separate and secret treaties
(Schutz- und Triitzbundnis). These provided for mutual
guarantees of territory, while in the event of war the troops
of the contracting parties were to be united for common
purposes, and placed under the command of the King of
Prussia. In these negotiations Bismarck had confronted
the Southern States with a confidential revelation, not
minimised in the communication, of Napoleon's demands
for compensation. He could satisfy Napoleon, if he chose,
by acquiescing in the cession of Bavarian and Hessian
territories to a France which the South had hoped to play
off as a protector against Hohenzollern tyranny. The
alternative was still more simple. Prussia in return for
the signature of the secret military conventions would re-
sist the cession of a single yard of German territory; and
if Napoleon, now or in the future, threatened Germany the
Southern-States would join with the Northern Confedera-
tion in a united resistance. The argument was irresistible.
With the military conventions signed, sealed, and delivered,
and Napoleon definitely disposed of, Bismarck could with
an easy mind complete the formal treaty of peace that em-
bodied the preliminaries of Nikolsburg.
The Treaty of Prague (August 23) opened a new chapter
in the history of Prussia, of Austria, of Germany and of
Europe. Austria agreed that the old Confederation
should be dissolved and a new one, from which she was
excluded, formed under Prussian leadership. The line of
the river Main was fixed as the southern boundary of the
new organisation. With the exception of Venetia, trans-
ferred, through Napoleon, to Italy, the integrity of the
Austrian Empire was maintained. Schleswig-Holstein
and Lauenburg were annexed by Prussia, while the Duke
of Augustenburg subsequently abandoned his claims aud
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? 2I4
BISMARCK
released his 'subjects' from their allegiance. Napoleon
secured certain concessions. The kingdom of Saxony,
included in the Northern Confederation, retained its terri-
torial integrity, and dynastic crown. The three Southern
States--Baden, Wurttemberg, Bavaria--and the southern
portion of Hesse-Darmstadt, were prohibited from enter-
ing the Northern Confederation, with which they could
make arrangements by treaty; retaining severally their
'international independence' they were free to unite in
a separate confederation of their own. On the other
hand, Prussia was given a free hand in the North; and she
promptly prepared to annex Hanover, Nassau, Hesse-
Cassel, the northern portion of Hesse-Darmstadt, and the
former free city of Frankfurt, and to depose their several
ruling houses and governments. These annexations were
justified on the ground that the States in question had
made war as Prussia's enemies, and that' by reason of their
geographical position they could embarrass Prussia beyond
fiie measure of their natural power. ' In reality their
territories were required for military and strategic reasons,
and in order to secure for Prussia in the new Bund an over-
whelming military, political, and economic predominance.
Bismarck desired also to teach a drastic lesson to dynastic
Particularism. Saxony had been spared to humour Napo-
leon, Austria and Russia, but the rulers of Hanover, Hesse,
and Nassau must be punished by extirpation. The new
League would contain no dynasty, other than the Saxon,
with either the tradition or the power of independence, and
Saxony after this object-lesson would give no trouble in the
future. In a word, Prussia emerged from the war enlarged
to the extent of some twenty-seven thousand square miles,
and four and a quarter million inhabitants. She had not
merely tightened her grip on the Rhine and consolidated
the connection between Berlin and her Rhenish acqui-
sitions of 1815, but had secured an outlet to the North
Sea and the Baltic of supreme importance for the future.
The harbour of Kiel, in itself, was worth a king's ransom,
and the acquisition of Schleswig-Holstein with Lauenburg
would enable the canal from the Baltic to the North Sea--
so often planned in the middle of the century--to be
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
carried out as a Prussian enterprise. The sea-faring popu-
lation of the Duchies would provide a splendid nucleus
for the naval and mercantile marine that would complete
Prussia's ambition to be a European Power on terms of
equality with Great Britain and France.
The treaty was a signal triumph for Bismarck's state-
craft of 'blood and iron. ' Bismarck the man and
Bismarck the statesman were now the foremost figures on
the European stage, and behind Bismarck stood the new
Prussia conscious of its strength. Prussia and the world
were continuously reminded that fidelity to Prussian
ideals was the secret of success. Prussia had saved herself
by her efforts and Germany by her example. In 1867
Treitschke at Heidelberg as editor of the Preussische Jahr-
bilcher, could begin to teach the lesson, driven home by his
professoriate at Berlin (1874), that the Empire to come
must be an extended Prussia. The clauses in the treaty
which permitted the Southern States to form a separate
union, and forbade the incorporation of that union or any
member of it with the Northern Confederation were
worthless. No treaty could destroy the intellectual, moral,
and material bridges across the Main that a common
German civilisation, embedded in a common speech, the
intellectual fraternity of great German universities, and
the economic bonds of an increasing trade aided by the
tariff union, so richly provided, and the military bridges
were already laid by the secret conventions. A German
Empire was practically made by the Treaty of Prague. Its
complete realisation in the future could only be prevented
by destroying the framework which the Treaty of Prague
had created. The first of these conditions was Prussia
and Prussianism as Bismarck interpreted them.
But if the Treaty of Prague had gone a long way towards
stamping on Germany a particular solution of the German
problem--a solution which in 1862 had seemed so im-
probable as to be regarded as the fantasy of a political
gambler--it had not solved the two formidable problems
in foreign relations that the guaranteed form of German
unification at once raised.
The new Germany, whether federal or unitary, whether
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BISMARCK
divided by an arbitrary line of demarcation, the river Main,
or not, had to determine its attitude and policy towards
a new Austria and an old France--an Austria, severed as
the penalty of defeat from its historic membership in the
German organisation, and with no historical or practical
experience to inspire and direct either its policy, its status
in the world of Europe, or its internal polity and frame-
work--the old and undefeated France, whose flag flew at
Metz and Strasburg, in whose heart the two most abiding
and cherished convictions were the supremacy of France
in Europe, and the peril embodied in a unified Germany.
Thiers' indictment that Napoleon in 1866 had allowed the
Empire of Charles v. to be revived was the phrase of a
great phrase-maker, but it crystallised the fears of France
in an epigram. For the Treaty of Prague, while most
assuredly it did not threaten Europe with a revival of the
Empire of Charles v. , no less assuredly re-created for
Germany and its neighbours the problem of Central
Europe. On what principles, with what objects, and on
what system of State life ought the territory between the
Rhine and the Vistula, the Vosges and the Carpathians, to
be politically organised?
The Empire of Charles v. had attempted to solve that
recurring riddle by the effort to re-adapt to the conditions
of the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery the great
mediaeval conception of the unity of secular European
Christendom under the continuance of the Holy Roman
Empire of the German nation. The effort had collapsed
with the rupture of the spiritual and moral unity of
Europe, effected by the Reformation, and aggravated by the
pressure of the territorial national State of which sixteenth-
century France was the most potent expression on the
Continent. Napoleon--the heir both of the Bourbons
and the Revolution--had attempted to solve it by the
practical abolition of Central Europe, the establishment
of the Grand Empire Francais of the West/resting on the
alliance with the Eastern Empire of Russia and the'allot-
ment of the central area to a dismembered Prussia, an
Austria expelled from Germany and cut off from the sea,
and a League of the Rhine, militarily, economically, and
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 217
politically dependent on the Empire of the West. Napo-
leon's structure was destroyed by Nationalism and sea-
power in combination. The Congress of Vienna aimed
at frustrating both Westernism and Centralism by a return
to a modernised interpretation of the old theory of the
Balance of Power. It remade a Germany that mirrored
the European equilibrium; it sustained the hegemony of
a decentralised Austria, with a sub-centre of gravity at
Berlin, as an effective counterpoise alike to Paris in the
west and Petersburg in the east, and it revived the Concert
of Europe. But the separation of Holland and Belgium,
the unification of Italy, the renaissance of Prussia and the
defeat of Austria had now wrecked the system of 1815.
The problem re-emerged. What after Koniggratz was
to be the new political framework of Central Europe?
The Treaty of Prague did not register merely the substi-
tution of Berlin for Vienna as the new nodal point of an
old political system. That old system had explicitly re-
jected the unified national State as the framework of
Central Europe. The unification of Italy was a victory
for the national State; and it was with the aid of the Italy
made by Cavour and Napoleon, that Bismarck adminis-
tered the coup de grclce to the wounded Austria of 1859.
The removal of Austria left the central site clear for the
erection of a national German State, the essence of which
lay in the assumption that Central Europe belonged to
the German race and must be so organised as to put the
claim beyond question. The Italy of Cavour's policy
combined Liberalism--government through represen-
tative institutions, ministerial responsibility, and a consti-
tutional monarchy--with Nationalism--Nationalism as the
foundation of the State that is Law and Right. But the
Prussia that had annexed Schleswig-Holstein, absorbed
Hanover, Nassau, and electoral Hesse, and defeated
Austria was the State that is Power, whose organ is Force.
And in the profound difference between these two ex-
pressions of Nationalism--the Italian and the Prussian--lay
the deep significance of the emergence of the old problem
of Central Europe. The doctrine of race in Germany had
combined not with the gospel of Law but with the gospel
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BISMARCK
of Power. The problem for Bismarck--the problem of
Central Europe--was how to impose the new national
German State, based on power, on the European system,
and how to remodel that system to admit the new Ger-
many. There now lay before him the task of internal
reconstruction--the making of the new confederation--
and the task of reconstructing Europe on the results of the
victory of 1866.
The constitution of the new Germany must assist
the solution of the problem imposed on foreign policy.
The new Germany must be national in form and structure,
but it could not be constitutional, parliamentary, or
liberal, as England or Italy interpreted constitutional and
realise its ambitions without a new orientation for Austria
and a drastic alteration in the status and power of France.
Not until Austria had transferred its centre of gravity (as
he had predicted in 1864) to Buda-Pesth and accepted the
role of a Danubian State, with a front facing to the south-
east of Europe; not until France had been reduced to
subordination in the west could the new Central Europe,
with Berlin as its capital, be completed. Such a solution
would be a fresh and decisive victory for the principles,
enshrined in Prussian Nationalism, and the final defeat of
the principles antagonistic to the State as Power.
If there was one certainty in 1866 it was that France
would not allow without a struggle the North German
Confederation to absorb the Southern States and ring
France in with a German Empire stretching from the
Memel and the Eider to the Alps. The claims of the old
France could not be reconciled with the ambitions of the
new Germany.
The interest therefore of the next three years in Bis-
marck's statesmanship lies in two directions: first, his
determination to secure such a constitution for the North
German Confederation as would practically ensure a State
of the same character and under a similar irresponsible
political control to those existent in Prussia; secondly, an
ultimate settlement with France that would establish the
German Empire to come--a unified national State--as the
liberal government.
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 219
dominating power in Central Europe. The connection
between the character of tin North German Confederation
and the final victory of the Bismarckian solution of the
German problem was vital. It provides an illuminating
interpretation of the deeper issues and ideals of Bismarck's
statecraft.
An ultimate reconciliation with Austria was clearly fore-
shadowed in 1866. But reconciliation with France. was
impossible in 1867, nor was it desired. Bismarck's policy re-
quired the defeat of France. The danger from France was
not purely political or military--in the union of an undefeated
France with a defeated Austria, a revival of the system of
Kaunitz and the Bourbon monarchy of 1756. Rome and
the papacy brought into the political conflict the battle of
ideas. The syllabus of 1864 led logically to the Vatican
Decrees of 1870. Papal infallibility was a victory of Ultra-
montanism. Against the sovereignty of the modern State,
over all causes and persons, ecclesiastical as well as civil,
throughout its dominions supreme, it arrayed the theory
that in spheres of thought and action, defined not by the
State but by the Church, the competence of civil authority
ceased, and that the jus dirigendi and ihejuscoercendi passed
to spiritual power, intrinsically and in the divine order of
things, superior. France, Austria, and the patrimony of
Peter, were the political strongholds of this creed and
party. The defeat of Austria and France transferred the
struggle to the floors of the Prussian Landtag and the
Imperial Reichstag. What would have been the issue
of this tremendous struggle of principles, cutting down to
the bone of civil life and the fundamentals of society, if
France had won in 1870?
For the present Bismarck had to reckon with French
and German national sentiment. On both sides of the
frontier the high explosive of national passion was stored
up in embarassing plenitude, and any political trifle might
detonate the magazines. Napoleon's repeated and vary-
ing demands had proved not so much what the Emperor
himself desired as what he knew France expected him to
extort. The extreme irritability of French public opinion
was caused by anger, humiliation, and fear, and the danger
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BISMARCK
was all the greater because Napoleon's failure in Mexico
and in European combination with the internal discontent,
imperilled the dynasty and made it imperative for the
Tuileries to re-gild its tarnished prestige with a striking
success in foreign policy. France was corroded with the
worst form of ignorance that can sap a nation's strength,
the ignorance that is steeped in vanity. The boulevards
of Paris and the estaminets de province did not know
Prussia, and they refused to recognise the profound changes
that had made the Germany of 1867 as different from the
Germany of 1815 as that Germany was from the Germany
of 1789. The France of 1867 was inspired with the
axiomatic conviction that it was still the first country of
Europe, the foyer de civilisation, first in science, letters,
the arts and arms.
The irritability of German public opinion was due co
pride and the consciousness of strength. Great things
had been accomplished, but they were only the beginning.
The supremacy in Europe was at last passing into German
hands. The injuries of the past were not yet obliterated,
and the one veto which German Nationalism was not pre-
pared to tolerate was a French veto on the completion of
German unity. After 1866 any French or German states-
man could have made a war with ease in twenty-four hours.
For things simply could not remain as they were in 1866.
Neither Napoleon nor Bismarck could postpone indefin-
itely the collision without abandoning what neither could
abandon. The maintenance of the French Empire and
the imperial dynasty on the throne was Napoleon's, the
completion of German unification was Bismarck's, task.
For Napoleon the tragedy was summed up in the impossi-
bility of refusing war if it was thrust upon him, since refusal
meant another humiliation, and that spelled ruin. The
Treaty of Prague placed the initiative in Bismarck's hands.
Obedient to the opportunism on which his statecraft rested,
he already willed the end in 1866; the means and the
moment would be revealed by circumstances that could
not be predicted in advance but might be made. It
was Bismarck's deepest conviction that true opportunism
consisted as much in creating opportunities as in seizing
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 221
them when they occurred. But as in 1864 or in 1866 the
war that lay ' in the logic of history '--a logic not made by
chance or a blind caprice, but created by statecraft--must
be strictly and essentially ' defensive. ' War must secure,
since policy could not, the conditions on which a German
Central Europe could live for the future with its neigh-
bours. The achievement of these conditions could on
Bismarclrian principles alone prove its justifiability and
necessity.
v
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? CHAPTER V
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE NORTH GERMAN
CONFEDERATION
The Making of the North German Confederation--The War
with France, 1866-1870--The Treaty of Frankfurt--The
Unification of Germany, 1870-1871.
The conclusion of the treaties which established peace was
only part of the complicated and exhausting burden of
work that Bismarck had to shoulder. This enormous pres-
sure of business could not be delegated, except in its de-
tails; and even if delegation had been possible Bismarck
was not the man to permit, in so critical a situation, the
interference of colleagues, military or civil. The gigantic
labour fell on a man already worn out, living on shattered
nerves and an adamantine will. He had returned to
Berlin on August 4, and when on September 20 he took
part in the triumphal entry of the army, every one ob-
served with concern the weary exhaustion in his face and
figure. He had in fact dragged himself from a sick bed
to ride with the generals, Moltke, Roon, Herwarth von
Bittenfeld, Steinmetz, and Vogel von Falkenstein, to re-
ceive the homage of a crowd, delirious with enthusiasm,
and the roses of the girls at the Brandenburg Gate. He
was, and he knew it, the arresting figure in the cavalcade;
men and women along the route had their eyes on the
civilian in the cuirassier uniform, merely a titular general
of brigade, for he was the magician who had achieved the
miracle. To-day it was roses--roses, roses all the way
past the statue of. his master, Frederick the Great--but
had the Crown Prince arrived too late at Koniggratz, it
would not have been even the besoms of the old women
or the stones of a duped democracy. He would have been
lying, face downwards, after the last charge.
222
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 223
The Landtag had been dissolved at the outbreak of war,
and the elections of July 8 reflected the victories. One
hundred and forty Conservatives had been returned, and
had the dissolution been deferred till the end of July it is
probable that the defeat of the opposition would have been
decisive. Junkertum was jubilant. Now was the time to
teach these pestilent Radicals a lesson. The King shared
their views. But Bismarck thought otherwise. It was the
hour for the olive branch that he had plucked at Avignon
in September 1862. The opposition had had their lesson.
National Liberalism--not Junkertum--was the true ally
in the work of unification to come. Not even in his deal-
ings with Austria and the defeated German South did
Bismarck show himself more convincingly a masterly
realist--the statesman who appreciates realities and bends
them to his will--than in his treatment of the Landtag.
'I was in a position to carry out the boldest and most in-
cisive policy of reaction,' he told the Reichstag in 1879,
'with the success and iclat which still attached to me from
Koniggratz . . . if I had thought that absolutism in
Prussia would have better promoted the work of German
unity, I should most decidedly have counselled recourse
to it. ' For himself and for his policy the triumph would
be all the more enduring if he could now hypnotise
National Liberalism into servitude as a loyal agent of his
will. The King, not unnaturally, resisted, supported by
his military advisers, and Bismarck had a hard task, assisted
by the Crown Prince, in persuading his sovereign to accept
what he regarded as a personal humiliation and a public
surrender. Bismarck wrote to his wife (August 3) :--
'Great controversy over the speech from the Throne
. . . these folk see nothing but their own nose and practice
their swimming in the stormy flood of phrases. With
our enemies we can settle up, but our Friends! They all
wear blinkers and see only a speck of the world,'
The Landtag opened on August 5, and the royal speech
indicated that the government would throw a white sheet
over the blue uniform with the red facings. The bill,
introduced by Bismarck, provided an indemnification for
the absence of a legal budget since 1862, and additional
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? 224
BISMARCK
credits for 1866. The Budget for 1867 would be sub-
mitted to the Lower House. It was a frank admission that
the government had acted illegally, but the Minister-
President invited the House to close the constitutional
controversy, and to recognise that if the government had
been ' technically' wrong it could not have acted other-
wise under the circumstances, and that peace and pardon
were now necessary in order to proceed with the great
duties that awaited Prussia. Let bygones be bygones;
neither Crown nor Landtag in the future would assail each
other's rights. The era of conflict was over--never to
return. 'The government,' he said, later, 'has gladly
grasped the opportunity to bring the conflict to an end,
in the conviction that it serves no purpose in constitutional
life to drive matters to extremities. Constitutional
fovernment cannot be judged by mathematical, nor even
y juristic, rules. It is a continuous compromise . . .
the making of peace never satisfies every wish, never fulfils
every calculation. '
L. von Gerlach pronounced the bill a blow in the face of
Bismarck's best friends. The Conservatives received the
measure in morose silence, but it passed the Lower House
by 230 to 75 votes, and the Upper House without a
division. The irreconcilables of both camps refused the
olive branch, and from the Indemnity Bill dates a re-
grouping of Prussian and German parties which the or-
ganisation of the new Confederation definitely confirmed.
In September 1866 the Progressive party (Fortschritts-
Partei), which had been the core of the opposition, split up.
Fifteen of its important members, with eight from the
left centre, founded a new party, under Bennigsen's leader-
ship, which on the dissolution of the Nationalverein,
became the powerful National Liberal party. Its raison
d'Hre was to give the new government firm support in its
foreign policy, and to work for complete unity with free-
dom. 'Der deutsche Staat und die deutsche Freiheit
miissen gleichzeitig mit denselben Mitteln errungen
werden. ' A similar split took place in the Conserva-
tive ranks. On October 27, 1867, the Free Conservative
party was founded on the principle that Prussia had
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 225
now entered 'the class of constitutional States. ' 'The
Time of Absolutism had passed. ' The Free Conser-
vatives pledged themselves to support and work for the
'Constitutional monarchy' defined in the Constitution
of 1867. How active political thought and movement
had become under the influence of the years 1866 and 1867
can be best judged by two other party manifestations:
first, the notable Eisenach Programme which founded the
Social Democrats in August 1869; secondly, the German
Popular Party (Deutsche Volkspartet) of South Germany
in September 1868, with its ideal of the complete demo-
cratic State and responsible parliamentary government.
The Eisenach Programme, of which much was to be heard
later, aimed amongst other ends at direct legislation by a
popular legislature, substitution of a national militia for
the standing army, separation of Church and State, aboli-
tion of ecclesiastical teaching in the elementary schools,
complete independence of the judiciary, abolition of all
press laws, legal recognition of trades unions, abolition of
all indirect taxation, substitution of a single progressive
income-tax, and regulation by law of the hours, remunera-
tion, and conditions of labour.
During the short autumn session of 1866 Bismarck, ex-
hausted as he was, astonished the Landtag by his persua-
sive geniality. The old rasping irritability and explosions
of anger were reserved for the ministers of the South and
for Benedetti; it was ail the more remarkable, as he was in
daily pain and tortured by insomnia. But with Bismarck,
as with the great Napoleon, anger, insolence, and menaces
were storm-cones indicating that the situation was critical;
they were intended to drive an adversary into indiscretions.
