146
BISMARCK
Austria, racked on a series of Procrustean beds, called con-
stitutions, with Italy on one side and Hungary on the other,
and Russia sullenly hostile, could not expect to repeat in
1864 the miracle of 1849.
BISMARCK
Austria, racked on a series of Procrustean beds, called con-
stitutions, with Italy on one side and Hungary on the other,
and Russia sullenly hostile, could not expect to repeat in
1864 the miracle of 1849.
Robertson - Bismarck
The disin-
tegrated Germany of the Federal Bund and denationalised
Austria were no whit behind the new Italy, France, and
Great Britain in their Polish sympathies. The contrast,
indeed, is striking between the manifestation in 1863 of
public opinion in Prussia and non-Prussian Germany, in
support of the Poles, and in sincere reprobation of the
terrible severity with which the defeated rising was crushed
by the Russian autocracy, and the cold-blooded equan-
imity with which Germany and the Magyarised Dual
Empire of 1876 and 1896 condoned, when they did not
positively approve, the more terrible treatment of the
Balkan Slavs and the Armenians by the Ottoman auto-
cracy. Only by such a contrast can we realise the
strength of the Liberal movement and of the moral forces
behind it, with which Bismarck wrestled in 1863, and
register in 1896 the atrophy of a nation's conscience and the
withering of its ideals, when for two generations it has
been drugged by the doctrine that the great questions of
the day can be decided only by blood and iron.
Bismarck at once recognised the gravity of the Polish
issue and the opportunity that the Polish question pro-
vided. His attitude to the problem of Poland, and Prus-
sian Poland in particular, never altered since 1848, when
he first denounced the danger of Polonism to the Prussian
State, through the Kulturkampf to the anti-Polish legis-
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? 138
BISMARCK
lation of his chancellorship that he left as a wasting mort-
gage to his successors. He told General Fleuiy in De-
cember, 1863, that the question was one of life and death
to Prussia: 'I would rather die,' he said, 'than permit
our position in Posen to be discussed at a European Con-
gress: I would rather cede our Rhinelands. ' He had no' .
sympathy with the Nationalist principle, outside Prussia
and Germany; it was simply a force in a political situation,
to be exploited as such; and if a force that threatened
Prussian hegemony one to be extirpated. The eighteenth-
century partitions of Poland were the well-merited fate
of a State too anarchic to resist the strength of its neigh-
bours. The dream of a reconstructed Poland on Liberal
lines in 1863 was simply a childish chimera. The inde-
pendence of Russian Poland under the suzerainty of the
Tsar would lead to a demand for the freedom of Prussian
Poland, a result absolutely fatal to the Prussian position
in the East and on the Baltic. The demand for autonomy
and political liberties sprang from the same delusions about
government that tainted the progressive and democratic
parties in Germany. Concessions to Polish demands
within Prussia were intrinsically inadmissible, and would
embarrass the good friend, Russia. The Polish rebellion
was a domestic affair of the Tsar's government, interference
with which was an impertinence that the Tsar would
justly resent.
Prussia's interest must be the sole criterion of Prussia's
policy. A rebellion on her borders was a serious danger;
there were disquieting signs that the conflagration would
spread. The sooner it was stamped out the better for
every one concerned. Bismarck, in short, only cared to
extract the maximum of political advantage from an affair
which he examined with icy impartiality. The blood of
Polish martyrs, for whose sufferings he did not care a
groschen, might become the seed of Prussian domination
in Central Europe. Through General von Alvensleben
he promptly (March 8) concluded a convention with
Russia, by which the two countries undertook to establish
a military cordon on their respective frontiers in order to
stop their respective Polish subjects from aiding the rebel-
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 139
lion, and to prevent the escape of rebels from lawful au-
thority. The action of the parliamentary opposition in
the Landtag only confirmed Bismarck's determination.
Interpellations, denunciations of the convention, reso-
lutions by sweeping majorities, he brushed aside as irre-
levant attempts to interfere wkh the royal right to con-
clude treaties by prerogative, and to make the foreign policy
of Prussia conform to the folly of ignorant idealists or crazy
demagogues. He told the Lower House roundly that the
making of war and treaties was the right of the Crown,
and roused its fury by the emphatic assertion that he would
make war or abstain from it without their approbation or
consent, and that his duty to his sovereign and Prussia
would never be influenced one hair's-breadth by their
votes or their attacks.
When the governments of Great Britain, France, and
Austria, under the pressure of public opinion agreed to
gresent a joint note formulating six demands 1 to the
. ussian government, and invited the concurrence of
Prussia in this diplomatic pressure, Bismarck firmly refused,
and for four chief reasons. A close understanding with
Russia was, and had long been, the sine qua non of his sys-
tem. Refusal to sign the note was the most practical
proof he could give of friendship to Russia. The aliena-
tion of Russia, still suffering from the humiliation of 1856,
and threatened with the boycott of Europe and the moral
condemnation of the civilised conscience, was for Prussia
in 1863 midsummer madness. Secondly, he disapproved of
the six demands. If Russia conceded them, the National
Union and the Radicals throughout Germany would
utilise the concession to harass the government of Prussia
already plagued with the charlatanry of Progress. Thirdly,
rejection by the Russian government of the joint note
must be followed either by more exacting pressure, and if
necessary, war, or by a painful rebuff at Petersburg.
Bismarck did not believe in a diplomacy that invited hu-
miliation, and the idea of war on behalf of the Polish rebels
1 The six points were briefly: (i) an amnesty; (2) a Polish parliament j
(3) a Polish National Executive; (4) Polish language in official communica-
tions j (5) religious freedom; (6) legal recruiting.
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? 140
BISMARCK
was idiotic. Fourthly, he foresaw the failure of this sin-
gular union of Great Britain, France, and Austria, and he
desired it to fail. The ill-assorted partners would quarrel,
and from their quarrel Prussia would derive advantages
that could be left for future exploitation. The separation
of Austria and of France from Russia was worth all the
joint notes and all the Polish lives in the world. As early
as I860 Bismarck had expressed the fear that France would
ally with Russia, isolate Prussia, or drive her into a hateful
dependence on Austria. He had laid it down that in a
Franco-Russian alliance Prussia must be the third member.
Great Britain could be soothed or neglected as circum-
stances indicated. The British army did not exist; and
the British fleet was useless in this business. Fortune had
now given Prussia an unexpected favour. France by her
stupid sentimentalism would alienate Russia. Prussia
could first secure Russian friendship, break up the Franco-
British entente, then work for a French benevolent neu-
trality, and Austria would be left to face an irreconcilable
Italy and an independent Prussia secure on both her
flanks. Here, indeed, was a game for the Titans.
Bismarck might well gaze into the baffling face of the
Time-spirit. The Schleswig-Holstein question was threat-
ening an ugly crisis. It is significant of the minister's
exploratory and prescient vigilance that while Nation-
alists and democrats were crying aloud for Germany and
Prussia to act, he gave no sign that he was earnestly
sounding all the depths and shallows in a rock-sown sea.
He contented himself with a pointed reminder to the
Danish government that Prussia was a signatory to the
Convention of London of 1852, and a sharp rap on the
heads of the ' noisy' journalists and politicians who desired
Prussia to go to war with all her neighbours because of
alleged grievances. Toujours en vedette! The motto of
Frederick, the Master, was more than ever the watchword.
Neither menaces nor caresses from London, Paris, and
Vienna induced Bismarck to modify his refusal to join
in the combined intervention at Petersburg and, as he
foresaw, the joint note was a complete failure. Assured
of Prussia's support, the Russian government in effect bade
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 141
the signatory Powers mind their own business, and pro-
ceeded to extinguish the rebellion in blood and flame.
Napoleon was intensely chagrined at the result, the blame
for which he threw chiefly on Great Britain. Our Foreign
Office had used the strong language that should precede
strong action, but it now covered its retreat to the wired
trenches of a good conscience in the smoke-clouds of a
parliamentary Blue-Book. At the Tuileries the need of a
real diplomatic success somewhere was being seriously
felt. Paris was seething with sentiment and ill-defined
ambition. Napoleon's disillusioned eyes turned to Berlin.
In the Wilhelmstrasse, not in the Ball-Platz, lay the keys
that could unlock the doors to the Rhine; and Napoleon
knew that the hunger of France, gnawing at the vitals of
the Second Empire, could be appeased, and only appeased,
by the Rhenish provinces.
The true author of the Polish fiasco was Bismarck. Had
he made Prussia a signatory to the Note of the Six De-
mands, the Russia of 1863, isolated and in grave difficulties,
would have been obliged to yield to the Concert of Europe.
Had Prussia been a country with responsible self-govern-
ment Bismarck must either have met the overwhelming
demand of the Landtag or been driven from office. With
Prussian support it was well within the compass of practical
diplomacy, without firing a shot, to have extorted a charter
of liberties for Russian Poland and prevented the cruelties
that added one more chapter to the blood-stained record.
The moral and political effect of such concerted action
would have been of incalculable advantage. But a Can-
ning in London or a Cavour at Berlin were needed.
Instead, there was Bismarck on the one side, and on the
other Napoleon and the clever mediocrities of the Quai
d'Orsay, the organised hypocrisy of Vienna and a Palmer-
ston, no longer the man of 1839, and permanently suspect
to a hostile court. Public opinion in Prussia and Germany
was impotent against Bismarck. While it raged, he sided
with Russia, thereby revealing to the Triple Entente that
without war they were helpless, and that the strategic
position of Prussia and the strength of the Prussian army
made the suggestion of war without Prussia ridiculous and
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? 142
BISMARCK
impossible. It was in Bismarck's power, and he knew it, to
meet the storm in the last resort by an appeal to Prussia
and Germany to forget the exaggerated woes of Poland
and concentrate on the Ahab of Europe--Napoleon.
Bismarck, it must be remembered, in these years was in
a dangerous temper: he was fighting for the life, honour,
and greatness of Prussia, as he interpreted them, and he
had thrown his all into the struggle. Even more truly
than Cavour from 1852 onwards he was gambling for
tremendous stakes. Not once but fifty times in the next
few year she indicated his determination, if the gods failed
him, to move Acheron. What could not be done by the
Conservative forces, could be done by calling in the Revo-
lution. His heart within was white-hot with the same
emotion that mastered the German of his day, and no
man could let loose more skilfully the whirlwinds of
national passion, or rejoice more triumphantly in riding
the storm.
But in 1863, as always, he had himself in hand. The
hour assuredly had not come: the situation must be de-
veloped much further and with a remorseless caution.
He could not afford to make a single mistake. The Prus-
sian army was not ready. Like his diplomacy it needed
time. And it was of the essence of his system, as of
Frederick the Great's, that so far as preparation and cal-
culation could ensure it, victory must be a certainty. The
Statecraft that is Force betrays the State that is Power if
it ignores or misunderstands the character and conditions
under which Force works in the world of human things.
Bismarck had secured the friendship of Russia. His
confidence that Prussia could rely on her strength and in-
dependence had been justified. The initiative in policy,
lost in the period from 1815 to 1862, was being quietly
recovered. While the members of the temporary Triple
Entente were abusing Prussia, and still more heartily, each
other, Bismarck was drawing up an edifying balance-sheet.
He could remind his royal master of two sound lessons--
the indispensability of the Crown's unfettered control of
policy, the futility of 'moral penetration,' as a solution
of European problems. The relevance of both to the
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
constitutional crisis was obvious, and the sequel was to
drive the argument home with cumulative power. King
William was, Bismarck discovered, eminently teachable;
but he eminently required to be taught. Time was even
more necessary for the instruction of the Crown than for
the development of the European situation. An autocrat
who takes the bit in his teeth will dash the chariot of State
to pieces more quickly and disastrously than a nation that
loses its head. If William's conscience or prejudices
drove him to break loose, Bismarck would share the fate
of Metternich.
The quality of Bismarck's judgment was never better
illustrated than in his refusal of Gortschakov's suggestion
that the Russo-Prussian understanding should be converted
into a formal alliance. It was a tempting proposal; and
we can well believe that he weighed it in every scale before
declining. Treaties, it is true, were not more sacred than
other, less formal, engagements. They were, in Bis-
marck's eyes, no more than the summary of a particular
situation, and their observance was always conditioned by
an implicit clause--rebus sic stantibus--things being as they
were. Nor was it the fear that a treaty would limit his
initiative or freedom of action. A virtual alliance with
Russia was the fixed point on which Prussian policy
was henceforward to pivot. The identity of interest--
dynastic, governmental, political--between the Russia of
the Tsar and the Prussia of William 1. , was practically
complete. Nor did Bismarck fear the accusation at home
or elsewhere that the Holy Alliance was being revived.
He had faced that when he made the Alvensleben Con-
vention, and proved that he could ignore public opinion
in Prussia and the criticism of foreign governments. His
real reason for the refusal of Gortschakov's offer lays bare
an essential principle of his statecraft. To the Prussia of
1863, convalescent from a prolonged locomotor-ataxy, and
not yet cured, Russia was more indispensable to Prussia
than Prussia was to Russia. Bismarck's judgment of
Prussia's strength was extraordinarily sane and impartial.
He shared with Gustavus Adolphus and Richelieu the
sense of limits, which is one of the finest and rarest, if not
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? i44
BISMARCK
the finest and rarest, gift of the highest statesmanship.
Russia, he pronounced with customary vividness, would in
such an alliance sit on the longer arm of the lever. All
that was needed in 1863 could be distilled gradually from
the informal but close understanding already established.
Every alliance, he remarked at another time, implies a
horse and a rider. The function of diplomacy is to secure
that you are the rider and your ally the horse. Because
he correctly judged that in 1863, Gortschakov would be
the rider and he, Bismarck, the horse, he put the offer
politely and with many assurances of affection, personal
and political, on one side.
While the Polish Rebellion was still running its ap-
pointed course, the German question also had developed
a crisis. The demand that something must be done, and
done now, to reshape the indefensible travesty of a political
mechanism, called the Bund--that precious monument
the restoration of which in its anachronistic nudity had
marked the grave both of 1848 and of Conservative con-
structive statesmanship. For ten years every German
mind had been labouring with the problem and putting on
record, to the embarrassment of that age and the despair
of the seeker after truth in the next two generations, its
perplexities, fears, hopes, dreams and solutions. State-
papers, diaries, letters, pamphlets, caricatures, memorials,
note-books, and minutes of clubs, unions, leagues--the
archives of the chancelleries, the waste-paper basket of the
patriot, and the scrap-heap of the lecture-room--which
German research has by no means exhausted, testify to the
deep-seated and universal discontent. Nationalists, Radi-
cals, Clericals and Ultramontanes, Conservatives, bureau-
crats and professors, hummed like bees in the swarming
season from the frontier of Schleswig to the forelands of
the Alps. The flower of the universities, professorial and
undergraduate, linked hands and pens with the politicians
--Bennigsen, Droysen, Samwer, M. Duncker, the Coburg
group, and the unitarian enthusiasm of the Grand-Duke
of Baden. Already the trumpet of the young Treitschke
was blowing its earliest clarion calls.
When the butchers meet in conclave because something
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
must be done for the sheep, we may be sure that it is not
the sheep but the butchers who fear the future. In 1863,
the Habsburg Emperor felt the cruel coercion of a
Germany out of joint, and the unpleasant necessity of
putting it right before worse befell. The dynasties from
Dresden to Munich leaped to the suggestion from Vienna
that disinterested patriotism could be concentrated in a
Congress of Princes ready to confer benefits on their
subjects. To the adroit Beust at Dresden, as fertile in
diplomatic resource as in conversational epigram, the
opportunity was exceptional. Beust, like every one else,
had his scheme, or rather half a dozen schemes, in pigeon-
holes, and another half dozen producible if required, like
the magician's rabbits, for any audience, and from any
diplomatic bag--and Beust was by far the cleverest of all
the political conjurers in the middle States who desired
a tripartite Germany--Austria, the middle States, and
Prussia--regrouped in a new Federal structure. To Beust
and to the Triad party, the supreme merit of this solution,
the details of which were simply a drafting matter, lay in
its recognition of the equality of non-Austrian and non-
Prussian Germany as a collective unit with Austria and
Prussia. Such equality would fairly meet the Prussian
demand for parity with Austria and the Austrian reluct-
ance to surrender her historic hegemony; it would no less
fairly remove the fatal objection to all dualistic schemes
which imposed on the middle and petty States an obli-
gatory choice of being absorbed either in a Prussian or an
Austrian system, an absorption damaging to the general
interests of Germany, historically unjust, and repugnant
to the legitimist sovereignty of the dynasties.
Concessions must, of course, be made to the people as
well as to the States of Germany. Bismarck's failure was
assumed to be a practical certainty: Prussia would then
succumb to the liberal majority which would adopt the
programme of the National Union and achieve a unitary
and democratic solution under Prussian leadership. Once
the citadel in Prussia had fallen to the parliamentary
opposition, the rest of Germany would lynch its dynasties
into acceptance of the unitary and liberal plan. And
B. K
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?
146
BISMARCK
Austria, racked on a series of Procrustean beds, called con-
stitutions, with Italy on one side and Hungary on the other,
and Russia sullenly hostile, could not expect to repeat in
1864 the miracle of 1849. Now, if ever, was the moment
to drive an Austrian dynastic, anti-Prussian, and particu-
larist programme through.
The problem was first to combine the minimum of real
concession with the maximum of outward homage to
democratic demands; and secondly, to arrange the Federal
machinery in such a way as to grant in theory the Prussian
claim to parity with Austria, while refusing the substance
--an easy matter, for equal voting powers between Austria
and Prussia must always leave Prussia in a minority when
non-Prussian Germany made equal either to Austria or
Prussia voted (as it would) with Austria. The Austrian
government accordingly produced its specious plan. A
new Directorate of six States (Austria, Prussia, Bavaria,
and three others chosen in rotation) under Austrian presi-
dency was to be created, together with a Federal Council
of 21 votes, a Federal Tribunal of Law, and a Federal
Assembly of 302 Delegates elected, not by direct suffrage,
but by the various parliaments of the Federated States.
Rebellious German democracy was, in short, to be re-
manacled in a new Federal cage, and Prussia was, through
her King, to mediatise herself for the benefit of Germany
on the altars of dynasticism. The Emperor Francis
Joseph met King William at Gastein. The crises of
German history always begin or end at a bathing resort.
The two sovereigns talked and agreed that the business
could be settled by a Congress of Princes at Frankfurt.
It was fitting that the rulers, by personal negotiations,
should settle the affairs of-Germany in a royal and family
conference; and their ministers were to be in close attend-
ance, but take no part in the august deliberations. While
their princely masters worked, they could copy letters,
dine, dance, and arrange for the exchange of decorations.
On August 16 the Congress met; only one important
sovereign (and his minister) was absent. The surprise and
dismay were universal, for the absentee was the King of
Prussia. They sent to fetch him. The King of Saxony
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 147
was the courier chosen to remind King William that a
Congress of Princes, headed by Csesarean Majesty from
Vienna, begged the honour of his company. Delay and
much anxiety. Then the King of Saxony came back.
The King of Prussia regretted his inability to accept the
invitation. Indignation, expostulation, consternation, pre-
vailed: then after a few days, the Congress ruefully broke
up. All that it accomplished was to repeat the invitation
(by letter this time) to Prussia and to 'leave open' the
question of the Presidency ' for further discussion. ' The
proposal to proceed, without Prussia, was indeed suggested,
but crumbled into pieces at once. 'We will have no con-
federation without Austria,' said the Bavarian minister,
'but likewise none without Prussia. ' A reorganisation of
Germany which omitted Prussia was ridiculous. The
coercion of Prussia would, in the state of public opinion,
probably end in the revolution with the Prussian army at
its disposal. And when the Prussian government officially
published its reasons for abstention--the patent inade-
quacy of the proposals of the Princes to meet the rights of
Prussia and the needs of Germany was glaringly and pain-
fully evident. 'A national Parliament,' said the Prussian
memorandum of September 15, 'was an essential of any
Federal reform. The interests and claims of the Prussian
people are intrinsically and inseparably identical with those
of the German people. ' The argument was repeated in the
Note of September 22, sent to all the members of the Con-
gress of Princes. Prussia laid it down that: (1) She, as
well as Austria, must have a right to veto a declaration of
war by the Confederation; (2) her position in the Con-
federation must be equal to that of Austria; (3) she could
not accept an enlargement of the functions of the Con-
federation limiting Prussian independence; (4) there must
be a German Parliament, representative of the German
nation, and elected directly by it.
At a word from Prussia the Austrian plan and all others
of the same kind went, unhouseled, unanointed, and
unannealed into the limbo reserved for the acrobatics of
pseudo-statesmanship. The Congress of Princes sum-
moned to consecrate the consummation of a new German
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? 148
BISMARCK
Confederation, was suddenly turned into the funeral of
the . Greater Germany party.
Henceforward, there were only three possible alter-
natives--a unification under Austria imposed on a defeated
Prussia, a unification under Prussia imposed on a defeated
Austria, or the unitary Empire of the National Union, in
which Prussia was dissolved in a Germany, from which
Austria was excluded, a unification to be imposed on Ger-
many by the triumph of National Liberalism. In the
autumn of 1863, though we to-day find it hard to believe
it, and before the year 1864 had revolutionised the Euro-
pean situation and German public opinion, the last of the
three alternatives seemed far the most probable. One
conclusion, however, is certain. The author of the fiasco
of the Congress of Princes, the man who administered the
coup de gr&ce to the Greater Germany party, was Bismarck.
'Lord ! ' says Puck,' what fools these mortals be. ' The
sacred simplicity of the diplomatic or royal ostrich pro-
vokes a deeper laughter of Jove than the perjuries of lovers.
The supposition of Rechberg and Beust and all the sham
and pigmy Machiavellians, princely or ministerial, that the
Minister-President at Berlin, who had served seven gruel-
ling years of apprenticeship at Frankfurt, would not see
through the patent trap of the Austrian plan must have
provoked the grimmest humour of Bismarck. The idea
that the Prussian monarchy was meekly to strip to the skin
in the imperial. city of Frankfurt, and put on a Nessus shirt
patched up by kings and grand-dukes in the workhouse at
Vienna was too delicious even for the grand diplomacy.
Did Rechberg, Beust, and their company seriously imagine
that the Minister-President was risking all in the struggle
with the Landtag to sacrifice the cause of Prussianism
at the bidding of a mob of princes? Their action proves
that if they knew themselves and their tricks, at least they
did not know the Minister-President at Berlin. 'Stripped
of its coat,' Bismarck said, 'the Austrian poodle is dis-
tinctly meagre. '
Yet the reality of the German situation was profoundly
disquieting to Bismarck. National Liberalism was, and
remained, a tremendous and dangerous force. The time
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 149
had long passed when the German people could be fobbed
off with a hollow sham and be manipulated in blinkers. in to
a series of dynastic pens, renamed a Unified Germany.
The essence of the problem lay in the demand in all parts
of Germany for the nation to be included in the task of
government, so that legislation, taxation, policy would be
expressive of a nation's will, character and ideals--a Ger-
many for the Germans by the Germans. Hence any
reconstruction to be practical politics, must be organic.
The Austrian and princely programme was the old Diet
and Federation, with a few new and useless wheels added,
some of the old grit and rust cleaned out, and the whole
recoloured with a thin coat of democratic paint, intended
to fade.
For Bismarck, the problem was not how to combine a
minimum of concession to democracy with a maximum of
princely and particularist independence and autocracy,
but how to combine a maximum of concession to the
demand for self-government with the unity of an efficient
and irresponsible executive. Bismarck had here pene-
trated to an abiding reality in the German heart. If the
Germans passionately desired a share in the government
of a unified Germany, they no less passionately desired
power. The National Union and National Liberalism were
the outcome of both desires. The old system satisfied
neither. Germany was impotent in the world. It was
simply shameful, every German felt, that a great country
could not, or would not, prevent a third-rate State like
Denmark from violating its obligations, defined in the
public law of Europe, and could not protect Germans in
Holstein from illegal oppression, and the reason was that
poKcy was determined by a group of conflicting dynasties,
and power was dissipated in an antiquated and contemptible
political mechanism. Ending, not mending, that system
would alone meet the demand for power--the power of the
National State--and provide the organs of power. The
foreign observer can indeed see in the evolution of National
Liberalism the Nationalism, fierce, deep, and continuous.
It is the Liberalism or the absence of it that puzzles him.
Bennigsen's speech in 1867 on the Luxemburg question,
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? i5o
BISMARCK
applauded from one end of Germany to the other, is
saturated with the doctrine of, and demand for, power,
the German National State as the expression of German
power. Yet in 1863 Bennigsen was Bismarck's most for-
midable opponent, because Bennigsen was a Liberal as
well as a Nationalist.
The explanation is really simple. National Liberalism
grew to its strength as a movement for self-government
through representative institutions, and as a national pro-
test against the inertia and apathy of the dynastic sove-
reignties that ruled Germany. Up till 1861 no German
government had evinced any sincere desire to subordinate
dynastic or particularist interests to the cause of Germany
as a whole. The homage of the dynastic and diplomatic
lip in all the Courts to the cause of Germany was copious;
but when it came to action, Austria, Prussia, Bavaria,
placed Austrian, Prussian or Bavarian selfishness first, and
Germany was forgotten. Hence the Liberals were con-
vinced that, while self-government was intrinsically
desirable, a unification of Germany on a democratic basis,
that swept away the State sovereignties, alone would
provide for the realisation of what the German people
demanded--a single German State, playing its part as a
European Power in the European system. Such a State
would represent the totality of German brains, wills,
ideals, and material resources; and it would pursue a
German policy made by the German people. Nothing but
real representative institutions, with a Parliament that made
policy because it was a government-making organ, would
enable the Germans to be a single nation, with a national
will working through organs automatically effective.
Hence the stronger the Nationalist passion, the stronger
with the Liberals was the insistence on the necessity of
democratic self-government. Power through represen-
tative institutions was the complement to parliamentary
self-government as the instrument of National power.
Bismarck might have said in 1863, 'Almost thou
persuadest me to be a National Liberal. ' He did not,
however, believe, on principle, in the efficiency of consti-
tutional monarchy and responsible parliamentary govern-
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 151
ment. He was convinced that ' the English system' was
wholly inapplicable to the German character and the his-
torical conditions in which it had been developed through
many centuries. And the closer he studied Great Britain
the more strongly he inferred that parliamentary govern-
ment did not make for executive efficiency, continuity of
policy and strong administration. The correctness of this
judgment is not the question. That Bismarck thought so
there can be no doubt. Unity achieved by moral penetra-
tion and persuasion he regarded as. a pure delusion. Neither
the dynasties nor the Liberals would give him the army
that would smash Austria, nor the time, uninterrupted by
party strife, to devise a foreign policy and prepare in
secret for the day of decision. He did not doubt the-
German patriotism of the German people. He trusted it
indeed far more than he did the dynasties, as his proposal
for a National Parliament as an essential part of Federal
reform proved; but what he did doubt most gravely was
the readiness of the Sybels, the Gneists, the Twestens,
Virchows, Laskers, Dunckers, and Bennigsens to will the
means no less than the ends of national unity. They
aimed at power, but they shrank from force. They were,
in his judgment, political cowards, and therefore in his
view lacked the higher statesmanship.
The one system that would give him what he wanted
existed already in Prussia. It was being tested now, and
it was standing the test. Its retention, therefore, as the
nucleus of the new Germany was indispensable. Just as
in foreign policy Bismarck's system pivoted on an under-
standing with Russia, so in the German problem his solu-
tion pivoted on the Prussian monarchy, the irresponsible
director of the Prussian nation in arms.
The National Liberals would mutilate or destroy the
executive nucleus of a policy of power. But Bismarck was
ready now to foreshadow the lines of his own programme.
Once the Congress of Princes was killed, the publication
of the official statement of Prussian policy, already cited,
was a tactical move in the higher strategy; for Bismarck
often acted on Palmerston's dictum:'I tell ambassadors the
truth, because I know they won't believe it. ' The Prussian
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BISMARCK
memoranda of September 15 and September 22, 1863, were
the last nail in the coffin of Austrian Greater Germanism.
They were also intended to be the first in the coffin of
the National Liberals.
Bismarck's victory over William 1. when he refused the
invitation to Frankfurt, was a signal personal triumph
greater even than the ratification in 1879 of the alliance
with Austria. Of the many struggles with his sovereign,
these two in 1863 and 1879 were the most critical and de-
cisive, for in each case the central principle of his system
was in jeopardy; and in 1863 Bismarck had yet to win,
not as in 1879 simply to retain, his ascendancy. William
wished to go to Frankfurt. Heart and brain, combined
in favour of accepting the invitation. All his relatives,
male and female, urged him strongly to accept. Indeed,
how could he as the King of Prussia refuse to meet his
brother sovereigns when refusal meant personal discourtesy,
and the rejection of the unique chance of demonstrating
to the German world the unity and patriotism of the
German dynasties, and their earnest desire to make a free
gift of Federal Reform from their united prerogative.
The dynasties as the initiators and executors of Reform!
'Thirty princes,' cried William,' sending an invitation and
the courier a king! How can one refuse? ' Bismarck
guessed that William would be argued or trapped in
that tainted company into fatal concessions; his royal
honour would be pledged. A counter demonstration of
the independence of Prussia and the power of the Minister-
President was imperatively required in the summer of 1863.
He appealed to William's pride. It was for Prussia to lead,
not to follow, to impose her own, not to accept the dan-
gerous plans of others. The mediatisation of Prussia
would be the result of the Frankfort Congress, brought
about by Prussia's sovereign. But if the King went to
Frankfurt his Minister could not accept the responsi-
bility and must retire to SchOnhausen. The conflict of
wills, which lasted several days, exhausted ruler and minister.
Bismarck won. His secretary found him after the final
interview with the King, and after he had handed the
letter of refusal to the King of Saxony, alone in his room.
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 153
In reply to a question he hurled a plate and some glasses
to pieces against the wall. 'I felt,' he said to the aston-
ished subordinate, 'that I must smash something. Now
I can breathe again. '
Germany busied itself in the autumn of 1863 with
feverish activities and plans for unification. Negotiations
arising out of the abortive Congress dragged on between
Berlin, Vienna, and the German Courts. The National
Verein and the Reform Verein discussed with unabated
energy the scheme of the Congress of Princes and the
Prussian memorandum of September 22; the honesty of
the latter was contested by all reformers whether of the
Great or the Small Germany camps. The Prussian Land-
tag was dissolved; no budget had been voted, and the
'constitutional conflict' was quite unsolved; but despite
the severity of the recent Press ordinance and the electoral
efforts of the bureaucracy the Conservative party could
only increase their numbers from eleven to thirty-eight.
The new Landtag was as solidly hostile in foreign and
home policy to the government as the old, that had
rejected the Army Budget; and the unpopularity of
Bismarck was greater than ever. 'Men spat,' he said,
'on the place where I trod in the streets. '
A graver crisis than any Germany had faced since 1848
was at hand, the problem of Schleswig-Holstein entangled
in all the barbed wire of a complicated international situa-
tion. On March 30, 1863, King Frederick vn. separated
Holstein from Schleswig by granting it a separate legis-
lature, budget and army. Schleswig was subsequently to
be united by a common constitution with Denmark. This
policy, the work of an overwhelming Radical majority at
Copenhagen, angered the Duchies, which claimed to be
autonomous and inseparable, and infuriated Germany,
which saw in it the Danish determination to absorb
Schleswig in the Danish kingdom. The Federal Diet,
which was not a party to the London Convention of 1852,
that regulated the succession to the Danish throne and the
relations of the Duchies to the Danish Crown, passed a
resolution (July 9) calling on King Frederick to rescind
the ' March charter' and restore the conditions defined in
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? 154
BISMARCK
the Convention. The Danes ignored the resolution, and
the Danish General Council passed the Joint-Constitution
for Denmark and Schleswig on November 13, 1863.
Frederick vn. declined to sign the Patent, bringing the
constitution into operation, on the ground that he was a
dying man and could not fairly prejudge the action or tie
the hands of his successor in a matter of such gravity. On
November 15 Frederick died. His heir, under the Pro-
tocol of 1852, was Christian ix. of Sonderburg-Gliickstein,
who now succeeded to the Danish Crown and to the
dukedom of Schleswig and Holstein, integrally united to
Denmark under the terms of the London Convention.
Christian, threatened by the Danish ministry that refusal
to sign the Patent would cause a Danish revolution and
endanger his throne, signed the Patent (November 15).
At once the Duchies and Germany were in an uproar.
tegrated Germany of the Federal Bund and denationalised
Austria were no whit behind the new Italy, France, and
Great Britain in their Polish sympathies. The contrast,
indeed, is striking between the manifestation in 1863 of
public opinion in Prussia and non-Prussian Germany, in
support of the Poles, and in sincere reprobation of the
terrible severity with which the defeated rising was crushed
by the Russian autocracy, and the cold-blooded equan-
imity with which Germany and the Magyarised Dual
Empire of 1876 and 1896 condoned, when they did not
positively approve, the more terrible treatment of the
Balkan Slavs and the Armenians by the Ottoman auto-
cracy. Only by such a contrast can we realise the
strength of the Liberal movement and of the moral forces
behind it, with which Bismarck wrestled in 1863, and
register in 1896 the atrophy of a nation's conscience and the
withering of its ideals, when for two generations it has
been drugged by the doctrine that the great questions of
the day can be decided only by blood and iron.
Bismarck at once recognised the gravity of the Polish
issue and the opportunity that the Polish question pro-
vided. His attitude to the problem of Poland, and Prus-
sian Poland in particular, never altered since 1848, when
he first denounced the danger of Polonism to the Prussian
State, through the Kulturkampf to the anti-Polish legis-
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? 138
BISMARCK
lation of his chancellorship that he left as a wasting mort-
gage to his successors. He told General Fleuiy in De-
cember, 1863, that the question was one of life and death
to Prussia: 'I would rather die,' he said, 'than permit
our position in Posen to be discussed at a European Con-
gress: I would rather cede our Rhinelands. ' He had no' .
sympathy with the Nationalist principle, outside Prussia
and Germany; it was simply a force in a political situation,
to be exploited as such; and if a force that threatened
Prussian hegemony one to be extirpated. The eighteenth-
century partitions of Poland were the well-merited fate
of a State too anarchic to resist the strength of its neigh-
bours. The dream of a reconstructed Poland on Liberal
lines in 1863 was simply a childish chimera. The inde-
pendence of Russian Poland under the suzerainty of the
Tsar would lead to a demand for the freedom of Prussian
Poland, a result absolutely fatal to the Prussian position
in the East and on the Baltic. The demand for autonomy
and political liberties sprang from the same delusions about
government that tainted the progressive and democratic
parties in Germany. Concessions to Polish demands
within Prussia were intrinsically inadmissible, and would
embarrass the good friend, Russia. The Polish rebellion
was a domestic affair of the Tsar's government, interference
with which was an impertinence that the Tsar would
justly resent.
Prussia's interest must be the sole criterion of Prussia's
policy. A rebellion on her borders was a serious danger;
there were disquieting signs that the conflagration would
spread. The sooner it was stamped out the better for
every one concerned. Bismarck, in short, only cared to
extract the maximum of political advantage from an affair
which he examined with icy impartiality. The blood of
Polish martyrs, for whose sufferings he did not care a
groschen, might become the seed of Prussian domination
in Central Europe. Through General von Alvensleben
he promptly (March 8) concluded a convention with
Russia, by which the two countries undertook to establish
a military cordon on their respective frontiers in order to
stop their respective Polish subjects from aiding the rebel-
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 139
lion, and to prevent the escape of rebels from lawful au-
thority. The action of the parliamentary opposition in
the Landtag only confirmed Bismarck's determination.
Interpellations, denunciations of the convention, reso-
lutions by sweeping majorities, he brushed aside as irre-
levant attempts to interfere wkh the royal right to con-
clude treaties by prerogative, and to make the foreign policy
of Prussia conform to the folly of ignorant idealists or crazy
demagogues. He told the Lower House roundly that the
making of war and treaties was the right of the Crown,
and roused its fury by the emphatic assertion that he would
make war or abstain from it without their approbation or
consent, and that his duty to his sovereign and Prussia
would never be influenced one hair's-breadth by their
votes or their attacks.
When the governments of Great Britain, France, and
Austria, under the pressure of public opinion agreed to
gresent a joint note formulating six demands 1 to the
. ussian government, and invited the concurrence of
Prussia in this diplomatic pressure, Bismarck firmly refused,
and for four chief reasons. A close understanding with
Russia was, and had long been, the sine qua non of his sys-
tem. Refusal to sign the note was the most practical
proof he could give of friendship to Russia. The aliena-
tion of Russia, still suffering from the humiliation of 1856,
and threatened with the boycott of Europe and the moral
condemnation of the civilised conscience, was for Prussia
in 1863 midsummer madness. Secondly, he disapproved of
the six demands. If Russia conceded them, the National
Union and the Radicals throughout Germany would
utilise the concession to harass the government of Prussia
already plagued with the charlatanry of Progress. Thirdly,
rejection by the Russian government of the joint note
must be followed either by more exacting pressure, and if
necessary, war, or by a painful rebuff at Petersburg.
Bismarck did not believe in a diplomacy that invited hu-
miliation, and the idea of war on behalf of the Polish rebels
1 The six points were briefly: (i) an amnesty; (2) a Polish parliament j
(3) a Polish National Executive; (4) Polish language in official communica-
tions j (5) religious freedom; (6) legal recruiting.
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? 140
BISMARCK
was idiotic. Fourthly, he foresaw the failure of this sin-
gular union of Great Britain, France, and Austria, and he
desired it to fail. The ill-assorted partners would quarrel,
and from their quarrel Prussia would derive advantages
that could be left for future exploitation. The separation
of Austria and of France from Russia was worth all the
joint notes and all the Polish lives in the world. As early
as I860 Bismarck had expressed the fear that France would
ally with Russia, isolate Prussia, or drive her into a hateful
dependence on Austria. He had laid it down that in a
Franco-Russian alliance Prussia must be the third member.
Great Britain could be soothed or neglected as circum-
stances indicated. The British army did not exist; and
the British fleet was useless in this business. Fortune had
now given Prussia an unexpected favour. France by her
stupid sentimentalism would alienate Russia. Prussia
could first secure Russian friendship, break up the Franco-
British entente, then work for a French benevolent neu-
trality, and Austria would be left to face an irreconcilable
Italy and an independent Prussia secure on both her
flanks. Here, indeed, was a game for the Titans.
Bismarck might well gaze into the baffling face of the
Time-spirit. The Schleswig-Holstein question was threat-
ening an ugly crisis. It is significant of the minister's
exploratory and prescient vigilance that while Nation-
alists and democrats were crying aloud for Germany and
Prussia to act, he gave no sign that he was earnestly
sounding all the depths and shallows in a rock-sown sea.
He contented himself with a pointed reminder to the
Danish government that Prussia was a signatory to the
Convention of London of 1852, and a sharp rap on the
heads of the ' noisy' journalists and politicians who desired
Prussia to go to war with all her neighbours because of
alleged grievances. Toujours en vedette! The motto of
Frederick, the Master, was more than ever the watchword.
Neither menaces nor caresses from London, Paris, and
Vienna induced Bismarck to modify his refusal to join
in the combined intervention at Petersburg and, as he
foresaw, the joint note was a complete failure. Assured
of Prussia's support, the Russian government in effect bade
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 141
the signatory Powers mind their own business, and pro-
ceeded to extinguish the rebellion in blood and flame.
Napoleon was intensely chagrined at the result, the blame
for which he threw chiefly on Great Britain. Our Foreign
Office had used the strong language that should precede
strong action, but it now covered its retreat to the wired
trenches of a good conscience in the smoke-clouds of a
parliamentary Blue-Book. At the Tuileries the need of a
real diplomatic success somewhere was being seriously
felt. Paris was seething with sentiment and ill-defined
ambition. Napoleon's disillusioned eyes turned to Berlin.
In the Wilhelmstrasse, not in the Ball-Platz, lay the keys
that could unlock the doors to the Rhine; and Napoleon
knew that the hunger of France, gnawing at the vitals of
the Second Empire, could be appeased, and only appeased,
by the Rhenish provinces.
The true author of the Polish fiasco was Bismarck. Had
he made Prussia a signatory to the Note of the Six De-
mands, the Russia of 1863, isolated and in grave difficulties,
would have been obliged to yield to the Concert of Europe.
Had Prussia been a country with responsible self-govern-
ment Bismarck must either have met the overwhelming
demand of the Landtag or been driven from office. With
Prussian support it was well within the compass of practical
diplomacy, without firing a shot, to have extorted a charter
of liberties for Russian Poland and prevented the cruelties
that added one more chapter to the blood-stained record.
The moral and political effect of such concerted action
would have been of incalculable advantage. But a Can-
ning in London or a Cavour at Berlin were needed.
Instead, there was Bismarck on the one side, and on the
other Napoleon and the clever mediocrities of the Quai
d'Orsay, the organised hypocrisy of Vienna and a Palmer-
ston, no longer the man of 1839, and permanently suspect
to a hostile court. Public opinion in Prussia and Germany
was impotent against Bismarck. While it raged, he sided
with Russia, thereby revealing to the Triple Entente that
without war they were helpless, and that the strategic
position of Prussia and the strength of the Prussian army
made the suggestion of war without Prussia ridiculous and
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BISMARCK
impossible. It was in Bismarck's power, and he knew it, to
meet the storm in the last resort by an appeal to Prussia
and Germany to forget the exaggerated woes of Poland
and concentrate on the Ahab of Europe--Napoleon.
Bismarck, it must be remembered, in these years was in
a dangerous temper: he was fighting for the life, honour,
and greatness of Prussia, as he interpreted them, and he
had thrown his all into the struggle. Even more truly
than Cavour from 1852 onwards he was gambling for
tremendous stakes. Not once but fifty times in the next
few year she indicated his determination, if the gods failed
him, to move Acheron. What could not be done by the
Conservative forces, could be done by calling in the Revo-
lution. His heart within was white-hot with the same
emotion that mastered the German of his day, and no
man could let loose more skilfully the whirlwinds of
national passion, or rejoice more triumphantly in riding
the storm.
But in 1863, as always, he had himself in hand. The
hour assuredly had not come: the situation must be de-
veloped much further and with a remorseless caution.
He could not afford to make a single mistake. The Prus-
sian army was not ready. Like his diplomacy it needed
time. And it was of the essence of his system, as of
Frederick the Great's, that so far as preparation and cal-
culation could ensure it, victory must be a certainty. The
Statecraft that is Force betrays the State that is Power if
it ignores or misunderstands the character and conditions
under which Force works in the world of human things.
Bismarck had secured the friendship of Russia. His
confidence that Prussia could rely on her strength and in-
dependence had been justified. The initiative in policy,
lost in the period from 1815 to 1862, was being quietly
recovered. While the members of the temporary Triple
Entente were abusing Prussia, and still more heartily, each
other, Bismarck was drawing up an edifying balance-sheet.
He could remind his royal master of two sound lessons--
the indispensability of the Crown's unfettered control of
policy, the futility of 'moral penetration,' as a solution
of European problems. The relevance of both to the
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
constitutional crisis was obvious, and the sequel was to
drive the argument home with cumulative power. King
William was, Bismarck discovered, eminently teachable;
but he eminently required to be taught. Time was even
more necessary for the instruction of the Crown than for
the development of the European situation. An autocrat
who takes the bit in his teeth will dash the chariot of State
to pieces more quickly and disastrously than a nation that
loses its head. If William's conscience or prejudices
drove him to break loose, Bismarck would share the fate
of Metternich.
The quality of Bismarck's judgment was never better
illustrated than in his refusal of Gortschakov's suggestion
that the Russo-Prussian understanding should be converted
into a formal alliance. It was a tempting proposal; and
we can well believe that he weighed it in every scale before
declining. Treaties, it is true, were not more sacred than
other, less formal, engagements. They were, in Bis-
marck's eyes, no more than the summary of a particular
situation, and their observance was always conditioned by
an implicit clause--rebus sic stantibus--things being as they
were. Nor was it the fear that a treaty would limit his
initiative or freedom of action. A virtual alliance with
Russia was the fixed point on which Prussian policy
was henceforward to pivot. The identity of interest--
dynastic, governmental, political--between the Russia of
the Tsar and the Prussia of William 1. , was practically
complete. Nor did Bismarck fear the accusation at home
or elsewhere that the Holy Alliance was being revived.
He had faced that when he made the Alvensleben Con-
vention, and proved that he could ignore public opinion
in Prussia and the criticism of foreign governments. His
real reason for the refusal of Gortschakov's offer lays bare
an essential principle of his statecraft. To the Prussia of
1863, convalescent from a prolonged locomotor-ataxy, and
not yet cured, Russia was more indispensable to Prussia
than Prussia was to Russia. Bismarck's judgment of
Prussia's strength was extraordinarily sane and impartial.
He shared with Gustavus Adolphus and Richelieu the
sense of limits, which is one of the finest and rarest, if not
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? i44
BISMARCK
the finest and rarest, gift of the highest statesmanship.
Russia, he pronounced with customary vividness, would in
such an alliance sit on the longer arm of the lever. All
that was needed in 1863 could be distilled gradually from
the informal but close understanding already established.
Every alliance, he remarked at another time, implies a
horse and a rider. The function of diplomacy is to secure
that you are the rider and your ally the horse. Because
he correctly judged that in 1863, Gortschakov would be
the rider and he, Bismarck, the horse, he put the offer
politely and with many assurances of affection, personal
and political, on one side.
While the Polish Rebellion was still running its ap-
pointed course, the German question also had developed
a crisis. The demand that something must be done, and
done now, to reshape the indefensible travesty of a political
mechanism, called the Bund--that precious monument
the restoration of which in its anachronistic nudity had
marked the grave both of 1848 and of Conservative con-
structive statesmanship. For ten years every German
mind had been labouring with the problem and putting on
record, to the embarrassment of that age and the despair
of the seeker after truth in the next two generations, its
perplexities, fears, hopes, dreams and solutions. State-
papers, diaries, letters, pamphlets, caricatures, memorials,
note-books, and minutes of clubs, unions, leagues--the
archives of the chancelleries, the waste-paper basket of the
patriot, and the scrap-heap of the lecture-room--which
German research has by no means exhausted, testify to the
deep-seated and universal discontent. Nationalists, Radi-
cals, Clericals and Ultramontanes, Conservatives, bureau-
crats and professors, hummed like bees in the swarming
season from the frontier of Schleswig to the forelands of
the Alps. The flower of the universities, professorial and
undergraduate, linked hands and pens with the politicians
--Bennigsen, Droysen, Samwer, M. Duncker, the Coburg
group, and the unitarian enthusiasm of the Grand-Duke
of Baden. Already the trumpet of the young Treitschke
was blowing its earliest clarion calls.
When the butchers meet in conclave because something
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
must be done for the sheep, we may be sure that it is not
the sheep but the butchers who fear the future. In 1863,
the Habsburg Emperor felt the cruel coercion of a
Germany out of joint, and the unpleasant necessity of
putting it right before worse befell. The dynasties from
Dresden to Munich leaped to the suggestion from Vienna
that disinterested patriotism could be concentrated in a
Congress of Princes ready to confer benefits on their
subjects. To the adroit Beust at Dresden, as fertile in
diplomatic resource as in conversational epigram, the
opportunity was exceptional. Beust, like every one else,
had his scheme, or rather half a dozen schemes, in pigeon-
holes, and another half dozen producible if required, like
the magician's rabbits, for any audience, and from any
diplomatic bag--and Beust was by far the cleverest of all
the political conjurers in the middle States who desired
a tripartite Germany--Austria, the middle States, and
Prussia--regrouped in a new Federal structure. To Beust
and to the Triad party, the supreme merit of this solution,
the details of which were simply a drafting matter, lay in
its recognition of the equality of non-Austrian and non-
Prussian Germany as a collective unit with Austria and
Prussia. Such equality would fairly meet the Prussian
demand for parity with Austria and the Austrian reluct-
ance to surrender her historic hegemony; it would no less
fairly remove the fatal objection to all dualistic schemes
which imposed on the middle and petty States an obli-
gatory choice of being absorbed either in a Prussian or an
Austrian system, an absorption damaging to the general
interests of Germany, historically unjust, and repugnant
to the legitimist sovereignty of the dynasties.
Concessions must, of course, be made to the people as
well as to the States of Germany. Bismarck's failure was
assumed to be a practical certainty: Prussia would then
succumb to the liberal majority which would adopt the
programme of the National Union and achieve a unitary
and democratic solution under Prussian leadership. Once
the citadel in Prussia had fallen to the parliamentary
opposition, the rest of Germany would lynch its dynasties
into acceptance of the unitary and liberal plan. And
B. K
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146
BISMARCK
Austria, racked on a series of Procrustean beds, called con-
stitutions, with Italy on one side and Hungary on the other,
and Russia sullenly hostile, could not expect to repeat in
1864 the miracle of 1849. Now, if ever, was the moment
to drive an Austrian dynastic, anti-Prussian, and particu-
larist programme through.
The problem was first to combine the minimum of real
concession with the maximum of outward homage to
democratic demands; and secondly, to arrange the Federal
machinery in such a way as to grant in theory the Prussian
claim to parity with Austria, while refusing the substance
--an easy matter, for equal voting powers between Austria
and Prussia must always leave Prussia in a minority when
non-Prussian Germany made equal either to Austria or
Prussia voted (as it would) with Austria. The Austrian
government accordingly produced its specious plan. A
new Directorate of six States (Austria, Prussia, Bavaria,
and three others chosen in rotation) under Austrian presi-
dency was to be created, together with a Federal Council
of 21 votes, a Federal Tribunal of Law, and a Federal
Assembly of 302 Delegates elected, not by direct suffrage,
but by the various parliaments of the Federated States.
Rebellious German democracy was, in short, to be re-
manacled in a new Federal cage, and Prussia was, through
her King, to mediatise herself for the benefit of Germany
on the altars of dynasticism. The Emperor Francis
Joseph met King William at Gastein. The crises of
German history always begin or end at a bathing resort.
The two sovereigns talked and agreed that the business
could be settled by a Congress of Princes at Frankfurt.
It was fitting that the rulers, by personal negotiations,
should settle the affairs of-Germany in a royal and family
conference; and their ministers were to be in close attend-
ance, but take no part in the august deliberations. While
their princely masters worked, they could copy letters,
dine, dance, and arrange for the exchange of decorations.
On August 16 the Congress met; only one important
sovereign (and his minister) was absent. The surprise and
dismay were universal, for the absentee was the King of
Prussia. They sent to fetch him. The King of Saxony
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 147
was the courier chosen to remind King William that a
Congress of Princes, headed by Csesarean Majesty from
Vienna, begged the honour of his company. Delay and
much anxiety. Then the King of Saxony came back.
The King of Prussia regretted his inability to accept the
invitation. Indignation, expostulation, consternation, pre-
vailed: then after a few days, the Congress ruefully broke
up. All that it accomplished was to repeat the invitation
(by letter this time) to Prussia and to 'leave open' the
question of the Presidency ' for further discussion. ' The
proposal to proceed, without Prussia, was indeed suggested,
but crumbled into pieces at once. 'We will have no con-
federation without Austria,' said the Bavarian minister,
'but likewise none without Prussia. ' A reorganisation of
Germany which omitted Prussia was ridiculous. The
coercion of Prussia would, in the state of public opinion,
probably end in the revolution with the Prussian army at
its disposal. And when the Prussian government officially
published its reasons for abstention--the patent inade-
quacy of the proposals of the Princes to meet the rights of
Prussia and the needs of Germany was glaringly and pain-
fully evident. 'A national Parliament,' said the Prussian
memorandum of September 15, 'was an essential of any
Federal reform. The interests and claims of the Prussian
people are intrinsically and inseparably identical with those
of the German people. ' The argument was repeated in the
Note of September 22, sent to all the members of the Con-
gress of Princes. Prussia laid it down that: (1) She, as
well as Austria, must have a right to veto a declaration of
war by the Confederation; (2) her position in the Con-
federation must be equal to that of Austria; (3) she could
not accept an enlargement of the functions of the Con-
federation limiting Prussian independence; (4) there must
be a German Parliament, representative of the German
nation, and elected directly by it.
At a word from Prussia the Austrian plan and all others
of the same kind went, unhouseled, unanointed, and
unannealed into the limbo reserved for the acrobatics of
pseudo-statesmanship. The Congress of Princes sum-
moned to consecrate the consummation of a new German
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? 148
BISMARCK
Confederation, was suddenly turned into the funeral of
the . Greater Germany party.
Henceforward, there were only three possible alter-
natives--a unification under Austria imposed on a defeated
Prussia, a unification under Prussia imposed on a defeated
Austria, or the unitary Empire of the National Union, in
which Prussia was dissolved in a Germany, from which
Austria was excluded, a unification to be imposed on Ger-
many by the triumph of National Liberalism. In the
autumn of 1863, though we to-day find it hard to believe
it, and before the year 1864 had revolutionised the Euro-
pean situation and German public opinion, the last of the
three alternatives seemed far the most probable. One
conclusion, however, is certain. The author of the fiasco
of the Congress of Princes, the man who administered the
coup de gr&ce to the Greater Germany party, was Bismarck.
'Lord ! ' says Puck,' what fools these mortals be. ' The
sacred simplicity of the diplomatic or royal ostrich pro-
vokes a deeper laughter of Jove than the perjuries of lovers.
The supposition of Rechberg and Beust and all the sham
and pigmy Machiavellians, princely or ministerial, that the
Minister-President at Berlin, who had served seven gruel-
ling years of apprenticeship at Frankfurt, would not see
through the patent trap of the Austrian plan must have
provoked the grimmest humour of Bismarck. The idea
that the Prussian monarchy was meekly to strip to the skin
in the imperial. city of Frankfurt, and put on a Nessus shirt
patched up by kings and grand-dukes in the workhouse at
Vienna was too delicious even for the grand diplomacy.
Did Rechberg, Beust, and their company seriously imagine
that the Minister-President was risking all in the struggle
with the Landtag to sacrifice the cause of Prussianism
at the bidding of a mob of princes? Their action proves
that if they knew themselves and their tricks, at least they
did not know the Minister-President at Berlin. 'Stripped
of its coat,' Bismarck said, 'the Austrian poodle is dis-
tinctly meagre. '
Yet the reality of the German situation was profoundly
disquieting to Bismarck. National Liberalism was, and
remained, a tremendous and dangerous force. The time
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 149
had long passed when the German people could be fobbed
off with a hollow sham and be manipulated in blinkers. in to
a series of dynastic pens, renamed a Unified Germany.
The essence of the problem lay in the demand in all parts
of Germany for the nation to be included in the task of
government, so that legislation, taxation, policy would be
expressive of a nation's will, character and ideals--a Ger-
many for the Germans by the Germans. Hence any
reconstruction to be practical politics, must be organic.
The Austrian and princely programme was the old Diet
and Federation, with a few new and useless wheels added,
some of the old grit and rust cleaned out, and the whole
recoloured with a thin coat of democratic paint, intended
to fade.
For Bismarck, the problem was not how to combine a
minimum of concession to democracy with a maximum of
princely and particularist independence and autocracy,
but how to combine a maximum of concession to the
demand for self-government with the unity of an efficient
and irresponsible executive. Bismarck had here pene-
trated to an abiding reality in the German heart. If the
Germans passionately desired a share in the government
of a unified Germany, they no less passionately desired
power. The National Union and National Liberalism were
the outcome of both desires. The old system satisfied
neither. Germany was impotent in the world. It was
simply shameful, every German felt, that a great country
could not, or would not, prevent a third-rate State like
Denmark from violating its obligations, defined in the
public law of Europe, and could not protect Germans in
Holstein from illegal oppression, and the reason was that
poKcy was determined by a group of conflicting dynasties,
and power was dissipated in an antiquated and contemptible
political mechanism. Ending, not mending, that system
would alone meet the demand for power--the power of the
National State--and provide the organs of power. The
foreign observer can indeed see in the evolution of National
Liberalism the Nationalism, fierce, deep, and continuous.
It is the Liberalism or the absence of it that puzzles him.
Bennigsen's speech in 1867 on the Luxemburg question,
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? i5o
BISMARCK
applauded from one end of Germany to the other, is
saturated with the doctrine of, and demand for, power,
the German National State as the expression of German
power. Yet in 1863 Bennigsen was Bismarck's most for-
midable opponent, because Bennigsen was a Liberal as
well as a Nationalist.
The explanation is really simple. National Liberalism
grew to its strength as a movement for self-government
through representative institutions, and as a national pro-
test against the inertia and apathy of the dynastic sove-
reignties that ruled Germany. Up till 1861 no German
government had evinced any sincere desire to subordinate
dynastic or particularist interests to the cause of Germany
as a whole. The homage of the dynastic and diplomatic
lip in all the Courts to the cause of Germany was copious;
but when it came to action, Austria, Prussia, Bavaria,
placed Austrian, Prussian or Bavarian selfishness first, and
Germany was forgotten. Hence the Liberals were con-
vinced that, while self-government was intrinsically
desirable, a unification of Germany on a democratic basis,
that swept away the State sovereignties, alone would
provide for the realisation of what the German people
demanded--a single German State, playing its part as a
European Power in the European system. Such a State
would represent the totality of German brains, wills,
ideals, and material resources; and it would pursue a
German policy made by the German people. Nothing but
real representative institutions, with a Parliament that made
policy because it was a government-making organ, would
enable the Germans to be a single nation, with a national
will working through organs automatically effective.
Hence the stronger the Nationalist passion, the stronger
with the Liberals was the insistence on the necessity of
democratic self-government. Power through represen-
tative institutions was the complement to parliamentary
self-government as the instrument of National power.
Bismarck might have said in 1863, 'Almost thou
persuadest me to be a National Liberal. ' He did not,
however, believe, on principle, in the efficiency of consti-
tutional monarchy and responsible parliamentary govern-
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 151
ment. He was convinced that ' the English system' was
wholly inapplicable to the German character and the his-
torical conditions in which it had been developed through
many centuries. And the closer he studied Great Britain
the more strongly he inferred that parliamentary govern-
ment did not make for executive efficiency, continuity of
policy and strong administration. The correctness of this
judgment is not the question. That Bismarck thought so
there can be no doubt. Unity achieved by moral penetra-
tion and persuasion he regarded as. a pure delusion. Neither
the dynasties nor the Liberals would give him the army
that would smash Austria, nor the time, uninterrupted by
party strife, to devise a foreign policy and prepare in
secret for the day of decision. He did not doubt the-
German patriotism of the German people. He trusted it
indeed far more than he did the dynasties, as his proposal
for a National Parliament as an essential part of Federal
reform proved; but what he did doubt most gravely was
the readiness of the Sybels, the Gneists, the Twestens,
Virchows, Laskers, Dunckers, and Bennigsens to will the
means no less than the ends of national unity. They
aimed at power, but they shrank from force. They were,
in his judgment, political cowards, and therefore in his
view lacked the higher statesmanship.
The one system that would give him what he wanted
existed already in Prussia. It was being tested now, and
it was standing the test. Its retention, therefore, as the
nucleus of the new Germany was indispensable. Just as
in foreign policy Bismarck's system pivoted on an under-
standing with Russia, so in the German problem his solu-
tion pivoted on the Prussian monarchy, the irresponsible
director of the Prussian nation in arms.
The National Liberals would mutilate or destroy the
executive nucleus of a policy of power. But Bismarck was
ready now to foreshadow the lines of his own programme.
Once the Congress of Princes was killed, the publication
of the official statement of Prussian policy, already cited,
was a tactical move in the higher strategy; for Bismarck
often acted on Palmerston's dictum:'I tell ambassadors the
truth, because I know they won't believe it. ' The Prussian
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? 152
BISMARCK
memoranda of September 15 and September 22, 1863, were
the last nail in the coffin of Austrian Greater Germanism.
They were also intended to be the first in the coffin of
the National Liberals.
Bismarck's victory over William 1. when he refused the
invitation to Frankfurt, was a signal personal triumph
greater even than the ratification in 1879 of the alliance
with Austria. Of the many struggles with his sovereign,
these two in 1863 and 1879 were the most critical and de-
cisive, for in each case the central principle of his system
was in jeopardy; and in 1863 Bismarck had yet to win,
not as in 1879 simply to retain, his ascendancy. William
wished to go to Frankfurt. Heart and brain, combined
in favour of accepting the invitation. All his relatives,
male and female, urged him strongly to accept. Indeed,
how could he as the King of Prussia refuse to meet his
brother sovereigns when refusal meant personal discourtesy,
and the rejection of the unique chance of demonstrating
to the German world the unity and patriotism of the
German dynasties, and their earnest desire to make a free
gift of Federal Reform from their united prerogative.
The dynasties as the initiators and executors of Reform!
'Thirty princes,' cried William,' sending an invitation and
the courier a king! How can one refuse? ' Bismarck
guessed that William would be argued or trapped in
that tainted company into fatal concessions; his royal
honour would be pledged. A counter demonstration of
the independence of Prussia and the power of the Minister-
President was imperatively required in the summer of 1863.
He appealed to William's pride. It was for Prussia to lead,
not to follow, to impose her own, not to accept the dan-
gerous plans of others. The mediatisation of Prussia
would be the result of the Frankfort Congress, brought
about by Prussia's sovereign. But if the King went to
Frankfurt his Minister could not accept the responsi-
bility and must retire to SchOnhausen. The conflict of
wills, which lasted several days, exhausted ruler and minister.
Bismarck won. His secretary found him after the final
interview with the King, and after he had handed the
letter of refusal to the King of Saxony, alone in his room.
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 153
In reply to a question he hurled a plate and some glasses
to pieces against the wall. 'I felt,' he said to the aston-
ished subordinate, 'that I must smash something. Now
I can breathe again. '
Germany busied itself in the autumn of 1863 with
feverish activities and plans for unification. Negotiations
arising out of the abortive Congress dragged on between
Berlin, Vienna, and the German Courts. The National
Verein and the Reform Verein discussed with unabated
energy the scheme of the Congress of Princes and the
Prussian memorandum of September 22; the honesty of
the latter was contested by all reformers whether of the
Great or the Small Germany camps. The Prussian Land-
tag was dissolved; no budget had been voted, and the
'constitutional conflict' was quite unsolved; but despite
the severity of the recent Press ordinance and the electoral
efforts of the bureaucracy the Conservative party could
only increase their numbers from eleven to thirty-eight.
The new Landtag was as solidly hostile in foreign and
home policy to the government as the old, that had
rejected the Army Budget; and the unpopularity of
Bismarck was greater than ever. 'Men spat,' he said,
'on the place where I trod in the streets. '
A graver crisis than any Germany had faced since 1848
was at hand, the problem of Schleswig-Holstein entangled
in all the barbed wire of a complicated international situa-
tion. On March 30, 1863, King Frederick vn. separated
Holstein from Schleswig by granting it a separate legis-
lature, budget and army. Schleswig was subsequently to
be united by a common constitution with Denmark. This
policy, the work of an overwhelming Radical majority at
Copenhagen, angered the Duchies, which claimed to be
autonomous and inseparable, and infuriated Germany,
which saw in it the Danish determination to absorb
Schleswig in the Danish kingdom. The Federal Diet,
which was not a party to the London Convention of 1852,
that regulated the succession to the Danish throne and the
relations of the Duchies to the Danish Crown, passed a
resolution (July 9) calling on King Frederick to rescind
the ' March charter' and restore the conditions defined in
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BISMARCK
the Convention. The Danes ignored the resolution, and
the Danish General Council passed the Joint-Constitution
for Denmark and Schleswig on November 13, 1863.
Frederick vn. declined to sign the Patent, bringing the
constitution into operation, on the ground that he was a
dying man and could not fairly prejudge the action or tie
the hands of his successor in a matter of such gravity. On
November 15 Frederick died. His heir, under the Pro-
tocol of 1852, was Christian ix. of Sonderburg-Gliickstein,
who now succeeded to the Danish Crown and to the
dukedom of Schleswig and Holstein, integrally united to
Denmark under the terms of the London Convention.
Christian, threatened by the Danish ministry that refusal
to sign the Patent would cause a Danish revolution and
endanger his throne, signed the Patent (November 15).
At once the Duchies and Germany were in an uproar.
