King William at General
Headquarters
was in a fine moral
and military indignation.
and military indignation.
Robertson - Bismarck
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BISMARCK
they reveal an earnest desire for peace in many quarters,
marred by a complete incapacity, as is usually the case, to
realise the policy of Prussia and the will of her directors.
Had Austria consented to withdraw from Holstein, and
to give Prussia a free hand to reorganise a new Federal
system, in which Austria renounced all membership,
war might have been averted. But the opportunity for
an imaginative statesmanship based on recognition of
Prussia's primacy in North Germany, and on a wholly new
conception of Austria's future and position in Central
Europe, had passed with the Convention of Gastein.
A great State such as Austria still was, with her historic
traditions and imperial memories, could not abandon her
allies in the German middle and petty States and renounce
her past in the spring of 1866 at the threat of a Prussian
mobilisation. The Federal Revolution engineered by
Prussia was fatal to her German presidency. In April and
May Bismarck's one fear was that war might be averted at
the eleventh hour. Early in May Austria made a desperate
effort to detach Italy by the offer of Venetia, through
Napoleon, in return for Italian neutrality. Had the offer
been made in January before the Italian treaty with
Prussia had been concluded, it would have saved the situa-
tion. Sorely tempted, La Marmora refused. Italy was
in honour bound to stand by her treaty. Well might
Bismarck bid Govone good-bye with the words, 'To our
meeting in Vienna! '
Still more serious was Napoleon's next step. With
Russian and British approval the Emperor formally pro-
posed a Congress--magic word--to discuss in particular the
three burning questions--Schleswig-Holstein, Venetia, and
German Federal reform. Bismarck was in a grave dilemma,
for a Congress spelled the ruin of his policy. Nevertheless
with a heavy heart he accepted, trusting to his goddess
Fortune. And she did not desert him. Austria accepted
also, but with the categorical reservation that the parti-
cipating great Powers must renounce in advance all
territorial aggrandisement. The reservation reduced the
proposed Congress to impotence. The neutral Powers
promptly withdrew their support. Benedetti was with
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 203
Bismarck when the telegram announcing the abandonment
came in. The Minister-President sprang to his feet. 'It
is war,' he cried: 'Long live the King! '
His universal unpopularity had been checked by an
attempt at assassination by Cohen-Blind in Unter deu Lin-
den on May 7. The prospect of war had stirred the mili-
tary spirit in Prussia; and next evening Bismarck received
a great ovation from an excited crowd outside the Foreign
Office. The tide of public opinion indeed was turning.
It only needed some Prussian victories to set it swirling as
fiercely in Bismarck's favour as it had hitherto run against
him. Freed from the nightmare of a Congress, Bismarck
now forced Austria to fight. He declared that Prussia, in
consequence of the termination of the Convention of
Gastein, had as much right to Holstein as to Schleswig.
The Prussian troops were ordered to enter Holstein
(June 6). The Austrians retired without resisting, as
Bismarck had desired. A further provocation was there-
fore necessary. On June 10 Bismarck communicated to
the Federal Diet a precise scheme of Federal reform
explicitly excluding Austria and Luxemburg from all
membership in the new organisation to be created. Next
day the Austrian plenipotentiary pressed the Diet for a
mobilisation of the Federal forces, with the exception of
Prussia, on the ground that Prussia had violated the Treaty
of Vienna and the Federal Constitution. In other words,
Prussia was to be the subject of a Federal execution. The
vote was taken on June 14, and the Austrian proposal ac-
cepted by nine votes to six. Baden abstained; three curia
only voted with Prussia--some of the petty States of the
north and the cities of Hamburg, Liibeck, and Bremen:
the rest voted with Austria. The Prussian representative
at once declared that his government considered the
Confederation at an end, and the sitting was raised.
On June 16, after a peremptory ultimatum, the Prussian
troops entered Saxony, Hesse-Cassel, and Hanover; on
JuHe~2o Italy declared war on Austria. Bismarck's fate
ancTThe future of Prussia were now in the hands of the
military chiefs and the Prussian army. 'It is,' says Sybel,
'the one great and simple feature of the Prussian govern-
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BISMARCK
ment that at last it has always been the material and actual
considerations that have preponderated. ' The King in his
Proclamation of June 18 asserted that 'as known to my
people and to God, Who sees the heart,' the war was a
defensive one, thrust upon him, in defence of Prussia's
honour, independence, and existence. But Moltke told
the simple truth (and gave the lie to his sovereign) when
in a few chiselled sentences he declared subsequently that:
'The war of 1866 did not take place because the existence
of Prussia was threatened, or in obedience to public opinion,
or to the will of the people. It was a war which was fore-
seen long before, which was prepared with deliberation
and recognised as necessary by the Cabinet, not in order to
obtain territorial aggrandisement, but in order to secure
the establishment of Prussian hegemony in Germany. '
Bismarck might be satisfied with his power to convert.
He, too, now opened his Bible and read Psalm ix. 3-5,
which greatly comforted him. Yet he also wrote with
perfect sincerity: 'We have good confidence, but we must
not forget that Almighty God is very capricious (sehr
launenha/t). ' He recognised that he had thrown the iron
dice in a tremendous gamble, and that fate or fortune
might refuse the prize. At Koniggratz in those critical
hours when the Crown Prince and his army had not yet
appeared to turn the Austrian flank, it is related that Bis-
marck reflected bitterly how for four years he had toiled
to secure the international situation that victory required,
and had succeeded beyond all expectation, and now these
infernal generals were going to make a mess of it. He had
decided that if victory fell to the Austrians he would die
in the last charge--a more probable resolve than the other
he is credited with, that he would offer Napoleon the left
bank of the Rhine and call out the Revolution in Germany.
He realised fully that to Germany he appeared a desperate
gambler. 'Had I failed,' he told the Reichstag later,' the
old women would have swept me with a curse and their
besoms from the streets. '
The generals did not make a mess of it, nor did the
Prussian army fail them. The crowning mercy of Konig-
gratz (July 3) was, as Roon said, the gift of the Prussian
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 205
soldier quite as much as cf the Prussian higher command.
Bismarck's inmost thought was revealed in his remark:
'The struggle is decided--the task is now to win back the
old friendship with Austria. ' A week later he wrote to his
wife: 'Things go well; if we do not exaggerate our de-
mands, and do not believe that we have conquered the
world, we shall get a peace worth the efforts we have made.
But we are as easily intoxicated as we are depressed, and I
have the thankless task of pouring water into the foaming
wine, and bringing home the truth that we do not live
alone in Europe, but with three neighbours. ' The long
strain, the concentrated excitement, the renewed pressure
of multitudinous affairs, and the additional task of dealing
with an elated King and triumphant generals, seriously
affected his health. During the campaign Bismarck was
really ill; nothing but his superb constitution and his iron
will kept him from a grave collapse. But intensely irri-
table and overwrought though he was, his judgment
retained its mastery. 'The appreciation and import of
a military victory,' he said, with great truth, 'at the
moment of its decision is one of the hardest tasks that
statecraft imposes. '
The chief obstacles to the settlement that Bismarck de-
sired were two: first, Napoleon; secondly, his sovereign
and the soldiers. Time is the one power with which
statesmanship and strategy trifle at great peril. The
longer the campaign lasted, the easier it would be for the
European Powers to intervene with effect. The argu-
ment for a European Congress was indeed strong. The
war had torn a great rent in the treaties and system of 1815.
The signatory European Powers had as clear a right as,
and an even clearer interest than, in 1856 or 1878 to insist
on reviewing and completing the system to be substituted
for the wrecked fabric. But Bismarck was absolutely
determined to refuse either the arbitration of neutrals, or
the revision of a Congress. Rather than submit to either,
he was ready to provoke a general war. Fortunately for
him Great Britain was in the throes of an internal struggle,
far more interested in Franchise Bills than in the fate
of Austria or Germany; Poland and Schleswig-Holstein
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BISMARCK
had been severe lessons in the futility of intervention,
unless backed by ships, men, and guns. Russia under the
mortgage created by Bismarck in 1863, was neither willing
nor able to fight on Austria's behalf, was no less willing to
let Napoleon have a severe snubbing, and was soon satis-
fied that Prussia did not intend to let loose democracy and
Liberalism in Germany. Napoleon was the one grave
difficulty, and Bismarck grasped at once that if he could
satisfy or convert William 1. to his idea of a settlement, he
could deal with Napoleon.
The eleven days from July 11, when Benedetti sud-
denly appeared to Bismarck's intense anger at the
headquarters at Zwittau, to July 22, when the armi-
stices of Nikolsburg opened the discussion of prelimi-
naries of peace, are packed with feverish telegrams, to
and fro; but the principles of Bismarck's diplomacy
stand out as clear and unwavering as in the months
preceding the war.
'The world is collapsing,' said Cardinal Antonelli,
watching the issues from an Ultramontane Vatican. 'It
is France that is beaten at Sadowa,' pronounced Thiers
with prophetic accuracy. Extraordinary as it now seems,
Napoleon had concluded a secret treaty with Austria
(June 12). Napoleon undertook to be neutral in the
German war; Austria undertook for an equivalent in
Germany to cede Venetia to Napoleon, and all changes in
Italy or Germany, 'of a nature to disturb the European
equilibrium,' were to be made by Austria and France in
concert. Striking, indeed, that the curse of the later
Bourbons, the secret diplomacy of Louis xv. against the
declared policy, and behind the back, of the royal minister,
should be repeated by the dynasty that claimed to repre-
sent the true France, that Bourbon dynasticism had ruined.
The cunning of the Carbonaro was always unpicking by
night the flimsy web of Us idies Napoleoniennes woven in
the day at the Tuileries. Napoleon, therefore, had faced
the future with the assurance that he had bargained with
both sides and was committed to neither. But the states-
man who has failed to be ready for the collapse of his
calculations commits against his country a graver
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
207
crime than the general who plans an offensive for
victory without providing the line of retreat in the case
of failure.
On July 4 Napoleon suddenly found himself in a terrible
position. France eagerly awaited the coup de mattre, but
the ulcer of Mexico had drained the military resources of
the Empire; the artillery lacked horses and armament, and
the army was not ready; the possible allies in Germany--
the anti-Prussian States, Hanover, Saxony, Wurttemberg,
Bavaria, Hesse--were in as poor a military way as France
herself, and would be crushed before France could assist
them; national passion had flamed up, white-hot, in
Prussia; a neutral observer noted that in all classes there
was one fierce conviction--' no French, no rotten peace. '
Austria was on the verge of collapse, and Napoleon himself
had no plan for immediate action. Worst of all, pros-
trating pain made him incapable of clear thought or
prompt decision. The fate of France turned--that is the
penalty of all autocracies, imperial or otherwise, at all
crises--on the character and capacity of a single man; and
in those July days, that flooded the gardens of the Tuileries
and the Champs Elysees, the orchards of Normandy, and
the vineyards of the Garonne with their mocking sunshine,
the decision had to come from a ruler tortured all his life
by the disease of indecision, tortured now by physical
agony. 'A grain of sand in a man's flesh and empires rise
wanted; he only knew that he did not want war and could
not wage it. Bismarck knew precisely what he wanted;
he was ready to wage war, and knew how to do it. It
is difficult to judge what Napoleon should have done.
Austria, Saxony, Hesse-Cassel were clamouring for the
Emperor to intervene and save them. Thiers and every
critic of the Empire were waiting to drive home the proof
of their accusations; Ultramontanes and Clericals, his only
true if selfish supporters in France, were in consternation
at Austria's downfall. His ministers were as divided as
their imperial master. The weak man who acts on the
principle that' something must be done ' is sure to do the
and fall. '
Napoleon at this
really did not know what he
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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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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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? 202
BISMARCK
they reveal an earnest desire for peace in many quarters,
marred by a complete incapacity, as is usually the case, to
realise the policy of Prussia and the will of her directors.
Had Austria consented to withdraw from Holstein, and
to give Prussia a free hand to reorganise a new Federal
system, in which Austria renounced all membership,
war might have been averted. But the opportunity for
an imaginative statesmanship based on recognition of
Prussia's primacy in North Germany, and on a wholly new
conception of Austria's future and position in Central
Europe, had passed with the Convention of Gastein.
A great State such as Austria still was, with her historic
traditions and imperial memories, could not abandon her
allies in the German middle and petty States and renounce
her past in the spring of 1866 at the threat of a Prussian
mobilisation. The Federal Revolution engineered by
Prussia was fatal to her German presidency. In April and
May Bismarck's one fear was that war might be averted at
the eleventh hour. Early in May Austria made a desperate
effort to detach Italy by the offer of Venetia, through
Napoleon, in return for Italian neutrality. Had the offer
been made in January before the Italian treaty with
Prussia had been concluded, it would have saved the situa-
tion. Sorely tempted, La Marmora refused. Italy was
in honour bound to stand by her treaty. Well might
Bismarck bid Govone good-bye with the words, 'To our
meeting in Vienna! '
Still more serious was Napoleon's next step. With
Russian and British approval the Emperor formally pro-
posed a Congress--magic word--to discuss in particular the
three burning questions--Schleswig-Holstein, Venetia, and
German Federal reform. Bismarck was in a grave dilemma,
for a Congress spelled the ruin of his policy. Nevertheless
with a heavy heart he accepted, trusting to his goddess
Fortune. And she did not desert him. Austria accepted
also, but with the categorical reservation that the parti-
cipating great Powers must renounce in advance all
territorial aggrandisement. The reservation reduced the
proposed Congress to impotence. The neutral Powers
promptly withdrew their support. Benedetti was with
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 203
Bismarck when the telegram announcing the abandonment
came in. The Minister-President sprang to his feet. 'It
is war,' he cried: 'Long live the King! '
His universal unpopularity had been checked by an
attempt at assassination by Cohen-Blind in Unter deu Lin-
den on May 7. The prospect of war had stirred the mili-
tary spirit in Prussia; and next evening Bismarck received
a great ovation from an excited crowd outside the Foreign
Office. The tide of public opinion indeed was turning.
It only needed some Prussian victories to set it swirling as
fiercely in Bismarck's favour as it had hitherto run against
him. Freed from the nightmare of a Congress, Bismarck
now forced Austria to fight. He declared that Prussia, in
consequence of the termination of the Convention of
Gastein, had as much right to Holstein as to Schleswig.
The Prussian troops were ordered to enter Holstein
(June 6). The Austrians retired without resisting, as
Bismarck had desired. A further provocation was there-
fore necessary. On June 10 Bismarck communicated to
the Federal Diet a precise scheme of Federal reform
explicitly excluding Austria and Luxemburg from all
membership in the new organisation to be created. Next
day the Austrian plenipotentiary pressed the Diet for a
mobilisation of the Federal forces, with the exception of
Prussia, on the ground that Prussia had violated the Treaty
of Vienna and the Federal Constitution. In other words,
Prussia was to be the subject of a Federal execution. The
vote was taken on June 14, and the Austrian proposal ac-
cepted by nine votes to six. Baden abstained; three curia
only voted with Prussia--some of the petty States of the
north and the cities of Hamburg, Liibeck, and Bremen:
the rest voted with Austria. The Prussian representative
at once declared that his government considered the
Confederation at an end, and the sitting was raised.
On June 16, after a peremptory ultimatum, the Prussian
troops entered Saxony, Hesse-Cassel, and Hanover; on
JuHe~2o Italy declared war on Austria. Bismarck's fate
ancTThe future of Prussia were now in the hands of the
military chiefs and the Prussian army. 'It is,' says Sybel,
'the one great and simple feature of the Prussian govern-
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? 204
BISMARCK
ment that at last it has always been the material and actual
considerations that have preponderated. ' The King in his
Proclamation of June 18 asserted that 'as known to my
people and to God, Who sees the heart,' the war was a
defensive one, thrust upon him, in defence of Prussia's
honour, independence, and existence. But Moltke told
the simple truth (and gave the lie to his sovereign) when
in a few chiselled sentences he declared subsequently that:
'The war of 1866 did not take place because the existence
of Prussia was threatened, or in obedience to public opinion,
or to the will of the people. It was a war which was fore-
seen long before, which was prepared with deliberation
and recognised as necessary by the Cabinet, not in order to
obtain territorial aggrandisement, but in order to secure
the establishment of Prussian hegemony in Germany. '
Bismarck might be satisfied with his power to convert.
He, too, now opened his Bible and read Psalm ix. 3-5,
which greatly comforted him. Yet he also wrote with
perfect sincerity: 'We have good confidence, but we must
not forget that Almighty God is very capricious (sehr
launenha/t). ' He recognised that he had thrown the iron
dice in a tremendous gamble, and that fate or fortune
might refuse the prize. At Koniggratz in those critical
hours when the Crown Prince and his army had not yet
appeared to turn the Austrian flank, it is related that Bis-
marck reflected bitterly how for four years he had toiled
to secure the international situation that victory required,
and had succeeded beyond all expectation, and now these
infernal generals were going to make a mess of it. He had
decided that if victory fell to the Austrians he would die
in the last charge--a more probable resolve than the other
he is credited with, that he would offer Napoleon the left
bank of the Rhine and call out the Revolution in Germany.
He realised fully that to Germany he appeared a desperate
gambler. 'Had I failed,' he told the Reichstag later,' the
old women would have swept me with a curse and their
besoms from the streets. '
The generals did not make a mess of it, nor did the
Prussian army fail them. The crowning mercy of Konig-
gratz (July 3) was, as Roon said, the gift of the Prussian
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 205
soldier quite as much as cf the Prussian higher command.
Bismarck's inmost thought was revealed in his remark:
'The struggle is decided--the task is now to win back the
old friendship with Austria. ' A week later he wrote to his
wife: 'Things go well; if we do not exaggerate our de-
mands, and do not believe that we have conquered the
world, we shall get a peace worth the efforts we have made.
But we are as easily intoxicated as we are depressed, and I
have the thankless task of pouring water into the foaming
wine, and bringing home the truth that we do not live
alone in Europe, but with three neighbours. ' The long
strain, the concentrated excitement, the renewed pressure
of multitudinous affairs, and the additional task of dealing
with an elated King and triumphant generals, seriously
affected his health. During the campaign Bismarck was
really ill; nothing but his superb constitution and his iron
will kept him from a grave collapse. But intensely irri-
table and overwrought though he was, his judgment
retained its mastery. 'The appreciation and import of
a military victory,' he said, with great truth, 'at the
moment of its decision is one of the hardest tasks that
statecraft imposes. '
The chief obstacles to the settlement that Bismarck de-
sired were two: first, Napoleon; secondly, his sovereign
and the soldiers. Time is the one power with which
statesmanship and strategy trifle at great peril. The
longer the campaign lasted, the easier it would be for the
European Powers to intervene with effect. The argu-
ment for a European Congress was indeed strong. The
war had torn a great rent in the treaties and system of 1815.
The signatory European Powers had as clear a right as,
and an even clearer interest than, in 1856 or 1878 to insist
on reviewing and completing the system to be substituted
for the wrecked fabric. But Bismarck was absolutely
determined to refuse either the arbitration of neutrals, or
the revision of a Congress. Rather than submit to either,
he was ready to provoke a general war. Fortunately for
him Great Britain was in the throes of an internal struggle,
far more interested in Franchise Bills than in the fate
of Austria or Germany; Poland and Schleswig-Holstein
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? 206
BISMARCK
had been severe lessons in the futility of intervention,
unless backed by ships, men, and guns. Russia under the
mortgage created by Bismarck in 1863, was neither willing
nor able to fight on Austria's behalf, was no less willing to
let Napoleon have a severe snubbing, and was soon satis-
fied that Prussia did not intend to let loose democracy and
Liberalism in Germany. Napoleon was the one grave
difficulty, and Bismarck grasped at once that if he could
satisfy or convert William 1. to his idea of a settlement, he
could deal with Napoleon.
The eleven days from July 11, when Benedetti sud-
denly appeared to Bismarck's intense anger at the
headquarters at Zwittau, to July 22, when the armi-
stices of Nikolsburg opened the discussion of prelimi-
naries of peace, are packed with feverish telegrams, to
and fro; but the principles of Bismarck's diplomacy
stand out as clear and unwavering as in the months
preceding the war.
'The world is collapsing,' said Cardinal Antonelli,
watching the issues from an Ultramontane Vatican. 'It
is France that is beaten at Sadowa,' pronounced Thiers
with prophetic accuracy. Extraordinary as it now seems,
Napoleon had concluded a secret treaty with Austria
(June 12). Napoleon undertook to be neutral in the
German war; Austria undertook for an equivalent in
Germany to cede Venetia to Napoleon, and all changes in
Italy or Germany, 'of a nature to disturb the European
equilibrium,' were to be made by Austria and France in
concert. Striking, indeed, that the curse of the later
Bourbons, the secret diplomacy of Louis xv. against the
declared policy, and behind the back, of the royal minister,
should be repeated by the dynasty that claimed to repre-
sent the true France, that Bourbon dynasticism had ruined.
The cunning of the Carbonaro was always unpicking by
night the flimsy web of Us idies Napoleoniennes woven in
the day at the Tuileries. Napoleon, therefore, had faced
the future with the assurance that he had bargained with
both sides and was committed to neither. But the states-
man who has failed to be ready for the collapse of his
calculations commits against his country a graver
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
207
crime than the general who plans an offensive for
victory without providing the line of retreat in the case
of failure.
On July 4 Napoleon suddenly found himself in a terrible
position. France eagerly awaited the coup de mattre, but
the ulcer of Mexico had drained the military resources of
the Empire; the artillery lacked horses and armament, and
the army was not ready; the possible allies in Germany--
the anti-Prussian States, Hanover, Saxony, Wurttemberg,
Bavaria, Hesse--were in as poor a military way as France
herself, and would be crushed before France could assist
them; national passion had flamed up, white-hot, in
Prussia; a neutral observer noted that in all classes there
was one fierce conviction--' no French, no rotten peace. '
Austria was on the verge of collapse, and Napoleon himself
had no plan for immediate action. Worst of all, pros-
trating pain made him incapable of clear thought or
prompt decision. The fate of France turned--that is the
penalty of all autocracies, imperial or otherwise, at all
crises--on the character and capacity of a single man; and
in those July days, that flooded the gardens of the Tuileries
and the Champs Elysees, the orchards of Normandy, and
the vineyards of the Garonne with their mocking sunshine,
the decision had to come from a ruler tortured all his life
by the disease of indecision, tortured now by physical
agony. 'A grain of sand in a man's flesh and empires rise
wanted; he only knew that he did not want war and could
not wage it. Bismarck knew precisely what he wanted;
he was ready to wage war, and knew how to do it. It
is difficult to judge what Napoleon should have done.
Austria, Saxony, Hesse-Cassel were clamouring for the
Emperor to intervene and save them. Thiers and every
critic of the Empire were waiting to drive home the proof
of their accusations; Ultramontanes and Clericals, his only
true if selfish supporters in France, were in consternation
at Austria's downfall. His ministers were as divided as
their imperial master. The weak man who acts on the
principle that' something must be done ' is sure to do the
and fall. '
Napoleon at this
really did not know what he
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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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