Chapter XXIII (2)

In Poland itself the Czar, after some hesitation, determined once and for all to establish a friend to Russia in every homestead of the kingdom by making the peasant owner of the land on which he laboured. The insurrectionary Government at the outbreak of the rebellion had attempted to win over the peasantry by promising enactments to this effect, but no one had responded to their appeal. In the autumn of 1863 the Czar recalled Milutine from his enforced travels and directed him to proceed to Warsaw, in order to study the affairs of Poland on the spot, and to report on the measures necessary to be taken for its future government and organisation. Milutine obtained the assistance of some of the men who had laboured most earnestly with him in the enfranchisement of the Russian serfs; and in the course of a few weeks he returned to St. Petersburg, carrying with him the draft of measures which were to change the face of Poland. He recommended on the one hand that every political institution separating Poland from the rest of the Empire should be swept away, and the last traces of Polish independence utterly obliterated; on the other hand, that the peasants, as the only class on which Russia could hope to count in the future, should be made absolute and independent owners of the land they occupied. Prince Gortschakoff, who had still some regard for the opinion of Western Europe, and possibly some sympathy for the Polish aristocracy, resisted this daring policy; but the Czar accepted Milutine's counsel, and gave him a free hand in the execution of his agrarian scheme. The division of the land between the nobles and the peasants was accordingly carried out by Milutine's own officers under conditions very different from those adopted in Russia. The whole strength of the Government was thrown on to the side of the peasant and against the noble. Though the population was denser in Poland than in Russia, the peasant received on an average four times as much land; the compensation made to the lords (which was paid in bonds which immediately fell to half their nominal value) was raised not by quit-rents on the peasants' lands alone, as in Russia, but by a general land-tax falling equally on the land left to the lords, who had thus to pay a great part of their own compensation: above all, the questions in dispute were settled, not as in Russia by arbiters elected at local assemblies of the nobles, but by officers of the Crown. Moreover, the division of landed property was not made once and for all, as in Russia, but the woods and pastures remaining to the lords continued subject to undefined common-rights of the peasants. These common-rights were deliberately left unsettled in order that a source of contention might always be present between the greater and the lesser proprietors, and that the latter might continue to look to the Russian Government as the protector or extender of their interests. "We hold Poland," said a Russian statesman, "by its rights of common." [512]

[Russia and Polish nationality.]

Milutine, who, with all the fiery ardour of his national and levelling policy, seems to have been a gentle and somewhat querulous invalid, and who was shortly afterwards struck down by paralysis, to remain a helpless spectator of the European changes of the next six years, had no share in that warfare against the language, the religion, and the national culture of Poland with which Russia has pursued its victory since 1863. The public life of Poland he was determined to Russianise; its private and social life he would probably have left unmolested, relying on the goodwill of the great mass of peasants who owed their proprietorship to the action of the Czar. There were, however, politicians at Moscow and St. Petersburg who believed that the deep-lying instinct of nationality would for the first time be called into real life among these peasants by their very elevation from misery to independence, and that where Russia had hitherto had three hundred thousand enemies Milutine was preparing for it six millions. It was the dread of this possibility in the future, the apprehension that material interests might not permanently vanquish the subtler forces which pass from generation to generation, latent, if still unconscious, where nationality itself is not lost, that made the Russian Government follow up the political destruction of the Polish noblesse by measures directed against Polish nationality itself, even at the risk of alienating the class who for the present were effectively won over to the Czar's cause. By the side of its life-giving and beneficent agrarian policy Russia has pursued the odious system of debarring Poland from all means of culture and improvement associated with the use of its own language, and has aimed at eventually turning the Poles into Russians by the systematic impoverishment and extinction of all that is essentially Polish in thought, in sentiment, and in expression. The work may prove to be one not beyond its power; and no common perversity on the part of its Government would be necessary to turn against Russia the millions who in Poland owe all they have of prosperity and independence to the Czar: but should the excess of Russian propagandism, or the hostility of Church to Church, at some distant date engender a new struggle for Polish independence, this struggle will be one governed by other conditions than those of 1831 or 1863, and Russia will, for the first time, have to conquer on the Vistula not a class nor a city, but a nation.

[Berlin and St. Petersburg, 1863.]

It was a matter of no small importance to Bismarck and to Prussia that in the years 1863 and 1864 the Court of St. Petersburg found itself confronted with affairs of such seriousness in Poland. From the opportunity which was then presented to him of obliging an important neighbour, and of profiting by that neighbour's conjoined embarrassment and goodwill, Bismarck drew full advantage. He had always regarded the Poles as a mere nuisance in Europe, and heartily despised the Germans for the sympathy which they had shown towards Poland in 1848. When the insurrection of 1863 broke out, Bismarck set the policy of his own country in emphatic contrast with that of Austria and the Western Powers, and even entered into an arrangement with Russia for an eventual military combination in case the insurgents should pass from one side to the other of the frontier. [513] Throughout the struggle with the Poles, and throughout the diplomatic conflict with the Western Powers, the Czar had felt secure in the loyalty of the stubborn Minister at Berlin; and when, at the close of the Polish revolt, the events occurred which opened to Prussia the road to political fortune, Bismarck received his reward in the liberty of action given him by the Russian Government. The difficulties connected with Schleswig-Holstein, which, after a short interval of tranquillity following the settlement of 1852, had again begun to trouble Europe, were forced to the very front of Continental affairs by the death of Frederick VII., King of Denmark, in November, 1863. Prussia had now at its head a statesman resolved to pursue to their extreme limit the chances which this complication offered to his own country; and, more fortunate than his predecessors of 1848, Bismarck had not to dread the interference of the Czar of Russia as the patron and protector of the interests of the Danish court.

[Schleswig-Holstein, 1852-1863.]

[The Patent of March 30, 1863.]

By the Treaty of London, signed on May 8th, 1852, all the great Powers, including Prussia, had recognised the principle of the integrity of the Danish Monarchy, and had pronounced Prince Christian of Glücksburg to be heir-presumptive to the whole dominions of the reigning King. The rights of the German Federation in Holstein were nevertheless declared to remain unprejudiced; and in a Convention made with Austria and Prussia before they joined in this Treaty, King Frederick VII. had undertaken to conform to certain rules in his treatment of Schleswig as well as of Holstein. The Duke of Augustenburg, claimant to the succession in Schleswig-Holstein through the male line, had renounced his pretensions in consideration of an indemnity paid to him by the King of Denmark. This surrender, however, had not received the consent of his son and of the other members of the House of Augustenburg, nor had the German Federation, as such, been a party to the Treaty of London. Relying on the declaration of the Great Powers in favour of the integrity of the Danish Kingdom, Frederick VII. had resumed his attempts to assimilate Schleswig, and in some degree Holstein, to the rest of the Monarchy; and although the Provincial Estates were allowed to remain in existence, a national Constitution was established in October, 1855, for the entire Danish State. Bitter complaints were made of the system of repression and encroachment with which the Government of Copenhagen was attempting to extinguish German nationality in the border provinces; at length, in November, 1858, under threat of armed intervention by the German Federation, Frederick consented to exclude Holstein from the operation of the new Constitution. But this did not produce peace, for the inhabitants of Schleswig, severed from the sister-province and now excited by the Italian war, raised all the more vigorous a protest against their own incorporation with Denmark; while in Holstein itself the Government incurred the charge of unconstitutional action in fixing the Budget without the consent of the Estates. The German Federal Diet again threatened to resort to force, and Denmark prepared for war. Prussia took up the cause of Schleswig in 1861; and even the British Government, which had hitherto shown far more interest in the integrity of Denmark than in the rights of the German provinces, now recommended that the Constitution of 1855 should be abolished, and that a separate legislation and administration should be granted to Schleswig as well as to Holstein. The Danes, however, were bent on preserving Schleswig as an integral part of the State, and the Government of King Frederick, while willing to recognise Holstein as outside Danish territory proper, insisted that Schleswig should be included within the unitary Constitution, and that Holstein should contribute a fixed share to the national expenditure. A manifesto to this effect, published by King Frederick on the 30th of March, 1863, was the immediate ground of the conflict now about to break out between Germany and Denmark. The Diet of Frankfort announced that if this proclamation were not revoked it should proceed to Federal execution, that is, armed intervention, against the King of Denmark as Duke of Holstein. Still counting upon foreign aid or upon the impotence of the Diet, the Danish Government refused to change its policy, and on the 29th of September laid before the Parliament at Copenhagen the law incorporating Schleswig with the rest of the Monarchy under the new Constitution. Negotiations were thus brought to a close, and on the 1st of October the Diet decreed the long-threatened Federal execution. [514]

[Death of Frederick VII., November, 1863.]

[Federal execution in Holstein. December, 1863.]

Affairs had reached this stage, and the execution had not yet been put in force, when, on the 15th of November, King Frederick VII. died. For a moment it appeared possible that his successor, Prince Christian of Glücksburg, might avert the conflict with Germany by withdrawing from the position which his predecessor had taken up. But the Danish people and Ministry were little inclined to give way; the Constitution had passed through Parliament two days before King Frederick's death, and on the 18th of November it received the assent of the new monarch. German national feeling was now as strongly excited on the question of Schleswig-Holstein as it had been in 1848. The general cry was that the union of these provinces with Denmark must be treated as at an end, and their legitimate ruler, Frederick of Augustenburg, son of the Duke who had renounced his rights, be placed on the throne. The Diet of Frankfort, however, decided to recognise neither of the two rival sovereigns in Holstein until its own intervention should have taken place. Orders were given that a Saxon and a Hanoverian corps should enter the country; and although Prussia and Austria had made a secret agreement that the settlement of the Schleswig-Holstein question was to be conducted by themselves independently of the Diet, the tide of popular enthusiasm ran so high that for the moment the two leading Powers considered it safer not to obstruct the Federal authority, and the Saxon and Hanoverian troops accordingly entered Holstein as mandatories of the Diet at the end of 1863. The Danish Government, offering no resistance, withdrew its troops across the river Eider into Schleswig.

[Plans of Bismarck.]

[Union of Austria and Prussia.]

[Austrian and Prussian troops enter Schleswig. Feb., 1864.]

From this time the history of Germany is the history of the profound and audacious statecraft and of the overmastering will of Bismarck; the nation, except through its valour on the battle-field, ceases to influence the shaping of its own fortunes. What the German people desired in 1864 was that Schleswig-Holstein should be attached, under a ruler of its own, to the German Federation as it then existed; what Bismarck intended was that Schleswig-Holstein, itself incorporated more or less directly with Prussia, should be made the means of the destruction of the existing Federal system and of the expulsion of Austria from Germany. That another petty State, bound to Prussia by no closer tie than its other neighbours, should be added to the troop among whom Austria found its vassals and its instruments, would have been in Bismarck's eyes no gain but actual detriment to Germany. The German people desired one course of action; Bismarck had determined on something totally different; and with matchless resolution and skill he bore down all opposition of people and of Courts, and forced a reluctant nation to the goal which he had himself chosen for it. The first point of conflict was the apparent recognition by Bismarck of the rights of King Christian IX. as lawful sovereign in the Duchies as well as in the rest of the Danish State. By the Treaty of London Prussia had indeed pledged itself to this recognition; but the German Federation had been no party to the Treaty, and under the pressure of a vehement national agitation Bavaria and the minor States one after another recognised Frederick of Augustenburg as Duke of Schleswig-Holstein. Bismarck was accused alike by the Prussian Parliament and by the popular voice of Germany at large of betraying German interests to Denmark, of abusing Prussia's position as a Great Power, of inciting the nation to civil war. In vain he declared that, while surrendering no iota of German rights, the Government of Berlin must recognise those treaty-obligations with which its own legal title to a voice in the affairs of Schleswig was intimately bound up, and that the King of Prussia, not a multitude of irresponsible and ill-informed citizens, must be the judge of the measures by which German interests were to be effectually protected. His words made no single convert either in the Prussian Parliament or in the Federal Diet. At Frankfort the proposal made by the two leading Powers that King Christian should be required to annul the November Constitution, and that in case of his refusal Schleswig also should be occupied, was rejected, as involving an acknowledgment of the title of Christian as reigning sovereign. At Berlin the Lower Chamber refused the supplies which Bismarck demanded for operations in the Duchies, and formally resolved to resist his policy by every means at its command. But the resistance of Parliament and of Diet were alike in vain. By a masterpiece of diplomacy Bismarck had secured the support and co-operation of Austria in his own immediate Danish policy, though but a few months before he had incurred the bitter hatred of the Court of Vienna by frustrating its plans for a reorganisation of Germany by a Congress of princes at Frankfort, and had frankly declared to the Austrian ambassador at Berlin that if Austria did not transfer its political centre to Pesth and leave to Prussia free scope in Germany, it would find Prussia on the side of its enemies in the next war in which it might be engaged. [515] But the democratic and impassioned character of the agitation in the minor States in favour of the Schleswig-Holsteiners and their Augustenburg pretender had enabled Bismarck to represent this movement to the Austrian Government as a revolutionary one, and by a dexterous appeal to the memories of 1848 to awe the Emperor's advisers into direct concert with the Court of Berlin, as the representative of monarchical order, in dealing with a problem otherwise too likely to be solved by revolutionary methods and revolutionary forces. Count Rechberg, the Foreign Minister at Vienna, was lured into a policy which, after drawing upon Austria a full share of the odium of Bismarck's Danish plans, after forfeiting for it the goodwill of the minor States with which it might have kept Prussia in check, and exposing it to the risk of a European war, was to confer upon its rival the whole profit of the joint enterprise, and to furnish a pretext for the struggle by which Austria was to be expelled alike from Germany and from what remained to it of Italy. But of the nature of the toils into which he was now taking the first fatal and irrevocable step Count Rechberg appears to have had no suspicion. A seeming cordiality united the Austrian and Prussian Governments in the policy of defiance to the will of all the rest of Germany and to the demands of their own subjects. It was to no purpose that the Federal Diet vetoed the proposed summons to King Christian and the proposed occupation of Schleswig. Austria and Prussia delivered an ultimatum at Copenhagen demanding the repeal of the November Constitution; and on its rejection their troops entered Schleswig, not as the mandatories of the German Federation, but as the instruments of two independent and allied Powers. (Feb. 1, 1864.)

[Campaign in Schleswig. Feb.-April, 1864.]

Against the overwhelming forces by which they were thus attacked the Danes could only make a brave but ineffectual resistance. Their first line of defence was the Danewerke, a fortification extending east and west towards the sea from the town of Schleswig. Prince Frederick Charles, who commanded the Prussian right, was repulsed in an attack upon the easternmost part of this work at Missunde; the Austrians, however, carried some positions in the centre which commanded the defenders' lines, and the Danes fell back upon the fortified post of Düppel, covering the narrow channel which separates the island of Alsen from the mainland. Here for some weeks they held the Prussians in check, while the Austrians, continuing the march northwards, entered Jutland. At length, on the 18th of April, after several hours of heavy bombardment, the lines of Düppel were taken by storm and the defenders driven across the channel into Alsen. Unable to pursue the enemy across this narrow strip of sea, the Prussians joined their allies in Jutland, and occupied the whole of the Danish mainland as far as the Lüm Fiord. The war, however, was not to be terminated without an attempt on the part of the neutral Powers to arrive at a settlement by diplomacy. A Conference was opened at London on the 20th of April, and after three weeks of negotiation the belligerents were induced to accept an armistice. As the troops of the German Federation, though unconcerned in the military operations of the two Great Powers, were in possession of Holstein, the Federal Government was invited to take part in the Conference. It was represented by Count Beust, Prime Minister of Saxony, a politician who was soon to rise to much greater eminence; but in consequence of the diplomatic union of Prussia and Austria the views entertained by the Governments of the secondary German States had now no real bearing on the course of events, and Count Beust's earliest appearance on the great European stage was without result, except in its influence on his own career. [516]

[Conference of London. April, 1864.]

The first proposition laid before the Conference was that submitted by Bernstorff, the Prussian envoy, to the effect that Schleswig-Holstein should receive complete independence, the question whether King Christian or some other prince should be sovereign of the new State being reserved for future settlement. To this the Danish envoys replied that even on the condition of personal union with Denmark through the Crown they could not assent to the grant of complete independence to the Duchies. Raising their demand in consequence of this refusal, and declaring that the war had made an end of the obligations subsisting under the London Treaty of 1852, the two German Powers then demanded that Schleswig-Holstein should be completely separated from Denmark and formed into a single State under Frederick of Augustenburg, who in the eyes of Germany possessed the best claim to the succession. Lord Russell, while denying that the acts or defaults of Denmark could liberate Austria and Prussia from their engagements made with other Powers in the Treaty of London, admitted that no satisfactory result was likely to arise from the continued union of the Duchies with Denmark, and suggested that King Christian should make an absolute cession of Holstein and of the southern part of Schleswig, retaining the remainder in full sovereignty. The frontier-line he proposed to draw at the River Schlei. To this principle of partition both Denmark and the German Powers assented, but it proved impossible to reach an agreement on the frontier-line. Bernstorff, who had at first required nearly all Schleswig, abated his demands, and would have accepted a line drawn westward from Flensburg, so leaving to Denmark at least half the province, including the important position of Düppel. The terms thus offered to Denmark were not unfavourable. Holstein it did not expect, and could scarcely desire, to retain; and the territory which would have been taken from it in Schleswig under this arrangement included few districts that were not really German. But the Government of Copenhagen, misled by the support given to it at the Conference by England and Russia--a support which was one of words only--refused to cede anything north of the town of Schleswig. Even when in the last resort Lord Russell proposed that the frontier-line should be settled by arbitration the Danish Government held fast to its refusal, and for the sake of a few miles of territory plunged once more into a struggle which, if it was not to kindle a European war of vast dimensions, could end only in the ruin of the Danes. The expected help failed them. Attacked and overthrown in the island of Alsen, the German flag carried to the northern extremity of their mainland, they were compelled to make peace on their enemies' terms. Hostilities were brought to a close by the signature of Preliminaries on the 1st of August; and by the Treaty of Vienna, concluded on the 30th of October, 1864, King Christian ceded his rights in the whole of Schleswig-Holstein to the sovereigns of Austria and Prussia jointly, and undertook to recognise whatever dispositions they might make of those provinces.

[Great Britain and Napoleon III.]

The British Government throughout this conflict had played a sorry part, at one moment threatening the Germans, at another using language towards the Danes which might well be taken to indicate an intention of lending them armed support. To some extent the errors of the Cabinet were due to the relation which existed between Great Britain and Napoleon III. It had up to this time been considered both at London and at Paris that the Allies of the Crimea had still certain common interests in Europe; and in the unsuccessful intervention at St. Petersburg on behalf of Poland in 1863 the British and French Governments had at first gone hand in hand. But behind every step openly taken by Napoleon III. there was some half-formed design for promoting the interests of his dynasty or extending the frontiers of France; and if England had consented to support the diplomatic concert at St. Petersburg by measures of force, it would have found itself engaged in a war in which other ends than those relating to Poland would have been the foremost. Towards the close of the year 1863 Napoleon had proposed that a European Congress should assemble, in order to regulate not only the affairs of Poland but all those European questions which remained unsettled. This proposal had been abruptly declined by the English Government; and when in the course of the Danish war Lord Palmerston showed an inclination to take up arms if France would do the same, Napoleon was probably not sorry to have the opportunity of repaying England for its rejection of his own overtures in the previous year. He had moreover hopes of obtaining from Prussia an extension of the French frontier either in Belgium or towards the Rhine. [517] In reply to overtures from London, Napoleon stated that the cause of Schleswig-Holstein to some extent represented the principle of nationality, to which France was friendly, and that of all wars in which France could engage a war with Germany would be the least desirable. England accordingly, if it took up arms for the Danes, would have been compelled to enter the war alone; and although at a later time, when the war was over and the victors were about to divide the spoil, the British and French fleets ostentatiously combined in manoeuvres at Cherbourg, this show of union deceived no one, least of all the resolute and well-informed director of affairs at Berlin. To force, and force alone, would Bismarck have yielded. Palmerston, now sinking into old age, permitted Lord Russell to parody his own fierce language of twenty years back; but all the world, except the Danes, knew that the fangs and the claws were drawn, and that British foreign policy had become for the time a thing of snarls and grimaces.

[Intentions of Bismarck as to Schleswig-Holstein.]

Bismarck had not at first determined actually to annex Schleswig-Holstein to Prussia. He would have been content to leave it under the nominal sovereignty of Frederick of Augustenburg if that prince would have placed the entire military and naval resources of Schleswig-Holstein under the control of the Government of Berlin, and have accepted on behalf of his Duchies conditions which Bismarck considered indispensable to German union under Prussian leadership. In the harbour of Kiel it was not difficult to recognise the natural headquarters of a future German fleet; the narrow strip of land projecting between the two seas naturally suggested the formation of a canal connecting the Baltic with the German Ocean, and such a work could only belong to Germany at large or to its leading Power. Moreover, as a frontier district, Schleswig-Holstein was peculiarly exposed to foreign attack; certain strategical positions necessary for its defence must therefore be handed over to its protector. That Prussia should have united its forces with Austria in order to win for the Schleswig-Holsteiners the power of governing themselves as they pleased, must have seemed to Bismarck a supposition in the highest degree preposterous. He had taken up the cause of the Duchies not in the interest of the inhabitants but in the interest of Germany; and by Germany he understood Germany centred at Berlin and ruled by the House of Hohenzollern. If therefore the Augustenburg prince was not prepared to accept his throne on these terms, there was no room for him, and the provinces must be incorporated with Prussia itself. That Austria would not without compensation permit the Duchies thus to fall directly or indirectly under Prussian sway was of course well known to Bismarck; but so far was this from causing him any hesitation in his policy, that from the first he had discerned in the Schleswig-Holstein question a favourable pretext for the war which was to drive Austria out of Germany.

[Relations of Prussia and Austria, Dec., 1854-Aug., 1865.]

[Convention of Gastein, Aug. 14, 1865.]

Peace with Denmark was scarcely concluded when, at the bidding of Prussia, reluctantly supported by Austria, the Saxon and Hanoverian troops which had entered Holstein as the mandatories of the Federal Diet were compelled to leave the country. A Provisional Government was established under the direction of an Austrian and a Prussian Commissioner. Bismarck had met the Prince of Augustenburg at Berlin some months before, and had formed an unfavourable opinion of the policy likely to be adopted by him towards Prussia. All Germany, however, was in favour of the Prince's claims, and at the Conference of London these claims had been supported by the Prussian envoy himself. In order to give some appearance of formal legality to his own action, Bismarck had to obtain from the Crown-jurists of Prussia a decision that King Christian IX. had, contrary to the general opinion of Germany, been the lawful inheritor of Schleswig-Holstein, and that the Prince of Augustenburg had therefore no rights whatever in the Duchies. As the claims of Christian had been transferred by the Treaty of Vienna to the sovereigns of Austria and Prussia jointly, it rested with them to decide who should be Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, and under what conditions. Bismarck announced at Vienna on the 22nd of February, 1865, the terms on which he was willing that Schleswig-Holstein should be conferred by the two sovereigns upon Frederick of Augustenburg. He required, in addition to community of finance, postal system, and railways, that Prussian law, including the obligation to military service, should be introduced into the Duchies; that their regiments should take the oath of fidelity to the King of Prussia, and that their principal military positions should be held by Prussian troops. These conditions would have made Schleswig-Holstein in all but name a part of the Prussian State: they were rejected both by the Court of Vienna and by Prince Frederick himself, and the population of Schleswig-Holstein almost unanimously declared against them. Both Austria and the Federal Diet now supported the Schleswig-Holsteiners in what appeared to be a struggle on behalf of their independence against Prussian domination; and when the Prussian Commissioner in Schleswig-Holstein expelled the most prominent of the adherents of Augustenburg, his Austrian colleague published a protest declaring the act to be one of lawless violence. It seemed that the outbreak of war between the two rival Powers could not long be delayed; but Bismarck had on this occasion moved too rapidly for his master, and considerations relating to the other European Powers made it advisable to postpone the rupture for some months. An agreement was patched up at Gastein by which, pending an ultimate settlement, the government of the two provinces was divided between their masters, Austria taking the administration of Holstein, Prussia that of Schleswig, while the little district of Lauenburg on the south was made over to King William in full sovereignty. An actual conflict between the representatives of the two rival governments at their joint headquarters in Schleswig-Holstein was thus averted; peace was made possible at least for some months longer; and the interval was granted to Bismarck which was still required for the education of his Sovereign in the policy of blood and iron, and for the completion of his own arrangements with the enemies of Austria outside Germany. [518]

[Bismarck at Biarritz, Sept., 1865.]

The natural ally of Prussia was Italy; but without the sanction of Napoleon III. it would have been difficult to engage Italy in a new war. Bismarck had therefore to gain at least the passive concurrence of the French Emperor in the union of Italy and Prussia against Austria. He visited Napoleon at Biarritz in September, 1865, and returned with the object of his journey achieved. The negotiation of Biarritz, if truthfully recorded, would probably give the key to much of the European history of the next five years. As at Plombières, the French Emperor acted without his Ministers, and what he asked he asked without a witness. That Bismarck actually promised to Napoleon III. either Belgium or any part of the Rhenish Provinces in case of the aggrandisement of Prussia has been denied by him, and is not in itself probable. But there are understandings which prove to be understandings on one side only; politeness may be misinterpreted; and the world would have found Count Bismarck unendurable if at every friendly meeting he had been guilty of the frankness with which he informed the Austrian Government that its centre of action must be transferred from Vienna to Pesth. That Napoleon was now scheming for an extension of France on the north-east is certain; that Bismarck treated such rectification of the frontier as a matter for arrangement is hardly to be doubted; and if without a distinct and written agreement Napoleon was content to base his action on the belief that Bismarck would not withhold from him his reward, this only proved how great was the disparity between the aims which the French ruler allowed himself to cherish and his mastery of the arts by which alone such aims were to be realised. Napoleon desired to see Italy placed in possession of Venice; he probably believed at this time that Austria would be no unequal match for Prussia and Italy together, and that the natural result of a well-balanced struggle would be not only the completion of Italian union but the purchase of French neutrality or mediation by the cession of German territory west of the Rhine. It was no part of the duty of Count Bismarck to chill Napoleon's fancies or to teach him political wisdom. The Prussian statesman may have left Biarritz with the conviction that an attack on Germany would sooner or later follow the disappointment of those hopes which he had flattered and intended to mock; but for the present he had removed one dangerous obstacle from his path, and the way lay free before him to an Italian alliance if Italy itself should choose to combine with him in war.

[Italy, 1862-65.]

Since the death of Cavour the Italian Government had made no real progress towards the attainment of the national aims, the acquisition of Rome and Venice. Garibaldi, impatient of delay, had in 1862 landed again in Sicily and summoned his followers to march with him upon Rome. But the enterprise was resolutely condemned by Victor Emmanuel, and when Garibaldi crossed to the mainland he found the King's troops in front of him at Aspromonte. There was an exchange of shots, and Garibaldi fell wounded. He was treated with something of the distinction shown to a royal prisoner, and when his wound was healed he was released from captivity. His enterprise, however, and the indiscreet comments on it made by Rattazzi, who was now in power, strengthened the friends of the Papacy at the Tuileries, and resulted in the fall of the Italian Minister. His successor, Minghetti, deemed it necessary to arrive at some temporary understanding with Napoleon on the Roman question. The presence of French troops at Rome offended national feeling, and made any attempt at conciliation between the Papal Court and the Italian Government hopeless. In order to procure the removal of this foreign garrison Minghetti was willing to enter into engagements which seemed almost to imply the renunciation of the claim on Rome. By a Convention made in September, 1864, the Italian Government undertook not to attack the territory of the Pope, and to oppose by force every attack made upon it from without. Napoleon on his part engaged to withdraw his troops gradually from Rome as the Pope should organise his own army, and to complete the evacuation within two years. It was, however, stipulated in an Article which was intended to be kept secret, that the capital of Italy should be changed, the meaning of this stipulation being that Florence should receive the dignity which by the common consent of Italy ought to have been transferred from Turin to Rome and to Rome alone. The publication of this Article, which was followed by riots in Turin, caused the immediate fall of Minghetti's Cabinet. He was succeeded in office by General La Marmora, under whom the negotiations with Prussia were begun which, after long uncertainty, resulted in the alliance of 1866 and in the final expulsion of Austria from Italy. [519]

[La Marmora.]

[Govone at Berlin, March, 1866.]

[Treaty of April 8, 1856.]

Bismarck from the beginning of his Ministry appears to have looked forward to the combination of Italy and Prussia against the common enemy; but his plans ripened slowly. In the spring of 1865, when affairs seemed to be reaching a crisis in Schleswig-Holstein, the first serious overtures were made by the Prussian ambassador at Florence. La Marmora answered that any definite proposition would receive the careful attention of the Italian Government, but that Italy would not permit itself to be made a mere instrument in Prussia's hands for the intimidation of Austria. Such caution was both natural and necessary on the part of the Italian Minister; and his reserve seemed to be more than justified when, a few months later, the Treaty of Gastein restored Austria and Prussia to relations of friendship. La Marmora might now well consider himself released from all obligations towards the Court of Berlin: and, entering on a new line of policy, he sent an envoy to Vienna to ascertain if the Emperor would amicably cede Venetia to Italy in return for the payment of a very large sum of money and the assumption by Italy of part of the Austrian national debt. Had this transaction been effected, it would probably have changed the course of European history; the Emperor, however, declined to bargain away any part of his dominions, and so threw Italy once more into the camp of his great enemy. In the meantime the disputes about Schleswig-Holstein broke out afresh. Bismarck renewed his efforts at Florence in the spring of 1866, with the result that General Govone was sent to Berlin in order to discuss with the Prussian Minister the political and military conditions of an alliance. But instead of proposing immediate action, Bismarck stated to Govone that the question of Schleswig-Holstein was insufficient to justify a great war in the eyes of Europe, and that a better cause must be put forward, namely, the reform of the Federal system of Germany. Once more the subtle Italians believed that Bismarck's anxiety for a war with Austria was feigned, and that he sought their friendship only as a means of extorting from the Court of Vienna its consent to Prussia's annexation of the Danish Duchies. There was an apparent effort on the part of the Prussian statesman to avoid entering into any engagement which involved immediate action; the truth being that Bismarck was still in conflict with the pacific influences which surrounded the King, and uncertain from day to day whether his master would really follow him in the policy of war. He sought therefore to make the joint resort to arms dependent on some future act, such as the summoning of a German Parliament, from which the King of Prussia could not recede if once he should go so far. But the Italians, apparently not penetrating the real secret of Bismarck's hesitation, would be satisfied with no such indeterminate engagement; they pressed for action within a limited time; and in the end, after Austria had taken steps which went far to overcome the last scruples of King William, Bismarck consented to fix three months as the limit beyond which the obligation of Italy to accompany Prussia into war should not extend. On the 8th of April a Treaty of offensive and defensive alliance was signed. It was agreed that if the King of Prussia should within three months take up arms for the reform of the Federal system of Germany, Italy would immediately after the outbreak of hostilities declare war upon Austria. Both Powers were to engage in the war with their whole force, and peace was not to be made but by common consent, such consent not to be withheld after Austria should have agreed to cede Venetia to Italy and territory with an equal population to Prussia. [520]

[Bismarck and Austria, Aug., 1865-April, 1866.]

Eight months had now passed since the signature of the Convention of Gastem. The experiment of an understanding with Austria, which King William had deemed necessary, had been made, and it had failed; or rather, as Bismarck expressed himself in a candid moment, it had succeeded, inasmuch as it had cured the King of his scruples and raised him to the proper point of indignation against the Austrian Court. The agents in effecting this happy result had been the Prince of Augustenburg, the population of Holstein, and the Liberal party throughout Germany at large. In Schleswig, which the Convention of Gastein had handed over to Prussia, General Manteuffel, a son of the Minister of 1850, had summarily put a stop to every expression of public opinion, and had threatened to imprison the Prince if he came within his reach; in Holstein the Austrian Government had permitted, if it had not encouraged, the inhabitants to agitate in favour of the Pretender, and had allowed a mass-meeting to be held at Altona on the 23rd of January, where cheers were raised for Augustenburg, and the summoning of the Estates of Schleswig-Holstein was demanded. This was enough to enable Bismarck to denounce the conduct of Austria as an alliance with revolution. He demanded explanations from the Government of Vienna, and the Emperor declined to render an account of his actions. Warlike preparations now began, and on the 16th of March the Austrian Government announced that it should refer the affairs of Schleswig-Holstein to the Federal Diet. This was a clear departure from the terms of the Convention of Gastein, and from the agreement made between Austria and Prussia before entering into the Danish war in 1864 that the Schleswig-Holstein question should be settled by the two Powers independently of the German Federation. King William was deeply moved by such a breach of good faith; tears filled his eyes when he spoke of the conduct of the Austrian Emperor; and though pacific influences were still active around him he now began to fall in more cordially with the warlike policy of his Minister. The question at issue between Prussia and Austria expanded from the mere disposal of the Duchies to the reconstitution of the Federal system of Germany. In a note laid before the Governments of all the Minor States Bismarck declared that the time had come when Germany must receive a new and more effective organisation, and inquired how far Prussia could count on the support of allies if it should be attacked by Austria or forced into war. It was immediately after this re-opening of the whole problem of Federal reform in Germany that the draft of the Treaty with Italy was brought to its final shape by Bismarck and the Italian envoy, and sent to the Ministry at Florence for its approval.

[Austria offers Venice, May 5.]

Bismarck had now to make the best use of the three months' delay that was granted to him. On the day after the acceptance of the Treaty by the Italian Government, the Prussian representative at the Diet of Frankfort handed in a proposal for the summoning of a German Parliament, to be elected by universal suffrage. Coming from the Minister who had made Parliamentary government a mockery in Prussia, this proposal was scarcely considered as serious. Bavaria, as the chief of the secondary States, had already expressed its willingness to enter upon the discussion of Federal reform, but it asked that the two leading Powers should in the meantime undertake not to attack one another. Austria at once acceded to this request, and so forced Bismarck into giving a similar assurance. Promises of disarmament were then exchanged; but as Austria declined to stay the collection of its forces in Venetia against Italy, Bismarck was able to charge his adversary with insincerity in the negotiation, and preparations for war were resumed on both sides. Other difficulties, however, now came into view. The Treaty between Prussia and Italy had been made known to the Court of Vienna by Napoleon, whose advice La Marmora had sought before its conclusion, and the Austrian Emperor had thus become aware of his danger. He now determined to sacrifice Venetia if Italy's neutrality could be so secured. On the 5th of May the Italian ambassador at Paris, Count Nigra, was informed by Napoleon that Austria had offered to cede Venetia to him on behalf of Victor Emmanuel if France and Italy would not prevent Austria from indemnifying itself at Prussia's expense in Silesia. Without a war, at the price of mere inaction, Italy was offered all that it could gain by a struggle which was likely to be a desperate one, and which might end in disaster. La Marmora was in sore perplexity. Though he had formed a juster estimate of the capacity of the Prussian army than any other statesman or soldier in Europe, he was thoroughly suspicious of the intentions of the Prussian Government; and in sanctioning the alliance of the previous month he had done so half expecting that Bismarck would through the prestige of this alliance gain for Prussia its own objects without entering into war, and then leave Italy to reckon with Austria as best it might. He would gladly have abandoned the alliance and have accepted Austria's offer if Italy could have done this without disgrace. But the sense of honour was sufficiently strong to carry him past this temptation. He declined the offer made through Paris, and continued the armaments of Italy, though still with a secret hope that European diplomacy might find the means of realising the purpose of his country without war. [521]

[Proposals for a Congress.]

The neutral Powers were now, with various objects, bestirring themselves in favour of a European Congress. Napoleon believed the time to be come when the Treaties of 1815 might be finally obliterated by the joint act of Europe. He was himself ready to join Prussia with three hundred thousand men if the King would transfer the Rhenish Provinces to France. Demands, direct and indirect, were made on Count Bismarck on behalf of the Tuileries for cessions of territory of greater or less extent. These demands were neither granted nor refused. Bismarck procrastinated; he spoke of the obstinacy of the King his master; he inquired whether parts of Belgium or Switzerland would not better assimilate with France than a German province; he put off the Emperor's representatives by the assurance that he could more conveniently arrange these matters with the Emperor when he should himself visit Paris. On the 28th of May invitations to a Congress were issued by France, England, and Russia jointly, the objects of the Congress being defined as the settlement of the affairs of Schleswig-Holstein, of the differences between Austria and Italy, and of the reform of the Federal Constitution of Germany, in so far as these affected Europe at large. The invitation was accepted by Prussia and by Italy; it was accepted by Austria only under the condition that no arrangement should be discussed which should give an increase of territory or power to one of the States invited to the Congress. This subtly-worded condition would not indeed have excluded the equal aggrandisement of all. It would not have rendered the cession of Venetia to Italy or the annexation of Schleswig-Holstein to Prussia impossible; but it would either have involved the surrender of the former Papal territory by Italy in order that Victor Emmanuel's dominions should receive no increase, or, in the alternative, it would have entitled Austria to claim Silesia as its own equivalent for the augmentation of the Italian Kingdom. Such reservations would have rendered any efforts of the Powers to preserve peace useless, and they were accepted as tantamount to a refusal on the part of Austria to attend the Congress. Simultaneously with its answer to the neutral Powers, Austria called upon the Federal Diet to take the affairs of Schleswig-Holstein into its own hands, and convoked the Holstein Estates. Bismarck thereupon declared the Convention of Gastein to be at an end, and ordered General Manteuffel to lead his troops into Holstein. The Austrian commander, protesting that he yielded only to superior force, withdrew through Altona into Hanover. Austria at once demanded and obtained from the Diet of Frankfort the mobilisation of the whole of the Federal armies. The representative of Prussia, declaring that this act of the Diet had made an end of the existing Federal union, handed in the plan of his Government for the reorganisation of Germany, and quitted Frankfort. Diplomatic relations between Austria and Prussia were broken off on the 12th of June, and on the 15th Count Bismarck demanded of the sovereigns of Hanover, Saxony, and Hesse-Cassel, that they should on that very day put a stop to their military preparations and accept the Prussian scheme of Federal reform. Negative answers being given, Prussian troops immediately marched into these territories, and war began. Weimar, Mecklenburg, and other petty States in the north took part with Prussia: all the rest of Germany joined Austria. [522]

[German Opinion.]

The goal of Bismarck's desire, the end which he had steadily set before himself since entering upon his Ministry, was attained; and, if his calculations as to the strength of the Prussian army were not at fault, Austria was at length to be expelled from the German Federation by force of arms. But the process by which Bismarck had worked up to this result had ranged against him the almost unanimous opinion of Germany outside the military circles of Prussia itself. His final demand for the summoning of a German Parliament was taken as mere comedy. The guiding star of his policy had hitherto been the dynastic interest of the House of Hohenzollern; and now, when the Germans were to be plunged into war with one another, it seemed as if the real object of the struggle was no more than the annexation of the Danish Duchies and some other coveted territory to the Prussian Kingdom. The voice of protest and condemnation rose loud from every organ of public opinion. Even in Prussia itself the instances were few where any spontaneous support was tendered to the Government. The Parliament of Berlin, struggling up to the end against the all-powerful Minister, had seen its members prosecuted for speeches made within its own walls, and had at last been prorogued in order that its insubordination might not hamper the Crown in the moment of danger. But the mere disappearance of Parliament could not conceal the intensity of ill-will which the Minister and his policy had excited. The author of a fratricidal war of Germans against Germans was in the eyes of many the greatest of all criminals; and on the 7th of May an attempt was made by a young fanatic to take Bismarck's life in the streets of Berlin. The Minister owed the preservation of his life to the feebleness of his assailant's weapon and to his own vigorous arm. But the imminence of the danger affected King William far more than Bismarck himself. It spoke to his simple mind of supernatural protection and aid; it stilled his doubts; and confirmed him in the belief that Prussia was in this crisis the instrument for working out the Almighty's will.

[Napoleon III.]