Chapter IV: Of Provincial and Communal Institutions (6)

"How bitterly the decrease of population was felt in many
regions is proved by a decree of the local diet [kreistag] in
Franconia, transmitted to us by Hormayr, according to which
any man might take two wives, priests (catholic) might marry
and no man under 60 years of age might enter a monastery.
Quite incalculable was the loss of domestic animals; we have
but very incomplete statistics on the subject, but according
to these few the assertion is not unjustifiable that at most
one fifth of the number existing before the war remained. The
lack of working people being so great it was therefore
inevitable that famine should break out in very many regions.
The memoranda in chronicles and diaries contain truly
horrible, heart-breaking representations on the subject. J. J.
Rayser's 'Historischer Schauplatz der Stadt Heidelberg'
reports from the Palatinate: … 'Many rejoiced if they could
only get oxhides, cowhides, the skins of horses, sheep and
other animals, and eat them. Indeed cruel hunger drove them to
other things too, towards which human nature is apt to feel
horror and disgust. They ate dogs, cats, rats, mice, frogs and
other animals in order to appease their bitter hunger.
{3770}
Nor did they refrain from such animals as had already lain for
several weeks on the roads, or in pools and streams and which
gave forth a horrible odor. … The starving people even killed
each other and ate up the corpses; they ransacked the
cemeteries, broke open graves, climbed up on the gallows and
on the wheel and took the dead away to eat them.' … The
reports of single cases of cannibalism from neighborhoods
where otherwise the most friendly and contented people lived,
are too disgusting to allow us to quote any further examples.
… There is no other example of a destruction of civilization
such as the Thirty Years War in Germany produced. There is no
other case where a whole people in all parts of the land was
uniformly exposed to such severe losses, so that in numbers it
was reduced to one half; where, from riches, luxury and
abundance such as had undoubtedly prevailed at the beginning
of the century men had come to poverty and to the want of even
the necessaries of life. … The dissolution of the numerous
military organizations and the dismissal of the regiments had
created an enormous number of tramps of the most dangerous
sort and still continued to do much towards increasing
vagabondage. The grade of intelligence among the people of the
lowlands had decreased most alarmingly; while superstition was
continually on the increase. Witch-trials flourished both in
the city and in the country. Beggary had long ceased to be a
cause for shame; the war, which had brought down to it in a
short time even those who had been formerly the richest,
caused even the most dishonorable trade to be held in honor.
Whoever by daily labor could earn his daily bread might think
himself fortunate. In the place of the horses which war had
carried away, human beings took to dragging carts in the
street. … With the ruin of the trade and of the art industry
of Germany, which in the 16th century would for so many
objects have probably needed to fear no rivalry and which was
only surpassed by that of Italy, went hand in hand the rise
and increase of French industry. This was due in no small part
to the fact that an extensive market was opened up for it in
Germany. From the great and small courts of the secular and
ecclesiastical princes, from the estates of the nobles, where
the plunder of the generals and colonels of all nations and
confessions had at last indeed been unloaded, the money
contributed by the subjects flowed into the strong-boxes of
the Paris manufactories, which dictated the fashions for the
whole continent. Thus did the industrial triumph of France
supplement its political supremacy; thus did Germany's
misfortune become the cause of enriching her western neighbor,
France having known how to secure its existence as a state by
itself three centuries earlier than the Germans had done."

_H. von Zwiedineck-Südenhorst,
Deutsche Geschichte, 1648-1740
(translated from the German),
volume 1, pages 45-49._

"Through the complete destruction of its old civilization,
through an unexampled devastation of its prosperity and ruin
of its moral life the fatherland of the Reformation had saved
for that part of the world the freedom of faith. Strangers
played with the strongest people of Europe. That language
which in Luther's and Hutten's time had gloried at once in the
purity of its origin and in the terse power of its national
plainness had become Gallicized and full of flourishes, a
disgusting mixture of flatness and bombast, of artificiality
and coarseness, so servile, so incapable of expressing in
simple grandeur what was high and noble that in answer to the
question what German writings of those times can we read
to-day the honest reply must be, with the exception of some
poems by Simon Dach, Logau and Paul Gerhard, solely the droll
adventures of Simplicissimus and the merry sermons of Father
Abraham a Santa Clara. The terror and need of the time, the
rule of brute force and the intrusion of foreign customs, had
jarred and disturbed the inner life of the nation to its very
depths. Truth and fidelity had vanished, as well as the proud
frankness and bright enjoyment of life of the older
generation. A hideous greed of gold had taken hold of high and
low; the boastful pride of luxurious extravagance continued in
the midst of the general poverty."

_Essay by Heinrich von Treitschke,
quoted by Zwiedineck,
page 52._

See, also, GERMANY: A. D. 1648, to 1648-1780
(pages 1484-1489).

GERMANY: A. D. 1648-1715.
Relations of Austria, Germany and France
after the Thirty Years War.

"After 1648 it was the natural policy of the Hapsburgh
emperors to maintain the status quo of the Westphalian
treaties. … After the emperor had once lost the prospect of
gaining for himself the undivided rule over Germany, all his
endeavors were needed at least to hinder it from passing to
another. The efforts of the separate territorial sovereigns to
enlarge and round off their lands, their attempts to extend
their power externally and at the same time to tighten their
hold on their own subjects found henceforward a counterpoise
in Austria."

_L. Häusser,
Deutsche Geschichte
(translated from the German),
volume 1, page 21._

"The whole shamefulness of this disintegration of Germany,
showed itself in the defenceless state of the empire. … Right
under the greedy hands of France lay the weakest, the most
unguarded members of the empire. All along that priest-avenue
the Rhine, from Munster and Osnabrück up to Constance,
stretched a confused mass of tiny states, incapable of in any
way seriously arming themselves, compelled to betray their
country through the feeling of their own utter weakness.
Almost all the Rhenish courts held pensions from Versailles. …
Fully one-third of Germany served in the wars of the empire as
a dead burden. … The weakness of Germany was to blame for the
new growth of power in Austria and France; … the foreigners
laughed at the 'querelles allemandes' and the 'misère
allemande'; the Frenchman Bonhours mockingly asked the
question if it was possible that a German could have
intellect. … As the born antagonist of the old order of things
in Europe the basis of which was Germany's weakness, Prussia
stood in a world of enemies whose mutual jealousies formed her
only safeguard. She was without any natural ally, for the
German nation had not yet come to understand this budding
power. … Just as the House of Savoy was able to tread its way
through the superiority of the Hapsburghs on the one hand and
of the Bourbons on the other, so did Prussia, although
immeasurably harder pressed, have to find a path for herself
between Austria and France, between Sweden and Poland, between
the maritime powers and the inert mass of the German empire.
{3771}
She had to use every means of remorseless egoism, always ready
to change front, always with two strings to her bow. The
electorate of Brandenburg felt to the very marrow of its being
how deeply foreign ideas had eaten into Germany. All the
disorganized forces … which opposed the strong lead of the new
monarchy placed their faith in foreign help. Dutch garrisons
were stationed on the Lower Rhine and favored the struggle of
the Cleve estates against their German lords. The diets of
Magdeburg and of the electoral Mark counted on Austria. …
Frederick William breaks down the barriers of the
Netherlanders in the German Northwest; he drives their troops
from Cleve and from East Friesland. … Then he calls out to the
deaf nation his warning words, 'Remember that you are
Germans,' and seeks to drive the Swedes from the soil of the
empire. Twice did the ill-will of France and Austria succeed
in robbing the Brandenburg prince of the reward of his
victories, of the rule in Pomerania: the fame of the day at
Fehrbellin they could not take from him.

See BRANDENBURG: A. D. 1640-1688 (page 310).

… When the republic of the Netherlands threatened to fall
before the attack of Louis XIV Brandenburg caught the raised
arm of the conqueror.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1674-1678 (page 2289).

Frederick William carried on the only serious war that the
empire ventured on for the recovery of Alsace.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1672-1714 (page 209)].

… With the rise of Prussia began the long bloody work of
freeing Germany from foreign rule. … In this one state there
awoke again, still half unconscious as if drunken with long
sleep, the old hearty pride in the fatherland. … The House of
Hapsburgh recognized earlier than the Hohenzollerns did
themselves how hostile this modern North German state was to
the old constitution of the Holy Empire. In Silesia, in
Pomerania, in the Jülich-Cleve war of succession—everywhere
Austria stood and looked with distrust on its dangerous rival.
… Equally dangerous to Hapsburgh and to the German empire were
the French and the Turks; how natural was it for Hapsburgh to
seek support from Germany, to involve the empire in its wars,
to use it as a bulwark towards the west or for diversions
against France in case the Turks threatened the walls of
Vienna. … Only it cannot be denied that in this common action
the Austrian policy, under a more centralized guidance and
backed by a firmer tradition, looked out for its own advantage
better than did the German empire—loose, heavy, and without
consistent leadership. When the might of Louis XIV began to
oppress Germany the policy of the Hapsburghs was to remain for
a long time luke-warm and inactive. This policy led Austria
indeed even to make a league with France and, when she did at
last decide to help the great elector of Brandenburg against
the enemy of the empire, this happened so charily and
equivocally as to give rise to the doubt whether the Austrian
army was not placed there to keep watch over the Brandenburg
forces or even to positively hinder their advance. An Austrian
writer himself assures us that Montecuculi was in secret
commanded only to make a show of using his weapons against the
French. For a long time Austria stood by inactive while the
Reannexations were going on.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1679-1691 (page 1236).

… The whole war as conducted by Austria on the Rhine and in
the West was languid and sleepy;

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1672-1714 (page 209);

the empire and individual warlike princes were left to protect
themselves. What an entirely different display of power did
Austria make when it was a question of fighting for its own
dynastic interests!"

_H. von Treitschke,
Deutsche Geschichte im 19ten Jahrhundert
(translated from the German),
volume 1, pages 21-33._

"As in the wars so in the diplomatic negotiations the
separation of the Austrian dynastic interests from the
advantage and needs of the German empire often enough came to
light. It is only necessary to revert to the attitude which
the emperor's diplomacy took at Nimeguen and Ryswick.

See NIMEGUEN (page 2362);
and FRANCE: A. D. 1697 (page 1243)].

… When in the conferences at Gertruidenburg (1710) Louis XIV
was reduced to being willing not only to give up the
'Reannexations' and Strassburg but even to restore Alsace and
the fortress of Valenciennes, it was also not the interests of
the empire but solely those of the House of Hapsburgh which
led to the rejection of these offers and to the continuance of
a war by which, as it turned out eventually, not one of these
demands was gained. No wonder that in Germany, restricted
though the imperial authority already was, men still did not
feel secure so long as the emperor continued to have even the
power of making peace independently of the empire."

_L. Häusser,
Deutsche Geschichte
(translated from the German).
volume 1, page 23._

"Louis XIV regarded himself not exactly as enemy of the German
empire and of the imperial power of the House of Hapsburgh,
but rather as a pretendant to the throne. As he explains it in
the political directions meant for his son the empire of the
West, the heritage of Charles the Great, belongs not of right
to the Germans but to the kings who are crowned at Rheims. …
The Germans have ruined the empire, only a ruler with the
power of the French king can bring it again to honor. … If
Louis XIV by means of the Rhine Confederation of 1658 saw
himself bound in a close communion with German princes and
electors, if his troops rushed in at the decisive moment
before Erfurt and at Saint Gothard, if his omnipresent
diplomacy sought to find starting-points everywhere, even in
the Hofburg at Vienna: all this seemed to him activity in a
field which he really felt belonged to himself. The rendering
of the German princes dependent on the French court, the
loosening of the bonds which held the empire together, the
isolation of the Hapsburghs from the rest of the empire: these
were tasks which presented themselves as a matter of course if
taken in connection with those views of the right of the
French to the empire. … Already in Richelieu's time the king's
councillor, Jacques de Cassan, had brought forward the proof,
in a writing dedicated to the cardinal, that the greater part
of the existing European states, including Germany, were lands
which had unjustly been estranged from the French crown. …
This idea d'Auberry now carried further: as a matter of fact
Germans and French were to be considered one people as they
had been under the Merovingians and Carolingians; … the true
ruler, in the sense of the original world-organization was not
the emperor but the French king."

_B. Erdmannsdörffer,
Deutsche Geschichte (1648-1740)
(translated from the German),
volume 1, page 509._

{3772}

GERMANY: A. D. 1789-1792.
Germany and the French Revolution.

"What enthusiasm prevailed when France proclaimed the equality
of everything that bears human form, when the prophecies of
Rousseau, who spoke as no other Frenchman could, to the
hearts, to the courage, to the ideals of the German youth,
seemed about to be realized! All the cravings of the time, the
noble eagerness to recognize the dignity of man and the
heaven-storming defiance of the sovereign ego, found
themselves satisfied by the bold sophism of the Genevan
philosopher who declared that, in a condition of absolute
equality, everyone should obey himself only. The sins of the
Revolution appeared to the harmless German spectators as
hardly less seductive than its great deeds. The taste which
had been educated on Plutarch's lives of heroes grew loyally
excited over the broad Catonism of the new apostles of
freedom: the unhistorical abstractions of their political
creed were in keeping with the philosophical self-satisfaction
of the age. The over-zealous youths in whose ears still
sounded the stirring words of the robber Moor felt themselves
drawn along by the rhetorical pathos of the French and
unsuspectingly admired the republican virtue of the Girondists
at the very time when this party with unhallowed frivolity was
instigating a war against Germany. … In Hamburg and several
other cities the festival of confraternity was celebrated and
the liberty pole erected on the anniversary of the storming of
the Bastille. … Even in Berlin women of rank were seen adorned
with the tricolored ribbon and the rector of the Joachimsthal
gymnasium, in a solemn official address held on the occasion
of the king's birthday, praised the glorious Revolution to the
lively applause of Minister Hertzberg. … But this enthusiasm
of the German cultivated world for revolutionary France was
and remained purely theoretical; … the German admirers of the
Revolution never once laid before themselves the question how
their feelings on the subject should take on flesh and blood.
The wise man of Konigsberg [Kant] unconditionally and harshly
rejected all right of resistance. Even Fichte, the most
radical of his disciples, who even in the days of Robespierre
still dared to defend French liberty, warned emphatically
against the carrying out of his own ideas. He saw no bridge
between the 'level high road of natural law' and the 'dark
defile of a half-barbaric policy,' and he closed with the
renunciatory declaration: 'Worthiness to attain liberty can
only come upwards from below; freedom itself, if there is to
be no disturbance, can only descend from above.' … When the
struggle of parties continued to rage ever more fiercely and
with more cruelty, when the fanatic zeal for equality took
upon itself to annihilate even the last aristocracy of all,
that of life itself, then the faithful and unchanging mind of
the German found it impossible any longer to follow the
unaccountable contortions of French passion. The German
enthusiast turned weeping away from the barbarian who had
defiled his sanctuary. … Only in the minor states, which
lacked the sense of justice of a monarchy, did the sins of the
old French regime find an echo. There in the Germany of the
religious foundations (the Rhine bishoprics) there still
flourished the catholic unity of faith and the pride of
cathedral chapters which were recruited from nobles. In the
cities of the empire the haughtiness and corruption of old
civilian confraternity held sway, in the territories of the
princes, counts and imperial knights, the arrogance of little
corner tyrants. The whole existence of these ruined and
ossified forms of government cried shame on the ideas of the
century. Almost solely in these tiniest provinces did a slight
popular ferment show itself when the glad news of the great
peasant emancipation came from France. It chanced that the
abbess of Frauenalbe was hunted from her lands by her
subjects, that the oath of allegiance was refused to her
sister-abbess in Elten. Small peasant revolts broke out here
and there. … All this betokened little; in reality nowhere was
the political slumber of the empire deeper than in these
regions. … The weak and weaponless small states were entirely
without power of resistance against foreign violence. …
Neither was the emperor nor were the Prussian statesmen blind
to the immeasurable dangers of a war in the condition in which
things were. Leopold's cold-blooded, calculating nature
remained long unmoved by the appeals for help written by his
unhappy sister Marie Antoinette, who allowed herself to be
carried to the very verge of betraying her country by her
woman's passion and her princely pride. The Prussian cabinet
was at first very well pleased with the steps taken by the
constitutional parties; its envoy, von der Goltz, made no
secret of acknowledging the righteousness of the cause of the
revolution and showed that he had kept his eyes open to the
accumulated acts of folly of the blinded court. The mad doings
of the emigres were condemned with equal severity in Vienna
and in Berlin. Not until the spring of 1791, not until King
Louis had had to atone for his unsuccessful flight by unheard
of personal humiliations, did the two courts begin to think
seriously of protecting themselves against acts of
revolutionary violence. … Frederick William's chivalrous soul
was aglow with the thought of avenging with his sword the
offended majesty of France. Single clever heads among the
émigrés succeeded after all in gaining secret influence at
court. … In his circular from Padua Leopold invited the
European powers to enter the lists for his ill-used
brother-in-law, to avenge by forcible means every insult to
the dignity of the king, to recognize no constitution of
France of which the crown should not voluntarily approve.
Bischoffswerder, of his own accord and contrary to his
instructions, then signed the Vienna treaty of the 25th of
July by which both parties (Prussia and Austria) mutually
guaranteed each other's possessions and promised each other
help in case of internal disturbances. … Public opinion in
Prussia greeted the Austrian alliance with deep mistrust, …
but King Frederick William approved the arbitrary steps of his
friend (Bischoffswerder). He met Leopold soon after in
Pillnitz … and rejoiced in the thought that the league of the
two chief powers in Germany would last eternally, to the weal
of coming generations. In all of these mistaken acts there was
no immediate threat against France. In Pillnitz those émigrés
who urged war were sternly thrust aside and all that was
obtained was the empty declaration of August 27; the two
powers announced that they considered King Louis's cause a
matter common to all sovereigns; in case all European powers
should agree, there should be interference in France's
internal affairs.
{3773}
This meant nothing whatever, for everyone knew that England
would have nothing to do with armed intervention. And even
these obscure conditions were abandoned in Vienna when King
Louis, in the autumn, was reinstated in his dignities and
voluntarily accepted the new constitution. The Revolution
seemed to have come to a standstill, the emperor was
completely pacified. … It was France and France alone that, in
the face of this peaceable attitude of the German powers,
forced the war upon them. … The antipathy of a great majority
of the nation [France] to the republic was to be overcome by
the glamor of military successes, by the old darling
dream-project of natural boundaries. The financial needs of
the state were to be remedied by a mighty plundering
expedition. … While the war-like mood in the legislative
assembly increased from day to day, in the negotiations with
the emperor paltry disdain was shown; not even was a definite
indemnity offered to the estates of the empire in Alsace. It
was then that the House, carried away by the stirring speeches
of the Gironde, demanded a solemn declaration from the emperor
that he would give up the plan of a European league and would
show his readiness to support France according to the old
treaties of alliance with the Bourbons. The penalty of refusal
was to be immediate war. Upon Leopold giving a dignified and
temperate reply war was declared against Austria on April 20th
1792. … A doctrinary speech of Condorcet's announced to the
world that the principles of republican liberty had risen up
against despotism. The glove was thus thrown down to the whole
of ancient Europe: for Prussia, moreover, the Vienna Treaty
now became binding, having meanwhile been supplemented by a
formal defensive league."

_H. von Treitschke,
Deutsche Geschichte im 19ten Jahrhundert
(translated from the German),
volume 1, page 114-124._

See, also, FRANCE: A. D. 1791 (pages 1271-1275).

GERMANY: A. D. 1796-1807.
Germany and Napoleon.

"With the Italian campaign of 1796 began the second epoch of
the revolutionary era, the more fruitful one for the world at
large. The propaganda of the revolution now first began to
take actual effect and in Central Europe a new order of things
superseded the old division of lands, the traditional forma of
state and society. It was through Bonaparte's victories that
the weapons of France first acquired an indisputable
ascendancy. … As was the case with her manner of making war,
so did France's European policy take on a new character in the
hands of the victor of Montenotte and Rivoli. … In the head of
the great man without a home, to whom the soul-life of
nations, the ideal world, ever remained an unknown quantity,
the horrible conception of a new world-monarchy had already
found a place. The images of the Cæsars and the Carolingians
stood in dazzling splendor before his mind. The rich history
of a thousand years was to be annihilated by a single grand
adventure; the multiform culture of the West was to yield to
the sway of one gigantic man. This new and altogether
un-French policy of conquest rushed to its goals with a
wonderful assurance and want of conscience. Bonaparte's
perspicuity recognized at once by what means Austria,
victorious in Germany but worsted in Italy, could be forced
into a temporary peace: … he offered the imperial court the
possession of Venice in return for Milan, Belgium and the left
bank of the Rhine. … Under such conditions the Peace of Campo
Formio was entered into on October 17th 1797. Once more the
Holy Empire was to pay the penalty for Austria's defeats, and
once more, with greater hypocrisy than ever before, there rang
out in the diet those unctuous, imperially-paternal phrases
with which the un-German imperial power was wont to bemantle
its dynastic policy. Whereas among the conditions of the
secret articles of Campo Formio were the mutilation of the
German western boundary, the secularization of ecclesiastical
territory, the compensation of foreign princes at the cost of
the empire: the published version of the treaty spoke only of
the unviolated integrity of the empire. … At last, however,
the unhallowed secret had to come out. At Christmas-tide 1797
Mainz was vacated by the imperial troops. There came to light
the whole hopelessly confused relationships of the two
similarly-fortuned nations of central Europe when, at the same
time, the French occupied the unconquered bulwark of the Rhine
provinces and the conquered Austrians marched into the city of
St. Mark. Soon afterwards the envoys of France at Rastadt
openly came forward with the demand for the left bank of the
Rhine. It was the first official forewarning of the
annihilation of the Holy Empire. … So deep was the empire
sunken when the dreaded 'Italicus,' on the occasion of a
flying visit to Rastadt first cast a glance into German life.
On the shallow intrigues of this fruitless congress did
Bonaparte base his judgment of our fatherland. He saw through
the absolute nullity of the imperial constitution and
complacently came to the opinion that if such a constitution
had not existed it would have been necessary to invent it in
the interests of France. … It seemed to him high time to win
the petty dynasts entirely for France by gratifying their
greed of land, and thus to rob sundered Germany of its
nationality (dépayser l'Allemagne). … On February 9th, 1801,
the Peace of Luneville proclaimed openly and unequivocally
that which the treaty of Campo Formio had only secretly and
obscurely provided: that the Rhine was henceforward to be
Germany's boundary. A district of nearly 1,150 square miles
and containing nearly four million inhabitants was thus lost
to Germany. … With uncanny cold-bloodedness the German nation
accepted the fearful blow. Scarcely a sound of patriotic wrath
was heard when Mainz and Cologne, Aachen and Treves, the
broad, beautiful lands that had been the scene of our earliest
history, passed into the hands of the stranger. How many
bitter tears had the decrepit generation of the Thirty Years
War once poured forth for the sake of Strassburg alone! … The
first consul resumed the plan which Sièyes as ambassador in
Berlin had sketched already ill 1798. He prepared a threefold
division of Germany and, in order to bring the defenceless
minor states wholly in his power, sought first to thrust back
the two chief German powers as far as possible towards the
east. … The great man-scorner now invented an infallible means
of gaining sway over these south and west German provinces.
{3774}
Not in vain had he probed the German higher nobility at
Rastadt into the inmost recesses of their hearts. He created
our new intermediate states for the purpose, through them, of
securing forever Germany's disintegration. The host of petty
princes, counts and imperial knights, were burdensome to him
because they belonged mostly to the Austrian party and were of
no use in war. Among the electors and dukes, on the contrary,
there was useful material enough for the formation of a crowd
of French vassals; … they had almost all, during the recent
wars, made separate treaties with the enemies of the empire.
As rebels against that empire and its emperor they had
abandoned the ground of legality and broken their bridges
behind them. If the man who was omnipotent now took under his
protection these political hermaphrodites who were fit neither
to live nor die; if he satisfied their greed by throwing them
some crumbs from the belongings of their lesser co-estates and
tickled their vanity by means of pretentious titles and a show
of independence; if he rolled together the hundreds of tiny
territories into some dozens of new accidental states with a
history of yesterday and entirely without a legal title,
living solely from the favor of France; if he then led his
satraps to audacious wars against their fatherland and hurried
them on from one felony to another, rewarding new
lackey-services by new booty—where was the wonder? They had
sold their souls to him and he was able to reckon on it that
they would rather kiss the boots of the stranger than ever
submit to subordinate themselves to a German commonwealth. …
Bonaparte, meanwhile, had long made up his mind to resume the
war with his unassailable enemy [England]. Already in March
1803, long before the breach occurred between the two western
powers, he sent his confidant Duroc to Berlin with the notice
that he saw himself compelled to seize Hanover. … Therewith
the last and sole pride of the Prussian policy, the neutrality
of North Germany, was threatened with its death-blow. … And
meanwhile the Holy Empire was made to drink the cup of shame
to the very dregs. When Bonaparte caused the Duke of Enghien,
seized within the limits of Baden, to be led to execution,
only foreign powers like Russia, Sweden and England dared in
Regensburg to demand satisfaction for the scandalous breach of
the peace of the empire. Baden on the contrary, by Napoleon's
command, begged most earnestly that the painful matter might
not be followed up any further; while the rest of the
plenipotentiaries took their holiday before the time and thus
by their flight cut off all further negotiations. In May 1804
the Napoleonic empire was founded. … A hard, distrustful
foreign rule weighed upon Germany even before its princes had
formally made their submission to the emperor. … Thus
prepared, Napoleon proceeded to realize in his own way the
idea of a German triad with which Hardenberg had just been
amusing himself. Not in bond with Austria and Prussia but
independently and in opposition to them was France's old
protegée, 'la troisième Allemagne,' to take political form and
shape. … In the spring of 1806 the rumor spread at the German
courts that a new and extensive mediatization was to take
place. Once more, as had happened four years previously, the
envoys of our high nobility hastened to Paris on behalf of
their lords, to secure by flattery and bribery their share of
the booty. … The Rhine confederation of Louis XIV was
resuscitated in an incomparably more pronounced form. Sixteen
German princes renounced the empire, declared that they
themselves were sovereigns and that every law of the venerable
old national commonwealth was null and void. They recognized
Napoleon as their protector and placed at his disposal an army
of 63,000 men to be used in any continental war in which
France should engage. … German particularism entered into the
bloom-time of its sins. … The anarchy of a new interregnum
broke in upon Germany. Faustrecht held sway, exercised no
longer by bandit nobles but by princely courts. Napoleon
regarded with mistrust any and every expression of national
feeling in the enslaved land. The interest of France, he wrote
to his Talleyrand, demands that opinion in Germany remain
divided. A certain Yelin of Ansbach published an anonymous
pamphlet, 'Germany at its lowest Depth,' a well-meant writing,
full of feeling, and one which, in an age of iron, had only
the peaceful advice to give: 'Weep aloud, oh noble, honest
German!' But even this pious ejaculation of a harmless petty
citizen seemed to the emperor a matter for alarm and he caused
the book-seller Palm, who is said to have aided in spreading
the book, to be court-marshalled and shot. It was the first
judicial murder of Napoleonism on German ground, and the
clever people in Bavaria began to doubt whether the Rhine
Confederation had, after all, really brought about the victory
of freedom and enlightenment. … A new act of treason on the
part of Napoleon led at last to the out-break of the
inevitable war. Often and solemnly had Napoleon assured to his
Prussian ally the possession of Hanover. It was now suddenly
reported in Berlin that the emperor, who all through the
summer had been carrying on peace-negotiations with England
and Russia, had not scrupled to offer to deliver back to the
Guelphs their hereditary lands. When this news reached him
Frederick William at once (August 9) wrote to the Czar: 'If
Napoleon treats with England concerning Hanover he will ruin
me.' The king foresaw that in a short time the miserable
condition in which things had been in February would recur
again and that Prussia had only the choice left of once more
in silence suffering herself to be shamefully plundered or of
opposing by arms the ingress of the grand army. That was why
the Prussian army was placed on a war-footing and made to
assemble in Magdeburg's territory. With this step of
justifiable self-defence the war was decided. … Nothing could
have been more honest than the unsparingly upright defiance of
the king to Napoleon; nothing more righteous than the three
demands of the Prussian ultimatum of October: withdrawal of
the French from Germany, recognition of the North German
Confederation, a peaceful agreement as to the remaining
questions at issue between the two powers. Even from the
verbose, clumsy war-manifesto there breaks forth occasionally
a tone of dignified national pride: the king takes up arms 'to
free unhappy Germany from the yoke under which it is being
crushed. Nations have certain rights independent of an
treaties!' … Already on the 15th of October (1806) Napoleon
laid a contribution on all the Prussian provinces this side
the Weichsel of 159 million francs, declaring that the result
of the battle of the former day (Jena) had been the conquest
of all these lands.
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Never had the man of fortune boasted so outrageously, and yet,
through a strange turn of fortune, the most unhallowed of his
lies was to become literally true. Immediately after the
defeat the court of Saxony carried out its long-planned
desertion and went over to Napoleon. A week after the battle
the Prussian territory to the left of the Elbe, and the
possessions of the House of Orange and of the electors of
Hesse, were provisionally incorporated in the French empire. …
On July 7-9, 1807, the Peace of Tilsit was signed, the most
cruel of all French treaties of peace, unprecedented in form
as well as in contents. It ran, not that the lawful king of
Prussia ceded certain lands to the victor, but that the
conqueror, out of regard for the emperor of all the Russias,
granted back to its sovereign the smaller half of the Prussian
state. And this scandalous phrase, which contemporaries only
looked upon as a freak of Napoleonic arrogance, expressed
simply the naked truth. … Alexander did not wish the last
narrow dam which separated the Russian empire from the lands
of the vassals of France, to be torn away. … Prussia retained,
outside of the 5,700 square miles which the state, exclusive
of Hanover, had owned before the war, only about 2,800, … of
9¾ million inhabitants only 4½ million. The work of Frederick
the Great seemed undone."

_H. von Treitschke,
Deutsche Geschichte im 19 Jahrhundert
(translated from the German),
volume 1, pages 164-265._

See FRANCE: A. D. 1796 (APRIL-OCTOBER),
and after (pages 1314-1349.)

GERMANY: A. D. 1815-1848.
After the struggle.
The Zollverein.

"In Austria, in the decades succeeding the wars of liberation,
their reigned the most immovable quiet. The much-praised
system of government consisted in unthinking inactivity. The
Emperor Francis, a man with the nature of a subaltern
official, hated anything that approached to a constitution and
a saying of his was often quoted: 'Totus mundus stultizat et
vult habere constitutiones novas.' Metternich's power rested
on the 'dead motionlessness' of affairs. As far as his German
policy was concerned his aim was to hold fast to the
preponderating influence of Austria over the German states,
but not to undertake any responsibilities towards them. … As
for Prussia, in spite of the great sacrifices which she had
made, she emerged from the diplomatic negotiations and
intrigues of the Vienna Congress with the most unfavorable
disposition of territory imaginable. To the five million
inhabitants that had remained to her five and a half millions
were added in districts that had belonged to more than a
hundred different territories and had stood under the most
varied laws. There began now for this state a time well filled
with quiet work, the aim and object being to create a whole
out of the various parts. … The founding of the Burschenschaft
[student league] in Jena, the antagonistic attitude of the
Weimar press, the Wartburg festival with its extemporized
conflagration scene, excited scruples and fears in the ruling
circles. The murder of Kotzebue and the attempt on Ibell's
life showed the growing fanaticism and called forth stronger
measures from the governments. … Metternich recognizes their
usefulness for the carrying through of his reactionary
measures. … At a meeting in Teplitz he succeeds in winning
Frederick William III for his plans. In Carlsbad, over the
heads of the members of the federal diet, the most decisive
regulations were adopted which culminated in the appointment
of the Mainz Central-Investigation-Committee … and confirmed
Metternich's unhallowed rule in Germany as well as the reign
of that most miserable reaction which called forth a burst of
indignation even from the most moderate-minded patriots, and
which laid the land open to the scorn of the foreigner."

_Bruno-Gebhardt,
Lehrbuch der deutschen Geschichte
(translated from the German),
volume 2, pages 501-504._

"The Congress of Vienna created in 1815 a form of government
for Germany which was very unsatisfactory in character. It
was, however, so constituted that a national development at
some future time was not rendered an utter impossibility. The
German confederation was rather, on the whole, provisional in
its character; this fact comes out more and more plainly with
each thorough analysis and illustration of its constitution
and of its institutions. The main thing was that the German
confederation preserved unimpaired the dualism in Germany.
Technically the emperor of Austria had the honorary direction
of the confederation; practically he possessed as emperor of
Germany little r no power. In point of fact the German
imperial title was only a decoration for the ruler over a
variegated mixture of peoples, in the midst of which German
nationality was hard pressed by the national strivings of the
other races. In reality the strongest member of the German
confederation was the kingdom of Prussia, although according
to the federal laws it stood on a like footing with Bavaria,
Saxony, Hanover and Würtemberg. … This German confederation
was only capable of eking out its existence in a long period
of freedom from European disasters. … Only gradually, in the
various heads, did the opinion begin to form of the historical
vocation of Prussia to take her place at the head of the
German confederation or, possibly, of a new German empire.
Gradually this opinion ripened into a firmer and firmer
conviction and gained more and more supporters. The more
evidently impossible an actual guidance of Germany by Austria
became, the more conscious did men grow of the danger of the
whole situation should the dualism be allowed to continue. In
consequence of this the idea of the Prussian hegemony began to
be viewed with constantly increasing favor. A great step
forward in this direction was taken by the Prussian government
when it called into being the Zollverein [or customs-union].
The Zollverein laid iron bands around the separate parts of
the German nation. It was utterly impossible to think of
forming a customs-union with Austria, for all economic
interests were as widely different as possible; on purely
material grounds the division between Austria and Prussia
showed itself to be a necessity. On the other hand the
economic bonds between Prussia and the rest of the German
lands grew stronger from day to day. This material union was
the prelude to the political one: the Zollverein was the best
and most effectual preparation for the German federal state or
for the German empire of later days."

_W. Maurenbrecher,
Gründung des Deutschen Reichs,
pages 4-5._

{3776}

"Paul Pfizer wrote in 1831 his 'Correspondence of Two
Germans,' the first writing in the German language in which
liberation from Austria and union with Prussia was put down as
the solution of the German question and in which faith in
Prussia was made a part of such love to the German fatherland
as should be no longer a mere dream. … 'So little as the dead
shall rise again this side the grave, so little will Austria,
which once held the heritage of German fame and German glory,
ever again become for Germany what she has once been.'"

_W. Oncken,
Das Zeitalter des Kaisers Wilhelm
(translated from the German),
volume 1, pages 69-70._

The formation of the Zollverein "was the most important
occurrence since the wars of liberation: a deed of peace of
more far-reaching consequences and productive of more lasting
results than many a battle won. The economic blessings of the
Zollverein soon began to show themselves in the increasing sum
total of the amount of commerce and in the regularly growing
customs revenues of the individual states. These revenues for
example increased between 1834 and 1842 from 12 to 21 million
thalers. Foreign countries began to look with respect and in
part also with envy on this commercial unity of Germany and on
the results which could not fail to come. … A second event
happened in Germany in 1834, less marked in its beginnings and
yet scarcely less important in its results than the
Zollverein. Between Leipzig and Dresden the first large
railroad in Germany was started, the first mesh in that
network of roads that was soon to branch out in all directions
and spread itself over all Germany. … A direct political
occurrence, independent of the Zollverein and the railroads,
was, in the course of the thirties, to assist in awakening and
strengthening the idea of unity in the German people by making
evident and plain the lack of such unity and its disastrous
consequences. This was the Hanoverian 'coup d'etat' of the
year 1837. … In that year William IV of England died without
direct successors. … Hanover came into the hands of the Duke
of Cumberland, Ernest Augustus. … The new king, soon after his
inauguration, refused to recognize the constitution that had
been given to Hanover in 1833, on the ground that his
ratification as next heir to the throne had not been asked at
that time. … By persistent efforts Ernest Augustus … in 1840
brought about a constitution that suited him. Still more than
this constitutional struggle itself did a single incident
connected with it occupy and excite public opinion far and
wide. Seven professors of the Gottingen university protested
against the abrogation of the constitution of 1833. … Without
more ado they were dismissed from their positions. … The brave
deed of the Gottingen professors and the new act of violence
committed against them caused intense excitement throughout
all Germany. … A committee composed both of conservatives and
liberals was formed in Leipzig and raised collections, in
order by honorable gift to replace at least the material
losses of the banished professors. … In the course of the
forties the idea of nationality penetrated more and more all
the pores of German opinion and gave to it more and more, by
pressure from all sides, the direction of a great and common
goal. At first there were only isolated attempts at reform …
but soon the national needs outgrew such single expressions of
good will. … A tendency began to show itself in the public
opinion of Germany to accept the plan of a Prussian leadership
of all un-Austrian Germany."

_K. Biedermann,
Dreissig Jahre Deutscher Geschichte.
volume 1, pages 9-91._

See, also, GERMANY: A. D. 1814-1820,
to 1819-1847 (pages 1531-1533).

GERMANY: A. D. 1862-1890.
The Bismarck policy.
"Blood and iron" speech of the Prussian Premier.

On the question of the reorganization of the army, which was
brought forward early by Prince William (afterwards King and
Emperor) after he assumed the Regency in 1858, the Prussian
Diet placed itself in determined opposition to the government.
At a session of the Budget Commission of the House of
Representatives, September 30, 1862, Deputy Forckenbeck
offered the following resolution: "Whereas it is also feared
that after the declaration of the royal state government made
the 29th inst. the same would continue the expenditures for
the organization of the army on its own responsibility which
have already been rejected by the House for the year 1862 and
the rejection of which is likewise to be expected for 1863,
according to the acknowledgment of the government itself, and
Whereas a direct insistence of the prerogatives of the
people's representatives is urgently required, the House of
Representatives declares as follows:

1. The royal government is requested to lay the estimates for
1863 before the House as speedily as possible for their
constitutional consideration, so that the amount of the same
may be constitutionally fixed before January 1st 1863.

2. It is unconstitutional for the royal government to direct
expenditures which were by resolution of the House of
Representatives definitely and expressly rejected."

The Minister of State, Herr von Bismarck, spoke on these
resolutions as follows: "I would willingly accept the
estimates for 1862, if I could do so without entering upon
explanations which might prove prejudicial. Either side might
abuse its constitutional rights and be met by a reaction in
kind from the opposite side. The crown, for instance, might
decree dissolution twelve times in succession without
violating the letter of the constitution, yet would it be an
abuse of power. It may refuse to accept a striking out of
estimates without measure. Where will you draw the line? At 6
millions? at 16? or at 60? There are members of the National
Verein [National Union]—an organization highly respected for
the well known fairness of its demands,—very estimable
members—who declare all standing armies as superfluous. Well
then, if the House of Representatives should hold such view
must not the government repudiate it? The 'cool headedness' of
the Prussian people has been referred to. Well, it is a fact,
the great self-assertion of individuality among us makes
constitutional government very hard in Prussia; in France,
where this individual self-assertion is wanting, it is
otherwise. There a constitutional conflict was no disgrace,
but all honor. We are perhaps too 'cultured' to tolerate a
constitution; we are too critical; the ability to pass
judgment on measures of the government or acts of the
legislature is too universal; there is a large number of
'Catilinarian Characters' [existences in the original] in the
land whose chief interest is in revolutions. All this may
sound paradoxical; yet it proves how hard constitutional life
is in Prussia.
{3777}
The people are too sensitive about the faults of the
government; as if the whole did not suffer when this or that
individual minister blunders. Public opinion is changeable,
the press is not public opinion; everyone knows how the press
originates; the representatives have the higher task of
directing opinion, of being above it. To return once more to
our people: our blood is too hot, we are fond of bearing an
armor too large for our small body; now let us utilize it.
Germany does not look at Prussia's liberalism but at its
power. Let Bavaria, Würtemberg, Baden indulge in liberalism,
yet no one will assign to them the rule of Prussia; Prussia
must consolidate its might and hold it together for the
favorable moment, which has been allowed to pass unheeded
several times. Prussia's boundaries, as determined by the
Congress of Vienna, are not conducive to its wholesome
existence as a sovereign state. Not by speeches and
resolutions of majorities the mighty problems of the age are
solved—that was the mistake of 1848 and 1849—but by Blood and
Iron. Last year's grants have been made, no matter on what
grounds; I am seeking sincerely for a road to harmony: the
finding of it does not depend on me alone. It were better, the
House of Representatives had not made an accomplished fact.
When the appropriations are not passed, then the way is clear.
The constitution affords no relief, for interpretation is
opposed to interpretation, 'summum ius, summa iniuria' [the
highest law, greatest injustice], 'the letter killeth.' I am
glad that the chairman by certain turns of speech admits the
possibility of an understanding, of a different vote of the
house on a new proposition of the government; I am searching
for the same bridge; when it will be found is uncertain. The
establishment of a budget for this year is barely possible;
the time is too short; our conditions are exceptional. The
government concedes the principle of the earliest possible
handing down of the estimates. But you say, this has been
promised so often and has not been done. Well 'You must trust
us for honest people.' I do not share in the interpretation
that it was unconstitutional to make expenditures that have
been denied, all three factors [i. e. Commons, Upper House and
Crown] must agree upon an interpretation, before it stands."

_Die Politischen Reden des Fürsten Bismarck
(translated from the German),
volume 2, pages 20, 28-30._