Chapter XII: The Man of Blood and Iron

The people demand their rights—Bismarck, the chief prop of the
Prussian monarchy—The question of the leadership of the German
states—The wonderful Prussian army—The war on Denmark—Preparing
to crush Austria—The battle of Sadowa—Easy terms to the defeated
nation—Preparing to defeat France—A good example of a war caused
by diplomats—Prussia’s easy victory—The new German empire—Harsh
terms of peace—The triumph of feudal government.

All of this time, the kings of Europe had been engaged in
contests with their own people. The overthrow of the French king
at the time of the revolution taught the people of the other
countries of Europe that they too could obtain their liberties.
You have already been told how the people of Austria drove out
Prince Metternich, who was the leader of the party which refused
any rights to the working classes.

That same year, 1848, had seen the last king driven out of
France, had witnessed revolts in all parts of Italy, and had
found many German princes in trouble with their subjects, who
were demanding a share in the government, the right of free
speech, free newspapers, and trial by jury. The empires of
Austria and Russia had joined with the kingdom of Prussia in a
combination which was known as the “Holy Alliance.” This was
meant to stop the further spread of republican ideas and to curb
the growing power of the common people.

Not long after this, there came to the front in Prussia a
remarkable man, who for the next forty years was perhaps the most
prominent statesman in Europe. His full name was Otto Eduard
Leopold von Bismarck-Schönausen, but we generally know him under
the name of Bismarck. He was a Prussian nobleman, a believer in
the divine right of kings, the man who more than anybody else is
responsible for the establishing of the present empire of
Germany. He once made a speech in the Prussian Diet or council in
which he said that “blood and iron,” not speeches and treaties,
would unite Germany into a nation. His one object was a united
Germany, which should be the strongest nation in Europe. He
wanted Germany to be ruled by Prussia, Prussia to be ruled by its
king, and the king of Prussia to be controlled by Bismarck. It is
marvellous to see how near he came to carrying through his whole
plan.

After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Prussia remained among the
powers of Europe, but was not as great as Austria, Russia,
England, or France. The German states, some 35 in number, had
united in a loose alliance called the German Confederation. (This
union was somewhat similar to the United States of America
between 1776 and 1789.) Austria was the largest of these states,
and was naturally looked upon as the leader of the whole group.
Prussia was the second largest, while next after Prussia, and
much smaller, came the kingdoms of Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, and
Wurtemburg. Bismarck, as prime minister of Prussia, built up a
wonderfully strong army. He did this by means of a military
system which at first made him very unpopular with the people.
Every man in the nation, rich or poor, was obliged to serve a
certain number of years in the army and be ready at a moment’s
notice to join a certain regiment if there came a call to war.

Having organized this army, and equipped it with every modern
weapon, Bismarck was anxious to use it to accomplish his purpose.
There were two counties named Schleswig (shlĕs′vig) and Holstein
(hōl′stīn) which belonged to the king of Denmark and yet
contained a great many German people. The inhabitants of
Schleswig were perhaps half Danes, while those of Holstein were
more than two-thirds Germans. These Germans had protested against
certain actions of the Danish government, and were threatening to
revolt. Taking advantage of this trouble, Prussia and Austria, as
the leading states of the German Federation, declared war on
little Denmark. The Danes fought valiantly, but were overwhelmed
by the armies of their enemies. Schleswig and Holstein were torn
away from Denmark and put under the joint protection of Austria
and Prussia.

This sort of arrangement could not last. Sooner or later, there
was bound to be a quarrel over the division of the plunder. Now
Bismarck had a chance to show his crafty diplomacy. He made up
his mind to crush Austria and put Prussia in her place as the
leader of the German states. He first negotiated with Napoleon
III, Emperor of the French, and made sure that this monarch would
not interfere. Next he remembered that the provinces of Venetia,
Trentino, and Istria still belonged to Austria, as the Italians
had failed to gain them in the war of 1859. Accordingly, Bismarck
induced Italy to declare war on Austria by promising her Venetia
and the other provinces in return for her aid. Saxony, Bavaria,
and Hanover were friendly to Austria, but Bismarck did not fear
them. He knew that his army, under the leadership of its
celebrated general, von Moltke, was more than a match for the
Austrians, Bavarians, etc., combined.

When Bismarck was ready, Prussia and Italy struck. The Austrians
were successful at first against the Italians, but at Sadowa in
Bohemia, their armies were beaten in a tremendous battle by the
Prussians. Austria was put down from her place as the leader of
the German Confederation, and Prussia took the leadership.
Hanover, whose king had sided with the Austrians, was annexed to
Prussia. The king of Prussia and several of his generals were
anxious to rob Austria of some of her territory, as had been the
custom in the past whenever one nation defeated another in war.
Bismarck, however, restrained them. In his program of making
Prussia the leading military state in Europe, he saw that his
next opponent would be France, and he did not propose, on
attacking France, to find his army assailed in the rear by the
revengeful Austrians. Accordingly, Bismarck compelled the king to
let Austria off without any loss of territory except Venetia,
which was given to the Italians. Austria was even allowed to
retain Trentino and Istria, and was not required to pay a large
indemnity to Prussia. (A custom which had come down from the
middle ages, when cities which were captured had been obliged to
pay great sums of money, in order to get rid of the conquering
armies, was the payment of a war indemnity by the defeated
nation. This was a sum of money as large as the conquerors
thought they could safely force their victims to pay.) The
Austrians, although they were angry over the manner in which
Bismarck had provoked the war, nevertheless appreciated the fact
that he was generous in not forcing harsh terms upon them, as he
could have done had he wanted to.

The eyes of all Europe now turned toward the coming struggle
between Prussia and France. It was plain that it was impossible
for two men like Bismarck and Emperor Napoleon to continue in
power very long without coming to blows. It was Bismarck’s
ambition, as was previously said, to make Prussia the leading
military nation of Europe, and he knew that this meant a struggle
with Napoleon. You will remember also that he planned a united
Germany, led by Prussia, and he felt that the French war would
bring this about. On the other hand, the French emperor was
extremely jealous of the easy victory that Prussia and Italy had
won over Austria. He had been proud of the French army, and
wanted it to remain the greatest fighting force in Europe. He was
just as anxious for an excuse to attack Prussia as Bismarck was
for a pretext to attack him.

It should be kept in mind that all this time there was no
ill-feeling between the French people and the Germans. In fact,
the Germans of the Rhine country were very friendly to France,
and during Napoleon’s time had been given more liberties and had
been governed better than under the rule of their former feudal
lords. All the hostility and jealousy was between the military
chiefs. Even Bismarck did not dislike the French. He had no
feeling toward them at all. It was part of his program that their
military power should be crushed and his program must be carried
through. Europe, to his mind, was too small to contain more than
one master military power.

The four years between 1866 and 1870 were used by Bismarck to
gain friends for Prussia among other countries of Europe, and to
make enemies for France. The kingdoms of south Germany (Bavaria,
Baden, and Wurtemburg), which had sided with Austria during the
late war, were friendly to France and hostile to Prussia.
Napoleon III, however, made a proposal in writing to Bismarck
that France should be given a slice of this south German
territory in return for some other land which France was to allow
Prussia to seize. Bismarck pretended to consider this proposal,
but was careful to keep the original copy, in the French
ambassador’s own handwriting. (Each nation sends a man to
represent her at the capital of each other nation. These men are
called ambassadors. They are given power to sign agreements for
their governments.) By showing this to the rulers of the little
south German kingdoms, he was able to turn them against Napoleon
and to make secret treaties with these states by which they bound
themselves to fight on the side of Prussia in case a war broke
out with France. In similar fashion, Bismarck made the Belgians
angry against the French by letting it be known that Napoleon was
trying to annex their country also.

Meanwhile, aided by General von Moltke and Count von Roon (rōn),
Bismarck had built up a wonderful military power. Every man in
Prussia had been trained a certain number of years in the army
and was ready at a moment’s notice to join his regiment. The
whole campaign against France had been planned months in advance.
In France on the other hand, the illness and irritability of
Napoleon III had resulted in poor organization. Men who did not
wish to serve their time in the army were allowed to pay money to
the government instead. Yet their names were carried on the
rolls. In this way, the French army had not half the strength in
actual numbers that it had on paper. What is more, certain
government officials had taken advantage of the emperor’s
weakness and lack of system and had put into their own pockets
money that should have been spent in buying guns and ammunition.

When at last Bismarck was all ready for the war, it was not hard
to find an excuse. Old Queen Isabella of Spain had been driven
from her throne, and the Spanish army under General Prim offered
the crown to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern, a cousin of the king
of Prussia. This alarmed Napoleon, who imagined that if Prussia
attacked him on the east, this Prussian prince, as king of Spain,
would lead the Spanish army over the Pyrenees against him on the
south. France made so vigorous a protest that the prince asked
the Spaniards not to think of him any longer. This was not enough
for Napoleon, who now proceeded to make a fatal mistake. The
incident was closed, but he persisted in reopening it. He sent
his ambassador to see King William of Prussia to ask the latter
to assure France that never again should Prince Leopold be
considered for the position of king of Spain. The king answered
that he could not guarantee this, for he was merely the head of
the Hohenzollern family. Prince Leopold, whose lands lay outside
of Prussia, was not even one of his subjects. The interview
between the king and the French ambassador had been a friendly
one. The ambassador had been very courteous to the king, and the
king had been very polite to the ambassador. They had parted on
good terms.

In the meanwhile, Bismarck had been hoping that an excuse for war
would come from this incident. He was at dinner with General von
Moltke and Count von Roon when a long telegram came from the
king, telling of his interview with the French ambassador. In the
story of his life written by himself, Bismarck tells how, as he
read the telegram both Roon and Moltke groaned in disappointment.
He says that Moltke seemed to have grown older in a minute. Both
had earnestly hoped that war would come. Bismarck took the
dispatch, sat down at a table, and began striking out the message
polite words and the phrases that showed that the meeting had
been a friendly one. He cut down the original telegram of two
hundred words to one of twenty. When he had finished, the message
sounded as if the French ambassador had bullied and threatened
the king of Prussia, while the latter had snubbed and insulted
the Frenchman. Bismarck read the altered telegram to Roon and
Moltke. Instantly, they brightened up and felt better. “How is
that?” he asked. “That will do it,” they answered. “War is
assured.”

The telegram was given to the newspapers, and within twenty-four
hours, the people of Paris and Berlin were shouting for war.
Napoleon III hesitated, but he finally gave in to his generals
and his wife who urged him to “avenge the insult to the French
nation.”

We give this story of the starting of the Franco-Prussian war of
1870 just to show the tricks of European diplomats. What Bismarck
did was no worse than what the Frenchman, Talleyrand, would have
done, or the Austrian, Metternich, or several of the Turkish or
Russian diplomats. It simply proves how helpless the people of
European countries are, when the military class which rules them
has decided, for its own power and glory, on war with some other
nation.

The war was short. The forces of France were miserably
unprepared. The first great defeat of the French army resulted in
the capture of the emperor by the Prussians and the overthrowing
of the government in Paris, where a third republic was started.
One of the French generals turned traitor, thinking that if he
surrendered his army and cut short the war the Prussians would
force the French to take Napoleon III back as emperor. Paris was
besieged for a long time. The people lived on mule meat and even
on rats and mice rather than surrender to the Germans, but at
last they were starved out, and peace was made.

In the meantime, another of Bismarck’s plans had been successful.
In January, 1871, while the siege of Paris was yet going on, he
induced the kingdoms of Bavaria and Wurtemburg, together with
Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, and all the other little German states to
join Prussia in forming a new empire of Germany. The king of
Prussia was to be “German Emperor,” and the people of Germany
were to elect representatives to the Reichstag or Imperial
Congress. Although at the outset, the war was between the kingdom
of Prussia and the empire of France, the treaty of peace was
signed by the republic of France and the empire of Germany.

Bismarck was very harsh in his terms of peace. France was
condemned to pay an indemnity of 5,000,000,000 francs (nearly one
billion dollars) and certain parts of France were to be occupied
by the German troops until this money was fully paid. Two
counties of France, Alsace and Lorraine, were to be annexed to
Germany. Alsace was inhabited largely by people of German
descent, but there were many French mingled with them, and the
whole province had belonged to France so long that its people
felt themselves to be wholly French. Lorraine contained very few
Germans, and was taken, contrary to Bismarck’s best judgment,
because it contained the important city of Metz, which was
strongly fortified. Here the military chiefs overruled Bismarck.
The desire among the French for revenge on Germany for taking
this French-speaking province has proved that Bismarck was right.
It was a blunder of the worst kind.

The policy of “blood and iron” had been successful. From a second
rate power, Prussia had risen, under Bismarck’s leadership, to
become the strongest military force in Europe. Schleswig had been
torn from Danish, Holstein from Austrian control. Hanover had
been forcibly annexed, and Alsace and Lorraine wrested from
France. The greater part of the inhabitants of these countries
were bitterly unhappy at being placed under the Prussian military
rule. Moreover, it must be remembered that a great deal of this
growth in power had been at the expense of the liberty of the
common people. The revolution of 1848 had demanded free speech,
free newspapers, the right to vote, and the right to elect men to
a congress or parliament, and while some of these rights had been
granted, still the whole country was under the control of the war
department. The emperor, as commander-in-chief of the army, could
suppress any newspaper and dismiss the congress whenever he might
think this proper. The Reichstag was, as it has been called, a
big debating society, whose members had the right to talk, but
were not allowed to pass any laws that were contrary to the
wishes of the military leaders.

Questions for Review

What was the reason for the revolts of 1848 all over Europe?

What was the object of the “Holy Alliance”?

What was Bismarck’s purpose in building up a strong army?

How did Bismarck defeat Austria?

What is a war indemnity?

Explain how Bismarck made enemies for Napoleon III.

Why were the French alarmed when Spain offered its crown to
Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern?

What means did Bismarck use to bring on war with France?

Was Prussia’s victory a good thing for her people?