Part 46 (1/2)

[Prorogation of the Prussian a.s.sembly, Nov. 9.]

It had been the distinguis.h.i.+ng feature of the Prussian revolution that the army had never for a moment wavered in its fidelity to the throne. The success of the insurrection of March 18th had been due to the paucity of troops and the errors of those in command, not to any military disaffection such as had paralysed authority in Paris and in the Mediterranean States.

Each affront offered to the army by the democratic majority in the a.s.sembly supplied the King with new weapons; each slight pa.s.sed upon the royal authority deepened the indignation of the officers. The armistice of Malmo brought back to the neighbourhood of the capital a general who was longing to crush the party of disorder, and regiments on whom he could rely; but though there was now no military reason for delay, it was not until the capture of Vienna by Windischgratz had dealt a fatal blow at democracy in Germany that Frederick William determined to have done with his own mutinous Parliament and the mobs by which it was controlled. During September and October the riots and tumults in the streets of Berlin continued. The a.s.sembly, which had rejected the draft of a Const.i.tution submitted to it by the Cabinet, debated the clauses of one drawn up by a Committee of its own members, abolished n.o.bility, orders and t.i.tles, and struck out from the style of the sovereign the words that described him as King by the Grace of G.o.d. When intelligence arrived in Berlin that the attack of Windischgratz upon Vienna had actually begun, popular pa.s.sion redoubled. The a.s.sembly was besieged by an angry crowd, and a resolution in favour of the intervention of Prussia was brought forward within the House.

This was rejected, and it was determined instead to invoke the mediation of the Central Government at Frankfort between the Emperor and his subjects.

But the decision of the a.s.sembly on this and every other point was now matter of indifference. Events outstripped its deliberations, and with the fall of Vienna its own course was run. On the 2nd of November the King dismissed his Ministers and called to office the Count of Brandenburg, a natural son of Frederick William II., a soldier in high command, and one of the most outspoken representatives of the monarchical spirit of the army.

The meaning of the appointment was at once understood. A deputation from the a.s.sembly conveyed its protest to the King at Potsdam. The King turned his back upon them without giving an answer, and on the 9th of November an order was issued proroguing the a.s.sembly, and bidding it to meet on the 27th at Brandenburg, not at Berlin.

[Last days of the Prussian a.s.sembly.]

[Dissolution of the a.s.sembly, Dec. 5.]

[Prussian Const.i.tution granted by edict.]

The order of prorogation, as soon as signed by the King was brought into the a.s.sembly by the Ministers, who demanded that it should be obeyed immediately and without discussion. The President allowing a debate to commence, the Ministers and seventy-eight Conservative deputies left the Hall. The remaining deputies, two hundred and eighty in number, then pa.s.sed a resolution declaring that they would not meet at Brandenburg; that the King had no power to remove, to prorogue, or to dissolve the a.s.sembly without its own consent; and that the Ministers were unfit to hold office.

This challenge was answered by a proclamation of the Ministers declaring the further meeting of the deputies illegal, and calling upon the Civic Guard not to recognise them as a Parliament. On the following day General Wrangel and his troops entered Berlin and surrounded the a.s.sembly Hall. In reply to the protests of the President, Wrangel answered that the Parliament had been prorogued and must disappear. The members peaceably left the Hall, but rea.s.sembled at another spot that they had selected in antic.i.p.ation of expulsion; and for some days they were pursued by the military from one place of meeting to another. On the 15th of November they pa.s.sed a resolution declaring the expenditure of state funds and the raising of taxes by the Government to be illegal so long as the a.s.sembly should not be permitted to continue its deliberations. The Ministry on its part showed that it was determined not to brook resistance. The Civic Guard was dissolved and ordered to surrender its arms. It did so without striking a blow, and vanished from the scene, a memorable ill.u.s.tration of the political nullity of the middle cla.s.s in Berlin as compared with that of Paris. The state of siege was proclaimed, the freedom of the Press and the right of public meeting were suspended. On the 27th of November a portion of the a.s.sembly appeared, according to the King's order, at Brandenburg, but the numbers present were not sufficient for the transaction of business. The presence of the majority, however, was not required, for the King had determined to give no further legal opportunities to the men who had defied him. Treating the vote of November 15th as an act of rebellion on the part of those concerned in it, the King dissolved the a.s.sembly (December 5th), and conferred upon Prussia a Const.i.tution drawn up by his own advisers, with the promise that this Const.i.tution should be subject to revision by the future representative body. Though the dissolution of the a.s.sembly occasioned tumults in Breslau and Cologne it was not actively resented by the nation at large. The violence of the fallen body during its last weeks of existence had exposed it to general discredit; its vote of the 15th of November had been formally condemned by the Parliament of Frankfort; and the liberal character of the new Const.i.tution, which agreed in the main with the draft-Const.i.tution produced by the Committee of the a.s.sembly, disposed moderate men to the belief that in the conflict between the King and the popular representatives the fault had not been on the side of the sovereign.

[The Frankfort Parliament and Austria, Oct.-Dec.]

In the meantime the Parliament of Frankfort, warned against longer delay by the disturbances of September 17th, had addressed itself in earnest to the settlement of the Federal Const.i.tution of Germany. Above a host of minor difficulties two great problems confronted it at the outset. The first was the relation of the Austrian Empire, with its partly German and partly foreign territory, to the German national State; the other was the nature of the heads.h.i.+p to be established. As it was clear that the Austrian Government could not apply the public law of Germany to its Slavic and Hungarian provinces, it was enacted in the second article of the Frankfort Const.i.tution that where a German and a non-German territory had the same sovereign, the relation between these countries must be one of purely personal union under the sovereign, no part of Germany being incorporated into a single State with any non-German land. At the time when this article was drafted the disintegration of Austria seemed more probable than the re-establishment of its unity; no sooner, however, had Prince Schwarzenberg been brought into power by the subjugation of Vienna, than he made it plain that the government of Austria was to be centralised as it had never been before. In the first public declaration of his policy he announced that Austria would maintain its unity and permit no exterior influence to modify its internal organisation; that the settlement of the relations between Austria and Germany could only be effected after each had gained some new and abiding political form; and that in the meantime Austria would continue to fulfil its duties as a confederate. [446] The interpretation put upon this statement at Frankfort was that Austria, in the interest of its own unity, preferred not to enter the German body, but looked forward to the establishment of some intimate alliance with it at a future time. As the Court of Vienna had evidently determined not to apply to itself the second article of the Const.i.tution, and an antagonism between German and Austrian policy came within view, Schmerling, as an Austrian subject, was induced to resign his office, and was succeeded in it by Gagern, hitherto President of the a.s.sembly (Dec. 16th). [447]

[The Frankfort Parliament and Austria, Dec., Jan.]

In announcing the policy of the new Ministry, Gagern a.s.sumed the exclusion of Austria from the German Federation. Claiming for the a.s.sembly, as the representative of the German nation, sovereign power in drawing up the Const.i.tution, he denied that the Const.i.tution could be made an object of negotiation with Austria. As Austria refused to fulfil the conditions of the second article, it must remain outside the Federation; the Ministry desired, however, to frame some close and special connection between Austria and Germany, and asked for authority to negotiate with the Court of Vienna for this purpose. Gagern's declaration of the exclusion of Austria occasioned a vehement and natural outburst of feeling among the Austrian deputies, and was met by their almost unanimous protest. Some days later there arrived a note from Schwarzenberg which struck at the root of all that had been done and all that was claimed by the a.s.sembly. Repudiating the interpretation that had been placed upon his words, Schwarzenberg declared that the affairs of Germany could only be settled by an understanding between the a.s.sembly and the Courts, and by an arrangement with Austria, which was the recognised chief of the Governments and intended to remain so in the new Federation. The question of the inclusion or exclusion of Austria now threw into the shade all the earlier differences between parties in the a.s.sembly. A new dividing-line was drawn.

On the one side appeared a group composed of the Austrian representatives, of Ultramontanes who feared a Protestant ascendency if Austria should be excluded, and of deputies from some of the smaller States who had begun to dread Prussian domination. On the other side was the great body of representatives who set before all the cause of German national union, who saw that this union would never be effected in any real form if it was made to depend upon negotiations with the Austrian Court, and who held, with the Minister, that to create a true German national State without the Austrian provinces was better than to accept a phantom of complete union in which the German people should be nothing and the Cabinet of Vienna everything.

Though coalitions and intrigues of parties obscured the political prospect from day to day, the principles of Gagern were affirmed by a majority of the a.s.sembly, and authority to negotiate some new form of connection with Austria, as a power outside the Federation, was granted to the Ministry.

[The Federal Heads.h.i.+p.]

[King Frederick William IV. elected Emperor, March 28.]

The second great difficulty of the a.s.sembly was the settlement of the Federal heads.h.i.+p. Some were for a hereditary Emperor, some for a President or Board, some for a monarchy alternating between the Houses of Prussia and Austria, some for a sovereign elected for life or for a fixed period. The first decision arrived at was that the head should be one of the reigning princes of Germany, and that he should bear the t.i.tle of Emperor. Against the hereditary principle there was a strong and, at first, a successful opposition. Reserving for future discussion other questions relating to the imperial office, the a.s.sembly pa.s.sed the Const.i.tution through the first reading on February 3rd, 1849. It was now communicated to all the German Governments, with the request that they would offer their opinions upon it.

The four minor kingdoms--Saxony, Hanover, Bavaria, and Wurtemberg--with one consent declared against any Federation in which Austria should not be included; the Cabinet of Vienna protested against the subordination of the Emperor of Austria to a central power vested in any other German prince, and proposed that the entire Austrian Empire, with its foreign as well as its German elements, should enter the Federation. This note was enough to prove that Austria was in direct conflict with the scheme of national union which the a.s.sembly had accepted; but the full peril of the situation was not perceived till on the 9th of March Schwarzenberg published the Const.i.tution of Olmutz, which extinguished all separate rights throughout the Austrian Empire, and confounded in one ma.s.s, as subjects of the Emperor Francis Joseph, Hungarians, Germans, Slavs and Italians. The import of the Austrian demand now stood out clear and undisguised. Austria claimed to range itself with a foreign population of thirty millions within the German Federation; in other words, to reduce the German national union to a partners.h.i.+p with all the nationalities of Central Europe, to throw the weight of an overwhelming influence against any system of free representative government, and to expose Germany to war where no interests but those of the Pole or the Magyar might be at stake. So deep was the impression made at Frankfort by the fall of the Kremsier Parliament and the publication of Schwarzenberg's unitary edict, that one of the most eminent of the politicians who had hitherto opposed the exclusion of Austria--the Baden deputy Welcker--declared that further persistence in this course would be treason to Germany. Ranging himself with the Ministry, he proposed that the entire German Const.i.tution, completed by a hereditary chieftains.h.i.+p, should be pa.s.sed at a single vote on the second reading, and that the dignity of Emperor should be at once offered to the King of Prussia. Though the a.s.sembly declined to pa.s.s the Const.i.tution by a single vote, it agreed to vote upon clause by clause without discussion. The hereditary principle was affirmed by the narrow majority of four in a House of above five hundred. The second reading of the Const.i.tution was completed on the 27th of March, and on the following day the election of the sovereign took place. Two hundred and ninety votes were given for the King of Prussia. Two hundred and forty-eight members, hostile to the hereditary principle or to the prince selected, abstained from voting. [448]

[Frederick William IV.]

Frederick William had from early years cherished the hope of seeing some closer union of Germany established under Prussian influence. But he dwelt in a world where there was more of picturesque mirage than of real insight.

He was almost superst.i.tiously loyal to the House of Austria; and he failed to perceive, what was palpable to men of far inferior endowments to his own, that by setting Prussia at the head of the const.i.tutional movement of the epoch he might at any time from the commencement of his reign have rallied all Germany round it. Thus the revolution of 1848 burst upon him, and he was not the man to act or to lead in time of revolution. Even in 1848, had he given promptly and with dignity what, after blood had been shed in his streets, he had to give with humiliation, he would probably have been acclaimed Emperor on the opening of the Parliament of Frankfort, and have been accepted by the universal voice of Germany. But the odium cast upon him by the struggle of March 18th was so great that in the election of a temporary Administrator of the Empire in June no single member at Frankfort gave him a vote. Time was needed to repair his credit, and while time pa.s.sed Austria rose from its ruins. In the spring of 1849 Frederick William could not have a.s.sumed the office of Emperor of Germany without risk of a war with Austria, even had he been willing to accept this office on the nomination of the Frankfort Parliament. But to accept the Imperial Crown from a popular a.s.sembly was repugnant to his deepest convictions. Clear as the Frankfort Parliament had been, as a whole, from the taint of Republicanism or of revolutionary violence, it had nevertheless had its birth in revolution: the crown which it offered would, in the King's expression, have been picked up from blood and mire. Had the princes of Germany by any arrangement with the a.s.sembly tendered the crown to Frederick William the case would have been different; a new Divine right would have emanated from the old, and conditions fixed by negotiation between the princes and the popular a.s.sembly might have been endured. That Frederick William still aspired to German leaders.h.i.+p in one form or another no one doubted; his disposition to seek or to reject an accommodation with the Frankfort Parliament varied with the influences which surrounded him.

The Ministry led by the Count of Brandenburg, though anti-popular in its domestic measures, was desirous of arriving at some understanding with Gagern and the friends of German union. Shortly before the first reading of the Const.i.tution at Frankfort, a note had been drafted in the Berlin Cabinet admitting under certain provisions the exclusion of Austria from the Federation, and proposing, not that the a.s.sembly should admit the right of each Government to accept or reject the Const.i.tution, but that it should meet in a fair spirit such recommendations as all the Governments together should by a joint act submit to it. This note, which would have rendered an agreement between the Prussian Court and the a.s.sembly possible, Frederick William at first refused to sign. He was induced to do so (Jan. 23rd) by his confidant Bunsen, who himself was authorised to proceed to Frankfort.

During Bunsen's absence despatches arrived at Berlin from Schwarzenberg, who, in his usual resolute way, proposed to dissolve the Frankfort a.s.sembly, and to divide Germany between Austria, Prussia, and the four secondary kingdoms. Bunsen on his return found his work undone; the King recoiled under Austrian pressure from the position which he had taken up, and sent a note to Frankfort on the 16th of February, which described Austria as a necessary part of Germany and claimed for each separate Government the right to accept or reject the Const.i.tution as it might think fit. Thus the acceptance of the heads.h.i.+p by Frederick William under any conditions compatible with the claims of the a.s.sembly was known to be doubtful when, on the 28th of March, the majority resolved to offer him the Imperial Crown. The disposition of the Ministry at Berlin was indeed still favourable to an accommodation; and when, on the 2nd of April, the members of the a.s.sembly who were charged to lay its offer before Frederick William arrived at Berlin, they were received with such cordiality by Brandenburg that it was believed the King's consent had been won.

[Frederick William IV. refuses the Crown, April 3.]

The reply of the King to the deputation on the following day rudely dispelled these hopes. He declared that before he could accept the Crown not only must he be summoned to it by the Princes of Germany, but the consent of all the Governments must be given to the Const.i.tution. In other words, he required that the a.s.sembly should surrender its claims to legislative supremacy, and abandon all those parts of the Federal Const.i.tution of which any of the existing Governments disapproved. As it was certain that Austria and the four minor kingdoms would never agree to any Federal union worthy of the name, and that the a.s.sembly could not now, without renouncing its past, admit that the right of framing the Const.i.tution lay outside itself, the answer of the King was understood to amount to a refusal. The deputation left Berlin in the sorrowful conviction that their mission had failed; and a note which was soon afterwards received at Frankfort from the King showed that this belief was correct. [449]

[The Frankfort Const.i.tution rejected by the Governments.]

The answer of King Frederick William proved indeed much more than that he had refused the Crown of Germany; it proved that he would not accept the Const.i.tution which the a.s.sembly had enacted. The full import of this determination, and the serious nature of the crisis now impending over Germany, were at once understood. Though twenty-eight Governments successively accepted the Const.i.tution, these were without exception petty States, and their united forces would scarcely have been a match for one of its more powerful enemies. On the 5th of April the Austrian Cabinet declared the a.s.sembly to have been guilty of illegality in publis.h.i.+ng the Const.i.tution, and called upon all Austrian deputies to quit Frankfort. The Prussian Lower Chamber, elected under the King's recent edict, having protested against the state of siege in Berlin, and having pa.s.sed a resolution in favour of the Frankfort Const.i.tution, was forthwith dissolved. Within the Frankfort Parliament the resistance of Governments excited a patriotic resentment and caused for the moment a union of parties. Resolutions were pa.s.sed declaring that the a.s.sembly would adhere to the Const.i.tution. A Committee was charged with the ascertainment of measures to be adopted for enforcing its recognition; and a note was addressed to all the hostile Governments demanding that they should abstain from proroguing or dissolving the representative bodies within their dominions with the view of suppressing the free utterance of opinions in favour of the Const.i.tution.