Germany from the Earliest Period Part 19

But no sooner was genuine German taste neglected for that of foreign nations than Gallomania revived; all were compelled to pay homage to the spirit and the tone prevalent throughout Europe. The witty aristocratic _medisance_ and grim spirit of rebellion emulating each other in France, were, in Germany, represented by Prince Piichler, the most _spirituel_ drawing-room satirist, and by the Jew, Borne, the most spirited Jacobin of the day. The open infidelity again demonstrated in France, also led to its introduction into Germany by the Jew, Heine, while the immoral romances with which that country was deluged speedily became known to us through the medium of the translations and imitations of "Young Germany," and were incredibly increased by our literary industry; all the lying memoirs, in which the French falsify history, view Napoleon as a demiG.o.d, and treat the enthusiasm with which the Germans were animated in 1813 with derision, were also diligently translated. This tendency to view everything German with French eyes and to ridicule German honor and German manners was especially promoted by the light literature, and numerous journals of the day, and was, in the universities, in close connection with the anti-christian tendency of the school of Hegel.--The late Catholic reaction, too exclusively political, has as yet exercised no influence over the literary world, and would scarcely succeed in gaining any, being less German than Roman.

While German poetry follows so false a course, it naturally follows that art also must be deprived of its natural character. Architecture has, it is true, abandoned the periwig style of France, but the purer antique or Byzantine taste to which it has returned is generally insipidly simple, while the attempts at Gothic and Moorish are truly miserable. A more elevated feeling than the present generation (which, in Goethe's manner, delights in trifling alternately with every style, or is completely enslaved by the modes imposed by France) is fitted to comprehend, is requisite for the revival of German or Gothic architecture. Still it may be, as is hoped, that the intention to complete the building of the Cologne cathedral will not be entirely without a beneficial influence.

The art of painting aspires far more energetically toward national emanc.i.p.ation. In the present century, the modern French style affecting the antique presented a complete contrast with the German romantic school, which, in harmony with the simultaneous romantic reaction in the poetical world, returned to the sacred simplicity of the ancient German and Italian masters. Overbeck was in this our greatest master. Since this period, the two great schools at Munich and Dusseldorf, founded by Peter Cornelius, and whose greatest masters are Peter Hesz, Bendemann, Lessing, Kaulbach, etc., have sought a middle path, and with earnest zeal well and skilfully opposed the too narrow imitation of, and the medley of style produced by the study of, the numerous old masters on the one hand, and, on the other, the search for effect, that Gallic innovation so generally in vogue. Were the church again to require pictures, or the state to employ the pencil of the patriot artist in recording the great deeds of past or present times or in the adornment of public edifices, painting would be elevated to its proper sphere.--Germany has also produced many celebrated engravers, among whom Muller holds precedence. Lithography, now an art of so much importance, was invented by the Bavarian, Senefelder. The art of painting on gla.s.s has also been revived.

In music, the Germans have retained their ancient fame. After Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, etc., have gained immense celebrity as composers.

Still, much that is unnatural, affected, _bizarre_ and licentious has crept into the compositions of the German masters, more particularly in the operas, owing to the imitation of the modern Italian and French composers. A popular reaction has, however, again taken place, and, as before, in choral music, by means of the "singing clubs," which become more and more general among the people.

The stage has most deeply degenerated. At the commencement of the present century, its mimic scenes afforded a species of consolation for the sad realities of life, and formed the Lethe in whose waters oblivion was gladly sought. The public afterward became so practical in its tastes, so sober in its desires, that neither the spirit of the actor nor the coquetry of the actress had power to attract an audience. The taste and love for art were superseded by criticism and low intrigues, the theatre became a mere political engine, intended to divert the thoughts of the population, of the great cities from the discussion of topics dangerous to the state by the all-engrossing charms of actresses and ballet-dancers.

The Germans, although much more practical in the present than in the past century, are still far from having freed themselves from the unjust, unfitting, and inconvenient situation into which they have fallen as time and events rolled on.

A mutual understanding in regard to the external position of the German in reference to the Slavonian nation has scarcely begun to dawn upon us. Scarcely have we become sensible to the ignominious restrictions imposed upon German commerce by the prohibitory regulations of Russia, by the customs levied in the Sound, on the Elbe, and Rhine. Scarcely has the policy that made such immense concessions to Russian diplomacy, and scarcely has the party spirit that looked for salvation for Germany from France, yielded to a more elevated feeling of self-respect. And yet, whoever should say to the people of Alsace, Switzerland, and Holland, "Ye are Germans," would reap but derision and insult. Germany is on the point of being once more divided into Catholic and Protestant Germany, and no one can explain how the German Customs' Union is to extend to the German Ocean, on account of the restrictions mutually imposed by the Germans.

Could we but view ourselves as the great nation we in reality are, attain to a consciousness of the immeasurable strength we in reality possess, and make use of it in order to satisfy our wants, the Germans would be thoroughly a practical nation, instead of lying like a dead lion among the nations of Europe, and unresistingly suffering them to mock, tread underfoot, nay, deprive him of his limbs, as though he were a miserable, helpless worm.

More, far more has been done for the better regulation of the internal economy of Germany than for her external protection and power. The reforms suited to the age, commenced by the philosophical princes and ministers of the past century, have been carried on by Prussia in her hour of need, by const.i.tutional Germany by const.i.tutional means.

Everywhere have the public administration been better regulated, despotism been restrained by laws, financial affairs been settled even under the heavy pressure of the national debts. Commerce, manufactural industry, and agriculture have been greatly promoted by the Customs'

Union, by government aid and model inst.i.tutions, by the improvements in the post-offices, by the laying of roads and railways. The public burdens and public debts, nevertheless, still remain disproportionately heavy on account of the enormous military force which the great states are compelled to maintain for the preservation of their authority, and on account of the polyarchical state of Germany, which renders the maintenance of an enormous number of courts, governments, general staffs and chambers necessary.

The popular sense of justice and legality, never entirely suppressed throughout Germany, also gave fresh proof of its existence under the new state of affairs, partly in the endlessly drawn-out proceedings in the chambers, partly in the incredible number of new laws and regulations in the different states. Still, industriously as these laws have been compiled, no real, essential, German law, neither public nor private, has been discovered. The Roman and French codes battled with each other and left no room for the establishment of a code fundamentally and thoroughly German. The most distinguished champions of the common rights of the people against cabinet-justice, the tyranny of the police and of the censor, were princ.i.p.ally advocates and savants. The Estates, as corporations, were scarcely any longer represented. The majority of governments, ruled by the principle of absolute monarchy and the chambers, ruled by that of democracy, had, since the age of philosophy, been unanimous in setting the ancient Estates aside. The n.o.bility alone preserved certain privileges, and the Catholic clergy alone regained some of those they had formerly enjoyed; all the Estates were, in every other respect, placed on a level. The ancient and national legal rights of the people were consequently widely trenched upon.

The emanc.i.p.ation of the peasant from the oppressive feudal dues, and the abolition of the restraint imposed by the laws of the city corporations, which had so flagrantly been abused, were indubitably well intended, but, instead of stopping there, good old customs, that ought only to have been freed from the weeds with which they had been overgrown, were totally eradicated. The peasant received a freehold, but was, by means of his enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, generally laden with debts, and, while pride whispered in his ear that he was now a lord of the soil and might a.s.sume the costume of his superiors, the land, whence he had to derive his sustenance, was gradually diminished in extent by the systematic division of property. His pretensions increased exactly in the ratio in which the means for satisfying them decreased; and the necessity of raising money placed him in the hands of Jews. The smaller the property by reason of subdivision, the more frequently is land put up for sale, the deeper is the misery of the homeless outcast. The restoration of the inalienable, indivisible allod and of the federal rights of the peasant, as in olden times, would have been far more to the purpose.--Professional liberty and the introduction of mechanism and manufactural industry have annihilated every warrant formerly afforded by the artificer as master and member of a city corporation, and, at the same time, every warrant afforded to him by the community of his being able to subsist by means of his industry.

Manufactures on an extensive scale that export their produce must at all events be left unrestricted, but the small trades carried on within a petty community, their only market, excite, when free, a degree of compet.i.tion which is necessarily productive both of bad workmans.h.i.+p and poverty, and the superfluous artificers, unaided by their professional freedom, fall bankrupt and become slaves in the establishments of their wealthier[1] compet.i.tors. The restoration of the city guilds under restrictions suitable to the times would have been far more judicious.

The maintenance of a healthy, contented cla.s.s of citizens and peasants ought to be one of the princ.i.p.al aims of every German statesman. The fusion of these ancient and powerful cla.s.ses into one common ma.s.s whence but a few wealthy individuals rise to eminence would be fatal to progression in Germany. By far the greater part of the people have already lost the means of subsistence formerly secured to all, nay, even to the serf, by the privileges of his cla.s.s. The insecure possession, the endless division and alienation of property, an anxious dread of loss, and a rapacious love of gain, have become universal. Care for the means of daily existence, like creeping poison, unnerves the population. The anxious solicitude to which this gives rise has a deeply demoralizing effect. Even offices under government are less sought for from motives of ambition than as a means of subsistence; the arts and sciences have been degraded to mere sources of profit, envious trade decides questions of the highest importance, the torch of Hymen is lit by Plutus, not at the shrine of Love; and in the bosom of the careworn father of a family, whose scanty subsistence depends upon a patron's smile, the words "fatherland" and "glory" find no responsive echo.

Among the educated cla.s.ses this state of poverty is allied with the most inconsistent luxury. Each and all, however poor, are anxious to preserve an appearance of wealth or to raise credit by that means.

All, however needy, must be fas.h.i.+onable. The petty tradesman and the peasant ape their superiors in rank, and the old-fas.h.i.+oned but comfortable and picturesque national costume is being gradually thrown aside for the ever-varying modes prescribed by Paris to the world. The inordinate love of amus.e.m.e.nts in which the lower cla.s.ses and the proletariat, ever increasing in number, seek more particularly to drown the sense of misery, is another and a still greater source of public demoralization. The general habit of indulging in the use of spirituous liquors has been rightfully designated the brandy pest, owing to its lamentable moral and physical effect upon the population.

This pest was encouraged not alone by private individuals, who gain their livelihood by disseminating it among the people, but also by governments, which raised a large revenue by its means; and the temperance societies, lately founded, but slightly stem the evil.

The public authorities throughout Germany have, it must be confessed, displayed extraordinary solicitude for the poor by the foundation of charitable inst.i.tutions of every description, but they have contented themselves with merely alleviating misery instead of removing its causes; and the benevolence that raised houses of correction, poor-houses, and hospitals, is rendered null by the laxity of the legislation. No measures are taken by the governments to provide means for emigration, to secure to the peasant his freehold, to the artificer the guarantee he ought to receive and to give, and the maintenance of the public morals. The punishment awarded for immorality and theft is so mild as to deprive them of the character of crime, pamphlets and works of the most immoral description are dispersed by means of the circulating libraries among all cla.s.ses, and the bold infidelity preached even from the universities is left unchecked. But--is not the thief taught morality in the house of correction? and are not diseases, the result of license, cured in the hospitals with unheard-of humanity?

Private morality, so long preserved free from contamination, although all has for so long conspired against the liberty and unity of Germany, is greatly endangered. Much may, however, be hoped for from the sound national sense. The memory of the strength displayed by Germany in 1813 has been eradicated neither by the contempt of France or Russia, by any reactionary measure within Germany herself, by social and literary corruption, nor by the late contest between church and state. The Customs' Union has, notwithstanding the difference in political principle, brought despotic Prussia and const.i.tutional Germany one step nearer. The influence of Russia on the one hand, of that of France on the other, has sensibly decreased. The irreligious and immoral tendencies now visible will, as has ever been the case in Germany, produce a reaction, and, when the necessity is more urgently felt, fitting measures will be adopted for the prevention of pauperism. The dangers with which Germany is externally threatened will also compel governments, however egotistical and indifferent, to seek their safety in unity, and even should the long neglect of this truth be productive of fresh calamity and draw upon Germany a fresh attack from abroad, that very circ.u.mstance will but strengthen our union and accelerate the regeneration of our great fatherland, already antic.i.p.ated by the people on the fall of the Hohenstaufen.

[Footnote 1: Because more skilful.--_Trans_.]

CCLXXIV. German Emigrants

The overplus population of Germany has ever emigrated; in ancient times, for the purpose of conquering foreign powers; in modern times, for that of serving under them. In the days of German heroism, our conquering hordes spread toward the west and south, over Italy, Gaul, Spain, Africa, England, and Iceland; during the Middle Ages, our mail-clad warriors took an easterly direction and overran the Slavonian countries, besides Prussia, Transylvania, and Palestine; in modern times, our religious and political refugees have emigrated in scarcely less considerable numbers to countries far more distant, but in the humble garb of artificers and beggars, the Pariahs of the world. Our ancient warriors gained undying fame and long maintained the influence and the rule of Germany in foreign lands. Our modern emigrants have, unnoted, quitted their native country, and, as early as the second generation, intermixed with the people among whom they settled. Hundreds of thousands of Germans have in this manner aided to aggrandize the British colonies, and Germany has derived no benefit from the emigration of her sons.

The first great ma.s.s of religious refugees threw itself into Holland and into the Dutch colonies, the greater part of which have since pa.s.sed into the hands of the British. The illiberality of the Dutch caused the second great ma.s.s to bend its steps to British North America, within whose wilds every sect found an asylum. William Penn, the celebrated Quaker, visited Germany, and, in 1683, gave permission to some Germans to settle in the province named, after him, Pennsylvania, where they founded the city of German town.[1] These fortunate emigrants were annually followed by thousands of exiled Protestants, princ.i.p.ally from Alsace and the Palatinate. The industry and honesty for which the German workmen were remarkable caused some Englishmen to enter into a speculation to procure their services as white slaves. The greatest encouragement was accordingly given by them to emigration from Germany, but the promises so richly lavished were withdrawn on the unexpected emigration of thirty-three thousand of the inhabitants of the Palatinate, comprising entire communes headed by their preachers, evidently an unlooked and unwished for mult.i.tude.

These emigrants reached London abandoned by their patrons and disavowed by the government. A fearful fate awaited them. After losing considerable numbers from starvation in England, the greater part of the survivors were compelled to work like slaves in the mines and in the cultivation of uninhabited islands; three thousand six hundred of them were sent over to Ireland, where they swelled the number of beggars; numbers were lost at sea, and seven thousand of them returned in despair, in a state of utter dest.i.tution, to their native country.

A small number of them, however, actually sailed for New York, where they were allotted portions of the primitive forests, which they cleared and cultivated; but they had no sooner raised flouris.h.i.+ng villages in the midst of rich cornfields and gardens, than they were informed that the ground belonged to the state and were driven from the home they had so lately found. Pennsylvania opened a place of refuge to the wanderers.[2]

The religious persecution and the increasing despotism of the governments in Germany meanwhile incessantly drove fresh emigrants to America, where, as they were generally sent to the extreme verge of the provinces in order to clear the ground and drive away the aborigines, numbers of them were murdered by the Indians. Switzerland also sent forth many emigrants, who settled princ.i.p.ally in North Carolina. The people of Salzburg, whose expulsion has been detailed above, colonized Georgia in 1732. In 1742, there were no fewer than a hundred thousand Germans in North America, and, since that period, their number has been continually on the increase. Thousands annually arrived; for instance, in the years 1749 and 1750, seven thousand; in 1754, as many as twenty-two thousand; in 1797, six thousand Swabians.

The famine of 1770, the partic.i.p.ation of German mercenaries in the wars of the British in North America, at first against the French colonies, afterward against the English colonists (the German prisoners generally settled in the country), induced the Germans to emigrate in such great numbers that, from 1770 to 1791, twenty-four emigrant s.h.i.+ps on an average arrived annually at Philadelphia, without reckoning those that landed in the other harbors.[3]

The pa.s.sage by sea to the west being continually closed during the great wars with France, the stream of emigration took an easterly direction overland. Russia had extended her conquests toward Persia and Turkey. The necessity of fixing colonies in the broad steppes as in the primitive forests of America, to serve as a barrier against the wild frontier tribes, was plainly perceived by the Russian government, and Germans were once more made use of for this purpose. Extensive colonies, which at the present date contain hundreds of thousands of German inhabitants, but whose history is as yet unknown, were accordingly formed northward of the Black and Caspian Seas. Swabian villages were also built on the most southern frontier of Russia toward Persia, and in 1826 suffered severely from an inroad of the Persians.

The fall of Napoleon had no sooner reopened the pa.s.sage by sea than the tide of emigration again turned toward North America. These emigrants, the majority of whom consisted of political malcontents, preferred the land of liberty to the steppes of Russia, whither sectarians and those whom the demoralization and irreligion of the Gallomanic period had filled with disgust had chiefly resorted. The Russo-Teuto colonies are proverbial for purity and strictness of morals. One Wurtemberg sectarian alone, the celebrated Rapp, succeeded during the period of the triumph of France in emigrating to Pennsylvania, where he founded the Harmony, a petty religious community. An inconsiderable number of Swiss, dissatisfied with Napoleon's supremacy, also emigrated in 1805 and built New Vevay. But it was not until after the wars, more particularly during the famine in 1816 and 1817, that emigration across the sea was again carried on to a considerable extent. In 1817, thirty thousand Swiss, Wurtembergers, Hessians, and inhabitants of the Palatinate emigrated, and about an equal number were compelled to retrace their steps from the seacoast in a state of extreme dest.i.tution on account of their inability to pay their pa.s.sage and of the complete want of interest in their behalf displayed by the governments. Political discontent increased in 1818 and 1819, and each succeeding spring thirty thousand Germans sailed down the Rhine to the land of liberty in the far west.

In 1820, a society was set on foot at Berne for the protection of the Swiss emigrants from the frauds practiced upon the unwary. The union of the Archd.u.c.h.ess Leopoldine, daughter to the emperor Francis, with Dom Pedro, the emperor of the Brazils, had, since 1817, attracted public attention to South America. Dom Pedro took German mercenaries into his service for the purpose of keeping his wild subjects within bounds, and the fruitful land offered infinite advantages to the German agriculturist; but colonization was rendered impracticable by the revolutionary disorders and by the ill-will of the natives toward the settlers, and the Germans who had been induced to emigrate either enlisted as soldiers or perished. Several among them, who have published their adventures in the Brazils, bitterly complained of the conduct of Major Schafer, who had been engaged in collecting recruits at Hamburg for the Brazils. They even accused him of having allowed numbers of their fellow-countrymen to starve to death from motives of gain, so much a head being paid to him on his arrival in the Brazils for the men s.h.i.+pped from Europe whether they arrived dead or alive.

The publication of these circ.u.mstances completely checked the emigration to the Brazils, and North America was again annually, particularly in 1827 and after the July revolution, overrun with Germans, and they have even begun to take part in the polity of the United States. The peasants, who have been settled for a considerable period, and who have insensibly acquired great wealth and have retained the language and customs of their native country, form the flower of the German colonists in the West.[4]

In the Cape colonies, the Dutch peasants, the boors, feeling themselves oppressed by the English government, emigrated _en ma.s.se_, in 1837, to the north, where they settled with the Caffres, and, under their captain, Praetorius, founded an independent society, in 1839, at Port Natal, where they again suffered a violent aggression on the part of the British.

Thus are Germans fruitlessly scattered far and wide over the face of the globe, while on the very frontiers of Germany nature has designated the Danube as the near and broad path for emigration and colonization to her overplus population, which, by settling in her vicinity, would at once increase her external strength and extend her influence.

[Footnote 1: The abolition of negro slavery was first mooted by Germans in 1688, at the great Quaker meeting in North America.]

[Footnote 2: Account of the United States by Eggerling.]

[Footnote 3: One of the most distinguished Germans in America was a person named John Jacob Astor, the son of a bailiff at Walldorf near Heidelberg, who was brought up as a furrier, emigrated to America, where he gradually became the wealthiest of all furriers, founded at his own expense the colony of Astoria, on the northwestern coast of North America, so interestingly described by Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, and the Astor fund, intended as a protection to German emigrants to America from the frauds practiced on the unwary. He resided at New York. He possessed an immense fortune and was highly and deservedly esteemed for his extraordinary philanthropy.]

[Footnote 4: The Allgemeine Zeitung of September, 1837, reports that there were at that time one hundred and fifty-seven thousand Germans in North America who were still unnaturalized, consequently had emigrated thither within the last two or three years. In Philadelphia alone there were seventy-five thousand Germans. Grund says in his work, "The Americans in 1837," "The peaceable disposition of the Germans prevents their interfering with politics, although their number is already considerable enough for the formation of a powerful party. They possess, notwithstanding, great weight in the government of Pennsylvania, in which State the governors have since the revolution always been Germans. This is in fact so well understood on all sides that even during the last election, when two democrats and a Whig candidate contended for the dignity of governor, they were all three Germans by birth and no other would have had the slightest chance of success. In the State of Ohio there are at the present date, although that province was first colonized by New-English, no fewer than forty-five thousand Germans possessed of the right of voting. The State of New York, although originally colonized by Dutch, contains a numerous German population in several of its provinces, particularly in that of Columbia, the birthplace of Martin Van Buren, the present Vice-President and future President of the republic. The State of Maryland numbers twenty-five thousand Germans possessed of votes; almost one-third of the population of Illinois is German, and thousands of fresh emigrants are settling in the valley of the Mississippi. I believe that the number of German voters or of voters of German descent may, without exaggeration, be reckoned on an average annually at four hundred thousand, and certainly in less than twenty years hence at a million. In the city of New York, the Germans greatly influence the election of the burgomaster and other city authorities by holding no fewer than three thousand five hundred votes. These circ.u.mstances naturally render the German vote an object of zealous contention for politicians of every party, and there is accordingly no dearth of German newspapers in any of the German settlements. In Pennsylvania, upward of thirty German (princ.i.p.ally weekly) papers are in circulation, and about an equal number are printed and published in the State of Ohio. A scarcely lower number are also in circulation in Maryland."]

Supplementary Chapter

From The Fall of Napoleon to the Present Day

The Confederation of the Rhine, wounded to the death by the campaign of 1812, was killed by the fall of Napoleon. From that event to the present time the accompanying pages must be restricted to a consideration of those matters which have been of capital importance to the German people. These matters may be summarized as consisting in the formation of the German Confederation, the Danish war, the Austro-Prussian war, the Franco-Prussian war, and the refounding of the empire.

As the fall of Sennacherib was sung by the Hebrews, so was the fall of Napoleon sung by the Germans. They had been at his mercy. He had deposed their sovereigns, dismembered their states, crippled their trade, and exhausted their resources. Yet in 1814, by the Peace of Paris, they had restored to them all they had possessed in 1792, but as a reconstruction of the former empire was impracticable, those states which still maintained their sovereignty coalesced.

This was in 1815. At the time there remained of the three hundred states into which the empire had originally been divided but thirty-nine, a number afterward reduced, through the extinction of four minor dynasties, to thirty-five. A diet, recognized as the legislative and executive organ of the Confederation, was inst.i.tuted at Frankfort. Instead, however, of satisfying the expectations of the nation, it degenerated into a political tool, which princes manipulated, which they made subservient to their inherent conservatism, and with which they oppressed their subjects. The French revolution of 1830 influenced to a certain extent their att.i.tude, and a few of them were induced to accord const.i.tutions to their people, but the effect was transient. Reforms which had been stipulated they managed to ignore. It took the insurrectionary movements of 1848 to shake them on their thrones. Forced then to admit the inefficiency of the diet, and attempting by hasty concessions to check the progress of republican principles, they consented to the convocation of a national a.s.sembly. Over this body the Archduke John of Austria was elected to preside. The choice was not happy. Measures which he failed to facilitate he succeeded in frustrating. As a consequence, matters went from bad to worse, until, after the refusal of the king of Prussia to accept the imperial crown which was offered to him in 1849 and the election of a provisional regency which ensued, the a.s.sembly lapsed into a condition of impotence which terminated in its dissolution.

Meanwhile republican demonstrations having been forcibly suppressed, there arose between Prussia and Austria a feeling of jealousy, if not of ill-will, which more than once indicated war, and which, though resulting in the restoration of the diet and temporarily diverted by a joint attack on Denmark, culminated in the battle of Sadowa.

Into the details of this attack it is unnecessary to enter. The casus belli was apparently an entirely virtuous endeavor to settle the respective claims of the king of Denmark and the duke of Augustenburg to the sovereignty of Schleswig-Holstein. The fas.h.i.+on in which the claims were settled consisted in wiping them out. The direction not merely of Schleswig-Holstein but of Lauenberg was a.s.sumed by Austria and Prussia, who, by virtue of a treaty signed October 30, 1864, took upon themselves their civil and military administration.

The administration which then ensued was announced as being but a temporary trustees.h.i.+p, and throughout Europe was generally so regarded. But Prussia had other views. In the chambers Bismarck declared that the crown had no intention of resigning the booty, that, come what might, never would it give up Kiel. Bismarck was seldom wrong. In this instance he was right. In the month of August following the treaty the Emperor Francis of Austria and King William of Prussia met at Gastein and concluded a convention by which it was agreed that Schleswig should belong to Prussia, Holstein to Austria, with Kiel as a free port under Prussian rule.

These proceedings, as might have been expected, created the greatest indignation in England, France, and among the minor states. Earl Russell declared that all rights, old and new, had been trodden under by the Gastein Convention, and that violence and force had been the only bases on which this convention had been established, while utter disregard of all public laws had been shown throughout all these transactions. On the part of France, her minister said that the Austrian and Prussian governments were guilty in the eyes of Europe of dividing between themselves territories they were bound to give up to the claimants who seemed to have the best t.i.tle, and that modern Europe was not accustomed to deeds fit only for the dark ages; such principles, he added, can only overthrow the past without building up anything new. The Frankfort Diet declared the two powers to have violated all principles of right, especially that of the duchies to direct their own affairs as they pleased, provided they did not interfere with the general interests of the German nation.

Nevertheless, a Prussian governor was appointed over Schleswig, and an Austrian over Holstein, both a.s.suming these duchies to be parts of their respective empires.

Early in 1866, it was evident that no real friends.h.i.+p could long continue between Prussia and Austria, and that these two great robbers would surely fall out over the division of the plunder; making it the ostensible cause for dispute, which was in reality their rivalry for the leaders.h.i.+p in Germany. In June, the Prussians crossed the Eyder, and took possession of Holstein, appointed a supreme president over the two duchies which pa.s.sed under Prussian rule, and settled, after a summary fas.h.i.+on, the vexed question. There were also other causes which tended to war. The weak side of Austria, weaker far than Hungary, was her Italian province of Venetia, one, indeed, that few can say she had any real or natural right to hold, beyond having acquired it by the treaty of 1813. To recover this from German rule had been the incessant desire of Italy, and grievous was her disappointment when the emperor of the French thought fit to stop immediately after the battle of Magenta and Solferino, instead of pus.h.i.+ng on, as it was hoped he would have done, to the conquest of Venetia.

In the spring of 1866, Italy was making active preparations for war, and Austria, on the other hand, increased largely the number of her troops, Prussia choosing, in defiance of all fair dealing, to a.s.sume that all these armaments were directed against herself; and, on this supposition, sent a circular to the minor states to tell them they must decide which side to take in the impending struggle. A secret treaty was made between Prussia and Italy: that Italy should be ready to take up arms the moment Prussia gave the signal, and that Prussia should go on with the war until Venetia was ceded to Italy. Angry discussions took place in the diet between Austria and Prussia, which ended in Prussia declaring the Germanic Confederation to be broken up, and both sides preparing for war.

Austria began early to arm, for she required longer time to mobilize her army. Prussia, on the contrary, was in readiness for action. Every Prussian who is twenty years old, without distinction of rank, has to serve in the army, three years with the colors, five more in the reserve, after which he is placed for eleven years in the Landwehr, and liable to be called out when occasion requires. In peace everything is kept ready for the mobilization of its army. In a wonderfully short time the organization was complete, and 260,000 men brought into the field in Bohemia. In arms, they had the advantage of the needle-gun. The Prussian forces were in three divisions, the "First Army" under the command of Prince Frederick Charles; the "Second Army" under that of the crown prince; and the "Army of the Elbe," under General Herwarth. The supreme command of the Austrian army of the north was given to Feldzeugmeister von Benedek, that of the south to the Archduke Albert.