A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 Part 28

The first public utterance of the reaction was a pamphlet issued in July, 1815, by Schmalz, a jurist of some eminence, and brother-in-law of Scharnhorst, the re-organiser of the army. Schmalz, contradicting a statement which attributed to him a highly honourable part in the patriotic movement of 1808, attacked the Tugendbund, and other political a.s.sociations dating from that epoch, in language of extreme violence. In the stiff and peremptory manner of the old Prussian bureaucracy, he denied that popular enthusiasm had anything whatever to do with the victory of 1813, [277]

attributing the recovery of the nation firstly to its submission to the French alliance in 1812, and secondly to the quiet sense of duty with which, when the time came, it took up arms in obedience to the King. Then, pa.s.sing on to the present aims of the political societies, he accused them of intending to overthrow all established governments, and to force unity upon Germany by means of revolution, murder, and pillage. Stein was not mentioned by name, but the warning was given to men of eminence who encouraged Jacobinical societies, that in such combinations the giants end by serving the dwarfs. Schmalz's pamphlet, which was written with a strength and terseness of style very unusual in Germany, made a deep impression, and excited great indignation in Liberal circles. It was answered, among other writers, by Niebuhr; and the controversy thickened until King Frederick William, in the interest of public tranquillity, ordered that no more should be said on either side. It was in accordance with Prussian feeling that the King should thus interfere to stop the quarrels of his subjects. There would have been nothing unseemly in an act of impartial repression. But the King made it impossible to regard his act as of this character. Without consulting Hardenberg, he conferred a decoration upon the author of the controversy. Far-sighted men saw the true bearing of the act. They warned Hardenberg that, if he pa.s.sed over this slight, he would soon have to pa.s.s over others more serious, and urged him to insist upon the removal of the counsellors on whose advice the King had acted. [278] But the Minister disliked painful measures. He probably believed that no influence could ever supplant his own with the King, and looked too lightly upon the growth of a body of opponents, who, whether in open or in concealed hostility to himself, were bent upon hindering the fulfilment of the const.i.tutional reforms which he had at heart.

[The promised Const.i.tutions delayed in Germany.]

In the Edict of the 22nd of May, 1815, the King had ordered that the work of framing a Const.i.tution should be begun in the following September.

Delays, however, arose; and when the commission was at length appointed, its leading members were directed to travel over the country in order to collect opinions upon the form of representation required. Two years pa.s.sed before even this preliminary operation began. In the meantime very little progress had been made towards the establishment of const.i.tutional government in Germany at large. One prince alone, the Grand Duke of Weimar, already eminent in Europe from his connection with Goethe and Schiller, loyally accepted the idea of a free State, and brought representative inst.i.tutions into actual working. In Hesse, the Elector summoned the Estates, only to dismiss them with contumely when they resisted his extortions. In most of the minor States contests or negotiations took place between the Sovereigns and the ancient Orders, which led to little or no result. The Federal Diet, which ought to have applied itself to the determination of certain principles of public right common to all Germany, remained inactive. Though hope had not yet fallen, a sense of discontent arose, especially among the literary cla.s.s which had shown such enthusiasm in the War of Liberation. It was characteristic of Germany that the demand for free government came not from a group of soldiers, as in Spain, not from merchants and men of business, as in England, but from professors and students, and from journalists, who were but professors in another form.

The middle cla.s.s generally were indifferent: the higher n.o.bility, and the knights who had lost their semi-independence in 1803, sought for the restoration of privileges which were really incompatible with any State-government whatever. The advocacy of const.i.tutional rule and of German unity was left, in default of Prussian initiative, to the ardent spirits of the Universities and the Press, who naturally exhibited in the treatment of political problems more fluency than knowledge, and more zeal than discretion. Jena, in the dominion of the Duke of Weimar, became, on account of the freedom of printing which existed there, the centre of the new Liberal journalism. Its University took the lead in the Teutonising movement which had been inaugurated by Fichte twelve years before in the days of Germany's humiliation, and which had now received so vigorous an impulse from the victory won over the foreigner.

[The Wartburg Festival, Oct., 1817.]

On the 18th of October, 1817, the students of Jena, with deputations from all the Protestant Universities of Germany, held a festival at Eisenach, to celebrate the double anniversary of the Reformation and of the battle of Leipzig. Five hundred young patriots, among them scholars who had been decorated for bravery at Waterloo, bound their brows with oak-leaves, and a.s.sembled within the venerable hall of Luther's Wartburg Castle; sang, prayed, preached, and were preached to; dined; drank to German liberty, the jewel of life, to Dr. Martin Luther, the man of G.o.d, and to the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar; then descended to Eisenach, fraternised with the Landsturm in the market-place, and attended divine service in the parish church without mishap. In the evening they edified the townspeople with gymnastics, which were now the recognised symbol of German vigour, and lighted a great bonfire on the hill opposite the castle. Throughout the official part of the ceremony a reverential spirit prevailed; a few rash words were, however, uttered against promise-breaking kings, and some of the hardier spirits took advantage of the bonfire to consign to the flames, in imitation of Luther's dealing with the Pope's Bull, a quant.i.ty of what they deemed un-German and illiberal writings. Among these was Schmalz's pamphlet. They also burnt a soldier's strait-jacket, a pigtail, and a corporal's cane, emblems of the military brutalism of past times which were now being revived in Westphalia. [279] Insignificant as the whole affair was, it excited a singular alarm not only in Germany but at foreign Courts.

Richelieu wrote from Paris to inquire whether revolution was breaking out.

The King of Prussia sent Hardenberg to Weimar to make investigations on the spot. Metternich, who saw conspiracy and revolution everywhere and in everything, congratulated himself that his less sagacious neighbours were at length awakening to their danger. The first result of the Wartburg scandal was that the Duke of Weimar had to curtail the liberties of his subjects. Its further effects became only too evident as time went on. It left behind it throughout Germany the impression that there were forces of disorder at work in the Press and in the Universities which must be crushed at all cost by the firm hand of Government; and it deepened the anxiety with which King Frederick William was already regarding the promises of liberty which he had made to the Prussian people two years before.

[Alexander in 1818.]

Twelve months pa.s.sed between the Wartburg festival and the beginning of the Conferences at Aix-la-Chapelle. In the interval a more important person than the King of Prussia went over to the side of reaction. Up to the summer of 1818, the Czar appeared to have abated nothing of his zeal for const.i.tutional government. In the spring of that year, he summoned the Polish Diet; addressed them in a speech so enthusiastic as to alarm not only the Court of Vienna but all his own counsellors; and stated in the clearest possible language his intention of extending the benefits of a representative system to the whole Russian Empire. [280] At the close of the brief session he thanked the Polish Deputies for their boldness in throwing out a measure proposed by himself. Alexander's popular rhetoric at Warsaw might perhaps be not incompatible with a settled purpose to permit no encroachment on authority either there or elsewhere; but the change in his tone was so great when he appeared at Aix-la-Chapelle a few months afterwards, that some strange and sudden cause has been thought necessary to explain it. It is said that during the Czar's residence at Moscow, in June, 1818, the revelation was made to him of the existence of a ma.s.s of secret societies in the army, whose aim was the overthrow of his own Government. Alexander's father had died by the hands of murderers: his own temperament, sanguine and emotional, would make the effects of such a discovery, in the midst of all his benevolent hopes for Russia, poignant to the last degree. It is not inconsistent either with his character or with earlier events in his personal history that the Czar should have yielded to a single shock of feeling, and have changed in a moment from the liberator to the despot. But the evidence of what pa.s.sed in his mind is wanting.

Hearsay, conjecture, gossip, abound; [281] the one man who could have told all has left no word. This only is certain, that from the close of the year 1818, the future, hitherto bright with dreams of peaceful progress, became in Alexander's view a battle-field between the forces of order and anarchy.

The task imposed by Providence on himself and other kings was no longer to spread knowledge and liberty among mankind, but to defend existing authority, and even authority that was oppressive and un-Christian, against the madness that was known as popular right.

[Conferences of Aix-la-Chapelle, Oct., 1818.]

[France evacuated.]

[Proposed Quintuple Alliance.]

[Canning.]

At the end of September, 1818, the Sovereigns or Ministers of the Great Powers a.s.sembled at Aix-la-Chapelle, and the Conferences began. The first question to be decided was whether the Allied Army might safely be withdrawn from France; the second, in what form the concert of Europe should hereafter be maintained. On the first question there was no disagreement: the evacuation of France was resolved upon and promptly executed. The second question was a more difficult one. Richelieu, on behalf of King Louis XVIII., represented that France now stood on the same footing as any other European Power, and proposed that the Quadruple Alliance of 1815 should be converted into a genuine European federation by adding France to it as a fifth member. The plan had been communicated to the English Government, and would probably have received its a.s.sent but for the strong opposition raised by Canning within the Cabinet. Canning took a gloomy but a true view of the proposed concert of the Powers. He foresaw that it would really amount to a combination of governments against liberty. Therefore, while recognising the existing engagements of this country, he urged that England ought to join in no combination except that to which it had already pledged itself, namely, the combination made with the definite object of resisting French disturbance. To combine with three Powers to prevent Napoleon or the Jacobins from again becoming masters of France was a reasonable act of policy: to combine with all the Great Powers of Europe against nothing in particular was to place the country on the side of governments against peoples, and to involve England in any enterprise of repression which the Courts might think fit to undertake.

Canning's warning opened the eyes of his colleagues to the view which was likely to be taken of such a general alliance by Parliament and by public opinion. Lord Castlereagh was forbidden to make this country a party to any abstract union of Governments. In memorable words the Prime Minister described the true grounds for the decision: "We must recollect in the whole of this business, and ought to make our Allies feel, that the general and European discussion of these questions will be in the British Parliament." [282] Fear of the rising voice of the nation, no longer forced by military necessities to sanction every measure of its rulers, compelled Lords Liverpool and Castlereagh to take account of scruples which were not their own. On the same grounds, while the Ministry agreed that Continental difficulties which might hereafter arise ought to be settled by a friendly discussion among the Great Powers, it declined to elevate this occasional deliberation into a system, and to a.s.sent to the periodical meeting of a Congress. Peace might or might not be promoted by the frequent gatherings of Sovereigns and statesmen; but a council so formed, if permanent in its nature, would necessarily extinguish the independence of every minor State, and hand over the government of all Europe to the Great Courts, if only they could agree with one another.

[Declarations and Secret Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.]

It was the refusal of England to enter into a general league that determined the form in which the results of the Conference of 1818 were embodied. In the first place the Quadruple Alliance against French revolution was renewed, and with such seriousness that the military centres were fixed, at which, in case of any outbreak, the troops of each of the Great Powers should a.s.semble. [283] This Treaty, however, was kept secret, in order not to add to the difficulties of Richelieu. The published doc.u.ments breathed another spirit. [284] Without announcing an actual alliance with King Louis XVIII., the Courts, including England, declared that through the restoration of legitimate and const.i.tutional monarchy France had regained its place in the councils of Europe, and that it would hereafter co-operate in maintaining the general peace. For this end meetings of the sovereigns or their ministers might be necessary; such meetings would, however, be arranged by the ordinary modes of negotiation, nor would the affairs of any minor State be discussed by the Great Powers, except at the direct invitation of that State, whose representatives would then be admitted to the sittings. In these guarded words the intention of forming a permanent and organised Court of Control over Europe was disclaimed. A manifesto, addressed to the world at large, declared that the sovereigns of the five great States had no other object in their union than the maintenance of peace on the basis of existing treaties. They had formed no new political combinations; their rule was the observance of international law; their object the prosperity and moral welfare of their subjects.

[Repressive tone of the Conference.]

[Metternich and Austrian principles henceforth dominant.]

The earnestness with which the statesmen of 1818, while accepting the conditions laid down by England, persevered in the project of a joint regulation of European affairs may suggest the question whether the plan which they had at heart would not in truth have operated to the benefit of mankind. The answer is, that the value of any International Council depends firstly on the intelligence which it is likely to possess, and secondly on the degree in which it is really representative. Experience proved that the Congresses which followed 1818 possessed but a limited intelligence, and that they represented nothing at all but authority. The meeting at Aix-la-Chapelle was itself the turning-point in the const.i.tutional history of Europe. Though no open declaration was made against const.i.tutional forms, every Sovereign and every minister who attended the Conference left it with the resolution to draw the reins of government tighter. A note of alarm had been sounded. Conspiracies in Belgium, an attempt on the life of Wellington, rumours of a plot to rescue Napoleon from St. Helena, combined with the outcry against the German Universities and the whispered tales from Moscow in filling the minds of statesmen with apprehensions. The change which had taken place in Alexander himself was of the most serious moment. Up to this time Metternich, the leader of European Conservatism, had felt that in the Czar there were sympathies with Liberalism and enlightenment which made the future of Europe doubtful. [285] To check the dissolution of existing power, to suppress all tendency to change, was the habitual object of Austria, and the Czar was the one person who had seemed likely to prevent the principles of Austria from becoming the law of Europe. Elsewhere Metternich had little to fear in the way of opposition.

Hardenberg, broken in health and ill-supported by his King, had ceased to be a power. Yielding to the apprehensions of Frederick William, perhaps with the hope of dispelling them at some future time, he took his place among the alarmists of the day, and suffered the German policy of Prussia, to which so great a future lay open a few years before, to become the mere reflex of Austrian inaction and repression. [286] England, so long as it was represented on the Continent by Castlereagh and Wellington, scarcely counted for anything on the side of liberty. The sudden change in Alexander removed the one check that stood in Austria's way; and from this time Metternich exercised an authority in Europe such as few statesmen have ever possessed. His influence, overborne by that of the Czar during 1814 and 1815, struck root at the Conference of Aix-la-Chapelle, maintained itself unimpaired during five eventful years, and sank only when the death of Lord Castlereagh allowed the real voice of England once more to be heard, and Canning, too late to forbid the work of repression in Italy and in Spain, inaugurated, after an interval of forced neutrality, that worthier concert which established the independence of Greece.

[Metternich's advice to Prussia, 1818.]

If it is the mark of a clever statesman to know where to press and where to give way, Metternich certainly proved himself one in 1818. Before the end of the Conference he delivered to Hardenberg and to the King of Prussia two papers containing a complete set of recommendations for the management of Prussian affairs. The contents of these doc.u.ments were singular enough: it is still more singular that they form the history of what actually took place in Prussia during the succeeding years. Starting with the a.s.sumption that the party of revolution had found its lever in the promise of King Frederick William to create a Representative System, Metternich demonstrated in polite language to the very men who had made this promise, that any central Representation would inevitably overthrow the Prussian State; pointed out that the King's dominions consisted of seven Provinces; and recommended Frederick William to fulfil his promise only by giving to each Province a Diet for the discussion of its own local concerns. Having thus warned the King against creating a National Parliament, like that which had thrown France into revolution in 1789, Metternich exhibited the specific dangers of the moment and the means of overcoming them. These dangers were Universities, Gymnastic establishments, and the Press. "The revolutionists," he said, "despairing of effecting their aim themselves, have formed the settled plan of educating the next generation for revolution. The Gymnastic establishment is a preparatory school for University disorders. The University seizes the youth as he leaves boyhood, and gives him a revolutionary training. This mischief is common to all Germany, and must be checked by joint action of the Governments. Gymnasia, on the contrary, were invented at Berlin, and spring from Berlin. For these, palliative measures are no longer sufficient. It has become a duty of State for the King of Prussia to destroy the evil. The whole inst.i.tution in every shape must be closed and uprooted." With regard to the abuse of the Press, Metternich contented himself with saying that a difference ought to be made between substantial books and mere pamphlets or journals; and that the regulation of the Press throughout Germany at large could only be effected by an agreement between Austria and Prussia. [287]

[Stourdza's pamphlet.]

With a million men under arms, the Sovereigns who had overthrown Napoleon trembled because thirty or forty journalists and professors pitched their rhetoric rather too high, and because wise heads did not grow upon schoolboys' shoulders. The Emperor Francis, whose imagination had failed to rise to the glories of the Holy Alliance, alone seems to have had some suspicion of the absurdity of the present alarms. [288] The Czar distinguished himself by his zeal against the lecturers who were turning the world upside down. As if Metternich had not frightened the Congress enough already, the Czar distributed at Aix-la-Chapelle a pamphlet published by one Stourdza, a Moldavian, which described Germany as on the brink of revolution, and enumerated half a score of mortal disorders which racked that unfortunate country. The chief of all was the vicious system of the Universities, which instead of duly developing the vessel of the Christian State from the cradle of Moses, [289] brought up young men to be despisers of law and instruments of a licentious Press. The ingenious Moldavian, whose expressions in some places bear a singular resemblance to those of Alexander, while in others they are actually identical with reflections of Metternich's not then published, went on to enlighten the German Governments as to the best means of rescuing their subjects from their perilous condition. Certain fiscal and administrative changes were briefly suggested, but the main reform urged was exactly that propounded by Metternich, the enforcement of a better discipline and of a more rigidly-prescribed course of study at the Universities, along with the supervision of all journals and periodical literature.

[The murder of Kotzebue, March 23, 1819.]

Stourdza's pamphlet, in which loose reasoning was accompanied by the coa.r.s.est invective, would have gained little attention if it had depended on its own merits or on the reputation of its author: it became a different matter when it was known to represent the views of the Czar. A vehement but natural outcry arose at the Universities against this interference of the foreigner with German domestic affairs. National independence, it seemed, had been won in the deadly struggle against France only in order that internal liberty, the promised fruit of this independence, should be sacrificed at the bidding of Russia. The Czar himself was out of reach: the vengeance of outraged patriotism fell upon an insignificant person who had the misfortune to be regarded as his princ.i.p.al agent. A dramatic author then famous, now forgotten, August Kotzebue, held the office of Russian agent in Central Germany, and conducted a newspaper whose object was to throw ridicule on the national movement of the day, and especially on those a.s.sociations of students where German enthusiasm reached its climax. Many circ.u.mstances embittered popular feeling against this man, and caused him to be regarded less as a legitimate enemy than as a traitor and an apostate. Kotzebue had himself been a student at Jena, and at one time had turned liberal sentiments to practical account in his plays. Literary jealousies and wounded vanity had subsequently alienated him from his country, and made him the willing and acrid hireling of a foreign Court.

The reports which, as Russian agent, he sent to St. Petersburg were doubtless as offensive as the attacks on the Universities which he published in his journal; but it was an extravagant compliment to the man to imagine that he was the real author of the Czar's desertion from Liberalism to reaction. This, however, was the common belief, and it cost Kotzebue dear. A student from Erlangen, Carl Sand, who had accompanied the standard at the Wartburg festival, formed the silent resolve of sacrificing his own life in order to punish the enemy of his country. Sand was a man of pure and devout, though ill-balanced character. His earlier life marked him as one whose whole being was absorbed by what he considered a divine call.

He thought of the Greeks who, even in their fallen estate, had so often died to free their country from Turkish oppression, and formed the deplorable conclusion that by murdering a decayed dramatist he could strike some great blow against the powers of evil. [290] He sought the unfortunate Kotzebue in the midst of his family, stabbed him to the heart, and then turned his weapon against himself. Recovering from his wounds, he was condemned to death, and perished, after a year's interval, on the scaffold, calling G.o.d to witness that he died for Germany to be free.

[Action of Metternich.]

The effects of Sand's act were very great, and their real nature was at once recognised. Hardenberg, the moment that he heard of Kotzebue's death, exclaimed that a Prussian Const.i.tution had now become impossible.

Metternich, who had thought the Czar mad because he desired to found a peaceful alliance of Sovereigns on religious principles, was not likely to make allowance for a kind of piety that sent young rebels over the country on missions of murder. The Austrian statesman was in Rome when the news of Kotzebue's a.s.sa.s.sination reached him. He saw that the time had come for united action throughout Germany, and, without making any public utterance, drew up a scheme of repressive measures, and sent out proposals for a gathering of the Ministers of all the princ.i.p.al German Courts. In the summer he travelled slowly northwards, met the King of Prussia at Teplitz, in Bohemia, and shortly afterwards opened the intended Conference of Ministers in the neighbouring town of Carlsbad. A number of innocent persons had already, at his instigation, been arrested in Prussia and other States, under circ.u.mstances deeply discreditable to Government. Private papers were seized, and garbled extracts from them published in official prints as proof of guilt. [291] "By the help of G.o.d," Metternich wrote, "I hope to defeat the German Revolution, just as I vanquished the conqueror of the world. The revolutionists thought me far away, because I was five hundred leagues off. They deceived themselves; I have been in the midst of them, and now I am striking my blows." [292] Metternich's plan was to enforce throughout Germany, by means of legislation in the Federal Diet, the principle which he had already privately commended to the King of Prussia. There were two distinct objects of policy before him: the first, to prevent the formation in any German State of an a.s.sembly representing the whole community, like the English House of Commons or the French Chamber of Deputies; the second, to establish a general system of censors.h.i.+p over the Press and over the Universities, and to create a central authority, vested, as the representative of the Diet, with inquisitorial powers.

[The South-Western States become const.i.tutional as Prussia relapses.]

[Bavarian Const.i.tution, May 26, 1818.]

The first of these objects, the prevention of general a.s.semblies, had been rendered more difficult by recent acts of the Governments of Bavaria and Baden. A singular change had taken place in the relation between Prussia and the Minor States which had formerly const.i.tuted the Federation of the Rhine. When, at the Congress of Vienna, Prussian statesmen had endeavoured to limit the arbitrary rule of petty sovereigns by charging the Diet with the protection of const.i.tutional right over all Germany, the Kings of Bavaria and Wurtemberg had stoutly refused to part with sovereign power. To submit to a law of liberty, as it then seemed, was to lose their own separate existence, and to reduce themselves to dependence upon the Jacobins of Berlin. This apprehension governed the policy of the Minor Courts from 1813 to 1815. But since that time events had taken an unexpected turn. Prussia, which once threatened to excite popular movement over all Germany in its own interest, had now accepted Metternich's guidance, and made its representative in the Diet the mouthpiece of Austrian interest and policy. It was no longer from Berlin but from Vienna that the separate existence of the Minor States was threatened. The two great Courts were uniting against the independence of their weaker neighbours. The danger of any popular invasion of kingly rights in the name of German unity had pa.s.sed away, and the safety of the lesser sovereigns seemed now to lie not in resisting the spirit of const.i.tutional reform but in appealing to it. In proportion as Prussia abandoned itself to Metternich's direction, the Governments of the South-Western States familiarised themselves with the idea of a popular representation; and at the very time when the conservative programme was being drawn up for the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, the King of Bavaria published a Const.i.tution.

Baden followed after a short interval, and in each of these States, although the Legislature was divided into two Chambers, the representation established was not merely provincial, according to Metternich's plan, or wholly on the principle of separate Estates or Orders, as before the Revolution, but to some extent on the type of England and France, where the Lower Chamber, in theory, represented the public at large. This was enough to make Metternich condemn the new Const.i.tutions as radically bad and revolutionary. [293] He was, however, conscious of the difficulty of making a direct attack upon them. This task he reserved for a later time. His policy at present was to obtain a declaration from the Diet which should prevent any other Government within the League from following in the same path; while, by means of Press-laws, supervision of the Universities, and a central commission of inquiry, he expected to make the position of rebellious professors and agitators so desperate that the forces of disorder, themselves not deeply rooted in German nature, would presently disappear.

[Conference of Carlsbad, Aug., 1819.]

The Conference of Ministers at Carlsbad, which in the memory of the German people is justly a.s.sociated with the suppression of their liberty for an entire generation, began and ended in the month of August, 1819. Though attended by the representatives of eight German Governments, it did little more than register the conclusions which Metternich had already formed.

[294] The zeal with which the envoy of Prussia supported every repressive measure made it useless for the Ministers of the Minor Courts to offer an open opposition. Nothing more was required than that the Diet should formally sanction the propositions thus privately accepted by all the leading Ministers. On the 20th of September this sanction was given. The Diet, which had sat for three years without framing a single useful law, ratified all Metternich's oppressive enactments in as many hours. It was ordered that in every State within the Federation the Government should take measures for preventing the publication of any journal or pamphlet except after licence given, and each Government was declared responsible to the Federation at large for any objectionable writing published within its own territory. The Sovereigns were required to appoint civil commissioners at the Universities, whose duty it should be to enforce public order and to give a salutary direction to the teaching of the professors. They were also required to dismiss all professors who should overstep the bounds of their duty, and such dismissed persons were prohibited from being employed in any other State. It was enacted that within fifteen days of the pa.s.sing of the decree an extraordinary Commission should a.s.semble at Mainz to investigate the origin and extent of the secret revolutionary societies which threatened the safety of the Federation. The Commission was empowered to examine and, if necessary, to arrest any subject of any German State. All law-courts and other authorities were required to furnish it with information and with doc.u.ments, and to undertake all inquiries which the Commission might order. The Commission, however, was not a law-court itself: its duty was to report to the Diet, which would then create such judicial machinery as might be necessary. [295]

[Supplementary Act of Vienna, June, 1820.]

These measures were of an exceptional, and purported to be of a temporary, character. There were, however, other articles which Metternich intended to raise to the rank of organic laws, and to incorporate with the Act of 1815, which formed the basis of the German Federation. The conferences of Ministers were accordingly resumed after a short interval, but at Vienna instead of at Carlsbad. They lasted for several months, a stronger opposition being now made by the Minor States than before. A second body of federal law was at length drawn up, and accepted by the Diet on the 8th of June, 1820. [296] The most important of its provisions was that which related to the Const.i.tutions admissible within the German League. It was declared that in every State, with the exception of the four free cities, supreme power resided in the Sovereign and in him alone, and that no Const.i.tution might do more than bind the Sovereign to co-operate with the Estates in certain definite acts of government. [297]

In cases where a Government either appealed for help against rebellious subjects, or was notoriously unable to exert authority, the Diet charged itself with the duty of maintaining public order.

[The reaction in Prussia.]

From this time whatever liberty existed in Germany was to be found in the Minor States, in Bavaria and Baden, and in Wurtemberg, which received a Const.i.tution a few days before the enrolment of the decrees of Carlsbad. In Prussia the reaction carried everything before it. Humboldt, the best and most liberal of the Ministers, resigned, protesting in vain against the ignominious part which the King had determined to play. He was followed by those of his colleagues whose principles were dearer to them than their places. Hardenberg remained in office, a dying man, isolated, neglected, thwarted; clinging to some last hope of redeeming his promises to the Prussian people, yet jealous of all who could have given him true aid; dishonouring by tenacity of place a career a.s.sociated with so much of his country's glory, and enn.o.bled in earlier days by so much fort.i.tude in time of evil. There gathered around the King a body of men who could see in the great patriotic efforts and reforms of the last decade nothing but an encroachment of demagogues on the rights of power. They were willing that Prussia should receive its orders from Metternich and serve a foreign Court in the work of repression, rather than that it should take its place at the head of all Germany on the condition of becoming a free and const.i.tutional State. [298] The stigma of disloyalty was attached to all who had kindled popular enthusiasm in 1808 and 1812. To have served the nation was to have sinned against the Government. Stein was protected by his great name from attack, but not from calumny. His friend Arndt, whose songs and addresses had so powerfully moved the heart of Germany during the War of Liberation, was subjected to repeated legal process, and, although unconvicted of any offence, was suspended from the exercise of his professors.h.i.+p for twenty years. Other persons, whose fault at the most was to have worked for German unity, were brought before special tribunals, and after long trial either refused a public acquittal or sentenced to actual imprisonment. Free teaching, free discussion, ceased. The barrier of authority closed every avenue of political thought. Everywhere the agent of the State prescribed an orthodox opinion, and took note of those who raised a dissentient voice.

[The Commission at Mainz.]

The pretext made at Carlsbad for this crusade against liberty, which was more energetically carried out in Prussia than elsewhere, was the existence of a conspiracy or agitation for the overthrow of Governments and of the present const.i.tution of the German League. It was stated that proofs existed of the intention to establish by force a Republic one and indivisible, like that of France in 1793. But the very Commission which was inst.i.tuted by the Carlsbad Ministers to investigate the origin and nature of this conspiracy disproved its existence. The Commission a.s.sembled at Mainz, examined several hundred persons and many thousand doc.u.ments, and after two years' labour delivered a report to the Diet. The report went back to the time of Fichte's lectures and the formation of the Tugendbund in 1808, traced the progress of all the students' a.s.sociations and other patriotic societies from that time to 1820; and, while exhibiting in the worst possible light the aims and conduct of the advocates of German unity, acknowledged that scarcely a single proof had been discovered of treasonable practice, and that the loyalty of the ma.s.s of the people was itself a sufficient guarantee against the impulses of the evil-minded.

[299] Such was the impression of triviality and imposture produced at the Diet by this report, that the representatives of several States proposed that the Commission should forthwith be dissolved as useless and unnecessary. This, however, could not be tolerated by Metternich and his new disciples. The Commission was allowed to continue in existence, and with it the regime of silence and repression. The measures which had been accepted at Carlsbad as temporary and provisional became more and more a part of the habitual system of government. Prosecutions succeeded one another; letters were opened; spies attended the lectures of professors and the meetings of students; the newspapers were everywhere prohibited from discussing German affairs. In a country where there were so many printers and so many readers journalism could not altogether expire. It was still permissible to give the news and to offer an opinion about foreign lands: and for years to come the Germans, like beggars regaling themselves with the scents from rich men's kitchens, [300] followed every stage of the political struggles that were agitating France, England, and Spain, while they were not allowed to express a desire or to formulate a grievance of their own.

[Prussian Provincial Estates, June, 1823.]

[Redeeming features of Prussian absolutism.]

In the year 1822 Hardenberg died. All hope of a fulfilment of the promises made in Prussia in 1815 had already become extinct. Not many months after the Minister's death, King Frederick William established the Provincial Estates which had been recommended to him by Metternich, and announced that the creation of a central representative system would be postponed until such time as the King should think fit to introduce it. This meant that the project was finally abandoned; and Prussia in consequence remained without a Parliament until the Revolution of 1848 was at the door. The Provincial Estates, with which the King affected to temper absolute rule, met only once in three years. Their function was to express an opinion upon local matters when consulted by the Government: their enemies said that they were aristocratic and did harm, their partizans could not pretend that they did much good. In the bitterness of spirit with which, at a later time, the friends of liberty denounced the betrayal of the cause of freedom by the Prussian Court, a darker colour has perhaps been introduced into the history of this period than really belongs to it. The wrongs sustained by the Prussian nation have been compared to those inflicted by the despotism of Spain. But, however contemptible the timidity of King Frederick William, however odious the ingrat.i.tude shown to the truest friends of King and people, the Government of 1819 is not correctly represented in such a parallel. To identify the thousand varieties of wrong under the common name of oppression, is to mistake words for things, and to miss the characteristic features which distinguish nations from one another. The greatest evils which a Government can inflict upon its subjects are probably religious persecution, wasteful taxation, and the denial of justice in the daily affairs of life. None of these were present in Prussia during the darkest days of reaction. The hand of oppression fell heavily on some of the best and some of the most enlightened men; it violated interests so precious as those of free criticism and free discussion of public affairs; but the great ma.s.s of the action of Government was never on the side of evil. The ordinary course of justice was still pure, the administration conscientious and thrifty. The system of popular education, which for the first time placed Prussia in advance of Saxony and other German States, dates from these years of warfare against liberty. A reactionary despotism built the schools and framed the laws whose reproduction in free England half a century later is justly regarded as the chief of all the liberal measures of our day. So strong, so lasting, was that vital tradition which made monarchy in Prussia an instrument for the execution of great public ends.

[A new Liberalism grows up in Germany after 1820.]

[Interest in France.]

But the old harmony between rulers and subjects in Germany perished in the system of coercion which Metternich established in 1819. Patient as the Germans were, loyal as they had proved themselves to Frederick William and to worse princes through good and evil, the galling disappointment of n.o.ble hopes, the silencing of the Press, the dissolution of societies,-- calumnies, expulsions, prosecutions,--embittered many an honest mind against authority. The Commission of Mainz did not find conspirators, but it made them. As years went by, and all the means of legitimately working for the improvement of German public life were one after another extinguished, men of ardent character thought of more violent methods.