Page:EB1911 - Volume 11.djvu/888

Rh of Germany could only be secured by a separate understanding between the two great powers; and the indiscretion of the Prussian plenipotentiary revealed to the diet a plan for what meant practically the division of Germany into Prussian and Austrian spheres of influence. This threw the lesser princes, already alarmed at the growth of Prussian military power, into the arms of Austria, which thus secured a permanent majority in the diet. To avoid any possible modification of a situation so satisfactory, Count Buol, the Austrian president of the diet, was instructed to announce that the constitution as fixed by the Final Act, and guaranteed by Europe, must be regarded as final; that it might be interpreted, but not altered.

The conception of the diet as a sort of international board of control, responsible in the last resort not to Germany but to Europe, exactly suited Metternich’s policy, in which the interests of Germany were subordinate to the wider ambitions of the Habsburg monarchy. It was, moreover, largely justified by the constituent elements of the diet itself. Of the German states represented in it even Prussia, by the acquisition of Posen, had become a non-German power; the Habsburg monarchy was predominantly non-German; Hanover was attached to the crown of Great Britain, Holstein to that of Denmark, Luxemburg to that of the Netherlands. The diet, then, properly controlled, was capable of being converted into an effective instrument for furthering the policy of “stability” which Metternich sought to impose upon Europe. Its one effort to make its authority effective as the guardian of the constitution, in the matter of the repudiation of the Westphalian debt and of the sale of the domains by the elector of Hesse, was crushed by the indignant intervention of Austria. Henceforth its sole effective function was to endorse and promulgate the decrees of the government of Vienna.

In this respect the diet fairly reflected the place of Germany in Europe. The constitution was the work of the powers, which in all matters arising out of it constituted the final court of appeal. The result was not wholly one-sided.

Until the congress of Troppau in 1820 “Jacobinism” was still enthroned in high places in the person of Alexander I. of Russia, whose “divine mission,” for the time, included a not wholly disinterested advocacy of the due carrying out of Article 13 of the Final Act. It was not to Russia’s interest to see Austrian influence supreme in the confederation. The lesser German princes, too, were quick to grasp at any means to strengthen their position against the dominant powers, and to this end they appealed to the Liberal sentiment of their peoples. Not that this sentiment was very deep or widespread. The mass of the people, as Metternich rightly observed, wished for rest, not constitutions; but the minority of thoughtful men—professors, students, officials, many soldiers—resented the dashing of the hopes of German unity aroused by the War of Liberation, and had drunk deep of the revolutionary inspiration. This sentiment, since it could not be turned to the uses of a united Germany, might be made to serve the purposes of particularism. Prussia, in spite of the promises of Frederick William in the hour of need, remained without a central constitution; all the more reason why the states of second rank should provide themselves with one. Charles Augustus, the enlightened grand duke of Weimar, set the example, from the best of motives. Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg and others followed, from motives less disinterested. Much depended on the success of these experiments.

To Metternich they were wholly unwelcome. In spite of the ring-fence of censors, and custom-house officers, there was danger of the Liberal infection spreading to Austria, with disintegrating results; and the pose of the tsar as

protector of German liberties was a perpetual menace. The zeal and inexperience of German Liberals played into his hands. The patriotism and Pan-Germanism of the gymnastic societies (Turnvereine) and students’ associations (Burschenschaften) expressed themselves with more noise than discretion; in the South-German parliaments the platitudes and catchwords of the Revolution were echoed. Soon, in Baden, in Württemberg, in Bavaria, the sovereigns and the chambers were at odds, united only in a common opposition to the central authority. To sovereigns whose nerves had been shattered by the vicissitudes of the revolutionary epoch these symptoms were in the highest degree alarming; and Metternich was at

pains to exaggerate their significance. The “Wartburg festival” of October 1818, which issued in nothing worse than the solemn burning, in imitation of Dr Martin Luther, of Kamptz’s police law, a corporal’s cane and an uhlan’s stays, was magnified into a rebellion; drew down upon the grand duke of Weimar a collective protest of the powers; and set in motion the whole machinery of reaction. The murder of the dramatist Kotzebue, as an agent of this reaction, in the following year, by a fanatical student named Karl Sand, clinched the matter; it became obvious to the governments that a policy of rigorous repression was necessary if a fresh revolution were to be avoided. In October, after a preliminary meeting between Metternich and Hardenberg, in the course of which the latter signed a convention pledging Prussia to Austria’s system, a meeting of German ministers was held at Carlsbad, the discussion of which issued in the famous Carlsbad Decrees (October 17, 1819). These contained elaborate provisions for supervising the universities and muzzling the press, laying down that no constitution “inconsistent with the monarchical principle” should be granted, and setting up a central commission at Mainz to inquire into the machinations of the great revolutionary secret society which existed only in the imagination of the authorities. The Carlsbad Decrees, hurried through the diet under Austrian pressure, excited considerable opposition among the lesser sovereigns, who resented the claim of the diet to interfere in the internal concerns of their states, and whose protests at Frankfort had been expunged from the records. The king of Württemberg, ever the champion of German “particularism,” gave expression to his feelings by issuing a new constitution to his kingdom, and appealed to his relative, the emperor Alexander, who had not yet been won over by Metternich to the policy of war à outrance against reform, and took this occasion to issue a fresh manifesto of his Liberal creed.

At the conference of ministers which met at Vienna, on the 20th of November, for the purpose of “developing and completing the Federal Act of the congress of Vienna,” Metternich found himself face to face with a more formidable opposition than at Carlsbad. The “middle” states, headed by Württemberg, had drawn together, to form the nucleus of an inner league of “pure German States” against Austria and Prussia, and of “Liberal particularism” against the encroachments of the diet. With Russia and, to a certain extent, Great Britain sympathetic, it was impossible to ignore their opposition. Moreover, Prussia was hardly prepared to endorse a policy of greatly strengthening the authority of the diet, which might have been fatal to the Customs Union of which she was laying the foundation. Metternich realized the situation, and yielded so gracefully that he gave his temporary defeat the air of a victory. The result was that the Vienna Final Act (May 15,1820), which received the sanction of the diet on the 8th of June, was not unsatisfactory to the lesser states while doing nothing to lessen Austrian prestige. This instrument merely defined more clearly the principles of the Federal Act of 1815. So far from enlarging the powers of the diet, it reaffirmed the doctrine of non-intervention; and, above all, it renewed the clause forbidding any fundamental modification of the constitution without a unanimous vote. On the vexed question of the interpretation of Article 13 Metternich recognized the inexpediency of requiring the South German states to revise their constitutions in a reactionary sense. By Articles 56 and 57, however, it was laid down that constitutions could only be altered by constitutional means; that the complete authority of the state must remain united in its head; and that the sovereign could be bound to co-operate with the estates only in the exercise of particular rights. These provisions, in fact, secured for Metternich all that was necessary for the success of his policy: the maintenance of the status quo. So long as the repressive machinery instituted by the Carlsbad