Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/24

Rh PRUSSIA [HISTORY. reformed the municipalities and granted them important rights of self-government. His administrative reforms amounted to a complete reconstruction of the ministerial departments and the machinery of provincial government, and practically established the system now in force. In 1810 Hardenberg, with a precipitancy which Stein would scarcely have approved, continued the reform in the con- dition of the peasants by making them absolute owners of part of their holdings, the landlords obtaining the rest as an indemnity for their lost dues. 1 The revolution thus effected in Prussia has been aptly compared in its results to the great revolution in France ; but, while there the reforms were exacted by a people in arms, here they were rather forced upon the people by the crown. The army was also reorganized by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, while the condition imposed by Napoleon that it should not exceed 42,000 men was practically evaded by replacing each body of men by another as soon as it was fairly versed in military exercises. The educational reforms of William von Humboldt established the school system of Prussia on its present basis, and the university of Berlin was founded in 1809. Frederick William hesitated to take part in the Austrian rising of 1809, but his opportunity came in 1813, when Napoleon fled from Russia, denuded of his troops. General York, commander of the corps that Prussia had been obliged to contribute to the French expedition, anticipated the formal declaration of war by joining the Russians with his troops on his own responsibility (30th December 1812). On the outbreak of the war the people rose en masse and with the utmost enthusiasm. The regular army was sup- ported by hosts of " Landwehr," or militia, eager to share in the emancipation of their country. A treaty of alliance between Russia and Prussia was concluded at Kalisch, and Austria, after some hesitation, also joined the league against Napoleon. In the struggle that followed (see AUSTRIA, vol. iii. pp. 134-135) Prussia played one of the most prominent parts, and her general Bliicher ranks high among the heroes of the war. Between 1813 and the battle of Waterloo Prussia lost 140,000 men, and strained her financial resources to the utmost. As compensation she received at the congress of Vienna the northern half of Saxony, her old possessions to the west of the Elbe, Swedish Pomerania, the duchies of Berg and Jiilich, and other districts in Westphalia and on the Rhine. The acquisitions of the last partition of Poland, with the excep- tion of the grand-duchy of Posen, were resigned to Russia, Friesland went to Hanover, and Bavaria was allowed to retain Baireuth and Ansbach, which had come into her hands in 1806. This rearrangement of the map did not wholly restore Prussia to its former extent, as its area was now only 108,000 square miles compared with 122,000 square miles at the beginning of 1806, but the substitu- tion of German for Slavonic territory and the shifting of the centre of gravity towards the west more than made up for any slight loss in mere size. Hanover still formed a huge wedge splitting Prussia completely in two, and the western frontier was very ragged. Prussia's position re- quired caution, but forced upon it a national German policy, and the situation of the new lands was vastly more effectual in determining the future leader of Germany than was Austria's aggrandizement in Italy. The work of incor- porating the new provinces was accomplished with as little friction as possible, and the Prussian statesmen had the good sense to leave the Rhenish districts in the full enjoy- ment of the institutions they had been used to under the French regime. The remainder of Frederick William III.'s reign, though 1 The patrimonial jurisdiction of the landowners was not taken away till 1848. marked by much material and social progress, was in the political sphere a period of the most deplorable reaction. At first the king seemed disposed to fulfil his promise of 1815 and grant the country a constitution, but ultimately both he and his minister Hardenberg suffered themselves to be dragged in the wake of the retrogressive policy of Metternich. The only concession made to the popular demand was the utterly inadequate patent of 1823, appoint- ing triennial provincial diets with a merely consultative- function. The king also allowed himself to be alarmed by the ultra- liberal movement at the universities, and joined in the notorious Carlsbad decrees (1819) and in the senseless prosecutions of demagogues that formed the sequel. Many of Prussia's noblest and most patriotic sons now suffered unmerited punishment, and the Government showed a total incapacity to understand the real state of affairs. Respect for the aged king, however, prevented an outburst during his reign. After 1830 Prussia began to shake herself clear of the Austrian leading-strings, and the establishment of the " Zollverein," or customs union of the German states under Prussian supremacy, was a decided step towards a policy of independence. In ecclesiastical matters this reign is memorable for the union forced by the crown upon the Lutherans and Calvinists, and for the preliminary symptoms of the " Culturkampf." Frederick William IV. (1840-1861), a man of character Frederic and intelligence, began his reign promisingly by an amnesty Wil for political offenders and by well-meant concessions to the dissatisfied Ultramontanes ; but it soon became evident that he held too exalted an idea of the divine right of kings willingly to grant such a constitution as was required. Then followed the contest between the crown and the people, the various steps of which have been chronicled in the article GERMANY. At last the king had to give way and grant a constitution based upon democratic principles, and substituting a representative parliament for the old Prussian system of estates. This constitution was pro- mulgated on 31st January 1850, and Prussia therewith formally entered the ranks of modern and constitutional states. But in the following years the king maintained as reactionary a policy as was in any way compatible with the constitution, receiving his chief support in this line of action from the Prussian " Junkerthum," or squirearchy. In external politics the chief feature of the reign is Prussia's neglect of the opportunity to take up a strong position as the political and military leader of northern and central Germany : the king refused the imperial crown offered to him by the Frankfort Parliament in 1849, and allowed Prussia to play a subordinate role at Olmiitz in the fol- lowing year. Towards the close of his life the Prussian Government was distrusted at home and discredited abroad. In 1858 William, prince of Prussia, became regent in Williat consequence of the mental illness of his brother, and in 1861 he succeeded to the throne as William I. His acces- sion was hailed as likely to increase both the liberalism of Prussia's internal institutions and the vigour of its external policy ; and the second at least of these expectations was not disappointed. But at an early period of his reign the king became involved in a constitutional dispute with the House of Representatives, which declined to grant the supplies necessary for an extensive system of military reorganization. Bismarck, who became prime minister in 1862, refused to allow the crown to be hampered by parlia- mentary restrictions and raised the funds required in defi- ance of the attitude of the lower house. This internal conflict may have had its influence in forcing upon the ministry the necessity of a strong foreign policy, especially in its dealings with Austria, though the party of reform believed that the hegemony of Germany might have been secured by Prussia without war if she had simply placed