Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/39

Rh remained not without fruit. A constitution, based on the democratic principle, was granted on the 3rd December, 1848; and since that period, Prussia ranks now historically — not, indeed, after John Bull's present ideal, but still in the eye of political philosophy de facto — as one of the great limited monarchies, whose existence forms one of the distinctive contrasts between the social organization of ancient and modern times.

now wind up this great political drama by a short sketch of the fifth act, which we have designated "Nationality and Empire."

Frederick William IV., with all his fine speeches and romantic sentiments, died in the year 1861; and his successor, the present King William, being a soldier to the backbone according to old Prussian traditions, soon fell into a position of painful conflict with his Parliament, about the period of military service, and the equipment thereto belonging. According to his view of what the defence of the country required, he could not yield; and, according to their view of what liberal policy and economical retrenchment required, they could not yield. So affairs came to a dead-lock; and the king, in 1862, found himself in the same position that, about two centuries before, had cost England a civil war and the loss of a king's head. But Prussia was not England; and, at the very moment when the plot of the political drama seemed most perplexed, a god appeared on the scene, worthy in every way to untie the knot. This god was Bismarck, who, with a firm will and a strong hand, and the aid of favoring circumstances, piloted his sovereign triumphantly through the troubled seas of Parliamentary conflict, carrying on the government of the country on the budget of the previous years without asking Parliament for an annual vote. Bismarck boldly sketched out a line of policy, the success of which will be accepted as the best guarantee of its wisdom. It may be shortly summed in the following five points: (1) to destroy Austrian predominance in the Diet as prejudicial to the interests of Germany, and antagonistic to the spirit of social progress in the nineteenth century; (2) to kick the Diet from off the political stage altogether as an incumbrance and a sham; (3) to give political, unity to Germany in the only practical way, by throwing the political and military guidance of the whole German people into the hands of Prussia — a great Germany could, be made only by a strong Prussia; (4) to give to Prussia a strong and a well-defensible boundary, wherever possible, by the absorption of the petty principalities; (5) to keep a sharp eye on the machinations, and a strong arm ready to strike against the ambitious encroachments of France. And all these points he had made up his mind to carry out, if not in the most scrupulous, certainly in the shortest and most effective way, not by talking or by the votes of majorities, according to the now fashionable democratic style, but by a firm will, a shrewd policy, and, when necessary, by "blood and iron."

And here, as in many similar cases, the old adage found itself true, that "fortune favors the brave." The policy of blood and iron effected more for the German cause in half-a-dozen years than any amount of talk and convocation would have done in as many centuries. The detachment of Holstein from the Danish monarchy, which followed naturally by the law of succession, just as Hanover fell off from England, to prevent which Denmark drew the sword, and Great Britain the pen, afforded Bismarck the desired opportunity at once of humbling Austria, strengthening the boundaries of Prussia, and blowing the Diet into smoke. Schleswig-Holstein was taken possession of jointly in the name of the German Diet by Austria and Prussia; but here the formal right ended and despotic expediency commenced. What any man, acquainted with the traditional policy of Prussia, and the maxims of politicians generally, might have predicted, took place. Holstein was not given to its rightful duke, in whose interest the war was ostensibly carried on; but Austria and Prussia, finding their interests in that quarter irreconcilable, quarrelled about the plunder, divided the whole of Germany into two parties, and went to war. This was exactly what Bismarck wanted, and wisely wanted, as absolutely necessary for the double purpose of diverting the mind of the Prussian people from the stiff struggle between the crown and the Parliament, and as the only feasible way of at once abolishing the cumbrous machinery of the Bund, and placing Austria altogether outside of the great German game. This splendid double stroke Bismarck delivered in the campaign which ended with the battle of Sadowa, 3rd February, and the peace of Prague, 23rd August, 1866, — a campaign made possible, next to his own bold design and firm will, by the military 

LIVING AGE. VOL. XVIII. 887