Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/622

 5 8 4 Readings in European History 487. How Bismarck held Prussia in check after the victory of Koniggratz. Hazard of continuing the war. On July 23, under the presidency of the king, a council of war was held, in which the question to be decided was whether we should make peace under the conditions offered or continue the war. A painful illness from which I was suffering made it necessary that the council should be held in my room. On this occasion I was the only civilian in uniform. I declared it to be my conviction that peace must be concluded on the Austrian terms, but remained alone in my opinion; the king supported the military majority. My nerves could not stand the strain which had been put upon them day and night ; I got up in silence, walked into my adjoining bedchamber, and was there overcome by a violent paroxysm of tears. Meanwhile I heard the council dispersing in the next room. I thereupon set to work to com- mit to paper the reasons which, in my opinion, spoke for the conclusion of peace, and begged the king, in the event of his not accepting the advice for which I was responsible, to relieve me of my functions if the war were continued. I set out with this document on the following day to explain it by word of mouth. In the antechamber I found two colonels with a report on the spread of cholera among their troops, barely half of whom were fit for service. These alarming figures confirmed my resolve to make the accept- ance of the Austrian terms a cabinet question. Besides my political anxieties, I feared that by transferring operations to Hungary, the nature of that country, which was well known to me, would soon make the disease overwhelming. The climate, especially in August, is dangerous ; there is great lack of water ; the country villages are widely distrib- uted, each with many square miles of open fields attached ; and, finally, plums and melons grow there in abundance. Our campaign of 1792 in Champagne was in my mind as a warning example ; on that occasion it was not the French but dysentery which caused our retreat. Armed with my documents I unfolded to the king the political and military reasons which opposed the continuation of the war. We had to avoid wounding Austria too severely ; we had to avoid leaving behind in her any unnecessary bitterness of