Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/534

500 against the Napoleonic despotism, remained unfulfilled because they would have been dangerous—dangerous to public order, which to him meant the same thing as the unlimited power of the King. As a man he found himself face to face with the revolutionary movements of the years 1848 and 1849, to which again the French Revolution had given the immediate impulse. The soldier, the first subject of the King, as he called himself, knew of no other duty than to strike down insurrections with armed force. Thus he went into the field and with severity he did his work.

At last the day came when he himself mounted the throne and with his own hand put upon his head the crown “given him by God.” That was to him no mere traditional form of speech—it was in him a deep-rooted religious conviction. The years of revolutionary movement had indeed resulted in a constitution, but the most essential part of all constitutions was to the King the least possible limitation of his power. It was his honest, aye, his pious faith, that God had made him King and ordained him to govern his people according to the best of his knowledge and conscience and that it was the duty of the representatives of the people simply to help him in doing so; that he would violate his own sacred duty if he permitted any essential part of the kingly power bestowed on him by God to escape him, and that those who would undertake to curtail the power of the monarch would be culpable of a revolt against God's commandment. His army was to him the sword of the Lord, the shield of the order of the universe, and of all human obligations he perhaps knew of none more sacred than the oath of fidelity sworn to the colors. The servant of the state was according to his mind not irresponsible, but politically responsible only to the monarch. Irresponsible he did not feel even himself, but responsible only to God and his own