Page:The Paris Commune - Karl Marx - ed. Lucien Sanial (1902).djvu/78

Rh public. Let us for a moment listen to the special pleadings of those stout-hearted patriots!

They dare not pretend that the people of Alsace and Lorraine pant for the German embrace; quite the contrary. To punish their French patriotism, Strasburg, a town with an independent citadel commanding it, has for six days been wantonly and fiendishly bombarded by "German" explosive shells, setting it on fire, and killing great numbers of its defenseless inhabitants! Yet, the soil of those provinces once upon a time belonged to the whilom German Empire. Hence, it seems, the soil and the human beings grown on it must be confiscated as imprescriptible German property. If the map of Europe is to be remade in the antiquary's vein, let us by no means forget that the Elector of Brandenburg, for his Prussian dominions, was the vassal of the Polish Republic. In the old Germanic Empire, the Emperor was elected by a "college" originally composed of seven "electors," three of whom were sovereign archbishops, and four were secular sovereigns. The number of the latter was subsequently increased to five by the elevation to the electorate of the Brandenburg principality, which in the course of time passed to the King of Prussia. This empire, which was practically a confederation of three hundred States under different rulers, lasted about nine hundred years; that is, from the beginning of the tenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth, when Napoleon I. abolished it and in its place formed under his own protectorate the Confederation of the Rhine, thereby severing Austria and Prussia from important German States upon which their influence had previously extended. On the fall of Napoleon, the changes had been so great in the economic and political conditions of Germany that it was found impossible to reconstitute the Empire, and in 1815 a German Confederation was formed, with a "Diet" (or parliament) sitting at Frankfort. The number of States was then reduced to forty, and was subsequently brought down to thirty-five by the extinction of "families." In 1866, a war between Prussia and Austria resulted in the defeat of the latter and the formation of the North German Confederation under the lead of the former. Then came the war with France in 1870, in which the South German States hastened to make common cause with their Northern brothers. Finally, in January, 1871, at Versailles, the new German Empire was proclaimed, with the King of Prussia as hereditary Emperor. The Empire is now composed of four kingdoms, six grand-duchies, five duchies, and seven principalities, besides the old free towns of Lubeck, Bremen, and Hamburg, and the conquered province of Alsace-Lorraine. There are two