Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/220

 armed force. This action accorded with the universal will of the population of the Palatinate, with the exception, perhaps, of a very few civil and military officers.

The terrible confusion which the refusal of the king of Prussia to accept the imperial crown under the national constitution had brought upon all Germany came now to light in an almost grotesque manner. As already mentioned, the national parliament had, on the 4th of May, summoned “the governments, the legislative bodies, the communes of the several German states, the whole German people, to see to it that the constitution of the German Empire be generally recognized and practically introduced.” Inasmuch as the king of Bavaria would not recognize the national constitution, the Pfaelzers felt themselves justified in rising against the Bavarian government, for they only obeyed the national parliament, which they regarded as the highest national authority in Germany. The “Committee for the Defense of the Country,” therefore, quite logically applied to the national parliament through their representatives in that body, and to the national central power, for recognition, protection, and support. The national central power, at the head of which stood the Austrian Archduke Johann, thereupon sent an imperial commissioner, Dr. Eisenstuck, to the Palatinate with the instruction “to take in the name of the imperial power all measures necessary for the restoration of the laws in that country,” and especially to see to it that some of the resolutions adopted by the “Committee for the Defense of the Country” be rescinded. The imperial commissioner, after due investigation, declared those resolutions to be invalid, but he recognized the “Committee for the Defense of the Country” and for the execution of the national constitution as fully competent to organize an armed power and to swear in the members thereof