THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO had been fought. For the second time the Parisians had been compelled to see the victorious allies within their walls—for the second time peace had been dictated to them; and the man who had filled two decades with his military genius and his ambition, who, not content with the splendid crown of France, had stretched forth his insatiable hands after a continental empire, now lay condemned to powerlessness, on the rock of St. Helena. But at the very time when, to the relief of the Bourbons, the light of the great Corsican’s life went out upon that world-renowned island, in both the Old World and the New, popular outbreaks against the restored princes and their medieval governments flamed up like a monstrous funeral pyre, a clear sign, had one been needed, that the day of freedom had not broken with Napoleon’s fall; that in his fall one insolent giant had but been replaced by a swarm of swaggering pygmies. Europe was indeed in need of peace after the enormous strain and excitement of so many years of war; but the peace with which the returning rulers blessed their people was such as to bring new convulsions on the Weary region. From the mouth of the Tagus to the Neva and the islands of the Grecian Archipelago all was effervescence and fermentation, and hot streams of national exasperation were poured upon those feudal dynasties which “had forgotten nothing and learned nothing”. Promises on the part of the princes; unrestrained devotion and satisfaction on the part of the people; a call for constitutional freedom; open and secret reaction; revolutions in the south; intervention of the areopagus of princes; abrogation of popular rights: this is in brief the history of the years 1816-1830.
One might have believed that the sovereigns had no less an aim in mind than to give to the world a new Golden Age. For on September 26th, 1815, Alexander, Czar of Russia, Francis, Emperor of Austria, and Frederic William III, King of Prussia, issued a proclamation wherein they announced their firm resolve, from that time forth, to adopt the Christian religion alone as their standard; to rule wholly in accordance with Christian love and peace, as well within their respective states as in their intercourse with foreign governments; to afford one another assistance in all cases, and to regard themselves merely as the plenipotentiaries of Providence appointed to rule three branches of one and the same family. Within the next few years all European sovereigns, with the exception of the King of England, the Pope, and the Sultan, entered this holy alliance. It was essentially the work of Alexander, who was influenced by a certain religious enthusiast, Fran von Krüdener. It was during the summer of 1815, in Heilbronn, Heidelberg, and Paris, that she aroused him to the formation of such a league by personal exhortations, naming him, in contrast with the “black angel” Napoleon, the “white angel of peace” and the chosen of the Lord.
Alexander, with all his susceptibility to such influences, was unquestionably the most important and influential of the monarchs of that time; but his nature was not of a greatness calculated to carry out successfully and to the advantage of Europe the part which he felt himself called upon to play—the Napoleon of peace. Of a yielding disposition and excitable temperament, he was much inclined toward magnificent creations and political reforms, and readily inflamed with noble ambitions. He was full of general good intentions, but energy and perseverance failed him, formidable hinderancesfrightened him, new persons rendered him untrue to his former resolutions and principles; and hence he easily gave the impression of an untrustworthy man. The brilliant successes of the last years of the war, the idolization he had met with in Paris, London, and Vienna, had changed his former modesty into inordinate self-esteem, and the pleasure with which he received the homage of princes and diplomats displayed a feminine vanity. Napoleon, in comparing the times of Tilsit and Erfurt with later years, found in him a “Byzantine Greek”, and named him the “Talma of the North”.
The judgment upon Alexander would have been a more favorable one, if it had not been that in all important questions another name was coupled with his—the name of a man who, more than he, was the true ruler of Europe. That man was Prince Metternich. From October 8th, 1809, until March 13th, 1848, he was minister of foreign affairs in Austria; and after 1821, when he celebrated his Italian triumphs, he also sustained the rank of chancellor. He was frivolous enough to wish, in the midst of entertainments and love affairs, to take into his hands the guidance of Europe. Not content to rule the motley empire of Austria after his very simple system, he wished to make Germany and Italy his prefectures, to treat the upward-striving Prussia as his vassal, and to take the lead everywhere. He knew how to conceal his limited knowledge by great versatility of expression in speech and on paper, to cloak his mean endowments as a statesman by a rigid adhesion to conservative principles. In the thirty-eight years of his ministerial activity he never and nowhere showed leading, creative thought; he worked everywhere merely for the law of inertia, of inactivity, and made himself at last so hated and despised that in 1848 a liberal minister, one of the so-called March ministers, was able to say, with universal assent, “I sum up the whole disgrace of the last decades in the name Metternich”. Playing before princes “the submissive courtier, corrupting diplomats by his fine-gentleman bearing, confounding the ambassadors of the lesser states by condescension and princely splendor”, he had exalted himself to a kind of oracle of whose title no one could give a satisfactory account. To carry conservatism to the point of absurdity and barbarous harshness, to forbid to the people all participation in the government, and reduce them to a tax-paying mass, to regard the princes not as the regents, but as the private possessors of their states, and to cause them to govern accordingly—these were the principles on Which turned the whole political wisdom of a man who, as Napoleon said, mistook intrigue for statesmanship.
How convenient for him must have been the phrases of the holy Alliance, speaking to the nations like a second Gospel, proclaiming the infallibility of the princes, those “plenipotentiaries of Providence!”. In regard to his own people, each sovereign was henceforth to wear in political matters the same halo as the Pope in matters spiritual, which, however, did not prevent the English diplomats from perpetrating their insular witticisms on the “triune monster” of the Eastern powers.
In his disinclination to allow his enjoyable life to be disturbed by political innovations, Metternich was in complete accord with his master, the “good” Emperor Francis. The latter enjoyed great popularity in Austria, and especially in Vienna. He passed there for a good-natured, benevolent monarch, who readily gave audience to each of his subjects, and entered into the details of their wishes; and he was master of the Austrian dialect in its broadest form. It was quite a different story when he saw his carefully hedged state threatened with innovations. “New ideas are being promulgated of which I cannot and will not approve. Abide by the old; for they are good, and our fathers have prospered under them—why should not we? I do not need savants, but brave citizens. It is your duty to educate the young to become such. He who serves me must learn what I command; he who cannot, or who comes to me with new ideas, can go, or I will dismiss him”. With this address to the professors of the Laibach Lyceum, he openly announced himself an absolute governor whose nod was law. He was, furthermore, so impressed with the idea of unlimited authority that he accorded to no one a lasting influence, and least of all to those who had the best right to it. Distrustful of himself, he was more so of others—of each superior, powerful personage—a thing which the most deserving of his generals, Schwarzenberg and Radetzky, and the most distinguished of his brothers, the Grand-dukes Charles and John, were compelled to learn by bitter experience. Even the clergy did not attain under him the position of an independent power; they were the assistants of the Imperial power, but not its rivals. Metternich was able to retain his post for so long a time by the fact that, owing to the very formation of his mind, he did not interfere in the emperor’s favorite department, latter had no inclination but for the minutiae, the details of government; while the former showed a dislike for details, and did not busy himself with the actual administration.
Austria must make herself felt, not by her military strength, but through the skill of her diplomats and the omnipresence of her police and her spies. This was Metternich’s chosen field, while the emperor found his pleasure in the details of the police system, which was developed under him into a system of espionage of the most unworthy sort. This was, however, admirably adapted to that patriarchal system in accordance with which the government, so far from denying its Oriental views, even dared to inculcate in its subjects the doctrine that the sovereign “has full power over their lives and property”. No less care was exercised in shutting up Austria against other lands. The influx of foreign intellects and intellectual products was guarded against like the smuggling in of the cattle plague. Study in foreign universities was forbidden. The entrance into Austrian schools of foreign teachers, and of scholars over ten years of age, was forbidden, and even for younger children special permission had to be obtained. The imparting of private instruction was rendered very difficult, permission being granted by the police only under oppressive conditions, and, even then, revocable every six years. All political literature, as well as modern histories, was subjected to strict censorship, with a view to police prohibition. For Austria, the German movement in the province of philosophy and theology, the progress in history and the natural sciences, did not exist. What was there permitted and pursued was the study of Oriental languages and literature, a little poetry, and by preference music, in order to charm the excited spirits into a soft world of sense, and to rock the empire into an Epimenidean sleep of years. And as for popular instruction, scarcely three-fifths of the children of school age attended school, and those who attended were, with their teachers, confined to a mechanical drill from which thewhy and wherefore were carefully excluded. The object was not to produce savants, but subjects and officials trained to blind obedience. For this purpose no guard and overseer could be more effective than the clergy. Upon their religious certificate depended every advance in the gymnasiums and universities, and confession was exacted from teachers and scholars six times yearly. It will readily be understood that the Protestants were much oppressed—hardly tolerated. Upon purchasing a house—upon assuming a trade—they were obliged to apply for a dispensation. To enter the military academy in Vienna Neustadt they must abjure their religion.
As to material interests the situation was not much better. There was scarcely a country in which business and industry were at so low an ebb as in Austria. Almost nothing had been done to unfetter the land and establish better relations between the tillers of the soil and its owners; and rich Austria, which under favorable agricultural laws and business conditions could have earned an enormous income from its grain export, produced scarcely enough for its own needs. The favorable situation on the Adriatic Sea, with the ports of Venice and Trieste, was sadly misused; the development of a prosperous merchant marine was hindered; and a good navy was looked upon as useless furniture, so that merchants were compelled to place their ships under the protection of the Turkish fleet against the insolence of the Barbary States. It was with a doubtful pride that the authorities could point to their German Austria as the land where, rather than in Italy, Spain, Germany, or France, the “old Europe” was still to be found.
HUNGARIAN DIET. GERMANY.
In its internal political development, also, Austria sought to remain as far behind as possible. In the year 1816 and the following years, in order to satisfy in some measure the requirements of the Act of Confederation, parliamentary representation had been introduced into the Germano-Slavonic provinces, or been re-established there. Since, however, the powers of these assemblies, of which the nobles and clergy had complete control, and which often began and ended on the same day, were limited to the granting of taxes and raising of recruits, they soon sunk to a mere formality—to expensive “farces”, as Stein said—which might just as well have been replaced by any sort of decree-issuing machine. The nobility, which was without education or patriotism, leading, according to the expression of one of its members, a “polypus” life, had neither the will nor the ability to play a part in politics; and the people, growing up in uncertain striving for their daily bread, or sunk in sybaritic indulgence, had no inclination for public affairs. Yet, even in Austria, the time could not pass wholly without a memento mori. The emperor and his Metternich had succeeded in lulling all the German provinces to sleep, in, taming the obstinate Diet, and in leading back student-like South Germany to a quiet, tradesmanlike state of being; but the Hungarian heath, they found, nourishes wild and spirited steeds. For fourteen years the Hungarian Reichstag, which ought constitutionally to have assembled every three years, was not called together; and, spite of all opposition, government business was conducted by commissioners and soldiers, who impressed recruits and collected the taxes. But though the Hungarians bent before superior force, they still abode by their protest. At hint, too, the arrears of taxes reached a serious figure. At the very same time—it was in the year 1825—there was every reason for not pushing affairs to an extreme, for in consequence of the Grecian war of independence there was fear of a war between Russia and Turkey, and hence of complications on the lower Danube. Unless the object were to bring about an open revolt in Hungary, the dissatisfaction could not be allowed to increase further. So Metternich himself advised giving way, and the Hungarian Reichstag was opened in Presburg in September, 1825. Here bitter complaints about the policy of the Hapsburgs—their inclination toward absolutism, their disregard of constitutional rights—soon found expression; and when the emperor spoke of the “mad endeavors of innovators and of punishment of the disobedient”, he was compelled, in order to check the excitement caused thereby, to interpret his “misunderstood words” into a recognition of the rights of the Reichstag. There the matter rested; and, after an existence of almost two years, the Reichstag separated without having effected much more than the sharper definition of its rights, and their definite recognition by the crown. The policy of suspense and passivity had gained the victory.
Another field of activity presented itself to Metternich in Germany. Here, owing to late events, several hundred independent states had been mediatized—absorbed in their neighbors—and a league of thirty-nine sovereign states founded. Great hopes attached themselves to this transformation. The need born of long oppression had once more given the name “fatherland” a meaning —the exaltation and self-sacrifice of the war of freedom, the victory won by the common efforts of all German peoples, had awakened their national feeling and roused them to a consciousness of their natural union. Princely proclamations, ministerial explanations, and the judgment of the foremost patriots, all seemed to show that the time had come for the formation of a united “fatherland”, strong without, free within. As to the details of the national structure there were differences of opinion.
The first thing to be considered was the interior structure of the individual states. From the Lake of Constance to the Baltic Sea resounded the demand for a constitution. Even the articles of confederation had been compelled to take notice of this, and in the 13th article was the following: “In all countries of the Confederation there will be [originally, ‘shall be’] a constitution with representation”. In this, however, nothing was said about the when and how, and a broad field left to the of individual sovereigns. A beginning in the path of progress was made by Charles Augustus, Grand-duke of Saxe-Weimar, who had up to that time been known as the Mecenas of Germany’s greatest poets. In full harmony with the Estates of the land he granted, in May, 1816, a constitution, which contains all the essential points of modern state life—viz., representation of all citizens, right of voting taxes, freedom of the Press. But among all the north German princes he stood alone. In time north the aristocracy was still too powerful, and with too slight a comprehension of the times to yield any of its old privileges, or tolerate any other sort of representation of the estates than one in which there was no semblance of a proper representation of the middle and lower classes, one in which the different estates, still in part divided, debated as “little chambers”, the nobles having the preponderance. Outside of Weimar there was not in all north Germany a constitution granting representation in which the people as such, and not the separate estates, were represented. In Saxony, Mecklenburg, Hanover, Brunswick, Oldenburg, the aristocratic system was in force as well after the Act of Confederation as before it.
The comical element among these medieval forms was represented in the seventy-year-old Elector William I of Hesse, who had been in banishment from 1806 to 1813, and who had been one of those whose lands were converted into the kingdom of Westphalia. Upon his return he struck out those years completely, and set everything so exactly upon the footing of the year 1806 that he even recalled to their former barracks the regiments furloughed in November of that year, and censured the commandant of Hanau because he had not delivered the quarterly report of the fortress since that time. The soldiers once more wore cues and powder, the pensioned officials were reinstated, the new laws abolished, and the purchasers of the crown-lands disposed of by the Westphalian Government were compelled to restore the same without compensation; and yet he offered his people a constitution which was not among the worst, and which included representation of the whole people. Since, however, owing to his notorious avarice, he wished to have free scope in financial matters, would not consent to a separation of the public purse from his private one, and would grant no right to levy taxes, the negotiations miscarried, the delegates were sent home, and Hesse remained without a constitution.
SOUTH GERMANY
Matters took another form in south Germany, where the princes, in order to amalgamate the old and the new parts of their lands, and to break the opposition of the mediatized nobles, took the lead in the introduction of liberal constitutions. They were led to this action furthermore by the consideration that through the means of liberal constitutions they could the more readily escape the ascendency and consequent oppression of the great powers; and they moved all the more emphatically upon the path of liberalism, since the reactionary system was in force with the great powers of Germany. So King Maximilian of Bavaria, in the year 1818, granted a constitution, which Stein greeted as a significant advance in the constitutional career. In August of that year Grand-duke Charles of Baden gave a still more liberal one, in order to outbid the hated Bavaria, which would fain round out its own dominions by the possession of the Maine and Tauber districts. In the following year, 1819, the contest over a constitution came to an end in Würtemberg. In that state King Frederic had taken the initiative, but had died during the conflicts that arose. His son William resumed the negotiations immediately upon his accession, and after a struggle of three years with the Estates, which showed no wisdom or enlightenment in the whole matter, agreed with them upon a constitution. This constitution was the more readily accepted, since at that time the storm of the diplomatic conference at Carlsbad threatened to break. In consequence of these precedents Hesse-Darmstadt was also forced to yield to the pressure of the people (December, 1820). In Nassau, after the death of the prince, the constitution given in 1814 was as far as possible neutralized by the bureaucratic minister Marschall. It was not until 1818 that the first parliament (which, by the way, Stein was obliged to leave), was opened.
Before the and the illegal measures of the east and north, the aspirations after freedom had taken refuge in the south German chambers, and had there made themselves a place. The question was, whether the position could be maintained, whether new alliances could not be formed, whether Prussia could not be drawn into the liberal current. King Frederic William III had, in his decree of May 22d, 1815, expressly promised a general representation of the people, and set the limit of time within which a commission of delegates and royal officials should meet to draw up a constitution. The time elapsed, but the commission was not called together, for the king was no longer in the hands of those who during the last three years had led him to victory. In political matters Frederic William III proved himself a man of wavering and undecided character. He had no comprehension of the aspirations of a new period, but saw in each movement of the people, even though wholly intellectual, future revolution. He loved to bury himself in theological studies and fashions. He possessed all the virtues of a simple, honorable father of a family, but was not richly enough gifted for the government of a great kingdom; he felt no call to set himself at the head of the new Germany, to compel the second-rate German states—Bavaria, Saxony, etc.—into his orbit, and to leave Austria no other choice than either to abdicate in Germany, or to break completely with her former policy. Instead of this he gave himself up more and more to the extreme reactionary party and sought the advice of his most pliant courtiers, such as Prince Wittgenstein. In his chancellor, von Hardenberg, he found a minister, but no character. Although Hardenberg was inclined toward a constitutional system, yet at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle he allowed himself to be brought over to the party of the Berlin nobles and the Austrian policy by Prince Metternich, who knew no more terrible spectre than a liberal Prussia. Under such conditions nothing else could be expected than that the king, out of good nature and thankfulness toward his self-sacrificing subjects, should promise a constitution, but that the fulfillment of his promise should be constantly postponed, and finally wholly abandoned. On this point Bishop Eylert expresses himself in the naivest manner in his defense of the theological sovereign: “The king has acted like a wise father, who, touched by the devoted love of his children upon his birthday or his recovery from illness, is in a kindly humor, and consents to their wishes; but afterward, upon consideration, he modifies his assent, and asserts his natural authority”.
Between the 22d of May and the 1st of September, the limit set for the meeting of the commission, appeared Privy-councillor Schmalz’s denunciation. Although a brother-in-law of the noble Scharnhorst, this man in a badly-written pamphlet reproached the German patriots with revolutionary machinations, and attributed to them the most atrocious plans for the overthrow of all the existing states and the attainment of German unity. With these plans he connected the Tugendbund