THE YEAR 1870 WILL long remain memorable in the annals of Europe. For in that year occurred a great and decisive war whose outcome was destined to exercise a large and profound influence upon the history of the subsequent period; whose consequences were to prove pervasive, far-reaching and unhappy, just as the four terrible years through which the world has recently passed will inevitably determine the future of the world for many decades to come. There was a certain tragic unity to that intervening period between the Franco-Prussian War and the World War, the shadow of the former, the dread of the latter hovering over the minds of men, full of menace, inspiring a recurrent sense of uneasiness and alarm. All the various streams of activity, all the different movements, national and international, social and economic, intellectual and spiritual, all the complex and diverse phenomena of the life of Europe during that crowded half-century took their form and color largely from the memory of war, the fear of war, the preparation for war. A period like that is surely worth studying. Indeed only if men acquire or possess a just understanding of it, only if they retain a vivid sense of its lessons and its warnings, will they be able to avert a repetition of its horrors, only thus will they have the aid of either chart or compass on their voyage into the future.
But apart from this general feeling of insecurity and apprehension, inspired by the Franco-Prussian War, that war had several immediate and specific consequences which must inevitably render the year 1870 notable in the history of modern times and which furnish a proper starting-point for this narrative. The war of 1870 completed the unification of Germany and created the German Empire. It completed, also, the unification of Italy, by giving to the kingdom, as its capital, the incomparable city of Rome. It overthrew the Second Empire in France and produced the Third Republic. It robbed France of Alsace-Lorraine for the benefit of Germany and thus embedded militarism in the life of Europe.
Of course, adequately to understand events of such moment we would be obliged to review the period before 1870, for the founding of the German Empire, of the Italian Kingdom, and of the French Republic was not something hastily improvised in that year as a result of the war. Each of these achievements had a long history behind it; each was the product of a long process of evolution. The year 1870 was only a year of culmination and fruition, the end of one period, the beginning of another.
From such a review as would satisfactorily explain the rise of modern Italy and Germany, their achievement of nationality after centuries of disunion, we are precluded here. Yet a slight sketch of the history of this remarkable transformation may be of value and, indeed, is necessary if we would have the background essential for the proper appreciation of the later period.
A century ago Italy was not a body politic; it was only a geographical expression. There was no Italian nation, but there existed within the peninsula ten small and entirely separate states, among which the most important were the Kingdom of Piedmont or Sardinia, the Grand-Duchy of Tuscany, the Papal States, the Kingdom of Naples and the two rich provinces in the north, Lombardy and Venetia, which belonged to Austria. There was no form of political union among these states, not even that of a loose confederation, as in the case of Germany. Consequently, there was no Italian flag, no Italian reigning house, no Italian citizenship, no Italian army. Out of this jumble of petty, independent states arose, in the great decade between 1859 and 1870, the present unified Kingdom of Italy.
All through the nineteenth century there were those who felt that these millions of Italians ought to be united into a single nation, that only thus could they occupy a position in the world worthy of their past, and one that would ensure a happier future. The most thrilling and persuasive spokesman of this national aspiration was Joseph Mazzini, who lived from 1805 to 1872. Even as a boy Mazzini was impressed with the unhappiness and misery of his country, subdivided, as it was, into numerous jealous and warring states. “In the midst of the noisy, tumultuous life of the students around me I was,” he says in his autobiography, “somber and absorbed and appeared like one suddenly grown old. I childishly determined to dress always in black, fancying myself in mourning for my country.” At the age of twenty-five Mazzini was thrown into prison because of his liberalism. After his release from prison, he founded a society called “Young Italy” which was destined to be an important factor in making the new Italy. Its object was to create, by persuasion and by action, a single country, common to all. Only those under forty were to be admitted to membership, because Mazzini’s appeal was particularly to the young. “Place youth at the head of the insurgent multitude,” he said; “you know not the secret of the power hidden in these youthful hearts, nor the magic influence exercised on the masses by the voice of youth. You will find among the young a host of apostles of the new religion.” With Mazzini the liberation and unification of Italy was indeed a new religion, appealing to the loftiest emotions, entailing complete self-sacrifice, complete absorption in the ideal, and the young were to be its apostles. Theirs was to be a missionary life. He told them to travel, to bear from land to land, from village to village, the torch of liberty, to expound its advantages to the people, to establish and consecrate the cult. Let them not quail before the horrors of torture and imprisonment that might await them in the holy cause. “Ideas grow quickly when watered with the blood of martyrs.” Never did a cause have a more dauntless leader, a man of purity of life, a man of imagination, of poetry, of audacity, gifted, moreover, with a marvelous command of persuasive language and with burning enthusiasm in his heart. The response was overwhelming. By 1833 the society reckoned 60,000 members. Branches were founded everywhere. Garibaldi, whose name men were later to conjure with, joined it on the shores of the Black Sea. This is the romantic proselyting movement of the nineteenth century, all the more remarkable from the fact that its members were unknown men, bringing to their work no advantage of wealth or social position. But, as their leader wrote later, “All great national movements begin with the unknown men of the people, without influence except for the faith and will that counts not time or difficulties.”
Mazzini believed that the first thing to do in bringing about the unification of Italy was to drive Austria out of the country. Austrians were foreigners; yet they held the two richest provinces in the peninsula, Lombardy and Venetia, and so great were their resources and their power that they dominated, more or less directly, the other states. Only if they were expelled could the Italians unite and control their own destinies. They could be driven out only by war, and Mazzini believed that the Italians were numerous enough and brave enough to carry through, alone and unaided, this necessary work of liberation. After the war should succeed, Mazzini hoped and urged that Italy should be proclaimed a republic, one and indivisible. Mazzini worked at a great disadvantage, as he was early expelled from his own country and was compelled to spend nearly all his lifetime as an exile in London, hampered by paltry resources, and cut off from that intimate association with his own people which is so essential to effective leadership.
Italy was not made as Mazzini wished it to be; nevertheless is he one of the chief of the makers of Italy. He and the society he founded constituted a leavening, quickening force in the realm of ideas. Around them grew up a patriotism for a country that existed as yet only in the imagination.
Italy was made by a man who was of an utterly different type from Mazzini, Count Camillo di Cavour, one of the greatest statesmen and diplomatists in the nineteenth century. Cavour’s mind was the opposite of Mazzini’s, practical, positive, not poetical and speculative. He desired the unity and the independence of Italy. He hated Austria as the oppressor of his country, as an oppressor everywhere. But, unlike Mazzini, he did not underestimate her power, nor did he overestimate the power of his own countrymen. Cavour believed, as did all the patriots, that Austria must be driven out of Italy before any Italian regeneration could be achieved. But he did not believe with Mazzini and others that the Italians could accomplish this feat alone. In his opinion the history of the last forty years had shown that plots and insurrections would not avail. It was essential to win the aid of a great military power comparable in strength and discipline to Austria.
Cavour was a thoroughgoing liberal in all his convictions and principles. He was a great admirer of the political institutions of England, which he desired to see introduced into his own country. Night after night he had sat in the gallery of the House of Commons, seeking to make himself thoroughly familiar with its modes of procedure. If he was to study parliamentary institutions anywhere, it must be abroad, for in none of the states in Italy was there even a semblance of a parliament. Cavour demanded a parliament for his own state, the Kingdom of Piedmont. “Italy,” he said, “must make herself by means of liberty, or we must give up trying to make her.”
Now in 1848 the Kingdom of Piedmont did become a parliamentary and constitutional state. Previously the king had ruled as autocrat; henceforth he was to share his power with his people. This gave Cavour his opportunity. He was elected to the first Piedmontese parliament, was taken into the cabinet in 1850, and became prime minister in 1852. He held this position for the remainder of his life, with the exception of a few weeks, proving himself a great statesman and an incomparable diplomat.
Cavour considered that the only possible leader in the work of freeing and unifying Italy was the House of Savoy and the Piedmontese monarchy, and he felt that the proper government of the new state, if it should ever arise, would be a constitutional monarchy. He wished to make Piedmont a model state so that, when the time came, the Italians of other states would recognize her leadership and join in her exaltation as best for them all. Piedmont had a constitution and the other states had not. Cavour saw to it that she had a free political life and received a genuine training in self-government. Also he bent every energy to the development of the economic resources of the kingdom, by encouraging manufactures, by stimulating commerce, by modernizing agriculture, by building railroads. In a word he sought to make and did make Piedmont a model small state, liberal and progressive, hoping thus to win for her the Italians of the other states and the interest and approval of the countries and rulers of Western Europe.
The fundamental purpose, the constant preoccupation of this man’s life, determining every action, prompting every wish, was to gain a Great Power as an ally. In the pursuit of this elusive and supremely difficult object, year in, year out, Cavour displayed his measure as a diplomat, and stood forth finally without a peer. It is a marvelously absorbing story, from which we are precluded here because it cannot be properly presented except at length. The reader must go elsewhere for the details of this fascinating record, in which were combined, in rare harmony, sound judgment, practical sense, powers of clear, subtle, penetrating thought, unfailing attention to prosaic details, with imagination, audacity, courage, and iron nerve.
Cavour’s purpose was to unite Italy. Italy could not be united unless Austria were driven out. Austria could not be driven out except by war, and in a war Austria’s military power would be far greater than that of Piedmont. Piedmont must, therefore, have an ally whose military power would be equal to that of Austria. As France was the only other great military power on the Continent, Cavour sought to win the support of the ruler of that country, Napoleon III. He succeeded in 1858 and Napoleon promised to help Piedmont expel Austria from Italy, and to free Italy “from the Alps to the Adriatic.” This was the greatest triumph of Cavour’s life, as it rendered everything else possible.
Thus in 1859 there came about a war between Austria on the one hand and Piedmont and France on the other. The latter were victorious in two great battles, that of Magenta (June 4) and of Solferino (June 24). Solferino was one of the greatest battles of the nineteenth century. It lasted eleven hours, more than 260,000 men were engaged, nearly 800 cannon. The Allies lost over 17,000 men, the Austrians about 22,000. All Lombardy was conquered, and Milan was occupied. It seemed that Venetia could be easily overrun and the termination of Austrian rule in Italy effected, and Napoleon’s statement that he would free Italy “from the Alps to the Adriatic” accomplished. Suddenly Napoleon halted in the full tide of success, sought an interview with the Emperor of Austria at Villafranca, and there on July 11, without consulting the wishes of his ally, concluded a famous armistice. The terms agreed upon by the two Emperors were: that Lombardy should pass to Piedmont, that Austria should retain Venetia, that the Italian states should form a confederation, that the rulers of Tuscany and Modena should be restored to their states, whence they had just been driven by popular uprisings.
This was not what Cavour and the Italian liberals wanted. They wished to be entirely free of Austrian influence, they wished the unity of Italy and not a confederation of small Italian states, they did not desire or intend to restore the petty princes they had overthrown, they wished the extension of the rule of the House of Savoy over the entire peninsula. All that Napoleon had done had been to secure Lombardy for Piedmont, an important service, yet far below what he had promised.
But the future of Italy was not to be determined solely by the Emperor of France and the Emperor of Austria. The people of Italy had their own ideas and were resolved to make them heard. During the war, so suddenly and unexpectedly closed, the rulers of Modena, Parma, Tuscany had been overthrown by popular uprisings and the Pope’s authority in Romagna, the northern part of his dominions, had been destroyed. The people who had accomplished this had no intention of restoring the princes they had expelled. They defied the two emperors who had decided at Villafranca that those rulers should be restored. In this they were supported diplomatically by the English Government. This was England’s great service to the Italians. “The people of the duchies have as much right to change their sovereigns,” said Lord Palmerston, “as the English people, or the French, or the Belgian, or the Swedish. The annexation of the duchies to Piedmont will be an unfathomable good to Italy.” The people of these states voted almost unanimously in favor of annexation (March 11-12, 1860). Victor Emmanuel, King of Piedmont, accepted the sovereignty thus offered him, and on April 2, 1860, the first parliament of the enlarged kingdom met in Turin. A small state of less than 5,000,000 had grown to one of 11,000,000 within a year. This was the most important change in the political system of Europe since 1815.
Napoleon III acquiesced in all this, taking for himself Savoy and Nice in return for services rendered. The Peace of Villafranca was never enforced.
Much had been achieved in the eventful year just described, but much remained to be achieved before the unification of Italy should be complete. Venetia, the larger part of the Papal States, and the Kingdom of Naples still stood outside. In the last, however, events now occurred which carried the process a long step forward. Early in 1860 the Sicilians rose in revolt against the despotism of their new king, Francis II. This insurrection created an opportunity for a man already famous but destined to fame far greater and to a memorable service to his country, Giuseppe Garibaldi, already the most popular military leader in Italy, and invested with a half-mythical character of invincibility and daring, the result of a very spectacular, romantic career.
Garibaldi was born at Nice in 1807. He was therefore two years younger than Mazzini and three years older than Cavour. Destined by his parents for the priesthood he preferred the sea, and for many years he lived a roving and adventurous sailor’s life. He early joined “Young Italy.” His military experience was chiefly in irregular, guerrilla fighting. He took part in the unsuccessful insurrection organized by Mazzini in Savoy in 1834, and as a result was condemned to death. He managed to escape to South America, where, for the next fourteen years, he was an exile. He participated in the abundant wars of the South American states with the famous “Italian Legion,” which he organized and commanded. Learning of the uprising of 1848 he returned to Italy, though still under the penalty of death, and immediately thousands flocked to the standard of the “hero of Montevideo” to fight under him against the Austrians. After the failure of that campaign he went, in 1849, to Rome to assume the military defense of the republic. When the city was about to fall he escaped with four thousand troops, intending to attack the Austrian power in Venetia. French and Austrian armies pursued him. He succeeded in evading them, but his army dwindled away rapidly and the chase became so hot that he was forced to escape to the Adriatic. When he landed later, his enemies were immediately in full cry again, hunting him through forests and over mountains as if he were some dangerous game. It was a wonderful exploit, rendered tragic by the death, in a farmhouse near Ravenna, of his wife Anita, who was his companion in the camp as in the home, and who was as high-spirited, as daring, as courageous as he. Garibaldi finally escaped to America and began once more the life of an exile. But his story, shot through and through with heroism and chivalry and romance, moved the Italian people to unwonted depths of enthusiasm and admiration.
For several years Garibaldi was a wanderer, sailing the seas, commander of a Peruvian bark. For some months, indeed, he was a candle maker on Staten Island, but in 1854 he returned to Italy and settled down as a farmer on the little island of Caprera. But the events of 1859 once more brought him out of his retirement. Again, as a leader of volunteers, he plunged into the war against Austria and immensely increased his reputation. He had become the idol of soldiers and adventurous spirits from one end of Italy to the other. Multitudes were ready to follow in blind confidence wherever he might lead. His name was one to conjure with. There now occurred, in 1860, the most brilliant episode of his career, the Sicilian expedition and the campaign against the Kingdom of Naples. For Garibaldi, the most redoubtable warrior of Italy, whose very name was worth an army, now decided on his own account to go to the aid of the Sicilians who had risen in revolt against their king, Francis II of Naples.
On May 5, 1860, the expedition of “The Thousand,” the “Red Shirts,” embarked from Genoa in two steamers. These were the volunteers, nearly 1,150 men, whom Garibaldi’s fame had caused to rush into the new adventure, an adventure that seemed at the moment one of utter folly. The King of Naples had 24,000 troops in Sicily and 100,000 more on the mainland. The odds against success seemed overwhelming. But fortune favored the brave. After a campaign of a few weeks, in which he was several times in great danger, and was only saved by the most reckless fighting, Garibaldi stood master of the island, helped by the Sicilian insurgents, by volunteers who had flocked from the mainland, and by the incompetency of the commanders of the Neapolitan troops. Audacity had won the victory. He assumed the position of Dictator in Sicily in the name of Victor Emmanuel II (August 5, 1860).
Garibaldi now crossed the straits to the mainland determined to conquer the entire Kingdom of Naples (August 19, 1860). The King still had an army of 100,000 men, but it had not even the strength of a frail reed. There was practically no bloodshed. The Neapolitan Kingdom was not overthrown; it collapsed. Treachery, desertion, corruption did the work. On September 6, Francis II left Naples for Gaeta and the next day Garibaldi entered it by rail with only a few attendants, and drove through the streets amid a pandemonium of enthusiasm. In less than five months he had conquered a kingdom of 11,000,000 people, an achievement unique in modern history.
Garibaldi now began to talk of pushing on to Rome. To Cavour, the situation seemed full of danger. Garibaldi, a tempestuous soldier himself and a leader of tempestuous soldiers, was totally lacking in the qualities of a statesman. To him everything was a matter for action, immediate action, and he had no conception of the extraordinary complexity and delicacy of international relations. Should he now attack Rome, all that had been achieved in this wonderful year would be imperiled. For Rome was the center of Roman Catholicism, the seat of the Pope’s temporal dominions, and the Pope’s power was supported by a French garrison. Napoleon III felt bound, in view of the strong Catholic sentiment of his countrymen, to continue to support that power. A clash with him must, by all means, be avoided, and Garibaldi was heading straight toward such a clash. Here was an adjustment that might be made by diplomacy; it could not be made by the sword.
Cavour, therefore, resolved to block any further activity of Garibaldi. He secured the assent of Napoleon III to the annexation by Victor Emmanuel of the outlying sections of the Papal States, the Marches, and Umbria, promising in turn not to touch the city of Rome and the territory immediately surrounding it. This being arranged, Victor Emmanuel marched southward, took the leadership from Garibaldi and completed the conquest of the Kingdom of Naples, not quite finished by the latter. Thereupon referendums were held in the Marches, Umbria, and the Kingdom of Naples, resulting overwhelmingly in favor of annexation to the new Kingdom of Italy.
On the 18th of February, 1861, a new Parliament, representing all Italy except Venetia and Rome, met in Turin. The Kingdom of Sardinia now gave way to the Kingdom of Italy, proclaimed on March 17. Victor Emmanuel II was declared “by the grace of God and the will of the nation, King of Italy.”
A new kingdom, comprising a population of about twenty-two millions, had arisen during a period of eighteen months, and now took its place among the powers of Europe. But the Kingdom of Italy was still incomplete. Venetia was still Austrian and Rome was still subject to the Pope. The acquisition of these had to be postponed.
Nevertheless, Cavour felt that “without Rome there was no Italy,” and he was working on a scheme which he hoped might reconcile the Pope and the Catholic world everywhere to the recognition of Rome as the capital of the new kingdom, when he suddenly fell ill and died on June 6, 1861.
Throughout his life Cavour remained faithful to his fundamental political principle, government by parliament and by constitutional forms. Urged at various times to assume a dictatorship he replied that he had no confidence in dictatorships. “I always feel strongest,” he said, “when Parliament is sitting.” “I cannot betray my origin, deny the principles of all my life,” he wrote in a private letter not intended for the public. “I am the son of liberty and to her I owe all that I am. If a veil is to be placed on her statue, it is not for me to do it.”
From 1815 to 1866 there were between thirty and forty independent German states, united in a very loose and ineffective confederation. There was no German nation, as we understand the term. There was no king or emperor of Germany. There was no German flag. No one was, properly speaking, a German citizen. He was a Prussian, or Austrian, or Bavarian or Saxon citizen, as the case might be. The federal government had no diplomatic representatives in the other countries of Europe, but each state had, or could have, its own diplomatic corps. The German as German had no legal standing abroad – only as a citizen of one of the separate states. Each state could make alliances with the others or with non-German states.
All this was changed during the years from 1866 to 1871. German liberals and patriots had long been discontented with this loose and weak confederation, which was a mockery of a nation, and had long desired to achieve that unity and strength which France and England had achieved much earlier. This feeling of dissatisfaction, and this passionate aspiration, had, for decades, been expressed by many men and on many occasions. In 1848, a year of revolution for Germany, an earnest attempt had been made to achieve German unity, to create a strong German state. But the attempt had failed. Nearly twenty years later the attempt was renewed, but under very different auspices. In 1848 it had been the liberals who had tried to achieve German unity, by persuasion, by argument, by democratic methods, and in the interest of democracy. In 1866 leadership rested with Bismarck, who hated democracy, who hated constitutions, who admired absolute monarchy, the House of Hohenzollern and the Kingdom of Prussia. Indeed, Bismarck’s political ideas centered in his ardent belief in the Prussian monarchy. It had been the Prussian kings, he said, not the Prussian people, who had made Prussia great. This, the great historic fact, must be preserved, whatever else might be changed in the course of time. What Prussian kings had done, they still would do. Any reduction of royal power would only be damaging to the state. Bismarck was the uncompromising foe of the attempts made in 1848 to achieve German unity, because he thought that it should be the princes and not the people who should determine the institutions and destinies of Germany. “I look for Prussian honor in Prussia’s abstinence before all things from every shameful union with democracy,” was one of his famous phrases. And another was this: “Not by speeches and majority votes are the great questions of the day decided – that was the great blunder of 1848 and 1849 – but by blood and iron”; in other words, the army, not parliament, would determine the future of Prussia.
This “blood and iron” policy was bitterly denounced by liberals, but Bismarck ignored their criticisms and soon found a chance to begin its application. He became the chief minister of King William I in 1862 and was destined to remain the chief minister for nearly thirty years, until he was dismissed in 1890 by William II. During that time he increased the territory of Prussia and remodeled Germany, making her a powerful empire and the center of the European state system.
Bismarck’s political views were entirely sympathetic to King William I, who likewise believed that the monarch and the army should control and shape the destinies of Prussia and of Germany. William I himself wrote, in 1849, that “whoever wishes to rule Germany must conquer it, and that cannot be done by phrases.”
The German Empire was the result of the policy of blood and iron as carried out by Prussia in three wars which were crowded into the brief period of six years, the war with Denmark in 1864, with Austria in 1866, and with France in 1870, each one of which was desired and provoked by Bismarck.
In the first war Prussia and Austria combined and attacked Denmark after having given her an ultimatum allowing her only forty-eight hours to comply with their demands, which, indeed, they did not expect or intend that she should accept. The two great powers easily defeated the one small one and then they took from her the two provinces of Schleswig and Holstein, which they forthwith proceeded to hold in common.
This situation was one that exactly suited Bismarck, for he wanted a quarrel with Austria and a quarrel can easily be brought about between two robbers over the question as to how they are to dispose of their spoils. Bismarck had for ten years desired a war with Austria because in the German Confederation Austria was the leading power and Bismarck wished that position for Prussia. He also wished German unity, but he wished it to be achieved by Prussia and for Prussia’s advantage. This could not be done as long as Austria remained connected with the other German states. In Bismarck’s opinion there was not room enough in Germany for both powers. That being the case, he wished the room for Prussia. The only way to get it was to take it. As Austria had no intention of yielding gracefully there would have to be a fight.
Finally war broke out in June, 1866. Bismarck had thus brought about his dream of a conflict between peoples of the same race to determine the question of control. It proved to be one of the shortest wars in history, one of the most decisive, and one whose consequences were most momentous. It is called the Seven Weeks’ War. It began June 16, 1866, was virtually decided on July 3d, Was brought to a close before the end of that month by the preliminary Peace of Nikolsburg, July 26, which was followed a month later by the definitive Peace of Prague, August 23. Prussia had no German allies of any importance. Several of the North German states sided with her, but these were small and their armies were unimportant. On the other hand, Austria was supported by the four kingdoms, Bavaria, Würtemberg, Saxony, and Hanover; also by Hesse-Cassel, Hesse-Darmstadt, Nassau, and Baden. But Prussia had one important ally, Italy, without whose aid she might not have won the victory. Italy was to receive Venetia, which she coveted, if Austria were defeated. The Prussian army, however, was better prepared. For years the rulers of Prussia had been preparing for war, perfecting the army down to the minutest detail, and with scientific thoroughness, and when the war began it was absolutely ready. Moreover, it was directed by a very able leader, General von Moltke.
Prussia had many enemies. Being absolutely prepared, as her enemies were not, she could assume the offensive, and this was the cause of her first victories. War began June 16. Within three days Prussian troops had occupied Hanover, Dresden, and Cassel, the capitals of her three North German enemies. A few days later the Hanoverian army was forced to capitulate. The King of Hanover and the Elector of Hesse were taken prisoners of war. All North Germany was now controlled by Prussia, and within two weeks of the opening of the war she was ready to attempt the great plan of Moltke, an invasion of Bohemia. The rapidity of the campaign struck Europe with amazement. Moltke sent three armies by different routes into Bohemia, and on July 3, 1866, one of the great battles of history, that of Königgrätz, or Sadowa, was fought. Each army numbered over 200,000, the Prussians outnumbering the Austrians, though not at the beginning. Since the battle of Leipsic in 1813, so many troops had not been engaged in a single conflict. King William, Bismarck, and Moltke took up their position on a hill, whence they could view the scene. The battle was long and doubtful. Beginning early in the morning, it continued for hours, fought with terrific fury, the Prussians making no advance against the Austrian artillery. Up to two o’clock it seemed an Austrian victory, but with the arrival of the Prussian Crown Prince with his army the issue was turned, and at half-past three the Austrians were beaten and their retreat began. They had lost over forty thousand men, while the Prussian loss was about ten thousand. The Prussian army during the next three weeks advanced to within sight of the spires of Vienna.
On June 24 the Austrians had been victorious over the Italians at Custozza. Yet the Italians had helped Prussia by detaining eighty thousand Austrian troops, which, had they been at Königgrätz, would probably have turned the day. The Italian fleet was also defeated by the Austrian at Lissa, July 20.
The results of the Seven Weeks’ War were momentous. Fearing the intervention of Europe, and particularly that of France, which was threatened, and which might rob the victory of its fruits, Bismarck wished to make peace at once, and consequently offered lenient terms to Austria. She was to cede Venetia to Italy, but was to lose no other territory. She was to withdraw from the German Confederation, which, indeed, was to cease to exist. She was to allow Prussia to organize and lead a new confederation, composed of those states which were north of the river Main. The South German states were left free to act as they chose. Thus Germany, north of the Main, was to be united.
Having accomplished this, Prussia proceeded to make important annexations to her own territory. The Kingdom of Hanover, the Duchies of Nassau and Hesse-Cassel, and the free city of Frankfort, as well as the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, were incorporated in the Prussian kingdom. Her population was thereby increased by over four and a half million new subjects, and thus was about twenty-four million. There was no thought of having the people of these states vote on the question of annexation, as had been done in Italy, and in Savoy and Nice. They were annexed forthwith by right of military conquest. Reigning houses ceased to rule on order from Berlin. Unwisely for themselves European nations allowed the swift consummation of these changes, which altered the balance of power and the map of Europe – a mistake which France in particular was to repent most bitterly. “I do not like this dethronement of dynasties,” said the Czar, but he failed to express his dislike in action.
The North German Confederation, which was now created, included all of Germany north of the river Main, twenty-two states in all. The constitution was the work of Bismarck. There was to be a president of the Confederation, namely, the King of Prussia. There was to be a Federal Council (Bundesrath), composed of delegates sent by the sovereigns of the different states, to be recalled at their pleasure, to vote as they dictated. Prussia was always to have seventeen votes out of the total forty-three. In order to have a majority she would have to gain only a few adherents from the other states, which she could easily do.
There was also to be a Reichstag, elected by the people. This was Bismarck’s concession to the Liberals. Of the two bodies the Reichstag was much the less important. The people were given a place in the new system, but a subordinate one.
The new constitution went into force July 1, 1867. This North German Confederation remained in existence only four years when it gave way to the present German Empire, one of the results of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.
BY THE YEAR 1867 all of Italy was united into a kingdom under the House of Savoy, except the city of Rome and the region immediately surrounding it, and all of Germany was united into a strong confederation, under the leadership of the House of Hohenzollern, except the South German states, Bavaria, Baden, Würtemberg, and a part of Hesse-Darmstadt. The unification, however, of neither country could be considered complete until these detached parts were joined with the main mass. This was brought about as one of the incidents of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Some knowledge of that war, therefore, is necessary to a comprehension of the subsequent period. Another by-product of that war was the Third French Republic, a fact in contemporary Europe of large significance. How did the clash come about between France and Prussia, a clash that had such consequences?
France, since 1852, had been an empire, ruled over by the Emperor Napoleon III, nephew of the great Napoleon. The Emperor played a large rôle in European politics from 1852 to 1870. His government was as much of an imitation of the system of Napoleon I as the nature of the times and the character of the ruler would allow. During most of the period the government was autocratic; only toward the end was it somewhat liberalized. In the main it was the personality of the monarch that counted, and that shaped the course of events. While there were occasional elections and a national legislature, and while universal suffrage nominally existed, in practice the legislature was controlled by the Emperor, universal suffrage was cleverly manipulated. the Emperor was, in large measure, an absolute sovereign. France experienced a great economic expansion during this reign and grew in wealth. The chief feature of the reign was the Emperor’s foreign policy, which led to several wars. One of these contributed, as we have seen, to the making of the Kingdom of Italy. Another, the Franco-German war of 1870, brought the Empire to an abrupt and catastrophic close.
‘The war of 1866 between Prussia and Austria, a war in which France did not participate, exerted a most unfortunate influence upon the public opinion of France and upon the prestige of the French Emperor. That war had resulted in greatly increasing the territory of Prussia, in expelling Austria from Germany, in founding a strong state, east of France, the North German Confederation. This swift rise of Prussia to a position she had never held before, this sweeping reorganization of Central Europe, created a widespread feeling of apprehension and alarm throughout France. Frenchmen felt that the balance of power was upset, that France was no longer safe as she had been, now that she had, on her eastern border, a strong, successful, aggressive military state. Frenchmen thought that Napoleon III could have and should have prevented this change, so full of possible menace. As he had not done so, as the new situation had come to pass with the Emperor merely standing by, a spectator and not an active and effective participant, Napoleon’s popularity was greatly decreased and confidence in his wisdom and foresight was greatly diminished. He might, at least, have seized the occasion of the crisis of 1866 to gain some unmistakable compensation for France, which would have kept the balance even.
This feeling of anxiety and of indignation which spread through France after 1866 was crystallized in the phrase “Revenge for Sadowa,” Sadowa being the name by which the decisive battle of Königgrätz was known to Frenchmen. The meaning of the phrase was that, if one state, like Prussia, should be increased in area and power, France also, for consenting to it, had a right to a proportionate increase, that thus the reciprocal relations might remain the same. But the golden moment for demanding this had been allowed carelessly, imprudently to slip by. And golden moments ought not to be neglected, for they have a way of not returning.
From 1866 to 1870 the idea that ultimately a war would come between Prussia and France became familiar to the people and governments of both countries. Many Frenchmen desired “revenge for Sadowa.” Prussians were proud and elated at their two successful wars, and intensely conscious of their new position in Europe. The newspapers of both countries during the next four years were full of crimination and recrimination, of abuse and taunt, the Government in neither case greatly discouraging their unwise conduct, at times even inspiring and directing it. Such an atmosphere was an excellent one for ministers who wanted war to work in, and both France and Prussia had just such ministers. Bismarck believed such a war inevitable, and, in his opinion, it was desirable as the only way of completing the unification of Germany, since Napoleon would never willingly consent to the extension of the Confederation to include the South German states. All that he desired was that it should come at precisely the right moment, when Prussia was entirely ready, and that it should come by act of France, so that Prussia could pose before Europe as merely defending herself against a wanton aggressor.
With responsible statesmen in such a temper it was not difficult to bring about a war. And yet the Franco-Prussian War broke most unexpectedly, like a thunderstorm, over Europe. Undreamed of July 1, 1870, it began July 15. It came in a roundabout way. The Spanish throne was vacant, as a revolution had driven the monarch, Queen Isabella, out of that country. On July 2, news reached Paris that Leopold of Hohenzollern, a relative of the King of Prussia, had accepted the Spanish crown. Bismarck was behind this Hohenzollern candidacy, zealously furthering it, despite the fact that he knew Napoleon’s feeling of hostility to it. Great was the indignation of the French papers and parliament and a most dangerous crisis developed rapidly. Other powers intervened, laboring in the interests of peace. On July 12, it was announced that the Hohenzollern candidacy was withdrawn.
The tension was immediately relieved; the war scare was over. Two men, however, were not pleased by this outcome, Bismarck, whose intrigue was now foiled and whose humiliation was so great that he thought he must resign and retire into private life, and Gramont, the French minister of foreign affairs, a reckless, blustering politician who was not satisfied with the diplomatic victory he had won, but wished to win another which would increase the discomfiture of Prussia. The French ministry now made an additional demand that the King of Prussia should promise that this Hohenzollern candidacy should never be renewed. The King declined to do so and, in a dispatch from Ems, authorized Bismarck to publish an account of the incident. Here was Bismarck’s opportunity which he used ruthlessly and joyously to provoke the French to declare war. His account, as he himself says, was intended to be “a red flag for the Gallic bull.” The effect of its publication was instantaneous. It aroused the indignation of both countries to fever heat. The Prussians thought that their King, the French that their ambassador had been insulted. As if this were not sufficient the newspapers of both countries teemed with false, abusive, and inflammatory accounts. The voice of the advocates of peace was drowned in the general clamor. The head of the French ministry declared that he accepted this war “with a light heart.” This war, declared by France on July 15, grew directly out of mere diplomatic fencing. The French people did not desire it, only the people of Paris, inflamed by an official press. Indeed, until it was declared, the French people hardly knew of the matter of dispute. It came upon them unexpectedly. The war was made by the responsible heads of two Governments. It was in its origin in no sense national in either country. Its immediate occasion was trivial. But it was the cause of a remarkable display of patriotism in both countries.
The war upon which the French ministry entered with so light a heart was destined to prove the most disastrous in the history of their country. In every respect it was begun under singularly inauspicious circumstances. France declared war upon Prussia alone, but in a manner that threw the South German states, upon whose support she had counted, directly into the camp of Bismarck. They regarded the French demand, that the King of Prussia should pledge himself for all time to forbid the Prince of Hohenzollern’s candidature, as unnecessary and insulting. At once Bavaria and Baden and Wurtemberg joined the campaign on the side of Prussia.
The French military authorities made the serious mistake of grossly underestimating the difficulty of the task before them. Incredible lack of preparation was revealed at once. The French army was poorly equipped, and was far inferior in numbers and in the ability of its commanders to the Prussian army. With the exception of a few ineffectual successes the war was a long series of reverses for the French. The Germans crossed the Rhine into Alsace and Lorraine, and succeeded, after several days of very heavy fighting, in shutting up Bazaine, with the principal French army, in Metz, a strong fortress which the Germans than besieged.
On September 1, another French army, with which was the Emperor, was defeated at Sedan and was obliged on the following day to surrender to the Germans. Napoleon himself became a prisoner of war. The French lost, on these two days, in killed, wounded, or taken prisoners, nearly one hundred and twenty thousand men.
Disasters so appalling resounded throughout the world. France no longer had an army; one had capitulated at Sedan; the other was locked up in Metz. The early de feats of August had been announced in Paris by the Government as victories. The deception could no longer be maintained. On September 3 this dispatch was received from the Emperor: “The army has been defeated and is captive; I myself am a prisoner.” As a prisoner he was no longer head of the government of France; there was, as Thiers said, a “vacancy of power.” On Sunday, September 4, the Legislative Body was convened. But it had no time to deliberate. The mob invaded the hall shouting, “Down with the Empire! Long live the Republic!” Gambetta, Jules Favre, and Jules Ferry, followed by the crowd, proceeded to the Hôtel de Ville and there proclaimed the Republic. The Empress fled. A Government of National Defense was organized, with General Trochu at its head, which was the actual government of France during the rest of the war.
The Franco-German War lasted about six months, from the first of August, 1870, when fighting began, to about the first of February, 1871. It falls naturally into two periods, the imperial and the republican. During the first, which was limited to the month of August, the regular armies were, as we have seen, destroyed or bottled up. Then the Empire collapsed and the Emperor was a prisoner in Germany. The second period lasted five months. France, under the Government of National Defense, made a remarkably courageous and spirited defense under the most discouraging conditions.