of feeling through all the Germanic races, to realize the equally strong vibration, the psychologic harmony quivering through heart and soul from North to South, through the mysteriously hidden dramas of fifteen hundred years. He believed himself a narrow Particularist Borussian, a “Pomeranian Giant,” and let a score of years go by before clearly making out by touch that the strange change of tonality, of sound, and significance that superposed the patriotism of the South to that of the North was a mere inharmonic change, and that according to the rotation of the two circles, each, in reality, underlay the other in turn.
It would be a fatal mistake to imagine that M. von Bismarck allowed himself to be led into the Danish campaign. He did nothing to bring it about, but the instant it showed itself on the cards he took advantage of it in the most predetermined, authoritative way, leaving his Austrian accomplice and victim no possibility of escape. From the hour when, in 1853, he boarded Count Richberg on the Carlsbad Railroad, and forced his enemy of the Francfort Bund to become his humble servant and carry out all his designs, to the hour when, in 1865, he drove Franz Joseph to sign the Condiminium on what he knew was a mere waste paper, he was resolved to turn to account the extraordinary opportunity offered him by the incredible blindness and insensate terror of revolution of his allies. In the Austrians, the dread of what the smaller States, encouraged by Hungary, might attempt, paralyzed every other consideration, and besides that, the abortive little plans of Count Beust, in Saxony, served to point out to him what other Germans were, in a purely German sense, thinking of, and he decided that the grand historic game thrust upon his perceptions and waited for by all around him, should be played by himself alone. Then he played it, not before seeing at once what it must entail, but by no means assured that he could win.
And then, they who watched him nearest and knew him best, know how he played that game, mindful of every event that filled the long history of the past, living over again all the struggles, all the glories and defeats of all the European nations far or near, finding examples both to imitate or avoid, losing sight of nothing, from Gregory VII. to Gutenberg, from papal obscurantism to the Reformation’s blaze of light; from Wallenstein’s murder to the treaty of Utrecht; from Richelieu to the scaffold of Louis XVI., and while calculating every catastrophe, keeping steadily on his way.
This, the fearful period between the Crimean War, when first Cavour stepped forth to the incident of Ems, when the die was cast, this was the really magnificent passage in the great chancellor’s career, for this was the time of possible doubt when responsibility lay so heavy that to elude it might be called prudence, and which to have survived is already a proof of superiority over common humanity.
And here we assert the true grandeur of the precursor,—of the one whom we have called the inventor, and who undeniably was so—of Cavour! There can be no question that his own intimate familiarity with the details of the Bond of Virtue and the War of Freedom7 of the glorious epoch when modern Germany headed and achieved the victorious movement against the world’s debasement,—brought distinctly to Bismarck’s mental vision the splendor of Cavour’s impossibly unequal contest for Italian freedom! The situations were essentially much alike, but so much grander for the Italian statesman, Italy’s odds being so immeasurably longer! But still the likeness came out, and the future chancellor could in no way aspire to be an initiator. The end was still a gigantic one, and one to which no true, brave patriot dared be false as an ideal,—but how as to the execution? As to the practical means of carrying out conceptions that might daily be doomed to alteration?
There it was again that the figure of Cavour arose supreme; his long, inexhaustible patience, his undying hopes, his sacrifices day by day of the very springs of life for a self-imposed duty,—these were his titles to immortal fame, these constituted his sovereign right to success. But was not the worst probation over when Waterloo was won, and was it not an accepted theory that the Vienna Congress had settled all the vexed questions of ancient Europe? Any further movement, therefore, might seem merely a disturbance. This, for conservative statesmen above all, was a dilemma.
Germany had liberated not Germany only, but the world in 1813, and had already had her Cavours!
There was no denying it: the Cavour of Germany was Stein. But was the work done? Had the Congress of Vienna settled anything, for was that still left to do without which the independence and well-being of forty millions of Germans was unguaranteed, and the peace of all Europe uninsured? If so, what remained to be achieved? to complete what the German Cavour, the Precursor Stein, had begun, to embody and make real the glorious dreams of which Queen Louise had been the symbol, the Joan of Arc?8
That, indeed, brought the Hohenzollerns on the scene, and lent to prosaic history its legend, giving to Frederick’s “big battalions” the white-robed heroine who should lead them on.
Whether, through the long years of indecision, during which disorder and revolution seemed the danger to be averted, the future “Chancellor of Iron” matured his plans after the manner of Newton, by “forever thinking of them” is still a question to be adequately answered by himself alone. This much is certain that when, in 1863-64, the subject of the Duchies cast its shadow on the path, it revealed its importance to Bismarck, as it had done fourteen years previously to Dahlmann, and stood forth distinctly as the initial syllable of the one mystical word, Unity.
Schleswig-Holstein was, as a matter of fact, and by all its several complications, the German question; it was its sign and portent, and if action of some sort were not taken thereupon, the door set ajar was closed upon the future, for a generation at least. Palmerston’s declaration, than which no unwiser one was ever made, touching the insanity of the man who should seek to understand the enigma of the Danish Duchies, was adopted in England solely from the dense and inconceivable ignorance of the British mind on all German topics, and the equally inexplicable but inborn dislike of all British politicians to grapple with any serious study of them.
It was the problem to which no German of the North could show indifference; and it was the one subject which brought Prussia to the fore, and put her reigning house in the van, forcing the Hohenzollerns into predominance. This was a crucial point, and wondrous to record! the will of Bismarck on that exceedingly curious detail brought the Hapsburgs together with the Hohenzollerns; Frederick with Marie-Therèse, Wallenstein’s camp with Rebels, in an unescapable atmosphere of rank Germanism!
But here again the first step of the forthcoming ruler was taken in obedience to an irresistible, though, perhaps, unavowed, national suggestion. The sense of all that the past had given to German history, to the power of German thought, formed a part of Bismarck’s very nature, and spite of the timidity of his experienced statecraft, he could not disobey the promptings of the German conscience.
When the quick-witted French public applied to Professor Lévy Brühl’s work the title of “The idea whence comes the fact,” they awarded it its permanent signification; it is the development of the German conscience that causes the imperial unity of Germany, and no one is more thoroughly aware of that than the famous chancellor.
We feel with whomsoever was a witness of the crowning struggle, that nothing can even paint its gigantic character more aptly than the concluding phrase of the now famous French historian:—
… “Thus was formed the virtual German nation,—the nation that willed to be, and for long years could not be because reality refused to bear out practically all its ideals. It was in truth, l’ame qui cherche un corps!”
These words can never be improved upon. The chancellor knows their truth, as the Kronprinz knew it, but the years lying between them threw a certainty of glory into one which the other could not attain to,—and Bismarck, too, was a man of old Prussia, of her ancient traditions and formalities, while the crown prince was modern amongst moderns—a soldier, yes! but pre-eminently a man, a citizen; but though each felt his conviction differently, its strength was one and the same in both.
The
The celebrated victory of the Great Elector, that made Prussia into a kingdom.
I would recommend every student of history to read attentively the extraordinary article of M. Paleologue in the
