Europe in 1789 and in 1848--Agitation in Western Germany before and
after the Revolution at Paris--Austria and Hungary--The March
Revolution at Vienna--Flight of Metternich--The Hungarian Diet--Hungary
wins its independence--Bohemian movement--Autonomy promised to Bohemia--
Insurrection of Lombardy--Of Venice--Piedmont makes war on Austria--A
general Italian war against Austria imminent--The March Days at
Berlin--Frederick William IV.--A National Assembly promised--
Schleswig-Holstein--Insurrection in Holstein--War between Germany and
Denmark--The German Ante-Parliament--Republican rising in Baden--Meeting
of the German National Assembly at Frankfort--Europe generally in March,
1848--The French Provisional Government--The National Workshops--The
Government and the Red Republicans--French National Assembly--Riot of May
15--Measures against the National Workshops--The Four Days of June--
Cavaignac--Louis Napoleon--He is elected to the Assembly--Elected
President.
[Europe in 1789 and 1848.]
There were few statesmen living in 1848 who, like Metternich and like Louis
Philippe, could remember the outbreak of the French Revolution. To those
who could so look back across the space of sixty years, a comparison of the
European movements that followed the successive onslaughts upon authority
in France afforded some measure of the change that had passed over the
political atmosphere of the Continent within a single lifetime. The
Revolution of 1789, deeply as it stirred men's minds in neighbouring
countries, had occasioned no popular outbreak on a large scale outside
France. The expulsion of Charles X. in 1830 had been followed by national
uprisings in Italy, Poland, and Belgium, and by a struggle for
constitutional government in the smaller States of Northern Germany. The
downfall of Louis Philippe in 1848 at once convulsed the whole of central
Europe. From the Rhenish Provinces to the Ottoman frontier there was no
government but the Swiss Republic that was not menaced; there was no race
which did not assert its claim to a more or less complete independence.
Communities whose long slumber had been undisturbed by the shocks of the
Napoleonic period now vibrated with those same impulses which, since 1815,
no pressure of absolute power had been able wholly to extinguish in Italy
and Germany. The borders of the region of political discontent had been
enlarged; where apathy, or immemorial loyalty to some distant crown, had
long closed the ear to the voices of the new age, now all was restlessness,
all eager expectation of the dawning epoch of national life. This was
especially the case with the Slavic races included in the Austrian Empire,
races which during the earlier years of this century had been wholly mute.
These in their turn now felt the breath of patriotism, and claimed the
right of self-government. Distinct as the ideas of national independence
and of constitutional liberty are in themselves, they were not distinct in
their operation over a great part of Europe in 1848; and this epoch will be
wrongly conceived if it is viewed as no more than a repetition on a large
scale of the democratic outbreak of Paris with which it opened. More was
sought in Europe in 1848 than the substitution of popular for monarchical
or aristocratic rule. The effort to make the State one with the nation
excited wider interests than the effort to enlarge and equalise citizen
rights; and it is in the action of this principle of nationality that we
find the explanation of tendencies of the epoch which appear at first view
to be in direct conflict with one another. In Germany a single race was
divided under many Governments: here the national instinct impelled to
unity. In Austria a variety of races was held together by one crown: here
the national instinct impelled to separation. In both these States, as in
Italy, where the predominance of the foreigner and the continuance of
despotic government were in a peculiar manner connected with one another,
the efforts of 1848 failed; but the problems which then agitated Europe
could not long be set aside, and the solution of them complete, in the case
of Germany and Italy, partial and tentative in the case of Austria, renders
the succeeding twenty-five years a memorable period in European history.
[Agitation in Western Germany.]
The sudden disappearance of the Orleanist monarchy and the proclamation of
the Republic at Paris struck with dismay the Governments beyond the Rhine.
Difficulties were already gathering round them, opposition among their own
subjects was daily becoming more formidable and more outspoken. In Western
Germany a meeting of Liberal deputies had been held in the autumn of 1847,
in which the reform of the Federal Constitution and the establishment of a
German Parliament had been demanded: a Republican or revolutionary party,
small but virulent, had also its own avowed policy and its recognised
organs in the press. No sooner had the news of the Revolution at Paris
passed the frontier than in all the minor German States the cry for reform
became irresistible. Ministers everywhere resigned; the popular demands
were granted; and men were called to office whose names were identified
with the struggle for the freedom of the Press, for trial by jury, and for
the reform of the Federal Constitution. The Federal Diet itself, so long
the instrument of absolutism, bowed beneath the stress of the time,
abolished the laws of censorship, and invited the Governments to send
Commissioners to Frankfort to discuss the reorganisation of Germany. It was
not, however, at Frankfort or at the minor capitals that the conflict
between authority and its antagonists was to be decided. Vienna, the
stronghold of absolutism, the sanctuary from which so many interdicts had
gone forth against freedom in every part of Europe, was itself invaded by
the revolutionary spirit. The clear sky darkened, and Metternich found
himself powerless before the storm.
[Austria.]
There had been until 1848 so complete an absence of political life in the
Austrian capital, that, when the conviction suddenly burst upon all minds
that the ancient order was doomed, there were neither party-leaders to
confront the Government, nor plans of reform upon which any considerable
body of men were agreed. The first utterances of public discontent were
petitions drawn up by the Chamber of Commerce and by literary associations.
These were vague in purport and far from aggressive in their tone. A
sterner note sounded when intelligence reached the capital of the
resolutions that had been passed by the Hungarian Lower House on the 3rd of
March, and of the language in which these had been enforced by Kossuth.
Casting aside all reserve, the Magyar leader had declared that the reigning
dynasty could only be saved by granting to Hungary a responsible Ministry
drawn from the Diet itself, and by establishing constitutional government
throughout the Austrian dominions. "From the charnel-house of the Viennese
system," he cried, "a poison-laden atmosphere steals over us, which
paralyses our nerves and bows us when we would soar. The future of Hungary
can never be secure while in the other provinces there exists a system of
government in direct antagonism to every constitutional principle. Our task
it is to found a happier future on the brotherhood of all the Austrian
races, and to substitute for the union enforced by bayonets and police the
enduring bond of a free constitution." When the Hungarian Assembly had thus
taken into its own hands the cause of the rest of the monarchy, it was not
for the citizens of Vienna to fall short in the extent of their demands.
The idea of a Constitution for the Empire at large was generally accepted
and it was proposed that an address embodying this demand should be sent in
to the Emperor by the Provincial Estates of Lower Austria, whose meeting
happened to be fixed for the 13th of March. In the meantime the students
made themselves the heroes of the hour. The agitation of the city
increased; rumours of State bankruptcy and of the impending repudiation of
the paper currency filled all classes with the belief that some catastrophe
was near at hand. [411]
[The March Revolution at Vienna.]
The Provincial Estates of Lower Austria had long fallen into such
insignificance that in ordinary times their proceedings were hardly noticed
by the capital. The accident that they were now to assemble in the midst of
a great crisis elevated them to a sudden importance. It was believed that
the decisive word would be spoken in the course of their debates; and on
the morning of the 13th of March masses of the populace, led by a
procession of students, assembled round the Hall of the Diet. While the
debate proceeded within, street-orators inflamed the passions of the crowd
outside. The tumult deepened; and when at length a note was let down from
one of the windows of the Hall stating that the Diet were inclining to
half-measures, the mob broke into uproar, and an attack was made upon the
Diet Hall itself. The leading members of the Estates were compelled to
place themselves at the head of a deputation, which proceeded to the
Emperor's palace in order to enforce the demands of the people. The Emperor
himself, who at no time was capable of paying serious attention to
business, remained invisible during this and the two following days; the
deputation was received by Metternich and the principal officers of State,
who were assembled in council. Meanwhile the crowds in the streets became
denser and more excited; soldiers approached, to protect the Diet Hall and
to guard the environs of the palace; there was an interval of confusion;
and on the advance of a new regiment, which was mistaken for an attack, the
mob who had stormed the Diet Hall hurled the shattered furniture from the
windows upon the soldiers' heads. A volley was now fired, which cost
several lives. At the sound of the firing still deeper agitation seized the
city. Barricades were erected, and the people and soldiers fought hand to
hand. As evening came on, deputation after deputation pressed into the
palace to urge concession upon the Government. Metternich, who, almost
alone in the Council, had made light of the popular uprising, now at length
consented to certain definite measures of reform. He retired into an
adjoining room to draft an order abolishing the censorship of the Press.
During his absence the cry was raised among the deputations that thronged
the Council-chamber, "Down with Metternich!" The old man returned, and
found himself abandoned by his colleagues. There were some among them,
members of the Imperial family, who had long been his opponents; others who
had in vain urged him to make concessions before it was too late.
Metternich saw that the end of his career was come; he spoke a few words,
marked by all the dignity and self-possession of his greatest days, and
withdrew, to place his resignation in the Emperor's hands.
[Flight of Metternich.]
For thirty-nine years Metternich had been so completely identified with the
Austrian system of government that in his fall that entire system seemed to
have vanished away. The tumult of the capital subsided on the mere
announcement of his resignation, though the hatred which he had excited
rendered it unsafe for him to remain within reach of hostile hands. He was
conveyed from Vienna by a faithful secretary on the night of the 14th of
March, and, after remaining for a few days in concealment, crossed the
Saxon frontier. His exile was destined to be of some duration, but no exile
was ever more cheerfully borne, or sweetened by a profounder satisfaction
at the evils which a mad world had brought upon itself by driving from it
its one thoroughly wise and just statesman. Betaking himself in the general
crash of the Continental Courts to Great Britain, which was still as safe
as when he had visited it fifty-five years before, Metternich received a
kindly welcome from the Duke of Wellington and the leaders of English
society; and when the London season was over he sought and found at
Brighton something of the liveliness and the sunshine of his own southern
home. [412]
[The Hungarian Diet.]
The action of the Hungarian Diet under Kossuth's leadership had powerfully
influenced the course of events at Vienna. The Viennese outbreak in its
turn gave irresistible force to the Hungarian national movement. Up to the
13th of March the Chamber of Magnates had withheld their assent from the
resolution passed by the Lower House in favour of a national executive;
they now accepted it without a single hostile vote; and on the 15th a
deputation was sent to Vienna to lay before the Emperor an address
demanding not only the establishment of a responsible Ministry but the
freedom of the Press, trial by jury, equality of religion, and a system of
national education. At the moment when this deputation reached Vienna the
Government was formally announcing its compliance with the popular demand
for a Constitution for the whole of the Empire. The Hungarians were
escorted in triumph through the streets, and were received on the following
day by the Emperor himself, who expressed a general concurrence with the
terms of the address. The deputation returned to Presburg, and the
Palatine, or representative of the sovereign in Hungary, the Archduke
Stephen, forthwith charged Count Batthyány, one of the most popular of the
Magyar nobles, with the formation of a national Ministry. Thus far the Diet
had been in the van of the Hungarian movement; it now sank almost into
insignificance by the side of the revolutionary organisation at Pesth,
where all the ardour and all the patriotism of the Magyar race glowed in
their native force untempered by the political experience of the statesmen
who were collected at Presburg, and unchecked by any of those influences
which belong to the neighbourhood of an Imperial Court. At Pesth there
broke out an agitation at once so democratic and so intensely national that
all considerations of policy and of regard for the Austrian Government
which might have affected the action of the Diet were swept away before it.
Kossuth, himself the genuine representative of the capital, became supreme.
At his bidding the Diet passed a law abolishing the departments of the
Central Government by which the control of the Court over the Hungarian
body politic had been exercised. A list of Ministers was submitted and
approved, including not only those who were needed for the transaction of
domestic business, but Ministers of War, Finance, and Foreign Affairs; and
in order that the entire nation might rally round its Government, the
peasantry were at one stroke emancipated from all services attaching to the
land, and converted into free proprietors. Of the compensation to be paid
to the lords for the loss of these services, no more was said than that it
was a debt of honour to be discharged by the nation.
[Hungary wins independence.]
Within the next few days the measures thus carried through the Diet by
Kossuth were presented for the Emperor's ratification at Vienna. The fall
of Metternich, important as it was, had not in reality produced that effect
upon the Austrian Government which was expected from it by popular opinion.
The new Cabinet at Vienna was drawn from the ranks of the official
hierarchy; and although some of its members were more liberally disposed
than their late chief, they had all alike passed their lives in the
traditions of the ancient system, and were far from intending to make
themselves the willing agents of revolution. These men saw clearly enough
that the action of the Diet at Presburg amounted to nothing less than the
separation of Hungary from the Austrian Empire. With the Ministries of War,
Finance, and Foreign Affairs established in independence of the central
government, there would remain no link between Hungary and the Hereditary
States but the person of a titular, and, for the present time, an imbecile
sovereign. Powerless and distracted, Metternich's successors looked in all
directions for counsel. The Palatine argued that three courses were open to
the Austrian Government. It might endeavour to crush the Hungarian movement
by force of arms; for this purpose, however, the troops available were
insufficient: or it might withdraw from the country altogether, leaving the
peasants to attack the nobles, as they had done in Galicia; this was a
dishonourable policy, and the action of the Diet had, moreover, secured to
the peasant everything that he could gain by a social insurrection: or
finally, the Government might yield for the moment to the inevitable, make
terms with Batthyány's Ministry, and quietly prepare for vigorous
resistance when opportunity should arrive. The last method was that which
the Palatine recommended; the Court inclined in the same direction, but it
was unwilling to submit without making some further trial of the temper of
its antagonists. A rescript was accordingly sent to Presburg, announcing
that the Ministry formed by Count Batthyány was accepted by the Emperor,
but that the central offices which the Diet had abolished must be
preserved, and the functions of the Ministers of War and Finance be reduced
to those of chiefs of departments, dependent on the orders of a higher
authority at Vienna. From the delay that had taken place in the despatch of
this answer the nationalist leaders at Pesth and at Presburg had augured no
good result. Its publication brought the country to the verge of armed
revolt. Batthyány refused to accept office under the conditions named; the
Palatine himself declared that he could remain in Hungary no longer.
Terrified at the result of its own challenge, the Court now withdrew from
the position that it had taken up, and accepted the scheme of the Diet in
its integrity, stipulating only that the disposal of the army outside
Hungary in time of war, and the appointment to the higher commands, should
remain with the Imperial Government. [413]
[Bohemian movement.]
[Autonomy promised.]
Hungary had thus made good its position as an independent State connected
with Austria only through the person of its monarch. Vast and momentous as
was the change, fatal as it might well appear to those who could conceive
of no unity but the unity of a central government, the victory of the
Magyars appears to have excited no feeling among the German Liberals at
Vienna but one of satisfaction. So odious, so detested, was the fallen
system of despotism, that every victory won by its adversaries was hailed
as a triumph of the good cause, be the remoter issues what they might. Even
where a powerful German element, such as did not exist in Hungary itself,
was threatened by the assertion of provincial claims, the Government could
not hope for the support of the capital if it should offer resistance. The
example of the Magyars was speedily followed by the Czechs in Bohemia.
Forgotten and obliterated among the nationalities of Europe, the Czechs had
preserved in their language, and in that almost alone, the emblem of their
national independence. Within the borders of Bohemia there was so large a
German population that the ultimate absorption of the Slavic element by
this wealthier and privileged body had at an earlier time seemed not
unlikely. Since 1830, however, the Czech national movement had been
gradually gaining ground. In the first days of the agitation of 1848 an
effort had been made to impress a purely constitutional form upon the
demands made in the name of the people of Prague, and so to render the
union of all classes possible. This policy, however, received its deathblow
from the Revolution in Vienna and from the victory of the Magyars. The
leadership at Prague passed from men of position and experience,
representing rather the intelligence of the German element in Bohemia than
the patriotism of the Czechs, to the nationalist orators who commanded the
streets. An attempt made by the Cabinet at Vienna to evade the demands
drawn up under the influence of the more moderate politicians resulted only
in the downfall of this party, and in the tender of a new series of demands
of far more revolutionary character. The population of Prague were
beginning to organise a national guard; arms were being distributed;
authority had collapsed. The Government was now forced to consent to
everything that was asked of it, and a legislative Assembly with an
independent local administration was promised to Bohemia. To this Assembly,
as soon as it should meet, the new institutions of the kingdom were to be
submitted.
[Insurrection of Lombardy, March 18.]
Thus far, if the authority of the Court of Vienna, had been virtually
shaken off by a great part of its subjects, the Emperor had at least not
seen these subjects in avowed rebellion against the House of Hapsburg, nor
supported in their resistance by the arms of a foreign Power. South of the
Alps the dynastic connection was openly severed, and the rule of Austria
declared for ever at an end. Lombardy had since the beginning of the year
1848 been held in check only by the display of great military force. The
Revolution at Paris had excited both hopes and fears; the Revolution at
Vienna was instantly followed by revolt in Milan. Radetzky, the Austrian
commander, a veteran who had served with honour in every campaign since
that against the Turks in 1788, had long foreseen the approach of an armed
conflict; yet when the actual crisis arrived his dispositions had not been
made for meeting it. The troops in Milan were ill placed; the offices of
Government were moreover separated by half the breadth of the city from the
military head-quarters. Thus when on the 18th of March the insurrection
broke out, it carried everything before it. The Vice-Governor, O'Donell,
was captured, and compelled to sign his name to decrees handing over the
government of the city to the Municipal Council. Radetzky now threw his
soldiers upon the barricades, and penetrated to the centre of the city; but
he was unable to maintain himself there under the ceaseless fire from the
windows and the housetops, and withdrew on the night of the 19th to the
line of fortifications. Fighting continued during the next two days in the
outskirts and at the gates of the city. The garrisons of all the
neighbouring towns were summoned to the assistance of their general, but
the Italians broke up the bridges and roads, and one detachment alone out
of all the troops in Lombardy succeeded in reaching Milan. A report now
arrived at Radetzky's camp that the King of Piedmont was on the march
against him. Preferring the loss of Milan to the possible capture of his
army, he determined to evacuate the city. On the night of the 22nd of March
the retreat was begun, and Radetzky fell back upon the Mincio and Verona,
which he himself had made the centre of the Austrian system of defence in
Upper Italy. [414]
[Insurrection of Venice.]
[Piedmont makes war.]
Venice had already followed the example of the Lombard capital. The tidings
received from Vienna after the 13th of March appear to have completely
bewildered both the military and the civil authorities on the Adriatic
coast. They released their political prisoners, among whom was Daniel
Manin, an able and determined foe of Austria; they entered into
constitutional discussions with the popular leaders; they permitted the
formation of a national guard, and finally handed over to this guard the
arsenals and the dockyards with all their stores. From this time all was
over. Manin proclaimed the Republic of St. Mark, and became the chief of a
Provisional Government. The Italian regiments in garrison joined the
national cause; the ships of war at Pola, manned chiefly by Italian
sailors, were only prevented from sailing to the assistance of the rebels
by batteries that were levelled against them from the shore. Thus without a
blow being struck Venice was lost to Austria. The insurrection spread
westwards and northwards through city and village in the interior, till
there remained to Austria nothing but the fortresses on the Adige and the
Mincio, where Radetzky, deaf to the counsels of timidity, held his ground
unshaken. The national rising carried Piedmont with it. It was in vain that
the British envoy at Turin urged the King to enter into no conflict with
Austria. On the 24th of March Charles Albert published a proclamation
promising his help to the Lombards. Two days later his troops entered
Milan. [415]
[General war against Austria, beginning in Italy.]
Austria had for thirty years consistently laid down the principle that its
own sovereignty in Upper Italy vested it with the right to control the
political system of every other State in the peninsula. It had twice
enforced this principle by arms: first in its intervention in Naples in
1820, afterwards in its occupation of the Roman States in 1831. The
Government of Vienna had, as it were with fixed intention, made it
impossible that its presence in any part of Italy should be regarded as the
presence of an ordinary neighbour, entitled to quiet possession until some
new provocation should be given. The Italians would have proved themselves
the simplest of mankind if, having any reasonable hope of military success,
they had listened to the counsels of Palmerston and other statesmen who
urged them not to take advantage of the difficulties in which Austria was
now placed. The paralysis of the Austrian State was indeed the one
unanswerable argument for immediate war. So long as the Emperor retained
his ascendency in any part of Italy, his interests could not permanently
suffer the independence of the rest. If the Italians should chivalrously
wait until the Cabinet of Vienna had recovered its strength, it was quite
certain that their next efforts in the cause of internal liberty would be
as ruthlessly crushed as their last. Every clearsighted patriot understood
that the time for a great national effort had arrived. In some respects the
political condition of Italy seemed favourable to such united action. Since
the insurrection of Palermo in January, 1848, absolutism had everywhere
fallen. Ministries had come into existence containing at least a fair
proportion of men who were in real sympathy with the national feeling.
Above all, the Pope seemed disposed to place himself at the head of a
patriotic union against the foreigner. Thus, whatever might be the secret
inclinations of the reigning Houses, they were unable for the moment to
resist the call to arms. Without an actual declaration of war troops were
sent northwards from Naples, from Florence, and from Rome, to take part, as
it was supposed, in the national struggle by the side of the King of
Piedmont. Volunteers thronged to the standards. The Papal benediction
seemed for once to rest on the cause of manhood and independence. On the
other hand, the very impetus which had brought Liberal Ministries into
power threatened to pass into a phase of violence and disorder. The
concessions already made were mocked by men who expected to win all the
victories of democracy in an hour. It remained to be seen whether there
existed in Italy the political sagacity which, triumphing over all local
jealousies, could bend to one great aim the passions of the multitude and
the fears of the Courts, or whether the cause of the whole nation would be
wrecked in an ignoble strife between demagogues and reactionists, between
the rabble of the street and the camarilla round the throne. [416]
[The March Days at Berlin.]
Austria had with one hand held down Italy, with the other it had weighed on
Germany. Though the Revolutionary movement was in full course on the east
of the Rhine before Metternich's fall, it received, especially at Berlin, a
great impetus from this event. Since the beginning of March the Prussian
capital had worn an unwonted aspect. In this city of military discipline
public meetings had been held day after day, and the streets had been
blocked by excited crowds. Deputations which laid before the King demands
similar to those now made in every German town received halting and evasive
answers. Excitement increased, and on the 13th of March encounters began
between the citizens and the troops, which, though insignificant, served to
exasperate the people and its leaders. The King appeared to be wavering
between resistance and concession until the Revolution at Vienna, which
became known at Berlin on the 15th of March, brought affairs to their
crisis. On the 17th the tumult in the streets suddenly ceased; it was
understood that the following day would see the Government either
reconciled with the people or forced to deal with an insurrection on a
great scale. Accordingly on the morning of the 18th crowds made their way
towards the palace, which was surrounded by troops. About midday there
appeared a Royal edict summoning the Prussian United Diet for the 2nd of
April, and announcing that the King had determined to promote the creation
of a Parliament for all Germany and the establishment of Constitutional
Government in every German State. This manifesto drew fresh masses towards
the palace, desirous, it would seem, to express their satisfaction; its
contents, however, were imperfectly understood by the assembly already in
front of the palace, which the King vainly attempted to address. When
called upon to disperse, the multitude refused to do so, and answered by
cries for the withdrawal of the soldiery. In the midst of the confusion two
shots were fired from the ranks without orders; a panic followed, in which,
for no known reason, the cavalry and infantry threw themselves upon the
people. The crowd was immediately put to flight, but the combat was taken
up by the population of Berlin. Barricades appeared in the streets;
fighting continued during the evening and night. Meanwhile the King, who
was shocked and distressed at the course that events had taken, received
deputations begging that the troops might be withdrawn from the city.
Frederick William endeavoured for awhile to make the surrender of the
barricades the condition for an armistice; but as night went on the troops
became exhausted, and although they had gained ground, the resistance of
the people was not overcome. Whether doubtful of the ultimate issue of the
conflict or unwilling to permit further bloodshed, the King gave way, and
at daybreak on the 19th ordered the troops to be withdrawn. His intention
was that they should continue to garrison the palace, but the order was
misunderstood, and the troops were removed to the outside of Berlin. The
palace was thus left unprotected, and, although no injury was inflicted
upon its inmates, the King was made to feel that the people could now
command his homage. The bodies of the dead were brought into the court of
the palace; their wounds were laid bare, and the King, who appeared in a
balcony, was compelled to descend into the court, and to stand before them
with uncovered head. Definite political expression was given to the changed
state of affairs by the appointment of a new Ministry. [417]
The conflict between the troops and the people at Berlin was described, and
with truth, as the result of a misunderstanding. Frederick William had
already determined to yield to the principal demands of his subjects; nor
on the part of the inhabitants of Berlin had there existed any general
hostility towards the sovereign, although a small group of agitators, in
part foreign, had probably sought to bring about an armed attack on the
throne. Accordingly, when once the combat was broken off, there seemed to
be no important obstacle to a reconciliation between the King and the
people. Frederick William chose a course which spared and even gratified
his own self-love. In the political faith of all German Liberals the
establishment of German unity was now an even more important article than
the introduction of free institutions into each particular State. The
Revolution at Berlin had indeed been occasioned by the King's delay in
granting internal reform; but these domestic disputes might well be
forgotten if in the great cause of German unity the Prussians saw their
King rising to the needs of the hour. Accordingly the first resolution of
Frederick William, after quiet had returned to the capital, was to appear
in public state as the champion of the Fatherland. A proclamation announced
on the morning of the 21st of March that the King had placed himself at the
head of the German nation, and that he would on that day appear on
horseback wearing the old German colours. In due time Frederick William
came forth at the head of a procession, wearing the tricolor of gold,
white, and black, which since 1815 had been so dear to the patriots and so
odious to the Governments of Germany. As he passed through the streets he
was saluted as Emperor, but he repudiated the title, asserting with oaths
and imprecations that he intended to rob no German prince of his
sovereignty. At each stage of his theatrical progress he repeated to
appropriate auditors his sounding but ambiguous allusions to the duties
imposed upon him by the common danger. A manifesto, published at the close
of the day, summed up the utterances of the monarch in a somewhat less
rhetorical form. "Germany is in ferment within, and exposed from without to
danger from more than one side. Deliverance from this danger can come only
from the most intimate union of the German princes and people under a
single leadership. I take this leadership upon me for the hour of peril. I
have to-day assumed the old German colours, and placed myself and my people
under the venerable banner of the German Empire. Prussia henceforth is
merged in Germany." [418]
[National Assembly promised.]
The ride of the King through Berlin, and his assumption of the character of
German leader, however little it pleased the minor sovereigns, or gratified
the Liberals of the smaller States, who considered that such National
authority ought to be conferred by the nation, not assumed by a prince, was
successful for the moment in restoring to the King some popularity among
his own subjects. He could now without humiliation proceed with the
concessions which had been interrupted by the tragical events of the 18th
of March. In answer to a deputation from Breslau, which urged that the
Chamber formed by the union of the Provincial Diets should be replaced by a
Constituent Assembly, the King promised that a national Representative
Assembly should be convoked as soon as the United Diet had passed the
necessary electoral law. To this National Assembly the Government would
submit measures securing the liberty of the individual, the right of public
meeting and of associations, trial by jury, the responsibility of
Ministers, and the independence of the judicature. A civic militia was to
be formed, with the right of choosing its own officers, and the standing
army was to take the oath of allegiance to the Constitution. Hereditary
jurisdictions and manorial rights of police were to be abolished; equality
before the law was to be universally enforced; in short, the entire scheme
of reforms demanded by the Constitutional Liberals of Prussia was to be
carried into effect. In Berlin, as in every other capital in Germany, the
victory of the party of progress now seemed to be assured. The Government
no longer represented a power hostile to popular rights; and when, on the
22nd of March, the King spontaneously paid the last honours to those who
had fallen in combat with his troops, as the long funeral procession passed
his palace, it was generally believed that his expression of feeling was
sincere.
[Schleswig-Holstein.]
In the passage of his address in which King Frederick William spoke of the
external dangers threatening Germany, he referred to apprehensions which
had for a while been current that the second French Republic would revive
the aggressive energy of the first. This fear proved baseless;
nevertheless, for a sovereign who really intended to act as the champion of
the German nation at large, the probability of war with a neighbouring
Power was far from remote. The cause of the Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein,
which were in rebellion against the Danish Crown, excited the utmost
interest and sympathy in Germany. The population of these provinces, with
the exception of certain districts in Schleswig, was German; Holstein was
actually a member of the German Federation. The legal relation of the
Duchies to Denmark was, according to the popular view, very nearly that of
Hanover to England before 1837. The King of Denmark was also Duke of
Schleswig and of Holstein, but these were no more an integral portion of
the Danish State than Hanover was of the British Empire; and the laws of
succession were moreover different in Schleswig-Holstein, the Crown being
transmitted by males, while in Denmark females were capable of succession.
On the part of the Danes it was admitted that in certain districts in
Holstein the Salic law held good; it was, however, maintained that in the
remainder of Holstein and in all Schleswig the rules of succession were the
same as in Denmark. The Danish Government denied that Schleswig-Holstein
formed a unity in itself, as alleged by the Germans, and that it possessed
separate national rights as against the authority of the King's Government
at Copenhagen. The real heart of the difficulty lay in the fact that the
population of the Duchies was German. So long as the Germans as a race
possessed no national feeling, the union of the Duchies with the Danish
Monarchy had not been felt as a grievance. It happened, however, that the
great revival of German patriotism resulting from the War of Liberation in
1813 was almost simultaneous with the severance of Norway from the Danish
Crown, which compelled the Government of Copenhagen to increase very
heavily the burdens imposed on its German subjects in the Duchies. From
this time discontent gained ground, especially in Altona and Kiel, where
society was as thoroughly German as in the neighbouring city of Hamburg.
After 1830, when Provincial Estates were established in Schleswig and
Holstein, the German movement became formidable. The reaction, however,
which marked the succeeding period generally in Europe prevailed in Denmark
too, and it was not until 1844, when a posthumous work of Lornsen, the
exiled leader of the German party, vindicated the historical rights of the
Duchies, that the claims of German nationality in these provinces were
again vigorously urged. From this time the separation of Schleswig-Holstein
from Denmark became a question of practical politics. The King of Denmark,
Christain VIII., had but one son, who, though long married, was childless,
and with whom the male line of the reigning House would expire. In answer
to an address of the Danish Provincial Estates calling upon the King to
declare the unity of the Monarchy and the validity of the Danish law of
succession for all its parts, the Holstein Estates passed a resolution in
November, 1844, that the Duchies were an independent body, governed by the
rule of male descent, and indivisible. After an interval of two years,
during which a Commission examined the succession-laws, King Christian
published a declaration that the succession was the same in Schleswig as in
Denmark proper, and that, as regarded those parts of Holstein where a
different rule of succession existed, he would spare no effort to maintain
the unity of the Monarchy. On this the Provincial Estates both of Schleswig
and of Holstein addressed protests to the King, who refused to accept them.
The deputies now resigned in a mass, whilst on behalf of Holstein an appeal
was made to the German Federal Diet. The Diet merely replied by a
declaration of rights; but in Germany at large the keenest interest was
aroused on behalf of these severed members of the race who were so
resolutely struggling against incorporation with a foreign Power. The
deputies themselves, passing from village to village, excited a strenuous
spirit of resistance throughout the Duchies, which was met by the Danish
Government with measures of repression more severe than any which it had
hitherto employed. [419]
[Insurrection in Holstein, March 24.]
[War between Germany and Denmark.]
Such was the situation of affairs when, on the 20th of January, 1848, King
Christian VIII. died, leaving the throne to Frederick VII., the last of the
male line of his House. Frederick's first act was to publish the draft of a
Constitution, in which all parts of the Monarchy were treated as on the
same footing. Before the delegates could assemble to whom the completion of
this work was referred, the shock of the Paris Revolution reached the North
Sea ports. A public meeting at Altona demanded the establishment of a
separate constitution for Schleswig-Holstein, and the admission of
Schleswig into the German Federation. The Provincial Estates accepted this
resolution, and sent a deputation to Copenhagen to present this and other
demands to the King. But in the course of the next few days a popular
movement at Copenhagen brought into power a thoroughly Danish Ministry,
pledged to the incorporation of Schleswig with Denmark as an integral part
of the Kingdom. Without waiting to learn the answer made by the King to the
deputation, the Holsteiners now took affairs into their own hands. A
Provisional Government was formed at Kiel (March 24), the troops joined the
people, and the insurrection instantly spread over the whole province. As
the proposal to change the law of succession to the throne had originated
with the King of Denmark, the cause of the Holsteiners was from one point
of view that of established right. The King of Prussia, accepting the
positions laid down by the Holstein Estates in 1844, declared that he would
defend the claims of the legitimate heir by force of arms, and ordered his
troops to enter Holstein. The Diet of Frankfort, now forced to express the
universal will of Germany, demanded that Schleswig, as the sister State of
Holstein, should enter the Federation. On the passing of this resolution,
the envoy who represented the Denmark. King of Denmark at the Diet, as Duke
of Holstein, quitted Frankfort, and a state of war ensued between Denmark
on the one side and Prussia with the German Federation on the other.
[The German Ante-Parliament, March 30-April 4.]
[Republican rising in Baden.]
The passionate impulse of the German people towards unity had already
called into being an organ for the expression of national sentiment, which,
if without any legal or constitutional authority, was yet strong enough to
impose its will upon the old and discredited Federal Diet and upon most of
the surviving Governments. At the invitation of a Committee, about five
hundred Liberals who had in one form or another taken part in public
affairs assembled at Frankfort on the 30th of March to make the necessary
preparations for the meeting of a German national Parliament. This
Assembly, which is known as the Ante-Parliament, sat but for five days. Its
resolutions, so far as regarded the method of electing the new Parliament,
and the inclusion of new districts in the German Federation, were accepted
by the Diet, and in the main carried into effect. Its denunciation of
persons concerned in the repressive measures of 1819 and subsequent
reactionary epochs was followed by the immediate retirement of all members
of the Diet whose careers dated back to those detested days. But in the
most important work that was expected from the Ante-Parliament, the
settlement of a draft-Constitution to be laid before the future National
Assembly as a basis for its deliberations, nothing whatever was
accomplished. The debates that took place from the 31st of March to the 4th
of April were little more than a trial of strength between the Monarchical
and Republican parties. The Republicans, far outnumbered when they
submitted a constitutional scheme of their own, proposed, after this
repulse, that the existing Assembly should continue in session until the
National Parliament met; in other words, that it should take upon itself
the functions and character of a National Convention. Defeated also on this
proposal, the leaders of the extreme section of the Republican party,
strangely miscalculating their real strength, determined on armed
insurrection. Uniting with a body of German refugees beyond the Rhine, who
were themselves assisted by French and Polish soldiers of revolution, they
raised the Republican standard in Baden, and for a few days maintained a
hopeless and inglorious struggle against the troops which were sent to
suppress them. Even in Baden, which had long been in advance of all other
German States in democratic sentiment, and which was peculiarly open to
Republican influences from France and Switzerland, the movement was not
seriously supported by the population, and in the remainder of Germany it
received no countenance whatever. The leaders found themselves ruined men.
The best of them fled to the United States, where, in the great struggle
against slavery thirteen years later, they rendered better service to their
adopted than they had ever rendered to their natural Fatherland.
[Meeting of the German National Assembly, May 18.]
On breaking up on the 4th of April, the Ante-Parliament left behind it a
Committee of Fifty, whose task it was to continue the work of preparation
for the National Assembly to which it had itself contributed so little. One
thing alone had been clearly established, that the future Constitution of
Germany was not to be Republican. That the existing Governments could not
be safely ignored by the National Assembly in its work of founding the new
Federal Constitution for Germany was clear to those who were not blinded by
the enthusiasm of the moment. In the Committee of Fifty and elsewhere plans
were suggested for giving to the Governments a representation within the
Constituent Assembly, or for uniting their representatives in a Chamber
co-ordinate with this, so that each step in the construction of the new
Federal order should be at once the work of the nation and of the
Governments. Such plans were suggested and discussed; but in the haste and
inexperience of the time they were brought to no conclusion. The opening of
the National Assembly had been fixed for the 18th of May, and this brief
interval had expired before the few sagacious men who understood the
necessity of co-operation between the Governments and the Parliament had
decided upon any common course of action. To the mass of patriots it was
enough that Germany, after thirty years of disappointment, had at last won
its national representation. Before this imposing image of the united race,
Kings, Courts, and armies, it was fondly thought, must bow. Thus, in the
midst of universal hope, the elections were held throughout Germany in its
utmost federal extent, from the Baltic to the Italian border; Bohemia
alone, where the Czech majority resisted any closer union with Germany,
declining to send representatives to Frankfort. In the body of deputies
elected there were to be found almost all the foremost Liberal politicians
of every German community; a few still vigorous champions of the time of
the War of Liberation, chief among them the poet Arndt; patriots who in the
evil days that followed had suffered imprisonment and exile; historians,
professors, critics, who in the sacred cause of liberty have, like
Gervinus, inflicted upon their readers worse miseries than ever they
themselves endured at the hands of unregenerate kings; theologians,
journalists; in short, the whole group of leaders under whom Germany
expected to enter into the promised land of national unity and freedom. No
Imperial coronation ever brought to Frankfort so many honoured guests, or
attracted to the same degree the sympathy of the German race. Greeted with
the cheers of the citizens of Frankfort, whose civic militia lined the
streets, the members of the Assembly marched in procession on the afternoon
of the 18th of May from the ancient banqueting-hall of the Kaisers, where
they had gathered, to the Church of St. Paul, which had been chosen as
their Senate House. Their President and officers were elected on the
following day. Arndt, who in the frantic confusion of the first meeting had
been unrecognised and shouted down, was called into the Tribune, but could
speak only a few words for tears. The Assembly voted him its thanks for his
famous song, "What is the German's Fatherland?" and requested that he would
add to it another stanza commemorating the union of the race at length
visibly realised in that great Parliament. Four days after the opening of
the General Assembly of Frankfort, the Prussian national Parliament began
its sessions at Berlin. [420]
[Europe generally in March, 1848.]
At this point the first act in the Revolutionary drama of 1848 in Germany,
as in Europe generally, may be considered to have reached its close. A
certain unity marks the memorable epoch known generally as the March Days
and the events immediately succeeding. Revolution is universal; it scarcely
meets with resistance; its views seem on the point of being achieved; the
baffled aspirations of the last half-century seem on the point of being
fulfilled. There exists no longer in Central Europe such a thing as an
autocratic Government; and, while the French Republic maintains an
unexpected attitude of peace, Germany and Italy, under the leadership of
old dynasties now penetrated with a new spirit, appear to be on the point
of achieving each its own work of Federal union and of the expulsion of the
foreigner from its national soil. All Italy prepares to move under Charles
Albert to force the Austrians from their last strongholds on the Mincio and
the Adige; all Germany is with the troops of Frederick William of Prussia
as they enter Holstein to rescue this and the neighbouring German province
from the Dane. In Radetzky's camp alone, and at the Court of St.
Petersburg, the old monarchical order of Europe still survives. How
powerful were these two isolated centres of anti-popular energy the world
was soon to see. Yet they would not have turned back the tide of European
affairs and given one more victory to reaction had they not had their
allies in the hatred of race to race, in the incapacity and the errors of
peoples and those who represented them; above all, in the enormous
difficulties which, even had the generation been one of sages and martyrs,
the political circumstances of the time would in themselves have opposed to
the accomplishment of the ends desired.
[The French Provisional Government.]
[The National Workshops.]
France had given to Central Europe the signal for the Revolution of 1848,
and it was in France, where the conflict was not one for national
independence but for political and social interests, that the Revolution
most rapidly ran its course and first exhausted its powers. On the flight
of Louis Philippe authority had been entrusted by the Chamber of Deputies
to a Provisional Government, whose most prominent member was the orator and
poet Lamartine. Installed at the Hôtel de Ville, this Government had with
difficulty prevented the mob from substituting the Red Flag for the
Tricolor, and from proceeding at once to realise the plans of its own
leaders. The majority of the Provisional Government were Republicans of a
moderate type, representing the ideas of the urban middle classes rather
than those of the workmen; but by their side were Ledru Rollin, a
rhetorician dominated by the phrases of 1793, and Louis Blanc, who
considered all political change as but an instrument for advancing the
organisation of labour and for the emancipation of the artisan from
servitude, by the establishment of State-directed industries affording
appropriate employment and adequate remuneration to all. Among the first
proclamations of the Provisional Government was one in which, in answer to
a petition demanding the recognition of the Right to Labour, they undertook
to guarantee employment to every citizen. This engagement, the heaviest
perhaps that was ever voluntarily assumed by any Government, was followed
in a few days by the opening of national workshops. That in the midst of a
Revolution which took all parties by surprise plans for the conduct of a
series of industrial enterprises by the State should have been seriously
examined was impossible. The Government had paid homage to an abstract
idea; they were without a conception of the mode in which it was to be
realised. What articles were to be made, what works were to be executed, no
one knew. The mere direction of destitute workmen to the centres where they
were to be employed was a task for which a new branch of the administration
had to be created. When this was achieved, the men collected proved useless
for all purposes of industry. Their numbers increased enormously, rising in
the course of four weeks from fourteen to sixty-five thousand. The
Revolution had itself caused a financial and commercial panic, interrupting
all the ordinary occupations of business, and depriving masses of men of
the means of earning a livelihood. These, with others who had no intention
of working, thronged to the State workshops; while the certainty of
obtaining wages from the public purse occasioned a series of strikes of
workmen against their employers and the abandonment of private factories.
The chocks which had been intended to confine enrolment at the public works
to persons already domiciled in Paris completely failed; from all the
neighbouring departments the idle and the hungry streamed into the capital.
Every abuse incidental to a system of public relief was present in Paris in
its most exaggerated form; every element of experience, of wisdom, of
precaution, was absent. If, instead of a group of benevolent theorists, the
experiment of 1848 had had for its authors a company of millionaires
anxious to dispel all hope that mankind might ever rise to a higher order
than that of unrestricted competition of man against man, it could not have
been conducted under more fatal conditions. [421]
[The Provisional Government and the Red Republicans.]
[Elections, April 23.]
The leaders of the democracy in Paris had from the first considered that
the decision upon the form of Government to be established in France in
place of the Orleanist monarchy belonged rather to themselves than to the
nation at large. They distrusted, and with good reason, the results of the
General Election which, by a decree of the Provisional Government, was to
be held in the course of April. A circular issued by Ledru Rollin, Minister
of the Interior, without the knowledge of his colleagues, to the
Commissioners by whom he had replaced the Prefects of the Monarchy gave the
first open indication of this alarm, and of the means of violence and
intimidation by which the party which Ledru Rollin represented hoped to
impose its will upon the country. The Commissioners were informed in plain
language that, as agents of a revolutionary authority, their powers were
unlimited, and that their task was to exclude from election all persons who
were not animated by revolutionary spirit, and pure from any taint of
association with the past. If the circular had been the work of the
Government, and not of a single member of it who was at variance with most
of his colleagues and whose words were far more formidable than his
actions, it would have clearly foreshadowed a return to the system of 1793.
But the isolation of Ledru Rollin was well understood. The attitude of the
Government generally was so little in accordance with the views of the Red
Republicans that on the 16th of April a demonstration was organised with
the object of compelling them to postpone the elections. The prompt
appearance in arms of the National Guard, which still represented the
middle classes of Paris, baffled the design of the leaders of the mob, and
gave to Lamartine and the majority in the Government a decisive victory
over their revolutionary colleague. The elections were held at the time
appointed; and, in spite of the institution of universal suffrage, they
resulted in the return of a body of Deputies not widely different from
those who had hitherto appeared in French Parliaments. The great majority
were indeed Republicans by profession, but of a moderate type; and the
session had no sooner opened than it became clear that the relation between
the Socialist democracy of Paris and the National Representatives could
only be one of more or less violent antagonism.
[The National Assembly, May 4.]
[Riot of May 15.]
[Measures against the National Workshops.]
The first act of the Assembly, which met on the 4th of May, was to declare
that the Provisional Government had deserved well of the country, and to
reinstate most of its members in office under the title of an Executive
Commission. Ledru Rollin's offences were condoned, as those of a man
popular with the democracy, and likely on the whole to yield to the
influence of his colleagues. Louis Blanc and his confederate, Albert, as
really dangerous persons, were excluded. The Jacobin leaders now proceeded
to organise an attack on the Assembly by main force. On the 15th of May the
attempt was made. Under pretence of tendering a petition on behalf of
Poland, a mob invaded the Legislative Chamber, declared the Assembly
dissolved, and put the Deputies to flight. But the triumph was of short
duration. The National Guard, whose commander alone was responsible for the
failure of measures of defence, soon rallied in force; the leaders of the
insurgents, some of whom had installed themselves as a Provisional
Government at the Hôtel de Ville, were made captive; and after an interval
of a few hours the Assembly resumed possession of the Palais Bourbon. The
dishonour done to the national representation by the scandalous scenes of
the 15th of May, as well as the decisively proved superiority of the
National Guard over the half armed mob, encouraged the Assembly to declare
open war against the so-called social democracy, and to decree the
abolition of the national workshops. The enormous growth of these
establishments, which now included over a hundred thousand men, threatened
to ruin the public finances; the demoralisation which they engendered
seemed likely to destroy whatever was sound in the life of the working
classes of Paris. Of honest industry there was scarcely a trace to be found
among the masses who were receiving their daily wages from the State.
Whatever the sincerity of those who had founded the national workshops,
whatever the anxiety for employment on the part of those who first resorted
to them, they had now become mere hives of disorder, where the resources of
the State were lavished in accumulating a force for its own overthrow. It
was necessary, at whatever risk, to extinguish the evil. Plans for the
gradual dispersion of the army of workmen were drawn up by Committees and
discussed by the Assembly. If put in force with no more than the necessary
delay, these plans might perhaps have rendered a peaceful solution of the
difficulty possible. But the Government hesitated, and finally, when a
decision could no longer be avoided, determined upon measures more violent
and more sudden than those which the Committees had recommended. On the
21st of June an order was published that all occupants of the public
workshops between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five must enlist in the
army or cease to receive support from the State, and that the removal of
the workmen who had come into Paris from the provinces, for which
preparations had already been made, must be at once effected. [422]
[The Four Days of June, 23-26.]
The publication of this order was the signal for an appeal to arms. The
legions of the national workshops were in themselves a half-organised force
equal in number to several army-corps, and now animated by something like
the spirit of military union. The revolt, which began on the morning of the
23rd of June, was conducted as no revolt in Pans had ever been conducted
before. The eastern part of the city was turned into a maze of barricades.
Though the insurgents had not artillery, they were in other respects fairly
armed. The terrible nature of the conflict impending now became evident to
the Assembly. General Cavaignac, Minister of War, was placed in command,
and subsequently invested with supreme authority, the Executive Commission
resigning its powers. All the troops in the neighbourhood of Paris were at
once summoned to the capital, Cavaignac well understood that any attempt to
hold the insurrection in check by means of scattered posts would only end,
as in 1830, by the capture or the demoralisation of the troops. He treated
Paris as one great battle-field in which the enemy must be attacked in mass
and driven by main force from all his positions. At times the effort
appeared almost beyond the power of the forces engaged, and the insurgents,
sheltered by huge barricades and firing from the windows of houses, seemed
likely to remain masters of the field. The struggle continued for four
days, but Cavaignac's artillery and the discipline of his troops at last
crushed resistance; and after the Archbishop of Paris had been mortally
wounded in a heroic effort to stop further bloodshed, the last bands of the
insurgents, driven back into the north-eastern quarter of the city, and
there attacked with artillery in front and flank, were forced to lay down
their arms.
[Fears left by the events of June.]
Such was the conflict of the Four Days of June, a conflict memorable as one
in which the combatants fought not for a political principle or form of
Government, but for the preservation or the overthrow of society based on
the institution of private property. The National Guard, with some
exceptions, fought side by side with the regiments of the line, braved the
same perils, and sustained an equal loss. The workmen threw themselves the
more passionately into the struggle, inasmuch as defeat threatened them
with deprivation of the very means of life. On both sides acts of savagery
were committed which the fury of the conflict could not excuse. The
vengeance of the conquerors in the moment of success appears, however, to
have been less unrelenting than that which followed the overthrow of the
Commune in 1871, though, after the struggle was over, the Assembly had no
scruple in transporting without trial the whole mass of prisoners taken
with arms in their hands. Cavaignac's victory left the classes for whom he
had fought terror-stricken at the peril from which they had escaped, and
almost hopeless of their own security under any popular form of Government
in the future. Against the rash and weak concessions to popular demands
that had been made by the administration since February, especially in the
matter of taxation and finance, there was now a deep, if not loudly
proclaimed, reaction. The national workshops disappeared; grants were made
by the Legislature for the assistance of the masses who were left without
resource, but the money was bestowed in charitable relief or in the form of
loans to associations, not as wages from the State. On every side among the
holders of property the cry was for a return to sound principles of finance
in the economy of the State, and for the establishment of a strong central
power.
[Cavaignac and Louis Napoleon.]
[Louis Napoleon elected Deputy but resigns, June 14.]
General Cavaignac after the restoration of order had laid down the supreme
authority which had been conferred on him, but at the desire of the
Assembly he continued to exercise it until the new Constitution should be
drawn up and an Executive appointed in accordance with its provisions.
Events had suddenly raised Cavaignac from obscurity to eminence, and seemed
to mark him out as the future ruler of France. But he displayed during the
six months following the suppression of the revolt no great capacity for
government, and his virtues as well as his defects made against his
personal success. A sincere Republican, while at the same time a rigid
upholder of law, he refused to lend himself to those who were, except in
name, enemies of Republicanism; and in his official acts and utterances he
spared the feelings of the reactionary classes as little as he would have
spared those of rioters and Socialists. As the influence of Cavaignac
declined, another name began to fill men's thoughts. Louis Napoleon, son of
the Emperor's brother Louis, King of Holland, had while still in exile been
elected to the National Assembly by four Departments. He was as yet almost
unknown except by name to his fellow-countrymen. Born in the Tuileries in
1808, he had been involved as a child in the ruin of the Empire, and had
passed into banishment with his mother Hortense, under the law that
expelled from France all members of Napoleon's family. He had been brought
up at Augsburg and on the shores of the Lake of Constance, and as a
volunteer in a Swiss camp of artillery he had gained some little
acquaintance with military life. In 1831 he had joined the insurgents in
the Romagna who were in arms against the Papal Government. The death of his
own elder brother, followed in 1832 by that of Napoleon's son, the Duke of
Reichstadt, made him chief of the house of Bonaparte. Though far more of a
recluse than a man of action, though so little of his own nation that he
could not pronounce a sentence of French without a marked German accent,
and had never even seen a French play performed, he now became possessed by
the fixed idea that he was one day to wear the French Crown. A few obscure
adventurers attached themselves to his fortunes, and in 1836 he appeared at
Strasburg and presented himself to the troops as Emperor. The enterprise
ended in failure and ridicule. Louis Napoleon was shipped to America by the
Orleanist Government, which supplied him with money, and thought it
unnecessary even to bring him to trial. He recrossed the Atlantic, made his
home in England, and in 1840 repeated at Boulogne the attempt that had
failed at Strasburg. The result was again disastrous. He was now sentenced
to perpetual imprisonment, and passed the next six years in captivity at
Ham, where he produced a treatise on the Napoleonic Ideas, and certain
fragments on political and social questions. The enthusiasm for Napoleon,
of which there had been little trace in France since 1815, was now
reviving; the sufferings of the epoch of conquest were forgotten; the
steady maintenance of peace by Louis Philippe seemed humiliating to young
and ardent spirits who had not known the actual presence of the foreigner.
In literature two men of eminence worked powerfully upon the national
imagination. The history of Thiers gave the nation a great stage-picture of
Napoleon's exploits; Béranger's lyrics invested his exile at St. Helena
with an irresistible, though spurious, pathos. Thus, little as the world
concerned itself with the prisoner at Ham, the tendencies of the time were
working in his favour; and his confinement, which lasted six years and was
terminated by his escape and return to England, appears to have deepened
his brooding nature, and to have strengthened rather than diminished his
confidence in himself. On the overthrow of Louis Philippe he visited Paris,
but was requested by the Provisional Government, on the ground of the
unrepealed law banishing the Bonaparte family, to quit the country. He
obeyed, probably foreseeing that the difficulties of the Republic would
create better opportunities for his reappearance. Meanwhile the group of
unknown men who sought their fortunes in a Napoleonic restoration busily
canvassed and wrote on behalf of the Prince, and with such success that, in
the supplementary elections that were held at the beginning of June, he
obtained a fourfold triumph. The Assembly, in spite of the efforts of the
Government, pronounced his return valid. Yet with rare self-command the
Prince still adhered to his policy of reserve, resigning his seat on the
ground that his election had been made a pretext for movements of which he
disapproved, while at the same time he declared in his letter to the
President of the Assembly that if duties should be imposed upon him by the
people he should know how to fulfil them. [423]
[Louis Napoleon again elected, Sept. 17.]
[Louis Napoleon elected President, Dec. 10.]
From this time Louis Napoleon was a recognised aspirant to power. The
Constitution of the Republic was now being drawn up by the Assembly. The
Executive Commission had disappeared in the convulsion of June; Cavaignac
was holding the balance between parties rather than governing himself. In
the midst of the debates on the Constitution Louis Napoleon was again
returned elected, to the Assembly by the votes of five Departments. He saw
that he ought to remain no longer in the background, and, accepting the
call of the electors, he took his seat in the Chamber. It was clear that he
would become a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, and that the
popularity of his name among the masses was enormous. He had twice
presented himself to France as the heir to Napoleon's throne; he had never
directly abandoned his dynastic claim; he had but recently declared, in
almost threatening language, that he should know how to fulfil the duties
that the people might impose upon him. Yet with all these facts before it
the Assembly, misled by the puerile rhetoric of Lamartine, decided that in
the new Constitution the President of the Republic, in whom was vested the
executive power, should be chosen by the direct vote of all Frenchmen, and
rejected the amendment of M. Grevy, who, with real insight into the future,
declared that such direct election by the people could only give France a
Dictator, and demanded that the President should be appointed not by the
masses but by the Chamber. Thus was the way paved for Louis Napoleon's
march to power. The events of June had dispelled any attraction that he had
hitherto felt towards Socialistic theories. He saw that France required an
upholder of order and of property. In his address to the nation announcing
his candidature for the Presidency he declared that he would shrink from no
sacrifice in defending society, so audaciously attacked; that he would
devote himself without reserve to the maintenance of the Republic, and make
it his pride to leave to his successor at the end of four years authority
strengthened, liberty unimpaired, and real progress accomplished. Behind
these generalities the address dexterously touched on the special wants of
classes and parties, and promised something to each. The French nation in
the election which followed showed that it believed in Louis Napoleon even
more than he did in himself. If there existed in the opinion of the great
mass any element beyond the mere instinct of self-defence against real or
supposed schemes of spoliation, it was reverence for Napoleon's memory. Out
of seven millions of votes given, Louis Napoleon received above five,
Cavaignac, who alone entered into serious competition with him, receiving
about a fourth part of that number. Lamartine and the men who ten months
before had represented all the hopes of the nation now found but a handful
of supporters. Though none yet openly spoke of Monarchy, on all sides there
was the desire for the restoration of power. The day-dreams of the second
Republic had fled. France had shown that its choice lay only between a
soldier who had crushed rebellion and a stranger who brought no title to
its confidence but an Imperial name.