by incestuous intercourse with the old German Diet, the so-called
Central Power, profited by the Viennese movement to show forth their
utter nullity. This contemptible Assembly, as we have seen, had long
since sacrificed its virginity, and young as it was, it was already
turning grey-headed and experienced in all the artifices of painting
and pseudo-diplomatic prostitution. Of the dreams and illusions of
power, of German regeneration and unity, that in the beginning had
pervaded it, nothing remained but a set of Teutonic clap-trap
phraseology, that was repeated on every occasion, and a firm belief of
each individual member in his own importance, as well as in the
credulity of the public. The original naivety was discarded; the
representatives of the German people had turned practical men, that is
to say, they had made it out that the less they did, and the more they
prated, the safer would be their position as the umpires of the fate
of Germany. Not that they considered their proceedings superfluous;
quite the contrary. But they had found out that all really great
questions, being to them forbidden ground, had better be let alone,
and there, like a set of Byzantine doctors of the Lower Empire, they
discussed with an importance and assiduity worthy of the fate that at
last overtook them, theoretical dogmas long ago settled in every part
of the civilized world, or microscopical practical questions which
never led to any practical result. Thus, the Assembly being a sort of
Lancastrian School for the mutual instruction of members, and being,
therefore, very important to themselves, they were persuaded it was
doing even more than the German people had a right to expect, and
looked upon everyone as a traitor to the country who had impudence to
ask them to come to any result.
When the Viennese insurrection broke out, there was a host of
interpellations, debates, motions, and amendments upon it, which, of
course, led to nothing. The Central Power was to interfere. It sent
two commissioners, Welcker, the ex-Liberal, and Mosle, to Vienna. The
travels of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza form matter for an Odyssey in
comparison with the heroic feats and wonderful adventures of those two
knight-errants of German Unity. Not daring to go to Vienna, they were
bullied by Windischgraetz, wondered at by the idiot Emperor, and
impudently hoaxed by the Minister Stadion. Their despatches and
reports are perhaps the only portion of the Frankfort transactions
that will retain a place in German literature; they are a perfect
satirical romance, ready cut and dried, and an eternal monument of
disgrace for the Frankfort Assembly and its Government.
The left side of the Assembly had also sent two commissioners to
Vienna, in order to uphold its authority there--Froebel and Robert
Blum. Blum, when danger drew near, judged rightly that here the great
battle of the German Revolution was to be fought, and unhesitatingly
resolved to stake his head on the issue. Froebel, on the contrary, was
of opinion that it was his duty to preserve himself for the important
duties of his post at Frankfort. Blum was considered one of the most
eloquent men of the Frankfort Assembly; he certainly was the most
popular. His eloquence would not have stood the test of any
experienced Parliamentary Assembly; he was too fond of the shallow
declamations of a German dissenting preacher, and his arguments wanted
both philosophical acumen and acquaintance with practical matters of
fact. In politics he belonged to "Moderate Democracy," a rather
indefinite sort of thing, cherished on account of this very want of
definiteness in its principles. But with all this Robert Blum was by
nature a thorough, though somewhat polished, plebeian, and in decisive
moments his plebeian instinct and plebeian energy got the better of
his indefiniteness, and, therefore, indecisive political persuasion
and knowledge. In such moments he raised himself far above the usual
standard of his capacities.
Thus, in Vienna, he saw at a glance that here, not in the midst of the
would-be elegant debates of Frankfort, the fate of his country would
have to be decided. He at once made up his mind, gave up all idea of
retreat, took a command in the revolutionary force, and behaved with
extraordinary coolness and decision. It was he who retarded for a
considerable time the taking of the town, and covered one of its sides
from attack by burning the Tabor Bridge over the Danube. Everybody
knows how, after the storming, he was arrested, tried by
court-martial, and shot. He died like a hero. And the Frankfort
Assembly, horrorstruck as it was, yet took the bloody insult with a
seeming good grace. A resolution was carried, which, by the softness
and diplomatic decency of its language, was more an insult to the
grave of the murdered martyr than a damning stain upon Austria. But it
was not to be expected that this contemptible Assembly should resent
the assassination of one of its members, particularly of the leader of
the Left.
LONDON, March, 1852.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] "Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung" (The New Rhenish Gazette). After the
March revolution, 1848, Marx returned from Paris to Germany, and
settling down--for the time being--at Cologne, founded this paper.
Although the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" never went in for propounding
"Communist schemes," as Mr. Dawson, e.g., says it did, it became a
very nightmare to the Government. Reactionaries and Liberals alike
denounced the "Gazette," especially after Marx's brilliant defence of
the Paris Insurrection of June. The state of siege being declared in
Cologne, the "Gazette" was suspended for six weeks--only to appear
with a bigger reputation and bigger circulation than before. After the
Prussian "coup d'etat" in November, the "Gazette" published at the
head of every issue an appeal to the people to refuse to pay taxes,
and to meet force by force. For this and certain other articles the
paper was twice prosecuted. On the first occasion the accused were
Marx, Engels, and Korff; on the second and more important trial, they
were Marx, Schapper, and Schneider. The accused were charged with
"inciting the people to armed resistance against the Government and
its officials." Marx mainly conducted the defence, and delivered a
brilliant speech. "Marx refrains" (in this speech) "from all
oratorical flourish; he goes straight to the point, and without any
peroration ends with a summary of the political situation. Anyone
would think that Marx's own personality was to deliver a political
lecture to the jury. And, in fact, at the end of the trial, one of the
jurors went to Marx to thank him, in the name of his colleagues, for
the instructive lecture he had given them." (See Bernstein's work,
"Ferdinand Lassalle.") The accused were unanimously acquitted by the
jury. Among the better known of the contributors of the "New Rhenish
Gazette," edited by Marx, were Engels, W. Wolff, Werth, Lassalle;
while Freiligrath wrote for it his splendid revolutionary poems.
Perhaps one of the grandest of these is the celebrated "Farewell of
the 'Rhenish Gazette'," when on the 19th May, 1849, the final number
of the paper--suppressed by the Government--appeared, printed in red
type.
"When the last of crowns like glass shall break,
On the scene our sorrows have haunted,
And the people the last dread 'Guilty' shall speak,
By your side ye shall find me undaunted.
On Rhine or on Danube, in word and deed,
You shall witness, true to his vow,
On the wrecks of thrones, in the midst of the freed
The rebel who greets you now."
(Translated by Ernest Jones.)
XIII.
THE PRUSSIAN ASSEMBLY--THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.
APRIL 17th, 1852.
On the 1st of November Vienna fell, and on the 9th of the same month
the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in Berlin showed how much
this event had at once raised the spirit and the strength of the
Counter-Revolutionary party all over Germany.
The events of the summer of 1848 in Prussia are soon told. The
Constituent Assembly, or rather "the Assembly elected for the purpose
of agreeing upon a Constitution with the Crown," and its majority of
representatives of the middle class interest, had long since forfeited
all public esteem by lending itself to all the intrigues of the Court,
from fear of the more energetic elements of the population. They had
confirmed, or rather restored, the obnoxious privileges of feudalism,
and thus betrayed the liberty and the interests of the peasantry. They
had neither been able to draw up a Constitution, nor to amend in any
way the general legislation. They had occupied themselves almost
exclusively with nice theoretical distinctions, mere formalities, and
questions of constitutional etiquette. The Assembly, in fact, was more
a school of Parliamentary _savoir vivre_ for its members, than a body
in which the people could take any interest. The majorities were,
besides, very nicely balanced, and almost always decided by the
wavering centers whose oscillations from right to left, and _vice
versa_, upset, first the ministry of Camphausen, then that of
Auerswald and Hansemann. But while thus the Liberals, here as
everywhere else, let the occasion slip out of their hands, the Court
reorganized its elements of strength among the nobility, and the most
uncultivated portion of the rural population, as well as in the army
and the bureaucracy. After Hansemann's downfall, a ministry of
bureaucrats and military officers, all staunch reactionists, was
formed, which, however, seemingly gave way to the demands of the
Parliament; and the Assembly acting upon the commodious principle of
"measures, not men," were actually duped into applauding this
ministry, while they, of course, had no eyes for the concentration and
organization of Counter-Revolutionary forces, which that same ministry
carried on pretty openly. At last, the signal being given by the fall
of Vienna, the King dismissed its ministers, and replaced them by "men
of action," under the leadership of the present premier, Manteuffel.
Then the dreaming Assembly at once awoke to the danger; it passed a
vote of no confidence in the Cabinet, which was at once replied to by
a decree removing the Assembly from Berlin, where it might, in case of
a conflict, count upon the support of the masses, to Brandenburg, a
petty provincial town dependent entirely upon the Government. The
Assembly, however, declared that it could not be adjourned, removed or
dissolved, except with its own consent. In the meantime, General
Wrangle entered Berlin at the head of some forty thousand troops. In a
meeting of the municipal magistrates and the officers of the National
Guard, it was resolved not to offer any resistance. And now, after the
Assembly and its Constituents, the Liberal bourgeoisie, had allowed
the combined reactionary party to occupy every important position, and
to wrest from their hands almost every means of defence, began that
grand comedy of "passive and legal resistance" which they intended to
be a glorious imitation of the example of Hampden, and of the first
efforts of the Americans in the War of Independence. Berlin was
declared in a state of siege, and Berlin remained tranquil; the
National Guard was dissolved by the Government, and its arms were
delivered up with the greatest punctuality. The Assembly was hunted
down during a fortnight, from one place of meeting to another, and
everywhere dispersed by the military, and the members of the Assembly
begged of the citizens to remain tranquil. At last the Government
having declared the Assembly dissolved, it passed a resolution to
declare the levying of taxes illegal, and then its members dispersed
themselves over the country to organize the refusal of taxes. But
they found that they had been woefully mistaken in the choice of their
means. After a few agitated weeks, followed by severe measures of the
Government against the Opposition, everyone gave up the idea of
refusing the taxes in order to please a defunct Assembly that had not
even had the courage to defend itself.
Whether it was in the beginning of November, 1848, already too late to
try armed resistance, or whether a part of the army, on finding
serious opposition, would have turned over to the side of the
Assembly, and thus decided the matter in its favor, is a question
which may never be solved. But in revolution as in war, it is always
necessary to show a strong front, and he who attacks is in the
advantage; and in revolution as in war, it is of the highest necessity
to stake everything on the decisive moment, whatever the odds may be.
There is not a single successful revolution in history that does not
prove the truth of these axioms. Now, for the Prussian Revolution, the
decisive moment had come in November, 1848; the Assembly, at the head,
officially, of the whole revolutionary interest, did neither show a
strong front, for it receded at every advance of the enemy; much less
did it attack, for it chose even not to defend itself; and when the
decisive moment came, when Wrangle, at the head of forty thousand men,
knocked at the gates of Berlin, instead of finding, as he and all his
officers fully expected, every street studded with barricades, every
window turned into a loophole, he found the gates open, and the
streets obstructed only by peaceful Berliner burghers, enjoying the
joke they had played upon him, by delivering themselves up, hands and
feet tied, unto the astonished soldiers. It is true, the Assembly and
the people, if they had resisted, might have been beaten; Berlin might
have been bombarded, and many hundreds might have been killed, without
preventing the ultimate victory of the Royalist party. But that was no
reason why they should surrender their arms at once. A well-contested
defeat is a fact of as much revolutionary importance as an easily-won
victory. The defeats of Paris in June, 1848, and of Vienna in October,
certainly did far more in revolutionizing the minds of the people of
these two cities than the victories of February and March. The
Assembly and the people of Berlin would, probably, have shared the
fate of the two towns above-named; but they would have fallen
gloriously, and would have left behind themselves, in the minds of the
survivors, a wish of revenge which in revolutionary times is one of
the highest incentives to energetic and passionate action. It is a
matter of course that, in every struggle, he who takes up the gauntlet
risks being beaten; but is that a reason why he should confess himself
beaten, and submit to the yoke without drawing the sword?
In a revolution he who commands a decisive position and surrenders it,
instead of forcing the enemy to try his hands at an assault,
invariably deserves to be treated as a traitor.
The same decree of the King of Prussia which dissolved the Constituent
Assembly also proclaimed a new Constitution, founded upon the draft
which had been made by a Committee of that Assembly, but enlarging in
some points the powers of the Crown, and rendering doubtful in others
those of the Parliament. This Constitution established two Chambers,
which were to meet soon for the purpose of confirming and revising it.
We need hardly ask where the German National Assembly was during the
"legal and peaceful" struggle of the Prussian Constitutionalists. It
was, as usual, at Frankfort, occupied with passing very tame
resolutions against the proceedings of the Prussian Government, and
admiring the "imposing spectacle of the passive, legal, and unanimous
resistance of a whole people against brutal force." The Central
Government sent commissioners to Berlin to intercede between the
Ministry and the Assembly; but they met the same fate as their
predecessors at Olmuetz, and were politely shown out. The Left of the
National Assembly, _i.e._, the so-called Radical party, sent also
their commissioners; but after having duly convinced themselves of the
utter helplessness of the Berlin Assembly, and confessed their own
equal helplessness, they returned to Frankfort to report progress, and
to testify to the admirably peaceful conduct of the population of
Berlin. Nay, more; when Herr Bassermann, one of the Central
Government's commissioners, reported that the late stringent measures
of the Prussian ministers were not without foundation, inasmuch as
there had of late been seen loitering about the streets of Berlin
sundry, savage-looking characters, such as always appear previous to
anarchical movements (and which ever since have been named
"Bassermannic characters"), these worthy deputies of the Left and
energetic representatives of the revolutionary interest actually arose
to make oath, and testify that such was not the case! Thus within two
months the total impotency of the Frankfort Assembly was signally
proved. There could be no more glaring proofs that this body was
totally inadequate to its task; nay, that it had not even the remotest
idea of what its task really was. The fact that both in Vienna and in
Berlin the fate of the Revolution was settled, that in both these
capitals the most important and vital questions were disposed of,
without the existence of the Frankfort Assembly ever being taken the
slightest notice of--this fact alone is sufficient to establish that
the body in question was a mere debating-club, composed of a set of
dupes, who allowed the Governments to use them as Parliamentary
puppet, shown to amuse the shopkeepers and petty tradesmen of petty
States and petty towns, as long as it was considered convenient to
divert the attention of these parties. How long this was considered
convenient we shall soon see. But it is a fact worthy of attention
that among all the "eminent" men of this Assembly there was not one
who had the slightest apprehension of the part they were made to
perform, and that even up to the present day ex-members of the
Frankfort Club have invariably organs of historical perception quite
peculiar to themselves.
LONDON, March, 1852.
XIV.
THE RESTORATION OF ORDER--DIET AND CHAMBER
APRIL 24th, 1852.
The first months of the year 1849 were employed by the Austrian and
Prussian Governments in following up the advantages obtained in
October and November, 1848. The Austrian Diet, ever since the taking
of Vienna, had carried on a merely nominal existence in a small
Moravian country-town, named Kremsir. Here the Slavonian deputies,
who, with their constituents, had been mainly instrumental in raising
the Austrian Government from its prostration, were singularly punished
for their treachery against the European Revolution. As soon as the
Government had recovered its strength, it treated the Diet and its
Slavonian majority with the utmost contempt, and when the first
successes of the Imperial arms foreboded a speedy termination of the
Hungarian War, the Diet, on the 4th of March, was dissolved, and the
deputies dispersed by military force. Then at last the Slavonians saw
that they were duped, and then they shouted: "Let us go to Frankfort
and carry on there the opposition which we cannot pursue here!" But it
was then too late, and the very fact that they had no other
alternative than either to remain quiet or to join the impotent
Frankfort Assembly, this fact alone was sufficient to show their utter
helplessness.
Thus ended for the present, and most likely for ever, the attempts of
the Slavonians of Germany to recover an independent national
existence. Scattered remnants of numerous nations, whose nationality
and political vitality had long been extinguished, and who in
consequence had been obliged, for almost a thousand years, to follow
in the wake of a mightier nation, their conqueror, the same as the
Welsh in England, the Basques in Spain, the Bas-Bretons in France, and
at a more recent period the Spanish and French Creoles in those
portions of North America occupied of late by the Anglo-American
race--these dying nationalities, the Bohemians, Carinthians,
Dalmatians, etc., had tried to profit by the universal confusion of
1848, in order to restore their political _status quo_ of A.D. 800.
The history of a thousand years ought to have shown them that such a
retrogression was impossible; that if all the territory east of the
Elbe and Saale had at one time been occupied by kindred Slavonians,
this fact merely proved the historical tendency, and at the same time
physical and intellectual power of the German nation to subdue,
absorb, and assimilate its ancient eastern neighbors; that this
tendency of absorption on the part of the Germans had always been,
and still was, one of the mightiest means by which the civilization of
Western Europe had been spread in the east of that continent; that it
could only cease whenever the process of Germanization had reached the
frontier of large, compact, unbroken nations, capable of an
independent national life, such as the Hungarians, and in some degree
the Poles; and that, therefore, the natural and inevitable fate of
these dying nations was to allow this process of dissolution and
absorption by their stronger neighbors to complete itself. Certainly
this is no very flattering prospect for the national ambition of the
Panslavistic dreamers who succeeded in agitating a portion of the
Bohemian and South Slavonian people; but can they expect that history
would retrograde a thousand years in order to please a few phthisical
bodies of men, who in every part of the territory they occupy are
interspersed with and surrounded by Germans, who from time almost
immemorial have had for all purposes of civilization no other language
but the German, and who lack the very first conditions of national
existence, numbers and compactness of territory? Thus, the
Panslavistic rising, which everywhere in the German and Hungarian
Slavonic territories was the cloak for the restoration to independence
of all these numberless petty nations, everywhere clashed with the
European revolutionary movements, and the Slavonians, although
pretending to fight for liberty, were invariably (the Democratic
portion of the Poles excepted) found on the side of despotism and
reaction. Thus it was in Germany, thus in Hungary, thus even here and
there in Turkey. Traitors to the popular cause, supporters and chief
props to the Austrian Government's cabal, they placed themselves in
the position of outlaws in the eyes of all revolutionary nations. And
although nowhere the mass of the people had a part in the petty
squabbles about nationality raised by the Panslavistic leaders, for
the very reason that they were too ignorant, yet it will never be
forgotten that in Prague, in a half-German town, crowds of Slavonian
fanatics cheered and repeated the cry: "Rather the Russian knout than
German Liberty!" After their first evaporated effort in 1848, and
after the lesson the Austrian Government gave them, it is not likely
that another attempt at a later opportunity will be made. But if they
should try again under similar pretexts to ally themselves to the
counter-revolutionary force, the duty of Germany is clear. No country
in a state of revolution and involved in external war can tolerate a
Vendee in its very heart.
As to the Constitution proclaimed by the Emperor at the same time with
the dissolution of the Diet, there is no need to revert to it, as it
never had a practical existence, and is now done away with altogether.
Absolutism has been restored in Austria to all intents and purposes
ever since the 4th March, 1849.
In Prussia, the Chambers met in February for the ratification and
revision of the new Charter proclaimed by the King. They sat for about
six weeks, humble and meek enough in their behavior toward the
Government, yet not quite prepared to go the lengths the King and his
ministers wished them to go. Therefore, as soon as a suitable occasion
presented itself, they were dissolved.
Thus both Austria and Prussia had for the moment got rid of the
shackles of parliamentary control. The Governments now concentrated
all power in themselves, and could bring that power to bear wherever
is was wanted: Austria upon Hungary and Italy, Prussia upon Germany.
For Prussia, too, was preparing for a campaign by which "order" was to
be restored in the smaller States.