"For what else did he (Otto I) wish to found but a

world-monarchy like that of the Caesars? Emperor of the Romans

and Augustus did he call himself and at Rome he had received

his imperial crown. And was not for him the most sacred spot

in the universe the grave of St. Peter at Rome? Was not this

Saxon in armor an equally eager apostle of the Roman church

with that Anglo-Saxon monk who as servant of the pope had

planted Christianity in North German lands? While Otto was

determined to extend the power of his empire as far as to the

most distant peoples of the still unexplored north and east,

he at the same time purposed to bear to the end of the world

Christianity in the form in which Rome had given it him. The

bones of the Roman martyrs he carried over the Alps and

through faith in them he worked wonders; woods were cleared,

marshes dried, cities built, victories won over the most

dangerous enemies. Not only did the language of Rome sound

forth from the altars of Saxony: it became at the same time

the language of affairs in the emperor's chancery, and in it

the commands of the all-powerful Augustus were issued to the

whole world. Thus did Otto, although through and through a

Saxon warrior of the old stamp, live wholly at the same time

in those Roman ideas against which, in times gone by, his

forefathers had struggled. The mightiest contradictions which

have affected the course of the world's history met together

in his personality in full force, and reconciled themselves

there just as they did in the great onward course of events. …

In all the movements of the time Otto took part with force and

with success; the imperial title was now no empty name as it

had been in the last years of the Carolingian period. But not

through laws, not through an artificial state system, not

through a great army of officials did Otto rule Western

Europe, but more than all through the wealth of military

resources which his victories had placed in his hands. Through

the great army of his German vassals who were well versed in

war he overthrew the Slavonians, kept the Danes in check,

compelled the Hungarians to relinquish their nomadic life of

plunder and to seek settled dwelling places in the plains of

the Danube; so that now the gates of the East through which up

till then masses of peoples threatening everything with

destruction had always anew broken in upon the West were

closed forever. The fame of his victories and his feudal

supremacy, extending itself further and further, made him also

protector of the Burgundian and French kingdoms, and finally

lord of Lombardy and of the City of Rome. With the military

resources of Germany he holds in subjection the surrounding

peoples; but through the power thus won, on the other hand, he

himself gains a proud ascendancy over the multitude of his own

vassals. Only for the reason that he wins for himself a truly

royal position in Germany is he enabled to gain the imperial

crown; but this again it is which first really secures and

confirms his own and his family's rule in the German lands. On

this rests chiefly his preeminent position, that he is the

first and mightiest lord of Western Christendom, that as such

he is able at any moment to bring together a numerous military

force with which no people, no prince can any longer cope. But

not on this alone. For the Catholic clergy also, spreading far

and wide over the whole west, serves him as it were like a new

crowd of vassals in stole and cassock. He nominates the

archbishops and bishops in his German and Italian kingdoms as

well as in the newly converted lands of the North and East; he

rules the successor of St. Peter and through him exercises a

decisive influence on church progress even in the western

lands where he does not himself install the dignitaries of the

church. Different as this German empire was from the Frankish,

faulty as was its organization, its resources seemed

nevertheless sufficient in the hand of a competent ruler to

maintain a far-reaching and effectual rule in the West; the

more so as it was upheld by public opinion and supported by

the authority of the church. But one must not be led into

error; these resources were only sufficient in the hands of a

so powerful and active prince as Otto. From the Elbe marshes

he hastened to the Abruzzian Mountains; from the banks of the

Rhine now to the shores of the Adriatic, now to the sand-dunes

of the Baltic. Ceaselessly is he in motion, continually under

arms—first against the Wends and Hungarians, then against the

Greeks and Lombards. No county in his wide realm, no bishopric

in Catholic Christendom but what he fixed his eye upon and

vigilantly watched. And wherever he may tarry and whatever he

may undertake his every act is full of fire, force and vigor

and always hits the mark. With such a representative the

empire is not only the highest power in the Western world but

one which on all its affairs has a deep and active influence—a

power as much venerated as it was dreaded."

_W. von Giesebrecht,

Deutsche Kaiserzeit

(translated from the German).

volume 1, pages 476-484._

"He (Otto) now permanently united the Roman empire to the

German nation and this powerful and intelligent people

undertook the illustrious but thankless task of being the

Atlas of universal history. And soon enough did the connection

of Germany with Italy result in the reform of the church and

the revival of the various sciences, while in Italy itself it

was essentially the Germanic element which brought into being

the glorious civic republics. Through a historical necessity,

doubtless, Germany and Italy, the purest representatives of

the antique and the Teutonic types and the fairest provinces

in the kingdom of human thought, were brought into this

long-lasting connection. From this point of view posterity has

no right to complain that the Roman empire was laid like a

visitation of Fate on our Fatherland and compelled it for

centuries to pour out its life-blood in Italy in order to

construct those foundations of general European culture for

which modern humanity has essentially Germany to thank."

_Gregorovius,

Geschichte der Stadt Rom

(translated from the German),

volume 3, page 334._

See, also, GERMANY: A. D. 936-973 (pages 1439-1441).

GERMANY: 11-12th Centuries.

The question of the Investitures.

See (in this Supplement) PAPACY: A. D. 11-12TH CENTURIES.

{3760}

GERMANY: A. D. 1125-1272(?).

The Rise of the College of Electors.

"At the election of Rudolph [1272 or 1273?] we meet for the

first time the fully developed college of electors as a single

electoral body; the secondary matter of a doubt regarding what

individuals composed it was definitely settled before

Rudolph's reign had come to an end. How did the college of

electors develop itself? … The problem is made more difficult

at the outset from the fact that, in the older form of

government in Germany there can be no question at all of a

simple electoral right in a modern sense. The electoral right

was amalgamated with a hereditary right of that family which

had happened to come to the throne: it was only a right of

selection from among the heirs available within this family.

Inasmuch now as such selection could,—as well from the whole

character of German kingship as in consequence of its

amalgamation with the empire—take place already during the

lifetime of the ruling member of the family, it is easy to

understand that in ages in which the ruling race did not die

out during many generations, the right came to be at last

almost a mere form. Usually the king, with the consent of

those who had the right of election, would, already during his

lifetime, designate as his successor one of his heirs,—if

possible his oldest son. Such was the rule in the time of the

Ottos and of the Salian emperors. It was a rule which could

not be adhered to in the first half of the 12th century after

the extinction of the Salian line, when free elections, not

determined beforehand by designation, took place in the years

1125, 1138 and 1152. Necessarily the clement of election now

predominated. But had any fixed order of procedure at

elections been handed down from the past? The very principle

of election having been disregarded in the natural course of

events for centuries, was it any wonder that the order of

procedure should also come to be half forgotten? And had not

in the meantime social readjustments in the electoral body so

disturbed this order of procedure, or such part of it as had

been important enough to be preserved, as necessarily to make

it seem entirely antiquated? With these questions the

electoral assemblies of the year 1125 as well as of the year

1138 were brought face to face and they found that practically

only those precedents could be taken from what seemed to have

been the former customary mode of elections which provided

that the archbishop of Mainz as chancellor of the empire

should first solemnly announce the name of the person elected

and the electors present should do homage to the new king.

This was at the end of the whole election, after the choice

had to all intents and purposes been already made. For the

material part of the election, on the other hand, the part

that preceded this announcement, they found an apparently new

expedient. A committee was to draw up an agreement as to the

person to be chosen; in the two cases in question the manner

of constituting this committee differed. Something essential

had now been done towards establishing a mode of procedure at

elections which should accord with the changed circumstances.

One case however had not been provided for in these still so

informal and uncertain regulations; the case, namely, that

those taking part in the election could come to no agreement

at all with regard to the person whose choice was to be

solemnly announced by the archbishop of Mainz. And how could

men have foreseen such a case in the first half of the 12th

century? Up till then double elections had absolutely never

taken place. Anti-kings there had been, indeed, but never two

opposing kings elected at the same time. In the year 1198,

however, this contingency arose; Philip of Suabia and Otto IV

were contemporaneously elected and the final unanimity of

choice that in 1152 had still been counted on as a matter of

course did not come about. As a consequence questions with

regard to the order of procedure now came up which had hardly

ever been touched upon before. First and foremost this one:

can a better right of one of the elected kings be founded on a

majority of the votes obtained? And in connection with it this

other: who on the whole has a right to cast an electoral vote?

Even though men were inclined now to answer the first question

in the affirmative, the second, the presupposition for the

practical application of the principle that had been laid down

in the first, offered all the greater difficulties. Should

one, after the elections of the years 1125 and 1152 and after

the development since 1180 of a more circumscribed class of

princes of the realm, accept the existence of a narrower

electoral committee? Did this have a right to elect

exclusively, or did it only have a simple right of priority in

the matter of casting votes, or perhaps only a certain

precedence when the election was being discussed? And how were

the limits to be fixed for the larger circle of electors below

this electoral committee? These are questions which the German

electors put to themselves less soon and less clearly than did

the pope, Innocent III, whom they had called upon to

investigate the double election of the year 1198. … He speaks

repeatedly of a narrower electoral body with which rests

chiefly the election of the king, and he knows only princes as

the members of this body. And beyond a doubt the repeated

expressions of opinion of the pope, as well as this whole

matter of having two kings, at the beginning of the 13th

century, gave men in Germany cause for reflection with regard

to these weighty questions concerning the constitutional forms

of the empire. One of the most important results of this

reflection on the subject is to be found in the solution given

by the Sachsenspiegel which was compiled about 1230. Eike von

Repgow knows in his law-book only of a precedence at elections

of a smaller committee of princes, but mentions as belonging

to this committee certain particular princes: the three

Rhenish archbishops, the count Palatine of the Rhine, the duke

of Saxony, the margrave of Brandenburg and,—his right being

questionable indeed—the king of Bohemia. … So far, at all

events, did the question with regard to the limitation of the

electors seem to have advanced towards its solution by the

year 1230 that an especial electoral college of particular

persons was looked upon as the nucleus of those electing. But

side by side with this view the old theory still held its own,

that certainly all princes at least had an equal right in the

election. Under Emperor Frederick II, for instance, it was

still energetically upheld. A decision one way or the other

could only be reached according to the way in which the next

elections should actually be carried out. Henry Raspe was

elected in the year 1246 almost exclusively by ecclesiastical

princes, among them the three Rhenish archbishops. He was the

first 'priest-king' (Pfaffenkönig). The second 'priest-king'

was William of Holland. He was chosen by eleven princes, among

whom was only one layman, the duke of Brabant. The others were

bishops; among them, in full force, the archbishops of the

Rhine.

{3761}

Present were also many counts. But William caused himself

still to be subsequently elected by the duke of Saxony and the

margrave of Brandenburg, while the king of Bohemia was also

not behindhand in acknowledging him—that, too, with special

emphasis. What transpired at the double election of Alphonse

and Richard in the year 1257 has not been handed down with

perfect trustworthiness. Richard claimed later to have been

elected by Mainz, Cologne, the Palatinate and Bohemia;

Alphonse by Treves, Saxony, Brandenburg and Bohemia. But in

addition to the princes of these lands, other German princes

also took part,—according to the popular view by assenting,

according to their own view, in part at least, by actually

electing. All the same the lesson taught by all these

elections is clear enough. The general right of election of

the princes disappears almost altogether; a definite electoral

college, which was looked upon as possessing almost

exclusively the sole right of electing, comes into prominence,

and the component parts which made it up correspond in

substance to the theory of the Sachsenspiegel. And whatever in

the year 1257 is not established firmly and completely and in

all directions, stands there as incontrovertible at the

election of Rudolph. The electors, and they only, now elect;

all share of others in the election is done away with.

Although in place of Ottocar of Bohemia who was at war with

Rudolph Bavaria seems to have been given the electoral vote,

yet before Rudolph's reign is out, in the year 1290, Bohemia

at last attains to the dignity which the Sachsenspiegel, even

if with some hesitation, had assigned to it. One of the most

important revolutions in the German form of government was

herewith accomplished. From among the aristocratic class of

the princes an oligarchy had raised itself up, a

representation of the princely provincial powers as opposed to

the king. Unconsciously, as it were, had it come into being,

not exactly desired by anyone as a whole, nor yet the result

of a fixed purpose even as regarded its separate parts. It

must clearly have corresponded to a deep and elementary and

gradually developing need of the time. Undoubtedly from a

national point of view it denotes progress; henceforward at

elections the danger of 'many heads many minds' was avoided;

the era of double elections was practically at an end."

_K. Lamprecht,

Deutsche Geschichte

(translated from the German),

volume 4, pages 23-28._

See, also, GERMANY: A. D. 1125-1152 (page 1444).

GERMANY:A. D. 1154-1190.

Frederick Barbarossa in Italy.

See (in this Supplement) ITALY: A. D. 1154-1190.

GERMANY:A. D. 1162-1177.

The Emperor and the Pope.

See (in this Supplement) PAPACY: A. D. 1162-1177.

GERMANY:12th-17th Centuries.

Causes of the Disintegration of the Empire.

"The whole difference between French and German constitutional

history can be summed up in a word: to the ducal power, after

its fall, the crown fell heir in France; the lesser powers,

which had been its own allies, in Germany. The event was the

same, the results were different: in France centralization, in

Germany disintegration. The fall of the power of the

stem-duchies is usually traced to the subjugation of the

mightiest of the dukes, Henry the Lion, who refused military

service to the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa just when the

latter most needed him in the struggle against the Lombards.

See SAXONY: A. D. 1178-1183 (page 2813).

… The emperor not only banned the duke, he not only took away

his duchy to bestow it elsewhere, but he entirely did away

with this whole form of rule. The western part, Westphalia,

went to the archbishops of Cologne; in the East the different

margraves were completely freed from the last remnants of

dependence that might have continued to exist. In the

intervening space the little ecclesiastical and secular lords

came to be directly under the emperor without a trace of an

intermediate power and with the title of bishop or abbot,

imperial count, or prince. If one of these lords, Bernard of

Ascanium, received the title of Saxon duke, that title no

longer betokened the head of a stem or nation but simply an

honorary distinction above other counts and lords. What

happened here had already begun to take place in the other

duchy of the Guelphs, in Bavaria, through the detachment from

it of Austria; sooner or later the same process came about in

all parts of the empire. With the fall of the old stem-duchies

those lesser powers which had been under their shadow or

subject to them gained every where an increase of power:

partly by this acquiring the ducal title as an honorary

distinction by the ruler of a smaller district, partly by

joining rights of the intermediate powers that had just been

removed to their own jurisdictions and thus coming into direct

dependence on the empire. … Such was the origin of the idea of

territorial supremacy. The 'dominus terrae' comes to feel

himself no longer as a person commissioned by the emperor but

as lord in his own land. … As to the cities, behind their

walls remnants of old Germanic liberty had been preserved.

Especially in the residences of the bishops had artisans and

merchants thriven and these classes had gradually thrown off

their bondage, forming, both together, the new civic

community. … The burghers could find no better way to show

their independence of the princes than that the community

itself should exercise the rights of a territorial lord over

its members. Thus did the cities as well as the principalities

come to form separate territories, only that the latter had a

monarchical, the former a republican form of government. … It

is a natural question to ask, on the whole, when this new

formation of territories was completed. … The question ought

really only to be put in a general way: at what period in

German history is it an established fact that there are in the

empire and under the empire separate territorial powers

(principalities and cities)? As such a period we can designate

approximately the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th

centuries. From that time on the double nature of imperial

power and of territorial power is an established fact and the

mutual relations of these two make up the whole internal

history of later times. … The last ruler who had spread abroad

the glory of the imperial name had been Frederick II. For a

long time after him no one had worn the imperial crown at all,

and of those kings who reigned during a whole quarter of a

century not one succeeded in making himself generally

recognized. There came a time when the duties of the state, if

they were fulfilled at all, were fulfilled by the territorial

powers.

{3762}

Those are the years which pass by the name of the interregnum.

… Rudolph of Hapsburgh and his successors, chosen from the

most different houses and pursuing the most different

policies, have quite the same position in two regards: on the

one hand the crown, in the weak state in which it had emerged

from the interregnum, saw itself compelled to make permanent

concessions to the territorial powers in order to maintain

itself from one moment to another; on the other hand it finds

no refuge for itself but in the constant striving to found its

own power on just such privileged territories. When the kings

strive to make the princes and cities more powerful by giving

them numerous privileges, and at the same time by bringing

together a dynastic appanage to gain for themselves an

influential position: this is no policy that wavers between

conceding and maintaining. … The crown can only keep its place

above the territories by first recognizing the territorial

powers and then, through just such a recognized territorial

power by creating for itself the means of upholding its

rights. … The next great step in the onward progress of the

territorial power was the codification of the privileges which

the chief princes had obtained. Of the law called the 'Golden

Bull' only the one provision is generally known, that the

seven electors shall choose the emperor; yet so completely

does the document in question draw the affairs of the whole

empire into the range of its provisions that for centuries it

could pass for that empire's fundamental law. It is true that,

for the most part it did not create a new system of

legislation but only sanctioned what already existed. But for

the position of all the princes it was significant enough that

the seven most considerable among them were granted an

independence which comprised sovereign rights, and this not by

way of a privilege but as a part of the law of the land. A

sharply defined goal, and herein lies the deepest

significance, was thus set up at which the lesser territories

could aim and which, after three centuries, they were to

attain. … This movement was greatly furthered when on the

threshold of modern times the burning question of church

reform, after waiting in vain to be taken up by the emperor,

was taken up by the lower classes, but with revolutionary

excesses. … The mightiest intellectual movement of German

history found at last its only political mainstay in the

territories. … This whole development, finally, found its

political and legal completion through the Thirty Years War

and the treaty of peace which concluded it. The new law which

the Peace of Westphalia now gave to the empire proclaimed

expressly that all territories should retain their rights,

especially the right of making alliances among themselves and

with foreigners so long as it could be done without violating

the oath of allegiance to the emperor and the empire. Herewith

the territories were proclaimed to be what they had really

been for a long time—states under the empire."

_I. Jastrow,

Geschichte der deutschen Einheitstraum und seiner Erfüllung

(translated from the German).

pages 30-37._

GERMANY: 13th-15th Centuries.

The rise of the Free Cities and their Leagues.

"Under cities we are to understand fortified places in the

enjoyment of market-jurisdiction (marktrecht), immunity and

corporate self-government. The German as well as the French

cities are a creation of the Middle Ages. They were unknown to

the Frankish as well as to the old Germanic public law; there

was no organic connection with the Roman town-system. … All

cities were in the first place markets; only in

market-jurisdiction are we to seek the starting point for

civic jurisdiction. The market-cross, the same emblem which

already in the Frankish period signified the market-peace

imposed under penalty of the king's ban, became in the Middle

Ages the emblem of the cities. … After the 12th century we

find it to be the custom in most German and many French cities

to erect a monumental town-cross in the market-place or at

different points on the city boundary. Since the 14th century

the place of this was often taken in North-German cities by

the so-called Roland-images. … All those market-places

gradually became cities in which, in addition to yearly

markets, weekly markets and finally daily markets were held.

Here there was need of coins and of scales, of permanent

fortifications for the protection of the market-peace and the

objects of value which were collected together; here merchants

settled permanently in growing numbers, the Jews among them

especially forming an important element. Corporative

associations of the merchants resulted, and especially were

civic and market tribunals established. … From the beginning

such a thing as free cities, which were entirely their own

masters, had not existed. Each city had its lord; who he was

depended on to whom the land belonged on which they stood. If

it belonged to the empire or was under the administration

(vogtei) of the empire the city was a royal or imperial one.

The oldest of these were the Pfalz-cities (Pfalzstädte) which

had developed from the king's places of residence

(Königspfälze). … Beginning with the 12th century and in

course of the 13th century all cities came to have such an

organ [i. e. a body of representatives] called the Stadtrath

(consilium, consules) with one or more burgomasters (magistri

civium) at their head. Herewith did the city first become a

public corporation, a city in the legal sense. … Of the royal

cities many since the time of Frederick II had lost their

direct dependence on the empire (Reichsunmittelbarkeit) and

had become territorial or provincial cities, through having

been sold or pledged by the imperial government. As soon as

the view had gained ground that the king had no right to make

such dispositions and thus to disregard the privileges that

had been granted to the cities, people spoke no longer of

royal cities but of cities of the empire. These had, all of

them, in course of time, even where the chief jurisdiction

remained in the hand of an imperial official, attained a

degree of independence approximating to the territorial

supremacy of the princes. They had their special courts as

corporations before the king. Since the second half of the

13th century they rejoiced in an autonomy modified only by the

laws of the realm; they had the disposal of their own armed

contingents and the sole right of placing garrisons in their

fortresses. They had accordingly also the right of making

leagues and carrying on feuds, the right to lordless lands

(Heimfallsrecht) … and other prerogatives. The cities of the

empire often ruled at the same time over extensive

territories. …

{3763}

Among the cities of the empire were comprised after the 14th

century also various cities of bishoprics which had been able

to protect themselves from subjection to the territorial power

of the bishop, and which only stood to it in a more or less

loose degree of subordination. … For the majority of the

cities of bishoprics which later became cities of the empire

the denomination 'Free Cities' came up in the 14th century

(not till later 'Free Cities of the Empire'). … Among the

leagues of cities, which especially contributed to raise their

prestige and paved the way to their becoming Estates of the

Empire or of the principalities, the great Rhenish civic

confederation (1254-1256) lasted too short a time to have an

enduring effect. The Swabian civic league was for purely

political purposes—the maintenance of the direct dependence on

the empire (Reichsunmittelbarkeit) against the claims of

territorial sovereignty of the princes, and its unfortunate

ending served rather to deteriorate than to improve the

condition of the cities. It was different with the Hansa. This

name, which signified nothing else than gild or brotherhood,

was first applied to the gild of the German merchants in the

'stahlhof' in London. This gild, having originated from the

amalgamation of various national Houses of German merchants in

England, had finally, under the name of 'Hansa of Germany' or

'Gildhall of the Germans in England,' come to comprise all

Germans who carried on trade with England. Similar

associations of the German merchants were the 'German House'

in Venice, the 'German Counting-house' in Bruges and the

German Hansas in Wisby on Gotland, in Schonen, Bergen, Riga

and Novgorod. The chief purpose of these Hansas was the

procuring of a 'House' as a shelter for persons and for wares,

the maintaining of peace among, the Hansa brothers, legal

protection, the acquisition of commercial privileges, etc. The

Hansas were gilds with several elected aldermen at their heads

who represented them in external matters and who administered

the property. … Quarrels among the brothers might not, under

penalty, be brought before external tribunals; they were to be

brought before the Hansa committee as a gild-tribunal. This

committee had also an extended penal jurisdiction over the

members; under certain circumstances they had even the power

of life and death in their hands. An especially effective

punishment was the Hansa Bann, which occasioned, besides

expulsion from the Hansa, a complete boycott on the part of

the Hansa brothers. … The community of interests thus founded

among these cities led repeatedly, already as early as the

second half of the 13th century, to common steps on their

part; so that in Hansa affairs a tacit league existed, even

although it had not been expressly sanctioned. After this had

become more clearly apparent in the troubles with Flanders

(1356-1358) the name Hansa was also applied to this

league-relationship, so that henceforward besides the Hansa of

the German merchants there existed a Hansa of the German

cities. The Hanseatic League received a firm organization

through the Greifswald and Cologne confederations of 1361 and

1367, both of which were at first only entered into for a

single warlike undertaking (against Waldemar of Denmark), but

which were then repeatedly renewed and finally looked upon as

a permanent league. The Hanseatic League … came forward in

external matters, even in international relationships, as an

independent legal entity. It carried on war and entered into

treaties with foreign nations; it had a league army at its

disposal and a league fleet; it acquired whole territorial

districts and saw to the building of fortresses. In itself it

was not a defensive and offensive league; it did not concern

itself with the feuds of single cities with outsiders. The

sphere of activity of the league was essentially confined to

the province of commerce: protection of commerce, … the

closing of commercial treaties, etc. … The head of the League

was and continued to be Lubeck. Its kernel, as it were, was

formed by the Wendish (i. e. Mecklenburg and Pomeranian)

cities which were united under Lubeck. Originally any city of

Lower Germany which asked to be taken in was received into the

League. … Hansa cities which did not fulfil their federal

obligations came under the penalty of the Hansa bann and the

general commercial ostracism consequent upon it. … The federal

power was exercised by civic diets, which were assemblies of

delegates from the members of the council [Rath] of the

individual cities. The summons was sent by Lubeck. The decrees

were passed in the form of 'recesses.' … Within the League

again were narrower leagues with their own common affairs and

their own civic diets. After numerous changes the four

'quarters' were recognized as such: the Wendish under Lubeck

as its head, the Saxon under Brunswick, the Cologne under

Cologne, the Prussian-Livonian under Danzig.

_R. Schröder,

Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte

(translated from the German),

pages 588-609._

See, also, HANSA TOWNS (page 1624),

and CITIES, IMPERIAL AND FREE (page 473).

GERMANY: 15th-17th Centuries.

The decay of the Hansa.

"The complete ruin of the empire in the course of the 15th

century necessarily entailed at last the ruin also of its

members. Nowhere did this elementary truth make itself felt in

a more terrible manner than in northeastern Germany, in those

colonial districts which in consequence of the extraordinary

development of the Hansa had risen in importance to the extent

of having an influence on the whole east and northeast of

Europe. Here the year 1370 had denoted for the Hansa a climax

without a parallel. After a glorious war it had closed with

the Danish king, Waldemar Atterdag, a peace which seemed about

to keep the northern kingdoms, for a long time to come, under

the power of its will. But, soon after, the Lubeck-Hanseatic

policy began to degenerate. … The Hansa had looked on without

interfering at the struggle which began between the Teutonic

Order and Poland. This freed it from the threatening maritime

supremacy of the Order; besides this it had just become

involved, itself, in conflicts in the North. … A long and

tedious war ensued … which ended to the disadvantage of the

Hansa. … Within the Hansa, during the struggle, the divergency

of interests between the Wendish, Prussian and Livonian cities

had for the first time become so pronounced as to amount to

complete disunion, and already in 1431 in Hanseatic circles

the fear could be expressed … 'that the noble confederation of

our Hansa will be dissolved and destroyed.' Such being the

case it soon became evident that the struggle with King Erich

had actually cost the Hansa the 'Dominium maris Baltici.'

{3764}

For one thing the English and the Dutch, more and more

unopposed, began to carry on in the East a commerce which was

hostile to the Hansa. … While the Western enemies of the Hansa

thus appeared in districts on the Baltic, which had hitherto

been reserved for the Hanseatic merchant, the influence on the

North Sea of the Baltic Hansa cities diminished also more and

more. It was possible indeed, for some time to come, still to

hold on to Norway. But further to the southwest the Hansa

ships, in the war which England in union with Burgundy had

been waging with France since the year 1415, saw themselves

attacked on all sides in spite of the neutral flag. It was

well-known that the empire would not protect the German flag.

It was worse still that in England a more and more violent

opposition arose against the Hanseatic privileges, for the

progress of this movement laid bare once and for all the

fundamental contrast between the commercial interests in

England of the Rhenish Hansa cities and those of the

'Osterlings' [Eastern cities]. If the English were prepared

perhaps to further extend the rights of the Hansa in their

land in return for the simultaneous free entry of their flag

in the Baltic, that was a condition which pleased the German

western cities as much as it seemed unacceptable to the

Osterlings, Lubeck at their head. The English had succeeded in

carrying discord into the enemy's camp. Affairs in Flanders

were on a footing equally dangerous to the continued existence

of the Hansa as a whole. … Lubeck, in a diet of the year 1466,

recommended the members of the Hansa to consider the merchants

of Cologne as not belonging to the Hansa when in the lands of

the Duke of Burgundy. A complete breach could not now fail to

come. It occurred, very unfortunately for Cologne and the

western cities, on English territory. In 1468 English ships

were plundered in the 'Sund,' at the bidding, as was claimed,

of the Hansa. The result was that King Edward IV took prisoner

all German merchants who happened to be in England and forbade

commercial intercourse with Germany. From this restriction,

however, the Cologners were able to free themselves through

separate negotiations with the king. It was an inconsiderate

step thus to separate themselves from the rest of the Hansa,

and that, too, in such a question as this. Cologne stood there

fully isolated now even from the western cities. Lubeck at

once profited by the occasion to have Cologne placed under the

Hansa bann and soon after the Hansa, almost entirely united

now except for Cologne, began the war against England. In the

year 1472 a great fleet sailed out against the island-kingdom;

it had complete success. The peace of Utrecht of February 18th

1474 restored once more the old Hanseatic privileges in

England and opened up the prospect of damages amounting to

£10,000. Cologne had to submit; in 1478 it returned to the

Hansa. But all the same there was no complete restoration of

the old unity. The mercantile differences between the west and

the east cities not only continued but increased, and a

dominion over the Baltic, not to mention the North Sea, was,

in spite of the momentary success in England, no longer to be

thought of. … After about 1490 the interests also of the

Wendish cities including, say, Bremen, Hamburg and Lüneburg,

became divided. … Thus towards the end of the 15th century the

Hansa bore the stamp of decline in all directions, … the

political-mercantile preponderance on land, as well as the

'Dominium maris Baltici,' was broken and the league itself was

torn by internal dissensions. In the years from 1476 to 1494

only one common Hansa diet was held; complete ruin was now

only a question of time. The 16th century and a part still of

the 17th century comprise the period of the slow wasting away

of the Hansa. While at the beginning of this period the South

German merchant-princes developed a German world-commerce, the

satiated mercantile houses of the North showed themselves

incapable of progressing even on purely commercial paths. They

remained in the ruts of old-fashioned commerce." In England

"less and less regard was paid to the warnings and plaints of

this antiquated piece of retrogression, until Queen Elisabeth

made use of the incautious promulgation of an imperial edict

forbidding English merchants to settle in the Hansa cities to

simply abrogate the Hanseatic privileges in England. It was

the key-stone on the tomb of the Hanseatic relations with

England, once so close and full of import."

_K. Lamprecht,

Deutsche Geschichte

(translated from the German),

volume 4, pages 468-484._

"The unmerciful fate which had overtaken the German nation

[the 30 years war], like a storm wind descending upon the

land, gave also the death-blow to that proud communal system

which when in its prime showed better than any other

institution the greatness of the German power in the Middle

Ages. He who does not know the history of the Hansa does not

know how to estimate the true significance of our people. He

does not know that no goal was too distant for it, no task too

great; that at the same time it could belong to the first

commercial nations of the world and intellectually absorb and

work over the idea of humanism, could offer defiance to the

kings of the Danes and challenge the pope for usurping the

rule of the world. How did things still look on the Thames

when in Dantzig, day after day, four or five hundred ships

were running in and out, when the merchants of Soest, Dortmund

and Osnabrück were opening their counting-houses in the

Warangian city of Novgorod? It is in truth nothing new if the

German nation today again begins to reckon itself among the

naval powers. … In those days it was also the baneful

religious schism which hindered the great commercial centres

on the German northern coast from making use of the favoring

constellations which presented themselves. The evangelical

burghers of Lubeck and Rostock could not make up their minds

for the sake of advantageous trade connections with Spain to

become bailiffs of their brothers of the faith in Holland;

they could put no trust in the brilliant promises with which

the emperor's Jesuits tried to turn them away from the cause

of Denmark and Sweden, and herewith probably the last

opportunity was missed of breathing new life in the already

aging commercial league. The attempt made in 1641 to renew the

league by ten cities remained ineffectual. Lubeck which

already in 1629 had lost 96 ships could no longer keep itself

from ruin; its great commercial houses became bankrupt and

drew down the smaller ones with them in their fall; Dantzig,

which still in 1619 had been able to show an export of grain

to the amount of 102,981 tons, exported in 1655 only 11,361,

and in 1659 not more than 542 tons."

_Zwideneck-Sü-denhorst,

Deutsche Geschichte, 1648-1740

(translated from the German),

volume 1, page 50._

{3765}

GERMANY: 16th Century.

At the beginning of the Reformation Movement.

"An increase in pilgrimages first begins to mark a new phase

of religious life which was encouraged by the admonitions of

preachers of repentance like Capistrano. Like an avalanche did

the numbers grow of the pilgrims who streamed together from

all parts of Upper and Central Germany, from the foot of the

Alps to the Harz Mountains. Thirty, even seventy thousand

might have been counted of those who assembled at Niklashausen

to hear the words of the prophet (Boeheim) who was already

reverenced as a saint. … This 'saint' was burned with an Ave

Maria upon his lips. … It might have been supposed that the

sad outcome of these movements would have frightened men away,

but no; one can boldly maintain on the contrary that never,

save during the crusades, were so many pilgrimages made as in

the last 60 or 70 years before the reformation. … If that way

of striving after righteousness before God, vain and mistaken

as it seems to us, may be looked upon as religion, then the

last fifty or sixty years before the reformation show an

exceptionally high degree of religious feeling, or at least of

religions need; a feeling ever increasing through lack of

means to satisfy it. With regard to the clergy, indeed, things

looked dark enough, especially in North and Central Germany.

One does not know which was greater, their lack of knowledge

or their lack of morality. … The most incredible facts were

brought to light by the later visitations. … The result might

have been a complete return to heathenism had such a clergy,

which could show, especially in the larger South German

cities, but few redeeming exceptions, had the whole spiritual

guidance of the people in its hands. But it did not; and the

doings of the secular clergy by no means affected the

religious life of the community as they would have done

to-day. The exponents and fosterers of this religious life at

that time in Germany were the mendicant friars: Franciscans,

Dominicans, Augustinian friars. … Many things in the outer

world, especially at the end of the century, came to aid the

church's efforts: the needs of an age in which so much was

unstable; the anger of Heaven which, as the monks so

drastically preached and the multitude piously believed, so

evidently threatened to vent itself. That period of history,

indeed, might be called a prosperous one by anyone regarding

merely superficially the condition of social and political

affairs. It is well known how German commerce prospered at

that time, extending to all parts of the world and ever having

new paths opened up for it by the new discoveries. Frenchmen

and Italians, astounded at the riches and princely splendor

which the commercial magnates in the South German

trade-centres were able to display, sang the praises of the

prosperity and culture of the land. Industry and commerce were

on the increase and art, realizing its highest aims, found an

abiding-place and self-sacrificing patrons in the houses of

the citizens. With every year the number of high and low-grade

schools on the Rhine and in South Germany increased in number,

and were still scarcely able to do justice to the pressing

educational needs. An undercurrent of fresh and joyous

creative impulse, full of promise for the future, can be

traced among the burghers. But if one regards the age as a

whole one sees everywhere not only a threatening, but actually

a present decline. The abundant popular literature, more even

than the writings of scholars, gives a clear insight into

these matters. … Since the days of antiquity, on the eve of

the French Revolution alone do we find the opposing principles

so sharply contrasted with each other as they were at the end

of the Middle Ages. In the rich commercial cities themselves

there was already an immense proletariat as opposed to the

excessive wealth; and there is reason to believe that never,

even counting the present day, have there been so many beggars

as in those decades. It must be borne in mind that, both

practically and theoretically, beggary was furthered by the

church. Much from her rich table fell into the lap of the poor

man, and actually not only was it no shame to beg but beggary

was a vocation like any other. The man who ate the bread of

beggary stood morally higher than he who toiled to gain a

living. … Men did, on the other hand, have the consciousness

that the great accumulation of capital in the hands of

individuals furthered poverty as it always does. The

complaints are general against 'selfishness'; the pauper, the

town artisan, the noble and the scholar are remarkably in

accord on this one point, that deception, usury and cheating

are the only explanation of the prosperity of the merchant.

When the knight attacked the goods-waggons of the traders he

believed that he was only taking what rightfully belonged to

himself. The merchants and the rich prelates were responsible

to his mind for the deterioration of his own class or estate

which can no longer hold its own against the rich civilians.

All the more does he oppress his own serfs. Only seldom among

the higher classes do we hear a word of pity for the poor man,

a word of blame against the fleecing and harrassing of the

peasants; much oftener bitter scorn and mockery, which

nevertheless is founded on fear; for men know well enough in

their inmost souls that the peasant is only waiting for a

suitable moment in which to strike out and take bloody

vengeance, and anxiously do they await the future. Even among

the citizens themselves those who were without possessions

were filled with hatred against the rich and against those of

high degree. The introduction of Roman law, unintelligible to

the burgher and peasant, made the feeling of being without law

a common one. The more firmly did men pin their faith on that

future in which the Last Judgment of God was to come and

annihilate priests and lords. Such impressions, which were

kept vivid by an ever spreading popular literature, by word of

mouth and by pictorial representations, could only be

heightened by the state of political affairs in the last

decades of the 15th century and the first years of the 16th.

Well known are the many struggles for the firmer organization

of the empire, for the carrying through of the reform-plans of

a Berthold of Mainz. The publicists of the time, and to no

small degree the Emperor Maximilian himself, who, if he wanted

to carry through any measure addressed himself directly to the

people, cast broadside among the populace numerous pamphlets

containing the most unintelligible ideas and promises.

{3766}

And what a host of plans and ideas did this much loved,

knightly emperor not have! How beautifully could he talk of

old German might and glory and draw pictures of a rosy future.

With intense interest did men follow the transactions of the

diets which promised to better affairs. One plan of taxation

followed on the heels of another. What project was left

undiscussed for the better carrying out of the Peace of the

Land! In the end everything remained as it had been save the

want and general discomfort which increased from year to year.

Bad harvests and consequent rise in prices, famine, severe

sicknesses and plagues are once more the stock chapters in the

chronicles. Frightful indeed were the ravages caused by the

first, almost epidemic, appearance of the Syphilis; with

regard to which, during the whole period of the reformation,

the moral judgment wavered. … It is a wondrous, gloomy time,

torn by contradictions, a time in which all is in a ferment,

everything seems to totter. Everything but one institution,

the firmly welded edifice of the Roman church. To Germany also

came the news of the horrible vices with which the popes just

at this time disgraced the Holy See: people knew that no deed

was too black for them when it was a question of satisfying

their greed of power and their lust. But nevertheless they

remained the successors of Peter and the representatives of

Christ, and so little can one speak of a process of

dissolution in the church, that the latter appears on the

contrary the only stable power and the

religious-ecclesiastical idea is rather the one that rules all

things. Although men to a great extent scorn and mock her

servants and long often with burning hatred for their

annihilation, yet it continues always to be the church that

holds the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and that can avert the

wrath of God; the church, to which the anxious soul turns as

the last anchor of hope and tries to outdo itself in her

service. It is not indeed pious reverence for a God who is

holy and yet gracious that draws the sinners to their knees,

but the dread of the tortures of purgatory and of the wrath of

Him who sits above the world to judge it. This causes the

soul, restless, dissatisfied, to be ceaseless in its endeavors

to conciliate the Angry One through sacrificial service—the

whole religious activity being one half-despairing 'Miserere'

called forth by fear. Such was the spirit of the age in which

Martin Luther was born and in which he passed his youth."

_Kolde,

Martin Luther

(translated from the German),

volume 1, pages 5-27._

See, also, PAPACY: A. D. 1471-1513, to 1517-1521

(pages 2441-2450).

GERMANY: 16th Century.

The Catholic Reaction.

"Altogether about the year 1570 the spread of protestantism in

Germany and the lands under its influence had reached its

zenith. It had been accepted by the great majority of the

nation—already in 1558 about seven tenths; the gaining over of

the rest also seemed only a question of the near future. Yet

beyond a doubt its lasting success was only legally assured in

places where it had won over the governing power and could

stand on the generally recognized basis of the religious

peace. This was the case in the secular principalities of the

protestant dynasties, but not in the Wittelsbach and Hapsburgh

lands, where its lawful existence depended only on the

personal concessions of the existing ruler, and still less in

the ecclesiastical territories. … To give it here the secure

legal basis which it lacked was the most important problem, as

regarded internal German affairs, of the protestant policy. …

The only way to attain this was to secure the recognition on

the part of the empire of the free right of choosing a

confession in the bishoprics; in other words the renunciation

of the 'Ecclesiastical reservation.' … This goal could only be

attained if the protestants advanced in a solid phalanx. This

is, however, just what they could not do. For they themselves

were torn by bitter contentions with regard to the faith. …

From this point of view it was no boon that Calvinism, the

specifically French form of protestantism, found entrance also

into Germany. … Under its influence, to begin with, the

Saxon-Thuringian church became divided in its interpretation

of the teachings concerning justification and the Lord's

Supper. … The complications were still further increased when

Frederick III of the Palatinate, elector since 1559, disgusted

at the quarrelsomeness of the Lutheran theologians, dismissed

the zealot Tilemann in August 1560, and in 1563 gave over the

recognized church of the Palatinate to Calvinism. Herewith he

completely estranged the Lutherans who did not regard the

Calvinists as holding the same faith. … Germany could no

longer count itself among the great powers and at home the

discord was ever increasing. The motion of the Palatinate in

the electoral diet of October 1575 to incorporate in the

religious peace the so-called 'Declaration of King Ferdinand'

with regard to it, and thus to secure the local option with

regard to a creed in the bishoprics, was opposed not only by

the ecclesiastical members of the electoral college but also

by the electorate of Saxony. In consequence of the same party

strife a similar motion of the Palatinate, made in the diet of

Regensburg, was lost. … On the one hand hostilities grew more

bitter among the German protestants, on the other the Roman

church, supported by the power of the Spanish world-monarchy,

advanced everywhere, within and without the German empire, to

a well-planned attack. … She had won her first victory in the

empire with the refusal in 1576 to grant the local option of

creed, for this was almost equivalent to a recognition on the

protestant side of the 'Ecclesiastical Reservation.' The more

eagerly did Rome, by demanding the oath drawn up in the

council of Trent, strive to chain fast her bishops to her, to

remove those who made opposition even if it had to happen by

disregarding the law of the land and the religious treaties,

to bring zealous catholic men into the episcopal

sees—everywhere to set the reaction in motion. The manner of

proceeding was always the same: the protestant pastors and

teachers were banished; the catholic liturgy, in which the

utmost splendor was unfolded, was reintroduced into the

churches, and competent catholic clergy were put in office.

The members of the community, left without a leader, had now

only the choice allowed to them of joining the catholic church

or of emigrating; the protestant officials were replaced by

catholic ones; new institutions of learning, conducted by

Jesuits, were founded for the purpose of winning the rising

generation, inwardly also, for Catholicism.

{3767}

Beyond a doubt this whole work of restoration put an end in

many cases to a confused and untenable state of affairs, but

at least as often it crushed down by force a healthy, natural

development and wrought havoc in the moral life of the people.

Thus did the reaction gain the ascendancy in most of the

ecclesiastical principalities of the South; in the North the

scale still hung in the balance. … And in this condition of

affairs the discord among the protestants grew worse year by

year! 'Their war is our peace' was the exultant cry of the

Catholics when they looked upon this schism. In order to

preserve pure Lutheranism from any deviation, the electoral

court of Saxony caused the 'Formula of Concord' to be drawn up

by three prominent theologians in the monastery of Bergen near

Madgeburg (20 May 1577), and compelled all pastors and

teachers of the land to accept them under pain of dismissal

from office. As this necessarily accentuated the differences

with the Calvinists, John Casimir of the Palatinate

endeavored, in the Convention of Frankfort on the Main in

1577, to unite the protestants of all denominations and all

lands … in a common effort at defence; but his appeal and the

embassy which he sent to the evangelical princes met with no

very favorable reception. On the contrary in course of time 86

estates of the empire accepted the Formula of Concord which

was now published in Dresden, together with the names of those

who had signed it, on the 25th of June 1580, the 50th

anniversary of handing in the Augsburg Confession. What a pass

had matters come to since that great epoch! … At any rate the

unity of the German protestants was completely at an end, and

especially any joint action between Saxony and the Palatinate

had been rendered impossible. … In 1582 the Roman party opened

a well-planned campaign for the purpose of putting itself in

full possession of the power in the empire. The emperor

belonged as it was to their confession, so all depended on the

manner in which the diet should be made up; and this again

depended on who should be members of the college of princes:

for in the college of electors the votes of the protestants

and catholics were equal inasmuch as the Bohemian vote was

'dormant,' and of the imperial cities only a few were still

catholic. In the electoral college, then, the protestants

possessed the majority so long as the 'administrators' [of the

bishoprics] maintained as hitherto their seat and their vote.

In the first place the catholics succeeded in the diet of 1582

in persuading Magdeburg for the nonce to renounce in favor of

Salzburg its presidency in the assembly of the princes;

herewith, however, a precedent was given, not only for this

ecclesiastical foundation but for all the evangelical

administrators, that permitted of the most fateful conclusions

being drawn to the disadvantage of the protestants. Scarcely

had this happened when the Roman party gave a decisive turn to

affairs on the Lower Rhine. Archbishop Gebhard of Cologne

prepared to follow the example of his predecessor Hermann of

Wied, chiefly induced, it must be said, by the wish to gain

the hand of the fair countess Agnes of Mansfeld. Relying on

the Cologne protestants and the Counts of the Wetterau and

reckoning on help from the Netherlands he formally went over

to the protestant church on the 19th of December 1582,

proclaimed the local option of a creed for his diocese on the

16th of January 1583, and married the Countess Agnes a few

weeks later in Bonn. While on the one hand, now, the diet of

the duchy of Westphalia declared for him and the local option

was here put through, the Cologne diet, on the other, called

together by the cathedral chapter, declared against him, under

pressure as it was from both Spain and Rome. Pope Gregory XIII

deposed him … and on the 23rd of May the pupil of the Jesuits,

Ernest of Bavaria, who already since 1566 had been bishop of

Freisingen, since 1573 of Hildesheim, since 1581 also of

Liege, was placed in the see of Cologne. The war began. On the

one side Spanish and Bavarian troops marched into the land, on

the other forces from the Netherlands and the Palatinate, led

by John Casimir in person under the approval of Louis VI. …

The fortunes of war soon turned completely against him

[Gebhard], … he himself was beaten and compelled to flee to

the Netherlands, and Westphalia was then conquered. This

victory was decisive not only for Northern Germany, but for

the fate of the bishoprics altogether—indeed for the whole

form which the administration of the empire was to take. Had

Gebhard held his own, the majority in the electoral college

would have become protestant; the bishoprics in the northwest

which had not yet taken a decisive stand, and probably others

also, would have followed the example of Cologne and would

never have allowed their seats in the assembly of princes to

be taken from them; the Lower Rhenish-Westphalian provinces

would then have been gained for protestantism. The opposite of

all this now happened. In the first place Archbishop Ernest

restored the Roman church by the most oppressive means in

Westphalia; he called the Jesuits to Bonn, Neuss, Emmerich and

Hildesheim. His election as bishop of Munster (May 1585)

decided the victory in that bishopric also. … The Roman party

succeeded now, actually, in driving the administrators from

the diet. In order not to cause the violent dissolution of the

diet which met in April 1594 for the purpose of granting a tax

which was pressingly needed for the Turkish war, Magdeburg

renounced once more Its presidency in the college of princes;

and when, in December 1597, the diet was again called for the

same purpose, the catholic estates, in spite of all protests

to the contrary, regarded the matter as having been settled by

the precedents of the last two diets. Herewith the

administrators lost their seats in the diet, and in the

college of princes the majority was in the hands of the

catholics. Inasmuch also as the evangelical members of the

college of electors did not hold together, the total majority

of the diet was at the disposal of the catholics. … On the

27th of April 1608 the Palatinate, together with Brandenburg

and nine lesser protestant estates, but without the electorate

of Saxony [Luther's state!], declared to Duke Ferdinand of

Styria, the emperor's representative, that they would leave

the diet but would maintain the possession of the

ecclesiastical estates by force if necessary. The schism with

the church had already paralyzed the judicial system of the

empire; it now paralyzed also its highest political

corporation."

_Käemmel,

Deutsche Geschichte

(translated from the German),

pages 701-715._

See, also, PAPACY: A. D. 1537-1563 (page 2458).

{3768}

GERMANY: A. D. 1615.

First newspaper publications.

See PRINTING AND PRESS: A. D. 1612-1650 (page 2592).

GERMANY: A. D. 1618-1700.

The rise of Prussia.

"King Frederick [the Great] has good reason for it when he

says in his memoirs: 'Just as a river first becomes valuable

when it gets to be navigable, so the history of Brandenburg

first gains more serious importance towards the beginning of

the 17th century.' It was under the elector John Sigismund

that three decisive occurrences took place which opened up a

great future for the Marks—a totally different development

from the growth of the other lands of the empire. These were

the joining to Brandenburg of the secularized provinces of the

Teutonic Order, the going over of the ruling house itself to

the reformed church, finally the acquisition of the Lower

Rhenish border lands. Other princes of the empire also,

catholics as well as protestants, had enlarged their power by

means of the lands of the old church. But in the matter of the

territory of the Order the policy of the German protestants

ventured its boldest move; by Luther's advice the Hohenzollern

Albrecht snatched away from the Roman church the largest of

all its clerical belongings. The whole territory of the new

duchy of Prussia was alienated ecclesiastical land; the pope's

anathema and the emperor's ban fell on the head of the

renegade prince. Never was the Roman See willing to recognize

such robbery. In uniting the ducal crown of their Prussian

cousins with their own electoral hat the Hohenzollerns of the

Mark broke forever with the Roman church. Their state stood

and fell henceforward with the fortunes of Protestantism. At

the same time John Sigismund adopted the reformed creed. … At

the same time of thus gaining a firm footing on the Baltic

John Sigismund acquired the duchy of Cleve together with the

counties of Mark and Ravensberg,—a territory narrow in

circumference but highly important for the internal

development as well as for the European policy of the state.

They were lands which were strongholds of old and proven

peasant and civic freedom, richer and of higher capacities for

culture than the needy colonies of the East, outposts of

incalculable value on Germany's weakest frontier. In Vienna

and Madrid it was felt as a severe defeat that a new

evangelical power should establish itself there on the Lower

Rhine where Spaniards and Netherlanders were struggling for

the existence or non-existence of protestantism—right before

the gates of Cologne which was the citadel of Romanism in the

empire. … A power so situated could no longer have its horizon

bounded by the narrow circle of purely territorial policy; it

was a necessity for it to seek to round off its widely

scattered provinces into a consistent whole; it was compelled

to act for the empire and to strike for it, for every attack

of strangers on German ground cut into its own flesh. … For

the House of Brandenburg, too, tempting calls often sounded

from afar, … but a blessed providence, which earnest thinkers

should not regard as a mere chance, compelled the

Hohenzollerns to remain in Germany. They did not need the

foreign crowns, for they owed their independent position among

other states to the possession of Prussia, a land that was

German to the core, a land the very being of which was rooted

in the mother-country, and yet at the same time one that did

not belong to the political organization of the empire. Thus

with one foot in the empire, the other planted outside of it,

the Prussian state won for itself the right to carry on a

European policy which could strive for none but German ends.

It was able to care for Germany without troubling itself about

the empire and its superannuated forms. … The state of the

Hohenzollerns plunged once again headlong from the position of

power which it had so recently attained; it was on the sure

road to ruin so long as John Sigismund's successor looked

sleepily into the world out of his languid eyes. This new

attempt, too, at forming a German state seemed again about to

end in the misery of petty-stateism as had been the case

formerly with the political constellations of the Guelphs, the

Wettiners, the Counts Palatine, which had arisen under

immeasurably more favorable auspices. It was at this juncture

that the elector Frederick William, the greatest German man of

his day, entered the chaos of German life as a prince without

land, armed only with club and sling, and put a new soul into

the slumbering forces of his state by the power of his will.

From that time on the impulse of the royal will, conscious of

its goal, was never lost to the growing chief state of the

Germans. One can imagine English history without William III,

the history of France without Richelieu; the Prussian state is

the work of its princes. … Already in the first years of the

rule of the Great Elector the peculiar character of the new

political creation shows out sharply and clearly. The nephew

of Gustavus Adolphus who leads his army to battle with the old

protestant cry of 'with God' resumes the church policy of his

uncle. He it is who first among the strife of churches cries

out the saving word and demands general and unconditional

amnesty for all three creeds. This was the program of the

Westphalian peace. And far beyond the provisions of this

treaty of peace went the tolerance which the Hohenzollerns

allowed to be exercised within their lands. … While Austria

drives out its best Germans by force, the confines of

Brandenburg are thrown open with unequalled hospitality to

sufferers of every creed. How many thousand times has the song

of praise of the Bohemian exiles sounded forth in the Marks! …

When Louis XIV revokes the Edict of Nantes the little

Brandenburg lord steps forth boldly against him as the

spokesman of the protestant world, and offers through his

Potsdam Edict shelter and protection to the sons of the

martyred church. … Thus year after year an abundance of young

life streamed over into the depopulated East Marks; the German

blood that the Hapsburghs thrust from them fructified the land

of their rivals, and at the death of Frederick II about a

third of the inhabitants of the state consisted of the

descendants of immigrants who had come there since the days of

the Great Elector. … The particularism of all estates and of

all territorial districts heard with horror how the Great

Elector forced his subjects to live as 'members under one

head,' how he subjected the multiplicity of rule in the diets

to the commands of his own territorial jurisdiction and

supported his throne on the two columns of monarchical

absolutism: the miles perpetuus and permanent taxation.

{3769}

In the minds of the people troops and taxes still passed for

an extraordinary state burden to be borne in days of need. But

Frederick William raised the army into a permanent institution

and weakened the power of the territorial estates by

introducing two general taxes in all his provinces. On the

country at large he imposed the general hide-tax

(general-hufenschoss), on the cities the accise, which was a

multiform system of low direct and indirect imposts calculated

with full regard for the impoverished condition of agriculture

and yet attacking the taxable resources at as many points as

possible. In the empire there was but one voice of execration

against these first beginnings of the modern army and finance

system. Prussia remained from the beginning of its history the

most hated of the German states; those imperial lands that

fell to this princely dynasty entered, almost all of them,

with loud complaints and violent opposition into this new

political combination. All of them soon afterwards blessed

their fate. … Frederick William's successor by acquiring the

royal crown gained for his house a worthy place in the society

of the European powers and for his people the common name of

Prussians. Only dire need, only the hope of Prussia's military

aid, induced the imperial court to grant its rival the new

dignity. A spasm of terror went through the theocratic world:

the electorate of Mainz entered a protest; the Teutonic Order

demanded back again its old possession, which now gave the

name to the heretical monarchy while the papal calendar of

states, for nearly a hundred years to come, was to know only a

'margrave of Brandenburg.'"

_H. von Treitschke,

Deutsche Geschichte im 19ten Jahrhundert

(translated from the German),

volume 1, pages 26-36._

See, also, GERMANY: A. D. 1608-1618 (page 1466),

and PRUSSIA: A. D. 1700 (page 2613).

GERMANY: A. D. 1648.

The effects of the Thirty Years War.

"The national recollection holds fast to the great German war

as a thirty years continuance of universal warlike ravagings.

As a matter of fact, however, the separate parts of the empire

were directly affected by it in very different degrees; some

parts only seldom and to a small extent, many at frequent

intervals or through long-enduring periods: no part however to

such an extent that during the whole three decades it stood

always under the immediate pressure of military events and of

military burdens. Devastation and exhaustion worked their

immediate results in all directions, but we must not leave out

of consideration that the local differences were naturally

very great. An incalculable number of details concerning the

horrors of the war and concerning its destructive effects lies

before us. … So undoubtedly well-founded as on the whole the

majority of these details may be said to be, impressively as

they are apt to be brought forward, they are none the less not

such as to suffice to enable us to gain from them an

exhaustive representation of the condition of things. We have

hundreds who give testimony to all the ravagings and the

misery of the time, and the voices of such witnesses are

almost the only ones that are heard. It is natural that there

are no equally eloquent reports concerning those periods of

time and those places in which people found themselves in

medium and comparatively bearable circumstances. For the most

part only what was exceptional—although, indeed, that happened

only too often—is depicted in the complaining reports. … It

cannot be denied too that amid the fearful needs of that time

the German language succumbed to a certain propensity for what

is monstrous. In all the writings which speak of war and the

ravages of war one sees an exuberance, which comes to be a

fixed mannerism, of almost whiny tones of complaint. … The

superlative of horror predominates almost exclusively; and

with an exceedingly fertile faculty of invention men surpass

themselves in ever new, ever more blood-curdling variations of

the one theme of blood and arson, of wretchedness and famine.

… The most severe of all evils, indeed, as a matter of fact,

were those to which the peasant element was subjected. … The

profits of all agricultural labor were most perceptibly

diminished on account of the extraordinary highness of wages,

which, a natural result of the lack of workmen, formed the

subject for the chief complaints after the war, especially of

those classes which possessed land. Everywhere we meet with

the fact that those entirely without property, such as serving

men and maids are really better off than the peasant who has

land. They draw the highest wages in money and in natural

products, they must be treated with the greatest consideration

by their employers to prevent them from quitting their

service, for everywhere they are sought after and easily do

they find work. … If the evils hitherto touched upon concerned

chiefly the peasant holdings, there was another and no less

important one which concerned all property holders and

especially the nobles, whether feudatory or directly under the

empire. This was the general burden of debt on landed

property. … The noble as well as the peasant had, from of old,

mortgages resting upon his property; those who made the loans

were chiefly the large and the small capitalists in the

cities. … As a matter of fact, already during the war itself

in large parts of the empire the landed property had been in a

condition of insolvency."

_B. Erdmannsdörffer,

Deutsche Geschichte, 1648-1740

(translated from the German),

volume 1, pages 100-109._

"How bitterly the decrease of population was felt in many

regions is proved by a decree of the local diet [kreistag] in

Franconia, transmitted to us by Hormayr, according to which

any man might take two wives, priests (catholic) might marry

and no man under 60 years of age might enter a monastery.

Quite incalculable was the loss of domestic animals; we have

but very incomplete statistics on the subject, but according

to these few the assertion is not unjustifiable that at most

one fifth of the number existing before the war remained. The

lack of working people being so great it was therefore

inevitable that famine should break out in very many regions.

The memoranda in chronicles and diaries contain truly

horrible, heart-breaking representations on the subject. J. J.

Rayser's 'Historischer Schauplatz der Stadt Heidelberg'

reports from the Palatinate: … 'Many rejoiced if they could

only get oxhides, cowhides, the skins of horses, sheep and

other animals, and eat them. Indeed cruel hunger drove them to

other things too, towards which human nature is apt to feel

horror and disgust. They ate dogs, cats, rats, mice, frogs and

other animals in order to appease their bitter hunger.

{3770}

Nor did they refrain from such animals as had already lain for

several weeks on the roads, or in pools and streams and which

gave forth a horrible odor. … The starving people even killed

each other and ate up the corpses; they ransacked the

cemeteries, broke open graves, climbed up on the gallows and

on the wheel and took the dead away to eat them.' … The

reports of single cases of cannibalism from neighborhoods

where otherwise the most friendly and contented people lived,

are too disgusting to allow us to quote any further examples.

… There is no other example of a destruction of civilization

such as the Thirty Years War in Germany produced. There is no

other case where a whole people in all parts of the land was

uniformly exposed to such severe losses, so that in numbers it

was reduced to one half; where, from riches, luxury and

abundance such as had undoubtedly prevailed at the beginning

of the century men had come to poverty and to the want of even

the necessaries of life. … The dissolution of the numerous

military organizations and the dismissal of the regiments had

created an enormous number of tramps of the most dangerous

sort and still continued to do much towards increasing

vagabondage. The grade of intelligence among the people of the

lowlands had decreased most alarmingly; while superstition was

continually on the increase. Witch-trials flourished both in

the city and in the country. Beggary had long ceased to be a

cause for shame; the war, which had brought down to it in a

short time even those who had been formerly the richest,

caused even the most dishonorable trade to be held in honor.

Whoever by daily labor could earn his daily bread might think

himself fortunate. In the place of the horses which war had

carried away, human beings took to dragging carts in the

street. … With the ruin of the trade and of the art industry

of Germany, which in the 16th century would for so many

objects have probably needed to fear no rivalry and which was

only surpassed by that of Italy, went hand in hand the rise

and increase of French industry. This was due in no small part

to the fact that an extensive market was opened up for it in

Germany. From the great and small courts of the secular and

ecclesiastical princes, from the estates of the nobles, where

the plunder of the generals and colonels of all nations and

confessions had at last indeed been unloaded, the money

contributed by the subjects flowed into the strong-boxes of

the Paris manufactories, which dictated the fashions for the

whole continent. Thus did the industrial triumph of France

supplement its political supremacy; thus did Germany's

misfortune become the cause of enriching her western neighbor,

France having known how to secure its existence as a state by

itself three centuries earlier than the Germans had done."

_H. von Zwiedineck-Südenhorst,

Deutsche Geschichte, 1648-1740

(translated from the German),

volume 1, pages 45-49._

"Through the complete destruction of its old civilization,

through an unexampled devastation of its prosperity and ruin

of its moral life the fatherland of the Reformation had saved

for that part of the world the freedom of faith. Strangers

played with the strongest people of Europe. That language

which in Luther's and Hutten's time had gloried at once in the

purity of its origin and in the terse power of its national

plainness had become Gallicized and full of flourishes, a

disgusting mixture of flatness and bombast, of artificiality

and coarseness, so servile, so incapable of expressing in

simple grandeur what was high and noble that in answer to the

question what German writings of those times can we read

to-day the honest reply must be, with the exception of some

poems by Simon Dach, Logau and Paul Gerhard, solely the droll

adventures of Simplicissimus and the merry sermons of Father

Abraham a Santa Clara. The terror and need of the time, the

rule of brute force and the intrusion of foreign customs, had

jarred and disturbed the inner life of the nation to its very

depths. Truth and fidelity had vanished, as well as the proud

frankness and bright enjoyment of life of the older

generation. A hideous greed of gold had taken hold of high and

low; the boastful pride of luxurious extravagance continued in

the midst of the general poverty."

_Essay by Heinrich von Treitschke,

quoted by Zwiedineck,

page 52._

See, also, GERMANY: A. D. 1648, to 1648-1780

(pages 1484-1489).

GERMANY: A. D. 1648-1715.

Relations of Austria, Germany and France

after the Thirty Years War.

"After 1648 it was the natural policy of the Hapsburgh

emperors to maintain the status quo of the Westphalian

treaties. … After the emperor had once lost the prospect of

gaining for himself the undivided rule over Germany, all his

endeavors were needed at least to hinder it from passing to

another. The efforts of the separate territorial sovereigns to

enlarge and round off their lands, their attempts to extend

their power externally and at the same time to tighten their

hold on their own subjects found henceforward a counterpoise

in Austria."

_L. Häusser,

Deutsche Geschichte

(translated from the German),

volume 1, page 21._

"The whole shamefulness of this disintegration of Germany,

showed itself in the defenceless state of the empire. … Right

under the greedy hands of France lay the weakest, the most

unguarded members of the empire. All along that priest-avenue

the Rhine, from Munster and Osnabrück up to Constance,

stretched a confused mass of tiny states, incapable of in any

way seriously arming themselves, compelled to betray their

country through the feeling of their own utter weakness.

Almost all the Rhenish courts held pensions from Versailles. …

Fully one-third of Germany served in the wars of the empire as

a dead burden. … The weakness of Germany was to blame for the

new growth of power in Austria and France; … the foreigners

laughed at the 'querelles allemandes' and the 'misère

allemande'; the Frenchman Bonhours mockingly asked the

question if it was possible that a German could have

intellect. … As the born antagonist of the old order of things

in Europe the basis of which was Germany's weakness, Prussia

stood in a world of enemies whose mutual jealousies formed her

only safeguard. She was without any natural ally, for the

German nation had not yet come to understand this budding

power. … Just as the House of Savoy was able to tread its way

through the superiority of the Hapsburghs on the one hand and

of the Bourbons on the other, so did Prussia, although

immeasurably harder pressed, have to find a path for herself

between Austria and France, between Sweden and Poland, between

the maritime powers and the inert mass of the German empire.

{3771}

She had to use every means of remorseless egoism, always ready

to change front, always with two strings to her bow. The

electorate of Brandenburg felt to the very marrow of its being

how deeply foreign ideas had eaten into Germany. All the

disorganized forces … which opposed the strong lead of the new

monarchy placed their faith in foreign help. Dutch garrisons

were stationed on the Lower Rhine and favored the struggle of

the Cleve estates against their German lords. The diets of

Magdeburg and of the electoral Mark counted on Austria. …

Frederick William breaks down the barriers of the

Netherlanders in the German Northwest; he drives their troops

from Cleve and from East Friesland. … Then he calls out to the

deaf nation his warning words, 'Remember that you are

Germans,' and seeks to drive the Swedes from the soil of the

empire. Twice did the ill-will of France and Austria succeed

in robbing the Brandenburg prince of the reward of his

victories, of the rule in Pomerania: the fame of the day at

Fehrbellin they could not take from him.

See BRANDENBURG: A. D. 1640-1688 (page 310).

… When the republic of the Netherlands threatened to fall

before the attack of Louis XIV Brandenburg caught the raised

arm of the conqueror.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1674-1678 (page 2289).

Frederick William carried on the only serious war that the

empire ventured on for the recovery of Alsace.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1672-1714 (page 209)].

… With the rise of Prussia began the long bloody work of

freeing Germany from foreign rule. … In this one state there

awoke again, still half unconscious as if drunken with long

sleep, the old hearty pride in the fatherland. … The House of

Hapsburgh recognized earlier than the Hohenzollerns did

themselves how hostile this modern North German state was to

the old constitution of the Holy Empire. In Silesia, in

Pomerania, in the Jülich-Cleve war of succession—everywhere

Austria stood and looked with distrust on its dangerous rival.

… Equally dangerous to Hapsburgh and to the German empire were

the French and the Turks; how natural was it for Hapsburgh to

seek support from Germany, to involve the empire in its wars,

to use it as a bulwark towards the west or for diversions

against France in case the Turks threatened the walls of

Vienna. … Only it cannot be denied that in this common action

the Austrian policy, under a more centralized guidance and

backed by a firmer tradition, looked out for its own advantage

better than did the German empire—loose, heavy, and without

consistent leadership. When the might of Louis XIV began to

oppress Germany the policy of the Hapsburghs was to remain for

a long time luke-warm and inactive. This policy led Austria

indeed even to make a league with France and, when she did at

last decide to help the great elector of Brandenburg against

the enemy of the empire, this happened so charily and

equivocally as to give rise to the doubt whether the Austrian

army was not placed there to keep watch over the Brandenburg

forces or even to positively hinder their advance. An Austrian

writer himself assures us that Montecuculi was in secret

commanded only to make a show of using his weapons against the

French. For a long time Austria stood by inactive while the

Reannexations were going on.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1679-1691 (page 1236).

… The whole war as conducted by Austria on the Rhine and in

the West was languid and sleepy;

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1672-1714 (page 209);

the empire and individual warlike princes were left to protect

themselves. What an entirely different display of power did

Austria make when it was a question of fighting for its own

dynastic interests!"

_H. von Treitschke,

Deutsche Geschichte im 19ten Jahrhundert

(translated from the German),

volume 1, pages 21-33._

"As in the wars so in the diplomatic negotiations the

separation of the Austrian dynastic interests from the

advantage and needs of the German empire often enough came to

light. It is only necessary to revert to the attitude which

the emperor's diplomacy took at Nimeguen and Ryswick.

See NIMEGUEN (page 2362);

and FRANCE: A. D. 1697 (page 1243)].

… When in the conferences at Gertruidenburg (1710) Louis XIV

was reduced to being willing not only to give up the

'Reannexations' and Strassburg but even to restore Alsace and

the fortress of Valenciennes, it was also not the interests of

the empire but solely those of the House of Hapsburgh which

led to the rejection of these offers and to the continuance of

a war by which, as it turned out eventually, not one of these

demands was gained. No wonder that in Germany, restricted

though the imperial authority already was, men still did not

feel secure so long as the emperor continued to have even the

power of making peace independently of the empire."

_L. Häusser,

Deutsche Geschichte

(translated from the German).

volume 1, page 23._

"Louis XIV regarded himself not exactly as enemy of the German

empire and of the imperial power of the House of Hapsburgh,

but rather as a pretendant to the throne. As he explains it in

the political directions meant for his son the empire of the

West, the heritage of Charles the Great, belongs not of right

to the Germans but to the kings who are crowned at Rheims. …

The Germans have ruined the empire, only a ruler with the

power of the French king can bring it again to honor. … If

Louis XIV by means of the Rhine Confederation of 1658 saw

himself bound in a close communion with German princes and

electors, if his troops rushed in at the decisive moment

before Erfurt and at Saint Gothard, if his omnipresent

diplomacy sought to find starting-points everywhere, even in

the Hofburg at Vienna: all this seemed to him activity in a

field which he really felt belonged to himself. The rendering

of the German princes dependent on the French court, the

loosening of the bonds which held the empire together, the

isolation of the Hapsburghs from the rest of the empire: these

were tasks which presented themselves as a matter of course if

taken in connection with those views of the right of the

French to the empire. … Already in Richelieu's time the king's

councillor, Jacques de Cassan, had brought forward the proof,

in a writing dedicated to the cardinal, that the greater part

of the existing European states, including Germany, were lands

which had unjustly been estranged from the French crown. …

This idea d'Auberry now carried further: as a matter of fact

Germans and French were to be considered one people as they

had been under the Merovingians and Carolingians; … the true

ruler, in the sense of the original world-organization was not

the emperor but the French king."

_B. Erdmannsdörffer,

Deutsche Geschichte (1648-1740)

(translated from the German),

volume 1, page 509._

{3772}

GERMANY: A. D. 1789-1792.

Germany and the French Revolution.

"What enthusiasm prevailed when France proclaimed the equality

of everything that bears human form, when the prophecies of

Rousseau, who spoke as no other Frenchman could, to the

hearts, to the courage, to the ideals of the German youth,

seemed about to be realized! All the cravings of the time, the

noble eagerness to recognize the dignity of man and the

heaven-storming defiance of the sovereign ego, found

themselves satisfied by the bold sophism of the Genevan

philosopher who declared that, in a condition of absolute

equality, everyone should obey himself only. The sins of the

Revolution appeared to the harmless German spectators as

hardly less seductive than its great deeds. The taste which

had been educated on Plutarch's lives of heroes grew loyally

excited over the broad Catonism of the new apostles of

freedom: the unhistorical abstractions of their political

creed were in keeping with the philosophical self-satisfaction

of the age. The over-zealous youths in whose ears still

sounded the stirring words of the robber Moor felt themselves

drawn along by the rhetorical pathos of the French and

unsuspectingly admired the republican virtue of the Girondists

at the very time when this party with unhallowed frivolity was

instigating a war against Germany. … In Hamburg and several

other cities the festival of confraternity was celebrated and

the liberty pole erected on the anniversary of the storming of

the Bastille. … Even in Berlin women of rank were seen adorned

with the tricolored ribbon and the rector of the Joachimsthal

gymnasium, in a solemn official address held on the occasion

of the king's birthday, praised the glorious Revolution to the

lively applause of Minister Hertzberg. … But this enthusiasm

of the German cultivated world for revolutionary France was

and remained purely theoretical; … the German admirers of the

Revolution never once laid before themselves the question how

their feelings on the subject should take on flesh and blood.

The wise man of Konigsberg [Kant] unconditionally and harshly

rejected all right of resistance. Even Fichte, the most

radical of his disciples, who even in the days of Robespierre

still dared to defend French liberty, warned emphatically

against the carrying out of his own ideas. He saw no bridge

between the 'level high road of natural law' and the 'dark

defile of a half-barbaric policy,' and he closed with the

renunciatory declaration: 'Worthiness to attain liberty can

only come upwards from below; freedom itself, if there is to

be no disturbance, can only descend from above.' … When the

struggle of parties continued to rage ever more fiercely and

with more cruelty, when the fanatic zeal for equality took

upon itself to annihilate even the last aristocracy of all,

that of life itself, then the faithful and unchanging mind of

the German found it impossible any longer to follow the

unaccountable contortions of French passion. The German

enthusiast turned weeping away from the barbarian who had

defiled his sanctuary. … Only in the minor states, which

lacked the sense of justice of a monarchy, did the sins of the

old French regime find an echo. There in the Germany of the

religious foundations (the Rhine bishoprics) there still

flourished the catholic unity of faith and the pride of

cathedral chapters which were recruited from nobles. In the

cities of the empire the haughtiness and corruption of old

civilian confraternity held sway, in the territories of the

princes, counts and imperial knights, the arrogance of little

corner tyrants. The whole existence of these ruined and

ossified forms of government cried shame on the ideas of the

century. Almost solely in these tiniest provinces did a slight

popular ferment show itself when the glad news of the great

peasant emancipation came from France. It chanced that the

abbess of Frauenalbe was hunted from her lands by her

subjects, that the oath of allegiance was refused to her

sister-abbess in Elten. Small peasant revolts broke out here

and there. … All this betokened little; in reality nowhere was

the political slumber of the empire deeper than in these

regions. … The weak and weaponless small states were entirely

without power of resistance against foreign violence. …

Neither was the emperor nor were the Prussian statesmen blind

to the immeasurable dangers of a war in the condition in which

things were. Leopold's cold-blooded, calculating nature

remained long unmoved by the appeals for help written by his

unhappy sister Marie Antoinette, who allowed herself to be

carried to the very verge of betraying her country by her

woman's passion and her princely pride. The Prussian cabinet

was at first very well pleased with the steps taken by the

constitutional parties; its envoy, von der Goltz, made no

secret of acknowledging the righteousness of the cause of the

revolution and showed that he had kept his eyes open to the

accumulated acts of folly of the blinded court. The mad doings

of the emigres were condemned with equal severity in Vienna

and in Berlin. Not until the spring of 1791, not until King

Louis had had to atone for his unsuccessful flight by unheard

of personal humiliations, did the two courts begin to think

seriously of protecting themselves against acts of

revolutionary violence. … Frederick William's chivalrous soul

was aglow with the thought of avenging with his sword the

offended majesty of France. Single clever heads among the

émigrés succeeded after all in gaining secret influence at

court. … In his circular from Padua Leopold invited the

European powers to enter the lists for his ill-used

brother-in-law, to avenge by forcible means every insult to

the dignity of the king, to recognize no constitution of

France of which the crown should not voluntarily approve.

Bischoffswerder, of his own accord and contrary to his

instructions, then signed the Vienna treaty of the 25th of

July by which both parties (Prussia and Austria) mutually

guaranteed each other's possessions and promised each other

help in case of internal disturbances. … Public opinion in

Prussia greeted the Austrian alliance with deep mistrust, …

but King Frederick William approved the arbitrary steps of his

friend (Bischoffswerder). He met Leopold soon after in

Pillnitz … and rejoiced in the thought that the league of the

two chief powers in Germany would last eternally, to the weal

of coming generations. In all of these mistaken acts there was

no immediate threat against France. In Pillnitz those émigrés

who urged war were sternly thrust aside and all that was

obtained was the empty declaration of August 27; the two

powers announced that they considered King Louis's cause a

matter common to all sovereigns; in case all European powers

should agree, there should be interference in France's

internal affairs.

{3773}

This meant nothing whatever, for everyone knew that England

would have nothing to do with armed intervention. And even

these obscure conditions were abandoned in Vienna when King

Louis, in the autumn, was reinstated in his dignities and

voluntarily accepted the new constitution. The Revolution

seemed to have come to a standstill, the emperor was

completely pacified. … It was France and France alone that, in

the face of this peaceable attitude of the German powers,

forced the war upon them. … The antipathy of a great majority

of the nation [France] to the republic was to be overcome by

the glamor of military successes, by the old darling

dream-project of natural boundaries. The financial needs of

the state were to be remedied by a mighty plundering

expedition. … While the war-like mood in the legislative

assembly increased from day to day, in the negotiations with

the emperor paltry disdain was shown; not even was a definite

indemnity offered to the estates of the empire in Alsace. It

was then that the House, carried away by the stirring speeches

of the Gironde, demanded a solemn declaration from the emperor

that he would give up the plan of a European league and would

show his readiness to support France according to the old

treaties of alliance with the Bourbons. The penalty of refusal

was to be immediate war. Upon Leopold giving a dignified and

temperate reply war was declared against Austria on April 20th

1792. … A doctrinary speech of Condorcet's announced to the

world that the principles of republican liberty had risen up

against despotism. The glove was thus thrown down to the whole

of ancient Europe: for Prussia, moreover, the Vienna Treaty

now became binding, having meanwhile been supplemented by a

formal defensive league."

_H. von Treitschke,

Deutsche Geschichte im 19ten Jahrhundert

(translated from the German),

volume 1, page 114-124._

See, also, FRANCE: A. D. 1791 (pages 1271-1275).

GERMANY: A. D. 1796-1807.

Germany and Napoleon.

"With the Italian campaign of 1796 began the second epoch of

the revolutionary era, the more fruitful one for the world at

large. The propaganda of the revolution now first began to

take actual effect and in Central Europe a new order of things

superseded the old division of lands, the traditional forma of

state and society. It was through Bonaparte's victories that

the weapons of France first acquired an indisputable

ascendancy. … As was the case with her manner of making war,

so did France's European policy take on a new character in the

hands of the victor of Montenotte and Rivoli. … In the head of

the great man without a home, to whom the soul-life of

nations, the ideal world, ever remained an unknown quantity,

the horrible conception of a new world-monarchy had already

found a place. The images of the Cæsars and the Carolingians

stood in dazzling splendor before his mind. The rich history

of a thousand years was to be annihilated by a single grand

adventure; the multiform culture of the West was to yield to

the sway of one gigantic man. This new and altogether

un-French policy of conquest rushed to its goals with a

wonderful assurance and want of conscience. Bonaparte's

perspicuity recognized at once by what means Austria,

victorious in Germany but worsted in Italy, could be forced

into a temporary peace: … he offered the imperial court the

possession of Venice in return for Milan, Belgium and the left

bank of the Rhine. … Under such conditions the Peace of Campo

Formio was entered into on October 17th 1797. Once more the

Holy Empire was to pay the penalty for Austria's defeats, and

once more, with greater hypocrisy than ever before, there rang

out in the diet those unctuous, imperially-paternal phrases

with which the un-German imperial power was wont to bemantle

its dynastic policy. Whereas among the conditions of the

secret articles of Campo Formio were the mutilation of the

German western boundary, the secularization of ecclesiastical

territory, the compensation of foreign princes at the cost of

the empire: the published version of the treaty spoke only of

the unviolated integrity of the empire. … At last, however,

the unhallowed secret had to come out. At Christmas-tide 1797

Mainz was vacated by the imperial troops. There came to light

the whole hopelessly confused relationships of the two

similarly-fortuned nations of central Europe when, at the same

time, the French occupied the unconquered bulwark of the Rhine

provinces and the conquered Austrians marched into the city of

St. Mark. Soon afterwards the envoys of France at Rastadt

openly came forward with the demand for the left bank of the

Rhine. It was the first official forewarning of the

annihilation of the Holy Empire. … So deep was the empire

sunken when the dreaded 'Italicus,' on the occasion of a

flying visit to Rastadt first cast a glance into German life.

On the shallow intrigues of this fruitless congress did

Bonaparte base his judgment of our fatherland. He saw through

the absolute nullity of the imperial constitution and

complacently came to the opinion that if such a constitution

had not existed it would have been necessary to invent it in

the interests of France. … It seemed to him high time to win

the petty dynasts entirely for France by gratifying their

greed of land, and thus to rob sundered Germany of its

nationality (dépayser l'Allemagne). … On February 9th, 1801,

the Peace of Luneville proclaimed openly and unequivocally

that which the treaty of Campo Formio had only secretly and

obscurely provided: that the Rhine was henceforward to be

Germany's boundary. A district of nearly 1,150 square miles

and containing nearly four million inhabitants was thus lost

to Germany. … With uncanny cold-bloodedness the German nation

accepted the fearful blow. Scarcely a sound of patriotic wrath

was heard when Mainz and Cologne, Aachen and Treves, the

broad, beautiful lands that had been the scene of our earliest

history, passed into the hands of the stranger. How many

bitter tears had the decrepit generation of the Thirty Years

War once poured forth for the sake of Strassburg alone! … The

first consul resumed the plan which Sièyes as ambassador in

Berlin had sketched already ill 1798. He prepared a threefold

division of Germany and, in order to bring the defenceless

minor states wholly in his power, sought first to thrust back

the two chief German powers as far as possible towards the

east. … The great man-scorner now invented an infallible means

of gaining sway over these south and west German provinces.

{3774}

Not in vain had he probed the German higher nobility at

Rastadt into the inmost recesses of their hearts. He created

our new intermediate states for the purpose, through them, of

securing forever Germany's disintegration. The host of petty

princes, counts and imperial knights, were burdensome to him

because they belonged mostly to the Austrian party and were of

no use in war. Among the electors and dukes, on the contrary,

there was useful material enough for the formation of a crowd

of French vassals; … they had almost all, during the recent

wars, made separate treaties with the enemies of the empire.

As rebels against that empire and its emperor they had

abandoned the ground of legality and broken their bridges

behind them. If the man who was omnipotent now took under his

protection these political hermaphrodites who were fit neither

to live nor die; if he satisfied their greed by throwing them

some crumbs from the belongings of their lesser co-estates and

tickled their vanity by means of pretentious titles and a show

of independence; if he rolled together the hundreds of tiny

territories into some dozens of new accidental states with a

history of yesterday and entirely without a legal title,

living solely from the favor of France; if he then led his

satraps to audacious wars against their fatherland and hurried

them on from one felony to another, rewarding new

lackey-services by new booty—where was the wonder? They had

sold their souls to him and he was able to reckon on it that

they would rather kiss the boots of the stranger than ever

submit to subordinate themselves to a German commonwealth. …

Bonaparte, meanwhile, had long made up his mind to resume the

war with his unassailable enemy [England]. Already in March

1803, long before the breach occurred between the two western

powers, he sent his confidant Duroc to Berlin with the notice

that he saw himself compelled to seize Hanover. … Therewith

the last and sole pride of the Prussian policy, the neutrality

of North Germany, was threatened with its death-blow. … And

meanwhile the Holy Empire was made to drink the cup of shame

to the very dregs. When Bonaparte caused the Duke of Enghien,

seized within the limits of Baden, to be led to execution,

only foreign powers like Russia, Sweden and England dared in

Regensburg to demand satisfaction for the scandalous breach of

the peace of the empire. Baden on the contrary, by Napoleon's

command, begged most earnestly that the painful matter might

not be followed up any further; while the rest of the

plenipotentiaries took their holiday before the time and thus

by their flight cut off all further negotiations. In May 1804

the Napoleonic empire was founded. … A hard, distrustful

foreign rule weighed upon Germany even before its princes had

formally made their submission to the emperor. … Thus

prepared, Napoleon proceeded to realize in his own way the

idea of a German triad with which Hardenberg had just been

amusing himself. Not in bond with Austria and Prussia but

independently and in opposition to them was France's old

protegée, 'la troisième Allemagne,' to take political form and

shape. … In the spring of 1806 the rumor spread at the German

courts that a new and extensive mediatization was to take

place. Once more, as had happened four years previously, the

envoys of our high nobility hastened to Paris on behalf of

their lords, to secure by flattery and bribery their share of

the booty. … The Rhine confederation of Louis XIV was

resuscitated in an incomparably more pronounced form. Sixteen

German princes renounced the empire, declared that they

themselves were sovereigns and that every law of the venerable

old national commonwealth was null and void. They recognized

Napoleon as their protector and placed at his disposal an army

of 63,000 men to be used in any continental war in which

France should engage. … German particularism entered into the

bloom-time of its sins. … The anarchy of a new interregnum

broke in upon Germany. Faustrecht held sway, exercised no

longer by bandit nobles but by princely courts. Napoleon

regarded with mistrust any and every expression of national

feeling in the enslaved land. The interest of France, he wrote

to his Talleyrand, demands that opinion in Germany remain

divided. A certain Yelin of Ansbach published an anonymous

pamphlet, 'Germany at its lowest Depth,' a well-meant writing,

full of feeling, and one which, in an age of iron, had only

the peaceful advice to give: 'Weep aloud, oh noble, honest

German!' But even this pious ejaculation of a harmless petty

citizen seemed to the emperor a matter for alarm and he caused

the book-seller Palm, who is said to have aided in spreading

the book, to be court-marshalled and shot. It was the first

judicial murder of Napoleonism on German ground, and the

clever people in Bavaria began to doubt whether the Rhine

Confederation had, after all, really brought about the victory

of freedom and enlightenment. … A new act of treason on the

part of Napoleon led at last to the out-break of the

inevitable war. Often and solemnly had Napoleon assured to his

Prussian ally the possession of Hanover. It was now suddenly

reported in Berlin that the emperor, who all through the

summer had been carrying on peace-negotiations with England

and Russia, had not scrupled to offer to deliver back to the

Guelphs their hereditary lands. When this news reached him

Frederick William at once (August 9) wrote to the Czar: 'If

Napoleon treats with England concerning Hanover he will ruin

me.' The king foresaw that in a short time the miserable

condition in which things had been in February would recur

again and that Prussia had only the choice left of once more

in silence suffering herself to be shamefully plundered or of

opposing by arms the ingress of the grand army. That was why

the Prussian army was placed on a war-footing and made to

assemble in Magdeburg's territory. With this step of

justifiable self-defence the war was decided. … Nothing could

have been more honest than the unsparingly upright defiance of

the king to Napoleon; nothing more righteous than the three

demands of the Prussian ultimatum of October: withdrawal of

the French from Germany, recognition of the North German

Confederation, a peaceful agreement as to the remaining

questions at issue between the two powers. Even from the

verbose, clumsy war-manifesto there breaks forth occasionally

a tone of dignified national pride: the king takes up arms 'to

free unhappy Germany from the yoke under which it is being

crushed. Nations have certain rights independent of an

treaties!' … Already on the 15th of October (1806) Napoleon

laid a contribution on all the Prussian provinces this side

the Weichsel of 159 million francs, declaring that the result

of the battle of the former day (Jena) had been the conquest

of all these lands.

{3775}

Never had the man of fortune boasted so outrageously, and yet,

through a strange turn of fortune, the most unhallowed of his

lies was to become literally true. Immediately after the

defeat the court of Saxony carried out its long-planned

desertion and went over to Napoleon. A week after the battle

the Prussian territory to the left of the Elbe, and the

possessions of the House of Orange and of the electors of

Hesse, were provisionally incorporated in the French empire. …

On July 7-9, 1807, the Peace of Tilsit was signed, the most

cruel of all French treaties of peace, unprecedented in form

as well as in contents. It ran, not that the lawful king of

Prussia ceded certain lands to the victor, but that the

conqueror, out of regard for the emperor of all the Russias,

granted back to its sovereign the smaller half of the Prussian

state. And this scandalous phrase, which contemporaries only

looked upon as a freak of Napoleonic arrogance, expressed

simply the naked truth. … Alexander did not wish the last

narrow dam which separated the Russian empire from the lands

of the vassals of France, to be torn away. … Prussia retained,

outside of the 5,700 square miles which the state, exclusive

of Hanover, had owned before the war, only about 2,800, … of

9¾ million inhabitants only 4½ million. The work of Frederick

the Great seemed undone."

_H. von Treitschke,

Deutsche Geschichte im 19 Jahrhundert

(translated from the German),

volume 1, pages 164-265._

See FRANCE: A. D. 1796 (APRIL-OCTOBER),

and after (pages 1314-1349.)

GERMANY: A. D. 1815-1848.

After the struggle.

The Zollverein.

"In Austria, in the decades succeeding the wars of liberation,

their reigned the most immovable quiet. The much-praised

system of government consisted in unthinking inactivity. The

Emperor Francis, a man with the nature of a subaltern

official, hated anything that approached to a constitution and

a saying of his was often quoted: 'Totus mundus stultizat et

vult habere constitutiones novas.' Metternich's power rested

on the 'dead motionlessness' of affairs. As far as his German

policy was concerned his aim was to hold fast to the

preponderating influence of Austria over the German states,

but not to undertake any responsibilities towards them. … As

for Prussia, in spite of the great sacrifices which she had

made, she emerged from the diplomatic negotiations and

intrigues of the Vienna Congress with the most unfavorable

disposition of territory imaginable. To the five million

inhabitants that had remained to her five and a half millions

were added in districts that had belonged to more than a

hundred different territories and had stood under the most

varied laws. There began now for this state a time well filled

with quiet work, the aim and object being to create a whole

out of the various parts. … The founding of the Burschenschaft

[student league] in Jena, the antagonistic attitude of the

Weimar press, the Wartburg festival with its extemporized

conflagration scene, excited scruples and fears in the ruling

circles. The murder of Kotzebue and the attempt on Ibell's

life showed the growing fanaticism and called forth stronger

measures from the governments. … Metternich recognizes their

usefulness for the carrying through of his reactionary

measures. … At a meeting in Teplitz he succeeds in winning

Frederick William III for his plans. In Carlsbad, over the

heads of the members of the federal diet, the most decisive

regulations were adopted which culminated in the appointment

of the Mainz Central-Investigation-Committee … and confirmed

Metternich's unhallowed rule in Germany as well as the reign

of that most miserable reaction which called forth a burst of

indignation even from the most moderate-minded patriots, and

which laid the land open to the scorn of the foreigner."

_Bruno-Gebhardt,

Lehrbuch der deutschen Geschichte

(translated from the German),

volume 2, pages 501-504._

"The Congress of Vienna created in 1815 a form of government

for Germany which was very unsatisfactory in character. It

was, however, so constituted that a national development at

some future time was not rendered an utter impossibility. The

German confederation was rather, on the whole, provisional in

its character; this fact comes out more and more plainly with

each thorough analysis and illustration of its constitution

and of its institutions. The main thing was that the German

confederation preserved unimpaired the dualism in Germany.

Technically the emperor of Austria had the honorary direction

of the confederation; practically he possessed as emperor of

Germany little r no power. In point of fact the German

imperial title was only a decoration for the ruler over a

variegated mixture of peoples, in the midst of which German

nationality was hard pressed by the national strivings of the

other races. In reality the strongest member of the German

confederation was the kingdom of Prussia, although according

to the federal laws it stood on a like footing with Bavaria,

Saxony, Hanover and Würtemberg. … This German confederation

was only capable of eking out its existence in a long period

of freedom from European disasters. … Only gradually, in the

various heads, did the opinion begin to form of the historical

vocation of Prussia to take her place at the head of the

German confederation or, possibly, of a new German empire.

Gradually this opinion ripened into a firmer and firmer

conviction and gained more and more supporters. The more

evidently impossible an actual guidance of Germany by Austria

became, the more conscious did men grow of the danger of the

whole situation should the dualism be allowed to continue. In

consequence of this the idea of the Prussian hegemony began to

be viewed with constantly increasing favor. A great step

forward in this direction was taken by the Prussian government

when it called into being the Zollverein [or customs-union].

The Zollverein laid iron bands around the separate parts of

the German nation. It was utterly impossible to think of

forming a customs-union with Austria, for all economic

interests were as widely different as possible; on purely

material grounds the division between Austria and Prussia

showed itself to be a necessity. On the other hand the

economic bonds between Prussia and the rest of the German

lands grew stronger from day to day. This material union was

the prelude to the political one: the Zollverein was the best

and most effectual preparation for the German federal state or

for the German empire of later days."

_W. Maurenbrecher,

Gründung des Deutschen Reichs,

pages 4-5._

{3776}

"Paul Pfizer wrote in 1831 his 'Correspondence of Two

Germans,' the first writing in the German language in which

liberation from Austria and union with Prussia was put down as

the solution of the German question and in which faith in

Prussia was made a part of such love to the German fatherland

as should be no longer a mere dream. … 'So little as the dead

shall rise again this side the grave, so little will Austria,

which once held the heritage of German fame and German glory,

ever again become for Germany what she has once been.'"

_W. Oncken,

Das Zeitalter des Kaisers Wilhelm

(translated from the German),

volume 1, pages 69-70._

The formation of the Zollverein "was the most important

occurrence since the wars of liberation: a deed of peace of

more far-reaching consequences and productive of more lasting

results than many a battle won. The economic blessings of the

Zollverein soon began to show themselves in the increasing sum

total of the amount of commerce and in the regularly growing

customs revenues of the individual states. These revenues for

example increased between 1834 and 1842 from 12 to 21 million

thalers. Foreign countries began to look with respect and in

part also with envy on this commercial unity of Germany and on

the results which could not fail to come. … A second event

happened in Germany in 1834, less marked in its beginnings and

yet scarcely less important in its results than the

Zollverein. Between Leipzig and Dresden the first large

railroad in Germany was started, the first mesh in that

network of roads that was soon to branch out in all directions

and spread itself over all Germany. … A direct political

occurrence, independent of the Zollverein and the railroads,

was, in the course of the thirties, to assist in awakening and

strengthening the idea of unity in the German people by making

evident and plain the lack of such unity and its disastrous

consequences. This was the Hanoverian 'coup d'etat' of the

year 1837. … In that year William IV of England died without

direct successors. … Hanover came into the hands of the Duke

of Cumberland, Ernest Augustus. … The new king, soon after his

inauguration, refused to recognize the constitution that had

been given to Hanover in 1833, on the ground that his

ratification as next heir to the throne had not been asked at

that time. … By persistent efforts Ernest Augustus … in 1840

brought about a constitution that suited him. Still more than

this constitutional struggle itself did a single incident

connected with it occupy and excite public opinion far and

wide. Seven professors of the Gottingen university protested

against the abrogation of the constitution of 1833. … Without

more ado they were dismissed from their positions. … The brave

deed of the Gottingen professors and the new act of violence

committed against them caused intense excitement throughout

all Germany. … A committee composed both of conservatives and

liberals was formed in Leipzig and raised collections, in

order by honorable gift to replace at least the material

losses of the banished professors. … In the course of the

forties the idea of nationality penetrated more and more all

the pores of German opinion and gave to it more and more, by

pressure from all sides, the direction of a great and common

goal. At first there were only isolated attempts at reform …

but soon the national needs outgrew such single expressions of

good will. … A tendency began to show itself in the public

opinion of Germany to accept the plan of a Prussian leadership

of all un-Austrian Germany."

_K. Biedermann,

Dreissig Jahre Deutscher Geschichte.

volume 1, pages 9-91._

See, also, GERMANY: A. D. 1814-1820,

to 1819-1847 (pages 1531-1533).

GERMANY: A. D. 1862-1890.

The Bismarck policy.

"Blood and iron" speech of the Prussian Premier.

On the question of the reorganization of the army, which was

brought forward early by Prince William (afterwards King and

Emperor) after he assumed the Regency in 1858, the Prussian

Diet placed itself in determined opposition to the government.

At a session of the Budget Commission of the House of

Representatives, September 30, 1862, Deputy Forckenbeck

offered the following resolution: "Whereas it is also feared

that after the declaration of the royal state government made

the 29th inst. the same would continue the expenditures for

the organization of the army on its own responsibility which

have already been rejected by the House for the year 1862 and

the rejection of which is likewise to be expected for 1863,

according to the acknowledgment of the government itself, and

Whereas a direct insistence of the prerogatives of the

people's representatives is urgently required, the House of

Representatives declares as follows:

1. The royal government is requested to lay the estimates for

1863 before the House as speedily as possible for their

constitutional consideration, so that the amount of the same

may be constitutionally fixed before January 1st 1863.

2. It is unconstitutional for the royal government to direct

expenditures which were by resolution of the House of

Representatives definitely and expressly rejected."

The Minister of State, Herr von Bismarck, spoke on these

resolutions as follows: "I would willingly accept the

estimates for 1862, if I could do so without entering upon

explanations which might prove prejudicial. Either side might

abuse its constitutional rights and be met by a reaction in

kind from the opposite side. The crown, for instance, might

decree dissolution twelve times in succession without

violating the letter of the constitution, yet would it be an

abuse of power. It may refuse to accept a striking out of

estimates without measure. Where will you draw the line? At 6

millions? at 16? or at 60? There are members of the National

Verein [National Union]—an organization highly respected for

the well known fairness of its demands,—very estimable

members—who declare all standing armies as superfluous. Well

then, if the House of Representatives should hold such view

must not the government repudiate it? The 'cool headedness' of

the Prussian people has been referred to. Well, it is a fact,

the great self-assertion of individuality among us makes

constitutional government very hard in Prussia; in France,

where this individual self-assertion is wanting, it is

otherwise. There a constitutional conflict was no disgrace,

but all honor. We are perhaps too 'cultured' to tolerate a

constitution; we are too critical; the ability to pass

judgment on measures of the government or acts of the

legislature is too universal; there is a large number of

'Catilinarian Characters' [existences in the original] in the

land whose chief interest is in revolutions. All this may

sound paradoxical; yet it proves how hard constitutional life

is in Prussia.

{3777}

The people are too sensitive about the faults of the

government; as if the whole did not suffer when this or that

individual minister blunders. Public opinion is changeable,

the press is not public opinion; everyone knows how the press

originates; the representatives have the higher task of

directing opinion, of being above it. To return once more to

our people: our blood is too hot, we are fond of bearing an

armor too large for our small body; now let us utilize it.

Germany does not look at Prussia's liberalism but at its

power. Let Bavaria, Würtemberg, Baden indulge in liberalism,

yet no one will assign to them the rule of Prussia; Prussia

must consolidate its might and hold it together for the

favorable moment, which has been allowed to pass unheeded

several times. Prussia's boundaries, as determined by the

Congress of Vienna, are not conducive to its wholesome

existence as a sovereign state. Not by speeches and

resolutions of majorities the mighty problems of the age are

solved—that was the mistake of 1848 and 1849—but by Blood and

Iron. Last year's grants have been made, no matter on what

grounds; I am seeking sincerely for a road to harmony: the

finding of it does not depend on me alone. It were better, the

House of Representatives had not made an accomplished fact.

When the appropriations are not passed, then the way is clear.

The constitution affords no relief, for interpretation is

opposed to interpretation, 'summum ius, summa iniuria' [the

highest law, greatest injustice], 'the letter killeth.' I am

glad that the chairman by certain turns of speech admits the

possibility of an understanding, of a different vote of the

house on a new proposition of the government; I am searching

for the same bridge; when it will be found is uncertain. The

establishment of a budget for this year is barely possible;

the time is too short; our conditions are exceptional. The

government concedes the principle of the earliest possible

handing down of the estimates. But you say, this has been

promised so often and has not been done. Well 'You must trust

us for honest people.' I do not share in the interpretation

that it was unconstitutional to make expenditures that have

been denied, all three factors [i. e. Commons, Upper House and

Crown] must agree upon an interpretation, before it stands."

_Die Politischen Reden des Fürsten Bismarck

(translated from the German),

volume 2, pages 20, 28-30._

"Otto von Bismarck-Schoenhausen, born April 1, 1815, was a

Junker [squire, aristocrat] from top to toe, but from the very

first, as was the case with all the Junkers of Prussia,

Pomerania and the Mark, his life had been thoroughly merged in

that of the Prussian state. He had first called attention to

himself in 1847 at the general diet (Vereinigter Landtag]. In

1849 he came forward in the chamber of deputies, in 1850 in

the Union Parliament at Frankfort—always as the goad of the

extreme right, and each time his appearance gave the signal

for a violent conflict. Perfectly unsparing of all his

opponents, very anti-liberal but very Prussian, very

national-minded, in spite of being such a Junker, Bismarck

flared up with especial violence against the democratic

attacks on the army and the monarchy. … To Frankfort Bismarck

came as the sworn defender of the policy of reaction. The

Austrian party, thinking him to be a man of no consequence,

greeted his coming with joy. He soon made himself unpleasant

enough, especially to the Austrian presidents of the federal

diet. … He refused to accept the servile role which Austria

had apportioned to him; his objections in matters of form and

on unimportant occasions prepared the great fundamental

anti-Austrian uprising. A feeling of pain came over him at the

sight of the Prussian submission to Austria, but at the same

time he was seized with a thirst for vengeance. … In

Frankfort, too, he learned thoroughly to know German affairs:

the utter weakness of the Confederation and the misery of

having so many petty states. … To his mind the goal of

Prussian policy was to drive Austria out of Germany and then

to bring about a subordination of the other German states to

Prussia. … Nor did he make the least secret of his warlike

attitude towards Austria. When an Austrian arch-duke, who was

passing through, once asked him maliciously whether all the

many decorations which he wore on his breast had been won by

bravery in battle: 'All gained before the enemy, all gained

here in Frankfort,' was the ready answer. In the year 1859

came the complications between Austria and Italy, the latter

being joined by France. This Italian war between Austria and

France thoroughly roused the German nation. … Many wanted to

protect Austria, others showed a disinclination to enter the

lists for Austria's rule over Italy. … Bismarck's advice at

this time was that Prussia should side against Austria and

should join Italy. In the spring of 1859, however, he was

transferred from Frankfort on the Main to St. Petersburg: 'put

on ice on the Neva,' as he said himself, 'like champagne for

future use.' … In June 1859, in view of the Italian war, it

had been decreed in Prussia that the army should be mobilized

and kept in readiness to fight. … When, later, in the summer

of this year, the probability of war had gone by, the Landwehr

was not dismissed but, on the contrary, a beginning was made

with a new formation of regiments which had already been

planned and talked over. … On February 10, 1860, the question

of the military reorganization was laid before the diet, where

doubts and objections were raised against it. … On the 4th of

May, at the same time when the law about civil marriages was

rejected, the land-tax, by which the cost of the

army-reorganization was to have been covered, was refused by

the Upper House. The liberals were disappointed and angered.

The ministry was soon in a bad dilemma: should it give way to

the liberal opposition and dissolve the newly formed

regiments? The expedient that was thought of seemed clever

enough but it led in reality to a blind alley and was

productive of the most baneful consequences. The ministry

moved a single grant of 9,000,000 thalers for the purpose of

completing the army and maintaining its efficiency on the

former footing. The motion was carried on May 15, 1860, by a

vote of 315 against two. … The new elections for the house of

deputies in December 1861 produced a diet of an entirely

different stamp from that of 1858. … The moderate majority was

now to atone for the sin of not having come to any real

arrangement with the ministry on the army question; for the

new majority came to Berlin with the full intention of

crushing the army-reform. … The chief task of the newly formed

ministry of 1862 was to solve the military question, for the

longer it had remained in abeyance the more complicated had

the matter become.

{3778}

The newly-elected diet had been in session since the 19th of

May. The majority was determined to draw the conclusion from

the provisional nature of the army-reorganization grants that

no such grants were any longer to be made. The battle cry of

the majority of the diet was that all further demands of the

government for the military reform were to be refused. … But

how would this result? … The new officers had an actionable,

legal claim to their salaries; who was to pay them? The budget

for 1862 was already in great part expended. … Were the

ministers themselves to pay the damages? Such seems to have

been the idea of the fanatics in the parliament. … By

September 1862 the belligerent and uncompromising attitude of

the liberal majority had induced King William to lay aside his

earlier distrust of Bismarck. He allowed him to be summoned

and placed him at the head of the ministry. Most stirring was

the first audience which Bismarck had with his king in the

Park of Babelsberg on September 23. The king first of all laid

before Bismarck the declaration of his abdication. Very much

startled, Bismarck said: 'To that it should never be allowed

to come!' The king replied that he had tried everything and

knew no other alternative. His convictions, contrary to which

he could not act, contrary to which he could not reign,

forbade him to relinquish the army-reorganization. Thereupon

Bismarck explained to the king his own different view of the

matter and closed with the request that his Majesty might

abandon all thoughts of abdication. The king then asked the

minister if he would undertake to carry on the government

without a majority and without a budget. Bismarck answered

both questions in the affirmative and with the utmost

decision. … The alliance between the king and his minister was

closed and cemented on that 23rd of September in Babelsberg to

endure for all time. … To this bond of allegiance which joined

king and minister, Prussia and Germany owe all the glory that

has fallen to their share. … In the summer of 1863 was

originated the famous Austrian project of reform. … The

proposals of Prussia that there should be one central head of

Germany with popular representation from the whole nation was

entirely thrust aside and, on the contrary, a federal

directory was recommended with a parliament of delegates from

the separate diets. … In spite of Prussia's absence the

assembly of princes took place at Frankfort. King John of

Saxony again travelled to Baden to urge King William to attend

but the latter again declined. Not but that this refusal cost

him a great struggle. … Bismarck had to threaten with his

resignation before he could make the king remain firm; … he

did not breathe freely again until the Saxon king had taken

his leave. Then with his powerful hand he demolished a plate

of glasses that stood before him; that cooled his anger and

his excitement and he was once more the polished courtier. …

Bismarck's policy now met with a great piece of good fortune.

Through the death of the king of Denmark, namely, the

Schleswig-Holstein question was forced to a final solution and

this offered Bismarck an opportunity of trying his diplomatic

skill, while at the same time it gave the Prussian army a

brilliant occasion for showing what it could accomplish. In a

series of bold moves Bismarck steered through the

complications of the Schleswig-Holstein question; it is the

first stage in his great career of victory. … But in spite of

all the successes of the Danish war the diet continued in its

opposition. A loan for the war was refused; any loan made

without the consent of the diet was declared unconstitutional

and not binding. … The subsequent grant for the costs of the

war was refused. … Naturally the Prussian war-budget could not

be made up, and the land continued to be governed without a

budget. The details of the debates on these subjects are today

only of minor interest. Much time was lost in mutual insults

between Bismarck on the one hand and Virchow and Gneist on the

other. Bismarck challenged Virchow to a duel, Virchow refused

the challenge. … By April 1866 Bismarck had cleared the

political field for his war against Austria; the necessity for

that war had long been apparent to him. … That the German

question could only be settled by the separation of Austria

from Germany and that this separation could only be brought

about by a war between Prussia and Austria had, in the course

of years, become clear to all patriots who knew anything of

history. With incomparable perspicuity the statesman who had

led Prussia's policy since the autumn of 1862 had grasped the

idea and had seen to carrying it out with the whole force of

his iron will. Already in the autumn of 1863 he had drawn up

the program of what he intended that the German Confederation

should be. … The history of the world had not for centuries

seen such a war as 1866. … It was then that King William and

his minister, crowned with victories, asked the Prussian diet

for indemnity: i. e. for an acknowledgment of their good

purposes in spite of their illegal acts. … In point of fact

the diet had been wrong and the king and his minister had

acted wisely and well; in point of form they had broken the

letter of the law. … In the years 1862-1866 Bismarck had held

off Napoleon with incomparable political skill. He had always

refused the French demands, but so that Napoleon in each case

could cherish some hope and could venture again and again to

approach Prussia with some new lure. Not until August 1866 did

Napoleon receive a thorough and open repulse. Bismarck then

answered every threat of the French with the counter-threat of

a German war. The refusal of Bismarck and his king brought

Napoleon into a very bad position as regarded the French

people. In the minds of the latter a war against Germany was a

foregone conclusion since 1866. … On the 8th of July (1870)

the French envoy came to King William in Ems and demanded that

he should forbid Prince Leopold to accept the crown of Spain.

… It is a popular fiction that the king turned his back on

Benedetti, or that he answered that he 'had nothing more to

say to him,' or that he out and out refused him an audience.

An extra of the German papers of July 14th did indeed read to

that effect: Bismarck himself had drawn up the notice for the

papers. He had made no false additions, but here and there he

had erased and omitted some of the words spoken at Ems, thus

rendering possible at least the whole false conception of the

matter. Bismarck ventured on such a step, having clearly

counted the costs; the result showed how closely he had made

his calculations. …

{3779}

It was the war of 1870 that fundamentally changed the

relations of the chancellor to the mass of the people. After

1871 he was immensely popular. … People believed that he could

do anything, that he could make possible what was impossible

for other men. … Bismarck was very soon surrounded with an

almost mythical halo."

_W. Maurenbrecher,

Gründung des Deutschen Reichs

(translated from the German),

pages 13-258._

See, also, GERMANY:

A. D. 1861-1866, and after (pages 1537-1548).

GERMANY: A. D. 1863.

Formation of the first Socialist party by Lassalle.

See SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A. D. 1862-1864 (page 2949).

GERMANY: A. D. 1870-1874.

The "Kulturkampf" in its first stages.

Speeches of Bismarck.

"For reasons relating to its own internal affairs the state,

even though it took no special attitude to the dogma of

infallibility in itself, could not avoid being drawn into the

conflicts which that dogma was bound to call forth between its

upholders and its opponents. It was the duty of the state to

prevent the evil results to its citizens of the anathema which

the bishops hurled at those who denied the infallibility; it

was necessary for it to interfere and, by introducing civil

marriages, to render marriage possible to those apostates who

were not allowed to receive the sacraments; it was necessary

for it to protect in the exercise of their office those of its

public teachers who rejected the new dogma, even if their

spiritual superiors should declare them unfit to hold such

office. In cases, finally, where whole congregations, or

majorities of them, remained true to the old teachings it was

necessary for the state to protect them in the possession of

their churches of which the bishops tried to deprive them.

Already in November and December 1870 the first cases had

occurred with regard to which the Prussian minister of

education had been obliged to draw these conclusions.

Professors of the Bonn and Breslau universities who, because

they denied the infallibility, had been forbidden to lecture

by Archbishop Melchers of Cologne and Prince-bishop Forster of

Breslau, appealed to the protection of the minister. Certain

pastors and teachers of gymnasiums, who had joined in a

declaration drawn up at Nuremberg (August 25, 1870) against

the new dogma, and who had in consequence been threatened with

ecclesiastical punishments, did the same. Mühler had no other

course than to declare that, so far as officials appointed by

the state were concerned, the state must maintain its

exclusive disciplinary power, and that he would continue in

future to regard as catholics those whom he had so regarded

before the decree of infallibility was passed, even if they

saw fit to reject that dogma. Similar conflicts broke out in

Bavaria where the minister, Lutz, upheld the pastor Renftle,

of Mering near Augsburg, in the enjoyment of his benefices in

the face of the bishop, and where the Munich professors,

Döllinger, Friedrich, Huber and others courageously refused

such assent to the dogma as the Archbishop Scherr, on October

20, 1870, demanded from them. Döllinger's written

justification of himself, published on March 20, 1871, seemed

to give a firm basis and a distinguished leader to the whole

movement. … Twelve thousand signatures were collected in a few

weeks for an address to the king of Bavaria and an appeal was

made to the catholics of Germany, Austria and Switzerland in

favor of common action. … Meanwhile the other party had been

busy enough. Hundreds and hundreds of ecclesiastics protested

against Döllinger's assertion that thousands of the clergy

thought as he did. A lay assembly in Munich, held on April 23,

which expressed itself in favor of infallibility, was the

forerunner of countless similar ones. … Already some weeks

earlier the archbishop of Munich had ventured to excommunicate

Döllinger. … On August 27 Lutz sent a writing to Archbishop

Scherr claiming the right to regulate afresh the relations

with the church as the dogma of infallibility was something

essentially new: at the same time he announced that the

government would do its utmost to protect the upholders of the

old teachings and to secure the independence of civil affairs

from ecclesiastical right of compulsion. In Munich such

decisive measures would probably not have been adopted had not

matters in Prussia taken a similar turn. The conflict had been

brought to a climax here by the demand of Bishops Krementz and

Ermeland that two teachers in Braunsberg, Wollmann and

Treibel, should be dismissed for denying the infallibility.

This demand the minister had refused on March 18, 1871, and on

June 29 had even given his approval to the regulation that

scholars who should obey the orders of the bishop to absent

themselves from the class in religious instruction of these

teachers should be expelled from the gymnasium. The bishop had

retaliated by excommunicating the two teachers in question, as

well as Professor Michelis, one of the chief opponents of

infallibility. In the dioceses of Cologne, Paderborn and

Breslau also, the conflicts had become more fierce on account

of excommunications imposed by the bishops. Still more

important was it that the chancellor of the empire had now

personally entered the lists. As his cool attitude already

before the council had given reason to expect, the Vatican

dogma did not much trouble him. All the more alarming seemed

to him the agitation which the clergy were stirring up among

the Polish nobles, and the league of Guelphism and Catholicism

as illustrated by Windhorst's position in the Centre. … He

[Bismarck] caused the announcement to be made in an article of

the Kreuzzeitung that the government would not only continue

on the defensive against the Centre, but in turn would proceed

to attack it. The ultramontanes had better consider whether

such a struggle could turn out to the advantage of the Roman

Church. If, he concluded, three hundred years ago Teutonism in

Germany was stronger than Romanism, how much stronger would it

be now when Rome is no longer the capital of the world, but on

the point of becoming the capital of Italy, and when the

German imperial crown no longer rests on the head of a

Spaniard but of a German prince. … In the Federal Council Lutz

moved an amendment to the criminal code which should threaten

any clergyman with imprisonment up to two years if he should

misuse his office and discuss state affairs so as to disturb

the peace. … This 'pulpit-paragraph' was accepted with 179 to

108 votes and became law December 14th 1871. … The Prussian

diet was opened on November 27, 1871, with the announcement of

four new laws which should regulate marriages, the

registration of civil personal matters, the withdrawal from

existing churches, and the supervision of schools. …

{3780}

The conservative party was in wild excitement over these

measures and the Kreuzzeitung became the organ of decided

opposition, especially against the school-supervision law

which was chosen as the first object of attack. The

conservatives collected petitions from all parts of the land

to kill this law which they prophesied would make the schools

a tool of atheism, a hot-bed of revolution, unnationality and

immorality. They succeeded in getting together more than

300,000 signatures. … At the first reading in the House of

Deputies the school-supervision law was passed, although by a

majority of only 25 votes. … At the second reading the

majority increased to 52. … The chief struggle was expected in

the House of Lords. … The vote here was favorable beyond all

hopes, resulting on March 8th in a majority in favor of the

law almost as great as that in the House of Deputies. … By no

means calm was the attitude of the pope towards the increasing

complications, and when, a few weeks later, on June 24th,

1872, he received the German 'Leseverein' in Rome he

complained bitterly of the prime minister of a powerful

government who, after marvellous successes in war, should have

placed himself at the head of a long-planned persecution of

the church; a step which would undoubtedly tarnish the glory

of his former triumphs. 'Who knows if the little stone shall

not soon be loosened from above that shall destroy the foot of

the Colossus!' The chief cause of this embitterment lay in the

expulsion of the Jesuits which had meanwhile been decreed by

the diet. … The more the national opposition to the Roman

claims increased, the more passionate did the frame of mind of

the ultramontanes become; and also, in no small degree, of the

pope. An allocution addressed to the cardinals on December 22,

1872, surpassed in violence anything that had yet been heard.

… Even Reichensperger found it advisable in excusing a

vehemence that thus went beyond all bounds to call to mind

that the Latinized style of the papal chancery was not to be

taken too literally. The German government, after such a

demonstration, had no other alternative than to recall the

last representative of its embassy to the papal court. …

Already in November Minister Falk had laid before the House a

draft of a law concerning the limits of ecclesiastical

punishments and disciplinary measures; on January 9, 1873,

followed the drafts of three new laws. … Still more

passionately than in the debate concerning the change in the

Constitution did Bismarck come forward in the discussion of

April 24-28. … Windhorst and Schorlemer-Alst answered him back

in kind. … With violent attacks on Bismarck they prophesied

that these Draconic laws would rebound against the passive

opposition of the people; that dawn was glimmering in men's

minds and that the victory of the Church was near. To the

great majority of the German people, who had followed the

political-ecclesiastical debates with the liveliest interest,

such assurances seemed almost laughable. They felt sure of

victory now that Bismarck himself had seized the standard with

such decision. The 'May Laws' which the king signed on May 11,

1873, were considered a weapon sure to be effectual, and even

the advanced-liberals, who had followed many of the steps of

the Government with hesitation and doubt, declared in an

appeal to their electors on March 23 that the conflict had

assumed the proportions of a great struggle for enlightenment

(Kulturkampf) in which all mankind were concerned, and that

they themselves, in junction with the other liberal parties,

would accordingly support the Government. … On August 7 (1873)

Pius IX sent a letter to the emperor under pretext of having

heard that the latter did not sympathize with the latest

measures of his government. He declared that such measures

seemed to aim at the annihilation of Catholicism and warned

him that their final result would be to undermine the throne.

He deduced his right to issue this warning from the fact that

he was bound to tell the truth to all, even to non-catholics:

for in one way or another—exactly how this was not the place

to make clear—everyone who had received baptism belonged to

the pope. The emperor answered on September 3rd in a most

dignified tone. … 'We can not pass over in silence the remark

that everyone who has been baptized belongs to the pope. The

evangelical faith which I, as your Holiness must know, like my

forefathers and together with the majority of my subjects,

confess, does not allow us to accept any other Mediator in our

relations with God save our Lord Jesus Christ.' … Among

protestants this royal answer was greeted with jubilant

acclamations and even in foreign lands it found a loud echo.

The aged Earl Russell organized a great meeting in London on

January 27, 1874. … Soon after the opening of the Prussian

diet Falk could bring forward the draft of a law which handed

over to state-officials [Standesbeamte] all matters referring

to the celebration of marriages and the registration of civil

personal matters. This draft was sure from the first of a good

majority. … On March 9th 1874 the law could be proclaimed. In

the same month still the deputies Hinschius and Völk made a

motion in the diet to introduce civil marriages throughout the

whole empire. … It furthermore seemed necessary to take

stronger measures against bishops and priests unlawfully

appointed and whom the state had either deposed or refused to

recognize. The mildest measure was to remove them from their

dioceses or parishes, to banish them to certain fixed places

and, in the worst cases, to expel them altogether from the

lands of the empire. … The draft of the law (to this effect)

was warmly supported and at last, April 25, 1874, was accepted

by a vote of 214 to 208. … On July 13th, 1874, as Prince

Bismarck, who had gone to take the cure in Kissingen, was

driving to the Saline the twenty-one year old

cooper's-apprentice Kullmann, of Magdeburg, fired a pistol at

him, and wounded him in his right hand which he had just

raised for the purpose of saluting. At once arrested, Kullmann

declared to the chancellor, who visited him an hour later in

his prison, that he had wished to murder him on account of the

laws against the church. … The reading of ultramontane papers

and the violent discourses of the catholic clergy had driven

him to the deed. He atoned for it with fourteen years in the

House of Correction. Not alone did public opinion make

ultramontanism accountable for the deed, but Bismarck himself

laid very strong emphasis on the fact that the criminal had

spoken of the Centre as 'his party.' 'You may try as hard as

you please to rid yourselves of this murderer,' he cried out

in the diet of December 4th, 'he none the less holds fast to

your coat-tails!'"

_C. Bulle,

Geschichte der neuesten Zeit

(translated from the German),

volume 4, pages 20-41._

{3781}

At the Session of the Lower House of the Prussian Diet January

30, 1872, Deputy Windthorst spoke in opposition to the royal

order for the abolition of the separate Roman Catholic section

of the department of worship and public instruction and Prince

Bismarck, in reply, said: "The party to which the gentleman

belongs has contributed its share to the difficulty of

obliterating the denominational standpoint in matters

political. I have always considered it one of the most

monstrous manifestations in politics, that a religious faction

should convert itself into a political party. If all the other

creeds were to adopt the same principle, it would bring

theology into the parliamentary sessions and would make it a

matter of public debate. … It has always been one of my

fundamental principles that every creed ought to have full

liberty of development, perfect liberty of conscience. But for

all that I did not think it was a necessary corollary that a

census of each denomination be taken merely for the purpose of

giving each its proportional share in the Civil Service. …

Where will you stop? You begin with a Cabinet; then you count

the Chiefs of Division. I do not know what your ratio is—I

think you claim four to seven—nor do I care to know. The

subordinates in the Civil Service follow next. It is a fact,

moreover, that the Evangelicals are by no means united in one

denomination. The contrast is not merely between Protestants

and Catholics. The United Prussian Established Church, the

Lutheran Church, the Reformed Church, all have claims

analogous to those of the Catholics. As soon as we cut up the

state into denominational sections, giving each creed its

proportional share, then the large Jewish population will come

in for its part, a majority of which, distinguished by its

special capacity, skill and intelligence, is peculiarly fitted

for the business of the State. … We cannot admit the claim of

the ecclesiastical authorities to a further share in the

administration and in the interest of peace we are obliged to

restrict the share they already have; so that we may have room

beside each other and be obliged, as little as possible, to

trouble ourselves about theology in this place."

_Die politischen Reden des Fürsten Bismarck

(translated from the German),

volume 5, pages 231-240._

In the German Parliament, May 14, 1872, on the question of a

grant of 19,350 thalers for the German embassy at the See of

Rome, Prince Bismarck spoke as follows: "I can easily

understand how in considering this item of the estimates, the

opinion may be held that the expenditure for this embassy was

superfluous, as it does no longer consider the protection of

German citizens in foreign parts. Still I am glad that no

motion for the striking out of this post was made, which would

be unpleasant to the Government. The duties of an embassy

consist not merely in affording protection to their

countrymen, but also in keeping up the political relations of

the Government which it represents with that to which it is

accredited. Now there is no foreign sovereign, who, in the

present state of our laws, might be called upon to exercise,

in accordance with those laws, prerogatives in the German

empire like those of His Holiness, approaching almost to

sovereignty, limited by no constitutional responsibility.

There is therefore great importance for the German empire in

the character that is given to our diplomatic relations with

the head of the Roman Church, wielding, as he does, an

influence in this country unusually extensive for a foreign

potentate. I scarcely believe, considering the spirit dominant

at present in the leading circles of the Catholic Church, that

any ambassador of the German empire could succeed, by the most

skilful diplomacy, or by persuasion (comminatory attitudes

conceivable between secular powers are out of the question

here)—I say no one could succeed by persuasion in exerting an

influence to bring about a modification of the position

assumed by His Holiness the Pope towards things secular. The

dogmas of the Catholic Church recently announced and publicly

promulgated make it impossible for any secular power to come

to an understanding with the church without its own

effacement, which the German empire, at least, cannot accept.

Have no fear; we shall not go to Canossa, either in body or in

spirit. Nevertheless it cannot be concealed that the state of

the German empire (it is not my task here to investigate the

motives and determine how much blame attaches to one party or

the other; I am only defending an item in the Budget)—that

the feeling within the German empire in regard to religious

peace, is one of disquietude. The governments of the German

empire are seeking, with all the solicitude they owe to their

Catholic as well as Lutheran subjects for the best way, the

most acceptable means, of changing the present unpleasant

state of affairs in matters of religion to a more agreeable

one, without disturbing to any degree the creedal relations of

the empire. This can only be done by way of legislation—of

general imperial legislation—for which the governments have to

rely upon the assistance of the Reichstag. That this

legislation must not in the least infringe upon the liberty of

conscience,—must proceed in the gentlest, most conciliatory

manner; that the government must bend all its energies in

order to prevent unnecessary retardation of its work, from

incorrect recording or errors in form, you all will admit.

That the governments must spare no efforts for the

establishment of our internal peace, in a manner least

offensive even to the religious sensitiveness of those whose

creed we do not share, you will also admit. To this end,

however, it is before all things needful that the Roman See be

at all times well informed of the intentions of the German

governments, much better than it has been hitherto. The

reports made in the past to His Holiness, the Pope, on the

state of affairs in Germany, and on the intentions of the

German governments, I consider as one of the chief causes of

the present disturbances of denominational relations; for

those presentations were both incorrect and perverted, either

by personal bias, or by baser motives. I had hoped that the

choice of an ambassador, who had the full confidence of both

parties, both on account of his love of truth and reliability,

and on account of the nature of his views and his

attitude—that the choice of such an ambassador as His Majesty

had made in the person of a distinguished prince of the church

[Cardinal Prince Hohenlohe] would be welcomed at Rome; that it

would be taken as an earnest of our peaceable and conciliatory

intentions; that it would be utilized as a means to our mutual

understanding.

{3782}

I had hoped that it would afford the assurance that we would

never ask anything of His Holiness, but what a prince of the

church, sustaining the most intimate relations to the Pope,

could present before him; that the forms with which one

sacerdotal dignitary confers with another would continue to

prevail and that all unnecessary friction in a matter so

difficult in itself would be avoided. … All this we had hoped

to attain. But alas! for reasons which have not yet been

submitted to us, a curt refusal on the part of the Papal See

frustrated the intentions of His Majesty. I dare say such an

incident does not often occur. It is customary, when a

sovereign has made choice of an ambassador, out of courtesy to

make inquiry at the court to which the chosen ambassador is to

be accredited, whether he be persona grata or not. The case of

a negative reply, however, is extremely rare, bringing about,

as it must, a revocation of the appointment made not

provisionally, but definitely, before the inquiry. Such a

negative reply is equal to a demand to annul what has been

done, to a declaration: 'You have chosen unwisely.' I have now

been Foreign Minister for ten years; have been busy in matters

of higher diplomacy for twenty-one years; and I can positively

assert that this is the first and only case in my experience

of such an inquiry receiving a negative reply." Deputy

Windthorst, in reply, criticised the procedure of the German

Government in this affair, and justified the position taken by

the papal court, saying: "I believe, gentlemen, for my part,

that it was the duty of the Cardinal to ask the permission of

his master, the Pope, before accepting the post. The Cardinal

was the servant of the Pope, and as such, could not accept an

office from another government without previous inquiry. … The

case would be the same if His Holiness had appointed an

adjutant general of His Majesty as papal nuncio, only more

flagrant, for you will admit that a Cardinal is quite a

different person from an adjutant general." Prince Bismarck

replied: "I do not wish to discuss here the personal criticism

which the gentleman made on His Eminence, the Cardinal, but I

would say a word about the expression 'master' which was used.

The gentleman is certainly well versed in history, especially

ecclesiastical history, and I wish to ask him, who was the

master of Cardinal Richelieu or Cardinal Mazarin. Both of

these dignitaries were engaged in controversies and had to

settle important differences with the See of Rome, in the

service of their sovereign, the king of France; and yet they

were Cardinals. … If it should please His Holiness to appoint

an adjutant general of His Majesty as papal nuncio, I should

unconditionally advise His Majesty to accept him. … I am an

enemy to all conjectural politics and all prophesies. That

will take care of itself. But I can assure the gentleman that

we will maintain the full integral sovereignty of the law with

all means at our disposal, against assumptions of individual

subjects of His Majesty, the king of Prussia, be they priests

or laymen, that there could be laws of the land not binding

upon them; and we are sure of the entire support of a great

majority of the members of all religious confessions. The

sovereignty can and must be one and integral,—the sovereignty

of the law; and he who declares the laws of his country as not

binding upon himself, places himself outside the pale of the

law."

_Die politischen Reden des Fürsten Bismarck

(translated from the German),

volume 5, pages 337-344._