1849

Schwarzenberg to Windischgrätz: 'Our relations with France must be conceived realistically and should not be adjusted to the principle of legitimacy or that of the juste milieu... The little nephew of the great uncle gives us no reason to sulk, least of all out of regard for the Elder and Younger Bourbons who have always been hostile to us.' He had looked favourably on Napoleon since his election to the French Presidency in December. This worried Austrian conservatives.

Friedrich Dahlmann, a liberal delegate to the Frankfurt assembly: 'The path of power is the only one that will satisfy and satiate the swelling desire for freedom because it is not merely freedom that the German has in mind. For the most part it is the power that he has hitherto lacked for which he lusts.'

Schwarzenberg-Schmerling: We can't untie the knot that binds German and non-German provinces nor accept the 'unilateral abolition of the Bund'. A unified German state is bad for Germany too. 'The continuation of Austria as a political unit is needed by Germany as well as by Europe.'

Elections for the new Prussian parliament. Bismarck elected — (EF) it took string-pulling by one of Johanna's relatives to find a constituency in Brandenburg. 'The sessions of every kind are the more exhausting because the first word tells you what the whole speech will contain, like certain bad novels, but you cannot leave because of the possibility of votes.'

Gall: February elections were under universal suffrage but still conservatives won 53.

OP (p115): After the December move, FW was influenced (e.g by Radowitz) to consider social issues arising from industrialisation. During this first election campaign the King himself spoke about improving the lot of the 'poor and propertyless'. On 9 February the cabinet authorised local authorities to establish industrial councils to found or reconstitute compulsory guilds in more than 70 crafts. The training of apprentices were again recognised as guild functions. In the Landtag the biggest opponents were bankers and businessmen, the biggest supporter was Bismarck who defended artisans as necessary for the health of the 'state organism' and attacked the factory system for enriching individuals at the expense of undernourished workers. Cf. 16/5/53. (Hamerow: once the political crisis passed this sort of thing was mostly forgotten by the bureaucracy amid the 1850s boom.)

Leopold Gerlach diary, Brandenburg says: 'I have tried everything with him [FW]. I have been rude, I have flattered him, I have been gentle, but always in vain.' Their relationship was already hopeless and FW undermined his Cabinet with everyone. Mixed signals bounced around from court and cabinet.

Ludwig-Leopold: FW's continued fascination with Germany is a sure sign he has succumbed to Radowitz's advice 'to build himself a nest in the tri-coloured Gardens of the Hesperides of his imagination'. In the first months of 1849, Leopold favoured a simple return to the Bund with Austria retaining its dominance but was absent from court in much of the first half of the year. Rauch was ill with gout then later 1849 he returned to Russia (where he died June 1850). Ludwig was busy with the Kreuzzeitung and organising conservative politics and thought the king should focus on domestic problems not Germany. From late spring Leopold was in FW's company almost daily and took over Rauch's daily duty of reading reports to the king over morning coffee and he could count on support of the Queen. (He was formally appointed Adjutant General in April 1850.)

Bismarck speech to Prussian Landtag: 'The battle of principle that has shaken Europe to its foundations in the past year is not of the kind that admits of mediation. The principles rest upon opposite foundations that inherently preclude each other. The one derives its legal authority ostensibly from the popular will but in reality from the club-law of the barricades. The other is based upon a decree ordained of God, a decree of God's grace, and seeks to evolve as an organic extension of the constitutionally established legal order... The decision concerning these principles is not to be reached by parliamentary debates: sooner or later God, who directs the battles, must throw the iron dice of decision.' (This is oddly very little quoted though it echoes the infamous 'iron and blood' comment.)

Schwarzenberg dissolved the Austrian parliament, decreed a new constitution for the entire empire (drafted by Count Stadion) that gave almost all power to the Emperor (temporarily suspended after decreed and abolished in 1851 so never went into effect), and demanded the entire empire be included in a unified Germany. This scuppered last hopes in Frankfurt of Austria leading their plans and pushed Frankfurt towards a Small Germany led by Prussia. (Clark p649: in late October 1848 Frankfurt had voted for a Greater German solution with the Habsburgs' German lands included.)

Sperber: Until now the Small Germans at Frankfurt had been a clear minority. Now they did a deal with the Assembly's democrats, agreeing universal suffrage. Democrats now mostly supported the proposal to offer the crown of a new state to the Prussian king. This also was a final blow to hopes of Hungarian constitutional monarchists that some sort of arrangement could be reached between them and the Habsburgs.

Schwarzenberg to Buol, Olmütz: 'The impious faction which has sworn to sacrifice the repose of the world to its insatiable cupidity and to its enormous pride as the 'happiness of peoples' has chosen unfortunate Hungary at this moment to be its theatre of activity. It is from there that adventurers without honour and without country, the scum of all nations, have made their rendezvous in order to establish the triumph of a detestable cause. Opposition to such a triumph is at this time a project worthy of the solicitude of all enlightened governments.'

The Frankfurt National Assembly adopted a constitution with universal male suffrage for over 25s, secret ballot, ministers responsible to a bicameral parliament, no veto, and offered the Imperial throne and title (Kaiser) to FWIV. (Evans: 27/3)

FWIV received the delegation from Frankfurt at his palace and rejected the offered Imperial crown as a crown 'of dirt and clay'. (Barclay (p194): FW and the cabinet did not want to reject the possibility of Prussia contributing to a federal state out of hand and his words were conciliatory but his tone was different and it was clear to all he had rejected the crown. To his uncle the King of Hanover he wrote that the crown was 'a dog collar with which they wanted to chain me to the revolution of '48'. So when/where was the 'dirt and clay' comment, endlessly quoted, actually made?) The Frankfurt National Assembly collapsed. The moderates went home and the army disbanded the remaining radicals.

OP: its fate and constitution 'met with general apathy; the popular movement had long since recoiled from its initial support'. All future problems were foreshadowed in the debates of the preceding year. Should Austria be excluded? If included, then all of it or just the German segment?

OP (p26): After this Radowitz persuaded FW to propose a federal union of princes under a conservative constitution, and a deal with Austria guaranteeing her frontiers but excluded from the new union. It was unpopular with the Gerlachs and Camarilla. The German princes played for time.

JS: it had little support in Prussia, the ministers mostly disliked the scheme, the Camarilla hated it.

Gall: Radowitz was initially in sync with the Gerlachs — an opponent of bureaucratic absolutism, a supporter of the Christian ideals of a corporative state, a leader of the far right in the Frankfurt Assembly. He hoped his ideas would spark a rejuvenation of Christian conservatism across Europe.

Bismarck re Radowitz: 'To this very day I do not know whether he was a catholicising opponent of Prussia or only bent upon maintaining his position with the King. It is certain that he made a skilful keeper of the medieval wardrobe in which the King dressed up his fancies, and contributed thereby to make the King dawdle away the opportunities for practical intervention'. (Sometimes quoted as 'the clever wardrobe attendant for the King's medieval fantasies'.) He also said that Radowitz was 'without an idea in his head', was purely out for 'popularity and applause', a man 'whom nothing raised above the level of the ordinary save an astonishing memory' (cf. 4/7/50). Gall: he was effectively 'director of Prussian foreign policy' from May 1849.

Barclay (Ch8): FW's relationship with Radowitz was extremely close, in some ways even closer than with the Queen. (Other books do not convey this.) In a marginal comment (10/4/51), FW compared Radowitz and Ludwig Gerlach: 'Both of them build on the same foundations according to the same principles and for the same course. But Gerlach is content to breathe no higher than at the altitude of the Righi [a mountain range near Lucerne 1,800 meters above sea level], while Radowitz is in his element at the height of a Mont Blanc. That is why Gerlach bites him in the foot, for no one is permitted to see further than he. Everyone is supposed to get dizzy where he does. Alas!' Leopold Gerlach agreed with Bismarck that Radowitz was a flatterer but also thought that he dressed up FW's ideas in maths and logic, 'two sciences of which the king has no idea at all', and played them back to him. Radowitz supported FW in his grand universal dreams, escaping the limited Prussian tableau. He thought FW had to respond to the two big forces of the age, the social question and the national question.

Sperber: FW delayed answering for a month before condemning it at the end of April. This led to mass meetings in favour of the Frankfurt constitution across Germany. Some of them saw the red flag waved, a symbol of radical republicanism. Demonstrations were increasingly in leftist strongholds. More moderate deputies started leaving Frankfurt and went home. By the second week of May demonstrations had turned to armed conflict in some places. Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich,Vienna remained quiet. Radical action in Saxony, always a stronghold of the left during the revolution, and the Palatinate (Bavarian province on west bank of the Rhine), was suppressed by Prussian troops with artillery and infantry.

. On 22 April Radowitz was summoned to Berlin from Frankfurt (where he was serving as a deputy and had voted to offer FW the crown!) and a week later Brandenburg asked him to meet with the cabinet to discuss the future of Germany. Radowitz would turn down the job of Foreign Minister and other formal appointments, staying an informal friend and adviser. In the first half of 1849 Brandenburg was happy to listen to him and agreed with much on Germany but changed his mind later in the year when the confrontation with Austria developed. Radowitz's strategy was based on an informal alliance of monarchical, constitutional and national liberals with moderate conservatives. He could work with the Gotha liberals in the summer but he could not organise grassroots and remained a court politician. (Barclay p196ff).

Landtag voted to recognise the Frankfurt constitution as legally binding in Prussia. In the debate in Landtag. Bismarck scoffed at the example of Piedmont and allying with revolution. Instead, he wanted Prussia to grab German dominance while Austrian and French domestic chaos provided a temporary opening - but not in alliance with liberals. He said that 'Prussia will always be in a position to give laws to Germany rather than receive them from others... The Frankfurt crown may glitter brightly but the gold which lends authenticity to its sparkle must be won by melting down the Prussian crown and I have no confidence that the smelting will succeed with the form of this constitution.' (AJPT - he originally put his name to a letter endorsing the call from Frankfurt for FWIV to take the crown — true??)

OP: April Debate in Landtag on Frankfurt constitution (think this must be 21/4). Bismarck said: it 'seeks to undermine and demolish that house of state constructed by centuries of glory and patriotism and cemented throughout by the blood of our ancestors'. The Prussian government should put forward its own plan for German unity. Bismarck thought that accepting the offer of the German crown would have come at the price of 'melting down' the Prussian crown. He wanted Prussia to take over Germany, not to be submerged in a weak liberal Germany. OP: occasional references to German unity in this period were tactical and greatly outweighed by his genuine expressions of support for Prussia to dominate.

Gall: In summer 1848 Wilhelm had said that Prussia must lead Germany, 'not become merged in it'. Bismarck entirely agreed.

Barclay: Late April the Landtag voted to recognise the Frankfurt constitution as legally binding in Prussia, the government dissolved it.

Kossuth interim president. The Austrians needed Russian help.

Prussian government rejected the offer, saying the constitution was intended 'to remove the supreme authority and introduce a republic'; and instead called on German governments to a conference in Berlin to consider a new way forward.

King Friedrich Augustus II of Saxony sent the liberal deputies home and appointed a conservative government to impose order. By 3 May there were over 100 barricades in Dresden and the king fled and called for Prussian help. Among the revolutionaries were Richard Wagner (influenced by Proudhon and Feuerbach) and Mikhail Bakunin. Wagner: 'The old world is in ruins from which a new world will arise, for the sublime goddess REVOLUTION comes rushing and roaring on the wings of the storm.' Prussian troops were sent by train, marched on the city 9 May, demolished the barricades. Wagner dodged snipers then fled to Switzerland. Bakunin shaved his beard and fled but was arrested, sent back to Russia where he was exiled to Siberia. Wagner wrote to his wife that he'd learned he was 'anything but a true revolutionary', he preferred 'wife, child, hearth and home', and 'people of our kind are not destined for this terrible task... Thus do I bid farewell to revolution.' (!)

Friedjung writes (p2) that in May FW4 spoke to Schwarzenburg in Vienna about the fanciful scheme for a new federal state excluding the Habsburg empire plus a new alliance between this state and the empire. (Doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere else?)

Elections to the French Legislative Assembly. The results showed a pattern that would endure for over a century. The areas of 'red France' in 1849 would continue to support the Left through radicals and socialists to communists in the mid-20th Century. Those regions supporting order in 1849 continued to support conservative parties. Maurice Agulhon (French historian): 1848 was the 'apprenticeship of the republic' when the political world of modern France came into existence. This pattern does not hold for the German elections of May 1848. (Fascinating that an electoral pattern can hold so long in one place but not another, we don't have good theories for why.)

There were demonstrations in favour of the Frankfurt constitution throughout Germany suppressed by Prussian troops including Dresden, the Bavarian Palatinate (after King Maximillian rejected Frankfurt constitution) and Baden where Wilhelm put down the protests killing insurgents.

(Clark) The Austrian Reichstag (moved out of Vienna after October) was dissolved. (On p404 Clark implies this may have happened on 4/3, unclear, perhaps it was decided then but formally happened 7/5?)

Emperor Ferdinand met Tsar Alexander at Cracow and, kneeling, asked for full-scale Russian intervention. Alexander agreed. Over coming weeks Austrian and Russian forces converged on Budapest.

Prussia, Saxony, Hanover agreed to form a union if other German states minus Austria agreed. The new constitution proposed two days later (details in Barclay p200) were 'a monarchical-conservative variation on the Frankfurt constitution and it was one with which many moderate liberals could live' (p200). The new Imperial President would be the Prussian King. An Upper House of state delegates. A Lower House elected by German people.

The Prussian government changed electoral law to the three-tier suffrage using A105 which allowed decrees when the Landtag not sitting (this clause important 1862-6). Bismarck opposed this at the time and argued no voting system could properly reflect national will and argued to conservative friends it should be replaced but after a few years he decided it wasn't necessary and the key issue was controlling parliament's powers. For the rest of his career he grappled with the dilemma: too weak and parliament could not resist the bureaucracy, too strong and it threatened the Crown. (OP p63-4).

Hamerow (p299ff): it did not require property ownership either for voting or holding office. Every male aged 24 and above could vote who had 'not lost possession of his civic rights ... provided that he does not receive poor relief from public funds' and if he has 'had residence or abode [in the place he wants to vote] for six months'. 1849-61 between ~10-25% of males over 24 were excluded by poverty, change in domicile, or transgression of the law. In Prussian elections 1849-63 an average of 5% of voters belonged to the first class, 13% to the second and 82% to the third.

Participation was 32% in 1849, no figures for 1852, 16% in 1855 (height of the reaction), 23% in 1858, 27% in 1861, 34% in 1862, 31% in 1863. The public vote allowed the bureaucracy and government to influence voters. In 1855 Wilhelm wrote that 'downright terrorism was directed against people and institutions'. Only roughly half of the richest voted 1849-63 but dominated (much higher in Berlin).

Russia deployed troops against the revolutionary government of Hungary.

The Frankfurt Assembly (which had been forced to relocate to Stuttgart) was told by the Wurttemberg Minister of Justice that further meetings were prohibited. Deputies were turned away by troops. The papers of the assembly were packed up and sent to Switzerland.

(OP) Moderate liberals assembled in Gotha, agreed to cooperate with the Prussian government in creating the German union. This group became known as the Gothaer or old-liberals. They were repelled by the excesses of the radicals. They hoped for Prussian leadership on German unity under a moderate constitution. Von Rochau, a journalist who had shifted from radical to moderate, distinguished between philosophy and practical politics, Realpolitik: 'Neither a principle, nor an idea, nor a treaty will unite the splintered German forces, but only a superior force that swallows up the rest.' His work was influential. The young Treitschke said, 'I'll go with the party that shows the strongest national initiative'.

OP: after the passions of 1848, moderate liberals were terrified by the potential for extreme revolutionary forces. In the 1850s the upper Mittelstand focused on business, trade, finance and the powerful economic changes, not politics.

Barclay: There was a natural overlap between the Gotha liberals and Radowitz's strategy.

An important note by FW describing his notion of royal authority over the military.

Elections to Prussian Landtag under new 3-tier system. Gall: Conservatives won 114, about a third of 352. Bismarck's February victory was repeated. After this he moved his family to Berlin.

Schwarzenberg to Hübner, then Austrian envoy to France: 'Do me the favour of explaining to me this species of sympathy which still exists at Paris for Piedmont, for this government without honesty or law, for this frog in the fable, for these men dear to the revolution and abhorred by the rest of Italy, for this country which corrupts everything it touches and is incapable of making either war or peace.'

Davis (p76) Palmerston voiced support for the Prussian scheme. He was prepared to see a reorganisation of Germany provided it didn't lead to a big increase of power for either Prussia or Austria. Radowitz's scheme seemed to offer the only sensible way to preserve duality and independence for the smaller states. He took the FO by surprise. Palmerston tried to dampen the reaction but Cowley reported from Frankfurt that there was 'great suspicion that the policy of Great Britain is in favour of Prussian supremacy in Germany' and his assurances to the contrary were ineffective. In Germany debates over protection vs free trade were entangled with suspicion of Britain's supposed desire to divide-and-rule Germany. But, says Davis (p78), there is no evidence that Palmerston's support for Prussian plans had anything to do with trying to foil Bruck's ideas and instead was based entirely on political considerations of trying to maintain the Vienna settlement. Commercial policy remained focused entirely on lowering tariffs. The Times supported Austria's talk of a more liberal commercial policy (cf. 10/11/49).

Austria crushed Hungarian uprising with Russian help and with Russia pressured Prussia. Kossuth fled to England and America, ended his days in Turin where he recorded the first Hungarian voice on a phonograph in 1890. Bismarck realised this had changed the game: he wrote, 'What we chatter and resolve about it has no more value than the moonlight reveries of a sentimental youth, who builds castles in the air and believes that some event for which he hopes will make him into a great man.' Gall: FW and Radowitz, unlike Bismarck, didn't realise that other German states were going along with them to play for time. Gall says that around this time Bismarck kept his opposition to Radowitz quiet, though placed two articles in Kreuzzeitung August 1849 unsigned (which infuriated FW but he didn't discover who'd written them).

Leopold Gerlach diary: Radowitz said that Ludwig's newspaper articles against him 'border on high treason'. (Were both Gerlach and Bismarck writing articles against him in August? Were Bismarck's secret and Gerlach's public? Is Gall confused?) Both Gerlachs had very poor relations with Radowitz from spring/summer 1849 and hostility deepened. The Gerlachs wanted friendship with Russia and Austria but opposed the idea of restoring the Holy Roman Empire and Schwarzenberg's centralising and absolutist policies which they thought undermined the struggle against revolution and Austria's role in it. They wanted a restored Bund with greater Prussian influence.

FW-Charlotte: 'I want to make Austria mightier and greater than ever before, with one wing over Germany, with the other over Italy, united and strong within.' Radowitz's projects are not at all inimical to Austrian interests, he insisted.

(JS) 28 German states recognised the new union, but Bavaria held out and the support of Hanover and Saxony was never strong. Barclay: By the end of 1849 26 states agreed to join the new Union. By late 1849 Saxony and Hanover had essentially pulled out. Radowitz's poor diplomacy was partly the reason but they faced concerted opposition from Russia and Austria. In August Schwarzenberg insisted the Bund had only been suspended and he began to press for its resuscitation.

Landtag debate. Liberals were pushing for a commitment that the Prussian constitution would be changed to reflect the new Union constitution. Bismarck objected — the liberals were again trying to grab what they had failed to get in the chaos. He asked the Landtag, what would Frederick the Great have done, relying on the Army and the 'martial element ... the prominent feature of the Prussian national character'?

'He would have had the choice of joining up with his old comrades-in-arms, Austria, following the break with Frankfurt, and there taking over the brilliant role that the Russian Emperor had played in destroying, in alliance with Austria, the common enemy, the revolution. Or he would have been at liberty, with the same right with which he conquered Silesia, having declined Frankfurt's offer of the Imperial crown, to tell the German people what constitution they were to have, under threat of his bringing the sword to bear. That would have been a national policy for Prussia. It would have placed Prussia, in the first case together with Austria, in the second on its own, in the right position to help Germany to acquire the power that is its due in Europe... All of us want the Prussian eagle to spread its wings, to protect and rule from Memel to the Donnersberg.' But these wings must remain free of a new Holy Roman Empire and any liberal constitution. (This was the question he confronted 1862-6: work with Austria or against her?) Craig puts the 'iron dice' quote in this speech, not March 1849 (maybe he repeated it?). (Gall p71)

OP (p68) In September he gave a speech (presumably it's the same 6/9 speech):

He opposed the idea of dissolving Prussia, 'the best pillar of German power', in a German union. 'What preserved us [Prussia] was that which constitutes the real Prussia. It was what remains of that much stigmatised Stockpreussentum, which outlasted the revolution: that is, the Prussian army, the Prussian treasury, the fruits of an intelligent Prussian administration of many years' standing, and that vigorous spirit of cooperation between King and people that exists in Prussia. It was the loyalty of the Prussian people to the hereditary dynasty. It was the old Prussian virtues of honour, fidelity, obedience and bravery, which permeate the army from its nucleus, the officer corps, outward to the youngest recruit. This army harbours no revolutionary enthusiasm.You will not find in the army, any more than in the rest of the Prussian people, any need for a national rebirth. They are satisfied with the name Prussia and proud of the name Prussia... Prussian we are and Prussian we wish to remain.' When he was attacked in the debate for being 'a lost son of the great German fatherland' he replied, 'My country is Prussia and I have never left my country and I shall never leave it.'

Palmerston instructed his envoy in Vienna to express 'openly and decidedly the disgust' which Austrian 'atrocities in Italy, Galicia, Hungary, and Transylvania' had excited among the public in Britain. He officially referred to the Austrians as 'really the greatest brutes that ever called themselves by the undeserved name of civilised men.'

Debate re A108 of Constitution on tax (taxes continue indefinitely until amended by law). Bismarck defended it arguing the monarchy was under no obligation to go the British way and become merely 'a decorative ornament on the dome that sits atop the building of the state... I see our [Prussian Crown] as its central, load-bearing column'.

JS says Radowitz became foreign minister with 'no support around the cabinet table'. NO. September 1850.

Bismarck's son Herbert was born.