ensured the triumph of Bismarck’s policy. The intervention
which Napoleon had planned resolved itself into diplomatic
pourparlers of which the result was wholly insignificant;
and even before the war was ended Bismarck was
preparing for an understanding with Austria and with
the South German states that should minimize the risk
of a French attack. By the preliminary treaty of peace signed
at Nikolsburg on the 26th of July the great objects for which
Treaty of Prague, August 23.
Prussia had fought were fully secured. By Article
I. the integrity of the Austrian monarchy was preserved,
with the exception of Lombardo-Venetia;
by Article II. Austria consented to “a new organization
of Germany without the participation of the empire of
Austria,” consented to “the closer union” to be founded by
the king of Prussia to the north of the Main, and to the German
states south of the Main entering into a union, the national
relations of which with the North German Confederation were to
be “the subject of an ulterior agreement between the two
parties”; by Article III. Austria transferred all her rights in
Schleswig and Holstein to Prussia, reserving the right of the people
of north Schleswig to be again united to Denmark should they
“express a desire to be so by a vote freely given”; by Article
V. the territory of Saxony was to remain intact. These Articles,
enmbodying the more important terms, were included with slight
verbal alterations in the treaty of peace signed at Prague on the
23rd of August. Separate treaties of peace had been signed with
Württemberg on the 13th, with Baden on the 17th and with
Bavaria on the 22nd of August; treaties with Hesse-Darmstadt
Aggrandizement of Prussia.
followed on the 3rd of September, with Saxe-Meiningen
on the 8th of October and with Saxony on the 21st.
The other unfortunate North German states which
had sided with Austria were left to their fate, and on
the 20th of September King William issued a decree annexing
Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau and the free city of Frankfort
to the Prussian monarchy, and bringing them under the Prussian
constitution.
The return of King William to his capital had been a triumphal progress; and Bismarck had shared to the full the new-born popularity of his master. He seized the occasion to make his peace with Liberal sentiment, and the bill Federal constitution. of indemnity for past ministerial breaches of the constitution was carried in the new Prussian diet with enthusiasm. On the 24th of February 1867 the constituent diet of the confederation, elected by universal suffrage and the ballot, met in Berlin, and soon accepted in its essential features the constitution submitted to it. It was arranged that the headship of the confederation should be hereditary, that it should belong to the king of Prussia, and that legislative functions should be exercised by a federal council (Bundesrat), representative of the various governments, and by a diet (Bundestag) elected by the whole people.
The federal parliament began at once the task of consolidating
the new institutions. In the sessions of 1869 and 1870 it established
a supreme tribunal of commerce, sitting in
Leipzig, and passed a new penal code. Great as were
National Liberals.
these results, they did not satisfy the aspirations
of patriotic Germans, who, having so suddenly and so unexpectedly
approached unity, longed that the work should be
completed. A party called the National Liberals was formed,
whose main object was to secure the union of South with North
Germany, and it at once entered into peculiar relations with
Bismarck, who, in spite of his native contempt for parliaments
and parliamentary government, was quite prepared to make use
of any instruments he found ready to his hand. There was,
indeed, plentiful need for some show of concession to Liberal
sentiment, if a union of hearts was to be established between the
South and North Germans. The states south of the Main had
issued from the war as sovereign and independent powers, and
they seemed in no great haste to exchange this somewhat precarious
dignity either for a closer alliance among each other
or with the North German Confederation. The peoples, too,
fully shared the dislike of their rulers to the idea of a closer union
with North Germany. The democrats hated Prussia as “the
land of the corporal’s stick,” and Bismarck as the very incarnation
of her spirit. The Roman Catholics hated her as the land
par excellence of Protestantism and free thought. Nothing but
the most powerful common interests could have drawn the
dissevered halves of Germany together. This sense of common
interests it was Bismarck’s study to create. An important
Customs parliament.
South German hostility to union.
step was taken in 1867 by the conclusion of a treaty
with the southern states, by which it was agreed that
all questions of customs should be decided by the
federal council and the federal diet, and that, for the
consideration of such questions, the southern states should send
representatives to Berlin. In reality, however, the customs
parliament (Zollparlament) was of little service beyond the
limits of its special activity. In the election to the
customs parliament in 1868, Württemberg did not return
a single deputy who was favourable to the national
cause; in Bavaria the anti-nationalists had a large
majority; and even in Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt, where the
opposition to Prussia was less severe, a powerful minority of
the deputies had no liking for Bismarck and his ways. Thus the
customs parliament was kept rigidly to the objects for which it
was founded, greatly to the disappointment of patriots who had
not doubted that it would become an effective instrument for
the attainment of far larger purposes. Had the completion of
unity depended wholly on internal causes, it certainly would
Irritation of France.
not have been soon achieved; but other forces, not
altogether unexpectedly, came to Bismarck’s aid.
France had been irritated by the enormous increase
of Prussian power, and even before the treaty of Prague was
signed the emperor Napoleon III. indicated a wish to be
“compensated” with the left bank of the Rhine. This was a
claim exactly calculated to play into Bismarck’s hands. The
communication of the French emperor’s original proposals to
the South German governments, whose traditional policy had
been to depend on France to save them from the ambitions of the
German great powers, was enough to throw them into the arms
of Prussia. The treaties of peace between Prussia and the South
German states were accompanied by secret treaties of offensive
and defensive alliance, under which the supreme command in
war was to be given to the Prussian king. A common war
against a common enemy now appeared the surest means of
welding the dissevered halves of Germany together, and for
this war Bismarck steadily prepared. There were soon plentiful
signs of where this enemy was to be sought. On the 14th of
March 1867 Thiers in the French Chamber gave voice to the
indignation of France at the bungling policy that had suffered
the aggrandizement of Prussia. The reply of Bismarck was
to publish (March 19) the secret treaties with the South German
states. War was now only a question of time, and the study of
Bismarck was to bring it on at the moment most favourable
to Germany, and by a method that should throw upon France
the appearance of being the aggressor. The European situation
was highly favourable. France was hampered by the Roman
question, which divided her own counsels while it embroiled her
with Italy; the Luxemburg question, arising out of her continued
demand for “compensation,” had only served to isolate
her still further in Europe. French patriotic feeling, suspicious,
angry and alarmed, needed only a slight provocation to cause it
to blaze up into an uncontrollable fever for war.
The provocation was supplied at the right moment by the candidature of the prince of Hohenzollern for the vacant crown of Spain. To bring the Peninsula under French influence had been for centuries the ambition of French statesmen; The Hohenzollern candidature. it was intolerable that it should fall to a “Prussian” prince and that France should be threatened by this new power not only from the east but from the south. High language was used at Paris; and the French ambassador, Count Benedetti, was instructed to demand from the king of Prussia the withdrawal of the Hohenzollern candidature. The demand was politely but firmly refused, and Bismarck, judging that the moment had come for applying the match to
