CHAPTER VI
The political horizon which after the revolution in March looked so glorious soon began to darken. In South Germany, where the opinion had gained ground that the revolution should not have “stood still before the thrones,” a republican uprising took place under the leadership of the brilliant and impetuous Hecker, which, however, was speedily suppressed by force of arms. In the country at large such attempts found at first little sympathy. The bulk of the liberal element did not desire anything beyond the establishment of national unity and a constitutional monarchy “on a broad democratic basis.” But the republican sentiment gradually spread and was intensified as the “reaction” assumed a more and more threatening shape.
The national parliament at Frankfurt elected in the spring, which represented the sovereignty of the German people in the large sense and was to give to the united German nation a national government, counted among its members a great many men illustrious in the fields, not of politics, but of science and literature. It soon showed a dangerous tendency of squandering in brilliant, but more or less fruitless, debates much of the time which was sorely needed for prompt and decisive action to secure the legitimate results of the revolution against hostile forces.
But our eyes were turned still more anxiously upon Berlin. Prussia was by far the strongest of the purely German states. The Austrian empire was a conglomeration of different nationalities—German, Magyar, Slavic and Italian. The
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