THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
and bloody struggles he put down the last resistance on the 31st. Vienna was then subjected to the unlimited arbitrariness of military rule, and the revolutionary movement in German Austria had an end. Several of the chivalrous legionaries, with whom we students had enjoyed such sunny days in Eisenach, had fallen in the battle, and the rest were fugitives.
With this catastrophe coincided a marked turn of affairs in Prussia. Since March the Prussian government had moved in constitutional forms, and the ministry, at the head of which stood the liberal General von Pfuel, showed itself willing to fulfill the promises that had been given. But the king and his immediate surroundings had on various occasions manifested a disposition which hardly harmonized with those pledges and called forth grave apprehensions. On October 31 the Prussian Constituent Assembly gave voice to the general sympathy with the struggling people of Vienna and resolved to request his Majesty's government “to take speedy and energetic steps to induce the German central power in Frankfurt to effectually protect the imperiled liberties of the people in the German districts of Austria, and to restore peace.” The president of the ministry, General von Pfuel, supported this resolution. The next day he found himself compelled to resign, and the king then appointed a ministry of decidedly reactionary character, at the head of which he put Count Brandenburg, and the leading spirit of which was Herr von Manteuffel. The Constituent Assembly solemnly protested, but in vain. On November 9 the Brandenburg ministry presented itself to the Assembly with a royal message which transferred the meetings of that body to another place and prorogued its sessions until November 27. By a large majority the Assembly denied the right of the royal government to do these things, but the next day the house was surrounded by large bodies of troops under
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