THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
tional parliament for the defense and introduction of the national constitution. And for this act of suppression mainly Prussian troops were selected—troops of the same king who in March, 1848, had solemnly promised to put himself at the head of the national movement and to merge Prussia in Germany; who then had been elected German emperor; and who now was to strike down those who insisted that he should become German emperor.
It has been said in defense of this monstrous proceeding that the popular uprising for the national constitution in the Palatinate and in Baden was mixed up with strong republican tendencies; that is, with the desire to subvert the existing political order of things. This is true to a certain extent, but it is also true that if the German princes had loyally done that which in March, 1848, they had given the German people the fullest right to expect that they would do, and if the king of Prussia and his brother-kings had accepted the national constitution, they would have neutralized, disintegrated, and rendered powerless all republican movements in Germany. The German people at large would have been satisfied. They would undoubtedly have consented even to some changes in the monarchical sense in the national constitution. And it is no less true that the manner in which the kings, after so many beautiful promises and pledges, sought to disappoint the hopes of the German people for national unity, was only too certain to destroy all faith in their national sentiment, and to create the opinion that only by means of republicanism a united German nation could be formed. The attitude of the king of Prussia, as well as the kings of Bavaria, Hanover, and Saxony, placed before the German people the clear alternative either to abandon, at least for the time being, all endeavors for German unity and political freedom, or to strive for the
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