THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
realization of these objects by means which are termed by governments revolutionary. The pitiable history of Germany during the next ten years has strikingly demonstrated that those who looked at the situation in the year 1849 in the light of this alternative were entirely right.
Let us now return to the Palatinate and the recall of the imperial commissioner. At first attempts were made to check the revolutionary movement in the Palatinate with small bodies of troops; but this failed, and as also in the meanwhile by the uprising of the people and the defection of the army in Baden the situation of things had become much more serious, the Prussian government began to mobilize some army corps and to prepare for a regular campaign. It was these preparations which had caused the various revolts in the Prussian provinces on the Rhine and in Westphalia. The Palatinate was now, for a little while, left to itself, and the good-natured and sanguine people saw in this temporary quiet a sign that the king of Prussia and his royal associates after all disliked openly to proceed against them with arms in their hands, because other populations in Germany might be as enthusiastic for the cause of German unity and liberty as the people in the Palatinate and Baden. They preferred to believe that the uprising would end as merrily as it had begun; and this explains the fact that the popular lightheartedness in the midst of revolutionary events, which I have designated as a picnic humor, lasted a considerable time. The cooler heads indeed did not indulge in such delusions; they foresaw that this would be a decisive struggle against an anti-national and anti-liberal reaction, in which the princes and court parties would put into the field their large and well organized power, if necessary even to the last reserves, and that against this power the resources of the Palatinate and of Baden looked
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