THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
beginning of the campaign, if at all. Now, after a series of defeats that possibility had disappeared. Could it be a great victory of our troops in the highlands of Baden? Not to be thought of, as the retreat of our forces from the Murg River must have weakened them more by the inevitable demoralization than they could have been strengthened by reinforcements from other parts of the country. Could it be a great victory of the Hungarians in the East? But the Hungarians were far away and the Russians were marching upon them. Could it be a new uprising of the people in Germany? But the revolutionary impulse was evidently exhausted. Here we were shut up in a fortress surrounded by the Prussians. A stubborn defense of the fortress could serve our cause, only in so much as it might prove that a popular army could also possess courage and maintain its military honor. But under all circumstances the fortress could resist only a very limited time. And then? Capitulation. And then? We would fall into the hands of the Prussians. The supreme commander of the Prussian troops in Baden was “The Prince of Prussia,” in whom, at that time, nobody would have recognized the afterwards so popular Kaiser Wilhelm I. At that period the prince was regarded as the worst enemy of all movements for freedom. The generally credited rumor that it was he who on the 18th of March, 1848, in Berlin, had given the order to fire upon the people had earned for him, with the people, the title of the “Grapeshot Prince.” The excitement of the masses against him during those days of March was in fact so violent that the king thought it best to send him away to England for some time, and this journey was carried out in a manner which looked very much like flight. That in the year 1849 when the imperial crown was offered to his brother, Frederick William IV., he belonged to those who advised
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