Chapter 2
SCHLESWIG – HOLSTEIN BEFORE 1863
For over a quarter of a century the affairs of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein on the periphery of the Teutonic and Scandinavian worlds occupied a special place in the story of German unification. Neither duchy was of any great economic significance; no mineral resources lay hidden beneath its soil to attract predatory powers. Strategically, however, they were of some significance. The Helstat or united monarchy (the term used to describe all the possessions of the Danish crown) still had a role to play as guardian of the Sound, while towards the end of the nineteenth century the Kiel Canal linking up the Baltic and North Seas conferred special strategic importance on Holstein. And a glance at the map reveals the significance of the duchies as an arrondissement to Prussian territory once that power embarked on an expansionist policy. But the continued interest of the German and Danish peoples in Schleswig-Holstein from 1846 to 1866 was due not to its strategic importance for Prussia but to the fierce clash between German and Danish nationalism in the flat land between the Eider and the Kongeaa rivers and its repercussions in Germany.
Despite the hyphenated name Schleswig-Holstein, the duchies differed in various respects. Holstein, with approximately 500,000 inhabitants in 1860, was completely German-speaking, had been a member of the Holy Roman Empire and was admitted without question to full membership of the Confederation in 1815. The king of Denmark, as duke of Holstein and Lauenburg (the latter a duchy acquired by Denmark in 1815), had a seat in the Federal Diet as had the British monarch in respect of the kingdom of Hanover (until 1837 when Queen Victoria came to the British throne) and the king of the Netherlands in respect of the grand duchy of Luxemburg. Schleswig, with approximately 400,000 inhabitants in 1860, had never been in the Holy Roman Empire and was not in the German Confederation. The Federal Diet had no direct jurisdiction over this duchy which was subject only to the authority of the Danish king. Secondly, at least half the population spoke a Danish dialect until well into the nineteenth century although the language of state there, as in Holstein, was High German.
The duchies had been associated with each other since the late Middle Ages when the council of the local nobility, anxious to prevent fresh partitions of the duchies, agreed to elect as their ruler Christian of Oldenburg, the king of Denmark. Before becoming duke of Schleswig and count of Holstein and Stormarn (the title was consolidated in 1474 into duke of Schleswig-Holstein) King Christian recognized the privileged position of these powerful local magnates. In the charter of 1460 he solemnly affirmed that he was ruler not by hereditary right but by election; acknowledged that only his male heirs would be eligible for election as duke; and promised that the close association between them would remain unimpaired, that only residents of the duchies would be appointed to high office in either duchy, and finally, that the local estates would be consulted before taxes were levied or war waged.
Had history taken the course it did in Britain, Sweden and Spain, Christian’s successors would have ignored promises squeezed out of them by ambitious local magnates. In the normal course of events the duchies would have been assimilated into the Danish kingdom and in all probability no more would have been heard of the 1460 Charter.
But in the mid sixteenth century the brothers of the reigning monarch partitioned the duchies and ruled over their shares as virtually autonomous territories. So for the next two hundred years, when other European monarchs were consolidating their dominions the Danish kings were struggling to reassert their authority over the duchies. This was no easy task. Only in 1720 did Denmark recover the Gottorp parts of Schleswig at the end of the Great Northern War. Not until 1773 did she recover the Gottorp possessions in Holstein. That was because the duke of Holstein-Gottorp, fighting a rearguard action against the loss of his Schleswig possessions, was able through his marriage to a Russian princess to enlist the support of Russia in his struggle. When Peter III, a Gottorp prince, became tsar of Russia, war with Denmark seemed inevitable. It was averted by his death, for his successor, Catherine the Great, bent on expanding at the expense of Poland and Turkey, was ready to abandon the Russian claim to the Schleswig territories and surrender the Gottorp parts of Holstein in return for the grand duchy of Oldenburg acquired by the Danes in 1699.
Because the Danish rulers had not been able to incorporate the duchies into the Helstat at an earlier point, they retained their distinctive political and social structure despite the three-hundred-year-old association with the Danish crown. Their special status was recognized in Copenhagen where their affairs were handled by a separate administrative body – the Schleswig-Holstein chancellery – run by German officials. In the kingdom of Denmark the power of the crown had been unlimited since 1665. The status of the nobility had been much reduced, the remnants of the elective machinery of medieval times swept away, the towns subjected to royal control and a uniform legal system introduced. In the duchies, on the other hand, strong local traditions lingered on well into the nineteenth century. The small farmers who owned 75 per cent of the land in Schleswig and West Holstein shared in the administration, appointed minor parish officials and elected assessors to the lower courts. And in the few towns strung out along the east coast the citizens elected the members of the local councils. Economically the duchies looked not to Denmark to dispose of their cattle and agrarian produce, but to the south. Hamburg, gateway to the English market, exerted a greater influence on them than Copenhagen.
Geographical remoteness conspired with historical accident to guarantee the duchies’ semi-autonomous status. The Baltic separated them from Copenhagen, and the fiord-indented east coast discouraged travel between Scandinavia and Germany. Even in the duchies contact between west and east coast was minimal because of the inhospitable moorland in the centre and almost ceased during the winter months. Not until the 1830s was the first metalled road built and the first railway laid, significantly between Kiel and Altona, consolidating still further the link with Hamburg.
Despite the looseness of the political and economic links binding the duchies to Denmark, loyalty to the Danish crown was strong enough to enable the Helstat to survive the trauma of 1814 when Denmark, the ally of Napoleon, suffered defeat. King Frederik’s German subjects remained as loyal to the crown as his Danish subjects. And the educated classes – the German pastors, teachers and officials, who exerted much influence in Copenhagen as well as in the duchies – prided themselves on being ‘brave Danes’ during the English bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807. They were ‘German’ only in the sense that they shared in the rich cultural heritage of the German fatherland.
Not until the 1840s did national animosities seriously affect relations between Germans and Danes. Schleswig was at the heart of the dispute.
In ancient times Danish was spoken down to the Eider river. But in medieval times German knights, merchants and artisans extended German influence along the northern, eastern and south-eastern frontiers of the Holy Roman Empire. By the fourteenth century Low German had superseded Danish as the common tongue in South Schleswig and made significant inroads in the centre of the duchy in the so-called ‘mixed districts’. Even so, at least half the inhabitants of Schleswig still spoke a Danish dialect, although German officials and pastors spoke German in the courts, schools and churches.
In the 1830s a small group of dedicated activists launched a campaign to arouse in the local people in North Schleswig a sense of awareness of their Danish cultural heritage. In 1836 the Danish liberal movement gave its blessing to these activists. Since 1831 when the king had established consultative estates – two for the kingdom and two for the duchies – a vigorous liberal movement had developed north of the Kongeaa. Encouraged by this development, and working through the Copenhagen-based Freedom of the Press Society (Trykkefrihedsselskabet), Danish liberals raised their sights and began to agitate for fully responsible government. In supporting the Schleswig activists, especially their demand that Danish be introduced into the courts and schools of North Schleswig, Danish liberals were originally inspired not by national sentiment but by the belief that every people had a natural right to use its own tongue in administrative matters.
Nor when the new king, Christian VIII, decreed in 1840 that Danish was to be used in the courts, churches and schools of North Schleswig was he inspired by nationalist, much less liberal, sentiments but simply by a perfectly understandable wish to preserve the Helstat intact in a changing world. By giving limited recognition to the Danish movement in Schleswig the king hoped to retain the loyalty of that duchy. And through the Holstein association that duchy, too, would remain loyal to the Danish crown. A long-overdue modernization – which he pursued energetically in the 1840s – would then cement the relationship between all parts of his kingdom.
However, the Schleswig estates, which were dominated by German officials and landowners, denounced the new regulations and demanded the re-introduction of German as the only official language. In 1842 when a prominent North Schleswig deputy suddenly insisted on speaking in Danish, the Germans refused to let him continue. As so often in confrontational situations, exaggerated fears inflamed passions on both sides. The Germans were convinced that the king and the Danish liberals were plotting to separate Schleswig from Holstein – which was not the king’s intention nor that of most liberals at that time – while Danish liberals assumed – wrongly – that because the Germans would not concede to Danish equality of status with German, they wished to separate the duchies from Denmark.
On its own this local quarrel would not have had a permanent effect on relations between Germans and Danes in Schleswig. For in the end the estates, though refusing in principle to allow those able to speak German fluently permission to use Danish, made exceptions in the case of a handful of deputies unable to do so. In any case the language regulations were a dead letter in the courts because German lawyers refused to use Danish. What kept the tension high in the 1840s was a quite different issue: the so-called ‘succession question’.
King Christian had no male heirs, and neither had Crown Prince Frederik or the king’s brother, Prince Frederik Ferdinand. After their death, according to the lex regia (Kongelov) of 1665, cognates would inherit the Danish crown. In all probability the crown would pass to King Christian’s younger sister, Louise Charlotte, who was married to Vilhelm, Landgraf of Electoral Hesse, a serving Danish officer, and on to her children. The difficulty was that this could lead to the break-up of the Helstat because of the different succession in the duchies. Majority legal opinion both Danish and German believed that the female succession applied to Schleswig because in 1720 at least the Gottorp parts of Schleswig had been annexed to Denmark. But it was generally admitted that only male heirs could succeed in Holstein in accordance with the 1460 Charter. That would mean that Holstein would revert to Duke Christian August of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, head of a cadet branch of the Danish royal house and brother-in-law of King Christian, and an active politician of conservative persuasions who exerted much influence in the duchies. In October 1844 the Jylland estates – one of the two Danish estates – concerned by speculation about the succession, petitioned the king to declare that the female succession applied to all parts of the Helstat and urged him to take action against all who disputed this interpretation.
When the Holstein estates met later that year conservative and liberal members alike united in support of what became known as Schleswig-Holsteinism. The duchies, it was alleged, formed the independent state of Schleswig-Holstein. This state could be inherited only by the male line of the royal house. Once this line was extinct the link with Denmark would be terminated and the duchies would go their own way under the Augustenburgs. The direction they wished to move in was made plain in 1846 when the German members of the Schleswig estates demanded that the king negotiate with the Federal Diet to secure the admission of Schleswig to the German Confederation. Dynastic claims and national animosities reinforced each other. The ambitions of the Augustenburgs – who were, incidentally, ready to settle for the duchies only if they could not attain their real objective, the crown of the Helstat – coincided with the rising tide of national feeling among the Germans who now looked forward with satisfaction to the end of the association with Denmark. However, the broad support the political élite in Schleswig-Holstein enjoyed in the late 1840s probably owed just as much if not more to mounting social misery among landless labourers accentuated by drought and rising prices.
The rift between Germans and Danes deepened in 1846 when King Christian issued a public statement on the succession issue: the Open Letter (Aabene Bref). While confident that the female succession applied to Schleswig, the king conceded that it was unclear whether it applied to certain parts of Holstein. Reassuring the duchies that he had no intention of encroaching on their established rights or altering the traditional ties between them, he declared his firm resolve of preserving the Helstat. The Holstein estates then in session not only rejected the claims Christian was making but protested to the Federal Diet that the Danish king was acting ultra vires in attempting to interfere with the relationship between the duchies. The response from Germany surpassed all expectations. Declarations of support poured in from German Landtage, universities, learned societies and mass meetings in the towns calling on the Diet to defend the ‘German’ nationality of Schleswig-Holstein. Conservatives as well as middle-class liberals joined in the cries of protest. For, like Metternich, they saw in the defence of the ‘rights’ of the duchies a bulwark against the forces of revolution in the shape of the ‘democratic’ Eiderdanes.
The mounting tension between Germans and Danes came to a head in 1848. In December 1847 King Christian died on the eve of announcing the introduction of a new constitution for the Helstat – a final attempt to preserve the state by giving it a liberal face-lift. King Frederik continued with these plans. At first there were signs that the offer of full financial and legislative powers for joint estates meeting alternately in Copenhagen and Gottorp, with provincial estates dealing with local matters, would set radicals against moderates in Schleswig-Holstein. But news of events in Paris, Berlin and Vienna in the spring of 1848 radicalized the situation. The Schleswig-Holsteiner insisted on separate constitutional arrangements for Schleswig-Holstein, the entry of Schleswig into the German Confederation and the restoration of freedom of the press and of public meetings, both drastically curtailed by the late king in the aftermath of the Open Letter.
In Copenhagen the National Liberals were now in the ascendancy. The Eiderdanes, as they are often called after the river separating Schleswig from Holstein, believed that if Denmark was to meet the challenge of a new era Schleswig must become an integral part of the Danish kingdom. German Holstein would be allowed to go its own way. The Eiderdanes forced King Frederik to issue a proclamation declaring that Schleswig, as part of Denmark, would have a common constitution with Denmark. When news reached Kiel that the king had appointed a new ministry including prominent National Liberals – among them the fiery Orla Lehmann – the Germans rebelled. They set up a provisional government for Schleswig-Holstein, preserving a threadbare semblance of legality by declaring the king – duke to be ‘unfree’ in his own capital and appealing to the Diet for protection.
At first all went well for the Schleswig-Holsteiner. The king of Prussia espoused the cause of the duke of Augustenburg, while the Federal Diet recognized the Kiel government and asked Prussia to secure the king of Denmark’s consent to the inclusion of Schleswig in the Confederation. King Frederick William responded to the Diet’s call for military action. Prussian troops crossed the Eider and by the end of April had driven the Danes out of Schleswig and were commencing the invasion of Jylland. In May elected representatives from Schleswig-Holstein were received with enthusiasm by the Frankfurt Parliament.
It soon dawned on the king that he might have to pay dearly for his romantic gesture. At home the radicals were most likely to be the main beneficiaries of continued warfare, as the French Jacobins had been half a century earlier. Abroad, Prussia was brought up sharply against the realities of international politics. Russia expressed alarm at the prospect of the Helstat’s collapse and strongly disapproved of the king’s flirtation with ‘revolution’. Though Russia would scarcely have fought over the Elbe duchies, the strictures of a brother monarch were deeply disturbing to Frederick William. Russian diplomats with British and French support exerted further pressure on Berlin and Frankfurt. The prospect of isolation frightened the king who, without consulting the Frankfurt Parliament, signed an armistice with Denmark at Malmø in July 1848. The Frankfurt Liberals at first rejected the armistice but in September acquiesced reluctantly in the fait accompli.
Not until July 1850 did the First Slesvig War officially end. Under heavy pressure from the Great Powers King Frederick abandoned the Schleswig-Holsteiner under the terms of the Treaty of Berlin. The Danish king then asked the newly restored Diet to help him re-establish his authority in Holstein. Left to their own devices the Schleswig-Holsteiner were decisively defeated at the battle of Idstedt. In November Austria and Prussia patched up their quarrel (analysed in the next chapter) and at the Diet’s request occupied Holstein. What was left of the insurrectionary government handed over its power to them and the rebel army was disbanded.
The Great Powers were anxious to see the status quo restored in the Baltic. In July 1850 Britain, Russia, France, Austria, Prussia and Denmark placed on record in the London Protocol their conviction that the Helstat must be restored and the vexed succession question finally resolved. It proved far from easy to achieve these objectives. The National Liberals, still influential in Copenhagen, were reluctant to abandon all hope of annexing Schleswig, while Austria and Prussia were equally determined not to tolerate such a disturbance of the status quo. Eiderdanism and Schleswig-Holsteinism both had radical connotations obnoxious to the conservatives controlling Austrian and Prussian policy. They refused to hand over Holstein to Denmark until the balance of power shifted back to conservative forces. Hence their insistence that estates with local powers be re-established in Schleswig as well as in Holstein to ensure that the landed nobility in the duchies could act as an effective brake on the democratic Eiderdanes. In the end the Danes, conscious of their diplomatic isolation, abandoned Eiderdanism. With the appointment of the conservative Count Christian Bluhme as foreign minister in October 1851, negotiations with Austria and Prussia made rapid progress.
The outcome was incorporated in a royal proclamation in January 1852 in which the king undertook to return to the status quo ante bellum and create ‘an organic and homogeneous union of all parts of the monarchy’. While traditional ties between the duchies would be respected, their demand for administrative autonomy – a major tenet of Schleswig-Holsteinism – was explicitly repudiated. The Schleswig-Holstein chancellery set up in 1834 would not be re-created. Denmark would keep the democratic constitution of 1849 while Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg would each have its own constitution, separate ministries and estates with deliberative powers over local matters. These estates together with the Danish Rigsdag would be consulted about a new constitution to handle common areas, i.e. foreign policy, military affairs and in part finance. The local constitution for Schleswig would include guarantees for equality of treatment for the German and Danish nationalities. A note to Berlin and Vienna accompanying copies of the proclamation reaffirmed the king’s intention not to incorporate Schleswig or take any steps in that direction. In July the Federal Diet, which had not been formally involved in the negotiations with Denmark, recorded its approval of the proclamation.
In return for these promises Austria and Prussia withdrew from Holstein and accepted a settlement of the succession question favourable to Denmark. After further protracted negotiation involving the Great Powers it was agreed that on the death of King Frederik, Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, head of another cadet branch of the royal house, would inherit the crown. The rival contender, Duke Christian August of Augustenburg, while not renouncing his claims, nevertheless surrendered his estates in the duchies for a cash payment. He agreed to live outside Schleswig-Holstein and promised not to indulge in activities likely to undermine the new succession. Five Great Powers together with Denmark and Sweden-Norway approved these dynastic arrangements in the Treaty of London signed in May 1852. The powers, it should be noted, did not actually guarantee the integrity of the Helstat or assume any collective responsibility towards it; each power exchanged the treaty separately with Denmark so that each was bound separately to her and not to the other powers.
The ascendancy of conservative forces in Denmark and the duchies, together with a measure of economic prosperity in the 1850s from which all parts of the monarchy benefited, could not save the Helstat. On the contrary: Schleswig-Holsteinism was given a new lease of life by Danish treatment of Schleswig. In a determined effort to restore their authority and stamp out the Schleswig-Holstein party in that duchy, many German officials, pastors and judges were replaced by Danes and extremely onerous restrictions were placed on the freedom of the press, on public meetings and on associations. Even greater resentment was caused by the language ordinances.
In the spring of 1851 August Regenburg, the newly appointed Danish official responsible for churches and schools, with the support of King Frederik and of Count Carl Moltke, minister for Schleswig, announced that Danish would be used in the schools as the medium of instruction in the mixed districts of Central Schleswig. It would alternate with German in the churches and be of equal standing with German in all official transactions and in civil proceedings. It was Regenburg’s passionate belief – to which he clung despite evidence to the contrary – that as the inhabitants spoke both low Danish and low German they would assuredly opt for the former once the ‘German yoke’ was removed.
The Schleswig-Holsteiner did not object to the use of Danish in North Schleswig, recognizing somewhat belatedly the justice of the Danish case. But they bitterly opposed its use in the mixed districts, regarding it as a crude device for driving German out of Schleswig. So determined was their resistance that, far from retarding the Germanization of the mixed districts especially in Angeln, Danish policy greatly accelerated the process. These ill-considered measures heightened the animosity between Germans and Danes and played right into the hands of the Schleswig-Holstein party. Furthermore, the Danes damaged their international standing by a stubborn refusal to consult the inhabitants – this through a well-founded fear that until the influence of German officials had been neutralized, a completely free vote would not be possible. Only most reluctantly did they modify the ordinance slightly in 1861 to appease foreign opinion.
Secondly, the constitutional arrangements inside the Helstat met with German disapproval and kept the affairs of the duchies on the agenda in Berlin and Vienna for years to come. The disagreement concerned both the position of the local estates and the common constitution. The king had submitted separate constitutions for Schleswig and Holstein to the respective estates. Although the Schleswig estates accepted only with reservations and the Holstein estates rejected their constitution, both were imposed on them in 1854. The common constitution of 1855 was an even more contentious issue. The Danish king proposed to establish a Rigsraad of eighty members meeting biannually to discuss foreign policy, defence, commerce and finance. Twenty members would be nominated by the king (twelve from Denmark and eight from the duchies) and thirty elected (seventeen in Denmark and thirteen in the duchies). In all, Denmark would have fifty-seven members to thirty-three for the duchies. As some Danish members were sure to be elected in North Schleswig, the balance would be tilted even more decisively towards Denmark. From the very beginning the leaders of the German minority were not prepared to tolerate subordination to the Danes and pounced upon every legal loophole to obstruct Danish plans. Nor did the Holstein nobility care for the democratic franchise on which some Danish members would be elected.1 Thus, at the first session of the Rigsraad in 1856 eleven German members maintained that while the Danish Rigsdag had been allowed to approve the constitution, the estates of Holstein, Schleswig and Lauenburg had not been consulted. This, they alleged, was a breach of the promises of 1851–2, an argument which the Rigsraad rejected.2
However, the German minority was not without friends south of the Elbe, in part, no doubt, because of the strenuous efforts prominent exiled Schleswig-Holsteiner made at various German courts to keep the issue alive. Prussia soon took a hand in the game and an exchange of notes took place between Copenhagen, Berlin and Vienna in the winter of 1856–7. At issue was the common constitution and also the subordinate matter of the Rigsraad’s right to dispose of domain lands in the duchies hitherto administered locally. It was indicative of mounting anti-Danish feeling that the Germans were soon alleging that the domain issue was the thin end of the wedge proving that the Danes planned to incorporate the duchies in Denmark. Finally, at the end of October 1857 Austria and Prussia referred the contentious issues to the Federal Diet. In February 1858 that body refused to recognize the common constitution or the Holstein constitution on the grounds that it had not been submitted to the estates as they claimed federal law required. They therefore asked the Danish king to confer on Holstein and Lauenburg the independent and equal status promised in 1851–2.
In July 1858 the Diet threatened Denmark with federal execution unless she complied promptly with this request. Carl Christian Hall, the newly appointed president of the council of ministers, being by temperament a procrastinator, was anxious to de-escalate the crisis, having no wish to be at war with Germany. Consequently he persuaded his colleagues to agree to suspend the common constitution in respect of Holstein and Lauenburg and summon the Holstein estates to discuss the new situation. This step, implemented in November, did at least remove all pretext for intervention by the Diet. An optimist as well as a procrastinator, Hall may even have hoped that the Germans might at last begin to make constructive proposals for a common constitution.
If he had really expected such a stroke of good fortune, he was quickly disappointed when the Holstein estates met in January 1859 to discuss both the common constitution and a new constitution for Holstein drawn up by the Danes. Emboldened by signs of popular support south of the Elbe, the Schleswig-Holstein party threw down the gauntlet. While paying lip-service to the concept of a reorganized monarchy, the estates stated their own preference in unmistakeable language: restoration of the administrative and legislative union of the duchies as it had existed before 1848. They flatly rejected the Rigsraad set up in 1855 on the grounds of distance from the duchies and the inability of most Germans to speak Danish. In its place they proposed that the four constituent parts of the kingdom be given equal representation in deciding matters of common concern. Legislative power would be vested in separate ministries for the duchies and in the four local assemblies. Legislation would require the consent of all four bodies: the Danish Rigsdag, the estates of Schleswig and Holstein and the assembly of the nobility in Lauenburg. In practice this meant that no progress would ever be made. A proposition which gave the 50,000 inhabitants of Lauenburg an equal voice with 1,500,000 Danes, so that the German minority in the Helstat (approximately 900,000) had a veto power over legislation, was an absurd suggestion totally unacceptable to the Danes, now well advanced on the road to constitutional government.
For good measure the Holstein estates forthrightly denounced the ‘oppression’ of fellow Germans in Schleswig – a duchy over which they had, of course, no jurisdiction. An ominous precedent. When the Schleswig estates met in January 1860 the German majority bitterly attacked the absence of political liberty in the duchy and declared that by suspending the common constitution for Holstein and Lauenburg only, the Danes had in effect incorporated Schleswig in the Danish kingdom. Schleswig, like Holstein, demanded the restoration of the old links between the duchies and appealed to the Diet and to Austria and Prussia for assistance. Prussia did not reply officially to Hall’s protest. But the National Society organized several protest meetings about conditions in Schleswig, while the lower house of the Prussian Landtag petitioned the king to do all he could to help the duchies secure their ‘rights’. However much Hall protested at foreign interference in Denmark’s domestic affairs, Schleswig was now firmly on the agenda in Germany.
Whether Hall really believed in the possibility of reaching agreement with all parties on a common constitution seems doubtful. In September 1859 he persuaded the Rigsraad to agree an interim constitution for Holstein. As one Hamburg newspaper remarked, no German state had ever been offered such a liberal constitution of the prince’s own free will. The estates were offered decision-making powers in local matters and a reduction in their contribution to common finances. Although Denmark assured the Diet in November that matters of common concern would be discussed with the Holstein estates, it is quite possible that Hall was taking the first step towards the separation of Holstein from the Helstat.
For the time being the Diet postponed federal execution. Then in July 1860 when the Danes published the common budget for the Helstat requiring a contribution from Holstein (as provided for in the interim constitution), there were fresh protests in Frankfurt. In February 1861 the Diet declared that the interim constitution would be legally binding only with the Holstein estates’ consent. Under renewed threat of federal execution the king was ordered to submit both budget and constitution to the estates. Under pressure from Britain, France, Russia and Sweden–Norway, Hall summoned the estates. It was the old story. They simply repeated their demand for the restoration of the old ties between the duchies and, significantly, called on Germany to defend their ‘established rights’. In April 1861 the Diet again referred the affairs of the duchies to committee for consideration of further action.
As the prospect of armed confrontation between Denmark and the Confederation suddenly loomed up, the Great Powers grew alarmed. For the next eighteen months one after the other they thought up schemes (including the partition of Schleswig) to reconcile the irreconcilable. Hall bent with the wind, reduced the financial contribution expected of Holstein for the current fiscal year and showed willingness to recommence negotiations with Austria and Prussia. On this basis the Diet suspended federal execution in July 1861. In the winter of 1861–2 Austria, Prussia and Denmark once again negotiated about the duchies. Neither side would budge from entrenched positions. Denmark persisted in offering Holstein a special status while stoutly maintaining that the future of Schleswig was no concern of foreign powers – to which Austria and Prussia retorted that Schleswig was indeed their concern because of Denmark’s failure to keep the promises of 1851–2. They demanded that the common constitution be suspended for Schleswig as well as for Holstein as it had never been submitted to the estates. The Danes must prepare a new constitution guaranteeing absolute equality of status to the duchies and also withdraw the language ordinance in Middle Schleswig.
Controversy still rages over Hall’s policy. It has been generally assumed that from his appointment in 1857 his policy was essentially Eiderdane in character and that he gladly yielded ground to the Confederation over Holstein in order to weaken the ties with Schleswig, while at the same time resisting foreign attempts to interfere in that duchy. More recently it has been argued that he genuinely believed in preserving the Helstat and changed gear to Eiderdanism only when it became clear that Danish political development was being retarded by the German connection. Whatever the truth may be – and much ambiguity surrounds the actions of this accomplished procrastinator – by June 1861 he had certainly concluded that it was impossible to reach any reasonable agreement with the Holstein estates. Domestic pressures were also of importance in pushing Hall into Eiderdanism by the back door. The National Liberals were engaged in a power struggle with more radical liberals – the bondevennerne – who had since 1858 held a slender majority in the Landsting (one of the two houses of the Rigsdag). The Danish National Liberals, like their German counterparts, wanted to preserve a monopoly of power for the upper classes and realized that, with elections due in 1861, they were likely to lose their shaky majority in the Folksting (the other house). The government’s opponents formed a new association to attack Hall’s equivocal foreign policy with the significant name Dannevirke Society (Foreningen Dannevirke), that being a reference to the Danish fortifications in South Schleswig constructed in medieval times to hold back the Germans. In May an address signed by almost all the members of the Rigsdag and carrying 71,000 signatures was presented to Hall. It demanded the union of Schleswig with Denmark. Hall seized this opportunity of enhancing National Liberal electoral prospects by declaring that government policy in recent months had been broadly in line with this demand and that the only solution was to give Holstein a special status in the Helstat. The appointment of the prominent National Liberal Orla Lehmann to a cabinet post in September 1861 confirmed that a new phase in Danish policy was beginning.
The moment for action arrived in the spring of 1863. In January the Rigsraad – from which Holstein and Lauenburg members were now excluded and from which many Schleswig members also absented themselves – petitioned the king to give a definitive constitution to Denmark and Schleswig. On 30 March 1863 a royal patent offered Holstein a liberal constitution with increased powers for the estates. No legislation on common matters would apply to Holstein without its consent. But Holstein’s opposition would not prevent a law agreed by the Rigsraad from applying to Denmark and Schleswig. In April, opening the new Rigsraad, King Frederik reaffirmed that legislation approved by crown and Rigsraad would in future be binding on Schleswig. Strictly speaking the March Charter was an attempt to buy off Holstein, not to annex Schleswig which still retained its local institutions. But contemporaries could hardly be blamed for assuming that annexation was the government’s objective after the huge popular gathering in Copenhagen’s Casino theatre on 28 March had rejected all but dynastic links with German Holstein.
It is fair to say that Hall had been driven to this momentous step by the sheer logic of the situation as well as by mounting political pressure. Having retreated steadily before the insistence of the Diet that common legislation was invalid without the consent of the Holstein estates, he was left with a clear choice: either to continue the fruitless attempts to reach agreement with the Germans or to treat Holstein as a separate entity bound only by dynastic ties with Denmark. Forced by circumstances to adopt a firm policy, Hall may possibly have hoped to make the Great Powers realize that they must bring pressure to bear on Germany to prevent war breaking out.
There is no doubt that the Danes had high hopes that the Great Powers would support them in their stand. The French foreign minister, Edouard Drouyn de Lhuys, had assured them that France would do all she could to prevent a conflict between Denmark and Germany. The Danes were encouraged, too, by signs that English public opinion was on their side. Lord John Russell’s proposal in September 1862 that Schleswig be given autonomous status had been roundly condemned in the House of Commons in February 1863. And the marriage of Princess Alexandra, eldest daughter of Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, to the Prince of Wales in March sparked off popular demonstrations in Britain in favour of Denmark. Most important of all, Hall and his colleagues had strong reasons for supposing Sweden–Norway would give active support in the event of complications.
Furthermore, there was much less to fear from Germany despite angry protests in the duchies, for both Austria and Prussia were distracted by the repercussions of the Polish Crisis which rumbled on into the high summer. In addition, the serious constitutional crisis in Prussia was moving inexorably to a crisis and absorbing the attentions of German liberals. Not until July did the Diet find time to condemn the March Charter as a violation of the Danish promises of 1851–2. In August Denmark peremptorily rejected a demand for the repeal of the royal patent on the grounds that the Diet had overstepped its powers in referring to Schleswig. The Danish note went on to state bluntly that if the Diet persisted in threatening federal execution, Denmark reserved the right to consider this a casus belli. Nevertheless, Hall, a cautious man by nature, was still willing to negotiate if only for the sake of appearances about Holstein’s new position in the Helstat. Optimistic about the outcome of the dispute, he assured the king that war was unlikely. Once the Diet realized that the Great Powers would condemn any interference in Schleswig it would surely draw in its horns and confine itself to verbal protests. At the end of September the Rigsraad began discussion of the common constitution for Denmark–Schleswig. But on 1 October the Diet, brushing aside British proposals for further negotiation, decided to proceed with federal execution against King Frederik in his capacity as duke of Holstein and Lauenburg. Hanover and Saxony were instructed to take the necessary military action on behalf of the Confederation, while Austria and Prussia were to hold forces in reserve if called upon.
On 13 November the Rigsraad finally approved the new constitution by forty votes to sixteen. Hall hurried off to obtain the royal signature, only to find King Frederik dangerously ill. In his lucid moments he expressed unwillingness to sign, preferring to leave that momentous decision to his successor. Two days later Frederik was dead. As Prince Ferdinand had died in July, the agnate succession had ended. In accordance with the Treaty of London, Christian of Glücksburg, the ‘Protocol Prince’ as the Germans called him, ascended the throne as Christian IX. On 18 November the new king, a retiring man not well known to the Danish public, was exposed to heavy pressure from his National Liberal ministers and from crowds demonstrating outside the palace; he was even warned by the Copenhagen chief of police that law and order could not be guaranteed unless he signed the cons-titution. Unable to find any politician to form an alternative government and much against his better judgement, King Christian gave way. His signature set in motion a chain of dramatic events which did not end until Denmark, beaten on the field of battle, was obliged to surrender the duchies to Prussia and Austria.
The day the news of King Frederik’s death reached him, Duke Christian August of Augustenburg, who had promised in 1852 not to make use of his succession rights, formally renounced them in favour of his son Prince Friedrich. On 17 November Duke Ernst of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha received the thirty-four-year-old prince and recognized him as duke of Schleswig-Holstein. In his proclamation to his new ‘subjects’ published in Holstein on 18 November, the duke asserted the prior claims of the Augustenburgs over all international obligations. The Treaty of London notwithstanding, the agnate succession had ended. Schleswig-Holstein was an independent state of which he was the lawful ruler. When the German members of the Schleswig and Holstein estates met together in Kiel they favoured immediate recognition of the duke and refused to send a deputation to Copenhagen to swear allegiance to King Christian. Instead they appealed to the Diet to give immediate recognition to Duke Friedrich VIII of Schleswig-Holstein.
The German reaction was overwhelming in its intensity and enthusiasm. A tidal wave of national sentiment engulfed towns principally in South-West Germany in the winter of 1863–4. Addresses poured into the Diet from Landtage and from popular meetings, all demanding immediate recognition of the duke, the separation of the duchies from Denmark and their entry into the Confederation. As euphoric nationalists saw it, the right of the German duchies to join the German fatherland took absolute precedence over the paper claims of a treaty imposed on an impotent Germany by foreign powers a decade earlier. It was 1848 all over again, with the Augustenburg pretender turned overnight into a popular hero because his dynastic claims coincided with the national aspirations of the German people – or at least with the demands of its literate and vocal citizens. On 28 November, by fourteen votes to two, the Diet refused to recognize King Christian’s envoy and temporarily suspended the vote of Holstein and Lauenburg.3
Would history repeat itself, with the Prussian king intervening on behalf of the Augustenburg duke? On the answer to that question might depend the future of the German national liberal movement. That brings us to Prussia, whose affairs since 1862 had been under the direction of the forty-eight-year-old Junker and ex-diplomat Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck-Schönhausen.
THE PRUSSIAN CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS
At the beginning of the 1860s Prussia was in the grip of a serious political crisis which at one point led King William I to threaten abdication; if he was in earnest, this was a rare moment in Hohenzollern history. The crisis was the immediate cause of Bismarck’s appointment as minister–president, a post for which in the normal course of events he would have been a most unlikely choice. The circumstances of his appointment had some bearing on his subsequent conduct of foreign affairs. What the precise relationship was is open to considerable argument; but certainly it is far too simplistic an explanation of Bismarck’s dynamic foreign policy to attribute it to a conscious attempt to escape the implications of the domestic crisis.
Historians have argued passionately about the rival merits of Leopold von Ranke’s Primacy of Foreign Policy and Eckart Kehr’s Primacy of Domestic Policy, at times almost as if these were mutually exclusive explanations: either the domestic dog wags the foreign policy tail or the foreign policy tail bears no resemblance to the rest of the animal. In fact, Bismarck’s contemporaries were acutely aware of the mutual interdependence of domestic and foreign policy. Conservatives believed that to keep the floodgates of revolution firmly closed, the Great Powers must make a conscious effort to uphold the status quo abroad; peace abroad implied peace at home. Liberals, on the other hand, believed that a foreign policy aimed at the destruction of the international equilibrium must lead to political change at home: disorder abroad, disorder at home. Bismarck was almost alone in perceiving other permutations, in particular that a radical foreign policy need not upset the status quo in Prussia: disorder abroad, order at home. Certainly conservatives and liberals were keenly aware of the ever-shifting relationship between foreign policy and domestic affairs. And no doubt the army crisis did sharpen Bismarck’s perceptions of the mounting liberal ‘threat’ to the stability of the monarchy and give added urgency to his search for foreign-policy success.
The crisis arose out of the attempt to reform the Prussian army. In October 1858 sixty-one-year-old Crown Prince William became regent in place of his ailing brother. A quite different personality from the king, William had been trained as a soldier with no expectation of ever becoming king until it became apparent that Frederick William would have no children. William was a typical Hohenzollern in his belief that the growth of Prussia historically was due to a combination of strong government and army and that the maintenance of this combination was a sine qua non for the survival of the monarchy. An unimaginative man of rather indecisive character, lacking the brilliance of his brother, he was a natural conservative but not a reactionary of the old school. In the 1850s he consorted with the so-called Wochenblattpartei, the name given to a small group of high officials, diplomats and academics led by Moritz August von Bethmann Hollweg who expressed their views in the Preussisches Wochenblatt founded in 1857. These moderate conservatives wanted Prussia to take the lead in reviving the Erfurt Union, a view not displeasing to William who bitterly resented Prussia’s humiliation in 1850. And while the Wochenblattpartei believed in a strong monarchy, they also believed that royal absolutism was the road to revolution and that kings could stay on their thrones in troubled times only by working within a constitutional framework and promoting the modernization of the state.
One of William’s first acts as regent was to appoint Prince Anton of Hohenzollern–Sigmaringen minister–president in place of Baron Otto von Manteuffel, whose very name was a byword for political reaction. Supporters of the Wochenblattpartei filled the ministries of foreign affairs, finance, the interior and education. The tone of the ‘New Era’ was set by the first sentences in the regent’s address to his cabinet:
Prussia must make moral conquests in Germany by wise legislation of its own by emphasizing ethical values and by actively promoting elements favouring unification such as the Customs Union, which is in need of reform. The world must know that Prussia is ready to protect right everywhere. Through a firm, logical and, if need be, energetic stance in political matters, combined with wisdom and sober judgement, Prussia must acquire political prestige and that authority which it cannot attain by material power alone.4
Liberals enthused about these vague platitudes and averted their gaze from other passages in the declaration which indicated that William was no less determined than his predecessors to maintain his royal power to the full. And despite the new ministry, the king was surrounded at court by reactionary advisers who denounced all liberals as dangerous revolutionaries.
Even before he became regent William was concerned about the state of the army. Events in 1859 stiffened his resolve to set reforms in motion. The outbreak of war in Northern Italy precipitated an international crisis. The effect of this on Prussian policy will be discussed later. Suffice to say here that Prussian mobilization revealed serious weaknesses in the army, making reform even more urgent. And when General Eduard von Bonin, the minister of war, resigned in December 1859 – forced out by the intrigues of General Edwin von Manteuffel, chief of the military cabinet, and General Gustav von Alvensleben – William appointed General Albrecht von Roon, a bitter opponent of constitutional government, as minister of war to mastermind the reforms.
The case for a major overhaul was overwhelming. The population had grown to eighteen million but to save money only 40,000 – about 25 per cent of those liable for compulsory service – were called up annually so that the army had fallen behind in size compared with those of the Austrians and French. From a professional soldier’s standpoint the Prussian army left much to be desired. Hitherto recruits had spent three years in line regiments (though on financial grounds they were usually released after two and a half years), two years with the front-line reserves, and fourteen with the Landwehr – for the first seven years soldiers were in the first levy (erstes Angebot) and in wartime would fight in the front line alongside the regular army. As the Landwehr under its part-time officers was poorly trained, such an arrangement was scarcely a formula for victory. William and Roon were determined to create a truly professional army. Roon proposed to increase the annual intake to 63,000. The recruits would be kept a full three years with line regiments and five years in the line reserves. During this time they would be subjected to intensive training. After that would come eleven years in the Landwehr, now completely separated from front-line service and relegated to garrison and rearechelon duties. The net result would be the creation of a professional army doubled in size from 50,000 to 110,000 with greatly augmented reserves. To accommodate these vastly increased numbers, Roon proposed to expand the officer corps and create thirty-nine new infantry and ten cavalry regiments. Under the Prussian constitution of 1850 Landtag approval was required for all expenditure; so in February 1860 Roon introduced his army bill.
Reform of the army was never a purely technical matter. Behind the army’s modernization programme lay mounting anxiety in the exclusive Prussian officer corps about political development since 1850. The military leaders Edwin von Manteuffel, Alvensleben and Roon chafed at criticism of military expenditure in the Landtag and resented the (not very successful) attempts of successive ministers of war to exercise more control over the army. And, as liberalism revived at the close of the 1860s, the military cabinet feared fresh revolutionary outbursts. The balance of power must be swung back towards the crown, the only bulwark of ‘law and order’ against ‘mob rule’. To do this they must eliminate unreliable civilian elements from the army and turn it into an utterly reliable instrument over which the king had supreme command. For many officers that would be a first step on the road to counter-revolution and the abolition of the constitution. As the political crisis deepened in the winter of 1861–2, the military cabinet drew up plans for a coup d’état which the king endorsed in January 1862.
The so-called Old Liberals who had controlled the Landtag since 1858 had not the slightest intention of engaging in revolutionary activity. They, too, favoured army expansion but were critical of Roon’s bill basically for two reasons. First, the sharp increase in expenditure of 9,500,000 talers was likely to increase taxation by 25 per cent and would retard the modernization of Prussia. Second, demotion of the Landwehr coupled with the increase in length of service and the expansion of the officer corps convinced some liberals that the Junker camarilla wanted to eliminate all traces of liberalism from the army and turn it even more into a bastion of reaction. Attempts to interfere with the Landwehr rang the alarm bells in liberal circles, for on its establishment in 1814–5 the Reformers had hoped to introduce a patriotic bourgeois spirit into line regiments as an antidote to the unthinking obedience (Kadavergehorsamkeit) of the Frederician army which had not prevented it going down to defeat at Jena. Both the king and his minister of war were implacably opposed to the Landwehr on political and military grounds alike and had deliberately run it down; ‘civilians in uniform’ had no place in a highly professional army, especially one likely to be employed by its officers in counter-revolutionary activities.
Though the military committee of the Landtag approved army expansion, it also recommended a reduction in the number of regiments, the retention of two-year service and the preservation of the Landwehr. Whereupon Roon – who showed more tactical skill than colleagues in the military cabinet – withdrew the bill. Worse followed. The constitutional position of the army was shrouded in ambiguity. The minister of war was supposed to countersign royal ordinances, which implied some measure of Landtag control; but the army was also under the king’s personal command. Pouncing on this ambiguity Roon decided to rely on the royal prerogative to implement the reforms; all the Landtag had to do was provide the necessary finance. Carefully concealing his intentions from the Landtag, Roon requested a provisional appropriation for army expansion. The Landtag agreed foolishly relying on Roon’s verbal assurances that the changes they objected to would not be implemented.
Predictably the government broke its word. In the course of the summer thirty-six Landwehr regiments were replaced by an equivalent number of line regiments. To add insult to injury, in January 1861 King William dedicated the flags over the tomb of Frederick the Great in the Potsdam Garrison Church. Outraged though liberals were by such provocative behaviour, they sought desperately to avoid confrontation. In June 1861 they approved a second provisional appropriation, though still insisting that the period of service remain at two years.
Many liberals outside the lower house of the Landtag were by now thoroughly disillusioned with the meagre achievements of the ‘New Era’ and strongly critical of the timid and conciliatory behaviour of the official opposition. Nothing had been done to break the power of the upper house which had effectively blocked liberal measures such as the bill to abolish patrimonial jurisdiction. Yet the government still expected the Landtag to accept unpopular military measures. Accordingly a number of break-away liberals founded the Progressive Party (Deutsche Fortschrittspartei) with more pronounced liberal views. At the elections in December 1861 the new party emerged as the largest in the new Landtag.
Unlike the Old Liberals who were deeply disturbed to find themselves at loggerheads with the government, the Progressives were determined to press more vigorously for reforms such as greater representation in the upper house and in local administration. While as opposed as the Old Liberals to any extension of the franchise, the Progressives were especially anxious to establish the principle of ministerial responsibility. In March 1862 they demanded itemization of the budget to prevent funds being diverted from other heads of account for military purposes, and reaffirmed their rejection of the three-year service period. An angry king retaliated at once. The Landtag was dissolved and those ministers of liberal persuasions still remaining in office were replaced by conservatives. The ‘New Era’ was manifestly over. The elections in May resulted in a dramatic defeat for the conservatives despite heavy government pressure on the electorate. The conservatives retained only eleven seats and the Old Liberals forty-seven, while the Progressives held 133. With the support of the left-centre opposition liberals they completely dominated the lower chamber. The election result threw the court camarilla into a panic. The military braced itself for revolutionary outbreaks while the king approved plans to reconquer Berlin in the event of an uprising; cannon would be placed at all crossroads and mortars on the castle roof.
The fear of ‘red revolution’ was utterly groundless. Having won a famous victory, the Progressives did not know what to do with it. They, too, favoured army expansion so that Prussia could play the role an increasing number of liberals expected of her in German affairs. And as the Progressives wanted only a fairly limited degree of political change within the existing constitution, they were unwilling to call on the unenfranchised masses to support a tax boycott. They had no wish to endanger their own privileged position in society by consorting with the masses. However, in fairness to German liberals it should be remembered that they believed genuinely in the power of ideas. True followers of Kant, they pinned their hopes on the emergence of an irresistible steamhead of moral pressure powerful enough to sweep away all opposition. Until that happened they were prepared to compromise and accept the reforms, provided that the government conceded a two-year service period. This was a not unreasonable demand; most generals thought it perfectly adequate for training purposes. Even the conservative cabinet including Roon recommended that the king settle for that. But William, influenced by the diehards Manteuffel and Alvensleben, refused to budge on what he had elevated into a matter of principle with a sudden burst of obstinacy characteristic of a fundamentally weak man. On 17 September he summoned the crown prince, thereby confirming rumours that he was prepared to abdicate rather than capitulate. As the royal attitude hardened, so did the Landtag’s opposition. On 23 September by 308 votes to 11 the Landtag deleted from the 1862 budget the funds already spent by the government on army reorganization. Trapped between a cabinet which refused to govern without a budget and a Landtag unwilling to give way, the king agreed to receive in audience Otto von Bismarck who had been alerted by his friend Roon to come to Berlin.
During the famous audience at Schloss Babelsberg, the king’s summer residence near Berlin, Bismarck suppressed his considerable doubts about the wisdom of William’s principled stand and promised to force reforms through in the teeth of the lower house’s opposition. He could not deny the constitutional right of the Landtag to approve the budget but advanced the ingenious (although not original) argument that when king, upper house and lower house failed to agree a budget, the old one remain in force. The king finally overcame his reservations about his able but eccentric servant and appointed him minister–president and foreign minister, posts he held for the next twenty-eight years.
BISMARCK: THE MAN AND THE PHILOSOPHY
Bismarck’s appointment did not signify any dramatic departure in Prussian foreign policy. It would have been surprising had that been the case. The broad thrust of a country’s external relations is determined in large measure by a combination of factors: past history and tradition, strategic necessity, geographical location and economic power. Within these parameters individuals or groups of individuals in the corridors of power make their decisions and choose the methods they consider appropriate to advance the national or imperial ‘interests’ of the state they serve – or more accurately the perception they have of what these ‘interests’ are. In other words, the freedom of manoeuvre of policy-makers is necessarily limited and conditioned by the broad determinants of policy, whatever their particular philosophy of life may be. Nevertheless, it is a real freedom. Prussia would in any event have played a significant role in German affairs in the third quarter of the nineteenth century by virtue of her power and position. How she chose to exercise that power was the crucial question: would she be content to work with Austria and the smaller states in the hope of defending her interests in a revitalized Confederation where she would enjoy at least parity of esteem with Austria? Or would she advance the interests of Prussia at the expense of the other states and impose her will, by force if necessary, on the rest of Germany? What distinguished Bismarck from his predecessors was not so much the broad objective – the aggrandisement of Prussia – as his methods; his whole-hearted commitment to Machtpolitik; the cynical realism with which he assessed men and situations; the ruthless energy and sheer animal power he displayed in the pursuit of his policies; the inclination to go va banque at moments of crisis combined with extraordinary tactical skill and the ability to see several moves ahead in the diplomatic game and keep his options open to the very end. Such were the qualities the new minister – president brought to his task.
Prussia in 1862 was already a well-established German power and a European Great Power. Her rise to pre-eminence against the odds is a remarkable story owing something to good fortune and a great deal to the energy, determination and lack of scruple of a number of her rulers. The broad outlines of the story are worth recalling to make this point clear. The core of the Prussian state, the Margravate of Brandenburg, lying between the Elbe and Oder rivers, was created in 1157 out of the old Nordmark founded in 928 by Henry the Fowler as a frontier post during the first wave of German colonization in Eastern Europe. In 1351 the growing importance of Brandenburg was recognized when its ruler became one of the seven electors of the imperial throne. After a troubled interlude the emperor gave the electorate to Frederick of Hohenzollern, burgrave of Nuremberg. For the next two centuries Brandenburg’s history was relatively uneventful. Lacking material resources and surrounded by powerful neighbours – Sweden and Poland – she struggled to survive.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century Brandenburg acquired through inheritance territories in the west and east which were to shape the future of the small electorate. In 1614 she acquired three small territories in West Germany: the counties of Mark and Ravensberg on the Weser, the duchy of Cleves on the Rhine and the principality of Ravenstein, giving Brandenburg an interest in the rich trade of the lower Rhine. In 1618 the duchy of East Prussia, founded by the Teutonic Knights in the thirteenth century and secularized during the Reformation, passed to the Hohenzollerns on the extinction of the male line. This gave Brandenburg a substantial foothold in Slav territory. Then, after suffering appalling devastation during the Thirty Years’ War, Brandenburg’s fortunes began to change under her new ruler, Elector Frederick William, who succeeded in 1640. For the next forty-eight years the Great Elector, a ruler of outstanding ability, worked to turn his weak and divided dominions against all the odds into a strong state, the master of Northern Europe. He established his control over all his possessions, made the most of Brandenburg’s limited resources and built up a standing army – the first in Germany – which was soon respected for its fighting qualities. At the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 Frederick William, benefiting from the decline of Poland and Sweden, acquired Eastern Pomerania, giving him a foothold on the Baltic, control of the mouth of the Oder and the port of Stettin.
This policy was continued, though not very effectively, by Frederick I – who acquired the royal title of king of Prussia in 1701 – and more effectively by Frederick William I. If Prussia acquired a reputation for being a huge barracks, this was due in large measure to the Soldier King who completed the centralization of the state and greatly expanded the army. With this superb fighting machine and with a well-filled treasury his son Frederick the Great attacked Silesia in 1740 and after fighting two costly wars retained the wealthy province. By the victory over Austria Frederick had more than doubled the population of his kingdom from 2,400,000 to 5,400,000, turned Prussia into a European Great Power and acquired for her a lasting reputation for cynical and ruthless diplomacy. Basically Frederick was more interested in eastward expansion than in the Rhineland; he would gladly have exchanged the Rhineland possessions for Saxony had that been on offer. What was on offer was the partition of Poland; Frederick joined forces with the rulers of Russia and Austria on three occasions, gained in all 2,500,000 new subjects and was able to round off the kingdom in the east, linking up East Prussia and Brandenburg.
The settlement of 1815 gave a decisive twist to the direction in which Prussian policy moved in the nineteenth century. Since 1740 the centre of gravity of the kingdom had moved steadily eastwards. The Polish – Saxon dispute altered that. During the Congress of Vienna, Prussia, Austria and Russia quarrelled. Tsar Alexander I resolved to create an ‘independent’ Polish kingdom under Russian control. To achieve this, he persuaded King Frederick William III to surrender his Polish territories and take compensation at the expense of Saxony, one of Napoleon’s staunchest allies. Greatly alarmed by the threat posed by these arrangements to the balance of power in the east, Britain, Austria and France threatened war unless the eastern monarchs gave way. In the end the tsar won; Congress Poland was created under Russian rule simply because no one wanted to try to force Russian armies out of Poland. As Prussia had regained only part of her former Polish possessions – West Prussia, Posen and Danzig – she had to be compensated elsewhere in accordance with the prevailing philosophy of the age. Accordingly she was given two-fifths of Saxony, Swedish Pomerania and the kingdom of Westphalia. It suited Britain and Austria to see Prussia established as the guardian of the Rhine with a corresponding obligation to resist France by force in the event of future aggression. This had the most profound strategic implications for Prussia. Consolidation of her territories in the east – hitherto a major objective of Prussian policy – soon took second place to a new objective: the extension of Prussian influence over the territories separating the Rhineland from Brandenburg-Prussia to give her uninterrupted control of a solid mass of territory stretching across North Germany.
It is true that up to 1848 cooperation with Austria within the framework of the German Confederation had established a balance of power in Europe sufficiently strong to deter France from challenging Prussia in the west. But after the Revolution of 1848–9 when Prussia and Austria confronted each other as enemies, and after the accession to power of Napoleon III had considerably increased German fears of French intentions, Prussia faced a new and far more serious strategic situation. She no longer attached any military significance to the Confederation but sought instead to create a strong power base in North and Central Germany from which to repel attacks from either France or Austria.
Her growing economic and military power in the 1860s gave a fresh impetus to Prussia’s expansionist policy. To be assured of complete security against France, Austria and Russia as well, Prussia sought to establish a broader power base south of the river Main so that she could control the entire geographical area bounded in the north by the Baltic and North seas, the Rhine in the west, the Alps and Bodensee in the south, the Bohemian Forest in the south-east and the river Vistula in the east.5 Bismarck recognized these as the ‘natural frontiers’ of Prussia. Writing to Foreign Minister Baron Alexander von Schleinitz in 1859 he offered the (unsolicited) advice that ‘… the present situation had put the winning card in our hands again provided that we allow Austria to become deeply involved in the war with France and then march southwards with our entire army carrying frontier posts in our big packs. We can plant them either on the Bodensee or as far south as Protestantism is the dominant faith.’6
It had long been obvious to the Prussian ruling élite that the main obstacle to the realization of these wider ambitions was Austria, a power unlikely to allow herself to be thrust unceremoniously out of Germany. Bismarck was well aware of this early in the 1850s. ‘Because of our geographical ramifications,’ he wrote to Leopold von Gerlach in 1853, ‘Prussia has no other parade ground than Germany. But it is precisely this area that Austria believes she has desperate need of. There is no room for both of us in view of the claims Austria is making and we cannot trust each other in the long run. We are taking the breath from each other’s mouth; either one of us gives way or the other is forced to give way.’7 That war would be the inevitable result of their rivalry he did not hesitate to admit frankly to Otto von Manteuffel in 1856. ‘German dualism,’ he wrote, ‘… has regularly adjusted relationships [between the two powers] in a radical fashion by warfare and there is no other means in this present century by which the clock of development can be made to show the correct time.’8
The Bismarck of 1862 was a very different man from the brash young Junker who first entered political life in 1847 as a substitute delegate to the Prussian United Diet. In that assembly he quickly established a reputation as an extreme conservative, a bitter and outspoken opponent of liberalism and a tenacious defender of the class interests of the Junkers. Looking back it is apparent that even in those early days his conservatism was punctuated with bursts of pragmatic Realpolitik. While inclined on the whole to agree with orthodox conservatives of the Gerlach school who believed that ‘red revolution’ could be held at bay only if all the conservative powers stood together, at times Bismarck spoke out like a Prussian particularist, a man deeply loyal to the Hohenzollerns who would always put Prussia first. More than once he expressed deep admiration for the singlemindedness of the Great Elector and Frederick the Great in advancing Prussian interests. Writing to Prince Heinrich Reuss in 1853 he declared that ‘Prussia has not become great through liberalism and freedom of the mind but through a series of strong, determined and wise rulers who carefully cultivated and husbanded the military and financial resources of the state. They held these in their autocratic hands to throw them with ruthless courage into the scales of European politics whenever a favourable opportunity arose.’9 Already in December 1850 in defending the Olmütz agreement he revealed how far he disagreed with orthodox conservatives. He praised the agreement not so much because it brought the conservative powers back from the brink of war but because the ‘liberal’ connotations of the Erfurt Union would have so reduced Prussian power that it was not worth fighting for. ‘Why do large states go to war nowadays?’ he asked with a rhetorical flourish. His whole philosophy was encapsulated in the answer: ‘The only sound basis for a large state is egoism and not romanticism; that is what distinguishes a large state necessarily from a small one. It is not worthy of a large state to fight for a thing which is not in its own interest.’10
The conflict between conservative romanticism and Realpolitik was finally resolved in favour of the latter in the course of the 1850s when he served as ambassador to the Federal Diet. He quickly made his mark as an outspoken opponent of Austrian policy, clashing frequently with Count Friedrich von Thun, the Austrian president of the Diet. True, Bismarck had little success in his attempts to weaken Austrian influence (with one exception in 1853), because Austria could always rely on the hostility of the smaller states to Prussia, a Johnny-come-lately to the ranks of the Great Powers whose history had been a story of expansion and disregard for established rights. Though Bismarck’s opposition to liberalism and his defence of Junker class interest never wavered, he soon jettisoned the doctrine of conservative solidarity. By 1853 he concluded that there was no mileage for Prussia in continuing the triangular relationship with Austria and Russia. What Prussia needed was an ally outside the Confederation to help her further her ambitions. The ally he had in mind was France, a proposition which shocked orthodox conservatives to the foundations. The upstart dictator Napoleon III was in their eyes the very embodiment of the Revolution, a standing threat to peace in Europe and therefore to social order at home. Brushing aside such objections, Bismarck commented coolly that ‘one cannot play chess if from the outset sixteen of the sixty-four squares are out of bounds’.11
His unideological approach to international affairs was in tune with the spirit of mid-nineteenth-century Realpolitik. Certainly there was a touch of the autocratic style of the eighteenth-century ruler in his dismissive comment that his diplomacy was not dependent upon the actions of parliamentary bodies or press barons but was concerned ‘… only with the politics of Great Powers carried on by force of arms’.12 But he was very much of his century in his acute awareness of the political potential of the economic and social changes occurring in Germany. Already in December 1862 he was assuring King William that the Customs Union was ‘the most effectual basis for the common handling of the economic and eventually of the political interests of the German states’.13 Not, of course, that he was alone in this; Austrian leaders were equally conscious of their significance. Most Prussian conservatives, on the other hand, looked askance at the process of modernization, lamenting the growth of huge urban aggregations of population – ‘hotbeds of revolutionary activity’ – and the decline of rural society, the repository of ‘sound’ moral values and the only foundation of a ‘healthy’ society. Bismarck sympathized with that attitude in 1848. But by the end of the 1850s he had realized that National Liberalism might be manipulated in the interests of Prussia. He began to contrast the ‘false position’ of the Federal Diet – where ‘non-German’ states (i.e. Austria) were determining German policy – with ‘true’ German patriotism which, so he claimed, coincided with Prussian interests. That is what he meant as early as 1858 when he wrote that ‘there is nothing more German than the particularist interests of Prussia rightly interpreted’.14 Already in 1859 when the liberals were discussing the formation of the National Society, Bismarck, bumping into one of their leaders, Hans Viktor von Unruh, in the hotel lobby, staggered him with the comment that the ‘German people’ were the only possible ally for Prussia. In fact Bismarck, who went far beyond the bounds of propriety in badgering the New Era government he was supposed to be serving, failed to persuade it to maintain contacts with the Society founded that summer.
Another indication of Bismarck’s understanding of the changing nature of politics was his interest in the press, which he attempted to manipulate in Prussian interests. An inveterate newspaper reader, already in 1848 when still an orthodox conservative he persuaded colleagues to found the Neue Preussische Zeitung to propagate their views. His sojourn in Frankfurt convinced him that efforts must be made to counter the Austrian press. In fact, the Prussian government was well aware of the use to which public opinion could be put. Since 1841 a press section had existed in the Foreign Office. Called the ‘Literary Büro’ after 1860, it subsidized newspapers and journalists. Bismarck made extensive use of this apparatus. At his instigation the Neue Allgemeine Zeitung was founded in 1863 to replace existing government organs. He intervened personally in editing the new journal, correcting leading articles, feeding in material via the Foreign Office and attempting to influence the foreign press through his contact men. But the effect was largely wasted, simply because of his draconian measures against the free press in Prussia.
What shocked dyed-in-the-wool conservatives to the foundations was Bismarck’s advocacy of representative institutions, an idea he began to toy with in the late 1850s. In 1861 in the celebrated Baden-Baden memorandum he bluntly informed his monarch that a national parliament was ‘the only unifying force which can supply an adequate counterweight to the tendency of the dynasties to adopt separate and divergent policies’.15 In other words, such institutions would act as a focal point, rallying public opinion around the Hohenzollern monarchy. If Austrian opposition at Frankfurt proved insurmountable, Prussia might consider creating a Customs Union Parliament with extended powers – for he was very well aware of the coercive power which Prussian control of the Union gave her. At this stage Bismarck was thinking in terms of an assembly of members from state legislatures. Later he proposed an assembly directly elected by universal male suffrage, having with his customary perception appreciated the truth of Pierre Proudhon’s famous dictum that universal suffrage is counter-revolution. There was no need to fear manhood suffrage. On the contrary: as long as elections were conducted on the basis of open ballots, landowners would be able to exert a decisive influence on rural voters and guarantee the return of a conservative body as a prop for monarchy.
The net result of Bismarck’s unorthodox thinking was to ensure that on the eve of his appointment he was thoroughly mistrusted by conservatives and liberals alike and excoriated as an irresponsible adventurer, a man without principle whose sole object in life was the aggrandisement of Prussia by any means, fair or foul, that came to hand.
AUSTRIAN POLICY
The Landtag’s action in deleting military expenditure from the budget transformed the army issue into a constitutional crisis, raising in an acute form the question whether king or Landtag should control military expenditure. This turn of events was highly unwelcome to the new minister–president, whose major interest was in foreign affairs. Precisely because he believed that national liberalism could be harnessed to the chariot wheels of the Prussian war machine, he made a determined effort to de-escalate the crisis. He withdrew the 1863 budget and promised to introduce a new bill on military service. To the leaders of the Old Liberals he held out the prospect of cabinet posts and indicated a willingness to accept a two-year service period – with which Roon also agreed. But the king adamantly refused to compromise. Speaking to the budget committee at the end of September Bismarck made one more attempt to win over the liberals by restating his political strategy in the clearest possible terms: ‘Prussia,’ he said, ‘must build up and preserve her strength for the favourable moment which has already come and gone many times. Her borders under the treaties of Vienna are not favourable for the healthy existence of the state. The great questions of the day will not be settled by speeches and majority decisions – that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849 – but by blood and iron.’16 Significantly enough, some Progressives were already in agreement with much of what he said.17 But for others his speech was further proof that the leopard had not changed his spots. Heinrich von Treitschke, later one of Bismarck’s greatest admirers, thought that ‘its vulgarity was surpassed only by its absurdity’.18 That was still the view of most liberals outside Prussia when the Schleswig-Holstein Question erupted once more on the German scene at the end of 1863.
Without the cooperation of Austria in the winter of 1863–4 Prussia would have been hard pressed to wrest Schleswig-Holstein from Danish hands. This is, therefore, an appropriate point at which to look briefly at the policy objectives of the second great German power: Austria.
It is unnecessary to recount the story of the rise of the house of Habsburg, a dynasty which had by extraordinarily fortunate marriage alliances built up a huge polyglot empire in Central Europe. By virtue of this vast accumulation of territory and of the title of Holy Roman Emperor – held by the Habsburgs continuously (with one exception) since the fifteenth century19 – Austria had been the dominant power in Germany, the champion of Catholicism and defender of South-Eastern Europe against the Turk. Despite the loss of the imperial title in 1806 and twofold defeat by the French, after Napoleon’s fall Austria remained a prestigious power equalled on the continent only by tsarist Russia. Thanks to the skilful diplomacy of Metternich, who controlled her foreign policy from 1809 to 1848, Austria regained her former possessions in Italy and Dalmatia. And her representative presided over the Federal Diet, a position which gave Austria more effective power in Germany than any Holy Roman Emperor had ever possessed.
Austria in the nineteenth century was a classic example of what has been recently described as ‘imperial overstretch’. Her economic and social development lagged well behind her considerable military achievements. Significant reforms of the administrative structure, educational system and army in the late eighteenth century under Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Joseph II put Austria ahead of other states for a brief period. But the French Revolution did not have as great an impact on her as it did on Prussia and some other German states. After a second defeat in 1809 – when for the first time a fleeting attempt was made to rally national feeling against the French – Austria stagnated. Emperor Francis I was a deeply conservative ruler, pathologically afraid of liberalism, who, after Kotzebue’s murder, tightened up the repressive police machinery in Austria. Although Metternich was the dominant figure in European diplomacy for forty years, he was virtually powerless to influence domestic policy. That was in the hands of Count Franz von Kolowrat-Liebsteinsky, who faithfully carried out the emperor’s wishes. However, Metternich’s remark that he had often governed Europe but never Austria did not mean that he was a liberal manqué. On the contrary, he constantly assured the emperor that reform was unnecessary.
Economically Austria lagged behind Prussia in the nineteenth century, despite some advances. Most of all, Austrian finances, in a parlous state in the eighteenth century, deteriorated steadily through constant involvement in war. Austria fell into the bad habit of spending more than she collected in revenue and bridging the gap with paper money. When attempts were made to bring expenditure into line with revenue, as in 1811, the partial recovery was soon reversed by some fresh crisis requiring a display of Austrian military strength.
The simple truth is that whereas the realization by Prussia of her ambitions depended on the disruption of the status quo, Austria’s very survival depended upon the maintenance of the existing order of things. The burden of trying to be strong enough to act as a barrier to the French in Northern Italy, a foil to Russia in Eastern Europe and a counterpoise to Prussian ambitions in Germany was too much for her underdeveloped economy to bear. Secondly, the multinational structure of her empire rendered her peculiarly vulnerable to the nationalist ideology. Once the genie was released from the bottle, the empire was doomed in the long run. All that Austrian statesmen could hope to do was retard the development of these forces in Germany and Italy by a negative policy of repression. This policy could succeed – as it did under Metternich – only provided that the other Great Powers agreed that the suppression of liberalism and nationalism was more important than the relentless pursuit of their own ambitions.
When this ceased to be the case, as it did following the disruption of the international status quo after the Crimean War, Austria’s position became untenable. Russia, deeply resentful of Austria’s equivocal, not to say anti-Russian, policy, could no longer be relied upon to come automatically to Austria’s aid in the event of complications in Germany or Italy. The conservative coalition on which Austria had relied in the past was now fatally flawed. Secondly, after 1851 France was ruled by a man whose ambitions could be realized only by the disruption of the status quo. War was now a much more likely eventuality. When it broke out in Italy in 1859 it was soon apparent that Austria could no longer underwrite her imperial commitments. She suffered defeats at the hands of the French and Piedmontese and lost Lombardy, while at home her finances deteriorated almost to the point of state bankruptcy. The neo-despotic system which had held the empire together after 1849 was weakened and constitutional reform forced upon Emperor Francis Joseph. Thirdly, Austria faced a new challenge to her authority in Central Europe from Prussia. Rivalry with Prussia was of long standing, but in the past Prussian rulers had been anxious to avoid war. In the age of Realpolitik with Bismarck in charge of Prussia’s external affairs, Austria could no longer rely upon a peaceful outcome of disagreements. To have avoided disaster in this situation would have called for diplomatic skill of a very high order and the adoption of bold alternative policies which the men of average ability who ran Austrian affairs proved incapable of adopting.
DANISH POLICY
Finally, we must look briefly at the policies pursued by Denmark which led to the crisis of 1863–4.
In the mid nineteenth century Denmark was still a significant Baltic power though her great days were long past. For most of her existence as an independent kingdom, Danish history has been surprisingly turbulent. Throughout the medieval period she was the strongest and most aggressive of the three Scandinavian kingdoms. Her influence reached its zenith in 1397 with the union of Kalmar when Norway and Sweden accepted Erik of Pomerania as heir to the three thrones. This dynastic arrangement brought under one crown not only Denmark, Norway and Sweden but also the old Norse lands of Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. This union lasted little more than a century.
In the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Denmark’s relative position in Northern Europe steadily declined, although she went to war repeatedly in a desperate effort to resist the inevitable. Sweden broke away from Danish tutelage and began her spectacular rise to supremacy in the Baltic. But by the time of the peace settlement of 1720 which ended the Great Northern War, the balance of power in the Baltic had changed yet again. Sweden now ceased to be a major Baltic power, being forced to surrender territory to Prussia and Hanover. Russia, with the acquisition of Livonia, Ingria and South-west Karelia, rose to a position of pre-eminence in the Eastern Baltic. Denmark was forced to abandon all (nominal) claims to Swedish territory, thus bringing to an end two hundred years of bloody struggle between the two Scandinavian kingdoms.
For the rest of the eighteenth century Denmark enjoyed an unaccustomed period of peace. Those who conducted her foreign policy pursued two main objectives: first, the recovery by peaceful means of the Holstein-Gottorp parts of Schleswig which Denmark had been obliged to surrender in the seventeenth century; and secondly, the avoidance of entanglements in the conflicts between the Great Powers. In the first objective Denmark was completely successful, as indicated earlier. The Gottorp parts of Schleswig were incorporated in the Danish kingdom in 1721 while the Holstein portions were recovered by arrangement with Russia in 1773.
Denmark was successful for many years in her second objective. Through skilful diplomacy, as at the time of the Seven Years’ War, she avoided being drawn into hostilities. However, her commercial prosperity was her undoing in the end. During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars the demand of the belligerents for corn and nautical supplies greatly increased. Copenhagen became a port of world rank and Danish–Norwegian shipping had a virtual monopoly of the carrying trade in the Mediterranean and with the Far East. Inevitably this led to friction with Britain, who insisted on her ‘right’ to search all neutral vessels. Already during the American War of Independence, Denmark had banded together with Russia and Sweden in the First Armed Neutrality in 1780 to protect her shipping. But once Britain was at war with France Denmark’s situation became precarious. Clashes between British men-of-war and Danish convoy vessels led to the formation of the Second Armed Neutrality in 1800; whereupon a British squadron promptly attacked the Danish fleet anchored off Copenhagen in April 1801 and forced Denmark to recognize the British right of search. Just as Napoleonic oppression produced the first sparks of popular national feeling in Germany, the battle of Copenhagen was accompanied by the first stirrings of Danish national feeling. Subsequent Danish attempts to remain neutral foundered when the British government learned that France and Russia had secretly agreed to force Denmark and Sweden to close their ports to English shipping. When the Danish Crown Prince Frederik refused to comply with a British demand for the surrender of the fleet (to be returned after the war), a British squadron bombarded Copenhagen from 2 to 5 September 1807. The Danes were forced to capitulate and surrender their fleet. Under French pressure Denmark allied with Napoleon and declared war on Britain.
The war ended disastrously for Denmark. Her foreign trade suffered heavy blows over the next seven years; she lost half her merchant fleet, the British blockade restricted her flourishing export trade, and Denmark experienced price rises, currency depreciation and eventually state bankruptcy in 1813. In that year King Frederik VI tried to change sides but was unwilling to pay the price demanded – the surrender of Norway. Finally in January 1814 Denmark was forced to make peace with her enemies. This had the most profound effects on Denmark. The four-hundred-year-old connection with Norway was terminated when that country was united with Sweden. But, as Denmark had unreservedly joined the coalition against Napoleon during the Hundred Days, she was allowed to keep the old Norse settlements – Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands – together with the forts on the Guinea coast and the Danish West Indian islands. And in return for the loss of Norway she was given Swedish Pomerania which was then transferred by previous arrangement to Prussia, who then ceded to Denmark the small duchy of Lauenburg together with a payment of three million rix dollars.
The settlement of 1815 marked a watershed in Danish history. For the next century she eschewed all alliances and pursued a policy of complete neutrality which ended only in 1949 when in a vastly changed Europe she became a founder member of NATO. Economically Denmark recovered in the late 1820s from the effects of the war. As the population explosion in Europe stimulated a demand for food, especially in the industrializing countries, Denmark found a new role for the next fifty years as the exporter of corn, cattle and dairy produce, especially to Britain after the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. Politically the first half of the century was a period of advance for Denmark. The virile liberal movement which grew up in the 1830s combined with the peasant movement (bondevennerne) to overthrow absolutism during the 1848 Revolution and established constitutional government in Denmark with the passage of the Basic Law (Junigrundlov) in June 1849.
The growth of liberalism was accompanied by the growth of Danish nationalism referred to earlier in this chapter. Whereas the definition of the proper frontiers for a German national state posed immense political problems which plagued the Germans for the next two centuries, Danish nationalists were quickly agreed about their objective: the creation of a nation state including the whole of Schleswig but excluding German Holstein. Danish nationalism, like the German variety, was a compound of various ingredients: language, historical tradition and strategic necessity. Thus, the Danish National Liberals claimed the river Eider separating Schleswig from Holstein as Denmark’s natural frontier on the grounds that it had historical significance. It also guaranteed the Danes a defensible frontier in the Dannevirke fortifications. These factors outweighed the undeni–able fact that South Schleswig was solidly German-speaking. Similarly, the German nationalists claimed the river Kongeaa (Königsau), separating Schleswig from Sonderjylland, as a historic frontier despite the presence of a Danish-speaking population in North Schleswig.
Eiderdanism gained ground in Denmark basically for three reasons, not necessarily in this order of importance: growing anxiety about the Holstein connection; the conviction that if it came to war with Germany Denmark would be supported by fellow Scandinavians; and the failure of attempts to work out the details of a common constitution for the Helstat.
In 1840 and again in 1859 when the prospect of war between France and the German Confederation loomed on the horizon, the king of Denmark was obliged in his capacity as duke of Holstein to provide a levy for the federal army. In the event of war Holstein soldiers led by Danish officers would be fighting an external foe – in all probability France, the friend of Denmark – while Schleswig and Denmark remained neutral. This intolerable situation was very likely to end up with the whole of the Helstat being dragged into war – or so it was feared in Copenhagen. The implications of the Holstein connection were revealed only too clearly between 1848 and 1852 when Denmark had been at war with Germany. To Eiderdanes it made good sense to be rid of this dangerous foreign complication as soon as possible so that they could create a homogeneous national state down to the Eider.
Secondly, the Scandinavian movement encouraged Danish nationalists to feel that they were part of a wider unity. Scandinavianism originated as a literary movement in the 1830s arousing interest in the cultural and linguistic homogeneity of the northern kingdoms. In the 1840s it assumed a political form with the foundation of the Scandinavian Society (Scandinavsk Selskab) in 1843, widely supported by academics, students and liberals in the towns. It was pledged to work for the political and military union of the three kingdoms in a modern populist version of the Kalmar Union. At popular festivals held in Copenhagen and Uppsala speakers enthused about the common Scandinavian fatherland which, it was claimed, had a special mission to uphold freedom in the modern world. Seen in this broader context, defence of the Danish-speaking people of Schleswig was not a narrowly Danish concern but part of the defence of the Scandinavian way of life. And during the First Slesvig War hundreds of volunteers from Sweden–Norway fought alongside Danish soldiers while the Swedish Riksdag voted two million dalers for additional armaments. Scandinavianism revived in the mid 1850s. There was a flurry of activity among students in Scandinavian universities, while the crowned heads King Oscar of Sweden, King Frederik of Denmark and Prince Carl Viceroy of Norway all evinced interest in a closer association between their realms. Above all the accession of Prince Carl, an enthusiastic Scandinavian, to the Swedish throne as Carl XV in 1859 encouraged Eiderdanes to feel that material help would be forthcoming if it came to war.
Thirdly, the failure of the attempts to agree a common constitution, described earlier in this chapter, together with the favourable international situation convinced leading National Liberals at the beginning of the 1860s that the time had come to take the initiative. Significantly Hall, Ditlev Monrad, minister for cultural affairs, and Orla Lehmann, minister of the interior, kept Swedish Foreign Minister Count Ludwig Manderström fully informed of their plans. In January 1863 they discussed the establishment of a Scandinavian union with the Swedish ambassador Count Henning Hamilton. The unification of Italy in 1860–1 greatly encouraged them to believe a dynastic union could be achieved in the near future under King Carl as ruler of the three kingdoms. In February Manderström warmly approved the decision to separate Holstein from Schleswig as a first step towards a Northern Union, though being a cautious and experienced diplomat he suggested that Hall inform the Great Powers in advance, advice which the president of the council ignored. In July when the Federal Diet demanded the withdrawal of the March Patent, Hall, well aware that a refusal would probably lead to conflict, proposed a formal alliance with Sweden. Later in July when King Carl met King Frederik at Skodsborg palace the former advised Hall to reject the Diet’s demand and assured him that if Germany tried to enforce federal execution, Sweden would send 20,000 troops to defend Schleswig. Negotiations for a formal alliance were conducted through Hamilton in August. But when the Swedish ministers discussed the draft treaty early in September 1863 only King Carl, Minister–President Louis de Geer, Manderström and Hamilton were whole-heartedly in support. Their more cautious colleagues decided to delay matters until British and French reactions were known. While King Carl continued to persuade himself that the alliance was a certainty, his ministerial critics realized that, as neither Britain nor France was likely to underwrite Danish resistance, the project was a dead letter. Unfortunately the equivocal attitude of the Swedish cabinet was never made fully clear to Denmark. Nor did Denmark’s political leaders seek to clarify it, hoping that the impression conveyed by continued negotiations would be sufficient to deter the Germans. On 28 September 1863 Hall introduced a revised Denmark–Schleswig constitution in the Rigsraad. Throughout October Manderström continued to encourage Danish resistance with optimistic reports of imminent assistance. As late as 16 November he assured the Danish ambassador in Stockholm that King Frederik’s death would not alter Sweden’s attitude to an alliance. Only on 2 December after ostentatious demonstrations of support for the duke of Augustenburg in Germany did Manderström in effect shelve the negotiations. He now argued that as the Germans were threatening to separate the duchies from Denmark, the signatories of the London Treaty would surely intervene rendering a Swedish alliance superfluous for the time being. Even on 14 December the impulsive Swedish monarch informed a Danish visitor that he would defend Schleswig, alliance or no alliance. Danish National Liberals can hardly be blamed for suppressing their growing doubts and persuading themselves that Sweden would stand by them if the crisis led to war.
At the same time that Denmark was deluding herself about Swedish assistance she was also underestimating the threat presented by Bismarck. Up to mid November it was confidently assumed in Copenhagen that the reactionary Junker, enemy of German nationalism, was well disposed towards Denmark. He had, after all, assured the Danish and British ambassadors in Berlin that Schleswig was not the concern of the Diet. Furthermore, if the Rigsraad approved the common constitution currently before it, then provided that Denmark withdrew the March Patent and offered to negotiate with the Diet about Holstein, Prussia would no longer support federal execution. Only when the November constitution was on the point of ratification did Bismarck suddenly abandon the pretence and warn Denmark that the constitution violated the promises of 1851–2 and rendered a peaceful outcome unlikely.
THE 1863 CRISIS
The Schleswig-Holstein Question rescued the Prussian liberals (or so they thought) from a hopeless situation – hopeless because once Bismarck started to raise taxes without the Landtag’s consent their bluff was called. Not only were they faction-ridden and found it difficult to remain united for long, but they were utterly opposed to a tax boycott, a sanction likely to embarrass the government seriously and perhaps even force it to surrender. The re-emergence of interest in the Elbe duchies, however, infused them with new hope. Would not the pressure of national sentiment force Prussia willy-nilly to take the initiative in bringing about national unification, which in its turn must lead to significant political change, sweeping away in the process blind reactionaries like Bismarck? As a friend wrote to the prominent liberal Rudolf von Bennigsen: ‘Upon the outcome [of the Schleswig-Holstein affair] depends not only the rescue of the duchies for Germany and her entire position abroad but also the course of our inner development for many years to come.’20
The liberal conviction that national unity and political liberalism were interdependent was not one which commended itself to Bismarck. He never wavered in his belief that the victory of liberalism would sound the death-knell of the monarchical order which he was pledged to preserve, and must, therefore, be opposed to the bitter end. As he remarked to Count Robert von der Goltz, the Prussian ambassador to Paris who was displaying alarming signs of wishing to swim with the liberal tide:
If we now turn our backs on the Great Powers in order to throw ourselves into the arms of the small states whose policy is dictated by the democrats in the National Society, that would be the most miserable situation into which we could bring the monarchy both at home and abroad. We would be pushed instead of pushing; we would be relying on elements we could not control and which are in essence hostile to us but to which we should have to surrender unconditionally. You believe that there is something in ‘German public opinion’, legislative assemblies, newspapers, etc. which could be of use to us for the purpose of union or hegemony politics. I consider that to be a fundamental error and a complete fantasy. Our growth in power cannot issue forth from legislative chambers or from the press but from Great Power politics carried on by force of arms; we do not have the strength to waste it by taking up false positions or for the sake of mere phrases or for the Augustenburgs.
But he went on to reassure Goltz that he was not ‘in any way frightened of war … you will be convinced perhaps very soon that war is also part of my programme’.21
As early as 1856 Bismarck had made no secret of his conviction that the interests of Prussia and nothing else must be the sole determinant of government policy towards the duchies. Unless Prussia could extract tangible benefits out of the Danish–German dispute she must leave well alone. The entry of an independent Schleswig-Holstein into the German Confederation could not conceivably benefit Prussia. Hemmed in by Prussian territory, the new duchy would be exposed to outside pressures, especially those of Austria, and become a centre of intrigue for Vienna on Prussia’s doorstep. Although the preservation of the status quo did not greatly interest him either – for clearly only if the Helstat disintegrated would Prussia have room for manoeuvre – that would be preferable to the creation of a truly independent Schleswig-Holstein ruled by the duke of Augustenburg.22
It is often suggested that the annexation of the duchies must have been his objective throughout the crisis of 1863–4 in order to round off Prussian territory in North Germany. While the strategic importance of Schleswig-Holstein for Prussia certainly did not escape Bismarck, it is doubtful whether annexation was his primary objective. Only in February 1864 did he finally opt for that solution.23 It has been suggested that a primary consideration was the use he could make of the crisis to benefit Prussia in the struggle with Austria.24 The Germans could not call themselves masters in their own house as long as the Great Power signatories of the Vienna settlement – of which the German Confederation was part – could still claim a certain moral responsibility for the future of Germany. That might well preclude Prussian expansion by force of arms. Therefore an overriding priority for Prussia was to try to persuade the Great Powers to disengage themselves from German affairs. If Bismarck could shunt them on to a side track, the main line would be clear for Prussia to force Austria out of Germany. ‘Seeing things from the Schleswig-Holstein angle,’ as he remarked to Goltz, ‘must never cloud for us the European angle.’25
It seems much more likely that a supreme pragmatist like Bismarck was unclear at first what use he could make of the Schleswig-Holstein affair. Certainly he was not daunted by international crises. Long ago he had commented that ‘great crises represent the weather which is conducive to Prussia’s growth when we use them without fear and perhaps very ruthlessly …’.26 But just how to steer the ship of state through squally weather depended on circumstances. All he could do was block solutions of the Schleswig-Holstein Question inimical to Prussian interests. Two immediate problems faced him. First, contemptuous though he was of the Diet, it had become the focal point of a mounting national liberal campaign to detach the duchies from Denmark. If that campaign succeeded it would give an immense fillip to expectations of political change throughout Germany. To combat this threat and ensure that the balance of power remained tilted firmly in favour of conservatism called for careful manoeuvring at Frankfurt. Secondly, Prussia had to prevent Austria exploiting the situation in her own interests.
His success in making sure that Austria was on Prussia’s side is often regarded as one of Bismarck’s great diplomatic achievements. In reality agreement with Austria was not difficult to obtain. Basically Austria faced the same problem as Prussia. Now that public opinion was beginning to count for something, she dare not seem to be lacking in enthusiasm for the national cause. On the other hand, she was frightened that if public opinion swept the Diet into precipitate action, serious international complications would arise which would draw in Austria. War cost too much and might endanger the stability of the monarchy, especially a war fought in defence of the nationality principle. And, like his predecessors, the emperor’s chief minister, Count Johann von Rechberg, believed in dualism. With Napoleon on the prowl, feeling confident enough to declare in November 1863 that the treaties of 1815 were ‘null and void’, solidarity with Prussia was mandatory. As the Austrian council of ministers saw it, if the National Liberals swung Bismarck on to a democratic course over the duchies, the conservative order of things would be endangered and France would be the main beneficiary. Austria without Prussian or Russian support feared that she would be at the mercy of Napoleon – and it cannot be emphasized too strongly that the French emperor, not the Prussian minister–president, was regarded as the bogey-man of Europe in 1863.
Bismarck quickly reassured Rechberg that Prussia would uphold the London Treaty and would not be swept into support for the duke of Augustenburg as she had been in 1848. Nevertheless, maintenance of the status quo at all costs was certainly not Bismarck’s objective. The means of disrupting it lay in the promises Denmark made in 1851–2 to the two major German powers to respect the position of the duchies. In order to keep Austria in play, Bismarck assured Rechberg that Prussia would adhere to the London Treaty. But, in order to have at his disposal a pretext for intervening in the duchies, he made this commitment conditional upon Denmark keeping her promises to Austria and Prussia. In other words, if Denmark refused to withdraw the November constitution – which conflicted with the promises of 1851–2 – Austria and Prussia would no longer feel bound to uphold the London Treaty.27 This conditional relationship between two separate but related agreements enabled Bismarck to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds. Up to a point he could mollify the Diet by arguing that the two German powers sympathized with the nationalist cause and were certainly not unreservedly on Denmark’s side, while simultaneously they were able to reassure conservative opinion in Germany and abroad by their refusal to commit themselves to the cause of the duke of Augustenburg. Behind this adroit balancing act lay the gnawing fear which Bismarck shared with many conservatives that unless Austria and Prussia could control the volatile situation the nationalist agitation would unleash the forces of revolution in Germany.28 No doubt Bismarck did play up this anxiety in his dealings with Britain and Russia, but that does not mean he was not genuinely concerned about the domestic implications of the crisis.
In Frankfurt Austria and Prussia were already hard at work applying the brake to the nationalist movement. When Robert von Mohl, the Baden representative, attempted on 21 November to proclaim Duke Friedrich lawful ruler of the duchies and protested at the continued presence of the Danish plenipotentiary, Austria and Prussia succeeded in getting the motion referred to committee. On 28 November Baden returned to the fray to demand on behalf of the committee the suspension of the vote of Holstein-Lauenburg until the succession question had been resolved. Austria and Prussia immediately objected that the Danish plenipotentiary was fully entitled to exercise his rights in respect of Lauenburg where the succession was not in dispute. In the case of Holstein suspension was justified, not because of the succession question but simply and solely because Denmark had failed to implement the 1851–2 promises. Brushing these objections aside, the Diet carried the Baden motion.
The situation deteriorated still further when, on the same day, some middle states attempted to change the conditions upon which federal execution was to be carried out. Bavaria, supported by Baden, Württemberg and Nassau, argued that after King Frederik’s death the succession question had entered a new phase. Federal execution (i.e. the occupation of Holstein-Lauenburg by federal troops) should no longer be based on the October resolution but should take account of the 28 November resolution – this represented a step away from the status quo for, as well as suspending the vote of Holstein-Lauenburg, it had declared that the Confederation must defend its rights in the light of ‘changed circumstances’. The question now to be answered was whether King Christian IX had any claim to Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg. Only when that issue had been resolved – so the middle states argued – would it be clear whose ‘rights’ the Confederation was supposed to defend and what steps it must then take to enforce these rights. Anxious to keep the initiative in their own hands, Austria and Prussia moved a counter-motion that federal execution be implemented at once but on the terms laid down by the October resolution, i.e. against King Christian as duke of Holstein. With reference to the succession question, they restricted themselves to a bare acknowledgement of the undoubted rights of the Confederation under federal law.29 In the end the Austro-Prussian motion was carried by eight votes to seven, but only because the two major German powers made it clear that they would not give military support to any other motion and would themselves occupy Holstein if need be to stop the Diet.
The Augustenburg movement was now reaching mammoth proportions in Germany. On 18 November the executive of the National Society pledged full support to him. As the rival Reform Society was fully at one on this issue, both combined to launch an appeal to all German Landtage to dispatch colleagues to Frankfurt for an extraordinary meeting on 21 December. Five hundred attended and expressed whole-hearted support for Duke Friedrich. A permanent committee of thirty-six was appointed to organize popular meetings to express the widespread support enjoyed by the Schleswig-Holsteiner. On 30 December ‘Duke’ Friedrich arrived in Kiel and set up his court, an illegal act from which the federal commissioners averted their gaze.
Meanwhile important developments were taking place in Copenhagen. King Christian signed the November constitution with extreme reluctance and only because he believed that to have been his predecessor’s wish. As the crisis deepened, he grew increasingly alarmed at the prospect of what he believed would be a disastrous war. On 20 December the British, French and Russian ambassadors in presenting their credentials to the new monarch told Hall bluntly that their countries would not help Denmark in the event of war. They advised him to withdraw the constitution and negotiate his way out of a cul-de-sac. Hall rejected this advice out of hand. This because on 16 December the council of ministers had finally decided not to yield an inch to foreign powers. Withdrawal of the constitution would not, in their view, impress the Germans but would certainly lead to a domestic crisis, so strongly was public opinion committed to Eiderdanism. Nor would such a gesture guarantee immunity from fresh demands – they had withdrawn the March Patent on 5 December but it had not mollified the Germans. Deep down they still hoped that, whatever the Great Powers might say, when the crunch came they would not allow Germany to impose her will on Denmark.
Psychologically they had come to the end of the road. Tired of endless and fruitless negotiation and uncertain about Denmark’s future, they decided to go va banque. One of the ministers wrote later of ‘… a courage born of desperation that sometimes conquers but more often succumbs. Such courage inspired the ministry.’30 On receiving the advice of his ministers that a peaceful outcome was now unlikely, an alarmed king asked Hall to hold the Rigsraad in session to discuss withdrawal of the constitution. Hall and his colleagues refused and dissolved that body on 21 December. On 23 December, after further consultation with the British ambassador, John Wodehouse, the king returned to the attack, demanding the recall of the Rigsraad to discuss the issue. The ministers decided on 23 December – the day before Saxon and Hanoverian troops advanced into Holstein and Lauenburg – to resign en bloc rather than agree to this demand. Their calculation was that the king, after a fruitless round of conversations with various politicians, would be obliged to turn to them again. Then he would have to choose between acceptance of Eiderdanism and abdication. They were correct in supposing he would not find a conservative politician willing to form a ministry. Then suddenly Monrad broke ranks and offered his services to the king, which enabled Christian to form a new ministry on 31 December. Whether Monrad volunteered because he felt the king’s abdication would seriously weaken Denmark’s position or because he was offended by Hall’s insistence on collective cabinet responsibility which excluded the dismissal of Lehmann to mollify the Germans, or simply because he wanted to be at the head of affairs, is an open question. A complex character who seems to have had no very clear political objectives, Monrad headed a cabinet of professional administrators who were unknown to the general public. Consequently he was much more dependent on the king who still strove desperately to avoid war. It will be seen presently that, as Monrad lived in hopes of finding a way out of the toughest corners, he was much more responsive to foreign pressure for a de-escalation of the crisis than Hall had been.31 But by now it was too late for Denmark to avoid catastrophe.
Mounting pressure in Germany for immediate action, especially the demands being made by some states for the occupation of Schleswig and the recognition of Duke Friedrich, forced Bismarck’s hand. On 28 December, in an attempt to take the wind out of the nationalists’ sails, Austria and Prussia moved that the Confederation now occupy Schleswig for the express purpose of compelling Denmark to withdraw the common constitution. This motion clearly implied that King Christian was still duke of Schleswig-Holstein. On the same day Hesse-Darmstadt moved a counter-motion also calling for the occupation of Schleswig by federal forces but adding the significant phrase: ‘until the current pending issues [i.e. the succession question as well as the constitutional issue] are resolved’. Both motions were referred to the appropriate committee for deliberation. However, under pressure from Prussia and Austria, who insisted that action was an urgent necessity, the Diet agreed to take the vote before the committee – which was also examining the succession question – had made its recommendations. On 14 January 1864 the Austro-Prussian motion was defeated by eleven votes to five.
The two major German powers had now reached the parting of the ways. On 16 January they issued a joint statement in which they declared that they still hoped the Diet would have second thoughts and support their motion so that they could all work together. However, if the Diet still rejected the motion or passed a resolution on the succession question – which was outside the competence of the Confederation so far as Schleswig was concerned – then Austria and Prussia would act independently ‘to make effective the rights of Germany’ by demanding the withdrawal of the constitution within forty-eight hours and the submission of proposals by the Danes indicating how they intended to implement the promises of 1851–2. If Denmark rejected this ultimatum, they would occupy Schleswig. To emphasize their continued commitment to the conservative cause, they added that once in occupation they would not permit demonstrations in support of Duke Friedrich.
The Austrians suspected that they might be about to embark on a ride on a tiger. Fearing that Bismarck was planning to seize the duchies, they tried their best to commit Prussia to the proposition that they would depart from the succession laid down in the London Treaty only by mutual agreement. Bismarck avoided the attempt to pin him down, assuring the Austrians that he personally would be only too willing to oblige them but that, regrettably, his partner Mr Jaggers – the Prussian monarch – would not agree, being frankly more inclined to tear up the treaty. As it was, Bismarck pretended he was having a hard time keeping in check anti-Austrian sentiments in court circles. So, feeling they had at least a supporter of the treaty in Bismarck, Austria settled in the declaration of 16 January for a promise that in the event of war the two powers reserved the right to determine the future status of the duchies and the succession question by mutual agreement. In effect Bismarck had wriggled out of the commitment to the London Treaty. So although the Austrians persuaded themselves that Bismarck’s hands were tied, as he remarked to the Italian ambassador, Austria was ‘working for the king of Prussia’.32 And paying a heavy price for her association into the bargain; Austrian diplomats in South Germany reported a sharp decline in Austrian prestige caused by this unpopular policy which was denounced in scathing terms by the central committee of German deputies in an appeal to the German people on 24 January 1864. In a statement bristling with inflammatory language the London Treaty was dismissed as nothing other than a ‘pseudonym for [Germany’s] earlier shame’. The cautious policy of Austria and Prussia was deplorable. The German people had right on their side and were fighting ‘for the highest prizes: freedom from Austrian and Prussian servitude and for the salvation of its very existence’. Their opponents ‘… boast much but their superiority is more appearance than reality; they are only strong if the rest of Germany backs away without counsel and without courage’.33
Had federal forces occupied Schleswig on the basis of the Hessian motion as the central committee would have wished, international complications would have been distinctly possible. More important still, the adoption of the Hessian motion against the wishes of Austria and Prussia would have given an important fillip to the Augustenburg cause and might well have led subsequently to significant political change in Germany. By acting in their own name on the basis of promises made to them by Denmark and resolutely avoiding all reference to the inflammatory succession question Austria and Prussia could not only occupy Schleswig and minimize international repercussions but also hold at bay the ‘forces of revolution’ which undoubtedly worried both Bismarck and Rechberg.
Bismarck would not have been content with the withdrawal of the November constitution, which he was confident the Danes would never abandon in any case. Even that unlikely event would not have deterred him. He would still have occupied Schleswig as a pledge to ensure that Denmark fulfilled the promises of 1851–2. That would have opened up infinite possibilities for delaying tactics until Prussia was quite ‘satisfied’ with the new arrangements. What he wanted, quite simply, was an excuse for military intervention. As he remarked apropos of federal execution: ‘Once German troops are in the duchy [i.e. Holstein] things will take their own course and the situation can alter very rapidly.’34 Similarly, once Schleswig was in Prussian hands it would be difficult to restore the status quo.
Then at the twelfth hour Denmark nearly upset Bismarck’s calculations. On 16 January Austria and Prussia delivered their ultimatum: the constitution must be withdrawn within forty-eight hours or else they would occupy Schleswig. The time-scale militated against Danish compliance short of a coup d’état which the king would not entertain or public opinion have tolerated. On 18 January Denmark had no alternative but to reject the ultimatum. However, on 21 January, under strong British and Russian pressure, Monrad indicated willingness to rescind the constitution and reorganize the Helstat in accordance with the promises of 1851–2. To this end he requested a six-week delay to enable elections to be held to the Rigsraad. No doubt Monrad was playing for time, as Bismarck rightly assumed when he rejected the request on the grounds that Denmark had already had twelve years to resolve the constitutional issue. Nevertheless, the pretext for war suddenly appeared thread-bare. British pleas on behalf of Denmark were curtly rejected in Berlin. But to reassure the Great Powers of his bona fides, Bismarck organized a joint declaration explaining that Austria and Prussia had recognized the integrity of the Danish monarchy in 1852 on the basis of promises made to them by the Danes. The occupation of Schleswig did not signify a departure from that principle. However, if complications arose (i.e. if Denmark resisted them) or if other powers intervened in a conflict with Denmark, Austria and Prussia gave notice that they would renounce these obligations. Even so, final arrangements would be arrived at in agreement with the Great Powers. At the same time he made much of the fears in Berlin and Vienna that a revolutionary war destructive of monarchical institutions everywhere in Europe would break out unless Austria and Prussia were firmly in the saddle in Schleswig.
There was no formal declaration of war on Denmark. On 24 December when 6,000 Saxon and 6,000 Hanoverian troops entered Holstein to carry out federal execution, the Danes at once withdrew their forces into Schleswig. Meanwhile an Austrian and Prussian force under the command of Field Marshal Count Friedrich von Wrangel stayed on the Holstein frontier at their bases in Hamburg and Lübeck. On 20 January Wrangel assumed command over all the federal forces involved in the execution. On 21 January the Austro-Prussian forces entered Holstein. Though the Saxons and Hanoverians refused to take orders from Wrangel, they were in no position to offer resistance. On 31 January Wrangel requested his Danish opposite number, General Christian de Meza, to withdraw from Schleswig. When he declined to do so, Wrangel’s forces crossed the Eider at several points on 1 February and the Second Slesvig War commenced.
THE REACTION OF THE GREAT POWERS
So far the focus has been on the internal roots of the 1864 War: the tangled relationships between Germans and Danes, the clash of rival nationalisms in a frontier area, the involvement of the German Confederation and the ambitions of Prussia. That does not exhaust an inquiry into the origins of the war. Had the international situation not been reasonably favourable, Austria and Prussia would scarcely have gone to war. The changing pattern of international affairs is, therefore, part of the explanation, and to this aspect we now turn.
Reference was made earlier to the Crimean War, a conflict which had profound and lasting effects upon international relations for at least two decades. In the first half of the nineteenth century the five Great Powers – Austria, Prussia, Britain, France and Russia – despite conflicting power interests, had acted in concert to settle disputes likely to escalate into conflagrations destabilizing the existing order in Europe. After 1856 the Concert of Europe ceased to function. The war permanently soured relations between Austria and Russia, fatally weakening the unofficial alliance of the conservative powers against revolution. A further destabilizing factor was the revisionist policy being pursued by Napoleon III. When the Schleswig-Holstein crisis was at its height in the winter of 1863–4 foreign offices all over Europe believed that the real threat to peace came not from Bismarck but from Napoleon, who was thought to be planning war in the spring to bolster up his regime. The general consequence of the changing balance of power was that Prussia was able to wage a local war against Denmark without having to fear the emergence of a united front between Britain, France and Russia.
Let us look first at Britain, a power with a significant interest in the survival of the Helstat. The Baltic, like the Black Sea, had been strategically important ever since the first clash with Russia in the late eighteenth century. Secondly, Britain’s Baltic trade was still of considerable value despite the fact that the steam age had made her less dependent on timber for her ships; one quarter of all British tonnage still passed through the Sound between 1860 and 1862. Thirdly, British opinion instinctively took the side of Denmark, threatened by her larger neighbour, much as it supported Belgium in 1914. For all these reasons Britain was interested in the outcome of the Schleswig-Holstein affair.
In the 1850s and early 1860s Britain made several attempts to mediate the dispute out of existence. Immediately after the 1848 Revolution Palmerston advocated the partition of Schleswig. After that was abandoned Britain canvassed the idea of autonomous status for the duchy. But when the crisis broke in 1863 the policy-makers in London were in disarray. The prime minister, Lord Palmerston, strongly supported by public opinion, was robustly pro-Danish. He and many of his cabinet colleagues insisted on the absolute validity of the London Treaty, indignantly rejecting German attempts to make its implementation dependent on fulfilment of the promises of 1851–2. Prussia he regarded with jaundiced eyes as an aggressor state manoeuvring to secure a naval base at Kiel. Queen Victoria, on the other hand, was just as firmly pro-Augustenburg and sympathetic to Prussia, while the foreign secretary, Earl (formerly Lord John) Russell, blamed both Germans and Danes for the deteriorating situation.
At first Palmerston made the running. On 23 July 1863 he nailed his colours firmly to the mast, declaring in the House of Commons that if any attempt was made to disturb the status quo in the Baltic the power responsible ‘would find, in the result, that it would not be Denmark alone with which they would have to contend’.35 As the crisis deepened, he remained firmly anti-Prussian, no doubt strengthened in this by Bismarck’s off-the-cuff remark to the British ambassador on 22 December that ‘a few cannon shots would settle the affair’.36 On 2 January the cabinet took the momentous decision to aid Denmark if the Augustenburg pretender was established as duke of Schleswig-Holstein.
But even at his most belligerent Palmerston recognized the parameters within which British policy had to operate. The cabinet decision was qualified by the observation that without French, Russian and Swedish support Britain would not give military assistance to Denmark. For whatever degree of concern there might be in Whitehall about continental developments, Europe was of minor significance in the totality of things.37 Like Russia, Britain was a world power. As the leading industrial nation her attentions were focused primarily on the defence of markets spread across the globe and on the mounting problems she faced in her colonial possessions. In India, for example, after the Mutiny of 1857–8 strenuous efforts were being made to overhaul the administration of the sub-continent. During the American Civil War she was concerned about the possibility of Fenian-inspired invasions of Canada. In addition, Britain kept an anxious eye on Russian advances towards Afghanistan and on the machinations of Napoleon III in the Mediterranean, especially in Egypt. The upshot was that over half Britain’s forces were stationed abroad, chiefly in India and Canada, so that Britain could not risk war in Europe without a continental ally.
Neither France nor Russia was prepared to underwrite Britain. Furthermore, whatever reservations there were about Prussia’s eagerness to start a war, the two German powers were, in fact, pursuing a moderate policy compared with that favoured by the Diet. And it was universally felt that Denmark had violated the promises of 1851–2. So when Palmerston and Russell, alarmed by the prospect of the German invasion of Jylland, informed France and Russia that a squadron of the fleet was being sent to Copenhagen, the cabinet revolted. On 24 February it vetoed this move and ordered Russell to undo the damage. Thus there remained only the option of a negotiated settlement through the calling of an international conference. That proposal Russell first put to the Danes in February 1864.
Secondly, France. She had no significant strategic or commercial interests at stake in the Baltic, but her restless new ruler saw in the dispute an opportunity to advance his general aims of upsetting the Vienna settlement at the expense of his uncle’s great enemy, Austria, and of reconstructing Europe along national lines. Partly because of his belief in the nationality principle and partly because he saw in Prussia a potential ally against Austria, he favoured Prussian acquisition of Schleswig-Holstein. Denmark united with Danish North Schleswig would, he thought, be better off in a Scandinavian union which would have a role to play as a barrier to Russian expansion in the north in a Europe reconstructed along grandiose Napoleonic lines. Hence he was not interested in British overtures for joint action in support of Denmark. Relations between Britain and France had reached their nadir in the autumn of 1863. Palmerston and his colleagues were filled with anxiety about French designs on Holland, Belgium and the Rhineland. They had opposed French intervention in Italy; denounced the annexation of Nice and Savoy; left France in the lurch over Mexico; and had just rejected Napoleon’s ambitious proposal for a European Congress to discuss the Polish question. Without doubt the break-down of the old Anglo-French entente greatly assisted Bismarck in his complex diplomatic game in the winter of 1863–4.
Thirdly, Russia. The tsar did not approve of the democratic tendencies at work in Denmark and considered the November constitution a violation of the promises of 1851–2. On the other hand, the maintenance of the Helstat was very much in Russian interests in view of the strategic importance of the Baltic. Most certainly the Helstat was preferable to a Scandinavian union which would leave a fairly strong power in control of the Sound. But fear of revolution in Europe and of Napoleon’s restless policy – particularly his advocacy of an autonomous Poland – worried her much more. Beset by economic problems at home and continuing unrest in Poland, Russia had no wish to be involved in war over Schleswig-Holstein. The British ambassador, Lord Francis Napier, succinctly summarized her position: ‘The interest of Russia on behalf of Denmark is sincere but is secondary. The interest of Russia in maintaining an alliance with Austria and Prussia on account of Poland is capital and predominant.’38 That alliance was also essential for Russia in a global perspective. Since the Crimean War she had turned increasingly eastwards, becoming absorbed in the affairs of Turkestan and Afghanistan. She needed the support of the German powers to protect her flank in Europe while she pursued these new interests and was not willing to endanger that support for the sake of Denmark. Consequently British proposals for joint action on behalf of Denmark fell on deaf ears in St Petersburg, whereas proposals for a peaceful settlement were seized upon with alacrity.
In other words, the diplomatic configuration in the winter of 1863–4 was such that Prussia could risk war without fearing armed intervention from the major powers. This is not to deny Bismarck’s skill in manoeuvring with dexterity from the autumn of 1863 to the summer of 1864, playing off one power against another to ensure that Prussia remained tertius gaudens. Handling Napoleon III was the most difficult task, for if the mercurial emperor formed an alliance with the tsar, Prussian attempts to gain the ascendancy in Germany would be seriously impeded. To avert this danger and at the same time to use France as a stick with which to beat Austria when the time came, he showed willingness to enter into an agreement with France. But to avoid giving offence to Britain, Austria and Russia – all of whom suspected Napoleon of planning war for the spring of 1864 – he carefully avoided binding commitments, especially, the ‘entente franche et vigoureuse’ Napoleon was looking for after his disenchantment with Britain and Austria.
Between 20 April and 25 June 1864 the signatory powers of the London Treaty together with Count Friedrich von Beust, the representative of the Confederation, met in London to try to regulate the Schleswig-Holstein Question by international agreement. This was the last thing Bismarck wanted. Several factors conspired together to avert this danger. First, Bismarck managed to delay the opening session of the conference until Prussian troops had driven the Danes out of Schleswig after the storming of the Dybbøl fortifications on 18 April. Acting on the old well-tried maxim ‘beati possidentes’ Bismarck calculated that the conference could not talk Prussia out of the duchies. Second, by staying in Berlin Bismarck enjoyed maximum room for manoeuvre, obliging the Prussian representative in London to await his instructions at every twist and turn of the road. Third, while outwardly professing interest in an agreed solution, Bismarck worked hard to ensure that the divergent interests of the powers sabotaged the conference.
Bismarck’s task was greatly facilitated by the unfortunate tactics pursued by the Danes. Instead of accepting the British conference proposal in February – for only at the conference table could Denmark expect Great Power support – they procrastinated, hoping to hold on to Dybbøl. Their refusal was due in part to the pressure of public opinion which was oblivious to the plain fact that Denmark could not win on the field of battle. Inevitably military victory eluded them, so that when the time came to go to London their position was much weaker than it need have been. At the conference itself their failure was due not so much to intransigence in the pursuit of a clearly defined policy, as is often alleged, but rather to a combination of divided counsels and chronic inability to decide on a realistic policy. This was for several reasons. First, King Christian, unlike his ministers, cherished the illusion that the Helstat could still be preserved. Secondly, Monrad lacked experience of foreign affairs; he presided over a cabinet of equally inexperienced nonentities; and he instructed the Danish delegation in London to pursue a negative policy. They were to fall back from one position to another and thereby forfeited the tactical advantage of having a clear goal from the start. To conciliate the king, the delegation was to support the lost cause of the Helstat in which the council of ministers did not believe. As it was extremely unlikely that a common constitution could be worked out for the Helstat at this late stage, the Danish delegates were authorized to agree to the separation of Holstein from Schleswig provided that Schleswig and Denmark could have a common constitution. Finally – but only when other powers raised it – they could support partition, the only realistic hope for Denmark. The third reason for failure was that Andreas Krieger, a convinced Eiderdane and the strongest personality in the three-man delegation, was not interested in reaching a settlement. He spent most of his time manipulating British public opinion in the expectation of either forcing Palmerston to promise military aid to Denmark or bringing to power the Tory opposition which he supposed (quite erroneously) would be ready to fight for Denmark.
Step by step Bismarck succeeded in demolishing the London Treaty and persuading the Great Powers to disengage themselves from German affairs. On 12 May Count Albrecht von Bernstorff with Austrian support announced that Prussia was no longer bound by the treaty. Five days later Bernstorff, again with Austrian approval, demanded political independence for the duchies united by their common institutions and with only the dynastic link holding them to Denmark; this, he argued, was the only way to protect them from ‘the recurrence of any foreign oppression’. To confuse the issue – for Bismarck did not want the conference to settle for Personal Union – Bernstorff was told to add the rider that a decision on the succession question would be postponed for the time being. The Danish government, however, rejected Personal Union out of hand because if Schleswig had only a monarch in common with Denmark, this was tantamount to abandoning the Danish-speaking population to Germanization, a crass betrayal of the national cause and totally unacceptable to Eiderdanes.
Rejection of Personal Union opened up the way for Austria and Prussia to propose on 28 May the establishment of an independent Schleswig-Holstein under the duke of Augustenburg. This proposal, greeted with a mixture of astonishment and jubilation in liberal circles in Germany, originated with Rechberg. Suspecting rightly that Prussia was now bent on annexation, and conscious that Austrian public opinion was demanding a change of policy, Rechberg opted for a daring solution which, if it succeeded, would restore Austrian prestige with the smaller German states at a stroke. Greatly annoyed but unable to dissuade the Austrians from raising the succession question, Bismarck went along with it for appearances’ sake. But in private negotiations with the duke he made it plain that the duchies would become a Prussian satellite, a demand which the duke found unacceptable. Bismarck commented cynically that: ‘At the London Conference he had [verba ipsissima] hitched the duke of Augustenburg as an ox before the plough to bring it ahead. As soon as the plough was in motion, he had again unhitched the ox.’39 This solution died a natural death because of Danish opposition and Bernstorff’s half-hearted support.
Proposals for the partition of Schleswig along national lines – first mooted in 1848 – made little progress. On 28 May Britain proposed the Schlei-Dannevirke line, which Denmark accepted. But Austria and Prussia, unwilling to allow the mixed districts of Central Schleswig to remain in Danish hands, proposed a line from Abenraa to Tønder. This was unacceptable to Denmark for not only did she regard the Schlei estuary as a military necessity but she still clung stubbornly to her belief that the inhabitants of Central Schleswig could be won back to their Danish cultural heritage given time.
Finally Britain proposed that the frontier line be decided by a neutral power and offered to aid the Danes if the Germans rejected an arbitration award. Austria and Prussia agreed, but only on condition that the award not be binding on them. But at the Statsraad on 20 June Monrad made a fatal mistake; lacking confidence in his own judgement, he left the decision to King Christian. Predictably the monarch turned down arbitration and opted for the maintenance of the Schlei-Dannevirke line at all costs. This was not because he wanted partition. On the contrary. He was buying time. A few days earlier he had been encouraged by the Danish ambassador in St Petersburg to believe that Personal Union was still a viable alternative if Denmark as well as the duchies entered the German Confederation. In fact, there was no basis for this belief. The Danish government now wanted to end the conference quickly before the House of Commons rose for the summer recess, hoping that its collapse would be seen as a defeat for Palmerston and Russell and would topple the government. The incoming Tory administration would surely come to the aid of Denmark. When she formally rejected arbitration on 22 June, thus effectively ending the conference, Denmark may have lost a golden opportunity of obtaining a frontier farther south than that of 1920. At the very least an award by a neutral power would have made it much more difficult for Bismarck to obtain the whole of Schleswig and would have shifted the onus for failure fairly and squarely on his shoulders. Three days later the armistice expired and the war was resumed. Things had worked out exceedingly well for Prussia. As Lord George Clarendon remarked to Bernstorff: ‘Vous êtes entrés dans la conférence maîtres de la situation et vous en sortez maîtres de la conférence.’40
THE WAR AND THE TREATY OF VIENNA
The Second Slesvig War commenced on 1 February 1864 and fighting finally ceased on 20 July. On 1 February 57,000 Prussian and Austrian troops commanded by Wrangel crossed the Eider. After an initial passage of arms at Missunde where the Danes stood their ground, the Danish commander evacuated the Dannevirke on the night of 5–6 February, withdrawing the bulk of his 44,000 men to the fortified positions at Dybbøl and to the island of Als. There were angry protests in Copenhagen because of the emotional connotations of the Dannevirke and the firm belief that it was an impregnable fortification. De Meza was recalled, disgraced and replaced by General Johann Gerlach. In fact, the Dannevirke defences were too weak to withstand a frontal onslaught, as de Meza was well aware, and could in any case be easily endangered by an enemy turning-movement across the Schlei. De Meza simply did not have large enough forces to cover a seventy-five kilometre front. The sad truth was that Denmark had taken up a position in 1863 which she lacked the military strength to sustain. Defence expenditure had been curtailed by the Rigsraad in the 1850s. And although the Danish fleet gave a good account of itself by blockading Prussian harbours and defeating the Austrian fleet at the battle of Heligoland on 9 May, the Danish army faced superior numbers and artillery equipped with rifled breech-loading cannon.
After the evacuation of the Dannevirke forces to Dybbøl and Als the remainder of the Danish army retired into Jylland. On 18 February a Prussian detachment crossed the Kongeaa and occupied the border town of Kolding. This unauthorized local initiative – which annoyed Bismarck – aroused the concern of some Great Powers. Britain considered dispatching a squadron of the fleet to Copenhagen, while the French suddenly grew alarmed at the forward thrust of Prussian policy.41 As the Austrians had supposed that the occupation of Schleswig was the objective of the military operations, King William sent General Erwin von Manteuffel to Vienna to persuade them otherwise. On 6 March agreement was reached. The conquest of Dybbøl and Als were confirmed as the main military objectives but the invasion of Jylland was now deemed necessary to protect the forces in Schleswig besieging Dybbøl. It was also agreed in the Austro-Prussian Convention that, as hostilities had broken out, they were no longer bound by the promises of 1851–2. At a peace conference they would propose the creation of a Schleswig-Holstein state bound only by dynastic ties to Denmark. The king was anxious that Prussian soldiers prove their mettle in action, while Bismarck wanted a spectacular victory to place Prussia in an unassailable position at the impending conference. The final attack on Dybbøl, the major operation of the war, began on 2 April with heavy bombardment of the fortifications by twenty-eight batteries of artillery – a proleptic hint of what modern war would be like. That was followed on 18 April by the successful storming of the fortifications by Austrian and Prussian soldiers after six hours of intense bombardment. The Danes, outnumbered six to one, fought bravely but were forced to capitulate. An armistice came into force for the duration of the London Conference.
On 26 June the war resumed. A contingent of 24,000 Prussian soldiers crossing the Sound by boat at dead of night took Als on 29 June. In July the Austrian and Prussian fleets, aided by expeditionary forces from the mainland, occupied the islands off the west coast of Schleswig-Holstein. Other forces had pushed as far ahead as Frederikshavn on the tip of the Danish peninsula. Bowing to the inevitable, King Christian asked Monrad to resign. He was replaced by a conservative, Count Bluhme, who the king hoped would be able to pull Personal Union out of the hat. This was an impossible dream, as was the government’s hope that partition would still be on the cards. On 20 July a new armistice was signed and on 25 July the peace conference opened in Vienna. No concessions were forthcoming and the preliminary peace was signed on 1 August. Finally on 30 October in the Treaty of Vienna, the king of Denmark handed over to the king of Prussia and the emperor of Austria Holstein, Schleswig and Lauenburg and agreed to ‘recognize the dispositions they made’ for these territories.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
1. German landowners and officials, the backbone of the Schleswig-Holstein movement, dominated the Schleswig as well as the Holstein and Lauenburg estates through the introduction of a highly restricted franchise favouring the better off in town and country.
2. Under the Danish constitution the Rigsdag had decision-making powers. The Danes maintained that the estates in the duchies were intended to have only consultative powers in respect of constitutional changes – a dubious claim which the Germans strenuously denied. It was clearly a political blunder of the first order not to have submitted the common constitution to the German estates, if only as a face-saving exercise. Cf. Lawrence D. Steefel, The Schleswig-Holstein Question (Cambridge, Mass., 1932), p. 17; N. Neergaard, Under Junigrundloven. En Fremstilling af de danske Folks Politiske Historie fra 1848 til 1866 (Copenhagen, 1916), pp. 105–6.
3. The term ‘Federal Diet’ is somewhat inaccurate. An engerer Rat conducted the day-to-day business of the Confederation, reaching decisions by majority vote as opposed to the unanimity vote at plenary sessions. There were seventeen votes in the engerer Rat: Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, Württemberg, Baden, Electoral Hesse, Hesse-Darmstadt, Holstein/Lauenburg (Curia 10) and Luxemburg/Limburg (Curia 11) had one each; the five Saxon principalities (Curia 12) had one vote; Braunschweig and Nassau (Curia 13) one; the two Mecklenburgs (Curia 14) one; Oldenburg, the Anhalt and the Schwarzenburg territories (Curia 15) one; the Reuss territories one; the Lippe territories, Liechtenstein, Waldeck and Hesse-Homburg one; and Bremen, Hamburg, Lübeck and Frankfurt one.
4. APP 1 no. 2, address of the Prince Regent to the Staatsministerium.
5. Not until the Bismarckian Reich was on the point of collapse in 1917 did expansion to the east – a revival of the old Drang nach Osten – appear as a serious theme in German history.
6. GW 14 no. 724, Bismarck to Gustav von Alvensleben, 23 April/5 May 1859.
7. GW 14/1 no. 480, Bismarck to Leopold von Gerlach 19/20 December 1853.
8. GW 2 no. 152, Bismarck to Otto von Manteuffel, 26 April 1856.
9. GW 1 no. 416, Denkschrift for the Prince of Prussia, September 1853.
10. Quoted in O. Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany (Princeton, 1963), p. 79.
11. GW 14 no. 789, Bismarck to Leopold von Gerlach, 2/4 May 1860.
12. GW 14/2 no. 999, Bismarck to Robert von der Goltz, 24 December 1863.
13. APP no. 86, Promemoria by Bismarck, 25 December 1862.
14. GW 2 no. 343, Einige Bemerkungen über Preussens Stellung im Bunde, March 1858.
15. GW 3 no. 234, Denkschrift über die deutsche Frage, mid-July 1861.
16. GW 10 no. 94, session of the budget commission.
17. Cf. Carl Twesten’s comment in 1862: ‘If some time or other a Prussian minister–president should come forward and say: I have moved frontier posts, violated international law and torn up treaties as Count Cavour has done – gentlemen, I believe we would not then condemn him … we would erect a monument to him as Italian history will raise one to Cavour.’ Quoted in Michel Gugel, Industrieller Aufstieg und bürgerliche Herrschaft: Sozioökonomische Interessen und politische Ziele des liberalen Bürgertums in Preussen zur Zeit des Verfassungskonflikts 1857–1867 (Köln, 1975), p. 69.
18. Karl Martin Schiller, Treitschke: Aufsàtze Reden und Briefe (Meersburg, 1929), vol. 5, p. 530; Treitschke to W. Nokk, 29 September 1863.
19. Charles VII, a Wittelsbach who was emperor from 1740 to 1745.
20. Hermann Oncken, Rudolf von Bennigsen, Ein deutscher liberaler Politiker nach seinen Briefen und hinterlassenen Papieren (Stuttgart, 1910), vol. 1, p. 621.
21. GW 14/2 no. 999, Bismarck to Robert von Goltz, 24 December 1863.
22. A year before his letter to Goltz Bismarck was brutally frank about his policy: ‘I am certain of this, that the whole Danish business can be settled for us only by war. The occasion for such a war can be found at any moment that we find favourable for waging it … the disadvantage of having signed the London Protocol we share with Austria and cannot free ourselves from the consequences of that signature without war. If war comes, however, the future territorial status of Denmark will depend upon its results.’ GW 4 no. 17, Bismarck to Count von Fleming, 22 December 1862.
23. That he was thinking along these lines at the close of 1863 is suggested by remarks made to relatives on New Year’s Eve: ‘The Always United [a reference to the popular slogan in use by the Schleswig-Holsteiner to describe the close association between the two duchies] must now become Prussians. That is the goal I am steering towards; whether I achieve it is in God’s hands. But I could not accept responsibility for allowing Prussian blood to be spilt to create a new middle state which would vote with the others in the Diet against us.’ Klaus Malettke, Die Schleswig-Holsteinische Frage 1862–1866 (Göttingen, 1969), no. 10.
24. E.g. P. von Linstow, ‘Bismarck Europa og Slesvig-Holsten 1862–1866’, HT (78) 1978, pp. 389–435. Also A. Hillgruber, Bismarcks Aussenpolitik (Freiburg, 1972), pp. 56–7.
25. GW 14/2 no. 999.
26. GW 1 no. 473, Bismarck to Baron von Manteuffel, 15 February 1854.
27. The link was contained in article 3 of the London Treaty which referred specifically to ‘the rights and obligations of the duchies established by the federal act of 1815 and by the existing federal law [which] shall not be altered by this treaty’.
28. The British ambassador in Berlin thought Bismarck was genuinely anxious to activate federal execution to ‘prevent revolutionary movements in Germany’. APP no. 213, Buchanan to Russell, 12 December 1863.
29. Under the federal constitution the Diet had the right to decide a disputed succession in member states, i.e. in Holstein but not in Schleswig.
30. D.G. Monrad, Deltagelse i Begivenhederne 1864: En Efterladt Redegørelse (Copenhagen, 1914), p. 49.
31. The news of a change of ministry alarmed Berlin. ‘Goodbye to the fine hopes of getting rid of the treaty,’ exclaimed King William, while Bismarck was highly embarrassed by the possibility of Denmark returning to the path of legality. APP 4 no. 252, Nicolay to Oubril, 25 December 1863. Some days earlier Bismarck had admitted frankly that the promises of 1851–2 were ‘not very practical to implement and that we are almost demanding that the cabinet in Copenhagen square the circle’. Talleyrand to Drouyn de Lhuys, 11 December 1863; Quoted in Lawrence D. Steefel, op. cit., p. 139.
32. OD 1 no. 152, Talleyrand to Drouyn de Lhuys.
33. Klaus Malettke, op. cit. no. 13.
34. APP 4 no. 151, Bismarck to Sydow, 29 November 1863.
35. Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, CLXXII, p. 1252.
36. Quoted in Johannes H. Voigt, ‘Englands Aussenpolitik wâhrend des deutsch–dànischen Konflikts 1862–1864’, ZGSHG 90 (1965), p. 91; cf. APP 4 no. 381, Oubril to Gortschakov, 19/31 January 1864.
37. Bismarck visiting London in 1862 commented to his wife that ‘… English ministers know less about Prussia than about Japan and Mongolia ….’. GW 14/2 no. 599, 5 July 1862.
38. Quoted in W.E. Mosse, The European Powers and the German Question 1848–71 (CUP, 1958), p. 195 FN 1.
39. Quoted in Lawrence D. Steefel, op. cit. p. 256.
40. APP 4 no. 179. Writing to the queen on 22 June Clarendon went much further: ‘M. de Bismarck is completely master of the situation – he does exactly what he pleases with the whole of Germany … in the pursuit of his own ends he is restrained by no principle and if no check is to be put on his bold bad policy there is nothing to prevent him dictating at Copenhagen a peace that might annihilate the political independence of Denmark.’ Quoted in Johannes H. Voigt, op. cit., p. 497 FN 152.
41. Drouyn de Lhuys commented sharply to Goltz on 21 February; ‘First we had seized Holstein on the pretext of Federal Execution, then although this security should have been enough for Schleswig too, we had occupied the duchy as a “material guarantee”; we had declared, though in not very clear terms, that we only wanted to enforce the stipulations of 1851–52; now we advance into Jutland and are going on to “exterminate” the Danes; for what else can we intend in ruining Denmark financially, taking one province after another from them, and finally getting on to Copenhagen?’ Quoted in Lawrence D. Steefel, op. cit., pp. 189–90.