In 1867 Garibaldi again set out, invaded the papal territory with a motley band of volunteers. But he had lost his cunning. He seemed like a shorn Samson since he yielded to Victor Emmanuel; he could do nothing. He was repulsed. Then new French troops arrived, and at the miserable village of Mentana, twenty miles from Rome, on the Campagna, the Garibaldians were utterly routed. Many fled, many were mown down mercilessly by the French from behind the walls. It was a bitter event, a cruel blow to Italian prestige, a painful memory for ever — Mentana.
Italy must wait for Rome until 1870, when French troops were withdrawn on the outbreak of the Franco- Prussian War. On September 20, 1870, three weeks after Sedan, Victor Emmanuel’s Bersaglieri entered Rome by the breach near the Porta Pia, and the Temporal Power fell. The Royal Court came and occupied the Quirinal, the Pope retired and shut himself up in the Vatican, after pronouncing the Greater Excommunication against those who deposed him.
And so Italy was made — modern Italy. Fretfulness, irritation, and nothing in life except money: this is what the religious fervour of Garibaldians and Mazzinians works out to — in united, free Italy as in other united, free countries. No wonder liberty so often turns to ashes in the mouth, after being so fair a fruit to contemplate. Man needs more than liberty.
Chapter XIX. The Unification of Germany
It was after the fall of Napoleon that nations really came to consciousness. In the beginning of Europe, there were many tribes, races, peoples, but no nations owning state property, and no kings as we have them now, representing state interest. Rome was a state of citizens, a republic of free men, when she first began to conquer. In Gaul, in Britain, in Germany, chieftains were chosen as leaders from among the warriors of the tribe. There was no kingship which descended from father to son.
But if men must fight their way forward, they must have a leader whom all obey. And if, after a state or a tribe has made conquests, unity is to be kept, if the people are to be united into one active power, then the leader must not only be absolute, he must be permanent. So we have the great emperors leading Rome, we have hereditary kings at the heads of the tribes.
Still there are no nations, in the modern sense. The whole history of Europe is a history of the breaking down of great institutions to make way for smaller, more numerous, more individual powers. So the greatest of all institutions, the Roman Empire, disappeared utterly. Then arose the Holy Roman Empire, which reached its height in Barbarossa and Frederick II., and disappeared with Napoleon. The Papacy ran parallel with the Holy Roman Empire; but with Victor Emmanuel the popes were driven inside the narrow bounds of the Vatican.
Under Rome, vast numbers of men were slaves. Under the popes, men believed darkly what they were bidden, books and free knowledge were hidden away. Kings arose when emperors and popes declined. But kings are really war-lords, war-chieftains. A king was originally the great overlord of the barons: the people were merely serfs, half slaves. Kings and barons existed as proud fighting-powers; realms consist in the glamour and glory of conflict.
The great change comes when the peoples cease to be unified for fighting purposes, and unite for production. There are two great passions that rule mankind — the passion of pride and power and conquest, and the passion of peace and production. The Renaissance wras the time when the desire for peace and production triumphed over the desire for war and conquest.
After the Renaissance, kingdoms were productive in the first place, and in the second placc, they were fighting powers. Kings were still war-leaders; but they must also lead in prosperity. Kings who ignored the national prosperity were beheaded. The passion for peace and production triumphed over the desire for war. Kings must be no longer proud. The greatest man is he who causes the greatest production of necessary substance — the greatest merchant, the greatest owner of industry. The time comes when the leaders of industry, the rich men of the middle class really rule, as they do in Britain to-day, and in the great republics.
Nations, in the modern sense, arise when mankind chooscs peace and production rather than war and glory. After the Renaissance and the Reformation, nations like England became conscious of their true purpose. The English people realised that their glory was in a life lived in unison and peaceful freedom, not in triumph over others. They wanted to be free from kingly power. They wanted to sum up to one vast, productive nation, not to a resplendent monarch.
And so the idea works itself out: it is the producer who matters, only the producer. Pride is nothing, glory is nothing, only production is important. And the producers in the last instance are the workers themselves. The people now move towards power, as in extreme democracies. Europe is again moving towards a oneness. Nations are once more tending to merge into one vast European state, a vast European rule of the people. Long ago, Europe was one vast realm ruled by a gorgeous emperor in Rome. Now the circle has almost been completed again. Europe seems to move towards unification, towards the institution of one vast state ruled by the infinite numbers of the people — the producers, the proletariat, the workmen.
The national spirit brings us to this, which is ultimately the international or universal spirit. Nations, however, must, in the first instance, be pivoted upon a central power, a king. After the king has served his day, he disappears.
‘Nation awakens by nation, King by king disappears.’
The great Germanic race had never since the Middle Ages had its one king, it had never become a nation. Itself the mother of nations, it was the last to come to national unity. It could only be united under a firm ruler.
The struggle for leadership was between Austria and Prussia. When in 1848 the republicans of France once more drove out their king, Louis Philippe, all Europe was stirred by a revolutionary feeling. France declared a republic, only to elect as president Louis Napoleon, son of Louis Bonaparte, whom the great Napoleon had made King of Holland. In 1852 Louis Napoleon asked the French nation to vote whether he should take the imperial title or not. By 7,800,000 votes to 233,000 they chose that he should. So the Emperor Napoleon hi. came to the throne of France, where he sat rather insecurely.
The year 1848 saw the Austrian Empire on the brink of dissolution. Bohemia, Hungary and North Italy all rose to shake off her foreign sway. Yet chiefly through the activities of the great Austrian minister Metternich, who hated popular governments, Austria kept together.
She had hardly time to notice, at first, what was happening in Germany. There the states loudly demanded independence. The Confederation had been dominated by Austria. With surprising ease they called their own parliament together at Frankfort, in 1848. For a long time they could come to no decision, because they did not want to exclude Austria. Austria proper was German, but the millions of non-German subjects in her empire would swamp the Germans. It was decided to leave Austria out of the new state of Germany, and to face her opposition. A new empire of Germany was to be established, with an emperor entitled Emperor of the Germans. In March 1849, it was decided to offer the new title and office to Frederick William iv. of Prussia.
Prussia herself was struggling with a revolution. In Berlin the people had risen against the power of the Crown. Therefore the King would have nothing to do with offers made by revolutionary parliaments. He refused the imperial crown. And almost at once the whole movement for a united Germany dwindled down and collapsed, and Germany went on as before, with her thirty-nine independent and separate states.
The people’s party in Prussia demanded a parliament of their own. The King declared: ‘ According to the law of God and the country, the Crown must reign according to its free decision and not according to the will of majorities.’ Berlin rose in fierce revolution, the King had to escape. The streets were barricaded, hot fighting took place. The King gave way. He declared that Prussia was henceforth to be absorbed in Germany, and he allowed the National Assembly to meet, to form a new constitution.
But when Austria crushed her revolution in Vienna, Frederick William roused again and struck in Berlin.
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The Assembly had begun to wrangle. He ordered it to dissolve. It refused. The military marched down and dispersed it. Then, in December 1848, the King gave a constitution framed by himself, and the power of the Crown was safe.
So it was that three months after, he refused the imperial crown of Germany, which the revolutionary parliament of Frankfort offered to him, calling it a crown of mud and wood. But he invited the various German governments to Berlin, with a view to forming a real federal constitution. Austria and Bavaria declined to come, Saxony and Hanover soon retired. In the end a federal constitution was drawn up for North Germany, headed by Prussia, and including about twenty-eight states.
Austria, always afraid and jealous of Prussia, immediately made a southern federation, with headquarters at Frankfort. It was a question whether Prussia or Austria would lead Germany. A quarrel arose. The Prussian king and ministers were timid, Austria was quick, energetic. She demanded the immediate dissolution of the northern federation, under threat of instant war. Prussia cast away all thoughts of resistance, and surrendered at Olmiitz. Austria was still triumphant, dominant in Germany. Frederick William’s bold words ended in smoke.
In 1861 King William I. came to the throne of Prussia. During the Berlin revolution he had fled to England, for the people hated him as a tyrant. But he did not like English ideas of government. He was a soldier by nature. ‘ I am the first king,’ he said, ‘ to mount the throne since it has been supported by modern institutions, but I do not forget that the crown has come to me from God alone.’ And he prepared to assert the royal power in all its force.
For many years Prussia had been unconsciously leading the way towards union. Every little province and department had its own gate across its own frontier, with customsofficers waiting for every traveller, every wagon either coming or going, to charge a certain percentage on the goods. This very much hampered, and often prevented the selling of commodities from town to town, village to village. So that trade was clogged, industry half strangled, and smuggling was universal. Prussia had gradually done away with all her internal customs barriers. From end to end of Prussian dominions, goods were freely exchanged, there was complete internal free trade. The duty was reduced also on goods which were being brought into the kingdom. But on goods which were being carried across the Prussian territories, say from Denmark to Saxony, a heavy duty was charged. So Prussia stimulated her own trade, and made a profit out of that of others.
The southern states soon saw what an advantage this was. Bavaria and Wurtemberg joined and formed a southern union of free trade, another union was formed between central states. But the advantage of free trade within the German lands was too great to be overlooked. South Germany joined the Prussian union of customs- duties in 1834, Central Germany entered in 1854, and soon the whole of the German states were united in one free- trading combine, Austria only being excluded.
Trade, commerce, is really the basis of union between different states which come together. But the Prussians knew that to keep such a union firm, a perfect army was needed. They steadily proceeded to realise the ideas of the reformers who, after the disaster of October 1806, had worked for the overthrow of Napoleon. William I. of Prussia had three remarkably great ministers, Bismarck, Moltke, and Roon. Roon was the war-minister. It was he who established the modern German army. Universal military service for three years was enforced on all classes, with a further obligation to serve in the reserve, the Landwchr, for four years. New weapons, especially the needle-gun, were introduced, and new, scientific methods of drill and tactics studied. It was a preparation such as Frederick William I. had made a hundred and fifty years before.
But in Prussia the same struggle between king and parliament went on, as elsewhere. In 1861 the progressive party had a large majority in the representative house of the Assembly. They demanded that obligatory military service should be reduced to two years; that the upper house, corresponding to our House of Lords, but much more powerful, should be reformed; and that the ministers who really governed the country, such as the Chancellor, who may be called the Prime Minister, and the War Minister, and the Foreign Minister, should be responsible to the National Assembly, not to the King. The progressive party demanded reforms according to the British model. The King refused. The Assembly then in 1862 refused to vote the money for the army There was a deadlock. The King could do nothing. In his anger, he even thought of abdicating.
Then appeared the powerful figure of Bismarck. Bismarck was a North German nobleman. He had been a member of the National Assembly during the period of the 1848 revolution. He had strongly opposed the merging of Prussia into Germany. ‘ Prussians we are, and Prussians we will remain,’ he said. In all the diplomatic missions, he had held firm as iron against Austrian demands.
Bismarck was chosen chancellor in 1862. He promised the King he would never yield. He did not believe in votes, in government by the people and their representatives. ‘ The decision on these principles,’ he said, ‘ will not come by parliamentary debate, and not by majorities of votes. Sooner or later the God who directs the battle will cast his iron dice.’
The old struggle was repeated. Just as Charles I. and Went worth faced the Long Parliament, just as Louis xvi. and his ministers faced the Estates General, so William i. of Prussia and Bismarck faced the representatives of the people. According to the evidence of history, they were bound to be defeated.
But the defeat was not yet. It was a maxim of those days that an absolute monarchy depended on successful wars — which means, that a nation in its pride of kingship onlv lives by triumphing over its neighbour. Failure in foreign wars brought down the crown of France, and helped to bring down the crown of England. In the pride of its heart, every nation desires to triumph over its neighbours. But pride of heart and the desire for triumph exhaust themselves, it seems. And then in their hearts peoples and nations only wish for ease and prosperity, they have no use for wars. And when they have no use for wars, they have no use for absolute kings with their ministers. Nothing further matters but the dead level of material prosperity.
Bismarck and William I. were successful in war, so they carried Germany with them. First came a great insurrection of the Poles against Russia. The Progressives or Liberals in Germany all wanted to help the Poles. But Bismarck need not ask the people nor the parliament what side he should take. He assisted the Russians in suppressing the rising. He next refused even to hear Austria, when she came forward proposing a new union of Germany. Then the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, which lay between Denmark and Prussia, were left without an heir. Denmark, Prussia and Austria all claimed the provinces. Austria and Prussia soon defeated Denmark, who received no help from the other powers.
Austria had now decided that the Duke of Augusten- berg should receive the duchies, for he had the strongest claim. Bismarck intended no such thing. The King of Prussia would have been glad of a peaceful settlement. Bismarck was determined on war. And now at last the two great Germanic powers were to decide which was to lead.
At this time, Cavour and Garibaldi, helped by the French under Napoleon in., had freed Italy, all except Venice and Rome. Venetia remained in Austrian hands, the Pope held out in Rome. Victor Emmanuel was the first King of Italy. Bismarck now cleverly made an alliance with the new King of Italy, and promised that Prussia should make no peace with Austria until Venice was surrendered to Italy. So Victor Emmanuel sent the Italian armies against Austria, Garibaldi fighting in the Tyrol. The Italians were badly beaten, and things would have looked very black for them, save for the interference of Prussia.
In Germany things went differently. The war was the first sign to Europe of a new power risen in their midst, using methods hitherto unknown. The whole campaign had been elaborately worked out by the Army Council, before the war began. Moltke, the great general, sat in Berlin and directed the movements of the campaign by telegraph, receiving telegrams all the time. When a decisive blow was to be struck, a swift express-train conveyed him to the
front. After the battle he returned to Berlin.
This was something new in warfare: and it was speedily effective. The Hanoverians were overthrown at Langen- salza, in June 1866, as they were trying to make their way to join the Austrians. In July the Austrians, after a hard and doubtful struggle, were defeated at Koniggratz in Bohemia. It was one of the shortest wars, but one of the most significant.
Bismarck now showed himself a great statesman. Those states of the north that had opposed Prussia — Schleswig, Holstein, Hanover, Hesse, Cassel — were annexed to Prussia, so that her lands now practically covered North Germany. The southern states, Bavaria, Baden, Wurtemberg, were treated very delicately, for Bismarck did not want to make enemies of them. He knew they would immediately join France against him if he did. For Napoleon in. also had the idea that he could only keep his throne in France by winning victories abroad, as his great predecessor had done, and therefore he also was on tenterhooks to declare war somewhere.
Now Bismarck founded the North German Federation, which was the beginning of the German Empire of our day. Bismarck did not follow the British model. He did not like the liberal middle classes of Germany, the tradespeople and manufacturers who were so powerful in Britain. He preferred even the work-people. So he made way for socialism.
The head of the Federation was the Federal Council, composed of envoys, not elected, but chosen from the various governments of the different states., This council brought in all bills, and controlled the administration of the law. Next was the Reichstag, the House of Commons, elected by manhood suffrage, and not by property qualification. Thus it was the people’s house. It was not like the British House of Commons, a chamber of rich men. The Reichstag passed or rejected the bills of the Federal Council, and it controlled finance. But it did not govern. The ministers governed. And the ministers were quite independent of the Reichstag. They represented the Crown, and they alone decided what course should be taken. Reichstag and people’s representatives could not interfere. They only voted money and accepted or rejected the new bills which the Council offered.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 920