The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866

We do not assert that there was an understanding between France and Prussia last spring, and that Prussia went to war because that arrangement assured her against loss; but we think there is nothing irrational in the popular belief in the existence of such an understanding, and that nothing has occurred since the middle of June that renders that belief absurd. The contrary belief makes a fool of Napoleon III.,—a character which not even the Emperor's enemies have attributed to him since he became a successful man.

War began on the 15th of June, the day after that on which that bungling body, the Bund, under Austrian influence, had resort to overt measures against Prussia, which had suffered for some time from its covert measures. The Germanic Confederation ceased to exist on the 14th of June, having completed its half-century, with a little time to spare. The declarations of war that appeared on the 18th of June,—the anniversary of Fehrbellin, Kolin, and Waterloo, all great and decisive Prussian battles, and two of them Prussian victories, or victories which Prussians aided in winning,—the declarations of war, we say, were mere formalities, and as such they were regarded. Prussia's first open operation was taken three days before, when she invaded Saxony,—a country in which the Austrians, had they been wise, would have had at least a hundred thousand men within twenty-four hours after the action of the Diet. Prussia had been prepared for war for some weeks, perhaps months, while we are assured that Austria's preparations were far from complete; from which, supposing the statement correct, the inference is drawn that she did not expect Prussia to push matters to extremity. It is more likely that she fell into the usual error of all proud egotists,—that of estimating the capacity of a foe by her own. We cannot think so poorly of Austrian statesmen and generals as to conclude that they did not see war was inevitable in the latter part of May, which gave them three weeks to mass their troops so near the Saxon frontier as would have enabled them to cross it in a few hours after the Diet had given itself up to their direction, before the world. As the Diet never durst have acted thus without Austria's direct sanction, Austria must have known that war was at hand, and she should have prepared for its coming. Probably she did make all the preparation she thought necessary, she supposing that Prussia would be as slow as herself, because believing that her best was the best thing in the world. This error was the source of all her misfortunes. She applied to the military art, in this age of railways and electric telegraphs, principles and practices that were not even of the first merit in much earlier and very different times. She was not aware that the world had changed. Prussia was thoroughly aware of it, and acted accordingly. She was all vivacity and alertness, and hence her success. In nineteen days, counting from the morning of June 15th, she had accomplished that which almost all men in other countries had deemed impossible. While foreigners were speculating as to the number of days Benedek would require to reach Berlin, and wondering whether he would proceed by the Silesian or the Saxon route, the Prussians were routing him, taking Prague, and marching swiftly toward Vienna. The contending armies first "felt" one another on the 26th of June, in a small affair at Liebenau, in which the Prussians were victorious. The next day there was another "affair," of larger proportions, at Podal, with the same result; and two more actions, one at Nachod and at Skalitz, in which Fortune was consistent, adhering to the single-headed eagle, and the other at Trautenau, which was of the nature of a drawn battle. On the 28th there was another fight at Trautenau, the Prussians remaining masters of the field; while the Austrians were beaten at other points, and fell back to Gitschin, once the capital of Wallenstein's Duchy of Friedland, and where the Friedlander was to receive ample vengeance just seven generations after his assassination by contrivance and order of the head of the German branch of the house of Austria, Ferdinand II. Could Wallenstein have "revisited the glimpses of the moon" on the night of the 28th of last June, he might have cast terror into the soul of Francis Joseph, as the Bodach Glas did into that of Vich-Ian-Vohr, by appearing to him, and bidding him beware of the morrow; for it was at Gitschin, on the 29th of June, and not at Sadowa, on the 3d of July, that the event of the war was decided. Had the battle then and there fought been fortunate for the Austrians, the name of Sadowa would have remained unknown to the world; for then the battle of the 3d of July could not have been fought, or it would have had a different scene, and most probably a different result. Austrian defeat at Gitschin made the battle of Sadowa a necessity, and made it so under conditions highly favorable to the Prussians. The ghost of Wallenstein might have returned to its rest with entire complacency, and with the firm resolution to trouble this sublunary world no more, had it witnessed the flight of the Austrians through Gitschin. By a "curious coincidence," it happens that a large number of the vanquished were Saxons, descendants, it may be, of men who had acted with Gustavus Adolphus against Wallenstein in 1632.

The battle of Sadowa was fought on the 3d of July, the third anniversary of the decisive day of our battle of Gettysburg. At a moderate estimate, four hundred and twenty thousand men took part in it, of whom one hundred and ninety-five thousand were Austrians and Saxons, and two hundred and twenty-five thousand Prussians. This makes the action rank almost with the battle of Leipzig, the greatest of all battles.⁴⁷ It is satisfactory evidence of the real greatness of Prussian generalship, that it had succeeded in massing much the larger force on the final field, though at a distance from the Prussian frontier and far within the enemy's territory; and also that while the invaders of Austria were opposed by equal forces on the left and centre of the Austrian line, they were in excessive strength on that line's right, the very point at which their presence was most required. Yet further: these great masses of men were all employed, and admirably handled, while almost a fourth part of the Austrian army remained idle, or was not employed till the issue of the battle had been decided. The Austrian position was strong, or it would have been so in the hands of an able commander; but Benedek was unequal to his work, and totally unfit to command a larger army than even Napoleon I. ever led in any battle. There seldom has lived a general capable of handling an army two hundred thousand strong. The Prussians, to be sure, were stronger, and they were splendidly handled; but it must be observed that they were divided into two armies, and that those armies, though having a common object, operated apart. In this respect, though in no other, Sadowa bears a resemblance to Waterloo, the armies of the Crown Prince and of Prince Frederick Charles answering to those of Blücher and Wellington. The Prussian force engaged far exceeded that of all the armies that fought at Waterloo, and the Austrian army exceeded them by some five or six thousand men. War has very rarely been conducted on the scale that is known in 1866. Even the greatest of the engagements in our civil contest seem to shrink to small proportions when compared with what took place last summer in Bohemia. The armies of Grant and Lee, in May, 1864, probably were not larger than the Prussian army at Sadowa. At the same time, Austria had a great force in Venetia, and large bodies of men in other parts of her empire, and some in the territory of the Germanic Confederation; and the Prussians were carrying on vigorous warfare in various parts of Germany.

After their grand victory, the Prussians pushed rapidly forward toward Vienna; and names that are common in the history of Napoleon's Austrian campaigns began to appear in the daily journals,—Olmütz, Brünn, Znaym, Austerlitz, and others. Nothing occurred to stay their march, and they were in the very act of winning another battle which would have cut the Austrians off from Hungary, when an armistice was agreed upon. It was so in 1809, when the officers had to separate the soldiers to announce the armistice of Znaym. It came out soon after that the cessation of warlike operations took place not a day too soon for the Austrians, whose army was in a fearfully demoralized condition. Vienna would have been occupied in a week by the Prussians, had they been disposed to push matters to extremities, and that without a battle; or, if a battle had been fought, the Austrian force must have been destroyed, or would have been literally cut off from any safe line of retreat. Probably the house of Austria would have been struck out of the list of ruling families, had the Austrians not submitted to the invaders. Count Bismark is a man who would have had no hesitation in reviving the Bohemian and Hungarian monarchies, had further resistance been made to his will. The armistice was quickly followed by negotiations, and those were completed on the 23d of August, exactly seventy days after the Diet, at the dictation of Austria, had given up Prussia to punishment, to be inflicted by the Austrian sword.

The terms of the treaty of peace are moderate; but it should be understood that what Austria loses is very inadequately expressed by these terms, and what Prussia gains not at all; and what Prussia gains at the expense of Austria, important as it is, is less important than what she has gained from France. From Austria she has taken the first place in Germany; from France, the first place in Europe, which is the same thing as the first place in Christendom, or the world,—meaning by the world that portion of mankind which has power and influence and leadership, because of its knowledge, culture, and wealth. The moral blow falls with greater severity on France than on Austria. Austria had no right whatever to the first place in Germany. There was something monstrous, something highly offensive, in the Germanic primacy of an empire made up of Magyars, Poles, Bohemians, Italians, Slavonians, Croats, Illyrians, and other races, and not above a fourth of whose inhabitants were Germans. Prussia had in June last twice as many Germans as Austria, though her entire population was not much more than half as large as that of her rival;⁴⁸ and when she turned Austria out of Germany at the point of the needle-gun, she simply asserted her own right to the leadership of Germany. But no one will say that there can be anything offensive in a French primacy of Christendom. Objection may be made to any primacy; but if primacy there must be, as mostly there has been, France has the best claim to it of any country. England might dispute the post with her, and England alone; for they are the two nations of modern times to which the world is most indebted. But England has, all but in direct terms, resigned all pretensions to it. Prussia, therefore, by conquering for herself the first place in the estimation of mankind, who always respect the longest and sharpest sword, unhorsed France. Napoleon III. lost more at Sadowa than was lost by Francis Joseph; and we cannot see how he will be able to recover his loss, should Prussia succeed in her purpose to create a powerful Germanic empire,—and all things point to her success. A new force would be introduced into the European system, of which we can only say, that, if its mere anticipation has been sufficient to curb France on the side of the Rhine, its realization ought to be sufficient to prevent France from extending her dominion in any direction—say over Belgium—which such extension is inclined to take.

Thus has a great revolution been effected, and effected, too with something of the speed of light. On the 14th of June, France, in the estimation of the civilized world, was the first of nations, the head of the Pentarchy. On the 4th of July, she had already been deposed, though the change was not immediately recognizable. On the 14th of June, Prussia's place, though respectable, was not to be named with that of France; it was at the tail of the Pentarchy. On the 4th of July she had conquered for herself the headship of that powerful brotherhood. It was the prize of her sword, and it is on the sword that the French Emperor's power mainly rests. He obtained his place by a free use of the military arm, in December, 1851; he confirmed it by the use of the sword in the Russian and Italian wars; and he purposed making a yet further use of the weapon, had circumstances favored his plans, at the time he allowed the Germano-Italian war to begin. Is he who took the sword to perish by it? Is the Prussian sovereign that stronger man of whose coming Crœsus, that type of all prosperous sovereigns, was warned? Who shall say? But as Napoleon's ascendency rested, the sword apart, upon opinion, and not upon prescription, it is difficult to see how he can submit to a surrender of that ascendency, and make way for one who but yesterday was his inferior, and who, in all probability, was then ready to buy his aid at a high price. The Emperor is old and sickly. His life seems to have been in danger at the very time he was making his demand for an increase of imperial territory. Years and infirmities may indispose him to enter on a mighty war; but he thinks more of his dynasty than of himself, his ambition being to found a reigning house. This must lead him to respect French opinion, on his son's account; and opinion in France is anything but friendly to Prussia. Almost all Frenchmen, from Reds to Whites,—Republicans, Imperialists, Orleanists, and Legitimists,—seem to be of one mind on this point. They all agree that Prussian supremacy is unendurable. They could have seen their country make way for England, or Russia, or even Austria, without losing their temper altogether; but for France to be displaced by Prussia is something that it is beyond their philosophy to contemplate with patience. The very successes of the Emperor tell against him under existing circumstances. He has raised France so high, from a low condition, that a fall is unbearable to his subjects. He has triumphed, in various ways, over nations that appeared to be so much greater than Prussia, that to surrender the golden palm to her is the very nadir of degradation. His loss of moral power is as great at home as his loss of material power abroad. He has become ridiculous, as having been outwitted by Germans, whom the French have ever been disposed to look upon as the dullest of mankind. Ridicule may not be so powerful an agency in France to-day as it was in former times, but still it has there a sharp sting. The Emperor may be led into war by the force of French opinion; and he would have all Germany to contend against, with the exception of that portion of it which belongs to the house of Austria. The Austrians would gladly renew the war, with France for their ally. They would forgive Solferino, to obtain vengeance for Sadowa. What occurred among the Austrians when they heard of the French demand for a rectification of their frontier shows how readily they would come into any project for the humiliation of Prussia that France might form. They supposed the French demand would be pushed, and they evinced the utmost willingness to support it,—a fact that proves how little they care for Germany, and also how deeply they feel their own fall. They would have renewed the war immediately, had France given the word. But the Emperor did not give the word. He may have hesitated because he preferred to have Italy as an ally, or to see her occupy the position of a neutral; whereas, had he attacked Prussia before the conclusion of the late war, she must have adhered to the Prussian alliance, which would have led to the deduction of a large force from the armies of Austria and France that he would desire to have concentrated in Germany. Or he may have been fearful of even one of the consequences of victory; for would it not be a source of danger to him and his family were one of his marshals so to distinguish himself in a great war as to become the first man in France? The general of a legitimate sovereign can never aspire to his master's throne; but the French throne is fair prize for any man who should be able to conquer the conquerors of Sadowa. The Emperor's health would not permit him to lead his army in person, as he did in the Italian campaign; and that one of his lieutenants who should, by a repetition of the Jena business, avenge Waterloo, and regain for France, with additions, the rank she held five months ago, would probably prove a greater enemy to the house of Bonaparte than he had been to the house of Hohenzollern. The part of Hazael is always abhorred in advance as much as Hazael himself abhorred it; but Benhadad is sure to perish, and Hazael reigns in his stead.

The nation by which this great change has been wrought in Europe—a change as extraordinary in itself as it is wonderful in its modes, and likely to lead to something far more important—is one of the most respectable members of the European commonwealth, though standing somewhat below the first rank, even while acting on terms of apparent equality with the other great powers. The kingdom of Prussia is of origin so comparatively recent, that there are those now living who can remember others who were old enough to note its creation, in 1700. The arrangements for the conversion of the electorate of Brandenburg into the kingdom of Prussia were completed on the 16th of November, 1700, and the coronation of Frederick I. took place on the 18th of January, 1701, two hundred and eighty-four years less three months after his family's connection with the country began; for it was on the 18th of April, 1417, that the Emperor Sigismund, last member of the Luxemburg family, made Frederick, Burgrave of Nürnberg, Elector of Brandenburg,—the investiture taking place in the marketplace of Constance. The transaction was in the nature of a job, as Frederick was a relative of the Emperor, to whom he had advanced money, besides rendering him assistance in other ways. Frederick was of a very old family, and in this respect, as in some others, the house destined to become so great in the North bore a close resemblance to that other house destined to reign in the South, that of Savoy, which became regal not long after the elevation of descendants of the Burgrave of Nürnberg to royal rank. He was a man adapted to the place he received; and the family has seldom failed to produce able men and women in every generation, some of them being of the highest intellectual force, while others have been remarkable for eccentricities that at times bore considerable resemblance to insanity. Yet there was not much in the history of the new electoral house that promised its future greatness, for more than two centuries.

It is surprising to look back over the history of Germany, and note how differently matters have turned out, in respect to families and countries, from what observers of old times would have predicted. When Charles V. fled before Maurice of Saxony, he may have thought, considering the great part Saxony had had in the Reformation, that from that country danger might come to the house of Austria in yet greater measure; but he would have smiled at the prophet who should have told him not only that no such danger would come, but that Saxony would be ruined because of its adherence to the house of Austria, when assailed by a descendant of the then insignificant Elector of Brandenburg. Yet the prophet would have been right, for Saxony suffered so much from her connection with the Austrians in Frederick the Great's time that she never recovered therefrom; and in the late contest she was lost before a shot was fired, and her troops, after fighting valiantly in Bohemia, shared the disasters of the power upon which she had relied for protection. Bavaria was another German country that seemed more likely to rise to greatness than Brandenburg; but, though her progress has been respectable, it must be pronounced insignificant if compared with that of Prussia. The house of Wittelsbach was great before that of Hohenzollern had risen to general fame; but the latter has passed it, as if Fortune had taken the Hohenzollerns under its special protection, and we should not be in the least surprised were they to take all its territory ere the twentieth century shall have fairly dawned upon the world.

The first of the great Prussian rulers was the Elector Frederick William, who reigned from 1640 to 1688, and who is known as the Great Elector,—a title of which he was every way worthy, and not the less that there was just a suspicion of the tyrant in his composition. He had not a little of that "justness of insight, toughness of character, and general strength of bridle-hand," which Mr. Carlyle attributes to Rudolph of Hapsburg. He was a man of the times, and a man for the times. He came to the throne just as the Thirty Years' War was well advanced in its last decade, and he had a ruined country for his inheritance; but he raised that country to a high place in Europe, and was connected with many of the principal events of the age of Louis XIV. He freed Prussia from her connection with Poland. He created that Prussian army which has done such wonderful things in the greatest of wars in the last two centuries. He it was who won the battle of Fehrbellin, June 18, 1675, at the expense of the Swedes, who were still living on the mighty reputation won under Gustavus Adolphus, almost half a century earlier, and maintained by the splendid soldiers trained in his school. The calm and philosophic Rankè warms into something like eloquence when summing up the work of the Great Elector. "Frederick William," he says, "cannot be placed in the same category with those few great men who have discovered new conditions for the development of the human race; but he may unhesitatingly be ranked with those famous princes who have saved their countries in the hour of danger, and have succeeded in re-establishing order,—with an Alfred, a Charles VII., a Gustavus Vasa. He followed the path trodden by the German territorial princes of old; but among them all there was not one who, finding his state reduced to such a miserable condition, so successfully raised it to independence and power. He instilled into his subjects a spirit of enterprise,—the mainspring of a state. He took measures which secured to his country an increase of power and prosperity. What the world most admired, and indeed what he himself most valued, was the condition of his army. It contained at the time of his death one hundred and seventy-five companies of foot, and seventy-six of cavalry; the artillery had recently been increased in proportion, and the Elector's attention had been constantly directed to its improvement. The whole strength of the army was about twenty-eight thousand men. There was nothing that he recommended so earnestly to his successor as the preservation of this instrument of power. By this it was that he had made room for himself among his neighbors, and had won for the Protestant cause of North Germany the respect that was its due."⁴⁹

Nor did he neglect that naval arm which has been of so great service to many countries. Prussia's desire to have a navy has raised many smiles, and caused much laughter, in this century, as if it were something new; whereas it is an ancient aspiration, and one which all Prussian sovereigns and statesmen have experienced for two hundred years, though not strongly. The Great Czar, who came upon the stage just after the Great Elector left it, did not long more for a good sea-coast than that Elector had longed for it. Frederick William could not effect so much as Peter effected, but he did something toward the creation of a navy for Prussia. His reluctance in parting with a portion of Pomerania was owing to his commercial and maritime aspirations. "Of all the princes of the house of Brandenburg," says Rankè, "he is the only one who ever showed a strong predilection for maritime life and maritime power. It was the dream of his youth that he would one day sail along shores obedient to his will, all the way from Custrin, out by the mouths of the Oder, across to the coast of Prussia. His sojourn in the Netherlands had strengthened, though it had not inspired, his love of the sea. The best proof how painful this cession was to the Elector is the fact that he shortly afterward offered to the crown of Sweden, not alone the three sees of Halberstadt, Minden, and Magdeburg, but a sum of two millions of thalers in addition, for the possession of Pomerania." The same writer says of the Great Elector elsewhere, that "his mind had a wide grasp; to us it may seem almost too wide, when we call to mind that he brought the coast of Guinea into direct communication with Brandenburg, and ventured to compete with Spain on the ocean." When he died, the population of his dominions amounted to one million five hundred thousand.

His successor was his son Frederick, who added to the territory of Prussia, and who, as before stated, became king in November, 1700, a few days after the extinction, in the person of Charles II., of the Spanish branch of the house of Austria. One royal house had gone out, and another came in. Prince Eugene of Savoy, the ablest man that ever served the house of Austria, plainly told the German Emperor that his ministers deserved the gallows for advising him to consent to the creation of the new kingdom, and all subsequent German history seems to show that he was right. But that house needed all the aid it could beg, buy, or borrow, to press its claim to the Spanish crowns; and, thanks to the exertions of the Great Elector, Brandenburg had an army, the aid of which was well worth purchasing at what Leopold may have thought to be a nominal price, after all. So well balanced were the parties to the war of the Spanish Succession, at least in its earlier years, that the mere absence of the Prussian contingent from the armies of the Grand Alliance might have thrown victory into the French scale. What would have been the effect had the army and the influence of Brandenburg been placed at the disposal of Louis XIV.? What would have been the fate of the house of Austria, had the Elector been actively employed on the French side, like the Elector of Bavaria, in the campaign of Blenheim, instead of being one of the stoutest supporters of the Austrians? Even Eugene himself might never have won most of those victories which have made his name immortal, had his policy prevailed at Vienna in 1700, and the Emperor refused to convert the Elector of Brandenburg into King of Prussia. At Blenheim, the Prussians behaved in the noblest manner, and won the highest praise from Eugene, who commanded in that part of the field where they were stationed; and he spoke particularly of their "undaunted resolution" in withstanding the enemy's attacks, and of their activity at a later period of the battle. It is curious to observe that he notes the steadiness and strength of their fire,—a peculiarity that has distinguished the Prussian infantry from the beginning of its existence, and which, from the introduction of the iron ramrod into the service, had much to do with the successes of Frederick the Great, and, from the use of the needle-gun, quite as much with the successes of Prince Frederick Charles and the Crown Prince. In the time of Frederick I., the Prussian troops were employed in Germany and Italy, in France and Flanders. They also served against the Turks. It may be said, that, if the Great Elector created the Prussian army, it received the baptism of fire in full from his son, Frederick I., the first Prussian king.

Frederick I. died in 1713. If it be true—as we think it is—that the great enterprise of William of Orange for the deliverance of England could not have been undertaken but for the aid he gave that prince, Englishmen and Americans ought to hold his name in especial remembrance. He was succeeded by his son Frederick William I., who is counted a brute by most persons, but whom Mr. Carlyle would have us believe to have been a man of remarkable worth. He had talents, and he increased the territory of his kingdom. When he died, in 1740, he left to his son a kingdom containing 2,500,000 souls, a treasury containing $6,000,000, and an army more than thirty thousand strong, and which was the first force in Europe because of its high state of discipline and of the superiority of its infantry weapon. The introduction of the iron ramrod was a greater improvement, relatively, in 1740, than was the introduction of the needle-gun in the present generation. Nothing but the use of that ramrod saved the Prussians from destruction in the first of Frederick II.'s wars. That gave them superiority, which they well knew how to keep. "The main thing," as Rankè observes, "was a regular step and rapid firing; or, as the king once expressed it, 'Load quickly, advance in close column, present well, take aim well,—all in profound silence.'" The whole business of infantry in the field is summed up in the royal sentence, though some may think that line would be a better word than column; and the Prussian system did favor the linear rather than the columnar arrangement of troops, as it "presented a wide front, less exposed to the fire of the artillery, and more efficient from the force of its musketry."

Frederick William I. died in 1740. His successor was Frederick II., commonly called the Great. His history has been so much discussed of late years that it would be useless to mention its details. He raised Prussia to the first rank in Europe. Russia was coming in as a European power, and Spain was then as great as France or England, partly because of her former greatness, but as much from the sagacity of her sovereign and the talents of her statesmen. Louis XV. had lessened the weight of France, and George III. had degraded England. The Austrian house had suffered from its failure before Frederick. All things combined to make of Prussia the most formidable of European nations during the last half of Frederick's reign. When he died, in 1786, the Prussian population amounted to six millions,—the increase being chiefly due to the acquisition of Silesia, which was taken from Austria, and to Frederick's share in the first partition of Poland. He left $50,000,000, and his army contained 220,000 men.