Peace preliminaries were signed on July 27. Bismarck's principal war aims—the dissolution of the German Confederation and the removal of Austria from German affairs—had been accomplished by a course so circuitous, so Machiavellian, that historians continue to debate whether or not Bismarck actually intended the diplomatic campaign as it unfolded.82
Putting aside as unprofitable for our study an analysis of the psychological intentions of the Prussian president-minister, three questions remain: (1) How was Prussia able to convert a somewhat reckless act of Danish nationalism into a decisive weapon of destruction against the Confederation, on whose behalf Bismarck was allegedly acting? (2) How was Prussia able to use an alliance with Austria, and a successful war prosecuted by the two allies, to destroy Austria's role in German nationalism? (3) Is there anything about the nature of Moltke's strategy that helps us answer (1) and (2); that is, did the military imperative in this instance shape the sort of state that Bismarck was pursuing, such that it enabled, indeed brought to life a ruthlessly decisive diplomatic and political opponent of both the Confederation and the Austrian empire? The answers to all three questions revolve around legitimacy, popular nationalism, and self-determination, and their interplay with the new constitutional structure coming into being, the nation-state.
First, Denmark and all the states of the German Confederation were inflamed by nationalism. There were both German- and Danish-speaking residents in Schleswig-Holstein, in significant numbers. It had long been a goal of Danish nationalists to recognize constitutionally what was already a fact dynastically; namely, that the Danish king was the ruler of the duchies. Danish dynastic succession had been strengthened by the Treaty of London in 1852, which recognized Christian IX as the successor to Frederick VII. The role of the duchies, however, remained a point of contention between the two national movements. As early as 1855 a constitution had been adopted for a Greater Denmark that gave a central parliament in Copenhagen legislative rights over the duchies.
Protests had been immediately lodged against this move by the Confederation on behalf of Holstein, which was a member of the Confederation, and also by Austria and Prussia, which were signatories to the Treaty of London. When the Federal Diet threatened the Danish king with an enforcement order (a Bundesexekution) with respect to Holstein and Lauenburg, Frederick compliantly abolished the new constitution, but this had the unfortunate effect of separating Schleswig from the other two territories, because it was not a member of the Confederation. At the end of March 1863 the Danes formally objected to the section of the Treaty of London that dealt with Schleswig, and announced they would henceforth recognize special status for Holstein and Lauenburg only. When the Conf-federation now threatened to reinstitute the Bundesexekution order with respect to Schleswig, it exceeded its lawful authority. The Confederation was not a signatory to the Treaty of London, and Schleswig was not a member of the German Confederation. The Confederation was thus discredited in the eyes of German nationalists and forced to rely on the two German great powers to enforce matters against the Danes.
The Danes promptly adopted a new constitution incorporating Schleswig, and it was at precisely this point that Frederick VII died. The Treaty of London, which had been guaranteed by the great powers for just this eventuality, was now called into question because the legal requirements for succession had not been fulfilled by the Holstein parliament. German opinion was virtually unanimous that the treaty did not apply. Into this breach the duke of Augustenburg, who had relinquished his rights under the treaty, now stepped forward and offered his son, who was presented to the Confederation as Duke Frederick VIII. This was rapturously hailed by the citizens of Schleswig-Holstein as vindicating their rights to self-determination. A constituent assembly gathered spontaneously and swore allegiance to Frederick VIII. The majority of members of the German Confederation declared for Augustenburg and for the recognition of an independent principality for Schleswig-Holstein. This was the situation in November 1863. Prussia thus was offered the opportunity of championing the national movement, a role for which Bismarck had previously clamored.
Now, to the astonishment of all observers, Bismarck objected. As his principal biographer puts it,
instead of leading Prussia to the head of the national movement, instead of mobilizing Prussia's military might for the German cause, the might that after all was supposed to have been strengthened and was to be strengthened further to this end, the Prussian head of government appealed to the sanctity of international treaties. And instead of supporting the actions of the Confederation and upholding Prussia's claim to a leading role with that organization, he was obviously concerned only to put relations between Prussia and Austria back on their old, pre-1848 footing…83
For Austria had never been keen on the idea of self-determination. The vindication of national passions would hardly be welcome to a multinational empire, with the obvious implications for Venetia, Bohemia, and Hungary. Moreover, Schleswig-Holstein was far from Austria, lying between Prussia and Denmark and obviously well within Prussian control. In view of this, Vienna was extraordinarily pleased, if surprised, when the Prussian minister-president suggested a close collaboration between the two states and rejected the proposal for an independent principality.
It was a virtuoso performance. By demonstrating the impotence of the Confederation to the German national movement, Bismarck wholly discredited it as the vehicle for unification. The German Confederation could not deliver a German state against the Danes. But by luring Austria into a repudiation of the Augustenburg plan, Bismarck demonstrated that Austria too could not be relied on to vindicate German nationalism. By securing an alliance with Austria, he divided it from France, the one party that might have saved the Habsburg Empire once Prussia turned on it. And by selecting a field of confrontation so remote from Austria as Schleswig-Holstein, Bismarck guaranteed that, when the time was right, he could force a conflict with a now isolated Austria and annex the duchies to Prussia.
In creating an alliance with Austria, he excluded the German Confederation. This was accomplished by persuading the Austrians that the principle on which they must stand was the sanctity of international law; the Confederation, after all, was not a signatory to the Treaty of London. Moreover, Bismarck claimed to be upholding the rights of the state-nation against the national movements that threatened it, in this case the Danish. When, Prussia having proposed to annex the duchies, Austria was forced to fall back on the pro-Augustenburg position, she fatally embarrassed herself with the German national movement and gave Prussia the casus belli that permitted Moltke's armies to take the field.
All this falls into place if we appreciate Bismarck as the architect of the nation-state, as opposed to a champion of nationalism. Perhaps the most important insight into his aims is contained in his own words: “If revolu-tion there is to be, let us rather undertake it than undergo it.”84
Despite his frequent and passionate claims to the contrary, Bismarck was not inclined to protect the state-nations of Europe, including its empires. Rather he aimed to destroy the Concert built out of them with a new creation, the nation-state.* In so doing he was internationalizing the constitutional struggle in which he was engaged in Prussia, and he was deploying a strategic style of confrontation that was uniquely suited to the popular resources and moral passions of the nation-state.
The mortal risk to the Vienna system of state-nations lay in the kind of warfare conducted by the nation-state. As Lothar Gall has observed of the 1866 campaign:
The danger, as Bismarck knew, was considerably increased by the type of war that the Prussian military leadership, under the influence of… Moltke, envisaged waging. From the start it was no limited engagement in the style of eighteenth century warfare that they planned, one answering to possibly wide-ranging but at the same time precisely defined and hence limited political objectives; what they had in mind was an unlimited, “total” war that aimed to destroy the opponent's military might as completely as possible.
85
It is no coincidence that the appearance of the nation-state—in the United States owing to the Civil War, in Europe owing to the unification of Germany—was accompanied by the strategic style of total war.* If the nation governed the state, and the nation's welfare provided the state's reason for being, then the enemy's nation must be destroyed—indeed, that was the way to destroy the state. Whereas Napoleon and the state-nation had reversed this, as for them it was necessary to destroy the state by threatening the state apparatus with annihilation, for the nation-state it was necessary to annihilate the vast resources in men and matériel that a nation could throw into the field, quickly through encirclement (Moltke's method), or less quickly if necessary through the attrition of economic resources (Sherman's method). It was only when nuclear weapons made the divided superpowers mutually and mortally vulnerable that the nation-state and the style of total war it dictated were undermined (at least as to these powers and their allies).
Moltke's strategy led to the overwhelming defeat of the Austrians at Koniggratz and Sadowa on July 3, 1866, and the peace of July 27 of that year. This time there was no congress to sort out the results. The Prussian peace terms were moderate, nonnegotiable, and perfectly understandable in light of the objective of creating a nation-state, though puzzling from the perspective of a state-nation (as indeed they completely bewildered William I). Austria made no surrenders of territory. Even the customary war indemnity demanded of the loser was quite reasonable, much of it being composed of a cancellation of Prussian debts. The principal changes were political: Hanover, Hesse, Nassau, and what had been the free city of Frankfurt all were to lose their independent status and become provinces of Prussia, as were the disputed duchies of Schleswig and Holstein.
Bismarck next turned to the question of the southern states of Germany. The peace treaty of Prague in 1866 confined Prussia to an area north of the river Main. His strategy for annexing the states beyond the Main appeared at the time extraordinarily indirect and improbable, but it was made successful nonetheless by virtue of a remarkable stroke of political luck. For Bismarck did not threaten these states directly—which would have united Austria and France against him—but rather brought them under his control by virtue of a conflict over Spanish succession, of all things. If we keep in mind his goal of building a new constitutional order, however, and put to one side the more usual goals of simple territorial aggrandizement and accretion, his success does not seem all that roundabout. It was only necessary for him to build, by every means at his disposal, a sense of the German nation in the southern states, and then wait for the international opportunity that would allow him to unite that sense with Moltke's army corps.
Bismarck first concluded a set of secret military alliances with the south German states. Then he announced a proposal for a common customs union, to be governed by a parliament elected on the basis of universal suffrage for the entire area of the union, which included Southern and Northern Germany. He then covertly disclosed to the press a secret deal wherein Napoleon III had agreed to purchase Luxembourg from the king of the Netherlands. When news of this broke, a wave of patriotic emotion carried the southern states into the new parliament in June 1867.
Of course, in such a parliament, as he was well aware, he immediately began to confront the same political opposition he had encountered in the Prussian parliament. Popular opinion was far more influential in the nascent nation-state than it had been in the state-nation, but Bismarck had to risk its antagonism and even opposition if he was to harness its energy. In the election to the new parliament Bismarck's allies were crushed, just as his forces had been routed repeatedly in Prussian elections. Bismarck bided his time.
In 1868 Queen Isabella of Spain was overthrown; the successful insurgents now looked for a new monarch. They offered the crown to Prince Leopold of the Catholic branch of the Hohenzollerns, Prussia's dynastic family. This in itself did not fire Bismarck's ambitions for the Prussian ruling house, contrary to the conclusions of historians analyzing this offer from the state-nation's point of view. Napoleon I may have wanted his relatives on all the thrones proximate to his; Bismarck was after something else. Rather, he feared that if the Hohenzollern candidate rejected the offer, the Spanish would turn to the Wittelsbach dynasty of Bavaria, the principal south German state that opposed his long-range plans. If this happened, Bismarck told a nonplussed William I on March 9, 1870, the Spanish ruling house would maintain “contacts with anti-national elements in Germany and afford them a secure if remote rallying point.”86
This did not persuade William, who was often baffled by his minister-president. In the middle of March the king cast the only vote in the Prussian Crown Council against the Hohenzollern candidacy of Prince Leopold. The king's opposition was sufficient; on April 20 Leopold and his father sent the Spanish government a formal notification of their refusal. By June, however, Bismarck had been able to turn this around, all the time keeping to the pretense that this was purely a dynastic affair. The acceptance by Leopold on June 19 was followed by the consent of the Prussian king two days later. Now the trap was baited.
What Bismarck counted on was an intemperate reaction by Napoleon III. If this could be provoked, then
German national feeling would all of a sudden come into play: the nation would feel humiliated through its protecting power, Prussia, and would demand appropriate counter-measures. [That] would result in all misgivings and reservations with regard to Prussia and Prussian control being thrust into the background, at least temporarily. One could then expect to see a kind of national united front comprising the vast majority of existing parties and political forces with corresponding repercussions on the future shape of Central Europe.87
On July 4, two days after the announcement by the Spanish of the Hohenzollern acceptance, the Prussian ambassador was summoned to hear a sharply worded threat from the French foreign minister as well as the prime minister. The ambassador agreed to report these directly to the Prussian king at Bad Ems, where William had gone for a holiday. Two days later the French foreign minister announced in the Chamber of Deputies that
[w]e do not believe that respect for the rights of a neighbor people obliges us to suffer a foreign power to disturb the present balance of power in Europe to our disadvantage… [The French government relies on] the wisdom of the German… people….[But] should things turn out otherwise we shall know… how to do our duty without hesitation and without weakness.88
At this point the French ambassador, Benedetti, hurried to Bad Ems. On July 9 he delivered a formal complaint to the Prussian king. As arranged by Bismarck, the king replied simply that he had given his consent as the head of the Hohenzollern family and not as king of Prussia; the decision had been one for Leopold's branch of the family to decide. The conciliatory king nevertheless then promptly wrote to Leopold's father on July 10 suggesting that his son withdraw. On July 12 Prince Leopold announced that he was no longer a candidate.
However they may have appeared, so far things were going Bismarck's way. He knew he could count on the king's genuine aversion to war and his willingness to compromise. Now Bismarck's judgment of Napoleon III and the French leader's invincible vanity, as well as recent developments on the French political scene, came to bear. Through the Prussian ambassador in Paris the French government demanded not only formal approval of the withdrawal but also a declaration on the part of the king that in consenting to the candidature he had had no desire to offend the interests and honor of the French nation, and, further, that he would enter into a binding commitment never to give his consent to such a candidacy in the future. It was now possible for Bismarck to spring the trap by disclosing these demands to the German public and demonstrating that France was attempting to use the king's obvious love of peace and willingness to compromise to humiliate him and with him Prussia and the German nation that relied on Prussia as its military arm. Thus when the king sent his reply to the French through Bismarck, the latter cut the “Ems Dispatch” to only two
sentences and distributed it to all Prussian diplomatic missions late in the evening of July 13 for immediate publication. A legend has grown up around Bismarck's behavior at this point—Winston Churchill renders it unforgettably89—that Bismarck doctored the dispatch. The “revised” message went:
His Majesty the King has refused to receive the French ambassador again and has informed the latter through the duty adjutant that His Majesty has nothing further to say to the ambassador…90
The original had spoken only of “an adjutant” and the part about having nothing to say had referred explicitly to the present state of information. This was the final snap of the trap. French reaction, which would have been imprudent enough in the hands of Napoleon III, was now a matter of French public opinion. Bismarck could count on France responding so vehemently that Prussia could take its newly won national solidarity into the field. The French mobilized on July 14, 1870, and declared war on July 19, 1870. With this declaration, the formal legal requirements of the alliance treaties with the south German states were triggered, probably unnecessarily for ever since the publication of the Ems Dispatch, German national opinion had been passionately behind the Prussian king.
THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES Page 30
