Library of the Worlds Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 5 | Page 3

between the huntsman and the devil in the 'Freisch��tz': sooner or later, he declared, the people would come to the Emperor, and pointing to the Imperial arms, would say, "Do you fancy this eagle was given you for nothing?" He sat in the Erfurt Parliament, but had no faith in its success. He opposed the constitution which it adopted, although this was far more conservative than that drafted at Frankfort, because he deemed it still too revolutionary. During the Austro-Prussian disputes of 1850 he expressed himself, like the rest of the Prussian Conservatives, in favor of reconciliation with Austria, and he even defended the convention of Olm��tz.
After Olm��tz, the German Federal Diet, which had disappeared in 1848, was reconstituted at Frankfort, and to Frankfort Bismarck was sent, in 1857, as representative of Prussia. This position, which he held for more than seven years, was essentially diplomatic, since the Federal Diet was merely a permanent congress of German ambassadors; and Bismarck, who had enjoyed no diplomatic training, owed his appointment partly to the fact that his record made him persona grata to the "presidential power," Austria. He soon forfeited the favor of that State by the steadfastness with which he resisted its pretensions to superior authority, and the energy with which he defended the constitutional parity of Prussia and the smaller States; but he won the confidence of the home government, and was consulted by the King and his ministers with increasing frequency on the most important questions of European diplomacy. He strove to inspire them with greater jealousy of Austria. He favored closer relations with Napoleon III., as a make-weight against the Austrian influence, and was charged by some of his opponents with an undue leaning toward France; but as he explained in a letter to a friend, if he had sold himself, it was "to a Teutonic and not to a Gallic devil."
[Illustration: BISMARCK]
In the winter of 1858-9, as the Franco-Austrian war drew nearer, Bismarck's anti-Austrian attitude became so pronounced that his government, by no means ready to break with Austria, but rather disposed to support that power against France, felt it necessary to put him, as he himself expressed it, "on ice on the Neva." From 1859 to 1862 he held the position of Prussian ambassador at St. Petersburg. In 1862 he was appointed ambassador at Paris. In the autumn of the same year he became Minister-President of Prussia.
The new Prussian King, William I., had become involved in a controversy with the Prussian Chamber of Deputies over the reorganization of the army; his previous ministers were unwilling to press the reform against a hostile majority; and Bismarck, who was ready to assume the responsibility, was charged with the premiership of the new cabinet. "Under some circumstances," he said later, "death upon the scaffold is as glorious as upon the battlefield." From 1862 to 1866 he governed Prussia without the support of the lower chamber and without a regular budget. He informed a committee of the Deputies that the questions of the time were not to be settled by-debates, but by "blood and iron."
In the diplomatic field it was his effort to secure a position of advantage for the struggle with Austria for the control of Germany,--a struggle which, six years before, he had declared to be inevitable. During his stay in St. Petersburg he had strengthened the friendly feeling already subsisting between Prussia and Russia; and in 1863 he gave the Russian government useful support in crushing a Polish insurrection. To a remonstrance from the English ambassador, somewhat arrogantly delivered in the name of Europe, Bismarck responded, "Who is Europe?" While in Paris he had convinced himself that no serious interference was to be apprehended from Napoleon. That monarch overrated Austria; regarded Bismarck's plans, which appear to have been explained with extraordinary frankness, as chimerical; and pronounced Bismarck "not a serious person." Bismarck, on the other hand, privately expressed the opinion that Napoleon was "a great unrecognized incapacity." When, in 1863, the death of Frederick VII. of Denmark without direct heirs raised again the ancient Schleswig-Holstein problem, Bismarck saw that the opportunity had come for the solution of the German question.
The events of the next seven years are familiar history. In 1864 Prussia and Austria made war on Denmark, and obtained a joint sovereignty over the duchies of Holstein and Schleswig. In 1866, with Italy as her ally, Prussia drove Austria out of the German Confederation; annexed Schleswig, Holstein, Hanover, Electoral Hesse, and Frankfort; and brought all the German States north of the Main, except Luxemburg, into the North German Confederation, of which the King of Prussia was President and Bismarck Chancellor. When war was declared by France in 1870, the South German States also placed their forces at the King of Prussia's disposal; and before the war