William Dawson - History of the German Empire

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AT THE OPENING OF THE nineteenth century the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation still existed, after a thousand years of chequered life. Long decadent, it was now moribund, however, and perpetuated only in name an august sovereignty which at one time extended over a large part of the European Continent. Diverse in race, language, religion, and political forms, having no common bond in administration, law, justice, or military organization, the many parts of the imperial dominion were kept together in firm union only so long as they were subject to a strong rule, and when once the centre of authority had become weakened, decline and disintegration ran their certain course.

The first powerful impetus to this process was given by the Peace of Westphalia, which secured to the German Princes a large degree of territorial sovereignty. Now for a century and a half these Sovereigns had steadily encroached upon the imperial jurisdiction and disputed its claims, local autonomy had spread and strengthened, until the might and majesty of Charlemagnes and Barbarossas sway had come at last to be represented by a loose and incoherent political system, composed of States which had little in common save a desire to magnify themselves at the expense of the Emperor and of each other. Of these States there were three hundred, for the most part petty and as political organizations contemptible, each with its Court and Government, army and bureaucracy, customs and taxes, coinage, weights, and measures. Giants amongst pigmies, Austria and Prussia overshadowed all the rest.

For over five hundred years the Austrian reigning house had borne the imperial title, yet for a long time it had been Prussia and not Austria which had been gaining in power at home and repute abroad. As a member of the old Empire, Prussia had long gone her own way; never had the Emperors succeeded in asserting an effectual authority over her masterful rulers. More and more the northern kingdom had disputed the superiority claimed, in virtue of a sovereignty that had become little more than titular, by its older but less vigorous rival on the Danube. From the time when Frederick the Great established the Prussian military State, whose foundations had been laid by his father, and challenged the power of the house of Habsburg in its citadel by the rape of Silesia, an act of aggression which he had to defend by seven years of continuous warfare, the precedence of Austria in the Empire had been definitely threatened.

Frederick the Great had almost doubled his territory; he had increased the population under his sway from two and a half to six millions and his army from 82,000 to 200,000. As his master-thought in life had been conquest, so his supreme concern at the last he died in 1786 was that the gains which he had won, some by fair, others by unfair means, should be consolidated and preserved. My last wishes when my breath expires, he wrote in his will, will be for the happiness of my country. May it ever be ruled with justice, wisdom, and decision; may it be the happiest of States because of the clemency of its laws, the best managed financially, and the most bravely defended, because of the honourable and worthy fame of its army.

The immediate successors of the greatest of the Hohenzollerns failed to live up to his reputation, or to improve or even rightly value the inheritance which he had committed to their keeping. Frederick William II, known as William the Fat, was, with all his amiability, a man of small intelligence and weak character. He neither ruled well himself nor had he the wit to choose men able to do his work well for him, and he became the creature of scheming flatterers. A frank libidinist, his notorious amours were only made more vulgar by the bouts of religious extravagance which alternated with them. More than once be made a feeble show of challenging Austrias reviving pretensions, but when it came to supporting words by acts, his courage failed him. The administration of his country, energetic and efficient at his accession, he left weak and corrupt: the army had diminished in numbers and in spirit; debt had accumulated though taxation had increased: in civil life, public spirit and private virtue had decayed. It was due to this King even more than to his successor, Frederick William III, a weakling likewise, though free from his coarseness and private vices, that twelve years after the death of Frederick the Great the fame of that rulers martial triumphs had been sacrificed and Prussias prestige in Europe for a time suffered eclipse. Even in Germany the once powerful northern kingdom had ceased to be either feared or respected. The Alliance of Princes (Frstenbund) which Frederick had concluded, with himself as its centre, had been dissolved, and States which, like Saxony, had been accustomed to look to Prussia for support had gravitated instead to Austria.

The German household, divided against itself, its chief members indifferent custodians of the common interest of security, was unable to stand the shock of Napoleons onslaught. After Austria, already vanquished in Italy, had been compelled to conclude on behalf of the Empire the Peace of Lunville in 1801, the subjugation of all Germany followed swiftly. Meanwhile, Bavaria, Wrtemberg, and Baden had sought safety by joining the enemy of the larger fatherland. State after State fell beneath the hammer-blows of the mighty Thor, and soon from the Rhine to the Elbe ancient sovereignties lay in ruins, heap on heap. The climax came in 1806, when at the battle of Jena (October 14th) the kingdom of Prussia, which Frederick had raised to such a dizzy height of power, was shattered and overthrown; while by the succeeding Peace of Tilsit (July 7, 1807) its area was reduced to the four eastern provinces of Brandenburg, Silesia, West Prussia, and East Prussia, and its population from ten to five millions. Two months before Jena, Napoleon had declared the Holy Roman Empire dissolved, in order that he might himself claim succession to Charlemagne, and on August 6th, at his bidding, Francis II not unwillingly laid down the imperial office. So it was that a dominion which had been created by warlike emprise, and many acts of masterly if cunning statecraft, succumbed in helpless impotence, unhonoured and unregretted.

If Napoleon found delight in putting down the mighty from their seats, he was no less fond of exalting the humble and meek. As far as was consistent with his political designs, he lightened the sorrows of many of his German victims, for in his rare deeds of magnanimity, as well as in those of heartless cruelty, there was always a deep, calculated purpose. To some he gave new territories for those taken away, to others he gave titles; to two reigning houses he deigned to give his relatives in marriage. There was a systematic readjustment of princely rank amongst the rulers who passed into his service or under his protection. The duke, for reward or consolation, was made a grand duke, the grand duke an elector, the elector a king. Three of the four kingdoms comprised within the present German Empire, Bavaria, Wrtemberg, and Saxony, owed their higher status to the favour of Napoleon.