Part 1214

… With the rise of Prussia began the long bloody work of freeing Germany from foreign rule. … In this one state there awoke again, still half unconscious as if drunken with long sleep, the old hearty pride in the fatherland. … The House of Hapsburgh recognized earlier than the Hohenzollerns did themselves how hostile this modern North German state was to the old constitution of the Holy Empire. In Silesia, in Pomerania, in the Jülich-Cleve war of succession—everywhere Austria stood and looked with distrust on its dangerous rival. … Equally dangerous to Hapsburgh and to the German empire were the French and the Turks; how natural was it for Hapsburgh to seek support from Germany, to involve the empire in its wars, to use it as a bulwark towards the west or for diversions against France in case the Turks threatened the walls of Vienna. … Only it cannot be denied that in this common action the Austrian policy, under a more centralized guidance and backed by a firmer tradition, looked out for its own advantage better than did the German empire—loose, heavy, and without consistent leadership. When the might of Louis XIV began to oppress Germany the policy of the Hapsburghs was to remain for a long time luke-warm and inactive. This policy led Austria indeed even to make a league with France and, when she did at last decide to help the great elector of Brandenburg against the enemy of the empire, this happened so charily and equivocally as to give rise to the doubt whether the Austrian army was not placed there to keep watch over the Brandenburg forces or even to positively hinder their advance. An Austrian writer himself assures us that Montecuculi was in secret commanded only to make a show of using his weapons against the French. For a long time Austria stood by inactive while the Reannexations were going on.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1679-1691 (page 1236).

… The whole war as conducted by Austria on the Rhine and in the West was languid and sleepy;

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1672-1714 (page 209);

the empire and individual warlike princes were left to protect themselves. What an entirely different display of power did Austria make when it was a question of fighting for its own dynastic interests!"

_H. von Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte im 19ten Jahrhundert (translated from the German), volume 1, pages 21-33._

"As in the wars so in the diplomatic negotiations the separation of the Austrian dynastic interests from the advantage and needs of the German empire often enough came to light. It is only necessary to revert to the attitude which the emperor's diplomacy took at Nimeguen and Ryswick.

See NIMEGUEN (page 2362); and FRANCE: A. D. 1697 (page 1243)].

… When in the conferences at Gertruidenburg (1710) Louis XIV was reduced to being willing not only to give up the 'Reannexations' and Strassburg but even to restore Alsace and the fortress of Valenciennes, it was also not the interests of the empire but solely those of the House of Hapsburgh which led to the rejection of these offers and to the continuance of a war by which, as it turned out eventually, not one of these demands was gained. No wonder that in Germany, restricted though the imperial authority already was, men still did not feel secure so long as the emperor continued to have even the power of making peace independently of the empire."

_L. Häusser, Deutsche Geschichte (translated from the German). volume 1, page 23._

"Louis XIV regarded himself not exactly as enemy of the German empire and of the imperial power of the House of Hapsburgh, but rather as a pretendant to the throne. As he explains it in the political directions meant for his son the empire of the West, the heritage of Charles the Great, belongs not of right to the Germans but to the kings who are crowned at Rheims. … The Germans have ruined the empire, only a ruler with the power of the French king can bring it again to honor. … If Louis XIV by means of the Rhine Confederation of 1658 saw himself bound in a close communion with German princes and electors, if his troops rushed in at the decisive moment before Erfurt and at Saint Gothard, if his omnipresent diplomacy sought to find starting-points everywhere, even in the Hofburg at Vienna: all this seemed to him activity in a field which he really felt belonged to himself. The rendering of the German princes dependent on the French court, the loosening of the bonds which held the empire together, the isolation of the Hapsburghs from the rest of the empire: these were tasks which presented themselves as a matter of course if taken in connection with those views of the right of the French to the empire. … Already in Richelieu's time the king's councillor, Jacques de Cassan, had brought forward the proof, in a writing dedicated to the cardinal, that the greater part of the existing European states, including Germany, were lands which had unjustly been estranged from the French crown. … This idea d'Auberry now carried further: as a matter of fact Germans and French were to be considered one people as they had been under the Merovingians and Carolingians; … the true ruler, in the sense of the original world-organization was not the emperor but the French king."

_B. Erdmannsdörffer, Deutsche Geschichte (1648-1740) (translated from the German), volume 1, page 509._

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GERMANY: A. D. 1789-1792. Germany and the French Revolution.

"What enthusiasm prevailed when France proclaimed the equality of everything that bears human form, when the prophecies of Rousseau, who spoke as no other Frenchman could, to the hearts, to the courage, to the ideals of the German youth, seemed about to be realized! All the cravings of the time, the noble eagerness to recognize the dignity of man and the heaven-storming defiance of the sovereign ego, found themselves satisfied by the bold sophism of the Genevan philosopher who declared that, in a condition of absolute equality, everyone should obey himself only. The sins of the Revolution appeared to the harmless German spectators as hardly less seductive than its great deeds. The taste which had been educated on Plutarch's lives of heroes grew loyally excited over the broad Catonism of the new apostles of freedom: the unhistorical abstractions of their political creed were in keeping with the philosophical self-satisfaction of the age. The over-zealous youths in whose ears still sounded the stirring words of the robber Moor felt themselves drawn along by the rhetorical pathos of the French and unsuspectingly admired the republican virtue of the Girondists at the very time when this party with unhallowed frivolity was instigating a war against Germany. … In Hamburg and several other cities the festival of confraternity was celebrated and the liberty pole erected on the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. … Even in Berlin women of rank were seen adorned with the tricolored ribbon and the rector of the Joachimsthal gymnasium, in a solemn official address held on the occasion of the king's birthday, praised the glorious Revolution to the lively applause of Minister Hertzberg. … But this enthusiasm of the German cultivated world for revolutionary France was and remained purely theoretical; … the German admirers of the Revolution never once laid before themselves the question how their feelings on the subject should take on flesh and blood. The wise man of Konigsberg [Kant] unconditionally and harshly rejected all right of resistance. Even Fichte, the most radical of his disciples, who even in the days of Robespierre still dared to defend French liberty, warned emphatically against the carrying out of his own ideas. He saw no bridge between the 'level high road of natural law' and the 'dark defile of a half-barbaric policy,' and he closed with the renunciatory declaration: 'Worthiness to attain liberty can only come upwards from below; freedom itself, if there is to be no disturbance, can only descend from above.' … When the struggle of parties continued to rage ever more fiercely and with more cruelty, when the fanatic zeal for equality took upon itself to annihilate even the last aristocracy of all, that of life itself, then the faithful and unchanging mind of the German found it impossible any longer to follow the unaccountable contortions of French passion. The German enthusiast turned weeping away from the barbarian who had defiled his sanctuary. … Only in the minor states, which lacked the sense of justice of a monarchy, did the sins of the old French regime find an echo. There in the Germany of the religious foundations (the Rhine bishoprics) there still flourished the catholic unity of faith and the pride of cathedral chapters which were recruited from nobles. In the cities of the empire the haughtiness and corruption of old civilian confraternity held sway, in the territories of the princes, counts and imperial knights, the arrogance of little corner tyrants. The whole existence of these ruined and ossified forms of government cried shame on the ideas of the century. Almost solely in these tiniest provinces did a slight popular ferment show itself when the glad news of the great peasant emancipation came from France. It chanced that the abbess of Frauenalbe was hunted from her lands by her subjects, that the oath of allegiance was refused to her sister-abbess in Elten. Small peasant revolts broke out here and there. … All this betokened little; in reality nowhere was the political slumber of the empire deeper than in these regions. … The weak and weaponless small states were entirely without power of resistance against foreign violence. … Neither was the emperor nor were the Prussian statesmen blind to the immeasurable dangers of a war in the condition in which things were. Leopold's cold-blooded, calculating nature remained long unmoved by the appeals for help written by his unhappy sister Marie Antoinette, who allowed herself to be carried to the very verge of betraying her country by her woman's passion and her princely pride. The Prussian cabinet was at first very well pleased with the steps taken by the constitutional parties; its envoy, von der Goltz, made no secret of acknowledging the righteousness of the cause of the revolution and showed that he had kept his eyes open to the accumulated acts of folly of the blinded court. The mad doings of the emigres were condemned with equal severity in Vienna and in Berlin. Not until the spring of 1791, not until King Louis had had to atone for his unsuccessful flight by unheard of personal humiliations, did the two courts begin to think seriously of protecting themselves against acts of revolutionary violence. … Frederick William's chivalrous soul was aglow with the thought of avenging with his sword the offended majesty of France. Single clever heads among the émigrés succeeded after all in gaining secret influence at court. … In his circular from Padua Leopold invited the European powers to enter the lists for his ill-used brother-in-law, to avenge by forcible means every insult to the dignity of the king, to recognize no constitution of France of which the crown should not voluntarily approve. Bischoffswerder, of his own accord and contrary to his instructions, then signed the Vienna treaty of the 25th of July by which both parties (Prussia and Austria) mutually guaranteed each other's possessions and promised each other help in case of internal disturbances. … Public opinion in Prussia greeted the Austrian alliance with deep mistrust, … but King Frederick William approved the arbitrary steps of his friend (Bischoffswerder). He met Leopold soon after in Pillnitz … and rejoiced in the thought that the league of the two chief powers in Germany would last eternally, to the weal of coming generations. In all of these mistaken acts there was no immediate threat against France. In Pillnitz those émigrés who urged war were sternly thrust aside and all that was obtained was the empty declaration of August 27; the two powers announced that they considered King Louis's cause a matter common to all sovereigns; in case all European powers should agree, there should be interference in France's internal affairs. {3773} This meant nothing whatever, for everyone knew that England would have nothing to do with armed intervention. And even these obscure conditions were abandoned in Vienna when King Louis, in the autumn, was reinstated in his dignities and voluntarily accepted the new constitution. The Revolution seemed to have come to a standstill, the emperor was completely pacified. … It was France and France alone that, in the face of this peaceable attitude of the German powers, forced the war upon them. … The antipathy of a great majority of the nation [France] to the republic was to be overcome by the glamor of military successes, by the old darling dream-project of natural boundaries. The financial needs of the state were to be remedied by a mighty plundering expedition. … While the war-like mood in the legislative assembly increased from day to day, in the negotiations with the emperor paltry disdain was shown; not even was a definite indemnity offered to the estates of the empire in Alsace. It was then that the House, carried away by the stirring speeches of the Gironde, demanded a solemn declaration from the emperor that he would give up the plan of a European league and would show his readiness to support France according to the old treaties of alliance with the Bourbons. The penalty of refusal was to be immediate war. Upon Leopold giving a dignified and temperate reply war was declared against Austria on April 20th 1792. … A doctrinary speech of Condorcet's announced to the world that the principles of republican liberty had risen up against despotism. The glove was thus thrown down to the whole of ancient Europe: for Prussia, moreover, the Vienna Treaty now became binding, having meanwhile been supplemented by a formal defensive league."

_H. von Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte im 19ten Jahrhundert (translated from the German), volume 1, page 114-124._

See, also, FRANCE: A. D. 1791 (pages 1271-1275).

GERMANY: A. D. 1796-1807. Germany and Napoleon.