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

own
territories, had re-established its power and threatened Prussia with war.
Russia supported Austria, and Prussia submitted at Olmütz (1850). In
these stirring years, Bismarck--first as a member of the United Diet and
then as a representative in the new Prussian Chamber of
Deputies--made himself prominent by hostility to the constitutional
movement and championship of royal prerogative. He defended the
King's refusal of the imperial crown, because "all the real gold in it
would be gotten by melting up the Prussian crown"; and he compared
the pact which the King, by accepting the Frankfort constitution, would
make with the democracy, to the pact between the huntsman and the
devil in the 'Freischütz': 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
Olmütz.
After Olmütz, 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