Karl Marx

Austria, Prussia and Germany in the War

From the English.

[“New-York Daily Tribune,” No. 5647, May 27, 1859]

Vienna, May 10, 1859

The impatience and disappointment of the Viennese at the snail’s pace at which the war, begun in such an apparently vigorous manner, is proceeding, has prompted the government to have the following placard posted on all the walls of the capital:

“The possibility that the enemy may get to know, within a few hours, and exploit to his advantage, all the news that is communicated in the domestic papers about the movements of the Imperial and Royal Army, imposes here the obligation to proceed with the utmost caution in the communications in question. The latest reports state that the operating Imperial and Royal Army holds a position between the Po and the Sesia, from which any offensive movement may be made. It is in possession of all the crossings of the Sesia, and although the continuing high water of the Po still prevents decisive movements on to the right bank of that river, the stretches of country between Pontecurone and Voghera are nevertheless constantly held by considerable parts of the army; at the same time, the railway bridge at Valenza has been blown up by us.”

The government naturally views the movements in the smaller Italian states with some uneasiness. The War Ministry has published the following table of the armed forces of these states:

Tuscany. Four regiments of line infantry, each regiment consisting of two battalions, each battalion of six companies – 6,833 men; one battalion of riflemen, six companies – 780 men; one battalion of insular riflemen – 780 men; battalions of volunteer chasseurs – 2,115 men; one battalion of veterans – 320 men; one penal detachment – 150 men; two squadrons of dragoons – 360 horses; one regiment of artillery – eight batteries, each with six guns; one battalion of coastal artillery – 2,218 men; one regiment of gendarmes – 1,800 men. With the appropriate staffs, engineers, naval units, etc., this yields 15,769 men.

Parma. Gardes du corps, halberdiers, guides – 179 men; two line battalions, one chasseur battalion – 3,254 men; one company of artillery – 84 men; engineers – 14 men; gendarmes, four companies – 417 men; with the staffs, commands, schools, labour companies – 4,294 men.

Modena. Four line regiments of only one battalion each – 4,880 men; one company of chasseurs – 120 men; three companies of dragoons – 300 men; one field battery with six guns – 150 men; one coastal battery with twelve guns – 250 men; one labour company – 130 men; one company of pioneers – 200 men; in addition a number of veterans, halberdiers, etc., total 7,594 men.

San Marino. The little republic raises 800 men.

Rome. Two Swiss infantry regiments (a third is now being formed) – 1,862 men; two Italian regiments of the same strength; two sedentary battalions (a curious kind of soldiers) – 1,260 men; one regiment of dragoons, 670 men and horses; one regiment of artillery with seven batteries and four guns – 802 men; gendarmes – 4,323 men; with staffs, engineers, etc., 15,255 men.

Naples and Sicily. Four Swiss regiments, two Neapolitan Guard Grenadier regiments, six grenadier regiments, thirteen infantry regiments, one carabinier regiment, with the depot companies, in all 57,096 men; twelve chasseur battalions with 14,976, and with the depot companies 16,740; nine cavalry regiments, two regiments of heavy dragoons, three regiments of dragoons, one carabinier regiment, two lancer regiments, one mounted chasseur regiment – 8,415 men and horses; two regiments of artillery, each consisting of two field and one fortress battalion, or sixteen field batteries with 128 guns and 12 fortress companies – together, including train, 52,000 men. Adding the halberdiers, engineers, guides, gardes du corps, etc., yields a total strength of 130,307 men.

The Neapolitan fleet consists of two line-of-battle ships with 80 and 84 guns, fifty sailing frigates, twelve steam frigates each with 10 guns, two sailing corvettes, four steam corvettes, two sailing corvettes, eleven smaller steam ships, ten mortar boats and eighteen gunboats.

The Austrian government has, in fact, more or less foreseen the events in Tuscany and may have taken them into account to a certain degree; what fills it with genuine alarm, however, is the reserved, wavering and anything but friendly attitude adopted by the Prussian government. The Prussian government is arming because the clamour of public opinion forces it to do so, but at the same time its diplomatic steps make the arming so to speak ineffectual. It is well known that the present Prussian ministry, and in particular the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Herr von Schleinitz, belongs to the Gotha Party, as it is called in Germany; that is a party which complacently deludes itself with the notion that a collapse of Austria could offer Prussia the opportunity of creating a new Germany under the rule of the Hohenzollerns. This party listens with feigned credulity to Bonapartist diplomacy, which assures it that the war is to be “localised” in Italy and that the stationing of a French observation corps under Pélissier at Nancy means nothing more than a little flattery for that “famous warrior.” En passant, I may remark that the same number of the “Moniteur” which contains this comforting theory publishes an imperial decree for the erection of a statue to Humboldt in Paris, a manoeuvre which, in any case, shows that Bonaparte believes buying the Gotha Party with statues to be no more difficult than buying the French Zouaves with sausages. The Austrian plenipotentiary to the German Federal Diet in Frankfurt, Rechberg, has, it is firmly established, moved a resolution calling on the Diet to declare whether its own security is not endangered by Bonaparte’s participation in the Italian war; but as a result of Prussian intrigues the Diet has to this day refrained from answering the question. Prussia may be in the right when it protests against being commanded by a majority of the petty German sovereigns; but then it would be its duty to take the initiative and itself to propose the measures indispensable for the defence of Germany. So far, it has pursued exactly the opposite course. On 29 April it addressed a circular dispatch to the various members of the Confederation, preaching restraint and caution to them in a very presumptuous tone. In answer to this dispatch, the South German governments reminded the Berlin cabinet, in very impressive language, of the Roman formula: “Caveant consules ne quid respublica detrimenti capiat.”

They declared that, in their conviction, the moment of serious danger for the security of Germany had already arrived and the time of inactivity was decidedly over. Within its own country, the Prussian ministry finds allies of the most diverse kinds. Alongside the Gotha Party itself, there is, first of all, the “Russian” party, which preaches neutrality; then the very influential party of the bankers, stock-market speculators and the people of the Crédit mobilier, represented by the “Kölnische Zeitung,” who, on the basis of their material interests, are devoted to the Crédit mobilier in Paris and consequently to Bonapartism; finally, the pseudo-democratic party, which acts as if it were so outraged by Austrian brutality that it discovers liberalism in the policy of the hero of December. I can assert with certainty that several members of the last-named party have been bought with napoleons d’or and that the chief agent of this trafficker in political opinions lives in Switzerland and is not only a German but even a former member of the German National Assembly of 1848 and an unbridled Radical. You will understand that under these circumstances any declaration directed against neutrality that issues from a Prussian source is eagerly watched here, and that a short manifesto by Herr Friedrich von Raumer, the Prussian historian of the Crusades, has caused a great sensation; it bears the title “Prussia’s Standpoint” and openly combats the theory of the Gotha Party. From the following extracts you may judge the substance of Raumer’s effusions:

“It has been asserted by a certain party that Prussia must preserve the fullest independence, must not allow herself to be carried away either by events or by the impatient agitation of those who seek to push Germany’s policy into false paths and to determine her to premature measures. The government, it is said, must in the face of this maintain its standpoint with immovable firmness, and it is hoped that, since the forces of the other German Great Power are engaged by the Italian war, the states of Germany will rally around Prussia as the natural centre of German policy.

We cannot bring ourselves, without examination, to join in these declarations, to submit to these instructions. To begin with, the assertion of the fullest independence of Prussia is an exaggeration. On the contrary, Prussia has rightly looked about her, asked, wished, warned, recommended, because, wedged in between four powerful states, she is precisely unable to assert full independence and self-reliance, but must take their actions and omissions into account without however surrendering herself and her true calling. Prussia entered the ranks of the Great Powers not by virtue of her mass, but by virtue of the movement of her spirit, her resolution and activity. As soon as these are lacking (history has proved it), she sinks down into lower regions and is neglected or even dominated by others.

For four months diplomacy has toiled hard, but has achieved absolutely nothing in the face of an adversary like Napoleon III, and has instead become completely bankrupt. Is it not natural, not commendable, when the Germans (instructed by bitter experience and in the right feeling of what honour, duty and self-preservation demand) grow impatient and want no longer to mistake cloudy phantoms for sheltering rocks?

How can one hold immovably to a standpoint when all essential circumstances round about have changed and decisive events have occurred? Since we have now achieved nothing whatever from the standpoint of mediation, we may well doubt whether it was the correct one from the beginning, whether it was not a great mistake to take up a position between France and Austria as if the matter concerned France and Turkey. This alleged impartiality, without a decided preponderance on the German side, has not won over the French, but has very much turned the minds of the rest of Germany away from Prussia and diminished confidence.”

We repeat: Without Germany, Prussia cannot in the long run be a great power. The suggestion and advice to abandon Austria in truth to its fate and to rally round Prussia means to ruin Germany. In the manner of Medea, Germany, which, thank God, is at last feeling itself to be an indivisible whole, is to be hacked to pieces, thrown into the witches’ cauldron, and allowed to be talked into believing that diplomatic cooks will bring it forth from it renewed and rejuvenated! We know nothing more foolish, more unpatriotic, more calamitous than the openly proclaimed or secretly smuggled-in doctrine of an Austrian and a Prussian Germany. It is the damnable doctrine of a line of demarcation running right across our German fatherland, cutting it wretchedly apart; it is the presumptuous, short-sighted doctrine of the year 1805, which was inevitably followed by 1806.

The interests of the whole of Germany are the interests of Prussia, and Austria has for centuries (despite all shortcomings, errors and mishaps) been the shield of Germany against Slavs, Turks and French. In a few weeks the Italian war must take a decisive turn; will Germany, in a few weeks, be armed against Napoleon, when he baits the French with the natural frontier of the left bank of the Rhine and, with reference to the Peace of Basel, demands Prussia’s consent?

Caution! has not been lacking so far, but foresight has; events have outstripped all those who waited and have made them forget the old approved proverb: Time lost, all is lost!

In order not to delay the dispatch today, I shall report on another occasion on the commercial panic and the currents among the population of this cheerful and naive city.