From the English.

["New-York Daily Tribune", No. 5465, October 27, 1858]

Berlin, October 13, 1858

After a hard struggle, the Prussian palace revolution has at length become a *fait accompli*. From a mere deputy and plenipotentiary of the King, the Prince of Prussia has been transformed into the state regent. The reluctance with which the Queen and the camarilla yielded was manifest even in the closing scene of the dynastic drama. Herr von Westphalen, the Minister of the Interior and their official representative, refused to sign the decree by which the King transfers the royal power to his brother, resigned his office, and had to be replaced by Herr von Flottwell. On the other hand, the King has not abdicated unconditionally, but, in the words of the decree, "...until I shall again be able to discharge the duties of My royal office Myself", and with the reservation: "Of the affairs of My Royal House I retain those which concern My person for My own disposition." By the one clause the power of the regent is made provisional, and by the other the Queen keeps her hand upon the royal purse. The conditional form of the transference proves that the camarilla, though forced to evacuate the fortress, is determined not to give up the fight. It is indeed an open secret that the King's own physicians, after the apoplectic stroke he suffered last week, have expressed their doubt whether, even under the most favourable circumstances, he will live another year. This declaration has materially contributed to Herr von Manteuffel's resolve to execute a change of front and hoist the flag of the Prince of Prussia. Possessing a smattering of modern history, he knows that Mazarin's influence survived Louis XIII. He knows that Perceval, in spite of the intrigues and the dire prophecies of the Whig place-hunters, succeeded in ingratiating himself with the Regent (the subsequent George IV) and in retaining his post, although, as a blind tool of the camarilla known under the name of the King's Friends, and led by the Queen and the Duke of York, he had grossly insulted the Crown Prince. This defection of Manteuffel compelled the camarilla and the Junker party behind it to sound the retreat. Otherwise the Prince of Prussia would have been left with no choice but either merely to wear the borrowed mask of royal dignity or to call upon the people to intervene—the latter step being as incompatible with his own principles as it would have been with the traditions of the Hohenzollern dynasty. Manteuffel's capacity for changing delivered him from this distressing dilemma. Whether he will show himself grateful to the renegade remains to be seen. The very fact that Manteuffel's name is indelibly associated with the defeat of the March revolution, that he was the responsible editor of the Prussian *coup d'état*, and that his ministry is therefore a living and continuous protest against a "usurpation" by the people, may dissuade the Prince, his personal aversion notwithstanding, from separating himself at once and ostentatiously from this "man of the saving deed".

The contrast between the Prince and the King bears the ordinary hallmark of the Hohenzollern family. The comedian who is more or less profligate, more or less imbued with Byzantine religious conceptions, and more or less coquetting with medieval romance, is always succeeded by the crabbed mixture of sergeant-major, bureaucrat, and schoolmaster. Such is the contrast between Frederick I and his son Frederick William I, between Frederick William II and Frederick William III, between the feeble extravagances of Frederick William IV and the sober mediocrity of the present regent.

It is pretty generally expected, and the British press busily propagates this opinion, that the accession to power of the regent will lead at once to a turn in Prussian foreign policy, release it from Russian supremacy, and bring it closer to England. Now it is conceivable that the Prince Regent is personally toying with similar ideas. The insulting manner with which Nicholas treated Count Brandenburg, the Prussian plenipotentiary and near relative of the royal house, at the Warsaw Congress—an insult that drove Brandenburg to suicide—has never faded from the Prince's memory. The sting of personal affront was felt all the more bitterly, since Nicholas simultaneously forced Prussia, and that in a very unceremonious way, to yield to the claims of Austria, to look on while an Austrian army marched into Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein, and to humble herself before the eyes of all Europe. When, at a later date, the secret and confidential dispatches of the British ambassador at St. Petersburg were published in England, the Prince, by no means a man of conciliatory temper, felt himself again mortified by the ostentatious contempt with which the late Emperor, in appraising the attitude which the European great powers would probably assume in the event of a partition of the Turkish Empire, did not deign even to mention Prussia. It is known that the Prince of Prussia, after the first warlike steps, met the dictatorial arrogance of his Muscovite brother-in-law with stubborn obstinacy during an interview at Prague. In the course of the Russian war, the camarilla suspected the Prince of inclining to the side of the Western Alliance, and accordingly subjected him to a system of personal surveillance and espionage, which was accidentally exposed in a Potsdam scandal trial. The Prince, on his side, had ascertained that the chiefs of the camarilla and favourites of the King, General von Gerlach and Cabinet Councillor Niebuhr (the son of the great historian), were acting as direct agents of the St. Petersburg government, informing it in detail of everything that went on in the Cabinet, and receiving from it orders which went even into such particulars as the disposition of the various *corps d'armée* throughout the kingdom. With the death of Emperor Nicholas the grounds of personal antagonism vanished. On the other hand, Alexander II cannot be expected to inspire his uncle with that feeling of fear with which Nicholas, after his marriage to Frederick William III's eldest daughter, understood how to strike the Hohenzollern dynasty right to the heart. It is, rather, highly probable that the new family connections of the regent with England will exercise a certain influence on the direction of his foreign policy. However, this really depends not on the personal inclinations of the Prince, but on the vital conditions of the state. If Prussia were simply a German power, the question could be decided very easily; but Prussia is not only the rival of Austria, which, in its turn, is an opponent of Russia; the most important principle of the Prussian monarchy is land-grabbing at the expense of Germany with the help of Russia. Through the alliance of Frederick William I with Russia, Prussia succeeded in taking Pomerania from the Swedes. Through the alliance with Catherine, in turn, Frederick the Great was enabled to retain Austrian Silesia and obtain substantial parts of Poland; the same manoeuvre was repeated by Frederick William II and Frederick William III with equal success. Similarly, through the protection of Alexander I, Prussia received the Rhine Province, and was permitted at the same time to aggrandise herself at the expense of Saxony. And it is precisely upon Russia that Prussia must rely in the event of a French invasion. It is, therefore, more than doubtful whether the vital conditions of the Prussian state will ever allow its rulers to cast off Russian supremacy, and whether, consequently, the expectations of the public, both on this point and on questions of home policy, will not be disappointed.