Karl Marx

Quid pro Quo

I

["Das Volk" No. 13, July 30, 1859]

General Clausewitz, in a piece on the Austro-French campaign of 1799, remarks that Austria so often succumbed because the disposition of its battles, both strategic and tactical, was calculated not on actually achieving victory, but rather on the exploitation of an anticipated victory. Enveloping the enemy on both wings, encirclement, splitting up one’s own army and sending it to the most remote points in order to block every loophole for the enemy, already defeated in the mind – these and similar measures for exploiting a fantastic victory were each time the most practical means of securing defeat. What holds for Austria’s warfare holds for Prussia’s diplomacy.

Prussia had unquestionably aimed at playing a great role with small production costs. A certain instinct told it that the moment was favourable for the inflation of mediocrities. The France of the Vienna Treaties, the France of Louis-Philippe, had been re-christened from a kingdom into an empire by a simple decree, without a single boundary-stone in Europe having budged. Instead of the Italian campaign of 1796 and the expedition to Egypt, the founding of the confidence-trickster society of December 10 and the sausage review at Satory had sufficed for the travesty of the 18th Brumaire by the 2nd of December. Prussia knew that the illusion of the French peasants about the resurrection of the real Napoleon was not entirely shared by the Great Powers. A tacit agreement had been reached that the adventurer who had to play Napoleon in France was undertaking a dangerous role and could therefore become dangerous to official Europe at any moment. France could tolerate the Brummagem-empire <sham empire> only on the condition that Europe seemed to believe in the farce. It was therefore necessary to make the role easier for the comedian and to secure a competent claque in the pit and the gallery. Whenever the internal conditions of France became untenable – and two years seem to be the maximum period of rotation of the rococo empire around its own axis – the ex-prisoner of Ham had to be granted a foreign adventure. The travesty of some article of the Napoleonic programme, capable of execution beyond the French frontier, then appeared on Europe’s order of the day. The son of Hortense was allowed to wage war, but only on Louis-Philippe’s motto: “La France est assez riche pour payer sa gloire.” <“France is rich enough to pay for its glory.”> The old King of Prussia <Frederick William III>, the man with the headless head, once said that his Prussia was distinguished from the Prussia of Frederick the Great by the fact that the latter stood in abstract contrast to Christianity, whereas the former had overcome the transitional epoch of vapid enlightenment and had penetrated to a deep inner understanding of revelation. In the same way, the old Napoleon adhered to the shallow rationalist prejudice that a war was advantageous for France only when the foreign countries reaped the expenses of the war and France reaped its revenues. His melodramatic replacement, by contrast, has penetrated to profundity of the view that France must itself pay for the glory of its wars, that the keeping of its old frontiers is a law of nature and that all its wars must be “localised”, i.e. must move within the narrow playground that Europe condescends to assign to him each time for the performance of his role. His wars are therefore in fact only periodic bleedings of France, which enrich it by a new national debt and cheat it of an old army. After each such war, however, certain grievances arise. France is out of tune; but Europe does everything, first of all, to talk the belle France <beautiful France> out of its crotchets. It plays the Barnum of the Dutchfish <literally: Dutch fish; here: Dutch bumpkin>. After the Russian war, was he not overwhelmed with all the theatrical attributes of the arbiter of Europe? Did Baron von Seebach not travel back and forth from Dresden to Paris and from Paris to Dresden? Did not Orlov, the poison-mixer, and Brunnow, the forger, dance attendance on him? Did the Prince of Montenegro and Jacobus Venedey not believe in his plenipotentiary power? Was he not permitted to carry through Russia’s demands under the guise of treacheries against England? The Russian peace, which Palmerston sealed by the betrayal of Kars and by the negative greatness of his own General Williams – was it not denounced by the “Times” as a betrayal of England by Bonaparte? Did he not thus shine in the light of the most cunning mind in Europe? Had he not, during the war, occupied all the capitals, if not of the modern, then of the ancient world, and did not his good-natured evacuation of the Dardanelles point to deeper-laid plans? The old Napoleon seized the nearest expedient. The apparent resignation of the re-issued Napoleon points to Machiavellian inscrutability. He rejected the good only because he strove for the better. Finally, the peace treaty of Paris, was it not crowned by an “avis” from Europe to the anti-Bonapartist newspaper scribblers of Belgium, the giant state?

Meanwhile the two normal years of the self-rotation of pseudo-Napoleonic France rolled on. The official representatives of Europe believed that for the time being they had done enough for the greatness of the man. He was allowed to sail to China in the wake of the English and, at Russia’s bidding, to install Colonel Cuza in the Danubian principalities. But as soon as the delicate boundary lines between the hero and the pickle-herring who represents the hero were blurred, even only tentatively, Louis-Napoleon found himself ordered back with scorn onto the terrain assigned to him. His intrigue against the United States of North America, his attempt to revive the slave trade, his melodramatic threats against England, his anti-Russian Suez Canal demonstration, which he had to undertake on Russia’s behalf in order to justify Palmerston’s Russian opposition to the project in the eyes of John Bull – all that burst. Only against little Portugal was he permitted to act big, in order to set his small acting with regard to the Great Powers into the proper relief. Belgium itself began to fortify itself, and even Switzerland declaimed Wilhelm Tell. What had evidently happened to the official powers of Europe was what had so often misled investigators of astronomy in earlier epochs: a false calculation of the period of rotation.

In the meantime the two years of the self-rotation of the lesser empire <inferior empire> had run out. During the first rotation – 1852 to 1854 – a noiseless weathering had taken place, which could be smelled but not heard. The Russian war was its safety valve <safety valve>. Things were different during the cycle from 1856 to 1858. The Pseudo-Bonaparte had been flung back by the internal development of France to the moment of the coup d’état. Orsini’s grenades had flashed lightning. The unhappy suitor of Miss Coutts had had to abdicate before his generals. France, an unheard-of event, was, according to Spanish custom – the operation took place under the star of Eugénie, who was afflicted with tympanitis – divided into five captaincies-general. The establishment of a regency transferred power in fact from the imperialist Quasimodo to Pélissier, the Orleanist roaster of Arab human flesh. But the renewed terreur <reign of terror> inspired no terror. Instead of appearing dreadful, the Dutch nephew of the battle of Austerlitz appeared grotesque. N’est pas monstre qui veut. <Not everyone can be a monster. (V. Hugo, “Napoléon le petit”)> Montalembert could play Hampden in Paris, and Proudhon proclaimed Louis-Philippism in Brussels with an acte additionnel. The uprising in Chalon proved that the army itself viewed the restored Empire as a pantomime whose final scene was approaching.

Louis Bonaparte had once again reached the fateful point where official Europe had to grasp that the danger of revolution could be averted only by travestying a new article of the old Napoleonic programme. The travesty had begun with Napoleon’s end, the Russian campaign. Why not continue it with Napoleon’s beginning, the Italian campaign? Of all European persons, Austria was the least grata <popular>. Prussia has to avenge on it the Congress of Warsaw, the battle of Bronzell and the North Sea expedition. Palmerston had always authenticated his civilisation-mongering by hatred of Austria. Russia was horrified to see that Austria was again announcing specie payments for its bank. When, in 1846, for the first time in living memory, Austria’s treasury showed no deficit, Russia had given the signal for the Krakow revolution. Finally, Austria was the bête noire <black beast> of liberal Europe. Louis Bonaparte’s second amphitheatrical Attila march therefore had to be directed against Austria, under the well-known conditions: no war costs, no extension of the French frontiers, war “localised” within the bounds of sound reason, i.e., within the terrain necessary for a second glorious bleeding of France.

Under these circumstances, since comedy was being played anyway, Prussia believed that the moment had also come for it to play a great role, with official permission and with good insurance. The Peace of Villafranca has pilloried it before all Europe as a dupe. With its great progress in constitutionalism, a progress demonstrable in the geometrical progression of its national debt, it has deemed it appropriate to plaster the wound with a blue book of its own make. In a further article we shall lend an ear to its apology.

II

["Das Volk" No. 14, August 6, 1859]

When regency Prussia speaks as it writes, its talent for not only misunderstanding but also being misunderstood, a talent newly confirmed in the European comedy of errors, is easily explained. In this it bears a certain similarity to Falstaff, who was not only witty himself but was also the cause of wit in other people.

On 14 April Archduke Albrecht arrived in Berlin, where he stayed until 20 April. He had a secret to impart to the Regent <Wilhelm I> and a proposal to make. The secret was the imminent Austrian ultimatum to Victor Emmanuel. The proposal consisted in a war on the Rhine. Archduke Albrecht was to operate with 260,000 Austrians and the South German federal corps on the far side of the Upper Rhine, while the Prussian and North German corps under Prussian supreme command would form a northern army on the Rhine. Instead of a “federal commander”, Franz Joseph and the Prince Regent were to decide jointly from a single headquarters.

Prussia, with suppressed indignation, immediately rejected not only the plan of war but “made the most urgent representations to Archduke Albrecht against the hasty proceeding with the ultimatum”.

When Prussia puts into action the donkeypower (as is well known, for large machines, horsepowers are the unit of calculation) of its garrulous cunning, nobody can resist, least of all an Austrian. The Regent and his four satellites – Schleinitz, Auerswald, Bonin and Herr Dr Zabel – were “convinced” that they had “convinced” Austria.

"After Archduke Albrecht," says a semi-official Prussian statement, "left Berlin on 20 April, the bold plan of the moment was believed postponed … But—alas!—a few hours after his departure, the telegraph from Vienna announced the dispatch of the ultimatum!"

After the outbreak of war, Prussia refused to declare its neutrality. Schleinitz reveals to us, in a "Despatch to the Prussian Missions at the German Courts, dated Berlin, 24 June", the secret of this heroic resolve.

"Prussia", he whispers, "has never abandoned its position as mediating power" (in another despatch it is called mediatory power) "since the outbreak of war, its main endeavour has been directed precisely at preserving this position by declining to give assurances of its neutrality, by keeping clear of all engagements in every direction, and thus remaining completely impartial and free for the mediating action."

In other words: Austria and France, the contending parties, will exhaust each other in the war provisionally "localised" on the Italian arena, while England, as a neutral (!), stands far in the background. The neutrals have paralysed themselves, and the hands of the combatants are tied, because they must use their fists. Between the one and the other hovers Prussia "completely impartial and free", a Euripidean Deus ex machina. The mediator has always carried the day over the extremes. Christ got further than Jehovah, Saint Peter further than Christ, the priest further than the saints, and Prussia, the armed mediator, will get further than the tense parties and the neutrals. Eventualities must occur when Russia and England give the signal for the end of the comedy. Then they will smuggle their secret instructions into Prussia's pocket from behind, while it puts on the Brennus mask from the front. France will not know whether Prussia is for Austria, Austria not whether Prussia is for France, both not whether Prussia is not mediatising against both in favour of Russia and England. It will have the right to demand confidence from "all sides" and to instil distrust in all directions. Its unboundedness will bind all. Moreover, if Prussia declared itself neutral, it was impossible to prevent Bavaria and other members of the Confederation from taking sides for Austria. On the other hand, as an armed mediator with the neutral great powers covering its flanks and rear, with the phantom image of its ever-threatening "German" grand deed in the perspective, it dared hope, while proceeding in equally mysterious and measured steps to the rescue of Austria, temporarily to spirit away the hegemony of Germany at a discount. As the mouthpiece of England and Russia, it could impress the German Confederation; as the appeaser of the German Confederation, it could insinuate itself with England and Russia.

Not only German great power, but European great power and, on top of that, "mediating power", and above all, tyrant of the Confederation! In the course of events we shall see how Schleinitz gets ever more bogged down in slime in this course of ideas, as cunning as it is sublime. The previous fifth wheel on the European state cart, the great power "by courtesy", the European personage "on sufferance"—this same Prussian now entrusted with the grandiose position of the "quos ego"! And this, not because he draws the sword, but rather because he only shoulders the rifle, without shedding anything but the tears of the Regent and the ink of his satellites. That the glory, even that of the "Mediator" in Goethe's Elective Affinities, remained unattainable, was indeed not Prussia's fault.

Prussia understood that in the first act it had to scowl at Austria, to keep Louis Bonaparte's slightest suspicion at bay, and above all to recommend itself by good conduct to Russia and England.

"To achieve this objective, so important for our own interest," as Schleinitz confesses in the despatch already quoted, "was, given the agitation prevailing in many German states, not easy. Moreover, we need hardly recall that the direction of our policy in this matter diverged from that of a large number of German governments, and that in particular Austria did not agree with it."

Despite all these difficulties, Prussia successfully played the gendarme of the German Confederation. From the end of April to the end of May it unfolded its mediating action by forcing its co-confederates into inactivity.

"Our efforts," says Schleinitz euphemistically, "were directed above all at preventing premature involvement of the Confederation in the war."

At the same time, the Berlin cabinet opened the sluices of the liberal press, which gushed out to the bourgeois black on white that, if Bonaparte marched into Italy, it was only to liberate Germany from Austria and to establish German unity under the hero who certainly belongs to the nation, since he had already once been declared "national property".

What somewhat complicated Prussia's operation was that it had the vocation, "in due course", not only to mediate but to mediate "in arms". While hushing up the war-lust, it had simultaneously to call to arms. While distributing the weapons, it had to warn against their use:

Do not play with the firearm,
For it feels, as you do, pain.

"If, however," says Schleinitz, "while we simultaneously took all measures aimed at securing Germany, which lies between the two belligerent great powers, and while likewise the organs of the Confederation, with our co-operation, unceasingly made defensive preparations, there arose for us the new duty of seeing to it that these preparations were not suddenly transformed into means of attack, and thereby the position of the Confederation and our own were not seriously compromised."

Meanwhile, the "mediating power" understandably could not always proceed one-sidedly in the same direction. Moreover, dangerous symptoms broke out.

"There were, to our lively regret," says Schleinitz, "indications of intended separate agreements in a direction diverging from our policy, and the gravity of the situation had to arouse in us the apprehension that thereby the tendency towards a dissolution of the Confederation relations might involuntarily come to the fore more and more."

To prevent these "abuses" and to begin the second act of the "mediation", General Willisen's mission to Vienna took place. Its results are set forth in Schleinitz's despatch dated Berlin, 14 June, addressed to Werther, the Prussian envoy in Vienna. As long as Schleinitz writes only to the German confederates, he uses the familiar Prussian privy councillor style in ordinary. When he writes to the foreign great powers, it is luckily in a language unknown to him. But his despatches to Austria! Ell-long phrase tapeworms, steeped in the green sentiment-soap of Gothaism, powdered with the dry chancery sand of the Uckermark, and half-drowned in torrents of perfidious Berlin treacle.

III

["Das Volk" No. 15, 13 August 1859]

If we analyse part of the Berlin blue book, now already three weeks old, in greater detail, it is neither from antiquarian caprice nor from interest in Brandenburg history. Rather, these are documents which at this very moment are being trumpeted by German liberals and democrats as proof of Prussia's imperial future calling.

Schleinitz's last despatch to General Willisen arrived in Vienna on 27 May. Werther's despatches to Schleinitz concerning Willisen's reception at the imperial cabinet date from 29 and 31 May. They remain unanswered for half a month. To hush up all contradictions between the original "mission" and its subsequent "interpretation", both Schleinitz's despatches to Willisen and Werther's despatches to Schleinitz are suppressed in the Prussian blue book, exactly like all negotiations between the Prince Regent and Boustrapa. Rechberg, the Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, could in no way reconstruct the original text, since Willisen and Werther were not to communicate the Prussian despatches to him in copy, but merely to read them out to him orally. One understands the predicament of a minister who is not allowed to read a sentence construction like the following, but must listen to it:

"Guided by the desire," says Schleinitz, "to let full clarity prevail in so important a matter, I had taken care, in my letter addressed to General von Willisen, to define our standpoint with full precision, both with regard to what we intend to do on our part under certain circumstances, and with regard to the preconditions which must necessarily underlie the action we have in view."

Before Schleinitz prepared to give an official interpretation of Willisen's mission to Vienna, he had, with characteristic caution, allowed the events to pass by him. The Austrian army had lost the battle of Magenta, evacuated all Lombard fortresses, and was in full retreat behind the Chiese. Gorchakov's circular despatch to the German small states, in which he commanded them strict neutrality under threat of the knout, had found its way into the press. Derby, suspect of secret sympathies with Austria, resigned into the hands of Palmerston. Finally, on 14 June—the date of Schleinitz's despatch to Werther—the Preußische Staats-Anzeiger published a decree for the mobilisation of six Prussian army corps. Willisen's mission to Vienna, followed by this mobilisation! All Germany was full of Prussia's heroic discretion and discreet heroism.

Let us finally come to Schleinitz's despatch to the Prussian envoy in Vienna. "Magnanimous words" had fallen from the Regent's lips. Willisen had further oracled about "most honest intentions", "most disinterested plans", and "most confidential confidence", and Count Rechberg had expressed his "agreement with the standpoint we have adopted"; but the same Rechberg, a Viennese Socrates, wished at last to bring the debate down from the heaven of phrases to the actual flat earth. He placed "special value" on seeing the Prussian "intentions formulated". Prussia therefore sets about, through Schleinitz's pen, to bring the "intention" of Willisen's "mission" to "precision". He therefore sums up "the intentions made known by us in the exchange of ideas that took place in Vienna in what follows", which summarizing what follows we reproduce in condensed form. The point of Willisen's mission was this: Prussia had "firm intentions under an express precondition". Schleinitz would have done better to say that Prussia had burdensome intentions under a fixed precondition. The precondition was that Austria leave to Prussia the initiative in the German Confederation, renounce separate treaties with German courts, in short, temporarily concede the hegemony in Germany to Prussia; the intention, to secure Austria's "Italian territorial possession based on the treaties of 1815" and to "strive for peace on this basis". Prussia considered Austria's relations with the other Italian states and "the relations of these latter" as an "open question". Were Austria's "Italian possessions to be seriously threatened", Prussia would "attempt an armed mediation" and,

"depending on the success of the same, act further for the attainment of the goal outlined above, as its duties as a European power and the high calling of the German nation require".

“It is,” says the disinterested Schleinitz, “in our own interest not to intervene too late. The choice of the moment, however, both for the mediation and for the further action by Prussia that will follow in its wake, must be left to the free discretion of the royal court.”

Schleinitz asserts first, that this “exchange of ideas” arranged by Willisen is described by Rechberg as an “exchange of sentiments”; secondly, that Prussia’s intentions and presuppositions “had the good fortune to enjoy the approval of the imperial court”; and thirdly, that Rechberg, an enemy of pure thought, as it seems, wanted to see the “exchange of ideas” transformed into an “exchange of notes”, “to have the agreement of the two cabinets attested in writing,” in short, to have the Prussian “presupposition” and Prussian “intention” “stated” in black and white. Here Schleinitz’s noble consciousness is stirred to indignation. What is the purpose of Rechberg’s demand? In reality, the transformation of our “most secret political thoughts, confidentially communicated, into binding assurances.” Schleinitz is engaged in real, secret political mental exercises, and Rechberg wants to bind the unapproachable idea into profane notes! Quelle horreur for a Berlin thinker! Moreover, such an exchange of notes would amount to a “guarantee” of the Austrian-Italian possessions. As if Prussia wanted to guarantee anything! Furthermore, the exchange of ideas, transformed sacrilegiously into an exchange of notes, might “from the French and Russian sides be immediately and logically regarded as an engagement formel [a formal commitment] and as an entry into the war.” As if Prussia ever intended to enter into a war or compromise itself on any side, let alone on the French and Russian side! Finally, and this is the main thing, such an exchange of notes “would obviously make the intended attempt at mediation impossible.” Austria must understand, however, that the issue is neither its Italian possessions, nor the treaties of 1815, nor French usurpation, nor Russian world hegemony, nor any profane interests at all, but rather that the European troubles were initiated solely in order to improvise Prussia’s new sublime “position” as a “mediating power.” Shakespeare’s knave, who wakes up a lord after having fallen asleep a tinker, does not speak more movingly than Schleinitz when he is seized by the fixed idea of Prussia’s calling as the European “armed mediating power.” Like a tarantula’s bite, he is stung and urged on by the “uneasy conviction, that he ought to act up to his newborn sublimity of character.”

The “confidence” with which Schleinitz whispers the fixed idea of Prussia’s calling as a mediating power into Rechberg’s ear leads him, as he says, “to hope to encounter at the imperial court a confidence corresponding to our own.” Rechberg, for his part, demands a copy of this curious note from Schleinitz. To document Prussian confidence, Werther declares that, “according to his instructions,” he is authorised to read the note orally, but by no means to hand over the corpus delicti. Rechberg then demands that Werther accompany him to Francis Joseph in Verona, so that the latter “may at least orally obtain an accurate and complete knowledge of Prussia’s views.” Prussian confidence resists this demand too, and with ironic resignation Rechberg remarks that if he “perhaps cannot follow all the developments of the Berlin despatch with complete correctness” in his reply, this must be attributed to the fact that he knows Schleinitz’s sentence constructions only by hearsay.

Rechberg’s reply, addressed to Koller, the Austrian envoy in Berlin, is dated Verona, 22 June. It casts doubt on the harmony between Willisen’s mission at the end of May and the Berlin interpretation of that mission in mid-June.

“After my earlier conversations with him” (Werther) “and with General von Willisen,” says Rechberg, “I had not believed that the Berlin cabinet would still maintain so great a reserve towards us as to avoid even any written attestation of its intentions.”

Still less had Willisen’s mission prepared Rechberg for the sublime calling of Prussia as the armed mediating power of Europe. The point at issue in reality, says Rechberg, is “Europe’s independence against the supremacy of France.” Events themselves have revealed the hollowness and nullity of the “pretexts” “by which our opponents sought to gloss over their true intentions until the moment of ripeness.” “Moreover, Prussia as a member of the German Confederation has obligations with which the maintenance of a mediating position might at any moment prove incompatible.”

Finally, Austria had hoped to see Prussia “as a party” on its side and therefore had from the outset denied its calling as “mediator.” Since Austria had, from the beginning of the Italian troubles, declared itself against Prussia’s “attempts at a mediating position,” it could obviously even less ever approve an “armed mediation by Prussia.”

“An armed mediation,” says Rechberg, “by its very concept, implies a casus belli towards both sides. Such a case, however, fortunately does not exist between Prussia and Austria, and we are therefore unable to envisage, for the relationship between these two powers, the possibility of an armed mediation by Prussia. The name, like the thing itself, would seem bound to remain forever alien to this relationship.”

We see: Rechberg contradicts Schleinitz’s despatch and its interpretation of Willisen’s mission. He finds Prussia’s tone changed since the end of May; he flatly denies that Austria has ever recognised Prussia’s sublime calling as an armed mediating power. Schleinitz owes the clarification of this misunderstanding No. 2 (the first occurred between Archduke Albrecht and the Prince Regent) through the publication of his despatches to Willisen and of Werther’s despatches to himself.

For the rest, Rechberg replies as an Austrian, and why should the Austrian change his skin vis-à-vis the Prussian? Why should Prussia not “guarantee” Austria’s territorial possessions in Italy? Does not such a guarantee, Rechberg asks, correspond to the spirit of the Vienna treaties?

“Could France, in the era after the Congress of Vienna, and indeed down to our own day, have hoped to find only a single opponent, had it wished to overturn an important part of the treaty-based order of Europe? France could not have thought of touching the property relations by a localised war.”

Incidentally, an “exchange of notes” is not yet a “treaty-based guarantee.” Austria had merely wanted to “take note” of Prussia’s good intentions. To please Schleinitz, however, it would keep his very secret political thoughts entirely secret. Regarding peace, Rechberg remarks, Prussia may make peace proposals to France as much as it wishes, “provided that these proposals maintain intact the territorial status of 1815 and the sovereign rights of Austria and the other princes of Italy.”

In other words, Austria, in its “confidential communications to Prussia” as a mediating power, was not inclined to go beyond meaningless commonplaces. Should Prussia, however, “enter as an active ally, there could then be question of drawing up peace conditions only by common agreement.”

Finally, Rechberg lays his finger on Prussia’s bleeding wounds. Austria had concurred in the “intention” of Prussia’s initiative at the Diet on the “presupposition” of the transformation of the Prussian exchange of ideas into an exchange of notes. With the premise falls the conclusion. Even Schleinitz, with his peculiar conceptual faculty, will “understand” that, since Berlin “has undertaken no binding obligation in any respect,” since it has pushed the “moment of its decisions, to be taken in the form of armed mediation,” into the blue “future and reserved it to its own free choice,” Vienna for its part “must preserve its freedom unrestricted within the sphere of German federal relations.”

Prussia’s attempt to wangle from Austria the supremacy in Germany and the authority for the sublime role as the European mediating power had thus decisively failed, while the mobilisation of the six Prussian army corps had taken place. Prussia owed Europe an explanation. In a “circular despatch of 19 June to the Prussian legations at the European courts” Schleinitz therefore declares:

“Through the mobilisation, Prussia has adopted a position more in proportion to the present situation, without relaxing the principles of moderation … Prussia’s policy has remained the same as that which it has pursued in the Italian question from the beginning of the complication. But Prussia has now also brought its means for contributing to its solution up to the level of the situation.”

And so that no doubt may remain, either about the policy or about the means, the despatch ends with the words that “it is Prussia’s intention to forestall the divisions of Germany.”

Even this declaration of contrition the Regency thought it necessary to dilute by “wholly confidential” communications to France. Already immediately before the outbreak of the war, the battle-painter G. <presumably Ginain>, a mutual friend of Boustrapa and the Regent, had been entrusted with a mission from the former to Berlin. He had brought back the most friendly assurances. At the time of the mobilisation, however, official and semi-official protestations had travelled to Paris to the following effect:

“Let France by no means take Prussia’s military measures amiss. We have no illusions; we know how impolitic a war against France would be, what dangerous consequences it would have. But let the Emperor take account of the difficult situation in which we find ourselves. The government of the Prince Regent is being pressed and pushed from all sides. We are in the presence of mistrustful susceptibilities, and we are compelled to spare them.”

Or:

“We shall mobilise. But let no one imagine that this is an offensive measure against France. In his capacity as quasi head of the German Confederation, the Regent not only has the duty to protect its interests, but also to adopt an internal position that allows him to prevent rash steps and to impose his policy of moderation on the other German states. May the Emperor understand this well and neglect nothing to facilitate our task.”

Prussia’s double-dealing went to comical lengths in approaching the French government:

“The governmental newspapers should not praise Prussia unduly at the expense of Bavaria, Saxony, etc., that could only compromise Prussia.”

Walewski therefore declared with full right in his circular despatch of 29 June:

“The new military measures being taken in Prussia inspire us with no uneasiness … The Prussian government declares, in mobilising a part of its army, that it has no other intention than to protect the security of Germany and to place itself in a position to exercise a just influence on the further arrangements of agreement with the two other great powers.”

Prussia’s sublime
vocation as an armed mediation power
had already become so much a catchword among the Great Powers that Walewski could risk the cheap joke that Prussia was mobilising not against France but against “the two other Great Powers”, lest they should otherwise cheat it of its “just” influence on the “agreement arrangements”.

Thus ended the second act of the Prussian mediation.

IV

[“Das Volk” No. 16, August 20, 1859]

The first act of the Prussian mediation—end of April to end of May—decreed over Germany la mort sans phrase. In the second act—end of May to 24 June—the crippling of the “great fatherland” is embellished by the phrase of the Willisen mission and the arabesque of the Prussian mobilisation. A night scene of this second act is played at the small German courts, which get to hear a note from Schleinitz. Schleinitz, like Stieber, loves a “mixed” oral procedure. From his already mentioned note, dated Berlin, 24 June, “to the Prussian missions at the German courts”, we quote here only two passages. Why did Prussia refuse the Austrian wish to transform the “exchange of thoughts” into an “exchange of notes”?

“The fulfilment of this wish”, Schleinitz whispers to the German courts, “would have been equivalent to a guarantee of Lombardy. To assume such an obligation in the face of indeterminate eventualities was unfulfillable for Prussia.”

From the Berlin standpoint, therefore, the loss of Lombardy was neither “a serious threat to the Austrian possessions in Italy”

nor “the definite eventuality” for which the Prussian sword lay in wait in order to spring from its scabbard.

“Furthermore”, continues Schleinitz, “every engagement of a formal kind had to be kept at a distance which could alter our position as a mediation power.”

Thus it was not the purpose of Prussian mediation to alter the “indeterminate eventualities” in the interest of Austria; rather, it was the vocation of all possible eventualities to leave “Prussia’s position as a mediation power” unaltered. While it categorically demands of Austria the concession of the initiative in the German Confederation, it offers it the hypothetical equivalent of Prussian goodwill, guaranteed by good Prussian intention. Onion soup with raisin sauce, as the Berlin street-corner idler says.

In the third act of the mediation, Prussia finally appears as a European Great Power, and Schleinitz fabricates a dispatch in two copies, one addressed to Count Bernstorff in London, the other to Baron Bismarck in Petersburg, one to be read to Lord John Russell, the other to Prince Gorchakov. Half of the dispatch consists of bowing and apologising. Prussia has mobilised a part of its forces, and Schleinitz is inexhaustible in the reasoning behind this bold deed. In the general circular to the European Great Powers of 19 June, it was the safeguarding of the territory of the German Confederation, the role as armed mediation power, but especially “forestalling splits in Germany”. In the letter to the German confederates, “this measure was to tie down France’s military forces and considerably ease Austria’s position”. In the dispatch to England and Russia, it is “the armaments of the neighbours”, the “supervision of events”, the “approach of the war to the German frontier”, dignity, interests, vocation, and so forth. But “on the other hand” and “nevertheless” and “I repeat, Count, Baron”, Prussia means no harm with its armaments. It is “certainly not its intention to add new complications”. It pursues “no other aim than that which it, in understanding with England and Russia, recently strove for”. Nous n’entendons pas malice <We intend no harm>, cries Schleinitz.

“What we desire” is “peace”, and “we appeal trustingly to the cabinets of London and Petersburg to find, in association with them, the means of putting a stop to the bloodshed.”

In order to show itself worthy of the trust of England and Russia, Prussia swears by two Russo-English functions: the first, that Austria brought about the war by the ultimatum; the second, that the struggle revolves around liberal-administrative reforms and the dissolution of the Austrian protectorate over neighbouring Italian states. The aim of Prussia is the adjustment of the rights of the Austrian Imperial House with a national-liberal “work of reorganisation”. Finally, as Schleinitz says, it believes in Louis Bonaparte’s self-denying declarations <selbstverleugnenden Erklärungen>.

And these commonplace banalities are all that Prussia, “with full confidence and outspoken frankness”, stammers awkwardly to the neutral Great Powers about its “mediation plans”. Schleinitz, “the sober, modest young man”, fears “to prejudge the question to a certain extent if he were to specify his ideas further”. Only the fixed idea finally bursts out. Prussia believes itself to be “called” to be the “armed mediation power”. May England and Russia recognise this vocation! May they

“express their views on a solution of the present complications and on the way in which it could be made acceptable to the contending parties”.

May they, in particular, provide Prussia with instructions which allow it, under high official approval, so to speak avec garantie du gouvernement <with the guarantee of the government>, to assume the role of the mediation lion! Thus Prussia wants to play the European lion <Löwen>, but as Snug the Joiner.

Lion:
“Then know that I, one Snug the joiner, am,
No lion fell, nor else no lion’s dam;
For, if I should as lion come in strife
Into this place, it were pity on my life.”

Theseus:
“A very gentle beast, and of a good conscience.”

Lysander:
“This lion is a very fox for his valour.”

Theseus:
“True; and a goose for his discretion.”

Schleinitz’ dispatch is dated 24 June, the day of the Battle of Solferino. Both copies of the dispatch were still lying on Schleinitz’ desk when the news of the Austrian defeat arrived in Berlin. At the same time, the post brought a dispatch from Lord John Russell, “in which Mr. Brougham’s little man <kleiner Mann>” of old, the “tom-tit of English liberalism” <“Zaunkönig des englischen Liberalismus”>, the herald of the Irish “coercion-bills”, initiates Prussia into Palmerston’s Italian ideas. Magdeburg is not on the Mincio, nor Bückeburg on the Adige, any more than Harwich is on the Ganges or Salford on the Satluj. Bonaparte, however, has declared that he has no appetite for Magdeburg and Bückeburg. Why, then, provoke the Gallic cock by Teutonic rudeness? Jack Russell even discovers that, once the “victory” on the battlefield is “decided”, “the combatants will probably be very ready to end the exhausting struggle”. Relying on this ingenious discovery, censuring Germany’s lust for war, commending Prussia’s “moderate and enlightened behaviour”, Russell warns Schleinitz not to ape England “quite so exactly as the circumstances in Germany will permit”!! Finally, Jack of all trades <Hans Dampf in allen Gassen> remembers Prussia’s “sublime mediation vocation”, and with the usual small, sour-sweet smirk, the puny man throws to his pupil in constitutionalism by way of farewell the comforting words:

“A time may perhaps very soon come when the voice of friendly and conciliatory powers can be heard with success and peace representations will no longer be without effect!” (Russell’s dispatch to Lord Bloomfield at Berlin, dated London, 22 June)