The anger and the dread felt by our Liberals at the Prince 
Regent’s’ participation in the Warsaw Congress, find, as is usual 
with the grievances of genuine Prussian Liberals, their vent in 
bitter aspersions of Austria and its new-fangled Constitution.*' In 
the first place, Francis Joseph will never be forgiven, for having 
bereft these gentlemen of their greatest consolation, and the 
standing topic of their verbose self-righteousness, viz., the contrast 
between “constitutional” Prussia and ‘“‘absolutist” Austria. The 
Austrian patent, of course, 1s open, not only to cavils, but to 
serious misgivings of every kind. The circumstances under which 
and the hands by which the gift is bestowed, stamp it with the 
character of a shift, rather than a sincere concession. Once before, 
on the 4th of March, 1849, Francis Joseph promulgated the 
outlines of a constitution, only to cancel them the following year, 
after the fortune of war had declared on his side.*°? But, then, 
- there exists no instance on the records of history of princes having 
ever curtailed their own privileges, and yielded to popular claims, 
except under a heavy pressure from without, and there exists no 
instance of their having kept faith whenever they could dare to 
break their oaths and their pledges with impunity. The old 
Hungarian Constitution*”’ has not been restored in its integrity, 
since the two most important rights of voting the ways and means, 
and the levies of troops, are transferred from the Diet at Pesth to 
the Central Imperial Council at Vienna, which latter being 
intended to form the States General of the whole empire, finds 
itself invested with attributes likely to become permanent sources 

a William, Prince of Prussia.— Ed. 

of strife between itself and the different national or provincial 
Diets. The Constitutions of the German and Slavonic provinces 
being limited to the most general and vague outlines, may be 
made nothing or everything of. The greatest fault found with the 
patent on the part of the Magyars is the separation of Croatia and 
Servia and Transylvania from Hungary, and the grant to those 
provinces of different independent Diets; but if the events of 
1848-49 be recalled to mind, it may be justly doubted whether 
the Croats, Slavonians, Serbs, and Wallachians will be inclined to 
share in this Magyar grievance, and back it by their support. The 
Vienna statesmen, in this instance, seem rather to have played a 
clever trick upon the principle of nationality, and turned it to their 
own account. 

But, as for the general Diet of the whole empire, under the 
name of the Imperial Council, seated at Vienna and composed of 
the respective delegates appointed by the different Diets of 
Galicia, Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia, Servia, Venetia, and the 
German provinces, being placed beyond the pale of allegiance to 
the Diet of the German Confederation, will it not cut asunder the 
relations that have hitherto obtained between German Austria and 
the German Confederation? This is the great theme now harped 
upon. by official Prussian Liberalism, which will never stand in 
want of arguments for its pet idea, the exclusion of Austrian 
Germany from the German Confederation. But all this reasoning 
proceeds from a false premise in clinging to the letter of Francis 
Joseph’s patent. While the latter must be considered, on the part 
of the Austrian dynasty, as a clever device, it affords to the various 
peoples crushed under Hapsburg sway a precious handle for 
working out their own destinies and reopening the era of 
revolutions. For the present, the Austrian Constitution will have 
done much good in humbling the Pharisean pride of the Prussian 
mock Liberals, and stripping the Hohenzollern dynasty of the only 
advantage it could boast over its rival, that of carrying on the old 
concern of the bureaucrat and the soldier under the more 
respectable form of constitutionalism. 

To give you an insight into the real state of this much-vaunted, 
“regenerated” Prussia, it will be necessary to recur to the changes 
that have lately taken place in the organization of the Prussian 
army. You will remember that the Prussian Chamber of Deputies, 
while lacking on the one side the courage to affront public opinion 
by an open sanction of the Government proposals for the 
reorganization of the army, and lacking on the other side the 
courage to make a decided stand against the martinet leanings of 

Preparations for War in Prussia 495 

the Prince Regent, hit upon the usual expedient of weakness—a 
middle course, neither fish nor flesh. It refused to pass the 
Government plan for the reorganization of the army, but voted 
$9,500,000 for putting the army into a state fit to encounter the 
dangers apprehended from without.* In other words, the Prussian 
Deputies voted the ways and means wanted by the Government 
for carrying out its plan, but voted them on false pretexts. Hardly 
had the Prussian Parliament been adjourned when the Ministry, 
openly breaking through the conditions on which the grant was 
obtained, began, without further ado, to introduce the changes in 
the organization of the army willed by the Prince Regent and 
rejected by the so-called representatives. During the recess of the 
Parliament, the standing army has been doubled, being raised from 
40 regiments to 72 regiments of the line and 9 regiments of the 
guard. The permanent annual expenses for the military budget 
have thus, by the supreme will of the Prince Regent, and in open 
violation, not only of the will of the people, but of the vote of its 
mock representatives, been raised by 100 per cent. But do not 
fancy the Prince of Hohenzollern or any of his colleagues risks the 
fate of Strafford.** There will be some low grumbling, pickled 
with fervent assertions of dynastic loyalty, and unbounded 
confidence in the Cabinet, and this will be all. Now, considering 
that even the old army organization, founded as it was upon a 
merely agricultural population, had become an intolerable draw- 
back upon the resources and the productive activity of a people 
which in the course of time had engaged in manufactures, it will 
be easily understood how the army, now doubled in numbers, 
must grind down the best energies of the masses, and drain the 
springs of national wealth. The Prussian army may now boast of 
being the largest in Europe in proportion to population and 
national resources. 

You know that a Hohenzollern ruler, when speaking of himself, 
or when spoken of by his cabinet and his officials, goes by the 
name of Kriegsherr, that is to say, “Lord of War.” Now this, of 
course, does not mean that Prussian kings and regents lord it over 
the chances of war. Their great anxiety to keep peace, and their 
known propensity for being thrashed in the open field show 
better. By that title of “Lord of War,” so dearly cherished by 
Hohenzollern rulers, it is rather understood that the true prop of 
their kingly power must be sought for, not in the people, but in a 

4 On this sitting of the Prussian Diet (February 10, 1860) see the Stenographische 
Berichte tiber die Verhandlungen, Bd. I, Berlin, 1860, S. 95-106.— Ed. 

portion of the people, separated from the mass, opposed to it, 
distinguished by certain badges, trained to passive obedience, 
drilled into a mere instrument of the dynasty which owns it as its 
property and uses it according to its caprice. A Prussian king 
would, therefore, rather abdicate than allow his army to swear 
obedience to the Constitution. Hence a Hohenzollern ruler, being 
the king of his people only as far as he is the “Lord of War,” in 
other words, the proprietor of the army, must, before all things, 
dote on it, fondle it, flatter it, and feed it with always increasing 
morsels of the national wealth. This great aim has been obtained 
by the new military organization. The number of officers has been 
doubled, and the rapid promotion to higher grades in the French, 
Austrian, and Russian armies, which the Prussian officers had cast 
longingly anxious eyes upon, has been secured to them without 
exposing their lives and limbs to the least hazard. Hence there is 
just now prevailing, not among the common soldiers, but among 
the officers of the Prussian army, a vast amount of enthusiasm for 
the Prince Regent and his “liberal” Ministers. At the same time 
the aristocratic fox-hunters, grumbling at the liberal phrases of the 
new régime, have been quite conciliated by the new occasion 
afforded them for fastening their younger sons on the purse of 
the country. There is one drawback to all this, even from the 
dynastic standpoint. Prussia has now concentrated all its available 
forces into one standing army. That army once beaten, there will 
be no reserve to fall back upon. 

Written on October 23, 1860 Reproduced from the newspaper 

Tribune, No. 6097, November 8, 1860 

497