their dream of conquest, so similar to that of the French excursionists into Germany seventy-eight years afterwards. 'Everyone now,' said Goethe-on the first rumour of intended retreat-saw the situation; none looked each other in the face; or, if they did, it was to curse their luck or their leaders. Towards night we formed a circle in which few seemed disposed to break silence; but at length there was a general appeal to me to know what I thought of it all. I replied, "From this spot and from this day begins a new epoch of world-history, and you will be able to say that you were here to see it."'

This time it is France, not Germany, that has rushed into war for an idea,' and the idea she warred for was to arrest by force of arms German national union, which her declaration of war at once converted into an accomplished fact. The baffled French belligerents of this year-carent quia vate sacro-are scarce likely perhaps to hear the sentence which the great German poet prophetically uttered to his comrades in the Prussian campaign of the Argonne in 1792, applied with equal frankness by French lips to the French campaign of the Rhine in 1870- From this day begins for France and Germany a new epoch, and you may say you have lived to see it.'

If we could imagine ourselves unconcerned spectators of these European vicissitudes, there might be reserved for us a rude awakening at no distant period. When Louis XI., in Quentin Durward,' asks his astrologer if he can predict his own death, he replies that it will happen twenty-four hours before that of your majesty.' The present collapse of a military power, which has marched abreast with our own through so many eventful ages of European history, must have something of consequence to teach us. And that something we cannot think to be exactly what Mr. Lowe says it is, in his recent speech at Elgin: What we have been witnessing' is not precisely the destruction of a most gallant standing army by what is not a standing army.' What we think we hear '-if we hear rightly-is not the knell of

standing armies.' There is something almost like what our French neighbours call an amère dérision, in terming the Prussian military organisation, as remodelled since 1860, an organisation mainly useful for defensive wars.' It was remodelled expressly for such purposes as it served in 1866 in the war against Austria; and that war was neither defensive, nor, in its outset, otherwise than most unpopular. The ineffectiveness of the calls made upon the Landwehr in 1830, 1848, and subsequent years, when Prussia was really playing a defensive part in German and European politics, had sufficiently shown that, unless at exceptional epochs of enthusiasm, such as 1813, Mr. Lowe's armed nation' was, even for defensive purposes, a frail reed to trust to.

It was in direct defiance of popular predispositions, and repeated parliamentary majorities, that King William and Count Bismarck carried through that reorganisation of the Prussian military system by which it has been, during the last ten years, without losing its Landwehr reserve, approximated, as regards the regular forces kept on foot, to the great standing armies of neighbouring rival Powers. The Prussian Government,' says a well-informed French military writer, just before the sudden outbreaking of the present war,' 'from the beginning opposed to the discontent of the doctrinaires of the Liberal party that placid indifference which so long enabled it to sustain a chronic constitutional conflict with the Chambers. All endowed with political foresight anticipated with confidence that, on the day when success should ratify the policy pursued by the Crown, the démocrates unitaires [ultra-Liberal partisans of German unity] would be the first to applaud a policy from which they had withheld their sanction, and would thus themselves, almost without knowing it, be brought under discipline by the prevailing military spirit.'

The governing power of Prussia is that ascribed to her by Mr. Carlyle-drill--including under that name whatever comes within the description of systematic scientific civil and military administration. Her military organisation has

1 L'Armée Prussienne en 1870, p. 20.

always had a strong royal and aristocratic backbone; it is this that is represented by King William and Count Bismarck at the present day; but the unpopular stiffness of the system has not prevented its superiority in science and action over the less rigid military hierarchies of Austria and France. The English army, scanty as it has always been in numbers compared with the work it has to do, has hitherto preserved those solid qualities in its regimental system—those habits of respected command and steady obedience, which the French army was losing, by the testimony of General Trochu, three years back,' even before the rude tests of this war.

If we want such lessons as Prussia got in bygone years, and as France is now getting, to teach us how to make effective military use of the men and material we have, we are not unlikely to get them in our turn-perhaps at no distant day; but national greatness and independence do not always survive such lessons.

L'Armée Française en 1867, p. 29.

423

XIV.

BISMARCK, PRUSSIA, AND PAN-TEUTONISM.

1. Das Buch vom Grafen Bismarck. Von George Hesekiel. In drei Abtheilungen, reich illustrirt von namhaften Künstlern. Bielefeld und Leipzig, 1869.

2. Krieg und Friede. Zwei Briefe an Ernst Renan, nebst dessen Antwort auf den ersten. Von David Friedrich Strauss. Leipzig, 1870.

3. Unsere Grenzen. Von Wolfgang Menzel. Stuttgart und Leipzig, 1868. 4. Elsass und Lothringen. Nachweis, wie diese Provinzen dem Deutschen Reiche verloren gingen. Von Adolf Schmidt, ord. Prof. an der Univ. Jena. Dritte vermehrte Auflage. Leipzig, 1870.

5. Elsass und Lothringen, und ihre Wiedergewinnung für Deutschland. Von Prof. Dr. Adolph Wagner. Fünfte Auflage. Leipzig, 1870.

Ar the soldierly banquet given by King William I. to his principal officers, on the brief rest-day which followed his 'crowning mercy' of September 2 last, at Sedan, champagne was served in honour of the great events of the day before— (vin ordinaire only, say the German chroniclers of the campaign, having previously appeared at the royal table)—and the King proposed a toast in the following terms:

We must to-day, in gratitude, drink to the health of my brave army. You, War-Minister Von Roon, have sharpened our sword; you, General Von Moltke, have guided it; and you, Count Von Bismarck, by your direction of the national policy for years, have brought Prussia to her present pitch of elevation. Let us then drink to the health of the army-of the three I have named in connexion with that toast-and of every one present who has contributed, according to his power, to the results now accomplished.

The qualities which raised Freiherr Otto Von Bismarck -Mad Bismarck, as he was called in early manhood-from

From the Quarterly Review, January 1871.

the obscure activities, and equally obscure diversions and dissipations of a land-improving, sporting, and deep-drinking Altmark Junker or Squire to hold the helm of state during the eight last eventful years in Prussia, may be regarded as in good measure identical with those which have won for Prussia herself, within half that period, ascendancy over Germany and victory over France. The final moral of the great international drama must be left to the future. The end is not yet, but the ends already compassed under Count Bismarck's Ministry, and compassed with the ultimate acquiescence and applause of his strongest popular opponents, suffice to show that the audacious and pugnacious Minister has well understood the instruments he had to use and the parties he had to deal with. Much of what has appeared the astounding audacity of his action in politics has really resulted from his abnormal-sapient' perception that windbags were windbags, and that a very slight prick might cause to collapse a very big bladder. The mistake apt to be made on this side the Channel about the political career of Bismarck is that of unconsciously crediting Prussia with the parliamentary precedents and traditions of England. But the most cherished Prussian traditions and precedents have always been those of military monarchy and aristocracy. These have been associated from first to last with all her modern advances in the scale of nations.

When Oliver Cromwell made his first appearance in the House of Commons, Lord Digby, according to the rather apocryphal parliamentary legend, asked Hampden, Who that sloven was?' and received for answer-That sloven whom you see before you hath no ornament in his speech:

We learn from the Book of Bismarck, that when the Squire of Schoenhausen, having sown his wild oats, bethought himself at length of taking a wife, he found his character as a marrying man did not stand much higher with prudent parents than probably did that of Ritter Blaubart, after his too frequent conjugal bereavements. The pious and decorous parents of Fräulein Von Putkammer were horrified at the announcement of such a suitor; but the Fräulein herself stood firm to her choice. It has never been said since that the lady of Mad Bismarck has had to suffer anything similar or analogous to what a French critic of Perrault has called les angoisses trop méritées de Madame Barbebleu.'