But this hope has been disappointed. Austria will not forget that its princes once ruled Germany. In the more youthful but powerfully developing Prussia she refuses to perceive a natural ally, but sees only a hostile rival. Prussia

so Austria reasons-must be opposed on every occasion, since what is good for Prussia is bad for Austria. The old, unhappy jealousy has again blazed up. Prussia shall be weakened, annihilated, dishonored. With Prussia no treaties are to be observed; the confederated princes have not only been roused against Prussia; they have been induced to dissolve the confederation. Wherever we look throughout Germany we are surrounded by enemies, whose war cry is, "Down with Prussia!"

Austria

But the spirit of 1813 still lives in my people. Who can The nation in rob us of a single foot of Prussian soil, if we are firmly arms against resolved to protect the acquisitions of our fathers; if king and people are united more firmly than ever by the danger to the fatherland, and hold it to be their highest and most sacred duty to risk blood and treasure for her honor? In anxious expectation of what has now happened, I have for years regarded it as the first duty of my royal office to prepare Prussia's military resources for a powerful manifestation. And no Prussian can fail to view, as I do, with confidence and satisfaction the military forces which now protect our boundaries. With their king at their head the Prussian people feel themselves, in truth, a nation in arms. Our enemies are deceived when they imagine that Prussia is paralyzed by internal discord. Over against the enemy the nation is a single powerful unit. In the face of the enemy all differences disappear and we stand united, whether it be for good or

evil fortune.

for the conflict

I have done all that I could to spare Prussia the burden and Austria sacrifices of a war: my people know this; God, who searches responsible all hearts, knows it. Up to the last moment I have, in combination with France England and Russia sought and kent

Let it be so. The fault is not mine should my people have hard battles to fight and mayhap heavy burdens to bear. No alternative is any longer left us. We must fight for our very existence. We must engage in a life-and-death struggle with those who would cast down the Prussia of the Great Elector, of Frederick the Great; the Prussia which emerged victorious from the War of Liberation, from the position to which the skill and strength of her princes and the bravery, devotion, and character of her people have raised her.

Let us petition Almighty God, the director of the history of nations, the disposer of battles, to bless our arms. Should he grant us the victory, we shall then be strong enough to renew, in a firmer and more beneficent manner, the bonds which have so loosely bound the German lands together, in name rather than in fact, and which have now been torn asunder by those who fear the right and might of the national spirit.

May God be with us.

BERLIN, June 18, 1866

WILLIAM

252. Bis

to his wife

Count Bismarck was able to write to his wife on July 9, three days after the great and decisive victory of Prussia at Königgrätz, as follows:

HOHEN MAUTH, Monday, July 9 It goes well with us at least, if we are not excesmarck writes sive in our demands and do not think that we have conquered the world, we shall achieve a peace that is worth while. But we are as easily elated as we are cast down, and I have the thankless task of pouring water into the intoxicating wine, and making it plain that we do not live alone in Europe but with three neighbors.

about the battle of Königgrätz

The Austrians have taken a stand in Moravia, and we are at present so rash as to propose that to-morrow our headquarters shall be on the spot they now occupy. Prisoners are still coming in, and one hundred and eighty cannon

have arrived since the 3d. If they bring on their southern army, we shall, with God's gracious aid, beat that, too. Confidence is everywhere. Our soldiers are dears [Unsere Leute sind zum Küssen], - every one of them so heroic, quiet, obedient, and decent, though with empty stomachs, wet clothes, wet camp, little sleep, and no soles to their shoes! They are friendly to all, with no plundering or burning, but paying what they can, and eating moldy bread. There must be a goodly stock of fear of God among our common men, otherwise things could not be as they are. It is hard to get news of acquaintances; we are scattered miles apart, and do not know where to send, and have no one to send. There are men enough, of course, but no horses.

the battle

The king exposed himself a great deal on the 3d, and it Conduct of was a good thing that I was with him, for the warnings of William in others did not influence him, and no one else would have dared to talk to him as I did the last time, and it did the job, when a knot of ten cuirassiers and fifteen horses of the sixth cuirassier regiment were trampling about us in bloody confusion and the shells buzzed around disagreeably near his Majesty. The worst of them happily did not go off. I should, however, rather have had him too venturesome than to have him show himself overprudent. He was delighted with his troops, and with good reason, so that he did not seem to notice the whizzing and din about him. He was as composed as if he were on the Kreuzberg, and kept finding a new battalion to thank and say good-night to, until we were nearly within the firing line again. But so much was said to him of his recklessness that he will be more careful in the future, so your mind may be at rest on that score. I can hardly believe yet that the battle has really taken place.

Bismarck's fears that the king and his advisers would be intoxicated by the brilliant victory over Austria and would wish to press on, and perhaps lose much in the

end were justified Hotella in bic

how although

253. How

Bismarck

held Prussia

in check after the victory of Königgrätz

Hazard of continuing the war

On July 23, under the presidency of the king, a council war was held, in which the question to be decided was whethe we should make peace under the conditions offered or continu the war. A painful illness from which I was suffering made necessary that the council should be held in my room. On thi occasion I was the only civilian in uniform. I declared it to b my conviction that peace must be concluded on the Austriar terms, but remained alone in my opinion; the king supported the military majority.

My nerves could not stand the strain which had been put upon them day and night; I got up in silence, walked into my adjoining bedchamber, and was there overcome by a violent paroxysm of tears. Meanwhile I heard the council dispersing in the next room. I thereupon set to work to commit to paper the reasons which, in my opinion, spoke for the conclusion of peace, and begged the king, in the event of his not accepting the advice for which I was responsible, to relieve me of my functions if the war were continued.

I set out with this document on the following day to explain it by word of mouth. In the antechamber I found two colonels with a report on the spread of cholera morbus among their troops, barely half of whom were fit for service. These alarming figures confirmed my resolve to make the acceptance of the Austrian terms a cabinet question. Besides my political anxieties, I feared that by transferring operations to Hungary, the nature of that country, which was well known to me, would soon make the disease overwhelming. The climate, especially in August, is dangerous; there is great lack of water; the country villages are widely distributed, each with many square miles of open fields attached; and, finally, plums and melons grow there in abundance. Our campaign of 1792 in Champagne was in my mind as a warning example; on that occasion it was not the French but dysentery which caused our retreat. Armed with my documents I unfolded to the king the political and military reasons which opposed the continuation of the war.

We had to avoid wounding Austria too severely; we had to avoid leaving behind in her any unnecessary bitterness of

feeling or desire for revenge; we ought rather to reserve the Bismarck's possibility of becoming friends again with our adversary of reasons for treating the moment, and in any case to regard the Austrian State as a Austria piece on the European chessboard and the renewal of friendly leniently relations as a move open to us. If Austria were severely injured, she would become the ally of France and of every other opponent of ours; she would even sacrifice her anti-Russian interests for the sake of revenge on Prussia.

On the other hand, I could not see any guarantee for Prussia has us in the future of the countries constituting the Austrian nothing to gain from monarchy, in case the latter were split up by risings of the destroying Hungarians and Slavs or made permanently dependent on the Austrian those peoples. What would be substituted for that portion of power Europe which the Austrian state had hitherto occupied from Tyrol to Bukowina? Fresh formations on this territory could only be of a permanently revolutionary nature. German Austria we could neither wholly nor partly make use of. The acquisition of provinces like Austrian Silesia and portions of Bohemia could not strengthen the Prussian State; it would not lead to an amalgamation of German Austria with Prussia, and Vienna could not be governed from Berlin as a mere dependency.

To all this the king raised no objection, but declared the actual terms as inadequate, without, however, definitely formulating his own demands. Only so much was clear, that his claims had grown considerably since July 4. He said that the chief culprit could not be allowed to escape unpunished, and that, justice once satisfied, we could let the misled backsliders off more easily; and he insisted on the cessions of territory from Austria which I have already mentioned.

I replied that we were not there to sit in judgment, but to pursue the German policy. Austria's conflict and rivalry with us were no more culpable than ours with her; our task was the

establishment or foundation of German national unity under