LITMIR.BIZ

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in his ranks laid the foundation of that friendship which has ever since united the two nations. In Calabria the hero met with the feeblest resistance from the Bourbon troops and the wildest of welcomes from the populace. At Salerno he took tickets for Naples and entered the enemy's capital by railway train (September 7). Then he purposed, after routing the Bourbon force north of the city, to go on and attack the French at Rome and proclaim a united Italy.

      Cavour took care that he should do no such thing. The Piedmontese statesman knew when to march onwards and when to halt. As his compatriot, Manzoni, said of him, "Cavour has all the prudence and all the imprudence of the true statesman." He had dared and won in 1855–59, and again in secretly encouraging Garibaldi's venture. Now it was time to stop in order to consolidate the gains to the national cause.

      The leader of the red-shirts, having done what no king could do, was thenceforth to be controlled by the monarchy of the north. Victor Emmanuel came in as the deus ex machina; his troops pressed southwards, occupying the eastern part of the Papal States in their march, and joined hands with the Garibaldians to the north of Naples, thus preventing the collision with France which the irregulars would have brought about. Even as it was, Cavour had hard work to persuade Napoleon that this was the only way of curbing Garibaldi and preventing the erection of a South Italian Republic; but finally the French Emperor looked on uneasily while the Pope's eastern territories were violated, and while the cause of Italian Unity was assured at the expense of the Pontiff whom France was officially supporting in Rome. A plébiscite, or mass vote, of the people of Sicily, South Italy, and the eastern and central parts of the Papal States, was resorted to by Cavour in order to throw a cloak of legality over these irregular proceedings. The device pleased Napoleon, and it resulted in an overwhelming vote in favour of annexation to Victor Emmanuel's kingdom. Thus, in March 1861, the soldier-king was able amidst universal acclaim to take the title of King of Italy. Florence was declared to be the capital of the realm (1864), which embraced all parts of Italy except the Province of Venetia, pertaining to Austria, and the "Patrimonium Petri"--that is, Rome and its vicinity,--still held by the Pope and garrisoned by the French. The former of these was to be regained for la patria in 1866, the latter in 1870, in consequence of the mighty triumphs then achieved by the principle of nationality in Prussia and Germany. To these triumphs we must now briefly advert.

      No one who looked at the state of European politics in 1861, could have imagined that in less than ten years Prussia would have waged three wars and humbled the might of Austria and France. At that time she showed no signs of exceptional vigour: she had as yet produced no leaders so inspiring as Mazzini and Garibaldi, no statesman so able as Cavour. Her new king, William, far from arousing the feelings of growing enthusiasm that centred in Victor Emmanuel, was more and more distrusted and disliked by Liberals for the policy of militarism on which he had just embarked. In fact, the Hohenzollern dynasty was passing into a "Conflict Time" with its Parliament which threatened to impair the influence of Prussia abroad and to retard her recovery from the period of humiliations through which she had recently passed.

      A brief recital of those humiliations is desirable as showing, firstly, the suddenness with which the affairs of a nation may go to ruin in slack and unskilful hands, and, secondly, the immense results that can be achieved in a few years by a small band of able men who throw their whole heart into the work of national regeneration.

      The previous ruler, Frederick William IV., was a gifted and learned man, but he lacked soundness of judgment and strength of will--qualities which are of more worth in governing than graces of the intellect. At the time of the revolutionary outbreaks of 1848 he capitulated to the Berlin mob and declared for a constitutional régime in which Prussia should merge herself in Germany; but when the excesses of the democrats had weakened their authority, he put them down by military force, refused the German Crown offered him by the popularly elected German Parliament assembled at Frankfurt-on-Main (April 1849); and thereupon attempted to form a smaller union of States, namely, Prussia, Saxony, and Hanover. This Three Kings' League, as it was called, soon came to an end; for it did not satisfy the nationalists who wished to see Germany united, the constitutionalists who aimed at the supremacy of Parliament, or the friends of the old order of things. The vacillations of Frederick William and the unpractical theorisings of the German Parliament at Frankfurt having aroused general disgust, Austria found little difficulty in restoring the power of the old Germanic Confederation in September, 1850. Strong in her alliance with Russia, she next compelled Frederick William to sign the Convention of Olmütz (Nov. 1850). By this humiliating compact he agreed to forbear helping the German nationalists in Schleswig-Holstein to shake off the oppressive rule of the Danes; to withdraw Prussian troops from Hesse-Cassel and Baden, where strifes had broken out; and to acknowledge the supremacy of the old Federal Diet under the headship of Austria. Thus, it seemed that the Prussian monarchy was a source of weakness and disunion for North Germany, and that Austria, backed up by the might of Russia, must long continue to lord it over the cumbrous Germanic Confederation.

      But a young country squire, named Bismarck, even then resolved that the Prussian monarchy should be the means of strengthening and binding together the Fatherland. The resolve bespoke the patriotism of a sturdy, hopeful nature; and the young Bismarck was nothing if not patriotic, sturdy, and hopeful. The son of an ancient family in the Mark of Brandenburg, he brought to his life-work powers inherited from a line of fighting ancestors; and his mind was no less robust than his body. Quick at mastering a mass of details, he soon saw into the heart of a problem, and his solution of it was marked both by unfailing skill and by sound common sense as to the choice of men and means. In some respects he resembles Napoleon the Great. Granted that he was his inferior in the width of vision and the versatility of gifts that mark a world-genius, yet he was his equal in diplomatic resourcefulness and in the power of dealing lightning strokes; while his possession of the priceless gift of moderation endowed his greatest political achievements with a soundness and solidity never possessed by those of the mighty conqueror who "sought to give the mot d'ordre to the universe." If the figure of the Prussian does not loom so large on the canvas of universal history as that of the Corsican--if he did not tame a Revolution, remodel society, and reorganise a Continent--be it remembered that he made a United Germany, while Napoleon the Great left France smaller and weaker than he found her.

      Bismarck's first efforts, like those of Cavour for Sardinia, were directed to the task of restoring the prestige of his State. Early in his official career, the Prussian patriot urged the expediency of befriending Russia during the Crimean War, and he thus helped on that rapprochement between Berlin and St. Petersburg which brought the mighty triumphs of 1866 and 1870 within the range of possibility. In 1857 Frederick William became insane; and his brother William took the reins of Government as Regent, and early in 1861 as King. The new ruler was less gifted than his unfortunate brother; but his homely common sense and tenacious will strengthened Prussian policy where it had been weakest. He soon saw the worth of Bismarck, employed him in high diplomatic positions, and when the royal proposals for strengthening the army were decisively rejected by the Prussian House of Representatives, he speedily sent for Bismarck to act as Minister-President (Prime Minister) and "tame" the refractory Parliament. The constitutional crisis was becoming more and more acute when a great national question came into prominence owing to the action of the Danes in Schleswig-Holstein affairs.

      Without entering into the very tangled web of customs, treaties, and dynastic claims that made up the Schleswig-Holstein question, we may here state that those Duchies were by ancient law very closely connected together, that the King of Denmark was only Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, and that the latter duchy, wholly German in population, formed part of the Germanic Confederation. Latterly the fervent nationalists in Denmark, while leaving Holstein to its German connections, had resolved thoroughly to "Danify" Schleswig, the northern half of which was wholly Danish, and they pressed on this policy by harsh and intolerant measures, making it difficult or well-nigh impossible for the Germans to have public worship in their own tongue and to secure German teachers for their children in the schools. Matters were already in a very strained state, when shortly before the death of King Frederick VII. of Denmark (November, 1863) the Rigsraad at Copenhagen sanctioned a constitution for Schleswig, which would practically have made it a part of the Danish monarchy. The King gave his assent to it, an act which his successor, Christian IX., ratified.

      Now, this

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