People

The good will ofAlexander Post Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2008 22:45:16 +0000
An invitationwas issued to the Powers to meet in Conference at Aix-la-Chapelle. Therewas no longer any doubt that the five years' occupation, contemplated whenthe second Treaty of Paris was made, would be abandoned. The good will ofAlexander, the friendliness of his Ambassador, Pozzo di Borgo, who, as anative of Corsica, had himself been a French subject, and who now aspiredto become Minister of France, were powerful influences in favour of LouisXVIII and his kingdom; much, however, of the speedy restoration ofconfidence was due to the temperate rule of Richelieu.

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Parliamentary debate offered themeans Post Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2008 22:57:00 +0000
The nation itself,far from suffering from Napoleon's fall, regained something of thespontaneous energy so rich in 1789, so wanting at a later period. The cloudof military disaster lifted; new mental and political life began; and underthe dynasty forced back by foreign arms France awoke to an activity unknownto it while its chief gave laws to Europe. Parliamentary debate offered themeans of legal opposition to those who bore no friendship to the Court:conspiracy, though it alarmed at the moment, had become the resort only ofthe obscure and the powerless.

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Even the dishonest eloquence Post Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2008 23:13:18 +0000
Groups of able men were gathering aroundrecognised leaders, or uniting in defence of a common political creed. ThePress, dumb under Napoleon except for purposes of sycophancy, graduallybecame a power in the land. Even the dishonest eloquence of Chateaubriand,enforcing the principles of legal and constitutional liberty on behalf of aparty which would fain have used every weapon of despotism in its owninterest, proved that the leaden weight that had so long crushed thoughtand expression existed no more.

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WhenStein had summoned the Prussian Post Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2008 23:31:57 +0000
But if the years between 1815 and 1819 were in France years of hope andprogress, it was not so with Europe generally. In England they were yearsof almost unparalleled suffering and discontent; in Italy the rule ofAustria grew more and more anti-national; in Prussia, though a vigorouslocal and financial administration hastened the recovery of theimpoverished land, the hopes of liberty declined beneath the revivingenergy of the nobles and the resistance of the friends of absolutism. WhenStein had summoned the Prussian people to take up arms for theirFatherland, he had believed that neither Frederick William nor Alexanderwould allow Prussia to remain without free institutions after the battlewas won.

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For a while the hopeseemed Post Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2008 23:48:12 +0000
The keener spirits in the War of Liberation had scarcelydistinguished between the cause of national independence and that ofinternal liberty. They returned from the battlefields of Saxony and France,knowing that the Prussian nation had unsparingly offered up life and wealthat the call of patriotism, and believing that a patriot-king would rejoiceto crown his triumph by inaugurating German freedom. For a while the hopeseemed near fulfilment.

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It was added that acommission Post Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2008 23:59:51 +0000
On the 22nd of May, 1815, Frederick Williampublished an ordinance, declaring that a Representation of the Peopleshould be established. [276] For this end the King stated that the existingProvincial Estates should be re-organised, and new ones founded where noneexisted, and that out of the Provincial Estates the Assembly ofRepresentatives of the country should be chosen. It was added that acommission would be appointed, to organise under Hardenberg's presidencythe system of representation, and to draw up a written Constitution.

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Guarded as it was Post Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2008 0:13:40 +0000
Theright of discussing all legislative measures affecting person or propertywas promised to the Assembly. Though foreign affairs seemed to be directlyexcluded from parliamentary debate, and the language of the Edict suggestedthat the representative body would only have a consultative voice, withoutthe power either of originating or of rejecting laws, these reservationsonly showed the caution natural on the part of a Government divestingitself for the first time of absolute power. Guarded as it was, the schemelaid down by the King would hardly have displeased the men who had done themost to make constitutional rule in Prussia possible.

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The old court-party at Berlin Post Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2008 0:32:44 +0000
But the promise of Frederick William was destined to remain unfulfilled. Itwas no good omen for Prussia that Stein, who had rendered such gloriousservices to his country and to all Europe, was suffered to retire frompublic life. The old court-party at Berlin, politicians who had been forcedto make way for more popular men, landowners who had never pardoned theliberation of the serf, all the interests of absolutism and class-privilegewhich had disappeared for a moment in the great struggle for nationalexistence, gradually re-asserted their influence over the King, andundermined the authority of Hardenberg, himself sinking into old age amidcircumstances of private life that left to old age little of its honour.

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Hardenberg had not only occasioned Post Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2008 0:43:43 +0000
Todecide even in principle upon the basis to be given to the new PrussianConstitution would have taxed all the foresight and all the constructiveskill of the most experienced statesman; for by the side of the ancientdominion of the Hohenzollerns there were now the Rhenish and the SaxonProvinces, alien in spirit and of doubtful loyalty, in addition to Polishterritory and smaller German districts acquired at intervals between 1792and 1815. Hardenberg was right in endeavouring to link the Constitutionwith something that had come down from the past; but the decision that theGeneral Assembly should be formed out of the Provincial Estates wasprobably an injudicious one; for these Estates, in their present form, weremainly corporations of nobles, and the spirit which animated them was atonce the spirit of class-privilege and of an intensely strong localism.Hardenberg had not only occasioned an unnecessary delay by basing therepresentative system upon a reform of the Provincial Estates, but hadexposed himself to sharp attacks from these very bodies, to whom nothingwas more odious than the absorption of their own dignity by a GeneralAssembly.

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Schmalz, contradicting astatement which attributed Post Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2008 1:01:03 +0000
It became evident that the process of forming a Constitutionwould be a tedious one; and in the meantime the opponents of the popularmovement opened their attack upon the men and the ideas whose influence inthe war of Liberation appeared to have made so great a break between theGerman present and the past.The first public utterance of the reaction was a pamphlet issued in July,1815, by Schmalz, a jurist of some eminence, and brother-in-law ofScharnhorst, the re-organiser of the army. Schmalz, contradicting astatement which attributed to him a highly honourable part in the patrioticmovement of 1808, attacked the Tugendbund, and other political associationsdating from that epoch, in language of extreme violence.

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