But we must not outstrip chronology; the first record of the events of the war of 1870, and of the mighty changes brought on thereby, is that of Sybel, not altogether wrongly entitled an “historical monument.” Professor Sybel’s five volumes do, assuredly, constitute a history founded on documentary evidence, if ever such a one existed, but for that very reason they are, perhaps, somewhat wanting in actual life. They are fashioned after the methods employed and approved of in bygone days, and present rather the character of a register than a record of deeds done by living men. As far as the testimony of hard, dry acts went, it is probably impeachable; but we then come to the question, Is documentary evidence in such a case sufficient to give all that is true? Is not truth, where human impulses and irrationalities are concerned, derived from sources lying higher than the regions sacred to “Blue Books”? Whereas it was to the certificates vouchsafed by state papers, and instruments of such like order, that Sybel’s reliability was chiefly due. Once admit the value of these vouchers (and their corroborative weight none can deny), and it becomes difficult to overrate the importance of Sybel’s still unconcluded “Begründung des Deutschen Reiches.”
The reader who for the first time takes cognizance of the contents of these formidable volumes, is overwhelmed by the amount of attestations they present him with, by his own inability to refute them, or by counter statements substitute a truer appreciation of what did really occur. The dry narrative of mere fact is thus, but the impression it should produce as of a fact lived through is wanting.
This history of Professor Sybel’s is a Prussian one; for which it is obvious that such extraordinary materials would not have been furnished him had it not been tacitly understood that his final verdict must be completely favorable to the Emperor Wilhelm I. and his powerful minister.
In the curious and wide-spreading complications, whence eventually resulted the Franco-German war of 1870, there are two distinct parts: the part before hostilities broke out, and the part after the victory of the Germans might be inevitably foreseen: the first period counts in its dramatis personæ all the states and all the statesmen of Europe. From the Crimean War to the cession of Venetia to Italy through France, there is not an event that is not a connecting link in a long serpentine chain. At the moment this may have escaped the eye, but, once fixed in its one perspective of distance, the chain shows unbroken and all is far less than has been supposed,—occasioned by any arts, manœuvres, or intrigues of the chief actors; the vulgar notions of Prince Bismarck’s incessant wiles, or of Louis Napoleon’s base designs against his neighbors may be discarded as relatively subordinate. The incidents that marked the gigantic game of chess played (not in Europe only) from the overthrow of the Orleans dynasty to the death of Friedrich III. and the fall of Bismarck in the winter of last year were neither the outcome of individual Machiavelianism nor entirely attributable to chance; both were all but in equal degree cause and effect. The actors personally in each case replied to the suggestions of circumstances they had but indirectly helped to bring about.
From 1848-50 to 1889-90, observe the rapid succession of so-called “unexpected” events: The rise to the rule of Democracy in France; the restoration to power of the despotic Bonapartist empire, whence issued the revival of the nationalistic theory, leading on one side to revolution, on the other to conservative resistance and the supremacy of a warlike state like Prussia. We need go no further for the determining cause of the two sovereign influences! Cavour and Bismarck, the two men who predominate our half century, spring from a common necessity, and in reality emerge from the conference of 1856, misnamed the “Crimean Race!”
“I was the egg,” the chancellor was wont to say, “whence my royal master foresaw that unity might perhaps be hatched;” and on Orsini’s scaffold the Piedmontese seer knew full well that the Corsican Carbonaro could not elude the fate lying in wait for him, disguised in the freedom of Italy. You can dissever none of these facts one from the other, and we now approach the “one man principle.” The protagonists stand face to face, rather than side by side, but both are equally the unconscious promoters of that antagonism between Germany and France which, in fact, has shaped, and still shapes, the whole policy of Europe.
From this single grand outline, all the minor lines either start, or towards it tend, indirectly, in convergent curves.
From the vast system formed by the monster-questions—United Germany, the Latin races, the East, the future of catholicism and the papacy, the strife of liberty against despotism—from all these parent problems you can detach none of the smaller incidents of the age; you are obliged to take count of the little Danish Campaign, which taught Prussia those deficiencies, impelling her directly to the attainment of her future military omnipotence, and which, under the abortive attempts of the Saxon minister, M. de Beust,* gave a timid reminder to Germany of what her unity had been and might once again be. Each incident, however local or however remote, formed a feature of the whole; between 1854 and 1870, you cannot ignore the would-be secession of the Southern Confederates, which ended in making “all America” the counterpoise to our older world—neither dare you neglect the Indian meeting whence England issued, clad in moral as in political glory, and gave the noblest sign of the Christian significancy of the Victorian Era; all holds together, men and facts succeed each other in quick alternation; the light that fades on one hand shines with dazzling glare on the other. Cavour dies. Greatest of all, and genuine creator, with his disappearance the equilibrium is endangered. Right ceases to reign, force asserts itself, and Bismarck, ironhanded, invincible, holds sway over a scared, unresisting, one may say a soulless world.
This is the turning-point. The one man theory apparently endures; but physically and morally, the vision of disintegration rises, threatening all; and whence the “New Order” is to come, above all morally, none divine.
We reach here the close of the preliminary period. Up to the 4th of September, 1870, and for a few years beyond, State policy is the proper name for whatever occurs; we deal to a large extent with mathematical quantities, with impersonal obstructions. Statesmen and statecraft are in their place, and fill it; individuals, however distinguished, are, as it were, sheathed in collective symbols and represented by principles. Documentary evidence suffices now! Treaties, minutes, diplomatic reports, instruments of all descriptions, are really the requisite agents of this inanimate diplomatic narration. State papers are the adequate expression, the exclusive speech of mere states, and of this speech Heinrich v. Sybel is one of the foremost living masters.
It would be next to impossible to find anywhere a loftier, clearer, or more minutely correct record of what preceded and caused the war of ‘70, than in the earlier volumes of Sybel’s “History”; for up to the reverses of France, and the substitution of German for French predominance, we are still—in all connected with Germany,—in presence of the Prussia of the past, of the Prussia whose social conditions were fixed by Frederick the Great. Men are simply pawns upon the board; their fate has no influence on others—the fate of kings, queens, and high chivalric orders, is alone of any import to the constituted realm. Nations obey and question not. They are represented by mouldy, defunct formulæ, and as yet no living popular voice, save that of the revolution of 1789, has been raised to ask where was the underlying life of the innominate crowd? But the revolution spoke too loudly, and like the tragedy queen in Hamlet, “protested too much.”
In external Europe, and mostly in over-drilled Prussia, the élite only spoke, and under strict military surveillance, exercised by privilege of birth, the officer’s uniform remained the sign of all title to pre-eminence.
For these reasons this history must be accepted as the perfect chronicle of the occurrences which marked the time before and immediately after the fall of Sédan.
When later the dormant life that was underneath awoke, breathed, and became manifest, Sybel’s official tone no longer struck the true note; the heart of peoples had begun to beat, and disturbed its vibrations. Humanity was astir everywhere, and setting the barriers of etiquette at defiance. Not only were dry registers based on blue books insufficient, but the failure of the vital power that engenders other