WHY WAS BISMARCK MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN THE REVOLUTIONARIES OF 1848-49 IN ENDINGAUSTRIA’S INFLUENCE IN GERMANY?

The February 1848 overthrow of the Orleans Monarchy was much more than just a French phenomenon as it precipitated revolutionary activity across Europe. In Germany, the Austrian chancellor Metternich was finally overthrown. This was a significant victory for he had long been regarded as the personification of monarchical absolutism and everything else that was reactionary. The revolutionaries attempted to follow up on that success by convening the Frankfurt Assembly as a prelude to German unification. That revolutionary project raised high hopes but it failed spectacularly barely a year after being launched. The revolutionaries who glaringly lacked the state machinery and the military capacity to back their decisions soon realised that it was one thing to remove Metternich the individual and something else to remove Austria the mighty state from pre-eminence in Germany. That pre-eminence would only be ended in 1867 after the Austro-Prussian war of 1866.Ironically the man to end it would be the conservative iron chancellor of Prussia, Otto von Bismarck. This essay shall attempt to show that
Bismarck succeeded where the revolutionaries failed because of his combination of shrewd diplomacy and (more importantly) brute force.

To begin with Bismarck’s success was founded on the full support he enjoyed from the King of Prussia which was the most powerful German state after Austria. He actually owed his position to the king who had appointed him in 1862.The conservative base from which he operated controlled the instruments of state power thus giving Bismarck’s policies complete state support. From such a vantage point he was therefore able to by-pass parliament and collect taxes for army reform safe in the knowledge that he had support from both the king and the rest of Prussia’s powerful conservative establishment. He was
also able to embark on the diplomatic manoeuvres which laid the basis for the war which culminated in Austria’s defeat. He was also able to get the Prussian king’s approval for his schemes of expelling Austria from Germany, the creation of the North German Confederation (all in 1867) and ultimately the unification of Germany in 1871

All that was in stark contrast to the 1848-49 revolutionaries whose every effort met with the brick wall of monarchical and state opposition. The revolutionaries failed because unlike Bismarck they failed to win the support of the Prussian king or any other German king for that matter. Their attempt to end Austria’s influence or achieve unification stemmed from the very revolutionary ideals of parliamentary rule and constitutionalism that were so inimical to the conservative monarchies that held power in the various German states. They failed because their plan of action involved usurping power from the ruling
monarchical establishment or else refashion the monarchy to suit their own interests. The kings however refused to be manipulated or assist the revolutionary cause. This explains why Frederick William IV of Prussia refused to accept the throne of the united Germany (minus Austria) which the revolutionaries had offered him. He sarcastically declared that he would not “pick up a crown from the gutter.”

Bismarck ultimately succeeded because he had the necessary enforcement apparatus to implement his policies unlike the revolutionaries. As leader Bismarck could count on the full co-operation of the state machinery including the army. The situation was even made easier for him by the fact that he had a personal friendship with senior military personnel namely Roon and Moltke. He worked closely with the two to reform and modernise the army after having defied parliament and collected the necessary taxes for that purpose. Bismarck was thus able to co-ordinate diplomacy and military strategy to defeat Austria.

The same could not be said for the revolutionaries who possessed neither control nor access to any enforcement machinery. There was no civil service or any other such structure in any of the German states which the revolutionaries could call upon to implement their decisions. They did not control the army and they did not even have its support and therefore could not possibly dislodge Austria which jealously clung onto the pre-eminence achieved at 1815 Vienna Settlement. In any case the revolution (or even the revolutionaries themselves) was just an effervescent and temporary political phenomenon
which had been propelled to the front stage by a temporary popular enthusiasm. Their staying power was highly suspect and as such they had no solid power base of their own. That lack of a solid power base forced them to rely on the armies that were controlled paradoxically by the very kings they sought to upstage. In September 1848 they begged the conservative Prussian army to crush radical riots that had broken out in Frankfurt itself. They even needed the Austrian army to crush a simultaneous Czech revolutionary rising. The conservative armies acted out of self-interest rather than out of any sympathy for the revolutionary cause. The situation was made painfully clear to the revolutionaries when the same Prussia refused to engage Austria in war and climbed down from its position of seeking unification in the face of Austrian threats. That was the so-called humiliation of Prussia at Olmutz in 1850.Even without this the revolutionaries could not possibly end the influence of Austria while at the same time seeking their help against the Czechs as already discussed here.

Bismarck succeeded because he employed military force and superior military force at that to defeat Austria. When compared with that of Austria Bismarck’s Prussian army was a much better trained, better organised and better equipped force. His army made fullest use of the their newly developed needle-gun which enabled them to fire a superior five rounds per minute which was more than the Austrians could offer with their cumbersome slow-firing weapons. Bismarck also profited from Prussia’s better developed railway system which facilitated the faster and more efficient deployment of Prussian troops to the battle sites. With such advantages Bismarck crushed the Austrians after just seven weeks of fighting; so fast that Napoleon III of France who had been hoping to intervene at some later stage was presented with an accomplished fact.

While Bismarck boasted of an army and a superior one at that the 1848-49 revolutionaries contrastingly had no army to speak of not even a poor one. The best they could do was relying on the Prussian king to bail them out and he was generally unwillingly to because he was in the first instance an enemy of the revolution. This was a fact that became apparent in 1849 when a counter-revolution commenced in Prussia Austria and other German states. He also refused to accept the revolutionary crown of a united Germany and in a moment of truth he sent his troops to drive out what remained of the Frankfurt Assembly late in 1849.In this way he destroyed all that had been left of the revolutionaries’ work.

Bismarck’s success also stemmed from his ability to combine military activity with shrewd diplomacy. He employed a Machiavellian and opportunist strategy which at first included co-operation with Austria to end Danish influence in Germany before turning against Austria at the opportune moment. He displayed diplomatic skill in persuading the German Bund to sanction a joint Austro-Prussian rather than an allGerman war to expel Denmark from Schleswig and Holstein. He followed this up by successfully negotiating Prussian and Austrian administration of Schleswig and Holstein respectively on behalf of the
German Bund. In this way Bismarck laid the basis for future confrontation with Austria. He went on to secure a military alliance with Sardinia and also secured French and Russian neutrality. With all this in place he deemed it time for confrontation with Austria. He provoked the war in 1866 by suggesting reforms to the German Bund that Austria found unpalatable and by permitting into Schleswig refugees from Austrian administered Holstein. This was in contravention of the Gastein Convention signed by Austria and Prussia. Having employed such diplomacy he left the army to do the job of defeating Austria in battle and this duly happened after just seven weeks.

Bismarck’s diplomatic capacity was way beyond anything that motley gathering of the 1848-49 revolutionaries could offer. The revolutionaries were clearly crippled by their lack of government office and failure to control any state apparatus. Without these they could only talk enthusiastically making all kinds of bombastic but empty declarations. By contrast Bismarck the statesman could negotiate with Austria with Denmark France Russia or any other country and dispatch the army in any direction.

When all has been said and done one thing clear is that a solid power such as that provided by control of government and military force is always required in such cases. However noble or popular your cause is you cannot do much without these. This explains why Bismarck succeeded where the revolutionaries failed.