to demonstrate the impossibility of a Russo-French alliance by invoking
the Tsar's conservative political principles, he received a reply which in
its sober tone exhibited the full measure of Bismarck's
revolutionary quality: "Necessity will force you into it."

Against this background of Bismarck's enunciation of his policy
and the bold postulate that necessity furnished its own legitimacy, the
actual measures of the Prussian ministry appear anti-climactic, in contrast,
as in his speech. As in the Spring, the King's vacillations brought about
an approximation to the policy Bismarck sought to achieve consciously
and once more Austria played into its opponents hands by its inability to
clinch its gains. No sooner had a Prussian circular note of September 3
announced that Prussia could not recommend the "Four Points" to the other
German states, than Frederick William IV repented his act of independence
and began to negotiate with Austria about including the "Four Points" in the
Alliance of April 20. On November 9 he finally accepted the "Four Points"
and on November 20 he even agreed that Austria could count on Prussian
assistance if Russia attacked the Austrian troops in the Danube
Principalities.

But Austria did not know what to do with its diplomatic triumph.
Far from utilizing the Prussian alliance to extricate itself from its Balkan
involvements, it saw in it a guarantee which enabled it to challenge
Russia with impunity. Frederick William IV had hardly accepted Austria's
unilateral invasion of the Principalities than he was confronted by another
accomplished fact. On December 2 Austria concluded an alliance with Britain
and France despite the fact that Russia had meanwhile accepted the "Four

40. EYCK I, p. 247.

49. Stern VIII, p. 84.

- 32

Points." And even if the ministry at Berlin could not profit from its opportunities, its envoy in Frankfurt saw clearly that Austria had mortgaged its future both towards Russia and towards Prussia: "The combination of cowardice, avarice, and insolence, which characterizes the present policy of the [Austrian] Empire will result in a severe hangover. . . THE IMPERIAL CABINET) The arrogance of [the皇族] does not permit them to admit that they need us; they prefer to enmesh us but they badly deceived themselves as long as they treat political relationships like private business deals. For alliances of great powers are of value only when they express [mutual interests and all their clauses and interpretations can not furnish a substitute for good will and energetic action." This appraisal of the result of a year of confusion, in which Prussia had achieved freedom of action despite itself, and gained in force from the concluding paragraph with its aphoristic vision of the future: "It is already a great advantage for us that after the war our relations with Russia will be better than those of Austria. . . The day of reckoning is sure to come, even if a few years pass. . . Austria has put itself as a barrier in Russia's way; the latter's policy will henceforth be directed against this barrier. . . Through this transformation of the constellation of power we can only gain in freedom of action. Indeed it is a very favorable result of our hesitating policy that it has caused the antagonism between Austria and Russia to become shallower and more permanent."

Austria, however, while aware of these dangers seemed paralyzed by their enormity. It is the fate, of course, of governments whose domestic structure has become rigid that the internal difficulties of arriving at

42. W.I., p. 515. 9 December, 1854.

in an area so far removed from the main concern of most German governments.
And the vacillations of the Prussian government over the past eighteen
months should have made clear that Prussian support would remain formal
at best and that by attempting to force Prussia into one distasteful
decision after another, Austria might undermine its prestige and demonstrate
its impotence.

When Austria formally proposed that the contingents of the Con-
federate army be put in readiness and that the Austrian army in the Danube
Principalities constitute a part of them, Bismarck had a field day.
"Bismarck is profuse in his concern for the interests of the German
governments," reported the Austrian envoy in Frankfurt, "for their finances,
for their freedom of action, for their right to be informed before
decisions are taken. . .No one knew for what and against whom to mobilize."
In his frustration the Austrian foreign minister answered with a circular
dispatch which promised the German governments which supported Austria
"a share of the benefits which might be obtained in an eventual war."
Whatever this enigmatic phrase meant, it was easy to interpret it as an
offer by Austria to compensate its supporters in Frankfrut at the expense
of the other German states. Nor was Bismarck the man to miss such an
opportunity. He knew that
outraged particularist self-will was more likely to produce unity of purpose
than national consciousness, all the more so if Prussia took over the
leadership of the opposition. He therefore never tired of emphasizing
Prussia's determination not to submit; he again spoke darkly of a liberal
ministry at Berlin and at the proper moment came up with a formula which

48. EYCK I, p. 253.

therefore saw an increasing effort by the powers to extricate themselves
from their involvement culminating in the Congress of Paris.

There is no need to trace the precise diplomatic moves which
brought this about because the significance of the Crimean war did not
reside in the terms of the settlement which concluded it. Rather the
importance of the Crimean war was to be found in the diplomatic revolution,
the seeds of which it sowed. It is the essence of a revolution that its
memory may pass as pernicious as its reality. The stability of the
Vienna settlement had been due to the conviction of the three Eastern
powers that only their unity prevented a revolutionary chaos or a domination
of Europe by France. But the Crimean war demonstrated that the requirement
of unity no longer superseded all other considerations of national strength.
Austria, the "chamber of peers of Europe," as Talleyrand had called it,
found itself in an uneasy alliance with a France governed by a usurper.
Prussia had been paralyzed by the instability of its King. And the
German Confederation had demonstrated its impotence in a European crisis.
All the pillars of the Vienna settlement had thus been shown as contingent,
not as self-evident. Stability could no longer be found in a rigid
adherence to the status quo, which rejected any fundamental change as
inconceivable. France had ended its isolation of a generation; their myth
of Russian invincibility had been shattered; and Austria which had staked
its survival on exalting the sanctity of treaty relationships had been
forced to subordinate them to its Balkan interests.

But it is equally the fate of revolutions that contemporaries
rarely understand their significance. Trained in the school of a period
of stability, they seek to return to familiar methods and thereby only

hasten the collapse of the existing structure. For the more desperately
the remnants of the old order assert traditional forms, the more they
demonstrate their incongruity. Austria might strive to restore close
alliance with Russia, but nothing could remove the memory of the Crimean
war. The German Confederation might be profuse in its protestations of
Confederate loyalty; but nothing could eliminate the consciousness that
in its hour of crisis, Austria had found itself alone and the Assembly of
the Confederation torn in the conflict between the major German powers.
Never again would the invocation of the unity of conservative interests
have the same compelling quality; safety was no longer to be found in
a rigid adherence to the status quo but in adaptability, in adjusting
the new situation and utilizing it to maximum advantage. When a system
of legitimacy has disintegrated, its components freed of its restraints
once again become forces in flux. Then victory will go to who best under-
stands their characteristics and their inherent dynamism; to the statesman
of sufficient imagination to grasp all possible combinations, and of sufficient
will power to conjure up that which is most favorable to his charges.

So it happened that perhaps the most important document of the
Crimean war was a report which found its way into the files of the Foreign
Ministry of Berlin with marginalia indicating that its author had not
succeeded in convincing his superior. Shortly after the conclusion of the
Congress of Paris, Bismarck had drafted an outline of what he took to be
the requirements of Prussian policy in the new constellation of powers.
Its distinguishing characteristic was less the boldness of its proposals,
than yet the force of its language, but its seal assumption of the perfect
flexibility of international relationships which were limited only by the

safety? The canons of the Metternich system would have counselled an
alliance with Austria, a reliance on the German Confederation, and the
closest relationships with Great Britain. Each of these elements was
demolished by Bismarck in turn. Britain would have difficulty maintaining
control of the seas against a resurgent French navy aided perhaps by
the United States. In any case Britain's land-forces were so negligible
that the Central Powers would have to bear the brunt of the conflict. The
German Confederation was an illusory force. "Aided by Russia, Prussia,
and Austria, the German Confederation would probably hold together, because
it would believe in victory even without its support; but in the case of
a two-front war towards East and West, those princes who are not under
the control of our bayonets would attempt to save themselves through
declarations of neutrality, if they did not appear in the field against us.
. . With a million troops of the Holy Alliance behind it, the German
Confederation may seem durable; in the present situation it is unable to
resist a foreign danger."

But what about the alliance with Austria, the cardinal postulate
of Prussian policy for over a generation? Not only was Austria a weak
ally, Bismarck replied, but an incongruous one. "If we remained victorious
against a Franco-Russian alliance for what would we have fought? For the
continuation of Austria's predominance in Germany and the miserable
constitution of the Confederation. . . For that we can not possibly risk our
existence or bleed to death victoriously." On the contrary, Austria was
the chief obstacle of Prussia's growth: "Germany is too small for the two
of us. . ., as long as we plow the same furrow, Austria is the only state
against which we can make a permanent gain and to which we can suffer a