Violence and Legitimacy: European Monarchy in the Age of Revolutions 9783110561395, 9783110558395

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Volker Sellin Violence and Legitimacy

Volker Sellin

Violence and Legitimacy European Monarchy in the Age of Revolutions

Originally published as Gewalt und Legitimität. Die europäische Monarchie im Zeitalter der Revolutionen, Munich, Oldenbourg, 2011.

ISBN 978-3-11-055839-5 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-056139-5 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-055900-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover illustration: Nikolaj Dmitrievič Dmitriev-Orenburgskij (1838-1898), General Skobelev on horseback (1883), Irkutsk Regional Art Museum after the name of V. P. Sukačev. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Preface The German original of the present book was published in 2011 by Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich. I am very grateful to Martin Rethmeier of De Gruyter-Oldenbourg-Verlag, Munich, for his readiness to publish the English version as well and to Dr. Elise Wintz and Rabea Rittgerodt for their careful editing. Volker Sellin Heidelberg, 27 May, 2017

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110561395-001

Preface to the German edition of 2011 Every scholar stands on the shoulders of his predecessors. The authors from whom I have profited are listed in the bibliography. During work on the manuscript I had several opportunities to discuss my ideas with others. The chapters “Enlightenment” and “Charisma” are based on conferences I gave at the Academy of Sciences of Heidelberg. Participation in three international conferences was helpful in clarifying my approach. Upon invitation of Lucien Bély I participated in December 2000 in a conference on “La présence des Bourbons en Europe, XVIe‒XXIe siècle” at the Sorbonne. In October 2002 Marina Tesoro invited me to a conference on “Monarchia, tradizione, identità nazionale” at the University of Pavia, and in November 2007 I participated in a conference on “Monarchia e legittimazione politica in Europa tra Otto e Novecento”, organized by Fulvio Cammarano and Giulia Guazzaloca at the Facoltà di Scienze Politiche of Bologna University. At the invitation of Fabio Rugge and Marina Tesoro I served in March 2009 as guest professor at the Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori of Pavia University where I had the opportunity to discuss my approach with Italian students. I am grateful to the staff of numerous libraries I consulted. In the first place I should like to thank the library of Heidelberg University and its director Dr. Veit Probst no less than Irina Lukka of the Slavonic Department of the Finnish National Library at Helsinki. Special gratitude is due to Martin Rethmeier and Dr. Julia Schreiner of Oldenbourg Publishing House. Volker Sellin Heidelberg, 18 April, 2011

Contents 

Introduction 1 Legitimate and Illegitimate Government 1 Monarchy and Revolution 3 Preserving Legitimacy, a Never-Ending Task 5 8 Approach and Disposition Levels of Analysis 10 Social, Geographic, and Chronological Limits 11 Point of Departure, Method, and Aims of the Investigation



Violence 14 Acceptance or Constraint 14 16 George III and the American Revolution Charles X and the July Revolution 18 Louis-Philippe and the February Revolution 22 23 Friedrich Wilhelm IV and the March Revolution Mirabeau and the Force of Bayonets 26 Foreign Intervention 27 28 Peterloo 1819 Milan 1898 32 St. Petersburg 1905 34



Dynasty 40 Dynasties and States 40 Dynastic Crises 44 The Crisis of the House of Valois 1559‒1589 47 The Time of Troubles in Russia 1598‒1613 48 The Dynastic Crisis in Spain 1833‒1839: Isabelinos and Carlistas 50 Pretenders Foreign to the Dynasty 53 From the House of Stuart to the House of Hanover 1688‒ 1714 55 The Foundation of New Hereditary Monarchies in the Age of Revolutions 56 Dynastic Anniversaries 60 Dynasty, Nation, and Constitution 64 Disempowered Dynasties’ Quest for Restoration 70

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Contents

Religion 75 75 The Sacral Character of Monarchy The Inviolability of the Constitutional Monarch Doubts about the Divine Right of Kings 80 Coronations 82 84 Napoleon’s Imperial Coronation in 1804 Napoleonic State Cult and the Church 87 88 The Sacre of Charles X 1825 The Coronation of William I of Prussia in 1861 Russian Autocracy and Orthodox Church 93 95 The Coronation of Alexander III in 1883

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

Success in War 100 100 Victory or Defeat The Deposition of Napoleon I 106 Napoleon III 110 113 The Fall of the Second French Empire The Abdication of Nicholas II 115 Symbolic Manifestations of the Prussian and German Military Monarchy 119 124 The Overthrow of William II The Renunciation of Charles I 131



Enlightenment 139 Diderot and Catherine II 139 Cameralistics 141 Peter the Great 142 Legitimacy through Reform 145 Political Mechanics 147 Enlightened Absolutism 150 Taxation without Reform 158 The Monarchy in the Revolution 159 Enlightenment and the Age of Revolution



160

Constitution 163 Democratic Constitutionalism: The Monarchy under the Constitution of 1791 163 Referendum and Plebiscite 167 The Caesarism of Napoleon III 171 Monarchical Constitutionalism 174

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Contents

Imposition and Restoration 176 Russia’s Transition to Constitutionalism The Statuto Albertino of 1848 189 Napoleonic Constitutionalism 190 Constitutional Conflict 192 194 The German Empire Constitutional Celebrations 196

182

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209 Nation Dynastic States and Nation States 209 210 The Creation of the Monarchy by the Nation The Creation of the Nation by the Monarch 214 Particularism in Germany 219 223 Official Nationality in the Russian Empire Monarchy and National Movement 227



Social Reform 232 Lorenz von Stein’s Social Kingdom 232 The Social Ideas of Napoleon III 233 The Economic and Social Policy of the Second Empire 240 Victoria and Albert Bismarck’s Social Legislation 243 Friedrich Naumann’s Social Kingship 244 245 The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia Principles of Liberal Social Reform: The Italian Example



Charisma 253 The Charismatic Savior 253 Napoleon I 254 Napoleon III 255 The Charismatic Tsar 257 Giuseppe Garibaldi and Victor Emanuel II 259 Michail Skobelev and Alexander III 264 Paul von Hindenburg and William II 268 The Dynastic Ruler as Hero 273 276 Monarchical Heroes’ Memorials



Summary



List of Abbreviations

283 287

236

248

X

Contents



Picture Credits



Bibliography

Index

324

288 289

1 Introduction Il n’existe au monde que deux pouvoirs, l’un illégitime, c’est la force ; l’autre légitime, c’est la volonté générale. Benjamin Constant¹

Legitimate and Illegitimate Government Why do people allow themselves to be governed by others? It appears safe to say that people are ready to be governed by others if they consider that government legitimate. The criterion of legitimacy is agreement with convictions of right. According to Peter Graf Kielmansegg “legitimacy is social acceptance as of right.”² But since convictions are subject to change a long accepted political system may eventually lose its legitimacy. If legitimacy is lost, government deteriorates into dictatorship and can maintain itself by force only. That’s what Benjamin Constant had in mind when he declared that there were only two kinds of government: “One is illegitimate and works by constraint; the other one is legitimate and is the general will”. By identifying legitimacy with the general will Constant clarified that legitimate government is based on a recognition that the individual citizen cannot refuse as long as he accepts the prevailing order of values. The recognition is thus “not the result of a free decision” but a “perception of social validity.”³ Constant emphasized that no form of government will last without this perception: “If the government of the small number is sanctioned by general approval it becomes the general will. This holds true of any form of government: If theocracy, monarchy, aristocracy prevail on the minds, they are the general will.”⁴ Constant’s general approval must be distinguished from the popularity of a ruler. If government is transmitted through heritage it may easily fall on the shoulders of persons who are unable to obtain popularity, their legitimacy notwithstanding. According to Linda Colley between the restoration of Charles

 Benjamin Constant, “Principes de politique,” in Constant, Œuvres, ed. Alfred Roulin, Paris 1957, 1103.  Peter Graf Kielmansegg, “Legitimität als analytische Kategorie,” Politische Vierteljahresschrift 12 (1971), 367.  Ibid., 368.  Constant, “Principes,” 1103: “Si vous supposez le pouvoir du petit nombre sanctionné par l’assentiment de tous, ce pouvoir devient alors la volonté générale. Ce principe s’applique à toutes les institutions. La théocratie, la royauté, l’aristocratie, lorsqu’elles dominent les esprits, sont la volonté générale.” https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110561395-002

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II in 1660 and the accession of George III one hundred years later in Great Britain no ruler, with the possible exception of Queen Anne, enjoyed at best more than a modest or passing popularity.⁵ By the criteria of legality and recognition on the one hand and arbitrariness and constraint on the other Aristotle had distinguished “right or constitutional” from “degenerate” governments, orthai politeiai from parekbaseis. He explained the distinction by referring to the household where he qualified the government of the master over his slaves as despotic and over his children and his wife as a rational guidance of free individuals. In a monarchy he called lawful government “royal,” in a democracy “political.”⁶ On the other hand, he defined despotic government as the absolute determination of the will of the subjects by the despot. To Aristotle the final criterion, by which the government of free individuals and the government of slaves could be distinguished, was the benefit for which the government was exercised. A free government aimed at the common good, a despotic government at the advantage of the governors only.⁷ Aristotle’s distinctions dominated political thought way into the early modern period. At the end of the 16th century Johannes Althusius defined the “legitimate ruler” (legitimus magistratus) in Aristotelian tradition by his intention to serve the common good.⁸ The legitimate ruler observed the law. To Jean Bodin the “royal and legitimate monarchy” (la monarchie royale et légitime) followed natural law.⁹ The rational philosophy of the Enlightenment justified government by an original contract the purpose of which was to grant the observation of natural law and the well-being of the commonwealth. In his article Société in the Encyclopédie, Louis de Jaucourt declared that a government was “legitimate” only if it contributed to the purpose for which it had been instituted.¹⁰ The term “legitimacy” (légitimité) has come into use only shortly before the French

 Linda Colley, “The Apotheosis of George III: Loyalty, Royalty and the British Nation 1760‒ 1820,” Past and Present 102 (1984), 95.  Aristotle, Politica, 1259 a 37‒b 1, 1254 b 2‒6.  Ibid., 1279 a 17‒21, 27‒31 ; cf. Volker Sellin, “Politik,” Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol. 4 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1978), 795‒96.  Johannes Althusius, Politica methodicè digesta atque exemplis sacris et profanis illustrata, Herborn 1614, ch. 38, 938 : “Officium veri et legitimi magistratus est, curare salutem et bonum regni publicum, atque Rempublicam administrare secundum leges honestas et justas,” etc.  Jean Bodin, Les six livres de la République (Paris : Jacques du Pois, 1583), book 2, ch. 3, 280. Cf. Thomas Würtenberger, “Legitimität, Legalität,” Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol. 3 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1982), 677‒740.  Louis de Jaucourt, “Société,” in Encyclopédie, vol. 15 (Neufchastel 1765), 254 : “L’autorité n’est légitime, qu’autant qu’elle contribue à la fin pour laquelle a été instituée l’autorité même.” Cf. Würtenberger, “Legitimität, Legalität,” 692‒93.

Monarchy and Revolution

3

Revolution. In 1788 Le Roy de Barincourt used expressions such as “legitimacy of pure democracy” (légitimité de la pure démocratie) and “legitimacy of the constitution” (légitimité de la constitution).¹¹ In the beginning of the Restoration period a concept of legitimacy became dominant which in political theory had hitherto been regarded as one of its variants only. The partisans of the traditional monarchical order regarded divine right hereditary monarchy as the only form of legitimate government. Legitimacy thus became a term to designate party and was opposed to revolution and popular sovereignty. Ever since the 1830’s this doctrine was called legitimism and its adherents are known as legitimists.¹² Although the present book does not follow the narrow understanding of legitimacy that dominated the Restoration period, its object is nevertheless the legitimacy of monarchy, not the legitimacy of government in general. This limitation of the focus is justified by the fact that even after the French Revolution monarchy remained for more than a century the prevailing form of government in Europe.

Monarchy and Revolution During the French Revolution the legitimacy of government was redefined. On 26 August 1789 the National Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The third article deals with sovereignty. It reads: “The source of sovereignty resides essentially with the nation. No body and no individual are permitted to exercise authority which does not expressly emanate from the nation.”¹³ The phrase was not intended to be a declaration of war on the monarchy. The overwhelming majority of the National Assembly in the summer of 1789 could not even imagine another form of government in France. But the article laid the foundation of a kind of monarchy that was entirely different from the one that had hitherto existed. By transferring sovereignty to the nation, the King was restricted to an organ of the constitution with a limited number of certain clearly defined rights. The constitution that the assembly adopted two years later subordinated the King to the law. In the paragraph determining the rights and powers of the King it states that in France there was no “higher authority

 Ibid., 695.  Ibid., 730.  Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, 26. 8.1789, art. 3, in Jacques Godechot, ed., Les Constitutions de la France depuis 1789 (Paris : Garnier-Flammarion, 1970), 33‒34 : “Le principe de toute souveraineté réside essentiellement dans la nation ; nul corps, nul individu ne peut exercer d’autorité, qui n’en émane expressément.”

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than the law.” The King governed only on the basis of the law and could demand obedience only “in the name of the law.”¹⁴ The monarchy that was created by this constitution did not last. Eleven months after delivering his oath on the constitution the Legislative Assembly deposed Louis XVI. Only six weeks later the National Convention abolished the monarchy as well. During the following months the Convention sat in judgment on Louis XVI. In the end the King was condemned to death and executed on 21 January 1793. Within three years France had thus experienced two fundamental turns of her political system. By claiming the sovereignty for the nation in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789 the National Assembly had demonstrated that the absolute monarchy had lost its legitimacy, and the proclamation of the Republic on 21 September 1792 similarly confirmed the loss of legitimacy of the democratic monarchy as well that had been founded only one year before. The turns occurred because in both cases the existing constitution no longer conformed to the general will and was therefore perceived as a constraint or better, as force without legitimacy. In political theory power without legitimacy has always been regarded as despotic. Two types of tyrants have been distinguished: the tyrant who had usurped the government against the law (usurpator ex defectu tituli), and the tyrant who had legally come to power, but governed tyrannically (usurpator ex parte exercitii).¹⁵ In the Old Regime the deposition of a ruler had normally been justified by showing that he had turned a tyrant. In keeping with this argument estates used to add to the resolution by which a ruler was deposed, a list of his illegal acts in order to expose the tyrannical character of his government. The most well-known example of this procedure is the adoption of the Declaration of Rights by the English Parliament in 1688. According to the Declaration James II had forfeited his legitimacy by repeated breaches of the constitution. The purpose of his deposition was therefore said to be the defense of the existing law against the ruler and, by consequence, the restoration of the rule of law. ¹⁶ Law was thus construed as something unalterable and intangible, sanctioned by tradition.

 Constitution française 1791, Titre 3, Chap. 2, Section 1, Art. 3, ibid., 44 : “Il n’y a point en France d’autorité supérieure à celle de la loi ; le roi ne règne que par elle, et ce n’est qu’au nom de la loi, qu’il peut exiger l’obéissance.”  Hella Mandt, Art. “Tyrannis, Despotie,” in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol. 6 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1990), 663.  Volker Sellin, “The Breakdown of the Rule of Law: A Comparative View of the Depositions of George III, Louis XVI and Napoleon I,” in: Robert von Friedeburg, ed., Murder and Monarchy. Regicide in European History, 1300‒1800 (Houndmills: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2004), 259.

Preserving Legitimacy, a Never-Ending Task

5

The transformation of Louis XVI to a mere organ of the constitution by the Constituante followed a different pattern. In the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 26 August 1789 no unlawful acts of the King are listed. The justification for reducing the King to the executive function only was not the abuse of power. The truth is that the legitimacy of a government was fundamentally redefined. Louis XVI had lost the legal basis of his government because the principles of monarchical legitimacy themselves had changed. In the terms of Benjamin Constant Old Regime monarchy had inadvertently transformed itself into a tyrannical regime because it had failed adequately to conform to the change of the “general will” (volonté générale).

Preserving Legitimacy, a Never-Ending Task The usurpation of the constituent power by the Constituante marks the beginning of a process during which in the whole of Europe the relationship between legitimacy and power, monarchy and despotism underwent a fundamental change. Every indubitably legitimate monarchy could degenerate into a regime of brute force if it insisted inflexibly on its traditional rights. Therefore the European monarchies were confronted with the need incessantly to reassert their legitimacy and to devise strategies to adapt to social change. In September 1791 Louis XVI saved his throne only by taking an oath on the constitution, and the restoration of Louis XVIII in 1814 succeeded only because he conceded a constitution that preserved fundamental achievements of the Revolution and the Empire. A consequence of the drying up of the traditional sources of legitimacy was the decline of divine right monarchy. Even if the majority of the European monarchies maintained the divine right formula in the royal title the dogma rapidly lost credibility. As the constitution of 1791 shows, the French National Assembly had removed it from the title of the King. Louis XVIII restored it, but could not avoid that it was increasingly questioned. Not only in France did it lose adherents. In 1831 in the Kingdom of Württemberg liberal-minded Paul Pfizer registered “a steadily waning belief in the divine institution and the supernatural origin of monarchical authority,”¹⁷ and in 1852 the lawyer and former member of the

 Paul Pfizer, Briefwechsel zweier Deutschen, 14th letter, 2nd improved and enlarged edition (Stuttgart and Tübingen: Cotta, 1832), 152.

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Frankfurt National Assembly Heinrich Albert Zachariae admitted that to him “the divine right of Kings” was “an entirely unknown entity.”¹⁸ Jacob Burckhardt called the age that had been inaugurated by the meeting of the Estates General in Mai 1789 and continued in his own life time, the revolutionary period (Revolutionszeitalter). In Burckhardt’s eyes the revolutions of the 19th century were but the expression and the manifestation of a principle that had been working underground since 1789 at the latest, of a “spirit of eternal revision,” as an unabating tendency of “desiring change in the interest of public good.”¹⁹ It was precisely this spirit of revision that again and again called into question the legitimacy of monarchy. In the long run monarchy could neutralize the menace of revolution only by appropriating part of its principles. On the one hand policies legitimating monarchy were restorative insofar as they were meant to secure and consolidate monarchy; on the other hand they were revolutionary to the degree that they made concessions to the revolution. In a process of continuing restoration monarchy in fact supported the revolution, and in this endeavor monarchy was more successful than the revolution had been so far. A comparison between the democratically created constitution of 1791 and Louis XVIII’s imposed Charte constitutionnelle of 1814 shows the difference. While the constitution of 1791 was abolished a year later the Charte remained in force for 16 years at first and after its revision during the July Revolution for another 18 years. At the same time it became the model and prototype of a great number of imposed constitutions in Poland, Germany, Belgium, Spain, and Italy, since not only in France, but in other parts of Europe as well the history of monarchy in the age of Revolution was a history of repeated restorations, a never-ending process of adjustment to ever new challenges. In order to preserve monarchical legitimacy it was imperative to make concessions before they were extracted by force. As early as September 1807 the Prussian Chancellor of State Karl August von Hardenberg wrote of the Revolution that the “power” of its “principles” was “so great” and that these principles were “so generally recognized and disseminated that a government” that did not accept them, either “risked its ruin or their enforced implementation.” Therefore he recommended counteracting the “violent impulsion” from below by “wisdom of the govern-

 Quoted from Hans Boldt, Art. “Monarchie V-VI,” in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol. 4 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1978), 207.  Jacob Burckhardt, “Das Revolutionszeitalter,” in: idem, Historische Fragmente, ed. Emil Dürr (Stuttgart and Berlin: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1942), 205.

Preserving Legitimacy, a Never-Ending Task

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ment” with a view to safeguarding the monarchical principle.²⁰ When in early 1848 in the face of the revolution that had broken out in Sicily, one after the other of the States on the Italian peninsula imposed constitutions, Giacinto Borelli, minister of the Interior in the Kingdom of Sardinia, advised King Carlo Alberto also to impose a constitution. If the transition to constitutionalism could not be avoided, it was better that the King grant the constitution by his own free will instead of waiting until he had no choice but to cede to force; it was better to “set the conditions than to receive them.”²¹ On 30 March 1856 Tsar Alexander II declared in a speech for the marshals of the nobility in Moscow that the emancipation of the serfs was not imminent but that sooner or later the serfs had to be emancipated. As well as Minister Borelli in February 1848 in Turin the Tsar reminded his audience “that it was much better if the emancipation proceeded from above than from below.”²² Reforms will only be introduced if their desirability is being acknowledged. In the age of revolutions the ability of crowned heads to perceive the dangers that menaced their legitimacy was subject to doubt. The indictment that Johann Jacoby addressed to King Frederick Wilhelm IV of Prussia has become famous: “It is the tragedy of Kings that they do not want to hear the truth.”²³ In an open letter Lord Henry Brougham besieged the young Queen Victoria shortly after her accession, with a view to safeguarding the monarchy, not to stop at the half-hearted extension of the suffrage by the reform of Parliament as enacted in 1832. Brougham concluded in a tone of resignation that his counsel would probably remain without effect: “Where was ever the monarch whom revolt did not take by surprise? Like the deceived and dishonored husband, the sover-

 Karl August von Hardenberg, “Rigaer Denkschrift,” 12.9.1807, in: Georg Winter, ed., Die Reorganisation des Preußischen Staates unter Stein und Hardenberg, part 1, vol. 1 (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1931), 305‒306.  Consiglio di conferenza presieduto da Sua Mestà, Seduta n. 6, Processo verbale della seduta del 3 febbraio 1848, in: Luigi Ciaurro, ed., Lo Statuto albertino, illustrato dai lavori preparatori (Roma: Dipartimento per l’informazione e l’editoria, 1996), 114: “Bisogna darla, non lasciarsela imporre; dettare le condizioni, non riceverle”; for the imposition of constitutions in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, in the Papal States, in the Grandduchy of Tuscany, and in the Kingdom of Sardinia in early 1848 cf. Kerstin Singer, Konstitutionalismus auf Italienisch. Italiens politische und soziale Führungsschichten und die oktroyierten Verfassungen von 1848 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2008).  Quoted from Aleksej Popel’nickij, “Reč’ Aleksandra II, skazannaja 30‒go marta 1856 g. moskovskim predvoditeljam dvorjanstva,” Golos Minuvšago. Žurnal Istorii i Istorii Literatury 4 (1956), no. 5‒6, 393: “gorazdo lučše, čtoby eto proizošlo svyše, neželi snizu.”  Karl Wippermann, “Jacoby, Johann (1805‒1877),” in: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 13 (1881), 626.

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eign is always the last person whose eyes are opened to his position. […] Thus slumbers the monarch upon the collected materials of the political explosion, as the inhabitants of Vesuvius do, while the eruption is about to sweep them away.”²⁴ The deposition of King Charles X of France in the July Revolution of 1830 confirmed Lord Brougham’s view of the political blindness of Kings. The Charte constitutionnelle of 1814 did not oblige Charles to agree the appointment of ministers with the Chamber. Therefore the promotion in August 1829 of Jules de Polignac who was known for his reactionary views, was in formal accord with the constitution. But in the eyes of the Chamber it clearly contradicted its spirit. Legality and legitimacy were no longer in harmony with each other. When in the forties Louis-Philippe of Orléans who had been made King in the course of the July Revolution of 1830, opposed the extension of the suffrage he certainly did not act in contrast to the letter of the Charte as revised during that revolution, but the oligarchic petrifaction of the July Monarchy resulted in a situation in which it no longer appeared legitimate. Since the regime did not heed the growing criticism, it was overturned in the revolution of February 1848. Both Charles X and Louis-Philippe lost their thrones because they failed to adjust to the changing requirements of legitimacy in a monarchy. Adjustment to the expectations of a society on the road to democratization was everywhere arduous and painful for the rulers. Even in England and Italy – monarchies that introduced parliamentary government comparatively early – they accepted effective limitation of their prerogatives only late in the 19th century.²⁵

Approach and Disposition In spite of Brougham’s and Jacoby’s skepticism the majority of the European monarchies managed to survive for a long time in the age of revolutions. This success was due to the various strategies of legitimization they were developing in the face of the revolutionary menace. Strategies of legitimization are strategies of

 [Henry Brougham,] Letter to the Queen, on the State of the Monarchy, by a Friend of the People (London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co, 1838), 16; cf. Richard Williams, The Contentious Crown. Public Discussion of the British Monarchy in the Reign of Queen Victoria (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), 10‒16.  Cf. Fulvio Cammarano, “Il “garante interessato” : monarchia e politica in Italia e Gran Bretagna dopo il 1848,” in: Giulia Guazzaloca, ed., Sovrani a metà. Monarchia e legittimazione in Europa tra Otto e Novecento (Soveria Mannelli: Rubettini Editore, 2009), 72‒73.

Approach and Disposition

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preserving power. The legitimizing strategies, by which the European monarchies tried to defend themselves against the threat of revolution, are the object of the present book. The policy of legitimization aimed less at the replacement than at the adequate adjustment and completion of traditional legitimizing strategies. Dynastic origin remained a major source of legitimacy, as long as monarchy existed. In 1814 the French throne was offered to Louis XVIII and not to some other European prince, primarily because he was a scion of the ancient dynasty of France. Even Napoleon III hoped to add to his legitimacy by stressing his Bonaparte origin. Both rulers demonstrated their claim to dynastic legitimacy by the way they inserted themselves in the imperial succession. By naming himself the eighteenth the restored King made allowance for the son of Louis XVI who had never had a chance to ascend the throne. Similarly, Napoleon III made allowance for the Duke of Reichstadt, son of Napoleon I. Even constitutional monarchs did not renounce divine right, and Napoleon who owed his power to the Revolution, tried to utilize the religious belief of the citizens for safeguarding his rule. The book is divided into eleven chapters. The introduction in chapter 1 is followed by an analysis of monarchical power that had lost or was on the point of losing its legitimacy, in chapter 2. The chapter will discuss cases in which legitimizing strategies were not undertaken or failed. The main focus will be on attempts to counteract the loss of power by military means. The frequently ensuing crises of monarchical government will demonstrate the indispensability of adequate policies of legitimization. The next three chapters will discuss the sources of legitimacy which had already been in use during the Old Regime, but retained their significance in the age of revolution. The third chapter is devoted to the role of the dynasty in the Old Regime and in the revolutionary period, the fourth chapter to the role of religion and the fifth chapter to the significance of military victory for the legitimacy of a monarchy in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The sixth chapter discusses the relationship of monarchy and Enlightenment. By subjecting everything to the examination by reason, the Enlightenment questioned monarchy even before the Revolution. The search for the perfect monarchy that many writers of the period were pursuing was directed at a type of monarchical government of indubitable legitimacy. Every legitimizing strategy that was developed in the age of the Revolution was rooted in a higher or lesser degree in political principles of the Enlightenment. Three strategies will be analyzed in three different chapters. They correspond to the three fundamental processes of change which dominated the 19th century: constitutionalism, nationalism and social reform. The seventh chapter sketches origin and development of the constitutional monarchy. It will be shown that monarchies turned constitutional much more frequently through monarchical imposition than by

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1 Introduction

the vote of democratically elected assemblies on the example of the French Constituante of 1789. The eighth chapter will show how rulers stemming from historical dynasties developed into national leaders in spite of the fact that nationalism had in its origins been a revolutionary force directed against the structures of the traditional states’ system. The ninth chapter starts from Lorenz von Stein’s theory of social kingship and tries to find out since what time and in which way monarchy devised methods for legitimating itself among the laboring classes. The tenth chapter will examine whether charisma could provide monarchy with a new legitimacy. Following Max Weber by charisma is understood a revolutionary principle which became a political force only in the age of the masses. For the monarchy this turned out to be both a chance and a danger, depending on whether charisma was attributed to the monarch himself or to one of his subjects. In a short eleventh chapter the chief results of the book will be summarized.

Levels of Analysis The legitimacy of monarchy may be analyzed on three levels. On the first level one may examine the legitimacy of monarchy as against the legitimacy of a republic. In France this question was decided three times in favor of the latter: at the constituent meeting of the National Convention on 21 September 1792, by the Provisional Government of the Second Republic on 24 February 1848 and by the constituent assembly of the Third Republic in February 1871. On the second level one may discuss the legitimacy of a certain dynasty as against the legitimacy of another dynasty. In this sense in early 18th century England one can confront the legitimacy of the house of Hanover with the legitimacy of the house of Stuart. The constellation resembled the conflict between Napoleon and the Bonaparte dynasty on the one hand and Louis XVIII and the Bourbon dynasty on the other in the years between 1804 and 1814 or 1815. In both cases the conflict was caused by the interruption of the regular succession by a revolution. On the third level is to be located the conflict between the claims of two members of the same dynasty. A conflict of this kind broke out in Spain in 1833 between Don Carlos, brother, and Isabella II, daughter of Ferdinand VII. Other than on the second level of analysis the dynastic succession in the reigning family as such was contested by neither of the contending parties. Contested was instead the female succession. A monarchy and a dynasty may be recognized as legitimate while the actual ruler is not. This was the case in Germany in 1918, when Wilhelm II was advised to abdicate and make room for his grandson in the hope that by this step the

Social, Geographic, and Chronological Limits

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monarchy could be saved. Such a distinction between monarch and monarchy, however, can be maintained only for a short period of time. By hesitating too long Wilhelm II within a few weeks discredited monarchy to a degree that it was no longer considered legitimate.

Social, Geographic, and Chronological Limits The legitimacy of a government depends on the convictions of the governed. The governed are divided into social groups with different mentalities and beliefs and with different possibilities of political action. In the Old Regime rulers were deposed by the political elites. If at all, only estates were in a position to offer resistance to a tyrannical ruler. James II of England in 1688 was deposed by Parliament, Napoleon I by the French Senate. But in the the 19th century political unrest originated mostly with the lower classes in the capitals. The deposition of Charles X in 1830 was forced on the barricades of Paris, and the deposition of Napoleon III on 4 September 1870, only two days after the French defeat at Sedan, was equally achieved by the common people of Paris, even though the regime had been confirmed only a few months before in a nation-wide plebiscite. Legitimacy was evidently judged differently in various social spheres. The book aims at the identification of ideal types. In order to distinguish the typical from the accidental, it is imperative to resort to the comparison of different similar cases. The comparisons are based on the hypothesis that European monarchy represents in itself a specific type of government. This hypothesis alone makes it necessary to transgress the level of national history and to extend the investigation to a plurality of European monarchies. The inclusion of all continental monarchies, however, has appeared neither possible nor necessary in a typology. Criterion of the choice of States to be included in the investigation was the consideration that after the defeat of Napoleon the restoration and confirmation of monarchical legitimacy was primarily the objective of the five great powers of the Concert of Europe. Therefore Great Britain, France, Austria, Russia, and Prussia, after 1871 to be replaced by the German Empire, had to be studied in the first place. Italy had also to be included, be it only for purposes of comparison of the processes of national unification both in that country and in Germany. Equally for the sake of comparison it has appeared useful to analyze within Spanish history both the dynastic crisis that broke out in 1833 after the death of King Ferdinand VII, and the deposition of Queen Isabella II in 1868. Not included are the Scandinavian countries. The chapters are not arranged by countries but by the types of factors that in the monarchies analyzed engendered or endangered legitimacy. These types will

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be traced not only in different countries but over considerable distances of time as well. Since legitimacy depends on a majority of factors, it has turned out necessary to discuss the same monarchies and rulers in more than one chapter. Because of the typological approach neither the book as a whole nor the single chapters could be arranged along the chronology. In the analysis of a number of problems the investigation reaches far back in history. A discussion of monarchical legitimacy cannot pass by the transfer of the royal dignity from the Merovingians to the Carolingians. With a view to revealing typical crises of the dynastic succession the analysis turns among others to the crisis of the house of Valois in France between 1559 and 1589 and to the time of troubles in Russia from 1598 to 1613. In the main, however, it starts in the late 17th century in the Age of Enlightenment. At the end of the First World War in Russia, in Germany, and in Austria-Hungary the monarchies broke down. They did not survive the war mainly because democratic legitimacy had remained weak. Under these circumstances the monarchs themselves had to accept responsibility for the unprecedented sacrifices the war had demanded from their subjects. This burden turned out unbearable. Since France had turned republican as early as 1870, at the end of the war Great Britain was the only one among the five great powers of Europe that retained its monarchy. Since the foundations of monarchical legitimacy in Great Britain have since then remained essentially the same it appears reasonable to conclude the discussion with the year of 1918.

Point of Departure, Method, and Aims of the Investigation The investigation is in the main based on printed materials and secondary sources on the history of monarchy in modern and contemporary Europe. In the past the focus of historical research was primarily focused on the history of single monarchies. Emphasis was either placed on key events or central aspects of the history of selected monarchies or on the biographies of outstanding monarchs. Comparative studies of the legitimating policies of monarchies in the age of revolution are still rare. Notable exceptions are to be found in the contributions to a conference at the University of Bologna of November 2007. The papers of the conference, edited by Giulia Guazzaloca, cover essentially the same monarchies as the present book.²⁶ In a collection of essays published in 2004 by Robert von Friedeburg regicide is taken as a point of departure for the

 Giulia Guazzaloca, ed., Sovrani a metà. Monarchia e legittimazione in Europa tra Otto e Novecento (Soveria Mannelli: Rubettino Editore, 2009).

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study of monarchical legitimacy.²⁷ Another type of premature break-down of monarchical performance is studied in the contributions to a volume on “Thronverzicht. Die Abdankung in Monarchien vom Mittelalter bis in die Neuzeit,” edited in 2010 by Susan Richter and Dirk Dirbach.²⁸ The history of a widely ramified European dynasty was discussed at an international conference in Paris in December 2000, organized on the three hundredth return of the day when Philip V Bourbon ascended the throne of Spain. The contributions to the conference haven been published in 2003 by Lucien Bély in a volume on “La présence des Bourbons en Europe. XVIe‒XXIe siècle.”²⁹ It shows how the history of the Bourbon dynasty is not only a history of triumph but of failure as well. When several authors combine to write European history they in effect rarely transcend the limits of national history. An outstanding example of European history written by the same author is Lucien Bély’s “La société des princes” of 1999. Another good example is Martin Kirsch’s “Monarch und Parlament im 19. Jahrhundert” of the same year, a comparative study of a legitimizing strategy of monarchy in Central and Western Europe.³⁰ For more information on sources and historical literature used in the present book see the bibliography and the notes.

 Robert von Friedeburg, ed., Murder and Monarchy. Regicide in European History, 1300‒1800 (Houndmills: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2004).  Susan Richter and Dirk Dirbach, eds., Thronverzicht. Die Abdankung in Monarchien vom Mittelalter bis in die Neuzeit (Cologne,Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau, 2010).  Lucien Bély, ed., La présence des Bourbons en Europe. XVIe‒XXIe siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2003).  Martin Kirsch, Monarch und Parlament im 19. Jahrhundert. Der monarchische Konstitutionalismus als europäischer Verfassungstyp – Frankreich im Vergleich (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999); cf. Hans-Christof Kraus, “Monarchischer Konstitutionalismus. Zu einer neuen Deutung der deutschen und europäischen Verfassungsentwicklung im 19. Jahrhundert,” Der Staat 43 (2004), 595‒620.

2 Violence All who take the sword die by the sword. Matthew ,

Acceptance or Constraint Government is a power relationship that is accepted as long as it is considered legitimate. Without legitimacy, no government will last. When the French Revolution questioned the traditional legitimacy of monarchy, the courts of Europe countered by propagating the ideology of legitimism. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 they concluded the Holy Alliance in order to defend themselves collectively against the threat of revolution. In April 1820 the Russian government advocated common intervention of the Great Powers in any country that had fallen prey to revolution, a policy that was doomed to failure. On 5 May 1820 the British foreign secretary Castlereagh called to mind that the powers of the anti-Napoleonic coalition had not renewed their alliance in order to suppress democratic movements but to protect themselves against new French aggressions. At the Congress of Verona of 1822 the policy of joint intervention came to a premature end. The intervention of 1823 in Spain to restore absolutism was undertaken by France alone.¹ The revolutions of 1820 and 1821 in Spain, in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and in the Kingdom of Sardinia show that in these countries the reforms of the post-Napoleonic period had not obtained legitimacy. The restoration regimes were perceived to be coercive and sooner or later engendered resistance. Though the revolutions were suppressed, in Italy by Austrian, in Spain by French forces, it was clear that from now on revolutions might break out anywhere. In 1830 a new wave of insurrections swept over Europe. In defense of their traditional legitimacy the European monarchies devised various strategies. In the age of revolutions government without legitimacy could develop in two ways. Either a person arrogated to himself a power position to which he was not entitled, or a ruler lost the legitimacy he had formerly possessed, because his subjects were no longer satisfied with his performance. In 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte destroyed the Directory and seized the government by force and  Volker Sellin, “Gleichgewicht oder Konzert? Der Zusammenbruch Preußens und die Suche nach Wiedergewinnung der äußeren Sicherheit,” in: Andreas Klinger, Hans-Werner Hahn, and Georg Schmidt, eds., Das Jahr 1806 im europäischen Kontext. Balance, Hegemonie und politische Kulturen (Cologne: Böhlau, 2008), 59. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110561395-003

Acceptance or Constraint

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in 1851 his nephew Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte took over by destroying the Second French Republic. Significantly both of them sought to make good for their act of violence by the introduction of a constitution and through plebiscite. The overwhelming assent they hereby obtained provided their government with democratic legitimacy. In 1815 in the course of the Second Restoration Louis XVIII was returned to his throne through foreign intervention. The Great Powers did not acknowledge the plebiscite Napoleon had carried through after his return from the Isle of Elba. After their victory at Waterloo nobody could prevent them from again restoring the Bourbon monarchy. The second restoration of Louis XVIII was the first allied intervention in the common struggle against revolution. Since, however, force alone is unable to create legitimacy it was uncertain whether the King would again obtain a permanent hold on his country. Both emperors of the Bonaparte dynasty lost their legitimacy, Napoleon I after 15, Napoleon III after 19 years of government. But not only these rulers of revolutionary origin but several monarchs of traditional dynasties as well lost legitimacy in the age of revolution. Louis XVI, Charles X, and Louis-Philippe had failed in time to adjust to the changing demands on the legitimacy of monarchy. Clear indications of a decline of legitimacy were increasing public criticism, parliamentary obstruction, protest movements, and acts of resistance of all kinds. If confronted with such developments monarchs needed the capacity to judge the force of social movements. Resistance of individuals could be dealt with by resorting to penal law. But resistance of the elites or of substantial fractions of the population indicated that the legitimacy of a monarchy had become doubtful in broad sections of society. But the gradual loss of legitimacy did not necessarily bring about the fall of the monarchy. Even in the face of public protest there was still room for peaceful agreement. In many cases monarchs forfeited their thrones only when they attempted to break resistance by force. The use of the army against demonstrants contradicts one of the fundamental requirements of any government, namely that it provide protection. Besides, it bears considerable risks, because it is hard to control. Once the troops are on the spot, nobody can exclude the unintended discharge of shots or violent acts of nervous and impatient soldiers, quite apart from the fact that no ruler can indefinitely be sure of the loyalty of his troops when using them against their compatriots. Ever since the American Revolution many rulers have lost their thrones, because they had nourished the illusion that in times of crisis they could secure their power with the help of the military. These miscalculations could have been avoided if they had taken serious the changing political climate and heeded well-intentioned warnings. This shall be demonstrated by a closer look at three depositions of rulers, of George III of England in the American Revolution in 1776, of Charles X of France in the July Revolution of 1830, and of Louis-Phil-

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ippe of France in the February Revolution of 1848. In all these cases the protests that preceded the depositions were supported by broad sections of the population, and there had been a substantial number of warnings which should have prevented the rulers from taking the wrong decisions. The three cases resemble each other in that the protests were shared by large segments of the population and that the depositions were preceded by a period in which – the arbitrary policies of the government notwithstanding – there was still hope that the ruler would abstain from his abuses and thus restore the legitimacy of his government. At last the prospects of a peaceful settlement of the conflict came to nothing because the monarch stuck to his point of view and resorted to military means. The employment of the army, however, was a step that his subjects could not forgive.

George III and the American Revolution When in April 1775 hostilities broke out between British troops and American settlers the opposition movement in the colonies was already in its twelfth year. Nobody in London should have doubted the tenacity of the opposition to British taxation and the broad support that the movement was enjoying among the settlers. British fiscal policy in America from 1763 to 1774 was a series of repeated attempts and repeated disclaimers. The London authorities and the colonial taxpayers entered into a kind of financial dialogue that shows how the British government actually strove for a consensus with the Americans. When in 1765 Parliament faced massive resistance to the Stamp Act in the colonies it was repealed only one year later and replaced by the Declaratory Act which stated as a matter of principle that Britain would not give up the right to tax the colonies, the actual repeal notwithstanding. Since, however, the settlers maintained that representation and taxation could not be separated from each other Joseph Galloway presented a plan of union providing for a British-American legislature. The proposal remained without consequence. In a famous speech Edmund Burke warned the government of too severe a course of action in dealing with the colonies. On 22 March 1775 he warned the House of Commons that the British settlers were imbued with a spirit of liberty not to be found in any other people of the world. For this trait of character he listed five causes to be regarded as inalterable facts. The Americans owed to their British origin an unbreakable love of liberty. The legislative assemblies in the colonies had for a long time acquainted them with parliamentary procedures. In the Northern colonies their religion had been molded by dissenting Protestantism. In the Southern colonies an almost aristocratic class consciousness had developed among the slave owners. In American educa-

George III and the American Revolution

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tion public law was of primary importance. This is shown by the fact that of Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England there had been sold almost as many copies in America as in England. The study of law, however, “renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defense, full of resources.”² The sixth cause, according to Burke, was the geographical distance: “Three thousand miles of ocean lie between you and them. No contrivance can prevent the effect of this distance in weakening government.”³ The exercise of political power as it had been customary in the relationship between Britain and the colonies, no matter how legal it may have been, was not compatible with ideas of liberty, in particular with those of the Americans. Therefore Burke advised conciliation with the colonies and renunciation of taxing them by Parliament. Burke’s warnings remained unheeded. The conflict sharpened. In April 1775 war broke out. One year later the colonies declared their independence from the mother country. By the Declaration of Independence the American Continental Congress declared the rule of King George III of England in the colonies to be terminated. The decree was justified by his allegedly tyrannical acts for which actually not the King but Parliament was responsible. The most severe indictment referred to the employment of troops. The section was introduced by a statement which included what was to follow: The present King of Great Britain “has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.”⁴ In the succeeding sections of the text the theme was elaborated in a series of forceful attacks: “He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the Lives of our people.”⁵ By these sentences the Continental Congress in effect declared that by employing military force the British King had forfeited his right to rule in America. More specifically the rebellious Americans charged the mother country of illegitimate use of force on two levels. The first charge was directed against the usurpation of a power that had lost its legitimacy and was therefore considered tyrannical. Among the charges of this category was taxation without the consent of the taxed, a charge that had been leveled against the British government ever since the beginning of the conflict in 1763. The second charge referred to the em-

 Edmund Burke, “Speech on Moving his Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies, 22. 3. 1775,” in: idem, Select Works, ed. E. J. Payne, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904), 183.  Ibid.  Declaration of Independence as Adopted by Congress, 4.7.1776, in: [Thomas Jefferson], The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, vol. 1: 1760‒1776 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), 431.  Ibid.

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ployment of the army. This charge was more serious, because by sending troops London had crossed a line beyond which conciliation had become extremely difficult. It is significant that the resolution to separate from the mother country was taken only after war had broken out.

Charles X and the July Revolution After the fall of Napoleon in April 1814 the Bourbon monarchy was restored in France. The restoration succeeded because by imposing a constitution, the Charte constitutionnelle, Louis XVIII had acknowledged essential achievements of the Revolution and the Empire. Among these were a series of fundamental rights and Napoleon’s Code civil. Besides, the King sought to secure acceptance of his regime by inserting into the Charte a ban on any kind of political purge.⁶ Louis XVIII died in 1824 and was succeeded by Charles X, his younger brother. Charles X neither possessed Louis’ prudence nor was he prepared to put up with the new role of the monarchy under the terms of the Restoration. In the late twenties he provoked a conflict with the Chamber over the deputies’ share in determining policy. The conflict broke out in August 1829 when the ultra-royalist French ambassador to London, Duke Jules de Polignac, was appointed to the post of Prime Minister. It came to a head in the spring of 1830. The King’s address from the throne to the chambers of March 2 contained scarcely concealed warnings directed at the opposition: Peers of France, deputies of the departments, I have no doubt that you will concur in my endeavors to operate the well-being of the country; you will repel the perfidious insinuations that ill-intentioned people try to spread. If illegal maneuvers should place obstacles in the ways of my government which I do not wish to foresee, I would find the vigor to overcome them in my resolution to maintain public peace, in the just confidence of the French, and in the love they have always shown for their Kings.⁷

 Charte constitutionnelle française du 4 juin 1814, art. 11, in Les Constitutions de la France depuis 1789, ed. Jacques Godechot (Paris : Garnier-Flammarion, 1970), 219: “Toutes recherches des opinions et votes émis jusqu’à la restauration sont interdites. Le même oubli est commandé aux tribunaux et aux citoyens.”  AP, series 2, vol. 61 (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1886), 544: “Pairs de France, députés des départements, je ne doute pas de votre concours pour opérer le bien que je veux faire ; vous repousserez les perfides insinuations que la malveillance cherche à propager. Si de coupables manœuvres suscitaient à mon gouvernement des obstacles que je ne veux pas prévoir, je trouverais la force de les surmonter dans ma résolution de maintenir la paix publique, dans la juste confiance des Français et l’amour qu’ils ont toujours montré pour leurs rois.”

Charles X and the July Revolution

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On 16 March the Chamber of Deputies voted their reply to the King’s address. By 221 as against 181 votes the Chamber declared that the course of the government contradicted the spirit of the constitution, because the views of the representation of the people were not taken into account. This was an allusion to Polignac’s appointment. The crucial passage reads as follows: Sire, the Charte we owe to the wisdom of your august predecessor, […] consecrates as a right the intervention of the country in the deliberation of public interest. This intervention […] makes the permanent concurrence of the political views of your government with the wishes of your people the indispensable condition of the regular course of public affairs. Sire, our loyalty, our devotion leave us no choice but to tell you that this concurrence does not exist.⁸

By their address the 221 deputies declared that they considered the appointment of Polignac an act of violence without legitimacy. The requirements of legitimacy in a constitutional monarchy had increased since the proclamation of the Charte constitutionnelle in 1814. Though formally the Charte attributed to the King the right to appoint the ministers the majority of the Chamber by now wished to subordinate this right to the condition that the spirit of the constitution, as they interpreted it, was not violated. The address was not intended as a rupture with the monarch. Instead the Chamber hoped that the King would dismiss the unwelcome minister and thus recover the legitimacy he had jeopardized through the appointment. However, Charles’ reactions to the address revealed that he was determined to risk the test of strength. He adjourned the Chamber to September. On 17 May he dissolved it and called new elections. When in the beginning of July he discovered that in the new Chamber the opposition would again be in the majority, the King proceeded to a coup d’état. Having recourse to article 14 of the Charte the government drew up four ordinances to break the opposition. The article empowered the King “to take the necessary measures for the observation of the laws and the safety of the State.”⁹ The King dissolved the newly elected Chamber, called new elections, restricted the suffrage, and limited the freedom of the

 Ibid., 618: “Sire, la Charte que nous devons à la sagesse de votre auguste prédécesseur, […] consacre comme un droit l’intervention du pays dans la délibération des intérêts publics. Cette intervention […] fait du concours permanent des vues politiques de votre gouvernement avec les vœux de votre peuple, la condition indispensable de la marche régulière des affaires publiques. Sire, notre loyauté, notre dévouement nous condamnent à vous dire que ce concours n’existe pas.”  Charte constitutionnelle du 4 juin 1814, art. 14 : in : Godechot, ed., Constitutions, 220: “[Le roi] fait les règlements et ordonnances nécessaires pour l’exécution des lois et la sûreté de l’état.”

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press. The opposition regarded these measures as unconstitutional because Charles disregarded the right of the Chambers to participate in legislation and because the King had dissolved the newly elected Chamber before it had constituted itself. On Sunday, 25 July 1830, the ministers assembled in the castle of SaintCloud. The King had invited them to the signature of the ordinances. The reports of the procedure leave no doubt that the participants, including the King himself, were fully aware of the risks they were about to run. After all, the majority of the Chamber had declared the course of the government unconstitutional, and in the July elections the voters had confirmed this majority. Thus not only the Chamber but the electorate themselves had set limits to the wishes of the King. Baron Vitrolles reports in his memoirs that before the meeting he had addressed several ministers separately and exhorted them to caution. He allegedly warned Montbel, the minister of finance, in the following words: “Take care; you are going to risk your head and, what is far more serious, the future of the monarchy and the fate of France.”¹⁰ To the minister of the interior, Peyronnet, he reports to have said: “In a moment you will decide the fate of the monarchy at this table”.¹¹ Placing their confidence in the army the King and the ministers brushed away all doubts. Charles X chose force instead of trying to reach an understanding with the opposition. It is obvious that he would not have lost face if he had reacted to the confirmation of the opposition in the new elections by remodeling the government and replacing the unpopular Polignac. On 26 July the King’s four ordinances – known as “July ordinances” – were published in the Moniteur, the official organ of the government. On the very same day 44 journalists signed a solemn protest that Adolphe Thiers had drawn up. It was published the next morning in the eleven newspapers the authors worked for. In the text it was pointed out that “these memorable ordinances” were “the most flagrant violation of the laws”: “The legal regime has now been interrupted, the regime of force has begun.”¹² One cannot describe more pointedly the antagonism between legitimacy and force. On 27 July members of the Royal

 Eugène d’Arnauld, baron de Vitrolles, Mémoires et relations politiques, vol. 3 (Paris : Charpentier, 1884), 363 : “Mais prenez-y garde, vous jouez votre tête, et bien plus, vous jouez la royauté et les destinées de la France !”  Ibid., 364: “Vous allez dans un instant, autour de cette table […] décider du sort de la monarchie.”  Quoted from Prosper Duvergier de Hauranne, Histoire du gouvernement parlementaire en France, 1814‒1848, vol. 10 (Paris : Lévy, 1871), 537 : “Cependant le Moniteur a publié enfin ces mémorables ordonnances, qui sont la plus éclatante violation des lois. Le régime légal est donc interrompu, celui de la force est commencé.”

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Guard at the Palais-Royal shot into the angry crowd. On the same day the government called the army under the command of Marshal Marmont who ordered the immediate occupation of all strategic positions in the city. The people raised barricades. During three days of fighting Marmont tried in vain to get Paris under control. On 29 July he took the consequences and evacuated the city. The morning after on the walls of the houses and on public squares placards had been posted on which a change of sovereigns was demanded. Louis-Philippe of Orléans was to become King. Authors of the placards were Adolphe Thiers and François-Auguste Mignet. The first sentence of the appeal read: “Charles X cannot return to Paris; he has shed the blood of the people.”¹³ That he had taken up arms against his people is the only reproach raised against Charles on the placard. As in the American Declaration of Independence the use of force against the citizens was interpreted as an implied abdication. The attack on the constitution through the July ordinances was no longer mentioned. It was thus made obvious that by resorting to military force the King had forfeited any chance to settle the conflict peacefully by repealing the ordinances. Thiers and Mignet were aware that there was no stronger argument for the banishment of Charles X than his recourse to armed force. By this act he had definitely gambled away his legitimacy. One might disagree about the real extension of the powers article 14 of the Charte attributed to the King. But resorting to military force and leaving so many victims in the streets of the capital: this monstrosity could not be repaired. In this sense Charles de Rémusat explained on the same day in the Globe why it was too late for reconciliation. If Charles X remained on the throne “a bloody barrier” would rise “between King and people. Can one imagine a King – guilty and humiliated, covered by the blood of the French and defeated, hated, and degraded, all at once? No, no, he must go, France and he have to part forever.”¹⁴ Of the duke Louis-Philippe of Orléans, however, on Mignet’s and Thiers’ placard it is said: “The duke of Orléans has never fought against us.”¹⁵ Shortly thereafter Louis-Philippe accepted the throne under the conditions that the liberal opposition in the Chamber had in the meantime come to consider the indispensable foundation of a legitimate monarchy. The suffrage was enlarged and parliamentary government was introduced.

 Quoted from ibid., 590.  Charles de Rémusat, Mémoires de ma vie, vol. 2, ed. Charles H. Pouthas (Paris : Plon, 1959), 350: “Une barrière sanglante se lèverait entre le roi et le peuple. Se figure-t-on un roi coupable et humilié, couvert du sang des Français et vaincu, odieux et avili tout ensemble ? Non, non, il faut qu’il parte, la France et lui doivent se faire d’éternels adieux.”  Quoted from Duvergier de Hauranne, Histoire, vol. 10, 590.

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Louis-Philippe and the February Revolution Eighteen years later, however, Louis-Philippe was himself accused of having shed the blood of the people. Like the Restoration monarchy before, the bourgeois monarchy itself had stiffened in the structures that had been created at the time of its foundation while society continued to march forward. In the forties criticism of the general corruption, of the large percentage of government employees in the Chamber, and of the restrictions of the suffrage increased. All attempts to enlarge the electorate through legislation foundered on the majority in the Chamber, hostile to reforms, and on the chief minister François Guizot. At last the opposition tried to obtain the long-needed reforms by resorting to extra-parliamentary activities. From July 1847 in large parts of the country they organized banquets at which deputies, writers, and journalists tried to mobilize public opinion by addresses that were then published in the leading newspapers. Under the cover of private meetings a powerful political movement thus came into being. The demands raised in the numerous toasts extended from the reform of the suffrage to the recognition of popular sovereignty. In January and February 1848 the prohibition of an additional banquet in the twelfth arrondissement where primarily workers lived, almost provoked an open conflict between government and opposition. The government apprehended a radicalization of the movement. But neither the transfer of the banquet into another arrondissement nor doubling the entrance fee which should have rendered participation difficult for workers, turned the opposition round. Under these circumstances the organizers resolved on 21 February to call off the banquet which had been set on the day after. In protest against the cancellation and against the pressures of the government responsible for it, students and workers organized a demonstration in those streets through which the march to the banquet would have passed. The first clashes with the National Guard occurred. The revolution, however, was unleashed only the next evening when the army caused a carnage. On the Boulevard des Capucines in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs an officer tried with his detachment to prevent a group of demonstrators from marching further ahead. All of a sudden shots were fired. Fifty-two citizens were killed, almost one hundred were injured.¹⁶ Upon this barricades were erected immediately. The insurgents sequestered a carriage that happened to pass by, loaded the corpses of sixteen victims on it and then paraded them crosswise through

 Henri Guillemin, 24 février 1848. La première résurrection de la République (Paris: Gallimard, 1967, 92.

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Paris.¹⁷ The monarchy did not survive this humiliation. On the following day the republic was proclaimed and a provisional government was formed. On the same day it addressed a proclamation to the French people which began by stating that the King had fled and left behind “a blood-mark that made it impossible for him once more to think better of it.” The proclamation then referred to the revolution of 1830: “The people’s blood was shed as in July.”¹⁸ Once more as in 1776 and 1830 the army’s killing of citizens was construed as a symbolic abdication.

Friedrich Wilhelm IV and the March Revolution Only against this background it becomes fully comprehensible why the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV was terrified when he caught sight of the victims of the street fighting in Berlin on 18 and 19 March 1848.¹⁹ Already the days before several clashes with the military had occurred. On 18 March thousands of Berliners crowded the castle-yard and brought before the King their demands of abrogating censorship, calling a constituent assembly, changing the government, and removing the troops. When they arrived in front of the castle they heard that the King had already complied with their demands. In the early afternoon Friedrich Wilhelm presented himself to the crowd and was universally greeted with gratitude and joy. An hour later, however, when the King had already retired into the castle, two shots were fired unexpectedly. The people believed they had been betrayed, and took to erecting barricades everywhere in the city. Soldiers fired at unarmed citizens. Only the next morning the fighting was terminated and the troops were ordered to leave the capital. 277 citizens had lost their lives. Ludwig Pfau, a democrat from Heilbronn in Württemberg, gauged the political dimension of the event in his poem “A German King.” The third stanza reads: There they lie, young and old, Their bodies stiff and torn to pieces; There they come, weeping and wailing, Bride, brother, sister, and wife;

 William Fortescue, France and 1848. The End of Monarchy (London: Routledge, 2005), 70.  Le Moniteur universel no. 56, 25. 2.1848: “Ce gouvernement s’est enfui en laissant derrière lui une trace de sang qui lui défend de revenir sur ses pas. Le sang du peuple a coulé comme en juillet.”  For the following cf. Rüdiger Hachtmann, Berlin 1848. Eine Politik- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte der Revolution (Bonn: Dietz, 1997), 157‒208.

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Father and mother come, Looking at their beloved. They say: this was done by a king, By a German king!²⁰

There was an aftermath to the fighting. On 19 March in the afternoon an immense crowd assembled again on the castle’s yard. Imitating the Paris populace the insurgents had loaded the corpses on carriages and deliberately exposed the wounds of the victims. In several files they carried the corpses to the castle, placed them on the castle square and forced the King to uncover his head before the dead.²¹ Ludwig Pfau continues: And a thousand voices threaten And force the King to step down; He salutes the dead And lifts his little cap And they all bleed anew, As their murderer approaches, As if they said: this was done By a king, by a German king!²²

 Quoted from Erich Weinstock, Ludwig Pfau. Leben und Werk eines Achtundvierzigers, (Heilbronn: Stadtarchiv, 1975), 45‒46: “Da liegen sie, Jung und Alte, Starr, mit zerfetztem Leib; Da kommen sie, weinend und klagend: Braut, Bruder, Schwester und Weib; Da kommen Vater und Mutter Und schauen die Ihren an Und sagen: das hat ein König, Ein deutscher König getan!”  Cf. the note of the mayor of Berlin, Heinrich Wilhelm Krausnick, and other eye-witness accounts in: Karl Ludwig von Prittwitz, ed., Berlin 1848, ed. Gerd Heinrich (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1985), 329‒32.  Quoted from Weinstock, Ludwig Pfau, 45‒46: “Und tausend Stimmen drohen: Da muß der König herab; Er salutiert die Toten Und nimmt sein Hütlein ab. Da bluten all’ aufs neue Bei ihres Mörders Nahn, Als sprächen sie: das hat ein König, Ein deutscher König getan!”

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The humiliation of the King was an outrage committed by his subjects, directed against the violence originating from him. Force and counterforce denoted a crisis of the monarchy’s legitimacy. The King was left but one choice: to win new confidence by fulfilling the promises of the day before. Until the end of his life Frederick William IV did not get over the humiliation of 19 March.²³ The republican Pfau hoped that in Prussia the carnage of 18 March would usher in the end of monarchy. His poem terminates as follows: The grave will be the grave Of royal power! Those who have sown blood Will reap battle. In blood will be stifled The illusion of old faithfulness – Thank God! This was done by a king, A German king.²⁴

Soon, however, the conviction gained the upper hand that the military had acted not on the order of Frederick William IV, but of crown prince William, his younger brother, later to become King of Prussia and German Emperor. This made it easier for the King to recover the affection of the citizens of Berlin, all the more so since he had without delay sent the unpopular crown prince to England and thus removed from the scene a chief cause of the dislike to which the monarchy was exposed. In France Charles X in 1830 and Louis-Philippe in 1848 had of their own accord fled from their subjects to England. In Prussia it apparently was sufficient that the crown prince went abroad.

 Dirk Blasius, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, 1795‒1861. Psychopathologie und Geschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992), 128.  Quoted from Weinstock, Ludwig Pfau, 45‒46: “Das Grab wird nah zum Grabe Der königlichen Macht! Die Blut gesäet haben, Die ernten eine Schlacht. Im Blute wird ersticken Der alten Treue Wahn Gottlob ! Das hat ein König, Ein deutscher König getan.”

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Mirabeau and the Force of Bayonets The conviction that legitimacy could not be obtained by force of arms, was expressed by count Mirabeau in a memorable way on 23 June 1789 at a turning point of the French Revolution. Louis XVI had summoned the three Estates to a common session, a Séance royale, in the intent of reading to them his proposals for political reform. When he had finished he ordered the assembly to disperse. While the Aristocracy and parts of the Clergy obeyed, the Third Estate remained seated. Since they had, only a few days before, declared themselves the National Assembly they could not recognize in the King a right to adjourn them. When the master of ceremonies, the marquis of Dreux-Brézé, exhorted them once more to disperse president Bailly declared: “I don’t believe that the assembled nation is in a position to receive orders.”²⁵ Mirabeau rose and declared: “Tell those who have sent you that we are here by the will of the people and that we shall move only by force of bayonets.”²⁶ Bailly has recorded a version of Mirabeau’s intervention which gives even clearer expression to the conviction that legitimacy cannot be won by force: “Tell those who have sent you that the force of bayonets cannot break the will of the nation.”²⁷ It may be true that the will of the nation cannot be changed by force. But until the fall of the monarchy in August 1792 the partisans of the revolution were haunted by the fear that with the help of the army the King might succeed in overruling the will of the nation. When, on 11 July 1789, the rumor spread that the King was assembling troops around Paris, the citizens made ready for a struggle. In search of arms they took the fortress of the Bastille by assault. The King yielded and removed the troops from the neighborhood of the capital. When two years later he flew from Paris, the National Assembly interpreted this act as an attempt to cross the frontier and crush the revolution from abroad in alliance with foreign governments. In order to prevent further attempts of this kind in the future, the assembly inserted an article into the constitution that once more emphasized the incompatibility of law and force: “If the King places himself at the top of an army and directs their forces against the nation, or if he

 Quoted from Jean-Christian Petitfils, Louis XVI (Paris : Perrin, 2005), 671 : “Je crois que la Nation assemblée ne peut pas recevoir d’ordre.”  Quoted from ibid., 671: Allez dire à ceux qui vous ont envoyé que nous sommes ici par la volonté du peuple et que nous n’en sortirons que par la puissance des baïonnettes.  Quoted from ibid., 1019, n. 31: Allez dire à ceux qui vous envoient que la force des baïonettes ne peut rien contre la volonté de la Nation ; cf. Skadi Krause, Die souveräne Nation. Zur Delegitimierung monarchischer Herrschaft in Frankreich 1788‒1789 (Berlin : Duncker & Humblot 2008, 57‒58).

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does not by a formal act dissociate himself from a similar step which is undertaken in his name, he is presumed to have abdicated the government.”²⁸ The article denotes a dilemma. The National Assembly aspired at a balance of power as perfect as possible. Therefore they denied the legislative assembly the right to depose the King, because such an article would have placed the assembly above the King. On the other hand they were not ready to renounce the threat of deposition if the King should try to destroy the political order the revolution had created. Since another organ of the constitution should not be permitted to depose the King, the Constituante defined facts which if committed by him would be conceived as abdications. This type of abdication is called “legal abdication” (abdication légale).²⁹ After the King’s flight the assembly extended the definition of implicit abdication. In addition to waging war against the nation, retracting the oath on the constitution was included. In March an article had already been inserted stating that leaving the country and disregarding an express invitation by the legislative assembly to return, was likewise to be considered an implicit abdication.

Foreign Intervention The article concerning attempts at military suppression of the revolution was directed at the King himself or at foreign governments acting in his name. The National Assembly suspected from the beginning that Louis XVI tried to induce Emperor Leopold, brother of Queen Marie Antoinette, to intervene in France. Interventions to crush revolutions in other countries were to become common on behalf of the Concert of Europe after the Congress of Vienna. The pitfalls of such a policy had clear-sightedly been expounded in September 1791 by Louis XVI himself when he warned his brothers in exile to persuade friendly governments to intervene in his favor. He believed that it was impossible to govern a nation against their inclination. At present the inclinations of the French were directed towards human rights, unreasonable though these might be. A military

 Constitution du 3 septembre 1791, Sept. 3, Titre III, Chapitre II, Section I, Art. 6, in : Godechot, ed., Constitutions, 45 : “Si le roi se met à la tête d’une armée et en dirige les forces contre la nation, ou s’il ne s’oppose pas par un acte formel à une telle entreprise, qui s’exécuterait en son nom, il sera censé avoir abdiqué la royauté.”  Ibid., Art. 8.

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victory was useless if afterwards one could not govern. Against the prevailing spirit, however, it was impossible to govern a great kingdom.³⁰ Another foreign intervention was the suppression of the Baden revolution of 1849 by Prussian troops. Actually, there were two interventions, because Alexander von Dusch, foreign minister in the exile government of Baden at Mainz, had asked first the Imperial government and then the Prussian government for help. During the night of 13 May Grand Duke Leopold had fled across the Rhine to Alsace. Commander of the Prussian expeditionary corps was crown prince Wilhelm, brother of Friedrich Wilhelm IV. The engagement dragged on for several weeks. On 23 July the fortress of Rastatt finally surrendered. The rebels were severely punished. The consequences of the Prussian intervention for the people of Baden are reflected in the four stanzas of Ludwig Pfau’s “Baden Lullaby” (Badisches Wiegenlied). The first stanza reads: Sleep, my child, sleep quietly, Outside walks the Prussian! He has killed your father, He has brought poverty on your mother, And to those who do not sleep quietly, The Prussian will shut the eyes. Sleep, my child, sleep quietly, Outside walks the Prussian”!³¹

Peterloo 1819 Carnage among unarmed people is called massacre. If soldiers are the actors, a massacre may cause political convulsions and thereby even endanger the existing political regime. Nothing seems to prove more irrefutably the tyrannical char-

 Louis à ses frères, [Septembre 1791], in: Félix-Sébastien Feuillet de Conches, Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, et Madame Elisabeth, vol. 2 (Paris: Plon, 1864), 331‒336.  Quoted from: Ute Faath and Hansgeorg Schmidt-Bergmann, eds., Literatur und Revolution in Baden 1848/49. Eine Anthologie (Karlsruhe: Literarische Gesellschaft/Scheffelbund, 1997), 128: Schlaf’, mein Kind, schlaf’ leis, Dort draußen geht der Preuß’! Deinen Vater hat er umgebracht, Deine Mutter hat er arm gemacht, Und wer nicht schläft in guter Ruh’, Dem drückt der Preuß’ die Augen zu. Schlaf, mein Kind, schlaf’ leis, Dort draußen geht der Preuß’!

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acter of a ruler than bloodshed perpetrated by his soldiers among civilians. In the following sections three massacres of this kind that happened in Europe in the age of revolution, shall be compared to each other: the massacre on St. Peter’s Field at Manchester on 16 August 1819, the suppression of workers’ unrest in Milan in May 1898, and Bloody Sunday at St. Petersburg on 9 January 1905. The comparison will show that not only under Tsarist autocracy but also under the liberal regimes of the West governments light-heartedly called the army against demonstrators, in violation of the most fundamental human rights and in total disregard of their duty to protect the citizens. Armed intervention was in all three cases provoked by the protest movements and the petitioning campaigns of the workers, often occasioned by hunger. The application of force was thus a consequence of the social tensions and upheavals accompanying the industrial revolution. That the authorities had recourse to sheer force shows that they had not yet found a method of legitimizing monarchical government among the new social classes. On 16 August 1819 almost 60,000 people from Manchester and Salford and from the entire county of Lancashire, men, women, and children, assembled unarmed and in their Sunday dresses on St. Peter’s Field at Manchester, in order to demonstrate for an improvement of their living conditions and for a reform of the House of Commons. The name of Peterloo for the location was coined only a few days later in satirical intention in order to attest to the British army four years after the defeat of Napoleon near Waterloo a new success.³² The fact that the name asserted itself indicates the important place the event obtained in British collective memory. Mass demonstrations of a similar kind had already taken place several times since 1816, most recently at Birmingham on 12 July 1819. The demonstrations were symptoms of the industrial crisis under which England was suffering since the end of the Napoleonic wars. In Lancashire the crisis hit in particular the home workers. In 1817 many weavers from Manchester and surroundings had participated in a march to London in order to reveal their distress to the Prince Regent. The weavers were not themselves the organizers of the mass demonstrations. It was rather political radicalism that agitated on behalf of the suffering working population. The radicals demanded political reform, in the first place universal suffrage and annual elections to the House of Commons. They won over the weavers by arguing that their misery was a consequence of the mistaken and selfish policies of the ruling class and that the power of this

 Donald Read, Peterloo, The “Massacre” and its Background (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1958), 145; Reginald James White, Waterloo to Peterloo (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957), 195.

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class could be broken only by a fundamental reform of Parliament. Under the influence of their radical leaders the workers of Manchester and Birmingham also demanded that these cities the population of which had multiplied in the course of the industrial revolution, be permitted to send their own members to the House of Commons. This demand was met in 1832 in the course of the reform of Parliament. In 1819, however, nobody could foresee this. Therefore the radicals had started to organize the election of Members of Parliament on mass assemblies. Unauthorized elections of this kind were incompatible with the constitution and could not effectively provide anybody with a seat. But they were a propagandistic artifice to exert pressure on the government and on Parliament. Members from city constituencies (boroughs) in which only a restricted number of people possessed the right to vote, were to be confronted with representatives of the people who could with a better justification affirm that they had been elected at a democratic suffrage. At the assembly at Birmingham in July 1819 a certain Sir Charles Wolseley was elected Legislatorial Attorney and Representative of the city.³³ The same had been planned to happen at the meeting in Manchester as well, scheduled for 9 August. But the Home Office declared the step to be against the law. Therefore the city of Manchester prohibited the meeting whereupon the organizers announced another meeting to be held on 16 August, and since they attached great importance to legality, in order not to give the authorities a pretence to interfere, they removed the election of a Member of Parliament from the program. As a consequence the meeting set on 16 August was not prohibited. In harmony with the recommendations of the Home Office it appeared as though the local authorities had decided to wait and see, whether seditious speeches were given or not. In fact they did not wait. With a view to the uninterrupted sequence of mass demonstrations and to the ever more radical demands of political reform the city government and the Home Office were convinced that revolution was imminent. In contrast to the Home Office, however, the magistrate went so far as to consider the meeting in itself seditious, even if the unlawful election of a Member of Parliament was not intended. Because of this conviction it would have been logical if they had forbidden the meeting after the second announcement as well. Instead the authorities interfered at the most unfortunate moment. No sooner had the radical agitator Henry Hunt climbed the platform in the middle of an immeasurable number of people and started his speech than the militia on one side and shortly after regular troops from the other side forced their way through the masses and arrested Hunt and the other organizers of the meeting. Unfortunately

 Asa Briggs, The Age of Improvement (London: Longmans, 1959), 210.

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the militia which was less well trained in managing their horses, arrived on the scene before the hussars. The sudden appearance and the inconsiderate proceedings of the armed militiamen caused panic amid the crowd. After having arrested Hunt and other instigators the soldiers cleared the square. Eleven people died. About 400 were injured, among them 140 by saber-cuts.³⁴ Five days later the city authorities received a letter of thanks from the Prince Regent in which he expressed his “great satisfaction at their prompt, decisive and efficient measures for the preservation of public tranquility.”³⁵ The letter had been diligently calculated. City magistrate was an honorary post. If the government had started an investigation or called those in responsibility to account for what had happened, it would possibly have induced many officials in the country to lay down their functions. This would have been too great a risk, especially in critical times.³⁶ The weavers of Lancashire could read the Prince Regent’s praise in the newspaper. This was in full accordance with the magistrate of Manchester who was pleased that in this way he was by the highest authority exonerated from the charge of having abused his functions and exceeded his powers. On the other hand by his reaction the Prince Regent jeopardized the credibility of the monarchy, all the more so since the weavers had, driven by their distress, more than once appealed to him for help before. Contemporaries held the British government responsible for the massacre. The news motivated Shelley to his poem “The Masque of Anarchy” the second strophe of which begins by the phrase: “I met murder on the way – He had a mask like Castlereagh.”³⁷ Richard Carlile asked the Prince Regent in an open letter: “How shall the future impartial historian record, […] that the Regent of Great Britain has publicly sanctioned the slaughter of several hundred of his unoffending subjects, and has not taken one step to satisfy himself of the facts of the case?³⁸ In London the massacre gave rise to the “Cato Street Conspiracy.”³⁹ A certain Arthur Thistlewood had just been released from jail after one year of confinement when he heard about Peterloo. He decided to avenge the victims. To-

 Read, Peterloo, 140.  Quoted from ibid., 145.  Ibid., 183; Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England 1783‒1846 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), 252.  Percy Bysshe Shelley, “The Masque of Anarchy 1819, written on the occasion of the massacre at Manchester,” in: idem, The Complete Works, ed. Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck, vol. 3: Poems (London: Benn, 1965), 235.  Quoted from Steve Poole, The Politics of Regicide in England, 1760‒1850. Troublesome Subjects (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 154.  White, Waterloo, 197‒198.

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gether with a couple of other conspirators he planned to assassinate the entire British cabinet. However, the plan was discovered. On 23 October 1820 the conspirators were arrested in their hiding-place in Cato Street and brought to court. Five of them were hanged.

Milan 1898 Along with Turin and Genoa Milan was one of the leading industrial centers of Italy at the end of the 19th century. In its streets in May 1898 at first workers and police and then workers and the army clashed. The clashes resembled in many respects those of Manchester. Here too hunger was the deep cause of the unrest among the working population. Italian corn harvest had been exceptionally poor in 1897. From April 1897 to January 1898 bread prices in Milan rose by 27 %.⁴⁰ Additional corn imports could not lower them, because in 1894 the government had raised customs duties on corn for fiscal reasons from 5 to 7.50 Lire per quintal. But when in early 1898 hunger riots and strikes multiplied everywhere, the government of Prime Minister Antonio Di Rudinì suspended the increase of the duties for a period of three months. Meanwhile, however, the Spanish-American War impeded corn exports from the United States.⁴¹ At the end of April and in early May in several parts of Italy unrest approached a peak. An increasing number of people were killed during clashes between demonstrators and the police. On 4 May the government interrupted the collection of the duties altogether for a period of two months. Calm, however, was not restored as expected. In the evening of 6 May the Milan police for the first time fired at demonstrators. As a consequence workers erected barricades all over the city. On the day after the prefect of Milan, Antonio Winspeare, ordered the sixty-year old general Fiorenzo Bava Beccaris to restore order. A few hours later the Italian government placed Milan under martial law and transferred upon Bava Beccaris extraordinary powers. The general used artillery to repel the demonstrators. An incident of 9 May sheds light on the brutality of his proceedings. When an – as it later became clear – unfounded rumor spread that from the monastery of the Capuchins close to Porta Monforte guns had been fired, he ordered a breach to be made in the walls of the monastery. On moving in, the soldiers found about sixty persons in the building, the monks and a group of beggars who were waiting for their

 Alfredo Canavero, Milano e la crisi di fine secolo (1896‒1900), 2nd ed. (Milan: Ed. Unicopli 1898), 148.  Ibid., 154, 159.

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everyday soup. To monks and beggars alike handcuffs were attached, and they were put in prison. According to official communiqués the operations of the police and the military in Milan from 6 to 9 May 1898 resulted in 80 dead and 450 wounded. Witness accounts even point to a considerably higher number of victims.⁴² The authorities had called for the army because they believed that a revolutionary insurrection was imminent, even though of such an eventuality there was no serious indication whatsoever. On 7 May the Questor of Milan Vittorio Minozzi had sent a telegram to Prefect Winspeare saying: “The situation is serious […]. We are not confronted with demonstrations, but with a revolutionary movement.”⁴³ In the same sense Winspeare had informed the government in Rome. Under the impression of reports of this kind Di Rudinì had proclaimed the state of siege. With respect to the action of the military Eugenio Torelli, founder and responsible director of the Corriere dell Sera, wrote to the historian Pasquale Villari: “I am seeing things that remind me of the Bourbons.”⁴⁴ An unexpected parallel to the events around Peterloo is revealed in the commentary of the King to the action of the army. For the “great service” that he had rendered “to the institutions and to civilization,” King Umberto I bestowed upon General Bava Beccaris the Cross of Grand Officer of the Military Order of Savoy and appointed him Senator.⁴⁵ There was a sequel to the bestowal. In the evening of 29 July 1900 Gaetano Bresci, a silk-weaver from Coiano near Prato, at Monza fired three times on King Umberto who had just attended a gymnastics contest. The King died within a few moments.⁴⁶ In the course of the ensuing law suit the assassin declared that the plan to kill the King had come to him when he heard that the authors of the carnage of Milan were not hanged but praised and decorated.⁴⁷ Bresci had moved to the United States in 1897, where he had found work in a silk factory at Paterson, New Jersey. Upon the news of the bloodshed General Bava Beccaris had caused at Milan, he began to save money for a passage to Italy. As soon as he had accumulated enough he returned to Italy, resolved to punish the King.

 Ibid., 183‒186.  Quoted from ibid., 173: “La situazione è grave […]. Non si tratta di dimostrazioni, ma di un movimento rivoluzionario.”  Eugenio Torelli Viollier to Pasquale Villari, 3.6.1898, in: Lucio Villari, “I fatti di Milano del 1898,” Studi Storici 8 (1967), 549.  Canavero, Milano, 256‒257; Raffaele Colapietra, “Bava Beccaris, Fiorenzo,” DBI , vol. 7 (Rome: Istituto della Enciplopedia Italiana, 1965), 302‒303.  Ugoberto Alfassio Grimaldi, Il re “buono” (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1970), 442‒447.  Bruno Anatra, “Bresci, Gaetano,” DBI, vol. 14 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1972), 168‒169.

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Bresci’s act was a crime of the dimensions of an antique tragedy. A silk weaver crossed the ocean to avenge a crime that ran against his fundamental sense of justice. Gaetano Bresci acted alone, but it is to be assumed that many other citizens of the country as well regarded the King’s action as a scandal. It again shows how monarchy jeopardized its legitimacy if it permitted unmitigated force to be used against citizens and then publicly praised the perpetrators. On 29 August 1900 at Milan Bresci was sentenced to imprisonment. On 22 Mai 1901 he died in prison. According to the authorities he had hung himself in his cell. An examination of this version is hardly possible since the papers concerning his captivity have disappeared from the Archivio Centrale dello Stato in Rome. Likewise disappeared from the Archivio di Stato di Milano have the documents of his trial.⁴⁸

St. Petersburg 1905 On Sunday, 9 January 1905, at St. Petersburg soldiers fired on unarmed workingmen who carried with them portraits of the Tsar like images of saints and marched singing to the Winter Palace in the intent of presenting a petition to Tsar Nicholas II. Observers guessed that at least 50,000, perhaps close to 100,000, people participated in the procession.⁴⁹ According to the authorities 130 persons were killed and 299 heavily injured. These figures are probably too low.⁵⁰ Jan Kusber estimates that about 1,000 people were killed.⁵¹ The march had been organized by Georgij Apollonovič Gapon, a priest who had for years been active in the labor movement. In 1903 he had founded the “Assembly of the Russian Factory and Mill Workers of St. Petersburg”, a working men’s association for self-improvement. In early 1905 the association numbered several thousand members. Gapon always cooperated closely with the authorities. He placed great emphasis on legality. In December 1904 the Putilov works, a big armaments and shipbuilding enterprise, had dismissed four work-

 Ibid., 169.  Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905, vol. 1: Russia in Disarray (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 90.  Ibid., 91‒92.  Jan Kusber, Krieg und Revolution in Rußland 1904‒1906: Das Militär im Verhältnis zu Wirtschaft, Autokratie und Gesellschaft (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1997), 93; cf. the figures in Gerald D. Surh, 1905 in St. Petersburg: Labor, Society, and Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), 165, where the number of dead or injured participants and by-standers is estimated at about 1,000.

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ers. Since all four of them were members of his association Gapon entered into negotiations with the management trying to obtain their reemployment. Since his endeavors were not successful the workers of the factory to which the four had belonged, went out on strike on 3 January. In the following days a growing number of workers from other St. Petersburg plants joined in the strike movement. On 7 January about 100,000 workers were on strike, about two thirds of the factory work force of the city. The conflict induced Gapon to return to a project he had developed earlier. On 6 January he informed the military governor of the city, General Fullon, that on the following Sunday he intended to guide a procession to the Winter Palace where a petition should be presented to the Tsar. To Gapon three days were left for the mobilization of the workers. His preparations notwithstanding he continued in his endeavors to terminate the lingering industrial conflict in the Putilov works through negotiations. The police did not interfere with the preparations for the demonstration. But on 7 January the military governor issued a warning that no demonstration would be tolerated. In the evening of 8 January the government tried to arrest Gapon in the hope of preventing the demonstration, but Gapon had gone into hiding. He nevertheless stuck to his plans. On the same 8 January he sent a formal request to the Minister of the Interior, Petr Danilovič Svjatopolk-Mirskij, asking for a meeting with the Tsar on 9 January, 2 o’clock pm, at which the petition should be presented. The petition had been ready since 7 January and was known to the authorities. In the petition the Tsar is asked for justice and protection in a tone both pathetic and respectful. Simultaneously demands are raised aiming at a radical transformation of the monarchy. The Tsar is addressed as the father of his people. The bureaucracy and the capitalists are held responsible for the actual grievances. The most important political demand was the election of a constituent assembly by universal and equal suffrage and by secret ballot. The petition also demanded termination of the war against Japan “in accordance with the will of the people.”⁵² The most important demands of social policy were “abolition of land redemption payments,” abolition of indirect taxation, and the introduction of a progressive income tax, the eight-hour work day, and freedom in the struggle of labor against capital. The last section sounds like a bitter prophecy of what was going to happen on Sunday. In the direction of the Tsar it reads: But if Thou withholdest Thy command and failest to respond to our supplications, we will die here on this square before Thy palace. There is no place for us to go, nor is there any reason for us to go any further. There are two paths before us: one to freedom and happi-

 Quoted from Aleksej Šilov, “K dokumental’noj istorii “peticii” 9 janvarja 1905 goda,” Krasnaja Letopis’: Istoričeskij Žurnal 2 (13) (1925), 34.

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ness, the other one into the grave […]. Let our lives be a sacrifice for suffering Russia. We do not regret this sacrifice, but offer it gladly.⁵³

On Sunday morning, tens of thousands, men, women, and children, coming from different directions, set out on their way to the Winter Palace. At first nobody tried to stop them. Only after some time soldiers appeared and called upon the demonstrators to return home. The admonitions remained unheeded. When one of the larger groups in the middle of which Gapon was marching, arrived at Narva Gate which was still far from the Winter Palace, a bugle was blown. Thereupon the soldiers began to fire. The same happened at other points of the city. The peaceful procession ended in bloodshed. Nicholas II kept a diary, but rarely dedicated more than five to seven lines to a single day. Under 9 January 1905 he entered: A difficult day! At Petersburg dangerous disturbances (ser’eznye besporjadki) occurred, because workers wanted to march to the Winter Palace. The troops were obliged to fire at various points of the city. There were many dead and wounded. My Lord, how painful and hard! Mom came here from the city and joined us for morning mass. All of us had breakfast together. I went for a walk with Mischa. Mom stayed overnight.⁵⁴

The Tsar writes as if the events in the streets of the capital did not concern him. That the troops were forced to fire (dolžny byli streljat’) was not for a moment questioned by him. One complaint in the workers’ petition had been: “Anyone of us who dares raise his voice in defense of the working class and the people is thrown into jail or exiled.”⁵⁵ It would have been easy enough for the Tsar to receive a delegation of the workers and to permit the petition to be handed over to him. But Nicholas took their grievances so little seriously that he did not even take the trouble to move from Carskoe Selo to the Winter Palace in the capital. He had not even thought of empowering a minister to receive the representatives of the workers. From this it is easy to conclude that the autocracy believed that it could dispense with the consent of the urban masses and the industrial workers and instead base its power in case of conflict on the army. A few days later the Minister of Agriculture Aleksej Sergeevič Ermolov warned the Tsar in a personal encounter that the forcible suppression of the

 Quted from ibid., 35; an English translation of the petition in Ascher, Revolution, vol. 1, 87‒ 89, and in Walter Sablinsky, The Road to Bloody Sunday: Father Gapon and the St. Petersburg Massacre of 1905 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 344‒349.  [Nikolaj II], Dnevniki Imperatora Nikolaja II, ed. S. M. Lukonin (Moscow: Orbita, 1991), 246.  Quoted from Ascher, Revolution, vol. 1, 87; the original version in Aleksej Šilov, “K dokumental’noj istorii,” 33.

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demonstration on 9 January would entail additional and still more violent movements of protest. Even if the government had succeeded in curbing the workers’ demonstrations in the streets of Sankt Petersburg by bloodshed (prolitie krovi) it would still not have obtained pacification, but rather the opposite. “The agitation has not subsided, but it can choose other forms of expression, it may manifest itself in a series of plots which, as far as is known, are already being contrived by anarchist conspirators and of which nobody is safe, not even your Highness, all the precautions notwithstanding that have been taken for your protection.” At St. Petersburg the troops had acquitted themselves of their task. Meanwhile, however, the movement had seized hold of many other cities. The army did their duty there as well. But what could one do if the unrest was transferred from the cities to the villages and if the farmers rebelled? “Which forces and which troops would be at hand to curb this new Pugačev revolt (pugačevčina) if it spreads over the entire country?” Ermolov doubted that in a similar situation the troops would again obey orders to fire at the people. The soldiers came from this same people and had already come into continuous contact with the population. They had had no choice but to listen to the cries and to the curses of their victims. When Nicholas agreed that the government could not rely on the army alone, Ermolov emphasized that the only foundation of the monarchy was the people, but only on the condition that the people believed in the Tsar and “regarded him as their protector (zaščitnik) not only at present but in the future as well.” And then the minister mercilessly urged upon the autocrat what actually had happened on 9 January and what was now left to be done. From all quarters of the city the workers had rushed to the Winter Palace, “not ill-disposed” and “not in the intention of subverting your throne.” The crowd had by their leaders been made believe “that you would receive them and step out in person to listen to their grievances.” The bloodshed could have been avoided. The petitions of the workers “should in time have been listened to and examined” and “perhaps your Highness could have declared beforehand that you were ready to receive a delegation of the workers and that you would give the order that their grievances would be examined and remedied as far as the laws permitted.” At present it was necessary that Nicholas addressed the people himself in order to let them hear from his own mouth his “deep regret of what has happened” and his intention “to examine and to satisfy the requests and demands of the workers as far as they were in accordance with the laws.” Indispensable, he said, was “the expression of sympathy for the unintended victims of the catastrophe.” Among the great number of casualties there had been “not only leaders and revolutionaries but people from the crowd, women and children, and even persons that had only happened to pass by.” “Your Highness must come to their

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rescue.” Some of these might be culpable and have merited their lot, but their innocent families and children had made the same sacrifices. In the capital collections were made for the distressed. “If I should be asked for help on their behalf I should not feel justified in refusing it, but not so much we, but your Highness has to lend his assistance, and only on this condition will the people distinguish between you and those actually responsible for the events of 9 January. […] A word from you, my lord, directed to the people, that’s what I believe is absolutely necessary.”⁵⁶ Ermolov waited in vain for a word from the Tsar. But his apprehensions were well-founded. From Bloody Sunday a strike movement originated which quickly spread to large parts of the country. On 4 February for the first time since the assassination of Alexander II in 1881 a member of the Tsarist family fell victim to an attempt at his life. Near the Kremlin the social revolutionary Ivan Platonovič Kaljaev threw a bomb at the coach of Grand-Duke Sergej Aleksandrovič, General Governor of Moscow and uncle of Nicholas II, a man ill-reputed as an unbending reactionary. When twelve years later, on 23 February 1917, in St. Petersburg the strikes broke out that were to lead to the February Revolution it became obvious that the Tsar had not learned from the errors he had committed in 1905. On the eve Nicholas had moved to the Russian headquarters at Mogilev. Therefore he was from then on informed about the aggravating situation in the capital only by the reports that were telegraphed to him. Induced by these reports on 25 February he gave orders to send the army to curb the demonstrations. Perhaps he would have taken a different decision if he had been able personally to form a judgment on the situation at St. Petersburg. But as in 1905 he did not consider returning to the capital. As Ermolov had predicted, on the day after a number of units refused to obey. Two days later the entire garrison of the city was in open rebellion. On 2 March, in the hope through a personal sacrifice to prevent the spread of the mutiny to the troops who fought at the front, the Tsar abdicated in favor of his brother Michael for himself and for his son Aleksej, a bleeder.⁵⁷ The employment of military force against his subjects had rebounded upon the Tsar. In the age of revolutions the European monarchy could no longer feel secure of its traditional legitimacy. In line with the social and political development it was  [Aleksej Sergeevič Ermolov], “Zapiski A. S. Ermolova,” KA 8 (1925), 51‒53: “Vaše slovo, gosudar’, obraščennoe k narodu, ja sčitaju bezuslovno neobchodimym”; cf. Ascher, Revolution, vol. 1, 107.  See below in the chapter “Success in war” the section “The abdication of Nicholas II.”

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continuously confronted with ever new demands. If monarchy ignored the expectations of the citizens it ran the risk of being perceived as oppressive. Whether in a given situation traditional legitimacy was strong enough to stave off the actual menaces, was doubtful. But if the monarch had recourse to the army, he jeopardized his legitimacy. In several revolutions of modernity the call of the military brought about the definite loss of power. Thomas Jefferson used the argument in the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 and Adolphe Thiers in his appeal to the citizens of Paris of 1830. Friedrich Wilhelm IV’s shock in March 1848 when he heard what his soldiers had accomplished in Berlin, shows that he knew all too well how dangerous it was for a ruler to use the army against his own subjects. This is all the more true if his rule had not been questioned at all. The peaceful demonstrations of workers at Manchester in 1819, at Milan in 1898, and at St. Petersburg in 1905 were not attacks on the existing political order. Only their violent suppression and the decoration of the military leaders who had carried it out, transformed them into menaces to the monarchy. Nothing proves this more clearly than Gaetano Bresci’s return from America and his attempt at the King. For having called the army Umberto I paid with his life. After Bloody Sunday at St. Petersburg the revenge did not hit at the Tsar himself but at his uncle, Grand-Duke Sergej Aleksandrovič, General Governor of Moscow, and the entire country was roused to rebellion.

3 Dynasty Ce n’est pas tout de se déclarer monarque héréditaire. Ce qui constitue tel, ce n’est pas le trône qu’on veut transmettre, mais le trône qu’on a hérité. Benjamin Constant¹

Dynasties and States In a hereditary monarchy government is transmitted from generation to generation by fixed rules within the reigning family. Dynastic origin and lawful succession have for centuries and right through the age of revolution remained an essential source of monarchical legitimacy. Not only have rulers from ancient families continued to insist on their dynastic legitimacy, but the new monarchies that were founded after 1789, also tried to establish a dynastic tradition. Napoleon I was determined to transform his family into a European dynasty. When his nephew Napoleon III restored the Empire he also reinstated the Bonaparte dynasty. But in the 19th century dynastic legitimacy alone was no longer sufficient and needed to be supplemented by new legitimizing factors, foremost by constitutionalism and nationalism. The legitimizing capacity of dynastic descent cannot adequately be assessed unless one looks back behind the French Revolution and analyzes the achievements of the dynastic principle in the early modern period. These achievements include both the foundation and the consolidation of states. Where dynastic legitimacy was lacking or doubtful, a ruler had to supplement it by other legitimizing factors. The elevation of William of Orange and his wife Mary Stuart to the English throne at the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was sanctioned by Parliament. Catherine the Great, a German princess not related to the Romanov dynasty sought to justify her usurpation of the Russian throne after the violent death of her husband, Tsar Peter III, by a policy of reforms.² The task was alleviated by the fact that Peter the Great had virtually abolished dynastic succession through the fundamental law of 1722. The law empowered a Tsar freely to desig-

 Benjamin Constant, “De l’Esprit de conquête et de l’usurpation dans leurs rapports avec la civilisation européenne,” in: Constant, Œuvres, ed. Alfred Roulin (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), 1030.  Cynthia H. Whittaker, “The Reforming Tsar: The Redefinition of Autocratic Duty in EighteenthCentury Russia,” Slavic Review 51 (1992), 90; Karen Rasmussen, “Catherine II and the Image of Peter I,” Slavic Review 37 (1978), 57. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110561395-004

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nate any of his sons or even a person foreign to the dynasty as his successor, if he considered it necessary in the interest of the State.³ In political theory the strict rules of succession were one of the main arguments in favor of hereditary monarchy. But in practice the succession was often enough disputed, as is demonstrated by the numerous wars of succession in European history. As a rule, claims to the throne were justified by juridical arguments, no matter how well founded they might be. Claims often originated in dynastic marriages that had frequently been expressly arranged for the purpose of creating prospects of territorial expansion. One of the most well-known sequel of dynastic marriages of this kind was initiated through the German King’s Maximilian I matrimonial alliance with Mary, daughter of Charles the Bold of Burgundy. Philip the Fair, offspring of this marriage, married Joan the Mad of Castile and Aragon. Their son, the later Charles V, was to hold in his hands, apart from the German hereditary lands of the House of Habsburg, the Netherlands, Spain, and the Italian possessions of the Spanish crown. Only the Duchy of Burgundy with its residence at Dijon he could not secure for the House of Habsburg. Dynastic marriages resulted in the formation of composite states the parts of which were often held together by the common dynasty alone, whereas the various provinces for a long time retained their own ancient laws. In composed states provinces might border on each other, as did the Netherlands among themselves or England and Scotland which in 1603 had been brought into a personal union when on the English throne to the childless Queen Elizabeth I Tudor succeeded King James VI Stuart of Scotland. But often enough dynastic marriages created claims on territories distant from the original residence of the dynasty. Such was the case at the extension of the House of Habsburg to the Low Countries, to Spain and to Italy in the age of Charles V. The formation of composite states as a result of dynastic policy shows that states were created by dynasties and not vice versa. But dynastic policy did not only result in the extension of monarchies but might just as well lead to their division. In the Carolingian Empire the sons of a ruler possessed equal rights to the succession. Accordingly, after the death of Louis the Pious, the Empire of Charlemagne was divided among Louis’ three sons, Louis the German, Charles the Bald, and Lothario. The German Empire of 1871 contained several member states the names of which indicated that they had originated from a common

 Text of the law in the original and in English translation in: Antony Lentin, ed., Peter the Great: His Law on the Imperial Succession in Russia, 1722. The Official Commentary (Oxford: Headstart History, 1996), 128‒33.

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Saxon territory: apart from the Kingdom of Saxony the Duchies Saxony-Altenburg, Saxony-Coburg-Gotha, Saxony-Meiningen, and Saxony-Weimar. In the Old Regime dynasties, not states, waged war against each other and concluded peace treaties. In the Peace of Nystad of 1721 not Sweden ceded the provinces of Estonia, Livonia, and Ingermanland to Russia, but Frederick I, King of Sweden, “and the Kingdom of Sweden” to his “Tsarist Majesty and his offspring and successors in the Russian Empire.”⁴ After the crushing defeat at Kunersdorf on 12 August 1759 Frederick the Great expected a Russian advance on Berlin. The fact that the Russians failed to appear, the King called in a letter of 1 September to Prince Henry the “miracle of the House of Brandenburg,” not the miracle of Prussia or of the Prussian States.⁵ In 1763 at Hubertusburg peace was concluded by the rulers, Maria Theresa and Frederick the Great, not by the states, and it was the rulers who renounced all claims they might have brought forward against each other.⁶ Only after the Revolution dynasties gradually ceded the place to their states as subjects of international law. In the preliminary peace of February 1871 between France and Germany France renounced the territories that were later to form the Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine, in favor not of the House of Hohenzollern, but of the German Empire.⁷ In a composite state as created by the dynasty, dynastic legitimacy did not refer to the accumulated whole but to the single provinces of which it was composed. In the various provinces different rights of succession might exist. This circumstance alone endangered their cohesion. When in 1837 Princess Victoria ascended the British throne, the personal union of England and Hanover was dissolved, because in Hanover female succession was excluded. In order to avoid the disruption of their composite states rulers naturally aspired at strengthening the existing bonds between the parts and above all at creating uniform rights of succession. By the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 Emperor Charles VI created a uniform order of succession for the lands under Habsburg rule by which, in contrast to the existing law in several of them, under certain conditions female succession was provided for as well. But since the Pragmatic Sanction

 Peace of Nystad, 10.9.1721, Art. 4, in: F. W. Ghillany, ed., Diplomatisches Handbuch. Sammlung der wichtigsten europäischen Friedensschlüsse, Congressakten und sonstigen Staatsurkunden, part I (Nördlingen: Beck, 1855), 155.  Theodor Schieder, Friedrich der Große. Ein Königtum der Widersprüche (Frankfurt: Propyläen, 1983), 196‒97.  Peace of Hubertusburg, 15. 2.1763, Art. 3, in: Ghillany, ed., Handbuch, 182‒83.  Preliminary Peace of Versailles, 26. 2.1871, art. 1, in: Johannes Lepsius, Albercht Mendelsson Bartholdy, and Friedrich Thimme, ed., Die Große Politik der Europäischen Kabinette 1871‒1914, vol. 1 (Berlin: Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft für Politik und Geschichte, 1926), 3.

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was not universally acknowledged by the other states of Europe, a war of succession became inevitable, when Maria Theresa succeeded her father on the throne of Austria in 1740. The creation of uniform rules of succession and of other common institutions was an important step in the process of reform and centralization that marked the Age of Enlightenment, a fact that eventually is also reflected in the new nomenclature. As late as 1794 the Prussian code of laws was titled “General Law Code for the Prussian States” (Allgemeines Landrecht für die Preußischen Staaten), not General Law Code for Prussia. The term Österreich as designating the totality of the Habsburg lands has originated only in the course of the creation of an Austrian Imperial dignity by the German Emperor and King Francis II, from now on also Emperor Francis I of Austria, in 1804. As long as the provinces a dynasty had assembled over the generations, were held together by the bonds of a personal union alone, it remained difficult to identify a common interest of state, especially if the provinces were separated from each other geographically. At the time of Philipp II the Spanish interest of state differed notably from the interest of state of the Netherlands. It is no surprise, then, that in the second half of the 16th century the Netherlands rose against Spanish domination. It was more likely that there existed a common dynastic interest among the provinces of a composite state than a common interest of state. The dynasties competed with each other for the maintenance and the extension of their power and their reputation in Europe. For this purpose they used the material resources of their countries. In the age of mercenaries money alone was required for drawing up an army and setting up military power. By the acquisition of new territories rulers hoped to tap new sources of income. If dynasties regarded their countries primarily as a means of filling their treasuries, they resembled modern investors who don’t care in which place and in which branch of the economy they are making profit. Only on these grounds can the readiness of rulers be explained to divide and exchange territories with no regard for the preferences of their subjects. A characteristic example was presented as late as the second half of the eighteenth century by the Elector Palatine Charles Theodore of the House of Wittelsbach. When the last Elector of the Bavarian branch of the dynasty died in 1777, the Electorate of Bavaria devolved upon the Elector Palatine who was also Duke of Jülich and Berg, Duke of Neuburg and Count Palatine of Sulzbach. In spite of the dynastic bond Charles Theodore was unfamiliar with Bavaria and not averse to the proposal of Emperor Joseph II to exchange the Bavarian Electorate for the Austrian Low Countries. The Austrian Low Countries had only in 1713 been transferred from Spain to Austria by the Peace of Utrecht that terminated the War of the Spanish Succession. Joseph II regarded them as a territorial outpost that was dif-

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ficult to defend against the expansionist tendencies of France, whereas the lands of Charles Theodore along the Rhine and in particular the Duchies of Jülich and Berg possessed an obvious geographical connection with the Low Countries. As is well known the projected deal did not materialize, because Frederick the Great of Prussia opposed an extension of Austrian power in Southern Germany. But the project again demonstrates that some rulers did not care which subjects they were to govern. From the point of view of the 19th century it must have appeared more than strange that the German-speaking Charles Theodore had no qualms about giving away his Bavarian subjects in exchange for French- and Flemishspeaking foreigners. The apparent readiness of rulers to exchange territories among themselves brings into focus a characteristic feature of dynastic legitimacy. To begin with, dynastic legitimacy justified a ruler’s claim to obedience of the subjects living on a determined territory. The claim rested on lawful succession or on rightful cession of the right to rule to the present ruler in a valid peace treaty or in a contract. The legality of rule was independent from an emotional bond between rulers and subjects. Still, to the scion of an ancient dynasty legitimacy was attributed not only on the grounds of genealogy, but also in the light of the myths that surrounded the memory of great figures of his family. The rationale of dynastic succession rested on the hereditary charisma of the legitimate dynasty. The visible sign of hereditary charisma in England and France was the capacity of Kings to cure of scrofulousness by the royal touch. In times of crisis before the Revolution the memory of the House of Bourbon and its great Kings in history was regularly invoked. On 2 April 1814 the Journal des débats published a proclamation of the Count of Provence, living in exile in Great Britain, dated 1 January. Therein the prospective Louis XVIII called Napoleon a “usurper” not of his throne, but “of the throne of St. Louis.”⁸ Chateaubriand advocated the restoration of Louis XVIII, arguing that he was “the heir of Henry IV and Louis XIV.”⁹

Dynastic Crises Dynastic succession was meant to warrant the durability of monarchy over generations. But it was not immune to crises. As a matter of principle, two types of dynastic crises may be distinguished – crises arising from natural and crises aris-

 Journal des débats, 3.4.1814, 3.  François René de Chateaubriand, De Buonaparte, des Bourbons, et de la nécessité de se rallier à nos princes légitimes, pour le bonheur de la France et celui de l’Europe (Zürich: Orell, 1814), 56.

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ing from political causes. The natural crises arose from the fact that dynastic succession was based on biological conditions. The basic prerequisite for a regular succession was the existence of a rightful heir to the throne. If a rightful heir was missing or if the succession was doubtful for other reasons, wars of succession easily arose. Inheritance claims were often used as a pretext in the pursuit of other objectives. In 1688, three years after the Simmern branch of the House of Wittelsbach had become extinct, Louis XIV opened the War of the Palatine Succession mainly for fear of a shift in the European balance of power to the disadvantage of France at a time when Emperor Leopold I continued to attain victories over the Turks.¹⁰ A critical situation might also unfold, if an heir to the throne existed but was unable to take up government with the required authority because of minority or insanity. In an open letter to Queen Victoria who had just ascended the throne at 18 years of age, Lord Henry Brougham confessed in 1838 that he was worrying about the future of the monarchy in Britain, because “all the powers of the executive government” were “intrusted to a woman, and that woman a child.”¹¹ Of dynastic crises for political reasons one may speak if a ruler had been deposed or forced to abdicate, all the more so, if at the same time the dynasty itself had altogether been abolished. This kind of proceeding was in fact the rule, even at those depositions of the Old Regime which had formally been justified by the argument that the monarch in question had turned into a tyrant and had thus forfeited his governing rights. One should imagine that an accusation of this kind, expressly directed at the person of the actual ruler, would not simultaneously affect his offspring. The extension of the sanctions to the offspring followed from the idea that the degeneration of the deposed ruler into a tyrant had demonstrated that the dynasty had lost its hereditary charisma and thus its capacity to rule. In keeping with this idea six weeks after the execution of Charles I Parliament also abolished the institution of monarchy as such. In the first paragraph of the relevant act it is stated that in consequence of the King’s conviction for high treason “his issue and posterity” had “become incapable” of government as well. Accordingly the act discharged “all the people of England and Ireland […] of all fealty, homage and allegiance which is or shall be pretended to be due unto any of the issue and posterity of the said late

 Volker Sellin, “Der benutzte Vermittler. Innozenz XI. und der pfälzische Erbstreit,” in: Joachim Dahlhaus and Armin Kohnle, eds., Papstgeschichte und Landesgeschichte. Festschrift für Hermann Jakobs zum 65. Geburtstag (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau, 1995), 607‒608, 615‒616.  [Henry Brougham], Letter to the Queen on the State of the Monarchy. By a Friend of the People (London: Leukin Jones, 1838), 9.

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King.” Expressly mentioned are Charles’ two sons Charles and James, the future Kings Charles II and James II. Only after the disability of the executed King’s offspring had been proclaimed in the first part of the act, the second part declared monarchy as such “unnecessary, burdensome and dangerous to the liberty, safety and public interest of the people” and therefore abolished.¹² The deposition of the House of Stuart did not conjure up a dynastic but only a political crisis, since along with the dynasty monarchy as such had been abolished. At the deposition of James II in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 Parliament acted differently. Though they likewise accused him of having broken the law, Parliament neither abolished the monarchy nor did it exclude the entire dynasty from the succession. Excluded was only James’ recently born son. The reasons for this exclusion, however, were not doubts regarding the Stuart charisma, but the Catholic faith of the prince. In his stead the Protestant daughter Mary from James’ first marriage was chosen his successor. Though the precedence of James’ son was overruled, the principle of dynastic succession was thus still safeguarded.¹³ On the eve of Napoleon’s deposition by the French Senate in April 1814 consideration was given at first to preserving the Imperial throne for his three-year-old son. Nobody wished the son to atone for the crimes of his father. For practical reasons, however, the plan was discarded. The conspirators around Talleyrand calculated that Napoleon would, as long as he lived, try to use his son as an instrument for influencing politics from behind the scenes. Besides, the regency would have accrued to the young prince’s mother Marie Louise and in this way the destinies of France would inevitably have been entrusted to Metternich.¹⁴ Thus the road was prepared for the restoration of the Bourbons. A dynastic crisis of its own kind followed upon the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. Since the heir to the throne Aleksej was a bleeder and could not, so his father thought, live without him, Nicholas included his son in his abdication and declared his brother Michail his successor. In view of the revolutionary menace, however, Michail declined the offer. Since there was no legal heir left, monarchy ceased to exist for want of a monarch. Half a year later the Bolsheviks took over in Russia.

 An Act for the abolishing the kingly office in England and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging, 17. 3.1649, in: John P. Kenyon, ed., The Stuart Constitution 1603‒1688. Documents and Commentary, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 339‒340.  Cf. below the section “From the House of Stuart to the House of Hannover 1688‒1714.”  Volker Sellin, Die geraubte Revolution. Der Sturz Napoleons und die Restauration in Europa (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001), 137, 153.

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Queen Isabella II of Spain was deposed during the September Revolution of 1868, but in the constituent assembly, elected in January 1869, the republicans remained in the minority. Accordingly, the constitution of June 1869 again provided for a constitutional monarchy, but based on popular sovereignty. General Prim’s government went out in search of a suitable King. After Napoleon III had excluded the nomination of the Duke of Montpensier, son of King Louis-Philippe and Isabella’s brother-in-law, the choice fell on Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. Leopold’s candidature in July 1870 sparked the Prussian-French war.¹⁵ After his refusal Amadeo d’Aosta, son of King Victor Emanuel of Italy of the House of Savoy, was called on the throne of Spain. But Amadeo met with open rejection and resigned in February 1873. Thereupon the republic was proclaimed. But in late 1874 Spain restored the monarchy and Isabella’s son was made King Alfonso XII.¹⁶ The restoration of the Bourbons six years after Isabella’s deposition indicates that the monarchy was still widely accepted. But the repeated attempts to put foreign princes on the vacant throne demonstrate that the legitimacy of the historic dynasty had weakened. In 1931 Spain again turned republican. The most serious dynastic crises of the modern period occurred in France and in Russia during the second half of the 16th and in the early 17th century. In both countries the initial crises were followed by further dynastic conflicts. At the same time both countries were shaken by heavy social and political convulsions and the lack of an undisputed political authority was increasingly felt.

The Crisis of the House of Valois 1559‒1589 The French King Henry II lost his life in 1559 in an accident during a tournament. His eldest son Francis succeeded him at the age of 15, but died a year later. The throne devolved on his ten-year-old brother Charles. Henry’s widow, Catherine of Medici, became regent. The dynastic crisis thus started as a minority crisis. The crisis was aggravated by the fact that the regent was a foreigner. As a foreigner she lacked the authority to stand up against the aristocratic families who were competing for influence at court. The struggle for power was intertwined with the religious conflict between Catholics and Huguenots. In 1562 civil war broke out. The religious conflict threatened to involve the country in a war with

 Éric Anceau, Napoléon III. Un Saint-Simon à cheval (Paris : Tallandier, 2008), 496.  Walter L. Bernecker and Horst Pietschmann, Geschichte Spaniens: Von der frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart, 4th ed. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2005), 272‒77.

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Spain. The assassination of Gaspard de Coligny and other Huguenot leaders at the massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572 was closely connected with their plans to come to the rescue of the Protestants of the Netherlands in their struggle against the Duke of Alba.¹⁷ It is obvious that Madrid would not have tolerated such an intervention. Charles IX died in 1574. He was succeeded by his younger brother Henry who was 23 years of age. Henry III’s government lasted only 15 years. In 1589 he was assassinated during the siege of Paris that was occupied by the Ligue. Since he left no heir, his death marked the end of the House of Valois. A new dynastic crisis ensued. King Henry III had designated as his successor Henry of Navarra, husband of his sister Margaret and a Protestant. In order to terminate the civil war the new King was bound to win acceptance, especially among Catholics. In the pursuit of this objective he had first of all to regain the capital. In the hope of accommodating the Catholic party, Henry converted to Roman Catholicism in 1593. Through the Edict of Nantes of 1598 he effected a long-term reconciliation of the religious parties and brought the civil war to a close. Henry IV initiated a new dynasty, the House of Bourbon, and terminated the dynastic crisis that had shaken France ever since the death of Henry II. This achievement was a consequence of Henry III’s designation on the one hand, and of the pacification edict of 1598 that ended the religious civil war, on the other.

The Time of Troubles in Russia 1598‒1613 In 1598 Tsar Fedor, son of Ivan IV the Terrible (Ivan Groznyj), died without leaving heirs. The two other sons of Ivan IV, Ivan and Dmitrij, had already died in 1581 and 1591. The year 1598 thus marks the end of the Rurikid dynasty and the beginning of the so-called Time of Troubles (smutnoje vremja or smuta) that was to last until 1613.¹⁸ To resolve the crisis a general diet (zemskij sobor) was convened in Moscow in 1598. The diet elected a new Tsar: Boris Godunov, brother of Irina, Tsar Fedor’s widow. Godunov had already governed the country under the mentally disabled Tsar Fedor. But he was not a member of the Rurikid dynasty and had not been

 Nicola M. Sutherland, The Massacre of St. Bartholomew and the European Conflict 1559‒1572 (London: Macmillan, 1973).  For the following sections I am indebted to Chester S. L. Dunning, Russia’s First Civil War. The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty (University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), and Giuseppe Olšr S. I., “La Chiesa e lo Stato nel cerimoniale d’incoronazione degli zar russi nel periodo dei torbidi (1598‒1613),” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 16 (1950), 395‒434.

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designated by the late Tsar, an element that in Russia had always played an important role in addition to the dynastic relationship. Instead, Godunov’s authority rested on the election by the diet. His election legitimized his offspring as well. From now on dynastic succession should again be the law. The election of the new Tsar was sanctioned by the Patriarch of Moscow, Iov, in the coronation ceremony. That dynastic legitimacy or something close to it was nevertheless considered important, became apparent when the Patriarch construed a kind of adoption of Godunov by Tsar Ivan IV. Allegedly Ivan had one day declared to him that just as Tsarina Irina, wife of his son Fedor and Boris Godunov’s sister was his God-given daughter, so Boris was also his son. In addition, an indirect designation of Godunov by Tsar Fedor was assumed. Fedor, it was said, had designated his wife Irina as his successor and Irina her brother Boris. The new Tsar was forced to assert himself against rivaling Boyar families with in part draconian measures. In this way he made many enemies. Gaining general acceptance was rendered difficult by an additional circumstance he was unable to influence. In 1601 and 1603 Russia was seriously afflicted by famine. Large parts of the country suffered depopulation. In many places public security broke down. In a society that tended to conclude from its successes God’s approval of a government, the general misery could easily jeopardize a ruler’s legitimacy, in particular if at the same time it lacked stability for other reasons as well. Therefore Godunov’s position was severely menaced when suddenly rumors would have it that Dmitrij, the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible, was still alive. Godunov was said to have in 1591 when he was running the government for Tsar Fedor, attempted upon Dmitrij’s life in the hope of eventually gaining the throne for himself. But Dmitrij had escaped. In October 1604 the alleged prince Dmitrij, coming from Poland-Lithuania, crossed the Russian border with a small army in the hope of conquering the Russian throne, pretending to be the son of Tsar Ivan IV. By this step he opened the civil war. Boris Godunov died in 1605. He was succeeded by his sixteen-year-old son Fedor. But Dmitrij continued to claim the Russian throne for himself. At last young Tsar Fedor lost every support. During an insurrection in Moscow the Kremlin was stormed. Fedor and his mother were strangled. On 21 July 1605 Dmitrij was crowned Tsar. In historical writing he is remembered as the “false Dmitrij” (Lžedmitrij). In using this designation one reproduces the charge of his enemies that he was an impostor. Historians are still divided on the issue. On 17 May 1606 Dmitrij fell victim to a Bojar rising led by Vasilij Šujskij. This murder reopened the dynastic crisis. Though Šujskij was himself crowned Tsar in the Moscow Kremlin as well, other than Dmitrij a year earlier, he met with widespread resistance. A new civil war broke out. Since 1609 Polish troops were invading the country and for some time even occupied the capital. On behalf of the

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murdered Dmitrij large sections of society revolted against the usurper Vasilij Šujskij. In July 1610 he was deposed. A three year interregnum ensued. It came to a close at a new general diet that assembled on 8 February 1613 at Moscow. The succession on the throne was again determined through an election. On 21 February the 16 year old Michail from the Romanov family was elected Tsar. The Romanov dynasty was to rule Russia until the fall of the monarchy in 1917. It gained legitimacy by the same method that Boris Godunov had first applied after Tsar Fedor’s death: election by a general diet and confirmation by the Church. That the method had not paved the way for a Godunov dynasty is explained by the performance of the extremely skillful and charismatic pretender. Even if he wasn’t but an instrument in the hands of the group of Boyars opposing Godunov, the success of the move was achieved by his personal dexterity. The broad agreement Dmitrij met with, shows that dynastic legitimacy remained superior to any alternative claim. Not even Godunov’s election by a general diet and his solemn coronation by the Patriarch shook the belief in the validity of the pretender’s claims. However, Dmitrij’s attraction is not only explained by the fact that he managed to convince many people of the legality of his claims, but also by the consideration that in the severe crisis that was afflicting the country, salvation was expected if at all from a scion of the legitimate dynasty. To all appearances the belief in the sanctity of a dynasty’s blood had by no means disappeared when the Carolingian Mayor of the Palace deprived the Merovingians of their power.

The Dynastic Crisis in Spain 1833‒1839: Isabelinos and Carlistas On 18 May 1829 Maria Josepha of Saxony, third wife of Ferdinand VII of Spain, died at less than 26 years without leaving an heir. Since Ferdinand’s first two marriages had also remained without issue, his brother, Infant Don Carlos María Isidro, nourished hopes of succeeding him on the throne. But on 9 December 1829 Ferdinand remarried again. His fourth consort was 23-year-old Maria Cristina of Naples, by her mother Ferdinand’s niece. On 10 October 1830 she gave birth to a daughter, Infant María Isabel Luisa.¹⁹ Since the Bourbons’ ascension to the throne of Spain in 1713 the succession was determined by the Lex Salica and females were excluded. As early as 1789 the Cortes voted the abrogation of the Lex Salica, but Charles IV, Ferdinand

 Isabel Burdiel, Isabel II: No se puede reinar inocentemente (Madrid: Espasa, 2004), 49‒50.

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VII’s father, had failed to sanction the decree. As soon as Maria Cristina’s pregnancy was ascertained the son made up for his father’s neglect. On 3 April 1830 he signed the Pragmatic Sanction the Cortes had approved forty years earlier.²⁰ Don Carlos and his adherents protested against this decision. They denied the King the right to sanction a decree of the Cortes that his predecessor had convened. It could not be excluded, however, that after Isabella Queen Maria Cristina might yet give birth to a son as well. But in the spring of 1832 another daughter was born to her, the Infant Luisa Fernanda. On 29 September 1833 Ferdinand died. Three-year old Isabella was immediately proclaimed his successor. The late King’s testament provided for a regency government under Queen Maria Cristina. The regent was a Neapolitan princess and thus a foreigner just as Catherine of Medici had been in France at the time of the civil war.²¹ Infant Don Carlos was supported by all those who opposed reform – the great majority of the clergy, the farmers, and the lower classes of the cities in the interior of the country. Isabella on the other hand was supported by the nobility, the civil servants, the educated classes, and the population of the coastal cities.²² After Ferdinand’s death Don Carlos tried to back his claims to the throne by military means with the help of his adherents. Since he was a political reactionary who opposed constitutionalism Maria Cristina had no choice but to seek support among the Liberals. The Liberals for their part considered it advantageous to defend dynastic legitimacy and Isabella’s succession.²³ Innumerable poems extolled Isabella’s succession as liberation from reaction and obscurantism. Francisco de Galardí put these sentiments into verse: Spain bases her glory And places her loyalty On the love of her Majesty Our Isabel the Second […]. With blood one must write, With blood one must seal: Isabella is to reign, And Cristina is to govern […]. Death to the rebel and traitor Who does not obey Isabella,

 José Luis Comellas, Isabel II. Una reina y un reinado (Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, 1999), 23.  Joaqin Tomás Villarroya, El sistema politico del Estatuo Real (1834‒1836) (Madrid: EspasaCalpe, 1968), 20.  Burdiel, Isabel II, 63‒64.  Comellas, Isabel II, 63.

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Just as dissolves and dies away The mist when the sun rises.²⁴

The first result of the alliance between the regent and liberalism was the imposition of the constitution (Estatuto Real) by the first minister Martinez de la Rosa in 1834. The regent had appointed him on the advice of the English and French envoys. As a foreigner she put greater trust in the representatives of these two liberal powers than in her surroundings at court. The Estatuto assigned the legislative authority to two chambers, the Estamento de Próceres and the Estamento de Procuradores. The First Chamber was composed of the grandees of the Realm, the representatives of the high clergy, merited civil servants, great landowners, industrialists, scientists, and artists. The grandees were to possess their seats by inheritance, whereas the rest of the Próceres was to be appointed for life by the Crown.²⁵ The members of the Second Chamber (Estamento de Procuradores) were elected indirectly by the 16,000 Spaniards paying the highest amount of taxes.²⁶ The Estatuto Real was abrogated in the Revolution of 12 August 1836 and replaced by the much more liberal constitution of June 1837 that also provided for two Chambers, a Senate and an elected Congress. Census suffrage was maintained but the number of voters was increased to 260,000.²⁷ The transition of the country to constitutionalism was an effect of the dynastic crisis. In the first two years the government had not taken serious the war against the Carlistas. But since 1835 the pretender’s successes made it imperative for Maria Cristina to place all the economic resources of the country at the service of the war. A measure of her exertions is the unprecedented number of 370,000 recruits she lifted during the Civil War.²⁸ In the end Maria Cristina carried the day. The Civil War was ended in August 1839 by the treaty of Vergara. Don Carlos went to France into exile.²⁹ A year later the regent was forced to leave the country, too. New regent became General Baldomero Espartero.

 Francisco de Galardi, “A Doña Isabel II, Reyna de España,” quoted from Burdiel, Isabel II, 66: “España su Gloria funda / y cifra su lealtad / en amar la Majestad / de Nuestra Isabel Segunda […]. / Con sangue se ha de escribir / Con sangre se ha de sellar : / Isabel ha de Reinar / Y Cristina ha de regir […]. Muera el faccioso traidor / Que a Isabel no obedeciere, / Como se consume y muere / La niebla al salir del sol.”  Estatuto Real, Articulos 3‒7, in: Tomás Villaroya, Sistema Politico, 635‒636.  Comellas, Isabel II, 32‒33.  Ibid., 53‒55.  Luis Garrido Muro, “Las palabras y los hechos : guerra y politica durante la época de las regencias (1833‒1843),” in: Liberalismo y romanticismo en tiempos de Isabel II (Madrid: Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales, 2004), 91‒92.  Comellas, Isabel II, p. 58.

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Pretenders Foreign to the Dynasty The false Dmitrij was still in power when at the turn of the year 1605 the Terek Cossacks presented a man from Murom named Il’ja Korovin as Petr Fedorovič, allegedly a son of Tsar Fedor Ivanovič who had died in 1598.³⁰ Apart from the false Dmitrij who in fact had obtained the throne of the Tsars, in the Time of Troubles a number of men pretended to be the true Dmitrij, son of Tsar Ivan IV, and even after the establishment of the Romanov dynasty in 1613 the repeated appearance of pretenders (samozvancy) remained a typical feature of Russian monarchy way into the 19th century. In the 17th century at least 23, in the 18th century at least 44 pretenders have been registered.³¹ As in the case of the false Dmitrij, the phenomenon was regularly connected with doubts regarding the legitimacy of the actual Tsar. Doubts of this kind might arise whenever the dynastic succession was interrupted or disregarded.³² Apart from the false Dmitrij the most well-known pretender is the Don Cossack Emel’jan Pugačev who claimed to be Tsar Peter III and who under Tsarina Catherine the Great stirred a powerful insurrection in the South-East of the Russian Empire of the time.³³ His following is estimated at two millions at the least.³⁴ The real Peter III had in the summer of 1762 been deposed by his consort Catherine. Shortly thereafter he was assassinated. From now on Catherine governed the country in the capacity of Tsarina, not of regent for her minor son Paul, later to become Paul I. Soon rumors would have it that Peter had escaped his murderers and was alive. Since 1764 no less than 16 men, mostly from the lower classes, passed themselves off as Tsar Peter III.³⁵ In other periods of history pretenders also presented themselves as specific Tsars or Carevičes. Judged from the objectives that the pretenders usually propagated, the phenomenon belongs in the context of social protest movements. Judged from their specific strategy, however, it was a concomitant of the numerous dynastic

 Martin Krispin, “Der Bolotnikov-Austand 1606‒1607,” in: Heinz-Dietrich Löwe, ed., Volksaufstände in Rußland. Von der Zeit der Wirren bis zur “Grünen Revolution” gegen die Sowjetherrschaft (Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 2006), 60.  Philip Longworth, “The Pretender Phenomenon in Eighteenth-Century Russia,” Past & Present 66 (1975): 61; cf. C. M. Troickij, “Samozvancy v Rossii XVII‒XVIII vekov,” Voprocy Istorii (1969): No. 3, 134‒146.  Boris A. Uspenskij, “Zar und Gott. Semiotische Aspekte der Sakralisierung des Monarchen in Rußland,” in: Uspenskij, Semiotik der Geschichte (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1991), 144.  Alice Plate, “Der Pugačev-Aufstand: Kosakenherrlichkeit oder sozialer Protest?,” in: Löwe, ed., Volksaufstände, 353.  Longworth, “Pretender Phenomenon,” 79.  Ibid., 70, 80‒81.

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ruptures in the history of the Russian monarchy in the 17th and 18the centuries. It thus indirectly confirms the validity of dynastic legitimacy. The fact that in times of economic crisis pretenders managed to recruit great masses of adherents is explained by the popular myth of the good Tsar and his capacity to defeat misery. The good Tsar could only be a Tsar belonging to the legitimate dynasty. This belief was deep-rooted to a degree that under the severe regime of Peter the Great the rumor spread that Peter was not the legitimate Tsar but a stranger that had been substituted when he was a child. The rumor explains the emergence of at least eight men who pretended to be the true Carevič Aleksej. If Peter was not the legitimate Tsar, then his son, who in 1718 had died in prison, could not have been the true Carevič either.³⁶ The pretender phenomenon that existed in Russia since the 16th century, benefited from the sacralization of the monarchy. The Tsar was frequently compared to God or to Christ.³⁷ This is in keeping with the stories of the miraculous salvation from death as divulged by both the false Dmitrij and Pugačev.³⁸ The return of a Tsar presumed dead was by many regarded as a kind of resurrection. The structure of the argument remained the same. The samozvancy gathered adherents in times of crisis because they pretended to be the true Tsars who allegedly had been deprived of their dignity or inheritance by force. Their followers were convinced that only legitimate Tsars could liberate them from misery. Apparently, resistance or social protest directed at a ruling Tsar, could not be justified by natural law or from the Bible but only by pretending that dynastic legitimacy had been infringed.³⁹ Accordingly, the great rebellions of the 17th and 18th century were always directed at an alleged usurper on the throne in the name of the true Tsar.⁴⁰ In periods of dynastic crisis in Western Europe as well pretenders appeared claiming for themselves a legitimacy superior to the governing rights of the actual ruler. On 4 August 1578 King Sebastian I of Portugal was killed in the battle of Alcazarquivir in Morocco, but his body was not found on the battle-ground. Since Sebastian had left no heirs, two years later his Kingdom passed to Philip

 Boris A. Uspenskij, “Zar und ‘Falscher Zar.’ Usurpation als kulturhistorisches Phänomen,” in: Uspenskij, Semiotik, 93; Longworth, “Pretender Phenomenon,” 69.  Michael Cherniavsky, Tsar and People. Studies in Russian Myths (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1961), 41‒47.  For the false Dmitrij cf. Maureen Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism in Early Modern Russia. The False Tsars of the Time of Troubles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 35‒37.  Ibid., 246: “It is very striking that Russians at this time were apparently unable to legitimize revolt except through the ideology of hereditary monarchy.”  Daniel Field, Rebels in the Name of the Tsar (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 2.

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II of Spain. During the following years several persons pretended to be King Sebastian and offered stories of their miraculous salvation from the battleground.⁴¹ If Sebastian had in fact returned, Philip II would have lost his right to rule Portugal. In 1595 in Champagne a certain François de La Ramée pretended to be the son of King Charles IX who had died in 1574, and of Elizabeth of Austria. Allegedly Catherine of Medici had exchanged him for a girl immediately after his birth, because she wanted to secure the succession for the younger son Henry, later to become Henry III. If this prince had really existed, he would in the order of inheritance have ranged before Henry IV from the House of Bourbon who became King in 1589. In 1595 Henry IV had to cope with a series of reservations. They were motivated by his Protestant past and by the fact that he still lacked an heir all of which stirred fears that the dynastic crisis would resume after his death.⁴² Another prince, whose identity was claimed by several pretenders, was Charles-Louis, son of Louis XVI of France. At the fall of the monarchy in 1792 he had been put to prison in the Temple along with his family and remained there until his death three years later. Even before he died rumors would have it that he had escaped from the Temple. These rumors incited Jean Baptiste Regnault-Warin to his popular novel “Le Cimetière de la Madeleine” of 1800 in which the young Louis XVII, as he was known among the partisans of the monarchy, flees from prison and embarks to America later to return to France. The book that contained many details of the royal family and the prince served the false Charles-Louises as a welcome source of information and enabled them to play their role more convincingly. Already in 1798 a certain Jean-Marie Hervagault had styled himself Louis XVII. Between 1815 and 1817 a certain Mathurin Bruneau contested to Louis XVIII the right to rule pretending that he was the son of Louis XVI. On the whole almost forty pretenders passed themselves off as Louis XVII.⁴³

From the House of Stuart to the House of Hanover 1688‒1714 More swiftly and more elegantly than the dynastic crises during the religious wars in France and during the Time of Troubles in Russia the crisis was over Yves-Marie Bercé, Le Roi caché. Sauveurs et imposteurs. Mythes politiques populaires dans l’Europe moderne (Paris : Fayard, 1990), 17‒81.  Ibid., 156‒175.  Ibid., 328‒339.

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come that had originated in England following the deposition of James II. The decision to depose him had curiously enough sprung from a dynastic event, the birth to the King and his second wife, Catholic Mary of Modena, of a successor to the throne on 10 June 1688. James himself had converted to the Catholic faith in 1673. Attempts of the Whig party around the Earl of Shaftesbury to exclude him from the succession to his brother Charles II through legislation, had failed in the early eighties during the so-called exclusion crisis. The majority of Parliament believed that they could get along with a single Catholic King as long as he remained an exception. The birth of a prince, however, threatened to provide the country forever with a Catholic dynasty. After the experience made with Mary I Tudor who was married to Philip II of Spain, the birth of a Catholic successor in English eyes conjured the danger of despotism and foreign intervention. Immediately after the young prince’s birth many people suspected that the child had been substituted in the hope of converting the British Crown to Catholicism. Even after James II’s expulsion Parliament in principle held on to dynastic legitimacy but imposed the condition that the dynasty remained Protestant. The combination of these two points of view is expressed in the succession settlement contained in the Bill of Rights. Instead of the Catholic son from his second marriage the Protestant daughter Mary from his first marriage and her husband, the Stadholder of the Netherlands, William of Orange, a grandson of Charles I, were declared successors of James II. When both Mary and William had died in 1694 and 1702 respectively without leaving offspring, Mary’s sister Anne succeeded to the throne. Since she neither left an heir, in 1714 the House of Hanover ascended the British throne. The Act of Settlement of 1701 had once more confirmed that Catholics were excluded from the succession. The first King from the House of Hanover was George I, a son of Sophia, daughter of Frederick V of the Palatinate and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of James I.

The Foundation of New Hereditary Monarchies in the Age of Revolutions In the age of the French Revolution and Napoleon numerous ancient dynasties were dethroned. The beginning of the process was marked by the deposition of the Bourbons of France in 1792. Later on Napoleon deposed a great number of dynasties in Germany and Italy, among others the Bourbons of Naples, the House of Savoy in Piedmont, the House of Lorraine-Tuscany in Florence, and the House of Hanover in Germany. In 1808 he induced Charles of Spain to transfer the Crown of Spain from the House of Bourbon to the House of Bonaparte. After the Emperor’s fall all the disempowered dynasties were reinstated.

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Fig. 1: Bertrand Andrieu (1761‒1822), Frontside of a medal with a portrait of Napoleon and the King of Rome, coined for the prince’s baptism on 9 June 1811.

The age of revolutions was also an epoch in which new hereditary monarchies were founded. The beginning was marked by the French National Assembly when they established a democratic monarchy based on the constitution of 1791. Even if the old King was also the new King and the dynasty remained identical, the Constituante had yet instituted a new monarchy. This is already shown by the fact that the King’s position and prerogatives, the hereditary character of the throne, and the determination of the reigning dynasty, so far unwritten customary law, were from now on inserted in the constitution. It was no longer the unwritten legal tradition that legitimized monarchy, but the written constitution as created by the representatives of the nation. In 1804 Napoleon established a new monarchy in France by adopting the dignity of a hereditary Emperor of the French. The birth of a successor in 1811 nourished hopes that the Empire would indeed survive the death of its founder (fig. 1). In 1805 Napoleon had also crowned himself King of Italy at Milan. Apart from that he provided his numerous brothers and sisters all over Europe with thrones hoping that they would es-

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tablish new hereditary monarchies: Joseph was made King of Naples in 1806 and King of Spain in 1808. Louis became King of Holland in 1806 and Jérôme King of Westphalia in 1807. Napoleon’s brother-in-law Joaquin Murat succeeded Joseph at Naples in 1808. It was precisely to the foundation of new hereditary monarchies that Benjamin Constant alluded in the statement quoted at the beginning of the chapter, namely that one could not become a hereditary monarch simply by declaring himself such. According to Constant a hereditary monarch distinguished himself not by the throne he bequeathed to his offspring, but by the throne he had inherited himself. That means that a new ruler such as Napoleon could not acquire dynastic legitimacy, even if he acted like a dynastic ruler, had himself crowned and adopted the ceremonial of a hereditary monarchy. Constant did not enter into the question whether his judgments also applied to the German King and Emperor Francis II who in 1804 had proclaimed the hereditary Empire of Austria and had started to rule as Emperor Francis I – no less arbitrarily than Napoleon had proclaimed the French Empire and himself Emperor. After he had deposed Napoleon on 3rd April 1814 the French Senate had to decide on the future government of France. Since the country’s republican experiences during the Revolution had not been encouraging, a restoration of the monarchy was the only solution seriously taken into consideration. But it was by no means inevitable that the brother of Louis XVI and the House of Bourbon should be recalled on the throne. For a time even holding on to the Bonaparte family and instituting a regency government during the minority of Napoleon’s three-year old son was taken into consideration. Other options were count Bernadotte, Crown Prince of Sweden, and the Duke of Orléans. If at last the choice fell on the Count of Provence, brother of Louis XVI, it was not in recognition of his dynastic claims, but for the fact that he was a Bourbon which provided him with an advantage over the rest of the candidates, since it made it more likely that the new monarchy would meet with the consent of the French. Still, the Senate tried to make the recognition of the Count of Provence as King of the French dependent on his acceptance of the constitution they had approved on 6 April. The Senate did not aim at a restoration of the old, but at the foundation of a new hereditary monarchy albeit under the ancient dynasty. In this respect they followed the example of the Constituante at the beginning of the Revolution. But after his return from exile Louis XVIII deliberately transformed the project of founding a new monarchy into a restoration of the old monarchy with timely adjustments. He ordered the Senatorial constitution that had been based on popu-

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lar sovereignty, to be formally modified to become a Charte constitutionnelle, freely imposed by the monarch.⁴⁴ After the fall of Napoleon new hereditary monarchies were established in other parts of the continent, too: in the Kingdom of the United Netherlands, in the Kingdom of Poland, in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and in the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom. After the July Revolution the House of Orléans was called to rule in France, and Belgium became an independent Kingdom under Leopold of Coburg-Gotha. Greece, after having gained independence from the Turks made Otto of Wittelsbach King. In 1852 Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte created the Second Empire. In 1861 the Kingdom of Italy and in 1871 the Second German Empire were founded. The nation states that were born on the Balkans, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro were without exception turned into monarchies. A particular case was the restoration of the Empire of Mexico. Napoleon III persuaded the Habsburg Archduke Maximilian to have himself proclaimed Emperor under the protection of French troops. After having taken over the government Maximilian felt sure of the support of the Mexicans. Therefore he refused to accompany the French troops on their way back to Europe when after the end of the War of Secession the government of the United States with reference to the Monroe doctrine demanded the departure of the French. Édouard Manet has immortalized Maximilian’s fate in his painting “The execution of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico.” It shows the Emperor standing between two generals in front of a firing squad sent by President Juárez after his return from exile in the United States. From the point of view of monarchical legitimacy the history of Maximilian of Mexico appears remarkable in particular because the prince, albeit being the scion of one of the oldest dynasties of Europe, had placed himself in the service of a Caesar who had gained power thanks to a revolution, in the intent of founding a monarchy in a country on which he possessed no rightful claim whatever. To Benito Juárez, his opponent, Maximilian was nothing but a usurper albeit of noble origin who had destroyed the republic in Mexico in order to put himself into power, not unlike Napoleon III in France.⁴⁵

 For the restoration of Louis XVIII and the making of the Charte constitutionnelle see Sellin, Revolution, and more recently Sellin, Das Jahrhundert der Restaurationen 1814 bis 1906 (Munich: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2014), 24‒26; English edition: European Monarchies from 1814 to 1906. A Century of Restorations (Munich De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2017)  Volker Sellin, “Die Bestrafung des Usurpators. Edouard Manets ’Erschießung des Kaisers Maximilian von Mexiko’,” in: Pantheon 54 (1996), 113‒114; also in: Sellin, Politik und Gesellschaft. Abhandlungen zur europäischen Geschichte, ed. Frank-Lothar Kroll (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2016), 253‒254.

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Dynastic Anniversaries The great number of new hereditary monarchies that have been established since the French Revolution, proves that in the 19th century dynasties were still regarded as the indispensable foundation of monarchical legitimacy. In order to maintain monarchical sentiment the subjects were invited to take part in the life of the reigning family. Dynastic events such as birth, marriage, ascension to the throne, and crown jubilees were celebrated not only in seclusion at court but in public as well, and even a ruler’s death was mourned in public. The new monarchies followed this tradition. On 19 February 1806 Napoleon I decreed that both his birthday on 15 August 1769 and the day of his coronation on 2 December 1804 be celebrated every year in a great national festivity, to be held in every community of the Empire.⁴⁶ In the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy Napoleon’s coronation of 1805 was celebrated every year on 26 May. In addition the Emperor also ordered his marriage to Marie Louise of Austria on 1 April 1810 and his son’s baptism on 9 June 1811 to be celebrated all over the Empire. The program of the festivities started from a religious service in the morning. A Tedeum was sung, and the priest extolled Napoleon’s achievements. Besides, the ritual prayer for the Emperor was spoken.⁴⁷ After a dinner for the authorities, the local military and the notables, for the afternoon the population was invited to participate in plays and competitions, the so-called réjouissances publiques, including among others the climbing tree (mât de cocagne). Food was distributed to the poor. In Genoa 150 children of the charity-school were served lunch on the christening-day of the King of Rome in two pavilions erected on Piazza Verde for the purpose. Of particular significance was the distribution of dowries given to indigent girls, the so-called rosières, on the condition that they married a veteran. On the occasion of the Emperor’s marriage dowries were provided for the marriage of 6,000 veterans who had participated in at least one campaign, with girls from their respective community. The dowries amounted in Paris to 1200 Francs each and in the other parts of the Empire to 600 Francs. The marriages were to be celebrated everywhere in the Empire at the same time.⁴⁸

 Décret impérial concernant la Fête de Saint Napoléon, celle du Rétablissement de la Religion catholique en France etc., 19. 2.1806, Titre I, Art. 1, and Titre II, Art. 6, Bulletin des lois de l’Empire français, 4th series, vol. 4, no. 1335, 279‒280.  See below in the chapter “Religion” the paragraph entitled “The Church and the Napoleonic State Cult.”  Décret impérial contenant des Actes de bienfaisance et d’indulgence à l’occasion du Mariage de sa Majesté l’Empereur et Roi, 25. 3.1810 ; cf. Volker Sellin, “Der napoleonische Staatskult,” in:

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In the German Empire the celebrations on the Emperor’s birthday also promoted monarchical sentiments and national integration. While in Berlin ceremonies were arranged at court and parades in the streets, the day was celebrated in cities and villages all over the country as well. In garrison-towns the military lined up on parade and tattoos were held. In other cities private associations, in particular veterans’ associations and rifle clubs, organized processions. In Essen ever since 1905 the organization of the Emperor’s birthday was entrusted to a celebrating committee established for the purpose the membership of which included the top representatives of public life.⁴⁹ Whereas every citizen was invited to watch the parades and processions, the local people of rank, directors of administrative authorities and law-courts, officers of the local garrison, leading industrialists, and heads of schools assembled at great banquets. At Essen and Cologne around 800 invitees participated.⁵⁰ At the banquets the monarch was celebrated in speeches and toasts. At Karlsruhe, the residential city of the Grand-Duchy of Baden, ever since 1904 two banquets were held on the Emperor’s birthday, one for the heads of the civil and military authorities, the other one for the social elite of the city. At either banquet both the Emperor and the Grand-Duke were celebrated.⁵¹ Of particular importance were the celebrations on the Emperor’s birthday in schools.⁵² Through the speeches of teachers or headmasters and patriotic hymns sung on the occasion children and youth were early trained in monarchical sentiment. Excluded from the birthday ceremonies in honor of the Emperor were social democrats. In Prussia the ceremonies easily inserted themselves into the tradition of the King’s birthday festivities. But in the monarchies of Southern Germany the birthdays of two sovereigns had to be celebrated every year. The governments at Stuttgart and Karlsruhe supported the celebration of the Emperor’s birthday in their respective States. The Bavarian government, on the other hand, regarded the birthday festivities for the Emperor as an encroachment on the prerogatives of the King of Bavaria. It apprehended that in the minds of the Bavarians the Im-

Guido Braun et al., eds., Napoleonische Expansionspolitik: Okkupation oder Integration? (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter), 2013, 138‒159; also in: Sellin, Politik und Gesellschaft, 145‒167.  Monika Wienfort, “Kaisergeburtstagsfeiern am 27. Januar 1907. Bürgerliche Feste in den Städten des Deutschen Kaiserreichs,” in: Manfred Hettling and Paul Nolte, eds., Bürgerliche Feste. Symbolische Formen politischen Handelns im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 161.  Ibid., 162, 164.  Ibid., 169.  Fritz Schellack, Nationalfeiertage in Deutschland von 1871 bis 1945 (Frankfurt: Lang, 1990), 19‒21.

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perial dignity of the House of Hohenzollern would refer to the background the Bavarian monarchy. Therefore it sought to curtail the celebrations.⁵³ The apprehension reveals that contemporaries expected from dynastic celebrations a strengthening of monarchical sentiment. If dynastic celebrations had these effects William II could not waste the opportunity offered him by the 100th birthday of his grandfather, William I, on 22 March 1897. The day was indeed celebrated with great pomp.⁵⁴ The Emperor sought to make all classes of society take part. The workers were to be given a holiday on 22 and 23 March without reduction in payment. Schools were to be closed. Even in Bavaria lessons were suspended. In Berlin the monument to Emperor William on the Schlossfreiheit was unveiled under bells and cannon. A two hours parade and a reception in the castle followed. On 23 March 40,000 veterans and citizens marched past the Emperor. Still, the political output of the jubilee did not meet the expectations. The introduction of a black, white and red cockade for the army met with criticism in Old Prussian circles and in Bavaria. The Festschrift that William II had ordered from the historian Wilhelm Oncken in honor of his grandfather, entitled “Unser Heldenkaiser”, was not sold in as many copies as expected. In Bavaria a priest was deposed from his office, because on a pupil’s question he had replied that Bavaria had no reason to celebrate the first German Emperor.⁵⁵ Nine years earlier, from 29 to 31 July 1888, the 100th birthday of King Louis I of Bavaria had been celebrated. Actually the birthday should have been celebrated in 1886 already, but particular circumstances had demanded the postponement. Other than at the jubilee of Emperor William I the initiative had not originated at court but in the city of Munich. On the city government’s invitation in early 1886 a committee of the leading representatives of public life was set up and empowered to make preparations for the birthday celebrations.⁵⁶ King Louis I had provided for the artistic and architectural embellishment of the city of Munich. The integrating effect of the jubilee here as well remained limited. This is revealed by the fact that collecting money for financing the costly celebrations proved extremely difficult. Perhaps the reason was that the King was before all to be valued as a prince of the arts.⁵⁷ It appears at least questionable whether this idea was universally appreciated. Many citizens of Munich still remembered

 Ibid., 23‒26, 31.  Ibid., 33‒43.  Ibid., 42.  Simone Mergen, Monarchiejubiläen im 19. Jahrhundert. Die Entdeckung des historischen Jubiläums für den monarchischen Kult in Sachsen und Bayern (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2005), 207‒208.  Ibid., 206.

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how in March 1848 Louis I had been forced to abdicate under disgraceful conditions on account of his affair with the Irish dancer Lola Montez. The association of metal workers of Munich declared that it could not organize a meeting for the purpose of collecting donations because it was denied any political initiative.⁵⁸ The culminating point of the three days celebrations was as at Berlin in 1897 the unveiling not of a monument but of a bust of the King in the hall of fame on the Theresienwiese.⁵⁹ Though emphasis was placed on the Bavarian monarchy, included in the ceremony was also the German nation at large.⁶⁰ At dynastic jubilees monarchy was ritually celebrated in the hope of strengthening the attachment of the citizens to their sovereigns, just as a minister, in order to confirm the believers, seeks to preach the gospel at every service as if it was something never heard of before. With respect to the festivities at the silver wedding of King Umberto I of Italy and Queen Margherita in April 1893 Marina Tesoro has observed that military parades and public processions were intended to evoke in the men and women who were lined up in the streets, compassion and enthusiasm about being, if only “as humble believers,” admitted to “a collective liturgy” (a una liturgia collettiva).⁶¹ It is obvious that towards the close of the century the self-representation of the monarchy in public ceremonies was judged increasingly important. The Festangst Simone Mergen had identified in Bavaria in the middle of the century had vanished.⁶² By now methods had to be devised how to implant the consciousness of belonging to one nation beyond the middle classes into the common people as well. Monarchy seemed to be a suitable instrument for achieving this kind of integration. The growing public pressure on monarchy to use the recurring dynastic events for the confirmation of monarchical legitimacy and for the improvement of national cohesion is demonstrated by the history of Queen Victoria of England. Until the seventies of the 19th century the utilitarian sobriety of British society and the Queen’s notorious dislike of pomp combined to keep monarchical ceremonial at a modest level. The leaders of both great parties, Disraeli and Gladstone, were convinced that after the electoral reform of 1867 the urban masses had to be won over for the monarchy as well. The next opportunity for a public celebration was a thanksgiving for the recovery of the successor to the throne on 27 February 1872. The govern-

 Ibid., 209‒210.  Ibid., 212.  Ibid., 213‒214.  Marina Tesoro, “Prove per un giubileo. Le feste pubbliche per le nozze d’argento di Umberto e Margherita di Savoia,” in: Tesoro, ed., Monarchia, tradizione, identità nazionale. Germania, Giappone e Italia tra Ottocento e Novecento (Milan: Mondadori, 2004), 119.  Mergen, Monarchiejubiläen, 157.

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ment persuaded the Queen to consent to a public service in St. Paul’s Cathedral.⁶³ Among the monarchical celebrations under Queen Victoria two jubilees excelled: her golden jubilee of 1887 and her diamond jubilee ten years later. On 22 June 1887 the Times extolled it as the Queen’s unique achievement that she not only identified herself “with all the joys and sorrows and the whole luck of her people”, but that she had also permitted her subjects “to participate in her own satisfactions and sorrows.” In this way had been formed the singular “personal quality of the relations the long government of the Queen had established between the nation and their sovereign.”⁶⁴ By this judgment the paper clarified the role monarchy could adopt in a society on the road to democratization.

Dynasty, Nation, and Constitution Though it remained essential for the acceptance of monarchy in the 19th century, dynasty alone was losing its capacity to legitimize it. Instead, constitutionalism and nationalism were gaining importance as legitimizing factors. Without the guarantees contained in the Charte constitutionnelle Louis XVIII would not have become King in 1814. His adherents stressed dynastic right, but were careful in selecting models worth following among the Kings of the House of Bourbon. Henry IV was remembered as the great conciliator. Louis XIV was rarely mentioned, except for Chateaubriand. His absolutism and his never ending wars stood in too sharp a contrast to the expectations placed on the restored monarchy. The most imminent task of the moment was, as at the end of the 16th century, bridging the deep cleavages in society. Louis XVIII’s brother Charles X fell from power in 1830, because in the eyes of the liberal opposition he had violated the Charte. This carried more weight than dynastic descent. The choice of Louis-Philippe, however, who belonged to a collateral line of the House of Bourbon, as his successor, shows that the political class thought it wise to deviate as little as possible from dynastic principles, but like William of Orange and Mary Stuart in 1688 the citizen King had to take an oath on the constitution before ascending the throne. In Southern Germany the political changes effected by Napoleon had increased the power and standing of the Wittelsbach, Württemberg, and Zähringen  Richard Williams, The Contentious Crown. Public Discussion of the British Monarchy in the Reign of Queen Victoria (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), 209; Elizabeth Longford, Victoria R. I. (London: Abacus, 2000), 425.  The Times, 22.6.1887, quoted from Williams, Crown, 216.

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dynasties, but the new Kings at Munich and Stuttgart and the Grand-Duke of Baden had to be careful in evoking their dynastic descent, because the majority of their actual subjects had originated from other territories. Freiburg had belonged to the House of Habsburg, and Heidelberg and Mannheim had been Palatine under the Wittelsbach dynasty. King Louis I of Bavaria changed the image program of the projected national monument on Wittelsbach near Aichach. Originally the statues of eight Wittelsbach rulers should be placed there. The first ruler was to be Count Palatine Otto whom Frederick Barbarossa had invested with Bavaria in 1180, the last one King Louis I himself. Except for Louis this program would have taken into account rulers of ancient Bavaria only, and the history of the recently acquired territories would have been consigned to oblivion. Therefore the King changed the program. Instead of the statues he ordered the coats of arms of the capitals of the eight Bavarian circles to be placed on the monument: Munich, Augsburg, Passau, Regensburg, Ansbach, Bayreuth, Würzburg, and Speyer. In this way ancient Bavaria and new Bavaria were given equal consideration. On 25 August 1834 the monument was unveiled in the presence of 20,000 to 30,000 spectators.⁶⁵ The act is apt to confirm Hans-Michael Körner’s judgment that the memory of the history of the Duchy and the Electorate “in the interest of integration policy” was “subjected to domestication”, wherever it entered “a state of tension with political reality.”⁶⁶ But Louis I acted not always as discreetly as he did at Wittelsbach. For example the frescoes he ordered to be painted in the arcades of the court garden in Munich have been dedicated exclusively to the history of the House of Wittelsbach and to the achievements of its rulers. The King had wished that “from every one of the eight centuries of Wittelsbach government in Bavaria an object of peace and an object of war” were chosen.⁶⁷ Under the direction of Peter von Cornelius, but executed by his students, at a point universally accessible, a monumental image program was realized in the capital. It transformed “in chronological order the history of the Wittelsbach dynasty” into “the history of Bavaria,” as Monika Wagner has acutely observed.⁶⁸ When the cost of the frescoes were brought before the Bavar-

 Josef Bestler, “Das Nationaldenkmal auf Wittelsbach,” in: Toni Grad, ed., Die Wittelsbacher im Aichacher Land. Gedenkschrift der Stadt Aichach und des Landkreises Aichach-Friedberg zur 800‒Jahr-Feier des Hauses Wittelsbach (Aichach: Mayer, 1980), 337‒340, 343.  Hans-Michael Körner, Staat und Geschichte in Bayern im 19. Jahrhundert (München: Beck, 1992), 125.  Quoted from Hans Reidelbach, König Ludwig I. von Bayern und seine Kunstschöpfungen (Munich: Roth, 1888), 202.  Monika Wagner, Allegorie und Geschichte. Ausstattungsprogramme öffentlicher Gebäude des 19. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland. Von der Cornelius-Schule zur Malerei der Wilhelminischen Ära

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ian diet for examination, member Dr. Friedrich Wilhelm Kapp, a Protestant minister from Bayreuth, remarked that the one-sidedly dynastic conception of the cycle had neglected the views of the new citizens of Bavaria: “I only wish we had enough money to depict still more deeds of the kind as are shown in the arcades, in particular of the history of the recently acquired provinces.”⁶⁹ The glorious deeds shown in the frescoes are reaching their climax in the imposition of the constitution by Max I Joseph in 1818. Though this event belongs already in the history of the new greater Bavaria, within the cycle it was to be understood before all as an achievement of the House of Wittelsbach.⁷⁰ After the Revolution of 1848 a great number of conflicts between dynastic and national legitimacy occurred both in Germany and in Italy. On the eve of the war of 1859 the people of Florence tried to push the Grand-Duke of Tuscany into war against Austria on the side of Piedmont-Sardinia and France. When the Grand-Duke refused he was immediately deposed. In the eyes of his subjects he had lost the right to rule, his indubitable dynastic legitimacy notwithstanding, if he was not prepared to identify himself with the national aspirations of the Italians. When in the following year Giuseppe Garibaldi and his irregulars destroyed the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the overwhelming majority of the subjects of the House of Bourbon voted for Victor Emanuel II of Sardinia to become King of Italy, thereby denying their hereditary rulers the right to rule and thus discarding the dynastic principle altogether. The defection of the Sicilians and Neapolitans from their ancient dynasty is explained by the fact that Victor Emanuel II promised national unity and the extension of the constitution of Piedmont, the Statuto albertino of 1848, to the whole of Italy. In 1860 Victor Emanuel II took the oath as hereditary King of Italy. In this way here also a new hereditary monarchy, both national and constitutional, was instituted. In Germany national unification was connected to the fall of ancient dynasties as well. But the fall was not carried through by a revolutionary leader such as Garibaldi but by the government of the European great power Prussia. After the defeat of Austria in 1866 the Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarck annexed not only Schleswig and Holstein over which Austria and Prussia had gone to war, but also the Kingdom of Hanover, the Electorate of Hesse, the Duchy of

(Tübingen: Wasmuth, 1989), 72; for the relationship between dynasty and nation in Bavaria see further down the section “Particularism in Germany” in the chapter “Nation.”  Quoted from Eva Alexandra Mayring, “Geschichte und Geschichtsargumentation in den bayerischen Landtagsverhandlungen zur Zeit Ludwigs I.,” in: Johannes Erichsen and Uwe Puschner, eds., “Vorwärts, vorwärts sollst du schauen….” Geschichte, Politik und Kunst unter Ludwig I. (Regensburg: Pustet, 1986), 355.  Wagner, Allegorie, 80.

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Nassau and the city of Frankfurt. The annexations were effected through Prussian legislation. Bismarck justified it in the Prussian Chambers by the consideration that the dynasties in question had forfeited their right to rule because they had impeded national unification. The explanatory preamble to the bill that the prime minister introduced into the Prussian Chamber of Deputies, started from the observation that the governments of the four States to be annexed had by their policies “proved that they could not be counted upon to satisfy the national requirements and to fulfill the just wishes of the German people.” Apart from that, Prussia could create national unity only on the condition that it increased her power through the annexations.⁷¹ During the debate in the Prussian House of Deputies Bismarck protested against the charge that the annexations were an act of brute force, unless they were sanctioned by a referendum, and justified the conquest “by the right of the Germans to exist, to breathe and to unite as a nation, and also by the right and the duty of Prussia to provide this German nation with the foundations of an independent existence.”⁷² The Prime Minister justified the annexations as an act of national revolution, while dynastic legitimacy was overruled. This appears all the more remarkable if one takes into consideration that during the constitutional conflict of the early sixties in Prussia the same Bismarck had insisted on the undivided legitimacy of the Hohenzollern dynasty. If King Frederick William IV had accepted the Imperial crown offered him by the German National Assembly in the spring of 1849, he would – as King of Prussia – have relied on dynastic and as German Emperor on both democratic and national legitimacy. Since the constitution provided for a hereditary Imperial dignity, his offspring would have succeeded him in both Prussia and the Empire by dynastic right. How fast a new dynasty can be turned into an ancient one was demonstrated by Napoleon III who justified his claim to the Imperial throne by the alleged dynastic legitimacy of the House of Bonaparte. This claim explains why he called himself Napoleon III. For the same reason that induced the Count of Provence to style himself Louis XVIII, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte after his coup d’état of 1852 called himself Napoleon III. In the same manner as Louis XVIII had counted the son of his executed brother as Louis XVII, al-

 Entwurf eines Gesetzes, betreffend die Vereinigung des Königreichs Hannover, des Kurfürstenthums Hessen, des Herzogthums Nassau und der freien Stadt Frankfurt mit der Preußischen Monarchie, in: Anlagen zu den Stenographischen Berichten über die Verhandlungen des Hauses der Abgeordneten, 9th Legislature, 1st Session, 1866‒1867, vol. 1, Document 29, 118.  Bericht der 13. Kommission zur Vorberathung des Gesetz-Entwurfs, betreffend die Vereinigung des Königreichs Hannover, des Kurfürstenthums Hessen, des Herzogthums Nassau und der freien Stadt Frankfurt mit der Preußischen Monarchie, in: ibid., Document 47, 302.

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though the prince had never been King, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte counted the Duke of Reichstadt, son of Napoleon I and of Empress Marie Louise, born in 1811, as Napoleon II, though he had never been on the throne either. The fiction of dynastic continuity obviously remained an important element of monarchical legitimacy, even if the dignity had originally been established by plebiscite owing to the attribution of charisma. By naming himself Napoleon III he made a political statement that underlined his claim to the throne. In this respect he resembled the Count of Provence who styled himself Louis XVIII after the Dauphin, his nephew, had died in 1795. The appeal to dynastic legitimacy was much more than an exercise in genealogy. In the preamble to the constitution of 14 January 1852 Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte promised to restore his uncle’s regime. Since for the time being he had only been elected president of the republic for ten years, he confined himself to the declaration that he had taken the constitution of the Consulate of the year VIII as a model. When a few months later he abrogated the republic and proclaimed the Second Empire, he made the restoration of the First Empire the objective of his constitutional policies. Historical dynasties used to confirm their standing through appropriate marriage policies. New dynasties strove for marital bonds with old dynasties in the hope of increasing their reputation. The most famous example is Napoleon’s marriage to Marie Louise of Austria in 1810. Napoleon III on the other hand did not marry a princess from a governing dynasty, but a Spanish countess, María Eugenia de Guzmán Condesa de Teba.⁷³ On 22 January 1853 he convoked the Senate, the Corps législatif and the Council of State in the Tuileries in order to make known his marriage project. He emphasized that this marriage did not “conform to the ancient political traditions.” By talking of ancient political traditions he obviously alluded not only to marriage policies of historical dynasties in general, but to the marriage of Napoleon I in particular. In the course of his speech he expressly returned to the argument: “When, in the face of old Europe, you are elevated to the level of the historical dynasties, you do not gain recognition by declaring your coat of arms of ancient origin or by establishing marital bonds with a royal family, but much rather by always keeping alive the memory of your origin, by preserving your specific character and by openly accepting the position of parvenu in the face of Europe, a glorious title if you owe it to the free election of a great nation.”⁷⁴ In their equivocation these words confirm the un Anceau, Napoléon III, 226.  Napoléon III, “Communication relative au mariage de l’Empereur,” 22.1.1853, in : Napoléon III, Œuvres, vol. 3 (Paris : Plon, 1856), 357‒359 : Quand, en face de la vieille Europe, on est porté par la force d’un nouveau principe à la hauteur des anciennes dynasties, ce n’est pas en vieillissant son blason et en cherchant à s’introduire à tout prix dans la famille des Rois, qu’on se fait accepter.

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diminished validity of the dynastic principle, while at the same time they qualify its weight by appealing to the principle of national sovereignty. In 1915 in Germany the fifth centenary of the day was recorded when burgrave Frederick VI of Nuremberg was appointed Margrave and Elector of Brandenburg by Emperor Sigismund. In a commentary on the jubilee the historian Otto Hintze reduced German history since Frederick’s appointment to the history of the House of Hohenzollern: “The Hohenzollerns have created the Prussian State, and they have founded the new German Reich.”⁷⁵ Just as Louis I had declared the House of Wittelsbach the driving force in the historical process in Bavaria, Hintze declared the Prussian dynasty the driving force in the historical process in Germany. In his eyes nation and constitution had played a secondary role only. In retrospect the Hohenzollern Jubilee appears as the futile attempt to justify an outdated regime through history. The same holds true for the festivities on the occasion of the third centenary of the House of Romanov that had taken place two years before in the Tsarist Empire. Commemorated was the appointment to the throne in 1613 of the House’s ancestor, Michail Fedorovič Romanov, by the Estates, the Zemskij Sobor. In order to obviate unwanted interpretations the Jubilee Committee pointed out that the Tsarist autocracy had never been based on contract. Michail’s election had been unconditional.⁷⁶ Nicholas II even used the jubilee expressly to emphasize the autocratic nature of his regime. In his jubilee manifesto neither the constitution nor the Duma were mentioned and at the jubilee ceremony in Kazan Cathedral on 21 February 1913 the president of the Duma, Michail Rodzjanko, had difficulties to secure adequate seats for the Duma members.⁷⁷ Whereas King Louis I, Tsar Nicholas II, and Emperor William II highlighted the historic achievements of their dynasties, King George V of England during the First World War disavowed his dynastic provenance from the German House of Saxony-Coburg and Gotha under the pressure of public opinion. In July 1917 he announced that his dynasty was adopting the designation of a House of Windsor.⁷⁸ For the moment this was an effective anti-German demonstration,

C’est bien plutôt en se souvenant toujours de son origine, en conservant son caractère propre et en prenant franchement vis-à-vis de l’Europe la position de parvenu, titre glorieux lorsqu’on parvient par le libre suffrage d’un grand Peuple.  Otto Hintze, “Zum Hohenzollernjubiläum 1915,” Hohenzollern-Jahrbuch 19 (1915), 1.  Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power. Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 2: From Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 456.  Ibid., 461‒462.  Kenneth Rose, King George V (New York: Knopf, 1984), 174.

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but it was also a step by which the King called into question the dynastic principle as such. For centuries both the reason of State and equality of birth had demanded that the great European dynasties join in wedlock. Both the Russian Tsar Nicholas II and the German Emperor William II were cousins of King George V of England. That the family relationship of the reigning dynasties had little influence on policy had been demonstrated precisely by the outbreak of the First World War. William II is reported to have commented on the renaming of the British dynasty by the observation that he was already looking forward to the next performance of Otto Nikolai’s opera “The Merry Wives of Saxony-Coburg and Gotha.”⁷⁹

Disempowered Dynasties’ Quest for Restoration The belief in the power of hereditary charisma protected rulers from inconsiderate deposition. In the early modern period resistance to unlawful government was not permitted to individual subjects but at most to the estates, and these were in any case bound to give a legal justification. By listing a ruler’s allegedly unlawful acts they sought to demonstrate that he had turned a tyrant and thereby lost his legitimacy. Only a procedure that provided the deposition with a semblance of legality, could effectively absolve the subjects from their duties of loyalty. Such an absolution, however, was nowhere attained immediately and in no case universally. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 a broad Jacobite movement developed on the British Isles aiming at the restoration of the House of Stuart on the throne. The American War of Independence was not only a war of the settlers against the mother country, but also a civil war between the adherents of the republic and the loyalists who preferred staying under the British Crown. In France the fall of Napoleon in 1814 and 1815 gave rise to Bonapartism. After the July Revolution legitimism and after the Revolution of 1848 Orleanism remained strong political forces for decades. In the National Assembly, elected in February 1871 after the fall of the Second Empire, the two wings of monarchism combined disposed of two thirds of the seats. As long as important fractions of the population continued to feel loyal towards a deposed ruler and his family, the legitimacy of the new regime remained fragile, especially if the deposed rulers or their offspring were able to mobilize their adherents against the new regime. Therefore deposed rulers and their families had every reason to fear for their lives. They often fled abroad as soon as

 Ibid.

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they became aware that they had lost the struggle for the throne. If the flight succeeded they sometimes tried from the exile to recover their thrones. The interaction of the exiled dynasty and their adherents at home may be illustrated by two examples, Jacobitism in the 18th and Bonapartism in the 19th century. After having been deposed on 23 December 1688 King James II of England sailed from Rochester to France. Two weeks before a first attempt had failed when his ship ran aground. His wife Maria di Modena and their son had preceded him on 8 December. James justified his flight with considerations of personal safety: “If I do not retire, I shall certainly be sent to the Tower, and no King ever went out of that place but to his grave.”⁸⁰ In France Louis XIV assigned the castle of Saint-Germain-en-Laye to him. There James’ family entertained a court numbering close to 1,000 persons until the Sun King’s death in 1715. From there shortly after his arrival James with French support made his first attempts to expel the new rulers from Whitehall. He sought to combine a military invasion from without and an armed rising from within. The most powerful group within the country on whose support James could count, on the condition that he set the Test Act in force again and convoked a free Parliament, were Anglican nobles. But the initiatives failed in July 1690 in the battle at Killiecrankie in Scotland and in July 1690 in the battle on the Boyne in Ireland where James II and William of Orange faced each other in person. In 1692 a new attempt, the Aylesbury plot, failed when the French ships destined for England were destroyed near La Hogue and Barfleur by the united British and Dutch fleets.⁸¹ In the Fenwick plot of 1696, adherents of the Stuarts planned to assassinate King William in the hope of inciting their partisans in the country to new risings and persuading the French government to attempt a new debarkation in England, but the plans were betrayed.⁸² Numerous conspirators were imprisoned, seven were executed and five were incarcerated for life by Parliament. On 6 September 1702 James II died. Louis XIV recognized his son, known as the Old Pretender, as King James III. In 1708 an invasion of Scotland by French troops failed. It had been destined to stir up a rising in the country.⁸³ In 1715, one year after the accession of the House of Hanover, the Jacobites rose again. Particularly in Scotland they mustered three times as many soldiers as the govern-

 Quoted from William Alfred Speck, James II (London: Longman 2002), 80.  Eveline Cruickshanks, “Attempts to Restore the Stuarts, 1689‒96, 1689‒96,” in: Eveline Curickshanks and Edward Corp, eds., The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites (London: Hambledon Press, 1995), 2‒6.  Ibid., 8‒9.  Daniel Szechi, The Jacobites. Britain and Europe 1688‒1788 (Manchester: Manchester University Press), 1994, 54‒57.

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ment.⁸⁴ Nevertheless, the rising failed. The Jacobites attempted their last great riot in 1745 under the leadership of the pretender Charles Edward, son of James III and grandson of James II. After the prince had at first achieved several successes in Scotland, he marched into England. Since the population did not rise and French support failed to arrive, the pretender was forced in December to retreat across the Scottish border.⁸⁵ Near Culloden in Scotland he was definitely defeated in 1746. For more than half a century the Stuarts had tried to recover the throne they had lost in 1688. In their endeavors they were supported by France that was hoping in this way to weaken England, her chief rival in Europe, and bring her into dependency. But the main prerequisite of the restoration of the Stuarts was the broad Jacobite movement in England and Scotland. If the Glorious Revolution attained its objectives in a short time and without bloodshed, great efforts were nonetheless required to accustom the British people to the new dynasty. On 11 April 1814 Napoleon and Tsar Alexander on behalf of the coalition concluded the Treaty of Fontainebleau. Napoleon was conceded the Isle of Elba, turned into a sovereign principality for the purpose, and a high pension. In exchange the Emperor promised to renounce his throne and to leave France. If Napoleon was exiled in the intent to shield the Bourbon monarchy from an attempt of a Napoleonic restoration, it was made obvious before long that Elba was located much too close to France. In March 1815 the Emperor landed unexpectedly in France and soon after held the reins of government again in his hands. After his defeat at Waterloo in June he resigned himself to British custody on 15 July. The British government, after having been entrusted with his guard by the allies, shipped him off for the Island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic. The remoteness and inaccessibility of the island and the tight control, to which Napoleon was subjected there, show how dangerous the British still believed he was. In 1821 he died on the island. In French memory he remained alive and Bonapartism was winning adherents, in particular under the July monarchy that lacked splendor and political success. Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, the Emperor’s nephew, sought to take advantage of this mood for a return of the House of Bonaparte on the throne of France. Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, born in 1808, was doubly related to Napoleon I, because he was the son both of Napoleon’s brother Louis, for a time King of Holland, and of Napoleon’s step-daughter Hortense Beauharnais, daughter of the

 Ibid., 77.  Bruce Lenman, The Jacobite Risings in Britain 1689‒1746 (London: Eyre Methuen, 1980), 258‒ 259.

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Emperor’s first wife Joséphine. When after the battle of Waterloo the Bonapartes were exiled from France, he and his mother settled at Arenenberg in the Swiss canton of Thurgau on the Untersee.⁸⁶ On the insistence of his private tutor Philippe Le Bas he went in the autumn of 1820 for three years to the gymnasium at Augsburg. With his mother he often visited Italy where a great part of the Bonaparte family lived. He also stayed repeatedly in England. During his enforced exile he gained a personal impression of these countries and in the end was fluent not only in German but in Italian and English as well. After the Duke of Reichstadt, the only son of Napoleon I, had died in 1832, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte whose elder brother had died two years before, claimed the dignity of Emperor for himself. But the actual political situation left little hope that he would in the foreseeable future be able to realize this claim. On 30 October 1836 he made an attempt at Strassburg to overthrow the July monarchy and take power by force. The attempt failed before it had actually begun.⁸⁷ The French government exiled him to the United States, but as early as 1838 he returned to Arenenberg via London. From there he not long after attempted another insurrection. Encouraged by the sensation that the return of Napoleon’s remains to France had produced, and stimulated by the Rhine crisis of 1840 in which France found herself again isolated from the great powers as in 1814 and 1815, Louis, coming from England, in the night of 5 August 1840 disembarked from a steamer, rented for the purpose, with close to 50 followers at Boulogne on the French coast. As at Strassburg four years before he again hoped to win over the local garrison and to march to Paris at the head of its soldiers. However, the troops of the garrison pushed the invaders back into the sea.⁸⁸ After the coup at Strasbourg, Louis-Napoléon had simply been expelled. This time, however, he was put on trial and sentenced to imprisonment for life at Fort Ham in Picardy. In May 1846 he managed to escape from prison, disguised as a craftsman. Via Brussels he reached London within two days. The opportunity actually to gain power in France was provided to him by the February Revolution of 1848. On 10 December 1848 he was by universal suffrage elected by an overwhelming majority president of the Second Republic. The constitution provided for a four-year term. A re-election was possible after another four years at the earliest. But Louis-Napoleon wished to stay in power. Therefore he sought to modify the constitution. Since the National Assembly did not assent he committed a coup d’état on 2 December 1851. He had a new constitution worked out according to which he would

 Anceau, Napoléon III, 36‒38.  Ibid., 69‒71.  Ibid., 82‒83.

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for ten years act as Prince-President. One year later, however, he arrogated to himself the dignity of a hereditary Emperor of the French. Both the coup d’état of 1851 and the establishment of the Second Empire were confirmed by plebiscite. The Bonaparte monarchy had successfully been restored. In the Old Regime dynasty and dynastic succession were the chief elements establishing the legitimacy of monarchical government. They determined the successor of a defunct ruler and excluded others from the succession. The foundation of the dynastic principle was hereditary charisma. That’s why in the reigning dynasties ancestor-worship was considered important. The historic achievements of the forefathers of a reigning dynasty were used not only to refute the claims of other dynasties, but also as an argument against the transition to other forms of government. Dynastic crises almost invariably engendered civil war and anarchy. Only rarely did religious or political principles prove stronger than dynastic right. The most famous cases are the depositions of the ruler in the Netherlands in 1581, in England 1688 and in the thirteen North-American colonies in 1776. The French King Henry IV was forced to become a Catholic, before he could take his Kingdom in possession. Other than the American Revolution the French Revolution did not yet definitely inaugurate the era of the republic. Only twelve years after the fall of Louis XVI Napoleon proclaimed the Empire. He reintroduced hereditary monarchy in France and reestablished dynastic legitimacy, albeit for the House of Bonaparte. Elsewhere in Europe during the 19th century new hereditary monarchies were created as well. However, the acceptance of hereditary monarchy and of dynastic legitimacy was increasingly subjected to the condition that it meet certain political expectations. Among these were, in varying degree, the transition to constitutionalism, the recognition of national aspirations, and social reform.

4 Religion Tout ce qui tend à rendre sacré celui qui gouverne est un grand bien. Jean-Étienne Portalis¹

The Sacral Character of Monarchy The monarchs of the Old Regime regarded God as the source of their power. Ever since Charlemagne they used to add to their title a formula that attributed their position to the grace of God.² The introduction of the formula was a consequence of Pope Zacharias’ assent to the transfer of the royal dignity from the Merovingian dynasty to the Carolingian major-domo Pippin and his family. Bonifatius anointed Pippin in 751, after he had been elected King by the Frankish nobility.³ Zacharias justified his step by the consideration that the Merovingian dynasty had effectively lost their power and their ability to govern, whereas the Carolingian majors-domo who were actually wielding the power, had demonstrated their ability to defeat the heathen and to defend the church. In 732 Pippin’s father Charles Martell had in fact defeated the Arabs near Poitiers after they had crossed the Pyrenees and advanced far into Frankish territory. From Pippin the Pope expected protection against the Lombards. The transfer of kingship from the Merovingians to the Carolingians presupposed that the dynastic sanctity of the Merovingians on which their legitimacy had been founded, was surpassed by a sanctification of the Carolingian family. By anointing Pippin Bonifatius effected this sanctification. In 754 Pope Stephen  Quoted from Alfred Marquiset, ed., Napoléon sténographié au Conseil d’État 1804‒1805 (Paris : H. Champion, 1913), 25. The meeting of the Council of State in which the remark was made, took place on 23 prairial XII (12 June 1804) at Saint-Cloud. Portalis, Councillor of State, from 1804 to 1807 Minister of culture, continued: Le Malheur de nos jours est qu’on raisonne trop la puissance. Quand les peuples la croyaient conférée par la divinité, ils la regardaient comme sacrée.  Whether Pippin already used the formula, is uncertain. We do not possess any original diploma issued by him. The first original diplomas of German Kings preserved to this day have been issued by Karlmann and date from the year 769. The earliest original diploma of Charlemagne dates from 772. Cf. Karl Schmitz, Ursprung und Geschichte der Devotionsformeln bis zu ihrer Aufnahme in die fränkische Königsurkunde (Stuttgart: Enke, 1913), 172‒73.  Ernst Perels, “Pippins Erhebung zum König,” in: Eduard Hlawitschka, ed., Königswahl und Thronfolge in fränkisch-karolingischer Zeit (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1975), 277; Eugen Ewig, “Zum christlichen Königsgedanken im Frühmittelalter,” in: Theodor Mayer, ed., Das Königtum. Seine geistigen und rechtlichen Grundlagen (Vorträge und Forschungen 3, Konstanz: Thorbecke, 1956), 45. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110561395-005

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II personally repeated Pippin’s anointment and at the same time also anointed Pippin’s sons, Charles and Carloman. The baptismal anointment served as liturgical model,⁴ Samuel’s anointments of Saul and David as biblical models of the anointment of Kings.⁵ Thanks to the ecclesiastical consecration the Carolingians were from now on recognized as a royal dynasty. They thus owed their dignity in fact to the grace of God, as the devotional formula in their official title stated. The transfer of rule regarded the Carolingian dynasty as a whole. A precise order of succession was not introduced. Therefore election remained for the time being an indispensable factor in determining a successor. Primogeniture developed only later, in France not before the 12th century,⁶ whereas the German Empire remained elective until its fall in 1806. German Kings thus, for a long time to come, owed their dignity not exclusively to the grace of God. Much rather, royal dignity was the “result of the concerted action of election, hereditary right, and consecration.”⁷ The consecration provided the anointed ruler with a sacral quality. The divine election manifested itself in France, and later on in England as well, through the King’s capacity to heal from scrofula by the imposition of his hands. In France the demonstration of this capacity remained an integral part of the coronation ceremony down to the end of the monarchy. The belief in the divine enthronization of the ruler was confirmed by the 13th chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans: “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.” King James I of England has made no bones about the elevated claims of his office. On 21 March 1610 he declared in Parliament that Kings were “not only God’s lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God’s throne, but even by God himself they are called gods,” and of right so, because “they exercise a manner or resemblance of divine power upon earth.”⁸ These words give expression to a

 Arnold Angenendt, “Rex et Sacerdos. Zur Genese der Königssalbung,” in: Norbert Kamp and JoachimWollasch, ed., Tradition als historische Kraft. Interdisziplinäre Forschungen zur Geschichte des Früheren Mittelalters (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1982), 100‒19.  1. Samuel 10, 1; 16, 13; cf. Steffen Schlinker and Dietmar Willoweit, “Gottesgnadentum,” in: Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 4 (1995), 917; Herbert Schneider, “Herrscherweihe,” ibid., vol. 5 (1996), 43.  Percy Ernst Schramm, Der König von Frankreich. Das Wesen der Monarchie vom 9. zum 16. Jahrhundert (Weimar: Böhlau, 1939), 110‒11.  Fritz Kern, Gottesgnadentum und Widerstandsrecht im früheren Mittelalter. Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Monarchie, 2nd ed. (Cologne: Böhlau, 1954), 87.  James I on monarchy: speech to Parliament, 21 March 1610, in: John P. Kenyon, ed., The Stuart Constitution 1603‒1688. Documents and Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

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widely shared conviction, namely that monarchy was the most natural of all forms of government, since it reflected God’s government of the world. The comparison sounds less presumptuous if one considers that James at this point did not deal with any corporeal King, but with the imperishable kingship which is personalized in every individual King. Edmund Plowden, an English lawyer of the time of Elizabeth I, stated that the King combines “in himself two Bodies, viz., a Body natural, and a Body politic. His Body natural (if it be considered in itself) is a Body mortal, subject to all Infirmities that come by Nature or Accident, […] that happen to the natural Bodies of other People. But his Body politic is a Body that cannot be seen or handled, consisting of Policy and Government, and constituted for the Direction of the People, and the Management of the public weal, and this Body is utterly void of Infancy, and old Age, and other natural Defects and Imbecilities.”⁹ It was the imperishable political body of the King that James I compared to God, not his mortal and natural body that is affected with all the weaknesses of creatures. The immortality of the King’s political body manifested itself in the ritual exclamation at the funerals of the Kings of France in the Abbey of St. Denis: “The King is dead! Long live the King!”¹⁰ When primogeniture had definitely been established, at a King’s death it was clear who his successor would be, and since kingship itself was eternal, the government of the new King started immediately at his predecessor’s demise. If, however, neither election nor anointment nor coronation were required for the legal transfer of the royal dignity, one could, from a purely legal point of view, just as well have done without any of these actions. As Edward Coke concluded in 1609, the coronation was nothing but “a royal decoration and an exterior celebration of the change of sovereigns.” Half a century before, at the coronation of Edward VI, Archbishop Cranmer had declared that the anointment was simply a ceremony without practical value. Even without the anointment the King would be a “whole man and God’s anointed just as if he had received the anointment.”¹¹ If already in the beginning of the early modern period anointment and coronation were declared formalities without practical effect, in most hereditary monarchies the election was no less reduced to a simple formula within the coronation ritual. Beginning in the 18th century a

1966), 12‒13; ibid., 13: “If you will consider the attributes to God you shall see how they agree in the person of the King.”  Edmund Plowden, “Commentaries or Reports,” quoted from Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies. A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 7.  Quoted from ibid., 410: “Le roi est mort ! Vive le roi !”  Quoted from ibid., 317‒18.

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growing number of rulers preferred to do without the coronation as well. This renunciation is a symptom of the secularization of political culture. Enlightened thought took offence at the coronation ceremony, because it identified therein two mentalities it despised: religious superstition and uncritical adherence to tradition. When at the end of August 1774 at Versailles Anne Robert Jacques Turgot assumed the office of controller general of finance, the preparations for the sumptuous coronation ceremonies for Louis XVI were already on the way. In accordance with tradition the coronation (sacre) was to take place in the cathedral at Reims. On 11 November, however, Turgot transmitted a memorandum to the King in which he proposed, with a view to reducing cost, to simplify the ceremony and to carry it through not at Reims, but at Paris. He also recommended the King to dispense with the oath to fight heretics.¹² Significantly, in a letter to Turgot Condorcet at the same time raised the question, whether “of all unnecessary expenditures the expense of the coronation was not the most superfluous and ridiculous.” Condorcet approved of the transfer of the ceremony from Reims to Paris among others in consideration of the fact that it might contribute to destroying the prejudice that French Kings could be crowned at Reims only and that an allegedly miraculous oil was required for the anointment. Finally, he criticized that for fidelity to tradition alone “a ceremony was considered indispensable that actually adds nothing to the rights of the monarch.”¹³ Louis XVI rejected Turgot’s proposals. He had been brought up in the belief that God had blessed him and his country. In view of this conviction coronation and anointment appeared to him as an indispensable expression of his grateful acquiescence in the divine plan of salvation, of which he regarded himself and his office as an integral part.

The Inviolability of the Constitutional Monarch The secularization of the royal dignity in the age of Enlightenment culminated in the articles on the royal prerogative in the French constitution of 1791. As is shown by the letters of grievances (cahiers de doléances) that the deputies

 Hermann Weber, “Das Sacre Ludwigs XVI. vom 11. Juni 1775 und die Krise des Ancien Régime,” in: Ernst Hinrichs, Eberhard Schmitt, and Rudolf Vierhaus, eds., Vom Ancien Régime zur Französischen Revolution. Forschungen und Perspektiven (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978), 540‒41; Chantal Grell, “The sacre of Louis XVI: The End of a Myth,” in: Michael Schaich, ed., Monarchy and Religion. The Transformation of Royal Culture in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 348.  Quoted from Weber, “Sacre,” 542.

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brought with them to the Estates General in Mai 1789, the country aspired at a thorough renewal, but not at the fall of the monarchy. The reasons for the initial fidelity to monarchy were not only the traditional attachment to the dynasty and the belief in the possibility to reform the monarchy, but also the lesson, learned from Montesquieu, that in an extended State freedom can be secured only in a monarchy in which the powers are separated. The majority of the National Assembly stuck to this conviction even after the King’s abortive flight of June 1791 had raised doubts about his fidelity to the constitution. If France was to remain a monarchy, the Constituante had to provide it with a new type of legitimacy. Dynastic legitimacy had to yield to democratic and constitutional legitimacy and the attributes of royal power had to be defined one by one. Under the constitution of 1791 which Louis XVI had accepted, the House of Bourbon continued to govern according to the rules of primogeniture and male succession, but no longer on the ground of historical right and much less thanks to divine calling, but owing to the delegation by the nation. The delegation of royal power by the citizens was reflected in the new title of the head of state. He was no longer to be called “King of France,” just as if the country were the dynasty’s patrimony, but “King of the French,” a title denoting the popular source of his right to rule. By the definite exclusion of any further royal titles, divine right was abrogated. The supreme authority in France was “the law,” and the King could demand obedience only “on behalf of the law.” At the accession to the throne the King had to take an oath on the constitution. Anointment and coronation would no longer be required.¹⁴ These rules corresponded to the democratic legitimacy of the monarchy and to the principle of legality. The requirements of legality also explain the regulation which at first sight might recall the former sacral character of monarchy, namely that the “person of the King” was “inviolable and sacred” (inviolable et sacrée). On 1 September 1789 Mirabeau had declared in the French National Assembly that it had been necessary to declare the person of the King “infallible and sacred” (irreprochable et sacrée) in order to secure the hereditary character of the crown. The crown had to be rendered hereditary in order to prevent it from becoming “a continuous cause of upheavals.”¹⁵ Obviously, then, sacredness

 Constitution française 1791, Titre III, Chapitre II, Section I : De la royauté et du roi, Artt. 1‒4, in: Jacques Godechot, ed., Les constitutions de la France depuis 1789 (Paris : Garnier-Flammarion, 1970), 44‒45.  Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau in : Archives Parlementaires, series 1, vol. 8, Paris 1875, 541 (1.9.1789) : “Il a fallu rendre la couronne héréditaire, pour qu’elle ne fût pas une cause perpétuelle de bouleversements ; il en est résulté la nécessité de rendre la personne du Roi irréprochable et sacrée, sans quoi on n’aurait jamais mis le trône à l’abri des ambitieux”; cf. Jean-

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meant as much as intangibility and the office of King was indeed the only State organ the holder of which could not be removed by any other organ. To call the King sacred thus did not mean that he owed his office to God. Such a belief was incompatible with the principle that government was based on the will of the nation, as had been stated in the third article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789.¹⁶ The constitution expressly granted the intangibility of the King’s person because in a hereditary monarchy the head of state is called to exercise the government for life. The King’s inviolability was compatible with a democratic constitution only on the condition that he was also irresponsible. His irresponsibility manifested itself in the prescription that every decree of the King had to be countersigned by a member of the government who by this act accepted the responsibility. Irresponsible government should no longer exist. The irresponsibility of the King was a privilege for which he had paid a price, namely that he had lost the liberty to act on his own.¹⁷ In the French constitution of 1791 the former sacrality of the King was reduced to a series of paragraphs designed to protect the hereditary principle and to grant the separation of powers. In spite of the attribution of constitutional sacredness this rational monarchy was entirely devoid of religious meaning. It was indeed not to be based on a pretended Christian belief of the citizens, but exclusively on the will of the nation as manifested in the constitution. Therefore, religion could not protect the King from deposition. When in 1792 doubts were raised about the law-abidance of the King, monarchy was abolished in the hope of finding other means of securing the legality of government.

Doubts about the Divine Right of Kings Whereas in the French constitution of 1791 there is no mentioning of a divine right of Kings, in other constitutions of the 19th century it was preserved, provided they were based on the monarchical principle. The preamble to the Charte constitutionnelle of 1814 was introduced by the King’s traditional title Louis,

Joseph Mounier, ibid., 413 (12.8.1789) : “Pour maintenir les droits de la couronne, il faut que la personne du Roi soit inviolable et sacrée ; car, s’il existerait un pouvoir exécutif supérieur au sien, il ne serait plus monarque.”  Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, 26. 8.1789, Art. 3, in : Godechot, ed., Constitutions, 33‒34 : “Le principe de toute souveraineté réside essentiellement dans la Nation ; nul corps, nul individu ne peut exercer d’autorité, qui n’en émane expressément.”  Cf. further down in the chapter “Constitution” the section “Democratic constitutionalism. The monarchy according to the constitution of 1791.”

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par la grâce de Dieu roi de France et de Navarre. This was in line with Louis XVIII’s conviction that the legitimacy of the King of France was based, as before the Revolution, on dynastic tradition and divine institution. In the course of the revision of the Charte in the July Revolution of 1830 the King’s title was reduced to Louis Philippe, roi des Français. The Statuto albertino of 1848, since 1861 the constitution of the Kingdom of Italy, however, preserved divine right as well as the Prussian constitution, imposed by Frederick William IV in 1848 and revised in 1850. In 1899 in the new edition of Rönne’s “Staatsrecht der Preußischen Monarchie” Philipp Zorn called the use of the divine right formula in the Prussian constitution of 1850 and the King’s talk of himself in the plural a simple honorary privilege of the monarch.¹⁸ But the members of the Prussian National Assembly of 1848 had judged it to be much more than an honorary privilege and, after an extended debate, decided to remove the formula from the royal title. On 12 October 1848 the assembly discussed the preamble of the future constitution. In the draft it was worded: “We, Frederick William, by the grace of God King of Prussia etc.” During the discussion two points turned out controversial in this formula: the royal title “King of Prussia” instead of “King of the Prussians” on the one hand and divine right on the other. As Lüdicke, reporter of the committee, pointed out, a minority had advocated the abolition of the divine right formula, because they regarded it as a heritage of absolutism under which “one had been obliged unconditionally to submit in every respect to the authority as ordained by God.” The majority of the committee, however, had advocated the preservation of the formula, “because they simply regarded it as a custom that even though it had been observed for centuries, was devoid of any practical significance.”¹⁹ In plenary the member Schneider confirmed criticism of the formula when he exclaimed: “The revolutions have shown that the people also exist by divine right.”²⁰ The member Weichsel emphasized that “the whole Haller-Metternich system had been based on the proposition of divine right.”²¹ The member Borchardt added that during the March Revolution it had depended “on the will of the people whether it wanted to continue to be governed by a King or not.” Therefore the Prussians no longer possessed “a King by the grace of God,” but

 Ludwig von Rönne, Das Staatsrecht der preußischen Monarchie, 5th ed., revised by Philipp Zorn (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1899), 209.  Verhandlungen der constituirenden Versammlung für Preußen 1848, vol. 6 (Leipzig: Thomas, 1848), Session 73, 12.10.1848, 3920.  Ibid., 3925.  Ibid., 3929.

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“a King by the free will of the sovereign people.”²² According to the member Siebert a “free people” could “be governed only by a prince whom they had themselves vested with royal power and called upon the throne” from which “he alone was entitled to turn into practice the will of the people.”²³ The member Kruhl on the contrary defended the formula on the ground that “nations and the people” needed “such a sign, such a symbol, to which they attach their fidelity and love.”²⁴ The member Dallmann, a farmer, confirmed the popularity of the formula: in the district of Herford from which he came, there was among ten people scarcely a single one who did not wish to see it preserved.²⁵ An unconventional argument was brought forward by the member Hermann Schulze from Delitzsch towards the end of the debate. “When a business firm has gone bankrupt,” Schulze remarked, it is not common “to transfer its name to the new enterprise.” He was convinced that absolutism had gone completely bankrupt with its old firm “by the grace of God.” Therefore he recommended doing without “the old bankrupt firm.”²⁶ At the roll-call 217 members voted for the abolition and only 134 for the preservation of the formula.²⁷ This vote was one of the reasons why King Frederick William IV broke his promises of March 1848. On 8 November he first transferred the National Assembly to Brandenburg and on 5 December he dissolved it altogether. At the same time he imposed a constitution which was again based on divine right.

Coronations In the vast majority of the population the Revolution had not destroyed the religious faith. Therefore to the defenders of monarchy it appeared plausible to use Christianity for a legitimizing strategy of monarchy in the hope of counterbalancing the rising tide of democracy. During the 19th century various monarchs indeed tried to renew the traditional alliance of throne and altar and in competition with the secular ideas of Enlightenment and Revolution again to rivet their rule in the religious convictions of the subjects by means of the corresponding public acts and ceremonies. Among the foremost opportunities for the public

     

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

3930. 3931. 3933. 3946. 3946. 3953.

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self-presentation of the monarchy were the coronations. Being a religious ceremony in collaboration with the clergy the coronation was a visible sign of the enthronization of the monarch by divine grace. Louis XVI had recurred to this argument when he, against Turgot’s recommendation, insisted on a traditional coronation in the cathedral of Reims. Even though in France the ritual had already before the Revolution been questioned in the immediate surroundings of the King, during the whole of the 19th century rulers were crowned under the assistance of ecclesiastical dignitaries. These coronations were demonstrations of protest against the spirit of the times. When they took place in constitutional monarchies it was doubtful, whether they were in keeping with the constitution. Italian constitutional lawyers at least regarded the coronation as incompatible with the Statuto albertino of 1848, in which the position and the prerogatives of the monarch had definitively been defined in a way that left no room for the grace of God. The coronation had been replaced by the oath on the constitution.²⁸ Actually, in Italy religious ceremonies in the service of the monarchy were unthinkable anyway. The annexation of Rome and of the State of the Church, by which the Kingdom of Italy in 1870 completed its unification, had provoked a profound rupture between Church and State that was overcome only in 1929 by the concordat concluded by Mussolini.²⁹ If nevertheless constitutional monarchs sought to justify their rule by the ritual of coronation, they either labored for the restoration of Old Regime monarchy or they tried to make the uneducated masses believe that the actual monarchy was the only form of government compatible with the will of God. Napoleon I was a true virtuoso in using the clergy of the Empire for this kind of self-propaganda. His coronation in the cathedral of Notre Dame of Paris in 1804 in the presence of Pope Pius VII is a good example of how he used religion for the stabilization of his rule. A claim to divine right in the sense of the traditional monarchies was not intended. Insofar there was no conflict with the constitutional character of the regime. When the Pope arrived in Paris, the imperial dignity had been sanctioned long before by decree of the Senate and by plebiscite. The coronation of Charles X of France at Reims in 1825, however, was an act of restoration, designed to emphasize the divine origin of the royal dignity. How little he considered himself limited by the Charte constitutionnelle, Charles demonstrated five years later in the crisis of 1830, when he had no scruples to disregard the constitution and issue the so-called July ordinances. The corona-

 Paolo Colombo, Il re d’Italia. Prerogative costituzionali e potere politico della Corona (1848‒ 1922) (Milan: Angeli, 1999), 61.  Arturo Carlo Jemolo, Chiesa e Stato in Italia negli ultimi cento anni (Torino: Einaudi, 1955).

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tion of William I of Prussia in Königsberg in 1861 resembled the coronation of Charles X in that it was intended as a demonstration of divine right. It differed from Charles’ coronation, however, in that William had himself crowned not in spite of but because of the Prussian constitution of 1850 in the intention publicly to define its limits. In the following sections the three coronations will be analyzed. The coronation of Tsar Alexander III in 1883 in the Uspenskij Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin will serve as a counter-example. At that period Russia was still an absolute monarchy.

Napoleon’s Imperial Coronation in 1804 The creation of the French Empire in 1804 was an act nobody could have foreseen. Only twelve years after the proclamation of the republic by the National Convention monarchy was reestablished in France, but the new monarch was not a descendant of the Bourbons or of another historical dynasty, but a soldier, originating from the lesser Corsican nobility. Historiography has offered various explanations for the foundation of the Empire. After the conspiracy of Georges Cadoudal Napoleon thought it advisable to make sure that the regime could not be abrogated by an attempt on his life, since other than in a republic, in a hereditary monarchy there is always a successor. The adoption of the royal title, however, could easily have been interpreted as an attempt to revive the monarchy that had broken down during the Revolution. If this would have been the intention of the French, it would have been more appropriate to call to the throne the count of Provence, brother of Louis XVI. But the imperial title possessed other connotations. Its roots went back to Roman antiquity and it permitted Napoleon to justify his rule by invoking the memory of Charlemagne. Claiming the succession of the Carolingian Emperor meant placing himself on the same level as the German Emperor and King. In addition, the memory of Charlemagne could be used to justify the extension of French rule to Belgium and the Netherlands and to parts of Germany and Italy, an extension that had taken place during the revolutionary wars since 1792. Half a year after his imperial coronation Napoleon followed Charlemagne’s example also by having himself crowned King of Italy under the iron Lombard crown, not however in the ancient coronation city of Pavia, but at Milan. From a juridical point of view both of these coronations were superfluous. They could not add to the power position Napoleon had already obtained. Napoleon’s imperial coronation on 2 December 1804 was essentially a political act imbued with great symbolic meaning, and it was a program. The Pope’s presence at the ceremony possessed a significance hardly to overestimate. It con-

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firmed, in the eyes of Europe, the resurrection of the Empire of Charlemagne, as evoked by Napoleon. Charlemagne himself had received the imperial crown from Pope Leo III in 800. Ever since the imperial coronation of Otto the Great in 962 the German Emperors had for centuries been crowned by the Pope. Beyond the Rhine the foundation of the French Empire was indeed regarded as a symbolic attack on the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. Therefore, in anticipation of future developments, Emperor Francis II in the same year of 1804 adopted, in addition to his German imperial dignity, a newly created Austrian imperial title, in this respect naming himself Francis I, in order that he would eventually keep at least one imperial dignity. This move of the Habsburg ruler was no less usurpatory than Napoleon’s adoption of the imperial title had been. As far as the Austrian territories within the German Empire are concerned, Francis’ act was in sharp contrast with the imperial constitution that excluded the existence of two Emperors within the Empire. Napoleon’s creation of the French Empire was a monarchical restoration, but precisely for this reason it limited the prospects of an eventual restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. The cooperation of Pope Pius VII deprived the partisans of the Bourbon dynasty of an important supporter, since from now on the son of the Revolution possessed not only a democratic legitimacy, confirmed by plebiscite, but also an ecclesiastical legitimacy, sanctioned by Christian anointment. In his funeral oration for Pius VII Father Ventura mentioned Napoleon’s coronation. He emphasized the restorative character of the event: “Pius did not sanction usurpation, but restored sovereignty; he did not install a new monarchy, but reestablished the old one, in order that it would serve as support and foundation of every other monarchy; he did not crown the son of the Revolution, but the instrument and representative of legitimacy.”³⁰ Some people felt as if they had been robbed of the Emperor, of the Emperor who had originated from the Revolution and was legitimized by the Revolution.³¹ After a restoration of the monarchy under an Emperor from the House of Bonaparte there certainly was no need of any further restoration under the House of Bourbon. The dynastic sanctity of the Bourbons was thus in 1804 replaced and outdone by a new sanctity just as the sanctity of the Merovingian dynasty had been pushed aside by the anointment of the Carolingian Pippin in 751 and 754. Like Pippin Napoleon Bonaparte

 Quoted from Frédéric Masson, Le Sacre et le Couronnement de Napoléon (Paris : Tallandier, 1978), 233 : “Pie VII ne consacra pas l’usurpation, il rétablit la souveraineté ; il n’institua point une monarchie nouvelle, il renouvela l’ancienne pour servir d’appui et de fondement à toutes les autres ; il ne couronna point le fils de la Révolution, mais l’instrument et le vicaire de la Légitimité.”  Ibid.

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was a new ruler who’s right to rule was confirmed by the Church. The benedictions spoken at the anointments recalled the appointments of personalities foreign to the royal family in the Old Testament, namely Moses, Joshua, and Samuel.³² The action of Pope Zacharias of 751 had legitimized not only the actual King of the Franks, but his entire family as well. It had set the beginning of a new dynasty. Similarly the coronation of Napoleon by Pius VII provided the rule of the House of Bonaparte with the benediction of the Church. From now on the dynasty Bonaparte, so the Emperor hoped, would range on a par with the ancient dynasties of Europe. In addition to the uncertain charismatic, the incomplete constitutional and the precarious plebiscitary legitimacy Napoleon would in this way acquire an enduring dynastic legitimacy and secure the succession of his imperial offspring. Actually, through the ecclesiastical consecration by the Holy Father in person, Napoleon even surpassed the German Emperor who after 1530 was no longer crowned by the Pope, but by the Archbishop of Mainz and at Frankfurt, the city where he was elected and where since the 16th and 17th centuries he used to be crowned as well. In 1792, only twelve years before the coronation of Napoleon, Francis II of Habsburg had been crowned German Emperor at Frankfurt.³³ It had taken Pope Pius VII some time before he came round to yield to the pressures from Paris and to anoint Napoleon in person. The main reason for his commitment was the fear that to refuse the invitation might provoke reprisals against the Church in France. The presence of the Pope permitted Napoleon publicly to demonstrate in sumptuous ecclesiastical ceremony the Papal assent to his adoption of the imperial dignity. The publicity of the ceremony was not limited to the capital, since the coronation was on the same day also celebrated in every department, by using busts and statues of Napoleon. In addition it had been ordered by imperial decree that from each department a delegation of 16 men with a flag be sent to the coronation ceremony at Paris.³⁴

 Eugen Ewig, “Zum christlichen Königsgedanken im Frühmittelalter,” in: Mayer, Königtum, 45.  Wolfgang Sellert, “Zur rechtsgeschichtlichen Bedeutung der Krönung und des Streites um das Krönungsrecht zwischen Mainz und Köln,” in: Heinz Duchhardt, ed., Herrscherweihe und Königskrönung im frühneuzeitlichen Europa (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1983), 23‒25; for the last coronation of a German Emperor see Christian Hattenhauer, Wahl und Krönung Franz’ II. AD 1792 (Frankfurt: Lang, 1995).  Volker Sellin, “Der napoleonische Staatskult,” in: Guido Braun et al., eds., Napoleonische Expansionspolitik: Okkupation oder Integration? (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2012), 144; and in: idem, Politik und Gesellschaft. Abhandlungen zur europäischen Geschichte, ed. Frank-Lothar Kroll (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2015), 151.

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Napoleonic State Cult and the Church The coronation in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame was only the most spectacular manifestation of the use that Napoleon made of the Church and the Christian faith for the consolidation of his legitimacy. At Notre-Dame Napoleon also contracted his marriage to the Austrian princess Marie-Louise on 1 April 1810, and on 9 June 1811 the King of Rome was baptized in the cathedral. Like the coronation these events were on the same day also celebrated in every church of the Empire. The ceremonies were manifestations of the state cult Napoleon had first instituted by decree on 13 July 1804.³⁵ In the Napoleonic cult to the clergy was attributed a strategic function. The ceremonies followed a fixed pattern. At the beginning of a national holiday the civil and military dignitaries of a city assembled at the town hall – in capitals of the Departments at the prefecture – and from there they marched in the order of their respective rank to church for mass, a procedure similar to the Corpus Christi procession. As prescribed by an imperial decree of 19 February 1806 an obligatory part of the service was a speech of the priest or the bishop “on the glory of the French armies and on the duty of every citizen to sacrifice his life for his Emperor and for his fatherland.”³⁶ A Tedeum was sung and at the end the prayer for the ruler was spoken. The prayer that had been in use for the King in the Old Regime had been modified so as to suit the Emperor, the new ruler: Domine, salvum fac nostrum imperatorem et regem Napoleonem. A number of national holidays recurred periodically, others were observed on certain occasions only. Annual national holidays were made the day of the imperial coronation which since 1805 was also the day of the battle of Austerlitz, and Napoleon’s birthday on 15 August. Eventually Napoleon had Cardinal Caprara of Milan discover a saint by the name of Napoleon who allegedly had died a martyr under Emperor Diocletian. His name day was placed on 15 August. Finally the concordat of 1801 was also celebrated on this day. The national holiday policies show how Napoleon sought to exploit traditions of the church for his own purposes. On 15 August the Catholic world celebrated Assumption day, and the first Sunday of December was Advent Sunday.

 Décret impérial relatif aux Cérémonies publiques, Préséances, Honneurs civils et militaires, le 24 messidor an XII (13 July 1804), in : Bulletin des lois de l’Empire français, 4th series, vol. 1, n. 110, 141‒86 ; see further down in the chapter “Nation” the section “The creation of the nation by the monarch,” and Sellin, “Staatskult,” in: idem, Politik und Gesellschaft, 145‒67.  Décret impérial concernant la Fête de Saint Napoléon, celle du Rétablissement de la Religion catholique en France etc., 19. 2.1806, Titre II, Art. 8, in : Bulletin des lois de l’Empire français, 4th series, vol. 4, n. 1335, 280: sur la gloire des armées françaises, et sur l’étendue du devoir imposé à chaque citoyen de consacrer sa vie à son prince et à la patrie.

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Thus, political holidays were placed on Church holidays in the hope of securing for them attention and significance. The employment of the faith for the purpose of stabilizing Napoleon’s rule was clearly manifested in the interpretation of the fourth commandment in the Imperial Catechism of 1806. To the question which duties were imposed on Christians with respect to their princes and which in particular were “our duties towards Napoleon the First, our Emperor,” the answer was given: “Christians owe to the princes who govern them, and we owe in particular to Napoleon I, our Emperor, the love, the respect, the obedience, the fidelity, the military service, and the taxes that are fixed for the preservation and defense of the Empire and of his throne; in addition we owe him urgent prayers for his well-being and for the spiritual and secular welfare of the State.”³⁷ The fact that Napoleon was able baldly to use the clergy for political purposes, is explained by the concordat which he had concluded with the Pope in 1801 and by which to the head of State was conceded the right to nominate the bishops who by consequence were dependent from his benevolence. After Napoleon’s excommunication by the Pope in June 1809 resistance to the compulsory celebrations and in particular to the Tedeum and the prayer for the Emperor hardened, most of all among priests in the Catholic areas annexed to the Empire.

The Sacre of Charles X 1825 Though the Charte constitutionnelle had not excluded coronations, Louis XVIII was never crowned. The Charte resulted from a revision of the constitution the Napoleonic Senate had adopted on 6 April 1814 after the fall of the Emperor. In this constitution a coronation had not been mentioned. The Senate had tried to base the monarchy on the national will. This plan appeared hardly compatible with a ceremony that could easily be construed as a recognition of divine right. The Charte did not expressly demand a coronation, but at one point it was mentioned as a matter of course. According to article 74 “the King and his successors” would “take the oath on the constitution during the coronation ceremo-

 Quoted from: André Latreille, Le Catéchisme Impérial de 1806. Etudes et documents pour servir à l’histoire des rapports de Napoléon et du clergé concordataire (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1935) (Annales de l’Université de Lyon, 3e série, Lettres, Fasc. 1), 80 : “Les chrétiens doivent aux princes qui les gouvernent, et nous devons en particulier à Napoléon Ier, notre empereur, l’amour, le respect, l’obéissance, la fidélité, le service militaire, les tributs ordonnés pour la conservation et la défense de l’empire et de son trône ; nous lui devons encore des prières ferventes pour son salut et pour la prospérité spirituelle et temporelle de l’Etat.”

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ny”.³⁸ That Louis nevertheless preferred not to be crowned is explained by the circumstances. He had governed less than a year when Napoleon’s return from the Isle of Elba obliged him to leave the country. The Second Peace of Paris subjected France to an occupation by allied troops that was raised only three years later. To crown a King at a time when parts of his country were controlled by foreigners appeared out of place. The departure of the occupying forces was agreed in 1818 at the Congress of Aachen. In his opening speech from the throne at the parliamentary session of 1819 King Louis declared that he had “quietly” waited for the “happy moment” when he could consider coronation. He called the ceremony a “national festivity” at which religion underscored “the intimate union of the people and their King.”³⁹ By this remark Louis revealed his hopes that the coronation would reconcile the nation with the monarchy. He regarded it as a political act that did not contradict the Charte, but would facilitate its acceptance. Other than his two brothers, Louis had understood that the ritual of the coronation could only be preserved if it was imbued with a new significance and took into account the changed circumstances. Unfortunately since 1819 his health was deteriorating to a degree that he could not take upon himself the exhausting ceremony. Because of his bad health it had been considered for a time to carry through the coronation not in Reims, but at Saint-Denis or in Paris, for example in the church of Sainte-Geneviève.⁴⁰ Louis XVIII died in 1824. His brother and successor Charles X immediately ordered the preparations for his coronation at Reims to be taken up. An address of the Chamber of Peers of 31 December 1824 to King Charles referred to that “important ceremony by which the ancient and holy alliance of religion and monarchy will anew be confirmed.”⁴¹ Other than in Louis’ speech of December 1818 there was no mentioning of the people, the nation or the citizens. The wording of the peers’ address reveals the attempt to base the restored Bourbon monarchy on the traditional alliance of throne and altar, in the hope of restoring a central element of the Old Regime. At the coronation ceremony of 29 May 1825 the King

 Charte constitutionnelle, art. 74, in: Godechot, Constitutions, 224: “Le roi et ses successeurs jureront dans la solennitè de leur sacre, d’observer fidèlement la présente Charte constitutionnelle.”  Landric Raillat, Charles X et le sacre de la dernière chance (Paris: Orban, 1991), 42.  Ibid., 47; Richard A. Jackson, Vive le roi ! A History of the French Coronation from Charles V to Charles X (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 189‒191.  Quoted from Jean-Paul Garnier, “Le Sacre de Charles X,” Revue des deux mondes, year 107, 8th period, vol. 37 (1937), 638 : “cette importante cérémonie où sera de nouveau consacrée l’antique et sainte alliance de la religion et de la royauté.”

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took the prescribed oath on the Charte,⁴² but several participants had the sensation that the whole procedure was in contrast to the spirit of the constitution. The fact that Louis XVIII had imposed the Charte could not alter its character of a contract between the King and the nation, but the coronation ceremony of 1825 was said to have made the impression, as if the King owed his right to rule exclusively to God. To many observers the ceremony resembled much more a stage performance than an act of state. Some of those present resented that the King threw himself in full length on the floor before two cardinals.⁴³ Though the prostration was a traditional part of the consecration ceremony, in 1825 it obviously was no longer understood. Significantly, it had been cancelled in the course of the preparations of the sacre of Louis XVIII.⁴⁴ In his satirical poem “The Coronation of Charles the Simple” Pierre Jean de Béranger devoted its own stanza to the scene: “King”, a soldier shouts, “get up! ”No”, the bishop replies; “and, by St. Peter I am crowning you: enrich us. Whatever comes from God comes from the priests. Long live legitimacy!”⁴⁵

Many contemporaries compared Charles’ sacre to the coronation of Napoleon in 1804. Some of them criticized that Charles had the Archbishop of Reims put the crown on his head, whereas Napoleon in 1804 had crowned himself.⁴⁶ Two days after his coronation Charles went to the hospital Saint-Marcoul to perform the ritual touch of people suffering from scrofula. The step was part of the coronation ceremonies, but had been performed in the Old Regime on other festive occasions as well.⁴⁷ “The belief in the healing capacity of Kings was one

 According to Raillat, Charles X, 166, the King spoke the following oath: “En présence de Dieu, je promets à mon people de maintenir et d’honorer notre sainte religion, comme il appartient au Roi Très Chrétien et au fils aîné de l’Église, de rendre bonne justice à mes sujets ; enfin, de gouverner conformément aux lois du royaume et à la Charte constitutionnelle que je jure d’observer fidèlement. Ainsi, que Dieu me soit en aide et Ses saints Évangiles.”  Garnier, “Sacre,” 649.  Anton Haueter, Die Krönungen der französischen Könige im Zeitalter des Absolutismus und in der Restauration (Zürich: Juris-Verlag, 1975), 156‒58.  Pierre Jean de Béranger, Œuvres complètes, nouvelle édition, revue par l’auteur, vol. 2 (Paris: Editions d’aujourd’hui, 1851), 143.  Raillat, Charles X, 272.  Marc Bloch, Les rois thaumaturges. Étude sur le caractère surnaturel attribué à la puissance royale particulièrement en France et en Angleterre (Strasbourg and Paris: Libr. Istra, 1924), 360.

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of the strongest elements in the monarchical myth.”⁴⁸ At the coronation of Louis XVI in 1776 2,400 ill persons had assembled, whereas Charles had to content himself with 121.⁴⁹ Several invalids, some of them having come from far away, had been sent back home again, because originally the King had decided to dispense with the rite.⁵⁰ That he doubted his healing capacity himself, is revealed by the remark, with which he said goodbye to the ill: “My dear friends, I have spoken words of consolation to you, I hope very much that you will be cured.”⁵¹ From then on Charles no longer practiced the royal touch.⁵² The historical judgment on the coronation of Charles X has to a high degree been determined by his inglorious fall only five years later. Instead of becoming a symbol of the renewal of monarchy, in retrospect it became a symbol of its obsolescence. After Charles X no French monarch has ever again tried to rely on the Church in the hope of gaining legitimacy.

The Coronation of William I of Prussia in 1861 Whereas except for Louis XVIII until 1830 every King of France was crowned, in the Prussian monarchy coronation was the exception. Two Kings only were crowned, Frederick I in 1701 und William I in 1861. Frederick I had himself crowned because he was the first King of Prussia and the inauguration of a new royal dynasty required a dignified ceremony. The coronation city was Königsberg. Only there the Elector of Brandenburg could be made King, because the Duchy of Prussia was no part of the Holy Roman Empire in which the German King alone could be King. For this reason Frederick I did not call himself “King of Prussia” but “King in Prussia.” Over a century and a half Frederick’s successors renounced coronation. Even King Frederick William IV who was strongly convinced of the rights of legitimacy, had not permitted himself to be crowned, when he ascended the throne in 1840. Only his brother William I accepted coronation. The reasons he revealed on the day itself. To the presidents of the two Chambers and to the speaker of the princes and the provinces he declared that the Kings of Prussia had worn the crown for 160 years by divine right. He was the first King who ascended the throne since

 Raillat, Charles X, 196.  Garnier, “Sacre,” 655.  Raillat, Charles X, 198‒201.  Quoted from Garnier, “Sacre,” 655: “Mes chers amis, je vous ai apporté des paroles de consolation, je souhaite bien vivement que vous guérissiez.”  Bloch, Les rois thaumaturges, 404.

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it had been surrounded “by modern institutions.” With these words he alluded to the constitution of 1850. On 7 January 1861 already, five days after the death of Frederick William IV, he had in a proclamation expressly acknowledged the constitution.⁵³ The constitution did not demand coronation, but to William it was the actual reason for his decision to have himself crowned. He regarded the coronation as a demonstration against the further democratization of the constitution. Walter Bussmann qualified it as a “challenge of the constitutional regime by divine right.”⁵⁴ In this sense the King declared: “But remembering that the crown comes from God only, I have by means of the coronation at a holy place public that I have humbly received it from his hands. The prayers of my people […] have surrounded me at this ceremony asking for the blessings of the Almighty for my government.” With these words William opted for a religious instead of a constitutional legitimacy of his rule. Other than Charles X of France, William crowned himself in the palace chapel at Königsberg.⁵⁵ A relativization of the constitution became apparent when the King observed that Prussia will be spared “interior dangers,” because “the throne of her Kings” was “firm in its power and its prerogatives, as long as the unity of King and people that had made Prussia great,” is preserved. Actually, his brother Frederick William IV had saved the throne in 1848 only by consenting to the transformation of Prussia into a constitutional regime. The safety of the throne rested from then on first of all on the legal guarantees, contained in the constitution. By the words “unity between King and people” William alluded to a patriarchal relationship which was no longer appropriate in a constitutional age. Until July 1861 he had considered receiving the traditional oath of hereditary homage that Frederick William IV still had accepted in 1840. When eventually he resolved against it, his motif was not the belief that it had become obsolete under the constitution, but the consideration that since his ascension to the throne he had experienced so much “love and attachment” that “under all circumstances he could count on his people’s fidelity, devotion and readiness to make sacrifices.”⁵⁶ To the Cardinal Archbishop of Co Wilhelm I., “An mein Volk,” 7.1.1861, in: Ernst Berner, ed., Kaiser Wilhelms des Großen Briefe, Reden und Schriften, vol. 2 (Berlin: Mittler, 1906), 13.  Walter Bussmann, “Die Krönung Wilhelms I. am 18. Oktober 1861. Eine Demonstration des Gottesgnadentums im preußischen Verfassungsstaat,” in: Dieter Albrecht, Hans Günter Hockerts, Paul Mikat, and Rudolf Morsey, eds., Politik und Konfession. Festschrift für Konrad Repgen zum 60. Geburtstag (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1983), 204.  Ibid., 203.  William I to the president of the House of Lords, Prince Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, to the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Dr. Simson, and to count Dohna-Leuck, mouthpiece of the princes and the provinces, 18.10.1861, in: Berner, Kaiser Wilhelms des Großen Briefe, Reden und Schriften, vol. 2, 19‒20; see also Bussmann, “Krönung,” 193‒94.

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logne he confessed on coronation day the “confidence” that the Catholic clergy in Prussia would continue to teach his “Catholic subjects fear of God and obedience to the government that God had placed over them, and respect for the law, the only firm foundation of public order, and give them a good example as they had done before.”⁵⁷ William’s successors refrained from being crowned King of Prussia or German Emperor. Against the continuation of the coronations spoke not only the obsolescence of the ritual and the doubts of its constitutional propriety, but also the religious division of Prussian and German society that rendered it difficult to provide for the religious consecration a form that every citizen could recognize as binding.

Russian Autocracy and Orthodox Church Until the end of the monarchy there existed in Russia a close symbiosis between secular and spiritual power. Among the various Christian denominations within the Russian Empire the Orthodox Church enjoyed a privileged position. Until 1905 only the Orthodox Church was permitted to proselytize among the adherents of other denominations, whereas Orthodox believers who converted or reconverted to other Churches, were subject to public persecution. The heretic law that had existed right into the early modern period in Western Europe as well, thus remained in force in Russia until the beginning of the 20th century. Not only the Tsars, but their wives as well, had to belong to the Orthodox Church. In exchange for the protection the Tsar accorded, the Church defended autocracy. The orthodox doctrine concerning the position of the Tsar was chiefly based on the teachings of the deacon Agapetus of Constantinople at the time of Justinian. Agapetus attributed to the Emperor two different natures. As a human being he allegedly resembled all other humans, but as a ruler he resembled God and had no superior on earth.⁵⁸ The idea of the godlikeness of the King resurfaced in Russia in the 16th century. In a pamphlet “gratitude and praise for the birth of the divinely crowned Tsar and Grand-Duke Ivan” the Fourth it is written: “In his natural existence the Tsar resembles everybody; with respect to the power

 William I to the Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne, 18.1.1861, in: Berner, Kaiser Wilhelms des Großen Briefe, Reden und Schriften, vol. 2, 21.  Ihor Sevčenko, “A Neglected Byzantine Source of Muscovite Political Ideology,” Harvard Slavic Studies 2 (1954), 147; cf. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 499.

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of his majesty, however, he resembles God who is placed above everything.”⁵⁹ This statement corresponds to the conception the English King James I entertained of his office as ruler. Both conceptions were based on the conviction that the King possessed two bodies, a personal and individual body and an eternal and imperishable body. This doctrine could be interpreted in two ways. On the one hand it confirmed the hypothesis that the ruler was installed by God. On the other hand it reminded the ruler of his duties towards his subjects. Church and State had to cope in common with exterior enemies, with interior rebellions and with heretics.⁶⁰ The doctrine that the Tsar’s government over Russia resembled God’s government over the world could be used as an argument in favor of autocracy, as though autocratic rule alone of all political regimes corresponded to the divine world order. As long as the Tsars remained conscious of their divine mission and governed in the interest of the subjects who were entrusted to them, there was no room for representative bodies, be they estates or modern representative assemblies. Since Peter the Great the balance between secular and spiritual power has been shifting in favor of the State. After the death in 1700 of Patriarch Adrian of Moscow, spiritual head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Tsar Peter abrogated the patriarchate. In its place in 1721 he created the “Most Holy Governing Synod” (Svjatejšij Pravitel’stvujuščij Sinod), a collegial board of prelates. Being the supreme spiritual administrative agency of the Orthodox Church it was accorded the same rank as the Senate, the supreme secular administrative organ of the State below the Tsar.⁶¹ In correspondence to the general procurator of the Senate Peter the Great in 1722 also created for the Synod the position of a chief procurator who was accorded the function of “the Tsar’s eye” and had to make sure that the Church acted in his interest. Since 1835 the chief procurator had the position of a minister of the cabinet.⁶² Following the secularization of the Church’s lands by Catherine the Great in 1764, the dependence of the Church from the State increased in the domain of finance as well. The Tsar’s right to interfere

 Quoted from Michael Cherniavsky, Tsar and People. Studies in Russian Myths (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1961), 46.  Marc Szeftel, “Church and State in Imperial Russia,” in: Robert L. Nichols and Theofanis George Stavrou, eds., Russian Orthodoxy under the Old Regime (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1972), 127.  Gregory L. Freeze, “Handmaiden of the State? The Church in Imperial Russia Reconsidered.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36 (1985): 86.  Szeftel, “Church,” 133.

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in Church affairs, however, was limited to the purely administrative sector.⁶³ In spiritual affairs the Church preserved its autonomy to a great degree until 1917.

The Coronation of Alexander III in 1883 At the accession of every new Tsar the clergy took upon themselves the obligation to denounce to the authorities anything that might bring damage upon the Tsar, with no regard to the seal of confession.⁶⁴ Other than the Kings of Prussia every Tsar was crowned. The coronations took place in the Uspenskij Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin. It is true that in the Cathedral there was so little space that only the honorary guests could be seated. But since the festivities extended over several days, there were enough opportunities left for the participation of the public. The London Times reported on Alexander’s solemn entrance into Moscow five days before the coronation: at least one third of the population of the capital had stayed up the whole night in order to be present at the great event, since, the reporter added, it was only on such an occasion that one could “perceive the glory and magnificence of the most absolute monarch in Europe.”⁶⁵ Innumerable religious stations and symbolic actions had been integrated into the pageant. The correspondent emphasized in particular a scene at Resurrection Gate in front of the shrine with the miraculous icon of the Iberian Madonna. Nobody passed the shrine without at least crossing himself. Some believers kissed the image of the Madonna, lit a candle or dropped a coin into the offertory-box. “What the lowest subject never misses doing, the Tsar himself did not want to omit,” the correspondent observed. Therefore Alexander had stepped down from his horse and along with the Tsarina ascended the steps to the shrine where he was received by the First Vicar with the cross and with holy water. Of the coronation itself the Times reported five days later. The religious character of the ceremony is duly emphasized. “The clerical dignitaries, in all the pomp of their great offices, invoke upon the heads of the august pair the blessings of heaven, obtain from them the confession of their faith in the religion which is about to sanctify their power, and finally invest them with the symbols of imperial rule.” Thereafter Alexander “went forth to show himself to his people, crowned, anointed, consecrated, as their head and lord

 Ibid., 130.  Ibid., 137.  “The Coronation of the Czar,” The Times, 23 May 1883.

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in all things secular and religious, temporal and eternal.”⁶⁶ The high position of the Orthodox Church received due consideration during the ceremony by the fact that the thrones of the Tsar and of the patriarch were placed side by side.⁶⁷ But since 1742 it was customary that the Tsar crowned himself. The coronation festivities that extended over several days, the overwhelming attendance of the population, the visibility of the central role of the Orthodox Church, and finally the demonstration of the Tsar’s profound piety ensured at every coronation the renewal and stabilization of his religiously sanctified legitimacy. The Tsar’s striving for religious legitimacy is demonstrated by the manifesto that Alexander issued on the day of his coronation, on 15 May 1883. It is contained in a commemorative book of almost 500 pages the government published after the end of the festivities. The manifesto begins with a prayer invoking the Lord’s blessing: “After we have accepted the crown of our ancestors by the will of God and received the holy anointment, we whole-heartedly pray to God, the protector of the Tsars and their government that he bless this sacred day and this hour in which we have before him repeated the venerable vow of the ruler at the historical location that is sanctified by the belief and the prayer of the entire Russian country!” The prayer for God’s help in the government of the Empire follows: “May he strengthen the power of our government by the force of his spirit and give us wisdom and vigor for the reconciliation of those who have been led astray, for the consolidation of order and justice in business, for the illumination of the people and every individual in their religious convictions and for the fortification of the fidelity to duty and to the law, for the protection of everybody’s rights, and for the general security, for the improvement of the welfare and the glory of our beloved fatherland!”⁶⁸ It could hardly have been expressed more clearly that the coronation of the Tsar corresponded to God’s will and that his government was to be seen as a kind of religious service. The religious belief did not gain the same importance under the various Tsars. In Alexander III the attention to Orthodox piety was connected with a national-romantic program to revive the pre-Petrine Russian State. This policy became manifest in a great number of new churches constructed under his government in the ancient byzantine style. The return to pre-Petrine architecture corresponded to Alexander’s opposition to the Enlightenment and the West. In religious policies these endeavors aimed at strengthening the Orthodox as against the non-Orthodox churches, in national policies at the Russification of  The Times, 28 May 1883.  Szeftel, “Church,” 128.  V pamjat’ svjaščennago koronovanija Gosudarja Imperatora Aleksandra III i Gosudaryni Imperatricy Marii Feodorovny (S.-Peterburg 1883), 166.

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non-Russian nationalities on the periphery of the Empire. Among the first new churches was Resurrection Cathedral (Chram Voskresenija Christova), also named “Cathedral of the Savior on the Blood” (Chram Spasa na Krovi), erected at St. Petersburg on Griboedov Channel on the spot where Alexander II on 1 March 1881 had fallen victim to an attempt of the terrorist society Narodnaja Volja. Because of its old-Muscovite look the church to this day forms a sharp contrast to the baroque architecture of the former residential capital. But the contrast was intended. Alexander examined the designs in person that had been turned in upon the call for tenders and opted for an architecture in the style of the churches of Jaroslavl’ and Rostov, dating from the 17th century. In 1883 the planning was entrusted to Al’fred Parland. But only in 1887 did the Tsar approve his last design.⁶⁹ The architecture illustrates Alexander’s intentional departure from the westward orientation of Peter the Great and from the policy of reforms of his father and predecessor Alexander II. Instead he tried to redirect monarchy to the ancient Russian traditions, in line with the Slavophil movement. “The Savior on the Blood is Old Muscovy plunged into the heart of European Petersburg.”⁷⁰ Architecture of this kind badly suited a church dedicated to the memory of Alexander II (fig. 2). The recourse to Muscovite tradition was related to a mobilization of popular piety. The location of Alexander’s violent death soon became an object of pilgrimage. There Alexander II was revered as a martyr; he even was compared to Christ: “They have terminated the life of the ruler. Christ was crucified a second time.”⁷¹ These circumstances explain why the new church was dedicated to resurrection. Resurrection Cathedral became the model of numerous other churches planned between 1888 and 1905.⁷² A by no means less strange appearance is displayed by Alexander-Nevskij-Cathedral on Cathedral hill in the center of Estonia’s capital Reval, today Tallinn. Its construction was not only an act of Orthodox mission in a province inhabited by a majority of Lutherans, but thanks to the dedication to Alexander Nevskij also a national provocation of the Baltic Germans. Nevskij had stopped the advance of the Livonian Order of Knighthood on 5 April 1242 by his victory on frozen Lake Peipus.

 Michael S. Flier, “The Church of the Savior on the Blood. Projection, Rejection, Resurrection,” in: Robert P. Hughes and Irina Paperno, eds., Christianity and the Eastern Slavs, vol. 2: Russian Culture in Modern Times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 27.  Flier, “Church,” 30.  Quoted from ibid., 31: “Gosudarja žizn’ skončali. Vtoroj raz Christa raspjali.”  Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power. Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 2: From Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 246.

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Fig. 2: Al’fred Aleksandrovič Parland (1842‒1920), Chram Spasa na Krovi (Church of the Redeemer on the Blood), St. Petersburg (1883‒1907).

Beginning with the Age of Enlightenment, if not earlier, the belief in the sacral character of monarchy was losing ground. The doctrine of the Godly ordained monarch was incompatible with the principle of national sovereignty that had reached its breakthrough during the French Revolution. In the constitution of 1791 the French National Assembly removed the formula “by divine right” in the King’s title. During the 19th century democratically elected constitutional assemblies no less opposed the formula, as has been shown for the Prussian National Assembly of 1848. There was no consent about the question whether di-

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vine right was compatible, if not with a democratic, then at least with an imposed constitution. From a legal point of view already in the beginning of the modern era the opinion had been voiced that the coronation could not confer rights on the ruler he otherwise would not possess. This is the essential explanation for the fact that the ceremony was falling into disuse even in those monarchies that continued to believe in divine right. In the age of revolutions some rulers used the rite in the intent to oppose divine right to the democratic tendencies of the times. Significant examples of coronations in restorative intention were the coronation of Charles X of France in 1825 and the coronation of William I of Prussia in 1861. In Russia that turned constitutional only in 1906, till then during the coronation ceremony the divine enthronization of the ruler was repeated as of old on a symbolical level, for the last time at the coronation of Tsar Nicholas in 1896. Even in monarchies that preserved divine right in the titles of the King, the claim degenerated more and more to a formula without legal or political significance, as was acknowledged even by influential public law scholars.

5 Success in War Un gouvernement qui parlerait de la gloire militaire, comme but, méconnaîtrait ou mépriserait l’esprit des nations et celui de l’époque. Benjamin Constant¹

Victory or Defeat Protection of the weak, defense against the enemies, victory in battle: these have always been the foremost tasks of the ruler. “Hail to thee in victor’s crown, ruler of the fatherland! Hail to thee, Emperor!” Thus began the first verse of the hymn that was sung in the German Reich at the festivities commemorating the battle of Sedan and the foundation of the Empire. Martin Luther compared God to a feste Burg (a mighty fortress) and Jesus to a victorious fighter: “With might of ours can naught be done, / Soon were our loss effected; / But for us fights the Valiant one, / Whom God himself elected.” Since the 17th century, however, less and less rulers led their armies on the battlefields by themselves. The last King and military leader in one person was Frederick the Great. But even if the victories were obtained by generals in the service of rulers, regardless of whether they were called Turenne, Prince Eugene, Marlborough or Nelson, from a political point of view they were attributed to the rulers themselves. In 1814 Benjamin Constant stated that it was characteristic of the traditional monarchy in contrast to Napoleon’s practice that the ruler left the supreme command to others: “There is no necessity for a King to lead his armies. Others may fight for him, while by his peacefulness he secures for himself love and respect among his people. The usurper, by contrast, is forced always to place himself at the top of his praetorians. They would despise him, if he ceased being their idol.”² As has been explained above, the wars of the Old Regime were based on dynastic, not on national conflicts. The powers of Old Europe even regarded their war against Napoleon as an affair of the dynasties, not of the citizens. When news of the devastating defeat of the Prussians at Jena and Auerstedt arrived at Berlin, the military commander of the city, Count von der Schulenburg, issued a proclamation, later to become famous: “The King has lost a battle. Now to keep

 Benjamin Constant, “De l’Esprit de conquête et de l’usurpation dans leurs rapports avec la civilisation européenne” (1814), in: Constant, Oeuvres, ed. Alfred Roulin (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), 993.  Ibid., 1032. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110561395-006

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quiet is the first duty of the citizens.” Wars were waged by the King, not by the people, even if a large part of the armies were sons of Prussian peasants, according to the canton system of Frederick William I. The dynastic understanding of the events is again revealed in the final paragraph of the proclamation: “The King and his brothers are alive.” There was no mentioning the thousands of men killed in battle. But the war of 1806 was the last true dynastic war in which Prussia was involved. The Prussian defeat was sealed by the Peace of Tilsit in 1807. It had the effect of an incentive to a comprehensive military reform. The most important part of the reform was the introduction of compulsory service. If, however, according to Scharnhorst’s dictum, from now on not hired mercenaries but the citizens were to defend the fatherland, victory or defeat could no longer leave the nation indifferent. Therefore the question became more acute than ever, whether the legitimacy of monarchy was strengthened by military success and jeopardized by military defeat. According to a report of the Austrian Foreign minister Metternich, Napoleon justified his refusal of concessions to the coalition during their meeting in Marcolini Palace at Dresden on 26 June 1813 by exclaiming: “Well, what do you expect from me? […] That I dishonor myself? Never! I shall know how to die, but I shall not cede a handbreadth of territory. Your rulers, born on the throne, may be defeated twenty times and still return to their residences every time: I cannot do so, I, the son of fortune. My government will not outlast the day on which I have ceased to be strong and hence dreaded.”³ There is good reason to doubt that Napoleon has really expressed himself in this way.⁴ Whereas Metternich put in writing the quoted report only many years after the meeting, in a letter he sent to Emperor Francis during the night after the conversation, he reported on Napoleon’s intransigence but not on Napoleon’s motives. Perhaps he put the quoted passage years later in Napoleon’s mouth in order to justify himself for the breakdown of his endeavors to reach an understanding with the Emperor, pursued far into March 1814. The statement that Metternich attributed to Napoleon, at any rate corresponded perfectly to the ideology of legitimism that prevailed in the Restoration period and according to which Europe’s tranquility could only be granted, if everywhere the former rulers returned and resumed unlimited government. In this sense Talleyrand demanded at the Congress of Vienna that “everywhere and forever the spirit of revolution”  Wenzel Clemens Fürst von Metternich, “Zur Geschichte der Allianzen (1813 und 1814),” in: Aus Metternichs nachgelassenen Papieren, ed. Fürst Richard Metternich-Winneburg, part 1, vol. 1 (Vienna, Braumüller, 1880), 151.  Volker Sellin, Die geraubte Revolution. Der Sturz Napoleons und die Restauration in Europa (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001), 62‒64.

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cease to work and that “every legitimate right be again held sacred.”⁵ The dynasties of Europe had for centuries fought each other. In innumerable wars especially in the 17th century Richelieu and Louis XIV had increased French territory to the point where it stood on the eve of the Revolution. France became a great power as a military state like Prussia. The thorough reforms in the administration and the mercantilist economic policies in the age of absolutism had in the main served to finance the standing armies. By now, however, Talleyrand tried to make believe that only usurpers who owed their rise to the Revolution, waged war. After the Revolution had been defeated, he wrote to the Austrian foreign minister, France, having happily recovered her legitimate Kings and her ancient limits, no longer aimed at conquests, but much rather resembled “the sea that overflows its shores only if roused by the storms.”⁶ Talleyrand had dexterously framed his declaration in a way as to suit the dominating mood among the allied governments. After having happily mastered the menace of revolution and of the revolutionary conqueror the historical monarchs all of a sudden discovered their common interest in the preservation of peace. They took advantage of the Vienna Congress to round off their recent territorial acquisitions and to grant them to each other. For a long time to come they apprehended a disturbance of the peace only from a new revolution in France. After having lived through the last twenty-five years they could imagine war and conquest only as originating from revolution and usurpation. The ability to preserve peace unexpectedly became the mark of legitimacy of the historical monarchies. The classical testimony of this view remains Benjamin Constant’s book “De l’esprit de conquête et de l’usurpation.” Constant tried to show that for the preservation of their legitimacy usurpers are, other than traditional monarchs, forced to proceed from one conquest to the next. The book came out in January 1814, when the coalition was still negotiating with Napoleon. Constant pleaded for terminating Napoleon’s rule once and forever. In the second chapter he discusses the difference between usurpation and monarchy. A monarch, he writes, does not gain the throne by his own will. Therefore he need not strive for the respect of the citizens. The usurper, on the other hand, was “bound to justify his seizure of power.” He had tacitly obliged himself to achieve great successes and had “to be careful not to frustrate the expectations of the public he had

 Talleyrand to Metternich, 19 December 1814, in: Comte d’Angeberg (Pseudonym for: I. J. B. Chodzko), ed., Le congrès de Vienne et les traités de 1815, vol. 1 (Paris : Amyot, 1863), 540 : France wished “que partout et pour jamais l’esprit de révolution cessât, que tout droit légitime fût rendu sacré.”  Ibid.: “semblable à la mer, qui ne franchit ses rivages que quand elle a été soulevée par les tempêtes.”

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fuelled so forcefully.” In principle it was surely an advantage if a ruler proved capable of accomplishing something great, but only as long as the general welfare required it. But it was “an evil,” if a ruler “was for purely personal reasons condemned to great successes” that were “not in the interest of the general welfare.”⁷ In Constant’s view usurpers waged war in search of legitimacy. Monarchs were legitimized by birth and therefore were not in need of military success. A usurper risked his throne, if he lost a war, but a monarch from an ancient family, just as Metternich reported Napoleon to have said, had no reason to fear for his throne, even if he was defeated “twenty times.” A usurper, whose legitimacy depended on military success, could not avoid constantly reminding his subjects of his victories. Napoleon employed a variety of methods to meet this requirement, among them the foundation of monuments. On 15 August 1810, the Emperor’s birthday, the Column of the Great Army was inaugurated on Place Vendôme at Paris. On the model of the antique Trajan Column it displays the campaign of 1805 in a gigantic relief that screws itself spirally upwards from bottom to top. It was made from the bronze recovered by melting the Austrian and Russian cannons seized at Austerlitz on 2 December of that year. On top of the column was placed Napoleon’s statue in the guise of a Roman Emperor (fig. 3).⁸ In addition to the monument the brilliant victory was remembered every year in national festivities. The second of December that was also the day of Napoleon’s coronation, was year by year celebrated in every community of the Empire. These celebrations were a major item in the festival calendar of the Napoleonic political cult. To this day there exist further monuments at Paris by which Napoleon sought to immortalize his victories. The Arc de Triomphe du Carroussel at the entrance to the Tuileries had also been destined for the glorification of the 1805 campaign. At the same time he gave orders to build the Arc de Triomphe on Place de l’Étoile. It was completed in the 1830’s. In spite of Constant, however, it appears doubtful if the great number of monuments that Napoleon had ordered to erect, denotes an elevated need of legitimacy that is explained exclusively by the Emperor’s revolutionary origin. At London and in other English cities numerous monuments were similarly erected

 Constant, “Esprit,” 1030: “Or, c’est sans doute un avantage que d’être propre à de grandes choses, quand le bien général l’exige ; mais c’est un mal, que d’être condamné à de grandes choses, pour sa considération personnelle, quand le bien général ne l’exige pas.”  Volker Sellin, “Napoleon auf der Säule der Großen Armee. Metamorphosen eines Pariser Denkmals,” in: Christof Dipper, Lutz Klinkhammer, and Alexander Nützenadel, eds., Europäische Sozialgeschichte. Festschrift für Wolfgang Schieder (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2000), 377‒80.

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Fig. 3: Jacques Gondouin (1737‒1818) and Jean-Baptiste Lepère (1761‒1844), The Column of the Grande Armée on Place Vendôme in Paris (1806‒1810) with Napoleon’s statue of 1863 by Augustin-Alexandre Dumont (1801‒1884).

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to honor Napoleon’s British adversaries, Nelson and Wellington. Nelson’s column of 1843 on London’s Trafalgar Square even appears as a counter-project to Vendôme Column at Paris. The fact that it was erected on private initiative and was privately financed, does not disagree with the supposition that the English successes scored during the wars against the neighboring country, were meant to contribute as much to the legitimacy of the British monarchy as Napoleon’s monuments were intended to contribute to his reputation in France.⁹ Tsar Alexander I also ordered a huge monumental church to be constructed, in order to remember the Russian victory over the foreign conqueror in the Patriotic War of 1812.¹⁰ In memory of the military achievements of the Bavarian army during the wars of liberation King Ludwig I ordered the Siegestor (Victory Gate) to be erected at Munich. Building victory monuments remained a custom in the remainder of the century. At Berlin to this day the Siegessäule (Victory Column) recalls the three wars of German unification between 1864 and 1871. Actually Benjamin Constant’s simple distinction between a traditional monarch and a usurper was already obsolete in 1814. The repeated exchange of rulers, caused by Napoleon, the abrogation of the ecclesiastical states, the mediatization of small and average-sized territories in the German Empire, and the lavish territorial equipment of the member states of the Confederation of the Rhine had turned many monarchs into beneficiaries of Napoleon’s conquests. To this degree they too had become, with respect to parts of their subjects, usurpers who had to justify their rule by performance. In a memorandum of 2 June 1857 for minister von Manteuffel on the question of whether the Prussian government could disregard the revolutionary origin of the French Second Empire and enter into political relations with Napoleon III in the same way as it did with other monarchs, Otto von Bismarck, then Prussian envoy to the Federal Diet at Frankfort, argued: “But how many governments are there in the present world of politics that have uninterruptedly been based on law. Spain, Portugal, Brazil, all American republics, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Greece, Sweden, England that still consciously lives on the legacy of the revolution of 1688, are unable to trace their actual legal state from a legitimate origin. Even with respect to the political rights that the German princes have taken in part from the Emperor and the Empire, in part from their equals, the Standesherren, in part from their own provincial estates, a completely legitimate possession title is impossible to produce.” Later on Bismarck added: “The present Emperor of the  For the British monuments to Nelson and Wellington see Helke Rausch, Kultfigur und Nation. Öffentliche Denkmäler in Paris, Berlin und London 1848‒1914 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006), 208‒ 28.  See further down in the chapter “Charisma” the section “Monarchical Heroes’ Memorials.”

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French cannot be suspected of addiction to conquest to a higher degree than several others, and in the defect of illegal origin he partakes with many existing authorities.”¹¹ If Bismarck had written only fifteen years later he could have pointed out that the Kings of Prussia and Sardinia had during national unification once more gained a multitude of new subjects to whom they were called to justify their rule. The touchstone of the aptitude of military success for legitimization is less victory than defeat. Judged from the experiences that had been made by the time of the Congress of Vienna, military defeat did not endanger a historical monarchy. Maria Theresa remained in government in spite of the cession of Silesia to Frederick the Great and of her failure to recover it in the Seven Years’ War. Francis I of Austria lost two wars against Napoleon one after the other in 1805 and 1809, and still no one demanded his abdication. Frederick William III of Prussia also kept his throne after the humiliating Peace of Tilsit in 1807. During the 19th century the rule was confirmed. Between the Congress of Vienna and the First World War Russia twice suffered severe defeat, in 1856 in the Crimean War and in 1905 in the Russo-Japanese War. Both defeats shook the Empire, but did not endanger the rule of the Romanov dynasty. The First World War turned out different. When it became apparent that they could not win this war, in March 1917 the Russian Tsar and in November 1918 the German and the Austrian Emperor lost their thrones. If the preceding decline of legitimacy was an immediate effect of military failure or due to other causes, will be examined apart.

The Deposition of Napoleon I The deposition of Napoleon by the French Senate on 3 April 1814 seemed to confirm Constant’s judgment that a usurper loses his legitimacy as soon as he ceases being successful. The Senate voted deposition only a few days after the troops of the coalition had entered into Paris. Thus the intimate connection of defeat and deposition imposes itself right away. In reality, however, the deposition was not the result of a loss of legitimacy. It presupposed, it is true, the capture of the capital, but in the main it was caused by an intrigue of Talleyrand, to which only few opponents of the Emperor were privy. The nation was just as surprised by the news of the fall of Paris as Napoleon himself. Therefore no judgment had

 Otto von Bismarck, “Denkschrift für Minister von Manteuffel, 2 July 1857,” in: id., GW, vol. 2: Politische Schriften, ed. by Hermann von Petersdorff, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Stollberg, 1924), 227,229.

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been formed yet on the consequences for Napoleon’s reputation. Talleyrand, however, on the very day of the entrance of the allied armies made Tsar Alexander believe that the French had enough of the Emperor and were longing for the return of the Bourbons. At the time of his deposition Napoleon had not been defeated in battle. The fall of Paris, it is true, was a startling act to which the allies had been driven most of all by the decision of the Tsar to take revenge for the conquest and the burning of Moscow during the campaign of 1812. But whether the entrance into the French capital would within a short time lead to a decisive military success over the Emperor himself, nobody was able to say at the moment. Napoleon had retired to Fontainebleau castle and still disposed of a considerable striking power. The prosecution of the war was thwarted less by the allies than by Napoleon’s Marshals when on 4 April they refused to participate in retaking the occupied capital. Napoleon gave in and drafted his first declaration of abdication. The attempt to secure the throne for the dynasty in negotiations with the Tsar was thwarted by the transition of Marshal Marmont’s corps to the enemy.¹² The generous conditions Napoleon secured for himself in the abdication contract the Tsar concluded with him on behalf of the allies on 11 April, reveal the respect his adversaries even now felt for him. In political theory a distinction is made between the tyrant or usurper ex defectu tituli and the usurper ex parte exercitii. To Constant Napoleon was a usurper of the first type, a usurper who had to justify his illegal seizure of power by appropriate action. In the decree of 3 April 1814 by which Napoleon was deposed, the French Senate maintained that the Emperor had turned a tyrant only in government and therefore had to be regarded as a usurper ex parte exercitii. By this argument the Senate followed the pattern of the English Declaration of Rights of 1688 and of the American Declaration of Independence of 1776. Both of these declarations had served to justify the deposition of dynastic rulers or, to use Constant’s terminology, of “monarchs,” not of “usurpers,” and the deposed “monarchs” were declared to have originally acquired their thrones by dynastic law, not by usurpation. The reason of their fall was therefore said to be, not an original lack of the right to rule, but a sequel of policies by which they had gradually revealed themselves as tyrants. In the same sense by the decree of 1814 the French Senate declared that initially the Emperor had governed “safely and with circumspection” and nourished the conviction that “acts of wisdom and jus-

 Sellin, Revolution, 176‒85.

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tice” were to be expected from him.¹³ Only in later years he had developed into a tyrant. As evidence of this degeneration his transgressions are enumerated one by one, just as the declarations of 1688 and 1776 had done. The use of this argument alone shows that the Senate regarded Napoleon as a ruler who had legally obtained the throne, but had later abused his power. The judgment of the Senate is no surprise. In their eyes Napoleon’s rise to power had been approved by the nation in accordance with the democratic principles of the Revolution. By the same principles they now justified the deposition of the Emperor and the inauguration of a new regime. But even among the governments of the coalition Napoleon was not regarded as a usurper who had illegally seized power. In a memorandum for Hardenberg the Prussian State councilor Friedrich Ancillon argued in February 1814, Napoleon had certainly made a “bloody and deplorable use” of his power, but in the usual sense of the word he had not “usurped” it.¹⁴ The ease, with which in March 1815 Napoleon recovered power in France, shows that even after his fall he still enjoyed legitimacy in large sections of the nation. But regardless of his endeavors the great powers, still assembled at Vienna in congress, refused to concede him a second chance. On 18 June 1815, four days after his defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon abdicated again and this time definitely. This abdication was also a consequence of defeat, but revealed by no means a loss of legitimacy. At Vienna, the allies had agreed not to recognize Napoleon again as Emperor of the French, whether the French nation should vote in his favor or not.¹⁵ Since after their victory of 18 June they were in a position to enforce their decision, Napoleon was left no choice but to abdicate. Again the nation was not accorded the opportunity to vote for or against him. Napoleon’s abdication in 1815 was the result of an action of the victors that would have been unthinkable in the dynastic world of the Old Regime. Even for the purpose of the short war of 1815 – the overthrow of the regime in the country of the enemy – there were only Napoleonic precedents. By their policy the coalition intervened violently in the sovereign rights of the French nation. If one takes the plebiscite of April 1815 as a measuring rod, the allies disregarded the express will of the French nation when they insisted on removing Napoleon again from the throne. In the spring of 1814, however, they had been united in

 Décret du Sénat conservateur, portant que Napoléon Bonaparte est déchu du trône, et que le droit d’hérédité établi dans sa famille est aboli, 3.4.1814, Bulletin des lois du Royaume de France, 5th series, vol. 1 (Paris 1814), 7.  Friedrich Ancillon, “Denkschrift 12. 2.1814,” Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, I. HA Rep. 92, Nachlaß Albrecht, Nr. 56, fol. 95.  Volker Sellin, “Der Tod Napoleons,” Francia 35 (2008), 286‒89.

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the conviction that they were not entitled to take decisions regarding the future government of France. As Metternich argued in February 1814, it was one the fundamental principles of society, not to intervene in the form of government of an independent state. On the very day that the powers would take the position that it could be admissible to intervene in the legal succession in another state, “they would undermine the existence of every throne.”¹⁶ Therefore a change of the dynasty should in no case be brought about by the allies, but only by the French nation themselves.¹⁷ The decision was indeed taken by the French Senate. But the minds had been oriented in this direction by a communication of the Tsar that from now on the allies would no longer negotiate with Napoleon. To the French people was thus left only the choice between Napoleon and peace. The inflexible attitude of the allies in the summer of 1815 is explained by the fear that Napoleon would again plunge Europe into war, as soon as France would have recovered from her latest setbacks. They took the breach of the abdication treaty of Fontainebleau by which Napoleon had been accorded the government of the Isle of Elba and a generous pension, as a new confirmation of their suspicion that Napoleon could not be trusted and that it was useless to conclude treaties with him. After his second abdication in June 1815 the British government shipped Napoleon to the Isle of Saint Helena in the Southern Atlantic Ocean. In July he had asked for British protection. Louis XVIII did not demand his delivery, even though he had after his return to France in March 1815 declared the Emperor to be a rebel. The British government refrained from delivering Napoleon on their own initiative, since they were afraid that a law suit and the execution of a death sentence would inevitably risk the breakdown of the shaky Restoration regime. Therefore they asked their allies for full powers to deal with the Emperor at their discretion. On this legal basis and without trial Napoleon was brought to the island in the Atlantic Ocean. The exile was not a punishment but a security measure.¹⁸ There is good reason to suppose that Napoleon would have kept his throne, if he had yielded at the Congress of Châtillon in February 1814 and accepted the armistice terms of the coalition. His persistent refusal to accept these terms, only at first sight looks like a confirmation of the words that Metternich had put him into the mouth. According to the treaty draft of the coalition he was supposed to

 Vote autrichien, in: August Fournier, Der Congress von Châtillon. Die Politik im Kriege von 1814. Eine historische Studie (Vienna: Tempsky, 1900), Annex III, 287.  Cf. Sellin, Revolution, 99‒103.  Cf. Sellin, “Tod,” 291‒94; idem, “Absetzung, Abdankung und Verbannung. Das politische Ende Napoleons,” in: Susan Richter and Dirk Dirbach, eds., Thronverzicht. Die Abdankung in Monarchien vom Mittelalter bis in die Neuzeit (Cologne: Böhlau, 2010), 236.

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renounce the Rhine frontier. The left bank of the Rhine was territory that France had annexed already before Napoleon had seized power. Ceding it was regarded by Napoleon, as he emphasized more than one time in the spring of 1814, as incompatible with his honor, because in this case he would not only not have gained additional territory for France, but not even have preserved the territorial extension in which he had taken over the government.¹⁹ If one takes this argument serious, it appears that from the beginning of 1814 Napoleon had continued to fight on French soil chiefly because he wanted to save his honor. In October 1918 Max Weber used the same argument to explain why William II had no choice but to abdicate. To Schulze-Gaevernitz he wrote on 11 October, it would not do justice to William and the Imperial dignity to eat his bread free in a mutilated Germany.²⁰ One week later in a letter to Friedrich Naumann he warned from any attempt “to maintain a monarch in a position he could not hold with honor.”²¹ Constant’s theory of the necessity for a usurper continuously to achieve military successes contributes little to explaining the two depositions of Napoleon. Not even the Senate that deposed him in April 1814 believed that he had obtained the government illegally and had therefore to be considered a usurper. The action was indeed justified on the example of depositions of historical rulers. It is true that Napoleon’s deposition both in 1814 and in 1815 followed military setbacks. But there is no evidence that because of these setbacks Napoleon had lost the support of the French nation and that this loss was the cause of his deposition. In neither case the nation was given the opportunity to pass judgment on Napoleon’s future. If there was a change in the mentality of the French, it was general war weariness. Accordingly, the return of the Bourbons was hailed by many for the sole reason that they regarded them as guarantors of the interior and exterior peace.

Napoleon III The Second Empire was the first French regime after 1815 that broke down after a military defeat, but it was the fourth regime that was terminated prematurely by a revolution or a coup d’état. All these turns happened in Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte’s lifetime. The end of the Second Republic was brought about by himself  Sellin, Revolution, 89, 177.  Max Weber to G. von Schulze-Gaevernitz, 11 October 1918, in: idem, Gesammelte Politische Schriften (Munich: Drei Masken Verlag, 1921), 477.  Max Weber to Friedrich Naumann, 18 October 1918, ibid., 480.

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through the coup d’état of 2 December 1851. Two times – in 1836 from Strasburg and 1840 from Boulogne – he had in vain tried to turn over the July monarchy by a military putsch, before it was swept away without his involvement by the February revolution of 1848.²² It is no wonder that his performance in government was influenced by these experiences. They convinced him that the Empire could only endure if it was governed in accordance with the will of the people. He justified even his coup d’état of 1851 with the necessity of abrogating the limitations of universal suffrage that the legislative assembly of the Republic had introduced by the law of 31 May 1850. By article 36 of the constitution of 14 January 1852 universal suffrage was reestablished. In the Second Empire the members of the Chamber (Corps legislatif) were elected by universal suffrage. But it was also used in another connection that was particular to the Second Empire. According to the fifth article of the constitution the Emperor was responsible to the French people and entitled to have his democratic legitimacy at any time confirmed by plebiscite. The Second Empire was like the First a hereditary monarchy, and the Bonaparte family formed the governing dynasty. Other than the Houses of Bourbon and Orléans the Bonaparte family lacked the traditional dynastic legitimacy. Even if he was proud of the dynastic relationship to his uncle, Napoleon III could not be sure that the name of Bonaparte alone would secure for him the necessary assent of the nation, especially so since he had observed that dynastic origin had not precluded the fall of Charles X and Louis-Philippe. Therefore the constitutional right of the Emperor to have his legitimacy at any time confirmed by plebiscite appears as a timely compensation for the increasingly doubtful legitimacy even of the historical dynasties. The overwhelming majorities Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte had obtained both at his election of president of the Republic in December 1848 and after his coup d’état in December 1851, were reasons to expect that at future consultations of the nation he would again register a sufficient number of votes in his favor, all the more so since he alone determined the day of the plebiscite and formulated the query that was to be put to the vote. The plebiscite was a political instrument that required an extremely careful application. After the foundation of the Empire in 1852 Napoleon III made use of it only one time – on 8 May 1870. This alone permits to suppose that he regarded it as a safety valve in case the support to his regime should decline or in case he had introduced changes into the constitution that might not meet with approval among his long-time adherents. Such a situation had developed towards the end

 See above in the chapter “Dynasty” the section “Disempowered Dynasties’ Quest for Restoration.”

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of 1869 and in the beginning of 1870, and it was no accident that from the plebiscite of 8 May the Emperor hoped to receive confirmation of the reforms destined to transform the authoritarian Empire of the beginning into a liberal regime. A decisive step towards the formation of the Empire libéral was the appointment of the former republican Émile Ollivier and his commission to form a cabinet. Ollivier took over the government on 2 January 1870, but the Emperor reserved for himself the position of president of the council. The actual political situation and the assessment of the legitimacy of the regime are revealed by a declaration the new minister made to Napoleon when he took over his charge: “Sire, I am happy because I believe I am going to save your dynasty”.²³ The first step toward the liberalization of the regime had been taken by Napoleon III already in November 1860 by a decree that accorded to the legislative body and the Senate greater competences. On this occasion Ollivier had predicted that the Emperor would make further concessions, especially if the nation desired it, because he would not act in opposition to the nation, and in fact, this was “the only system” which could “save him from being sooner or later overthrown”.²⁴ The menace of an upheaval was incessantly brought home to the government by the agitation of the Republicans. But it had to win over to his side the adherents of parliamentary monarchy as well. The transformation of the authoritarian into a liberal Empire offered the prospect of splitting the opposition. In 1865 Ollivier defended his approval of the liberal reforms of the government with the consideration that the art of politics consisted in yielding to the legitimate endeavors of the people at the right time without giving the impression of a capitulation. To prove his statement he tried to show that Louis XVI, Napoleon I, Charles X, and Louis-Philippe would not have been turned over if they had yielded in time.²⁵ At this point one is tempted to ask why Napoleon III himself five years later failed to yield in time and thereby to save his throne. The question imposes itself if only because at the outbreak of the Prussian-French war Ollivier was still president of the council and full-heartedly supported the policies of the French government up to the declaration of war.

 Quoted from Theodore Zeldin, Emile Ollivier and the Liberal Empire of Napoleon III (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 122.  Quoted from ibid., 63.  Ibid., 86‒87.

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The Fall of the Second French Empire On 2 September 1870 the Emperor suffered a devastating defeat at the hands of the Prussians and was taken prisoner of war. Two days later the republic was proclaimed at Paris. This does not mean that Napoleon III had suffered the natural fate of a usurper as outlined by Napoleon I according to Metternich’s report of their meeting at Dresden. Neither does the event confirm Constant’s conviction that the government of a usurper could not last if he was unsuccessful in war. Instead, there is reason to believe that the Revolution of 1789 had created a mentality in France by which changes of regime became as frequent as changes of government elsewhere. After all, the Second Empire had lasted 18 years. None of the preceding regimes had lasted longer. The July monarchy had broken down after 18 years and the restoration monarchy had ended in 1830 after 16 years only. In both monarchies ancient dynasties, not usurpers had been on the throne. But, to be sure, their government did not lack elements of usurpation either. At his return from exile in May 1814 Louis XVIII had swept aside the democratic constitution as created by the Senate and approved by the Corps législatif, and arrogated to himself the government contending that he was King by divine and dynastic right. Louis-Philippe had speedily been put on the throne in the July revolution of 1830 by a small group of liberals related to the paper Le National, before the adherents of the Republic could have proclaimed the abolition of the monarchy. If one takes these two developments and the coup d’état of Napoleon III together, the conclusion imposes itself that in France after the fall of Napoleon I a solid consensus on the legitimacy of monarchy had become difficult to attain. But unlike Charles X and Louis-Philippe Napoleon III was even by contemporaries marked as an adventurer, a characterization that referred in the first place to his various military enterprises. The Second Empire indeed differed from the two preceding monarchies in that it went several times to war. This readiness for war, however, can hardly be explained by the consideration that Napoleon III had incessantly felt obliged to justify his usurpation, as Constant had written. The chief objective of his foreign policy was the revision of the treaties of 1815 by recovering a political position on the continent equal to the power of Russia and Austria. With French help Russia was weakened in the Crimean War and Austria in the Italian war of 1859. In addition France increased his influence in the Near East and in Italy to the detriment of both Russia and Austria. How deeply French policies after 1815 were motivated by revisionism is clear from the fact that the two preceding monarchies had also set themselves revisionist goals. The intervention in Spain in 1823 had only on the surface served the purpose of removing the consequences of the revolution of 1820. In reality,

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the French foreign minister Chateaubriand sought to restore French influence on the Peninsula with a view of strengthening his position within the European States’ system. In 1829 foreign minister Polignac intended to enter into the Russo-Turkish War. The expected conquests in the Balkans would, according to Polignac’s calculations, render necessary a revision of the Vienna order. In the course of this revision France would claim the Rhine frontier.²⁶ French hopes were disappointed when Russia and Turkey concluded the Peace of Adrianopel, before the French government could present their proposals in St. Petersburg. Under the July Monarchy the revisionist endeavors came to light especially during the Rhine crisis of 1840. In this case France again achieved no success, because by a concerted action the four great powers intervened on the spot. In the fifties the European Concert disintegrated. In the Crimean War members of the former anti-Napoleonic Quadruple Alliance stood in opposite camps for the first time since the Congress of Vienna. Austria remained neutral, it is true, but Russia had hoped for Austrian help and now felt deserted by Vienna. Thus the anti-French alliance of the victors of 1814 and 1815 that had dominated European foreign policy for almost forty years, was broken, and France gained a degree of latitude that the two preceding monarchies had not possessed. There is no doubt that a Bourbon or an Orleans King would have taken advantage of this situation to promote France’s revisionist policies. During the sixties as well Napoleon III, in relation to his neighbors, pursued a course perfectly in keeping with the traditions of French foreign policy. This holds particularly true for the relationship with Germany. Ever since Richelieu, if not before, France sought to keep Germany divided. Since he considered the weakening of Austria a priority, Napoleon III for a long time regarded Prussia as his natural ally beyond the Rhine. In the approaching conflict between the two German powers he hoped to play the role of an umpire and, as a consequence, to increase French influence in Germany. The swift and unexpected Prussian victory at Königgrätz in August 1866 not only destroyed these hopes, but revealed at one blow that Prussia had become a great power that would no longer tolerate French attempts at intervention in Germany. The French government regarded this outcome of the Austro-Prussian war as a defeat and was supported in this view by the French public. If from now on Napoleon III was out for revenge he therefore was not in contrast to public opinion or to the traditional priorities of France. During the July crisis of 1870 it was not him but French

 Volker Sellin, “Conclusion: France, the Vienna Settlement, and the Balance of Power,” in “The Transformation of European Politics, 1763‒1848”: Episode or Model in Modern History?, ed. Peter Krüger and Paul W. Schröder (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2002), 233.

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public opinion that insisted on the demand that the Prussian government give a guarantee for Leopold von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen’s renunciation of the Spanish throne, a policy that led to Bismarck’s famous redaction of the Ems dispatch. Even the French declaration of war to Prussia of 19 July met with broad approval in the country.²⁷ It can therefore be excluded that Napoleon III had incited the war for the only reason, to quote Constant once more, that he had been under a constraint to justify his usurpation. The antecedents of the war rather suggest that no French government, after having proceeded so far, could have afforded to react on Prussia’s diplomatic provocation in other ways than by a declaration of war. The same consideration renders it highly improbable that Charles X or Louis-Philippe and their dynasties would have survived the defeat of Sedan. The question remains, whether ever since the end of the Old Regime a monarch of necessity risked his throne if he was defeated in war. In search of an answer the connection between defeat in war and depositions of rulers will be examined in three historic monarchies. Appropriate examples appear to be the three European Empires that broke down at the end of the First World War: the Russian Empire, the German Empire, and the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary. In all three cases the question will be, whether the fall of the monarchies was the inevitable consequence of military defeat or whether other factors played the decisive role.

The Abdication of Nicholas II When on 2 March 1917 Tsar Nicholas II signed his abdication document at the General Quarters of the Northern Russian Army at Pskov, the World War was still going on. The Russian front had not collapsed. Therefore there was no immediate connection between the Tsar’s step and developments on the front. But in the country the situation was deteriorating. On 23 February strikes had broken out at Petrograd, former St. Petersburg. Tens of thousands of workers crowded the streets. Since simultaneously international women’s day was held, innumerable women demonstrated for equality. During the following days the strikes expanded. The main reason for the protest movement was hunger. In the industrial centers of the country, Petrograd and Moscow, the supply of coal from the Donec region and of grain from the black soil area in the South had been insufficient from the beginning of the war, since the Russian railway system

 Lynn M. Case, French Opinion on War and Diplomacy during the Second Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1954), 252‒53, 265‒69.

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was unable to meet the civil and the military requirements at the same time. In relation to the total surface the German Empire in 1914 possessed a rail network ten times as dense as Russia. Three quarters of the Russian railway lines were single track. On the outbreak of the war the army sequestered one third of the rolling stock for the purpose of supplying the front.²⁸ Aid deliveries from allied countries were difficult to bring into Russia. At the beginning of the war the German Empire closed the Belt and Turkey closed the Straits. The only Russian ports, in which ships could be unloaded during the whole year, were Vladivostok on the Pacific coast and Murmansk. From these ports deliveries had to be transported to Petrograd, Moscow, and to the other central cities. But the Trans-Siberian Railway also possessed one track only. A railway to Murmansk did not yet exist in 1914. It was constructed only during the war by approximately 70.000 German and Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war and completed in January 1917, one month before the outbreak of revolution.²⁹ The only remaining European port of the country that was neither located on the Baltic nor on the Black Sea, Archangelsk, was frozen during six months of the year and connected to the capital also by a one track railway only.³⁰ These structural problems were exacerbated at the end of 1916 and in the beginning of 1917 by the unusually hard winter. Many railway lines were blocked by the snow. Even if they still disposed of flour, bakeries at Petrograd could produce no more bread, because they had run out of fuel. In addition, inflation had forced down the purchasing power of the salaries to a degree that many families had become unable to buy even those goods that were still on the market.³¹ Since their stock of coal was exhausted, on 21 February the Putilov Works at Petrograd suspended the production.³² Other plants followed. The workers on leave intermingled with strikers. Clashes with the police were becoming more and more frequent. Demonstrators demanded the abolition of the autocracy and the termination of the war. The Tsar was not in the least aware of the gathering storm when in the afternoon of 22 February he returned to Mogilev to Russian headquarters. Therefore he couldn’t observe the developments at Petrograd but through the reports that were sent him by his staff. But his main source of information on the events in the capital was his wife Alexandra. She possessed only a limited understanding of politics and was personally interested in nour-

 Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New York: Knopf, 1991), 206‒07.  Reinhard Nachtigal, Die Murmanbahn 1915‒1919, 2nd ed. (Remshalden: B. A. Greiner, 2007), 6, 71‒82.  Pipes, Revolution, 207.  Ibid., 237.  Ibid., 273.

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ishing her husband’s illusions that the government was master of the situation.³³ Probably in the conviction that the strike movement would before long subside, the minister of the Interior, Protopopov, had instructed the pertinent bodies to conceal from the Tsar the real dimension of the unrest. Nevertheless, after a few days Nicholas must have recognized that the police had lost control of the situation. Otherwise he would not, in the evening of 25 February, have ordered the commander of the city, general Chabalov, to quell the revolt by force.³⁴ Complying with the Tsar’s order Chabalov issued a curfew for the next day and warned that if necessary the army would shoot on gatherings. On the morning of 26 February soldiers in combat uniform dominated the scene in the city. At first everything remained quiet. In the afternoon, however, at various points of the city soldiers fired on demonstrators. The most serious incident occurred on Znamenskij square. When the crowd refused to disperse, a company of the Volynskij guard regiment opened the fire and killed forty civilians on the spot. The news of the massacre provoked a mutiny in the Pavlovskij regiment in the same afternoon. The soldiers were no longer ready to proceed against unarmed citizens. Within two days the mutiny spread to the entire garrison that numbered no less than 160,000 men. The hunger revolt had turned into open rebellion. The mutinying soldiers demanded the abdication of the Tsar, among others because they regarded this as the only way of avoiding punishment for insubordination. But if the mutiny in the capital endured, the danger increased that the troops on the front would also disobey. Because he feared such a turn of events the Tsar abdicated on 2 March 1917. In his abdication manifesto the Tsar justified this step by the necessity to bring the war to a victorious end. The unrest on the interior menaced to thwart the war effort. “In these fateful days in Russian life we consider it as a bounden duty to facilitate to Our people the close unity of purpose and the concentration of all their forces in order to obtain victory as soon as possible (dlja skorejšago dostiženija pobedy). Therefore We have, in agreement with the State Duma, decided to renounce the throne of the Russian Empire and to abdicate the supreme power.”³⁵ Chief of general staff Alekseev and the commanding generals had urged the Tsar to abdicate. This explains why the abdication manifesto was addressed to the chief of staff of the armed forces and not, as one should imagine, to the Russian people at large or to the Duma and the Provisional Government. It had been drafted by the chief of the diplomatic chancellery at headquarters. The Tsar regarded the turmoil at Pet Ibid., 239.  Ibid., 276.  Manifest otrečenija Nikolaja II, in: P. E. Ščegolev, ed., Otrečenie Nikolaja II. Vospominanija očevidcev. Dokumenty, 2nd ed. (Leningrad 1927), new impr. (Moscow: Sov.Pisatel, 1990), 223.

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rograd in the first place as an interference with the direction of the war. By the manifesto he informed the army that he had done everything in his power to overcome the disturbance. To him the abdication was vital to secure the continuation of the war effort. Far from being the consequence of defeat, it was intended as a means to prosecute the war. But the unrest in the capital clearly was a consequence of the war, or, to be more precise, a consequence of the inability of the government to provide the population under war conditions with the most important products of daily need. Since the Tsar had neglected to admit representatives of the Duma into the government, the monarchy was bearing a large share of the responsibility for the food crisis. This neglect was all the more serious since the Tsar himself had lost contact to the political class and to the Russian people at large. In August 1915 he had decided to take upon himself in person the supreme command of the Russian forces. From then on he was staying most of the time at headquarters in Mogilev. Only rarely did he visit Petrograd, the seat of the government and the country’s capital.³⁶ In this way he not only permitted to Tsarina Alexandra, princess of Hessen-Darmstadt, and to the Siberian peasant Rasputin whom she had taken under her protection, an improper influence on the government, but also lost sight of the changing mood of the population.³⁷ Taking into consideration the insufficient preparation of the Russian economy, one is tempted to ask why in the summer of 1914 Russia had not tried harder to avoid going to war and why in the summer of 1916 the Tsar had not done everything to enter into peace negotiations. Russia has certainly not gone to war in order to strengthen the legitimacy of the monarchy by obtaining victories. But the developments of February 1917 show that the monarchy would not have survived defeat. The abdication of the Tsar was a desperate attempt to avoid defeat, in the hope of preserving the independence and the great power position of the country. For all the setbacks suffered since the outbreak of the war, from a military point of view until 1917 the Romanov monarchy had not proved unequal to its task. Its failure was rather political, and the Tsar’s abdication was not the consequence of military defeat, but of the obvious incapacity to terminate a war of such dimensions.

 Pipes, Revolution, 224‒26.  Ibid., 240.

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Symbolic Manifestations of the Prussian and German Military Monarchy The last German Emperor liked to present himself in military posture. He loved military language and sought to impress by an appearance of combative determination. But in reality he did not intend to base his authority on military prowess. The background of this attitude is more complex. William II was King of Prussia and German Emperor. The legitimacy of the King of Prussia was based on history, on dynastic tradition, and on divine right, as far as the divine was still believed at the close of the 19th century. Additional factors contributing to the acceptance of the monarchy were the excellent performance of the Prussian administration, the rule of law in government, and the constitution of 1850. The legitimacy of the German Emperor was national and, to judge from the attitude of William II, to a certain degree dependent on mass appeal. The double face of the Imperial monarchy was acutely analyzed by Friedrich Naumann in his book “Demokratie und Kaisertum”, published in 1900: “As King of Prussia” the Kaiser has “taken over the heritage of the ancient tradition, as Kaiser he is national Emperor, embodiment of the general will, personal leader from an old into a new era.”³⁸ Naumann recognized resemblances to the Napoleonic system, and he was not the only one to regard the Protestant Imperial dignity much more as a heritage of the Second French Empire than as a restoration of the old German Reich that had succumbed in 1806.³⁹ To the system of Napoleon III the German Empire resembled in the first place thanks to the combination of authoritarian state and universal suffrage, a combination that of necessity imparted to German politics a plebiscitary quality. The “heritage of the ancient tradition” that according to Naumann William II had taken over as King of Prussia, was the heritage of a military monarchy that had introduced constitutional government only forty years before his accession. At the center of its founding myth was placed the army that Frederick William I had created, and the military successes that Frederick II had achieved with it. This myth was confirmed by the victories over Denmark, Austria, and France in Bismarck’s wars of German unification, even if the army had thanks to the introduction of compulsory service meanwhile been transformed from a professional army into a people’s army. But even under the regime of compulsory service and after the introduction of the Prussian constitution of 1850 the King of Prussia  Friedrich Naumann, “Demokratie und Kaisertum,” in: idem, Politische Schriften, ed. Theodor Schieder, vol. 2: Schriften zur Verfassungspolitik (Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1964), 266.  Cf. Elisabeth Fehrenbach, Wandlungen des deutschen Kaisergedankens 1871‒1918 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1969), 55 and passim.

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had preserved the military commanding power. The oath of loyalty bound the soldiers in Prussia until 1918 exclusively to the monarch, not to the constitution.⁴⁰ The character of a military monarchy was bequeathed by Prussia to the Empire. In the middle of the World War Otto Hintze pointed out that Prussia and the Empire had remained a military monarchy, in spite of the constitution, and he continued: “If our adversaries aim at destroying Prussian militarism” they intend “to destroy in its heart the historical achievement of the Hohenzollern dynasty and in this way the foundation on which the power and the well-being of the German people are based today. Our militarism is a vital necessity.”⁴¹ In Hintze’s eyes the military striking power of the German Empire was indissolubly linked to the Hohenzollern monarchy. To him the German Imperial monarchy drew its legitimacy primarily from its military capacities. By symbolic action it took care that this relationship was imprinted on the public mind. An example is given by Anton von Werner’s painting of the Kaiser proclamation on 18 January 1871 at Versailles castle. On invitation of the crown prince the artist, “at his time the most prominent court-painter of the German Empire,” had attended at the proclamation.⁴² But the commission of the painting he received from the Grand-Duke of Baden. In 1877 it was given to Emperor William I on his 80th birthday as a donation of the German princes. It was to be hung in the White Hall of Berlin castle. In order to fit the predestined wall it was given a dimension of 4.34 times 7.32 meters.⁴³ During the Second World War it got lost and has been preserved in copies only. On a platform to the left King William I of Prussia, who was proclaimed Kaiser, stands in elevated position together with numerous dignitaries, easy to recognize, but not specifically highlighted. The largest space on the painting is reserved for a vast number of officers hailing the Kaiser. Therefore Thomas Gaethgens has interpreted the painting as a document of the brotherhood in arms of the German tribes, through which the victory against France and the foundation of the Reich had only become possible. The most important

 Wilhelm Deist, “Kaiser Wilhelm als Oberster Kriegsherr,” in: idem, Militär, Staat und Gesellschaft. Studien zur preußisch-deutschen Militärgeschichte (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1991), 4.  Otto Hintze, “Zum Hohenzollernjubiläum 1915.” Hohenzollern-Jahrbuch 19 (1915), III.  Thomas W. Gaethgens, “Anton von Werner und die französische Malerei,” in: Dominik Bartmann, ed., Anton von Werner. Geschichte in Bildern, 2nd ed. (Munich: Hirmer, 1997), 49.  Dominik Bartmann, “Der Maler der Kaiserproklamation,” in: idem, ed., Anton von Werner, 335, 340.

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occurrence on the painting thus seems to be the common acclamation.⁴⁴ At the suggestion of William I from the late seventies onward the baroque arsenal of Berlin was transformed into “a hall of fame for the Prussian army.”⁴⁵ Anton von Werner was commissioned to paint the proclamation of the Kaiser once more for that place. To fit the spatial conditions the new painting was given the size of approximately five times six meters. For this reason alone Werner was obliged to reduce the number of acclaiming officers. Besides, the painting was, in accordance with the program of the hall of fame, to convey a different message. The hall of fame was, as had already been criticized in the Chamber of deputies, a monument to Prussian particularism.⁴⁶ Accordingly the defeat of France in 1870 was interpreted, not as a triumph of the German nation at large, but as an event of Prussian history, or to be more precise, as a success of the reigning dynasty of Prussia. The painting of the Kaiser proclamation was inserted into a cycle of no less than four history images, devoted to outstanding events in the history of the Hohenzollern dynasty: apart from the Versailles proclamation, painted in 1883, the coronation of Frederick I at Königsberg in 1701, also painted by Anton von Werner (1887), the homage of the Silesian estates to Frederick II in 1741, painted by Wilhelm Camphausen (1882), and Frederick William III’s proclamation “An mein Volk” of 1813, painted by Georg Bleibtreu (1882).⁴⁷ The insertion of the Kaiser proclamation into this cycle was a deliberate symbolic action, just as the choice of January 18 for the public act at Versailles had been. January 18 was the day on which in 1701 Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg was crowned the first Prussian King. In other words, the proclamation of William as Kaiser coincided with an outstanding commemoration day of the Prussian monarchy. During the Second World War, both the painting at Berlin castle and the image in the arsenal have got lost. Instead, the modello that Werner had made for the painting in the arsenal has been preserved in a slightly revised version. The Kaiser had intended to present Bismarck with a smaller version of the painting on the chancellor’s 70th birthday on 1 April 1885. Since, however, there was not enough time to work out a new painting, Bis-

 Thomas W. Gaethgens, Anton von Werner. Die Proklamierung des Deutschen Kaiserreiches. Ein Historienbild im Wandel preußischer Politik (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1990), 43‒47, 52‒55.  Decree of William I of 22 March 1875, quoted from: Monika Arndt, Die “Ruhmeshalle” im Berliner Zeughaus. Eine Selbstdarstellung Preußens nach der Reichsgründung (Berlin: Mann, 1985), 144.  Arndt, “Ruhmeshalle,” 30.  Ibid., 52‒56.

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marck was presented the modello. Today it hangs in the Bismarck museum at Friedrichsruh. If the first version of Werner’s painting had sought to legitimize William I as creator of German unity, the second version hailed him as great King of Prussia. In both versions the elevation to Emperor is presented exclusively as a military achievement. The three versions of the Kaiser proclamation have that much in common that the originals were accessible only to a small fraction of the German nation. Since the public was not invited to see the paintings, they could not contribute to the national consensus and there is no use trying to explore their reception among the citizens. A different case is Sedan day, also a symbolic representation of the new Reich. On 2 September 1870 a French army under the command of Marshal Mac-Mahon capitulated near Sedan on the Meuse. Napoleon III was taken prisoner by the Prussians, and French resistance to the unification of the South-German states with the Confederation of Northern Germany was overcome. The proposal to initiate a national holiday in remembrance of this success was first voiced by citizens, in particular by liberal Protestants. Apart from the day of the capitulation at Sedan other dates were also discussed, for example January 18, day of the proclamation of the Emperor, and May 10, the day on which in 1871 the peace of Frankfurt was concluded. At last September 2 was given precedence. The Kaiser’s decision to unveil Victory Column at Berlin on Sedan Memorial Day in 1873, had contributed to this result.⁴⁸ The Prussian government tolerated the Sedan celebrations, but at first did not decree them.⁴⁹ In 1873 the Prussian ministry of education at least ordained that the day be celebrated in schools and at the universities.⁵⁰ During the following years Sedan Day was given an increasingly official character, and in the programs of the celebrations the military elements gradually moved to the foreground. A special touch was imparted to Sedan Day in 1883 at Berlin, when the Sedan Panorama at Alexanderplatz station was inaugurated in the presence of the Kaiser and many highly placed personalities, among them General Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke. The Panorama was a circular image, 15 to 115 meters, of the battle of Sedan. The painting had also been commissioned to Anton von Werner. A corporation established for the purpose ordered a circular twostoried building to be constructed for the Panorama. The corporation was in the hands of a Belgian enterprise, the “Société anonyme des Panoramas de Ber Jakob Vogel, Nationen im Gleichschritt. Der Kult der “Nation in Waffen” in Deutschland und Frankreich, 1871‒1914 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997), 145.  Cf. the ordinance of 3. 8.1873, in: Fritz Schellack, Nationalfeiertage in Deutschland von 1871 bis 1945 (Frankfurt: Lang, 1990), 93, n. 1.  Vogel, Nationen, 145.

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lin.”⁵¹ The patriotic undertaking was thus directed by foreign capital interests and designed for making profit. The Kaiser stayed about one and a half hours at the inauguration ceremony. On the way out he remarked to Werner: “By your masterpiece you have acquainted the people with the memory of the day of Sedan and promoted the comprehension of the event. May my fullest respect be the greatest recompense for you.”⁵² During two decades the painting of the battle attracted numerous visitors. Later on interest declined, and in 1904 the circular building was pulled down. On the order of the Kaiser the Prussian general staff took possession of the painting. The last news of its whereabouts dates from 1930.⁵³ The suggestion to establish Sedan day as a national holiday had come from the citizens. Nevertheless the monarchy proved unable to take advantage of the day, the only national holiday of the Reich, for the confirmation of its legitimacy in all sections of society. Beginning in the early seventies resistance to Sedan day originated in particular from Social Democracy and parts of the Catholic Church. On 19 August 1874 Bishop Wilhelm Emanuel Ketteler forbad the clergy of his diocese to participate in the ceremonies of Sedan day with services and bell-ringing. In Ketteler’s view Sedan day was less a true national holiday than a feast of the party that supported Bismarck in his struggle against the Catholic Church. In his eyes this party celebrated “on Sedan day not so much the victory of the German people over France,” but their victories “over the Catholic Church.”⁵⁴ The Social Democrats opposed the Sedan celebration, because they regarded it as a glorification of militarism. Therefore in a toast at the commemorative banquet at Berlin Castle William II used the 25th anniversary of the French capitulation at Sedan to attack Social Democracy: “But the great and elevated festivity is vitiated by a tone that really does not belong here, a gang of men, not worth bearing the name of Germans, dares abuse the German people, dares draw in the dust the hallowed person of the universally revered and immortalized Kaiser. May the entire nation find the force in themselves to repudiate these unheard-of attacks!”⁵⁵ Peter-Christian Witt strikingly writes: “Sedan Day

 Alexandra Baldus, Das Sedanpanorama von Anton von Werner. Ein wilhelminisches Schlachtenpanorama im Kontext der Historienmalerei (Phil. Diss. Bonn, 2001), 178‒79.  Quoted from: Anton von Werner, Erlebnisse und Eindrücke 1870‒1890 (Berlin: Mittler, 1913), 375‒76.  Baldus, Sedanpanorama, 237, 240.  Ausschreiben des Bischofs von Mainz, die Sedanfeier betreffend, in: Theodor Schieder, Das deutsche Kaiserreich von 1871 als Nationalstaat (Cologne and Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1961), 152; Schellack, Nationalfeiertage, 88.  Quoted from Schultheß’ Europäischer Geschichtskalender 36 (1895) (Munich: Beck, 1896), 178.

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was a festival of the people – but always of only part of the people, because on Sedan Day it was also customary mercilessly to blow for battle against those who were not ready unconditionally to adjust to the predominating political and social order of the Empire.”⁵⁶ The reservations among Catholics against the Sedan festivities and the Social Democrats’ refusal to participate reveal the limits of any attempt to base the legitimacy of monarchy in the Empire on success in war. The decline of interest in the Sedan Panorama at Berlin indicates that the memory of the German-French War was gradually fading away after the turn of the century. By consequence, it became more difficult to use the German successes in this war for the confirmation of the legitimacy of the Hohenzollern monarchy.

The Overthrow of William II Like his grandfather William II was Oberster Kriegsherr, supreme commander of the entire military forces of the Reich. At the latest since August 1916 the military command and increasingly political leadership as well lay in the hands of the Oberste Heeresleitung (Supreme Army Command), or to be precise, in the hands of General Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff. The Kaiser only rarely influenced the actual direction of the war. The constitution of the Empire did not permit the civil government to participate in military decision-making. The resumption of unlimited submarine warfare in January 1917 was pushed through by Hindenburg and Ludendorff against the advice of the responsible Imperial Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg. By consequence in April the United States lived up to their announcement and entered the World War. During the summer of 1918 an increasing number of American troops were arriving on the Western front. After 8 August, the “black Friday” of the German army, when British tank units broke through the German lines near Amiens, there was no chance left to Germany to win the war. But the Supreme Army Command would not draw immediate consequences. Only on 29 September they informed the Kaiser of the hopelessness of the situation and demanded without delay to enter upon armistice negotiations. Therefore Imperial Chancellor Max von Baden who had been appointed only two days earlier, on 5 October sent a request of armistice negotiations to the American president Woodrow Wilson referring to Wilson’s message to Congress

 Peter-Christian Witt, “Die Gründung des Deutschen Reiches von 1871 oder dreimal Kaiserfest,” in: Uwe Schultz, ed., Das Fest. Eine Kulturgeschichte von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: Beck, 1988), 315.

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of 8 January in which the president had enunciated the American peace conditions in fourteen points.⁵⁷ By the request for armistice negotiations the Imperial Chancellor unintentionally unleashed a debate on the necessity for William II to abdicate, because in reply to the German note of 14 October the American president declared that the allies were not prepared to negotiate with a government that had not originated in the will of the nation.⁵⁸ There followed an extended exchange of diplomatic notes between the American and the German governments. In the third note of 23 October the American Secretary of State Robert Lansing demanded the disempowerment of the German Emperor. On the actual situation in Germany the note expressed itself as follows: “It is evident that the German people have no means of commanding the acquiescence of the military authorities of the Empire in the popular will” and “that the power of the King of Prussia to control the policy of the Empire is unimpaired.”⁵⁹ With this reaction the American government pursued the same course as Tsar Alexander I had done when after the entrance of the coalition into Paris on 31 March 1814 he publicly announced that there would be no further negotiations with Napoleon or a member of his family. In their answer the German government pointed out that the transformation of the Imperial constitution into a parliamentary regime was already on the way. Therefore the impending negotiations were carried through by a government that was based on the confidence of the democratically elected Reichstag. But since at the moment it was hard to foresee whether Wilson would content himself with the German note, William II increasingly appeared, like Napoleon in April 1814, to be an impediment to peace. At the least the impression imposed itself that Germany might obtain a better peace, if the Kaiser abdicated. But his abdication was not only demanded in order to acquiesce in the conditions of the enemy. As a matter of fact, the Kaiser’s reputation had been declining for a long time already. The conviction was spreading that he had to take upon himself the consequences of the defeat. On 6 November the Frankfurter Zeitung wrote, “the Kaiser himself has made of himself the symbol of the policies that have led Germany into the abyss; […] and so dignity demands that he resign

 Woodrow Wilson, “An Address to a Joint Session of Congress, 8 January 1918,” in: [idem], The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, edited by Arthur S. Link, vol. 45 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 534‒39.  The Secretary of State to the Swiss Chargé (Oederlin), 14 October 1918, in: Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States 1918, Supplement 1: The World War, vol. 1 (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1933), 358‒59.  The Secretary of State to the Swiss Chargé (Oederlin), 23 October 1918, ibid., 382.

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if this terrible policy is breaking down.”⁶⁰ At that time Wilson’s demand already lay weeks back, but William II so far had not made preparations yet to take this step long overdue. On 29 October he had withdrawn from any further debate on the question by departing head over heels and without informing the Chancellor beforehand, from Berlin to German headquarters at Spa in Belgium. At headquarters he was surrounded exclusively by his military advisers and could communicate with the Chancellor by telegraph and telephone only. The debate on the necessity of the Kaiser’s abdication was for a long time centering on his person only, not on the dynasty or the monarchy at large. The above quoted demand of the Frankfurter Zeitung of 6 November emphasized William’s personal responsibility and did not call into question the future of the monarchy as such. But the connection between the person of the Kaiser and the form of government was increasingly established in that William’s personal renunciation was declared unavoidable if the dynasty and the monarchy should last. On 4 November 1918 the mutinying sailors of the Third Squadron assumed control of the Imperial Military Harbor at Kiel. The crews rebelled against the intention of the naval command at a time when the war was already lost, to depart with the battle fleet for a “fatal voyage,” as they called it, against England.⁶¹ Before long the mutiny extended to the whole country. After a few days many German cities were in the hands of the rebels. Soon the revolution would reach Berlin. In this situation the crisis of the Emperor came to a head at Spa and in Berlin. Because of the rapid spread of the revolution the leaders of the Social Democrats Friedrich Ebert and Philipp Scheidemann on 7 November directed an ultimatum to the Imperial Chancellor and demanded the abdication of the Kaiser and the crown prince by noon of 8 November. If by this hour “no satisfactory answer” should have been given, the Social Democrat ministers would leave the government.⁶² Later on Ebert postponed the deadline to the morning of 9 November.⁶³ The right wing Social Democrats were afraid to lose every influence on the masses, if the Imperial government of which they formed part, did not heed the demands of the insurgents. Because of the ultimatum the Imperial Chancel-

 Frankfurter Zeitung, 6 November 1918 (no. 308): “Die Kaiserfrage.”  Wilhelm Deist, “Die Politik der Seekriegsleitung und die Rebellion der Flotte Ende Oktober 1918,” Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 14 (1966), 355.  Erich Matthias and Rudolf Morsey, eds., Die Regierung des Prinzen Max von Baden (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1962), 577.  Prinz Max von Baden, Erinnerungen und Dokumente, revised edition by Golo Mann and Andreas Burckhardt (Stuttgart: Klett, 1968), 586.

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lor from now on was feverishly trying to persuade the Kaiser who stayed at Spa, to resign the throne. At Spa William had in the morning of 8 November resolved personally to lead the army back into the Reich and quell the rebellion. The First General Quarter Master Wilhelm Groener was ordered to prepare the operation. On the same evening, however, Groener, Hindenburg, and Colonel-General von Plessen concluded that the project was impracticable. On the following day a group of frontier officers who had been expressly ordered to come to Spa, confirmed that the troops would scarcely have followed such an order. Apart from that, the army could not at the same time hold the line at the front and fight the revolution at home. William II faced the same situation as Napoleon on 4 April 1814 when the marshals of France refused to take the capital back by force. This refusal had induced Napoleon to draft his first declaration of abdication. Kaiser William, however, was still seeking for ways out. Probably he was not instructed of Groener’s proposal to seek death in battle at the front and thus to save the reputation of the monarchy. The idea was rejected by his military surroundings if only because the German armistice commission had crossed the frontier on 9 November already.⁶⁴ Therefore a battle, into which one could have sent the Kaiser, was no longer to be expected. Besides, it could not be excluded that the Kaiser, instead of being killed, would be taken prisoner. At the suggestion of General Count von der Schulenburg William at last declared that he was prepared for a partial abdication. He would resign as German Kaiser, but keep the Prussian crown.⁶⁵ In the morning of 9 November at general headquarters there was not only lacking the time but also the competence to judge the legal consequences of such a separation of functions. The proposal brings to mind Friedrich Naumann’s idea of the twofold legitimacy of the German Kaiser, of a historical Prussian and a modern Imperial legitimacy. William appears to have convinced himself that Prussia could remain a great power without possessing the Imperial crown. Perhaps he also thought that the Empire, not Prussia had been at war, and that it was sufficient if only the Kaiser and not the King of Prussia take upon himself the responsibility for the defeat. To resign the throne of Prussia throne seems to have been more difficult for William II because other than the fifty years old Reich the Prussian crown was loaded with a tradition of centuries. A few days earlier William had declared to the Prussian minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Arnold Drews,

 Kuno Graf Westarp, Das Ende der Monarchie am 9. November 1918, edited by Werner Conze (Berlin: Helmut Rauschenbusch Verlag, 1952), 146‒48.  Ibid., 74, 88‒89.

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that abdication would be incompatible “with his duties as Prussian King and successor of Frederick the Great towards God, the people, and his conscience.”⁶⁶ From a political point of view the idea of separating the two crowns in the actual situation was totally beside the mark. If the revolutionaries demanded the abdication of the Emperor, they did not distinguish between his Prussian and his Imperial crown. As far as they demanded a republic, the distinction was by itself irrelevant. The King of Bavaria and the Duke of Brunswick had been forced to abdicate on the previous day already. In the morning of 9 November undersecretary of state Wahnschaffe on the order of the Imperial Chancellor called several times at headquarters and insisted that the Kaiser take a decision.⁶⁷ When by noontime no communication of the kind had arrived from Spa, the Chancellor instructed Wolff’s telegraph agency on his own to make public that William II had abdicated as German Emperor and as King of Prussia. His hope by this step to save the monarchy in the last moment soon turned out futile. At two o’clock in the afternoon from a balcony of the Imperial Diet Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed the republic. By the proclamation he preceded Karl Liebknecht, leader of the Independent Social Democratic Party, by a few hours only. That it has come to this cannot be explained by the defeat alone. On 11 October an acute observer such as Max Weber was still certain that “the position of the dynasty” will be “preserved,” if the Emperor would, “without being urged from outside,” withdraw “now.”⁶⁸ Even ten days later the preservation of the dynasty still appeared possible to him, provided the Kaiser abdicated on his own initiative: “It is unbelievable that the monarch has not by himself immediately taken the course that dignity demanded. Everything would be better. It is to be hoped that it will still happen before the last minute.”⁶⁹ On 30 October Kurt Hahn, confidant of the Chancellor and collaborator in the Imperial Chancellery, still believed that the dynasty could “be saved, if the Kaiser’s abdication that was bound to happen anyway by natural necessity,” occurred “early enough and in such forms as to make the people feel grateful to him.”⁷⁰ As late as 7 November, after the revolution had broken out at Kiel, Philipp Scheidemann still had not given up hope. But at the session of the war cabinet he warned: “If abdication does not come now, before long the question will be posed: republic or

 Matthias and Morsey, eds., Regierung, 461.  Ibid., 614.  Max Weber to Gerhart von Schulze-Gaevernitz, 11 October 1918, in: idem, Schriften (1921), 477.  Max Weber to Karl Löwenstein, 21 October 1918, ibid., 480.  Kurt Hahn to Imperial Chancellor Prince Max von Baden, 30 October 1918, in: Matthias and Morsey, eds., Regierung, 427.

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monarchy.”⁷¹ As late as 8 November the members of the Interparty Committee (Interfraktioneller Ausschuss) hoped that by his immediate abdication the Kaiser would still save the monarchy.⁷² These are judgments to be taken seriously, and they lead to the conclusion that the monarchy has broken down because William II did not realize or refused to realize that he had to make the personal sacrifice in order to preserve the dynasty.⁷³ The Chancellor’s unauthorized communication did not influence developments. If on 9 November Max von Baden had waited for the Kaiser’s decision, the republic would still have been proclaimed, all the more so, since until the last moment William had only agreed to resign the Imperial, not the Prussian crown.⁷⁴ Still, it needs explaining why the Kaiser lacked insight. That he lacked political judgment is no surprise if one looks back on his performance during three decades at the helm of the Reich. But it is striking to see that from among his immediate surroundings nobody had the courage in time and with appropriate emphasis to open his eyes. As early as 12 October Max Weber had written to Friedrich Naumann in despair: “Is there no partisan of monarchical institutions who explains to the monarch what is demanded from him?”⁷⁵ And on 18 October he added in a further letter to Naumann: “The step can and must be taken by the Prince-Chancellor, by nobody else, but if possible after an understanding with the military leaders and as soon as at all possible.”⁷⁶ It seems that the Chancellor did not regard the immediate and unequivocal information, Weber demanded, as his duty. On the American note of 23 October he writes in his memoirs: “I had well informed the Kaiser on the unfavorable interpretation of the Wilson note, but carefully avoided to advise him.”⁷⁷ When on 31 October in the war cabinet the problem of abdication was discussed, the Imperial Chancellor read a declaration according to which he had given to “confidants of His Majesty” material with a view “to enabling them to inform His Majesty about the situation both within the country and abroad.”⁷⁸ This

 Session of the War Cabinet, 7 November 1918, ibid., 577.  Session of the Interparty Committee, 8 November 1918, ibid., 594‒95.  The same conclusion in: Wolfram Pyta, “Die Kunst des rechtzeitigen Thronverzichts. Neue Einsichten zur Überlebenschance der parlamentarischen Monarchie in Deutschland im Herbst 1918,” in: Patrick Merziger, Rudolf Söber, Esther-Beate Körber, and Jürgen Michael Schulz, eds., Geschichte, Öffentlichkeit, Kommunikation. Festschrift für Bernd Sösemann zum 65. Geburtstag (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2010), 364.  Westarp, Ende, 70.  Max Weber to Friedrich Naumann, 12. October 1918, in: idem, Schriften (1921), 477.  Max Weber to Friedrich Naumann, 18 October 1918, ibid., 479.  Prinz Max von Baden, Erinnerungen, 487.  Session of the War Cabinet, 31 October 1918, in: Matthias and Morsey, eds., Regierung, 438.

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communication leaves no doubt that the Chancellor even up to this moment had not himself talked to the Kaiser about abdication. Perhaps he held himself back, because the Kaiser suspected him of pursuing the abdication in the hope of securing for himself the regency for the 11 year old son of the crown prince in the Empire.⁷⁹ Because of his prominent position at the Western Front during the battle of Verdun in 1916 and because of his doubtful moral conduct it appeared unthinkable that the crown prince himself would follow William II. In vain Prince Max endeavored to persuade a member prince of the Reich to drive the inevitability of abdication home to the Kaiser who avoided a personal discussion with the Imperial Chancellor by departing for headquarters on 29 October. The leading generals, who were assembled there, regarded it still less than the Chancellor as their duty to provide the Kaiser with political advice, much less to urge his abdication. The report of the Prussian minister of the Interior, Drews, provides an impression of how difficult it was to make oneself heard by the Kaiser. Drews had come to inform him on German public opinion about abdication. He began his report in the garden of Villa Fraineuse by declaring that he would have to pronounce things “that a Prussian subject and official under normal conditions was not permitted to say.” Upon this the Kaiser had interrupted him sharply: “You have sworn me the oath of allegiance and should have unconditionally refused to accept such a commission.”⁸⁰ In such a tone not even Napoleon had rejected the warnings of his Foreign Minister Caulaincourt in February and March 1814.⁸¹ He at last had only refrained from reading them. Kaiser William for his part contented himself with a warning shot, too. He listened to Drews’ report, but insisted on his point of view. Afterwards Hindenburg confirmed the Kaiser in his rigidity. The Supreme War Lord was to stay under all circumstances: “I and every other officer would be scoundrels, if we would now leave him in the lurch.”⁸² Groener shared this view.⁸³ In a note of 16 April 1919 Hindenburg asserted that on 9 November during the report on the military situation neither he nor Groener had recommended abdication. Besides, during the conversations at headquarters he had “fully shared” the Kaiser’s view that neither the Chancellor nor the Imperial Diet were entitled to approach the King of Prussia with a suggestion of this kind.”⁸⁴ General Staff officer Alfred Niemann

 Cf. Pyta, “Kunst,” 373.  Minister Drews on his reception by the Kaiser at Spa on 1 November 1918, in: Matthias and Morsey, eds., Regierung, 462.  Sellin, Revolution, 115‒18.  Quoted from Matthias and Morsey, eds., Regierung, 462.  Westarp, Ende, 37‒38.  Ibid., 52.

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reports how the Kaiser “with shining eyes” informed him of the discussion: “You should have seen how the Field Marshall shielded his Kaiser!” Groener had “duly explained” to Drews “from where the chief danger for the fatherland was menacing: not from the superiority of our enemies, but from disintegration and rebellion at home.”⁸⁵ The Kaiser’s flight to Holland stands in strange contrast to the resolution he had expressed only one day before, namely to subdue the revolution by military means. It was already his second flight from responsibility within ten days. On 29 October by his departure for Spa he had evaded the confrontation with the Imperial government and the public. On 9 November he withdrew from the duty to answer for his conduct in the face of the German nation. According to judicious contemporaries the monarchy in Germany had had a good chance to survive the defeat in the First World War. There is every indication that only the refusal of William II of his own free will and in time to draw the personal consequences of the defeat, made the fall of the monarchy in November 1918 inevitable.

The Renunciation of Charles I On 4 October 1918 the government of Austria-Hungary as well sent a request for armistice to the American president. Like the German government it referred to Wilson’s message to Congress of 8 January in which Wilson had in fourteen points presented the American peace proposals. The tenth point dealt with Austria-Hungary in particular: “The peoples of Austria-Hungary whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development.”⁸⁶ Wilson wished to preserve the integrity of the Danube monarchy, under the condition that under the common roof to the single nationalities was accorded the right of self-determination. Therefore the monarchy’s request for an armistice obliged the government to make preparations for a fundamental reform of the political structure. Before, all endeavors to comply with the quest of the various nationalities for autonomy had failed, because the geographical distribution of the nationalities did not correspond to the historical boundaries of the single provinces. Additional difficul Alfred Niemann, Kaiser und Revolution, improved edition (Berlin: Verlag für Kulturpolitik, 1928), 126.  Wilson, Address, 8.1.1918, in: [idem], Papers, vol. 45, 537: “The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development.”

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ties resulted from the fact that the areas of settlement of the various nationalities were rarely closed and not neatly separated from each other because of the extended zones of mixed settlement. The historical province of Bohemia that belonged to the Austrian part of the Empire, may exemplify these difficulties. The majority of the population was of Czech nationality. The German minority lived on the edge of the Bohemian basin and in Prague, the capital. Between the Czech and the German areas of settlement there was a more or less extended strip of mixed settlement. The tenth point of Wilson’s Fourteen Points was intended as an appeal to the Austrian government to accord national self-determination to the Czechs. The Czechs, however, mistook self-determination of their nationality for autonomy of historical Bohemia. It was an open question, how this kind of autonomy could be made compatible with German self-determination within the province. The Austrian Prime Minister Hussarek was working on a plan of structural reform of the monarchy that took account of these difficulties. He proposed to preserve the historical provinces and accord national autonomy within them. The project was still under discussion when on 16 October 1918 Emperor Charles proclaimed the famous peoples manifesto (Völkermanifest).⁸⁷ Other than Hussarek’s proposals the manifesto aimed at a federal structure, composed not of the historical provinces but of true nation states. Accordingly, the Emperor invited the nationalities “on whose right to self-determination the new Empire would be based,” to form “national councils” from “the deputies that each nation had sent into the Imperial Council (Reichsrat)”. The national councils would then be asked to concur with each other and with the government on the next steps to be taken. The manifesto was directed at the peoples of the Austrian or Cisleithan part of the Empire only, whereas to the “lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown” integrity was expressly promised. This half-measure is explained by the hurry in which the manifesto had to be elaborated and published. For two reasons there was no time to lose. On the one hand, Emperor Charles wanted to show to the American president his readiness to accept the terms of the tenth point, before Wilson would have decided on the Austro-Hungarian ceasefire request. On the other hand, if there was still a chance to win American support for the preservation of the Danube monarchy, it was high time to take the necessary steps, because its disintegration was already in full swing, actively assisted by the Entente.

 On the making of the manifesto cf. Helmut Rumpler, Das Völkermanifest Kaiser Karls vom 16. Oktober 1918. Letzter Versuch zur Rettung des Habsburgerreiches (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1966); the text of the manifesto ibid., 88‒91.

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The note of 19 October by which the American government answered Austria-Hungary’s ceasefire request, revealed at one stroke that the peoples’ manifesto had failed to make the expected impression on the allies. Foreign Secretary Robert Lansing declared that since the President’s message to Congress of January developments had taken place by which the peace conditions proclaimed in it had in part become obsolete. In the meantime the allies had recognized the Czech national council as a belligerent power on the side of the Entente. Therefore the political future of the Czechs and the Slovaks no longer depended on the United States. The American government likewise recognized the national aspirations of the Southern Slavs for independence.⁸⁸ To the Southern Slavs within the Monarchy belonged the Slovenes, the Croats and the Serbs. Whereas most of the Slovenes lived in the Cisleithan part of the Empire, the Kingdoms of Croatia and Slavonia belonged to the Hungarian part.⁸⁹ Only the Kingdom of Dalmatia that was predominantly inhabited by Croats and Serbs, belonged to Cisleithania. Bosnia and Herzegovina were administrated by both parts of the Empire in the form of a condominium. To the Hungarian part of the Empire also belonged the Slovaks. However, the Kaiser’s manifesto had not promised national self-determination to the peoples of that part. Instead, it had expressly recognized the integrity of the provinces of the Hungarian Crown. For these provinces the manifesto thus did not offer solutions that could compete with the proposals of the Entente. Charles’ hopes for the support of the United States for the preservation of the multi-national Empire had turned out an illusion. Instead, the peoples manifesto further promoted its disintegration. Since the borders of the national areas of settlement did not, as has been shown, coincide with the borders of the historical provinces (Länder), the invitation to form national councils of necessity provoked the disintegration of the entire political structure of the Habsburg Empire. In its Cisleithan part the most important nationalities, as far as numbers are concerned, were the Germans, the Czechs, the Poles, and the Italians. While the Czechs and the Slovaks were already founding their own independent State, the Poles aspired at entering into the new Polish State and the Italians at entering into the Kingdom of Italy. Since the Slovenes and the Croats wished to unite with the Serbs in a South Slav Kingdom, the Germans of Cisleithania were left alone. In this situation the German deputies of the Cisleithan Imperial Council  The Secretary of State to the Swedish Minister (Ekengren), 19 October 1918, in: Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States 1918, Supplement 1: The World War, vol. 1 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1933), 368.  The Slovenes were distributed among several crown-lands. In Crain they attained 90 %, in Styria little less than 30 % and in Carinthia more than 20 % of the population.

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also made common cause and on 21 October constituted themselves in the Lower Austrian House of Parliament (Niederösterreichisches Landhaus) as a German national council or rather as a provisional Austro-German National Assembly. On their first meeting the assembly elected an executive council of 20 members by the name of a State Council (Staatsrat) and voted the foundation of a “German-Austrian State” (“eines deutsch-österreichischen Staates”). For this State they claimed “authority over the entire area settled by Germans, including the Sudetenländer, the German-speaking parts of Bohemia.”⁹⁰ The deputy Karl Renner characterized the situation resulting from the peoples manifesto and the subsequent formation of the provisional German-Austrian National Assembly at the meeting of 30 October, as follows: “Over night we have suddenly become a nation without a State. Our former fellow-citizens have ceased to be such; those who were the administrative agencies over Germans, Czechs, Poles, and other nations, are no longer able to exercise their legal mandate over these nations.”⁹¹ At this point Renner did not expressly mention the monarchy, but if the Austrian Germans have over night become a nation without a State, they have also become a nation without an Emperor. Therefore they were obliged to take a decision not only on their future form of government, but, in case they voted again in favor of monarchy, also on their future dynasty.⁹² According to Renner’s analysis the Emperor had suspended his rule over the nations of the Cisleithan part of the Empire and had placed his future as a monarch into their hands. Originally, the Provisional National Assembly of the Germans of Austria had intended to leave this decision up to a constituent assembly elected for the purpose, but circumstances demanded a decision only three weeks after the Provisional Assembly had started deliberations. On 12 November the Assembly voted for the foundation of the Republic of Deutschösterreich and recommended its incorporation into the German Republic that had been proclaimed at Berlin only three days before. Both decisions were taken unanimously.⁹³ On the previous day Emperor Charles had signed a declaration by which he  Stenographisches Protokoll der konstituierenden Sitzung der Nationalversammlung der deutschen Abgeordneten, 21 October 1918, 5.  Stenographische Protokolle der Nationalversammlung, 2nd meeting, 30 October 1918, 31.  Speech of the deputy Karl Hermann Wolf, ibid., 29.  Stenographische Protokolle, 3rd session, 12 November 1918, 68; the law on the form of government in German Austria in: Gertrude Enderle-Burcel, Hanns Haas, and Peter Mähner, eds., Der österreichische Staatsrat (Vienna: Verl. Österreich, 2008), 363, n. 19: “Artikel 1: Deutschösterreich ist eine demokratische Republik. Alle öffentlichen Gewalten werden vom Volke eingesetzt (German Austria is a democratic Republic. All public powers are authorized by the people). Artikel 2: Deutschösterreich ist ein Bestandteil der Deutschen Republik (German Austria forms part of the German Republic). […]”.

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promised to recognize in advance “the decision German Austria would take regarding their future form of government.” The declaration proceeded: “The people have through their representatives taken over the government. I am completely renouncing participation in public affairs. At the same time, I am dismissing my Austrian government.”⁹⁴ The declaration was the result of the deliberations of several politicians of German nationality exclusively, among them Prime Minister Heinrich Lammasch, Minister of Finance Josef Redlich, and State Chancellor Karl Renner. This circumstance may explain why it refers to the decision of German Austria only and not to the decisions of the other nationalities of the Empire and why it cannot be construed as a declaration of abdication. Nevertheless, the Emperor announces the dismissal of the government of Cisleithania, a measure that was to have repercussions in other provinces of this part of the Empire as well, even if the monarchy had meanwhile come to exist all but nominally in these provinces. At last, during the night of 10th November, the Austrian Council of Ministers, also an organ of Cisleithania alone, had discussed the draft of the declaration, before it was to be presented to the Emperor for the signature on the following day.⁹⁵ But even with respect to Deutschösterreich, renouncing participation in government did not equal abdication, all the more so since in the declaration nothing was said about the consequences for Charles’ offspring. Perhaps the determination of the future form of government should be left up to the constituent national assembly to meet in January and the declaration had been extorted from Charles by the assurance that nothing would be prejudiced concerning the future of the monarchy, if only the Emperor renounced actual participation in government. Anyhow it is striking that no time limit was attached to the renunciation. It is likely that the Emperor was urged to issue the declaration in order to spare the provisional National Assembly the embarrassment of deposing him. The hypothesis is corroborated by a look at the making of the declaration. The decision to urge the Kaiser to renunciation was taken on 9 November only, after the fall of the Hohenzollern Monarchy had been known in Vienna.⁹⁶ From the moment that Germany had become a republic, the Germans of Austria could be integrated into the German Reich only on the condition that they abolished monarchy as well. But the authors of the declaration of renunciation were also motivated by the apprehension that on 11 November, a Monday, by imitating

 Quoted from Hanns Haas, “Historische Einleitung,” ibid., LX.  Fritz Fellner, ed., Schicksalsjahre Österreichs 1908‒1919. Das politische Tagebuch Josef Redlichs, vol. 2 (Graz: Böhlau, 1954), 12 November 1918, 317.  Ibid., 9 November 1918, 316.

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the revolution in Germany “the “street” would proclaim the republic, or the “Red Guard” would march to Schönbrunn and force the Kaiser to abdicate.”⁹⁷ Thus the renunciation of the Kaiser was also meant to prevent social upheaval. As Ludwig Freiherr von Flotow, director of the Ministry of the Exterior, reports in his memoirs, in the evening of 10 November Karl Renner and Karl Seitz, president of the provisional National Assembly, appeared before Prime Minister Lammasch “with shaking knees” and declared: “If the Kaiser does not cede, he and his family are lost. In this case the people can no longer be restrained. They will take Schönbrunn by storm.”⁹⁸ On the next day Renner repeated this position before the Council of State: “In Germany the two wings of Social Democracy, the right wing and the left one, have united and taken up government together. These events will have the consequence for us that the entire proletariat will unanimously demand that we enter upon the same policy. Our position is menaced to the utmost.”⁹⁹ On 13 November 1918 under the name of King Charles IV the monarch signed an almost identical document for the Hungarian part of the Empire. This did not prevent him in 1921 to try two times without success from his exile in Switzerland to return on the Hungarian throne.¹⁰⁰ The attempts confirm the supposition that he had indeed regarded his two declarations of renunciation not as an abdication, but as a provisional abstention from exercising the government. This is also made likely by Ludwig von Flotow’s report of a conversation with the Emperor on 12 November at noontime. The Emperor had explained that he had signed the declaration of renunciation “only under compulsion” and “could therefore not recognize the newly created legal situation as permanent”.¹⁰¹ It should not be overlooked, however, that on account of the political developments since October the two parts of the Empire were in an entirely different position from a constitutional point of view. Cisleithan Austria had disintegrated, but Deutschösterreich was a new state. A simple resumption of government by the former Emperor was excluded because the state he had once governed, no

 Ibid., 12 November 1918, 317.  Erwin Matsch, ed., November 1918 auf dem Ballhausplatz. Erinnerungen Ludwigs Freiherrn von Flotow, des letzten Chefs des österreichisch-ungarischen auswärtigen Dienstes 1895‒1920, (Vienna: Böhlau, 1982) 331.  Enderle-Burcel et al., Staatsrat, 11.11.1918, 348.  István Szabó, “Die Abdankung König Karls IV. von Ungarn 1918,” in: Richter and Dirbach, Thronverzicht, 148‒49.  Matsch, November 1918, 332.

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longer existed.¹⁰² Hungary had proclaimed the republic on 16 November 1918, but preserved its legal continuity as a State. In 1920 by the article of law no. 1 all “the revolutionary, unconstitutional decisions taken since 1918 and aiming at the abolition of the Kingdom, were annulled.”¹⁰³ Thus, the monarchy had formally been restored and Charles’ claim to again be recognized as King of Hungary, which he raised in the following year, appears plausible. As to the causes of the fall of the monarchy in the Habsburg Empire, there is no reason to suppose that the Emperor had lost his legitimacy in consequence of the defeat. But the defeat and the peace terms that the Entente had imposed, had brought those forces to the fore that long before the outbreak of the war had aspired at the dissolution of the multi-national state. If the monarchy had in time granted autonomy to the single nationalities without endangering the future of the monarchy as a whole, the development would have gone in a different direction. Perhaps under these circumstances the World War would not have taken place at all, because Vienna’s harsh reaction to the murder of Sarajevo, the inacceptable ultimatum directed at Serbia, had in itself been a consequence of the unresolved nationalities problem. The decision of the provisional GermanAustrian National Assembly to abolish monarchy is explained by the proclamation of the republic in Berlin and by the wish of the Austrian Germans, after the fall of the multi-national state to be united with the German Reich. The age of absolutism was also the age of the military monarchy in Europe. Rulers such as Louis XIV of France, Charles XII of Sweden, Peter I of Russia, and Frederick II of Prussia created for themselves huge military machines in order to round off their territories, to consolidate their governments, and to win fame in battle. Napoleon brought this policy to such a perfection that after his fall in Europe the desire for repose was greater than the passion for glory. Benjamin Constant explained Napoleon’s bellicosity by the need to justify his usurpation. From this he concluded that only usurpers still waged war, whereas monarchs from old families were certain of their legitimacy and could do without military success. To examine this hypothesis, analyzing defeats may prove helpful. If the legitimacy of a ruler did not depend on military success, he had no reason to fear for his throne if he was beaten in battle. In reality, in the age of revolution not only the two French Emperors who had come to power by coups d’état lost their thrones after defeat, but also the dynastic rulers of Russia,  Wilhelm Brauneder, “‘Ein Kaiser abdiziert doch nicht bloss zum Scheine!’ Der Verzicht Kaiser Karls am 11. November 1918”, in: Richter und Dirbach, Thronverzicht, 135.  Regierungsverordnung No. 2394/1920 of 18 March 1920, quoted from Szabó, Abdankung, 144.

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Germany, and Austria-Hungary. Whereas this identity of destinies clearly argues against Constant’s thesis, a closer look will show that the fall of none of the two French Emperors may simply be explained by the relationship between usurpation and military failure. On the other hand there is good reason to suppose that the three dynastic Emperors could have preserved their thrones in 1917 and 1918 if they had timely adapted their rule to the developments in a changing society and acted more prudently during the crisis. In the case of William II way into November 1918 the loss of legitimacy that the unexpected defeat had caused, did not concern the monarchy as such but rather the actual Emperor. If William had renounced the throne in due time the monarchy could have been preserved, as acute contemporaries observed. The Austrian Emperor Charles could have avoided his fall, if the nationalities problem had been solved before the World War in a way that would have satisfied all parties concerned. Nicholas II by March 1917 had got into the situation that made his abdication inevitable, also on the ground of ill-advised decisions in the past such as the half-hearted transition to constitutionalism and the personal take-over of the supreme command.

6 Enlightenment Ein wohl eingerichteter Staat muß vollkommen einer Maschine ähnlich seyn, wo alle Räder und Triebwerke auf das genaueste in einander passen, und der Regent muß der Werkmeister, die erste Triebfeder oder die Seele seyn, wenn man so sagen kann, die alles in Bewegung setzt. Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi¹

In the age of Enlightenment political philosophers subjected the monarchy to the critical examination of reason. Some authors regarded monarchy as incompatible with enlightened principles. Others recommended reforms in order to bring it into harmony with the demands of reason. The German economist Justi recommended constructing the state on the model of a machine. The analogy to a machine was used as an argument to defend monarchy against criticism. Expediency, not tradition, was invoked to justify monarchy.

Diderot and Catherine II From 8 October 1773 to 5 March 1774 Diderot stayed at St. Petersburg. He had been invited by Catherine II. Three times per week the Tsarina received him for conversation in the Winter Palace. In these exchanges monarchy and Enlightenment met in person, the absolute monarchy of Russia and French Enlightenment in its last phase. Catherine expected from Diderot recommendations for her policy of reform. But Diderot had little opportunity to get acquainted with his host’s country. For this reason alone his recommendations remained highly abstract. He regarded it as inacceptable in principle that a ruler should determine the destiny of a country by himself. He distrusted “every arbitrary government”, even “the arbitrary government of a good, strong, just, and enlightened ruler.”² The worst that could happen to a free nation, the philosopher declared,

 Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi, Die wahre Macht der Staaten, in: idem, Gesammlete Politische und Finanzschriften über wichtige Gegenstände der Staatskunst, der Kriegswissenschaften und des Cameral- und Finanzwesens, vol. 3 (Copenhagen and Leipzig: Rothensche Buchhandlung, 1764), 86‒87.  Denis Diderot, Mémoires pour Catherine II, texte établi d’après l’autographe de Moscou, avec introduction, bibliogaphie et notes par Paul Vernière (Paris: Garnier, 1966), no. 124 (De la Comhttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110561395-007

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was the succession of two or three governments of “just and enlightened despotism” (d’un despotisme juste et éclairé).³ If three rulers like Elizabeth I had governed England one after the other, the country would inevitably have developed into a slave state.⁴ To be sure, rulers such as Peter I and Catherine, who had made Russia great in the 18th century, were extremely rare. But Diderot felt nevertheless justified recommending the Tsarina to transform the Commission she had instituted in 1767 for the elaboration of a new law code, into a permanent representation of the people. He was convinced that only in this way her reforms would last. Catherine had invited the political philosopher because she wanted him to have a critical look at her governing practices. But far from limiting himself to a number of recommendations, Diderot did not hesitate to make the Tsarina understand that absolute monarchy, the actual form of government in Russia, by itself was incompatible with enlightened principles and therefore illegitimate. A few years later Catherine mentioned her conversations with Diderot to the French envoy, count Ségur. “If I had believed him,” she said, “everything in my Empire would have been turned upside down: legislation, administration, foreign relations, and finance, in order to put unpractical theories in its place.” In conclusion she said to have declared to him: “Monsieur Diderot, with the greatest pleasure I have heard what your brilliant mind has made you say, but on the basis of all your sublime principles that I understand very well, one would make beautiful books and accomplish little in practice. In all your projects of reform you forget the difference between your situation and mine. You work on paper only, and paper tolerates everything. […] I, on the contrary, am a poor Empress and work on the human skin (sur la peau humaine) that is much more irritable and sensitive.”⁵ The philosopher had proved unable to convince the Empress, because the two possessed opposite concepts of political rationality. These concepts represented diverging ideas of enlightened monarchy. Diderot stood for a developed civil society that aspired at reforming the French state from below by means of enlightenment and with the help of its citizens. This position was individualistic. It aimed at political freedom in a constitutional system framed on the Eng-

mission et des avantages de sa permanence), 117 : “le gouvernement arbitraire d’un maître bon, ferme, juste et éclairé.”  Ibid., 118.  Cf. Denis Diderot, Réfutation suivie de l’ouvrage d’Helvetius intitulé l’Homme, in : idem, Œuvres complètes, ed. J. Assézat, vol. 2 (Paris : Garnier, 1875), 381 :  Louis-Philippe, comte de Ségur, Mémoires ou souvenirs et anecdotes, vol. 2 (Stuttgart : Hoffmann, 1829), 450.

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lish model. Catherine on the other hand governed a relatively backward country, in which enlightened reforms could be carried through by the ruler alone. Accordingly, Catherine argued in categories of reason of state. She had enunciated her political convictions in 1767 in the famous “instruction (nakaz) to the commission in charge of elaborating a new code of laws.” In the instruction Catherine did not start from the citizen or man, but from the “fatherland” (otečestvo), and her primary interest was to raise this fatherland to the “highest level of welfare (blagopolučie), of glory, of felicity (blaženstvo) and of tranquility.”⁶ The concept of political felicity (Glückseligkeit des Staates) had been framed in full Aristotelian tradition by Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi who had defined the attainment of political felicity the primary objective of government, in keeping with cameralistics, a German variety of enlightened political philosophy, the so-called oekonomische, Kameral- und Policeywissenschaft. The Tsarina had thoroughly studied his writings. The idea that a state could be “felicitous” appears less strange if instead of “state” one chooses the term societas civilis. By “common felicity” was understood the well-being of the whole, politically ordered society. On the one hand, the term recalls the ancient Aristotelian idea that good life was the supreme purpose of political society, a purpose that could only be achieved in common. On the other hand it gave expression to the modern conviction that the power of a state depended on the tax-paying capacity of the subjects and therefore on their economic well-being.

Cameralistics Originally conceived as a set of rules for the administration of the princely chamber, in the 18th century cameralistics developed into a political science that worked out practical recommendations for the direction of the interior affairs of state. In the early writings of the cameralists the prince resembles right away an entrepreneur who directs the political economy according to the principles of business administration. Wilhelm von Schröder wrote in 1686 that the economic well-being of the subjects was the very foundation on which “the entire felicity of a prince, who governed those subjects, was erected.”⁷ The recommendations of the cameralists were devised to help a prince at exploiting the economic and personal resources of his country as effectively as possible and

 [Ekaterina II], Nakaz eja imperatorskago veličestva Ekateriny vtoryja samoderžicy vserossijskija dannyj kommissii o sočinenii proekta novago uloženija, S.-Peterburg 1893 (§ 2), 2.  Wilhelm von Schröder, Fürstliche Schatz- und Rent-Cammer (Leipzig: Gerdesius, 1686), 19.

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at satisfying the demands directed at his state’s finances. The strain on public finances has sensibly increased since the 17th century, when a standing army for the ruler was becoming the prerequisite of preserving his position within the political system of Europe. A standing army demanded regular pay, but regular pay could not be granted unless there were regular tax revenues. Regular revenues, however, could only be attained if the rights of the estates, who until then had voted the levy of taxes, were abolished and an efficient and permanent financial bureaucracy was established. The assessment, the collection, and the administration of the taxes were to become the most important task of the expanding state bureaucracy. In the course of this process rational planning and organization took the place of ancient right and entrenched custom. Characteristic of the violence employed during the procedure is the announcement of King Frederick William I to the opposing estates of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1715 that he was decided to establish his sovereignty like a “rocher von Bronse” (a rock of bronze).⁸ Monarchs who in this way strove to emancipate themselves from opposing estates, were in the 19th century by liberal critics reproached of absolutism, a term that in spite of recurring reservations was to become the widely accepted term to designate the entire epoch.⁹ The term has possessed negative connotations from the beginning. This is explained by the fact that in the decades preceding the revolution of 1848, especially in the two greatest German states, absolutism was by no means a matter of the past. The liberals demanded constitutions, a share in political decision-making, and a guarantee of civil liberties. Therefore to them absolutism was the opposite of constitutionalism.

Peter the Great Even where there were no estates as in Russia, enormous efforts were required to prepare the monarchy for the new tasks through centralization of public power and rationalization of the administration. Nowhere were the necessary reforms taken up as abruptly and violently as in the Tsarist Empire. When after the disempowerment of his half-sister Sof’ja Alekseevna Peter the Great in 1689 gained exclusive control, the state of Moscow had in almost every respect remained in a pre-modern stage of development. A measure of Peter’s radical break with tradi Quoted from Gerhard Oestreich, Friedrich Wilhelm I. Preußischer Absolutismus, Merkantilismus, Militarismus (Göttingen, Musterschmidt, 1977): 46.  See Reinhard Blänkner, “Absolutismus.” Eine begriffsgeschichtliche Studie zur politischen Theorie und zur Geschichtswissenschaft in Deutschland, 1830‒1870 (Phil. Diss. Göttingen, 1990).

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tion was the abolition, on 22 February 1722, of an institution that is commonly regarded as a fundamental law of any monarchy, namely, dynastic succession. The Tsar placed the interest of the state above the interest of the dynasty. Therefore the throne was to be transmitted in the future to individuals only who offered a guarantee that they would continue the reforms that Peter had initiated. His own son Aleksej who died in 1718 under mysterious circumstances as a prisoner in Peter and Paul fortress at St. Petersburg, had opposed his interior and foreign policies, and Peter was no less ready to entrust Aleksej’s son Petr Alekseevič with the throne. In the new fundamental law (glavnyj ustav) of 1722 on the succession Peter therefore decreed that from now on every Tsar had to determine his successor himself and that he was invited to designate either one of his sons or a person foreign to the dynasty. Peter ordered a familiar priest and scholar, Feofan Prokopovič, to justify the law of succession in a public manifesto. Prokopovič presented the common good (dobro obščee) as the decisive argument in favor of the reform and thus placed natural law, as it revealed itself to the common sense (zdravyj estestvennyj razum), above historic right.¹⁰ Prokopovič justified the precedence of natural law by the social contract, arguing that the original “establishment of the monarchy by the people” (narodnoe ustavlenie monarchii) obliged the ruler to strive after the common good.¹¹ It is obvious that by appealing to the common good any reform could be justified. This view corresponded to the teachings of the older natural law school in Germany, of which the last representative had been Christian Wolff. In his principles of the law of nature and of nations Wolff accorded to the monarch “a complete, unlimited, and unsurpassed authority”, thanks to which he could “direct all public affairs at his discretion.”¹² By recurring to the social contract Prokopovič provided monarchy with a philosophical justification, but obliged it at the same time to promote the common good. By this argument the absolute monarch was made the first servant of the state, a self-interpretation that is to be found not only in Frederick II of Prussia, but also in Peter the Great.¹³ The separation of monarch and state and the

 Petr Velikij, Pravda voli monaršej vo opredelenii naslednika deržavy svoej, ed. Antony Lentin (Oxford: Headstart History, 1996), 242, 136.  Ibid., 224.  Christian Wolff, Grundsätze des Natur- und Völckerrechts, worinn alle Verbindlichkeiten und alle Rechte aus der Natur des Menschen in einem beständigen Zusammenhange hergeleitet werden (Halle: Renger, 1754), § 1002, 718.  Reinhard Wittram, Peter I. Czar und Kaiser, vol. 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964), 121,125; Antony Lentin, “Introduction,” in: Petr Velikij, Pravda voli monaršej, 37; Trude Maurer, “’Rußland ist eine europäische Macht’. Herrschaftslegitimation im Jahrhundert der Ver-

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idea of the monarchical servant were given an exemplary expression in the allocution Peter held in 1709 before his soldiers on the eve of the battle of Poltava against Charles XII of Sweden: “You must not believe that you are fighting for Peter. You are fighting for the state that has been entrusted to Peter, for your people and fatherland, for our right belief and our Church.”¹⁴ Contemporaries already regarded the abolition of the traditional order of succession by Peter as the culmination of monarchical high-handedness. In a chapter on the laws in a despotic country of his “De l’Esprit des lois” of 1748 Montesquieu devoted an entire paragraph to the case. “Such an order of succession,” he wrote, “causes a thousand revolutions and destabilizes the throne to the same degree, as the succession is arbitrary.”¹⁵ But the step may also be interpreted as a sign of prudent foresight, because in good time it invalidated a common argument of antimonarchical criticism. In his pamphlet “Common Sense”, by which in the rebellious provinces of North America Thomas Paine paved the way for the republic, criticism of the hereditary monarchy was accorded much space. Dynastic succession was declared responsible for the accession of minor and incapable rulers and for the impossibility to force ill and senile Kings to abdicate. Besides, the prospect of one day taking over the government was supposed to have a pernicious effect on the character of successors to the throne.¹⁶ Preoccupations about the preservation of their political achievements after their death were common to rulers of the early modern period. Many territorial princes of Germany tried to prescribe in their political testaments certain policies to their successors. Landgrave George II of Hessen-Darmstadt demanded that his heirs complete the establishment of a public treasure he had been planning for a long time, but had not been able to accomplish because of the Thirty Years’ War.¹⁷ In order to commit their successors effectively to their testaments, testators often demanded a promise of loyalty or the countersignature of their testaments by their sons.¹⁸ As he revealed in his Political Testament of 1752, Frederick the Great hoped to guard against the danger that a weak successor destroy his nunft und der Palastrevolten,” JbbGO NF 45 (1997): 584; Cynthia H. Whittaker, Russian Monarchy. Eighteenth Century Rulers and Writers in Political Dialogue (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), 39.  Quoted from Maurer, Herrschaftslegitimation, 584; cf. Whittaker, Monarchy, 41.  Montesquieu, De l’Esprit des lois, book 5, ch. 14, texte établi et presenté par Jean Brethe de la Gressaye, vol. 1 (Paris : Société les Belles Lettres, 1950), 123.  Thomas Paine, “Common Sense,” in The Writings of Thomas Paine, edited by Moncure Daniel Conway, vol. 1 (New York: Putnam’s, 1902), 81‒82.  Susan Richter, Fürstentestamente der Frühen Neuzeit. Politische Programme und Medien intergenerationeller Kommunikation (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009), 378.  Ibid., 165‒72.

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work, by the acquisition of additional provinces. Thus tax revenues would rise, permit him to increase the standing army from 136,000 to 180,000 men and enable the state to defend itself on its own.¹⁹ As Frederick explained in 1776, large monarchies held their own by their dimension alone and by their interior force; but small states easily succumbed, if they were not all force, nerf et vigueur. ²⁰ The scarcity of resources demanded heightened rationality.

Legitimacy through Reform By abolishing dynastic succession Peter the Great challenged the traditional foundations of monarchical legitimacy. Cynthia Whittaker has shown how through Peter the ideal of the “good tsar” who strives for the defense of the country, for the protection of the laws, and for the maintenance of orthodoxy, was gradually replaced by the ideal of the “reforming tsar”. Peter’s successors in the 18th century regarded a policy of reforms on his example indeed as a means of gaining legitimacy.²¹ Catherine II in particular profited from referring to Peter the Great for the simple reason that she was a German princess who owed her accession in 1762 to a palace revolution of which her husband, Tsar Peter III of the Romanov dynasty, had fallen victim. Catherine’s reference to Peter the Great is present in the very first chapter of the above mentioned instruction (nakaz) of 1767. The chapter initiates with the terse observation that Russia was a “European power” (evropejskaja deržava). Peter the Great is said to have furnished the proof of this contention when he introduced European ways of life into Russia. His reforms allegedly succeeded only because the outdated customs he registered at his accession had by no means corresponded to “the climate” of the country. The climate argument was borrowed from Montesquieu. According to Montesquieu Russia was located on the margin of the Asian climate zone that predestined to despotism. The “muscovite government” tried hard, it is true, to get rid of despotism (“à sortir du des-

 Cf. Volker Sellin, “Friedrich der Große und der aufgeklärte Absolutismus. Ein Beitrag zur Klärung eines umstrittenen Begriffs,” in Soziale Bewegung und politische Verfassung. Festschrift für Werner Conze, edited by Ulrich Engelhardt, Volker Sellin, and Horst Stuke (Stuttgart: Klett, 1976), 102.  Frédéric le Grand, “Exposé du gouvernement prussien, des principes sur lesquels il roule, avec quelques réflexions politiques,” in Die politischen Testamente Friedrichs des Großen, edited by Gustav Berthold Volz (Berlin : Hobbing, 1920), 245.  Cynthia H. Whittaker, “The Reforming Tsar. The Redefinition of Autocratic Duty in Eighteenth-Century Russia,” Slavic Review 51 (1992), 77‒78, 92‒93.

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potisme”), but particular circumstances might push the country back into the evil from which it wished to escape.²² According to the “Esprit des Lois” despotism was a completely arbitrary form of government the principle of which was in a state of permanent dissolution.²³ But Catherine wanted to govern Russia by laws: “I do not want slaves, but obedience to the laws.”²⁴ Precisely for this reason in 1767 she undertook the reform of the old law code (uloženie) of 1649. The Russian historian Omel’čenko considered this initiative of Catherine as so fundamental that in 1993 he characterized the overall objective of her reforms as a “legal monarchy” (zakonnaja monarchija).²⁵ In the tenth and eleventh paragraph of the instruction to the law code committee Catherine declared that in a country of Russia’s size another form of government than autocracy was inconceivable: “An extended Empire requires unlimited power in the person who governs it. The swiftness in deciding the affairs that are reported from faraway places has to compensate for the slowness resulting from this distance. Any other form of government would not only be harmful to Russia, but would at last result the cause of her total destruction as well”.²⁶ Montesquieu had considered “speed in the execution” as one of the advantages of monarchy, but had at the same time warned from allowing promptitude to degenerate into rapidity.²⁷ From this degeneration, according to Montesquieu, monarchy was guarded by the famous “intermediary powers” (pouvoirs intermédiaries), in France before all by the parliaments who were entitled to register the royal decrees before they gained validity. In Russia where there were no estates or estates-like institutions, Catherine in 1775 tried to compensate for the missing intermediary powers by the reform of local administration.²⁸

 Montesquieu, De l’Esprit des lois, vol. 1, book 5, ch. 14, 121.  Ibid., vol. 1, book 8, ch. 10, 214.  Quoted from Oleg A. Omel’čenko, “Zakonnaja Monarchija” Ekateriny II (Moscow: Jurist, 1993), 73.  Ibid.; for a discussion of the term see in particular 83.  Katharinae der Zweiten Instruction, ch. 2, 5.  Montesquieu, De l’Esprit des lois, vol. 1, book 5, ch. 115 ; see also Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi, Kurzer systematischer Grundriß aller Oeconomischen und Cameralwissenschaften, in: id., Gesammlete Politische und Finanzschriften, vol. 1 (Copenhagen and Leipzig 1761), 506.  Cf. Dietrich Geyer, “‘Gesellschaft’ als staatliche Veranstaltung. Sozialgeschichtliche Aspekte des russischen Behördenstaats im 18. Jahrhundert,” in: idem, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft im vorrevolutionären Russland (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1975), 38‒39.

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Political Mechanics Catherine’s attempt to defend Russian autocracy by rational arguments exemplifies the aspiration, to be traced all over Europe, to justify not only the call for innovations but the preservation of existing rules and customs as well. Eventually the law of reason could even be invoked to justify violations of the existing law. In an essay on the “Independency of Parliament” of 1732 David Hume demonstrated that in Great Britain the balance between Parliament and Crown was safeguarded by a procedure clearly in contrast to constitutional law. According to the constitution, as it stood since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the power of the House of Commons could not be restricted by anybody. But in reality a balance was nonetheless preserved between Crown and Parliament, because the interest of the House of Commons taken as an institution was held in check by the self-interest of the members taken as individuals. The Crown, Hume argued, disposed of so many offices that it was in a position to influence the majority of the members at least to such a degree that the balance of the constitution was preserved. “We may therefore give to this influence what name we please; we may call it by the invidious appellations of corruption and dependence; but some degree and some kind of it are inseparable from the very nature of the constitution and necessary to the preservation of our mixed government.”²⁹ Many German Cameralist writers cherished the idea that a perfect Commonwealth was to resemble a machine or a clock-work.³⁰ Every group and every subject, every branch of the economy and every public office were to function as wheels within the overall mechanism and had to fulfill their pre-ordained task for the whole. Neither civil liberty nor the protection of the individual were considered the first object of politics, but the perfect adjustment of everybody to the technocratic system. The Cameralist philosopher Johann Friedrich von Pfeiffer wrote in the late seventies of the 18th century: “Both general felicity and morality are based on the very simple, very natural principle, namely that the public body has to procure the best to each of its members, and that every member is obliged to promote the well-being of the public body; therefore a useful member is a good citizen […]; a useless member is a bad citizen.”³¹ It is obvious that the ideal of the machine state was in agreement with unlimited monarchy. If the machine was constructed well, a single person was sufficient to supervise it and to  David Hume, “On the Independency of Parliament,” in: idem, Essays Moral, Political and Literary, vol. 1 (London: Longmans, Green, & co., 1898), Essay VI, 120 – 21.  Barbara Stolberg-Rilinger, Der Staat als Maschine. Zur politischen Metaphorik des absoluten Fürstenstaats (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1986).  Quoted from ibid., 111, n. 34.

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grant its undisturbed motion. Any politically motivated interference would have impeded its natural movement and thus exposed the commonwealth to dangers. The ideal of the machine state subjected the traditional structure of society to a new criterion of legitimacy. Hence the historical orders, aristocracy, clergy, middle-classes, and peasantry, had to justify their existence by their function within the political machine. Their proper adjustment to the overall system provided them with a new and timely justification. The machine metaphor was applied to subordinate public institutions as well. In the instructions of Emperor Joseph II of 1781 to the directors and vice-directors of the public schools the prefect of the schools is called the “power unit, and so to speak, the entire soul of the school machine.”³² The use of the metaphor of the machine state is explained by the desire, common in the 18th century, to establish political laws in analogy to the laws of physics and mechanics. This desire was not confined to the interior affairs of states but extended to foreign policy as well and to the attempt to apply Newton’s laws of gravity to the European states system. The balance that existed between the celestial bodies was interpreted as a command of nature to create and maintain a balance between states as well.³³ At the beginning of the century, the conflict over the Spanish succession gave rise to a debate on the right of other states to armed resistance against the concentration of power due to a dynastic coincidence of the kind. In 1700, Daniel Defoe was convinced that the public well-being and the repose of Europe served as a justification “to set aside the Point of nice Justice.”³⁴ However, in Defoe’s eyes dynastic succession was a case of a more general danger: “Every king in the world would be the universal monarch, if only he could, and the only obstacle that stops him, is the power of his neighbors.”³⁵ In the same sense Frederick the Great wrote two years before his accession that every prince was by nature inclined to expansion. Equilibrium policies thus demanded that to the expansionist inclinations of the neighbors a power potential of equal weight were opposed. Here again Frederick used the clock-

 “Weisungen für die Direktoren und Vicedirektoren der Gymnasien” (Vienna 1781), in: Karl Wotke, Das Österreichische Gymnasium im Zeitalter Maria Theresias, vol. 1 (Berlin: Hofmann, 1905), 378.  Kurt Kluxen, “Zur Balanceidee im 18. Jahrhundert,” in: Helmut Berding et al., eds., Vom Staat des Ancien Régime zum modernen Parteienstaat. Festschrift für Theodor Schieder (München: Oldenbourg, 1978), 42‒43.  Daniel Defoe, “The Two Great Questions Consider’d,” in: id., Political and Economic Writings, vol. 5, edited by P. N. Furbank (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2000), 36.  Ibid., 34.

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work metaphor in order to underline the inevitability as well as the predictability of this tendency. As well as a clock maker was able to predict the movement of the clock because he knew its mechanics, a prudent statesman sought to know the maxims of the various courts, to discover the guiding principles behind their policies, and to understand the background of actual developments: “He leaves nothing to accident, his sharp eyes foresee the future and along the chain of causes look back into the most distant centuries.”³⁶ As well as man explored nature in the hope of dominating it, Frederick sought to understand the laws of politics and to adjust to them in the interest of his country. He was convinced that in politics only those statesmen were successful who had diligently calculated the existing forces and options and had thus in due time acquired the ability to establish a reliable system of maxims. Frederick who liked to qualify himself as an “enlightened king” (roi éclairé), emphasized that a well-administered government was obliged to abide by a system as strict as a “system in philosophy.” In such system finance, politics, and the military had to be oriented towards a common goal: “the consolidation of the state and the increase of its power” (l’affermissement de l’état et l’accroissement de sa puissance). A system of the kind could not be established within a short period of time, because it presupposed deep reflection, longstanding familiarity with the affairs, an extended horizon, and prudent calculation. Of France the Prussian King remarked that she possessed no system. Every minister created his own system for himself, and a new minister aimed at the opposite of his predecessor.³⁷ The quest for order and a system also lay at the basis of the endeavors to codify the law, typical of the period. In February 1764 Tsarina Catherine II instructed Prince Vjazemskij on his nomination to the post of General Procuror in a most secret ordinance: “Our laws are in need of correction (popravlenie). They have to be arranged so as to represent “a uniform system.” Laws that do not fit into the system have to be “suspended”; “temporary” laws have to be distinguished from “long-lasting and necessary laws.”³⁸ Three years later the above mentioned committee for a new law code started to work.

 Frédéric le Grand, “Considérations sur l’état présent du corps politique de l’Europe,” in: idem, Œuvres, vol. 8 (Berlin : Decker, 1848), 15, 3.  Frédéric le Grand, “Testament politique” (1752), in: idem, Testamente, 190.  Quoted from Oleg A. Omel’čenko, “Zakonnaja Monarchija” Ekateriny II (Moscow: Jurist, 1993), 75.

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Enlightened Absolutism In historiography a particular combination of Enlightenment and monarchy has acquired prominence: so-called enlightened absolutism. Like the term absolutism itself the expression “enlightened absolutism” has originated in the 19th century. It must not be overlooked, however, that in the 18th century related terms are already to be found, albeit rarely. In 1767 the Physiocrat Paul-Pierre Le Mercier de la Rivière advocated the introduction of a “legal” or “natural” despotism (despotisme légal or despotism naturel). Le Mercier believed that a single individual was in a better position to perceive what a commonwealth needed. Therefore a prince was to be given unlimited power and thus enabled to transform his knowledge into practice.³⁹ Six years later Diderot warned of a succession of just and enlightened rulers because he believed they tended to turn their subjects into slaves.⁴⁰ The term “enlightened absolutism” goes back to Wilhelm Roscher, an early representative of the historical school of Political Economy. In an essay of 1847 he distinguished three “stages of development” within absolutism: confessional, courtly, and enlightened absolutism. As chief representatives of these stages he regarded Philip II of Spain, Louis XIV of France, and Frederick II of Prussia. Each of these rulers, he maintained, had successively intensified absolute government and further liberated the prince from existing constitutional limitations. Significant for the increase of monarchical power through Enlightenment appeared to him the self-description of Frederick the Great as the first servant of the State. As a mere servant and “in the name of the State,” Roscher explained, the prince could “much more unceremoniously claim property and blood of the people than in his own name. In power relationships,” he wrote, “it is often of great advantage to take on the role of a mere mandate, especially if the mandatory does not possess any other organs.”⁴¹ From the point of view of liberal constitutionalism a more devastating verdict could hardly have been rendered on enlightened absolutism. This is made plain by the interpretation of the metaphor of the first servant of the State that up to this day not only for Roscher, but also for many later historians had contained the essence of what appears as the enlightened character of Frederick’s government. Other than many later writers Roscher did not view the metaphor as an approach to liberalism, but rather as an attempt to justify an even  Paul-Pierre Le Mercier de la Rivière, L’ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés politiques, edited by Edgard Depitre (Paris: Geuthner, 1910), 128‒30 and passim.  See above the section “Diderot and Catherine II.”  Wilhelm Roscher, “Umrisse zur Naturlehre der drei Staatsformen,” Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Geschichte 7 (1857), 451.

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more ruthless encroachment on the freedom of the subjects. With this interpretation Roscher was not alone among his contemporaries. Similar judgments are to be found in other liberal writers of the time. The professor of public law at Freiburg University, Carl von Rotteck, wrote in 1840 that “the so-called enlightened or liberal absolutism” was as “condemnable, if not, for the hypocrisy that characterized it in particular, still more condemnable than any other.”⁴² In the second half of the 19th century in German historiography Frederick and his political maxims were again regarded more favorably. Two explanations of this reversal impose themselves. On the one hand, by Prussia’s transition to constitutionalism during the Revolution of 1848 in all German states except Austria absolutism was superseded. Hence there was no reason to oppose it any longer. On the other hand Prussia, the great power Frederick the Great had created, had brought about the unification of Germany. In the preface of his biography of Frederick of 1889 Reinhold Koser accordingly wrote: “Only in the hour of birth of German unity the path-breaking significance of Frederick’s government for German history has become clear: His appearance had after all been more than a mere “passing episode.” […] But at the same time a generation such as ours who under the impression of a great ruler“ – Emperor William I – ”has witnessed an enormous strengthening of the idea of monarchy, will show a more profound comprehension for a King who with his idea of the duty and the office of a King, and with his vow to be the first servant of the state, had provided monarchy with a new truth and a new consecration.”⁴³ In his book “Die Hohenzollern und ihr Werk” of 1915 Otto Hintze judged that “the spirit of enlightened despotism of Frederick’s time with its well-intentioned, humane tendencies and its conservative social policies” had found “a classical expression” in the General Law Code for the Prussian States. Shortly afterwards Hintze emphasized that Frederick had by the justification of his government on the ground of an original contract and because of his conviction that he was only the first servant of the state, been “the first monarch in world history to give expression to the modern idea” that “the monarch was an organ of the state that remained above him.” In this way Frederick had become “the chief representative of enlightened absolutism that can be qualified as a preliminary stage of modern constitutionalism.”⁴⁴

 Carl von Rotteck, “Monarchie,” in Staats-Lexikon, ed. Carl von Rotteck and Carl Welcker, vol. 10 (1840), 662.  Reinhold Koser, Geschichte Friedrichs des Großen, 4th and 5th, enlarged edition, vol. 1 (Stuttgart and Berlin: Cotta, 1912), XII.  Otto Hintze, Die Hohenzollern und ihr Werk. Fünfhundert Jahre vaterländischer Geschichte (Berlin: Parey, 1915), 397, 400.

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German liberalism prior to 1848 had viewed absolutism as the exact opposite of the modern constitutional state. Almost a hundred years later Otto Hintze declared it its precursor. Instead of its despotic traits he emphasized the “well-intentioned and humane tendencies” of the Prussian welfare state. It is to suppose that Koser provided the explanation for this revision of judgment when he registered a restoration of monarchism in the German Empire. The restoration of monarchism of necessity was connected with a decrease in importance of liberal and democratic ideas and with the confirmation of the so-called monarchical principle. The conclusion suggested itself that through Frederick the Great the Prussian monarchy had given birth to a tradition of timely reform from above and had thus, other than France, to a great extent been spared revolutionary upheavals. This view laid the foundation of the interpretation, as proposed by Fritz Hartung and Karl Otmar von Aretin, that enlightened absolutism was essentially an alliance of absolutism and Enlightenment. Like Wilhelm Roscher these authors considered enlightened absolutism a distinct phase in the evolution of absolute monarchy, but other than Roscher they regarded as its distinctive feature not the increase of monarchical power, but the enduring influence exercised by “philosophy,” in particular by the “political philosophy of the Enlightenment.”⁴⁵ This interpretation is fraught with difficulties. The criterion of enlightened influences is much too vague to permit the configuration of a specific profile of absolute monarchy. It appears difficult to accord with Hartung where he contends that in historiography everybody knew “what is meant by Enlightenment.”⁴⁶ The era of Enlightenment has brought forth entirely different and in part clearly diverging philosophical ideas: Hobbesian political absolutism as well as Locke’s liberal philosophy, cameralism aiming at the increase of monarchical power and at the detailed regulation of people’s lives as well as the recommendation of the French Physiocrats and the Scotch moral philosopher Adam Smith to set the economic cycle free true to the maxim of laissez faire, laissez passer. It is frequently assumed that the allegedly enlightened rulers had secretly subscribed to ideas that towards the end of the century were to be proclaimed as rights of man and of the citizen in the American and French revolutions. Otherwise Hartung’s statement that enlightened absolutism had not found the “courage to draw the full consequences of its theories and to turn upside down the entire existing order of society,” would hardly make sense.⁴⁷ Actually  Fritz Hartung, “Der Aufgeklärte Absolutismus” (1955), in: Karl Otmar Freiherr von Aretin, ed., Der Aufgeklärte Absolutismus (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1974), 57.  Ibid.  Ibid., 58.

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it is doubtful if it was really a lack of courage that Catherine remained unimpressed by Diderot’s recommendations, and not the insight into the social and political situation of her country. No ruler of the 18th century was considering to transfer sovereignty upon the nation and to confine himself to the role of a mere organ of the constitution, let alone to abolish monarchy altogether. At any rate many historians concede that enlightened monarchs respected certain rights of man and mention in this respect most of all religious toleration and the abolition of torture, but they rarely examine in detail, whether torture was not abolished and religious freedom conceded in the first place for the sake of cameralistic rationality. With respect to toleration Justi argued, “one must not attempt to overcome religious difference by persecution, expulsion, or other violent means, and thereby expose the country to destruction, poverty, and loss of inhabitants, and to leave the country with only few trading houses and manufactures.”⁴⁸ Justi does not qualify freedom of religion as a fundamental right of man. Frederick the Great reasoned in like manner when he wrote: “The false zeal is a tyrant that depopulates the provinces, but toleration is a tender mother who attends them and makes them flourish.”⁴⁹ Catherine the Great devoted several sections in her instruction of 1767 to the abolition of torture. They were taken almost literally from Cesare Beccaria’s book “Of the crimes and the punishments” (Dei delitti e delle pene), published at Livorno only three years before. In criminal law Beccaria demanded, in the place of paragraphs that had thoughtlessly been carried through the centuries, a new and reasonable system of norms. The criterion of reasonableness was to be conformity to the purpose of punishment that Beccaria thought was to protect society from crime. For this reason he demanded that punishments were stipulated in proportion to the damage that a crime inflicted on society.⁵⁰ From this he concluded that punishments had to be precisely fixed by law and that courts were not to be permitted to inflict additional punishments on their own. With the same argument Beccaria criticized the application of torture during investigations. If the accused was guilty, the punishment was fixed by law. If he was innocent, and as such he had to be regarded until judgment had been passed, he did not deserve punishment at all.⁵¹ Beccaria and, following him, Catherine of

 Justi, Grundriss, 521.  Frédéric le Grand, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la maison de Brandebourg, in: id., Œuvres, vol. 1 (Berlin 1846), 212.  Cesare Beccaria, “Dei delitti e delle pene” (1764), in: Luigi Firpo, ed., Edizione nazionale delle opere di Cesare Beccaria, vol. 1 (Milan: Mediobanca, 1984), § 6, 40 ; § 12, 55 : a misura che sono contrari al ben pubblico.  Beccaria, Delitti, § 16, 62.

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Russia thus condemned torture because it contradicted the principles of enlightened government, not because it was incompatible with human dignity. As far as the result is concerned, it certainly made no difference whether torture and the persecution of heretics were abolished for reasons of human dignity or following the principles of a well-ordered police state. The anachronistic supposition of certain ideals that were believed to be necessarily connected with enlightened policies brought the defenders of enlightened absolutism at two other points into difficulties where human rights and reason of state were in sharp contrast. Frederick II and Catherine II did not seriously question serfdom, and in foreign relations neither of the two nor Maria Theresa or Joseph II departed in the least from the traditional policies of power and conquest. Neither Frederick nor Catherine considered emancipating the serfs, because serf labor secured the economic survival of the aristocracy the services of which were indispensable to both rulers. Frederick was fully aware that enlightened opinion condemned serfdom. But at the same time he was convinced that good will alone was not sufficient to abolish this “barbarous custom.” The institution was based on ancient contracts between landowners and serfs. Agriculture depended on the services of the serfs. If serfdom were abolished at one stroke, agriculture, the preservation of which was considered essential for the undisturbed movement of the political machine, would break down. The services of the serfs in fact maintained agriculture east of the Elbe and in turn enabled the landed aristocracy to serve the King both in the officer corps and in the bureaucracy. Serf labor was thus part of the elaborate overall system the development and maintenance of which in Frederick’s opinion was characteristic of an enlightened ruler.⁵² Frederick’s reference to existing contracts shows that the power even of an absolute monarch ended where reform proposals conflicted with vested rights of leading social groups. Only after the defeat by Napoleon at Jena and Auerstedt in 1807, was serfdom abolished in Prussia. The step was not motivated by respect for a fundamental right to personal freedom, but, as is explained in the October edict of Frederick William III, by the hope “to counter the decline of well-being among our trusted subjects.”⁵³ The reform followed the teachings of Adam Smith, not those of Jefferson or Mirabeau. Catherine’s views on the situation of the peasants was ever since 1773 determined by the revolt of Pugačev, and this trauma may be the reason why she had  Frédéric le Grand, “Essai sur les formes du gouvernement et sur les devoirs des souverains” (1777), in: id. Œuvres, vol. 9 (Berlin 1848), 205‒06, 201.  “Edikt den erleichterten Besitz und den freien Gebrauch des Grundeigentums sowie die persönlichen Verhältnisse der Landbewohner betreffend,” Memel, 9 October 1897, in: Werner Conze, ed., Quellen zur Geschichte der deutschen Bauernbefreiung (Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1957), 102.

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Aleksandr Radiščev atone in Siberia for his pamphlet of 1790 “A Journey from Saint Petersburg to Moscow” in which he had sharply criticized serfdom.⁵⁴ Anyhow the Tsarina had commuted the death penalty to ten years of banishment. But banishment was still a severe punishment, all the more so since Catherine had up to this point tolerated freedom of the press to such a degree that in 1789 the citizens of St. Petersburg could read the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen the French National Assembly had adopted in August, in their newspapers.⁵⁵ As to foreign relations Hamish Scott has commented on the apparent absence of enlightened practice in foreign policy by stating that rulers and statesmen who at home strove for “progressive and humanitarian goals” disregarded these principles abroad, namely in foreign policy.⁵⁶ To be sure, the contrast between domestic and foreign policy to which Scott is alluding, goes back not to the monarchs in question, but to those historians who called the domestic policies of the princes concerned humanitarian, instead of explaining them on the background of cameralist reason of state. Frederick the Great himself did not, as we have seen, perceive a fundamental difference between the maxims of internal and foreign policy; hence the clock metaphor applied both to the interior structure of the state and to the rules pertaining to foreign policy. Whoever knew how to turn to his profit the natural laws of international politics, could not only avoid failure, but at the same time score the most astonishing successes, possibly even without bloodshed. The seizure of Polish provinces in 1772, committed in common by Russia, Austria, and Prussia, was praised by the King as a particularly successful piece of rational policy and as “the first example in history of a peaceful partition among three powers.”⁵⁷ Another problem connected with the hypothesis of enlightened absolutism arises from the fact that in many states, especially in Germany, already long before the middle of the 18th century, enlightened ideas heavily affected policy. German cameralism had influenced policy in the German princely states ever since the 17th century. In Russia it affected, as Marc Raeff has shown in his book “The Well-Ordered Police State” of 1983, not only Catherine II, but had already influ-

 Aleksandr Nikolaevič Radiščev, Putešestvie iz Peterburga v Moskvu, in: id., Sočinenija, ed. V. A. Zapadov (Moscow1988).  Isabel de Madariaga, “Catherine the Great,” in: Hamish M. Scott, ed., Enlightened Absolutism. Reform and Reformers in Later Eighteenth-Century Europe (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1990), 304.  Hamish M. Scott, “The Problem of Enlightened Absolutism,” ibid., 25.  Frédéric le Grand, “Mémoires depuis la paix de Hubertsbourg, 1763, jusq’à la fin du partage de la Pologne” (1775), in: idem, Œuvres, vol. 6 (Berlin, Decker, 1847), 47.

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enced Peter I as well. With respect to Prussia it is hard to understand, why only Frederick II, but not his father Frederick William I should be regarded as an enlightened ruler, since it was really him who had created the state of Frederick the Great. If Hamish Scott qualifies the adoption in the early seventies of Frederick William’s canton regulation for the recruitment of peasants’ sons by Maria Theresa among the reforms of enlightened absolutism in Austria, he implicitly qualifies the soldier king himself as an enlightened ruler. Frederick the Great called his father a philosopher on the throne arguing that he had been deeply convinced that a prince – like a good housekeeper – was obliged to spare property and blood of his subjects.⁵⁸ With a view to all these inconsistencies Günter Birtsch has called enlightened absolutism “a terminological mistake in historiography” and proposed to analyze the reigns of Frederick William I and of Frederick II under the heading of a Prussian and the reigns of Maria Theresa and of Joseph II under the heading of an Austrian “reform absolutism.”⁵⁹ In like manner he recommended qualifying Peter I and Catherine II in Russia. The fact that Peter the Great and Frederick William I in general are not numbered among the enlightened rulers though their successors who are commonly regarded as enlightened, in government to a great extent only followed their example, is reflecting a specific characteristic of the hypothesis of enlightened absolutism. More than the term absolutism itself the term enlightened absolutism refers to an objective and to a program, not to an actual political and social reality. On the level of ideology, many rulers of the time indeed resemble each other, especially in the second half of the 18th century, when the enlightened vocabulary of the age increasingly found its way even into official documents. However, the enlightened rhetoric practiced by many rulers must not conceal the enormous differences in the political and social development of their countries. In 1797 about 30,000 children visited elementary school in Russia while Bohemia numbered 170,000 pupils in 1789.⁶⁰ Catherine’s Legislative Commission could not complete its task. In its second year already plenary sessions were suspended because the majority of its members from the nobility were obliged to

 Frédéric le Grand, “Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la maison de Brandebourg,” 126; cf. Hamish Scott, “Reform in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1740‒90,” in: id., Enlightened Absolutism, 151.  Günter Birtsch, “Aufgeklärter Absolutismus oder Reformabsolutismus?,” in: idem, ed., Reformabsolutismus im Vergleich (Hamburg: Meiner, 1996), 104, 106.  Jan Kusber, “Grenzen der Reform im Rußland Katharinas II,” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 25 (1998), 518; Wolfgang Neugebauer, “Niedere Schulen und Berufsschulen,” in: Notker Hammerstein and Ulrich Herrmann, eds., Handbuch der deutschen Bildungsgeschichte, vol. 2: 18. Jahrhundert (Munich: Beck, 2005), 240.

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serve as officers in the Russo-Turkish War. In Prussia and in Austria, however, the great codifications were completed: in 1794 the Allgemeine Landrecht für die Preußischen Staaten and in 1811 the Allgemeine Bürgerliche Gesetzbuch für die gesamten Deutschen Erbländer der Österreichischen Monarchie. In France Napoleon completed the codifications initiated during the Revolution. Whereas Prussia and Austria possessed a well-trained bureaucracy, an efficient tax system, and highly developed schools, Catherine’s efforts at reform reached their climatic and geographic as well as their social and political limits. As Jan Kusber has shown, during many months of the year roads were impassable in Russia and therefore the effective exercise of government essentially confined to the capitals St. Petersburg and Moscow. For the same reason internal commerce had scarcely developed. Even internal colonization had made little progress. The collection of taxes had proceeded irregularly. The establishment of an efficient bureaucracy had slowed down for lack of trained personnel. The nobility had accepted the functions in local administration the reform of 1775 had designed for them, only reluctantly and to an insufficient degree. Therefore the Empress had to revert to personalities coming from further developed frontier regions, such as the Baltic German Jacob Johann von Sievers who had served her for many years as general governor of Novgorod. Finally, the numerous wars the Tsarina had waged, and the integration of the conquered territories in the South and West had repeatedly and to a great degree required public support to the detriment of reform.⁶¹ There is reason to suppose that significant sections of historiography have, while adhering to a traditional concept that for more than one and half centuries had not seriously been questioned, permitted their view to be detracted from a convincing interpretation of monarchical reform in the period of Enlightenment. In fact, almost the entire history of the state in early modern Europe, as Johannes Kunisch has pointed out, must be understood as the history of a continuous reform from above.⁶² The objects of this overarching process of reform were the growth of monarchical power, the rationalization of government, the centralization of the administration, the increase in the general well-being, and the strengthening of the state with respect to its neighbors. For the attainment of these goals the Cameral- und Polizeiwissenschaft provided a complex of scientific instructions that were brought to the knowledge of governments in part through

 Kusber, “Grenzen,” 509‒28.  Johannes Kunisch, Absolutismus. Europäische Geschichte vom Westfälischen Frieden bis zur Krise des Ancien Régime, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), 197.

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cameralist writings, in part by the growing number of public servants who had studied the discipline at universities. The chief incentive of princely reformism was, as has been shown, the increasing competition among the powers within the European states system. Military defeat, the discovery of relative backwardness, the destruction of cities and villages in wars, desolation of extended stretches of land, loss of population, and over-indebtedness again and again worked as incentives to reform. Good examples of this are Maria Theresa’a and Joseph II’s policies of reform that had been motivated to a great degree by the loss of Silesia after 1740 and by Austrian defeat in the Seven Years’ War. Even the British government was forced to open up new sources of income to cover the cost of this war they had fought on three continents.

Taxation without Reform George III was no absolute ruler, to be sure, but as King in Parliament he availed himself of the same cameralist principles as other Kings. The idea to make the British subjects in the thirteen North-American colonies accept their share in the payment of the accrued debts and in the cost of their own administration was certainly in keeping with enlightened principles of government. The introduction of a stamp tax in 1765, however, provoked such a strong protest among the settlers that Parliament after a short time was forced to repeal it. Obviously, this kind of enlightened policy was no longer enforceable in North America. The Americans were no longer ready to be told by a far-away King what was in keeping with their welfare and with the welfare of the British Empire. According to their understanding of natural right everybody had in liberty to decide for himself how to promote his happiness. Within two decades the conflict resulted not only in the independence of the thirteen colonies, but in their departure from monarchy as well. After the deposition of George III on 4 July 1776 appointing another prince King of America was not seriously taken into consideration. As in North-America, in France as well the Revolution was preceded by an abortive attempt at cameralistic reform. On 20 August the minister of finance Calonne had disclosed to the King that the state was all but bankrupt. The reasons were in the first place the exorbitant expenditures for the numerous wars in which France had participated during the eighteenth century. The latest bloodletting had been administered to the household by the French intervention in the American War of Independence. During the ensuing two years the government tried by all means to overcome the deficit by radical reforms of the tax system. But the resistance of the privileged classes, represented in the first place by

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the parlements, law-courts that were entitled to register new laws, turned out insuperable. At last the King was urged in the summer of 1788 to convoke the Estates General for the first time after 175 years. The revolt of the nobility (révolte nobiliaire) on the eve of the Revolution disclosed a twofold failure of the monarchy, as it had developed since the days of Richelieu and Louis XIII. On the one hand the government had failed politically, since it had proved unable to resolve the financial crisis with its traditional tools; on the other it had failed symbolically, insofar as the King, by convoking the Estates General, had resorted to an institution the disempowerment of which had once been the precondition of the creation of the modern French state. Therefore the decision foreshadowed a fundamental transformation of the monarchy.

The Monarchy in the Revolution Historians are agreed that France had not experienced enlightened absolutism. However, one is tempted to ask whether the attempt of Louis XVI from 1786 to 1788 to avoid bankruptcy through incisive reforms of the tax system, really differed essentially from financial reforms in other monarchies in similar situations, except that it failed. The petitions (cahiers de doléances) from all over France that the deputies brought to the Estates General in May 1789, did not question the preservation of monarchy. The hopes centered on its reform, not on its suppression. The last of the decrees by which the National Assembly abrogated the feudal system in early August, even hailed Louis XVI as “restorer of French liberty” (restaurateur de la liberté française). The destruction of the monarchical consensus was effected by the King himself as late as June 1791 by his flight and the fatal memorandum he left in the Tuileries on this occasion and in which he revoked all the declarations by which he had sanctioned the great reform decrees of the National Assembly since 1789. Even though the confidence in the King was heavily shaken, the National Assembly continued to adhere to the monarchy. When in July of 1791 during the debate on the King’s behavior the Left proposed to proclaim the Republic, the partisans of the monarchy forwarded the well-known argument of enlightened political theory according to which the republican form of government suited only small states. To the objection that the United States had only recently adopted the form of a republic even though they disposed of an extended territory, Joseph Barnave responded that other than America France was densely populated and surrounded by enemies. He pointed out that the Americans possessed another ethos than the French, displayed the customs and the liberty of a young

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people and busied themselves almost exclusively in agriculture and other physical endeavors. In this way they had preserved their natural and genuine character and kept the distance to the artificial passions from which the revolutions of government originated. France possessed, other than America, a great many individuals who were exclusively engaged in intellectual speculations. This animated the imagination and rendered people ambitious and thirsty for glory. A national character of this kind, however, required strong government as it existed in a monarchy only.⁶³ To this view the majority of the assembly adhered. On 14 September 1791 Louis XVI took the oath on the constitution. But the nation was divided, and the King did not perceive that he could have recovered their confidence only if after the outbreak of war against the great powers in April of the following year it became clear to everybody that he had made his own the cause of the revolution. On 10 August 1792 the Legislative Assembly suspended the King and on 21 September the National Convention proclaimed the Republic. Thus in France either type of enlightened monarchy had failed: Catherine’s monarchy of cameralist as well as Diderot’s monarchy of constitutional rationality. Like the American colonists in 1776, the French had thus also arrived at the conclusion that monarchy and Enlightenment were incompatible.

Enlightenment and the Age of Revolution The transition to constitutionalism did not dispense the partisans of monarchy from seeking a rational justification of this form of government. Barnave’s advocacy of the preservation of monarchy in the National Assembly after the abortive flight of Louis XVI in June 1791 is the first example of a rational justification of constitutional monarchy directed against partisans of the republic. A few years before the Revolution of 1848 Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann let his eyes wander through the “most different times and conditions” in order to show, “what a well-considered constitution monarchy was.” “The majority of the people” have “in all times” been “in need of this most understandable and most sentimental form of government.” Dahlmann regarded monarchy as a guarantee of the preservation of the state, and so he continued that “innumerable times” the “preservation of the entire state had depended on the fidelity to an ancestral dynasty.” Therefore he warned from inconsiderately underestimating the great

 Joseph Barnave, in: Archives parlementaires, Series I, vol. 28 (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1887), 15 July 1791, 326‒27.

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value of monarchy: “Whoever wants to eradicate monarchy also in this part of the world that is already almost succumbing under the weight of many an inevitable change, forgets that from order has frequently emerged liberty, but never order from liberty.”⁶⁴ The tradition of enlightened thinking is also apparent in the recommendations of some political writers to handle constitutional monarchy in a way so as to ensure it long duration. In this intent Benjamin Constant wrote that in a constitutional monarchy on the model of the Charte constitutionnelle it was excluded that the monarch wield active power (pouvoir actif). Instead he was supposed to view himself as holding a particular “royal power” (pouvoir royal). Thanks to this power he accepted the role of a “neutral authority” (pouvoir neutre). This neutral authority or power had been created for the purpose of mediating between the other powers and of granting their smooth collaboration. However, this objective would only be attained if apart from the pouvoir royal the monarch did not possess the executive power (pouvoir exécutif) as well, but placed it in the hands of his responsible ministers.⁶⁵ Constant was far from proposing a revision of the Charte constitutionnelle. Instead he demanded that the monarch set the necessary limits himself and thus secure the durability of the system. Robert von Mohl also demanded that the monarch set himself limits. He recognized that the representative system worked only if the government and the chambers concurred. According to him the concurrence could be achieved by two methods only. The first method was corruption, in other words a proceeding in which the government sought in a manipulative way to exercise an influence on the composition and voting of the chambers. Of such practices Mohl expressed a clear warning. He was convinced that in the long run they tended to jeopardize the trust in the constitutional system and thus to undermine the legitimacy of the monarchy they originally had wished to secure. The second method was parliamentary government. Mohl emphasized that the transition to parliamentary government would confirm the authority of the monarch and guarantee his position.⁶⁶

 Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann, Die Politik, auf den Grund und das Maß der gegebenen Zustände zurückgeführt, vol. 1, 3rd ed. (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1847), 114‒15.  Benjamin Constant, “Principes de politique,” in: idem, Œuvres, ed. Alfred Roulin (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), 1112‒13 ; cf. Lothar Gall, Benjamin Constant. Seine politische Ideenwelt und der deutsche Vormärz (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1963), 166‒74.  Robert von Mohl, “Das Repräsentativsystem, seine Mängel und die Heilmittel. Politische Briefe,” in: ders. Politische Schriften, ed. Klaus von Beyme (Cologne and Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1966), 157‒58.

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The age of Enlightenment distrusted the traditional justification of monarchical government. Inherited right lost its binding force as much as the appeal to a divine order. Therefore the desire increased to give monarchy a philosophical foundation. The dissociation from tradition that this approach entailed, strengthened the readiness to accept reform in the interest of rationality and efficiency. To the demand that had originated with Aristotle and had been transmitted by the medieval mirrors for princes that governments are bound to serve the common good, enlightened defenders of monarchy sought to correspond by demonstrating that a hereditary monarchy could more easily fulfill this obligation than a republic. The metaphor of the machine state amounted to the recommendation that the ruler adjust himself to the intrinsic peculiarities of the apparatus. The doctrine of the machine state was favorable to the monarchy, since it was easier to imagine a single person acting from insight into the nature of things than a plurality of persons. The most radical version of this theory is to be found in the physiocrat Le Mercier de la Rivière and his doctrine of legal despotism (despotisme légal). Le Mercier proposed to confer unlimited and hence despotic power on the monarch with a view to enabling him to put his enlightened thought into practice. As is shown by the order of succession that Peter the Great had introduced, rationality could be driven to the point where hereditary monarchy as such was called into question. The outbreak of the French Revolution at first did not weaken the rational arguments in favor of the monarchy. Even though Louis XVI had by his attempted flight in June 1791 raised doubts about his loyalty to the principles of the Revolution, a quarter of a year later the National Assembly voted his nomination as the first constitutional King of the French. In a big country such as France they could not imagine another form of government. In the 19th century moderate liberalism regarded constitutional monarchy as a form of government in which individual liberty and stability of the institutions could be made compatible to the highest possible degree. Nevertheless, at the same time liberal writers such as Benjamin Constant and Robert von Mohl gave recommendations as to how royal power could effectively be circumscribed for the sake of enduring legitimacy.

7 Constitution Toute société, dans laquelle la garantie des droits n’est pas assurée, ni la séparation des pouvoirs déterminée n’a point de constitution. ¹

Democratic Constitutionalism: The Monarchy under the Constitution of 1791 If the term constitution refers to the legal structure of a state, there is no monarchy without a constitution. A constitutional monarchy in the strict sense of the term, however, has to meet certain criteria. These criteria have gradually evolved in the history of England. As one of the first political writers on the continent Montesquieu analyzed the English constitution in his book “De l’esprit des lois” of 1748. He believed that the purpose of that constitution was safeguarding individual liberty and that this purpose was achieved by the separation of powers. Montesquieu’s analysis exerted a great influence on constitution-making during the American Revolution. The American constitutions for their part influenced the constitutional history of the French Revolution and later on of the entire European continent. Apart from the separation of powers France took over, in 1789, four major constitutional principles from America: popular sovereignty, the distinction of constituent and constituted power, a written constitution, and a bill of rights. The first year of the French Revolution was marked by these principles. In his pamphlet “What is the third estate?” of January 1789 Abbé Joseph Emmanuel Sieyès declared that the nation alone possessed the constituent power (pouvoir constituant). Therefore only the nation was able to determine the voting procedure at the imminent meeting of the Estates General. During the conflict over composition and voting procedure of the assembly in the autumn of 1788 Louis XVI had lost the initiative. In September a storm of pamphlets on a reform of the monarchy had broken loose.² Sieyès’ brochure was but one of this multitude of pamphlets. On 27 December the King’s Council had decided to concede to the Third Estate as many deputies, as the two upper Estates possessed in com-

 Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen du 26 août 1789, art. 16, in : Jacques Godechot, ed., Les constitutions de la France depuis 1789 (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1970), 35.  Eberhard Schmitt, Repräsentation und Revolution. Eine Untersuchung zur Genesis der kontinentalen Theorie und Praxis parlamentarischer Repräsentation aus der Herrschaftspraxis des Ancien régime in Frankreich (1760‒1789) (Munich: Beck, 1969), 144. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110561395-008

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bination, but left it up to the General Estates themselves to decide whether voting should be by order or by head.³ Sieyès demanded that votes be taken by head, arguing that only in this way the Third Estate would be accorded its due weight. He justified the demand by the consideration that the Third Estate fulfilled the totality of the useful functions in society and therefore represented by itself a whole nation, whereas one could easily abstract from the two higher Estates without jeopardizing the capacity of the state to act. The equation of the Third Estate with the nation and the assertion that the nation possessed the constituent power foreshadowed the 17 June 1789, when at the request of the same Abbé Sieyès, the Third Estate declared itself the National Assembly (Assemblée nationale). The deputies were no longer supposed to act as delegates of their respective constituencies but instead as representatives of the nation as a whole and equipped with a free mandate. The assembly decided to use their powers to provide the country with a new constitution. It therefore adopted the name of a constituent assembly, an Assemblée nationale constituante or simply Constituante. Within a few weeks the two upper estates joined forces with the Third Estate. As in America, the deliberations of the Constituante aimed at the establishment of a new political order to be outlined in a specific document, a written constitution. As early as 26 August the Constituante adopted, once more true to the American model, a Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. The third article provided the basis in law of the assembly’s claim to the constituent power, stating that the principle of any sovereignty resided essentially in the nation. Accordingly, no body and no individual could exercise political authority unless it expressly emanated from the nation.⁴ The article also foreshadowed the coming decisions relating to the position of the King. By expressly stating that no body, much less a single individual, could claim political authority that had not been derived from the nation, it anticipated the articles of the constitution of 1791 according to which the King disposed of a delegated power only and could claim obedience only “on behalf of the law.”⁵ Nevertheless the National Assembly did not question that France should remain a monarchy. Therefore it refrained from temporarily deposing the King until the close of the deliberations. This failure contributed to the im-

 Ibid., 160‒61.  Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, art. 3 : in : Godechot, Constitutions, 33‒34 : “Le principe de toute souveraineté réside essentiellement dans la Nation. Nul corps, nul individu ne peut exercer d’autorité, qui n’en émane expressément.”  Constitution française 1791, Titre III, Chapitre II, Section I, Art. 3, ibid. 44 : “Il n’y a point en France d’autorité supérieure à celle de la loi ; le roi ne règne que par elle, et ce n’est qu’au nom de la loi, qu’il peut exiger l’obéissance.”

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pression as if the constitution was to be negotiated between the King and the National Assembly. The King was only suspended from office after his abortive flight of June 1791. Under the impression of the flight the Assembly entered into deliberations on whether or not to abide by the monarchy. At the end of a prolonged debate the majority voted for its preservation, and the King was reinstated in September, after having sworn an oath on the constitution. By taking popular sovereignty as its point of departure the constitution of 1791 was based on democratic constitutionalism as it had first been proclaimed during the American Revolution. By 1815, four procedures, by which the general will could manifest itself in a constitution, had developed in France: the adoption by an elected assembly, the referendum, the formal plebiscite, and the tacit acceptance or, as one could say, the plebiscite without a plebiscite. In the course of the 19th century, these forms of legitimization were used in many other states of the continent as well. The constitution of 1791 was adopted by the National Assembly into which the Estates General had been transformed in June 1789. By his oath of 14 September 1791 King Louis XVI accepted the principles of democratic constitutionalism. From now on he possessed only those rights that the constitution had expressly accorded him. This was a revolutionary innovation. It was no longer the ancient tradition, or the dynastic privileges, or divine right in which the legitimacy of monarchy was rooted in France, but the constitution that the National Assembly had adopted. By accepting the constitution the King simultaneously sanctioned the breakdown of the traditional and the birth of a new, a democratic monarchy. As compared to Old Regime monarchy the power of the King from now on was strictly limited. The constitution reduced the King to a mere organ of the state, to its highest official, to an official, however, whose special position found its expression in the fact that his person was declared “inviolable and sacred.”⁶ The inviolability secured to the crown the independence from the legislative and the judicial powers. Since at the same time, however, responsible government was one of the elementary principles of constitutionalism, the King’s freedom of action had to be restrained by the rule that without the countersignature of a responsible minister no royal decree could obtain force of law. The inviolability of the monarch could thus only be preserved on the condition that he acted exclusively in agreement with ministers who in his place took upon themselves the responsibility.⁷  Ibid., art. 2; cf. above in the chapter “religion” the section “The inviolability of the constitutional monarch.”  Constitution française 1791, Titre III, Chapitre II, Section IV, artt. 4‒6, in : Godechot, Constitutions, 49‒50.

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The French experiment of a monarchy on the model of democratic constitutionalism failed after ten months only. On 10 August 1792 Louis XVI was deposed from his office. On 21 September the republic was proclaimed. The constitutional monarchy of 1791 had not failed because the monarch had broken the constitution; it had failed because he had not accepted the role the constitution reserved for him. On 25 July, when the King had temporarily been suspended because of his attempted flight, Joseph Barnave admonished Marie-Antoinette: “Who wants to be something after a revolution, must have contributed to it.”⁸ It was not enough that the King took an oath on the constitution. Instead he was obliged in critical situations to demonstrate by his behavior that he stood firmly on the ground of the constitution and of the revolution. Four days earlier Barnave had pointed out to the Queen the difference between a merely formal loyalty to the constitution and a substantial identification with the revolution. The King would be returned his crown and the power, he wrote; and the advantages that the constitution offered, exceeded anything he could have expected. But he had to procure by himself what the law cannot give: “recognition and confidence” (la consideration et la confiance).⁹ In a further letter Barnave again emphasized the great merits of the constitution. It would make the King stronger. Whereas the nobility had been disempowered, the idea of the monarchy would be entrenched in the constitution with strong and deep-reaching roots. Barnave continued: “It is important today to implant into the manners, into the emotions of the people, into the general will of the nation, that which for the time being exists only on paper. One must bring back to life the royal power through confidence and popularity.”¹⁰ Barnave’s admonitions implied that in critical situations even far-reaching guarantees of the constitution had little weight if the King did not convincingly identify himself with it. If Louis XVI had taken this advice to heart, he would in the summer of 1792 when Prussian and Austrian troops invaded the country and approached the capital, not have locked himself up in the Tuileries, but hurried to the soldiers on the front to demonstrate his support for the cause of the Revolution. Instead he was suspected of secret connivance with the enemy. The constitution of 1791 gave nobody the right to depose the King, and his suspension by the Legislative Assembly on 10 August

 Joseph Barnave to Marie-Antoinette, 25 July 1791, in: Evelyne Lever, ed., Correspondance de Marie-Antoinette (1770‒1793) (Paris: Tallandier, 2005), 562: “Pour être quelque chose après une révolution, il faut y avoir mis sa part.”  Joseph Barnave to Marie-Antoinette, 21 July 1791, ibid., 558.  Joseph Barnave to Marie-Antoinette, n. d., ibid., 580: “Il s’agit aujourd’hui de mettre dans les moeurs, dans l’affection du peuple, dans la volonté universelle de la nation, ce qui n’est encore tracé que sur le papier. Il faut raviver la puissance royale par la confiance et la popularité.”

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1792 was clearly unconstitutional. Nevertheless, one can hardly absolve him from the charge that in a moment in which the country was exposed to a severe crisis, he had not demonstrated to everybody and without reservations that he stood on the side of the Revolution.

Referendum and Plebiscite The constitution of 1791 obtained force of law thanks to its adoption by the Constituante and through the oath of the monarch. No provision had been made for a confirmation of the constitution by the nation. After all it had been created by their elected representatives. During the American Revolution it had been established as a rule that a constituent assembly had to result from general elections. Accordingly, in the German Revolution of 1848 a National Assembly was elected for the purpose of creating a constitution for the German national state. Like the French constitution of 1791 the German Imperial constitution was not submitted to the nation for confirmation after its adoption in March 1849. It remained a dead letter because King Frederick William IV of Prussia refused acceptance of the Imperial crown offered him by the assembly. After the fall of the monarchy in 1792 France established new methods of providing democratic legitimacy to constitutions. The first step was the election of a new constituent assembly, the National Convention (Convention nationale). In 1793 the Convention adopted a republican constitution that, however, was not put into force because of the crisis the Revolution underwent at the time. When the period of the Terror was over, the Convention presented a new constitution in 1795. It confided the legislative power to two chambers, the Council of Five Hundred and the Council of Ancients, and the executive power to a Directory of five members. Other than the French constitution of 1791 and the German Imperial constitution of 1849 the two constitutions the Convention had adopted, were submitted to a referendum for confirmation. If however only the vote of the nation could give force of law to a constitution, it might just as well be proposed by a body that other than the French Convention or the German National Assembly of 1848 had not been elected for the purpose. After the coup d’état of Brumaire 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte ordered the two Chambers to elect from among themselves two legislating committees of 25 members each and asked them to prepare “the necessary modifications” in those articles of the constitution of 1795 “that have proved detrimental and unsuita-

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ble.”¹¹ For the deliberation of the new constitution each of the two committees elected a constitutional commission.¹² The two commissions did not possess a mandate from the sovereign. They had neither been elected by the people nor had they been provided for in the articles on constitutional revision in the constitution of 1795.¹³ The decisive influence on the formation of the constitution was exerted by Abbé Sieyès and Napoléon Bonaparte. On 12 December 1799 the legislative committees adopted the constitution by secret ballot in a common session. On 15 December it was proclaimed and on 24 December it was put into force.¹⁴ The constitution of the year VIII was thus not created by the constituent power of the people, but worked out by bodies that had not been empowered for the purpose by the sovereign. It was put into force without the nation having previously been given a chance to confirm it by a referendum. Article 95 prescribed that the constitution be “subsequently” presented to the French people for approval.¹⁵ The popular vote was indeed taken. The result was obtained on 7 February 1800, one and a half months, after the constitution had been put into force.¹⁶ Therefore the national vote possessed only a confirming, not a constituent character. The distinction is made plain on the level of terminology. As Jean-Marie Denquin has emphasized, the vote for the constitution of 1799 was unlike the votes of 1793 and 1795 not a referendum, but a plebiscite.¹⁷ Denquin’s distinctions, however, do not correspond to the language of the contemporaries. In the sources the referendums of 1793 and 1795 appear as plébiscites, the plebiscites of the First Consul and later Emperor on the other hand as appels au peu-

 Décret du 19 brumaire an VIII instituant le Consulat provisoire, in : Thierry Lentz, Le 18 Brumaire. Les coups d’Etat de Napoléon Bonaparte (novembre-décembre 1799) (Paris: Picollec, 1997), 458, art. 8 ; art. 11: “Les deux commissions sont encore chargées de préparer, dans le même ordre de travail et de concours, les changements à apporter aux dispositions organiques de la constitution dont l’expérience a fait sentir les vices et les inconvénients.”  Lentz, Brumaire, 393‒94.  Constitution de la République française, 13 December 1799, art. 95, in: Godechot, Constitutions, 138‒39.  Lentz, Brumaire, 406‒07.  Constitution de la République française, 13 December 1799, art. 95, in: Godechot, Constitutions, 162: “La présente Constitution sera offerte de suite à l’acceptation du peuple français.”  Claude Langlois, “Le Plébiscite de l’an VIII ou le coup d’État du 18 pluviôse an VIII,” in: Annales historiques de la Révolution Française 44 (1972), 43.  Jean-Marie Denquin, Réferendum et plébiscite. Essai de théorie générale (Paris : Pichon & Durand-Auzias, 1976), 44 : “Vote sur une Constitution, c’est-à-dire sur un texte général et impersonnel, mais aussi désignation des gouvernants ; vote sur un texte déjà en vigueur: pour beaucoup d’auteurs, c’est ici que commence la liste des ’plébiscites’.”

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ple. Only the plebiscites of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte after 1851 are called plébiscites in the sources as well.¹⁸ Both referendum and plebiscite are inquiries directed at the sovereign. But they differ with respect to author and objective. In 1793 and 1795 the vote was imposed by the National Convention. The purpose was the confirmation of the assembly’s previous decrees. Only with the nation’s express approval the constitutions were put into force. The referendum was thus part of the process of constitution making. The vote on the constitution of 1799, on the other hand, was imposed by the First Consul. Against Sieyès he had insisted that the sovereign be consulted. In any case, the vote was no part of the constitution making process any more, but was meant to confirm the constitution after the fact, in particular the person of the First Consul. According to an often repeated anecdote a woman who was unable to follow a public lecture of the new constitution, asked another woman what it contained, and received the answer: “Bonaparte!”¹⁹ If the constitutions of 1793 or 1795 had not been confirmed by the nation, the Convention or another newly elected assembly could readily have drafted a new constitution. The constitution of 1795 transferred executive power to a Directory of five members, but it did not name the Directors, because their offices were elective. In the constitution of 1799, however, the First Consul and the two other Consuls were named. So not only the constitution, but also the persons who had usurped government, were put to the vote. Bonaparte certainly had not ventured the coup d’état in the intent subsequently to take the risk of losing it again by way of plebiscite. Therefore the vote had by all means to confirm his seizure of power, and the First Consul took all the measures necessary to grant the desired result. The vote was not, as in 1793 and 1795, given orally in the primary assemblies, but in writing in “registers of acceptation or refusal” that were laid out in the town halls, with the justices of the peace, in notary’s offices, and at other public places.²⁰ In this way voting went on the record. Many a voter will have reflected twice before entering his name in the register with a negative vote. In the end the minister of the Interior Lucien Bonaparte took care that the plebiscite was a success. He transferred the local results into the national register and thereby made sure that more than three million votes were in favor of Bonaparte against only 1.562 votes in the negative. To the positive votes he added between 7.000 and 10.000 votes in every Département. The 35,000 votes of the ma Enzo Fimiani, “Per una storia delle teorie e pratiche plebiscitarie nell’Europa moderna e contemporanea,” in: Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 21 (1995), 277.  Lentz, Brumaire, 409: “Il ya Bonaparte! ”  Denquin, Référendum, 43; Jacques Godechot, Les institutions de la France sous la Révolution et l’Empire, 2nd ed. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), 556.

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rine he increased to the number of nearly 57,000, and for the army that not voted at all, he added 500,000 votes, a figure that corresponded to the military manpower of the moment. Instead of over three million, in reality only 1,550,000 people and thus little more than 20 % of those having the right to vote had approved the new constitution.²¹ In the eyes of the contemporaries, however, the result of the plebiscite gave to the First Consul democratic legitimacy. By appealing to the people Napoleon had recognized national sovereignty, and the published results left no room for doubts that the constitution of the Consulate corresponded to the will of the people. The same propaganda effect was obtained by the plebiscites of 1802, by which Napoleon secured for himself the Consulate for life, and of 1804 by which he had himself confirmed Emperor of the French. Napoleon placed great emphasis on plebiscites as source of legitimacy. On St. Helena he one day explained the no ruler had ever ascended a throne with claims more legitimate than him: To “Hugo Capet the throne had been transferred by a handful of bishops and nobles,” to him “the Imperial throne had been transferred at the request of the totality of the citizens, three times solemnly expressed.”²² Obviously, Napoleon had forgotten or pushed to the back of his mind that the results had been straightened, or he was convinced that important was not the actual majority, but the belief that the nation had voted for him. As the quoted statement shows, Napoleon regarded the three plebiscites as belonging together. Since the plebiscites of 1802 and 1804 only sanctioned changes in the constitution of the Consulate, namely changes in the position of the head of state, the plebiscite of 1799 was indeed the basis of the other two, whereas the only further plebiscite of Napoleon, the vote of April 1815 on the Acte additionnel aux constitutions de l’Empire that Benjamin Constant had drafted, again marks a new beginning. Like the plebiscite of 1799 the plebiscite of 1815 was intended to legitimize a coup d’état, in this case Napoleon’s usurpation of the French throne after his return from the Isle of Elba. Both the interior situation and the foreign relations of France demanded an unmistakable vote of the nation. Napoleon required their assent to the turnover of Louis XVIII and the restoration of the Empire. Since on 6 March, after his landing on French soil, the King had declared him a rebel and a traitor, he wished to oppose to this verdict the clear vote of the French people. To win them over he had to present a constitution that equaled the Charte constitutionnelle of Louis XVIII in liberality. At

 Langlois, Plébiscite, 51‒65; Lentz, Brumaire, 438‒440.  Emmanuel de Las Cases, comte de, Le Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène. Texte établi et commenté par Gérard Walter, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1956), 64 :

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the same time the plebiscite was meant to give to the restored Empire international legitimacy. The great powers were still assembled in Vienna for the Congress and had already publicly declared their refusal again to acknowledge Napoleon as Emperor of the French. Napoleon on the other hand hoped that the will of the nation, as revealed by the plebiscite, would induce the powers to change their minds. But the result was sobering. Among the votes cast Napoleon obtained a clear majority of one and a half million as against 5,700 votes in the negative, but the turnout was only at 21 %.²³

The Caesarism of Napoleon III Both the first and the last plebiscite of Napoleon I were intended to give democratic legitimacy to a coup d’état. On 20 and 21 December 1851 Napoleon’s nephew, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, held a plebiscite after the same pattern, seeking for confirmation of his coup d’état of 2 December. The people were asked to give their assent to five principles that should afterwards serve as the basis of a new republican constitution: a responsible head of state for ten years, ministers who were to depend exclusively on the executive power, a Council of State, a legislative body elected by universal suffrage, and a Senate.²⁴ The constitution that had been worked out along these lines and proclaimed on 14 January 1852 was not again presented to the people for approval. On 7 November 1852 the Senate voted the transformation of the republic into the Second Empire. This constitutional revision was subjected to a further plebiscite on 21 and 22 November. Ever since his ascent to power after the coup d’état de Brumaire 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte had been compared to Caesar. Both of them had indeed won power and authority as military leaders, before they usurped exclusive political control. As early as 1800 Napoleon’s brother Lucien published a brochure under the title “Parallèle entre César, Cromwell et Bonaparte.”²⁵ The term Caesarism, however, gained acceptance only after the middle of the 19th century. In its place, the terms Napoleonism and Bonapartism were frequently used. Constantin Frantz characterized the relationship between the sovereign and state authority in the system of Napoleon III as follows: “The state authority must have the ma-

 Frédéric Bluche, Le plébiscite des cent jours (avril-mai 1915) (Geneva: Droz, 1974), 36‒38, 96; id., “Plébiscite,” in: Jean Tulard, ed., Dictionnaire Napoléon, nouvelle édition, revue et augmentée (Paris: Fayard, 1989), 1339.  Constitution du 14 janvier 1852, in: Godechot, Constitutions, 292.  Dieter Groh, art. “Cäsarismus, Napoleonismus, Bonartismus, Führer, Chef, Imperialismus,” in: Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol. 1 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972), 735.

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jority of the people on its side, not the majority of a parliament, […] because only in this way the collective will that manifests itself in the head of state, receives the power of a physical necessity.”²⁶ By the coup d’état of 2 December 1851 Napoleon III in more than one respect tied up with the example his uncle had set. As Napoleon I had done on 18 Brumaire 1799, his nephew in 1851 similarly destroyed a constitution the nation had created in virtue of their constituent power. It goes without saying that Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte would not have been ready to leave the political arena in case he had not obtained the consent of the nation to his five guiding principles. He aimed at the nation’s acclamation, not at their decision. In a similar way he operated in the following year in his second plebiscite that was meant to confirm the creation of the Empire. A major difference of the rule of Napoleon III as compared to the First Empire ensued from the fact that the second chamber, the Corps legislatif, was periodically re-elected by universal suffrage. As in the case of the plebiscites, the Emperor had to do everything possible to win the elections to the Corps législatif as well. Since he did not mean to accept the role of a constitutional King who, as Adolphe Thiers once remarked, contented himself with ruling, but intended to govern, he was himself a party in the political struggle. Every time at elections his policies and the Empire sought anew for confirmation. In order to secure successes at the polls, the regime applied a particularly effective method of influencing elections: the nomination of official candidates. In as many of the uninominal constituencies as possible a suitable personality was made the candidate of the government. The entire public administration from the prefect to the elementary school teachers in the villages was mobilized for his support. The candidate was authorized to promise to the electorate all sorts of material benefits from the Imperial government. The majority in the Corps legislatif that had been secured by these means should permit the government to push through the Chamber their legislative projects without having to overcome substantial resistance. The official candidature (candidature officielle) reveals a characteristic feature of plebiscitary politics. The direct influence exerted on the electorate degraded parliament to an executive organ of the government and rendered it difficult for them to play an independent role. According to Max Weber in a “plebiscitary government” the leader feels legitimized by the confidence of the masses.²⁷ The anti-parliamentary character of the Second Empire had its legal  Constantin Frantz, Louis Napoléon. Masse oder Volk, edited by Günter Maschke (Vienna and Leipzig: Karolinger, 1999), 61.  Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ch. III, § 14, 5th ed., edited by Johannes Winckelmann, (Tübingen: Mohr, 1980), 156.

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basis in the fifth article of the constitution according to which the Emperor was responsible to the French people and possessed the right at any time to appeal to the people.²⁸ Even when during the sixties the regime was gradually turning more liberal and when the role of the Chamber was growing in importance, Napoleon III was not ready to renounce the right to ask the nation for a vote of confidence if need should be. But after the foundation of the Second Empire in 1852 he made use of this right only one time. On the surface the plebiscite of 8 May 1870 was, like the preceding two plebiscites, intended to confirm changes in the constitution. The French were asked to ratify a senatorial decree in which a series of constitutional reforms introduced during the sixties had been summed up. At the same time the decree included the rejection of parliamentary government, a reform that many citizens had been waiting for. To the two contrasting questions the voter could only answer by a simple yes or no.²⁹ The Emperor’s calculation that the people would not reject the constitutional reforms the opposition had pushed through in the sixties, even if in this way they simultaneously sanctioned the renunciation of parliamentary government, paid off. How little weight, however, the assent of the nation possessed in an emergency, was revealed only a few months later. On 4 September 1870, two days after the capitulation of Sedan during the Franco-Prussian War the Empire broke down without further ado. The deposition of the Emperor on 4 September 1870 was a plebiscite of its own kind. That this plebiscite produced an entirely different result as compared to the formal plebiscite of 8 Mai, is confirmed in an unexpected manner by the judgment that the Emperor’s cousin, Napoléon-Jérôme Bonaparte, had passed one year earlier on plebiscites in general: “If the people say yes, it is an illusion; if they say no, it is a revolution.”³⁰ At the same time, however, the episode reveals the downside of plebiscitary politics. Plebiscitary politics is condemned to fulfilling the material and political expectations of the electorate. As soon as it suffers a serious setback their solidarity may break down from one day to the next. The responsibility of the head of state towards the people was a double-edged sword. On the one hand it permitted him to renew his legitimacy by addressing a well considered question to the sovereign people. But on the other hand it might in a critical moment endanger his very position and by consequence the regime itself.

 Constitution française 14 January 1852, art. 5, in: Godechot, Constitutions, 293: “Le président de la République est responsable devant le Peuple français, auquel il a toujours le droit de faire appel.”  Eric Anceau, Napoléon III. Un Saint-Simon à cheval (Paris: Tallandier, 2008, 489).  Quoted from Fimiani, Storia, 284: “Si le peuple dit oui, c’est une illusion ; s’il dit non, c’est une révolution.”

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Monarchical Constitutionalism The French constitution of 1791 provided the legal basis for the first constitutional monarchy on the European continent. Constitutional monarchies were based on the modern principle of representation. They distinguished themselves from corporative monarchies by written constitutions and parliamentary assemblies the members of which possessed a free mandate. Only England where constitutional monarchy had gradually evolved from the corporative monarchy, to this day lacks a written constitution. In the course of the 19th century constitutional monarchy became the preponderant form of government on the continent, but only few constitutional monarchies were committed to democratic constitutionalism and popular sovereignty on the French model of 1791. By far more common was constitutionalism based on the monarchical principle that reserved to monarchs exclusively the right to frame a constitution. Constitutions of this type were not given in virtue of a constituent power, but in execution of the royal prerogative, and other than democratic constitutionalism monarchical constitutionalism did not aim at placing government on entirely new foundations. Talking of monarchical constitutionalism therefore appears inappropriate. Constitutionalism is a revolutionary concept, whereas monarchs who granted a constitution acted on behalf neither of the revolution nor of the general will, but simply by considerations of enlightened and beneficial policy. The monarchical principle was based on the assumption that even after having imposed a constitution the monarch remained in full possession of power and that the representatives of the people simply partook in its exercise. There is no doubt that even an imposed constitution could last only if the nation acquiesced in it. Tacit acceptance was thus the fourth way in which a new regime could be legitimized by the general will. An assent that is given by simply refraining from opposition may also be regarded as a kind of plebiscite. The prototype of this form of monarchical constitutionalism was the Charte constitutionnelle that Louis XVIII proclaimed on 4 June 1814 after his return from exile. On 2 and 3 April the French Senate had deposed Napoleon on behalf of the nation and on 6 April it approved a monarchical constitution. Article 29 stated that the constitution was in due time to be subjected to a referendum. The Senate had been an organ of the Empire. Other than the Convention in 1792 it had not been democratically elected nor had it been given the mandate to provide France with a constitution. Therefore it appears natural that it wanted to have the constitution legitimized by a popular vote. Viewed in this light the Senatorial constitution must be regarded as a product of democratic constitutionalism. Its second article states: “The French people freely summon to the throne of France LouisStanislas-Xavier of France, brother of the late king, and, after him, the other

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members of the house of Bourbon in the old order.”³¹ The Senate wished to base the monarchy exclusively on popular sovereignty. Any continuity with the old monarchy, including the democratically legitimized monarchy of 1791, was denied. Therefore the choice of the count of Provence was not taken in recognition of his dynastic claims. This was demonstrated by the fact that he was addressed by his civil name and not as Louis XVIII, as he had styled himself ever since 1795. Even the qualification as “brother of the last king” contradicted the monarchical view according to which the son of Louis XVI was regarded as the last king before the restoration of the monarchy, and Louis-Stanislas-Xavier would consequently have to be addressed as uncle of the last king. The count of Provence was chosen because of all candidates who were taken into consideration, he had the greatest chances of obtaining the assent of the French. The count of Provence followed the call of the Senate, but refused to accept the constitution presented to him. He believed that in virtue of dynastic hereditary law he had been king of France since 1795 and therefore could not be made king again, much less a democratically legitimized “King of the French,” and by a body that had originated in the Revolution. Therefore after his return from exile he ordered the Senatorial constitution to be subjected to a revision by a committee composed of members of the Senate and the Corps législatif. The democratic constitution of the Senate was in this way turned into a constitution of the monarchical principle or of monarchical constitutionalism. The king’s action amounted to a coup d’état, a genuine usurpation. The purpose of the usurpation was the restoration of traditional monarchical legitimacy. A quarter of a century after the proclamation of popular sovereignty by the Constituante in 1789 this coup d’état was a venture. It succeeded only because of the grants the King was simultaneously giving through the Charte constitutionnelle. The Senate had hoped by their constitution to oblige the king on his return from exile to acknowledge the essential achievements of the Revolution and the Empire. With this intention they had inserted into the text the preservation of the Code civil, the acceptance of the public debt, the confirmation of the sale of the national goods, the recognition both of the new and the ancient nobility, and a waiver of cleansing. The king inserted all these demands into the Charte

 Constitution française, 6 April 1814, art. 2, in: Wilhelm Altmann, ed. Ausgewählte Urkunden zur außerdeutschen Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1776 (Berlin: R. Gaertners Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1897), 201: “Le peuple français appelle librement au trône de France Louis-Stanislas-Xavier de France, frère du dernier roi, et après lui les autres membres de la maison de Bourbon dans l’ordre ancien.”

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constitutionnelle and in this way secured its tacit acceptance by the nation.³² Only on the ground of these liberal concessions in the Charte Louis XVIII succeeded, after the fall of the Empire, in the restoration of divine right monarchy.³³

Imposition and Restoration The relationship between restoration and constitution is complex. This is demonstrated by a comparison of the policies of Louis XVIII and the Spanish king Ferdinand VII in 1814. When in March 1814 Ferdinand returned to Spain from his exile in France, he repudiated the constitution the Cortes had adopted in 1812, and ordered its adherents to be prosecuted. Absolutism was restored. Louis XVIII on the other hand was clever enough to limit himself to a mere revision of the Senatorial constitution. But in the very first public statement he delivered after his return from exile in Britain, in the Declaration of Saint-Ouen of 2 Mai 1814, he made it clear that he maintained his claim to the recognition of unlimited monarchical sovereignty. Nonetheless, the Declaration possessed a plebiscitary touch, insofar as it clearly makes a difference between the people whose “love” had recalled the King “on the throne” of his “fathers,” and the Senate that had produced the draft of a constitution. In the appeal to “mutual trust” (confiance mutuelle) between monarchy and nation is concealed an unmistakable dissociation from the Senate who claimed to represent the nation.³⁴ The declaration is not addressed to the Senate, but directly to the nation. By the imposition of the Charte constitutionnelle at last the King clearly overrode the resolutions of the Senate. Neither the Senate nor the Corps legislatif as political bodies were invited to cooperate in the revision of the Senatorial constitution. A confirmation of the Charte by the two chambers was not considered necessary. By its imposition and its plebiscitary appeal Louis secured the success of his policy of restoration. The imposition was not meant to advance democracy, but to confirm and to strengthen the monarchy. The imposition of a constitution was

 Charte constitutionnelle 1814, artt. 9, 68, 70, 71, in Godechot, Constitutions, 219, 223‒24. Art. 11, ibid., 219, excluded political purges: “Toutes recherches des opinions et votes émis jusqu’à la restauration sont interdites. Le même oubli est commandé aux tribunaux et aux citoyens.” The article corresponds to art. 25 of the Senatorial constitution.  The making of the Charte constitutionnelle is analyzed in: Volker Sellin, Die geraubte Revolution. Der Sturz Napoleons und die Restauration in Europa (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001), 225‒73.  [Louis XVIII], “Déclaration du Roi, Saint-Ouen, 2 Mai 1814,” Bulletin des lois du Royaume de France, 5th series, vol. 1, no. 8 (Paris 1814), 75‒76.

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the most important instrument of the Restoration. It was used in the hope of neutralizing further revolutionary claims and was thus an act of counterrevolution. Since, however, it met a great number of revolutionary demands it appears at the same time as a kind of revolution from above with a view to securing to the monarchy legitimacy in keeping with the times. The majority of the European constitutional monarchies of the 19th century was established by the imposition of a constitution and in this sense by an act of restoration in the face of the revolutionary menace. The restorations were either meant to contain revolutions already at work, or to prevent the outbreak of impending new revolutions. For two reasons the imposition of the Charte constitutionnelle by Louis XVIII belongs into the first of the two categories. On the one hand the restoration of the Bourbons was the historical answer to their deposition in 1792. On the other hand the imposition of the Charte was the answer to the Senatorial constitution. It replaced a democratic constitution by a constitution based on the monarchical principle. A first attempt to replace a revolutionary constitution by a constitution based on dynastic legitimacy had already been made by Louis XVI. When on 20 July 1791 at night he and his family escaped under cover of darkness from the Tuileries, their destination was Montmédy in Lorraine where General Bouillé waited for the refugees with loyal troops. In the palace the King had left behind a manifesto in which he explained the reasons of his flight. It was entitled “Declaration of the King addressed at all the French at his departure from Paris.”³⁵ It is obvious that the choice of the addressee had been carefully premeditated. The King did not turn to the National Assembly, but to the totality of his subjects. About the Assembly the King writes that they had neglected the task they had received from the nation, but had instead allowed themselves to be dominated by the clubs, the factious (factieux), who pursued but one objective: the destruction of the monarchy and the constitutional order. The monarchy had been reduced to a vain phantasm (un vain simulacre).³⁶ Since the Assembly had not made a stand against this development, they had in the King’s eyes lost their credit. They pursued but one goal, namely “to establish a metaphysical and philosophical system of government that in reality could not work.” Therefore the King appealed against the alleged instigators in the Assembly to his loyal subjects (ses fidèles sujets). He wanted to open their eyes and reveal to them the

 AP, Series I, vol. 27, 21 June 1791, 378 – 83.  AP, series I, vol. 27, 21 Juni 1791, 379.

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true intentions of those who were trying to destroy the “fatherland” under the pretext of its reformation.³⁷ By its direct appeal to the subjects the manifesto unveils even more clearly than Louis XVIII’s Declaration of Saint-Ouen of May 1814 the plebiscitary character of the procedure. Just as Louis XVIII tried to delegitimize the Senate, Louis XVI had sought to delegitimize the National Assembly by establishing a direct and confidential relationship with his subjects. The talk of a “metaphysical” government and the distinction between the “noble and good” majority of the French on the one side and the agitators on the other, are already present in a letter of Louis XVI to Charles IV of Spain of 12 October 1789. In this letter the hard-pressed King had solemnly protested “against all acts that ran counter to the royal authority, acts to which ever since 15 July he had against his will been forced to assent.”³⁸ The fact that he had up to this point given his sanction to the decrees of the National Assembly, is in the manifesto of 20 June 1791 once more explained by the outward force to which he had been exposed as a prisoner both of the capital and of the Assembly. Therefore at the very beginning of his declaration he revokes all the decrees issued during his “captivity.” At the same time he underlines the necessity “to give to the French and to the whole universe a report of the behavior both of himself and of the government that had usurped power in the Kingdom.”³⁹ At the end of the manifesto he appeals to the French and in particular to the citizens of Paris to distrust the insinuations and lies of their false friends: “Return to your King; he will always be your father, your best friend.” He anticipates the moment when he will again be among them, “when a constitution to which he will voluntarily have assented, will grant that our holy religion will be respected, that government will rest on solid and beneficial foundations, that property and individual rights will be protected from infringements, that the laws cannot be violated without punishment, and that at last liberty will be established on safe and unshakable foundations.”⁴⁰

 Ibid., 381: “Sa Majesté […] voulait faire connaître à ses fidèles sujets l’esprit de ces factieux qui déchirent le sein de leur patrie, en feignant de vouloir la régénérer.”  Quoted from Albert Mousset, Un témoin ignoré de la Révolution. Le comte de Fernan Nuñez, Ambassadeur d’Espagne à Paris (1787‒1791) (Paris: É. Champion, 1924), 228 : “J’ai choisi Votre Majesté comme chef de la seconde branche pour déposer en vos mains la protestation solennelle que j’élève contre tous les actes contraires à l’autorité royale qui m’ont été arrachés par la force depuis le 15 juillet de cette année.”  AP, series I, vol. 27, 21 June 1791, 378: “Le roi, après avoir solennellement protesté contre tous les actes émanés de lui pendant sa captivité, croit devoir mettre sous les yeux des Français et de tout l’univers le tableau de sa conduite, et celui du gouvernement qui s’est établi dans le royaume.”  Ibid., 383.

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The manifesto tied in with declarations the King had already made to the assembled Estates General on 23 June 1789 at a Séance royale. On that occasion he had referred to himself as the “common father” of all his subjects and as “defender of the laws” of the realm. At the same time he had rejected the claim of the Third Estate to represent the nation and to hold the constituent power. If the deputies refused loyal cooperation he would “care by himself for the welfare of his peoples”; “he alone would consider himself their true representative” and in the knowledge of their lists of grievances (cahiers de doléances) and in perfect agreement of the nation’s wishes with his intentions as directed at the common good, carry through the necessary reforms.⁴¹ The manifesto shows that even at the moment of his flight the King remained determined to turn France into a constitutional regime and to renounce part of his traditional privileges. But the constitution would have to take account of the indispensable rights of the monarchy as well. As is shown in his study of the fall of the monarchy, Marcel Reinhard believes that it would have been better for the King to publish his manifesto of 20 June only after having successfully completed his flight.⁴² He would indeed have been spared the embarrassment, after the failure of his flight, to have to explain why he had revoked his assent to the decrees of the National Assembly. But it should not be overlooked that the flight and the simultaneous publication of the memorandum were two parts of a political strategy by which Louis XVI not only hoped to regain his freedom of action, but also to lay the foundations of an alternative political system. As far as the decrees of the National Assembly up to June 1791 had been sanctioned by the King and had received force of law, in the night of his flight Louis XVI accomplished a veritable coup d’état. The coup could only succeed if he obtained the support of the nation. On this support, however, the King could only count if the news of his departure were accompanied by an offer. By addressing the manifesto not to the National Assembly, but to the nation at large, the King not only sought to explain his flight to the French people but also to encourage them to reclaim the rights they had conferred on the Assembly, and in a common effort to transform France into a constitutional monarchy that would not be in danger to degenerate into anarchy and lawlessness. The King obviously hoped that in combination with this offer his flight would exert such a pressure on the National Assembly that they could not avoid seeking

 Déclaration des intentions du Roi, §§ 1‒3, in : AP, series I, vol. 8 (Paris 1875), 23 June 1789, 144.  Reinhard: Chute, 30: “Mieux eût valu attendre d’avoir gagné la place de sûreté”; John Hardman: Louis XVI (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 189.

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an understanding with him. This also results from Bouillé’s report according to which the King had wished to find an agreement with the assembly as soon as he would have regained his liberty, taking into consideration that several members, among them Mirabeau, Duport, and the brothers Lameth, also criticized the constitution in the making, because they were afraid that it would pave the way either for the republic or for anarchy. ⁴³ It is obvious that to leave the manifesto in the Tuileries was part of a calculated strategy. In his declaration to the committee of investigation that the National Assembly had dispatched after his return, the King repudiated one of the most serious charges that in the Assembly had been raised against him, the charge that he had intended to pass the frontiers of the realm in order to attack his own country with foreign troops from foreign soil. To this charge the King remarked: “If I had intended to leave the realm, I would not have published the memorandum on the day of my departure, but waited until I had arrived beyond the frontiers.”⁴⁴ Obviously Louis had as a matter of principles envisaged two alternative ways of recovering independence: a military solution with foreign support, including, if need should be, the transition of the borders, or a political solution through negotiations with the National Assembly. If the King left the manifesto in the Tuileries as a proof that he did not intend to leave the country, the action clearly appears as part of a strategy aiming at an agreement. In order to achieve the agreement the King considered it necessary to mobilize political support. The invitation of the people to turn against the National Assembly and to defend the King’s indispensable rights shows how Louis XVI, until recently unquestionably legitimized by the ancient tradition of his dynasty, did not refrain any longer from pursuing his goals by revolutionary methods. But this plebiscitary strategy had a chance of success only on the condition that the monarchy could still count on a high degree of attachment among the subjects and that the King made a political offer that could compete with the policies of the National Assembly. The offer Louis XVI made in his manifesto was the express commitment to a constitutional system and the confirmation of his declaration of 23 June 1789. On these terms he sought to conclude an alliance with the nation. He hoped that his pledge would appear much more trustworthy if left at the moment of his flight in the Tuileries than published subsequently in safe and far away Montmédy. For the success of the King’s move it was at any rate essential that between the discovery of the flight and the publication of his intentions the people were not given the opportunity to speculate for days on the ultimate aims of the King,

 François Claude Amour, Marquis of Bouillé, Mémoires (Paris: Baudouin, 1821), 194.  Déclaration du roi, in: AP, series I, vol. 27, 27 June 1791, 553.

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days in which the minds would easily have tied themselves down to an interpretation that was disadvantageous and detrimental to the monarchy. After all, the King must have envisaged the possibility that the flight failed. In this case it was uncertain whether he would get still another opportunity to appeal to the nation. Hence the appeal at this juncture was important not only for his personal destiny, but also for the future of the dynasty and the monarchy. The attempt of Louis XVIII in 1814 to oppose to the revolution of the Senate a restoration of the monarchy by imposing a constitution was repeated in the autumn of 1848 by Frederick William IV of Prussia.⁴⁵ In March the revolutionary turmoil had obliged the King to announce the convocation of a National Assembly for the purpose of agreeing a constitution. By agreement the government understood that the constitution could not be forced upon the crown. But to what degree the King would be able to force his own ideas upon the Assembly, depended on the future course of the revolution and the political power relationships. On 16 October, after all, the Assembly repudiated a motion of the Left to imitate the French National Assembly of 1789 and claim unlimited constituent power. Actually, however, they increasingly acted, as if they had received such a mandate and adopted a number of decrees to which the King would under no circumstances give his assent. Among them was the abolition of all medals and decorations. The King was particularly exacerbated by the removal of the formula “by the grace of God” from the royal title.⁴⁶ The radicalization of the majority caused the government on 9 November first to transfer the Assembly from the capital to Brandenburg and on 5 December to dissolve it altogether. Simultaneously the King imposed a constitution compatible with his ideas of monarchical rights. In doing so he did not recur to the government’s draft of 20 May but to the version the committee of the Assembly had approved on 26 July. It is obvious that the government wished to make the imposed constitution as liberal as possible in order not to provoke a new wave of unrest in the country. Still, they made almost forty changes in the committee draft in order to strengthen the position of the Crown. The dissolution of the National Assembly marked the failure of the plan to create in monarchical Prussia a democratic constitution on the example of the French constitution of 1791. Even contemporaries compared the imposition of the Prussian constitution in December 1848 with the imposition of the Charte constitutionnelle in June 1814. There was, however, a major difference in that other than the Charte of Louis XVIII the Prussian constitution was imposed

 For the revolution of the Senate see Sellin, Revolution, 143‒71.  See above in the chapter “Religion” the section “Doubts about the Divine Right of Kings.”

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pending a revision by the Prussian Chambers. In March 1849 both Chambers expressly confirmed the legality of the imposition, before they subjected the constitution to an overall revision and discussed and voted the articles individually one after the other. By this procedure the principle of agreement was belatedly taken account of. Obviously the King wished to avoid the charge of having broken his promise. But the second Chamber did not make it easy for him to accomplish the pacification he was trying to accomplish. When the Chamber again adopted resolutions with which he disagreed, he dissolved it out of hand on 27 April 1849, before the revision was completed. On 30 May he recurred to the article on emergency decrees and imposed an illiberal electoral law by which the notorious three-class franchise was introduced in Prussia. Accordingly, the revised constitution of 31 January 1850 conceded to the Crown a much stronger position than the imposed constitution of December 1848 had done.⁴⁷ In the autumn of 1848 Emperor Francis-Joseph of Austria had also dissolved the Constituent Diet that had been meeting at Kremsier ever since its transfer from Vienna, and instead in May 1849 imposed a constitution. Other than the King of Prussia, however, he revoked this constitution in December 1851.

Russia’s Transition to Constitutionalism Russia’s transition to constitutionalism in the autumn of 1905 was extorted by a general strike. On 4 October the railroad workers laid down their work. Soon the strike extended to other branches. Within a few days the economic life of the country came to an almost complete standstill. It is supposed that by the middle of October almost one and a half million people of different sectors and half a million members of the middle classes had stopped working.⁴⁸ In the big cities food went scarce, while strikers’ assemblies called for the fall of the autocracy. In this situation count Sergej Jul’evič Vitte who had just returned from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he had concluded a peace treaty with Japan, advised the Tsar to make political concessions.⁴⁹ The first institutional reform the Tsar thereupon carried through was the creation of the office of Prime Minister. Vitte was named its first incumbent. Upon Vitte’s recommendation the Tsar on 17 October issued a manifesto in which he announced a constitutional reform of the Russian

 See Sellin, Revolution, 314‒20.  Manfred Hildermeier, Die Russische Revolution 1905‒1921 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1989), 72.  Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905, vol. 1: Russia in Disarray (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 224.

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Fig. 4: Il’ja Efimovič Repin (1844‒1930), October 17, 1905 (1911).

Empire (fig. 4).⁵⁰ As he explained in the very first sentence of the text that Vitte had drafted, the measure was motivated by the disturbances “in the capitals and in many parts of Our Empire.” But since the well-being (blago) of the Russian monarch was inseparable from the well-being of the people and the troubles (pečal’) of the people inseparable from the troubles of the monarch, he invited the government to take appropriate measures “for the pacification of political life” (k umirotvoreniju gosudarstvennoj žizni). The term pacification is a clear indication that by means of the manifesto the Tsar sought to restore the legitimacy of the monarchy. The step thus forms part of the tradition Louis XVIII had established almost one hundred years earlier by imposing the Charte constitutionnelle. By the timely introduction of reforms the Tsar hoped to give new heart to the vacillating legitimacy of the autocracy. In the light of this objective it was encouraging that after the proclamation of the manifesto the strikes gradually subsided.⁵¹ Like Louis XVIII in his time Nicholas II unquestionably continued to adhere to divine right, as is already shown in the introductory formula of the manifesto it-

 Vysočajšij Manifest, in: “Pravo. Eženedel’naja Juridičeskaja Gazeta,” 25 October 1905, 3395‒ 97; also in: J. L. Tatarov, “Manifest 17 oktjabrja 1905,” KA 11‒12 (1925), 46‒47, 89‒91; text of the manifesto in English language in: Ascher, Revolution, vol. I, 228‒29; for the making of the manifesto see Sergej Jul’evič Vitte, Vospominanija, vol. 3 (Moscow: Izd. Social’no-Economičeskoj Literatury, 1960), 3‒17.  Ascher, Revolution, vol. 1, 232.

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self.⁵² In the manifesto the Tsar promised to grant a number of fundamental rights such as personal inviolability, freedom of conscience, of speech, of assembly, and of association. He also announced an extension of the suffrage in Duma elections that had been established on 6 August 1905 by the then Minister of the Interior Aleksandr Bulygin, to include “those classes of the population that at present do not possess any voting rights at all.” Besides, the Duma should in the future participate in legislation no longer in an advisory capacity only but have the right of decision. At the same time, however, the Tsar reserved for himself the right to veto any decision of the assembly.⁵³ The most urgent reform measure promised in the October manifesto was indeed a new electoral law. Between 5 and 9 December the highest officials of the Empire met under the presidency of the Tsar at Carskoe Selo to discuss a draft the Council of Ministers had elaborated.⁵⁴ At the beginning of the first meeting State Councilor Dmitrij Nikolaevič Šipov characterized the actual crisis by stating that “between government and society” an “abyss” had opened up. To close it, the electoral law had to be reformed in a way as to enable the deputies to earn “the trust (doverie) of society.” In this respect the order of 6 August had been completely insufficient. Therefore it had not been met by “the indispensable assent” (sočuvstvie) among the citizens.⁵⁵ By the expressions “trust” and “assent” Šipov underlined the crucial conditions on which the acceptance of the monarchy was based and which in the crisis the Tsar had by all means to strengthen in the interest of renewing monarchical legitimacy. Barnave had used almost the same words when on 21 July 1791 he had admonished Marie-Antoinette that after his return on the throne Louis XVI should try to restore his reputation (considération) and the trust (confiance) in his person.⁵⁶ The new electoral law was proclaimed on 11 December 1905. As announced in the October manifesto the number of those having the right to vote was substantially enlarged as compared to Bulygin’s reform of 6 August. But the new suffrage was still neither universal nor equal. By dividing the population into four groups of electors – land-owners, farmers, town-dwellers, and workers – provision had been made that members of the bourgeoisie and of the nobility received a voting power above average. Those having the right to vote were called to determine electors. The electors then elected the Duma deputies. The inequality of

 “Božieju Milostiju, My, Nikolaj Vtoryj, Imperator i Samoderžec Vserossijskij” ecc.  Ascher, Revolution, vol. I, 179.  V. Vodovozov, ed., “Carskosel’skija soveščanija,” Byloe 3 (25) (September 1917): 217‒65.  Ibid., 238.  See above the section “Democratic Constitutionalism: The Monarchy under the Constitution of 1791.”

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voting rights had the effect that 2,000 land-owners, 4,000 town-dweller, 30,000 farmers, and 90,000 workers elected one elector. Women, agricultural workers, servants, and day laborers did not receive voting rights at all.⁵⁷ The constituent meeting of the State Duma was ceremoniously opened on 27 April 1906 at 5 o’clock in the afternoon by State Secretary Eduard Vasil’evič Friš, president of the law department of the State Council.⁵⁸ Four days earlier the Tsar had proclaimed a constitution by the name of “Fundamental State Laws” (Osnovnye Gosudarstvennye Zakony).⁵⁹ The term was not new. The very first Russian code of laws of 1832 contained “Fundamental State Laws.” By inserting the fundamental laws into the national legislative tradition the term constitution that would have evoked associations with the revolutions of the West, was avoided.⁶⁰ Much in the same way, as Louis XVIII by choosing the term Charte constitutionnelle, so Nicholas II sought by the title of the constitution to create the impression that the new fundamental laws were completely in line with the tradition of Russian public law and no concession to the revolution. Accordingly the government refrained from putting the promises of the October manifesto down in a separate document, but inserted them instead into the fundamental laws. During the secret discussions on the question of a constitution that were held in April 1906 in the Tsar’s presence again at Carskoe Selo, the question was raised whether the indispensable innovations could be introduced by the careful insertion of single articles into the existing fundamental laws, or whether the fundamental laws had to be subjected to an overall revision (peresmotr). Prime Minister Vitte, cautiously but firmly, advocated a comprehensive review.⁶¹ His arguments show that from the imposition of a constitution he expected not only a limitation but also a confirmation of the rights of the monarch. According to the draft the Council of Ministers had elaborated, the legislative power was to be exercised by the Tsar in conjunction with the Council of State and the Duma (art. 7). Other than the French Charte constitutionnelle of 1814 the draft conceded to the Chambers the right to initiate legislation. The power to initiate laws for amending the constitu Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905. Vol. 2: Authority Restored (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 43.  Stenografičeskij otčet, Gosudarstvennaja Duma, First Session, First meeting, 27 April 1906, 1‒ 4.  Svod Zakonov Rossijskoj Imperii v pjati knigach, vol. I (Saint Petersburg: 1912), 1; English translation of the most important parts in: Marc Szeftel, The Russian Constitution of April 23, 1906: Political Institutions of the Duma Monarchy (Brussels: Édition de la Librairie Encyclopédique, 1976), 84‒109.  Szeftel, Constitution, 25.  V. Vodovosov, ed., “Carskosel’skija soveščanija II,” 7 April 1906. Byloe 4 (26) (October 1917), 190.

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tion, however, was to be reserved to the Tsar (artt. 8 and 107). The Duma was in no case to be transformed into a constituent assembly, but should be entitled to discuss and adopt constitution-amending bills introduced by the government.⁶² State Councilor Aleksandr Semenovič Stišinskij and Minister of the Interior Petr Nikolaevič Durnovo, however, had proposed to deny to the Council of State and to the Duma any participation in constitution-amending legislation.⁶³ This would clearly have contradicted the promises contained in the October manifesto. Vitte believed that if the fundamental laws were excluded from the Duma’s right of initiative, it was indispensable to list in them as precisely as possible the rights not only of the people and of the representation but also the rights of the Tsar and of the government. He thought that in the actual version of the fundamental laws the rights of the monarch in his capacity as head of the supreme authority were not sufficiently defined. For example they did not contain a clause stating that foreign policy belonged to the prerogatives of the Tsar. Vitte obviously thought that if the fundamental laws were left unchanged, the Duma could, thanks to their right of initiative, introduce a law by which they subjected foreign policy to their control. The same could happen with respect to the army and to the expenditures of the court. All this made it advisable in Vitte’s eyes to embark upon a comprehensive revision of the fundamental laws of 1832. His opinion was shared by other participants in the meeting, among them the president of the State Council, count Dmitrij Martynovič Sol’skij.⁶⁴ At the meeting of 9 April Vitte once more summed up his point of view: “The fundamental laws have to be revised, because thanks to their right of initiative the Duma is able to change everything but the fundamental laws. Therefore whatever might provoke dangers if touched must remain beyond the competences of the Duma. It is not dangerous to speak about liberties, about legality, about civil rights. That’s all possible. But there are without doubt dangerous subjects. To these belong the legal foundations of the Duma and of the State Council, the fundamental regulations concerning the budget and public loans, and the prerogatives of the monarch in his capacity as head of state. All these matters belong into the fundamental laws.”⁶⁵ Far-ranging limitations of the Duma’s right to concur in legislation were contained in article 87. It empowered the Tsar in urgent matters to legislate by decree. Such laws by decree, however, were to become inoperative if they were not confirmed by the Duma at their next session.    

Sergej Vitte on 7 April 1906, ibid., 189. Ibid., 193. Ibid., 191. Ibid., 9 April 1906, 202.

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Articles 69 through 83 of the Fundamental Laws listed the “rights and duties of the Russian subjects” (O pravach i objasannostjach rossijskich poddanych). Duties in addition to rights had first been introduced into the French constitution of 1795. Article 70 of the Fundamental Laws made it the first duty of every Russian subject to dedicate himself to “the defense of the throne and of the fatherland” (zaščita prestola i otečestva). In this way the constitution tied the conscience of every citizen to the person of the monarch. The article also introduced universal conscription. In spite of article 87 the articles on legislative procedures reveal that the Fundamental Laws limited the Tsar’s prerogative rights. Therefore it may appear strange that article 4 still accorded the Tsar the “supreme autocratic power” (verchovnaja samoderžavnaja vlast’), as if the power relationships should remain as before. The title “autocrat” (samoderžec) was a translation of the Byzantine term autocrator into Church Slavonic and originally referred to a ruler who had received his right to rule immediately from God and not from another ruler.⁶⁶ For this reason the Grand Dukes of Moscow adopted the title only after having emancipated themselves from the domination by the Golden Horde. At the times of Peter the Great and Tsarina Anne the term “autocracy” (samoderžavie) acquired the additional meaning of unlimited or – in the Western acceptation of the term – absolute power. Accordingly, the Fundamental Laws of 1832 called the power of the Tsar both “autocratic” (samoderžavnyj) and “unlimited” (neograničennyj). Article 4 of the Fundamental Laws of 1906 still accorded the Tsar an “autocratic,” but no longer an “unlimited” power. At the beginning of the deliberations on this article at Carskoe Selo Nicholas II confessed that he had difficulty assenting to this modification. Like William II who in November 1918 believed that he could not abdicate considering that in a similar situation Frederick the Great would neither have abdicated, Nicholas now declared that he had been troubled all the time by the question whether he was permitted to modify the limits of the power he had inherited from his ancestors. He was determined to fulfill the promises of October 1905, but was not ready to renounce the traditional definition of his power. If he clung to this definition he would naturally provoke unrest and criticism. But one had to take into consideration from where the criticism was originating. It was the “so-called educated element,” the proletarians, and the third estate. But he was convinced that 80 % of the Russian people sided with him, supported him, and were grateful for his refusal to consent to a limitation of his power.⁶⁷ Vitte countered dryly.

 For an interpretation of the concept of “autocracy” see Szeftel, Constitution, 171‒98.  Vodovosov,”Carsko-sel’skija soveščanija II,” 9 April 1906: 204‒05.

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Since in the October manifesto Nicholas had declared that without the consent of the Duma and of the State Council no decree could henceforth obtain force of law, the supreme power was from now on subjected to the law and had to be exercised in accordance with the law. The supreme power had thus suffered a limitation. Only the Turkish Sultan disposed of unlimited power.⁶⁸ If one compares William II with Frederick the Great and Nicholas II with Peter the Great it turns out that weak rulers wish to live up to the lessons of the past, strong rulers to the prospective requirements of the future. It appears natural that monarchs of ancient dynasties were conscious of their family traditions, but both Nicholas and William had better taken over from Peter I and Frederick II the capacity to distance themselves from the convictions of their ancestors and to act in line with the needs and possibilities of their own time instead of clinging to long outdated maxims of action. The Tsar’s power could indeed no longer be called “unlimited.” But it was still “autocratic” in the same sense as in Western Europe in the 19th century the power of the monarch was defined by the monarchical principle. According to article 57 of the Vienna Final Act of 1820 “the sovereign” could by a ständische Verfassung (corporative constitution) be obliged to accept “the co-operation of the estates” in the execution of certain rights, but he could not be obliged to give the estates a share in his power. It was a fundamental principle of constitutional public law of the period that even in a constitutional regime the monarch retained full power. This explains why article 4 of the Russian Fundamental Laws of 1906 expressly confirmed autocratic power, notwithstanding that the State Council and the Duma were by the same laws accorded a share in the government.⁶⁹ Nicholas’ observations on the fourth article show that he lacked an adequate idea of the social classes on whom before all he had to base his legitimacy under the conditions of an expanding industrial society. If he really believed he could do without the consent of the educated classes, of the urban middle class, and of the workers, he did not remember from where the revolution had originated, and he had not understood that his rule was menaced not so much by the peasants on the countryside, but by the inhabitants of the big cities and in particular by the workers in the industrial agglomerations. Other than the Charte constitutionnelle of 1814 the revised Russian Fundamental Laws of 1906 did not provide the basis for a workable constitutional regime. As early as 8 July 1906 the Tsar again dissolved the Duma. In February

 Ibid., 206.  See Szeftel, Constitution, 190‒91.

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1907 the second Duma assembled, to be again dissolved only four months later. In June 1907 the Tsar, taking advantage of the exceptional article 87, imposed a new electoral law. Thanks to this law the third Duma obtained a conservative majority. But to the same degree that the Duma from now on proved amenable, her capacity to contribute to the legitimacy of the regime, decreased. The consequences were revealed in the First World War. Because of the powerlessness of the Duma the Tsar alone had to bear the responsibility for its unprecedented economic and social costs. At the end of his treatise on “Russia’s Transition to Sham Constitutionalism” Max Weber observed, judging from the German point of view: “The miserable government of the Tsar, endangered in its very foundations by every war, surely has the appearance of a “comfortable” neighbor. A truly constitutional Russia would probably be a stronger, and being more sensitive to the instincts of the masses, a more restless neighbor. But one must not deceive oneself: this Russia is coming, one way or the other”.⁷⁰

The Statuto Albertino of 1848 There were two types of imposition. From the impositions that were meant to contain a revolution already in progress, must be distinguished those impositions that served to prevent the outbreak of a revolution altogether. To this type of imposition belong the constitutions that the King of Naples, the GrandDuke of Tuscany, the Pope as sovereign of the Papal States, and the King of Sardinia imposed in early 1848.⁷¹ The Statuto albertino that King Charles Albert of Sardinia imposed on 4 March 1848 was the only Italian constitution of the revolution that was not revoked in 1849. The revolution in Italy had first broken out at Palermo in January 1848. Thereupon the King of the Two Sicilies imposed a constitution. After the King of the Two Sicilies had rushed forward, fear of revolution induced King Charles Albert in Turin in February to follow suit and impose a constitution, too. At the meeting of the Consiglio di Conferenza del Regno di Sardegna of 3 February 1848 the Minister of the Interior, count Giacinto Borelli, declared: “The machinations of the sects” and “the strong excitement of the press” have “precipitated everything.” He pointed out that the spirits were

 Max Weber, “Rußlands Übergang zum Scheinkonstitutionalismus”, in: idem, Zur Russischen Revolution. Schriften und Reden 1905‒1912. Edited by Wolfgang J. Mommsen (Max Weber Gesamtausgabe, section I, vol. 10) (Tübingen: Mohr, 1989), 679.  See the comparative analysis of the Italian impositions in: Kerstin Singer, Konstitutionalismus auf Italienisch. Italiens politische und soziale Führungsschichten und die oktroyierten Verfassungen von 1848 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2008).

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in fermentation. The decision of the government of Naples had everywhere provoked turmoil, especially at Genova that since the Congress of Vienna was part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. A crisis had become almost unavoidable, and the demand of a representative constitution was daily to be expected. In this situation Borelli recommended measures appropriate to forestall an upheaval. If a constitution was unavoidable, it was better to accord it on one’s own initiative than having to submit to it. Borelli declared that the government ought to determine the conditions instead of accepting the dictates of others.⁷² And he added: “If public opinion is expressed so visibly as in our case, there is no way but to satisfy it within just limits.”⁷³ The deliberations of the governing council resulted in the imposition of the Statuto albertino. The preamble reveals that Charles Albert nevertheless thought of himself as retaining full sovereignty – just as Louis XVIII had done after the imposition of the Charte. He did not regard himself as legitimized by the general will but styled himself King by divine right, as he had done before. But the road to the Statuto clearly reveals that the legitimacy of the monarchy was no longer primarily based on divine right, but on the timely compromise with the revolution that the King had sealed by the one-sided imposition of the constitution. The imposition undoubtedly was an act of restoration in that it served to strengthen the monarchy and render it unassailable by the revolutionary movement.

Napoleonic Constitutionalism From the impositions that were undertaken during revolutions or in the face of impending revolutions, must be distinguished the impositions by which Napoleon and his allies sought to stabilize states that had been artificially composed of territories and subjects of diverse origin, and to conciliate the citizens to their new rulers. New rulers were in power wherever Napoleon had deposed the traditional dynasties and in their stead had placed his brothers and sisters on the thrones. In 1806 he made his youngest brother Louis King of Holland; in the same year he named Joseph Bonaparte and two years later his brother-in-law Joachim Murat King of Naples; in 1807 he made his brother Jérôme King of West-

 Consiglio di conferenza presieduto da Sua Maestà, Seduta n. 6, Processo verbale della seduta del 3 febbraio 1848, in: Luigi Ciaurro, ed., Lo Statuto albertino, illustrato dai lavori preparatori (Rome: Dipartimento per l’informazione e l’editoria, 1996), 114: “Bisogna darla, non lasciarsela imporre; dettare le condizioni, non riceverle.”  Ibid., 115: “Quando l’opinione si pronuncia in modo così visibile come è da noi, non c’è altro che soddisfarla nei giusti limiti.”

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phalia, and in 1808 he promoted Joseph Bonaparte to the throne of Spain. In the Kingdom of Italy Napoleon had himself crowned King and linked the Kingdom to the French Empire in a personal union. Something similar had since 1809 been the case in the Grand-Duchy of Berg, because the prospective King Louis, Napoleon’s nephew and son of his brother Louis, was still a child. Napoleon documented the hopes he entertained with respect to his constitutional policies, in a letter of 15 November 1807 by which he transmitted a constitution for the Kingdom of Westphalia to his brother Jérôme. In the letter he admonished Jérôme to observe the constitution carefully, since thanks to the constitution and to the rights that it granted, his subjects would attain such a degree of legality and equality of rights that they would never wish to return under their former sovereigns.⁷⁴ Napoleon advised even those princes of the Confederation of the Rhine who had descended from ancient dynasties, such as the King of Bavaria and the Grand-Duke of Baden, to seek legitimacy for their new rank by imposing a constitution. On the one hand the princes concerned still governed their ancient territories, but on the other hand they had received, by the Imperial recess of 1803 (Reichsdeputationshauptschluß) and through additional territorial changes during the following years, an enormous expansion of territory and thereby obtained a great many new subjects. These subjects had no less than the citizens of the Kingdom of Westphalia, to be conciliated to their new rulers. To meet this requirement Bavaria was accorded a constitution as early as 1808 that, however, was never put into practice. In Baden the deliberations aiming at a new constitution came to a standstill. The acceptation of new rulers and the integration of ancient and new populations actually remained a problem even after the Congress of Vienna. Since those member states of the Confederation of the Rhine that were governed by historical dynasties, were – other than the satellite states governed by members of the Bonaparte family – not dissolved after the fall of Napoleon, the need to legitimize the new rulers in the eyes of their recently acquired subjects remained on the agenda. On the example of the Charte and in the vein of Napoleon’s constitutional policy constitutions were imposed in Bavaria and Baden in 1818.⁷⁵ If in the French satellite states Napoleon tried to integrate the population through constitutions, he simply followed the model of the Empire itself where the consular constitution of 1799 and the amendments of 1802 and 1804 served

 Napoléon Ier: Correspondance, vol. 16 (Paris: Imprimérie Imperiale, 1864), No. 13361, 166‒67; see below 215 – 16.  See ibid. the section “Particularism in Germany.”

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the same purpose. Napoleon had not established satellite states in every conquered territory. Some of them were indeed integrated into the Empire and partook of the constitutional development of France. In Napoleonic Italy both systems co-existed. Piedmont, Liguria, Tuscany, and Latium with the city of Rome were annexed. In this way the Empire received a considerable amount of Italian-speaking citizens whose loyalty Napoleon hoped to secure thanks to the modernity of French institutions. The Kingdoms of Italy and Naples were satellite states with limited autonomy. In Italy only the islands of Sardinia and Sicily remained beyond Napoleon’s influence.

Constitutional Conflict In the system of monarchical constitutionalism the policy of rendering monarchy immune to revolution by imposing constitutions could only succeed within narrow limits. In legislation and for the adoption of the budget the constitutions demanded the concurrence of government and Chambers, but they offered no recipe of how to obtain that concurrence in case of conflict. In several treatises Robert von Mohl analyzed the problem in a comparative perspective. He concluded that in principle there were only two methods of bringing about the required concurrence, namely corruption or parliamentary government. By corruption he understood any extralegal procedure or any procedure of doubtful legality by which the government managed to secure a majority in the Second Chamber. Among the procedures in question were manipulations of the suffrage, government influences in elections, the refusal of holidays for deputies who were also public servants, manipulations of the rules of procedure and influences on seating arrangements. Mohl warned against these methods which, if applied regularly, in the long run threatened the credibility of the government and of the constitutional system in general and thus undermined the legitimacy of the monarchy. Mohl believed that to avoid these dangers the transition to parliamentary government was indispensable. In his eyes parliamentary government was based on the principle that the monarch, without an express obligation, submitted to the vote of the majority. He emphasized that parliamentary government was “no article in the constitution,” but a “system of government,” in other words, a maxim of policy.⁷⁶

 See above in the chapter “Enlightenment” the section “Enlightenment and the Age of Revolution.”

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If the monarch was unable to bring the Chambers to heel through corruption and if he refused to accept parliamentary government, conflicts were inevitable. In France one such conflict ended up in the July Revolution of 1830. Instead of parting with the unpopular minister Jules de Polignac, King Charles X risked a coup d’état and thereby lost his throne. In March 221 deputies had directed an address to the King declaring that the Charte constitutionnelle had made the continuing agreement between the government and the wishes of the people the condition of the ordinary course of public affairs, and they added that such an agreement did not exist.⁷⁷ A similar conflict shook the Kingdom of Prussia in the 1860’s. It did not break out over the nomination of a minister, but over a project of law. In 1861 the minister of war Albrecht von Roon introduced a bill on military reform in the Prussian House of Deputies. The reform aimed at making compulsory military service that had existed on paper since 1814, again a reality, both for the sake of justice and as a means to increase the strength of the Prussian army. The liberal members of the House of Deputies opposed the reform and especially the three years service, because they were afraid that the measures would lead to a militarization of society and turn the soldiers into willing instruments in the hands of the King. When it had become obvious that the House would not approve of the bill, the government withdrew it in the conviction that military affairs belonged to the monarch’s power of command and did not require the consent of parliament. Therefore it limited itself to demanding insertion of the necessary means into the ordinary budget to which the House reacted by refusing approval of the budget law as well. Since none of the conflicting parties was prepared to give in, Otto von Bismarck who had been nominated Prussian minister president in September 1862 went ahead for four years without an approved budget, justifying this policy by the so-called gap theory. He argued that in legislation the constitution demanded the concurrence of Crown and Parliament, but had not explained how to proceed if this concurrence could not be attained, thus leaving a gap that could be closed only by the King as the original author of the constitution. Since the state could not suffer a standstill, it was the duty of the government in the given situation to take the necessary measures, if need should be, even without parliamentary backing. Their budgetary powers were the most important privilege of Parliament. Even in the Old Regime approval of taxes had been the chief function of the es-

 Adresse des 221 et réponse du roi (18 March 1830), in : Pierre Rosanvallon, La Monarchie impossible. Les chartes de 1814 et de 1830 (Paris: Fayard, 1994), 281; see above in the chapter “Violence” the section “Charles X and the July Revolution.”

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tates. This gives an idea of Bismarck’s temerity. Although the country did not revolt against the King, there is no doubt that the course of the government during the conflict weakened the legitimating effect of the constitution. Bismarck’s proceedings revealed all too openly the limits of the nation’s rights of political participation. But if the constitution was no longer sufficient for justifying the monarchy, it had to be supplemented by other legitimizing elements. This was exactly the strategy by which Bismarck managed to resolve the constitutional conflict without ceding to the demands of the liberal opposition. Bismarck managed the crisis by employing the Prussian army to resolve the German national question which the National Assembly of Frankfurt had left open in the Revolution of 1848. One of the main reasons of the Assembly’s failure had at last been the refusal by Frederick William IV of the Imperial dignity offered him. If the King had accepted the election to Emperor of the Germans he would have become a monarch whose government rested on two opposing principles of legitimacy. In Prussia he would have remained King by divine right, in Germany at large he would have become Emperor by the revolution and would thus have reduced legitimism on which he relied in Prussia, to an absurdity on the national level. But if German unity was based on the Crown of Prussia instead of a democratically elected Parliament, the conflict of legitimacies could be avoided. By resolving the national question, albeit by employing Prussian military power, Bismarck compensated the liberal opposition at the same time for the failure of their parliamentary ambitions. After the surprisingly swift defeat of Austria in 1866 the Prussian progress party that had fought against the government’s policy of conflict until the very last moment, fell apart. The newly founded National-Liberal Party supported Bismarck and his German policy. The expenditures of the past four years were retrospectively approved by an indemnity bill. The Prussian government thus formally recognized the budgetary powers of Parliament, powers they had in reality never contested. On the other hand Parliament withdrew the charge of unconstitutional policy. The alleged gap in the constitution, however, was thereby not closed.

The German Empire The result of the Prussian constitutional conflict produced repercussions far beyond Prussia. Since the Second German Empire was created by Prussia, the Prussian constitutional principles were to a great degree extended to the Reich. The deputies of the Imperial Diet, it is true, were, other than their Prussian counterparts, elected through universal, equal, and secret ballot. But since parliamentary government was not provided for, the Diet’s powers to impose the will of the

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electorate on the government were limited. In case of conflict the Imperial government was able to sue for the support of the masses by plebiscitary incitement and propaganda. This tendency is analyzed in Friedrich Naumann’s book of 1900, “Democracy and Emperorship” (Demokratie und Kaisertum), in which the Second French Empire of 1852 is compared to the German Empire of 1871. About the government of Napoleon III Naumann writes in the beginning: “The basic principle is this: popular sovereignty is recognized in theory, but exercised by transferring it upon one man. The transfer is achieved through popular vote. The government is based on the will of the masses. The Imperator is the embodiment of the universal national will, his right is based on the fact that the nation needs him, and that he has the army.”⁷⁸ These “Napoleonic ideas,” Naumann continues, had “not been fully put into practice”, but “the Prussian monarchical idea” had “strongly been imbued with them”. Naumann rationalizes the Emperor’s dual legitimacy by distinguishing two aspects of his rule: “As King of Prussia” the Emperor has taken over “the heritage of the ancient tradition; as Kaiser he is national Imperator, embodiment of the universal will, personal leader from an old into a new epoch.”⁷⁹ Thus Naumann defined the qualities that in his eyes legitimized the German Emperor as distinguished from the King of Prussia. They clearly differ from all traditional ideas of legitimacy and emphasize instead the national role of the Emperor. The concept of leader points to the idea of personal responsibility. Unlike a constitutional monarch a leader cannot be inviolable and irresponsible. A few years later Naumann indicated that he no longer believed that the “ancient tradition” was sufficient for legitimizing a monarch: “Monarchs are in need of majorities. They exist, as long as they are believed to be needed. If this belief vanishes, the most ancient right of inheritance is powerless.”⁸⁰ Two years after the resolution of the constitutional conflict Otto von Gierke coined the term Obrigkeitsstaat (authoritarian state). By Obrigkeitsstaat he understood a regime that was based on domination and thus differed from the urban communities of the Middle Ages that had been based on cooperation (Genossenschaft).⁸¹ Gierke used the term Obrigkeitsstaat for the absolute monarchies of the early modern period in which the individual in his sole capacity as subject had been confronted by the “obrigkeitliche Administration” (administra-

 Friedrich Naumann, Demokratie und Kaisertum, in: idem, Politische Schriften. Edited by Theodor Schieder, vol. 2: Schriften zur Verfassungspolitik (Köln and Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1964), 265.  Ibid., 265‒66; see above in the chapter “Success in War” the section “The Fall of William II.”  Friedrich Naumann, “Demokratie und Monarchie” (1912), in: idem, Politische Schriften, vol. 2, 443.  Otto von Gierke, Das deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht, vol. 1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1868), 646‒47.

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tion by the authorities). He thus did not use the term in the intent of criticizing monarchies of his time with imposed constitutions. He rather believed that the ancient Obrigkeitsstaat had thanks to the imposition of constitutions already changed into a Volksstaat (people’s state). Prussia had “only after its transformation into a Volksstaat” been in a position “to accept its historical calling to take the lead in Germany.”⁸² Gierke’s disciple Hugo Preuß was much more skeptical. In the middle of the First World War he wrote that the ancient authoritarian system was still the dominating constitutional principle of the German Empire. The imposition of a constitution in 1848 had changed “only the form, not the essence of the political structure” in Prussia. In the course of the unification of Germany through Bismarck “the Prussian authoritarian government had entered into the smaller German Empire” (kleindeutsches Reich), just as “it had already gone unimpaired over to constitutionalism.” The German constitutions only served to “conceal the authoritarian nature” of the political system.⁸³ Preuß distinguished between the constitutional authoritarian state and the Volksstaat and demanded that the German Obrigkeitsstaat be at last transformed into the Volksstaat. By analyzing it as an authoritarian state Preuß, other than Gierke, placed the Empire close to absolutism and revealed all attempts of the past to legitimize the monarchy through an imposed constitution, as insufficient. Since in Prussia and Germany both the military command and foreign policy were placed beyond the reach of the Imperial Diet, the responsibility for the policies that had lead to the outbreak of the World War, and for the political and military decisions taken during the war, were falling on the Prussian King and German Emperor. This constellation contributed decisively to the fall of the monarchy, all the more so since William II’s capacities proved entirely inadequate for the tasks that his constitutional position burdened upon him during the World War.

Constitutional Celebrations The introduction of constitutionalism was a radical innovation. This alone explains why it was often made an occasion of national celebrations and memorial events. On 3 July 1776, the day after the American Continental Congress had resolved to separate from the mother country, John Adams wrote from Philadelphia to his wife Abigail: “The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable

 Idem, Die Steinsche Städteordnung (Berlin: Schade, 1909), 63.  Hugo Preuß, Das deutsche Volk und die Politik (Jena: Diederichs, 1915), 68, 72, 133, 140, 152, 154.

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Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade with shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more”.⁸⁴ Though eventually not the second but the fourth of July, the day when the Continental Congress adopted the entire text of the Declaration of Independence, as Thomas Jefferson had drafted it, was made the American national holiday, Adams’ prophecy has come true. His conviction that the achievement of freedom had to be celebrated, asserted itself. During the ratification process of the Federal Constitution of 1787 numerous additional occasions for celebrations beyond independence have been defined. At the so-called Federal Processions in the big cities along the Atlantic coast the population participated in festivities celebrating the ratification by the ratifying conventions of the single States, first in Boston on 8 February 1788.⁸⁵ The biggest celebration took place in Philadelphia on 4 July 1788, two days after Congress had put into force the Federal Constitution. Twelve years earlier at the same date the United States had declared independence from Britain.⁸⁶ The celebrations were an expression of joy over the adoption of the Constitution and at the same time served the purpose of winning over opponents and skeptics and of convincing them of the rightness of the decision. They were thus also a piece of political propaganda. With a view to keeping alive the memory of the Revolution and to winning over the population for its objectives, the French constitution of 1791 stated that “there will be held national celebrations for the purpose of preserving the memory of the French Revolution, of maintaining fraternity among the citizens, and of attaching them to the constitution, the fatherland, and the laws.”⁸⁷ In 1795 a similar paragraph was inserted into the constitution of the Directory.⁸⁸

 John Adams to Abigail Adams, 3 July 1776, in: Margaret A. Hogan and C. James Taylor, eds., My Dearest Friend. Letters of Abigail and John Adams (Cambridge, Mass., and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 125.  Jürgen Heideking, “Die Verfassungsfeiern von 1788. Das Ende der Amerikanischen Revolution und die Anfänge einer Nationalen Festkultur in den Vereinigten Staaten,” Der Staat 34 (1995), 395‒96.  Hans-Christoph Schröder, “The Pope’s Day in Boston und die Verfassungsfeier in Philadelphia,” in: Uwe Schultz, ed., Das Fest. Eine Kulturgeschichte von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (München: Beck, 1988), 250.  Contitution française 1791, Titre I, in: Godechot, ed., Constitutions, 37 : “Il sera établi des fêtes nationales pour conserver le souvenir de la Révolution française, entretenir la fraternité entre les citoyens et les attacher à la Constitution, à la Patrie et aux lois.”

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Both the American constitution of 1787 and the French constitutions of 1791 and 1795 had originated from the constituent power of the people. Through annual celebrations of the constitutions the nations obviously sought to enshrine the achievements of the respective revolutions so indelibly in the conscience of the citizens that any idea of returning to the former state of things was excluded. The citizens should incessantly keep reminded never again to abandon their hard-won sovereignty. The celebrations thus served to confirm and to preserve the power of the people. The citizens regarded as an improvement as against the previous state of affairs also those constitutions which they had not created themselves, but which had been imposed by their rulers. Therefore in these societies as well the desire to celebrate the constitutions made itself felt. But the question was raised whether the citizens had better not participate in celebrations of this kind and not give the impression as if they assented to an imposed constitution that with respect both to origin and content remained far behind democratic principles. It is true that monarchs could just as well have taken themselves the initiative to celebrate their constitutions, but from such a step they refrained, because it was to be feared that public festivals with thousands of participants could all to easily be used as an opportunity to raise demands that went beyond the existing constitutions. This problem may be studied in the constitutional celebrations of 1843 in Baden and in two celebrations of 1832 in Bavaria. 22 August 1843 was the 25th anniversary of Grand-Duke Charles’ signature under the Baden constitution. As early as March liberal newspaper brought into play the idea of publicly celebrating the day. On 21 June during a public meeting at Oberkirch in the Rench Valley a festival committee was constituted. Among its 26 members were leading representatives of the liberal opposition. The reaction of the authorities was ambiguous. The Department of the Interior declared that the government was not preparing celebrations on the occasion, but would not interfere with private functions as long as legal regulations were observed. At the same time the government urged public servants to participate, obviously in the hope that their presence would exert a moderating influence.⁸⁹ By a prohibition of the celebrations the Grand-Duke would have disav-

 Constitution du 5 fructidor an III (22 August 1795), art. 301, ibid., 134 : “Il sera établi des fêtes nationales, pour entretenir la fraternité entre les citoyens et les attacher à la Constitution, à la patrie et aux lois.”  Paul Nolte, “Die badischen Verfassungsfeste im Vormärz. Liberalismus, Verfassungskultur und soziale Ordnung in den Gemeinden,” in: Manfred Hettling and Paul Nolte, eds., Bürgerliche Feste. Symbolische Formen politischen Handelns im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 66‒67; cf. Bernhard Wien, Politische Feste und Feiern in Baden 1814‒1850. Tra-

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owed his own constitution. It should be kept in mind that the constitution had been granted to confirm the consent with the monarchy. But the authorities did not refrain from subjecting the celebrations to their control. In a report from Eberbach it is stated that Jacob Heuß’ commemorative speech had previously been “presented” to the competent district official “for censorship.” The government wished by all means to avoid the transformation of the “constitutional celebration” into a “rally of the opposition.” In vain had the authorities “further demanded” that the toasts be also turned in before the festivities.⁹⁰ The apprehensions of the government were well-founded. The celebrations all over the country amounted to a plebiscite on the constitution, a plebiscite that even 25 years after its introduction should not fail by any means. The strategy of the liberal opposition is mirrored in a letter of 27 June 1843, written by Karl Mathy of Mannheim, deputy to the Baden Diet, and directed to Carl Theodor Welcker. At the beginning of the letter instead of praise there was only mockery for the Baden constitution of 1818: “If one looks at the person (the constitution), one shouldn’t think that it is already that old; it still looks very childish if not almost cretinous, and its parents seem to have hitherto had as little pleasure at it as the begetters of a monster, born without hands and legs and preserved in methylated spirit. But even monsters are honored as family saints, and so the constitution may have its celebration. I hope that someday it will for an entrance fee be exposed as a weird creature.”⁹¹ It is characteristic that in spite of his critical attitude Mathy advocated the constitutional celebrations. He reported that at Mannheim the following ideas about the program were current: “In an assembly as numerous as possible one speaker will explain the significance of the day etc. Another one will read the whole section of the constitution referring to the civil and political rights of the people of Baden and to the specific guarantees. […] A third speaker will conclude with cheers for the creator of the constitution, Grand-Duke Charles.” These cheers actually corresponded to the nature of the celebration as a thanksgiving, but Mathy indicated that among liberals thanking the prince would meet with reservations and so he added: “There is not the slightest risk in these cheers.” The ambivalence of the celebration ceremony is also revealed by the next sentence: “Then there will follow a meal during which in fiery toasts all

dition und Transformation: Zur Interdependenz liberaler und revolutionärer Festkultur (Frankfurt: Lang, 2001), 137.  Quoted from Karl Mathy, ed., Die Verfassungsfeier in Baden am 22. August 1843 (Mannheim: Bassermann, 1843), 75.  Mathy to Welcker, 27 June 1843, in: Karl Wild, Karl Theodor Welcker, ein Vorkämpfer des älteren Liberalismus, part 2, appendix 66 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1913), 415.

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sorts of things will be wished, hoped, desired, demanded, extorted, and let live.” In other words: Mathy wanted to use the celebrations for pointing out in public in the presence of as many citizens as possible and to be heard far beyond the Grand-Duchy the shortcomings of the existing political situation: “The multiplication of the celebrations has […] the positive advantage that in this way the whole country will in fact participate and that the reports on it will come out in great numbers and will occupy the German public for a longer period of time.”⁹² It corresponded to the unofficial character of the celebrations that they were not organized in the residence for the whole state, but separately in the single communities in a common effort of members of the local social and economic elite and the local authorities. That despite the fragmentation of the organization the celebrations possessed a uniform profile was due to the personal connections within the bourgeois elite and to the reports in the liberal press. When the celebrations were over, Karl Mathy collected and published the newspaper reports on the celebrations in the Grand-Duchy, as far as he could get hold of them. On the basis of these reports it is easy to find out to what degree his recommendations had been heeded. For the celebration speeches the communities invited either a prominent personality from among themselves or a liberal member of the Baden diet. Karl Mathy himself delivered a speech at Schwetzingen. Therein he called the imposition of the constitution the fulfillment of a claim: “Yes, we are celebrating the constitution, not as a gift of grace, since these have no value – but as the fulfillment of a promise that the people have earned under heavy sacrifices in the place of ancient rights which under the pressure of hard times had gone lost.”⁹³ Simultaneously he remembered the continuing political deficits of the country. In the field of justice “the most important improvements” lay “still ahead.” He demanded legislation on ministerial responsibility and the abolition of censorship.⁹⁴ Similar speeches were given in other places. At Weinheim Friedrich Hecker demanded freedom of the press, public legal proceedings, a more equitable tax system, and the abolition of the possibility to get redeemed from military service for a certain sum of money: “But how are these objectives to be attained? By a staunch attachment to the constitution and by the attempt to develop it further.” At this point a phrase follows that almost sounds like an invitation to public protest: “Against the determined popular will no wise government can resist.”⁹⁵

   

Ibid., 416. Mathy, Verfassungsfeier, 42. Ibid., 38‒39. Ibid., 51‒52.

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An important part of the celebrations was devoted, as Mathy had proposed, to the public lecture of central parts of the constitution. Frequently a magnificent specimen of the constitution was paraded at the head of the obligatory pageant. Besides, printed brochures containing the text of the constitution were distributed among the people. Karl Mathy estimated that around 100.000 copies were handed out.⁹⁶ The total number of participants in the celebrations all over Baden is said to have been of a similar magnitude.⁹⁷ This reveals the degree of political mobilization achieved in the Grand-Duchy at the period. Eleven years before the celebrations in Baden, constitutional celebrations had taken place near Neustadt in the Palatinate and at Gaibach in the Lower Main District. They had been characterized by the same ambiguity between a thanksgiving celebration and a political demonstration. The occasion had been the 14th anniversary of the proclamation of the Bavarian constitution on 26 May 1818. Both towns were located in areas that had been annexed by the Kingdom of Bavaria only in the course of the territorial reordering of Germany at the time of Napoleon and after the Congress of Vienna. As has been explained already, an essential objective in imposing constitutions in all South German monarchies after 1815 had been the integration of the newly won citizens into their respective States. The constitutional celebrations of 1832 at Hambach and Gaibach show that by then this objective had only partly been attained. The Palatinate had belonged to France from 1794 through 1814 and was therefore deeply influenced by the institutions of the Republic and the Empire. The transfer to the Kingdom of Bavaria was motivated by considerations of security. The left bank of the Rhine was to be attached to strong German States in order to deter France from a new attack on Germany. Its Northern part was assigned to Prussia and the Southern part, the Palatinate, to Bavaria. The territorial situation under the Old Regime was not taken into account because by the Reichsdeputationshauptschluß of 1803 the secular princes who had possessed principalities on the left bank of the Rhine under the Holy Roman Empire, were all compensated on the right bank, whereas the Imperial free cities and the ecclesiastical territories had been suppressed. Thus after the breakdown of the Napoleonic Empire the Palatine people regarded themselves as homeless victims of big politics who for a long time did not know where they were going to be pushed. Characteristic of the situation is a letter of the former Jacobin Johann Andreas Georg Friedrich Rebmann of 4 September 1815 from Kaiserslautern: “By the way,

 Wien, Feste, 171.  Nolte, Verfassungsfeste, 63; Mathy, Verfassungsfeier, V, writing two months after the event, mentions “hundreds of thousands.”

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only the gods know if and when our souls in this country will be assigned to Baden, to Darmstadt, to Prussia, or to Austria. If only we remain together and do not end up under an “Oktav-” or even “Duodezherrscher,” it may be acceptable, but unfortunately it appears all too probable that not eagles nest on the Donnersberg but crows and magpies and that our souls will be used as tokens to compensate and fill out.”⁹⁸ Such a mood required particular efforts from the House of Wittelsbach to gain legitimacy among the citizens of the Palatinate on the Rhine after having taken it over. Fifteen years after the Congress of Vienna the French July Revolution of 1830 touched off political upheavals in many member States of the German Confederation. Conflicts over the freedom of the press caused King Louis I of Bavaria in December 1831 to dissolve the diet. The ensuing return of the Palatine deputies from Munich was used for demonstrations of protest in their constituencies. The liberal opposition of the Palatinate celebrated their deputies with banquets and used the opportunity for political speeches and toasts and for the mobilization of their adherents.⁹⁹ When a citizen of Neustadt invited to a celebration of homage and thanksgiving at Hambach Castle on 26 May 1832, Bavarian constitution day, 32 other citizens of Neustadt, instead of a thanksgiving, announced an entirely different celebration.¹⁰⁰ Its purpose is described by Philipp Jakob Siebenpfeiffer in the text of the invitation: “Peoples arrange feasts of thanksgiving and of joy when great and propitious events occur. For centuries the German people has not experienced occasions of the kind. Of such a celebration even now there is no reason. For the German, at present, the great events exist only in the bud. If a German wants to arrange a feast, it is only a feast of hope; it is not devoted to what has been achieved but to what remains to be achieved, not to the

 Rebmann to Hermes, 4 September 1815, in: Günther Volz, ed., Briefe Andreas Georg Rebmanns an Johann Peter Job Hermes aus den Jahren 1815 und 1816, in: MHVP 57 (1959), 178: “Übrigens wissen die Götter, wenn und wann unsre Seelen hier zu Lande gebadet, gedarmt, gepreußt oder geösterreichert werden. Wenn wir nur beisammen bleiben und keinem Oktav- oder gar Duodezherrscher zufallen, so mag es noch gehen, aber leider scheint es nur zu wahrscheinlich, daß auf dem Donnersberge nicht Adler, sondern Krähen und Elstern nisten und unsre Seelen als Jetons zum Ausgleichen und Ausfüllen verwandt werden möchten”; cf. Volker Sellin, “’Heute ist die Revolution monarchisch’. Legitimität und Legitimierungspolitik im Zeitalter des Wiener Kongresses,” QFIAB 76 (1996), 348.  Wolfgang Schieder, “Der rheinpfälzische Liberalismus von 1832 als politische Protestbewegung,” in Vom Staat des Ancien Régime zum modernen Parteienstaat. Festschrift für Theodor Schieder, ed. Helmut Berding et al. (Munich and Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1978), 179‒80.  For the background of Hambach festival see Cornelia Foerster, Der Preß- und Vaterlandsverein von 1832/33. Sozialstruktur und Organisationsformen der bürgerlichen Bewegung in der Zeit des Hambacher Festes (Trier: Trierer historische Forschungen, 1982), 110‒16.

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glorious victory but to the valiant struggle, the struggle for liberation from interior and exterior violence, for the attainment of lawful freedom and German national dignity.”¹⁰¹ As is demonstrated by these words, beyond criticism of the Bavarian constitution the celebration aimed at the creation of a democratic German nation state. At the celebration itself speakers such as Philipp Siebenpfeiffer and Johann Georg August Wirth went so far as openly to demand a republic. The postponement by one day relative to the celebration of the constitution served as a symbol of the conviction that the order of the day was not remembering the past but organizing the future. The Bavarian constitution of 1818 was by Siebenpfeiffer contemptuously numbered among the “little constitutions (“Constitutiönchen”) that were given as toys to a mass of peevish children“ – the citizens of the German constitutional States – ”of the great family“ – the German nation.¹⁰² Among the nearly 30.000 participants there were numerous citizens from Baden and other neighboring German States. As far as the origin of the participants is concerned the line of a merely regional celebration has thus clearly been crossed. When the president of the district administration and general commissary of the Rhine District, Ferdinand Freiherr von Andrian-Werburg, became aware that instead of a commemoration and a thanksgiving celebration a political demonstration had been planned, he prohibited without further ado not only the meeting of 27 May at Hambach Castle but from 26 through 28 May any public gathering of more than five persons.¹⁰³ If he had succeeded with this policy, he would not only have made the national demonstration an unlawful act, but also prevented the population of the Rhenish Palatinate from celebrating the Bavarian constitution day simply as a day of remembrance. When the ordinance became known, however, a wave of protest of such a magnitude swept through the Palatinate that the president was obliged to repeal the prohibition in time before the set date. This success spurred the political fervor of the opposition even more. As in Baden eleven years later it became obvious that the citizens found it difficult in uncritical thankfulness to celebrate a constitution they had not created by themselves through their representatives. The attempt to prohibit the gathering necessarily gave the impression as though the government distanced

 Quoted from Johann Georg August Wirth, Das Nationalfest der Deutschen zu Hambach (Neustadt: Christmann, 1832), 5; cf. Cornelia Foerster, “Das Hambacher Fest 1832. Volksfest und Nationalfest einer oppositionellen Massenbewegung,” in Öffentliche Festkultur. Politische Feste in Deutschland von der Aufklärung bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg, ed. Dieter Düding, Peter Friedemann, and Paul Münch (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1988), 114; Schieder, “Liberalismus,” 183‒84.  Quoted from Wirth, Nationalfest, 38.  Text of the ordinance ibid., 6‒7.

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themselves from their own constitution and at the same time questioned its capacity to legitimate the monarchy. After the meeting Wirth and Siebenpfeiffer were arrested, to be, after one year of custody, acquitted by a jury at Landau. Since 1650 Gaibach had been in possession of the counts of Schönborn.¹⁰⁴ Through mediatization it had been transferred to Bavaria. When on 26 May 1818 the Bavarian constitution was proclaimed, Franz Erwein count of Schönborn-Wiesentheid had resided at Gaibach for one year. Franz Erwein admired the British representative system and wished for Bavaria an equally liberal constitution.¹⁰⁵ In his ideas he concurred with the Bavarian Crown Prince Louis, later to become King Louis I, whom he had met around 1812 and with whom he agreed in the love for the arts. When the Bavarian constitution had come into effect, he decided to have a column erected near Gaibach, visible from far away, and there to organize a celebration every year on 26 May. The planning of the monument was entrusted to the architect Leo von Klenze. The foundation was ceremoniously laid on 26 May 1821, third anniversary of the constitution. Present were the Crown Prince, numerous members of both Chambers and the heads of the civil and military authorities of the Lower Main District. In a hole of the foundation stone the Crown Prince deposited a copy of the constitution.¹⁰⁶ The Munich artist Peter von Heß made the scene the object of a painting that today is in possession of the Mainfränkisches Museum at Würzburg (fig. 5). On the painting the Crown Prince takes the count of Schönborn by the hand while pointing to the foundation stone. The gesture is a symbolic expression of the fact that the constitution reconciled the Standesherren who had been deprived of their political rights, with their new Lord, the King of Bavaria. The constitution conceded to the mediatized nobility membership in the Upper House of the Bavarian Diet, called the Chamber of the Imperial Councilors (Kammer der Reichsräte), and in this way again special political rights, however in a wider field of influence. By setting a monument to the constitution by erecting the column, however, the count demonstrated that he appreciated its usefulness not only from the point of view of the Standesherr, and the Crown Prince as well had its effect on the whole of the Bavarian nation in mind. In an opinion on the draft of the constitution that his father had asked him for, Ludwig had writ-

 Katharina Weigand, “Gaibach. Eine Jubelfeier für die bayerische Verfassung von 1818?,” in Schauplätze der Geschichte in Bayern, ed. Alois Schmid and Katharina Weigand (München: Beck, 2003), 292  Josef Friedrich Abert, “Franz Erwein Graf von Schönborn-Wiesentheid. Patriot und Förderer der Künste, 1776‒1840,” in Lebensläufe aus Franken, vol. 4, ed. Anton Chroust (Würzburg: Schöningh, 1930), 354.  Weigand, “Gaibach,” 298‒99.

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Fig. 5: Peter von Hess (1792‒1871), Laying of the foundation stone of Constitution Column at Gaibach on 26 May 1821 (1823).

ten: “May the constitution of Bavaria be the one that gives the greatest amount of rights to the people; the greater will become the attachment to the throne, the more securely it will be founded on love and reason.”¹⁰⁷ On 22 August 1828 Constitution Column was solemnly inaugurated. The column is about 30 meters high and has been designed in imitation of the Trajan Column in Rome (fig. 6). On the top there is a bronze candelabrum on the foot of which the following dedication is attached: “A monument to the constitution of Bavaria, to its donor Max Joseph, to its preserver Ludwig.”¹⁰⁸ Since Louis I, by now King, wanted to participate in the inauguration, just as he had been present at the foundation, the inauguration could not be carried through on constitution  Quoted from Hans-Michael Körner, “‘Bemerkungen über den Entwurf der Verfassung für Baiern’. Das Verfassungsgutachten des Kronprinzen Ludwig von Bayern vom 9. März 1815,” ZBLG 49 (1986): 448.  Quoted from Weigand, “Gaibach,” 299: “Der Verfassung Bayerns, ihrem Geber Max Joseph, ihrem Erhalter Ludwig zum Denkmale.”

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Fig. 6: Leo von Klenze (1784‒1864), Constitution Column at Gaibach (1828).

day itself, as had been hoped. Apart from the honorary guests, the Imperial Councilors and deputies, nearly 30.000 people are reported to have come to Gaibach for the occasion.¹⁰⁹ The constitutional celebrations of the following three years, however, were only modestly frequented. Only the feast of the year 1832 that was celebrated on the same day as Hambach festival, on 27 instead of 26 May, again saw a huge gathering. The number of participants is estimated at 5.000 to 6.000 people.¹¹⁰ As at Hambach at the same time Siebenpfeiffer and Wirth, so at Gaibach the mayor of Würzburg Wilhelm Joseph Behr called for a further development of the Bavarian constitution: “Experience shows […] that those constitutions that have been one-sidedly imposed by the princes, have left unsatisfied the most justified hopes of the peoples. Truly satisfactory constitutions that are up to their task can only come into being through the concurrence of prince and people.” Accordingly in an address to the King he proposed “to request that the constitution of Bavaria be revised by way of contract be-

 Ibid., 301.  Ibid., 305.

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tween Prince and people so as to enable it actually to correspond to its purpose and solve its task.”¹¹¹ Behr’s courageous intervention remained without success. Instead he was arrested in January 1833, just as Wirth and Siebenpfeiffer had previously been arrested in the Rhenish Palatinate. In March 1836 he was in the second instance sentenced to fortress detention of an indefinite period of time for high treason. The prosecution of democrats was meant to protect the constitution from a renewed liberalization, but it did not contribute to the legitimization of the monarchy. Therefore the King was well advised when in June 1847 he had Behr released from prison. Thanks to the revolution Behr in the following year profited from an amnesty extended to all political prisoners. In April 1848 he was elected at Kronach to the National Assembly of Frankfort. For reasons of health, however, he renounced his seat in November already.¹¹² The events at Hambach and Gaibach in 1832 served to confirm the Bavarian government in their “fear of public jubilees” and of the “potentialities of political mobilization” inherent in anniversary celebrations of a constitution.¹¹³ For the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the constitution in May 1843 King Louis I permitted only a service in the court chapel and the decoration for the monument to Maximilian I Joseph in Munich, but forbade a pageant of the deputies and Imperial councilors to the monument.¹¹⁴ Democratic constitutionalism saw its breakthrough in the American Revolution. The United States became a republic, but the adoption of the first French constitution in September 1791 demonstrated that democratic constitutionalism was compatible with monarchy as well. However, its success in monarchies remained limited. More successful in monarchies was monarchical constitutionalism. In the nineteenth century the voluntary limitation of a monarch’s personal power helped defend the traditional legitimacy of monarchy against the revolutionary challenge. It is true that sooner or later monarchical constitutionalism met its limits. If constitutional regimes that had been founded on impositions did not make efforts to turn more democratic, they risked losing the consent of the citi-

 Quoted from ibid., 306.  Ibid., 306‒8; Ulrich Wagner, “Wilhelm Joseph Behr. Eine biographische Skizze,” in: idem, ed., Wilhelm Joseph Behr. Dokumentation zu Leben und Werk eines Würzburger Demokraten (Würzburg: Schöningh, 1985), 59‒61.  Simone Mergen, Monarchiejubiläen im 19. Jahrhundert. Die Entdeckung des historischen Jubiläums für den monarchischen Kult in Sachsen und Bayern (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitäts-Verlag, 2005), 159; Hans-Michael Körner, Staat und Geschichte in Bayern im 19. Jahrhundert (Munich: Beck, 1992), 232.  Mergen, Monarchiejubiläen, 159.

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zens. The defense or the obstruction of public ceremonies at the anniversary of an imposed constitution amounts to the admission that the political purpose of the imposition had been attained only imperfectly. But some governments found other ways of confirming their legitimacy in the face of the revolutionary menace. Bismarck’s victory in the Prussian constitutional conflict that paved the way for the successes of his German policy, in the long run turned out a heavy burden for the monarchy in Germany. If parliamentary government had been introduced earlier than October 1918, perhaps no revolution would have taken place at the end of the First World War, and the monarchy could have survived and served as an element of continuity. In the revolution of 1917 in Russia it was too late for Nicholas II to make up for the reforms he had opposed in the revolution of 1905.

8 Nation Royaliser la nation, nationaliser le royalisme, […] voilà le but que le gouvernement se propose. Élie Decazes¹

Dynastic States and Nation States The monarchies of the Old Regime had been created by the dynasties. Through conquest, purchase or exchange, or by inheritance resulting from prudent marriage policies, dynasties formed political complexes that often encompassed vast areas. Since the territories that had been assembled over a long period of time, were often if at all only insufficiently integrated with each other, the result of the process frequently were composed states the provinces of which possessed different legal systems and sometimes different religious beliefs. In many cases the provinces were linked to each other only by the common head of State. By creating large political complexes dynasties hoped to increase their power and reputation.² Nationalism opposed to the hereditary monarchies an entirely different principle of political organization. Whereas in dynastic states the common bond of the subjects was their subjection to the same ruler, the citizens of national states regarded themselves as political and cultural entities. National monarchies could not afford making dynastic interests the guiding principle of policy. Instead they pursued national goals. Many nation states are the result of national movements that have prevailed against the dynastic principle. Wherever a nation’s area of settlement differed from the historical borders of a dynastic State, conflicts arose between the historical monarchies and nationalism. The multi-ethnic States of both AustriaHungary and Russia denied their nations autonomy and self-determination until their breakdown. Some rulers on the other hand perceived that nationalism could as well be turned into an advantage of monarchy. If a monarch made his own the idea of nationalism, he had a chance to turn the adherents of the national movement into partisans of the monarchy.

 Decazes in the Chamber of Deputies, 15 December 1917, in: AP, series 2, vol. 19 (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1870), 785.  See above in the chapter “Dynasty”, 41. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110561395-009

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The Creation of the Monarchy by the Nation Since the outbreak of the French Revolution national monarchies have come into existence in three different ways. Either the nation created a monarchy, or the monarchy created a nation, or the two cooperated in creating both a national monarchy and a monarchical nation. Already under the Old Regime public opinion had occasionally elevated a ruler to a symbol and a source of hope of the nation. With his agreement and support the British contemporaries of the French Revolution celebrated their nation in the person of George III.³ In his pamphlet “Vom Tode für das Vaterland” (Of the Death for the Fatherland) Thomas Abbt declared in 1761 that in the Seven Years’ War Prussia, other than her enemies, aimed at the common good. This objective overruled the contrast between the estates: “But if there is a common good […], there must also be a single political virtue. From this point of view the difference between peasant, town-dweller, soldier, and nobleman disappears. Everything unites and adopts the formerly so glorious name of a citizen.”⁴ The members of a corporative society in this way turn into a nation. In the hypotheses of the political writers of the 17th and 18th centuries on the origin of States from the state of nature, men always formed a nation with a view to putting up government. In historical reality, through the National Assembly of 1789 the French Nation was the first one to create a national monarchy. It is true that the Constituante held on to the existing dynasty, but this dynasty was no longer legitimized by historical right but exclusively by the will of the nation. From now on Louis XVI governed as King because the constitution had made him such. But the new monarchy remained in existence for little more than ten months only. After the fall of Napoleon in 1814 on behalf of the nation the Senate of the Empire once more drafted a constitution aiming at the creation of a national monarchy. The monarch was to be the brother of the last French King, the count of Provence who at that time was living in England in exile. Ever since 1795 he had styled himself Louis XVIII and had regarded himself as King of France. Louis XVIII accepted the invitation of the Senate to return on the throne, but he subjected the democratic constitution of the Senate to a revision and put the revised constitution into force by way of royal imposition. The King of the Charte constitutionnelle regarded himself as a ruler by his own right and refused  Linda Colley, “The Apotheosis of George III: Loyalty, Royalty and the British Nation,” PP 102 (1984), 99, 106.  Quoted from Jörn Leonhard, Bellizismus und Nation. Kriegsdeutung und Nationsbestimmung in Europa und den Vereinigten Staaten 1750‒1914 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2008), 195.

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to be made King by the nation. If Louis had accepted the senatorial constitution the nation would have been reconciled with the restoration of the House of Bourbon. For the time being, however, the task remained unresolved. The distance between monarch and nation was revealed at the latest in March 1815 when Napoleon escaped from the Isle of Elba and again conquered the power in France within a short period of time and without meeting any resistance worth mentioning. In a national monarchy the King had to identify himself unambiguously with the nation state and the national revolution. At the same time, however, the nation as well had to recognize in the King their representative and advocate. For the restored monarchy of France it was a question of life and death that the union of monarchy and nation was established. In 1817 during a debate on the presentation of a new press law the minister of the police Élie Decazes characterized the course of his government in the following words: “To win the nation over for the monarchy and the monarchy for the nation, to protect all existing interests and every property, to maintain a perfect equality of rights, to consign the past to oblivion, to extinguish hatred, to arouse affection for the holders of power by rendering their power respected and by exercising it for the protection of all the liberties granted by the Charte, – that is the aim of the government and the guideline the King has drawn for her, – the King who, according to his own words, cannot be King of two peoples and can accept but one balance and one justice.”⁵ With these words the minister sought to bridge the gulp between the adherents of the Old Regime, the ultra-royalists, who believed that the liberal concessions in the Charte constitutionnelle of 1814 had gone too far, and the heirs of the Revolution who were afraid that the restored King secretly aspired after the return of the ancient monarchy. Louis XVIII did not want to be King of two different peoples – the royalists on one side and the liberals on the other. Therefore he sought to reconcile the contrasting positions. As the minister’s motto reveals, he hoped to achieve this in two different ways. On the one hand the nation was to become aware that the King was on their side. That’s what was meant by win-

 Decazes in the Chamber of Deputies, 15.12.1817, in: AP, series 2, vol. 19 (Paris : Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1870), 785: “Royaliser la nation, nationaliser le royalisme, protéger tous les intérêts acquis, toutes les propriétés, maintenir une égalité complète des droits, ramener à l’oubli du passé, éteindre les haines, faire aimer le pouvoir en le faisant respecter et en l’exerçant pour protéger toutes les libertés garanties par la Charte, voilà le but que le gouvernement se propose, la règle que lui a tracée le Roi qui, pour rappeler les paroles sorties de la bouche royale, ne peut être Roi de deux peuples et ne peut avoir qu’une même balance et une même justice.”

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ning the nation over for the monarchy (royaliser la nation). At the same time the royalists had to recognize that the interests of the nation did not conflict with the interests of the monarchy. In this sense the minister wanted to win the monarchy and its adherents over for the nation (nationaliser le royalisme). Jacques-Claude Beugnot confirmed Decazes in this conviction when on 15 January 1819 he wrote him that the fate of the dynasty depended from the nation’s readiness to view the King as their advocate. To “work against” the interests of the nation “Would mean to ruin oneself; to lag behind them would be equal to jeopardizing one’s own dignity; to take its lead means ruling.”⁶ By his coup d’état of 1814 by which he had prevented the nation from making him their national monarch under their own conditions, Louis XVIII had for the time being placed himself against the nation. In the long run the nationalization of the restored Bourbon monarchy could have succeeded if the government had shown a greater sensitivity to the wishes of the nation. But in this respect Charles X destroyed all illusions. Charles’s successor, Louis-Philippe of Orléans, was a King whom the nation had created. A few modifications transformed the imposed Charte in the July Revolution into the constitution of a parliamentary monarchy. But this experiment already failed 18 years later. By its refusal to assent to a timely extension of the suffrage the regime more and more adopted the character of a plutocracy. Such a system had no chance of achieving national legitimacy. In the National Assembly of 1848 at Frankfort the German nation sought to found a national monarchy under a national monarch. Like in France in 1789 the nation that had sent their representatives to Frankfort, was defined by the political conditions of the pre-revolutionary period. The National Assembly had been convoked by the Diet of the German Confederation at Frankfort. Accordingly, the elections took place in all parts of the German Confederation and thus also in areas where in part non-Germans lived, sometimes even in a majority as in the province of Posen, in the Kingdom of Bohemia, in the province of Trento, or in Slovenia. On the other hand the Germans who lived outside the German Confederation, namely in the Baltic provinces of Russia, in the Duchy of Schleswig, and in Alsace, did not send representatives to Frankfort. Since nationalism was a movement of European dimensions, the members of the non-German nations within the German Confederation also strove at founding national states or  Beugnot to Decazes, 15.1.1819, quoted from Jean Benoît Yvert, “Decazes et la politique du juste-milieu : ’Royaliser la Nation, nationaliser la Royauté’ (1815‒1820),” in : Roger Dufraisse, ed., Revolution und Gegenrevolution 1789‒1830. Zur geistigen Auseinandersetzung in Frankreich und Deutschland (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1991), 199 : “Les contrarier serait se perdre; se trainer après eux serait se dégrader ; se placer à leur tête c’est régner.”

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at entering into national States founded by their national equals. Therefore soon a conflict arose over the question, whether the borders of the future German national State should be drawn by historical or by ethnic criteria. To define borders from a purely ethnic point of view was difficult because of the mixed settlement among the nationalities, especially in the Eastern parts of Central Europe. In Bohemia for example the Germans settled chiefly in the Northern and Western periphery of the country and in Prague. If during the revolution of 1848 the greatGerman solution of the national question had not foundered on Austrian resistance, Bohemia with her Czech majority would have become part of the German national State. After the government of Vienna under Prime Minister Schwarzenberg had demanded that the whole of the Austrian Empire and thus in part territories that had never belonged neither to the Holy Roman Empire nor to the German Confederation, be accepted into the German national state, to the National Assembly was left no choice but to create a German national State without the participation of Austria. The Imperial Constitution that was adopted in March 1849, provided for a small-German national State that was to include all Member States of the German Confederation except Austria, and adopt the form of a hereditary monarchy. The King of Prussia, after Austria’s renunciation the most powerful German prince, was elected hereditary Emperor. Another choice would have jeopardized the prospects of the new Empire. But Frederick William IV refused to accept a crown of revolutionary origin. More successful was the creation of a national monarchy in Belgium after the separation from the Kingdom of the United Netherlands and in Greece after the liberation from Turkish dominion. In both cases the new nations elected King a prince from one of the numerous German dynasties. As a creation of a national monarchy may be likewise viewed those cases in which in the age of nationalism a historical dynasty acquired unprecedented popularity as a symbol of national aspirations, even if it had not as the Hohenzollerns in Germany or the Savoias in Italy created the new nation State. A good example of this is the British monarchy during the second half of Queen Victoria’s government. A measure of the change of attitudes is the appearance of a new meaning of the term patriotism in the course of the 19th century.⁷ Whereas in England until the middle of the 19th century patriots were predominantly called the adherents of the radical opposition and of Chartism, it is owing to Disraeli and the conservatives that the British people later on regarded as patriotic more and more the support of pol-

 Hugh Cunningham, “The Language of Patriotism, 1750‒1914,” History Workshop 12 (1981): 8, 18‒28.

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icies of national greatness and self-assertion. This change of language was facilitated by the enlargement of the suffrage in 1867 and by other liberal reforms that met the demands of the opposition, and by the death of the prince consort Albert whom many had suspected to be an advocate of German interests and values, in 1861.⁸ The decline of royal power since the parliamentary reform of 1832 and the appeasement of the radical opposition enabled the monarchy to adopt a position above the social classes and above the political parties and to integrate them in this way into a community of values and purposes. In 1872 Disreali said of the working classes that they were “English to the core” and “repudiate cosmopolitan principles.” Instead “they adhere to national principles.”⁹

The Creation of the Nation by the Monarch More frequent than the creation of national monarchies by the nations was the opposite process: the creation of nations by monarchs.¹⁰ The procedure had been invented and applied by Napoleon. In his numerous wars in which until 1812 he regularly secured victories, the Emperor continued to make conquests and as a consequence not only enlarged the Empire, but founded at the same time a growing number of satellite States the borders of which were also again and again enlarged or modified. At the height of Napoleon’s power the Empire extended from Hamburg in the North to Rome in the South and from Brittany in the West to Dalmatia in the South-East. It therefore included Germans, Dutchmen, Flemings, Walloons, Italians, and Croatians. Even among the satellite States the citizens of which belonged to the same ethnic group there were those that never before had been under the same government. Therefore Napoleon was both in the Empire itself and in the numerous satellite States confronted with the task of integrating the populations of diverse territorial and ethnic origin into an organic whole. Without a successful integration cohesion and stability of his new political foundations could in the long run not be secured. One

 Richard Williams, The Contentious Crown. Public Discussion of the British Monarchy in the Reign of Queen Victoria (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), 153‒66.  Benjamin Disraeli, “‘Conservative and Liberal Principles.’ Speech at Crystal Palace, June 24, 1872,” in: Earl of Beaconsfield, Selected Speeches, ed. T. E. Kebbel, vol. 2 (London: Longman, 1882), 528.  Cf. the expression “dynastisch konstituierte Nation” in Manfred Hanisch, “Nationalisierung der Dynastien oder Monarchisierung der Nation? Zum Verhältnis von Monarchie und Nation in Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert,” in: Adolf M. Birke and Lothar Kettenacker, eds., Bürger, Adel und Monarchie (Munich: Saur, 1989), 78.

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part of the integrating policies of the Emperor was devoted to the reform of the administration on the French model and to the introduction of the Code Napoléon. At the same time, however, Napoleon tried to create among the citizens both of the Empire and of the satellite States a common identity, a sort of national consciousness, and to motivate the citizens to view their new monarchs as national rulers. Napoleon resorted in particular to two instruments by which he hoped to integrate the new political societies: by granting constitutions and by organizing national festivals. The objectives he was pursuing by his constitutional policies, he expounded in a letter of 15 November 1807 by which he transmitted to his brother Jérôme a constitution for the Kingdom of Westphalia. Napoleon had composed this Kingdom with its residential city of Kassel after the peace of Tilsit from territories that had formerly belonged to Prussia, to Brunswick, and to Electoral Hesse, and from additional fractions of territory of diverse origins. In its first article the constitution enumerated more than twenty towns and territories that had been integrated into the Kingdom which thus turns out to have been a paradigm of an artificial State without any background in tradition. Since the Kingdom was thus neither based on a historically transmitted central territory nor on an ancient dynasty, particular efforts were required to give the new State solid foundations. Using almost the same words by which Antoine Barnave had beseeched Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette to gain respect (considération) and trust (confiance) among the citizens, Napoleon impressed on his brother that his throne could be based on nothing but “the trust and the love of the population” (la confiance et l’amour de la population).¹¹ To win the trust and the attachment of the population Jérôme was to observe the constitution carefully, to grant equality of career opportunities, and to abolish every form of serfdom. In addition he was obliged to introduce the Code Napoléon, public trials and jury courts. The population would thus attain a degree of liberty, equality, and well-being that existed nowhere else in Germany. This kind of government would turn out a much stronger barrier against Prussia than the Elbe River, the fortresses, and the military protection accorded by France.”Which people might wish to return under the arbitrary government of Prussia, if they have once enjoyed the blessings of a wise and liberal administration?”¹² The purpose of this policy is obvious: By a modern constitution and by liberal institutions the desire should be implanted into the citizens forever to re Napoléon I to Jérôme Bonaparte, Roi de Westphalie, 15.7.1897, in: idem, Correspondance, vol. 16 (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1864). Nr. 13361, 166.  Ibid.: “Quel peuple voudra retourner sous le gouvernement arbitraire prussien, quand il aura goûté les bienfaits d’une administration sage et libérale ?”

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main under the government of the new dynasty and by no means ever to return to their former rulers. In other satellite States and in the Empire itself Napoleon proceeded by this same principle. All the members of his family were equal in that they nowhere possessed dynastic legitimacy. Their example offers an opportunity to study the attempt to compensate missing dynastic legitimacy by constitutional and especially national legitimacy. Napoleon used history for the ideological justification of his rule. He strove to legitimize the French Empire by invoking Charlemagne. The coronation at the hand of Pope Pius VII in December 1804 was essentially motivated by this endeavor.¹³ By referring to the first Frank Emperor he appealed to collective memories that carried weight not only in France, but in the German and Italian parts of his Empire as well. The invocation of Charlemagne was complemented by the memory of the Roman Empire. This is witnessed up to this day by the Column of the Grande Armée on Place Vendôme at Paris which was modeled after the Roman columns for Trajan and Marcus Aurelius to immortalize Napoleon’s triumph over Russia and Austria at Austerlitz in 1805.¹⁴ Other forms of propaganda also played an important role. The plebiscites alone by which Napoleon sought to legitimize first the coup d’état de Brumaire of 1799, then the consulate for life in 1802, and at last the Empire in 1804, essentially served the purpose to make every citizen believe that his rule was based on the will of the overwhelming majority. Since the Italian campaign of 1796 Napoleon used to make his military successes public through his bulletins. When he became Emperor he ordered victory in battle to be celebrated by thanksgiving services in the churches of the Empire. On these occasions a Tedeum was sung, as had been the practice under the monarchy. In 1807 Napoleon ordered the treaties of Tilsit to be read in public at Kaiserslautern. The task Napoleon tried to resolve was essentially a problem of political education, and he was by no means the first one to face it. From the beginning of the Revolution the National Assembly had striven to create acceptance for the incisive reforms they had decreed. For this reason the constitution of 1791 ordered national celebrations to be regularly held, a directive that in 1795 was also inserted in the constitution of the Directory.¹⁵ During preparations of the first great feast of the French Revolution, the Fête de la Fédération of 1790, the

 See above 84– 86.  Volker Sellin, “Napoleon auf der Säule der Großen Armee. Metamorphosen eines Pariser Denkmals,” in: Christof Dipper, Lutz Klinkhammer, and Alexander Nützenadel, eds., Europäische Sozialgeschichte. Festschrift für Wolfgang Schieder (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2000), 378.  See above 197– 98.

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architect Bernard Poyet wrote that the great public celebrations produced an electrifying effect on the participants and had the result that in the end they were all dominated by the same sensations.¹⁶ La Révellière-Lépeaux who under the Directory was responsible for public education, demanded in 1796 that national celebrations be organized, apt to arouse among the participants “such a devotion to the common effort that every citizen became ready to sacrifice his passions and his most ardent wishes to the happiness and to the glory of the Republic to such a degree that he would even despise death.”¹⁷ Without doubt the participation of the entire population was required if the mentality of devotion, characteristic of the Old Regime, was to yield to Republican virtue. Therefore La Révellière-Lépeaux demanded that the national festivals be held simultaneously both “in the smallest village and in the largest city of the Republic and that the citizens recognize everywhere the same plan, the same objective, the same rites, and the same songs. The model of this sort of omnipresence of ceremonies on an identical plan was of course the Catholic Church. It appears natural that Napoleon followed the same principles when he changed the Republic into an Imperial monarchy. If public education and national festivals had been able to turn the faithful subjects of an absolute monarch first into citizens of a constitutional monarchy and then into republicans, there was reason to expect that the citizens of the Empire and of the satellite Kingdoms could be made loyal subjects of their new superiors by the same method. This conviction formed the basis of the political cult Napoleon introduced after the foundation of the Empire.¹⁸ At first the republican holidays were replaced step by step by Napoleonic holidays. The storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, the proclamation of the Republic on 21 September 1791, and the execution of Louis XVI on 21 January 1793 were no longer celebrated. Instead the day of Napoleon’s Imperial coronation on 2 December 1804 and the battle of Austerlitz on 2 December 1805 were made the occasion of a new national holiday. Another national holiday was made 15 August, Napoleon’s Birthday.¹⁹

 “Le sentiment de chacun devient celui de tous par une espèce d’électrisation, dont les hommes les plus pervers ont de la peine è se défendre,” quoted from Marie-Louise Biver, Fêtes révolutionnaires à Paris (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979), 205.  Louis Marie de La Révellière-Lépeaux, “Réflexions zur le culte, sur les cérémonies civiles et sur les fêtes nationales, lues dans la séance du 12 floréal an VI de la classe des sciences morales et politiques de l’Institut national,” in idem, Mémoires, vol. 3 (Paris: Plon, 1895), 22.  Volker Sellin, “Der napoleonische Staatskult,” in: Guido Braun, Gabriele B. Clemens, Lutz Klinkhammer, and Alexander Koller, eds., Napoleonische Expansionspolitik. Okkupation oder Integration? (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), 138‒59.  See above in the chapter “Religion” the section “Napoleonic State Cult and the Church.”

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True to the recommendation of La Révellière-Lépeaux the celebrations were carried through in every community of the Empire according to the same pattern. Every single aspect was subjected to the control of the prefects and of the Minister of the Interior. Public servants and the military were obliged to participate. In the morning the dignitaries assembled in the town hall, in the capitals of Departments in the prefecture. From there they marched in their uniforms in the prescribed order to church for the service. The priests, in Episcopal towns the bishop, had to glorify the Emperor in their sermons and to thank God for having given the nation such a ruler. A Tedeum was sung, and at the end of the sermon the traditional prayer for the Emperor was spoken. After this the dignitaries and the notabilities of the community were invited to dinner. In this way the representatives of the state and local society were brought into contact. The needy were given food and other useful commodities. The afternoon was reserved for games and competitions. In the evening there were dances, and public buildings were illuminated. At the end there were fireworks. The objective of the national festivals was summed up by the prefect of the Department of Donnersberg, Jeanbon St. André, in a circular to the vice-prefects and mayors on the impending celebrations for the Emperor’s birthday on 6 August 1807 as follows: “Public joy must universally be present”.²⁰ The diversity of the program should grant that no section of society felt excluded. Even the poor were taken care of by the Emperor. He ordered dowries to be given to needy girls of marriageable age, the so-called rose-girls (rosières), on the condition that they were ready to get married, during the ceremonies, to a veteran. It is not known whether these festivals helped to promote the formation of a national consciousness in the States that Napoleon had artificially created. The period of time in which Napoleon was in power, has remained too short, and the Emperor’s benefactions were overshadowed by taxation and by the heavy death toll in the unending military campaigns. But this could not disprove the idea that through constitutionalism and national education rulers could turn states that had been arbitrarily pieced together, into nations.

 The prefect of the Department of Donnersberg, Jeanbon St. André, to the sub-prefects and to the mayors of Mainz and Bingen, (6 August 1897), Landesarchiv Speyer, G6/4456 fol. 114: “La joie publique doit se manifester partout.”

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Particularism in Germany After the fall of Napoleon several German middle-sized states followed exactly this path in order to consolidate their territories that under Napoleon and through the decisions of the Congress of Vienna had been enlarged, in many cases to a great degree, and in order to secure them against their neighbors and the princes who had lost their former sovereignty. From the point of view of the German national movement the intentionally created consciousness of belonging to a medium-sized state within the German Confederation was particularism. During the German Revolution of 1848 the term became a defamatory watchword by which the resistances of the German states against renouncing governing rights in favor of the German national state were stigmatized. It is characteristic that the most strident disproval was expressed by the formula of “dynastic particularism.”²¹ The term particularism points to its opposite, the idea of unity, in this case to the idea of the unity of the German nation. The attribute “dynastic” identifies the defenders and beneficiaries of particularist positions. Actually, there was a twofold conflict: on the one hand indeed a conflict between the national movement and the dynasties, on the other hand a conflict between two opposing types of nation building. In the course of the reordering of Germany at the time of Napoleon the ecclesiastical territories, a great number of secular Imperial estates, the Imperial knights, and almost all Imperial cities had been integrated in a limited number of middle-sized states. These states obtained sovereignty. They resigned membership in the Holy Roman Empire and were instead in 1806 obliged by Napoleon to enter into the Confederation of the Rhine. Emperor Francis II deposed the German Imperial crown. After the expulsion of Napoleon from Germany the Confederation of the Rhine was dissolved, but not the individual member states, with the exception of the Kingdom of Westphalia und the Grand-Duchy of Berg that had been governed by members of the Bonaparte family. Only by granting their continuing existence the anti-Napoleonic coalition had in the fall of 1813 been able to persuade the confederate states to change alliances. The first member state to leave the Confederation was Bavaria that to this effect concluded the treaty of Ried with Austria on 8 October 1813. The other middle states followed suit after the battle of nations near Leipzig. Only the Kingdom of Saxony did not succeed to pass over into the Restoration period without losses. In spite of vehement resistance by the so-called Standesherren, the former Imperial estates

 Irmline Veit-Brause, “Partikularismus,” in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol. 4 (Stuttgart: Klett 1978), 748.

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that at the time of Napoleon had been subordinated to their more powerful neighbors, the Congress of Vienna not only confirmed the former Confederate States in their existence, but continued in the territorial re-ordering of Germany. Prussia obtained almost one half of Saxony and the Rhineland, and Bavaria was given the Palatinate on the left bank of the Rhine. The legitimacy of the new States was in the first place based on the legality of the Reichsdeputationshauptschluß of 1803 and of the following treaties in which the additional territorial changes had been agreed upon. On the traditional attachment to the dynasty the rulers could at the most count in those parts of their enlarged States that they had ruled already before Napoleon. When in 1806 the Confederation of the Rhine was concluded, they began to place their legitimacy on new foundations. An essential means to achieve this end, they viewed in analogy to Napoleon’s instructions of 1807 for the government of the Kingdom of Westphalia by his brother Jérôme, in a modern administrative integration and a constitution that accorded political rights especially to the class of notables. Among the Confederate States under a German prince only Bavaria in fact received a constitution. It was proclaimed in 1808, but never put into practice. After the fall of Napoleon the deliberations on constitutions that had begun at the time of the Confederation of the Rhine, were taken up again. In 1818 the first modern representative constitutions within the German Confederation were created in Bavaria and in Baden (fig. 7). Contemporaries emphasized the significance of these constitutions for national integration. In March 1819 Anselm Feuerbach wrote from the formerly Prussian Ansbach, where he acted as First President of the Court of Appeal, about the Bavarian constitution: “One should not believe what One great royal word like our constitution can do in a short time. Only with this constitution our King has conquered Ansbach and Bayreuth, Würzburg, Bamberg, and so forth. Now someone should come and expect us to wear another color than blue and white!”²² On the imposition of the Baden constitution Carl von Rotteck judged in 1818: “We have received an estates-based constitution, a political life as a people […] We were citizens of Baden-Baden, of Durlach, of the Breisgau, of the Palatinate, of Nellenburg, of Fürstenberg, we were citizens of Freiburg, Constance, Mannheim; a people of Baden we were not. From now on we are One people, possess a common will and a recognized common interest, a common life and a common law. Now at last we are

 Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach to Tiedge and Elise von der Recke (Ansbach, 27 March 1819), in: Ludwig Feuerbach, ed., Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach’s Leben und Wirken aus seinen ungedruckten Briefen und Tagebüchern, Vorträgen und Denkschriften, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Wigand, 1852), 112‒13.

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Fig. 7: Christian Daniel Rauch (1777‒1857), plaster model of the relievo “Granting the Constitution” at Max Joseph Monument in Munich.

entering into history with a role of our own.”²³ With these words Rotteck described the birth of a new nation. The integrative function of constitutions is also discernible in the composition of the Chambers. The heads of the formerly sovereign families everywhere possessed personal membership in the First Chamber. By granting them an elevated role in legislation they were compensated for the loss of their former independence. This is documented by the donation of the Constitution Column, remembering the imposition of the Bavarian constitution in 1818, in the park of Gaibach castle near Volkach on the Main by count Franz Erwein von Schönborn-Wiesentheid, a former Imperial knight.²⁴ The Constitution Column was to mark a new beginning and to document the origin of a sectionalist Bavarian national consciousness. In 1810 already the Bavarian historian and court librarian Johann Christoph Freiherr von Aretin had demanded suitable measures for the formation of a Bavarian “national character.” At present one perceived everywhere only “Europeans” with the same “taste,” the same “passions,” and the  Carl von Rotteck, “Ein Wort über Landstände” (1818), in: Hermann von Rotteck, ed., Dr. Carl von Rotteck’s Gesammelte und nachgelassene Schriften mit Biographie und Briefwechsel, vol. 2 (Pforzheim: Finck, 1841), 411‒12.  See above in the chapter “constitution” the section “constitutional ceremonies.”

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same “customs.” Under the same circumstances they all would act in the same way: “Wherever they find gold to be won and women to be spoiled, they certainly feel at home”. On this basis a Bavarian national consciousness could not be formed. Therefore Aretin concluded: “Only at a time, when we can manage that the Bavarian can never become the citizen of another country than Bavaria, we will have placed the independence of Bavaria on solid foundations.” The formation of their own “national physiognomy” should distinguish the Bavarians “from the other nations and liberate them from the desire […] to merge with them.”²⁵ Aretin’s program of national pedagogy was not directed against certain other nations, but against the cosmopolitism of the Enlightenment. The seriousness of his recommendations should not be questioned on the ground that he had copied them almost literally from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne” of 1772.²⁶ It is characteristic that to the most important objectives of Aretin’s national pedagogy belonged the implantation of the dynastic idea into the hearts of every citizen of a country and therefore also and in particular into the hearts of those who had become citizens only during the recent territorial upheavals. Since a traditional attachment to the House of Wittelsbach could be expected only from ancient Bavarians, Aretin proposed methods of the kind he had learned from Napoleon. Into the center of the dynastic propaganda he put the historical achievements and the present political significance of the Royal House, just as Napoleon had based the claim of the Bonaparte family on his achievements as First Consul and Emperor of the French. The evolution of the city of Munich and especially of the Ludwigstraße between Feldherrnhalle and Siegestor in the following years became a symbol of the dynasty’s determination to carry through political reforms. In 1819 Aretin published “teutsche Spielkarten für das bayrische Volk” (German playing cards for the Bavarian people) on which scenes of Bavarian history were depicted. One card (Seven of Spades) addressed the representation of the people that had been introduced by the constitution; a “lost territories card” (Ace of Clubs) reminded of former Bavarian territories that had been transferred to foreign rulers.²⁷ In addition Aretin proposed the introduction of a Bavarian national festival. In the same year the Oktoberfest at Mu-

 Quoted from Volker Sellin, “Nationalbewußtsein und Partikularismus in Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert,” in: Jan Assmann and Tonio Hölscher, eds., Kultur und Gedächtnis (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988), 252.  Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne et sur sa réformation projetée, in: C. E. Vaughan, ed., The Political Writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau, vol. 2 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962), 432.  Sellin, “Nationalbewußtsein,” 253.

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nich was indeed founded and thus, as Joseph von Hazzi wrote a quarter of a century later, a “general rendezvous of all citizens of the Bavarian Empire, created for every Bavarian, just as the festivals at Olympia had once been created for the Greeks.”²⁸ In 1867 the Bavarian National Museum was inaugurated in Munich. On the gallery on the first floor the history of the House of Wittelsbach is illustrated on 150 wall paintings. Among the more recent glorious deeds of the dynasty are represented the extension of the Bavarian territory since the Reichsdeputationshauptschluß of 1803 and the imposition of the constitution in 1818. It is obvious that the new Bavarian national consciousness was in the first place conceived as a dynastic consciousness. This was in keeping with the origins of the new State. It had clearly been created by the dynasty. The King had imposed the constitution. The government had carried through the administrative and the ideological integration of the country. The result has been a State nationalism that is still alive today. The success of the Bavarian national pedagogy shows that Napoleon’s hope to turn the inhabitants of the artificial States he had created, into modern nations, was not without foundation. At the same time it reveals that ordinances and laws alone would not have been sufficient for bringing about the necessary integration. A change of mentalities was needed as well, and in particular the development of a national consciousness centered on the new State. To accomplish this, obviously much longer time spans were required than had been left up to Napoleon.

Official Nationality in the Russian Empire The national pedagogy in Bavaria and its model, Napoleon’s integration policy in the expanding Empire and in the new States under his dominion outside France, could be called “official nationalism,” in taking over an expression that towards the end of the 19th century is to be found in Russia,. The professor of literature Aleksandr Nikolaević Pypin had coined the term “official nationality” (narodnost’ oficial’naja) for the principles of national political education that Sergej Uvarov, from 1833 to 1849 Minister of Education under Tsar Nicholas I, had developed.²⁹ Uvarov had placed his program of national education under three  Quoted from ibid., 256; for the relationship between dynasty and nation in Bavaria see also above in the chapter “Dynasty” the section “Dynasty, Nation and Constitution”.  Aleksandr Nikolaević Pypin, Charakteristiki literaturnych mnenij ot dvadcatych do pjatidesjatych godov. Istoričeskie očerki, 3rd ed. (St. Petersburg: Tipografia M. M. Stasjuleviča, 1906), 93‒140.

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headings: orthodoxy (pravoslavie), autocracy (samoderžavie), and nationality (narodnost’).³⁰ If for this whole triadic program Pypin introduced the expression “official nationality”, he caused some confusion, as the term narodnost’ (nationality) now appeared on two levels and thus in two meanings – first as designating of one of the three elements in Uvarov’s triad, and second as a term designating the program as a whole. The term narodnost’ had been introduced into Russian language only in 1819 by the poet and writer Petr Andreevič Vjazemskij. It was a translation of the French word nationalité into Russian language. But whereas nationalité and national were chiefly political terms, narod and narodnyj also signified peuple and populaire. ³¹ Another meaning of the term narodnost’ was “popularity” and “closeness to the people.”³² In his report on the first ten years as Minister of Education Uvarov not only used the adjective narodnyj but also nacional’nyj. The three concepts of his triad he called nacional’nye načala (“national principles”), whereas other than Pypin he reserved the term narodnost’ exclusively for the third one of these principles.³³ Nacional’nost’ to Uvarov meant as much as nation in the sense of political nation (Staatsnation) or State. In the final chapter of his report Uvarov wrote that Russia had “grown up”. Therefore it would have been unworthy of her “to imitate the other European nations (nacional’nosti)” (literally: “to run after them” – idti pozadi); instead Russia claimed “to march ahead at their side at least on the same level.”³⁴ By narod Uvarov understood, in conformity with the traditional linguistic usage, the totality of the Tsar’s subjects. Only since the turn of the 18th to the 19th century the ethnic acceptation of a community of descent, language and culture had come into use.³⁵ If, however, the totality  Sergej S. Uvarov, Desjatiletie ministerstva narodnago prosveščenija 1833‒1843 (St. Petersburg 1864), 2‒3.  Alexej Miller, “Natsiia, Narod, Narodnost’ in Russia in the 19th Century: Some Introductory Remarks to the History of Concepts,” JbbGO 56 (2008): 380‒81; Andreas Ebbinghaus, “‘National’ (narodnyj) und ‘nationale Eigenart’ (narodnost’) in der russischen Literaturkritik der 1820er Jahre,” in: Peter Thiergen, ed., Russische Begriffsgeschichte der Neuzeit. Beiträge zu einem Forschungsdesiderat (Cologne: Böhlau, 2006), 57‒68); Maureen Perrie, “Narodnost’: Notions of National Identity,” in: Catriona Kelly and David Shepherd, eds., Constructing Russian Culture in the Age of Revolution 1881‒1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 28.  Cf. Theodore R. Weeks, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia. Nationalism and Russification on the Western Frontier, 1863‒1914 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996), 203, n. 23.  Uvarov, Desjatiletie, 3.  Ibid., 107.  Nathaniel Knight, “Ethnicity, Nationality and the Masses: Narodnost’ and Modernity in Imperial Russia,” in: David L. Hoffmann and Yanni Kotsonis, eds., Russian Modernity. Politics, Knowledge, Practices (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 44‒48.

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of the Tsar’s subjects formed the narod, then narodnost’ was the specific character of the Russian people. By their respective narodnost’, their national character, such was obviously the idea the European nations (nacional’nosti) differed from each other.³⁶ As is well known the Russian Empire was a multi-ethnic State that did not possess a unitary national character, but distinguished itself by a great ethnic and cultural diversity. Therefore a common narodnost’ did not exist, for the time being. The term was a program that contained something that was to be developed, and Uvarov’s program of State education aimed exactly at the creation of a common national character in the entire Russian Empire. He regarded the triade of orthodoxy, autocracy, and narodnost’ as the common denominator among the multiple elements that he hoped would “converge into the broad reality of the Empire.”³⁷ The motive of this policy was to make the Empire secure against revolution. This is shown by the considerations with which Uvarov justified his political program: “In the middle of the rapid breakdown of the religious and civil institutions in Europe, with a view to the general expansion of the spirit of decomposition, in the face of deplorable events around us it appeared necessary to put the fatherland on safe foundations on which the wellbeing, the force, and the life of the people (blagodenstvie, sila i žizn’ narodnaja) can thrive.”³⁸ In the Polish insurrection of 1830 the European revolution had approached the Russian borders closer than ever before. The insurrection could easily have spread to the Polish-settled parts of the Western governments of the Empire. With a view to this possibility it is natural that Uvarov, in accordance with the Tsar, tried to superimpose on the loyalties within the various ethnicities of the Russian Empire a comprehensive Russian loyalty. To educate the population of the Empire to narodnost’ therefore did not mean anything else but the development of a consciousness of being one people in the same way as Rotteck had hoped for in 1818 for the highly heterogeneous population of the Grand duchy of Baden. It is natural that in the formation of an Imperial consciousness Russian language and culture should take the lead over the other languages and nationalities, whereas the specific cultures of the various non-Russian peoples would be accorded less importance. This policy was pursued with particular emphasis in the Western governments, the one-time Polish territories that Russia had acquired during the partitions of Poland, because here the susceptibility to for-

 Knight, “Ethnicity,” 107.  Uvarov, Desjatiletie, 106.  Ibid., 2.

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eign-induced insurrections and separatist movements was by far greater than anywhere else. After the Polish insurrection of 1830 and 1831 the University of Vil’njus was closed. Instead at Kiev, beyond the borders of the former PolishLithuanian Empire, two years later Vladimir University was founded. Uvarov justified this step by the necessity to give to the education of the youth in the Western governments a “direction in harmony with the general spirit of Russian national education”. The new university should as far as possible remove the characteristic contrasts by which the Polish youth differed from the Russian youth. In the first place it should cast out the idea that they possessed their “own nationality” (častnaja narodnost’). Instead it should “acquaint the Polish youth more and more with Russian ideas and customs” and impart to them “the general way of thinking of the Russian people.”³⁹ Uvarov hoped to attain these objectives by bringing into contact the Polish and the Russian academic youth at Kiev, by intense instruction in Russian language and literature, and finally by acquainting especially the Polish students with Russian laws and institutions.⁴⁰ In principle Uvarov’s entire education policy aimed at “the introduction of a patriotic education that corresponded to the needs of our century,” and that meant introduction of “an independent and preferably Russian education.”⁴¹ Significant was the establishment of chairs for Russian history and Russian language and literature at the universities of the Empire on the basis of the university statute of 1835. In Moscow Michail Pogodin, in St. Petersburg Nikolaj Ustrjalov took over the chairs of Russian history. Simultaneously Stepan Ševyrev was appointed professor of ancient Russian literature.⁴² Ustrjalov was charged to write an official history of Russia to be used in universities.⁴³ Uvarov’s system of national education aimed at cultural unification of the Tsarist Empire. Uvarov wanted to create “a national culture” for it.⁴⁴ This process would inevitably end up in general Russification. But the educational method was comparatively cautious, and it took time to become effective. In the intro-

 Ibid., 38‒39.  Ibid., 39.  Ibid., 48.  Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 1825‒1855 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961), 53, 58; Cynthia H. Whittaker, The Origins of Modern Russian Education: An Intellectual Biography of Count Sergei Uvarov, 1786‒1855 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1964), 162‒3.  Whittaker, Origins, 163.  Alexandre Koyré, La philosophie et le problème national en Russie au début du XIXe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 290.

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duction to his report of 1844 Uvarov wrote of his “hopes and the approach to the distant, almost invisible aim.”⁴⁵ But the growth of a Russian national consciousness would in the long run also lead to a new understanding of the Empire and of the monarchy, when dynastic legitimacy was overarched by national legitimacy.⁴⁶ In Uvarov’s conception instead of a primarily dynastic ruler the Tsar would inevitably become a national monarch, a monarch who embodied the Russian state nation in the same manner, as Napoleon had embodied the French and Maximilian I Joseph the Bavarian nation. This program demonstrates the modernity of Uvarov’s political program, even if it remained behind the contemporary developments of Western Europe in that it refrained from making the imposition of a constitution an instrument of national integration. The integration should instead be brought about by Orthodox Christianity, and most of all by the autocracy. The minister declared it to be the “main condition of the political existence of Russia.” In Uvarov’s eyes the Russian colossus was based on the autocracy; it was “the keystone of its greatness.” At present the introduction of a constitution would jeopardize the unity of the Empire. Of this the overwhelming majority of the Tsar’s subjects were convinced.⁴⁷ Uvarov’s program of national political education was meant to promote the deepening and confirmation of this conviction as well.

Monarchy and National Movement There was still a third method of creating national monarchies. In Germany and Italy monarchy and democratic national movement combined in creating both the nation and the national monarchy. In both countries the historical dynasties – in Germany the House of Hohenzollern, in Italy the House of Savoy – concluded an alliance with the national movement. By themselves neither the German nor the Italian national movement had been strong enough to overcome the resistances against the formation of a national State. In Italy the liberal and national movement of the Risorgimento had several times tried in vain to break the Austrian hegemony over the peninsula upon which most Italian States relied. During the Revolution of 1848 and 1849 King Charles Albert of Sardinia twice declared war on Austria and was defeated both times. If he had succeeded, Italian unity would much easier have been attained, but the King acted first of all in his

 Uvarov, Desjatiletie, 1.  Miller, “Natsiia,” 383.  Uvarov, Desjatiletie, 3.

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own particular political interest. He wanted to exclude Austria from the peninsula in order to establish his own preponderance in Northern Italy. From the failure of the two attempts Charles Albert concluded that without a powerful ally he could not force Austria to yield. His son and successor Victor Emanuel II found this ally thanks to the skillful diplomacy of minister president Camillo di Cavour in the French Emperor Napoleon III. In 1859 Austria was defeated and forced to cede Lombardy. As a consequence the princes of Central Italy who up to this point had been held in power by Austria, were deposed as well. The Grand-Duke of Tuscany had been ousted by a revolt of the people of Florence already on 27 April 1859, since he had refused to enter into the war against Austria side by side with the Kingdom of Sardinia. This event demonstrated at a stroke that dynastic legitimacy had lost its force. The Grand-Duke could have preserved his throne if he had made his own the national aspirations of the Italians. After the departure of the Grand-Duke a National Assembly was convoked in Tuscany. It advocated a union with the Kingdom of Sardinia. For considerations of foreign policy the government in Turin did not at once accept the application. In the light of the future developments the events foreshadowed the tacit interaction of the Savoy monarchy and the national revolution. This interaction acquired the most spectacular appearance in 1860 during the campaign of the Thousand under the leadership of Giuseppe Garibaldi. At the head of a few hundred irregular troops Garibaldi conquered the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and afterwards handed it over to Victor Emanuel of Savoy. The Italian national State was established through the extension of the Kingdom of Sardinia. Since the other Italian princes had refused to make common cause with the national movement, they lost their thrones. Differently from Germany the Italian unification process did not result in a federal, but in a unitary State, and Victor Emanuel was made King of Italy. The King of Sardinia created the nation in the sense that Italy would not have attained national unity if he had not, in 1859 and 1866, lead his armies against Austria. When unity had been attained, one of the leading personalities of the Risorgimento, the Piedmontese statesman Massimo d’Azeglio, declared: “Italy is made; now we must make Italians.”⁴⁸ Common national institutions had to be established: a national school system, a national administration, a national army, and most of all an Italian national consciousness which so far had developed mainly among the educated classes, but not among the great majority of the agrarian and especially in the South largely illiterate population. During

 Quoted from Giuseppe Galasso, Italia nazione difficile. Contributo alla storia politica e culturale dell’Italia unita (Milan: Mondadori, 1994), 1: “L’Italia è fatta, restano a fare gli Italiani.”

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its first years the Italian monarchy had to face similar tasks as Napoleon in the countries he had conquered. It had to form a nation out of a population composed of largely heterogeneous elements. In this sense the monarch created the nation. Simultaneously, however, the nation also created their monarch. If Garibaldi had not handed the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies that his partisans had conquered, over to King Victor Emanuel, Italian unity would not have been achieved. Even more important was the fact that in Tuscany as well as in the other States of the peninsula, the Italians abandoned their traditional rulers and accepted the King of Sardinia as their new sovereign. The recognition of the King of Italy was everywhere confirmed by plebiscite on the basis of the universal suffrage of men. Thus the new national monarchy was based on the general will. The general recognition of the King of Sardinia as King of Italy is explained by the fact that the votes were cast not only in favor of this person, but also of the constitution of Sardinia, the Statuto albertino of 1848 that was to become, in the course of the national expansion of Sardinia, the constitution of united Italy. So the “Tuscan people” was asked on 11 and 12 March 1860 to vote for one of the following two propositions: “unification with the constitutional monarchy of King Victor Emanuel or independent Kingdom.”⁴⁹ At Naples on 21 October 1860 the vote was taken on the proposition “The people want the one and indivisible Italy, with Victor Emanuel, constitutional King and his legitimate descendants.”⁵⁰ The formation of the German national State can be analyzed as a contest between the two German great powers, Austria and Prussia, for political hegemony in Central Europe. In this contest both powers pursued primarily the interests of their respective States. German unity as such possessed for neither power the highest priority. Neither Bismarck nor his Austrian opponents were nationalists. But Bismarck perceived that Prussia’s prospects for winning supremacy in Central Europe were greater because it could conclude an alliance with the German national movement. Austria could not pursue the same policy because as a multi-ethnic power it could not act in the name of nationalism. By the Prussian victory in the Prussian-Austrian war of 1866 Austria was excluded from the formation of a German national state. Instead a small-German nation state was cre-

 Proclama che indice il Plebiscito, Firenze, 1 March 1860, in : Elisa Mongiano, Il “voto della Nazione.” I plebisciti nella formazione del Regno d’Italia (1848‒60) (Torino: G. Giappichelli Editore, 2003), 319 : “Il popolo toscano è solennemente convocato nei comizi i giorni 11 e 12 marzo 1860 per dichiarare la sua volontà sulle due seguenti proposte : Unione alla Monarchia Costituzionale del Re Vittorio Emanuele, ovvero Regno separato.”  Ibid., 324: “Il popolo vuole l’Italia una ed indivisibile, con Vittorio Emanuele, Re costituzionale, e suoi legittimi discendenti.”

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ated under Prussian lead. The small-German solution of the national question had already been advocated by the German National Assembly at Frankfurt in the Revolution of 1848. For the rest, the foundations and the method of Bismarck’s unification policies were entirely different. In 1849 the Prussian King Frederick William IV should be made a democratic and national monarch whose dignity of German Emperor was based exclusively on the sovereignty of the nation. In the German Empire of 1871, on the other hand, sovereign was not the nation, but the German princes. From a legal point of view the Empire was a confederation of princes, not a creation of the nation, and the King of Prussia who was accorded the title of German Emperor, was only the president of this confederation. As had already been provided for by the Imperial constitution that the German National Assembly of Frankfurt had adopted in 1849, the nation of the new Empire was defined by the borders that had developed in history or had been drawn by high politics during the formation of the nation state. In general, the borders of the small-German or kleindeutsch Empire, as it is commonly called, corresponded to the borders of the German Confederation, apart from the fact that Austria was excluded and Schleswig and Alsace-Lorraine were included. The Polish minorities in the Prussian provinces east of the river Elbe, most conspicuously in Posen, were as naturally admitted into the German nation State, as the Germans of Austria and the Baltic provinces were excluded. The historical development of the States and actual policy determined who belonged to the nation. The nation itself was accorded no voice. Within the small-German Empire soon a national consciousness developed in which the Germans beyond the borders had no part. To be German became tantamount to citizenship in the Second German Empire. If in many respects the existing monarchies, most of all the Prussian monarchy, created the German nation, it must not be overlooked that Prussia would not have been able to accomplish this, if the German national movement had not labored for a solution of the national question. The constitution of the North-German Confederation that in 1870 was with a few amendments to be transformed into the constitution of the German Empire, was in 1867 discussed and adopted by the North-German Constituent Diet that had been elected by universal suffrage. In this way the nation co-operated in the creation of the national institutions. But not only on the level of public law but also and in particular on the symbolic level the national monarch was created by the nation. He became popular, because he revived common historical memories of ancient German Imperial glory and greatness.

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In the age of revolution dynastically defined monarchies in various ways became national monarchies. Either the nation created for themselves a monarch. Of this the establishment of a national monarchy by the French Constituante in 1791 is the perfect example. Or the monarch created a nation on the example of Napoleon who tried to transform the conquered territories into Kingdoms with a national consciousness or to merge the population in the territories he had annexed, with the French nation. Whereas Napoleon’s policies of integration remained without success because of the limited period of his rule, the procedure proved effective in the middling States of Germany. Napoleon’s nation building from above has also influenced the writings of Sergej Uvarov and the policy of “official nationality” in the Russian Empire at the time of Nicholas I. Finally, some monarchical nation states have come into being, because nation and monarchy co-operated in their foundation. The small-German national state of 1871 was the result of the alliance between the ethnically oriented German national movement and the Prussian monarchy. A similar alliance was concluded in Italy where the Italian national movement and the Kingdom of Sardinia combined to create the Italian national state. Both the King of Sardinia and the King of Prussia won national legitimacy as monarchs of national states.

9 Social Reform Das wahre, mächtigste, dauerndste und geliebteste Königthum ist das Königthum der gesellschaftlichen Reform. Lorenz von Stein¹

Lorenz von Stein’s Social Kingdom The 19th century was not only the age of democracy and nationalism. It was also the age of the industrial revolution. Lorenz von Stein regarded industry as the chief characteristic of the epoch. The machine had brought forth a new society, industrial society. In Stein’s eyes every society was determined by the conflict between a dominant and propertied and a dominated class without property. In industrial society capitalists were the dominant and workers the dominated class. If society had at all times been determined by this rule, one class would always and without any prospect of improvement have remained condemned to bondage and poverty. “Aside from and partly above society,” however, Stein saw “a second type of human society” at work – the state. About the state he wrote that its “essence” was based “on the principle that only the highest degree of the personal development of every individual was the highest degree of development of the whole.” In relation to the endeavors of the propertied parts of society who aimed at the domination of the weak, the state thus represented “the principle of freedom.”² Securing freedom was the actual purpose of the state. As repository of the idea of the state and as embodiment of the principle of freedom Stein regarded kingship. Because of its independent position above the dominating class only kingship was able to use its power “essentially in the interest of the welfare” of the dominated classes “who by themselves did not possess the means to get forward, and who by those who possess these means, are increasingly brought into dependence.”³ If the king employed his power for the lower classes he would earn their gratitude and their attachment, and his throne would receive “the firmest support” that “human institutions could find.”⁴ In the

 Lorenz von Stein, Das Königthum, die Republik und die Souveränetät der französischen Gesellschaft seit der Februarrevolution 1848, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Wigand, 1855), 48.  Ibid., 14.  Ibid., 46.  Ibid., 48. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110561395-010

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light of this conviction there was no better strategy of securing legitimacy for the monarchy than a policy of social reform. Stein pointed out that it was in the nature of any dominating class in a monarchy to subjugate kingship. In England the nobility, represented by Parliament, had accomplished this already in the 17th century when it triumphed over the crown. In France the monarchy had fallen in 1792 because it had also long before submitted to the nobility. The revolt of the middle-classes against the nobility and against privilege had inevitably pushed the monarchy as well into the abyss. With a view to these experiences a policy of social reform was the only means to preserve the independence of the monarchy from the dominating class. If in the past the monarchy had relied on the middle-classes against the nobility, it was now forced to rely on the working classes against the industrial bourgeoisie. By defining time-transcending tasks for kingship Stein made it clear that the monarchy would not enter on fundamentally new paths if it worked for the improvement of the lower classes. Quite to the contrary social reform had always been its noblest task. Stein’s demand of social reform ran counter to the dominating economic doctrine of the epoch that condemned every kind of state intervention. This explains why only few rulers adopted it as a strategy of securing legitimacy. In the French Second Empire the improvement of the working classes was combined with a marked policy of industrialization. Napoleon III expected working class improvement chiefly from economic growth and a general rise of the standard of living. Queen Victoria of England found in philanthropy a method of supporting the working population and of enhancing the sense of social responsibility among the middle-classes. In this way she united the nation behind a common task. Bismarck hoped to alienate the workers from social democracy by his social legislation and to attach them to the monarchical State. Russia remained far behind in her industrial development. Instead, another social reform was carried through by the middle of the century: the emancipation of over 22 million people from serfdom.

The Social Ideas of Napoleon III The policy of industrialization of Napoleon III could be subsumed under the motto he had formulated in one of his historical writings: “If you march at the head of the ideas of your century, these ideas will follow and support you. If you march in their suit, they will carry you along. If you march against them,

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they will turn you over.”⁵ Obviously he was sensitive to the dominant tendencies of his time. This sensibility helped him to win an independent profile by which he could distinguish himself from Napoleon I. When in December 1848 Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte was elected president of the Republic, he was already forty years of age. He had taken advantage of the long years in which he was waiting for his chance, to work out a political program. Most of all during his imprisonment on the fortress of Ham in Picardy from 1840 to 1846 he had devoted himself to extensive reading and writing. When in later years he was asked where he had acquired his profound knowledge, he used to answer that he had acquired it at the “University of Ham.”⁶ His first publication, the “Rêveries politiques,” had appeared in 1832. In 1839 he published a brochure entitled “Des idées napoléoniennes.” The most important writings of the period of his imprisonment are “Analyse de la question des sucres,” L’Extinction du paupérisme” and “Le Canal de Nicaragua.” Working out a program of government was unusual for a future ruler in monarchical Europe. Only Frederick the Great had already reflected on the politics of his time when he was Crown Prince. But whereas Frederic’s main concern was Prussia’s position in the European States system, Louis-Napoleon addressed before all the social and economic challenges that the industrial revolution and the unprecedented population growth since the second half of the eighteenth century had brought about. His reading experiences and his visits in the industrial centers of England had provided him not only with extended information but also with personal insight into these problems. With respect to the interest in the understanding of the social conditions of the industrial world Napoleon III outdid by far all other rulers of his time. Perhaps this was due to the influence of his mother who had inculcated to her two sons: “You are princes, don’t forget that, but don’t forget by what right you are princes. Your titles are of recent date. To obtain recognition you have before all to prove capable of being useful.”⁷ This was an invitation to confirm the questionable dynastic legitimacy of the house of Bonaparte by merit. In contrast to the census regimes of the Restoration period and the July Monarchy Louis-Napoleon in all his life advocated universal suffrage. For this

 Napoléon III, Fragments historiques 1688 et 1830, in idem, Œuvres, vol. 1 (Paris: Plon, 1856), 324: “Marchez à la tête des idées de votre siècle, ces idées vous suivent et vous soutiennent. Marchez à leur suite, elles vous entraînent. Marchez contre elles, elles vous renversent.”  Éric Anceau, Napoléon III. Un Saint-Simon à cheval (Paris: Tallandier, 2008), 97.  Quoted from Hendrik Nicolas Boon, Rêve et réalité dans l’œuvre économique et sociale de Napoléon III (’s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1936), 4: “Vous êtes princes, ne l’oubliez pas, mais sachez aussi sous quelle loi. Vos titres sont de date récente ; pour les faire respecter il faut vous montrer, avant tout, comme capables d’être utiles.”

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reason alone he committed himself to reforms in favor of the masses. In all his writings of the years of preparation he demanded an active role of the state in the national economy and in the promotion of the welfare of the working classes. In the treatise on the sugar question Louis-Napoleon demanded that the government continue to promote the national production of beet sugar. In his view the production of sugar distinguished itself from other branches in that it took place only at certain periods of the year in the unhealthy and noisy plants and during the remaining time outdoors. In foreign commerce Louis-Napoleon demanded a system of educational tariffs to give to the national production an opportunity of development: “To create industry you need science that invents, intelligence that applies, capital that lays the basis, tariffs that protect till the development is completed.”⁸ In 1843 Louis-Napoleon drafted a book on the conditions of the laboring classes. The book was never written. Instead in the following year he published a pamphlet on the defeat of pauperism (“L’Extinction du paupérisme”) where he demanded the intervention of the state in the economy.⁹ Through taxation, he explained, the state disposed of a simple instrument for the promotion of industry and for the emancipation of the working classes. He compared taxation with the activity of the sun that absorbed the humidity of the earth in order to depose it again afterwards in those regions that needed water to become fertile.¹⁰ LouisNapoleon did not recognize a fundamental contrast between the interests of industry and the interests of the working people. It was just necessary to organize labor. Louis-Napoleon wanted to create agrarian colonies for the unemployed and provide them with fallow land. Under strict supervision they should be accustomed to work. If the agrarian colonies granted labor and bread to everybody, they should in times of boom when labor was in increased demand, function as a reservoir of workers for industry. The whole organization had a military touch: “In these colonies a strict discipline will be observed, life in them will be healthy but simple, because the aim is not keeping up do-nothings, but the refinement of man through healthy and profitable work and a moral education. […]. Accommodation, payment, nourishment, and clothing will be arranged according to the

 Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, Analyse de la question des sucres, in: Napoléon III, Œuvres, vol. 2 (Paris: Plon, 1856), 240: “Pour créer l’industrie il faut la science qui invente, l’intelligence qui applique, les capitaux qui fondent, les droits de douane qui protègent jusqu’au développement complet.”  Napoléon III, Œuvres, vol. 2, 107‒61; Boon, Rêve, 33‒39.  Napoléon III, Œuvres, vol. 2, 114 ; Boon, Rêve, 33.

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army tariff, because the military organization is the only one that is based both on the well-being of all its members and on the strictest parsimony.”¹¹

The Economic and Social Policy of the Second Empire One may ask whether this program could have been put into practice. When Louis-Napoleon would have had the power, he did not seriously try. But the treatise of the prisoner of Ham on pauperism still reveals a number of principles to which he remained true as Emperor, in particular the conviction that the state was obliged to promote the economy in a way that along with the general well-being the condition of the working classes was improved as well. Many contemporaries were impressed. George Sand compared Napoleon the nephew with Napoleon the uncle: “The Napoleon of today embodies the sufferings of the people just as the other one embodied their glory.”¹² Louis-Napoleon repeatedly differentiated his own aims from his uncle’s achievements. On one of his numerous trips through France he visited Bordeaux in the fall of 1852. On 9 October, at a banquet to which the chamber of commerce and the court of commerce had invited, he pronounced a programmatic speech. At that time Louis-Napoleon still styled himself Prince-President, but the proclamation of the Empire was generally expected. At a central point of his speech the president addressed the apprehensions that many Frenchmen nourished with respect to this impending step. “In distrust certain people believe: the Empire means war. But I say: the Empire means peace.”¹³ Alluding to his dynastic origin the President continued, by inheritance only glory is transmitted, not war. Then he summed up his own program of government. “Like the Emperor” he too had “many conquests to make,” however in an entirely different field. He wanted “in the interest of religion, of morality, and of well-being win over that still so numerous part of the population that […] working on the most fertile soil in the world” could “hardly enjoy the products of the most urgent needs.” And he continued: “We dispose of immeasurable areas of fallow land to be ploughed, roads

 Napoléon III, Œuvres, vol. 2, 132; cf. Boon, Rêve, 35.  George Sand to Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, 26 November 1844, in: George Sand, Correspondance, vol. 6 (1843‒June 1845), ed. Georges Lubin (Paris: Garnier, 1969, 711: “Le Napoléon d’aujourd’hui est celui qui personnifie les douleurs du peuple comme l’autre personnifiait ses gloires.”  Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, “Discours de Bordeaux, 9.10.1852”, in: Napoléon III, Œuvres, vol. 3 (Paris 1856), 342‒43 : “Par esprit de défiance, certaines personnes se disent : l’Empire, c’est la guerre. Moi je dis : l’Empire, c’est la paix.”

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to be constructed, ports to be excavated, rivers to be made navigable, channels to be completed, and we have our railways network that waits to be completed. We have, confronting Marseille, a great Kingdom that has to be assimilated to France. We have to approach to the American continent all our big ports on the Atlantic coast through the speed of those connections that are still missing.” And now he added an explicit comparison with the First Empire: “These are the conquests that I have in mind and all of you who have assembled around me and who with me are desirous of the well-being of our fatherland, you are my soldiers.”¹⁴ Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte could not have stated more clearly that he wanted to base his legitimacy essentially on the economic development of France and on the resolution of the social question and that he accorded to these accomplishments at least the same value as to the achievements of his uncle. In 1840 already he had distinguished his program from the policy of Napoleon I in almost the same words as in 1852: “The Napoleonic idea is therefore essentially much more an idea of peace than an idea of war, an idea of order and of restoration much more than an idea of upheaval.”¹⁵ In point of fact, the Second Empire was by no means an era of peace in French history. In the fifties it participated at first in the Crimean War and afterwards waged war against Austria in alliance with the Kingdom of Sardinia. In the sixties it sent an expeditionary force to Mexico, and in 1870 it risked the war against Prussia in which it broke down. In internal policy, however, the emphasis was on economic growth and on an adequate social legislation. Thanks to the confiscation of large parts of the possessions of the House of Orléans by decree of 22 January 1852 the Prince-President obtained financial leeway for a series of projects in social policy. The returns were used for the support of the societies of mutual assistance (société de secours mutuels) through which laborers provided for times of illness and old age. The societies also promoted the construction of workers’ homes in the industrial centers and the foundation of mortgage banks.¹⁶ On the occasion of the birth of the successor in 1856 the Emperor provided the societies anew with half a million of Franks. The Emperor sought to extend the network of the societies that had been founded on private initiative, to the whole of France and make members all la-

 Ibid., 343‒44: “Nous avons d’immenses territoires incultes à défricher, des routes à ouvrir, des ports à creuser, des rivières à rendre navigables, des canaux à terminer, notre réseau de chemins de fer à compléter. […] Telles sont les conquêtes que je médite.”  Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, “L’Idée napoléonienne” (London 1840), in: Napoléon III, Œuvres, vol. 1, 13.  Boon, Rêve, 69.

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borers of the country if possible. This however required a stricter control by the government and the recruitment of well-to-do honorary members who through elevated contributions and professional counsel could contribute to the organizational and financial consolidation of the societies. Between 1852 and 1856 the number of societies increased in fact from 2,400 to 3,400 and membership from 271,000 to 426,000 companions. In 1869 there existed 6,000 societies with 800,000 ordinary and more than 100,000 honorary members.¹⁷ As far as economic policy is concerned, Napoleon took care of a speedy extension of the infrastructure, as he had announced in Bordeaux, in order to promote the industrial development of the country. In England he had become acquainted with the advantages of a dense traffic and communication network. In the early fifties France still lagged far behind in this field. If the country wanted to become an industrial nation, it had to overcome this deficiency. The chief attention of the regime was focused on the promotion of railway construction. One of its first measures was the extension of railway concessions from 46 to 99 years. According to a law of 1842 the railway societies were responsible for the provision of the rolling stock and the construction of railway stations, whereas the government was to take care of track construction. At the foundation of the Empire the French network amounted to approximately 4,000, at its end to nearly 20,000 kilometers.¹⁸ Railway construction assumed the role of a strategic sector for the growth of the iron and steel industry. Thanks to the transport revolution commerce doubled in volume between 1851 and 1863.¹⁹ Parallel to railway construction the electric telegraph system expanded. Between 1851 and 1869 the total of all telegraph lines increased from 2,133 to 40,118 kilometers.²⁰ Roads and bridges were also constructed. The inland waterways were extended and the maritime ports were adapted to the expanding requirements of international trade. An essential prerequisite of the development of the infrastructure and of economic growth in general was the modernization of banking. A signaling effect in this field originated from the foundation of the investment bank Société Générale de Crédit Mobilier by the brothers Emile and Isaac Péreire in 1852. In 1863 the Crédit Lyonnais followed and in 1864 the Société Générale. These banks worked nationwide and at more favorable conditions than the great num-

 Ibid., 73.  Roger Price, The French Second Empire. An Anatomy of Political Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 214‒15; Johannes Willms, Napoleon III. Frankreichs letzter Kaiser (Munich: Beck, 2008), 147.  Price, Empire, 215.  Ibid., 219.

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ber of local and regional institutes.²¹ They collected the savings of the citizens in the whole Empire in order to give long-term credits to industry, and financed in the first place the extension of the railway network and the modernization of Paris. In 1852 the Crédit Foncier, a mortgage bank, was founded. It engaged itself primarily in the renewal of buildings in the cities. The credit that the regime had acquired after few years only was revealed when during the Crimean War the government financed a public loan through a public subscription. In this economic plebiscite the Emperor scored a brilliant success. Instead of the 250 million Franks the government had expected, more than 468 million were drawn.²² The Second Empire demonstrated its openness towards the industrial world also in the two great international exhibitions of 1855 and 1867 at Paris in which French industry demonstrated that it had reached the same level as the industry of other nations. The first universal exhibition had taken place in London in 1851. That France followed suit after four years only is proof of her determination to modernize. The two international exhibitions contributed to the legitimacy of the Empire in that they occasioned visits of foreign monarchs. Of particular significance was the visit of Queen Victoria and her family in August 1855. Great Britain had once fought the first French Emperor consequently and fiercely as no other European great power. The foreign policy of his nephew, however, sought to arrive at an understanding with Britain. In 1854 he had entered the Crimean War on the side of England. Still more clearly than the military alliance, Queen Victoria’s visit during the international exhibition proved that the Emperor’s revolutionary origin no longer impaired France’s international standing. On 24 August Victoria even paid homage to Napoleon I by a visit of his grave at Les Invalides, a scene that Paul-Emile Boutigny later made the object of one of his paintings.²³ On the same day the Queen noted in her diary: “It seems as if in this tribute of respect to a departed foe, old enmities and rivalries were wiped out, and the seal of Heaven placed upon that bond of unity, which is now happily established between two great and powerful nations.”²⁴ One is indeed tempted to say that in the relations between France and Great Britain peace and civilization at last replaced war. Victoria’s visit to Paris had been preceded by a visit of the Emperor to England. The two meetings developed into a personal friendship between Victoria and Napoleon III that was to end only with the Em-

 Ibid., 229.  Boon, Rêve, 91.  Cathérine Granger, “Napoléon et Victoria, visites croisées,” in : Napoléon III et la reine Victoria. Une visite à l’Exposition universelle de 1855 (Paris: Réunion des Musés Nationaux, 2008), 47.  Quoted from Christopher Hibbert, Queen Victoria. A Personal History (London: HarperCollins, 2000), 236.

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peror’s death.²⁵ In 1867 France organized another Universal Exhibition that was also used as an opportunity for visits of foreign rulers. Tsar Alexander II came from Sankt Petersburg, Emperor Francis Joseph from Vienna, and King William I from Berlin.²⁶ Napoleon III promoted economic development in the hope of confirming his legitimacy. Thanks to its openness to industry and thanks to its political stability the Second Empire gained within a short period of time a high degree of trust and credit among the citizens, essential prerequisites of economic growth.²⁷ Under universal suffrage, however, the Emperor needed the consent of the working classes in the first place. In order to secure this consent he ordered the minister of commerce, Eugène Rouher, on 5 January 1860 to make preparations for a liberalization of foreign commerce. The first result of this initiative was the conclusion of a commercial treaty with Great Britain in the same month. From the treaty Napoleon expected not only sustained economic growth, but, as he pointed out right in the beginning of his letter to Rouher, also a rise in the standard of living of the working classes.²⁸ This change of policy estranged business and large parts of the bourgeoisie.²⁹ The gradual liberalization of the political structures of the Empire in the sixties originated from Napoleon’s endeavor to compensate for the loss of consent to his economic policy by an extension of political participation.

Victoria and Albert When on 28 June 1838 young Queen Victoria was crowned in Westminster Abbey, the British monarchy had touched the bottom of its public esteem. “The lives, loves, and morals of George III’s children” were such as to make her two predecessors, George IV and William IV, “arguably, the most unloved royal generation in English history.” When George IV died in 1830, the Times wrote, never had a

 Antoine d’Arjuzon, Coexistence, alliance, querelles, amitié. La France et la Grande-Bretagne de 1815 à 1904, in : Granger, “Napoléon et Victoria,” 31.  Johannes Paulmann, Pomp und Politik. Monarchenbegegnungen in Europa zwischen Ancien Régime und Erstem Weltkrieg (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000), 331  Cf. James F. MacMillan, Napoleon III (London: Longman, 1991), 138‒39.  Napoleon III to minister of State Rouher, 5 January 1860, in: Napoleon III, Oeuvres, vol. 5 (Paris 1869), 107‒8.  Price, Empire, 236.

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man been less regretted than the late King.³⁰ A quarter of a century later the poet Walter Savage Landor looked back on the death of the fourth George: George the First was always reckoned Vile, but viler George the Second; And what mortal ever heard Any good of George the Third? When from Earth the Fourth descended (God be praised!) the Georges ended.³¹

But apart from the personal qualities of the various holders of the royal title the parliamentary reform of 1832 had taken from the Crown the power it had still preserved after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and a growing number of Britons expressed doubts on the usefulness and on the necessity of the monarchy. Especially among the Radicals, the Chartists, and the Republicans the irrationality and the cost of the institution were denounced. Again and again it was pointed out that with a view to the plight of the working classes in the industrial agglomerations of the country it was no longer justified to spend enormous amounts of money for a numerous royal family. At an alternative coronation party of Chartists in Newcastle in 1838 one of the speakers remarked that if the monarchy did not “reign for the good of millions, it should not reign at all”.³² Queen Victoria succeeded in placing the acceptance of monarchy on a new basis by assigning it a new task in the field of philanthropy. In this endeavor she was supported by her consort Albert von Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha. To be sure, her predecessors on the throne had also engaged in charitable activities. But new was the dimension of the engagement shown by Victoria and Albert, and new was in particular the social significance that their commitment achieved in the developed industrial society. The philanthropic activities of the Victorian monarchy may be viewed as a response to criticism by the Radicals. Private charity was a tradition in England. The private initiative in the local community and in the neighborhood was more highly developed than on the Continent, because the state interfered much less on the local level. Much of

 David Cannadine, “Splendor out of Court: Royal Spectacle and Pageantry in Modern Britain, c. 1820‒1977”, in: Rites of Power: Symbolism, Ritual, and Politics Since the Middle Ages, ed. Sean Wilentz (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 208.  Walter Savage Landor, “The Georges” (Published in The Atlas, 28 April 1855), in: idem, The Complete Works, vol. 15/3: Poems, ed. Stephen Wheeler (New York and London: Barnes & Noble, 1969), 93.  Quoted from Richard Williams, The Contentious Crown. Public Discussion of the British Monarchy in the Reign of Queen Victoria (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), 17.

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what elsewhere was taken care of by the public administration was in England left up to private initiative. Industrialization multiplied the opportunities of private philanthropy. On the one hand it intensified social distress in the industrial agglomerations; on the other it increased the well-being of large parts of the middle-classes. Private philanthropy was bent, apart from alleviating actual distress, to make the needy capable of improving their situation by their own efforts. Therefore the great number of philanthropic associations aimed in the first place at the foundation of asylums, schools, maternity homes, and hospitals. It was not only the middle-classes that engaged in private charity but the aristocracy and the crown as well. From 1837 to 1871 Queen Victoria donated 277.439 pounds in favor both of individuals and of institutions and thus an average of 8.160 pounds a year, a sum that comes close to 15 % of the annual budget voted by Parliament for the Crown’s private expenditure (Privy Purse). It must not be overlooked, however, that the Queen disposed of additional sources of income. In later years her donations increased. In 1882 for instance she gave 12.535 pounds for charity.³³ But the philanthropic activities of the Queen were not restricted to financial contributions to charitable projects, no matter how important these may have been in themselves and for the example the Queen gave to others by supporting them. Perhaps still more valuable was her patronage of philanthropic associations and other charitable initiatives. In the end she patronized no less than 150 institutions and thus three times as many as George IV.³⁴ One can hardly overestimate the importance of royal patronage for the acceptance of monarchy in society. The royal seal conferred upon a philanthropic institution a higher degree of respectability and procured it new members and donators. At the same time it gave to the civil engagement from which the institution had sprung an elevated significance and a vital purpose. Private philanthropy originated in the main from the desire “to be useful, to be seen to be useful, to be respectable, to be informed, to be amused, to ‘keep up with the Joneses’, to gossip, to wield power, to love and be loved.”³⁵ By exercising patronage the monarchy gave to the philanthropists a sense of social belonging and to their activity national significance.³⁶ Whereas the social policy of Napoleon III hoped to attain its objectives in favor of the laboring classes through direct state intervention, the social policy of the British crown acted to a great extent indirectly by encouraging philan Frank Prochaska, Royal Bounty. The Making of a Welfare Monarchy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 77.  Ibid.  Ibid., 68.  Ibid., 75.

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thropic activity in society. In this way it not only contributed to reducing distress but simultaneously unified the nation in the common acceptance of social responsibility. Monarchy thus became a symbol of public spirit and social progress. “The monarchy’s support for charitable campaigns promoted social harmony, while creating allegiance to the crown.”³⁷ The sense of belonging in a spirit of self-responsibility that originated from the crown was shared even by the working-class. Not only well-to-do citizens but also artisans and factory workers asked Prince Albert for support at the foundation of welfare organizations.³⁸ Looking at the revolutions on the Continent the Globe wrote on 19 May 1849 about the promotion of philanthropy by Prince consort Albert: “And when we see the Consort of such a Queen distinguished by similar virtues and excellencies, the tie of attachment to the Throne becomes so strong, that there is not the remotest chance of its being weakened by any sympathetic feeling with the democratic spirit that has lately convulsed … the neighbouring nations.”³⁹

Bismarck’s Social Legislation By the social legislation of the eighties the German Imperial Chancellor Otto von Bismarck sought to win the working population over for the monarchy and to alienate it from social democracy. In defense of this policy he several times invoked a statement that Frederick the Great is recorded to have made as crown prince: “After my accession I shall be a true King of the beggars.”⁴⁰ Later-on the Prussian Kings had followed this principle. “Our Kings have emancipated the serfs, they have created a flourishing peasantry; it is possible that they will also succeed – the serious endeavor exists – to contribute to the improvement of the workers’ situation.”⁴¹ This sounds just as if Bismarck had adopted Stein’s theory of kingship. He indeed opposed the abstention of the state from improving conditions in the economy and in society. “I do not believe that “laisser faire, laisser aller”, “pure Manchesterism in politics,” “Everyone may look what he is doing”; “Everyone should look what he is doing and where he will end up”; “Those who are not strong enough to stay upright will be knocked down and thrown on the ground”; “For whoever has, will be given more, whoever does not have, from him

 Ibid., 86.  Ibid., 90.  Quoted from ibid., 87.  Bismarck in the Prussian House of Deputies, 15 February 1865, in: idem, GW, vol. 10 (Berlin: Stollberg, 1928), 232: “Quand je serai roi, je serai un vrai roi des gueux : ein König der ‘Geusen’.”  Bismarck, ibid.

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will be taken” – that this principle could be applied in the State, especially in the monarchy.”⁴² This attitude, he maintained, was in strident contrast to Prussia’s monarchical tradition where “the common man” attached himself “with a much proven fidelity […] to his dynasty and to monarchy.”⁴³ But Bismarck was soon to realize that it would not be easy to win over the working classes for the monarchy by appealing to their gratefulness. More effective appeared material interest. On 18 May he explained in the Imperial Diet what kind of political effect he was expecting from old age and disability assurance. He compared the receiver of a pension granted by the government, even if it was low, with the holder of government bonds. The creditor of the government had the greatest material interest in that the State, who owed him something, would thrive and not perish. The same was true of the receiver of a government pension. He also would do everything to keep the State solvent. Through old age and disability insurance the Empire created at one stroke “700.000 small pensioners” and as many defenders of the existing institutions.⁴⁴ With this idea Bismarck took up one of the most frequently used arguments of liberals by which they sought to justify the exclusion of people without property from the suffrage. One ought to have a stake in society, the advocates of a census system argued, to participate in its government. Bismarck had introduced universal suffrage in the North German Confederation and in the German Empire in the hope that the lower classes and in particular the peasants would give their vote to candidates who supported monarchy. By this move he had consciously disregarded the convictions of the liberal parties. In the meantime, however, it had turned out that the fast growing multitude of industrial workers gave their votes increasingly to social-democratic candidates. Bismarck regarded social democracy as a party that aimed at the fall of the existing order of society and at the fall of the monarchy. But since he could not easily abolish universal suffrage again, he now tried to tie the workers to the monarchy through their property that consisted in their title to a pension.

Friedrich Naumann’s Social Kingship Friedrich Naumann’s book “Demokratie und Kaisertum” (Democracy and Emperorship) of 1900 contains in its third section a chapter entitled “The Social Emper-

 Bismarck in the Imperial Diet, 2 April 1881, GW, vol. 12 (Berlin: Stollberg, 1929), 238.  Bismarck in the Imperial Diet, 9 January 1882, ibid., 317.  Bismarck in the Imperial Diet, 18 May 1889, GW, vol. 13 (Berlin: Stollberg, 1930, 403.

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orship”. By this Naumann understood the “cooperation of the masses and Emperorship.” In the beginning Naumann pointed to the difference between Bismarck’s social legislation and William II’s initiatives in social policy of 1889 and 1890. In Naumann’s eyes only William’s program was based on a concept of social Emperorship. While Bismarck had regarded organized socialism in the last resort as a military challenge to the State that could be overcome through struggle only, William II in 1890 had been “determined,” “to make his peace with the labor movement.”⁴⁵ Therefore in the Imperial edicts of 4 February 1890 he had, other than Bismarck, proposed to respond to the demands of social democracy. He had not been interested in “fighting social democracy,” but “in the satisfaction of justified desires and demands of the workers.”⁴⁶ On this foundation, so Naumann wrote, could have been concluded an alliance between the monarchy and the labor movement. Such an alliance would have neutralized the influence of the big landowners east of the Elbe. The attempt of 1890 failed, but Naumann continued to hope for the realization of the social Emperorship. He was convinced that it would make possible “a period of uniform industrial and liberal legislation” and in this way anchor the monarchy firmly in the laboring classes: “Then it will be heard in the cities that contain modern life, it will be heard from the shaft, from the quarry, from the assembly of workers, unusually but heartily: Long liver the Emperor!”⁴⁷ Friedrich Naumann’s idea of social Emperorship was not only in name similar to the program of social Kingship in Lorenz von Stein. In the eyes of both authors social reform not only corresponded to the justified aspirations of the working classes but would also help to secure the future of the monarchy. By its readiness for reform the monarchy would, so they believed, gain acceptance among the working population. Social reform thus appeared to them as a timely method of securing legitimacy.

The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia The abolition of serfdom in Russia by Tsar Alexander II in 1861 was one of the reforms that had been touched off by the Russian defeat in the Crimean War. These reforms were intended, not dissimilar to the reforms that Prussia had in Friedrich Naumann, Demokratie und Kaisertum, in: idem: Politische Schriften, ed. Theodor Schieder, vol. 2: Schriften zur Verfassungspolitik (Cologne and Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1964), 134‒35.  Ibid., 335.  Ibid., 341.

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troduced in 1806 after the defeat by Napoleon, to overcome the backwardness of the Empire relative to the other great powers that the war had revealed. One of the main causes of Russian backwardness was serfdom. Agriculture based on serf labor was economically inefficient, and it impeded reforms, because it provided no incentives to innovation. Since the unit of production was not the estate economy of the noblemen but the individual farmstead, the advantages of big farming were absent. Cost and revenue accounting was hardly possible.⁴⁸ Catherine II already had declared the abolition of serfdom indispensable. Alexander I and Nicholas I had made several attempts to resolve the problem.⁴⁹ As far as the reform was motivated by the intention to modernize state and society, it even in 1861 followed the maxims of enlightened policy. J. I. Rostovcev’s statement in a memorandum of 20 April 1857, no thinking and enlightened person who loves his country, could oppose the emancipation of the serfs, could have been written by a philosophic writer of the age of Enlightenment. Nobody should be another man’s property. A human being should not be treated like a commodity.⁵⁰ General Adjutant Rostovcev was a member of the Secret Committee (sekretnyj komitet) that Alexander II had appointed in January 1857 and commissioned to resolve the peasant question.⁵¹ But the Tsar was by no means motivated by enlightened principles alone. Another motif was equally important: the fear of social revolution. Two years before Konstantin Kavelin had warned that serfdom, if it continued in its present form, might in a few decades cause the whole nation to explode.⁵² Alexander II’s remark of 30 March 1856 that it would be much better to carry through the reform from above than from below, shows that the Tsar would not exclude a peasant revolt if the situation remained unchanged for a long time to come.⁵³ In a report for the Russian foreign minister Gorčakov of the summer of 1857 Baron August von Haxthausen warned of Giuseppe Mazzini and his revolutionary organization in Russia. Haxthausen’s report convinced the Tsar that the peasants would in fact rise if the government did not carry through the reform in time.⁵⁴ The memory of the Pu-

 Daniel Field, The End of Serfdom. Nobility and Bureaucracy in Russia, 1855‒1861 (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1976), 27‒29, 53.  Peter A. Zaionchkovsky, The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia (Gulf Breeze: Academic International Press, 1978), 34‒40.  Ibid., 45.  L. G. Zacharova, Samoderžavie i otmena krepostnogo prava v Rossii 1856‒1861 (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo Universiteta, 1984), 54.  Zaionchkovsky, Abolition, 58.  See above chapter 1 (Introduction), 7.  Zaionchkovxky, Abolition, 49‒50.

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gačev revolt under Tsarina Catherine II had almost a century later still the effect of the writing on the wall. For a while it had looked as if the monarchy would inescapably end up between the Scylla of a peasant upheaval and the Charybdis of a revolt of the nobility. The landed nobility was the immediate beneficiary of serfdom. The peasant services (barščina) and the payment of land rent (obrok) formed the basis of their economic existence. If the Tsar wanted to secure acceptance of the monarchy among the 22 millions of serfs, he had to exonerate the peasants without jeopardizing the consent of the nobility to the monarchy. In the end the government won over the nobility for the abolition of serfdom by inviting them to participate in its realization. On 20 November 1857 a decree was issued for Nazimov, General Governor of the three formerly Polish provinces Vil’njus, Kovno, and Grodno, in which he was asked to have the nobility in his district elect a committee of nobles (dvorjanskij gubernskij komitet). The decree contained 22 “general principles” for the equipment of the peasants with what they needed for their existence (obščie načala dlja ustrojstva byta krest’jan). The great landowners (pomeščiki) were to remain in possession of all the land. The peasants were to keep their farmstead (usad’ba), buildings and fields between one and one half of a dessiatine, and redeem them within eight to twelve years. Besides they should be entitled to use part of the lands of their lords. In exchange they should pay rent or supply work.⁵⁵ On 25 November the Secret Committee decided to communicate the “general principles” in Nazimov’s decree to the General Governors and the noble constables of all other provinces of the Empire as well.⁵⁶ The nobility was thus invited to ask for decrees like the one for Nazimov. In this way the foundation was laid for the abolition of serfdom in all of Russia.⁵⁷ During the following months the government sought to accelerate the formation of committees of the nobility.⁵⁸ The emancipation law of 19 February 1861 regulated the relationship between land-ownership and usage rights according to the conditions contained in Nazimov’s decree. The peasants acquired personal freedom. The landowners were confirmed in their rights of possession, but they had to concede to the peasants the usage right of home and yard and a share of the farmland. For this the

 Zacharova, Samoderžavie, 74; Peter Scheibert, Die russische Agrarreform von 1861. Ihre Probleme und der Stand ihrer Erforschung (Cologne and Vienna: Böhlau, 1973), 47; Zaionchkovsky, Abolition, 54‒55; Field, End, 83.  Zacharova, Samoderžavie, 80.  Field, End, 86.  Zacharova, Samoderžavie, 86.

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peasants either paid rent or they provided services. The peasants could at any time release home and yard, but only with permission of the landowner.⁵⁹ It was by no means clear whether the peasants would welcome the reform and show the Tsar their gratitude for emancipation. Those concerned regarded the reform indeed with reservations. The emancipation was to be put into practice after two years only. Mainly for fiscal reasons the peasants were obliged to remain within the agrarian community. That restricted their freedom of movement. Most of all they had to redeem the land allotted to them within 49 years, and after redemption they would keep less than they had utilized before. Therefore the government was afraid that the publication of the liberation manifesto of 19 February 1861 would much rather provoke unrest than demonstrations of gratitude. The government tried to counteract this danger with the help of propaganda. One of the instruments of propaganda was a series of popular pamphlets (lubok) that had to convey to the peasants the desired interpretation of the reform. One of the lubki was entitled “The unforgettable day of 19 February 1861, of the emancipation of the peasants and household servants from personal dependence: Thanks to the Tsar liberator!” (fig. 8).⁶⁰ The print shows an oversized Tsar standing on a stage and surrounded by innumerable peasants who look up to him in reverence. Some of them are folding their hands in prayer. Above the Tsar a blessing Jesus Christ is hovering on a cloud. At the Tsar’s feet is lying a document with the inscription “Zakon i Pravda” (Law and Justice). Below the illustration a poem consisting of seven quatrains is printed, containing the allocution that the authors make the peasants pronounce, full of humility and gratitude. The illustration by itself confirms the interpretation of the liberation manifesto as an act by which the Tsar is claiming to have executed God’s will. In this way on the one hand all objections to the manifesto should be brought to silence, on the other hand the legitimacy of the Tsar and of his policy should be given religious sanction.

Principles of Liberal Social Reform: The Italian Example Lorenz von Stein did not define methods by which kingship was to emancipate the lower classes. That social reforms could be introduced in different ways, is  Zaionchovsky, Abolition, 82‒83, 87.  Quoted from Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power. Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 2: From Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 75. The original title of the lubok: “Nezabvennyj den’ 19 fevralja 1861 goda osvoboždenija krest’jan i dvorovych ljudej iz krepostnoj zavisimosti: Slava Carju osvoboditelju!”

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Fig. 8: The unforgettable day of 19 February 1861 (Lubok, 1861).

revealed by the conflict between William II and Bismarck. The Emperor wanted to attach the workers to the monarchy by satisfying at least part of the claims that their elected representatives were raising. But the comparison of a pensioner with an owner of government bonds makes clear that Bismarck wanted to make the worker more or less a passive receiver of government transfer payments. Bismarck hoped that by responding to their material interest these payments would induce the pensioners to support the state and of monarchy. Liberalism followed entirely different principles. Liberal projects of social reform centered on the idea of education to a capitalist working attitude. Of this the early social legislation of Italy offers an example.

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When the Kingdom of Italy was founded in 1861, it was a backward country from an economic point of view if compared to the further developed countries of Central and Western Europe. Urgently needed was the creation of an infrastructure as an indispensable prerequisite of industrial development. The political leaders did not diagnose a social question of the kind that had developed in the industrial centers of England. But far-sighted statesmen believed that the industrial experiences of other countries should be used as an admonition to take institutional measures apt to avoid social distress in the future. With this objective in mind they developed a program of liberal reform, based on the idea of educating the people to help themselves. The first reform based on this idea was the establishment of postal savings banks through law of 27 May 1875.⁶¹ It was due in the first place to the indefatigable initiative of Quintino Sella, for many years minister of finance of the rightwing liberals (Destra). With this reform the English system of Postal Savings Banks that Gladstone had created in 1861, was transferred to Italy. The law turned every Italian post office into a savings bank and in this way multiplied their number by one stroke many times over. Everyone could from now on find in his neighborhood an institute where to carry his savings without effort. The reform had in the first place been intended for lower people such as peasants, craftsmen, or wage-earners. The law pursued both economic and social objectives. The economic purpose was the collection of private savings for the formation of capital that was required for the economic development of the country. The social purpose was creating in the citizens a sense of personal responsibility. Sella was convinced that the practice of saving would gradually elicit a real propensity to save. This again would call forth a work ethos as it existed in the Germanic nations, especially in England and Holland. Sella called the intentional causation of this change of attitude economic education (educazione economica) or moral education (educazione morale), sometimes national education (educazione nazionale).⁶² The education to thrift should gain national significance in particular by making even the small saver “in a certain way a capitalist,” and the proletarian a proprietor. In this way the path would be opened for the “new era in which the struggles of the past, struggles between oppressors and oppressed, give way to the active concord of men who compete unanimously for the welfare of all and of every individual.”⁶³ Sella obviously believed that

 Volker Sellin, Die Anfänge staatlicher Sozialreform im liberalen Italien (Stuttgart: Klett, 1971), 126.  Ibid., 128.  Quoted from ibid., 129.

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by the development of a modern saving and work ethos the conflict between the possessing and the non-possessing class could be avoided. Liberal economists like Francesco Ferrara objected that by establishing postal savings banks the government simply replaced private philanthropy that had hitherto worked for the establishment of savings banks, by official philanthropy. But private philanthropy was essential for society. He could have pointed to England where there was an old tradition of private philanthropy. But Sella emphasized that the existence of a postal savings bank in the neighborhood alone did not induce anybody to save. Therefore private philanthropy had to remain active even after the introduction of the reform. The citizens had to see to it that people made use of the institution. Therefore the law created not only new tasks, but also new opportunities for private philanthropy. Only the cooperation of legislation and philanthropy granted the success of the project of social emancipation.⁶⁴ The law on the legal recognition of self-help societies (società di mutuo soccorso) that was adopted after seventeen years of preparation also tied in with private philanthropy. The societies had, as in France, developed on the basis of private initiative. One of the most obvious defects of the Italian societies was their lack of stability and their short lifespan. The legal recognition should enable the societies to accept donations and inheritances, to conclude contracts, and to take legal action. In this way the philanthropic initiatives should be rendered more effective, and to the social provision of workers and craftsmen should be given a guarantee of success. As Luigi Luzzatti, the indefatigable initiator of these and other liberal reforms in society, emphasized, the purpose of the legal recognition was supporting and promoting private saving and self-help, as had been the case in the institution of the postal savings banks. The success of social provision should produce a capitalistic mentality that would advance the economic development of the country. If Luzzatti other than Stein in his encompassing theory of social development, pointed out that in Italy there was no antagonism between entrepreneurs and workers, he implied that such an antagonism would in the course of the expansion of industry sooner or later develop in this country as well, if no reform was undertaken.⁶⁵ The unprecedented population growth since the second half of the 18th century had produced pauperism. The poverty of the masses and the distress of the lower classes in the early phase of industrialization were regarded as a menace to the existing institutions of civil society. Therefore it was the interest of mon-

 Ibid., 132‒33.  Ibid., 138‒41.

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archy to win legitimacy among the new classes as well. In his theory of social kingship Lorenz von Stein attributed to monarchy the function to defend the oppressed classes from their oppressors so that all parts of society would enjoy freedom. In the thirties and forties Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte developed a program of social and economic reform. As Emperor he tried to improve the lot of the laboring classes by developing the infrastructure, by the expansion of credit, and by the promotion of economic growth. Queen Victoria set an example in the promotion of private philanthropy and in this way raised the sunken authority of the British monarchy. Bismarck sought to attach the workers to the monarchy by making them shareholders of the State. In Russia industry and the origins of a population of industrial workers were considerably delayed. By the middle of the century the most urgent social problem was serfdom. Tsar Alexander II hoped to secure the loyalty of the Russian peasants by the abolition of serfdom in 1861 and to remove in this way every propensity to revolt directed against the landowners and the State. The liberal principles of social reform, as they manifested themselves in the initiatives of Sella and Luzzatti in Italy, aimed at stabilizing the institutions by the promotion of self-help.

10 Charisma Die charismatische Autorität ist […] eine der großen revolutionären Mächte der Geschichte. Max Weber¹

The Charismatic Savior Among Max Weber’s three pure types of legitimate domination European hereditary monarchy belongs to the type of traditional authority that rests “on an established belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions and the legitimacy of those exercising authority under them.”² Charismatic authority on the other hand was characterized by Weber as “the great revolutionary force” and as such “foreign to all rules”: it “repudiates the past, and is in this sense a specifically revolutionary force”. It “is sharply opposed to rational, and particularly bureaucratic, authority and to traditional authority.”³ “It makes a sovereign break with all traditional or rational norms.”⁴ Weber pointed out that charisma appears in the extraordinary, unpredictable, unusual achievements of an individual. The charismatic ruler demands “obedience and a following by virtue of his mission” and not in virtue of his hereditary right.⁵ Max Weber believed that kingship had originally evolved “from charismatic heroism.”⁶ Heroism proves itself before all in emergencies that cannot be overcome by ordinary means. The charismatic hero saves the nation in a crisis. By his action he demonstrates his capacity to lead. Weber takes as an example Saul’s appointment as it is reported in the first book of Samuel. When the Ammonites besieged the town of Jabesh in Gilead, the elders sent messengers to all parts of Israel for help. Saul was just returning from the field. When he heard of the appeal from Jabesh, “the Spirit of God came powerfully upon him, and he burned with anger.” He set up an army and annihilated the Ammonites. Thereupon “all the people went to Gilgal and made Saul king in the pres-

 “Die drei reinen Typen der legitimen Herrschaft,” in: Max Weber, Gesamtausgabe, Section 1, vol. 22/4, edited by Edith Hanke (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 2005), 737.  Max Weber, Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1978), 215.  Ibid., 244‒45;  Max Weber, “The Sociology of Charismatic Authority,” in: H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, ed., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1948), 250.  Ibid., 246.  Ibid., 251. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110561395-011

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ence of the Lord.”⁷ Israel had not had kings before. The monarchy originated with Saul. In dynastic wars in which the parties contested the possession of a province, an essential condition of the appearance of charismatic war heroes was absent: the threat to a common good such as religious belief. During the Thirty Years’ War King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden appeared to many German Protestants as a savior of their belief in the hour of need. As a consequence of the French Revolution the nation came to be regarded as a common good. The Revolution created the pre-conditions of the appearance of popular heroes that saved the nation in a crisis. The national crisis could result from internal disruption or from external menace or from a combination of both. After the abolition of the monarchy in France both in 1799 and in 1848 the sensation of a political crisis resulted among broad sections of the population in the readiness to place their trust in a hero and savior from the house of Bonaparte. But even where the monarchy continued to exist, in the age of nationalism individual military leaders easily acquired such a degree of popularity as to jeopardize the stability of the monarchy. The plebiscitary legitimacy of the charismatic war hero threatened to eclipse the legitimacy of the ruler, unless the monarch had ceded power to a parliament. Examples of the sort are the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Russian general Michail Dmitrievič Skobelev and the German General Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg.

Napoleon I Saul was made King because in adversity he had proved himself as a savior of his people. Napoleon also presented himself as savior of France and of the revolutionary heritage. He justified his coup d’état of 1799 and the acceptance of the Imperial dignity in 1804 with the emergency situation into which France had got under the Directory. The coup d’état of Brumaire was by no means the first coup that shattered the Directory, and it had not even been planned by Napoleon Bonaparte. When in the autumn of 1799 the general returned from his Egyptian expedition, the Abbé Sieyès, one of the five Directors, turned to him, because he wanted to overthrow the regime, but needed a military backup for the execution of his plan. The country had been at war ever since 1792. As in 1793 already, the enemy armies were advancing. Napoleon had conquered Italy in 1796 and 1797. In the meantime the Russian general Suvorov had re-conquered

 1 Samuel 11, 6 and 15.

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it. The Italian Republics that had in 1796 been established under the protection of the French armies were destroyed again in 1799. In a true blood rage the Parthenopean Republic perished at Naples. Napoleon later on described the development as follows: The five members of the Directory split; the enemies of the republic slipped into the councils and brought enemies of the rights of the people into the government. This form of government kept the state in ferment, and the great interests that the French had conquered in the Revolution, were incessantly compromised. A unanimous vote rose from the deep countryside, from the center of the towns, and from the camps. It demanded that while preserving all the principles of the republic a hereditary system be established in the government that protected the principles and the interests of the Revolution from the factions and from the influence of foreigners. By the constitution of the year VIII the First Consul of the Republic was in power for ten years; the nation had prolonged his tenure for life; they elevated him to the throne and made it hereditary in his family.⁸

Immediately upon this description of his ascent to power in France Napoleon declared that he had been made Emperor for no other purpose but for the protection of the highest goods of the nation: The principles of popular sovereignty, of liberty, of equality, of the destruction of feudalism, of the irrevocability of the sale of the national domains, of the independence of religion, had been consolidated. The government of France was under this fourth dynasty based on the same principles as the Republic: a constitutional and moderate monarchy.⁹

Napoleon III Under the July Monarchy Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, son of Louis Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon and from 1806 to 1810 King of Holland, had several times staged a coup and without success tried to seize power in France. The outbreak of the February Revolution of 1848 and the proclamation of the Second Republic at last created the pre-conditions of his legal seizure of power. On 4 November 1848 the constituent National Assembly adopted a constitution that resembled the American Federal Constitution in that it opposed to a one chamber legislative national assembly, elected by universal suffrage of men, a president to be directly elected by the same suffrage. The election of the president was sched-

 Emanuel de Las Cases, Le mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, ed. Gérard Walter, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), 64.  Ibid.

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uled for 10 December 1848. 7.5 million Frenchmen or 76 % of the registered voters went to the polls. Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte obtained more than 5.5 million votes and thus 74.5 % of the votes cast.¹⁰ This result indicates the existence of various fears nourished in all social quarters. The agrarian and in part illiterate population of the countryside protested against the tutelage by the urban population; the bourgeoisie sought safety from radical agitators; the urban workers avenged themselves on the republican elites for not taking care about their misery.¹¹ Broad sections of the population obviously hoped that the nephew of the great Napoleon would save them, just as the people of Israel once had hailed Saul as their savior. In this sense the socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon wrote on 19 December 1848: “This name there [Napoleon] – the peasant has known him for long; it is almost a cult with him. Napoleon will be his savior.”¹² According to the constitution the Legislative National Assembly and the President were independent from each other and both elected by universal suffrage, the deputies for three years and the president for four years. A sequel of two presidential terms was excluded. But Bonaparte was not prepared to retire in 1852 already and tried to persuade the chamber to revise the constitution at this point. The chamber refused. Thereupon Bonaparte resolved upon a coup d’état. For the time being he aimed at an extension of the president’s term to ten years. In the early morning of 2 December 1851, the very day on which in 1804 Napoleon I had been crowned Emperor at Paris and in 1805 had obtained victory at Austerlitz, the president ordered Palais Bourbon, seat of the National Assembly, to be occupied. 78 deputies of the opposition were woke up and arrested, and everywhere in the city a proclamation was attached to the walls in which the president justified the action by affirming that the National Assembly had tried to destroy the Republic. In this situation the president declared it his duty “to thwart their perfidious projects, to maintain the Republic, and to save the country through an appeal to the only sovereign, I know in France, the people.” Like the uncle in 1799, so the nephew as well considered it his mission “to close the age of the revolutions by satisfying the legitimate needs of the people and to protect it from the subversive passions.”¹³ By talking of the attack on the

 Éric Anceau, Napoléon III. Un Saint-Simon à cheval (Paris : Tallandier, 2008), 142‒43.  Pierre Milza, Napoléon III (Paris: Perrin, 2006), 190‒91.  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, “Les paysans,” in: Le Peuple, 19.12.1848, quoted from Anceau, Napoléon III, 143: “Ce nom-là [Napoléon], le paysan le connaît depuis longtemps ; c’est presque un culte pour lui. Napoléon sera son sauveur.”  Le Moniteur universel, 3.12.1851, 3019, quoted from Anceau, Napoléon III, 188 : “ Cette mission consiste à fermer l’ère des révolutions en satisfaisant les besoins légitimes du peuple et en le protégeant contre les passions subversives ”.

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legitimate needs of the people the president alluded to the law of 31 May 1850 by which the Chamber had withdrawn the right to vote from almost one third of those eligible to vote: from the propertied, from the persons without regular income, from the persons of no fixed abode, and from casual laborers. Therefore the coup was also justified by the desire to restore universal suffrage. Only a few weeks before the coup d’état, on 13 January 1851, the Legislative National Assembly had by a majority of only seven deputies voted against the president’s request to abolish all suffrage restrictions.¹⁴

The Charismatic Tsar As Max Weber emphasized, the charisma of a leader was in constant need of proof. A single heroic deed could not justify permanent rule. Charisma is ascribed; it is based on recognition. For continuous recognition can only hope who keeps achieving successes. “The holder may forego his charisma.” As soon as recognition ceases, the ruler is reduced to the status of “a private citizen and, if he then wishes to be more, he becomes a usurper deserving punishment.”¹⁵ Napoleon succeeded in maintaining his charisma thanks to his extraordinary military abilities at least until the Russian campaign of 1812. But already at the establishment of the hereditary Imperial dignity in 1804 the question had arisen under what conditions it would be possible to develop charismatic leadership into a hereditary monarchy and thus transform charisma “into an everyday phenomenon.”¹⁶ One possibility was suggested by Max Weber himself when he discussed the relationship between military achievement and charismatic kingship: “The king is everywhere primarily a war lord and kingship evolves from charismatic heroism.”¹⁷ As soon as “the principle of primogeniture, as governing the inheritance of authority” is established, charisma is transmitted through inheritance to the successors on the throne.¹⁸ A hereditary monarch is thus considered legitimate not on account of his own achievements, but thanks to the achievements of his ancestors.¹⁹ Max Weber has qualified this kind of recognition as

 Anceau, Napoléon III, 183.  Max Weber, “The Sociology of Charismatic Authority”, in: id., Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (London: Routledge, 1948), 248‒9  Id., Economy and Society, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (University of California Press, 1978), 251.  Id., “Charismatic Authority,” 251.  Id., Economy and Society, 248.  Id., Economy and Society, 248.

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“hereditary charisma” (Erbcharisma).²⁰ Hereditary charisma is the ultimate justification for the belief that dynastic lineage is capable of legitimizing the power of an individual monarch. Neither Napoleon I nor Napoleon III was able to transform his personal charisma into hereditary charisma. This is no surprise if one considers that their own charisma had not been powerful enough to maintain them on the throne until the end of their lives. The possessor of hereditary charisma, on the other hand, need not accomplish extraordinary exploits in order to preserve his throne. The loss of Silesia did not for a moment jeopardize Maria Theresa’s rule, and Prussia’s crushing defeat in the war of 1806 and 1807 against Napoleon and the humiliating peace of Tilsit did not cost the throne to Frederick William III. In the course of the 19th century, however, this kind of intangibility of dynastic rule was increasingly questioned. The conviction spread that a dynastic ruler, born on the throne, was no less obliged to prove himself by performance, especially in critical situations. This was at first brought home to Tsar Alexander I. On 6 September 1812, when Napoleon approached Moscow, his sister, Grand-Duchess Catherine, wrote him from Jaroslavl’: The seizure of Moscow has brought the excitement to a peak; the dissatisfaction has reached its summit, and your person is by no means spared. If that much is reported to me, form your own judgment on the real state of mind. You are openly accused to have precipitated your Empire into disaster and to have caused the general breakdown, at last to have destroyed the country’s honor as well as your personal honor […]. Save your honor. It is under attack.”²¹ Three weeks later Catherine once more returned to the point: “You are accused of inactivity, and therefore I have said: Save your honor!²²

Perhaps this crisis of his rule explains why Alexander assigned to himself a providential role after Napoleon’s expulsion from Russia. He regarded the liberation of Europe from the Napoleonic yoke as his personal mission. When Colonel Michaud brought him the news of the burning of Moscow, Alexander is reported to have declared as early as 21 September 1812: “Don’t forget what I am saying; perhaps we will remember it one day with joy; Napoleon or I, he or I; we can no longer rule at the same time. I have got to know him; he will not deceive me.”

 Max Weber, “The Types of Legitimate Domination,” in: id., Economy and Society, 248, 253; id., “Erhaltung des Charisma,” in: Max Weber Gesamtausgabe, section I, vol. 22/4, ed. Edith Hanke (Tübingen: Mohr, 2005), 559.  Catherine to Alexander, 6.9.1812, in: Nicolas Mikhailovitch, ed. Correspondance de l’empereur Alexandre 1er avec sa sœur la grande-duchesse Cathérine 1805‒1818 (St. Pétersbourg: Manufacture des Papiers de l’État, 1910), 83‒84.  Catherine to Alexander, 23.9.1812, ibid., 95.

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To this Michaud will have replied: “Sire, in this moment Your Majesty is signing the glory of the nation and the liberation of Europe.”²³ By the defiant formula “he or I” Alexander revealed his resolution to oppose to the charisma of the Corsican conqueror his own charisma, just as if the extraordinary war hero could be defeated only by a war hero of equal excellence. When on 31 March 1814 the Tsar entered Paris on top of the coalition armies, the population of the capital hailed him as savior and liberator and as a “second Hercules” because, as it was said, he had cleared the world “of the monsters and criminals.”²⁴ In Russia Alexander might have continued to rely on the dynastic legitimacy of the Romanovs. In Europe, however, he adopted for a short period of time the role of a charismatic hero. Insofar the constellation prefigured the conflicts that were conjured up by Garibaldi, Skobelev and Hindenburg.

Giuseppe Garibaldi and Victor Emanuel II That the Italian revolutionary leader Giuseppe Garibaldi possessed an exceptional personal aura is testified by Harriet Meuricoffre. In August 1860 she wrote: “I have seen today the face of Garibaldi; and now all the devotion of his friends is made as clear as day to me. You have only to look into his face, and you feel that there is, perhaps, the one man in the world in whose service you would, taking your heart in your hand, follow blindfold to death.”²⁵ The impression that Garibaldi’s sight made on Harriet Meuricoffre, is confirmed by Amitai Etzioni’s characterization of charismatic authority. Etzioni defined charisma as “the ability of an actor to exercise diffuse and intense influence over the normative orientations of other actors.”²⁶ Only a person who has abandoned his own norms of behavior, is able blindly and without examining the aptitude or justice of his undertaking to follow a leader into death. A recent biography of Garibaldi begins with the statement that along with Dante Alighieri, Christopher Columbus, and Leonardo da Vinci, the popular hero from Nice “is one of the few Italians who is known and admired throughout the world, and in modern times he is the only one who is loved as well as ad-

 Quoted from Volker Sellin, Die geraubte Revolution. Der Sturz Napoleons und die Restauration in Europa (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001), 44.  Ibid., 127  Quoted from Lucy Riall, Garibaldi. Invention of a Hero (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 1.  Amitai Etzioni, A Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations. On Power, Involvement, and Their Correlates, revised and enlarged edition (New York: Macmillan Free Press, 1975), 305.

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mired”. In 1860 Victor Hugo called him a “man of freedom, a man of humanity,” and after his death the Deutsche Zeitung called for a new Homer “worthy of singing the Odyssey of this life.”²⁷ In 1834 Garibaldi was sentenced to death in absence because he had taken part in an attempted insurrection of Giuseppe Mazzini. He fled to South America and distinguished himself as freedom fighter first in Brazil and then on the Rio de la Plata. After the outbreak of the Revolution of 1848 he had returned to Italy. In the following year he defended the Roman Republic against the French intervention forces under General Oudinot. Since Garibaldi distinguished himself both in South America and in Italy, he was soon hailed as “hero of the two worlds” (l’eroe dei due mondi). The Congress of Vienna had restored the plurality of States on the Apennine Peninsula. Other than in Germany the Italian States were not given any kind of federal bond. In the shadow of the Restoration the Risorgimento unfolded, as the Italian national and liberal movement is called. Its fiercest opponent was Austria that in Lombardy and Venetia not only ruled two great Italian States, but at the same time supported absolutism in the other Italian monarchies. In the hope of pushing Austria out from Northern Italy and of breaking at the same time Austrian hegemony over the Peninsula the Kingdom of Sardinia concluded an alliance with Napoleon III. Overestimating Austrian own power, in 1859 the government of Vienna let themselves get seduced into an ultimatum and into a declaration of war on Sardinia. With French help the Danube Monarchy was by the preliminary peace of Villafranca forced to cede Lombardy. This success triggered a wave of revolts in Central Italy. In the end only the Pope as ruler over the States of the Church and the King of the Two Sicilies remained on their thrones. The conquest of these States by regular Sardinian troops had not been agreed between Turin and Paris. In 1859 Napoleon III had only intended to support the government of Turin in the expulsion of Austria from Upper Italy, since his only interest was weakening Austria and thus taking vengeance for the humiliation inflicted on his uncle by the treaties of 1814 and 1815. But he had not wished to support the birth of a new great power in Southern Europe that could have impaired the France’s international position at least by hampering her political influence on the Italian peninsula. An attempt of Sardinia to take up arms again with a view to integrating by force after Tuscany and the duchies of Central Italy also the States of the Church and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies into the emerging nation state, would necessarily have called  Alfonso Scirocco, Garibaldi. Battaglie, amori, ideali di un cittadino del mondo (Bari: Laterza, 2001), VII-VIII; quotations from the English edition: Alfonso Scirocco, Garibaldi. Citizen of the World, translated by Allan Cameron (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007), X‒XI.

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forth the resistance of the great powers and especially of France, all the more so since the Papal State had been accorded the special protection of the Second Empire. When still president of the Second Republic, Napoleon III had in 1849 sent an expeditionary corps to Rome in order to destroy the Roman Republic that had been created during the Revolution, and to restore the government of the Pope. Since this intervention France held a protection force in Rome. The retreat of the protection would have cost the Emperor the support of the French Catholics. The road to Italian unity appeared barred. In this situation Giuseppe Garibaldi took the initiative. With the tacit permission of the Sardinian Prime Minister Camillo di Cavour he embarked on 6 May 1860 at Quarto near Genova with about a thousand partisans on two captured ships, in the intent to conquer, supported by local partisans, first Sicily and then the continental part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, a kingdom with a population of 9 million and a standing army of 50.000 men. On 11 May the troops landed at Marsala. On 27 May Garibaldi took the Sicilian capital Palermo. On 19 August he crossed the strait of Messina and entered Calabria. On 7 September the masses hailed him at Naples. In the beginning of October Garibaldi defeated the army of King Francesco II on the Volturno.²⁸ The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies lay at his feet. Meanwhile thousands of volunteers from all over Italy had poured into the South. Everywhere collections were organized in order to equip the soldiers with weapons and clothing. On 11 July a benefit concert was given for Garibaldi at New York. “Lucia di Lammermoor” and sections of “Lucrezia Borgia” by Gaetano Donizetti, and parts of the “Sicilian Vespers” by Giuseppe Verdi were performed.²⁹ Garibaldi did not content himself with the military defeat of his opponent. Only a few days after his arrival in Sicily he provisionally took into his hands the entire civil authority in the conquered territories and assumed the title of a dictator. Though he had from the very beginning placed his campaign under the motto “Italy and Victor Emanuel” (Italia e Vittorio Emanuele) and in this way made public his resolution to hand the territories to be conquered over to the King of Sardinia, Cavour observed the enterprise from Turin with growing concern. Garibaldi increasingly eluded every control. The Sardinian Prime Minister was afraid that the popular leader would make true his repeatedly stated intention to conquer after Naples the States of the Church and Venetia for the Italian nation state. Since his invasion of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies had already provoked sharp protests from the great powers, an attack on the States

 Ibid., 294‒97.  Ibid., 263

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of the Church and on Venetia would inevitably have resulted in French military intervention and called forth fierce resistance on the part of Austria. Thus all hopes for the unification of Italy might have foundered. But Cavour was not only afraid of international complications, but worried also about the future of the monarchy. He would have preferred that Garibaldi did not cross the straits of Messina. On 1 August 1860 he wrote to his confidant Costantino Nigra that if Garibaldi should after Sicily conquer also the Kingdom of Naples, he would inevitably become the absolute master of the situation. King Victor Emanuel would lose almost all of his authority. In the future the great majority of Italians would see nothing else in him but the friend of Garibaldi. Most probably he would keep the crown of Sardinia, but this crown would from then on only shine in the reflection of the light that a heroic adventurer would permit to fall on it.³⁰ The crown of Italy, however, would only loosely stay on the King’s head if he had received it from the hands of Garibaldi.³¹ The plebiscitary assent that Garibaldi enjoyed all over the country indeed constituted a danger for Victor Emanuel, because as King of Sardinia he did not posses any dynastic claim on other States of Italy. Outside of his own Kingdom he could base his legitimacy only on the national idea and on the appeal of the constitution of Sardinia, the Statuto albertino of 1848. But Garibaldi fought for the national idea no less forcefully than Victor Emanuel, and united Italy could certainly have acquired a constitution by a more democratic method than through the extension of the imposed Statuto albertino. In this critical moment Cavour saw only one way of saving the monarchical principle. King Victor Emanuel had to steal a march on the popular hero and complete Italian unity by force of arms himself, but leave out Rome. Cavour considered stirring an insurrection at Naples in order to create a pretext for an armed intervention, before Garibaldi would arrive on the spot.³² If Victor Emanuel would then wrest Venetia from the Habsburgs in alliance with the popular leader, Garibaldi’s successes in Sicily would soon be forgotten. Cavour was aware of the risks of the project, but he was also convinced that for a ruler of the house of Savoy it would be better to perish in war than through revolution. Cavour was a level-headed personality, but in this moment he obviously believed that the only way left for preserving the authority of his King, was making him a charis-

 Cavour to Nigra, 1 August 1860, in: Il carteggio Cavour-Nigra dal 1858 al 1861, vol. 4: La liberazione del Mezzogiorno (Bologna : Zanichelli, 1929), 122 : “[…] cette couronne ne brillera plus que par le reflet de la lumière qu’un aventurier héroique jugera bon de jeter sur elle.”  Ibid.: “Le Roi ne peut tenir la couronne d’Italie des mains de Garibaldi : elle chancellerait trop sur sa tête.”  Ibid., 123.

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Fig. 9: Pietro Aldi (1852‒1888), Giuseppe Garibaldi meets King Vittorio Emanuele II on 26. October 1860 near Teano.

matic hero and investing him, apart from his dynastic legitimacy, with a plebiscitary legitimacy accruing to a victorious military leader.³³ Cavour’s considerations remained without consequences. Garibaldi was not stopped as he advanced on the Italian mainland. When he had taken Naples, however, Cavour tried everything in his power to dissuade him from continuing his campaign. Since Garibaldi enjoyed an immense prestige in public this task could only be tackled by the King himself, all the more so, since Garibaldi could not forgive the Sardinian Prime Minister that he had ceded his hometown of Nice to France. With the consent of the French government Victor Emanuel II marched at the head of regular troops through the States of the Church towards Garibaldi. Near Teano North of Naples the King met with the war hero on 26 October 1860 (fig. 9). Without further ado Garibaldi resigned his dictatorship and transferred government to Victor Emanuel, after the overwhelming majority of the population had by plebiscite voted the union with the Kingdom of Italy in

 Cf. Rosario Romeo, Cavour e il suo tempo, vol. 3 (1854‒1861) (Bari: Laterza, 1984), 715‒16.

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formation.³⁴ On 7 November the King and Garibaldi entered into the city of Naples together. In Turin Cavour took precautions to impede Garibaldi from regaining a power position. Garibaldi’s request to be assigned an official mission in the South was declined. His units were dissolved. The vestiges of revolution he had left, should be deleted as quickly and completely as possible. During the following years Garibaldi tried two more times by force of arms to achieve the inclusion of Rome into the Kingdom of Italy and thus give it the capital that the nation was claiming. In 1862 he was stopped at Aspromonte in Calabria by Italian troops; in 1867 he was defeated at Mentana in Latium by the troops of the Pope and a new, hurriedly dispatched French intervention corps. By these two actions Garibaldi challenged other than in 1860 not the King personally but the constitutional order of the national state, established in 1861. In the conflict with government and Parliament, the charisma of the popular hero remained without effect.

Michail Skobelev and Alexander III Michail Dmitrievič Skobelev was born near Moscow on 17 September 1843. Both his father and his grandfather had been generals. His grandfather had fought against Napoleon. His achievements had earned him hereditary nobility.³⁵ Skobelev himself in 1861 also entered upon a military career. Soon he won the reputation of an unusually vain and ambitious man, filled with restless energy, but also of an extravagant and undisciplined, occasionally also of a cruel person. In the early seventies he distinguished himself at Chiva in Turkestan, in 1875 at the seizure of Kokand. A year after, he was appointed military governor of Fergana in the rank of major general.³⁶ His highhandedness, however, impaired his reputation. When on 12 April 1877 war broke out between Russia and Turkey, Skobelev at first was not accorded his own command. Only when the third attempt to take the fortress of Plevna had failed, he was promoted to Lieutenant General and entrusted with a strategic assignment. It was high time to save the Russian army from disgrace. After Plevna had capitulated on 28 November, the Russian forces

 On 21 October 432.053 voters in Sicily approved the union; 667 voted against it. In the continental part of the Kingdom 1 302 064 voted for the union and 10 362 against it. Cf. Elisa Mongiano, Il “voto della Nazione”. I plebiscite nella formazione del Regno d’Italia (1848‒60) (Turin: G. Giappichelli, 2003), 336, 327.  Hans Rogger, “The Skobelev Phenomenon: the Hero and his Worship,” Oxford Slavonic Papers, New Series 9 (1976), 48.  Ibid., 51‒52.

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persecuted the defeated Turks in the intent of moving forward as far as possible in the direction of Constantinople. In the course of this operation the Russian army was involved in acrimonious fighting at the Shipka Pass near Sheinovo. The final breakthrough was essentially Skobelev’s merit. His success won him popularity all over the country, but in the army as well. When in the camp he passed their tents, the soldiers rushed out and hailed him shouting hurrah, as else was customary only during visits of the Tsar.³⁷ To attract attention Skobelev liked to ride into battle on a grey horse (fig. 10). In 1880 he was charged with the command of a military expedition against the Turkmens of Achal-Tekke whose raids were impeding the pacification of the Trans-Caspian region. The year before another Russian military expedition had ingloriously failed on the same spot. That a European great power should not be able to cope with 20.000 tribal warriors worried the Tsar and hurt the national pride of the Russians. On 12 January 1881 the Russian army took the fortress of Geok-Tepe under Skobelev’s command.³⁸ As already in the Russo-Turkish war here again the failures of the predecessors shed a bright light on Skobelev’s success. Dostoevskij noted in his diary: “Cheers for our victory at Geok-Tepe! Long live Skobelev with his soldiers!”³⁹ When in April Skobelev returned to Moscow he was enthusiastically greeted at the station by an immense crowd. Eyewitnesses estimated it at 25.000 persons. The governor general of the city had a hard time to force his way through to the general. On the day after he commented the scene by stating: “Yesterday I have seen Bonaparte on his return from Egypt.”⁴⁰ The ambassador of Austria-Hungary, count Kálnoky, reported to Vienna that Skobelev was “the national hero and undoubtedly the most popular man in the Russian Empire.”⁴¹ On 1 March 1881 Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in Sankt Petersburg. His son and successor Alexander III nourished a deep resentment against Skobelev. He probably scented in him the rival in the competition for the favor of the masses. His most important advisor, Konstantin Pobedonoscev, however, admonished him to receive the general benevolently. He reminded him that in the army and among the masses Skobelev represented a power factor, and his services could

 Ibid., 54‒56.  Ibid., 56‒57.  Fedor M. Dostoevskij, Tagebuch eines Schriftstellers, ed. Alexander Eliasberg, vol. 4 (Munich: Musarionverlag 1923), 481.  Quoted from Rogger, “Phenomenon,” 58.  Quoted from Ernst R. von Rutkowsky, “General Skobelev, die Krise des Jahres 1882 und die Anfänge der militärischen Vereinbarungen zwischen Österreich-Ungarn und Deutschland,” Ostdeutsche Wissenschaft 10/11 (1963/64), 90.

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Fig. 10: Nikolaj Dmitrievič Dmitriev-Orenburgskij (1838‒1898), General Skobelev on horseback (1883).

be useful for him on many occasions. Alexander gave the conqueror of Geok-Tepe an audience, but he didn’t even care to offer him a chair and terminated the encounter after ten minutes only. Thereupon Pobedonoscev repeated his admonitions. Times were critical, he said, and nobody could exclude the eventuality that the country was going to split into two camps, one in favor of, the other one against the Tsar. In this situation he was obliged to seek allies among the best of the nation. This was more important today than ever. Skobelev disposed, he said, of “great moral influence among the masses”; people believed and fol-

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lowed him.⁴² Pobedonoscev tried to persuade the Tsar to use the plebiscitary assent to Skobelev for the consolidation of the regime by drawing him close to himself and thus to partake of the popularity of the people’s hero. Other than Cavour Pobedonoscev did not object to the possibility that on the crown of the Tsar was falling the reflection of the light that came from a “heroic adventurer.” Contemporaries compared Skobelev openly to the Italian revolutionary. The secretary of the French embassy at Moscow, Vogüé, warned against his “dynastic pretensions” and called him the “Slavic Garibaldi.”⁴³ Pobedonoscev obviously perceived the danger that might accrue to the Tsar from a charismatic personality. He advised him to make use of Skobelev’s charisma instead of driving him into the opposition. But Alexander’s repelling attitude produced just this effect. For a long time the popular general had criticized the timidity of Russian foreign policy. After he had distinguished himself in the Russo-Turkish war he could not get over the fact that at the congress of Berlin of 1878 the Russian government had ceded to the demand of the other powers to revise the peace of San Stefano to the disadvantage of Russia. For this diplomatic setback Skobelev blamed Germany in particular. From then on he declared several times in public a war with the German Empire was inevitable and the only chance to overcome Russia’s economic and political crises. By an address to students from Serbia in Paris in February 1882 he provoked nothing less than a scandal in foreign policy. He had asserted that the Tsar was no longer master in his own house but instead was under German influence. While the Tsar called the general’s behavior unpardonable, the German ambassador to Sankt Petersburg, General von Schweinitz, wrote that several close acquaintances had unanimously reported that their servants were enthusiastic about Skobelev’s behavior.⁴⁴ The German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck advised diplomatic restraint and recommended only to ridicule the general who imagined himself to become a second Napoleon because he “had coped with a few thousands Tatars,” in the press.⁴⁵ To friends Skobelev expressed the supposition that the autocracy would within a short period of time fall prey to a revolution. In this case the army would not unconditionally be obliged to defend it: “Dynasties change or disappear, but nations are immortal.”⁴⁶ Tsar Alexander III obviously did not dare to call Skobelev to account. Instead he now received him for a two hours conversa-

 Rogger, “Phenomenon,” 58‒59.  Quoted from ibid., 61.  Hans Lothar von Schweinitz, Denkwürdigkeiten, vol. 2 (Berlin: R. Hobbing, 1927), 187.  Quoted from Hans Herzfeld, “Bismarck und die Skobelewepisode” (1930), in: idem, Ausgewählte Aufsätze (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1962), 170.  Quoted from Rogger, “Phenomenon,” 61.

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tion. In diplomatic circles it was believed that if the Tsar reprimanded him, the self-willed general would leave the army and along with a group of partisans stir up the Slav peoples of the Balkans against Turk and Austro-Hungarian domination, just as Garibaldi had stirred up the Sicilians and Neapolitans against their King. Such an eventuality the Tsar could not risk by any means. Whether the structural conflict between ruler and popular hero would someday have broken out openly, is difficult to say, because only a few months after his reception by the Tsar, on 26 June 1882, Skobelev died in a Moscow brothel at the age of less than 39 years from a heart attack. Crowds flocked to his burial, especially from the lower segments of the population. His death soon became the object of all sorts of rumors. Their truth is doubtful and at any rate impossible to verify, but they illustrate how the general was perceived. Some people asserted he had been assassinated at the instigation of Bismarck. Others believed the Tsar had ordered to poison him, because he had been aiming at the overthrow of the Romanovs.⁴⁷ That Skobelev should have been striving for the power in Russia is as unproven as a plot, but it is significant that he was viewed as a menace to the peace and to the autocracy. Obviously he was attributed capacities to lead that many failed to perceive in the Tsar. In the age of rising nationalism the monarchy could easily lose its credibility if it closed the eyes before the national hopes of society. Insofar Skobelev’s popularity constituted a clear warning for the Tsar. On the day of his burial in an editorial of the nationalist “Moskovskie Vedomosti” Michail Katkov compared him to a Russian bogatyr’,⁴⁸ a legendary hero, and in 1904 he was hailed in the Russian Biographical Dictionary as a farsighted champion of the Russo-French alliance, concluded after Bismarck’s dismissal, and as an “honest, devoted, and truly Russian warrior who had rushed forward only for serving the ruler and Russia, as far as possible, still more effectively.”⁴⁹

Paul von Hindenburg and William II Paul von Hindenburg had been in retirement for three years when the First World War broke out. Like several times in Skobelev’s career in August 1914 the failings of other military leaders presented him with the unexpected opportunity to be Ibid., 65‒68.  Michail Katkov, Sobranie peredovych statej Moskovskich Vedomostej, 1882 god (Moscow: Univ. Tip., 1898), no. 178 (28.06.1882), 330.  P. Gejsman and A. Bogdanov, “Skobelev, Michail Dmitrievič,” in: Russkij Biografičeskij Slovar’, Sabaneev-Smyslov (Saint-Petersburg: Tipografija Glavnago Upravlenija Udelov, 1904), 582.

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come a national hero. Only a few weeks after the outbreak of the war the eighth army, operating in East Prussia under Colonel General Maximilian von Prittwitz und Gaffron, was confronted by two Russian armies on German soil – the Njemen Army under General Pavel Rennenkampf and the Narev Army under General Alexandr Samsonov. When General von Prittwitz, perceiving the superior forces of the enemy, decided to retire behind the Vistula and thus provisionally to abandon Eastern Prussia, he was recalled, together with his General Chief of Staff, count Waldersee. New Chief of staff was made Erich Ludendorff who had just distinguished himself during the seizure of Liège. He was not entrusted with the superior command of the eighth army since in the light of Prussian seniority rules he appeared still too young for the task. In his stead Paul von Hindenburg was selected. As General Groener, eyewitness of Hindenburg’s appointment, later reported, “the only reason” for the choice of Hindenburg was the fact “that from his phlegm absolute inactivity was expected so that Ludendorff would have plenty of scope.”⁵⁰ Between 25 and 31 August 1914 both Russian armies were completely annihilated at Tannenberg. The battle was soon shrouded in myth. Among others it was compared to the battle of Sedan on 1 and 2 September 1870 during the Prussian-French War. The Kölnische Volkszeitung reported on 1 September “with multiplied satisfaction that the army of the protector of the Serbs, Nicholas, now had also met his Sedan,” “materially and morally,” thanks to superior German tactics.⁵¹ The wide-spread perception that the Russians were cruel and uncivilized barbarians, excessive indications of the number of enemies taken prisoners, and finally unverified reports on alleged cruelties of Russian soldiers advancing on East Prussian territory, may in part explain why the victory of Tannenberg was before long perceived as a national feat. Though the operative planning of the battle was due to lieutenant colonel Max Hoffman and general chief of staff Erich Ludendorff, in the German public alone Hindenburg was hailed as a national hero and savior.⁵² The longer the World War was dragging on, the more all hopes were focused on this hero. The appointment of Hindenburg and Ludendorff to the Superior Army Command on 29 August 1916 was in accordance with these hopes. Thanks to the belief in his charismatic capacities Hindenburg disposed in this position of a weight that enabled him to determine not only military but also far-reaching

 Quoted from Dorothea Groener-Geyer, General Groener. Soldat und Staatsmann (Frankfurt: Societäts-Verlag, 1955), 339.  “Ein russisches Sedan,” Kölnische Volkszeitung No. 774, 1 September 1914 (noon edition), quoted from Jesko von Hoegen, Der Held von Tannenberg. Genese und Funktion des Hindernburg-Mythos (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna, 2007), 47.  Ibid., 35‒40, 44‒53.

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political choices. Among these was in January 1917 the decision to resume unrestricted submarine warfare, even though in this case the United States had announced their entry into the war. By simply threatening resignation in July 1917 the war hero succeeded in July 1917 to make William II drop Imperial Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg.⁵³ By the same method Hindenburg had already at the turn of the year 1914 tried to force the Emperor to dismiss General Chief of Staff Falkenhayn. At that time William II had reacted indignantly to this attempted extortion. He spoke of the “attitudes of a Wallenstein” and considered bringing Hindenburg before a military court. The affair brought home to the Emperor for the first time that in the public perception Hindenburg had become his rival. When the Supreme Army Command demanded Bethmann Hollweg’s dismissal in July 1917, the Emperor had already given up. His burst of anger about the behavior of Hindenburg and Ludendorff remained without consequences. As a contemporary witness reports, he commented the event by exclaiming that obviously he had better resign since for the first time in history a Prussian monarch had been forced by his generals to do something against his will.⁵⁴ At about the same time William confirmed his wish to stay one more day at Homburg, instead of returning to general quarters at Bad Kreuznach, to the chief of the military cabinet, general von Lyncker, by exclaiming: “What should I do at Kreuznach? There I would after all be only Hindenburg’s adjutant and would not have to say anything at all.”⁵⁵ In February 1915 the Kaiser explained his intention to stay in East Prussia even after the spring battle of Masuria, by remarking: “I want to be East Prussia’s liberator; if I should leave, they would again attribute this to Hindenburg.”⁵⁶ In order to emphasize his independence from the dominating myth around the General Field Marshal he ostentatiously decorated the Chief of the Supreme Command of the Army, Erich von Falkenhayn, with the order Pour le Mérite for the victory at the Masurian Lakes.⁵⁷ Not long after, however, William II came to understand that he had better demonstrate harmony with the popular hero. In the conflict between his dynastic legitimacy and Hindenburg’s charismatic authority

 Gerhard Ritter, Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk. Das Problem des “Militarismus” in Deutschland, vol. 3: Die Tragödie der Staatskunst: Bethmann Hollweg als Kriegskanzler (1914‒1917) (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1964), 580‒82.  Hoegen, Held, 189, n. 72.  Admiral von Müller’s Diary, 28 May 1917, in: Walter Görlitz, ed. Regierte der Kaiser? Kriegstagebücher, Aufzeichnungen und Briefe des Chefs des Marine-Kabinetts, Admiral Georg Alexander von Müller 1914‒1918 (Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1959), 289;  Ibid., 15 February 1917, 90.  Hoegen, Held, 180.

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his only chance of self-assertion under the pressure of war was sharing in the overwhelming reputation of the Field Marshal.⁵⁸ In August 1916 the Neue Preußische Kreuzzeitung refuted the suspicion as if “the authority” of the Kaiser could “suffer if confronted with the deeds and the greatness, the popularity, and the glory of an army commander.” “In Prussia and in Germany” this is “one of the things that are simply impossible.” And in the unmitigated spirit of the dynastic monarchy the paper continued: “Whatever the greatest political and military leaders have accomplished in the service of their rulers, it has always only added new gemstones to the royal crown and of necessity increased the love and veneration of the ruler who had appointed those men.”⁵⁹ The Kaiser did not share this confidence. When in the summer of 1916 in consideration of the “mood in Berlin” General Chief of Staff Falkenhayn recommended him to appoint Hindenburg commander in chief at the entire Eastern Front, he reacted “very indignantly to the fact” that he was expected to consider popular sentiment.” “To him this was equivalent to resignation, and Hindenburg had replaced him in the manner of a popular tribune.”⁶⁰ How the surroundings of the Kaiser perceived the relationship of the two, is revealed by a report of the former Prussian minister of war and meanwhile supreme commander of the Third Army, General Lieutenant Karl von Einem, on the festivities of Hindenburg’s seventieth birthday on 2 October 1917. Von Einem pointed out how “deferentially” the Kaiser had behaved in the presence of the Field Marshal. He had “treated his General Chief of Staff with circumspection and in this way demonstrated that he was aware of Hindenburg’s value for the war, for Germany, and for the monarchy.”⁶¹ In September 1916 von Einem had written: “For me it is a beautiful feeling that Hindenburg and Ludendorff are after all irremovable.”⁶² The Bavarian Crown Prince Rupprecht believed that during the last year of the war the Kaiser had “entirely lost his authority.” The “displeasure” was “so great that serious people” doubted “if the dynasty of Hohenzollern was able to survive the war.”⁶³ The traditional resources of legitimacy had been used up. If anybody at all, it was no longer the Kaiser who granted the nation’s survival but his servant, the General Field Marshal.

 Ibid., 180‒82.  Quoted from ibid., 186‒87.  Müller’s Diary, 3 July 1916, in: Görlitz, Kaiser, 200.  Von Einem, 16 October 1917, in: Wilhelm Deist, ed. Militär und Innenpolitik im Weltkrieg 1914‒ 1918, part two (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1970), doc. 425, 1137, n. 5.  Ibid., 1136, n. 5.  Crown Prince Rupprecht to Imperial Chancellor Hertling, 19 August 1917, in: Ernst Deuerlein, ed., Briefwechsel Hertling-Lerchenfeld 1912‒1917, vol. 2 (Boppard: Boldt, 1973), 915.

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From the danger to be eclipsed by the glory of a charismatic war hero a ruler was safe only when the political power had been transferred to a parliament. This had become obvious in the case of Garibaldi whose charisma had become of no effect when the Italian nation state had come into existence as a constitutional State with a parliament. The victor over Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington, was also celebrated as a national hero in his country.⁶⁴ But his popularity did not produce a conflict with the King. Parliament had worked out procedures apt to integrate even a Wellington into the political elite of the country. After the battle of Talavera in Spain in July 1809 Sir Arthur Wellesley was accorded a seat in the House of Lords and the title of a Viscount of Talavera and Wellington. In May 1814 he was promoted to dukedom. In 1818 he became member in Liverpool’s cabinet. Ten years later he was himself appointed Prime Minister. Even the war hero had to rise within the political elite and in Parliament before he obtained the highest office of the State. But at no point along this road he could have shattered the authority of the ruler. In the legends a man reveals himself a hero by his actions. Hercules strangled the lion of Nemea, Siegfried killed the dragon. The hero remains such even if he fails like Schiller’s diver at his second attempt. But the charismatic hero remains such only as long as he is successful. He becomes a popular hero by acting for a common purpose. Garibaldi, Skobelev, and Hindenburg were celebrated as charismatic popular heroes because they were regarded as national saviors. They became saviors through ascription. But in case of doubt appearance was more important than reality. Not as an experienced strategist but because of his phlegm Hindenburg had reached a position that presented him with the opportunity to appear as a charismatic war hero. All three of the leaders were aware that in the age of the masses the popular hero was before all a product of publicity through the media. After the failure of the Roman revolution in the summer of 1849 Garibaldi himself laid the foundation of his myth by means of his memoirs.⁶⁵ At the time of the conquest of the South he attached his signature to innumerable portrait postcards.⁶⁶ During the Russo-Turkish War correspondents of the national and international press were continually coming and going at Skobelv’s quarters. The general himself had brought with

 On Wellington see the biography in two volumes by Elizabeth Longford, Wellington. The Years of the Sword (London: Harper & Row, 1969), and ead., Wellington. Pillar of State (London: Harper & Row, 1972)  See Riall, Garibaldi, 157:  Franco Ragazzi, “Garibaldi e i garibaldini fra raffigurazione colta ed epica popolare”, in: id., ed., Garibaldi nell’immaginario popolare (Genova: De Ferrari, 2007), 36.

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him photographs in heroic pose.⁶⁷ Hindenburg preferred painting, in particular the portraits that Hugo Vogel made of him. In March 1915 he declared Vogel his “court and favorite painter”, notwithstanding that he did not have a court at all.⁶⁸ Max Weber analyzed charisma as a revolutionary force. On Saul’s example the charismatic hero appears as a personality who, independent from customary career patterns, thanks to his personal gift of grace, his aura, and his reputation, takes the salvation of the threatened nation in his own hands. At first sight the three military leaders mentioned by way of example seem to correspond but in part to this type. Only Giuseppe Garibaldi can without restriction be characterized as a revolutionary leader. Michail Skobelev and Paul von Hindenburg on the other hand occupied high if not very high positions in the regular armies of their countries. Still they, too, the longer the more resolutely, played the role of revolutionaries. Based on the overwhelming popularity they had acquired because of their military successes, both of them in different ways exerted pressure on the government and usurped competences to which they were not entitled. Skobelev tried to force an aggressive foreign policy on the Tsar while Hindenburg at the Supreme Command unceremoniously tried to take the Kaiser by the hand in existential national questions.

The Dynastic Ruler as Hero In times of crisis the plebiscitary legitimacy of a charismatic war hero obviously carried more weight than the dynastic legitimacy of the monarch. A way out of this dilemma had first been shown by Cavour in his struggle with Garibaldi: the ruler himself has to be regarded as a hero. Tsar Alexander I has accomplished this feat far beyond the borders of his own country at least for a certain period of time in the course of Napoleon’s defeat. The people of Paris perceived him at his entrance into the city on 31 March 1814 and during the following weeks not so much as the monarch of a foreign Empire but as the liberator and savior of Europe. To the extent that in the course of the 19th century the monarchs looked upon themselves more and more as leaders of their nations, in times of crisis they were confronted with the task to protect and to defend these nations. Therefore it is no

 Rogger, “Phenomenon,” 73‒74.  Quoted from Wolfram Pyta, Hindenburg. Herrschaft zwischen Hohenzollern und Hitler, 3rd ed. (Munich: Pantheon, 2007), 123.

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wonder that a number of rulers who did not want to share their reputation with others, tried to add a charismatic reputation to their dynastic legitimacy. When William II ascended the throne in June 1888 he immediately had himself styled as a savior from the two main dangers that allegedly threatened the Empire: parliamentary government and democracy. John Röhl has characterized this procedure as a “charismatization of the Imperial dignity.”⁶⁹ It was nothing else but the attempt to counteract the democratization of the monarchy by styling the monarch as a hero. The attempt of William II to increase the legitimacy of the Hohenzollern dynasty by feigning charisma is also demonstrated by the posthumous promotion of his grandfather to a “Heldenkaiser” (Emperor Hero) by the name of “William the Great.”⁷⁰ If charisma was indeed hereditary, a reflection of the light that surrounded the Emperor founder of necessity was falling on the grandson. William II was by no means the only monarch of the century who pursued similar projects of dynastic policy. Anton Dominik Ritter von Fernkorn’s equestrian monument to Archduke Charles of 1860 on Heldenplatz at Vienna transformed the dynastic military leader Archduke Charles who had defeated Napoleon on 22 May 1809 at Aspern, into a national hero and underlined in the struggle between Prussia and Austria for mastership in Germany the Habsburg claim to leadership. Judging from the inscriptions on the pedestal the monument was dedicated on the one hand in traditional dynastic manner to the “heroic leader of Austria’s armies,” on the other hand in the sense of national politics to the “perseverant fighter for Germany’s honor.”⁷¹ If charismatic qualities were attributed, it was not excluded in principle that a ruler could be styled a hero if his subjects could be convinced that the security and honor of the nation depended from him. But a dynastic ruler played with fire if he aspired to the charisma of a hero. The desire itself is a symptom of crisis because it shows that the ruler in question no longer trusted in his traditional legitimacy. The charisma itself, however, remains a revolutionary force even in a traditional ruler. If his charismatic aspirations fail, he cannot simply return

 John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II. Der Aufbau der persönlichen Monarchie 1888‒1900 (Munich: Beck, 2001), 31‒37; Martin Kohlrausch, Der Monarch im Skandal. Die Logik der Massenmedien und die Transformation der wilhelminischen Monarchie (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2005). 86‒87.  See the commemorative volume that William II had himself suggested: Wilhelm Oncken, Unser Heldenkaiser. Festschrift zum hundertjährigen Geburtstage Kaiser Wilhelms des Großen, edited by the committee for the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche zum Besten des Baufonds (Berlin: Schall & Grund, 1897)  Quoted from Winfried Romberg: Erzherzog Carl von Österreich. Geistigkeit und Religiosität zwischen Aufklärung und Revolution (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2006), 20.

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under traditional legitimacy. The way out that Cavour had first indicated, namely to overtrump the charismatic leader Garibaldi by declaring King Victor Emanuel II himself a hero, would sooner or later have ended in failure. On the throne William II had not become a hero. But in the November crisis of 1918 when his abdication had become inevitable, General Groener was about to recommend him to seek at least the death of a hero on the front, no matter that the war was almost over.⁷² At the end of a war involving heavy losses without precedence the idea reveals the fictitiousness of a monarchy that had refused to accept democratic and parliamentarian legitimacy until shortly before its breakdown. On the other hand Hindenburg’s election to president of the Weimar Republic only seven years later confirmed in a both unexpected and questionable way the legitimizing power of charismatic heroism. The second escape from the dilemma into which a charismatic hero could precipitate a ruler, was the attempt to align himself with the charismatic leader in the hope of sharing his reputation. That’s what Pobedonoscev recommended Tsar Alexander III to do, and William II also resigned himself to this course when he recognized that he was unable to outweigh the plebiscitary legitimacy of Hindenburg. It is not clear whether such a subjection of his own legitimacy to the popularity of the war hero would have helped the monarchy even if Germany had not lost the war, because it shows no less than making the ruler himself appear as a hero that the traditional legitimacy had become fragile. History offers a precedent of a monarch’s attempt to seek support from a charismatic war hero for the preservation of his own legitimacy. In the face of the wide-spread dissatisfaction with the un-heroic July monarchy in April 1831 King Louis-Philippe opted for an unusual demonstration. Since the removal of the Emperor’s statue in April 1814 on the Vendôme Column Napoleon had erected in honor of the Great Army, only a flag was waving – till the July Revolution the Lily banner, from then on the Tricolor, as had been the case already during the Hundred Days of 1815. Since the July Revolution the French public demanded to put Napoleon’s statue back on top of the column.⁷³ The July monarchy welcomed the opportunity to confirm its own unstable legitimacy through the public rehabilitation of Napoleon. But it did not want to give to the statue again the appearance of a Roman Emperor. It would have looked like a commitment to the Empire and a dissociation from the present regime. Therefore instead of the Emperor the soldier Napoleon was placed on top of the column, as petit caporal with hat and in

 See above in the chapter “Success in War” the section “The Fall of William II.”  Le National, 29 July 1833, where it is said that the statue was “réclamée dès le lendemain de la révolution de juillet par le peuple de Paris.”

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frock – the popular army leader, the glorious battle winner, the national hero. With this step the regime took into account the rise of Bonapartism in the country. The unveiling of the monument on 28 July 1833 in the presence of the King was nothing less than an act of borrowing legitimacy for the new regime from Napoleon’s charisma. When the veil that had enveloped the monument – a green cloth with Napoleon’s silver bees – was removed, the King and the generals present uncovered their heads and all swords were stuck towards the statue.⁷⁴ The return of Napoleon’s remains from Sankt Helena at the suggestion of Adolphe Thiers seven years later again presented an opportunity for the use of Napoleon’s charisma by the unwarlike bourgeois monarchy. The French historian Jean Tulard has aptly characterized the event: “Louis-Philippe in this way appropriated for himself Austerlitz, Jena, and Wagram.”⁷⁵ The fall of the July monarchy after only 18 years of existence demonstrates that borrowing foreign charisma can procure to a regime at best a reprieve.

Monarchical Heroes’ Memorials The monument to Archduke Charles on Heldenplatz at Vienna is only one of countless examples of how rulers by erecting monuments sought to memorialize both their own successes and the achievements of their ancestors in the hope that the great figures of the dynasty’s past would shed light on their present successors as well and thus increase their reputation. In 1812 on Christmas Day Tsar Alexander promised to construct a gigantic Church on the Sparrow Mountains near Moscow in memory of the soldiers who had fallen in defense of the country during the war against Napoleon. The dimensions of the Church should bring to mind the scale of the triumph that Alexander had reported over Napoleon. A young man of Swedish ancestry, Alexander Vitberg, was appointed architect. The existing sketches of the cathedral to be dedicated to Christ the Redeemer, show a classicist building of overwhelming dimensions. With a height of nearly

 Le Constitutionnel, 29 July 1833. Cf. Volker Sellin, “Napoleon auf der Säule der Großen Armee. Metamorphosen eines Pariser Denkmals,” in: Christof Dipper, Lutz Klinkhammer, and Alexander Nützenadel, eds., Europäische Sozialgeschichte. Festschrift für Wolfgang Schieder (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2000), 385‒392; and in: Volker Sellin, Politik und Gesellschaft. Abhandlungen zur Europäischen Geschichte, edited by Frank-Lothar Kroll (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 207‒ 235.  Jean Tulard, “Le retour des Cendres,” in: Pierre Nora, ed., Les lieux de mémoire, part 2 : La nation, vol. 3 (Paris: Gallimard, 1986), 92 : “Louis-Philippe s’annexait ainsi Austerlitz, Iéna et Wagram.”

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170 meters the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer (Chram Christa Spasitelja) was meant to become the largest building of the world. In October 1817 the cornerstone was laid. But the construction was making only little progress, and the ground proved unsuitable for a building of such dimensions. Therefore Alexander’s successor, Tsar Nicholas I, gave orders to start planning all over again.⁷⁶ A new site was chosen in the middle of the city, close to the Kremlin, and Nicholas decided that the church be erected in more modest, but still monumental, dimensions and in traditional Russian style. Konstantin Ton was appointed architect. The height of the church was still to be 100 meters. It was inaugurated in 1883 at the coronation of Alexander III. The cathedral placed the victory over Napoleon into the context of Russian history. In the age of nationalism it became a symbol of the merger of autocracy, orthodoxy, and the greatness of the Russian people.⁷⁷ Since it had been erected under no less than four Tsars it appeared particularly well suited to confirm the legitimacy of the house of Romanov. To the North of the Capitol at Rome stands – visible from far away – the Vittoriano, a monument by which united Italy sought to anchor their first King, Victor Emanuel II, in the memory of the nation (fig. 11). The vast dimensions of the edifice and the white marble, shining far, indicate the power by which resurrected Italy sought to assert her claim to recognition in Rome, city of churches and Popes. The equestrian monument to the King may appear modest against the background of the gigantic architecture in classicist style, but just this confrontation brings to mind that his achievements by far transcended his person. According to the first bill on the erection of the monument that the minister of the Interior Giuseppe Zanardelli introduced in Parliament only three months after Victor Emanuel’s death, its purpose was “to transmit to the coming centuries, along with the glory of the King, the history of the liberation of the fatherland and of the achievement of national unity.”⁷⁸ The speech of Prime Minister Agostino Depretis at the ceremony on 22 March 1885 when the foundation stone was laid, contained the most important rhetorical topoi suitable for the charis-

 Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power. Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 1: From Peter the Great to the Death of Nicholas I (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 236‒38.  Ibid., 384‒86; ibid., vol. 2: From Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 232‒33.  “[…] noi onorando il Re, onoriamo anche l’Italia. Gli è con legittimo orgoglio che il paese vedrà sorgere un monumento il quale, oltre significare la gratitudine degli italiani, riassumerà, e qui nella capitale da tanto e si lungo desiderio invocata, tramanderà ai secoli colla gloria del Re, la storia della patria liberata e della conquistata unità”; quoted from Thorsten Rodiek, Das Monumento Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II in Rom (Frankfurt: P. Lang, 1983), 34.

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Fig. 11: Giuseppe Sacconi (1854‒1905), National Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II in Rome (1885‒1911); Enrico Chiaradia (1851‒1892), Equestrian statue.

matic idealization of the founder king. Only here, so Depretis declared, could “the altar of salutary concord be consecrated of which the protector and creator had been King Victor Emanuel.” Significant are the titles of honor that the Prime Minister reserved for the King: “Father of the Fatherland” (Padre della Patria), “Hero” (Eroe), and “Liberator King” (Re liberatore).⁷⁹ The purpose of the traditional equestrian monuments of Emperors and Kings had always been to immortalize a ruler in his majesty without emphasizing a particular achievement such as the extension of the national territory. In the Old Regime the acquisition and the loss of provinces was a matter of the dynasties and did not concern the subjects. But Victor Emanuel had not conquered Italy in a dynastic war. Rather, he had placed himself at the service of the national movement and co-operated in the formation of a both national and constitutional state that the Italians were eventually invited to confirm by plebiscite. To the great majority of the nation Victor Emanuel was a new King who was legitimized exclusively by his singular achievement of uniting the nation under a constitution. He could not claim for

 Quoted from Kathrin Mayer, Mythos und Monument. Die Sprache der Denkmäler im Gründungsmythos des italienischen Nationalstaates 1870‒1915 (Cologne: SH-Verlag, 2004), 106‒7.

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himself any kind of dynastic legitimacy except for the fact that national unity was attained only because the dynastic right of all other Italian princes was overruled. Depretis hailed him as a “Liberator King,” because apart from the citizens of Piedmont he had liberated the Italians from the domination of their former dynasties, in particular of the Habsburgs and the Bourbons. It is not by hazard that for this act the Prime Minister used terms that are normally applied to a charismatic leader – liberator, savior, and hero. But it appeared impossible to give expression to the charismatic authority that Victor Emanuel had acquired through his achievement, in a conventional equestrian monument of the dynastic tradition. Charisma is a revolutionary force. It rests essentially on the recognition by those in whose interest it unfolds. For this reason alone it appears plausible that the equestrian statue that, taken as such, inserts itself into the tradition of ruler monuments, was placed in front of a gigantic scenery and thus into a national instead of a dynastic context. However, it certainly belonged to the dynastic tradition that by the monument to the ruler the achievements of his servants were attributed to the King himself. Not Victor Emanuel but Giuseppe Garibaldi was in fact the true charismatic hero. Garibaldi equaled Saul who defeated the Ammonites, but since other than Saul he was not permitted to become King, Victor Emanuel himself had to be presented as a charismatic savior and thus in a certain sense as a revolutionary leader. Immediately upon Garibaldi’s death on 2 June 1882 the Italian Parliament resolved to erect a monument in Rome in his memory as well. It was to be placed on the Gianicolo where Garibaldi in 1849 had defended the Roman Republic against the French expeditionary corps.⁸⁰ From the beginning great care was taken to place Garibaldi’s monument into an adequate relationship to the monument to King Victor Emanuel. Senator Caracciolo di Bella, rapporteur of the parliamentary committee for monuments, declared on 5 July 1883, the two monuments were “two concepts and two objects that could not be separated from each other,” since “the name of the Great King” and the name of the “popular hero” were closely connected to each other.⁸¹ But the connection did not exclude a hierarchical grading between the two symbolic figures. Thus in the bill of the committee for the Senate, also introduced by Caracciolo di Bella, Garibaldi’s role in relation to Victor Emanuel was defined as a “continuous and valuable support in the common endeavor of national redemption.”⁸² In this way Garibal-

 Sirocco, Garibaldi, 156‒57, 164.  Quoted from Mayer, Mythos, 133, n. 284: “l’intima correlazione che […] unisce il nome del Gran Re con quello dell’eroe popolare.”  Ibid., 133, n. 285: “costante e valido aiuto nell’opera comune del riscatto nazionale.”

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di was downgraded to a charismatic assistant of the Great King. This degradation is also manifest in the geographic orientation of the monument towards the Capitol, the place where at the same time the monument to Victor Emanuel was under construction. In this way “the mythical connection with the Padre della Patria was realized.”⁸³ On 9 March 1890 Kaiser William I died. In the same year the Imperial Diet resolved to build a monument to him at Berlin. In the bill on the call for tender it was stated that the monument was destined for the “founder of the Reich.” The locality of the monument was at first left open.⁸⁴ But soon agreement was reached that a more or less conventional equestrian monument without surrounding architecture would not do justice to the extraordinary significance of the founder of the Reich. To stay behind the monument to Victor Emanuel under construction at Rome was out of the question.⁸⁵ The two sketches, to which a first prize was awarded, were in keeping with these requirements. Bruno Schmitz proposed a semicircular colonnade to be constructed at the cross-roads of Carlottenburger Chaussee and Siegesallee. On its vertex an arch of triumph with a dome hood should be placed. In front of the colonnade on an elevated base an equestrian statue of the Kaiser should be erected.⁸⁶ Wilhelm Rettig and Paul Pfann proposed a domed building with a colonnade in front to be placed on the Western side of the Königsplatz, opposite to the Imperial Diet. In the back part of the rotund a gilded equestrian statue of the Kaiser should be placed.⁸⁷ Other participants in the tender proposed to place the monument among others in Tiergarten Park, on the square in front of Brandenburg Gate, and at Opernplatz. Because of the difficulty of representing in a single monument both the person of the monarch and the founder of the Reich the Reichstag committee was considering setting up two monuments: “one of them as a great national monument, as a work of architecture, and the other one to represent the figure of the eternalized ruler in the manner in which he had lived among us, in which he continued to live in the heart of the people, just as it is the case here in Berlin

 Ibid., 130.  Wolfgang Vomm, Reiterstandbilder des 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland. Zum Verständnis und zur Pflege eines traditionellen herrscherlichen Denkmaltyps im Historismus (Bergisch Gladbach 1979), 344, 548.  Ibid., 345‒46.  Ibid., 354‒55, 364‒65.  Ibid., 347.

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with Frederick William III.”⁸⁸ The proposal confirms the observation made with respect to the Roman Vittoriano that national legitimacy was expressed through the architecture, dynastic legitimacy through the equestrian statue. Neither of the prize-winning projects was realized, owing to the intervention of Kaiser William II. In his name on 9 June 1890 the deputy chancellor of the Reich, von Boetticher, in the Reichstag demanded a second tender, this time expressly of an equestrian statue, to be placed on the Schloßfreiheit between the Berlin Stadtschloß and the river Spree. Von Boetticher justified his demand by the impossibility simultaneously to represent the person of the late Emperor and his historic achievement: “Creating a work that brings into view all the forces and persons that have contributed to the foundation of the Reich, would run the risk that the world-historical person of the eternalized Kaiser would be pushed too far into the background or would have to be represented with a pathos that contradicts the character of this Kaiser.”⁸⁹ Thereupon the Reichstag decided to submit the question from now on to the “decision of his Majesty the Kaiser.”⁹⁰ After the conclusion of the second tender the assignment was given to the sculptor Reinhold Begas and the architect Gustav Halmhuber. For an extended architectural monument there was not enough space on the Schloßfreiheit. So the choice of the location and the preference of William II for an equestrian statue with little surrounding architecture combined to give origin to a monument that entirely reflected the dynastic tradition. It attributed the foundation of the Reich exclusively to the Kaiser and his dynasty.⁹¹ For financial reasons statues representing those men who had in effect created the Reich, namely Otto von Bismarck and Helmuth von Moltke, were not added.⁹² Other than the Vittoriano in Rome the monument to Kaiser William I appears contradictory in itself. Like the Roman monument it was meant to remember the one great national deed. Therefore it had originally been destined to become a monu-

 Freiherr von Unruhe-Bomst (rapporteur) in: Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen des Reichstags, 8th Legislaturperiode, 1st Session 1890/91, 32nd Sitzung, 2 July 1890 (Berlin: Verlag der Buchdruckerei der Norddeutschen Allgemeinen Zeitung, 1890), 744.  Ibid., Anlagenband I (Berlin 1890), Aktenstück no. 54, 544.  Stenographische Berichte des Reichstags, 2 July 1890, 744; ibid., Anlagenband i, Durcksache no. 132, 800; cf. Reinhard Alings, Monument und Nation. Das Bild vom Nationalstaat im Medium Denkmal. Zum Verhältnis von Nation und Staat im deutschen Kaiserreich 1871‒1918 (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter,1996), 221.  Cf. Bernd Nicolai, Das National-Denkmal für Kaiser Wilhelm I. in Berlin (1889‒1897). Wettbewerbe – Ausführung – Rezeption (Göttingen 1980), 49: “Das Begasdenkmal muß in diesem Sinne als primär monarchisches Denkmal bezeichnet werden, dem die Beziehung zum deutschen Volk aufgepfropft war.”  Vomm, Reiterstandbilder, 367.

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ment to a charismatic hero, the redeemer of the nation. William II had this objective changed into the glorification of a dynastic ruler. German unification thus appears as a dynastic achievement of the house of Hohenzollern instead of a revolutionary action on the basis of the national principle. The monument corresponded to an outdated conception of legitimacy. It denied exactly those values on which the monarchy in Germany could most likely have based a long-lasting future: nation and constitution. As long as military victory was numbered among the essential tasks of a ruler, he went the risk to be outstripped by subordinated military leaders. In Homer’s Iliad this was the fate of Agamemnon when he was confronted with Achill.⁹³ In the age of democracy the popularity of a war hero could seriously impair the authority of the ruler. This is demonstrated by the conflicts between Giuseppe Garibaldi and Victor Emanuel II, between Michail Skobelev and Alexander III, and at last between Paul von Hindenburg and William II. A method to obviate similar crises was sought by making the rulers themselves or their dynastic ancestors appear as charismatic heroes. Tsar Alexander I gladly accepted the role of a liberator of Europe from the Napoleonic yoke and Cavour made great efforts to help King Victor Emanuel II to outdo Garibaldi by waging war against Austria. Oversized monuments, such as the Church of Christ the Redeemer in Moscow and the Vittoriano in Rome, turned dynastic rulers into national heroes and thus provided monarchy with a new kind of legitimacy, true to the spirit of nationalism that dominated the century.

 I owe this point to Tonio Hölscher, Heidelberg.

11 Summary For centuries monarchy was the predominant form of government in Europe. At the beginning of modern times Jean Bodin assigned the supreme power in a state to the king. With this doctrine he gave a theoretical foundation to the evolution of absolute monarchy during the following two centuries. In France the claim of the monarchy to absolute government was ruled out by the Revolution. On 17 June 1789 at Versailles the members of the Third Estate declared themselves the National Assembly and transferred the supreme power from the King to the nation. By this act the French monarchy was not abolished, but redefined. From now on the monarch was no longer the sovereign, but an organ of the constitution, the supreme servant of the state. This principle was clearly enunciated in the third article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 26 August 1789. It stated that sovereignty resided exclusively with the nation. No corps and no individual could claim political authority unless it was derived from the nation. This principle was declared to refer to any form of government. It was in fact acknowledged by every French regime of the revolutionary period down to the Bourbon restoration of 1814. Louis XVIII, however, after his return from exile ordered the democratically legitimized constitution that the Napoleonic Senate had elaborated for the restoration of the monarchy, into a monarchically legitimized Charte constitutionnelle to be put in force by royal imposition. To him restoration of the monarchy meant the return to the principle that the monarch possessed supreme authority. In his “Principes de politique” of 1815 Benjamin Constant revealed this claim to be an illusion. It is true that Louis XVIII himself perceived that he would not be able to ascend the throne without granting a constitution, but Constant generalized the third article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen by stating that the legitimacy of any regime, be it democratic, oligarchic or monarchical, was based on the general will, in other words: on the expressly or tacitly given assent of the governed. According to this interpretation the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy had only become possible, because the King’s concessions were considered generous enough to secure it general acceptance. Dynastic and divine right legitimacy, however, to which Louis XVIII referred in his declarations, was by itself not sufficient to justify the restoration of the monarchy. The Charte contained guarantees of the highest priority for the generation that had lived through the Revolution and the Empire. By the Charte the King granted the preservation of the legal and social order that had been created in France since the meeting of the Estates General in May 1789. By foregoing polithttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110561395-012

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ical purges, true to his promise in the Charte, he helped overcoming the cleavages that the Revolution had left behind in society. Finally, the return of a King of the ancient dynasty nourished the hope that after the uninterrupted series of wars peace would at last be attained as well. These expectations were in accordance with the particular situation that had resulted from the breakdown of the Empire. But it remained to be seen whether the nation would in the long run be satisfied with the limitations of the rights of the Chambers and with the elevated electoral census. Monarchical legitimacy, as far as it depended from the assent of the governed, was in constant need of reconfirmation. Acceptance is unstable, and it was natural that in the course of the political and social development of the century public expectations rose. Therefore the monarchy, to use Constant’s words, was obliged to avoid that it was perceived as a regime of violence. In the July Revolution of 1830 the Bourbon monarchy was turned over because Charles X had not been aware of this requirement. For the same reason eighteen years later the citizen king Louis Philippe failed as well. That the French monarchy was brought down twice after its restoration in 1814 is explained by the failure of both Charles X and Louis-Philippe to adjust their legitimacy to the rising expectations of the governed. Both regimes turned rigid in their respective stages of development and increasingly gave the impression of contradicting the very spirit of the constitution. Both monarchs gambled away the assent of the nation they had enjoyed in the beginning, Charles X by tenaciously holding on to his first minister Jules de Polignac, and Louis-Philippe by his refusal in time to enlarge the suffrage. When the public revolted, both regimes, instead of backing down, before it was too late, passed over from covert to open violence and thus rendered their fall unavoidable. In the spring of 1917 Nicholas II made the same experience. When his government encountered opposition, he at first also tried to defend his position by force of arms. Some monarchies maintained themselves far beyond the 19th century. Thanks to adequate strategies they succeeded in preserving power and safeguarding the loyalty of their subjects, thus maintaining legitimacy. Six strategies turned out to be the most important. Three of them confirmed traditional modes of legitimacy: dynastic origin, divine right, and the ability to defend the country against external enemies. The remaining three strategies were developed only in the age of revolution: granting constitutions, nationalizing the monarchy, and inaugurating social reform. The six strategies were not everywhere applied simultaneously. Often certain strategies were preferred while others were neglected. Both Charles X of France and William I of Prussia regarded the public display of divine right in their coronation ceremonies as an alternative to further concessions in constitutional policy. During the constitutional conflict of the eighteen-sixties Bismarck secured to William I who would have

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preferred abdication to the introduction of parliamentary government, the consent of the nation by using the Prussian army to bring about the unity of Germany. As a consequence the German Empire enjoyed legitimacy as a national, but only to a lesser degree as a democratic State. In France, the monarchy definitely broke down as a consequence of defeat in the German-French war in 1870. In his last years of existence the Second Empire had been on the road of liberalization. The declaration of war against Prussia was supported by public opinion. If France had won the war the regime would have had good chances to remain in power for a long time to come. If Napoleon III has not survived the war of 1870, the Russian, the Austro-Hungarian and the German monarchies as well have not survived the First World War. In all three cases the extraordinary strains of this war revealed that the strategies of power preservation during the preceding decades had been insufficient. In Russia the constitutional regime of 1906 had not been developed further. In Germany the preservation of the monarch’s power of command, the absence of parliamentary government, and the three-class franchise in Prussia turned out to be heavy burdens. Austria-Hungary at last broke to pieces because it had not succeeded to solve her nationality problem. Nevertheless, there is reason to suppose that the monarchy could have survived in all three of these States if the actual incumbents of the throne had acted with more circumspection in the moments of crisis. At last the personal factor played a decisive role. If William II had abdicated in October 1918 in favor of his son, the monarchy would most probably have been preserved. A hereditary monarch only rarely adopted the role of a charismatic savior. Charisma was more frequently attributed to successful military leaders than to monarchs, as had been shown in the preceding century in Italy with Giuseppe Garibaldi and in Russia with Michail Skobelev. During the First World War Paul von Hindenburg won the reputation of a charismatic leader thanks to his victory at Tannenberg. Only a strong Parliament could have impeded that in the last two years of the war Hindenburg obtained an almost unlimited power position in Germany. In this development the crisis of the Hohenzollern monarchy is revealed. William II’s judgment was well founded when he deplored that to all intents and purposes he had become the adjutant of Hindenburg. At this point the British monarchy could have served as an example. After the defeat of Napoleon it had proved capable to integrate Wellington, the victor of Waterloo, into the political system without conferring on him extraordinary powers. Thanks to the use of adequate strategies of legitimacy, in the majority of countries the European monarchs succeeded for over a century after the fall of Louis XVI to stay in power. At last the three great monarchies of Central and Eastern Europe broke down under the strains of the First World War. Their vigilance

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had waned and they had not persistently enough continued in their previous policy of legitimating monarchical government in an age of democracy and industrialization.

12 List of Abbreviations ADB AHR AP DBI Doc. ed. GSPK GW HZ ibid. id. JbbGO JGMOD KA MHVP NF n. no. n. d. PP PVS QUFIAB SR vol. VF VfZG ZBLG ZHF

Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie American Historical Review Archives parlementaires Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani document edited/editor Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz Gesammelte Werke Historische Zeitschrift ibidem idem Jahrbücher für die Geschichte Osteuropas Jahrbücher für die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands Krasnyj Archiv Mitteilungen des Historischen Vereins der Pfalz Neue Folge note number no date Past & Present Politische Vierteljahrsschrift Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken Slavic Review volume Vorträge und Forschungen Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landesgeschichte Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110561395-013

13 Picture Credits Cover: Nikolaj Dmitrievič Orenburgskij (1838‒1898), General Skobelev on horseback (1883), Irkutsk Regional Art Museum after the name of V. P. Sukačev, Irkutsk. Fig. 1: Bertrand Andrieu (1761‒1822), Frontside of a medal with a portrait of Napoleon and the King of Rome, coined for the prince’s baptism on 9 June 1811, from: Lisa Zeitz and Joachim Zeitz: Napoleons Medaillen (Petersberg: Imhof, 2003), 220 © Michael Imhof Verlag  57 Fig. 2: Al’fred Aleksandrovič Parland (1842‒1920), Chram Spasa na Krovi (Church of the Redeemer on the Blood), St. Petersburg (1883‒1907), wikimedia.commons, © Andrew Butko.  98 Fig. 3: Jacques Gondouin (1737‒1818) and Jean-Baptiste Lepère (1761‒1844), The Column of the Grande Armée on Place Vendôme in Paris (1806‒1810) with Napoleon’s statue of 1863 by Augustin-Alexandre Dumont (1801‒1884), detail: wikimedia.commons, © Siren-Com; full image: wikimedia.commons, © Benh.  104 Fig. 4: Il’ja Efimovič Repin (1844‒1930), October 17, 1905 (1911), Russian Museum Saint Petersburg, wikimedia.commons, © J.M. Domingo.  183 Fig. 5: Peter von Hess (1792‒1871), Laying of the foundation stone of constitution column at Gaibach on 26 May 1821 (1823), Kunstsammlungen Graf von Schönborn.  205 Fig. 6: Leo von Klenze (1784‒1864), Constitution column at Gaibach (1828). wikipedia.org © Reinhard Brunsch.  206 Fig. 7: Christian Daniel Rauch (1777‒1857), plaster model of the relievo “Granting the Constitution” at Max Joseph Monument in Munich, from: Bayerns Krone 1806. 200 Jahre Königreich Bayern. Edited by Johannes Erichsen and Katharina Heinemann (Munich: Bayerische Schlösserverwaltung, 2006), 273, © Bayerische Schlösserverwaltung and Hirmer Verlag Munich.  221 Fig. 8: The unforgettable day of 19 February 1861 (Lubok, 1861). From: Richard S. Wortman: Scenarios of Power. Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 2: From Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 75.  249 Fig. 9: Pietro Aldi (1852‒1888), Giuseppe Garibaldi meets King Vittorio Emanuele II on 26. October 1860 near Teano (Sala Monumentale Siena)  263 Fig. 10: Nikolaj Dmitrievič Dmitriev-Orenburgskij (1838‒1898), General Skobelev on horseback (1883), Irkutsk Regional Art Museum V. P. Sukačev.  266 Fig. 11: Giuseppe Sacconi (1854‒1905), National Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II in Rome (1885‒1911); Enrico Chiaradia (1851‒1892), Equestrian statue, wikimedia.commons © LPLT.  278

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Index Aachen 89 Abbt, Thomas 210 abdication 10, 17, 21, 23, 27, 38, 45 – 46, 63, 106 – 10, 115, 117 – 18, 125 – 30, 135 – 36, 138, 144, 187, 270 – 71, 275, 285 absolutism, absolute monarchy 4, 14, 64, 81 – 82, 84, 95, 102, 137, 139 – 40, 142 – 43, 146 – 47, 150 – 54, 156, 158 – 59, 176, 187, 195 – 96, 217, 260, 283 Achill 282 Adams, Abigail 196 Adams, John 196 – 97 Adrian, Patriarch of Moscow 94 Adrianopel 114 Agamemnon 282 Agapetus, Deacon 93 Aichach 65 Alba, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Pimentel, Duke of 48 Albert, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Consort 214, 240 – 41, 243 Alcazarquivir 54 Aldi, Pietro 263 Alekseev, Michail Vasil’evič 117 Aleksej Nikolaevič Romanov, Tsarevich 38, 46, 54, 143 Alexander I, Tsar 105, 125, 246, 258, 273, 282 Alexander II, Tsar 7, 38, 97, 240, 245 – 46, 252, 265 Alexander III, Tsar 84, 95 – 96, 264 – 65, 267, 275, 277, 282 Alexander Nevskij 97 Alexandra Fedorovna, Tsarina 116, 118 Alfonso XII, King of Spain 47 Althusius, Johannes 2 Amadeus I (Amadeo d’Aosta), King of Spain 47 American Revolution 15 – 16, 74, 152, 163, 165, 167, 207 Amiens 124 Ancillon, Friedrich 108 Andrian-Werburg, Ferdinand Baron of 203

Andrieu, Bertrand 57 Anna Ivanovna, Tsarina 187 Anne, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland 2, 56 annexation 66 – 67, 83, 88, 110, 192, 230 Ansbach 65, 220 Archangelsk 116 Arenenberg 73 Aretin, Baron Johann Christoph 221 – 22 Aretin, Baron Karl Otmar 152 Aristotle 2, 162 Aspern 274 Aspromonte 264 Auerstedt 100, 154 Augsburg 65, 73 Austerlitz 87, 103, 216 – 17, 256, 276 autocracy 29, 36, 69, 93 – 94, 116, 146, 182 – 83, 187 – 88, 224 – 25, 227, 267 – 68, 277 Bailly, Jean Sylvain 26 Bamberg 220 Barfleur 71 Barnave, Joseph 159 – 60, 166, 184 Bava Beccaris, Fiorenzo 32 – 33 Bayreuth 65 – 66, 220 Beauharnais, Hortense 72 Beauharnais, Joséphine 73 Beccaria, Cesare 153 Begas, Reinhold 281 Behr, Wilhelm Joseph 206 – 7 Béranger, Pierre Jean de 90 Berlin 23, 25, 39, 42, 61 – 63, 100, 105, 120 – 24, 126, 134, 137, 240, 267, 271, 280 – 81 Bethmann Hollweg, Theobald von 124, 270 Beugnot, Jacques Claude 212 Bill of Rights 56, 163 Birmingham 29 – 30 Birtsch, Günter 156 Bismarck, Otto von 66 – 67, 105 – 6, 115, 119, 121 – 23, 193 – 94, 196, 208, 229 – 30, 233, 243 – 45, 249, 252, 267 – 68, 281, 284

Index

Blackstone, William 17 Bleibtreu, Georg 121 Bloody Sunday 34 – 38 Bodin, Jean 2, 283 Boetticher, Karl Heinrich von 281 Bologna 12 Bonaparte (dynasty) 9 – 10, 15, 40, 56, 67, 72 – 74, 86, 111, 191, 216, 222, 234, 254 Bonaparte, Lucien 169, 171 Bonaparte, Napoléon Jérôme 173 Bonapartism 71 – 72, 171, 276 Bonifatius 75 Borchardt 81 Bordeaux 236, 238 Borelli, Giacinto, Count 7, 189 – 90 Boris Fedorovič Godunov, Tsar 48 – 50 Boston 197 Bouillé, François Claude Amour, Marquis 177, 180 Boulogne 73, 111 Bourbon (dynasty) 10, 13, 15, 33, 44, 46 – 48, 50, 55 – 58, 64, 66, 72, 79, 84 – 85, 89, 107, 111, 114 – 15, 175, 177, 211 – 12, 279, 283 – 84 Boutigny, Paul Emile 239 Boyne 71 Brandenburg 42, 69, 82, 91, 121, 181, 280 Bresci, Gaetano 33 – 34, 39 Brougham, Lord Henry 7 – 8, 45 Bruneau, Mathurin 55 Brussels 73 Bulygin, Aleksandr G. 184 Burckhardt, Jacob 6 Burke, Edmund 16 – 17 Bussmann, Walter 92 Cadoudal, Georges 84 Caesar, Julius 171 cahiers de doléances 78, 159, 179 Calonne, Charles Alexandre, Viscount 158 cameralistics 141, 147, 152 – 53, 155, 157 – 58, 160 Camphausen, Wilhelm 121 candidature officielle 172 Capet, Hugo 170 Caprara, Giovanni Battista, Cardinal 87 Caracciolo di Bella, Camillo 279

325

Carlile, Richard 31 Carlos María Isidro, Count of Molina 50 Carolingians 12, 41, 50, 75 – 76, 84 – 85 Carskoe Selo 36, 184 – 85, 187 Castlereagh, Robert Stewart, Viscount 14, 31 Catherine (Ekaterina Pavlovna), Queen of Württemberg 258 Catherine II, the Great, Tsarina 40, 53, 94, 139 – 41, 145 – 47, 149, 153 – 56, 160, 246 – 47 Catherine of Medici 47, 51, 55 Cato Street conspiracy 31 – 32 Caulaincourt, Armand, Marquis, Duke of Vicence 130 Cavour, Camillo di 228, 261 – 64, 267, 273, 275, 282 celebration 60 – 64, 87 – 96, 100, 103, 121 – 24, 196 – 207, 216 – 18, 222 Chabalov, Sergej Semenovič 117 charisma 10, 46, 50, 68, 86, 253 – 54, 257 – 59, 262 – 64, 269 – 79, 282 Charles Albert, King of Sardinia 189 – 90, 227 – 28 Charles Edward, the Young Pretender 72 Charles I, Emperor of Austria, as Charles IV King of Hungary 131 – 38 Charles I, King of England and Scotland 45, 56 Charles I, the Bold, Duke of Burgundy 41 Charles I, the Great (Charlemagne), Roman Emperor 41, 75, 84 – 85, 216 Charles II, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland 2, 46, 56 Charles II, the Bald, Roman Emperor 41 Charles IV, King of Spain 50, 178 Charles V, German Emperor 41 Charles VI, German Emperor 42 Charles IX, King of France 47 – 48, 55 Charles X, King of France 8, 11, 15, 18, 20 – 21, 25, 64, 83 – 84, 88 – 89, 91 – 92, 99, 111 – 13, 115, 193, 212, 284 Charles XII, King of Sweden 137, 144 Charles XIV John, King of Sweden (Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte) 58 Charles Martell 75

326

Index

Charles Theodore, Elector Palatine and of Bavaria 43 – 44 Charles, Archduke of Austria 274, 276 Charles, Grand-Duke of Baden 65, 120, 191, 198 Charles-Louis, Dauphin 55 Charte constitutionnelle 6, 8, 18 – 19, 21, 59, 64, 80 – 81, 83, 88 – 90, 161, 170, 174 – 77, 181, 183, 185, 188, 190 – 91, 193, 210 – 12, 283 Chateaubriand, François René, Viscount 44, 64, 114 Châtillon 109 Chiaradia, Enrico 278 Chiva 264 church, State of the Church 49 – 50, 75, 83, 86 – 88, 92 – 99, 105, 123, 144, 216 – 18, 260 – 63, 276 – 77 civil war 47, 49, 52, 70, 74 Code civil (Code Napoléon) 18, 175, 215 codification 43, 141, 146, 149, 151, 156, 185 Coiano 33 Coke, Edward 77 Coligny, Gaspard II de 48 Colley, Linda 1 Cologne 61, 92 – 93 Columbus, Christopher 259 common good 2, 6, 77, 103, 143, 148, 162, 179, 210 Concert of Europe 12, 27, 114 concordat 83, 87 – 88 Condorcet, Antoine Caritat, Marquis 78 Confederation of the Rhine 105, 191, 219 – 20 Congress of Vienna 27, 101 – 2, 106, 108, 114, 171, 190 – 91, 201 – 2, 219 – 20, 260 Constance 220 Constant, Benjamin 1, 5, 40, 58, 100, 102 – 3, 105 – 7, 110, 113, 115, 137 – 38, 161 – 62, 170, 283 – 84 Constantinople 93, 265 Constituante 3, 5, 6, 10, 26, 27, 57 – 58, 79, 98, 155, 159 – 60, 162, 164 – 65, 167, 175, 177 – 80, 210, 216, 231, 283 constituent assembly 10, 23, 35, 47, 98, 134 – 35, 164 – 65, 167, 182, 186, 255

constituent power 5, 163 – 64, 168, 172, 174, 179, 181, 198 Constitution Column 204 – 7, 221 constitution 3 – 7, 15, 19, 20, 27, 30, 47, 52, 58, 64, 66, 68, 69, 73, 81, 83, 88, 92, 111, 113, 119 – 20, 124 – 25, 142, 147, 153, 160, 163 – 79, 181, 185 – 94, 196 – 208, 210, 212, 215, 218, 220 – 23, 227, 229 – 30, 255 – 56, 262, 278, 282 – 84 constitution of 1791 3 – 4, 6, 57, 78 – 80, 98, 160, 163 – 67, 174, 179, 197, 207, 210, 230, 283 constitutional celebration 196 – 207 constitutional conflict 192 – 95, 208 constitutional monarchy 9, 19, 47, 66, 78, 83, 152, 161 – 62, 166, 174, 177, 192, 195, 217, 229, 255 constitutionalism 7, 9, 40, 51 – 52, 74, 92, 119, 138, 140, 142, 150 – 51, 160 – 61, 163, 165 – 66, 174 – 75, 180, 182, 188 – 90, 192, 196, 207, 215 Cornelius, Peter von 65 coronation 49, 76 – 79, 82 – 93, 95 – 96, 99, 103, 121, 216 – 17, 241, 256, 277, 284 Cortes 51, 176 coup d’état 19, 67, 73 – 74, 110 – 11, 113, 137, 167, 169, 171 – 72, 175, 179, 193, 212, 216, 254, 256 – 57 Cranmer, Thomas 77 Crimean War 106, 113 – 14, 237, 239, 245 Cromwell, Oliver 171 Culloden 72 D’Azeglio, Massimo 228 Dahlmann, Friedrich Christoph 160 Dallmann, Colonist 82 Dante Alighieri 259 David, King of Israel 76 Decazes, Élie 209, 211 – 12 Declaration of Independence 17, 21, 39, 107 – 8, 197 Declaration of Rights 4, 107 Declaration of the Rights of Man 3 – 5, 80, 155, 164, 283 defeat 100 – 101, 103, 106, 108, 110, 113 – 15, 118, 125, 127 – 28, 131, 137 – 38, 154, 245, 258

Index

Defoe, Daniel 148 Delitzsch 82 democratic constitutionalism 163, 165 – 66, 174, 207 Denquin, Jean-Marie 168 deposition 4, 11, 15 – 17, 27, 45 – 47, 50, 53, 56 – 57, 66, 70 – 71, 74, 106 – 8, 110, 112, 115, 135, 158, 166, 173 – 74, 177, 228 Depretis, Agostino 277 – 79 despotism 2, 4, 56, 140, 144 – 46, 150 – 52, 162 Di Rudinì, Antonio 32 – 33 Diderot, Denis 139 – 40, 150, 153, 160 Dijon 41 Diocletian, Roman Emperor 87 Directory 14, 167, 169, 197, 216 – 17, 254 – 55 Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield 63, 213 divine right 3, 6, 9, 75 – 76, 80 – 83, 88, 92, 98, 113, 119, 165, 176, 181, 183, 190, 194, 283 – 84 Dmitriev-Orenburgskij, Nikolaj Dmitrievič 266 Dmitrij Ivanovič, Tsar 49 – 50, 53 – 54 Donizetti, Gaetano 261 Dostoevskij, Fedor Michajlovič 265 Dresden 101, 113 Dreux-Brézé, Henri-Evrard, Marquis 26 Drews, Wilhelm Arnold 127, 130 – 31 Duma 69, 117, 184 – 86, 188 – 89 Dumont, Alexandre 104 Duport, Adrien 180 Durnovo, Petr Nikolaevič 186 Dusch, Alexander von 28 dynastic legitimacy 9, 40, 44, 50 – 51, 54, 56 – 57, 60, 64 – 68, 74, 86, 111, 113, 228, 234, 254, 259, 263, 270, 273 – 74, 277 – 78, 281, 284 Eberbach 199 Ebert, Friedrich 126 Edward VI, King of England 77 Edward VII, King of England 63 Einem, Karl von 271 Elba 15, 72, 89, 109, 170, 211 Elizabeth I, Queen of England 41, 77, 140

327

Elizabeth of Austria 55 Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia 56 Ems 115 Enlightenment, enlightened 2, 9, 12, 78, 82, 96, 98, 139 – 40, 149 – 52, 154 – 56, 158 – 62, 222, 246 Ermolov, Aleksej Sergeevič 36 – 38 Espartero, Baldomero, Prince of Vergara 52 Essen 61 Estates General 6, 26, 79, 159, 163, 179, 283 Etzioni, Amitai 259 Eugénie, Empress of the French (María Eugenia de Guzmán) 68 Falkenhayn, Erich 270 – 71 February Revolution 8, 16, 22, 73, 111, 255 Fedor I Ivanovič, Tsar 53 Fedor II Borisovič Godunov, Tsar 49 – 50 Ferdinand II, King of the Two Sicilies 189 Ferdinand VII, King of Spain 10 – 11, 50 – 51, 176 Fergana 264 Fernkorn, Anton Dominik Ritter von 274 Ferrara, Francesco 251 Feuerbach, Anselm 220 First World War 12, 69 – 70, 106, 115, 120, 124, 137 – 38, 189, 196, 208, 268 – 69, 271, 275, 285 Florence 56, 66, 228 Flotow, Ludwig Freiherr von 136 Fontainebleau 72, 107, 109 Francesco II, King of the Two Sicilies 261 Francis I, Emperor of Austria, until 1806 Holy Roman Emperor Francis II 43, 58, 85, 106 Francis, Duke of Reichstadt 9, 68, 73 Francis-Joseph, Emperor of Austria 182 Frankfurt National Assembly 6, 67, 167, 194, 207, 212 – 13, 229 – 30 Frankfurt 6, 86, 122, 194 Frantz, Constantin 171 Frederick I Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor 65 Frederick I, King in Prussia 91, 121 Frederick I, King of Sweden 42

328

Index

Frederick II, the Great, King of Prussia 42, 44, 100, 106, 119, 121, 128, 137, 143 – 44, 148, 150 – 56, 187 – 88, 234, 243 Frederick V, Elector Palatine, King of Bohemia 56 Frederick VI, Burgrave of Nuremberg 69 Frederick William I, King of Prussia 101, 156 Frederick William III, King of Prussia 106, 121, 154, 258, 281 Frederick William IV, King of Prussia 25, 67, 81 – 82, 91 – 92, 167, 181, 194, 213, 230 Freiburg 65, 151, 220 French Revolution 2 – 3, 5, 14, 18, 26, 40, 42, 56, 60, 74, 81 – 85, 98, 102, 108, 113, 152, 157, 159 – 60, 162 – 63, 166, 175, 177, 197, 210, 216, 254 – 55, 283 – 84 Friedrichsruh 122 Friš, Eduard Vasil’evič 185 Fullon, Ivan Aleksandrovič 35 fundamental law 40, 143, 185 – 88 Gaehtgens, Thomas 120 Gaibach 201, 204, 206 – 7, 221 Galardi, Francisco de 51 Galloway, Joseph 16 Gapon, Georgij Apollonovič 34 – 36 Garibaldi, Giuseppe 66, 228 – 29, 254, 259 – 64, 267 – 68, 272 – 73, 275, 279 – 80, 282, 285 Genova 190, 261 Geok-Tepe 265 – 66 George I, King of Great Britain and Ireland 56 George II, Landgrave of Hessen-Darmstadt 144 George III, King of Great Britain and Ireland 2, 15 – 17, 158, 210, 240 George IV, King of Great Britain and Ireland (1811 – 1820 prince regent) 240, 242 George V, King of Great Britain and Ireland 69 – 70 German Empire 11, 41, 59, 69, 100, 119 – 20, 124 – 25, 127, 194 – 96, 230, 244, 267, 295 German-French (Franco-Prussian) War 47, 112, 124, 173, 237, 285

Gierke, Otto von 195 – 96 Gilgal 253 Gladstone, William Ewart 63, 250 Glorious Revolution 40, 46, 56, 71 – 72, 105, 147, 241 Gondouin, Jacques 104 Gorčakov, Aleksandr Michajlovič 246 Groener, Wilhelm 127 Guizot, François 22 Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden 254 Habsburg 41, 43, 59, 85, 137, 262, 274, 279 Hahn, Kurt 128 Haller, Karl Ludwig von 81 Halmhuber, Gustav 281 Ham 73, 234, 236 Hambach Festival 202 – 4 Hambach 201 – 3, 206 – 7 Hamburg 214 Hanover (dynasty) 10, 55 – 56, 71, 240 – 41 Hardenberg, Karl August von 6, 108 Hartung, Fritz 152 Haxthausen, August von 246 Hazzi, Joseph von 223 Hecker, Friedrich 200 Heidelberg 65 Heilbronn 23 Heldenplatz 274, 276 Henry II, King of France 47 – 48 Henry III, King of France 48, 55 Henry IV, King of France 44, 48, 55, 64, 74 Henry, Prince of Prussia 42 Hercules 259, 272 hereditary charisma 44, 46, 70, 74, 258, 274, 276 Herford 82 hero, heroism 253 – 54, 257, 259 – 60, 262 – 65, 268 – 70, 272 – 76, 278 – 79, 282 Hervagault, Jean-Marie 55 Heß, Peter von 204 Heuß, Jakob 199 Hindenburg, Paul von 124, 127, 130, 254, 259, 268 – 73, 275, 282, 285 Hintze, Otto 69, 120, 151 – 52 Hobbes, Thomas 152 Hoffman, Max 269

Index

Hohenzollern (dynasty) 42, 47, 62, 67, 69, 115, 120, 124, 135, 151, 213, 227, 282, 285 Homburg 270 Homer 260, 282 Hubertusburg 42 Hugo, Victor 260 Hume, David 147 Hunt, Henry 30 – 31 Hussarek, Maximilian, Baron of Heinlein 132 imposition 6 – 7, 9, 52, 62, 81 – 82, 90, 99, 174, 176 – 77, 181 – 82, 185, 189 – 92, 196, 198, 200, 208, 210, 212, 262 industrial revolution 29 – 30, 232, 234 integration 61 – 63, 65, 191, 201, 209, 214 – 15, 220 – 21, 223, 227, 230, 272 intervention 14 – 15, 27 – 28, 113, 233, 235, 261 – 62, 264, 281 inviolability 78 – 80, 165, 195 Iov, Patriarch of Moscow 49 Irina Fedorovna Godunova, Tsarina 48 – 49 Isabella II, Queen of Spain 10 – 11, 47, 51 Ivan IV Vasil’evič Groznyj (the Terrible), Tsar 48 – 49, 53 Ivan Ivanovič 48 Jabesh 253 Jacobites 71 – 72 Jacoby, Johann 7 – 8 James (III), son of James II of England 71 – 72 James I, King of England and Scotland 56, 76 – 77, 94 James II, King of England, Ireland and Scotland 4, 11, 46, 56, 71 – 72 Jaroslavl’ 97, 258 Jaucourt, Louis de 2 Jefferson, Thomas 39, 154, 197 Jena 100, 154, 276 Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia 58, 190 – 91, 215, 220 Joan I, the Mad, Queen of Castile and Aragon 41 Joseph Bonaparte, King of Naples, from 1808 King of Spain 58, 190 – 91

329

Joseph II, German Emperor 43, 148, 154, 156, 158 Joshua 86 Juárez, Benito 59 jubilee 60, 64, 69, 198, 207 July Monarchy 8, 22, 73, 111, 113 – 14, 234 – 35, 255, 275 – 76 July ordinances 19 – 20, 83 July Revolution 6, 8, 15, 18, 23, 59, 64, 70, 81, 113, 193, 202, 212, 275, 284 Justi, Heinrich Gottlob von 139, 141, 153 Justinian, Roman Emperor of the East 93 Kaiserslautern 201, 216 Kaiser-Wilhelm-Denkmal 62, 280 – 82 Kaljaev, Ivan Platonovič 38 Kálnoky, Count Gustav Sigmund 265 Kapp, Friedrich Wilhelm 66 Karlsruhe 61 Kassel 215 Katkov, Michail Nikiforovič 268 Kavelin, Konstantin Dmitrievič 246 Ketteler, Wilhelm Emanuel 123 Kiel 126, 128 Kielmansegg, Peter Graf 1 Kiev 226 Killiecrankie 71 Klenze, Leo von 204, 206 Kokand 264 Königgrätz 114 Königsberg 84, 91 – 92, 121 Körner, Hans-Michael 65 Korovin, Il’ja 53 Koser, Reinhold 151 – 52 Kremsier 182 Kreuznach 270 Kronach 207 Kruhl, Heinrich 82 Kunersdorf 42 Kunisch, Johannes 157 Kusber, Jan 34, 157 La Hogue 71 La Ramée, François de 55 La Révellière-Lépeaux, Louis-Marie de 217 – 18 Lake Peipus 97

330

Index

Lameth, Alexandre de 180 Lameth, Charles de 180 Lammasch, Heinrich 135 – 36 Landau 204 Landor, Walter Savage 241 Lansing, Robert 125, 133 Le Bas, Philippe 73 legitimism 3, 14, 70, 91, 101, 194 Leipzig 219 Le Mercier de la Rivière, Paul-Pierre 150, 162 Leonardo da Vinci 259 Leopold I, German Emperor 45 Leopold II, German Emperor 27 Leopold II, Grand-Duke of Tuscany 66, 189, 228 Leopold, Grand-Duke of Baden 28 Leopold, Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen 47, 115 Lepère, Jean-Baptiste 104 Le Roy de Barincourt, Pierre-Paul 3 Liebknecht, Karl 128 Liège 269 Liverpool, Robert Jenkinson, Second Earl of 272 Livorno 153 Locke, John 152 London 16, 18, 29, 31, 73, 95, 103, 105, 239 Lothario I, Roman Emperor 41 Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland 58, 72, 190, 255 Louis Bonaparte, Prince 191 Louis I, King of Bavaria 62 – 63, 65, 69, 202, 204 – 5, 207 Louis I, the Pious, Roman Emperor 41 Louis II, the German, King of the Franks 41 Louis IX (Saint-Louis), King of France 44 Louis XIII, King of France 159 Louis XIV, King of France 44 – 45, 64, 71, 102, 137, 150 Louis XVI, King of France 4 – 5, 9, 15, 26 – 27, 55, 58, 74, 78 – 79, 83 – 84, 91, 112, 159 – 60, 162 – 63, 165 – 66, 175, 177 – 80, 184, 210, 215, 217, 285 Louis XVIII, King of France 5 – 6, 9 – 10, 15, 18, 44, 55, 58, 64, 67 – 68, 81, 88 – 91,

109, 113, 170, 174 – 78, 181, 183, 185, 190, 210 – 12, 283 Louis-Philippe, King of the French 8, 15 – 16, 21 – 22, 25, 47, 64, 111 – 13, 115, 212, 275 – 76, 284 Ludendorff, Erich 124, 269 – 71 Lüdicke, Judicial Councillor 81 Luisa Fernanda, Infanta of Spain 51 Luther, Martin 100 Luzzatti, Luigi 251 – 52 Lyncker, Moriz von 270 machine state 139, 147 – 49, 154 – 55, 162 Mac-Mahon, Patrice de, Duke of Magenta 122 Madrid 48 Mainz 28, 86 Manchester 29 – 32, 39 Manet, Édouard 59 Mannheim 65, 199, 220 Manteuffel, Otto, Baron 105 March Revolution 25, 81, 181 Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor 216 Margaret of Valois, Queen of France 48 Margherita of Savoy, Queen of Italy 63 Maria Cristina, Queen of Spain 50 – 52 Maria Josepha, Queen of Spain 50 Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia 42 – 43, 106, 154, 156, 158, 258 Marie Antoinette, Queen of France 27 Marie Louise, Empress of the French 46, 60, 68 Marija Fedorovna, Tsarina 36, 95 Marija Grigorevna Skuratova-Bel’skaja 49 Marlborough, John Churchill, First Duke of 100 Marmont, Auguste-Frédéric-Louis Viesse de, Duke of Ragusa 21, 107 Marsala 261 Marseille 237 Martinez de la Rosa, Francisco de 52 Mary I, Queen of England 56 Mary of Modena, Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland 56, 71 Mary Stuart, Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland 40, 46, 56, 64

Index

Mary, Duchess of Burgundy 41 massacre 28 – 29, 31, 117 Masuria 270 Mathy, Karl 199 – 201 Matthew, Evangelist 14 Max von Baden, Prince 124, 126, 129 Maximilian I Joseph, King of Bavaria 207, 227 Maximilian I, German Emperor 41 Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, Emperor of Mexico 59 Mazzini, Giuseppe 246, 260 Mentana 264 Mergen, Simone 63 Merovingians 12, 50, 75, 85 Messina 261 – 62 Metternich, Clemens Wenzel Lothar, Prince 46, 81, 101, 103, 109, 113 Meuricoffre, Harriet 259 Michail Aleksandrovič Romanov, GrandDuke 46, 50 Michail I Fedorovič Romanov, Tsar 69 Michaud de Beauretour, Alexandre 258 – 59 Mignet, François-Auguste 21 Milan 29, 32 – 34, 39, 57, 84, 87 military state / military monarchy 102, 119 – 20 Minozzi, Vittorio 33 Mirabeau, Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, Count 26, 79, 154, 180 Modena 56, 71 Mogilev 38, 116, 118 Mohl, Robert von 161 – 62, 192 Moltke, Helmuth von 122, 281 monarchical constitutionalism 174 – 75, 207 monarchical principle 7, 80, 152, 174 – 75, 177, 188, 262 Monroe, James 59 Montbel, Guillaume Isidore, Baron 20 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, Baron de la Brède et de 79, 144 – 46, 163 Montez, Lola 63 Montmédy 177, 180 Montpensier, Antoine-Marie-Philippe-Louis d’Orléans, Duke 47 monument 62, 103 – 5, 121, 204, 207, 274 – 82

331

Monza 33 Moscow 7, 38 – 39, 48 – 50, 84, 94 – 95, 107, 115 – 16, 142, 155, 157, 187, 226, 258, 264 – 65, 267 – 68, 276, 282 Moses 86 Munich 62 – 63, 65, 105, 202, 204, 207, 222 – 23 Murat, Joachim, King of Naples 58, 190 Murmansk 116 Murom 53 Mussolini, Benito 83 Nantes 48 Naples 50, 56, 58, 189 – 90, 192, 229, 255, 261 – 64 Napoleon I, Emperor of the French 9 – 11, 14 – 15, 18, 29, 40, 44, 46, 56 – 60, 64, 68, 70, 72 – 74, 83 – 90, 100 – 110, 112 – 13, 125, 127, 130, 137, 154, 157, 167, 170 – 72, 174, 190 – 92, 201, 210 – 11, 214 – 20, 222 – 23, 227, 229, 231, 234, 236 – 37, 239, 246, 252, 254 – 58, 264, 267, 272 – 77, 285 Napoleon III, Emperor of the French 9, 11, 15, 40, 47, 59, 67 – 68, 105, 110 – 15, 119, 122, 171 – 73, 195, 228, 233 – 34, 238 – 40, 242, 255, 258, 260 – 61, 285 Napoleonic Empire 5, 18, 57, 74, 83 – 85, 171, 174 – 75, 191, 201, 210, 214 – 17, 223, 237, 257, 275, 284 narodnost’ 223 – 26 nation state 59, 132, 167, 203, 210 – 13, 219, 229 – 31, 260, 272, 282 nation 3, 26 – 27, 63, 67, 69, 74, 79 – 80, 89 – 90, 101, 106, 108 – 12, 121 – 22, 125, 139, 153, 160, 163 – 64, 166 – 74, 176 – 77, 179 – 82, 194 – 95, 198, 203, 205, 209 – 14, 219, 221 – 24, 227 – 28, 230 – 31, 233, 243, 246, 253 – 55, 259, 264, 266 – 67, 271, 274, 277 – 78, 282 – 85 National Assembly 3, 5, 6, 26 – 27, 57, 67, 70, 73, 81 – 82, 98, 134 – 37, 164, 167, 181, 194, 212, 228, 255 – 57, 283 national consciousness 215, 218, 221, 223, 225 – 26, 228, 230

332

Index

National Convention 4, 10, 84, 160, 167, 169, 174 national education 223, 225 – 26, 250 national festival 60 – 61, 87 – 89, 103, 122, 197, 215 – 17, 222 national holiday 60, 87 – 88, 122 – 23, 197, 217 national monument 65, 277, 280 national movement 209, 219, 227 – 31, 260, 278 nationalism 9, 40, 64, 209, 212, 232, 268, 277, 282 nationality 97, 131, 133, 135, 137 – 38, 213, 223 – 24, 226, 285 Naumann, Friedrich 110, 119, 127, 129, 195, 244 – 45 Nazimov, Vladimir Ivanovič 247 Nelson, Horatio, Viscount 100, 105 Neustadt 201 New York 261 Newcastle 241 Newton, Isaac 148 Nice 259, 263 Nicholas I (Nikolaj I Pavlovič), Tsar 223, 231, 246, 277 Nicholas II (Nikolaj II Aleksandrovič), Tsar 34, 36, 38, 46, 69 – 70, 115, 138, 183, 185, 187 – 88, 208, 284 Niemann, Alfred 130 Nigra, Costantino 262 Nikolai, Otto 70 November Revolution 126 – 29, 208 Novgorod 157 Nuremberg 69 Nystad 42 Oberkirch 198 Obrigkeitsstaat 195 – 96 October manifesto 182 – 88 official nationality 223 – 24, 231 Old Regime 4, 9, 11, 42, 45, 74 – 75, 83, 87, 89 – 90, 100, 108, 115, 165, 209 – 11, 278 Ollivier, Émile 112 Olympia 223 Omel’čenko, Oleg A. 146 Oncken, Wilhelm 62 Orange 56, 64

Orléans 21, 58, 70, 111, 237 Otto I, King of Greece 59 Otto I, the Great, German Emperor 85 Otto, Count Palatine of Wittelsbach 65 Oudinot, Nicolas Charles Victor 260 Paine, Thomas 144 Palermo 189, 261 Paris 11, 13, 21, 23 – 24, 26, 39, 48, 60, 73, 78, 83, 86, 89, 103, 105 – 7, 113, 125, 177 – 78, 216, 239, 256, 259 – 60, 267, 273 Parland, Al’fred Aleksandrovič 97 – 98 parliamentary government 8, 125, 161, 173, 192, 194, 208, 285 parliamentary reform 7, 30, 214, 241 Passau 65 Paterson 33 Pavia 84 Pepin III, King of the Franks 75 – 76, 85 Péreire, Émile 238 Péreire, Isaac 238 personal union 41 – 43, 191, 209 Peter I, the Great, Tsar 40, 54, 94, 97, 137, 140, 142 – 45, 156, 162, 187 – 88 Peter III, Tsar 40, 53, 145 Peterloo 28 – 29, 31, 33 Petrograd 115 – 16, 118 Peyronnet, Pierre-Denis, Count 20 Pfann, Paul 280 Pfau, Ludwig 23 – 25, 28 Pfeiffer, Johann Friedrich von 147 Pfizer, Paul 5 Philadelphia 196 – 97 philanthropy 233, 241 – 42, 251 – 52 Philip I, the Fair, King of Castile and León 41 Philip II, King of Spain 54 – 55, 150 Philip V, King of Spain 13 Pius IX 189 Pius VII, Pope 83, 85 – 86, 216 plebiscite, plebiscitary 11, 15, 68, 74, 83, 85 – 86, 111 – 12, 165, 167 – 74, 176, 178, 180, 195, 199, 216, 229, 239, 254, 262 – 63, 267, 273, 275, 278 Plessen, Hans Georg Hermann von 127 Plevna 264

Index

Plowden, Edmund 77 Pobedonoscev, Konstantin Petrovič 265 – 67, 275 Pogodin, Michail Petrovič 226 Poitiers 75 Polignac, Jules de 8, 18 – 20, 114, 193, 284 Poltava 144 popular sovereignty 22, 47, 58 – 59, 103, 163, 165, 174 – 75, 195, 255 Portalis, Jean-Étienne-Marie 75 Portsmouth 182 Poyet, Bernard 217 Pragmatic Sanction 42, 51 Prague 132, 213 Prato 33 Preuß, Hugo 196 Prim, Juan, Marquis of Los Castillejos 47 Prittwitz und Gaffron, Maximilian von 269 Prokopovič, Feofan 143 Protopopov, Aleksandr Dmitrievič 117 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 256 Pskov 115 Pugačev, Emel’jan Ivanovič 37, 53 – 54, 154, 247 Pypin, Aleksandr Nikolaevič 223 – 24 Quarto

261

Radiščev, Aleksandr Nikolaevič 155 Raeff, Marc 155 Rasputin, Grigorij Efimovič 118 Rastatt 28 Rauch, Christian Daniel 221 Rebmann, Andreas Georg Friedrich 201 Redlich, Josef 135 referendum 165, 167 – 69, 174 reform 7, 29 – 30, 40, 97, 101 – 2, 112, 132, 139 – 40, 142 – 43, 145 – 46, 152, 154, 156 – 59, 162 – 63, 173, 179, 182 – 84, 193, 208, 215, 245 – 52 regency 46 – 47, 51 – 53, 58, 130 Regensburg 65 Regnault-Warin, Jean-Baptiste 55 Reims 78, 83, 89 – 90 Reinhard, Marcel 179 religion 9, 16, 47 – 48, 59 – 60, 74 – 75, 80, 82 – 83, 89, 92, 95 – 96, 153, 225, 236

333

Rémusat, Charles de 21 Rennenkampf, Pavel Karlovič 269 Renner, Karl 134 – 36 Repin, Il’ja Efimovič 183 republic 4, 10, 23, 47, 57, 59, 68, 70, 74, 84, 111 – 13, 128 – 29, 134 – 37, 144, 159 – 62, 166 – 67, 171, 201, 203, 207, 217, 234, 241, 255 – 56, 260 – 61, 279 Restoration 3, 15, 22, 101, 109 restoration 5 – 6, 18, 44, 46 – 47, 58, 64, 68, 70, 72, 74, 83, 85, 89, 99, 109, 113, 119, 159, 171, 176, 181, 190, 211 – 12, 219, 234, 260, 283 – 84 Rettig, Wilhelm 280 Revolution of 1848 7, 66, 70, 92, 151, 160, 167, 181, 189 – 90, 219, 227, 230, 260 – 61, 272, 279, 284 Richelieu, Armand-Emmanuel, Duke of 114 Richelieu, Armand-Jean I du Plessis, Duke of, Cardinal 102, 159 Ried 219 rights of man 3 – 5, 27, 80, 152, 154, 283 Risorgimento 228, 260 Rochester 71 Rodzjanko, Michail Vladimirovič 69 Röhl, John C. G. 274 Romanov (dynasty) 40, 50, 53, 69, 106, 118, 259, 268, 277 Romanov, Sergej Aleksandrovič, GrandDuke 38 – 39 Rome 33 – 34, 60, 83, 87, 192, 205, 214, 261 – 62, 264, 277, 279 – 82 Rönne, Ludwig von 81 Roon, Albrecht von 193 Roscher, Wilhelm 150 – 52 Rostov 97 Rostovcev, Jakov Ivanovič, Count 246 Rotteck, Carl von 151, 220 – 21, 225 Rouher, Eugène 240 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 222 Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria 271 Sacconi, Giuseppe 278 Sacre 78, 88 – 90 Saint Helena 109 Saint Petersburg 29, 34 – 35, 37 – 39, 97 – 98, 114 – 15, 139, 143, 155, 157, 226

334

Index

Saint-Cloud 20 Saint-Denis 89 Saint-Germain-en-Laye 71 Saint-Ouen 176, 178 Salford 29 Samsonov, Aleksandr Vasil’evič 269 Samuel, Prophet 76, 86, 253 San Stefano 267 Sand, George 236 Sarajevo 137 Saul, King of Israel 76, 253 – 54, 256, 273, 279 Savoy (dynasty) 33, 47, 56, 213, 227 – 28, 262 Scharnhorst, Gerhard von 101 Scheidemann, Philipp 126, 128 Schiller, Friedrich 272 Schmitz, Bruno 280 Schneider, Ludwig Karl Eduard 81 Schönborn-Wiesentheid, Franz Erwein, Count 204, 221 Schönbrunn 136 Schröder, Wilhelm von 141 Schulenburg, Friedrich Wilhelm, Count von der 100, 127 Schulze-Delitzsch, Hermann 82 Schulze-Gaevernitz, Gerhart von 110 Schwarzenberg, Felix, Prince 213 Schweinitz, Hans Lothar von 267 Schwetzingen 200 Scott, Hamish 155 – 56 Sebastian I, King of Portugal 54 – 55 Second Empire 59, 68, 70, 74, 105, 110, 112 – 13, 119, 172, 195, 236 – 40, 252, 261, 285 Second Republic 10, 15, 73, 110, 234, 255 – 56, 261 Sedan 11, 100, 115, 122 – 24, 173, 269 Ségur, Louis-Philippe, Count 140 Seitz, Karl 136 Sella, Quintino 250 – 52 Senate 11, 46, 52, 57 – 58, 68, 83, 88, 94, 106 – 9, 112 – 13, 171, 173 – 76, 181, 210 – 11, 279, 283 serf, serfdom 7, 154 – 55, 215, 233, 243, 245 – 49, 252 Ševyrev, Stepan Petrovič 226

Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, First Earl of 56 Sheinovo 265 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 31 Shipka Pass 265 Siebenpfeiffer, Philipp Jakob 202 – 4, 206 – 7 Siebert 82 Siegfried 272 Sievers, Jacob Johann von 157 Sieyès, Joseph Emmanuel 163 – 64, 168 – 69, 254 Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor 69 Šipov, Dmitrij Nikolaevič 184 Skobelev, Michail Dmitrievič 254, 259, 264 – 68, 272 – 73, 282, 285 Smith, Adam 152, 154 social legislation 233, 237, 243 – 44, 249 social reform 9, 74, 232 – 33, 245, 248 – 52, 284 Sof’ja Alekseevna 142 Sol’skij, Dmitrij Martynovič 186 Sophia of Hanover, Electress of Brunswick-Lüneburg 56 sovereignty 3, 4, 142, 164, 170, 176, 283 Spa 126 – 28, 131 Speyer 65 St. André, Jeanbon 218 Standesherr 105, 205, 219 state cult, Napoleonic 87, 103, 217 – 18 Statuto albertino 66, 81, 83, 189 – 90, 229, 262 Stein, Lorenz von 10, 232 – 33, 243, 245, 248, 252 Stephen II, Pope 76 Stišinskij, Aleksandr Semenovič 186 Strasbourg 73 Stuart 10, 40 – 41, 46, 55, 64, 71 – 72 Stuttgart 61, 65 succession 1, 10, 40 – 41, 43 – 46, 49 – 51, 53, 56, 63, 74, 86, 143 – 44, 148, 162 Šujskij, Vasilij Ivanovič, Tsar 49 – 50 Suvorov, Aleksandr Vasil’evič, Prince 254 Svjatopolk-Mirskij, Petr Danilovič, Prince 35 Talavera

272

Index

Talleyrand-Périgord, Charles Maurice de, Duke of Benevento 46, 101 – 2, 106 – 7 Tallinn 97 Tannenberg 269, 285 Teano 263 Teba 68 Tesoro, Marina 63 Thiers, Adolphe 20 – 21, 39, 172, 276 Third Estate 26, 163 – 64, 179, 283 Thistlewood, Arthur 31 Tilsit 101, 106, 215 – 16, 258 Time of Troubles 12, 48 – 50, 53 – 55 Ton, Konstantin Andreevič 277 Torelli Viollier, Eugenio 33 Trajan, Roman Emperor 103, 205, 216 Treaty of Fontainebleau 72, 107, 109 Tulard, Jean 276 Turenne, Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, Viscount 100 Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques 78, 83 Turin 7, 32, 189, 228, 260 – 61, 264 tyrant, tyranny 4, 5, 11, 17, 28, 45, 70, 107 Umberto I, King of Italy 33, 39, 63 Ustrjalov, Nikolaj Gerasimovič 226 usurpation 4, 40, 85, 102, 107, 113, 115, 137 – 38, 170, 175 usurper 4, 44, 50, 54, 59, 100, 102 – 3, 105 – 8, 110, 113, 137, 257 Utrecht 43 Uvarov, Sergej Semenovič 223 – 27, 231 Valois 12, 47, 48 Vendôme Column 103 – 5, 216, 275 Ventura, Father 85 Verdi, Giuseppe 261 Verdun 130 Vergara 52 Verona 14 Versailles 78, 120 – 21, 283 Victor Emmanuel II, King of Italy 261, 263, 278 Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland 7, 42, 45, 63 – 64, 213, 233, 239 – 42, 252

335

Vienna 27, 101 – 2, 106, 108, 114, 135, 137, 171, 182, 188, 190 – 91, 201 – 2, 213, 219 – 20, 240, 260, 265, 274, 276 Vil’njus 226, 247 Villafranca 260 Villari, Pasquale 33 Vitberg, Aleksandr Lavrent’evič 276 Vitrolles, Eugène d’Arnaud, Baron 20 Vitte, Sergej Jul’evič 182 – 83, 185 – 87 Vittoriano 277 – 82 Vjazemskij, Aleksandr Alekseevič, Prince 149 Vjazemskij, Petr Andreevič, Prince 224 Vladivostok 116 Vogel, Hugo 273 Vogüé, Eugène Melchior, Viscount 267 Volkach 221 Volturno 261 Wagner, Monika 65 Wagram 276 Wahnschaffe, Arnold 128 Waldersee, Georg, Count 269 Wallenstein, Albrecht, Duke of Friedland 270 war 100 – 103, 105 – 7, 110, 112 – 13, 115 – 20, 124, 137 – 38, 157 – 58, 160, 189, 214, 227 – 28, 236 – 37, 245 – 46, 254, 257, 260, 263 – 64, 267 – 71, 275, 284 – 85 Waterloo 15, 29, 72 – 73, 108, 285 Weber, Max 10, 110, 128 – 29, 172, 189, 253, 257, 273 Weichsel, Ferdinand Friedrich 81 Weinheim 200 Welcker, Carl Theodor 199 Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of 105, 272, 285 Werner, Anton von 120 – 22 Whittaker, Cynthia 145 William I, King of Prussia and German Emperor 62, 84, 91, 99, 119 – 22, 142, 151, 240, 280 – 81, 284 William II, King of Prussia and German Emperor 62, 69 – 70, 110, 119, 123 – 31, 138, 187 – 88, 196, 245, 249, 268, 270, 274 – 75, 281 – 82, 285

336

Index

William III, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland 40, 56, 64, 71 William IV, King of Great Britain and Ireland 240 William of Prussia, Crown Prince 25 Wilson, Woodrow 124 – 26, 129, 131 – 32 Winspeare, Antonio 32 – 33 Wirth, Johann Georg August 203 – 4, 206 – 7 Witt, Peter Christian 123 Wittelsbach (dynasty) 43, 45, 59, 64 – 66, 69, 202, 222 – 23

Wittelsbach 43, 45, 59, 64 – 66, 69, 202, 222 – 23 Wolff, Christian 143 Wolseley, Charles 30 workers’ associations 34, 237, 251 Würzburg 65, 204, 206, 220 Zachariae, Heinrich Albert 6 Zacharias, Pope 75, 86 Zanardelli, Giuseppe 277 Zorn, Philipp 81