THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES (38 page)

The limits to the size of armies that Napoleon I had shattered had reim-posed themselves in his Russian campaign. There was a limit to what foraging and pillage could accomplish to effectuate resupply. But with provisioning by rail there was in principle no limit imposed by logistics on the size of armies that could be fielded. Only the national economy and the demography of the society remained constraints. In 1870 the North German Federation deployed against France exactly twice the number of men Napoleon had led into Russia: 1,200,000. By the time Germany fielded an army in the next war, that number would double again.

Technological developments either enhanced the importance of sheer numbers—like new technologies of lethal firepower—or made those numbers more effective, like the development of the telegraph that gave commanders greater control of their forces. By the 1860s firearms had undergone considerable improvement since their introduction as slow-firing muskets. The smooth-bore, muzzle-loading musket, whose awkwardness had inspired the elaborate quadrilles of Maurice of Nassau, was
replaced by the breech-loading, rapid-firing, rifled firearm. Rifling, the grooving inside barrels that increased the range and accuracy of a weapon fivefold, was in use by the 1840s, by which time the percussion cap had replaced the flintlock. In 1866 the Prussians fought with the Dreyse “needle gun,” the first rifled breechloader. This fired three shots to a muzzle-loaded rifle's one, and could be fired lying down. “For the first time in the history of war the infantryman could kill his adversary at a range of several hundred yards without presenting a target himself.”
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According to Strachan, between 1840 and 1900 the range and rate of small-arms fire had increased tenfold.
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In artillery, analogous developments took place. By 1870 Krupp was producing new steel breech-loading rifled cannon with ranges in excess of three thousand yards.

These technological developments challenged the prudence of the Napoleonic confrontation. How could an attacking force close with the enemy if they were battered to pieces miles before even sighting them? Just as importantly, how could the commander deploy forces in these huge numbers as anything more than a giant, confused mass? In 1865 Moltke wrote:

Napoleon I had demonstrated at Ulm the power of dividing the army into columns that advanced to a critical point for juncture. Napoleon, however, had held that an army must be massed days before battle. Partly this was dictated by the time it took for columns to re-form in battle formation. But partly also it was the result of Napoleon's preference for interior lines, an undivided force, frontal assault at the crucial moment, and central tactical command. Such tactics seemed suicidal now in the face of the advances in firepower that a defensive position could deploy with such lethal effectiveness. Scharnhorst was among the first to adapt the Napoleonic principle of concentrated forces to new conditions through the use of concentric movements. In Moltke, strategy found a commander who
would use concentric operations and detached corps on a scale undreamt of before. As Rothenberg has observed:

Outflanking maneuvers of this kind—because they had to encompass the enormous lines made possible by armies in unprecedented numbers— would call for enormous numbers as well. The army with the greatest resources in manpower and supply would enjoy a decisive advantage. This required not only a sense of national purpose (which the state-nation was well-suited to provide) but also a sense of participation in the politics that led to war (which only the nation-state could fulfill). “[T]he greater the sense of participation in the affairs of the State, the more was the State seen as the embodiment of these unique and higher value systems which called it into being, and the greater became the commitment to protect and serve it.”
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Thus popular participation became the instrument that both created the nation-state and was itself reinforced by the institutions of the State it created. This phenomenon is evident in the history of the creation of the nation-state Germany by the Prussian state-nation.

Bismarck had begun by identifying Prussia as the apotheosis of the German; accordingly there was nothing “more German than the development of Prussia's particular interests.”
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But this was by no means clear to the other members of the German federal diet, including especially the Austrians. It was Bismarck's task to somehow separate the Austrians from the mission of unification and then carry out that mission so successfully as to silence opposition to Prussian leadership among the other apprehensive German states.

Bismarck became minister-president in 1862. The following November, King Frederick VII of Denmark died, and the main line of the Danish royal house became extinct. The provinces of Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg had been attached to the Danish kingdom in much the same way that Hanover had been attached, for dynastic reasons, to the British kingdom: Frederick had been duke of Schleswig-Holstein, and as duke of Holstein and Lauenburg as well had been represented in the German Confederation. As with Hanover, Holstein and Lauenburg were by language and geography German. Two national movements, the German and the Danish, competed for support in the duchies, whose independence had
been guaranteed by the 1852 Treaty of London, to which the great powers were signatories.

In March 1863, the Danish parliament rashly incorporated Schleswig
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on the nationalistic grounds that most of the population of Schleswig was Danish, conceding that Holstein and Lauenburg held special rights. In reply, acting in the name of the Confederation on behalf of the German minority in the duchy, Prussian and Austrian forces invaded Schleswig in January and Jutland in March. Anglo-French opposition to the invasion was frustrated by English fears of encouraging a French move against the Rhine. In August the new king of Denmark, whose forces had been overwhelmed despite some initial misfires by the Prussian general, surrendered his rights in Schleswig.

Having contrived a successful military alliance with Austria over Schleswig, Bismarck proceeded to use this success as a hammer to break first the Confederation and then Austria herself. The apparent Austrian-Prussian rapprochement put Prussia in a good position to renew the Franco-Prussian free-trade treaty that Prussia had negotiated in 1862, playing on French fears of a Habsburg/Confederation-wide competing market. Bismarck now proposed expanding this treaty to include the entire Confederation, excluding Austria. Eventually even the southern, pro-Austrian states came along because they were unable to survive without the markets and outlets controlled by North Germany.

Bismarck then used the Austro-Prussian military success to drive a wedge between Austria and the rest of the German states. Austria and most of the southern German states in the Confederation had expected to bring Schleswig into the Confederation along with Holstein. Bismarck rejected this and instead negotiated an agreement with Austria partitioning the duchies, Austria to administer Holstein and Prussia, Schleswig, on an ad interim basis. In so doing, he was playing on the unreformed constitutional structure of the multinational Habsburg state that was perforce insensitive to the contradiction of accumulating isolated, ethnically distinct provinces.

This agreement, the Treaty of Bad Gastein, discredited Austria within the Confederation, as well as put her in the impossible position of attempting to administer a remote and recalcitrant state that lay between Prussia and Denmark. Bismarck took covert steps to exacerbate this difficulty, as well as stimulating Prussian public opinion to call for the annexation of both duchies into Prussia. Attempting a retreat from its position, Austria then reasserted its support for an independent duke and proposed that the
decision be left to the Confederation. This Bismarck knew would result in a rejection of Prussian claims to the duchies, because the Confederation would vote for a separate state constructed from a union between the duchies. Prussia therefore denounced this move as a breach of the treaty and a cause for war. Bismarck promptly concluded a treaty with Italy to attack Austria and add Venetia to the Italian national state; he also began talks with Hungarian nationalists. Next he attempted to isolate Austria within the Confederation by bidding for the support of the German liberals, to whom he proposed a national parliament elected by universal suffrage. When Austria asked the Confederation to reject Prussia's proposals, Prussia responded by announcing that the German Confederation had ceased to exist, and called upon the German states to join a new Confederation, the North German Confederation, that excluded Austria.

The Prussian king, William I, had wished to avoid war with the Austrians and as a consequence the Prussians began their mobilization late, such that there was doubt whether an effective offensive could be mounted. But whereas the Austrians could employ only one railroad line for their mobi-lilization in Moravia, Moltke used five to transport Prussian troops from all over Prussia to the battlefront. Thus on June 5, 1866, the Prussian armies spread over a half circle of 275 miles. Moltke began at once to draw them closer toward the center, but steadfastly refused to order a full concentration in a small area. It was not until June 22 that officers of the Prussian vanguard handed their Austrian counterparts notice of the Prussian declaration of war.

The Austrian army moved from Moravia in three parallel columns, reaching their destination on June 26. Their commander, Benedek, was a product of the old school: fearless, stolid, he relied on formation in depth and the advantage of an interior line of operations. He failed, however, to derive the chief advantage of such a concentration when he delayed attacking either of the two equally strong Prussian armies facing him. Moreover, Benedek's early concentration inhibited his mobility. Once the opportunity had passed it was too late for the Austrians even to retreat behind the Elbe at Koniggratz and Benedek was forced to accept battle with the river at his rear. Like a Wagnerian overture, Moltke continued to hold off the final climax, keeping his armies one day's distance from each other until the night of July 2. At that time, he ordered the two Prussian armies to operate not merely against the flanks, but against the rear of the enemy: a strategy of encirclement. This did not completely come off, but at Koniggratz the Austrian army did lose the war as well as a fourth of its strength. Because Benedek did not retain enough space to advance against one portion of the Prussian army and then turn against the other, but instead was so hemmed in that he could not attack one force without being immediately attacked in his rear, the advantage of the interior line was forfeited. Had the local commanders actually carried out Moltke's orders for encirclement, it is possible the Austrian army would have been entirely destroyed, as occurred when Moltke's battle plan was executed against the French at Sedan.

Peace preliminaries were signed on July 27. Bismarck's principal war aims—the dissolution of the German Confederation and the removal of Austria from German affairs—had been accomplished by a course so circuitous, so Machiavellian, that historians continue to debate whether or not Bismarck actually intended the diplomatic campaign as it unfolded.
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Putting aside as unprofitable for our study an analysis of the psychological intentions of the Prussian president-minister, three questions remain: (1) How was Prussia able to convert a somewhat reckless act of Danish nationalism into a decisive weapon of destruction against the Confederation, on whose behalf Bismarck was allegedly acting? (2) How was Prussia able to use an alliance with Austria, and a successful war prosecuted by the two allies, to destroy Austria's role in German nationalism? (3) Is there anything about the nature of Moltke's strategy that helps us answer (1) and (2); that is, did the military imperative in this instance shape the sort of state that Bismarck was pursuing, such that it enabled, indeed brought to life a ruthlessly decisive diplomatic and political opponent of both the Confederation and the Austrian empire? The answers to all three questions revolve around legitimacy, popular nationalism, and self-determination, and their interplay with the new constitutional structure coming into being, the nation-state.

First, Denmark and all the states of the German Confederation were inflamed by nationalism. There were both German- and Danish-speaking residents in Schleswig-Holstein, in significant numbers. It had long been a goal of Danish nationalists to recognize constitutionally what was already a fact dynastically; namely, that the Danish king was the ruler of the duchies. Danish dynastic succession had been strengthened by the Treaty of London in 1852, which recognized Christian IX as the successor to Frederick VII. The role of the duchies, however, remained a point of contention between the two national movements. As early as 1855 a constitution had been adopted for a Greater Denmark that gave a central parliament in Copenhagen legislative rights over the duchies.