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The Tsar and His Subordinate Knyazes
First published: in Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 293, May 9, 1849.
Cologne, May 8. It is said that the French ambassador in Berlin has protested against the entry of the Prussians into Saxony.
At last, therefore, the French Government has noticed that the East-European counter-revolution menaces it as well, and that the new Holy Alliance [1] has as its ultimate, supreme aim nothing other than the conquest, and this time, perhaps, the partition of France.
We know positively that in the treaty which has been concluded between the orthodox Tsar and his two subordinate knyazes from OlmĂźtz and Potsdam the ultimate aim of the alliance is declared to be the conquest of France, the abolition of the Republic and the elevation of the âlegitimate Kingâ, the âson of holy Louisâ, the idiot Henry of Bordeaux to the throne of France and Navarre.
That Odilon Barrot is involved in this plot is hardly doubtful.
This is what they expect you to do, Prussian soldiers of the army reserve! You are being called away from your hearths and homes, from your wives and children, in order first of all to fight against your brothers in Germany and Prussia, to help in suppressing the small remnant of the freedom which you won last year â and then to fight against the Hungarians who are coming to the aid of your threatened freedom â and when you have completed this work to the satisfaction of your knyazes and your supreme lord and master, Tsar Nicholas, then you will be led across the Rhine against the nation whose heroic uprisings in 1789-94, 1830, and 1848 procured you all the freedoms you enjoy.
It is for this that last year as fighters at the barricades, and as the awe-inspiring mass of the people, you won a few liberties for yourselves, so that now, as soldiers of the army reserve, you yourselves will help to suppress these liberties once more and finally, in the service of your supreme master, the Russian Tsar, destroy also the two bulwarks of liberty â Hungary and France!
- â The reference is to the October-November 1848 counter-revolutionary coup d'etat in Prussia which resulted in the dissolution of the Prussian National Assembly and the introduction of the Constitution imposed by King Frederick William IV.
This refers to the Prussian National Assembly convened in Berlin on May 22, 1848, to work out a Constitution and introduce a constitutional system on the basis of an "agreement with the Crown". It was dissolved on December 5 as a result of the coup d'etat in Prussia. The causes behind the coup d'etat were the formation of the Brandenburg-Manteuffel counter-revolutionary Government and the publication on November 9 of a decree transferring the Assembly to the provincial town of Brandenburg. Liberal and democratic (Left) deputies failed to offer any real resistance to the instigators of the coup d'etat and confined themselves to passive resistance. The introduction of a Constitution "granted" hy the King was announced simultaneously with the dissolution of the Assembly.
The Holy Allianceâan association of European monarchs founded on September 26, 1815, on the initiative of the Russian Tsar Alexander I and the Austrian Chancellor Metternich, to suppress revolutionary movements and preserve feudal monarchies in European countries. During the 1848-49 revolution and subsequent years, counter-revolutionary circles in Austria, Prussia and Tsarist Russia attempted to revive the Holy Alliance's activities in a modified form.