were continued in form; there was little to choose between a constitutional monarchy where the king was appointed by the people and controlled by Parliament, and an avowed republic.  This was the principle held by nearly all his contemporaries.  He deliberately rejected it.  He did not hold that the voice of the people was the voice of God.  This belief did not satisfy his moral sense; it seemed in public life to leave all to interest and ambition and nothing to duty.  It did not satisfy his critical intellect; the word “people” was to him a vague idea.  The service of the People or of the King by the Grace of God, this was the struggle which was soon to be fought out.

Bismarck’s connection with his neighbours was cemented by his marriage.  At the beginning of 1847, he was engaged to a Fraeulein von Puttkammer, whom he had first met at the Blankenburgs’ house; she belonged to a quiet and religious family, and it is said that her mother was at first filled with dismay when she heard that Johanna proposed to marry the mad Bismarck.  He announced the engagement to his sister in a letter containing the two words, “All right,” written in English.  Before the wedding could take place, a new impulse in his life was to begin.  As representative of the lower nobility he had to attend the meeting of the Estates General which had been summoned in Berlin.  From this time the story of his life is interwoven with the history of his country.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER III.

THE REVOLUTION.

1847-1852.

Bismarck was a subject of the King of Prussia, but Prussia was after all only one part of a larger unit; it was a part of Germany.  At this time, however, Germany was little more than a geographical expression.  The medieval emperors had never succeeded in establishing permanent authority over the whole nation; what unity there had been was completely broken down at the Reformation, and at the Revolution the Empire itself, the symbol of a union which no longer existed, had been swept away.  At the restoration in 1815 the reorganisation of Germany was one of the chief tasks before the Congress of Vienna.  It was a task in which the statesmen failed.  All proposals to restore the Empire were rejected, chiefly because Francis, who had taken the style of Emperor of Austria, did not desire to resume his old title.  Germany emerged from the Revolution divided into thirty-nine different States; Austria was one of the largest and most populous monarchies in Europe, but more than half the Austrian Empire consisted of Italian, Slavonic, and Hungarian provinces.  The Emperor of Austria ruled over about 20,000,000 Germans.  The next State in size and importance was Prussia.  Then came four States, the Kingdoms of Saxony, Hanover, Bavaria, and Wuertemberg, varying in size from five to two million inhabitants; below them were some thirty principalities of which the smallest contained only a few thousand inhabitants.