Industrialization of War, 1840–84 247
army, but the elected representatives gathered in the Landtag refused
to approve the necessary law. Both sides appealed to English prece
dents from the seventeenth century, for the Stuart kings’ struggles
with Parliament seemed precisely parallel. But the outcome in Prussia
was different. In 1862 King Wilhelm found in Otto von Bismarck a
minister and politician whose thirst for power, skill in using it, and
readiness to wage war in pursuit of policy soon left all rivals far
behind.
To begin with, Bismarck and the king simply pushed ahead with
army reforms and continued to collect taxes as usual. The Landtag’s
right to ratify governmental expenditures had been granted in 1848
and enshrined in a constitution handed down by the king as part of the
settlement of the revolutionary upheavals of that year. But what one
king had given, another could take back, or so it seemed to many
Prussians; and habits of obedience were far too deeply engrained to
make refusal to obey seem plausible, even for those who most bitterly
opposed Bismarck and the king.
Aside from such expensive moves as completing the manufacture of
enough needle guns to equip the whole army, and the purchase of
three hundred steel breech-loading cannon from Alfred Krupp, the
main thrust of King Wilhelm’s reforms was to increase the size of the
army by drafting a larger proportion of the eligible age classes. He also
sought to improve the efficiency of the reserves by putting units de
signed for active field service in time of war under the command of
regular officers.^38
Military reform took on new urgency in 1864, when Bismarck allied
Prussia with Austria in a war against Denmark. At first, the Austrian
troops performed better against the Danes than the Prussians, whose
soldiers, after all, had seen no action against a foreign foe since 1815.
But in April 1865 the Prussians successfully assaulted a fortified posi
tion at Düppel—the most significant action of the war—and sent a
wave of patriotic excitement across the Germanies. Thereupon, the
Danes sued for peace, ceding Schleswig and Holstein to the victors.
This in turn allowed Bismarck to pick a quarrel with Austria over how
to divide the spoils and reorganize the German constitution.
An important aspect of the Danish war was that it allowed the
General Staff and its chief, General Helmut von Moltke, to attain
- This aspect of the reformers’ plans was particularly offensive to the Landtag.
Liberals suspected that the real motive was simply to capture the Landwehr for the
forces of reaction so that the Prussian army could safely be used for suppression of
revolution at home. Cf. Gordon A. Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640–1945
(New York, 1964), pp. 138–48.
