Frankfort,
Baden, Cologne, had just been defeated and disarmed. In Berlin and
Breslau the people were at daggers-drawn with the army, and daily
expected to come to blows. Thus it was in every local center of
action. Everywhere questions were pending that could only be settled
by the force of arms; and now it was that for the first time were
severely felt the disastrous consequences of the continuation of the
old dismemberment and decentralization of Germany. The different
questions in every State, every province, every town, were
fundamentally the same; but they were brought forward everywhere under
different shapes and pretexts, and had everywhere attained different
degrees of maturity. Thus it happened that while in every locality
the decisive gravity of the events at Vienna was felt, yet nowhere
could an important blow be struck with any hope of bringing the
Viennese succor, or making a diversion in their favor; and there
remained nothing to aid them but the Parliament and Central Power of
Frankfort; they were appealed to on all hands; but what did they do?

The Frankfort Parliament and the bastard child it had brought to light
by incestuous intercourse with the old German Diet, the so-called
Central Power, profited by the Viennese movement to show forth their
utter nullity. This contemptible Assembly, as we have seen, had long
since sacrificed its virginity, and young as it was, it was already
turning grey-headed and experienced in all the artifices of painting
and pseudo-diplomatic prostitution. Of the dreams and illusions of
power, of German regeneration and unity, that in the beginning had
pervaded it, nothing remained but a set of Teutonic clap-trap
phraseology, that was repeated on every occasion, and a firm belief of
each individual member in his own importance, as well as in the
credulity of the public. The original naivety was discarded; the
representatives of the German people had turned practical men, that is
to say, they had made it out that the less they did, and the more they
prated, the safer would be their position as the umpires of the fate
of Germany. Not that they considered their proceedings superfluous;
quite the contrary. But they had found out that all really great
questions, being to them forbidden ground, had better be let alone,
and there, like a set of Byzantine doctors of the Lower Empire, they
discussed with an importance and assiduity worthy of the fate that at
last overtook them, theo