Wrangel took out his watch--one can imagine the old silver "turnip"--and with his thumb on the dial replied:
"Tell your city guard that the force is here. I will be responsible for the maintenance of order. The National Assembly has fifteen minutes in which to leave the building and the city guard in which to withdraw."
In a quarter of an hour the building was empty, and next day the city guard was dissolved. A month later the King, Frederick William IV, granted his _octroyierte_ Constitution--that is, a concession of his own royal personal will--which established the Diet as it is to-day.
Emperor William I, as King of Prussia, had a good deal of trouble with his Parliament, and in 1852 wanted to abdicate rather than rule in obedience to a parliamentary majority--it was the "conflict time" about funds for army reorganization. Bismarck dissuaded him from doing so by promising to become Minister and carry on the government, if need were, without a parliament and without a budget. He actually did so for some years, but there was no change in the Constitution as a result.
Nor has there been any constitutional change in the relations of Crown to Parliament during the present reign. As a young man, the Emperor had of course nothing to do with Parliament, Prussian or Imperial, and since his accession, though there is always latent antagonism and has been even friction at times, he has, generally speaking, lived on "correct," if not friendly terms with it. There is little, if any, of the devoted affection one finds for the monarch in the English Parliament.
And not unnaturally. Early in his reign, in 1891, he made a reference to Parliament little calculated to evoke affection. "The soldier and the army," he said to his generals at a banquet in the palace, "not parliamentary majorities and decisions, have welded together the German Empire. My confidence is in the army--as my grandfather said at Coblenz: 'These are the gentlemen on whom I can rely.'" Again, a year or two afterwards he dissolved the Reichstag for refusing to accept a military bill and did not conceal his anger with the recalcitrant majority. In 1895 he telegraphed to Bismarck his indignation with the Reichstag for refusing to vote its congratulations on the old statesman's eightieth birthday. In 1897, speaking of the kingship "von Gottes Gnaden" he took occasion to quote his grandfather's declaration that "it was a kingship with onerous duties from which no man, no Minister, no Parliament, no people" could release the Prince. In 1903 his Chancellor, Prince Bülow, had to defend in Parliament his action in the case of the Swinemunde despatch already mentioned. Attention was called to the telegram in the Reichstag and the Chancellor defended the Emperor. He denied that the telegram was an act of State--it was a personal matter between two sovereigns, the statement of a friend to a friend. "The idea," said the Chancellor, who contended that the Emperor had a right to express his opinions like any citizen,