Long before he became Imperial Chancellor Bismarck had done masterly and important work for the country. In 1862 he began his career by filling the post of interim Minister President of Prussia at a time when the present Emperor was still an infant. It was on taking up the position that he made the celebrated statement that "great questions cannot be decided by speeches and majority-votes, but must be resolved by blood and iron." Born in April, 1815, two months before the battle of Waterloo, at Schoenhausen, in the Prussian Province of Saxony, not far from Magdeburg, he studied at the universities of Gottingen and Berlin and passed two steps of the official ladder--Auscultator and Referendar--which may be translated respectively protocolist and junior counsel. His parliamentary career began in 1846, two years before the second French Revolution. At that time Prussia was an absolute monarchy, without a Constitution or a Parliament. There was no conscription, that foundation-stone of Prussian power and of the modern German Empire. Then came the agitated days of 1848, the sanguinary "March Days" in Berlin. Frederick William IV was on the throne, and in 1847 permitted the calling of a Parliament, the forerunner of the present Reichstag; but only to represent the "rights," not the "opinions," of the people. "No piece of paper," cried the King, "shall come, like a second Providence, between God in heaven and this land!" That, too, was Bismarck's sentiment, courageously expressed by him when the Diet was debating the idea of introducing the English parliamentary system, and proved by him in character and conduct until the day of his death. He would have made a splendid Jacobite!
The three "March Days," the 18th, 19th, and 20th of March, 1848, form one of the few occasions in Prussian or German history on which Crown and people came into direct and serious conflict. According to German accounts of the episode the outbreak of the revolution in France was followed by a large influx into Berlin of Poles and Frenchmen, who instigated the populace to violence. Collisions with the police occurred, and on March 15th barricades began to be erected. Traffic in the streets was only possible with the aid of the military. The King was in despair, not so much, the accounts say, at the danger he was in of losing his throne as at the shedding of the blood of his folk, and issued a proclamation promising to grant all desirable reforms, abolishing the censorship of the press, and summoning the Diet to discuss the terms of a Constitution. The citizens, however, continued to build barricades, made their way into the courtyards of the palace, and demanded the withdrawal of the troops. The King ordered the courtyards to be cleared, the palace guard advanced, and, either by accident or design, the guns of two grenadiers went off. No one was hit, but cries of "Treason!" and "Murder!" were raised. Within an hour a score of barricades were set up in various parts of the town and manned by a medley of workmen, university students, artists, and even men of the Landwehr, or military reserve.