resolution and spoken with the greatest eloquence. Not many years were to go by before he began to repent of what he had done, for, as he saw the new danger from Social Democracy, he like many other Germans believed that the true means of defeating it was to be found in increased intensity of religious conviction. It was, however, then too late.
He, however, especially in the Prussian Upper House, threw all the weight of his authority into the conflict. It was, he said, not a religious conflict but a political one; they were not actuated by hatred of Catholicism, but they were protecting the rights of the State.
"The question at issue," he said, "is not a struggle of an Evangelical dynasty against the Catholic Church; it is the old struggle… a struggle for power as old as the human race… between king and priest… a struggle which is much older than the appearance of our Redeemer in this world… a struggle which has filled German history of the Middle Ages till the destruction of the German Empire, and which found its conclusion when the last representative of the glorious Swabian dynasty died on the scaffold, under the axe of a French conqueror who stood in alliance with the Pope.[1] We are not far from an analogous solution of the situation, always translated into the customs of our time."
He assured the House that now, as always, he would defend the Empire against internal and external enemies. "Rest assured we will not go to Canossa," he said.
- ↑ The Ghibellines were expelled from Italy in 1267, when Conradin of Hohenstaufen was beheaded by Charles of Anjou.
