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1915
v.l
HISTORY OF GERMANY IN THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY
TVeifschke He/for/ch Go-Hhard vor?
TREITSCHKE'S HISTORY
OF GERMANY IN THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY
TRANSLATED BY EDEN 6? CEDAR PAUL
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON
VOLUME ONE
NEW YORK
McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY
1915
SATISFACTION that an English translation of Heinrich von Treit-
schke's monumental " History of Germany in the Nineteenth
Century " is at last to appear in English, even though thirty-six
years have passed since the appearance of the first and twenty-
one years since the appearance of the final volume, will be tempered
in many minds by a feeling of regret and almost of shame that this
just tribute to a great literary achievement should have been
delayed so long. It cannot be pleaded in explanation of past
neglect that the History is a work for scholars only, for no famous
history appeals more strongly, in virtue alike of its contents and
its literary style, to the suffrages of the great public.
Year by year German works of ephemeral value are reproduced
in English by the score and the hundred, in response to an ever-
insistent demand for the latest in caprice or sensation, yet in this
country and America this literary masterpiece, one of the fore-
most contributions of German scholarship to historical science, has
hitherto enjoyed little more than a library reputation, and has
remained inaccessible to most readers unable or unwilling to make
acquaintance with Treitschke in the original. The reception given
to a translated edition of the History will help to decide how far
this strange disregard of Treitschke has been merely the acci-
dental result of a lack of commercial enterprise on the part of
publishers, or due to a genuine want of public appreciation.
An Introduction to a standard work of so established a repu-
tation as this can only be redeemed from impertinence by perti-
nence. Inasmuch as the translation will introduce Treitschke to
a new circle of readers, the title to pertinence may perhaps be
conceded if in these preliminary words an attempt be made to give
to those readers some indication of what the History is and what
it has to offer them.
The History was neither begun nor ended as Treitschke
originally intended. While still engaged in his preparatory spade
work, Treitschke found the plan, as he had conceived it, expanding
beneath his hands. His first idea was to write only the history of
v.
History of Germany
the Germanic Federation, created by the Congress of Vienna in
1815, on the ruins of the Holy Roman Empire of the German
Nation, which Napoleon had impiously destroyed nine years before.
What scholarship and literature would have lost had he adhered
to that first design may be imagined. The spectacle of Treitschke
exhausting himself in the endless task of writing the dreary, unin-
spiring, unheroic annals of the Deutscher Bund, suggests the hardly
less congruous spectacle of a Velasquez passing his days in painting
Dutch interiors in either case a fate comparable to the rigours
which might have been reserved in a tenth Circle for men of
genius who had misused their talents. Treitschke, as the special
historian of the Bund, might have done the work better than
anyone else, but there were other men able to do it well enough.
It was not, however, the unattractiveness of the task that led
him to abandon the idea of concentrating upon the history of the
Bund. He tells us that he had not been long at work before he
recognised that a History of the Germanic Federation would be a
history for students and specialists. It was not his ambition
to write such a work, but to write German history for the German
nation. Hence he found it necessary to carry his researches both
further back and further forward. As the plan developed he came
to fix on the Peace of Westphalia as his starting point. That land-
mark gave him just the wide perspective which his scheme, as it
had now taken shape, required, for it enabled him to survey in all
essential features the beginnings of modern Germany and above
all to do full justice to the romantic story of the growth of the
Prussian State. It was his intention to bring the narrative down
to his own day.
Of the History, five portly volumes were published, carrying
the story to the revolutionary movements of 1848. The History
had not to win its way laboriously into favour like many great
works, for it was born famous. Edition after edition has been
published, and its place in the estimation one might almost say
the reverence of the German nation is perhaps greater to-day than
ever. Nor is there any great mystery about this. The immense
amount of research and the stores of erudition embodied in the
History, the writer's weighty authority alike as professor, publicist,
and parliamentarian, and the fascination of his literary style would
alone have assured a brilliant success. Yet these were not the
recommendations which gave to Treitschke and the History their
immense influence over the minds of modern Germany.
Two facts, I think, contributed in a special degree to bring
vi.
Introduction
about this result. The first was the fact that Treitschke wrote
for the most part of events which were part of the living tradition
of his day, events many of which fell within the memory and even
the experience of a large section of his contemporaries. The period
between 1871, when the present Empire was established, back
to the time when Napoleon's power was at its zenith, spanned
barely two generations, yet what a powerful drama had been
played in Germany during that short period ! When it opened
Prussia still lay humbled and abased beneath a foreign yoke,
exhausted in body, impoverished in spirit, atrophied in will ;
between Jena and Leipzig she lived through a passion as bitter
as ever befell a nation ; in that ordeal her worth and right to
live were put to the test of supreme endurance and sacrifice.
Redeemed by her own efforts, Prussia came out of the trial victo-
rious, and stood again erect, secure henceforth against the enemies
of her unity within no less than against those which might
threaten from without. Moreover, with Prussia's stripes the rest
of Germany was healed.
After the fall of Napoleon, the history of Germany for fifty
years was mainly one of slow internal reorganisation and develop-
ment ; there was the inevitable sway of the pendulum from a sense
of buoyant freedom to apathy and reaction, followed in turn,
however, by the painful emergence of the German States one by
one from the twilight of absolutism into the day-dawn of constitu-
tional government. Then came the bitter " conflict " between
Crown and Parliament in Prussia, in which the old system and the
new fought with desperate tenacity, without decisive victory on
either side, a struggle carrying for both the moral and the warning
" Thus far and no farther ! " which has been the jealous watch-
word of Prussian parliamentary life from that day to this. And all
through this period of change and transition that pompous mockery
the Bund continued its futile Diet, cumbered about many things
and persistently refusing to recognise that only one thing really
mattered, the question whether the future of Germany was to lie
with Austria or Prussia. After vainly trying to settle this question
by diplomatic wrangling, the rivals fought it out in the two cam-
paigns of 1864 and 1866, of which the natural if not necessary
sequel was the gigantic war of 1870, when the diapason of the
century's longing and endeavour ended full in national unity and
a New Empire, with all that the rebirth meant for the political,
intellectual, and material development of the German peoples.
It was to this epoch of German history that Treitschke devoted
vii.
History of Germany
himself, and it was to contemporaries who had lived through or
in it, and to whom, therefore, its events and vicissitudes were
intensely real, that his History was addressed. A nation still in
the first enthusiasm of military and political triumph, still dazzled
by its successes, and revelling in the consciousness of proved
strength and yet greater latent power, could not fail to respond
to the appeal of a historian whose eloquent periods breathed a
patriotic fervour even greater than its own.
Yet even here the secret and the significance of Treitschke's
influence are not exhausted. From the German standpoint it is
his supreme merit that he voiced the new life and self-consciousness
of modern Germany in a way that no other man no statesman,
no writer of any kind, and certainly no historian had done before.
At last there stood forth a man, like to that earlier patriot-historian
of Bonn, Ernst Moritz Arndt, the " deutschester Mann " of his
time, as he was called, who was able and determined to do justice
not only to the past of the German nation, but to its present and
future, to assert its claims and rights, to formulate its aims and
ambitions, and to interpret to the world its individuality and out-
look. For two generations the Great Powers had regarded Germany
as for practical purposes blotted out of the map of Europe. Ger-
many had seemed to accept her fate, hardly venturing to assert
a right to recognition, apologising that she dared to stand in the
light of her haughty neighbours. Even after the national revival
had set in, and the disunited tribes had become a nation, the old
attitude of disregard and contumely continued ; to the older
states, which had so long monopolised the seats of the mighty,
the German Empire was still an upstart and an outsider. For the
slights from which Germany suffered, Treitschke gravely blamed
Germany herself. In the past there had been too much apology.
Treitschke went to the other extreme. With a defiant pride and a
high disdain he struck the word apology out of the German vocabu-
lary ; his rdle and his mission were to be those of his country's
vindicator.
Not only was the History to be a vindication of Germany's
right to be a united nation and to have her own place in the sun ;
it was also intended to justify Prussia's historical right to lead
Germany to the promised land of her desires and to be the completer
of her appointed and just destiny. That Germany was ordained,
by some dispensation unsuspected by ordinary men, to direct the
world in progress, as Germany understood it, and Prussia to be her
spokesman and interpreter, was to Treitschke so obvious as hardly
viii.
Introduction
to need argument. This Ptolemaic view of history, which regards
Germanism as the centre of civilisation, runs through all his political
writings, and the invective of which he was a master was specially
reserved for those nations which stubbornly refused to adopt this
novel order of ideas. What made this attitude and advocacy of
Treitschke the more remarkable was the fact that his ancestors
were not Germans at all, and that he himself, until he changed his
citizenship, was not a Prussian but a Saxon.
" I write for Germans." " No nation has greater cause than we
to hold in honour the memory of our hard-struggling fathers, or
recalls so seldom how through their blood and tears, their sweat of
brain and of hand, the blessing of its unity has been won." " The
narrator of German history only half achieves his task if he merely
indicates the causality of events and speaks his mind with courage.
He should in addition feel himself, and create in the hearts of his
readers, joy in the fatherland."
In passages like these, we may find the key both to Treitschke 's
presentation of history and to his singular hold upon the admira-
tion and the attachment of his countrymen. His History is what
he meant it to be a clarion call to national consciousness and
an inspiration to national devotion. He stung the national spirit
of his countrymen into new and virile life, made pride of race a
passion, patriotism a religion, and loyalty an act of worship.
This emphasis of nationality and the national standpoint
caused him to set at defiance some of the most cherished canons
of historical science, for it made detachment and objectivity impos-
sible, led him into partisanship and special advocacy, and tempted
the free play of prejudice. He says in one place, indeed, that it
has been his aim to "speak definitely without harshness, justly
without vagueness." That was a counsel of perfection which he
may for formality's sake have pinned to his inkstand, like a new
year's resolution, to be kept as long as possible, but he more often
ignored than observed it. For moderation was not his special grace,
nor was a judicial temperament his special gift. Impartiality and
equanimity are not the only virtues, but they belong to the virtues
which are looked for in a historian, and when they are lacking,
the greatest work falls short of perfection. Treitschke 's History
must be read and valued and praised subject to this reservation.
" There are many ways of writing history, and each is justified
so long as the style adopted is adhered to consistently and severely."
To this dictum, which Treitschke laid down for his own guidance,
the History is faithful. The examination of his sources must have
ix.
History of Germany
entailed prodigious research in divers fields, but there is no sugges-
tion of the antiquary in his pages. For him history was some-
thing more and greater than a recital of facts and completed
events, if, indeed, in the seamless web of human life any single
event can be said to be completed. Regarding history as life,
he strove to recreate the national drama ; he put the actors upon
the stage again, and made them play over their parts, not as
marionettes, but as living men and women. In so doing, he at
times made heroes out of commonplace men and the heroes he
turned into demigods, but that was part of his deliberate plan,
which was the glorification of his country. The ground covered
by the History was not new, but drawing from fuller materials
than had been accessible before, he was able to throw new light
upon known facts, to bring these facts into new relations, to discuss
them from fresh and original points of view, to challenge established
verdicts, and thus to invest the most hackneyed episodes with fresh
interest.
If Treitschke's temper as a historian has received much adverse
criticism, his literary style has received no less praise, and deser-
vedly so. There is something Byzantine in the structure of the
History, in the conjunction of massiveness with a bewildering
wealth and variety of ornament, of strength with splendour, gran-
deur with dignity, severity with grace. The flow of language is
easy and rhythmical ; often it is impetuous ; only when the nervous
pen responds to the impulses of an imagination fired by passion,
does the stream break bounds. Stung into anger or indignation
Treitschke's declamations are at times torrential and overwhelm-
ing. Yet the effect is never spoiled by any suggestion of forced
rhetoric ; the passion may seem to be extravagant or even
misplaced, but it is sincere, and free from artifice. The literary
purist will rightly find fault with occasional lapses of taste due to
his ardent temperament without doubt a part, and not the least
precious part, of his Slavic inheritance and to his inability to keep
prejudice under control, but these sunspots detract little if at all
from the brilliancy of the total effect.
It was Treitschke's poignant regret, when the shadow of pre-
mature death fell upon him, that he was leaving the great work
of his life incomplete. He was cut off at the age of sixty-two and
in his intellectual prime, having scarcely brought the story of
Germany in the nineteenth century to the end of the 'forties. The
History ceases, therefore, at a point which to him must have been
specially distressing ; for he had not left behind the revolutionary
x.
Introduction
movements of 1848, an episode which he regarded as amongst the
most humiliating and hateful in German and particularly in
Prussian history. Not only, therefore, did the drama which he
was reconstructing remain unfinished, but the still unplayed acts
were, for a passionate patriot, amongst the most fascinating of all
above all, the wars of 1864 and 1866, which gave to Prussia a
series of new provinces, and put that Power and Austria in their
rightful places, Prussia at the head of Germany, Austria thrust
out of the imperial heritage ; the formation of the North German
Confederation ; and finally the war of 1870, which destroyed one
empire and created another, set New Germany on a path of unex-
ampled progress and prosperity, yet also, as events have proved,
sowed seeds of infinite coming mischief. So far as it was com-
pleted, however, the History will be seen to leave no essential
phase of the national life unregarded. The political history of the
period ' naturally occupies Treitschke's principal attention, but
he also passes in review the economic movements which were of
such great importance for the country's later development, the
intellectual awakening, and the special tendencies which came to
the front in philosophy and literature, in science and art.
It is one of the greater ironies of literary history that the
last and crowning part of Treitschke's task was left undone.
His treatment of the events which ushered in the Empire
would not have been faultless or final, but his narrative would
have been an epic worthy of the master-pieces of historical
literature. "Who will finish my History?" he asked pathetically
of his friend and later biographer Hausrath. In putting the
question he himself gave the answer. His History no one else
could complete. Many other German writers of eminence have
described the final episodes in the inspiring story of national
unity, some with a knowledge and erudition, others with an
intellectual grasp, a conscientiousness, or an earnestness of
purpose not unworthy of his own.
Well as they have written, however, they have only supple-
mented and have not replaced Treitschke. For he, while uniting
all these traits, added to them another, and it is this trait which
gives to the History its uniqueness. It is the intimate personal
element in his work, due to the close identification of the writer
with his subject, of his own life with the life of his country.
Therefore it is that so much of the History is the faithful reflex
and utterance of his own soul. Because he felt deeply, he wrote
intensely and often passionately. If often he was prejudiced, at
xi.
History of Germany
a difficult disputed problem, how often I have had to ponder every
word, so that I could speak definitely without harshness, justly with-
out vagueness. The undertaking was all the bolder in that we
already possess a comprehensive account of the last decades of the
Holy Empire in Hausser's History of Germany, a book whose appear-
ance had the significance of a political achievement, and which
will always remain an ornament of our historical literature. But
since the death of this ever-memorable man, our knowledge of the
Napoleonic epoch has been notably enlarged, and not least by your
own works. Moreover, the standpoint of historical criticism has
changed. He who to-day desires to further the understanding of
the present through a description of that epoch, must place in the
foreground of his narration the internal development of the
Prussian state, and the great transformations of spiritual life.
In the introductory book I have made no attempt to relate
new facts. Nor have I been afraid to repeat from time to time
what is already well known, for if the historian attempts always
and everywhere to relate novelties he will certainly depart from
truth. It has been my endeavour to extract from the confusion
of events the most important points of view ; to bring vigorously
forward the men and the institutions, the ideas and the changes
of destiny, which have created our new nationality. Hence the
internal affairs of the minor German states are dealt with very
briefly. I propose in the second volume, when I come to the
description of the South German constitutional struggles, to deal
with these relationships in fuller detail. I trust that you, and
other indulgent judges, will find that my survey gives an
approximately just idea of the great contrasts which destroyed
the state structure of our middle ages, and levelled the ground
for the secular political formations of the new century. Within
such narrow limits it was impossible to give more than the outlines
of the picture.
After the destruction of the Old Empire, the description
becomes gradually more detailed, and with the days of the first
Peace of Paris begins the thorough narration of history which in
the second volume I hope to carry forward to the year 1830. For
this period, with the permission of the Chancellor and of Baron
von Roggenbach, I have utilised the Berlin archives and the archives
of the ministry of foreign affairs in Karlsruhe. I cannot express
sufficient gratitude for the willingness with which I have always
been furnished facilities by the present administration of the
archives, at first under your own leadership and subsequently under
xiv
Dedicatory Preface
that of Heinrich von Sybel. I have never misused this confidence,
because it was impossible to do so. In the history of Prussia there
is nothing to cloak, nothing to conceal. What errors and sins
there have been in the history of this state, have long been known
to all the world, thanks to the ill-favour of our neighbours and
thanks to the fault-finding spirit of our own people ; honourable
research leads in most cases to tl\e recognition that even in times
of weakness, Prussian statecraft was better than its reputation.
There are many ways of writing history, and each is justified so
long as the style adopted is adhered to consistently and strictly. The
aim of this book is simply to relate and to judge. If the represen-
tation is not to remain altogether formless, I must give to the
readers no more than the completed results of the enquiry, without
showing them the entire machinery of investigation, or burdening
them with polemic disquisitions.
When I survey the century and a half which this volume
attempts to describe, I feel once more, as I have so often felt
when writing it, the wealth and the simple greatness of the history
of our fatherland. No nation has greater cause than we to
hold in honour the memory of its struggling fathers, or recalls
so seldom how through their blood and tears, their labour of brain
and of hand, the blessing of its unity has been achieved. You, my
dear friend, have already, in the Paulskirche, dreamed the dream
of the Prussian empire of German nationality, and have in heart
remained younger than many of the precocious younger generation ;
for you know how bearable seem the troubles of the present when
compared with the distresses of the old days when there was no
empire . You will not blame me because now and then, out of the
equable peace of historic discourse there sounds a louder tone
The narrator of German history fulfils but half his task when he
indicates the connection of events and expresses his opinion with
frankness ; he should also himself feel and should know how to
awaken in the hearts of his readers what many of our country-
men have already forgotten in the disputes and vexations of the
moment a delight in the fatherland.
HEINRICH VON TREITSCHKE.
BERLIN,
February loth, 1879.
XV.
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION.
ALTHOUGH Max Duncker has in the interim passed away, I retain
this dedication in grateful memory. During the revision of this
volume, I have utilised the abundant literature of recent years
in order to attain to an independent judgment concerning the
beginnings of the War of Liberation, based upon new researches
into the archives. The emendations and additions due to this
cause are, however, not extensive.
T.
BERLIN,
September 2$th, 1894.
xvu.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
VOL. I. BOOK ONE.
INTRODUCTION. THE EXTINCTION OF THE EMPIRE.
I. GERMANY AFTER THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA
i. The Imperial Constitution 3
2. The Prussian State - 28
3. The New Literature - 99
II. REVOLUTION AND FOREIGN DOMINION
i. The Revolutionary War to the Peace of Basle - 120
2. Frederick William III. The Principal Resolu-
tion of the Diet of Deputation. Classical
Poetry - 169
3. Dissolution of the Empire. The War of 1806 - 246
III. THE RISE OF PRUSSIA
i. Stein. Scharnhorst. The New Germany - - 313
2. The Altenstein Ministry. The War of 1809 - 375
3. The Confederation of the Rhine. Hardenberg's
Administration. The Russian War - 413
IV. THE WAR OF LIBERATION
i. Its Preparation - 477
2. The Spring Campaign. The Truce - 528
3. The Period of Victories - - 553
V. CONCLUSION OF THE WAR
i. Liberation of the West. Plans of Campaign - 598
2 The Winter Campaign 628
3. Peace and the Return Home 649
xix.
BOOK I
IXTRODUCTKHI
THE EXTINCTION OF THE EMPIRE
CHAPTER I.
GERMANY AFTER THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA.
I. THE IMPERIAL CONSTITUTION.
DESPITE the antiquity of her history, Germany is the youngest
of the great nations of Europe. Twice has she been granted a
period of youth, twice has she been through the struggle for the
principles of national power and free civilisation. It is a thousand
years since she created for herself the glorious kingdom of the
Germans ; eight hundred years later she found it necessary to
re-establish the state upon an entirely new foundation ; first in
our own days did she as a unified power resume her place in the
ranks of the nations.
Long ago, forced by the overwhelming power of events, she
united with her own the imperial crown of Christendom, she adorned
her life with all the charms of knightly art and culture, she shrank
from neither risk nor sacrifice in order to maintain the leadership
of the western world. In the world-wide campaigns of her great
emperors the power of the German monarchy passed away. Upon
the ruins of the old kingdom there immediately grew up a new
structure of territorial dominions : spiritual and temporal princes,
free cities, counts and knights a formless medley of inchoate
state-structures, but full of marvellous vital energy. Amid the
decline of the imperial glory, the princes of Lower Saxony, the
knights of the Teutonic Order, and the burghers of the Hanseatic
League, completed with sword and plough the greatest work of
colonisation which the world had seen since the days of the Romans.
The lands between the Elbe and the Niemen were conquered and
settled ; for centuries to come the Scandinavian and Slav peoples
were subordinated to German commerce and to German culture.
But princes and nobles, burghers and peasants, went their separate
ways ; the reciprocal hatred of the estates rendered nugatory every
attempt to effect the political organisation of the nation's super-
abundant creative energy, to restore in federal form the lost unity
of the state.
History of Germany
Then came Martin Luther, to unite once more for great ends
talented men drawn from all sections of our divided people.
Through the earnestness of the German spirit, the secularised
Church was led back into the lofty simplicity of Protestant Chris-
tianity, and in that spirit there burgeoned the idea of freeing the
State from the dominion of the Church. For the second time
our people attained to one of the summits of its civilisation
and entered straightway upon the most venturesome revolution
ever attempted. In other Teutonic lands, the universal work of
Protestantism was to strengthen the authority of the national
state, to put an end to the multiplex dominion of the Middle Ages.
In the land of its birth it effected merely the dissolution of the
old order. During those days of joyful expectation, a foreigner
wore our crown, and this was decisive in its influence upon the
whole future of the German monarchy ; for the nation hailed the
Monk of Wittenberg with shouts of exultation, and, moved to the
depths of its being, awaited an entire transformation of the empire.
The imperial power, which should have been the leader of the
Germans in their struggle with the Papacy, renounced at once
ecclesiastical and political reform. The empire of the Haps-
burgs chose the Catholic side, led the Latin peoples of Southern
Europe into the field against the German heretics, and remained
henceforward, until its inglorious fall, the enemy of all that was
truly German.
Protestantism turned for help to the temporal rulers. These
territorial princes justified their right to existence by their work
as protectors of the German faith. But the nation was unable
to secure the universal victory on German soil of its own especial
work, the Reformation, and was likewise unable to rejuvenate its
own national state in accordance with the temporal ideas of the
new time. The German spirit, inclined, as always, to excessive
idealism, was alienated from the struggles of political life by the
profundities of the new theology ; impassioned Lutheranism did
not understand how to avail itself of the fortunate hour for the
work of liberation. Germany so powerful in arms, was ignomini-
ously beaten in the Schmalkaldian War, and had for the first time
to submit to a foreign yoke. Then came the wild uprising of
Maurice of Saxony to rescue German Protestantism and to destroy
the Spanish dominion, but to destroy also the ultimate bonds of
monarchical order which still served to unite Germany, and the
freedom of the estates of the realm assumed henceforward the form
of boundless licence. After a rapid succession of partial victories
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
and partial defeats, the wearied factions concluded the premature
religious peace of Augsburg. Thereupon ensued the most deplorable
period of German history. The empire voluntarily quitted the
circle of the great powers and renounced all share in European
politics. The amorphous mass of Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinistic
principalities, immobile and yet unreconciled, passed two genera-
tions in idle dreams, whilst at our very gates the armies of the
Catholic world-empire were fighting to rob the heretics of the
Netherlands of the freedom of belief, and its navies were disputing
the command of the sea.
Then at length the last and decisive war of the epoch, the war
of the religions, broke out. The home of Protestantism became also
its battle-ground. All the powers of Europe took part in the war.
The scum of all nations was heaped up on German soil. In a
disturbance without parallel, the old Germany passed away. Those
who had once aimed at world-dominion were now, by the pitiless
justice of histoty, placed under the feet of the stranger. The Rhine
and the Ems, the Elbe and the Weser, the Oder and the Vistula,
all the ways to the sea, became " captives of foreign nations " ;
on the Upper Rhine were established the outposts of French
rule, while the south-east became subject to the dominion of
the Hapsburgs and of the Jesuits. Two-thirds of the entire
nation were involved in this dreadful war ; the people, degenerating
into savagery, carrying on a burdened life amid dirt and poverty,
no longer displayed the old greatness of the German character, were
no longer animated by the free-spirited and serene heroism of then-
ancestors. The dominion of an ancient civilisation, that civilisa-
tion which alone adorns and ennobles existence, had disappeared
into oblivion ; forgotten were even the craft-secrets of the guilds.
The nation, which once had sung of Kriemhild's revenge, and which
had fortified its heart by the heroic strains of Luther's hymns,
now embellished its impoverished speech with foreign tinsel, and
those who still remained capable of profound thought wrote French
or Latin. The entire life of Germany lay open without defence
to the influence of the superior civilisation of the foreigner. Under
the urgency of the Swedish distresses, amid the petty sorrows of
poverty-stricken everyday life, the very memory of the glories of
the wonderful centuries of old disappeared from the minds of the
masses ; in the transformed world, the ancient cathedrals, wit-
nesses to the former magnificence of German burghership, seemed
strange and unfriendly. Not till a century and a half had elapsed
were the treasures of ancient German poetry recovered by the
5
History of Germany
laborious research of learned investigators, so that all were
astonished at the wealth of the former treasure-house. Never was
any other nation so forcibly estranged from itself and from its own
past ; not even modern France is separated by so profound a
chasm from the days of the old regime.
This horrible confusion seemed to foreshadow the destruction
of the German name, and yet it proved the beginning of a new life.
In those days of misery, hi the time of the Peace of Westphalia,
our new history begins. It is to two forces that we owe the restora-
tion of our declining nation, which since those days has trans-
formed its life politically and economically, in faith, in art, and in
science, to make that life ever richer and ever wider in its scope :
the force of religious freedom, and the force of the Prussian state.
Through the sorrows and struggles of the Thirty Years' War,
Germany secured the future of Protestantism in the western world,
and at the same time established upon an indestructible basis the
characteristics of her own civilisation. The extreme south adhered
to the Catholic world of the Romans ; the northern marches
touched the hard Lutheranism of Scandinavia ; but the central
regions of Germany remained the common ground of three con-
fessions. Of all the great nations, Germany was the only one in
which these different creeds competed on equal terms, and Ger-
many was therefore compelled to establish in her homes and her
schools, throughout her political and social life, that ecclesiastical
peace which had been attained through a long, fierce, and bloody
struggle. In earlier days, when the Roman Church was still the
Church Universal, bearing in its bosom no more than the germs
of Protestantism, it was Catholicism which had trained our people
for civilisation, and which had provided the abundant ground-
work of art and science. But when Catholicism expelled from
herself these powers of freedom, and when, with the assistance of
the Latin peoples, she became transformed into a closely knit
ecclesiastical party, she was enabled, it is true, through the
talent for dominion of the House of Hapsburg, to reconquer for
herself a portion of Germany ; but the spirit of our people remained
ever hostile to the Jesuitic faith. The rich spiritual forces of the
Neo-Roman Church flourished in their Latin homelands ; but they
could strike no root upon this foreign German soil, hi this nation
of born heretics. Here sang no Tasso or Calderon, here painted
no Rubens or Murillo. Hardly one among the slothful German
monks was found to compete in zeal for learning with the diligent
6
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
fathers of the Maurist Congregation. Among the Germans, the
Society of Jesus educated many pious priests and many able states-
men ; it produced also many ponderous zealots, who, like Father
Busenbaum, with uncouth German bluntness disclosed to the world
the secret that the end justifies the means. But the entire culture of
the Society of Jesus was the work of Roman brains, and Roman
also were the stultifying educational methods of the Jesuits. In
Germany, the new Catholicism worked only to hinder and con-
fuse ; the spiritual possessions of Catholicism contrasted with the
thought-world of Protestantism much as the barren scholasticism
of our first Jesuit, Canisius, contrasted with the straightforward
wisdom of the works of Luther. Despite all the wholesale
conversions of the Counter- Reformation, Germany remained, as
Rome well knew, the citadel of heresy. The central fibre of our
spirit was Protestant.
Dearly-bought ecclesiastical tolerance prepared the towns for
a restrained freedom, a circumspect boldness of thought, which
could never have thrived under the uncontrolled dominion of
any single Church. Upon such a soil, so soon as the exhausted
people was once more able to produce men of genius, there flourished
our new science and poetry, the most vigorous literature of modern
history, essentially Protestant, and yet with the freedom and gentle-
ness of the secular spirit. Upon our troubled nation this literature
once more bestowed the gift of a powerful speech, restored the
ideals of humanism, and reawakened self-confidence. Thus for
our people even the defeats of the Reformation ultimately proved a
blessing. Constrained to carry in one bosom all the great contrasts
of European life, Germany became enabled to understand them
all, and to control them with the might of thought. Humanity
resounded from every breath of her spirit. Her classical litera-
ture became more various, bolder, and freer, than that produced
by the earlier ripened culture of her neighbours. A century
and a half after the decline of the ancient German civilisation it
was possible for Holderlin thus to apostrophise the new Germany :
"O sacred heart of the peoples, O Fatherland I j
All-patient, thou, like our silent Mother Earth,
And misunderstood, although now from thy depths
Strangers draw all that they have of the best."
Simultaneously there awakened the state-constructive powers
of the nation. Amid the disintegration of outworn imperial forms
and undeveloped territories, the young Prussian state raised its
7
History of Germany
head ; and in Prussia, henceforward, centred the political life of
Germany. Just as nearly a thousand years before, the crown of
Wessex had united all the Saxon kingdoms to form the English
state, and just as the Kingdom of the Franks, starting from the Isle
de France, continued to enlarge throughout the Middle Ages until
it had conquered and united the isolated baronies and communes, so
also out of the sundered fragments of the German nation did the
monarchy of the Brandenburg-Prussian Mark create once more a
Fatherland. It is, as a rule, only the virile formative energy
of youthful peoples that achieves success in the fierce struggle
for the beginnings of national unity ; but here the change was
effected in the clear noonday light of the new time, against the
opposition of the whole of Europe, in a contest with the legitimate
authority of the Holy Empire, and with the countless opposing
forces of the complex German life, hardened and concreted by
long historical tradition. This was the most arduous movement
towards national unity which Europe has ever known, and nothing
but the ultimate, complete, and brilliant success of that unity has
finally compelled an unwilling world to believe in the reality of
the work which had often before been so vainly attempted.
It was impossible that the reconstitution of the German
state should now be effected by the emperor and the empire.
With the rise of Protestantism, the imperial constitution, which
had for long been in an extremely fragile condition, became a hateful
lie. The ultimate consequences of all great human actions remain
concealed from the doer. Just as Martin Luther, when he broke
loose from the mediaeval Church, was unaware that he was opening
the road for the secular science of our days, which would have
been a scandal to his piety, so also, when he freed the state
from the rule of the Church, did he lay an axe to the roots of that
Roman imperialism of which he was himself a faithful subject. As
soon as the majority of the nation had adhered to the Protestant
doctrine, the theocratic office of the emperor became as
untenable as was its principal prop, the support of the spiritual
princes. The crowned guardian, and the bishops of the Old
Church, could not rule a heretical nation. In the first years of
the Reformation, in the Reichstag of 1525, the demand made itself
audible that the spiritual prerogatives should pass under the control
of the temporal princes ; and at all' subsequent great turning-
points of the policy of the realm the necessary idea of secularisa-
tion continually recurred, springing from the very nature of things.
8
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
But the unsatisfactory balance of forces and counter-forces which
interfered with every movement of the empire rendered nugatory
even this irrefutable consequence of the Reformation. The majority
of the spiritual princes retained their prerogatives, and the fantastic
claims to dominion of the Sacra Cesarea Majestas were also retained,
although the German kingship in which was invested this Roman
imperial crown had long been devoid of all authority, and although
all the prerogatives of the ancient monarchy had long since passed
into the hands of the territorial princes.
Outside the limits of the imperial heritage two-thirds of the
German people became Protestant, and Protestant also became
all the great princely houses, with the exception of the Wittelsbachs
and the Albertines. Official Germany, however, remained Catholic.
Adherents of the ancient creed retained the majority in the Council
of Electors and in the Council of the Princes, and the imperial
dominion continued to preserve its semi-priestly character. In
virtue of his coronation, the emperor became " Participator in
Our Spiritual Office " and made common cause with the Pope and
the Church to testify his gratitude for the appropriate ecclesiastical
honours ; ex officio, he was prebend of several Catholic foundations,
and therefore received Holy Communion hi both kinds. Under this
Roman theocracy, heresy could not legally exist. The first great
political act of the German Lutherans was the Protest of Spires,
which gave the new faith its name ; herein it was stated in set
terms that the Protestants would not submit to the majority in
the empire. In the struggle with the empire which was thus
begun Protestantism maintained itself henceforward as an element
of continuous sedition. Protestantism enforced the religious
peace treaties, which were in flat contradiction with the ancient
imperial oath and with the fundamental ideas of the Holy Roman
Empire, and constituted a state within the state in order to safe-
guard the dearly gained religious freedom against the majority in
the Reichstag. The Corpus Evangelicorum, though somewhat
milder in form than the Confederations of the Polish Nobles'
Republic, was, like these, an anarchistic makeshift utterly opposed
to the conception of the state.
Nothing but a revolutionary change, nothing but a trans-
formation of the Holy Empire into a federation of temporal states,
could rescue the nation from such a falsification of its political
life ; nothing but a national authority which honourably recog-
nised its own temporal character could furnish justice alike for
Catholics and Protestants on the common ground of the law.
9 B
History of Germany
This conviction forced itself upon both the great publicists of seven-
teenth century Germany ; the spokesman of the Swedish party,
Hippolytus a Lapide, was a passionate advocate of a war of anni-
hilation against the imperial rule ; the judicious Samuel Puffendorf
regarded the realm as hastening " with the certainty of a rolling
stone " towards its transformation into a confederation of states.
Even official Germany had an obscure perception how senseless
the old forms had become in the new time. The religious peace
treaties only pretended to be truces, and encouraged the nation
to hope for better times, for " by God's grace a union shall
be effected in matters of belief." The Peace of Westphalia
commissioned the next Reichstag to effect a comprehensive
revision of the constitution, whereby the newly acquired powers
of the estates of the empire should be harmonised with the ancient
rights of the imperial crown. But here also the House of Austria
hindered attempts at reform. The Imperial Assembly of 1654
broke up without effecting a settlement, and since the next Reichs-
tag continued to meet in Ratisbon for a century and a half without
ever attempting its most important duty, the German state
remained in actuality without a constitution. In its public law
were embodied the wreckage of three fundamentally diverse
constitutional forms, which existed side by side and uncombined :
the shadowy vestiges of the ancient monarchical unity ; the im-
perfect beginnings of a new confederation of states ; and, finally,
and endowed with far more vitality than either of these, the par-
ticularism of the territorial powers.
Throughout all changes, the imperial dominion maintained
its ancient claims to autocracy, and would never admit that an
imperial law could limit the prerogatives of the emperor. The
imperial suzerain continued to receive the homage of his kneeling
subjects, the estates of the empire, himself seated the while, and
with covered head. As far as his arm could reach, he continued
to exercise judicial authority through the Aulic Council of the
Empire, as if he had still hi reality remained what he had once
been in the days of the Sachsenspiegel the supreme judge con-
cerning property, fiefs, and life and death. At the corona-
tion, the herald continued to brandish the imperial sword towards
the four winds of heaven, because the whole of Christendom was
subordinate to the double eagle. The imperial law continued to
speak solemnly of the fiefs of the empire as extending along the
Riviera past Genoa and far into Tuscany ; the three chancellor-
ships for Germany, Italy, and the Arelate were still in existence ;
10
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
Nomeny and Bisanz, and numerous other estates which had long
passed to strangers, were still summoned to vote in the Reichstag ;
the Duke of Savoy was regarded as the imperial vicar in Walsch-
land (Italy) ; and no one could say where stood the boundary-
stones of the Holy Empire. To the poetic vision of the youthful
Goethe it seemed that in the ancient Prankish pageant of the
imperial coronation the richly coloured glories of the old empire
were recalled to life ; but to one who looked at the matter with
the cool vision of the man of the world, like the Ritter von Lang,
this imperialism of effete memories and boundless claims seemed
a preposterous mummery, as ludicrous and absurd as the sword
of Charlemagne, which bore the Bohemian lion on its blade, or
as the choir-boys of St. Bartholomew's, whose clear-toned fiat!
resounding from the chancel acclaimed in the name of the German
nation the choice of the ruler of the world.
The transformation of the ancient Teutonic electoral monarchy
into a hereditary monarchy secured national unity for most of the
peoples of Western Europe. Germany, however, remained an
electoral realm, and the union of its crown with the House of Austria
during three centuries served only to arouse new forces of disinte-
gration and discord, since for our people the imperial rule of the
Hapsburgs was a foreign dominion. The Old German South-
eastern Mark, separated from Middle Germany by the powerful
Slav realm of Bohemia, went its own way early in the Middle Ages,
and became perforce involved hi the confused political life of the
Hungarian-Slav- Wallachian racial compost of the Lower Danubian
lands. By the House of Hapsburg, this area was made the nucleus
of a powerful polyglot empire, absolved by means of privileges,
false and true, of all serious duties towards the German realm.
As early as the sixteenth century it had acquired so secure an
independence that the Hapsburgs were enabled to entertain the
idea of a union of these remoter regions with then: German heritage
to form a kingdom of Austria. Amid the throng of foreign peoples,
the valiant tribes of the Alps and the Upper Danube faithfully
preserved then- German type, and with then* fresh and vigorous
disposition took a notable part in the intellectual creative work
of our Middle Age. The art of chivalry nourished at the cheerful
court of the Babenbergs ; hi the days of the Hohenstaufen
emperors, the greatest poet of the time was a son of the Tyrolese
Alps ; the beautiful market-halls of St. Stefan and of St. Marien-am-
Stiegen bore witness to the pride and the artistic diligence of the
German burghers of Lower Austria. In this region also, the German
IT
History of Germany
spirit now allied itself to the joyful awakening of the reformed
doctrine; in Bohemia, the Hussites again became active; and at
the opening of the century of the Reformation the greater part
of the German-Austrian crown lands adhered to the faith of our
people. Thereupon the religious bigotry of the imperial house
let loose over Austria all the horrors of national murder, and amid
frightful atrocities the dominion of the Roman Church was restored
by the imperial saviours. Those of truly German spirit, those
who would not bow their necks beneath the foreign yoke, the best
of the Bohemians, left their country by hundreds of thousands
to find a new home in the lands of the Protestant princes.
Those who remained, lost in the school of the Jesuits the vital
energy of the German spirit, lost their bold conscientiousness, lost
their moral idealism. By ecclesiastical oppression, the profoundest
roots of the national life were destroyed. The bright gaiety of
Austrian Teutondom declined into a thoughtless hedonism, and the
frivolous people soon habituated itself to the false bonhomie of a
priestly rule which knew well how to conceal its cold contempt for
humanity beneath agreeably indulgent forms.
The Peace of Westphalia gave a legal sanction to this last
great victory of the Counter-Reformation. The emperor gave his
assent to the equality of the three confessions, only on condition
that this equality should not exist in his own hereditary dominion.
From that day Austria has remained apart from the community
of German life. The one thing that still gave meaning and reality
to the tattered imperial constitution, the secure freedom of religious
belief, did not exist in the Hapsburg lands ; and at the very time
when Germany was displaying in flaunting peace-festivals its
rejoicing over the final attainment of religious harmony, the emperor
was affixing to the church-doors in Vienna and Prague, in Graz and
Innsbruck, the Papal Bull which condemned the conclusion of
peace. After the peace, the imperial house continued to work
unceasingly for the eradication of heresy. For a hundred years
after this date, until the death of Charles VI, the waves of Protes-
tant emigration from Austria towards the German north con-
tinued to flow, though becoming ever smaller as the years elapsed,
until all the hereditary dominions of the empire had passed into
the death-slumber of religious unity. At the beginning of the Thirty
Years' War, the Bohemian County of Glatz was Protestant through-
out, except for one single Catholic commune. When the grenadiers
of King Frederick entered this region the people were Catholic
to a man, and in the centre of the freshly proselytised country there
12
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
reared its head the gracious pilgrimage-church of Albendori, a
monument of victory for the battle of the White Mountain. Hence-
forward the German-Austrian lands pursued a life apart, alienated
from then- Catholic neighbours in Bavaria by tribal hatred and
ancient political hostility, and jealously shut off from all contact
with the North German heresy. Intercourse between Bohemia
and the Lower Elbe, which in the Middle Ages was so lively that
the Emperor Charles IV could hope to establish a great Elbe empire
extending from Prague to Tangermunde, came to an end ; all the
old fruitful interchange of influences between north-eastern and
south-eastern Germany utterly ceased ; and at the frontier between
Saxony and Bohemia there gradually became manifest a sharp
division of nationalities, a fundamental contrast of ideas and of
customs. Into this separate world of the south, hardly a murmur
made its way of the spiritual strains of the reawakening German
poetry, or of the free discourse of our youthful science. While
the young people of Germany were weeping over the sorrows of
Werther, and while they were feeling with Robber Moor a fierce
contempt for the poverty in action displayed by their quill-driving
age, pleasure-loving Vienna was glorifying the dull caricatures of
Blumauer's travesty of the iEneid. The works of the great
Austrian composers were the only things serving to show that
the creative energy of the German spirit was not yet utterly extinct
in the beautiful home of Walther von der Vogelweide. Not until
the nineteenth century did the isolated Germans of the South-
eastern Mark once more find the power enabling them to follow with
a lively understanding all the work of modern German civilisation.
In this way the policy of the Danubian land, inspired by its
Catholic unity of faith, was for long utterly foreign to the aims of
our people. This policy cleft the old empire asunder, creating
the much-deplored German dualism. So long as the Germans
remained true to themselves it was impossible for them ever to
abandon their resistance to the foreign dominion of the Haps-
burgs. As the centuries passed, the House of Austria became so
closely associated with the Roman imperial crown that in the
popular estimation the two seemed almost inseparable. The one
man to hold the imperial title during recent centuries who was not
an Austrian, Charles VII, seemed to his contemporaries almost an
anti-emperor. A profound inner kinship united the degermanised
emperorship with the Papal See, its opponent of former days.
The policy of Vienna, like that of Rome, exhibits that char-
acteristic of hypocritical unction which makes theocracy the most
History of Germany
immoral of all forms of government. In Vienna, as in Rome,
there was the like incapacity to understand the rights of an oppo-
nent. All the Hapsburgs, Maria Theresa with her serene amia-
bility no less than Leopold I, with his dull-witted pride, endured
the assaults of fate in the firm conviction that their line was under
the special favour of God, and that only wicked and godless men
could resist the pious Archducal House of Austria. Everywhere
and always they displayed the same rigid immobility amid the
storms of the centuries. Every ignominious peace which the might
of history forced upon the ancient imperial house was subscribed by
the Hapsburgs with a tacit reservation that when the hour should
come the inalienable rights of the imperial authority would be
fully restored. Everywhere and at all times there was the same
audacious weaving of myths and distortion of right. Whilst
Maria Theresa was rising against the rightful emperor, Charles VII,
she herself displayed the moral indignation of injured imperial
majesty ; when, thereupon, King Frederick anticipated her
threatened attack, her husband, who up to now had lived at her
court as a simple private individual, assumed the imperial sceptre,
and condemned the enemy of the Queen of Hungary as an enemy
of the emperor and of the empire ; confidently, and as if it were a
matter of course, the little House of Lorraine then revived all the
claims to dominion that had been made by the ancient imperial
race ; and just as the Popes, according to their own fable, sit upon
the throne of the chief of the Apostles, so did the Lorrainers behave
as if the Hapsburgs had never died out. In Vienna, just as in
Rome, the welfare of the people was ignored with the same courtly
cold-bloodedness ; and as soon as religious unity had been firmly
established and the passive obedience of the subjects had been
assured, the whole might of Austria was directed to without. The
life of the state was concentred in European politics, whilst at
home the old-established administration pursued its leisurely course
in accordance with its outworn forms. Nothing was done for the
development of an orderly system of government, nothing for
the general well-being or for general culture ; no attempt was
made to undertake those inconspicuous but arduous duties of in-
ternal politics which form the most secure foundation for the life
of a healthy secular state. During centuries, the history of Austria,
while it tells us of many capable diplomatists and military com-
manders, has no word to say of a single great administrator. First
under Maria Theresa did the crown recall to mind the primary duties
of the monarchy-
H
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
None the less, even in the confused compost of the Hapsburg-
Burgundian heritage, the leaven of the state-constructive energy
of modern history, pressing everywhere towards the consolidation
of dominion, began to work. Under Leopold I, Hungary was
conquered, and the crown of St. Stephen became a hereditary
appanage of the House of Austria. Therewith begins the history
of modern Austria as a great power, just as contemporaneously
modern German history begins with the Great Elector. The
Hapsburg possessions became a geographical unity, and the Danu-
bian empire found the focus of its military power in the warlike
peoples of Hungary. Henceforward strong economic and political
interests associated Germany with the thronged peoples of this
south German world, in which Germandom was able only with
difficulty to maintain a spiritual preponderance. In the course of
the long and glorious Turkish War, a sentiment of community
became established between the German, Hungarian, and Slav
companions-in-arms. The conquest of Hungary completed that
which the policy of the Counter-Reformation had begun, the
severance of Austria from Germany. As long as the Turkish
pashas were massed upon the Konigsburg of Buda, Austria was
contending with the eastern barbarians on behalf of German
civilisation ; it was only with the help of Germany, with the aid
of the good swords of the men of the Mark, of Saxony, of Bavaria,
that the Turks were driven out of Hungary. But when the Porte
declined into weakness, this last bond which had still united our
nation to the Austrian imperialism, the bond of a common danger,
was torn asunder. Germany and Austria were henceforward two
independent realms, connected only in an artificial union by the
forms of public law. For many decades to come, the destruction
of these false forms remained the chief task of German history.
Step by step the national unity of the new Austria became
more firmly established. By the Pragmatic Sanction was pro-
claimed the indissolubility of the imperial dominions. Thereupon
the greatest of all the Hapsburg rulers bestowed upon the Hapsburg
heritage, hitherto united only by the imperial house, the clergy,
the nobility, and the army, a scanty common constitution. Maria
Theresa founded the system of the Austro-Hungarian dualism.
She established the Bohemian-Austrian chancellorship as supreme
authority in the Cisleithan crown-lands, whilst the dominions
under the crown of St. Stephen preserved their old-established legal
rights. Thus with a sure hand were designed the forms which
alone could hold together these areas of excessive national contrasts.
History of Germany
After many vain attempts to form a unified state or a federation of
states, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy has always returned to
the ideas of the empress. The stresses and the glories of the
Theresan days served also to give stability to the state. During
eight years of fierce fighting the brave Hapsburg empress, vigor-
ously supported by her faithful subjects, maintained the heritage
of her house against a powerful coalition. During the Seven
Years' War, however brightly might shine the star of King Frederick,
compelling the admiration even of the conquered, the imperial
army nevertheless bore away the palm of victory at Kolin and
Hochkirch, rejoiced over the heroic greatness of its Loudon, and
came out of the mighty struggle with a well-justified sense of
satisfaction. Long before there existed an Austrian empire, it
was customary in Europe to speak of the Austrian state and the
Austrian army.
The possessorship of the crown of St. Stephen made it im-
possible for the imperial house to pursue a consistent aim in Euro-
pean policy. The conqueror of Hungary, Eugene of Savoy, showed
to the state the road of promise towards the Black Sea. It now
became the natural aim of the Danubian empire to press onward
towards the mouth of the great river, and to subordinate to its own
predominant civilisation the Slav-Wallachian peoples of either bank.
Distant Belgium, which continually threatened to involve the state
in the affairs of Western Europe, now became an inconvenient
burden ; as early as the days of the Silesian War began the attempts,
thenceforward continually repeated, to exchange for some nearer
province this untenable and remote area of occupation. Yet
the imperial house never learned, in a mood of wise concentration,
to turn its united powers against the south-east. In this realm of
conflicting nationalities, a national policy was simply impossible ;
never, and least of all in that despotic epoch, has public opinion
exercised any influence upon Austrian diplomacy. The conduct of
Austria in European affairs has invariably been determined by the
personal preferences of its rulers. The power of the house was
originally based upon a bold and cunning family policy, greedily
seeking extended influence in all directions, but without definite
plan and without question as to the peculiarities or the position
in the world of the conquered areas. The notions of this dynastic
statecraft and the glorious memories of imperial world-dominion
long remained active in the new Danubian realm. The Austrian
court clung firmly to its dominant position in the German empire ;
it endeavoured, by the conquest of Bavaria, to connect the upper
16
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
Austrian possessions on the Rhine with the nuclear regions of the
monarchy ; from the days of Charles VI onward it revived the
Italian policy of the Spanish Hapsburgs, endeavouring to maintain
its ascendancy on the further side of the Alps, conducting all the
while a rapid succession of rash onslaughts on the Poles and the
Turks this excessive and ill-conceived lust of dominion leading
the powerful state from defeat to defeat.
Thus the imperial power was hostile to the Protestant-German
culture, was indifferent to the European tasks of German policy,
and regarded with the aloofness of a midland country the com-
mercial interests of our coasts. The ill-defined authority of the
imperial rule was for the Hapsburg-Lorrainers simply a welcome
means for the forcible exploitation of the fighting strength of the
German nation in pursuit of the aims of the House of Austria, and
for the attainment of their own aggrandisement by the misuse
of the forms of the imperial law. The time-honoured imperial juris-
diction became the playground of pettifogging arts, and Germany's
foreign policy an incalculable game. The empire, now exposed by
the court to foreign attacks, and now involved in un-German
quarrels, had ever to pay the price for Austria's defeats. Mainly
through the fault of the Hapsburgs, Holland and Switzerland,
Schleswig-Holstein, Pomerania and the Ordensland, Alsace and
Lorraine, were lost to Germany. These were irreparable losses, less
shameful for the semi-foreign power which was unable to combine
its imperial duty with the interests of its own house, than for the
German nation, which failed always after such disasters to find
energy to tear up its pact with Austria.
The imperial dominion was rooted in a lost past, and therefore
found its natural opponents in the secular princes, whose energies
were on the increase, while its adherents were drawn from the rotten
and degenerate portions of the empire. " Ecclesiastically endowed
Germany " constituted the kernel of the Austrian party that
luxuriantly flourishing spiritual province of German life which,
having been restored to the Roman Church through the victories
of the Counter-Reformation, henceforward led an easy life under
the lax rule of the crozier, rejoicing in nepotism and sensuality.
These Catholic regions, surrounded and subdivided by Protestant
areas, could not remain so utterly estranged from the national
life as were the hereditary dominions of the imperial house. To
many a gentle-spirited and learned prince of the Church, the ideas
of the age of enlightenment were welcome. But the political
energy of the spiritual states remained lost beyond hope of rescue ;
History of Germany
and in Cologne, Mainz, and Treves the mass of the people were so
untouched by the thought of the new century that the subsequent
loss of the left bank of the Rhine seemed to cause hardly a per-
ceptible wound to the spiritual life of Germany. The powerful
Catholic nobility likewise adhered to the emperor, exercising control
through its prince-bishoprics over three of the electorates and a num-
ber of the princely thrones of the empire, and finding in the service of
the Archducal House of Austria comfortable sinecures for its sons.
Even the diets of the temporal principalities looked for help to the
emperor when they wished to defend their own individual privileges
against the common rights of the new monarchy. Unquestionably
the Catholic majority turned a favourable eye towards the imperial
court, what time the factions of the realm were tearing one another
to pieces, and while their mutual suspicions were stifling all possi-
bilities of reform, and while every power that might threaten the
imperial rule was held in check by other opposing forces. The
traditional reverence of the smaller princes for the Archducal House
of Austria, their mutual envies, the influence of the father-con-
fessors upon the numerous princely converts, and the abundance
of honours and privileges with which the Hofburg rewarded the
faithful, secured support at this epoch even from the Protestant
courts ; in many of the princedoms the chancellor was simul-
taneously an imperial minister entrusted with the task of attending
to Austrian interests in his own court. So extensive a use of
these indirect means for the control of the German nobility was made
by a power regardless of the laws of the empire and the duties of
German policy, that an able partisan of the imperial house, Baron
von Gemmingen, wrote in an unguarded moment : " The House
of Austria must either be the ruler or the enemy of the German
realm."
Side by side with these ruins of a declining monarchical
authority used to further foreign ends, the imperial constitution also
contained the beginnings of a federal order. These were an inherit-
ance from that great period of reform when Berthold of Mainz,
Frederick of Saxony, and Eitelfritz of Zollern, as leaders of the
state of princes, had made a bold attempt to transform the German
community into a powerful federal state. From this time date the
organisation of local government, and also the imperial chamber
or federal court of justice formed by the estates of the empire. But
as the emperor weakened the efficiency of this tribunal of the
estates by the competitive authority of his own monarchical
18
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
aulic council, the majority of the more powerful princes of the
empire were able to withdraw their domains from the jurisdiction of
the federal court of justice. In Swabia, Franconia, and on the Rhine,
where a crowd of bishops and imperial knights, of princes and free
cities, of abbots and counts, were massed together in extraor-
dinary complexity, respect for the prefects and for the provincial
assemblies still sufficed at times to maintain a degree of order,
and to unite the pigmy military contingents of the estates into
larger units. In the north and the east, however, the change
of administration never became firmly rooted. Here, since the
Peace of Westphalia, the spiritual privileges had been almost
entirely destroyed, and the powerful temporal princes were suffi-
cient unto themselves. As out of an enlightened modern world, the
North German looked boldly over the confused medley of little
states in the south-west, of which he spoke mockingly as " the
empire." All that was young and vigorous in Old Germany was
in revolt against the constricting forms of the imperial constitution.
The particularism of the temporal princes remained, however,
the most vigorous political force in the realm. The Holy Empire
was, in fact, what Frederick the Great termed it the illustrious
republic of the German princes. From the time of the Peace of
Westphalia onward, its estates possessed the power of contracting
alliances, and wielded a real sovereignty alike in spiritual and in
temporal affairs. Only the name of sovereignty was lacking.
The princes disregarded the imperial authority just as life dis-
regards death. Not one of the temporal states which had arisen
upon the ruins of the ancient tribal dukedoms comprised a well-
rounded area, not one of them represented a self-contained German
tribe ; they all owed their existence to dynastic political arts
which, by war and marriage, by purchase and exchange, by services
and treasons, had assembled isolated fragments of the disintegrated
empire and knew how to retain these in a firm grip. This domestic
policy was a necessary outcome of the imperial constitution. The
nation was mediatised, only the master-castes were directly repre-
sented in the empire ; at the Reichstag it was not the states
but the princely houses that were represented ; it was the
creed of the princely house and not that of the people which deter-
mined whether an estate of the empire should be reckoned Protes-
tant or Catholic ; in a word, the imperial law knew nothing of
states, but recognised only the land and the scions of princely
houses. The changing events of a tumultuous history had led to
an extraordinary confusion of territorial boundaries, and had
19
History of Germany
destroyed in the members of the German princely order, all brotherly
sense of justice and all respect for the possessions of their fellows.
Each coveted his neighbour's land, and was always ready to seize
it with the help of foreign power. The land-hunger and the dynastic
pride of the great princely houses threatened the utter destruction
of the empire. Long did Saxony and Bavaria strive to attain the
kingly crown ; the Palatinate desired to raise to the dignity of a
Kingdom of the Rhine its dominions on the Lower Rhine, and thus
to obtain supremacy in the empire.
Nevertheless, in the life of these temporal princedoms there
was comprised almost all which we denote to-day by the name of
German statecraft. It remains the historic glory of our great
nobility that the princes of Germany did not, as did the Polish
magnates, use the power they had snatched from the national
monarchy solely to increase the renown of their own houses, but
expressly endeavoured to fulfil, within the limits of their narrow
opportunities, the political duties which the empire had failed to
undertake. The imperial house pursued its European schemes, and
the Reichstag quarrelled about empty forms, but in the territorial
areas there was governorship. Here alone were found care and
protection for the laws, for the well-being, and for the culture of the
German people. In their struggle with the House of Hapsburg
our princes had formerly saved the treasure of German spiritual
freedom. In the subsequent prolonged period of inglorious peace,
there flourished that faithful electoral policy which, devoid of all
great ideas, and anxiously shrinking from the hazards of the Euro-
pean struggle, devoted its benevolent attention to the prosperity of
its own narrow area of domestic rule. The territorial fragments,
pieced together by miraculous chances, gradually grew to form an
exiguous political community. The territories became states. In
the narrows of their separate lives a new particularism came into
being. The subjects of the Elector of Saxony, the inhabitants of
the Palatinate, the Brunswick-Liineburgers, adhered faithfully
to their respective princely houses, which so long had shared joy
and sorrow with their little peoples. Their own happiness and that
of their children was in the hands of their prince, while the great
fatherland became to them no more than an obscure saga. After
the Thirty Years' War it was, once more, not the emperor and
the empire that helped the burghers and the peasants to reconstruct
their devastated habitations and to save out of the great destruc-
tion scanty fragments of their ancient well-being ; it was to their
own Karl Ludwig that the Palatiners owed the return of happier
20
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
days. The temporal princedom, whose unrestrained egoism
threatened the destruction of all the bonds of national unity, yet
remained an active and efficient element in the life of the nation.
If a reconstruction of united Germany were to be at all possible it
must be on the foundation of these territorial authorities.
In this chaos of contradictions every institution of the empire
had lost its meaning and every law had lost its safeguards. The
imperial house pursued its own aggrandisement at the cost of
Germany. The honourable office of the imperial chancellorship,
whose holders had formerly been the natural leaders of the nation in
every constitutional struggle, gradually became hi the hands of the
Archbishops of Mainz a pliable instrument of Austrian Catholic
party policy. The electoral capitulations, originally designed to
check any dynastic misuse of the imperial authority, now served
to free from all restraint the dynastic ambitions of the territorial
chiefs. Like the States General of the Netherlands, the Reichstag
had effected its own transformation from an assembly of the estates
into a Bundestag or federal diet, but never proved itself able, as did
the States General, to construct a healthy federal life. Everywhere
the forms of law were in conflict with the living power of history.
The imperial constitution bestowed the right of the majority upon
the weakest estates and forced upon the more powerful the convic-
tion that what was given to the empire was taken from their own
freedom. A thick fog of phrases and lies enveloped the Gothic
ornamentation of the ancient imperial structure ; hi no state of
the modern world was there so much pertinacious and solemn
falsehood. The pious imperial and fatherly intimations of the
degermanised imperial majesty, the ardent patriotic asseverations
of the estates of the empire at a tune when they were leagued
with the foreigner, the boastful talk of German liberty and of the
unbowed neck of the nation everything in this activity at Ratisbon
seems to us a colossal lie.
After those weary days following the Peace of Augsburg, in
which the ancient German pride was transformed into a timorous
philistinism, there made itself manifest in our people a mean-
spirited tendency to seek consolation for the intolerable and the
painful, and German patience did not disdain to provide scientific
explanation and justification even for the absurdity of this imperial
constitution. Vainly did Samuel Puffendorf raise his warning
voice and describe the empire truthfully as apolitical monstrosity.
As the passions of the wars of religions gradually subsided, and the
21
History of Germany
falsity of the theocratic imperial forms ceased to be felt to any
considerable extent in daily life, there was no disturbance in the
passively obedient spirit of learned legalism. Certain Cesarians of
the school of Reinkingk continued to maintain that the Holy
Empire was an absolute monarchy and that its emperor was the
true successor of the divine Augustus. Others, again, regarded
with favour the weakness of the empire and the undisciplined state
of its members as the Palladium of German freedom. The majority
considered happy Germany to be the realisation of the ideal of the
composite state, combining all the advantages of other constitu-
tional forms. Not even a Leibnitz could free himself from the
dominion of this world of dreams.
In the sloth of a national life of this character the well-grounded
sense of proportion, characteristic of the national genius, had begun
to disappear. An epoch of intolerable troubles had broken the
courage of the burghers and had accustomed the common man
to prostrate himself before the powerful. Our free-spirited tongue
learned to decline into a slavish obedience, and adopted that cring-
ing phraseology which has not to this day been entirely discarded.
The unprincipled raison d'etat of the age exercised its pernicious
influence even on civic life. A people greedy of money competed,
in corruption and intrigue, to secure the favour of the great ;
hardly even in the quiet of domestic life were there preserved any
traces of true-hearted kindliness. The nobleman, who was no longer
able in the diet to maintain his influence against the rising power
of the monarchy, endeavoured to secure it in other ways by
influence at court and by misuse of the common people. Never
in our history was the nobility more powerful, and never was it
more injurious to the life of the nation. The conspicuous example
of the Bourbon kingship had befooled the senses of our petty terri-
torial chiefs, so that the estate of princes forgot its ancient
fatherly care for the common people. The larger courts mis-
employed the newly acquired right of forming alliances ; they
became involved in European intrigues ; they founded splendid
armies with marshals and generals ; and distinguished among them
was the Elector Palatine, who was able to have an admiral upon
his revenue-boats on the Rhine. All of them, great or small,
endeavoured to vie in splendour with the Grand Monarque ; the
poorest country of Western Europe soon outshone all its neigh-
bours hi the multitude of its flaunting princely castles. There was not
a count of the empire who could get on without his Versailles, his
Trianon ; in the castle-garden at Weikersheim the entrance to the
22
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
seat of the realm of Hohenlohe was guarded by statues of the con-
querors of the world Ninus, Cyrus, Alexander, and Csesar. Neither
a sense of duty towards the monarchy, nor a spirit of responsibility
towards their own order, could impose moral restraints upon the
German princelings. Many of them regarded their empty and
purposeless existence as a curse, and many dissipated their energies
in unrestrained license.
There was no place in the Old German state for a co-operation
between the nobles and the commons, for an English Lower House.
The Hansa League had fallen as soon as the unified national powers
of the peoples of the west had conquered the two Indies ; the
glorious flag which in the Middle Ages had waved victoriously over
all the northern seas was hardly to be seen among the fleets of the
new transatlantic traffic. The nation was as completely estranged
from the ocean as was its imperial house. Among all the German
writers of the eighteenth century there is but one, Eustace Moser,
who voices the love of the sea and who knows how to prize the
liberating power of that commerce which binds the nations to-
gether. In the motionless atmosphere of our quiet midland life the
joyful sea-proverb which was still to be read on the Navigation House
in Bremen, "Navigare necesse est, vivere non necesse," sounded
like a mockery. Colonial wares were brought up the Elbe and the
Rhine in English and Dutch bottoms, and almost the only German
goods in the world-market were linen and metal wares. None of
the anciently celebrated imperial cities could maintain their historic
position. The waters of the Trave lay idle, the overland trade came
to an end, the history of Liibeck architecture ceased with the decline
of Gothic, that of Augsburg architecture with the epoch of the
Renaissance. Only in a few younger trade centres, such as Ham-
burg and Leipzig, did a new commerce slowly become established.
The old imperial towns shut themselves up within their walls,
anxiously cherishing their municipal privileges and their guild
customs, not venturing to express their views in the Reichstag, full of
alarm at the increasing power of their princely neighbours. During
long decades we find hardly an intimation in our history that these
once proud communities were still alive. In the servile atmosphere
of the new princely residences civic pride could not thrive, and
for this reason the country, whose Hanseatic heroes had once had in
their gift the kingly crowns of Scandinavia, now grew proverbial for
all that was petty and poor-spirited. Germany became the spec-
tacle, previously unknown in history, of "an ancient nation without
a capital city. Nowhere was there a focus of the national life such
23
History of Germany
as was possessed by the neighbouring nations in London, Paris,
Madrid, and even in Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Amsterdam.
Nowhere was there a site upon which the party struggles of a state-
guiding nobility and the culture and wealth of a self-conscious
burgherdom could come into contact with a reciprocally fertilising
influence. The energies of the nation were dispersed in endless
subdivisions, breaking up like the German River into a thousand
petty channels : each estate, each city, each territorial area was a
world by itself.
The full disgrace of this subdivision was manifested in the
defencelessness of the realm. In the days of her greatness Germany
had encircled her threatened eastern frontier with the iron girdle
of the marches ever ready for war. Now, when attack was ever
imminent from the west, the weakest, because the unarmed regions
of the empire, lay within the grasp of the greedy hands of France.
All along this " priests' quarter " of the Rhine, from Munster and
Osnabriick below to Constance above, was a confusion of petty states,
unfitted for any serious military preparation, forced into treason by
the recognition of their own weakness. Almost all the courts of the
Rhineland were pensioners of Versailles ; the first Rhenish federa-
tion of 1658 was esteemed by inspired patriots a glorious under-
taking for the safeguarding of German freedom. An area of nearly
three thousand six hundred square miles was composed of these
tiny states, not one of which extended over more than one
hundred and thirty square miles. The popular wit made a
mock of the soldiers of Cologne, who knitted their own
stockings, and of the fierce warriors of the Bishop of Hildesheim,
whose hats bore the inscription, " Give peace in our time, O
Lord ! " This region of Germany a third of the land, and its
richest portion was simply a burden in the wars of the empire. It
remains a striking testimony to the valour of Germany that, despite
this self-mutilation, the nation was never completely overthrown by
the rulers of France or of Sweden. But the German realm as a
whole hardly took a place in the second rank of the powers ; whilst
its own limbs, more powerful than itself, were playing independent
parts on the stage of European politics.
The imperial constitution has the aspect of a carefully con-
ceived system especially designed to enchain the energies of the
most warlike of all the nations. This unnatural state of affairs
was, in fact, only maintained hi its integrity by the watchful care of
the entire Continent. As once by reason of its strength, so now
by reason of its weakness, the Holy Empire remained the centre and
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
the foundation of the European system of states. Upon the
impotence of Germany and Italy were established the new powers
of Austria, France, Sweden, Denmark, and Poland ; thereupon were
grounded also the British command of the sea and the independence
of Switzerland and the Netherlands. The centre of the Continent
was kept enchained by a tacit conspiracy of all the other nations.
Foreigners made a mock of les querelles allemandes and of la mislre
allemande, and the Frenchman Bouhours asked scornfully whether
it were possible for a German to be a man of spirit. Never before
had the nation been so profoundly despised by its neighbours ; it
was only the ancient renown of the German warriors which could
not be disputed. The political state, however, which was respon-
sible for this general contempt of Germany was everywhere regarded
as the essential safeguard of European peace ; and our people,
whose reputation for national arrogance had once been as bad as is
that of the British to-day, repeated in parrot phrases the accusa-
tions of their jealous neighbours, and accustomed themselves
to look upon their fatherland with the eyes of the stranger. The
German political science of the eighteenth century enriched the old
illusions of German freedom with the new rallying cry of the free-
dom of Europe. All our publicists, not excepting Putter and
Johannes Miiller, warn the peace-loving world of the destructive
power of German unity, and conclude their praise of the Holy
Empire with the zealous exhortation : Woe to the freedom of this
quarter of the world if the hundreds of thousands of German
bayonets should ever learn to obey a single master !
A dispensation unsearchable in its wisdom chastises the nations
by those very gifts which they have so scandalously misused.
From very early days a many-sided and cosmopolitan broad-
mindedness was secured for our people by its position in the world,
by its inborn disposition, and by the course of history. The German
nation was endowed with a natural understanding of the Latin
world ; the Romance nationalities were established by German
conquerors upon the ruins of Roman civilisation ; the Germans
were closely akin by blood to the English and to the Scandinavians,
and had been from of old made intimately acquainted with the
Slavs by war and commerce ; during the Middle Ages, as a midland
people, they received civilisation from the south and the west,
and handed it on to the north and the east. Thus the Germans
became the most cosmopolitan of all the nations, even more recep-
tive of foreign ideas than their companions in fate, the Italians.
The impulse towards what was afar off became for us a destiny,
25 c
History of Germany
wherein lay at once the curse and the greatness of German life. The
centuries of plans for German world-dominion were succeeded by
an epoch of passive cosmopolitanism. The midland people received
the commands of all the world. As estates of the empire, or as
sponsors of peace, the great princes of Europe belonged to the
German empire and thus controlled its life. But the nation, becom-
ing familiarised with foreign dominion, cleaved with German fidelity
to the foreign flags. Particularist obscurity, a preference for the
foreign neighbour over the neighbour who was akin by blood,
flourished nowhere so luxuriantly as in the German provinces
belonging to foreign princes. The Holsteiner prided himself upon
his Danebrog ; the Stralsunder rejoiced in the glory of the three
crowns, and compassionated the Pomeranian of Brandenburg whose
ruler wore a mere electoral hat ; the successors of the conquerors
of the Vistula region, the proud families of the Huttens, the Oppens,
and the Rosenbergs, took Polish names, and, rejoicing in the freedom
of the Sarmatian nobility, ridiculed the marchland despotism of the
Prussian Duchy.
The old adventurous love of wandering remained, however,
unconquerable hi our active-minded race. For fully three cen-
turies, so long as the employment of mercenary troops continued,
a stream of German soldiers flowed into every country. The noise
of German blows was heard on every battle-field of Europe, before
the walls of Athens no less than in the green isle of Erin. The
flags of France, Sweden, and Holland, and the hardly less un-
Germaii imperial service, were regarded as more honourable than
the dull uniformity of garrison life at home : on his death-bed the
trusty old blade adjured his son to gain glory for his house and riches
for himself in the service of foreign crowns. The German regiments
of Bernard of Weimar formed the nucleus of the unconquerable
armies which were led to victory by Turenne and Conde; it
was in the German school that our neighbours learned how to
fight us. To foreign climes, also, was withdrawn a long series of
German statesmen, physicians, merchants, and men of learning
vigorous offshoots of the German stock, lost for ever to the father-
land. A spectacle at once dismal and imposing was this titanic
excess of energy of a people given over to the stranger. Every
attempt to write our history must remain altogether defective if it
fails to do justice to these workings of the German spirit and of
the German arms that were dispersed throughout the world. At
the very time when France was conquering the western marches
of the Holy Empire, Peter the Great was creating the new Russian
26
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
state with the aid of German energies. Even the princely houses
were seized by the national migratory impulse ; every ambitious
German court sought to establish itself on some foreign throne,
and the imperial house favoured this tendency in order to promote
the removal of troublesome rivals from within the empire. Ulti-
mately all the crowns of Europe, except those of Piedmont and the
Bourbon states, fell into the hands of princes of German stock ;
but the acquirement of this masterful position by the leaders of
our nobility served only to strengthen the centrifugal tendencies
within the realm, to enslave the German state all the more firmly
to the will of the outer world.
Over this decayed life of the community there was spread the
glamour of a history dating back from a thousand years. A tradi-
tion, never once interrupted, connected to-day with yesterday.
Anyone well versed in the history of the empire was a skilful counsel
in the lawsuits of his own day ; when the young lawyer Wolfgang
Goethe was gaining from Datt's folios scientific instruction con-
cerning the public peace and the legal procedure of the empire, he
could see the honest figure of the Ritter Goetz von Berlichingen,
seated sturdily upon the penitent's bench. Always the imperial
constitution remained the one and only bond of political unity for
our disintegrated people. In the very last year of the effective
life of that constitution, the Hamburg publicist Gaspari wrote :
" Through the emperor alone we are free ; without him we should
no longer be Germans." Through its unwieldy forms there con-
tinued to find expression that ancient Teutonic idea of the state
which even in the very earliest days of our history had manifested
the moral earnestness and the love of freedom of the Germans :
the imperial authority was protector of the common peace, and was
thus honourable even in its decay. The people could never com-
pletely lose a sense of unity so long as they continued to live under
a common law, and so long as the national community of spirit was
displayed at once in the science of jurisprudence and in the practice
of the courts. Even when the common law became gradually over-
grown by particularist legal forms, the national form of legal
procedure remained established, and the empire secured for the
nation the independence and high position of the judges. Every
right in the empire ultimately rested upon the rights of the em-
peror ; one who resisted the imperial majesty had the ground cut
from under his feet. " If I hold to the emperor, I shall remain
elector, and my son will be elector after me ! " such were the
words with which the temporising George William of Brandenburg
27
History of Germany
rejected the advances of Gustavus Adolphus. Throughout the
following century the same consideration stood in the way of every
bold resolution, whenever a revolutionary will declared itself,
whenever there was manifest a desire to cut new paths through
this overgrown wilderness of imperial law, at once so natural
and so unnatural. The policy of foreign nations and that of the
House of Austria, the self-interest and the mutual jealousies of the
smaller courts, the balance of political forces and the interests of
a social order hastening to destruction, cosmopolitanism and dreams
of German freedom, the legalist spirit and ancient custom, the
force of sloth and German fidelity all these things combined
to maintain the established order. In the middle of the eighteenth
century, in the general opinion of the world, the Holy Empire was
secure for a future of which no one could foresee the end.
2. THE PRUSSIAN STATE.
Upon the foundation of this imperial law and of its structure
of territorial states, and yet in sharp contrast with both, the Prus-
sian state came into existence. The vigorous will of the North
German tribes gave them from the earliest times a superiority
in state-constructive energy over the softer and wealthier popula-
tion of High Germany. Only so long as the crown was in Saxon
hands did the German monarchy remain a vigorous kingship ; its
power declined in the hands of the Franconians and of the Swabians,
chiefly in consequence of the haughty disobedience of the Saxon
princes. Then there arose in Low Germany the two powerful
political creations of the later Middle Ages the Hansa League and
the Order of Teutonic Knights, both independent of the imperial
authority and often at enmity with it. The north was the cradle
of the Reformation. It was against the resistance of the North
Germans that the Spanish dominion shattered itself ; and, after the
un-German policy of the Hapsburgs had evoked dualism in the
empire, the north was the chief home of the German opposition.
In the course of the seventeenth century the leadership of this
opposition passed to the Hohenzollerns from the unready hands of
the Wettins. The centre of gravity of German politics moved to
the north-east.
There, in the marches beyond the Elbe, a new North German
tribe had come into existence, consisting in part of the conquering
Lower Saxon stock, in part of immigrants from all the German-
28
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
speaking lands, but containing also a slight admixture of the
blood of the old Wendish indigenes. Hard were they, and
weather-proof, steeled by toil on a niggardly land, fortified
too by the unceasing combats of a frontier life, able and
independent after the manner of colonists, accustomed to regard
their Slav neighbours with the contempt of a dominant race,
as rugged and incisive as was compatible with the genial and
jovial solidity of the Low German character. Three times had
this sorely tried land begun the rough journeyman's work of
civilisation : first of all, when the Ascanian conquerors cleared
the pine-forests around the lakes of the Havel and built their
towns, fortresses, and monasteries in the lands of the Wends ;
next, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, when the first of the
Hohenzollerns laboriously re-established the peace and well-being
that had been destroyed by the Bavario-Lutzelburg dominion ;
and now once again had Brandenburg suffered from the horrors
of the Thirty Years' War, suffered more severely than the rest of
Germany, so that it was necessary to begin the work of civilisation
anew.
Throughout the Middle Ages the rough customs of this needy
frontier-land gave it an evil reputation in the empire. The sands
of the marches have provided never a saint for the Roman Calen-
dar ; very rarely did a minnesong make itself heard in the rude
courts of the Ascanian Margraves. The industrious Cistercians of
Lehnin laboured rather to acquire the reputation of diligent farmers
than to win fame in art and learning ; the sturdy burghers in the
towns of the Mark passed their lives in rough and homely toil, and
it was only the men of Prenzlau who could compare their Marien-
kirche with the fine buildings of the rich towns on the Baltic. It
was solely in warlike energy and vigorous ambition that the state
of the Brandenburgs was pre-eminent over its neighbours ; even
in the days of the Ascanians and of the Lutzenburgers, plans were
several times conceived for the foundation of a great north-eastern
power in this favourable position between the Elbe and the Oder,
between the petty states of Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and Silesia.
Still more exalted seemed the prospects of the Mark when the
burgraves of Nuremberg received the electoral hat ; Frederick I
was the leader of the German princes in the reform movement
in empire and Church, Albrecht Achill the admired leader of the
knightly nobility in their struggles with the towns. At the same
time within the state there began a bold and firm monarchical policy.
The Mark received, at the hand of Frederick I, the gift of public
29
History of Germany
peace, and enjoyed it before the Holy Empire; in the Mark earlier
than in other lands of the empire the indivisibility of the state
received legal expression in the laws of Albrecht Achill. The
nobility and the towns bowed their stubborn necks before the will
of the three first Hohenzollerns. But the early promises were not
fulfilled in the immediate sequel. The successors of these heroes
of lofty aims soon relapsed into the narrow comfort of German
electoral policy. They lost the barely acquired sovereign authority,
which for the most part passed once more to the diet ; for good or
for ill they made terms with their overbearing territorial nobles ;
like all the more powerful princes of the empire they endeavoured
to safeguard their administration and the legal rights of their
country against every onslaught of the imperial authority, remain-
ing the while well disposed and loyal to the imperial house ; late
and with hesitation did they enter the Lutheran Church, preferring
to abandon the leadership of the Protestant parties to the Electorates
of Saxony and of the Palatinate.
With good reason does King Frederick remark in the memoirs
of his house, that, just as a river first becomes of value when it is
navigable, so does the history of Brandenburg first become pro-
foundly significant towards the beginning of the seventeenth cen-
tury. Not until the days of the Elector John Sigismund were
three things effected which assured for the Mark a great future, a
development differing fundamentally from the life of the other
lands of the empire : the union with Brandenburg of the secularised
Teutonic Ordensland; the adhesion of the princely house to the
Reformed Church ; and, finally, the acquirement of the frontier
regions of the Lower Rhine.
Other princes of the empire, Catholics as well as Protestants,
had indeed enlarged their power by acquiring the possessions of the
ancient Church. But in the Ordensland the policy of the German
Protestants made its boldest seizure ; on the advice of Luther,
Albrecht Hohenzollern snatched from the Roman Church the
greatest of its ecclesiastical territories. The whole area of the new
Duchy of Prussia was spoil taken from the Church ; the rebellious
princes who effected this rape incurred the ban of the Pope and
of the emperor. The seizure never received the recognition of
the Roman See. When the Hohenzollerns of the Mark united the
ducal crown of their Prussian cousins with their own electoral hat
they broke for ever with the Roman Church ; henceforward their
state must stand or fall with Protestantism. At the same time
John Sigismund made his personal adhesion to the reformed faith
30
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
He thus laid the foundation for the subsequent union of his house
with the heroic race of Orange, emerging from the deplorable sloth
of a torpid Lutheranism into the fellowship of that Church which
alone pursued with warlike courage the political ideas of the Refor-
mation. In the Mark the Calvinistic ruler held sway over a
stubborn Lutheran people ; in Prussia Lutherans and Catholics,
and hi the lands of the Lower Rhine the adherents of all three of
the great Churches of Germany, lived in a variegated assembly.
Threatened by the religious hatred of its own subjects, the princely
house was constrained to extend an equal tolerance to all the
ecclesiastical parties. Thus originated the peculiar duplex atti-
tude of the Hohenzollerns towards our ecclesiastical life : with
the fall of the power of the Palatinate they became the leaders of
militant Protestantism in the empire, but had also to represent the
fundamental idea of the new German civilisation freedom of
religious belief. As early as the days of John Sigismund some of
the imperial statesmen declared, with the keen insight of hatred,
that it was greatly to be dreaded that the Brandenburgs would
now become the leaders of the whole Protestant party.
Together with the Prussian ducal crown the House of Hohen-
zollern acquired that proud colony of united Germany which had
been watered with the blood of all the German tribes even more
richly than the Mark, and which could boast a greater and more
heroic history than any other territorial region in the empire ; here,
in the " New Germany," the Teutonic knights had once built up
the Baltic great power of the Middle Ages. This remote frontier-
land, continually threatened by the enmity of the Polish nobles
and by that of its Scandinavian and Muscovite neighbours, involved
the state of the Hohenzollerns in the confused struggles of the
northern territorial systems. Thus when John Sigismund planted
his foot firmly on the shores of the Baltic, he simultaneously
acquired the Duchy of Cleves as well as the counties of Mark and
Ravensberg, a region of trifling extent, but one of great import-
ance alike to the internal development and to the foreign policy of
the state. These were regions of ancient and faithfully guarded
yeoman and city freedoms, wealthier and more highly civilised
than the needy colonies of the east, invaluable frontier posts on the
weakest border of Germany. In Vienna and in Madrid it was
regarded as a serious reverse that a new Protestant power should
establish itself upon the Lower Rhine where the Spaniards and
the Netherlander were fighting for the existence or non-existence
of Protestantism should establish itself under the very gates of
Cologne, the central stronghold of Romanism in the empire. Ir
its fifteen hundred square miles the young state included almosi
all the ecclesiastical, territorial, and feudal contrasts which fillec
the Holy Empire with open strife : with legs wide-straddled
like the Colossus of Rhodes, this state stood over the Germar
lands, its feet planted on the threatened frontiers of the Rhine anc
of the Niemen.
A power in such a situation could no longer remain confinec
within the narrow circle of German territorial policy. It wa;
constrained to attempt to round off its dispersed provinces int<
a more tenable shape ; it was compelled to negotiate and to figh
on behalf of the empire, for every attack upon German soil mad<
by the foreigner involved a wound of its own flesh. And yei
towards the imperial authority this state, ruling over Germai
land alone, occupied a position of fortunate independence. Fo:
those estates of the empire, whose dominions were entirely com
prised within the frontiers of the empire, it was always a matte:
of difficulty to conduct an independent European policy. Othe:
princely houses, whose acquirement of foreign crowns had with-
drawn them from the shackles of the imperial constitution, wen
lost to German life. The House of Brandenburg, too, received
many alluring appeals from distant lands : opportunities foi
dominion in Sweden, in Poland, in the Netherlands, in England;
seemed to offer. The force of circumstances, however, in ever>
case led the reasonable discretion of the princely house to with-
stand these dangerous temptations. A fortunate Providence
(for to the serious mind this cannot seem a matter of chance) com-
pelled the Hohenzollerns to remain in Germany. They had no need
of foreign crowns, for they owed their independent position in the
community of states to the possession of the Duchy of Prussia, a
German region to the core, bound to the motherland by all the roots
of its life, and at the same time outside the legal union of the empire,
Thus with one foot in the empire and the other outside, the Prus-
sian state acquired the right of conducting a foreign policy which
could pursue none but German ends. This state could take
thought for Germany without troubling about the empire and its
outworn forms.
It is not permissible to the historian to deduce the present
from the past, the future from the present, after the simple manner
of the natural philosopher. Man makes history. The advantages
of the situation become effective in the national life only through
the conscious will of those who know how to avail themselves ol
32
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
these advantages. Once more the state of the Hohenzollerns fell
from its hardly acquired position of power ; it moved towards
disaster so long as George William, the successor of John Sigis-
mund, looked sleepily over the world out of his heavy eyes. It
appeared as if this new attempt at the upbuilding of a German state
was again to end in the pettiness of particularism, as had happened
before, in the case of the Guelphs, the Wettins, the Palatiners,
whose power had seemed to establish itself under far more favour-
able auspices. Then came the Elector Frederick William, a landless
prince, the greatest German of his day, thrusting himself with a
vigorous impetus into the desert of German life, to inspire the
slumbering forces of his state with the might of his will. Never
since that time has the strength of the purposive monarchical will
of the developing German power known any decline. We can
conceive English history without William III, we can conceive
French history without Richelieu ; the Prussian state is the work of
its princes. There are few other countries in which monarchy has
so continually preserved the two virtues upon which its greatness
depends : a bold and far-seeing idealism which sacrifices the con-
venience of to-day to the greatness of to-morrow ; and that strong
sense of justice which ever constrains self-interest in the service
of the whole. It was only the wide vision of the monarchy that
could recognise in these poverty-stricken territorial fragments the
foundation-stones of a new great power. It was only in the sense
of duty to the crown, in the idea of the monarchical state, that the
mutually hostile tribes and estates, parties and churches, which
were comprised within this microcosm of German life, could find
protection and peace.
Even in the earliest j*ears of the Great Elector the peculiarities
of the new German power became plainly manifest. The nephew
of Gustavus Adolphus, who led his young army to battle with the
ancient Protestant warcry " With God," took over the ecclesias-
tical policy of his uncle. He was the first to find the saving solu-
tion for the quarrels of the Churches, demanding a general and
unconditional amnesty for all three confessions. This was the
programme of the Peace of Westphalia. But the toleration ex-
tended by the Hohenzollerns in the interior of their own dominion
went far beyond the prescriptions of this Peace. In accordance
with the imperial law Brandenburg was recognised as a Protes-
tant estate, and yet this was the first state in Europe in which
complete religious freedom was secured. In the Netherlands the
multiplicity of unassociated sects was dependent simply upon
33
History of Germany
anarchy, upon the weakness of the state ; but here freedom of
conscience rested upon the laws of a powerful state-organisation
which would not allow itself to be deprived of its right to super-
vise the Churches. In the other territories of Germany there
still everywhere existed one dominant Church, whose power
was restricted only in so far as it was unable altogether to forbid
the other creeds to hold religious services ; in Brandenburg the
throne stood free above all the Churches and protected their
equality. While Austria was forcibly expelling its best Germans,
an unparalleled hospitality threw open the frontiers of Branden-
burg to the toleration of every belief. How many thousand times
in the Mark was uplifted the hymn of gratitude of the Bohemian
exiles :
" Thy people, else in darkness, by error quite surrounded,
Finds here abundant house-room, secure, on freedom grounded 1 "
When Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, the Lord of
Brandenburg, as spokesman of the Protestant world, set himself
in bold opposition, and in his Edict of Potsdam offered protection
and shelter to the children of the martyr-Church. Wherever the
flames of the ancient religious hatred weie still raging among the
German people, the work of the Hohenzollerns was one of guar-
dianship and reconciliation. They summoned to the Spree the
Jewry of Vienna ; via facti, and without asking the leave of the
empire, they secured the Protestants of Heidelberg in the pos-
session of their churches ; for the Protestants of Salzburg they
provided a new home in East Prussia. Thus into the unpeopled
eastern Mark there streamed year after year an abundance of young
life ; the German blood which the Hapsburgs rejected fertilised
the land of their rival. At the death of Frederick II about one-
third of the population of the state was made up of the offspring
of immigrants who had found their way into the country since the
days of the Great Elector.
It was this Church policy of the Hohenzollerns which closed the
epoch of the religious wars, ultimately compelling the best of the
temporal princes to follow in Brandenburg's footsteps, and at the
same time depriving the spiritual estates of the last justification
for existence for why should there be any more spiritual princes
of the empire now that freedom was assured to the Catholic Church
beneath the wings of the Prussian eagle ? By the Peace of
Westphalia Frederick William acquired the great foundations of
Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Minden, and Kammin. No other state in
34
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
Germany was so greatly enriched by the goods of the Roman Church ;
yet the seizure was justified, for therewith were also taken over the
great tasks of civilisation which the Church of the Middle Ages
had of old performed for the immature state the duty of providing
for the poor and the work of popular education. The same need
for self-preservation which compelled the Hohenzollerns to main-
tain peace between Catholics and Protestants, forced them also
to mediate between the antagonisms within the Protestant
Church. From the time when John Sigismund first forbade the
Lutheran zealots to fulminate against the Calvinists, the idea of
Protestant union became characteristic of the Prussian state ;
and what had been begun simply from necessity became ulti-
mately a political tradition, became a matter of principle with the
princely house.
Just as the Prussian state secured for the Germans peace
between the Churches and enabled Germany to take part once
more in the activities of the civilised nations, so also did Prussia
restore what had been lacking since the opening of the days of
religious discord a coherent will against the foreign world.
Throughout Germany abundant energies were failing to find an
outlet in the narrow spheres that were open to them, so that
anyone with lofty ambitions hastened to some foreign country ;
then came Frederick William to grasp in his resolute hand the
scanty resources of the poorest region in Germany, compelling
his people to serve their own homeland, and showing Europe once
more the might of the German sword. The empire lived upon
ancient memories, preserving in the new Europe the political
forms of the Middle Ages ; but this North German power was
firmly rooted in the modern world; its vigorous state-authority
rose above the ruins of the old ecclesiastical dominion and above
the ancient rights of the estates ; it lived through the troubles of
the present with eyes fixed on schemes for a great future.
With a single blow, Frederick William made for his despised little
territory a place in the ranks of the European powers, so that, after
the battle of Warsaw, Brandenburg could stand side by side with
the ancient military states. This strongly -unified and warlike power
appeared to rise suddenly, like a new-made volcanic island, out of
the raging sea of conflicting sovereignties in Germany, and before
the wondering gaze of a people which had long ceased to believe
in rapid resolve and high endeavour. So vigorously blew the fresh
breeze of purposive political will through the history of the new
Prussian state, so tensely and vigorously were all the muscles of
35
History of Germany
its people turned to work, so gross appeared the disproportion
between ambition and means, that to friend and foe alike it seemed
for a century and a half that Prussia could be no more than an
artificial venture. The world regarded as the chance creation of
a few favourites of fortune, what was in reality the necessary
reconstruction of the ancient national state of the Germans.
In the great struggles for power of the European world, no less
than in the contests between the creeds within the German borders,
Prussia maintained a difficult intermediate position. So long as
Protestant Germany had remained prostrate and lacked the will
to arise, Europe consisted of two distinct state-systems which
rarely came into contact. The powers of the south and the west
were fighting for the dominion of Italy and for the Rhenish Bur-
gundian lands, while the powers of the north and the east disputed
for the ruined fragments of the Teutonic Ordensland, and for the
command of the Baltic Sea, the legacy of the Hanseatic League.
There was only one desire that was common to the east and to the
west, and this was to keep ever open the terrible abyss that yawned
in the middle of the Continent. Now uprose the youngest power of
Germany, greatly mocked as " the realm of the long borders."
Belonging to the European system, its dispersed provinces touched
the boundaries of all the great powers of the Continent. As soon
as Prussia began to move with an independent will the powers
of the west were involved in the affairs of the east, and the interests
of the two state-systems became ever more frequently and closely
intertwined.
The born opponent of the old order of Europe, established
upon Germany's weakness, Prussia stood in a world of enemies,
whose jealousies were her only salvation stood without a single
natural ally, for elsewhere in the German nation there was as yet
no understanding of the significance of this young force. This,
too, was in the time of that hard statecraft in which the state was
the mere incorporation of power, regarding the destruction of its
neighbours as a natural duty. Just as the House of Savoy won
through against the preponderant power of the Hapsburgs and the
Bourbons, so also, but in far more difficult circumstances, must
Prussia cut a way for herself between Austria and France, between
Sweden and Poland, between the sea-powers and the inert mass
of the German empire, availing herself of all the means furnished by
a reckless egoism, ever ready for a change of front, ever with two
strings to her bow.
To its very marrow, electoral Brandenburg came to realise
36
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
the extent to which foreign elements had eaten their way into
Germany. All the unbridled forces of feudal licence which strove
against the strict rule of the new monarchy looked for support
to foreign aid. Dutch garrisons were established along the Lower
Rhine and favoured the struggle of the estates of Cleves against
the German suzerain ; the diets of Magdeburg and of the Electoral
Mark looked for help to Austria ; the nobles of Konigsberg, Polish
in their sympathies, appealed to the Polish overlord for help against
the despotism of the Mark. In the struggle against foreign
dominion, the national unity of these dispersed provinces and
the repute of their ruler became established. Frederick William
destroyed the barrier of the Netherlands in the German north-
west, and drove the Dutch troops out of Cleves and East Frisia ;
he liberated Old Prussia from the Polish feudal suzerainty, and
forced the diet of Konigsberg to accept his own lordship. Then
he made his appeal to the deaf nation in the words, " Remember
that you are German!", and endeavoured to expel the Swedes
from the realm. Twice the disfavour of France and Austria served
to deprive the Brandenburger of the reward of his victories and to
cheat him of his dominion in Pomerania ; but none could rob
him of the glory of the day of Fehrbellin. At length, after long
decades of shame, there came a brilliant triumph of German arms
over the first military power of the age, and the world learned that
Germany could once more dare to assert her rights. The inheritor
of the^German ecclesiastical policy of Gustavus Adolphus, destroyed
the daring structure of the Scandinavian Baltic Empire which
had been established by the sword of the King of Sweden.
The two artificial powers of the seventeenth century, Sweden and
Holland, began to withdraw within their natural borders, and the
new state which arose in their place displayed neither the licentious
lust of conquest of the Swedish military power nor the monopoly-
seeking mercantile spirit of the Netherlands. It was German ; it
was satisfied to protect its own domain ; and to the plans of the
Bourbon for world-dominion it opposed the ideas of the Euro-
pean balance of power and of freedom for the nations. When the
Republic of the Netherlands seemed likely to succumb before the
onslaught of Louis XIV, Brandenburg boldly attacked the con-
queror. Frederick William conducted the one serious campaign
ventured by the empire for the reconquest of Alsace ; and on
his death-bed he concerted with his nephew of Orange the plan
for the rescue of Protestant and parliamentary England from the
arbitrary rule of the Stuarts, the vassals of Louis. Wherever this
37
History of Germany
young power stood alone its campaigns were victorious, but it was
everywhere unfortunate when Prussia was forced to involve itself
in the confusions of the imperial army.
Thus in its very inception the new structure of the state
showed itself a European necessity. At length Germany had again
found one who could extend the empire. With the rise of Prussia
there began the long and bloody task of the liberation of Germany
from foreign dominion. Despoiled by its neighbours for centuries
past, the empire now saw for the first time the foreign powers yield-
ing back a few fragments of German ground. In this single state
of Prussia there reawakened, though still but half-conscious and
as if drunken from prolonged slumber, the ancient stout-hearted
pride in the fatherland. The faithful landsfolk of the County
Mark began the little war against the French ; the peasants
of East Prussia put the Swedes to headlong flight. When the
peasant Landwehr of the Altmark, guarding the Elbe-dike against
the Swedes, wrote upon their flags, " We are peasants of little
wealth, and serve our gracious elector and prince with goods
and blood," the disjointed words breathed the same heroic spirit
as that which of old, in days of greater freedom, was voiced by
the warcry, " With God for King and Fatherland."
Whilst the power of the Hapsburgs was extending beyond the
limits of Germany, by the continuous control of destiny the state
of the Hohenzollerns pressed ever deeper into the inner current
of German life, at times against the will of its chief. Frederick
William never ceased to regret his inability to maintain, against the
opposition of Austria and Sweden, his hereditary Pomeranian claims
in the Peace of Westphalia. As King of the Vandals he hoped to
rule the Baltic from the harbour of Stettin, but was forced to content
himself with the Saxon- Westphalian Church lands as a substitute
for the mouths of the Oder. Yet this diplomatic reverse was in
reality advantageous to the state, which was thus preserved from a
half-German separate life on the Baltic, so that its central posi-
tion was strengthened, and it was forced to take part in all the
negotiations of internal German policy. Moreover, the whole of
North Germany was overlaid with a network of agreements respect-
ing hereditary claims which had been concluded during past
centuries by the far-seeing House of Hohenzollern. Any day
the fortune of death might bring some new enlargement to the
ambitious power.
The House of Hapsburg recognised, even earlier than the
Hohenzollerns themselves, how dangerous to the ancient consti-
38
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
tution of the Holy Empire was the growth of this modern North
German state. Although electoral Saxony still bore the title of
Director Corporis Evangelicorum, Prussia was the real leader of
German Protestantism; its monarchical order threatened the
whole structure of feudal and theocratic institutions which supported
the imperial crown ; its powerful army and its independent appear-
ance in the community of states, threatened the traditional system
of imperial domestic policy. In Silesia, in Pomerania, in the
dispute about the Jiilich-Cleves inheritance everywhere, filled
with misgivings, Austria encountered this dangerous rival. All the
imperial princes regarded with as much suspicion as was felt by
the court of Vienna, this restless state which threatened to
embrace the whole of the German north. Whenever a bold venture
was undertaken there arose throughout Germany a cry of alarm
concerning " the Brandenburg dominion thrusting itself yet
further into the realm." When the great Elector expelled the
Swedes from Diippel and Alsen, the princes of the west combined
with the crown of France to constitute the first Confederation of the
Rhine, for the protection of the Swedish realm. Since the imperial
house still exercised through the Breisgau and Upper Swabia a
military control over the whole of Southern Germany, in the South
German courts the dread of Austria's land-hunger was at times
greater than anxiety regarding distant Brandenburg ; but ulti-
mately all the smaller princes came to consider the imperial
court a great conservative force, whereas this newcomer in the
north was separated from the ancient order of German affairs by
a profound and irreconcilable opposition.
Thus the nation regarded the rise of the state of the Hohen-
zollerns with a hatred and alarm similar to that which had of
old been inspired in the Italian tribes by the conquests of Rome.
The free spirits of the time were already beginning to turn towards
the ideas of modern absolutism ; but the mass of the people still
cleaved to the ancient and traditional feudal forms which it was
the mission of the House of Brandenburg to abolish. Some of the
warlike deeds of Frederick William aroused, indeed, the admiration
of his contemporaries ; after his bold march from the Rhine to the
Rhyn he was greeted for the first time by the name of " the Great "
in the Alsatian folk-song. But such exalted moods were of brief
duration. The arrogant member that set itself up against the
empire, and yet was unable to cffer the nation a substitute for the
crumbling ancient order, was regarded with rage and hatred ;
Leibnitz, the inspired imperial patriot, declared, in an eloquent
39
History of Germany
memoir, that the Brandenburger must be punished by his peers
because he had led his army single-handed against the French for
the rescue of Holland. In this race, that was still lacking true
political insight, no one perceived that the leadership of sundered
peoples necessarily falls to that section among them which takes
upon itself the duties of the whole. All the more distressing,
therefore, became the vague foreboding that this active power must
be destroyed if it were not to expand to the detriment of the rest ;
and even as in the Middle Ages the popular wit was always directed
against that German tribe which happened to be inspired by the
thought of national unity, so now particularist anxiety and parti-
cularist self-complacence displayed their ridicule against the Marks.
The people mocked the poverty of the " sandbox " of a Holy
Empire, mocked the Brandenburg despotism ; the burghers of Stettin
fought desperately to preserve for their good town the advantages
of Swedish freedom, and to protect it from the yoke of the men of
blood from the Mark. The particularism of all the estates and of all
the provinces learned with horror that the Great Elector forced
his subjects to live as " members of one body," that he imposed
upon the dispersed dominion of the diets the commands of the
supreme central authority, and that he based his throne upon
the two pillars of monarchical dominion, the miles perpetuus and
permanent taxation. In the popular view, troops and taxes still
seemed extraordinary burdens, for days of special need. Frederick
William made the army a permanent institution, and weakened
the power of the separate estates of his realm by the introduction
of two taxes of general application : a general land tax in the
country and an excise in the towns, a manifold system of small
direct and indirect contributions, adapted to the poverty of the
exhausted national economy, and impinging upon the taxable
capacity to the widest possible extent. Throughout the empire
there was one common voice of disapprobation against these
first beginnings of the modern military and fiscal systems.
From the first days of its independent history, Prussia was the
best-hated of all the German states ; the imperial lands which
passed under the control of this princely house entered the new
community of states in almost every case amid loud complaints
and violent resistance, and yet all of them soon congratulated
themselves on their new lot.
The terrible and hopeless confusion of German conditions, the
hereditary respect of the Hohenzollerns for the imperial house, and
the domestic needs of their own state, surrounded as it was by
40
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
powerful enemies, made it impossible for many decades for the old
and the new Germany to come into open conflict each with the other.
Frederick William lived and worked in the hope of imperial reform.
With all the fiery impetuosity of his heroic nature, at the first
Reichstag after the Peace of Westphalia, he pressed for that redraft-
ing of the imperial constitution which had been promised at Osna-
briick. When this plan came to nothing, George Frederick of
Waldeck conceived the venturesome idea, that the Hohenzollern
himself should impose a new order upon the empire. He sug-
gested that there should be constituted a league of German
princes under the hegemony of the enlarged Brandenburg state.
The times, however, were not yet ripe. The Elector left his bold
adviser in the lurch, for he was forced to meet a more immediate
need, and to form an alliance with the emperor against the Swedes ;
subsequently he even abandoned the long-cherished plan of the
conquest of Silesia because he needed the help of Austria in his
struggle with France. Yet the way had been disclosed, and every
new disturbance of German life led the Prussian state back to
the twofold idea of the enlargement of its own dominion and of
a federal hegemony.
Frederick William's successor brought to his house with the
kingly crown a worthy place in the society of the European powers,
and he gave to his people the common name of Prussians. It was
only the need and the hope of Prussia's armed help that decided
the imperial court to accede the new honour to its rival. A
shudder went through the theocratic world : electoral Mainz
protested, the Teutonic Order demanded the restoration of the
ancient possession which now gave its name to the heretic king-
dom, and, for a century yet to come, the Papal Almanack continued
to recognise nothing more than the " Margrave " of Brandenburg.
To the grandson of Frederick I, the possession of a kingly crown,
with all the claims necessarily attaching to this position, seemed
a serious warning of the need for increasing the power and inde-
pendence of his state. But the weak spirit of the first king knew
little of such pride. A loyal imperial prince, he served the imperial
house, and fought in knightly fashion on the Rhine, in the artless
hope that the emperor would recover the fortress of Strasburg ;
he helped the Hapsburgs to beat the Turks, allowed his army for
a scanty pay to fight as an accessory force of Austria, and permitted
his naval forces to take part in the war of the Spanish succession.
It was then that the French first learned to dread the Prussian
infantry as the nucleus of the German army ; but the Berlin court
41 D
History of Germany
played no part in the political conduct of the war. While the brave
soldiers of Prussia were gaining fruitless renown in the campaigns
of Hungary, the Netherlands, High Germany, and Italy, Sweden
was carrying on a struggle of despair against the powers of the
north ; but Prussia failed to take advantage of its central position,
and thus to bring the northern war to a decisive conclusion by a bold
diversion of its forces from the Rhine to the Oder. Laboriously
must Frederick William I subsequently pay for his father's mis-
takes in order, out of the shipwreck of the Swedish empire, to
save for Germany at least the mouths of the Oder.
From of old the Hohenzollerns, in accordance with the sound
custom of the German princes, had paid careful attention to the
ideal aims of the life of the state ; it was they who founded the
universities of Frankfort and Konigsberg, and re-established that
of Duisburg. And now, under the tolerant rule of the free-handed
Frederick and his philosophical queen, it seemed as if the re-
awakening art and science of Germany were finding their home in
rude Brandenburg. The four great reforming thinkers of the age,
Leibnitz, Puffendorf, Thomasius, and Spener turned towards the
Prussian state. The new university at Halle became the centre
of free investigation, assuming for several decades the leadership
of Protestant science, and filling the gap which had been left by
the destruction of the old university of Heidelberg. The poverty-
stricken capital became adorned with the gorgeous architectural
work of Schliitcr ; the court, greedy of fame as a patron of the arts,
endeavoured to outshine the hated Bourbons. Yet the frivolous
self-glorification of courtly despotism remained ever foreign to the
House of Hohenzollern ; the luxury of Frederick I lagged far
behind the reckless extravagance of the Saxon Augustus. The
charms of sin were not felt by the heavy North German nature ;
again and again, and often in ludicrous contrast, the earnest and
sober northern characteristics broke through the artificial forms
imported from Versailles. Even as it was, the expenditure of the
court threatened to exhaust the means of a poor country ;
for a community the force of whose will had pushed it into
a situation beyond the scope of its natural powers, nothing
was harder to endure than a tame mediocrity. It was well for
Germany that the close-fist of Frederick William I brought to
a speedy close the pleasures and the glories of these early days
of kingship.
The immature state contained the germs of a many-sided life,
and yet with its inconsiderable powers it was hardly ever able to
42
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
fulfil its tasks adequately ; rarely have its princes directly carried
on the work of their fathers ; the successor, while entering the
breach which his predecessor had opened, turned his own best
energies to departments of the national life which that predecessor
had neglected. The Great Elector had to struggle throughout his
life with the pressure of hostile neighbours. In the great projects
of European policy he never lost that strong domestic sense which
had characterised most of his ancestors, and which even in the early
days of his house had brought to many of its chiefs the cognomen
of ceconomus ; he did all in his power to restore well-being to his
country, nurtured the roots of a monarchical officialdom, and began
to effect the transformation of the national economy in accordance
with the needs of the modern monetary system. But in the storms
of this war-filled regime it was impossible to effect a thorough
reform of the administration ; the shapeless bundle of territories
was with difficulty held together by the personal repute of the
ruler and by the unwieldy and antiquated authority of the privy
council. It was by the grandson of the Great Elector that the
ancient state-system was finally abolished.
The fundamental ideas of the internal order of the Prussian
state were so irrevocably fixed by King Frederick William I
that even the laws of Stein and Scharnhorst and the reforms of
our own days could serve only to develop and not to destroy
the work of the founder. He was the creator of the new
German administration, of our officialdom and our military caste ;
his inconspicuous and laborious activity was not less fruitful for
German life than were the deeds at arms of his grandfather, for it
was he who introduced into our history a new form of government,
the circumscribed national unity of the modern monarchy. He gave
meaning and content to the new name of Prussia, united his people
in a community for the fulfilment of political duty, and stamped
for all tune upon the consciousness of this state the notion of duty.
Only one who is familiar with the gnarly growth, with the hard
edges and angles of the Low German national character, will under-
stand this rigid disciplinarian, will understand his breathless and
stormy passage through life the scorn and the terror of his con-
temporaries, rough and rude, scolding and quarrelsome, ever at
work, forcing his people and himself to labour, a sterling old German,
essentially German hi his childish frankness, his goodness of heart,
his profound sense of duty, and not less so in his terrible fits of
hasty anger and in his formless and unconquered solidity. In this
royal burgher, the ancient hatred of the North German people for
43
History of Germany
the modish refinements of Gallic manners, as expressed in Laurem-
berg's Low German satirical poems, became incorporated in flesh
and blood ; his severity towards wife and child showed him also
the true son of the classic age of German domestic tyranny an
age in which, owing to the enslavement of public life, the energies
of the men could find vent only within the narrow limits of the
household. Severe, joyless, terribly restricted, did life become
under the close-fisted rule of this rigid disciplinarian. The hard
one-sidedness of his spirit could value those simple moral and
economic forces alone, which served as internal bonds of national
union ; with the whole energy of his masterful will he threw him-
self into the province of administration, displaying here the primi-
tive force of a creative spirit. Firmly and consistently, as of old
William the Conqueror in overthrown England, did Frederick
William I piece together the structure of a unified state out of the
dispersed fragments of his territories. But not to him, as to
William the Norman, did the unified state appear as a mere appanage
of his own house. Rather, in the mind of the unlettered prince,
was there conceived, clearly and vividly, a notion of the state that
was accordant with the new doctrine of natural law : the notion
that the state exists for the good of all, and that the king is placed
at its head to administer with unbiassed justice over all the estates
of the realm, to pursue the public weal regardless of all private
privileges and preferences. To the development of this idea he
devoted his unceasing activities ; and if, when he placed his heavy
foot on the loose immorality of the paternal court he also stamped
upon the germs of a more abundant culture which had begun to
develop under Frederick I, he yet did but what he had to do.
The firm and manly discipline of a fighting and industrious people
was of greater importance for Prussia's high destiny than were
the premature blossoms of art and science.
A gentler hand than his could never have succeeded in bringing
the ancient feudal licence under the control of the majesty of the
common law ; milder natures than Frederick William and Leopold
von Dessau would never have been able to stand against the storm-
wind which then blew from the Gallic quarter over the German
courts. Among all the statesmen of modern history, two only
can be compared as organisers of administration with this soldier
king : Bonaparte and von Stein. He united to the daring of the
innovator, the painfully exact sense of order of the economical
householder, who measured the black and white threads with which
the official documents were tied and counted the buttons on the
44
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
gaiters of his grenadiers ; he conceived audacious plans whose
realisation has become possible only in the nineteenth century, and
yet retained in all his negotiations a secure grasp of the limits
of the possible. His prosaic sense, directed towards that which
was practically useful and could be immediately grasped, adopted
other measures than those characteristic of his heroic grandfather,
and yet, hi the midst of his care for that which was very small and
very near, he always remained conscious of the lofty destiny of his
state ; he was well aware that he was collecting and forming
the energies of his people for the decisive hours of a great future,
and he often said, " I know perfectly well that in Vienna and
Dresden they call me a penny-wise pedant, but my grandchildren
will reap the benefit ! "
It was by the army that Prussia was raised to the rank of a
European power, and it was by the army that tjie first breach was
made in the old administrative system of the state. For the
management of the new taxes which he had introduced to finance
his military establishment, the Great Elector had established a
number of intermediate boards, the war-commissariats ; thus for
some decades the tax-economy of the developing modern state
existed side by side with the administration of the crown lands,
the last fragments of the natural economy of the Middle Ages.
Frederick William I put an end to this dualism. In the general
directory he created a supreme authority, and hi the war-chambers
and domain-chambers intermediate authorities for the whole
administration, and also endowed these bodies with judicial authority
in questions of public law. The variegated and manifold charac-
teristics of the area he controlled forced the king to establish an
institution to intermediate between the provincial-system and the
real-system ; at the head of the subdivisions of the general
directory he placed provincial ministers, who had also to conduct
certain branches of the administration on behalf of the state as a
whole. Speaking generally, however, a centralised administration
was here earlier established than elsewhere on the Continent.
Whatever still remained of the ancient feudal authorities, was either
abolished or else subjected to the control of the officials of the
monarchy ; an unpitying current of reform swept through the
profoundly corrupt administration of the towns, did away with
the nepotism of the magistrature, forcibly imposed a new and
juster system of taxation ; threw the three towns of Konigsberg
into one, united into a single municipality the two communes of
Brandenburg that were separated by the Havel, and placed the
45
History of Germany
entire system of municipal administration under the keen super-
vision of royal war councillors.
Everywhere the particularism of the estates, of the territorial
areas, and of the communes, presented a hostile front to the new
and generally applicable order. The nobles murmured against
the authority of the bourgeois officials. The proud East Prussians
complained of the infringement of ancient charters, now that
Pomeranians and Rhinelanders could take office in the Duchy.
The law-courts, too, were still living in the circle of ideas of the
old feudal state, and, just like the French parliaments, almost
invariably took the side of the decaying rights of the parts against
the vigorously living right of the whole. It was in the victorious
struggle to secure national unity and equality before the law, that
Prussia's new ruling class of officials under the crown obtained
its schooling. From that homeless race of servants, which
during the seventeenth century had flitted from court to court,
there was gradually constructed a class of Prussians whose members
devoted their lives to the service of the monarch, who found their
honour in his, who were vigorous, active, and conscientious like
their king. They did not, as had done the feudal lords of the old
time, allow their energies to atrophy within the limited fields of
territorial interest and nepotism ; they belonged to the nation,
they learned to feel no less at home in Cleves than in Konigsberg ;
and in the class struggles of society maintained against high and
against low the law of the land. By an established order of
precedence, and by an assured position, the king secured for
his officials a respected status in bourgeois life ; he demanded,
from every candidate for office, proof of scientific knowledge,
and thus founded an aristocracy of culture side by side
with the old aristocracy of birth. The result showed how justly
he had esteemed the living energies of German society ; the best
intelligences of the nobility and of the bourgeoisie streamed to join
the new ruling class. Prussian officialdom was for long years the
firm support of the German national idea, just as in former days
the jurists of Philip the Fair had been the pioneers of French
national unity.
The Great Elector had imposed upon his subjects the general
liability to taxation ; to this Frederick William I added the
obligations of universal military service and compulsory education,
thus establishing the threefold group of general civic duties by
which the people of Prussia have been trained in an active love for
the fatherland. In his mind, powerful for all its limitations, the
46
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
road was unconsciously prepared for a strong national sentiment
akin to the citizen-sense of antiquity. In the eastern march of
Germany, ever accustomed to battle, the ancient German idea of
military service for all physically fit men had never completely
disappeared, even during the epoch of mercenary armies. In East
Prussia there lasted on into the eighteenth century the vestiges
of the old Polish Landwehr, and Frederick I undertook to con-
stitute a territorial militia for the unified state. In the soldier
eye of his son such attempts at an unregulated arming of the people
found no favour. King Frederick William understood the superi-
ority of well-disciplined standing armies ; he saw that his state
could survive only through the tense employment of all its energies,
and yet was unable to effect a permanent provision for the cost
of his levies. Since with him every other consideration was sub-
ordinated to the demands of political duty, he came to the bold
resolve that all Prussians should pass through the school of the
standing army. In recent centuries there had been but two political
thinkers, Machiavelli and Spinoza, who had ventured to defend
the simple and great idea of universal military service ; both these
thinkers revived this idea from the history of classical antiquity,
and both failed to find understanding among their contemporaries.
The needs of domestic economy and an instinctive recognition of
the nature of his state now led the rough, practical man who occu-
pied the throne of Prussia to adopt the same view, little as he
recked of the moral force of a national army. First among the
statesmen of the new Europe did he give expression to the principle :
" Every subject is born to bear arms." To construct an army of
the children of his country was his life-long ideal. The cantonal
regulation of 1733 announced the duty of universal military
service.
It was but the establishment of a principle. The notion was
still unripe, for it was flatly contradicted by the long term of military
service then customary. The poverty of the country and the force
of adverse prejudice, compelled the king to make numerous excep-
tions, so that the burden of compulsory service was imposed, in
actual fact, upon the shoulders of the country-folk alone ; and, even
thus limited, the duty of bearing arms could not be fully enforced.
Unconquerable remained the tacit resistance to the unheard-of
novelty, the detestation of the people for the long and severe term
of duty. It was seldom possible to make up more than half
of the army with homebred cantonists, and the deficiency was
made up by voluntary enlistment. Many of the masterless German
47
History of Germany
soldiers of fortune who had hitherto marketed their skins in Venice
and the Netherlands, in France and Sweden, now found a home under
the flag of the North German power ; the south and the west of
the empire were the most fertile recruiting grounds of the Prussian
regiments. By such a wonderful and devious route has our nation
risen to power and unity. That unarmed third of the German
people whose state authorities hardly raised a finger for the defence
of the empire paid the blood-tax to the fatherland in the persons
of the thousands of its lost sons who fought as mercenaries in the
armies of Prussia ; the petty princes of Swabia and the Rhine,
who regarded Prussia as their most dreaded opponent, helped to
increase the fighting strength of their enemy. As soon as the
Prussian army came into existence the empire gradually ceased to
be a general recruiting ground ; and, as that army gathered strength,
it came to pass that Germany was no longer the battle-field of all
other nations.
In the army the king found the means to reconcile the
territorial nobility with the monarchical order. The repute of the
war-lord had risen greatly since the rude days of the Great Elector,
but it was his grandson who succeeded in bringing under his
immediate control the nomination of all the officers, and in thus
constituting the first truly monarchical corps of modern history.
His sense of organisation, always understanding how to adapt
political reform to the given social conditions, led him to perceive
at once that the hardy sons of the numerous impoverished noble
families of the east were the natural leaders of the peasant lads
liable for military service. He placed the officers' corps, as a closed
aristocracy, at the head of the rank and file ; created in the house
of cadets a training school for the officers ; threw open to all who
wore epaulettes the way to the highest offices in the army ; kept a
strict watch over the honour of the military order ; and endeavoured
in every possible way to win the nobles for this knightly caste,
whilst preferring to direct the cultured members of the bourgeoisie
into the civil service of the administration. How often, with prayers
and threats, did he warn the arrogant nobility of East Prussia to
provide for their rude sons the discipline of the house of cadets,
and, practising his own precept, he made all his own boys serve
in the army. Moser refers with admiration to this " hereditary
maxim of the Prussian house to accustom the nobles to the military
and financial system of the crown." By these means he succeeded
in creating out of the semi-savage junkers a brave and loyal mon-
archical nobility, ready to conquer and to die for the [fatherland,
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
and as firmly associated with the life of the state as the parlia-
mentary nobility of England. Everywhere else throughout the
high aristocratic world of the Baltic regions feudal anarchy con-
tinued to flourish in Sweden, Swedish Pomerania, Mecklenburg,
Polish Prussia, and Livonia ; it was only in Prussia that the
nobles were won for the duties of the modern state. The army
seemed as if it were a state within the state, with its own courts,
churches, and schools ; the burgher regarded with disgust the
iron strictness of the inhuman military discipline by which the
rough masses of the rank and file were forcibly held together ; he
bore unwillingly the blustering arrogance of the lieutenants and
their centaurian hatred for the quill-driver's pretensions to learn-
ing a hatred which had been manifest hi the officers' circles since
the days of the fiery Prince Karl Emil and hi the berserker rough-
ness of the Old Dessauer. And yet this army was not merely the
best-trained and best-equipped military force of the time, but was
also, of all the great armies of the modern nations, the most highly
endowed with the civic spirit, the only one which never broke
faith with its war-lords and never endeavoured (after the Pretorian
model) to set the laws of the land at defiance.
No less uncongenial than the army organisation, appeared, to
the Germans, the Prussian system of compulsory education ; the
ignorance of the masses was still regarded by the ruling classes as
the great safeguard of public order. King Frederick William,
however, like his grandfather, admired the Protestant Netherlands
as the chosen land of civic welfare ; he had there learned to appre-
ciate the moral and economic blessings of a comprehensive system
of school education, and he felt obscurely that the vital energy of
Protestant civilisation sprang from the elementary school. Con-
vinced that the oppressed and brutalised masses of the north-east
could have their native roughnesses removed only by the com-
pulsion of the state, he decisively anticipated, in this respect also,
the legislation of all the other great powers ; and by the educa-
tional law of 1717 he directly imposed upon all heads of families
the duty of sending their children to school. Very slowly, upon
the foundation of this law, the Prussian school system became
established. The difficulties attendant upon its development were
in part due to the poverty and inertness of the people ; but were
in part also the king's own fault, for all popular culture must rest
upon the prosperity of independent research and of creative art,
and for these ideal activities Frederick William felt a character-
istically barbarian contempt.
49
History of Germany
Thus through the community of arduous civic duties, through
the unity of the officialdom and of the military system, the men
of Magdeburg and Pomerania, of the Mark and of Westphalia,
were welded together into a single Prussian people ; and when
Frederick II extended to all his subjects the Prussian nationality
he did no more than give a legal sanction to his father's work.
However roughly and masterfully the Prussian kingship might
manifest its sovereignty against all disloyal opposition, the work
of unification yet proceeded far more considerately than did, in the
adjoining country, the forcible " levelling of the French soil." The
state could not give the lie to its own Teutonic nature ; it was
permeated throughout by a powerful element of historical piety.
Just as it had endeavoured to reconcile the ecclesiastical differences,
so was it compelled in political life to adopt an intermediate posi-
tion in order to counteract the excess of centrifugal tendencies.
Towards the ancient traditions of the territorial areas a tolerant
respect was everywhere exhibited ; even to-day the double eagle
of Austria may be seen displayed in the market place of almost
every Silesian town, and the patron saint of Bohemia still looks
out from the citadel of Glatz over the beautiful surrounding country.
The arrogant lords who wished to forbid the Great Elector to bury
his father with Calvinistic rites were finally, after a severe struggle,
reduced to the common position of subjects. The diets lost their
ancient rights of government and were deprived of all influence
in financial and military affairs ; but were permitted to retain a
semblance of life as soon as these necessary changes had been
effected.
Until the extinction of the Holy Empire there were only three
occasions on which, throughout all the territorial areas which
gradually accrued to the crown of Prussia, a local constitution was
formally abolished. This occurred in Silesia, in West Prussia,
and in Miinster, for here the estates became the nucleus of a party
hostile to the central government, seriously threatening its pre-
dominance. Everywhere else the diets lived on into the new
time, remarkable vestiges of that ancient epoch hi which the
German north still consisted of numerous petty territories. They
were the fragments of eggshell that the eaglet still carried on its
head : they represented the past of the state ; whereas the crown,
officialdom, the army, represented the present. They represented
particularism and feudal privilege, as opposed to the national
unity and to the common law ; their power still sufficed, at times,
to render difficult the great progress of monarchical legislation,
50
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
but they were no longer able to arrest that progress completely.
The diets remained competent to allot certain taxes and to admin-
ister the territorial debts ; in this narrow sphere there persisted
unchanged the nepotism, the routine, and the empty formalism of
the old feudal order ; and the nobleman of the Mark still preferred
to speak of his Brandenburg as an independent state under the
crown of Prussia. Nor was the feudal office of Landrat abolished,
but a place was found for it in the order of monarchical officialdom ;
the Landrat, nominated by the crown after being proposed by the
estates, was at the same time representative of the knighthood ;
and a royal official subordinated to the war-chamber and to the
domain-chamber. The king cherished a thoroughly citizen mis-
trust of the overbearing disposition of his junkers, but he needed
the cordial support of the nobility for the establishment of his new
military constitution. He therefore sought to appease the dis-
affected by honours and dignities, leaving to the landed proprietors
a portion of their old privileges of taxation and of their other
seignorial rights, but always under the supervision of the royal
officials.
It was this prudent and tolerant policy which rendered it
possible for the king to carry into execution his great economic
reforms. He founded that peculiar system of monarchical organi-
sation which for two generations harmonised the traditional
organisation of classes with the new tasks of the nation. Every
province and every class was made to undertake certain
branches of economic and political work on behalf of the crown.
In addition to agriculture (which was the principal industry of the
entire monarchy), in the electoral Mark and the Westphalian pro-
vinces, manufactures, in the coastlands, commerce, and in the
Magdeburg districts, mining, must be carried on. The nobles
remained the sole great landed proprietors, and had an almost ex-
clusive right to become officers in the army ; the peasantry
undertook the work of agriculture and must serve in the
ranks ; the burghers engaged in commerce and industry, and
must bear the chief burden of taxation.
It was regarded as a primary duty of the royal justice to
secure these territorial rights and class privileges against all possible
attack, and nowhere was the fulfilment of this duty so difficult as
upon the old colonial soil where the excessive powers of the terri-
torial chiefs was a danger alike to the crown and to the civic peace.
The most human of all royal duties, the protection of the poor
and of the oppressed, was for the Hohenzollerns a primary need of
51
History of Germany
self-preservation ; they bore with pride the name " Kings of
the Beggars," which had been assigned to them in mockery by
France. The crown forbade the purchase of the peasants' lands
which in Mecklenburg and Swedish Pomerania had given the
nobility the absolute dominion of the countryside, thus saving the
agricultural middle class from destruction ; and, from the days
of Frederick William I onwards, a carefully considered agrarian
legislation aimed at promoting the enfranchisement of the agricul-
turists. It was the desire of the king to abolish hereditary serf-
dom, and to transform all peasant property into free ownership
of the land ; as early as 1719 he said : " What a fine thing it would
be if my subjects were free instead of being serfs, so that they
could better enjoy what is their own, could carry on their affairs
with so much more zeal and diligence because they would be dealing
with their own property." For long, indeed, it was impossible for
the crown to carry this desire into effect. Not only had there to
be faced the passionate opposition of the powerful nobles, already
rendered antagonistic by the abolition of feudalism, but there must
also be reckoned with the passive resistance of the rude peasantry
themselves, who regarded with suspicion every change in the
traditional order. Continually, however, and without pause, the
king drew nearer to his goal. His " whipping decree " protected
the serf from maltreatment ; the services and dues that could be
demanded from the peasantry were lightened ; a commencement
was made in the subdivision of the communal lands to form separate
sections of real estate ; everywhere the way was opened for the
liberation of the land and of the working powers of the labourer.
The reforms of Stein and Hardenberg could achieve their striking
success only because they came when preparation for them had
been made by the legislation of three generations. In the official-
dom of the crown the small man found protection against the
arrogance of the nobles, found expert advice, and found also in-
exorably strict supervision ; to the thrifty king no sacrifice seemed
too great that was for the good of his peasant-folk ; the entire
revenue of a year was devoted to the restoration of civilisation
in East Prussia, devastated by pestilence and war, and to the
repeopling with diligent workers of the wide deserts on the Niemen
and the Pregel.
It was to their faithful care for the well-being of the masses,
and not to their renown in war, that the Hohenzollerns owed the
unshakable confidence which, through all need and all temptation,
was felt by the people in the crown. Periods of torpor and exhaus-
52
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
tion occurred in the Prussian state as elsewhere ; indeed, such
periods seemed in Prussian history more conspicuous and more
deplorable than in other lands, because Prussia was ever regarded
by a thousand hostile eyes eager to search out its weaknesses and
to detect influences that might destroy it without any effort on the
part of its enemies. Yet none who take a tranquil view of a con-
siderable period of time can fail to recognise the steady progress of
the monarchy towards national unity and towards the institution
of equality before the law. The portraits of the Hohenzollerns do
not display the spiritless and monotonous uniformity that we see
in the Hapsburg princes, but they show, nevertheless, an unmis-
takable family likeness ; and the same family likeness is seen also
in their political activity. Whether strong or weak, whether in-
telligent or the reverse, they almost all displayed a sober under-
standing of the hard realities of life ; not disdaining to be great
in little things, and all taking a high view of their princely duty.
The mood of the first Hohenzollern of the Mark, who termed
himself " God's simple officer in the princedom," prevailed in all
his descendants ; we find it once more in the motto of the Great
Elector : " For God and the people " ; we find it in the feverish zeal
for service displayed by the soldier-king, who never ceased to be
conscious that he must answer with his own soul's salvation for
the well-being of his people ; we find it, finally, given profounder
and freer expression in the words of Frederick the Great :
" The King is the first servant of the state." Many of the Hohen-
zollerns have failed in their task through an over-scientific dread
of the game of hazard which is war, but very few through an un-
ready lust of battle ; the traditional policy of the house sought to
establish the glory of the ruler in the maintenance of the law and in
the culture of the works of peace ; it was but occasionally, in great
moments of history, that they directed the carefully fostered
energies of the state towards an enemy without in this respect,
as in all others, offering an absolute contrast to the Hapsburgs,
whose statesmanship was wholly concerned with European ques-
tions. Long ago, like the old Frankish kings, the dynasty had
relinquished its domestic possessions to the state ; it lived solely
for the good of all. Whilst almost all other territories of the empire
bore the name and the arms of their princely house, the banners
of the Hohenzollerns displayed the ancient imperial eagle of the
Hohenstaufen, that flag which had for centuries defended the
distant eastern marches, and bore the colours of the Teutonic
Knights. This severe political kingship educated a maltreated and
53
History of Germany
brutalised people in the rights and duties of citizenship. Wherever
we may contemplate the condition of the German territories,
comparing their condition before and after their entrance into the
Prussian state, be it in Pomerania, in East Prussia, in Cleves, or in
the County Mark, everywhere the roll of the Prussian drums had
brought freedom to the Germans, had signalised enfranchisement
from foreign authority and from the tyranny of feudal polyarchy.
Upon the foundation of the common law there was then erected,
with severe struggles it is .true, but in accordance with a natural
and necessary development, a new and riper form of political free-
dom, involving the orderly participation of the citizens in the
conduct of the state. It was not genius but character and firm
discipline which gave this state its moral greatness ; and its power
depended, not upon the wealth of its resources, but upon their
orderliness and upon their readiness for immediate use.
Now, however, was least of all the moment in which the German
nation was ready to understand the strange phenomenon of this
state armed and ready to strike, youthful and immature, tough
in bone and sinew, full of vigour and fire, but ungainly, its bones
ill-clothed, lacking grace and nobility of aspect. The old hostility
of the Germans for the upstart Brandenburg was increased to a
passionate hatred by the Boeotian roughness of Frederick William I.
It does not become the historian to tone down the painfully crude
colours of our modern history ; it is not true that this profound
hatred was merely a dissembled love. At this time there
originated in the general mind that view of the nature of the Prus-
sian state, that view strangely compounded of true and false, which
for a hundred years yet to come was to remain dominant through-
out the half-cultured circles of Germany, and which even now has
the upper hand in German history as written by the foreigner.
This land under arms seemed to the Germans no more than a
magnified barrack. All the sounds that found their way into the
rest of the empire from out the weary silence of this great prison-
house were merely the threatening and steady tramp of the giant
Guards of Potsdam, the harsh words of command of the officers,
and the cry of distress of the deserters hunted through the streets ;
of the blessings which the grateful Lithuanian peasant called down
from heaven upon his severe king, Germany heard nothing. In
the empire the nobles had fallen upon golden days. In Hanover,
now that their elector passed his days in distant England, the
dominion of the territorial chiefs was unrestricted ; the junkerdom
of Saxony took advantage of their Polish king's conversion to the
54
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
Roman Church to struggle for new feudal privileges, and passed
their days in licentious living at the shameless court of a ruler
engaged in the ruin of his country. With mixed anger and con-
tempt the proud races of the neighbouring lands contemplated
the citizen-soldier despotism of the Hohenzollern, by which the
joyful days of the rule of the nobles had been so forcibly disturbed.
Nor did the townsman regard the Prussian system with a
cordial eye. He viewed, now with ironical sympathy, and now with
dread, the iron industry and the inflexible severity of the Prussian
official ; it seemed to him that all the sacredness of the law was
threatened when he saw the new administration, ever at war with
the old courts, taking its way remorselessly across the ancient
charters of the territories and the communes ; and he could not
grasp that the old life which was here being trampled down was
only the teeming life of corruption. The hostility of the men ol
education was better founded. The whole academic world felt a
sense of shameful injury when the rough king played his clownish
tricks with the valiant J. J. Moser and the Frankfort professors.
The effect produced upon rich artist natures by the contemplation
of the stiff and dry military order is manifested by the excess of
hatred which the greatest Prussian of those days exhibited towards
his fatherland. Yearningly did Winckelmann seek to escape from
the heavy and suffocating air of the accursed land, and when he
finally shook from off his feet the dust of the schoolroom of Alt-
mark and revelled with intoxicated joy hi the paintings of the
Dresden gallery, he continued, with the artlessness of a great Pagan,
to send his curses back to the homeland : "I think with loathing
of this country, which groans under the greatest despotism that the
world has ever known. It is better to be a circumcised Turk than a
Prussian. In such a country as Sparta [an extremely ideal descrip-
tion of the regime of the corporal's stick !] the arts cannot possibly
thrive, and degenerate perforce." So widely divergent were then
the two creative energies which in unconscious union have made
the new Germany. The lesser people of the empire detested the
King of Prussia on account of the universal nuisance of his enlist-
ments. " Don't grow too tall, or the recruiters will get hold of
you," said the Swabian mother anxiously to her son. Everyone
along the Rhine could recount a hundred terrible tales of the inn
in Frankfort which was the head-quarters of the Prussian recruiting
officers ; there was no possible devilry that they failed to ascribe
to these savage brutes.
All this force and cunning, all the enormous expenditure on
55
History of Germany
the army which swallowed up fully four-fifths of the Prussian
revenue, served merely such was the view in the empire for the
purposeless playing-at-soldiers of a thick-headed tyrant. A whole
generation had passed away since the heroic struggle of Cassano,
when the blood of the grenadiers from the Mark reddened the
waters of the Ritorto, and the grateful Lombards first greeted the
brave prussiani with the exhilarating tones of the Dessauer march ;
when the wild and stimulating strain was now heard upon a peace-
ful drill-ground, the Germans laughed scornfully at the " Prussian
bluster." The reign of Frederick William came in the poverty-
stricken time of the Peace of Utrecht, a period barren of ideas ;
the petty arts of Fleury, Alberoni, and Walpole dominated Euro-
pean politics. Perplexed was the simple-minded prince amid the
crafty intrigues of diplomacy. He adhered to his emperor with
ancient German fidelity ; he wished to put sabre and pistols in his
children's cradles that they might help in expelling foreign nations
from the imperial soil ; how often with the beer-tankard of the
fatherland in his hand did he not raise his resounding shout :
" Vivat Germania teutscher Nation ! " Now must the guileless
man learn how the court of Vienna, in conjunction with his two
ambitious neighbours of Hanover and Saxony, was secretly planning
the partition of Prussia, and must witness their helping the Alber-
tiners to the Polish crown, and their surrender of Lorraine to the
French ; he must witness their attempts to sow discord in his own
household between father and son ; must finally experience their
perfidious attempts to deprive him of his sound hereditary right
to Berg and East Frisia. Thus throughout his life he was pushed
to and fro between open opponents and false friends ; not until the
close of his days did he see through Austria's cunning and conjure
his son to avenge the tricks played upon the father. At the foreign
courts it was currently said, that the King of Prussia always stood
on watch with his gun at full cock, but would never pull the trigger ;
and when, within the empire, the other Germans were sometimes
anxious about the Potsdam military parades, they consoled
themselves by saying, " After all, the Prussians are very slow to
shoot ! "
The joke missed fire when Prussia found a ruler who com-
bined with the sense of the practicable and with the fortunate
sobriety characteristic of the Hohenzollerns, the boldness and the
insight of genius. The clear sunshine of youth was diffused over
the beginnings of the Frederician epoch, when at length, after so
56
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
prolonged an arrest, the inert mass of the German world was once
more set in motion, and when the powerful opposing forces which
Germany contained within its bosom broke into inevitable conflict.
Since the days of the Lion of the North, Germany had not again
seen a heroic figure upon which the whole nation could gaze with
wondering admiration. But the figure which in proud freedom,
like that of Gustavus Adolphus of old, strode among the great
powers and forced the Germans to believe once again hi the wonders
of the heroic age, was now that of a German.
The central characteristic of this powerful nature was his
pitiless and cruel German realism. . Frederick presents himself as
he is, and sees things as they are. Just as in the long series of his
letters and writings we find not a single line wherein he endeavours
to glorify his own actions or to adorn his own image for the benefit
of posterity, so also do we find in his statesmanship, even though he
did not despise the petty arts and cunning of the age as means to
his ends, the stamp of his royal frankness. Whenever he takes the
sword in hand he explains with unmistakable definiteness what he
demands from the opponent, and does not lay down his weapon
until he has attained his end. As soon as he awakens to self-
consciousness he is filled with pride and rejoicing to be the son of a
free century, which is using the torch of reason to illumine the dusty
corners of a world of ancient prejudices and exanimate traditions ;
on the ceiling of his bright hall at Rheinsberg was painted a picture
of the sun-god, rising victoriously through the clouds of dawn.
It is with the self-confident assurance of the disciple of enlighten-
ment that he approaches the phenomena of history, examining
them each by each with the judgment of his keen understanding.
In the struggles for power among the states he concerns himself
only about what is really alive, cares only for the power that can
speedily and wisely find expression hi effective action. "Nego-
tiations without weapons are like music without instruments," he
says frankly. When he is informed of the death of the last Haps-
burg he says to his councillors, " I give you a problem to solve ;
if one has an advantage in one's hand, should one make use of it
or not ? " Never did anyone exhibit a prouder contempt for that
boastful powerlessness that pretends to possess power, that im-
moral privilege which bases itself upon the sacredness of historic
right, that dread of action which conceals its helplessness behind
an empty respect for forms ; and never did this implacable realism
exercise so cleansing, so destructive, so revolutionary an influence
as in that great world of fable which was the Holy Empire. Nothing
57 E
History of Germany
was more remorseless than Frederick's scorn for the sacred majesty
of the Emperor Francis, tied to his wife's apron-strings, a worthy
king of Jerusalem, occupied in lucrative commissariat-negotiations
for the armies of the Queen of Hungary ; nothing could be more
cruel than his mockery of the " phantom " of the imperial army,
his scorn of the obscure nonentity of the petty courts, of the formal
commercial spirit " of these accursed periwig-pates of Hanover,"
of the vain pride of the landless junkers of Saxony and Mecklen-
burg, of " this whole race of princes and people of Austria." He
that bends the knee before the great ones of this world " is one who
does not know them."
With an assured sense of superiority he opposes to the shadow-
pictures of the imperial law the healthy reality of his modern state ;
a fierce love of mischief speaks out of his letters when he brings
home to " the pedants of Ratisbon " the iron necessity of war.
Frederick effected in action that which the disputatious publicists
of the previous century, Hippolytus and Severinus, had attempted
in words alone ; he held up a mirror before the " disagreeable and
corpse-like countenance of Germany," proving to all the world
the hopeless corruption of the Holy Empire. Well-meaning con-
temporaries blamed him because he thus exposed to laughter the
anciently venerable community, but posterity thanks him, in that he
restored truth to a place of honour in German statecraft, as of old
had done Martin Luther in the spheres of German thought and
belief.
Frederick adopted early in life that strict Protestant view of
German history and imperial policy which, since the days of Puffen-
dorf and Thomasius, had dominated the freer spirits of Prussia ;
amid the embittering experiences of his joyless youth he had re-
moulded this view with a keen independence. In the Schmalkald
rising, in the Thirty Years' War, in all the confused happenings
of the last two centuries, he sees nothing but the unceasing struggle
of German freedom against the despotism of the House of Austria,
that house which " with a rod of iron " ruled the weak princes of
the empire like slaves, and allowed only the strong ones to do as
they liked. Not without personal satisfaction does he interpret
the facts of history in accordance with such a one-sided view,
for to direct this one-sidedness towards the light and towards life
seems to him the privilege of the creative hero, and he regards it
as the task of the Prussian state to lead this ancient struggle to
victory. In his earlier years he remained faithful to Protestantism ;
he esteemed it the glorious duty of the House of Brandenburg " to
58
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
work on behalf of the Protestant religion throughout the German
empire and Europe," and he contemplated Heidelberg with uneasi-
ness, seeing that here in the old leading centre of our Church the
monks and the priests of Rome were once more vigorously at work.
Even at a later date, when he had become estranged from religious
belief, and when from the altitude of his independent philosophical
enlightenment he passed a hostile judgment upon the mediocre
parson-natures of Luther and Calvin, he remained actively conscious
that his state must continue ever rooted in the Protestant world.
He knew how all the accomplices of the Holy See were secretly
working for the destruction of the new Protestant great power ;
he knew that his human ideal of freedom of belief, of the right
of all to seek salvation after their own fashion, was attainable only
on the soil of Protestantism ; he understood that in new and
secular forms he was himself carrying on the struggles of the six-
teenth century ; and to his latest work, the plan for the League
of German Princes, he attached the significant superscription,
" Drawn up after the example of the League of Schmalkald."
The earliest of Frederick's political writings which has come
down to us shows the glance of the youth of eighteen already
directed towards that region of national life upon which he was to
exercise the greatest and most individual forces of his genius the
great questions of statecraft. The crown prince contemplates
the position of his nation in the world, finds the situation of its
dispersed areas an extremely dangerous one, and draws up, still
half in jest, daring plans for the rounding off of the remoter pro-
vinces, so that they may no longer remain in isolation. It is not
long before these immature youthful proposals reappear as pro-
found and powerful ideas ; three years before his ascent to the
throne the great path of his life is perceived with a wonderful
prophetic clearness. " It seems," he writes, " that heaven has
predestined the king to make all those preparations which a wise
foresight undertakes before the beginning of a war. Who can tell
whether it may not be reserved for me to make a glorious use of
the opportunities thus provided, and to employ these materials
of war in the realisation of the designs for which my father's pre-
vision intended them ! " He observes how his state vacillates in
an untenable position between the petty territories and the great
powers, and is resolved to put an end to this vacillation (decider
cet etre}. To enlarge the national area, corriger la figure de la Prusse,
has become a necessity if Prussia is to stand on her own feet and to
do credit to the name of her king.
59
History of Germany
From generation to generation his ancestors had paid faithful
service to the House of Austria, conscientiously refraining from
turning to their own advantage the difficulties of their neighbour,
but rewarded always with ingratitude, treachery, and contempt.
Frederick himself, in the distressing period of his misused youth,
had found it hard to endure " the arrogance, the presumption, the
overbearing insolence, of the court of Vienna"; his heart was
cankered with hatred " for the imperial band " which with its
tricks and its lies had alienated his father's heart. His untamable
pride was in revolt when at his father's court there was lacking
the correct tone of cold refusal for the exacting demands of Austria ;
he wrote angrily that a King of Prussia should resemble the noble
palm-tree, of which the poet says, " If you wish to fell it, it rears
its proud head the higher." With watchful eye he followed the
varying fortunes of the European system of states, and came to
the conclusion that the old policy of the balance of power was
altogether outworn. After the victories of the war of the Spanish
succession the time was over for fighting the Bourbon in alliance
with Austria and England ; now the moment had come for the
new German state " by the terror of its arms " to raise itself to
such a height of power as would enable it to maintain its own
freedom of will against all its neighbours and against the imperial
house.
Thus in the mouth of Frederick, the old and greatly misused
expression " German freedom," acquired a new and nobler meaning.
It was no longer to signify that dishonourable policy of the petty
princes which called hi the foreigner to help them against the
emperor, and which betrayed the marches of the realm into foreign
hands ; it was to signify the formation of a great German power
which should defend the fatherland with the strong hand in the
east and in the west ; and which should do this of its own will,
independently of the imperial authority. For hundreds of years
it had been the rule that whoever was not a good Austrian must
be a good Swede (like Hippolytus a Lapide), or a good Frenchman
(like the princes of the Confederation of the Rhine), or a good Eng-
lishman (like the scions of the Guelphs). Even the Great Elector,
in the press between neighbours of predominant power, was able
only at intervals to maintain an independent position. It was the
work of Frederick, avoiding on either hand the destructive tendencies
to the acceptance of concealed or manifest foreign dominion, to
institute a third tendency, a policy that was Prussian, and Prussian
only. To this policy belonged Germany's future.
60
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
It was not the way of this hater of phrases to talk much of
the fatherland ; and yet his soul was animated by a vigorous
national pride inseparably associated with his keen sense of personal
independence and with his princely sentiment. It seemed to him
to touch his honour that foreign nations should play the masters
upon German soil ; that this should be, was a discredit to his
illustrious blood, for which the philosophic king, with the naive
inconsistency of genius, had a very high respect. When the in-
extricable confusion of German affairs forced him at times to form
an alliance with the foreigner, he never alienated an acre of German
soil, and never allowed his state to be misused for foreign purposes.
All his life through he was exposed to the accusation of faithless
cunning, for no treaty and no alliance could ever make him renounce
the right of free self-determination. All the courts of Europe
spoke angrily of travailler pour le roi de Prusse ; accustomed from
of old to dominate German life they found it hardly possible to
grasp the new situation and understand that now at length the
resolute egoism of an independent German state was able to set
itself in successful opposition to their will. Voltaire's royal disciple
began for the German states the same work of liberation that Vol-
taire's opponent, Lessing, effected for our poetry. Even in his
youthful writings, Frederick strongly condemns the weakness of
the Holy Empire, which had thrown open to the foreigner its Ther-
mopylae, Alsace ; he rages against the court of Vienna for its
surrender of Lorraine to France ; he can never forgive the Queen
of Hungary for having turned loose upon the German empire the
savage mob of " those Graces of the east," the Jazyges, the Croats,
and the Tolpatsches, and for having for the first time induced
the barbarians of Muscovy to take part in the internal affairs of
Germany. During the Seven Years' War his German pride and
hatred often found vent in grim and scornful words. To the
Russians, who have plundered his peasants of Neumark, he sends
the greeting : " Oh ! that with one leap they could sink themselves
in the Black Sea, so that they and all memory of them might
pass away for ever." When the French overran Rhineland he
composed (in French, it is true) an ode which recalls to our minds
the strains of the War of Liberation :
"To its uttermost sources
Spumes the ancient Rhine with hate.
Cursing the shame, that its waters
Must bear a foreign yoke ! "
6l
History of Germany
" Prudence teaches us how to guard what we already possess
but through intrepidity alone do we learn how to increase ou
possessions " such are the words with which Frederick, in hi
Rheinsberg days, already betrays how his inmost nature urges hin
to rash resolution, to tempestuous daring. It appears to him th<
first duty of the statesman to avoid half measures ; and of al
conceivable resolutions the worst of all seems to him to resolv
to do nothing. Yet in this also he displays his German blood
that from the first he knows how to control his ardent love of actioi
by cool and sober consideration. One who felt within himsel
the heroic force of an Alexander determined to work for permanen
ends within the narrow circle in which destiny had placed him
In war, sometimes, his fiery spirit leads him beyond the bounds o
prudence ; he demands the impossible from his troops, and fail
through a proud under-estimation of his enemy ; but as a statesma:
he always preserves a perfect moderation, a wise limitation, whic]
leads him to reject at once any too adventurous design. He i
never for a moment befooled by the thought of cutting his owi
state loose from the fallen German community ; his position i]
the empire does not impair his freedom of action in European
policy, while it gives him the right to intervene in the destin;
of the empire itself, and for this reason he wishes to keep his foo
in the stirrup of the German steed. Still less does he dream o
aspiring to the imperial crown. Since the days of the prophecie
of the court astrologers of the Great Elector there had alway
persisted in Hohenzollern circles the obscure premonition that th
house was destined to bear the sword and sceptre of the Hoi;
Empire ; and the Hotspurs, Winterfeldt and Leopold of Dessau
sometimes ventured to greet their royal hero as the Germai
Augustus. But Frederick knew that his temporal state coul<
not carry the Roman crown, that the attempt to assume it woul<
involve the newcomer among the powers in interminable intrigues
and said drily, " For us it would be no more than a fetter."
Hardly had he mounted the throne when there arrived tha
great crisis in German destiny which the seer's vision of Puffendoi
had already indicated as likely to furnish the only possible mean
of thorough-going imperial reform. The old imperial house die<
out, and before the ardent eyes of the young king, in whose hand
was the only well-ordered fighting force of Germany, there openei
a world of alluring prospects, which must have led astray int
overbearing dreams a spirit less profound and less firmly collected
Frederick felt the earnestness of the hour. " Day and night,
62
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
he wrote, " the fate of the empire monopolises my thoughts, and
to me alone is given the will and the power to secure it." He felt
assured that this great moment must not be allowed to pass without
bringing to the Prussian state complete freedom of movement,
and without providing it with a place in the council of the great
powers ; and yet he also recognised how incalculably confused
would become the situation of Germany owing to the greed of its
foreign neighbours, and owing to the hopeless internal dissensions
of the empire, as soon as the Hapsburg monarchy fell in ruins.
For this reason he desired to protect Austria, and was satisfied,
out of the mass of the carefully considered ancient claims of his
house, to put forward the most important alone. Single-handed,
and without a word to the watching foreign powers, he broke upon
Silesia in an overwhelming storm. Germany, accustomed to the
solemn considerations and counter-considerations of its imperial
jurists, received with astonishment and horror the doctrine that
the rights of the state can be maintained by living force alone.
The conqueror offered the imperial crown to the spouse of Maria
Theresa and undertook to fight France on behalf of Austria. It
was the resistance of the Hofburg that urged him on to compre-
hensive plans of imperial reform, which remind us of the daring
dreams of Waldeck.
It was not Frederick who created German dualism, although
he was reproached with this by his contemporaries and by pos-
terity; dualism had existed since the days of Charles V, and
Frederick was the first who seriously attempted to destroy it. As
soon as he found it impossible to come to an understanding with
the Viennese court, the king conceived the bold idea of removing
the imperial crown for ever from the House of Austria, and thus
severing the last bond which still connected this dynasty with
Germany. He approached the Bavarian Wittelsbachs, the only
one among the more powerful princely races of Germany which
resembled the Hohenzollerns in ruling over German lands alone,
and who, like the Hohenzollerns, regarded Austria as their natural
enemy ; he was the first to establish that alliance between the two
greatest of the purely German states which has since then been
so often renewed, and always for the good of the fatherland. The
Elector of Bavaria received the imperial dignity, and it was the
hope of Frederick that this new emperorship, which he himself
spoke of as " my work," would secure a firm support for the crown
of Bohemia.
Forthwith there reawakened in Berlin and in Munich that
63
History of Germany
saving idea of secularisation which sprang to life whenever a healing
hand was laid upon the sick body of the empire. The aim was to
strengthen the power of the great temporal estates of the realm,
which in Frederick's view were the sole really living members of
the empire, at the expense of the theocratic and republican terri-
tories ; a purely temporal art of statesmanship devoted itself to
the realisation of the political ideas of the Reformation. Certain
spiritual provinces of High Germany were to be secularised, and
several of the imperial towns were to be annexed to the adjoining
princely domains. With good reason did Austria complain that this
Bavarian emperorship under Prussian tutelage threatened grave
injury to the nobility and to the Church. Should these inchoate
ideas be realised, German dualism would be practically done away
with, and the imperial constitution, even should it persist in form,
would be profoundly modified in substance ; Germany would
become a confederation of temporal princes under the dominant
influence of Prussia ; the spiritual states, the imperial towns, the
crowd of petty counts and barons, deprived of the support of the
Hapsburgs, would go down to destruction, and the German bulwark
in the heart of the empire, the crown of Bohemia, would be con-
quered for Teutonic civilisation. Thus Germany could have effected
spontaneously and by her own powers that necessary revolution
which two generations later was shamefully forced upon her by the
might of the foreigner. But the House of Wittelsbach, already
estranged from German life by its hereditary association with France
as well as by the rigidity of Catholic unity, displayed a distressing
incapacity in face of this great opportunity ; the nation failed
to understand the significant fortune of the moment. In a tour
through the empire the king gained so disheartening an insight
into the dissensions, the greed of gain, and the slavish anxiety
of the petty courts, that he learned to lay aside for ever his hopes
for Germany ; moreover, his own power did not yet suffice to over-
come the valiant resistance of the Queen of Hungary. Notwith-
standing the triumphs of Hohenfriedberg and Kesselsdorf , the second
Silesian War ended in the restoration of the Austrian emperorship.
The empire remained in its state of unconstitutional confusion,
Francis of Lorraine ascended the imperial throne after the death
of Charles VII, and there was reconstituted the old alliance between
Austria and the Catholic majority in the Reichstag.
The attempt to do away with German dualism miscarried ;
sharper, more hostile than ever before, was the separation of parties
in the empire. Yet one permanent gain had been secured by the
64
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
king the establishment of Prussia's position as a great power.
He had saved Bavaria from destruction, had increased the strength
of his own land by more than a third ; with a hardy stroke he had
broken the long chain of Hapsburg-Wettin territorial areas which
shut hi the Prussian state to the south and east ; and for the first
time the proud imperial house had suffered profound humiliation
at the hands of one of the princes of the empire. It was solely his
own energy that he had to thank for his victories, and he presented
so brave a front in face of all the old powers, that Horace Walpole
was forced to admit that this King of Prussia now held in his hands
the control of the European balance. Saxony, Bavaria, Hanover,
all the central states, which up till now had remained rivals of the
crown of Prussia, were by the Silesian Wars permanently reduced
to the second rank. High above the innumerable petty opposi-
tions that flourished within the empire there arose the one dominant
question : Prussia or Austria ? The problem of the future of
Germany had been stated. From a free altitude the king now
looked down upon the turmoil of the estates of the German empire,
and to all insulting demands could jestingly reply, that those who
made them must take him for a Duke of Gotha or for a Prince of
the Rhine ! In relation to his smaller neighbours he was now
able to assume that role of benevolent patron and protector which,
in his Anti-Machiavel, he had pointed out as the sublime duty
of the stronger ; already in the Reichstag there was forming the
nucleus of a Prussian party, and the North German courts were
beginning to send then- sons to serve in the king's army.
Meanwhile, with astonishing rapidity, the new acquisitions
became fused with the monarchy. For the first time upon any
considerable area did the state exhibit that strong force of attrac-
tion and that formative energy which it has since then everywhere
displayed in German and half -German lands. The new energies
of the modern world made their way into the neglected province,
the victim of feudal and ecclesiastical oppression ; the officialdom
of the monarchy overthrew the dominion of the nobles, the strength
of law put an end to nepotism, toleration replaced restraint in
matters of conscience, and the German school-system superseded
the profound spiritual slumber of priestly education. The sluggish
and servile peasant learned once again to hope for the morrow,
and his king forbade him to abase himself before the officials by
kneeling to kiss the hem of their garments.
In that century of struggles for power there was no other
state whose working imposed such manifold and widely human
65
History of Germany
tasks. It was the peaceful labour of administration which first
gave a moral justification to the conquest of Silesia, and furnished
the proof that this widely censured act of daring was a genuinely
German deed. By the Prussian rule there was restored to the
German nation this magnificent frontier-land which had already
been half-overwhelmed by foreign influences. Silesia was the
only one of the German-Austrian hereditary dominions in which
the policy of religious unity had been unable to effect a complete
victory. In the valleys of the Riesengebirge the calm and easy-
going German stock had withstood with insuperable tenacity the
violent deeds of the Lichtenstein dragoons and the oratorical arts
of the Jesuits. The majority of the Germans remained true to
the Protestant faith. The Protestant Church, oppressed and
despised, despoiled of its goods, continued a poverty-stricken exist-
ence ; only the threats of the crown of Sweden secured for this
Church, in addition to the small number of God's houses which still
remained to it, the possession of a few sanctuary churches. The
Catholic Poles of Upper Silesia and the Czech colonists whom the
imperial court had summoned into the land to carry on the struggle
against the German heretics, were the props of the imperial
dominion. With the entry of the Prussian army the German
elements once more gladly raised their heads ; joyfully there
resounded through the sanctuary churches praise to the Lord, Who
after showing severity to His people had now at length displayed
a banner for them to follow. Under the protection of Prussian
toleration, Protestantism soon regained its consciousness of
spiritual superiority, the Polish elements visibly lost ground, and
after a few decades the Prussian Silesians, in ideas and customs,
resembled their North German neighbours more closely than they
resembled the Silesians across the border. The Protestant con-
queror, however, left the Roman Church in undisturbed possession
of almost all the Church property of the Protestants, and whilst
England was constraining its Irish Catholics to pay taxes in sup-
port of the Anglican State Church, in Silesia, the Protestant must
continue now as formerly to pay taxes on behalf of the Catholic
Church. It was only the treasonable practices of the Roman clergy
during the Seven Years' War that forced the king to abandon this
excess of toleration, which had involved injustice towards the
Protestants ; and even then the situation of the Catholic Church
in Prussian Silesia remained a more favourable one than in any
other Protestant state.
The flourishing development of Silesia under Prussian rule
66
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
sufficed to show that the new province had found its natural master,
and that the change in the destiny of the German east was un-
alterably established. The Viennese court, however, continued to
cherish the hope of securing revenge for the past shame, and of
reducing the conqueror of Silesia once again to the mediocre situa-
tion of the ordinary German prince, just as had been possible in
the case of those presumptuous ones who had formerly ventured
to raise their hands against the imperial authority. King Frederick
knew, moreover, that the final and decisive appeal to arms still
lay before him. He attempted on one occasion during the brief
years of peace to exclude the son of Maria Theresa from the imperial
dignity, so that for the future at least the empire should be separated
from the House of Austria, but the scheme was wrecked by the
hostility of the Catholic courts. The irreconcilable opposition
between the two leading powers of Germany determined for a
lengthy period the course of European politics and deprived the
Holy Empire of its last vestiges of vital energy. In painful anticipa-
tion the nation seemed to foresee the approach of a new Thirty
Years' War. That which had been slowly prepared by the quiet
labours of toilsome decades appeared to the next generation merely
as a wonderful chance, as the fortunate adventure of a talented
spirit. Quite isolated in the diplomatic correspondence of the
epoch is the far-seeing utterance of the Dane, Bernstorff, who
in the year 1759 wrote sadly to Choiseul : " All that you are
endeavouring to-day in the hope of preventing the uprise in central
Germany of a warlike monarchy whose iron arm will soon crush
the petty princes it is all lost labour ! " The neighbouring powers
in the east and in the west vented their anger against the lucky
one who, out of the turmoil of the war of the Austrian succession,
had alone drawn the prize of victory ; nor was it simply the
personal hatred of powerful women that was weaving the web of
the great conspiracy which now threatened to enmesh Frederick.
It was the general feeling of Europe that the ancient and traditional
structure of the comity of states was imperilled as soon as any
victorious great power became established in the centre of the
Continent. The Roman See was deeply concerned that the detested
home of heresy should be once again enabled to give expression
to its own independent will ; it was only in consequence of the
co-operation of Rome that it became possible for the two ancient
enemies, the two great Catholic powers of Austria and of France,
to unite against Prussia. The aim was to render the impotence of
Germany eternal.
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History of Germany
By a daring onslaught the king saved his crown from certain
destruction, and when, after seven terrible years, he had defended
his German state on the Rhine and on the Pregel, on the Peene and
in the Riesengebirge, against foreign and semi-foreign armies, and
in concluding peace had maintained the extent of his power over
the last village, Prussia seemed to stand once more in the same
position as at the outset of the murderous campaign. Not a hand's
breadth more German soil had been added to its domain, half the
country lay desolate, the abundant work of peace of three genera-
tions had been almost completely destroyed, in the unhappy Neu-
mark the work of civilisation had to be begun at the beginning
for the fourth time. The king himself could never think without
bitterness of these dreadful days, when evil fortune had heaped
upon his shoulders all the distresses which a man can bear, and
even more ; what he then suffered seemed to him the senseless
and evil caprice of a mocking fate, a tragedy without justice and
without definite aim. Nevertheless there was a colossal success
acquired as the outcome of this struggle, in appearance so fruit-
less ; the new order of German affairs, which had begun with the
foundation of the Prussian power, had proved itself an irrevocable
necessity, and this in face of the severest test conceivable. A hun-
dred years earlier Germany had been able to free herself from the
Hapsburg dominion only by the struggles of an entire generation,
and even to effect this had been forced to pay shameful subsidies
to her foreign allies ; now the poorest region of the empire was
competent within seven years to repel the attacks of a world in
arms, and the victory was gained by German force alone, for the
sole foreign power which had come to the help of the king betrayed
him in the hour of need. Germany's star was once again in the
ascendant ; for the Germans those were true words which were
uttered in joyful thanksgiving in all the churches of Prussia :
" Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth : Yet
they have not prevailed against me."
At the opening of the second campaign it had been the proud
hope of Frederick to fight a battle of Pharsalia against the House
of Austria, and to dictate terms of peace beneath the walls of
Vienna, for this teeming time displayed everywhere the embryonic
germs of the great new formations of a distant future, and plans
were already on foot for an alliance between Prussia and Piedmont,
Austria's other rival. But the battle of Kolin once morerplunged
the king in despair, and he fought now only for the existence of
his state. The attempts he made to summon a counter-Reichstag
68
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
to oppose a North German union to the imperial league were
nullified by the unconquerable jealousy of the smaller courts, and
above all by the arrogant opposition of his Guelph allies. The
hour was not yet come for the abolition of German dualism, for
the reconstitution of the empire ; but by the terrible reality of this
war the obsolete ancient formalisms of the German community were
morally annihilated, and the ultimate veil was stripped from the
colossal lie of the Holy Empire. Never before had any emperor
played so brainlessly with the fatherland as did this Loraine-
Augustus, who threw open all the gates of Germany to foreign
plunderers, surrendered the Netherlands to the Bourbons, and the
eastern marches to the Muscovites. And while the emperor thus
trampled his oath under foot, and himself deprived his house of all
right to the German crown, there was played at Ratisbon the
impudent farce of an appeal to the disciplinary powers of the
imperial law. The Reichstag summoned the conqueror of Silesia
in its antiquated formula, " By these presents must he, the said
Elector, be guided " ; the Brandenburg envoy kicked the mes-
senger of the illustrious assembly downstairs ; the eager but miser-
able imperial army assembled under the banner of the Bourbon
enemy of the empire, to be instantly dispersed like chaff before the
wind by the cavalry squadrons of Seydlitz. But the German nation
loudly acclaimed the victor of Rossbach, the rebel against the
emperor and the empire. With this barren satirical comedy the
great tragedy of imperial history came in truth to its close ; what
still remained of the old German community barely preserved
henceforward even the semblance of life.
The victor, however, who amid the thunder of the battles
had overthrown the ancient theocratic forms, was the official
protector of Protestantism. However effete in this epoch of
enlightenment might seem the ecclesiastical oppositions, Frederick
nevertheless recognised that the essential content of the Peace
of Westphalia, the equality of religious beliefs in the empire, would
become untenable as soon as the two Catholic great powers should
triumph ; the common cause of Protestantism afforded him the
only stimulus with which he could urge the hesitating petty princes
into the struggle against Austria. With a watchful eye, he
followed the underground intrigues of the " pretraille " at the Pro-
testant courts ; it was his word of power that protected the free-
dom of the Protestant Church in Wiirtemberg and Hesse when in
these states the successors to the crown went over to Rome. His
smaller North German allies recognised even more clearly than did
69
History of Germany
Frederick himself the religious significance of the war. In the
letters of F. A. von Hardenberg, minister of Hesse, the allies of
Prussia were always spoken of plainly as the " Protestant Estates,"
and it is esteemed the natural policy of all the Protestant states
of the empire to give their firm support to the Prussian party.
The Prussian grenadier went into battle to the strains of Lutheran
hymns ; the Protestant soldiers of the Swabian region dispersed
with execrations, refusing to fight against their co-religionists; in
the conventicles of the English dissenters, godly ministers prayed on
behalf of the Maccabeus of Holy Writ Frederick, the free-thinker.
The Pope, on the other hand, bestowed upon the empress's
field-marshal a consecrated hat and sword, and every fresh news
of Prussian victory aroused in the Vatican a storm of anti-
pathy and fear. How crushed and fallen had the Protestant world
lain before the feet of Rome a hundred and twenty years earlier,
when the banners of Wallenstein were waving on the shores of the
Baltic and when the Stuarts were endeavouring to subject parlia-
ment to their Romish kingcraft. Now it was a Protestant great
power which gave to the Holy Empire the death-blow, and by
the battles on the Ohio and on the Ganges it was decided for all
time that the dominion of the ocean and the colonies should
belong to the Protestant Teutons.
The struggle for the existence of Prussia was the first truly
European War ; it created the unity of the new comity of states
and gave to that comity the aristocratic form of a pentarchy. When
the new central European great power forced recognition from its
neighbours the two ancient state-systems of the east and of the
west were fused into an inseparable whole, and at the same time
there was a decline in the importance of the less powerful states,
which had formerly, at times, by their accession to a coalition, been
able to decide the issue of a great war, but which were no longer
competent to meet the demands of the new and more grandiose
methods of war-making ; the states of the second rank must be
satisfied henceforward to leave the conduct of European affairs to
the great powers of land and sea. Of these five dominant powers,
two were Protestant, and one was schismatic, so that it now remained
unthinkable that Europe should ever pass back beneath the rule
of the crowned priest. The establishment of the Protestant-
German great power was the most serious reverse that the Roman
See had experienced since the rise of Martin Luther. King Frederick
had in truth, as the English ambassador Mitchell phrased it, been
fighting for the freedom of the human race.
70
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
In the school of sorrows and of struggles the people of Prussia
acquired a vivid sense of nationality, so that the king was justified
in speaking of his nation prussienne. Before this time, to be a
Prussian had been an arduous duty, but it now became an honour.
The idea of the state, of the fatherland, arose in a million hearts
to stimulate and to strengthen. Even the oppressed spirit of the
common man could appreciate a flavour of the classical citizen-
sense that was expressed in the blunt words of the king : " It is not
necessary that I should live, but it is necessary that I should do
my duty to the country and fight for the fatherland." Through-
out Prussia, beneath the stiff forms of the absolute monarchy,
there flourished the self-sacrifice and the great passion of the people's
war. The army which fought Frederick's last battles was a national
army ; the exigencies of the time had forbidden recruiting hi
foreign lands. The estates of the Mark voluntarily entered those
regiments which saved for the nation the fortresses of Magdeburg,
Stettin, and Kiistrin ; the seamen of Pomerania assembled with
their little fleet to hold the mouths of the Oder against Sweden.
During six years the officials received no pay, and quietly went on
with their work as if it were a matter of course. In zealous com-
petition, all the provinces did their sworn duty and fulfilled their
sworn obligations, as it was expressed in the new Prussian manner
of speech all, from the brave peasants of the Rhenish County
Mors on the one side, to the unhappy East Prussians on the other,
who opposed to the Russian conqueror their tough and passive
resistance, and whose loyalty was undisturbed even when the pitiless
king accused them of treachery and loaded them with proofs of his
disfavour.
It was the nation-building power of war which first reawakened
in these North German tribes that stubborn pride which had of old
animated the German invaders of the Roman empire and the
mediaeval conquerors of the Slavs ; the active self-satisfaction of the
Prussians contrasted strangely with the harmless and amiable
modesty of the other Germans. Confidently Count Hertzberg refutes
Montesquieu's doctrine of republican virtue. Where, he asks, in
any republic can you find a finer and more thriving civic virtue than
here under the steely skies of the north, in the offspring of those
heroic nations of the Goths and Vandals who long ago shattered
the Roman empire ? The same sentiment animated the mass
of the people, shown now hi arrant boasting, in the thousand
mocking anecdotes that were current of imperial stupidity and
Prussian military cunning, and now in the moving lineaments of
History of Germany
conscientious loyalty. The young seaman Joachim Nettelbeck comes
to Danzig and is hired to row the King of Poland across the har-
bour ; there is placed upon his head a hat, bearing the monogram
of King Augustus ; for a long time he refuses to put it on, for it
seems to him treason to his Prussian king to bear the sign of the
foreign ruler ; finally he yields, but the ducat that he earns seems to
burn his hand, and directly he gets back to Pomerania he gives
away the wages of sin to the first Prussian wounded soldier he
encounters. So sensitive had now become the political pride of this
people who a few decades before were utterly absorbed in their
petty household cares.
It was impossible to ignore that to the two great captains of
history, to Caesar and Alexander, a companion must now be added,
and that this companion was a Prussian. In the temperament of
the North German people we find side by side with a remarkable
staying-power a trait of inconsiderate rashness, which leads them
to love playing with danger, and the Prussians found this char-
acteristic of their own magnified to genius in their commander
Frederick. They noted how, after a hard apprenticeship, having
rapidly become a master-craftsman, he threw on one side the
careful rules of the laborious ancient art of war, and himself
"dictated the laws of war" to the enemy, always ready to seek
decision in open battle. They noted how he restored cavalry, the
rashest of all the arms, to its old position, proper to the great
conduct of war. They noted how after every victory and also
after each one of his three defeats he continued to maintain " the
proud privilege of initiative." The result proved how happy was
the understanding between king and people. A crowd of heroes
surrounded their commander, diffusing through all ranks of the
army that joyous love of adventure, that spirit of the offensive,
which in all great periods of its history has remained the strength
of the Prussian army. Out of the junkers of the Mark and the
peasant-lads of Pomerania, Frederick created the dreaded regi-
ments of the Ansbach-Beyreuth dragoons and the Zieten hussars,
who in the fury of their charges and the shock of their onset soon
excelled the savage horsemen of Hungary. As the king proudly
expressed it, such soldiers knew nothing of risk : "A general who
in other armies would be regarded as insane is with us simply a
man who does his duty." The twelve campaigns of the Frederician
epoch have impressed their own stamp for ever upon the warlike
spirit of the Prussian people and of the Prussian army ; even to-
the North German, when war is discussed, involuntarily adopts
72
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
the expressions of those heroic days, and speaks like Frederick of
" brilliant campaigns " and " fulminating attacks."
The good-hearted amiability of the Germans outside Prussia
rendered it necessary that a longer time should elapse before they
could overcome then: repulsion towards the hard realism of this
Frederician policy, which unchivalrously chose the precise moment
to attack an enemy when that attack was least welcome. But
when the great year of 1757 came, victorious attack and serious
defeat, new and audacious uprising and new and brilliant victories,
followed one another with perplexing speed, and out of the welter
of events the image of the king continually emerged ever great and
dominant, the people was moved to its very marrow by the con-
templation of true human greatness. The weather-beaten and
hard-bitten figure of old Fritz, as it had been forged by the hammer-
blows of pitiless destiny, exercised a magical charm upon countless
loyal spirits, which had regarded with no more than a confused
alarm the brilliant apparition of the youthful hero of Hohenfried-
berg. The Germans were, as Goethe said of his Frankforters,
Fritz-possessed " for what had we to do with Prussia ? " With
suspended breath they watched how, from year to year, the
unconquerable man saved himself from the forces of destruction.
That overwhelming harmony of undivided love and joy which at
times illumines as with a golden light the history of fortunate
peoples, was indeed still denied to distracted Germany. Like
Luther and Gustavus Adolphus, the only two earlier heroes whose
image is ineradicably imprinted upon the memories of our people,
hi the crozier-ridden lands on the Rhine and the Main, Frederick
also was feared as the great enemy. The enormous majority of
Protestants, however, wide circles among the Catholics, and above
all every advocate of the young science and art of the epoch, fol-
lowed his career with ardent sympathy. People treasured his witty
sayings, and recounted wonder upon wonder performed by his
grenadiers and hussars. Yet the alarmed generation of his con-
temporaries was far from realising that this German was the first
man of his century, and that the renown of the great king
extended to Morocco and to America.
Few were as yet aware that the Prussian renown in battle
was no more than a rejuvenescence of the primeval military glory
of the German nation ; even Lessing sometimes speaks of the
Prussians as of a half-foreign people, and remarks with wonder, that
heroic courage seems in them to be inborn as it was in the Spartans.
Gradually, however, even the masses began to feel that Frederick
73 F
History of Germany
was fighting for Germany. The battle of Rossbach, the bataille
en douceur, as he mockingly terms it, was of all his victories the one
that most powerfully influenced our national life. If in this nation
of private individuals there still existed any political passion what-
ever, it was the tacit sentiment of bitterness against French
arrogance which, so often chastised by the German sword, had still
always maintained itself intact, and had now once more drenched
the Rhineland with blood and tears. But now came Frederick
with his good sword to encounter France, which was submerged
in the waters of shame ; a loud shout of rejoicing arose from all
parts of Germany, and Schubart the Swabian cried : " Then
impetuously I seized the golden harp, thereon to sing Frederick's
praises." It was then that once again the Germans throughout
the empire experienced a feeling resembling national pride, and
they sang with old Ludwig Gleim : " Germans let us be, and
Germans let us remain ! " The French officers who returned to
Paris from the German battle-fields were open in their praises of
the victor of Rossbach, for it still seemed impossible to their pride
that this little Prussia could ever seriously threaten the power of
France ; but in the German comic drama to the once dreaded
Frenchman was now sometimes allotted the role of butt and
windy adventurer.
It is true that the nation still lacked a political understanding
of the nature of Prussia. Alike in respect of the decisive facts
of its recent history and in respect of the institutions of its most
powerful state., this well-informed people lived in remarkable ignor-
ance. When the victories of Frederick had to some extent mitigated
the ancient hatred for Prussia, even in the Protestant lands of the
empire every citizen continued to regard himself as fortunate because
he was not a Prussian. The industrious fables of the Austrian
party found everywhere willing listeners : " This free people,"
wrote Frederick Nicolai in 1780 from Swabia, " looks down upon
us poor Brandenburgers as slaves." The attractive energy of the
powerful state exercised itself only upon strong and aspiring natures.
From the Frederician days onwards there was a steady stream of
youthful talent carrying men out of the empire into the Prussian
service : some were impelled by admiration for the king, and some
by a longing for a wider field of activity ; but many had also an
obscure intimation of the significance of this throne. The mon-
archy had now completely outgrown the narrow-mindedness of
territorial life, gladly took to itself all the healthy energies of the
empire, and found among the circles of the immigrants many of
74
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
its most loyal and capable servants found there also its saviour,
Stein.
With the Treaty of Hubertusburg there began for the German
north a period of forty years of profound quiet, that richly blessed
epoch of peace upon which Goethe hi his old age so often looked
back with grateful emotion. The old tradition of the poverty of
Prussia began to seem fabulous. Social life, especially in the capital
city, assumed richer and freer forms ; the popular well-being under-
went a remarkable increase, and the great years of German litera-
ture began. The position of the empire had been at once simplified
and rendered more difficult by the war. All that remained alive
of the old order was the unsolved opposition of the two great
powers. The premonition of a day of painful decision went through
the German world ; the lesser courts engaged hi busy negotiations,
seeking to protect themselves by the formation of a federation of
the minor powers, in the event of their being endangered by a new
concussion " between the two colossi of Germany." King Frederick,
however, thoroughly instructed as to the unending force of sloth
hi this ancient empire, was satisfied to devote himself to the recon-
stitution of the exhausted energies of his own state ; the aims of
his German policy were henceforward merely these, to obviate the
working of any foreign influence upon the empire, and to maintain
an effective counterpoise against the power of Austria.
A serious danger which threatened the German power from
the east disturbed his peaceful plans. Since the war the Polish
republic had been subject to the will of the Czarina, and the formal
union of the distracted state with the Russian empire seemed only
a question of time. Thereupon Frederick conceived the idea of
the partition of Poland, which ran counter to the Russian views,
setting limits to Russia's ambition. It was a victory of German
diplomacy at once over the unending land-hunger of Russia and
over the powers of the west which were pushed relentlessly aside
by the straightforward procedure of the powers of the east. The
necessary deed unquestionably opened a prospect of incalculable
complications, for the corrupt realm of the Sarmatian nobles now
pursued its path towards hopeless extinction ; but it was neces-
sary, for it rescued the loyal land of East Prussia from the return
of the Muscovite dominion, and secured for the state that con-
necting link between the region of the Pregel and the region of
the Oder which, as crown prince, Frederick had already recognised
as indispensable for Prussia. For the second time the king was
the Augmenter of the Empire, restoring to the great fatherland
"75
History of Germany
the nuclear region of the power of the Teutonic Knights, the beau-
tiful valley of the Vistula which, in days long gone by, the German
Knights had won from the barbarians, and the German peasantry
from the rage of the elements. When the estates of West Prussia
in the refectory of the High Master's castle at Marienburg " swore
fealty to the re-established dominion " (to quote the phrase used
on the commemorative medals), atonement was made for the
wrong done to this German land by the overweening ambition of
the Poles and by the treason of feudal licence. The struggle of
five centuries between the Germans and the Poles for the possession
of the Baltic shore was decided in favour of Germany.
The state, still bleeding from the wounds of the last war, had
now to begin the arduous labour of peaceful reconquest. Horribly
had the Sarmatian nobility infested the land of the Vistula,
exhibiting that contemptuous disregard of foreign rights and foreign
nationality which has ever distinguished the Poles from the other
nations of Europe. Even more vigorously than formerly in Silesia,
must the conqueror now comport himself in order to restore the
German system to repute in the ancient and honourable cities once
renowned for German military fame and German civic industry,
in Schwetz, Kulm, and Marienburg ; to re -institute in the devas-
tated country the first beginnings of economic life. Just as in
former days the first German conqueror had wrested from the
waters the corn lands of the inter-riverine district, so now there arose
from the marches around the flourishing Bromberg the creation
of the second conqueror, the industrious region of the Netzegau.
Frederick himself had but an obscure vision of the significance to
the great course of German history of this re-acquirement of the
Ordensland, whilst the nation had become estranged from its own
past, and hardly realised that these districts had ever been Ger-
man. Some, with the acid obscurity of the moral platitudinarian,
censured the diplomatic intrigue which had led to the alienation
of the land ; others repeated credulously the fables circulated by
the French, the ancient allies of the Poles, in order to stamp as
infamous the powers that effected the partition ; most of them
remained cold and indifferent, finding merely a new reason for accept-
ance of the current view that old Fritz was possessed by the devil.
Not a soul in the empire gave him any thanks for the new benefit
he had bestowed upon our people.
The restless ambition of Emperor Joseph II made it
necessary for the king in the evening of his life to return to those
ideas of imperial policy which had occupied his youth. The court
76
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
of Vienna abandoned the conservative attitude which alone could
preserve in the empire any regard for the imperial house and under-
took to compensate itself in Bavaria for the loss of Silesia ; the
whole course of Austrian history for the last two centuries, the
continuous development of the imperial state outward from the
German realm, was suddenly to be reversed by a wild internal ad-
venture. Thereupon for the second time King Frederick made an
alliance with the Wittelsbachs, and with the might of the sword
forbade the House of Austria to increase its power upon German
soil ; more sharply and clearly than ever before did the contrast
between the two rivals become manifest in the light of day. The
war of the Bavarian succession exhibits at once in its military aspects
and in its political aims many remarkable similarities with the
decisive war of 1866 ; but the former campaign was undertaken,
not to free Germany from the dominion of Austria, as was the case
when Prussia drew the sword three generations later, but merely
to repel Austrian aggression, to maintain the status quo. Although
the ageing hero no longer possessed the audacity to enable him to
carry into effect his campaign on the great lines in which it was
conceived, none the less the power of Prussia was sufficient to compel
the Viennese court to give way. For the second time Bavaria
was saved, the proud imperial court must stoop " to plead before
the tribunal of Berlin," and the embittered Prince Kaunitz uttered
that prophecy which upon the field of Koniggratz was to find
fulfilment hi the opposite sense from that intended by the prophet :
if ever Austria and Prussia were again to cross swords, these swords
would not be sheathed " until the matter had been fought to a
manifest, complete, and irrevocable issue." Hardly less valuable
than the immediate result was the powerful revolution of opinion
in the empire. The dreaded disturber of the peace, the rebel against
emperor and empire, now seemed to the nation the wise protector
of the law ; the smaller courts, which had so often trembled before
the sword of Prussia, now terrified by the restless scheming of the
Emperor Joseph, looked for rescue to the arbiter hi Sans Souci.
In the farms of the Bavarian Alps, side by side with the picture of
the popular saint Corbinian, there was hung .that of the old warrior
with the three-cornered hat. In the chorus of the Swabian and
North German poets which sang the king's fame there were now
mingled a few voices from the profoundly hostile Electoral Saxony ;
the bard Ringulph related in enraptured odes how " from the
bosom of the Almighty, King Frederick, has issued thy great soul
rejoicing in battle." Not long before K. F. Moser had said that
77
History of Germany
it was impossible for the vision of the ordinary man to follow this
eagle in his flight, but perchance there would some day arise a
Newton of political science who could measure the paths of the
Frederician policy. For the Germans began to perceive that this
enigmatic policy had, after all, been wonderfulty and essentially
simple, that Frederick the statesman, devoid alike of hatred and
of love, utterly free from personal feeling, had always sought that
alone which was clearly demanded by the situation of his state.
When the War of Independence broke out in North America
and the enlightened world joyfully hailed the new sun that was
rising in the west, Frederick, too, did not conceal his pleasure. To
his youthful great power a yet newer state elbowing its way into
the circle of the ancient powers was heartily welcome. He was
glad to see this England, which had so shamefully betrayed him
in the last war, and which during the Polish negotiations had
prevented his acquiring Danzig, now herself in a painful quandary.
He declared openly that he would not for a second time defend
Hanover for ungrateful England ; he even once forbade the passage
of the English accessory troops hired in Germany, because this
unclean trade in men enraged him, and still more because he
needed the young men of the empire for his own army. He took
advantage of the need of the Queen of the Seas to preserve, through
the federation of the armed neutral powers, the rights of the navies
of the second rank. After peace had been declared he was the
first among the European princes to conclude a commercial treaty
with the young republic, thus manifesting that free and humane
conception of international law which has ever since been a tradi-
tional characteristic of the Prussian state. But neither his hatred
of the " goddam government," nor the outburst of popular favour
which was displayed towards him in the colonies, ever induced him
to take a single step beyond what was demanded by the interest
of his own state. His ancient enemy Kaunitz might continue to
explain the brilliant course of the Frederician policy as the outcome
of the incalculable cunning of a demoniacal nature. In the empire,
however, the old mistrust gradually passed away ; the nation
observed that nowhere were its opportunities considered with
such calm and deliberate attention as in the palace of Sans Souci.
Thus it was that the unheard-of came to pass, that the high
nobility of the empire of their own free will worked assiduously
under Frederick's banner. The Emperor Joseph resumed his old
Bavarian plan, intending to shatter the power of Prussia ; at
the same time, by a hastily conceived design of secularisation, he
78
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
threatened the status of his spiritual neighbours. A spasm of
alarm seized the smaller states, who thus saw their natural pro-
tector become their enemy. There was talk of a federation of the
central powers and of a league of the spiritual princes, until at
length they were forced to recognise that they could do nothing
without the help of Prussia. With youthful fire the aged king
threw himself into the struggle. All the alluring appeals that
were made to him to unite with the emperor in order to divide the
ownership of Germany he scornfully rejected as appeals to " com-
mon covetousness " ; he controlled his contempt for the petty
princes, recognising that it was only by strict justice that he could
bind ces gens-Id to his side. He succeeded in securing the great
majority of the council of electors and most of the more powerful
rulers on behalf of his league of German princes, so as to maintain
against the emperor the ancient imperial constitution and the
status quo of the estates of the empire. " It is only my love for the
fatherland and my duty as a good citizen," he wrote, " which
drives me in my old age into this new undertaking." The dreams
of his youth were brilliantly fulfilled in the days of his old age.
No longer hidden behind a Bavarian shadow-emperor as in the
Silesian Wars, but with visor raised, the crown of Prussia now took
the stage as the protector of Germany. All the neighbouring powers,
which had counted on Germany's weakness, noted with alarm the
unexpected crisis hi German affairs : France and Russia drew
nearer to the Viennese court, and there was danger that the alliance
of 1756 would be reconstituted. The cabinet of Turin, on the other
hand, hailed the League of Princes with joy as " the tutelary deity
of the Italian states."
The policy of federalism had during two centuries never got
beyond the stage of half-beginnings, but now that it was supported
by the power of the Prussian state it suddenly achieved a striking
success. The memory of the times of Maximilian I and of the
reform proposals of the Elector Berthold was revived. The League
of Princes was determined to preserve the ancient imperio-feudal-
theocratic Germany. But as affairs progressed, and when Prussia
maintained her leadership of the great estates of the empire, the
old forms of the imperial law necessarily became devoid of meaning.
The prospect was opened of the complete overthrow of the Austrian
system. As Count Hertzberg joyfully exclaimed, there was hope
of excluding the Archdukes from the great German fellowship, of
transferring the imperial crown at the next election to another
house, and of placing the leadership of the empire in the hands of
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History of Germany
the mightiest of all the estates. The young Charles Augustus of
Weimar had already resolved to subject to the examination of the
empire those ancient privileges which secured for the House of
Austria its peculiar position of authority. It almost seemed as
if the great problem of the future of Germany was to find a peaceful
solution. But the League of Princes could not endure, and this
bitter truth was manifest above all to the sober sense of the old
king. Only a concatenation of fortunate circumstances, only the
departure of the Emperor Joseph from the traditional methods
of Austrian statecraft, had thrown the petty princes into the arms
of Frederick ; their confidence in Prussia extended only so far as
it was forced on them by their dread of Austria. It was with the
utmost reluctance that Electoral Saxony accepted the leadership
of the younger and less distinguished House of Brandenburg ;
Hanover was hardly less distrustful ; even the most devoted and
the weakest of the federated estates, Weimar and Dessau, were
secretly taking counsel, so we learn from Goethe, how they could
best protect themselves against the dominion of their Prussian
protector. Directly the Hofburg abandoned its greedy designs it
was inevitable that the old and natural division of parties should
be re-established, that the spiritual princes now seeking help from
Berlin should once more regard Protestant Prussia as simply the
sworn enemy of their rule. Since Frederick knew this, since he
knew his faithful allies to the very marrow of their bones, he was
under no illusions as to the prospects of the affair, and was well
aware that this new League of Schmalkald was only a temporary
help, a means for the momentary preservation of an equilibrium.
Charles Augustus, hi generous enthusiasm, was drawing up bold
plans for the structure of the new imperial association, and think-
ing of a customs-union, of military agreements, and of a German
legal code ; Johannes Miiller was glorifying the League of Princes
in fulsome pamphlets, and Schubart was singing its praises in ardent
lyric effusions ; Dohm, in an inspired memoir, came to the con-
clusion, " there can never be any conflict between German and
Prussian interests." The cool reason of the king was uninfluenced
by such dreams as these ; he knew that nothing but a terrible war
could overthrow the Austrian rule in the empire ; it sufficed him to
prevent Austria from exceeding her legal power, for he needed peace
for his country.
All the necessary conditions were still lacking for a serious
reform of the empire ; and above all there was lacking the will
of the nation. The imperial-patriotic protagonists of the League
80
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
of Princes did not get beyond the ancient illusions of German
freedom. The Josephan policy, Hertzberg assures us in moving
terms, threatened to roll together the energies of Germany into
a single mass, and to subject free Europe to a universal monarchy,
whilst in the eyes of Dohm it seemed a praiseworthy aim of the
new league to keep open the western frontiers of Austria so that
France might at any time be able to come to the aid of German
freedom. The people perceived darkly that the existing order was not
worthy to exist ; in the writings of Schubart the small Swabian
territories are often depicted as an open dovecot, just under the
claws of the princely marten. But all such views and intima-
tions were held in check by a sentiment of hopeless resignation such
as the more active-minded present finds it difficult to understand ;
it seemed to the German as if an unsearchable hidden destiny had
condemned this people to vegetate for all eternity in a futile state
of affairs, which had long lost every right to existence. When the
great king departed he left, indeed, a generation of men whose
outlook on the world was happier and prouder than had been that
of their fathers ; there had been an enormous increase in the power
of that state which might at some future time lead Germany to a
new day. But the question by what ways and means a really
living order might be created for the German community, seemed
at the death of Frederick almost as insoluble as it had seemed when
he ascended the throne ; and indeed the great majority of Germans
made no serious effort to seek a solution. There hardly existed as
yet the first beginnings of a national party ; and to those without
counsel it seemed as if only a miracle could bring help. The horrible
confusion of everything is most conspicuously displayed by the
simple fact that the hero who had once used his good sword to
prove the nullity of the institutions of the empire, must now spend
the evening of his days in the defence of these exanimate forms
against the very head of the empire.
If it were possible to Frederick merely to pave the way for a
solution of the German constitutional problem, if he were forced
to leave this task unfinished, he was able, on the other hand, to
exercise a deep and lasting influence upon the internal politics of
the German territories, and to educate our people to a nobler sense
of the state, to a worthier view of its nature. He came at the end
of the great days of absolute monarchy, and seemed to his con-
temporaries the representative of a new conception of the state,
that of benevolent despotism. Propagandist energy is the peculiar
privilege of genius ; genius alone is competent to assemble a
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History of Germany
reluctant world beneath the banner of new ideas. Just as the ideas
of the Revolution were first effectively diffused by Napoleon, so also
was that serious conception of the duties of kingship, which since
the days of the Great Elector had been dominant on the Prussian
throne, transmitted first by Frederick to the general consciousness of
mankind. It was the brilliant results of the Silesian Wars which
had turned the attention of the world, hitherto admiringly fixed
on the courtly magnificence of Versailles, to contemplate with a
profounder consideration the unadorned crown of the Hohen-
zollerns. In war and in foreign policy the king displayed the
incomparable creative force of his spirit, in internal administra-
tion he was the son of his father. He animated the traditional
forms of the state with the energy of genius, completing the incom-
plete freely and greatly ; but he undertook no entirely new con-
struction. Yet Frederick was able to bring into conformity with
the culture of the century, those ideas of political kingship which
his father had realised as a hard-handed practical man ; unceas-
ingly he manifested his activity both to himself and others. When
still crown prince he had acquired a place among the political
thinkers of the age ; despite all its faults of youthful unripeness
his Anti-Machiavel is nevertheless the best and profoundest work that
has ever been penned concerning the duties of the princely office
in an absolute monarchy. Subsequently, in the first flush of vic-
tory, he wrote the Furstenspiegel for the young Duke of Wurtem-
berg. Yet more powerful than all theory was the evidence of his
deeds, for in the days of trial he followed his own precepts, showing
the world what it means " to think, to live, to die as a king."
Finally, he received also that favour at the hands of destiny which
even genius needs if it is to impress its stamp on an entire genera-
tion ; he had the good fortune to live on into a ripe old age. He
was now the Nestor, the accepted leader, of European princes ;
his fame drew the gaze of all the thrones, and from his words and his
works other kings could learn how to think greatly of their own
calling.
The traditional view of the petty princeling, that land and
people were the personal property of the sublimely estimable
princely house, fell into disrepute after the dry remark of the king :
" The prince has no relatives nearer than his state, whose interests
must always take precedence of the claims of kin." The over-
weening dynastic egoism of the Bourbons was displayed in all its
vanity when Frederick, on mounting the throne, had turned his
back upon the light pleasures of life with the words, " My only
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Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
God is my duty," when for half a century he had been serving this
one god with all the forces of his soul, and when to every grateful
utterance of his people he made the same quiet answer, " That is
why I am here." Never before had a monarch spoken so frankly
of the princely dignity, as did this autocrat, who recognised without
reserve the right to existence of the republic as well as of the
constitutional kingdom, and who sought the greatness of absolute
monarchy only in the arduousness of its duties, saying : " The
prince must be the head and heart of the state ; he is the supreme
chief of the civic faith of his country."
The coming generation of the high nobility formed itself after
Frederick's model, and in accordance with the philanthropic ideas
of the new enlightenment. The petty sultans of the days of
Frederick William I were succeeded by a long series of well-
disposed fathers of their country, men true to duty, such as Charles
Frederick of Baden and Frederick Christian of Saxony. It became
common for the princes to receive a military education after the
Prussian manner ; ecclesiastical toleration, furtherance of the
public well-being and of the schools, were regarded as princely
duties ; in some of the smaller states, as in Brunswick, the freedom
of the press became yet greater than in Prussia. Even in certain
spiritual provinces there was a tendency to improvement, and
Minister could value the gentle and careful administration of its
Fiirstenberg. Not everywhere, indeed, nor in a moment, could
the ingrained errors of the petty princely despotism be eradicated ;
the old immorality of the trade in soldiers reached its climax during
the American War to show of what the German minor princes were
capable. The Frederician system of seeking the happiness of the
people as a gift from above was apt to lead in the narrow domains
of the lesser states to empty play-acting or to oppressive tutelage.
The Margrave of Baden spoke of his council as "The natural guardian
of our subjects " ; many a well-meaning lordling maltreated his
tiny state by the imposition of the new-fashioned physiocratic
system of taxation, and by all kinds of unripe philanthropic
experiments ; whilst the princely state-directory of Oettingen-
Oettingen must provide the inquisitive ruler with precise informa-
tion concerning the " name, breed, use, and outward characteristics "
of all dogs within his domain, together with innumerable addi-
tional servile reports. On the whole, however, the princely genera-
tion of the eighties was the most honourable that for long had
occupied the German thrones. Wherever he could, the king
opposed the excesses of his fellows, liberating the aged Moser from
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History of Germany
prison, and securing the Wiirtembergers in the possession of their
constitution. The condition of the empire as a whole was hope-
less, but in many of its members a new and hopeful life began to
pulsate.
Moreover, the example of Frederick exercised its influence far
beyond the German borders. Maria Theresa became his aptest
pupil, diffusing in the Catholic world the ideas of the Frederician
monarchy. The old Austria, surrounded by weak neighbours,
had hitherto passed its time in a careless slumber, and it was the
growth hi strength of its ambitious northern neighbour which
first forced the imperial state to undertake a vigorous development
of its energies. Haugwitz, the North German, transformed the
Austrian administration in accordance with the Prussian model,
in so far as this was possible, and from these Austrian reforms
enlightened despotism elsewhere now learned its lesson, so that in
all the lands of Lathi civilisation, in Naples and Tuscany, in Spain
and Portugal, there began restless endeavours for the forcible im-
position of popular happiness. The pride of the French Bourbons
held out longest against the new conception of monarchy, and with
mocking laughter it was related at Versailles that at Potsdam the
court chamberlain never handed the king his shirt. Not until it
was too late, not until the Revolution was already knocking at the
door, did the French monarchy begin to have some inkling of its
duties. The Bourbons never fully emerged from the vain notion
of courtly self-deification and contempt for mankind, hence their
shameful fall. Among the Germans, on the other hand, the mon-
archical sentiment which was in our people's very blood, and which
had never completely decayed during the centuries of feudal poly-
archy, was reinvigorated by King Frederick. In no other nation
of modern history was the task of kingship understood in so great
and lofty a sense, and for this reason the German people remained,
even when the time of the parliamentary struggle arrived, the most
monarchical in sentiment among all the great civilised nations.
The love of peace of the House of Hohenzollern remained
active even in the greatest of its warrior-princes. Power was
prized by Frederick as no more than a means to secure the well-
being of the nations and to spread civilisation among them. It
seemed to him an injury to princely honour to conceive that power
could ever become an end in itself, that the struggle for power for
its own sake could ever bring historic fame. It was for this reason
that he wrote his passionate polemic against Machiavelli. It was
for this reason that in his writings he returned again and again
84
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
to the repellent example of Charles XII of Sweden. He was
perhaps secretly aware that within his own breast elemental forces
were at work which might lead him to similar aberrations, was
never weary of depicting the vanity of aimless warlike renown,
and in the circular hall at Sans Souci he had the bust of the King
of Sweden placed contemptuously at the feet of the Muses. Even
hi the salad days of his youth he was perfectly clear as to the moral
aims of power. " This state," he then wrote, " must become
strong so that it may be able to play the fine role of maintaining
peace solely out of the love of justice, and not by inspiring fear.
But if in Prussia it should ever happen that injustice, partisanship,
and vice should gam the upper hand, I should hope to see the
headlong fall of the House of Brandenburg." When, at the close
of the Seven Years' War, he felt himself strong enough to maintain
peace by justice, he devoted himself so zealously to the restoration
of the popular well-being, that the army actually suffered in conse-
quence.
This is literally true. The military commander, who had
brought Prussia so many laurels, left the Prussian army in a worse
condition than that in which he had found it on ascending the
throne, and as a military organiser was not the equal of his rough
father. He needed diligent workers to restore his devastated
country, and it was therefore a principle with him to favour foreign
recruiting for the maintenance of the army. The regimental
commanders must draw up their cantonal lists in conjunction with
the local administrators, and from the time this arrangement was
instituted there occurred annually in every district that conflict
between military demands and civic interests which, under changing
forms, continued to manifest itself throughout the history of
Prussia. On this occasion the contest was decided in favour
of the needs of the popular economy. The civic authorities
endeavoured to save every vigorous and capable youth from the
red stock of the cantonist. The king himself intervened on this
side, liberating from the duty of military service numerous classes
of the population, such as immigrants, the families of all those
engaged in industry, the servants of landlords. A number of
towns, and even entire provinces, such as East Frisia, received
special privileges. Soon after the peace, the army came to be more
than half composed of foreigners. Frederick took a high view of
the army, loved to speak of it as the Atlas which carried the state
upon its strong shoulders ; the fame of the Seven Years' War still
continued to produce its effect, so that service as a common soldier,
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History of Germany
although in Prussia as everywhere else it was regarded as a
misfortune, was not here, as elsewhere in the empire, considered a
disgrace. The king brought the great summer manoeuvres on the
heath of Mockerau to a degree of technical perfection which has
probably never been attained in the sequel ; he never ceased to
urge his officers " to love detail, which is also a work of glory " ;
and he wrote for their instruction his military manuals, the ripest
of all his works. No advance in military matters escaped his
glance ; even when a very old man he constructed the new arm
of light infantry, the green fusiliers, after the model of the American
riflemen. The fame of the Potsdam drill-ground drew spectators
from every country ; in Turin, Victor Amadeus and his generals
carefully imitated every movement of the great Prussian drill-
sergeant, even to the bent position of the head ; and when the
young Lieutenant Gneisenau saw the pointed morions of the
grenadiers on parade sparkling in the sun, he cried out with
enthusiasm, " Which among all the peoples of the world can show
such a wonderful sight as this ? "
Yet it is unquestionable that in Frederick's later years the
efficiency of the army declined. The flower of the old officers'
corps lay upon the battle-fields ; during the Seven Years' War and
this is without example in the history of warfare with very few
exceptions all the notable generals had either been killed or per-
manently disabled. Those who now came to the front had learned
war only as subalterns, and they sought the secret of the Frederician
victories in the manual exercises of the drill-ground. Among the
foreign officers, there were many adventurers of dubious character.
Advancement was sought by favour, and there was no place for
the proud courage of a York or a Blucher. The king, less friendly
towards the bourgeoisie than his father, believed that only the
nobleman was a man of honour, and cashiered most of his bourgeois
officers. In the noble officers' corps there arose a junker senti-
ment which became yet more intolerable to the people than had
been the unrestrained roughness of earlier days. The enlisted
veterans ultimately came to live in civic occupation, in comfort with
their wives and families, and detested the thought of active service
for a country in which they remained foreigners. Already in the
war of the Bavarian succession Frederick noted with annoyance
how little this army could do, but the explanation of the failure
eluded his observation. The eudaemonism of his epoch led him to
misunderstand the moral energies of the military system. At one
time, in accordance with the custom of his day, he had formed
86
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
Prussian regiments of Austrian and Saxon prisoners-of-war, and
not even the numerous desertions of these unfortunates could teach
him that he was wrong. In the latest years of the war he had had
abundant evidence of what an army of the children of the country
was able to effect, and yet this powerful appeal to the united energy
of the nation was always regarded by him as a temporary resource
for days of especial need, " now that the protection of the father-
land is in question and that danger is extremely pressing." Among
his statesmen, Hertzberg alone held sacred the bold ideas of
Frederick William I, who had desired gradually to purge his army
of all foreigners, " for then we shall become invincible like the
Greeks and the Romans." But the venerable king saw with
gratification the economic progress of his unhappy country, and he
described his ideal of a military system in the extraordinary words :
" The peaceful citizen should be altogether unaware of the fact
when the nation is at war." Thus one of the pillars supporting the
state structure, the idea of universal military service, was slowly
crumbling away.
The traditional subdivision of classes, and the organisation
of labour which rested thereon, were maintained by the king even
more strictly than they had been by his father ; whenever the
peasant, the burgher, the nobleman seemed to him no longer
adequate for his part in the national economy, he gave help by
instruction and by relentless coercion, by presents and by loans.
The noble must remain the first estate of the realm, for "I need
him for my army and for my national administration." By the
mortgage institutions, and by notable contributions in hard cash,
Frederick succeeded in " preserving " the landed property of the
nobles after the devastation of the years of war. Hence he dared
as little as his father to attempt to carry into practice that com-
plete liberation of the country-folk to which his great mind aspired.
It is true that by the common law the crude form of serfdom was
abolished, but the only slightly less oppressive hereditary subordina-
tion was everywhere maintained. The administration was content
to mitigate in certain details the severities of the existing class-
rule. Unnoticed and undesired by the ageing prince, there was
beginning a significant transformation in the relationships of social
power. The new literature was producing a cultured public as a
compost of all the classes ; the merchants and industrials of the
great towns, the bourgeois leaseholders of the extensive crown-
lands, gradually attained a secure state of well-being and a vigorous
self-consciousness, and could not permanently tolerate the privileges
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History of Germany
of the nobles. The nobleman lost, little by little, at once the
moral and the economic foundations of his dominant position. The
structure of the ancient class-subdivisions was undermined un-
awares.
The administrative organisation of the father also remained
unchanged under the son, the only difference being, that to the
provincial departments of the general directory he added four new
sections, dealing with the entire state, and concerned respectively
with war, commerce, mining, and forestry, thus making a step
further in the direction of the unified state. The crown continued
to stand high above the people. Country dragoons were instructed
to supervise the peasantry in the use of the seed potatoes presented
by the king ; by an order of the Landrat and of the Chamber, com-
pulsion was used to overcome the vigorous passive resistance of
those concerned, against the new communal division, against the
irrigation schemes, against all advances in agricultural technique.
The completely exhausted spirit of enterprise of urban industry
could be re-established only by the forcible methods of the prohibi-
tive system. The errors of the Frederician economic policy lay, not
in the zeal of the administration for the happiness of the people
(a zeal which made light of obstacles, but for which the time was not
yet ripe), but in the fiscal artifices which were forced upon the king
by his financial needs. He was compelled to utilise three-fourths
of his regular expenditure upon the army, and he endeavoured to
balance his budget by the use of monopolies and of indirect taxes.
In its lack of elasticity, the financial system still resembled that of
a private household ; nearly half of the regular income was derived
from the royal demesnes and the forests. The high expenditure
of the state was rendered possible only by its extensive territo-
rial possessions, which served also for the technical education of
the country people. The maximum of the principal taxes being
established by law, for the extraordinary expenses of domestic
colonisation and reclamation recourse must be had to the expan-
sible yield of the public administration of utilities. The carefully
guarded war-chests sufficed for a few brief campaigns ; but it was
impossible for Prussia to conduct a long and arduous war without
the aid of foreign subsidies, for the rights of the diets, the tradi-
tional views of officialdom, and the immaturity of the national
economy, forbade recourse to governmental loans. Notable as
was the increase in civic welfare, progress hi this respect was less
rapid than among the more fortunately situated neighbouring
peoples. The Prussian state always remained the poorest of the
88
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
great powers of the west, essentially an agricultural country, and
one which played a very modest part hi world commerce, even after
Frederick, by the acquisition of East Frisia, had opened access to
the North Sea. The harbours of the Ems and of the Oder lacked
the possession of a wealthy industrial hinterland.
As a reformer Frederick was active in that province only of
the internal life of the state which his predecessor had failed to
understand. As regards the administration of justice, almost the
only service rendered by Frederick William had been an apt trans-
formation of the mortgage system. His son created the new
Prussian judiciary, just as his father had brought into being the
modern German executive officialdom. He knew that the adminis-
tration of justice is a political duty inseparable from the state :
throughout all his dominions he secured the complete indepen-
dence of the imperial courts; instituted a ministry of justice side by
side with the general directory ; placed the entire administration of
justice in the hands of a hierarchially ordered state officialdom,
which trained its own successors, and which exercised a rigid super-
vision over the private judicial authorities that still existed in the
lowest ranks of the magistracy. There was a promise of the uncon-
ditional independence of the courts vis-a-vis the administration,
and such independence was hi practice secured except as regards
a few instances of judicial power arbitrarily but benevolently
exercised by the royal cabinet. The new judiciary, though not
very highly paid, preserved an honourable sense of its duties ; and
whilst the courts of the empire displayed venality and partisan-
ship, in Prussia the proud saying was justified (even against the
king's will) il y a des juges d Berlin To the youth of the age of
enlightenment, who regarded the state as a construction of the
human will consciously working towards a definite end, it was a
self-evident desire that the state must not be something fixed and
traditional in character, but that it must be dominated by a con-
sciously conceived and purposive system of law ; all through his
life it was Frederick's idea to effect the first comprehensive codifica-
tion of the law which had been undertaken since the time of Jus-
tinian. Not till after his death, did the system of civil law come
into operation which manifests more plainly than any other work of
this epoch the Janus-head of the Frederician conception of the state.
On the one hand the legal code is so careful to preserve the tra-
ditional social differences that the whole system of the laws was
adapted to the ancient feudal division of classes, even preserving
for the nobility a feudal marriage law in conflict with the commoD
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History of Germany
law ; on the other hand the code pushes the notion of state
sovereignty so boldly to its ultimate consequences that many of
its utterances anticipate the ideas of the French Revolution, lead-
ing Mirabeau to say that in this respect Prussia was a century in
advance of the rest of Europe. The aim of the state is the general
welfare ; it is only in pursuit of this aim that the state may
impose limitations upon the natural freedom of its citizens ; but in
pursuit of this aim it is also empowered to abolish all existing
privileges. The king is no more than the chief of the state, and
only as chief of the state does he possess rights and duties.
Such were the views of the ruler of Prussia in the days in
which Biener and other notable jurists were still maintaining
as an incontestable legal principle the rights of the German princes
as private owners of country and people. Consequently the
authority of the state, placed above the domain of private rights,
exercises an ordering and instructive influence in all private affairs,
prescribes moral duties to parents and children, to masters and
servants, endeavouring hi its promethean legislative wisdom to
provide for every possible legal dispute of the future.
This legal code marks the ultimate terms of the ancient abso-
lutism : strict limits were imposed upon authority, and the com-
munity was raised to the level of a legal state. At the same time
the code, inasmuch as it overthrew the dominion of Roman law,
was unwittingly paving the way for a new legal unity of the
German people. The mechanical state-idea of the Frederician days
was soon superseded by a profounder and more far-seeing philo-
sophy, the incomplete juristic culture of Carmer and Suarez was
replaced by the work of historical jurisprudence ; but for many
decades the civil code remained the powerful foundation upon which
all further reforms of the Prussian state were erected. Among
the officials, as among the people, the belief in the dominion of law,
a belief which is the pre-condition of all political freedom, became
a living force. If the state existed in order to secure the general
well-being it followed by an inevitable necessity (although Frederick
himself failed to see this) that the privileges of the dominant castes
should be abrogated and that the nation should participate in the
conduct of public affairs. Sooner or later this conclusion would
have to be drawn, for even now, in the enlarged domains of state
activity, only a supply of talented human energies could prove
adequate for the severe tasks which the kingship was undertaking.
Far less effectually did Frederick work on behalf of the
intellectual life of his people. We know, indeed, from Goethe's
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Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
memoirs how the heroic episodes of the Seven Years' War exercised
upon German culture a fertilising and liberating influence, how in
those years of renown in arms a sense of national existence, an
enlarging sentiment of vital energy, came to animate the exhausted
field of poetry ; how the poverty-stricken speech of the country,
which had long been stammeringly attempting the expression of
exuberant feelings, now at length escaped from dulness and empti-
ness, to find the great expression for the great idea. It was within
sound of the drums of the Prussian war camp that the first Ger-
man comedy, Minna von Barnhelm, was written. In this wonderful
spiritual awakening the people of Prussia took an extensive share,
providing for the literary movement several of its pioneer figures,
from Winckelmann to Hamann and Herder. Interpermeated with
the Prussian spirit was the new and maturer form of Protestantism
which ultimately emerged victoriously from the thought-struggles
of this fermenting epoch to become a common heritage of the North
German people I refer to the Kantian ethics. It was only upon
this soil of Protestant freedom that the categorical imperative
could flourish, only here that was conceivable that work of renun-
ciation and faithfulness to duty. Where in former days rough
commands had enforced silent obedience, there was now to be seen
the evocation of a free-spirited assent by the image of the king
who built fearlessly upon the power of the investigating under-
standing, and who willingly recognised that he who reasons best
goes farthest. Frederick carried on in the freest sense the ancient
Prussian policy of toleration in matters of belief, incorporating
hi his legal code the principle, " ideas of God and of divine things
cannot be the object of legal compulsion." Nor did the free-thinker
abandon the attempts towards religious union that had been made
by his predecessors, but insisted that the two Protestant Churches
should not refuse to one another in case of need the community
of the sacraments. The supreme episcopal authority which he
claimed for his own crown, secured him against any state-hostile
machinations on the part of the clergy, and even allowed him to
tolerate that Society of Jesus which had recently been suppressed by
the Pope. He secured for the press a freedom which was rarely limited,
for " if newspapers are to be interesting they must work without
interference." He declared all the schools to be " state institu-
tions," and spoke gladly and with enthusiasm of the duty of the
state to train the coming generation to independent thought and
to self-sacrificing love of country. How often did he praise a
renown for science and art as the finest ornament of the crown?
History of Germany
In this also he showed himself a true German and a prince of peace,
in that he regarded a classical education as the source of all higher
culture, whereas the soldier Napoleon preponderantly esteemed
the exact sciences. Despite all this, the king exercised but little
direct influence in the promotion of popular culture.
The exiguity of financial resources, the lack of efficient ele-
mentary school-teachers, and his incessant struggles, now with
foreign enemies and now with domestic poverty, rendered it difficult
for the king to carry his plans into execution ; and ultimately the
narrow utilitarianism of the father manifested itself also in the
son. The thrifty-minded man found it easier to provide means
for any other purpose than for that of popular instruction. When
the Germans in the empire made a mock of the hungry Prussians,
they thought above all of the Prussian professors. For the
elementary schools the provision was extremely scanty ; for exten-
sive areas in the country districts the rule of universal compul-
sory education, though continually made more stringent, remained
in practice a dead letter. None of the Prussian universities
attained the fame of the new Georgia Augusta University. Not
until near the close of the Frederician epoch, when Zedlitz, the
friend of Kant, undertook the control of the educational institutes,
was a somewhat freer impulse given to the educational system.
At that time the excellent Abbot Felbiger was improving the Catholic
elementary schools, and found imitators in Austria and elsewhere
in the empire, so that ultimately even Catholic Germany came to
share in the finest blessings of the Reformation.
It seemed an easy matter to assemble in Berlin for abundant
activities a brilliant circle of the best heads of Germany. Every
young talent in the empire wished to develop under the eye of the
national hero. Even Winckelmann, who had once in hatred
shaken the dust of the Mark from his feet, now felt how strong
were the bonds with which this state attached the hearts of its sons.
" For the first time," he now wrote, " I hear the voice of the father-
land calling me." He burned with desire to show the Aristotle
of the art of war that a native-born subject could do something
worth doing, and for years was in treaty for a post at Berlin. At
Frederick's French academy, however, there was no place for
German thinkers. The Medicean days which had once been
expected from the art-inspired prince of the Rheinsberg court of the
Muses, were provided only for the foreign wits at the round table
of Sans Souci ; the disciple of French culture had no understanding
of the young life that was growing within the frame of his own
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Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
people. Whilst Berlin society was intoxicating itself to excess in
the ideas of the new literature, while mocking free-thought and
artificialised pleasure-seeking were expelling the old rigid moral
simplicity, the Prussian administration continued to retain its
one -sided tendency towards the immediately useful. That intoler-
ably stiff home-made and prosaic spirit which the old soldier-
king had introduced into his state was mitigated by Frederick
but not abolished ; it was only the baroque magnificence of the
new palace and the mighty cupolas of the Gendarmenkirche which
showed that there was proceeding a gradual modification in that
barbaric hatred of culture which had characterised the thirties.
The Prussian state continued to give expression to one side
only of our national life. The delicacy and the yearning, the
profundity and the enthusiasm, of the German nature could not
come to their rights in this sober-minded world. The focal centre
of German policy did not become the home of the spiritual life of
the nation ; the classical epoch of our poetry found its stage in
the petty states. This significant fact is the key to many of the
riddles of modern German history. To the cool and undetached
attitude of King Frederick our literature owes the most precious
of all its possessions, its incomparable freedom; but this indiffer-
ence of the crown of Prussia during the days that were decisive as
to the character of modern German culture, is also responsible for
the fact that it long remained difficult for the heroes of German
thought to understand the one truly living state of our people.
After Frederick's death it was fully two decades before Prussia
could give a hospitable reception to the intellectual forces of the
new Germany ; and a considerably longer period must subsequently
elapse before German science was able to recognise that it was of
one blood with the Prussian state that the state-constructive
force of our people was rooted in the same vigorous idealism which
had inspired German research and German art in its bold ventures.
Frederick's coldness towards German culture is unquestionably
the most tragical, the most unnatural phenomenon in the long
history of the passion of new Germany. The first man of the
nation, the one who had re-awakened in the Germans the courage
to believe in themselves, regarded from the outlook of a foreigner
the finest and most characteristic works of his own nation ; there
is surely no more expressive, no more shocking way of describing
the slowness and difficulty with which this people of ours was able
to shake off the dire heritage of the Thirty Years' War, the excessive
power of foreign influences. Frederick was not, as had been
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History of Germany
Henry IV of France, a loyal advocate of the national merits and
defects ; he lacked Henry's understanding of the national tempera-
ment in every shade of its caprices. Two natures were at war
within him. On the one hand he was the philosophical connois-
seur, who rejoiced in the strains of music, in the sweet sounds of
French verse, who regarded the fame of the poet as the greatest
happiness on earth, who in honest admiration exclaimed to Voltaire :
"To me the fortune of birth has given an empty appearance, but
to thee every talent possible, and thine is the better part." On
the other hand, he was the energetic North German, who stormed
at his Brandenburger churls in the rough dialect of the Mark,
to the hard people an image of warrior-courage, of restless labour,
of iron strength. The French enlightenment of the eighteenth
century suffers from the essential disease of a profound untruth,
in that it possesses neither the desire nor the power to harmonise
life with the ideal. People waxed enthusiastic regarding the
sacred innocence of nature, whilst wallowing with delight in the
most unnatural practices which had ever prevailed in the Euro-
pean world. They mocked the ridiculous chances of birth, dreamed
of primitive freedom and equality, while indulging in the most
uncontrolled contempt for mankind and in all the sweet sins of the
old courtly society, satisfied with the hope that in some remote
future reason would assert its sway over the ruins of the actual
world of their day. At the Prussian court the talented and ill-
conditioned Prince Henry was a true child of this culture : theoretic-
ally a contemner of that empty vapour which the mob term fame
and greatness, but in practice a man of the hard reason of state,
unscrupulous, an expert in all possible wiles and artifices.
Frederick, too, led after his own manner the double life of the
men of the French enlightenment. It was his tragical destiny to
think and to speak in two languages, of neither of which he had
perfect command. To the youth intoxicated with beauty, the
rude gibberish that was to be heard in his father's tobacco-parlia-
ment was as repugnant as were the obscure writings of over-refined
pedantry with which he came into contact in the works of bigoted
theologians ; for well or for ill he had to make use of this uncouth
speech in discharging current affairs, now in a rough dialect, now
in a stiff legal style. For the world of ideas fermenting in his head
he could find worthy expression only in the tongue of cosmopolitan
culture. He often admitted that his rough and bizarre muse
spoke in a barbarous French, and in the recognition of this weak-
ness he was apt to take too low an estimate of the artistic value
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Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
and linguistic purity of his own verses. One thing at least among
those which make the poet, a protean talent, was not lacking to
him. His muse ranged over the entire gamut of moods. Now,
in appropriate earnestness it could express the great and the
sublime ; now again, in satiric caprice, tease and worry its victims
with the malice of a Kobold or, to say truth, with the mischievous
waggery of a Berlin gutter-snipe. Yet it was a true feeling which
taught him that the wealth of his soul failed to find such abundant
and pure expression in his verses as in the tones of his flute ; the
most tuneful expression, the ultimate profundity of sensation, were
for the German unattainable in the foreign tongue.
The philosopher of Sans Souci never became truly at home in
the foreign culture which he so ardently admired. In especial
he was separated from his French associates by the strictness of
his moral view of the world-order. The greatness of Protestantism
consists in its imperious demand for the unity of thought and will,
of the religious and of the moral life. Frederick's moral culture
struck its roots too deeply into German Protestant life for him
to escape a sense of the secret weakness of French philosophy.
Frederick could adopt towards the Church an attitude more dis-
passionate than was possible to Voltaire, the Catholic, who, in his
Henriade, the evangel of the new toleration, finally comes to the
conclusion that all respectable men must belong to the Roman
Church. Frederick never bent his neck like Voltaire beneath
religious forms which his conscience rejected, and could endure
with the serene indifference of the born heretic the action of the
Roman Curia in placing his works on the Index. Whilst he some-
times condescends to describe philosophy as his passion, we
recognise that with him consideration of the great problems of exist-
ence is something of far more importance than a casual pastime ;
after the manner of the ancients he seeks and finds in the thought-
process the repose of the spirit at one with itself, the security of
the soul that is lifted above all the vicissitudes of fate. After the
aberrations of passionate youth, he early learned to exercise a
forcible control over the tendency towards artistic softness and
sensuality, which often impelled him to grasp at the pleasures of
the moment. However boldly and disrespectfully doubt and
mockery might course through his mind, he ever held firmly to
the conception of the moral order of the world and to the thought
of duty. The solemn earnestness of his life utterly consecrated
to duty is separated by the heaven's breadth from the loose
and fragile morality of the Parisian enlightenment. His writings,
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History of Germany
couched in a clear and precise style, which is sometimes trivial
but never confused, are directed with persistent force of will towards
a secure and determinate conclusion, and in the same way he desires
to regulate his life in accordance with recognised truth. As far
as is practicable in face of the resistance of a barbaric world he
endeavours to secure for humaneness, which he terms the cardinal
virtue of every thinking being, the dominion over state and society ;
and he goes to meet death with the quiet conviction " that he leaves
the world heaped over with his benefits."
Nevertheless it remained for ever impossible to him com-
pletely to overcome the division of his soul. The internal con-
tradiction is manifest at the first glance in Frederick's mordant
wit, which is so nakedly displayed because the hero, in his proud
truthfulness, never dreamed of attempting to conceal it. The life
of the man of genius is always impenetrable in its obscurity,
and very rarely indeed is it so difficult to understand as in the
wealth of this spirit thus cleft asunder. The king looks down with
supt rior iron} upon the flat ignorance of his Brandenburg nobility ;
he draws a deep breath of relief when after the tedium of this dull
society he can refresh himself in the company of the one man to
whom he looks with admiration, the master of the tongue of the
Gallic muses : yet at the same moment he feels what he owes to
the trustworthy soundness of this rough race ; cannot find words
enough in which to express his esteem for the high spirit, the fidelity,
the honourable disposition of his nobles; and bridles his spirit of
mocker, when he contemplates the firm biblical faith of old Zieten.
The French are his welcome guests for the pleasant hours of supper ;
but his respect is given to the Germans. Not one of his foreign
associates is so near to Frederick's heart as the " man of his soul,"
Winterfeldt, who maintained his German disposition even against
his royal friend. Very frequently Frederick expresses in his letters
his yearning for the new Athens on the banks of the Seine, and
bewails the envy of unfavourable gods who have condemned the
son of the Muses to rule over slaves in the Cimmerian region of
winter ; and yet he shares without repining, just as did his father,
the sorrows and labours of this poor people, glad at heart on account
of the new life that was springing to existence under the hard hands
of his peasants, exclaiming with pride : " I prefer our simplicity,
and even our poverty, to that accursed wealth which destroys the
worth of our race." Woe to the foreign poets when they take
upon themselves to offer political counsel to the king ; severely
and mockingly he then refers them to the limitations of their art.
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Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
However vividly, moreover, the ideas of the new France may
occupy his mind, he is a great writer only when, in his French
words, he is expressing German ideas, when in his political, mili-
tary, and historical writings he is speaking as a German prince
and commander. It was not in the school of the foreigner but
through his own energy and through his own incomparable experi-
ence that Frederick became the first publicist of the eighteenth
century, the one German who approached the state with creative
critical faculty, and who spoke in the great style of the duties of
the citizen. Never before in this denationalised race had any-
one written of love of country with the same warmth and profundity
as the author of the Letters of Philopatros. The ageing king no
longer considered it worth while to descend from the altitude of
his French Parnassus into the lowlands of German art, or to
examine with his own eyes whether the poetic energy of his people
had not at length been awakened. In his essay upon German
literature, composed six years before his death, he recapitulates
the ancient accusations of the ordinary Parisian critic against
the undisciplined wildness of the German tongue, and dismisses
with disdainful words the detestable platitudes of Goetz von Ber-
lichingen which he can hardly have read. And yet this very
essay bears eloquent witness to the passionate national pride of
the hero. He prophesies for the future of Germany an epoch of
spiritual glory, the rays of whose sunrise were already illuminating
those still blind to the light. Like Moses, he sees the promised
land from afar off, and comes to the hopeful conclusion, " It
may be that the last comers will excel all their predecessors ! "
So near to his people, and yet so remote, so greatly estranged and
yet so closely akin, w r as the great king of Germany.
The grand epoch of the old monarchy went down to its rest.
Around the king it became ever quieter ; the heroes who had
fought his battles, the friends who had laughed with him and shared
his enthusiasms, sank one by one into the grave ; he was over-
whelmed by solitude, the curse of greatness. He was accustomed
to spare no human feeling ; for himself in former days all the
wondrous dreams of his youth had been trampled under foot by his
unpitying father. In his old age his inconsiderate strength took
the form of an unyielding hardness. The serious-minded old
man who in the scanty hours of his leisure walked alone with his
greyhounds in the picture gallery of Sans Souci, or, heavy-hearted,
in the round temple of his park, pondered memories of his dead
sister, saw far below at his feet a new generation springing up of
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History of Germany
the petty children of man, ready to fear him and to obey, but not
to give him their love. The excess of power of this one man lay
as a heavy burden upon their spirits. When sometimes he still
visited the Opera House, the opera and the singers seemed to wilt
before the spectators ; everyone looked towards the place hi the
parterre where the lonely old man with his great severe eyes was
sitting. When the news of his death came, a Swabian peasant,
expressing the innermost thought of countless Germans, exclaimed :
" Who is now to rule the world ? " Until his last breath was
drawn all the energy of will of the Prussian monarchy continued
to emanate from this single man ; the day of his death was the
first rest-day of his life. His testament showed once again to the
nation how different was the political kingship of the Hohenzollerns
in its understanding of the kingly office from the petty courts of
Germany : "In the moment of my death my last wishes will be
for the happiness of this state ; may it be the happiest of all states
through the mildness of its laws, the most just of all in its domestic
administration, the most bravely defended of all by an army that
lives only for honour and fame for noble deeds, and may this realm
continue to flourish until the end of time ! "
A century and a half had passed away since, amid the ruins
of the old empire, Frederick William had sought the first materials
for the upbuilding of the new great power. A hundred thousand
men of Prussia had found a hero's death, a colossal labour had
been expended to establish hi safety the new German kingship,
and as the outcome of this frightful struggle there had at least
been secured for the empire one abundant blessing the nation
once more found itself master on its own soil. For the Germans
in the empire, life offered a consciousness of security which had
long been lacking ; it seemed to them as if this Prussian had been
predestined to cover with his shield against all foreign disturbers
the peaceful work of the nation ; without this powerful sentiment
of civic security our German poetry would not have found the
joyful spirit necessary for great creation. Public opinion began
gradually to reconcile itself with the state that had grown up
against the public will ; people accepted it as a necessity of Ger-
man life without troubling themselves much about its future.
The difficult problem as to how so venturesone a state-structure
was to maintain itself without the vivifying force of genius, received
serious consideration from one contemporary mind alone, that of
Mirabeau. The old epoch and the new were still greeting one
another on friendly terms, when shortly before the death of the
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Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
king the tribune of the approaching Revolution passed an hour
at the table of Sans Souci. In the glowing terminology of his
rhetoric Mirabeau has described the greatest man upon whom he
had ever set eyes. He termed Frederick's state a truly beautiful
work of art, the one state of the day which could seriously interest
a talented head, but he did not fail to see that this daring structure
rested unfortunately upon too slender a foundation. The Prussians
of those days could not understand such doubts ; the glory of the
Frederician epoch seemed so miraculous that even this most carp-
ingly critical of all the peoples of Europe was blinded by its splen-
dour. For the next generation, the fame of Frederick was a
destructive influence ; people reposed upon that fame in specious
security, and forgot that it is only by arduous labour that the
work of earlier arduous toil can be maintained. Yet when the
days of disgrace and trial arrived, Prussia was once more to
experience the power of genius slowly working to its issue and dif-
fusing blessings ; the memories of Rossbach and Leuthen provided
the ultimate moral energy which preserved the leaky vessel of the
German monarchy from submergence beneath the waters ; and
when the state once again took up arms in a struggle of desperation,
a South German poet saw the form of the great king descending
from the clouds, and calling to his people : '' Up, my Prussians,
assemble under my banners, and you shall be greater even than
were your forefathers ! "
3. THE NEW LITERATURE.
Meanwhile the German people, with a youthful energy and
speed unique in the slow history of ancient nations, had completed
a revolution in its spiritual life ; barely four generations after the
hopeless barbarism of the Thirty Years' War there dawned the
finest days of German art and science. From the vigorous roots of
religious freedom there sprouted a new secular free culture, just
as hostile to the ossified forms of German society as was the Prus-
sian State to the Holy Roman Empire. The classic literature of
all other nations was the offspring of power and of wealth, the ripe
fruit of a developed national civilisation ; the classical poetry of
Germany served to reintroduce the German people into the circle
of civilised nations, to open Germany's way to a purer civilisation.
Never before in the whole course of history has a powerful literature
so utterly lacked favouring external conditions. Here there was
no court which cherished art as an ornament of its crown ; there was
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History of Germany
no large urban public which could at once encourage the poet and
confine him within the limits of a traditional artistic form ; there
were no vigorous commerce and industry to present to the natural
philosopher fruitful problems for investigation ; there was no free
national life to offer the historian the school of experience : even
the lofty sensibility which derives from living amid great events
was first provided for the Germans by the deeds of Frederick the
Great. Spontaneously from the heart of this nation of idealism
did its new poetry spring to life, just as formerly had originated
the Reformation from the sound German conscience. The middle
classes lived their lives almost entirety excluded from the conduct
of the state, immured in the tedium, the compulsions, and the
poverty of the life of petty towns, and j'et in such tolerably secure
economic conditions that the struggle for existence did not as
yet monopolise all vital activities, and the savage jostle for
earnings and enjoj/ments still remained unknown to their peaceful
existence. Among these human beings in a condition of almost
incredible material well-being, there now awakened the passionate
yearning for the true and the beautiful. The more intelligent
among them felt themselves the free children of God, and soared
above the realm of petty realities into the pure world of the ideal.
The note was given by men of altogether exceptional talent, and a
hundred inspired voices joined in a full chorus. Each one spoke
after his own heart, confidently following the joyful message of
the youthful Goethe : it is an inner impulse, and therefore it is a
duty ! Each one gave to the full measure of his powers, as if the
creative activity of the thinker and of the poet was the only thing
in the wide world worth doing for a man of free spirit. They
lived their happy lives, recking little of the monetary reward of
their labour, immersed in their poetry, their contemplation, and their
research, rejoicing in the ever-flowing approbation of warm-hearted
friends, and rejoicing even more in the consciousness of their own
vision of the divine.
Thus from the year 1750 onwards three generations of Germans,
working simultaneously and successively, and often striving in
passionate contests, created the youngest of the great literatures
of Europe. This literature, for long almost unnoticed outside the
German borders, endowed with unbounded receptivity, took to
itself the enduring content of the classical poetry of England,
France, Spain, and Italy, reconstituting this with a new creative
spirit, to find fulfilment ultimately in Goethe, the most many-sided
of all poets. The movement was so perfectly free, so spontaneous
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Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
an outcome of the innermost impulse of an overfilled heart, that
of necessity it culminated finally in the audacious idealism of
Fichte, who regarded the moral will as the sole reality, and the
whole outer world as merely a creation of the thinking ego ; yet
the whole process was a necessary and natural growth. The
creative energy of the German spirit had long been slumbering like
a chrysalis in its delicate envelope, but there now happened what
the poet expresses in the words : " The moment comes for the
imago to emerge, to spread its wings, and fly to the heart of the
rose." A pure-minded ambition, seeking truth for the sake of
truth, beauty for the sake, of beauty, now animated the clear heads
of the German youth. No other of the modern nations has ever
devoted itself with the same earnestness, with the same undivided
ardour, to the world of ideas ; no other numbers among the leading
spirits of its classical literature so many fine and humanly lovable
characters. Hence, for our people, whenever their star seems to
be undergoing obscuration, the memory of the days of Weimar
will remain an inexhaustible source of confidence and hope. To
the Germans, art and science became matters of vital consequence,
and were never here, as once of old among the Romans, a mere
elegant play-acting, a pastime for the idle hours of the world of
fashion. Not with us did the courts develop our literature, but the
new culture arising from the free activity of the nation brought the
courts under its own subordination, liberated them from unnatural
foreign customs, and gradually won them to the adoption of a
gentler and more humane civilisation.
Moreover, this new culture was German to the core. Whilst
the political life of the country was subdivided into innumerable
currents, in the domain of spiritual work the natural vigour of the
national unity was so overwhelming that no attempt was ever
made at any territorial subdivision. All the heroes of our classical
literature, with the solitary exception of Kant, were migratory
men, and did not find their region of richest efficiency upon the
soil of their own home. All were inspired by a consciousness of
the unity and originality of the German nature, and all were ani-
mated by the passionate desire to restore the peculiar gifts of this
nation to their rightful place of honour in the world; they knew,
every one, that the whole of Germany was hanging upon their word,
and they felt it to be a proud privilege that only the poet and the
thinker were competent to speak to the nation and to act on behalf
of the nation. Thus it came to pass that for many decades the
new literature and the new science were the mightiest bond of
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History of Germany
union for this people split into so many fragments, and literature
and science ultimately determined the victory of Protestantism in
German life. It was in Protestant Germany that this great intel-
tellectual movement had its original home, and only gradually
did the Catholic regions of the empire submit to the same impulse.
The thought -process of the philosophers gave rise to a new moral
view of the world-order, to a new doctrine of humanism which,
though free from all dogmatic rigidity, was yet rooted in the soil
of Protestantism, and which ultimately became a common heritage
of all thinking Germans, Catholic and Protestant alike. One to
whom this new humanism was unknown was no longer living in
the new Germany.
The middle strata of society among which this new culture
sprang to life came to such an extent to occupy the foreground of
the national life that Germany, more than any other country,
became a land of the middle class ; the moral judgment and the
artistic taste of the middle class were the determinants of public
opinion. Classical education, which had hitherto been the instru-
ment for the expert training of lawyers and divines, now became
the basis of the general popular culture ; upon the ruins of the old
aristocracy of birth there upbuilt itself the new aristocracy of the
educated people which for a hundred years has been the lead-
ing class of our nation. In all directions the literary movement
exercised its awakening and fertilising influence ; it ennobled
manners, restoring to woman her due place as mistress in social
intercourse ; it provided once again for an oppressed and intimi-
dated generation the free breath of life. Building upon the written
speech of Martin Luther, it developed a common tongue of inter-
course for all branches of the German stock ; it was only in the
final third of the eighteenth century that the cultured classes began
to pay due respect to the pure High German even in daily life.
Unaffected by the noise and the hurry of the great world, German
poetry was able to maintain for an extraordinarily long period
the blameless cheerfulness, the concentrated reflectiveness, and the
fresh love of being, characteristic of youth. It was this which
so greatly charmed Madame de Stae'l in the brilliant days of Weimar
art ; she felt that on the Ilm, among the most highly cultured of
the German people, she was drinking in the forest-love of a primi-
tive human life, and was taking breath once more after the vapours
and the dust of her native world-city. And as it is the right of
youth to promise without restraint, and whilst receiving crowns
of glory to reach out the hands once more in pursuit of further
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Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
aims, the German nation, in this period of poetic rejuvenescence,
displayed an extraordinarily many-sided activity, unweariedly
propounding new problems, discovering new artistic forms, and
devoting its energies to every possible science, with the one excep-
tion of the science of politics.
It must be admitted that side by side with the peculiar merits
characteristic of its origin, our new literature exhibited also peculiar
weaknesses. Since the poet was unable to create his matter directly
out of the great passions of vigorously active public life, it resulted
that criticism gained a preponderance that was often dangerous
to the naive artistic creative energy, most of the dramatic heroes
of our classical art display a morbid tendency to renunciation, to
a dread of action. The unbridled freedom of creation readily led
the poets to arbitrary conceits, to elaborate artifices, to ambitious
beginnings which never found completion ; and it is not by mere
chance that the greatest of all our poets is the one who, among the
great poets of history, has left the world the largest number of
fragments. Individual talent could display its primitive energies
undisturbed, and was not all tuned to a single measure by the
exigencies of party life. Love became stormy, friendship effemi-
nate, and every sensation found expression to excess ; an enviably
rich sense of fellowship, fertile in ideas, produced a few men of
universal culture, such as had not been known in Europe since the
Renaissance. But within the retired sphere of this purely private
life there developed, not only what is valuable in individuality,
but also the defects characteristic of the free personality.
" Love, to the very marrow, love, hate, and fear, tremble, hope,
and despair." This was the watchword of the new sensationalism
of the epoch of Sturm und Drang; an unbridled self-confidence, a
faith in their power to storm the heavens became active in the
young generation, reacting against the lack of freedom characteristic
of public affairs. Incalculable caprices, personal hates and personal
envies, were given unrestricted expression ; many of the works
of this epoch are comprehensible to-day to those only who are
familiar with the letters and diaries of their writers.
A literature of such an origin and such a character could not
become popular in the fullest sense of the word, and could influence
the masses but slowly and indirectly. Whilst the men of culture
were inspiring themselves by the contemplation of the pure forms
of the antique, the sense of beauty among the common people,
although these were now better educated than formerly, remained
much blunter than that of the same class in France and in Italy.
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History of Germany
Once only in this northern land was there a passable cultivation
of the general sense of form : in the days of the Hohenstaufen,
when the palaces and the cathedrals of the late Romanesque style
were constructed, and when the glorious songs of our earlier classical
poetry were understood by the peasant lads and maidens in every
village along the Rhine and the Main. Since those days, at every
stage in the development of German civilisation, there has been
displayed a hideous foundation of unrestrained barbarism. When
the beautiful Renaissance facade of the Otto Heinrich building
in Heidelberg was erected, the German art of poetry was in a
profoundly depressed condition, and the noble edifice was defaced
by lamentable doggerel verses. Similarly, when the joyful days of
our second classical literature arrived, the fine arts, which
flourish only in the soft atmosphere of general well-being, were
hardly affected by the fresh current of the new time, and Goethe
wasted the beauty of his verses upon such ridiculous buildings as
that Roman house at Weimar whose pseudo-antique forms are
altogether repugnant, and which offends the cultured sense by its
utter vanity. We cannot, indeed, fail to be moved by the con-
templation of this heroic generation of idealism, which, amid the
unadorned poverty of the palaces of our petty princes, continued
to aspire towards the highest good of mankind : yet there persisted
an unnatural severance between the wealth of ideas and the poverty
of life, between the bold flights of the imagination of the cultured
and the utterly prosaic daily activities of the labouring masses.
The nobility of a harmoniously developed civilisation such as that
which brought happiness to the Italians in the days of Leonardo still
remained denied to the Germans.
All its defects and errors notwithstanding, it was this literary
revolution which determined the character of the new German
civilisation. By developing the fundamental ideas of the Reforma-
tion into a right of absolutely unprejudiced free investigation,
it made this country once again the central region of heresy.
Awakening the ideals of a purely humanistic culture, it awakened
also the national pride of country. However immature might be
the political culture of the time, however wrong-headed its cosmo-
politan dreams, in all the leaders of the movement there was none
the less active the noble ambition to prove to the world that, as
Herder says, " the German name is strong, firm, and great in its
own right." The national inspiration of the War of Liberation arose,
not in conflict with the ideas of humanism, but on a truly humanist
foundation. When the cruel blows of destiny had again reminded
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Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
the German genius of the needs to come down from the clouds to
the finite conditions of existence, the nation also attained by a
necessary last step to the consciousness that its new spiritual free-
dom could endure only in a respected and independent state ; the
idealism that breathed from the thoughts of Kant and the dramas
of Schiller, became transfigured in the heroic wrath of the year 1813.
It resulted that our classical literature, proceeding from an entirely
different starting-point, aspired towards the same goal as the
political labours of the Prussian monarchy. It is to these two
formative energies that our people owes its position among the
nations and the best features of its recent history. It is very
remarkable how both for a hundred years held equal pace in their
development, bearing witness to an inner connection, which for this
very reason cannot be fortuitous, since an immediate and obvious
reciprocal action is rarely traceable. At the very time when the
Great Elector was creating the new temporal state of the Germans,
there happened also in the world of literature the decisive libera-
tion of science from the yoke of theology. When subsequently,
under Frederick William I, the Prussian state was collecting its
forces in a period of quiet work, the intellectual life of the nation
was also in a state of self-containment, the arid prose of the
Wolffian philosophy once more taught the middle classes how to
think and to write logically. Finally, towards the year 1750,
contemporaneously with the heroic deeds of King Frederick, there
began the awakening of creative energy in literature, and the first
permanent works of the new poesy made their appearance.
To the mind of the Middle Ages, the moral world appeared a
closed visible unity ; state and church, art and science, received
the moral laws of their being from the hands of the Pope. It was
the aim of the Reformation to destroy this dominion of ecclesias-
tical authority, and to win alike for the state and for knowledge
the right to an independent moral existence. Yet the success thus
attained was but a half -measure. Just as the theocracy of the
Holy Empire remained established, and all the temporal states
continued to support the zealotry of the Churches, so also know-
ledge relapsed under the theological perversion ; the old queen of
the sciences continued to occupy her throne, and all the teachers
at the universities were compelled to avow some particular religious
creed. Then began, first of all in Germany's highly cultivated
neighbour-lands, the great work of the mathematical century ; a
strict and clear-headed research, working in a free secular spirit,
elucidated the secrets of nature ; and towards the end of the
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History of Germany
seventeenth century, when Newton discovered the laws of celestial
mechanics, there gradually ensued a profound change in our views
of the world-order. Dogmatic religious belief had hitherto been
regarded as the only trustworthy guide in the insecure realm of
thought, but now knowledge seemed to furnish greater security
than belief. It will always remain a proud memory for our people
how boldly and freely the harassed generation of the Thirty Years'
War participated in this mighty movement, at first in a spirit
of receptive discipleship (for Leibnitz found it necessary to say that
industry was the only talent of the German nation), but subse-
quently in a mood of active independence. After a long and fierce
struggle Puffendorf expelled the theologians from the field of
political science and founded for Germany a true doctrine of the
state. Other sciences followed suit and learned to stand upon
their own feet ; the University of Heidelberg was the first to abandon
the principle of religious unity. In Leibnitz there arose a thinker
whose cautiously intermediating spirit was inwardly free from the
dominion of dogma, and who opened a path of unprejudiced research
to German philosophy ; whilst soon Thomasius could joyfully
exclaim, "It is unrestricted freedom which alone gives the spirit
its true life." By the secularisation of the sciences, the political
power of the Churches was gradually destroyed from within out-
wards. By the middle of the eighteenth century there was little
left of the power which the court-chaplains and consistories had
formerly possessed in the Protestant lands of the empire ; the
new officialdom held fast to the sovereignty of the state. At this
period, also, Thomasius ventured to introduce the German tongue
into academic instruction, and since all the Protestant universities
followed his example, the Latin learning of the Jesuits was no longer
able to enter into rivalry with Protestant science ; everyone in
Germany who desired a living culture hastened to enrol himself
at some Protestant university. Although the corporate pride of
the professors and the roughness of the academic youth were not
yet entirely overcome, the first bridge had been erected between
science and the life of the nation.
At the same time there ensued for the Protestant Church a
period of new life, centred above all in the young University of
Halle, and firmly attached to the tolerant ecclesiastical policy of
the Prussian state. The nation had been heartily sickened by the
raging contests of dogma during the epoch of the wars of religion.
The efforts of the Calixtiners towards religious union, the "religious
inwardness" of the pietists, and the rationalising criticism of
1 06
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
Thomasius, found themselves side by side in a common struggle
with the tyranny of the theological belief in the letter of the written
word. The moral content of Christianity, which had almost been
forgotten amid the noisy struggles of the zealots, came once more
to its own, now that Francke and Spener had exhorted their congre-
gations to live the life of the gospels in mutual brotherly love.
The effective sense of Christian piety was manifested in the magni-
ficent foundation of the Halle orphanage and in other works of
charity ; the doctrine of pietism spoke to the heart, and enabled
women to feel themselves once more to be living members of the
congregation. Nor did this revival of German Protestantism lead,
like the efforts of the Dutch Arminians and of the English Latitu-
dinarians, to the formation of new sects ; it effected, rather, a genuine
union of the whole Protestant name, permeating the Church once
more with the spirit of primitive Christianity, and fulfilling the
word " in My Father's house are many mansions." After many
struggles and aberrations it yet remained as a permanent acquire-
ment that German Protestantism became the gentlest, the freest,
and the most comprehensive of all the Christian communities, and
one which was still able to find place within its bosom for the boldest
ventures of philosophy ; it resulted also that religious toleration
gradually made its way into the daily life of the Germans, and that
numerous mixed marriages, and before long also mixed schools,
gave a permanent seal to ecclesiastical peace.
It is only this revival of German Protestantism which explains
those most peculiar tendencies of the new German civilisation
which remain incomprehensible to most non-Teutons, and even to
the English ; this alone has rendered it possible for the German
to be at the same time pious and free, for his literature to be Protes-
tant without the taint of dogma. The English and French
enlightenment has the sign written on its forehead to show how it
was effected in conflict with the tyranny of enslaved Churches and
with the obscure zealotry of an ignorant populace ; even the deism
of the British is irreligious, for the deists' god makes no appeal to
the conscience, and merely fulfils the office of the great machine-
driver of the world. The German enlightenment, on the other hand,
was firmly rooted in Protestantism ; it attacked ecclesiastical
tradition with even sharper weapons than did the philosophy of
the neighbouring peoples, but the boldness of its criticism was
mitigated by a profound veneration for religion. It awakened
the consciences which the Anglo-French materialism put to sleep ;
it preserved the belief in a personal God, and in the ultimate
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History of Germany
purpose of the perfected world, the human immortal soul. The
fanatical hatred of the Church and the mechanical view of the world-
order which characterised the French philosophers, were regarded
by the Germans as a sign of enslavement ; Lessing turned with
repulsion from the mockeries of Voltaire, and, with the self-certainty
of the young man rejoicing in the future, the student Goethe laughed
at the senile tedium of the Systeme de la Nature. All through the
eighteenth century the Protestant parsonage continued to exercise
its ancient beneficial influence upon German life, while never
ceasing to take an ardent part in the creation of the new literature.
Even though our art could not become a possession of the whole
people, we have still to thank the rejuvenation of German Protes-
tantism for the great blessing that the most highly cultivated
moral views have come to permeate the conscience of the masses,
and that ultimately the ethics of Kant forced their way into the
Protestant pulpits and thence into the lowermost strata of the
North German people. The moral gulf between the upper and the
lower strata of society was narrower in Germany than in the lands
of the west.
This first epoch of modern German literature exhibits also a
severe prosaic tendency. Men of learning are the leaders of the
movement ; art is hardly touched as yet by the spirit of the new
age ; only in Schliiter's buildings and statuary, and in the com-
positions of Bach and Handel, do we witness a great and free
manifestation of the heroic character of the epoch. Yet to-day
those notable struggles against Jesuitism and against coagulated
Lutheranism seem to us as pioneer and as radical as the political
deeds of the Great Elector. They laid the firm foundation for
everything which we to-day speak of as German spiritual free-
dom. From the maturer writings of Leibnitz and Thomasius, from
Puffendorf's work upon the relationship of State and Church,
there speaks already that spirit of unconditional toleration which
in foreign lands neither Locke nor Bayle could whole-heartedly
advocate.
In the succeeding generation, the creative energy was almost
completely suspended. These were the empty days in which the
crown prince Frederick was experiencing the decisive impressions
of his youth. The market of learning was under the dominance
of a sterile polymathy, and the ambitious works of the day were
lacking precisely in those qualities of measure, precision, and
definiteness of expression, which were especially prized at the
Rheinsberg court of the Muses. Gottsched's poetry slavishly
1 08
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
followed the rigid rules of French poetry without ever rising out
of the level of bumptious platitude to attain the rhetorical pathos
of the romance world. Electoral Saxony was the only German
land which could boast of tasteful culture and of a fertile artistic
activity ; but the splendid operas and the fine baroque buildings
of the Dresden court are no more than the signs of the fantastic
late blossoming of Gallic art, and by no means indicate a progress
in our national life. Yet even now the growth of the German spirit
was far from being arrested. The more generally comprehensible
products of the intellectual work of the highly talented previous
generation became gradually current among the people. The
philosophy of Christian Wolff effected a reconciliation between
faith and knowledge sufficient for the needs of the epoch, and thus
provided for the coming generation a consistent and harmonious
view of the universe. The average culture of the middle classes
found peace in the belief that God operates in accordance with
natural laws. Wolff deliberately transcended the limits of the
learned world, awakened in wide circles a desire for thinking and
writing, and accustomed men of learning to contribute their quota
to the work of general enlightenment. Simultaneously, pietism
was working its influence in society. The rough tone of tyrannical
hardness disappeared from family life. In the sentimental assem-
blies of the finer spirits there began the cult of personality. The
life of every individual acquired an unexpected new value and
content ; the Germans came to recognise once more how rich is
the world of the heart, and became capable of understanding
profoundly conceived works of art.
Now there appeared in the arena, as suddenly as the might
of the Frederician state, and exhibiting the same overwhelming
strength, those forces of German genius which had been quietly
maturing in the long years of anticipation. In 1747 were pub-
lished the first cantos of Klopstock's Messiah. The warmth and
intimacy of feeling which in the prayers and diaries of the revivalists
had found no more than an immature and often ludicrous expres-
sion, now at length attained to a worthy poetic form ; the jejune
speech gained buoyancy, nobility, and boldness ; the entire world
of the sublime was reopened to the German imagination. With
remarkable speed the nation understood that a new epoch in its
culture had begun. A swarm of young men of talent surrounded
the bard, in whose personality the loftiness of the new art also
found a worthy representative ; and these admirers, in the naive
self-appreciation characteristic of all periods of powerful expansion,
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History of Germany
placed the epic of the German master above that of Homer, and
his odes above those of Pindar. This artistic circle was in-
toxicated by a fantastic enthusiasm for the fatherland, and this
sentiment, propagated slowly but vigorously, found its way through
all strata of the German middle class. Just as every nation, when
there comes a turning-point in its existence, is accustomed to find
fresh sources of enthusiasm in the great memories of the primitive
homeland, so now the yearnings of these days turned back towards
the simple greatness of the Teutonic primitive age, conceiving that
only in the shadows of the German oak-forests, only in the land
of Arminius and the bards, were truth and loyalty, strength and
ardour at home. What a chorus of acclamation arose from the
new Germany when the singer of the Messiah called upon the
new contestant, the young German muse, to enter the field against
the poesy of England.
Meanwhile Winckelmann made our people acquainted with
ancient art, and rediscovered the simple and profound truth that
art is the representation of the beautiful. At the same time he
produced the first work of the new German prose that was perfect
in respect of form. Clear, weighty, and inspired, sounded the words
of this priest of beauty, embodying passion and great thoughts
pressed together in a measured and concise form ; it was by " the
illuminated brevity " of his style that the shapeless prolixity of
learned pedantry was first overcome. His writings gave to the
young literature its trend towards the classical ideal. In rivalry
and in passionate delight, art and science sought to fulfil them-
selves with the spirit of antiquity ; and since man values that only
which he over-values, it resulted that this generation, rejoicing in
beauty, intoxicated with the joys of first awakening, could see
nothing in the ancient civilisation but pure humanity, health, and
nature. It was only to the Romans themselves that the world of
classical Rome was truly congenial, but to the genius of Greece the
Germans were attracted by a sentiment of kinship. To the Germans
first among the modern nations did there come a full understanding
of Greek life, and as the new culture ripened, the poet could joy-
fully exclaim : " The sun that smiled on Homer smiles also on
us now ! " By its entry into the antique world the German tongue,
which had so often been impoverished and obscure, reacquired a
considerable proportion of its ancient wealth, and it now came
to display an unanticipated plastic softness and flexibility. Alone
among the new languages of civilisation, German showed itself
competent to employ at once faithfully and vividly all the measures
no
Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
of the Greeks ; as soon as Voss, the German Homer, had shown
the way, Germany gradually became the leading speech of the world
for translations, hospitably providing a second home for the poetic
figures of all peoples and all ages. Yet this charming receptivity
implied neither weakness nor lack of independence : the German
disciples of the classic preserved then: spiritual freedom from
the classical ideals, not allowing themselves, as had happened to
the humanists at the close of the fifteenth century, to be led astray
from the firm regulation of their own lives by the moral views
of the antique world. Winckelmann, indeed, reminds us in many
of his characteristics of the unrestrained heroes of the Renais-
sance : but the majority of poets and thinkers who followed in his
footsteps remained German, taking from the Hellenic culture that
only which was accordant to the German nature ; and the poem
which of all the works of modern art approximates most closely
to the spirit of the antique, Goethe's iphigenia, was nevertheless
permeated by a sentiment of loving gentleness such as was never
understood by the hard-hearted heathen of antiquity.
Independent of these two tendencies, and yet at one with
both in the struggle for the rights of the free artistic creator, Lessing
went on his way. The most productive critic of all time, he stood
in relation to the pathetic exuberance of Klopstock as once Puffen-
dorf and Thomasius had stood in relation to pietism, at the same
time divergent and bringing fulfilment. His creative criticism
effected that which the enthusiasm of the new lyric poetry would
never by its own unaided powers have succeeded in effecting, the
permanent destruction of the strained unnaturalness of the poetic art
of Gottsched, the expulsion from the German Parnassus of the bastard
type of didactic poem, the liberation of the nation from the yoke
of the rules of art imposed by Boileau. Little as we are justified
in ascribing to the man who regarded patriotism as a heroic weak-
ness the conscious sentiment for the fatherland characteristic of
our own day, yet through those powerful controversial writings
which held up the dramas of Voltaire for the laughter of the Germans
there runs that same great tendency of a strengthening national
life that we find in the heroic progress of Frederick. Lessing's
criticism turned the German poets from the courtiers'-versification
of the Bourbons to the methods of Aristotle rightly understood,
to the simple examples of classic art, and he taught them to esteem
that truth which is true to nature more than all highly elaborated
rules. That criticism displayed to them in the plays of Shakes-
peare a source of primitive Teutonic life which became a fountain
III
History of Germany
of youth for German art ; the poet of the merry England of old
soon found in the free secular sense of the Germans a fuller under-
standing than in his own fatherland sterilised by puritanism.
Lessing, above all, educated the new public ; he was the first
German man of letters, the first who by his own personal worth
raised to honour the profession of the free author, and the first who
understood how to make an effective appeal to all the cultured
minds of the nation. The most obscure problems of theology,
of aesthetics, of archaeology, seemed luminously clear when treated
by him in the light tones of the lively speech of Upper Saxony,
in that prose that was simple and yet so full of art, which every-
where reflected his own inmost nature, the serenity of his own
understanding.
And here, even in the earliest youth of the classic German
prose, it became manifest that our free tongue was suited to every
individuality of style, that it permitted each creative mind to work
after its own fashion. The style of Lessing, plainly modelled on
French examples, was no less German than were the majestic periods
of Winckelmann for both these authors wrote as they had to
write. But the security of the literary sense of self-sufficiency
first came to the Germans when the great critic showed himself also
to be an original artist, presenting to our stage the first works that
were not shamed by contrast with the rich reality of the Frederician
epoch, and that could bear comparison with the dramas of foreign
lands. These were works displaying the keenest understanding of
art, and yet full of passionate dramatic movement ; apt for the
stage, and yet composed in perfect freedom ; works of imperishable
human content and yet taking their figures with a vigorous hand
from the animated life of the immediate present. Thus he rose
higher and higher, dispersing in all directions the seed of free cul-
ture. By his Emilia he gave our young literature the courage to
raise its voice against the lack of freedom in the state and in society.
His theological controversial writings laid the foundations for a
new epoch in theological science, for the biblical criticism of the
nineteenth century. The last of his poetic works established the
forms for the drama of lofty style which was subsequently to
undergo further development at the hands of Schiller, and mani-
fested at the same time that comprehending faith in enlightenment
whose serene mildness was not to become apparent to other nations
until after the storms of the Revolution.
In the seventies, a new and still richer generation came upon
the stage. The universal spirit of Herder united at once the
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Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
vigorous understanding of Lessing and the rich emotional nature
of Klopstock. He rediscovered that truth which had been lost
in the long centuries overlaid by barbarism, that art is not the
exclusive possession of particular peoples or ages, but is a common
gift of all nations and all times ; and he led back our German
lyric poetry to the ancient forms and subjects of the folk-songs.
The moving tones of German rhyme came once more to their
own, and emotional feeling found a warm, profound, and natural
expression in songs and ballads. A thoroughly unhistoric epoch,
one which had acquired its fame in the destruction of a decaying
world of historical ruins, was awakened by Herder to an under-
standing of historical life. His free spirit despised the poverty of
that self-satisfied illusion which regards all the children of men as
created only " for that which we term civilisation." He recog-
nised that each nation has its own measure of happiness, its own
golden age ; and with wonderful insight he discerned the peculiar
characteristics of the spiritual life of the peoples. It was through
his work that the contrast between the naive civilisation of anti-
quity and the sentimental culture of the modern world first became
apparent. To his prophetic glance there was already revealed
the interconnection between nature and history ; he conceived the
magnificent idea of " following the footsteps of the Creator, of
thinking after His manner," of seeking the revelation of God at once
in the constructive energies of the world-all and in the transforma-
tions of human history ; he gave a new profundity to the idea of
humanity when he thought of mankind as a " tone in the chorus
of creation, a living wheel in the works of nature." No writer of
the eighteenth century passed a severer judgment than Herder
upon the late manifestations of Christianity, and yet none dis-
played a profounder understanding of faith than did this intrinsic-
ally religious spirit. The highest goal of his endeavour was to
purify religion from all that was despiritualised and enslaved.
Every one of his writings breathes an air of intense piety, an
intimate and joyful faith in the wisdom and goodness of God, a
faith that ultimately overcomes all the caprices of a self-tormenting
nature inclined to get out of tune. Thus it was that an unsparing
opponent of the errors of the Church could without hypocrisy
remain a great divine and an ecclesiastical official a striking
testimony to the sober-minded freedom of the age.
The new universal culture for which the bold anticipations of
Herder had merely paved the way, now received their definitive
artistic form in the work of the poet of mighty speech to whom a
History of Germany
God gave power to express in song what he had learned in suffering.
It was this mysterious power of conveying an immediate environ-
ment that his contemporaries first learnt to marvel at in the
young Goethe. Soon, too, they felt the influence of his unending
love, of his unsurpassed receptiveness for all that is human. It
seemed like a personal revelation of himself when he made his Son
of God exclaim : " Oh, my generation, how I yearn towards thee !
And how dost thou, too, pitiful in heart, supplicate Me in thy deep
distress ! " Like the bards of all ages when art was naive, he
sang only what he had himself experienced ; yet his spirit was so
rich and multiform that his poetry gradually encompassed the
wide circle of German life, and during many decades almost every
new idea which this time of restless creation conceived, found its
most profound and most powerful expression in the work of
Goethe ; until at length the entire world of nature and of human
life was reflected in the old man's quiet eyes. By his early
poems he brought to German lyric poetry that new life which
Herder had merely foreshadowed. All the charming and tender,
sweet and yearning feelings of the German heart, which had
been obscured in the pathetic style of Klopstock, the writer
of odes, now found expression ; the ancient songs, such as
Roslein auf der Heide, delighted once more the cultured youth
of the day, now that Goethe had borrowed them from the herds-
man and the hunter, had ennobled their simplicity by the magic
of his art. The Germans learnt once more, from his genial poems,
to be unrestrainedly joyful, to give themselves up without reserve
to the heavenly delight of the moment. Then came Goetz to
reproduce before the eyes of the nation the rough, untamed energy
and greatness of the ancient German life ; then did the Sorrows
of Werther furnish satisfying expression for the storm and stress
of passion which filled the hearts of the young generation. It
was also politically significant that even in this dispersed and
distracted nation, a poet should attain an irresistible general success,
like that which of old had been attained elsewhere by Cervantes ;
and all that was vigorously youthful drew together in glowing
enthusiasm. At the close of the Frederician epoch, the poet
emerged from those struggles of the heart to which we owe the
most beautiful love poems in the German tongue, to become, after
ten years of life at court that were full of work and of distrac-
tion, once more an artist. He hastened to " that land where for
every receptive mind the most individual culture begins." There,
in the south, he learnt to reconcile northern passion and emotional
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Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
profundity with classical purity of form. However great he was,
and however powerful his influence, he never claimed dominion
over our poetry, and German freedom would never have permitted
any such claim. Even after the appearance of this almighty
genius, the literary movement went on its course in joyful unre-
straint. Hundreds of independent minds continued to work after
their own fashion. Everywhere in the Poets' Associations and in
the Freemasons' Lodges there was an ardent search for pure
humanity, for knowledge of the eternal ; and everywhere in this
life of activity there was a joyful foreshadowing of a wonderful
future. This generation felt itself raised above the common
reality of things, carried as if on the wings of the wind towards
the dawning of the light, towards the perfection of humanity.
The thoughtless masses, it is true, then as at all times, asked merely
for comfortable amusement. Wieland's roguish liveliness was
more agreeable to them than the pathos of Klopstock, just as
subsequently Kotzebue was more pleasing than Schiller or
Goethe. But in the best circles of society, a joyful idealism
was dominant, and it was this which gave its stamp to the
culture of the age.
Meanwhile the nation discovered that it possessed, not merely
the greatest poet, but also the greatest philosopher of the day.
The opposition between the German and the Anglo-French views
of the world-order was described by Goethe in the simple words :
" The French do not understand that there is anything in human
beings unless it has come into them from outside." To the German
idealism, it seemed, on the contrary, a problem for solution, how
anything at all could enter a soul from outside. To the enlighten-
ment of the West, the world of sensuous experience appeared the
one incontestable reality. Then Kant undertook to throw light
on the facts of human cognition, and asked the profound question,
how is the scientific cognition of nature in any way possible ?
This was the great turning point of the new philosophy. With
the same royal self-confidence as Goethe, Kant had begun the
work of his life : " Nothing shall hold me back from my course."
He started from the ideas of the mathematical century, and faith-
fully followed with independent mind every movement of the new
decades. Towards the end of the Frederician epoch, he produced
those works which for a long time to come were to establish the
fundamental moral ideas of the ripened Protestantism. More
boldly than any of the atheists of the Encyclopaedia, he con-
tested the illusion that a science could ever be derived from the
"5
History of Germany
supra-sensual, yet in the domain of the practical reason he found once
more the idea of freedom. From the necessities of moral action,
he derived the great conception (not based upon theological
crutches, and therefore invincibly victorious) that the most incom-
prehensible is of all things the most certain : the empirical ego is
subordinated to the laws of causality, the intelligible ego acts with
freedom. For free activity, he propounded that imperative in
which simple-mindedness and the highest culture could both find
peace : " Act as if the maxims in accordance with which you are
acting must become natural laws." Kant's ideas, moreover, like
everything that was written in this blossoming time, first came to
full fruition through the power of personality. The serene wisdom
of the thinker of Konigsberg, which demanded from men that
they should even die in a good humour, the simple greatness of
this life utterly filled with the ideal, profoundly moved the minds
of his contemporaries. Kant was the architect of his Old Prussian
home, he reintroduced the remote Eastern Mark as an active
member of the community of German intellectual workers, and
the uprising of 1813 showed how profoundly this valiant people
had taken to heart the saying that nothing anywhere in the world
could be esteemed except a good will.
Now there appeared upon the scene the young poet who was
destined to diffuse the ideas of the Kantian ethics through the
widest circles of the nation. Rough and formless seemed the
youthful writings of Schiller, the product of an invincible energy
of will in conflict with the control of petty enslaving circumstances ;
but the bold conception of his story-telling, his powerful pathos,
his sustained passion, and the vigorously ascending course of his
technique, already sufficed to herald Germany's discovery of her
greatest dramatist a dictatorial spirit, born to mastership and
victory, who now in his days of youthful fermentation irresistibly
forced upon his audience the savage and the horrible, and who
subsequently, matured and refined, lifted thousands with himself
above the common miseries of life. Out of the clamorous rhetoric
of these tragedies, there spoke a wealth of new ideas, a glowing
yearning for freedom, and the hatred of a great soul for the rigid
forms of the ancient society. The writings of Rousseau and the
political movement of the neighbouring lands were already throwing
their first sparks over Germany. One who despised everything
that was dull, narrow, and commonplace, this son of the petty-
bourgeois land of Swabia, reached out into the great circles of a
historical world ; he was the first to bind the cothurni on to the feet
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Germany after the Peace of Westphalia
of our sons. He first led them among kings and heroes, into the
greatest altitudes of humanity.
Beside such a wealth of art and science a purely political litera-
ture appears small and mean. Just as every great transformation
of our intellectual life has reflected itself in the destinies of a German
university, so on this occasion also we can trace the connection
between the beginnings of our classical literature and the first
blossoming of the Georgia Augusta University. There proceed
from Gottingen a zealous care for jurisprudence and the science
of the state, and this movement was reciprocally intercon-
nected with the great thought-current of the century which
was everywhere drawing its sources from the exact sciences
and streaming towards the freedom of the historical world. It
was a living law which was expounded by the publicists of
Gottingen ; it was a point of honour in the anti-imperial pro-
fessors to define the rights of Protestantism and of the temporal
estates of the empire against the shadowy claims of the Emperor-
ship. Yet neither the rough candour of Schlozer nor the industry
of Putter, neither the learnedness of the two Mosers nor any other
of the remarkable manifestations of political and publicist science
characteristic of that day, bears the stamp of genius. There is
not a trace of the bold, universal grasp of Puffendorf, not a trace
of that creative criticism which found expression in the ardent
voice of the poets, there is nothing of that inconceivable wealth of
expression which delights us in the belletristic literature of the time.
Beside the silvery tones of the prose of Lessing and Goethe the
language of Putter has the flat sound of base metal.
Whilst German poetry and philosophy were soaring above
the work of the neighbouring nations, in political science the
English and the French took the lead. It was only in the actions
and in the writings of the great king, himself untouched by the
literary revival of his own nation, that Germany took an effective
part in the great political thought-movement of the century.
In Herder's Ideas, how weak are the political sections when
compared with the richness of those that deal with the history of
civilisation. The one vigorous and peculiarly endowed political
thinker, belonging to the younger political life of Germany, Justus
Moser, exercises a real influence upon his contemporaries only hi
the sphere of aesthetics, by his spirited description of German
antiquity ; it was not until much later, in the days of the revival
of historical jurisprudence, that his profound historical view of
the state was understood by the nation. The German readers
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brought to the publicists a richer abundance of historical know-
ledge than was brought by the British and by the French, but they
had not a glimmer of political passion or of political understanding.
This utterly unpolitical age understood how to feel its way to art
under conditions whose absolute contradiction was perceived by all.
But while the research of German thinkers was boldly directed
towards the solution of the most obscure riddles of the universe,
there did not, even after the terrible teaching of the Seven Years'
War, appear a single man who could lay his finger upon the wounds
of the German state, or could with unsparing courage ask the deci-
sive question : What is the significance for the future of our country
of this uprising of a new German great power ? German life failed
to discover the exhaustive expression either in the wealth of ideas
of its literature or in the activities of the Prussian state. There
were moments, indeed, when the two creative energies of our new
history appeared to come into contact and to attain to a mutual
understanding. We of this later generation are moved to learn how
the gruff officers of Frederick's army sought counsel and edifica-
tion in Leipzig from the pious Gellert. The poet of the Spring,
Ewald Kleist, the Prussian recruiting officer, who in Zurich sought
refreshment from the hardships of his man-hunting career in the
circle of the artistic disciples of Klopstock, and who then found a
soldier's death at Kunnersdorf, appears to us to-day a more signifi-
cant figure than many a more highly gifted poet, because he united
in a single personality a heroic sense of the poetic yearning of this
teeming time. On the whole, however, it is certain that the
Prussia of that day was no less unaesthetic than the German
literature of the time was unpolitical. In the days of Lessing, the
Prussian capital was for some years the Acropolis of German
criticism ; since the seventies, its public had possessed the most
developed artistic sense in Germany and there had prevailed in the
town a refined and intellectual sociability ; but in respect of crea-
tive capacity it was poorly equipped. A shallow eudaemonism
was dominant. For the dull understanding of Nicolai, the flight
of the young German poetry was too lofty; while the critics of
Berlin were thus lamenting, elsewhere in the empire were being
fought the battles of the new German culture. The firm foundation
of national power was lacking to our classical literature. This
literature has proved for all time that the proud freedom of poesy
can dispense with the sun of good fortune ; that a new wealth of
ideas must inevitably find form and expression as soon as it springs
up in the soul of a nation. There was danger, however, that the
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nation would morbidly over-value the intellectual goods for the
very reason that its literary life was so much more magnificent than
its political. The patriotism of our poets remained too subjective
to exercise a direct influence upon the popular sentiment. The
cosmopolitan tendency which inspired the entire literature of the
eighteenth century, did not find in Germany, as it found in France,
a counterpoise in a highly developed national pride, and it there-
fore threatened to alienate the Germans from their own state.
Never since the time of Luther had Germany occupied so
shining a position in the European world as to-day, when the
greatest heroes and the greatest poets of their age and century
belonged to our nation. And this abundance of life came but a
hundred years after the disgrace of the Swedish distresses. Any-
one who at this time made a journey through the leading states
of Central and Northern Germany, gained the impression that
here was a noble people peacefully developing towards a beautiful
future. The humanistic culture of the time was actively engaged
upon innumerable institutions of general utility. The old curse
of mendicity disappeared from our highways, and the great towns
provided with a free hand for poor-houses and hospitals. Zealous
pedagogues laboured to transform the education of youth in accord-
ance with new-found systems, without depriving them of the
innocence of the " natural " human beings of Rousseau. Every-
where the newly enlightened world was straining at the bonds
imposed by the old feudal order. There were nobles here and
there who voluntarily freed their serfs. Philosophers noted with
satisfaction that the son of a knacker had in Leipzig become a
doctor, and that in caste-ridden Weimar a young Frankfort doctor
had risen above the heads of the native nobility to become a
minister of state. A cheerful enthusiasm for nature drove out
the old anxiety regarding the evils of fresh air, put an end to the
philistine customs of a close indoor life : the men of learning began
once more to feel themselves at home upon God's earth. Yet
this people of ours was sick within. Motionless and unreconciled,
the great lie of the imperial law stood contrasted with the new
culture and the new state of the Germans. In the petty terri-
tories of the south and of the west, all the sloth, all the inertia of
German life lay like a great unlighted bonfire, awaiting the fire-
brand which the restless neighbour-nation was to hurl across the
frontier. The glory of the Frederician age had hardly begun to
pale when the Holy Roman Empire fell into shameful ruin.
CHAPTER II.
REVOLUTION AND FOREIGN DOMINION.
1. THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR TO THE PEACE OF BASLE.
ONLY a royal commander or a reforming legislator could maintain
undiminished the heritage of Frederick. The old form of the
Frederician monarchy had two strings to its bow. Unless it could
engage the warlike energies of this people on a bold venture, and
could provide the Holy Empire with a new constitution by the arms
of Prussia, it was impossible that the forcible concentration of the
entire state-authority in a single hand should be permanently main-
tained. The enlarged area of the state-territory, the increased
claims upon the functional activity of the state, and the greatly
increased self-confidence of the well-to-do classes, involved demands
for a comprehensive reform, which should transmute the national
economy so as to make it more elastic, should abolish the old class
divisions which had become untenable, and should permit subjects
to take an active part in the administration of the districts and
the communes. If this reconstruction were not effected, illness
and rigidity threatened the monarchy. That spirit of criticism,
which had been awakened by Ferderick himself, but which had
been held within bounds by the dread of his genius, might readily
destroy the moral security of the state, which was based upon the
ancient Prussian loyalty and discipline.
It was Germany's misfortune that Frederick's successor was
equally unfitted to undertake either of these tasks. Frederick
William II possessed the knightly bravery of his ancestors and a
lively sense of his royal dignity and of the position of his state as
a great power, but he was devoid of the expert knowledge, the
enduring industry, the security of judgment, and the firm vigour
of will, which were demanded by his difficult office. He was as
mild and benevolent as his uncle, in old age, had been misan-
thropic, readily impressible, rich in good ideas, receptive for lofty
proposals; but what he had rashly and ardently undertaken was
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soon allowed to drop when he became wearied by any difficult
obstacles, or when sly opponents knew how to play upon his
generosity. Human ^pettiness breathed more freely when the
oppressive weight of the old hero had been removed ; and the
greatly loved man who so confidently and warmly associated with
his people, was greeted with a chorus of acclamation. As in the
days of Frederick I, the people once more spoke with approval
of the free hand of the king, and talk was long current in the
country of the gifts and the patents of nobility of the great year
of grace 1787. Many of the severities of the Frederician regime
were done away with ; the detested governmental administra-
tion of public utilities was abolished ; the recruiting officers
received orders that " for the general advantage of humanity "
they should do their harsh work with moderation. Yet in essentials
the old administration remained unchanged, and^all that was
lacking was the master-spirit that had animated it. The military
system declined under its senile leaders ; the king did not venture
to dismiss the veterans who still wore the laurels of the Seven
Years' War. The philanthropic ideas of the age, and a well-
meaning but weakly compliancy towards the interests of the
bourgeoisie, carried the state far from the Spartan stringency of
Frederick William I. It is true that by the cantonal regulation
of 1792 the old Prussian principle of universal military service was
maintained ; and yet at the same time the exceptions to the
obligation, already far too numerous, were legally recognised and
enlarged so that the duty to bear arms pressed almost exclusively
upon the sons of the peasantry.
The gay court was by no means grossly extravagant. The
expenses of the court, which now provided liberal subsidies to
artists and men of learning, averaged per year no more than
580,000 thalers not more than was needed by the thrifty successor
of Frederick William. The king's lack of economy was shown
only in his frivolous waste of the goods of the state, and it was
yet more disastrous that his good-natured humour rendered him
unable to resolve to replace by new and just taxes the oppressive
taxes that had been repealed. The surpluses which this national
economy could not do without, soon dried up. Courage was
lacking to overcome the difficult obstacles which the feudal con-
stitution opposed to every increase in the burden of taxation ;
the king was glad to take credit to himself for the alleviation he
had brought to his dearly loved people. As soon as one mobilisa-
tion and two campaigns had almost completely emptied the
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Frederician war-chest, the monarchy found itself in the humiliating
position of having to maintain its power with the aid of foreign
gold. In the city, immorality became rife now that it was able
to excuse itself by the example of the court, and flourished still
more luxuriantly when there ensued the inevitable reaction against
the superficial freethought of the Frederician days, and when a
morbidly mystical piety became the fashion in court circles. The
extraordinary power of the new literary idealism is shown by the
fact that public opinion has always judged the Prussian ruling
system by the spirit it has displayed in the conduct of ecclesiastical
and educational affairs. The whole of Germany simmered with
anger when the distinguished Zedlitz was dismissed from office
and the dull hypocrite Wollner endeavoured to repress the free
speculation of the century by his Religious and Censorial Edicts.
It proved difficult to promulgate the civil code against the obstinate
resistance of the devotees at court. The healthy nucleus of the
officialdom remained indeed indestructible, but the laborious
course of the administration was no longer able to keep pace with
the quicker movement of bourgeois intercourse, and the general
relaxation of discipline was manifested by many defalcations and
instances of corruption which would have been unthinkable under
the two previous kings.
And now, in these days without renown, it became clear how
weak was the footing upon which had been established that sense
of the state which Frederick had awakened in his people. For
the most part the national pride of the Prussian was a sentiment
of honour towards the great king, and that pride waned with the
hero's death. To the majority of East Prussians and Silesians,
Berlin was altogether out of the world ; the particularism of the
territorial areas found the foci of its interests in Konigsberg, Breslau,
and Magdeburg. An earnest and comprehensive participation in
the destiny of the state was found only in narrow circles. All
the louder became the chorus of criticism. The political impulse
which in the officialised state found no stage for work on behalf
of the Commonwealth, threw itself into literature. A flood of
lampoons was spread over Germany, regaling uncritical and
credulous readers with colossal fables about the Asiatic debauchery
of " Saul II, King of Cannonland." This was an unwholesome
and very dangerous activity, because in an absolute monarchy
every censure is arrowed directly against the personality of the
king, and still more dangerous because out of this abundance of
censorious criticism not a single fruitful idea emerged, never an
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intimation of the real infirmity of the community. It was a
tragical change of scene. The world continued to tell stories of
the brilliant sayings of the round table of Sans Souci, whilst now
close at hand in Charlottenburg and hi the Marble Palace at the
Heilige See, Reitz, the groom of the chambers, talked platitudes
with the Countess Lichtenau, and the successor of Frederick
regarded with wonder the spirits manifested in the magic mirror of
Colonel Bischofswerder.
Frederick's last work, the League of German Princes, fell to
pieces in the hands of his heir. The old king had indeed never
had any doubt as to the real sentiments of his petty federal asso-
ciates, nor of the untrustworthiness of the friendship of Hanover
and Saxony. His contemptuous phrase is on record, " There is
nothing to be done with these fellows." None the less he had
left this League of Princes as an inheritance to posterity. As
long as the extraordinary favour of the situation persisted, as long
as the fear of Austria forced the high nobility of Germany to place
themselves under the banner of Prussia, it was inevitable that a
strong will should know how to make use of the conspicuous posi-
tion at the head of the League of German Princes as a means for
the permanent increase of power. The vacancy of the imperial
throne was imminent, for the Emperor Joseph was seriously ill.
By a secret article in the constitution of the League, it was agreed
among the associated princes that the new imperial election should
be decided in accordance with a common understanding. Prussia
controlled the majority in the Electoral Council ; in the most
important of the spiritual states, Electoral Mainz, the choice of
a coadjutor had just been decided in Prussia's favour. At least
the attempt must be ventured to renew the policy of the second
Silesian War, in circumstances that were incomparably more
favourable, and, under the leadership of Prussia, to animate the
dead mass of the central states of Germany until they should form
a living power. Once more it seemed that it would be possible to
transfer the German crown to a German house, or else to abolish
the Emperorship entirely and to reconstitute in federal form the
Illustrious Republic of the German Princes. The smaller asso-
ciates must necessarily, however unwillingly, obey a victorious
Prussia. The sceptical views of his experienced predecessor were
remote from the more trivial and more trusting nature of the new
king. As a prince he had already built great hopes upon the idea of
the League of Princes, but now for a time he left the conduct of
his German policy in the hands of Charles Augustus of Weimar.
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In the head of this great-hearted patriot there blossomed bold
and vastly conceived schemes of reform. Unweariedly he travelled
from court to court as the courier of the League of Princes.
He regarded this defensive alliance as a permanent institution,
and as the solid nucleus of a new imperial constitution ; he
thought of creating a standing army for the League and of
providing a great parade-ground in Mainz ; the Bundestag,
summoned to Mainz, was to undertake the task of imperial reform
and to do away with the inveracities of the existing law. Pros-
pects seemed favourable. All the petty states of Europe felt
themselves threatened by the adventurous plans of conquest of
the Hofburg, and were inclined to look upon Prussia as the pro-
tector of the balance of power. In Piedmont and in Switzerland,
the question had already been mooted whether it would not be
well to join the League of Princes, in order thus to secure protec-
tion against Austria. When Belgium took up arms against the
innovations of the Emperor Joseph, the proposal was made that
this imperial crown-land should also be admitted, as an inde-
pendent state, into the imperial association.
Meanwhile Prussia had once more consciously assumed the
role of the leading power of Central Europe. Count Hertzberg
had conceived the happy thought of delivering from the dominion
of the patriotic party, or in other words, from the influence of
France, the Republic of the Netherlands, distracted by internal
struggles. The king's troops entered Holland, gained an easy
victory over the patriots, and restored the repute of the House of
Orange. Now came the time to enjoy the fruits of victory and
to attach to the Prussian system this royal house akin to Prussia
by blood and re-established by the force of Prussian arms. It
was the advice of Charles Augustus that the republic should join
the League of Princes, and that by regular subsidies to the smaller
princes of the empire, the maintenance of a standing army should
be rendered possible. But here, for the first time, became manifest
the disastrous instability of the king, who was unable to put any
of his good ideas into effective operation. His zeal for the League
of Princes had long had time to cool. The gentle disposition of
Frederick William led him to honour, with imperial-princely
devotion, the anciently consecrated forms of the German consti-
tution, and his piety was shocked by the thought of any radical
reform. The statesmen of Berlin barely concealed their contempt
for the League of German petty princes, and Count Hertzberg
frequently called it " the great affliction of high policy." Since
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Saxony and Hanover proved antagonistic, the summoning of the
Bundestag to Mainz never took place. None of the proposals of
Charles Augustus were realised, and within two years of the death
of Frederick there was no longer any talk of the development and
firmer establishment of the League of Princes. The army of
Prussia evacuated the Netherlands, and the frivolous spirit of the
king was willing to leave the payment of the costs of the war to
the rich neighbour peoples. The undertaking that had been so
brilliantly begun, terminated in a diplomatic reverse. It was
not Prussia but England that won the upper hand at the Hague,
and the ancient alliance between the two naval powers was re-
established. More than 6,000,000 thalers had been wasted, and
from that time the government began to suffer from a disastrous
lack of money. In the army, moreover, the effect of the bloodless
triumphs in Holland were most unfortunate, and the professional
soldier conceived a boundless contempt for the idea of an armed
nation.
Even yet, however, the wonderful favour of fortune was not
exhausted. The king was provided with still another oppor-
tunity to strengthen his power at once in Germany and in Europe.
The Emperor Joseph could not reconcile himself to the defeats of
the Silesian and Bavarian Wars. Dominated by a passionate desire
to revenge the honour of his house upon the Prussian opponent,
and to restore his dominant position in the empire, he abandoned
the interests of Austria in the east ; he came to an understanding
with Russia and acceded to the designs of Catherine upon Con-
stantinople, in return for great expansions of territory in Bavaria,
Italy, and the Turkish frontier regions. Whilst the armies of the
two imperial powers now began in the Danubian region a laborious
campaign against the Turks, in the hereditary dominions of Austria
there was everywhere manifested a resistance to the hasty reforms
of the emperor and to the forcible attempts he made in the direc-
tion of centralisation. Belgium was in open rebellion ; the Magyars
were so profoundly disaffected that the Hungarian nobles were
already sending messages to the King of Prussia, asking him to
propose a new King of Hungary. There was an uproar in all the
cabinets when the plans of aggrandisement of the imperial court
came to light. King Frederick William concluded with the naval
powers a triple alliance for the preservation of the status quo in
the Orient. Sweden had already declared war against Russia ;
even the Poles were thinking of taking up arms against the
Empress Catherine, and formed an alliance with Prussia. France,
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History of Germany
which since the days of Choiseul had been allied with Austria, was
now compelled by the outbreak of the Revolution to abandon all
thought of a bold foreign policy ; the court of Berlin greeted with
joy the beginnings of the Great Revolution because it endangered
the Austro-French Alliance ; the Prussian diplomatists were
careful to keep on good terms with Petion and the other spokesmen
of the National Assembly. Never before had the general situation
been so favourable for a campaign against Austria. If the Prus-
sian army, which was assembled on the Silesian frontier, should
venture to strike a blow into the heart of the Austrian power,
there was nothing between the Prussians and Vienna that could
offer any serious resistance, for almost the entire fighting force of
the emperor was engaged upon the distant Turkish War. Now
or never was the moment to end German dualism with the sword.
Now was the time to put the question which had once before been
proudly asked by Frederick when he stood between enemies and
doubtful friends to ask of Destiny the question, " Prussia or
Austria ? "
But neither the king nor his minister Hertzberg fully under-
stood the significance of this great moment in relation to the future
of Germany. This doctrinaire man of learning, a great Prussian,
full of love for the fatherland, entirely convinced that the irre-
concilable opposition between the two great powers of Germany,
was the inevitable outcome of geographical necessity, had been a
valuable assistant to the old king, active alike as publicist and as
writer of despatches in all the diplomatic negotiations that had
taken place from the beginning of the Seven Years' War until the
foundation of the League of Princes ; but he was not competent
to undertake the independent continuation of the Frederician
policy in its simple greatness. Although King Frederick had used
him merely as an instrument and had seldom listened to his advice,
he was in his own mind the true heir of the great king and of all
" the ancient and powerful Brandenburger system," and he con-
sidered himself to be the leading connoisseur of the diplomatic
relationships of Europe. He thought that so long as his hand
was on the tiller, no mistake could possibly be made, and that
Prussia would continue to play the leading part in European
affairs. Instead of the simple plans which the old hero had pur-
sued with relentless openness, his pupil loved to think out elaborate
and artificial combinations for the preservation of the balance of
power ; and it seemed to him that an alliance between the three
northern powers, Prussia, England, and Russia, was the philosopher's
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stone of the situation, although suitable conditions for such
an alliance were altogether lacking. Whereas Frederick ever
held it as a sober opinion that in the wide world Prussia had only
enemies, open or concealed, Hertzberg built with unshaken self-
conceit upon the victorious force of his reasoning. He dreamed
that he had found an unfailing way for the solution of the eastern
problem : the separation of the northern provinces from Turkey
and the reunion of Galicia with Poland were to provide the means
for a comprehensive territorial redistribution in Eastern Europe
which would be accepted with joy by all the powers of the east ;
the Prussian go-between was to be rewarded with Swedish
Pomerania, Danzig and Thorn, Kalisz and Posen in a word, all
the gaps on the northern and eastern frontiers of Prussia were
to be filled in. This was to be effected without any need for un-
sheathing the sword, by the magic of the pen of a diplomatist.
To Hertzberg's astonishment this over-elaborated plan was
rejected by the two imperial powers ; and he soon encountered
also the veto of the allies of Prussia. The naval powers feared an
open breach with the imperial courts because they were afraid
of losing the lucrative Russian trade. It was for this reason that
as long ago as the Seven Years' War England had refused to Prussia
the one really valuable help she could give as an ally, namely,
the sending of a strong fleet into the Baltic. The Poles, too, were
unwilling to consent to the withdrawal from Danzig and Posen,
which might perhaps have rendered possible the continuance of
the Polish Republic. The Porte, finally, would not hear of any
reduction of its dominion, for its armies were making a good resist-
ance to the attacks of the imperial powers. In this emergency,
Prussia dropped her demands and asked merely for the restoration
of the status quo in the east. Even now the negotiations might
have led to a decisive reckoning with Austria, if the Prussian tone
had been strengthened so that Austria might have seriously feared
war. But Hertzberg refused to go as far as this, whereas the king
with a wiser judgment demanded a decision by recourse to arms.
In the middle of this momentous development the Emperor Joseph
died, and now payment had to be made for the arrogant contempt
which Hertzberg had displayed for the League of Princes. The
League had already been weakened, because the sentiment of the
smaller courts was so unstable that to them the great question of
the election of the emperor no longer seemed a matter of import-
ance. With his usual fickleness, King Frederick William soon
abandoned his warlike schemes, consoling himself with the reflection
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History of Germany
that even his uncle had never wished to acquire the imperial
honour for his own house ; and when the successor of King Joseph,
Leopold II, approached him in a yielding spirit he, without further
consideration, offered Leopold the imperial dignity. Content with
a half victory, he concluded on July 26, 1790, the unlucky Reichen-
bach Convention, which merely restored the status quo before the
Oriental War.
It was so far a success that the threatening attitude of Prussia
compelled the House of Lorraine to abandon its conquest of Bel-
grade, and to bring to an inglorious close that Turkish War which
had been undertaken with such extravagant hopes and with such
a great beating of drums. And yet Leopold quite understood
the situation when, drawing a breath of relief, he wrote : " This
is the least bad peace we could hope to conclude." The death of
Joseph II was as disastrous to Prussia's German policy as had
formerly been the death of Charles VII. Joseph's prudent suc-
cessor rescued Austria's position of power in the empire by giving
up his brother's oriental plans. As he himself admitted, he
received the imperial crown without conditions, as a generous gift
from the King of Prussia. The diplomatic defeat of Austria was
advantageous solely to the Turks and to the maritime powers.
By the intervention of Prussia, the Porte was relieved of a dangerous
opponent ; and to the excessive prudence of Hertzberg, the rigidly
conservative oriental policy of England owed an easy triumph.
Soon, however, the court of Berlin saw the world-situation altered
to its disadvantage. By the skilled compliancy of Leopold, the
rebellious crown-lands were rendered once more obedient, were
kept quiet by his Florentine secret policy. In Poland, Austria
soon acquired a dominant influence. Sweden concluded a dis-
advantageous peace with Russia. England openly refused to
co-operate in Hertzberg's Polish schemes. Above all, the Conven-
tion of Reichenbach was the death of the League of Princes, was
the end of the German policy of the great king. The smaller
princes, when they saw that in Berlin there was now lacking a proud
and dominant will, and that from Leopold's moderation there
was nothing more to fear, relapsed one after another to their
natural party position ; they reconciled themselves with Austria ;
the League of Princes vanished without leaving a trace ; there
was not even effected a serious reform of the electoral capitulation.
The last favourable hour in which Prussia might perhaps
have done something to relieve the hopeless confusion of imperial
policy had passed beyond recall. Without guidance, the shapeless
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German community drifted hopelessly towards its destruction by
foreign power. Charles Augustus complained bitterly of the
slumbering spirit of the Germans, which regarded this chaos as
the sacrosanct ideal of a good constitution. Whilst in the west
the storm was already gathering which threatened to destroy all
the ancient forms of the European world, the well-meaning Elector
of Cologne expressed the heartfelt wish of the German high nobility
for the future of the fatherland. " We need a peaceful Emperor,
one who will economically maintain the German system ; but we
must leave to the pigmies their illusion that they also are run-
ning the machine." The people, too, were totally without under-
standing of the seriousness of the time. Isolated intelligent
publicists, such as George Forster, esteemed the triumph of Prus-
sian statecraft, but the sins of omission of that statecraft passed
unmarked. The mass of the nation rejoiced over the re-estab-
lishment of peace. When during the Reichenbach negotiations
the king paid homage to the fashionable Nature-cult and climbed
to the summit of the Heuscheuer, the loyal Silesians erected a
monument to him upon the frontier mountains, with the grateful
inscription, " His shield is the safeguard of our peace."
A necessary consequence of this pusillanimous maintenance
of peace was that before long Hertzberg was thrust aside by the
already powerful favourite Bischofswerder. However unfortu-
nate he had been in his choice of means, Hertzberg had at least
never abandoned one of the fundamental principles of the Frede-
rician statecraft, for he had always endeavoured to maintain the
proud independence of Prussian policy from the commands of
the Hofburg. But with the accession to power of Bischofswerder,
an entirely new tendency came into operation the policy of
peaceful dualism. In sharp contrast with the glorious fifty years
that had just closed, it was hoped by this policy to safeguard the
existence of the state by an alliance with Austria, directed
especially against Russia. The idea of imperial reform was utterly
renounced, it being considered that the best hope for German
affairs lay in a loyal understanding with the imperial house. In
the spring of 1791, Bischofswerder began the negotiations for
the Austro-Prussian Alliance. Nothing could have been more
unfortunate for the fate of Germany. This alliance between two
irreconcilable enemies was an essential falsehood. On both sides
confidence was wholly lacking. The great majority of the Prussian
statesmen still adhered firmly to the Frederician traditions, and
followed with lively suspicion every step taken by the Vienna
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cabinet ; in the Hofburg neither the conquest of Silesia nor the
humiliation of Reichenbach had been forgiven, and there was no
inclination whatever to recognise the northern newcomer as an
equal associate. Of all the great questions of power which were
in dispute between the two rivals, not a single one had been solved.
Contrary to the expectations of Berlin, the alliance between Austria
and Russia remained established. The pliant disposition of the
king towards the imperial house did not change in the mind of
the emperor the old conviction that every increase of Prussian
power in the empire was disastrous to Austria ; the Court of Vienna
marked with great anxiety the union with Prussia of the some-
time Hohenzollern territory of Ansbach-Bayreuth whereby Prussia
for the first time planted her feet firmly in South Germany and
won a threatening position on the flank of Bohemia. Still sharper
was the contrast of interests between the two allies in respect of
the Polish question.
Both the powers desired to maintain the Republic of Polish
Nobles as a bulwark against Catherine's restless policy of conquest.
The mechanical conception of the state characteristic of the age
found pleasure in artificialities. Whereas peace can be estab-
lished only through the sound internal health of vigorous national
states, it was then hoped to secure peace by a carefully main-
tained system of balances ; by the arbitrary construction of petty
states, which should act as buffers between the great powers.
Neither in Vienna nor in Berlin did anyone come to understand
that this Polish state of unbridled Junkerdom was doomed to
destruction, that the freedom of Poland was nothing more than
the foreign domination of Sarmatian nobles and landed gentry
over millions of Slav, Lithuanian, German, Jewish, and Wallachian
subjects, who had no rights and no sentiments in common with
their cruel masters. Austria, intimately akin to the Catholic
State of Nobles, and for hundreds of years past in continuous
alliance with that state, had nothing more to expect from a new
partition, and hoped rather to find in a strong Polish realm pro-
tection against Russia and Prussia. The Prussian state, on the
other hand, had grown up in conflict with its Sarmatian neigh-
bours, and had reason to dread that a revival of the Polish power
would greatly endanger the German Vistula region. The results
of the first partition could prove satisfactory to Prussia only on
the condition that Poland should remain a harmless power of
intermediate importance, and that at least Thorn and Danzig
should be united with West Prussia. Now that the two most
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important places in the German section of the Vistula were sur-
rounded by Prussian territory, it was impossible that they should
be permanently left in the hands of a foreign conqueror who was no
longer able to keep his old plunder in his grasp. Every considera-
tion of prudence impelled the Polish notables to gain the friendship
of Prussia by a yielding disposition. But not even the terrible
experience of the year 1772 had brought the stupid and arrogant
nobles to their senses. Now, as before, the unhappy people was
racked by party struggles. In Warsaw the hope was still cherished
of unfurling the white eagle once again upon the Green Bridge of
Konigsberg.
After a brief attempt at friendliness, the Polish policy became
once more decisively hostile towards the western neighbour, the
old deadly hate against the Germans, the Protestants, the con-
querors of the mouth of the Vistula, broke out once more. The
coup d'etat of the victorious party on May 3, 1791, led to the
creation of a new constitution which to Prussia was necessarily
equivalent to a declaration of war ; the crown of Poland was to
be furnished with enhanced power and was to be the hereditary
appanage of the House of the Albertines. The unnatural alliance
between Saxons and Poles which once before had for long decades,
as Frederick William I was accustomed to say, shut up the
Prussian state in a " cage," was now to be renewed for all time.
A Slav-Catholic power with a population twice as large as that of
Prussia, hostile to the German nation by race, creed, and ancient
memories, ruled by a princely house which must inevitably fall
under the influence of the Roman nuncio and of the Austrian
ambassador, threatened to spring into existence in the centre of
Germany and to enclose the Prussian state hi the south as in
the east. This plan, which once more put in question the very
existence of the Prussian great power, the entire work of the Hohen-
zollerns since the days of the Great Elector, received the eager
support of the Emperor Leopold, the ally of the King of Prussia.
Though the king, in a wave of generous caprice, had accepted the
new Polish constitution, yet the moment must soon come in which
he would recognise his error, and would understand that the policy
of the Hofburg was equally hostile to Prussian interests in Poland
and in Germany.
Such was the state of affairs. The constitution of the Holy
Empire was hopelessly disorganised ; every possibility of a reform
from within outwards had been lost ; the two leading powers
were allied in appearance but within were separated more sharply
History of Germany
than ever by ancient hatred and conflicting interests. Whilst in
this posture, Germany was influenced by that elemental movement
which had shaken France to its vitals. Goethe has depicted for
us how this ingenuous race of ours, free from envy and ever appre-
ciative of the great deeds of the foreigner, rejoiced " when the
first rays of the new sun began to shine, when we heard of the
Rights of Man, the rights common to all." A joyful belief in the
unending progress of humanity, this cherished idea of the philoso-
phical century, appeared to be established ; it seemed as if " the
highest that man can conceive was now near and attainable." The
aesthetic impulse towards freedom characteristic of the young poet
had long intoxicated him with the idea of the free individuality,
which, liberated from all compulsion, should obey only the voice of
its own heart. The preference of genius threw aside all traditional
morals, even the bonds of domestic fidelity ; in artistic circles,
adultery and easy-going divorce became exceedingly common,
and could reckon upon the smiling tolerance of free spirits. And
now, since the night of the fourth of August, the detested com-
pulsory authority of the state also appeared to be no more than a
construction of human arbitrariness, no more than a soft clay
which the will of freemen could always knead into new forms.
The artist, yearning for freedom from the state, saw his most
cherished dreams overwhelmingly fulfilled by the Declaration of
the Rights of Man; to the aesthetic view of the world-order
characteristic of this generation there seemed no need to seek
freedom within the state, to think of the duties which bind the
citizen to the community. The one of the existing political institu-
tions which in literary circles aroused the most passionate hostility
was the legal inequality of the classes, which was felt to be all
the more abhorrent because in the free social intercourse of cul-
tured circles it had long been in fact disregarded. What joy was
now felt when France announced the equality of all who bear the
human form ; when the prophecies of Rousseau, who more than
any other Frenchman appealed to the enthusiastic idealism of the
German youth, seemed on the point of realisation. All the yearn-
ings of the time, the noble impulse towards the recognition of
human dignity and of the heaven-storming confidence of the
sovereign ego, now found satisfaction in the audacious paradox
of the Genevese philosopher, that in a state of complete freedom
each man would obey himself alone.
To the guileless German theorists, the sins of the Revolution
seemed hardly less seductive than its greatness. To the taste that
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
had been schooled upon Plutarch's Lives, the stilted Catonism
of the new apostles of freedom made a powerful appeal ; the
unhistorical abstractions of their doctrine of the state corresponded
to the philosophical self-complacency of the age. The enthusiastic
youth, in whose ears were still ringing the words of power of the
Robber Moor, was powerfully moved by the rhetorical pathos of
the French enthusiast, admired the republican virtue of the school
of the Girondists, at the very time that this party was with a
reckless light-heartedness planning war against Germany. The
romantic glorification of the old Emperordom which during recent
years had been in vogue among the Swabian poets, now came
altogether to an end. Even Klopstock turned away from his
Cheruscan oak-groves to direct his eyes towards the new capital
of the world, to sing the praises of the hundred-armed, hundred-
eyed giant, and to exclaim, " Had I a hundred voices, I could not
celebrate the liberation of Gallia with loud enough tones, if the
divine voices did not join in the chorus." Cosmopolitan enthusiasm
for freedom dreamed of a brotherhood of all the nations, declaimed
in verse and in prose against tyrants and slaves, " to whom the
sound of chains is sweet ! " In Hamburg and other towns, on
the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, the Festival of
Fraternity was celebrated and the tree of liberty was erected.
The whole circle of those who surrounded Klopstock Henning,
the embodiment of the spirit of the age, Frau Reimarus and the
Stolbergs was intoxicated with this new spirit. Campe and
the other advocates of the new doctrines of education saw with
delight how the over-cultured world seemed to be turning
back once more to the innocence of primitive humanity. For
High Germany, Strasburg was the centre of the revolutionary
ideas ; thither went the young hotheads from Swabia in
order to learn the new French evangel. In the street-talk of
the students, in Tubingen, Mainz, and Jena, there could sometimes
be heard political appeals ; here and there there were brawls
with the emigres, the arrogant and undisciplined behaviour of these
traitors to their country seeming to justify all the violence of the
Revolution. Even in Berlin, women of the upper classes were
seen adorned with the tricolor, and the rector of the Joachimstal
Gymnasium took occasion on the king's birthday to celebrate
in an official speech the glories of the Revolution, doing this with
the lively approval of the minister Hertzberg.
Among the leaders of the nation none was more profoundly
impressed by the great movement of the neighbour country than
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was Kant. In his quiet way he had attentively followed the
political thought-movement of the age. More especially, he was
intimately acquainted with the works of Rousseau and Adam
Smith, and he now summed up in scientific phrase the metaphysical
struggles for freedom of the century in the great saying : "In
every man we must honour the dignity of the whole race, and no
human being must be used as a means to the ends of others."
What he had discovered in his solitary reflection he now saw
realised in the deeds of the French, and since in the serene quiet
of his life he had absolutely no intimation of the elemental energies
of the French populace, not even the horrors of the Reign of Terror
disturbed his admiration for the Revolution, for the men-of-blood
of the guillotine were also appealing to the rights of the ideal. In
the school of Kant the true content of the ideas of the revolutionary
epoch is most faithfully displayed.
This enthusiasm of the German cultured world for revolu-
tionary France remained purely theoretical. Just as the jurists
of Gottingen and Halle, in the more general part of their discourses,
had built up a system of rational law out of the ideal in order
subsequently, in the special part of these discourses, to expound
dispassionately the precise opposite of the rational state, the
labyrinth of the imperial German constitution, so now the German
admirers of the Revolution never asked themselves how their ideas
were to be realised in flesh and blood. The sage of Konigsberg
unconditionally rejected all right of resistance. Fichte, himself the
most radical of Kant's pupils, who ventured to defend French
liberty even hi the days of Robespierre, uttered an express warning
against the attempt to carry out his own ideas ; he saw no bridge
between " the level highroad of natural right " and " the obscure
by-ways of a semi-barbarous policy," and came to the regretfu]
conclusion that " worthiness for liberty can come only from below,
but liberty can be installed without disorder only from above."
As long as the blows of the Revolution affected only the nobility
and the Old Church, the theoretical admiration of the Germans
was unaffected ; it was their naive belief that the Jacobins were
engaged by dire necessity in the struggle with a rout of dangerous
traitors, and that " whoever fell, fell because he had done wrong."
But when the party-struggle became continually fiercer, and when
the fanatical rage for equality undertook to annihilate even the
ultimate aristocracy, that of life itself, it was no longer possible
for the leal and severe German sentiment to follow the capricious
development of Gallic passion. The German enthusiasts turned
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with tears from the barbarians who had desecrated their sanctuary.
Klopstock complained " Our golden dream is shattered " : people
were horrified and disillusioned. The sentiment of cold contempt
which the cruelty of the Reign of Terror must necessarily arouse
in a politically mature nation, was not produced hi the good-natured
Germans ; they noticed merely that the mass-murders of the
Committee of Public Safety were imposed by an infinitesimal
minority upon a slavishly obedient people. Those who had been
thus disillusioned, sank back into the ancient political indifference,
and devoted their whole activity once more to the work of art
and science. Goethe expressed the heartfelt view of the great
majority of cultured Germans when he laid it to the charge of
France that that country had to-day, as had Lutheranism of old,
disturbed peaceful culture. Schiller, too, voiced the general
feeling when he introduced the " Hours " with the words : " The
poet and philosopher belongs in the body to his own age, because
he cannot help it, but in the spirit he is a contemporary of all the
ages."
The most noble literary work which in Germany was the
outcome of the Revolution, came from the opposite camp. It
was inevitable that the forces of conservatism should draw to-
gether in order to counteract the revolutionary ideas. Among
the Prussian officers, it was especially the perjury of the French
troops which aroused profound disgust ; there was formed a
Royalist Club, upon whose members was strictly impressed the
sacred character of their oath to the flag. Brandes and Rehberg
expressed the sentiment of the old society in well-meaning and
well-informed writings, which lacked however both energy and
profundity ; Spittler judged the blessings and the curses of the
great movement with the impartial security of the historian. The
insight of Captain Gneisenau recognised as early as the year
1790 that the French were ripe for enslavement, and foresaw
that an unparalleled revolution threatened the frontiers of all the
nations. It was somewhat longer before Frederick Gentz came
to a full understanding of the signs of the times. In April, 1791,
he dissented from Burke's attacks upon the Revolution ; but a
year and a half later he translated the Englishman's book into
German, and appended those valuable essays which constitute a
turning-point in the history of our political culture. In these it
was recognised for the first time that the great age of our literature
was destined to rejuvenate and enlighten the political thinking also
of the nation. A disciple of the new culture, equipped with the
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History of Germany
wealth of ideas of the Kantian philosophy and with the pure sense
of form of classical poetry, he was the first to exhibit that energy
of productive criticism which owed a new life to art and science,
devoting himself not to abstract speculation upon natural law, but
to the criticism of the living facts of contemporary history. He
understood how to see reality, how, in the inchoate structure of
the moment, to recognise the foreshadowings of future development.
With a power and wealth of speech which Germany had hitherto
known in its poets alone, he chastised the folly that characterised
the mob, and prophesied, " France will pass from form to form,
from catastrophe to catastrophe." It was indeed already evident
that in strength of character this first publicist of the age was not
the equal of his own talents ; his hatred for the Revolution was not
free from nervous anxiety ; he trembled before the excess of
knowledge, before this wild century " which begins to need the
bridle," and yet from his work there springs sharply and clearly
the ground-ideas of a new and vigorous view of the state, one
closely connected with the awakening of the historical sense of
German science. The historical doctrine of the state is here
opposed to the cosmopolitan radicalism of the Revolution ; it
attacks the pleasing illusion of soft-headed people who wish to
introduce into politics the discarded claims of a Church in which
alone can be found salvation, who think of limiting the rich multi-
plicity of national culture, political and legal, by a catechism of
commonplaces concerning natural rights. It dispelled superstitious
belief in the right reason of the majority by the incisive saying,
" It is not majority rule, but the liberum veto, which is a natural
right." It defended the power of the state against the unbridled
individualism of the age, and maintained against the grasping
demands of the sovereign ego the profound truth that " political
freedom is politically limited freedom."
Many years of hard experience were to pass away before the
cultured members of the nation could learn to understand this
saying. For the moment, their happy peace remained undis-
turbed ; and still less in the lower strata of the people was any
dangerous political excitement to be noted. The curse of Germany
was in its system of petty states and in the torpor of the imperial
constitution. And how was it possible for the quietly satisfied
particularism of the masses to recognise these essential disorders
of German life ? The internal conditions of the greater temporal
states, in so far as these had been affected by the spirit of the
Frederician epoch, gave no occasion for passionate unrest. Many
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
of the political ideas which the half-culture of to-day is apt to
celebrate as " the ideas of '89," had in Prussia long been realised
or were approaching realisation. Freedom of conscience had been
established for generations ; freedom of the press was but little
curtailed ; almost everywhere in the Protestant North the churches
were subordinated to the authority of the state, and their
goods had been secularised ; a benevolent agrarian administration
imposed strict limits upon the feudal rights of the nobles ; what still
remained in existence of the vestiges of an outworn social order
could be peacefully abolished by a firm reforming will. It was
only in the petty states, where the justice of the monarchy was
lacking, that there was still to be found a counterpart of the sins
of the French aristocracy under the old regime. In the ecclesiastical
states of Germany, there yet flourished a Catholic unity of belief ;
hi the arrogant aristocratic cathedral-capitals, in the imperial
towns, there still prevailed the sloth and the corruption of the old
civic nepotism ; hi the territories of the princes, the counts, and
the imperial knights, there was still active the arbitrary spirit of
hole-and-corner tyrants. The whole existence of these corrupt and
ossified administrations was a scandal to the ideas of the century.
It was almost exclusively in these inconsiderable sections of
the empire, when the joyful tidings came from France of the
liberation of the peasantry, that there was manifest a certain
fermentation among the people. It resulted that the Abbess of
Frauenalb was chased out of the country by her subjects, while to
her colleague in Elten the oath of allegiance was refused. Minor
disturbances among the peasantry broke out in the district of
Treves, in the territories of some of the imperial knights, and
above all in Spires, the most notorious of the German bishoprics,
where since the days of the Peasant War there had prevailed a
rigid priestly dominion, and where the Table of Laws for the tem-
poral servants of the state held up before the officials as their
highest aim " the fulfilling of the will of the Lord, which is best
for all." In Mecklenburg, ill-treated serfs assembled and threatened
to put their feudal chief to death. The wretched local quarrels,
which for most of the imperial towns formed the essential fabric
of life, now assumed an exceptionally fierce tone ; the language
used against the suzerainty became louder and more virulent ;
the spiritual princes all along the Rhine betrayed their serious
anxiety by the issue of threats of punishment against the rebellious
spirit of their subjects.
All this had very little significance. In truth, nowhere els3 in
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History of Germany
the empire was the political slumber so profound as here ; and
even the literary movement of Protestant Germany had barely
touched the demoralised little peoples of the lands of the crozier.
But whilst there was no serious danger of uprising from below,
whilst even Forster in the days of his radical enthusiasm had to
admit that Germany was not ripe for a revolution, it was also true
that in this region of feckless and unarmed petty states there was
lacking all power of resistance to foreign force. The slowly-dying
members of the empire were neighbours to France, and had been
accustomed for two centuries past to obey the orders of the court
of Versailles ; such regions were interspersed among the domains
of the more vigorous temporal states. Should revolutionary France
endeavour to establish in some new form the old dominion of the
Bourbons upon the German Rhine, ecclesiastical Germany might
easily go to pieces at a touch, and might bring down with it in its
fall the last ruins of the Holy Empire.
This danger threatened already in the very earliest, in the
reputedly blameless, days of the Revolution. It was the greatness
and the curse of this movement that it tended inevitably to over-
flow the borders of France. The horrible Peasants' War of the
summer of 1789 and the new laws to countenance the results of
this mass-movement, served merely to realise a whole world of
desires and thoughts which during a century past had undergone
diffusion through all the nations of the west ; what wonder, then,
that the French now regarded themselves as the Messiahs of free-
dom. The sudden collapse of the Bourbon rule was ascribed, not
to the fact that the old order was enormously more degenerate in
France than in other lands, but to the superiority of the French
genius. Among the causes of the Revolution, a considerable one
was undoubtedly the general discontent regarding the profound
decline in the standing of France in Europe ; and now that the
power of this people had after all displayed itself so gloriously,
and when foreign nations were looking admiringly towards Paris
as the capital of the world, the French felt that it was their mission
to impose laws on all the earth. The nation was accustomed to
despise every foreign power ; it dreamt that its culture must always
serve as an example to the entire world as it had in earlier days,
in the time of Louis XIV ; of the new and original culture which
had sprung to life in Germany, the French knew nothing. The
Declaration of the Rights of Man had set an example to all other
peoples, and Lafayette hailed the new tricolor with the prophecy
that the flag should wave round the world. Since then, the force
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
of the revolutionary propaganda had increased ; the internal
disorders of all the neighbouring countries, of Italy and Spain, of
Holland and Belgium, of Switzerland and the German petty states,
promised an easy victory to France. A world- war such as had
been unknown in Europe since the days of the wars of religion
was imminent when all the horrible corruption which had charac-
terised France under the rule of the Bourbons (dependent upon the
immorality of the higher classes and the rude ignorance of the
lower), in association with the elemental energy of the ideas of a
new epoch, rose like a flood to overwhelm this world of defenceless
states.
The first blow against the rights of the German empire had
already been struck ; the estates of the empire in Alsace had been
deprived of their territorial rights, and the ecclesiastical princes
had been robbed of their spiritual goods in defiance of public agree-
ments and without asking the empire. Thus the old question
of power which had so long been disputed between the two neigh-
bouring peoples, the struggle for the region of the Rhine that had
never been fought to a conclusive issue, was forced upon the Germans
in a wonderfully complicated form. It was impossible to contest
the need for an appeal to force. Everyone knew the unhappy
situation of the unfortunate peasants of Alsace, who had to pay
taxes to the crown of France and at the same time feudal dues to
the petty German lords. Through the liberating act of the Revo-
lution, the hearts of the kindly people in this German area had
been completely won for France. Should Prussia, should the intel-
ligent temporal imperial princes who had themselves long ago made
free with the goods of the Church, and who worked considerately
to secure the liberation of their own peasantry, now intervene
with the strong hand to secure the tithes of the Bishops of Treves
and Spires, intervene on behalf of the feudal exactions of the over-
lords of Worms and of Leiningen, take action in support of this
compost of petty princes and lords who in the Reichstag were in
the habit of voting obediently in omnibus sicut Austria, and who
in the north were regarded only with contempt ? The struggle
against France might very readily become war against the Revolu-
tion, for the radicalism of war tolerates no half measures. The
emigres were thronging and agitating in all the courts ; the danger
was imminent that if the sword were once drawn, these sworn foes
of the Revolution would gain the upper hand, and that the German
powers would be led on to the mad undertaking of attempting to
restore the old Bourbon regime. But the privileges of the Alsatian
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History of Germany
estates of the realm formed the one bond of international law
which still connected the avulsa imperil with the whole empire.
To hand them over unconditionally to the sovereignty of the Paris
National Assembly would be to abandon the last claims of the
empire upon Alsace. The German state had not yet sunk so low
as of its own free will to put the finishing touches to the work of
Louis XIV least of all now, when France broke out into ominous
threats, and yet had neither money nor an army ready for war.
Thus alike in the west and in the east the storm was threaten-
ing, and for long the great enemy of Germany had been on the
watch reckoning the hour when these two tempests should break
simultaneously over our fatherland, when the destruction of
Poland and the French War occurring coincidently might completely
paralyse the leading German power. The Empress Catherine bore
a grudge against the Prussian court because King Frederick had
brought her Polish schemes to naught and because Frederick's
successor, half involuntarily, had nullified her dreams of Byzantine
imperialism. She had seen with regret Prussia and Austria come
to an understanding, but soon found means to make these allies
harmless to Russia. Could she only succeed in involving the
German powers in the incalculable risks of a war with France, she
would be mistress in Poland., and could carry out the inevitable
destruction of the Nobles '-State as best she pleased. She hardry
took the trouble to conceal her wishes, declaring openly to her coun-
cillors, " I want to have my elbows free, and to keep the German
courts busy with French affairs." For this reason she hastened to
bring the Turkish War to an end, and for this reason also she, the
friend of Diderot, now appeared as a fanatical opponent of the
Revolution. She protected the emigres, and continually warned
her neighbours of the common duty of all sovereigns to restore the
ancient crown of France ; she desired to bring about a counter-
revolution through the agency of the brothers of King Louis ; she
pledged, in indefinite terms, the arms of Russia in aid of the great
campaign of Royalism, keeping the power in her own hands of
withdrawing her assistance as soon as she pleased. This course of
conduct on the part of the court of St. Petersburg was so necessary
a consequence of Russia's well-secured geographical position that
the Prussian minister, Alvensleben, a man of by no means excep-
tional talent, immediately saw through the designs of the czarina,
and foreshadowed to the king the policy of his restless neighbour.
Neither the emperor nor the statesmen of Prussia failed alto-
gether to understand the incalculable dangers of a war in so confused
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
a situation. Leopold's sober judgment long remained unaffected
by the letters demanding help sent by his unfortunate sister, Marie
Antoinette, who, filled with feminine passion and suffering from
injured pride, went to the verge of treason in her machinations.
The Prussian cabinet was at first well satisfied by the demeanour
of the constitutional parties. The Prussian ambassador, von der
Goltz, frankly recognised that the Revolution was justified, and
did not shut his eyes to the accumulated follies of the unfor-
tunate court. In Vienna and in Berlin the plots of the emigres
were severely censured. It was not until the spring of 1791,
after King Louis had already had to atone for his ill-conceived
attempt at flight by incredible personal humiliations, that the two
courts began seriously to think of taking up arms against the Revo-
lution. The exciting news came at a most momentous instant,
for Bischofswerder had just taken the first steps towards the per-
manent union of the two powers. Frederick William's knightly
sense was inspired by the idea of revenging the injury of the majesty
of France with his own royal sword. Certain clever heads among
the emigres gradually acquired secret influence at the court ; it
was not by chance that just at this moment a new and un-Prussian
manner came over the administration ; that there was a departure
from the proud free-spiritedness of the great king ; that pinpricks
were directed against the leaders of the enlightenment. The
powerful favourite was the book-keeper of all the demagogues and
conspirators in Prussia. When the man of ill omen visited Austria
for the second time in the summer of 1791, in order to confirm
the understanding initiated in the spring, he found the emperor
at Milan in an excited mood; threatening expressions were let
fall, to the effect that it was time for the bane of revolution to be
uprooted time for the disturbers of the peace to be attacked every-
where, not excepting Germany. Shortly afterwards in a circular
letter from Padua, Leopold demanded of the European powers
that they should come to the help of his misused brother-in-law ;
that they should revenge the injury done to the honour of the king
by recourse to powerful measures, and that they should refuse to
recognise any French constitution which was not freely adopted
by the crown. Bischofswerder, of his own initiative and against his
instructions, signed the Vienna Convention of July 25th, whereby
both powers guaranteed each other's possessions and promised one
another help in case of internal disorders.
Therewith was the descending path which had been entered
at Reichenbach pursued to its end. The cunning of Leopold had
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History of Germany
completely overreached the king's favourite. Prussia abandoned
the proud independence of the Frederician policy, undertaking,
without receiving any corresponding advantage, to help the imperial
court in its need, for only Austria, and not Prussia, was threat-
ened in its possessions. In Belgium the fires of discontent were
still smouldering, and an attack by the French might readily lead
them to break into open flame. The negotiator who had thus
exceeded his instructions was received with reproaches in Berlin :
several of the ministers entered vigorous protests against this
momentous change in the political system, contending that the most
effective means against revolution were careful husbandry of the
energies of the state, that the Vienna Convention involved incal-
culable responsiblities which might easily prove destructive to
the army and to the finances. Public opinion in Prussia was also
profoundly suspicious of the Austrian friendship. The memories
of the Seven Years' War had not yet passed away ; the rights of
the estates of the empire in Alsace and the fate of the left bank of
the Rhine were so remote from the thoughts of the North Germans
that even later, when the imperial war on the Rhine had already
lasted a year and a half, one of the first political intelligences of the
time, Spittler, wrote naively, " We Germans are enjoying a happy
repose ! " King Frederick William, however, approved the arbi-
trary steps of his friend. Soon afterwards he met Leopold at
Pillnitz, was attracted by the dignified personal conduct of the sly
Florentine, and exclaimed with rejoicing that the alliance between
the two great powers of Germany would endure to all eternity
for the blessing of future generations. There was, indeed, in
all this ill-will no immediate danger to France. Whilst Frederick
William himself ardently desired the campaign against the French
rebels, his minister was as decisively opposed to the thought of
an offensive war as was the entirely peaceful emperor. In Pill-
nitz, the emigres who clamoured for war were ignored, and all
that resulted was the meaningless Declaration of August 27th,
in which the two powers stated that they regarded King Louis's
plight as the common concern of all sovereigns, and that interven-
tion in the internal affairs of France would ensue as soon as all the
powers of Europe were in agreement upon the matter. This
amounted to nothing at all, for everyone was well aware that
England would never take part in an armed intervention. Even
these vague intimations came to nothing in Vienna when King
Louis was in the autumn restored to his dignities and when he
voluntarily accepted the new constitution. It seemed that the
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Revolution had come to a standstill. The emperor was completely
pacified, and even the old Prince Kaunitz, who had earnestly
desired a European War against "the rabid fools" of France, now
admitted that all danger of war was over. The negotiations
concerning the rights of the empire in Alsace were conducted by
Leopold, in accordance with ancient imperial custom, with a
moderation that was tantamount to weakness ; he disregarded all
measures of military security, and demanded merely an indemnity,
but not restoration of what had been stolen. Austria and Prussia,
upon the request of France, demanded of the Electoral Prince of
Treves that he should forbid the equipment of the army of emigres
at Coblenz this poor little army which, considering the deadly
hate of the French against the traitor nobles, could never have
been a danger to the new France. When Leopold added that he
would use his Belgian troops to protect the men of Treves against
the attacks of French levies, he did no more than promise to
undertake what was already his inalienable duty as overlord of
the empire.
It was France and France alone that forced war upon the
German powers, notwithstanding their peaceful disposition. The
fundamental law of the constitutional monarchy had been hardly
established when the doctrinaires of the Gironde were already
working for its destruction. They desired a republic, and speedily
recognised that a declaration of war against the king's brother-in-
law would irreparably undermine the repute of the throne, that the
last poor vestiges of the old kingship must inevitably crumble as
soon as the flood of the revolutionary propaganda began to flow
over the whole of Europe. The antagonism to the republic of
the enormous majority of the nation was to be overcome by glory
and success in war, by the cherished ancient dream of the natural
frontier ; and the financial need of the state was to be relieved by
abundant booty. In view of the sensitive pride of the profoundly
moved nation, and of its utter ignorance of foreign affairs, it was
not difficult for the wild oratory of Brissot, Guadet, and Gen-
sonne" to weave out of true and false an attractive web of illusion,
to assimilate the insane letters of the unhappy court and the open
treason of the emigres with the heedless words of the Declarations
of Padua and Pillnitz. The nation began to believe that its new
freedom was endangered by an obscure conspiracy of all the old
powers, that the sword must be drawn hi order to maintain the right
of national self-government against the tutelage of Europe. Since
the warlike mood gained ground from day to day in the legislative
History of Germany
assembly, extreme arrogance was shown in the negotiations with
the emperor, and no definite indemnity was offered to the estates
of the empire in Alsace. Then the assembly, carried away by
the flaming speeches of the Girondists, demanded of the emperor
a formal declaration that he would abandon the plan of a European
coalition, and that he would hold himself ready to support France
in accordance with the old alliance with the Bourbons, and all this
under pain of instant war. Since Leopold returned a dignified
and temperate answer, war was declared against Austria upon
April 20, 1792. Not more wantonly were begun the robber
campaigns of Louis XIV than this struggle which, as far as
all human expectation could show, must involve unprepared
France in a shameful defeat. The doctrinaire speech of Condorcet
then announced to the world that the principle of republican free-
dom was uprising against despotism. The gauntlet was thrown
down to the whole of old Europe. As regards Prussia, the Vienna
Convention now came into operation, and was reinforced by a
formal defensive alliance.
The war was forced upon the German powers. Almost at the
same moment, Russian troops, making light of all resistance,
entered Poland, extending the control of the czarina as far as the
Vistula. Once again, as so often before, the central power of the
Continent stood between two fires. The statesmen of Prussia had
now to choose whether they should offer a stout resistance to the
hardly functional army of the Revolution, while devoting the main
forces of the state to safeguarding German interests in the east,
or whether conversely they should for a time let the Polish matter
await decision, in order first to settle the French War with speedy
and powerful strokes. Since France had herself torn up the old
treaties by her declaration of war, a heroic sentiment might now
conceive the hope of restoring to the empire the Vosges, so often
mourned by King Frederick as the German Thermopylae. Which-
ever might be the choice, the hour was pressing. It was essential
that the entire might of Prussia should at once be put into the field
in order, either in the east or in the west, to attain to a decisive
issue with overwhelming speed. But the eagle eye of the great
king was no longer watching over his state, and the pigmies who
surrounded his successor advised the adoption of the stupidest
course possible ; they began an offensive war against France, and
devoted to this venturesome undertaking barely the half of the
Prussian army.
The war of the first coalition was lost by diplomatic mistakes,
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
not in consequence of reverses in the field. It was decisive for the
course of the war that in Vienna and in Berlin all the sins and
all the lies of the covetous and uninspired cabinet-policy of the
eighteenth century were now revived, the policy which had failed to
understand the level sense of Frederick William I and had despised
the heroic pride of his son. The Emperor Leopold died at the
very outset of the war. His youthful successor, Francis II,
believed in the old Hapsburg Jt < J $t [the initials of Austria
Est Imperare Orbi Universo] with all the stiff obstinacy of a
head empty of ideas, inclining always to the simple view that
his archducal house could never possess land enough. He
revived the Josephan plans of conquest, hoping by means of
the French War ultimately to be able to effect the exchange of
Belgium for Bavaria. Nor did Prussian statecraft any longer
display the ancient character of sober self-restraint. Since the
conclusion of the Austrian alliance, Prussia had also been affected
with the insatiate greed of the Hapsburg-Lorraine policy, and
vacillated in vain pursuit of the illimitable, instead of following,
in accordance with the good old Hohenzollern manner, a firmly
restricted aim pursued with iron persistency. The aim of
the court intriguers, Haugwitz and Lucchesini, was to obtain the
greatest possible gain in land and people with the smallest possible
sacrifice. They perceived that the Vienna Convention, which
pledged Prussia to come unconditionally to the support of the
emperor, had been a deplorable folly ; and now, before Austria had
disclosed her Bavarian plans, they demanded, in return for mili-
tary help, a portion of Poland and the Palatinate territories on the
Lower Rhine the Bavarian Palatinate could seek compensation
in Alsace. They thus had in view the reconquest of the German
Western Mark, and imagined at the same time that the old dispute
concerning the Jiilich-Cleves succession could be brought to a con-
clusion entirely to the advantage of Prussia. It is undeniable that
this plan had a sound kernel ; but how could it be hoped that so
striking a gain, a simultaneous acquirement of Posen and the
Rhine provinces, could be effected, except by the use of all the
powers of the monarchy ? It was a loathsome sight, how the
greedy desires of the two courts now led them to bargain with one
another. To be sure of compensation in Poland, Prussia now
agreed that Austria should enlarge her dominion with plunder
from Bavaria ; the prime principle of the Frederician policy, the
old king's resolution which he so often maintained with sword
and with pen, that on no condition whatever was the House of
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History of Germany
Austria to be allowed to enlarge its power in the empire, was aban-
doned with lamentable weakness " from cowardly greed," as
Frederick had once said in relation to similar proposals. And yet,
after all, a loyal friendship between the two allies was far from
being secured.
In July, 1792, the high nobility of the German nation assembled
at Mainz around their new emperor Francis. It was the farewell
supper of the doomed Holy Empire. Once more there flaunted
through the narrow alleys of Mainz the golden chariots of the
spiritual electors, the brilliant array of retainers of hundreds of
princes, counts, and barons of the empire, all the splendour of the
good old days the last display of the kind before the new century
was to tread down with its iron heels the antediluvian Rhenish
frippery of bishops' mitres and princely crowns. While this splen-
did festival was in progress, the two great powers were secretly
in treaty concerning the spoils of victory. The fate of Bavaria
seemed to be decided. Prussia completely abandoned its old ward,
the House of "Wittelsbach, and considering the military weakness
of the South German state, it seemed beyond question that Austria
could immediately enforce the Bavario-Belgian exchange. But
thereupon the imperial negotiators explained that their chief did
not demand Bavaria alone but also Ansbach-Bayreuth, which
Prussia had just legally acquired, and this left no doubt that the
Hofburg aimed at the partition of Germany, at the subjection of
the whole of the south. The ministers in Berlin were " seriously
enraged," and the king regarded as a personal injury the demand
for the Franconian lands which had been the ancient appanage of
his house. Nor could a clear understanding be arrived at concern-
ing the Polish question. Although Austria did not absolutely
forbid Prussia to increase her dominion in the east, both parties to
the negotiations felt that there was a wide divergence in their
views as to the future of Poland. The court of Berlin had at
length become convinced that the May constitution of Poland,
which was favoured by Vienna, was strictly contrary to Prussian
interests.
In a mood of depression, grumbling at one another, and with-
out any clear agreement as to the aims of the war, the two allies
took the field. The imperial court engaged in the campaign
unwillingly, regarding it as a war of defence which had been forced
upon it ; the Prussian statesmen played just as unwillingly their
part in rendering a help which, in accordance with the treaties they
had made, it was impossible to refuse ; both the powers consoled
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themselves with the vague hope that the uncongenial undertaking
would in one way or another provide them with an extension of
territory. King Frederick William alone was inspired by a knightly
sentiment. He regarded himself as the defender of the rightful
kingship, and through his dreams there passed the figures of
Arminius and other saviours of the German Fatherland. But
even in him there was lacking any clear understanding of what
kind of order he was to impose upon conquered France.
Even before the armies met there became manifest not
only the dissentient aims of the allies but also the other
elements of hopeless untruth by which the coalition was affected.
Since the orators of the Gironde were preaching a war of principle
on behalf of revolutionary freedom, it was impossible for their
enemies completely to escape the influence of the counter-revolu-
tionary party. In Paris, Austria was regarded as the protector
and advocate of all those ancient political ideas which were toler-
antly spoken of by the general name of feudalism ; and against this
power of darkness the spokesmen of the Revolution fought with
joyful zeal. But that the state of the philosopher of Sans Souci,
the rebel against emperor and empire, should now protect the
old-time Europe with its armies, seemed to them almost incredible ;
they could not abandon the hope that fhey would still be able
to win this kingdom over to the side of enlightenment. Yet at
the Prussian head-quarters it was impossible to keep away the
emigres who were offering their services ever more loudly and more
confidently. In a moment of unintelligent weakness, the Duke
of Brunswick, the commander-in-chief, penned a fanatical war-
manifesto which was coloured with the sentiments of the Hotspurs
among the emigre nobles, and which aroused disgust in the Prussian
cabinet : the talented disciple of the French philosophy, to whom
the Minister of War in Paris had recently offered the leadership
of the revolutionary army, now threatened revolutionary France
with utter destruction. The Gironde exulted, for it seemed proved
beyond question that the plans of the allied despots were counter-
revolutionary.
Not less unhappy than the policy which had led to the struggle
was the conduct of the war. For a long time, it is true, the well-
drilled regiments of Austria and Prussia maintained an advantage
over the haphazard and bewildered mass of the revolutionary army.
Whenever it came to the issue of battle, the French were regularly
defeated by the Frederician troops ; they never dared to make a
stand against the Prussian cavalry, and especially against the
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dreaded " red king," Colonel Blucher of the Red Hussars. For
years to come, the peasant of the Mark joked about the French
blockheads, the " katzkoppe," as he nicknamed the chasseurs.
At the close of the three Rhine campaigns, Blucher published his
journal, describing modestly and yet with cordial self -approval
how often he had " smashed " the enemy. The officers returned
home from the war with the consciousness of duty gloriously ful-
filled. And yet these three campaigns, which brought to the
Prussian flag so many magnificent and isolated successes, closed
in a shameful peace. The conduct of war is everywhere deter-
mined, and especially in wars conducted by a coalition, by the
aims of the statecraft which the war is to subserve, and a policy
that dreads victory cannot endure great military commanders.
The vacillations of Prussian policy found their true expression in
the weakness of will and in the circumspect hesitation of the Duke
of Brunswick. In the last days of the Seven Years' War, King
Frederick had been forced by the overwhelming power of his
enemies to adopt a caution which was altogether foreign to his
own inclination and principles. What had thus been imposed upon
him by necessity seemed to the generals of the years of peace to
be the fine flower of military wisdom. They considered it the com-
mander's task to deploy their troops in a widely extended cordon,
to cover every threatened point, to protect the mountain by the
battalion and the battalion by the mountain ; that spirit of initi-
ative which Frederick had so often declared to be the very nerve
of war, had been completely lost in this peace-loving generation.
The artificiality of this circumspect method of conducting war
corresponded at once to the temperament of the Brunswicker and
to his political views, for he alone among the generals of the allied
army dreaded the elemental energies of the Revolution and shunned
the venture of open battle.
In accordance with ancient Austrian custom, of the auxiliary
forces summoned by the empire only a small proportion put in an
appearance. The commander-in-chief first acquired the fortresses
along the Meuse, and then, unwillingly obeying the king's orders,
advanced westwards towards Paris, although his army was far too
weak to attempt the conquest of the hostile capital. The campaign
was already decided by September aoth. The Duke did not dare
to attack the French upon the heights of Valmy, abandoned certain
victory, and evacuated French soil on the approach of French
reinforcements. Goethe perceived the consequences of this great
change of front with the seer's vision of the poet ; beside the watch-
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fire he said to the Prussian officers, " To-day there begins a new
epoch in world history." Meanwhile, by the revolt of the tenth of
August the throne of the Capets had been overthrown ; a French
Republic arose out of the horrible blood-bath of the September
massacres ; and the rulers of the New France could bring to the
convention as a wedding-gift the great tidings that the Frederician
army had ingloriously fled before the troops of freedom.
The surprises of this wild year of 1792 were not even yet at
an end ; it seemed as if an inscrutable destiny were to prove the
folly of all human foresight. A French volunteer-corps under an
incompetent leader pressed forward in a mad adventure upon the
flank of the Prussian army until close to Mainz ; the first fortress
of Germany opened its gates without resistance. The glories of
the Rhenish system of petty states collapsed like a house of cards ;
princes and bishops fled in wild disorder. In accordance with the
ancient treacherous custom of the Wittelsbachs, the Bavarian
Palatinate declared itself neutral ; the Holy Roman Empire
sensed the beginning of the end. The weak-willed population of
the spiritual territories allowed themselves to be seduced by a hand-
ful of noisy hotheads into the play-acting of a Rhenish Republic,
imitating in reverent awe all the brave words of the Parisian
dispensers of happiness, although " the phlegm which nature has
imposed upon us allows us only to regard the French with wonder-
ing admiration." The contemplation of this caricature of free-
dom broke the unstable heart of the most intelligent of the
Rhenish enthusiasts, George Forster. Meanwhile, Savoy and Bel-
gium, badly defended, fell into the hands of the ragged troops of
the Republic. Wonderful and brilliant results were these, which
might even have intoxicated a sober people. A measureless self-
confidence now animated the leaders of the new Republic ; they
demanded that all the nations who wished to rise on behalf of
freedom should follow the French example. The campaign of the
revolutionary propagandists was ceremoniously announced ; war
to the palaces, peace to the huts ! In this fanatical assurance of
victory there resided an immeasurable moral force. Moreover,
the military power of the Republic was increasing, although every-
thing in its military system was still disorderly and confused. The
extraordinary mobs which the Convention led into the field were
certainly unable in open battle to secure victory in face of the
methodical conduct of war of the Frederician generals, and yet to the
little armies of the old days it was quite impossible completely to
overthrow such a national uprising. Among the volunteers of 1792,
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there was an abundance of youthful talent, a great proportion of
the marshals and generals of the subsequent empire ; the new
equality gave an open road to all aspiring spirits, and the terror of
the guillotine spurred everyone on to venture the highest.
There were thus manifested a new art of war and a new state-
craft combining the land-hunger of the old cabinet policy with
unheard-of contempt for all the traditional forms of international
law. If the empire was to withstand the attack of this incalculable
young power, it was essential that the Rhineland above all should
receive a more vigorous political order and should be rendered
capable of offering resistance. Through the fault of the petty
courts, the fortress of Mainz had fallen into the hands of
Custine, and, after the defeat, could offer nothing to the oppressed
fatherland beyond pitiful complaints, appeals to precedent, and a
few passionate pamphlets which were to incite loyal subjects to
revolt against the " petty-bourgeois Custine." Was it desirable
to reinstate these outworn political authorities which had collapsed
at the first touch of the enemy ? Once more the idea of secularism
inevitably sprang to life ; if effected promptly and by the sole
hand of the German powers, it would have offered the last means
of saving the existence of the imperial domain. In Berlin, as
in Paris, the abolition of the spiritual cities was then seriously
considered, but in face of Austria's veto, the Prussian statesmen
abandoned the plan, and there recommenced the deplorable bar-
gaining for a cheap advantage.
It was finally resolved, after the Prussians had already driven
the French out of Frankfort and well across the Rhine, that in
the next year Belgium and Mainz should be reconquered, whilst
the emperor should be compensated with Bavarian, and the
Prussians with Polish, territory. Both powers were continuing
the unhappy war in the sole hope of securing a rounding-off of
their dominions. The plan of a royalist counter-movement, which
still dominated the honourable mind of the King of Prussia, lost
all foundation as soon as the Republic had been founded, and when,
not long after, King Louis XVI went to the guillotine.
Meanwhile the Russians established their power on the Vistula.
By the Peace of Jassy, Catherine had been disembarrassed of the
Turkish War, and as she now threw herself upon the Polish prey with
all her forces she once more found an ally in the party passion of
the Sarmatian nobility. With the aid of the Confederation of Tar-
gowitz, she abolished all the reforms of 1791 and restored the old
constitution restored, in a word, her own dominion over the
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crown of Poland. For thirty years past she had been working
incessantly to bring Russia into direct contact with the civilisation
of the west by means of the conquest of Poland ; now she seemed
to attain the goal of her desires, for she ruled over the land of the
Vistula, and could decide as she wished when and in what manner
she could effect the complete absorption of the conquered domain.
Who could withstand her ? By the dissensions among her German
neighbours, by the decay of the Western European comity of
nations, the power of Russia had been enormously increased, and
was, moreover, over-estimated by all its contemporaries ; no one
perceived that this thinly populated land had lost a million men in
the wars of its restless empress, and that its means for a war of
offence were inconsiderable. The diplomatic arts of Catherine
rendered it impossible for the German courts to take the side of the
Polish patriots. Since the court of St. Petersburg condemned in
passionate terms the murder of the king by the Jacobins, the
patriotic party at Warsaw rallied to the help of the French ; who-
ever was the enemy of France could not possibly be the ally of
Poland.
Thus it was owing to the carefully planned and unscrupulous
policy of the empress that King Frederick William found himself
surrounded by enemies, exactly as had been his predecessor twenty
years earlier. He was forced to decide whether he would tolerate
the sole dominion of the Russians in Poland, or whether he would
limit the increase of the Muscovite power by a new partition. The
choice could not be long in doubt. The Prusso-Polish alliance was
torn up by the Poles themselves when they offered the House of
Wettin the hereditary crown. The court of Berlin finally took the
step which had long been demanded by Prussian interests. It
declared openly against the constitution of May, 1791, and did so
in terms of artificial anger which were detestably inconsistent with
its former attitude. It assembled half the army on the eastern
frontier, and as Catherine, in view of the sinister fermentation with
which Poland was filled, did not feel secure of her position, she
unwillingly agreed hi January, 1793, to the second partition of
Poland. Then the world witnessed the suicide of a once mighty
people. All the horror of the rule of the Convention in Paris
seemed innocence itself when compared with the detestable spec-
tacle of the mute sitting of the Reichstag of Grodno. By a precon-
certed trickery, by the appearance of acting under compulsion,
the suborned delegates and magnates agreed to the partition.
Prussia acquired, in addition to Thorn and Danzig, the ^ extensive
History of Germany
Polish areas of Posen and Gnesen, whose lack in the Seven Years'
War had involved such difficulties for Frederick. They consti-
tuted a natural connecting link between Silesia and Old Prussia.
Since they already possessed a considerable proportion of German
inhabitants, and since they were in vigorous communication with the
empire, it seemed probable that in the course of years they might be
altogether won over to Teutonic civilisation. The great gap in our
eastern frontier was at length closed ; all the injustice that the
Polish nobility had for centuries past done to the pioneers of Ger-
man civilisation was now to be atoned for. If, however, the parti-
tion itself was a deed of just necessity, the choice of the means
displayed the moral decay of the Prussian state. By breach of
faith and by lies, by corruption and by trickery, was the goal
attained. Not satisfied with securing the frontier, Prussia took
more than was necessary, extending its dominion as far as the
Bzura, deep into the interior of a purely Polish region. Poland
thus mutilated could no longer maintain its existence ; the second
partition led inevitably and speedily to a final overthrow which
could not fail to be injurious to Germany.
The immediate consequence of the treaty of partition was the
destruction of the Prusso- Austrian alliance. It was true that the
Emperor Francis had at first agreed to the enlargement of Prussia
because he was unable to subdue Belgium without the assistance
of the North German power ; but he was disquieted to learn that
his ally had independently, and earlier than himself, secured the
reward of victory ; it seemed to him as if he were mocked when
Catherine wrote that he might crown his work by agreeing to the
new partition of Poland. He angrily dismissed his ministers and
entrusted the conduct of foreign affairs to the minister Thugut.
This man was the most hateful of all the enemies of Prussia, far
excelling the statesmen of Berlin hi emotional slyness and unscru-
pulous activity. He hoped to follow Catherine's example and to
take advantage of the terrible confusion of the European situation
to carry out a plan of conquest in the grand style. His greedy de-
sires extended in all directions, to Flanders and Alsace, to Bavaria,
Italy, to the Danubian regions, to Poland. His hatred of the North
German allies had become even greater since the heir to the
Bavarian Palatinate, the Duke of Zweibriicken, had safeguarded
himself against the scheme for the Bavario-Belgian exchange,
and since Prussia, at length recognising past errors, had declared
in plain terms that the exchange could not be allowed to take
place without the free assent of the House of Wittelsbach. The
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
Austrian statesman immediately attempted to attack the power of
Prussia in Poland. Nothing could be more welcome to Catherine ;
she found it hard to accept that the Polish booty should for a
second time be diminished in size by the intervention of Prussia,
and she cleverly utilised the mutual hate of the German powers to
weaken them by playing one neighbour off against the other.
Already in the summer of 1793 the courts of Vienna and St. Peters-
burg were drawing together. In Berlin there could be no possible
doubt as to the hostile aims of the new league of the emperors.
The decay of the coalition was immediately reflected in the
events of the war. The Prussians crossed the Rhine at Caub, near
the old Palatinate, in the same place where two decades later they
recommenced the struggle for the German River ; they drove the
enemy from the left bank, besieged and conquered Mainz. Under
the protection of their arms, the refugee high nobility returned,
and reconstituted unhindered all the old nuisance of the system of
petty states, although the hopeless corruption of that system was
well understood in Berlin. The Prussian army then remained
for a long time in the mountains of the Palatinate, fronting south-
ward toward Alsace, everywhere victorious when the enemy
attempted an attack ; but the Prussians did not venture to advance,
for the cabinet of Berlin distrusted the intentions of its ally. The
imperial general Wurmser, in command of the left wing of the army
at the front of the Weissenburg " Lines," demanded an advance
into Alsace, in order to restore there, as had been done along the
central Rhine, the rule of his fellows of the imperial nobility, and
defied the Prussian commander-in-chief with open disobedience.
Towards the end of the war, General Hoche was appointed to
the command of the French troops, the finest man among the
young military leaders of the Republic. Defeated by the Prus-
sians at Kaiserslautern, with the impetuosity of the born com-
mander he turned against Wurmser's army, defeated the imperial
troops at Gaisberg, Worth, and Froschweiler, in those foot-hills
where were subsequently to be fought the first battles of the great
war of retaliation, liberated Landau from its siege by the allies
and forced Wurmser to retreat. After the defeat of the Austrians,
the Prussian army could no longer hold the mountain, and evacu-
ated the Palatinate. In the horrors of the " winter of rapine "
the unhappy country learnt to experience the advantages of French
liberty. In a valiant army, severe defeats awaken moral energy ;
but this campaign, which had been lost by the fault of others,
disordered the discipline of the Prussian officers. They grumbled,
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History of Germany
broke into open complaint, and demanded that the army should
be recalled from this useless war. The un-Prussian spirit which
paralysed the administration had penetrated to the army ; it was
like a military republic ; the anger against Austria displayed itself
in a hundred detestable ways. In the theatre of war in the Nether-
lands, the coalition, now strengthened by the accession of England,
had also but little good fortune. Belgium had been won back,
and in the summer, after the taking of Valenciennes and Mainz,
the road to Paris lay open before the allied armies, if resolution could
only be found to unite forces for a common forward movement.
But the English commercial policy demanded the possession of
Dunkirk, while Thugut insisted upon the conquest of Picardy ;
owing to the quarrels of diplomacy the favourable moment was
lost, and at the close of the campaign the armies found themselves
once more on the defensive upon the southern frontier of Belgium.
Meanwhile the military strength of the Republic was steadily
increasing. The Jacobin Reign of Terror subjected the entire
country to the dictatorship of the capital ; war was a necessity,
for economic prosperity was utterly disturbed. The idea of the
revolutionary propagandists became a terrible truth : an un-
resting conspiracy extended its nets over half Europe, to
Warsaw and Turin, to Amsterdam and Ireland, endeavouring
to disturb the frontiers of every country. Tremblingly the
people made the incredible sacrifices which were imposed upon
them by the demands of the government in Paris. Although in
the German provinces of France, and in Catholic Alsace, the
terrorism of the commissaries of the Convention awakened, here
and there, old Austrian memories, in the east the mass of the
populace remained faithful to the tricolor because they dreaded
that a victory of the coalition would involve the reimposition of
tithes and the revival of forced labour. In Strasburg, people
chanted the Song oi the Revolution. The genius of Carnot gave
the army a new organisation, introducing troops of the line and
national guards into the tactical unity of the half-brigade. He
dismissed the useless elected leaders, and constituted out of the best
energies of the old Bourbon officers, and out of new volunteers, a
capable officers' corps. To those trained in the old and cautious
art of war, the wild venturesomeness of the Republican generals,
who hurled themselves upon the enemy with a reckless expendi-
ture of human life and of the munitions of war, proved irresistible ;
moreover, in the long campaign the conduct of the French troops
underwent a steady improvement.
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Thus the enemy gained strength ; whereas Prussia, at the
beginning of the third campaign, was completely paralysed by
the exhaustion of her financial resources. The Treasury was
almost entirely depleted. Already in the second year of the war,
the king had not been able to dispense with the aid of English
gold. It was to him and to his army alone that the empire owed
the reconquest of a dominant position on the Rhine. He would
be able to carry on the imperial war in the years to come if the other
estates of the empire, which had hitherto put into the field for the
defence of the western frontier a force of barely twenty thousand
men, were to help him out in his financial need, and to undertake
the support of his army on the Rhine. But to the penetrating
vision of petty particularism it seemed that the Prussian proposals
involved a revival of the ideas of the League of Princes. Every-
where was faint-heartedness and self-seeking. In many of the
courts there was even open treason, for France had long been at
work to bring the petty lords under her influence. Nor was Austria
in favour of a change which would have made the King of Prussia
appear as the imperial military commander, and his troops as the
imperial army. The attempts at a loan which Hardenberg strove
to raise among the smaller courts of the west, had no notable result.
Thus deserted by his co-estates, Frederick William finally resolved
to place his entire army of the Rhine at the disposal of the naval
power, for hire. This state of affairs, per se hardly tolerable for a
great state, involved in addition the most invidious disputes, for
the agreement regarding the subsidies contained a number of
ambiguous sentences. The naval power held that it could dispose
of the troops of its ally as it pleased, and desired to assemble all the
armies of the coalition in the Netherlands in pursuit of the interests
of English commercial policy. Prussia, on the other hand, con-
tended that the choice of the theatre of war was reserved to her-
self, and still endeavoured to defend the imperial frontier along the
central Rhine. Austria hoped once more to secure conquests in
Flanders and in Lorraine. Field-Marshal Mollendorff opened the
campaign with a second victory at Kaiserslautern. After being
compelled in the summer to withdraw from the mountains, he
advanced once more in the autumn, and for the third time the
Prussian regiments victoriously occupied the bloodstained heights
above the Lauter. Even in the Netherlands, the North German
accessory troops did not lack conspicuous success. The heroic sally
from Menin made by the Hanoverian General Hammerstein and
his adjutant Scharnhorst, proved that the old Prussian valiancy
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in arms was not yet extinct. But the courage of individuals
could not atone for the disastrous effects of the weakness of the
leadership and of the ambiguous character of the imperial policy.
In October, the Austrian army withdrew from Belgium over the
Rhine. The enemy pushed after it, occupied the Rhineland as
far as Coblenz ; and the Prussians, since their rear was then
threatened, were also forced to evacuate the left bank of the river.
At the same time the king experienced the evil consequences
of his dependence upon the naval power. England, embittered by
the independent attitude of the Prussian generals, refused the
payment of the monetary subsidy, thus making it impossible for
the king to continue the campaign. Thus it happened that the
best army of the coalition was lost to the European War through
England's selfish arrogance. Towards Christmas, Pichegru entered
Holland, crossing the great rivers on the ice, and the navy of this
state, which had once ruled the seas, lowered its flag to a troop of
French cavalry. The Batavian Republic was proclaimed, for the
great free state of the west now began to surround itself with a
wall of daughter-republics. Thus the third Rhenish campaign
had been fought in vain, and next summer the Westphalian terri-
tories must expect attack from the French by way of Holland.
Prussia was completely isolated, and it was soon learnt that the
rupture between Prussia and England had been hailed with delight
both in St. Petersburg and in Vienna. But in the Prussian nation
no one had any understanding of how profoundly the power of the
state had been damaged by a policy of half-measures and confused
aims. The capital rejoiced over the three victories of Kaisers-
lautern ; the minds of the people were intoxicated with patriotic
pride and royalist devotion. Then for the first time, hi the years
1793 and 1794, there was heard at Berlin the song " Hail to thee
in the victor's crown," the new Prussian words set to the old melody
of Handel. The beautiful monument of victory of the old mon-
archy, the Brandenburg Gate, was unveiled ; with enthusiastic
delight the people assembled in crowds to see the bride of the
young crown prince make her entry through this gate of triumph.
Prussian writers, in a well-meaning infatuation, compared the
undisturbed good fortune of their loyal and victorious nation
with the confusion and powerlessness of the state of the French
regicides.
Meanwhile the shaky accord of the coalition was completely
disturbed by the Polish negotiations. In Easter week, 1794, a san-
guinary revolt took place at Warsaw, and the Russians were driven
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out of the country. With the support of Paris, the area of dis-
turbance continually widened, reaching far into Prussian Poland.
This time also, in the last struggle of despair, the Polish nobility
still displayed its ancient sins of dissension and undiscipline. Yet
the unhappy nation manifested more strength than the parti-
tioning powers had expected, and a gracious destiny bestowed upon
Poland the good fortune of reinvigorating her heart at the prospect
of a true hero. Kosciuszko possessed neither the genius of the
great commander nor the world-wide vision of the statesman, but
his pure spirit, animated with all the knightly virtues of his people ,
was endowed also with an invincible uprightness, with a genuine
devotion for his fatherland, such as had been unknown in
Poland for centuries past. To the rough levies of the Polish pea-
santry, when the sober-minded hero, clad in a white frieze country-
man's coat, rode through the ranks of his men, Father Thaddeus
seemed like a guardian angel. In Russia, on the other hand, there
now flamed up the ancient hatred of the Byzantine Christians
against the Latins, of the Eastern Slavs against the Western. Like
one man, the empire demanded the annihilation of Poland in atone-
ment for the affront that had been offered. Never was any war
more sacred to the Russian people. It was obvious that in the
bloody day of Warsaw, the Poles' last hour had begun. It was
therefore the duty of Prussia to take immediate action, and before
the Russian armies could be assembled from the remote corners
of the empire, it was essential that Prussia should herself subdue
the revolt in order thereafter, in the inevitable final partition, to
be able to speak the decisive word. The king understood all that
was at stake. He sent his army over the frontier, defeated the
Poles at Rawka, subdued Cracow, and then turned against Warsaw,
which was badly equipped, torn by faction-fights, and by no
means prepared to resist the Prussian attack. But that unlucky
over-carefulness and over-refinement which had ruined the
Rhenish campaigns, served also to deprive the king of the fruits
of his Polish victories. The royal-minded man wished to take
Praga by storm, and then, like his ancestor the Great Elector, to
enter the Polish capital as a conqueror. Bischofswerder, however,
warned him to husband his forces for the reckoning with Russia ;
one of Catherine's agents, the Prince of Nassau-Siegena, eagerly
joined in this cowardly advice. A regular siege was begun and
was discontinued after a few days. Whilst the Prussian army,
depressed and embittered, withdrew from Warsaw, Souvbroff, the
barbarian of genius, in whom the savage national temperament of
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the Muscovites found vigorous expression, eame to the attack with
the bulk of Catherine's forces. His devotion to the White Czar
and to the Orthodox Church was as blind as that of any Russian
peasant, and yet he was a master in the western art of war, a great
warrior, born to command, accustomed to expect the impossible
from the courage of his soldiers, accustomed to act up to his motto,
" The bullet is a foolish woman, but the bayonet is every inch a
man." He carried out what the Prussian commanders had failed to
effect, defeated the army of Kosciuszko, and took Praga by storm
after murderous battles. Warsaw lay at the feet of Catherine,
her troops held the commanding position between the Bug and the
Vistula. The revolt had been suppressed, not by Prussia but by
Russia ; and the court of St. Petersburg announced boastingly,
" Poland has been completely overthrown by the armies of the
Empress."
The sins of omission of the Prussian generalship must be paid
for when the three eastern powers came to negotiate at St. Peters-
burg concerning the last partition. Prussia demanded the line of
the Vistula, with Warsaw, Sandomierz, and Cracow. Since Austria,
which had done very little towards the suppression of the revolt,
coveted these last two districts for herself, General Tauentzien
returned an answer which showed the complete decay of the coali-
tion. He said : " These two provinces in your hands would give
us more trouble than all the democracies of the world." Russia,
however, took Austria's side, since for more than a year Thugut
had been successfully engaged in acquiring the favour of Catherine.
The two imperial courts were at one in the intention of control-
ling Prussian ambition by all the means in their power, and since
Prussia would not give way, on January 3, 1795, Austria and
Russia signed a secret treaty against their ally. By this it was
arranged that Poland should be partitioned in such a way that Russia
and Austria should receive the preponderant part of the country,
while Prussia must remain content with Warsaw and a narrow strip
on the eastern Prussian frontier. In addition, a comprehensive
plan of conquest was laid down. In the Danubian provinces,
Russia was to enjoy the right of a younger son, while Austria
received a free hand for the annexation of Bavaria, Bosnia, and
Serbia, and also the Venetian Republic. Indeed, the empress
gave her assent to all other conquests which her ally might still
consider necessary. Should Prussia offer any opposition, this
was to be overpowered by the full might of the Russian and
Austrian armies. Thus all the immoderate desires of the Emperor
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Joseph were revived. On the Lower Danube, in the heart of
South Germany, and above all on the Adriatic, Thugut hoped to
enlarge the power of his state, and Catherine gladly acceded to
these desires because in the general disturbance she hoped to attain
the second great goal of her statecraft, the control of Constantinople.
To this had the Prussian state come in the five years since the
days of Reichenbach. By the naval power and by the German
empire, means for the conduct of the war were refused, while
Russia and Austria threatened an onslaught. For some months,
the treaty of January 3 still remained unknown in Berlin, but there
could be no possible doubt as to the sentiments of the imperial
court. Thugut had long ago assembled troops in Bohemia in
order to use them in the attack upon his Prussian allies. Was
it possible for Prussia, without money, and with the aid of such
allies as these, to prosecute the French War, whose aims in the
confused quarrels of diplomacy became ever obscurer and more
questionable ? For a long time all the king's advisers had been
demanding peace or an alliance with France even Hardenberg,
the talented minister who by his skilful administration had won the
Franconian Margravates for the monarchy, and who now began to
exercise an influence upon foreign affairs. Charles Augustus of
Weimar, who from the first had been strongly opposed to the war
with France, now renewed his efforts for peace. The army, and
even the valiant Blucher, were altogether averse to continuing the
war in alliance with the Austrians ; and not less eager for peace
was the nation, which considered that enough laurels had been
won. Young Vincke voiced the heart-felt sentiments of all
enlightened Prussians when he asked bitterly, " How long are we
to remain a voluntary sacrifice for Austrian double-dealing ? "
Hans von Held, whose tongue was the sharpest among those of
the literary opposition, wrote the moving exhortation : " Frederick
William, give the signal, call thy valiant army back ! Let us be the
Frenchmen's brothers, thus commands the voice of Fate." In
the empire, too, everything was calling for peace, for the condition
was one of general exhaustion. Thugut, on the other hand, passion-
ately embittered, threatened that he would himself come to terms
with France if he were not allowed to have Cracow. The hasty
withdrawal of the Austrians from the Netherlands, and many
serious reports that were received concerning the activity of Carletti,
the Tuscan minister in Paris, served to increase the suspicion of
the Prussian court against the Hofburg.
In France the need for peace was hardly less pressing, and there
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History of Germany
was an earnest desire for an understanding at least with Prussia.
With the fall of the Terror, the moderate parties came into control
at Paris, and the statesmen of Berlin flattered themselves with the
expectation that if Prussia were to conclude a separate peace, this
would pave the way for a general peace and would restore the
status quo in the empire. Against his will, the king at length gave
permission for the opening of peace negotiations ; in the bottom
of his soul, as a faithful prince of the empire, he still wished to carry
on the Rhenish campaign. Notwithstanding the diplomatic skill of
Hardenberg, the course of the Basle negotiations proved unfortunate,
because the ministers in Berlin lacked courage to threaten their
opponents with a resumption of hostilities. Nor did the Prussian
diplomats venture seriously to entertain the idea of secularisation,
which was once more brought up by the French, and which might
perhaps have furnished a passable way out of the difficulty. They
were content with half-measures, and on April 5, 1795, they con-
cluded the Peace of Basle, in virtue of which Prussia simply with-
drew from the coalition ; if the French proved unable to maintain
their position on the left bank of the Rhine, the king was to be
indemnified for his possessions in this region, and it was a tacit
understanding between the parties to the bargain that the indem-
nity was to take the form of secularised ecclesiastical lands.
In view of the state of affairs and personalities in Prussia,
the conclusion of peace was the last despairing means for the
rescue of the state from an untenable situation. It was the neces-
sary consequence of the errors and misfortunes of many years,
of a lying alliance which carried within itself the germs of treachery,
of a policy without energy oscillating ever between Poland and the
Rhine, and never venturing to strike a decisive blow. The respon-
sibility did not attach to individual men, but to the entire nation,
which, after having been once awakened by a great man from its
political slumber, had lapsed into a waking dream, and had learned
once more with a slack self-content, to despair of its political future.
Notwithstanding all excuses and explanations, it was the gravest
political error of our new history, a disloyalty of the Prussian
state to itself, which had to be atoned for by two decades of dis-
honour and stress, by unexampled sacrifices and struggles.
In its position as augmenter of the empire, Prussia had out-
grown the futility of the system of petty states. No defeat in the
open field could abase it more profoundly than it was abased by
its own action when without compulsion it drew its hand from the
German Western Mark, and when it abandoned to an unknown
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
destiny the region of Mainz, which Prussia's own army had so
recently restored to the empire. Amid powerful neighbours,
Prussia had always maintained itself by the energy of its own will.
More unbecoming than even an open alliance with the enemy of
the empire was the slothful pusillanimity of spirit which was content
to wait upon events to see if perchance the Austrians might still
be able to drive the French out of the empire. An honourable
sentiment of imperial pride led the king to refuse to the last pos-
sible minute his consent to the Peace of Basle. He was the heir
of that Great Elector who had been betrayed no less shamefully
by Austria and yet had ever and again ventured to renew the
struggle for the Rhenish land ; moreover, he perceived obscurely, as
did the brave old minister Finkenstein, that for the position of Prussia
in the world, the maintenance of the western frontier of the empire
was far more important than the possession of Sandomierz and
Cracow. Betrayed by his allies, he was unquestionably justified
in withdrawing from the coalition as soon as France offered honour-
able terms of peace and recognised the ancient frontiers of the
empire, but peace on such terms was attainable only by the hazard
of a fourth Rhenish campaign. The war had left untouched
the kernel of the monarchy. Although the misfortunes of the
year 1794 had caused momentary difficulties, there was everywhere
visible a general condition of well-being. There could be no ques-
tion of the people being overburdened with taxation. The domain
which was now enlarged by thousands of square miles provided
its amiable ruler with an annual income greater by barely a million
thalers than that yielded in former days by the little state of
Frederick II. In such a situation, a great statesman would have
known how to find means for a new campaign, notwithstanding
all financial difficulties and notwithstanding the unfortunate out-
come of the recent attempt at raising a foreign loan. But in
the king's council there was no man of creative mind ; the unhappy
prince saw no way out and pacified his conscience with the gloomy
consolation that the peace at least involved no formal surrender
of German land.
All the reckonings and expectations of his cunning advisers
soon showed themselves to have been erroneous. They had
expected to bring the imperial war to a close. Hardenberg believed
that France would voluntarily renounce the Rhine frontier simply
in order to come to terms with the empire, and naively expected
that there would result a permanent friendly relationship between
Prussia and the Republic. How little did they understand the
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character of revolutionary France ! Soon after the Basle Treaty
had been signed, the war party at Paris once more gained the
ascendancy, expected armed help from Prussia, and, disappointed
in this expectation, treated the peaceful neutral neighbour with
unconcealed contempt. It became ever clearer that a peace with
this revolutionary-minded state would not become possible until
the old European system lay in ruins. Haugwitz and Alvensleben
had hoped that the conclusion of peace would give them a free
hand for the Polish negotiations, but were compelled ultimately
to accept with trifling modifications the partition proposed by
the two imperial courts, for it was only as the ally of France that
Prussia could oppose the masterful will of Thugut and Catherine,
whilst the sense of honour of the king and the inertia of most of
his advisers rendered impossible an open alliance with the Revolu-
tion. None the less, by the Treaty of Basle, Prussia had already
become an accomplice, a secret ally of the French policy of conquest.
It was known in Berlin that the Republic would retain the left
bank of the Rhine ; compensation was expected from French
friendship for the lands of Cleves, and thus Prussia, however
repugnant the idea might seem, was chained to the victorious
chariot wheels of France.
The first step led to others. On August 5, 1796, a supple-
mentary treaty was concluded which placed in prospect certain
definite acquisitions. If the left bank of the Rhine should be lost,
the king was to receive the Bishopric of Minister, and his. brother-
in-law of Orange was also to be indemnified with certain spiritual
territories of the empire. Thus the great idea of secularisation
lost its true significance. King Frederick had understood it as a
means for the reform of the empire, but now it was to serve merely
for the spoliation of Germany. By the peace, Prussia apparently
won a great extension of its power. The petty states of North
Germany quickly followed the example of their powerful colleague.
A line of demarcation was drawn along the Rhine and then straight
across Central Germany ; behind it lay the neutral north, guarded
by the arms of Prussia against the terrors of war. The canny folk
of Berlin rejoiced ; the rule of the black eagle over the whole of
North Germany was now established by the peaceful arts of diplo-
macy. And yet the brilliancy of this position was utterly illusory.
The Rhine did not form a tenable frontier, the Republic could
hold the left bank only if it controlled also the right bank directly
or indirectly. Inevitably the war extended far into High Germany ;
for all the South German states had already concluded treaties of
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
submission to France, the precursors of the Confederation of the
Rhine. Surrounded by France and its vassals to the south and to
the west, North Germany could maintain its independence only so
long as France found it necessary to safeguard this in her own
interests. It was nothing but a peace-loving inertia which held
together the German alliance on behalf of neutrality ; should the
protector of North Germany become involved in a new war with
France, this league, which was devoid alike of moral content and
of positive aim, must immediately break up, for it was inevitable
that the smaller associates would fall away from a conquered
Prussia. From the egoism of these courts it was useless even to
expect a permanent subordination of the minor North German
contingents under the leadership of Prussia. The policy of Berlin,
poor in ideas, hardly even made an earnest attempt to transform
into a legally established hegemony, the dominant position which
Prussia in fact occupied in the north ; and yet the peace could
have been justified only if it had been utilised to revive in North
Germany the policy of the League of Princes.
The old king had always inexorably opposed the separation
of the north from the south, whenever the Emperor Joseph had
wished to effect this in the interest of Austria, but now the parti-
tion of Germany was realised for the advantage of France. Since
Prussia withdrew into the retired life of North German neutrality,
the best of the political gains which the re-acquirement of the
Franconian family lands had brought to the Hohenzollerns was
irrecoverably lost ; the powerful step forward into the centre of High
German life had been vainly effected. Among the South Germans
there existed henceforward two parties only, the French and the
Austrian existed so far as this outworn race still possessed any
political sentiment whatever. The unsatisfied provincial diets
of Wurtemberg and a few hotheads in Bavaria and Swabia admired
the victorious Republic as the protector of liberty. The people
in general knew nothing of the secret designs of the Hofburg ;
they saw that the imperial troops continued for years to fight
against the enemies of the empire, while Prussia stood inactive on
one side ; and they honoured the empire as the last loyal protector
of their native soil. In the autumn of 1795 the Bavarian Land-
sturm united with the Austrian forces, and fought the plundering
and undisciplined troops of the Sansculottes in the Taunus and the
Westerwald. Since in the person of the young Archduke Charles,
Austria had found a new hero, the long almost discredited name
of the imperial house now acquired a new esteem among the High
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Germans. Even to-day in the farms of the Black Forest we find
old wood-cuts commemorating the battles fought by the imperial
commander-in-chief. In these years there was constituted among
the best Germans of the southern highlands an Austrian historical
tradition which continued to exercise a powerful influence for
decades to come. It was at this time that the Szeklers and Kroats
were in the Neckar valley, and that the young Uhland received the
decisive political impressions of his life. Prussia, however, which
had never really acquired the confidence of the High Germans,
was now, and for a long time to come, the object of general contempt.
Thus the consequences of the Basle Treaty were disastrous in every
direction, and while Hardenberg had hoped that the peace would
pave the way for his state to effect a long series of internal reforms
and to introduce the sound ideas of the Revolution, this hope also
was doomed to disappointment. It rather resulted that the newly
acquired territory remained for years a hindrance to internal
progress.
The Basle Treaty, which was to have brought for the king the
honourable position of the intermediator of European peace, resulted
only in alienating from Prussia the whole comity of states. At
the two imperial courts, the news from Basle awakened passionate
anger. What was merely empty-headed weakness was regarded
in St. Petersburg and Vienna as black treachery and naturally
so, for Prussia could now only derive advantage from the victory
of the Republic. Both the courts remained firmly convinced that
Prussia was secretly intriguing with France ; and they attributed
the worst possible designs to the king's councillors, seriously
believing that Prussia was meditating a war of offence, was secretly
endeavouring to egg on the Turks and the Swedes to attack
Catherine. Thugut assembled an army on the Silesian frontier,
and incited the Russian cabinet in violent despatches to undertake
a war of destruction against their " natural enemy." He drew up
an adventurous plan by which Prussia was to be deprived of all
her Polish provinces and also of West Prussia. Souv6roff was to lead
the Russian armies against the Prussian capital. The military
preparations against the North German power brought the Rhenish
campaign to a standstill throughout the summer. It was not
until the autumn that the two imperial courts became convinced
that there was nothing to be feared from Prussian weakness, and
at the same time Thugut came to recognise that an understanding
with the Republic was impossible. The idea of the preservation
of the frontiers of the empire lay remote* frornjiis hard policy of
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interest. He was ready to sacrifice the left bank of the Rhine if
Austria could acquire the Bavarian hereditary dominion. No
one in the Hofburg thought of the duties of the emperorship. The
court of St. Petersburg was expressly assured that the Russian
troops might enter Germany as freely as they pleased hi order to
chastise the estates of the realm that had fallen away from Austria.
It was only in respect of Italian affairs that no agreement could be
effected. Thugut hoped to annex to Lombardy the domain of the
neutral Republic of Venice, whilst France did not wish to leave
Milan, the key to Italy, in Austria's hands. The result was that
once again in the autumn of 1795 the swords were unsheathed,
the court of Vienna hoping to conquer Venice on the Rhine. Since
the war was renewed for the sake of Italy, a decisive issue must be
fought out in Italy as well. United with Russia and England more
firmly than ever by the new triple alliance, supported by Pitt
with abundant monetary subsidies, Thugut rushed into the incal-
culable struggle. On all hands simple greed was dominant, every-
where was manifest contempt for all rights. Whether France or
Austria should prove victorious, the one thing that would neces-
sarily be overthrown was the old-established international law.
And while this disastrous struggle was in progress there remained
neutral that state whose boast that it held the balance of European
power had once been echoed alike by friend and foe !
It was astonishing to observe that in North Germany no one
seemed to dream of how dire was the penalty which Prussia had
to pay in the loss of general repute for this mean-spirited peace ;
no one seemed to understand the devastating effect of the loss of
all good feeling and all sense of justice which must inevitably result
in Germany now that the one truly living German state had aban-
doned the empire. All over North Germany, a general approval
was given to the wise men who had made peace. Trade and com-
merce were flourishing ; the shipping and the grain-trade of Prussia
enjoyed the advantage of neutral flags and received an altogether
unexpected expansion owing to the general naval war. The
energies of the new literature developed in undisturbed security ;
now were the golden days of Weimar. Half in contempt and half
in indifference, Saxony, proud of its culture, looked down out of
the fullness of its intellectual life into the desolate disorder of war
across the line of demarcation. By the joyful news from Basle,
Kant was incited to the composition of his essay upon Per-
petual Peace, and dreamed that the barbarism of war was soon
to be done away with at the very moment that a new age of blood
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History of Germany
and iron was dawning for enlightened Europe. The king, too,
who had so long resisted the peace, soon consoled himself with the
contemplation of the general satisfaction. Learning to make a
virtue of necessity, he wrote, filled with self-approval, to Catherine,
that it was his hope to follow the example of his predecessor, who
had first enlarged the boundaries of his state, and had then devoted
himself systematically to maintaining his newly-acquired dominion
and to ruling it in peace.
In actual fact, except John Sigismund and Frederick II no
other Hohenzollern had brought the monarchy so remarkable an
extension of territory ; in the ten years of this reign the domain
grew from 3,500 to nearly 5,600 square miles [German]. With
the accession of the Franconian Margravates, another happy land
of ancient civilisation was added to the needy trans-Elbian colonies.
Under the guidance of Hardenberg there was formed a Franconian
school of Prussian officials ; Alexander Humboldt presided over
the mining development of the Fichtelgebirge. Altenstein, Kir-
cheisen, and Nagler learnt there to adapt the stricter principles of
the ancient Prussian administration to the comfortable circum-
stances of free peasants and well-to-do townsmen of the lower
middle classes. These men of Franconia, and the philosophical
East Prussians who, like young Schon, had sat at the feet of Kant
in Konigsberg, and who had become acquainted with the ideas of
Adam Smith through the instrumentality of the excellent Kraus,
were subsequently the founders of the reform party of the official-
dom. From the military and economic points of view, the new
frontier on the Bug and the Pilitza was most advantageous, since
it opened free intercourse between the harbours of the province of
Prussia and the internal regions of Poland that were rich in wood
and grain, while it gave to the state an admirable and impregnable
position, between the Vistula, the Bug, and the Narew. The un-
happy inhabitants of Great Poland and Ma&ovia learnt for the
first time for centuries the blessings of a just and benevolent
administration. Misfortune was respected by a lenient treatment
of the insurgents, whereas in Russian Poland a cruel system of
punishments was enforced. The noble became at length a subject,
was forced to respect the law ; the peasants and the Jews could
once more provide for the future and devote themselves to peaceful
labour without trembling before the horsewhip of the landed
gentry. Security before the law, hitherto unknown in Poland,
attracted numerous settlers, and led to an influx of capital from
the German provinces into this rich virgin soil. There was a
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notable expansion of agriculture ; the regulation of mortgages
rendered possible a more vigorous agrarian development, new
roads and new canals were built ; with astonishing rapidity
Warsaw assumed the character of a German town. No one could
fail to recognise the general blossoming of improved economic
conditions.
But it soon became manifest that the power and happiness
of states do not depend upon military and commercio-political
conditions alone. The justice of historical destiny remains ever
inscrutable, and becomes acceptable only in a spirit of reflective
devotion, because neither to people nor to individuals does it
mete out justice with equal measure. Among nations, as among
individuals, there are favourites of fortune, in whose hands every-
thing thrives without effort ; and there are others of harder metal
for whom only that which is obtained by prolonged struggle turns
to advantage. What the Prussian state had hitherto gained
had been the reward of serious work ; but this new and large
extension of territory was acquired by ineffective campaigns and
inglorious undertakings, and upon the orderly domesticity of the
country it had the effect of a gambling gain. Often had the
Hohenzollerns resisted alluring appeals from abroad, but this time
they gave way to temptation. Of the ten and a half million
inhabitants of Prussia, four millions were now Slavs, so that there
was serious danger that the country would be alienated from its
great German future. The acquisition of Warsaw and Puitusk
was indeed a necessary step, unconditionally demanded in accord-
ance with the views of the time, since it was impossible for Prussia
to abandon either to Austria or to Russia the key of its eastern
frontier. It cannot be made a matter of personal reproach to the
king that he failed to look beyond the doctrines of his epoch relating
to the balance of power, and that he understood no better than
his contemporaries the force of national contrasts. It remained,
however, impossible to reconcile with the Protestant German
state these thousands of hostile gentry and these stupid peasants
who blindly obeyed their priests. During the Rhenish Wars,
Polish recruits could be seen in fetters marching towards the west,
and it happened sometimes that as many as half of these escaped
upon the way. The Polish provinces weakened the moral energy
of the state, which cannot exist without the free consent of its
citizens, and they brought its internal development to a stand-
still. The partition of Poland stands first among the manifold
causes of that deplorable torpor which affected the administration
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and the army for the next few decades. The energies of the German
officialdom barely sufficed to ensure the beginnings of a civilised
human life for these semi-barbarous lands which were not yet ripe
for Prussian administration. How was it possible to think of
reforms and of the introduction of self-government, which in two-
fifths of the monarchy would have been simply to the advantage
of the tyrannous Polish Junkers ? Or how could anyone dream of
the formation of a truly national army in which among ten soldiers
four would have been Poles ?
Whereas formerly, in newly acquired provinces, the state had
immediately introduced with a wholesome severity all its insti-
tutions, and especially its system of taxation, there now pre-
vailed at court a deliberate mildness, an excessive readiness to
listen to every desire expressed by the children of the new land,
to allow for every peculiarity, justified or unjustified. Instead
of simply including the new provinces in the organisation of the
ancient Prussian authorities, they were given a provisional adminis-
tration. Hardenberg ruled in Franconia, and Count Hoym in South
Prussia, with the powers of a viceroy. The old system of taxation
remained in operation. Even in the confused and disastrous Polish
system of taxation all that was done was to remedy a few crying
defects, and the incredible result was that the extensive Polish
domains provided to the general revenue of the state the trifling
sum of 200,000 thalers, whilst the rich region of Franconia actually
required a financial supplement from the national revenue. It
seemed as if the exhausted state no longer ventured to breathe its
own spirit into its new acquisitions. To the soft philanthropy of
the age it appeared cruel to apply the old manly principle of the
relentless straining of every possible nerve. Moreover, the acquire-
ment in Poland of the landed property of the starosts and of the
Church offered an irresistible temptation to the generosity of the
king ; instead of dividing up these estates and distributing them
among German immigrants, he disposed of the greater part of them
by favour and caprice. The greedy competition for the Southern
Prussian crown-lands severely affected the already slackened dis-
cipline of the officialdom ; and the Polish peasant, when he saw
the scandalous gift of lands to the new lords, forgot to return thanks
for the good deeds of the Prussian administration.
Among all the sins of omission of these weary years, there was
none so disastrous as the neglect of the army. The goodhearted-
ness of the king, the false economy of a lax policy of peace, and the
tacit mistrust of the loyalty of the Polish soldiers, resulted in a
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failure to undertake the necessary strengthening of the army.
Whilst the population had been almost doubled, the troops were
increased by no more than 35,000 men ; the army estimates,
which at the death of Frederick had been from 11,000,000 to
12,000,000 thalers, rose only to 14,000,000. Meanwhile the armies
of all the neighbouring realms increased enormously, while the posi-
tion of the nation in the world had been rendered more difficult than
ever by the extension of the frontiers in the east and in the west,
When Frederick William II died, Prussia's power, both
internal and external, was less than it had been at the close of
his uncle's reign. From a compact German state capable of the
incredible under the impulse of a vigorous and talented will, Prussia
had become a motley and unwieldy German-Slav realm, possess-
ing neither military strength nor financial resources sufficient for
the defence of its wide domains, and requiring a prolonged term
of peace in order to regain internal unity. The great penal judg-
ments of history seem strange to weak spirits, for the executioner
of the judgment is almost always partisan, almost always himseli
tainted with crime. Thus the destruction of the Polish state,
merited as it was by accumulated misdeeds, was now carried out
by unclean hands. The blame which had to be apportioned for
the necessary deed was punished in Russia by a long series of
internal struggles, and in Austria by the misfortunes of the French
War ; but by none of the three partitioning powers was the sin so
severely atoned as by Prussia, for in the conquest of purely Polish
territory none had strayed so far from the paths of a natural policy
as had this German state. The mean-spiritedness of Basle and
the quarrels of Grodno, had been turned by Prussia to her account
in such a way that henceforward there became supreme in Europe
that reckless land-hunger which recognised no right but the right
of the stronger and which found in Napoleon its supreme represen-
tative. Germany herself, now that all her states had recognised
that reform was inevitable, was once more in the same situation
as in the days of Gustavus Adolphus ; as then the equality of the
Churches, so now the secularisation of the Holy Empire, the destruc-
tion of theocracy, could be effected only by the intervention of
foreign forces.
2. FREDERICK WILLIAM III. THE PRINCIPAL RESOLUTION OF THE
DIET OF DEPUTATION. CLASSICAL POETRY.
Such was the situation of affairs when King Frederick William
III ascended the throne. Serious-minded and with a strong
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History of Germany
sense of duty, pious and upright, just and veracious, a thorough
German alike in his merits and in his defects, he possessed all the
virtues which form a good and pure-hearted man, and seemed
created to lead a well-ordered state of intermediate strength
honourably through a period of quiet ; it was a need to this pro-
foundly affectionate spirit to be loved by his subjects. His
intelligence comprehended only a narrow area ; and yet in all ques-
tions which came within his scope, his judgment was clear and
sound, formed after profound and thorough consideration, and he
always retained an inborn and fortunate comprehension of the
forces of reality. In his education, everything had been neglected
which might have led this noble but inelastic and essentially
unpolitical nature to the freedom of a royal view of the world-order.
First of all, the artless cheerfulness of the boy so forcibly repressed
by the morose temperament of a pedantic tutor, the theologian
Behnisch ; next the strict prince had to look on at the light-minded
activities of the paternal court and was forced shyly to conceal
the profound disgust which the spectacle aroused in his mind. He
thus learned to withdraw into himself and to shun the world. His
active powers were paralysed by an invincible diffidence ; it was
his misfortune that he was never able to take life lightly and to
look around among his fellows with serene self-command. Every
appearance in public, and even speaking to any large number of
people, was a burden to him. When he had to do it, he expressed
his intelligent judgment and his tender sensibilities in bare, curt
phrases ; his compressed and bald manner never furnished a true
expression for this fine knightly figure with the beautiful and honest
blue eyes. Accustomed from youth upwards to associate with persons
of mediocre intelligence, he was seldom able to overcome his aver-
sion to genius, to boldness, to anything that was out of the ordinary.
He was alarmed by that inconsiderate freedom of speech which is
characteristic of the great among the Teutons. Among all the
talented men who served him, one only became truly dear to him,
Scharnhorst, the man of simple nature, whose greatness imposed no
claims.
It is the strength and the weakness of staunch natures that
they find it difficult to forget. Frederick William was always
ready to pardon, but he never forgot. Whilst he remembered
with gratitude every service and every trifling obligation, and
whilst he was profoundly pained by separation from faithful
subjects, he could harbour a sentiment of anger for years until
at length he plucked up sufficient courage " to give his opinion in
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good German " ; and then the good-natured prince, violent in
his anger, was unjust and petty in good German. Least of all
was he able to forgive any arbitrary conduct on the part of his
servants. He wished to be king, and was king. No one ever
controlled him. Incredibly difficult was it for him to make any
great resolution ; he hesitated and procrastinated, let things slide,
tolerated for a long time anything that displeased him, because he
lacked confidence in his own judgment ; yet once he was forced
to come to a decision he always and everywhere followed his own
conscience. From lack of resolution he left much undone to which
his own level reasoning urged him, but he never did anything except
as the outcome of his own well-weighed conviction. His slow
moving but firm and vigorous spirit would accept from the ideas of
great intelligences no more than what his own nature approved ;
no force of persuasion ever induced him to abandon the moral and
political principles he held sacred. The blame and the glory of
his long reign belongs to himself far more than his contemporaries
were aware, for amid the brilliant figures of his generals and states-
men they were apt to lose sight of the inconspicuous prince. He
chiefly was responsible for that lax policy of peace which prepared
the destruction of the old state, but to him also belonged the credit
that after ten years of hesitation and after the cruel assaults of
destiny, he at length dared to be altogether himself, freely and
spontaneously resolving to undertake the reconstruction of the
state, carrying out the reforming ideas of his councillors just as far
as they seemed to him right, and not undertaking the long-prepared
War of Liberation until he himself saw that the right moment
had come. In the second half of his reign he was responsible for
the association of Prussian policy with Austrian, for the persecution
of the demagogues, and for the non-appearance of the promised
constitution ; but he also conducted the reconstruction of the
Prussian unified state with resolute patience, recognising with true
insight the right moment for this undertaking, when the oriental
confusion of the struggles of German commercial policy allowed
the state once more to resume its independent way. Without
him, and without the general confidence in his uprightness, the
reconciliation of the innumerable contrasts of the new Prussia
would have been as impossible as the peaceful creation of that
customs-union which inseparably connected non-Austrian Germany
with the Prussian state, and which laid the foundations of the new
German Empire.
; ^ This king was not able, like the first Frederick William and his
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son, to stamp his own nature upon the state, but must derive his
creative ideas from other and more brilliant intelligences. Yet
he remained the master. During his reign, for good or for evil,
the monarchical character of the Prussian state was ever main-
tained. In need and in disgrace, under discouragements by which
a freer and bolder spirit might well have been plunged in despair,
he pursued the course of duty without ever turning aside. Thus
his name is inseparably associated at once with the gloomiest
and the purest memories of our new history. His faithfulness
to duty and his natural feeling for the honour of the throne
gave him the energy to attain by gradual growth to a competent
understanding of his position. By degrees he learned to value
those domains of the national life which to his sober and
domesticated nature had at first seemed alien. He learned to
make himself at home in foreign policy ; and this prosaic man,
who in his youth had found pleasure in the deplorable insipidity
of the Conies of La Fontaine, became ultimately the Maecenas of
his house, a patron of the arts and sciences to a wider extent than
had been any other of the Hohenzollerns. One who wished to see
him in his human lovableness must seek him out in the lonely castle
at Paretz. There under the ancient trees, beside the blue waters of
the Havel, the young prince passed his happiest days by the side
of his beloved consort Louise, in the lively circle of the pretty little
flaxen-heads who grew up around him ; there he unbent, and by
his humorous sallies he even provoked to disrespectful laughter
that strict guardian of etiquette, the Countess Voss. It was a bless-
ing for his somewhat heavy nature, inclined to melancholy, that
he could cheer himself in the society of his serene-minded and high-
spirited wife and breathe there the whole breath of life ; and yet
for him, as for so many Teutons of deep feeling, the happiness of
marriage exercised for a time a narrowing rather than an expanding
influence. As a young husband he found full satisfaction in the
innocent joys of his home, and gave to the state no more than an
honourable diligence, not the free sacrifice of his entire intelligence
which was demanded by the princely office ; entangled in the
unconscious egoism of content, it was unwillingly that he left the
pure atmosphere of his home, and he was satisfied to keep far from
his personal environment the corruption which was eating up the
state and society, instead of making it his kingly duty to fight it
without pity.
By his candid tutor Sack, the crown prince was early introduced
to the old Hohenzollern idea of Protestant union, and was habi-
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
tuated to a profound and yet free conception of the Christian
faith. From Engel, he learnt the philanthropic ideas of the age of
enlightenment ; from Suarez the political doctrines of the masters
of common law ; in the campaigns on the Rhine and in Poland,
as well as in military manoeuvres in times of peace, he showed him-
self to be a valiant and well-informed officer. But, as he often
himself complained, he was kept far from all affairs of state. When
he entered upon the twenty-seven years of his reign, he found
himself in an unknown world. Filled with a profound veneration
for the works of his great-uncle, he was surrounded by elderly and
opinionated masters who encountered the timid young man with
the obscurity of the Frederician omniscience. Nothing was more
remote from his mind than a fantastical over-estimation of the
royal dignity. As the term " state " had gradually found its way
into the customary terminology of the people from the laws of
Frederick II, it had long been taken as a matter of course that every
King of Prussia should conceive his high office as a grave political
duty. The young king had a cordial feeling for the common man ;
his inclinations were simply bourgeois like those of his great-grand-
father, he had no preference for the nobility. It was his desire
to complete that liberation of the agricultural workers which his
ancestors for hundreds of years past had been effecting step by step.
In the same sense as the first Frederick William, he was able to say,
" I think as a Republican." Not that he was bewitched by the
ideas of the French Revolution ; to his peace-loving nature and
to his sense of justice alike, the bloody spectacle of the forcible
popular uprising was repulsive. But his natural fair-mindedness, the
traditions of his house, and the political ideas he had imbibed in
the school of Suarez, impelled him in the direction of social reform.
By philanthropic sentiment he was a free-trader ; an opponent
of those laws which tended to make the necessaries of life dearer
for the common people, or which rendered it more difficult to get
a fair value for the energies of labour. His sound understanding
soon discovered almost all the defects from which the benumbed
state was suffering. When the disturbances broke over Prussia,
the king spoke with a clearness, which to his environment seemed
actually uncanny, about the causes of the crash. Concerning
the ways and means of improvement, he often reflected with impres-
sive understanding ; and it was with perfect truth that in respect
of most of the proposals for reform put forward by Stein and
Scharnhorst he was later accustomed to remark, " I have had
this idea for a long time." There was only one essential idea, which
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History of Germany
he failed to grasp the impossiblity of effecting important changes' in
the Frederician state by isolated reforms. Lacking this essential
idea, all else was useless.
That rigid system of monarchical division of labour which the
first Frederick William and his son had brought into being, was
the creation of a deliberately conscious will, and was the outcome of
the one-sided greatness characteristic of Old Prussia. The whole
structure was cast in a single mould, and as if held together by iron
clamps ; one pillar supported the others ; the divisions of the
classes and the arrangement of the administration were insepar-
ably connected ; if one stone were torn away, the whole building
would collapse. If it was desired to abolish the privileges of the
nobles in the army, the nobleman must be allowed to carry on
bourgeois occupations and to buy land of the peasants. If the
peasants were to be freed from the obligation to forced labour,
the separation between town and country, the guild-system,
and the excise, could no longer be maintained. The monarchy
needed reform through and through as soon as it was recognised that
the ancient forms of society were outworn. But no one in Prussia
had yet attained to this degree of insight, not even Baron von
Stein.
The first decade of the reign of Frederick William III, the most
decried and the least-known epoch of Prussian history, was a period
of well-meaning but utterly unfruitful attempts at reform. A
few years earlier this state had still ranked, with good reason, as
the best-ruled on the Continent ; in the opinion of the whole of
North Germany it had faithfully guarded its vital energies in the
struggle against the Revolution. Thus it happened that even the
critical candour of the North German hardly noted how everything
was going wrong in the community. The new century was hasten-
ing forward on the wings of the wind ; now in a few brief years
important historical changes were to be effected which before this
had taken decades to mature ; in such days as these who did not
go forward went backward. But of this great transformation of
the times there was no intimation whatever in the peaceful people
that stayed in philosophic calm within its own boundaries, merely
observing with languid interest that two powerful nations were
struggling for the conquest of the world.
German good-nature is always inclined to expect the highest
from a new ruler, but seldom have there been such exaggerated
hopes as those which hailed the advent of this unassuming prince.
His strict morality sufficed to win the hearts of the middle classes,
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
and these intermediate strata of society became more and more
the exponents of our public opinion. In practice the enlightened
epoch rejoiced in an unrestrained good-fellowship, filled with the
warm pleasures of the senses, and yet in theory it retained a lively
enthusiasm for abstract " virtue" ; this term had not yet acquired
the connotation of philistine vacuousness which it bears to-day.
Since the days of the Great Elector, the Prussian people had not
again witnessed connubial happiness on the throne. What a
delight it was to these German family men when the " throne became
a shrine and the court a family," as Novalis sang with worthy
enthusiasm. The pitiless severity of the two powerful kings of the
eighteenth century had held the masses remote from the throne,
imposing upon them sentiments of timid respect ; but now, through
the cheerful cordiality of Queen Louise, the relationship between
the Hohenzollerns and their loyal people acquired that homely
characteristic of confidence which was elsewhere displayed only in
the quiet life of the petty states.
The Prussians felt proud as Royalists, as opponents of the Revo-
lution. Not alone the Hotspur among the youth of the Mark,
young Marwitz, but also other members of the nobility and of
the officers' corps, encountered the regicide Sieyes, the envoy of
the Republic, with angry glances when he made his appearance
with unpowdered hair and wearing a tricolor sash, at the gorgeous
old-fashioned ceremony of the oath of allegiance. The enlightened
society of Berlin, however, held a position of conscious opposition
to Austria and to the Holy Empire. The French were given to
understand that the king was a democrat after his own fashion,
that he would effect with due measure and in an orderly manner
what they had done so stormily, and it was soon reported that a
Jacobin had complained, " this king is stealing our thunder."
When the young king now made a clean sweep of the dubious
members of his father's environment, and when in an eloquent
address to his cabinet he gave utterance to an abundance of excel-
lent proposals and humane views, Marquis Herz exclaimed with
delight : " Pure reason has come down from Heaven and is estab-
lished upon our throne." An authors' club of Berlin published
" Annals of the Prussian Monarchy," which were to describe the
performances of the royal reformer step by step. This mood of
hope endured for a considerable period. When in the year 1800
Hufeland was summoned to Berlin, he wrote with satisfaction :
" I am going to a liberal state, one which is blossoming under a
new government." Schiller, too, and Johannes Miiller, spoke
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History of Germany
with cordial approbation of the essential freedom of Prussian life
and expressed their satisfaction at the speed with which Berlii
was becoming a centre of German art and culture.
But the king was soon to learn how limited was in truth his abso
lute authority, limited by the inertia of the adminstration, by th<
passive resistance of public opinion, by feudal prejudices, and b}
the military and bureaucratic spirit of caste. In the enlargec
monarchy, even a Frederick had hardly found it possible to retail
in a single hand the immediate conduct of all the affairs of state
Personal government had become an impossibility, but its form:
persisted in an altered sense. Under Frederick, the cabinet coun
cillors had been mere secretaries, whose duty it was to transmit
to the executive authorities the commands of the king ; undei
his two successors they acquired a dangerous power. Since the
prince could not himself supervise the enormous mass of reports
the secretaries became advisers. The cabinet councillors were
chosen for the most part from the ranks of the bourgeois judges
they alone held regular intercourse with the monarch and soon
came to regard themselves as tribunes of the people, as representa-
tives of the peaceful bourgeoisie against the nobility and the army,
Between the crown and its ministers there was a throng of incal-
culable subaltern influences at work. Among these trusted coun-
cillors, there was not a single one whom the young prince could
raise out of the slothful atmosphere or tepid resolves into the
fresh air of vigorous determination. The most notable among
them, Mencken, was of value to the royal pair through the benevo-
lence of his enlightened moral and philosophical views. He did
all he could to institute numerous reforms in matters of detail,
but he lacked the comprehensive insight of the statesman. Sub-
sequently Beyme had control of the most important internal affairs,
and Lombard of foreign affairs ; the former was an able lawyer and
a man of humane views, but was great in little things only, whilst
Lombard was an empty-headed and frivolous debauchee. The
personality of the adjutants-general was also in harmony with the
spirit of trivial mediocrity which dominated the whole circle.
Colonel Zastrow was a conceited opponent of all reform ; Colonel
Kockritz was a man of narrow philistine spirit, pleasing to his
young master by his phlegmatic good nature, happy when he could
recreate himself after the labours of the day over a pipe and a
quiet game of cards, but extremely testy at a young gentleman
among his subordinates who allowed himself " to make verses,"
as did poor Heinrich von Kleist. Although the king's views
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extended far beyond those of these petty-minded men, he neverthe-
less gradually allowed himself to be lowered to the level of their
smallness and pusillanimity.
Just as in former days the reconstruction of the state had pro-
ceeded from the army, so now it was in military affairs that it first
became apparent that the new epoch had need of new forms. The
most important acquisition of the old monarchy was lost when the
left bank of the Rhine was ceded to France, and when, not long
after, the new middle states of the south-west founded their
own little armies. Thus at the very outset of his reign the
king was forced to institute a more extensive levying of the native
Prussians who were liable to military service, " owing to a decline
of the enlistment in other parts of the empire." This first step
had to be followed by others. Henceforward the army depended
upon Prussian strength alone. If it were to be furnished with that
accession of numbers which was so urgently required, at least a
portion of the privileged classes must be summoned to bear arms.
This was impossible so long as the officers' corps remained a closed
caste placed at an inaccessible height above the rank and file, and
so long as the cruel old discipline still persisted, that discipline
which had become utterly repugnant to that philanthropic tempera-
ment which the age cultivated to the extreme of softness. As
soon as the old stock of recruited foreigners died out, a radical
reconstruction of the army became unavoidable, a complete
change of the old caste relationships and, above all, a change in
the position of the nobility in the state and in society.
Numerous proposals for reform were made. A few enlightened
spirits among the younger officials, such as Hippel and Vincke,
went so far as to demand that the old Prussian idea of universal
military service should be put into complete execution. Knesebeck,
Riichel, and other officers recommended the formation of a terri-
torial militia. But the ignorant pride of the old generals was hostile
to every proposed change. They still believed that the Frede-
rician army was unsurpassable. Even Frederick Gentz, who, to the
scandal of the poor-spirited time, ventured to send an open letter
of admonition to the new monarch, said of the army, " as far as this
is concerned, no change is needed " ; and Blucher, who was afraid
of no one, continued as late as the spring of 1806 to speak of " our
invincible army." Since to every proposal for reform the proud
old Field-Marshal Mollendorff made answer with a snarl, " This is
altogether above my head," the king determined, to his bitter sub-
sequent regret, not to show himself any wiser than these old men of
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established reputation. On the other hand, in the enlightened
world there prevailed a doctrinaire belief in the blessings of peace,
which formed a ludicrous contrast to the bloody practice of the
states of the new century, but which harmonised well with the
German good-nature. In unctuous pamphlets the question was
asked, " Are standing armies necessary in time of peace ? " The
decline of rigid absolutism is manifested by the fact that such
expressions of public opinion now began to exercise an influence
with which the government had to reckon. At the court, Mencken
ardently advocated the old view of the officialdom, that the military
expenditure was too heavy ; and the king himself wished to do
no more than was absolutely indispensable, for he desired to reduce
the burden of debt he had inherited from his father. Last of all,
the serious question had to be faced of how trustworthy regiments
could possibly be formed out of the disaffected Poles.
In view of these conflicting considerations, despite innumer-
able proposals and much consideration, no important reform was
effected. A trifling increase was made in the army, raising its
total strength to 250,000 ; but this involved a notable increase
in the army-expenses until they attained the figure of 16,000,000
or 17,000,000 thalers, for the king at length undertook to provide
for the troops on a more liberal scale, although still quite inade-
quately. For the reinforcement of this insufficient army, there
was to be a territorial reserve of 50,000 men, constituted chiefly
out of the privileged classes ; this reserve was actually in process
of formation when the confusions of the war of 1805 brought to a
premature conclusion this policy of half reforms. No support
was given to a brilliant plan of Scharnhorst, who, in the spring of
1806, proposed to form a great militia of 3,000,000 men. Even
the reduction of the cumbersome equipment and other technical
improvements which seemed necessary to the clear soldier's insight
of the king, had to encounter the obstinate resistance of the pom-
pous old gentlemen with the long waistcoat-flaps. The affable
prince was greatly disturbed by the arrogance of his officers, and
warned them sharply that they should not dare to be rude to the
meanest of the citizens, " for it is the citizens, not I myself, who
maintain the army." Yet he failed to understand that such
admonitions could bear no fruit so long as the ancient forms of the
army-constitution persisted, and so long as the officers' corps con-
tinued to be recognised as the first class in the state.
How strange, however, had been the metamorphosis effected
in that army of the Silesian wars, then so harmonious despite its
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severity and roughness. A new and over-talented generation was
growing up ; all the heroes of the future War of Liberation had
for some time been in the army, and most of them were already
staff officers. In many of the circles of the officers' corps there
prevailed a fresh and scientific sentiment, a lively understanding
of the present age. In the new military academy, Colonel Scharn-
horst gave his lectures Scharnhorst, son of a peasant of Lower
Saxony, who had found no field for his energies in noble-ridden
Hanover, and who had finally answered the king's summons to
Berlin. He was already teaching that which to the wisdom of
men of the old cautious military school seemed rank heresy, that
one " should never remain on the defensive in concentration, but
should always attack in concentration." He illustrated his doc-
trines by the wars of Frederick, and by those of young Bonaparte,
whom the Frederician veterans would hardly admit to be even a
bourgeois general. Forgotten in his little Silesian garrison there
lived Gneisenau, the born commander, poring over his maps,
following with attentive gaze every step taken by the Corsican from
the days of the first Italian campaign ; endeavouring to grasp all
the peculiarities of this new elemental force, as if foreseeing that
he himself was some day to encounter the unconquerable man.
The new spiritual life of the nation began at length to exercise its
influence even upon this military circle which had hitherto been
completely unaffected. All the literary tendencies had certain
representatives among the young officers, not excepting even the
peace-loving cosmopolitanism of the Kantian philosophy ; Lieu-
tenant Heinrich Kleist complained bitterly that he had to waste
his time so immorally in the Rhenish campaigns.
The dominant tone, however, remained extremely unspiritual.
Most of the old officers assiduously manifested their hatred for
culture and did not conceal their contempt for the schoolmaster
Scharnhorst. Since in each company only four or five new recruits
were introduced annually, the difficult and grateful task of the mili-
tary education of the people, which forms the chief work of the in-
fantry officers of the modern popular army, did not exist at all for
the officers of that day, and to high-spirited natures the perpetual
repetition of the same parades, with the same veteran professional
soldiers, became quite unbearable. The timid citizens of Berlin
were terrified, and the king intervened with severe punishments,
when the young officers of the notorious Regiment of Gensdarmes
made the streets hideous with noisy masquerades, and when the
overgrown Charles Nostitz, dressed up as Katharina von Bora,
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brandished his riding whip behind Doctor Luther. The hot young
blood, unable to accommodate itself to the tedium of perpetual
pipeclay and perpetual drill, broke out in such rough sports as these.
The whole tragedy of this army of peace was incorporated in the
tragic fate of Prince Louis Ferdinand ; it was dreadful to see how
the free and bold young hero, born for all that was glorious, dissi-
pated his energies in wild enjoyment and mad adventures because
he could not bear an empty existence. More and more the true
purpose of the military system was forgotten. The orders " pour
Ic merite," previously given only on the field of battle, now became
rewards for the heroic deeds performed in peaceful manoeuvres.
A pettifogging spirit supervised the length of the pigtails, the
shape of the trusses of hay, the clash of the presented arms ;
but, for the sake of economy, the artillery had no teams to
draw it. To the Frederician army nothing seemed of any
importance but a majestic slowness ; it happened on one occasion
that an artillery regiment took four days to march from Berlin to
Breslau. The common soldier, who did not wish to lose his custom-
ary skill in his manual occupation, was as peace-loving in his
thoughts as were the majority of the grey-headed captains, for whom
the furloughs of the years of peace brought many savings for their
private purse. It seemed as if the sword of Prussia was never
more to be drawn from the scabbard. The foreboding of Frederick,
in which he had warned " the favourites of Mars " that they should
never allow their manhood to be corrupted by sloth, arrogance,
and softness, was now literally fulfilled.
Just as little was there effected any comprehensive reform of
the administration. The king did not venture to follow the
example of his great-uncle, who had decided everything for himself.
His fair-mindedness shrank from the acceptance of the hard Frede-
rician principle which was inseparable from such omnipotence, that
the monarch must never admit error. Wherever possible, therefore,
he referred all petitions to the appropriate permanent authorities.
In this way there was added much work to the already oppressive
labours of the officials. Since the new provinces in Poland and
Franconia had at length been placed under the control of the General
Directory, the central authority, which formerly and in simpler
circumstances had been so thoroughly efficient, proved altogether
incompetent ; each department went its own way, and all unity of
control was lacking. The members of the official bureaucracy re-
mained far superior to those of the neighbouring German states ; they
were active, full of patriotic pride, and highly cultured, although here
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and there isolated presidents endeavoured to rival the generals in
their hatred of culture. But the antiquated organisation of the
authorities which were interpolated between the provincial system
and the real system, resulted in this, that no one was in reality
minister and able to supervise the course of the administration.
The simplest matter could not be carried out without distressing
disputes about competence, the delimitation of authority, and the
increase of the number of ministerial appointments served only
to increase the evil. In the old official families which had now been
attached to the service of the state for many decades, there was
indeed handed down from father to son a lively sentiment of the
honour of then* order, but there was also transmitted a considerable
measure of official arrogance ; newcomers like Baron von Stein,
who found their way into this bureaucratic world from the fresh
and natural activities of the country house, noted with regret that
the writing of official orders threatened to become an end in itself.
A formalised documentary activity gained the upper hand and
could not be overcome by the mild admonitions of the royal decrees,
because there was lacking at the head of affairs that far-sighted
statesmanship which might have imposed new positive duties upon
the officialdom. An additional difficulty was to be found in the
distressing inertia of the Polish provinces, which weighed as heavy
as lead upon the administration. It was an intolerable misfortune
that the ruling classes received hardly any young accession of
strength from the wide Slav dominions. The mocking saying of
its opponents that the Prussian state was a purely fortuitous
structure, seemed now to be justified by the facts.
Soon after ascending the throne, the king expressed, in
opposition to Struensee, the Minister of Finance, his disapproval
of the untenable prohibitive system which was perpetually violated.
It was not till seven years later that he was able to make the first
breach in this old order of affairs, and (through the intermediation
of Struensee's successor, Stein) almost entirely repealed the internal
duties. The introduction of uniform frontier tariffs was still every-
where regarded as a foolhardy venture. In his Budget Reports
of 1781, Necker said that there was little hope that it would be
possible to abolish the constitution barbare of the provincial tolls.
The fiscal unity of France was first established by the Revolution.
When now in Prussia it was ventured to abolish the internal customs
dues, it was soon realised that this reform was no more than a half
measure. For there still remained the excise with its sixty-seven
different tariffs, and a cabinet decree of the king vainly attempted
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to bring clearness into this confusion. There still existed the
industrial compulsion which distinguished the towns from the
open country ; only in the County Mark had Stein already ventured
to abolish this limited distinction. Together with the provincial
customs dues there was abolished also the freedom from tolls of
the privileged classes, and this first moderate invasion of the privi-
leges of the nobility in matters of taxation immediately raised the
question whether the far more oppressive inequality of direct taxa-
tion would still be suffered to continue. In the Electoral Mark,
in the year 1806, the towns paid nearly 2,500,000, the peasants
644,000, and the whole of the landed proprietors only 21,000 thalers,
in taxes to the state. But the time had not yet come for a radical
transformation of the national economy. There was a terrible
conflict of economic views. Most of the more intelligent among
the younger officials, like Vincke, were enthusiasts for the " divine
Adam Smith," but the landed proprietors inclined to the ideas of
the physiocrats.
The greatest hindrance to reform lay, however, in the opposi-
tion of the diets. The strong passive resistance of the old orders
had always turned the edge of the agrarian laws of the eighteenth
century ; now, under a government that was far too considerate,
this resistance displayed an altogether unexpected strength. One
of the first steps taken by the king was to give to certain free
peasants, known as the Kollmers, the right to representation among
the estates of East Prussia. Thus rejuvenated, the Diet of Konigs-
berg became the only tolerably healthy body among the decayed
feudal corporations of the monarchy ; with some reason it described
itself as the " representative of the nation." But when the king
further proposed to abolish patrimonial jurisdiction, even the Diet
of East Prussia offered repeated and open opposition. Another
cherished plan of the peasant-loving prince, the abolition of forced
labour for the peasantry and the transformation of all peasant
land held on terms of feudal subservience into free property, also
had to encounter the resistance of the nobles. This idea was by
no means the outcome of the French Revolution, but was a neces-
sary development of the earlier legislation of the Hohenzollerns,
who for two hundred years had been working for the liberation of
the country folk ; simultaneously, and altogether independently of
one another, such officials as Stein and Hippel, and such writers
as Leopold Krug, recommended the abolition of hereditary servi-
tude. On the crown-lands of West Prussia and East Prussia,
the valiant president Auerswald succeeded in abolishing statute
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labour, and wherever any one of the nobles was willing of his own
initiative to undertake the same reform, he received all possible
encouragement from the king ; but it was thought too venturesome
to attempt a comprehensive law for the entire monarchy. The
opposition was offered not by the landed proprietors alone, but
also by the rude peasants, who regarded with a vigorous mistrust
every attempt to alter the established order ; even the trees planted
along the new high roads were not safe from the hands of these
barbarians.
The same unteachable hostility was displayed also when the
king, impelled solely by the goodness of his own heart, undertook
the improvement of the elementary schools and made a serious
attempt to enforce the universal duty of school attendance. The
government still stood high above the people. Whilst the detest-
able lampoons of the opposition were now, as formerly, character-
ised by a deplorable poverty of ideas, in official circles all the great
social reforms of the subsequent century already received a
thoroughly intelligent advocacy ; J. G. Hoffmann even recom-
mended the complete abolition of the guild system. But energy
was lacking to constrain the hostile people to the acceptance of
these good ideas. In deference to " public opinion," the tobacco
monopoly was repealed, and yet this, properly administered, would
have been a very lucrative source of national income and one inter-
fering very little with the natural course of trade. When Struensee,
in the year 1798, proposed the issue of a moderate amount of
paper money, a trifling expression of dissatisfaction on the part of
the commercial classes of Berlin induced all the ministers to declare
with one voice that they felt it was impossible to carry out so odious
a measure. The weakness of the throne was displayed especially
in the moral condition of the capital. Whilst at the court an
ancient and inexpensive simplicity of manners was strictly observed,
the fashionable world of Berlin lived in complete disregard of this
admirable example of domestic virtue. The population of the
town now numbered 182,000 ; the upper classes already showed
all the freedom of metropolitan life, whilst among the middle classes
a dull surburbanism still prevailed. Sociability became a fine art
such as it had never before been in Germany. Wit and criticism
developed without restraint. Profligacy and intellectual arrogance
became so conspicuous that even Goethe spoke with some aversion
of this dangerous society. In such an atmosphere there grew up
natures of illimitable receptivity and sensitiveness, such as
Schleiermacher ; virtuosi of pleasure and of thought, such as
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William Humboldt and Frederick Gentz ; but also the empty-
headed imitators and idea-brokers the circle of Varnhagens, and
such virtuosi of crime as the murderess Ursinus.
During this decade of half beginnings and well-meaning
attempts there was on the whole a great deal of good effected.
In agrarian economy there was real progress ; in the twenty years
following the death of Frederick, the price of grain doubled, whilst
the price of land rose still faster, almost giddily. Thaer was the
first to draw the attention of the North Germans to the example
of English agriculture, and after the skilled advocate of free labour
had opened his educational institute in Moglin, among the younger
agriculturists there was a great increase in technical insight and
knowledge of agriculture. Without the influence of Thaer it would
hardly have been possible to carry into effect the Stein-Hardenberg
laws. Now for the first time the roads and waterways, which had
been terribly neglected throughout the empire, received serious
attention. Through the work of Stein, the Ruhr was opened to
navigation. The king himself devoted his earnest attention to
the valley of the Vistula, where, under the Polish regime, the mighty
dikes of the Teutonic Knights had completely fallen into decay.
The mining industry, which had already received a considerable
impetus under Heinitz, Stein's teacher, now underwent a further
advance when Count Reden instituted the great mining works in
Upper Silesia. Krug and Hoffmann were actively engaged in the
newly founded Statistical Bureau, while Niebuhr was summoned
from Denmark to take charge of the Bank.
In the general opinion there was nothing for which the new
Government was so highly esteemed as for the dismissal of the
detested Wollner and for the repeal of his severe Edict of Religions.
The young prince's contention that reason and philosophy are the
inseparable accompaniments of religion, went straight to the
heart of the enlightened world, for everyone could interpret the
phrase in accordance with his own pleasure. But when the king
recommended the ecclesiastical authorities to unite for a common
Protestant liturgy a proposal he owed to his tutor, Sack it
appeared once more that the crown was considerably in advance
of the people. He had to defer this plan of union till better days,
for in delicate questions of ecclesiastical policy he wished to work
even more cautiously than in matters of ordinary statecraft. The
same excess of caution was responsible for his temporary failure to
carry into effect that reform of the educational system which had
been discussed in so many memorials and treatises ; no satisfactory
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choice had been effected from among all the diverse methods of
education which the age of Pestalozzi was unweariedly producing.
A zeal hitherto unknown in Prussia was displayed for learning, and
the barrier was at length removed which had so long cut off this
state from German science. Alexander Humboldt, Johannes
Muller, Hufeland, and a long series of distinguished professors,
were summoned to Berlin ; even Fichte, who had been driven
out of Jena by the bigotry of the Lutherans of Electoral Saxony,
found an asylum on the Spree. The intellectual life of the capital
began to advance with giant strides. As early as the winter of
1786, twenty-one courses of public lectures were announced in the
town, and since that date they had become even more numerous
and important. In Berlin, A. W. Schlegel gave lectures on literary
history embodying the programme of the Romantic School. The
collections of the Royal House, which the young king was the first
to open to the public, and above all the theatre, which, under the
direction of Iffland, was still a great national institute of culture,
favoured a lively interchange of ideas, and thus, quite spon-
taneously, the question came to the fore whether this wealth of intel-
lectual life should not be centred in a university. No other German
university arose by so natural a development as that of Berlin ;
it was really in existence before it was formally constituted. But
for the moment not even this plan got beyond the stage of cabinet
discussion. The whole age seemed bewitched, and no important
matter could be brought to a conclusion.
The philistine indifference of the state to the fine arts was
at length overcome. Public picture-galleries were now opened,
and Berlin already possessed an independent school of aspiring
artists. Contrasted with the work of Langhans, a man of classical
spirit, who designed the Brandenburg Gate, was the robust realism
of Schadow. When the queen went out driving, there stood, hat
in hand, at the door of her carriage, the young lackey, Christian
Rauch, who was subsequently to outdo all others when his benevo-
lent mistress had smoothed his path to great artistic creation. But
in these respects also there was the same distressing phenomenon
of costly energies that were not utilised and of extensive beginnings
that were never brought to a conclusion. After a number of
plans had been taken up and discarded, only one great public
building was completed, the new Mint, adorned by Schadow with
admirable reliefs, and yet the building itself was repulsively bald,
a true image of this barren time.
Similarly in all the spheres of political life, the old was not yet
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History of Germany
swept away and the new was not yet properly developed. The
state had lost in character what it had gained in humane mildness.
It resembled a Gothic building still mighty in decay, upon which
shaky hands had here and there erected basely-designed turrets.
Yet the loyal people was happy in these incredible conditions. It
was unquestionable that the childlike manifestations of joy which
greeted the king and the queen whenever they made a progress
through the country, and which were loudest among the warm-
blooded Franconians, came just as sincerely from the heart as did
later the tragical letters of farewell from the lost provinces.
The king's ideas in matters of reform went no further than
social improvements. Not even Hardenberg had any thought
of more than the institution of civic equality in accordance with
the French example. There was but one man in Prussia who con-
ceived generous plans of political reform. As president of the
chamber in Westphalia, Baron von Stein had become acquainted
with the old municipal freedom of the County Mark, and from his
experience there, and from his study of English history, he had
formed the opinion that a sound political order exists only where
the people itself learns to put its hand to the work of government.
When the feudal constitution was abolished in the newly acquired
Minister territories, he wrote to the king : l " These diets, which
hitherto have been abused by the officials as the enemies of all
reform, might, if rightly handled, become the pillars of social order.
They check those arbitrary breaches of the constitution and of the
laws, of which in the pressure of affairs the territorial councils are
not infrequently guilty ; and by property and by dependence on
the fatherland they are chained to those interests of the country
which the foreign public officials often fail to recognise, towards
which they are apt to be indifferent, and which they sometimes
regard with hatred and contempt. Rulers have nothing to
fear from the propertied classes ; but they have much to fear from
the innovating tendencies of the younger officials, from the luke-
warmness and the mercenary spirit of the older ones, and from the
flabbiness and the egoism making light of all morality which
invade all classes alike." Such ideas were at present altogether
beyond the king's understanding. He did not, indeed, share the
detestation of the Revolution which was felt by the bigoted Royalists
of his court, for he fully recognised the justice of the liberation
of the French peasantry ; but owing to the bloody deeds of the
1 Report to the King, Mtinster, October 30, 1804.
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
French revolutionists he was suspicious of anything that savoured
of constitutional monarchy. In view of the general contentment
of his people, how could it occur to him that the absolutism which
had brought his state into existence, now belonged to the past ?
Not even Stein himself knew how rotten had become the old order,
and how urgently necessary was a reconstruction. In all classes
there prevailed the same incredible illusion. Historical criticism
can offer no suggestion how the disgraces of 1806 might have been
spared to the old monarchy. Only the incisive demonstration of
war could display to this blinded generation the inward decay of
those Frederician forms which paralysed all activity by the magic
of ancient renown. Only a defeat could put an end to the
unnatural episode of the German rule in Warsaw, could restore
the state to itself, and could revive its true German nature.
Originally Frederick William was as little prepared for his
royal duties as for the conduct of foreign policy ; of a slow and
cautious temperament, he needed long training in a severe school
before his soft disposition became accustomed to the hardness of
the great questions of political power. By inclination and by his
sense of duty he was a man of peace. He would have regarded it
as criminal folly, in the absence of urgent necessity, to introduce
to the hazard of war this industrious North Germany, whose quiet
happiness was esteemed by all, even by Frederick Gentz ; he was
loath to expose the heavily-burdened state to new confusions ;
he could be forced to draw the sword only by direct attack. The
general peace-loving character of the North Germans found no more
ardent representative than at the Prussian court ; here pacifism
had even become a constitutional doctrine. " A king," said
Colonel Kockritz to his royal friend, " has no right to stake the
existence of his state in a war ; such a right is reserved for a Re-
public." But there was no doubt in the sound sense of the king
about the dangerous intentions of France. His father had ever
remained faithful to the old hostility to the Republic. On his
death-bed he had rejected the offer of an alliance with France,
and he would not allow himself to be led astray when Caillard held
out to him the prospect of acquiring the German imperial crown.
Count Haugwitz, also, was now full of mistrust of the rulers of
Paris. Consequently the relations between the two powers
remained extremely cool, and the young king sometimes declared
that he wished to save up the energies of his state for the time
when perhaps a decisive struggle with this robber neighbour might
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become necessary. It is probable that he himself did not know
whether he meant this seriously, or whether he was merely seeking
a cloak for his own pacifism. As a good German, he desired the
contentment of the whole empire and the restoration of the
ancient frontiers; he approved the position of the French neither
in Mainz, which had been conquered by his own troops, nor yet in
his own hereditary dominions on the Lower Rhine.
The prince under whose rule the greatest and most extensive
changes of territorial area occurred that were ever effected in
Prussian history, was one with a constitutional dislike to any
trafficking in lands and people ; even trifling rectifications of fron-
tier were repugnant to his conscience. He had at length agreed
to the cession of Cleves and Guelderland only because these terri-
tories, temporarily occupied by the French, had not yet paid him
homage. Throughout Germany the relationship between a prince
and his subjects was still regarded as a matter of personal duty ;
as soon as a ruler died the gates of the towns were immediately
closed and the troops were at once sworn in to their new master.
The sober sense of the son was not illusioned by the romantic honour
which the father had paid to the ancient and honourable forms of
the imperial constitution ; he recognised the irrevocable decay of
the empire, and as a faithful Protestant he had but little sympathy
with the troubles of the spiritual states. But since he had not as
yet paid any serious attention to the possibility of imperial reform,
the simple re-establishment of the status quo in Germany would
have been most agreeable to his sense of justice and to his love of
peace. If this should prove impossible, he desired at least to pre-
serve a balance between Austria and Prussia, to compensate every
enlargement of Austrian power by a corresponding increase of his
own state. Without any personal rancour against the Hofburg,
he revived the Bavarian policy of his great-uncle, working on behalf
of the rights of the Wittelsbachs against the imperial plans of con-
quest. It is true that the leading thought of his German policy
remained the preservation of peace in the north. In his view
the power of the monarchy, at once against France and against
Austria, must be maintained by diplomatic means alone.
It was with this sentiment of a just paterfamilias that the
inexperienced young prince went to encounter the elemental ener-
gies which during recent months had transformed the aspect of the
world. The leaders of the Reign of Terror had once boasted that
the Revolution was to plough deep furrows ; and this prophecy
had been horribly fulfilled. In the nine years since the storming
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of the Bastille, 22,331 new laws had been passed in unhappy
France ; every bridge between the past and the present had
been destroyed ; of all the institutions of the Bourbon state the
only one that still remained was the Academy of Paris. A third
of the soil of France had been forcibly torn from its old possessors.
Depreciated paper money had been issued to the amount of
47,000,000 francs. All the rights of property were in a state
of hopeless confusion. For years the country had been despoiled
by the practical communism of the Paris mob. Well-being and
security before the law had disappeared, and therewith had dis-
appeared also all the nobility of its culture. The Goddess of Reason
had been enthroned upon the altars of the denied churches ; the
most tasteful people of Europe paid honour to the red cap of the
convicted prisoner as the emblem of its new freedom, and renamed
the days of the calendar after the pig, the donkey, and the potato.
The hideous work of the guillotine had at length come to an end,
but the cruel penal laws against priests and emigres were still
enforced with pitiless rancour. The goods and the civic existence
of thousands were still at the mercy of the incalculable caprices of
the dominant party. Nine years of incredible misery had extin-
guished the last sparks of political idealism, and had deprived of
all meaning the struggles of public life ; the disputes between parties
were, as they have ever since remained in France, nothing more than
a contest for the possession of power.
The French nation demanded peace, legal security for the new
distribution of property, and the restoration of the ancient Church.
If matters were left to themselves, the recall of the royal house
seemed inevitable, not because the wearied people still retained
any sentiment of loyalty to the dynasty, but because it was only
the monarchical order which seemed to promise an epoch of peaceful
well-being. In the general decay, the army alone preserved some
degree of virile discipline ; in the general exhaustion, it alone
retained moral aims. Numerous successes, deserved and unde-
served, had awakened warlike ambition and pride in the uncon-
quered tricolor, and this especially among the young generals. It
was through this army, the one orderly and enthusiastic power in
the new France, that the radical parties of the Convention retained
their dominion against the will of the nation. On the I3th of Vendemi-
aire, 1795, General Bonaparte suppressed the Royalist rising and
forcibly secured the entry of two-thirds of the members of the Con-
vention into the popular assembly of the new directorial constitu-
tion. But this involved a continuance of the war, for it was only
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History of Germany
in war-time that the victorious minority could hope to retain a
secure possession of power.
With the Italian campaign of the year 1796 began the second
epoch of the period of the Revolution, and the epoch most impor-
ant to the history of Europe. Now for the first time the revolu-
tionary propaganda became really effective. A new order of
affairs made an end of the old territorial distribution, abolished
the traditional forms of state and society in Central Europe. It
was through the victories of Bonaparte that the arms of France
first obtained an incontestable superiority. When the young hero,
passing round the Alps, invaded Northern Italy from the south,
he at once showed himself to be master of a new and bolder method
of warfare, of a method which was able to make war pay for war,
to nourish it upon the resources of the conquered land ; he was not
afraid to accept the risk of annihilation, but offered battle to the
enemy after a sudden change of front. No longer, as in the day
of the old linear tactics, were battles a simple struggle between two
compact lines, either army endeavouring to break through the line
of the other. Bonaparte gave to the course of war a dramatic
movement ; he forced a decisive issue by the infliction of over-
whelming blows with his carefully saved reserves as soon as the
forces of his first lines of attack had been used up ; and no one
ever knew as well as he how to make the best possible use of the
favour of fortune. Not to him, as to the commanders of the costly
old mercenary armies, did it seem to be the first duty of the general
to spare his own troops for all losses could be readily made good
by conscription. His primary aim was to destroy the forces of the
enemy. Marching rapidly through the country, he endeavoured
to strike a vital blow at the heart of his opponent, to rob him of
his capital city. With an enthusiastic belief in himself and in the
power of his sword, his spirit glowing with the obscure and majestic
poetry of war, he educated his troops to believe with a blind
confidence in his destiny, taught them that " honour, glory and
wealth " are the highest arms of war, and filled them through and
through with a restless, adventurous military spirit which despised
as empty chatter all talk of popular happiness and popular freedom.
He christened the French with the cleverly chosen name of la
grande nation, and induced in the people, who were sickened of
party struggles, an intoxicated sentiment of overweening belief
in themselves and in the fortune of war a spirit which proved
stronger and more enduring than had been the enthusiasm for
freedom of the early days of the Revolution.
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
The victor of Montenotte and Rivoli imposed a change of
character upon the European policy of France no less than upon
the conduct of war. Notwithstanding the cosmopolitan catch-
words with which the government was accustomed to deck its
actions, its designs were not notably different from those that had
characterised the national policy of the House of Bourbon. The
desire was to extend the boundary of the nation towards the east,
and by the weakening of Germany to give to France a prepon-
derant influence in the counsels of Europe and to secure for her the
leadership of the Latin peoples ; the direct control of Europe was
not the French ambition. But the insatiable man who now held
his Byzantine court in Italy, who at his caprice carved the con-
quered regions into vassal states, who overcame all opposition
on the part of the Directory, now by threats and now by sending
abundant plunder, was a man without a fatherland. As a youth
he had once been an enthusiast for the liberation of his Corsican
home, but his precocious wisdom in the things of the world soon
dissipated these youthful dreams ; with never a regret he entered
the service of the conquerors of Corsica because he saw that the
dissolution of the old order in revolutionary France offered the
highest possibilities to a man of supreme endowments. He
now felt himself to be the born conqueror, superior to all other
mortals in the energy of his will and in his ability to carry out
his designs. He luxuriated in the feeling of being the one power
of the time which was able to undertake the impossible, and rejoiced
in the proud consciousness that to him alone was it given to carry
into effect the determinations of a terrible destiny. Before him was
extended the old Europe, split up by contesting interests, paralysed
by a cumbersome military system and by antiquated constitu-
tions a world of petrified states, appealing to historical precedent
alone in justification of their right to existence. At his back were
the powerful warlike energies of the French nation, a nation that
had broken with its own past, and regarded itself as endowed with
the mission to impose new laws on the whole earth.
Thus there arose in the mind of this man without a fatherland
to whom the spiritual life of the nations and the world of ideas
always remained incomprehensible, the detestable thought of a
new world-empire. The images of the Caesars and of the Carlo-
vingians loomed before his mind ; the rich history of a millennium
was to be annihilated by a giant adventure ; the many-sided
culture- world of the west was to obey the orders of a single
Colossus. With a marvellous sureness of aim, and with unexampled
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freedom from conscientious scruples, this new and utterly un-
French policy of world-conquest advanced towards its goal. The
insight of Bonaparte at once recognised by what means Austria,
victorious in Germany but beaten in Italy, was to be forced to a
transitory peace. He saw through the plans of Thugut in the
Adriatic ; with unprecedented treachery he made an excuse for
the conquest of the neutral Republic of Venice ; easily overthrew
the undefended Venetians ; and then offered the imperial court
to exchange Venice for Milan, Belgium, and the left bank of the
Rhine, knowing that the rounding-off of her dominion with Venice
would be more grateful to Austria than the retention of the
lost and untenable outposts. In addition, to the emperor were
promised the secularised ecclesiastical lands of Salzburg and
Bavaria as far as the Inn, whilst to his cousin, who had been driven
out of Modena, was to be given the Breisgau. It was on these
terms that the Peace of Campo Formio was concluded on
October 7, 1797.
Once again had the Holy Empire to pay the price for Austrian
defeats ; and once again, and more hypocritically than ever before,
there were heard in the Reichstag those consecrated imperial and
fatherly phrases with which the German imperial power was accus-
tomed to veil the aims of its own self-seeking policy. Whilst in
the secret articles of the Treaty of Campo Formio the mutilation
of the German western frontier, the secularisation of the spiritual
domains, and the indemnification of foreign princes at the expense
of the empire, had been arranged, in the open phrasing of the
Treaty of Peace allusion was made to the retention of the perfect
integrity of the empire. A decree of the imperial court invited the
estates of the empire to a Congress at Rastatt, in order that " upon
the basis of integrity, Germany's constitution and welfare may be
established for centuries to come, to the permanent ecstasy of peace-
loving humanity." At the Congress of Rastatt, the envoys of the
Republic appeared as the masterful umpires of German affairs.
Nearly three hundred German diplomats were assembled ; among
them were many men of learning, eager to enrich the great collec-
tion of riddles known as the imperial law by the addition of some
new prodigies. By flattery and by corruption they rivalled one
another to secure the favours of the arrogant strangers. The
French language and French ways were dominant. Every even-
ing, official Germany applauded French play-actors when these
were doing their best to amuse les Mtes Allemandes. It was
the task of the Austrian statesmen to keep secret from the envoys
192
Revolution and Foreign Dominion
of the estates of the empire the real character of the conversations
of Campo Formio. For a time this deceit was successful, for the
emperor was represented by three different embassies : as Emperor,
as Archduke of Austria, and as King of Hungary, and always one
of his envoys could skilfully hide himself behind the others.
At length, however, the unhallowed secret had to be made public.
At Christmas, 1797, Mainz was evacuated by the imperial troops.
The hopelessly confused situation of the two nations of central
Europe whose destinies had been intertwined by fate, now came
to light, for on the same day the French occupied the unconquered
bulwark of the Rhineland, and the conquered Austrians entered
the town of St. Mark. Soon afterwards, the French plenipoten-
tiaries in Rastatt openly demanded the left bank of the Rhine.
This was the first official announcement of the annihilation of the
Holy Empire. For in accordance with the patrimonial conception
of the imperial law it was regarded as self-evident that the houses
of the temporal hereditary princes must be compensated for the
losses they sustained on the left bank of the Rhine, whilst the
spiritual electoral princes (in the French documents of state they
received the descriptive name of princes usufruitiers) were to be
indemnified for their right of usufruct by pensions. General secu-
larisation, of which for years past the idea had continually and
inevitably recurred, now seemed to be the last possible means of
satisfying the dynastic wishes of the German estate of princes.
The plunder of the goods of the Church by the high nobility now
began. The emperor himself had opened the floodgates by the
deliberate annexation of the Salzburg ecclesiastical lands. In
savage greed, the princely envoys thronged round the plenipoten-
tiaries of the Directory in order to obtain from the favour of the
enemies of the empire a rich share in the domains of their spiritual
co-estates.
It was the intention of Thugut that in this robbery of the
spiritual princes Prussia should come off empty-handed. In
the secret articles of the Treaty of Campo Formio, the cession of
the left bank of the Rhine from Basle to the Nette was approved
on the express understanding that in this way Prussia would retain
its possessions on the Lower Rhine, and thus would^have no claim
to indemnity. This understanding was in open contradiction
with the Treaty of August, 1796, which had promised the court of
Berlin an advantageous rounding-off of Prussian dominion in the
event of the cession of the left bank of the Rhine. Thus by two
contradictory secret treaties, France had tied to her side the two
193
History of Germany
mutually hostile great powers of Germany, one of which hoped
to secure advantage out of its defeats, and the other out of its
inaction. Inevitably, the third power, which based its claims upon
the victorious use of the sword, would derive the maximum advan-
tage from these contradictory negotiations.
Even after all that had happened, the way was open for a
resolute Prussian policy. The Prussian possessions on the Lower
Rhine became untenable, now that the emperor had ceded to France
Belgium, Mainz, and the region of the Moselle. The whole left
bank of the Rhine had been lost to Germany through the Treaties
of Campo Formio. These facts would have to be accepted ; and
an endeavour must be made to give to Germany a tenable secular
constitution at least on the right bank of the Rhine. It was for
Prussia, the natural opponent of the spiritual states, to undertake
with her own hands the now unavoidable task of the general secu-
larisation of the Holy Empire, the task of breaking the power of
the Hofburg in Germany by the annihilation of the spiritual depen-
dencies of Austria, of transforming the empire into a League of
Princes under the leadership of Prussia. The smaller temporal
princes must receive their indemnification at the hands of Prussia,
not at the hands of France. It must be the aim to win them over
to the Prussian side by the one influence that was sacred to them,
by the influence of their dynastic interests. Dohm, the Prussian
envoy in Rastatt, had in fact advised the king thus to undertake
secularisation in the grand style, as a means to carrying out a com-
prehensive reform in the empire, and not for the gratification of
petty greeds. But to the poor-spirited blindness of the court of
Berlin, no bold resolution was possible. During the war, Prussian
policy had been animated by the benevolent aim of establishing
peace between Austria and France upon the basis of the integrity
of the empire ; but the proposed intermediation of Prussia was
roughly rejected because Thugut could not overcome his gloomy
mistrust of the North German power, and also because a state which
under no circumstances was willing to strike a blow was not able
to play the part of intermediator in a world-war. Now that the
cession of the Rhineland had been decided against the wishes of
the king, his envoys in Rastatt endeavoured, in accordance with
the natural policy of Prussia, to bring about an indemnification of
the temporal princes on as liberal a scale as possible, whilst the
court of Vienna desired to limit the extent of the secularisation,
and, above all, protect the established pillars of the Hapsburg
empire, the three spiritual electoral states. From Berlin a strong
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
opposition was also offered to the Hapsburg plans of Bavarian
conquest.
Prussia and Bavaria now appeared, as formerly in the days
of Frederick, as the leaders of the anti-Austrian party ; but not
now, as of old, was this opposition dictated by the proud conscious-
ness of their own power. It soon became evident how insecure was
that apparently brilliant position of strength which the Prussian
state had acquired through its policy of North German neutrality.
Its small proteges soon realised that the fulfilment of their greedy
wishes was to be expected only from the conscienceless activities
of the young Republic and not from the pacifism of Berlin. The
French envoys dominated the Congress, and Prussia herself in
reality was playing only the deplorable role of the first among the
petty states on the look-out for plunder, and she did not even
venture to propose a thorough-going reorganisation of the German
constitution. To this abasement had the empire sunk when the
dreaded Corsican paid a flying visit to Rastatt, thus obtaining his
first glance into German life. It was in the bitter quarrels of this
fruitless Congress that Bonaparte formed his judgment of our
fatherland. He saw through the absolute nullity of the imperial
law, and was satisfied to feel that if the imperial constitution could
no longer be maintained, its fall could only redound to the advan-
tage of France. With the malicious joy of the plebeian he noted
with contempt the slavish abasement of the German estate of
princes. Yet it did not escape his notice that in consequence of
the weakness of its territorial authorities this country was over-
ripe for national unity, and it seemed to him urgently necessary that
by the satisfaction of their land-hunger the smaller dynasties should
be won over entirely to the side of France, and that divided
Germany should thus be robbed of its nationality (depayser
I'Allemagne).
The Congress of Rastatt was broken up by a recommencement
of the war. Thugut had accepted the Treaties of Campo Formio
unwillingly, for he had hoped to acquire the Papal States in addi-
tion to Venice. When France refused to accede to this desire,
and when, contrary to the agreement, he worked for the general
secularisation of Germany, that is to say, for the annihilation of
the old emperordom, the Hofburg felt that the foundations of
its power were threatened ; for, so wrote the minister to St. Peters-
burg, " not only does Germany subsist through Italy, but also
Italy subsists through Germany." Meanwhile there ensued new
arbitrary acts of French statecraft. In the midst of the peace,
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History of Germany
the Pontifical State was transformed into a Roman Republi
and the Swiss Unified State was established. The old powe
had the view forced upon them that no peaceful common life w;
compatible with this restless policy of world-conquest. As ear
as the summer of 1798, Austria, England, and the new Czar Pa
were working for the formation of the second coalition. T]
allies took the matter very seriously, utilising all their energie
It was their intention to attack the revolutionary state and i
daughter-republics, along the whole extended line from the Tex
to Calabria, along all its frontiers simultaneously. There was
better prospect for the success of their gigantic armaments becaus
of the two most notable commanders of the Republic, one, Hoch
had just died, while the other, Bonaparte, was far away in Egyp
The young hero had conceived the grandiose idea of striking ;
the power of England, which he hated as the most dangerous enen
of his plans of world-conquest, in her most vulnerable spot, tl
east.
For Prussia, the question of joining the new coalition was n<
one to be decided inconsiderately, for every one of the allied powe
was pursuing aims which were foreign to German policy, <
were even directly hostile to Germany. Russia desired to mail
tain the status quo in the east, in order subsequently to solve tl
eastern question according to her own wishes. In the Englis
Parliament, there were manifested always more plainly and am
gantly the designs of an active commercial policy, which, as it w<
phrased by the German poet, " desired to lock up the domain <
free Amphitrite as if it were a private house." To the naval powei
of the second rank, it was impossible that either England's so.
dominion in the Mediterranean, or yet the complete destructio
of the French and Dutch colonial possessions, could be welcomi
Finally, the court of Vienna hoped for great conquests in Itah
and also for the re-establishment within the empire of tt
supreme imperial authority. Its paid writers once more adopte
a threatening tone of Ferdinandian arrogance, warning the Germa
high nobility to fulfil their duties of feudal allegiance towards th
imperial majesty. Above all, the second coalition displayed
marked reactionary character which had little in common wit
the moderate views of the Prussian court. The Czar Paul spok
in his fantastical manner of the restoration of the ancient Frenc
kingship. Fanatical pamphlets preached a war of annihilatio
against the godless men of new France, declaring that all the rofa
riers of Europe were looking towards Paris. The embassy-murde
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
at Rastatt at the beginning of the war already served to show how
blindly embittered were the advocates of the traditional law,
although the deed of blood was not directly ordered by the Hof-
burg. The cruel re-establishment of the Bourbon tyranny in
Naples showed still more plainly what intense passion the fury
of the Jacobins had awakened, and what confusion Europe had to
expect if through the victory of this most powerful of all alliances
the forces of the counter-revolution gained free sway.
Yet there were overpowering reasons why Prussia should join
the Triple Alliance. The statesmen of Berlin were at one with
the three powers in the intention to impose limits upon the floods
of the world conquest. Count Haugwitz had at length clearly
recognised the character of French policy. Moreover, if every one
of the allied powers pursued her own immediate aims, it would be
all the more possible for Prussia to establish her own dominance
in Germany by resolute action. England was preparing for a land-
ing on the coast of Holland, while Austria assembled her army in
High Germany and Italy. If Prussia, whose eastern frontier was
no longer threatened, threw all her military forces into the
wide gap between these two theatres of war, it seemed to all human
foresight that the honourable and heartfelt desire of the young
king, the reconquest of the Rhineland, must be fulfilled, and that
the victorious state would by German deeds acquire the hegemony
of the north which it had hitherto possessed only in appearance.
It was the fault of the king, and of his generals weakened by old
age, that the great hour remained unutilised. The hesitating prince
considered that the moment had not yet come for the overthrow
of the Revolution ; he wished to wait upon events, to save up his
energies for a possible last blow. North Germany, in love with
peace, joyfully agreed to this poor-spirited determination ; its
princes and its peoples delighted in the return to the Basle policy
of neutrality.
Thus the colossal struggle began without Prussian co-opera-
tion. The battle of Aboukir founded the Mediterranean rule of
the British, and brought Bonaparte's oriental schemes to naught ;
the victories of Souvbrof! and Melas snatched Italy from the French ;
the Archduke Charles pressed victoriously forward into High
Germany, and once more the peasantry of the German south threw
in their lot with the imperial troops ; the domain of the Republic
lay open before the armies of the coalition, but once again the
dissensions of the allies proved the salvation of France. To the
Hofburg the arrogance of the Russian commanders seemed as
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History of Germany
intolerable as the policy of the czar, who in Italy demanded the
restoration of the legitimate governments and seized Corfu and
Malta for himself. Whilst Thugut was endeavouring to subject
the Peninsula to the dominion of Austria, Souvoroff counteracted
his endeavours in every possible way, and finally refused to take
full advantage of victory and to conquer Genoa, the last position
of the French in Italy. Upon the proposal of England, from the
open road of victory the great Russian was diverted to Switzerland,
where he wasted time and energy in that heroic march over the
Alps which displayed to the astonished world the extraordinary
staying-power of the Russian soldiers, but which was fruitless from
a military point of view. When the end of the year 1799, which
had opened with such glowing hopes, was approaching, the power-
ful Triple Alliance broke up in fierce hostility. The czar summoned
his troops home, and there was no longer any talk of threatening
the domain of the Republic.
The idea of world-conquest had already struck so deep a root
in the life of the new France, that the French nation regarded the
loss of its Italian conquests as an intolerable disgrace, and greeted
the Corsican hero on his return from Egypt with rejoicing, regard-
ing him as a saviour. The coup d'etat of the i8th Brumaire, the
outcome of an internal necessity, brought the whole authority
of the state into the hands of the commander-in-chief who, for
the past three years, had, by the terror of his arms, maintained the
radical war-party in power, and this change gave to the new France
the constitution which, with trifling alterations, has persisted to
the present day. The only two new political ideas which had really
permeated the nation, the idea of national unity and the idea of
social equality, were carried out to their ultimate consequences ;
the altered distribution of property was recognised, and was secured
by a strict legal system. Above the undifferentiated mass of this
people of equals there now arose I'homme peuple, the democratic
autocrat in whose boundless authority the one and indivisible
nation found a satisfactory realisation of its own greatness. The
compact hierarchy of the active new officialdom obeyed his will,
since for those who, while accepting subordination to the auto-
crat, formed part of this hierarchy, there was promise for the satis-
faction of every ambition ; while the hierarchy relieved the ruled
of all care and all labour for the nation's weal. The army of tax-
payers of the lower classes obeyed him blindly ; whilst the military
organisation, happily adapted to the aims of a policy of conquest,
placed at the disposal of the First Consul at the same time the
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
masses of the national levies and the technical efficiency of bodies
of mercenary troops employed for a long term of service. The
possessing classes, on the other hand, liberated from the burden
of compulsory military service, enjoyed, in comfortable security,
the triumphs of the tricolor, and learnt to value the exciting news
of war and victory as an indispensable pastime.
This was at once the greatest triumph and the self-annihila-
tion of popular sovereignty. It was the proudest, the cleverest,
and the best-ordered despotism of modern history, the necessary
conclusion of the course of development in which the French state
had been engaged since the accession of the Bourbons to power.
Even the ancient traditional catholic character of French culture
was now re-established by the Concordat. All the fruitful new
ideas which the legislation of the National Assembly and the Con-
vention had realised or prepared, found in the prefectoral system,
hi the legal code, and in the fiscal and military systems of the new
autocracy a talented realisation, in so far as they correspond to
the two aims of the democratisation of society and the centralisa-
tion of the state. On the other hand, of the desires of the Revolu-
tion for liberty, of the participation of the nation in the conduct
of affairs, there remained nothing but the empty spectacle of
worthless parliamentary forms. The constitution of Napoleonic
France, like that of the old Bourbon regime, was in reality no more
than a method of administration. Commerce, which had been
almost completely ruined in the party struggles of the last decade,
now rapidly revived, thanks to the legal security and to the free-
dom of movement which the new laws provided for the economic
energies of the nation. But the new ruler neither desired nor was
able to effect any change in the other tragical heritage of the
Revolution, in the spiritual desolation of French life. His
mind was filled with common human ambition ; freedom of
thought and independent creative activity in art and science were
regarded by him as vain ideology, partly ludicrous and partly open
to suspicion.
Thus there entered upon the stage that strange two-edged
system of Bonapartism which, in self-consciousness, readiness for
activity, and organising energy, was enormously superior to the
ossified states of the neighbour country. It was a structure of the
Revolution, democratic from the foundation upwards, the natural
opponent of the historical state-authorities and social forms of old
Europe ; but it was also despotic from the foundation upwards,
the sworn enemy of all freedom, of all national peculiarity in popular
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History of Germany
life. Napoleon's first task was to make good the losses of the last
year, to re-establish the status quo of Campo Formio. His brilliant
attempt to shake the naval dominion of England by the alliance of
all the sea-powers of the north and of the south, was a complete
failure ; but in war upon land, fortune was kind to him. His dramatic
march across the St. Bernard showed to the delighted French that
the laurels of Souvoroff could be worn also by French soldiers. The
victory of Marengo restored the dominion of Italy to Bonaparte ;
the dismissal of Thugut showed that the tough staying-power of
the court of Vienna was beginning to fail. But there was still
required one last blow, the battle of Hohenlinden, to compel
exhausted Austria to make peace. On February 9, 1801, the Peace
of Luneville recognised publicly and unmistakably what the Treaty
of Campo Formio had established secretly and obscurely, that
henceforward the Rhine was to be the boundary of Germany.
A domain of 1,150 square miles [German], and of almost
4,000,000 inhabitants, had been lost to Germany, nearly one-seventh
of the population of the old empire, which, without Silesia, had
been estimated at 28,000,000. The German nation accepted
this terrible blow with an uncanny cold-bloodedness. Hardly a
sign of patriotic anger was manifested when Mainz and Cologne,
Aix-la-Chapelle and Treves, the broad and beautiful homelands
of our most ancient history, passed to the foreigner. Yet the
stunted generation of the Thirty Years' War had once shed an
abundance of bitter tears over a Strasburg.
It was the fault of the rule of the crozier that the country of
the left bank of the Rhine had become so foreign to the nation. The
ecclesiastical domain had taken no part whatever in the victories
of Frederick and in the poems of Goethe, no part in anything
which had filled the life of the new Germany. This region now
accepted its fate with dull resignation ; it was only the Lower
Rhenish provinces of Prussia which loudly bewailed their separa-
tion from an honourable state. It was natural that the moving
propaganda of the Revolution had not been entirely without effect
during the long years of the French occupation. Here and there
might be witnessed a modest copy of the revolutionary societies
of the people of Mainz. For a time the young men were intoxi-
cated with the hope that their home would become an independent
daughter-republic under the protection of France. In Coblenz,
the federates of the Cis-Rhenish Republic danced round the red,
white, and green tree of freedom. Biergans, the Brutus of Cologne,
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
diligently endeavoured to imitate the fierce eloquence of Marat
and Desmoulins ; but the copy was hardly more successful than
was the German Marseillaise, the tame, philistine league-song of
the Rhenish Republicans : " Rejoice, brothers all, Reason has
conquered." It was only young Joseph Gorres who understood
how to speak this fanatical speech which was foreign to the Ger-
man nature. With all the impetuosity of his fantastic intelligence
and with all the unripeness of his half culture, acquired in the con-
ventual schools of the episcopal lands, the honourable and enthu-
siastic youth threw himself into the whirlpool of the revolutionary
movement, celebrating in speeches and in pamphlets the wonders
of Gallic freedom. When the evacuation of Mainz had decided
the fate of the Rhineland he delivered the funeral oration of the
Holy Empire, exclaiming : " Nature created the Rhine for the
boundary of France : woe to the weak mortal who shall attempt
to move her boundaries, and who shall prefer mud and heaps of
stones to her sharply-drawn natural outlines." Such was the scorn
with which the most gifted son of the Rhineland took leave of his
fatherland ; such were the sentiments which experience of the
ecclesiastical rule had aroused in the hot spirit of the man who,
not long after, was to become the most enthusiastic apostle of
Germanism on the Rhine !
Among the masses of the Rhenish people the activity of the
Jacobins had no effect. They groaned under the burdens imposed
by the war and under the insecurity of the endless provisional con-
ditions ; they saw with discontent how the foreign officials plundered
the country, rudely destroyed the monuments of antiquity, deforested
the mountains, carried off to Paris the old pillars from the grave
of Charlemagne. It was only with the completion of the annexa-
tion that they learnt also to esteem the advantages of the new
administration. For the spiritual domains of the Rhineland,
as for Italy, the French Government was the pioneer of the modern
state-life ; it brought the beginnings of civic equality, which in
Prussia, and in many of the neighbouring temporal states, had
long existed ; and it brought also numerous other political reforms
which were still lacking elsewhere in Germany. Under this regime,
moreover, the homeless and unarmed people of the lands of the
crozier learnt for the first time the glory of war and the self-satis-
faction that comes from forming part of a great community.
The region that consisted of a confused assembly of ninety-
seven bishoprics, abbacies, princedoms, counties, and estates of the
empire, and that had nourished an innumerable body of Imperial
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History of Germany
Knights, was divided into four well-rounded departments. A
strict police broke up the bands of oppressors, and established in
the mountain-districts of the Eifel and of the Hunsriicken a state
of peaceful security which had been unknown in the days of the
dispersed rule of powerless petty states. In these lands of ancient
peasant freedom the abolition of hereditary serfdom had but little
significance. But all the more profound and valuable was the
effect of abolishing the feudal burdens of the ecclesiastical tithes ;
and still more valuable was the result of the sale of the national
goods ; upon the ruins of the ancient spiritual landed domains there
came into existence a new and well-to-do system of petty proprie-
torship. The gates of the ghetto of Benn were opened and the
Protestants of Cologne and Aix-la-Chapelle built their first churches.
The public procedure of the Courts of Assize put an end to the
extraordinary forms of legal procedure which had previously been
characteristic of the thirteen courts of the good town of Cologne
and of the innumerable tribunals of spiritual and temporal lords.
Instead of the Lords of Council, to whom the people had given the
nickname of the " Cologne Clique," instead of the highly noble and
all- wise patricians who once ruled the " realm of Aix," prefects
and mayors were everywhere at work as obedient servants of the
First Consul. All local independence had been abolished ; and yet
the new official Government showed itself, not only more kindly,
but also, more honourable and more just, than the ancient nepotist
dominion.
It is true that the Rhinelanders stoutly defended their
German speech and German customs against all attempts at
forcible Gallification. The arbitrary unnaturalness of the new
river boundary was felt as a great grievance. All along the river
the people carried on a petty warfare against the detested customs-
officers, and refused to abandon neighbourly intercourse with their
fellow-countrymen on the right bank of the Rhine. Yet it was
soon realised how powerful are the bonds with which a vigorous
state attaches its members. Free trade with the extensive western
hinterland, the abolition of the old guild rights and boundary
rights, called into existence new industrial undertakings and new
relationships of intercourse. The good French gold, which had been
current in France since the plunder-campaigns and the fiscal reforms
of Bonaparte, looked very different from the Petermannchen and
the Kastemannchen and all the other variegated coinage of the
episcopal days. The people of the middle and lower Rhine never
became so whole-heartedly French as did the soldier-race of Alsace.
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
Notwithstanding the enfranchisement of agriculture and industry,
the increasing pressure of taxation and the terrible sacrifice of men
that resulted from the Napoleonic wars, rendered impossible a
sense of genuine economic well-being. But still it was generally
held in these regions that they belonged for ever to France. The
Rhinelanders had broken with their past, and of all their old tradi-
tions they had taken with them into the new time only the Catholic
faith, hence the feeling of inner kinship which for a long period to
come bound them to the new French culture. The old order had
vanished without leaving a trace behind, and all possibility of its
restoration had passed away ; soon there disappeared the very
memory of particularism. For the rising generation of the Rhine-
land, a living history really began with the entry of the French.
It was only men of exceptionally deep nature, such as Gorres and
the brothers Boisseree who gradually came to recognise the curse of
all foreign dominion, the atrophy and disorder which that dominion
imposes upon spiritual life. They turned their longing gaze towards
the centuries of the Middle Age when the Rhineland was still a
living member of the German Empire, and amid tears and repent-
ance they rediscovered their lost fatherland. To the great
majority, what had happened seemed an unalterable necessity,
especially in view of the fact that the condition of affairs in the
empire was not such as to tempt any thought of reunion. Even
upon the right bank of the Rhine, everyone believed that the new
western frontier of Germany had been established for all time.
It was now the task of the imperial authorities to carry out
the great work of indemnification which was a necessary outcome
of the diminution of the empire. By the Seventh Article of the
Peace of Luneville, it was agreed that the hereditary princes of the
left bank of the Rhine should receive compensation in the interior
of Germany (dans le sein de V Empire) ; the conversations of Rastatt
were here to serve as a guide. Thus by the sword of the foreign
conqueror there was imposed upon the Reichstag the duty of secu-
larising the Holy Empire and destroying the spiritual states. What
in the days of the Silesian War had led to the salvation and rejuvenes-
cence of the German state, now led to the partition of Germany.
During the confused negotiations which for the next two years were
proceeding between Paris and Ratisbon, between Berlin, St. Peters-
burg, and Vienna, there spontaneously resulted that grouping of
German parties, of which anticipations had already been manifested
at the Congress of Rastatt. The court of Vienna remained for long a
prey to the extraordinary illusion that Bonaparte would not trouble
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History of Germany
himself about the reconstitution of Germany, and endeavoured
to save as many as possible of the theocratic authorities of the
ancient empire, and above all to save the spiritual electoral
princes. In one of the Austrian state-papers we read : " It is not
the amount of their income but their very existence which is of
value to the German constitution." Prussia and Bavaria, on the
other hand, the most powerful of the temporal states, fought on
behalf of the common interests of the hereditary princes, favoured
general secularisation, and were therefore considered by the world
to be the allies of France.
Not even at this time, however, did there exist an unconditional
understanding between the First Consul and the Crown of Prussia.
Bonaparte could not endure as an ally anyone who claimed the
independence of a great power ; the new " federal system " which
he proposed to institute in place of the old comity of states, gave
room only for a dominant France and for powerless vassals. He
was the enemy of every independent power, and he never had any
good feeling towards Prussia. In the life of Bonaparte, there was
no development. He did not, like the true heroes of history, learn
from experience, but unmoved and untaught, he worked to the
end of his career for the realisation of his original plan of world-
conquest. It is for this reason that he seems greatest in the days
of the consulate, when these dreams of power first became revealed.
In four neighbour countries at once he appeared as the intermediator
of peace and as the great organiser. In Switzerland he threw on
to the dust-heap the old structure of the Unified State and gave to
the Confederates a reasonable federal constitution, for, as he put
it, " Nature herself has predestined you to be a federation of states,
and no reasonable man seeks to force Nature from her path." With
the same penetrating insight he recognised that in Holland the
federal form of state was out of date ; he allowed the Batavian
Unified State to persist, and imposed a constitution which facili-
tated the transition to monarchy. For the Italians, he awakened
a world of brilliant memories and expectations, bringing once more
into honour the ancient name of the country, and raising the vassal
state on the Po to become an Italian republic ; here also the train
was carefully laid for monarchy and for a veiled foreign dominion.
Finally, in the matter of his German policy he had long indicated
the way which was to lead to the destruction of the German name.
Never was an impossible scheme undertaken with more crafty
consideration, and never was it put into operation with a more
vigorous activity.
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When in speeches and state-papers the First Consul described
the German Empire as indispensable to the balance of European
power, all that he had in mind was the anarchy of German
particularism and he was thinking not at all of the theocratic forms
of the imperial constitution. The Carlo vingian traditions of the
Holy Empire were not less hostile to the Corsican's plans of world-
dominion than were the medieval institutions of ancient Germany
in conflict with the modern democratic character of the new tyranny.
As the Moniteur wrote, the German constitution was " the centre
of all the feudal prejudices of Europe," and was at the same time
one of the chief pillars of the Austrian power. But in Paris the
court of Vienna was considered, next to England, to be the bitterest
enemy of the Revolution ; the destruction of Austrian power in
Germany had been long determined. As early as the summer of
1800, one of the hired scribes of Talleyrand was writing the Letter
of a German Patriot, a first ballon d'essai in the direction of those
devilish half truths by means of which Bonapartism exercised so
misleading an influence upon our people. The pamphlet related in
eloquent words the long tale of Austria's sins against the Holy
Empire, and urged all enlightened Germans to overthrow the Haps-
burg dominion. The First Consul revived the plan which already
in the year 1798 Sieyes had suggested when he was ambassador in
Berlin. He prepared the tri-partition of Germany, and in order to
bring the defenceless petty states as far as possible under his own
authority, he wished first to push back towards the east the two
German great powers. It was for this reason that the Breisgau
was given to the Duke of Modena ; it was for this reason that
France, for the moment in unison with the court of Vienna, offered
a decisive objection when Hardenberg ventured to propose that
Prussia should seek her indemnification in Franconia. It was for
this reason that the wishes of Bavaria, which was already casting
greedy eyes upon Ansbach-Bayreuth, received gracious approval
in Paris. It was for this reason, finally, that the First Consul
enquired of Berlin whether Mecklenburg might not conveniently
round off the Prussian dominion, while the ancient ducal house
might be compensated in the Prussian Rhineland. In this respect
Bonaparte had no more than a partial success, for King Frederick
William firmly refused to take possession of Mecklenburg against
the will of the dukes ; but Bonaparte succeeded to this extent,
that Prussia was not allowed to increase her Franconian possesr
sions, and lost all influence in the south.
The great despiser of men now found an infallible means for
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History of Germany
the control of these southern and western German domains. It
was not in vain that at the Congress of Rastatt he had seen into
the innermost souls of the German high nobility. It was in order
to secure for ever the dissociation of Germany that he became the
creator of our new middle states. The little people of princes,
counts, and imperial knights, was a nuisance to him, for most
of them belonged to the Austrian party and were useless in war.
Among the electoral princes and the dukes, on the other hand, he
saw sufficient utilizable material for the creation of a crowd of
vassals to France. They were too weak to stand upon their own
feet, too vain to yield to the authority of a national state, but they
were powerful enough to constitute a number of small contingents
which, under the leadership of the conqueror of the world, might
once more exhibit the ancient German valiancy in arms. During
the last war they had almost all concluded separate peaces with
the enemy of the empire, had left the path of legality as rebels
against the emperor and the empire, and had broken down the
bridges behind them. When the man of power took under his pro-
tection these political hermaphrodites which could neither live nor
die, when he gratified their greed by throwing them a few fragments
taken from the possessions of their pettier co-estates, when he
flattered their vanity by resounding titles and the appearance of
independence ; when, that is to say, he compacted together the
hundreds of tiny territories into a few dozen new casually con-
structed states, which without a history and with no legal title to
existence, existed solely by the grace of France ; when he then
induced his satraps to wage insolent wars against the fatherland,
leading them from one felony to another, and rewarding every new
crime by new booty they had signed away their souls to him, and
he could henceforward confidently reckon that they would rather
kiss the shoes of the foreigner than ever again voluntarily subject
themselves to a German community. He was not the man to leave
to his proteges a debt of gratitude. " France," he wrote to the
Elector of Bavaria, " and France alone, can secure you in your
power " ; and once more, "to us alone does Bavaria owe her
enlargement, and at our hands alone can she receive protection."
Up to this point Bonaparte's German policy seems no more
than a grandly conceived further development of the old French
statecraft, which since the days of Henry IV had continually aimed
at the establishment of a protective suzerainty over the German
petty states. In the state-papers of the First Consul there now
recurs the seductive word " sovereignty," which in the Peace of
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
Westphalia the diplomats of France had first applied to the
German territorial suzerainty. But the ideas of this restless
spirit now sought to push far beyond these goals. As soon as
Western Germany had been subjected, Austria and Prussia were to
be enchained. Bonaparte's friendship for Prussia was never anything
more than an adroit double game. Although he cherished a pro-
found and justified contempt for the timid policy of the court of
Berlin, he none the less shared an error then universal, and over-
estimated the might of Prussia. It was true that the man who
despised all ideology had no vision for the inexhaustible moral
energies which slumbered in the inert state ; but he was well aware
of what the Prussian soldier had been able to achieve in the Rhenish
campaigns, and was not sufficiently well informed with regard
to the progressive decay of the Frederician army. With such an
opponent, he wished to fight only under favourable circumstances,
and with all the rest of Germany on his side. During the war he
had several times hoped, through the intermediation of the most
peace-loving of the great powers, to attain to a general peace, and
subsequently to allay the awakening mistrust of the court of Berlin
by indefinite concessions. After the peace, he regarded the destruc-
tion of the Austrian party in the empire as his most immediate
task, and for this end the help of the Lorrainer's old rival was
indispensable. The letters of the First Consul to the young king
overflowed with terms of endearment. He wrote that every wish
of his royal friend would be regarded by the French Cabinet as a
command ; he said that both he and William, one the admirer and
the other the successor of Frederick, should continue to walk hand
in hand in the footsteps of the great king. To the mightiest of
the temporal estates of the empire it was impossible to refuse abun-
dant indemnification ; but it was essential to avoid any strengthen-
ing of the Prussian party. Hence Talleyrand was given instructions
that the Prussophile House of Mecklenburg was to be excluded from
the new Electoral Council, but the minister did not venture to
propose this exclusion.
The court of Berlin, upon its side, was far from convinced of
the good faith of France. In Berlin, as almost everywhere else,
the coup d'etat of the i8th Brumaire had been welcome because
the establishment of an orderly government in France seemed to
offer promise of a general peace. Once again, as so often before,
it was hoped that the integrity of the empire would be preserved
by diplomatic methods. But how could a German state which
even after the declaration of the imperial war in the year 1799
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History of Germany
failed to draw its sword, attain so high an aim ? The sundering
of the Rhineland from Germany had been completed, and Prussia
had not ventured upon any serious step to ward off the blow. At
length, indeed, a bold move was made, when France and Russia
threatened, in the year 1801, to occupy Hanover and to force the
closing of the German ports ; thereupon Prussia stepped forward
and herself occupied the German land a resolute measure which
England valued at its true worth but which Bonaparte never for-
gave. Meanwhile, however, the king observed with regret how
isolated was his state, but he mistrusted the incalculable aims of
Bonaparte, and to the enquiries of the First Consul whether Prussia
would not seek compensation in Hanover, he repeatedly refused to
do this, not only on grounds of justice, but because he recognised
the ulterior designs of French policy. On the other hand, he saw
that the interests of Prussian shipping were seriously interfered
with by the commercial policy of England. Finally he was separated
from the court of Vienna by the old unteachable mutual mistrust ;
so recently as the war of 1799, Austria had sent a considerable
proportion of its army into Bohemia in order to hold Prussia in
check.
Thus the king determined to seek an understanding with
Russia ; it seemed to him that this state was by geographical
position a power mainly defensive. Now for the first time the
young monarch took part in foreign policy with an independent
idea ; he now began in these questions also to find a sphere for his
peculiar deliberative method. Since there had always been a
strong Prussian party at the court of St. Petersburg it was soon
possible to come to a good understanding with the Czar Paul. It
was Prussia which in the year 1800 endeavoured to bring about
peace between France and Russia. The drawing together of Prussia
and Russia became a friendship when the young Czar Alexander
ascended the throne over the corpse of his father. On June 10,
1802, the two neighbour princes had that memorable meeting in
Memel which was to have such weighty consequences for the reign
of Frederick William. Both were young men, both were full of
the philanthropic ideas of the age of enlightenment which aimed
at popular happiness, so that they were soon on common ground ;
they discussed the danger which was threatening both from the
world power of the west, and they swore mutual fealty. Upon the
czar, who was still little more than a boy, the knightly and serious
behaviour of the king and the bewitching grace of the queen made
a lively impression, so far as his character, with its strange admixture
208
Revolution and Foreign Dominion
of enthusiasm, self-deception, and slyness, was capable of profound
sensations. Again and again his Polish friend Czartoryski, an
irreconcilable opponent of Prussia, complained that this day of
Memel had been the beginning of all evil. But Frederick William
cleaved to his new friend with the unchangeable loyalty of his
honourable heart. A personal inclination strengthened him in the
resolve which had been formed through the working of his sober
reason. He would venture upon a war with France only in alliance
with Russia. He urged the Russian court to participate in the
negotiations about the German indemnity questions, in order
that France might not be the only arbiter in the empire.
Whilst the king thus secretly endeavoured to protect his rear
in the case of a possible war with France, hi his German policy he
was also pursuing ideas which were in flat opposition to the designs
of the First Consul ; it was solely in consequence of the confused
party involvements of the moment that the Prussian court seemed
for a time to walk hand in hand with the French government.
The general secularisation could be welcome to the Prussian state
only as soon as the cession of the Rhinelands was decided. All
the Prussian Protestant traditions combined to lead the king to
work towards this end. Moreover, in the enlightened world there
was then dominant the doctrine of the unrestricted power of the
state, which by right controlled all the goods of the Church on
behalf of the nation. Stephani's book upon The Absolute Unity
of State and Church was now going the round of North Germany.
The King of Prussia was himself permeated by these views, and
was now making his cabinet work out a comprehensive plan for the
confiscation of all the ecclesiastical goods in Prussia. In like manner
he believed that he would be acting altogether in the spirit of his
great-uncle if he placed himself on the side of Bavaria and the new
middle states ; Frederick, in his plans for imperial reform, had
always had in mind the strengthening of the great temporal estates
of the empire. Bonaparte favoured the middle states, because he
desired to construct out of them the nucleus of a French party.
The Prussian court, conversely, supported this policy in the hope
that by the destruction of the most futile of the petty states the
force of resistance of the empire against France could be enhanced.
Haugwitz declared frankly to the Austrian ambassador Stadion,
that such had for years been the persistent view of his court.
Russia spoke in the same sense to the court of Vienna, for from the
Prussian state-papers the conviction had been gained that a
general secularisation was necessary to strengthen the German
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History of Germany
west. Once more with the same grounds the king justified himself
to the czar for Prussia's own demands for indemnification : he must
strengthen himself for the eventuality of a great German war
against Bonaparte.
Behind all these schemes and wishes there remained the shy
and indefinite hope that it would be possible to reorganise the
secularised empire, or at least the north, in federal form. The
recognition that the old emperordom was no longer tenable
gradually found a wider acceptation. Already a year after the
death of Frederick a pamphlet had put the question in plain terms,
" Why should Germany have an Emperor?" During the war of
the second coalition there appeared another pamphlet, Hints
concerning the State Constitution of Germany, and in this the
admonition was uttered, " Germans ! unite to form a strongly
united German Federation ! " Similar federalist ideas were dis-
cussed among the Prussian statesmen. In the year 1800, the inde-
fatigable Dohm, after a conversation with the Duke of Brunswick,
carried a stage further the proposals he had already announced
in Rastatt, and drew up a plan for a North German Federation.
The aim of this was to check the overgrowth of the power of France,
already threatening all her neighbours. For this reason, the Basle
league of neutrality must be transformed to constitute a vigorous
and permanent federation. There were to be four sections, under
the leadership of the more powerful of the middle states and the
supreme leadership of Prussia. There were to be a Bundestag
and permanent federal courts. The army was to be under Prussian
command and was to be trained on the Prussian model. Such
plans were freely discussed at the court of Berlin but no one ven-
tured to attempt to carry them out. Not even Dohm could free
himself from that deplorable error which tainted all the old ideas of
Prussian policy. He also was under the illusion that the re-estab-
lishment of the German power could be effected by pacific means ;
the First Consul would offer no opposition so long as the idea of
" national independence " was not expressly avowed !
The wisdom of the statesmen of Berlin failed to see how
profoundly relationships in the empire had been modified since
the days of Frederick. It was not Prussia, but France, which
now held in its hands the balance of German power. France divided
in accordance with her own favour and caprice the ruins of the
spiritual states. As things were, the co-operation of Russia in the
negotiations could be no more than apparent ; the sole result of
this co-operation was, that in the distribution of lands, some princes
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
who were related to the court of St. Petersburg received preferential
treatment. When in such conditions the Prussian state demanded
the constitution of the new middle states, this could serve only
to strengthen the French party in the empire without securing any
loyal support for Prussia. Prussia became Bonaparte's accomplice
without securing for herself any permanent alliance with the man
of power.
How much more adroitly than by this well-meaning policy of
half-measures and self-deception did the straightfoward uncon-
scientiousness of the new court of Munich know how to turn matters
to its own advantage. Here the House of Pfalz-Zweibriicken had
just attained to the throne which had been so often contested by
the greed of Austria. The Prime Minister, Count Montgelas, never
failed for a moment to recognise that the young dynasty had every-
thing to fear from the Hofburg and everything to hope from Bona-
parte. Quickly making up his mind, he appeared soon after the
peace at the head of the French party in Germany, and for this was
rewarded by the grateful assurance of the First Consul that the
high-minded nobility of France would forget the earlier vacilla-
tions of the Bavarian court. The unscrupulous realist saw in
Bavaria's past no more than a history of lost opportunities ; now
at length, when the world was out of joint, was the time to grasp
at the skirts of happy chance, to get into the victorious chariot of
the conqueror of the world, and by faithful vassal's service and
unwearied haggling to secure just as much booty as the conqueror
was willing to spare. To this policy of logical particularism, any-
thing that remained to the empire of the millennial union of the
German nation seemed frankly ludicrous ; all shame, all affection,
all sentiment for law, were here unknown. Greedily it seized the idea
of a German Trias, which had once before emerged after the Peace
of Hubertusburg, and which was now revived when Prussia aban-
doned the South German petty states whilst Austria threatened
them. Gagern, the minister of Nassau, a well-meaning imperial
patriot, who, after the dilettantist manner of the petty-state diplo-
matists, was always full of slight, readily conceived, and obscure
projects, had as long ago as the time of the Treaty of Campo Formio
naively urged upon the imperial court the formation of a league
of the smaller states, under Russian guarantees. In a similar
sense the honourable Swabian publicist, Pahl, wrote' an appella-
tion to the Luneville Peace Congress. But now that the writers
of the Bavarian Palatinate urged a separate alliance of all the lesser
German powers, without Austria and Prussia, it was not their wish,
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History of Germany
as it had been the wish of these eloquent dreamers, to rescue the
national independence of the German south. What they desired
was the subjection of the middle states under the arbitrary dominion
of France, the annihilation of Germany. Temporarily, so long as
it was still necessary to fight the Austrian party, the Zweibriicken
dynasty remained on good terms with its ancient protector, Prussia.
Bonaparte did not interfere, for he knew how easy it would be to
break up this friendship, since the Franconian margravates of the
King of Prussia were at the very gates of Bavarian greed.
During this most difficult crisis which had ever affected the
ancient German state, Austria deprived herself of all possible
influence, endeavouring to rescue an untenable position by a policy
of stupid rigidity. At the Prussian court, there was no failure
to recognise the need for the destruction of the old order, but the
desire for the reconstruction of the empire merely took the form of
a weak and indefinite hope. Thus the decision as to the future
of Germany was inevitably left in the hands of the foreign conqueror,
who boasted, " I alone know what I have to do." Even during
these troubled years, the Reichstag of Ratisbon had remained so
true to the sleepy customs of its spectral existence that a warm-
hearted imperial patriot was able in the middle of the imperial war,
to write with all seriousness upon the problem of what the dis-
tinguished Imperial Assembly was to consider in the near future.
The empire accepted the Peace ot Luneville, and the spiritual estates
did not find the courage to protest against their death-sentence.
Almost the whole of the year 1801 had passed before Austria and
Prussia finally succeeded in constituting a Diet of Deputation,
and even at the end of eight months more, the deliberations of this
committee had not yet been begun. The decayed body of the Holy
Empire no longer possessed the power to carry out its intentions
without assistance. The struggle of all against all and the
infatuation of the Austrian court rendered every resolution
impossible.
The Hofburg was still unable to understand that in the Peace
of LuneVille it had abandoned the spiritual estates ; it did every-
thing it could to avoid the inevitable consequences of its own
actions, and even arranged for the election by its own adherents
of an archduke to fill the vacant prince-bishoprics of Cologne
and Miinster. At the same time the Hofburg exhibited its ancient
hostility to all enlargement of Prussia. It would | be better, so
the phrase ran at the court of Vienna, to renounce three rich Turkish
provinces than to yield up Miinster and Hildesheim to the Protes-
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
tant great power. Meanwhile the Bavarian neighbour was con-
tinually rendered anxious by Austrian plans of exchange and
enlargement. This emperor, who could not find words strong
enough to express his anger at the forcible dispossession of the
spiritual estates, would freely permit the court of Munich to appro-
priate in the south-west the dominions of neighbouring imperial
towns, counts, and barons, if only Austria should receive in exchange
the eastern part of Bavaria. It was Austria which first uttered
the momentous phrase, " destruction of the smaller temporal
estates," whereas hitherto in official documents there had been
references only to the secularisation of the spiritual states. It
was owing to this rigidly conservative and recklessly greedy conduct
of the imperial court that Prussia and Bavaria found it necessary
to secure their own indemnification by separate treaties with France.
The Prusso-French Treaty contained the expressive sentence that
the crown of Prussia acquired its compensatory territory " with
unlimited suzerainty and sovereignty, upon the same footing
as that occupied by Prussia in her other German possessions "
whereas the imperial law did not recognise the sovereignty of the
imperial estates. It was not regarded as any longer worth the
trouble of even keeping up a pretence of the imperial over-lordship.
Without consulting the empire, Prussia, on August 3, 1802, took
possession of the new acquisitions allowed by Bonaparte.
Meanwhile the Parisians made a mock of the aspect of the
princes and statesmen of the Holy Empire who were hastening in
crowds to the First Consul's seat of dominion. The light-minded
city had speedily recovered its ancient Celtic cheerfulness after
the terrible years of the Revolution. Bonaparte understood the
Parisians' insatiable desire for nervous excitement, and knew how
to satisfy Paris by the brilliant spectacle of his campaigns of triumph
and booty. But even more entertaining than all these festivals
was the unexampled drama of the voluntary humiliation of the
German high nobility. How often, during all these heavy years,
must it have come home to the souls of the German petty princes
that an end had come to all their ancient glories. Again and
again they had fled before the armies of the Revolution, and they
had turned into money anything they could get together of the
possessions of their state. Now came the decisive hour ; it still
seemed possible to save their thrones. In their anxiety, all pride
and all shame were lost. Every noble conception of princely duties,
such as had gained ground at the German courts in the days of
Frederick, was destroyed by the tyranny of Bonaparte ; once more
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History of Germany
the sentiments of the princely dealers-in-soldiers of the good old
time gained the upper hand.
The high nobility of Germany settled upon the open wounds
of the fatherland like a swarm of hungry flies. With cynical
composure Talleyrand opened the great market for the land and
people of Germany, and said equably that if any German nobleman
still experiences any trace of shame, il faut ttouffer les regrets.
The highborn opponents of the Revolution begged for his favour,
paid court to his mistresses, tenderly carried about his lap-dog,
mounted, eager for service, to the little attic where lived his assis-
tant Matthieu the most cunning among that long series of talented
Alsatians, whose powers of work and knowledge of affairs were
gladly utilised by Bonaparte in his dealings with Germany. The
gold of the little courts, which they had never been able to find
when the empire needed money for the defence of the fatherland,
now ran in streams. In the diplomatic world everyone knew the
tariff of the French negotiators, and knew to a thaler the cost of a
vote in the princely council of the Reichstag. The Prince of Lowen-
stein, a successor of the victorious Frederick of the Palatinate,
played the broker in this unclean traffic . Even the rascality of
Paris was not slow to avail itself of the new opportunities ; many
of the greedy German princes, countrified in their simplicity, were
caught in the toils of a false agent of Talleyrand, until Bonaparte
himself took steps to put an end to the scandal.
All were drawn into this unwholesome activity, the good as
well as the bad, for nothing was to be expected of the Ratisbon
negotiations, and anyone in Paris who failed to look after his own
interests was remorselessly trodden under foot amid the throng.
Even the most valiant of the German petty princes, Charles
Frederick of Baden, must have his chaffering negotiator. Amid
the throng of the begging and offering smaller men, there stood with
self-conscious and patronising mien, the much-courted Prussian
envoy, Lucchesini, who believed himself able to outdo all others
in his cunning, and who failed to see how greatly Prussia was injur-
ing her repute by favouring an unsavoury game at chess which
recalled the Reichstag of Grodno and the shameful self-destruction
of the Polish nobility. This rivalry of dynastic greed destroyed
what still remained to the empire of loyalty, of faith, of duty, of
honour. Bonaparte rejoiced that there was no longer any moral
bond to hold the old German state together. Each court demanded
unashamedly what suited its own convenience ; hardly any attempt
was now made to offer compensation for actual loss as an excuse.
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
It soon became evident that the spiritual domains on the right
bank of the Rhine would not suffice to satisfy all these greedy
desires, and there was a general agreement that the imperial towns
should also form part of the spoil, as soon as the imperial towns
of the left bank had similarly been destroyed without compensa-
tion. Finally the great land-auction came to an end. The goods
were knocked down, sometimes to the highest bidder, sometimes
to the Prussian and Russian favourites, but for the most part to
those courts which Bonaparte had selected as props to his German
policy. When the negotiations were finished, he wrote openly
to the Margrave Charles Frederick, a near relative of the Czar,
that the House of Baden had now attained the rank " which is
demanded by its distinguished kinship and by the true interests of
France."
After the most essential matters had been arranged in Paris,
France and Russia appeared in Ratisbon as intermediaries. Bona-
parte permitted the czar an apparent co-operation, to satisfy his
avarice and to meet the wishes of Prussia. The mediators declared,
with good reason, that jealousy and opposition of interests in the
Reichstag made their intermediation essential. They disclosed
their plan of indemnification, and concluded masterfully that it was
then: will that this plan should be accepted without alteration. The
emperor offered a resistance even now, and did not yield until
Prussia and Bavaria had concluded a formal alliance with France,
and until a threatening note had been despatched from St. Peters-
burg ; but then the disinterested protector of the spiritual states
showed no hesitation in rounding-off his own hereditary dominion
by the bishoprics of Trent and Brixen. In the Diet of Deputa-
tion, the customary quarrels still continued for a time. The Russian
statesmen complained with disgust how tedious and wearisome was
this German disputatiousness, seeing that for every trifling change
in the ownership of lands a special courier must be sent to investi-
gate. But the die had been cast, and the more powerful princes
had already secured their booty.
On February 25, 1803, the Diet of Deputation terminated
its deliberations, and on April 27, by the last of the imperial
decrees, the annihilation of one hundred and twelve German states
was declared. Of the spiritual estates three only were left ; the two
Knightly Orders, these being spared because it was wished to leave
the Catholic nobility, so severely affected by the changes, a last
refuge for their sons ; and the Imperial Chancellor in Germania,
because Bonaparte recognised a useful tool for French designs in
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History of Germany
the unstable vanity of the Mainz Coadjutor, Dalberg. All the
imperial towns disappeared except the six largest. More than two
thousand square miles of territory, supporting over three million
inhabitants, were divided among the temporal princes. Prussia
received fivefold compensation for her losses on the left bank of
the Rhine ; Bavaria gained three hundred thousand heads ; Darm-
stadt was compensated eightfold, and Baden tenfold. Some, also,
of the foreign princely houses took part in the great spoliation,
such as Tuscany and Modena, cousins to Austria, and Nassau-
Orange, the prote'ge' of Prussia. Quite forgotten was the Frederi-
cian piinciple that Germany belonged to herself alone. To the
foreigner, central Europe seemed, as it had seemed in the six-
teenth century, a masterless mass, a place of spoil for the princes of
all nations. The Holy Empire was annihilated ; nothing but its
disgraced name still continued to exist for three distressing years.
Few among the great state-transformations of modern history
seem so detestable, so base, and so mean as this Princes' Revolution
of 1803. It was a triumph of hard and material self-seeking. Not
a glimmer of a bold idea, not a spark of noble passion illuminated
the colossal breach of public law. And yet the overthrow was a
great necessity. All that was buried was already dead ; all that
was disturbed was that upon which the history of three centuries
had already passed judgment. The ancient forms of the state
vanished in an instant, as if they had been swallowed up by the
earth, and never has anyone seriousry thought of reviving them.
The ridiculous falsehood of theocracy was at length done away
with. With the spiritual princes fell also the Holy Empire itself
and the claims of the Holy Roman emperor to world-dominion.
Even the ancient ally of the Hapsburg emperor, the Papal See,
would now recognise no more than the imperium Germanicum. The
Italian's fine sense of power recognised that the protectorate over
the Roman Church had now been transferred to France, and the
Pope wrote to his " beloved son " Bonaparte that Rome would
turn to him whenever help was needed. The Holy Empire became
transformed into a League of Princes, and it was with justice that
Talleyrand now spoke officially of the Federation Germanique.
This loose association of temporal princedoms was at first held
together solely by the name of Germany, and it seemed as if in the
near future a break up of the German community might be
expected, rather than its federative reconstruction. But with the
disappearance of the theocratic forms there had disappeared also
that spirit of rigid immobility which had hitherto held in thrall
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all the political energies of the nation. The new temporal Ger-
many was capable of movement, of development. If liberation
from foreign tutelage could once be effected, there might result
upon the soil of temporal territorialism the uprising of a national
unified state which would be less of a falsehood than had been the
Holy Empire.
With the effecting of secularisation there came an end to that
artificial distribution of votes which had hitherto given to Catholi-
cism an inequitable preponderance in the imperial assembly.
Henceforward the majority in the Reichstag was Protestant, like
the majority of the German nation outside Austria. In the electoral
council there appeared in place of Cologne and Treves, the new
electors of Salzburg, Wiirtemberg, Baden, and Hesse; in this
body there were six Protestant votes among ten. The still remain -
ing members among the imperial towns were all Protestant,
including Augsburg, where religious equality prevailed. In the
Council of Princes there remained fifty-three Protestant estates
beside twenty-nine Catholic estates. When, in accordance with
the imperial law, the new lords of the secularised lands claimed
the votes of the dispossessed estates, the last great dispute
of the Ratisbon assembly broke forth. The course of this struggle
manifested the great modification of influences and the radical
change in the old relationships of power in the empire. At one
time it had been necessary for the Protestants to protect them-
selves against the preponderant Catholic majority with the aid of
the Corpus evangelicorum ; now, in the name of the Catholics, the
emperor appealed to the principle of religious equality, and
demanded for his co-religionists a sufficient number of new votes
to establish equality in the council. But the contemporaries of
Kant had outgrown the hatreds of the religious wars. The great
majority of the Reichstag, and, above all, Prussia and Bavaria,
would not admit that the essence of religious equality was to be
found in equality of votes. It was openly said that the old
difference between Catholic and Protestant votes had lost its
meaning now that a rational system of tolerance prevailed in every
German state. The Emperor Francis, on the other hand, hoped
to re-establish the power of the Austrian party at all costs. In
opposition to the constitution, he employed for the last time the
ultimate right of the imperial majesty, imposing his veto, and the
dispute remained unsettled until the formal dissolution of the
empire. A partisan misuse of the rights of the crown for the advan-
tage of the House of Austria and of the Catholic party such was
217 P
History of Germany
the last act of imperial rule performed by the Hapsburg Lor-
rainers : a worthy conclusion to the long series of historical sins
of the Ferdinands and the Leopolds.
In the Roman camp there was unending complaint. With a
single blow the last theocracies of the Christian world, outside
the Pontifical State, had been destroyed, and the German clergy
lost its ecclesiastical wealth at the same time as its political power.
It was not only the goods of the spiritual lords who were immediates
of the empire that were subjected to secularisation, but the mediate
endowments and cloisters were, by the decision of the Imperial
Deputation, placed at the free disposal of the temporal lords. All
the world believed that this was the end of Romanism in the empire ;
no one had the least idea that secularisation would ultimately bring
as much gain as loss to the Papal See. The noble ecclesiastical
princes of the eighteenth century were for the most part practical
children of this world, slack in the performance of their ecclesias-
tical duties, and by their aristocratic class-feeling and by their
obligations as territorial suzerains were closely associated with the
national state. If only on account of neighbourly association, they
were unable completely to escape the spirit of toleration which filled
this people of ours devoted to religious equality ; they accepted the
principles of the Peace of Westphalia, which had been condemned
by the Pope ; and it was unwillingly that they bowed their stiff
necks beneath the feet of the Italian priest. At all times the idea
of a German national church found among them a few supporters,
and in Hontheim-Febronius a talented advocate. The result of
secularisation was to give the nobles a dislike for the service of the
Church. So far as is known, during the Napoleonic epoch, not a
single young nobleman of ancient lineage entered the priesthood.
The plebeian clergy which now came into existence was remote from
bourgeois society. It had a grudge against the new Germany on
account of the great spoliation of the Church ; it regarded the
Church as its only home ; and at a later date, when the Roman
designs for world-dominion were renewed, this clergy obeyed the
orders of the Pope with a blind zeal which was hardly less valuable
to the Roman curia than had been the territorial and princely power
of the opinionated prelates of the old regime.
The Catholic nobility suffered even more severely. By the
confiscation of seven hundred and twenty benefices it lost, not
merely a considerable proportion of its wealth, but also its whole
political authority. The last vestiges of an independent aristocracy
disappeared from the empire ; the days were over in which the
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power of the Westphalian counts could be esteemed equal to that
of two electors. It was the curse of these old stocks that they
lacked the consciousness of political duty. Like the Bourbon
court nobility, they had sought the good of their order in the
luxuries of an easy life, and they had never learned, in accordance
with the example of the old Prussian Junkerdom, to assimilate
themselves to modern monarchical forms, but withdrew in
rancour from the life of the nation. It was only to the Archducal
House of Austria that they would, in accordance with ancient
custom, devote the services of their sons. From the circles of this
Catholic nobility there came into existence an embittered opposi-
tion to the new temporal Germany. Passively influential, disturb-
ing the internal peace of the country even down to our own day,
this opposition has yet in the end, by its fruitless obstruction,
served merely to accentuate the democratic tendencies of our
recent history.
It was the mediatised imperial towns which most readily
adapted themselves to the new order of things. Here and there,
indeed, the obstinate pride of the honourable patricians came into
sharp conflict with the efficient arbitrariness of the bureaucracy ;
and many even of the younger generation, like Frederick List, for
instance, preserved throughout life the proud self-confidence of
the old imperial burghers. But the consciousness of hopeless
weakness made serious resistance everywhere impossible. In the
Reichstag hardly any disturbance was noticeable on the part
of the Third College, which at one time had been as powerful
as the First and Second Colleges together. The few imperial towns
which were still inclined temporarily to offer any resistance carried
no weight against the power of the princes ; indeed, by the deci-
sion of the Imperial Deputation, they were excluded from political
influence ; they could take no part in the discussions concerning
peace and war, and in the imperial war they were to enjoy an uncon-
ditional neutrality. The pacifist generation felt no annoyance at
this extraordinary decision. The shippers of Hamburg found an
old wish of their heart fulfilled, and one which honest Busch had
often expressed. Even the inland press gave cordial approval,
contending that such a wise favouring of commerce was in accord-
ance with the enlightenment of the day.
Thus it came to pass, as the outcome of the political struggles
that had continued in the empire for many hundreds of years, that
the princely authority emerged as sole conqueror. The hierarchical,
municipal, and aristocratic state-structures of ancient Germany
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History of Germany
had been destroyed except for a few vestiges. All that was not of
princely blood became absorbed into the mass of subjects ; the
gulf between princes and people, which had become ever greater
in the period of absolute monarchy, was now widened even more.
How powerful, too, appeared the influence of the estate of
princes upon our national life. Just as in former days the refor-
mation of the Church had found protection and salvation among
the territorial magnates, so now the political revolution was imposed
from above upon an inert and silent people. That which implanted
in our soil the fundamental principles of revolutionary France was
not the propoganda of the trans-Rhenish Republicans but the
dynastic policy of the German courts. This policy marched forward
with the same all-embracing recklessness that had characterised
the parties of the French Convention, inconsiderately destroying
all historical right in the name of public safety.
The Princes' Revolution was a severe defeat for Austria. The old
imperial party was destroyed, the imperial dignity became an empty
name ; and it seemed that it might be desirable to abandon even
this name, for the new council of electors was strongly inclined
to choose a simple archduke when the time for a new election
should arrive. It was true that the monarchy attained a notable
rounding-off in the south-east in compensation for the sacrifice of
its western provinces ; and the diplomats of the Hofburg con-
gratulated themselves upon having at length been delivered from a
dangerous and difficult situation. The courts of Munich and Stutt-
gart had no longer any reason to tremble before the Austrian lust
of conquest, as it seemed possible that friendly relations might
again be opened. But the military dominion over the German
south-west had been lost, and in reality Austria left the empire.
Her policy would have to pursue an entirely new course if she was
still to exercise any kind of influence upon Germany, for the means
of power emplo3^ed by the old emperorship had been annihilated.
Nor had the power of Prussia been enhanced by the decision
of the Imperial Deputation. It was certainly an advantage that
the Austrian party had disappeared, and that in the Reichstag there
had become established a working balance between the north and the
south. Hitherto, the states of the south a nd of the west, control-
ling a majority, had exercised a decisive influence, but now the
votes of North Germany had come into their own. None the less, the
prestige of Prussia in the empire had greatly diminished. Her policy,
devoid of energy, had everywhere attained to the precise opposite
of her good intentions. Instead of an increase in the German power
220
Revolution and Foreign Dominion
of resistance, there had resulted rather a confirmation of French
preponderance ; instead of a reconstruction of the imperial consti-
tution, there had rather been produced an absolute anarchy which
drifted towards utter dissolution. Even the new acquisitions of
territory seemed more brilliant than they really were. Prussia
had lost the dominions on the Lower Rhine, which were loyal, and
were of value at once to Prussian power and to Prussian civilisa-
tion, and had acquired in place of these, in addition to Hildesheim,
Erfurt, and a few other small imperial towns and ecclesiastical
foundations, the Miinsterland, which was the tower of strength of
the dissatisfied Catholic nobility. Here, for the first time upon
German soil, had the Prussian conqueror to encounter, not merely
a transient particularist hostility, but a profound and enduring
hatred, such as had been encountered in the Slav provinces. The
cumbersome new administration aroused little respect in this
refractory country ; three years were required before Prussia could
make up its mind to abolish the cathedral chapter, the centre of
all disaffection. The increase in territory did not bring with it
any increase in national revenue, for here, as formerly in Franconia
and in Poland, Prussia was over-considerate towards the taxable
capacity of its new subjects. Even the army received only the
trifling increase of about three regiments. In addition, by the new
treaties there had not even been acquired a defensible frontier ;
as the mocking phrsae ran in Berlin, it was merely the Prussian
archipelago of the west that had been enriched by a few new
islands. The king perceived very clearly that in so disturbed a
time the Westphalian provinces could not be maintained without
Hanover. It might soon become absolutely necessary to annex
the Guelph lands, and yet nothing was done to prepare the state
for this serious future possibility. The lax system of paternal
mildness and economy persisted as if the day of eternal peace had
already dawned.
Meanwhile the German south effected with one vigorous blow
what Prussia had effected by the work of two centuries. In
North Germany, the spiritual domains had for the most part
been united with the neighbouring temporal states during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; the resolution of the Imperial
Deputation gave to these states no more than a moderate enlarge-
ment, without altering their historical character. In the south-
west, on the other hand, the whole traditional territorial status
was completely overthrown ; even the Palatinate, the most cele-
brated of the High German territories, was divided up among its
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History of Germany
neighbours. In this respect the Princes' Revolution led not merely
to a change in territorial distribution but to a new construction of
states. The arbitrarily assembled fragments of land which now
received the names of Baden, Nassau, and Hesse-Darmstadt,
possessed no community of historical recollections, and even
in Bavaria and Wurtemberg the old hereditary territory of the
dynasty was far from being strong enough to fulfil with its spirit
the newly acquired areas. Thus it happened that our multiform
national life was enriched by a new contrast which has not com-
pletely disappeared even in our own day. The new Germany fell
into three sharply differentiated groups. First of all, came the
smaller North German states with their old feudal order and their
hereditary princely houses ; secondly, the new creations of Bona-
partism, the bureaucratic state-structures of High Germany, states
without a history ; in between these, was Prussia, whose con-
tinuous development had led to the overthrow of the old feudal
order without completing the abolition of feudal forms. Suddenly,
and with revolutionary roughness, the modern state now invaded
the south. An arrogant, vigorous, and busy bureaucracy, which
took Bonaparte's prefects as its example, tore down the double
eagles from the council-halls of the imperial towns, removed the
ancient coats of arms from the gates of the episcopal castles, threw
on to the dustheap the constitutions of the towns and of the
territories, and out of the chaos of multiform areas created
strongly-centralised administrative districts. In these unarmed
regions they created a young and not inconsiderable military power,
which could easily threaten Prussia ; they endeavoured by all the
means at their disposal to foster a new sentiment of Bavarian,
Wiirtemberger, and Nassauer nationality.
In its ultimate consequences, however, this great transforma-
tion redounded to the advantage, not of particularism, but of
national unity. It was a- long stride further upon the way which
our history had taken for the past three hundred years. Through-
out this period it had again and again happened that a pitiless
necessity had destroyed outworn petty states, and had compacted
these together to form larger areas ; and now, in a moment,
more than a hundred of such petty states were swept away. It
was inevitable that from such an experience the German people
should sooner or later come to recognise that even the new terri-
torial distribution was but a temporary one, that it was the destiny
of Germany to march unceasingly forward towards the annihilation
of particularism, towards the construction of the truly national
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state. The Princes' Revolution destroyed for ever that charm of
historical venerability which had made the Holy Empire seem so
invincible. The old law had been broken ; the new conditions
aroused respect nowhere, and they made the arbitrary unnatural-
ness of the subdivision of German forces plain to every healthy
mind. It seemed nonsensical that in Bamberg the Franconians
and in Memmingen the Swabians should henceforward have to call
themselves Bavarians, while in the valley of the Neckar the Palatiners
were to feel themselves to be men of Baden. The profound falsity
of this new and artificial particularism came at length, as a sense
of political self-consciousness awakened in the nation, to arouse a
feeling of passionate hatred in Germans of free and noble spirit,
and to lead them towards the conception of national unity. Even
among the unthinking masses, many detestable particularist pre-
judices disappeared, now that people had been forcibly shaken out
of the ancient tradition of their lives. Just as in the new chance-made
states of Italy, Lombardy and Romagnola now found themselves
side by side, so also in the middle states of Germany, burghers of
the imperial cities and inhabitants of electoral and episcopal terri-
tories were forcibly thrown together, and learnt to value as a loyal
fellow-countryman a previously detested and despised neighbour.
In Italy, as in Germany, the arbitrary force of foreign dominion
had uprooted the naive belief in the eternity of the existing
order, and had thus prepared the ground for new catastrophic
changes which Bonaparte himself had never foreseen.
With the revolution of 1803, there began for Germany that new
century which in France dated from fourteen years earlier. The
great nineteenth century was in its inception, the richest century
of modern history. It was the destiny of this century to reap the
harvest that had been sown in the epoch of the Reformation, to
transform and to realise in popular life, the bold ideas and fore-
shadowings of that thought-pregnant period. First in this new
century were the last traces of mediaeval civilisation to disappear
and the characteristics of modern civilisation to develop. The
freedom of belief, of thought, of economic work, which in the days
of Luther existed merely in name, was to become a secure possession
of western Europe. The work of Columbus was to be completed,
and the trans-Atlantic world was to be united with the old civilised
peoples for a vigorous community of world-historical labour. Even
the dream of the Huttens and the Machiavellis, the unity of the
two great nations of central Europe, was to find incorporation in
flesh and blood. Germany was entering this epoch of fulfilment
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History of Germany
when the theocratic state-structure of its middle age fell to pieces,
and when the political testament of the sixteenth century was thus
at length fulfilled.
Yet how many were the battles and the storms before all
the transformations of the new age could be completed ! At
first the German realm exhibited an aspect of hopeless confusion.
No seer could imagine that a glorious young life was ultimately
to arise out of these ruins. One thing alone was unmistakable
that a profound transformation was at hand. The Revolution
had done but half its work, for Bonaparte intended from the first
to keep German affairs in a flux. Since the fortunate issue of the
campaign of plunder, the ancient land-hunger of the German
estate of princes exceeded all bounds ; this rage seized the protege's
of Bonapartism like an epidemic of madness, and during the next
decade dominated the entire policy of the new middle states. In
this restless monarchical world, the imperial knights, counts, and
barons could no longer maintain themselves ; by the fall of their
colleagues on the left bank of the Rhine, and by the abolition of
the cathedral chapters, they had had the ground cut from under
their feet, and they themselves had been spared only because
French policy was not yet in a position to carry all its designs into
effect. The resolution of the Imperial Deputation had hardly
been subscribed, when several of the princes began to " mediatise "
the domains of the neighbouring imperial knights (for to " media-
tise " was the fashionable phrase). The emperor attempted at
Ratisbon to espouse the cause of his persecuted followers, but
Prussia once more took the side of the princes, and one imperial
knight after another was swallowed up by greedy neighbours.
The conduct of the new Reichstag was in no respect distin-
guished from that of the old. Jean Paul wittily compared this
body to a great polyp, whose shapeless form undergoes no altera-
tion however much it may have swallowed. With the ancient and
customary fruitless disputes, there was also transmitted into the
new time the old established imperial-patriotic phraseology. The
envoy of the Archducal Chancellor Dalberg, welcomed the repre-
sentatives of the new electors with the pompous words : ' The
ancient and honourable imperial structure, which seemed so near
to its complete overthrow, is to-day supported by four new main
pillars." But in reality no one shared this confidence. Dull,
vain, and heavy was the course of the proceedings. Not one of the
envoys ventured even to propose the question whether the old con-
stitution could still be maintained in an empire whose essential
224
Revolution and Foreign Dominion
basis had thus been altered. Everyone felt that in reality all
was at an end : looking on with folded arms they all recognised
that the hour was approaching when this misery of Ratisbon would
come to an end for ever.
Among the people all remained tranquil. Not a hand was
raised to resist the new authorities ; even the complaints regarding
the loss of the much-prized ancient liberty, sounded dull and
timid. The imperial-patriotic jurist, Gaspari, found even in his
distress a good-natured word of gratitude for the Imperial Deputa-
tion, because by its pensions this body " had at least brought
consolation to the unfortunate " ; and even the conservative
Barthold Niebuhr was unwilling to lament over the dead or to
contest the necessity of this breach of law. The few among the
cultured cosmopolitans of North Germany who still at times looked
down out of the heaven of ideas into the low world of political
life, greeted the triumph of the princely order as a victory of modern
civilisation ; they hoped, as Harl of Erlangen expressed it in his
work upon the latest state-changes in Germany, that the " beautiful
dawn of enlightenment would at length expel obscurity from the
spiritual lands." A sounder view than that of most of his con-
temporaries was taken by young Hegel concerning the situation
of the empire. He saw in this chaos " the juxtaposition of two
contradictions, that a state is at the same time to be and not to
be," and he found the ultimate cause of the trouble in the vaunted
German freedom. But his insight appears merely as the uncannily
clear vision of one who is hopelessly diseased ; no breath of passion
inspires his wise words ; for this reason, after scientifically dis-
cussing the problem, he allowed his essay to remain unpublished.
To the arrogance of the Berliners, which seemed to increase with the
increasing weakness of their state, it appeared that the Princes'
Revolution had not done enough for Prussia. In the carping
circles of the capital, where such men as Held and Buchholz were
the loudest talkers, the king was blamed because he had not grabbed
enough in the general scramble. " Why," it was asked, " did not
Prussia swallow all the North German territory, without paying
so many compliments, and without troubling itself about copy-
book morality and so-called legality ? " The great majority of the
nation was equally unconcerned with such frivolous boastings, as
with the quiet distresses of the dethroned, for the nation continued
to maintain its unshaken indifference.
One man alone, with moral earnestness and statesmanlike
insight, ventured to speak openly of the disgrace of the fatherland.
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History of Germany
When the Prince of Nassau endeavoured to deprive the ancient
imperial knightly house of Stein of its territorial suzerainty, the
Baron Karl von Stein sent an open letter to the petty despot,
referring him in pithy phrases to the judgment of his own conscience
and to the punishments that would be inflicted by an offended
Deity, and concluded : "If the great and beneficial aims of
independence and self-sufficiency of Germany are to be attained, the
petty states must be united with the two great monarchies upon
whose existence depends the endurance of the German name, and
may Providence allow me to live to see this fortunate event." It
was through this letter that the name of the president of the West-
phalian Chamber first became known outside the bounds of Prussia.
His proud spirit was admired, but the nation was not yet com-
petent to understand the ideas of the most valiant of its sons.
Yet this land of ours was not a Poland, and there still lived
in our people, which received so equably the blows of the stranger,
the joyful consciousness of a great destiny. The same decade
which witnessed the burial of the ancient German state brought to
the new poetry its purest successes. How remote now seemed
those days when Klopstock had, with a beating heart, seen the
German Muse start on her uncertain course. Schiller was singing
with quiet pride : " We may freely display the laurels that have
bloomed on the German Pindus ! " The Germans had long been
aware that they had enriched with new and independent ideals
the treasures of European culture that had been handed down to
them, and that they occupied a place in the great community of
civilised nations which no one else in the world could fill. It was
with enthusiasm that the youth of our nation spoke of German
profundity, of German idealism, of German universality. To look
freely forth over all the dividing limits of finite existence, to
regard nothing human as foreign, to traverse the realm of ideas
in living community with the best of all nations and all times
this was regarded as German, this was esteemed the special privilege
of German culture. The national pride of this idealist generation
was gratified with the idea that no other people was able to follow
to the uttermost the bold flight of German genius, to attain to the
freedom of our cosmopolitan sense.
In fact our classical literature bore the definite stamp of national
peculiarity. Madame de Stael herself admitted that those only
who, like herself, were half German by blood, could adequately
grasp of the wonderful peculiarity of German thought. All the
226
Revolution and Foreign Dominion
activity, all the passion of our youth became involved in these
literary struggles which had now for three generations enticed
German men into their charmed circle. An incomparable mass of
new ideas was springing up. As the talented Frenchwoman put
it, " an ingenuous foreigner might easily regard as a genius any
skilled German talker, who is merely echoing the ideas of others."
The insatiable impulse towards the communication of ideas, which
is characteristic of all spiritually productive epochs, now found vent
in an extraordinarily rich interchange of letters. Just as in former
days Hutten had joyfully communicated to his humanist friends
every new revelation which came to his mind, so now the invisible
Church of the German thinkers joined in happy mutual devotion.
In the law court, behind a pile of legal documents, the father of
Theodor Korner eagerly read the works of his friends at Weimar ;
and how often did Prince Louis Ferdinand, when in Westphalia
with his regiment, ride over early in the morning to Lemgo, after a
night spent in feasting, in order to talk with the Rector Reinert
about Sophocles and Homer. Every poem was an event, was dis-
cussed, dissected, admired, in detailed letters and criticisms. All
the unavoidable defects of literary epochs, tittle-tattle and party
spirit, sentimentality, paradox, and even self-deception, had free
play. Yet out of the very weakness of the time there spoke the
vital force and the joy of life of a talented and high-thinking
generation, to whom the world of ideas was the only reality. Un-
ashamedly William Humboldt praised the divine anarchy of Papal
Rome because it left thinkers undisturbed to experience and to
contemplate. What did he care for the Romans of flesh and
blood, as compared with those spiritual voices which spoke to him
from the marble statues of the Vatican ? In the same sense, Schiller
complains of the emptiness of his revolutionary age which stimulates
the spirit without giving to it any object upon which to work,
without, that is to say, any aesthetic image to contemplate.
One who does full justice to the profound earnestness of this
idealism, and to the abundance of intellectual energy which is
required to carry it through, will no longer find puzzling the political
incapacity of the epoch we are considering. The parsimony of
nature imposes upon the creative activity of nations, just as of
individuals, strict limits, and to every great human activity attaches
the evil of one-sidedness. It was impossible that a generation
characterised by such energy of intellectual creation should at the
same time possess the astute sense of worldly values, the resolute
unanimity, and the hard national hatred, which alone would have
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History of Germany
saved the country from the unparalleled dangers of the political
situation. Just as Luther, full of his ideas of God, had no glance
to spare for works of art in the Rome of Leo X, so the heroes of the
new German culture deliberately turned their gaze away from the
desolation they saw spreading over the German south-west, and
joined with Goethe in thanking destiny that they themselves were
safe in the impassive northern region which it was not so easy to
injure.
In the friendship between Schiller and Goethe, the human
amiability and the creative power of the new culture found their
most finished expression. From ancient days it had been a glory
of the Germans to claim that no other people had so often exhibited
the finest blossoms of friendship between men, the ungrudging and
faithful co-operation of great men for great ends ; and among the
numerous fine friendships of German history, this was the finest
of all. During ten fruitful years, these two friends never ceased
to provide new gifts for their nation, fulfilling Goethe's own saying
that genius is that human power which furnishes laws and rules
by its own spontaneous activity. And yet it was only a part of
their natures that they devoted to this abundant poietic activity,
for they were well aware that no one wins permanent fame who is
not himself greater than his works.
In the hearts of the youth of the time there was preserved,
beyond the possibility of oblivion, this unique picture of artistic
and human greatness : how these two, so long separated by destiny,
by the course of their education, and by the nature of their respec-
tive gifts, at length found one another, and thenceforward, during
the prime of their lives, stood firmly side by side in true German
fealty, working so harmoniously together that neither knew which
of them had written many of the individual epigrams in the Xenien,
and yet each of them fully conscious of his own worth, giving and
receiving in perfect freedom, and without the least inclination to
interfere with his friend's individuality. On the one side, the
favourite of fortune, brought up in luxury, liberally endowed
with rank and wealth, beauty and health ; on the other side, the
man sorely tried, who had for years contended with sickness and
privation, and who had yet remained so proud and free in spirit
that not a single line of his writings displays the common needs of
his everyday life. The one was unrestrainedly himself, living
for the moment only and indifferent to the future. He allowed
the golden fruits of his poetry to ripen at their leisure until
at the approved hour he could easily pluck them from the
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branch. To him, the German tongue revealed her most cherished
secrets, following like a diligent pupil every hint of the master.
From the depths of an ever fresh and clear imagination, from
the wide extent of an immeasurable knowledge, there flowed spon-
taneously into his mind an unsought stream of images and ideas.
In the mind of the other there glowed a nobler ambition. He
wished to conquer here and now ; he wished to transfigure in great
and beautiful lineaments the luminous thoughts which moved his
heart, to force the dull world to believe in them and to shake off
" all the rubbish of reality." He made full use of every hour, as
if he had a premonition of the near approach of death, he knew how
to compensate by untiring industry the deficiencies of his less many-
sided culture ; and he knew how, like a careful steward, to make
a secure and effective use of every word in his less wealthy verbal
treasury. He availed himself to the utmost of the force of his ardent
will, until he had attained to a finished and forcible conclusion ;
whereas Goethe, in his easy way, was so often content to leave his
work rough-hewn.
Goethe's genius was predominantly lyrical, and to him all
poetic activity had the fervour of a religious creed ; and yet in the
midst of the excitement of subjective sensibility, he never failed
to retain that " kindly restraint in love with the real " which he
so greatly esteemed as the true productive state of the born poet.
When he came to an end of his inner experiences he always pro-
duced in his readers the lofty illusion that he had himself
completely disappeared behind imaginary figures which had been
nourished upon the blood of his own heart. The dramatic genius
of Schiller trod more firmly in the objective world. Seeking and
choosing, he often reached out for materials which originally had
nothing in common with his own inner life ; but when he had
warmed these foreign figures with his formative hands, he breathed
upon them with the breath of his heroic nature, and furnished them
so directly and so powerfully with the lofty pathos of his ardent
sensibility, that his hearers always came to imagine that it was
Schiller's own voice they were hearing, and regarded him as a
subjective poet. In addition to the secure foothold of genius walk-
ing amid visions, both these poets were endowed with that clarity
of consciousness which was characteristic of the whole epoch, and
they loved to give to themselves and to others an account of the laws
of then- art. Neither of them considered that hi aesthetic culture
alone was to be found the true task of their epoch. One worked
as statesman, natural philosopher, and psychologist, the other as
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historian and philosopher, to render a many-sided culture more
profound and more luminous. Both felt at one with their nation.
They did not fail to recognise that their works would prove fruitful
on foreign soil, but they knew that it was to German life that they
owed all that was most characteristic in their activities and that they
could find an intimate and spontaneous understanding only where
German hearts were beating : "In the Fatherland write what
pleases thee ! There are the bonds of thy affection, there is thy
world ! "
It is, however, to the honour of German uprightness that
even in this age of aesthetic contemplation, Schiller stood higher
in the favour of the people than did his great friend. The average
man does not rise beyond the material stimulus of poetry, and for
this reason he cannot accept the one-sided moral estimate charac-
teristic of art. It was only richly endowed spirits that could really
understand the profound stream of the later poetry of Goethe.
Only to the experts in life was the inner significance of his figures
apparent ; only natures with insight were able amid his protean
transformations to recognise the figure of the genius who always
remained true to himself. Over the most highly cultured members
of the nation the life and works of Goethe gradually came to exer-
cise a quiet but irresistible power, which became ever greater as
the years passed. We owe it to Goethe that William Humboldt
was able to say that nowhere else was the true essence of
poetry so profoundly understood as in Germany. From The
Table Talk of Luther, the Germans had once learnt what it means
to live wholly in God ; how to sense the omnipotence and the love
of the Creator in every simple event of the twenty-four hours.
Now the new humanism incorporated itself in a powerful and
original human existence. From the life of Goethe, the happy
circle of those with insight learned how, to the spirit of the
artist, every experience becomes an image, how the freest culture
returns to Nature, how distinguished pride harmonises with cordial
simplicity and democratic love for mankind. As is the dramatist's
right. Schiller's influence was more in the direction of width ; to
him belonged the hearts of the enthusiastic youth of his time ;
his moral earnestness touched the conscience ; his joyful belief in
the nobility of mankind was as easily comprehensible to all as was
the sparkling beauty of his ever-perspicuous speech. It is he
whom we have to thank for the fact that the delight in the new
culture became diffused through the widest circles, in so far as it
was possible for this literature to become popular ; by the powerful
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rhetoric of his Jungfrau von Orleans even the courts of Berlin and
Dresden were shaken out of their essential prosiness. Goethe,
as a youth, had been inspired with enthusiasm for the Strasburg
cathedral, and had been the first among his contemporaries to gain
an insight into the life of mediaeval Germany ; it was a delight
to him to incorporate the archaic into the wealth of his speech and
to reanimate it with life. Schiller, on the other hand, was a modern
of the moderns, modern in sensibility and in speech, devoid of all
sentiment for German antiquity, and for this reason all the more
popular ; for the nation which had forgotten its own past demanded
novelty and plainness.
In Italy, Goethe enjoyed a second youth, living himself into
the classical world, so that he became at home in antiquity as had
no one since Winckelmann. Having assimilated the new views
which flowed into his mind in Italy, he now astonished the nation
by a series of poems which, in contrast with the obviousness and
vital warmth of his youthful writings, displayed to the Germans
a loftiness of style and a pregnant worth which had hitherto been
unknown. But he had to learn that the mass of his readers could
not follow his new style, and that they were unable to understand
either the tender sensuous beauty of his iphigenia, or the restrained
but profound passion of his Tasso. The Germans lost sight of the
poet now that he had buried himself " in his badger's earth,"
and year after year through research and contemplation became
the confidant of nature. He ventured upon the titanic under-
taking, proceeding step by step from the simplest to the highest
organisation, to gain an understanding of Nature as a whole, and
in that understanding to live at one with nature. And this
scientific cognition was at the same time artistic contemplation ;
he gave himself up to nature with all the energies of his soul, so
intimately and so lovingly that he could with justice speak of his
geological studies as his " friendship with the earth." Research
did not lead him astray, but strengthened in him the naive contem-
plative attitude of the poet who always seeks the centre of gravity
of the world in the heart of humanity. To his seeing gaze, the all
became alive ; and inasmuch as he recognised how the eternal
is active throughout all nature, he cleaved all the more joyfully
to the belief in the independent conscience, the sun of our moral
system. Since he had come to sense the God which is the intimate
motive energy of the world, the serene joy of his poet's spirit seemed
explicable through the consecration of a pious and holy conception :
" The joy of life streams out of all things, from the smallest as from
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the greatest star ; all advance and all struggle is eternal peace in
God our Lord ! "
Schiller, meanwhile, as he himself tells us, had in his poetic
activity become a completely new man, and by earnest philo-
sophical research had acquired the knowledge that through art
alone will our race attain to harmonious perfection, that in art alone
is man at once active and free, operating effectively upon externals
and at the same time altogether himself. Thus was the most
intimate secret of the age given bold enunciation. A thousand
delighted voices answered his rousing appeal, " from the narrow
and dull life of every day, flee to the refuge of the ideal," and
welcomed the happy message that the artist is the complete man,
that everything beautiful is good, and that that alone is good
which is beautiful. At the same time the poet passed a severe and
even a harsh judgment upon the shapelessness of his own youthful
writings, and attained to a mastery of the classical purity of form.
It was by Schiller that the work of Winckelmann was first com-
pleted ; only after Schiller had brilliantly glorified the Gods of
Greece, did the longing for the sublime simplicity of the antique,
the cult of the classical ideal, become a common possession of
cultured Germans. With wonderful speed did Schiller make him-
self at home in this world from which his youth had been so remote.
With the certainty of genius he discovered the motive energy of
ancient history, the last and highest thought of Hellenism :
" Even though the body be fallen into dust, the great name lives
on ! "
The two great poets having thus formed an alliance, the next
thing was to permeate the world with this new idealism, to make a
clean sweep of the spurious wisdom of prosy everyday morality,
of dull utilitarianism and fantastical obscurity, to drive them out
of the temple of the German Muses, to provide an open road for
all that was truly significant and creative, to convince mediocrity
that art offers no place for it. The Xenien-dispute subserved this
purpose. It was a party struggle in the grand style which, in spite
of all its roughness and animosity, was yet necessary to the develop-
ment of our national life ; the Germans were well aware that in
this there was being fought a question vital to their civilisation.
Inspired by his active-minded friend to fresh creative work, Goethe
continued to show himself in ever new manifestations. Intoxi-
cated with beauty, with the pagan frankness of a rose-crowned poet
of antiquity, he sang in Roman elegies the joys of the love- warmed
camp, and only on occasions when he was furnishing a majestic
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view of eternal Rome did he allow the reader to perceive that the
intellectual wealth of a spirit overlooking all the centuries was
hidden behind the cordial sensuality of these delightful verses.
Soon afterwards he stood once more in the midst of the German
present, describing with Homeric simplicity the healthy energy
of our middle classes, the straightforward greatness which dwells
amid the small things of the contented home; and exhorted our
people to remain true to themselves, in a time of stress to hold fast
to their own. The ardent and faithful love for the fatherland
which spoke from Hermann und Dorothea made but slight impres-
sion upon Goethe's contemporaries in their pride of culture. But
with delight did they recognise their own personalities in the figures
of Wilhelm Meister in these men without fatherland, without
family, without calling, free from all the bonds of the historical
present, and knowing only life itself, knowing only the passionate
impulse for human culture. In this Odyssey of culture Goethe held
up the mirror to his age, delineating with wonderful clearness all the
characteristics of that literary epoch, alike its weakness and its
fullness of life ; and he fulfilled the highest task of the romantic
poet, succeeding where none had succeeded before in showing how
life itself educates striving and erring men.
Schiller, meanwhile, less many-sided, ceaselessly making
the most of his natural gifts, acquired the mastery of the German
stage. To him was essential that vigorous dramatic stimulus
which Goethe was glad to keep at a distance. Brilliant pictures
of battle and victory passed through his dreams. The sound of
the trumpets, the rustle of the banners, and the clash of the swords,
followed him even to his death-bed. The passions of public life,
the struggles for the great purposes of mankind, for dominion and
for liberty, those mighty changes of destiny which decide the issues
of national suffering and national greatness, furnished the natural
soil for his dramatic genius. His smaller poems, too, deal, by
preference, with the beginnings of national life, displaying in mani-
fold applications how the sacred compulsion of the law binds
unpeaceful men together in the bonds of humanity. Never has
the intertwining of the simple life of mankind with the great con-
trolling powers of the state and of society been more beautifully
described than in the Lay of the Bell.
However prof oundly he might despise this "prosaic" age,
however proudly he might reject any attempt at writing poetry
with a purpose, nevertheless, this mind wholly directed towards
the historic world was yet fulfilled with an intense political passion,
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History of Germany
which was fully understood only by those of a later generation.
It was not by mere chance that he so long cherished the idea of cele-
brating in an epic the deeds of Frederick the Great. When the
Germans took up arms for the liberation of then: own land, the
glowing picture of the popular uprising in Schiller's Maid of
Orleans first became truly comprehensible. When under the
pressure of foreign dominion they once again came to realise them-
selves, they were first able to do full justice to the greatness of the
poet who in his two most powerful dramas had brought the history
of the fatherland so near to their understanding. In his poetry
the most deplorable period of our past regained so fresh and
joyful a life that even to-day the German finds himself almost more
at home in the camp of Wallenstein than among the soldiers of
Frederick. From the battles of the sturdy German peasants of
the Alps he composed a luminous picture of a great war of libera-
tion, incorporating in this poem everything that alone such a high
spirit as his could say concerning the eternal rights of humanity,
concerning the fortitude and unanimity of free peoples. In
political life, Wilhelm Tell was soon to become more significant than
had formerly been Klopstock's Ballads of the Bards. It was upon
this poem in especial that the rising generation nourished its inspira-
tion for liberty and fatherland. To the young enthusiasts, the
dramatically voiced exhortation, " Unite, unite, unite ! " seemed
a sacred legacy from the poet to his own people.
It is true that it was not possible for Schiller to give to the
Germans that national theatre for which ever since Lessing all our
dramatists had longed. This could be created by no single man.
Schiller endeavoured to attain to a national style, which should
consciously and independently unite in itself the genuine greatness
of the older drama ; the richness in figures, the activity of move-
ment, and the profound characterisation, of Shakespeare ; the
lyrical tendency of classical, and the strict composition of French
tragedy ; and which should thus express the character of our new
culture. But there was lacking to the poet a vigorous intercourse
with the people. It is only the loud acclamations of the audience
in a great town that can show the dramatist when he has found that
which is common to all, that which is truly popular. The handful
of dull petty bourgeois in the parterre of the theatre at Weimar
were not the people ; and the distinguished wits in the court boxes
gave the same applause, and even a more lively applause, to the
experiments of talented caprice as to what was simply great. What
was above all lacking in the Germans, as Goethe complains, was
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" a national culture, which should constrain the poet to adapt to
that culture the peculiarities of his genius." Giving bounteously,
but receiving very little, stood the dioscuri of Weimar over
against their people, which by them was first raised to a loftier
culture. It is for this reason that both of them, after many
attempts with trilogies and single dramas, with iambics and
couplets, with choruses and melodramatic interludes, did not after
all succeed in creating an artistic form for our drama, a form which
could be generally recognised as national. Just as the ceremonious
and exaggeratedly pathetic declamation of the Weimar actors was
not copied by the rest of Germany, so the dramatists themselves
worked arbitrarily and capriciously, each beginning anew, each
endeavouring by new arts and new artifices to outshine all the
others. Our stage offered a picture of anarchy, which yet displayed
all the charms of unrestrained freedom. No one was more pain-
fully aware than Goethe himself of the petty dispersal of German
life, and of the disastrous influence of this dispersal upon art. Of
his own Wilhelm Meister he said that he had been forced to choose,
" a most wretched kind of matter, comedians, country gentry and
such stuff," because German society had nothing better to offer
to the poet ; and in his Tasso, with a bitterness which must have
been the outcome of personal experience, he described the oppres-
sive narrowness of life at petty courts oppressive and narrow
despite all the refinement of its culture.
It was not only the natural tendency of the German spirit
(which finds more satisfaction in the depiction of character than
in the discovery of tense situations), that was responsible for the
rare appearance, in this blossoming time of German poetry, of that
humour which was brilliant enough in our merry sixteenth century.
Another, and indeed the chief, reason of this failure was the atrophy
of our public life. Comedy could not follow the bold advance of
tragedy. Comedy is rooted always in the present, and flourishes
only amongst people who possess an ingenuous belief in themselves,
who feel perfectly at home in their own skins ; it needs firmly
established national customs and ideas of decorous behaviour,
unless it is to occupy itself with arbitrarily chosen and commonplace
social struggles and interests, unless it is to become insipid. In
the slowly reviving German nation there were as yet but weak
beginnings of all this. The most popular comic dramatist of the
time, Kotzebue, whose talent in this direction was unquestionable,
repelled nobler natures not only by the inborn commonness of a
thoroughly superficial spirit, but even more by the pettiness of
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the circumstances he described, and by the insecurity of his moral
sentiment which oscillated between lamentable weakness and
smirking looseness. Even Jean Paul, der Einzige, who was then,
with high artistic aims, devoting himself to the service of the
comic Muse, was defeated by the desultory unreadiness of German
social life. His figures moved, now in the heavy and suffocating
atmosphere of the confined and poor-spirited life of the little
town, and now in the tenuous ether of an ideal freedom,
where man can no longer breathe. The enthusiasm of his warm-
hearted love of humanity fails, nevertheless, to furnish him with
any firm moral grasp ; he capriciously plays with the eternal laws
of the moral world, in order subsequently to luxuriate in glorified
sentimentality, and to leave his lovers " to dwell in the brief and
blessed elysium of the first kiss." His readers had no definite sense
of style, and consequently he could permit to his humour all possible
manifestations of caprice ; unashamedly he gives free rein to the
lack of form then natural to the German spirit, twisting language out
of its proper channels, and overloading it with inflated artificialities.
The moral dangers of the aesthetic view of the world-order
did not escape the keen sight of Goethe. He warned the youth of
his time that they should " know how to accompany the Muses,
but should not take the Muses for their leaders " ! Yet it was a
rich generation which so unrestrainedly followed its own impulses.
All the sluices of the German genius seemed to have been raised ;
our music attained its most classical development ; in philology,
F. A. Wolf, and in the fine arts, Asmus Karstens, were adventur-
ously breaking new ground. Even social charm, which is apt to
be lacking to German straightforwardness, was brilliantly developed
in the circles of the elect ; seldom have woman's love and woman's
naughtiness been described in a more delightful and seductive
manner than in the letters of Caroline Schelling. Nor can we fail
to rejoice in the contemplation of the noble prince who allowed
all these great men to work as they pleased, who understood them,
and who at the same time was himself so firm-hearted and so
stately. Unrestrainedly Charles Augustus shared in this young
and vigorous life, until at length he was taught, not by foreign
counsel but by personal experience, " gradually to impose limits
upon his free soul."
Men of the old French nobility, such as Talleyrand, Segur
and Ligne, were accustomed to maintain that no one could really
know what life was who had not had experience of the last days
of the old regime ; but with much better reason could the poets
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and thinkers of Germany say the like of their golden age. A
wonderful compactness of spiritual existence enabled each one to
effect the harmonious development of his gifts in every direction ;
and it merely corresponded to the actual circumstances of the
day if this fine sociability was more highly esteemed than the
dull life of the state, if again and again in the letters of Schiller
and of Goethe we find expression given to the ancient desire that
above all the state must not encroach upon " the freedom of the
individual." The attitude of this artistic world to the state was
brilliantly displayed by William Humboldt in his treatise upon the
limits to the effective power of the state. He contends that the
highest aim of life, the education of human beings to individuality
of energy and culture, can be attained only when the individual
moves freely amid manifold situations. For this reason the
state, which is an institute of compulsion, must confine itself to
securing life and property, but must leave the kingly human being
to act freely in all other respects. The state stands on a higher
level in proportion as the individuality of the persons who combine
to make it a state is higher, richer, and more independent. In this
way was the Kantian doctrine of the constitutional state in the
aesthetic sense carried a stage further ; the barren doctrine of
individualism based on natural right gained ground when it became
associated with the cult of the free personality. The admirers of
classical antiquity were preaching the flight from the state, the
precise opposite of Hellenic virtue.
All too soon was to come a terrible awakening from these
joyful dreams ; all too soon was the pride of culture to learn that
for noble peoples there is something even more terrible than
vulgarity disgrace. Nevertheless, the heroes of German poetry
are by no means exposed to the reproach of being accomplices
in the disgrace of their fatherland. The destruction of the old
German state had been determined ; the participation of our poets
in the political events of the time could not have sufficed to avert
this destiny, and could only have diverted them from the contem-
plation of the eternal. They cherished the most peculiar gift of
our nation, the sacred fire of idealism. It is to them in especial
that we owe it that there still continued to exist a Germany when
the German Empire had disappeared ; that even in the midst of
need and servitude the Germans could still continue to believe in
themselves, in the imperishability of the German essence. Out
of the culture of the free personality issued our political freedom
and the independence of the German state.
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In the poem which more proudly and more firmly than any
other voiced the contempt of the idealists for vulgar reality, in
Schiller's Reich der Schatten, we find the words :
"Incorporate the Godhead into your own wills,
Then will it descend from its lofty throne ! "
The poet left them unaltered, although Humboldt aptly remarked
that they failed to render satisfactorily the fundamental aesthetic
ideas of the poem. But Schiller knew what he was about. For
the culture which he and his friends were announcing was not
contemplative enjoyment but joyful activity. Surrender of the
whole personality to the service of the ideal did not weaken the
energy of the will, but strengthened it, fulfilling its disciples with
that steadfastness of soul which regards " everything which we
term destiny as simply a matter of indifference," as Gentz said of
Humboldt himself. This active humanism was neither soft, nor
yet hostile to the state ; but it had not yet grasped the nature
of the state, and needed the schooling of experience to develop
all the virtues of the citizen and of the hero. When Humboldt,
who was now preaching that people should turn their backs upon
the state, subsequently served his own state with the greatest
fidelity, he was not contradicting himself, but was simply marching
a few steps further along the same road : he had learned that the
nobility of free human culture cannot exist in an oppressed and
dishonoured people.
Meanwhile there began in literature a new tendency which
was to lead the Germans to a profounder understanding of the
state and of the fatherland. The first manifestations of the young
Romantic School seemed at the outset to bear witness to a moral
and artistic decline. Whereas the last two literary generations
had been extraordinarily rich in noble and lovable figures, now
the number of the empty-headed, the lascivious, and the over-
cultured, underwent an enormous increase. The Storm and Stress
Movement upon which the rising generation of poets plumed itself,
was no longer naive youthful passion, but already displayed the
characters of decadence. Simple delight in the beautiful was
replaced by a morbid ambition which wished at all costs to furnish
forth novelties, and Goethe says aptly of his successors, " they
seem to be like knights who, endeavouring to outshine their prede-
cessors, look for a guerdon outside the lists."
The poetic faculty of the romanticists fell far below their
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intentions. Even to contemporaries it was obvious that their
imaginations worked vigorously in the void. Their leaders, despite
stormy claims to genius, were rather finely-cultured connoisseurs
than creative artists ; their art was rather a deliberate experimen-
tation than an instinctive creation. Goethe's " living absorption
into reality " was to be replaced by irony (the deadly enemy of all
naivety) as the true poetic mood. The fine saying that " all noble
natures pay with what they themselves are," served to their arro-
gant sterility as an excuse for idleness. Arbitrary caprice confused
the boundaries of all artistic form, corrupted the chaste simplicity
of tragedy with operatic songs, introduced the onlookers as partici-
pators in dramatic action, brought upon the stage the incomprehen-
sible experiences of remote nations and times whereas the stage
should always remain contemporary in the best sense of the
word, and should represent nothing but what the audience can
sympathetically understand. As Schiller puts it, language had now
been so highly cultivated by great masters that it saved the writer
the trouble of philosophising and thinking for himself ; the younger
generation stretched its signification beyond the limits of the
possible, speaking of " sounding colours " and " aromatic tones."
The boundaries between poetry and prose were destroyed, poetry
taking the form of discussions about art, whilst criticism concerned
itself with fantastic pictures. Art was science, science was art ;
all the manifestations of the spiritual life of mankind, belief and
knowledge, prophecy and poetry, music and the fine arts, emerged
from the single ocean of poesy to return to it once again.
The result was that the romanticists, while they continually
spoke of popular poetry, attained to a fantastic and artificialised
view of the world-order which was comprehensible to none but a
few initiates, and to these comprehensible only in scant measure.
Frederick Schlegel's Lucinde furnishes a tragical testimony at
once to the lack of discipline and to the incapacity of this school.
Here we have an artificially heated imagination luxuriating in
" dithyrambs over the most beautiful situation," without ever
becoming sensuously warm and comprehensible, but resembling
the loquacious ramblings of a drunken pedant. Even philosophy
became infected by the presumptuousness and the obscurity of
romanticism. Hitherto it had escaped the cosmopolitan influences
which had invaded all the other branches of literature, but had
created for itself an independent world of ideas which had remained
as incomprehensible to the foreigner as was the terminology of
the German philosophers. The genius of our speech, whose
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tendency was in the direction of brilliant and verbose in-
denniteness, lent itself only too readily to the mystical bent
of the German nature ; and to these inclinations, romantic
enthusiasm was to prove altogether disastrous. When young
Schelling, inspired by the ideas of Goethe, determined to follow
nature as it is displayed in all that lives, it is true that with
astonishing boldness he opened to philosophic thought a completely
new domain ; but he utterly lacked that profound modesty which
Kant had never failed to display in his boldest speculations. The
inspiration of the " intellectual outlook," which in the domain of
the experimental sciences will no more than furnish brilliant
hypotheses, which always need verification by empirical proof, was
to serve him in place of observation and comparison. He imagined
that by arbitrary interpretations, drawn from the realms of his own
fancy, he could force from nature those secrets which nature will
reveal to none but those who search for them with a loving and
self-renouncing diligence. For the sober investigators there were
contemptuously reserved the spiritless handicrafts. Good society
displayed an enthusiasm for natural philosophy, or learned with
satisfaction from Gall's doctrine of the skull how easy it is for the
man of genius to solve the most obscure problems of psychology
and natural science. All the deplorable effects of over-education
began to manifest themselves. Intellectual pride capriciously
questioned the world-saving laws of the moral life, looking down
with contemptuous laughter upon Schiller, the moral pedant.
Weaker natures became the prey of an over-intellectual faint-
heartedness, learning to contemplate everything from all sides,
whilst losing sight of the contrasted view-points which the intellec-
tual wealth of the times offered to all, and losing the energy for
independent thought and will. Everyone who had given a
theoretical explanation of a historical phenomenon, and had
learned to explain its origin, imagined that he had also thereby
provided a justification for its existence.
None the less, the romantic poetry bore most valuable fruit
in our life, not so much through the works of art which it produced,
as in consequence of the stimulus it imparted to science through
the new and wider outlook it provided for the general feeling and
thought of the nation. It refined the sentiment of nature, and
rendered that sentiment more profound ; it awakened an under-
standing for the soul of the countryside, for the magical charm of
the lonely forests, of the rocky wildernesses, of the moss-grown
springs. The eighteenth century, like the ancients, had felt itself
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at home in the richly cultivated and fertile plain, but the new time
sought for the romantic stimulus of nature : our youths learned
to prize once more the blameless joys of the fresh and free life of
the wanderer, and our people, down into the lower strata of the
middle class, gradually became enriched by an abundance of new
outlooks upon life. The world of fairy tale, of the mysterious,
of chiaroscuro, was now for the first time fully opened to German
poetry. Its visionary figures were less vivid, less sharply defined,
less complete, than were those of the classical period of our art ;
and yet they rose in relief out of a distant background, seeming to
carry with them unending significance, and they were surrounded
with the atmosphere of the " moonlit night which bewitches our
senses with its charm." Primevally old and long forgotten sensa-
tions of the Teutonic mentality were once more revived.
The romanticists felt that the classical ideals had completely
failed to represent the innermost life of our people ; they sought
for new materials, overrunning, in the spirit of adventurous con-
quistadors, the whole world as far as the cradle of humanity in India,
and further yet to the nature-races in the forgotten corners of the
world. Wherever the all-engendering poetry had incorporated
itself in language, art, and religion, its manifestations were sought
with intention to wed them to the German genius. Just as of old
the Romans had placed in their Pantheon the images of the gods
of the subject races, so now should the new race that was victorious
in the realm of the spirit, that conceived itself as penetrating and
overlooking all other nations with its gaze, take to itself, in faithful
reproduction, the poetry of all lands. The fine sense of form and
the graceful feminine receptivity of A. W. Schlegel brought the
German translator's art to its finest blossom. One after another
there speedily appeared German versions of Shakespeare, Cervantes,
Calderon, and a number of other happy translations. The German
art of poetry proved itself adequate for all these strange tasks, and
there was even a danger of its succumbing to an over-elaborated
formalism which was contrary to its innermost nature ; for in all
epochs of their greatness the Teutons have ever prized content far
above form. Nevertheless, the bold voyages of discovery made by
the romanticists brought an invaluable and permanent gain. It
was in their circles that there first awoke the historical sense which
had always been lacking throughout the philosophical century.
A. W. Schlegal, in his lectures on the history of literature, following
the foreshadowings of Herder, developed the great idea that art is
rooted in the soil of nationality, that in every people their language,
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History of Germany
their religion, and their art can be understood only as a necessary
unfolding of the popular spirit. Thus was the foundation laid upon
which subsequently was to be erected the magnificent structure of
comparative philology, comparative literature, and the comparative
history of the arts.
Moreover, this free voyaging into great distances led the
romanticists home again. Since everywhere in history they were
searching for national characteristics and for the primitive
peculiarities of the peoples, they were ultimately led to ask
themselves the question, how this new German people had itself
come into existence. It occurred to them to look the antiquity
of their own fatherland once more in the face, and the new genera-
tion found the image a strange one, as to a grown man is apt to seem
strange his own likeness as a boy. With delighted shamefaced-
ness the Germans discovered how ludicrously little they knew of the
wealth of their own land. The much-abused, obscure night of the
Middle Ages became illuminated once more with a cheerful light. A
multicoloured turmoil of strange figures, of monks and minnesingers,
of saintly women and glorious champions, moved before their
enchanted gaze ; the Hohenstaufen emperors, whose name was
still known in Swabia among the common people, reappeared as
the knightly heroes of the nation. The dealers at the annual fairs,
who sold to humble readers the coarse-paper editions of old folk-
books, now sometimes ventured to offer his wares to men of learning.
Educated people gave attentive ear when the servant-maid was
telling the children fairy tales, and word was passed round among
initiates that in the myths of the ancient Teutonic heathendom
there still lay concealed an inexhaustible treasure of profound and
moving sentiment. Johannes Miiller gave for the first time a
detailed description of mediaeval life in his History of Switzerland,
which, despite its tortuous and artificial rhetoric, was none the
less profound and vivid, and brought forward an abundance of
new historical points of view. This, too, was the first book to refer
to the heroic greatness of the Nibelungenlied. In the year 1803
was published Tieck's collection of German minnesongs. Three
years later Schenkendorf issued his appeal against the utilitarian
barbarians who wished to lay hands on the old High-Master's castle
at Marienburg : the despised Gothic now came to its own, under
the name of the Old German architectural art.
Thus there began on all sides a re-entry into German life ; a
great transformation was manifesting itself, and before long this
transformation was accelerated by the pressure of the foreign yoke,
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
by the awakening of national hatred. Their aesthetic delight in
the antique and the popular, made the romanticists opponents of
the Revolution ; they detested the " clean-shaven aspect " of
modern equality before the law ; they detested the natural right
which would impose its bald rules upon the beautiful multiplicity
of historical phenomena ; they loathed the new world-empire which
threatened to destroy the abundance of national states and national
legal developments. There happened now for the first time in
history what could happen only in so thoroughly idealistic a nation,
that a movement which in its origin was purely aesthetic, rejuvenated
and transformed political views. For this generation, poetry was,
in actual fact the ocean into which all rivers flowed. If science,
faith, and art were to be understood as the necessary outcome of
the folk-spirit, no less certain was it that the law and the state owed
their origin to the same spirit. Sooner or later it was inevitable that
this necessary conclusion should be drawn, and that the idea of the
national state should be conquered for German science. The connec-
tion between Frederick Gentz and the romantic school rested upon
the feeling of a profound inner kinship, and it was directly from
the ideas and foreshadowings of the romanticists in the domain of
the philosophy of history that was subsequently derived the
historico-political doctrine of Niebuhr and Savigny.
No less weighty with consequences was the revival of religious
sentiment now preparing in the younger generation. Our classical
poetry held aloof from the life of the church. Although it was in
intimate harmony with the fundamental moral ideas of Protes-
tantism, it would not recognise any of the existing religions as
" religion." To Kant it seemed that religion was the recognition
of our duties as the laws of God, the acceptance of the divine
element in will ; his sublime strictness did not do full justice to the
sentiments of the believing heart, to the impulse towards elevation
and submission. It was this wonderful world of feeling, of myste-
rious yearning, which irresistibly drew the glances of the roman-
ticists. Whilst the most enthusiastic spirits among them were
becoming intoxicated with the sensuous beauty of the Catholic
cult, or were reaching out towards the discovery of a new aesthetic
world-religion, young Schleiermacher remained firmly planted upon
the soil of Protestantism. His spirit was too closely directed
towards the world of affairs for it to be possible for him like the
poets of Weimar, to forget reality for art ; and yet he was too
much of an artist to find satisfaction in the pitiless general rule
of the categorical imperative. To him the individual form of the
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general moral law was to be found in the personality which at once
freely develops its own individuality and at the same time consciously
harmonises itself to the great objective orderings of the state and
of society. In his lectures concerning religion, he opposes to the
cultured despisers of religion the warning, " religion hates soli-
tude : " and he showed how religion has its roots in feeling, how it
possesses a primitive life precedent to all intercourse and all doctrine,
a moral energy which is effective in all mankind. Only through
religion can the human being, immersed in the finite, make himself
at one with the infinite and become eternal in every moment.
With patriotic pride, which gave anticipations of the moods of later
years, he referred to the invincible might of the home of Protes-
tantism, " for Germany is still always here, and its invisible energy
is unweakened." Just as he appealed to a philosophical self-
sufficiency on behalf of the common religious life, so also did he wish
to enforce the value of the state. The state, he taught, is the finest
of all human works of art ; it first gave to the individual life in the
highest degree ; and for this reason the coercion exercised by the
state must never be felt as a burdensome restraint.
Similar views were reached by Fichte, that rigid and stiff-necked
thinker to whom the emotional wealth of Schleiermacher appeared
to be womanish weakness ; for the literary movement, which to us
who look back upon it to-day seems so simple and so necessary,
fulfilled itself only amid the continuous conflicts of self-confident
and strongly individual personalities. The philosophy of Fichte
was the last word of transcendental idealism. To the world of
experience, he flatly denied all reality. It was only because moral
activity demands a stage, that the spirit was forced to look out of
itself into an outer world, and to assume this world to be real. In
his political writings also, this venturesome man appeared to despise
all the limits of historical reality. He wished to realise perpetual
peace, the ideal of the age, by the complete abolition of international
trade, so that the " closed commercial states " should have inter-
course with one another only through the interchange of scientific
ideas ; and in his speeches upon the elements of the present age, he
proclaimed it as the privilege of the sun-like spirit to soar above
the crowd, and as a cosmopolitan to find its fatherland " where
light is and justice." None the less there speaks through these
lectures an active mind which reached out beyond the world of
theories. Every sentence preaches the strict service of duty :
there is only one virtue, to forget oneself ; and only one vice, to
think of oneself. Without knowing it, in his harsh admonitions,
244
Revolution and Foreign Dominion
directed against the slackness of his contemporaries, he was glori-
fying the manly virtues of Old Prussia. It was merely as a bold
suggestion that he expressed a thought in sharp contradiction with
his cosmopolitan dreams. In the end, he said, the state is the
vehicle of all civilisation, and is therefore justified in claiming all
the energies of the individual.
Thus within the bosom of the literary movement there was
preparing a new political tendency. One who cast even a casual
glance upon the distressing contradiction in German affairs, one
who saw in close juxtaposition so flourishing an intellectual, and
so miserable a political life, might well be reminded of the times of
Philip of Macedon, when upon the grave of Grecian freedom, upon
the battle-field of Chaeronaea, the Thebans erected the beautiful
lion monument, and Lycurgus adorned conquered Athens with
magnificent buildings. Just as Hellas had once stood insecurely
between Persia and Macedonia, so now Germany, pregnant with
thought, stood between Austria and France. Yet hi truth, the
position of affairs in Germany was by no means so hopeless ; the
melancholy proverb that the owl of Minerva begins her flight
only in the twilight, applied to Hellas but not to Germany. Our
classical literature was not the expiring flicker of an ancient civili-
sation, but the significant beginning of a new development. Not
among us was an Aristotle making a comprehensive survey of the
last data of civilisation on its way down to the grave ; for in
Germany a youthful generation, one which amid all its errors was
filled with the joy of life and with a sense of security in the future,
was astonishing the world with ever new discoveries. Never for a
moment among the intellectual leaders of the nation was there
any failure to believe in the great destiny of Germany. " Despite
their miserable constitution," writes A. W. Schlegel, " and despite
their defeats, the Germans remain the salvation of Europe." In
the same sense writes Novalis, that whilst other nations were
dissipating their energies in party struggles, or in the pursuit of
wealth, the Germans were building up, with all possible diligence, a
higher epoch of civilisation, and would hi course of time gain an
enormous preponderance over the other civilised nations. Even
the gloomy Holderlin, who was profoundly affected by the impo-
tence of the Germans, " poor in deed, though rich in thought/'
still exclaimed hi joyful prophecy :
" Shall there come as lightning comes from the clouds
Action out of thought ? Will the books soon come to life ? "
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History of Germany
Servile sentiment was ever far from this generation of poets
and thinkers. It is true that Germany sent her pilgrims to take
their place upon that great foreign stream which, during the Consu-
late and the first years of the Empire, was setting towards Paris
from all the ends of Europe. In Paris, as once of old in imperial
Rome, the finest artistic treasures of the world were now stored,
and once again, as in the days of Augustus, there was assembled
in a capital city a cosmopolitan public, whose critical judgment
determined which among many beautiful things was the most
beautiful. It was in the galleries of the Louvre that the over-
whelming greatness of Raphael was first recognised. The German
intellectuals found the petty towns of the homeland too narrow :
they hastened to the Seine to intoxicate themselves alike in the
noble and in the ignoble joys of the capital of the world. Yet
even in the dazzling splendour of their new quarters they did not
lose the sense of their own superiority ; they did not forget that
in the production of all these stolen glories the French themselves
had no share, but had first through the works of Laplace slowly
begun to rise out of barbarism towards civilisation. While
Frederick Schlegel was marvelling at the turtle-soup and the
naked actresses of the new Babylon, he wrote, " Paris has only one
fault, that there are so many French there " ; and his Dorothea
adds, " it seems almost incredible how stupid are the French."
More finely than these mocking cosmopolitans did Schiller voice
the national pride of his own nation of thinkers. He knew that
the victories of Kant and of Goethe were of greater significance
than the laurels of Marengo, that the Germans always had the
right to remind their boastful neighbours of the eternal good of
humanity, and he writes proudly and grandly concerning the
Pantheon of the Parisian plunderers :
"He alone possesses the Muses,
Who bears them warm in his bosom ;
To the Vandal, they are stone ! "
3. DISSOLUTION OF THE EMPIRE. THE WAR OF 1806
Matters had now arrived at such a juncture that the only
thing which could hold over-powerful France within bounds was
an alliance of the four Great Powers. Austria, however, had not
yet recovered from the blows received in the last war. Since the
spring of 1803, the young czar had been growing seriously alarmed
246
Revolution and Foreign Dominion
regarding the insatiability of the Napoleonic policy, with which
he had become sufficiently acquainted hi the German indemnity-
negotiations ; but in his boyish instability he came to no definite
decision. Prussia was anxiously endeavouring to maintain the
balance between the two dreaded colossi of the east and of the west,
to preserve the friendship of Russia without offending France.
It was only in the happy security of the insular kingdom of Britain
that people felt strong enough to look things in the face. The
Peace of Amiens which had concluded the war between the two
deadly enemies, soon proved no more than an unstable truce. In
Italy, hi Holland, in Switzerland, in Germany, everywhere the First
Consul was pressing arrogantly forward, regardless of all treaties.
But more serious than all this, in the eyes of commercial-minded
England, was the Injury to the economic interests of the island.
When France, Spain, Italy and Holland were closed by Bonaparte
to English trade, the nation felt that the very foundations of its
power were threatened. In full accord with the people, the court
of St. James's refused to evacuate Malta so long as Holland and
Switzerland were occupied by French troops. Meanwhile Bona-
parte had long ago determined to resume the war against the
inaccessible enemy. As early as March, 1803, long before the breach
between the two western powers, he sent his confidant, Duroc,
to Berlin, with the intimation that he found it necessary to take
possession of Hanover. Since he was unable to overcome the sea
power of England, he thought that by the occupation of Taranto
and of Hanover he would close to British trade the entrance to
Italy and the German North,
In this manner the ultimate and sole pride of Prussian policy,
the neutrality of North Germany, was put hi question. To avert
such a blow from the German Empire, Frederick had long ago
concluded the Treaty of Westminster, and had taken upon his
shoulders the dangerous burden of the Seven Years' War ; and this
at a time when the left bank of the Rhine was still German, and
when the power of France was far less to be dreaded. Even Count
Haugwitz urgently advised that the First Consul should be fore-
stalled by a resolute invasion of France. It is true that the situa-
tion was by no means simple. The perplexity of Prussia was a
source of manifest satisfaction in Vienna ; an appeal for help from
the Hanoverian Government was bluntly rejected, and there was
no longer any talk of the duties of the suzerain of the empire.
England did nothing to secure against attack the hereditary
dominion of its kings and the nursery of its best soldiers. In
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History of Germany
Hanover itself, the occupation which Prussia had two years earlier
undertaken for the advantage of the country, had produced a great
deal of ill-feeling ; instead of the friendship and neighbourly senti-
ment of the Frederician times, moodiness and mistrust were now
dominant. But what were such considerations when compared
with the pressing demands of honour and self-preservation ? The
last vestiges of Prussian prestige would be overthrown should
French troops enter without hindrance between the eastern
and the western provinces, should they press on to the very
walls of the principal fortress of Magdeburg. From subsequent
revelations of Napoleon it appears that a well-timed and
vigorous remonstrance on the part of the Berlin court would
not at this moment have brought about a war with France. The
First Consul was then wholly immersed in his ambitious plans for
the conquest of England. He had assembled his army on the coast
in the neighbourhood of Boulogne, and there in the strict military
school of a two years' training-camp had brought its technical
efficiency to perfection. The national hatred of the fifteenth
century was revived ; a fleet of transports, notably increased by
voluntary contributions, was ready to carry the army across to
the enemy's coasts. If he could only gain control of the channel
for twelve hours, the landing would be attempted, and, as Bona-
parte said in his letters, " then England would cease to exist." The
independence of Ireland and the destruction of the wealth of
Britain would for ever destroy the power of the island kingdom.
Lost in such dreams as these, it was impossible that Bonaparte
should now desire a breach with Prussia.
^> King Frederick William, faithful to the leading idea of his
foreign policy, did not wish to undertake this venture unless he knew
that his back was guarded by Russia. After having despatched
to Paris and London timid counsels in favour of peace, he demanded
of the czar whether Prussia could count upon the help of Russia.
In St. Petersburg, however, the blind Prussophobe sentiments of
the Hanoverian Junkerdom proved decisive. Count Minister, Anglo-
Hanoverian ambassador at the Russian court, shared with the
English high tories then: inextinguishable hatred against the
heirs of the Revolution, but he shared also the profound detestation
of the Hanoverian nobles for equality before the law, and for the
plain bourgeois military character of the Prussian State. In the
request of Prussia, he could see nothing but a trap, a hostile attack
upon the independence of Hanover. Upon the advice of Minister,
the czar Alexander answered his royal friend with a refusal ; and
248
Revolution and Foreign Dominion
since, in addition, England refused to modify its severe navigation
laws in favour of the Prussian flag, the result was that when, at
the eleventh hour, the Hanoverian Government spontaneously
appealed for help from Prussia, the answer was a rebuff.
In the midst of the peace of the empire, the army corps of
Mortier entered undisturbed into the imperial land of Hanover,
a land which in accordance with international law had nothing to
do with the war between England and France. The incapacity
of the old state authorities made them an easy prey for the
Bonapartist armies. The loyal people detested the French as a
hereditary foe, and had done so since the victories of Ferdinand of
Brunswick ; the Hanoverians were once again prepared to exercise
the ancient warrior spirit of the Lower Saxons in a conflict with
this never-resting Frenchman. But the cowardly nobles' govern-
ment in Havover ordered the troops to make no kind of disturbance ;
and without any serious attempt at resistance, by the Treaty of
Suhlingen they handed over the whole country to the foreign com-
mander. For the second time within fifty years, the brave
Hanoverian army was forced into capitulation by a dishonourable
policy. Nor did there on this occasion, as formerly upon the day
of Kloster-Zeven, ensue a saving intervention of the British Govern-
ment. England allowed the French to do as they liked. On June 4,
1803, the birthday of George III, the French troops entered the town
of Hanover. Mortier closed the Elbe and the Weser, and demanded
taxes from the Hansa towns. The occupation and exploitation of the
Hanoverian territory lasted for two years ; Bonaparte gave autograph
directions how the royal stud was to be sent to Paris, and how the
forests could best be used for the advantage of the French fleet.
Then a second and still more disgraceful capitulation led to the
disarming of the little army. With death in their hearts, and curs-
ing " the cowardly curs of the Government and the Diets," the
betrayed soldiers accepted their disgrace. Hundreds of them got
away singly on board English ships, and entered the German legion
of the king of England. Everyone in the country helped the
fugitives on their way ; the people held together as if in a great
conspiracy. The unhappy men who had capitulated at Suhlingen
formed the nucleus of those glorious regiments which subsequently
in Spain resumed the struggle against France, and proudly inscribed
upon their banners the word Peninsula. There thus persisted in
the German nation its old stout-heartedness ; all that was lacking
was the great will which should know how to make a worthy use
of such magnificent energies.
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History of Germany
When it was too late Alexander recognised that a mistake had
been made. The cabinet of Berlin engaged in vain negotiations
to induce the First Consul to evacuate the Hanoverian territory.
The fine illusions which the credulous Lombard brought back from
Brussels, after a conversation with Bonaparte, were soon dissipated.
Before long it was learnt that France demanded an alliance with
Prussia without offering any quid pro quo. The king felt that
he could not make himself responsible for such a step, and turned
once more to Russia to ask help in saving the state from an intoler-
able oppression. It was thanks to him that on May 4, 1804,
Prussia and Russia undertook to furnish reciprocal assistance in
case Bonaparte should seize any other of the imperial lands. At
the same time negotiating with France, they received an indefinite
assurance that French troops should not pass beyond the Hano-
verian borders, and guarantees of respect were given for North
German neutrality. In Berlin there was still no lack of good plans
and good intentions. Enquiries were made in Weimar as to the
possibility of a renewal of the League of Princes, and Hardenberg,
who, since April, 1804, had been a member of the Ministry, was
already giving expression to the idea which subsequently, in the
latter half of his public life, came to form the fundamental element
of his German policy the plan to combine the whole of Germany
into a federation of states under the joint leadership of Austria
and Prussia. But all these good plans crumbled to pieces in face
of the pacifist anxiety of the cabinet. The statesmen of Prussia
flattered themselves with the illusion which was the outcome of
the experiences of the last fifteen years, the illusion that the state
could secure a gain by peaceful negotiations, could thereby
strengthen its untenable position. Even the able new Minister of
Foreign Affairs was still far from recognising that salvation could
come only from a European alliance against France, and he hoped
to secure an enlargement of the Prussian domain through friend-
ship with France.
Meanwhile the Holy Empire was forced to drain the goblet
of shame to the dregs. When Bonaparte had the Due d'Enghien
arrested and killed on Badenese territory, it was only the foreign
powers of Russia, Sweden, and England that ventured in Ratisbon
to demand satisfaction for this criminal disregard of the peace of
the empire. Baden, acting on the orders of Napoleon, earnestly
begged that the distressing matter should not be followed up,
while the other envoys, taking their holidays before the proper
time, sought to avoid further discussion by flight. In May, 1804,
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
the Napoleonic Empire was founded, and it was obvious that the
new crown, which was assumed by this usurper with the blessing
of the Pope, was the diadem of the Caesars and of the Carlovingians.
The Roman Empire passed from the Hapsburg-Lorrainers to the
Napoleons. Unashamedly the man of might already spoke of the
Empire of the West ; he revived all the ancient Roman recollec-
tions which had been preserved in the mingled civilisation of France.
The eagles of imperial Rome waved in the field before his legions.
Soon he was using threats in his letters, in view of the possibility
that Austria or Russia should dream of being so foolish as to raise
the standard of revolt.
In vain did Gentz assure the court of Vienna that the recogni-
tion of this crown would serve merely to incite to new excesses
the insatiable man who had become great only through the pettiness
of his slaves. The talented advocate of the old comity of states
found ready to his hand the orphic formula which was subsequently
to prove the guiding principle of the courts in their contest with
Bonapartism. It was necessary, he said, to maintain historic
rights against the right of revolt, against the idea of popular
sovereignty. The outwearied Austrian policy remained quite
unreceptive for such ideas. The legal wearers of the crown of
Charlemagne had long taken a dislike to the burden of that crown,
more especially since the House of Lorraine could no longer count
securely upon the votes of the electors. The emperor Francis
therefore seized the opportunity of the establishment of Napoleon
on the throne, to secure the high rank of his own house for all time
to come. With the approval of Napoleon he assumed the style of
Emperor of Austria, and the usurper received in return the recognition
of the ancient imperial house. In this manner was the empire of
Austria, which had in reality existed since the days of Leopold I,
formally established ; the domestic policy of the Hapsburg-
Lorrainers, which for three centuries had concerned itself solely
with the preservation of the hereditary dominions of the house,
attained to its natural goal. The head of the House of Hapsburg
continued to hold the title of Roman Emperor, but it was impossible
that this " bizarre duplex emperorship," as Talleyrand mockingly
called it, could be permanently maintained. The ancient and sacred
name, now deprived of all meaning, must sooner or later disappear ;
the power of the Carlovingian imperial crown was henceforward
vested in Napoleon.
In Berlin, the Bonapartist empire was greeted as a new
guarantee for the bourgeois ordering of France, and it soon
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History of Germany
gained recognition; but Frederick William's modest good sense
would hear nothing of the North German imperial crown, which
the diplomatists of Napoleon offered him in dubious terms.
The smaller estates of the empire, good and bad alike, Baden
and Hesse Rothenburg, Fiirstenberg and Leiningen, Bremen and
Augsburg, sent humble congratulations to the crowned plebeian,
in terms whose Byzantine abasement outdid even the flatteries of
the French. They described themselves as His Majesty's most
submissive and obedient of servants, they congratulated the
protector of the German constitution, the hero and the peace-
bringer, towards whose brilliant and benevolent genius the whole
Continent was looking in dumb astonishment ; they described in
moving terms the joy with which all German hearts were inspired
at the aspect of this new Caesar ,who was so like their first emperor,
Charles ; thanked him most cordially for the benefits they had
received in the German indemnity-negotiations ; and commended
themselves, in conclusion, to his kindly consideration in the event
of a new distribution of lands 1 .
To fill the measure of German degradation, in the autumn of
1804 Napoleon made a tour through the newly acquired Rhenish
territories. In the ancient imperial town of Aix-la-Chapelle, the
ambassador of the Emperor Francis presented his new credentials ;
in all the towns of the Rhine the prince of peace was received by
the people with loud rejoicings. He established his court at Mainz,
in the same halls where twelve years earlier the ancient empire had
celebrated its last festivals. The princes of the south and of the
west assembled in haste to pay homage to the successor of Charle-
magne. Everything suggested memories of Carlovingian times ;
there were already plans on foot for a second Rhenish league. But
in a lonely room, the eloquent old Charles Frederick of Baden fell
sobbing into the arms of the Chancellor Dalberg, bewailing the
destruction of his fatherland. What had this stranger in common
with the old royal peasant of the Germans, who in the night blessed
the trellises of the Rhenish vine-growers ? What did he know of
that ancient magic ring which had formerly drawn the German
Charles to the German River ? A severe and mistrustful foreign
dominion overshadowed Germany even before its princes had
formally submitted themselves to the Imperator. Napoleon had
his spies throughout the empire : " Ten spies," he wrote, " are
1 1 have published these letters in the twenty-ninth volume of the Preussischt
Jahrbucher, 1872, pp. 103 et seq.
252
Revolution and Foreign Dominion
hardly enough for such a town as Hamburg." No one was safe
from the claws of his police. The English agent, Rumbold, arrested
in Hamburg by the French, was, indeed, set at liberty upon the
demand of the king of Prussia, but the confidants of Napoleon were
well aware that he would treasure up this reverse against the
Hohenzollerns.
Whilst the German powers were recognising the new imperial
crown, there prevailed at the court of St. Petersburg a lively and
warlike mood. Since the murder of the Due d'Enghien, the young
czar had completely broken with France ; he saw that Napoleon
wanted a new continental war, began negotiations with Vienna and
London, and gave himself up once more to the enthusiastic dreams
of a great war of popular liberation which he was to resume eight
years later. He wished to strike a blow for the freedom of Europe,
fighting not France, but the person of the usurper ; he wished to
gratify the restored ancient states by liberal constitutions, and to
unite a peaceful Europe in a permanent holy league of the peoples.
After long hesitation, Austria advanced a step to meet Alexander's
urgent demands, and in November, 1804, agreed upon a defensive
alliance with Russia in the event of a further attack of Napoleon
upon Italy.
If Prussian policy truly understood the signs of the times,
it was necessary that the warlike zeal of Alexander should be at
once utilised and bridled. It was not by an untimely war that
the peace of Europe could be saved, but only by a carefully
prepared and timely armed movement of the three great powers
of the east. Napoleon's thoughts were still chiefly concerned
with his armee navale, and upon his plans for an invasion of
England. He burned with desire " to take vengeance for six
centuries of injury and insult ; if only this greatest of aims can be
achieved, all else will follow of itself." It was with deliberate
intent that in the summer of 1805, he travelled for some time in
Italy, in order to withdraw the eyes of the world from the coasts
of the Channel ; and then suddenly appeared once more in
Boulogne, " to complete the great event before which all Europe
trembles." But in accordance with his usual manner he continued
to hold two doors open. The army of Boulogne could also be
utilised for a sudden attack upon Austria ; and the more plainly
there became manifest the enormous difficulties of landing in
England, the more vigorously did Napoleon come to occupy him-
self with plans for a new continental war.
It seemed prudent to await the probable miscarriage of an
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attempt at an English invasion, to offer the threatening opponent
no excuse for an attack, and meanwhile to prepare as quietly as
possible the armaments required for a new war of coalition, even
though the army and finances of Austria were in so pitiful a condi-
tion that the most notable man in the imperial army, the Archduke
Charles, urgently advocated peace. A reconciliation between the
courts of Berlin and Vienna seemed no longer impossible. The
Archduke John, and the patriotic circle which surrounded him,
had long advocated the view that nothing could be done without
the aid of Prussia. Even Gentz, who became more and more
embittered in his hatred for the Revolution, and who was already
referring all the sins of modern history to Protestantism, still
remained statesman enough to urge an understanding with Prussia.
However profound the mistrust of the northern rival, it was impos-
sible for the Hofburg not to recognise how indispensable was the aid
of Prussian arms ; in the course of the secret negotiations of 1805,
Austria seriously proposed to Berlin a reconstruction of the German
constitution, so that the north should come under the dominion
of Prussia, while the south should remain under Austrian suzerainty.
But at the Prussian court there was still dominant the paternal
wish for assured tranquillity ; it was hoped that peace could be
maintained on the Continent, and that if this were impossible, the
neutrality of North Germany might at least be secured. Even
Hardenberg still cherished optimistic dreams ; he considered that
the power of France was generally overestimated, and he wished
to keep the hands of Prussia free, so that, should the circumstances
demand it, by an alliance with France the strengthening of the
monarchy and, above all, the annexation of Hanover, might be
effected. It was through Hardenberg's influence that Prussia
returned no satisfactory answer to the demands of the two imperial
courts.
Thus it happened that the young czar, controlled by no
will superior to his own, was left to the fancies of his restless
imagination. The great statesman who for ten years had almost
uninterruptedly been conducting the obstinate struggle of England
against France, lacked, like all the British diplomats, a thorough
understanding of continental conditions. Inconsiderately, William
Pitt shared the confused plans of Alexander ; already in April,
1805, a secret treaty of war between Russia and England was signed.
Meanwhile, Napoleon assumed the royal crown of Italy, and wrote
to the czar, as if in defiance, that only the wish of the Italian nation
compelled him to make this sacrifice of his greatness. Then the
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Republic of Liguria was annexed to the empire, and therewith even
hesitating Austria was forced to join the Third Coalition. The
allied courts were occupied in far-reaching plans. The boundaries
of France were to be pushed back to the Rhine and to the Moselle ;
complete independence were to be regained for Germany, Holland,
and Switzerland ; the crowns of France and Italy were to be for
ever separated. It was hoped, altogether in the sense of the ancient
Anglo-Dutch Barrier Treaty, to control the grasping power of the
French state by strengthening Holland, Piedmont, and Switzer-
land. If Prussia should join the coalition, she was to receive
Fulda in Orange-Nassau, and the Lower Rhineland, from the Moselle
down to the Netherland frontier. A general congress was to decide
the new territorial distribution when victory had been secured ;
it was hoped that even the dethronement of the Corsican might be
effected. But the slow and weak preparation of armaments was
in crying disproportion with these bold resolves.
Among the numerous failures of the impatient and impetuous
Russian policy, there was none which must be so severely atoned
as the arrogant contempt for Prussia. The league of friendship
concluded at Memel was now destroyed by the Polish plans of the
czar, which long continued to threaten the good understanding
between the two neighbouring powers. Educated in the views of
the fashionable enlightenment, Alexander had from the first, like
his tutor Laharpe, regarded the partition of Poland from the out-
look of the French philosopher. In the terrible catastrophe he saw,
not an inexorable historical necessity, but simply a deplorable deed
of violence, and one which justified all the horrors of the Revolu-
tion. The thought that this bloodstained heritage was one he was
forced to receive at the hands of his grandmother, was a heavy
burden to his feeble spirit. In such a mood as this, when he was
still no more than grand duke, he made the acquaintance of Prince
Adam Czartoryski, the son of that old prince who had been hailed
by a party of the Polish nobles as King Adam I. To the son
of the czar, the versatile Pole was irresistible ; he was talented,
highly cultured, older in years and experience than the grand duke,
a master in the arts of Sarmatian flattery and subtleness. To
strangers he seemed to resemble a knight-errant seeking his lost
fatherland, and to be illumined and ennobled by a flavour of
patriotic sadness. For many years the two friends were engaged
in secret plans for the atonement of Catherine's misdeeds and for
the restoration of Poland. In the mind of Alexander the calcula-
tion was coloured by the feeling that his philanthropic intentions
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History of Germany
coincided precisely with his personal advantage ; if he dreamed
of the liberation of Poland, he saw the crown of the Jagellons upon
his own head.
Czartoryski pursued his Sarmatian plans with a vigour which
to every Russian must have seemed equivalent to high treason, and
misused his position as curator of the University of Vilna on behalf
of a Polish-Catholic culture, and for the encouragement of a deadly
hatred of the Russians. Now, when the conduct of foreign
affairs was entrusted to him, he hailed the War of the Coalition as
a welcome means for forcing Prussia over to Napoleon's side and
then robbing the detested neighbour state of its Polish provinces.
It was known that the Polish patriots continued to look hopefully
towards their old ally France. For many years a Polish legion had
fought under the tricolour ; Napoleon had already realised how this
unhappy people might be utilised as a weapon against the eastern
powers. For this reason, Czartoryski advised that the czar should
forestall the Frenchman, and himself proclaim the freedom of
Poland. To Polish levity it seemed a favourable opportunity
for simultaneously arranging for a war against Prussia ; then
Austria might secure, in Silesia and Bavaria, indemnity for her
Galician possessions. The czar had not yet been completely won
over to these nebulous plans, but the clever Pole had moved him
to this extent, that his imperial friend, quite recklessly, was willing
to side against Prussia. The ardent friendship of Memel seemed
forgotten ; the negotiations in Berlin were conducted on the Russian
side with insufferable arrogance, as if there was a deliberate inten-
tion to drive Prussia out of the coalition. Since King Frederick
William continued steadfastly to observe neutrality, Alexander
had determined that he would lead the Russian army into Austria
through Prussian territory, even against the king's will.
Meanwhile the success of the Napoleonic designs against
England became ever more questionable ; the elaborate plan to
lure Nelson's fleet away to the West Indies and meanwhile to sweep
the Channel, was defeated by the watchfulness of the British
naval hero. Napoleon was already weighing the question whether
it was not desirable, if not to abandon the whole undertaking
(over five years later Arthur Wellesley still had good reason to fear
a new attempt at invasion), yet to postpone the matter to a more
favourable opportunity. In such a situation, nothing could be
more welcome to the Imperator than the news of the military
preparations of the Coalition. Eagerly he took up the challenge
which his opponents had thrown down, and was delighted at the
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prospect of driving out of the German Empire " this skeleton
Francis II who has been placed upon the throne by the
service of his ancestors " ; and he said, " Germany will see more
soldiers than ever before ! " Whilst the grande armee hastened
unnoticed and in wonderful order from Boulogne to the Rhine,
the theatre of war on the Upper Danube was carefully surveyed
by French spies, and at the same time the most brilliant of
the Napoleonic campaigns was prepared by a prudent diplomatic
activity.
There was no reason to fear opposition from the Holy Empire.
The Reichstag of Ratisbon was at the moment profoundly immersed
in important negotiations concerning a petty question of
communal pasture-lands, and in this matter worthily occupied the
brief respite which was still allowed. The Imperator now addressed
his old proteges, the courts of the South German Middle States,
speaking as protector of dynastic particularism. He was coming
to rescue German liberty, and never again should German princes
be treated as subjects of the German Emperor. Upon Napoleon's
orders, the elector Max Joseph of Bavaria put off the Austrian
negotiators, who were masterfully and threateningly demanding
his adhesion to the Coalition, by hypocritical peace-declarations.
The German prince gave his sacred word of honour that his troops
should not undertake any military operations ; he begged, in
desperate paternal anxiety, that a little patience should be granted,
because his son, who was travelling in France, would be exposed
to the revenge of the Corsican ; and he then hastened with his army,
from the betrayed Austrians, to join the French. The Bavarian
people paid no heed to the infamous conduct of the court. The old
tribal hatred for the empire, the old and justified mistrust of the
greed of the Hofburg, reawakened. With rejoicing, the brave
little army responded to the appeal of the Imperator, who said,
" You are fighting for the first goods of the nation, for independence
and political existence." Baden and Darmstadt joined the move-
ment, and, after some hesitation, Wurtemberg also ; all four of the
Middle States, which Napoleon was already speaking of as " the
pillars of my future German federation," joined his camp.
He hoped to gain over Prussia also by deliberate deception.
He offered Hanover to Prussia, if Prussia in return would cede
Cleves on the right bank of the Rhine with Wesel, and would
join the war against the Coalition. Thus the Prussian monarchy
was to break with Austria and Russia, was to evacuate her last
position on the Rhine, was to allow herself to be pushed back
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towards the east, was to surrender Italy, Switzerland, and Holland
to the conqueror of the world. Napoleon expressly retained in his
own hands the free disposal of these countries ; he saw that the time
was approaching when the Dutch would weary of their isolation,
and would demand union with France. And for all these sacrifices
nothing was offered to the king beyond that Hanover which,
acquired under such conditions, could be maintained as a possession
only by a long war against England. With irresponsible levity,
Hardenberg yielded to the French persuasions and urgently advised
that the French terms should be accepted. All that was wrong in
his view was that the price was not high enough, and he hoped with
the help of Napoleon to gain Bohemia and Saxony in addition to
Hanover. It was only the sober good sense of the king which
preserved the state from a disastrous step, one which threatened
for ever to destroy the possibility of an understanding with the
eastern powers, to prevent a common uprising against the
Napoleonic empire of the world. Frederick William rejected the
French offer of alliance, but he was soon to learn the truth of the
words of the Great Elector that " for this state, neutrality is the most
thankless of all political systems." For whilst Napoleon was
endeavouring by new negotiations to secure neutrality on terms
that would be advantageous to France, Prussia was simultaneously
threatened from the east. The czar Alexander announced in open
plain terms that his troops would march through Prussia. The
king did what his honour demanded, put a large proportion of his
army upon a war footing, and assembled his troops on the Warthe.
The czar was astonished and alarmed at the breach of the peace,
to the despair of Czartoryski ; and his foolish conduct had as its
only consequence that the junction of his army with his Austrian
allies, was more and more delayed.
In this untenable situation, out of accord with France, in a
state of tension with Russia approximating to open hostility, with
anger and mistrust arising on all sides, the Prussian court contem-
plated the outbreak of this war of Titans, as the cowardly Lombard
was accustomed to describe it in his anxiety of soul. With crushing
blows, Napoleon overthrew the Austrian army on the Upper
Danube before the Russians arrived on the scene. The world learnt
for the first time what it signified for the military power of France
to be reinforced by the warlike energy of the Rhineland and of the
German south. The glory of the great day of Trafalgar, at which
Napoleon's fleet was annihilated, almost vanished before the
terrible news which came from High Germany. It was related
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how individual sections of the Austrian army had been defeated
in a series of brilliant victories ; how the main body of the Austrians
under Mack had been forced to a disgraceful capitulation at Ulm ;
how the frenzy of despair had seized the imperial troops, how
everywhere amongst the army and the officials there were signs of
panic, weakness, and cowardice, all the sins of a profoundly corrupted
state system, how the grande armee had at length pressed forward
upon its irresistible march towards the Austrian capital.
But fortunately for the Allies, at the very beginning of the
campaign, the victor had permitted himself a deed of arrogance,
which, rightly utilised, might have given another turning to the
hopeless struggle of the Coalition, and which necessarily put an
end to the untenable neutrality of Prussia. In order to bring Berna-
dotte's army-corps to Ulm at the proper time, Napoleon did unre-
flectingly what the czar was merely threatening to do, and sent his
troops into Franconia, across neutral Prussian territory. To
Prussia, he thought, he could do anything he liked, for, as he had
written at an earlier date, " Prussia has sunk to the level of a
power of the second rank." But at this news the anger of the king
flamed up, and his Hohenzollern blood began to boil. He pro-
claimed his rights in a courageous Declaration, broke off all his
agreements with Napoleon, permitted the Russians to pass through
Silesia, ordered the mobilisation of the whole army ; to his level
sense it seemed self-evident that all diplomatic relations with France
must immediately be broken off. The people, too, displayed a
lively excitement at the outrage. In the theatre at Berlin there
was ardent applause at the warlike notes of the Reiterlied der
Wallensteiner, and the populace made a disturbance beneath
the windows of the French ambassador, Laforest ; the estates
of the Mark declared themselves ready to provide levies for the
army, at their own expense ; the young officers went to the frontier
in the assurance of Frederician invincibility. It was only in secret
that Lombard and the French party ventured to carry on their
usual intercourse with Laforest.
Hardenberg, too, recognised the necessity for vigorous defence,
but he did not realise in its entirety the pressing danger of the
moment. He was unable to grasp that the king's latest steps made
altogether impossible any honourable understanding with the revenge-
ful Corsican ; nor did he recognise that this hero was not accustomed
to allow negotiations to prevent him from following up his victories.
The sanguine man continued to believe in the possibility of a peace-
ful issue, and therefore advised, although salvation might still
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have come from a rapid participation in the war, that there should
rather be an armed intermediation which might readily be rendered
useless by further warlike successes of the French. Meanwhile
the czar Alexander came in person to Berlin, and on November 3rd
the Treaty of Potsdam was signed. Prussia undertook to engage
Napoleon, by diplomatic negotiations, to recognise the status quo
of the Peace of Luneville. If he refused, as it was obvious he would,
the intermediating power of the Coalition was to come into action,
and was to receive as the reward of victory an enlargement of terri-
tory ; Russia agreed to use her services in London to secure the
cession of Hanover, whilst the English statesmen would as soon
have given Holland to Prussia ! The great European warlike
alliance appeared to be concluded. The czar renounced his Polish
plans, saying remorsefully, " I shall not be beguiled in that way
again." The alliance between the reconciled friends was cemented
by a tender embrace over the grave of Frederick the Great, one
of those touching incidents dear to the dramatic nature of
Alexander.
According to the calculations of the duke of Brunswick, the
Prussian army could not intervene in the struggle before Decem-
ber I5th ; for the troops assembled on the eastern frontier were not
to be led directly to Moravia for a junction with the Russo-Austrian
army, but were to go by a wide circuitous route to Thuringia, in
order thence to attack the French in the rear. This evolution
corresponded to the wishes of Austria, and expressed the preference
of the Brunswicker for such artificial methods ; and it is unques-
tionable that in the mind of the cautious old duke, the idea still
persisted that perhaps the war might after all be avoided. The
king cherished the same opinion ; he still hoped to enforce peace
without drawing the sword, simply by the display of his military
forces. He had ordered a march into Hanover, and he won Hesse
and Saxony for the Coalition. An army of 200,000 men assembled
on the southern frontier of the monarchy in order to defend the
independence of the German north ; there were also the English
and Russian troops which had landed in Hanover, and the Swedes
of King Gustavus IV, the deadly enemy of the Revolution. At
the same time the Russian reserve-army passed through Silesia
towards Moravia, and the archduke Charles led the Austrian
southern army out of Hungary.
The fate of the world hung upon a wise postponement of the
battle. If the allies could hold Napoleon in Moravia by a careful
defensive strategy until all their supports arrived, until with the
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coming of the momentous December I5th, the Prussian army
would also be ready to come into action, Napoleon's defeat seemed
inevitable. He was more than one hundred miles from the French
border, could expect no reinforcements, and even now his army was
hardly so strong as that of the enemy. But he was again to be saved
by the blunders of his opponents. During the negotiations, he
had appeared to be in a yielding mood and inclined for peace, in
order to arouse the belief that he was afraid. Alexander saw
through the game, and insisted again and again that the cunning
of the enemy should never lure him to a premature attack ; all
the experienced officers urged him to caution. But a brilliant
review of the army overthrew all the good resolutions of the czar.
His arrogant pride was awakened at the sight of these fine regiments,
still crowned with the laurels of the campaigns of Souvorofl.
The young Hotspur was fascinated by the idea of astonishing the
world by a decisive war, even before Prussia was ready to take
part in it. The young court generals, who had so often in Russian
history been to blame for light-minded resolutions, vehemently
applauded the idea of an imprudent attack. It was determined
that an attack should be delivered upon Napoleon's well-secured
position in a direction from east to west, in such a way that the
army, if beaten, would have to retreat into Hungary, and would be .
cut off from communication with Silesia, where, at Neisse, 40,000
Prussians were standing ready. On the anniversary of the day
of Napoleon's crowning as emperor, Alexander received, in the
battle of Austerlitz, the reward for the greatest folly of his life,
and now Emperor Francis also lost his head and begged the
victor for a truce. Napoleon agreed, on condition that the Hofburg
should abandon the alliance with the czar, that the Russian troops
should proceed homeward by way of Hungary, and that no foreign
army should remain on Austrian soil.
Thus was the great European war-alliance broken in its incep-
tion by the fault of the two emperors. Yet the military situation
of Prussia still remained advantageous. The czar did not
completely abandon the war, but placed at the king's disposal
the Russian forces still in Silesia and Prussian Poland. Frederick
William had command of 300,000 fresh troops ready for war ;
with such a force he might well hope to protect the liberty of North
Germany, and to assist oppressed Austria to a tolerable peace.
That this hope also came to nothing was chiefly the fault of the
Prussian negotiator, Count Haugwitz, but in the last analysis it
was the fault of the king himself. Prussian armed intermediation
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History of Germany
was meaningless unless the Prussian negotiator was prepared to
present a plain alternative, demanding of the conqueror that he
should either accept the conditions of peace imposed by Prussia,
or else try the fortune of war. But the pacifist king could not
summon up sufficient resolution. From the first he took the
edge off the negotiations, inasmuch as he gave his envoy secret in-
structions that at all hazards he was to maintain peace with France. i
During recent years Haugwitz had given many proofs of diplomatic
insight, and had often formed a sounder judgment of Napoleon's
hostile intentions than had his colleague Hardenberg, but in the
present complication neutrality seemed to him the only possible
policy. He had therefore no idea of going beyond the peaceful
instructions he had received from the king. He travelled slowly,
as he had been ordered, in order that the I5th of December might
pass. When at length he encountered Napoleon, in the course
of a conversation lasting several hours he said not a word of the
king's conditions of peace, not a word of armed intermediation or
threats of war, but allowed himself to be put off with empty phrases,
and went to Vienna to wait upon events. There he received the
news of the battle of Austerlitz, and immediately resolved to secure
at all costs a reconciliation with the man of power. In his anxiety
of soul, he persuaded himself that Austria was already thinking of
joining Napoleon in order to fight Prussia. Subsequently, on his
own initiative, and without any adequate authority, he signed at
Schonbrunn, on December I5th an offensive and defensive alliance
with France, in which Prussia recognised in advance all the conces-
sions which Napoleon hoped to force from the Emperor Francis,
abandoned Cleves on the right bank of the Rhine to France, aban-
doned loyal Ansbach to Bavaria, and received in return Hanover.
The victor rejoiced, saying, " If I am sure of Prussia, Austria
must do whatever I want ! " With the Treaty of Schonbrunn in his
hand, he compelled the unhappy court of Vienna, on December 26th,
to accept the oppressive conditions of the Peace of Pressburg.
The House of Austria lost Venice, Tyrol, and the remains of its
Swabian possessions ; the ceded German provinces were divided
among the South German satraps of France. By the grace of
Napoleon, Bavaria and Wurtemberg received kingly crowns, and
therewith the greatest of all goods, the last goal of two centuries
of treason and felony, full and unrestricted sovereignty. Emperor
Francis had to accede in advance to all the consequences that might
arise out of these new rights. Therewith disappeared the last
1 Recently proved by M. Lehmann, Scharnhorst, I, 354.
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
shadows of the ancient national monarchy ; the German kingship
could no longer be maintained over sovereign kings. In the
announcement of peace, the realm was already spoken of as the
German Federation. For a long time past the Imperator had been
discussing with the South German courts, what could best be
established in place of the " miserable monkey play " of the Reich-
stag of Ratisbon. Now, in affable letters, he announced to his
loyal followers their new glories : Baden had entered the sphere
of the great powers, and Bavaria at the first opportunity was to
receive still further enlargement. He stood now at the climax
of his successes. No misfortune had as yet tarnished the wonderful
triumphs of his fortunate flags. France regarded the invincible
one with astonishment ; the German city of Strasburg was proud
to allow itself to be used by the new empire as a gate of entry into
its old fatherland, and rechristened the Metzgertor after the battle
of the three emperors ; in Paris, a Trajan's column was to
celebrate the fame of the Imperator.
On the return journey Napoleon received in Munich the
obedient gratitude of the new King of Bavaria, celebrated the nuptials
of his stepson with the daughter of the Wittelsbacher, and was
gratified to learn how Max Joseph was announcing to his rejoicing
people the " restoration " of the ancient Bavarian royal dignity.
All Bavarians were now to wear blue and white cockades, " that they
might know one another mutually as brothers and that they might
secure from foreigners proper recognition as Bavarians."
Chancellor Dalberg hastened to the wedding. The man of many
abilities had issued during the war, in a wave of patriotic sentiment,
a confused appeal to the German Reichstag, plaintively asking :
" Shall the name of Germany, the name of German Nation, the
name of a Race, become extinct, the name of the people that once
conquered the Roman colossus ? " He had to listen to a severe
reprimand, because he had " endeavoured to reawaken the German
spirit." To secure complete reconciliation with those in authority
he shortly afterwards nominated Cardinal Fesch, Napoleon's
uncle, to be his coadjutor ; this man was a worthless off-
shoot of the House of Bonaparte, a Corsican who understood not
a single word of German, and who accepted the offered honour
unwillingly, only on the understanding that he v/as soon to mount
the most distinguished princely throne of Germany. At the same
time the heir to the Baden throne was married to Stephanie Beau-
harnais. To his brother-in-law Murat, Napoleon gave the Prussian
Cleves and the Duchy of Berg, which latter (in accordance with an
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old Bavarian design) was now exchanged for Ansbach. Thus the
Bonaparte family made its joyful entry into the ranks of the high
nobility of the German nation ; the German estate of Princes
formally recognised the just claim of equality " of the. fourth
dynasty of France."
Meanwhile Napoleon took all possible measures to force the
crown of Prussia to accept the Treaty of Schonbrunn. The grande
armee and the South German troops advanced to the Main ; other
army corps were pushed forward in Nassau and in Holland, up to
the Prussian border. When the Imperator returned to France, he
left Berthier in Munich, and his horses in Strasburg. It was his
intention to return " as quick as lightning " in order to arrange for
his armies to invade Prussia simultaneously from the west and from
the south. Such was the position of affairs when Haugwitz returned
after a tedious journey, flattering himself that by the Treaty of
Schonbrunn he had saved the state. Was the king to punish by
shameful dismissal the negotiator who had forgotten his duty and
had exceeded his instructions to such an incredible extent, and was
he to maintain, sword in hand, that dominion over North Germany,
including Hanover (which in actual fact belonged to Prussia ) ;
or was he to receive this same Hanover as a gift at the hands of
Napoleon and to give in exchange Cleves and Ansbach, to conclude
a defensive and offensive alliance with France, and to allow himself
to be involved in the war against England ? For an honourable
state there could be no hesitation between these two alternatives.
And yet Hardenberg advised a middle course. He counselled that
the Treaty of Schonbrunn should be accepted, but under reserva-
tions which should prevent a breach with England ; for although
he strongly condemned the conduct of his opponent Haugwitz,
he hoped, even now, that it might be possible to secure further
accessions of territory by new negotiations with Napoleon. In
this way the cunning enemy was given the desired excuse to refuse
on his side to be bound any longer by the Treaty of Schonbrunn.
This serious mistake was immediately followed by a second and even
greater one. Whilst Napoleon wrapped himself in a dubious silence
and advanced his armies from all sides against Prussia, the demobi-
lisation of the Prussian army was determined. Deceived by the
ambiguous utterances of Laforest, Prussia believed that the atti-
tude of France was friendly, and wished to escape the continued
burden upon the finances, To meet the costs of the mobilisation,
a loan had been floated and the issue of currency notes to the
amount of 5,000,000 thalers had been authorised.
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
The state was to pay dearly for this pusillanimous economy.
Napoleon had merely waited for the return home of the Prussian
army in order to force Prussia " to yet another treaty." Now that
Prussia stood before him disarmed, he at once removed the mask.
Hardenberg continued ingenuously to hope that he would come to
a friendly understanding with the Imperator concerning the recon-
stitution of Germany ; he thought of a German trias, that is to say,
that Austria should keep to her own affairs, while Prussia acquired
predominant influence in the north and France in the south, and he
believed that it would still be possible in such an intolerable situa-
tion as this to retain a certain political community for the German
nation. Then Haugwitz, who was to conclude the negotiations
in Paris, sent the shattering news that Napoleon would no
longer recognise the Treaty of Schonbrunn. On February 15, 1806,
the perturbed negotiator signed the Treaty of Paris, whose
conditions were even more severe than those of Schonbrunn.
Prussia undertook to close the Hanoverian rivers, to begin at once
a war against England which would completely paralyse Prussian
trade, whilst not a word was said in the new Treaty of the compensa-
tion for Ansbach which had been promised in the Treaty of Schon-
brunn. What a situation ! The regiments had long been on a
peace footing and were dispersed in their garrisons ; the French
armies, invading from the Main and from the Rhine simultaneously,
could overrun the country in a few weeks. Austria had concluded
peace ; the czar held back, advising his friend secretly to come to
terms as best he could, for good or for evil, with the preponderant
power. Nor could any speedy help be expected from England.
By the disaster of Austerlitz, the heart of the great Pitt had been
broken, and after his death for a considerable time the British policy
was a vacillating one. All the generals, even Ruchel the fierce
enemy of France, declared that resistance was impossible ; but
Hardenberg, moved to the depths of his soul, left the decision to the
king, since the ministers did not as yet possess any independent
responsibility. Frederick William decided as he was compelled
to decide, and accepted the Treaty of Paris.
^ Such was the lamentable ending of the first attempt to abandon
the ; easy-going Basle policy of neutrality. Through the meddle-
someness of the czar and the pusillanimity of Emperor Francis,
the coalition had been destroyed. Prussia having been thus
isolated, had been lured by Napoleon out of one false position into
another, and had finally been subdued for good or evil. Despite
the ill-will of the Hanoverians, the black eagles were affixed to the
265 s
History of Germany
gates of the old Guelph towns. The lamentations of the faithful
Ansbachers remained unheard although they sent despairing
petitions to the king that he would not abandon them. Yet
even in the midst of this humiliation there became manifest the
first glimmer of a moral power of resistance, which during the heavy
years of peace seemed to have altogether disappeared. During
the winter the old unteachable self-satisfaction had often been
boastfully manifested ; as late as January, so talented and active
an officer as young Bardeleben wrote triumphantly, " We have
attained to the happiness of peace with great and true glory ! "
but after the Treaty of Paris there was a change of mood. Among
the enlightened publicists of the capital, there were, indeed, a few
emptyheads who praised the king because without a single blow
he had gained a fine province ; but the nobles and the army felt
with dissatisfaction that the glories of the Frederician times had
passed away. Profounder natures, such as Gneisenau, saw that
the decisive hour was rapidly approaching, and placed their hopes
upon an alliance between the two German great powers. No one
felt the disgrace more painfully than the high-minded king.
He plainly declared his hopes : the Treaty of Paris was not
binding for it had been secured by fraud and untruth ; his duty
demanded that at the very next offence committed by France,
Prussia should unsheathe the sword.
Whilst Napoleon's protege Haugwitz took over the official
conduct of foreign affairs, and steered the state in the narrow waters
of the French alliance, Hardenberg remained the king's trusted
adviser, and in view of the near prospect of war secretly revived
the treaty with Russia. The eyes even of this over-sanguine man
had at length been opened. He had had a large share in the poli-
tical sins of the last two years, and yet was regarded in Paris as
the leader of the anti-French party because he was an opponent
of Haugwitz, and because he had again and again urged the king
to rid himself of this "homme sans foi et sans loi." 1 The keen
intelligence of Napoleon recognised in Hardenberg a high-minded
statesman : he wished to revenge himself for the troubles of the
previous autumn, loaded the minister with vituperation, which
received dignified answers, and ultimately demanded his dismissal.
It was to these attacks of Napoleon that Hardenberg owed a repu-
tation which his actions had not deserved ; all men of standing
looked hopefully towards him, and the valiant patriot Marwitz,
the leader of the nobles of the Mark, honoured him as having
1 Hardenberg's Journal, September 6, 1806.
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been " since the autumn of 1805 the ideal of the man who should
rescue the state." * But it was in these terrible weeks of the spring
of 1806 that Hardenberg first really became that which the world
held him to be. He saw with horror the abyss on the edge of which
Prussia was tottering ; all that was noble and high-minded in this
richly endowed nature sprang to active life, and henceforward
until the end he was the unwearied enemy of the Napoleonic world-
empire.
The last hope of Haugwitz in concluding the Treaty of
Paris was that the French troops would soon be recalled. But
this expectation proved vain. The grande \armee remained in
Germany, threatening Austria from the Inn, and Prussia from the
Rhine and the Main. The Hofburg was to be forced to accept the
formal dissolution of the Holy Empire, which had been planned by
the Imperator ; and at the same time Napoleon had determined
that in case of need peace with England was to be secured by the
surrender of Hanover, which was to be taken from Prussia for the
purpose. Should the Prussian court resist this new injury, the
French army was ready for invasion. Meanwhile the fortified
places of Kehl, Kastel, and Wesel were occupied by France ; the
fortress on the Lower Rhine was intended to constitute a point
d'appui for an attack upon Prussia.
Thus prepared, Napoleon proceeded to realise after his own
manner the idea of the German trias with which Hardenberg had
lately been playing. " La troisieme Allemagne " was to be
politically constituted as a protege of France, not in alliance with
Austria and Prussia but independently and in opposition to both.
The fantastic memorial of Dalberg, which talked of the re-establish-
ment of the Carlovingian empire and of a rejuvenation of the
honourable German nation, and also the short and futile prelimi-
nary negotiations in Munich with the greater South German States,
convinced the Imperator how difficult it would be "to make these
Germans work in unison." For this reason he determined to impose
the new order offhand, just as of old Charles V had constrained the
Italian princes to his will by treaties which were practically
forced upon them. He knew that he could do anything he liked
with the Middle States if he offered them new booty at the expense
of their smaller co-estates. There had, indeed, been no lack of
submission among these petty lords of the south. The majority
had come together to form the Frankfort Union, and they sustained
.a common ambassador in Paris. Again and again was the man
1 Expression used by Marwitz in a letter to Hardenberg, dated February II, 1811.
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of power deafened with requests and proposals from the anxious
petty princes. When he was in a good mood, he allowed Talley-
rand to tell him " ce que c'est que ce prince-la," and gave a gracious
answer. But the conqueror had no use for unarmed vassals ;
moreover, he was suspicious of the friendship which some of these
petty lords exhibited for Prussia, and which the majority among
them showed for Austria. His resolution was taken : "It lies
in the very nature of existing circumstances that the petty princes
must be destroyed." There was already rising upon the ruins of
the old comity of states the new federative system ; the central
sun of France surrounded by satellite states. Two of the Impera-
tor's brothers ascended the thrones of Holland and of Naples;
the rest of Italy, and Switzerland, were under his orders. For the
German Federation, which was to strengthen the ranks of these
satellite peoples, he counted first of all upon the four South German
Middle States, and upon the new Lower Rhenish Grand Duchy of
Joachim Murat. Of the smaller states, he had in mind to spare
only a few, which had commended themselves to him by extreme
servility or by dynastic ties.
In the spring of 1806 there spread through the German courts
a rumour that a new and comprehensive mediatisation was in
prospect. Then, as four years earlier, the envoys of our high
nobility hastened to Paris, in order by flattery and corruption to
secure a good share of booty for their masters. Then, as before,
an Alsatian was in charge of the business of the German territorial
distribution ; on this occasion the negotiations were conducted
by the old imperial publicist Pfeffel, under the guidance of Talley-
rand and La Besnardiere. Meanwhile, however, the constitution
of the Confederation of the Rhine was decided upon in Napoleon's
cabinet. But no negotiations were undertaken with any of the
German courts, and of the envoys in Paris four only had been
allowed to read the Charter before Talleyrand, on July 12,
summoned the faithful to a session. Here he displayed to them
their hopeless situation ; how as rebels against the empire they
could no longer deal in half measures ; thereupon the Charter
was accepted without any discussion. The Rhenish Federation
of Louis XIV was revived, but in an incomparably stronger form.
Sixteen German princes separated themselves from the empire,
declared themselves to be sovereign, and further declared that
every law of the ancient and honourable national comity was null
and inoperative ; they recognised Napoleon as their Protector,
and placed at his disposal for every continental war in which
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France might be engaged, an army of 63,000 men. Unconditional
subordination in matters of European policy and equally uncondi-
tional sovereignty in internal affairs : such were the two leading
thoughts of the constitution of the Confederation of the Rhine,
dictated by a thorough knowledge of the German estate of princes.
The courts tolerated their subordination because, standing between
Austria and France, they needed a protector, and because they
hoped for new marks of Napoleon's favour. Some secretly consoled
themselves with the thought that the French dominion would not
last for ever ; but the sovereignty they all regarded as a treasure
that was to endure to all eternity. German particularism was
blossoming in all its sins.
Napoleon, in a letter to Dalberg, did not deny himself the
pleasure of making a mocking reference to the time-honoured
treason of the petty princes ; he called the policy of the Confedera-
tion of the Rhine conservative, since it merely gave legal sanction
to a protectorate which had existed in fact for several centuries.
At the same time he prudently flattered dynastic arrogance. No
lord paramount was any longer to be imposed upon the German
princes. No foreign court could interfere in their internal affairs ;
he himself was merely to exercise the duty of a Protector, and
his protectorate had no ulterior aim beyond securing complete
sovereignty for the allies. The promised fundamental statute
for the Confederation of the Rhine never appeared ; the Bun-
destag, with its two councils, never assembled. For this piece of work,
which was the outcome of rude force, there was lacking from the
very outset all capacity for further development. It was far from
the mind of the Protector, who had already scolded his own tame
legislative body in Paris with the words, " Vous chicanez le
pouvoir ! " to allow himself to be bothered by the tedious delibera-
tions of a Rhenish Bundestag. It sufficed him that he had now
under his command 150,000 German soldiers, regiments from the
left bank of the Rhine. The two kings in the Confederation of the
Rhine, however, did not conceal their hostility to any idea of their
subordination to the Confederation, and they flatly rejected all the
plans for federal development which the new prince-primate,
Dalberg, brought forward with inexhaustible enthusiasm.
The domain of the Confederation extended over the whole
of the south-west, from the Inn to the Rhine, and then stretched
northward far towards Westphalia, surrounding the Prussian
State and its smaller allies in a wide curve ; the thirty-ninth
Article of its Charter threateningly announced that for these other
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German States the right of entry was reserved. Those of the
smaller estates of the empire that still remained in the south and in
the west, were subjected to the suzerainty of the sixteen members
of the Confederation : this was the fate of all the princes and
counts, of all the imperial knights (as many of them as had still
kept their heads above water in the storms of recent years), of the
two knightly orders, of the imperial towns of Nuremberg and
Frankfort in all, a domain of 550 square miles [German] and con-
taining about 1,250,000 inhabitants. All the sordidness attaching
to the principal resolution of the Diet of Deputation seem trifling
in comparison with the detestable brutality of this new exercise
of arbitrary power ; for what had happened was not on this occasion
initiated by the empire itself, and was not justified by the excuse
of indemnification, but was the outcome of the arbitrariness
of a handful of perjured princes. Moreover, under the protection
of the Napoleonic army, the destruction was now threatened of
Lobkowitz and Schwarzenberg, and of all those Austrian territorial
lords who had so long constituted the nucleus of the imperial
party among the temporal princes. With them fell also the old
and celebrated races of the Furstenbergs and the Hohenlohes,
which, but a few decades before had been almost as powerful as
their fortunate neighbours in Carlsruhe and Stuttgart and one
at least among those thus mediatised allowed his doom to be pro-
claimed for honour's sake, and of his own deliberate will. Prince
Frederick Louis of Hohenlohe-Oehringen proudly rejected all
the alluring offers which Napoleon made to the celebrated Prussian
general in order to win him over to the Confederation of the Rhine.
He would not break the faith which had for centuries united his
house with the Hohenzollerns, but lost his territorial suzerainty
because he courageously placed himself on Prussia's side. Even
more directly was the court of Berlin injured by the spoliation
of the House of Nassau-Orange, for this house had provided
for the crown of Prussia an indemnification on German soil
for the lost possessions in the Netherlands, and it was now
deprived of a part of its German lands, without its being
thought necessary even to notify Berlin of the fact. Chance
and caprice decided which of the petty states were to remain
in existence and which were to be destroyed. Count von
der Leyen was allowed to enter the Confederation of the Rhine
as a sovereign prince because he was the nephew of Dalberg. But,
unknown to these malefactors, there yet presided over this arbitrary
proceeding a great necessity. Once more there disappeared a
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
whole crowd of those sterile state-structures which had once
enriched themselves with the spoils of the ancient German
monarchy ; the soil was being levelled upon which subsequently
was to rise a new structure of German unity.
Until far into the summer Napoleon remained convinced that
the rightful emperor would refuse to accept the destruction of the
ancient empire ; for the Peace of Pressburg expressly stated that
the new kings were not to cease to belong to the German league.
But Austria was utterly exhausted by unsuccessful war ; the Arch-
duke Charles and the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Philip
Stadion, hoped that the energies of the monarchy might be re-estab-
lished in peace. In addition, in the Treaty of Pressburg, all the
consequences of the Bavario-Wurtemberg sovereignty had been
accepted, and the imperial suzerainty had therefore been
indirectly abandoned. But if the will and the power to maintain
the claims of the old emperordom by force of arms were lacking,
the honour of the imperial house still demanded that the worthless
title should be abandoned in good time, freely and voluntarily,
before Napoleon enforced its renunciation. Such was the advice
of Stadion ; but even in these gloomy days, in which a history
dating from a thousand years was moving to its tragic conclusion,
the ancient greed of the Hapsburg dynastic policy could not rest.
Just as his ancestors had always regarded the occupancy of the
imperial throne as no more than a means for the increase of their
immediate territorial dominion, so Emperor Francis regarded
the abandonment of the imperial crown simply as a possibility
for a good stroke of business. " The time for discarding the
imperial title," so he wrote, " is that in which the advantages which
would thus be derived for my monarchy outweigh the disadvan-
tages which its further retention might entail." For this reason
Metternich was to hasten to Paris, in order there " to put a good
value upon the imperial dignity," and not to refuse to resign it,
but rather to display a conciliatory spirit in return for " some great
advantages to be received by my monarchy." Such was the mood
in which the last of the Roman-German emperors took leave of
the purple of the Salii and the Hohenstauffen. The customary
phrases of imperial and paternal loyalty and suzerain care were
no longer heard ; the policy of the House of Austria at length
displayed in plain words its attitude towards Germany.
But the proposed commercial transaction miscarried. When
Metternich reached Paris, the Charter of the Confederation of the
Rhine had already been drawn up. The German emperor was
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History of Germany
confronted with an accomplished fact, and had only to look on
whilst at Ratisbon Napoleon and his vassals decreed the formal
dissolution of the empire.
Meanwhile the ultimate disgrace was inflicted on the Reichstag
by one of the most loyal of the estates of the empire. The
Hotspur of royalism, King Gustavus of Sweden, recalled his envoy
because he regarded it as beneath his dignity to participate in delibe-
rations which were under the influence of usurpation and egoism.
When in Paris the preparations were in progress for the foundation
of the Confederation of the Rhine, Dalberg was careful to give a
holiday to the Assembly at Ratisbon. Then on August ist, eight
envoys declared in the names of the Rhenish federal princes that
their honourable lords found it " comported with their dignity
and with the purity of their aims " to separate themselves formally
from the Holy Empire, which was in fact dissolved ; they placed
themselves under the " powerful protection of the monarch whose
intentions had always proved themselves to be in harmony with the
true interests of Germany." Simultaneously the French ambassador
announced that Napoleon would no longer recognise the empire,
which had long been merely a shadow of itself.
In the ancient centuries of force and roughness there had always
been preserved among the Germans a last sentiment of shame ;
the murderer avoided the neighbourhood of his victim because he
dreaded lest he should see the red blood burst once more from the
wounds of the corpse. But this new and unprejudiced generation
had no sentiments of this kind ; when the declaration of the first
of August was read, there were present in the Reichstag hardly
any envoys beyond those from the members of the Confederation
of the Rhine which had destroyed the ancient German state. The
Reichstag broke up without any further proceedings. Thereupon,
on August 6th, in a cool and colourless manifesto, Emperor Francis
laid aside the German crown, and at the same time declared,
in opposition to the law, that " the office and dignity of lord para-
mount " was extinct, and that the empire of Austria was exonerated
of all German imperial duties. The alliance between Germany
and the imperial hereditary dominions had, however, been for long
so loose, that the formal separation had hardly any influence upon
Austrian internal conditions. Thus by a coup d'etat of the last
Hapsburg emperor was that crown destroyed which had for a
thousand years been intimately associated at once with the
proudest and with the most painful memories of the German people ;
among these memories was the heroic fame of the Othos, but also
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the horror of the Thirty Years' War and the ludicrous disgrace
of Rossbach. The empire had traversed the whole circle of earthly
destiny ; after being an ornament of Germany it had become a
detestable caricature ; and when it at length collapsed it seemed as
if a ghost had been laid. The nation remained silent and cold.
It was not until the shame of the period without an emperor had
been experienced to the full that the dream of emperor and empire
once again was awakened in the German heart.
In the camp of Bonapartism there was manifest ill-natured
rejoicing. The Mainzer Zeitung wrote : " There is no longer a
Germany. What some are inclined to regard as the efforts of a
nation fighting against its dissolution are no more than the lamen-
tations of a few persons beside the grave of a people which has out-
lived its destiny. It is not now that Germany has perished. That
which gives content and life to the history of nations is the spirit
of a few great and leading men " whereupon there followed
the customary genuflection before the hero of the century. In
the highlands and along the Rhine, the opinion was widely diffused
that England's gold and Austria's arrogance were alone responsible
for the latest war, and for the destruction of the emperordom ;
but in the north the masses hardly knew even the name of the empire
and had no sense of the seriousness of the times. Under the pro-
tection of the grande armee, the princes of the Confederation of
the Rhine took possession of their spoils, and just as had happened
three years before, the people suffered everything with no more
than a few trifling complaints. All the courts of the Confederation
considered that in virtue of their new sovereignty they were justi-
fied in destroying the last vestiges of the ancient rights of the
estates ; Napoleon's word of power, " C'est commande par les
circonstances," was the justification for every arbitrary act.
Frederick of Wiirtemberg, immediately after he had succeeded
to the kingly crown, demanded from the Committee of the Diet the
key of the estate treasury, and abolished the old territorial con-
stitution which had been defended in the battles of three hundred
years by the valiant Swabians, and which was the one living energy
in the German south, saying that it was " an institution no longer
adapted to the circumstances of the day " ; his ministers rejoiced,
for now at length had been overcome the stubbornness of the
estates. Even the crown of Denmark took the opportunity of the
dissolution of the empire to incorporate Holstein into its state ;
King Gustavus deprived Swedish Pomerania of its ancient terri-
torial rights, and introduced the Swedish constitution.
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The anarchy of a new interregnum broke over Germany ;
clublaw prevailed. The clubs were no longer in the hands of
medieval brigand nobles, but in those of modern princes.
Napoleon suspiciously persecuted all displays of national feeling
in the subordinated lands. He wrote to Talleyrand that the
interests of France demanded that German public opinion should
remain divided. When at Ansbach there was published an anony-
mous pamphlet entitled Germany in Her Profound Abasement,
a well-meant sentimental essay which in this time of iron could
only give utterance to the peaceful counsel, " Weep, weep all
noble and loyal Germans ! " to the Imperator even this groan
of German philistinism seemed alarming, and he had the book-
seller, Palm, who was said to have circulated the pamphlet,
tried by court-martial, and shot. This was the first of
Bonaparte's judicial murders on German soil, and the pru-
dent folk of Bavaria began to doubt whether the Confederation
of the Rhine had really brought about the victory of peace and
enlightenment.
How differently from this tearful Ansbacher did Frederick
Gentz know how to speak to his people. The finest of his writings,
the fragments from the recent history of the balance of power,
showed, it is true, that the talented man was now writing in the pay
of Austria : for the noble archducal house he could find words of
praise alone, and he flatly denied the manifest designs of the Hof-
burg against Bavaria. But these extenuations signified little in
comparison with the magnificent frankness, with the flaming words,
with which he probed the ultimate causes of the German disgrace.
The old balance of power had been disturbed by a new world-
dominion ; "it is not the genius of Napoleon, but the defenceless-
ness of Germany, for which Germany is herself responsible, that
has brought about her doom." The great question of the future
is, whether the whole of Germany is to become what the half
of Germany has become to-day, what Holland and Switzerland,
Spain and Italy have become. Europe has been overthrown by
Germany's fault, and by Germany must Europe be re-established.
He calls for a saviour and an avenger, who shall restore us to our
eternal rights, who shall build up Germany and Europe once again.
With all the might of his scorn he lashes the fools who expect the
salvation of the world from France. " The avenging fate which,
for the punishment of Germany's arrogant stupidity has flogged
her through the whole weary cycle of political insanity, has at
length metamorphosed the enthusiasts of freedom for a timid
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
and febrile freedom into eulogists of the most atrocious slavery
which has ever oppressed the nations."
From the quiet north there at length resounded powerful
words of patriotic wrath. Ernst Moritz Arndt, the valiant son of
the isle of Riigen, had hitherto passed his days as an obedient
subject of the three crowns of Sweden ; it was only when the
disgrace of the Germans came home to him, that his German blood
boiled and he came to understand which was his fatherland.
During the war of 1805 he wrote the first portion of his Geist der
Zeit, and from that time onwards he remained firmly attached
to his unhappy people, playing the part of a faithful Eckart,
of an awakener of consciences. There were at his disposal neither
the comprehensive knowledge of Gentz, nor the insight and the
logical powers of the great publicists. A child of nature, he needed
many years before he could throw off the provincial prejudices
of his Swedish-Pomeranian home, and get rid of the obscure enthu-
siasm for the land of the forests and of freedom, Scandinavia, and
could overcome his hostility towards poor, sober Prussia, which,
with its coldly calculating Frederick, was alone responsible for the
splitting up of Germany. But fresh and powerful, like the waves
of his ocean home, endowed with a primitive and immediate force
of sensibility, such as was possessed by no other political writer of
the age, his eloquence flowed from an overfilled heart glowing with
love. His every word was true and courageous. Whilst the hard
political ideas of the Viennese publicists were comprehensible to
very few in this generation without a state, Arndt concluded his
book with the simple appeal, " I love humanity " ; he moved
emotions because he preached politics from the human side. He
was the first to recognise and to chastise the moral evils of
intellectual over-culture, and to the clever century he exclaimed
that it was " better to live than to chatter about life." " Without
the people, there is no humanity ; and without free citizens, there
if no free man. A man is seldom of so strong a fibre that he can
endure servitude and contempt without deterioration ; a people,
never." Similar sentiments found expression in the younger
literary circles of Berlin ; since the unhappy Ansbach negotiations,
the old feeling of comfortable self-satisfaction was no longer possible.
In the entourage of Schleiermacher, ideas were entertained of a
northern federation, which by freedom of trade and intercourse,
and by a common military system, was once more to restore brother-
hood to the Germans of the north.
Such ideas as these, the only ones which promised salvation,
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History of Germany
had lately begun to influence even the Prussian Government.
Whilst the Holy Empire went down towards destruction, and the
South and the West bowed beneath the French yoke, King
Frederick William, as we learn from his subsequent war-manifesto,
undertook to assemble the last Germans under the flag of Prussia.
Two years earlier he had bluntly rejected the North German imperial
crown which Napoleon had offered him, because he mistrusted
Greek gifts ; and it was with honest regret that he saw the empire
abolished. Not until the old legal community of the German nation
had completely disappeared, did the conscientious prince at length
determine to carry out those plans of federal reform which, since
the days of the League of Princes, had continually been revived
at the court of Berlin ; not until then did he determine to give a
firm legal form to the protectorate of Prussia over the north, which
had existed in fact since the Peace of Basle. It was his desire,
as he wrote to Frederick Augustus of Saxony, to oppose to the Con-
federation of the Rhine, a federative system which might save
the north of Germany. Prussia at length re-entered the paths of
a healthy German policy, and it was this very return to its
great traditions which was to entail terrible humiliation, and
punishment for past sins. The king no longer believed a single
word of the smooth flatteries which Napoleon had continued
to shower upon him throughout the winter. Since the Treaty of
Paris, he had been prepared for the worst ; he considered the founda-
tion of the Confederation of the Rhine, of which no notification
whatever had been given to the allied court of Berlin, to be a revo-
lution, and to be a manifestation of hostility towards Prussia. He
felt by no means secure in the possession of Hanover, which he
regarded as the bulwark of the independence of the north. The
union of this country with the great power of North Germany was
in such close correspondence with European interest, that even in
England a few far-sighted persons advised a friendly understand-
ing with the cabinet of Berlin ; but the Guelph pride of George III
obstinately resisted such an idea. Thus while, on account of
Hanover, England was carrying on a fruitless war with Prussia,
the king had to fear that the trickery of his ally might once more
deprive him of the dearly-bought country.
It was full time that the last countries which still remained
German and free should be put in a state of military preparation.
That tri-partition of Germany of which Hardenberg had dreamed
in the spring, was now almost completed, although in a very different
sense from that which the credulous man had foreseen. All that
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
remained possible to the court of Prussia was to proceed indepen-
dently of Austria and France, and to take independent action with
regard to the third of Germany that lay within its own sphere of
influence. Since even Haugwitz had long obtained a clear under-
standing of the intentions of Napoleon, Prussia began already in
July, even before the Confederation of the Rhine had been formed,
to negotiate with the courts of Dresden and Cassel regarding the
constitution of a North German Federation. The Prussian plan
closely resembled the old-established constitution of the empire,
and demanded from the smaller courts no more than the absolutely
essential military provisions. Prussia was to have the imperial
dignity, whilst the two Electors were to receive the long-desired
kingly crowns ; there was to be a congress of envoys, under the
leadership of these three states, and each of them was to have
supreme military command in one of the three regions of the federa-
tion ; finally, there were to be a federal court of justice, and a federal
army of 240,000 men which in time of war was to remain under the
supreme command in Prussia. Everything was anxiously avoided
which might hurt the pride of the members of the federation.
The congress and the tribunal were not to sit in Berlin, but, in
accordance with ancient imperial custom, in two minor towns.
To satisfy the ambition of Saxony and Hesse, it was arranged to
mediatise the imperial knighthood and some of the pettiest counts
and barons, and the two Middle States were to receive the lion's
share of the spoil.
Once more, however, it was to become manifest that there
was no success obtainable for this state without arduous toil. It
was not as a last resort, nor yet by peaceful negotiations, that the
bold idea of the Prussian emperordom could be realised. The
obscure vacillations of Berlin statecraft had aroused profound
distrust in all the courts ; the hesitating embarrassment of Prussia
was regarded by the world as deliberate calculation. Even at the
friendly court of St. Petersburg there was for some time a doubt
whether this North German Federation was not a Napoleonic
intrigue. It was impossible that Austria should regard with a
favourable eye a policy which endeavoured to transfer to Prussia
a fragment of the old imperial glory. The Emperor Francis
remained full of suspicion, especially since Prussia kept the negotia-
tions strictly secret. It was through the intermediation of the
Austrian ambassador in Paris that the Elector of Saxony first heard
the news that Napoleon wished to warn him against the ambitions
of Berlin. In such circumstances, what could be expected from the
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History of Germany
good sentiments of those petty states which for so long had been
accustomed to will the end without willing the means, to claim
the protection of Prussia without offering any service in return.
The elector of Hesse had first carried on secret negotiations
on behalf of his accession to the Confederation of the Rhine, and had
only failed to conclude a bargain with France because Napoleon
would not present to the greedy elector the territory of his cousins
of Darmstadt. Now, always in the hope of fresh accessions of
territory, he joyfully accepted the plan of the North German
Federation, but his zeal soon cooled when it became clear that
Frederick William's sense of justice intended to limit the
mediatisation within narrow bounds. The Saxon cabinet dis-
played that stiff arrogance which had before characterised
the negotiations concerning the Frederician League of Princes.
There could be no question of subordinating the Saxon crown to
a Prussian emperordom. Since Prussia yielded in the matter of
the imperial dignity, the court of Dresden demanded the consti-
tution of a Federal Directory, which should circulate between
Prussia, Saxony, and Hesse ; and instead of a federal army and
federal court of justice, there were to be three district armies,
and three district tribunals under the separate guidance of the
three leading powers. The old longing of the Albertines for the
annexation of the Ernestine lands was revived, and from that
time for two generations to come, remained the principal aim of
Dresden statecraft. The Hansa towns also showed themselves
averse to the scheme, although the North German Federation asked
them for no more than a monetary payment instead of a supply
of men for the army ; they secretly determined to form a separate
Hanseatic Federation. When the danger of war now became more
imminent, and Prussia demanded from the smaller proteges a con-
tribution to the upkeep of the army, the court of Schwerin mani-
fested the patriotic sentiments of the German petty princes in the
ever-memorable declaration : " However thankful His Serene
Highness the Duke would be to accept your Exalted Royal
Protection if His Serene Highness believed himself to be in danger,
yet in existing circumstances he must urgently excuse himself from
making the proposed contribution." The upright Lord of Schwerin
did, indeed, give way when Prussia recalled to his mind "the
national honour of the oppressed fatherland," and threatened
an invasion. Meanwhile the whole course of the tedious negotia-
tions showed that a firm alliance with these courts could be based
upon the pressure of arms alone.
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The resistance of the petty states was supported in Paris, and
by the faithlessness of Napoleon the North German Federation
was destroyed in the germ. On July 22nd Talleyrand had written
to the Berlin court suggesting that Prussia should derive advantage
from the foundation of the Confederation of the Rhine, and should
found a North German Empire for itself. It was manifest that this
friendly invitation aimed only to secure Prussia's assent to the
dissolution of the ancient empire. The Confederation of the Rhine
had been from the first intended, as was plainly shown by the con-
cluding article of its constitution, to provide for the adhesion of
all the German petty states. Hardly had it been concluded when
it was enlarged by the entry of the new Grand Duchy of Wurzburg.
At the very moment when Napoleon was offering his ally the
North German imperial crown, he warned the courts of Dresden
and Cassel against the Prussian alliance, and secretly encouraged
the plans for the aggrandisement of Saxony, and the attempts of
the Hansa towns to form a separate league. On August i3th he
came more plainly into the open, transmitting by the mouth of
Dalberg to the two electors his assurance of protection against
the ill-will of Prussia should they wish to join the Confederation
of the Rhine. Four weeks later he declared to the Prince-
Primate that he had recognised the full sovereignty of all the
German princes, and that he would tolerate no lord paramount
over them. Nowhere did these French intrigues produce a pro-
founder impression than at the court of Dresden. As soon as war
became imminent, the alarmed elector endeavoured to carry on
a double game between Prussia and France, similar to that which
Bavaria a year before had carried on between France and
Austria. Too timid and too honourable to refuse his neighbour
his federal help, he still hoped to secure himself against all
eventualities, and begged that the Prussian troops should enter
his territory suddenly, because he wished to make Napoleon
believe that it was unwillingly that he had become the federal
ally of Prussia.
After all the lamentable humiliations of recent months, was
Prussia now to endure, in addition, that Napoleon should forbid
her to preserve against foreign dominion the last vestiges of
Germany ? Were the Prussians to dally until the faithless man
who had surrounded the monarchy with his armies, and who
carried on unceasing preparations in his fortresses on the Rhine,
offered to the king on the point of his sword a new and still more
shameful treaty of subjection ? " Napoleon strikes at our heart,"
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wrote General Riichel, " he threatens Saxony and Hesse in viola-
tion of his most sacred assurances." Nothing but the sword could
find a way out of this intolerable situation. Since the winter,
the one-sided patriots at the court had already foreseen that the
decisive struggle was inevitably approaching. In anticipation
of the oncoming catastrophe, Stein, the Minister of Finance,
endeavoured during the spring to deliver the king from the influence
of his subordinate advisers. He drew up a memorial upon the errors
of the Government, the first programme of his great policy of reform.
" Since Prussia has no state constitution, and since the supreme
authority is not divided between the Chief of the State and the
Representatives of the Nation, there seems to be all the greater
need for a governmental constitution ; authority has become the
spoil of a subordinate influence ; for this reason the secret cabinet
government must be abolished, and in its place there must be con-
stituted a Council of State with five expert ministers who must be
in immediate relations with the king ; moreover, these must be
new and energetic persons, for when measures are changed there
must be a change also in those who are to carry them out."
Blucher, too, boldly denounced the rout of base loungers which
surrounded the noble king. In September, just before the fall of
the dice, a number of the princes of the royal house, together with
Stein, Blucher, and Riichel, addressed a common memorial to the
throne, informing the king of that which " all Prussia, all Germany,
all Europe knows," and imploring him to dismiss Haugwitz, Bey me,
and Lombard. How profoundly must the old and solid framework
of absolutism have been shattered when royal princes could venture
such a step ! Frederick William was not inclined to allow the
prestige of his crown to be endangered ; he called this undertaking
a mutiny, and gave the petitioners an ungracious reception. Thus
it happened that in the most important offices, the old time and the
new remained side by side and in direct contact. In the
army, the general-quartermaster Scharnhorst stood beside the
commander-in-chief the duke of Brunswick ; in the ministry,
Stein sat beside Haugwitz ; in the cabinet, Lombard acted after
his own nature, whilst Hardenberg was giving the monarch trust-
worthy counsel. Under such leadership as this, the shapeless old
monarchy resumed the struggle with the man of power, of whom
the French said with timid wonder : "He knows everything, he
wills everything, he can do everything ! "
The unavoidable war was at length precipitated by a new act
of treachery on the part of Napoleon. How often and how
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ceremoniously had France undertaken to guarantee her Prussian ally
in the possession of Hanover. Now it was suddenly learned in
Berlin that the Imperator, who throughout the summer had been
conducting a great peace negotiation with England and Russia,
had inconsiderately offered to restore to the Guelphs their heredi-
tary dominions. Upon recept of this news, Frederick William
immediately wrote to the czar (August gth) : "If Napoleon is
treating with London about Hanover, he will destroy me." The
king foresaw that before long the unworthy conditions of February
would be renewed, that Prussia would have as sole alternative
either to endure in silence a shameful act of robbery or to resist
the invasion of the grande armee by force of arms. The Prussian
army was therefore placed upon a war footing and assembled at
Magdeburg. By this absolutely necessary step, the war was
determined. For although the negotiations between France and
England fell through, and the proposed deal with Hanover was
temporarily abandoned, it still remained certain, in view of the
secret intrigues of French diplomacy in Dresden and Cassel, that
Napoleon would joyfully seize any convenient opportunity to over-
throw the one state that still prevented the extension of the
Confederation of the Rhine over the whole of Germany. As the
king must have expected, within the next few days France
threateningly demanded the demobilisation of the Prussian army,
and the dissolution of the proposed North German Federation.
With full justice he wrote to his Russian friend that peace was
possible on two conditions only, if Napoleon should withdraw his
troops from Germany and should undertake to offer no further
obstacles to the North German Federation ; otherwise war was
inevitable, for who could impose laws upon this man ?
Although the Imperator did not immediately send an ulti-
matum, the delay was dependent merely upon his desire to await the
issue of the peace negotiations he was conducting with Russia.
With complete foresight, and calculating every step, he had for
months been engaged in diplomatic and military preparations for
the Prussian war. Not one of his other campaigns of conquest
had been initiated with such extreme caution, for he still had a
considerable respect for the Frederician army. He succeeded in
detaching his opponent almost completely from the other great
powers, and he had hidden his game so cleverly that his contem-
poraries and posterity believed his falsehood that this war of defence
he had thus forced upon the Prussian State was a desperate chance
venture| [wantonly undertaken by the king. The fable found
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acceptance even in Prussia, for after the unfortunate issue of the
previous passage at arms, everyone execrated the policy of 1806.
By the cession of Hanover, Napoleon had sown enmity between
the Prussian court and England ; now he advised the Russian
plenipotentiary, Oubril, to conclude a separate peace. Should
the czar refuse to ratify the step undertaken by his envoy, there
was still another weapon available which might have kept the St,
Petersburg court out of the Prussian War. As long before as
August, the Corsican Sebastiani had gone to Constantinople, in
order to induce the Sultan Selim to declare war against Russia.
He found the Divan in a state of angry excitement, for the uncer-
tain and meddlesome policy of Czartoryski had secretly encouraged
the Servians to revolt, had brought the hospodars of the Danubian
provinces under Russian influence, and had sowed dissension in
the isles of Greece. It was not difficult to urge the Porte onwards.
When the czar Alexander rejected the separate peace proposed
by Oubril, it was already known in Paris that Russia would be
unable to place more than half her army at the disposal of Prussia.
Soon after the battles in Thuringia, the war on the Danube broke
out, and Napoleon exhorted the Sultan, " Now is the time to
secure your independence ! " With the rejection of Oubril's peace
proposals, there was no longer any choice open for the court of
Berlin, for now a war between France and Russia was unavoidable,
and this was a war which could not be carried out without Prussia's
co-operation. By the oriental negotiations Napoleon simulta-
neously secured the neutrality of Austria. In Vienna the hatred
against the victor of Austerlitz was stronger than the mistrust of
Haugwitz, even stronger than the gratification which was felt at
the plight of the North German rival. But in the last war the power
of Austria had been so profoundly shaken, that in the complication
of the moment Austria hardly counted, and now this country was
completely paralyzed by the incalculable Turkish confusion. As soon
as the troops of Alexander invaded Wallachia, Archduke Charles
advised his imperial brother to occupy Belgrade ; for months the
cabinet of Vienna remained resolved upon a war against Russia.
Hence the Hofburg received no less coolly the Prussian demands
for help than it received Napoleon's suggestions of an alliance for
the protection of the independence of Saxony. But to secure the
favour of the Imperator, the Hofburg went so far as to betray to
the court of the Tuileries a war-despatch of the Prussian minister.
Thus Haugwitz was enmeshed by the diplomatic mastery
of his opponent, and was, in truth, already beaten, although he
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continued to foster happy anticipations. He continued to reckon
trustfully upon the co-operation of Austria, which there was really
no reason whatever to expect ; and he believed that the people
of the Confederation of the Rhine would voluntarily serve under
the king's banner, whereas everywhere mistrust and coldness were
exhibited towards Prussia. It was only the help of Russia which
the king had been able to secure for his state by secret negotia-
tions in St. Petersburg. But not even the czar realised the great-
ness of the danger, thinking that it would suffice to send to Prussia's
assistance an army of 70,000 men ; and he allowed himself to be
drawn into the war in the east at the very time that the struggle
for Prussia's existence began. Moreover, there was a revival of
the old troubles concerning the untrustworthy Polish provinces.
The well-meaning Prince Radziwill advised the king to assume the
title of King of Poland, and the czar, that of King of Lithuania,
saying " these titles would obliterate all adverse sentiment."
Frederick William was careful to avoid following this two-edged
counsel ; but meanwhile in Paris a manifesto was issued summon-
ing the Poles to fight for freedom by the side of their old French
ally. For the opening of the campaign Prussia could count upon
the co-operation of Electoral Saxony alone, and the loyalty of this
one and only friend had long been vacillating. More than once
Napoleon let the court of Dresden know that he regarded Saxony's
participation in the war as compulsory ; the anxious elector did
not yet venture upon open treachery, but he allowed his envoy to
remain in Paris, and even before the news of the battle of Jena
he sent thanks to the French emperor for his friendly attitude.
Count Schonfeld, the Saxon representative in Vienna, received
instructions to declare to the French ambassador that the elector
had only joined Prussia under the force of circumstances, and hoped
that Napoleon would not regard the behaviour of the court of
Saxony as dictated by hostility against France. Napoleon could
count with certainty upon the desertion of Electoral Saxony.
The elector of Hesse remained neutral, since his avarice could
expect nothing out of this war, and Haugwitz did not interfere
with him.
Such was the isolation of Prussia when this country took up
arms against the whole of western Europe. Nothing but a careful
defensive could ensure even a tolerable issue for the unequal
struggle. With the support of that triangle of fortresses between
the Elbe and the Oder which had so often proved the salvation of
the threatened state, it might perhaps be possible to withstand the
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History of Germany
overwhelming power of the enemy for such a time as would be
necessary for the arrival of the auxiliary army from the interior
of Russia. But Haugwitz wished to prove to the mistrustful world
that he was engaged in this war in earnest. He advised an attack,
and the Frederician traditions of the army also spoke on behalf of
a bold offensive. The resolution was therefore taken to advance
through Thuringia against South Germany, and for this madly
venturesome undertaking not even the whole of the army was
engaged. All the East Prussian regiments and the majority of
the South Prussian regiments, nearly 40,000 men in all, remained
at home. How differently did Napoleon know how to arm for
battle and for victory. As early as August he had pushed forward
the troops of the Confederation of the Rhine to the borders of
Thuringia. In the first days of September he despatched marching
orders to the grande armee, prescribing each days' march with
detailed precision. His spies swarmed on the roads from Bamberg
to Berlin : a war chest of 24,000 francs was enough for him, for any
more that he wanted would be a spontaneous fruit of the antici-
pated victory.
Now, even more definitely than in the previous year, the
Imperator indicated as the aim of the war the partition of Germany
and the independence of all the German crowns ; it was for this
aim that in a circular he demanded the armed help of the courts
of the Confederation of the Rhine. An imperial embassy explained
to the Senate how Napoleon had pledged himself to safeguard
invaded Saxony from the ambitions of an unjust neighbour, and
after the outbreak of the war a manifesto " to the peoples
of Saxony " announced that France was coming to liberate them.
The French, so far as in this dull generation there still existed any
to trouble themselves about political questions, joyfully agreed
with their ruler. Since Henry II had first presented himself in
the guise of the eternal defender of German liberty, the protec-
tion of the German system of petty states was generally regarded
as one of the tasks of French national policy. Just as readily did
the princes of the Confederation of the Rhine follow the protector
of German particularism. Frederick of Wurtemberg exhibited all
the wrath of offended majesty when the Duke of Brunswick exhorted
him on behalf of the common fatherland and called to his mind the
duties of German princes. The South German officers were
delighted with the idea that now at length this arrogant Prussia
was to be repaid for the disgraces of Rossbach and Leuthen.
Yet it was a holy war, for by this war and by its terrible mis-
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carriage, the old order of German life was utterly destroyed.
What had collapsed at Ratisbon was an empty shadow ; but that
which was destroyed on the battle-fields of Thuringia and East
Prussia was the living German State, the only one which had given a
content and an aim to the political existence of this people. It was
going down to destruction when, after long years of aberration, it
once more came to itself, and began to wage war against the enforced
dominion of the foreigner and against the felony of its own princes.
Nothing could be more honourable than the open and upright letter
of defiance sent by the king to Napoleon ; nothing could be better
justified than were the three demands of the Prussian ultimatum
of October ist : the withdrawal of the French from Germany ; the
recognition of the North German Federation ; a peaceful under-
standing concerning the other two questions still in dispute between
the two powers. Even in the diffuse and ill-drafted war-manifesto
we still find, here and there, a tone of worthy national pride. The
king takes up arms, " in order to free unhappy Germany from the
yoke now imposed upon the country ; nations have rights which
are greater than all treaties ! "
Neither in the people nor yet in the army was there as yet any
idea of the great significance of the war. With the voice of one
crying in the wilderness, Schleiermacher stood in the pulpit of the
Ulrichskirche in Halle to interpret to the blind the signs of the
times : " All our life is rooted in German freedom and German
sentiment ; that is all that matters ! " Fichte, too, still remained
solitary, and understood by but few. As soon as the serious
significance of the war became manifest, there awakened in this
valiant man a lively sense of the state. He resolutely discarded
all his cosmopolitan dreams, and with flaming words he praised the
occupation of those who were fighting on behalf of the fatherland.
" What is the character of the warrior ? He must be capable of
sacrifice. It is impossible for him to escape a soundness of senti-
ment, a genuine love of honour, an elevation towards something
which is greater than life and its enjoyments." In the self-satisfied
circles of the officers' corps, there was heard hardly so much
as a laugh at the inspired speeches of the strange enthusiast ; here
there was still dominant the stiff obscurity of the Frederician times,
and in addition a spirit of carping criticism, which exercised
its wit upon every command issued by those in authority. No one
as yet fully understood how severely the army had been affected
by the profound slumber of the last decade. The king himself,
perhaps, had the clearest vision. His insight recognised the dis-
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order, the self-sufficiency, the dullness which everywhere prevailed;
but how would it have been possible for this retiring individual
to make his own views felt in opposition to those of the world-
renowned old Brunswicker ? The common soldier did his duties
mechanically. The masses of the people remained cold and
indifferent. Only the older ones who still remembered the great
king trusted firmly in the sharp talons of the Prussian eagle and
spoke boastfully of the march on Paris.
Thus began the only utterly disastrous campaign of the
fortunate history of Prussian warfare. Unexampled as had been
the rise of this state, equally unexampled was now to be its defeat,
as ever memorable to all subsequent generations as a personally
experienced sorrow, a warning to all towards watchfulness, humility,
and loyalty. Napoleon was animated by a savage and malicious
joy when he saw the most distinguished of the ancient powers
helpless beneath his claws. Insults poured from his lips ; never
before had he been so passionate, so full of hatred and cruelty.
He felt that the last hope of Germany rested upon Prussia ; with
the insight of the mean-minded man he recognised that these
Hohenzollerns were made of other metal than the Emperor Francis
and the satraps of the Confederation of the Rhine. In his addresses
to the army it was the noble queen, above all, against whom he
uttered the most malicious abuse. She, who had taken absolutely
no part in the decisive negotiations of August, was to bear the blame
for " the burghers' war " which had overtaken guileless France
so unexpectedly ; she thirsted for blood, and like another Armida
was madly setting her own castle in flames. Even before the
swords were crossed, it was already decided that it was impossible
for an honourable peace ever to be arranged between Napoleon
and the Hohenzollerns. The Imperator scornfully concluded his
war-manifesto with the words : " May Prussia learn, that while
it is easy to gain territory and people by the friendship of France,
her enmity is more terrible than the storms of the ocean ! "
Just as by the abuses of power of the previous winter Haugwitz
had brought his state into its desperate diplomatic situation, so
now he was responsible for the mistaken beginnings of the
campaign. Notwithstanding its enormously heavy baggage, the
Prussian army had completed the invasion of Thuringia earlier than
the enemy ; but the intended invasion of France was not carried
out, because Haugwitz wished first to await the issue of his ultimatum.
A few invaluable days were lost in purposeless idling to the north
of the Thuringian forest. Then came the news that the enemy were
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hurrying along the Nuremburg-Lcipzig road to eastern Thuringia,
threatening the Prussian left flank. The Duke of Brunswick
feared for his line of communications, and ordered a withdrawal to
the Elbe. While thus engaged, the army was simultaneously
attacked from the south and from the east. The Imperator himself
advanced northwards through the valley of the Saal. The advance
guard of the Prussians was defeated at Saalfield ; the death of the
high-minded Prince Louis Ferdinand profoundly disturbed the
morale of the troops, being regarded by them as an evil omen ; and
with disgust the officers heard the cry arise from the dispersed
bodies of the Prussian army, the cry never heard in that army before,
" We are cut off ! " Prince Hohenlohe, ill-advised by the empty
talker Massenbach, now forfeited in a single day the fame he
had formerly acquired in knightly fashion on the Rhine. With
his Prusso-Saxon corps, he withdrew past Jena to the table-land
on the left bank of the Saal, and since he had received orders not
to undertake any serious fighting, not only did he fail to cross the
river, but failed also to occupy the valley and the heights over-
looking the table-land. Napoleon immediately took advantage
of the blunder, at once himself occupied the heights, torch in hand
led the artillery up the steep slopes, and when the grey morning
of October I4th broke, the Imperator was already secure of victory.
How could this fraction of the Prussian army hold the position of
Vierzehnheiligen against the French main body, which now began
to attack from the commanding heights with an overwhelming
preponderance of force ? The German soldier fought bravely in
a manner worthy of his ancient fame, now as always the Prussian
cavalry showed itself superior to the French ; it was only in
dispersed fighting that the heavy infantry was unable to contend
with the nimble tirailleurs of Napoleon. The French were inspired
by the warlike ardour of young leaders accustomed to victory,
whilst the allies were paralysed by the caution of their helpless
old staff-officers. " Voyez done le pauvre papa saxon ! " cried the
French soldier with mocking wonder to an old grey-headed colonel
who had been taken prisoner. It would still have been possible
for General Riichel with his fresh troops to secure an orderly retreat
for the beaten army, but he led his regiments in isolation to useless
struggles. Thus it happened that the reserve was involved in the
defeat, and when now in the early autumn night the retreat to
Weimar was undertaken, the last moral bands which still held the
army together were ruptured. Deaf to the exhortations of unloved
leaders, the soldier thought only of himself. In formless masses
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the vestiges of the battalions and the batteries, interspersed with
portions of the unending baggage-train, hastened across the table-
land. Every bugle-call of the pursuing enemy increased the panic
and confusion. " This was a horrible experience," writes
Gneisenau referring to this dreadful night. " It would be a thousand
times better to die than to live through it again ! " In vain did
he collect a few troops of the fugitives at the edge of the woods
of Webicht, just in front of Weimar, in order to cover the retreat
of the corps. He was to learn how great is the elemental might of
terror over a stricken army ; a last random attack of the French
cavalry, carried out in the obscurity of the night, once more led
to a dispersal in wild confusion. Inextinguishably there remained
in the spirit of the hero this picture of horror, an inheritance for the
days of reprisal.
Simultaneously, a few miles lower down the river, Davoust
gained an incomparably more difficult victory over the Prussian
main body. He marched westward along the road from Naumberg
in order to cut off the Prussians from the way to the Elbe. When
on the morning of the I4th his columns emerged from the narrow
pass of Kosen upon the undulating table-land which rises steeply-
above the left bank of the Saal, between Hessenhausen and
Auerstedt, the two armies suddenly encountered one another in
the thick fog, both of them on the march, neither of them expecting
this battle, and the Prussians in this case greatly outnumbering the
enemy. During the first hours of the battle the Duke of Brunswick
was fatally wounded ; in the decisive moment the Prussian army
was without a leader, for the king did not venture to take over
the supreme command himself and had not yet nominated a
commander-in-chief. Scharnhorst, indeed, pressed forward vic-
toriously with the left wing, and believed that he had already saved
the honour of the day ; but the cavalry of the right wing was
unskilfully employed, and the second division under Kalckreuth
took no part in the fight, for in this peace army no general dared
to act on his own initiative. Thus the enemy succeeded, by using
its ultimate reserves, in defeating the right wing of the Prussians,
and now Scharnhorst, too, had to give way. The army retreated
in tolerable order intending to turn northward at a point further to
the west, near Buttstedt, and to take the road past Sangerhausen
to Magdeburg. Hohenlohe had taken the same line of retreat from
Weimar, and when, in the darkness of the night, the two beaten
armies now encountered one another, the alarm became general,
and the main army was involved in the disorder of the force of
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Hohenlohe. The men were dull and unaffected in the face of the
destruction of Old Prussia ; numbers of them lost their flags ; some
even, who had been taken prisoner by the enemy and who were then
rescued by a spirited troop of cavalry, refused to take up arms
again. When the army drew nearer home, many of the soldiers
deserted, those of long service saying to themselves that they had
carried the musket long enough, that the king had plenty of young
fellows, and that they might fight it out. The magic of the Frederi-
cian invulnerability had been destroyed, and a warlike fame beyond
compare had been lost.
On October I5th Napoleon imposed upon all the Prussian
provinces on the hither side of the Vistula a tax of 159,000,000
francs, on the ground that the battle of the day before had signified
the conquest of the whole of this region. Never had the favourite
of fortune boasted more audaciously, and yet, through a remarkable
fatality, the most criminal of lies was to become a literal truth.
Immediately after the defeat the Court of Dresden carried out its
long-planned desertion, and went over to Napoleon. A week later,
the Prussian domains on the left bank of the Elbe, as well as the
possessions of the House of Orange and the House of Hesse,
were temporarily annexed to the French empire. The system of
ambiguous neutrality, which, with Napoleon's consent, had been
adopted by the elector of Hesse, was now punished ; the conqueror
would no longer tolerate a secret enemy at his back. In Miinster,
the devotees of the ancient liberty of the estates rejoiced in the
throwing off of the Prussian yoke ; the black-and-white turnpikes
were torn down, the French and Miinsterland flags waved to cele-
brate the entry of the Napoleonic troops. In Hanover, too, the
black eagles were hastily removed, and the dismissal of the Prussian
officials was greeted with unconcealed delight.
Whilst the new provinces were thus lost, the reserve army
at Halle underwent a defeat ; and since it withdrew to Magdeburg
instead of guarding the capital, Napoleon was able to continue
unhindered his victorious march to Berlin along the chord of the
wide arc which the beaten forces occupied. Terribly now had to
be avenged the self-satisfied arrogance of the times of peace None
of the fortresses were properly armed, for no one had regarded as
conceivable the entrance of an enemy into the heart of the mon-
archy ; and the unwieldy fiscal system which, after the method of
a good domestic economist, measured the expenditure in accordance
with the income, provided absolutely no means for extraordinary
expenses. Many of the commanders of the fortresses had been
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valiant officers, but their sense of duty did not spring from love
for the fatherland, being due simply to pride of caste. To them
the army was everything, and in their invincible arrogance they
calmly awaited the inevitable victory of the Frederician regiments.
When the alarming intelligence of the defeat spread through the
country, when the miserable remnants of this invincible army
reached Magdeburg, filling the whole town with alarm and confusion,
it seemed to these old officers as if the world were coming to an end ;
all resistance was useless ; everything on which their life had
depended for support had crumbled to pieces. After the fall of
Erfurt, which capitulated disgracefully immediately after the battle,
the principal fortresses of the old state, Magdeburg, Kiistrin, Stettin,
and a number of smaller places, opened their gates.
With a sound good sense the loyal people visited most of its
wrath upon the generals, for just as the loss of the double battle
was mainly due to bad leadership, so also was this last disgrace
attributable to the generals. Everywhere the conduct of the garri-
sons showed that they were worthy of a better fate. Young officers
broke their swords in despair, common soldiers placed the muzzles
of their muskets against their breasts and fired, not wishing to
survive the shame of the capitulation ; in Kiistrin several
battalions rose in mutiny against their dishonoured commanders.
But so ineffective had now become the power of public censure,
that subsequently not one of these old men who had thus forgotten
their duty had the courage when overtaken by disgraceful punish-
ment to atone for the stain on their honour by voluntary death.
Prince Hohenlohe, even, ended in dishonour. With unspeakable
privations, he had led the vestiges of his corps by a wide detour
to the Uckermark, and then the French overtook him at Prenzlau,
in the marshes by the Ucker See. Exhausted in body and mind,
profoundly disturbed by the reports of misfortune which reached
him from all sides, he allowed himself to be discouraged by the
suggestions of Massenbach, and to be grossly deceived by Murat's
falsehoods as to the strength of the enemy ; in the true style of
the adventurer of the empire, the brother-in-law of Napoleon
pledged his word of honour to a deliberate lie. A last despairing
attack by Prince August failed, and the army of Hohenlohe capitu-
lated in the open field. Such was the end of that knightly prince who
had once been an ornament of the Prussian army, who amid
the disorder of the days of the Confederation of the Rhine had alone
among the princes of the South maintained honourable courage
and German loyalty.
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The army was annihilated. After the fall of Stettin and
Kiistrin, the line of the Oder had also become untenable, and it
seemed hopeless to attempt to offer a last resistance with the aid
of the East Prussian regiments on the further side of the Vistula.
Napoleon wrote in a satisfied mood to the Sultan, " Prussia has
vanished." Even Gentz considered that " it would be ridiculous
to dream any longer of the revival of Prussia ! " How many
storms had passed over this State since its rulers had shown it the
steep path that leads to great things ; often before had the capital
seen the enemies of the country within its walls ; but now for
the first time in Prussia's history was disgrace associated with
misfortune. Shame and rue raged in every heart, and the coarse
joy of the conqueror made him refrain from nothing which might
increase these painful sensations. Designedly he displayed his
contempt for everything Prussian ; in the royal castle of the
Hohenzollerns he penned new and filthy libels against Queen
Louise. While sending the coat and sword of Frederick the Great
to the Invalides, he poured his scorn out oil this people that left
the grave of its greatest man so unadorned ; the Imperial Guard
destroyed the obelisk on the battle-field of Rossbach ; the figure
of Victory was torn down from the Brandenburg Gate, to disappear
in a shed on the Seine. What a spectacle it was when the brilliant
regiment of the Gensdarmes, disarmed, ragged, and almost starving,
was driven up and down Unter den Linden like a drove of beasts.
To the sound of drums and trumpets, in a ceremonial procession,
there were carried through the streets the old banners with their
aspiring eagles and whole baskets full of silver kettledrums and
trumpets, witnesses of old glory and new shame. Of all the troops
that had been in the field, the Garde du Corps was the only regiment
that had saved all its distinctions of honour. It was soon for-
bidden that any Prussian uniform should be worn in Berlin ; even
the pensioned officers were to lay aside the blue coat. In addition
there were intolerable taxes, there were arrogance, debauchery,
and the oppression of billeting. On November 2ist Napoleon
issued from Berlin that incredible decree which forbade all trade
with England, and condemned all English goods to confiscation ;
the Continental System was founded, and for years to come the
well-being of Germany was forcibly repressed.
There were not lacking traits of dishonourable servitude.
The baseness that is not absent from any nation appeared here
more hateful than anywhere else, for German uncouthness lacks
understanding of the dubious art which characterises the more
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refined culture of the Romans, whereby an outward respectability
is preserved even amid baseness. Many a man of mean spirit
crawled to offer his services to the conqueror. Lange, Buchholz,
and other leaders of Berlin enlightenment, glorified the victory
of reason over the prejudices of the nobles. The hatred of the
people for the arrogance of the officers manifested itself in various
outbreaks of rude mockery. Moreover, the cumbrous pedantry and
the stupid punctiliousness of the officialdom, paralysed the powers
of resistance of the state ; in this time of disorder all the authorities
continued quietly to carry on their daily work, so that the
conquering invader found everywhere an ordered apparatus and
administration ready to his hand, and many a well-meaning old
War Office clerk became, without knowing it, a tool in the
hands of the enemy. Among the instances of open treachery, none
appear so shameful as the desertion of Johannes Miiller. The
triumphs of the Imperator induced in this enthusiastic admirer
of Old German and of Swiss freedom, a mood of servile admiration ;
with a complete change of front, he glorified in swelling periods
Napoleon and Frederick as the heroes of the modern world. His
old comrade Gentz thereupon broke off their friendship in a rage,
and wished for him one punishment only, that he might see the
usurper overthrown and Germany free once again ! Less unworthy
but no less morbid was the scientific indifference with which Hegel
regarded the destruction of his fatherland. When Napoleon
burst over the field of Jena, it seemed to Hegel as if the world's
soul had been displayed in bodily form, and from the fall of Prussia
he deduced the sagacious doctrine that spirit always gains the victory
over spiritless reasoning and sophistry. Generally speaking, in Thur-
ingia, the first overwhelming impression of misfortune was speedily
dissipated, and it was only under the pitiless oppression of the
following years that the people of Mid-Germany came to learn
how firmly intertwined was its own life with the destiny of the
Prussian State.
In the old provinces of Prussia, the change of mood began
sooner, immediately after the first defeats. Napoleon's unbridled
and ever-growing hatred for Prussia was nourished upon the secret
suspicion that in this state, notwithstanding all the shame and the
folly of recent weeks, there still slumbered an untamable force of
will, such as the Imperator had never before encountered upon the
Continent. What the Prussian soldier was capable of under power-
ful leadership was shown by the retreat of Blucher's army. In
these battles several young heroes, who were subsequently to help
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in leading the state towards brighter days, first became known to
friend and foe. With the remnants of the reserve army and some
other troops, Blucher crossed the Elbe, near Magdeburg, in order
to effect a junction with the forces under Hohenlohe ; and while
the river was being crossed, Colonel York with his yagers held
off the pursuing army for several hours in the brilliant battle of
Altenzaun. When the proposed junction with Hohenlohe was
rendered impossible by the news of the capitulation of Prenzlau,
Scharnhorst conceived the audacious plan of turning against the
flank and the rear of the French, in order to divert a portion of the
hostile army from the Mark. The small force hastened towards
Mecklenburg, and actually succeeded in luring three French army
corps in pursuit. Even amid all the troubles and distresses of this
difficult retreat, in the free spirit of Scharnhorst there began to
waken the creative ideas of military reform of which he had given
the first indications in the spring, in his memorial upon the militia.
With convincing clearness, in a conversation with Muffling held
in Gadebusch, he showed that in the defeats of the last weeks the
severest and ultimate source of all the misfortunes had been the
failure of the common soldier to participate in the action, and that
what was above all needed was to transform the army in such a
way that it should come to feel itself at one with the fatherland. x
Subsequently the army fought with desperate courage at the
gates and in the streets of Liibeck against a superior force of the
enemy, and it was only when all provisions and all munitions of
war had been lost, and when further resistance was utterly
impossible, that Blucher laid down his arms in Rattkau. This
was a struggle full of heroic rage, such as the miserable campaign
of 1805 had never seen ; and altogether different from the thought-
less curiosity of the Viennese now appeared the worthy conduct of
the great majority of the people of Berlin, in face of Napoleon's
entry. Never before had anyone spoken so frankly to the
Imperator as the preacher Erman, who at the greeting at the gate
said plainly that a servant of the Gospel could not lie, and that it
was therefore impossible for him to pretend that he rejoiced at
the entrance of the enemy.
The pitiless reality of the war destroyed the phrases of
enlightened vanity, destroyed that dream-world of the reason, in
which the over-culture of the great town was accustomed to lose
its way, and it forced the slack spirits once more to hate and to
1 Recorded by Muffling in a memorial upon the Landwehr, which he transmitted to
Hardenberg on July 12, 1821.
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love cordially. With the well-being of intellectual sociability
there disappeared also the world of literary make-believe. Now
that misery dwelt in every home, even the pride of culture recog-
nised the forcible hand of the living God ; the man of learning came
to understand just as much as the man of simple mind, what this
perplexing life of ours becomes without faith, and what a miserable
creature is man without his nation. The longer the billeting lasted,
the more serious, the more collected, the more Prussian, became
the general mood, and soon the town of frivolous criticism was
hardly to be recognised. All waited in breathless suspense to hear
the news from the East Prussian theatre of war. The maimed
veterans played upon their hurdy-gurdys the song of lament for
Prince Louis Ferdinand, the one folk-song which had come into
existence in the dull misery of the present war ; and on the birthday
of the beloved queen, behind all the curtained windows of Berlin,
lights were burned in defiance of the prohibition of the French
governor. In the provinces too, there began an awakening from
the slumber of the times of peace ; many a weatherproof old peasant
looked with grim hope towards the picture of the great king hanging
on the wall.
Thus amid distress and shame did Barthold Niebuhr first
learn to know the Prussian people and cleave to it with all the
passion of his great heart, recognising that noble natures appear
greater in evil fortune than in good. Immediately before the
battle of Jena, he had left Denmark to enter the service of the
Prussian state, and when on the retreat to Konigsberg he was asso-
ciating with the Pomeranians and the Old Prussians, he wrote
confidently : "I never expected to find in association so much
energy, seriousness, loyalty, and good humour ; if they had been
properly led, these people would have been unconquerable by
the whole world ! " But the crowd must always feel before they can
hear. As far as the masses were concerned, it was only the endur-
ing need of the coming year that was to win them fully for the
ideas of liberation ; and it was among the warlike nobles and among
the men of learning that anger for the fatherland was aroused far
sooner and far more easily. The military pride of ancient Prussia
and the bold idealism of the new German literature suddenly
encountered one another in a single idea. Amid the destruction
of the old monarchy, there was already prepared the groundwork
of that great change which has determined the course of our history
in the nineteenth century the reconciliation of the Prussian state
with the freedom of German culture. In the old generation of soldiers
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there prevailed a savage bitterness against the foreign dominion,
and many brave men belonging to those circles voluntarily offered
their services to the king. Fichte, too, went of his own free will
to Konigsberg, because he could not bend his head beneath the yoke
of the oppressor. Around Schleiermacher there was quietly assem-
bling a circle of warm-hearted patriots. This loyal spirit saw " the
regeneration of Germany arising out of its profound humiliation " ;
he wished to play his part in speech and writing, and he considered
this to be the last moment in which he ought to forsake his king.
" Free speech is the sharpest poison for Napoleon," he said.
Not for an instant did he believe in the permanence of the triumph
of France, holding that this conqueror had " too little of the kingly
spirit."
Completely overwhelmed by the unexpected defeat, King
Frederick William had, immediately after the battle, offered peace
under humiliating conditions. These were the most deplorable
days of his life. Some of his counsellors even recommended that
Prussia should join the Confederation of the Rhine. It was the
arrogance of the conqueror which first restored to the unhappy
prince a consciousness of his royal duties. Napoleon raised his
demands in the course of the negotiations, asking not only the
cession of all the territories westward of the Elbe, but also that
Prussia should withdraw from the Russian alliance. This touched
the king's pride. His conscience would not allow him to do what
the Emperor Francis, in a far more favourable situation, had done
without a thought a year before ; he could not consent to abandon
the ally whose help he had so recently besought. On November
2ist, in the headquarters at Osterode, a council was held concerning
the acceptance of a truce which Lucchesini and Zastrow had
pusillanimously subscribed. Then came the moment when the
men separated themselves from the boys and from the wiseacres.
Not only did Stein, who had rescued the state treasure, the means
for the continuation of the war, by moving it into East Prussia,
advise the rejection of the treaty, but the same course was taken
by his political opponent, the high tory Count Voss, a leading
noble of the Mark. The king took the same view, and here in the
remote eastern Mark, the last bulwark of German freedom, he again
took up arms. Immediately afterwards he dismissed Haugwitz.
From this day onwards, the much misunderstood monarch, though
he may often have erred and vacillated in detail, held firmly and
invincibly through six terrible years to the idea that no honourable
peace could be concluded with France until after the re-establishment
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of Prussia. Thus began the campaign in East Prussia, the first
in which the sun did not shine uncloudedly upon the Imperator,
the first which in despairing Europe awakened a glimmer of hope
that perhaps after all this man of might was not invincible.
Napoleon's sharp gaze soon led him to recognise that in North
Germany it was necessary for him to draw the reins of his dominion
tighter than in the regions of the Confederation of the Rhine.
In the south he was surrounded by the tried allies of France who
ruled their new-formed states docilely in accordance with the
principles freshly imported from France ; in the north he had to
do with a tougher population, utterly refractory to the French
system, and he found there a strict Protestant civilisation, cumbrous
feudal institutions, and ancient princely races which were closely
allied with Prussia, England, and Russia. In the north, therefore,
he was from the first more severe, and retained the whole of the
north-western region, the lands of the Guelphs, the Hesses, and the
Oranges, at the disposal of his own relatives. One only of the
established North German dynasties was welcome to him as a
natural friend, and this was the House of the Albertines, the old
rivals of the Hohenzollerns, and it was on behalf of the sovereignty
of the Albertines that he had professedly taken up arms. On
December nth, by the Peace of Posen, the elector of Saxony was
admitted into the Confederation of the Rhine, and received a royal
crown. In order to detach the new king permanently from Prussia,
Napoleon promised to give him Prussian Lower Lusatia and the
loyal district of Kottbus in exchange for the Mansfeld territory,
and bade him send an auxiliary corps into the field against his
betrayed ally. The Imperator also secured the personal gratitude
of the bigot Frederick Augustus, in that he ordained the equality
of the Catholics and the Protestants in Saxony, an innovation which
the court of Dresden had never been able to carry into effect among
its rigid Lutheran population. This last step of Napoleon's was,
moreover, something more than a mere diplomatic move, for from
year to year there continually became plainer the inner kinship
which associates every modern world-empire with the Roman world-
church. Not even the heir of the Revolution could dispense with
the help of Rome, just as little as could formerly Charles V. His
letters to the Holy See and his embassies to the Senate, expressly
drew attention to the fact that he had everywhere delivered our
holy religion from its Protestant persecutors, and that he was
unceasingly at war with England, the deadly enemy of the Roman
Church.
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German submissiveness celebrated its saturnalia even more
meanly in Electoral Saxony than it had done a year earlier in
Bavaria. How delighted were the Saxons to take an equal rank with
their proud Prussian neighbours ! In the spring of 1807, whilst the
fight for the last remnants of German freedom was proceeding along
the Vistula, the town of Leipzig instituted a magnificent festival in
honour of the new Saxon crown. The sun of Napoleon, the boastful
image which he had borrowed from his predecessor Louis XIV,
shone everywhere over the decorated streets. In the market places
was erected an altar to the fatherland ; the students marched
up in festal array, burned torches before the altar, and sang
exultingly, " Our Fatherland is saved ! " Even the dead bodies
in the university dissecting-room were to take part in the national
delight of Saxony, for an illuminated inscription over the entrance
to the room announced, " Even the dead call out, Hail ! "
In Napoleon's eyes, the other petty princes of the north were
no more than Prussian vassals and officers, and he would gladly
have got rid of them one and all. But these extraordinary state-
structures were so dispersed that their annexation was difficult ;
moreover, in the Confederation of the Rhine there was not at the
moment to be found a trustworthy king to whom they could be
presented. The Imperator had more serious matters to consider;
he would not devote to this question more attention than it
deserved ; and he wished above all to bring the negotiations to a
speedy conclusion, because he desired to make immediate use of
the smaller contingents in the Prussian war. For this reason,
when the petty princes of Thuringia and Westphalia, some of them
in person and others by proxy, besought the favour of the conqueror
at the headquarters in Posen, they received a tolerably gracious
reception. For the third time there began the hateful drama of the
German land-chaffering, and for the third time the gold of German
princes poured into the bottomless pockets of Napoleonic diplomacy ;
and the negotiations went on happily, for in the Nassau statesman
Hans von Gagern the oppressed little princes found an alert and
disinterested commission agent. This extraordinary admirer of
ancient German liberty had derived from his learned historical
inquiries the conclusion that pure Germanism, the true greatness
of Germany, consisted in the motley disintegration of its national
life. When now he heard of the anxieties of the petty lords of the
north, he hastened to the scene, took the part of those who were
in danger, and by his busy activities so far held in check his old
admirer Talleyrand that the Frenchman, in any case a proud
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History of Germany
aristocrat and well-disposed towards the German high nobility, at
length acceded to all the desires of the indefatigable German. Nor
was there lacking humour worthy of such a situation. " Give me
one of your petty princes," once exclaimed Talle}'rand's assistant,
La Besnardiere ; " Not one," answered the zealous saviour of
particularism, " you must swallow the whole lot of them, even if
it should choke you ! "
Thus it was as sovereigns that the Ernestines and the
Ascanians, the Reusses and the Schwarzburgs, the Lippes and the
Waldecks, entered the Confederation of the Rhine. The count of
Biickeburg at the same time acquired the princely title, for the
French were carrying on the business in a spirit of contemptuous
levity, and in the treaty spoke simply of the two Princes of Lippe.
Subsequently, however, Napoleon complained angrily that in these
negotiations he had, for the first time, been deceived, and said
if he had known where Reuss, Lippe, and Waldeck really were,
their princes would not have received thrones. He never forgot
that these dynasts of the north had once constituted the nucleus
of the Prussian party in the empire. For this reason he was always
a strict master to them, would not allow them any expansion of
territory, nor would admit them to kinship, whereas after his brutal
manner he displayed a certain good feeling towards the rulers at
Dresden and in the South German courts. It was for this reason
also that the patriarchal little peoples of the North German petty
states remained quite uninfluenced by the Napoleonic cult which
found so many advocates in Electoral Saxony and South Germany ;
the peasants of Thuringia and Mecklenburg felt themselves person-
ally offended when they saw their tribal dukes humiliated before
the foreign potentate. But the end of the matter was that even
while the war continued, Prussia was thrust out of Germany (as
in the previous autumn Austria had been thrust out), while the
totality of the petty states of those of medium size were subjected
to the Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine.
While the German allies were abandoning Prussia, this unfor-
tunate state had to atone for the partition of Poland. The Slav
domains, whose possession during the last decade had brought the
internal development of the monarchy to a standstill, proved unten-
able in the hour of danger. Four weeks after the battle of Jena,
Dombrowski raised the standard of revolt in Poland ; all the nobles
hastened to place themselves beneath the banner of the white eagle,
and soon the disturbance extended throughout the territory which
had been annexed to Prussia in the last two partitions. The king
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could not endure the burden of his lofty office unless he were secure
of the love and fidelity of his subjects, and he considered that the
state must be held together by moral bonds. The spectacle of this
great defection filled his soul with profound bitterness, but he recog-
nised with sobriety how this national movement could not possibly
be restrained, and he paid no attention to the fantastic proposals
of Prince Radziwill, who dreamed of a royalist counter-movement.
The revolt of the ancient ally of France was more than welcome to
the Imperator. He eagerly encouraged the disturbance, dis-
tributed arms among the rebels, incited the Poles in the Prussian
regiments to desert, and recorded in his bulletins that the Polish
people was now showing itself in really interesting colours. At
the same time he carefully guarded himself against giving the Poles
any definite pledge. Coldly and distinctly did he see through
these Sarmatian Junkers, recognising their stormy courage, but
also their levity, their egoism, their political incapacity. The
country was valuable to him as a source of excellent auxiliary
troops, and as a means for preparing the long-planned humilia-
tion of Russia; he was ready, if circumstances should make it
seem desirable, to restore to the Poles the semblance of political
independence.
The Polish rebellion at length made it necessary for the czar
to furnish the assistance which he had promised his Prussian
friend. But it was not as mere auxiliaries as had been assumed in the
previous autumn, that the Russian forces appeared upon Prussian
soil. The Russians had to bear the burden and heat of the day, and
payment must now be made for the light-heartedness with which the
Turkish War had been begun, since only a portion of the Russian
army was available for Prussia. In the unhappy frontier land
there were renewed the horrors of the Seven Years' War. Before
long the undisciplined roughness of the Russian friends became
even more detestable to the plundered Prussian countryman than
was the rage of the enemy ; and there had also to be endured the
spectacle of the bad leadership of the Russians and the intolerable
arrogance which their officers displayed towards the valiant little
Prussian army of General Lestocq. Nevertheless, this campaign,
which dragged on indecisively for months upon the devastated plains
of Poland and Prussia, was the first which shook the victorious
confidence of the Napoleonic army. The French soldiers, accus-
tomed to rapid successes and rich booty, to the comfortable life
of the vine-lands of the south, began to murmur, and to ask if their
insatiable leader was never going to weary of fighting. For several
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weeks in succession Lestocq's army defended, with ancient Prussian
tenacity, the crossing of the Vistula into Kulmerland ; and when at
length summoned to join the Russian army in the east, these poor
remnants of the Prussian army proved decisive in the first battle
which the conqueror failed to win. On February 7 and 8, 1807,
at Eylau, Napoleon endeavoured by a vigorous attack to drive
the army of the allies eastward. On the second day of the battle,
after a murderous struggle, the left wing of the Russian forces had
been thrown into disorder. Thereupon Scharnhorst recognised
that the decisive moment had come. He moved the troops of
Lestocq, which, after an exhausting march, had just arrived upon
the extreme right wing of the allies, against the enemy's centre.
Once again did the star of fortune of the Frederician days seem to
shine over the Germans, when the little Prussian force, with bands
playing and banners waving, advanced through the ranks of the
fleeing Russians towards the forest of Kutschitten, and then drove
the enemy before them, past Anklappen.
The French attack had failed. In opposition to all his customs,
the Imperator was compelled, after these undecisive battles, to enter
winter quarters ; and so powerful was the impression produced
by this first failure, that immediately after the battle Napoleon
approached the king with new proposals of peace. Mingling
flattery with threats, he wrote that this was the finest moment of
his life ; the Prussian nation must be restored as a protective wall
between Russia and France, either under the House of Brandenburg
or any other princely race ; he would restore all the lands on the
hither side of the Elbe ; he thought no more of Poland now that
he had come to know the country. Unmistakable, however, was
the deceiver's intention to separate Prussia from her ally, in order
subsequently, after the overthrow of Russia, to humiliate further
the king of Prussia, abandoned by all the world. Frederick William
did not hesitate for a moment, and firmly rejected the French
proposals. It was first in misfortune that the passive virtues of
loyalty and staying power in which the strength of his character
lay, came to light. The royal house, which was now carrying on
its impoverished existence in Memel on the last corner of German
territory, became for the whole country an example of honourable
resignation, of pious trust in God. More cordially, more intimately
than in the days of good fortune did the proud people of East
Prussia adhere to the ruling dynasty. Throughout the country
everyone related admiringly of the beautiful queen how, though ill
and though a terrible snow storm was raging, she had fled along
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the waste of the Kurische Nerung, thinking it better to fall into
God's hands than into the enemy's ; and how she subsequently
stood confidently and courageously by the side of her profoundly
afflicted spouse.
It was true that a free and courageous spirit was still lacking
to the guidance of the state. It was not possible that in a moment
should be overcome the effects of a decade of weakness and of
half measures. Severe exhortations were issued to the troops,
and severe punishments were inflicted upon those garrison-com-
manders of the fortresses who had forgotten their duty. The
conduct of Lestocq's little army was exemplary ; and Scharnhorst,
who in the previous year had brought about the formation of large
divisions composed of all arms, now actually laid aside the old
cumbrous linear tactics, and directed the movements of the army
in accordance with the principles of the new and bolder conduct
of war, which the king himself impressed upon his officers in a
thoroughgoing course of instruction. But the equipment of nineteen
reserve battalions was effected so slowly that none of them came to
be utilised in the field. An appeal for the general arming of the
people, already signed by the king, was never issued, because the
loyal estates of East Prussia made urgent representations to the
effect that the nobles could serve only in the royal army, but never
in a Landsturm. Nor did the civil administration pass for many
months out of a moribund state of transition. The monarch was
not yet able to see that the obsolete cabinet government was
irreconcilable with the independent responsibility of the ministers ;
and he dismissed Stein, with harsh and unjust words, when
the baron openly and passionately advocated the abolition of
the cabinet. Hardenberg knew better how to manage the king.
His frankness, which always continued to display itself in amiable
and quiet forms, at length prevailed, and on April 26, 1807, there
was quietly effected a change in the constitution, the most significant
in its consequences which the ancient absolutism had experienced
since the days of Frederick William I. Cabinet government was
abolished, and Hardenberg became prime minister and foreign
secretary and was charged also with all matters concerning the
conduct of the war.
Even after the partial success of Eylau, the position of the allies
remained extremely serious. However successfully the toughest of
Napoleon's opponents was fighting on the sea, in the management
of continental affairs the shopkeeping spirit of England showed
now, as formerly, a maladroitness which was already beginning
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to become proverbial. Whereas three years earlier not a single
hand had been raised in London to defend Hanover against the
French, Prussia was immediately punished by a declaration of war
for her occupation of the electoral princedom ; and when, in January,
1807, peace was made between England and the Prussian court,
and Prussia abandoned her claims to Hanover, the cabinet of St.
James's did nothing to support her new ally against the common
enemy. No treaty of subsidies was signed. Count Miinster, whose
advice was decisive in London regarding all German affairs, could
not overcome the old Guelph mistrust of Prussia. Austria had not
been shaken out of her neutrality even by the terrible news of the
Polish rebellion. Both parties were eagerly wooing the Hofburg.
Napoleon offered Silesia in exchange for Galicia ; the czar sent
Pozzo di Borgo, the deadly enemy of the House of Bonaparte, to
Vienna, with urgent exhortations ; the king of Prussia, in his great
difficulties, declared himself willing to permit the temporary occu-
pation of the Silesian forests by an army of Austrian auxiliaries.
Archduke Charles, however, remained faithful to his pacifist
policy. To cloak Austrian inactivity, the offer was at length made
that Austria should intermediate to secure peace, but in such a
situation this offer was of no avail. The friendship of the czar
was the last hope of the tottering Prussian monarchy, and the
enthusiastic young Russian was not sparing of fine words when,
in the spring, he appeared in person upon the theatre of war. How
amiably he behaved in his intercourse with the royal family,
saying fervently to his unhappy friend, " It is true, is it not, neither
of us can fall alone ? " and to many an honourable Prussian
it seemed that he now for the first time fully understood Alexander's
greatness of heart.
It is characteristic of Hardenberg's nature, of his unshaken
courage, and of his happy-go-lucky instability, that at such
a time, when the whole existence of Prussia was still at stake,
he ventured to bring forward a profound and comprehensive
plan for the re-ordering of Germany and of the entire state-
system. For more than ten years he had cherished the hope that
with the aid of France he might construct a North German great
power, which should counterbalance the House of Austria. As
soon as he came to recognise the vanity of this dream, he at once
adopted a new system of German policy, to which he remained faith-
ful until his death, the policy of a regulated dualism. Fate, how-
ever, had spoken with no uncertain voice ; both Austria and
Prussia were beaten in isolation, and nothing but their faithful
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co-operation could liberate Germany. During the following years,
all Prussian patriots without distinction of party united upon this
idea ; as if by force of nature, it found simultaneous expression
in a hundred troubled hearts. In the writings of Gentz, the notion
returns again and again as a ceterum censeo. In the artistic
drawings in which Colonel Knesebeck loved to represent the future
of Europe, the European balance was always maintained by the
alliance between Austria and Prussia. Arndt and Kleist swore to
restore the two mightiest sons of Germany to mutual harmony.
Queen Louise longed for the day when the reconciled German
brethren should join in the holy war. The king alone quietly held
to his old opinion, and when he thought of an anti-French European
league, Russia always came first in his mind. Hardenberg, on the
other hand, now considered the rivalry of the two German powers
as an obsolete and unhappy prejudice, for their interests were
identical. Simply, magnanimously, and without any ulterior
motive, he prepared these plans ; not one of his state-papers shows
any kind of concealed hostility towards Austria. He believed that
by maintaining friendly and neighbourly relations, the ancient
opposition of interests might be completely allayed, and it is
undeniable that his policy corresponded to the needs of the
immediate future.
It was in this spirit also that the new treaty of alliance was
drawn up which was signed on April 26th at Bartenstein by Prussia
and Russia. The two powers pledged themselves not to lay down
their arms until Germany had been liberated, and the French had
been driven back across the Rhine ; the German domain was to
be safeguarded by a chain of fortresses along the left bank of the
Rhine, whilst Austria was to be secured in the south-west by Tyrol
and the line of the Mincio ; instead of the Confederation of the
Rhine there was to be constituted a German league of sovereign
states under the common leadership of the two great powers, in
such a way that Austria should be supreme in the south and Prussia
in the north ; as regards the dominion of Prussia, this was to be
restored to the status quo of 1805, with rounded off and strengthened
frontiers ; finally, there was to be an increase of the Guelph domain
on German soil and, if at all possible, the independence of Holland
was to be restored. By a special article, the door was left open
for the accession of the Hofburg to the league ; the adhesion of
England and Sweden was also securely counted on. With remark-
able confidence there were manifested here almost all the ideas which
were to be actually realised in the year 1814.
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History of Germany
The court of Vienna, however, was alarmed by the rashness of
this policy. Count Stadion's sympathies were estranged when he
heard that such audacious plans had been made without the assent
of the Hofburg, and would not go beyond the terms of the Peace of
Pressburg. How little, too, did the Russian conduct of the war cor-
respond to the bold flight of Hardenberg's proposals. It was only
the co-operation of fortune and the valour of the soldiers which
had enabled the mediocre capabilities of General Bennigsen to win
the laurels of Eylau. This leader carefully guarded himself against
putting his fame to further hazard, and for four long months
remained almost stationary. Meanwhile Napoleon, in his winter
quarters at Osterode, displayed a feverish activity. He
strengthened his army, raised the conscription levies of 1808 in
advance, made the princes of the Confederation of the Rhine
constitute a reserve army, conducted from afar the defence of
Constantinople against the English fleet, and at the same time
carried on the investment of Danzig. Since this place was to serve
him as a point of support for the continuation of the campaign,
he determined for the second and last time in his military career
to undertake the weary work of a formal siege, which he had always
shunned since the battles round Mantua. The fortress was
bravely defended by General Kalckreuth, and in the attempts to
relieve the siege, Colonel Biilow, already a distinguished officer in
the new German army, gained great renown. But since Bennigsen
would venture nothing to liberate this important place, Kalckreuth
was forced on May 27th into an honourable capitulation.
The fierce old General Courbiere defended himself with better
success in Graudenz. In the mountains of the Silesian frontier,
Count Gotzen, a fiery spirit in a weak frame, also maintained a
petty warfare with far-sighted boldness. But of all the deeds of
the allied armies, the most conspicuous was the heroic defence of
the little Farther Pomeranian fortress of Kolberg. Here, in this
loyal town, which during the Seven Years' War had thrice with-
stood a superior force of the enemy, was the cradle of the new
Prussian military renown ; here there first awakened that sacred
wrath of the nation, which after six painful years was to compel
the liberation of the world ; here was to appear upon the stage
of history a man who better than any other embodied the true
spirit of the Prussian soldier, combining incisive courage with clear
insight. Twenty years of tedium in garrison-life as a subaltern
had not destroyed the youthful freshness of Gneisenau. Kindly
and frank, altogether free from selfishness, and a man of modest
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disposition though inclined to exercise an ironical wit upon stupidity
and meanness, he stood on the very summit of culture. His com-
prehensive vision embraced the whole circle of the national history
of a gigantic time, but his wealth in ideas did not lead him astray
from the happy belief that the energies of a strong people are
inexhaustible, and did not disturb his bold delight in adventure
and fighting. In the fire of his glance, in the serene majesty of his
appearance, there was to be found some of that charm which had
once radiated from the young king Frederick. In the threatened
fortress, everything suddenly assumed a new aspect when the
unknown major came to take command of the despairing garrison;
when out of the motley force in Kolberg he speedily constituted
a fine body of men, inspired by a sentiment of victory ; and when he
induced the valiant burghers, led by the daring old seaman, Nettel-
beck, to take part in the work of defence. " I took everything into
my own hands," so he tells us, " behaved like an independent
prince, being even somewhat despotic ; I cashiered cowardly
officers ; lived happily among the brave fellows ; did not bother
myself about the future, and kept a sturdy front." The enemy's
generals noted with astonishment how this man of genius was
able to carry on war in a manner which placed his soldiers on an
equal footing with the French. The defender changed roles wih
the attacker, harassed the besiegers by surprise-sallies, threw
up earthworks in the open country, which for many weeks kept the
enemy away from the walls of the fortress. The high-spirited love
of song characteristic of the old German soldiers, which in this melan-
choly war had elsewhere been in abeyance, was now revived ;
mockingly the men sang on their unconquered walls
"We've plenty of cannon, we're all free from care,
So toddle off homewards, and don't waste time here."
Simultaneously, not far from Kolberg, Schill, the bold hussar,
was engaged in adventurous skirmishing, and Gneisenau learnt with
a delight altogether free from envy how the masses were hailing
this brave but narrow man as the hero of the fatherland. He was
well satisfied as long as the oppressed soul of our people was once
more hopefully aspiring, no matter upon whose image their gaze
was fixed. In Hither Pomerania, Marwitz got together a volunteer
corps, " for the liberation of the German fatherland," as the brave
young fellow said to his men. In Westphalia, the faithful Vincke
endeavoured to raise a revolt. Blucher, with a small Prussian
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History of Germany
force, with the aid of auxiliary Swedish troops, and in the hope of
further help from an English army which was expected at Riigen,
devoted himself to making a diversion in Napoleon's rear. To
the Imperator the tenacious Prussian nature became daily more
detestable. In a terrible rage, he termed Schill a robber ; in his
newspapers he had the king described as a simpleton, who hardly
deserved to rank as an adjutant beside Alexander ; he was resolved
to destroy utterly this inconvenient state which he could no longer
pardon.
Then came the decisive moment in East Prussia. In June,
the general uneasiness about the fall of Danzig made it necessary
for the Russian commander-in-chief at length to set his army in
motion. The French attack was happily defeated at Heilsberg.
When Napoleon now advanced down the Alle, in order to surround
the Russians, Bennigsen, ignorant of the enemy's strength, under-
took an ill-advised attack against the French columns, and at
Friedland, on June I4th, was completely defeated. On the anni
versary of Marengo, the Prussian War came to an end, for after
this one battle, Alexander's courage collapsed, as suddenly as it had
formerly after the battle of Austerlitz. His own land was still
untouched by the enemy, but he dreaded a revolution in Russian
Poland. His brother Constantine and the great majority of the
generals were openly opposing this war for foreign ends, and even
Stadion had already asked the Russian ambassador why the czar
wished to sacrifice himself for Prussia. The fickle minded man
considered that he had done all that generosity demanded. With-
out notifying the king, who continued to believe firmly in the
affectionate assurances of his friend, Alexander offered a truce.
Napoleon eagerly accepted the offer. He was not now in a posi-
tion to carry the war into the interior of Russia, and he was also
anxious about the vacillating position of Austria, which at this
time was despatching a negotiator to the allies. In a few days he
succeeded in gaining over the czar for the French alliance. It
was not that Alexander's shrewdness had ever trusted this ally.
It was only that he hoped for a few years to derive advantage from
the new friendship. If, with the help of France, two wishes dear
to the heart of the young emperor could be fulfilled, if Finland
could be conquered, and if a firm foot could be planted in the Balkan
peninsula, Russia, thus strengthened, might hope to resume the
war for the liberation of the world with better success. Blinded
by such alluring prospects, Alexander hardly noticed that the
Napoleonic world-empire and the Continental System could not
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
exist without overthrowing Russia, and that by the occupation of
Danzig, and the reconstruction of a Polish state, the Imperator was
already preparing, long in advance, a decisive war against his new
friend.
After the two emperors had united in an offensive and
defensive alliance and in a common war against England, Russia's
forsaken ally was summoned to the council. The king had behaved
in knightly fashion, continuing the struggle until almost the last foot
oi his country had been lost. Now it was inevitable that he should
give way, for what could an appeal to the Germans, such as Harden-
berg wished him to make, avail at this hour ? When upon the raft
in the Memel, Frederick William met the conqueror, he could not
conceal the profound antipathy in his honourable heart, whilst
for the beaten enemy the conqueror could exhibit only an ill-natured
contempt, and could utter only growling proposals. Even the
requests of the ill-used queen, who on behalf of her country sacri-
ficed even her woman's pride, and who personally interceded with
the rude oppressor, had as much effect upon Napoleon, as he wrote
himself in malicious amusement, " as water upon a duck's back."
On July 7 and 9, 1807, the Peace of Tilsit was signed, the
most cruel of all the treaties of peace with France, unparalleled
both in form and content. It was not to the rightful king of Prussia
that the conqueror returned certain portions of land ; but out of
respect for the emperor of all the Russias he restored the lesser
half of the Prussian state to its king. And this ignominious phrase
which, to contemporaries, seemed merely the outcome of Napoleon's
ill-bred arrogance, expressed the naked truth, for it was indeed
only out of regard for the czar that Napoleon consented for the
moment to be content with no more than half of that destruction
of Prussia upon which he had firmly resolved. He needed the
Russian alliance in order to be able to undertake undisturbed his
great attack upon Spain. Alexander, on his side, did not wish to
allow the last narrow dam which still separated the Russian empire
from the vassal lands of France to be completely demolished, and
he did not conceal his uneasiness when Napoleon proposed to detach
Silesia and East Prussia from the Prussian monarchy. Of the five
thousand seven hundred square miles [German] which, not including
Hanover, the state had possessed before the war, there were left
about two thousand eight hundred ; of the twenty-three war
and domain chambers only the eight largest ; of nine and
three quarter million inhabitants, only four and a half million.
The work of Frederick the Great seemed to have been altogether
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History of Germany
annihilated. The state was but a trifle larger than it had been in
the year 1740, and was far more unfavourably situated. Pushed
back to the right bank of the Elbe, and robbed of all its outposts
in the west, it stood under the point of the French sword. Its
rescued province, Silesia, the reduced Old Prussia, the still remain-
ing parts of Brandenburg and Pomerania, were connected only by
narrow strips, like the segments of a trefoil. At any moment,
upon a nod of the Imperator, Berlin could be simultaneously
attacked by the Poles from the east, the Saxons from the south,
the Westphalians from Magdeburg, and the French from Mecklen-
burg, and the net be thus drawn together round the Hohenzollerns.
All the Polish provinces of the monarchy, with the exception
of parts of West Prussia, were allotted to the king of Saxony,
who assumed the title of Duke of Warsaw. Thus this fourth
partition of Poland reconstituted the pernicious union between
Poland and Saxony, and at the same time gave to the House of
Wettin a military road through Silesia, that via regia which had
been so often desired by the Polish Augustuses. The new duchy,
following the French example, speedily constituted a vigorous
army such as had never been known to the old Nobles' Republic.
Beneath the feeble rule of the timid House of Wettin, the anti-
German sentiments of the Sarmatian nobility were altogether
unbridled, for the Wettins were quite unable to control the proud
electors ; all the German officers were at once driven out of the
country, in opposition to the express terms of the Treaty of Tilsit,
and with the secret approval of the French Protector. To secure
a fulcrum for Polish fanaticism, Napoleon made the fortress of
Danzig a free town, and provided it with a strong French garrison.
To separate the czar for ever from his Prussian friend, Napoleon
counselled him to enrich himself at the cost of his unhappy ally,
and to unite the district of Bialystock to the Russian empire.
The detestable exaction thus urged by Napoleon was followed by
Alexander as accommodatingly as had been the corresponding advice
by Frederick Augustus of Saxony ; he consoled his conscience with
the consideration that if he had refused, this territory would
certainly have been united to Warsaw. Out of the Prussian lands
on the left bank of the Elbe and from the territories of Electoral
Hesse, with portions of the Guelph lands, a kingdom of Westphalia
was constituted, and handed over to the Imperator's brother
Jerome, with the intimation that he must regard obedience
to France as the first of his princely duties. A " regular constitu-
tion " was here to put an end to " all those vain and ridiculous
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
distinctions " of the estates and of the territorial jurisdictions
which seemed dangerous to the bureaucratic centralisation of the
world-empire.
In the courts of the Confederation of the Rhine, there was
nothing but rejoicing, now that the only German state which
possessed a history and a life of its own was submerged in the
general German misery. The Middle States had attained the goal
of their desires, for they had no longer any German power either
to fear or to envy. Their officers gladly boasted how bravely they
had helped in person in the humiliation of North German arrogance,
and they could not tell enough of the wonders of Prussian stupidity.
If one were to believe the voice of the official press in Munich and
Stuttgart the battle of Jena had been the one memorable event in
the history of Prussian warfare. In superficial area, the Confedera-
tion of the Rhine was twice as great as this reduced Prussia, whilst
the population of the Confederation was three times as numerous ;
Bavaria alone could now regard itself as the equal of the state
of Frederick, for this land of the Confederation of the Rhine
had a population which was only a million smaller than that of
Prussia, whilst Bavaria was incomparably more prosperous. The
wags of Dresden and Leipzig loved to contemplate the English
humorous cartoon, representing the meeting on the raft at Tilsit.
Here was seen the boastful little " Boney " embracing the young
czar so vigorously that the raft was set shaking, and the onlooking
Frederick William fell miserably into the water.
Of all the princes of the Confederation of the Rhine, the
new king of Saxony was the most humble servant of France. The
slow-minded, painfully conscientious man had grown grey in the
traditions of the ancient imperial law, in the stiff formulas of a
Spanish etiquette ; he alone among the greater princes of the empire
had taken no part in the great spoliation of the spiritual states
which was not difficult in his case, for he had no indemnities to
demand. In the previous autumn he had resolved, though with
difficulty, to pay homage to the victorious plebeian. When he
at length came to Berlin, the Imperator was no longer there, and
all he could do in his perplexity was to ask the ever-obliging Gagern :
" How can one really get on with this man ? " When subsequently
his treachery to Prussia was rewarded with rich gifts, when upon
the homeward journey Napoleon personally appeared in Dresden,
and, speedily seeing through the thick-headedness of the king,
assumed the mien of the kindly well-wisher, the weakly prince was
completely blinded by the imperial grandeur of the Protector, and
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History of Germany
came to build with superstitious confidence upon the fortune of
his " great ally." Contrary to all precedent in this slow-moving
state system, ambitious young men were advanced to the head of
the army, and they soon filled the minds of their men, who had gone
over to the French side somewhat unwillingly, with the unprincipled
lust of adventure of the troops of the Confederation of the Rhine ;
here, as in Bavaria and Wiirtemberg, the red ribbon of the Legion
of Honour was regarded as the highest distinction obtainable by a
soldier. In everything Frederick Augustus did the will of his master,
and it was hardly necessary for the Imperator to utter his warning,
" What you do for Prussia you do against yourself ! "
Thus amid the rejoicings of the German particularists, the
partial destruction of Prussia was effected. But the inhabitants of
the older Prussian provinces had different feelings when the king
notified them with the dignified words : " That which centuries
of faithful forefathers, that which treaties, love, and confidence
had united, must now be dismembered." With a dull inertia had
the people of the hundreds of German states which in the storms of
this wild time had been overwhelmed, borne their fate ; but those
that were now torn asunder from Prussia, felt in the very marrow
or their lives what it signified to men to belong to an honourable
state. The unhappy monarch could scarcely maintain his com-
posure when from East Prussia and Magdeburg, from Thorn and
Westphalia, from all his lost German lands, there came letters full
of ardent thanks, full of touching lamentations. The faithful
peasants of the County Mark wrote in their rough style : " Our
hearts are breaking as we take leave of you, as truly as we are
alive the fault is not yours ! " So, too, the German emigrants into
the Polish provinces were heavy-hearted at the separation from the
old monarchy. How terribly devastated, too, was the territory
that still remained to the king. A single year had destroyed the
rich fruits of the peaceful work of three decades. It was first as
a result of this war that the domestic life of North Germany assumed
the characteristics of utter penury. Previously, some of the
branches of artistic life had at least shown tolerable blossoms,
but now came the epoch of general shapelessness and lack of taste.
Poverty was everywhere visible. It was displayed in the unadorned
buildings, in the wretched furniture, in the restricted diet ; an
anxious economy dictated all the conduct of daily life. In
unhappy East Prussia, whole areas of land seemed as if dead ;
entire villages on the Passarge had disappeared. The preachers
announced from the pulpit that anyone who wished could there
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Revolution and Foreign Dominion
reap the corn lest all should perish in the standing crop. But even
after the peace the conqueror devoted himself with meticulous
care to the plundering of the detested land. All the sick from the
hospitals of Warsaw and Westphalia were immediately sent to
Prussia ; when one of his regiments was withdrawn, a sale was
first effected of all the royal stores and provisions, down to the
stocks of the salt-works and the china factories. He ordered that
no flintlocks and no powder should be left in the country, not
even if the Prussians were willing to pay cash for them, for he said
he had no longer any reason to spare Prussia. In contradiction
to the plain wording of the Treaty of Tilsit, New Silesia was at once
united to Warsaw. The complaints of the king were regarded
as senseless and not worth a reply.
The worst remained, namely, that with all these sacrifices the
quiet of peace was not even yet secured. The Prussian plenipo-
tentiary, Field-Marshal Kalckreuth, a warm admirer of Napoleon,
had conducted the negotiations at Tilsit with a trustful levity which
overshadowed all the military services of the defender of Danzig,
and which had to be paid for heavily by the state. The evacuation
of the country and of the fortresses was to take place on the first
of October, but only if the whole of the war indemnity had previously
been paid, and since no definite arrangement had been made as to
the amount of this sum, afterwards as before the whole Prussian
domain was occupied by Napoleon's army. Thus the Imperator
gained a free hand for his Spanish plans, since the grande armee
in Prussia sufficed to keep quiet the two imperial powers of the east,
whilst from the Prussian taxes he gained the money he needed for
the Spanish War.
Disarmed, gagged, and mutilated, the Prussian monarchy lay
at the feet of Napoleon ; with finished cunning he had prepared
everything in order to destroy it completely at the chosen hour.
One thing only eluded the keen insight of the contemner of ideas,
namely, that this state had gained in internal unity and moral
energy what it had lost in external power. Prussia was quit of the
untrustworthy Poles ; such of the old German tribal lands as
remained, held together like one man. It was from these lands of
the eagle that formerly had proceeded the victorious plan of the
Great Elector, the bold endeavour to constitute a new German
state ; upon these now rested the whole future of Germany. They
alone, among all the purely German territories, would have nothing
to do with the Confederation of the Rhine. The honourable senti-
ments of Frederick William had preserved his Prussia from the
History of Germany
ultimate disgrace of voluntary servitude. The grave errors of the
last years had not only been atoned for but had been recognised ;
even in Tilsit, on the advice of Hardenberg, the king had resolved
to entrust the reconstruction of the administration to Baron von
Stein. All things that could animate a strong people to despairing
resolve, pride and hatred, pain and repentance, were fermenting
in a thousand valiant spirits, and every new misdeed of the
foreign oppressor increased the bitterness, until at length all that
was Prussian was united in the passionate desire for reprisal. If
only it were possible to assemble and to organise the powerful
energies of this wrathful people, if only it were possible to
rejuvenate the state by the idealism of the new culture, Germany
could yet be saved. Even during the war, a talented Frenchman,
who had found a new home in German science, Charles de Villers,
wrote warningly: "The French armies have beaten the German
because they are stronger, but for the same reason the German
spirit will ultimately conquer the French I believe that some
indications of this development are already visible. Providence
chooses its own paths."
312
CHAPTER III.
THE RISE OF PRUSSIA,
I. STEIN. SCHARNHORST. THE NEW GERMANY.
SEVERAL times before, Prussia had astonished the German world
by a sudden disclosure of its hidden moral energies. This had
happened when the elector, Frederick William, forced his little
state into the ranks of the old powers. It had happened again
when King Frederick hazarded the struggle for Silesia. But none
of the great surprises of Prussian history were so unexpected by
the Germans as the rapid and proud uprising of the half-destroyed
great power after the profound reverse of Jena. Whilst the cele-
brated names of the old time were all committed to contempt and
oblivion, and whilst everyone in Prussia was complaining of the
complete lack of capable young men, a new generation suddenly
rallied round the throne. There appeared men of powerful
character, enthusiastic spirit, and clear intelligence, an unending
abundance of them, a crowd of persons brilliant in camp and in
council, who could take equal rank with the literary great ones
of the nation. And just as formerly Frederick had merely reaped
upon the battle-fields of Bohemia what his father had laboriously
sown in the quiet times of peace, so now this speedy recovery of
strength on the part of the humiliated monarchy was no more than
the ripe fruit of long years of arduous work. When the state
thus pulled itself together, it was realising all that German thinkers
and poets had thought and uttered during the last decades concern-
ing human dignity and human freedom, concerning the moral
aims of life. It put its trust in the liberating power of the spirit,
and let the full stream of the ideas of the new Germany flow through
its life.
Now for the first time Prussia became in reality the German
state. The best and the boldest of all the sons of the fatherland,
the last of the Germans, assembled under the black-and-white
flags. Upon the ancient Prussian valiancy and loyalty, the
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History of Germany
vigorous idealism of a distinctive culture superimposed new duties
and new aims ; and in the discipline of political life the Prussian
spirit was quickened to activity and learned to rejoice in self-
sacrifice. The state abandoned its petty preference for the
immediately useful ; science recognised that it had need of the
fatherland in order to become truly human. The old, hard, war-
like Prussiandom, and the richness of ideas of the modern German
culture, at length found themselves at one, never again to separate.
The reconciliation between the two poietic powers of our new
history, gives to those painful years which followed the Peace of
Tilsit their historic grandeur. In this time of sorrow and self-
knowledge were first formed all the political ideals for whose
realisation the German nation is working to this day.
Never did the arbitrary will of the conqueror display itself
more cruelly than in Prussia ; for this reason nowhere else was the
great significance of the struggle which was shaking the world felt
more keenly and more passionately than among the German patriots.
In opposition to the adventurous plans of the Napoleonic world-
empire, there arose the idea of national freedom, the same idea
which the founder of the Prussian State had once defended against
Louis XIV. In opposition to the cosmopolitan doctrines of the
armed revolution, there displayed itself the national sentiment,
the enthusiasm for fatherland, for folk-life, and for the peculi-
arities of the home. In the struggle against the oppressive universal
domination of Bonapartism, there came into existence a new and
really living conception of the state, a conception which found
the moral force of the nations in the free unfolding of personal
energy. The great contrasts which here encountered one another
were faithfully reflected in the persons of the leading men. On the
one side was a man who believed himself to be destiny personified,
that the nature of things spoke through his mouth and worked
through his hands the man of power, who, with the force of
his masterful genius, oppressed all opposing wills. Far beneath
him stood his servants, valiant soldiers and useful men of affairs,
but hardly one of them possessed of an independent character,
and hardly one whose inner life rose above the dullness of the
daily commonplace. On the other side was a long series of excep-
tional men, men of strongly developed and peculiar natures, each
one a little world in himself, full of German defiance and German
criticism, each one worthy of a biography, too independent and too
full of ideas to be simply obedient, yet all united in the ardent
desire to restore liberty and honour to their disgraced fatherland.
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The Rise of Prussia
In this circle there was one who was not the commander but
was first among equals, Baron von Stein, the pioneer of the age of
reform. His ancestral castle was in Nassau, amid the motley
groups of the petty particularist states ; from the bridge across
the Lahn in the neighbouring town of Ems, the boy could simul-
taneously look upon the dominions of eight German princes and
lords. Here he grew to manhood, in the free air, in the strict
discipline of a proud, pious, and honourable ancient knightly house,
which regarded itself as the equal of all the princes in the empire.
Did not the hereditary fortresses of the Houses of Stein and Nassau
stand close beside one another upon the same rock ? why then
should the old coat of arms with the roses and the chevrons be
regarded as of less importance than the Saxon lozenge-crown, or
the antlers of the armorial bearings of the Wiirtemburger ? The idea
of German unity, to which those born in subjection could attain only
by the devious paths of historical culture, was instilled in the cradle
into this proud lord who was subject to the emperor alone. He
could see the matter in no other way ; "I have but one fatherland,
Germany, and just as in accordance with the ancient constitution
I belong to Germany alone and to no particular part of Germany,
so also do I give my heart to Germany alone and to no part of
Germany." But little influenced by the aesthetic enthusiasm of
his contemporaries, his active spirit, concentrated upon reality,
early became immersed in historical affairs. All the wonders of
the history of the fatherland, from the overthrow of the Roman
legions by the Germans of the Teutoburger Wald down to the
grenadiers of Frederick the Great, appeared vividly before his eyes.
The whole of greater Germany, as far as the German tongue is heard,
was the object of his ardent love. He excluded from his affection
not one of those who had ever manifested the energy and grandeur
of the German nature. When in old age, in his own Nassau, he
built a tower in honour of the memorable deeds of Germany, the
pictures of Frederick the Great and of Maria Theresa, of Scharn-
horst and of Wallenstein, hung there peaceably side by side. His
ideal was the powerful German kingship of the Saxon emperors ;
the newly constituted states which had since then arisen upon the
ruins of the monarchy all seemed to him arbitrary structures, the
product of secret treason, of foreign intrigue, ripe for destruction
when anywhere and in any way the majesty of the ancient rightful
kingship should come to its own again. His unsparing frankness
towards crowned heads arose, not only from the inborn valiancy
of a heroic spirit, but also from the pride of an imperial knight who
History of Germany
in all these princes could see only men who had forgotten their
duty, co-estates who had enriched themselves at the expense of
the empire, and he could not understand why anyone should make
such a fuss about these kinglets.
He had watched the Rhenish campaigns from close at hand,
and had attained to the conviction, which he once expressed to the
empress of Russia before the assembled court, that the German
people was loyal and vigorous, and that only the poor-spiritedness
of its princes was the cause of Germany's corruption. He detested
the foreign dominion with the elemental power of a passionate
nature which when it once broke out flowed irresistibly like a
mountain torrent ; but he expected the salvation of Europe neither
from the restoration of the ancient and outworn state authorities,
nor yet from the artificial doctrines of the balance of power
characteristic of the old diplomacy. His free and great spirit
always went straight to the moral nucleus of things. With the
vision of the seer he already recognised, as did Gneisenau, the
elements of a permanent reconstruction of the comity of nations.
In his view, the unnatural preponderance of France would stand
or fall with the weakness of Germany and Italy. A new balance
of power could not arise until each of the two great nations of middle
Europe was united to form a powerful state. Stein was the first
statesman who recognised the driving force of the new century,
the impulse towards the formation of national states ; and it was
not till two generations later that the course of history was to
justify his brilliant vaticinations. His dream of a united Germany
was still rather the conception of a high-minded enthusiast, than a
clear political ideal ; he did not yet know how estranged Austria
had become from the modern life of the nation, and in the struggles
for Silesia he could see no more than a regrettable civil war.
Nevertheless, in recent years, he had come to recognise the
living power of the Prussian state ; and, diverging in this from
the ordinary views of the imperial nobles, he had devoted himself
to the service of the Protestant great power. He was well suited
by the fresh, natural life of the mining districts, one which was
fortifying to his physical constitution ; and subsequently, when
he found a second home among the free peasants and the proud,
ancient nobility of the Westphalian territories, he was always
personally on the spot, whatever might be the state of the weather,
in order to look after affairs with his own masterful personality ;
he was restless and ardent, but also good-natured and loyal ;
thoroughly practical, concerned just as much about the cattle
The Rise of Prussia
of the petty cottars, as about the aqueducts for the rich coal-
mines a true nobleman at once distinguished and affable, magnan-
imous in all things, a king in his own province. He knew little of
the east of the monarchy. The Rhenish Franconian was for long
unable to overcome his territorial prejudice against the needy
colonial lands across the Elbe. He believed himself able to recognise
a furtive and lupine glance in the serious, weatherbeaten traits
of the Brandenburg peasants, who did indeed bear the traces of
prolonged poverty and serfdom ; and with the native pride of an
imperial knight, he looked down upon the poor and needy Junkers
of the Mark, who had none the less done far more for Germany's
new history than all the imperial nobles put together. It was con-
stitutionally difficult to this baron of the empire to receive pay
and to bend his stiff neck beneath the yoke of service. When he
became personally acquainted with the still vital remnants of old
German communal freedom and of feudal institutions, when he
observed the generally useful efficiency of the provincial diets and
the peasant folk-sittings, of the town councils and church synods,
and when he compared with these the stiff and formal pettiness
and the ubiquitous intrusiveness of the royal officialdom, he became
inspired with a profound contempt for the nullity of literalism
and of red tape. With severe and even unjustified words he censures
the salaried official, " a man learned in books, without interests,
without property, who, whether it rains or whether the sun is shining,
receives his pay regularly from the state treasury, and spends his
whole life in writing, writing, writing."
Thus in vigorous activity, in lively intercourse with all classes
of the people, he gradually attained to an independent view of the
nature of political freedom, which bore the same relationship to
the democratic doctrines of the Revolution as the German sense of
the state did to the French. WTien he was still quite a young man,
Adam Smith's doctrine of the free mobility of economic forces had
made a strong and permanent impression upon his mind ; but
nothing was further from the German baron than that over-estima-
tion of economic goods, to which the blind followers of the Scotsman
were prone, and he openly adhered to the Frederician idea that
excessive wealth is the destruction of the nations. He was pro-
foundly impressed by Justus Moser's vivid descriptions of the
peasant freedom of ancient Germany ; the study of German and of
English constitutional history, helped forward his political culture ;
and there can be no doubt that the romantic conception of the
world -order characteristic of the epoch, the general enthusiasm for
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the unbroken energy of a youthful popular life, also exercised an
unconscious influence upon him. But the true source of his political
convictions was a powerful moral idealism, which was steeled
to a far greater extent than the baron himself was aware by the hard
school of the Prussian official service.
The administration of the first Frederick William had long
ago forced the people, who were then altogether estranged from
public life, to take an interest in the affairs of the community.
Stein recognised that those who had been thus educated were now
capable, by themselves, under the supervision of the state, of look-
ing after the affairs of the circles and communes. In place of
the outworn class-differences, he wished to introduce the equality
before the law characteristic of modern bourgeois society. This,
however, was not to result in the creation of an undifferentiated
mass of sovereign individuals, but in the production of a new and
juster subdivision of society, which should impose upon the
propertied members of the community, upon the well-to-do, and
especially upon the landed proprietors, the burden and the honour
of communal service, and which should thus furnish these with
powers, constituting a young aristocracy based upon the idea of
political duty. He thought that it was possible to fight the
Revolution with its own weapons, to put an end to the struggle
between the classes, to realise in its completeness throughout the
administration the idea of the unified state. Yet with the vigorous
activity of the innovator, he combined a profound affection for
historical institutions, and above all for the power of the crown.
" To form a constitution," he often said, " consists in developing
the present out of the past." He endeavoured to pass back, from
those artificial conditions of tutelage and compulsion which had
formerly come into existence out of the miseries of the Thirty
Years' War, to the simple and free views of our German ancestors,
to whom service in arms was the honourable right of every freeman,
and to whom care for the communal economy seemed to be the
natural task of the burgher and of the peasant. To the greedy
revolutionary sentiment, which demanded from the state unending
human rights, he opposed the ancient Prussian sense of duty. To
the impudent dilettantism of the political philosophers, he opposed
the knowledge of affairs and knowledge of men acquired by a shrewd
official who had won his insight out of the experience of life, learning
that the reconstruction of the state must begin from below, and
that constitutional forms are valueless if they lack the foundation
of a free administration.
The Rise of Prussia
These ideas, however new and even rash they might appear,
were the necessary outcome of the internal evolution which the
Prussian State had undergone from the time of the destruction of
the old feudal dominion down to the formulation of the common
law. They were so closely akin at once to the moral earnestness
of the Kantian philosophy and to the re-awakening historical sense
of German science, that to us who come afterwards, they seem
to be as it were a political precipitate from the classical age of
our literature. Simultaneously, as if upon a word of command,
immediately after the overthrow of the old order, the same ideas
were uttered by the best men alike of the sword and of the pen, but
by no one so comprehensively and with such marked individuality
as by Stein. In the letters and memorials of Scharnhorst and
Gneisenau, Vincke and Niebuhr, we everywhere find recurring the
same leading idea. The nation must be awakened to independent
and responsible political activity ; and there must thus be aroused
the self-confidence, the courage, and the spirit of sacrifice
characteristic of a living love of the fatherland. It was not after
the manner of these practical statesmen to attempt to construct
a closed system of political ideas ; they regarded it rather as a great
advantage of English life that in England political theorising was
so little respected. Thus the one literary work that came into
existence under Stein's own eyes, Vincke's Treatise on the British
Constitution, was devoted to the study of the real. This little
work gave for the first time a faithful picture of the self-government
of the English counties, which had hitherto received no attention
among the wonderful subdivisions of authority in the typical con-
stitutional state. The book contained so unmistakable a declaration
of war against the French bureaucracy of the Confederation of the
Rhine, that it could not be printed until after the overthrow of the
Napoleonic dominion. Consequently the profundity of Stein's
ideas upon statecraft were never really perceived by the baron's
own contemporaries. Only in the present day has it been recog-
nised that this great man was not merely an advocate of the
conception of the national state, but that he also rescued for the
European continent the ideas of self-government, and a notion o
popular freedom based upon ancient and unforgotten traditions of
Teutonic history. Every advance in our political life has brought
the nation back to Stein's ideals.
It was the defect of his merits that he did not find himself at
home in the tortuous paths of foreign policy, and that he despised
as sordid trickery the indispensable arts of diplomatic astuteness.
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History of Germany
To him were lacking cunning, caution, and gifts of hesitancy and
restraint. In the domain of administration, he moved with complete
certainty. But when there seemed to open a prospect for the
liberation of his fatherland, his equanimity was disturbed ; and,
carried away by the wild impetuosity of his patriotic enthusiasm,
he readily expected the impossible.
It was not given to this hero of holy wrath and stormy veracity
to steer the state cautiously through the rocks till the propitious
moment arrived for the uprising. Yet no one else was born as
he was born for the task of political reform. To restore to the
distracted monarchy its power of direction towards high moral
aims, to invigorate its slumbering magnificent energies with the
awakening power of an ardent will this was possible to Stein alone,
for no other possessed the same moving and overwhelming might
of a great personality. No ignoble word could be heard, no excuse
for weakness or selfishness ventured to raise itself, when he expressed
his serious ideas in his old-fashioned German, in a speech altogether
free from artificiality, rough with the roughness of the people, in
that weighty brevity which is natural to the wealth of ideas and
the restrained passion of the genuine Teuton. Vulgarity trembled
before the pitilessness of his thorny wit, before the crushing blows
of his anger. But anyone who was really a man, and came into
contact with this spirit strong in faith, always went on his way
with a brighter glance and with heightened courage. The image
of this baron of the empire was immovably enshrined in the hearts
of the best men of Germany. His figure was firm and compact,
his shoulders were powerful, as if created to wear a cuirass ; his
brown eyes sparkled beneath the dominant brow, and his aquiline
nose surmounted narrow and mobile lips that were full of
expression; every movement of the great hands was firm and
commanding. He seemed a character out of the spirited sixteenth
century, reminding us involuntarily of Diirer's picture of Ritter
Franz von Sickingen, so talented and so simple, so brave among men
and so humble before God, the whole man a wonderful synthesis of
natural energy and of culture, of liberal-mindedness and justice,
of ardent passion and equitable consideration. His was a nature
which, with its incapacity for any selfish calculation, must ever
remain an insoluble riddle to Napoleon and his companions in
fortune. He was the man for the situation ; even his weaknesses
and the one-sidedness of his views, corresponded to the needs of
the moment. If he judged the officialdom and the petty nobility
with undue harshness, and if he regarded the Austrians simply as
320
The Rise of Prussia
Prussia's German brethren, all the better for the state, which had
now to destroy the privileges of the nobility and the sole dominion
of the bureaucracy, and which must magnanimously forget every-
thing which was a barrier between the two German great powers.
After his vain struggle against cabinet government and his
contumelious dismissal, Stein had lived quietly in Nassau, and
there, in a comprehensive memorial, had compiled certain sketches
for the reconstitution of the state ; then came the news of the
disastrous peace, which actually made the hot-blooded man
seriously ill. Soon afterwards came his recall to power. He
speedily recovered ; his illness was forgotten ; after three days
his will mastered the fever. On September 30, 1807, he arrived
at Memel, and the king, full of confidence, entrusted him with the
leadership of the whole state. What a situation ! On his last
birthday, Frederick William, since the French evacuation of the
country had not been begun, had written an autograph letter to
the Imperator, asking him the plain question whether it was his
intention to annihilate Prussia. Napoleon remained dumb, deeds
gave the answer. In the midst of the peace there were 160,000
Frenchmen in the fortresses and in great camps, distributed over the
whole Prussian dominion, East Prussia alone excepted. The
nucleus of the old Prussian army, numbering more than 15,000
men, was still held prisoner at Nancy, and whence should the
plundered monarchy obtain means for the formation of a new
army ? Of disposable annual income, there remained to the
state only thirteen and a half million thalers, barely two-thirds of
its former revenue. Everywhere where Napoleon's troops were in
possession, the income of the state was impounded for France,
as if the war were still in progress, so that the king received nothing,
and hundreds of the officers who had been discharged on half-
pay, could not be paid at all. The once greatly envied Oversea
Trading Company had, like the Bank, suspended payment ;
its shares fell to 25 ; the Treasury Bills fell to 27, since
it was impossible to think of redeeming them, and the French
authorities made use of the paper money for usurious business.
Masses of depreciated small coin streamed from the ceded pro-
vinces back into the country ; and to make matters worse, the
French had an additional quantity of small change, to the amount
of three million thalers, coined in the Berlin mint. The state credit
was so completely destroyed that a premium loan of one million,
issued in small shares of twenty-five thalers each, had not been taken
up at the end of three years. In the diplomatic world, Prussia
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History of Germany
was now hardly esteemed as highly as one of the kingdoms of the
Confederation of the Rhine ; in the year 1808, the Dutch ambas-
sador, a French consul, and an Austrian commercial attache,
constituted the whole foreign diplomatic corps at the court of
Konigsberg. The French military administration, under the
brutal leadership of Daru, was even worse in peace than it had been
in war, and every one of its excesses was undertaken at Napoleon's
express command. One tax pressed on the heels of another, and
for months it remained impossible to say how much the insatiable
enemy would still demand from the exhausted country. In East
and in West Prussia a progressive income-tax was imposed, rising
to 20 per cent., to pay off the burdens of the war ; a certain mer-
chant of Stettin, who was far from being a rich man, paid during
the year following the peace more than fifteen thousand thalers for
taxes and billeting.
Business was at a standstill. British mercantile competition
had availed itself of the previous war to destroy the strongest
mercantile marine of the Baltic coasts. When subsequently the
war broke out with France, and peace with England had not yet
been concluded, the Prussian flag was threatened simultaneously
by the British cruisers and by the French. Then came the
distresses of the Continental System. Within a brief space, the
shipping of the Pomeranian harbours fell from a tonnage of sixty-
eight thousand to forty thousand. The old, natural routes of world-
commerce lay unused. The Baltic provinces, since good roads
were still almost entirely wanting, had no way open for 1heir
one article of export, grain. Colonial produce was smuggled into
the country from Gothenburg and Heligoland, the new Little-
London ; other goods came from Malta and Corfu, by way of
Bosnia and Hungary. The middle classes of Prussia could no longer
pay the prices of the customary luxuries ; people drank an infusion
of chicory, and smoked colt's-foot and walnut leaves. Poverty
reigned in every house and in every industry. The printers of
Konigsberg required three weeks in order to print a law occupying
six folios, for they had type enough for but one folio at a time.
Schon, the able minister of finance, who prided himself on his
reputation for old Prussian courage, found the posture of affairs
so hopeless that, four months after the peace, he issued a memorial
to the effect that the conqueror must be satisfied by the cession
of the Magdeburg region on the right bank of the Elbe and portions
of Upper Silesia, as otherwise the country would be absolutely
ruined by the burden of taxation.
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The Rise of Prussia
Everything recalled those lamentable days when Wallenstein
had occupied the Mark and George William had passed his days
in Konigsberg as a prince without a country. But what an abun-
dance of love and loyalty had come into existence in the subsequent
six generations. Then the diet of Konigsberg had bluntly defied
the will of its elector. Now, prince and people stood together,
like one great family. The poor country house at Memel and the
gloomy rooms of the old castle of the Teutonic Knights at Konigs-
berg, did not lack visitors, who wished to give pleasure to their
king in his need and to say a kindly word. At the baptism of the
new-born princess, the estates of East Prussia appeared as sponsors.
In all the shop windows there was hanging the new picture which
represented the king standing among his children, dressed in the
hideous uniform of the day, and how much more royally did
Frederick William know how to endure his hard lot than did the
father of the Great Elector. He was filled with profound bitterness
of spirit ; more than ever did he need the cordial encouragement
of his spouse ; there were hours when it seemed to him as if he
could succeed in nothing, as if he had been born only for misfor-
tune. When in the cathedral of Konigsberg he read the inscrip-
tions upon the tombs of the Prussian dukes, he chose as a motto
for his own hard life, " My days are passed in disquiet, my hope is
in God ! " Yet this hope sustained him. He could never accept
the conviction that the common souls of the family of Bonaparte
who now wore the crowns of Europe were really princes, that in
the reasonable world of God, this adventurer of the Napoleonic
world-empire, who for all his brilliancy and glory was so inflated
and so specious, could permanently continue to exist. He never
allowed himself to be persuaded into any personal friendliness
towards Napoleon. Even Stein once advised that the mood of
the Imperator should be rendered milder by a little timely flattery,
and that Napoleon should be invited to act as sponsor at the
baptism of the new-born princess. The king rejected the idea
unhesitatingly. But to the political proposals of his great minister,
he adhered willingly and without reserve. He had a far greater
share in Stein's legislation than his contemporaries were aware.
Much which now came to perfection was merely the bold execution
of those ideas of reform over which the irresolute prince had been
brooding for a decade. Thus only do the rapid and striking successes
of a single year of Stein's administration become comprehensible.
The new minister found willing helpers also among the officials.
It was fortunate for him that it was on East Prussian soil that he
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History of Germany
had to begin his work of reform. Here, in especial, was keenly felt
the untenability of the old division of classes, for the province pos-
sessed in its Kollmers a number of free landowners who were com-
moners. Here had the cultured classes, and especially the officials,
long been well-acquainted with the free moral and political views
which the two most efficient teachers of the University of Konigs-
berg, Kant and the recently deceased Kraus, had diffused for many
years. Most of Stein's laws were prepared in the East Prussian
provincial department. At the head of this administration was the
minister von Schrotter, an exemplary official of astonishing activity,
who had retained even into old age a youthful receptivity for new
ideas ; under him were working Friese and Wilckens. l Schon was
completely filled with the ideas of Kant. In many respects he was
a faithful representative of the vig'orous, enlightened, and intelli-
gent East Prussian character, but he was a doctrinaire advocate
of unrestricted free trade, he was immeasurably vain, was incapable
of modestly recognising the services of another, and, moreover,
quite in conflict with the characteristics of his fine stock, was
untruthful. Beside him worked Staegemann, a highly-cultured
and able man of business, endowed with rare industry and rare
modesty, who sometimes gave expression to his faithful affection
for the Prussian state in profoundly felt, but clumsy, poems. There
was also Niebuhr, the man of brilliant learning, too sensitive, too
dependent upon the moods of the moment, to find himself readily
at home in the equable activity of the office, but invaluable to all
by the inexhaustible wealth of his living knowledge, by the width
of his outlook, by the nobility of his lofty passion. There was
Nicolovius, a profound spirit, strongly affected by the religious
tendency of the time. There were Sack, Klewitz, and many others,
a brilliant company of exceptional powers. Nearest to the views
of Stein among them all, was the Westphalian, Baron von Vincke.
He also had formed his views of the state in contact with the nobles
and with the peasants of the countryside, but the born Prussian
recognised far more frankly than did the imperial knight the services
of the salaried officialdom. Vincke could not be reckoned among
the poietic intelligences ; his strength lay in kinesis, in the un-
resting activity of the administrative official.
Hardenberg, who upon Napoleon's orders had for the second
time been obliged to leave the ministry, sent from Riga a great
memorial on the reorganisation of the Prussian state which he had
1 Recently shown in the remarkable book by Ernst Meier, D:e Rejorm dcr
Verwal>ung$-Organisation unter Stein und Hardenberg, Leipzig, 1881.
324
The Rise of Prussia
there composed in collaboration with Altenstein. In many respects
this corresponded with the ideas of the new minister of state ;
many of its proposals were taken word for word from Stein's own
utterances, such as the idea of an assembly of the estates for the
whole country. Here also, however, there was akeady manifest
that intimate and profound contrast which always separated the
disciples of the enlightenment from Stein's historical conception
of the state. Hardenberg was first of all a diplomatist. In
administrative affairs he was far from being so well-informed as
Stein, and for this reason in his memorial he inconsiderately incor-
porated certain general theoretical proposals dear also to Alten-
stein, the friend of Fichte. His scheme of reform was conceived
" in accordance with the highest idea of the state " ; in commercial
policy the principle of laisser-faire was to prevail without restric-
tion. Whereas Stein had from the first regarded the Revolution
with the mistrust of the aristocrat, and desired to transplant to
German soil a few only of its tried results, Hardenberg had been
much more strongly influenced by French ideas. He definitely
indicated as the goal of reform, " the introduction of democratic
principles in a monarchical government " ; in matters of detail,
he wished to follow closely the French example, demanded for the
army conscription with right of purchasing substitutes, and would
gladly have abolished the honorary Landrate (the old-established
administrative chiefs-of-district in Prussia) to replace them by
bureaucratic district officials. He said nothing at all concerning
self-government by the commons. A point common to both these
statesmen was, however, the moral altitude of then* sense of the
state. Both of them desired, as Altenstein's proposal expressed
it, "a revolution in a good sense, leading directly towards the
supreme goal of the ennoblement of humanity " ; both of them
knew that France pursued a tendency of secondary import-
ance, directed to the simple manifestation of power ; and they
demanded from the rejuvenated German state that it should
protect religion, art, and science, all the ideal aims of the human
race, for their own sake, and that it should thus secure a victory
over the foreign dominion by means of moral energies.
Stein possessed in a high degree the art indispensable to the
statesman of making a good use of the ideas of others. He allowed
all the proposals which were brought to him from the circles of the
officials to influence his mind, but his ultimate decisions were deter-
mined by his own consideration. He laid down the broad line of
the leading ideas, but committed the carrying out of these to the
325
History of Germany
councils, and intervened personally only when it was necessary
to push the completed work through in opposition to doubt and
active resistance. When he came to Memel there was already on
foot a proposal for the abolition of hereditary servitude in East and
West Prussia. Schon, Staegemann, and Klewitz had worked out
the plan upon the king's instructions, appealing especially to the
fact that in the neighbouring duchy of Warsaw, the abolition of
serfdom was imminent The new minister at once gave a wider
scope to the law, demanding the extension of the reform to the
whole area of the state. Since he had begun to think for himself
in political matters, he had regarded the lack of freedom of the
country people as the curse of north-eastern Germany. The moment
seemed to him propitious for the permanent cure of the ancient
evil, and with one bold step to attain the end towards which the
laws of the Hohenzollerns from the time of Frerderick William I
had ever advanced with partial success. The king joyfully agreed ;
the bold confidence of his minister awakened in him the courage
to will effectively that which all his life he had merely hoped for.
Thus there was promulgated on October 9, 1807, an edict con-
cerning the facilitated ownership and the free utilisation of landed
property, or, as Schon called it, the Prussian habeas corpus act.
Thus in unassuming forms there was completed a far-reaching
social revolution. About two-thirds of the population of the
state now acquired unrestricted personal freedom. On and after
Martinmas, 1810, there were to be none in Prussia but freemen.
This same law destroyed at a single blow the feudal ordering of
the Frederician state. The nobleman received the right to become
a peasant and to carry on bourgeois industries, and this right was
to be considered a compensation for the privileges previously enjoyed
by the nobility in the army. Every kind of landed proprietorship,
and every kind of occupation, was henceforward to be open to
every Prussian.
But Stein was not inclined to discard the old national principles
of the monarchy, and to allow the destruction of petty proprietor-
ship to be effected under the cloak of free competition. It seemed
to him that a free and vigorous estate of peasants was the firmest
prop of the state, and the nucleus of its powers of military defence.
For this reason the right to purchase the lands of the peasants was
granted to the larger landed proprietors, but only under restriction
and with the consent of the authorities. Whereas Schon, faithful
to the dogmas of the English free-traders, desired to accelerate the
destruction of the old generation of settlers on the land, as an
326
The Rise of Prussia
unavoidable economic necessity, Stein came to the rescue of the
indebted great landed proprietors with a General Indulgence. Thus
it became possible to assist the landed gentry through the difficulties
of the immediate future, and to retain most of them in the posses-
sion of their ancient lands. No less moderate despite its boldness
was the new edict which provided free property for the peasants
on the domains in East and West Prussia, about forty-seven
thousand families ; they were to redeem three-fourths of the
services and charges attached to their lands within the space of
four-and-twenty years by monetary payments. The remaining
fourth was to continue as an irremovable tax. Stein rejected as
too radical a disturbance of the accepted relationships of property,
the idea of a complete abolition of all the encumbrances upon
peasant property. He also determined upon the abolition of
thirlage, of the guilds and the selling monopolies of bakers, butchers,
and hucksters. His aim was to effect the transformation of all
services and payments in kind into money payments, and to
abolish the rights to forced labour and other manorial rights, to
abolish all servitude and all communal dues ; private property
was everywhere to come into its own. In sharp contrast with the
Frederician system of the monarchical organisation of labour, the
new laws were " to get rid of everything which had hitherto stood
in the way of the individual's acquirements of such a degree of well-
being as he was competent to acquire in accordance with the measure
of his energies." The instructions issued to the executive authori-
ties after Stein's resignation, expressed doubtless in a somewhat
more abstract form than Stein had himself used, ran simply :
" Industry must be left to take its natural course ; it is not
necessary to favour trade, all that we have to do is to see that
no difficulties are put in its way."
The remarkable change thus effected in the ancient social
system of Prussia, was hardly noticed abroad. This quickly
moving epoch had experienced a sufficient number of radical
innovations, and how many of them which had been introduced
with a great deal of noise had after all come to nothing. The
French made fun of the caution with which in Konigsberg the
footsteps of the Great Revolution were being followed. In Prussia
itself, however, the feeling was all the more vivid that the new
legislation was profoundly affecting all the relationships of life. The
cultured bourgeoisie hailed with gladness the liberation of the
country folk ; in Breslau the deeds of the royal reformer were
commemorated on the stage. But the nobles of the Electoral
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History of Germany
Mark, led by the valiant Marwitz, raged against the audacious
foreigner who, with his school of Franconian and East Prussian
officials, was disturbing the good old Brandenburger way. No less
unheard-of seemed the Jacobinical phrasing than the revolutionary
content of Stein's new laws, which, in accordance with the ancient
custom of Prussian absolutism, endeavoured to explain to the
people the monarch's intentions in detail, and which in doing this
repeatedly referred to the good of the state and to the progress of
the spirit of the time. In Priegnitz, the peasants even raised a
disturbance against " the new freedom," and the king had to send
a force to keep them in order. In the Junkergasse at Konigsberg,
at the Perponcher Club, worthy gentlemen of the court, of the
landed gentry, of the army, were profoundly incensed at the
" viper's brood " of the reformer. No one there scolded more
fiercely than General York, to whom it seemed that the severe old-
time discipline was disappearing from the world, that the time was
coming when every cornet would begin to stick up for the rights of
man. Even Gneisenau could not follow the minister in all these
bold ventures, and it seemed to him that the destruction of great
landed proprietorship was imminent, until experience taught him
his error. Some of the finest men of the East Prussian stocks
of the Dohna, the Auerswald, and the Finkenstein, sent a petition
to the king, imploring him to protect the rights of the nobility,
and at least to save the noble from military service and from the
patrimonial courts. Nor were justified complaints lacking, for
although the legislator everywhere expressed his leading ideas with
businesslike clearness and definiteness, there were nevertheless in
certain matters of detail, owing to the haste with which the work
was done, many obscurities and contradictions. But the prestige
of the royal command was as firmly established as was the con-
fidence in the justice of Frederick William. Even those who were
personally dissatisfied could not imagine that this prince could
order an open act of .injustice. The reform ran its course. Once
again, as so often before, it was by the will of the crown that an act
of liberation was effected for the Prussian people.
The second great task which Stein undertook was the com-
pletion of the unity of the state. From the proceedings of the
Paris National Assembly, he had learned the necessity for a
centralised financial system, and from a study of the executive
organisation of the First Consul he had come to recognise that the
business of the state must be so carried on as to render a unified
supervision possible. Even before the war he had recommended
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The Rise of Prussia
the appointment of departmental ministers for the whole state.
The extraordinary juxtaposition of provincial ministers and
departmental ministers, the intermingling of the real system
with the provincial system, was no longer adequate to the needs
of an active modern administration. The anxious preservation
of territorial peculiarities had been carried so far during recent
decades, that the officials of the old school could even speak of the
Prussian monarchy as a " federal state." Yet closer examination
showed how healthy and full of life was the executive organisation
founded by Frederick William I. Now that the undertaking was
ventured of carrying his work a stage further, full justice was for
the first time done to the remarkable insight of the strict old
organiser. Schon esteemed him as the greatest king of Prussia
as far as internal affairs were concerned. What was resolved on
was not a revolution, but the progressive development and sim-
plification of the ancient institutions. The law of December 16,
1808, concerning the changed constitution of the supreme state
authorities decreed that there should be five departmental
ministers, for home affairs, finance, foreign affairs, war, and justice,
at the head of the entire administration of the state, and the old
general treasuries were to be united into a single general state
treasury, under the charge of the minister of finance. Stein foresaw
how dangerous might become the power of these five men, and he
therefore intended to constitute, as the supreme authority of the
monarchy, a council of state which should unite in itself all the
leading energies of the state service, including the ministers, should
advise as to legislative proposals, and should decide the great
disputed questions of public law. But his successors failed to cany
out this part of his proposals.
Through the appointment of the departmental ministers, the
general directory was abolished. There remained, however, the
old war chambers, and domain chambers, under the new names of
" administrations." The judiciary and the executive were com-
pletely separated ; the judicial business of the old chambers was
allotted to the " administrations " ; they were purged of useless
members (for Stein everywhere fought against the practical irre-
movability of the old officialdom, and reserved to the crown the
right of dismissing the executive officials at will); the course of
business was simplified, and greater independence was secured
for the presidents and the heads of departments in the individual
branches of the executive. But the advantages of the German
collegial system, its lack of partisanship, and its careful regard
329 y
History of Germany
for all the circumstances of the individual case, were too highly
esteemed by Stein for him to be willing to exchange that system
for the readier mobility of a bureaucratic prefectural administra-
tion. The intermediate authorities of the Prussian executive
remained colleges and in this form continued to work beneficially
for two generations. Instead of the vain display of the general
councils which stood beside the Napoleonic prefects giving diffident
advice, the German statesmen demanded the active and regular
participation of the nation in administrative affairs. Thus there
would flow in to the men of the boardroom a wealth of views and
feelings derived from the outside world, whilst the people itself
would become animated with the sense of fatherland, of indepen-
dence, and of national honour.
But how was this vigorous activity on the part of the ruled
to be incorporated in the firmly ordered hierarchy of the paid
officialdom ? It was obviously impossible to transfer to the
provincial diets the conduct of individual executive affairs ;
nepotism, cumbrousness, the commercial spirit of the old feudal
committees, still gave to these bodies an evil repute. For this
reason Stein and Hardenberg both conceived the remarkable idea
of proposing that in every government nine of the representatives
sitting in the provincial diets should be co-opted upon the boards
for three years, and that these co-opted members should take full
part in all the work of the boards. This idea shows very clearly
how complete a breach had been made with the old views of bureau-
cratic self-satisfaction, but it led to nothing. The new institu-
tion came into existence in East Prussia alone ; elsewhere the
provincial diets showed little inclination to provide the daily
allowance of money for the notables. The East Prussian representa-
tives soon found themselves to be extremely isolated among their
far more numerous bureaucratic official colleagues ; they felt
themselves to be dilettanti among experts ; those from the country
would not work long in their offices ; the monetary allowances
were not forthcoming ; zeal soon cooled, and in the year 1812 the
unlucky experiment was abandoned. 1 Nor did the new office
of lord-lieutenant at first prove very satisfactory. Whereas
revolutionary France had subdivided its ancient provinces into
powerless departments, Stein, in deliberate contrast, wished to
unite the weakly governmental areas into great and vigorous
provinces. Three lords-lieutenant, for Silesia, for Old Prussia, and
for the territories of Pomerania and the Mark, respectively, were
1 Report of Minister von Schuckmann to the king, May 24, 1812.
330
- The Rise of Prussia
to supervise the government, not as intermediaries but as permanent
commissaries of the ministry, and as representatives of the common
interests of their provinces. The institution was plainly based
upon the wider relationships of a great state. In the narrow
circumstances of the diminished monarchy, its only effect was to
render more difficult the conduct of business ; not until after the
restoration of Prussia to the position of a great power, did its
utility become manifest.
The social reforms of Stein and the consolidation of the unity
of the state, proceeded from the independent and peculiar working
out of ideas which had been in the air since the outbreak of the
revolution and which were a common possession of all clear intelli-
gences among the Prussian officials. But a thoroughly creative
action, the free work of Stein's own genius, was the Towns' Ordi-
nance of November 19, 1808. x He regarded the elevation of the
nation out of the dull narrowness of its domestic life, as the last and
highest task of his political activity. He saw that the country was
in danger of falling into a condition of sensuality, or of attributing
an exaggerated worth to the speculative sciences, and he wished to
lead it on towards a vigorous activity which should be of value
to the community. By a happy practical insight, he was led to
begin his work with the towns. Only after an independent com-
munal life had been awakened among the cultured townsmen,
would it be possible for the rude peasants who had but recently
been delivered from hereditary servitude, and who still regarded
their landlords with great hostility, to be awakened to the rights
and duties of self-government. Wilckens played the principal
part in the working out of this law. The towns were given the
independent control of their finances, of their poor relief, and of
their educational activities ; and on the demand of the state, they
might also carry on police affairs in the state's name. They were
thus to be in a position of almost complete independence vis-d-vis
the state authority, and were even granted autonomous rights in
matters of taxation, no one yet foreseeing how injurious to the com-
munity would be the effect of this last privilege. The various
ancient gradations of civil right were done away with, and the
privileges of the guilds were also abolished. The inhabitants
of the towns consisted now of two classes only, citizens and
denizens. One who had acquired the freedom of the city, and
1 Stein always definitely described the Towns' Ordinance as his own creation.
It is simply owing to the way in which the work of his office was carried on that
the documents contain so few autograph comments of the minister's (E. Meier
op. cit., page 147 )
331
History of Germany
this was not difficult to obtain, was bound to undertake all communal
duties ; for whilst the freedom of property was a leading idea of
Stein's law, no less important in that law was the principle that upon
the property owner was imposed the duty of service to the
community. An elected magistracy, whose members were partly
unpaid and partly paid on a very moderate scale, with a representa-
tive assembly elected by all the burgesses (who for electoral purposes
were listed in separate constituencies), conducted the administra-
tion of the town. Thus the atrophy of German communal life
which had endured for two centuries came at length to an
end.
This reform seems all the more remarkable in its simple clear-
ness and directness of aim since Stein had no example to follow
anywhere in Europe. The careless English municipal constitu-
tions were of as little value to him as examples as was the patrician
domination in his own beloved Westphalian towns. Now for the
first time did there come into existence in Germany modern urban
communities, independent corporations which, nevertheless, were
at the same time trustworthy organs to fulfil the will of the central
authority, and which remained subject to governmental super-
vision. Hitherto some of the towns had been completely deprived
of independence. Others, like the baronial country-towns, con-
stituted petty states within the state, with their own patrimonial
jurisdiction and their own police, and only too often had the com-
mands of the king to " our vassals, officials, magistrates, and
beloved subjects " been thwarted by the passive resistance of these
ancient municipal dominions. Now at length in the administra-
tion of the towns the centralised authority obtained a powerful
prop, and one which corresponded to its own national charac-
teristics.
This reform also had to be imposed upon the nation by the
king's command. The gentry of the Mark, and the officers of the
old school, complained of the republican principles of the Towns'
Ordinance. What horror was felt in these circles when it was learned
that one of the first state officials, the president von Gerlach, had
accepted the election to the position of chief burgomaster of
Berlin ! The exhausted communal sentiment of the bourgeoisie
showed at first very little inclination for the enforced honorary
services ; and it soon became apparent that self-government is
expensive ; whereas Stein and his friends had rather anticipated
a diminution in the cost. The towns, which under the rule of
Frederick William I had been accustomed to strict economy, were
332
The Rise of Prussia
for the most part better disposed towards the new ordinance than
were the old rural communes, which were accustomed to the nepotist
rule of independent magistrates. It was only during the War of
Liberation that a true understanding of the blessings of freedom
awakened among the townsfolk, when the central authority had
almost everywhere to discontinue its work, and when every town
was forced to look after itself. Since then there has become
manifest in our municipal life a second flowering, less brilliant, but
not less honourable than the great epoch of the Hanseatic League.
In educational matters, in the relief of destitution, in foundations
of general utility, the German bourgeoisie once more endeavoured
to compete with the older and richer urban culture of the Romans.
Just as Frederick William I had created the modern German
executive officialdom, so did Stein's Towns' Ordinance prove the
starting-point for German municipal self-government. Upon this
were based the new by-laws, which for two generations, so long as
parliamentarism still remained immature, constituted the best
and the most secure element of German national freedom. Through
Stein's reforms there was reawakened in the German bourgeoisie
a lively communal sense and a delight in responsible political
activity. It is to these reforms that we owe the fact that the Ger-
man constitutional state is to-day established upon a firm founda-
tion, that our views as to the nature of political freedom, however
erroneous they may at times have been, have never become so
vain and formalised as were the doctrines of the French Revolution.
Through the losses of the Treaty of Tilsit, Prussia had once
more become a mainly agricultural country. For this reason it
was Stein's intention that the Towns' Ordinance should be followed
as soon as possible by a Rural Districts' Ordinance. A proposal
by von Schrotter and the East Prussian provincial department
had already been drafted. Stein demanded free rural com-
munes with village-mayors and village-courts. The last and
strongest props of the old feudal order of society, the territorial
police and patrimonial courts, must be abolished, for power must be
derived only from the highest authority. Stein's plans involved
no alteration in the ancient historical character of the office of
Landrat ; as formerly, so now, the Landrat was to be a servant
of the state, but he was to be at the same time a moderately paid
official, a landlord resident in the circles, and the trusted adviser
of its inhabitants. But to the experienced eye of the minister, the
existing circles seemed too large for the energies of a single man,
and he was already considering, in conjunction with his friend
333
History of Germany
Vincke, the appointment of several Landrats in each district ; like
the English justices of the peace, they were from time to time to
assemble to hold quarter sessions. In addition to the Landrats,
there was to be a provincial assembly, constituted of all the
principal landowners and of a number of representatives from the
towns and villages. The strong representation given to landed
property was obviously necessary, for no one yet knew whether
the rude peasantry, who had only just become freemen, were
competent for representation in the provincial assembly. For
this reform also the indefatigable Schrotter had already drawn up
a detailed plan which in essential respects proceeded from the
same principles as the Circle Ordinance of 1872.
Stein desired that the lord-lieutenant should be assisted by
a provincial diet, so that the peculiarities and the separate interests
of the great territories should be properly represented within the
unified state. He gladly boasted that his scheme for this institu-
tion was based upon free property ; he gave the suffrage to all
" property holders," and in his mouth this term meant exclusively
or chiefly those who held real property in town or country. With
a bold hand he had overthrown the legal barriers between the
ancient classes. There no longer existed in Prussia any hereditary
class differences ; and yet he did not wish in any spirit of levity
to overthrow the distinction between the professional classes on
the one hand and groups of interests on the other, for this distinction
was still a marked one in the popular consciousness. For this reason
he demanded a class representation for the provincial diets, in such
a way that the country gentry, the towns, and the peasantry, were
to name their representatives separately ; and he rejected the
proposals of his Silesian friend, Rhediger, who wished to do away
completely with the old division of classes. It was enough for
Stein if the totality of the burgesses of the town and of the peasants
obtained class representation, whereas only a few privileged towns
that were immediates of the empire, and among the peasantry
only the Kollmers, had taken part in the old feudal diets. Whilst
he was still in power the first step was taken towards this end.
" In order that the government may be supported by general
assent," East Prussia received a new Territorial Ordinance, which
secured for the Kollmers equal political rights with the nobles,
and gave them the right to representation on the territorial
committees.
Finally, over these new provincial estates were to be super-
posed the Prussian estates of the realm, as a support for the throne,
334
The Rise of Prussia
and as an indispensable means for awakening andjx invigorating
the national spirit. In these disordered times, the old absolutism
was everywhere feeling its powerlessness. When the stringency
of the national finances made it necessary to sell the domains, the
king was unwilling to take upon his own shoulders the responsi-
bility for so venturesome a step, and he therefore had the new
domestic law concerning the sale of the domains laid before the
estates of all the provinces for their acceptance, although he
expressly declared that he did this as an act of grace and not as a
duty. (In Silesia, which had no estates, the proposal was laid
before the representatives of the mortgage institute and of some of
the towns.) It was impossible that such a state of insecurity in
public law should persist. Stein cherished the idea of a great
reform of taxation ; he desired to break with the anxious domestic
economy which measured the expenses in accordance with the
income, and he wished to introduce for Prussia the bold principle
which applies to every national fiscal system which is run on broad
lines, that the income must be regulated in accordance with the
expenditure. For this reform, and for all the other sacrifices which
seemed to him to be required of the reawakening nation, he con-
sidered that the approval of an assembly of the estates of the realm
was indispensable. For the moment, however, owing to the imma-
turity of the people, the powers of this body must be deliberative
merely.
Such, in essentials, were Stein's proposals for a thorough-going
reform, the greatest and the boldest which the political idealism
of the Germans had ever conceived. By similar plans Turgot had
once hoped to avert the approaching Revolution, but the proposals
of the German statesman far transcended the ideas of the French-
man, in modest greatness, in logical definiteness, and in regard for
that which was historically extant. The king was in agreement
with all these proposals, but that to which he was least inclined
was the summoning of the estates of the realm. It was not that
he feared a limitation of his power ; but to his retiring nature, the
noise of the debates, the passion of the parliamentary struggle, the
necessity for his own public appearance, were repugnant. Brought
up in the traditions of a mild absolutism, full of antipathy to the
sins of the Revolution, he could not yet completely convince him-
self that the representative system had become indispensable. It
was in fact questionable, in view of the lamentable state of political
culture, whether the influence of the estates of the realm would not
prove rather a hindrance than a help. From the gentry which,
335
History of Germany
according to Stein's proposals, was to constitute the most powerful
element of the united diet, the free assent to a juster system of
taxation and to the other innovations proposed by the minister,
was hardly to be expected. Even the towns and the peasants
showed only too often how little they were able to follow the reform-
ing ideas of the crown.
If, however, Stein's own vigorous personality were to remain
in control, if the reform were to proceed as he planned, step by
step, if, first of all, by the abolition of the territorial police, the
dominant position of the country gentry were to be destroyed, and
if then the district assemblies and the provincial diets were to spread
through the liberated areas, he might hope to bring the king to
understand that the summoning of an assembly of the estates of
the realm was necessary on behalf of the unity of the state, as a
counterpoise to the centrifugal forces of the provincial diets. In
this way, by the free choice of the crown, might be effected the
transition from absolute monarchy to a representative system, and
the Prussian state might perhaps be spared a whole generation of
tentative proceedings. Stein was prepared to build upon the
awakening insight in the loj-al and good-hearted people. He did
not fail to recognise the deep chasm which existed between the
over-refined and unworldly culture of the men of learning and
the esential roughness of the masses ; but he hoped to bridge this
chasm by the reconstitution of the educational system, and it was
only his sudden fall which prevented these plans from coming to
maturity. Years before, in Miinster, he had shown that this
branch of internal administration was within the purview of his
free and comprehensive spirit, for in Miinster he had fought
Jesuitism at the University, and had awakened a new life in this
ossified institution.
Hand in hand with administrative reform, there proceeded the
reorganisation of the army, this also being effected under Stein's
personal supervision. The king himself gave the first impetus.
In this department, which he regarded as peculiarly his own, he
always retained the immediate direction, and never failed to display
an apt power of judgment and a penetrating knowledge of affairs.
As early as July, 1807, he appointed Scharnhorst to the presidency
of a commission for army reorganisation, and submitted to this
commission an autograph memorial in which he clearly pointed out
all the defects of the existing military system, and rightly indicated
the means for its improvement. There were associated with
336
The Rise of Prussia
Scharnhorst in this work a number of younger men of talent, who
followed with a lively understanding, as did Scharnhorst himself,
all the intellectual work of the time, men of statesmanlike intelli-
gence who regarded the army as a popular school, and the art of
war as a branch of politics. Their quiet activity served, not merely
to sharpen the weapons for the War of Liberation, but also to bring
the Prussian army once more into harmony with the new culture,
and to endow the German military system for all future time with
the characteristics of serious culture and intellectual freshness and
alertness.
These officers were united from the outset with the leading
statesman by a remarkable and instinctive agreement of moral and
political conviction. It sounded like one of Stein's own utter-
ances when Gneisenau, apropos of the French Rights of Man, ex-
claimed, " First make the human race enthusiasts for duty, and
only after that for rights ! " Just as the disciple of Adam Smith
was unwilling to apply the principle of the division of labour
unconditionally to the national administration, esteeming the skilled
business ability of the professional official less highly than that
popular maturity which is acquired in self-government, so also did
these military experts cherish the belief that it is moral force which
ultimately proves decisive in war. However highly they esteemed
the essentials of technical training, they regarded as still more
important, to use Scharnhorst 's own words, " the intimate union
of the army with the nation." Scharnhorst wrote soon after the
peace : " The sense of independence must be instilled into the
nation, which must be given an opportunity of becoming acquainted
with itself, of standing on its own feet ; then only will it respect
itself, and learn how to gain respect from others. All that we can
do is to work towards this end. We must loosen the bonds of
prejudice, guide the rebirth of the nation ; care for its growth,
and not hinder its free development ; more than this it is not in our
power to do."
Scharnhorst had long been recognised as the first military
writer of his country, as the most brilliant authority among the
German officers, but after an extremely varied life he also had at
his disposal an exceptional wealth of practical experience. He had
seen service in every arm, in the general staff, and in the military
colleges. During his training at the military college of Wil-
helmstein, he had become acquainted with that exemplary little
troop which the talented old warrior Count Wilhelm von Biickeburg
had formed out of the young men of his own petty territory ; next
337
History of Germany
as a Hanoverian officer, in the Netherlands theatre of war, he had
become closely acquainted with the English Army, which among
all the armies of Europe still preserved most faithfully the charac-
teristics of the ancient mercenary system ; he had seen active
service against the loosely organised militia of the Republic and
also against the well-trained conscripts of Napoleon, and in the
war of 1806 he was sufficiently near to the leadership to have learned
completely to understand the errors of the Frederician army and
the ultimate grounds of its overthrow. To the simple Saxon, that
stiff military conduct which the king demanded from his officers
was repugnant. He went about in an inconspicuous, and almost
untidy, dress, with his head hanging down, and his deep-set
thinker's eyes turned quite inward. His hair fell in disorder over
his forehead ; his speech was gentle and slow. In Hanover he
was often seen knocking at the doors of the baker's shop, and
then sitting quietly with his wife and children at supper under
the [trees of the Eilenride. Thus he remained throughout life,
straightforward and unadorned in all things. The simplicity and
tenderness of his private correspondence reminds us of the men of
antiquity ; in his writings, as in everything else, matter is every-
thing 'and form nothing. But the superiority of a powerful,
continuously productive and thoroughly independent spirit, the
nobility of a moral disposition which simply did not know what
self-seeking is, gave to this unpretentious man a natural charm
which, repellent to men of common mind, slowly and surely
attracted magnanimous spirits. His daughter, Countess Julie Dohna,
owed everything to her widowed father ; she was spoken of as a
royal woman, and was accepted in distinguished circles as if she
had indeed been of royal blood.
The equable temperament of the general was more agreeable
to the king than was Stein's stimulating and stimulated nature ;
none among his counsellors was so near to Frederick William.
Scharnhorst returned the confidence of his royal friend without
restraint. It would have seemed to him base to think any longer
of past errors ; he admired the moral strength of the unfortunate
monarch ; and he never swerved in his loyalty, not even when, in
their patriotic impatience, many of his friends became disaffected
towards the over-cautious prince. A true Low German, he was of a
retiring disposition, quiet, and reserved by nature. Praise sounded
to him almost like an insult, and a gentle word as a profanation of
friendship. His life led him along a rough road, always among
enemies. In Hanover, the plebeian had had to contend with the ill-
338
The Rise of Prussia
favour of the nobility ; whilst in Prussia the innovator had to fight
against the arrogance of the old generals. When now, by the
confidence of the king and by the general acclamation of the army,
he was placed at the head of military affairs, for five years he had
to carry on the obscure activity of a conspirator, preparing for the
War of Liberation under the very eyes of the enemy. He thus
learned to control every word and every gesture, and the simple-
minded man who despised on his own account every kind of
duplicity, became, for the sake of his country, a master in the arts
of concealment, unrivalled in the faculty of holding his tongue,
cunning and world-wise. With a rapid and searching glance he
read the thoughts of those with whom he came in contact ;
whereas, when on his side he had to conceal one of the king's
secrets, it was necessary for him with ambiguous phrase to lure
friend and foe alike upon a false scent. The officers said very
truly, that his soul was as full of furrows as his face ; he reminded
them of William of Orange, who long before in a similar situation,
quiet and self-contained, had prepared for the struggle with the
world-empire of Spain. And just like William the Silent, Scharn-
horst hid within his bosom the lofty passion, the love of struggle,
characteristic of the hero, and during the last war these traits had
acquired for him the friendship of the active-minded Blucher.
He did not know fear, he would not admit how stultifying can be
the anxiety that follows a defeat ; in the courts-martial his
sentence was always the most severe against cowardice and breach
of faith. In a strange and yet harmonious manner there were
combined in this great soul a petty-bourgeois simplicity, and a
world-embracing breadth of view ; a yearning for peace, and
courage in war ; philanthropic tenderness of heart, and the ele-
mental energy of the national hatred. Perhaps no one suffered so
bitterly from the distresses of the time as did this man of silence ;
day and night he was never free from the thought of the disgrace
of his country. Everyone approached him with reverence, for all
felt involuntarily that upon him depended the future of the army.
Among the men who assisted him in the work of army re-
organisation, four proved equally the heirs of his spirit, so that
each one of the four received a portion of the comprehensive talents
of the master. These were Gneisenau and Grolman, the born
commanders ; Bo}'en, the organiser ; and Clausewitz, the man
of learning. All four of them were, like Scharnhorst himself, poor
and temperate, men of few needs, free from all self-seeking, looking
only to the end which had to be gained, and with all their candour,
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History of Germany
men of profound modesty as is natural to the gifted soldier for
whilst the solitary poietic activity of the artist and of the man of
learning very readily leads to vanity, the soldier works only as a
member of the great whole, and is unable to show what he is worth
unless an inscrutable destiny leads him to the right place at the
right moment. With an excess of modesty, Gneisenau declared
himself to be merely a pigmy beside the giant Scharnhorst. He
lacked the profound erudition of the master, and like so many men
of action, he felt the gaps in his knowledge as if they were a lack
of capacity ; on the other hand, he possessed in a far greater measure
the inspiriting confidence of the hero, that joyful fatalism which
makes the great commander. How proudly and securely did he
now spread his sails when he at length emerged from the erroneous
wanderings of a passionate youth, and when after the long and
dreary calm of a subaltern service, he had attained to the high seas
of life. Every task that destiny offered him he undertook with
a happy facility and readiness ; unhesitatingly the infantry soldier
took over the command of the engineers and the supervision of
the fortresses. Whilst Scharnhorst was cautiously weighing the
dangers of the immediate future, Gneisenau always looked forward
with ardent yearning to the hour of the uprising, and suffered even
fools gladly if they would only take part in the great conspiracy.
A kindred nature was that of Grolman, magnanimous, serene,
and happy, incisive and unsparing in act and speech, created for
the melee, for the bold seizure of the fortune of the moment ; yet
he was to experience to the full the cruelty of the soldier's destiny,
and never in war was he to occupy the first place. In his general
demeanour, Boy en appeared to resemble the general most closely ;
he was a serious and reserved East Prussian who had sat at the
feet of Kant and Kraus, and who, as a poet, was also in close touch
with the new literature. It was only the ardent eyes under his
bushy eyebrows which betrayed the stormy courage that slum-
bered in the simple and silent man. After his quiet manner he had
turned over in his own mind the organising ideas of Scharnhorst,
had developed them further, and after the wars he helped to give
its permanent form to the new people's army. Finally, the youngest
of this circle of friends, Carl von Clausewitz, was more than any of
the others the trusted pupil of Scharnhorst, deeply initiated into
the new scientific theories of war to which Scharnhorst was devoted.
Subsequently Clausewitz developed these theories independently,
and in a series of works, which in respect of classic form greatly
excel those of the master, he secured for the theory of war its place
340
The Rise of Prussia
among the number of state-sciences. His was a profound intel-
ligence, and he was a master of historical judgment ; but he was
perhaps too critical and too cautious to grasp, as did Gneisenau,
the fortune of battle at the propitious moment ; yet he was far
from being simply a man of books, for he was a practical and valiant
soldier, looking with wide-open eyes upon the tumult of life. He
had just returned with Prince Augustus from duress as a prisoner
of war. While he was in France, his love for the youthful candour
and freshness of the Teutons had risen to the point of enthusiasm.
He returned home with the conviction that the French were still
in essentials as unmilitary a people as they had been formerly in
the days of the wars of the Huguenots when they trembled before
the German infantry and cavalry. How can the primitive character
of nations alter in ten years ? How could those who had been
conquered one hundred times permanently control Germany mighty
in arms ?
It was with the aid of such forces as these that the king under-
took the work of reconstruction. The whole army was formed
anew. Six brigades, two Silesian, two Old Prussian, one from
Pomerania, and one from the Mark, were all that still remained of
the Frederician army, and constituted the last anchor for German
hopes. The troops were given more practical weapons and cloth-
ing, the pigtail was done away with, the arts of the parade-ground
passed into abeyance, and their place was taken by the strenuous
work of field service. All the stores had to be provided anew ;
Napoleon's marshals had carried out their work of plunder so
thoroughly that the Silesian artillery was unable for many months
to undertake any practice for lack of powder. A commission of
inquiry made a thorough examination of the conduct during the
war of individual officers, and pitilessly cashiered all who were
blameworthy or suspect. In the newspaper Der Volksfreund,
edited by the valiant Barsch, Gneisenau demanded the abolition of
flogging in the army, asking bitterly whether the Prussian soldier
was to continue to seek the stimulus of good conduct in the cane
instead of in the sense of honour. His views found acceptance,
the new articles of war abolished the old and cruel corporal punish-
ments. How changed was the world when Prussian officers could
now venture to discuss in the press the defects of the military
system !
In another article, Gneisenau sarcastically alluded to the con-
venient system by which the sons of the Junkers could, while still
children, exercise a hereditary right to command the soldiers of
34'
History of Germany
the king. In these words he merely gave open expression to what
all intelligent officers were thinking. The abolition of the privileged
position of the Junkers, and of all the other military privileges of
the gentry, was a necessary consequence of the spirit of the new
legislation ; and since the Prussians had taken practical note of
the efficiency of Napoleon's youthful commanders many Hotspurs
demanded that the renowned free promotion of the French should
be imitated in Prussia. Scharnhorst, however, went his own way ;
he saw the moral evils which had resulted from the adoption of
the Napoleonic principle, " young generals, old captains " ; he
saw how many rough and unwholesome elements had found their
way into the lower strata of the French officers' corps, and how
seriously in the French army unbridled ambition had loosened the
bonds of true comradeship. The son of the German peasant was
well aware why Washington had exclaimed to the Americans, " Take
only gentlemen for your officers." He understood why King
Frederick William I had allowed his officers to disobey orders
when these orders touched their honour. It was not his desire to
destroy the ancient aristocratic character of the Prussian officers'
corps, but only to substitute the aristocracy of culture for the
aristocracy of the privileged nobility.
The regulation of August 6, 1808, concerning the appoint-
ment of ensigns, established the principle that in time of peace only
knowledge and culture, and in time of war only distinguished
bravery and intelligence, could give a claim to officer's rank ; no
Junker could now become an ensign simply on the ground of here-
ditary right, for the position of ensign could not be attained before
the age of seventeen years, and only then after a scientific examina-
tion ; whilst not until a second examination had been passed, and
upon a proposal from the officers' corps, could a young man win
his epaulettes. The king impressed it upon the officers that
they should never cease to realise their honourable position as
educators and teachers of a noteworthy portion of the nation. In
the lower grades up to the rank of captain, promotion usually
occurred by seniority, but in the selection of the staff-officers and
in the filling of the higher posts of command, service was alone
determinative. Through these inconspicuous proposals, the
officer's position acquired a new character which to us to-day seems
a matter of course, since it constitutes a distinctive national feature
of the German military system. Now for the first time did the
officers' corps gain an inner correspondence with the civil official-
dom, now first did it acquire a definite intellectual superiority over
342
The Rise of Prussia
the rank and file. The prospect of rapid promotion was open to
talent ; and yet the slowness of promotion in the lower grades,
the general similarity of culture and of manner of life, resulted in
this, that every member of the officers' corps had a definite sense
of his position, and that an aristocratic class-consciousness per-
meated the whole body. The social barrier which in France
separated the officer promoted from the ranks from his more
cultured fellows, could not here exist.
For no one was the transformation of the military system so
momentous, as for the older generation of the landed gentry, whose
members still continued to form the majority of the officers' corps.
Many years passed away before the actual favouring of the nobility
in the army ceased to exist. But the principle was none the less
firmly established that even the noble must acquire his commis-
sion by the proof of scientific knowledge, and only men of a con-
siderable degree of culture could show themselves adequate for the
new and more severe ordering of the service. No longer did the
state service offer an asylum for the ignorant, and the reformers
already began to speak of the new Prussia as an intelligent state.
It was by Scharnhorst that the excessive roughness of the eastern
German Junkerdom was first smoothed away, for the house of
cadets instituted by Frederick William I had but half succeeded in
effecting this change. The old generation, which had despised the
quill-drivers, died out, and their youthful successors recognised
and revered the power of knowledge.
The fundamental idea of all these reforms was that hence-
forward the army was to consist of the people in arms, it was to be
a national army, to which everyone capable of bearing arms must
belong. Recruiting was abolished, the enlisting of foreigners was
forbidden ; only a few volunteers of German blood were still
admitted. The new articles of war and the ordinance concerning
military punishments started with the premise that in future all
subjects, even young persons of good education, should serve as
common soldiers, and this established the need for a gentler treat-
ment of the rank and file. All thinking officers were at one as to
the need for abolishing the old exemptions from military service.
The idea of the general liability to service had even before the war
been defended by Scharnhorst himself, by Boyen, by Loussau, and
by other officers, and it was fully considered by the king. During
the unfortunate campaign, this idea had quietly been gaining
ground, and it was now clear to every intelligent soldier that the
unequal war could only be resumed through the utilisation of the
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History of Germany
entire energy of the nation. Immediately after the peace, Blucher
begged his dear Scharnhorst, " to provide for a national army ; no
one must be exempt on any account, it must be a disgrace to anyone
not to have served." Prince Augustus, while still a prisoner of
war, transmitted a plan for the reconstitution of the army, in which
universal military service was the leading idea. Scharnhorst
knew, however, what most of his contemporaries had completely
forgotten, that this was merely the revival of an ancient Prussian
principle. He reminded the king that his ancestor Frederick
William I had, first of all the princes of Europe, introduced general
conscription ; it was this principle whose application had once
made Prussia great, and here Austria and France were merely
imitators. It now appeared to be necessary to return to the old
Prussian system, and straightway to abolish the misuse of exemp-
tions. Thus only could be constituted a true standing army, an
army which would be of equal strength at all times. Almost with
the very words of the old soldier-king did Scharnhorst begin his
proposal for the formation of a reserve army. The first section
opened with the words : "All the inhabitants of the state are by
birth defenders of the state."
From the first, the Prussian officers conceived the ideas of
universal military service in a freer and juster sense than did the
bourgeoisie under the French Directory. The conquered were too
proud-spirited to imitate the institutions of the conqueror. It had
been bearable that the king's command should except from cantonal
duty certain classes of people, either on account of class-privilege
or else for economic reasons. But the proposal that a man of
means should be able to buy himself exemption from military
service, that one subject should sell his skin to another, was
utterly un-Prussian, and in conflict with all the traditions of the
army. The French system of substitution was indeed recommended
by a few civil officials, but not by any single officer of note. Here
ideas were more democratic than among the heirs of the revolu-
tion ; in plain terms it was demanded that all should be liable to
military service, and this demand was made, not simply as a means
to the ends of the War of Liberation, but as a permanent institution
for the education of the people. Notwithstanding his contempt for
military superficialities, Scharnhorst was ever a trained expert ;
he was well aware to how small an extent unaided enthusiasm was
able to replace the staying power, the skill, and the discipline, of
the trained soldier. With his rich historical knowledge he had
attained to the conviction that the gentler the manners of the
344
The Rise of Prussia
times, the more necessary for the nation was a military education,
so that the civilised world might retain the virile virtues of simpler
times, so that the vigorous energy of body and soul should not be
lost by culture. Gneisenau joyfully acclaimed this manly view of
historic life ; it was his desire that military training should begin
even at the elementary school, for was the heroic glory of the
Spartans no longer attainable to modern humanity ? From his
soul, Boyen wrote for all friends of Scharnhorst the verses :
"Valiant men throughout the country wield ye every one the sword;
Let all classes, as is fitting, fight for hearth and sov'reign lord ! "
Thus there was no dispute about the principle. But how were
the enormous difficulties in the way of its execution to be over-
come ? To this age, which had so recently emerged from the
barbarism of the ancient military discipline, it seemed an intolerable
severity that the sons of the cultured classes should be enrolled
straightway in the standing army ; moreover, in September, 1808,
Napoleon forced the acceptance of the Treaty of Paris, in accord-
ance with which the ill-used state was forced to pledge itself not
to keep an armed force larger than forty-two thousand men.
Thus the only thing that remained, was to overreach the con-
queror by cunning, to find a way round the treaty, and to create,
beside the standing army, a reserve army, a Landwehr, for use in
case of war. And yet even for this end the direct road was closed.
Scharnhorst at once recognised that the simplest plan would be to
provide the Landwehr through the school of the standing army,
to constitute the reserve army out of the trained soldiers who had
served then: tune. Yet for the moment this was impossible. The
calling up of so great a number of recruits would at once have
aroused the suspicions of Napoleon ; and moreover, a Landwehr
constituted in this way would obviously not attain a notable
strength until many years had passed, whilst month by month a
fresh outbreak of the war was anticipated. For this reason, the
Prussians must content themselves with a militia without any
apparent connection with the standing army, ostensibly intended
only for the maintenance of internal peace, but trained for military
purposes by repeated drills, and with a sufficient supply of arms to
be able to take the field as a reserve army immediately after the
outbreak of war. Four times during the years 1807 and 1810 did
Scharnhorst resume these Landwehr plans, and confer upon
them with the monarch. His first proposal came into effect on
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History of Germany
July 31, 1807, quite independently, and long before the Austrian
Landwehr came into existence.
The earlier plans pursued as their main purpose the prepara-
tion for military service of the sons of the well-to-do classes, who
would be able to provide their own arms and uniform ; this force
was to be drilled in tune of peace under the harmless name of a
" burgher guard " or of the " national watch." In the summer of
1809, the restless military reformer gave a wider scope to these
proposals, in which could already be recognised the elements of
the organisation of 1813. He set a high value upon the heroic
energy of a wrathful people, but he also had a sober vision of the
length of time that would be requisite before he could transform
an armed mob into troops ready and fit for war. His plan was that
the standing army should begin the attack ; meanwhile the reserve
army was to be constituted out of the soldiers that had served their
term, out of the supernumeraries, and also out of all the younger
men liable to cantonal service ; the well-to-do were to join as
volunteer yagers. This Landwehr was to take over service
in the fortresses, and was to effect the investment of places
garrisoned by the enemy ; as soon as it was sufficiently developed,
it was to follow the army, and its place was to be taken by the
militia, or Landsturm, which had meanwhile been assembled and
was to comprise all those still fit to bear arms. Scharnhorst knew
how disagreeable to Napoleon were his memories of the campaign
of La Vendee, and how greatly he dreaded a popular uprising. It
was Scharnhorst 's hope to open the War of Liberation with a small
army which should base its actions upon a few fortresses or
entrenched camps, and with such an end in view, he had an
extremely careful study made of the unfavourable ground of the
North German plain. When Gneisenau learned of Wellington's
Portuguese victories, he even hoped to reconstitute a Torres Vedras
upon this plain, out of the little town of Spandau.
All these hopes came to nought. As soon as Napoleon was
informed of the Prussian plans for a new Landwehr, he at once
uttered masterful threats. His detested opponent was not to go
a single step outside the provisions of the Treaty of Paris while
he reserved to himself the right to trample these provisions under
foot. At length it became clear that the constitution of a Land-
wehr remained impossible so long as Prussia was not yet in a
position to declare war against France. Until then, all that could
be attained without arousing the suspicion of the Imperator, was
to undertake a more rapid training of the men of the standing army.
346
The Rise of Prussia
The legally established age for the service of those liable to military
duty was twenty years, and this was left unchanged ; but as many
of them were called up as possible, and were sent home again in
a few months when they had received a tolerable training. The
strength of the army allowed by the treaty was not observed with
undue strictness. For years, the bodyguard in Berlin, whenever
the force went out into the field for manoeuvres, left a portion of the
men in barracks, so that Napoleon's spies could not ascertain the
strength of the battalions. It was impossible to avoid that many of
those fit for service should evade the more severe levies by flight,
whilst on the other hand many conscripts entered Prussia from the
territories of the Confederation of the Rhine. On the whole the
people showed a self-sacrificing loyalty towards the king. It
happened on one occasion that the peasants of the neighbourhood
stole a cannon during the night from the ramparts of the West-
phalian fortress of Magdeberg, and brought it by boat to Spandau
their tribal lord needed weapons to use against the Frenchmen.
Through this system of partial training Scharnhorst gradually
succeeded in building up a force of 150,000 soldiers. It was a
tragical spectacle, that of this great man endeavouring year after
year to elude the notice of his omniscient enemy by a thousand
wiles and tricks. His soul longed for the joy of battle ; he was
willing to sacrifice the last man and horse in the country so that
Germany might once more be free ; yet ever again and again the
watchful opponent rendered vain his plans of military preparation.
It was not until the hour of open battle struck that in a moment
there sprang to life all that had been quietly prepared in five years
full of arduous labour, full of nameless anxieties. Scharnhorst and
no other was the father of the Landwehr of 1813. , .
Meanwhile hatred and poverty brought about a profound
transformation in the mood of the cultured classes of North Ger-
many, a transformation for which the way had long been prepared
by the ideas of the Romantic literature. After great tribulations
of popular life there always ensues a storm of complaints and accusa-
tions, the tormented consciences endeavouring to lay upon the
shoulders of isolated individuals the blame which belongs to all ;
invectives and foul lampoons crawled like loathsome worms out
of the corpse of the fallen old order. Thus there threw themselves
upon the humiliated Prussian state a number of miscreants, for the
most part the same persons who had before the war been loud in
their advocacy of an alliance between North Germany and France.
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History^of Germany
Colln's Neue Feuerbrdnde, Massenbach's Historische Denkwurdig-
keiten, Buchholz's Galerie preussischer Charaktere, and similar
writings, busily unearthed all the garbage that could be discovered
in any neglected corners of the old monarchy, down to the domain-
purchasers of the days of Frederick William II. 1 That conceited
and barren precocity, which since the days of Nicolai had persisted
in the circles of the half-cultured of Berlin, had now found its
political expression. Just as those of this way of thinking had
formerly contested, in the name of enlightenment, everything that
was free and vital in the new poetry, so now was the war against
Napoleon censured in the name of freedom. It was only the
mercantile egoism of England, and the arrogance of the Prussian
officers, which had forced war upon peace-loving France ; and
there was nothing that Buchholz was less willing to pardon to the
state of Frederick than the unworthy alliance with Russian bar-
barism against French civilisation.
The authors of these libels were the intellectual forefathers
of a new political tendency which has since that time, under mani-
fold shapes and names, continued to flourish secretly in the soil
of Berlin, and to be a cancer in the Prussian state. This takes
the form of a professional desire to criticise, of an unwearied search
for scandals, infinitely conceited, and yet utterly under the dominion
of phrases, flourishing great words of freedom and progress, and
yet continually failing to understand the signs of the times. In
all these writings there was also a genuinely German characteristic,
a national weakness, of which but a few of our publicists have
remained altogether free. I refer to the peculiar incapacity for
rightly judging the dimensions of men and things, the failure to
distinguish the great and the genuine from the small and the
ephemeral. Just in the same tone as Lombard and Haugwitz
had been blamed were Hardenberg and Blucher now abused by
these perpetual critics, and the readers of their works were left
with the despairing impression that in the rotten wood of this
state no nail could any longer obtain a hold.
The needs of the moment, however, were all too pressing ;
the sense of the people was too honourable for them to be satisfied
with nothing more than retrospective blame. Whoever among
them was a man, looked forward towards the day of liberation.
The lampoons had comparatively little effect ; even in Berlin the
1 No one acquainted with Buchholz's other writings can doubt that the Galerie
is the work of his pen. We have in addition the testimony of Gentz (Ompteda
NacMasr, I, -362).
348
The Rise of Prussia
criticisms received scant attention. A profoundly earnest senti-
ment prevailed ; it was as if all men wished to be purer and better,
as if rage concerning the overthrow of the fatherland had com-
pletely overcome all mean and base inclinations of the spirit.
Never before had so lively a sentiment of equality united high and
low in the German north ; people drew sadly together, like the
members of a bereaved household. There had been enormous
losses of property, the whole wealth of the Prussian gentry had
disappeared ; the arbitrary new territorial divisions had annihilated
the customary channels of intercourse of whole regions ; the
mutilated state could no longer furnish occupation for thousands
of its faithful servants. Those among the younger members of
the community who would not follow the star of disloyalty which
flamed over the Confederation of the Rhine, found nowhere scope
for their activities. As Dahlmann, thinking of his own youthful
days, expressed it, in these Napoleonic times no one knew what
to do. The sense of bitterness grew and grew, and the longer the
decisive issue was postponed, the more powerful and the more
passionate became the belief that the ephemeral structure of foreign
dominion could not and must not continue, that this dissolution
of all German life was a sin against God and against history, that
it was the febrile dream of an insane criminal.
It was during these days of convulsive excitement that there
first awakened in North Germany the idea of German unity. It
was in truth the child of sorrow, of historic yearning ; but no less
was it the child of poetical and political enthusiasm. How firmly
did the eighteenth century believe in the eternity of its Roman
Empire. With what docility, content, and affection had the genera-
tion of the nineties still adhered to its principles when George
Forster in his memorials of the year 1790 described in moving
terms " the amiable behaviour of a German prince," and when
Chodoviecki immortalised Archduke Max in an engraving as a
great friend of humanity, showing how he helped a market woman
to lift her basket on to her head ! Now the empire had perished ;
the Germans were no longer a people, merely comrades in speech.
How soon was even this last bond of community likely to be torn
asunder, since the left bank of the Rhine seemed for ever handed
over to French civilisation, and in the kingdom of Westphalia, the
French official speech was dominant as far as the Elbe. All but
two of our princes now wore the chains of the foreigner. Yet amid
the destruction of their old nationality, the Germans were still
inspired by the proud sentiment that the world could not do without
349
History of Germany
them, that in spite of all, through their poets and thinkers, they
had done more for humanity than ever had done their conquerors.
Amid the sorrows of the present, they yearningly looked back into
the remote periods of German greatness ; the empire which so
recently had been a mock for children, now seemed to them a glory
of the nation. In all the moving letters, speeches, and writings
of this period of oppression, the two bitter questions recurred again
and again : Why is it that individually the Germans are so great
whilst as a nation they coimt for nothing at all? why is it that
those who once gave laws to the rest of the world are now beneath
the feet of the stranger ?
Poets and men of learning were accustomed to speak of an
ideal Germany, to turn in imagination to all the sons of German
blood, ignoring the territorial divisions of German soil. Now that
literature was filled with political passion, these views were trans-
mitted to the state. Fichte directed his admonitions as a German
to Germans, refusing to recognise, and simply putting on one side,
all the distinctive divisions which unhappy experience had for
centuries made in the one nation. Germanism, the genuine ancient
and uncorrupted German kind, should once more attain to honour.
A magnanimous enthusiasm celebrated the inborn nobility of the
German nature, and did so in terms of exaggeration, for only
through hyperbole could so unpolitical a race once more attain to
a right esteem for the concerns of its own home, to natural con-
sciousness of self. The old, endurable resignation was replaced by
a bold radicalism which despised all the structures of our recent
history as works of chance and crime. What was there that was
worthy of veneration, what was there that was worth sparing, in
this Germany of the Confederation of the Rhine ? If only the
foreign tyrants could be overthrown, if their voluntary slaves could
be chastised and their reluctant slaves liberated, there would
reconstitute itself a new and powerful Germany, brilliant with the
adornments of clear thought and military glory. No matter what
precise form it should assume, so long as it was unified and was
derived from the primitive spirit of the nation. Then would the
Germans, if they were left free to develop, win also in art and
science the laurels which had once decked the foreheads of the
Hellenes and add them to their own crowns of victory. People
were loth to speak of the man of might, who had once before led
our nation upwards along the road to political power. It seemed
that what this generation required was the very opposite of the
Frederician idea. The work of Frederick appeared to be destroyed,
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The Rise of Prussia
and many of the young enthusiasts could never forgive him for
having raised his sword against the anointed imperial majesty.
A magnanimous oblivion for the old fraternal strife, a true harmony
between all of German stock, this was what was necessary for
the common struggle ; it must not be directed from any one chosen
political centre, but the world empire must be overthrown by the
uprising of the whole nation, and then everything would come
right of itself.
It was of great moment for our political life, and continues
to influence us at the present day, that in the case of Germany the
idea of national unity was not, as it had been in France, the out-
come of the slow ripening of centuries, the natural fruit of a con-
tinuous monarchical policy directed always towards the same goal,
but that it reawakened suddenly after a prolonged slumber, amid
passionate tears, amid dreams of times that had passed away.
Hence arose that touching characteristic of idealist enthusiasm,
of loyal inspiration, which makes the German patriots of the fol-
lowing generations so lovable. Hence also its morbid bitterness,
for even after the rude hatred of the French which was the issue of
that tormented time had passed away, there still remained in the
hearts of the spirited Teutons a profound rancour against the
foreign world. It seemed impossible to dream of Germany's future
greatness without railing at the foreign nations which had sinned
so often and so grossly against Central Europe. Hence, also, the
remarkably confused nature of the political aspirations of the Ger-
mans. An enthusiasm inflamed by indefinite historical images led
to an intoxication for the idea of a great fatherland in the clouds
which in one way or another was to renew the glories of the Othos
and the Hohenstaufen, and animated all who were able to join in
the same complaints and the same yearning, men of the most
varied political tendencies, who united voluntarily as party com-
rades. These enthusiasts hardly noticed the while the living forces
of genuine German unity which were actively at work in the Prus-
sian state. From this, finally, came the weakness of the German
national feeling, which even to this hour has not yet attained to
the invaluable certainty of an automatic instinct. Very slowly
did the dream of German unity pass from the cultured classes
into the masses of the people, and even then the great name of the
fatherland long remained an indefinite word to the common man,
a miraculous land of promise, and the honourable love for a united
Germany was often led astray into a narrow-minded, grasping
particularism.
History of Germany
In Prussia the old loyalty to the king was too firmly estab-
lished for it to be possible that the hopes of the patriots should be
so completely diverted towards the realm of the indefinite. It
was not by mere chance that none among the publicists and popular
orators of the time displayed so much sober insight as did
Schleiermacher, a Prussian by birth. If he spoke of the liberation
of Germany, it was always on the understanding that the restora-
tion of the old Prussian power was a self-evident pre-condition.
When Schenkendorf preached of emperor and empire in inspired
verses, when Heinrich Kleist urged Germans to draw " first of all
the emperor into the holy war," they tacitly assumed that in this
new empire, Prussia must occupy a worthy place. Upon the athletic
ground on the Hasenheide, in the circles of Jahn, Harnisch, and
Friesen, there was already to be heard the confident prophecy, that
Prussia had always carried Germany's sword, and that in the new
empire Prussia must bear the crown. It was, however, very gradually
that Fichte came to accept these Prussian views, and it was not until
1813 that he recognised that no one but the king of Prussia could
be " the despot to impose Germanism." Arndt, also, first learned
through the victories of Prussia to understand the necessity of the
Frederician structure of the state. Common, however, to all the
youthful patriots, even to those of Prussia, was the childish belief
in some miraculous good fortune to be realised only when Ger-
many should once more belong to herself. The whole energy of
luxuriant sentiment which had been accumulating throughout the
classical period of our poetic literature, now streamed into political
life. Never had the youth of North Germany had such large and
proud ideas of themselves and of the future of their nation as now
when this country seemed to be annihilated. They had no doubt
whatever that the whole great land of Germany which had as a
single community hearkened to the words of its poets must
necessarily re-enter the ranks of the nations as a single united power.
Nowhere, however, was any attempt made towards the formation
of a political party with clearly restricted and attainable ends,
nowhere was there any intelligent discussion of the question in
what forms the rejuvenated fatherland was to be reconstituted.
Out of the abundance of anticipations and hopes which moved
impatient spirits, there emerged only one palpable political plan,
and this plan was indeed conceived with serious earnestness, the
resolution to undertake a fight against the dominion of the
foreigner.
The enemy continued to occupy the country for a year and a
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The Rise of Prussia
half after the declaration of peace ; and even for a long time after
this, when the French troops had at length evacuated Prussia,
the whole of Germany was closely watched by Napoleon's spies.
All the French diplomatists and those of the Confederation of
the Rhine must continually send reports as to the feeling among
the people. Bignon in Stuttgart, and Linden, the Westphalian
envoy in Berlin, were particularly zealous in this unsavoury occu-
pation ; Napoleon's envoy in Cassel, Reinhard the talented
Swabian and friend of Goethe, utilised his relationships with the
German world of letters in order to keep the Imperator informed
regarding all the movements of German thought. For this
reason it was necessary that the patriots, altogether in opposition
to the tendencies and gifts of the German nature, should meet
in secret societies. Hardenberg himself, in his Riga memorial to
the king, declared that at such a time as this, secret societies
were indispensable, and especially recommended the freemasons'
lodges to diffuse sound political principles, since Napoleon knew
how to utilise for his own purposes the still considerable influence
of the freemasons, and had his brother-in-law, Murat, appointed
Grand-Master.
So long as the enemy continued to occupy the country,
very few among the Prussians inspired with a genuine German
sentiment held altogether aloof from this subterranean activity.
Schon relates that even Stein had profoundly secret inter-
views in Konigsberg with Gneisenau, Silvern, and other friends,
in order to discuss the position of the fatherland and the possi-
bility of its restoration. So intense was the excitement that even
those with clear heads could not completely abandon the groundless
hope that perhaps some fortunate coup de main, some sudden
uprising of the people, might lay the French spectre. In the circles
of the nobles of Berlin there were some, and especially women, who
were moved by the enormous vigour of their hatred for the French
to loud complaints against the men of half-measures and the
weaklings ; by outsiders these extremists were spoken of as the
Tugendbund [League of Virtue] ; everyone knew when they met
in secret, for the German sense of honour lent itself very badly to
the obscure arts of the conspirator. More serious plans! were
pursued by a number of other amorphous patriotic clubs, to which
Liitzow and Chasot, Reimer, Eichhorn, Schleiermacher, and a
number of valiant soldiers, burghers, and men of science belonged.
They bought arms, in so far as their scanty means allowed ; they
endeavoured to get into touch with men of the same way of
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History of Germany
thinking elsewhere in Germany, to exhort them, to encourage them.
How often did Lieutenant Hiiser ride from Berlin to Baruth, in
order to commit to the Saxon post, letters to the fellow- conspirator
Heinrich Kleist. Subsequently Jahn and some of his gymnastic
friends constituted a German league. Like the Swiss Confederates
in the meadows of Riitli, the conspirators assembled at night in
the woods near Berlin and consecrated themselves to the struggle
for the fatherland. As the outbreak of the war was further and
further postponed, the word was sometimes passed round among
the Hotspurs that if this procrastinator Frederick William could
not make up his mind, his brother, the knightly Prince William,
must ascend the throne.
The epoch was one of fever. Among the patriots there was
an everlasting secret coming and going. They went about in
disguise, carried news about the position of the enemy, about the
strength of the fortified places, even the open-minded must learn
to write with sympathetic ink, and to travel under a false name.
How profoundly transformed was now the quiet world of North
Germany ; what savage elemental passion now flamed in these
once so peaceful hearts ! The whole new order of things was in
suspense ; involuntarily the thought found expression, Is this
to go on for ever ? Countess Voss, praying in her own
chamber, besought God to remove the man of ill-omen from the
world. Among the young people in Magdeburg, among the friends
of Immermann, it became a common subject of discussion as to
how it might be possible to get rid of the Corsican, and no one took
the discussion amiss. More serious natures embraced the thought
in deadly earnest ; for months Heinrich Kleist had it as the
dominant idea in his obscured soul. Subsequently Napoleon
learned with horror, from the murderous attack of the unhappy
Staps, how profoundly hatred can transform even pious and
straightforward natures. It was a matter of course that the uni-
versity students should, after their manner, take part in these
forbidden societies. Even before the disaster of Jena, the students
of Marburg, influenced by the murder of Palm, had constituted a
secret league to preserve Germany and German freedom. The
most celebrated among these secret societies, the one whose name
the French employed to denote them all, the Tugendbund of
Konigsberg, never contained more than three hundred and fifty
members, of whom four only belonged to Berlin. A few well-
meaning but uninfluential patriots, such as Barsch, Lehmann,
Mosqua, and the young lawyer Bardeleben, had founded this society
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The Rise of Prussia
with the king's permission, to encourage moral and patriotic
sentiments, but had obediently dissolved it as soon as the legal
state-authorities returned on the withdrawal of the French, and
when the old prohibition of secret societies came once more into
operation. Neither Stein nor Scharnhorst were members of the
Tugendbund ; and of their intimate friends two only belonged to
the society, Grolman and Boyen.
In general, the effectiveness of the secret societies was far
less considerable than the anxious French were inclined to believe ;
there were those in France who after the fall of the Napoleonic
dominion could explain this only as the outcome of secret influences.
Many fine fellows were won over to the cause of the fatherland
by this life of secret societies ; some of the best of the younger
generation who, at a later date, took leading places in the adminis-
tration, Eichhorn, Merckel, and Ribbentrop graduated in this
school. Scharnhorst, who saw everything and knew everything,
now and again entrusted some of the conspirators with dangerous
duties, as for instance when it was necessary to bring arms across
the frontier. In the year 1812, the secret activity took a new
direction ; aid was given to the German officers who desired to
enter the Russian service ; in the rear of the grande armee, news
of defeat was disseminated, and once a French courier was cut off.
On the whole, however, the immediate result was trifling ; but
all the stronger was the repercussion, and it was by no means
one for rejoicing. Through the secret societies that fantastical
tendency, already natural to Young Germany, gained new energy.
A portion of the young men became accustomed to play with
impossibilities, to despise the hard facts of the existing relationships
of power, and after a fortunate peace had been secured by hard
fighting they continued to carry on an activity which could only
have been justified under the pressure of foreign dominion. Among
the Governments, on the other hand, when subsequently disaffec-
tion began to spread among the liberated peoples, a pusillanimous
sentiment of anxiety was strengthened by the recollection of these
days of fermentation.
In any case, even in this time of stress, the Prussian state
remained true to its monarchical character. Whatever plans
individuals might make on their own initiative for the liberation
of the fatherland, their most daring hopes went no further than
to carry the monarch with them ; even if they should take up arms
without the king's orders, it was for the king that they wished
to fight. The loyal people, however, could never repose confidence
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in attempts at an independent drawing of the sword ; the move-
ment succeeded only when the king himself called his subjects
to arms. The lack of freedom that lies in the very nature of every
secret society was antipathetic to the bold sentiments of the
Germans. It was the best and the strongest who therefore refused
to tie their hands, who said with Gneisenau : " My league is
of another kind, without signs and without mysteries ; it is in
harmony with the sentiments of all those who will not bear the
foreign yoke." Far more powerful than the activity of the secret
societies, was that great conspiracy under the free air of heaven
which wove its threads everywhere where loyal Prussians were
living. Everyone who was inclined to despond could find a
comforter who urged him to put his trust in the fulfilment of time.
But there was no one in the whole country who looked for the day
of decision with more invincible and brilliant confidence than
General Blucher. With profound insight he knew how to dis-
cover the essential amid all transitory phenomena, and the
internal weakness and impossibility of the Napoleonic world-empire
was to him unquestionable. Timorous natures regarded him
as mad when in his rough way he bluntly ejaculated concerning
the ruler of the world : " Let him do what he likes, he is only a
fool."
In the old days of the intellectual enthusiasts, a highly
cultured inhabitant of Berlin could not easily accept the idea
that it was a matter of duty to abandon the delights of intellectual
society for the salvation of the dull and ossified state. But now
everyone felt that the wealth of culture could secure peace of soul
for no one, that the disgrace of the fatherland disturbed the joy and
quiet of everyone's existence, and Schleiermacher's sermons found
a powerful response in the heavy-laden hearts of all. He more
than all others was the political teacher of the cultured people of
Berlin. The devout crowded into the narrow little church of
the Holy Trinity when Schleiermacher was expounding in his
sonorous and truly eloquent periods new and ever new applications
of moral ideas to the needs of the time ; when he insisted that all
human worth was to be found in the energy and purity of the will,
in a free self-surrender to the great whole ; that now more than
ever was applicable the scriptural exhortation, that we should
possess as if we did not possess, that we should regard our goods
and our life merely as things held in trust which must lead us
towards higher things, and that we should not fear " them which
kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul : but rather fear him
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The Rise of Prussia
which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell " ; that the
moral value was incomparably greater of those who lived for the
love of theu: country, whereas those who thought only of them-
selves degenerated into a weakly sensuality ; how fine an object
for love and loyalty was this state which had once been an example
to other Germans, and which had ever remained a place open for
every creed, the embodiment of justice and honourable candour.
All this was said with such simple piety, in a way comprehensible
to the most ordinary intelligence, and yet was put so spiritually,
and was drawn from the very source of the new culture ; was at
once so accordant with religious faith and so brilliantly adapted to
the political needs of the moment. Practical theology, which had
so long stood in the background, remote from the intellectual
struggles of the time, now once more advanced into the very fore-
ground of German culture, and the enheartened hearers realised
that amid all the changes of history Christianity was able [to
remain ever new and vigorous, ever fit to exercise an influence
upon contemporary life.
The enormous change in opinion, the forcible turning of the
age from self-satisfied culture to the exercise of political will, is
perhaps shown more clearly in Fichte's essay on Machiavelli than
in any other writing of the period. The Icarus of the German
idealists, the despiser of reality, now extolled the hardest of all
the apostles of matter-of-fact politics, because in the strong-willed
Florentine, Fichte recognised the prophet of his fatherland. Whilst
the drums of the French garrison were sounding beneath the
windows of the Academy, Fichte gave his lectures to the German
nation. Remorseful and profoundly stirred, touched in conscience,
was the assembly when the fierce-eyed man unsparingly passed
judgment upon the profoundly debased time, in which excessive
egoism had wrought its own destruction. But he restored hope
to the discouraged by describing for them the invincible energy
and majesty of the German nature in terms of such grandeur, of
such boldness, of such conscious understanding as during these last
two centuries of cosmopolitanism no one had ventured to use to
our people doing all this with the extravagance of the national
pride characteristic of the new literature. The Germans alone,
he said, were still men of primitive strength, not enthralled by
arbitrary phrases, the people of ideals, of true force of character ;
if they were to perish, the whole human race must perish with
them. If any hope were still left for mankind, a new German race
must be brought to life, a race which should honour its fatherland
35;
History of Germany
as the bearer and the security of earthly immortality, and which
in that faith should take up the battle against the irrational and
detestable idea of universal monarchy.
Schleiermacher's sermons aroused the suspicions of the
French spies. The foreigners did not know what to make of the
lofty emotion of this orator who postponed the fulfilment of his
dreams to a future age ; they did not understand how irresistibly
the emotions of this philosophical generation were affected precisely
by such exaggerated idealism. The youth of the time assented
whole-heartedly to the doctrine that it was the triumph of culture
and the happiness of the individual ego to sacrifice oneself on
behalf of the species. Fichte referred with philosophical con-
descension to " the rare case in which government and science
are at one " ; his audience felt that the restoration of the German
state was even more a moral task than a political one ; they felt
that there was nothing more urgently needed than that " firm
and conscious spirit " which the orator attempted to awaken.
When faced by the masterful nature and the crushing moral
severity of the philosopher, his hearers involuntarily thought of
Baron von Stein.
It was in the same sense that, during and after the war, Arndt
wrote new volumes of his Geist der Zeit. He took the field
against our polyarchy which had become a universal servitude,
against the unpolitical fair-mindedness of the Germans which con-
scientiously spared the obsolete until foreigners cleared it away
for them ; and, above all, against the over-spiritualised and over-
delicate culture, which fancied that fame in war was a trifle, that
valiancy was too venturesome, that manliness was defiance, and
that firmness was more trouble than it was worth. " Advance
to the Rhine," thus ran his conclusion, " and then call out :
' Freedom and Austria ! Francis for our Emperor, not Bona-
parte !'"
In the blustering activity of the valiant Jahn, there were
manifest some of the most ludicrous traits which marred the new
Germanism : rough and arrogant hatred of the foreigner, noisy
boasting, contempt for all that was graceful and refined. This
was a man of uncouth nature, whose influence upon our young
people was necessarily all the more harmful in that the Teuton
is spontaneously inclined to mistake coarseness for frankness.
It was most unfortunate that the sons of a richly endowed nation
should honour a noisy barbarian as their teacher. Nevertheless,
during these early years of Jahn's activity, the preponderant
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The Rise of Prussia
result was good. His crude peasant's understanding was com-
petent to grasp the one idea which was then of importance, the
need for resolute fighting ; and he possessed a rare gift for
disciplining young men, for instilling into them an honourable
hatred for all slackness and softness. The new athleticism did
not merely serve to strengthen the bodies of those belonging to a
slack generation. It was soon noted that the morals of the youth
of Berlin became purer and more manly after, in the year 1811,
the Turnplatz or open-air gymnasium had been opened on the
Hasenheide ; and this gain was of more importance than the ill
wrought by the confusion which the Turnvater had introduced
into many a youthful head. His book, Das deutsche Volkstum,
amid an extraordinary jumble of whimsical conceits, contained
many vivid descriptions of the energy and soundness of ancient
Teutonic civilisation.
Horrible, indeed, was the way in which the rough primitive,
always in honour of the true Germanism, kneaded with his hard
fists the delicate leaves and blossoms of our speech. Everything
was to be rubbed off which German had acquired in the interchange
of ideas with other nations. It sometimes happened to him to
coin a new primevally German word out of Romance roots as
in the case of his beloved Turnen (gymnastic exercises). But,
like Luther, he made many fortunate ventures in speech ; for
instance, the good word Volkstum ( = nationality) was discovered
by him. So all-powerful, moreover, was still the idealistic ten-
dency of the time that even this buffoon sought the true
grandeur of his nation in its spiritual activity ; he extolled the
Greeks and the Germans as the sacred peoples of humanity, and
termed Goethe the most German of all the poets. Like many a
greater one among his contemporaries, and as harmlessly as they,
he could see nothing in the great struggles between Austria and
Prussia beyond a scrimmage between two vigorous young fellows
who sparred at one another for a while in their exuberance of spirits,
and then behaved themselves as soon as they had come to their
senses. Yet he had enough mother-wit to recognise the profound
difference between the two powers. The great jumble of people
which was Austria could never be completely Germanised ; it
was from Prussia that the rejuvenation of the old empire had
proceeded, and it was Prussia alone which could rouse Germans
to become once more a great nation. We must get rid of the
German national cancer, the childish petty territorialism, the
patriotism of the small districts ; there must be one single supreme
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History of Germany
authority in the empire, one national capital, unity of customs,
coinage, and weights and measures ; there must be Reichstags
and provincial diets and a powerful Landwehr composed of all
fit to bear arms, " for it is an essential principle among the Teutons
that he who is weaponless is without honour ! "
Such were the ideas which, with a berserker confidence, he
threw into the world as if moved by an irresistible inner impulse,
such were the ideas which were greeted by our young men with
jubilant enthusiasm. And this was at a time when Prussia con-
tained a population of little more than four millions, and when
no one had given a thought to the question as to how the Austrian
jumble of peoples could be brought into harmonious union with
the true Germany ! How painfully must these proud dreams
conflict with the hard reality of the particularist state authorities.
Even if liberation from the foreign dominion could be effected,
there still remained a cruel disillusionment for this hopeful
generation, for it was inevitable that there should be a long period
of bitter civil struggle.
It was not the publicists alone whose writings displayed the
national passion, for this affected the whole of our literature. To
the scions of the Romantic school, Achim von Arnim proposed
the task of breathing the fresh morning air of the old German
life, of entering devoutly into the glories of the sagas and chronicles
of their ancient homeland. Thus should we learn to understand
how we had come to be, and thus could we gain new confidence
for the struggles of the present. It was in the consciousness of a
lofty patriotic call, and with all the overstrained self-consciousness
peculiar to our nineteenth century literature, that the young poets
and men of learning set to work. Just as happened at a later
date in the case of the orators of liberalism and the writers of Young
Germany, they always retained the firm, conviction that the new
order of German affairs was in reality created by themselves ;
that the statesmen and the soldiers had merely carried out what
they had themselves conceived in thought much more finely and far
more grandly. Once more there came to German literature a period
of youth. As formerly the generation of 1750 had discovered the
world of the heart, and with naive wonderment had dug into its
treasures, so now the new Romanticism greeted with intoxicated
delight the even more joyful discovery of the ancient glories
of the fatherland. They contemplated German antiquity with
the wondering, wide-open eyes of childhood ; through all which
they thought and dreamed there flowed a sentiment of historical
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The Rise of Prussia
affection, a feeling of deliberate 'contrast to the recent culture
and to the fostering of the exact sciences characteristic of the
Napoleonic empire. Out of the ferment of the New Romanticism
sprang the great epoch of the historical and philological sciences,
and these sciences, outwinging poetry, now assumed for a long
time the foreground of intellectual life.
For some years, Heidelberg was the favourite assembling
place of the young literary world. How painfully had the noble
Charles Frederick of Baden suffered all through these evil years
from the disgraceful position of the German petty princes ; but
now in his old age he could once more display his love for the father-
land by a good action. He restored the University of Heidelberg,
which, under the Bavarian rule, had fallen into complete decay,
doing so from the first with the intention that it should be something
more than a mere provincial university ; he provided on the Neckar
a free city for the young literature, almost the only one in the deso-
lated Germany of the Confederation of the Rhine ; and was able
to delight in seeing how, for the third time, the ancient Rupertina,
[Heidelberg University], as of old in the days of Otho Henry and
of Charles Louis, was able to intervene in the course of German life
with new creative ideas.
Here, in the most delightful corner of our Rhenish land, was
the cradle of the New Romantic school. The castle, ivy-clad and
hidden among the blossoms of the trees as if covered with snow,
the towers of the ancient cathedral in the sunlit plain beneath,
the ruined baronial castles which seemed to cling to the rocks like
swallows' nests, everything here aroused memories of a high-spirited
earlier time, which to the yearning imagination of the day seemed
far more agreeable than the insipid present. Achim Arnim and
Clemens Brentano met here ; here too came Gorres, no longer
able to endure existence on the French side of the Rhine, so close
to the French inferno. The poets of the eighteenth century had
felt at home everywhere on German soil, wherever they found
warm-hearted friends and could live undisturbed their lives in
the ideal ; now the North Germans began to look with longing
towards the beautiful lands of the vines and of the traditions.
How delighted was Heinrich Kleist when from his poor Braden-
burg he found his way into the mountains of South Germany.
It was first in these romantic circles that the land and people of
our south and west once more found honour. The love for the
Rhine, which is characteristic of all of German blood, became a
cult of enthusiasts now that the river was in the hands of the
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History of Germany
foreigner. How often, when friends touched glasses, was repeated
the complaint of Frederick Schlegel :
" Wave so lovable and mighty,
Fatherland upon the Rhine,
See how fast my tears are flowing
Since the stranger now has all."
The Rhine was now Germany's sacred stream, over every one
of its churches there hovered an angel, round every ruin there
played the nixies and the elves, or the heroic shades returned to
visit the great scenes of history. A number of poems and romances
endeavoured to reproduce these images. The ballads of the
classical poetry had for the most part dealt with the grey primeval
time, and their figures had moved upon an indefinite ideal stage ;
now the poet must give, even to his shortest pieces, a definite
territorial background, and must clothe his figures in historical
costume. As the poet's images moved through the mind, people
hoped to hear the roaring waters of the Rhine and the Neckar,
and in his heroes they wished to rediscover the vigorous simplicity
of their German forefathers.
That portion of the history of our country which alone con-
tinued to live in the memory of the common people, the last
hundred and fifty years, was repulsive to the patriot as the time
in which Germany had been torn asunder, and was horrible to the
poet through the prosiness of its vital forms. It was only in
the Middle Ages that the unbroken energy of German nationality
was supposed to have displayed itself, and when they spoke of the
Middle Ages people referred chiefly to the period from the fourteenth
to the sixteenth century. The merry guild customs of the old
manual workers, the secret rites of the operative masons, the love of
wandering of the travelling scholars, the adventures of knightly
brigands such had been the true German life, and its theatre
was to be found in the artist's country of the south-west, in the true
ancient empire. But in all this enthusiasm there was no thought
of a subdivision of German culture. The North Germans, with
some of the Protestant Swabians and Franconians, continued to
set the tone for the whole of Germany ; even the born Rhine-
landers among the Romanticists, Gorres, Brentano, and the
Boisser6es (the first Catholics who counted in the history of our
new literature), owed the best values of their lives to that common
German culture which was derived from Protestantism. Whoever
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The Rise of Prussia
still felt and thought as a German, was seized by the historic
yearning of the time ; even the unaesthetic nature of Baron von
Stein was not altogether untouched by this influence. A national
feeling and national confidence built themselves up upon these
pictures of the early days of our homeland. Only among the
Teutons, of this the young generation felt assured, could individual
originality thrive ; in France, as A. W. Schlegel said mockingly,
nature had provided thirty million examples of one single original
human being. Only upon German soil did the spring of truth well
forth ; among the French, the spirit of lies was dominant for to
the youth of the new romantic epoch, all was classed as lying
which seemed to them to lack freedom, to be dull, to be unnatural,
and they included in these categories the academical regulation
of art, the mechanical ordering of the police-ruled state, and the
sobriety of the severe culture of the understanding. Among the
writings of this circle at Heidelberg, none were so momentous as
Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the collection of German folk-songs made
by Arnim and Brentano. The figure of the vigorous youth upon
the title-page, riding along upon a bare-backed steed, swinging the
horn of his songs in his raised hand, seemed like that of a herald
summoning all to the joyful struggle against the spirit of lying. It
was not without misgiving that the friends sent out into the world
of culture these ill-written poems, and they begged Goethe to cover
them with the mantle of his great name. It seemed to them
of profound importance that the gifts of old German life should
not be squandered as had been the forests of the stripped mountains
along the Rhine ; they hoped for the coming of a new time full of
song and gamesomeness and cordial joy of life, in which training
to arms would once again become the chief pleasure of the Germans,
and in which everyone might range the world as happily and freely
as " the glorious students," the last artists and discoverers in this
prosaic age.
The collection of verses appeared at the appropriate hour,
for just at this time Schiller's Wilhelm Tell began to exercise an
influence through wide circles, awakening everywhere an under-
standing of the simple energy of our ancestors. There was no end
to the delighted admiration of the readers when the bells of the
Wunderhorn related with sweet sound how richly endowed had been
this old Germany with the divine gift of poesy, with abundance of
love and longing, of courage and roguery ; thousands of nameless
students, lansquenets, hunters, and beggars moved through its
artless songs. Herder's great revelation that poetry is a common
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History of Germany
heritage, now first received general understanding. Subsequently
von der Hagen published the Nibelungenlied ; however bungling
the mode of treatment, the mighty figures of Hagen and Kriemhild
aroused in the minds of the readers the joyful conviction that even
six hundred years before Goethe our people had known a great
epoch of poetry. Yet dilettantism still predominated. Medi-
sevalism and Germanism were regarded as practically synonymous.
Fundamentally divergent epochs of mediaeval civilisation were
uncritically confused, and the enthusiasts were quite unable to
dream that in the blossoming time of the days of chivalry the
detested French had really been the pioneers of civilisation.
Fouque, the weakly visionary (who, nevertheless from time to time
succeeded in producing a fable full of meaning, recording the secrets
of the forest and of the water, or who could now and then write
a powerful description of some old Norse hero) was for some
years the fashionable poet of the world of good society. The
ladies of Berlin were enthusiasts for his graceful, modest, and lovely
maidens, for the incomparable virtue of his knights, and they
adorned their dressing-tables with iron crucifixes and silver-mounted
devotional books.
Teutonic philology had hitherto been a mere accessory to other
sciences, the supplementary study of certain historians, jurists,
and theologians. Now at length it endeavoured to stand upon
its own feet, and to realise for German antiquity Herder's bold
anticipations, and F. A. Wolf's views as to the origin of the Homeric
poems. It was the brothers Grimm who first gave to German
philology the character of an independent science. Little atten-
tion was paid to these two retiring men when they wrote in the
Einsiedlerzeitung of Heidelberg ; but soon they were to prove
themselves the finest and the strongest among their fellows. It
is through their work, above all, that the genuine and fruitful
nucleus of the romantic view of the world-order was subsequently
handed down to an entirely transformed world and became part of
the spiritual inheritance of the nation. They took quite seriously
the old article of faith of the Romanticists that everything flows
out of the ocean of poetry ; and in every domain of folk life, in
speech, law, and custom, they endeavoured to demonstrate how
culture and abstractions have everywhere been formed out of the
sensual, the natural, and the primitive. How condescendingly
had the writers of the eighteenth century spoken to the people
when they troubled themselves at all about the common man ;
but now the experts of science went to school to the common people,
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The Rise of Prussia
listening diligently to the chatter of the spinning-room and the
shooting-gallery. An old peasant-woman helped the brothers
Grimm in the collection of the German folk-tales, and thus there
came into existence a book like Luther's Bible, a glorious common
heritage of the European peoples, compiled so sympathetically
as to retain its permanent national characteristics. The ancient
Aryan figures of fable, Hop-o'-my-Thumb, Lucky Hans, Snow
White and Rose Red, seem such essentially German figures, and
the simple serenity of spirit which had clung to them in their wide
wanderings through the nurseries of Germany spoke in so homely
a manner from the unadorned and faithful narrative, that even
to-day we can think of the darlings of our childhood only in these
particular forms, just as we can listen to the Sermon on the Mount
in no other words than those of Luther.
At this same period, another and even more grossly neglected
treasure of the nation's early days was rediscovered. How ter-
ribly had our ancient cathedrals had to suffer for the self-satis-
faction of the last century ; the glorious frescoes on their walls
had been covered with stucco, and corkscrew columns and
trumpet-blowing angels with puffed cheeks defiled the Gothic
altars. Now the hatred for the Church and the hard utilitarianism
of the Frenchified bureaucracy of the Confederation of the Rhine
brought a new wave of iconoclasm over Bavaria, Swabia, and the
Rhineland. A number of venerable churches were despoiled and
came under the hammer ; deplorable was the sight when, during
the breaking down of the walls, the stucco fell away, and for a
moment the beautiful old frescoes were displayed once more to
the light of day, then to crumble away for ever. Thereupon the
brothers Boisseree resolved to save what it was still possible to save
out of the great destruction. Their quiet and faithful activity
was the first sign of the reawakening of the German spirit on the
left bank of the Rhine. Indefatigably they endeavoured from amid
the lumber-rooms of the houses of the Rhenish patricians to collect
the forgotten old German paintings. Their aged mother gave her
blessing to this pious work, and their Romanticist friends elsewhere
gave faithful help. What a joy it was to Gorres and Savigny
when a fine sculptured altar-piece could be picked up for a few
kreuzer from some peasant or second-hand dealer, and sent along
to the brothers. Everything was welcome and everything was
admired so long as it displayed the true characteristics of the old
German spirit, the idealistic softness of the Cologne school of
painters no less than the profundity of Diirer and the powerful
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realism of the old Dutch painters. Then Sulpice Boisseree found
one of the old sketches for the cathedral of Cologne, and with joyful
courage projected the designs for his great work on the cathedral.
In these weary days when Napoleon once visited his good town of
Cologne and after a few minutes hurriedly left the most beautiful
cathedral of the Germans in order to inspect a regiment of
cuirassiers, every true son of the Rhineland was already dreaming
of the re-establishment of the Cologne building works, which had
formerly for centuries been the living focus of German art on the
Rhine.
The same firm faith in the immortality of the German people
inspired also the creator of the history of our politics and juris-
prudence, K. F. Eichhorn. The old dominion of the common law
seemed for ever broken, the domain of the code Napoleon extended
up to the shores of the Elbe, and the jurists of the Confederation
of the Rhine regarded the German law as already fit for burial.
Eichhorn showed, however, how the law-making spirit common
to the whole German nation had ever remained active through-
out the many transformations in the constitution of the state,
and how the origin and growth of German law was explicable
solely out of this persistent natural energy. The historical view
of the nature of law, for which the way had been paved by Herder
and the earlier Romanticists, now suddenly matured. It was
so necessary a corollary of the view of the world-order characteristic
of the new age, that it was simultaneously advocated by men of
the most different outlooks. Among these were Savigny, the
legal teacher of the brothers Grimm, who in Landshut had already
awakened the suspicion of the Bonapartist-Bavarian bureaucracy
by his doctrine of the law-creating energy of the folk spirit. Above
all there was Niebuhr, whose Roman History speedily aroused
general admiration as the greatest scientific achievement of the
day. To him also it seemed that the spirit of the Roman people
(and this was an idea altogether unknown to the pragmatical
historians of the eighteenth century) had been the driving energy,
the formative necessity of Roman history ; and at the same time
he indicated new paths for historical research by a keen criticism
of historical sources, which with a sure sense rejected as fit only
for the dust-heap all the old traditions of the Seven Kings of Rome.
Yet he also was of opinion that " the historian needs a positive
spirit." Before his eyes, the dead letters of the historical sources
came to life, and through his truly creative faculty he was able
to erect upon the vestiges of a destroyed tradition a picture of real
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happenings. With how restrained a freedom did he exercise
political judgment, quite in Stein's distinguished manner. He found
just praise for the moderation of the plebs, severe criticism for
the arrogance of the patricians, and at the same time he drew
the genuinely Prussian conclusion that under the rule of a strong
throne such manifestations of class arrogance would never have
been possible. Thus in almost all branches science showed itself
even more vigorous and more productive than were most of the
younger poets. This, too, was a sign of the times that Alexander
von Humboldt's Ansichten der Natur first made available for the
whole German nation, in a simple and classical form, the acquire-
ments of profound scientific and geographical research.
It was a crepuscular time. A fresh wind, as of morning,
announced the approach of a beautiful day, but in the half light the
forms and masses of the youthful world could not be clearly distin-
guished. Fundamentally contrasted opinions, which before long
were to be in passionate conflict, still proceeded harmoniously hand
in hand. Fouque, the reactionary, lived with Fichte, the radical,
as a son with a father. Of the Romantic poets, some held piously
to the old faiths, whilst others were merely playing ironically
with mediaeval ideals. In the domain of history there ap-
peared, side by side with the strictly methodical investigations
of Niebuhr and Eichhorn, such fantastical works as Creuzer's
Symbolik, the first attempt to understand the secret night-side of
classical culture and the origin of the mysteries of the ancients
a book full of talented foreshadowings, but obscure and full
of arbitrary caprices. The scientific contemplativeness of the
historical school of jurists was not free from timorousness and fear
of action ; in essentials those of this school had little in common
with the hopeful, undismayed freedom of spirit of Arndt, and they
betrayed much more kinship with the views of F. Gentz, who now,
exhausted by excesses, cold and blase, tended more and more amid
the dull and unreflective life of Vienna to become an uncondi-
tional admirer of the good old time. The inexhaustible pageant of
German history made it possible for everyone, whatever might be
his own shade of opinion, to be an enthusiast for some particular
epoch of the history of the fatherland. Some were charmed by
the strange magic, and others by the fresh and vigorous folk-
characteristics, of mediaeval life. Whilst Fichte drew the atten-
tion of his admirers to the magnificent civic life of the Hansa towns,
and to the faithful who fought in the League of Schmalkald,
Frederick Schlegel condemned Frederick the Great as " a hereditary
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History of Germany
enemy," and the boastful visionary Adam Miiller glorified the
Holy Roman Empire as an incorporation of Christ.
Even more confused was the motley of religious sentiment.
It is true that men who were Protestant through and through,
such as Schleiermacher, Fichte, and the brothers Grimm, never
vacillated in their evangelical conviction. Savigny, on the other
hand, was brought nearer to the views of the pre-Lutheran Church
by the brilliant Catholic Sailar. Schenkendorf sang enraptured
songs to Mary, Queen of Heaven ; the conversion of F. Schlegel
and F. Stolberg to the Roman Church threw a strong light upon
the moral weakness of the aesthetic views of life which were still
predominantly characteristic of the age. A gloomy hatred of the
Jews replaced the broad-hearted tolerance of the Frederician days.
Many among the enthusiasts of mediaevalism believed themselves
able to see plainly sculptured on every Jewish face the instruments
of Christ's passion. Political hatred played a part in the produc-
tion of these sentiments, for Napoleon was endeavouring with
considerable success to secure the aid of European Jewry on behalf
of his world empire. All these different tendencies were for the
moment in tolerable harmony, and the aged Voss found very little
approval when, with a sound understanding and with unrestrained
roughness, he attacked the dream-world of the Romanticists in
the name of -Protestant freedom of thought. In this chaotic
activity no one found himself more at home than the noisy Gorres,
the honourable Jacobin in the monk's cowl, who found it possible
to be at one and the same time a radical and an admirer of the
Middle Ages, a Germanist and a venerator of the Roman papacy,
always brilliant, stimulating and stimulated, overflowing with
aesthetic, historical, and natural-philosophical instances, and yet
always subject to a sort of rhetorical and poetical intoxication.
All these different minds were at one in a single resolve : they all
desired that it should be possible for them once more to experience
a heartfelt joy in their German nature ; they wished to maintain
their native peculiarity and to develop it further in complete
freedom, without any regard for foreigners who desired to make
the world happy by the imposition of a foreign dominion.
The political passion of the time found its mightiest artistic
expression in the works of Heinrich von Kleist, that profoundly
unhappy poet who surpassed all other poets of the younger genera-
tion. In the primitive force of his dramatic passion, and in his
power of vigorous characterisation, he exceeded even Schiller, but
the wealth of ideas, the lofty culture, the wide outlook, and the
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The Rise of Prussia
adequate self-confidence of our greatest dramatist were denied
to this son of ill-fortune. Hardly noticed by his contemporaries,
and robbed by a cruel destiny of all joy in his own creative work,
he seems to us who look back upon him as the one truly apt poet
of this time of oppression, as the herald of that elemental hatred
which foreign injury had poured into the veins of our good-natured
people. His Penthesilea was the most savage, his Kdthchen von
Heilbronn was the tenderest and noblest, among the twilit dream-
figures of German Romanticism ; but his Hermannsschlacht was
a lofty song of revenge, a mighty hymn of the lust of reprisal as
true, as vivid, as full of life in every characteristic as formerly
Klopstock's songs of the bards had been indefinite and confused,
every feeling pouring directly from the heart of one thirsting for
revenge. Not like the patriotic men of learning had Kleist found
it necessary to acquire the idea of the fatherland by a reflective
process ; he experienced the naive and natural hatred of the
Prussian officer ; he saw the ancient and glorious flag which had
been the pride of himself and of his house trampled in the dust,
and he longed to chastise the being responsible for this insult.
Everywhere this rolling stone passed, he was followed, as if by
the call of the Erinyes, by the wild question : " Art thou yet
on thy feet, Germania ? Is the day of thy revenge at hand ? "
Stormily, dreadfully, as never before from a German mouth did
there spring from his lips the poetry of hatred :
" Rescue from the yoke oi serfage,
Which, from iron-ore fast-forged,
Hell's own first-born son the tyrant
Rivets fast upon our necks ! "
This was the same unrestrained natural force of national
passion as had once sounded in the wild strains of the March of
the Marseillaise, but incomparably more poetical, more truthful,
more deeply felt. Subsequently, in his Prinz Friedrich von Horn-
burg, the unhappy poet created the one artistically complete speci-
men of our historical dramas which drew its materials from the
recent and still vividly remembered German history ; this was
the most beautiful poetic celebration of Prussian glory-in-arms.
When this work also was ignored by his contemporaries, and when
the situation of the fatherland seemed to become ever more hope-
lessly tragical, the impatient man died by his own hand, a victim
of inborn morbid dispositions, but also a victim of this gloomy
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History of Germany
despairing time. It was characteristic of the great transformation
that had taken place in the national life that a man belonging to
the old Brandenburger race of soldiers should glorify Prussian
militarism with all the brilliancy of colouring characteristic of the
new poetry ; this Prussian militarism which had so long been with-
out understanding and misunderstood, which had remained remote
from modern German culture. How actively now was the stiff
and arrogant Junkerdom of the Mark taking part in the intellectual
activity of the nation : a whole series of its sons, Kleist, Arnim,
and Fouque, the Humboldts and L. von Buch, stood in the first
rank among Germany's poets and men of learning. The philistine
nature of the old Prussianism had at length completely passed
away.
Strangely enough, no one contributed more powerfully towards
this great transformation in the emotional spirit of the German
people, no one did more to strengthen the happy feeling of self-
satisfaction, than Goethe. He did it almost against his own will
by a work which originally belonged to quite a different epoch.
It remained as ever his destiny to find the right word for the most
peculiar and most secret sentiments of the Germans. In the year
1808 appeared the first part of Faust. Goethe was now almost
sixty years of age, and for nearly forty years had been a recognised
force in German life. A pilgrimage to Weimar to see the dignified,
cheerful, serious-minded master, had long been regarded as a
necessary duty of all young authors. No one expected from Goethe
yet another creative act, participating in the struggles of the new
Germany ; everyone knew with what cold and distinguished
reserve he refused to have anything to do with the Hotspurs of
Romanticism. It was true that he had accepted the dedication
of the Wunderhorn in a friendly spirit, and that he gave his good
wishes to the collection, hoping that it might find a place in every
German home. He himself, in his happy days at Strasburg, had
sounded, in a way understood by but few, the praises of Gothic
architecture. When now, after long years, he saw the seed thus
sown springing to life, saw the whole world filled with enthusiasm
for ancient German art, he expressed the opinion that humanity
is first truly human when united, and he delighted in the amiable
enthusiasm of Suplice Boisseree. None the less, the stimulated
and fantastical nature and the defiant national emotion of the
younger generation remained repugnant to him.
His own culture was rooted in the cosmopolitan century that
had passed away. Never could he forget what he and all his con-
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The Rise of Prussia
temporaries had in youth owed to the French. The elemental
unrest of Kleist aroused horror in his contemplative mind. In
his letters to his old comrade Reinhard, he expressed sharp
criticism concerning the grotesqueries of Arnim and Brentano,
and defended the old and honourable rationalism against the two-
faced younger natural-philosophy. There even were moments
in which he roundly declared that Romanticism was morbid, in
contradistinction to the healthiness of the classical spirit. Least
of all could he forgive the young people for the way in which their
literary movement was directed towards political ends ; every
immediate translation of art into the prosy life of the state seemed
to him a desecration. He regarded as an inevitable destiny the
great disturbance which had burst over Germany. The natural
elective affinity of genius led him to believe firmly in Napoleon's
fortunate star. What did he know of Prussia and the deadly
injury that had been inflicted on Prussian pride ? How could
the son of the good old time, who lived in Frankfort, Strasburg,
Leipzig, and Weimar, among a harmless and peaceful people,
regard a war waged by the German nation as possible ? Even to
Goethe's contemporaries it seemed painful, and for all time to
come it will be a distressing memory to the Germans, that our
noblest poet could see nothing more in the enemy of his country
than a great man, that he was too old to understand fully the
wonderful and saving transformation which had come over his
compatriots. He had felt so solitary since the death of Schiller.
Meditating with a heavy heart upon the dear shadows of happier
days, he let the greatest work of his life pass out into the hands
of the unknown crowd. When fifteen years earlier a few fragments
of this work had appeared, no one had taken much note of the
matter.
And yet this poem now attained a success as flaming and as
irresistible as had once his Sorrows of Werther, as if these lines,
over which the poet had grown old, had been now first conceived,
and were written for the day in which they appeared. The painful
question whether old Germany was really done for, was on every-
one's lips ; and now, in the decline of the nation, suddenly there
came this work, beyond comparison the crown of the whole of the
modern poetry of Europe ; and people felt a joyful certainty that
only a German could have written thus, that the poet was ours, and
that his figures were one flesh and blood with us ! It was as if
destiny had given a sign that the civilisation of the world could
not after all dispense with us, and that God still had in His
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History of Germany
mind a great destiny for this people. Schiller, already, had imposed
upon the drama, greater tasks than had been imposed by Shakes-
peare, although Schiller had not attained to the grand power of
delineation possessed by the Englishman ; the tragedy of passions
was not enough for Schiller ; he wished to make men realise
through their senses that world-history is the world court of
justice. But now, with the appearance of Faust there was
something yet greater ; now for the first time since Dante the
attempt was made to incorporate in poetry the whole spiritual
heritage of the epoch. Such from the first had been the poet's
conception, as he himself has told us ; but when year after year he
continued to carry these beloved figures in his heart, when again
and again in all happy hours he returned to dwell with them, they
grew with him and he with them. The old puppet-s
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