16

Humiliations heaped upon her by France; the strange combination, the lash and the kiss!

First, let us quote from Bismarck, who looking backward after his amazing politico-military triumph at Koeniggraetz, (1866), tells a French interviewer for “Le Siecle” this root-fact about Germans, their weakness and their power:

“No government, however it may act, will be popular in[62] Prussia; the majority in the country will always be opposed to it; simply from its being the Government;—and holding authority over the individual, the central authority is always doomed to be constantly opposed by the moderates, and decried and despised by the ultras. This has been the common fate of all successive governments since the beginning of the dynasty. Neither liberal ministers, nor reactionary ministers have found favor with our Prussian politicians.

“Frederick William III, surnamed the Just, had succeeded as little as Frederick William IV in satisfying the Prussian nation.

“They shouted themselves hoarse at the victories of Frederick the Great, but at his death they rubbed their hands at the thought of being delivered from the tyrant! Despite this antagonism, there exists a deep attachment to the royal house. No sovereign or minister, no government, can win the favor of Prussian individualism. Yet all cry from the depths of their hearts, ‘God save the King!’ And they obey when the King commands.”

With this clue from the master before us, the thing to do is, clearly, to reach out after this German Unity idea in a broad way.

Napoleon’s armies had marched everywhere, during all those victorious years, and each soldier had been a living exemplar of the power of National glory.

This National spirit in his armies had helped Napoleon amazingly, despite his genius as a soldier. The great Prussian patriot, Stein, one of the leading men of his time and an early believer in the high destiny of his country, began studying some of the more obscure but vital forces behind Napoleon’s career of glory. Stein finally read the secret and urged that as Napoleon had won by National spirit, so Napoleon could in the end be defeated by a similar National spirit when properly opposed to him; and Napoleon with one terrifying black look saw that von Stein had divined the real force of French solidarity, a proclamation was out for von Stein’s head, and the patriot who dreamed of his Confederation of Germany, against the French, or any other foreign[63] foe, was obliged to make his escape to the heart of the Bohemian mountains.

Fr: Wm. II (1797-1840), child of the Revolution, to his dying day remained untouched by the new political principles that had their origin beyond the Rhine. Compound of dreams and realities, William had led a repressed life; for one thing, he did not fight for his opinions; indeed his opinions were literary and artistic; a peculiar pietism bound him; he believed too much in man’s natural goodness; being an honest man himself, he did not readily suspect others.

This Frederick was always thinking of a Germany built on the traditional order, with all intervening social grades, from peasant to king upon his throne, each bowing and scraping to the other; and Frederick, as the father of his kingdom, exercising a despotic paternalism.

Nor did he see that the French revolution had been fought and Napoleon’s armies had carried afar if not the seeds of political equality, at least the glorious conception that “revolution means opportunity for men of talents, everywhere.”

The pressure on the king was found in this: that under duress he had promised a written constitution.

And behold Frederick in these troublous times! For eleven long years, off and on, he tries to find a common ground of religious formulas for the united Lutheran and Reformed churches. He even attacks Rome on the question of mixed marriages. Of course, he failed utterly, this noble-minded Hohenzollern who believed too implicitly in the inherent goodness of mankind.

Repair then to your church windows and read your blackletter Bible, you dreaming Frederick; such is your story, in a few words.

Gabble about your Gothic restorations as you will, and your correct revisions of the liturgy, Frederick, it remains for your Louise to do a man’s work against French foes, and thus hasten the slow-coming of United Germany.

In the meantime, Prussia is falling to pieces for lack of the mailed fist. Everything is going to rack and ruin; beloved[64] Prussia repeatedly humiliated by French invaders; and had it not been for noble Queen Louise there might well be no Prussian glory at this hour to record.

Her lovely countenance, wreathed in smiles, is immortalized for us through the art of Joseph Grassi; and is to be seen in the Hohenzollern Museum.

The artist depicts her with youthful charm, her fair brow adorned by her slender crown, whose weight, alas, although slight, gave her no rest till death.

Her eyes are gentle, and about her face and form is the indefinable touch of ever-present girlishness, never to fade, even in the woman-grown.

It were nearer the truth to say Louise personifies Prussia’s ambition to power.

This beautiful woman bore indeed a heavy burden; well she knew the dread and fear of kings and kingly office.

On the one side was the tyrant Napoleon, on the other Fr: Wilhelm, her kingly husband, without an idea outside of cathedral architecture and bishoprics in Jerusalem; yet Louise willed that Prussia should seize the reins of power, shake off the French yoke, and mount the heights of glory.

As a foil to the ferocious Bismarck—himself a majestic king-maker—here we reveal to you a true creator of National honor, in the form of a frail, fair woman; showing thus how far the pendulum of Time and Chance often rocks in bringing about political changes.

Though poles apart, the brutal Bismarck stands side by side with the lovely Louise; the blood and iron of the man were of no avail without the finesse of the woman.

Thus this singular cross-fertilization, compounded of smiles and frowns—the kiss and the lash—the white jeweled hand and the mailed fist in the end makes it possible for humiliated Prussia to rise again—the late harvest of the years bringing the reality of our United Germany.

Bismarck’s amazing story we spread before you in detail, but beside that frowning rock we stoop for a moment to pluck the modest violets clinging all unobserved in a gloomy place where the sun seldom comes; these flowers are Louise[65] and their subtle perfume symbolizes the penetrating yet delicate incense of her pathetic life.

Without Louise, our story were soon ended. Otherwise Bismarck himself could not have come into the illustrious pages of history. Noble Prussian queen, heroine of Prussian glory, mother-consoler in the twilight, your gentle spirit hovers like some evening-star, luminous with hope.
17

Napoleon’s hated Continental system of domination causes Prussian downfall—The Queen decides to fight back.

The treaty of Luneville, February, 1801, now seemed to lend color to Napoleon’s greatest delusion of grandeur; he would restore the ancient domain of Charlemagne, comprising France, Germany and Italy! Signing with Prussia and Bavaria, Napoleon confiscated broad Papal domains along the Rhine, lands that had been in possession of the church since Roman times. With this bribe for secular princes, as the price of the readjustment, exactly 112 Teutonic domains, petty in size but all-powerful with the prestige of centuries, vanished from the map. The holy Electors of Treves and Cologne, those empire-makers of ancient days, were stripped of their worldly possessions, and expelled from the Papal lands.

There were even rumors of a French-supported Emperor of Prussia—think of that!

Francis of Austria, for reasons of policy, gave up the high-swelling title, “Holy Roman Emperor,” and more modestly contented himself with “Emperor of Austria.”

And now, when Napoleon’s delusion—Charlemagne—seemed on the very point of realization, there came the third Coalition against him; Prussia joined against France; but Napoleon soon gained the most noted of his victories, Austerlitz; 15,000 prisoners, 12,000 dead on the field, represented Austria’s loss alone, but this was not all.

The victorious French pressed on to Vienna. By the treaty of Pressburg, Austria was excluded from Germany; Wuertemberg,[66] Bavaria and the Rhinelands went over to the French, Napoleon setting himself up as Protector of the Rhine country, with his representative President Karl von Dalberg, former archbishop of Mainz.

Louise was high-spirited, impulsive, courageous, imaginative—the very foil of her slow-going Frederick, with his church restorations forevermore. The Queen, always for an aggressive policy, by her sympathy encouraged the Prussian war party; patriots, restive under the indecision of Frederick, were eager to shake off French domination. The appeal was to Militarism, but what would youThe Hun was not only “at the gate,” but was inside the walls; and if a man will not fight for his fireside, then he must remain a slave. It was a virtuous cause.

The cabal at the Prussian court, secretly in opposition to the easy-going King, was aided by Louise. There were the King’s brothers, the ambitious Hardenburg, the King’s cousin, Ferdinand, the gifted Rahel Levin—and many others.

These plots within the palace gave to Louise’s life strange political aspects.

The Queen desired to strike.

By 1805 Austria, Russia and Great Britain were united, but Russia still wavered.

Louise’s secret influence became a watchword for Prussian patriots, who despised French rule.

After Austerlitz, Napoleon read Prussia his ultimatum: Shall it be war or peacePeace and Hanover, or war with me?

A treaty was drawn giving to Napoleon control over Prussia; and this document Fr: William weakly signed. After that Napoleon simply ignored Prussia; made it so hot for Prussian ministers that they resigned when Paris frowned, or danced when Paris smiled. Napoleon set up his new Rhein Confederation without consulting Prussia; and Prussian patriots felt themselves mortified beyond endurance.

Young men in Berlin, by way of protest, made a demonstration. Going to the doorsteps of the French minister,[67] they there sharpened their swords! Napoleon was furious; he sought out the bookseller circulating an anti-French pamphlet, “The Deepest Humiliation of Prussia,” lured him across the frontier, and had him assassinated.

The Prussian patriotic party, begun as a court cabal secretly headed by Louise, decided on war.

The troops were drilled night and day in preparation for the great war of liberation. Never before had a downtrodden nation worked harder to win liberty through liberation from the French yoke. However, the immediate results were to be disastrous.

The Queen’s dragoons went to the front; the Queen rode near by in her carriage; she wore a smart military coat, colors of her crack regiment; and General Kalkreuth, in a burst of enthusiasm, vowed that the Queen could herself win the war should she remain with the troops.

Yes, Louise was actually going out to fight Napoleon’s veterans, Napoleon’s famous marshals, Berthier, Murat and the others; and even the great Napoleon himself.

The decisive struggle took place at Jena, October 16, 1806; Prussian forces were annihilated.

Napoleon came on to Berlin and housed himself in the Prussian palace. From here he now issued bulletins denouncing Louise as the cause of the war; he attacked her character, accusing her of a liaison with the handsome Alexander of Russia, and of still other intrigues with high army officers; he presented her as a compound of shameless camp-follower and dangerous woman, plotting against her own husband, thus bringing ruin to her native land.

Napoleon even had Louise’s apartments broken into and the Queen’s papers seized, to see if incriminating evidence could not be uncovered. Ah, he knew all the tricks of love as well as of war!

But Napoleon went too far. His cruel persecution caused Prussians to sympathize with their Queen, instead of reviling her.
18[68]

Years before the great question is settled Prussia indeed becomes Germany—in moody thoughtfulness—in stubborn determination—in unflinching courage.

Louise now reveals herself a glorious National heroine. In spite of her animosity toward Napoleon for his atrocious slanders, the Queen decided to arrange an interview with the conqueror and beg favorable terms for her beloved Prussia.

The meeting took place July 6, 1807. Napoleon sent his coach, drawn by six white horses, to bring the Queen to the miller’s house, where the interview was staged in an upper room. Louise had on her finest court robe, white crepe embroidered with silver, and wore her famous crown of pearls; her loveliness and her woman’s wit were to be used in behalf of prostrate Prussia.

Napoleon rode up in great style, surrounded by his brilliant staff—Berthier, Murat and the others. Louise awaited him at the head of the rickety stairs. As he went up in the semi-darkness, he stumbled and fell.

The Queen apologized that she was forced to meet the Emperor in so mean a place; but he immediately replied that to see so lovely a woman was well worth a few minor obstacles.

Louise now began pleading with Napoleon for leniency toward Prussia. What an interview that was!

How eloquently she set forth her people’s sufferings in the great French wars; she pictured the sorrows of Prussia so vividly that at last Napoleon became mightily interested. Finally he said:

“Ah, your Majesty asks very much indeed, but I am dreaming!” By this he meant, “I do not hear a word you say; I am looking at your beautiful eyes.”

The clever Louise saw that she was progressing with her arguments, and undoubtedly had the Emperor under the spell of her fatal beauty; to oblige a grand lady in distress,[69] he would be willing to concede much indeed, in his famous r?le of lady-killer and protector of feminine loveliness.

But at that precise moment, who should enter the room but Fr: Wilhelm himself, the Queen’s blundering husband!

Always in the way—mentally clumsy—he spoiled everything! The interview ended abruptly.

Louise, heartbroken, retired in utter despair. She had believed that the justice of her cause, her eloquence, her loyalty to her people would go far to soften Napoleon’s wrath, but in all this she was cruelly disappointed. Next day the French tyrant announced his terms: Indemnity of 154,000,000 marks; one-third cash; one-third payable in lands; the final third “on time,” in the interim he would garrison in five fortified towns 30,000 French troops and 10,000 French cavalry, whose support was at the expense of Prussia, till the debt was paid.

This great Queen, after life’s fever, sleeps enshrined in her snowy marble tomb at Charlottenburg.

One day you will stand with uncovered head beside her royal grave, and recall her noble life. She deserves well of her country!

But mark this well: out of Prussia’s humiliations came her ultimate strength; the vanquished, as is often the story of human life, was strengthened more than the victors. Prussia, chastened by her severe lessons, henceforth proceeded to build herself up slowly till at last she was ready, many, many years later, to strike for German Unity that final blow at the palace of the French kings at Versailles.

In the wearisome stretch of time till that distant day of German glory, Prussia henceforth becomes Germany—in spirit—in moody thoughtfulness—in stubborn determination—yes, under God, by blood and iron! There float before us many noble names, poets, prophets, soldiers who aid in stimulating “German national faith”—Fichte, Arndt, Kleist, Roon, Moltke, Scharnhorst, Humboldt—and in the historical twilight big with mutterings and rumblings of the New Time to come with all its glory, taking the place of the[70] Prussian ruin between 1806 and 1813, is Queen Louise, her gentle spirit a veritable evening-star, luminous with hope.

By 1813, Fr: William III had been induced by the pressure of public opinion to join Russia to fight off the French. May 17, 1813, William’s famous decree, “To My People!” called for help to expel invaders, thereby to recover Prussian independence; and Napoleon was totally defeated in the tremendous battle of Leipzig, October 16-19, or “Battle of the Nations,” as the Germans call Prussia’s return to power and glory.

It was this patriotic appeal “To My People,” that made William’s troubles; the Prussian Liberals felt that the Government owed the people a Liberal political Constitution, in return for Leipzig.

His Majesty grabbed on it, twice, and was at his wit’s end to know how to keep his crown and his declaration of friendship for the people.

In the meantime, twenty-three minor German states having adopted constitutions, more or less liberal, the growing demands of the common people for a share in Prussian government could be no longer denied.
19

Kingcraft comes upon evil days—in the rising tide of liberal ideas, monarchies of old are all but swept away.

When the Napoleonic dynasty collapsed, after Waterloo, there were 39 petty principalities in the German-speaking area grouped about Rhein, the Main, Neckar, Elbe; these knights’ holdings, ecclesiastical strongholds, and domains of various descriptions became merged by cross-fighting throughout the Napoleonic era.

The Congress of Vienna (1815) deeming it advisable to set up a loose confederacy of the multitude of petty powers, founded a German Confederation, but whether it was geographical, racial or political no human being could say.[71]

The local German princes kept full sovereign powers, but gradually, as a matter of expediency, the various states grouped themselves around Prussia and Austria. As for the Nation, there was no German sovereign, no supreme court, no commercial or political relationship worthy of the name. Instead, on every hand was intense local hatred, aloofness and suspicion. This condition continued for very many years.

The plain fact was that the various princes did not want German National unity; for the reason that it is not human nature for men to give up an advantage for an uncertainty. Also, at this time, neither Prussia nor Austria was strong enough to impose her hegemony upon Germany. Austria’s policy was for delay; and in Prussia the general belief existed for many years that Austrian domination was really essential to put down the rising spirit of Democracy.

The authority of the Congress set up a Bond of Confederation, ruled by a Diet or Bundestag, sitting at Frankfort-on-the-Main.

In the hurly-burly, certain centres, such as Saxony, Bavaria and Wuertemberg, were raised in rank from duchies to kingdoms, while still others, such as Westphalia, Grand Duchy of Warsaw, were dissolved. The free cities were reduced to four; caste declined in political importance. The Confederation of the Rhine was set aside.

Thus the close of the Napoleonic period found German territory without political unity.

The last stand of kingly ultra-conservatism is the one great political feature of Europe, from the downfall of Napoleon, 1815, to the popular outbreaks of 1848. During this dark period the cause of constitutional liberty in Prussia made little progress. Old forms as well as new were under suspicion. On the one side were ultra-conservative conceptions of Divine-right, upheld by Metternich, and on the other side was the idea that sovereignty came not from heaven but from earth, making the will of the people the voice of God.

Prussia and Austria, as the representatives of Divine-right,[72] closely watched these revolutionary tendencies, suppressed uprisings, muzzled the press, in an attempt to check the surging tide of liberalism.

However much the kings had feared the wars of Napoleon, kingcraft was now confronted by an enemy more deadly. The babble of the bondsmen about to break their chains portended far greater disaster to dynasties than ever did bullets on the battlefield of Waterloo.

With might and main, the monarchs, resisting the demands of the people for constitutional government, stamped out everything that looked like the first signs of National sentiment.

Nor was Germany alone in this reactionary attitude. The kingly side of all Europe stood shoulder to shoulder against new political experiments.

In Italy, Greece, Spain, sovereigns applied the lash the harder, in an endeavor to suppress this new evil against kingcraft; nevertheless, among the common people there continued to grow consciousness of political rights.

“Napoleon in many of the lands he conquered,” says Ffyfe, “set up many revolutionary ideas that sounded the death knell of the Feudal system. It was part of his administrative genius to take the lands from barons and their class, and turn them over to peasants; it happened in France with the lands of the ecclesiastical barons of the church; it happened in North Germany, in 1810, when the decree of administrative following the annexation of the North German Coast swept away with a few strokes of the pen, thirty-six forms of Feudal privileges.”

And these could never be restored, even after the Congress of Vienna spent seven or eight months, after Waterloo, dividing the loot among the old royal houses.

The system of monarchical Absolutism maintained itself in one way or another for years, but the old-line conception of the political legitimacy of despotic rulers had been rudely shattered.

In spite of a brave show of gold cloth, diamonds, laces,[73] jewels, swords, silk stockings, lackeys, grooms, guards and crowns, kingcraft was now placed on the defensive. The cry of the people, “Liberty!” filled many a market-place.

Forces of democracy were working everywhere, ill-directed to be sure, but never despairing of ultimate victory over kingcraft, which indeed had now come upon evil days. It is an undeniable fact that Bonaparte had purged the political ideas of French Revolution of many excesses, and had turned to practical account certain forms of liberty, for example, ridding captured lands, as Ffyfe tells us, of offensive special privileges, on part of irresponsible rulers of petty degree; but the danger was found in this: that a mere “desire” for political expediency, however surrounded by the halo of popular rights, avails nothing unless ultimately sustained by strong central authority; and it requires no profound knowledge of men’s way to know that at no time in the history of the world has collective rulership been other than a theory. The excesses of the French Revolution were not readily overlooked by the conservative elements in Germany.
20

German hope of National union gleams like a star.

There gradually grew throughout Germany a spirit of intense longing for country, and many a noble spirit had in a vision seen from afar the common Fatherland. Especially in the universities, the feeling was strong.

The German universities were hotbeds of political excitement. For many years after Napoleon’s downfall all manner of theories of government were strenuously debated, to the accompaniment of duels, beer-drinking, private feuds, and popular agitation, often ending in blood. The Burschenschaft, as the student brothers were called, finally formed themselves into a league comprising sixty schools; and held a famous meeting at Wartburg, 1817.

The patriots took Holy Communion, made impassioned speeches, built bonfires and cast into the flames hated books supporting Metternich’s system of kingcraft. Also the patriots[74] consigned to the fire an illiberal pamphlet by King Fr: Wilhelm III of Prussia.

Metternich became alarmed. Kotzebue, hated as a spy of Russia in Germany, was stabbed to the heart by Karl Sand. This gave to Metternich the desired opportunity, and he proceeded forthwith to impress on Fr: Wilhelm and the Czar the absurdity of toying longer with “Democratic ideas and paper constitutions.”

Then and there the Biblical phrases of democrat-mongering kings, under the Holy Alliance, ceased in the high courts of Russia and Prussia. Metternich got hold of Fr: Wilhelm, also the other political tools of the Frankfort Diet, and at Carlsbad decrees were issued sounding the doom of Liberalism and the return to power of the old-line kings.

By gag-law and intimidation Metternich rushed the decrees through the Diet;—and for a generation “Carlsbad” signified the suppression of Democratic sentiments throughout Germany.

Metternich fought free speech, free parliaments and a free press. His iron laws were aimed to stifle democratic mutterings. Austrian spies were everywhere, searching out revolutionary societies.

The hope that Prussia might be the leader in the new German spirit of nationality now vanished. William III definitely withdrew his promise of a written Constitution, made in 1813, and reiterated in 1815.

Persecutions continued north and south; Prussia hounded Jahn for five long years, this Jahn whose gymnastic societies had been so helpful in hardening young men to Prussian army services; and the poet Arndt, whose impassioned verse intensified the National spirit of Germany, was shamefully treated, his papers scattered and the man driven from his university.

For many a long year the gloomy spirit of “Carlsbad” decrees hung over Germany.

However, the Germans have an intensely practical side as well as a dreamy poetical side. It is not surprising, therefore,[75] that the earliest steps in the direction of German unity (1818) came through Prussian customs house reforms under the patriot, Maassen.

There had been, as we explained heretofore, no freedom of trade throughout Germany; each of the petty thirty-nine states was surrounded by Chinese walls; for example, to send goods from Hamburg to Vienna, the shipper had to pay ten separate tolls.

Under the old Prussian system there were in vogue at one and the same time no less than sixty-seven conflicting tariff systems. All this tax oppression meant a harvest for smugglers. But Maassen, at a stroke, established a common tariff in Prussia; made the tax so low that smuggling became unprofitable. The other states protested vehemently at first, but one by one entered this new customs union.

And we may understand now certain sarcastic remarks sometimes made about Germany by her historical enemies: “Paper, cheese, sauerkraut, ham, and matches, served to unite German hearts more than political ties!”

This slur is ill-deserved; at best, it simply means that the advantages of the “Zollverein” were economic as well as political; and, in later years, the necessity for a common system of doing business played a deservedly important part in helping along Bismarck’s plans.

The customs league, called the “Zollverein,” is generally held to be the very beginning of practical unity for Germany.

On the poetical side of German character, earliest appeals for the Fatherland—one and united!—were expressed down through the years; long indeed before actual political union was possible, Germany’s bards, in their impassioned, semi-religious songs awakened in German hearts the spirit of intense longing for the common Fatherland, based on blood-brotherhood and language.

One of the famous types of this patriot-poet was Arndt, son of an emancipated slave. Arndt was a noble democrat; his history of slavery in Pomerania inspired Adolphus to abolish that evil, 1806; the Prussian aristocrats held Arndt a life-long grudge.[76]

“Spirit of the Times,” his patriotic trumpet-call aroused Prussians to fight France. Napoleon tracked the lyric poet out; Arndt fled to Sweden; but continued to write for the cause. He returned to Germany, 1809.

“Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?” remains one of the great semi-religious songs of nations. Arndt asks what comprises the FatherlandSurely not Prussia, not Swabia, nor this nor that, but all side by side comprise the German brotherhood of race and language.
Where is the German FatherlandIs’t SwabiaIs’t Prussia’s landIs’t where the grape glows on the Rhine, Where sea-gulls skim the Baltic’s brineOh, no! more great, more grand Must be the German Fatherland!

Here is a spirited verse from “The God That Lets the Iron Grow”:
The God who made earth’s iron hoard Scorned to create a slave Hence, unto man the spear and sword In his right hand he gave! Hence him with courage he imbued Lent wrath to Freedom’s voice— That death or victory in the feud Might be his only choice!

“Der Gott, der Eisen wachsen liess,” “Was blasen die Trompeten,” were on all patriotic lips; at this, William III, mightily offended, had Arndt arrested and sent him into retirement for twenty years.

The old man lived to become a great National hero. He died January 29, 1860, aged 91. It is pleasant to record that on his ninetieth birthday Germany united in good wishes for their national poet of the dark hours.

The people built him a monument at the place of his birth, Schoritz, and another at Bonn, where for many years he had been professor of history.[77]
21

It is not time, O William, to go to church but to go to war; yet you and your son keep on reading your Gothic Bible.

Now comes the year 1840; William III goes to the tomb of his ancestors, and is succeeded by Fr: William IV, with whom began anew the long battle between the principle of Divine-right of kings and political democracy exercised by the masses. William IV, intensely addicted to Divine-right theories of government, was in the course of a turbulent reign forced to face great political agitators. However, the King had behind his throne, always, that conservative class (found in every country) that clings tenaciously to the past and dreads the future. The watchword of all William’s enemies was “Liberty!” The cry, visionary as it was, served as a rallying point for those who favored some form of French constitutionalism; and while, as a whole, the so-called friends of Liberty were very impracticable, had no definite plan for relief, we find among the political agitators foremost in their discontent many of the brightest minds in Germany, college graduates, professional men, the clergy, and solid middle class merchants. All were zealous for immediate political reforms.

Consider the position of our Fr: William IV. He was a peculiar man, to begin with—and an irresolute man, to end with. He was not built for times of war. Yet he had to face cannon!

Early in life, in impressionable years, through a court blunder, young William had had a tutor, Delbrueck, who poisoned his charge’s mind against the Prussian military and bureaucratic system.

The attitude of Delbrueck was certainly heresy as vile as though your own child’s nurse should bring your boy up to fear and despise his own father. Surely, you would not like that?

Delbrueck was quickly given the sack; and it was well that he got off without a broken head![78]

He was succeeded by a preacher, Ancillon, of renown in church affairs. This Ancillon started young William off on another track; antiques, church history, Bible study, architecture, the brotherhood of man, and the fatherhood of God.

Then William studied art under Rausen, and under Schinkel; and also the future king became absorbed in landscape gardening and in architecture.

William was presumed to be “liberal” in his views, that is to say, he was, in a sense, supposed to be a “democrat.”

Of course, the Radicals at this hour knew nothing of Bismarck, who was to be the power behind the throne. They saw instead only a weak king; and history tells over and over again, down through time, what becomes of weak kings when the people are throwing up barricades in the streets and are tossing up their caps and crying “Liberty!”

Under his royal nose the Liberals kept sticking his father’s pledge of the glorious year, 1813. How about that long-promised Constitution, your MajestyThousands of deluded Prussians now believed that they could accurately define the peculiar word “Liberty!” It looked as though the people were bent on casting out a king. As yet there were in Prussia no organized party lines; the general situation was summed up in the growing hopes that the common people placed in French constitutionalism—wherever that might lead.

At any rate, the old régime must go.
22

Bad business, this promising a written Constitution—The deluge breaks.

The Prussian nobility, always bound to the King by feelings of ardent loyalty, formed a military caste; the peasantry was industrious, thrifty and hard-working; the State officials were devoted to a spirit of discipline at once thorough and pedantic; the Prussian school-system was first in square-headed masters, who ruled with rods of iron. Thus, the Prussian[79] National ideal was based on Discipline military in its severity, self-sacrifice and energy. “Throughout Prussia was a spirit of affirmation, expressive of the vigorous National egotism. As time passed, the machine men of olden Prussia were gradually replaced by free-willed, self-conscious citizens taking an enlightened interest in their country; the old-time tutelage headed by the monarchs underwent a transformation; and the trend was toward enlightened self-government; but many years were to pass before this ideal was reached.”

William did indeed cherish, in a way, an idea of German Unity, and in this respect he was a democrat or a radical, whatever you wish to term him. Here, we must make one fact plain. It will make you smile at William’s simplicity, will show you how utterly he was out of touch with the tendencies of the times; how good-natured he was; how honest he was. He believed that German Unity, if ever it came, should historically be an extension of the old Holy Roman Empire, through the illustrious House of Hapsburg!

Which is equivalent to saying that your own family should advance by humbling itself before your own greatest rival; that you should bow to your political enemy and submit to being effaced, to heighten your rival’s glory.

Strauss calls William “A romanticist on the throne of the C?sars!” This Fr: William IV wished to be an absolute monarch, after the traditional Hohenzollern style, yet he had so few soldierly instincts that the army hated him.

This political attitude with William was not a form of romantic idealism bordering on lunacy; it was instead a token of his blundering stupidity; also in a sense his four-square frankness in owning that Prussia was playing second fiddle to Austria, at this interesting moment. And, in truth, all that William thought was logical; the stream was tending that way; few denied it, except politicians interested in advancing their own fortunes by setting Austria back in the great game of grab. However, William, instead of loading cannon and turning them on the Radicals, now swarming around his palace, was much pleased to send a bishop to Jerusalem.

Nicholas of Russia warned William to beware of democrats,[80] and to stand up for Divine-right of kings, but what is the use of advising a coward to be a hero, a fool to be a wise manIn the end, a man must go through life with the sort of head he has—round, square, flat, or mushy—is it not trueYou are no exception, yourself; and our church-building William, in turn, was true to his own ?sthetic nature, regardless of bayonets poked under his nose.

Bad business this promising the people a written Constitution; ominous for the breed of kings; a situation, in short, not unlike that forced on the Grand Monarch at an earlier day, that is to say, no money without the States’ General.

After 1840, Liberal opinions were directed against the King, personally, charging him with political reactionary tendencies. The course of popular liberty was taken by noted men, among them Arnold Ruge, Karl Marx, Feuerbach, Strauss, Bauer, Fallersleben, Dingelstedt, Meissner, Beck, Kinkel, and others. Also, when Ischech attempted to assassinate William IV, the dastardly act found supporters who gloried in the “patriot’s” effort to rid the country of a “tyrant,” even through cold-blooded murder.

Also, the very memory of the frightful excesses of the French Revolution still shocked the conservative political element of Europe. The land-owning classes of Prussia, backed by the Prussian army, stood shoulder to shoulder for their old titles. The new call of political liberalism was, therefore, in the view of Prussian conservatives, to be put down at all hazards. The position was, of course, largely selfish, but it was very human.

Matters came to a crisis in ’47; King William IV needed money for a little railroad project in East Prussia. In his dilemma, he called his Baby Parliament, or Diet, April 11, 1847, and “deigned” to permit therein the right of petition; there were in truth no privileges of political significance, no real powers; it was a side-show, so far as the “people” were concerned—and for eleven weeks volleys of oratory crackled and thundered.

Here, we meet Bismarck face to face; and you should now[81] be prepared, from what you have read, to understand the gigantic problem Bismarck was called upon to face—single-handed!

Furthermore, Bismarck’s attitude was not, as has often been recorded, a case of “might is right.” The French Revolution had proven conclusively that there can be no political “right” without a political “might.” We should not forget this fact throughout the Bismarck story of Prussia’s rise to power.