3>D CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE DATE DUE ft-HP .-£f.,~i MtWj- ^ y/j"ffl' '1 <• V CAYLORD POINTED IN U.S.*. The original of tliis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026955611 THE EVOLUTION OF PRUSSIA THE MAKING OF AN EMPIRE BY J. A. R. MARRIOTT, MA. FELLOW AND MODERN HISTORY TUTOR OF WORCESTER COLLEGE AND C. GRANT ROBERTSON, MA, C.V.O. FELLOW OF ALL SOULS AND MODERN HISTORY TUTOR OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE DD 347.M°35"" """"'"" "-'""^ Evolution of Prussia. 3 1924 026 955 611 OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1917 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY HUMPHREY MILFORD M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY PREFACE This book represents a preliminary attempt to fill a conspicuous and somewhat discreditable gap in our historical hterature. There are useful chapters on the history of Prussia in many text-books of general European history ; there are excellent monographs on special periods, such as the English translation of Ranke's Memoirs oj Brandenburg, or Mr. Fisher's study of Napo- leonic Germany ; there are well-known biographies, such as Carlyle's Frederick and Seeley's Stein. But we are not aware of any work which fulfils the purpose which we have had in view. We have attempted to set forth the story of the rise and development of Brandenburg- Prussia and the later Prussianization of Germany under the Hohenzollern dynasty, and to set it forth, briefly and simply, but as a connected whole and with due regard to the claims of historical scholarship. We have deemed it wise to bring the narrative to a close with the fall of Bismarck, since the events of the last twenty-five years have not yet fallen into historical perspective, and cannot be disentangled from political controversy ; but, for the convenience of readers, the main facts have been succinctly narrated in an epilogue. Original research on Brandenburg-Prussian history has already been exhaustively carried out by many scholars. 6 The Evolution of Pntssia PAGE CHAPTER IX Restoration and Reaction, 1815-40: J- he StAATEABU-XD ; The XoI.LV£REL\' • ' • 11 CHAPTER X The Revolution of 1848. The Frankfort Parliament . . . . • . •3'"' CHAPTER XI The Prussianization of Germany : The Rule of Bismarck ; Schleswig-Holstein and the Seven Weeks' War . . . . • 33r CHAPTER XII The Unification of Germany : The Franco- German War ; The German Empire . . 355 CHAPTER XIII Bismarck, the Imperial Chancellor, 1871-90 . 379 CHAPTER XIV Epilogue, 1890-1914 ..... 424 General Works of Reference .... 448 Index ..,...., ^^j LIST OF MAPS PAGE Brandenburg in 1415 • 48 The Cleves-Juuch Succession . . 61 Brandenburg-Prussia, 1618 • 72 Prussia in 1786 .... 162 Prussia, i 795-1 807 .... . 182 Prussia after Tilsit . 220 Prussia, 1815-66 .... . 278 The German Empire, 1871-1914 . 380 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE CHIEF DATES IN THE EVOLUTION OF PRUSSIA 928. Foundation of the North Mark by Henry I, ' The Fowler.' 1 134. Albert ' The Bear ' founds the Ascanian line as Margrave of Brandenburg. 1225-1446. The Teutonic Order Christianizes and colonizes Prussia. 1320. End of the Ascanian line in Brandenburg. 1417. Frederick I, of Hohenzollern, Burgrave of Nuremberg, invested with the electorate of Brandenburg. 1519-25. Albert of Hohenzollern, Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, secularizes East Prussia. 1609. Cleves-Jiilich succession claimed by Elector of Branden- burg. 1618. Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg, invested with the duchy of East Prussia. The Thirty Years' War begins. 1640. Accession of the Great Elector, Frederick William. 1648. Treaties of Westphalia. Territorial gains of Brandenburg- Prussia. 1660. East Prussia freed from Polish suzerainty. 1688. Death of the Great Elector. 1701. Frederick I acquires the Prussian crown — ' King in Prussia '. 1713. Accession of Frederick William I. 1719. Acquisition of Stettin and part of western Pomerania. 1740. Accession of Frederick the Great, and of Maria Theresia. First Silesian War. 1745. Acquisition of Silesia by the Treaty of Dresden. 1756. The Seven Years' War begins. 1763. Peace of Hubertsburg. Acquisition of Silesia confirmed. Chronological Table A. D. 1772. First Partition of Poland. Acquisition of West Prussia. Frederick takes title of ' King of Prussia '. 1785. Frederick forms the League of Princes (Fiirstenbund). 1786. Death of Frederick the Great. Accession of Frederick WilUam II. 1788. Triple Alliance. 1791. Declaration of Pillnitz. 1792. War with France. 1793. Second Partition of Poland. 1795. Third Partition of Poland. Treaty of Basel. 1797. Treaty of Campo-Formio. Accession of Frederick Wilham III. 1799. Congress of Rastadt. 1801. Treaty of Luneville. 1803. Act of Mediatization. 1805. Treaties of Schonbrunn and Pressburg. 1806. Confederation of the Rhine. Battles of Jena and Auerstadt. 1807. Battles of Eylau, Friedland. Treaty of Tilsit. Reform in Prussia. 1809. Risings in North Germany. 18 12. Napoleon's invasion of Russia. 1813. War of German Liberation. 1814. First Treaty of Paris. 1815. The Congress of Vienna — Final Act (June 10). Waterloo Campaign. Second Treaty of Paris. 18 16. Reaction in Germany. 1818. Fiscal reform (The Zollverein). 18 1 9. Karlsbad decrees. 1830. Insurrection in Germany. 1833. League of the Three ' Emperors ' {Dreikaiserbuni). 1840. Accession of Frederick William IV. 1847. Prussian United Diet. 1 848. Revolution in Germany. 1849. Dissolution of Frankfort Parliament. 1851, Restoration of the Bund. 10 The Evolution of Prussia A. D. i86i. Accession of William I (Regent 1858). 1862. Bismarck becomes Minister-President. 1863. The question of the Danish duchies (Schleswig and Holstein). 1865. Convention of Gastein. 1866. Seven Weeks' War. Treaty of Prague. 1867. North German Confederation. 1870. Franco-German War. 1871. The new German Empire. 1873. The Kuhurkampf and the May Laws. 1878. Congress and treaties of Berlin. 1879. Dual Alliance of Germany and Austria. Bismarck breaks with the National Liberals. Commencement of the policy of Protection and State Socialism. 1882. Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria and Italy. 1884. Commencement of the foundation of a colonial empire. 1888. Death of William I. Accession and death of Emperor Frederick III. Accession of William II. i8go. Resignation of Bismarck (who died 1898). Death of Moltke (1891). Agreement with Great Britain over East Africa and Zanzibar. Heligoland ceded to Germany. 1897. First Naval Law. (Confirmed and extended 1900, 1905, 1909, 1911.) 1906. Conference at Algefiras. 1908. Annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria. 191 1. ' The Agadir Crisis.' Franco-German Convention respecting Morocco and Equatorial Africa. 1914. Assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Austro- Serbian Crisis. August 4. The Great European War. CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY Since the death, of Frederick the Great in 1786 the Prussia in kingdom of Prussia has been a state of a unique type, """^"y- occupying a special position both in Germany and in Europe. Since 1867 it has accomplished by its own methods a momentous task, the unification of Germany and the erection of a German Empire, under the presidency of the House of Hohenzollern. Since 1871 it is not without the justification of historical fact and present realities that when we speak of Germany we think of Prussia, and when we speak of Prussia we are thinking of Germany. ' The whole Empire ', wrote Treitschke {Politik, ii. 346), ' is based historically and pohtically on the fact that it is (as Emperor William once said to Bismarck) " an extended Prussia ", that Prussia is the dominant factor, both in fact and in formula. What is our German Imperial army ? Unquestionably it is the Prussian army, which, by the Army Bill of 1 8 14, was developed into a nation in arms, extending over the whole Empire. The German Imperial Post, the telegraph system, the Imperial Bank are old Prussian institutions, extended to the Empire. . . . The conditions are such that the will of the Empire can in the last instance be nothing else than the will of the Prussian state.' If the supremacy of Prussia in the modern German Modem Empire rests on the sure foundations of a great prestige and a great tradition, it rests no less on solid and Prussia. 12 The Evolution of Prussia indisputable facts ; on the characteristic features of the Prussian state, the geographical and territorial position of Prussia in Germany, the prerogatives of the Prussian monarchy, the alliance of that monarchy with the governing class, the strength of the Prussian army, civil bureaucracy and administration, the Imperial navy, which is essentially a Prussian creation, and whose arsenals are Prussian strongholds ; on the organization of intellect and the industrial resources and economy of the Prussian people. It is no less indisputable that neither within nor without the boundaries of the German Empire is there any German state capable of challenging, singlehanded or in combination with other German states, the supremacy of Prussia. The defeat of Austria and her exclusion from Germany in 1866-7 were the indispensable conditions of a German Empire controlled and directed by Prussia, and the political reality on which that German Empire was founded. Since 1871 Austria, so far as she is a German state, could only be a vassal ally, not a rival, of Prussia. The gravamen of Bismarck's indictment of Prussian policy between 181 5 and i860 has been decisively and finally reversed. If Prussian policy in that epoch was made, as he asserted truly enough, at Vienna, and not at Berlin, Austrian policy from 1879 to 1914 has been made at Berlin and not at Vienna. The basis Facts and statistics are impressive. The supreme "j^jj"^"^" direction of the military and political affairs of the Empire power. is vested in the German Emperor, and the Imperial crown is hereditary ^ in the House of Hohenzollejn. Of 208,780 square miles of German territory 134,616 are ^ Virtually, though not technically. Cf. p. 372 infra. Introductory 13 Prussian ; of 65,000,000 of subjects of the German Empire 40,000,000 are subjects of tlie King of Prussia ; of 86 towns with a population of over 50,000 inhabitants 55 are Prussian ; of the Federal contributions to the Imperial Budget (Matricular-Beitrage), amounting to £12,750,000, Prussia contributes £8,000,000. Since 1871 the Imperial Chancellor (with the exception of Prince Hohenlohe) has always been a member of the Prussian service ; Prussia has 17 members out of 61 in the Federal Council (Bundesrat) and 236 out of 397 in the Imperial Parliament (Reichstag). Of the 25 active corps of the German army Prussia (with Baden and Hesse, whose troops are amalgamated with the Prussian) provides 17. There is no imperial ministry of war ; the functions of such a ministry are performed by the Prussian War Office, placed in Berlin, which prepares the military budgets of Saxony and Wiirtemberg. In whichever direction we turn, or whatever test we apply, the formula Preussen, Preussen uber Alles — Prussia first at all costs — is the practical trans- lation of the famous song. To the Prussian soldier, civil servant and Junker, as well as to the Emperor William I, Prince Bismarck and Professor von Treitschke, the Empire is ' an extended Prussia ', in which, if there is a collision of interests, Prussia must prevail, for it is Prussia's strength that makes the Empire formidable and Prussian institutions and Prussian organization that are the secret of dynastic splendour and Imperial power. Without the Empire Prussia would be a state of the first rank, but without Prussia Germany would be an appanage of the mongrel Habsburg Dual Monarchy. ' When I am thus amongst Prussian excellencies,' wrote Prince Hohenlohe, the 14 The Evolution of Prussia Imperial Chancellor, ' the contrast between North and South Germany becomes very perceptible to me. South German Liberalism is no match for the young aristocrats. They are too numerous, too powerful, and have the kingdom and the army too much on their side. Moreover the Centre goes with them. ... As I laboured from 1866 to 1870 for the union of South and North, so I must strive now to keep Prussia attached to the Empire. For all these gentlemen don't care a fig for the Empire, and would rather give it up to-day than to-morrow ' (December 15, 1898, Memoirs, ii. 474). 'What I see', wrote von Roon, thirty-five years earlier, ' in history is force. . . . The Schleswig-Holstein question is not a question of law or of pedigrees ; it is a question of force, and we [Prussians] have it.' Berlin as Prussia has, moreover, not merely unified Germany, she a capital, j^^g given Germany a capital, or, more accurately, has made the capital of Prussia the capital of Germany. Neither the Germany of the Dark Ages and of Charles the Great, nor the Germany of Saxon, Hohenstaufen, Luxemburg and Habsburg emperors had a real capital. Individual states, princely dynasties, rich industrial areas had centres of racial, dynastic or economic life and ambition ; there were cities which were treasuries of national or religious sentiment or artistic and industrial achievement, but neither Aachen nor Dresden, neither Mainz nor Heidel- berg, neither Frankfort nor Munich, neither Koln nor Augsburg were capitals as London or Paris were capitals ; centres where the political, military, administrative,, dynastic, economic, intellectual and spiritual life of a nation, conscious of its unity, met and blended and Introductory 15 radiated forth, the loss of which would have truncated the vitaUty and articulated mechanism of an organic state. Vienna and the Hofburg were the home of Habsburg emperors, but Vienna never was, and never pretended to be, the capital of Germany. Napoleon's entry into Vienna at the head of the Grand Army did not mean what the entry of the Allies into Paris meant in 1 8 14, nor what the German entry meant in 1871 ; and had Napoleon declared himself emperor in imperial Schonbrunn the ceremony would have proclaimed a message to Germany and Europe very different from the message proclaimed to France and the world on January 18, 1 871 when, to the rever- berating assent of the siege guns bombarding Paris, the King of Prussia was hailed German Emperor in the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles. For what, as Treitschke scornfully asks, when he describes the Congress of Vienna, has Vienna stood in the life of Germany and the German people ? It has stood, he answers, for dynastic selfish- ness, dismemberment, frustrated hopes and intellectual nulhty. In 1871 Prussia gave to Germany, or imposed on her, a capital in the true sense, entry into which by the armed hosts of a foreign foe would be the coup de grace. But the visitor to Berlin, as he walks through the Thiergarten, the Siegesallee, and Unter den Linden, passing the statues of dim and forgotten electors till the statue of Frederick the Great bids him halt, feels that he may be in the capital of Germany, but that all around him are the reaUzations not of German but of Prussian dreams. Frederick rides there in the bronze of Rauch, as he rode in hfe, toujours en veiette for his Prussia, and he is flanked on every side by the memories in enduring stone that i6 The Evolution of Prussia The historical problem. Branden- burg. speak of the triumphs that his reign and spirit inspired. Stand by the Prussian sentry at the Konigswache in the ghostly watches ; those trumpets blowing into the winds of night are the trumpets of Ziethen's and Seydlitz's hussars, and the dim figure in the blue uniform with the red facings who silently takes our salute is Scharnhorst, or Moltke, or maybe Frederick himself. The Evolution of Prussia and the Making of an Empire. How and when did this Prussia come into existence, by what stages has it developed, and by what methods and with what end in view has it advanced, line upon line, precept upon precept, to the Prussia of to-day that has gathered the empire of the German nation under the double-headed eagle ? The history, as all the books tell us, begins in 141 5, when a HohenzoUern Burgrave from the Germany of the south came into the March of Brandenburg as elector. The March of Brandenburg certainly had none of the characteristics that are the distinctive features of the modern Prussia. It was not a military principality, not an intellectual centre, it was not yet Protestant and toler- ant, not strong in its administrative framework, not agri- culturally rich nor endowed with industrial wealth buried in its undeveloped fields and marshes. It had no windows to the expanding sea ; it was surrounded by older dynasties : powerful, greedy, and jealous neighbours. Brandenburg was in 141 5 the least of all the electorates, and its electoral hat was somewhat tattered. The HohenzoUern who had left the pleasant and prosperous farms of Franconia and the red roofs of a thriving city for this cold, inhospitable and forbidding north took over a doubtful mortgage, a Introductory 17 principality some of which was in pawn, and a sour and sandy soil on which brutal manorial chiefs and brutish serfs fought a dour and relentless battle with nature and with each other. No one in 141 5 could have foreseen that this masterful and ambitious Burgrave from Franconia was starting afresh in his impoverished and anarchic electorate the evolution of a principality which in four hundred and fifty years would be the most important purely German state in Europe, that the tattered electoral hat would be adorned with a crown, won in the far east at Konigsberg, and that the rod of the ' Hohenzollern toy from Nuremberg ' would have swallowed up the rod of Wettin, Welf, Wittelsbach, and Habsburg. No one was probably less conscious of the historic mission of Prussia to achieve the unity of Germany than the Hohenzollern who in 1417 kneeled at the feet of a Luxemburg Caesar to receive investiture as an elector of the Holy Roman Empire. For in 1417 there was no Prussia in existence ; two hundred years at least must pass before Brandenburg-Prussia existed even in name. A modern Prussian historian, Droysen, one of the chief Stages of founders of the faith in Prussia's historic mission, has marked out the great stages in the evolution of Prussian policy and of the Prussian state : the territorial formation (141 5-161 8); the era of illuminated despotism (1618-1 786); the epoch of revolution, collapse and recovery (1786- 1815) ; the renaissance and unification (1815-1871) ; and to these must be added the purely modern era, Prussia as the director of an empire, the most powerful of the continental states of Europe, superimposing on 1832 B i8 The Evolution of Prussia its empire 'a world-economy and a world-policy (1871- 1914). The pur- The object of the following chapters is to trace, thbbook. 'lefine and mark the broad features of the historical process by which the electorate of 141 5 has passed into the German Empire of to-day. It is not our intention to write a history of Prussia in the sense of a detailed or an abbreviated narrative of events, but to explain and estimate the significance and contribution of each stage in the development and final result. Histori- cal importance cannot be measured by wealth of detail or in terms of years. A single ruler or a single generation may accomplish more than a whole century. The relative value and proportion of individuals and of events to the process as a whole are the vital and informing realities ; the scheme of the chapters and the allotment of space, as a glance at the table of contents reveals, have been determined not by length of time, counted in years, but by the intrinsic character of the subject- matter. Our purpose and task have been to ascertain and emphasize how and when out of inorganic elements has been hammered on the anvil of European history an organic unity, and how a consciousness of that organic unity was created and grew, in the struggle for existence and the pressure of conflicting ambitions. A developing organism must needs adapt itself to the conditions of its environ- ment, but a stage is always reached when the organism is strong enough to mould and adapt the conditions so as to further its own purposive action. That stage was reached in 1740 ; it was completed in 1786. ' It is not necessary that I should live,' wrote Frederick, ' but it is necessary Introductory 19 that I should act.' What Bismarck said in a famous speech in 1888 was true of Prussia from 1640 onwards : We must make greater exertions than other powers on account of our geographical position. We lie in the middle of Europe ; we can be attacked on all sides. God has put us in a situation in which our neighbours will not allow us to fall into indolence or apathy. The pike in the European fish-pond prevent us from becoming carp. The stage of territorial formation obviously comes first. Territorial When" the Spaniard was holding east and west in fee, when Valois and Bourbon kings were unifying round the ville lumiere of Paris the France of Villon, Ronsard, Rabelais and Brantome, when the Tudor England of the Reformation and of Shakespeare, mewing its mighty Angevin youth, was dipping its wings in the waters of the dawn, the dreary and provincial chronicle of Branden- burg history invites at first sight our attention to dreary and provincial achievement. But those early electors whom dynastic pride or professorial piety have disin- terred from the dust of parochial archives for the laurels and the gold of the Siegesallee, and who seem as much surprised to find themselves the ornaments of the Avenue of Victory as we are to find them there, could at least say of the two hundred years from 1415-1618, Nous avons vecu. They had lived — they had avoided dismemberment and the fatal German tendency of their day to split into sub-dynasties — they had become Pro- testants, they had seized all that their neighbours ■ had allowed them to seize, and in seizing they had always staked out claims for their successors to make good — if they could. To have lived, and to be stronger at the end B 2 20 The Evolution of Prussia ■; than at the beginning, was, in the Germany of Charles V and Ferdinand I, no small achievement. The electors had brought Brandenburg-Prussia into existence on the ruins of the Teutonic Order, though they had not founded a state ; for the elector who now ruled in East Prussia, on the Rhine, and in the March of Brandenburg, was a prince whose tripartite and separated territories had nothing as yet in common but a HohenzoUern master, and the pike in the European pond was seeking for carp to be devoured before they became pike like itself. The Hohenzollerns had roughly jointed together the geographical and territorial base on which a state could be founded, and with the consciousness of that fact and with the vision of the heavens and the earth around him black with storm Elector John Sigismund in 1619 went to his rest. He and his predecessors had finished the first chapter of a story, the end of which they neither foresaw nor expected. Critical In the long and thick book that follows after 161 8 four critical epochs stand out with unmistakable significance : the age of the Great Elector ; the age of Frederick the Great ; the age of Stein, and the age of Bismarck. So far as four men could, these four made Prussia ; and if we wish briefly to sum up their work we can say that the Great Elector determined the mission and functions of the Prussian ruler, Frederick established the Prussian state, Stein and Scharnhorst made the Prussian nation in arms, and Bismarck unified the German Empire on the triple basis of the supremacy of the Prussian monarchy, the Prussian state, and the Prussian nation in arms. Introductory 21 With one exception these critical and formative epochs Four great . • fiffurcs are preceded by periods of decline and failure. But it is not the least remarkable characteristic of the evolution of Prussia that when the fortunes of the state most urgently needed a great man, who could forget nothing and learn everything, that man has been produced or has been absorbed into Prussian service. The Great Elector rescued Brandenburg-Prussia from the impotence and exhaustion to which the futility of his father had reduced it in the Thirty Years' War. Stein and his com- peer Scharnhorst recreated Prussia after the catastrophe of Jena, the final denouement of the moral, intellectual, financial and political bankruptcy that set in after the death of Frederick the Great. Bismarck's work began when the convention of Olmiitz had robbed Prussia of the position won in 181 5. Prussia had contemplated being dissolved in Germany, and had refused to be the leader of a new, liberal and nationalist Fatherland ; she had capitulated to the illiberal and denationalizing reaction of the House of Habsburg. The Liberals who wished to destroy the military Junkers, the Junkers who thirsted to avenge the March Days, shared in common a bitter humiliation. Olmiitz was the greatest of Metternich's triumphs over Prussia, though it was Schwarzenberg, not Metternich, who inflicted the defeat. Frederick the Great is the exception. He inherited an Frederick army, an administrative machine, a system, and a tradition. Had he been simply a ruler of sound and average capacity his Prussia might have played an interesting part in the Europe of Maria Theresia, Kaunitz, and Joseph H, of Pitt, Vergennes, and Catherine the Great, but had remained 22 The Evolution of Prussia a respectable second-rate state. Frederick, unques- tionably the greatest of all the HohenzoUern rulers, was the most gifted and versatile figure in European history between WiUiam III and Napoleon. Some men, as Seeley has well said of WiUiam III, are born into a great place and show their greatness simply by filling it. But Frederick was not born into a great place. He inherited a crown of the second rank and the blue and red uniform ; he had been bred in the graceless and starving atmosphere of the barrack-yard, the parade ground, and the ' Tobacco ParHament '. The distinctive quality of his career is the conscious per- sistence with which he snatched greatness from his competitors on whom it was thrust and thrust it upon himself. The Europe of 1740 was as unconscious of Frederick's quality, and of what genius could make of Prussia, as was the Europe that enjoyed epigrams on the Junker, ' a red reactionary and smelling of blood,' who became Minister -President in 1862. The march into Silesia in December 1740, 'the crossing of the Rubicon with waving banners and resounding music,' was a reverber- ating stroke with the uncovered spearhead of the Hohen- zoUern lance at the shield of the House of Habsburg. Austria was the rival who blocked the way to Prussian greatness, and at Mollwitz were fairly joined the issues that were finally decided at Koniggratz. Foreign In the throw of the iron dice the sword would not be po icy. ^j^g gpjg umpire of the duel. Frederick's alliances are as illuminating as are the alliances of Bismarck. Bismarck, who could have written a better monograph on Frederick than the great savants who made the age of Bismarck so Introductory 23 notable, had learned from Frederick the vital principles of a Prussian Realpolitik. Prussia must achieve as much by diplomacy as by ' blood and iron ', and if force is the executor of policy the iield for force must first be carefully mapped out and prepared. In Frederick's alliances, as shifting in duration as they were definite in aim, Bismarck discovered the arcanum imperii, that Prussia by herself was impotent, and that the European state system must be so manipulated as to compel the jealous friend and the avowed foe to promote or acquiesce in the achieve- ment of Prussian aims under the most favourable condi- tions. Bismarck's handling of German kings and princes, of Napoleon III and Alexander II, of Italy and Great Britain, has no parallel in Frederick's handling of France, England, the German states, and Russia, except in its spirit, its principles of action, and its objects — the defeat of Austria and the supremacy of Prussia. In foreign policy, above all, Frederick was the master of Bismarck, and Bismarck would have been the first to claim the discipleship. Porson said of the Eton boy's verses, ' I Frederick's can see in them a great deal of Horace and Vergil, but P"^" ^" nothing Horatian or Vergilian.' Nothing more com- pletely damns the Epigoni from 1 786-1 806 than their failure to recognize the difference between the slavish copying of phrases and the reproduction of the master's spirit in a new vocabulary. They were obstinately blind in supposing that Prussia was strong enough to stand by herself, and that the Prussian state could be kept great by selfish, sterile and stagnant isolation ? A Prussia without friends or allies had every one for a foe, and was drifting, as events dramatically proved 24 The Evolution of Prussia Political theory. Criticism of the theory. to self-imposed disaster and merited dismemberment. Stein and Hardenberg for their age, Bismarck for his, returned to the Frederician spirit, traditions, and prin- ciples. In the epic of their achievement there is little or nothing of the letter of Frederick, but there is every- thing that is Frederician. No less notable in these critical epochs is the interpre- tation of life from which was built up a political theory of statecraft. To the Prussia of the age of Bismarck we commonly attribute an emphasis on state-necessity, the worship of force, the reasoned conviction that might can supersede right and furnish an invulnerable ethical title to power. It is not merely the erection into a creed of the evolutionary beatitude, ' Blessed are the strong, for they shall prey on the weak,' nor an unflinching adherence to the doctrine that ends justify means. It is this, and something deeper, grander, and more quickening to action : Salus Prussiae suprema lex — the principle that on the ruler is imposed a moral obligation, the duty to main- tain and to extend the state. The sum of political ethics and the categorical imperatives of statecraft are derived from the nature of the state which prescribes the end and provides the means ; the state whose prosperity justifies every sacrifice and annuls or transcends every moral rule. Political morality is a higher and more binding morality ; it is independent of and superior to social morality and the canons of individual and private conduct. The origins and evolution of this interpretation of political life must be sought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ; but the criticisms passed on the Great Elector, on Frederick, and on Bismarck, Introductory 25 are only too often criticisms the force and relevance of which they would peremptorily brush aside or flatly deny. What we call a patent lack of conscience and absence of moral scruples ; disregard of plighted word or treaty obligations ; cynical indifference to the cha- racter of the means, provided that the end in view be adequate ; employment of all the weapons of diplo- macy — to these charges they would not plead guilty, and their answer, not their defence, would be that the indictment ignored the nature of political ethics and rested on an elementary and academic confusion of the moral code of the individual with the moral code of the ruler and the state. ' The jurisprudence of sovereigns ', said Frederick, ' is commonly the right of the stronger.' ' The only sound principle of action for a great state is political egoism, and not Romanticism,' was Bismarck's deliberate avowal. In this momentous chapter of Prussian political thought, Frederick the influence and efficacy of which lay in its cool transla- pj^gjin,, tion into deeds, Frederick's reign is the decisive epoch. He inherited from his father and the Great Elector the deposit of experience, a dynastic tradition and a message which he consolidated into a system of thought and a school of policy. But what might in other hands have become the polished pedantry of a king's cabinet r the maxims of a copy-book for statesmen were in his dis- solved and reconi 'lined in the spectrum of a rich and compelling vitality, and shone out on the world with all the irresistible magic of a personal example. The identification of the interest of the state with the duty of the ruler, the mission of the Hohenzollern monarch. 26 The Evolution of Prussia because he was born a Prussian, to achieve the grandeur of Prussia, the emphasis on the service of the state as the highest of all forms of service, demanding the sacrifice of every consideration, personal or ethical — this was his con- tribution to the theory of kingship and to the diplomacy and philosophy of his day. He exemplified it by a career of toil which amazed and enthralled his generation — all the more remarkable because Frederick shared with Swift an inexhaustible contempt for human beings and an un- mistakable belief in the depravity of men and women. 'Ah, my dear Sulzer,' was his famous retort, ' you do not know the damned race as I do,' yet it was for this damned race that he toiled like a black in the sugar, season ; and out of it that he hammered and drilled the Prussian of the eighteenth century. A life and a personality — that was a more potent legacy even than the victory of Rosbach and the acquisition of Silesia. It was Frederick the king, the incarnation of Prussia, who stamped himself on the imagination and became the model for the governing classes to come. ' We all wish ', wrote Bismarck, with - Frederick in his mind, ' that the Prussian eagle should spread out his wings as guardian and ruler from the Mem el to the Donnersberg, but free will we have him. Prussians we are and Prussians we will remain . . . and I hope to God that we will still long remain Prussians when this sheet of paper is forgotten like a withered autumn leaf.' The state The state as power, the ruler as the personification and as power. exej-m-Qj- Qf tiie power of the state, efficiency as the infallible criterion of the machinery of administration, the determination of foreign and international relations Introductory 27 by the interest of the state — the progressive interpreta- tion and adoption of these principles of service and government explain the origin and emphasize the development of the most characteristic organs of a national life, vs^hich in combination for a single end made Prussia a type unique in the polities of Europe. Power and efficiency as ideals mean a powerful and efficient governing class, controlling all the resources of the community. The prerequisites are the unity of aim, the concentration of effort, the knowledge, the trained brain, and disciplined character of the expert. The service of the state in all its branches must therefore be an expert service. Amateurism involves individualism and waste. Society must be so arranged as to provide from the appropriate class the servants required, and the state in its own interest must then equip them with knowledge, training, and discipline, which will habituate those who serve to the self-sacrifice required. An army, a civil bureaucracy, and a university, based on a social economy carefully graded to the needs of the political organism, are seen to be indispensable organs of an expanding state which can only advance at the expense of its neighbours and in virtue of a higher efficiencj^ Geography had denied Prussia a frontier. But the army The army. could be made the frontier and thus convert a grave natural disadvantage into a positive superiority. The^ army must be the state exercising force, the executor of policy, maintaining the power already won and always ready to strike for the greater power to come. The army will not be the luxury of a ruler, nor will it merely provide a career for the idle, the rich, or the adventurous, still ijcharn- horst and Moltke. 28 The Evolution of Prussia less a class privilege or a means of earning a livelihood in competition with other careers and professions. Service in the army is the first and supreme civic duty, incumbent on all members of the state according to their class and place. Sacrifice to the interests of the army is sacrifice to the interests of the state in their most virile and effective form. A duty ceases to be a sacrifice and becomes a privilege and the symbol of citizenship. The army of Frederick the Great at first sight seems stained with all the social and economic injustice and the caste organization of a society that was an anachronism at his accession and a cankering malady at his death ; but this undeniable defect must not blind us to the two profoundly influential conceptions which he bequeathed to his successors. War is not an accident, nor the spasmodic revelation of dynastic greed and ambition ; it is a part of the science of government and inseparable fjrom policy, because war is a necessary part of the scheme of things ; it must, therefore, be studied and mastered as completely as any other science concerned with the activities of life, since government is the science of life as a whole. Secondly, the army is the state exercising an indispensable function, and must be organized and directed by the brain of the . state. A ruler versed only in the civil science of life is as incompletely equipped for his duties as the militarist tyrant ignorant of everything but the science of arms. Scharnhorst, the most original, attractive, and pro- foundly political of Prussia's military teachers, put the coping-stone on Frederick's work. Gneisenau, Clausewitz, von Roon, and Moltke only completed and carried Scharnhorst's principles to their logical conclusion. For Introductory 29 Scharnhorst's originality and grasp lay in the skill and insight with which he incorporated into the essentials of the Frederician system the essentials he had learned from the French Revolution. The Army Law of 1814 made the Prussian army the nation in arms, service in which is a school of citizenship. Military efficiency — the capacity in which a citizen will serve — the qualities and classes needed for officers and the higher command and direction — the organization of the brain of the army as a sub-brain of the state, — these were derivatives and specific problems for the military expert, and they were not fully solved until the epoch of von Roon, Moltke, and Blum en thai ; but the character, justification, and func- tions of the army belonged to the politital theory of the state and the place of the state in life as a whole. Scharn- horst was as convinced as Frederick that Prussia must in the broad sense be a military state, if she was to be a state at all, and if she was to be a Great Power her polity must rest on this fundamental premise. The evolution of a civil service (Beamtentum) had The civil proceeded on parallel lines with the evolution of the army, for its creation and development were the realization of similar principles of political thought and systematized action. The crushing by the Great Elector of the local estates and the tentative and gradual substitution of centralized administration for disorganized local auto- nomy made the drastic reforms of Frederick William I possible and Inevitable. The separated territories of the Prussian kingdom became a single domain, administered by a single central directory under the sovereign's vigilant 'personal presidency, the orders of which were executed by seivice. 30 The Evolution of Prussia a staff, carefully graded and co-ordinated and taught to be pitilessly efficient and to owe responsibility to the head of the state alone. Frederick the Great was bred and broken into this system, which he expanded and perfecteji in detail, but the framework of which he was quite content to preserve unaltered. But while Frederick William I was, and preferred to remain, the skilled proprietor of a large property, determined to exact the maximum of rent that agricultural and administrative science, sharp- ened by inordinate toil, could produce, Frederick, without losing the advantages of efficient administration, linked up the purely domestic civil service with foreign relations and the army, and made a single brain, his own, do the higher thinking for all three. Without that brain the civil service was indeed a wonderful machine, but still a machine ; and the problem for the age of Stein, when the machine had collapsed between 1786 and 1806, was not so much how to reconstruct the machine, but how, in a modern state that was converting itself into a nation in arms, to recreate, what Frederick had been, the brain of an efficient civil service, and make the state in its civil as in its military capacity independent of dynastic accidents and vicissitudes. We are too often tempted tp forget that in absolutist monarchies sovereigns who are geniuses impose on their kingdoms penalties as heavy and as unpredictable as sovereigns who are spendthrifts, libertines, or charlatans. The golden Stein and his colleagues, by the restoration of minis- civil° ^ terial responsibility, municipal autonomy, and local devo- service. lution, only partially solved the problem. The ideal of a -Prussian nation in arms under direct monarchical Introductory 31 rule was not completed by the ideal of a nation united in self-government — Gneisenau's triple conception of the supremacy of Prussia in its army, its science, and its constitution. Yet the reorganization of the civil service, sharing also in the invigorating national revival of the Liberation epoch, was so far effective that the golden age lies in the years from 1815-70. Prussia as a miHtary and political power was in the bonds of Metternich, yet, for aU that, the civil service was, silently and unobserved, perhaps unconsciously, preparing to make a miUtary defeat of Austria, if that should ever come, decisive and irreparable. In an epoch when her foreign policy and international action had ceased to be speciiically Prussian and to develop on an independent orbit, the civil service (the Beamtentum) was heightening and broadening the efiiciency in administration which had so signally charac- terized the Prussia of the eighteenth century and stamped it with its real differentia in the European state system. The civil service resumed the suspended work of internal consolidation. By sheer continuity of pressure in the daUy task of ordinary administration it rammed home the value of technical knowledge and the material benefits of science properly applied. It restored the prestige of the state in a generation intoxicated by the nationalist war of Liberation, and through the central organization it replaced the levers of the state machinery in the control of a sovereign encircled by expert advisers. Most striking of iiU, it recreated and reinforced the belief that to be German was good, but to be Prussian was better. In the mind of Junker, Liberal, Radical, or intellectual, for different reasons and with very different objects, Prussia 32 The Evolution of Prussia became the hope of the patriotic German. The Prus- sianization of gilesia and West Prussia under Frederick; the Great is paralleled by the Prussianization of the rich Rhenish Prussia acquired in 1 8 1 5 . Without the civil service neither w^ould have been possible, and the absorption of the Rhinelands within a generation is a wonderful tribute to the efficiency of the machinery employed. No less remarkable is the creation of the ZoUverein, which was the work of the civil service after 181 5. Through the ZoUverein Austria had been signally defeated six years before Koniggratz ; the victory of the Prussian tariff union banished to the limbo of shattered Utopias the dreams of the great Germany which was to include the German Confederation of 181 5 in a single unitary political system under Austrian presidency ; the economic expulsion of Austria from Germany was a fact in 1858, and the non-Prussian states — the south in particular — were confronted with the alternative of an economic union with its political corollaries under Prussia or economic isolation and ultimate ruin. The economic unification of Germany in 1867 preceded the poHtical unification by four years ; it synchronized with the military unification through the conventions with Bavaria, Wiirtemberg, and Baden, and it made the political unification under Prussian hegemony merely a question of time and of detail. Thanks to the work of the civil service Bismarck could afford to wait until his remorseless diplomacy had inspired his foes to strike the hour for the final denouement. There remained after 1871 the Prussianization of the new German Empire. The instrument for this was at hand in the civil service. Introductory 33 Imperial legislation through the Bundesrat and the Reichstag were the necessary forms, but the conversion of national legislation into administrative fact was the task of the civil Beamtentum, whose brain was in Prussian Berlin. The organization and administration of finance, customs, post office, railways, insurance against unemployment, old age, sickness, bringing home to every German man, woman, and child the idea of the Empire as power, and as an omnipresent fact in every aspect of life, was a triumph of administrative efficiency. The sove- reignty of the state machinery is the Prussian equivalent for the English Reign of Law. Organized efficiency is only possible where there is organized knowledge and a general appreciation of the value and potency of organized service. The gospel of work will be preached to deaf ears unless those who can hear have learned to value what methodized labour and disciplined brain can do. In the evolution of Prussia the significance of her schools and her universities comes not from the quantum of knowledge diffused through the various classes of the community (important as that may be), but in the intellectual standards and tests and the scale of values progressively taught to generation after generation, and in moulding the political thought of the day. The contribution of Prussia to the literature of power and imagination has not been remarkable either for dis- tinction or originality, but the Prussian contribution to the literature of knowledge has been extraordinarily The Uni- rich in its variety, volume, range, and quality. It is '*'^^^''"=^ a contribution, too, that has come late in Prussian Science. history, dating not from the foundation of the Academy 1832 c 34 The Evolutwn @f Prussia of Science, but from the foundation of the University of Berlin, which steadily Prussianized the German profes- soriate and yoked to Prussian service the work of German science. Historical research restored and unfolded the imperial past of the German people, and with the aid of philosophy fitted the ascertained facts into a metaphysic of the universe. The conception of a historic mission of Prussia to unify Germany as the only interpretation that would satisfy the philosophy of history was the creation of Prussian historians, with the result that a working hypothesis of professors and philosophers became the figment of the schools and the accepted platitude of a nation, taught to regard itself as the selected instrument for the triumphant realization of a cosmic process. A docile and drilled vanity is an inexhaustible reservoir of national effort. Europe was Bourbonized before it was revolutionized by France. French ascendancy from the age of Louis XIV to the age of Napoleon rested more securely on the achievements of French genius and the superiority of French civilization in the spheres of imagination, ideas, literature, and activity than on French arms. The downfall of Napoleon heralded the ascendancy of German science in collaboration with racial ambition. The hegemony of Prussia in Germany was preceded by and coincided with the achievements of Prussianized German sciences which reached their zenith in the age of German unification. Through her schools and, above all, through her universities, in alliance with her army and her civil service, Prussia could claim to represent more effectively the efficiency of the German mind as the basis and motor force of a new and scientific Introductory 35 civilization. Bismarck, like Napoleon, might affect to The Um- despise the ink and red tape of the bureaucracy and the g^''^''^ °* civil service — the animal armed with a pen — and to brand professors as ideologues, ignorant of life and obsessed with vain superstitions ; but, unlike Napoleon, he knew how to exploit their science in the interest and service of Prussian primacy. Nutrimentum spiritus, the motto chosen by Frederick the Great for his royal library, would be no unfitting motto also for the University of Berlin, which confronts the Royal Palace and proclaims itself as the intellectual Household Guard of the Hohen- zoUern monarchy. Von Ranke, von Humboldt, Grimm, Ritter, Kiepert, Mommsen, Virchow, Bopp, Savigny, Du Bois-Reymond — to name but a few of those who have made that university illustrious, — what would the unifica- tion of Germany by Prussia have been without such colleagues, and what do they not stand for in the sphere of intellectual achievement ? Moltke judged aright when he pronounced with the impressive brevity of the soldier that ' the victor in our wars is the schoolmaster '. It was in the schools and universities that the transition Final was triumphantly accomplished from the dream of '^^^""^• a strong and independent Prussia to the supremacy of Prussia in Germany, and the dream of the establishment on that secure basis of the world-supremacy of the German Empire. What brain-power had accomplished, working on the plastic material furnished by the national revival that began after the catastrophe of Jena, and utilizing exceptional opportunities in the historical situation, Prussian brains could always accomplish, irrespective of fundamentally different social, economic and political c 2 36 The Evolution of Prussia conditions. In her schools and universities, carefully systematized and fostered like every other department of the state to do the state's work, Prussia and Germany, taught by Prussia, acquired that unreserved belief in the infallibility and invincibility of science, and in the potency of material facts and machinery, which gave a new inter- pretation to the belief in the state as power, the sum of organized human effort, and the realization of ' an abso- lutely complete ethical organism '. For Germany and the German Empire the formula and basis of all political progress would lie in the union of efficiency provided by science with the force residing in the State. The triumphs of such a future seemed to be as unlimited as the future itself. CHAPTER II THE ORIGINS AND TERRITORIAL FORMA- TION OF BRANDENBURG-PRUSSIA The core of the modern kingdom of Prussia is the The historical electorate of Brandenburg and the duchy of ^^J^l °* East Prussia, which has given its name to the united HohenzoUern dominions. The acquisition and union of these two separate principalities laid the foundation, determined the character, and moulded the policy both of the nascent ruhng house and of the expanding state. But long before members of the HohenzoUern were directly concerned with the areas lying round the lower or middle Elbe, or the dreary plain between the lower Vistula and the Pregel, Brandenburg and East Prussia had lived through a tangled and complicated existence of strife and achievement, of prosperity and power waning into anarchy and decay. If Berlin and Frankfort- On-the-Oder are HohenzoUern foundations, Danzig, Gnesen, Oliva, Marienburg, even royal Konigsberg, enshrine memories, traditions and accomplished facts, of which the HohenzoUern rulers were the heirs not the authors. Brandenburg and East Prussia are not happy in having no history other than HohenzoUern history, but their chronicles, often as scanty in their produce and as misty in their atmosphere as the sandy flats of the 38 The Evolution of Prussia Havel, the Spree and the Masurian lakes, remind us profitably that as there were HohenzoUerns, powerful and numerous in Germany, before they estabHshed a Hohen- zollern state, so there was a Brandenburg and an East and West Prussia before HohenzoUerns set foot in either. This is only another way of saying that the founding of a line and the establishment of a principality are very different things from the making of a state. The history of Germany from the revival of the Holy Roman Empire by Charles the Great, through the long gallery of Saxon, Hohenstaufen, Luxemburg and Habsburg emperors to the Napoleonic Confederation of the Rhine or the ramshackle Federation vamped together by the diplomatists of Vienna in 1815, is bewilderingly rich in the creation of principalities, ecclesiastical as well as secular, and in the founding of princely lines from humble or dubious origins. The surface of Germany at any epoch is a com- plicated mosaic of these principalities, and the series of maps in our historical atlases provides an instructive and slowly shifting kaleidoscope of their evolution, amalgama- tion, separation, and dissolution. Out of one alone, Brandenburg-Prussia, has a national German state been pieced together. The work, in history, of the Hohen- zoUerns has been — it is indisputable — the making of this state. It is not surprising, therefore, that court scribes, erudite savants or brooding philosophers, intoxicated by the march of events and inflamed by a national spirit, in itself the result rather than the cause of the process, should have persuaded themselves or compelled the facts to persuade them, that this work was from the beginning a predestined function of the dynasty. In The Origins of Brandenburg-Prussia 39 history, as in natural science, the most obvious and the easiest interpretations are generally the most fallacious. The attribution of a historic mission, conscious of its end, before the instrument for its realization has been forged, does worse than distort the truth. It falsifies the significance of each stage and belittles the real grandeur of the final result. Impartially interpreted Brandenburg-Prussian history and the annals of Hohen- zoUern rulers, like the history of the British Empire, point a finer moral. To build greater than we know — to take care of the day and let the years take care of themselves — are the rarest, the most fruitful and the most memorable of human achievements. Modern Prussia may be said to have a similar origin The origins to that of the modern empire of Austria. Just as the ^gnburg historic Austria has been evolved out of the eastern March founded in the tenth and eleventh centuries on the middle Danube to block the advance of Magyar and Slav, so did Brandenburg take its start in a March on the lower Elbe and in the lands between Elbe and Oder to hold back and absorb if possible Wend, Prussian, Lithuanian and Pole. The kernel of the subsequent Electorate of Brandenburg is the Nordmark established according to the traditional date, a. d. 928, by Duke Henry of Saxony, who figures in German history as Henry the Fowler, King Henry I who founded the line of the Saxon emperors and whose successor Otto I, the Great, revived the Holy Roman Empire of Charles the Great. The boundaries of this northern March (Nord- mark) were pushed steadily eastwards from its centre at Brandenburg (Brennibor), converted into a fortress after 40 The Evolution of Prussia it had been wrested from the Wends. Its origins, there- fore, as was its foundation, were Saxon ; an advance guard and protective bastion of the mediaeval Saxon duchy, which must be carefully distinguished from the later Saxon electorate. But its purpose was not purely military — to protect by conquest — but to Germanize and to Christianize the non-German and pagan Wendish tribes and to provide new homes for the expanding German race of the west. The frontier history of mediaeval Germany from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries is the history of a wonderful colonizing effort on land, in which the energies of the German race were absorbed and without which the Germany of Central Europe could not have come into existence. In the struggle for the Wendish lands between Elbe and Oder the Saxon dukes and their representatives, the Margraves of the North or Brandenburg March, had, further to the east and the sauth-east, a powerful Slav competitor in the Christian kingdom of Poland, absorbing and converting by the sword and the gospel the lands between the Oder and the Vistula. The struggle with the Wends was bitter and protracted, and despite the foundation of two bishoprics (at Havelberg in 946 and Brandenburg in 949) the" progress made by 1133 was dubious and the results achieved slight. The With 1 1 3 3 came a new line, a new order and a permanent Ma^rer'aves. s'ivance, for in that year the Emperor Lothair conferred the March of Brandenburg on the head of the House of Ballenstedt (in the Harz mountains), and with the advent of Albert the Bear (also called Albert the Schone, or Fair) began the period of the Ascanian Margraves (so called from their castle Aschersleben), who ruled in The Origins of Brandenburg-Prussia 41 what was shortly (1157) called the Margravlate of Branden- burg until the extinction of the line with the death of Waldemar the Great in 13 19. In these two centuries of effective and expanding power four points stand out in clear relief. First, there is a great extension of territory, as the Ascanian House steadily pushed its conquests eastwards. To the original North or Old March (Nord- or Altmark) were added successively the Middle March, the Vormark (Priegnitz), and the Ukermark, deriving its names from the Slavonic ukri. It is probable that the beginnings of Berlin date from the middle of the thirteenth century, when the districts of the Spree passed under the House of Anhalt, though the fortress of Tanger- miinde long remained the capital of the Margraviate. Pushing stiU further east, the foundation of the New March beyond the Oder, with the town of Frankfort guarding the passage of the river, broke new ground and extended the frontiers into Pomerania and towards the shores of the Baltic, while to the south-east the acquisition of Lebus and Sternberg gave a firm grip on Upper and Lower Lusatia (Lausitz). Secondly, the Christianization of the Wendish population had proceeded hand in hand with their subjection, and the slow but steady infiltration of German settlers inaugurated, if it did not complete, the Germanization of the population. Thirdly, economic and social life were gradually shaking down into the mould that stereotyped Brandenburg for many generations to come. The Wendish population became a broad base of serfdom on which were superimposed the manorial lords, Slavonic or German in origin — for the Slav lord acquired equal rights with his German compeer, a process 42 The Evolution of Prussia emphasized and aided by the absence of serious competi- tion from a prosperous burgher Hfe. Towns there were, but they were not, and could not be yet, centres of thriving industry. Under the Ascanian Margraves Junkertum — the rule and predominance of a noble squirearchy — ^was born and developed. Fourthly, the Margraves had pointed the way and acquired controversial titles for further expansion. The investiture in 1 1 86 of Otto II with Pomerania, though it did not lead to a definitive acquisi- tion, begins the complicated story of Brandenburg claims which was not closed until 1815, and the relations with the powerful archbishopric of Magdeburg indicated that there was a future for the fortunate in the west as well as in the east. TheWittels- A century of decay and impotence as rapid as the Luxem" previous advance followed the extinction of the Ascanian burg hne. Another great German House, that of Wittelsbach, under the Emperor Lewis the Bavarian, laid hands on the Margraviate, but its hold was feeble, and the passing of the imperial crown to the House of Luxemburg ended Bavarian rule in the March in 1373, when Mark Branden- burg was perpetually united with the Bohemian crown. Henceforward it was governed by the House of Luxem- burg or its lieutenants, until, in 141 1, the second great chapter was begun, and a true successor to the Ascanian line was found in Frederick of HohenzoUern, Burgrave of Nuremberg. In the dismal record of mismanagementj misgovernment, loss of territory and internal anarchy which mark the period from 13 19 to 141 1 one event of importance stands out. In 1351, five years before the famous Golden Bull of Charles IV, the imperial The Origins of Brandenburg-Prussia 43 author had elevated the March of Brandenburg to the dignity of an electorate — bringing the number up to the mystic seven, four lay and three ecclesiastical. Hence- forward the ruler was Kurfiirst as well as Margrave, and his territories became Kur-Brandenburg, or Electoral Brandenburg. It is noticeable that the Kurmark, so created, nominally included all the lands between Elbe and Oder, as well as the Altmark to the west, but did not include the New March beyond the Oder — most probably because that New March had been pawned to the Teutonic Order (in 1402). Antiquarians of the seventeenth century, anticipating TheHohen. the piety and ignoring the competitive criticism of German Dryasdusts, found the origin of the Hohen- zollem House in the noble House of Colonna, three centuries at least before the days of Charles the Great. And Elector Albert Achilles justified his classical name and Renaissance sympathies when he sought the Father of his House amid the ruins of burning Troy and traced to a fugitive companion of Aeneas, the founder of Rome, the blending of Greek blood with Roman nobility. But if the verifiable is our test, the stronghold of , ZoUern, on the southern face of the Rauhe Alp in Suabia, was the cradle of the family, and we have evidence of Counts of ZoUern in 1061, to whom it was easy (apparently in 1 1 70) to attach the epithet of High — hence Hohenzollern. It is remarkable that in this area of South-west Germany — the sun-warmed angle made by the upper Danube and the upper Rhine — should lie the first homes of three of Germany's greatest dynasties, Stauffen of the Hohenstauflen, Habsburg, and 44 The Evolution of Prussia HohenzoUern, all destined to wear imperial crowns, but only one to be the founder of a purely German state. From their Suabian stronghold the Counts of Zollern spread out in collateral branches between Tubingen and the lake of Constance, and in 1 192 we find Count Frederick established by Frederick Barbarossa as Burgrave of Nuremberg in Franconia. His younger son retained the Suabian territories and founded the Suabian branch of the House,^ while the elder adhered to Nuremberg, to which by a happy marriage Baireuth was added (1248), while the Burgraviate was made hereditary in his family (1273). Culmbach may have fallen in earlier, but in 1332 Ansbach (Onolzbach) and in 1341 Plassenburg were acquired, and in 1363 the Burgrave was raised, for services to the Emperor, to the rank of an imperial prince (Reichsfiirst). The division of this expanding principality into the two parts of Ansbach and Baireuth was temporarily ended by Burgrave Frederick VI, to whom in 141 1 the Emperor Sigismund for his assistance in winning the imperial crown, more particularly for the solid advance of money, pledged the vicar-generalship of the harassed and impoverished March of Brandenburg. Four years later, in 1415, the bargain was terminated by the impecunious Emperor. Frederick was given the full electoral dignity, and with the formal investiture on April 17, 1417, the sixth Burgrave of Nuremberg steps into history as Frederick I, first HohenzoUern Elector of Brandenburg. The year 141 1 was therefore a critical date both in ^ See note A at the end of the chapter. The Origins of Brandenburg-Prussia 45 the annals of Brandenburg and of the HohenzoUerns. It was, curiously enough, no less critical in the annals, of Prussia with which the new elector had no connexion, but from which, a century later, his descendants were to inherit, as he had inherited in Brandenburg, the work and achievements of Teutonic pioneers. Prussia, like Brandenburg, had already for three hundred years been a field of Germanic colonization, absorption and Chris- tianization. The sandy plain between the Vistula and the Pregel, silted on its seaside by the Baltic into numerous Haffs, or estuaries, blocked by stretches of trackless forests and pitted by innumerable marshes and lakes, was the home of a pagan Slavonic tribe — the Prussians — which had much in common with the Lithuanians who spread over the plain beyond the Niemen and the Bug. Isolated by nature, savage and stubborn by race, they saw in the Dane who fared over the sea for amber, in the Pomeranian to the west and the Pole to the south, a common foe who would rob them of their independence and their primitive heathendom. Neither missionaries, such as the martyr St. Adalbert (997), nor the Cistercian monk Christian from Oliva, near Danzig, nor a papal crusade (1228), had succeeded in making any lasting impression. Doubtless the Pole in time would absorb this inhospitable land, which would bring him to the shores of the Baltic and confer control of the great artery, the Vistula, round which the Polish kingdom was built up, but if Prussia was to be won for the German branch of the Catholic Church and for German civihza- tion the sword must first cut the way through the forests ; and the foundation by a Bishop of Riga of the 46 The Evolution of Prussia The Teu- tonic Order. Order of the Sword, which achieved the conversion of Livonia, pointed a plain moral. To the Teutonic Order of knights, established in 1190, belonged the honour of anticipating and frustrating Polish ambitions and of establishing in a conquered and converted Prussia an ecclesiastical and military state of a unique type. The High Master of the Order, Hermann von Salza, a Prince of the Empire, whose ambitions had the sweep of the imperial black eagle, which he added to the black cross of the Order, listened to the cry that came from the Polish fief of Culmland (1226), the one corner of the land that had been effectively wrested by German priests from heathendom, and diverted the energies of the knights, whose central seat was at Acre, to the forests and marshes of Prussia. He had secured alike from Emperor and from Pope the pledge that the Order should be invested with all the lands won to Christianity and German civilization. In 123 1 the knights set foot in Prussia, and a fierce struggle began which lasted for a century, and in which the resistance of the Prussian was finally broken. The foundation of Konigsberg in 1255, the removal of the head-quarters of the Order from Venice to Marienburg (1309) — the fortress of their Divine patroness — the absorption of Pomerellen and the cul- minating acquisition of Danzig (13 11), are eloquent of the grip with which the Teutonic knights held what the sword had given them. Prussia in If the fourteenth century had witnessed the decay teenthcen '"'^ Brandenburg it was the golden age of the Teutonic tury. knights in Prussia. Behind the military crusader had pressed the German colonist and the German trader, no The Origins of Brandenburg-Prussia 47 less anxious than the German priest to make good what the strong hand of the High Master, enthroned at Marienburg, could guarantee. The Order carved out bishoprics with papal approval, and made them subject to the authority of the High Master ; it founded monas- teries and convents and schools subject to its discipline; it established towns where, under the supremacy of its chief, trade was promoted and municipal rights were granted to the burghers ; it allied itself to the Hanseatic League, and thereby made itself a commercial and maritime power along the shores of the Baltic ; it offered to the chivalry of all nations a field of adventure and fame, no less than of prowess for the greater glory of God and His Church. The English Henry of Derby was one of the many whose sword had flashed in the fabled ' land of spruce '. But, solid and memorable as were these achieve- ments, there were two things which the Teutonic Order could not secure. They could not keep the wonderful combination of the military spirit and the religious ideal at the flaming purity which had brought them from Culmland to Memel, Konigsberg, Marienburg, and Danzig. They had won Prussia for a German Church and a German civilization, but they could not check or extinguish Polish nationalism which lay all round them. The renascence of the Polish kingdom under the JageUon dynasty meant that Poland would challenge the title of the Teutonic Order to be masters in a land that shut the Pole from the Baltic. The First Peace of Thorn (141 1) that followed the crushing and indisputable Polish victory at Tannenberg (1410) was delusive. The Order was confirmed in its territories, save Samogitia. In reality The Origins of Brandenburg-Prussia 49 Tannenberg had sounded the knell of its prosperity and power. What it could not hold by the sword it was not likely it would hold by the pen. Victorious Poland bided its time, and time was against a declining Order. The new elector of Brandenburg, Frederick I, scholar, Branden- soldier, and administrator, doubtless heard of these Fredericklj happenings and reflected on them, for to a prince and an elector, in Jiagranti Caesaris gratia the defeat of the Teutonic knights, whose fame, splendour, and authority filled the Europe of the west, raised obstinate questionings ; but his immediate task was how to secure and hold the electorate with which he had been invested. The land had suffered terribly from the devastations of the Hussite soldiery, and the native nobility for two generations had given full rein to their irrepressible turbulence and determination to suffer no law but their anarchic right to do as they pleased. The substitution of a strong master, no mere soldier of fortune, but a prince, with the solid resources of Baireuth, Ansbach, and Nuremberg at his disposal, for the shadowy and intermittent power of impe- cunious imperial lieutenants from Bohemia or Moravia, was not to be tolerated without violent resistance. ' It might rain electors on the March,' it was said, but that would make no difference, and Quitzows, Rochows, Putlitzes, and Holtzendorfs jeered at the rule of ' a toy from Nuremberg '. But ' the toy from Nuremberg ' was no less in earnest. , He isolated the rebels from their allies * and his greedy neighbours — the Archbishop of Magdeburg, the Dukes of Saxony and Pomerania ; he placed the towns under his protection and confirmed their privileges, and, most effective of all, he took the field, defeated the 1832 n 50 The Evolution of Prussia rebels, and battered down their fortresses and strongholds. It was a contest of endurance, and force was on the side of the elector — force with the aid of nascent science. We read that Frederick brought the new invention of cannon and gunpowder into the struggle, and tradition, always picturesque, handed to the next generation the marvels of ' Heavy Peg ', the big gun which had shattered the chief castles of the Quitzows at Freisack. In four years, by 1 42 1, the elector could feel that he was really master in his new house. But, apart from this, his main activities were elsewhere. Baireuth and Nuremberg were his home — ^he was a Franconian and South German, who had not foreseen that in the bleaker north lay the fortunes of his line, and that the electoral dominions were more important than the plectoral dignity. His soldiership is evinced by the part he played in the Hussite wars ; his ambitions are revealed by his desire to acquire Saxony as well as Brandenburg, and his readiness to be a candidate for the imperial crown — the first but not the last occasion on which HohenzoUern came into conflict with Habsburg — and his horoscope of the future, as well as his share iri the prevailing vice of German princes, the partition of his territories, are defined in his will, accepted in 1438 by a Diet of the estates at Tangermiinde. The authenticity of the document is not unimpeachable, and a later genera- tion may have invented or exaggerated the unselfishness of the co-heir in refusing to execute all its provisions, but the fact remains that Baireuth and the Franconian lands went to the elder son John, called ' The Alchemist ' from his interest in chemistry, while the electoral dominion, clearly considered secondary in importance, The Origins of Brandenhurg-Pynssia 51 fell to the second son Frederick II. The Hohenzollern possessions were thus split in two with every prospect of further subdivision in the future. Between 1440, the year of Frederick's death, and 1619, The when the period of territorial formation reaches a well- l^^^^^g. marked stage, nine electors ruled in Brandenburg. They were, almost without exception, men of sound capacity, eminently practical, patient, and industrious, but no single one of them reached the first rank in German still less European history. Germany, on Frederick's death, was on the eve of the Renaissance, and the Reformation, with its intellectual and economic dislocation, its profound and permanent revolution of the political conditions, was at hand. The year of Frederick's death saw Frederick III of the Habsburg line elected to ti = imperial crown, and with that election, in which the Hohenzollern elector had concurred, began the predominance of the House of Austria. The empire virtually became an hereditary monarchy for three centuries in the Habsburg dynasty. The heroic or decisive personalities in the Germany of Erasmus, Luther, Charles V, and Maurice of Saxony are to be found elsewhere than in Brandenburg, and neither the Hohenzollern electors nor their dominions can be proved to have contributed the capital formative forces that moulded thought or action between the days of Hus and the opening of the Thirty Years' War. It is not, indeed, until the Great Elector that Brandenburg produces a really Great man. The interest and significance of this lengthy tract in Branden- Brandenburg history are clearly not to be found in a jejune ^^^ ^^^' epitome of facts, arranged in chronological blocks labelled 1618. D 2 52 The Evolution of Prussia with an elector's name, but in summarizing and estimating the character and variety of the elements that, with the help of time, were built into a principality of the second or third rank. The dynastic thread unmistakably runs through this slow evolution. Not once, but repeatedly, a critical turn which must be carefuUy noted is given by the personal policy of the ruler, and as we study this century and a half the impressive feature is not the brilliance of this or that elector, but the fidelity to attainable ends, the continuity of effort, and the steady growth of ambition in a succession of rulers, politically mediocre. The dan- In 1440 Brandenburg was confronted with two very Brniden- ^^^^ dangers, more markedly perhaps than most German burg. principalities : the danger of partition from wit^n, which wrecked the promising beginnings of so many German ruling families ; the pressure of powerful and hungry neighbours from without. The danger of parti- tion was emphasized in the fifteenth century by the greater importance attached at first to the Franconian possessions, compared with the electorate ; and as effective political union between Baireuth, Nurem- berg, and Brandenburg was difficult, if not impossible, the first condition of a real future for Brandenburg lay in its definitive severance from the south, and in the establishment of rulers with a monopoly of interest in an indivisible principality between Elbe and Oder. An electorate regarded simply as an appanage or an appendage to Baireuth would either dwindle, or be carved into dynastic fragments, and perhaps be finally abandoned. This danger was peremptorily averted by The Origins of Brandenhurg-Prussia 53 the notable Dispositio Achillea (1473) made by Elector The Dis- Albert Achilles (1471-86). By this instrument the ^^chilka principle of primogeniture was introduced into both 1473. the Franconian and Brandenburg territories. The Kurmark was to pass undivided to the eldest son, and alienation was forbidden. Ansbach and Baireuth were separated from Brandenburg, and divided into two, and not more than two, principalities, in each of which the principle of primogeniture was ordained. In default of male issue to any two of the rulers of the March, Ansbach, or Baireuth, the heir to the third was to unite all three under his rule. By assigning the electorate to his eldest son, and Ansbach and Baireuth to the younger sons. Elector Albert Achilles clearly indicated the reversal of his father's preference for Franconia. Brandenburg was thereby made the central possession of the House to the maintenance of which all else was secondary, and the main line was converted by this stroke of the testamentary pen into a northern dynasty whose future lay in lands watered not by the Main, but by the Elbe, the Spree, and the Oder. It was a momentous act, the full significance of which could not be seen in 1473 . But even if the Dispositio Achillea was not strictly maintained, its chief provision, the integrity of the electoral March, was loyally observed, and The Agreement of Gera (1598) confirmed and extended The Agree- its principles. Once again primogeniture and inalienability ^^"'^ °' „ were declared to be ' House Law ' of Kur-Brandenburg. Ansbach and Baireuth were to be the appanages of cadet lines and the reversionary rights of the Dispositio Achillea were repeated.'- The further provision that the ^ See note B at the end of this chapter. 54 The Evolution of Prussia duchy of Prussia, if it fell in, was to be indissolubly attached to the electorate and subject to the same inalienability, shows that the lesson of territorial integrity had been fully mastered. Henceforward, disaster from without alone would mutilate or diminish the elector's dominions. The HohenzoUerns had safeguarded them- selves against marital or parental weakness — as insidious a danger as political folly, and the more likely to occur because human nature is constant and human wisdom intermittent in its action. They had implicitly laid down an identification between the ruler and his territories. The elector was Brandenburg — he hoped in 1598 to be Brandenburg-Prussia. We shall see that steps were also being cautiously taken to ensure that Brandenburg was the elector. Territorial The Second danger lay in the geographical configuration and situation. The electorate had no adequate frontiers. The Altmark lay west of the Elbe and its boundaries were purely political and arbitrary. Even if the Oder to the east provided a frontier, the existence of the New March pawned in 1402 forbade acquiescence in the Oder line. Due south lay Saxony, Lusatia, and Silesia, due north Mecklenburg and North-East Pomerania and Stettin — the frontiers of which were also political and arbitrary. Brandenburg could not stand still in a world of ringing changes, when faiths were decaying and being reborn, ecclesiastical domains dissolving into the secular arm, princely houses rising and falling in the clash of wars of religion. She must either absorb her neighbours or her neighbours would absorb her. And for inland states penetrated by two such great rivers as Elbe and Oder The Origins of Brandenburg-Prussia 55 there is always the call of the sea. To push down the Elbe and the Oder, to secure the territory between them, to get a footing on salt water — ^what more natural ? For the rivers were roads and river-gates meant tariffs, tolls, towns with fat burghers, traders and the traders' friends across the seas. Expansion might be won in a single generation by big strokes and the great captain's throw of the iron dice, or it might be won in a series of genera- tions by persistent and successive nibbling, aided by the Heritage-Fraternities (Erbverbruderungen) which were the bills of exchange in the diplomatic currency of ambitious but timid German princes. The HohenzoUern Electors were not great captains nor great gamblers, even in the Germany of Charles V and Ferdinand I, which offered such a rare temptation and such unique chances to the gambling or the strokes of genius. They seemed to have taken the measure of their own capacity. They nibbled and they negotiated. They also married or gave in marriage, with prudence and foresight, and they won the reward of nibbling, negotiating, and marrying in the right way. The record of acquisition is prosaic but continuous. Acquisi- Elector Frederick II added Lychen and Himmelpfort territories. (1442), Kottbus and Peitz (144S), Wernigerode (1449), and redeemed the New March from the Teutonic Order in 1455. Elector Albert Achilles acquired Schwedt, Locknitz and Vierraden (1472), Garz (1479), Krossen, Ziillichau, Sommerfeld and Bobersberg (1482) ; Elector John Cicero added Zossen (1490) ; Joachim I Ruppin (1524), Joachim II the secularized bishoprics of Branden- ' burg, Havelberg and Lebus (1548), and John George 56 The Evolution of Prussia Buskow and Storkow (1571)- To this list must be added three 'Heritage-Fraternities '—the first (in 1442), secured a right of succession in Mecklenburg, the second (Con- vention of Grimnitz in 1529, ratified afresh in 1571) with Pomerania b/ which, failing heirs to the ducal Hne, Kur- Brandenburg was to inherit all Pomerania, with a similar reversion to Pomerania if heirs failed to Branden- burg. This instrument, reviving the aspirations of the Ascanian Margraves, became the basis of Prussian claims on Pomerania. The third (dating from 1537) was with the Duke of Liegnitz founding a similar claim to Liegnitz, Wohlau, and Brieg in Silesia. Though it was cancelled by the Emperor Ferdinand I, the validity of the cancellation was strenuously denied by the Branden- burg electors. Two hundred years later Frederick II revived the musty claim and skilfully coupled it with equally musty and still more dubious pretensions to Jagerndorf, which in 1524 had been purchased by the Ansbach Margraves, and had been forfeited in 1620. Elector To Elector John Sigismund (1608-19) fell the honour sLismund. °^ extending his dominions in lands both to the east and to the west, and thereby altered the whole outlook of the Hohenzollern rulers. Both in the case of Prussia and in the complicated dispute over the succession to Cleves-Jiilich John Sigismund reaped what his prede- cessors had so patiently sown and fostered. The absence of conquest by the sword is a remarkable feature of the first two centuries of Brandenburg expansion. Prussia, After the First Peace of Thorn the Order of Teutonic ^'^"■^^"''knights fell on evil days. The towns, headed by Danzig, revolted from its authority and placed themselves under The Origins of Brandenburg-Prussia 57 the crown of Poland, and the High Master was driven from Marienburg. A second Tannenberg was not necessary to compel the acceptance of the Second or Perpetual Peace of Thorn (1466), whose provisions settled the fate of Prussia for three centuries. The land was divided into two parts. The eastern half, with Konigsberg, was conceded as a Polish fief to the Teutonic Order ; the western half, called Royal Prussia, which included Danzig, Elbing, Marienburg, Culmland and the bishopric of Ermeland, was absorbed into the kingdom of Poland, which thus secured the whole of the lower Vistula, from Thorn to its mouth, and an incomparable foothold on the Baltic. It was a melancholy end to the dreams of Hermann von Salza, and the heroic souls of the fourteenth century. The best half of what German soldier, priest, missionary and trader had won had passed to the Pole, who thrust a solid wedge of Slav territory between the eastern half, nominally stiU German, and the Germany of the basin of the Oder. Over the glories of Marienburg, the wealth of Danzig, and the fortress of Thorn, guarding the superb sweep of the Vistula, no longer flew the black cross with the imperial eagle, and if East Prussia, held by a moribund order, was still to be saved for the German tongue it must be by aid from without, not by the ebbing strength within. A High Master, elected from some princely house, might perhaps furnish such aid. It is a tribute to the position of the Hohenzollerns that in 151 1 Albert, Margrave of Ansbach, and a nephew through his mother to King Sigismund of Poland, was chosen to sit in the chair of Hermann von Salza. 58 The Evolution of Prussia The If High Master Albert was expected to save the Teutonic Hohen-' Order and East Prussia from Polish absorption he suc- zoUems i • i and ceeded in the latter but not in the former, and m the most Prussia, surprising way. Self-interest bade him shake ofl Polish suzerainty ; the Pope bade him meet the just criticism of Luther and the Lutherans and reform the decadent Order. Albert failed to win independence from the Polish king, but he met the criticism of Luther by adopting Luther's advice to take a wife, secularize the Order, and turn its lands into a Lutheranized and lay duchy. In 1525 he married a daughter of the king of Denmark, and was invested by the king of Poland with the secularized duchy of East Prussia. Here, indeed, was a new HohenzoUern estate, and his relatives in Kur- Brandenburg were quick to see their chance. In 1569, after the death of Duke Albert, Elector Joachim II succeeded in securing co-infeoflment (Mitbelehnung) for himself and his heirs during the minority of the young Duke Albert Frederick. To make assurance doubly sure the elector married one sister, and his son, Elector John Sigismund, another sister of the duke, whose imbecility rapidly developed into insanity. In 1605 Elector Joachim became regent, and finally (in 1618), after much bargain- ing with Poland, Elector John Sigismund was invested with the duchy, under Polish suzerainty. At once the compact of Gera became operative, and East Prussia was indissolubly united with the electorate. It was an unwilling union on the side of Prussia. The new elector- duke was a Calvinist, hateful therefore to the Lutherans and to the Roman Catholics. The Prussian nobility, like the Brandenburg Junkertum of the fifteenth century, The Origins of Brandenburg-Prussia 59 did not relish the idea of a new and real master. With the Hohenzollerns the Prussians had a slender personal link in an apostate duke and his insane son, but with Electoral Brandenburg they had nothing in common. It was a foreign dynasty, alien in religion, institutions, and ideas. The elector would govern them from Berlin and would drag them from their isolation in the north-east corner of Europe into the vortex of German politics. They were, therefore, prepared to resist, with the aid of Poland, and resist they did. For many a long day the hold of the electors on the duchy was extremely pre- carious, and amid such inauspicious beginnings what was to prove the most loyal and docile of Hohenzollern possessions, the core and flower of Hohenzollern autocracy, passed under electoral rule. Elector John Sigismund, by his death in 1619, was The spared a peck of troubles, some of which he had ^v^ unnecessarily made for himself. He bequeathed to succession, his heir a complicated dispute, which involved valuable territories on the Rhine. The Cleves-Jiilich-Berg suc- cession question is a formidable rival to the Schleswig- Holstein question four centuries later in its genealogical conundrums, the number of the claimants, the strategic value of the territories in dispute, the fruitless appeals to an unascertainable pubhc law, the list of un- observed or violated agreements, the gravity of the European issue at stake, the inexhaustible elasticity of conscience in every one concerned, and the final settle- ment by the sword. The ducal territories of Cleves, Jiilich, Mark, Ravensberg, Ravenstein, and Berg, lay in a rich industrial ring round the lower Rhine where it 6o The Evolution of Prussia crosses into the territories of the United Netherlands. Its position, therefore, affected not only the Dutch, but the Spanish Habsburgs, the Bourbon monarchy, and North-west Germany, and gave the dukes a miniature but embarrassing ' Wacht am Rhein '. Furthermore the balance of religious power would be upset according as a CathoHc or a Protestant held the territories. Sooner or later dukes who rule in revolutionary crises over territories of prime strategical importance make their contribution to the situation by dying without male heirs, but leaving numerous sisters and aunts with husbands and sons scattered through the ruling houses of Europe. Duke John William of Cleves, who died in 1609, was no exception.'- He left no son, but he had three sisters, and he was himself the son of an imperial Habsburg mother. The main claimants were four : the Emperor because it was a vacant imperial fief, and his aunt had been duchess of Cleves ; Pfalz-Neuburg because he had married sister Anna and she was still living ; the elector of Saxony because of his mother, Sibylla of Cleves; and Elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg. Cleves-Julich. Elector of Saxony = Sibylla Duke William = Mary, dau. of Emp. I Ferdinand I. I \ i 1 Albert Frederick = Mary Eleanor John William Anna Magdalen (D. of E. Prussia) -f- o.s.p. i6og = Pfalz- = Count of I Neuburg Zweibriickei Elector John Sigismund = Anna Wolfgang ' Wilhelm Elector George William 62 The Evolution of Prussia The elector of Brandenburg's claims were certainly strong. The will of the late duke was on his side, and the insane Duke Albert Frederick had not only left him East Prussia, but through his marriage with Mary Eleanor of Cleves his daughter, Anna, John Sigismund's wife, had inherited the claim of the eldest sister of Duke John William to the undivided territories. Mary Eleanor's other daughter had been the wife of John Sigismund's father, so that father and son together represented a double claim. The Hohenzollerns, in short, had barri- caded themselves with titles through the female line, the only legal titles possible under the circumstances, until religion intervened. The elector and Pfalz-Neuburg, the other chief claimant, were Protestants, and both wanted the whole, not a partition nor joint dominion. To secure militant Roman Catholic support Pfalz- Neuburg left the Protestant fold and became a Roman Catholic ; to secure militant Protestant support John Sigismund became a Calvinist, and the Cleves-Jiilich question was transformed and blended (1613) into the mighty issues that shortly became the Thirty Years' War. The treaty of Xanten (1614) simply marked a stage when it provisionally assigned Jiilich and Berg to Pfalz-Neuburg and the remainder to John Sigismund. It was not until 1666, after many vicissitudes, that a final settlement was reached by which Cleves, Mark, and Ravenstein, came into the effective possession of the Great Elector and the Hohenzollerns were actually seated in Rhenish territories. Until that date their title was more one of right than of fact, and the tripartite character of Brandenburg-Prussia existed on paper and on the map rather than in reahty. The Origins of Brandenburg-Prussia 63 And in 1619 it was more than doub ful wh' her the framework that dynastic policy had I )raized !? ogether was sufficiently strong to stand the .empest weeping from the Baltic to Paris, from Bavaria and Bohemia to the capital of Gustavus Adolphus at Stockholm. Religion, as we have seen, had played no small part in The Re- the personal life and ambitions of the electors, but the fora^ation Reformation of the sixteenth century had also remoulded electorate, the structure and character of the electorate, and proved a new formative force in the life of the Brandenburgers. The advance of the Reformed religion did not, however, come from the electoral court. Joachim I (1499-1535), whose brother was cardinal-archbishop both of Mainz and Magdeburg, held to the old faith and was opposed to the secularization of the Teutonic Order. His successor, Joachim II (1535-6), made no efforts to stem the steady Lutheranization of his electorate, and at first gave political support to the Emperor Charles V. But the feeling of his subjects was too strong, and he 'swung over to the side of Protestant Saxony and Hesse, and after the Peace of Augsburg (1555) carried through a drastic reorganization of his territories. The three episcopal sees — Lebus, Havelberg, and Brandenburg — were secular- ized, and their administration appropriated to the elector, while Lutheranism became the religion both of the court , and the electorate. Furthermore, through his grandson, 1 Joachim Frederick (elector 1598-1608), the administra- tion and reformation of the great see of Magdeburg passed into HohenzoUern hands — constituting a political claim on the territories of the archiepiscopate not forgotten by the Great Elector in 1648. The branches 64 The Evolution of Prussia of the House at Ansbach and Baireuth had much earlier become Jl-otestant*, so that by the end of the sixteenth century alike in Brandenburg, Franconia, and East Prussia the Hohenzollerns were powerful allies of political Protestantism. The subsequent conversion of Elector John Sigismund to Calvinism gave deep offence to the preponderant Lutheranism of Brandenburg and East Prussia, which obstinately refused to follow the lead of their lord. It had, however, one striking result. As Calvinists the electors, after 1608, were in a hopeless minority, and they early learned the necessity and value of toleration. In the making of the Prussian state it is easy to see, but it is difficult to define, measure, or exaggerate the profound influence exercised by the tolerant regime of its rulers. The House of Hohen- zoUern intuitively and empirically at first, but finally as a matter of deliberate poHtical policy and principle of state action, came to stand for the noblest side of Pro- testantism — that truth and the moral conscience are not weakened but strengthened by the free inquiry of man's spirit, that human reason has its rights and duties, that civic loyalty, the authority of the rulers and the duty of service to the state, are compatible with and independent of differences in religious faith. The result The immediate results of the Reformation can be formation ^^'^^'^ i^ three directions. First, Brandenburg had hitherto broadly followed with benefit to itself a policy of co-operation with the Emperor. The House of Habsburg, however, remained Roman Catholic and the avowed champion of the Counter-Reformation. By 1608 it was clear that the struggle for religious supremacy The Origins of Brandenburg-Prussia 65 could not be averted, and that the destinies of Germany and every German principality would be remade by the issue of the tremendous contest which broke out in 1618. In the purely political sphere the electors were confronted with a cruel dilemma. Was it possible to combine loyalty to the Empire with loyalty to Brandenburg ? Secondly, Brandenburg, from its geographical position, could not evade a decision. It was surrounded by Protestant states, and its nearest and most powerful neighbour, Saxony, was politically the most important Lutheran principality in Germany. The Cleves-Jiilich question had plunged the electors into the centre of the European contest : and in Lutheran Prussia they were now a Baltic power, hemmed in by CathoHc Poland, but looking across the sea to an ambitious and Protestant Denmark and a still more ambitious and Protestant Sweden. Was the Baltic to become a Protestant lake ? Elector John Sigismund left the problem and Brandenburg's share in it to his successor. Thirdly, as a purely internal matter, the Reformation had greatly strengthened electoral authority. Secularization and disendowment increased the resources of the elector and removed the concurrent and competi- tive independence of the old Church. Even under the old order the electors had claimed and exercised an authority in the ecclesiastical sphere which had given them a remarkable power both in the bishoprics and in the monastic houses. But, with Lutheranism firmly estab- lished in Church and State, the elector became summus episcopus and concentrated in his hands the supreme administrative and ecclesiastical direction. Ecclesiastical change had therefore worked towards the same result as 1832 E adminiS' tration. 66 The Evolution of Prussia the secular policy of the electors since the memorable struggle of Frederick I with his rebel Junkers. Internal The most noticeable feature of the internal develop- ment during this period is the growth in the adminis- trative rights of the manorial landlord, the steady degra- dation of the peasantry into an economic serfhood, the decline in the local privileges of the towns, and the waning of the power of the estates in the united Landtag or Diet. Theoretically, the estates, which were the represen- tatives of a feudally organized society — nobles, town, and agrarian communities — exercised a concurrent authority with the elector in administration and legislation, and there are repeated examples up to the middle of the sixteenth century of their right and wish to intervene, and to compel the elector to work hand in hand with them. The power of the purse in particular provided a formidable weapon, which gave them a real voice in policy. But the introduction of Roman law by Elector Joachim I (1499-1535), and the foundation at Berlin of a central Electoral Cameral Tribunal {Kur- kammergericht), which created new judicial machinery under the control of the executive, still more the estab- lishment of a council of state (Staatsrat) by Elector Joachim Frederick (1598-1608) — a privy council of nine, co-ordinating the administration, which was intended to be the chief organ both of policy and executive action under the elector's presidency — together with the grow- ing practice of delegating the power of the Diet to a central committee — point to a principle, steadily pursued, of freeing electoral authority from ' parlia- mentary ' control. So important has the creation of the The Origins of Brandenburg-Prussia 67 privy council been considered that some writers have seen in it the origin and nucleus of the modern Prussian centralized administrative bureaucracy. But this is almost certainly an exaggeration. As an organ of delibera- tion and administration the privy council was a substitute for and a rival to the Landtag rather than a centraliza- tion of the executive or an extension of administrative machinery. The electors undertook to govern by and with the advice of their new Staatsrat, and thereby probably intended to shelve and supersede the tiresome interference of a representative Diet. The Staatsrat, then, can be more truly regarded as a preliminary stage which made ' bureaucracy ' possible, but by no means either inevitable or even contemplated in 161 8. It simply made the next stage — the crushing of the estates — easier. So far the authority of the elector was securely based on his position as a feudal and manorial lord. The elector was the largest ' landlord ' in his dominions ; secularization and disen4owment steadily increased his landed property, from the profits of which his electoral or ' state ' income was mainly derived. LUce other mediaeval princes, the elector was expected to ' live on his own ', and his patrimonial and seigneurial rights and jurisdiction were really independent of his rights qua elector. Two points are worth noting in this connexion. The slow establishment of autocracy in the seventeenth century meant that the electors strove to make their political authority correspond with their feudal authority, to become in the ' state ' and over all their subjects what they already were indisputably on their electoral manors E 2 68 The Evolution of Prussia and demesnes, over the agricultural tenants of all classes, the source and organ of power — to become in fact ' Landes- herr ' (lord of the land), ' land ' meaning their political territories as a whole, and not merely a manorial demesne. Secondly, the growing alliance between the nobility and the electors was stimulated by the position of both. The electors necessarily had a profound sympathy with patri- monial jurisdiction ; the nobles in their manors were what the elector was in his ; electors and nobles had, therefore, a common cause, and once the nobles frankly accepted the political overlordship of the elector his strength was their strength. They could work in harmony together for common objects, common principles, and a common conception of life. The nobles became the bulwark of the ' throne ', the ' throne ' the protector of the nobles. A dissolution of the feudal organization of society involved disaster for both. For the elector it meant also the disappearance of two-thirds of his revenue and com- plete dependence on taxation as a voluntary gift, with all the machinery for imposing and collecting it. Hence the, ideal of the electors came to be the government and administration of the whole of their territories as one large, indivisible, and unified estate, to break down every obstacle, whatever its title, that prevented the realization of this ideal, and to grade and maintain society in classes, carefully correlated to the authority and rights of the supreme ' Landesherr ', and thereby to establish a com- plete polity, self-contained and a model of its kind. Such an ideal obviously implied direct personal government ; but it also demanded efficiency. It could only be brought into existence gradually, and if the rulers in succession The Origins of Brandenhurg-Prussia 69 proved equal to their task. As early as 1618 incom- petence in the elector's chair might mean disaster. So far the electors had proved competent. The seven- teenth century was to be the touchstone of the dynasty. But the whole situation was governed by the character of the territorial state which 1618 saw completed. Both Brandenburg and East Prussia were essentially agricul- tural domains, and poor agricultural domains. Compared with the rich centre and south of Germany they were backward in development, civilization, and industrial life. Soil, climate, forests, marshes, demanded of the inhabitants, scanty in number, a fierce and unending struggle with obstinate conditions. In the evolution of the Brandenburg-Prussian type and character it is difficult to disentangle or allot the respective shares of race and environment. Generalization is fatally easy, but as difficult to refute as to verify. German and Wend, Prussian, Slav, Lett were blended together ; immigration was continuous, and on to the original blend were grafted Dutch, Huguenot, and Protestant from the south, even Scandinavian and Finn. The gospel of work, discipline, and efficiency was burnt into the souls and fibres of this racial amalgam by sun, wind, mist, and a bitter soil, before that gospel became a state policy imposed in the interests of the community. We can trace in the evolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the slow and expanding consciousness of a relentless belief, alike in the electors and their subjects, noble or serf — that they were of the North northy, that they could make the North and the North could make them. German they might be, Protestant they might be, but they were first and 70 The Evolution of Prussia foremost Prussians. History, nature, and God had made them different from other German races and German states. Instinct stiffened into a tribal consciousness ; the tribal consciousness took root as a racial memory and tradition, and became the faith and inspiration of a nation. Success added the final element — the conviction of superiority. The alliance of electors and nobility, with common prejudices, superstitions, and convictions, made indeed the political framework of Brandenburg- Prussia. But it achieved a still more enduring result. It made the Prussian soul. Note A. The Suabian branch was definitely separated from the Franconian in 1227, and in 1529 acquired the countships of Sigma- ringen and Vohringen, which in 1605 split into the two divisions of HohenzoUern-Hechingen and HohenzoUern-Sigmaringen, raised to the rank of princedoms of the Empire in 1623 and 1638 respectively. Finally in 1849 both principalities were ceded to the King of Prussia, the status of younger sons of the Royal House being granted to the princes. Note B. From the Dispositio Achillea and the Agreement of Gera sprang the elder and younger Culmbach lines of the HohenzoUern house. In i486 Ansbach went to Frederick and Baireuth to Sigismund, the younger sons of Elector Albert Achilles. In 1495 Frederick inherited Ansbach and founded the elder Culmbach line, which died out in 1603. Elector John George then settled Baireuth on his son Christian, and Ansbach on his son Joachim Ernest, who became the founders of the younger Culmbach line. In 1769 the Margraves of Baireuth died out, and Baireuth was united with Ansbach. The Baireuth-Ansbach line died out in 1806. But by a previous arrange- ment in 1791 Frederick Wi^am III incorporated Ansbach and Baireuth with the kingdom of Prussia. Both were lost in 1806-7. They now form part of the modern kingdom of Bavaria. CHAPTER III BRANDENBURG-PRUSSIA FROM 1618 TO 1740 The second great chapter of Brandenburg-Prussian Prussia history commences with the Thirty Years' War in 1618, thesecond and ends with the accession of Frederick the Great in 1740. As a clearly defined stage in the evolution of the modern kingdom of Prussia, this epoch has a recognizable and well-marked character. For it is the period in which Brandenburg-Prussia became the most important principality in northern Germany, won its way into the European state-system, and defined and consolidated the features of her polity which by 1740 combined to make her a state sut generis. Five charac- teristics stand out in prominent relief against the crowded and complicated details of these 120 years : the establishment of the personal autocracy of the ruler ; the extension (at the expense of German neighbours and rivals) of the territories possessed in 1618 ; the conversion of the electorate into a kingdom ; the foundation of a stand- ing army of remarkable strength in proportion to the area of the state and the size of its population ; and the parallel foundation of a centraHzed and highly efficient civil ad- ministration, which like the army was under the supreme and irresponsible direction of the Prussian sovereign. In 1618 Brandenburg- Prussia was a loosely knit and imper- fectly amalgamated principality, the authority of whose Brandenburg-Prussia, 1618-1740 73 ruler was disputed and shared by the nobles, the estates and the privileged corporations, honeycombed by religious dissidence and warring creeds, without an army or the requisite organs of a unified state life. In 1740 the kingdom of Prussia, though not yet geographically com- pact, was a unity, strong, well administered, and (as the sequel proved) surprisingly well equipped for a further advance. No other German principality in these critical hundred and twenty years made a progress comparable to that of Prussia. In 161 8 Berhn could not compete with Dresden, Heidelberg, and Munich as centres of political activity and moral weight in German and European life, but in 1740 the new sovereign who inherited the fruits of his predecessors' labours dared to challenge the Habsburg power. Elector George William (1618-40), the successor to Elector John Sigismund, had no part in this remarkable progress, ^^l^ Frederick the Great, who searched the annals of his 1618-40. House for the lessons of statecraft, and was as severe on incompetence in a Hohenzollern as on a mediocre general or a dishonest Landrat, pronounced him ' utterly unfit to rule '. Elector George William was a pleasant, pious, weU-intentioned young man, with a Teutonic appetite for meat and drink, a third-rate brain, and fourth-rate moral power. He would have made an average Junker in any part of his own dominions, or a harmless member of his great-grandson's ' Tobacco-ParHament '. Our Charles II might have said of him quite as truly as of George of Den- mark, ' I have tried him drunk and I have tried him sober. Either way there is nothing in him.' His ruling passion, the chase, seems like that of Louis XVI to have been 74 The Evolution of Prussia singularly whetted by revolution, and a cruel fate plunged him during the whole of his ' reign ' in the most cata- strophic upheaval that Germany had yet endured^ During the whirlwinds of the Thirty Years' War — the epoch of Richelieu, Gustavus Adolphus, Maximilian of Bavaria, and Wallenstein — he endeavoured to evade decisions, himself a Calvinist ruling over Lutheran Bran- denburg and East Prussia with a chief minister, Schwar- zenberg, who was a Catholic and the champion of the House of Austria. His brother-in-law, Gustavus Adol- phus, urged on him the necessity of ' masculine counsels ' {mascula concilia}, but George William's worst defect was not so much indecision of mind as his failure to see the necessity for decision and the absence of a mind to make up. Two such electors, and Prussia would have ceased to provide anything but parochial history. The issues For Brandenburg the world struggle that broke out in ^\ji„ 1618 involved two supreme issues. 'Was the House of Years' Austria, directing the Counter-Reformation, to smash political Protestantism in Germany and estabUsh a reno- vated and military empire from Stralsund to the passes of the Alps on the basis of a renovated Catholicism and a united Catholic league of German states ? 2Was the dominion of the Baltic Sea {dominium maris Baltict) to pass into Catholic hands, and the Baltic, and with it northern Germany, to be controlled by the northern Catholic Powers with Poland at their head f Each spelled ruin for Brandenburg as a Protestant and pohtical electorate of the Empire. An unscrupulous genius at Berlin, steering in the murky night by the clear and lonely star of HohenzoUern self-interest, might have sold Brandenburg-Prussia, 1618-1740 75 his alliance from phase to phase on the highest terms to the highest bidder — Catholic or Protestant, Habsburg, Wittelsbach, Bourbon, or Vasa — and emerged, bleeding but triumphant, with Pomerania, Mecklenburg, and West Prussia hammered by war into the electoral dominions. Frederick the Great would have achieved no less ; and what the Great Elector accomplished with emaciated resources was not beyond the power of George William from 1618 to 1630. But had a Gustavus Adolphus or a Cromwell been ruling in BerHn, obedient to the in- spiration that Brandenburg meant Protestantism and Protestantism Brandenburg, and the consciousness that the Divine Taskmaster in His inscrutable Providence had imposed this wonderful mission on His servant the elector to save the Truth by making a state, German Protestantism might have been welded together with a Protestant Baltic at its back, Lutheran and Calvinist crushed into unity, and the Protestant primacy wrested from the ineffective ' Winter- King ' at Heidelberg and the beery and somnolent Saxon elector at Dresden. The Thirty Years' War and the Revolution of 1848 have this in common. In each case the old Germany had coUapsed ; in the mighty moral and intellectual revolution that had wrought the collapse the Time-Spirit offered a unique opportunity. In each case, from the lack of the higher spiri- tual and poHtical vision, and from the moral cowardice that we call indecision, the Hohenzollern ruler failed. In each case the great refusal drove the next generation tomake good the failure by building in alliance with a rancid reaction. From 1619 to 163 1 Elector George William took refuge Neutrality, in a policy of neutrality that meant nuUity. He saw the ' '9"3i- 7^ The Evolution of Prussia Elector Palatine crushed in Bohemia, driven from the Palatinate, his electoral dignity taken away and given to Bavaria, himself obliged to acquiesce in a Dutch occupa- tion of Cleves (1624). He negotiated with Denmark and with Sweden, and with Vienna, only to witness the King of Denmark struck down at Lutter, and Mansfeld crushed at Dessau (1626), while the Swedes seized Pillau and Memel, ' the eyes of the Baltic,' and Danes, West- phalians, and Imperialists marched across the Altmark ravaging and burning. WaUenstein pushed north to secure Mecklenburg for himself, and compelled the elector to ' ransom ' his neutrality at a heavy cost — Mecklenburg, on the reversion of which the Hohenzollerns had the strongest of legal claims. The Edict of Restitution (1629) threatened to extirpate the Calvinists and to undo the result of the Reformation in Brandenburg. Between alliance with the victorious Imperialists and alliance with his brother-in-law the King of Sweden, freed from the Polish War, and now ready to strike hard for Protestantism in Germany, there was no middle course ; but George William dallied and haggled, and it was not until Magdeburg had fallen to Tilly and the Swedish guns were trained on Berlin that Brandenburg-Prussia entered the Swedish alliance (June 21, 1631). The Schwarzenberg temporarily retired, and for four uneasy Swedish years the elector was a Swedish ally, more anxious alliance, •' -' ' 1631-5 ; apparently to save Pomerania from Sweden than Branden- with"^^^ burg from the Imperialists. The death of Gustavus 'Austria', Adolphus at Liitzen (1632), and Swedish reverses in the south, enabled him to escape" from his fetters and accept Brandenburg-Prussia, 1618-1740 77 die Peace of Prague (August 8, 1635), which led to a rupture with Sweden. From 1636 to his death the elector, under the influence of Schwarzenberg, restored to power, was the ally of the House of Austria. In 1637 the ducal line in Pomerania died out, and George William claimed the inheritance, in virtue of the Heritage- Fraternity of 1529. Sweden refused to recognize the claim. Authorized by the Emperor to recover it by force, the elector, with such imperial help as he could buy or conjure, made three efforts which ended in dismal failure. For three years Brandenburg was the cockpit of the northern combatants, invaded and plundered by friend and foe, by Saxon, Swede, and Imperialist from the south. Cleves was threatened with mihtary execution by the Dutch for the non-payment of their occupation and services. The estates of East Prussia were on the verge of revolt. To the elector, driven to take refuge in Konigs- berg, death brought release on December I, 1640. His successor. Elector Frederick WUliam, known, both The Great in his own day and since, as the Great Elector, was a lad jg^o'^g of twenty, whose mother was Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, a granddaughter of William of Orange, ' The Silent '. The forty-eight years of his rule are decisive in the history of Brandenburg-Prussia, which Frederick the Great summed up with truthful brevity, ' Celui-ci a fait de grandes choses.' His training, as M. Waddington aptly remarks, had given him no experi- ence of affairs, but much experience of men and of life. Till fourteen he was educated in the electorate, and then spent four years with his relatives in Holland — a true centre of European diplomacy and school of statecraft — 7^ The Evolution of Prussia and under such leaders as Frederick Henry and John Maurice of Orange fitted to form his mind and brace his character. Refused in 1638 the administration of Cleves, he spent the next two years at Konigsberg, an impotent witness of failure and humiliation. Nature had endowed him with a robust physique, an immense industry, a strong brain, iron will, and violent temper, which he did little to control. He stands in his portraits a princely figure, with something of intellectual distinction but much more of force in the deep blue eyes, firm mouth, and powerful jaw. It is the face of a man who has ^wrestled with life and wrenched its lessons to serve a masterful purpose. He brought to his task an adequate technique, for he knew French, Latin, and Polish. He was a learner in 1640, and he remained a learner to the end. The ten years that preceded 1640 and the forty which followed were stern teachers. Frederick William was a pious Calvinist, but facts, as he interpreted them, enforced the conclusion that in a world demoralized by a devastating war success would come to the man who took that world as he found it, met force with force, guile with guile. Brandenburg had been ruined because its rulers had forgotten that foes were pitiless and friends selfish. The sum of statecraft lay in doing to others what they would do to you, in attaining the means to do it and to prevent them from doing it. The interest of the state and of the ruler were one — to achieve power, for power meant independence, security, and peace. Diplomacy, treaties, wars were the statecraftsman's weapons behind which lay the force of the state ; and the ruler, to do his Brandenhurg-Prussia, 1618-1740 79 duty, must be an uncontrolled director of that force. The obstacles to strength within must be broken as effectually as the foes and rivals without. In practical terms that meant that Brandenburg-Prussia must have a single will and a single master, an army, a revenue, and an obedient executive. Foreign affairs were a continuous problem for forty- Foreign eight strenuous years. Frederick William had grown to ig-o^gg. manhood with strong principles — he hated and feared and desired to punish all who had wronged, as he read it, Brandenburg-Prussia — the House of Austria and the Catholics, the Spaniard, the Swede, the Pole, and the German rival. But he was always ready to mask his feelings, to accept an ally for what he was worth, and to bow, unconvinced, to the inevitable. The diplomatist who cannot make facts and a situation must adapt him- self to them, and in a supple, resourceful, and unflinching foreign policy, his judgement told him, lay the fortunes of his House and state. For the unmapped labyrinth of poUcy he had, and never lost, an infallible compass and an unquenchable lamp — the interest of Prussia. Sacrifice to the interest of Prussia would serve most truly religion, honour, and material prosperity. The first task was to extricate a perishing principaHty The first and achieve peace. Schwarzenberg was probably saved j5^!8~ from dismissal and disgrace by an opportune death (1641), and the young elector kneeled to the King of Poland and received investiture of East Prussia — perhaps with a silent vow that with God's grace the duchy should some day be his and not a gift from the alien Slav at Warsaw. Meanwhile he recruited a military force, and 8o The Evolution of Prussia by adroit manipulation shook himself free of the imperial alliance and concluded an armistice with Sweden (1643-4). The choice of a wife was a part of foreign policy. ' La Grande Mademoiselle', Anne Marie of Orleans, was French and a Catholic ; Queen Christina of Sweden, no less gifted and masterful than himself, would have subjugated Berlin and Konigsberg to Stockholm. The young elector found his electress in Louisa Henrietta, eldest daughter of Frederick Henry of Orange, and thereby cemented his connexion with a brilliant House and a powerful Protestant state (1646). Her memory survives to-day in Oranienburg, her favourite chateau, near Berlin, as does that of her successor, the elector's second wife, Dorothea of Holstein-Gliicksburg, in the Dorotheen-Stadt and the famous Unter den Linden which &he planted. The war had worn itself out. In the negotiations that led up to the memorable Treaties of Westphalia (Octo- ber 24, 1648) Frederick William battled with aU the weapons at his disposal to secure first the whole of Pomerania, secondly for the Calvinists the political and religious privileges granted in 1555 by the Peace of Augsburg to (Lutheran) Protestants. In this latter he succeeded, and the Elector of Brandenburg by his championship placed himself at the head of the Corpus Evangelicorum and won the leadership of Protestantism in Germany. But of Pomerania he secured only the eastern and poorer half with the bishopric of Cammin, tlie western part with Stettin being assigned to the Swedes. In compensation, he wrested from a reluctant Empire the secularized bishoprics of Halberstadt and Brandenburg-Prussia, 1618-1740 81 Minden, with the reversion of the rich archbishopric of Magdeburg (which was finally taken over in 1681). Con- sidering the elector's position and resources in 1640 these were brilliant gains ; they consolidated and strengthened the central nucleus of his dominions, and are the most convincing proofs of a remarkable recovery and an unexpected skill. In eight years the shattered and despised Brandenburg had emerged the strongest Protes- tant principality of the Empire. Is it surprising that the treaties were regarded as a complete justification of the elector's creed and diplomatic methods ? The next seven years were occupied in clearing the The Swedes out of eastern Pomerania (165 1), in taking over Ij^^"^ the new territories east and west of the Elbe, in the 1648-60. commencement of a drastic administrative and financial reorganization, in the steady increase and reform of his military forces, in freeing Cleves from Dutch occupation, and in an attempted coup de main on Jiilich and Berg, lost in 1614, which broke down (165 1). Frederick William recognized that he had failed because he was not strong enough, and protracted negotiations finally ended in the settlement of 1666, which practically confirmed the Treaty of Xanten (1614). Cleves, Mark, and Ravensberg remained to the Hohenzollerns, with a right of succession to Jiilich, Berg, and Ravenstein if the Neuburg line died out. The framework of the Brandenburg state once more spread from Konigsberg to the Rhine. Its grip on northern Germany was definitely made good. But the Northern War, which broke out in 1655, and the elector's cynical and tortuous policy proved that the heart of the elector and of his dominions lay between the 1832 F 82 The Evolution of Prussia Pregel and the Elbe. Sweden, under Charles X, had challenged again the PoHsh monarchy. NeutraUty was impossible for Brandenburg-Prussia. But the elector was determined to wring from friend and foe, at all costs, a solid advantage for himself. Both sides should pay, for he had an army, and he had learned what a cool and unscrupulous diplomacy could achieve. In 1656 the Treaty of Konigsberg, by which East Prussia was to.be held as a Swedish fief and Ermeland secularized and annexed to it, made him the ally of Sweden. The Bran- denburg troops did fine service at the great battle of Warsaw, and the elector raised his terms. By the Treaty of Labiau, in the same year, East Prussia and Ermeland were to be sovereign possessions of the HohenzoUern duke. Sweden's military difficulties increased, and the elector flung his ally over and joined the Polish side. The Treaty of Bromberg promised him East Prussia, but without Ermeland, free of Polish suzerainty. The final Peace of Oliva (1660), negotiated under the direction of Sweden's ally, France, put an end to a war which had become European. The elector retained East Prussia as an independent duchy, but Elbing that he had hoped to annex with it was not included. In 1663 he made his solemn entry into Konigsberg to take over the sovereign power. East Prussia was not within the limits or the jurisdiction of the empire. At Konigsberg the Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Cleves henceforward ruled as a sovereign with a European position. The ducal crown gave him among the German princes a peculiar distinction. The lesson These three years of war and treaty-making completed Frederick WiUiam's political and military education. of 1660. Brandenburg-Prussia, 1618-1740 83 The, lessons they taught are clearly traceable in the rest of his career. The value of an army, indeed the impera- tive necessity of a strong military force, had been proved up to the hilt. The elector had utilized the vacancy in the imperial throne (1657) ^'^ wring from the House of Austria every possible concession. He had extorted from the necessities both of Sweden and of Poland the maxi- mum of advantage for himself, and he had shown himself as dangerous in friendship as in enmity. Between Sweden on the one side and the House of Austria on the other he occupied and must continue to occupy a middle position, the perils of which could only be averted by increased strength, the utmost vigilance, and a continued deter- mination to play off the one against the other and to exploit the rivalries of both to the profit of the elector. The future, stiU more than the past, forbade generosity or Quixotism. In a lynx-eyed egoism lay the destinies of Prussia. But the Peace of Oliva had also taught the bitter truth that northern Germany was part of a great European problem. Mazarin and the superb soldiership of Charles X had saved Sweden. The German princes had to reckon with the designs of France, the sleepless rival of the House of Austria. Diplomacy was a compli- cated and bewildering maze in which ambitions of territorial expansion, commerce, and religion were in conflict, and only to be unravelled by a cool hand and a remorseless purpose. And in 1660 the France of Richelieu and Mazarin — which had made Reason of State its ideal — was about to become the France of Louis XIV. For eleven years Brandenburg-Prussia was in compara- 1660-79. F 2 84 Evolution of Prussia live isolation, and its ruler occupied with strenuous internal reforms, years by no means wasted. The elec- tor's sympathies, as French intervention in Germany increased, were with the growing anti-French coalition. The danger to Holland in 1672 brought him into the League of Brunswick, and the invasion of Cleves in the great French turning movement against the Dutch brought home the vulnerability of his scattered dominions, and is an apt illustration of how his position compelled him to play a European role. The Treaty of Vossem (1673) enabled him to withdraw from the struggle, but in 1674 -^^ ^^^ '-'^'-^ °^ ^^^ ^^^^ °-^ ^i^ former allies, and as an elector took part in the imperialist campaign on the upper Rhine. Thence he was peremptorily summoned to the north. Sweden, France's ally, at France's direction had flung aside her neutrahty and invaded Brandenburg. The elector's time had come — he was determined to finish with the Swede. The victory at Fehrbellin (1675), which shattered the Swedish reputation for invincibility, was followed by a series' of brilliant campaigns in which the Swedes were driven out of Pomerania and East Prussia, Stettin, Stralsund, and the island of Riigen captured, and only the lack of a fleet prevented these telling blows from being repeated across the waters of the Baltic (1675-8). The elector's military fame had reached its zenith. The Peace The Peace of St. Germain (June 29, 1679) was a bitter Germain blow. The imperial coaUtion had been beaten in the (1679). west. If Frederick William stood victorious on the shores of the Baltic and had a right to expect that at last he. could retain what the sword had given, he was confronted Brandenburg-Prussia, 1618-1740 85 with a triumphant France, and Louis XIV, with his troops on the Weser, was inexorable. To her ally Sweden must be restored all that she had lost in fighting France's battles. Nor were the Empire and the House of Austria ready to reopen a hopeless struggle merely to aggrandize a Hohenzollern elector. Frederick William bowed to the inevitable, and Sweden recovered West Pomerania, Stralsund, and Stettin. The right bank of the Oder, the tolls and customs duties on the river, and an indemnity of 300,000 thalers were the sole fruits of four years of victorious war. Once again Western Pomerania, coveted for a century, had been struck from HohenzoUern hands. Tradition credits the disillusioned and enraged elector The last with the prophecy that a Hohenzollern of the future 1679-88. would one day avenge the insulting humiliation. But his practical interpretation of the situation was shown in the secret treaty with France (October 25, 1679), in which he became the paid ally of Louis XIV, and sub- ordinated his policy to French direction. This treaty, together with the confirmatory document of January 11, 1 68 1, and subsequent conventions, was concluded without his ministers' knowledge and was so skilfully concealed that its publication in 1867 in the heyday of German nationalism was a grievous blow to the legend of that historic mission of Prussia, of which the Great Elector was represented as the first evangelist. Erudite Prussian savants wrote with solemn pain of the treachery to Germany and the indelible blot on the Great Elector's record. And if we are prepared to believe that at Berlin in 1679 Frederick William viewed the German world 86 The Evolution of Prussia with the eyes of those who witnessed Koniggratz and Sedan, he must stand in the pillory, but not for the sin of the French alliance alone and not without the company of some of his illustrious successors. But in 1679 Frederick William — it is the marrow of his policy and criticism of life — was concerned with a very real present. The future would take care of itself if the ruler dealt faithfully with the facts of the day. His allies had deserted him. They should learn he was in earnest and an ally who would pay them in their own coin. Louis XIV was terribly strong. So long as France would do his business, she should pay for doing it. He pocketed without a scruple the good French gold, used it to make his army and his state stronger, and was ready, as events showed, to change his ' system ' when the interests of Prussia demanded it. In brief, the Great Elector was no prophetic architect of Prussia's mission to work for Germany. ' Germany ' did not exist. If Prussia had a mission it lay in securing Prussia's direct and immediate interest. Instead of a mission, he left to his heirs, who would interpret his career aright, the fruits and the maxims of a Real- folitik. Public affairs and the government of a state were superior to the private morality of the ruler. What would be wrong in the individual might be right in the prince. Success was the criterion. In 1672 the elector had made the profound mistake of relying on the Dutch, the House of Austria and the German Princes, and of opposing France. His aid had been to their interest and not his, and they had very naturally left him in the lurch. His disappointment had been embittered by personal wrath at a grievous error of judgement and Brandenhurg-Prussia, 1618-1740 87 a miscalculation of ' real ' facts. In his eyes the unpardon- able crime was not the entering on ' the dance of the louis d'or ', but in the homely language of a great master of foreign affairs, ' the putting his money on the wrong horse '. The French alliance lasted until 1684. It was aban- The new doned because the elector became convinced that, apart isg^-ss from soHd gold, France would not do his business. Sweden had broken with France, which could now enable the French ally at Berlin to ' recover ' western Pomerania. But France evaded every suggestion, while the reunions in Alsace, the seizure of Strasburg, the aggressions on the Empire were profoundly disquieting and threatened another great European war. Peace was saved by the Truce of Regensburg (1684), in which the elector ac- quiesced, though Louis XIV retained the fruits of his imperious violation of neutrahty. An abler and a colder head than the Great Elector's, his nephew William of Orange, was now directing with pitiless patience the formation of a great European coalition against France. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) was a direct blow at the interests of Protestant and tolerant Prussia ; it cut into the quick of the Calvinist elector. He replied with an offer of Prussia as an asylum to the oppressed Huguenots, and without a formal rupture with France concluded the Treaty of the Hague (1685), reviving the alliance of 1678. The House of Austria also was willing to conciliate HohenzoUern claims on Brieg, Liegnitz and Wohlau in SUesia by the cession of Schwiebus, while it secretly cajoled the elector's heir into a promise to restore it, unknown to his father — a characteristic stroke of 88 The Evolution of Prussia Habsburg Realfolitik against a Hohenzollern master. But before the decisive breach with France had been made the elector died (May 9, 1688). The crisis in England absorbed him in his last year, and he was ready to support William's expedition to secure the island sea-power for Protestantism and the Grand Alliance against France. The last passwords that he chose for the guard at Berlin were ' London ' and ' Amsterdam '. The reor- Foreign policy was only one-half of Frederick William's oftJf^C°" work. The drastic reorganization, amounting to an stitution. internal revolution, of the constitutional and administra- tive machinery occupied him from the first weeks after his accession to his death, and it is hall-marked with the imprint of a masterful personality, a tenacious grip on clearly conceived ends, a cynical indifference to the means employed provided they were effic* " and a deep-rooted conviction that it was the duty of the ruler to rule, to seek power and ensue it. The governor was charged with the interpretation of the interests of the state, which were the interests of the community ; against this interest neither privileges nor charters, neither constitutional tradition nor existing institutions could be permitted to argue or prevail. Facts and a bitter experience supported this implicit political creed. In 1640 the elector was confronted with an empty treasury, a disorganized rabble of a militia, Diets that could neither make, nor execute, nor obey law, and with subjects who could not defend themselves and refused to pay others to defend them. When Protestantism was at stake in a perishing world the Lutheran majority could rejoice at Brandenburg-Prussia, 1618-1740 89 the downfall of the Calvinist Elector Palatine and were more ready to crush the Calvinist heretic than to save themselves from the mercies of Wallenstein or Tilly. Brandenburg and Prussia needed a well-filled treasury, an army that had learned the elementary lessons of discipUne and obedience, a government with knowledge of the secret of the chanceries, and strong enough to give every subject of the state peace and the rights of his class. The interests of true religion no less impera- tively required that those who were dutiful subjects and served their rulers faithfully, should be allowed liberty of worship and of conscience. If the Great Elector learned much from the diplomacy of RicheHeu, Mazarin and Oxenstjerna, he had also been a disciple in the school of Frederick Henry of Orange, of Wallenstein, and, above all, of Gustavus Adolphus. Sweden had made itself a great poVv«r. The man who personified its greatness was the incomparable soldier, the creator of its army and the master of its foreign policy, to whom the interest of Sweden was the higher law. Frederick William was a son of defeat, and he passed Frederick his working life in a Germany condemned to remake its William's civilization from the wreckage, devastation and horrors of thirty years of war, which had unchained and brutalized the worst human passions — a Germany dazzled by the brilliance of the wonderful France of the seventeenth century. If the best minds of that France in the spheres of spirit, imagination, and the artistry of life made for progress, the sunshine and shadow of the Roi Soleil cast a stronger speU. The greatest of French ministers and the greatest of French kings were apostles of reaction, and 90 The Evolution of Prussia their work and their example — the glorification of the state, the fetish of a unity constructed from, the ruin of religious liberty, and of local and economic self-govern- ment, the identification of the interest of the community with the ambition and splendour of the sovereign, — made the reaction in Germany, born of disillusionment and disaster, irresistible. Unlike his weaker and more sensual contemporaries, lay and ecclesiastical, Frederick William did not mistake the trappings for the reality, did not believe that red shoes and flunkeys in gold lace, mistresses, an orangery, or a palace built by grinding the faces of the poor, made in themselves a ruler and a state. His own domestic life was pure. He was a loyal husband to two loyal and devoted wives. His court was simple, and comparatively free from the grossness and vulgarity so noticeable elsewhere. He found time for a genuine interest in mathematics, physics, and chemistl^, as well as in pictures, coins and antiques, and the electoral library in the castle at Berlin laid a noble foundation for the royal library of to-day. The city of Berlin may be said to be his special creation. In 1640 it had sunk to a battered township of 6,000 inhabitants. In 1688, rebuilt, extended and adorned, it contained perhaps 30,000 citizens, and already figured in the descriptive notebooks of the cultivated traveller, surprised to find so agreeable and fine a city in the sour solitudes of the Brandenburg March. But in the higher planes of pohtical thought and administrative action the elector's personality chimed with the gospel from Paris : unity through the ruler, the crushing of every institution that hampered an absolute control of all the resources, human or material, Prussia. Brandenburg-Prussia, 1618-1740 91 in the state, the interpretation of law as the will of the ruler, and of civic duty as obedience to a self- determining authority. Frederick William was the founder of Prussian absolutism, the originator of the machinery that it required, and the obstinate champion of the social structure that the system demanded. The centre of the opposition was in East Prussia, East particularly after the Polish suzerainty had been extin- guished. The elector's object was a quadruple one: to secure the recognition of his supreme power, to override the right of the estates alone to grant taxation ; to break the power of the executive and the control of the executive vested in the four superior councillors (Oberrate) and the Diet (Landtag) ; and to obtain recognition for the elector's directly appointed officials in taxation and administration. It was only by military force, by arresting and executing the leaders. Roth and the two von Kalcksteins ; by a prolonged contest with Landtag after Landtag ; and by continuous administrative action that the privileges and strength of the estates were gradually whittled away. Similarly, in Cleves and in the annexations gained in 1648 sharp war was made on the Diets and estates, and the electoral right to appoint a governor (Statthalter) to act as the head of the executive was won. The dis- continuance of united Diets ; the reference to local assemblies which could be managed or overawed ; the continuous intervention both in local taxation and administration by the electoral officials ; the practice of obtaining grants for periods of years, which made the summoning of the local bodies unnecessary, and the forces of a unified control and of the army combined to 92 The Evolution of Prussia destroy or render nugatory the mediaeval ' liberties ' and privileges. In their place came the governor, the college of government (Regierung), the circles (Kreise), administered by the sheriff (Landrat), and the commis- sioner of taxes, appointed by and responsible to the supreme head of the state. The widespread electoral domains, directly administered by the elector as lord of the land, provided a model for the civil administration to imitate and surpass. And in both spheres the paid and disciplined officials of the elector increased in numbers and importance. The army. From the very commencement the creation of a standing military force was perhaps the chief object of the elector, and the 4,000 to 5,000 men he enlisted in 164I had grown by 1688 to a permanent army of 25,000 to 30,000 soldiers, obtained by enlistment, well equipped, subjected to severe discipline under a special military law, and commanded by a trained corps of officers. Such an army implied special administrative organs for its finance, maintenance and efficiency. The war chancery, the war commissioners, the war chest or treasury, with their subsidiary local machinery and officials, were created and put to work side by side with the civil administration. The army was a potent instrument of unification, for if it was locally enlisted, its supreme direction was centralized. The soldiers of Cleves might be required to serve in East Prussia, and they knew no authority but the elector's. It became a state institution, and its officers, chosen from the nobility, acquired a privileged position. It had no mediaeval history ; it made its own reputation ; it was sharply distinguished from local and civil life ; its sword Brandenburg-Prussia, 1618-1740 93 was the ruler's, and it was encouraged to regard itself as the salt of citizenship and the bulwark of Prussia's strength. It could claim to have made Prussia — to be Prussia. The militarization of the state meant that the ruler as well as his dominion were militarized, began to interpret life in military categories and to regard their military authority as the first of all duties. To maintain in poor and scantily populated lands so large a force involved special taxation, the sacrifice of civil to military expenditure, the development of powerful administrative organs whose claims were supreme ; it meant also ideals of duty, obedience, system, control, management and law from above which infiltrated into and reacted on all social, civil and political thought. The first soldier was the Hohenzollern ruler ; the army was a creation of the dynasty, the symbol of its strength, the field and arm of its statesmanship. To be the commander-in-chief in the civil state as he was in the army was the inevitable ideal of government for Frederick William and his successors. And the alliance between ' throne ' and the officers' corps added a mihtary bond to the common social and economic interests of ruler and the Junker aristocracy. The esprit de corps of the regiment blossomed into a political and social ideal. The reorganized privy council (Geheimer Staatsrat) The privy was becoming the brain of the civil as distinct from the *^°""*^' " military administration, through which and with the advice of which the elector governed and made policy. Its functions were deliberative, executive, legislative and judicial, in that it exercised a general supervision over the administration of justice. Its members, honoured 94 The Evolution of Prussia with the title of excellency, were either important executive officers or advisers selected for their weight and experience in political affairs, and the privy council became the effective and continuous substitute for the dislocated and intermittent local Diets and estates ; like the Tudor privy council it co-ordinated and systematized the ruler's supervision of the whole administration. Commerce Frederick William's activities made themselves felt in zation. every sphere of action. His attention to taxation and to economy was unremitting ; the promotion of trade and industry, by speeding up and encouraging local effort, by the regulation of corporations and guilds, by the introduction of new trades and manufactures, by a scientific interest in agriculture, by draining marshes, cutting down forests, constructing canals and bringing waste or unoccupied land into cultivation, fiUs a large chapter in his internal policy. Commerce and navigation, he pronounced, are the two chief columns of a state — a saying in which we can trace the authorship of Colbert, and the fruitful lessons that he had begun in Holland and continued to his death. His dominions, even without the devastation of the Great War, needed men and women, and the colonization of Brandenburg and Prussia was continuous from 1648 onwards. A Dutch settlement was made in the New March; Swiss, French and Germans from all parts of the Empire were encouraged to settle, cultivate and multiply. The persecuted Calvinist from Saxony or Lutheran from the Palatinate, even the persecuted Catholic, could find a home in tolerant Prussia. The French Huguenot Church at BerHn, founded as early as 1672, recalls the steady immigration Brandenhuvg-Prussia, 1618-1740 93 of French colonists, which culminated after 1685 in the numerous groups, flying from the dragonnades of Louis XIV, who founded the Moabit quarter to the north- west of Berlin, and brought, as they did to England, new trades to the desert wastes of the March, a new thrift and sohd qualities of character. Frederick William could plead, indeed, that toleration was a policy that paid. In one respect — the commencement of a colonial policy — the elector began what was not resumed for two centuries. In 1680 he started a small navy, and in 1681 made a double settlement on the Guinea coast. Both are characteristic of his appreciation of the principles of policy in the great western states, and the foundation of an African company with a base at Emden was modelled on English, Dutch and French examples. But the enterprise languished. Prussia had no harbour on the ocean ; rivals were numerous and powerful. King Frederick WiUiam I abandoned the attempt in 1720, and sold the settlement to the Dutch. In 1884, when the German flag reappeared in West Africa, the Emperor WiUiam declared that at last he could look the Great Elector in the face. Frederick the Great summed up his ancestor with the The man criticism that if he was not always master of the first ^gj]^'^ move he was always master of the second. His most solid achievements were the result of an indomitable pertinacity and a combination of intellectual qualities. In no department of his work does he exhibit the originality of genius or a brain of the first order. Neither as a soldier, an administrator, nor as a political thinker is he in the first class of his age. But he could understand and adapt to very practical ends some of the most telling ideas 9^ The Evolution of Prussia that more powerful minds were impressing on their generation. Of many of the most potent elements in the strength of states he was ignorant, to others deliber- ately blind. For if he was a disciple of the new enlight- ened absolutism and worshipped at the altar of Reason of State, he interpreted his creed in the categories of a cramping and caste-ridden society. Nothing in Bran- denburg-Prussia needed more drastic reform than the social and economic framework which imprisoned the serf, the burgher and the noble. But the destroyer of mediaeval liberties was the champion of the feudal economy. The worst of all reactions is the exploitation of the worn-out machinery of one age by the new political philosophy of another. Frederick William shares, too, with his greater successor, Frederick II, the defect of relying too implicitly on material results. The significance of his ' reign ' is more truly founds not in the acres that he added, nor the increase in popula- tion, nor in statistics which emphasize the difference in prosperity and power between 1640 and 1688, memor- able as all these are ; but in the character and interpreta- tion of Prussia's future that he indelibly stamped on the constitution, administration, and policy of his tripartite principality. Until the age of revolution, of Stein and his colleagues, the task of his successors was to make explicit what he left implicit, and to carry to a logical conclu- sion both the merits and the defects of his Idea of a State. In the combination of his intellectual qualities Frederick William surpasses all the rulers of his house save one, Frederick II, and the difference between these two is the difference between great talents and indisputable genius. Brandenburg-Prussia, 1618-1740 97 His immediate successor is chiefly remembered as the Elector winner of a crown, and the founder of the Prussian Frederick, monarchy. The negotiations and the diplomacy which 1688-1713. led to this triumphant assertion of dynastic ambition were moulded by the three great European struggles which convulsed Europe from the English Revolution to the Treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt (171 3)— the War of the Grand Alliance (1689-97), the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13), and the Great Northern War (1698-1721), which ended in the downfall of the Swedish Empire and a revolution in the political conditions of the Baltic. In the first phase, guided by his minister Danckelmann, Frederick adhered to the system of the House of Austria, and was an active member of the League of Augsburg — the coalition of England, the Netherlands and ' Austria ' — the Prussian troops taking part in the campaigns on the Rhine and in the operations that led to the fall of Namur (1695). But the Peace of Ryswick (1697) did not bring to the elector what he so ardently desired — the principality of Orange and the guarantee of a royal crown from his allies. Danckelmann was sacrificed to theHanoverian sympathies of the Electress, the witty, cultivated and pious Sophia Charlotte, daughter of Elector Ernst Augustus and the Electress Sophia, mother of the English King George I. But by 1701, unremitting negotiation, and the certainty of a renewed struggle with France over the Spanish Succession, which made the Prussian army essential to the House of Austria, prevailed. On January 18, 1701, Elector Frederick crowned himself King in Prussia at Konigsberg, which enshrines the memory of Ottocar, King of Bohemia (1255), 1833 G 98 The Evolution of Prussia with every circumstance of pomp and splendour. And the creation of the Order of the Black Eagle — that imperial eagle which Hermann von Salza had first stamped on the black cross of the Teutonic Order — fitly completed a memorable day. It is not surprising that those who see in Prussian history the realization through Hohenzollern hands of the cosmic process of a preordained idea should credit the new king as he stood at the altar of the Schlosskirche in Konigsberg with the vision of a greater January i8 — when his descendant, crowned also in the same castle chapel, should be acclaimed German Emperor in the Galerie des Glaces of Louis XIV at Versailles. The The Prussian crown was more than a circlet of gold monarchy ^^^ precious stones. The elector placed it on his own head, though the royal unction was bestowed by a Calvinist and a Lutheran minister. It was a gift neither from pope nor emperor, and it symbolized the political irresponsibility of its wearer. East Prussia was not within the jurisdiction of the territorial limits of the Empire. The elector became a sovereign European prince, and if as yet he claimed to be only king in not of Prussia — for West Prussia was stiU Polish — he marked out for his successors the task of completing their sovereignty. Frederick had seen his relative William of Orange become King of England, his rival the Albertine Elector of Saxony of the Wettin House become King of Poland, and the crown of England, Scotland, and Irelandguaranteed to his mother-in-law and her descendants, the Electress Sophia at Herrenhausen. As king, he could now stand on terms of equality with other kings. More significant Brandenburg-Prussia, 1618-1740 99 still, the electorate of Brandenburg was swallowed up in the monarchy, and the crown imposed a stronger bond of unity, under the sovereignty of the monarch, and a new prestige on the divided territories of his House. Privy councillors, soldiers, nobles, burghers, serfs alike in Cleves, the historic March, or the former Duchy of East Prussia, swore allegiance to the Prussian king, served in the royal Prussian army and administration, or toiled on the demesnes of the Prussian lord of the land and lord of war (Landesherr, Krie'gsherr). The creation of the Prussian kingdom is more than a fact. It is an event of European import. For the next eleven years Prussia fought with the Grand The War of Alliance against Louis XIV, and Prussian troops took Sumessi'on part in the historic battles of Blenheim, Turin, Cassano, (1702-13)- Ramilhes, of Oudenarde and Malplaquet, at which the Crown Prince, the future Frederick WiUiam I, was present. But the Treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt, which Frederick I did not live to see completed, did not bring a compensation equal to the sacrifices endured. Upper Guelderland and the recognition of the new monarchy were the sole gains, which with Quedlinburg (1697), Mors and Lingen (1702), Neufchatel (1707), Tecklenburg (1707), and Tauroggen (1691), are the sum of the territorial acquisition of his reign. Absorption in the great western struggle had prevented The Prussia from striking for her own hand in the coaHtion ^°a"''"^™ formed by Russia, Poland, Hanover and Denmark to dismember the Swedish empire, and Frederick has been blamed for failing to see that the interests of Prussia lay on the Baltic, and for not using his fine army of 40,000 G 2 100 The Evolution of Prussia tried troops to secure the greatest share of the spoil. But Frederick I had neither the cynical courage, nor thq unscrupulous political egoism, nor the diplomatic versatility of his father's Realfolitik. He might have deserted the Grand Alliance, imposed peace in the north, sold his aid successively to Stockholm, Warsaw^, or Petrograd, tricked, deceived and shifted from side to side, bent only on acquiring Western Pomerania and Western Prussia by arms or by any means. But he did none of these things, perhaps because he had a conscience, more probably because he feared, as well he might, the soldiership of Charles XII, and had a thorough distrust of his own incapacity to match the unfathomable guile of Peter the Great and Augustus ' the Physically Strong ', and the surly intrigues of his relatives at Herrenhausen. He could not, in short, make up his mind, and he fell under the spell of the greatest soldier and diplomatist of the day, Marlborough, who on two critical occasions kept him true to the Grand Alliance of the West. He could free his dominions by extending (1701) the privi- legium de non appellando — by which no appeals went outside the electoral courts — and by setting up a supreme court of appeal at Berlin, one more organ of unification and royal authority, but a foreign policy of efficient selfishness on the scale of the Great Elector or Frederick the Great was quite beyond his powers. Frederick I. The pomp and apparatus of royalty were wholly to his taste. Ceremony was the breath of his life. But he also loved arts and letters, and the foundation of the Royal Academy of Arts (1696), and the Royal Academy of Sciences (1700), and of the University at Halle (1694),. Brandenburg-Prussia, 1618-1740 loi which became the centre of Protestant Theology, stands out in a reign of almost uninterrupted war. His queen, whose intellectual gifts made her the friend and patron of Leibniz, the most powerful brain, if we except Newton, in the Europe of his day, on her death-bed (1705), summed up one side of her husband's character. ' Do not grieve for me. I shall soon satisfy my curiosity about the causes of things, and give the king an oppor- tunity for a wonderful funeral pageant.' But for all his vacillations, frivolous extravagance, and personal vanity Frederick remained true to the tolerant Protestan- tism of his father. If the language of his court was French, he continued and extended the liberty of conscience and worship which Prussian subjects enjoyed, and Prussia could claim to be the foremost German Protestant principality within and without the Empire. War, plague, and royal extravagance had brought Frederick Prussia to the verge of bankruptcy. If her position was 1713-40. ' to be maintained a new regimen was imperatively required, and Frederick William I imposed it in startling measure. It is almost as difficult to believe that Frederick I and Sophia Charlotte could have such a son as that the son could be father of Frederick the Great. The twenty-seven years of his reign completed at a terrible price the work of the Great Elector ; and in the evolution of Prussia they have their indisputable place as the period in which all the most unlovely and forbidding qualities of Prussianism were scourged into the kingdom. It may readily be conceded that Frederick William was amazingly industrious, pious, an observer of his marriage vows, a lover of peace, proud of being a German and a 102 The Evolution of Prussia HohenzoUern, not without a sense of the community of German interests, a loyal supporter of the House of Austria, a hater of idleness and all the shams and snob- beries of second-rate courts and of the apparatus of lies and treachery which made the diplomacy of his day, com- bined with a passionate detestation of everything French, indeed of everything that did not fit in with his peculiar code of German or royal virtues. But the man and the ruler were and remain repellent, and his interpretation of life and duty was intolerable, reactionary, vulgar, and illiterate. His court was a barrack, his kingdom a combina- tion of the farm-yard and the parade-ground, and he viewed both with the eye of the non-commissioned officer and the stud-groom. The immortal memoirs of his daughter Wilhelmina, inaccurate as they are in detail, constitute an indictment, confirmed by all the evidence available, which cannot be shaken by rows of statistics, the archives of research, and the erudite ignoratio elenchi of a corrupted militarism. The bully of the royal hearth was the bully of the kingdom, whose conception of his prerogative and position was as domineering, raw and graceless as was his exercise of power. We might, perhaps, forgive the manners of a sweaty boor, the love of beer, tobacco and sauerkraut, of tall and kidnapped grenadiers, and of flogging his , children and his subjects. Nature in conspiracy with his own self-sufficiency had denied him the brain to under- stand or the taste to enjoy poetry, letters, philosophy, or the arts. God and humanity shrivelled in his coarse and tyrannical fingers into the mould of his own starved and ignorant self. But we cannot forgive Frederick William Brandenburg-Prussia, 1618-1740 103 his conception of manhood and womanhood, his contempt for and war upon everything in the realms of spirit, intellect, and conscience that he could not understand, his determination to drill and thrash the men and women under his irresponsible autocracy into smaller copies of their master, and the delusion, as stupid as it was demoralizing, that a kingdom bred and saturated in the atmosphere of the ' Tobacco-Parliament ' could be a state worth belonging to or ruling. Above all, we cannot forgive him for warping and brutalizing the genius of his extraordinary son. Two such kings as Frederick William I, and Prussia would have ceased to contribute to the world anything but the ethics of Bridewell and the lessons of the guard-room. In 171 3, Sweden, ruined by its astonishing sovereign, Foreign Charles XII, stood at bay in a bankrupt kingdom against ^° ^'^^' Dane, Pole, Hanoverian, and Muscovite. Prussia had three reasons for joining the coalition — her claims on Pomerania, the perpetual danger, that Fehrbellin had typified, of being attacked in the rear by a sea-power, and the certainty that if she stood aside Sweden would be beaten, her German and Slavonic principalities divided up, and Prussia left without a share. Negotiations proved futile, and in 1 71 3 the Prussian sword was thrown into the coalition. The exhausted Swedes fought heroically, but the Prussian troops swept them out of Pomerania, and in the final partition (17 19-21) Frederick William obtained Wollin, Usedom and western Pomerania with Stettin as far as the river Peene. A new era had begun in the Baltic. Sweden sank to the position of a second- rate state, Denmark remained as she was, Poland was 104 The Evolution of Prussia decadent, but in the east Russia had commenced an imperial career. The struggle for the supremacy of the Baltic entered on its final phase. But the King of Prussia was now satisfied. Jealousy of his relatives at Herrenhausen (who were also sovereigns of Great Britain, and whom he disliked as cordially as they dis- liked him), fear of the aggrandizement of Hanovef, which had obtained Bremen and Verden in the Swedish partition, and the complicated politics of the Empire made his foreign policy henceforth. Above aU he had his eye on Jiilich-Berg, that half of the original duchy of Cleves lost in 1614, which with its genealogical ramifica- tions recurs like a nightmare in Prussian history, The ruler of the Neuburg line was childless ; the Sulzbach line of the Palatinate claimed the inheritance. Frederick William, who loved peace all the more because he had a costly army of 70,000 men, did not wish to fight but to win by diplomacy. Thejulich- Under the influence of Grumbkow and the Austrian ceSfon"*^" representative Seckendorf, ignorant of history and question, utterly unfitted by temperament, habits, and knowledge of life to cope with the trained diplomatists of the chanceries, who very soon took the measure of his narrow understanding and saw that like all buUies he was a coward at heart, Frederick William stumbled into every trap. He was kept in loyal servitude to the House of Austria. Promised the succession in 1725, he was re-promised part of it in 1726, and guaranteed the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VI ; then suspecting that Vienna had gone back on its word, as it had, he tried direct negotiation and bribery with the Sulzbach claimant Brandenburg-Prussia, 1618-1740 105 and failed. A superb chance arose when the Polish throne became vacant in 1733, and his aid for the Habsburg candidate was indispensable. He was cajoled into letting it go, fought for the Habsburg in the War of the Polish Succession, and finally discovered in 1738 that the Third Treaty of Vienna which ended the war had also ended his chance of succeeding to Jiilich-Berg. It only remained to explode with impotent rage. His policy is indeed a record of political imbecility — the strong, self- centred king, victimized by charlatans and able men of the world who had guessed truly that he was a lath painted to look like iron. ' Here,' he is credited with saying, 'here', pointing to the Crown Prince, whom the European powers had saved from being murdered by his father, ' is one who wiU avenge me.' It had, perhaps, dawned at last on the king's limited vision that if the Crown Prince had been, as he had striven so hard to make him, the copy of himself, the hopes of vengeance were futile. Fortunately for their kingdoms kings do not always have the children they deserve. His army was the king's first and last care. He inherited The army. a standing force of some 30,000 to 40,000 men, and by the end of the reign had increased it to 90,000, of whom 70,000 were field troops. Prussia, which ranked about twelfth in population of the European states, ranked fourth in the number of its army, and the strain that its maintenance imposed can be judged by its cost. Out of a revenue of some seven million thalers five million were spent on the army. This involved the working of the whole financial and civil administration of the state, apart from the special military machinery, to provide io6 The Evolution of Prussia the resources required. Economy, which was a passion with Frederick William, was immensely stimulated by the ever-growing needs of the army, and Prussia came to be regarded as a machine, the chief function of which was to furnish soldiers, officers, and their equipment. The organization, finance, administration, and training of his troops were personally supervised by the king from the broadest principles of military service to the pettiest details. With the aid of Leopold of Dessau, ' the old Dessauer,' he worked out the driU book and the technical improvements, such as the ramrod and the new bayonet, the fine discipline both of infantry and artillery, the commissariat and transport, which under a commander of genius were to astonish Europe. Perfection of drill and manoeuvring were achieved by continuous peace operations and a military code that bristled with the most brutal and degrading punishments. Up till 1733 the rank and file were obtained partly by voluntary enlistment, partly by compulsory service. After 1733 a rigorous system of cantonal conscription was set up by which the military districts were required to furnish quotas according to population, and this subsequently became the basis of the universal obligation to serve which was completed by the law of 1814. Under Frede- rick William various classes were exempted and the army was drawn mainly from the peasantry and officered by the nobility, though throughout the eighteenth century large numbers continued to be recruited by voluntary enlistment. The maintenance of agriculture and the agricultural population was therefore a prime necessity. The manorial feudal economy, which riveted villein and Brandenburg-Prussia, 1618-1740 107 serf to the soil, put the labourer at the disposal of the manorial lord, the king or the Junker, and provided the officer class to whose authority the caste system and social habit had accustomed the peasantry, was the basis of con- scription and of the Prussian army. Reform, therefore, in that agrarian economy would have upset the whole miHtary machine, and with it the whole system of government. The position of the privileged Junker was as indispensable as the dependence of the unprivileged and oppressed serf. The foundation of the Cadettenhaus at Berlin by Frederick William — the state institution for training the sons of the nobility to be officers — illustrates the central conception, that service in the army was the chief duty of the noble and squire and the reward of the political and social status so rigorously maintained for the noble caste. Not even Frederick the Great could conceive of the army he required being raised, drilled, officered, and maintained in any other way than by stereotyping and keeping intact, at whatever price, the social and agrarian economy of a mediaeval feudalism. The pre- misses and postulates of political and social administration and of civil life were deep-rooted in this system, tampering with which involved the subversion of the position and prerogatives of the sovereign quite as seriously as of the position and prerogatives of Junkertum. The noble served as a noble, the serf as a serf — between that and the idea of a common citizenship in which each would serve as a citizen lay a revolution in political and economic thought and a revolution in machinery and the conception of the end and the functions of the state. ' The enlightened absolutism ' did not effect the transition either of thought, io8 The Evolution of Prussia Civil ad- ministra- tion : the General principle, or action ; when it came it was caused by disaster, and was the product of brains and characters which found their inspiration neither at Berlin nor in the principles of enlightened absolutism. For the eighteenth- century HohenzoUerns, dominated to the end by the structure and idea of a state which they held to be as essential a part of the law of the universe as their own irresponsible authority, the task was by efficiency to squeeze the maximum of result from this system. 'You can tell the Prince of Anhalt', said Frederick WiUiam, ' that I am the Field Marshal and the Finance Minister of Prussia.' To complete the unity of the civil machinery and reproduce in it the unity and control established in the army was the king's object — to make his sovereignty, in his own memorable phrase, as solid as bronze (' Ich stabilire die Souverainete wie einen Rocher von Bronce '). ' I am the master, the gentlemen are my servants,' ' No arguing, the man is my subject,' are two out of many sayings which illustrate his principles. And the ordinance of 1723 — a code of civil administration and administrative law — completed the reorganization of the machinery and grouped the whole in a carefully graded centralization. The apex was the general directory of five ministers (General- Ober- Finanz- Kriegs- und- Domainen-Directorium) which united the upper departments, hitherto distinct, of the Treasury, War, and Demesne administration. Beneath this stood the provincial departments, and beneath them the provincial chambers, while the base was the administration of the towns and of the Landrat in the more numerous agrarian communities. The chief characteristic of this Brandenburg-Prussia, 1618-1740 109 hierarchy of officials was its collegiate organization, i. e. it worked through boards or colleges, each of which consti- tuted a bureau with its paid staff. The king presided in the Directory and a link was provided with the privy council by the royal cabinet, whose members were generally two in number, and who acted as secretaries, the channels for the communication of the royal will and the organs for preparing or sifting the business. Hence the king at the head had all the levers under his hand, and he could originate, supervise, and control every administrative act. Frederick WilUam's function in life was to make the machine work up to the maximum of its efficiency and in a harmonized unity. As he wrote in his code, ' The gentlemen will say it is impossible, but they must put their heads to it, and we herewith command them peremptorily not to argue but to make it practicable ', The king's eye, the king's presence, and the king's cane were everywhere. The king's civil service was like the army, an organ for discipline, obedience, and performance. Slackness or indiscipline was tantamount to desertion and to be punished accordingly. Woe to the offender, great or small, on whom the royal displeasure fell. Escape was impossible, resistance punishable. The final destruc- tion or supersession of the Estates and Diets placed life, property, and work at the sovereign's disposal. His servants were required to work and were paid (a pittance) to work, and the rules and regulations left no loopholes for evasion, dishonesty, or incompetence. Frederick made a first-rate steward of his estate. He Results of knew its details from top to bottom. No matter was too ^^ system. no The Evolution of Prussia trifling for his notice. He cut down the expenditure in the royal palace to the barest minimum, as he cut down working costs everywhere. Subjects, money, and produce — Prussia was regulated, hectored, bullied, legislated for, and punished, to get them in increasing numbers. The greater the taxable capacity, the more could be taken, the more work and labour extorted — and the army was always growing, crying out for more money, food, and men. The one luxury was the tall Potsdam grenadiers, and to obtain these Frederick William would have bartered a university or mortgaged an academy. Pages could be filled with the details of his remorseless adminis- tration, with the repeopling of waste lands, the immigra- tion of foreign colonists, the extension of agriculture, and the encouragement of industries such as the woollen trade. In 173 1 the king followed the Great Elector's example — it is the finest of his achievements — in offering Prussia as an asylum to the oppressed Protestants of Salzburg, whose sufferings were later immortahzed in Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea. Still, there is little doubt that in the twenty-seven years of Frederick William's reign the revenues of Prussia were doubled, a solid balance of savings was stored in the barrels of the Royal Treasury, and the material output of the kingdom perhaps trebled. Statistics are held to justify the king and . the system. But in the criteria of politics the material test of quantity, apart from quality, is frequently the most falla- cious ; it degenerates into a vulgarization of values and an insidious application of the crudest theories of force. The • Prussia of 1 640-1 740 did not contribute one single first- , rate mind to the civilization of herself or the world. Her Brandenburg-Prussia, 1618-1740 III output in letters, science, the arts, is a virtual blank. Had she perished altogether, the world of mind and of spirit would not have been one whit the poorer. And such ideas, and not always the best ideas, as are traceable in her life were borrowed from other states. The synchro- nous history of the United Netherlands reminds us that small states, which wrest material prosperity from an unending struggle with nature and achieve marvels, if their rulers have penetrated to the deeper forces of human life and the conditions that nourish humanity, can also make a permanent contribution to civilization. Frederick William starved the universities, such as they were, and the academies of his kingdom. He did worse. He acted on the assumption that two-thirds of the strivings and achievements of the human mind and spirit were useless, had no rational purpose in the scheme of things, and were a source of weakness, not of strength. The travellers who entered his dominions have left on record the bleak and numbing air with the chill of fear and death that lay on the land. And Winckelmann, a Prussian born, who heralded the Renaissance of the eight- eenth century, who fled from his inhospitable father- land to become the inspirer of Lessing, Goethe, Wieland, and Schiller, wrote with truth ' that it was better to be a eunuch in a Turkish harem than a subject of the King of Prussia '. When Frederick William was dying they read to him his favourite hymn. At the words ' Naked I came into the world, and naked I shall leave it ', the king broke in, ' No, no, I shall have my uniform.' [The two best modern studies of the Great Elector are : M. Philippson, Der grosse Kurfurst (3 volumes. 1897-1903), and 112 The Evolution of Prussia A. Waddington, Le Grand Electeur (2 vols. 1905-8). The standard works on administration are : C. Boenhak, Geschichte des Preussischen Verwaltungsrechts (3 vols. 1884-92), and S. Isaacsohn, Geschichte des Preuss. Beamtentums. Frederick I and Frederick William I can be conveniently studied in the general histories of Stenzel, Droysen, Erdmannsdorffer and v. Zwiedeneck-SIjdenhorst. Of the memoirs : consult the first volume of Frederick's Memoires pour servir a I'histoire de la Maison de Brandebourg ; Pollnitz, Memoires pour servir a I'histoire des quatre derniers souverains de la Maison de Brandebourg{\'j<)\)\, while the most convenient edition of the Memoirs oj Wilhelmina, Margravine of Baireuth is in i vol. (1845). Carlyle's narrative of the whole of this period is a brilliant and characteristic tour de force.] CHAPTER IV FREDERICK THE GREAT, 1740-86 § I. Frederick from 1712 to 1745 Frederick the Great is and remains a European Frederick's figure. As soldier, diplomatist, and administrator he is ^°^' °°" the most gifted and the ablest head, the most powerful and impressive personality of all the Hohenzollern rulers, who made the capital of his kingdom, Berlin, a centre of political thought and action comparable to Paris, Vienna and London. He shares and surpasses the significance of the other great monarchs of the continent who were his contemporaries, Maria Theresia, Joseph H, and Catherine H. In the evolution of Prussia his long reign of forty-six years marks with deep red characters the dividing line between the German principality and the European power. Frederick's accession to the throne (May 31, 1740) was an interesting fact in German, and particularly North German, politics. His death on August 17, 1786, was a European event. A lamp in the pohtical firmament had been extinguished, a brain had ceased to work, a will to exercise its dominating force. Frederick was born on January 24, 1712, and his Frederick's mother was Queen Sophia Dorothea, sister of George II and'^rdu- of Great Britain and Ireland. His boyhood and early cation, manhood were spent under the sinister and numbing shadows of his father's court and tyranny. Until seven 1833 H 114 The Evolution of Prussia years of age the little Crown Prince was in the hands of women ; then his military training was undertaken by his father, with the aid of a tutor who was permitted to impart the rudiments and scraps of knowledge, such knowledge as would make him an intelligent sergeant, book-keeper, and farm bailiff. An eager, high-spirited, sensitive boy, with inborn longings for languages, letters, and the arts, capable of warm affections, and with an inherent love for the beautiful and the refined, and an inexhaustible intellectual curiosity, was condemned to suffer every brutality both to mind and body, to have every aspiration and desire flogged into silence and if possible extirpated by degrading punishment. French, Latin, and the flute he only learned by stealth, and at the price of bodily pain and boorish contempt ; English he never learned at all. Of a home and all that a home can mean Frederick was ignorant. He grew to manhood starved and ill-treated, a life that was an unending round of repellent and brutalizing tasks, habituated to deceit, and dominated by fear. Many years after, when the master of Prussia was a famous figure in the world he related how in a dream his father appeared to him, as at the Wusterhausen of his teens, and he awoke in a cold and dripping sweat of terror. Is it surprising that by manhood the iron had burnt itself into his soul, that the Crown Prince, taught the lessons of a militarized and irrespon- sible autocracy in the atmosphere of the illiterate and inhuman barrack of the Prussian court, should have been convinced by a damnably royal persistence that woman- hood, love, loyalty, generosity, charity, chivalry, ideals were the playthings of thg mocking gods; that human Frederick the Great 115 virtues, like human vices, were simply counters in the relentless game of destiny ; that God, freedom, and immortahty were the superstition of obscurantist priest and pastor, or bafHing riddles ? Of stupidity, ignorance, treachery, cruelty, tyranny, coarse animalism he knew far too much — of sympathy very little, of happiness nothing. The Crown Prince, holding out eager hands to the fire of life, found no warmth, but a hard clear light and that only to be seen through tears. At eighteen he could endure his existence and the The train- uniform that was his shroud no longer, and he attempted J?^ to escape, whither he cared not. But he was stopped. Prince, brought back, condemned by a characteristically diabolical device of his father to witness the execution of his companion. Lieutenant Katte, the one friend he had in the world, and after his own life had been spared, thanks to the intervention of the European courts, his training began afresh. He was placed under the care of three nobles, commanded to refuse to discuss with him or let him have anything to do with any subject but ' the Word of God, the constitution of the land, manufactures, police, agriculture, accounts, leases and lawsuits '. Frede- rick had learned one terrible lesson. Escape was im- possible, but his father could be fooled and outwitted. He acquired a gradual liberty by complete hypocrisy ; outwardly he professed obedience, drilled, attended sermons, wrote elaborate reports in bad German, and worked enough to hoodwink the tyrant. But he was the Crown Prince, and all knew that some day in God's Providence he would be king and master, able to dismiss and reward with a word or a stroke of the pen. Frederick II 2 ii6 The Evolution of Prussia found, was not surprised to find, men who would connive, women, high and low, willing to purchase the favour of the heir. His father insisted on marriage. He obeyed, and ' an innocent German insipidity ', the pious and commonplace Elizabeth of Brunswick-Bevern, was selected to be his unhappy wife. It was a fine match for her, and the brilliant, gay, and high-spirited Crown Prince may have meant much to the young bride. She meant nothing to him but the will of an odious parent. In due course she became Queen of Prussia, in name, but she had no place in his hearth, his pleasure, his duty, or his ambition. He never shared with her one thought, one aspiration, one hope or fear. In the agony of the Seven Years' War, when ruin stared him in the face, he neither sought nor expected comfort, still less strength for his titanic struggle, in a woman's devotion. And she, poor queen, was the wife of the greatest king of the century : on his side a formal courtesy and icy silence ; for her, isolation, resignation, and the consolation of a religion that her king and husband despised and derided. Frederick's At Ciistrin and then at Rheinsberg (1736-40) Frederick learned the Prussian machine and the necessity of work ; but he could also make leisure and he spent it, sometimes in dissipation (' I am for enjoyment, afterwards I despise it '), but always in reading, scribbling French poetry, in history, French literature, theatricals, music, correspond- ing with Voltaire and other luminaries, and in much thinking. His Jnti-Machiavel, a refutation of Machia- velli's Prince, was an academic and youthful exercise, on which his life and career as king are the most telling commentary. What he might have been under another Frederick the Great 117 father and in a cleaner and richer air we can only guess. That he retained his spirits, his confidence in himself, his intellectual buoyancy and social charm is an astonishing proof of the quality of fibre in his mind and body. In 1740 what he retained and had acquired were due to himself — for what he had lost and the perverted convic- tion that perhaps it was no loss, Frederick William I was responsible. His heart had withered up. Intellectual inti- mates, men whose knowledge or force of brain appealed to his head, ideas and the exchange of ideas, music, books, the service of soldiers, administrators, engineers — these he valued and was to know in abundance, but of charity, generosity, faith in the humanity that joy and sorrow can enrich he felt no need. He never had a friend, either man or woman. Friendship as a bond of human souls was unnecessary — a temptation to weakness. Duty, which became his watch-word, was work without love or pity, the categorical imperative of a universal reason, not the daughter of God. Religion, Protestant or Catholic, was like court ceremonies, a waste of time, the invention of priests, a dupery for women, an instru- ment to be manipulated by the ruler for purposes of state. In the famous formula of his toleration — Every one in this kingdom shall go to heaven in his own way — there rings beneath the principle of political expediency the veiled contempt of the crowned sceptic. If there was a heaven, let the fools or drones of humanity find it without hindrance ; for the wise and strong — for the ruler above all — there was more rational work. Frederick in 1740 inherited a well-filled treasury, Frederick's a large and well-drilled army, an autocracy undisputed philosophy ii8 The Evolution of Prussia and Indisputable. Men and women soon learned that if some salutary changes were made at once, gratitude had no place in the new king's character. He expected and insisted on unqualified obedience. He intended to be field-marshal and treasurer of Prussia. The new monarch was absolute ; but he was not an illiterate martinet. He was a brain, disciplined in the dictates and service of reason. Policy and the state would henceforth be governed and interpreted in the clear light of that reason, which alone made the world and human conduct intelligible and tolerable. Frederick is the only Hohen- 'ioUern who definitely rejected the Protestant faith of his House, the teachings of which had no personal meaning for himself. As a political fact and force in Germany or elsewhere Protestantism was a calculable reality, like other irrational realities in a world of chaotic human passions. Its maintenance or its exploitation must be weighed and reckoned with. But the true ruler would find his inspiration and guidance in an enlightened reason, infallible to all who sought its truth undimmed by affection and superstition and unhampered by the meshes of human weaknesses. In the Temple of Reason the king was the arch high-priest, whose duty was to purge it of the idols of the tribe, the market-place and the palace. Power was justified and only justifiable if used to promote a rational well-being, to transmute into gold the leaden metal of humanity, and to drill the human will to realize a rational life. Hence power must be as unlimited as reason. Frederick's enlightened absolutism, of which he became the incarnation in the eyes of an admiring century, was subtly and inextricably blended Frederick the Great ii9 with the ambition of the HohenzoUern and the pride of the Prussian king. Frederick identified himself completely with Prussia ; the power and prosperity of Prussia were at once the end of enlightened reason and flawless title- deeds of rational government. Enlightenment would make Prussia strong. The strength of Prussia would be the triumph of reason. On the threshold of his reign Frederick was as yet inexperienced and ignorant of great affairs on the great scale. His knowledge of war was limited to the parade- ground and books ; of diplomacy in the grand sense and of states and those who rule them he knew nothing at first hand. It is one of the most suggestive facts in his life that he never travelled, and, with some trifling exceptions, his knowledge even of Germany outside Prussia was confined to his campaigns. His judgement of France, Italy, Russia, England, the House of Austria was based on events, paper reports, and the principles of his theory of Hfe and system of policy. Like the Great Elector he was a learner all his life. His power of work, his concentrated industry, were only matched by the interpretation of his experience in the terms of his creed of conduct. In 1740 Europe was on the verge of a new epoch. The Frederick Anglo-French Alliance had worn itself out ; the Anglo- -^.j^^^ ' Spanish War of 1739 had reopened the problem of empire for Great Britain, and the ambitions of a consolidated' Bourbonism were in the ascendant. The second great chapter of the Anglo-French duel was about to open. For Frederick, ambitious to make himself a figure in the world and to increase the dominions of his House, who 120 The Evolution of Prussia had inherited the fiasco of the Julich-Berg succession, the death of the Emperor Charles VI (October 20) was decisive. ' This,' he wrote, truly enough, ' is the moment of the entire transformation of the old system of politics.' There was no male heir of the House of Habsburg to inherit the imperial crown. The heiress of the Habsburg dominions, of which the duchy of Silesia would form so valuable an accession to the kingdom of Prussia, was the young Archduchess Maria Theresia, whose succession was guaranteed by the Pragmatic Sanction, ratified by all the important European states. Her husband was Francis of Lorraine, who, according to the Habsburg plans, was to succeed Charles VI as Emperor, and continue the imperial crown in the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. Silesia. Frederick's two Silesian wars are the first phase of his career ; they epitomize the principles of his action and they illustrate strikingly his combination of war and diplomacy, his conviction that ' negotiations without arms are music without instruments '. The need and advantage of Prussia to be met by the cession of Silesia were a solid justification of conquest. Force and a suitable opportunity were the other essential prerequisites. Musty Hohenzollern claims on the coveted duchy were easily vamped up from the archives of the chancery. Prussia's guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction was considered and dismissed. A pledge given by his successor under different circumstances could not weigh against reasons of state, the morality of which was independent of and superior to the personal honour of the sovereign. Maria Theresia was in difficulties ; Prussia was ready and she was not. Ambition, as he confessed later, whispered to Frederick the Great 121 a listening ear. He could succeed by a rapid and un- expected blow. But with a cynical coolness that it is difficult to parallel, he informed Vienna that he had the will and power to take Silesia, and that if they would yield it up he would procure the imperial crown for Francis, stand by Maria Theresia and the Pragmatic Sanction against the world ; but if not offered with a good grace, the enemies of the House of Habsburg would be his friends and allies. This proposal of robbery, punctuated by blackmail, was rejected with noble scorn, and Frederick crossed the borders at the head of his troops. His action precipitated a European war. The First Silesian War was fought to win Silesia, the Tte _ Second to keep it. Frederick had a clearly defined object, ^ars. He needed allies, but their object was not his. He had no intention of treating them any better or any worse than he had treated Maria Theresia. They could be his tools, but he would not be theirs. The campaign did not go, however, as smoothly as he had expected. Glogau was secured on March 9, 1741, but the first pitched battle very nearly ended in disaster at MoUwitz (April 5). It was won not by Frederick, for the despairing king had galloped to Oppeln, thirty miles away, but by Schwerin and Frederick William I, whose training of the Prussian infantry wrested success from defeat. MoUwitz brought him the alliance of France and Bavaria. Frederick undertook to vote for the Elector Charles Albert as successor to Charles VI. The House of Austria was in sore straits. Frederick threw over his allies and agreed to the secret convention of Klein Schnellendorf (October 1741) by which Prussia in return 122 The Evolution of Prussia for neutrality was to have Lower Silesia. French and Bavarian successes convinced him rapidly that ' the true principles of the poUcy of my House ' demanded a renewal of the alliance with France which would add Upper Silesia to Lower. He broke the secret convention and invaded Moravia. He was compelled to retreat through Bohemia and saved the situation for himself by the first of his great victories at Chotusitz (May 17, 1742). Under pressure from England and to free her hands to deal with France and Bavaria, Maria Theresia bought Frederick off. Chotusitz had done his work. By the Treaty of Berlin (July 28) Silesia with the county of Glatz was ceded in full sovereignty to the King of Prussia. Frederick having acquired what he had set out to win by arms and diplomacy combined, threw his allies over for the third time and retired from the war. Had he not justified himself ? For if Maria Theresia had been wise, she would have made the Treaty of Berhn in November of 1740, and Mollwitz and Chotusitz would have been victories over France and Bavaria. Aninterval Cardinal Fleury, the experienced French minister, 1742-4. ' had pronounced the King of Prussia to be false, even in his careeses. Frederick knew perfectly well that as he trusted no one, no one trusted him. He set to work to assimilate his new acquisition into the organized unity of his kingdom ; but ht also filled up the gaps in his army, profited by his experience to introduce a series of military reforms, particularly in the cavalry, and watched lynx- eyed the diplomatic and military situation. The Austrian military star was steadily rising ; the Treaty of Worms riveted Austria's allies in fresh bonds, and the Bavarian Frederick the Great 123 Emperor was being hard pressed. Silesia would be lost if France and Bavaria were defeated. Frederick promptly formed the Union of Frankfort composed of some of the minor German princes, and renewed his alliance with France in consideration of obtaining a share in the parti- tion of Bohemia. He proclaimed as his object the restoration of liberty to the Empire ; but he was fighting to keep Silesia (August 7, 1744). By September i6 he had captured Prague ; a stroke TheSecond to the south failed and he was driven to a humiliating ^Var ■ retreat back to Silesia. The French in the spring of 1744-5- 1745 invaded the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium), and Frederick was left to save himself. A smashing victory at Hohenfriedberg (June 5, 1745) over Austrians and Saxons freed Silesia of invasion and was followed by a counter-invasion of Bohemia. Frederick won a hard- fought battle at Soor ; once more, however, he had to fall back on Silesia, whence he turned on the Saxons and defeated them at Hennersdorf (November 23), while the old Dessauer inflicted another defeat on them at Kessels- dorf (December 15), and Frederick entered Dresden. He had already (August 26) concluded with England the Convention of Hanover, by which, in return for Silesia guaranteed by Europe, he undertook to vote for Maria Theresia's husband at the Imperial election made necessary by the death of the Bavarian emperor. He had nothing to hope for from France whom he had thus deserted, and England, in the throes of the Jacobite rebellion, exerted all her pressure to persuade the Austrians to recognize that Silesia could not be recovered by force of arms. Maria Theresia gave way with extreme reluctance. 124 The Evolution of Prussia The Treaty of Dresden (December 25, 1745) ended the Second Silesian War. It confirmed the Treaty of Berhn and the Convention of Hanover. To Frederick, whose treasury wras empty and army grievously battered by two years of bloody but successful war, peace was doubly welcome. The liberty of the empire, whatever that might mean, must take care of itself. Francis of Lorraine could become emperor. But Frederick had kept Silesia. § 2. Internal Organization, the Reversal of Alliances, and the Seven Years' War, 1745-63 Frederich The eleven years that intervene between the Treaty of 1745-56- Dresden and the outbreak of the Seven Years' War are the most instructive of the reign. Frederick, was in the prime of .his physical and mental powers ; he had added to his kingdom a duchy covering 15,500 square miles and containing 1,250,000 inhabitants, an area of great indus- trial and agricultural value and providing him with a fine strategic bastion alike against Saxony and the House of Austria ; moreover, in 1744, by prompt action he had forestalled rival competitors, Hanover in particular, and annexed East Friesland, with its growing port of Emden ; in diplomacy and in war he had proved himself to be a commander of men and a master of events ; his armed and incalculable egoism had struck home as a force ; the sun was in the heavens, and the sorrows, disillusionment, and superhuman strain of the titanic battle for existence had not as yet cast the shadows that were never to leave him. To a personality and brain such as Frederick's, Frederick the Great 125 with his amazing power of work, his accessibility to ideas, his intellectual capacity for enjoying the power of reason in the ordering of life, and for assimilating the literature and civilization of distinguished minds, and for adapting to the most practical use the rich and varied experience of five years of war and negotiation in the centre of the European system, this period of peace inspired the highest gifts and quality of the king. He was not yet the historic figure of fame and of achievement — the incarna- tion of Prussia's past, present, and future for the genera- tions to come — but without these years of devotion to the lessons of the Silesian campaigns and to the maturing and digested thought welling up with his own mental growth he could never have become Frederick the Great. He is at his best in these eleven years, and so far as he found happiness he found it in them. The amount of work and the range of his activities Frederick's were prodigious, and only accomplished by the sternest ideal of his duties as king, by an austere self-mastery which inevitably hardened all that was hard in soul and body, and by a mechanical apportionment of a long day that left no room for rest. He desired to be and he made himself the brain of his kingdom. It was his function to think, it was for his servants and subjects to act and carry out his thought. Frederick combined, as perhaps Napoleon alone of modern rulers combined, the duties of a supreme commander-in-chief, foreign minister, treasurer, and head of the civil administration. His was the executive wUl, but his was also the reflective brain concerned with principles as much as with execution and detail. But his thinking was not confined to the 126 The Evolution of Prussia more obvious branches of an organized and co-ordinated state life. In expert knowledge of every department or province he was the director of the specialized staff ; he knew his dominions from end to end ; his cold and critical blue eyes penetrated every secret and every corner ; peasant and burgher, the woman in the fields, merchant or artisan, landrat or councillor of a provincial chamber, pastor or monk, the soldier in the ranks, junker or general, had seen the figure in the worn blue uniform stained with snuff, knew the musical voice, trembled at that icy displeasure or contemptuous reprimand, much more rarely heard the brief assent which signified a dry approval. The privileged of the circle of Sans-Souci saw another Frederick, witty, gay, profane, brilliant, a critic of life polished to a ghttering adamant. But for all and for everything, whether it was a village pound, a new canal, a new way of planting beetroot, an opera house for Berlin, a prima ballerina, the new oblique order in minor or major tactics, Maria Theresia's feminine bigotry, Kau- nitz's latest foppery, an amour of the Tzarina Elizabeth, or Voltaire's latest work, Frederick was the Grand Intelli- gence. How the king worked and made others work, all his subjects knew — but he was always the king, and for Prussia and finally for Europe enlightened absolutism came to be identified with the personality of this royal master. The army. The army was his first and last care. If toujours en vedette was his maxim in foreign affairs, ' ready to the gaiter-button ' was his maxim for the army. The Silesian campaigns had revealed defects in officers, men, equip- ment, numbers, and in the commander-in-chief himself. For eleven years he toiled to make good these defects. Frederick the Great 127 The numbers of the peace force were raised to 135,000, with an expansion capacity up to 200,000. Training was continued with increased rigour ; reforms in the Cadettenhaus, in the military education of the officer corps, in technical equipment, in the cavalry and artillery and in tactics were pushed through. Most important of all, Frederick took his own military education sternly in hand. He had grasped, with all the soldiers who belong to the first division of the first class, that an army must have a brain of the higher order, and that if officers and rank and file cannot be improvised, still less can the brain of a commander be improvised ; and in these eleven years the world only saw the manoeuvres and the king on horseback, but they did not see the hours and days spent in his study on military history and military thought, the travail of an intellect toiling at intellectual problems, any more than they shared the silence of absorption in the science of war which made von Moltke and von Blumen- thal. The Europe of the middle of the eighteenth century forgot that the military mind of the King of Prussia was also wrestling with the problems of diplomacy and administration, and with the problems of life under self-denying conditions that were forging and tempering the cells of the spirit no less than the cells of the brain. War to Frederick was a branch of the service of life as well as a branch of the service of the state : it was indissolubly linked with the other services of life and of the state ; mastery of its secrets was a mastery of life which would be revealed to an enlightened human reason ready to pay the price and obey the service that science, the fruit of reason, demanded. The army was 128 ^- The Evolution of Prussia Prussia and Prussia was her army. If reason enjoined a duty on a Hohenzollern and a Prussian king, here it was, categorical and clear. ' I am the first servant of the state,' he pronounced. And from his conception of his duty as the first servant of the Prussian state he permitted neither pain nor pleasure, neither fatigue nor the carnal passion for ease, neither church nor critic, no praise and no blame, no hope of heaven, no fear of hell to make him flinch. The service of the state was his religion ; it justified the mundane scheme of things, its command- ments were the law for his personal conduct, and for him the state was Prussia. Civil ad- In civil administration he accepted the framework tion^ '^'^ which he had inherited. He aimed neither at recon- structing principles nor reinterpreting ends, but simply at perfecting machinery. To the four departments of the General Directory he added two — one for Trade and Manufactures, another for Military Afiairs. The ' Foreign Office ' and Justice formed separate bureaux, no less under the king's personal supervision. Silesia, assimilated to the Prussian system, was kept as a sepa- rate department. With the help of the distinguished jurist, Cocceji, he swept away a number of abuses in the administration of justice, simpHfied the procedure, cheapened litigation, and strove to make the courts purer and more efficient. But his name is not associated, as is Napoleon's, with a great code, embodying the best and most scientific ideas, though it could have been done with Cocceji's help. At every point in Frederick's work He was limited and held up by three impregnable barriers— ;he needs of the army, the prerogative and status of the Frederick the Great 129 monarchy, the social economy. The army absorbed 8,500,000 out of a revenue of 11,000,000 thalers ; a great code would have revolutionized the royal prerogative and the privileges of the nobility, and have meant taking the state to pieces and building it up again. Efficiency in finance was the sum of his efforts, the provision of a revenue that would keep the army and the state, and provide a balance to be stored up as a reserve. Frederick ^ had before his mind, night and day, the conduct and- conditions of a big war. Prussia was poor ; she had' neither the financial machinery of an industrial state noi the assets on which to borrow ; she must, therefore, have reserves in men, money, food, and equipment in order tc be self-sufficing. Necessity, as weU as his own reasoned convictions, made him a narrow mercantilist in economic principles and practice. Wealth was so many barrels of thalers piled up in his treasury ; tariffs, bounties, prohibi- tions must be freely used to encourage the growth of crops, the breeding of beasts, the development of those industries that would make Prussia absolutely independent of friend or foe. Within the limitations of this creed, and the categories Frederick of his interpretation of political force and strength, he ^ ^^^ achieved marvels in the cheapness and efficiency of his administration, in the increase of productive power, but the limitations were the direct outcome of the system he inherited and his unqualified acceptance of it. Early in life he had assimilated from French thought the evangel of enlightenment and subjugated to it the monarchical absolutism and political ambitions of the Prussian sovereign, but outside this clearly marked sphere 1832 I 130 The Evolution of Prussia he declined to allow his mind to move freely. Already before 1756 that mind had ceased to grow. Its power remained ; his experience grew richer and richer ; but he was no longer accessible to new and fertilizing thought. Ideas, movements, forces, ideals which challenged or were in conflict with his own systematized interpretation of men and things he simply ceased to consider on their merits or dismissed them as impossible or erroneous. He failed to see, though the Seven Years' War itself heralded the new age, that a new world of thought and feeling was coming into existence, a new France, of which Voltaire was not the representative, a new Germany, ■ a new England, even a new House of Austria, and that Vlie who had been abreast of, and in sympathy with, the ; most potent thought of his day was no longer in touch, ; and presently would be behind, the best spiritual and in- ■ tellectual life even of a rationalist Europe. The closer and more detailed the survey of his administrative achieve- ments, the clearer is the conclusion that Frederick, in the upper ranges of state architecture, exhibits neither originality of conception nor profundity of insight, while the limitations of his creed are concealed by the glamour of his personality and the concentration of power on results that must always be impressive. Foreign Frederick's reading of Prussia's internal needs was po icy. greatly strengthened by his sleepless study of the European situation and the relations of the great states. The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) ended the war of the Austrian Succession, but it settled none of the great issues involved, and Frederick alone was contented with the result. France, Great Britain, and the House of Austria were Frederick the Great 131 profoundly dissatisfied with the selfish policy and half- hearted help of their respective allies. The great duel between France and Great Britain for colonial empire and the supremacy of the seas had no interest for Frede- rick ; and he was not reconstructing and strengthening his army or husbanding every thaler to be France's tool in a continental struggle while she fought England in Canada, West or East Indies, and on the water. Nor was he planning another Silesian adventure. Frederick was not the victim of a megalomaniac ambition, nor a lover of conquest for conquest's sake. But he realized with absolute clearness that Prussia's action and success had shaken the European state system, and that Prussia and her king were disliked, distrusted, and feared. He had dislocated the balance of power, and his diplomacy and army had exemplified most disquieting principles and a formidable efficiency. Frederick said that he would not henceforward attack a cat, but he was ready and determined to arm cats and dogs to maintain the position he had won. Any further disturbance of the balance of power in Germany must, in Prussia's interest, be resisted. Bismarck never said anything more Frederician in spirit than the remark that the pike in the European pond prevented Prussia from remaining a carp. And the Prussian pike had filched and was growing stronger on its rival's preserves. France and Great Britain were drifting, after 1 748, Maria _ into war, and neither at Versailles nor at St. James's were and"^^*'^ the governing minds grappling with the problem of how Kaunitz. to avert, or how to succeed in, the next great struggle. Not so Vienna. Maria Theresia regarded Frederick as I z 132 The Evolution of Prussia a robber. His action had wounded and humiliated a woman's honour and pride ; his success challenged the historic prestige and position of the House of Habsburg. Justice demanded his punishment, political ethics his political humiliation. She meant to recover Silesia, and she found in Anton von Kaunitz the diplomatic brain, as fertile in resource, as cunning in fence, and as persistent as Frederick himself. Under Kaunitz's guidance the House of Austria set to work to reform the army, and to revise the principles of Habsburg policy and foreign relations. Kaunitz's central conception was to form an irresistible coalition against Prussia, and, while not dis- pensing with Great Britain, her traditional ally, to reverse the whole traditional system of an irreconcilable antagon- ism between Bourbon and Habsburg by an alliance with France. By 1754 the coalition was in train. Versailles had begun to listen. The Con- Frederick had discovered through his agents and secret vention of ggj-yi^e what was afoot. Maria Theresia could rely on minster. Saxony and Russia, but Prussia was in alliance with France. Two great wars were rolling up. Between England and France — between Austria and Prussia — France was the common factor, for Fiance could utilize Prussia to attack Hanover. To save Hanover England made with Frederick the Convention of Westminster (January 16, 1756), which secured Prussia's protection of the electorate. That convention made Prussia useless to France in the war with Great Britain that had practically broken out in 1755. Kaunitz's diplomacy achieved a great triumph when on May i, 1756, France signed a defensive alliance with Austria. It only remained to Frederick the Great i33 convert the defensive into an offensive alliance, and the ring round Frederick would be, as Kaunitz hoped, complete and overwhelming. Russia would attack in the north-east, France from the west, Saxony and Austria from the south. Frederick recognized the extent and gravity of the Frederick peril. He ignored the plain truth that his seizure of ^^j.^ j.^g. Silesia had made Maria Theresia an implacable foe, and was about to involve him in a struggle not merely to keep Silesia, but to maintain Prussia intact as a state. Was he to wait for the blow to fall, or to strike with all his might and shatter the coalition before it was fully formed ? As in 1740 the army was ready, more ready indeed, and a finer army. He weighed all the issues and decided for the offensive. A peremptory ultimatum was sent to Vienna and received an evasive reply. On August 26, 1756, Frederick crossed into Saxony to clear his right flank for a decisive blow in Bohemia. He intended to maim Austria before the French or the Russians could intervene effectively. The Seven Years' War had begun. A strange combination of circumstances, strangely The Seven influenced by accident, had brought about a complete yy^^^'^ reversal of the alliances on which the European system had hitherto rested. France, at war with England, was the ally of Austria ; Austria, at war with Prussia, was the ally of France. An offensive alliance between Austria and France, England and Prussia, by which England and Austria, allies since 1689, would become open foes was inevitable. The treaty of May i, 1757, made France a member of the anti-Prussian coalition. The Con- vention of Westminster was completed by the subsidy 134 The Evolution of Prussia treaties of 1757 and 1758. For Frederick, as for Maria Theresia, the issue was really very simple. Frederick represented the Court of Vienna as bent upon ruining the Protestant cause and establishing a despotism in the Empire. But it was enough for him that the defeat of Prussia meant dismemberment and the disappearance d the Prussian state as he had made it, while victory meant the continued existence of the Prussian state as a European power. We need not complicate the argu- ment by elaborate speculation as to the more ambitious dreams that lay in Kaunitz's diplomacy. The victory of the coalition was to be rewarded by a reduction of Prussia, equivalent to a dismemberment. Had the coalition succeeded, the history of Germany and of the world would have been profoundly different from the history we know, though in what ways neither historian, philosopher, nor prophet would venture to say with con- fidence. Frederick fought the Seven Years' War that Prussia might have a future based upon her position and character in 1756. He fought for the salvation of Prussia, and the salvation of Prussia was the inspiration of his strategy and of his titanic efforts. As a national hero therefore he has a unique place. Without Frederick the struggle would have ended in disaster, and the final result was due even more to his adamantine and inex- haustible will and nerve than to his military genius. The As a chapter in military history the war is a treasury military -^^ lessons, but military history, if not studied in detail, is the most sterile of all subjects. It must suffice here to summarize the leading events. We may note, however, three considerations of importance. First, Frederick Frederick the Great i35 occupied a central position, with flanks exposed to the Russians in the east and the French and the Austrian allies in the west. The Enghsh alliance after 1757 and the Anglo-Hanoverian army under Ferdinand of Bruns- wick with increasing effectiveness guarded Frederick's right flank. Secondly, Frederick started with an army quaUtatively superior though numerically inferior to the forces of his enemies. But the first two campaigns decimated the superb instrument he had constructed, and from 1758 onwa,rds the Austrian forces were steadily levelled up in quality, and the numbers of the coalition told with increasing heaviness against the king. Thirdly, apart from his military gifts Frederick had a unity of control. He was king, commander-in-chief, and foreign minister in one, and the simplicity and organization of the Prussian state machinery made this unity extra- ordinarily effective. Few wars have been waged in which the sovereign was the state in arms so literally as Frederick was Prussia in arms from 1756-63. Neither in 1756 nor in 1757 did Frederick achieve his The cam- scheme. In 1756 Dresden was easily occupied, but a great ^ylf^and stroke in Bohemia was foiled by Saxon resistance at i757- Pirna. A bloody victory at Lobositz (October i) did not annihilate the relieving Austrian army, and it was not until October 16 that the Saxons capitulated. The great stroke in Bohemia had to be postponed till next year. Russia and Sweden now joined the coalition as offensive partners, and in Germany Frederick could only rely on Hesse, Brunswick, and Gotha. In April of 1757 Frederick flung himself with the flower of his army on Bohemia, and after another bloody battle outside 136 The Evolution of Prussia Prague (May 6) drove the Austrian army back on the city. But a second relieving army was at hand, and at Kolin Qune i8) the king's over-confidence and tactical blunders resulted in a costly defeat, and retreat was necessary. In the west the Duke of Cumberland and the Anglo-Hanoverian army had been defeated at Hasten- beck and compelled to sign the disastrous Convention of Kloster-Zeven (July 26), opening up the western flank ; the Swedes had broken out from Pomerania, and the Russians had defeated a Prussian force at Gross-Jagersdorf (August 30), followed by another reverse at GorHtz (September 7). Crushing decisions alone could avert disaster. Frederick's genius rose to the crisis. At Ros- bach (November 5) the Franco-Imperialist army was annihilated, and Frederick, hurrying back to Silesia, in- flicted on the Austrians a punishing defeat at Leuthen. Breslau capitulated, and the enemy was cleared out of Silesia. Rosbach and Leuthen were tactical masterpieces, and put Frederick in the first class of the great commanders. The cam- The next year, 1 75 8, brought him an increased subsidy iTcf' from Great Britain, a reorganized Anglo-Hanoverian army, a competent chief in Ferdinand of Brunswick, and, best of all, the supremacy of Pitt, determined to support Prussia through thick and thin and fight the French to a finish. Frederick once again struck at his main foe, the Austrians, by an invasion of Moravia, but the siege of Olmiitz proved a failure, the Austrians under Daun refused a decisive engagement, and Frederick hurried back to avert the Russian peril. The sanguinary struggle at Zorndorf (August 25) was at best a drawn battle, and two months later Frederick, surprised at Hochkirch (Octo- Frederick the Great i37 ber 24), was only saved by the excellence of his officers and men. The subsequent march to and relief of Neisse were a little masterpiece ; but the army of 1756 no longer existed, and Frederick was reduced to the defensive, i 1759, the year of victory for England — the year of The cam- Quebec, Minden, and Quiberon — was a year of disaster j^l^^and for Frederick. The Austrians refused a decision, and at 1760- Kunersdorf (August 12) the Russians, aided by the Austrian Laudon, inflicted on the over-confident king a terrible defeat. Dresden capitulated, and Finck and a Prussian army were surrounded and surrendered at Maxen (November 21). Prussia, as her king said, was only saved by a miracle or the ' divine stupidity ' of his foes, who did not follow up their successes. In a ruined land, Frederick, with poison in his pocket, still fought on. The next year opened badly. At Landeshut (June 23) a Prussian force was wiped out ; Glatz fell (July 26), and the Russians advanced to the Oder. At Liegnitz (August 15), however, Frederick defeated Laudon ; and at Torgau (November 3) Daun was lured into risking a battle and was defeated. Liegnitz and Torgau explain the Austrian reluctance to fight pitched battles and the fear that Frederick's genius inspired. Talk of peace was now invading the European chan- The peace ceries. Frederick's position seemed desperate. Pomerania ''^' was gone ; the Russians occupied the New March ; the Austrians were in Silesia ; but Frederick would not listen to any proposals which involved cession of territory. Militarily he was on the defensive, marching and counter- marching, to keep the enemy back without risking a great battle and a defeat that would be the coup de grace. His 138 The Evolution of Prussia reputation and fertility of resource were such that he succeeded in achieving the impossible. Throughout 1760 the king existed on his prestige and moral power. Laudon stormed Schweidnitz (October i), but a more serious loss was Pitt's retirement (1761) and the passing of the control in London to an inexperienced and self- confident young king and his agent Bute, more anxious to defeat the Whigs than to crush France and save Prussia. On January 6, 1761, Frederick had virtually decided peace must be won by a cession of territory, when on January 19 the Tzarina Elizabeth died, and the new Tzar turned from the coalition against, to alliance with, Prussia. Though the Tzar was deposed on July 18, his wife Catherine, who became Tzarina, intended to be neutral. Frederick stormed Burkersdorf (July 21), and recovered Schweidnitz (October 9), while his brother Henry, the . one general in Frederick's judgement ' who never made a mistake ', won a victory at Freiberg. Silesia had been cleared of the foe. The death of Elizabeth and the accession first of Peter and then of Catherine, had more than compensated for Bute's dropping of the British subsidy and bungling management of the peace negotia- tions. Every one was ready to come to terms, and on February 15, 1763, the Treaty of Hubertusburg ended the war for Frederick. He undertook to vote for the Archduke Joseph as the successor to his father to the imperial crown, and obtained a confirmation of the treaties of Dresden and Breslau. Silesia and the county of Glatz were to remain Prussian. The great coalition 1 had failed. Frederick emerged from the war without yielding a yard of territory or a stone of his fortresses. Frederick the Great i39 § 3. Prussia from 1763-86 If the peace of Hubertusburg was, on the face of it, no Results of more than a registration of the status quo of 1756, it was years' in reality a personal and a political triumph for Frederick. The apparently overwhelming combination of Sweden Russia, the House of Austria, its German allies, and France, had signally failed to achieve their object, the humiliation and reduction of Prussia. In Maria Theresia's eyes Satan had won at Berlin ; Silesia was lost for ever ; the House of Austria had not recovered its position, and must reckon perpetually with the House of Hohenzollern and a Prussia, rooted in the north, which would challenge the supremacy of Austria and her policy in the empire. AU that Frederick and Prussia stood for — the military state, the enlightened absolutism, a tolerant Protestantism, a public law, the sanction of which rested on force and efficiency, a ruthless egoism as the mainspring of policy — had been re-baptized by the blood of battle and the ink of the treaty. That Frederick could not have accom- plished what he had without the alliance of Great Britain is obvious. The defeat of France, the British subsidy, and the Anglo-Hanoverian army — and it is no depreciation of Frederick's marvellous efforts to state it plainly — had saved him from disaster. Frederick, as a critic of British policy, was fully entitled to argue that British self-interest really required that Great Britain should continue the struggle until Prussia had been rewarded by substantial annexations. But on his own principles he put himself out of court by denouncing Great Britain for action which he would have regarded as treachery in a Prussian Wni. 14° The Evolution of Prussia sovereign. Frederick's system assumed that egoism, ruthless and enUghtened, was the sole justifiable criterion of state action, with the consequence that if the English interest came into conflict with the Prussian, for England her interest alone must prevail. On the worst interpre- tation England only repeated the clear example of the Silesian campaigns, the abandonment of an alliance when it ceased to be profitable or necessary. Moreover, between 1758 and 1762 Frederick had shown that he was ready, without scruple or hesitation, to throw over the British or any other alliance, and to conclude a separate peace with any and every power which would grant the terms he judged desirable. The plain truth is that Frederick applied one set of canons to the judgement of his neigh- bours and another to the judgement of himself. Prussian needs proved Prussia's action to be right and all opposi- tion to it wrong, and he made the welkin ring with bitter denunciation if friend or foe accepted and worked out the only code which he allowed to have any binding force on himself. But for all who decline to accept egoism as a basis of state action, bolstered up by Reason of State, and armed with force, who dismiss Frederick's argument in 1763 as an invalid conclusion drawn from false pre- misses, it must suffice here briefly to point out first that England did not ' desert ' Prussia, and, secondly, that a study of the detailed diplomacy of 1762 and 1763 shows that she insisted on and obtained the cession by France of all Prussian territory in French occupation. The substi- tution of Bute for Pitt was in every way regrettable, if for no other reason than that it displaced a genius by a mediocrity. Frederick's services were recognized in Frederick the Great M^ Great Britain. It was at Berlin that the world was taught that gratitude was a weakness in a ruler, and had no place in the ethics of statecraft. Frederick reached the zenith of his fame in 1763. The Frederick magic of the king's personality was blended with the impressive solidity of his military and political organiza- tion, which had enabled Prussia to survive the onslaught of a great coalition. The Prussian state no less than the Prussian army cast its spell over the mind of Europe. Frederick, as the incarnation of a system, became the model for all who would do the like. At Vienna and Peters- burg two young rulers, Joseph and Catherine, saturated in the rationalism that had produced enlightened abso- lutism, frankly admitted their debt to Sans Souci, while for thirty years Frederician strategy and tactics dominated military thought. But in 1763 Frederick himself had suffered as much as his kingdom. He had lost in the war the only two women — his mother and his sister Wilhel- mina. Margravine of Baireuth — ^who had ever touched his heart. The physical and mental strain of the colossal struggle had stamped with an indelible imprint body and spirit. The unconquerable will, indeed, remained, but buoyancy, elasticity, and gaiety had gone for ever, and the future stretched out in front of him, stripped of all grace and charm, set with unending problems and darkened by an increasing isolation and loneliness. The autocrat was more an autocrat than ever, but in the sunken blue eyes, in which the imperious fire was unquenchable, in the thin compressed lips so ready with a barbed epigram or a bitter cynicism, in the stoop of the shoulders, men could see indeed the victor of Rosbach and Leuthen, but not 142 The Evolution of Prussia the Frederick who had built Sans Souci in the sunshine of the dawn. This was a sovereign who had wrestled with death without fear and who now wrestled with life without hope, a master of political wisdom, perhaps, but not a master of comfort, or of joy. Prussia in Frederick saw his kingdom in extremis. Berlin had been '' 3- /aided three times by the foe ; East Prussia had been devas- tated by the Russians and lost since 1758 ; Silesia had been the cockpit of five campaigns. The army had been cut to pieces, and discipline in the inferior soldiers of 1 76 1 was only maintained by a savage repression. The treasury was empty ; the coinage had been debased ; ruin, misery, and waste prevailed where in 1756 had been prosperity and progress. The gigantic task of rebuilding might well have dismayed the stoutest heart, but Frede- rick's determination was fired and steeled by the com- plexity and gravity of his difficulties. More than ever it was his duty to be the brain and will of Prussia and to extort a prosperous and strong state from intractable human material and conditions that defied success. Prussia should be as she was before — she should have an invincible army, an agriculture, a revenue, industries, no matter what the effort cost his subjects or himself. For the twenty-three years that remained of his reign he toiled and compelled his subjects to toil with unflagging energy and grim self-sacrifice. Prussia in The result is the most telling commentary. At his '' ■ death the revenue was 22 million thalers ; he had saved and stored 51 million thalers, which would, he calculated, cover the cost of eight campaigns ; the peace strength of the army was 1 50,000 men ; the fortresses had been Frederick the Great i43 rebuilt ; magazines had been established and equipment provided for at least 200,000 men, and there was a com- fortable balance each year between income and expendi- ture. Marshes had been drained, woods planted, waste cultivated, the number of cattle and horses very nearly doubled, and as a proof of Prussia's power the king had built himself a third palace (the New Palace) at Potsdam, the king to whom the apparatus of a royal court was a stupid luxury and who allowed only one-hundredth part of the state revenue and the profits of the royal estates to be spent on the personal maintenance of the monarchy. These remarkable results were not achieved without the tntemal most drastic economy and a ruthless interference witl ^^tion™" the liberty, property, and lives of every Prussian, frorr the king's ministers to the king's serfs. Economic polic) was modelled more closely than ever on extreme mercan tilist principles, the basis and working of which wert crumbHng away in the progress of scientific thought. The linen, woollen, silk, glass, porcelain, and sugar- refining industries were state creations and artificially fostered by every device that ingenuity and stern regula- tion could suggest. A state monopoly in tobacco, coffee, and salt was instituted in 1765 and 1766, and the organiza- tion (General-tabaks-administration) entrusted to French officials. The harshness and comprehensiveness with which this monopoly, an instrument for raising fresh revenue, was exercised, the inquisitorial control that _ it involved, and the horde of officials it employed, made it very unpopular and contributed in a very marked degree to make Frederick and his rule a burden that obliterated 144 The Evolution of Prussia the memory of the king's services. Cut off from the General Directory, the monopoly was a serious injury to the efficiency of the civil service, and while it increased the autocratic power of the sovereign it did so by increas- ing the power of the irresponsible cabinet officers. The experiments in the Levant Company, the Herring monopoly, and in the Marine Insurance (Seehandlung) proved failures. Frederick's policy, in fact, sterilized individual initiative, it taught industry to rely wholly on state inspiration and assistance ; it multiplied the ever- increasing army of miserably paid state employees dependent on the central control at Berlin. Frederick's Two far deeper defects underlay Frederick's system. limitations. Nothing was done to free the organization of society or the machinery of productiou, distribution, and consump- tion from the dead and mortifying fetters of the caste J system. Industry was to be created without the creation of an industrial class, a task as hopeless as an attempt to create an army without creating educated officers and disciplined soldiers. Frederick, imprisoned in an anti- quated economic creed and the postulates of autocracy which in the industrial and agrarian spheres were the, reverse of enlightened, was disappointed at the results achieved, which he attributed to the accursed obstinacy and incompetence of humanity. But men will remain obstinate and stupid if a system denies the conditions indispensable for free action and requires them to cease to think and merely to absorb the thought that is imposed on them. Frederick forgot the lesson of his own life — that the assimilation of ideas involves minds that can assimilate. He ignored the truth that predigested Frederick the Great i45 thought destroys or atrophies the machinery of mind even more surely than predigested food destroys the machinery of the stomach. Secondly, Frederick, more rigorously after than before 1763, made the Crown the , single Grand Intelligence of the state. But what was he doing in these years to ensure that there should be a Grand Intelligence when the enlightened king was no longer there ? It is frequently asserted that Frederick made the army, the civil service, and the economic administration mere machines : but they were machines adapted to carry out the wiU and thought of a highly-trained and culti- vated brain, which never ceased to think and to inspire. No one knew better than Frederick that efficiency and enlightenment without a directing and enlightened mind were impossible and the most pernicious of superstitions. Machinery was only a means to achieve an end. It is the most regrettable and the most astonishing of his limita- tions that he took no steps to provide a successor to his brain as well as to his crown and authority : still more regrettable that from 1763 onwards the principles, reorganization, and working of the autocracy pre- vented any such brain coming into existence. He left his Prussia, to which he had devoted forty-six years of such toil and sacrifice as few monarchs in any age can show, at the mercy of an heir whose character had not been disciplined nor his mind educated, who had not even an adequate technical knowledge of the absolutist regime in the army and the state which he inherited — a ruler dependent on officials who had been taught the supreme, duty of never thinking for themselves. Instead of a brain he left a series of political testaments 1832 K 146 The Evolution of Prussia with no guarantee that any one would obey them. Even the ilHterate Frederick WiUiam I had done better than this, for he had insisted that his heir should know his work from top to bottom. Yet Frederick was under no illusions about the perfection of the Prussian machine or its capacity to run by itself. His criticism of the short- comings of his officers, both in the army and the civil service, increased in volume and bitterness as he aged. His orders and his memoranda were a perpetual indict- ment of their shortcomings in mind and in the perform- ance of their duties. But like so many rulers to whom power is everything, and whose will to rule increases as the physical forces ebb, Frederick feared a rival authority in the state far more than he feared death. A corroding jealousy of youth, vigour, and independence secretly gnawed at his heart, as the ever-lengthening shadows of old age reniorselessly chilled his blood. And in the deepening isolation of his laborious solitude his inter- pretation of life and humanity laid with every year a freezing hand on his spirit. He could command obe- dience, but save in his faithful dogs he could not command love or loyalty. For the lonely king Sans Souci was haunted with the ghosts of a vanished past. The collaborators of his prime were replaced by automata subjugated to his will. Did he not remember how he, the heir who owed no gratitude to father or sovereign, had outwitted the tyrant ? Knaves, knaves, knaves, the world was full of knaves and rogues, of the idle, the incompetent, the wasteful, and the sensual. Roguery everywhere, at Paris, Petersburg, and Vienna, ^nd in Berlin, The penalties of a creed which enthroned Frederick the Great M7 a ruthless egoism in a universe of reason, strangely mocked by chance and marred by folly, which left no place for gratitude, unselfishness, pity, or love in policy or personal conduct, worked themselves out unseen and all the more terribly because they were not seen ; and if Prussia paid the price, the great king had paid it twice over before Berlin and his subjects heard with relief that he was no more. In Frederick's foreign policy, after 1763, it would be Foreign difficult to find traces of age or declining power. On the after^763. contrary it was the consummation of an enriched experience, a heightened fertility of resource and an unrepentant adherence to the principles and methods which vitalized his system. A vigilant exploitation of the shifting circumstances of the European situation, and a penetrating interpretation of the character of the rulers of the European states were never more effectively combined with a sleepless devotion to the interest of Prussia. The great war bequeathed a complicated legacy of problems. Frederick desired peace, and through peace to secure his position. War was a cruel gamble, the uncertainty of which not even genius and a matchless army could master. It was for a poor state like Prussia an unmitigated evil, only to be justified by the most imperious necessity. Frederick reconstructed his army and reconstituted his financial reserve, with a view not to fighting, but to avert fighting. Military strength was a warning to the adver- sary and a powerful arm to negotiations. The supreme task was to wrest from his rivals and the crowned caprice in human affairs the results of war through a diplomacy, double edged with bayonets and prestige. Frederick's of Prussia. 148 The Evolution of Prussia action showed clearly not merely that war for war's sake was no part of his system, but that it was the last card in the player's hand. But if so, then it must really be a trump card. Internal administration, which sacrificed education to the needs of the army, would make the Prussian army that supreme trump card. The higher leading must continue to be Prussia's secret alike in the field and in the chanceries of Europe. The needs Prussia's geographical and political position imposed two further postulates, enforced by bitter experience. East Prussia was isolated; at the mercy of Russia, and Russia was an expanding state. Zorndorf and Kunersdorf were never forgotten by Frederick. Russia, before 1763, had numbers and a libertine Tzarina, Elizabeth, whose political intelligence was on a level with her morals ; she still had the numbers, a new Tzarina no less a libertine, but as cool and heartless a devotee in the Temple of Enlightened Reason as Frederick himself. Frederick feared Russia, and fear was in Frederick's political thought the most reasonable basis of political affection. Secondly, Prussia could not stand alone. She must have allies. Great Britain was worse than untrustworthy and per- fidious ; she was useless. Frederick, therefore, struck Great Britain off the slate, and the alliance of the Seven Years War did not even linger on in a loose political connexion. The enmity of the House of Austria was obviously a permanent element to be reckoned with in all Germanic and European problems, while the Franco-Austrian alliance continued after the war. But if France and the House of Austria had definitely rejected all idea of reduc- ing or partitioning Prussia, they might in combination Frederick the Great i49 upset the balance of power to the disadvantage of Prussia, and recover elsewhere than in the northof Germany what the war had failed to give them. In 1765 the Archduke Joseph became emperor, and was associated with his mother in the government of the hereditary possessions of the House of Austria. Joseph, Frederick said, always took the second step before he took the first, a brilliant but not entirely accurate description of the most gifted Habsburg since Charles V. Joseph was wholly saturated with the creed of en- Joseph II lightened absolutism and of crowned philanthropy in the Theresia. service of humanity organized under a beneficent despot. His ambition was to create a real Austria out of the complexus of Habsburg dominions, to make it geographi- cally compact and to increase its strength by judicious annexations and a centralized administration based on reason of state and emancipated intelligence. His model was the Prussian king, and Frederick repaid the compli- ment by hanging Joseph's portrait in his bedroom, in case, which was not in the least likely, he should forget the restless ambition which fought at Vienna an unequal contest with a son's devotion to a noble and unemanci- pated mother and a ruler's passion to reform Austria and achieve Habsburg supremacy in one short lifetime. Frederick, who would have no woman in his establishment, neither queen, mistress, nor housekeeper, spent much of his life in combating able or powerful women — Maria Theresia, Madame de Pompadour, the Tzarinas Elizabeth andCatherine — and after 1 763 found in his great antagonist the empress-queen at Vienna his best ally, though neither he nor she perhaps was aware of it. For Maria Theresia 150 The Evolution of Prussia was a more effective check on Joseph IPs inexhaustible aspirations and ruthless rationalism than Frederick him- self. To the end she refused to make human reason do the work both of a brain and a conscience, and neither defeat nor a tangible material success could extirpate her conviction that ethical right had a place in the divine scheme of things. The famous criticism of Frederick on Maria Theresia's part in the First Partition of Poland, ' Elle pleurait et prenait toujours,' in truth reflects with more severity on the king who made it than on the queen against whom it was levelled. Every argument, therefore, pointed in Frederick's eyes to the desirabiHty of Russia as an ally ; a Russo-Prussian alliance would make for peace, be a solid counter-system to the Bourbon-Habsburg combination and drive a wedge between Vienna and Petrograd. Frederick, like Bismarck, was haunted by the nightmare of coalitions, and with more reason. He had learned what a coalition could cost Prussia. The The material for a Russo-Prussian alliance lay to his alliance, hand in Poland. West Prussia, with its ports of Elbing 1764-80. and Danzig, the sweep of the Vistula, and the fortress of Thorn, cut Prussia in half. Necessity required that it should cease to be Polish : necessity also gave to the duty of ' sewing together the dominions of the HohenzoUerns ' the most flawless of political title deeds. Poland, cursed with an elective monarchy and an anarchic, corruptible, and tyrannical nobility, was a Naboth's vineyard to the three enlightened monarchs of Prussia, Russia, and Austria. In 1763 the Polish throne was vacant. Frederick supported the Russian candidate, Stanislaus Ponia- towski, a discarded lover of the Tzarina Catherine, Frederick the Great 151 and thereby deprived a German rival, Elector of Saxony, from continuing the Polish Crown in the line that had held it since 1697. Stanislaus became king, or rather the crowned agent of Russian designs, and Frederick in 1764 secured the alliance of Russia, which was extended in 1767, but on dangerous terms ; for, if Russia guaranteed him her support in case of an Austrian attack he was pledged to attack Austria if she attacked Russia. It was, again to quote Bismarck, a case in which Catherine controlled the longer arm of the lever, and her war with Turkey stirred the deepest resentment and whetted the land hunger of Vienna. In four years Frederick extricated himself triumphantly from a critical situation by diplomatic strategy and tactics comparable to his most masterly military manoeuvres. The detailed strokes and counter- strokes would fiU a volume. It must suffice here to point out that the solution was found in the famous-infamous First Partition of Poland. The idea of Partition was not new. It had been The First discussed as early as 1656 by Charles X of Sweden and of Poland the Great Elector : and for a century the idea haunted ^772. the chanceries, emerging in the sinister half-shadows of memoranda and projects, only to be dismissed to a troubled rest. Whether Frederick was the first author of a definite scheme is disputable and irrelevant to the main develop- ment. The danger of an Austro-Russian war, in which Prussia would fight Russia's cause with dubious prospects, the certainty that Catherine meant to absorb Turkish territory, and that Joseph II and Kaunitz were deter- mined to have ' compensation ', to break up the Russo- Prussiaa alliance if they could, and substitute a Russo- 152 The Evolution of Prussia Austrian understanding in its place, sharpened every faculty of Frederick's, and in the great game he had the cooler head, the more experienced hand, and a definite and limited object — the acquisition of West Prussia. He held tight to his alliance with Catherine, and when Joseph in 1770 seized the county of Zips, he flung his troops into Elbing. On January 28, 1772, the secret treaty with Russia riveted Catherine and Frederick in an agreement to partition, and there was nothing for Joseph to do but to fight Prussia and Russia, or join the agreement on the best terms he could make. War, as Frederick had foreseen, was unnecessary if the three enlightened masters of the east could aggrandize them- selves at the expense of a defenceless neighbour. By the treaty of February 19, 1772, Austria joined in, and after five months spent in settling details the Partition was an accomplished fact. Joseph acquired Galicia and Lodo- meria, Catherine a large strip of Lithuania, and Frederick West Prussia, with Pomerellen and Ermeland, but with- out Danzig or Thorn. On September 13 the proclama- tion of annexation was made, and the king could call himself correctly king of, and not merely as before, king in Prussia. The argu. Frederick's action has been defended, firstly, because Se'pani- Poland was a dying kingdom, which the surgery of tion. partition restored to a new life in the march of Prussian civilization and progress ; secondly, because he had at length recovered the whole territory ruled by the Teutonic Order, and only took back what had been once germanized by German blood and sweat ; thirdly, be- cause he reorganized his acquisition and with marvellous Frederick the Great i53 labour conferred on it the blessings of an enlightened autocracy and an efficient administration; fourthly because if he had not forestalled Catherine and Joseph they would have made the Partition, and he would have obtained nothing ; fifthly, because the geographical, political, and military needs of Prussia required that the gap between East Prussia and Prussian Pomerania should be filled in ; and, lastly, because without the annexation Prussia never could have played the part in German and European history that she has subsequently played to the indis- putable benefit of Germany, Europe, and herself. These arguments are simply embroidered variants of the central doctrine that ends justify means and that reason of state and the law of dynastic needs, backed by bayonets, are superior to all other considerations. They would apply to and justify any and every aggressive conquest. Frede rick paved the way to robbery by an iniquitous agreemej with Catherine that Poland should remain decaden; anarchic, and unreformed. His diplomacy was through out a tissue of fraud and deceit, and the consummatioi of his designs was only effected by sheer force on an un -willing victim. The Partition was, and remains, a crime ;' it provided an odious precedent for the subsequent extinction of the Polish kingdom and of Polish nationality in blood and flame, which it made inevitable; audit taught a world on the eve of revolution that rois eclairh differed from the footpad only in the magnitude of their greed, the scale of their operations, and the philosophical hypocrisy with which they sought to cover naked aggression. Silesia and West Prussia — the two most successful rob- West beries of the eighteenth century — completed Frederick's Prussia 154 The Evolution of Prussia and the Prussian monarchv. Frederick and Ger- many. claims to be enshrined as a Prussian national hero. The material gain of 1772 was as important as the strategical, and in a few years West Prussia, reorganized by Frederick with marvellous energy, contributed two million thalers to the royal revenue. The annexation linked up Silesia, the New March, and Pomerania with East Prussia, which was no longer a virtual hostage in Russia's hands. But it also made Polish politics a grave concern to the foreign office at Berlin. Catherine was determined that anarchy, an equivalent for Russian control, should continue at Warsaw, Lublin, and Cracow. Frederick dare not assist the Poles to reform their king- dom, nor resist the manipulation of Stanislaus by Russian pressure. For without the friendship of Russia he was isolated in the European world. Peace and the maintenance of the status quo continued to define the objects of Frederick's policy from 1772 to his death — above all, the maintenance of the status quo in the Germanic federation. Frederick acquiesced in Russian or Austrian annexations at the expense of Turkey, for the very good reason that he could not prevent them ; the integrity of Turkey was not worth the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier, and the friendship of Catherine was worth three army corps. To keep Joseph and Catherine apart — at least, to prevent their combination against himself — was the core of his political system. It was in Germany, not on the Danube or the Dniester, that Joseph was a perpetual menace to Prussia. And the emperor saw in the Bavarian Succession question the opportunity for a great stroke — the first step to a still greater stroke. In 1777 the Elector of Bavaria died Frederick the Great i55 childless ; the heir was the Elector Palatine, who was also ruler of Jiilich and Berg. Joseph had not studied Prussian policy and the Silesian business without learning much. He set forth a historical and legal claim to a large part of Bavaria, and coerced or cajoled the heir, the Elector Palatine, into agreement while he pushed his troops across the frontier. Such an acquisition would aggrandize the House of Austria, increase imperial and Habsburg power, and give Prussia no equivalent com- pensation. Frederick promptly replied by denouncing this violation of public law, unprovoked aggression on the peace of the empire, and destruction of dynastic and princely rights. And as the Elector Palatine was also childless he secured the next heir, the Duke of Zwei- briicken, whose reversionary claims in the name of jus- tice he was prepared to defend. The robber of Silesia, who had plunged the empire into war in 1740, and the author of the Partition of 1772, protesting against the Partition of Bavaria — enlightened reason rebuking enlightened reason with the figments of an exploded, conventional morality — ^is a dramatic spectacle. For, as Frederick coolly informed his brother, Prussian interest alone was his motive, only it was most important not to say so. When the interests of the German princes coincided with those of Prussia then efficiency required that those arguments, worthless in themselves, should be employed which would influence minds deaf to the voice of the higher political philosophy. It came to war — the War of the Bavarian Succession — The War for Frederick was determined to checkmate Habsburg Bavarian ambition (July 3, 1778). The campaign of 1778 and Succession, 156 The Evolution of Prussia 1779 ended in a deadlock. While the king held up the main Austrian army in north-eastern'Bohemia, his brother pushed along the Elbe, but failed to make a junction with Frederick's troops. The Austrians refused to risk a decision, which Frederick was unwilUng to force on them. The stone-wall tactics of the enemy, rain, and difficulties of supply compelled the tired and ageing king to retreat. Before the spring permitted the projected invasion of Moravia, diplomacy had done its work, and the Peace of Teschen (May 13, 1779) restored peace. Bavaria was to pass to the Elector Palatine ; the claims of the Elector of Saxony were liquidated in cash ; Joseph acquired the Inn Quarter, a strip to the east of the river Inn, and France and Russia were made partners to the settlement which solemnly confirmed the treaties of Westphalia and the princely rights therein defined. The Peace The world was not surprised at the terms, but much of Teschen, surprised at the military ineffectiveness of Prussia. The army was disappointed with the king, and the king was bitterly disappointed with the army, with his generals, with the lack of discipline, and the absence of the qualities which had given Prussian troops the reputation of in- vincibility. The plain truth is that Frederick was not m 1778 the Frederick of 1756 ; he was not equal to the effort of taking a great risk, failure in which would have brought every enemy into the field against him — and Europe was a magazine of resentment, fear, and jealousy of Prussia — he was nursing his reputation, and he dis- covered that his army was not one on which he could implicitly rely for a supreme and difficult decision. The Prussian army, indeed, had begun to exhibit the defects Frederick the Great i57 which the wars of the Revolution brought into the glaring light of day. The brain that had made it, and been its soul and mind, was wearing out, and there was no brain to take its place. It had not learned that another brain was necessary, nor was it allowed to have one. Frederick also probably felt that diplomacy, not arms, could win. France, in the throes of war with England, was in no position to aid her ally Joseph II ; ■ Maria Theresia exerted all her influence for a peaceful solution ; a great war to complete the robbery of a neigh- bour was a sore burden on the conscience of a woman at whose door death was tapping ; and Russia supported Prussia. Frederick secured the rights of the German princes at the price of registering the right of Russia and of France to determine what was desirable for Ger- many. But that did not trouble him. He had frustrated Joseph II, and, more important, made good the interest of Prussia. Six years of life remained, and Frederick spent them in Europe a continuous effort to maintain the status quo. It was 1770-86. an up-hiU task, but his energy and resource never flagged. ' The cursed ' Joseph's fertility in devising ' detestable plans ' necessitated the maximum of skill and vigilance. The expansion of Russia at the expense of Turkey, the unlimited possibilities that a partition of the Ottoman empire , opened up, the union of Russian imperialism, which aimed at Constantinople, with the Habsburg tradi- tion of advance down the Danube, wrested Russia from the Prussian alliance and made Catherine and Joseph partners and allies (1781). The world Frederick had known was dissolving — a France that had lost Voltaire 158 The Evolution of Prussia and was dominated by the gospel of Rousseau, rein, forced from America, that was steadily sapping the foundations of the ancien regime; Great Britain de- feated, and her empire dismembered by the birth of the United States ; Poland the washpot of Catherine ; Turkey apparently destined to share Poland's fate. To pacify Catherine, and to indulge the resentment he had never ceased to feel for Great Britain's ' treachery ', in 1781 Frederick joined the Armed Neutrality of the north — a protest of the neutral states against British ' tyranny ' at sea over neutral shipping ; but the one area where Joseph's activities could be checked was in Germany and through the Germanic system. Habsburg princes had secured the rich and powerful sees of Cologne (an electorate) and Miinster. To prevent the capture and exploitation of the Imperial Diet by the emperor- to frustrate a league against Prussia by the formation of a league against the Habsburg House, allied with France and Russia, was Frederick's final project and achievement. The The Peace of Teschen may be said to have suggested Prmces " ^^ idea, the principles, and the compelling inspiration. 1785. Joseph H was in Frederick's eyes a grave public danger ; he threatened to make imperial power in reality what it was in theory. The Germanic system had come virtually to rest on a dualism — Prussia and the HohenzoUerns in the north, the House of Austria in the south. Any serious alteration in this equilibrium would be fatal to Prussia's interests and position. It remained for Prussia to convince the German princes that their interests and rights coincided with those of Prussia, and to resist all change to the detriment of the status quo. All the Frederick the Great i59 resources of diplomacy were utilized to influence the German courts, amongst which the idea of union was already under discussion. And with the help of Hanover and Saxony the basis of a league was laid (July 23, 1785), while Frederick, with a skill that showed the old hand had not lost its cunning, was quite willing that the President should be the Elector of Hanover, the King of Great Britain. The Archbishop and Elector of Mainz acceded to the union, which gave the four electors a majority in the college that elected the emperor. But already Joseph's proposal that the Elector Palatine should exchange Bavaria for the Austrian Netherlands had been defeated (February 1785) by the vigorous opposition of Prussia to the violation of the Treaty of Teschen, and, unsupported by his allies France and Russia, the emperor abandoned the scheme. Fresh accessions to the League of the Four Electors flowed in, and the League became the Fiirstenbund, or League of Princes — an organization, irrespective of status or creed, to main- tain the empire as it existed, to guarantee the possessions and rights of every member, to oppose exchanges or secularization of territory, and to utilize its authority at the next election to secure recognition of its principles from the imperial head of Germany. The League of Princes has a deep interest, not merely as the last achieve- ment of Frederick, or as a movement in which the young Freiherr vom Stein, destined for an imperishable place alike in Prussian and German history, made his entrance into German politics, but as showing the recognition, by the German princes that German affairs were primarily and ultimately a matter for Germans to decide. But the i6o The Evohdion of Prussia League accomplished little or nothing beyond coming into existence. Whether it would have opened a new chapter in German history had Frederick's brain, experi- ence, and driving power been its mainspring it is impos- sible to say. How Frederick would have shaped Prussian policy and how moulded German action in the decade from 1786 to 1796 — in the tide of the revolutionary maelstrom whose waters were already beginning to run deep and strong in France — we must always regret that we can never know. On August 17, 1786, working to the end, he died, quite unconscious that his death marked the closing of an epoch, and that French genius, which had inspired the illumination of the eighteenth century, was about to dominate the world anew. France and the French mind, not Joseph II and an enlightened absolutist imperialism, were the most formidable foe that the Prussia of Frederick was shortly called upon to face. Frederick, Frederick's reign and achievements are the most in- and the structive expositions of his principles, methods, and work. •""g- A catalogue of limitations is always the easiest of easy tasks for a generation which is removed by a century or more from an impressive figure, and has never lived under the conditions of thought, of political and social organiza- tion, never felt the indefinable impact of a personality dominating the atmosphere of a vanished age. For as Bagehot so truly says, the difficulty in historical apprecia- tion is not in seeing the merits and demerits of the solution of a problem, but in grasping the problem of which it was a solution. And in Frederick's case the limitations in his character, his principles, and his acts are obvious. His success, too, and what he made Frederick the Great i6i of Prussia, seem stamped with inevitability. We are surprised that, having done so much, he did not accomplish more. Unconsciously we read back into the Prussia of 1740 the Prussia, not of Frederick William II, nor of Jena, but the Prussia of the War of Liberation, of the ZoUverein, of Bismarck, Moltke, William I, and the Uni- versity of Berlin, and we attribute to it resources that it never possessed, not even when Frederick died. Frederick, we are probably all agreed, is not a character that wins love ; we can share Carlyle's feeling at the end of his great task that, unlike Cromwell, the closer he is studied the less he commands the homage due to an unanalysable moral grandeur and the daily communion of the invisible spirit with an invisible spiritual universe. Pathos and the tears of human things lie in Frederick's iron creed and loveless loneliness, even in that slavery to duty which brought a richer reward to the kingdom of Prussia than to the kingdom of Frederick's mind. For the greatest work that the truly great achieve is not what they make of their world but what they make of them- selves. Frederick's limitations, too, were not wholly but to a large extent limitations also of his age. In the conduct of states and the diplomacy of international relations violence, fraud, deceit, ambition, lust of power, disregard of the moral rules that would bring a private individual to the prison or a gallows, were not invented by Frederick nor did they disappear with him. The most serious gravamen of the indictment here is that Frederick, who claimed to represent a new type of monarchy, taught the Europe of his day that success in these methods obliterated the moral taint, and incited 1832 L Frederick the Great 163 both by precept and example the ruler who would be the first servant of his state to concentrate his brain power on a science of statecraft in which intellectual efficiency was everything and morality a damaging handi- cap. The doctrine that ends justify means is inevitably dogged and damned by a doctrine of casuistry, as elastic as it is pernicious. And in the politics of the eighteenth century Frederick is the arch-casuist. The circumstances of Prussia's position — it is the pith and marrow of his philosophy of politics — differentiated her from other states and transformed what would have been immoral acts in other rulers into a crown of glory for Prussia. The eighteenth century was mesmerized into admiring pre- cisely the qualities in Frederick that are most vulnerable to the criticism of a century not in his debt, while it acqui- esced in the defects that are most patent to us. But it also felt what we, born and bred in an age that has witnessed the triumph of the nationaHst principle, of constitutional monarchy, representative institutions, and equality under the law, underrate or forget — the revelation of enlightened absolutism proclaimed by a living example and a gifted personality. The world before Frederick's reign knew of absolutists who were not enlightened, of victorious soldiers, strong administrators, and successful conquerors. But it saw in Frederick much more than a scientific commander, a master of all the technique of diplomacy, an autocratic director of a centralized and efficient bureaucracy. Frederick indeed taught rulers and ruled potent lessons — that the rights of a sovereign are a deduc- tion from his duties ; that the title-deeds of monarchy in a rational world must rest on reason, and that the service L 2 164 The Evolution of Prussia of the first servant of the state demands that the ruler should be the most efficient member of his kingdom. Frederick freed a hypnotized Europe from the fetishes and superstitions of Versailles. And if we deplore his interpretation of humanity and his failure to understand the capabilities and duties of womanhood in civilization, he could answer with truth that not one thaler wrung from obedient subjects was spent on himself, that he earned by the sweat and travail of forty-six years the modest. wages he assigned to the King of Prussia, and that vicious women, a functionless aristocracy, a parasitic feudalism, and a corrupt and persecuting church had no place in his conception of a state. Blots there were in plenty in Frederick's Prussia, but it was free from the indelible infamies that stained the France of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Diderot. And the best minds of that France, not blind to Frederick's shortcomings, hailed in the adamantine King of Prussia the morning star of a new day for civilization and the human spirit. In the evolution of Prussia Frederick holds the place that his statue commands in the centre of his capital. The army, the bureaucracy, the monarchy — out of the union of these three he made the core of Prussian thought and action and the rocher de bronze of the Prussian State. Later generations took to pieces the Frederician machinery and recast the Frederician organizatioil of society ; little of what he left in 1786 seemed to be in existence a hundred years after his death. But in the making of the Prussian nation, which was the greatest and most difficult of the tasks that he bequeathed to his successors, the builders were consciously dominated by Frederick the Great 165 Frederick's ideas and conceptions both of means and ends. And into the Prussian nation they regrafted the army, the sovereign, and the bureaucracy as Frederick would have made them. For these builders, as for Frederick, the sovereign and creative principle was the power and interest of Prussia, superior to and independent of even- consideration. The service of Prussia was the sum oi citizenship ; and to that service all other goods or ideals, whatever their intrinsic value, must be sacrificed, n^ matter what the cost to the individual might be. Between this conception and the British conception of the State reconciliation is impossible, for the two have their origin, derive their authority, and clinch their conclusions in fundamentally opposed interpretations of life. [The literature on Frederick, particularly in German, is enormous. Apart from Carlyle's work, a contribution to great literature as well as to knowledge, the best and most scientific biography is that by R. KosER (the second and revised edition of which has not been quite completed). Koser's standard work contains full and critical notes on the whole hterature of Frederick's reign. For English readers the best short biography is that by W. F. Reddaway : Frederick the Great and the Rise of Prussia. Frederick's generalship can be studied in T. von Bernhardi : Friedrich der Grosse als Feldherr (also translated into English). For the thought of the eighteenth century consult : F. Rocquain : L' Esprit revolutionnaire avant la Revolution, lyij-Sg : and i. Faguet : La Politique com- paree de Montesquieu, Voltaire et Rousseau. For those who would see Frederick at first hand the volumes of the great undertaking — Die politische Correspondenz Friedrichs des Grossen — thirty-six of which have been published, are indispensable.] CHAPTER V PRUSSIA AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION The Reign of Frederick William II (1786-97) Frederick The death, of Frederick II signified for Prussia some- 1786-97. ' thing more than the passing of a great soldier. It meant the snapping of the mainspring of the administrative machine. This is the nemesis that waits upon an over- centralized autocracy. No security can be devised for a due succession of efficient administrators. Count Herzberg did his best to maintain the traditions of his master, but the personality of a minister, unless he attain to the stature of a Stein or a Bismarck, is of secondary significance in the Prussian economy. That of the sovereign is all-important. On the death of ' old Fritz ' the crown descended to the eldest son of his younger brother, Augustus William. Frederick William II, though not devoid of ability, cannot be counted among the great men of the Hohenzollern line. A man of fine presence and genial manners, but unmethodical in business ; easy-going, good-natured, and irresolute in character ; highly emotional in temperament, volup- tuous and self-indulgent ; deeply influenced by the mysticism which has attracted several members of his house ; devoted to music ; interested in architecture and painting, but infirm of purpose and vacillating in Prussia and the French Revolution 167 the conduct of affairs, — Frederick William presents to the psychologist an interesting study. But he was not the man to sustain the labours or to develop the policy of his great predecessor. His reign, therefore, marks the beginning of a period of decadence and reaction for the Prussian state. But it is by no means devoid of significance. The alliance, concluded by Frederick William, with the Impor- maritime powers exercised a marked influence upon the ^^^ ^^■ pohtics alike of western, eastern, and northern Europe ; in Poland he completed the work begun by Frederick the Great ; in conjunction with Austria he plunged into war with revolutionary France, and, three years later, he negotiated with the French RepubHc a treaty which, though discreditable to Prussian policy and involving palpable treachery to the Empire, was, in some respects, undeniably advantageous to the position of the Hohen- zollern in Germany. From the moment of his accession Frederick William The found himself involved in the diplomatic maelstrom TnP whicl^receded the outbreak of the revolutionary wars. On all sides, east, west, and north, there was profound upheaval and unrest. Much of this was due to the tactlessness, the ambition, and the reforming zeal of the luckless Emperor Joseph II. Consumed with the desire to set everything to rights in a minimum of time, to introduce uniformity into his heterogeneous dominions, and to round off his territories, Joseph found himself in conflict, as we have seen, not only with the princes of the Empire, but with his own immediate subjects in Hungary and the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium). In the latter. i68 The Evolution of Prussia the situation was complicated by the fact that, while the radical reforms of Joseph had evoked the hostility of the privileged orilers, there was an ultra-democratic party which looked for sympathy and support to France. In the United Provinces, also, there had long been a party which maintained close relations with France, in opposi- tion to the party which for centuries had rallied round the House of Orange. English Neither in Belgium nor in the United Provinces could England regard with indifference the extension of French iniluence. On coming into power in 1783 Pitt had found his country exhausted, humiliated, and diplomatically isolated. Before the outbreak of the Great War (1793) he had re-established the finances and had done much to restore Great Britain to her legitimate place in the European economy. His policy during these years had a twofold object : to counteract the influence of the Gallophil party in the Austrian and Dutch Netherlands, and to restrain the ambitions of Russia in the Near East. The main instrument of his diplomacy was the Triple Alliance, concluded between England, the United Pro- vinces, and Prussia in 1788. Towards that alliance Frederick William was inclined alike by personal and political reasons. His sister, the Princess Wilhelmina, was the wife of the Dutch Stadt- holder, William V. The position of the House of Orange had for some time past been gravely imperilled by the growth of the ' Patriot ' or Gallophil party in the Dutch provinces, and more particularly in Holland. In June 1787 a gross indignity was offered to the Princess of Orange, and the latter, perhaps inspired by Sir James Prussia and the French Revolution 169 Harris, the British ambassador at The Hague, appealed for the protection and assistance of her brother. The states of Holland appealed to France, and Pitt promised support to Prussia if France should interfere in the United Provinces. In September 1787 a Prussian force of 25,000 troops, under the command of the Duke of Brunswick, crossed the Dutch frontier, overcame without difficulty the resistance of the ' Patriots ', and completely re-estabHshed the authority of the Stadtholder. On April 15, 1788, a treaty between Prussia and the United Provinces was signed at Berlin, providing for a defensive alliance between the two countries and guaranteeing the hereditary Stadtholderate to the House of Orange. On the same day a counterpart of this treaty was signed at The Hague between the Provinces and Great Britain. The conclusion of a similar treaty (June) between England and Prussia consummated the alliance between the three Powers. Variously estimated both as regards expediency and motives the Triple Alliance did unquestionably achieve definite and impor- tant diplomatic results. It renewed friendly relations, interrupted since 1762, between the courts of London and Berlin ; it rescued the Low Countries from the embraces of France, and perhaps paved the way for the establishment of the United Kingdom of 18 14 ; it saved the independence of Sweden ; and it dealt to the prestige of Louis XVI a blow so severe that Napoleon regarded it as an important contributory cause of the French Revolution.'^ That revolution did not begin to exercise any appreci- ^ J. H. Rose, ap. American Historical Review, January 1909. i7o The Evolution of Prussia able influence upon the international situation for at least two years after the meeting of the States-General. During the period immediately preceding the outbreak of the great war diplomatic interest centred not in Prussia western but in eastern Europe. It was, indeed, in those 'Eastern years that the ' Eastern Question ', as modern diplomacy Question', understands the phrase, first attracted the serious atten- tion of Europe as a whole. Ever since 1768 Russia had been making very rapid headway against the Ottoman Turks. The Treaty of Kainardji (1774) gave Russia for the first time a firm grip upon the Black Sea, and an ill- defined right of interference between the sultan and his Christian subjects. In 1783 Catherine II took a further step by the annexation of the Crimea, and made no secret of her ambition to expel the Ottomans from Europe and to revive the Byzantine empire in favour of her grandson Constantine. Fascinated by the personality, and sym- pathetic towards the policy of the Tzarina, the Emperor Joseph II readily agreed to join in the enterprise. The Turk did not wait to be attacked, and in 1788 the two eastern empires were at war with the Porte. The crisis in eastern affairs was variously regarded in northern Europe. Pitt, alone among English statesmen, viewed the progress of Russia with alarm ; Gustavus III of Sweden seized the opportunity of marching an army into Finland ; while Frederick William saw in the pre- occupation of Austria and Russia the chance of an advantageous deal in Poland. Prussia was to get Danzig and Thorn ; Poland, as consolation for the loss of these fortresses, was to recover Galicia from Austria, while Austria was to get compensation from the Porte. For Prussia and the French Revolution 171 the attainment of these objects the machinery of the Triple Alliance was to be utilized. To this dangerous development Pitt was strongly opposed. When Denmark, at the bidding of Catherine, attacked Gustavus III, England willingly joined Prussia in bringing effective pressure to bear upon Denmark. Thanks to their intervention Swedish independence was saved, and the equilibrium in northern Europe was maintained. Nor did Pitt object to the acquisition of Danzig and Thorn by Prussia. On the contrary, he was prepared to facilitate it, by offering commercial con- cessions to Poland. But to Pitt the Triple Alliance was primarily valuable as an instrument for the preservation of peace. The ambitions of Frederick William, and in particular his intrigues at Warsaw and Constantinople, threatened to provoke a general European war. He insisted that the allies must have an adequate force in the neighbourhood of the Austrian Netherlands, on the one hand, to prevent the Belgians from throwing themselves into the arms of France ; and on the other, to prevent the Emperor from subjugating his restless subjects by force of arms. If Joseph refused to surrender Galicia to Poland the allies must acknowledge the inde- pendence of the Netherlands. About Gahcia Pitt cared little : about Belgium he cared much, and he was equally opposed to its immediate absorption by France or to the declaration of a precarious independence. So matters stood when Joseph II died (February 20, 1790) and was succeeded in the Habsburg dominions by his brother, Leopold II. The accession of this wise 172 The Evolution of Prussia and cautious prince probably averted a European war. Deeply incensed by what he regarded, not unjustly, as the perfidious conduct of the Prussian monarch, who had been simultaneously negotiating with Austria at the proposed expense of Turkey, and with Turkey against Austria, Leopold appealed to Prussia's ally, Great Britain. He emphasized his intention to make concessions to Belgium and to make peace with the sultan, but he declared that if attacked by Prussia he would hand over Belgium to France. England and Holland, thereupon, definitely refused to countenance or support the policy of Prussia, and in July Prussia came to terms with Austria in the Convention of Reichenbach. Those terms were, on the whole, all to the advantage of Austria. The ancient privileges of the Austrian Netherlands were guaranteed ; Prussia gave up, for the time, the hope of acquiring Danzig and Thorn ; Austria agreed to make peace with Turkey on the basis of the status quo. In August, almost simultaneously, Gustavus HI concluded with Russia the Treaty of Warela ; a year later (August 1 791) Leopold signed the Treaty of Sistova with the Turks, and in January 1792 Russia dictated to the sultan the Treaty qi Jassy. The latter treaty stipulated that the important fortress of Oczakow and the surrounding territory up to the Dniester should be ceded to Russia. Thus was tranquillity at last restored in Europe. To this end the pacific efforts of Pitt had largely contributed. But Frederick William claimed, and not without reason, that Prussia also had made considerable sacrifices for the sake of the European equilibrium. He was inclined, indeed, to think that the sacrifices demanded of him by Prussia and the French Revolution i73 his pacific maritime allies had been disproportionate. Consequently he was the more disposed to enter into closer relations with Vienna. That those relations involved Europe, before many months had passed, in a new and terrible war was not primarily the fault either of Frederick Wilham or of the Emperor Leopold. Until 1 79 1 the revolutionary movement in France The was regarded almost exclusively as a matter of domestic ?™'j'^. interest. The abolition of feudalism in France by the tion frenzied decrees of August 4, raised, it is true, difficult questions as to the rights of the German princes who held land in Alsace, rights which had been expressly reserved at the cession of Alsace in 1648. The rising flood of aristocratic emigration from France to Germany and the appeals of the emigres to the German Powers threatened still further difficulties. The pubHcation of Burke's Reflections (November 1790) compelled all think- ing men to face the question whether any established government was secure ' as long as this strange, nameless, wild, enthusiastic thing is established in the centre of Europe '. In Mainz there was a strong republican party ; most of the German districts west of the Rhine were Gallic in sympathies ; while Baden, the Palatinate, and Wiirtemberg were by no means unaffected by French ideas. The French Queen Marie Antoinette was the sister of the Emperor Leopold. Frederick Wilham of Prussia inherited the strong monarchical instincts of his House and was deeply shocked by the insults offered to the whole principle of monarchy by the revolutionary party in France. The doctrines proclaimed in France, if valid at all, were of universal and not merely local 174 The Evolution of Prussia validity, and there was a growing party in France anxious to make them prevail, not in France only, by force of arms. No one could fail to realize that all these were dangerous factors in the international situation, and that from any one of them a spark might fly on to inflammable material. Nevertheless, down to the summer of 1791, no contemporary observer could have plausibly predicted the probability of a great European conflict, and Pitt's firm belief in the maintenance of peace remained, as is well known, unshaken until the spring of 1792.^ The What, then, were the causes which precipitated war tion of between France and the German Powers ? For some Pillnitz. ^.jjjjg pjg^ ^]^g Count of Artois and the emigrant nobles had been making passionate appeals to the European sovereigns for intervention on behalf of monarchy and aristocracy. Those appeals were not publicly counte- nanced by the French court, but that the king, and still more the queen, supported them privately there can be little doubt. The Emperor Leopold had grave mis- givings as to the expediency of intervention, and did his best to dissuade his relations from that flight to the frontier which was interrupted so disastrously at Varennes. But though his advice was disregarded he offered them an asylum, and their ignominious recapture stirred him to more energetic action on their behalf. In May the Emperor had met the Count of Artois at Mantua, and on July 6 he issued to his brother monarchs the ' Padua ' circular, inviting them to join him ' in vindicating the honour and liberty of Louis XVI and his family, and in ^ Pitt's optimism was shared by the Prussian and Austrian ambassadors in Paris : see Denis, V AlUmagne^ i. 112. Prussia and the French Revolution 175 putting limits upon the perilous extremes to which the Revolution was tending in France '. A month later the Emperor conferred with the Prussian king at Pillnitz. The two monarchs refused to allow the emigres to use their asylum in Germany for warlike preparations against France ; and they rejected their demand for immediate intervention. But these wise measures were accompanied by a concession to the emigres, as foohsh as it was futile. The famous manifesto known as the Declaration of PiUnitz declared that the position of the French monarch was a matter of concern to all European sovereigns ; it demanded that the German princes who had been deprived of feudal rights in Alsace should be reinstated, and it threatened war if the demands were not conceded. The sentiments expressed in the Declaration of Pillnitz were those of Frederick William rather than of Leopold. The Emperor, indeed, insisted that before acting they must have the concurrence of the other Powers ; and he was aware that that concurrence would not be forth- coming. He imagined, vainly enough, that a threat which he knew to be empty would overawe the revolu- tionary leaders in Paris. It had, as might have been foreseen, a precisely opposite effect. In Paris it was regarded as a menace to the independence of the French nation. ' If cabinets engage kings in a war against peoples, we will engage peoples in a war against kings.' Such was Isnard's retort to the Pillnitz manifesto, and Isnard spoke the mind of France. The Emperor Leopold, however, still hoped and strove for peace. But the forces opposed to him were too strong. Gustavus III of Sweden was genuinely anxious 176 The Evohition of Prussia to initiate a monarchical crusade ; Catherine II, with more sinister motive, was well content that other sove- reigns should embark on it. ' I cudgel my brains to embroil the courts of Vienna and Berlin in the affairs of France that I may have elbow room ' — in Poland. But the worst enemies to peace were in Paris. The Girondins were spoiling for a war, by which they hoped to consoli- date a republic. The royalists looked to war as the sole chance of saving the monarchy. On March i the Emperor Leopold died, and in the same month a Girondin ministry was installed in office. On April 20 France declared war upon ' the King of Hungary and Bohemia '. Frederick WiUiam of Prussia, faithful to the offensive and defensive treaty concluded with Austria in February, resolved immediately to throw in his lot with his ally. The War The command of the Prussian army was entrusted to of the the Duke of Brunswick, but mobilization was slow, and Coalition, not until July were the Prussians ready to take the field. The plan of campaign was that Brunswick, at the head of 42,000 Prussians, should advance from Coblentz into Champagne, being supported by the Austrians on his right and left flanks. On July 27, just before the allied army crossed the Rhine, a manifesto, drafted by the emigres, was issued in Brunswick's name to the French people. He bade them submit to the authority of their lawful sovereign, and declared that for any resistance offered to the allied armies they would be held collec- tively and individually responsible. Should any harm befall Louis XVI or his family the French capital would be razed to the ground. To this insolent manifesto Paris responded by the insurrection of the tenth of August, Prussia and the French Revolution 177 The king was suspended, and sent as a prisoner to the Temple ; a convention was summoned, and on Septem- ber 21 the republic was proclaimed. Meanwhile the Prussians, having crossed the Rhine (August 19), took Longwy and Verdun (August 30). The one chance of success lay in a bold and rapid advance on Paris ; but Brunswick, though a good strategist of the orthodox school, was slow-moving and over-cautious. His army, moreover, was iU equipped. The supply services were shamefully inadequate, the medical service was bad, the commissariat was scanty, and the lack of efficiency among the officers was not redeemed by enthusiasm in the ranks. At Valmy the Prussians suffered a decided check ; the advance on Paris was arrested. On Novem- ber 6 the French won a brilliant victory over the Austrians on the Belgian frontier at Jemappes; Mens, Brussels, Liege, Namur, and Antwerp surrendered in turn ; every- where the French armies were welcomed by the Belgian populace as friends, and long before Christmas the Austrian Netherlands were in the hands of the French Republic. Custine's success on the middle Rhine was not less decisive than that of Dumouriez in Belgium. Speier, Worms, and Mainz opened their gates to him ; but Frankfort, though taken by the French in October, was brilliantly retaken by the Prussians in December. The recapture of Frankfort was the only consolation obtained by the allies in their initial campaign, and the close of the year saw the French in triumphant occupa- tion not only of Belgium but of Savoy and Nice. Mean- while, drunk with the blood of the September massacres, 1832 M 178 The Evolution of Prussia and elated by their unexpected success in the field, the French Republicans committed a series of blunders. With a shameless disregard for international obligations they declared the navigation of the Scheldt open, and then proceeded by a needlessly provocative decree to call upon all peoples, whether vyell or iU governed, to rise against their rulers and declare their freedom. On January 21 Louis XVI was sent to the guillotine, and on February i the French Republic declared war upon England and Holland. The Coalition thus embraced not Austria and Prussia only, but England, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Sardinia, and several of the German princes. But there was no real cohesion among the allies. Still, for the greater part of 1793, success rewarded their efforts in the field. The Austrians reconquered Belgium (March), entered France, and threatened Paris. On the middle Rhine the Prussians retook Mainz (July 28), marched triumphantly into Alsace, and in the autumn (September-November) they won a series of decisive though costly victories in, the Palatinate. But these reverses to French arms only roused the French people to more vigorous exertions at home and in the field. In Paris the Jacobins asserted them- selves over all their rivals ; Carnot reorganized the army ; and the whole nation responded superbly to the call of its leaders. In the summer of 1793 France was in danger, and in presence of that danger it was essential, therefore, to crush the supposed enemies of France at home, and to drive back the invader from her frontiers. Before the end of the year France was rapidly regaining the ground she had lost : the English were compelled to raise the siege of Dunkirk and in September were defeated at Prussia and the French Revolution i79 Hondschoote ; in October the Austrians were defeated at Wattignies ; the aUies were cleared out of Alsace and driven back across the Rhine, and before the close of the year the important arsenal of Toulon was retaken from the English. On every side the levee en masse had justified the energy and wisdom of Carnot. Opposed to him was a coalition which was no better than a rope of sand. Suspected in 1793, this fact became manifest in 1794. In the early part of the year the Austrians won some successes in the Netherlands, but after a great battle at Fleurus (June 26) they gradually withdrew, the French reoccupied Brussels, and before the close of the year were again masters of Belgium. In May, Prussia had concluded a subsidy-treaty with England by which she pledged herself to maintain 60,000 men in the field. Too weak to fight her own battles on land, England hoped, by this means, to save the Netherlands from France. But Prussia, while pocketing English gold, continued to play het own game. In the fighting of 1794 she took httle part, and that part was taken not upon the Belgian frontiers, as Pitt had intended, but on the upper Rhine. MoUendorf achieved some success in the Palatinate, but in October the Prussians recrossed the Rhine, and the French were left in occupation of almost aU the territories to the west of the river. Frederick William had, indeed, lost all interest in the western war. His monarchical instincts had been shocked by the doings of the revolutionaries in Paris ; he had been much more eager than the Emperor to respond to the appeal of the emigres, but from the first his eyes were fixed far more firmly on the Vistula than M 2 i8o The Evolution of Prussia on the Rhine. Among his counsellors there were several, such as Prince Henry, Count Haugwitz, General Mollen- dorf, and even the Duke of Brunswick, who preferred a Ffench to an Austrian alliance, while to most Prussian soldiers the idea of the Prussian" army playing the part of English mercenaries was not unnaturally distasteful. The That Prussia therefore should have sought to negotiate Ba^sel^ ° ^ separate peace with the French Republic can have caused little surprise. Nor was France averse to peace with Prussia. To divide the two great German Powers had always been a prime object of her diplomacy; their joint invasion of French territory had now been trium- phantly repelled ; not a German soldier remained upon French soil ; besides, the crusading enthusiasm in France was beginning to burn itself out ; the Thermidorian party was steadily gaining ground, and the mass of the French people were anxious for a settlement at home and peace on the frontiers. Accordingly, in January 1795 a Prussian envoy. Count von der Goltz, was sent to Switzerland to negotiate with Barthelemy, the French ambassador. Goltz died before terms were arranged, but Count Hardenberg succeeded to his mission, and on April 5, 1795, the Treaty of Basel was concluded. Prussia gave France a free hand to the west of the Rhine, she ceded Mors, Cleves, and upper Guelders, and recognized the Republic. France, in return, agreed to recognize the neutrality of the German princes north of the Main, including the Elector of Hanover, and to allow Prussia to compensate herself, of course at the expense of the Empire, on the right bank of the Rhine. Within the next eighteen months the example of Prussia was followed Prussia and the French Revolution i8i by Hesse-Cassel, Wiirtemberg, Baden, the Suabian Circle, and Bavaria. That Prussia purchased peace at the price of honour is undeniable. The Treaty of Basel betrayed a cynical disregard for the Empire, in which Prussia now held the second place ; it involved a gross breach of faith with Austria, and it meant the betrayal of the smaller princes of the Empire, of whose rights Frederick II had constituted himself the champion. But was Prussia's conduct foolish as well as base ? It is difficult to answer this question with- out mental reference to the subsequent humiliations of Jena and Tilsit. But viewed from a strictly contemporary standpoint, there was much to be said for an under- standing with France. Austria, not France, was the secular rival of Prussia ; if Prussia did not agree with her adver- sary quickly the chances were that her ally would. Nor was the possibility of a general peace remote. Napoleon's star had not yet risen above the horizon. France was inclined to peace, and Pitt would gladly have come to terms with the Directory. But the overwhelming motive which inspired Prussia's action in 1795, the causa causans of the Treaty of Basel, was anxiety as to the position in Poland, a desire to conserve what she had already acquired, and to get her share in the final scramble. To this topic we shaU return. Before doing so the brief sequel of the war of the First Coalition may be told. The Rhine campaign of 1795 left Austria in a favourable position, but in the following year she had to meet a threefold attack. The Archduke Charles effectually disposed of the armies of Jourdan and Moreau in the Palatinate and Bavaria respectively, but in North Italy Prussia and the French Revolution 183 Napoleon was in command. In a fortnight's campaign he brought the King of Sardinia to his knees, and a few weeks later he was master of all Lombardy, except Mantua. From June 1796 to February 1797 that great fortress resisted all his efforts, but on February 2 Mantua surrendered, and in April preliminaries of peace were arranged at Leoben. Negotiations dragged on for six months. During those months Napoleon picked a quarrel with the republic of Venice, deposed the ruling oligarchy, and occupied the city and its dependent islands in the Adriatic. In October the Treaty of Campo-Formio was concluded with the emperor. Belgium was definitely ceded to France, and the TheTreaty emperor agreed to cede Lombardy and to recognize, as 2f Campo- a new French dependency, the Cisalpine Republic. But it was at the expense of a third party — the Venetian Republic — that the friendship of Napoleon and Austria was sealed. AH continental Venice east of the Adige, with Istria and Dalmatia, was annexed to Austria ; the Venetian territory west of the Adige was added to the Cisalpine Republic ; Corfu and the Ionian Isles — ' step- ping-stones towards Egypt ' — ^were annexed to France. So much was published to the world. More significant were the secret articles. Austria acquiesced in the annexa- tion by France of all German territory west of the Rhine except that which had belonged to Prussia. This curious exception was clearly ' dictated by no love for the Court of Berlin, but solely that Prussia might be deprived of any claim to compensation '.^ In return for these concessions made largely at the expense of the ^ Fisher : Napoleonic Statesmanship (Germany), p. 27. 184 The Evolution of Prussia Empire, the Emperor, as sovereign of Austria, was to acquire the Inn district of Bavaria, long coveted by the Habsburgs, and the great bishopric of Salzburg. The German princes and states dispossessed on the left bank of the Rhine were to receive compensations on the right, at the expense of the ecclesiastical principalities. Mainz was to go to France, and the Prince of Holland, deprived of his Stadtholderate in Holland, was to be compensated in Germany. The Treaty of Campo-Formio was the counterpart and complement of the Treaty of Basel. Together they con- stituted a brilliant triumph for France and for Napoleon. The dream of ages had been realized. That for which Richelieu and Mazarin and Louis XIV had schemed and toiled was at last achieved. France was in possession of her ' natural frontiers '. Savoy and Nice, Belgium, and the western Rhinelands were aU in her keeping. But these treaties, if they marked the attainment of historic French ambitions, denote not less significantly the close of an epoch for Germany. The mediaeval empire, which in Voltaire's cynical phrase had long since ceased to be either Holy, or Roman, or an empire, was now palpably approaching the final catastrophe. The Habsburgs had long worn the imperial crown ; the HohenzoUern had professed devotion, if not to the person of the emperor, at least to the institution he personified. It would, however, be difficult to say which of the two great German Powers revealed itself in these treaties more completely indifferent to the interests of Germany as a whole. Both were ready to surrender the western Rhinelands to France ; both were willing to Prussia and the French Revolution 185 accept compensation at the expense of their colleague- princes ; both were intent upon rounding off their own hereditary possessions and consolidating their own dynastic position. The Holy Roman Empire was indeed ready for the ' mediatizing ' intervention of the Corsican conqueror. But before we follow to its doom the empire of Charlemagne, we must see the end of the kingdom of Poland. Poland supphes the key to the policy of Prussia during Prussia the revolutionary era. Previous chapters have disclosed poi^nd the connexion between the HohenzoUern Electors of Brandenburg and the Prussian Duchies, and have traced the sequence of events leading to the first partition of Poland in 1772. Of that nefarious operation Frederick II was, as we have seen, the principal instigator. By it Poland lost one-third of its territory, but the great fortresses of Danzig and Thorn, eagerly desired by Frederick, remained under the suzerainty of Poland. Three years later (1775) the Poles accepted a revised constitution which, though making for more orderly and more economical administration, left Poland entirely dependent upon Russia. But when in 1788 Russia became involved in war both with Turkey and Sweden the anti-Russian party among the Poles, led by Adam Casimir Czartoryski and Ignatius Potocki, seized the opportunity of electing a Diet pledged to secure a liberal and independent constitution for their unhappy country. The Diet, which met at Warsaw in October 1788, secured the withdrawal of Russian troops and entered into cordial relations with Frederick WilHam II of Prussia. The latter readily concluded an offensive and defensive i86 The Evolution of Prussia alliance with the Poles, and offered to recover for them Austrian Galicia, provided they were willing to hand over Danzig and Thorn to him. Pitt, as we have seen, favoured the scheme and, distasteful as the conditions were, the Polish patriots would perhaps have done well to accept them. But while they procrastinated, Prussia and Austria came to terms at Reichenbach, and Poland had lost its chance. Nevertheless, the patriots made a desperate effort to put what remained of their house in order. In 1791 a new Constitution was adopted by a coup de main. The elective monarchy, the liberum veto, and the right of confederation were swept away ; the executive was vested in a hereditary king assisted by a ' responsible ' ministry ; there was to be a bi-cameral legislature, including representatives of the cities ; the caste system was abolished, and a large instalment of social reform was effected. The new Constitution was an act of defiance to Catherine, who was pledged to maintain the anarchy enshrined in the Constitution of 1775. The other parti- tioners, however, looked more kindly upon it. To Austria a Poland, strengthened and renovated, would have been an indubitable advantage. Frederick William of Prussia, though disappointed of Danzig and Thorn, cordially congratulated the Poles on the Constitution of 1791, and when he met the Emperor Leopold at Pillnitz the two monarchs renewed a mutual guarantee of Polish integrity and independence (September 1791). Second They reckoned without the Tzarina Catherine. In of^Poland ^79^ ^^ situation was again in several ways more favour- able to Russia, not least by reason of the f^t that the Prussia and the French Revolution 187 German Powers were involved in war with France. Con- sequently a small group of pro-Russian Poles formed the Confederation of Targowica, denounced the new Con- stitution as a despotic coup d'etat, demanded their ancient liberties, and appealed to Catherine for help. Only too willingly Catherine complied ; a Russian force was sent into Poland, and before- the end of June Poland was once more in the grip of Russia. The notable reforms devised in 1 791 were swept away, the old anarchical constitution was restored, and Catherine, despite a strong protest from Austria, took toll from her Polish friends in the shape of some 98,000 square miles of territory and three million inhabitants. Prussia, admitted to a share of the spoil, got Danzig and Thorn with the provinces of Great Poland, Gnesen, Kalisch, and Posen, including in all about a million and a half of people and 22,000 square miles of territory. The partitioners promised to use their good offices to secure the Bavarian exchange for Austria, a concession which did little to mollify the emperor. Austria, however, was deeply engaged in the west, and her protests against the second partition could therefore be safely disregarded. The Polish patriots did everything in their power to avert the dismemberment of their country, but they struggled in vain, and on September 23, 1793, the Diet at Grodno gave a silent assent to the cession of Posen, Danzig, and Thorn to Prussia, and at the same time revoked aU the proceedings of 1 79 1 and entered into a formal alliance with Russia. As a crime against the principles of nationality and independence the partition of 1793 was even worse than that of 1772. The two really responsible partitioners, i88 The Evolution of Prussia Frederick of Prussia and Catherine of Russia, might in 1772 have plausibly argued that Poland had shown itself incapable of reform, that, as it then stood, it was a perr petual menace to the security of its neighbours and to the peace of Europe, and that Prussia and Russia were merely recovering lands which, in the past, Poland had stolen from them. As regards Russia's share this plea was not merely admitted but emphasized by Lord Salis- bury.i It might also have been urged in favour of the greater part of West Prussia. But no similar pleas could avail to excuse the partition of 1793. The Poles had manifested not merely the desire but the ability to set their house in order. In the eyes of the partitioners the crime of the reformers of 1791 was that they did their work too well ; that they might have given a new and vigorous life to Poland and thus have interposed a fatal and final barrier to the aggressions of her powerful neighbours. Danzig presents a real difficulty to those who would deal justly both with Poland and with Prussia. The Vistula, it has been said, is Poland, and Danzig com- mands the mouth of it. On the other hand, Danzig was and is a German city. If to the Poles it is unthinkable that Prussia should permanently control their one great commercial outlet to the north ; to the Prussians it is intolerable that the maritime capital of West Prussia should belong to any one but themselves. The unsatis- factory expedient of neutralization would seem in this case to be the only solution of an insoluble problem. The great province of Posen is in a different category. The inhabitants were predominantly, and in the eastern i- Essays on Foreign Politics, pp. 1 1 seq. Pnissia and the French Revolution 189 marshes almost exclusively, Polish. On the other hand, it commands the communications between Konigsberg and Breslau, and Bismarck regarded its possession as even more vital to the Prussian State than that of Alsace- Lorraine. ' Munich and Stuttgart are not more en- dangered ', he said, ' by a hostile occupation of Strassburg and Alsace than Berlin would be by an enemy in the neighbourhood of the Oder. Therefore, it must be assumed that if ever the question comes to an issue, we shall be determined to sacrifice our last man and the last coin in our pocket to defend the eastern frontier of Germany as it has been for the last eighty years.' ^■ Prussian policy in regard to Posen will be discussed later. We have yet to describe the last act in the eighteenth- century drama. The PoUsh patriots did not acquiesce tamely in the pinis second dismemberment. After it had been consummated Po'owae. in 1793 the Russians were virtually in military occupation of what stiU remained of ' independent ' Poland. In March 1794, however, the PoHsh army rose under their former leader Tadensz Kosciusko. This intrepid hero had after the partition of 1793 undertaken a mission to Paris. He now returned to Poland, called upon his countrymen to throw off the yoke of Russia and Prussia, and expelled the Russian garrisons from Cracow, Warsaw, and Wilna. For some months Kosciusko was practically dictator of Poland. But his triumph was short lived. In May 1794 Frederick William placed himself at the head of a Prussian army and marched into Poland. In June the Prussians won a decisive victory at Rawka, 1 Cf. Round Table, No. 17, p. 78. 190 The Evolution of Prussia occupied Cracow, and for two months (July 9-Septem- ber 6) besieged Warsaw. Listening to the fatal advice of Bischoflwerder, Frederick William hesitated to attack Warsaw and so gave Russia her chance. Having reoccu- pied Wilna in August, the Russians inflicted a crushing defeat upon Kosciusko and on November 8 they re-entered Warsaw in triumph. Kosciusko himself was wounded and taken prisoner by the Russians. On the accession of the Tzar Paul (1796), who had a chivalrous admiration for the Polish patriot, Kosciusko was released and retired to Switzerland, where in 18 17 he died. His defeat was soon followed by the extinction of his country. In January 1795 Catherine H came to a secret arrangement with the Emperor, to which Prussia was to be subsequently invited to adhere. The Russian frontier was advanced up to the river Bug, an addition of territory which brought with it about 1,200,000 inhabitants : Austria got Cracow with the Palatinates of Sandomir and Lubelsk, with about one million people. Prussia was to have Warsaw with the district between the Oder, the Bug, and the Niemen, but only on condition that she acquiesced in further accession of territory both to Russia and Austria at the expense of Turkey. Frederick William was highly indignant, as well he might be, at the treat- ment accorded to him by Russia. The only parallel to Russia's treacherous conduct towards her Prussian partner in crime was to be found in Frederick William's own treatment of Austria in 1793. As things were he had no option but to acquiesce in the terms offered to him, and so in 1795 ' New East Prussia ' was added to his dominions with another million of Poles. Prussia and the French Revolution 191 By the partition treaties of 1793 and 1795 the Hohen- zoUern dominions were nearly doubled in extent ; but the access of political strength was very far from being commensurate with the increase in geographical area. The partitioners destroyed the Polish State : they did not and could not exterminate the Polish nation. That nation, which at the end of the eighteenth century numbered fourteen millions, now numbers twenty-four. Of these, three and a half millions are subjects of the King of Prussia. But Prussia has never assimilated them. Every effort either to concihate or to coerce them — and both policies have at times been pursued — has resulted in more complete estrangement between the Prussian government and its Pohsh subjects. To outward seeming Frederick William had achieved a considerable success, but in no respect did he add to the essential greatness or even — apart from the acquisition of Danzig and Thorn — to the strategical security of his kingdom. Two years after the third partition of Poland Frederick Death of William passed away. He was neither a great man nor williamll a great ruler. He did something for the encouragement ^^9^^ of trade, but in matters ecclesiastical and intellectual he was a blind obscurantist. Under the influence of the Rosicrucians and more particularly of WoUner, their director, Frederick William insisted upon the narrowest evangelical orthodoxy ; a rigid censorship was imposed upon the pubhcation of books, and nothing was allowed to be taught by the Protestant pastors except what was set forth in the official manuals. Insistence upon religious orthodoxy did not prevent a decay of morals ; still less could it avert a subtle degeneration in politics. In the 192 The Evolution of Prussia European economy Prussia, despite notable accessions of territory, no longer held the position to which she had been elevated by Frederick the Great. The reign of his successor, brief as it was, sufficed to dissipate much of the prestige and influence which Frederick had won for his adolescent kingdom. In the devious ways of diplo- macy Frederick William was no match for Catherine II. To his army the campaigns against France (1792-5) brought no fresh laurels, while the Treaty of Basel, by which the war was brought to a conclusion, was a con- spicuous illustration of personal bad faith and political pusillanimity. That treaty is regarded by Treitschke as not merely infamous but disastrous. Before Prussia could regain her place in Europe, before she could aspire to lead the German people in their struggle for national independence, she had herself to pass through the fiery furnace of defeat, humiliation, and dismemberment. [For further reading : Hausser : Deutsche Geschichte vom lode Friedrichs des Grossen ; C. T. Heigel : Deutsche Geschichte, iy86- 1806 ; Fyffe : Modern Europe ; Sorel : V Europe et la Revolution fran(aise ; for Prussian policy in Poland cf. von Syeel : French Revolution ; Lord Eversley : Partitions of Poland ; and for later developments Prince von BiJLow : Imperial Germany^ CHAPTER VI THE UNMAKING OF PRUSSIA, 1 797-1 807 Jena and Tilsit ' We have fallen asleep upon the laurels of Frederick Frederick he Great.' Such was the text given out by Queen Luise iji_ ifter Jena. All else is commentary. Over the decade which intervened between 1795 and 1805 the historian of Prussia may therefore pass lightly. Those years are among the most inglorious in the story of the Hohenzollern, though the occupant of the Prussian throne was one of the most amiable of his race. Frederick William III was twenty-seven years of age when he succeeded, in 1797, to his father's throne. High hopes were entertained of the new king. ' Pure reason has de- scended from heaven and taken its seat upon our throne.' So spake an enthusiastic subject, and the sentiment was widely entertained. As regards the king's capacity for affairs these hopes were destined to disappointment ; as regards his personal attributes they were not. No more simple and unaffected gentleman ; no man of more sincere piety and unblemished morals ; no king with a more single-minded desire to serve his people ever sat upon the Prussian throne. But his head was inferior to his heart. Irresolute in will and contracted in outlook. 194 The Evolution of Prussia he had inherited the obstinacy without the ability of his ancestors. His wife, whom he married in 1793, and to whom he was tenderly attached, was not ill fitted, had the custom of the House permitted it, to supply many of Frederick William's deficiencies. A daughter of Prince Charles of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen Luise was a woman of exceptional beauty and grace, and richly dowered with both character and intellect. The mother of two Prussian kings, she still holds a peculiar place in the affection and respect of all good Germans, not only as. the queen who braved the storm of 1806-7, but as the mother of the first ' Kaiser in Deutschland \^ Not even Queen Luise, however, could overcome the combined hesitation and obstinacy of the king, nor counteract the timorous and unworthy counsels of such men as Prince Henry, the great-uncle of the monarch, and Count Haugwitz. The Con- Before he had been a week on the throne Frederick Rastatt, William was called upon to confront a situation, heavUy Nov.-mber fraught with destiny alike for Prussia and for Germany. March Of the terms concluded between the French Republic ''''''■ and the German Powers at Basel and Campo-Formio, the most important, as we have seen, were secret. Prussia and Austria agreed with their adversary over the pro- strate and unconscious body of the German Reich — the Holy Roman Empire in Germany. The time came, however, when the agreements had to be fulfilled and general propositions to be worked out in detail. For this purpose a Congress was summoned to meet at ^ William I was born in 1797 — the first year of his father's reign, The Unmaking of Prussia, 1797-1807 195 Rastatt in Baden, in November 1797. With almost incredible hypocrisy the Emperor adjured the Congress ' to maintain the common interests of the Fatherland with noble conscientiousness and German steadfastness ; and thus, united with their Imperial head, to promote a just and lasting peace, founded upon the integrity of the Empire and of its Constitution '. A glance at the secret articles of the Treaty of Campo-Formio (see p. 183) will furnish a sufficient commentary upon this amazing adjuration. That the German Fatherland was abominably betrayed by its leading states is beyond dispute ; whether, as then constituted, it was worth preserving is less easy to determine. The intrinsic gravity of the proceedings at Rastatt is equalled only by the levity of those who took part in them. That German princes of all degrees should have paid assiduous court to the representa- tives of the victorious Republic was perhaps consonant with human nature : that they should have played alto- gether for their own hands was a natural consequence of the selfish particularism — the Kleinstaaterei — which had characterized German politics for more than two hundred years ; still there was no reason or fitness in glozing over the scramble for territory by profane and unseemly jests at the expense of the body of which they were still members. At Rastatt there were endless intrigue and discussion, but little business was done. Bonaparte looked in upon its proceedings for a week at the end of 1797 and drew his own conclusions from what hp observed. The invincible jealousy of the two leading German Powers ; the concentration of the attention both of Austria and N 2 19^ The Evolution of Prussia Prussia upon their own territorial and dynastic interests ; their complete and callous indifference to the well-being of the Empire ; the particularism of the lesser princes, and their obvious inclination towards France — all this was readily apprehended by Bonaparte, and the appre- hension inspired his policy in the near future. Mean- while, the French envoys at Rastatt played a strong hand with undeniable skill. France, indeed, was the only Power which emerged from the Congress with any tangible advantage. In March 1798 virtually the whole of the left bank of the Rhine was, with about 3I million inhabitants, formally ceded to France ; it was reorganized in four departments and took its place in the French legal and administrative system. Then came the question as to how the dispossessed princes, including the rulers of Austria and Prussia, were to obtain compensation on the right bank. That com- pensation could be provided only by the secularization or disestablishment of the ecclesiastical states. But when it came to the point of working out details the Emperor shrank from a transaction, the honesty of which was dubious and the expediency questionable. Besides, France had shown a decided inclination towards Prussia against Austria, and towards the smaller states against both. Apart from the acquisition of the Rhinelands now accomplished, France had come to the Congress only to accentuate dissensions between the German princes. It soon became clear that the peace concluded at Campo-Formio would not be of long duration. In February 1798 France invaded the Papal States and The Unmaking of Prussia, 1797-1807 197 proclaimed the Riin^?." TJ'^'-i-hlir ■ ir '\pnl she proclaimed the Helveti. Ki. public, and on May i8 Bonaparte himself set sail from Toulon at the head of a great expedition destined for the conquest of Egypt. The Second Coalition was the result : Austria, Russia, Great Britain, Naples, Turkey, and Portugal combined against the French Republic. Of the great Powers one only stood aloof. No argu- The neu- ments availed to draw Prussia out of her inglorious p^ussla° neutrality. England in particular made every effort to induce Prussia to come in, if for no other reason than to help in sweeping the French out of Holland. Prussia, however, was immovable, and her selfish and short- sighted policy was partly responsible for the failure of the Anglo-Russian expedition to Holland in 1799. Pitt's original intention had been to attack Holland through Hanover ; but for the success of that scheme Prussian co-operation was practically indispensable. Prussia, though always susceptible in regard to Holland, withstood Pitt's blandishments, and the whole enterprise was a disastrous failure. With the war of the Second Coalition we must not War ol the concern ourselves : Napoleon's success in Egypt rendered coalition, abortive by the victories of the English fleet ; the cam- paign of 1799 made memorable by the success of Austria on the upper Rhine, and the brilliant strategy of Suvaroff in Italy ; Napoleon's dramatic and opportune return to France ; the coup d^etat of 1 8th Brumaire, and the over- throw of the Directory ; Napoleon's attainment of the Consulate ; the campaign of 1800 crowned by Napoleon's great victory at Marengo (June 14) and Moreau's at 198 The Evolution of Prussia Hohenlinden (December 3) — at all these things Prussia looked on unmoved and apparently unconcerned. By the end of 1800 her great rival was once more at the mercy of Napoleon, and in February 1801 was compelled to accept the Treaty of Luneville. That treaty was the complement and confirmation of those of Basel and Campo-Formio. Austria recognized not only the Cisalpine Republic in North Italy, but, in addition, the Ligurian (Genoa), Helvetic, and Batavian Republics, and at the same time she formally confirmed the cession of the Rhinelands to France. Thus the Empire lost 150,000 square miles of territory and 35- million people — constituting about one-seventh of the whole. It was the beginning of the end of the mediaeval Empire. The princes of the Empire, as represented in the Diet, claimed to be allowed to settle the details of the redis- tribution of territory ; but the internecine jealousies proved to be too acute for mutual adjustment, and France and Russia were called in as impartial arbitrators. The work was actually done in Paris, and to Paris, therefore, there flocked, in the course of 1801, a mob of German princes and diplomatists, all eager to make the best terms possible for their respective states. Witty pens have described the scenes enacted during these months in the French capital : the assiduous court paid to Talleyrand and his secretary, Mathieu ; fat German princes playing blind-man's-buff and hunt-the- slipper with the minister's little niece ; solemn German diplomatists caressing his wife's poodle ; on every side a shameless orgy of intrigue and bribery, steadily kept up until there was no longer a city or a bishopric to be had The Unmaking of Prussia, 1797-1807 199 for cajolery or cash.^ Treitschke has likened the spectacle to that of a swarm of flies carousing on the festering wounds of the Fatherland. Meanwhile, Bonaparte proceeded steadil)' with the The Act of task of reconstructing Germany in the interests of France. ^^^^ His principles of redistribution were few and simple : to penalize and isolate Austria ; to cajole and indemnify Prussia ; and, above all, to enlarge and consolidate the secondary states such as Bavaria, Baden, and Wiirtemberg, and to bind them, by ties of gratitude and interest, even more closely to France. The details of redistribution were eventually settled in the Reichsdeputationshaupt- schluss, or Principal Resolution of the Imperial Deputation (February 25, 1803), and embodied in the so-called Act of Mediatization. The Act of Mediatization affected only the non-heredi- tary sovereignties : the Ecclesiastical States and the Free Imperial Cities. The turn of the hereditary sovereigns was to come later. But the changes wrought in 1803 were sufficiently imposing. Previous to that date the Empire had contained some three hundred and sixty states. Of these less than half were permitted to survive. The imperial cities were reduced from fifty-one to six, the survivors being Hamburg, Bremen, Lubeck, Frankfort- on-Main, Nuremberg, and Augsburg. The old circles of the Empire finally disappeared, and all the ecclesiastical states except one were suppressed. In this process the electorates of Koln and Trier disappeared, and the third ecclesiastical electorate — that of Mainz — was transferred to Regensburg. Bavaria emerged with territories not only 1 Cf. e.g. H. von Gagern, Mein Antheil an der Politik, i. no. 200 The Evolution of Prussia enlarged but consolidated ; surrendering about 4,000 square miles of territory with 580,000 inhabitants on the west of the Rhine, and gaining 6,000 miles with about 850,000 subjects on the east of it, mainly at the ex- pense of the bishoprics of Wiirzburg, Bamberg, Freising, Augsburg, and Passau. She got also a priory, twelve abbeys, and seventeen free cities. Similar treatment was accorded to Baden. The Grand Duke himself was raised to the rank of an elector, and in exchange for territory in the west he obtained seventeen towns, including Mann- heim and Heidelberg, with lands which had belonged to the Bishops of Constance, Speier, Strasburg, and Basel on the east bank of the Rhine, and ten abbeys — in all about ten times as many subjects as he had lost. The Duke of Wiir- temberg and the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel also received the electoral hat and large accessions of territory. Austria, compelled to look on at the aggrandizement of the secon- dary states, herself gained nothing directly in Germany, and indirectly lost much. Not least through the extension and consolidation of the dominions of her great rival. Position of The immediate gains to Prussia were more than con- Primal 3. siderable ; the ultimate significance to her of the changes then effected was transcendant. Territorially, Frederick William did not get precisely what he wanted. He had coveted the great bishoprics of Wiirzburg and Bamberg, in order to extend HohenzoUern influence in the heart of Germany. But that did not suit Napoleon's game. He wanted to thrust Prussia northwards and eastwards : to counterbalance the power of Austria upon the Danube by another powerful state upon the Oder and Vistula. Central and Western Germany was reserved for the The Unmaking of Prussia, 1 797-1 807 201 clients of France. Consequently Prussia, having been compelled to relinquish over 1,000 square miles of terri- tory and 122,000 subjects on the left bank of the Rhine, gained nearly 5,000 square miles and 580,000 inhabitants to the east of it. Her acquisitions included the city and part of the bishopric of Miinster, the Westphalian bishoprics of Hildesheim and Paderborn, six Westphalian abbeys, the free cities of Miihlhausen, Nordhausen, and Goslar, together with Erfurt and the Thuringian lands of the see of Mainz. As compared with the acquisitions of Bavaria those of Prussia may appear almost insignificant. But her gains were not to be reckoned solely or even primarily in territory, subjects, and revenue. Almost all the injuries inflicted upon theHabsburgs must be reckoned to the ultimate advantage of their rivals : the exclusion of the ecclesiastical princes from the Imperial Diet ; the consequent shifting in the balance of political power from Roman Catholicism to Protestantism ; the absorp- tion of nearly all the free cities of the Empire : the elevation of the secondary principalities — all these things tended immediately to the disadvantage of the Habsburg Emperor and, in a future more or less distant, to the aggrandizement of the HohenzoUern. That Bonaparte desired or anticipated the latter result is improbable. Some concessions had to be made to Prussia to reward Frederick William for his subservient neutrality, and to bring up the HohenzoUern in the north to a plane of equality with the Habsburg in the south. The rise of Prussia to a position of predominance in Germany was not and at this time could not have been foreseen ; still less the fact that her predominance would ultimately be 202 The Evolution of Prussia achieved and consolidated by leading a united Germany against France. The task of the moment was to break beyond chance of repair the Empire in Germany ; to main- tain the French frontier on the Rhine ; to make sure that beyond the Rhine the HohenzoUern should balance the power of the Habsburg, and that both should be held in check by the existence of considerable states, of secondary rank, indebted for their present and dependent for their future position upon the favour of France. All this, by 1803, Bonaparte had achieved. The reconstitution of Germany was not yet, however, complete. The appetite of the princes was whetted rather than appeased by the Act of Mediatization. The secularization of the great ecclesiastical principalities was followed by measures of wholesale disestablishment and disendowment applied to institutions which had no political position. In this process the monasteries and other religious bodies, hospitals, and universities all suffered. Reforming activity and lust of lucre found their next victims in the imperial knights, who were deprived of jurisdiction they had long exercised and valuable dues they had long enjoyed. That in these processes many individuals suffered, through no fault of their own, is undeniable ; much that was eminently pic- turesque and wholly inoffensive in the life of Germany was ruthlessly destroyed ; yet, on the whole, it must be confessed that by the concentration of authority the lot of the people was sensibly ameliorated : taxation, if not lighter, became more equal and less uncertain ; justice more even-handed and less capricious ; economic condi- tions perceptibly though slowly improved. The Unmaking of Prussia, 1797-1807 203 From 1 80 1 to 1805 the Continental Powers were at Hanover, peace with France ; save only the prince who to the electorate of Hanover had added the Crown of Great Britain and Ireland. England had in 1802 made peace with Napoleon in the Treaty of Amiens on terms which do not concern this narrative, but in 1803 the two Powers were again at war, a war destined to last for more than a decade. Napoleon's first move after the renewal of war was directed against the continental possessions of the English king. Hitherto the fact of England's belligerency had been held not to involve the German possessions of the English king ; the neutrality of Hanover had been respected. That neutrality had been specifically included in the guarantee given to Prussia by France in the Treaty of Basel. Apart, however, from this specific guarantee there was no Power in Europe, not excluding England herself, to whom Napoleon's attack upon Hanover was of such momentous consequence as to Prussia. The menace of a French attack upon Hanover in 1756 had detached Frederick the Great from the French alliance, and had induced him to take the side of England in the Seven Years' War. But if the neutraHzation of Hanover was vital to Prussia in 1756 it was much more so after the Act of Mediatization. Hanover now cut the Hohenzollern dominions in two ; no Prussian sovereign could therefore regard with unconcern the presence of a foreign army in the electorate. The natural susceptibilities of Prussia were so far recog- nized by Napoleon, that on the eve of the renewal of 204 The Evolution of Prussia war with England he sent General Duroc to Berhn to warn Frederick William that he was meditating an occupation of Hanover. The moment was a critical one in the history of Prussia. The situation demanded a prompt decision. Had Stein been in power we cannot doubt that not only would the decision have been prompt but that it would have been followed by immediate action. In what direction would a patriot like Stein have moved in 1803 ? Plainly there were two courses open to Prussia ; and only two. Either she might have declared unequivocally that a French move on Hanover would be treated as a casus belli ; or she might have occupied the electorate in overwhelming force herself. To neither of these obvious alternatives could Frederick William make up his mind. Weak in will ; vacillating in purpose ; neither clear-sighted nor far-sighted ; con- stant only in his desire to preserve Prussian neutrality, Frederick William approached each belligerent in turn. To England he offered his mediation on condition of an immediate evacuation of the island of Malta — a step on which Napoleon, in negotiation with England, had laid great stress. The offer was curtly rejected by Pitt. Rebuffed by England, Frederick William turned to Napo- leon, and pledged his personal security for the payment of any indemnity which Napoleon might think proper to extort from the electorate. The pledge did not tempt Napoleon nor deflect him from his purpose. In May 1803 a French division, 17,000 strong, under General Mortier, occupied Hanover, practically without resistance on the part either of the government or of the inhabitants. Had there been leadership, either military The Unmaking of Prussia, 1797-1807 205 or political, the Hanoverian army was in numbers amply- sufficient to have offered a vigorous opposition to General Mortier's force. But in every respect, political, economic, and intellectual, the electorate was backward and leth- argic. The government, though unenlightened, was not oppressive, and the English connexion seems to have been far from unpopular. The crushing financial burdens laid upon the province by the French during the next two years would in any case have led the Hanoverians to regard the English rule not merely with complacency but with positive affection. The French occupation, though prolonged for two years, was not followed by formal annexation. Nevertheless, Napoleon treated Hanover as a conquered province. Very soon he made it clear not only that he meant to extort the last farthing of ready money from the inhabitants, but to impoverish their permanent resources. In July 1803 a French force was sent to Cuxhaven, which belonged to the city of Hamburg, to keep out English goods which sought entrance into Germany by the Elbe and the Weser. England's immediate reply was to threaten a blockade of the two rivers. Here again Prussia's interests were vitally engaged. Such a blockade must needs deal a serious blow at the linen industry of Silesia. Still Frederick William could not brace himself to decisive action. On the contrary, he met with obstinate immobility every effort made by Napoleon to tempt him to abandon his neutrality. The offer of the Imperial Crown of Germany was not perhaps intrinsically attrac- tive, coming, as it did, at the moment when Francis was assuming an Imperial Crown of Austria and Napoleon 2o6 The Evolution of Prussia was crowned as Emperor of the French. The offer of Hanover, made in the following year (1805), left the king equally unmoved. Not so some of his most trusted counsellors. The Duke of Brunswick and Count Haug- witz were all for acceptance ; but although Frederick William had himself occupied Hanover for six months when, in 1801, he adhered to the Armed Neutrality of the northern Powers, he had no mind, in 1805, for war with England any more than with Napoleon. Not that he was insensible to the insolence of Napoleon. On the contrary, he was deeply shocked by the judicial murder of the Due d'Enghien (March 20, 1804) and by the shameless abduction of Sir George Rumbold, the British Minister in Hamburg (November 1804). The arrogant contempt thus shown by Napoleon for the rights and susceptibilities of friendly sovereigns — in this case the Elector of Baden' and the Senate of the Free City of Hamburg respectively — made a deep impression upon the mind of Frederick William. Nor did Metternich, at that time Austrian ambassador in Berlin, neglect any opportunity for pointing the moral. That these things all contributed to the change of policy, already con- templated and soon to be announced by the Prussian king, cannot be doubted. The War The final impulse to action came, however, from °, . ^ another quarter. England, as we have seen, had been at Coalition, war with France since 1803. In 1805 Pitt succeeded in forming a Third Coalition, which was joined by the Emperor Francis, the Tzar Alexander of Russia, and Gustavus IV of Sweden. Of the German states, Bavaria, Baden, and Wiirtemberg fought on the side of France. The Unmaking of Prussia, 1797-1807 207 For two years past Napoleon had been concentrating a great army at Boulogne, in the hope of effecting an invasion of England. That hope was dissipated by the great naval campaign which culminated in Nelson's victory at Trafalgar (October 21). Two months, how- ever, before Trafalgar, Napoleon had realized that the scheme so carefully and skilfully devised had miscarried ; Sir Robert Calder's engagement with Admiral Villeneuve off Cape Finisterre (July 22) had ruined Napoleon's chance ; without a moment's hesitation his plans were changed, and, almost before his enemies could learn that the Boulogne camp was broken up. Napoleon and his army had appeared on the Danube. The Austrian general Mack suddenly found himself surrounded at Ulm, and on October 20 was compelled, with the whole of his fine army, to capitulate. The road to Vienna was now open. The Austrian capital was occupied by Murat on November 13, and on December 2 Napoleon himself inflicted a crushing defeat upon a combined Austrian and Russian force at Austerlitz. Meanwhile, Frederick William had at last made up his Prussia mind to intervene. Hitherto neither threats nor impor- ^^^ tunities nor proferred bribes had availed to penetrate the obstinacy of the Prussian king. Napoleon had offered Hanover ; the Tzar Alexander had threatened that the Russian army, if refused a passage through Silesia on its march to the upper Danube, would effect a passage by force ; Pitt had hinted that Belgium might fall to Prussia. Nothing moved Frederick William. But early in October news reached Berlin that Bernadotte, in order to reach Bavaria in the minimum of time, had marched his 2o8 The Evolution of Prussia troops through the Prussian Principality of Anspach (October 3). The news roused Frederick WiUiam to fury. He mobihzed his army ; he smiled upon Pitt's plan, a repetition of that which had issued in disaster in 1799, for a joint Anglo-Russian expedition to start from Hanover for the liberation of Holland ; and finally he gave ready permission to the Tzar to send the Russian army through Silesia. A few weeks later (October 28) the Tzar himself reached Berlin, where he received an enthusiastic welcome, for the purpose of conferring per- sonally with the Prussian monarch. Prussia Almost at the moment when the Tzar arrived in Prussia England. Pi^t dispatched a trusted and confidential envoy, the Earl of Harrowby, to convey the English proposals to Berlin. The offer which Harrowby was empowered to make sufficiently indicates the importance which Pitt attached to the co-operation of Prussia. In addition to a yearly subsidy of ^12 loj'. for each Prussian soldier serving in France, Pitt undertook to secure for Prussia the Austrian Netherlands and the intervening German lands between Belgium and the Prussian territories in Westphalia. He furtier promised that on the conclusion of a general peace England would restore all her oversea acquisitions except Malta and Cape Colony.^ Before Lord Harrowby reached Berlin Frederick Wil- liam had concluded with the Tzar the Treaty of Potsdam. (November 3). Prussia undertook to intervene with a force of 180,000 men unless, within four weeks. Napoleon would agree to the terms to be forthwith proposed to him. The French Emperor was to recognize the inde- ^ Rose, Pitt and the Great War, pp. 538 seq. The Unmaking of Prussia, 1797-1807 209 pendence of Germany, Holland, Switzerland, and Naples ; to resign the crown of Italy ; to restore Piedmont to the King of Sardinia and indemnify him with Genoa, Parma, and Piacenza, and to restore to Austria Venice up to the Mincio. The price of Prussian assistance was to be paid by England in the shape of the cession of Hanover. This latter stipulation was embodied in a secret article of the Treaty of Potsdam and was accepted by Alexander only with the greatest reluctance.'- No sooner were the terms agreed upon than Count Haugwitz was sent off to the French head-quarters to present the ultimatum to Napoleon, while a special Russian envoy, Count d'Oubril, was sent to London to procure Pitt's assent to the Hanoverian deal. Needless to say that, though prepared to go to the extreme length of concession to Prussia, Pitt was not willing even to consider the cession of Hanover. Count Haugwitz arrived at the French head-quarters at Briinn on November 29, and was immediately admitted to the presence of the emperor, with whom he had a prolonged conference. Napoleon had not the sUghtest intention of consenting to the Prussian terms, but he meant to evade any positive reply until the issue of the great battle, now pending, was decided. Consequently Haugwitz was cajoled with half -promises, and at last was sent off to Vienna to discuss the matter with Talleyrand. Talleyrand, of course, had his orders from Napoleon, and Haugwitz was amused at Vienna until decisive news arrived from Moravia. By the great victory at Austerlitz Napoleon had extricated ^ See Rose, op. cit., p. 540. 1832 O 210 The Evolution of Prussia himself from all his immediate difficulties ; he dictated the Treaty of Pressburg to Austria, and that of Schon- brunn to Prussia. The _ In the Treaty of Campo-Formio and even in that of Pressburg^ Luneville Austria, if not actually caressed by Napoleon, and had been treated with curious leniency ; in that of brunn. Pressburg she was crushed to the earth. She was com- pelled to resign Venetia to the kingdom of Italy and to recognize Napoleon as its king ; to Bavaria, now raised by Napoleon to the dignity of a kingdom, the whole of the Tyrol, the Vorarlberg, and several bishoprics and minor principaUties ; to Wiirtemberg, also converted into a kingdom, and to Baden her outlying provinces in western Germany. Thus Austria, cut off from the Rhine, from the Adriatic, from contact with Switzerland and with Italy, was reduced to the rank of a third- rate Power. Less disastrous but even more humiliating were the terms imposed at Schonbrunn upon Prussia. The latter was required to cede Anspach to Bavaria, to accept Hanover from Napoleon, and to close the ports of North Germany to English ships and commerce. Frederick William's obstinate adherence to the policy of neutrality had at last brought him to the position of a receiver of stolen goods. In bestowing this embarrassing gift upon Prussia Napoleon's object was, of course, to force Prussia from her neutrahty into a war with England. England treated the matter with disconcerting indifference. Prussia protested that the occupation of Hanover would be only temporary. Fox, however, described her conduct as ' a compound of everything that is contemptible in War with England. The Unmaking of Prussia, 1797-1807 211 servility with everything that is odious in rapacity '. The description was not less just than mordant. But England took little notice of this formidable accession to the ranks of her enemies except to seize some 400 Prussian ships which happened at the moment to be in English ports and to inflict irreparable damage upon the foreign trade of Prussia. In the meantime, Napoleon completed the work begun End of the at Rastatt and carried a stage further by the Act of ^°^^ Mediatization. That work was the final destruction of the Empire- last remnants of the Holy Roman Empire, and the recon- stitution of a great part of Germany under a new Charle- magne, with some real claim to be regarded as a veritable Emperor of the West. For this crowning step the way had been prepared by Napoleon on the eve of the Ulm-Austerhtz campaign. In the early autumn of 1805 treaties were concluded with the client states, Bavaria, Baden, Wurtemberg, by which they agreed to furnish considerable contingents to the army of France. That army marched, so its general had declared, to ' secure the independence of the German Empire '. The official organ of the Empire — the Diet of Regensburg — so far accepted this profession of Napoleon's purpose as to declare its neutrahty, while by the South German press the triumphal progress of the French arms was saluted with ' dithyrambic enthusiasm '.^ For the Diet itself Napoleon had nothing but deserved contempt, describing it with accuracy as ' no more than a miserable monkey- house '. Its course was nearly run. ' There will be no more Diet at Regensburg,' wrote Napoleon to Talleyrand 1 Fisher, op. cit., p. 103 and seq. for further details. O 2 212 The Evolution of Prussia in May 1806, 'since Regensburg will belong to the Empire.' The Treaty of Pressburg had expressly provided that the ruling Princes should enjoy 'complete and undivided sove- reignty over their own states '. Thus were ' shattered the last links of dependence which bound the three Courts to the Chief of the Empire '.^ It remained to forge the new fetters. Throughout the summer of 1806 Napoleon was busy at the task, and on July 17 the Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine was signed in Paris. The Kings of Bavaria and Wiirtemberg, Charles of Dalberg, Archbishop of Regensburg and Arch-Chancellor of the Empire, the Elector of Baden, the Duke of Berg, and the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, together with nine minor princes, definitely separated from the German Empire and accepted the protection of Napoleon, whom they pledged themselves to support with an army of 63,000 men. In this way a population of some 8,000,000 people became for military purposes an integral part of the French Empire. The armies of the Con- federation were organized by French officers ; the frontiers were fortified by French engineers, and foreign policy was dictated" from France. The six sovereigns named above were to form a College of Kings ; the nine minor sovereigns were to constitute a College of Princes, and the two Colleges were to form the Diet of the Confederation. There still remained the task of internal reconstruc- tion. This was rapidly effected. The Confederate- States absorbed a large number of the smaller principalities ; many of the local restrictions and exemptions which had ^ Fisher, p. 108. The Unmaking of Prussia, 1797-1807 213 impinged upon their absolute powers were abolished ; administration became more orderly and uniform, and taxation was equalized and systematized. On August I the Emperor of the French announced to the Diet of Regensburg that he ' no longer recognized the existence of the Germanic Constitution, while acknow- ledging the entire and absolute sovereignty of each of the princes whose states at present compose Germany '. On August 6 the Emperor Francis formally renounced the title of Holy Roman Emperor, and that hoary anachronism at last came to a dishonoured end. With an intelligent appreciation of coming events the Emperor had, two years before this, assumed the brand-new but not inap- propriate title of Emperor of Austria ; the real sovereignty of Germany had already been transferred to Paris. The new Charlemagne had arrived ; the empire of the old Charlemagne was dissolved. Its dissolution, as Professor Seeley reminds us, marks only the last stage in the process by which the German revolution was effected. In that . process the Government, which down to 1803 had been ; largely ecclesiastical, was completely secularized ; the German Church was disendowed ; and ' an intricate medley of small and heterogeneous states ' were consoli- dated ' into a comparatively small group of states moderately large and resembling each other '.^ Two months after the dissolution of the Empire The down. Napoleon annihilated the might of Prussia on the field Prussia of Jena. We must now review the events which led up to that catastrophe. Though Austria concluded peace with Napoleon after Austerlitz, England and Russia still ^ Seeley, Life and Times of Stein, i. 212. 214 The Evolution of Prussia remained at war with him. But Prussia's warUke tempera- ture cooled with great rapidity, and after AusterHtz her message of defiance to Napoleon was converted into one of congratulation. Napoleon accepted the felicitations at their true value and bade Prussia make war upon England. These orders she did not venture to disobey. At the same time, while Haugwitz maintained friendly relations with France, Hardenberg, who shared with him the foreign office, continued to be on good terms with Russia. Prussia, in fact, was pursuing the tactics, to which Frederick William III accustomed her, of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Napoleon's attitude was for the moment one of tolerant contempt. His hands were full with the task of reconsti- tuting Germany, and, provided Prussia embroiled herself beyond recall with England, other matters could wait. Prussia might even be caressed. Consequently there was talk, in the spring of 1806, of a North-German Confedera- tion under the HohenzoUern, who might even be per- mitted, as a counterpoise to the new Austrian Empire in the south, to assume the Imperial title in the north. The idea, in view of subsequent developments, is interesting ; but, for the moment, it came to nothing, owing to the determined opposition of Saxony, Hesse-Cassel, and the Mecklenburgs. So matters stood when (August 6, 1806) the news reached Berlin that in the peace negotiations with the new ministry in England ^ Napoleon had accepted, as a basis, the restoration of Hanover. 'Le Hanovre', such * Pitt died January 23, 1806, and Fox and Grenville then united to form the ministry of ' all the talents '. The Unmaking of Prussia, 1797-1807 215 were Talleyrand's words, ' ne fera pas de difficulte.' But if Hanover were not to stand in the way of peace with England, the idea of its restoration decided the issue of war at Berlin. And well it might. Hanover was the sole tangible asset that Frederick William had to show for insults innumerable and abject humiliation. And now, without a word to Prussia, this dearly-bought acquisition was to be tossed back to England. Is it matter for surprise that this culminating insult should have stung even King Frederick William into action ? On August 9 orders were given for the mobilization of the army, which early in the year had, with supreme folly, been disbanded. The issue between peace and war still hung in the balance. A few weeks later it was decided by an insolent outrage perpetrated by Napoleon. On August 25 a Nuremberg bookseller. Palm, was executed by order of a court martial for having sold copies of a pamphlet, Germany in her deep humiliation. The peculiar significance of this crime was not lost upon Prussia, and on October I war was declared. Within three weeks the great military monarchy had Jena and collapsed. It was just twenty years since Frederick the Great had died. During those years nothing had been done to bring the Prussian army up to the new standard required by the rapid development of the art of war. Organization, drill, tactics, were what Frederick had left them. The officers were the same, twenty years older and debilitated by inaction. Of seven infantry commanders five were over seventy ; of the cavalry generals two only were under sixty-five. ' A few far- seeing men in Prussia had', as Lord Roberts points out, after. 2i6 The Evolution of Prussia ' recognized the danger that was impending, and had urged that the whole miHtary system required recon- struction and revitalizing. Many schemes of reform had been proposed during the years that immediately pre- ceded the catastrophe of Jena, but . . . nothing had been done.' The moral, he who runs may read. ' One cannot read the story of the Jena campaign . . . without realizing from the tragedy of Prussia in 1806 . . . the fate, amazing in its swiftness and appalling in its severity, which may at any moment overtake a state which exists in fancied security, based on traditions of an heroic past, and wrapped in a selfish indifference, hoping, ostrich-like, to escape the danger it refuses to see.' ^ The Prussian army was as conceited as it was incom- petent. ' It possesses ', said General Riichel, ' several generals equal to Bonaparte.' In numbers it was not despicable. Including the 20,000 troops contributed by Saxony, the Duke of Brunswick and Prince Hohenlohe found themselves in command of 140,000 men, concen- trated near Jena on the Saale. A great French army, 200,000 strong, had meanwhile assembled on the upper Main. A preliminary encounter at Saalfeld (October 10) ended disastrously for the Prussians, and four days later the decisive blow fell. On October 14, Napoleon inflicted a crushing defeat upon Hohenlohe at Jena, while Davoust disposed of the forces of Brunswick at Auerstadt. At a single blow the field-arrny of Prussia was annihilated ; Brunswick himself fell mortally wounded ; 20,000 men were killed or wounded ; 200 guns were taken, and 1 Ap. Loraine Petre, Napoleon's Conquest of Prussia, pp. xi, xiii. The Unmaking of Prussia, 1797-1807 217 innumerable prisoners. But worse was to come. The Prussian fortresses were strongly garrisoned, and if defended with resolution Napoleon's onward march might have been indefinitely delayed, if not arrested. One after another they opened their gates to the French armies : Erfurt, HaUe, Spandau (October 25) ; Prenzlau, some thirty miles west of Stettin, was surrendered by Hohenlohe on October 28 ; Stettin itself fell on the 29th ; Bliicher, who had made a noble effort to save a desperate situation, was caught near Liibeck on November 7 ; and on November 8 the great fortress of Magdeburg, with a garrison of over 20,000 men, capitulated to an inferior French force. Meanwhile, Davoust had occupied Berlin without resistance on October 25, and two days later the French Emperor made a triumphal entry into the Prussian capital. In Berlin, Bonaparte behaved like the vulgar con'^ r Napoleon he was. With his own hands he desecrated the tomb of ^" -t*"""- Frederick the Great at Potsdam, and sent off his sword and scarf to the Invalides ; he scrawled obscene insults against the Queen Luise on the walls of her own palace ; he demolished the obelisk on the battle-field of Rossbach ; he carried off to Paris the figure of Victory from the Brandenburg gate, and drove the Prussian Guards like cattle down the Unter den Linden — a spectacle for the burghers to mock at.^ He did not, however, devote all his attention to spectacular effects. From Berlin he issued the famous Decree (November 21) which was ^ Henderson, History oj Germany, ii. 264. 2i8 The Evolution of Prussia formally to inaugurate the Continental Blockade and bring Great Britain to her knees. He then dealt with Prussia's allies. Saxony was treated with a leniency amply repaid in 1 813. The Elector was raised to kingly rank, but his country together with the smaller Saxon duchies was drawn into the Rhenish Confederation. Out of Hesse-Cassel and Brunswick the new kingdom of Westphalia was constructed for Jerome Bonaparte. The war But beyond the Vistula the Russian army was still in Prussia, the field, and thither the Prussian Court, with the remnant of the Prussian army, had retired. Meanwhile, Frederick William had given the first sign of a reviving spirit. Count Haugwitz was dismissed, and on Novem- ber 21 the Prussian king refused his assent to a Conven- tion, dictated by Napoleon, under the terms of which the remaining fortresses were to be surrendered, the Prussian army to be withdrawn into East Prussia, and Frederick William, as a vassal of France, to turn his arms against Russia. It was of good omen that the king's refusal was inspired by Stein acting in conjunction with Hardenberg. The war was to go on. Master of Brandenburg, Napoleon marched into Poland, where he was enthusiastically acclaimed. He promised to proclaim Polish independence, but only on condition that the Poles put 30,000 men into the field. ' I wish to see if you deserve to be a nation.' The sequel would seem to show that Napoleon was not satisfied that they did, for after Tilsit Polish Prussia was offered to Alexander. On December 18 the Emperor reached Warsaw, where he hoped to give his army three months' The Unmaking of Prussia, 1797-1807 219 rest. In a few weeks, however, he was again in the field, and on February 7 he was severely checked at Eylau by the Russians under Bennigsen. After Eylau Napoleon tried to induce Prussia to conclude a separate peace ; but on the advice of Hardenberg Frederick William refused. On the contrary he cemented his alliance with Russia by the Convention of Bartenstein (April 26), and made efforts to secure further assistance from Austria, Great Britain, and the Scandinavian states. On May 24, however, the great fortress of Danzig surrendered, and on June 14 Napoleon inflicted a severe defeat upon the Russian army at Friedland. A few days later the Russians applied for an armistice, which was granted by Napoleon. For the latter had, with characteristic rapidity, decided upon his next move. After all, the real enemy was not Russia, nor even Prussia. Prussia was incidentally to be crushed ; but if Alexander would join him against England, France and Russia could divide the world between them. In order to ensure complete secrecy the two Emperors The met in a pavilion erected on a raft which was moored in of Tilsit, the middle of the Niernp:!^ "'Frederick William was compelled to wait oii Viie bank to learn the fate of his unhappy kingdom. Napoleon and Alexander having made up their minds to a complete volte-jace, the bargain was soon struck. The Vistula was to be the western boundary of Russia, who was to recognize the Confedera- tion of the Rhine and the Napoleonic kingdom of Naples, Holland, and Westphalia ; Danzig was to become a free city ; Polish Prussia was offered to the Tzar with the title of king, but Alexander was shrewd enough to decline The Unmaking of Prussia, 1797-1807 221 the tempting bait. Thereupon the whole of the territory acquired by Prussia in the second and third partitions was erected into a grand duchy of Warsaw and conferred upon the King of Saxony. So much of the Tilsit Treaty was made public. The secret stipulations were even more significant. These provided that Russia should cede the Ionian Isles to France, and should make common cause with Napoleon against Great Britain if the latter refused to come to terms by November i. In return Russia was to get Finland from Sweden, Moldavia and Wallachia from Turkey. Sweden, Den- mark, and Portugal were to be coerced into war with England. A separate Treaty (July 9) embodied the details of Prussia's humiliation. Napoleon's original idea had been literally to expunge the Hohenzollern dominions from the map of Europe, and to make the Vistula the boundary between his own Empire and that of the Tzar. Out of regard, however, for his new ally he consented to restore a remnant of territory to Prussia. She was stripped of all her territories west of the Elbe to enlarge the kingdom of Westphalia, and of all that she had acquired from Poland since 1772 for the advantage of Saxony; she was required to pay a crushing indemnity and to maintain a French garrison until it was paid ; to recognize the Napoleonic kingdoms in Germany and elsewhere, and to keep her harbours hermetically sealed against English! trade. A year later her army was cut down to 42,000"' men. "' At Tilsit Prussia reached the n^-^'- -f her fortunes. Her population was reduced h. aoout 50 per cent., from 222 The Evolution of Prussia nearly ten millions to less than five ; her army was reduced by four-fifths ; her prestige was shattered. Until yesterday the rival of Austria and the equal of Russia, she now barely attained the rank of a second- class German Power. Causes o£ What were the causes of a downfall so rapid, of a cata- downfall. Strophe so crushing and complete ? Some of them ought to have emerged with tolerable clearness from the preceding narrative ; but it may be convenient to attempt a succinct and comprehensive summary. It has been frequently pointed out that Prussia has . owed nothing to the beneficence of nature. Denied any well-defined or easily defensible frontiers ; cursed with an arid soil and an ungenial climate ; deficient in con- venient harbours and condemned to a contracted coastr line, Prussia is pre-eminently the work of man's hands, a highly artificial manufactured product. She owes her pride of place to a remarkable succession of great rulers, a line of kings who have pursued undeviatingly and with single-minded devotion a carefully thought-out policy, designed to build up, out of the most unpromising materials, a great political edifice in Central Europe. To that end they maintained an army out of all proportion to the population or to the economic resources of the state. The whole administrative system was devised with a view 5 the maintenance of military efficiency. Finance and 6 ommerce subserved the same object. 'La Guerre', as r lirabeau wrote, ' est I'industrie nationale de la Prusse.' ^ 'o Prussia's continued greatness, then, two things were .ssential : a succession of rulers of pre-eminent ability ,^nd energy, and a military machine in a perpetual state The Unmaking of Prussia, 1797-1807 223 of efficiency. During the two decades which followed upon the death of Frederick the Great both essentials were lacking. Kings and statesmen were less than mediocre in quality, and the army sank into self-com- placent inefficiency. This was the primary reason for the collapse of 1806. But there were others. Excessive concentration upon a single object is apt with nations, as with individuals, to defeat its own object. ' Most of these military states are safe ', said Aristotle, ' only while they are at war, but fall when they have acquired their empire ; like unused iron they lose their edge in time of peace ; and for this the legislator is to blame, never having taught them the life of peace. . . . Warlike pursuits, though generally to be deemed honourable, are not the supreme end of all things, but only a means.' ^ The iron of the Prussian army lost its edge after the Peace of 1795. And not the army only. The administrative system depended upon the efficiency of the personal ruler. Frederick William II was a compound of mysticism and debauchery ; Frederick William III was as stupid as he was virtuous ; and neither possessed a counsellor who could supply his own deficiency. The diplomacy of Prussia was as maladroit as her policy was selfish, thus in 1806 she was deservedly isolated. For ten years she had maintained a neutrality as pusil- lanimous as it was short-sighted. Hence, when the hour of trial came, she found herself without a friend. In 1806-7 she went through the furnace of affliction ; she went through it alone, unpitied and unaided ; she emerged from it chastened, purified, and regenerated. ^ Politics, vii. 2, 14. 224 The Evolution of Prussia Her regeneration was due to a small group of remark- able men, with whose work the next chapter will be concerned. For further reference : Bailleu : Preussen und Frankreich ; Rambaud : Les Frangais sur leRhin ; Hueffer: Der Rastatter Congress ; Fisher : Napoleonic Statesmanship : Germany ; Loraine Petre : Napoleon's Conquest of Prussia; and biographies of Napoleon, su.h as Fournier's and Rose's. CHAPTER VII THE REMAKING OF PRUSSIA, 1807-15 The War of Liberation The Treaty of Tilsit marked for Prussia not only the Reforms nadir of degradation but the beginning of regeneration. Between 1807 and 18 10 a group of enlightened statesmen carried through a series of reforms which transformed Prussia hardly less completely than those of the Con- stituent Assembly had transformed France. Of these men the greatest was Heinrich Friedrich Karl Stein. Baron von Stein. ^ Born in 1757 in the State of Nassau, Stein was just fifty when in August 1807, at the hour of Prussia's greatest need, he was called to the first place in the counsels of the Prussian king. He had already served a considerable apprenticeship in the employment of the State. By birth an imperial knight, he was an immediate subject of the Empire and was destined by his parents to a place in the imperial law courts. He was educated mainly at the university of Gottingen; he read juris- prudence and political science, making a special study^ for which at Gottingen there were exceptional facilities, of English political institutions. He left Gottingen 1 For full details of the life of Stein reference should be made to Sir J. R. Seeley's biography, The Life and Times oj Stein, 3 vols. Cambridge University Press, 1878. 1832 p 226 The Evolution of Prussia disinclined for the legal profession, and, attracted by the policy and personahty of ' Frederick the Unique ', he decided to enter the civil service of Prussia (1780), and was assigned to the Department of Mines. In 1785 he was sent as Prussian Envoy to Mainz, Zweibriicken, and Darmstadt to obtain the adhesion of those courts to the Fiirstenbund. In 1787 the Government tried to tempt this young man of thirty into diplomacy by the offer of two important embassies, first that at The Hague, and then that at Petersburg. Both offers were declined, and for twenty years Stein worked — ultimately as President, in the War and Domains Chambers of Westphalia. In 1804 he became Minister of State in the Central Govern- ment at Berlin, with special charge of excise, customs, manufactures, and trade. This meant in effect that Stein became responsible for Prussian finance. That he was far from satisfied with the administrative system in which he now held high place is clear from the memorandum which he prepared in 1806.^ A study of that document enables us to understand the causes of the terrible collapse of Prussia. In particular. Stein took exception to the paramount influence exerted over the king by the Cabinet secretaries — the personal confidants of the king who inter- posed between his Majesty and the official Ministers of State. The memorandum was prepared early in 1806, and on November 29, after the catastrophe, Stein was offered but refused the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The king, deeply offended, told Stein that he was a ' refractory, insolent, obstinate, and disobedient official '. On January 3, 1807, the refractory official resigned, but in July ^ This may be read in extenso in Seeley, i. 267, The Remaking of Prussia, 1807-15 227 Napoleon insisted upon the dismissal of Hardenberg, and suggested Stein as his successor. Hardenberg himself warmly supported the suggestion ; Bliicher and Niebuhr added their earnest entreaties, and in August 1807, a few weeks after the signature of the treaty of Tilsit, Stein consented to take up the heaviest burden ever imposed upon the shoulders of a statesman. Before examining in detail the nature of the task and Scharn- the manner in which it was accomplished, a few words may Gneisenau. be said of Stein's fellow workers. The reorganization of the army was the work primarily of two men, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Gerhard Johann David von Scharnhorst was two years senior to Stein. By birth a Hanoverian, he served in the army of the Electorate in the campaigns of 1793-4, but in 1 801, at the request of the Duke of Brunswick, he transferred his services and sword to Prussia. Already famous as a writer on military subjects, he became a professor in the Military Academy in Berlin. He fought at Jena and was Chief of the Staff to General Lestocq, who commanded the Prussian contingent at Eylau. After the Peace he became head of the military administration in Stein's ' Ministry '. Closely associated with Scharnhorst was August Wilhelm Antonius Neit- hardt von Gneisenau. Born in Saxony in 1760, and educated at Erfurt, he entered the service of the emperor, for whom he fought in the War of the Bavarian Succes- sion (1778). He enlisted in the legion of German mer- cenaries hired by England for service against the American colonies, and on his return entered the Prussian army (1785). He saw service in Poland (1793-5) ; was slightly wounded at Saalfeld, where, as at Jena, he commanded 228 The Evolution of Prussia a battalion, and, after the retreat, he defended Colberg with a resolution not shared by most of his colleagues. His exploits at Colberg won him the friendship and admiration of Bliicher, and in 1807 he was appointed a member of the Commission, presided over by Scharn- horst, for the reorganization of the Prussian army. Later on he had a high command at Leipzig, and served as Bliicher's Chief of the Staff in the Waterloo campaign. Much of Bliicher's fame was really due to Gneisenau's pre-eminent knowledge both of strategy and tactics. He died in 1831, having attained the rank of Field-Marshal. Hum- In Prussia the army and the school have always been closely co-ordinated. What Gneisenau and Scharnhorst did for military reform was accomplished for education by Karl Wilhelm Baron von Humboldt (1767-1835), the elder brother of the famous traveller Alexander, and himself a statesman and a scholar of high distinction. To these men, only one of whom, Humboldt, was a Prussian, with a few others, such as Niebuhr, the famous historian, and Prince von Hardenberg, stands the credit of one of the most remarkable political achievements of the nineteenth century. It was their task to remake Prussia. Fichte. Their objective is thus defined by Sir Robert Morier. It was ' to substitute an organic whole, in its entirety, for the inorganic machinery that had been gradually rotting ever since the death of Frederick the Great, and was now happily once for all broken to pieces '.^ The spirit in which they approached their arduous work is clearly ii^icated by Stein himself. ' We started ', he writes, ' from the fundamental idea of rousing a 1 Memoirs, i. 189. The Remaking of Prussia, 1807-15 229 moral, religious, patriotic spirit in the nation, of in- spiring it anew with courage, self-confidence, readi- ness for every sacrifice in the cause of independence of the foreigner, and national honour.' In the execution of the task thus outlined, in their appeal to a ' moral religious patriotic spirit ', Stein and his colleagues owed an incalculable debt to the recent teaching of one of the greatest of German philosophers, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814). Fichte, who had been professor of philo- sophy at Jena, came in 1799 to Berlin, where he delivered regular courses of public lectures. In the winter of 1804-5 his subject was 'The Characteristics of the Present Age '.^ These lectures maintained a startling thesis : that ' a State which constantly seeks to increase its internal strength, is forced to desire the gradual abolition of all privileges and the establishment of equal rights for all men, in order that it, the State itself, may enter upon its true right, viz. to apply the whole surplus power of all its citizens, without exception, to the futherance of its own purposes. . . . We do indeed desire freedom and we ought to desire it ; but true freedom can be obtained only by means of the highest obedience to law.' ^ What an amazing paradox must this have seemed to those who had learnt their political philosophy from Humboldt, and to whom Humboldt's Limits of State Action (1791) had seemed the last word of political wisdom. Humboldt's political theory was, of course, in perfect consonance with the particularist practice of the Germany of the 1 Cf. Werke, vol. vii. There is a translation by Dr. W. Sniith, ' Quoted by M. E. Sadler, Germany in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 104, 105. 230 The Evolution of Prussia eighteenth century. The idea of the paramount State, still more, of a single paramount State, would have been as unthinkable to the German peoples as to Humboldt. ' Voltaire's saying that while France ruled the land, and England ruled the sea, Germany ruled the clouds was therefore profoundly true of the Germany of his day. It was the peculiar feature of the Germany which Napoleon overran that her greatest men were either indifferent, like Goethe, to the violent upheavals of the period, or else, like Beethoven, moved rather by the abstract ideas evolved in revolutionary France than by any German patriotism. The ideal of that Germany was art and culture, not patriotism. Its vital forces were turned to the production not of political efficiency or military leadership, but of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and Goethe's Faust.' ^ Fichte's teaching, then, marks the transition irom the particularist individualism of eighteenth-century Ger- many to the centralized autocracy and the omnipotent State of the nineteenth. Philosophically startling as were the lectures of 1805, those of 1807 were, from the point of view of high political courage, even more remarkable. The famous Addresses to the German Nation were delivered on successive Sunday evenings from December 13, 1807, to March 20, 1808, in the hall of the Academy of Sciences. The circumstances were dramatic, not to say perilous for the lecturer. The French garrison was still in occupation of Berlin ; French spies mingled with the great audience which hung upon the lecturer's lips ; the king, the court, ^ ' Germany and the Prussian Spirit,' ap. Round Table, September 1914, pp. 8, 9. The Remaking of Prussia, 1807-15 231 and the central government were exiled from the capital ; the scholar alone confronted the French masters of his country. To Fichte's lectures, delivered at this critical juncture, it is hardly possible to attach too much impor- tance. Seeley speaks of them as ' the prophetical or canonical book which announces and explains a great transition in modern Europe '. What is the nature of the argument ? The title is not without significance. The Lectures are addressed not to the Prussian people but to the German nation. Fichte then distinguishes between the Nation and the State ; between the higher patriotism and the ' spirit of joint civic loyalty to the constitution and the laws '. ' What ', he asks, is the spirit that ' can have an unquestionable right to demand of every one it meets, whether he him- self consents or not, and if necessary to compel him, to put everything, life included, to hazard ? ' Not mere civic duty or loyalty, ' no, but the consuming flame of the higher patriotism which conceives the nation as the embodiment of the Eternal ; to which the high-minded man devotes himself with joy, and the low-minded man . . . must be made to devote him^self.' Nationality is something more than community of territory. ' The first original and truly natural frontiers of states are unquestionably their spiritual frontiers.' Each nation, therefore, worthy of the niyne has its own distinctive quality or ethos. That ethos must be preserved with the utmost care. How can it be done ? The answer of Fichte is the answer of Aristotle. ' Only by a system of national education.' To the subject of education, then, a large proportion of these lectures was devoted. 232 The Evolution of Prussia Education must be national ; it must be provided at the expense of the State and, like military service, it must be compulsory. The method favoured by Fichte -was, in the main, that w^hich had been lately expounded by Pestalozzi. It must embrace both the culture of the intellect and also instruction in a practical craft ; but above all it must be infused with the spirit of patriotism and must subserve — in the broadest sense — a political end. ' I hope ', he said, ' to convince some Germans that nothing but education can rescue us from the miseries that overwhelm us.' How the teaching of Fichte bore fruit in the educational reforms of Humboldt will be seen later. Stein's But his influence was not confined to the sphere of education. It permeated the whole series of reforms with which the name of Stein is imperishably associated. Not that the whole credit belongs to Stein, or even to those of his colleagues named above. Seeley has shown that much of the inspiration came from the king himself. It was, however, necessity which drove. Prussia had either to undergo drastic reform or perish. Finance. Of the many questions which demanded Stein's atten- tion the most urgent was that of finance. Prussia, always a poor country and now reduced in revenue and population by nearly a half, was called upon not only to pay a war indemnity amounting to 120,000,000 francs, but at the same time to maintain an army of occupation of 150,000 men. To meet the indemnity Stein raised a mortgage of 70,000,000 francs on the security of the royal domains, and got bills accepted by the merchants and bankers to the extent of another 50,000,000. In matters of taxation there was at that time no central The Remaking of Prussia, 1807-15 233 machinery. The several provinces were independent. But Stein induced East and West Prussia and Lithuania to accept an income tax, and a property tax was intro- duced into Silesia, Pomerania, and the Marches. A little later (November 1809) an important step was taken by the sale of the royal domains on which hitherto the State had largely depended for its revenue. But the situation demanded something more than a reform of the finances. The administrative machine needed to be overhauled from top to bottom ; the whole economic basis of the state to be reformed ; the social system itself to be fundamentally reconstructed. The social and economic structure of Prussia was still entirely feudal. The mass of the people were serfs. A caste system, absolutely rigid in operation, divided class from class, and dominated land tenure. Agriculture consequently suffered. The landowner who lacked the capital wherewith to ciiltivate could not sell. The rich bourgeois could not buy. The Emancipating Edict issued on October 9, 1807, TheEman- was designed to eradicate these abuses. All personal gj-^l'"^ servitude — the status of viUainage — ^was abolished. ' From Martinmas i8io', so runs the edict, ' there shall be only free persons.' Land also was to be ' free '. Complete freedom of exchange was instituted. Hitherto the soil itself had been in the grip of the caste system. Noble land {adelige Gilter) could be held only by nobles ; civic land by citizens ; peasant land by peasants. All dis- tinctions in the soil were henceforward to be abolished. And all caste distinction of persons and occupations as 234 The Evolution of Prussia well. Henceforward the noble might engage in trade, peasants and citizens might interchange their callings. Labour, instead of being localized, was rendered mobile. Artificial barriers between town and country were thrown down. Entails were cut off and all restrictions upon the alienation of land were abolished ; but at the same time careful and ingenious precautions were taken lest this should lead to the expropriation of peasant owners. The work begun by Stein was completed by Harden- berg. Stein made the peasant personally free : but he was stiU bound to pay fixed dues and quit-rents to the lord. By the agrarian law of 1811 Hardenberg abolished this dual ownership and converted peasant copyholders into proprietors. One-third of the peasant holding was surrendered to the lord in commutation for all charges, while the peasant retained the remaining two-thirds in undivided and unshackled proprietorship. Not only to land did Stein apply the principle of ' freedom ' which he had learnt from Turgot and Adam Smith. He abolished also the exclusive privileges of the trade guilds and various restrictive monopolies. With equal vigour he attacked governmental and administrative abuses. Municipal By the Municipal Act (1808) Stein carried through a large measure for the reform of local government. The towns were emancipated from the control either of the feudal lords or of the central government, and the administration of their affairs was entrusted to elected councils. This was a reform of large significance. ' The battle of Jena ', writes Dahlmann,^ ' had been but the ^ Quoted ap. Seeley, ii. 228. Reform. The Remaking of Prussia, 1807-15 235 outward exhibition of the deep internal discord which went through all classes of the people. . . . The Baron vom Stein, by laying here the foundation of the salvation of Prussia, became in a deeper sense than King Henry, who could but build fortresses, the town builder of Germany.' Had Stein not been interrupted there is no doubt that Adminis- he would have extended similar principles to the rural Refonn. communes, and that ultimately he would have crowned the edifice of administrative reform by the establishment of a regular parliamentary constitution. As it was he did much to introduce order into the central administration. The system of Frederick the Great, wholly dependent upon the will and energy of the personal ruler, had, as we have seen, completely broken down. It was now to be replaced by a council of state, consisting of heads of departments, acting in conjunction with each other and under the presidency of the sovereign, to whom they were to be personally responsible. The work of the departments, five in number, was carefully differentiated and organized. But, far-reaching as was the reforming activity of Stein, the work was only half done when, in December 1808, he was, at the bidding of Napoleon, dismissed. Napoleon's decisive interposition is, ir jne sense, the most striking testimony to the value of t'' ,vork which Stein had accomplished. He had still m- j' to do, but it was done in a different sphere. For , , ee years he went into complete retirement. When h. re-emerged it was as the unofficial counsellor of the Tzar Alexander. In that capacity his services to Germany were, as we shall see, not less remarkable than those which as first minister to Frederick William he had rendered to Prussia. 236 The Evolution of Prussia Army Social, economic, and administrative reforms did not stand alone. Not less important was the task of military reorganization undertaken by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The old army system, based upon the principle of caste, had been completely discredited by the Jena campaign. But apart from that, reorganization would have been forced upon Prussia by Napoleon. In 1808 his fiat went forth that the army was to be reduced to 42,000 men. This was the reformer's opportunity. With a standing army so restricted in numbers every citizen must be trained to the use of arms. The active army was strictly limited to 42,000 men ; but after a short period of service with the colours the citizen soldier was to pass into the reserve ; a Landwehr was organized, though not until 1813, for home defence, and finally there was a Landsturm, or general arming of the population for guerilla warfare. Meanwhile, a number of reforms were introduced in the regular army : old and incompetent officers were cashiered ; caste restrictions were abolished ; a better system of promotion, based partly at least on merit, was adopted, and improvements were effected in drill, tactics, guns, and munitions. Education. Prussia has always regarded her army as part of her educational system. Of her indeed it may be said, as Aristotle said of Sparta, ' the system of education and the greater part of the laws are framed with a view to war '.J- Nor can it be denied that it is this unity of principle which has given to the fabric of German organization its remarkable completeness and consistency. The first lesson instilled into the mind of the German ^ Politics, vii. 2. The Remaking of Prussia, 1807-15 237 boy is that he has come into the world in order to tak his part in the defence of the Fatherland. Army organiza- tion and education are therefore parts of one coherent whole. ' Side by side ', writes Dr. M. E. Sadler, ' with the influences of German education are to be traced the influences of German military service. The two sets of influence interact on one another and intermingle. German education impregnates the German army with science. The German army predisposes German education to ideas of organization and discipline. Military and educational discipline go hand in hand.' ^ This being so, it is an easy transition from Scharnhorst and Gneisenau to Fichte and Humboldt. The latter became head of the Department of Cultus and Public Instruction in April i8og. Prussia had adopted the principle of compulsion in elementary education as far back as 1716. But the method of instruction was radically unsound. Fichte's Addresses, however, gave an immense impulse to educational reform. An unofficial commission was sent to visit Pestalozzi's institution at Yverdun ; and, as a result, a normal school on Pestalozzian principles was opened at Konigsberg under the direction of C. A. Zeller, himself an enthusiastic disciple of the Swiss reformer. From Konigsberg the new method was diffused throughout the Prussian dominions, and Pestalozzian principles have dominated the elementary education of Germany from that day to this. Humboldt was not content with reorganizing the ^ Board of Education Special Reports, ix. p. 43 and passim. Cf . also Dr. Sadler on ' Education ' ap. Germany in the Nineteenth Century. Manchester University Publications, No. XIII. 238 The Evolution of Prussia primary schools. Technical instruction, based always upon a sound general education, was encouraged ; in the Gymnasien an admirable type of secondary education, mainly classical, was provided ; leaving examinations were instituted to connect the higher secondary schools with the universities ; and finally the edifice was crowned by the foundation of the University of Berlin. The Peace of Tilsit had deprived Prussia of its leading university — that of Halle. Of the universities which still remained to her — that of Konigsberg was too remote, that of Frankfort-on-the-Oder was most inadequately endowed. It was decided therefore, in 1809, to found a new univer- sity in the capital, to assign as its head-quarters the palace of Prince Henry, with an annual subsidy of 150,000 thalers. Considering the position of Prussia at the time, the effort must be regarded as little short of heroic. Humboldt scoured Germany for eminent professors and gathered round him a remarkable band of scholars : Fichte taught philosophy ; Schleiermacher theology ; Savigny jurisprudence; Niebuhr history; and Wolf archaeology. A more eminent quintet never adorned a modern University. A year after the foundation of the University of Berlin that of Breslau was reorganized (18 11), absorbing at the same time the more ancient but poverty-stricken University of Frankfort-on-the-Oder. The new spirit did not manifest itself exclusively in educational institutions. In 1808 there was formed at Konigsberg the Moral and Scientific Union or Tugendbund, the object of the Union being ' the revival of morality, religion, serious taste, and public spirit'. It quickly attracted to itself a large number of adherents, and branch The Remaking of Prussia, 1807-15 239 associations were formed in many towns of Prussia and Silesia. Connected in some manner with Freemasonry it was wholly patriotic in aim, though somewhat vague in operation. The Tugendbund was indeed only one more indication of the new temper aroused on the one hand by Napoleonic brutality, on the other by the work of Stein, Hardenberg, Scharnhorst, and their colleagues and coadjutors. In this way and by such men was Prussia transformed. Politically, administratively, economically, militarily, and educationally a new Prussia came into being. Most of all : a new spirit was breathed into the Prussian people, a spirit which, though sometimes diverted and occasionally all but quenched, inspired immediately the great war of 1813-14, and led ultimately to the unification of Germany under Prussian hegemony in 1 87 1. In the general current of European affairs Prussia is The not, for the next year or two, intimately involved. conflKr" Very briefly therefore may we glance at the progress of the European conflict between the Treaty of Tilsit (1807) and Napoleon's invasion of Russia (18 1 2). Those years revealed with ever increasing emphasis the fact that the real conflict lay between Napoleon and Great Britain. Tilsit was a conspiracy aimed primarily against the life of England. Canning, then at the Foreign Office, was quick to apprehend this truth, and frustrated the plot by the prompt seizure of the Danish fleet. This operation unfortunately involved the bombardment of Copenhagen, and it widened the breach between England and Denmark. But it was wholly effective and Napoleon foiled in the Baltic turned to the Tagus. Portugal was 240 The Evolution of Prussia the only continental Power which maintained a friendly neutrality with England. But after Tilsit Napoleon had determined that there should be no more neutrals in Europe. Portugal therefore was ordered to adhere to the Continental System and to declare commercial war upon England. As she hesitated to comply, Junot crossed the Bidassoa ; the Portuguese royal family fled : a day later Junot entered Lisbon and declared ' that the House of Braganza had ceased to reign '. Thanks to the protection of the English fleet the chief representatives of that House were already on their way to Brazil. The The attack on Portugal was the prelude to the Peninsular War. War. In 1808 Napoleon found himself embarked upon a contest with the Spanish people. Their Bourbon kings he had already pushed aside, and he deemed it a light task to install Joseph Bonaparte in their place. But in the Iberian Peninsula Napoleon was confronted by a new phenomenon. Hitherto he had been waging a contest with kings and statesmen who might or might not be representative of national feeling. In Spain he personally encountered for the first time a nation ; somewhat loosely knit, but still a nation. This encounter not only exercised an immense influence upon the immediate situation ; it may be said, without exaggeration, to have opened a new chapter in the history of Europe. Immediately, it led to the postponement of Napoleon's plans for the partition of Turkey and the annihilation of Prussia ; it roused Austria to her courageous campaign in 1809 ; it strengthened and stimulated the national revival in Prussia ; above all, it gave England the oppor- The Remaking of Prussia, 1807-15 241 tunlty of playing an important part in the military struggle upon the Continent. That opportunity was equally welcomed by the government and by the people. ' We shall proceed,' said Canning, ' upon the principle that any nation of Europe which starts up with a deter- mination to oppose a Power which, whether professing insidious peace or declaring open war, is the common enemy of all nations becomes instantly our ally.' Un- official England was equally emphatic. ' Never before', said Sheridan, ' has so happy an opportunity existed for Great Britain to strike a bold stroke for the rescue of the world. Hitherto Buonaparte has run a victorious race because he has contended with princes without dignity, ministers without wisdom, or people without patriotism ; he has yet to learn what it is to combat a people who are animated with one spirit against him. Now is the time to stand up boldly and fairly for the dehverance of Europe.' For six years (1808-1814) England acted steadfastly upon the principles thus announced, and kept alight the flame of insurrection in the Peninsula. The repercussion of events in Spain was felt imme- Campaign diately in Germany. The year 1809 was Austria's ' great °^ ^^°'^' year '. Ever since Austerlitz she had been waiting for the opportunity of revenge and steadily preparing to make it effective. The army organization was largely reformed by the Archduke Charles and Count Stadion, and on April 6, 1809, a stirring appeal was issued by the Emperor to his people. A week later war was declared. One great army under the Archduke Charles attacked Bavaria, but after a week's fighting was forced back by 1832 Q 242 The Evolution of Prussia Napoleon upon Vienna ; a second under the Archduke Ferdinand advanced upon Warsaw ; a third under the Archduke John raised the standard of revolt in the Tyrol and then marched into Italy. The Tyrolese peasants fought with superb gallantry, but the strategy of Napoleon was irresistible, and on May 13 he was once more in the Austrian capital. But his position there was far from safe ; for the next two months it was indeed intensely critical. Had there been any real generalship among the Austrian archdukes Napoleon ought not to have escaped. As it was he suffered a very severe repulse, with the loss of 27,000 men, after two days' fighting at Aspern-Essling (May 21-2). The news of Aspern, by far the greatest reverse Napoleon had hitherto suffered, sent a thrill through Europe. Risings in Jn Prussia, the news of the battle of Aspern was Germany, received with unbounded enthusiasm, and it is Seeley's opinion that if England had landed in North Germany in May the force which was subsequently wasted at Walcheren, it would have initiated a national rising in Germany. Be this as it may, the enthusiasm evoked by Aspern was permitted to evaporate in a series of spirited and courageous but isolated, unofficial, and unfruitful risings. In April there was a general rising, under a Prussian officer Baron von Dornberg, in Hesse, where the rule of King Jerome was both hated and contemned. The rising was suppressed with great bloodshed, but Dornberg himself managed to escape into Bohemia. An attempt to surprise the French garrison in Magdeburg was no more successful. In May Major von Schill led with great courage another forlorn hope. He beat off The Remaking of Prussia, 1807-15 243 a French force sent out from Magdeburg, captured a small fortress in Mecklenburg, made his way to the coast, in the hope of getting into touch with an English fleet, and actually succeeded in taking Stralsund (May 28). But three days later Schill's gallant little force was cut to pieces and the heroic commander himself was killed. A third rising was led by Duke Frederick William of Brunswick, who raised a force of volunteers in Bohemia, invaded Saxony, occupied Dresden, and compelled a force of Westphalians and Saxons commanded by King Jerome to retreat. Eventually he cut his way through to the mouth of the Weser, where he and his ' Black Legion ' — more fortunate than Schill — embarked on English ships. Finally, when all was over, a large English army of 40,000 men, escorted by an adequate fleet, landed Quly 30) on the island of Walcheren, with the object of capturing Antwerp. The idea, which was Lord Castlereagh's, was a brilliant one ; the execution of it, committed to Lord Chatham and Sir Richard Strahan, was disastrously feeble. In September the expedition, decimated by disease and having effected nothing, was recalled to England. Meanwhile, Napoleon, recovering from the reverse at Aspern, won a decisive victory at Wagram (July 5-6), and Austria accepted the armistice of Znaim (July 12). Three months later a Definitive Treaty was concluded at Vienna (October 10). The severity of the terms imposed upon Austria was due, in a large measure, to Wellington's failure to push on after Talavera and to the fiasco of Walcheren. By the Treaty of Vienna the Habsburg dominions were still further dismembered : Galicia was divided between Russia and the Grand Q2 244 The Evolution of Prussia Duchy of Warsaw ; Trieste, Croatia, Carniola, and the greater part of Carinthia (the ' lUyrian Provinces ') were annexed to France ; the Tyrol and the Vorarlberg, with Salzburg- and a strip of Austria pi'oper, to Bavaria. The Habsburgs lost 4,500,000 subjects ; they had to pay an indemnity of ^^3 ,400,000 ; to reduce their army to 150,000 men ; and to promise strict adherence to the con- tinental system. They also gave an archduchess, Marie Louise, in marriage to Napoleon. Josephine was divorced , at the end of 1809, and on April i, 1810, the Emperor of the French was^married to the niece of Marie Antoinette. Rupture This Austrian marriage tad a powerful efiect upon the Napoleon 'n.^^t development in the Napoleonic drama — the aliena- ^P^ , tion of the Tzar Alexander. The bargain struck at Tilsit Alexander. r-i-/~>i and confirmed at Erfurt, where for a fortnight m October, 1 808, Napoleon held high festival in honour of his august ally and his dependent kings of the Rheinbund, had been imperfectly fulfilled. Finland was still in the hands of ' Sweden ; the Danubian Principalities still formed part of the Ottoman Empire. Other things contributed to the growing uneasiness of the Tzar. The sheet-anchor of Napoleon's policy at this period was the continental blockade. That blockade caused considerable loss to England ; it inflicted ruin upon neutrals and upon Napoleon's allies. In order to rnaintain it, Napoleon was forced to further annexations : the States of the Church were absorbed into the kingdom of Italy ; Louis Napo- leon's kingdom of Holland, Hamburg and other Hanseatic cities, the Duchy of Oldenburg, half Jerome's kingdom of Westphalia, part of the Grand Duchy of Berg, all were swept into the net of the French Empire in order The Remaking of Prussia, 1807-15 245 to keep the system intact. Alexander, deeply offended by the Austrian marriage, resentful of the annexation of his brother-in-law's Duchy of Oldenburg, suspicious of >Napoleoh's designs in Poland, found himself compelled to choose between ruinous adherence to the continental system and the forfeiture of the French alliance. After 1 8 10, relations between the Tilsit conspirators became rapidly worse. ' I shall have war with Russia on ground^ which lie beyond human possibilities, because they are rooted in the case itself.' So Napoleon himself had said to Metternich in 1 8 10. In the next two years he did his best to isolate Russia ; but with imperfect success. In 1 8 1 2 Alexander , protected his flanks by treaties . with Turkey and Sweden. ■ What lin^ would Prussia take ? If Russia was menaced by the extension of the Napo- Prussian Iconic Empire in North Germany, still more was Prussian ^° "^^' But Prussia had not yet d-nrV the last diiegs'of the cup of humiliation. Early i- '■'. o Napoleon pressed for the immediate payment r- ^^^ balance of the indemnity. ' If the King of Prus^' .■ .s not pay he must cede Silesia to me.' It was in this extremity that the king recalled Hardenberg to office. Shortly after that stateman's recall the king and country suffered a terrible loss in the death of Queen Luise. Her beauty and kindliness had endeared her to the people, and Jier superb courage in adversity had been an example and an inspiration alike to the soldiers and the statesmen of Prussia. Hardenberg re- turned to offlce primarily in order to avert a further dismemberment of his country by the payment of the indemnity due to the ruthless conqueror, but his activities were many sided. His reform of land tenure has already 246 The Evolution of Prussia been described. To his financial schemes a word must be devoted. The immediate necessities were to be met by a forced loan secured upon the Royal Domains and the property of the churches. New stamp duties, an income tax, and a patent tax were imposed, and exemptions from the land tax were abolished. A com- mission was to be issued to regulate the debts incurred by the provinces and communes during the war. Repre- sentative assemblies, both central and local, were called into being. But domestic reform, however important, could not have the first place in the mind of a Prussian statesman at a juncture so critical. The great conflict between France and Russia was obviously at hand. Even if neutrality had been possible to Prussia it would not have been permitted. On which side did her interests lie ? Prussia's The question was not easy to answer. To join Napoleon dilemma. . . . . , _ , . meant giving a free passagguSr the Trench troops; it meant a mortal affront to the fip", whose intercession had at least saved her in 1807 from complete annihilation, and exposure to his vengeance should Napoleon be defeated. To side with Russia would have called down upon Prussia instant and terrible vengeance at the hands of Napoleon. No more difficult problem has ever been presented to a responsible statesman. The dictates of honour were not obscure. But the risk involved in obedience might well give a patriot pause. All through the year 1811 the harassing negotiations proceeded. At last, on February 24, 1812, the die was cast, the treaty with France was signed. Prussia was- to allow a free passage to the grand army ; to provide 20,000 troops for offensive or defensive The Remaking of Prussia, 1807-15 247 operations and 20,000 more for garrison duty ; to permit the French to requisition bread, meat, and forage, on terms' to be subsequently determined ; and to adhere strictly to the continental system. On his part Napoleon merely guaranteed the maintenance of the mutilated Prussian- kingdom in statu quo. The conclusion of this treaty — a treaty which ' added the people of Frederick the Great to that inglorious crowd which fought at Napoleon's orders against whatever remained of indepen- dence and nationality in Europe ' '^ — filled up the cup of Prussia's humiliation. The patriotic party were plunged into despair. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau resigned ; some of the best officers took service in the Russian army ; Stein, in exile, denounced the betrayal of the cause he had striven to serve. Napoleon's left flank was thus secure ; the right was protected by Austria. For Austria Napoleon had no such contempt as that with which, not undeservedly, he regarded Prussia. The terms imposed upon the Emperor were, therefore, far less humiliating. Austria merely undertook to provide 30,000 troops for defensive purposes under her own generals ; in return she was to get Galicia. The details of the Moscow campaign do not concern The . Moscow us. On June 24, 1812, Napoleon crossed the Niemen at campaign. the head of 680,000 men ; by September 14 he was in Moscow ; the retreat begun on October 19 rapidly became a rout ; on December 5 Napoleon deserted his army and made all haste to Paris, and on December 13 100,000 men, a mere dishevelled and disorganized rabble, re-crossed the Niemen, and trudged wearily to Leipzig. "■ Fyffe, op. cit., i. 454. 248 The Evolution of Prussia Its results. How did the Russian disaster affect the general situa- tion, and in particular that of Prussia ? Napoleon's position, though shaken, was not desperate. Austria, playing her own game with conspicuous skill, refused to join his enemies ; the princes of the Rheinbund still adhered to their protector and president ; France re- mained loyal to the emperor, and within three months had given him a new army ; even the Tzar was undecided whether to seize Poland and so revenge himself on Prussia, or to put himself at the head of the Prussian patriots and lead a crusade for the liberation of Germany and of Europe. What was the attitude of Prussia ? The disaster which befell the tyrannical slave-driver reduced his slave to a condition of abject and pitiable indecision. Fortunately for the future of Prussia and of Germany, the decision at this fateful moment was taken out of the feeble hands of Frederick William III, and was confided to the sound judgement and indomitable will of Baron vom Stein and General Yorck. Stein and Stein had been for nearly four years in exile, but in the summer of 181 2, when Napoleon's advance had actually begun, the Tzar invited Stein ' most pressingly ' to come to Russia and give him the benefit of his counsel. Stein's prompt acceptance of that invitation was the turning-point in the history of modern Prussia and of modern Germany, for Stein it was who persuaded the Tzar to the fateful move which initiated the War of Liberation. But while Stein stimulated the Tzar, it was General Yorck who forced the hand of his own sovereign. Hans David Ludwig Count von Yorck was a rough Prussian soldier trained in the school of Frederick the Yorck. The Remaking of Prussia, 1807-15 249 Great. He had distinguished himself in the Polish War of 1794, and again in that of 1806. In 1812 he was appointed to command the Prussian auxiliaries attached to Macdonald's army-corps, which, on the advance to Moscow, was left to occupy Courland. After Napoleon's retreat overtures were made to Yorck by the Russian commander in Riga. Holding a strong position, but uncertain as to the policy of his government, Yorck, on his own responsibility, resolved on a decisive step. On December 30, 1812, he concluded with the Tzar the Convention of Tauroggen. That convention stipulated for the temporary neutrality of Yorck's contingent, and that Russian forces should be allowed to occupy the territory between Memel and Konigsberg. Frederick William, on learning of it, repudiated the convention and ordered the arrest of Yorck. The gallant soldier, undis- mayed, stuck to his post. ' With bleeding heart I burst the bond of obedience and wage war on my own account. The army wants war with France, the people wants it, the king himself wants it, but the king's will is not free. The army must make his will free. I will shortly be at Berlin with 50,000 men. There I will say to the king : Here, sire, is your army and here is my old head ; I will willingly lay it at the king's feet, but Yorck refuses to be judged and condemned by a Murat.' Frederick William made humble apology to France. He could do no otherwise. But luckily for Prussia his authority had passed to the statesman and the soldier. Stein and Yorck virtually assumed the reins of govern- ment. Stein summoned the estates of East Prussia to meet at Konigsberg ; he opened the Prussian harbours 250 The Evolution of Prussia and repudiated the continental system, and finally he organized the Landwehr and the Landsturm for a people's war against Napoleon. The Prussian Estates assembled on February 5, 1813. Meanwhile the Russian army had crossed the Niemen (January 13) ; Frederick William fled from Berlin to Breslau, and on February 28 the Treaty of Kalisch was concluded. The alliance of Russia and Prussia was con- firmed : Prussia was to surrender to the Tzar almost everything which she had acquired by the second and third partitions of Poland, while the Tzar undertook not to lay down arms until Prussia was restored, as regards area and population, to a position equivalent to that which she had held before Tilsit. The War On March 17 Frederick William declared war upon t/on!''''^" France. The War of Liberation had begun. In the history of that war two periods must be clearly dis- tinguished. The first, waged on the principles of Yorck and Stein, lasts down to the armistice of Plaswitz (June 4) ; the second, dominated by the diplomacy of Metternich, begins with the adhesion of Austria (August 12) and extends down to the entry of the allies into Paris (March 31, 18 14). Since the beginning of the year Napoleon had bent aU his energies to the raising and equipment of a new army. When he joined it at Erfurt (April 25) he found himself at the head of some 200,000 men. In the mean- time the allies had been permitted to occupy Dresden ; but on May 2 Napoleon attacked them at Liitzen, drove them back across the Elbe, and himself reoccupied the Saxon capital (May 14). A week later (May 20, 21) the armies again engaged at Bautzen on the Spree. The The Remaking of Prussia, 1807-15 251 battle was obstinately contested, and not until the close of the second day were the allies compelled to retreat. They then fell back, in perfect order, upon Silesia. It was after Bautzen that Napoleon made the greatest blunder of his military -career. He was anxious to strengthen his cavalry, to bring up the army of Italy to Laibach in order to intimidate Austria, and if possible to conclude a separate peace with the Tzar. On June 4, therefore, he offered a seven weeks' armistice. Eagerly accepted by the allies, it was known as the truce of Plaswitz. Here was the opportunity for Metternich's diplomacy. Nor was it neglected. Metternich's object was to restore the European equilibrium. He did not wish to exalt either Russia or Prussia unduly or to drive Napoleon from the French throne. Austria therefore offered her mediation to Napoleon, and by the Treaty of Reichenbach (June 27) she agreed to join forces with the allies if Napoleon should refuse the terms proposed by her. Those terms were very favourable to France. Napoleon was to be allowed to retain the French throne, the Rhine frontier, and the Presidency of the Rhine-Confederation ; but was to restore the lUyrian provinces to Austria, and to Prussia and the North German states the territory of which they had been deprived in 1807 and 18 10 respec- tively. Napoleo-n neglected to accept the terms before the specified day ; the armistice was allowed to lapse ; Austria declared war (August 12), and the second period of the War of Liberation began. Napoleon was now in command of about 700,000 men. Aug. 12) To these the allies could oppose about 500,000, with an March 31, additional 350,000 of reserves. 250,000, mainly Austrians, ^S'*- 252 The Evolution of Prussia were in Bohemia under Prince Karl von Schwarzenberg, who had also the equivocal advantage of the presence at his head-quarters of the allied sovereigns. Bliicher had 100,000 Prussians and Russians under his command in Silesia; a third army, consisting of Russians, Prussians, and Swedes, in all about 120,000 strong, was in Branden- burg under the command of Bernadotte, Crown Prince of Sweden. Before the end of the year the Prussians, by a superb effort, had brought their total contingent up to 300,000 men. Napoleon planned a triple attack. In Silesia, the French were badly beaten. On August 27 Bliicher won a great victory over Macdonald on the Katz- bach, and after various minor engagements the French were expelled from Silesia. In Brandenburg, Biilow, de- spite the apathy or something worse of Bernadotte, repulsed Oudinot's advance upon Berlin, drove the French back across the Elbe (August 21), and on September 6 routed the army of Ney at Dennewitz. There remained Schwar- zenberg's army in Bohemia. With a little more energy Dresden might easily have been taken, but Schwarzen- berg's procrastination gave Napoleon time to get back for its defence, and on August 26-7 he inflicted a severe defeat upon the Austrians. It was his last victory on German soil. The allied armies gradually concentrated upon the plain of Leipzig, and there the final issue was joined. The battle was on a gigantic scale; nearly 500,000 men were engaged ; and fighting lasted four whole days (October 16-19). ^^^ t>7 ^^ ^'^'^ °f it the might of Napoleon was broken. The victory cost the allies 54,000 men in killed and wounded. Napoleon lost 40,000, 260 guns, and 30,000 prisoners. The Remaking of Prussia, 1807-15 253 From Leipzig Napoleon made his way with the remnant of his shattered army towards the Rhine. If the allied armies had been under a single and a capable commander, he would never have reached it. A Bavarian army checked his progress near Hanau (October 29-31), but Napoleon pushed it aside, and on November 2 he crossed the Rhine, with 90,000 men, at Mainz. The Napoleonic Empire in Germany fell to the ground with a crash. The vassal princes of the Rhenish Con- federation hastened, with the exception of the King of Saxony, to come to terms with the allies. The Treaty of TopUtz (September) guaranteed their continued inde- pendence. In the Treaty of Ried (October) the Eling of Bavaria obtained a pledge that his sovereign rights should be undiminished, and that he should retain all the territory acquired through Napoleon, except the Tyrol and the Austrian districts on the Inn. King Jerome fled from Westphalia, and the dispossessed princes, including the Dutch Stadtholder, William of Orange, were restored to their thrones. If Bliicher could have had his way. Napoleon's broken The Allies army would have been immediately pursued across the "^ France. Rhine. The Tzar Alexander was in accord with him, and England, not uninfluenced by the fact that Wellington had crossed the Pyrenees and was now firmly established on French soil, threw her influence into the same scale. But Frederick William, with ingrained timidity, held back ; Bernadotte had no wish to see his native land despoiled by the foreigner ; while Austria was anxious to balance Napoleonic France against Russia. At Frankfort, there- fore, the alhes decided to offer terms to Napoleon. They 254 The Evolution of Prussia were conceived in a most generous spirit. France was to resign her conquests in Italy, Spain, trans-Rhenane Germany, and to withdraw within her ' natural frontiers ' — the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees. Belgium, Savoy, and the German provinces west of the Rhine would, under this arrangement, have been retained. It is almost incredible that, after Leipzig, Napoleon could have made peace on terms that would have amazed and delighted Louis XIV. It is even more incredible that he should have hesitated to accept them. On December i the cffier was withdrawn, and before the end of the year the allies, 400,000 strong, were in France. Never was Napoleon's strategy more brilliant than in the campaign by which, for nine weeks, the enemy's advance on Paris was delayed. Twice during that period he might have had peace on terms which would have given France the frontiers of 1 79 1 and left Napoleon in possession of its throne. Almost continuously through February there were negotiations at Chatillon, where Napoleon tried to drive a diplomatic wedge into the alliance. His efforts were foiled mainly by Castlereagh, who on March i brought about the Treaty of Chaumont. The four Powers pledged themselves against separate negotiations, signed an alliance for twenty years, and agreed to supply 150,000 men apiece. Meanwhile, all through the winter the Silesian army under Bliicher had been doing splendid work. On February i Bliicher won a decisive victory at La Rothiere, and though badly defeated a fortnight later near Montmirail, he again turned the tables on Napoleon at Laon (March 9). The pursuit of Napoleon was temporarily stayed by the illness of Bliicher, but nothing The Remaking of Prussia, 1807-15 255 could now resist the advance of the allies, and after some desultory fighting in the suburbs Paris itself surrendered (March 30). On the 31st the allies made a triumphal entry into the capital of France. Napoleon was deposed, by his own Senate, and sent into exile at Elba with a large pension ; Louis XVIII was recalled, and on May 30 the first Treaty of Paris was signed. With its terms, which were extraordinarily lenient to France, this narrative is not concerned. The questions affecting the future of Germany were referred to a Congress which was to meet in the autumn at Vienna. For further reference : Seeley : Lije and Times of Stein ; C. von Clausewitz : Nachrichten iiber Preussen in seiner grossen Katastrophe ; Fichte : Reden an die deutsche Nation ; L. von Ranke : Denkwiirdigkeiten des Staatskanzlers Fiirsten i>. Hardenberg (3 vols.) ; G. H. Peetz : Das Leben des Ministers Freiherrn vom Stein (6 vols. On this monu- mental work Seeley's work is based) ; M. L. E. Lehmann : Freiherr V. Stein ; Hans v. Gagern : Mein Antheil an der Politik (5 vols.) ; Treitschke : Fichte und die nationale Idee ; M. E. Sadler (and , others) : Germany in the Nineteenth Century. CHAPTER VIII THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA The Settlement of 1815 The Con- The Congress of Vienna forms one of the great land- less of marks in European history. The range of its diplomatic activities may be gauged from the fact that between May 1814 and November 1815 no fewer than forty-nine separate engagements were concluded.^ We must, how- ever, confine our attention to that section of its labours which had a direct bearing upon the evolution of Prussia. With the significant exception of Turkey every European State was represented at the Congress. The Emperor of Austria, the Tzar of Russia, and the Kings of Prussia, Bavaria, and Wiirtemberg were there in person. The Tzar brought with him a cohort of counsellors drawn, after the Muscovite mode, from many lands : Stein, Nesselrode, Capo d'Istria, Czartoryski, and Pozzo di Borgo. Prussia was represented by Hardenberg and William von Humboldt, England by Castlereagh, and Austria by Metternich. Talleyrand also, though not yet formally admitted to the Congress, was in Vienna in order to watch the interests of France, and he watched them, as will be ^ The texts of these treaties fill over 400 closely printed pages In the large octavo edition of Hertslet's Map oj Europe by Treaty. The Congress of Vienna 257 seen, with unsleeping vigilance and consummate adroit- ness. Of the many problems to be solved those which most closely concern us were : the future of Poland, the fate of Saxony, the rebuilding of Prussia, and the provision of a new constitution for Germany. The question of Alsace and Lorraine, though not less important to Germany, was decided in Paris. Two men, perhaps only two, came to Vienna with Poland, a perfectly clear and definite object. One of them was the Tzar Alexander ; the other was Talleyrand. The Tzar was determined to make reparation for the crime of Catherine and Frederick by reuniting and restoring the kingdom of Poland. But the crime was to be expiated wholly at the expense of Catherine's accomplices. Austria was to lose Galicia ; Prussia was to surrender South Prussia and new East Prussia, and the Tzar himself was to become the first king of a regenerated Poland. The odd thing is that the Tzar's grandiloquent homage to the ideas of unity, liberty, and nationality was taken so gravely by his colleagues. Alexander was a curious mixture of lofty mysticism, generous enthusiasm, and calculating shrewdness. His idealism prompted the regeneration of Poland ; his ambition whispered that this was the appropriate moment for the realization of Russia's dream. Yet he was no hypocrite ; and he was the master of many battalions. ' Avec 600,000 hommes,' as a colleague remarked, ' on ne negocie pas beaucoup.' Accordingly the grand duchy of Warsaw, now reconsti- tuted as the ' Congress ' kingdom of Poland, went to the Tzar, who, in addition, acquired Finland from the Swedes. 258 The Evolution of Prussia Prussian The town of Cracow, with the surrounding district, was ° ^" ■ declared to be a ' Free Independent and strictly neutral city, under the protection of Austria, Russia, and Prussia '. Austria regained part of Galicia. Prussia regained the great fortresses of Danzig and Thorn, together with the province of Posen lying between the Oder and the Vistula, and connecting Silesia with East Prussia. The Final Act of the Treaty of Vienna provided that the ' Poles who are respective subjects of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, shall obtain a Representation and National Institutions regulated according to the degree of political consideration that each of the Governments to which they belong shall judge expedient and proper to grant them '. To this engagement Frederick William adhered, and, in 1815, he issued a rescript to his Polish subjects, promising to respect their Church, their language, and their nationality, to establish a constitution and to employ Poles, as far as possible, in public offices. The sequel will show how far these promises were kept. The Saxon Danzig, Thorn, and Posen could not, however, be regarded as fulfilling the promises of the Treaty of Kalisch,^ particularly when it is remembered that Prussia gave up Anspach and Baireuth to Bavaria, and to Hanover Hildesheim and East Friesland, besides portions of Lingen and Eichsfeld. Where was Prussia to get her compensation ? Saxony was the destined victim. Her king, having adhered to Napoleon to the bitter end, had no claim to consideration at the hands of the aUies. Saxony was saved, however, or partially saved by the consummate adroitness of Talleyrand, who found in the 1 See supra, p. 250. The Congress of Vienna 259 Saxon question the desired seed for sowing discord among the alHes. That discord very nearly led to a renewal of war between Prussia and Russia on the one side and, on the other, England, Austria, and France. War, however, was averted, and Prussia had to content herself with the northern and smaller half of Saxony, containing 800,000 inhabitants. The compensation was still inadequate, even when Lower Pomerania (Neu-Vorpommern) was thrown in. It was ultimately found in western Germany. Of Prussia's acquisitions in 1815 by far the most Westphalia important was the great province on both sides of the ^ *r.^ Rhine, including Westphalia, Cleves, Koln, Aachen, Bonn, land. Coblenz, and Trier. The significance of this addition to the Hohenzollern dominions was not merely geographical, but economic, ecclesiastical, and cultural. Geographi- cally it brought Prussia into immediate contact with France ; it made her the guardian of the middle Rhine, and thus, in a sense, the protector of western Germany. True, the Rhine province was isolated, cut off from Prussia by the intervening territories of Hesse and Hanover. But this fact served to justify the annexations of 1866. The inhabitants of these lands were mainly CathoHcs, and culturally quite distinct from Prussians and Brandenburgers. The Rhineland had for twenty • years been an integral part of France ; it had imbibed the doctrines of the Revolution and had known the value of Napoleonic organization. All this it brought to Prussia ; and not this only, for, with Westphalia, it brought her a wonderful accession of industrial and economic resources, as the mere mention of Essen, Elber- feld, Diisseldorf, and Duisburg eloquently recalls. R 2 26o The Evolution of Prussia Austria. The full significance of these changes cannot be appreciated unless we bear in mind the changes simul- taneously effected in the position of the Austrian empire. The Habsburgs, from their own point of view, were not less fortunate than the HohenzoUern. They lost the Austrian Netherlands, which they had always regarded as a tiresome encumbrance, but acquired or recovered Eastern Galicia, Salzburg, the Tyrol, the Vorarlberg, the Illyrian provinces, Venetia, and Lombardy. The ethnical factor in these changes should not be ignored. The Habsburgs lost Flemings and gained Italians. The HohenzoUern exchanged Slavs for Germans. Two other questions remain to be considered : that of Alsace-Lorraine, and the future constitution of Germany as a whole. Neither was easy of solution. Both were German rather than Prussian problems, but in both Prussia had a special though proleptic interest. Alsace- The three great bishoprics of Lorraine passed to France in 1553, and the cession was confirmed by the Treaty of Westphalia (1648). By the latter treaty the Empire also ceded to France its rights over Alsace, though with certain obscure reservations. One of these obscuri- ties was cleared up when in 1681 Strasburg was annexed, under the mockery of judicial forms, by Louis XIV. The remaining portions of the Duchy of Lorraine were promised to France by the Treaty of Vienna (1735) and actually passed to her in 1766. On the strength of these historical facts Germans have been tempted — not unnaturally — to argue that Alsace-Lorraine having been originally German had been by force and fraud annexed to France. It seemed to them, in 1815, that the The Congress of Vienna 261 opportunity had come for their recovery. Nor could it be denied that France had made use of those provinces as ' a back door into Germany ', for the purpose of accentuating particularist tendencies and thus keeping Germany divided and impotent. Hardenberg, in particular, insisted that the oppor- tunity for a ' restoration ' ought not to be neglected. The argument could not be lightly brushed aside : that it did not prevail was due to the rough, straightforward, and eminently practical reasoning of the Duke of Welling- ton. With him it was no question of historical tradition, or of Hnguistic or ethnological affinities. He asked two blunt questions : (i) What have you been fighting against ? (ii) What have you been fighting for f His answers were equally direct : You have been fighting not against France, but against the armed doctrine of revolution. You have been fighting to secure the peace of Europe. That peace depends upon the restoration of a settled government in France under a legitimate dynasty. But even legitimacy will not, in the eyes of Frenchmen, atone for dismemberment. Deprive France of Alsace-Lorraine and within a few years Europe will be again at war. The duke prevailed as much perhaps by the force of person- ahty as by that of argument ; Hardenberg went away empty, and for another half-century Alsace-Lorraine remained in the keeping of France. Before this settlement was reached the diplomatic The game at Vienna had been rudely interrupted by the D^ys renewal of war. On March 6 the news reached Vienna that Napoleon, tiring of exile, had escaped from Elba (February 26). On March i he landed near Antibes, 262 The Evolution of Prussia made his way to Grenoble, and thence to Lyons, and on March 20 entered Paris. The allies promptly confirmed the Treaty of Chaumont, refused to receive the envoys of Napoleon and declared him an outlaw, and made immediate preparation for a renewal of the war. France was to be invaded from three points : the English and Prussians, under the command of Wellington and Bliicher, were to advance through the Netherlands ; the Russians and Austrians by the middle and upper Rhine respectively. The For three months Napoleon laboured incessantly to Campaign, ^^i^e a new army, and on June 14 he appeared at the head of 125,000 men on the western bank of the Sambre. Opposed to him were Wellington and Bliicher. Welling- ton was at Brussels in command of a mixed force of English, Dutch, and Germans, 105,000 strong. His front extended from Ghent to Mons. Bliicher, with head-quarters at Namur, had under his command a force mainly composed of Prussians, but partly of levies from the new Rhine provinces, amounting in all to 117,000 men. The Prussian line extended from Liege to Charleroi. Napoleon's plan was to throw himself upon the centre of the thin line opposed to him, to drive in a wedge between the allied armies and then defeat them in detail. He crossed the Belgian frontier on the 15th, attacked the extreme right of the Prussian forces on the same day, and by nightfall was in possession of Charleroi and the bridges over the Sambre. Bliicher hurried to the support of his right and took up his position at Ligny. A portion of Wellington's force was astride the Brussels road at Quatre-Bras. On the i6th, Ney was dispatched with The Congress of Vienna 263 orders to clear the British force out of Quatre-Bras, and that done, to attack Bliicher's right flank at Ligny. Meanwhile, Napoleon himself was to march on Ligny. At Quatre-Bras Ney found that he had more than enough to do. So far from clearing out the British he was himself pushed back with heavy loss. Not a man could he spare for the attack on Ligny. But neither, on the other hand, could Wellington go to the support of Bliicher. Wellington's failure to do so is the foundation of the BlUcher. legend which still does duty in Prussia for a history of the Waterloo campaign. Early on the i6th Wellington had ridden over to confer with Bliicher, and had promised, if not attacked himself, to go to the assistance of the Prussians. For the assertion that but for Wellington's promise Bliicher would not have fought at Ligny there is no warrant. Bliicher knew Wellington's promise to be conditional, and the condition was not fulfilled. Mean- while, Napoleon's attack upon Bliicher, though obstinately resisted, was successful, and Bliicher was forced to retire. His strategy in this retirement was the real turning- point of the campaign. After the battle of Ligny Napoleon unaccountably lost touch of his enemy. Imagining that Bliicher would retire upon Liege, he dispatched Grouchy with 30,000 men in pursuit of him. Grouchy never found him, for Bliicher, as loyal as he was brave and skilful, retired, not eastwards upon Liege, but, in order that he might keep in touch with Wellington, northwards on Wavre. On the 17th Napoleon dallied, but moving slowly along the Brussels road he found on the 1 8th that his advance was blocked by Wellington at Waterloo. 264 The Evolution of Prussia Waterloo, Second Treaty of Paris, Nov. 20. For five hours Wellington, on that fateful field, sus- tained the French attack ; and sustained it alone. His tactics were based on the assumption that the Prussians would come to his assistance. They came ; but not until six o'clock was their help effective. By that time the great battle was practically won. The Prussian cavalry, however, did an enormous though secondary service to the cause of the allies. They converted a defeat into a complete rout. The figures tell their own tale : the Prussians lost 6,000 men; Wellington lost 13,000; Napoleon lost 30,000 and aU his guns. The war was over. The decisive factors in the final struggle were two : Bliicher's strategical retreat upon Wavre, and Welling- ton's tactics at Waterloo. Waterloo opened the road to Paris : on the 7th of July the allies re-entered the French capital. Napoleon executed a formal abdication in favour of the King of Rome on June 22, surrendered to Admiral Hotham at Rochefort on July 15, and was deported to St. Helena, where, in 1821, he died. Two days after the re-entry of the allies Louis XVIII returned to his capital, and after four months of negotia- tions the Second Treaty of Paris was concluded (Novem- ber 20). France was, as we have seen, permitted to retain Alsace-Lorraine, but was deprived of most of Savoy and the other territorial gains of 18 14, including the fortresses of Philip peville, Marienburg, Saarlouis, and Landau ; her northern and eastern frontier, with eighteen fortresses, was to be occupied for five years by an alhed army of 150,000 men ; she was to pay an indemnity of 700,000,000 francs and to disgorge the art The Congress of Vienna 265 treasures and trophies stolen from the aUies, and (with the exception of the Prussian trophies) not restored in 1 8 14. On the same day the four great Powers solemnly confirmed the treaty which they had signed at Chau- mont (March 10, 1814) and renewed at Vienna (March 25, 181 5). Certain extensions had been rendered necessary by intervening events, but, in its amended form, the treaty formed the basis of the ' Concert ' which for the next four years was to control the destinies of Europe. Two months earlier (September 14) the Tzar Alexander had induced his brother sovereigns of Austria and Prussia to append their signatures to the famous docu- ment announced to the world as The Holy Alliance. The significance alike of the Holy Alliance and the Quadruple Treaty of November 20 was prospective and will.demand attention later on. Meanwhile, undisturbed by the reappearance of Final act Napoleon or by the renewal of the war, the diplomatists Con 39°. 439..440- HohenzoUern, origin of, 43. HohenzoUern-Sigmaringen, Prince Leopold of, 362. Holland, see United Provinces. Holy Alliance, the, 265, 287. Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm, Baron von, 228 seq., 256. Hundred Days, the, 262. Hungary, 167. lUyria, 244, 260. Imperial Bank of Germany, 408. Industrial Revolution in Germany, 381-6, 427-8. Inn Quarter, 156. Ionian Isles, 221. Italy, War of Independence, 333. Jena, University of, 283. John, Archduke of Austria, Reichsverweser, 242, 324. Joseph II, Emperor, 113, 141, 149. 151 et seq., 167, 170. Kaiser, the, 372. Kaiser in Deutschland, 371. Karlsbad Decrees, 286. Index 455 Katte, Lieut., 115. Kaunitz, Prince von, 126, 132, 151. Kiel, 344, 347, 35 1- Koln, 14, 1 9, 259, 3°2- Konigsberg, 37, 46, 47, 57, 77, 78, 81, 97, 98. Kosciusko, Tadensz, 189. Kossuth, Louis, 315. Kottbus, 55. Kotzebue, 285. Kiossen, 55- Kulturkampf, the, 394-7. Landon, Marshal, 137. League of Brunswick, 84. Lebus, 41, 55. Leibnitz, loi. Leipzig, 311. Leopold II, Emperor, 171, 176. Leopold of Dessau, 106. Liberation, War of German, 250. Ligurian Republic, 198. Lingen, 99. List, Friedrich, 294. Locknitz, 55. Lodomeria, 152. Lombardy, 260, 335. Louis XIV, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 89, 98, 99. Louis XVI, execution of, 178. Louis XVIII, King of France, 255, 264, 277. Louisa Henrietta, Electress, 80. Ludwig, King of Bavaria, 310. Luise, Queen of Prussia, 194. Lusatia, 41. Luxemburg, 357, 359, 446. Lychen, 55. Maassen, Karl Georg, 290. MacMahon, Marshal, 367. Magdeburg, 42, 49, 63, 76, 81. Mainz, 173. Manin, Daniel, 314. Manteuffel, Otto von, 318, 329. Maria Theresia, 113, 120, 121, 122-61 passim. Marie Louise, Empress, 244. Marienburg, 37, 46, 47. Marlborough, Duke of, 100. Maximilian, King of Bavaria, 313. ' May Laws ', The, 397, 398. Mazarin, Cardinal, 83. Mecklenburg, 56, 76. Memel, 47. Metternich, Prince, 21, 31, 206, 251, 256, 269, 285, 288, 299. Metz, 367. Middle March, the, 41. Moldavia, see Rumania. Moltke, Helmuth Karl Bernhard von,28, 35, 127, 332, 364, 366, .39=- . Morier, Sir Robert, quoted, 228, 281,352. Morocco, 442. Mors, 99, 180. Moscow Campaign, the, 247. Motz, 291. Miinster, Bishopric of, 201. Napoleon III, 333, 355, 361. Nassau, 350. Navy, the German, 390, 439, 440. Nelson, Viscount, 207. Neufchatel, 99. New March, the, 43, 55, 154. Ney, Marshal, 252, 262. Nice, 177, 355. Nicholas I, Tzar of Russia, 315. Nordmark, the, 39, 41, 42, 53. North German Confederation, 352 Seq. Nuremberg, 49, 50, 52. Oczakow, 172. Offenburg, 312. Oldenburg, Duchy of, 244. Oliva, 37, 45, 47. 456 Index Ollivier, Emile, 362. Olmiitz, 329. Orange, William of, 253. Order of the Sword, 46. Oudinot, Marshal, 252. Palatinate, the, 173, 300, 357. Papal States, the, 197, 244. Paris, siege of (1870), 368. surrender of (1814), 255. Paul, Tzar of Russia, 190. Peitz, 55. Peninsular War, the, 240. Pfalz-Neuburg, 60, 62. Pillnitz, Declaration of, 175. Pima, 135. Pitt, the Elder, 136, 138, 140. Pitt, William, 168, 197, 206, 208. Plaswitz, Armistice of, 251. Poland, 221, 257, 356. Napoleon I and, 218. partitions of, 151-3, 185 seq. Pomerania, 41, 75, 76, 80, 81, 85, 103. Poraerelia, 46. Poniatowski, Stanislaus, rjo. Posen, 187. Pragmatic Sanction, the, 104. Prague, 314. Priegnitz, 41. Prince Frederick Charles, 367. Prussia, administrative reform in, 232^ 235- agrarian reform in, 234. and Austria, relations of, 22-24, 31, 51, 65, 75> 77, 83, 99, "°5 120-2, 131, 139, 148-60, 350. 400-6, 445. and England, relations of, 88 95, 97, 131, 133-5, 139-40 158-60, 168, 208, 341, 400-6 416-7, 429, 437-9, 444. and France, relations of, 83 85-8, 90, 131, 338, 400-6 437, 442- Prussia {continued) : and Italy, relations of, 349, 401-8, 437. and Napoleon I, 245. and Russia, relations of, 148-60, 338, 340, 401-8, 418, 428, 43.7-4°, 445- armies of, 216, 221. army reform in, 236, 333. bureaucracy of, 282. collapse of, after Jena, 216 seq. constitution of 1850, 319 seq. education in, 236, 283. financial reform in, 232. historians of, 301. Landtage, 280, 281. March Revolution in, 315. municipal reforms in, 234. National Assembly of 1848, 318. reaction in, after 1815, 277. United Provincial Diet of, 308. Universities in, 238, 283. Prussia, East, 45, 58, 77, 79, 82, 84,91-2,98, 152, 153,154. West, 98, 152-4, 156. Puttkamer, 419. Quedlinburg, 99. Radetzky, Marshal, 3 14. Rastatt, Congress of, 194-5. Ravensburg, 55. Regensburg, 211, 212, 213; Truce Reichenbach, Convention of (1790), . '72- . Reichsgericht, the, 376. Reichskanzler, the, 373. Reichstag, the, 13, 387, 409, 432, 433- Revolution, French, of 1830, in- fluence of, on Germany, 298. French, of 1848, 312. German, of 1848, 313. Hungarian, of 1848, 314. Index 457 Revolution, Italian, of 1848, 314. Rhelnsberg, 116. Rhenish Prussia, 259. Rhine, Confederation of, 212, 251. Rhinelands, the, 196, 198. Roberts, Earl, quoted, 216. Roon, Albrecht Theodor Emil, Count von, 14, 28, 332, 364,366. Rousseau, 158. Rulers of Brandenburg-Prussia : Electors Albert Achilles, 43, 52, 53, 55. Frederick I, 16, 17, 42, 44, 49. Frederick II, 51, 55. Frederick William, ' The Great Elector,' 20, 21, 25, 75, 77, 78-96. George William, 73, 74, 75. Joachim I, 55, 63, 66. Joachim II, 58, 63. Joachim Frederick, 63, 66. John Cicero, 55. John George, 55. John Sigismund, 20, 56, 58, 59, 60, 64, 65. Kings Frederick I, 96-101. Frederick II, 'The Great,' 11, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24, 30, 35; 7I) lo/i 112-65 (passim), 166 seq. {passim). Frederick William 1, 101-12, 1 17. Frederick William III, 193 seq., 214, 248, 299, 303. Frederick William IV, 305 seq., 326. Kings and Emperors Frederick III, 419. William I, 13, 330 seq., 389, 406, 419. William II, 420, 421. Rumania, 221. Rumbold, Sir George, 206. Ruppin, 55. St. Helena, 264. SaLza, Hermann von, 46, 57, 98. Salzburg, no. Sans-Souci, 142, 146. Savoy, 177, 355.. Saxe-Weimar, 276. Saxony, 218, 257. Scharnhorst, Gerhard Johann David von, 21, 28, 227 seq. Scheldt, 178. Schill, Major von, 242. Schleswig-Holstein, 14,341 seq. ,350. Schv^arzenberg, Prince Felix, 21, 327- Schwedt, 55. Schweidnitz, 138. Schwiebus, 87. Seckendorf, 104. Seven Weeks' War, the, 348. Seven Years' War, the, 133-40. Seydlitz, 16. Sigismund, Emperor, 44. Silesia, 23, 32, 120-4, 153. Smith, Adam, 294. Social Democracy, 383, 391, 399, 4i3>4i4, 420)431)432,436- Sommerfeld, 55. Sonderrechte, 370. South-West Africa, German, 416. Staatsrat, the, 67, 93. Stadion, Count, 241. Stein, Heinrich Fricdrich Karl, Baron vom, 20, 2i, 30, 159, 218,225 seq., 248, 256, 268. Stettin, 80, 103. Storkow, 55. Stralsund, 84, 85. Strasburg, 87, 260, 367. Strauss, Johann, 301. Suvaroff, Marshal, 197. Svritzerland, 197, 198. Sybel, Prussian historian, 412. 458 Index Talleyrand, 209, 256. Tangermiinde, 50. Tauroggen, 99. Convention of, 249. Tecklenburg, 99. Teutonic Order of Knights, the, 43, 46, 55, 56, 57> 98- ■ Thiers, A., 368. Thorn, 170, 185, 258. ' Tobacco Parliament ', the, 102, 103. Togoland, 416. Toulon, 179. Treaties of, or at : Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), 130. Augsburg_(i555), 80. Bartenstein (1807), 219. Basel (1795), 180. Berlin (1745), 122. „ (187S), 405, 406. Bromberg (1655), 82. Campo-Formio (1795), 183. Chaumont (1814), 254. Dresden (1742), 124. Frankfort (1871), 369. Fulda (1813), 270. Hanover (1756), 123. Hubertusburg (1763), 138. Jassy (1792), 172. Kainardji (1774), 170. Kalisch (1813), 250, 258. Klein-Schnellendorf (1741), 121. Kloster-Zeven (1757), 136. Konigsberg (1656), 82. Labiau (1656), 82. Leoben (1797), 183. London (1852), 343. „ (1867), 360. Luneville (1801), 198. Oliva (i66d), 82, 83. Paris (1814), 255. „ (1815), 264. Potsdam (1805), 208. Prague (1635), 77. „ (1866), 350. Treaties of, or at {continued) : Pressburg (1805), 210. ' Reinsurance ' (Russo-German), 407, 431- Ried (1813), 253, 270. Ryswick (1697), 97. St. Germain (1679), ^4, ^5- Schonbrunn (1805), 210. Sistova (1791), 172. Skierniewice, 407. Teschen (1778), 156. Thorn (141 1, 1466), 47, 57. Tilsit (1807), 219. Toplitz (1813), 253, 270. Utrecht (1713), 97, 99. Vienna (1738), 105. „ (1809), 243. „ (1815), 265. >, (1864), 346- Warela (1790), 172. Westminster (1756), 132. Westphalia (1648), 80, 156. Xanten (1614), 81. 'tschke, Pruss' 13, 15, 412- Triple Alliance, the, ofi788,i67seq. Alliance, 407, 425, 428, 437, 438, 439, 441, 446- Entente, 429, 443. Tripoli, 445. Trochu, General, 368. Tubingen School, 301. Tugendbund, the, 238. Turkey, 154,437,438. Ukermark, the, 4 1 . Ultramontanism,German,30i,394. Union of Frankfort, 123. United Provinces, the, 168, 198, 244, 359- , „ United Provincial Diet (1847), 308. Usedom, 103. Vatican Decrees, 395, 357- Venice, 183,210, 260, 3 14, 348, 350. Index 459 Versailles, 370. Victor Emanuel I, King of Italy, 348. Vienna, Congress of, 255 seq. Final Act of 1820, 287. Vierkbnigsbiindniss, the, 328. Vierraden, 55. Villa Franca, armistice of, 334. Villeneuve, Admiral, 207. Voltaire, 126, 130, 157, 164. Walcheren, English expedition to, 243. Waldemar the Great, 41. Wallachia, see Rumania. WaUenstein, 74, 76. Warsaw, 82, 100, 154. Grand Duchy of, 221. Wartburg Festival, 285. Waterloo, Campaign of, 262. Wellington, Duke of, 253, 261. Wernfgerode, 55. Westphalia, 201, 259. Kingdom of, 218, 244. Wilhelmina, Princess of Prussia, 168. William I, 363. William V, Stadtholder, 168. William of Orange, 87. William, Prince of Prussia, 317. Windischgratz, Prince, 314. Windthorst, 396, 398, 415, 416. WoUin, 103. Wiirtemberg, 173, 200, 210. Xanten, 62. Yorck, Hans David Count von, 248. Ludwig, Zanzibar, 416, 429. Ziethen, i6. Zips, 152. Zollbundesrat, 359. ZoUern, 43. Zollparlament, 359. Zollverein, the, 32, 290 seq., 411. Zossen, 55. Ziillichau, 5;. Zweibrucken, 155. PRINTED IN ENGLAND _ AT THE OXrORD UNIVERSITY PRESS