Lectures on Modern history Part 16

The supreme object of Peter's policy was attained. He was in possession of the Baltic coast north of the Dwina. Finland was restored, but he retained Livonia, Esthonia, Ingria, from Riga to Viborg. On the Neva, where the Gulf of Finland penetrates farthest inland, he fixed his capital. The place was a swamp, that swallowed the tallest trunks of trees, and the workmen perished by fever. But an island in the mouth of the river made it impregnable by sea. It was free from traditions and reactionary memories, looking only to the future and the new things that the commerce with the world would bring; a gate for the inflow of the forces by which its founder would transform the nation. As part of the same transformation the Tsar of Muscovy became Emperor of Russia. It was a claim to the Byzantine inheritance, and a menace to the Austrian successor of the Western Empire. This was faint and distant; and Peter remained on friendly terms with Vienna. But the t.i.tle was coldly received by Europe, and was not finally recognised until forty years after his death.

The persuasions by which Peter bent Russia to his will were base and atrocious; for, although one of the greatest men that have influenced the course of Christian history, he is undoubtedly the worst of them; but he was not working for himself; at Pultawa he told his troops that they were fighting for Russia, not for him. His motive was impersonal. He had grasped a great ideal, and he served it with devotion, sacrificing everything to it, and not sparing himself. The absolute State was the ideal, or rather the idol, for which he toiled, the State as it had been devised by Machiavelli and Hobbes. To raise the country by the employment of its own internal forces was an unpromising and unprofitable enterprise. He, who was himself a barbarian, could only accomplish his purpose by means of aid from outside, by the instrumentality of those who had experience of a more advanced order of things. The borrowed forces could only be applied by the powers of a despot. That power, moreover, was already provided. Muscovy had never been governed otherwise than by irresponsible and irresistible authority. That authority had been inactive and not deeply felt. Now the same authority interfered to alter almost everything, except the subjection of the serf to the landowner.

To enforce the supremacy of the State over society, and of will over custom, Peter introduced his most characteristic inst.i.tution. He made precedence depend on public service, and regulated it according to rank in the army in fourteen degrees, from the ensign to the marshal.

A new aristocracy superseded the old, and the ancient n.o.bles were forced to serve, in order to be somebody, when away from the ancestral home. They were important, not by their possessions or their descent, but by the position in which they stood towards the emperor. Peter had imbibed too much of the rationalism of the West to be a persecutor. He was severe with the schismatics, who existed only as opponents of change and enemies of civilisation; and as there were no Jews in Russia, he decreed that in future there should be none. But he built churches for the foreigners whom he brought into the country, and did not attempt to sustain the domination of the Muscovite clergy, who, like the English, professed pa.s.sive obedience, but obeyed without approval. When the last patriarch was dying he expressed the wish that all men of other faith--Catholic, Protestant, and Mahomedan-- should be burnt, and their places of worship levelled with the ground.

Peter's schemes of change were so tremendous that most Russians recoiled and wished them no success. His own family opposed him, and became a centre of plotting opposition. He repudiated his wife, and sent her to the seclusion of a convent. His second empress was a peasant woman, whose name was Martha, but was called, in Russia, Catharine. It was uncertain whether her husband was dead. It was certain that Peter's first wife was living. n.o.body minded. But Alexis, the son of the earlier marriage, took the conservative side, and became, from 1711, the hope of those who rejected Peter's anti-national, cosmopolitan, chiefly Dutch and German system of reform. He longed for the Asiatic twilight of the past, and the discontented longed for him to succeed. Peter, seeing that he was a poor creature, wished him to resign his claim. Alexis fled, and placed himself under the protection of the emperor Charles VI. He was discovered in the castle of St. Elmo at Naples, and brought back to Russia, where he was condemned to death, and died of torture. The plan had been to return to the ancient ways, and to give Petersburg back to the Swedes, with the command of the coast. The clergy were mixed up in it, and Peter now secured himself against the Church. He had left the patriarchate vacant. He now abolished it, and divided its powers.

A kindred spirit had arisen, capable of carrying out reform in the Church. Procopovitch had become a united Greek, in order to be admitted to foreign universities. He studied in Rome, and in Germany he became familiar with Lutheran theology. He came back with much of the religious culture of the West, and Peter appointed him to one of the sees. The bishops protested. They said that he was a heretic seventeen times over. And they proposed, if they were not believed, that the matter should be decided by the three eastern patriarchs. It was a scheme to disconnect the Church from the State, to merge it in the Eastern Church. Procopovitch defeated his enemies, and drew up the plan by which the Church was brought under the civil power, much on the lines of Henry VIII. It was governed, thenceforward, by the Holy Synod, which was controlled by a great official who represented the emperor. The clergy ceased to be an obstacle. The government of the Church by the Synod was part of a plan of government by boards, which had been suggested by Leibnitz. The empire was governed by a Senate of eight, of ten, at one time of twenty members. Under the Senate, which made laws, were ten ministerial departments, or boards, like our Treasury or Admiralty, which executed them. And there were eleven governors of provinces, each larger than a European monarchy.

Men fit for such a responsibility could not be found in Russia, and the empire was badly governed. But it was there. The transformation was accomplished. And the gigantic force was centred in the hand of a tyrant.

The concentration was such, the destruction of resisting forces was so complete, that the machine worked well in the hands of women. For almost the whole of the seventy years after Peter's death, Russia was governed by empresses. The last of them, Catharine II, was one of the ablest and most successful rulers in modern times. For the machine which Peter created was strong enough to endure. It still exists as he made it, an amalgam of power and servility, never leading, but often supplying the deciding force in the history of the world. It was the empire of Peter the Great that destroyed the empire of Napoleon.

Such a Power, limited by feeble neighbours, would have been a danger to the whole of Europe, but that another great Power, founded in the same generation, became a bulwark against a menacing expansion. The rise of Prussia preserved the Continent from being submerged. This new phase of northern monarchy was very unlike that which we have just considered. Prussia, like Russia, was a military Power, living on the hope of expansion. But it was infinitely inferior, as to extent and population. It was not a giant but an athlete; and its future depended, not on the intrusion of foreign elements, but on its own development and practical organisation. Nature had done nothing to promise greatness. The country was open and arid, and the inhabitants were hard, unimaginative, and poor. Religion had less power over them than over any other part of Germany. To this day the sky-line of Berlin is more unbroken by church towers than that of almost any other city. Neither their situation on the map of Europe nor hereditary endowment fitted the Prussians for empire. It was the work of the dynasty that a country which was less than Scotland, and was protected by no barrier of land or water, became greater than France.

The Prussian people, by which I mean the people of Brandenburg and its vicinity, were conscious that Nature had not favoured them excessively, and that they could prosper only by the action of their government. No people were more submissive, or more ready to suffer, for the sake of the State. And none have gone farther in a.s.serting its omnipotence, or in abdicating in its hands. They had no silver streak, no natural barriers. As a consequence of the Reformation the dominions of the Teutonic knights were joined in personal union under the same Hohenzollerns who reigned on the Oder and the Elbe. One was part of the empire, the other was enclosed in Poland, and they were separated by Polish territory. They did not help each other, and each was a source of danger for the other. They could only hope to exist by becoming stronger. That has been, for two centuries and a half, a fixed tradition at Berlin with the rulers and the people. They could not help being aggressive, and they worshipped the authority that could make them successful aggressors.

The dynasty entered into the spirit of the problem from 1640.

One-half of the electors and kings since then have struggled intensely for the increase of their power. And they built up their state in spite of the other half, who had no enterprise or masterful energy.

But before the accession of the great elector, in 1640, Brandenburg had taken a line of its own in the question of religion which was eminently favourable to territorial increase. It was more tolerant than other portions of the empire. The elector was one of the last of the German princes to join the Reformation. And Saxony retained the pre-eminence among the Protestants. Early in the seventeenth century the reigning family became Calvinists. The country was Lutheran. The position was unfavourable to the exercise of what was called the right of Reformation, the right of enforcing conformity under pain of exile; and, between the Calvinist at the head and the Lutherans in every other office, the Catholics were able to exist. In some provinces, though not in all, they were definitely tolerated. The great elector made every effort to attract the fugitive Huguenots. Agents were sent out to show them the way, and to help them with funds. Whole districts were peopled by them, and about twenty thousand of them settled in Berlin and other towns. Like Peter the Great, the great elector derived his notion of better things from Holland, and he encouraged Dutch artisans to settle. His dominions were scattered and unlike. He introduced a system of government that was the same for all, and was above local or social influences. The estates lost their ancient authority, and one supreme will governed everything, through a body of trained administrators such as up to that time existed nowhere else.

The next elector obtained the royal crown. Prince Eugene said that the emperor's ministers, who had advised the grant, deserved to be hanged. But in fact they were not less prescient than he, for they warned Leopold that Prussia would deprive his family of the empire.

The King of Prussia became the head of the Protestant interest in Germany. That prerogative had been forfeited by the Elector of Saxony when he received the crown of Poland and became a Catholic. Rome alone protested against the Protestant king, and spoke only of a margrave of Brandenburg until after the death of Frederic II. All the Catholic Powers acknowledged the new t.i.tle and disregarded the protest. For the first time there was a kingdom within the empire, a kingdom, moreover, which was Protestant. It was a step towards the break-up of that irrational body.

The second king succeeded in 1713 and died in 1740. He is the Peter the Great of Prussia. For him, the whole secret of government is the increase of power at home. His idea was that monarchy cannot be too absolute. It requires to be wisely administered; but it does not require to be limited. Concentration cannot be too intense. No enemy outside is so dangerous as public opinion within. He announced that he would establish his power on a rock--"un rocher de bronze." He meant that the power of the State must be independent of the changing motives of the hour, that it must be directed by a will superior alike to majority and minority, to interests and cla.s.ses. He spent his reign in very deliberately contriving such a machine. The king, he said, must do his work himself, and not shrink from trouble. He was perpetually in harness. He was like a madman in his vehemence and his crudity of speech. But there was method in his fury, and calculating design and even practical wisdom. He gave an impetus as powerful as that of the Tsar Peter; but he was superior to him in knowledge of detail as well as in point of character. He was a hard taskmaster, but he knew what he was about; and it does not appear that his subjects desired to be governed in another way or that they would have been satisfied with a monarch who did not strain their strength to the uttermost.

The object in which they agreed with him--the supremacy of the Prussians in Germany--was not to be obtained if they would not go into training. There was no shrinking. He said, in 1713: "when my son comes to the throne he must find the vaults crowded with gold," and the son, in 1740, found eight million thalers. He found, moreover, a well-equipped army of eighty-three thousand men. This was the special creation of the energetic king. He was, indeed, a peaceful ruler, and did not thirst for military glory. Among European Powers he was of little account, and kept all his violence for home use. When he laid up treasure, and organised an army that was not so large as that of France, of Austria, or of Russia, but more concentrated and better drilled, his people understood that he would some day provide territory and population to match--an army so excessive, an army six times as large, in proportion to those of other Powers, was meant to be employed. The burden was not felt. Of the expense, one-half was borne by the domain. Of the men, a large portion was recruited abroad, and relieved the natives of Prussia. After some years, it was felt that the platoons of giants, which had cost twelve million thalers, were a wasteful toy, and that the money might have been spent to advantage among the people. The king attempted to supply their place by a levy among the the agrarian population, which is reputed the remote origin of universal service. His economy was so rigid that, with an income of seven million thalers, he spent five millions on his armaments. He thus created the force which began what Napoleon completed, the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. For that which the father stored, the son expended; and I hope in the next lecture to tell you how he did it.

He so eclipsed Frederic William that the latter became an obscure memory, and was spoken of with contempt and disgust by his own people.

Carlyle discovered in him his own ideal, the strong man, and set him on his legs. And when the army which he created, which had been remodelled by Frederic, Scharnhorst, Roon, and Moltke, became the greatest of all armies, Germany remembered its founder and was grateful for his militarism.

They have made their choice, as we must do. Those who remember with honour men like Hampden and Washington, regard with a corresponding aversion Peter the Great and Frederic William I. But without the first Europe might be French, and without the other it might be Russian. That which arose in Northern Europe about the time of our revolution settlement was a new form of practical absolutism.

Theological monarchy had done its time, and was now followed by military monarchy. Church and State had oppressed mankind together; henceforth the State oppressed for its own sake. And this was the genuine idea which came in with the Renaissance, according to which the State alone governs, and all other things obey. Reformation and Counter-Reformation had pushed religion to the front: but after two centuries the original theory, that government must be undivided and uncontrolled, began to prevail. It is a new type, not to be confounded with that of Henry VIII, Philip II, or Lewis XIV, and better adapted to a more rational and economic age. Government so understood is the intellectual guide of the nation, the promoter of wealth, the teacher of knowledge, the guardian of morality, the mainspring of the ascending movement of man. That is the tremendous power, supported by millions of bayonets, which grew up in the days of which I have been speaking at Petersburg, and was developed, by much abler minds, chiefly at Berlin; and it is the greatest danger that remains to be encountered by the Anglo-Saxon race.

XVIII

FREDERIC THE GREAT

THE PEACE of Utrecht was followed by a period of languor and depression. Spain and Sweden a.s.serted themselves unsuccessfully; whilst England under Walpole, France under Fleury, Austria under the ceremonious majesty of Charles VI, were inactive and pacific; The generation lacked initiative, and was not rich in eminent men.

In Prussia, there was no repose, no leisure, but simply the tension of a tiger crouching for a spring. The king, who had devoted his life to creating the greatest army in Europe, never attempted to employ it, and left it a thunderbolt in the hands of his son. The crown prince was a musician and a versifier, with a taste for clever men, but also for cleverish men, an epicurean student, with much loose knowledge, literary rather than scientific, and an inaccurate acquaintance with French and Latin. To Bayle, Locke, Voltaire in his first manner, he owed an abundance of borrowed ideas, conventionally rational; but to the rising literature; of his own country, which ruled the world before he died, he did not attend. Hardened by his father's heartless severity he learnt to live without sympathy, to despise mankind, to rely on himself. He was the author of a commonplace treatise against Machiavelli, partly founded on Montesquieu's Grandeur et Decadence. This unamiable youth, with the aspirations and the vanity of a minor poet, was the most consummate practical genius that, in modern times, has inherited a throne.

In the same year, 1740, in which Frederic II succeeded his father, the Emperor Charles VI died, leaving his hereditary dominions to his daughter Maria Theresa, wife of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, of the House of Lorraine. By an instrument called the Pragmatic Sanction, which was the subject of protracted negotiations, the Powers had agreed to acknowledge her right. She was & sensible and reasonable woman, much the best that had ever reigned; but she was without culture or superior talent, and he husband was not able to supply the deficiency. Frederic at once made himself master of Silesia. There were certain territorial claims. The succession was about to be disputed, and a scramble might be expected. The death of the Russian empress, Anne, made it improbable that Austria would be protected on that side. Frederic was ambitious, and he was strong enough to gratify his ambition. No accepted code regulated the relations between States. It could not be exactly the same as that between men; and in what respect it differed was not determined. States were absolute, and acknowledged no law over them. Grave and disinterested men would have admitted that that may be done for the State which could not be done for the individual; that robbery was not robbery, that murder was not murder, if it was committed in the public interest. There might be a want of generosity, a want of delicacy about it; but if conquest by unprovoked attack was a crime, in the same sense or the same degree as poisoning a man to obtain his property, history must undergo a fundamental revision, and all respect for sovereign authority must be banished from the world. How far that revision has been accomplished or that respect has departed, at the present day, may be hard to say. At that time, Frederic was much more widely applauded for his prompt success than detested or despised for his crime.

At Molwitz, his first battle, the Austrian cavalry carried all before them, and Schwerin got the king to quit the field before the solid infantry of Brandenburg won the day. Voltaire, who hated him behind a mask of flattery, said that he had never known what it was to be grateful, except to the horse that carried him out of fire at Molwitz.

That humiliation taught Frederk to remodel and increase his cavalry, and he afterwards owed to it much of his success. n.o.body again advised him to ride out of the way of danger. He was soon known to an invariable victor, and Maria Theresa ended the war by surrendering the contested province. Frederic concluded a treaty of alliance with France, which was to last fifteen years, and did last until, in 1756, Kaunitz effected the great change in the att.i.tude of European Powers.

On the extinction of the Habsburg dynasty of emperors, the Bavarian House of Wittelsbach claimed the succession; and the French, supported by Frederic, traversed Germany and invaded Bohemia. Maria Theresa was loyally defended by Hungary in both the Silesian wars, and maintained her right, without recovering the country she had lost. She was ineffectively supported by England against the superiority of French arms in the Netherlands. That good understanding now came to an end.

The Seven Years' War, otherwise called the Third Silesian War, because it finally settled the question whether Silesia should be Austrian or Prussian, though it involved almost every European Power, was an episode in a far larger controversy. French and English were at peace in the old world, but a feud had broken out in the backwoods of the new, where their strife was for the grandest prize ever disputed by man, dominion over America from the Atlantic ultimately to the Golden Gates of the Pacific, and for the future of the world. The French were masters of the lake region and the St. Lawrence, and also of the Mississippi basin. They claimed the intervening country by right of discovery, and they began, in 1748, to establish an effective occupation of the valley of the Ohio. The English might retain the Atlantic fringe; the French would possess the hinterland from Louisbourg to New Orleans. They planted a chain of posts, choosing the place for them with superb intuition. One is now Detroit, another Chicago. And under the inland slope of the Alleghanies, where the waters fall towards the Gulf of Mexico, at the confluence of the Monongahela with the Ohio, a French officer, Duquesne, built a fort, the most important of all, which closed the interior to our colonies, but which has undergone a significant change of name, for Fort Duquesne is called after Pitt, and is the Birmingham of America.

This annexation of debatable land was an act of aggression to which the colonists were not bound to submit. The first to understand that it was a question of existence was the man on whose head the destinies of the country rested. Washington twice led expeditions against Duquesne, the second time with Regulars under Braddock, and was each time defeated. The question of the possession of the interior was left to be decided on the Heights of Abraham. It was worth more to the English people than any continental issue. The quarrel spread to the ocean, and we made no scruple to a.s.sail French ships wherever the conditions were favourable.

Kaunitz, the minister of Maria Theresa, saw his opportunity for a grand stroke of policy. By transplanting the struggle from the New World to the Old, and from sea to land, he would obtain a French alliance against Prussia. Ostensibly his purpose was the recovery of the lost province; but the circ.u.mstances seemed promising, and he spoke of reducing Frederic to the position of a margrave of Brandenburg. He asked, at first, for no a.s.sistance in the field. If France would set up an army of observation on the frontier, the house of Hanover would be disabled from joining Prussia. France was glad, in a quiet way, to check the House of Hanover. By degrees a complete understanding was achieved, and Lewis XV undertook to help Austria with an army in the field and a vast sum of money. Belgium was to be the price of it, partly for France, partly for the Bourbon, who was Duke of Parma, in exchange for his Italian dominions. This change of front was much facilitated by the civilities of Kaunitz to the person whom the Austrian envoy described as the French Prime Minister, Madame de Pompadour.

He was equally successful with Russia. There the government had come to the conclusion that the danger to the empire was not from Austria, which was expanding towards the Mediterranean, and had just lost its northern province, but from Prussia, which was aspiring and aggressive, and on the watch for opportunities. Therefore the Russians were only too eager for the attack to begin, and had to be restrained by the Austrians, who could only bring France into line by a negotiation in several stages. The Russian government agreed, reluctantly, to wait for the spring of 1757. But the hereditary grand-duke was an admirer of Frederic; the chancellor, Bernstorff, was secured by the English; and the action of the Russians was half-hearted throughout.

The first half of 1756 was spent by the three great military Powers in preparing the attack for next year. n.o.body could blame the Austrians for plotting to reconquer what had belonged to them, and it is at Vienna that their initiative has been demonstrated. At Berlin, the discovery has been received with some resistance. They were proud of the great Frederic as a warrior and a conqueror; they were not ready to admire him as a quaker, and the victim of designing foes. He had been quite willing to commence a new war when the occasion should warrant it. He hoped, some day, to conquer Bohemia as he had conquered Silesia, and to exchange it for Saxony. But the conditions needed for such an enterprise did not exist, and he was in no hurry.

He concluded a very harmless Convention at Westminster, in January 1756; but he was not arming at a time when the scheme of Kaunitz was about completed. It was midsummer before he knew the danger that threatened him. Certain despatches which were opened as they pa.s.sed through the Prussian Post Office, others which were stolen, revealed the whole plot. Without an ally, except the House of Hanover, and such confederates from North-western Germany as English gold might induce to join, he had to defend himself against Austria, Russia, France, great part of Germany, and eventually Sweden and Spain. The help of England was a.s.sured, for, in May, war had been declared between England and France. But the English had not been preparing for a very formidable effort. They at once lost Minorca, the advanced post in the Mediterranean, from which they watched the Gulf of Lyons and the naval a.r.s.enal of Toulon, and felt the loss so acutely that they shot the admiral who had failed to relieve the place. Calcutta too was taken, and the English perished in the Black Hole. In the Lake region the French, at first, had the best of it.

Frederic underrated the value of the alliance, and mismanaged it badly. He knew that there was a Whig dogma against letting England be taken in tow by Hanover. The great propounder of the doctrine was William Pitt, who now rose to power. Frederic did not know that this turgid declaimer was as able, as powerful, as ambitious as himself, and did not divine that he would make the German quarrel and the compulsory defence of Hanover the means of occupying the military forces of France until the contest for' oceanic empire was decided in favour of England. Pitt declared that he would conquer America in Germany. He armed one hundred and forty-eight ships of the line and fifty frigates, with which he swept the Atlantic, and Montcalm, for many months, received neither instructions nor supplies. But Frederic required that the army in English pay, which was to defend Hanover, and thus to cover his right flank, should be commanded by the Duke of c.u.mberland. Upon this Pitt went out of office. The duke did not justify the king's choice of him. He was beaten by d'Estrees, and agreed to dissolve his force. But Pitt, who had soon returned to power, rejected the Convention, gave Frederic a subsidy of L670,000 a year, and maintained a force against the French, under Ferdinand of Brunswick, who did his work well. There was more of English gold in his camp than of English steel. One of our commanders was court-martialled. When the Marquis of Granby did better, at Warburg, the joy was great, and he became a popular hero. His hat and wig were blown off as he led the charge, and his portrait, bareheaded, in a high wind, is at Trinity, and was on the sign of many an inn, especially of a well-known one at Dorking, in Mr. Pickwick's time.

On 21st July, 1756, when Frederic II discovered the whole of the peril that confronted him, although it was far more than he had dreamt of, he lost neither hope nor courage. His army of 145,000 men was not the largest, but was much the best. Three or four of his generals, his brother Henry, the Prince of Brunswick, Schwerin, who had served under Eugene at Blenheim, and had followed Charles XII into Turkey, above all, Seydlitz, were superior to the men on the other side, so far as these were known. There were three millions in ready money, which was enough for two campaigns in those economical days. The Russians had a long march before them, in order to come within range; the French might be left to the army of English mercenaries. The king might hope, by energy and rapidity, to crush the Austrians in the valley of the Elbe, which is Bohemia, or the valley of the Oder, which is Silesia, before their friends came to aid them. Nearer still than Austria were the Saxons, whose elector was King of Poland, and whose minister, Bruhl, like Beust in 1866, was the centre of anti-Prussian politics.

Frederic began by seizing Dresden, and carrying off the secret papers of his enemies. The Saxon army held out for some weeks, and was then forced to serve in the ranks of their conqueror, who thus altered the proportion of numbers, by moving 20,000 men from one side to the other. The Saxon officers remonstrated when called on to take the oath of allegiance to their enemy. They said that such a thing was unexampled. He replied that he was not afraid of being original.

Their resistance had compelled him to withdraw from Bohemia, after an indecisive action. In 1757 he won a great battle at Prague, where he sacrificed 18,000 men and Schwerin was killed. The main Austrian army was shut up in the city, and Frederic expected them to surrender; but a relieving force, under Daun, defeated him at Kollin, and he withdrew to his own country, that is, he withdrew into Saxony, which he had made his home, Dresden being then the most civilised and luxurious place in Germany. For six years he did not see Berlin, which was twice occupied by the enemy. Up to that midsummer of 1757 his success in war, like that of Marlborough, had been unbroken. Kollin was the first of three great battles which he lost. In the following year he was again defeated by Daun, in a night attack at Hochkirch, with the loss of 100 guns. And in 1759, which is the turning of the tide, the Russians beat him at Kunersdorf. And yet it is to this chequered year 1757, not to the preceding career of incessant victory, that Frederic the Great owes the immensity of his military fame.

The French had triumphed on the western side of the seat of war, and had driven c.u.mberland before them, when Frederic attacked them with a much smaller force, at Rossbach, in Saxony. With hardly any resistance and hardly any loss, he gained a complete victory over them and their Imperialist allies. Then he hurried to Silesia, where the Austrians were masters. He defeated them at Leuthen, a month after Rossbach, recovered Breslau, and made 38,000 prisoners. Nothing like it had been seen in war. The defeat of the French made him a national hero. Previously, his enemies were Germans, and the French were his allies. That was forgotten and rectified. That Germany had so much to suffer at his hands was forgiven. And the victory was so complete, so artistic, that he was not less admired in France, where they laughed at their unsuccessful marshals. Not long before he was spoken of in Paris as one who had just missed being a great man. Such language was never used again. And the tremendous reduction of Austrian forces at Leuthen and Breslau was a still greater surprise.

A man who could do that might do anything, and was out of proportion with the ordinary race of men.

There is an undefinable quant.i.ty in military genius which makes the event uncertain. At the beginning the emperor had written that Frederic's secret had been discovered, and consisted in what was called the oblique order--that is, to make one wing much stronger than the other, to refuse with the weak wing, and to attack with overwhelming force with the strong. That method did not originate with him, but he repeatedly employed it. Then there was his innovation in the use of cavalry. He had learnt its value, against the musket of those days, by experience; and he believed that Seydlitz, in the open, at the head of seventy squadrons, was a thing which no infantry could resist. Then there was the impetus his troops derived from the extraordinary renown of their king, that there was nothing to counterbalance on the other side. This was evident, was matter of common knowledge. But even in his own army, on his own staff, in the royal family, there were two opinions. There was a school which taught that actual fighting must not be resorted to until the use of brains has been exhausted, that the battle comes in when the manoeuvre has failed, that the seizure of a strategic position, or a scientific retreat, like that of Wellington into Portugal, of Barclay in 1812 before Napoleon, of Johnston before Sherman, is the first defence of armies, so that a force which is tactically inferior may be strategically superior. Frederic was, I believe, the first great soldier to reject this doctrine, and to act on the principle that nothing can destroy the enemy except a pitched battle, and that the destruction of the enemy, not the weakening of the enemy, is the right object of war. His battles were very numerous and very sanguinary, and not always decisive. Napoleon followed in his footsteps, manoeuvring less, as he grew older, and fighting more. It is the adopted teaching of the Prussian school, since Clausewitz and Moltke.

During the French campaign of 1814 Napoleon said to Marmont: "We are still 100,000." "No!" said the marshal; "only 60,000." "Exactly,"

Napoleon replied; "60,000 and myself, that is 100,000." Something of this kind must be allowed in the person of the great king; and it kept up his hopes after his enemies began to prevail in 1759. In 1760 he was still successful at Liegnitz and at Torgau. But his country was exhausted; his ranks were thinned by the wasteful expenditure of life; there was nothing to look forward to, unless the Turk effected a diversion on the Danube; and Frederic was repeatedly on the point of taking poison. In 1755 he had written that war must always be aggressive. Even a successful defence weakens the victor.

The zeal of his only ally was beginning to cool. Pitt had accomplished more than he intended when he offered his subsidies to Prussia. Our fleet commanded the ocean. The Mediterranean squadron had been defeated at Lagos, the Atlantic squadron at Quiberon; Canada had been conquered, and with Canada, the interior of North America, with its population of savages and its inexhaustible resources.

Bengal was English, and the rivalry of the French in India had ceased to be formidable. In four years England had grown into a boundless empire, offering, what no other war had done, compensation for expenditure and increase of debt. Trade had learnt to follow the flag, and Pitt's profusion was not waste. Much of this success was due to the Prussian Alliance. The vicissitudes of the French army had hampered the French navy. Frederic, who was several times very near destruction, had been saved by his ally. He had retained his disputed province, while England annexed dominions as vast as Europe. His genius and his power had been made so manifest that he was not again attacked during the remainder of his reign. England possessed that which, if it had been duly husbanded and developed, would make her mistress of the world. The object of each, in concluding their alliance, had been gained, but there was no proportion between them.

In 1760 Pitt rejected peace with France when it would have damaged his treaty with Prussia. But when there was no prospect of a final triumph, and Frederic was only thinking of the terms on which he might obtain peace, Pitt advised him to negotiate. Then, in the autumn of 1761, under a new king, he was expelled from office. The subsidy came to an end, and Bute opened negotiations.

Frederic had resolved that he would not wear a diminished crown; that he would disappear from the scene if he could not preserve by treaty of peace the full integrity of the monarchy which he no longer hoped to preserve by war. But he stood alone. The change of reign, the fall of Pitt, the termination of the subsidy, the pacific disposition of Bute, somewhat exaggerated by those through whom he heard of it, weakened him so seriously that he allowed the struggle to languish while he sounded the courts, and especially sounded the Turk, as to his feelings towards his Austrian neighbour. Then, in an instant, the scene was entirely transformed. Elizabeth, the last of the children of Peter the Great, died in January 1762. She had been his bitter enemy throughout, personally as well as on grounds of pure policy, by which he was held to be the menacing obstruction to the expansion of Russia in Europe. Her heir was a German prince, married to a German princess, the famous Catharine, and they at once offered terms of peace.

Meanwhile Spain went to war with England, and the government began to treat apart from Frederic. Newcastle would have renewed the subsidy, but Bute refused, and Newcastle thereupon resigned, while Bute concluded peace. Frederic, quite unable to continue active operations, retained Silesia, but gave up his conquest, Saxony.

Therefore, at the price of immense suffering to his people, he emerged from the unequal contest victorious and successful.

William III, Lewis XIV, Peter of Russia, had been great and able sovereigns; but none had left on the world such an impression of his genius. When Frederic appeared at the Te Deum at Charlottenburg in all his glory, he broke down utterly and burst into tears. He had been the victor, but it was England that carried away the prize. He had acquired in his campaigns immeasurable authority and renown, but his people had been decimated and impoverished, and he had gained no accession of territory.

In the first years of peace that followed, it appeared that there was a neighbouring country in which that deficiency might be repaired, and the disappointing issue of the war might be made good by the art of the statesman. The republic of Poland covered an enormous territory, but was the most backward of the civilised nations. It was governed, socially and politically, by the aristocratic cla.s.s, and it was their prerogative that any minority, or even a single n.o.ble, might exert the right of veto on the proceedings of the Diet. The political conditions were those of the eleventh century. The government was the weakest in Europe. The Poles had been the earliest people to establish religious toleration; but they had succ.u.mbed to the Counter-Reformation, and they still refused liberty of conscience to the Dissidents, mainly of the Greek Church. It was the plain policy of Russia to maintain the grievance and the occasion for intervention, and to frustrate every attempt of intelligent Poles to reform their const.i.tution and create a regular government.

In the reign of Catharine in Russia, and of her admirer Stanislas Poniatowski in Poland, the republic became a Russian dependency. The empress desired that this convenient situation should continue, and esteemed that a part.i.tion would be injurious to her interests. From the same point of view it appeared desirable to Austria and Prussia.

Poland, undivided as it was, was useless to anybody but Catharine.

Poland divided among friends would strengthen each of them at the expense of Catharine. What they succeeded in appropriating would be so much taken from the sphere of Russian power. The Russian empress endeavoured to turn their thoughts elsewhere. She pointed to Turkey, which was a dreadful blot on the map of Christendom, and proposed that Austria should rectify its frontier on that side. But Turkey could defend itself, and could not be subjected to spoliation without a struggle, which Austria would have to carry on. That was a wretched bargain compared with Poland, which must yield if the three Powers showed their teeth. And Turkey could be of no use to Frederic the Great. Therefore Kaunitz proposed that he should give back Silesia, and compensate himself richly out of Polish territory, where Austria also had some local claims to enforce.

Frederic was ready to annex part of Poland, but he saw no reason for giving up anything that he possessed. If Austria wished to enlarge her boundaries, Poland was extensive enough to satisfy her demands as well as his own. There would be no difficulty, no obstacle on the spot, no resistance of European opinion. England had already proposed the Polish solution of territorial controversy. In France there would be some genuine or affected displeasure. But Poland was a Catholic country, much influenced by prelates. The men who guided French thought would be easily consoled for its disappearance from the political stage. It was not modern enough to interest them, and its treatment of the Dissidents was a glaring offence. Therefore, although Catharine annexed as much as both the others together, the part.i.tion was accomplished in opposition to her real policy. About one-third of Poland was thus taken. The reckoning proved correct.

Europe remained unmoved. By a series of treaties it had condoned the seizure of Silesia. It was too late to complain of the dismemberment of Poland. The work was completed, under very different conditions, twenty years later. It was overthrown by Napoleon; but, as he was without a Polish policy, and was disgusted by the obtrusive Liberalism of the Poles in his time, it was revived and sanctioned by the wisdom of united Europe at the Congress of Vienna.

The years which followed the Seven Years' War were a time of peace for a great part of the Continent, in the course of which a memorable change took place in European polity. It was the age of what may be called the Repentance of Monarchy. That which had been selfish, oppressive, and cruel became impersonal, philanthropic, and beneficent. The strong current of eighteenth-century opinion left the State omnipotent, but obliged it to take account of public, as distinct from dynastic, interests. It was employed more or less intelligently, for the good of the people. Humanity contended for the mastery with ambition. It was still a despotism, but an enlightened despotism. The competent expert more than ever was supreme, but he was influenced by great writers--Locke, Montesquieu, Turgot, Beccaria, Adam Smith. There was a serious tendency to increase popular education, to relieve poverty, to multiply hospitals, to promote wealth by the operations of the engineer, to emanc.i.p.ate the serf, to abolish torture, to encourage academies, observatories, and the like.

Prisons had never been so bad--attempts were made to reform them. The slave trade had never been so prosperous; people began to doubt whether it was moral. Laws were codified, and though the codes were surprisingly bad, the laws were improved by them. The movement was almost universal, from Spain to Denmark and Russia. Piedmont dealt successfully with the feudal and social question, which baffled the National a.s.sembly in France. The rich plain of the Milanese was administered by a proconsul of Maria Theresa, in a manner which made it the example of Europe. A strenuous disciple of the economists governed Baden. Wuerzburg and Bamberg, under the last Prince Bishop, were considered the happiest region in the empire. Turgot, Bernstorff, Firmian, were admired and imitated as Lewis XIV had been in a former phase of absolute monarchy. Society was enjoyable, apart from politics, and was studied like a fine art in the homes of luxury--Paris, Brussels, Rome, and Venice. Things went very well in those days with any man who was not a Whig, and had no views as to what makes governments legitimate and averts revolution.

In that age of the enlightenment of despotism the most enlightened despot was Frederic II. Of all rulers and reformers he was the most laborious and incessant. "A king," said he, "is the first servant of the State." He did more work and had fewer pleasures than any of them.