The Crown of Wild Olive Part 33

IX. Johann Sigismund. Only notable for our economical purposes, as getting the "guardianship" of Prussia confirmed to him. The story at page 317 (226), "a strong flame of choler," indicates a new order of things among the knights of Europe--"princely etiquettes melting all into smoke." Too literally so, that being one of the calamitous functions of the plain lives we are living, and of the busy life our country is living. In the Duchy of Cleve, especially, concerning which legal dispute begins in Sigismund's time. And it is well worth the lawyers' trouble, it seems.

It amounted, perhaps, to two Yorkshires in extent. A naturally opulent country of fertile meadows, shipping capabilities, metalliferous hills, and at this time, in consequence of the Dutch-Spanish war, and the mult.i.tude of Protestant refugees, it was getting filled with ingenious industries, and rising to be what it still is, the busiest quarter of Germany. A country lowing with kine; the hum of the flax-spindle heard in its cottages in those old days--"much of the linen called Hollands is made in Julich, and only bleached, stamped, and sold by the Dutch," says Busching. A country in our days which is shrouded at short intervals with the due canopy of coal-smoke, and loud with sounds of the anvil and the loom.

The lawyers took two hundred and six years to settle the question concerning this Duchy, and the thing Johann Sigismund had claimed legally in 1609 was actually handed over to Johann Sigismund's descendant in the seventh generation. "These litigated duchies are now the Prussian provinces, Julich, Berg, Cleve, and the nucleus of Prussia's possessions in the Rhine country."

X. George Wilhelm. Read pp. 325 to 327 (231, 233) on this Elector and German Protestantism, now fallen cold, and somewhat too little dangerous. But George Wilhelm is the only weak prince of all the twelve.

For another example how the heart and life of a country depend upon its prince, not on its council, read this, of Gustavus Adolphus, demanding the cession of Spandau and Kustrin:

Which cession Kurfurst George Wilhelm, though giving all his prayers to the good cause, could by no means grant. Gustav had to insist, with more and more emphasis, advancing at last with military menace upon Berlin itself. He was met by George Wilhelm and his Council, "in the woods of Copenick,"

short way to the east of that city; there George Wilhelm and his Council wandered about, sending messages, hopelessly consulting, saying among each other, "Que faire? ils ont des canons." For many hours so, round the inflexible Gustav, who was there like a fixed mile-stone, and to all questions and comers had only one answer.

On our special question of war and its consequences, read this of the Thirty Years' one:

But on the whole, the grand weapon in it, and towards the latter times, the exclusive one, was hunger. The opposing armies tried to starve one another; at lowest, tried each not to starve. Each trying to eat the country or, at any rate, to leave nothing eatable in it; what that will mean for the country we may consider. As the armies too frequently, and the Kaiser's armies habitually, lived without commissariat, often enough without pay, all horrors of war and of being a seat of war, that have been since heard of, are poor to those then practised, the detail of which is still horrible to read. Germany, in all eatable quarters of it, had to undergo the process; tortured, torn to pieces, wrecked, and brayed as in a mortar, under the iron mace of war. Brandenburg saw its towns seized and sacked, its country populations driven to despair by the one party and the other. Three times--first in the Wallenstein-Mecklenburg times, while fire and sword were the weapons, and again, twice over, in the ultimate stages of the struggle, when starvation had become the method--Brandenburg fell to be the princ.i.p.al theatre of conflict, where all forms of the dismal were at their height. In 1638, three years after that precious "Peace of Prag,"... the ravages of the starving Gallas and his Imperialists excelled all precedent,... men ate human flesh, nay, human creatures ate their own children. "Que faire? ils ont des canons!"

"We have now arrived at the lowest nadir point" (says Carlyle) "of the history of Brandenburg under the Hohenzollerns." Is this then all that Heavy Peg and our nine Kurfursts have done for us?

Carlyle does not mean that; but even he, greatest of historians since Tacitus, is not enough careful to mark for us the growth of national character, as distinct from the prosperity of dynasties.

A republican historian would think of this development only, and suppose it to be possible without any dynasties.

Which is indeed in a measure so, and the work now chiefly needed in moral philosophy, as well as history, is an a.n.a.lysis of the constant and prevalent, yet unthought of, influences, which, without any external help from kings, and in a silent and entirely necessary manner, form, in Sweden, in Bavaria, in the Tyrol, in the Scottish border, and on the French sea-coast, races of n.o.ble peasants; pacific, poetic, heroic, Christian-hearted in the deepest sense, who may indeed perish by sword or famine in any cruel thirty years' war, or ign.o.ble thirty years'

peace, and yet leave such strength to their children that the country, apparently ravaged into hopeless ruin, revives, under any prudent king, as the cultivated fields do under the spring rain. How the rock to which no seed can cling, and which no rain can soften, is subdued into the good ground which can bring forth its hundredfold, we forget to watch, while we follow the footsteps of the sower, or mourn the catastrophes of storm. All this while, the Prussian earth--the Prussian soul--has been thus dealt upon by successive fate; and now, though laid, as it seems, utterly desolate, it can be revived by a few years of wisdom and of peace.

Vol. I. Book III. Chap, xviii.--The Great Elector, Friedrich Wilhelm.

Eleventh of the dynasty:--

There hardly ever came to sovereign power a young man of twenty under more distressing, hopeless-looking circ.u.mstances. Political significance Brandenburg had none; a mere Protestant appendage, dragged about by a Papist Kaiser. His father's Prime Minister, as we have seen, was in the interest of his enemies; not Brandenburg's servant, but Austria's. The very commandants of his fortresses, Commandant of Spandau more especially, refused to obey Friedrich Wilhelm on his accession; "were bound to obey the Kaiser in the first place."

For twenty years past Brandenburg had been scoured by hostile armies, which, especially the Kaiser's part of which, committed outrages new in human history. In a year or two hence, Brandenburg became again the theatre of business, Austrian Gallas advancing thither again (1644) with intent "to shut up Torstenson and his Swedes in Jutland." Gallas could by no means do what he intended; on the contrary, he had to run from Torstenson--what feet could do; was hunted, he and his Merode Bruder (beautiful inventors of the "marauding" art), till they pretty much all died (crepirten) says Kohler. No great loss to society, the death of these artists, but we can fancy what their life, and especially what the process of their dying, may have cost poor Brandenburg again!

Friedrich Wilhelm's aim, in this as in other emergencies, was sun-clear to himself, but for most part dim to everybody else. He had to walk very warily, Sweden on one hand of him, suspicious Kaiser on the other: he had to wear semblances, to be ready with evasive words, and advance noiselessly by many circuits. More delicate operation could not be imagined. But advance he did; advance and arrive. With extraordinary talent, diligence, and felicity the young man wound himself out of this first fatal position, got those foreign armies pushed out of his country, and kept them out.

His first concern had been to find some vestige of revenue, to put that upon a clear footing, and by loans or otherwise to sc.r.a.pe a little ready-money together. On the strength _of which a small body of soldiers could be collected about him, and drilled into real ability to fight and obey_. This as a basis: on this followed all manner of things, freedom from Swedish-Austrian invasions, as the first thing. He was himself, as appeared by-and-by, a fighter of the first quality, when it came to that; but never was willing to fight if he could help it. Preferred rather to shift, manoeuvre, and negotiate, which he did in most vigilant, adroit, and masterly manner. But by degrees he had grown to have, and could maintain it, an army of twenty-four thousand men, among the best troops then in being.

To wear semblances, to be ready with evasive words, how is this, Mr.

Carlyle? thinks perhaps the rightly thoughtful reader.

Yes, such things have to be; There are lies and lies, and there are truths and truths. Ulysses cannot ride on the ram's back, like Phryxus; but must ride under his belly. Read also this, presently following:

Shortly after which, Friedrich Wilhelm, who had shone much in the battle of Warsaw, into which he was dragged against his will, changed sides. An inconsistent, treacherous man?

Perhaps not, O reader! perhaps a man advancing "in circuits," the only way he has; spirally, face now to east, now to west, with his own reasonable private aim sun-clear to him all the while?

The battle of Warsaw, three days long, fought with Gustavus, the grandfather of Charles XII., against the Poles, virtually ends the Polish power:

Old Johann Casimir, not long after that peace of Oliva, getting tired of his unruly Polish chivalry and their ways, abdicated--retired to Paris, and "and lived much with Ninon de l'Enclos and her circle," for the rest of his life. He used to complain of his Polish chivalry, that there was no solidity in them; nothing but outside glitter, with tumult and anarchic noise; fatal want of one essential talent, _the talent of obeying_; and has been heard to prophesy that a glorious Republic, persisting in such courses, would arrive at results which would surprise it.

Onward from this time, Friedrich Wilhelm figures in the world; public men watching his procedure; kings anxious to secure him--Dutch print-sellers sticking up his portraits for a hero-worshipping public. Fighting hero, had the public known it, was not his essential character, though he had to fight a great deal. He was essentially an industrial man; great in organizing, regulating, in constraining chaotic heaps to become cosmic for him. He drains bogs, settles colonies in the waste places of his dominions, cuts ca.n.a.ls; unweariedly encourages trade and work. The Friedrich Wilhelm's Ca.n.a.l, which still carries tonnage from the Oder to the Spree, is a monument of his zeal in this way; creditable with the means he had. To the poor French Protestants in the Edict-of-Nantes affair, he was like an express benefit of Heaven; one helper appointed to whom the help itself was profitable. He munificently welcomed them to Brandenburg; showed really a n.o.ble piety and human pity, as well as judgment; nor did Brandenburg and he want their reward. Some twenty thousand nimble French souls, evidently of the best French quality, found a home there; made "waste sands about Berlin into potherb gardens;" and in spiritual Brandenburg, too, did something of horticulture which is still noticeable.

Now read carefully the description of the man, p. 352 (224-5); the story of the battle of Fehrbellin, "the Marathon of Brandenburg," p. 354 (225); and of the winter campaign of 1679, p. 356 (227), beginning with its week's marches at sixty miles a day; his wife, as always, being with him;

Louisa, honest and loving Dutch girl, aunt to our William of Orange, who trimmed up her own "Orange-burg"

(country-house), twenty miles north of Berlin, into a little jewel of the Dutch type, potherb gardens, training-schools for young girls, and the like, a favorite abode of hers when she was at liberty for recreation. But her life was busy and earnest; she was helpmate, not in name only, to an ever busy man. They were married young; a marriage of love withal.

Young Friedrich Wilhelm's courtship; wedding in Holland; the honest, trustful walk and conversation of the two sovereign spouses, their journeyings together, their mutual hopes, fears, and manifold vicissitudes, till death, with stern beauty, shut it in; all is human, true, and wholesome in it, interesting to look upon, and rare among sovereign persons.

Louisa died in 1667, twenty-one years before her husband, who married again--(little to his contentment)--died in 1688; and Louisa's second son, Friedrich, ten years old at his mother's death, and now therefore thirty-one, succeeds, becoming afterwards Friedrich I. of Prussia.

And here we pause on two great questions. Prussia is a.s.suredly at this point a happier and better country than it was, when inhabited by Wends.

But is Friedrich I. a happier and better man than Henry the Fowler? Have all these kings thus improved their country, but never themselves? Is this somewhat expensive and ambitious Herr, Friedrich I. b.u.t.toned in diamonds, indeed the best that Protestantism can produce, as against Fowlers, Bears, and Red Beards? Much more, Friedrich Wilhelm, orthodox on predestination; most of all, his less orthodox son;--have we, in these, the highest results which Dr. Martin Luther can produce for the present, in the first circles of society? And if not, how is it that the country, having gained so much in intelligence and strength, lies more pa.s.sively in their power than the baser country did under that of n.o.bler men?

These, and collateral questions, I mean to work out as I can, with Carlyle's good help;--but must pause for this time; in doubt, as heretofore. Only of this one thing I doubt not, that the name of all great kings, set over Christian nations, must at last be, in fufilment, the hereditary one of these German princes, "Rich in Peace;" and that their coronation will be with Wild olive, not with gold.

FOOTNOTES:

[142] The late Sir Herbert Edwardes.

[143] I would much rather print these pa.s.sages of Carlyle in large golden letters than small black ones; but they are only here at all for unlucky people who can't read them with the context.

THE

ETHICS OF THE DUST

TEN LECTURES

TO

LITTLE HOUSEWIVES

ON

THE ELEMENTS OF CRYSTALLISATION

CONTENTS.

ETHICS OF THE DUST.

LECTURE I. PAGE

THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS 1