The World's Greatest Books - Volume 12 Part 19

Just about this time--August 1--Ferdinand has won the really splendid victory of Minden, on the Weser, a beautiful feat of war; for Pitt and the English in their French duel a mighty triumph; this is Pitt's year, but the worst of all in Frederick's own campaigns. His attack now on the Russians was his worst defeat--at Kunersdorf. Beginning victoriously, he tried to drive victory home with exhausted troops, who were ultimately driven in rout by Loudon with fresh regiments (August 9).

For the moment Frederick actually despaired; intended to resign command, and "not to revive the ruin of his country." But Daun was not capable of dealing the finishing stroke; managed, however, to take Dresden, on terms. Frederick, however, is not many weeks in recovering his resolution; and a certain astonishing march of his brother, Prince Henri--fifty miles in fifty-six hours through country occupied by the enemy--is a turning-point. Soltikoff, sick of Daun's inaction, made ready to go home and England rejoiced over Wolfe's capture of Quebec.

Frederick, recovering, goes too far, tries a blow at Daun, resulting in disaster of Maxen, loss of a force of 12,000 men. On the other hand, Hawke finished the French fleet at Quiberon Bay. A very bad year for Frederick, but a very good one for his ally. Next year Loudon is to invade Silesia.

It did seem to beholders in this year 1660 that Frederick was doomed, could not survive; but since he did survive it, he was able to battle out yet two more campaigns, enemies also getting worn out; a race between spent horses. Of the marches by which Frederick carried himself through this fifth campaign it is not possible to give an idea. Failure to bring Daun to battle, sudden siege of Dresden--not successful, perhaps not possible at all that it should have succeeded. In August a dash on Silesia with three armies to face--Daun, Lacy, Loudon, and possible Russians, edged off by Prince Henri. At Liegnitz the best of management, helped by good luck and happy accident, gives him a decisive victory over London's division, despite Loudon's admirable conduct; a miraculous victory; Daun's plans quite scattered, and Frederick's movements freed. Three months later the battle of Torgau, fought dubiously all day, becomes a distinct victory in the night. Neither Silesia nor Saxony are to fall to the Austrians.

Liegnitz and Torgau are a better outcome of operations than Kunersdorf and Maxen; the king is, in a sense, stronger, but his resources are more exhausted, and George III. is now become king in England; Pitt's power very much in danger there. In the next year most noteworthy is Loudon's brilliant stroke in capturing Schweidnitz, a blow for Frederick quite unlooked for.

In January, however, comes bright news from Petersburg: implacable Tsarina Elizabeth is dead, Peter III. is Tsar, sworn friend and admirer of Frederick; Russia, in short, becomes suddenly not an enemy but a friend. Bute, in England, is proposing to throw over his ally, unforgivably; to get peace at price of Silesia, to Frederick's wrath, who, having moved Daun off, attacks Schweidnitz, and gets it, not without trouble. And so, practically, ends the seventh campaign.

French and English had signed their own peace preliminaries, to disgust of Excellency Mitch.e.l.l, the first-rate amba.s.sador to Frederick during these years. Austria makes proffers, and so at last this war ends with Treaties of Paris and Hubertsburg; issue, as concerns Austria and Prussia, "as you were before the war."

_VI.--Afternoon and Evening of Frederick's Life_

Frederick's Prussia is safe; America and India are to be English, not French; France is on the way towards spontaneous combustion in 1789;--these are the fruits of the long war. During the rest of Frederick's reign--twenty-three years--is nothing of world history to dwell on. Of the coming combustion Frederick has no perception; for what remains of him, he is King of Prussia, interesting to Prussia chiefly: whereof no continuous narrative is henceforth possible to us, only a loose appendix of papers, as of the extraordinary speed with which Prussia recovered--brave Prussia, which has defended itself against overwhelming odds. The repairing of a ruined Prussia cost Frederick much very successful labour.

Treaty with Russia is made in 1764, Frederick now, having broken with England, being extremely anxious to keep well with such a country under such a Tsarina, about whom there are to be no rash sarcasms. In 1769 a young Kaiser Joseph has a friendliness to Frederick very unlike his mother's animosity. Out of which things comes first part.i.tion of Poland (1772); an event inevitable in itself, with the causing of which Frederick had nothing whatever to do, though he had his slice. There was no alternative but a general European war; and the slice, Polish Prussia, was very desirable; also its acquisition was extremely beneficial to itself.

In 1778 Frederick found needful to interpose his veto on Austrian designs in respect of Bavarian succession; got involved subsequently in Bavarian war of a kind, ended by intervention of Tsarina Catherine. In 1780 Maria Theresa died; Joseph and Kaunitz launched on ambitious adventures for imperial domination of the German Empire, making overtures to the Tsarina for dual empire of east and west, alarming to Frederick. His answer was the "Furstenbund," confederation of German princes, Prussia atop, to forbid peremptorily that the laws of the Reich be infringed; last public feat of Frederick; events taking an unexpected turn, which left it without actual effect in European history.

A few weeks after this Furstenbund, which did very effectively stop Joseph's schemes, Frederick got a chill, which was the beginning of his breaking up. In January 1786, he developed symptoms concluded by the physician called in to be desperate, but not immediately mortal. Four months later he talked with Mirabeau in Berlin, on what precise errand is nowise clear; interview reported as very lively, but "the king in much suffering."

Nevertheless, after this he did again appear from Sans-Souci on horseback several times, for the last time on July 4. To the last he continued to transact state business. "The time which I have still I must employ; it belongs not to me but to the state"--till August 15.

On August 17 he died. In those last days it is evident that chaos is again big. Better for a royal hero, fallen old and feeble, to be hidden from such things; hero whom we may account as. .h.i.therto the last of the kings.

GEORGE FINLAY

History of Greece

George Finlay, the historian of Greece, was born on December 21, 1799, at Faversham, Kent, England, where his father, Capt.

J. Finlay, R.E., was inspector of the Government powder mills.

His early instruction was undertaken by his mother, to whose training he attributed his love of history. He studied law at Glasgow and Gottingen universities, at the latter of which he became acquainted with a Greek fellow-student, and resolved to take part in the struggle for Greek independence. He proceeded to Greece, where he met Byron and the leaders of the Greek patriotic forces, took part in many engagements with the Turks, and conducted missions on behalf of the Greek provisional government until the independence of Greece was established. Finlay bought an estate in Attica, on which he resided for many years. The publication of his great series of histories of Greece began in 1844, and was completed in 1875 with the second edition, which brought the history of modern Greece down to 1864. It has been said that Finlay, like Machiavelli, qualified himself to write history by wide experience as student, soldier, statesman, and economist. He died on January 26, 1875.

_I.--Greece Under the Romans_

The conquests of Alexander the Great effected a permanent change in the political conditions of the Greek nation, and this change powerfully influenced its moral and social state during the whole period of its subjection to the Roman Empire.

Alexander introduced Greek civilisation as an important element in his civil government, and established Greek colonies with political rights throughout his conquests. During 250 years the Greeks were the dominant cla.s.s in Asia, and the corrupting influence of this predominance was extended to the whole frame of society in their European as well as their Asiatic possessions. The great difference which existed in the social condition of the Greeks and Romans throughout their national existence was that the Romans formed a nation with the organisation of a single city. The Greeks were a people composed of a number of rival states, and the majority looked with indifference on the loss of their independence. The Romans were compelled to retain much of the civil government, and many of the financial arrangements which they found existing. This was a necessity, because the conquered were much further advanced in social civilisation than the conquerors. The financial policy of Rome was to transfer as much of the money circulating in the provinces, and the precious metals in the hands of private individuals, as it was possible into the coffers of the state.

Hence, the whole empire was impoverished, and Greece suffered severely under a government equally tyrannical in its conduct and unjust in its legislation. The financial administration of the Romans inflicted, if possible, a severer blow on the moral const.i.tution of society than on the material prosperity of the country. It divided the population of Greece into two cla.s.ses. The rich formed an aristocratic cla.s.s, the poor sank to the condition of serfs. It appears to be a law of human society that all cla.s.ses of mankind who are separated by superior wealth and privileges from the body of the people are, by their oligarchical const.i.tution, liable to rapid decline.

The Greeks and the Romans never showed any disposition to unite and form one people, their habits and tastes being so different. Although the schools of Athens were still famous, learning and philosophy were but little cultivated in European Greece because of the poverty of the people and the secluded position of the country.

In the changes of government which preceded the establishment of Byzantium as the capital of the Roman Empire by Constantine, the Greeks contributed to effect a mighty revolution of the whole frame of social life by the organisation which they gave to the Church from the moment they began to embrace the Christian religion. It awakened many of the national characteristics which had slept for ages, and gave new vigour to the communal and munic.i.p.al inst.i.tutions, and even extended to political society. Christian communities of Greeks were gradually melted into one nation, having a common legislation and a common civil administration as well as a common religion, and it was this which determined Constantine to unite Church and State in strict alliance.

From the time of Constantine the two great principles of law and religion began to exert a favourable influence on Greek society, and even limited the wild despotism of the emperors. The power of the clergy, however, originally resting on a more popular and more pure basis than that of the law, became at last so great that it suffered the inevitable corruption of all irresponsible authority entrusted to humanity.

Then came the immigration and ravages of the Goths to the south of the Danube, and that unfortunate period marked the commencement of the rapid decrease of the Greek race, and the decline of Greek civilisation throughout the empire. Under Justinian (527-565), the h.e.l.lenic race and inst.i.tutions in Greece itself received the severest blow. Although he gave to the world his great system of civil law, his internal administration was remarkable for religious intolerance and financial rapacity. He restricted the powers and diminished the revenues of the Greek munic.i.p.alities, closed the schools of rhetoric and philosophy at Athens, and seized the endowments of the Academy of Plato, which had maintained an uninterrupted succession of teachers for 900 years. But it was not till the reign of Heraclius that the ancient existence of the h.e.l.lenic race terminated.

_II.--The Byzantine and Greek Empires_

The history of the Byzantine Empire divides itself into three periods strongly marked by distinct characteristics. The first commences with the reign of Leo III., the Isaurian, in 716, and terminates with that of Michael III., in 867. It comprises the whole history of the predominance of iconoclasm in the established church, of the reaction which reinstated the Orthodox in power, and restored the worship of pictures and images.

It opens with the effort by which Leo and the people of the empire saved the Roman law and the Christian religion from the conquering Saracen. It embraces the long and violent struggle between the government and the people, the emperors seeking to increase the central power by annihilating every local franchise, and to const.i.tute themselves the fountains of ecclesiastical as completely as of civil legislation.

The second period begins with the reign of Bazil I., in 867, and during two centuries the imperial sceptre was retained by members of his family. At this time the Byzantine Empire attained its highest pitch of external power and internal prosperity. The Saracens were pursued into the plains of Syria, the Bulgarian monarchy was conquered, the Slavonians in Greece were almost exterminated, Byzantine commerce filled the whole of the Mediterranean. But the real glory of the period consisted in the respect for the administration of justice which purified society more generally than it had ever done at any preceding era of the history of the world.

The third period extends from the accession of Isaac I., in 1057, to the conquest of the Byzantine Empire by the Crusaders, in 1204. This is the true period of the decline and fall of the Eastern Empire. The separation of the Greek and Latin churches was accomplished. The wealth of the empire was dissipated, the administration of justice corrupted, and the central authority lost all control over the population.

But every calamity of this unfortunate period sinks into insignificance compared with the destruction of the greater part of the Greek race by the savage incursions of the Seljouk Turks in Asia Minor. Then followed the Crusades, the first three inflicting permanent evils on the Greek race; while the fourth, which was organised in Venice, captured and plundered Constantinople. A treaty entered into by the conquerors put an end to the Eastern Roman Empire, and Baldwin, Count of Flanders, was elected emperor of the East. The conquest of Constantinople restored the Greeks to a dominant position in the East; but the national character of the people, the political const.i.tution of the imperial government, and the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Orthodox Church were all dest.i.tute of every theory and energetic practice necessary for advancing in a career of improvement.

Towards the end of the thirteenth century a small Turkish tribe made its first appearance in the Seljouk Empire. Othman, who gave his name to this new band of immigrants, and his son, Orkhan, laid the foundation of the inst.i.tutions and power of the Othoman Empire. No nation ever increased so rapidly from such small beginnings, and no government ever const.i.tuted itself with greater sagacity than the Othoman; but no force or prudence could have enabled this small tribe of nomads to rise with such rapidity to power if it had not been that the Greek nation and its emperors were paralysed by political and moral corruption. Justice was dormant in the state, Christianity was torpid in the Church, orthodoxy performed the duties of civil liberty, and the priest became the focus of political opposition. By the middle of the fourteenth century the Othoman Turks had raided Thrace, Macedonia, the islands of the Aegean, plundered the large town of Greece, and advanced to the sh.o.r.es of the Bosphorus.

At the end of the fourteenth century John VI. asked for efficient military aid from Western Europe to avert the overthrow of the Greek Empire by the Othoman power, but the Pope refused, unless John consented to the union of the Greek and Latin Churches and the recognition of the papal supremacy. In 1438 the Council of Ferrara was held, and was transferred in the following year to Florence, when the Greek emperor and all the bishops of the Eastern Church, except the bishop of Ephesus, adopted the doctrines of the Roman Church, accepted the papal supremacy, and the union of the two Churches was solemnly ratified in the cathedral of Florence on July 6, 1439. But little came of the union. The Pope forgot to sent a fleet to defend Constantinople; the Christian princes would not fight the battles of the Greeks.

Then followed the conquest, in May 1453, of Constantinople, despite a desperate resistance, by Mohammed II., who entered his new capital, riding triumphantly past the body of the Emperor Constantine. Mohammed proceeded at once to the church of St. Sophia, where, to convince the Greeks that their Orthodox empire was extinct, the sultan ordered a moolah to ascend the Bema and address a sermon to the Mussulmans announcing that St. Sophia was now a mosque set apart for the prayers of true believers. The fall of Constantinople is a dark chapter in the annals of Christianity. The death of the unfortunate Constantine, neglected by the Catholics and deserted by the Orthodox, alone gave dignity to the final catastrophe.

_III.--Othoman and Venetian_

The conquest of Greece by Mohammed II. was felt to be a boon by the greater part of the population. The sultan's government put an end to the injustices of the Greek emperors and the Frank princes, dukes, and signors who for two centuries had rendered Greece the scene of incessant civil wars and odious oppression, and whose rapacity impoverished and depopulated the country. The Othoman system of administration was immediately organised. Along with it the sultan imposed a tribute of a fifth of the male children of his Christian subjects as a part of that tribute which the Koran declared was the lawful price of toleration to those who refused to embrace Islam. Under these measures the last traces of the former political inst.i.tutions and legal administration of Greece were swept away.

The ma.s.s of the Christian population engaged in agricultural operations were, however, allowed to enjoy a far larger portion of the fruits of their labour under the sultan's government than under that of many Christian monarchs. The weak spots in the Othoman government were the administration of justice and of finance. The naval conquests of the Othomans in the islands and maritime districts of Greece, and the ravages of Corsairs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, reduced and degraded the population, exterminated the best families, enslaved the remnant, and destroyed the prosperity of Greek trade and commerce.

Towards the end of the seventeenth century ecclesiastical corruption in the Orthodox Church increased. Bishoprics, and even the patriarchate were sold to the highest bidder. The Turks displayed their contempt for them by ordering the cross which until that time had crowned the dome of the belfry of the patriarchate to be taken down. There can be no doubt, however, that in the rural district the secular clergy supplied some of the moral strength which eventually enabled the Greeks successfully to resist the Othoman power. Happily, the exaction of the tribute of children fell into disuse; and, that burden removed, the nation soon began to fed the possibility of improving its condition.

The contempt with which the amba.s.sadors of the Christian powers were treated at the Sublime Porte increased after the conquest of Candia and the surrender of Crete in 1669, and the grand vizier, Kara Mustapha, declared war against Austria and laid siege to Vienna in 1683. This was the opportune moment taken by the Venetian Republic to declare war against the Othoman Empire, and Greece was made the chief field of military operations.

Morosini, the commander of the Venetian mercenary army, successfully conducted a series of campaigns between 1684 and 1687, but with terrible barbarity on both sides. The Venetian fleet entered the Piraeus on September 21, 1687. The city of Athens was immediately occupied by their army, and siege laid to the Acropolis. On September 25 a Venetian bomb blew up a powder magazine in the Propylaea, and the following evening another fell in the Parthenon. The cla.s.sic temple was partially ruined; much of the sculpture which had retained its inimitable excellence from the days of Phidaeas was defaced, and a part utterly destroyed. The Turks persisted in defending the place until September 28, when, they capitulated. The Venetians continued the campaign until the greater part of Northern Greece submitted to their authority, and peace was declared in 1696. During the Venetian occupation of Greece through the ravages of war, oppressive taxation, and pestilence, the Greek inhabitants decreased from 300,000 to about 100,000.

Sultan Achmet III., having checkmated Peter the Great in his attempt to march to the conquest of Constantinople, a.s.sembled a large army at Adrianople under the command of Ali c.u.murgi, which expelled the Venetians from Greece before the end of 1715. Peace was concluded, by the Treaty of Pa.s.sarovitz, in July 1718. Thereafter, the material and political position of the Greek nation began to exhibit many signs of improvement, and the agricultural population before the end of the eighteenth century became, in the greatest part of the country, the legal as well as the real proprietors of the soil, which made them feel the moral sentiment of freemen.

The increased importance of the diplomatic relations of the Porte with the Christian powers opened a new political career to the Greeks at Constantinople, and gave rise to the formation of a cla.s.s of officials in the Othoman service called "phanariots," whose venality and illegal exactions made the name a by-word for the basest servility, corruption, and rapacity.