Blood and Iron Part 7

-- But the decline was equally manifest under Fr: Wm. II, the Great Frederick's nephew. Although he inherited a domain of six millions of people, banded under an excellent administrative system, sustained by the disciplined army of "Old Dessauer" (Prince Leopold), and although Fr: Wm. II found the huge sum of 40,000,000 thalers in his fighting uncle's treasure chest, yet within a few years all these splendid advantages were frittered away in idle dalliance and the weak king found himself twenty millions in debt.

By the time he died, 1797, Prussia was riding to a fall; and disregarding plain measures for her own safety, she had reached the sad place where the st.u.r.dy old Prussian spirit of prudence and independence had become so compromised that Prussia almost deemed it unessential to preserve her own political life!

-- Thus, within three generations, Prussia repeated the old story of human life, wherein the weak descendant eats up the strong sire's goods. Frederick the Great died Aug. 17th, 1786. Within three years, France struck at the German lands; and within 20 years the old Const.i.tution of the Empire was scoffed at by encircling enemies along the frontiers, led by France, while at home political disputants destroyed National spirit by exciting revolution after revolution.

"Everywhere," says Zimmermann, (Germany, p. 1618), "one felt the morning breeze of the new dispensation." The cry of the people had to be answered, and the common man wanted to know not only "Why!" but "When!"

-- For the ensuing 85 years clamor, disruption and disunion continue often accompanied by bloodshed; till through Bismarck's great work over which he toiled for 40-odd years, came the final answer of the Imperial democracy, 1871.

-- It is to be the labor of years with confusion worse confounded, as we go along. The Feudal system, with which Germany has been for centuries petrified, must be thrown off; the peasant laborers freed in some sort, whether social or political, the absurd restrictions of countless customs houses walling-in each petty princ.i.p.ality, must be destroyed. Before a new Germany may emerge, if Germany is to emerge at all, a National faith must be stimulated, fighting blood stirred, wars waged. Then, and then only, may this idea of German Unity, long the puzzling mental preoccupation of the fathers, become a geographical actuality and a political fact.

-- The German peasants' sense of respect for vested authority, even when held by hated kings, made the common people of the various German states almost ox-like in their patience under harsh political conditions.

Between the power of petty tyrants and of foreign despots, there was no freedom worthy of the name.

The German lived for himself, aloof, suspicious, not caring particularly to change his condition.

Compromise after compromise, failure after failure, sorrow after sorrow must be recorded in the great story; but do not despair. In amazing manner, through blood and iron, Otto von Bismarck, our blond Pomeranian giant, will face, fight and finally conquer the bewildering cross-forces of his time--till "German national faith" is supreme.

-- Paying no attention to its neighbor, each German state stood off by itself; each princeling had his army, in some instances only 25 men; each ruler had his castle, in imitation of Versailles; each state its custom house, its distinct court and rural costumes.

To go ten miles north or south was to find yourself in a new world; you could scarcely understand the mush-talk of the peasants, whereas the various Liliputian courts chattered in mongrel French, aped from Versailles.

-- The minor courts of Germany imitated the excesses of Versailles; had dancing teachers from Paris, French barbers, French governesses, and French prost.i.tutes.

Every young man of wealth was sent to Paris to acquire what was called "bon ton," that is to say, familiarity with the vices of the day; the etiquette of the fan and the study of new ways to spend money wrung from over-taxed peasants of German provinces was also regarded as very important.

Even to speak German was held a mark of vulgarity; and what more despicable than to be ashamed of one's ancestry?

-- Unmoved by the sufferings of the peasants, Augustus III of Saxony applied himself to grand operas, written by queens of French society.

While the peasants were living like beasts, Frederick Augustus, the successor, spent his time hunting red deer. The dukes of Coburg and Hildburghausen were miserable bankrupts. As a result of social excesses, Charles VII of Bavaria left a debt of forty millions.

Charles Theodore, in some respects an enlightened monarch, is particularly remembered for three strange facts: That he once gave an opera in German and not in French; that he tried to sell off Bavaria, his inheritance, and move to a more congenial locality; and third, that he hired Rumford, the great chemist, to invent a soup, at low cost, to feed the poor, whose miseries had been growing on account of the bad government.

-- Nor should we overlook the monarch at Zweibrucken, the Pfalzgraf Charles. His mania took the form of collecting pipes and toys, of which he had innumerable specimens from the ends of the earth. He kept also one thousand five hundred horses and a thousand dogs and cats.

Every traveler had to take off his hat and bow at sight of the spire, on pain of being beaten by the Count's constable.

-- Charles Eugene, of Wuertemberg, slave to luxury, played pranks when he was not indulging in vices. He liked to alarm peasants at night with wild cries; and when a woman stuck her head out of the window, the monarch would throw a hoop and try to drag her outside. In a deep forest he built his castle "Solitude."

-- On his 50th birthday, he wrote to his subjects, promising to mend his life; the letter was read in all the churches. The people decided that he was in earnest, promised him more money, of which he was in sore need. His first step was to contract a left-handed marriage with Francisca von Bernedin, whom he raised to the rank of countess.

-- His next step was to build a queer bird-cage for his new mate.

Menzel says of this episode: "Records of every clime and of every age were here collected. A Turkish mosque contrasted its splendid dome with the pillared Roman temple and the steepled Gothic church. The castled turret rose by the ma.s.sive Roman tower; the low picturesque hut of the modern peasant stood beneath the shelter of the gigantesque remains of antiquity; and imitations of the pyramids of Cestius, of the baths of Diocletian, a Roman senate-house and Roman dungeons, met the astonished eye."

-- Another amiable peculiarity of French-mongering German princelings in their petty monarchies, was man-stealing. Hard-pressed for funds, the practice was to kidnap peasants and sell them into foreign military service. The vile trade was dignified by court authority; followers of the game were known as "man merchants."

-- The Wuertemberg monarch in order to raise funds to complete the absurd castle for his mistress, took it into his head to sell 1,000 peasants to the Dutch, for the war in the Indies; and so deep lay the curse of tyranny that no public protest was raised. It is true that Schiller, the n.o.ble poet, who at this time was a student at Charles College, fled in disgust, but Schaubert, another poet, was not so fortunate; he was seized and imprisoned for ten years.

-- The vile practice of man-stealing from the wretched peasantry long continued as a monarchical privilege. The Landgrave Frederick of Hesse-Ca.s.sel, on one occasion sent 12,800 Hessians to the British, to fight in America. English commissioners came over and inspected the captive men as though picking out stock at a cattle show. Should a parent protest, a son, a wife or a widow, the answer was the lash.

Hanau furnished 1200 of these slave-soldiers, Waldeck several hundred.

Seume, who was himself a victim to the system, deported to America, tells us in his Memoirs: "No one was safe; every means was resorted to, fraud, cunning, trickery, violence. Foreigners were thrown into prison, and sold."

"There is a Hessian prince of high distinction," says Huergelmer. "He has magnificent palaces, pheasant-preserves, at Wilhelmsbad, operas, mistresses, etc. These things cost money. He has, moreover, a h.o.a.rd of debts, the result of the luxury of his sainted forefathers. What does the prince do in this dilemma? He seizes an unlucky fellow in the street, expends fifty dollars on his equipment, sends him out of the country, and gets a hundred dollars for him in exchange."

-- Frederick of Bayreuth expended all his revenues in building a grand opera house, for giving b.a.l.l.s, parties, receptions and official functions to aristocrats. His successor Alexander fell under the sway of Lady Craven, a British adventuress, who led the peasants a merry chase for the cash; man-stealing was the old game; and one order alone from the British government called for 1,500 peasants.

-- But why continue the recital of man's inhumanities?

Charles of Brunswick, a spendthrift, who sold subjects into captivity, paid his ballet-master 30,000 a year. Frederick of Brunswick on one occasion sold 4,000 peasants to Britain, for the army.

-- The terrible famine of 1770-72 added to the discontent of the common man, throughout Germany; he began to feel that it was the duty of kings to feed the hungry; bark, gra.s.s, leaves, carrion were eaten; disease spread; emigrations depopulated the Rheinlands; 20,000 left Bavaria alone; while upwards of 180,000 Bavarians died of hunger; in Saxony, the number that starved to death is placed at 100,000. Other kingdoms suffered heavily.

-- In many of the provinces were laws to prevent immigration; those who tried to get Bavarians to leave the country were guilty of a crime, punishable by hanging. A similar punishment was exacted for marrying out of one's native province.

-- Also, the wretched condition of the roads added to the isolation of the various German provinces. Exacting customs' duties, military espionages, a weak postal system, contributed to keep Germans unacquainted, except with near neighbors. He, indeed, was a bold man who had gone over the mountains or beyond his native valley. Even a journey of two days caused grave anxieties; the carriage was almost certain to be overturned in some deep rut and the travelers injured or killed; robbers lay in wait in the mountains; protection was almost unheard of; life and property were insecure; every traveler had to be his own policeman, and never issued forth on a journey without dagger, pistol and sword.

-- Thus, 300 princelings, great or small, were determined to rule in their individual capacities; there was no Germany in fact, and that much of the German Empire that had outlived the gradual ruin of the old Holy Roman Empire, the great-ancestor of Germany, was now approaching complete dissolution.

The power lay no more in states, but in 300-odd local political bureaus, scattered everywhere, dominated often enough by an ambitious French prost.i.tute, or by some lucky ballet-master.

-- Then, there was August of Saxony, who is said to have been the father of 300 children. This foolish fellow's fetes cost thalers by the wagon-load; one set of Chinese porcelains ran into the millions, and it cost 6,000 thalers to gild the gondolas for a night in June, to say nothing of the fancy ball.

-- The Baden monarch, Charles William, built Carlsruhe in the deep forest, the better that his orgies be kept from prying eyes.

-- Eberhardt of Wuertemberg gave the whole conduct of his government over to women and Jews--and by the way the Jews were the only saving force. As for the Graevenitz woman, she was king in petticoats. She mortgaged crown lands and raised h.e.l.l generally. One day in church she made a fuss about not being mentioned among royal rulers, and the pastor immediately replied: "Madam, we mention you daily in our prayers when we say: 'O Lord, deliver us from all evil!'" Once, in time of famine, Charles William scattered loaves of bread; the rabble maddened by hunger fought to the death for the dole!

-- Also, there were Ernest of Hanover and Tony of Brunswick, two precious rascals, with all their retinue of mistresses, mistresses'

maids, mothers, hangers-on, and pimps. Carl Magnus had his Grehweiler palace costing 180,000 guelden. He grew so desperate that the Emperor sent him to a fortress for ten years' imprisonment, for forging doc.u.ments to raise the wind. Count Limburg-Styrum was a princeling whose army consisted of one colonel, six officers and two privates!

Count William of Bueckeburg had a fort with 300 guns, defending a cabbage patch. Count Frederick of Salm-Kyrburg swindled the churches; and in tiny Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, only 15 miles square, was a royal palace of 350 rooms with clocks of all sizes, great and small, in each apartment. This count went mad over clocks, but was popular with the working cla.s.s; often he would take a man off a job in order to laugh and joke.

Also, Frederick had original taste in military affairs; his army comprised 150 soldiers, with 28 guards on horseback. The prince prided himself on being a wrestler, and one day when a yokel threw the prince, the prince set up a great cry, "I slipped on a cherry stone!"--and this regardless of the fact that it was not the time of the year for cherries.

-- There was another local ruler, Ludwig Guenther, who was fond of painting horses, and on his death 246-odd horse pictures adorned the walls of his palace.

-- "Show a German a door and tell him to go through, and he will try to break a hole in the wall."