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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/34072-8.txt b/34072-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0723d3d --- /dev/null +++ b/34072-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1507 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Evolution of an Empire, by Mary Parmele + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Evolution of an Empire + A Brief Historical Sketch of Germany + +Author: Mary Parmele + +Release Date: October 15, 2010 [EBook #34072] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + + + + + +THE + +EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE + + +A BRIEF HISTORICAL SKETCH OF + +GERMANY + + + +BY + +MARY PARMELE + + + + +_SECOND EDITION_ + + + + +NEW YORK + +WILLIAM BEVERLEY HARISON, + +59 FIFTH AVENUE + +1893. + + + + +COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY + +PARMELE & CHAFFEE. + + + +Press of J. J. Little & Co. + +Astor Place, New York + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +CHAPTER I. + +Indo-European Migrations--Divisions of the Aryan Family into European +Races--Laying the Foundations of the German Empire + + +CHAPTER II. + +Hermann--Subdivisions of the Teutonic Race + + +CHAPTER III. + +Ulfila--Migrations of Teutonic Races--Fall of Rome before +Alaric--Hunnish Invasion--Modern Europe foreshadowed + + +CHAPTER IV. + +Anglo-Saxon Occupation of Britain + + +CHAPTER V. + +Teuton Occupation of Gaul--Final Severing of Connection with Roman +Empire--Clovis, King of France--Merovingian Kings--Pippin--Beginning of +Carlovingian Line + + +CHAPTER VI. + +Charlemagne--Separation of France and Germany--Growth of Spiritual +Power--Conflict between Pope Gregory VII. and Henry IV.--Entire +Supremacy of the Church + + +CHAPTER VII. + +Europe in the Hands of Three Men--Charles V., Francis I., and Henry +VIII.--Indulgences sold by Leo X.--Birth of Protestantism + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +Thirty Years' War--Decay of the German Empire + + +CHAPTER IX. + +Napoleon Bonaparte--German Empire Extinct--Waterloo--German States +confederated, with Austria at the Head + + +CHAPTER X. + +Schleswig-Holstein--Bismarck--War with Austria--Königgrätz + + +CHAPTER XI. + +Napoleon III.--War with France--Germans in Paris--William crowned +German Emperor at Versailles + + +CHAPTER XII. + +Death of Emperor William--Death of Frederick--William II. Emperor--His +Policy--Situation in Europe + + + + +EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. + + +CHAPTER I. + +Foundation building is neither picturesque nor especially interesting, +but it is indispensable. However fair the structure is to be, one must +first lay the rough-hewn stones upon which it is to rest. It would be +much pleasanter in this sketch to display at once the minarets and +towers, and stained-glass windows; but that can only be done when one's +castle is in Spain. + +Would we comprehend the Germany of to-day, we must hold firmly in our +minds an epitome of what it has been, and see vividly the devious path +of its development through the ages. + +The German nation is of ancient lineage, and indeed belongs to the +royal line of human descent, the Aryan; its ancestral roots running +back until lost in the heart of Asia, in the mists of antiquity. + +The home of the Aryan race is shrouded in mystery, as are the impelling +causes which sent those successive tides of humanity into Europe. But +we know with certainty that when the last great wave spread over +Eastern Europe, or Russia, about one thousand years before Christ, the +submergence of that continent was complete. + +Before the coming of the Aryan, the Rhine flowed as now; the Alps +pierced the sky with their glistening peaks as they do to-day; the +Danube, the Rhône, hurried on, as now, toward the sea. Was it all a +beautiful, unpeopled solitude waiting in silence for the richly endowed +Asiatic to come and possess it? Far from it. It was teeming with +humanity--if, indeed, we may call such the race which modern research +and discovery has revealed to us. It is only within the last thirty +years that anything whatever has been known of prehistoric man; but now +we are able to reconstruct him with probable accuracy. A creature, +bestial in appearance and in life; dwelling in caves, which, however, a +dawning sense of a higher humanity led him to decorate with carvings of +birds and fishes; but, certain it is, the brain which inhabited that +skull was incapable of performing the mental processes necessary to the +simplest form of civilization; and life must have been to him simply a +thing of fierce appetites and brutal instincts. Such was the being +encountered by the Aryan, when he penetrated the mysterious land beyond +the confines of Greece and Italy. + +The extermination, and perhaps, to some extent, assimilation, of this +terrible race must have required centuries of brutalizing conflict, +and, it is easy to imagine, would have produced just such men as were +the northern barbarians, who for five hundred years terrorized Europe: +men insensible to fear, terrible, fierce, but with fine instincts for +civilization--dormant Aryan germs, which quickly developed when brought +into contact with a superior race. + +The earliest Indo-European migration is supposed to have been into +Greece and Italy, where was laid the basis for the civilization of the +world. The second was probably into Western Europe and the British +Isles; then, after many centuries, the central, and last, and at a time +comparatively recent, into the Eastern portion of the continent. + +So by the fourth century B.C. three great divisions of the Aryan race +occupied Europe north of Greece and Italy. The Keltic, the western; +the Teutonic, the central; the Slavonic, the eastern; and these, in +turn, had ramified into new subdivisions or tribes. + +To state it, as in the pedigree of the individual, the Aryan was the +founder, the father of the family; Slav, Teuton, and Kelt the three +sons. Gaul and Briton were sons of the Kelt; Saxon, Angle, Helvetian, +etc., sons of the Teuton; and all alike grandchildren of the Aryan; +whom--to carry the illustration farther--we may imagine to have had +older children, who long ago had left the paternal home and settled +about the Caspian and Mediterranean Seas. Mede, Persian, Greek, Roman, +apparently bearing few marks of kinship to these uncouth younger +brothers whom we have found in Europe in this fourth century B.C., but +with nevertheless the same cradle, and the same ancestral roots. + +It is the Teutonic branch of the Aryan family with which we have to do +now. The river Rhine flowed between them and their Keltic brothers, +and it was by the Keltic Gauls on the west side of this river that they +were first called Germans, which, in the language of the Kelt, meant +simply neighbors. + +CHAPTER II. + +Greece and Rome were unaware of the existence of the Teuton until about +the year 330 B.C., when Pythias, a Greek navigator, came home from a +voyage to the Baltic with terrible tales of the Goths whom he had met. +Nearly one century before Christ the inhabitants of Italy were enabled +to judge for themselves of the accuracy of the description. Driven +from their homes by the inroads of the sea, the Goths poured in a +hungry torrent down into the tempting vineyards of Northern Italy. +Gigantic in stature, with long yellow hair, eyes blue but fierce--what +wonder that the people thought they were scarcely human, and fled +affrighted, leaving them to enjoy the vineyards at their leisure. + +Accounts of this uncanny host reached Rome, which soon knew of their +breastplates of iron, their helmets crowned with heads of wild beasts, +their white shields glistening in the sun, and, more terrible than all, +of their priestesses, clad in white linen, who prophesied and offered +human sacrifices to their gods. + +But the sacrifices did not avail against the legions which the great +Consul Marius led against them. The ponderous Goth was not yet a match +for the finer skill of the Roman, and the invaders were exterminated at +Aix-la-Chapelle, 102 B.C. The women, in despair, slew first their +children and then themselves, a few only surviving to be paraded in +chains at the triumph accorded to Marius on his return to Rome. Such +was the first appearance of the Teuton in the Eternal City, and the +last until five hundred years later, when the conditions were changed. + +At the time of this first invasion of the Goths they had made some +progress in political and social organization, though of the simplest +kind. Predatory in habits and fierce as the wild beasts of their +forests, they were, however, romantic in ideals, had a fine sense of +the beautiful. They exalted woman, and honored marriage and the family +relation to an extent beyond any ancient people. When I have said +that, added to this, they had a glimmering sense of human rights in +communities and in the State, it will be seen that the German race had +the basis of a superior civilization; and when the Christian era +dawned, though the world knew it not, a great nation was coming into +organic form. + +At this period, Julius Cæsar had made Roman provinces of Gaul and +Britain; and now the wave of conquest naturally overflowed the boundary +line into the land of the Teuton; and the German, in his barbaric +simplicity, stood face to face with that finished human product, the +astute, cultivated Roman. + +For centuries they fought--always on German soil--the legions often +repulsed, yet pressing on and on, until a chain of Roman fortresses +stretched from the Rhine to the Baltic, and the people were held--not +subjugated--by Roman power. + +About the year 100 of our era there arose the first heroic figure in +the history of Germany, when Hermann made a prodigious but ineffectual +attempt to consolidate his people and expel the Romans. The colossal +statue only recently erected in Germany, is a tribute to the unhappy +hero of eighteen centuries ago. + +At the time of this attempt the Germans had learned much from the +superior civilization by which they were invaded. They were no longer +the barbarous race which had trampled down the vineyards of northern +Italy two hundred years before. Nor was this lesson in civilization +yet over. For five hundred years Teuton and Roman continued the +struggle. The one by the process growing wiser, richer in resource, +and in supplementing his rude strength with the finer methods of old +civilizations, becoming a more and more dangerous adversary; while the +other saw himself more and more enfeebled, and, wearied with the +conflict, felt decrepitude stealing surely over him. + +In the year 300 the Teutons had ramified into six branches--the +Burgundians, Thuringians, Franks, Saxons, Allemani, and Goths--all one +in race, but each with its own distinct traits and life. The Allemani +were so called from _aller-mannen_--all men; seeming to signify that +this tribe was composed of the fragments of many tribes. Why this +tribal name should have become that of the whole German nation is not +apparent. Obviously the word Allemagne has this origin, just as +Deutsch may be as readily traced to Teuton. + +But of these six tribes it was the Goths who first adopted +Christianity, and took on the forms of a higher civilization. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +As some winged seed is wafted from a fair garden into a dark, distant +forest, and there takes root and blossoms, so was the seed-germ of +Christianity caught by the wind of destiny, and carried from Palestine +to the heart of pagan Germany, where, strange to say, it found +congenial soil. + +The story is a romantic one. A Christian boy in Asia Minor, while +straying on the shores of the Mediterranean, was captured by some +Goths, who took their fair-haired prize home to their own land, and +named him Ulfila. + +The boy, with his heart all aflame for the religion in which he had +been nurtured, told his captors the story of Calvary--of Christ and His +gospel of peace and love--and lived to see the terrible sacrificial +altars replaced by the Cross. + +The Goths had no alphabet, so Ulfila invented one, and then translated +the Bible into their rude speech. A part of this translation is now +preserved in Sweden, and is the earliest extant specimen of the Gothic +language. Even to the unlearned observer, this Gothic version of the +Lord's Prayer, written by Ulfila more than one thousand five hundred +years ago, bears such strong marks of kinship to the German and English +versions that it can be easily read by us to-day, and makes us realize +how much of the Teuton has mingled with our own life and speech. + +The enormous vitality of the Teutons was evinced in their restless +desire to extend themselves. They were not comfortable neighbors. The +Franks made predatory incursions into Gaul, which they finally overran +and possessed; the Allemani, into Italy; the Saxons, in the same +manner, overran Britain; while the stalwart Goths addressed their blows +to the Roman Empire--the common foe of all--until 410 _Anno Domini_, +when, for a second time, Teuton feet trod the streets of Rome, this +time not chained to the chariot of a Marius, but conquerors. And when +the gates of the Eternal City yielded to the blows of Alaric, the Roman +Empire virtually ceased to exist. + +So this rude people, which in the time of Julius Cæsar was buried in +the forests of Central Europe, in six hundred years from his time +occupied all of Europe, and was beginning to lay the foundations of a +new empire upon the fragments of the old. + +There is not time to tell how the newly Christianized and civilized +Goths were now in turn attacked by the Huns, a race vastly more fierce +and terrible than they had ever been, who swarmed down upon them +suddenly, like the locusts of Egypt, and under the leadership of Attila +swept everything before them; then, after leaving a track of blood and +ashes through Germany, disappearing again over the steppes of Russia, +from whence they had mysteriously come; a tremendous upturning force, +but bearing no relation to the future result more than the plough to +the future grain. + +There had been no repose for Europe yet--incessant tribal changes; a +surging mass of humanity pouring from one land into another. The +troubled continent was a great, seething caldron, from which was to +emerge a new civilization. But soon after this final convulsion of the +Hunnish invasion the migrations ceased, and now, about the year 570, +the foundations of the present European divisions began to appear. In +Britain, subjugated by the Angles and Saxons, we see foreshadowed the +Anglo-Saxon England of to-day; in the country lying east and west of +the Rhine, France and Germany begin to be outlined; while the smaller +German states are distinctly visible, some of them with geographical +divisions almost the same as now. Modern Europe was beginning to +crystallize. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +I cannot resist the temptation of saying a few words about the +Anglo-Saxon occupation of Britain, which, as it virtually converted us +from Kelts into Teutons, is not a digression. + +From the time of Julius Cæsar the island of Britain had been occupied +by the Romans, and in consequence had become partly civilized and +Christianized. Upon the fall of the empire, the Roman legions were +withdrawn, and the people, left defenceless, became the prey of their +own northern barbarians, the Picts and Scots; the drama of Southern +Europe and the Goths being reënacted on a diminished scale. In the +fourth century the Britons implored the Angles and Saxons to come and +protect them from these savages. Invited as allies, they came as +invaders, and remained as conquerors, implanting their habits, speech, +and paganism upon the prostrate island. It was the extermination of +this exotic paganism which impelled to those deeds of valor recited in +the Round Table romances, and which made King Arthur and his knights +the theme of poet and minstrel for centuries. + +But the Saxon had come to stay, and Teuton and Kelt became merged, much +as do the lion and lamb, after the former has dined! The Teutonic +Saxon may be said to have dined on the Keltic Briton, and remained +master of the island until the Normans came, six centuries later, and +in turn dominated, and made him bear the yoke of servitude. + +Nor was this French-speaking Norman, French at all, except by adoption; +being, in fact, the terrible Northman of two centuries before, on +account of whose ravages the noble had entrenched himself in his strong +castle, and the wretched serf had in mortal terror sold himself and all +that he possessed, for the protection of its solid walls and moat; and +thus had been laid the foundations of feudalism. He it was who, with +long hair reeking with rancid oil, battle-axe, spear, and iron +hook--with which to capture human and other prey--had held France in a +state of unspeakable terror for centuries, but who had finally settled +down as respectable French citizen in the sea-board province of +Normandy, and in two centuries had made such wonderful improvement in +manners, apparel, and speech, that the simple Saxon baron stood abashed +before the splendid refinements of his conquerors. + +The origin of this mysterious Northman is unknown; but whatever it was, +or whoever he was, he certainly possessed Aryan germs of high potency. + +So the Saxon had built the solid walls of the racial structure upon a +foundation of Britons; and, though with no thought for beauty, had +built well, with strong, true structural lines. It was the Norman who +finished and decorated the structure, but he did not alter one of these +lines; the speech, traits, institutions, and habits of England being at +the core Saxon to-day, while there is a decorative surface only of +Norman. + +So when the Englishman calls himself with swelling pride, a Briton, he +speaks wide of the mark. The Keltic Briton was buried fathoms deep +under seven centuries of Saxon rule, and then, to make the extinction +more complete, was overlaid with this brilliant lacquer of Norman +surface. And if that mixed product, the English people, have any race +paternity, it is Teutonic, and herein may lie the impossibility of +making the English and Irish a homogeneous people--the English Teuton +and Irish Kelt being in the nature of things antagonistic, the +particles refuse to combine chemically, and can only be brought +together (to use the language of the chemist) in mechanical mixture. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +At the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England, and for three +centuries later, the history of France and Germany were one and the +same. + +The Roman Empire, in its decrepitude, found it a difficult task to +retain its dominion over Gaul, and so enlisted the Franks as allies. +Thus was made a breach in the wall between the Kelt and the Teuton, +through which in time flowed an irresistible German torrent, +intermingling with the former population, and, by virtue of its +superior strength, spreading itself over the land in permanent +dominion; and when Clovis, their Frankish leader, drove out from Gaul +the last remnant of Roman power, in 483 of our era, all connection with +the expiring empire was severed. The loose confederation of tribes was +gathered by the strong hand of the conquering Frank under one head, and +Clovis was proclaimed king, with hereditary rights for his children. + +With this event the doors close upon antiquity, and we are in the path +which leads swiftly to modern history. + +Clovis, the son of Merowig, gave his name to the dynasty thus founded. +One of his first acts was the renouncing of paganism, through the +influence of his wife, Clotilde, so that from their very birth France +and Germany were Christian, while England lingered for centuries under +pagan rule. + +The grandchildren of Clovis and Clotilde, Siegfried and Brunhilde, were +the heroes of the "Niebelungen Lied," and their adventures inspired not +alone the great German epic, but have lent to the greatest music of +modern times its majestic, heroic swing. + +The real Brunhilde did not immolate herself upon her husband's funeral +pile, as in the musical romance, but an end more tragic and vastly more +terrible was hers. After being tortured for three days, her hair was +tied to the tail of a fiery horse, spurs plunged into his sides, and +the unhappy queen was ground to fragments upon the stones of the Rue +St. Honoré, Paris, where this tragedy occurred about the year 600 A.D. + +But the heroic strain in the Merovingian blood soon exhausted itself. +The kings became effeminate, luxurious, and, after a time, too indolent +even to govern, and finally gave entire control of state affairs to a +royal steward, known as "_maire du palais_" or _major domus_, who was +indeed king _de facto_, with authority supreme over the king himself. + +Pepin was the last of these royal stewards. Conscious of his own +superior fitness, he took the crown from the long, perfumed locks of +the last Merovingian king and placed it upon his own head. What matter +that he had no drop of royal blood in his veins? He held the sceptre +with firm hand, by the divine right of ability, leaving it upon his +death to his second son Charlemagne, who was destined to wield it by +divine right of born conqueror and ruler of men. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +This colossal figure stands the one supreme historical landmark midway +between Julius Cæsar and Napoleon Bonaparte. In looking back, he saw +not his equal in history until he beheld Cæsar. Nor in looking forward +would he have seen another until just one thousand years later, when +the world seemed to have found another master in Napoleon Bonaparte. + +In the amplitude of his intelligence, in the splendor of his +attributes, and in his seven feet of stature, Charlemagne was every +inch a king. He was twenty-nine years old when, by the death of his +father, Pepin, he became monarch, and set about his task, which was, to +develop a great empire--overturning, conquering, despotic, often cruel, +but always with the high purpose of giving to his race a higher +civilization. In twenty-nine years more this task was accomplished, +and a map of the German Empire was a map of Europe. On Christmas day, +in the year 800, in the Cathedral of St. Peter's, at Rome, he received +the imperial crown from Pope Leo III., and was greeted with cries of +"Life and victory to Carolus Magnus, crowned by God Emperor of the +Romans;" and at that moment he stood at the head of an empire which +included all Christendom. + +Charlemagne acknowledged the pope who crowned him as his spiritual +sovereign, while, on the other hand, the pope bowed before the emperor +who appointed him, as his temporal sovereign. It was a magnificent, +all-embracing scheme of empire, of which the spiritual head was at +Rome, and the temporal at Aix-la-Chapelle. + +It seemed as if by this dual supremacy Charlemagne had provided for all +possible exigencies of human government. He rested content, no doubt +thinking he had embodied a perfect ideal in creating a system which +should thus coördinate and embrace both the spiritual and temporal +needs of an empire. Unfortunately, in order to be realized, it needed +always the wisest of emperors and best of popes. As soon as his +controlling hand was removed unexpected dangers assailed his work. + +In less than fifty years from his coronation, his three grandsons had +quarrelled and torn the empire into as many parts, the elder retaining +the imperial title. This event, 841 of our era, marks the beginning of +France and Germany as distinct nationalities; hence it is that both +nations claim Charlemagne, whereas he belongs to the French just as +Queen Elizabeth does to Americans. + +In forecasting his plans of empire, it is not probable that danger of +conflict between the spiritual and temporal heads ever occurred to +Charlemagne. But that is precisely what happened. Even this astute, +far-seeing man did not suspect the nature of the power with which he +formed this close alliance. His plan of government made the pope +distinctly the creation of the emperor. His creature, and hence +subordinate. But there was a tremendous principle of growth in that +spiritual centre! + +The first five hundred years after Christ the pope had been simply +Bishop of Rome. In the next five hundred years he was nominal head of +the whole Church. As the Church was entering upon its third +five-hundred-year lease, in the year 1073, the fiery monk Hildebrand, +who had now become Pope Gregory VII., determined it should be supreme +in authority over all other powers--a religious empire, existing by +Divine right, independent of the fate of nations or will of kings and +emperors. Henry IV., who was then emperor, indignant at these insolent +pretensions, deposed the pope--this creature of his own appointing, who +would override the authority of the power which had created him! + +The pope excommunicated the emperor. Each had done his worst, pope and +emperor; and had Henry stood his ground as he might, for he would have +had ample support from his people, it would have been a gain of +centuries for Europe. But--the ban of excommunication, with its +attendant horrors here, and still worse hereafter--it was more than he +could bear. Affrighted, trembling, penitent, he crossed the Alps in +dead of winter, crept to the castle of Canossa, near Parma, where +Hildebrand had taken refuge; and there this successor to Charlemagne, +this ruler of all Christendom, standing barefoot and clad in sackcloth +shirt, humbly begged admittance. The pope's triumph was complete. So +he let him shiver for three days in cold and rain before he opened the +gates and gave him forgiveness and the kiss of peace. + +The Church had never scored so tremendous a victory. She was supreme +over every earthly authority, and the hands on the face of time were +set back for centuries. Let Guelph and Ghibelline (the two political +parties representing the adherents of the pope and the emperor) storm +and struggle as they might, she need never more be afraid of +overstepping any humanly constituted bounds. + +And it was to be no empty panoply of power. The strong hand of +priestly authority must have its hold on every human conscience and +will. + +She sat and watched complacently as her children drove back the infidel +Saracens, conscious of her own growing strength, and that she was +becoming still stronger as those three tidal waves of religious frenzy +swept over Europe into the Holy Land. + +There was no question of supremacy now between temporal and spiritual +heads. All the lines of power--all the threads of human destiny--led +to Rome, and were found at last in the papal hand. + +But these were halcyon days. There was a cloud already on the horizon, +the size of a man's hand, and that hand was--Wickliffe's--the hand +which had torn the veil of mystery from the Bible by translating it +into the speech of the common people, the hand which had written words +inciting rebellion against church authority. + +The clouds grew larger and darker when printing came, disseminating the +new heresies. The Bible was broadcast in the hands of the people, who +began to manifest a dangerous tendency to think! + +The whole enginery of thumbscrew, rack, and stake was set to work. +Tender human flesh shrinks from burning, lacerating, and torture, so +the griefs, longings, and aspirations of thousands of hearts flowed in +streams deep down below the surface, coming to light here and there for +brief moments among the followers of Huss, the Albigenses, the +Waldenses, only to be driven back again into silence and despair. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +In the early part of the sixteenth century the fate of Europe was in +the hands of three men--Charles V., Emperor of Germany; Francis I., +King of France, and Henry VIII., King of England. + +Charles was half Fleming and half Spaniard, with the grasping +acquisitiveness of the one nation, and the proud, fanatical cruelty of +the other. Small of stature, plain in feature, sedate, quiet, crafty, +he was playing a desperate game with Francis I. for supremacy in Europe. + +Francis, handsome as an Apollo, accomplished, fascinating, profligate, +was fully his match in ambition. Covering his worst qualities with a +gorgeous mantle of generosity and chivalrous sense of honor, he was the +insidious corrupter of morals in France; creating a sentiment which +laughed at virtue and innocence as qualities belonging to a lower class +of society. + +Each of these men was striving to enlist Henry VIII. upon his side, by +appealing to the cruel caprices of that vain, ostentatious, arrogant +king, who in turn tried to use them for the furthering of his own +desires and purposes. + +It was a sort of triangular game between the three monarchs--a game +full of finesse and far-reaching designs. If Charles attacked Francis, +Henry attacked Charles. While the astute Charles, knowing well the +desire of the English king to repudiate Katharine and make Anne Boleyn +his queen, whispered seductive promises of the papal chair to Wolsey, +who was in turn to establish his own influence over his royal master by +bringing about the marriage with Anne, upon which the king's heart was +set, and then be rewarded by securing Henry's promise of neutrality for +Charles, in his designs of over-reaching Francis--and after that, the +road to Rome for the aspiring cardinal would be a straight one! + +It was an intricate diplomatic net-work, in which the thread of Henry's +desire for the fair Anne was mingled with Wolsey's desire for +preferment, and both interlaced with the ambitious, far-reaching +purposes of the other two monarchs. + +All these events were very absorbing, and while they were splendidly +gilding the surface of Europe in the first half of the sixteenth +century, it seemed a small matter that an obscure monk was denouncing +the pope and defying the power of the Catholic Church. Little did +Charles suspect that when his victories and edicts were forgotten, the +words of the insolent heretic would still be echoing down the ages. + +A few years later, and the Apollo-like beauty and false heart of +Francis I. were dissolving in the grave--Henry VIII. had gone to +another world, to meet his reward--and his wives--and Charles V. was +sadly counting his beads in the monastery of St. Jerome, at Yuste, +reflecting upon the vanity of human ambitions--but the murmur of +protest from the unknown monk had become a roar--the rivulet had +swollen into a threatening torrent. As it is the invisible forces that +are the most powerful in nature, so it is the obscure and least +observed events that have accomplished the most tremendous revolutions +in human affairs. + +In the year 1517, when it had not yet occurred to Henry's sensitive +conscience that his marriage with Katharine, his brother's widow, was +illegal, and while Charles V., that sedate young man, who "looked so +modest, and soared so high," was revolving plans for the extension of +his empire, Pope Leo X., the pious Vicar of Christ upon earth, and +elegant patron of Michael Angelo and Raphael, found his income all too +small for his magnificent tastes. It does not seem to have occurred to +him that his tastes were too costly for his income; he simply +recognized that something must be done, and at once, to fill his empty +purse. But what should it be? A simple and ingenious expedient solved +the perplexing problem. He would issue a proclamation to his "loving, +faithful children," that he would grant absolution for all sorts of +crimes, the prices graduated to suit the enormity of the offence. We +have not seen the proclamation, but doubt not it was in most caressing +Latin, for can anything exceed the velvety softness of the gloves worn +on the hands which sign papal decrees? + +Simple lying and slander were cheap; perjury and sins against chastity +more costly; while the use of the stiletto, of poison, and the hired +assassin could be enjoyed only by the richest. It worked well. In the +hopeful words of a pious dignitary, "as soon as the money chinks in the +coffer, the soul springs out of purgatory." Who could resist such +promise? Money flowed in swollen streams into the thirsty coffers, +many even paying in advance for crimes they intended to commit! + +Martin Luther was the one man who dared to stand up and denounce this +tax upon crime, this papal trade in vice. The people had at last found +a voice and a leader. + +Protestantism sprang into existence without the slow process of growth. +It had long been maturing in silence and darkness, and at the trumpet +tones of Luther, declared itself a power upon the earth. Here was a +revolt beyond the reach of thumbscrew and stake! You could not burn a +million people! + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +The Church gathered herself for one supreme effort to stem this fatal +tide, which was loosening her foundations. + +Just one hundred years from the birth of Protestantism, pope and +emperor, putting their spiritual and temporal heads together, planned a +crusade against twenty-five million Protestants. + +The desultory war against the new heresy had been ineffectual. As it +was stamped out in one place, it blazed up afresh in others. Now it +should be, at whatever cost, exterminated in the German Empire. + +Thus was initiated what is known as the "Thirty Years' War," the most +desolating in history. Generations came and went while it raged fierce +and furious--eight million slain, and twelve million surviving to meet +horrors worse than death. Cattle exterminated, food exhausted, the +uncultivated fields drenched with blood and tears--a vast graveyard, in +which were the mouldering corpses of eight million slaughtered people, +one-third of the population of the empire! Earth was kneaded into +bread; men found dead with their mouths filled with grass; and there +are frightful stories of human beings hunted down, like deer, for food. + +The spirit of the people was broken. Germany had been set back two +hundred years. And for what? Not to accomplish any high purpose, not +even from mistaken Christian zeal, but simply to carry out the despotic +resolve of the Catholic Church to rule the minds and consciences of all +men through its popes and priesthood. It was the old battle commenced +six centuries before. Had Henry not gone to Canossa in 1073, there had +been no Thirty Years' War in 1618! + +The empire of Charlemagne virtually perished during this struggle, the +Hapsburgs wearing its empty ornaments and trappings for a couple of +centuries more, imaginary rulers of an imaginary empire, the reality +and substance of which had departed. + +There was a flickering of the dying splendor when Maria Theresa was +empress (mother of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette), and impressed her +own strong, brilliant personality upon her empire and age--an age +rendered memorable also by the great Frederick, who brought Prussia +from obscurity to be ranked with the great powers, and thus rekindled +national pride and renewed the hopes of Germany. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +When the nineteenth century dawned, a new and striking figure had +appeared in Europe. Napoleon Bonaparte had arisen with a bound from +obscurity in Corsica to supreme authority in France, and with audacious +display of power wielded by genius, hurled his battalions across the +face of Europe. + +He seemed the embodiment of some new and irresistible force. Kingdoms +melted before him, and kings and princes vied with each other in doing +his bidding quickly, as he tore down old political divisions, and, as +it were, etched a new map of Europe with his sword; distributing +thrones as boys do marbles, until there was not an uncrowned head in +his own or his wife's family, or scarcely among his intimate friends. +He made his brother Joseph king of Spain; Bernadotte, his friend, king +of Sweden; Murat, his brother-in-law, king of Naples. Created the +kingdom of Holland and gave it to his brother Louis; and another +kingdom of Westphalia, which he gave to his brother Jerome. Appointed +Eugene Beauharnais, his stepson, viceroy of Italy. Married Hortense, +his step-daughter, to Louis, King of Holland; and Stephanie, Empress +Josephine's niece, to the Grand Duke of Baden. + +It will be observed that when there were not enough thrones to go +around, he simply created a kingdom! Certainly, with all his faults, +no one can accuse him of not having provided well for his family! + +At a touch from this Man of Destiny, the shadowy fabric of the German +Empire crumbled to dust. Just one thousand years from the crowning of +its first emperor Charlemagne, its last, Francis II., laid down his +arms and his sceptre before Napoleon, and with them the proud title of +"Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire," assumed on that Christmas day, in +the Cathedral of St. Peter's, in the year 800. + +When Napoleon married Marie Louise, daughter of this deposed monarch +who had occupied the throne of the Cæsars, his dream of universal +empire seemed realized. The continent of Europe was actually under his +feet. History had only twice before witnessed such a display of power, +and contained only three men as colossal in triumphs--Alexander, Julius +Cæsar, and Charlemagne. + +But it was the mantle of these last two that he felt he was destined to +wear, the glittering pinnacles of the great Roman Empire being ever +before his romantic ambition. Hence, when the longed-for son was born +he called him King of Rome. And why should he not? Was not his mother +daughter of a line of emperors leading back to Charlemagne, first +emperor of the Holy Roman Empire? + +But with the first reverse, this artificially created empire trembled +upon its foundations, and upon his defeat at Waterloo, 1815, one +thousand years from the death of Charlemagne, the whole fabric fell +apart into fragments. The crowns rolled off the heads of Joseph, +Jerome, Louis, and the rest of them. The magical creation passed away +like a vision of the night. + +Europe rallied from the spell which this Corsican magician had thrown +over her, and while he lay chained to the rock at St. Helena, the +vulture of regret eating his heart away, Metternich, prime minister of +Austria, was restoring order to Germany. + +A confederation of states was formed, with Austria as its chief, each +to be represented at a general Diet, held at Frankfort; and for fifty +years such was the condition of Germany. Prussia, fallen from her high +position under Frederick the Great, sinking lower and lower in the +scale of nations, dominated by Austria, powerless to resent insult, her +people helpless and hopeless, looking only to final disintegration and +absorption into the powerful states about her. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +We have now reached a period with which readers of to-day have more or +less personal familiarity. This hour of deep depression in Germany was +the one which comes before the dawn. + +The Schleswig-Holstein episode was a complicated, tiresome tangle, even +while it was enacting, and now is to most people only another name for +a rusty German key with which Pandora's box was opened for Europe just +twenty-five years ago. But it was a pivotal incident, and must be +understood in order to make clear the rapid succession of events +following, of which it was the first link in the chain. + +The two adjacent dukedoms of Schleswig and Holstein, which constitute a +sort of natural bridge about one hundred and fifty miles long and fifty +miles wide, between Denmark and Prussia, are, by the way, the land of +nativity for the Anglo-Saxon race, the Angles having inhabited +Schleswig, and the Saxons Holstein, at the time they so kindly +protected the Britons from the Picts and Scots! + +So it is probable that every member of this Anglo-Saxon family has +ancestral roots running back to that fertile strip of pasture land, +which was geographically and, at a later day, historically so important. + +At the time we are now considering, it had for many years been under +the Danish protectorate, the King of Denmark being, by virtue of his +position, also Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, just as the German Emperor +is now King of Prussia by virtue of his imperial office. + +But this little people were by no means merged with the Danish by this +arrangement; on the contrary, they preserved very jealously their own +traits and ancestral traditions. Among these, was the exclusion of +women from the royal succession--the Salic law, framed by their Frank +ancestors centuries before on the banks of the river Saale, being part +of their constitution. Hence, when King Frederick VII. of Denmark died +in 1862 without male heir, and King Christian IX. became king, the +people of the two dukedoms hotly refused to recognize him as their +lawful ruler, but claimed their right of reversion to Duke Frederick +VIII., who was in the direct male line of succession. + +Had the Salic law prevailed in Denmark, this Duke Frederick (father of +the present young Empress of Germany) would now (1890) be King of +Denmark instead of Christian IX. But it did not exist, so Christian, +father of the Empress of Russia--of the Princess of Wales--and of King +George of Greece--became, in 1862, lawful King of Denmark, with rights +unimpaired by female descent. + +This was the beginning of changes destined to alter the face of Europe. + +Schleswig-Holstein revolted against being held by a ruler who, +according to her constitution, was not the terminal of the royal line, +and insisted upon bestowing herself upon the German Duke Frederick +VIII. Denmark naturally resisted this _anti-Christian_ revolt. Salic +law or no Salic law, the dukedoms were hers, and should stay. And, +indeed, they were a charming pastoral possession, a morsel which must +have sorely tempted the German appetite to be invited to take. But in +those days Prussia's big brother, Austria, had not alone to be +consulted, but placated. This was the more bitter because of having +once tasted the sweets of national greatness under Frederick; and now +even little Denmark dare defy and insult her! And was not this crown, +which King William had received from his dead brother in 1857, but a +badge of brilliant servitude, after all, to Francis Joseph, who was his +chief? + +However, in this instance the big brother, for reasons of his own, +thought well of the cession of the twin dukedoms to Prussia, and they +would have been quickly absorbed into the German "_Diet_" had not the +Great Powers (who since the Napoleonic episode had been very alert in +such matters) grimly said, "Hands off!" + +It was just at this crisis, in 1862, that Bismarck, having been +appointed to the office of Prime Minister of Prussia, came from the +courts of St. Petersburg and Paris, where he had been ambassador, and +commenced his series of brilliant games upon the European chess-board. + +King Christian of Denmark, pleased with his success in retaining the +refractory states, determined to go still farther; that is, to adopt a +new constitution separating these Siamese twins, which should, in fact, +detach Schleswig from Holstein, incorporating it permanently with +Denmark. + +This was in direct violation of the treaty with the Great Powers made +in London, 1852, and afforded the needed pretext for war. + +The moment and the man had arrived. Bismarck, with the intuition of a +good player, saw his opportunity, pushed up the pawn, +Schleswig-Holstein, and said, "Check to your king." + +The Prussian and Austrian troops poured into Denmark, and in a few +short weeks the blooming isthmus had ceased to be Danish, and had +become German. + +Austria generously said, "We will divide the prize. Schleswig shall be +Prussian, and Holstein Austrian." + +Could anything be more odious to the Prussian? The long arm of +Austrian tyranny stretching way over their land, up to their northern +seaboard! It might almost better have become Danish. But "all things +come to him who waits," and--Bismarck waited. + +In the diplomatic adjustments which followed it was an easy matter to +quarrel over the prize, and once more the needed pretext was at hand. +Bismarck again pushed up his useful little pawn, and said "check," but +this time to the Emperor of Austria. Ah! here was a game worth +watching. Europe and America, too, were willing to let their morning +coffee get cold in studying the moves. Francis Joseph did not see as +far into the game as his astute adversary, whose keen eye was focused +at long range upon a renewed and consolidated Germany. + +The conflict was short (only seven weeks), but the preparation had been +long and thorough. The 3d of July will long be remembered by Germany. +King William was there; the Crown Prince was there, now become "Unser +Fritz" by his superb military achievements, the ideal prince and +soldier of modern Europe; and Königgrätz, like Waterloo, decided the +game. Francis Joseph was checkmated. Germany was the head of its own +nation. Its servitude to Austria existed no more. What wonder that +the people were glad, or that Unser Fritz became their idol, and +Bismarck their demigod! + +The dismembered parts were soon, under a new constitution, consolidated +into a national union, which was Protestant and Prussian, and forever +separated from all that was Catholic and Austrian. In five short years +what a change! Truly, blood and iron had proved a wonderful tonic! + +And what of poor little Schleswig-Holstein, that land of our race +nativity? If she had indulged in any innocent expectation of benefit +from such brilliant espousal of her cause, such hope must have been +rudely dispelled when she found herself between these upper and nether +millstones, and she must have realized that she had been only the +humble hinge upon which the door of opportunity had swung open for +Germany. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +The rest can be briefly told. Napoleon III., in brand new splendor, +was watching these events from Paris. He had an uncomfortable sense +that everything was too new and fine. There is nothing like the smoke +of the battlefield to simulate the delightfully mellow tone which, in +its finest perfection, comes only from age. + +To humiliate this newly reconstructed Germany would give just the +needed touch to his prestige, and as no slightest pretext for war could +be found, one was made to order, in the shape of a pretended affront to +the French ambassador by the kindly old King William, while peacefully +sunning himself at Ems. + +The question at issue was of the candidature of a Hohenzollern to the +vacant throne of Spain. Finding this was unpopular, the name was +promptly withdrawn by Prussia, and there the incident would naturally +have ended. But Bernadetti, French ambassador to Germany, had +instructions to press the matter offensively upon the king, who, +recognizing an intended impertinence, turned on his heel and left him. + +The telegraph swiftly bore the news that the ambassador had been +publicly insulted by the King of Prussia. The French heart was +industriously fired, and the leaven worked well. The insolent Germans +must be taught that the great French Empire was not to be insulted with +impunity. Did not the beautiful empress herself buckle the sword upon +the emperor, and even upon the boy Prince Imperial, who should go and +witness for himself his father's triumphs, and receive an object +lesson, as it were, in avenging insult to the imperial dignity, which +would one day be in his keeping? + +The miserable end came quickly! + +In less than one month the emperor was a prisoner, and in seven months +his empire was swept out of existence; the Germans were in Paris--and +King William, Unser Fritz, Bismarck, and Von Moltke were quartered at +Versailles. + +Here it was that the dramatic climax was reached when King Ludwig II. +of Bavaria, in the name of the rest of the German States, laid their +united allegiance at the feet of King William of Prussia, as the head +of the German Empire, begging him to assume the crown of Charlemagne, +which should be hereditary in his family! Poor, mad suicide though he +was, for this act Ludwig's memory should be forever enshrined in the +German heart, for he certainly first suggested, and then carried to +completion, this splendid consummation, apparently indifferent to the +fact that his own kingly dignity would be abridged. Adoring the +picturesque and dramatic as he did, perhaps it seemed to this royal +spendthrift not too much to pay a kingdom for the privilege of acting +in one scene so imposing and dramatic! + +So, in January, 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors in the palace of +Versailles, King William assumed the title of "Emperor of Germany"--a +Germany richer by two French provinces and an enormous indemnity from +the conquered state; great in prestige and under the best of emperors +and greatest of prime ministers, augmenting hourly in all that +constitutes power in a state. In less than one decade--not yet ten +years from Bismarck's return to Berlin--a new Germany had arisen from +the fragments of the old, a Germany so great and powerful she was +likely to forget the degradation and humiliation of only a quarter of a +century ago. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +When that kingly old man, Emperor William, sank at last under the +weight of years, the crown so brilliantly won at Versailles in 1871 +rested on the head of Unser Fritz--no longer in the flush of victorious +youth, but a poor, stricken man. The tardy honors had come too late. +In vain he struggled against the inevitable, striving to inaugurate the +beneficent policy which had been the dream of his life. Unhappy +Frederick! His death-chamber seemed the playground for every hateful +human passion, and the Furies to have made it their abode, as his +unfulfilled life slipped away from his loosening grasp! At last it was +ended. The untarnished soul and the tortured body parted company, and +William II. reigned in his stead. + +The sensibilities of the world had been shocked by the unfilial conduct +of this youth, and it was with little respect that he was seen +restlessly flitting from one court to another, displaying his imperial +trappings like a child with new toys. People laughed to think they had +ever been afraid of this aimless boy. Upon one point only was he +relentless. Man or newspaper breathing faintest whisper of praise for +the dead Frederick came swift under the political guillotine! Did he +wish to efface his father's memory from the hearts of his people? +Would he really, if he could, tear that brief, sad chapter from his +nation's history? It seemed so. Europe watched him much as one does a +headlong boy, who, with the confidence born of vanity and ignorance, +plays with deadly weapons, and imperils his own and his neighbors' +safety. The peace of the continent lay more than ever in the hand of +Bismarck, who alone had power to restrain this dangerous young ruler. + +But when William II. posed as the friend of the workingman and ally of +the socialist, the absurdity and the unexpectedness were amusing. What +did he care for industrial problems and the condition of the laboring +classes? The idea uppermost in his restless brain was that he was a +predestined hero, not fitted for the _rôle_ of a Merovingian king, with +a _maire du palais_. He would be the artificer of his own policy, and +be enrolled among the great sovereigns of history. + +There were rumors of dissension with his chancellor, whom finally he +removed, and said practically, "_l'etat, c'est moi_." There was +nothing now to restrain his restless vagaries, and a catastrophe seemed +at hand. + +This is the way it looked a few months ago. But writing current +history is much like drawing pictures upon the sand, which the incoming +tide effaces. + +The man who had long held the destinies of Europe in his hand sat in +the retirement of Schönhausen, complacently smoking and waiting for the +catastrophe, and the recall which would surely come. But he was not +needed. Was the _Zeit Geist_ penetrating the iron-encrusted empire? +William had forgotten his toys and was inaugurating +reforms--industrial, educational, social, which touched the lowest +stratum of his people. + +We cannot yet forget those visits to San Remo, the cruel intriguing +over his father's death-bed; but greatness lies in the path he has +taken. His intelligence, quicker than his sympathies, sees, perhaps, +that the forces of the future are industrial, not militant. His hand +has grown less nervous, but steadier in its grasp, more human in its +touch. The figure is filling out in stronger lines, with unexpected +promise that it may become heroic. + +He was not a pleasant youth, not a nice boy; but we can forgive much to +a sovereign who desires to bring about a general disarmament of Europe! +The early chapters of his biography will never be pleasant reading, but +we will not linger over them if the concluding ones tell of a Germany +brought into line with the world's highest and best development. + +Europe to-day is like a field closely packed with explosives, with a +plentiful sprinkling throughout the mass of that giant powder, +nihilism. People step carefully, lest they jar the hostile elements, +and "let loose the dogs of war." The slightest change in position of +the little package marked Bulgaria, and it may be too late. + +This province, which ten or twelve years ago was set up by the Great +Powers with an autonomy of its own, lying athwart the coveted pathway +to the Mediterranean, has, like Schleswig-Holstein, greatness thrust +upon it. The plaything of diplomacy, with only a semblance of +self-government, its _rôle_ in European politics is both tragic and +comic. Its king must await not alone confirmation by Turkey, but +ratification by the Great Powers, and little care they who ascends its +slippery little throne, except as he will further or obstruct the +private political ends of each; and Russia, thinking only of expansion +toward the sea, is especially paternal toward the forlorn little state. + +While this diplomatic game is enacting, there is a pause. Is it the +hush which precedes the storm? + +All eyes are fixed upon the Russian bear, cautiously and stealthily +prowling toward the south and east.--Austria hungrily watches the +Balkan provinces, over which the paw of the bear already +hovers.--Italy, with hate and suspicion, has eyes riveted upon her +hereditary enemy, Austria.--France, never for a moment forgetting +Alsace and Lorraine, watches her opportunity with Germany, and draws +into closer affinity with Russia--England, with gaze fixed upon an open +pathway to India, suspects them all--and Germany, conscious that +disaster is always imminent while the French thirst for revenge, and +the Russian thirst for the waters of the Mediterranean are unabated, +strengthens her defences and sleeps with hand upon her sword. + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Evolution of an Empire, by Mary Parmele + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE *** + +***** This file should be named 34072-8.txt or 34072-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/0/7/34072/ + +Produced by Al Haines + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/34072-8.zip b/34072-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..15ee959 --- /dev/null +++ b/34072-8.zip diff --git a/34072-h.zip b/34072-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e4a015d --- /dev/null +++ b/34072-h.zip diff --git a/34072-h/34072-h.htm b/34072-h/34072-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d23271d --- /dev/null +++ b/34072-h/34072-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1941 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<HTML> +<HEAD> + +<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> + +<TITLE> +The Project Gutenberg E-text of A Brief Historical Sketch of Germany, +by Mary Parmele +</TITLE> + +<STYLE TYPE="text/css"> +BODY { color: Black; + background: White; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; + text-align: justify } + +P {text-indent: 4% } + +P.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +P.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; } + +P.letter {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +P.contents {font-size: 90% ; + text-indent: -5% ; + margin-left: 15% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +P.finis { font-size: larger ; + text-align: center ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +</STYLE> + +</HEAD> + +<BODY> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Evolution of an Empire, by Mary Parmele + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Evolution of an Empire + A Brief Historical Sketch of Germany + +Author: Mary Parmele + +Release Date: October 15, 2010 [EBook #34072] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + +</pre> + + +<BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE +</H3> + +<H1 ALIGN="center"> +EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE +</H1> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +A BRIEF HISTORICAL SKETCH OF +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +GERMANY +</H2> + +<BR><BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +BY +</H4> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +MARY PARMELE +</H3> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +<I>SECOND EDITION</I> +</H4> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +NEW YORK +<BR> +WILLIAM BEVERLEY HARISON, +<BR> +59 FIFTH AVENUE +<BR> +1893. +</H4> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H5 ALIGN="center"> +COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY +<BR> +PARMELE & CHAFFEE. +</H5> + +<BR><BR> + +<H5 ALIGN="center"> +Press of J. J. Little & Co. +<BR> +Astor Place, New York +</H5> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +CONTENTS. +</H2> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +<A HREF="#chap01">CHAPTER I.</A> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="contents"> +Indo-European Migrations—Divisions of the Aryan Family into European +Races—Laying the Foundations of the German Empire +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +<A HREF="#chap02">CHAPTER II.</A> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="contents"> +Hermann—Subdivisions of the Teutonic Race +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +<A HREF="#chap03">CHAPTER III.</A> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="contents"> +Ulfila—Migrations of Teutonic Races—Fall of Rome before +Alaric—Hunnish Invasion—Modern Europe foreshadowed +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +<A HREF="#chap04">CHAPTER IV.</A> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="contents"> +Anglo-Saxon Occupation of Britain +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +<A HREF="#chap05">CHAPTER V.</A> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="contents"> +Teuton Occupation of Gaul—Final Severing of Connection with Roman +Empire—Clovis, King of France—Merovingian Kings—Pippin—Beginning of +Carlovingian Line +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +<A HREF="#chap06">CHAPTER VI.</A> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="contents"> +Charlemagne—Separation of France and Germany—Growth of Spiritual +Power—Conflict between Pope Gregory VII. and Henry IV.—Entire +Supremacy of the Church +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +<A HREF="#chap07">CHAPTER VII.</A> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="contents"> +Europe in the Hands of Three Men—Charles V., Francis I., and Henry +VIII.—Indulgences sold by Leo X.—Birth of Protestantism +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +<A HREF="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII.</A> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="contents"> +Thirty Years' War—Decay of the German Empire +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +<A HREF="#chap09">CHAPTER IX.</A> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="contents"> +Napoleon Bonaparte—German Empire Extinct—Waterloo—German States +confederated, with Austria at the Head +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +<A HREF="#chap10">CHAPTER X.</A> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="contents"> +Schleswig-Holstein—Bismarck—War with Austria—Königgrätz +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +<A HREF="#chap11">CHAPTER XI.</A> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="contents"> +Napoleon III.—War with France—Germans in Paris—William crowned +German Emperor at Versailles +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +<A HREF="#chap12">CHAPTER XII.</A> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="contents"> +Death of Emperor William—Death of Frederick—William II. Emperor—His +Policy—Situation in Europe +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap01"></A> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. +</H2> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER I. +</H3> + +<P> +Foundation building is neither picturesque nor especially interesting, +but it is indispensable. However fair the structure is to be, one must +first lay the rough-hewn stones upon which it is to rest. It would be +much pleasanter in this sketch to display at once the minarets and +towers, and stained-glass windows; but that can only be done when one's +castle is in Spain. +</P> + +<P> +Would we comprehend the Germany of to-day, we must hold firmly in our +minds an epitome of what it has been, and see vividly the devious path +of its development through the ages. +</P> + +<P> +The German nation is of ancient lineage, and indeed belongs to the +royal line of human descent, the Aryan; its ancestral roots running +back until lost in the heart of Asia, in the mists of antiquity. +</P> + +<P> +The home of the Aryan race is shrouded in mystery, as are the impelling +causes which sent those successive tides of humanity into Europe. But +we know with certainty that when the last great wave spread over +Eastern Europe, or Russia, about one thousand years before Christ, the +submergence of that continent was complete. +</P> + +<P> +Before the coming of the Aryan, the Rhine flowed as now; the Alps +pierced the sky with their glistening peaks as they do to-day; the +Danube, the Rhône, hurried on, as now, toward the sea. Was it all a +beautiful, unpeopled solitude waiting in silence for the richly endowed +Asiatic to come and possess it? Far from it. It was teeming with +humanity—if, indeed, we may call such the race which modern research +and discovery has revealed to us. It is only within the last thirty +years that anything whatever has been known of prehistoric man; but now +we are able to reconstruct him with probable accuracy. A creature, +bestial in appearance and in life; dwelling in caves, which, however, a +dawning sense of a higher humanity led him to decorate with carvings of +birds and fishes; but, certain it is, the brain which inhabited that +skull was incapable of performing the mental processes necessary to the +simplest form of civilization; and life must have been to him simply a +thing of fierce appetites and brutal instincts. Such was the being +encountered by the Aryan, when he penetrated the mysterious land beyond +the confines of Greece and Italy. +</P> + +<P> +The extermination, and perhaps, to some extent, assimilation, of this +terrible race must have required centuries of brutalizing conflict, +and, it is easy to imagine, would have produced just such men as were +the northern barbarians, who for five hundred years terrorized Europe: +men insensible to fear, terrible, fierce, but with fine instincts for +civilization—dormant Aryan germs, which quickly developed when brought +into contact with a superior race. +</P> + +<P> +The earliest Indo-European migration is supposed to have been into +Greece and Italy, where was laid the basis for the civilization of the +world. The second was probably into Western Europe and the British +Isles; then, after many centuries, the central, and last, and at a time +comparatively recent, into the Eastern portion of the continent. +</P> + +<P> +So by the fourth century B.C. three great divisions of the Aryan race +occupied Europe north of Greece and Italy. The Keltic, the western; +the Teutonic, the central; the Slavonic, the eastern; and these, in +turn, had ramified into new subdivisions or tribes. +</P> + +<P> +To state it, as in the pedigree of the individual, the Aryan was the +founder, the father of the family; Slav, Teuton, and Kelt the three +sons. Gaul and Briton were sons of the Kelt; Saxon, Angle, Helvetian, +etc., sons of the Teuton; and all alike grandchildren of the Aryan; +whom—to carry the illustration farther—we may imagine to have had +older children, who long ago had left the paternal home and settled +about the Caspian and Mediterranean Seas. Mede, Persian, Greek, Roman, +apparently bearing few marks of kinship to these uncouth younger +brothers whom we have found in Europe in this fourth century B.C., but +with nevertheless the same cradle, and the same ancestral roots. +</P> + +<P> +It is the Teutonic branch of the Aryan family with which we have to do +now. The river Rhine flowed between them and their Keltic brothers, +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap02"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER II. +</H3> + +<P> +Greece and Rome were unaware of the existence of the Teuton until about +the year 330 B.C., when Pythias, a Greek navigator, came home from a +voyage to the Baltic with terrible tales of the Goths whom he had met. +Nearly one century before Christ the inhabitants of Italy were enabled +to judge for themselves of the accuracy of the description. Driven +from their homes by the inroads of the sea, the Goths poured in a +hungry torrent down into the tempting vineyards of Northern Italy. +Gigantic in stature, with long yellow hair, eyes blue but fierce—what +wonder that the people thought they were scarcely human, and fled +affrighted, leaving them to enjoy the vineyards at their leisure. +</P> + +<P> +Accounts of this uncanny host reached Rome, which soon knew of their +breastplates of iron, their helmets crowned with heads of wild beasts, +their white shields glistening in the sun, and, more terrible than all, +of their priestesses, clad in white linen, who prophesied and offered +human sacrifices to their gods. +</P> + +<P> +But the sacrifices did not avail against the legions which the great +Consul Marius led against them. The ponderous Goth was not yet a match +for the finer skill of the Roman, and the invaders were exterminated at +Aix-la-Chapelle, 102 B.C. The women, in despair, slew first their +children and then themselves, a few only surviving to be paraded in +chains at the triumph accorded to Marius on his return to Rome. Such +was the first appearance of the Teuton in the Eternal City, and the +last until five hundred years later, when the conditions were changed. +</P> + +<P> +At the time of this first invasion of the Goths they had made some +progress in political and social organization, though of the simplest +kind. Predatory in habits and fierce as the wild beasts of their +forests, they were, however, romantic in ideals, had a fine sense of +the beautiful. They exalted woman, and honored marriage and the family +relation to an extent beyond any ancient people. When I have said +that, added to this, they had a glimmering sense of human rights in +communities and in the State, it will be seen that the German race had +the basis of a superior civilization; and when the Christian era +dawned, though the world knew it not, a great nation was coming into +organic form. +</P> + +<P> +At this period, Julius Cæsar had made Roman provinces of Gaul and +Britain; and now the wave of conquest naturally overflowed the boundary +line into the land of the Teuton; and the German, in his barbaric +simplicity, stood face to face with that finished human product, the +astute, cultivated Roman. +</P> + +<P> +For centuries they fought—always on German soil—the legions often +repulsed, yet pressing on and on, until a chain of Roman fortresses +stretched from the Rhine to the Baltic, and the people were held—not +subjugated—by Roman power. +</P> + +<P> +About the year 100 of our era there arose the first heroic figure in +the history of Germany, when Hermann made a prodigious but ineffectual +attempt to consolidate his people and expel the Romans. The colossal +statue only recently erected in Germany, is a tribute to the unhappy +hero of eighteen centuries ago. +</P> + +<P> +At the time of this attempt the Germans had learned much from the +superior civilization by which they were invaded. They were no longer +the barbarous race which had trampled down the vineyards of northern +Italy two hundred years before. Nor was this lesson in civilization +yet over. For five hundred years Teuton and Roman continued the +struggle. The one by the process growing wiser, richer in resource, +and in supplementing his rude strength with the finer methods of old +civilizations, becoming a more and more dangerous adversary; while the +other saw himself more and more enfeebled, and, wearied with the +conflict, felt decrepitude stealing surely over him. +</P> + +<P> +In the year 300 the Teutons had ramified into six branches—the +Burgundians, Thuringians, Franks, Saxons, Allemani, and Goths—all one +in race, but each with its own distinct traits and life. The Allemani +were so called from <I>aller-mannen</I>—all men; seeming to signify that +this tribe was composed of the fragments of many tribes. Why this +tribal name should have become that of the whole German nation is not +apparent. Obviously the word Allemagne has this origin, just as +Deutsch may be as readily traced to Teuton. +</P> + +<P> +But of these six tribes it was the Goths who first adopted +Christianity, and took on the forms of a higher civilization. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap03"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER III. +</H3> + +<P> +As some winged seed is wafted from a fair garden into a dark, distant +forest, and there takes root and blossoms, so was the seed-germ of +Christianity caught by the wind of destiny, and carried from Palestine +to the heart of pagan Germany, where, strange to say, it found +congenial soil. +</P> + +<P> +The story is a romantic one. A Christian boy in Asia Minor, while +straying on the shores of the Mediterranean, was captured by some +Goths, who took their fair-haired prize home to their own land, and +named him Ulfila. +</P> + +<P> +The boy, with his heart all aflame for the religion in which he had +been nurtured, told his captors the story of Calvary—of Christ and His +gospel of peace and love—and lived to see the terrible sacrificial +altars replaced by the Cross. +</P> + +<P> +The Goths had no alphabet, so Ulfila invented one, and then translated +the Bible into their rude speech. A part of this translation is now +preserved in Sweden, and is the earliest extant specimen of the Gothic +language. Even to the unlearned observer, this Gothic version of the +Lord's Prayer, written by Ulfila more than one thousand five hundred +years ago, bears such strong marks of kinship to the German and English +versions that it can be easily read by us to-day, and makes us realize +how much of the Teuton has mingled with our own life and speech. +</P> + +<P> +The enormous vitality of the Teutons was evinced in their restless +desire to extend themselves. They were not comfortable neighbors. The +Franks made predatory incursions into Gaul, which they finally overran +and possessed; the Allemani, into Italy; the Saxons, in the same +manner, overran Britain; while the stalwart Goths addressed their blows +to the Roman Empire—the common foe of all—until 410 <I>Anno Domini</I>, +when, for a second time, Teuton feet trod the streets of Rome, this +time not chained to the chariot of a Marius, but conquerors. And when +the gates of the Eternal City yielded to the blows of Alaric, the Roman +Empire virtually ceased to exist. +</P> + +<P> +So this rude people, which in the time of Julius Cæsar was buried in +the forests of Central Europe, in six hundred years from his time +occupied all of Europe, and was beginning to lay the foundations of a +new empire upon the fragments of the old. +</P> + +<P> +There is not time to tell how the newly Christianized and civilized +Goths were now in turn attacked by the Huns, a race vastly more fierce +and terrible than they had ever been, who swarmed down upon them +suddenly, like the locusts of Egypt, and under the leadership of Attila +swept everything before them; then, after leaving a track of blood and +ashes through Germany, disappearing again over the steppes of Russia, +from whence they had mysteriously come; a tremendous upturning force, +but bearing no relation to the future result more than the plough to +the future grain. +</P> + +<P> +There had been no repose for Europe yet—incessant tribal changes; a +surging mass of humanity pouring from one land into another. The +troubled continent was a great, seething caldron, from which was to +emerge a new civilization. But soon after this final convulsion of the +Hunnish invasion the migrations ceased, and now, about the year 570, +the foundations of the present European divisions began to appear. In +Britain, subjugated by the Angles and Saxons, we see foreshadowed the +Anglo-Saxon England of to-day; in the country lying east and west of +the Rhine, France and Germany begin to be outlined; while the smaller +German states are distinctly visible, some of them with geographical +divisions almost the same as now. Modern Europe was beginning to +crystallize. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap04"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER IV. +</H3> + +<P> +I cannot resist the temptation of saying a few words about the +Anglo-Saxon occupation of Britain, which, as it virtually converted us +from Kelts into Teutons, is not a digression. +</P> + +<P> +From the time of Julius Cæsar the island of Britain had been occupied +by the Romans, and in consequence had become partly civilized and +Christianized. Upon the fall of the empire, the Roman legions were +withdrawn, and the people, left defenceless, became the prey of their +own northern barbarians, the Picts and Scots; the drama of Southern +Europe and the Goths being reënacted on a diminished scale. In the +fourth century the Britons implored the Angles and Saxons to come and +protect them from these savages. Invited as allies, they came as +invaders, and remained as conquerors, implanting their habits, speech, +and paganism upon the prostrate island. It was the extermination of +this exotic paganism which impelled to those deeds of valor recited in +the Round Table romances, and which made King Arthur and his knights +the theme of poet and minstrel for centuries. +</P> + +<P> +But the Saxon had come to stay, and Teuton and Kelt became merged, much +as do the lion and lamb, after the former has dined! The Teutonic +Saxon may be said to have dined on the Keltic Briton, and remained +master of the island until the Normans came, six centuries later, and +in turn dominated, and made him bear the yoke of servitude. +</P> + +<P> +Nor was this French-speaking Norman, French at all, except by adoption; +being, in fact, the terrible Northman of two centuries before, on +account of whose ravages the noble had entrenched himself in his strong +castle, and the wretched serf had in mortal terror sold himself and all +that he possessed, for the protection of its solid walls and moat; and +thus had been laid the foundations of feudalism. He it was who, with +long hair reeking with rancid oil, battle-axe, spear, and iron +hook—with which to capture human and other prey—had held France in a +state of unspeakable terror for centuries, but who had finally settled +down as respectable French citizen in the sea-board province of +Normandy, and in two centuries had made such wonderful improvement in +manners, apparel, and speech, that the simple Saxon baron stood abashed +before the splendid refinements of his conquerors. +</P> + +<P> +The origin of this mysterious Northman is unknown; but whatever it was, +or whoever he was, he certainly possessed Aryan germs of high potency. +</P> + +<P> +So the Saxon had built the solid walls of the racial structure upon a +foundation of Britons; and, though with no thought for beauty, had +built well, with strong, true structural lines. It was the Norman who +finished and decorated the structure, but he did not alter one of these +lines; the speech, traits, institutions, and habits of England being at +the core Saxon to-day, while there is a decorative surface only of +Norman. +</P> + +<P> +So when the Englishman calls himself with swelling pride, a Briton, he +speaks wide of the mark. The Keltic Briton was buried fathoms deep +under seven centuries of Saxon rule, and then, to make the extinction +more complete, was overlaid with this brilliant lacquer of Norman +surface. And if that mixed product, the English people, have any race +paternity, it is Teutonic, and herein may lie the impossibility of +making the English and Irish a homogeneous people—the English Teuton +and Irish Kelt being in the nature of things antagonistic, the +particles refuse to combine chemically, and can only be brought +together (to use the language of the chemist) in mechanical mixture. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap05"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER V. +</H3> + +<P> +At the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England, and for three +centuries later, the history of France and Germany were one and the +same. +</P> + +<P> +The Roman Empire, in its decrepitude, found it a difficult task to +retain its dominion over Gaul, and so enlisted the Franks as allies. +Thus was made a breach in the wall between the Kelt and the Teuton, +through which in time flowed an irresistible German torrent, +intermingling with the former population, and, by virtue of its +superior strength, spreading itself over the land in permanent +dominion; and when Clovis, their Frankish leader, drove out from Gaul +the last remnant of Roman power, in 483 of our era, all connection with +the expiring empire was severed. The loose confederation of tribes was +gathered by the strong hand of the conquering Frank under one head, and +Clovis was proclaimed king, with hereditary rights for his children. +</P> + +<P> +With this event the doors close upon antiquity, and we are in the path +which leads swiftly to modern history. +</P> + +<P> +Clovis, the son of Merowig, gave his name to the dynasty thus founded. +One of his first acts was the renouncing of paganism, through the +influence of his wife, Clotilde, so that from their very birth France +and Germany were Christian, while England lingered for centuries under +pagan rule. +</P> + +<P> +The grandchildren of Clovis and Clotilde, Siegfried and Brunhilde, were +the heroes of the "Niebelungen Lied," and their adventures inspired not +alone the great German epic, but have lent to the greatest music of +modern times its majestic, heroic swing. +</P> + +<P> +The real Brunhilde did not immolate herself upon her husband's funeral +pile, as in the musical romance, but an end more tragic and vastly more +terrible was hers. After being tortured for three days, her hair was +tied to the tail of a fiery horse, spurs plunged into his sides, and +the unhappy queen was ground to fragments upon the stones of the Rue +St. Honoré, Paris, where this tragedy occurred about the year 600 A.D. +</P> + +<P> +But the heroic strain in the Merovingian blood soon exhausted itself. +The kings became effeminate, luxurious, and, after a time, too indolent +even to govern, and finally gave entire control of state affairs to a +royal steward, known as "<I>maire du palais</I>" or <I>major domus</I>, who was +indeed king <I>de facto</I>, with authority supreme over the king himself. +</P> + +<P> +Pepin was the last of these royal stewards. Conscious of his own +superior fitness, he took the crown from the long, perfumed locks of +the last Merovingian king and placed it upon his own head. What matter +that he had no drop of royal blood in his veins? He held the sceptre +with firm hand, by the divine right of ability, leaving it upon his +death to his second son Charlemagne, who was destined to wield it by +divine right of born conqueror and ruler of men. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap06"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER VI. +</H3> + +<P> +This colossal figure stands the one supreme historical landmark midway +between Julius Cæsar and Napoleon Bonaparte. In looking back, he saw +not his equal in history until he beheld Cæsar. Nor in looking forward +would he have seen another until just one thousand years later, when +the world seemed to have found another master in Napoleon Bonaparte. +</P> + +<P> +In the amplitude of his intelligence, in the splendor of his +attributes, and in his seven feet of stature, Charlemagne was every +inch a king. He was twenty-nine years old when, by the death of his +father, Pepin, he became monarch, and set about his task, which was, to +develop a great empire—overturning, conquering, despotic, often cruel, +but always with the high purpose of giving to his race a higher +civilization. In twenty-nine years more this task was accomplished, +and a map of the German Empire was a map of Europe. On Christmas day, +in the year 800, in the Cathedral of St. Peter's, at Rome, he received +the imperial crown from Pope Leo III., and was greeted with cries of +"Life and victory to Carolus Magnus, crowned by God Emperor of the +Romans;" and at that moment he stood at the head of an empire which +included all Christendom. +</P> + +<P> +Charlemagne acknowledged the pope who crowned him as his spiritual +sovereign, while, on the other hand, the pope bowed before the emperor +who appointed him, as his temporal sovereign. It was a magnificent, +all-embracing scheme of empire, of which the spiritual head was at +Rome, and the temporal at Aix-la-Chapelle. +</P> + +<P> +It seemed as if by this dual supremacy Charlemagne had provided for all +possible exigencies of human government. He rested content, no doubt +thinking he had embodied a perfect ideal in creating a system which +should thus coördinate and embrace both the spiritual and temporal +needs of an empire. Unfortunately, in order to be realized, it needed +always the wisest of emperors and best of popes. As soon as his +controlling hand was removed unexpected dangers assailed his work. +</P> + +<P> +In less than fifty years from his coronation, his three grandsons had +quarrelled and torn the empire into as many parts, the elder retaining +the imperial title. This event, 841 of our era, marks the beginning of +France and Germany as distinct nationalities; hence it is that both +nations claim Charlemagne, whereas he belongs to the French just as +Queen Elizabeth does to Americans. +</P> + +<P> +In forecasting his plans of empire, it is not probable that danger of +conflict between the spiritual and temporal heads ever occurred to +Charlemagne. But that is precisely what happened. Even this astute, +far-seeing man did not suspect the nature of the power with which he +formed this close alliance. His plan of government made the pope +distinctly the creation of the emperor. His creature, and hence +subordinate. But there was a tremendous principle of growth in that +spiritual centre! +</P> + +<P> +The first five hundred years after Christ the pope had been simply +Bishop of Rome. In the next five hundred years he was nominal head of +the whole Church. As the Church was entering upon its third +five-hundred-year lease, in the year 1073, the fiery monk Hildebrand, +who had now become Pope Gregory VII., determined it should be supreme +in authority over all other powers—a religious empire, existing by +Divine right, independent of the fate of nations or will of kings and +emperors. Henry IV., who was then emperor, indignant at these insolent +pretensions, deposed the pope—this creature of his own appointing, who +would override the authority of the power which had created him! +</P> + +<P> +The pope excommunicated the emperor. Each had done his worst, pope and +emperor; and had Henry stood his ground as he might, for he would have +had ample support from his people, it would have been a gain of +centuries for Europe. But—the ban of excommunication, with its +attendant horrors here, and still worse hereafter—it was more than he +could bear. Affrighted, trembling, penitent, he crossed the Alps in +dead of winter, crept to the castle of Canossa, near Parma, where +Hildebrand had taken refuge; and there this successor to Charlemagne, +this ruler of all Christendom, standing barefoot and clad in sackcloth +shirt, humbly begged admittance. The pope's triumph was complete. So +he let him shiver for three days in cold and rain before he opened the +gates and gave him forgiveness and the kiss of peace. +</P> + +<P> +The Church had never scored so tremendous a victory. She was supreme +over every earthly authority, and the hands on the face of time were +set back for centuries. Let Guelph and Ghibelline (the two political +parties representing the adherents of the pope and the emperor) storm +and struggle as they might, she need never more be afraid of +overstepping any humanly constituted bounds. +</P> + +<P> +And it was to be no empty panoply of power. The strong hand of +priestly authority must have its hold on every human conscience and +will. +</P> + +<P> +She sat and watched complacently as her children drove back the infidel +Saracens, conscious of her own growing strength, and that she was +becoming still stronger as those three tidal waves of religious frenzy +swept over Europe into the Holy Land. +</P> + +<P> +There was no question of supremacy now between temporal and spiritual +heads. All the lines of power—all the threads of human destiny—led +to Rome, and were found at last in the papal hand. +</P> + +<P> +But these were halcyon days. There was a cloud already on the horizon, +the size of a man's hand, and that hand was—Wickliffe's—the hand +which had torn the veil of mystery from the Bible by translating it +into the speech of the common people, the hand which had written words +inciting rebellion against church authority. +</P> + +<P> +The clouds grew larger and darker when printing came, disseminating the +new heresies. The Bible was broadcast in the hands of the people, who +began to manifest a dangerous tendency to think! +</P> + +<P> +The whole enginery of thumbscrew, rack, and stake was set to work. +Tender human flesh shrinks from burning, lacerating, and torture, so +the griefs, longings, and aspirations of thousands of hearts flowed in +streams deep down below the surface, coming to light here and there for +brief moments among the followers of Huss, the Albigenses, the +Waldenses, only to be driven back again into silence and despair. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap07"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER VII. +</H3> + +<P> +In the early part of the sixteenth century the fate of Europe was in +the hands of three men—Charles V., Emperor of Germany; Francis I., +King of France, and Henry VIII., King of England. +</P> + +<P> +Charles was half Fleming and half Spaniard, with the grasping +acquisitiveness of the one nation, and the proud, fanatical cruelty of +the other. Small of stature, plain in feature, sedate, quiet, crafty, +he was playing a desperate game with Francis I. for supremacy in Europe. +</P> + +<P> +Francis, handsome as an Apollo, accomplished, fascinating, profligate, +was fully his match in ambition. Covering his worst qualities with a +gorgeous mantle of generosity and chivalrous sense of honor, he was the +insidious corrupter of morals in France; creating a sentiment which +laughed at virtue and innocence as qualities belonging to a lower class +of society. +</P> + +<P> +Each of these men was striving to enlist Henry VIII. upon his side, by +appealing to the cruel caprices of that vain, ostentatious, arrogant +king, who in turn tried to use them for the furthering of his own +desires and purposes. +</P> + +<P> +It was a sort of triangular game between the three monarchs—a game +full of finesse and far-reaching designs. If Charles attacked Francis, +Henry attacked Charles. While the astute Charles, knowing well the +desire of the English king to repudiate Katharine and make Anne Boleyn +his queen, whispered seductive promises of the papal chair to Wolsey, +who was in turn to establish his own influence over his royal master by +bringing about the marriage with Anne, upon which the king's heart was +set, and then be rewarded by securing Henry's promise of neutrality for +Charles, in his designs of over-reaching Francis—and after that, the +road to Rome for the aspiring cardinal would be a straight one! +</P> + +<P> +It was an intricate diplomatic net-work, in which the thread of Henry's +desire for the fair Anne was mingled with Wolsey's desire for +preferment, and both interlaced with the ambitious, far-reaching +purposes of the other two monarchs. +</P> + +<P> +All these events were very absorbing, and while they were splendidly +gilding the surface of Europe in the first half of the sixteenth +century, it seemed a small matter that an obscure monk was denouncing +the pope and defying the power of the Catholic Church. Little did +Charles suspect that when his victories and edicts were forgotten, the +words of the insolent heretic would still be echoing down the ages. +</P> + +<P> +A few years later, and the Apollo-like beauty and false heart of +Francis I. were dissolving in the grave—Henry VIII. had gone to +another world, to meet his reward—and his wives—and Charles V. was +sadly counting his beads in the monastery of St. Jerome, at Yuste, +reflecting upon the vanity of human ambitions—but the murmur of +protest from the unknown monk had become a roar—the rivulet had +swollen into a threatening torrent. As it is the invisible forces that +are the most powerful in nature, so it is the obscure and least +observed events that have accomplished the most tremendous revolutions +in human affairs. +</P> + +<P> +In the year 1517, when it had not yet occurred to Henry's sensitive +conscience that his marriage with Katharine, his brother's widow, was +illegal, and while Charles V., that sedate young man, who "looked so +modest, and soared so high," was revolving plans for the extension of +his empire, Pope Leo X., the pious Vicar of Christ upon earth, and +elegant patron of Michael Angelo and Raphael, found his income all too +small for his magnificent tastes. It does not seem to have occurred to +him that his tastes were too costly for his income; he simply +recognized that something must be done, and at once, to fill his empty +purse. But what should it be? A simple and ingenious expedient solved +the perplexing problem. He would issue a proclamation to his "loving, +faithful children," that he would grant absolution for all sorts of +crimes, the prices graduated to suit the enormity of the offence. We +have not seen the proclamation, but doubt not it was in most caressing +Latin, for can anything exceed the velvety softness of the gloves worn +on the hands which sign papal decrees? +</P> + +<P> +Simple lying and slander were cheap; perjury and sins against chastity +more costly; while the use of the stiletto, of poison, and the hired +assassin could be enjoyed only by the richest. It worked well. In the +hopeful words of a pious dignitary, "as soon as the money chinks in the +coffer, the soul springs out of purgatory." Who could resist such +promise? Money flowed in swollen streams into the thirsty coffers, +many even paying in advance for crimes they intended to commit! +</P> + +<P> +Martin Luther was the one man who dared to stand up and denounce this +tax upon crime, this papal trade in vice. The people had at last found +a voice and a leader. +</P> + +<P> +Protestantism sprang into existence without the slow process of growth. +It had long been maturing in silence and darkness, and at the trumpet +tones of Luther, declared itself a power upon the earth. Here was a +revolt beyond the reach of thumbscrew and stake! You could not burn a +million people! +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap08"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER VIII. +</H3> + +<P> +The Church gathered herself for one supreme effort to stem this fatal +tide, which was loosening her foundations. +</P> + +<P> +Just one hundred years from the birth of Protestantism, pope and +emperor, putting their spiritual and temporal heads together, planned a +crusade against twenty-five million Protestants. +</P> + +<P> +The desultory war against the new heresy had been ineffectual. As it +was stamped out in one place, it blazed up afresh in others. Now it +should be, at whatever cost, exterminated in the German Empire. +</P> + +<P> +Thus was initiated what is known as the "Thirty Years' War," the most +desolating in history. Generations came and went while it raged fierce +and furious—eight million slain, and twelve million surviving to meet +horrors worse than death. Cattle exterminated, food exhausted, the +uncultivated fields drenched with blood and tears—a vast graveyard, in +which were the mouldering corpses of eight million slaughtered people, +one-third of the population of the empire! Earth was kneaded into +bread; men found dead with their mouths filled with grass; and there +are frightful stories of human beings hunted down, like deer, for food. +</P> + +<P> +The spirit of the people was broken. Germany had been set back two +hundred years. And for what? Not to accomplish any high purpose, not +even from mistaken Christian zeal, but simply to carry out the despotic +resolve of the Catholic Church to rule the minds and consciences of all +men through its popes and priesthood. It was the old battle commenced +six centuries before. Had Henry not gone to Canossa in 1073, there had +been no Thirty Years' War in 1618! +</P> + +<P> +The empire of Charlemagne virtually perished during this struggle, the +Hapsburgs wearing its empty ornaments and trappings for a couple of +centuries more, imaginary rulers of an imaginary empire, the reality +and substance of which had departed. +</P> + +<P> +There was a flickering of the dying splendor when Maria Theresa was +empress (mother of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette), and impressed her +own strong, brilliant personality upon her empire and age—an age +rendered memorable also by the great Frederick, who brought Prussia +from obscurity to be ranked with the great powers, and thus rekindled +national pride and renewed the hopes of Germany. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap09"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER IX. +</H3> + +<P> +When the nineteenth century dawned, a new and striking figure had +appeared in Europe. Napoleon Bonaparte had arisen with a bound from +obscurity in Corsica to supreme authority in France, and with audacious +display of power wielded by genius, hurled his battalions across the +face of Europe. +</P> + +<P> +He seemed the embodiment of some new and irresistible force. Kingdoms +melted before him, and kings and princes vied with each other in doing +his bidding quickly, as he tore down old political divisions, and, as +it were, etched a new map of Europe with his sword; distributing +thrones as boys do marbles, until there was not an uncrowned head in +his own or his wife's family, or scarcely among his intimate friends. +He made his brother Joseph king of Spain; Bernadotte, his friend, king +of Sweden; Murat, his brother-in-law, king of Naples. Created the +kingdom of Holland and gave it to his brother Louis; and another +kingdom of Westphalia, which he gave to his brother Jerome. Appointed +Eugene Beauharnais, his stepson, viceroy of Italy. Married Hortense, +his step-daughter, to Louis, King of Holland; and Stephanie, Empress +Josephine's niece, to the Grand Duke of Baden. +</P> + +<P> +It will be observed that when there were not enough thrones to go +around, he simply created a kingdom! Certainly, with all his faults, +no one can accuse him of not having provided well for his family! +</P> + +<P> +At a touch from this Man of Destiny, the shadowy fabric of the German +Empire crumbled to dust. Just one thousand years from the crowning of +its first emperor Charlemagne, its last, Francis II., laid down his +arms and his sceptre before Napoleon, and with them the proud title of +"Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire," assumed on that Christmas day, in +the Cathedral of St. Peter's, in the year 800. +</P> + +<P> +When Napoleon married Marie Louise, daughter of this deposed monarch +who had occupied the throne of the Cæsars, his dream of universal +empire seemed realized. The continent of Europe was actually under his +feet. History had only twice before witnessed such a display of power, +and contained only three men as colossal in triumphs—Alexander, Julius +Cæsar, and Charlemagne. +</P> + +<P> +But it was the mantle of these last two that he felt he was destined to +wear, the glittering pinnacles of the great Roman Empire being ever +before his romantic ambition. Hence, when the longed-for son was born +he called him King of Rome. And why should he not? Was not his mother +daughter of a line of emperors leading back to Charlemagne, first +emperor of the Holy Roman Empire? +</P> + +<P> +But with the first reverse, this artificially created empire trembled +upon its foundations, and upon his defeat at Waterloo, 1815, one +thousand years from the death of Charlemagne, the whole fabric fell +apart into fragments. The crowns rolled off the heads of Joseph, +Jerome, Louis, and the rest of them. The magical creation passed away +like a vision of the night. +</P> + +<P> +Europe rallied from the spell which this Corsican magician had thrown +over her, and while he lay chained to the rock at St. Helena, the +vulture of regret eating his heart away, Metternich, prime minister of +Austria, was restoring order to Germany. +</P> + +<P> +A confederation of states was formed, with Austria as its chief, each +to be represented at a general Diet, held at Frankfort; and for fifty +years such was the condition of Germany. Prussia, fallen from her high +position under Frederick the Great, sinking lower and lower in the +scale of nations, dominated by Austria, powerless to resent insult, her +people helpless and hopeless, looking only to final disintegration and +absorption into the powerful states about her. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap10"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER X. +</H3> + +<P> +We have now reached a period with which readers of to-day have more or +less personal familiarity. This hour of deep depression in Germany was +the one which comes before the dawn. +</P> + +<P> +The Schleswig-Holstein episode was a complicated, tiresome tangle, even +while it was enacting, and now is to most people only another name for +a rusty German key with which Pandora's box was opened for Europe just +twenty-five years ago. But it was a pivotal incident, and must be +understood in order to make clear the rapid succession of events +following, of which it was the first link in the chain. +</P> + +<P> +The two adjacent dukedoms of Schleswig and Holstein, which constitute a +sort of natural bridge about one hundred and fifty miles long and fifty +miles wide, between Denmark and Prussia, are, by the way, the land of +nativity for the Anglo-Saxon race, the Angles having inhabited +Schleswig, and the Saxons Holstein, at the time they so kindly +protected the Britons from the Picts and Scots! +</P> + +<P> +So it is probable that every member of this Anglo-Saxon family has +ancestral roots running back to that fertile strip of pasture land, +which was geographically and, at a later day, historically so important. +</P> + +<P> +At the time we are now considering, it had for many years been under +the Danish protectorate, the King of Denmark being, by virtue of his +position, also Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, just as the German Emperor +is now King of Prussia by virtue of his imperial office. +</P> + +<P> +But this little people were by no means merged with the Danish by this +arrangement; on the contrary, they preserved very jealously their own +traits and ancestral traditions. Among these, was the exclusion of +women from the royal succession—the Salic law, framed by their Frank +ancestors centuries before on the banks of the river Saale, being part +of their constitution. Hence, when King Frederick VII. of Denmark died +in 1862 without male heir, and King Christian IX. became king, the +people of the two dukedoms hotly refused to recognize him as their +lawful ruler, but claimed their right of reversion to Duke Frederick +VIII., who was in the direct male line of succession. +</P> + +<P> +Had the Salic law prevailed in Denmark, this Duke Frederick (father of +the present young Empress of Germany) would now (1890) be King of +Denmark instead of Christian IX. But it did not exist, so Christian, +father of the Empress of Russia—of the Princess of Wales—and of King +George of Greece—became, in 1862, lawful King of Denmark, with rights +unimpaired by female descent. +</P> + +<P> +This was the beginning of changes destined to alter the face of Europe. +</P> + +<P> +Schleswig-Holstein revolted against being held by a ruler who, +according to her constitution, was not the terminal of the royal line, +and insisted upon bestowing herself upon the German Duke Frederick +VIII. Denmark naturally resisted this <I>anti-Christian</I> revolt. Salic +law or no Salic law, the dukedoms were hers, and should stay. And, +indeed, they were a charming pastoral possession, a morsel which must +have sorely tempted the German appetite to be invited to take. But in +those days Prussia's big brother, Austria, had not alone to be +consulted, but placated. This was the more bitter because of having +once tasted the sweets of national greatness under Frederick; and now +even little Denmark dare defy and insult her! And was not this crown, +which King William had received from his dead brother in 1857, but a +badge of brilliant servitude, after all, to Francis Joseph, who was his +chief? +</P> + +<P> +However, in this instance the big brother, for reasons of his own, +thought well of the cession of the twin dukedoms to Prussia, and they +would have been quickly absorbed into the German "<I>Diet</I>" had not the +Great Powers (who since the Napoleonic episode had been very alert in +such matters) grimly said, "Hands off!" +</P> + +<P> +It was just at this crisis, in 1862, that Bismarck, having been +appointed to the office of Prime Minister of Prussia, came from the +courts of St. Petersburg and Paris, where he had been ambassador, and +commenced his series of brilliant games upon the European chess-board. +</P> + +<P> +King Christian of Denmark, pleased with his success in retaining the +refractory states, determined to go still farther; that is, to adopt a +new constitution separating these Siamese twins, which should, in fact, +detach Schleswig from Holstein, incorporating it permanently with +Denmark. +</P> + +<P> +This was in direct violation of the treaty with the Great Powers made +in London, 1852, and afforded the needed pretext for war. +</P> + +<P> +The moment and the man had arrived. Bismarck, with the intuition of a +good player, saw his opportunity, pushed up the pawn, +Schleswig-Holstein, and said, "Check to your king." +</P> + +<P> +The Prussian and Austrian troops poured into Denmark, and in a few +short weeks the blooming isthmus had ceased to be Danish, and had +become German. +</P> + +<P> +Austria generously said, "We will divide the prize. Schleswig shall be +Prussian, and Holstein Austrian." +</P> + +<P> +Could anything be more odious to the Prussian? The long arm of +Austrian tyranny stretching way over their land, up to their northern +seaboard! It might almost better have become Danish. But "all things +come to him who waits," and—Bismarck waited. +</P> + +<P> +In the diplomatic adjustments which followed it was an easy matter to +quarrel over the prize, and once more the needed pretext was at hand. +Bismarck again pushed up his useful little pawn, and said "check," but +this time to the Emperor of Austria. Ah! here was a game worth +watching. Europe and America, too, were willing to let their morning +coffee get cold in studying the moves. Francis Joseph did not see as +far into the game as his astute adversary, whose keen eye was focused +at long range upon a renewed and consolidated Germany. +</P> + +<P> +The conflict was short (only seven weeks), but the preparation had been +long and thorough. The 3d of July will long be remembered by Germany. +King William was there; the Crown Prince was there, now become "Unser +Fritz" by his superb military achievements, the ideal prince and +soldier of modern Europe; and Königgrätz, like Waterloo, decided the +game. Francis Joseph was checkmated. Germany was the head of its own +nation. Its servitude to Austria existed no more. What wonder that +the people were glad, or that Unser Fritz became their idol, and +Bismarck their demigod! +</P> + +<P> +The dismembered parts were soon, under a new constitution, consolidated +into a national union, which was Protestant and Prussian, and forever +separated from all that was Catholic and Austrian. In five short years +what a change! Truly, blood and iron had proved a wonderful tonic! +</P> + +<P> +And what of poor little Schleswig-Holstein, that land of our race +nativity? If she had indulged in any innocent expectation of benefit +from such brilliant espousal of her cause, such hope must have been +rudely dispelled when she found herself between these upper and nether +millstones, and she must have realized that she had been only the +humble hinge upon which the door of opportunity had swung open for +Germany. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap11"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XI. +</H3> + +<P> +The rest can be briefly told. Napoleon III., in brand new splendor, +was watching these events from Paris. He had an uncomfortable sense +that everything was too new and fine. There is nothing like the smoke +of the battlefield to simulate the delightfully mellow tone which, in +its finest perfection, comes only from age. +</P> + +<P> +To humiliate this newly reconstructed Germany would give just the +needed touch to his prestige, and as no slightest pretext for war could +be found, one was made to order, in the shape of a pretended affront to +the French ambassador by the kindly old King William, while peacefully +sunning himself at Ems. +</P> + +<P> +The question at issue was of the candidature of a Hohenzollern to the +vacant throne of Spain. Finding this was unpopular, the name was +promptly withdrawn by Prussia, and there the incident would naturally +have ended. But Bernadetti, French ambassador to Germany, had +instructions to press the matter offensively upon the king, who, +recognizing an intended impertinence, turned on his heel and left him. +</P> + +<P> +The telegraph swiftly bore the news that the ambassador had been +publicly insulted by the King of Prussia. The French heart was +industriously fired, and the leaven worked well. The insolent Germans +must be taught that the great French Empire was not to be insulted with +impunity. Did not the beautiful empress herself buckle the sword upon +the emperor, and even upon the boy Prince Imperial, who should go and +witness for himself his father's triumphs, and receive an object +lesson, as it were, in avenging insult to the imperial dignity, which +would one day be in his keeping? +</P> + +<P> +The miserable end came quickly! +</P> + +<P> +In less than one month the emperor was a prisoner, and in seven months +his empire was swept out of existence; the Germans were in Paris—and +King William, Unser Fritz, Bismarck, and Von Moltke were quartered at +Versailles. +</P> + +<P> +Here it was that the dramatic climax was reached when King Ludwig II. +of Bavaria, in the name of the rest of the German States, laid their +united allegiance at the feet of King William of Prussia, as the head +of the German Empire, begging him to assume the crown of Charlemagne, +which should be hereditary in his family! Poor, mad suicide though he +was, for this act Ludwig's memory should be forever enshrined in the +German heart, for he certainly first suggested, and then carried to +completion, this splendid consummation, apparently indifferent to the +fact that his own kingly dignity would be abridged. Adoring the +picturesque and dramatic as he did, perhaps it seemed to this royal +spendthrift not too much to pay a kingdom for the privilege of acting +in one scene so imposing and dramatic! +</P> + +<P> +So, in January, 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors in the palace of +Versailles, King William assumed the title of "Emperor of Germany"—a +Germany richer by two French provinces and an enormous indemnity from +the conquered state; great in prestige and under the best of emperors +and greatest of prime ministers, augmenting hourly in all that +constitutes power in a state. In less than one decade—not yet ten +years from Bismarck's return to Berlin—a new Germany had arisen from +the fragments of the old, a Germany so great and powerful she was +likely to forget the degradation and humiliation of only a quarter of a +century ago. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap12"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XII. +</H3> + +<P> +When that kingly old man, Emperor William, sank at last under the +weight of years, the crown so brilliantly won at Versailles in 1871 +rested on the head of Unser Fritz—no longer in the flush of victorious +youth, but a poor, stricken man. The tardy honors had come too late. +In vain he struggled against the inevitable, striving to inaugurate the +beneficent policy which had been the dream of his life. Unhappy +Frederick! His death-chamber seemed the playground for every hateful +human passion, and the Furies to have made it their abode, as his +unfulfilled life slipped away from his loosening grasp! At last it was +ended. The untarnished soul and the tortured body parted company, and +William II. reigned in his stead. +</P> + +<P> +The sensibilities of the world had been shocked by the unfilial conduct +of this youth, and it was with little respect that he was seen +restlessly flitting from one court to another, displaying his imperial +trappings like a child with new toys. People laughed to think they had +ever been afraid of this aimless boy. Upon one point only was he +relentless. Man or newspaper breathing faintest whisper of praise for +the dead Frederick came swift under the political guillotine! Did he +wish to efface his father's memory from the hearts of his people? +Would he really, if he could, tear that brief, sad chapter from his +nation's history? It seemed so. Europe watched him much as one does a +headlong boy, who, with the confidence born of vanity and ignorance, +plays with deadly weapons, and imperils his own and his neighbors' +safety. The peace of the continent lay more than ever in the hand of +Bismarck, who alone had power to restrain this dangerous young ruler. +</P> + +<P> +But when William II. posed as the friend of the workingman and ally of +the socialist, the absurdity and the unexpectedness were amusing. What +did he care for industrial problems and the condition of the laboring +classes? The idea uppermost in his restless brain was that he was a +predestined hero, not fitted for the <I>rôle</I> of a Merovingian king, with +a <I>maire du palais</I>. He would be the artificer of his own policy, and +be enrolled among the great sovereigns of history. +</P> + +<P> +There were rumors of dissension with his chancellor, whom finally he +removed, and said practically, "<I>l'etat, c'est moi</I>." There was +nothing now to restrain his restless vagaries, and a catastrophe seemed +at hand. +</P> + +<P> +This is the way it looked a few months ago. But writing current +history is much like drawing pictures upon the sand, which the incoming +tide effaces. +</P> + +<P> +The man who had long held the destinies of Europe in his hand sat in +the retirement of Schönhausen, complacently smoking and waiting for the +catastrophe, and the recall which would surely come. But he was not +needed. Was the <I>Zeit Geist</I> penetrating the iron-encrusted empire? +William had forgotten his toys and was inaugurating +reforms—industrial, educational, social, which touched the lowest +stratum of his people. +</P> + +<P> +We cannot yet forget those visits to San Remo, the cruel intriguing +over his father's death-bed; but greatness lies in the path he has +taken. His intelligence, quicker than his sympathies, sees, perhaps, +that the forces of the future are industrial, not militant. His hand +has grown less nervous, but steadier in its grasp, more human in its +touch. The figure is filling out in stronger lines, with unexpected +promise that it may become heroic. +</P> + +<P> +He was not a pleasant youth, not a nice boy; but we can forgive much to +a sovereign who desires to bring about a general disarmament of Europe! +The early chapters of his biography will never be pleasant reading, but +we will not linger over them if the concluding ones tell of a Germany +brought into line with the world's highest and best development. +</P> + +<P> +Europe to-day is like a field closely packed with explosives, with a +plentiful sprinkling throughout the mass of that giant powder, +nihilism. People step carefully, lest they jar the hostile elements, +and "let loose the dogs of war." The slightest change in position of +the little package marked Bulgaria, and it may be too late. +</P> + +<P> +This province, which ten or twelve years ago was set up by the Great +Powers with an autonomy of its own, lying athwart the coveted pathway +to the Mediterranean, has, like Schleswig-Holstein, greatness thrust +upon it. The plaything of diplomacy, with only a semblance of +self-government, its <I>rôle</I> in European politics is both tragic and +comic. Its king must await not alone confirmation by Turkey, but +ratification by the Great Powers, and little care they who ascends its +slippery little throne, except as he will further or obstruct the +private political ends of each; and Russia, thinking only of expansion +toward the sea, is especially paternal toward the forlorn little state. +</P> + +<P> +While this diplomatic game is enacting, there is a pause. Is it the +hush which precedes the storm? +</P> + +<P> +All eyes are fixed upon the Russian bear, cautiously and stealthily +prowling toward the south and east.—Austria hungrily watches the +Balkan provinces, over which the paw of the bear already +hovers.—Italy, with hate and suspicion, has eyes riveted upon her +hereditary enemy, Austria.—France, never for a moment forgetting +Alsace and Lorraine, watches her opportunity with Germany, and draws +into closer affinity with Russia—England, with gaze fixed upon an open +pathway to India, suspects them all—and Germany, conscious that +disaster is always imminent while the French thirst for revenge, and +the Russian thirst for the waters of the Mediterranean are unabated, +strengthens her defences and sleeps with hand upon her sword. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Evolution of an Empire, by Mary Parmele + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE *** + +***** This file should be named 34072-h.htm or 34072-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/0/7/34072/ + +Produced by Al Haines + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Evolution of an Empire + A Brief Historical Sketch of Germany + +Author: Mary Parmele + +Release Date: October 15, 2010 [EBook #34072] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + + + + + +THE + +EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE + + +A BRIEF HISTORICAL SKETCH OF + +GERMANY + + + +BY + +MARY PARMELE + + + + +_SECOND EDITION_ + + + + +NEW YORK + +WILLIAM BEVERLEY HARISON, + +59 FIFTH AVENUE + +1893. + + + + +COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY + +PARMELE & CHAFFEE. + + + +Press of J. J. Little & Co. + +Astor Place, New York + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +CHAPTER I. + +Indo-European Migrations--Divisions of the Aryan Family into European +Races--Laying the Foundations of the German Empire + + +CHAPTER II. + +Hermann--Subdivisions of the Teutonic Race + + +CHAPTER III. + +Ulfila--Migrations of Teutonic Races--Fall of Rome before +Alaric--Hunnish Invasion--Modern Europe foreshadowed + + +CHAPTER IV. + +Anglo-Saxon Occupation of Britain + + +CHAPTER V. + +Teuton Occupation of Gaul--Final Severing of Connection with Roman +Empire--Clovis, King of France--Merovingian Kings--Pippin--Beginning of +Carlovingian Line + + +CHAPTER VI. + +Charlemagne--Separation of France and Germany--Growth of Spiritual +Power--Conflict between Pope Gregory VII. and Henry IV.--Entire +Supremacy of the Church + + +CHAPTER VII. + +Europe in the Hands of Three Men--Charles V., Francis I., and Henry +VIII.--Indulgences sold by Leo X.--Birth of Protestantism + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +Thirty Years' War--Decay of the German Empire + + +CHAPTER IX. + +Napoleon Bonaparte--German Empire Extinct--Waterloo--German States +confederated, with Austria at the Head + + +CHAPTER X. + +Schleswig-Holstein--Bismarck--War with Austria--Koeniggraetz + + +CHAPTER XI. + +Napoleon III.--War with France--Germans in Paris--William crowned +German Emperor at Versailles + + +CHAPTER XII. + +Death of Emperor William--Death of Frederick--William II. Emperor--His +Policy--Situation in Europe + + + + +EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE. + + +CHAPTER I. + +Foundation building is neither picturesque nor especially interesting, +but it is indispensable. However fair the structure is to be, one must +first lay the rough-hewn stones upon which it is to rest. It would be +much pleasanter in this sketch to display at once the minarets and +towers, and stained-glass windows; but that can only be done when one's +castle is in Spain. + +Would we comprehend the Germany of to-day, we must hold firmly in our +minds an epitome of what it has been, and see vividly the devious path +of its development through the ages. + +The German nation is of ancient lineage, and indeed belongs to the +royal line of human descent, the Aryan; its ancestral roots running +back until lost in the heart of Asia, in the mists of antiquity. + +The home of the Aryan race is shrouded in mystery, as are the impelling +causes which sent those successive tides of humanity into Europe. But +we know with certainty that when the last great wave spread over +Eastern Europe, or Russia, about one thousand years before Christ, the +submergence of that continent was complete. + +Before the coming of the Aryan, the Rhine flowed as now; the Alps +pierced the sky with their glistening peaks as they do to-day; the +Danube, the Rhone, hurried on, as now, toward the sea. Was it all a +beautiful, unpeopled solitude waiting in silence for the richly endowed +Asiatic to come and possess it? Far from it. It was teeming with +humanity--if, indeed, we may call such the race which modern research +and discovery has revealed to us. It is only within the last thirty +years that anything whatever has been known of prehistoric man; but now +we are able to reconstruct him with probable accuracy. A creature, +bestial in appearance and in life; dwelling in caves, which, however, a +dawning sense of a higher humanity led him to decorate with carvings of +birds and fishes; but, certain it is, the brain which inhabited that +skull was incapable of performing the mental processes necessary to the +simplest form of civilization; and life must have been to him simply a +thing of fierce appetites and brutal instincts. Such was the being +encountered by the Aryan, when he penetrated the mysterious land beyond +the confines of Greece and Italy. + +The extermination, and perhaps, to some extent, assimilation, of this +terrible race must have required centuries of brutalizing conflict, +and, it is easy to imagine, would have produced just such men as were +the northern barbarians, who for five hundred years terrorized Europe: +men insensible to fear, terrible, fierce, but with fine instincts for +civilization--dormant Aryan germs, which quickly developed when brought +into contact with a superior race. + +The earliest Indo-European migration is supposed to have been into +Greece and Italy, where was laid the basis for the civilization of the +world. The second was probably into Western Europe and the British +Isles; then, after many centuries, the central, and last, and at a time +comparatively recent, into the Eastern portion of the continent. + +So by the fourth century B.C. three great divisions of the Aryan race +occupied Europe north of Greece and Italy. The Keltic, the western; +the Teutonic, the central; the Slavonic, the eastern; and these, in +turn, had ramified into new subdivisions or tribes. + +To state it, as in the pedigree of the individual, the Aryan was the +founder, the father of the family; Slav, Teuton, and Kelt the three +sons. Gaul and Briton were sons of the Kelt; Saxon, Angle, Helvetian, +etc., sons of the Teuton; and all alike grandchildren of the Aryan; +whom--to carry the illustration farther--we may imagine to have had +older children, who long ago had left the paternal home and settled +about the Caspian and Mediterranean Seas. Mede, Persian, Greek, Roman, +apparently bearing few marks of kinship to these uncouth younger +brothers whom we have found in Europe in this fourth century B.C., but +with nevertheless the same cradle, and the same ancestral roots. + +It is the Teutonic branch of the Aryan family with which we have to do +now. The river Rhine flowed between them and their Keltic brothers, +and it was by the Keltic Gauls on the west side of this river that they +were first called Germans, which, in the language of the Kelt, meant +simply neighbors. + +CHAPTER II. + +Greece and Rome were unaware of the existence of the Teuton until about +the year 330 B.C., when Pythias, a Greek navigator, came home from a +voyage to the Baltic with terrible tales of the Goths whom he had met. +Nearly one century before Christ the inhabitants of Italy were enabled +to judge for themselves of the accuracy of the description. Driven +from their homes by the inroads of the sea, the Goths poured in a +hungry torrent down into the tempting vineyards of Northern Italy. +Gigantic in stature, with long yellow hair, eyes blue but fierce--what +wonder that the people thought they were scarcely human, and fled +affrighted, leaving them to enjoy the vineyards at their leisure. + +Accounts of this uncanny host reached Rome, which soon knew of their +breastplates of iron, their helmets crowned with heads of wild beasts, +their white shields glistening in the sun, and, more terrible than all, +of their priestesses, clad in white linen, who prophesied and offered +human sacrifices to their gods. + +But the sacrifices did not avail against the legions which the great +Consul Marius led against them. The ponderous Goth was not yet a match +for the finer skill of the Roman, and the invaders were exterminated at +Aix-la-Chapelle, 102 B.C. The women, in despair, slew first their +children and then themselves, a few only surviving to be paraded in +chains at the triumph accorded to Marius on his return to Rome. Such +was the first appearance of the Teuton in the Eternal City, and the +last until five hundred years later, when the conditions were changed. + +At the time of this first invasion of the Goths they had made some +progress in political and social organization, though of the simplest +kind. Predatory in habits and fierce as the wild beasts of their +forests, they were, however, romantic in ideals, had a fine sense of +the beautiful. They exalted woman, and honored marriage and the family +relation to an extent beyond any ancient people. When I have said +that, added to this, they had a glimmering sense of human rights in +communities and in the State, it will be seen that the German race had +the basis of a superior civilization; and when the Christian era +dawned, though the world knew it not, a great nation was coming into +organic form. + +At this period, Julius Caesar had made Roman provinces of Gaul and +Britain; and now the wave of conquest naturally overflowed the boundary +line into the land of the Teuton; and the German, in his barbaric +simplicity, stood face to face with that finished human product, the +astute, cultivated Roman. + +For centuries they fought--always on German soil--the legions often +repulsed, yet pressing on and on, until a chain of Roman fortresses +stretched from the Rhine to the Baltic, and the people were held--not +subjugated--by Roman power. + +About the year 100 of our era there arose the first heroic figure in +the history of Germany, when Hermann made a prodigious but ineffectual +attempt to consolidate his people and expel the Romans. The colossal +statue only recently erected in Germany, is a tribute to the unhappy +hero of eighteen centuries ago. + +At the time of this attempt the Germans had learned much from the +superior civilization by which they were invaded. They were no longer +the barbarous race which had trampled down the vineyards of northern +Italy two hundred years before. Nor was this lesson in civilization +yet over. For five hundred years Teuton and Roman continued the +struggle. The one by the process growing wiser, richer in resource, +and in supplementing his rude strength with the finer methods of old +civilizations, becoming a more and more dangerous adversary; while the +other saw himself more and more enfeebled, and, wearied with the +conflict, felt decrepitude stealing surely over him. + +In the year 300 the Teutons had ramified into six branches--the +Burgundians, Thuringians, Franks, Saxons, Allemani, and Goths--all one +in race, but each with its own distinct traits and life. The Allemani +were so called from _aller-mannen_--all men; seeming to signify that +this tribe was composed of the fragments of many tribes. Why this +tribal name should have become that of the whole German nation is not +apparent. Obviously the word Allemagne has this origin, just as +Deutsch may be as readily traced to Teuton. + +But of these six tribes it was the Goths who first adopted +Christianity, and took on the forms of a higher civilization. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +As some winged seed is wafted from a fair garden into a dark, distant +forest, and there takes root and blossoms, so was the seed-germ of +Christianity caught by the wind of destiny, and carried from Palestine +to the heart of pagan Germany, where, strange to say, it found +congenial soil. + +The story is a romantic one. A Christian boy in Asia Minor, while +straying on the shores of the Mediterranean, was captured by some +Goths, who took their fair-haired prize home to their own land, and +named him Ulfila. + +The boy, with his heart all aflame for the religion in which he had +been nurtured, told his captors the story of Calvary--of Christ and His +gospel of peace and love--and lived to see the terrible sacrificial +altars replaced by the Cross. + +The Goths had no alphabet, so Ulfila invented one, and then translated +the Bible into their rude speech. A part of this translation is now +preserved in Sweden, and is the earliest extant specimen of the Gothic +language. Even to the unlearned observer, this Gothic version of the +Lord's Prayer, written by Ulfila more than one thousand five hundred +years ago, bears such strong marks of kinship to the German and English +versions that it can be easily read by us to-day, and makes us realize +how much of the Teuton has mingled with our own life and speech. + +The enormous vitality of the Teutons was evinced in their restless +desire to extend themselves. They were not comfortable neighbors. The +Franks made predatory incursions into Gaul, which they finally overran +and possessed; the Allemani, into Italy; the Saxons, in the same +manner, overran Britain; while the stalwart Goths addressed their blows +to the Roman Empire--the common foe of all--until 410 _Anno Domini_, +when, for a second time, Teuton feet trod the streets of Rome, this +time not chained to the chariot of a Marius, but conquerors. And when +the gates of the Eternal City yielded to the blows of Alaric, the Roman +Empire virtually ceased to exist. + +So this rude people, which in the time of Julius Caesar was buried in +the forests of Central Europe, in six hundred years from his time +occupied all of Europe, and was beginning to lay the foundations of a +new empire upon the fragments of the old. + +There is not time to tell how the newly Christianized and civilized +Goths were now in turn attacked by the Huns, a race vastly more fierce +and terrible than they had ever been, who swarmed down upon them +suddenly, like the locusts of Egypt, and under the leadership of Attila +swept everything before them; then, after leaving a track of blood and +ashes through Germany, disappearing again over the steppes of Russia, +from whence they had mysteriously come; a tremendous upturning force, +but bearing no relation to the future result more than the plough to +the future grain. + +There had been no repose for Europe yet--incessant tribal changes; a +surging mass of humanity pouring from one land into another. The +troubled continent was a great, seething caldron, from which was to +emerge a new civilization. But soon after this final convulsion of the +Hunnish invasion the migrations ceased, and now, about the year 570, +the foundations of the present European divisions began to appear. In +Britain, subjugated by the Angles and Saxons, we see foreshadowed the +Anglo-Saxon England of to-day; in the country lying east and west of +the Rhine, France and Germany begin to be outlined; while the smaller +German states are distinctly visible, some of them with geographical +divisions almost the same as now. Modern Europe was beginning to +crystallize. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +I cannot resist the temptation of saying a few words about the +Anglo-Saxon occupation of Britain, which, as it virtually converted us +from Kelts into Teutons, is not a digression. + +From the time of Julius Caesar the island of Britain had been occupied +by the Romans, and in consequence had become partly civilized and +Christianized. Upon the fall of the empire, the Roman legions were +withdrawn, and the people, left defenceless, became the prey of their +own northern barbarians, the Picts and Scots; the drama of Southern +Europe and the Goths being reenacted on a diminished scale. In the +fourth century the Britons implored the Angles and Saxons to come and +protect them from these savages. Invited as allies, they came as +invaders, and remained as conquerors, implanting their habits, speech, +and paganism upon the prostrate island. It was the extermination of +this exotic paganism which impelled to those deeds of valor recited in +the Round Table romances, and which made King Arthur and his knights +the theme of poet and minstrel for centuries. + +But the Saxon had come to stay, and Teuton and Kelt became merged, much +as do the lion and lamb, after the former has dined! The Teutonic +Saxon may be said to have dined on the Keltic Briton, and remained +master of the island until the Normans came, six centuries later, and +in turn dominated, and made him bear the yoke of servitude. + +Nor was this French-speaking Norman, French at all, except by adoption; +being, in fact, the terrible Northman of two centuries before, on +account of whose ravages the noble had entrenched himself in his strong +castle, and the wretched serf had in mortal terror sold himself and all +that he possessed, for the protection of its solid walls and moat; and +thus had been laid the foundations of feudalism. He it was who, with +long hair reeking with rancid oil, battle-axe, spear, and iron +hook--with which to capture human and other prey--had held France in a +state of unspeakable terror for centuries, but who had finally settled +down as respectable French citizen in the sea-board province of +Normandy, and in two centuries had made such wonderful improvement in +manners, apparel, and speech, that the simple Saxon baron stood abashed +before the splendid refinements of his conquerors. + +The origin of this mysterious Northman is unknown; but whatever it was, +or whoever he was, he certainly possessed Aryan germs of high potency. + +So the Saxon had built the solid walls of the racial structure upon a +foundation of Britons; and, though with no thought for beauty, had +built well, with strong, true structural lines. It was the Norman who +finished and decorated the structure, but he did not alter one of these +lines; the speech, traits, institutions, and habits of England being at +the core Saxon to-day, while there is a decorative surface only of +Norman. + +So when the Englishman calls himself with swelling pride, a Briton, he +speaks wide of the mark. The Keltic Briton was buried fathoms deep +under seven centuries of Saxon rule, and then, to make the extinction +more complete, was overlaid with this brilliant lacquer of Norman +surface. And if that mixed product, the English people, have any race +paternity, it is Teutonic, and herein may lie the impossibility of +making the English and Irish a homogeneous people--the English Teuton +and Irish Kelt being in the nature of things antagonistic, the +particles refuse to combine chemically, and can only be brought +together (to use the language of the chemist) in mechanical mixture. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +At the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England, and for three +centuries later, the history of France and Germany were one and the +same. + +The Roman Empire, in its decrepitude, found it a difficult task to +retain its dominion over Gaul, and so enlisted the Franks as allies. +Thus was made a breach in the wall between the Kelt and the Teuton, +through which in time flowed an irresistible German torrent, +intermingling with the former population, and, by virtue of its +superior strength, spreading itself over the land in permanent +dominion; and when Clovis, their Frankish leader, drove out from Gaul +the last remnant of Roman power, in 483 of our era, all connection with +the expiring empire was severed. The loose confederation of tribes was +gathered by the strong hand of the conquering Frank under one head, and +Clovis was proclaimed king, with hereditary rights for his children. + +With this event the doors close upon antiquity, and we are in the path +which leads swiftly to modern history. + +Clovis, the son of Merowig, gave his name to the dynasty thus founded. +One of his first acts was the renouncing of paganism, through the +influence of his wife, Clotilde, so that from their very birth France +and Germany were Christian, while England lingered for centuries under +pagan rule. + +The grandchildren of Clovis and Clotilde, Siegfried and Brunhilde, were +the heroes of the "Niebelungen Lied," and their adventures inspired not +alone the great German epic, but have lent to the greatest music of +modern times its majestic, heroic swing. + +The real Brunhilde did not immolate herself upon her husband's funeral +pile, as in the musical romance, but an end more tragic and vastly more +terrible was hers. After being tortured for three days, her hair was +tied to the tail of a fiery horse, spurs plunged into his sides, and +the unhappy queen was ground to fragments upon the stones of the Rue +St. Honore, Paris, where this tragedy occurred about the year 600 A.D. + +But the heroic strain in the Merovingian blood soon exhausted itself. +The kings became effeminate, luxurious, and, after a time, too indolent +even to govern, and finally gave entire control of state affairs to a +royal steward, known as "_maire du palais_" or _major domus_, who was +indeed king _de facto_, with authority supreme over the king himself. + +Pepin was the last of these royal stewards. Conscious of his own +superior fitness, he took the crown from the long, perfumed locks of +the last Merovingian king and placed it upon his own head. What matter +that he had no drop of royal blood in his veins? He held the sceptre +with firm hand, by the divine right of ability, leaving it upon his +death to his second son Charlemagne, who was destined to wield it by +divine right of born conqueror and ruler of men. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +This colossal figure stands the one supreme historical landmark midway +between Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte. In looking back, he saw +not his equal in history until he beheld Caesar. Nor in looking forward +would he have seen another until just one thousand years later, when +the world seemed to have found another master in Napoleon Bonaparte. + +In the amplitude of his intelligence, in the splendor of his +attributes, and in his seven feet of stature, Charlemagne was every +inch a king. He was twenty-nine years old when, by the death of his +father, Pepin, he became monarch, and set about his task, which was, to +develop a great empire--overturning, conquering, despotic, often cruel, +but always with the high purpose of giving to his race a higher +civilization. In twenty-nine years more this task was accomplished, +and a map of the German Empire was a map of Europe. On Christmas day, +in the year 800, in the Cathedral of St. Peter's, at Rome, he received +the imperial crown from Pope Leo III., and was greeted with cries of +"Life and victory to Carolus Magnus, crowned by God Emperor of the +Romans;" and at that moment he stood at the head of an empire which +included all Christendom. + +Charlemagne acknowledged the pope who crowned him as his spiritual +sovereign, while, on the other hand, the pope bowed before the emperor +who appointed him, as his temporal sovereign. It was a magnificent, +all-embracing scheme of empire, of which the spiritual head was at +Rome, and the temporal at Aix-la-Chapelle. + +It seemed as if by this dual supremacy Charlemagne had provided for all +possible exigencies of human government. He rested content, no doubt +thinking he had embodied a perfect ideal in creating a system which +should thus coordinate and embrace both the spiritual and temporal +needs of an empire. Unfortunately, in order to be realized, it needed +always the wisest of emperors and best of popes. As soon as his +controlling hand was removed unexpected dangers assailed his work. + +In less than fifty years from his coronation, his three grandsons had +quarrelled and torn the empire into as many parts, the elder retaining +the imperial title. This event, 841 of our era, marks the beginning of +France and Germany as distinct nationalities; hence it is that both +nations claim Charlemagne, whereas he belongs to the French just as +Queen Elizabeth does to Americans. + +In forecasting his plans of empire, it is not probable that danger of +conflict between the spiritual and temporal heads ever occurred to +Charlemagne. But that is precisely what happened. Even this astute, +far-seeing man did not suspect the nature of the power with which he +formed this close alliance. His plan of government made the pope +distinctly the creation of the emperor. His creature, and hence +subordinate. But there was a tremendous principle of growth in that +spiritual centre! + +The first five hundred years after Christ the pope had been simply +Bishop of Rome. In the next five hundred years he was nominal head of +the whole Church. As the Church was entering upon its third +five-hundred-year lease, in the year 1073, the fiery monk Hildebrand, +who had now become Pope Gregory VII., determined it should be supreme +in authority over all other powers--a religious empire, existing by +Divine right, independent of the fate of nations or will of kings and +emperors. Henry IV., who was then emperor, indignant at these insolent +pretensions, deposed the pope--this creature of his own appointing, who +would override the authority of the power which had created him! + +The pope excommunicated the emperor. Each had done his worst, pope and +emperor; and had Henry stood his ground as he might, for he would have +had ample support from his people, it would have been a gain of +centuries for Europe. But--the ban of excommunication, with its +attendant horrors here, and still worse hereafter--it was more than he +could bear. Affrighted, trembling, penitent, he crossed the Alps in +dead of winter, crept to the castle of Canossa, near Parma, where +Hildebrand had taken refuge; and there this successor to Charlemagne, +this ruler of all Christendom, standing barefoot and clad in sackcloth +shirt, humbly begged admittance. The pope's triumph was complete. So +he let him shiver for three days in cold and rain before he opened the +gates and gave him forgiveness and the kiss of peace. + +The Church had never scored so tremendous a victory. She was supreme +over every earthly authority, and the hands on the face of time were +set back for centuries. Let Guelph and Ghibelline (the two political +parties representing the adherents of the pope and the emperor) storm +and struggle as they might, she need never more be afraid of +overstepping any humanly constituted bounds. + +And it was to be no empty panoply of power. The strong hand of +priestly authority must have its hold on every human conscience and +will. + +She sat and watched complacently as her children drove back the infidel +Saracens, conscious of her own growing strength, and that she was +becoming still stronger as those three tidal waves of religious frenzy +swept over Europe into the Holy Land. + +There was no question of supremacy now between temporal and spiritual +heads. All the lines of power--all the threads of human destiny--led +to Rome, and were found at last in the papal hand. + +But these were halcyon days. There was a cloud already on the horizon, +the size of a man's hand, and that hand was--Wickliffe's--the hand +which had torn the veil of mystery from the Bible by translating it +into the speech of the common people, the hand which had written words +inciting rebellion against church authority. + +The clouds grew larger and darker when printing came, disseminating the +new heresies. The Bible was broadcast in the hands of the people, who +began to manifest a dangerous tendency to think! + +The whole enginery of thumbscrew, rack, and stake was set to work. +Tender human flesh shrinks from burning, lacerating, and torture, so +the griefs, longings, and aspirations of thousands of hearts flowed in +streams deep down below the surface, coming to light here and there for +brief moments among the followers of Huss, the Albigenses, the +Waldenses, only to be driven back again into silence and despair. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +In the early part of the sixteenth century the fate of Europe was in +the hands of three men--Charles V., Emperor of Germany; Francis I., +King of France, and Henry VIII., King of England. + +Charles was half Fleming and half Spaniard, with the grasping +acquisitiveness of the one nation, and the proud, fanatical cruelty of +the other. Small of stature, plain in feature, sedate, quiet, crafty, +he was playing a desperate game with Francis I. for supremacy in Europe. + +Francis, handsome as an Apollo, accomplished, fascinating, profligate, +was fully his match in ambition. Covering his worst qualities with a +gorgeous mantle of generosity and chivalrous sense of honor, he was the +insidious corrupter of morals in France; creating a sentiment which +laughed at virtue and innocence as qualities belonging to a lower class +of society. + +Each of these men was striving to enlist Henry VIII. upon his side, by +appealing to the cruel caprices of that vain, ostentatious, arrogant +king, who in turn tried to use them for the furthering of his own +desires and purposes. + +It was a sort of triangular game between the three monarchs--a game +full of finesse and far-reaching designs. If Charles attacked Francis, +Henry attacked Charles. While the astute Charles, knowing well the +desire of the English king to repudiate Katharine and make Anne Boleyn +his queen, whispered seductive promises of the papal chair to Wolsey, +who was in turn to establish his own influence over his royal master by +bringing about the marriage with Anne, upon which the king's heart was +set, and then be rewarded by securing Henry's promise of neutrality for +Charles, in his designs of over-reaching Francis--and after that, the +road to Rome for the aspiring cardinal would be a straight one! + +It was an intricate diplomatic net-work, in which the thread of Henry's +desire for the fair Anne was mingled with Wolsey's desire for +preferment, and both interlaced with the ambitious, far-reaching +purposes of the other two monarchs. + +All these events were very absorbing, and while they were splendidly +gilding the surface of Europe in the first half of the sixteenth +century, it seemed a small matter that an obscure monk was denouncing +the pope and defying the power of the Catholic Church. Little did +Charles suspect that when his victories and edicts were forgotten, the +words of the insolent heretic would still be echoing down the ages. + +A few years later, and the Apollo-like beauty and false heart of +Francis I. were dissolving in the grave--Henry VIII. had gone to +another world, to meet his reward--and his wives--and Charles V. was +sadly counting his beads in the monastery of St. Jerome, at Yuste, +reflecting upon the vanity of human ambitions--but the murmur of +protest from the unknown monk had become a roar--the rivulet had +swollen into a threatening torrent. As it is the invisible forces that +are the most powerful in nature, so it is the obscure and least +observed events that have accomplished the most tremendous revolutions +in human affairs. + +In the year 1517, when it had not yet occurred to Henry's sensitive +conscience that his marriage with Katharine, his brother's widow, was +illegal, and while Charles V., that sedate young man, who "looked so +modest, and soared so high," was revolving plans for the extension of +his empire, Pope Leo X., the pious Vicar of Christ upon earth, and +elegant patron of Michael Angelo and Raphael, found his income all too +small for his magnificent tastes. It does not seem to have occurred to +him that his tastes were too costly for his income; he simply +recognized that something must be done, and at once, to fill his empty +purse. But what should it be? A simple and ingenious expedient solved +the perplexing problem. He would issue a proclamation to his "loving, +faithful children," that he would grant absolution for all sorts of +crimes, the prices graduated to suit the enormity of the offence. We +have not seen the proclamation, but doubt not it was in most caressing +Latin, for can anything exceed the velvety softness of the gloves worn +on the hands which sign papal decrees? + +Simple lying and slander were cheap; perjury and sins against chastity +more costly; while the use of the stiletto, of poison, and the hired +assassin could be enjoyed only by the richest. It worked well. In the +hopeful words of a pious dignitary, "as soon as the money chinks in the +coffer, the soul springs out of purgatory." Who could resist such +promise? Money flowed in swollen streams into the thirsty coffers, +many even paying in advance for crimes they intended to commit! + +Martin Luther was the one man who dared to stand up and denounce this +tax upon crime, this papal trade in vice. The people had at last found +a voice and a leader. + +Protestantism sprang into existence without the slow process of growth. +It had long been maturing in silence and darkness, and at the trumpet +tones of Luther, declared itself a power upon the earth. Here was a +revolt beyond the reach of thumbscrew and stake! You could not burn a +million people! + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +The Church gathered herself for one supreme effort to stem this fatal +tide, which was loosening her foundations. + +Just one hundred years from the birth of Protestantism, pope and +emperor, putting their spiritual and temporal heads together, planned a +crusade against twenty-five million Protestants. + +The desultory war against the new heresy had been ineffectual. As it +was stamped out in one place, it blazed up afresh in others. Now it +should be, at whatever cost, exterminated in the German Empire. + +Thus was initiated what is known as the "Thirty Years' War," the most +desolating in history. Generations came and went while it raged fierce +and furious--eight million slain, and twelve million surviving to meet +horrors worse than death. Cattle exterminated, food exhausted, the +uncultivated fields drenched with blood and tears--a vast graveyard, in +which were the mouldering corpses of eight million slaughtered people, +one-third of the population of the empire! Earth was kneaded into +bread; men found dead with their mouths filled with grass; and there +are frightful stories of human beings hunted down, like deer, for food. + +The spirit of the people was broken. Germany had been set back two +hundred years. And for what? Not to accomplish any high purpose, not +even from mistaken Christian zeal, but simply to carry out the despotic +resolve of the Catholic Church to rule the minds and consciences of all +men through its popes and priesthood. It was the old battle commenced +six centuries before. Had Henry not gone to Canossa in 1073, there had +been no Thirty Years' War in 1618! + +The empire of Charlemagne virtually perished during this struggle, the +Hapsburgs wearing its empty ornaments and trappings for a couple of +centuries more, imaginary rulers of an imaginary empire, the reality +and substance of which had departed. + +There was a flickering of the dying splendor when Maria Theresa was +empress (mother of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette), and impressed her +own strong, brilliant personality upon her empire and age--an age +rendered memorable also by the great Frederick, who brought Prussia +from obscurity to be ranked with the great powers, and thus rekindled +national pride and renewed the hopes of Germany. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +When the nineteenth century dawned, a new and striking figure had +appeared in Europe. Napoleon Bonaparte had arisen with a bound from +obscurity in Corsica to supreme authority in France, and with audacious +display of power wielded by genius, hurled his battalions across the +face of Europe. + +He seemed the embodiment of some new and irresistible force. Kingdoms +melted before him, and kings and princes vied with each other in doing +his bidding quickly, as he tore down old political divisions, and, as +it were, etched a new map of Europe with his sword; distributing +thrones as boys do marbles, until there was not an uncrowned head in +his own or his wife's family, or scarcely among his intimate friends. +He made his brother Joseph king of Spain; Bernadotte, his friend, king +of Sweden; Murat, his brother-in-law, king of Naples. Created the +kingdom of Holland and gave it to his brother Louis; and another +kingdom of Westphalia, which he gave to his brother Jerome. Appointed +Eugene Beauharnais, his stepson, viceroy of Italy. Married Hortense, +his step-daughter, to Louis, King of Holland; and Stephanie, Empress +Josephine's niece, to the Grand Duke of Baden. + +It will be observed that when there were not enough thrones to go +around, he simply created a kingdom! Certainly, with all his faults, +no one can accuse him of not having provided well for his family! + +At a touch from this Man of Destiny, the shadowy fabric of the German +Empire crumbled to dust. Just one thousand years from the crowning of +its first emperor Charlemagne, its last, Francis II., laid down his +arms and his sceptre before Napoleon, and with them the proud title of +"Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire," assumed on that Christmas day, in +the Cathedral of St. Peter's, in the year 800. + +When Napoleon married Marie Louise, daughter of this deposed monarch +who had occupied the throne of the Caesars, his dream of universal +empire seemed realized. The continent of Europe was actually under his +feet. History had only twice before witnessed such a display of power, +and contained only three men as colossal in triumphs--Alexander, Julius +Caesar, and Charlemagne. + +But it was the mantle of these last two that he felt he was destined to +wear, the glittering pinnacles of the great Roman Empire being ever +before his romantic ambition. Hence, when the longed-for son was born +he called him King of Rome. And why should he not? Was not his mother +daughter of a line of emperors leading back to Charlemagne, first +emperor of the Holy Roman Empire? + +But with the first reverse, this artificially created empire trembled +upon its foundations, and upon his defeat at Waterloo, 1815, one +thousand years from the death of Charlemagne, the whole fabric fell +apart into fragments. The crowns rolled off the heads of Joseph, +Jerome, Louis, and the rest of them. The magical creation passed away +like a vision of the night. + +Europe rallied from the spell which this Corsican magician had thrown +over her, and while he lay chained to the rock at St. Helena, the +vulture of regret eating his heart away, Metternich, prime minister of +Austria, was restoring order to Germany. + +A confederation of states was formed, with Austria as its chief, each +to be represented at a general Diet, held at Frankfort; and for fifty +years such was the condition of Germany. Prussia, fallen from her high +position under Frederick the Great, sinking lower and lower in the +scale of nations, dominated by Austria, powerless to resent insult, her +people helpless and hopeless, looking only to final disintegration and +absorption into the powerful states about her. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +We have now reached a period with which readers of to-day have more or +less personal familiarity. This hour of deep depression in Germany was +the one which comes before the dawn. + +The Schleswig-Holstein episode was a complicated, tiresome tangle, even +while it was enacting, and now is to most people only another name for +a rusty German key with which Pandora's box was opened for Europe just +twenty-five years ago. But it was a pivotal incident, and must be +understood in order to make clear the rapid succession of events +following, of which it was the first link in the chain. + +The two adjacent dukedoms of Schleswig and Holstein, which constitute a +sort of natural bridge about one hundred and fifty miles long and fifty +miles wide, between Denmark and Prussia, are, by the way, the land of +nativity for the Anglo-Saxon race, the Angles having inhabited +Schleswig, and the Saxons Holstein, at the time they so kindly +protected the Britons from the Picts and Scots! + +So it is probable that every member of this Anglo-Saxon family has +ancestral roots running back to that fertile strip of pasture land, +which was geographically and, at a later day, historically so important. + +At the time we are now considering, it had for many years been under +the Danish protectorate, the King of Denmark being, by virtue of his +position, also Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, just as the German Emperor +is now King of Prussia by virtue of his imperial office. + +But this little people were by no means merged with the Danish by this +arrangement; on the contrary, they preserved very jealously their own +traits and ancestral traditions. Among these, was the exclusion of +women from the royal succession--the Salic law, framed by their Frank +ancestors centuries before on the banks of the river Saale, being part +of their constitution. Hence, when King Frederick VII. of Denmark died +in 1862 without male heir, and King Christian IX. became king, the +people of the two dukedoms hotly refused to recognize him as their +lawful ruler, but claimed their right of reversion to Duke Frederick +VIII., who was in the direct male line of succession. + +Had the Salic law prevailed in Denmark, this Duke Frederick (father of +the present young Empress of Germany) would now (1890) be King of +Denmark instead of Christian IX. But it did not exist, so Christian, +father of the Empress of Russia--of the Princess of Wales--and of King +George of Greece--became, in 1862, lawful King of Denmark, with rights +unimpaired by female descent. + +This was the beginning of changes destined to alter the face of Europe. + +Schleswig-Holstein revolted against being held by a ruler who, +according to her constitution, was not the terminal of the royal line, +and insisted upon bestowing herself upon the German Duke Frederick +VIII. Denmark naturally resisted this _anti-Christian_ revolt. Salic +law or no Salic law, the dukedoms were hers, and should stay. And, +indeed, they were a charming pastoral possession, a morsel which must +have sorely tempted the German appetite to be invited to take. But in +those days Prussia's big brother, Austria, had not alone to be +consulted, but placated. This was the more bitter because of having +once tasted the sweets of national greatness under Frederick; and now +even little Denmark dare defy and insult her! And was not this crown, +which King William had received from his dead brother in 1857, but a +badge of brilliant servitude, after all, to Francis Joseph, who was his +chief? + +However, in this instance the big brother, for reasons of his own, +thought well of the cession of the twin dukedoms to Prussia, and they +would have been quickly absorbed into the German "_Diet_" had not the +Great Powers (who since the Napoleonic episode had been very alert in +such matters) grimly said, "Hands off!" + +It was just at this crisis, in 1862, that Bismarck, having been +appointed to the office of Prime Minister of Prussia, came from the +courts of St. Petersburg and Paris, where he had been ambassador, and +commenced his series of brilliant games upon the European chess-board. + +King Christian of Denmark, pleased with his success in retaining the +refractory states, determined to go still farther; that is, to adopt a +new constitution separating these Siamese twins, which should, in fact, +detach Schleswig from Holstein, incorporating it permanently with +Denmark. + +This was in direct violation of the treaty with the Great Powers made +in London, 1852, and afforded the needed pretext for war. + +The moment and the man had arrived. Bismarck, with the intuition of a +good player, saw his opportunity, pushed up the pawn, +Schleswig-Holstein, and said, "Check to your king." + +The Prussian and Austrian troops poured into Denmark, and in a few +short weeks the blooming isthmus had ceased to be Danish, and had +become German. + +Austria generously said, "We will divide the prize. Schleswig shall be +Prussian, and Holstein Austrian." + +Could anything be more odious to the Prussian? The long arm of +Austrian tyranny stretching way over their land, up to their northern +seaboard! It might almost better have become Danish. But "all things +come to him who waits," and--Bismarck waited. + +In the diplomatic adjustments which followed it was an easy matter to +quarrel over the prize, and once more the needed pretext was at hand. +Bismarck again pushed up his useful little pawn, and said "check," but +this time to the Emperor of Austria. Ah! here was a game worth +watching. Europe and America, too, were willing to let their morning +coffee get cold in studying the moves. Francis Joseph did not see as +far into the game as his astute adversary, whose keen eye was focused +at long range upon a renewed and consolidated Germany. + +The conflict was short (only seven weeks), but the preparation had been +long and thorough. The 3d of July will long be remembered by Germany. +King William was there; the Crown Prince was there, now become "Unser +Fritz" by his superb military achievements, the ideal prince and +soldier of modern Europe; and Koeniggraetz, like Waterloo, decided the +game. Francis Joseph was checkmated. Germany was the head of its own +nation. Its servitude to Austria existed no more. What wonder that +the people were glad, or that Unser Fritz became their idol, and +Bismarck their demigod! + +The dismembered parts were soon, under a new constitution, consolidated +into a national union, which was Protestant and Prussian, and forever +separated from all that was Catholic and Austrian. In five short years +what a change! Truly, blood and iron had proved a wonderful tonic! + +And what of poor little Schleswig-Holstein, that land of our race +nativity? If she had indulged in any innocent expectation of benefit +from such brilliant espousal of her cause, such hope must have been +rudely dispelled when she found herself between these upper and nether +millstones, and she must have realized that she had been only the +humble hinge upon which the door of opportunity had swung open for +Germany. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +The rest can be briefly told. Napoleon III., in brand new splendor, +was watching these events from Paris. He had an uncomfortable sense +that everything was too new and fine. There is nothing like the smoke +of the battlefield to simulate the delightfully mellow tone which, in +its finest perfection, comes only from age. + +To humiliate this newly reconstructed Germany would give just the +needed touch to his prestige, and as no slightest pretext for war could +be found, one was made to order, in the shape of a pretended affront to +the French ambassador by the kindly old King William, while peacefully +sunning himself at Ems. + +The question at issue was of the candidature of a Hohenzollern to the +vacant throne of Spain. Finding this was unpopular, the name was +promptly withdrawn by Prussia, and there the incident would naturally +have ended. But Bernadetti, French ambassador to Germany, had +instructions to press the matter offensively upon the king, who, +recognizing an intended impertinence, turned on his heel and left him. + +The telegraph swiftly bore the news that the ambassador had been +publicly insulted by the King of Prussia. The French heart was +industriously fired, and the leaven worked well. The insolent Germans +must be taught that the great French Empire was not to be insulted with +impunity. Did not the beautiful empress herself buckle the sword upon +the emperor, and even upon the boy Prince Imperial, who should go and +witness for himself his father's triumphs, and receive an object +lesson, as it were, in avenging insult to the imperial dignity, which +would one day be in his keeping? + +The miserable end came quickly! + +In less than one month the emperor was a prisoner, and in seven months +his empire was swept out of existence; the Germans were in Paris--and +King William, Unser Fritz, Bismarck, and Von Moltke were quartered at +Versailles. + +Here it was that the dramatic climax was reached when King Ludwig II. +of Bavaria, in the name of the rest of the German States, laid their +united allegiance at the feet of King William of Prussia, as the head +of the German Empire, begging him to assume the crown of Charlemagne, +which should be hereditary in his family! Poor, mad suicide though he +was, for this act Ludwig's memory should be forever enshrined in the +German heart, for he certainly first suggested, and then carried to +completion, this splendid consummation, apparently indifferent to the +fact that his own kingly dignity would be abridged. Adoring the +picturesque and dramatic as he did, perhaps it seemed to this royal +spendthrift not too much to pay a kingdom for the privilege of acting +in one scene so imposing and dramatic! + +So, in January, 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors in the palace of +Versailles, King William assumed the title of "Emperor of Germany"--a +Germany richer by two French provinces and an enormous indemnity from +the conquered state; great in prestige and under the best of emperors +and greatest of prime ministers, augmenting hourly in all that +constitutes power in a state. In less than one decade--not yet ten +years from Bismarck's return to Berlin--a new Germany had arisen from +the fragments of the old, a Germany so great and powerful she was +likely to forget the degradation and humiliation of only a quarter of a +century ago. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +When that kingly old man, Emperor William, sank at last under the +weight of years, the crown so brilliantly won at Versailles in 1871 +rested on the head of Unser Fritz--no longer in the flush of victorious +youth, but a poor, stricken man. The tardy honors had come too late. +In vain he struggled against the inevitable, striving to inaugurate the +beneficent policy which had been the dream of his life. Unhappy +Frederick! His death-chamber seemed the playground for every hateful +human passion, and the Furies to have made it their abode, as his +unfulfilled life slipped away from his loosening grasp! At last it was +ended. The untarnished soul and the tortured body parted company, and +William II. reigned in his stead. + +The sensibilities of the world had been shocked by the unfilial conduct +of this youth, and it was with little respect that he was seen +restlessly flitting from one court to another, displaying his imperial +trappings like a child with new toys. People laughed to think they had +ever been afraid of this aimless boy. Upon one point only was he +relentless. Man or newspaper breathing faintest whisper of praise for +the dead Frederick came swift under the political guillotine! Did he +wish to efface his father's memory from the hearts of his people? +Would he really, if he could, tear that brief, sad chapter from his +nation's history? It seemed so. Europe watched him much as one does a +headlong boy, who, with the confidence born of vanity and ignorance, +plays with deadly weapons, and imperils his own and his neighbors' +safety. The peace of the continent lay more than ever in the hand of +Bismarck, who alone had power to restrain this dangerous young ruler. + +But when William II. posed as the friend of the workingman and ally of +the socialist, the absurdity and the unexpectedness were amusing. What +did he care for industrial problems and the condition of the laboring +classes? The idea uppermost in his restless brain was that he was a +predestined hero, not fitted for the _role_ of a Merovingian king, with +a _maire du palais_. He would be the artificer of his own policy, and +be enrolled among the great sovereigns of history. + +There were rumors of dissension with his chancellor, whom finally he +removed, and said practically, "_l'etat, c'est moi_." There was +nothing now to restrain his restless vagaries, and a catastrophe seemed +at hand. + +This is the way it looked a few months ago. But writing current +history is much like drawing pictures upon the sand, which the incoming +tide effaces. + +The man who had long held the destinies of Europe in his hand sat in +the retirement of Schoenhausen, complacently smoking and waiting for the +catastrophe, and the recall which would surely come. But he was not +needed. Was the _Zeit Geist_ penetrating the iron-encrusted empire? +William had forgotten his toys and was inaugurating +reforms--industrial, educational, social, which touched the lowest +stratum of his people. + +We cannot yet forget those visits to San Remo, the cruel intriguing +over his father's death-bed; but greatness lies in the path he has +taken. His intelligence, quicker than his sympathies, sees, perhaps, +that the forces of the future are industrial, not militant. His hand +has grown less nervous, but steadier in its grasp, more human in its +touch. The figure is filling out in stronger lines, with unexpected +promise that it may become heroic. + +He was not a pleasant youth, not a nice boy; but we can forgive much to +a sovereign who desires to bring about a general disarmament of Europe! +The early chapters of his biography will never be pleasant reading, but +we will not linger over them if the concluding ones tell of a Germany +brought into line with the world's highest and best development. + +Europe to-day is like a field closely packed with explosives, with a +plentiful sprinkling throughout the mass of that giant powder, +nihilism. People step carefully, lest they jar the hostile elements, +and "let loose the dogs of war." The slightest change in position of +the little package marked Bulgaria, and it may be too late. + +This province, which ten or twelve years ago was set up by the Great +Powers with an autonomy of its own, lying athwart the coveted pathway +to the Mediterranean, has, like Schleswig-Holstein, greatness thrust +upon it. The plaything of diplomacy, with only a semblance of +self-government, its _role_ in European politics is both tragic and +comic. Its king must await not alone confirmation by Turkey, but +ratification by the Great Powers, and little care they who ascends its +slippery little throne, except as he will further or obstruct the +private political ends of each; and Russia, thinking only of expansion +toward the sea, is especially paternal toward the forlorn little state. + +While this diplomatic game is enacting, there is a pause. Is it the +hush which precedes the storm? + +All eyes are fixed upon the Russian bear, cautiously and stealthily +prowling toward the south and east.--Austria hungrily watches the +Balkan provinces, over which the paw of the bear already +hovers.--Italy, with hate and suspicion, has eyes riveted upon her +hereditary enemy, Austria.--France, never for a moment forgetting +Alsace and Lorraine, watches her opportunity with Germany, and draws +into closer affinity with Russia--England, with gaze fixed upon an open +pathway to India, suspects them all--and Germany, conscious that +disaster is always imminent while the French thirst for revenge, and +the Russian thirst for the waters of the Mediterranean are unabated, +strengthens her defences and sleeps with hand upon her sword. + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Evolution of an Empire, by Mary Parmele + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE *** + +***** This file should be named 34072.txt or 34072.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/0/7/34072/ + +Produced by Al Haines + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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