Title: The Evolution of an Empire - A Brief Historical Sketch of Germany
Author: Parmele, Mary Platt, 1843-1911
Language: English
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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.





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