Robert Nisbet Bain

“ We are so accustomed to regard Hunyadi as the incarnation of Christian chivalry that we are apt to forget that he was a great captain and a great statesman as well as a great hero. It has well been said that he fought with his head rather than with his arm. He was the first to recognize the insufficiency and the unreliability of the feudal levies, the first to employ a regular army on a large scale, the first to depend more upon strategy and tactics than upon mere courage. He was in fact the first Hungarian general in the modern sense of the word. ”

“ Penetrated by the conviction that ignorance was the worst of the inveterate evils of old Russia, a pitiless enemy of superstition of every sort, a reformer by nature, overflowing with energy and resource, and with a singularly lucid mind armed at all points by a far reaching erudition, Prokopovich was the soul of the reforming party after the death of Peter the Great. To him also belongs the great merit of liberating Russian preaching from the fetters of Polish turgidity and affectation by introducing popular themes and a simple style into Orthodox pulpit eloquence. ”

“ When, therefore, he ascended the Polish throne in 1333, the future of his country, which then consisted of little more than the lately reunited provinces of Great and Little Poland, seemed dark indeed; especially as she was still at war with the Teutonic Order and with John of Luxemburg, king of Bohemia, who claimed the crown of Poland also. Fortunately Casimir was a man of penetrating genius. His father had been a hero who trusted entirely to his sword, yet the heroic struggle of a lifetime had barely sufficed to keep at bay the numerous and potent foes with which Poland was environed. ”

“ Like Napoleon, with whom he has often been compared, he was equally illustrious as a soldier, a statesman, an orator, a legislator and an administrator. But in all moral qualities the brilliant adventurer of the 15th was infinitely superior to the brilliant adventurer of the 19th century. Though naturally passionate, Matthias’s self-control was almost superhuman, and throughout his stormy life, with his innumerable experiences of ingratitude and treachery, he never was guilty of a single cruel or vindictive action. ”

“ It was not only that he hated and distrusted the boyars, but he was already statesman enough to discern that they could not be fitted into the new order of things which he aimed at introducing. Ivan meditated the regeneration of Muscovy, and the only men who could assist him in his task were men who could look steadily forward to the future because they had no past to look back upon, men who would unflinchingly obey their sovereign because they owed their whole political significance to him alone. ”

“ Sophia’s fondness for Golitsuin induced her to magnify his barely successful campaigns in the Crimea into brilliant triumphs which she richly rewarded, thus disgusting everyone who had the honour of the nation at heart. Most of the malcontents rested their hopes for the future on the young tsar Peter, who was the first to benefit by his sister’s growing unpopularity. Sophia was shrewd enough to recognize that her position was becoming very insecure. When Peter reached man’s estate she would only be in the way, and she was not the sort of woman who is easily thrust aside. ”

“ For the next forty years Czartoryski was certainly the leading Polish statesman. In foreign affairs he was the first to favour an alliance with Russia, Austria and England, as opposed to France and Prussia—a system difficult to sustain and not always beneficial to Poland or Saxony. In Poland Czartoryski was at the head of the party of reform. His palace was the place where the most promising young gentlemen of the day were educated and sent abroad that they might return as his coadjutors in the great work. ”

“ Signs are also not wanting that Christina was growing weary of the cares of government; while the importunity of the senate and Riksdag on the question of her marriage was a constant source of irritation. In retirement she could devote herself wholly to art and science, and the opportunity of astonishing the world by the unique spectacle of a great queen, in the prime of life, voluntarily resigning her crown, strongly appealed to her vivid imagination. ”

“ After Gustavus Vasa and Gustavus Adolphus Charles XI. was, perhaps, the greatest of all the kings of Sweden. His modest, homespun figure has indeed been unduly eclipsed by the brilliant and colossal shapes of his heroic father and his meteoric son; yet in reality Charles XI. is far worthier of admiration than either Charles X. or Charles XII. He was in an eminent degree a great master-builder. He found Sweden in ruins, and devoted his whole life to laying the solid foundations of a new order of things which, in its essential features, has endured to the present day. ”

“ The services which Count Moltke rendered to Denmark cannot be too highly appreciated. The mere fact that a distinguished statesman who had served the last two absolute kings of Denmark now voluntarily placed himself at the head of a ministry which included the most advanced of the popular agitators, gave the new government the hall-mark of stability and trustworthiness, whilst the fact that he still retained the ministry of finance was of itself a guarantee of security during the earlier years of a troublesome and costly war. ”

“ Throughout life he regarded the political situation of Denmark with absolute pessimism. She was, he often said, the cat’s-paw of the Great Powers. While Griffenfeldt would have obviated this danger by an elastic political system, adaptable to all circumstances, Juel preferred seizing whatever he could get in favourable conjunctures. In domestic affairs Juel was an adherent of the mercantile system, and laboured vigorously for the industrial development of Denmark and Norway. ”

“ In fact, by the end of his life, Stanislaus had become an expert in the art of “acceding” and “hedging.” Of resolute and independent action he was quite incapable; in fact, his whole career is little more than a record of humiliations. Thus in 1782 when he waited upon Catherine at Kaniow during her triumphal progress to the Crimea, she kept her ancient, grey-haired lover waiting for weeks, and while half contemptuously promising to respect the integrity of Poland, she curtly declined to be present at a supper which he had prepared for her at great cost. ”

“ The emissaries of Razin, armed with inflammatory proclamations, had stirred up the inhabitants of the modern governments of Nizhniy-Novgorod, Tambov and Penza, and penetrated even so far as Moscow and Great Novgorod. It was not difficult to revolt the oppressed population by the promise of deliverance from their yoke. Razin proclaimed that his object was to root out the boyars and all officials, to level all ranks and dignities, and establish Cossackdom, with its corollary of absolute equality, throughout Muscovy. ”

“ There was a slight collision between them as early as the diet of 1778; but at the diet of 1786 Fersen boldly led the opposition against the king’s financial measures (see Gustavus III.) which were consequently rejected; while in private interviews, if his own account of them is to be trusted, he addressed his sovereign with outrageous insolence. At the diet of 1789 Fersen marshalled the nobility around him for a combat à outrance against the throne and that, too, at a time when Sweden was involved in two dangerous foreign wars, and national unity was absolutely indispensable. ”

“ Anne was a grim, sullen woman, frankly sensual, but as well-meaning as ignorance and vindictiveness would allow her to be. But she had much natural good sense, was a true friend and, in her more cheerful moments, an amiable companion. Lady Rondeau’s portrait of the empress shows her to the best advantage. She is described as a large woman, towering above all the cavaliers of her court, but very well shaped for her size, easy and graceful in her person, of a majestic bearing, but with an awfulness in her countenance which revolted those who disliked her. ”

“ The oprichniki, as being the exclusive favourites of the tsar, naturally, in their own interests, hardened the tsar’s heart against all outsiders, and trampled with impunity upon every one beyond the charmed circle. Their first and most notable victim was Philip, the saintly metropolitan of Moscow, who was strangled for condemning the oprichina as an unchristian institution, and refusing to bless the tsar (1569) . Ivan had stopped at Tver, to murder St Philip, while on his way to destroy the second wealthiest city in his tsardom—Great Novgorod. ”