Mary Platt Parmele

“ But his reign was the rough, strong bridge which led to a Frederick the Great, and the reign of the Great Frederick was that other bridge which led to a powerful and dominating kingdom of Prussia,—from which was to spring a new German Empire!
If Frederick William was a tyrant of the most savage sort, on the other hand he organized industry, finance, and an army. If he was a miser in his family, he brought wealth and prosperity to his people. If he beat and cudgeled his own son for playing the flute, he left that son a kingdom and an army which were the foundation of his greatness. ”

“ How should the Empress of Austria, born, nurtured, and fed in the very center of despotism—not hearing or heeding the current ideas about human rights and freedom—entirely misunderstanding the past, the present, and the future—how should she suspect the terrific forces which were accumulating beneath the throne of France, or that it would become a scaffold for her child? Hapsburg and Bourbon, to her mind, were realities as fixed and enduring as the Alps. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Among the German tribes it was the Goths who had first come under the civilizing influence of the Christian religion.
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. ”

“ In three years more, not only Austria, but Germany, was in a worse condition than she had known for centuries—the wretched people, a prey to both parties, were slaughtered, robbed, driven hither and thither, and a country only recently rejoicing in its material prosperity was a waste and a ruin.
The Imperial troops were splendidly led by two great generals—Tilly and Wallenstein. The Protestant nations—England, Holland, Denmark, and Sweden—looked on in dismay as they saw a powerful and triumphant Protestantism being wiped out of existence in the land of its birth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was going on, quite unnoticed by King Frederick, an awakening in the German mind, and while he was building a structure of material greatness, there had commenced, unobserved by him, another structure, which was to be the chief glory of Germany.
The passion for speculative thought awakened by Spinoza was stirring the German soul to its depths. Kant had found that Spinoza's Eternal Order must be a Moral Order. That the moral instincts which guided mankind, and were the all in all, were the God in us, the in-dwelling of the Divine. ”

“ The most fascinating field for adventure the world had ever known was suddenly opened to Europe, and the magnet of boundless wealth was transferred from the East to the West. A stream of adventurous and rapacious men, from all the lands excepting Germany, was moving toward the setting sun.
Spain, only recently obscure, poor and struggling to free her land from an alien race, suddenly found herself mistress of her own territory, consolidated, and with an empire and resources in the West, practically boundless. ”

“ But Prussia owes her rise to just such infatuation as this. Acquisition and conquest are written on her foundation stones, the chief of which were laid by her Great Frederick.
It is pleasant to tell of peace once more. The Allies, wearied of the long war, gradually withdrew from Austria. Being unable to carry it on alone, Maria Theresa was compelled to abandon her dream of ruining Frederick. With bitterness of heart and humiliation she consented to give up Silesia forever as the price of a peace she did not desire. ”

“ In 1796 the young Corsican led a ragged, unpaid army into Italy. Without supplies, and almost without ammunition, he had audaciously planned to make the invaded country pay the expenses of the war waged against it.
He pointed to the Italian cities, and said to his soldiers, "There is your reward. It is rich and ample; but you must conquer it." He knew the French character and how in words brief, concise, forcible to address them like another Cæsar addressing his legions; to create incentives to glory, and to inspire enthusiasm as never man did before. ”

“ But no man better than he comprehended the policy of Austria, and all the complicated threads composing the web of German politics.
The choice of this man for minister to the King augured ill for the liberals. The outlook had never been darker than at this hour before the dawn.
But great political storms, like storms of another sort, are full of surprises. The ominous storm clouds we have feared roll away and vanish in calm, and the little ones, not larger than a man's hand, suddenly expand and darken our sky. A fateful storm was gathering for Germany in the duchy of Schleswig-Holstein. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The telegraph swiftly bore the news that the French ambassador had been publicly insulted by the King of Prussia. France was in a blaze of indignation. These Prussians should be taught that the great French Empire was not to be insulted with impunity.
Not a shadow of doubt existed as to the result. The French army was invincible, and the southern German states would be glad at the deliverance. They would welcome an invading army, and perhaps Hesse and Hanover also would revolt and the new Prussian confederation would fall to pieces in their hands. ”

“ His star had certainly deserted him, for while he was collecting his broken forces in Germany, and while hope was reviving over small victories, the allied armies, unknown to him, were advancing on Paris!
He learned it too late. History holds no picture more powerfully impressive than that of this man waiting at Fontainebleau, twelve leagues from Paris, still believing in his power to retrieve, and unconscious that he is already deposed! ”

“ The Turks had been steadily encroaching upon Germany; had made havoc in Hungary; had devastated Austria, and were now insolently pressing on toward their goal, the Imperial palace at Vienna.
While the incompetent and drowsy Emperor Frederick III. was helplessly viewing these stupendous overturnings, there occurred that other event, as important in the empire of thought as the invention of gunpowder had been in that of political institutions.
The invention of printing (1450) ,—that art preservative of all arts,—was the greatest step yet taken in the emancipation of the human mind. ”

“ Germany, which had always been a loosely compacted mass, was at the close of the Hohenstaufen dynasty composed of 60 independent cities, 116 priestly rulers, and 100 reigning dukes, princes, counts, and barons, always rivals and usually at war with each other, in perpetually changing combinations for attack or defense.
Lying beneath this body of small and struggling sovereigns was a people in whom was the first dawning consciousness of human rights; which consciousness was gradually extending to that helpless mass underlying the whole—the peasantry. ”

“ Nature had endowed him with a bold and aspiring genius. He had a consciousness of strength, combined with a belief that he was a chosen instrument appointed by fate to perform a definite work: the raising of Prussia to the first rank in the German empire.
When we see Frederick's ideal of a despotic personal government, with a divinely appointed ruler leading his country to greatness, independent of ministers and advisers,—it is easy to recognize the model which is being studied by a certain young ruler in Europe to-day! ”

“ So there had been created a strangely composite man, compounded of elements native to himself, to that undeveloped barbarian Frederick William, and to Voltaire! Joined to a strong practical common sense in the management of affairs was a passion for insincere, unsound, and shallow French ideals. And combined with the most despotic and arbitrary of wills, was an inflexible regard for the right of the humblest. While he despised the beliefs of Protestant and Catholic alike, he declared "I mean that every man in my kingdom shall have the right to be saved in his own way." ”

“ The study of profound subjects, conversation, and intimate friendships with learned men, trained his active mind to wonderful acuteness, and when he applied this to the study of history, when he read of the dignity of kings, and of what stuff greatness was made in the past—he formed his own ideals for the future. When Frederick William died in 1740 he was prepared to take the reins of government with a comprehensiveness of grasp of which his austere father was incapable, and with clearly defined plans to make Prussia great. ”

“ That is amazement—amazement that so many thousands were willing at the bidding of one ambitious man to die, to lay down their bodies in that heap of dead, for Prussia's greatness to rise upon! That not one was ready to reproach him for having brought these calamities upon them for the sake of Silesia; but instead, with twenty thousand still lying unburied upon one field, that they respond with infatuated enthusiasm to his appeal for more! ”

“ Thus was created the order of knighthood, which quickly spread over Europe.
The great Charlemagne, in accepting the crown of the Holy Roman Empire in 800, unconsciously inflicted a deep injury upon the future Germany. That glittering bauble, the crown of the Cæsars, was very costly, and retarded the development of Germany for centuries.
That country needed all her resources and energies at home, to solidify and develop a great nation during its formative period. ”

“ 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. A galling servitude to Austria existed no more. What wonder that the people were glad, or that Unser Fritz was their idol, and Bismarck became their demigod!
A great physician correctly diagnoses the disease before he treats it. Bismarck knew why the attempts at a German union had been futile. ”

“ While the Reformation was the leading fact in Europe at this period, another event had created a new and pervading atmosphere, in which all else existed. The impulse given to civilization by the taking of Constantinople by the Turks (1452) , and the consequent disseminating of Greek culture throughout Europe, was a transforming event in the history of civilization. Literature, art, music, took on new forms and thrilled with a new life. The activity of the human mind manifested itself in everything. ”

“ This work was the destruction of the Romano-Germanic Empire. That lifeless mass, whose oppressive weight had crushed the life and hope out of Central Europe for centuries, needed some tremendous force from without to break up its time-encrusted rivets. And that force was now in the hands of a workman who supposed he was engaged in rearing a great edifice for himself. Instead of which he was overturning, and plowing, and harrowing Germany, and preparing the ground for new forms of political life ”

“ The prizes did not confer as great an honor as those bestowed at Olympia two thousand years before, but they were sought with an intense enthusiasm.
The soul of the Teuton was by nature set to music. For him that art was not a luxury reserved for the rich and cultured, but the daily food which nourished the life of the most untutored. Within this musical and literary guild the two arts of music and poetry for centuries existed in their most elementary form, and were the soil out of which later came such marvelous blossom and fruit. ”