Mary Platt Parmele

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”