Robert Nisbet Bain

“ It is no exaggeration to say that Hungary owes to Klaman Tisza a consolidated government, the formation of a parliamentary majority, a healthy public spirit, public credit, the reform of the Upper House, an admirable educational system, economical, and particularly railway, development, and administrative and judicial reconstruction on modern lines. His opponents have accused him of unscrupulousness and party spirit, but not one of them can deny that he reshaped Hungary and made her the leading partner of the dual monarchy. ”

“ His banquets were orgies, his pastimes convulsions. He lived and he loved like one of the giants of old. There are deeds of his which make humanity shudder, and no man equally great has ever descended to such depths of cruelty and treachery. Yet it may generally be allowed that a strain of nobility, of which we occasionally catch illuminating glimpses, extorts from time to time an all-forgiving admiration. Strange, too, as it may sound, Peter the Great was at heart profoundly religious. ”

“ Unfortunately his genius never had full scope, and his opportunity came too late. Gustavus was, moreover, a most distinguished author. He may be said to have created the Swedish theatre, and some of the best acting dramas in the literature are by his hand. His historical essays, notably the famous anonymous eulogy on Torstenson crowned by the Academy, are full of feeling and exquisite in style,—his letters to his friends are delightful. Every branch of literature and art interested him, every poet and artist of his day found in him a most liberal and sympathetic protector. ”

“ It is a mistake to suppose, however, that La Chétardie took a leading part in the revolution which placed the daughter of Peter the Great on the Russian throne. As a matter of fact, beyond lending the tsesarevna 2000 ducats, instead of the 15,000 she demanded of him, he took no part whatever in the actual coup d’état which was as great a surprise to him as to every one else. The merit and glory of that singular affair belong to Elizabeth alone. The fear of being imprisoned in a convent for the rest of her life was the determining cause of her irresistible outburst of energy. ”

“ It was due entirely to his steadfast adherence to these principles that Poland in the course of the 15th century rose to the rank of a great power; but by a singular irony of fate, Casimir, in consequence of his unswerving efforts to make his country glorious and prosperous, entirely forfeited the popularity of his Polish subjects, whose true interests he understood far better than they did themselves. Thus his refusal to sacrifice Polish to Lithuanian or Lithuanian to Polish interests caused both Poles and Lithuanians to accuse the far-seeing monarch of partiality and favouritism ”

“ On his return to the capital Peter, in order to see what progress his son had made in mechanics and mathematics, asked him to draw something of a technical nature for his inspection. Alexius, in order to escape such an ordeal, resorted to the abject expedient of disabling his right hand by a pistol-shot. In no other way could the tsarevich have offended his father so deeply. He had behaved like a cowardly recruit who mutilates himself to escape military service. After this, Peter seemed for a time to take no further interest in Alexius. He left him entirely to himself. He employed him no more. ”

“ He was the first Magyar statesman who, for centuries, had occupied a European position. Breadth of view, swift resourcefulness, and an intimate knowledge of men and things were his distinguishing qualities as a statesman. Personally he was the most amiable of men; it has been well said that he united in himself the Magyar magnate with the modern gentleman. His motto was: “It is hard to promise, but it is easy to perform.” If Deák was the architect, Andrássy certainly was the master-builder of the modern Hungarian state. ”

“ For the next two years all Hungary was convulsed by a horrible civil war, during which the unhappy young king, who fought for his heritage to the last with desperate valour, was driven from one end of his kingdom to the other like a hunted beast. ”

“ The young nobleman was, from the first, a prime favourite at the French court, owing, partly to the recollection of his father’s devotion to France, but principally because of his own amiable and brilliant qualities. The queen, Marie Antoinette, was especially attracted by the grace and wit of le beau Fersen, who had inherited his full share of the striking handsomeness which was hereditary in the family. ”

“ Unfortunately, with all his gifts, Christian was no statesman, and was incapable of a consistent policy. He would neither conciliate Sweden, henceforth his most dangerous enemy, nor guard himself against her by a definite system of counter-alliances. By mediating in favour of the emperor, after the death of Gustavus Adolphus in 1632, he tried to minimize the influence of Sweden in Germany, and did glean some minor advantages. But his whole Scandinavian policy was so irritating and vexatious that Swedish statesmen made up their minds that a war with Denmark was only a question of time ”

“ From time immemorial the isle of Gotland had been the staple of the Baltic trade, and its capital, Visby, whose burgesses were more than half German, the commercial intermediary between east and west, was the wealthiest city in northern Europe. In July 1361 Valdemar set sail from Denmark at the head of a great fleet, defeated a peasant army before Visby, and a few days later the burgesses of Visby made a breach in their walls through which the Danish monarch passed in triumph. The conquest of Gotland at once led to a war between Valdemar and Sweden allied with the Hanseatic towns ”

“ The campaign of the Pruth (March to July 1711) must have been fatal to the tsar but for the incalculable behaviour of the omnipotent grand vizier, who let the Russian army go at the very instant when it lay helpless in the hollow of his hand. Even so, Peter, by the peace of the Pruth, had to sacrifice all that he had gained by the Azov expedition fifteen years previously. On receiving the tidings of the conclusion of the peace of Nystad (August 30, 1721) , Peter declared, with perfect justice, that it was the most profitable peace Russia had ever concluded. ”

“ Perhaps there is not another instance in history in which a man who was neither a soldier, nor a diplomatist, nor a writer, who appealed to no passion but patriotism, and who avoided power with almost oriental indolence instead of seeking it, became, in the course of a long life, the leader of a great party by sheer force of intellect and moral superiority.
During the diet of 1839–1840 Deák succeeded in bringing about an understanding between a reactionary government, sadly in want of money, and a Liberal opposition determined that the nation should have its political privileges respected. ”

“ After Narva, Charles XII. stood at the parting of ways. His best advisers urged him to turn all his forces against the panic-stricken Muscovites; to go into winter-quarters amongst them and live at their expense; to fan into a flame the smouldering discontent caused by the reforms of Peter the Great, and so disable Russia for some time to come. But Charles’s determination promptly to punish the treachery of Augustus prevailed over every other consideration. It is easy from the vantage-point of two centuries to criticize Charles XII. for neglecting the Russians to pursue the Saxons ”

“ All the enemies of France were thus necessarily the friends of Russia, and her friends Russia’s enemies. Consequently Great Britain, and still more Austria, were Russia’s natural allies, while the aggressive and energetic king of Prussia was a danger to be guarded against. It was, therefore, the policy of Bestuzhev to bring about a quadruple alliance between Russia, Austria, Great Britain and Saxony, to counterpoise the Franco-Prussian league. ”

“ Seldom has any man united so many and such various gifts in his own person and carried them so easily—a playful wit, a vivid imagination, oratorical and literary eloquence and, above all, a profound knowledge of human nature both male and female, of every class and rank, from the king to the meanest citizen. ”

“ Absalon’s last military exploit was the annihilation, off Strela (Stralsund) , on Whit-Sunday 1184, of a Pomeranian fleet which had attacked Denmark’s vassal, Jaromir of Rügen. He was now but fifty-seven, but his strenuous life had aged him, and he was content to resign the command of fleets and armies to younger men, like Duke Valdemar, afterwards Valdemar II., and to confine himself to the administration of the empire which his genius had created. In this sphere Absalon proved himself equally great. The aim of his policy was to free Denmark from the German yoke. ”

“ Brand-new institutions on Western models were gradually growing up among the cumbrous, antiquated, worn-out machinery of old Muscovy; and new men, like Menshikov, Goloykin, Apraksin, Osterman, Kurakin, Tolstoy, Shafirov, Prokopovich, Yaguszhinsky, Yavorsky, all capable, audacious, and brimful of new ideas, were being trained under the eye of the great regenerator to help him to carry on his herculean task. ”

“ The best that can be said for Stanislaus as king of Poland is that with all his romantic ideas and excellent intentions he remained from first to last the creature of circumstances. He had climbed to the throne by very slippery ways, he was dependent for a considerable part of his enormous income on the woman who had compensated him with a crown for the loss of her affections, he was detested by the nobility, who regarded him as a base-born upstart and yet had to put up with him. ”

“ Gustavus then liberated and garrisoned the long-oppressed Protestant cities of Augsburg and Ulm, and in May occupied Munich. The same week Wallenstein chased John George from Prague and manœuvred the Saxons out of Bohemia. Then, armed as he was with plenipotentiary power, he offered the elector of Saxony peace on his own terms. Gustavus suddenly saw himself exposed to extreme peril. If Tilly had made John George such an offer as Wallenstein was now empowered to make, the elector would never have become Gustavus’s ally; would he remain Gustavus’s ally now? ”

“ The union between a prince who physically was something less than a man and mentally little more than a child, and a princess of prodigious intellect and an insatiable love of enjoyment, was bound to end in a catastrophe. But there is no foundation for the stories of Peter's neglect and brutality. It took the spouses five years to discover that their tastes were divergent and their tempers incompatible. Even when Peter III succeeded his aunt on the 5th of January 1762, he paid off all the debts that Catherine had contracted without inquiring what they were for. ”

“ On the other hand, it is not too much to say that, from the end of 1759 to the end of 1761, the unshakable firmness of the Russian empress was the one constraining political force which held together the heterogeneous, incessantly jarring elements of the anti-Prussian combination. From the Russian point of view, Elizabeth’s greatness as a statesman consists in her steady appreciation of Russian interests, and her determination to promote them at all hazards. ”

“ The hour of Bestuzhev’s triumph coincided with the peace congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, which altered the whole situation of European politics and introduced fresh combinations, the breaking away of Prussia from France and a rapprochement between England and Prussia, with the inevitable corollary of an alliance between France and the enemies of Prussia. Bestuzhev’s violent political prejudices at first prevented him from properly recognizing this change. Passion had always been too large an ingredient in his diplomacy. ”

“ Briefly, it was Absalon’s intention to clear the northern sea of the Wendish pirates, who inhabited that portion of the Baltic littoral which we now call Pomerania, and ravaged the Danish coasts so unmercifully that at the accession of Valdemar one-third of the realm of Denmark lay wasted and depopulated. The very existence of Denmark demanded the suppression and conversion of these stiff-necked pagan freebooters, and to this double task Absalon devoted the best part of his life. ”

“ Panin was the inventor of the famous “Northern Accord,” which aimed at opposing a combination of Russia, Prussia, Poland, Sweden, and perhaps Great Britain, against the Bourbon-Habsburg League. Such an attempt to bind together nations with such different aims and characters was doomed to failure. Great Britain, for instance, could never be persuaded that it was as much in her interests as in the interests of Russia to subsidize the anti-French party in Sweden. ”

“ But law and order were well maintained; the licence of the nobility was sternly repressed; the kingdoms of Sweden and Norway were treated as integral parts of the Danish state, and national aspirations were frowned upon or checked, though Norway, as being more loyal, was treated more indulgently than Sweden. Margaret also recovered for the Crown all the landed property which had been alienated during the troublous days of Valdemar IV. This so-called “reduktion,” or land-recovery, was carried out with the utmost rigour, and hundreds of estates fell into the Crown. ”

“ Terror was the first feeling produced at Copenhagen by the landing of the main Swedish army at Korsör in Zealand. None had anticipated the possibility of such a sudden and brutal attack, and every one knew that the Danish capital was very inadequately fortified and garrisoned. Fortunately Frederick had never been deficient in courage. “I will die in my nest” were the memorable words with which he rebuked those counsellors who advised him to seek safety in flight. On the 8th of August representatives from every class in the capital urged the necessity of a vigorous resistance ”

“ A few months later, the Swedes were compelled by the Russians to evacuate Marienburg, and Martha became one of the prisoners of war of Marshal Sheremetev, who sold her to Prince Menshikov, at whose house, in the German suburb of Moscow, Peter the Great first beheld and made love to her in his own peculiar fashion. After the birth of their first daughter Catherine, Peter made no secret of their relations. He had found, at last, the woman he wanted, and she soon became so indispensable to him that it was a torment to be without her. ”

“ Valdemar was now, after the king of England, the most powerful potentate in the north of Europe. The south-western Baltic was a Danish Mediterranean, and Danish territory extended from the Elbe to lake Peipus. But this scattered and heterogeneous empire required a large standing army and a strong central government to hold it together. It is doubtful whether even the genius of Valdemar would have proved equal to such a stupendous task. ”