Crown Prince of Prussia

“ The phenomenal rise of Prussia and its predominance in German affairs gave to its leading city immense influence and remarkable prosperity, Prussia making herself the leader of the movement that finally welded together the twenty-six states now constituting the German Empire, with the Prussian King as Kaiser. It is essentially modern, and, despite the disadvantages of its location, is without doubt one of the handsomest cities of Europe. Notable among its many fine buildings are the Royal Palace and that of the Emperor and Crown Prince, and the Royal Library, containing a million volumes. ”

“ That in the year 1849 when the imperial crown was offered to his brother, Frederick William IV., he belonged to those who advised a favorable consideration of that offer, and that if he instead of his brother had been king of Prussia, the crisis might have taken a turn much more propitious to the realization of German unity, was at that time not yet known; nor would it have found much belief, for the prince of Prussia was then generally thought to be an honest and inflexible absolutist, who candidly and firmly believed that kings were ordained by God and had to render account only to God ”

“ The King of Prussia had covered himself with glory, to which he put the finishing stroke, by not demanding any compensation for the expenses of the war. All parties have been satisfied except the Emperor, who has disordered his finances, ruined his Kingdom of Bohemia with immense fines, has not obtained any advantage over his adversary, and consequently has destroyed among his own troops the opinion they had of their superiority, and, in fine, has sustained a loss the most sensible for a young Prince just beginning to reign, the reputation of justice and moderation. ”

“ I am sure your Excellency will agree with me. It is Prussia's mission to act towards the west. The German nation longs for unity, longs for a strong and powerful leader; Prussia's calling, Prussia's noblest ambition is and must ever be, to place this leadership in the strong hand of her king. Prussia must struggle to command the whole of Germany; she cannot rest until she has attained this high aim for herself and the whole nation. What is now gained is a step--an important step--on the great path which Prussia's German policy must pursue--but it is not its completion. ”

“ By their birth, God conferred on them the right to rule over Prussia. And the Prussian monarchy is rooted in the hearts of the people. Oh, your majesty, do not overthrow it! Honor in us the crown adorning your own victorious head! Sovereigns ought to respect each other, that their people may never lose the respect due to them; sovereigns ought to support and strengthen each other, to enable them to meet their enemies now carried away by the insane ideas of a so-called new era—ideas that brought the heads of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette to the scaffold. ”

“ In the first place, your majesty, the position of the house of Hapsburg and of Austria in Germany would be deeply compromised by a French alliance. Should your majesty obtain success, half success at the best, public opinion would always regard Prussia as a national martyr, sacrificed to the hereditary enemy of the German nation. This would give Prussia great additional strength, and it would be a fair ground upon which to renew the struggle under more favourable circumstances. ”

“ I will annihilate this Prussia which dared to take up arms against me, and who knows whether this gallery of Prussian kings will not close with Frederick William III.? Nothing on earth is lasting, and sovereigns now-a-days fall from their thrones as over-ripe apples from trees. The crown of Prussia fell to the ground on the battle-fields of Jena and Auerstadt! ”

“ It has been said that "the egg from which was hatched the German Empire was laid on the battlefield of Sedan." But, not to speak of the offer of the Imperial Crown to King Frederick Wilhelm by the Frankfort Parliament in 1848, Bismarck more than a year before the Austro-Prussian war had spoken to Lord Augustus Loftus, then British Ambassador to Prussia, of his ultimate intention that the King of Prussia should become the Emperor of an united Germany. ”

“ To increase their number, he scoured all Europe, other monarchs being not unwilling to secure his good will by providing him with the coveted men, for whom his almost insane passion made him willing to give any price. But the real significance of his reign in relation to Prussia's subsequent history, is the impulse which he gave to her military tastes, and his success in establishing firmly the absolute authority of the monarch. The power of feudal lords had already been shattered; it required only a strong army and a strong will to destroy it altogether. ”

“ They desire, at the present, that you seek to be the confidant of the Prince of Prussia. Gain his affection, then govern him, making yourself indispensable to him. Surround him with servants and confidants that you can rely upon. Inspire him with devotion to the holy order. Become, now, the friend of the prince, that you may, one day, rule the king. You are the chief of the order in Prussia; the more members you gain the more secrets will be revealed to you. ”

“ The genius of the nation has been directed to the perfection of military discipline and military weapons. The government is always prepared for war, and has been rarely averse to it. It has ever been ready to seize a province or pick a quarrel. The late war with France was as much the fault of Prussia as of the government of Napoleon. The great idea of Prussia is military aggrandizement; it is no longer a small kingdom, but a great empire, more powerful than either Austria or France. It believes in new annexations, until all Germany shall be united under a Prussian Kaiser. ”

“ He made himself personally acquainted with every village and landed estate in his kingdom, which he treated as if it were a great private enterprise and interest, for which he was responsible.
He was a reformer without heart; a King intent upon the well-being of his people, without tenderness; a leader prepared, if need be, not to lead, but to drag Prussia with a rough hand up the rugged path of virtue and prosperity; and determined to make his nation great, whether it wanted to be or not! ”

“ This Prince, full of burning enthusiasm for the honor of the Prussian State and the army of Frederick the Great, was at the head of the patriotic party which Napoleon called the war party. He criticised that so-called highest statesmanship, which wished Prussia to be friendly with all its neighbors, and in consequence of which it was regarded with suspicion by all the States. “By love of peace,” said Prince Louis, with clear insight, “Prussia maintains a peaceful attitude toward all the powers, and some day when they are ready for war, it will be mercilessly crushed. ”

“ The greater part of the beautiful furniture was sold. His importance for Prussia is twofold: in internal politics he laid down principles which continued to be followed long after his death. This was a province peculiarly suited to his genius; he was one of the greatest administrators who have ever worn the Prussian crown. His foreign policy was less successful, though under his rule the kingdom acquired some extension of territory. ”

“ Such a revolutionary foundation might be good enough for the ephemeral empires of France; the appeal of Prussia should be to the God of battles alone.
The antagonism between these conflicting principles was not long in revealing itself. In Germany the relations between Austria and Prussia were becoming unpleasantly strained in the question of the admission of the Habsburg Prussia and the Austro-Italian War. monarchy to the Zollverein, in that of the elector of Hesse and his parliament, in that of the relation of the Elbe duchies to the crown of Denmark. ”

“ Prussian statesmen were not lacking who put the blame for their country's degradation upon many of the social and political conditions which had characterized the "old régime" in all European monarchies, and, as these statesmen were called in counsel by the well-intentioned King Frederick William III (1797-1840) , the years from 1807 to 1813 were marked by a series of internal reforms almost as significant in the history of Prussia as were those from 1789 to 1795 in the history of France. ”

“ Still, a thousand interests and jealousies, local and dynastic, old prescriptive rights, and a constitutional slowness and sluggishness in the Germanic temperament, stood in the way of a united fatherland, and had to be got rid of or overcome by force before the dream of the nationalists could become a reality.
Prussia, founded by rapine, built up and strengthened by war and conquest, has always been a heartless, self-seeking state. The youngest of the great European states, and for a long time one of the most inconsiderable, she has gradually grown to be the first military power of the world. ”

“ He was a man of the times, and a man for the times. He came to the throne just as the Thirty Years' War was well advanced in its last decade, and he had a ruined country for his inheritance; but he raised that country to a high place in Europe, and was connected with many of the principal events of the age of Louis XIV. He freed Prussia from her connection with Poland. He created that Prussian army which has done such wonderful things in the greatest of wars in the last two centuries. ”

“ True, it was soon stated in the newspapers that the whole story of the journey of the king of Prussia had been a mere groundless rumor: but a king I now was, and must, spite of everything, a king remain, and truly one of the most rich and royal who had ever existed; only people did not rightly know what king. ”

“ The position is very serious, and the Prussian King's first appearance in foreign policy is not happy. There is no frankness or nobility in following all these fine protestations with an act of provocation and injustice towards ourselves, who have never been guilty of a single act of bad faith towards Prussia. ”

“ If, however, the King of Prussia, the Monarch of a small indistinguishable speck on the globe, when put in comparison with the empire of China, can keep up an army of one hundred and eighty or two hundred thousand men, I can perceive nothing either extravagant or extraordinary in supposing that a Sovereign whose dominions are eight times the extent of those of France, before her late usurpations, should have ten times as great a force as that of the King of Prussia. ”

“ Frederick William III. was even suspected of a leaning towards French methods of Government; and a Prussian statesman said to the French ambassador:
"You have only the nobles against you: the King and the people are openly for France. The revolution which you have made from below upwards will be slowly effected in Prussia from above downwards: the King is a democrat after his fashion: he is always striving to curtail the privileges of the nobles, but by slow means. In a few years feudal rights will cease to exist in Prussia." ”

“ There was no tact in scoffing at the King’s “North German sound practical sense” by saying, “Had such language fallen from the King of Hanover or of Saxony, I would have understood it,” and there was more weakness and sentimentality than firmness and statecraft in the hand that added, “But up to the present hour I have regarded Prussia as one of the five great Powers which, since the Peace of 1815, have been the guarantors of treaties, the guardians of civilisation, the champions of right, and ultimate arbitrators of the nations ”

“ In every great performance, perhaps in every great character, part is the gift of nature, part the contribution of accident, and part, very often not the greatest part, the effect of voluntary election, and regular design. The king of Prussia was undoubtedly born with more than common abilities; but that he has cultivated them with more than common diligence, was probably the effect of his peculiar condition, of that which he then considered as cruelty and misfortune. ”

“ In fact, it seems now a mere commonplace to assert that Prussia has prospered most when, as under Frederick the Great and William the Great, her policy has been truly German, and that she has fallen back most in the years 1795-1806 and 1848-1852, when the subservience of her Frederick Williams to France and Austria has lost them the respect and support of the rest of the Fatherland. ”

“ They are all young men who in any field of human endeavour are more than a match for men of their age, and by reason of these qualities, so rare in kings and princes, it has been easy to arouse a great feeling of devotion for the royal house of Prussia among all classes in Germany, with the possible exception of the Social Democrats. ”

“ In no other country could a small state like Prussia spring out of a mere society of Knight Templars, and in less than two hundred years, take her place among the first powers of the globe. While the smaller states of the empire followed their indolent habits, and cultivated the dilettante tastes of their rulers, Prussia was perpetually sharpening her sword, carving out of her neighbours fresh slices of territory, and using one acquisition as a stepping-stone to another. ”

“ The nation by which this great change has been wrought in Europe—a change as extraordinary in itself as it is wonderful in its modes, and likely to lead to something far more important—is one of the most respectable members of the European commonwealth, though standing somewhat below the first rank, even while acting on terms of apparent equality with the other great powers. The kingdom of Prussia is of origin so comparatively recent, that there are those now living who can remember others who were old enough to note its creation, in 1700. ”