LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Ex Libris ISAAC FOOT THE COLLECTED PAPERS OF SIR A. W. WARD VOLUME ONE HISTORICAL (i) CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS C. F. CLAY, MANAGER LONDON : FETTER LANE, E.G. 4 NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN CO. BOMBAY CALCUTTA!- MACMILLAN AND co., LTD. MADRAS J TORONTO : THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TOKYO : MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED COLLECTED PAPERS HISTORICAL, LITERARY, TRAVEL AND MISCELLANEOUS BY SIR ADOLPHUS WILLIAM WARD LITT.D., HON. LL.D., HON. PH.D., F.B.A. MASTER OF PETERHOUSE VOLUME ONE HISTORICAL (i) CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1921 W3 7 v.l TO MY WIFE PREFACE E Syndics of the Cambridge University Press A having paid me the high compliment of offering to publish my Collected Papers, I have made a selection from my contributions to periodicals in the course of the last sixty years, or thereabouts, adding a few lectures or addresses not hitherto made public, at least in the form in which they were delivered. I have not thought it desirable to attempt to bring any of these Papers * up to date,' or to make any changes in them except such as were necessitated by unintentional misstatements of facts or by slips of diction. In a few instances, I have added an observation or two that seemed called for in the way of postscript. I have divided this Collection under the three heads : Historical, Literary and Travel and Miscellaneous, although well aware that these designations, like the papers to which they are applied, may occasionally overlap one another. When, so long ago as 1866, 1 was appointed to the professorship of English Language and Literature, and of Ancient and Modern History, in Owens College, Manchester, a perhaps naturally * truant disposition' could, in the sequel, hardly fail to be encouraged in a systematic dissipation of such energies as it possessed. I have, however, in the Historical and Literary divisions of these volumes, endeavoured to confine my choice, so far as possible, to products of those special lines of study upon which viii Preface it has been my constant wish to concentrate my reading. In the concluding volume of these Papers it seemed permissible to use a looser rein, and to include, besides reminiscences of travel in places of historic fame, some addresses connected with the academical and other educational bodies of which I have been, or still am, a member, and a few papers concerned with educational questions in which they and I have been specially interested. I hope to find space to add a short selection of theatrical criticisms; and perhaps a few personal tributes of admiration or affection to contemporaries. Among these I shall make bold to insert a very early effort of which I was still more venturesome in sub- mitting the first draft to the critical censure of the Master of Trinity of those days, Dr W. H. Thompson in memory of his friend and my schoolmaster, the late Dr Donaldson. The biographical notice of the Founder of my College, Bishop Hugo de Balsham, here reprinted from the Dictionary of National Biography by the kind permission of the Delegates of the Clarendon Press, owed much to the revision and suggestions of my old friend and brother-Fellow, the late Mr E. R. Horton, sometime Vice-Master of University College School, London. One or two nugae, added chiefly because of the occasions on which they saw the light, will perhaps be pardoned even by those whose emotions they may leave unwrung. My thanks are due to the Publishers and Editors of various periodicals, as well as to the Councils or Com- mittees of various learned Societies, for readily allowing me to reprint articles which first appeared in publica- tions owned or controlled by them. My special thanks Preface ix are due to the Publishers and Editors of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, the Cornhill and Macmillan's Magazine among the Editors to my old friend Sir G. W. Prothero to the Delegates of the Oxford and Manchester University Presses, to the Councils of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Institute, and to the authorities of the Chetham and other Manchester Societies with which I have been in various ways personally connected. Messrs Macmillan and Co., with Mr T. H. Ward and Sir Henry Craik, K.C.B., have also kindly allowed me to reprint certain contributions in their volumes of selec- tions of English Poetry and Prose, and Mr E. Mellish Clark to reproduce a paper contributed by me to the Fasciculus dedicated to the honoured memory of his Father, the late Registrary of this University, by some of his manv friends. I have also to thank Mr W. D. Orcutt J for allowing me to reprint the Introduction to Henry VI contributed to The University Press Shakespeare, New York, and Messrs J. M. Dent and Sons and Messrs D. C. Heath and Co. for the same permission as to my Introduction to A Woman killed with kindness and Lillo's London Merchant . Of the shorter articles in this Collection , a considerable number first appeared in The Saturday Review, to which I was a contributor, from the beginning of 1863, for nearly a quarter of a century, in the well-re- membered days of Messrs A. Beresford-Hope, J.Douglas Cook and Philip Harwood, whose successors have courteously allowed me to reprint some of my articles in their journal. The Manchester Guardian, in the person of one of the most kind-hearted of men, as he was one of the most high-minded, the late Mr John Edward Taylor, attached me to its occasional service almost on the x Preface morrow of my pitching my tent, for a sojourn of many years, in Manchester; and his kinsman and successor in the conduct of that paper, Mr C. P. Scott, is I think aware of the deep sense of grateful attachment which, on public as well as on private grounds, I have long entertained towards those responsible for its work, and to himself above all. Finally, I have been permitted, by Messrs Longmans and Co. and Dr R. L. Poole, to reprint a few of my contributions to The English Historical Review. From its memorable first number onwards, this journal, under the guidance, first of the late Bishop Creighton, and then of his successors, the late Professor S. R. Gardiner and Dr Poole, has steadfastly adhered to its high purpose as an organ of research and criticism ; nor would it be easy to over- estimate its share in the advance, since its foundation, of historical studies in the Universities and other seats of learning in this country. I should like to associate here with these national services those of the Royal Historical Society and of its Literary Director Mr Hubert Hall, Assistant Keeper of the Public Records, who has done so much to advance historical research in this country, and those of the Historical and Literary Sections of the British Academy, whose work has not been the least effective among the endeavours of the Academy at large, so admirably organised and promoted by Sir Israel Gollancz, its Hon. Secretary from the time of its foundation. No further words of introduction seem required in this place. I hope to live to apologise personally to the members of the English Goethe Society for their President's presumption in reprinting a paper from its Transactions. I leave unacknowledged, but not un- Preface xi remembered, my varied indebtedness to the Owens College, now the Victoria University of Manchester, to my own Peterhouse, and to the Syndics of the Cam- bridge University Press, to whose generosity this book owes its existence, for allowing or facilitating the in- clusion in it of some of its contents. But I cannot close this Preface without placing on record my special obli- gations to Mr A. R. Waller, of Peterhouse, Secretary to the Syndics, for all the trouble he has taken in bringing the present publication to birth. The University Library, too, and Mr A. T. Bartholomew, also of Peterhouse, Assistant-Librarian, have been most helpful at various stages of its progress, and he has compiled a bibliography of my published works, printed with these Papers. I have, also, to thank Miss Alice D. Greenwood, the daughter of my honoured predecessor at Manchester, for the excellent Index she has compiled for these volumes, and my indefatigable secretary, Miss M. Pate, for the assistance she has given me in preparing the Collection for the printers. Whatever may be its fate, both I and those whom I shall leave behind me will always look upon it as a monument of the relations which I have long enjoyed with the northern College and University in whose work I long shared, with my own most ancient College at Cambridge, with the University of which we form part, and with the two institutions in that Uni- versity to my mind inseparable from its best and highest interests the Library and the Press. A. W. WARD. PETERHOUSE LODGE October, 1920. CONTENTS OF VOLUME I PAGE 1 . THE PEACE OF EUROPE I 2. FINLAY'S HISTORY OF GREECE . . . .55 3 . ROMAN MANNERS UNDER THE EARLIER EMPERORS 68 4. THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE 89 5. ELIZABETH OF BOHEMIA 98 6. TILLY 140 7. THE EMPIRE UNDER FERDINAND III . . . 149 8. SONGS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR . . .158 9. THE EFFECTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR . . 1 68 10. GARDINER'S REIGN OF CHARLES i 224 1 1 . COLONEL HUTCHINSON AND HIS WIFE . . 266 12. MEMOIRS OF GENERAL LUDLOW . . . 276 13. MEMOIRS OF MARY II 283 14. LEIBNIZ AS A POLITICIAN . . . .3^3 15. ELIZABETH, PRINCESS PALATINE . . 366 COLLECTED PAPERS HISTORICAL i. THE PEACE OF EUROPE Essays and Addresses by Professors and Lecturers of the Owens College, Manchester, 1873. Macmillan & Co. 1873. POLITICAL phrases, like everything else which is of human origin, have their day. If the nicknames of one generation are worn with pride as party badges by another, the watchwords of the popular politics of one century not unfrequently become the bye-words of its successor. Expressions in which our ancestors summed up what seemed to them established results of historical experience or cardinal maxims of political conduct, we as of one consent proclaim hollow and delusive; it is only our own devices which give a solid sound, and we confidently ring the changes on them accordingly. Thus the once famous expression of the Balance of Power, which pervades the English political oratory and literature of the eighteenth century, is now, as may be read by him who runs, regarded by general consent at least in our own country as signifying nothing but an exploded fallacy, a self-betrayed unreality. "The English and the Americans," says M. de Laveleye, the eminent publicist, to whose recent very striking work 1 I shall make more than one reference in this Essay, 1 Des causes acluelles de guerre en Europe et de f arbitrage (1873). 2 Historical "only speak of the Balance of Power as of a super- annuated idea, inapplicable to the nineteenth century." " This chimera, ' the balance of power,' " is the contemp- tuous phrase of another recent writer x ; but, then, unlike M. de Laveleye, who gives the only definition of the term which conveys any historical meaning to my mind, he has previously defined the maintenance of the balance of power to consist in preserving (by force of arms, if necessary) the exact relative positions of the European States actually existing at the time. I mention this definition, and the conclusion drawn from it, in order to suggest how easy it is to argue from one's own definitions. If the Balance of Power had ever been intended to mean the preservation at any cost of the precise existing positions of the States of Europe, it might certainly prove less difficult to show how long that balance endured than to point out when it was first established. As M. de Laveleye, on the other hand, explains the term, and as (to cite a much earlier writer) Hume, in his well-known Essay On the Balance of Power, evidently understands it, it expresses a principle of policy so simple and so obvious that, with or without the name, the underlying idea has existed, it may almost be said, ever since history has been written. The only question is as to its applicability to the political relations among any given group of States, those of Europe for example. 1 Mr Augustus Mongredien, England's Foreign Policy (1871). This Essay, together with numerous other pamphlets and papers, was obligingly communicated to me by the Secretary to the London Peace Society, whom I have every reason to thank for his courtesy to a stranger and sceptic. The Peace of Europe 3 Without any forced ingenuity, Hume endeavoured to trace a consciousness of the principle involved in the phrase in the political world of ancient Greece. No exception is to be taken to his illustrations, unless it be necessary to remark that hereditary jealousy as between the Athenians and the Thebans and that spirit of rivalry which was as the very breath of life to many of the Greek commonwealths exercised an influence as important as that of any political principle. The study of the policy of Athens, before and after the battle of Leuctra, is specially instructive as exhibiting the inevitable weakness of a people which is guided by its prejudices rather than its interests. But the real political capacities of Greece, a Brasidas, an Alcibiades, a Demosthenes, well understood the principle ; and one of them (as Hume observes) taught it to Persia. The political history of the Roman Empire moved within far wider limits than that of the Greek common- wealths. In the West 1 the principle of the Balance of Power was doomed to a long period of suppression, as Rome gradually became omnipotent in the territories forming the main theatre of classical history. She had obtained the mastery over Italy because the variety of races inhabiting it Gauls, Greeks, Etruscans and Italians had rendered combination against her out of the question. As her power progressed, the vastness of 1 For it is of course true, as Mr Cox remarks (History of Greece, i. 167, Note 332), that stress has rightly been laid (by Mr Rawlinson, in his History of Parthid) on the fact "that at no time was a check wanting to Roman power in the East, and that for three centuries this check was supplied by the Parthians." At the same time it is difficult to agree with Mr Cox that " the importance of this balancing power is not lessened, even if its effect be not felt everywhere." i 2 4 Historical her ambition became itself an element of safety. The genius of Hannibal alone, the one truly great foe whom Rome had at any time to fear, was equal to the con- ception of a Grand Alliance which might have prevailed against her; but the danger passed away. Philip of Macedon was finally bought off by a treaty which the Roman Senate was sure to break so soon as it should have crushed Hannibal x ; and, clinging with aristocratic tenacity to an accepted maxim of policy, the oligarchs who established the universal supremacy of the Roman Republic achieved this result by the system of divide et impera, which is the direct negation of the negative implied in the principle of the balance of power. From the Great Popular Migrations arose the begin- nings of that body of nations which we designate as the European family. The term is offensive to philosophic ears; I grant it to be as loose in every sense as it is variable ; but it commends itself as implying very little more than it actually means. It did not include Russia in the Middle Ages; at the present day, its geographical exactness is sufficient. It by no means necessarily involves a community of race, of civilisation, even of religion. It simply means a group of neighbours. The truth of Hesiod's maxim has never been considered parodoxical: that a bad neighbour is a great evil, and a good neighbour a great advantage. On this principle nations as well as men have always found it advisable 1 Appian, IX. 2: teal ra? jKa<; ovBerepoi fteftaiovs ovS" air* evvoia? eSotcovv TreTroirja-Qai. Cf. Ihne, Rom. Gesch., ill. 2. Philip's suicidal selfishness has more than one parallel in the history of alliances. The Peace of Europe 5 to act 1 . The relations between the nations and States of Europe have accordingly always been of primary importance to the nations and States in question. The peace of Europe is not identical with the peace of the world; but it is absurd to deny that the former is, and always has been, of primary importance to European peoples. So long as any vestige of real authority remained to the so-called Roman Empire of the Middle Ages, the endeavours to resist the predominance of the German Kings, who sought to assert a general supremacy under the pretext of its venerable name, were mere attempts frequently aided by the conflicting assumptions of the Papacy after its claims had become dissociated from those of the Empire to preserve or establish terri- torial, municipal or national independence. Neither the struggles between the Emperors and the Popes in general, nor the various combinations against the Hohenstaufen Emperors which accompanied them in particular, can, however, be said to have been based on the desire to establish a permanent system of mutually acknowledged rights and boundaries. And, theoretically, either the supremacy of one Power was acknowledged or that of another was asserted. Such, however, is the influence of ideas, especially where they are of an imaginative rather than a logical character, that Western Europe had to struggle for centuries before it was virtually emancipated from the results of Otto the Great's ambition. Fictitious in conception and false in 1 The Russians, e.g., whose diplomatic relations with their neighbours have always been, in one way or the other, of a most active kind. 6 Historical fact, the Roman Empire of the Germanic nation was doomed to inevitable extinction. But the modern State-system of Europe had to be formed an its main component elements before it could seek for external as well as for internal guarantees of its endurance. Thus it may be asserted that the European State which first unsettled the position of things at the beginning of the period which the school-books call Modern History, was the first State which brought about an endeavour to establish the balance of power. In other words, by exhibiting herself as the main danger to the preservation of the existing relations between the European States, France first suggested the con- ception of a general alliance in the interests of the common security of her neighbours. It was the active genius of Italian statesmen, the inheritors of the political genius as well as of the culture of ancient Greece 1 which, in order to resist the encroachments of France at the close of the fifteenth century, extended a system of policy, long pursued in the internal conflicts of Italy itself, to the relations between a considerable number of the European States at large. Nothing can be drearier and in detail less interesting than the narrative which, in his History of Florence, Macchiavelli gives of the endless jealousies and petty struggles between his native city and Venice, and the Popes and other Italian Powers. The " Balance of Power" which they attempted to preserve was nothing more than the casual result of a selfishness 1 Mr Freeman has dwelt on this from other points of view, in his suggestive Essay on Ancient Greece and Mediceval Italy (Historical Essays, Second Series). The Peace of Europe 7 often intensified by an inter-municipal envy, to which the Greeks themselves hardly sank in so deplorable a degree; but the great league which drew Charles VIII out of Naples was a legitimate combination of con- servative elements in and out of Italy against a per- manently disturbing element, the conquering ambition of the House of Valois 1 . The great duel between France and the House of Habsburg in the sixteenth century was, as between the main combatants, of course, a mere contest for supre- macy in Europe 2 ; but other States, England among the number, sought to influence the successive stages of its progress so as to make impossible the permanent pre- dominance of either. The policy of Wolsey lacks neither intelligibility nor intelligence ; but its zeal was excessive, and neither he nor his master knew perhaps could know the real measure of their country's resources. 1 Among the founders of this league (between Spain, Venice, the Emperor, the Duke of Milan, and the Pope) was Alexander VI. With all their vices, the genius of the Borgias was that of statesmen of the highest order, and one which might have made Italy great and free, could nations be made great and free by statecraft. As to the character of the ambition of Charles VIII (by whose side even Otto III seems a respectable imitator of Charlemagne), see Sismondi's Italian Republics. 2 There is something almost naif in the way in which the rivalry of France, even in the matter of Church reform, is resented by a German correspondent of the Roman King, towards the close of the fifteenth century: "darauss ich sorg, der kiing von Franckrich werd auff das mindest die kirchen reformieren vnd damit jm selbs in aller cristenheyt lob eer vnd auffsechen machen, das doch E. ko. Mt.von gotlichem vnd weltlichem rechtem me zu gepurettdenn jm " (Marquard Breisacher to K. Maximilian, 5th January, 14915, in Chmel's Urkunden, &c., p. 56). 8 Historical When the religious strife of the same century added a totally new element to the calculations of statesmen, when France was weakened by a division of many complications 1 , and Spain was temporarily strong in enforced unity, the danger to the Balance of Power from this new quarter assumed an unmistakable character. It needed the great Protestant combination, of which Elizabeth reluctantly became for a time the head, to remove the pressure of an intolerable incubus. Henry IV of France, who owed his throne in no small degree to the operation of this reaction, was too anxious to retain a secure seat upon it to allow the daring schemes with which he has been credited, to approach realisation within his life-time 2 . So long as the House of Habsburg left the security of its neighbours in peace, there was no likelihood of a serious effort on the part of the Protestant interest to unsettle the existing system. The combination which just before his death threatened the outbreak of a general war was caused by a difficulty which the policy of that House had deliberately pre- pared, and sought at the critical moment to use for the interests of its own ambition 3 . But after Henry IV's 1 For in the great civil wars of France there were arrayed: Calvinism against the authority of Rome, the principle of monarchy against that of aristocratic cantonal government, the principle of national self-determination against the prejudices of the capital, a free France against the tutelage of Spain. 2 The so-called " Great Plan of Henry IV," to which reference will be made below, was at the most held in readiness for contingent use. 3 i.e., the clash of claims of Jiilich-Cleve-Berg was the con- sequence of the cancelling by Charles V of the heritage treaty of 1544; and the Archduke Leopold was the real "ferret in the rabbit- warren " of the contested duchies. (Cf. as to this phrase Motley's Life of John of Barneveld, vol. I. p. 66.) The Peace of Europe 9 untimely death, his country was once more paralysed by intestine struggles; and the power of England, half-fledged, was crippled by the first serious symptoms of similar influences, and by the impotent timidity of a hopelessly self-confident prince. James I balanced nothing but his own wit, and even that with indifferent success. Thus, religious fanaticism once more nerving the arm of dynastic ambition, the same danger once more arose in the same quarter ; and the House of Habsburg once more sought by a combined effort of its branches to master the lands and the shores of Europe. This attempt, which belongs to the earlier part of the Thirty Years' War, had been near success; no sword has ever redressed a balance more promptly and more decisively than that of Gustavus Adolphus ; and the remainder of the long-protracted conflict was nothing but a struggle for the details of a peace as to the essential conditions of which no doubt could exist. Contemporary with the failure of the House of Habsburg, and at first a secret, then an open, cause contributing to that failure, had been the rise into new vigour the " rejuvenescence " as it has been termed 1 of the power of France. The indefatigable energy with which Richelieu had consolidated the monarchy is not more remarkable than the politic self-restraint with which he delayed the moment of intervention in the affairs of Europe. In the Peace of Westphalia his successor obtained for France, besides gains of territory, 1 By C. von Noorden in his Europaische Geschichte im 18. Jahr- hundert, a work of singular lucidity and breadth, so far as I can judge from its first volume. io Historical bases of pretexts and opportunities for new acquisitions ; in the Peace of the Pyrenees, which crowned the policy of Mazarin, the western branch of the House of Habsburg had likewise to acknowledge its defeat. It was only in the earlier part of the Great War that the voice of England had been feebly, her arm even more feebly, raised to influence the course of the struggle; by the time of the Peace of Westphalia she had ceased to be taken into account. When her strength was gathered in the mighty grasp of Cromwell, the political sagacity which he almost invariably exhibited ranged her arms on the side of France; and Holland was forced to follow in her wake. One of the last diplomatic attempts of Cromwell was to second Mazarin 's efforts to prevent the succession of a Habs- burg prince to the imperial throne 1 . How Cromwell would have borne himself towards the change in the aspect of European affairs which ensued by the conclusion of the Treaty of the Pyrenees, it is needless to speculate. His foreign policy had been essentially his own; and his most marked political characteristic was a swift and resolute recognition of fact. The chief importance of this treaty, and the chief motive why France had consented to it, was the marriage of Lewis XIV to the eldest daughter of the Spanish king, which secured to the French monarch the basis for a future claim on the Spanish inheritance. Of course, the claim was expressly renounced; but, practically, it survived as a danger for the future. When, 1 Ranke, Englische Geschichte y vol. in. p. 567. Leopold I was, however, elected, chiefly in consequence of the exertions of Brandenburg. The Peace of Europe 1 1 soon afterwards, Lewis himself assumed the reins of government, the epoch of preparation began for the great attempt of France to assert her supremacy- nothing short of this over Europe. His intentions were, generally, to acquire territory wherever France had frontiers, i.e. to annex parts of the Netherlands and of the Empire, and specially, when the opportunity arrived, to unite with the French Crown the monarchy of Spain. The former is the more directly significant, though the latter proved the more widely momentous, part of his policy. France bore herself as a standing menace to the peace of Europe. The policy of England towards France in this period was uncertain, for the simplest of reasons. The instincts of the people pointed in one direction, the desires of the Court in another ; while the machinery of govern- ment was neither such as to enable the Sovereign permanently to override the wishes of his people, nor sufficiently developed in a contrary direction to make his counsels amenable to their control 1 . Sir William Temple, one of the truest friends of a genuine peace- policy whom England has at any time numbered among her statesmen, temporarily defeated the designs of France upon the Netherlands by one of the boldest treaties ever consummated by our diplomacy. The Triple Alliance maintained peace by holding war in reserve. But the fatal course of Stewart policy, tenaciously directed towards its own ends, undid the alliance; and after new French encroachments the Treaty of 1 It was in this direction that Temple's famous scheme of Cabinet reform (1679) was intended to operate. (See Macaulay's Essay on Sir William Temple.) 1 2 Historical Nymegen only in so far constituted a check upon French ambition that, in sanctioning new French acquisitions, it prevented the immediate seizure, by force direct, of more. Europe had paid another Danegeld 1 . Then commenced those reunions (the word has fallen out of political use, the nineteenth century pre- ferring the term revindications) to which the Eastern difficulties of the Emperor obliged him to submit. While, in futile self-dependence, he was entangling himself in secret treaties with his ruthless adversary, and escaping from them when he found them broken reeds, England was, unknown to herself, bound hand and foot by another secret engagement between her sovereign and his French patron. A net of French intrigue had literally been spun around Europe from the Straits of Dover to the Bosphorus ; and there was nothing to stop French aggression, which, all future designs apart, freely extended itself towards the Rhine, across the Alps, and into the Netherlands. So far, then, as the maintenance of the Balance of Power signifies an endeavour to resist in the only way in which it can be resisted the encroachments of a neighbour of overbearing strength and ambition 2 , it must 1 To the Triple Alliance may perhaps be compared the treaties concluded by two other Whig statesmen: the Quadruple Alliance of 1718, which virtually disposed of the ambition of Spain, and Lord Palmerston's Quadruple Alliance of 1834, which he, not less truly than characteristically, described as "a capital hit, and all his own doing." 2 "The aim of modern politics," says Hume, in his Essay, "is pointed out in express terms in a maxim of Polybius : ' Never ought such a force to be thrown into one hand as to incapacitate the neighbouring States from defending their rights against it.'" The Peace of Europe 1 3 be conceded that the adoption of this principle had in Europe, from the close of the fifteenth to the close of the seventeenth century, been not so much a political theory as a political necessity. To maintain this Balance had, in the struggle of Italy against France, in the struggle of the Protestant Powers against Spain, in the struggle of Northern Germany and the United Provinces against the House of Habsburg, and now again in the struggle of the Netherlands and the Empire against France, been to obey the dictates of that law of self-preservation which no political theorist 1 has ever denied to be binding upon States and nations. There is no law unless there were one of religion absolutely prohibiting the use of arms which can override it. And since combination can alone render resistance successful on the part of the weaker against the stronger, combination for such a purpose was as legitimate as it was inevitable. But this rapid sketch has brought me to a period in European history when it was first sought to establish the security of the peace of Europe on a more per- manent footing, and to make the Balance of Power an enduring reality established by settled guarantees. Still, the end proposed was no other than that which the successive combinations of two centuries had pursued; and, so far as the end is concerned, the policy of William III, the incarnation of the much-decried system of the balance of power, has the same justifica- tion as the policy of Venice, of William the Silent, of 1 Except, of course, those who reject altogether the binding character of State-ties, and recognise only those of a commune, or of still narrower associations. 14 Historical Protestant Germany, and as that of William himself, when he first stood forth as the leader of his countrymen in their desperate struggle against their overbearing neighbour. Beyond all doubt it was not in the spirit of a crusader for constitutional rights (which as worked by the " constitutional party " of his reign, the Tories, with their patriotic objection to standing armies, were to give him ho little trouble) or for the sacred cause of civil and religious liberty all over the world (though he under- stood the meaning of the latter term much better than the bulk of either Tories or Whigs 1 ), that William of Orange accepted the invitation to ascend the English throne. His motive was the preservation of the independence of his native land. Yet no political necessity of his own would have justified him in causing England, or England in consenting at his bidding, to assume the attitude which she gradually took up towards the aggressive power of France. The reluctance and recalcitrance were the reverse of slight which he had to evade or overcome; but it was the duty of England to take part in the Grand Alliance which it became the object of his life to knit. For the attempted intervention of Lewis XIV in her own affairs had been no panic-stricken apprehension, but a well-established reality. It is, I confess, with little patience that one can see doubts thrown upon the wisdom or justice of a course of policy which was that of self-preservation pure and simple. Not only our constitutional life, which Charles II and James II had 1 As witness the Treaty of Limerick, and William's hesitation in taking the Scotch Coronation Oath. The Peace of Europe 15 already begun successfully to undermine and which they were plotting, with French help, to overthrow, not only the maintenance of that freedom from foreign ecclesias- tical control which indubitably the great body of the nation had at heart, but our national independence, in the literal sense of the term, was in danger from the league between the Stuarts and Lewis XIV, which force had from the first been intended to constitute a victorious combination, which force proved to be a reality after the Revolution, and which force combined force could alone successfully resist. It is not party zeal or national prejudice, but the calm verdict of historical criticism which asserts that the danger to England's freedom and England's power of self- determination without which no national life is worth a day's purchase from the United Provinces' greedy neighbour, was as real and as imminent as the danger which had threatened both communities from Spain in the days of the Revolt and of the Spanish Armada 1 . William perceived what his Parliament (in the unworthy attitude assumed by it in the debates on the 1 It is, of course, out of my power to prove the above proposition within my present limits. But attention may be directed, as to principal links in the chain of evidence, to the Secret Treaties of 1670 and 1676, and to the negotiations between Lewis and James early in 1688, described by Ranke at the close of his fifth volume. See also the very remarkable account of Bentinck's interview with the Brandenburg Privy Councillor, von Fuchss, ib. p. 529 seq. As to the conduct of France after the Revolution, the facts speak for them- selves. And the recognition of "James III" in 1701 was only the open declaration of an attitude which amounted to that of a claim to suzerainty. 1 6 Historical Partition Treaties 1 ) virtually refused to see that the question of the Spanish succession and of the frustration of the designs of France upon it, was intimately bound up with that of the independence of both the United Provinces and England, as towards France. The military power of Lewis, in other words his power of resuming a policy of aggression, had not been broken by the Peace of Ryswyk, in which the question of the succession had been studiously avoided, and which was therefore essentially a mere truce. To allow this Power directly or indirectly to acquire the whole of the inheritance of Charles II was a danger as palpable as it must soon become imminent. Neither was it desirable to allow the whole to fall to the Austrian candidate, and thus to raise a single branch of the House of Habsburg to a dangerous predominance in Europe. In his Partition Treaties, the execution of which was frustrated by circumstances beyond the control of statesmanship 2 , and afterwards in the War which he bequeathed as a legacy to the inheritors of his policy, William endeavoured to obviate both dangers by a division of the Spanish monarchy. This simple fact is not always remembered by those who identify the later (and in my judgment unjustifiable) policy of Marl- 1 Unworthy, because whatever may be thought of the policy of the Treaties, Parliament had by reducing the army made it impossible for the king to use any means but those of conciliatory negotiation. 2 Viz., death (that of Joseph Ferdinand) and intrigue round the deathbed of an impotent old man (Charles IPs last will was ascribed to the personal influence of the French envoy, Harcourt). But the Second Treaty had never been assented to by the Emperor, and it is not wonderful that Lewis should have rejected it in favour of the will. The Peace of Europe 17 borough with that which he inherited from William. But was the principle which William thus sought to carry into practice reconcilable with the inevitable canon of all political conduct, viz. the laws of morality? Fenelon impressed upon his royal pupil the maxim on which William acted, that " a particular right of succession or donation ought to yield to the natural law of security for many nations 1 ." Surely to this ought to be added the safe-guarding condition: "provided always that the consent of the people whose destinies are involved, be secured 2 ." In the case of the Spanish succession William was probably as little disturbed by the omission of any references to the wishes of Spain as Lewis himself, and disregarded the protest of the Spanish Government (in which it doubtless spoke the wish of the Spanish people) against the proposed dismember- ment of the monarchy. The defence of his policy lies not so much in the fact of the strong pressure of necessity, as in the consideration that the Spanish nation and the Spanish monarchy were not convertible terms. No national life is a legitimate subject of annihilation; but it seems a maintainable argument that an artificially accumulated State may be dismem- bered for the benefit of the group of nations to which 1 Quoted by Wheaton, History of the Law of Nations, p. 83. 2 Thus, e.g., when in the once famous Treaty of 1852 the Great Powers altered the succession in the Elbe Duchies, the measure, whatever its merits, remained incomplete till the assent of the Duchies themselves (through their estates) should have been obtained; and the absence of this assent, it was afterwards justly, and one would have thought intelligibly, argued, rendered the treaty nugatory in international law, which must be based on the principles of inter- national morality. W.P.I 2 1 8 Historical its members belong, if their continued union endangers the security of the rest 1 . I do not forget the Emperor Nicholas; but, granting that his scheme was in itself a desirable one, his political wrong lay in attempting to carry it out, first by a conspiracy, and then by force. It is at the same time true that the War of the Spanish Succession was afterwards carried on for a changed end. The same error was committed, mutatis mutandis, with perhaps less excuse, in the great War against the French Republic by the younger Pitt. The object, and if the above argument be accepted, the legitimate object, of the War of the Succession was to prevent the power of France from obtaining the un- divided Spanish inheritance ; but, at an early stage of the War, Great Britain bound herself to prevent the House of Bourbon from securing any part of it. So, in the later War with France, the legitimate object with which it was undertaken or (to speak more correctly) accepted, was to resist the aggression of France beyond her frontiers; but with this was afterwards combined another object which Great Britain had no claim to help in securing, viz., the restoration of a particular dynasty to the throne of France. And the ambition of 1 I am glad to find this view corroborated by von Noorden, who (taking exception to the Partition Treaties on other grounds) observes (p. 112): "It was by no means a question as to the dismemberment of a national life (Volksthum); not even Aragonese and Castilians, much less Spaniards, Neapolitans, Milanese and Netherlanders, were united by a national-political idea ; the dismemberment of the Spanish monarchy, to whatever degree it might wear the aspect of an act of force, was excused by the need and the welfare of the world of that age." The Peace of Europe 19 Marlborough carried him to even more unwarrantable lengths, when he continued the War with France, even after she had consented to renounce the support of Philip V 1 . Shortly before Marlborough 's fall, the death of the Emperor Joseph I, whereby the titular King Charles III of Spain became master of all the Austrian dominions, altered the whole aspect of the question. If the Spanish monarchy were in its entirety secured to him, the balance of power in Europe would once more be seriously threatened, though in an opposite direction to that which the efforts of Great Britain had hitherto sought to meet. It was, however, the result, not of the original policy of William and the War not of the policy of the balance of power proper but of the imprudent and unjustifiable engagements taken after his death, that British policy thus found itself in a false position, from which it could only extricate itself with loss of honour. A candid review of the conditions of the Peace of 1 This was in 1709 ; but already in 1706-7 France had made offers which it was in the interest of Great Britain to induce the Emperor to accept. Marlborough 's conduct in 1708-9 seems to me inde- fensible, although it is true (as urged by Archdeacon Coxe) that Marlborough was ready to waive the condition on which Godolphin insisted. He gave way to his party against the wishes of both the sovereign and the majority of the nation; and yet the Whigs had only become his party because their support had enabled him to carry on the War. But, as infinitely the most influential man of the party, he must bear the chief responsibility of its policy. The same remark applies a fortiori to the negotiations of 1710; for I cannot agree with the historians (Lord Stanhope, e.g.) who suspect the sincerity of Lewis XIV at this particular point of time. 2 2 2O Historical Utrecht, into which I have no space to enter, will show that no view of it could be less just than that shrilly proclaimed by the Whig writers of the day: how in it British interests had been sold to France. If Cato could have told the truth to his friends of either party, he might have informed the Whigs that they had been careless of the true interests of the country, and the Tories that they had made light of its pledged honour. But, had Great Britain not been legally and morally bound by engagements which it had never been her real interest to form, the conclusion of the great War of the Spanish Succession (which virtually secured the objects for which it had been undertaken) would be as justifiable and on the same grounds as was the opening of it. For nearly a century, until the generally aggressive ambition of France once more essayed, this time in the name of Freedom, to change the face of Europe, the Treaties of Utrecht remained the established basis of the relations between its States. The Quadruple Alliance of 1718 and the War against Spain of 1719 enforced the policy of Utrecht with remarkable promptitude and effect; and though the diplomatic history of this Alliance (and of the Triple Alliance preceding it) has its shady sides, the results of the foreign policy of Stanhope and Dubois were thoroughly consistent with the interests of the European system. Doubtless there were many other wars in this century ; but the several congresses which terminated them re- established general peace with comparatively little trouble, and without necessitating any unsettlement of the territorial stipulations of the Utrecht Treaties in any The Peace of Europe 21 intrinsically important point 1 . The War of the Austrian Succession, which led to the Second Silesian and to the Seven Years' War, was the result of an aberration, brought about by the restless eagerness of Austrian diplomacy, from the accepted principle of joint action on the part of the European Powers in reference to any question seriously affecting their mutual relations 2 . The only definite result of these wars was the sudden rise of Prussia to the rank of a Great Power ; but the aggres- sion which, under hypocritical pretences, Frederick II dared in the first war, and the acquisition which he heroically defended in the second and third, in no wise affected the security of any of the allies of himself or of his adversary. The transfer of Silesia having been accepted by Austria, was accepted by Europe; and the attempted unsettlement of the cession only led to its final establishment. The slight shock given to 1 The complicated arrangement at the Peace of Vienna in 1738, whereby Lorraine eventually fell to France, may be mentioned as an exception. German patriots have since discovered that their nation never forgave the House of Austria this act of national treason. 2 It seems to me that the engagements into which many European Powers had been induced to enter with Austria to uphold the Succession as settled by the Pragmatic Sanction must be condemned as prejudging a question which foreign Powers had no right to discuss unless they discussed it collectively in the interests of the peace of Europe at large. The fact that these engagements had been taken separately, and that they were in consequence observed by some and cast to the winds by others, without there being any mutual right of holding one another to the guarantee, caused the Wars mentioned in the text, which temporarily disturbed the peace of Europe, but cannot be said to have endangered it as a system capable of reestablishment on the same basis, to which indeed it finally attained. 22 Historical the European system by the original aggression was of less significance than the attempted retaliatory dis- memberment of the Prussian monarchy, an intrigue concocted in the dark, of which the consequences were averted by Frederick's heroic energy and endurance. Though his career did not end without his devising a scheme to secure himself and his brother-Princes against Imperial ambition, this was merely designed in self-defence ; and the growth of the Prussian monarchy continued in the main a legitimate internal develope- ment 1 . Lastly, the mighty struggles of Great Britain against Spain and France were undertaken for the extension of her colonial empire; and with the establishment of this whether by morally justifiable means or not, it is beyond my present purpose to enquire, within limits materially affected by the American War of Inde- pendence, the necessity or excuse for such wars has passed away for ever. There may seem a touch of hypocrisy in looking back with something like satis- faction upon a course of policy which most assuredly this country will never be willing to resume. But, 1 The secret, it may be said in passing, of the growth of the Prussian power most assuredly lies in the unabating devotion of its Governments, from that of Frederick II, or, indeed, from that of his father, downwards, to the perfection of their administrative system. As to the date when Prussia first became aware of her "mission," I most thoroughly agree with Mr Bryce (see his masterly chapter "on the New German Empire," in the last edition of the Holy Roman Empire, p. 438), that "too much has perhaps been said of late years about" the mission in question. Indeed, the way in which this application of the historical "germ theory" has been preached has been far more edifying than convincing. The Peace of Europe 23 historically speaking, this may be asserted: that the colonial wars of Great Britain were the results of causes not primarily connected with the principle of national self-preservation, which is involved in that of the balance of power, and that their issue in no wise materially affected the maintenance of the European system as one of allied independent States 1 . At home in Europe, Great Britain was true to the treaty which was the work of her own hand. One European Power only, as it could now be called 2 , preceded France in a scheme to unsettle the balance of Europe, or in other words to substitute a policy of forcible aggression not less forcible because generally nicely timed for one of deference to the system settled by the Utrecht Treaties and modifiable only by the whole body of European Powers adhering to them. But this Power contrived to make two others her accomplices in the conspiracy, and thus to shake the very foundations of European peace by destroying the elementary condition of mutual trust. The Partitions of Poland, of which Russia was the primary author, while they were shared with cynical greed by Prussia 1 Of the present and the future it may not be inapposite to say that colonial wars, involving the maintenance of the national honour, will continue to arise in unexpected quarters, and when once begun, will have to be fought out, in spite of protests sent in the rear of expeditions; but that a heavy responsibility will lie on the statesman- ship of a country, which has beyond all doubt arrived at a point in her history when it behoves her to consider the objects, and, accord- ing to a definitely accepted view of them, to determine the limits of her colonial empire. 2 Diplomatically speaking, Russia entered into the family of European States with the Treaty of Amsterdam (1717). 24 Historical and with more or less dubious reluctance by Austria 1 , constituted the first open breach of the settled system of Europe by some of its great Powers, a breach excused by no real need and defensible by no tenable argument. Nor were these Partitions sanctioned by any general European treaty, while Great Britain, thank God, entered into no engagement respecting them. This criminal violation of the fundamental principles of international law, identical with the eternal principles of morality, was to avenge itself upon two at least of its perpetrators. I am not aware of any more remarkable or instructive discovery for it deserves the name of the historic research of our own times than the proof which Sybel's masterpiece 2 has laid before the world; how the Partitions of Poland ripened the seeds of that bitter jealousy between Austria and Prussia which was a primary cause of the miserable collapse of the First Coalition against France. The conclusion at which it thus seems justifiable to arrive is this: the causes of war are and ever have been many and varying, at one time differences of religion have given rise to conflicts; at another, dif- ferences of nationality; now r historical jealousies, now quarrels which seem to be thrown of a sudden between States like the apple of Eris. But for those wars which had their primary source in the growth of one Power 1 Doubtless there was no hypocrisy in Maria Theresa's unwilling- ness. But her expression "J'ai toujours etc contraire a cet unique partage, si inegal" characterises the real nature of Austria's " moral " scruples at what she had consented to. As for Prussian historians, they continue to regret the inevitable necessity of obtaining a reason- able north-eastern frontier. 2 The History of the Period of the French Revolution. The Peace of Europe 25 into preponderance and aggressiveness, the system of the balance of power, in its more developed phase, furnished a remedy which made them less frequent, less protracted, less extended, and less uncertain in their issue than they would otherwise have been. So far from being in themselves among the causes of wars, great international treaties, which, like those of Utrecht, are arrived at by the consent of the nations of Europe and guaranteed by their collective agreement, are in themselves securities, though not all-sufficient securities, of her Peace. They are unable to prevent wars arising on issues resulting from separate engagements or beyond the scope of their provisions, though even such wars they help to bring to a speedier conclusion. And the general security which they profess to give they are able to preserve, so long as the principle of a general adherence to them, and of a submission to modifications effected in them by common consent only, is itself maintained. The Treaties of Vienna, which concluded the great Napoleonic War the inheritor of the thoroughly aggres- sive character of the French Revolutionary War differ in this respect from the Treaties of Utrecht, that they provided not a less, but a more, explicit guarantee for the maintenance of the European system. Already at Vienna the most important questions were decided by a committee of the representatives of the Five Great Powers (while eight Powers generally undertook the settlement of territorial questions). But, which is of more signal importance, the alliance of the Five Great Powers l was henceforth established as a superintending authority over the international affairs of Europe. The 1 Originally, of course, of four ; but France acceded at Aix-la- Chapelle, in 1818. 26 Historical Holy Alliance, whose ends have been frequently con- founded with those of the Alliance of the Great Powers of the last Coalition, was nothing but a private agree- ment between sovereigns, in terms so vague and so absurdly fantastic that it is not to be regarded as a political instrument at all 1 . But the Treaty which was finally renewed between the Four Great Powers on the same day as that on which the Peace of Paris was signed, and which was afterwards adhered to by France 2 , was the security of the Peace of Europe for nearly half a century, while the Peace of Paris itself was its basis. The system thus established, and accepted by Great Britain, which declined very decisively to have anything to do with the dreamy maxims of the Holy Alliance, was the very opposite of a hard and fast system. Instead of the Great Powers swearing, as it were, to maintain for ever the existing condition of things in Europe, a tribunal was, on the contrary, established designed expressly to provide, not of course for rash changes, but for the sanction of such modifications as might from time to time become necessary 3 . The duty of 1 Much confusion exists on this subject, which I have no space to discuss here. I can only refer for an admirably clear exposition of it to Bernhardi's Geschichte Russlands u. d. europ. Politik, 1814- 1831, vol. I. It has been still more recently treated by A. Sorel, Le Traiti de Paris, which it is a comfort to know was delivered as a course of diplomatic history at the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques at Paris. Such courses should form part of the training of all aspirants to the service of our own Foreign Office. 2 Viz. the Treaty of Chaumont, confirmed March 25th, renewed November 20, 1815, and secretly reconfirmed, November 25, 1818. 3 Art. VI (of the Treaty renewing the Alliance of Chaumont) : "Pour assurer et faciliter 1 'execution du present traite" et consolider les rapports intimes qui unissent aujourd'hui les quatre souverains The Peace of Europe 27 each Great Power was accordingly by no means to merge its own principles and ideas in those of the rest, but to labour at causing them to prevail by the means and on the occasions thus provided. I do not assert that the system thus established was as adequately administered in the interests of national developement as in those of the maintenance of peace ; but it must be allowed that with the sanction of this Alliance changes accomplished themselves in Europe consonant with the progress of national life and with the right of national self-determination. While much was left undone, much was done; and what was done was done permanently. The recognition of the inde- pendence of Greece, and of that of Belgium 1 , were thus guaranteed as international arrangements sanc- tioned by the public law of Europe. And of the Great Powers themselves, not one (though the will was not wanting) was able to pursue its designs of self-aggran- disement uncontrolled by the authority of a tribunal which it continued to acknowledge. That this system, though still nominally in force, has been signally impaired in its efficiency, is not only due to the disturbing influences which have at various times operated, and are probably destined in an in- creased degree to operate, in the direction of change. pour le bonheur du monde, les hautes parties contractantes sont convenues de renouveler a des epoques determinees des reunions consacrees aux grands interets communs et a 1'examen de mesures qui, dans chacune de ces epoques, seront jugees les plus salutaires pour le repos et la prosperite des peuples, et pour le maintien de la paix de 1'Europe." Sorel, p. 141. 1 We recently indulged ourselves in the perfectly unnecessary luxury of renewing this guarantee. 28 Historical It is also due to the growing tendency on the part of the Powers who still claim to hold the trust, to loosen their hands on the helm, and, instead of amending by joint agreement what is defective and ill agrees with the progress of the nations, to allow themselves or others to act independently of the common system of a guaranteed security which they still profess a desire to maintain 1 . Prussia began her great War upon Austria by formally putting herself in the wrong and cynically tearing up the Act of the Confederation to which she belonged, and the establishment of which formed an integral part of the Treaty of Vienna. Russia, acting on the Macchiavellian dictum that a wise prince keeps his engagements so long as it is neither in his power nor in his interest to break them, renounced another engagement contracted under the guarantee of the Great Powers ; and, though she afterwards acknowledged her dereliction of an established international principle, as her reward for the confession secured the object at issue. The Balance of Power, we are told, has become an obsolete conception. In other words, a system making possible a combination in the interests of the general Peace of Europe against those who threaten to disturb it is no longer possible on the basis of settled treaties. Of the last War undertaken and ended in the spirit of 1 It is perhaps needless to remark that guarantees which, like that inserted in the Luxemburg Treaty of 1867, are described as solidaires in the terms of the instrument, and subsequently explained to be collective only (as this was by one of the statesmen responsible for the Treaty itself, the present Foreign Secretary), are illusory and useless. Treaties of this kind accordingly reflect the reverse of credit on the statesmanship of their authors. The Peace of Europe 29* that system no result remains "except a monument in Pall Mall in London, and the names of a bridge and a boulevard at Paris 1 ." If this be the case, one of the methods which have served to diminish the chances of war and to facilitate the readjustment of peace being out of gear, it may be worth while to ask, in conclusion, whether there are any others which remain in force, or which may be looked forward to for the future? For that, if many causes of war have begun to disappear and others have decreased in activity, new causes have arisen and are arising around us in addition to the old which continue to exist, it is unfortunately only too easy to prove 2 . With the dreamers who imagine the reign of Peace at hand this enquiry has no concern. But it may be interesting to consider by what methods, apart from the discredited one which has been dis- cussed in this Essay, it has been at various times, and is now, sought to meet the evil to which Europe, the chief bearer of Christian civilisation, has been and continues to be exposed 3 . 1 Laveleye, p. 252. 2 This subject is treated with equal candour and ability by M. de Laveleye, whose work (quite apart from his view of the remedies applicable) accordingly deserves the attention of historical and political students alike. See also the case more briefly stated in his Cobden Club Essay (Second Series, 1871-2), On the Causes of War and the means of Reducing their Number, reprinted by the Peace Society. 3 The best summary of the schemes which have been at various times formed for securing a general and perpetual peace, or for leading up to it, will be found in Wheaton's well-known History of the Law of Nations. I have, where possible, consulted original sources; but my obligation to Wheaton, of course, remains. ; 30 Historical Much of interest might be said, in connexion with this subject, with regard to the ideal Peace of the Empire as contrasted with the local Peace (Land- friederi) which the Emperors so rarely succeeded in maintaining. Something too might be added with reference to a mediating Tribunal, the untimely loss of which has been recently 1 regretted viz., that of the Pope. But I must needs confine my remarks to a period in which these influences had practically ceased to operate that in the beginnings of which State life had been established on the ruins of an imaginary unity. In the history of this period endeavours directed towards securing the Peace of Europe by means other than direct appeals to force are at first few and sparse. The "Great Plan of Henry IV" in the beginning of the seventeenth century is freely cited as an early effort of this description. It is a scheme truly French in the extremely symmetrical and extremely unreal character of its benevolence 2 . A magnificent plan, no doubt, 1 In a speech by the Bishop of Salford (Dr Vaughan). 2 See for an account of it, and an estimate of its real character, Cornelius, Der grosse Plan Heinrichs IV von Frankreich in Munchner Hist orisches Jahrbuch for 1866. I quote the substance of his opening summary of its contents: "Transformation of the map of Europe! The House of Habsburg to confine itself to the Pyrenean peninsula, so far as European possessions are concerned. The rest of Christian Europe (the Muscovites apart) to be divided into fifteen States six hereditary monarchies (Spain, France, Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden, and Lombardy), six elective monarchies (Germany, Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, the Papal States with Naples, Venice with Sicily), and three republics (the Netherlands, Switzerland with Franche Comte, Alsace and the Tyrol, and Italy). The three religions to be left distributed in a fair balance among these States. Christian Europe to be converted into one great commonwealth the Christian The Peace of Europe 3 1 apart from the circumstance that its realisation, like that of the excellent General Garibaldi's plan of Perpetual Peace, would have necessitated a good final war to begin with. But not, as seems now historically ascertained, in any sense Henry IV's plan as a definite scheme; not even proved to have been his councillor Sully's plan as a settled proposal; probably only an ingenious day-dream, of which not even the practical preliminary clause the reduction of the power of the House of Habsburg consistently formed a distinct element in Henry IV's actual policy. A piece of paper which, like the maps we used to see in Paris shop- windows under a recent regime, might, had it suited an ulterior developement of Henry's policy to set the whole of Europe aflame, have contributed to ignite parts of the congeries into which it proposed to introduce so lucid an order. But so vast in its dimensions, and so impossible in its benevolence, that it might well serve to give a comparatively practical aspect to the proposals for the Peace of Europe which were to succeed it. Thus, in 1693, in his Essay on the Present and Future Peace of Europe, William Penn, in urging the Republic. Within its limits perpetual peace, abroad a common and general war against the infidel. A general council of sixty deputies to manage common affairs; six divisional councillors, those of the several groups of the? European system of States." Mr Motley, in his Life of John of Barneveld (vol. I. p. 229), though he aptly says of this plan, "Nothing could be more humane, more majestic, more elaborate, more utterly preposterous," seems to treat it as a real scheme of Henry IV's, cut short by the " broken table knife sharpened on a carriage- wheel" of Ravaillac. Elsewhere (p. 187) he has himself given an instance of the untrustworthiness of Sully's Memoirs. 32 Historical plan of a general congress for the settlement of inter- national disputes, refers to the "great design of Henry IV" as an example that what he proposes "is fit to be done 1 ." More venturously the Abbe de St Pierre, inspired with disgust by the difficulties which he had witnessed at the Conferences of Utrecht, clothed his proposals for a Perpetual Peace in the pseudo-historical garb of a Project composed by Henry IV and Sully themselves. His scheme is, in a word, that of an arbitrarily arranged federation between the principal European States, to which tribunal all differences between the members of the Federation are to be referred, three-fourths of the votes being necessary for a final judgment, and the power of the whole Alliance being bound to support its decisions 2 . This scheme was subsequently reproduced 1 "His example tells us that this is fit to be done. Sir Wm. Temple's 'History of the United Provinces' shows us by a surpassing instance that it may be done; and Europe, by her incomparable miseries, that it ought to be done" After searching Temple's tomes in order to satisfy myself as to the precise meaning of the second reference, I cannot but suppose that it is to the passage in chap. viii. extolling the Triple Alliance (to which Bentham, too, refers in his Essay noted below) as the cause of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. "Thus all Europe," says Hume (chap. Ixiv.), "seemed to repose herself with security under the wings of that powerful confederacy which had been so happily formed for her protection." There is, however, of course no real analogy between the action of the Triple Alliance and that of such a federation as the one sketched in the supposed scheme of Henry IV. 2 Wheaton, pp. 261-3, and cf. the Extrait and Jugement in Rousseau, (Euvres, vol. v. (1832); for Wheaton has perhaps not quite seized the character of Rousseau's criticisms. Of St Pierre's scheme the peace-loving French Minister Cardinal Fleury ("peace is my The Peace of Europe 33 in a lucid summary or Extract, by J. J. Rousseau, to which he added a Judgment or criticism, written in a vein of admirable irony, of his own. His objection to the plan is that any attempt to execute it would meet with violent resistance from the Princes, whose view of their own interests is opposed to those of the peoples, and from the Ministers, whose interests are always antagonistic to those of the peoples, and almost always to those of the Princes as well. He was therefore little edified by the worthy Abbe's argument 1 that it was only necessary for the Princes to be brought to a better intelligence of their own true interests, and the rest would easily follow. The difficulty, no doubt, lies in the indispensable preliminary. So I find that it has been remarked by Earl Russell 2 , with a cautiousness which has at times not been considered his most preeminent delight," says Pope, "not Fleury's more") remarked that it omitted an essential article, viz., one providing for the sending forth of missionaries "pour toucher les cceurs des princes et leur persuader d'entrer dans vos vues." The hint was taken by the famous deputa- tion which waited on the Emperor Nicholas in 1854, instead of the advice which to philanthropic dogmatism will always seem feeble time-serving, but which proceeded from no time-serving and no feeble lips: "And to be plaine with you, truelye I can not allowe that such communication shalbe used, or suche counsell geuen, as you be suere shall neuer be regarded nor receaued. For howe can so straunge informations be profitable, or how can they be beaten into their headdes, whose myndes be allredye prevented : with cleane contrarye persuasions? This schole philosophic is not unpleasaunte amonge frendes in familiare communication, but in the counselles of kinges, where greate matters be debated and reasoned with greate authoritye, these thinges have no place." More's Utopia, Bk. I. 1 Extrait, p. 40. 2 Quoted in one of the Peace Society's fly-sheets. 34 Historical characteristic, that, "on looking at all the wars which have been carried on during the last century, and examining into the causes of them, I do not see one of these wars in which, if there had been proper temper between the parties, the questions in dispute might not have been settled without recourse to arms." If there had been proper temper between the parties. It is, by the way, noteworthy that these early literary schemes of universal peace seem, as a general rule, to have been more immediately suggested by some external event appearing to point in the direction of their objects, but really of a very different character. So that, if I may use so irreverent an expression of the utterances of philosophers, they wear the ap- pearance of happy thoughts, or at least of incidental dialectical exercitations, rather than of the condensed results of political experience or historical study. Thus, if St Pierre's project followed upon the Peace of Utrecht, which achieved its limited ends by limiting its means, the next project (Bentham's) was obviously a consequence of the Armed Neutrality of 1780, the results of which were so insignificant that Catharine of Russia, who had been led to become its authoress, afterwards called it the Armed Nullity 1 . Finally, Kant's project, to be noticed below, was doubtless, in the first instance, suggested by the Peace of Bale and the attempted guarantee of the neutrality of the North German States in 1795, which transactions, it is to be hoped require no characterisation 2 . I am, of course, 1 Dyer's Modern Europe, ill. 534. 2 For how was this guarantee to be secured? See the Secret Article (i): "Dans le cas que le gouvernement d'Hanovre se refusal The Peace of Europe 35 well aware at the same time that Bentham's project was thoroughly consonant with the whole tenour of his political philosophy, and that Kant afterwards again insisted upon his views in an important work *. Bentham's project 2 was composed not long before the beginning of that long series of aggressive wars which unhinged the political system of Europe ; but it would be foolish to attach too much importance to the moral which this circumstance conveys. For the really practicable part, and at the same time the essential feature, of his scheme is tentative; it connects itself with precedents of a similar scope though on a smaller scale ; and, being intended to operate by purely moral means, can of course be only expected to operate gradually. Elsewhere, Bentham had defined the objects of an international code which should regulate the conduct of nations in their mutual intercourse; here, he suggested the establishment of a common Court of judicature for the decision of international differences ; arguing that although such Court were not to be armed with any coercive pow r ers, its salutary influence would consist in its reporting its opinion and causing that opinion to be circulated in the dominions of each State. Wheaton observes on the difficulty which would arise of preventing the more powerful members of such a a la neutralite, S. M. le Roi de Prusse s 'engage a prendre Tlilectorat d'Hanovre en depot, afin de garantir d'autant plus efficacement la republique fransaise de toute entreprise hostile de la part de ce gouvernement." Hausser, Deutsche Geschichte, &c., I. 596, note. 1 Viz., the Metaphysics of Jurisprudence, published in 1797. 2 It will be found in vol. n of Bowring's edition of the Works. According to Wheaton, it was to form part of an essay on Inter- national Law, which remained in a fragmentary state. 36 Historical league from acquiring absolute control over it ; but this would constitute no insuperable difficulty, were the constitution of the league made the subject of careful international agreement. But the idea is one the execution of which would require a long series of preparatory steps, lest the attempt to codify much that is virtually settled, together with what is still unsettled, should lead to the creation of difficulties by means of the very endeavour towards uniformity. A more fatal criticism on the plan, as corresponding to the end for which Bentham proposes it, seems to me to lie in the fact that nations by no means always, or even generally, make war because of the questions on which they profess to make it. A tribunal, however constituted, could hardly have settled the Scheldt difficulty in 1792, or the Hohenzollern difficulty in 1870, except in one way ; but how could it have weighed in its scales the motives which really hurried France into war in either case ? On the other hand, the proposals by which Bentham sought to facilitate the success of his plan, or to supple- ment its operation as obviously in itself inadequate, are really beyond the sphere of permanent international agreement. These were the " fixation" of the armed forces of the several European States, and the emanci- pation of the distant dependencies or colonies of those possessing any. Into his arguments against the utility of colonies I cannot here enter ; but it seems clear that neither in this respect nor in the matter of disarmament can any State allow measures affecting the question of its own safety the supreme end of its existence as a State to be permanently fixed by international The Peace of Europe 37 agreement. The impossibility of any such settlement is best shown when Bentham approaches a practical suggestion, and throws out the hint that Great Britain " might perhaps allow to France and Spain and Holland, as making together a counterpoise to her own power, a united naval force equal to half or more than her own." All such proposals for partial disarmament are opposed to the principle which Hegel justly asserts, that there is no supreme judge between States except where special agreements have constituted one (how, then, could the scale of disarmament be preliminarily fixed ?), or except where the spirit ruling the world has imposed its binding laws upon the universe. In other words, the preliminary measures indispensable to the success of Bentham 's scheme (except as a tentative and gradual progress towards the establishment of an international code administered by an international tribunal exercising a moral influence only) are to be expected from a growth of sentiment which time alone can ripen, and from this alone 1 . Finally, I may confine myself to the briefest possible notice of the last of these earlier literary projects of perpetual peace, that published by Kant in 1795, and republished with an addition in I796 2 . And this with 1 A fuller discussion of Bentham's project would of course necessitate an enquiry into the whole conception of the State which it implies. I may add that the necessity of revising the conception of the rights of individual States on which the European system is based is urged in an ingenious essay in which Professor Seeley adds another scheme to those discussed in my text. See "The United States of Europe," Macmillan's Magazine, vol. xxm (1871). 2 It is printed in the latter form in Rosenkranz and Schubert's edition of Kant's Sdmmtliche Werke, vol. vu, and will of course not be confounded with a paper in vol. i, which may strike some minds 38 Historical the less danger of doing it an injustice, because (as it seems to me), notwithstanding the touches of feeling and humour and even political shrewdness 1 which this as equally Utopian, viz., the Verkiindigung des nahen Abschlusses eines Tractates zum ewigen Frieden in der Philosophic (1796). The first edition of the essay adverted to in the text was bought up in a few weeks. 1 Though in the half-humorous preface to the Project, Kant expressly asks from the practical statesman, in compensation for the contempt which he will inevitably display for the lucubrations of the theoretical politician, a belief that, if the latter can do no good, at least he means no harm, it is well known that he took a keen interest in politics. And this, though in its external circum- stances his life resembled that of Claudian's "senex Veronensis, qui suburbium nunquam egressus est" (see Cowley's Essay, The Dangers of an Honest Man in much Company). The project is divided, most diplomatically, into Preliminary Articles and Definitive Articles, with a Guarantee and a Secret Article (the latter, if I remember right, added in the second edition). The preliminary articles assert that no peace is to be accounted such which secretly retains the materials for a future war. No independently existing State is to be permitted to be acquired by inheritance, exchange, purchase, or donation. (For, as Kant explains, "it is not usually known that at the present day States can marry one another." Yet the philosopher's net has a gap ; he has left out, as indeed he could not foresee, plebiscites.) Standing armies are in course of time to cease altogether; but not defensive systems of civic exercise in arms. No debts of State are to be contracted with reference to external quarrels. (The "commercial people" to which Kant makes pointed reference has certainly since his time increased its experience of the truth that the practice of making posterity pay for wars constitutes an obstacle to eternal peace.) No State is to intervene by force in the constitution or government of any other. Finally, in war no State is to omit the observation of duties the neglect of which would render mutual confidence in future times of peace impossible. The definitive articles are based on the principle that peace is not the natural condition of man. From this it follows that a perpetual The Peace of Europe 39 treatise exhibits, its highest value lies in that part where it reverts from the question of the application of principles to the consideration of general principles themselves. The great error in the scheme itself was, I think, justly pointed out by Hegel, who argued on the principle which is in truth the cardinal axiom of the modern system of State-government, that States, as individuals, cannot be deprived of the right of negation. From this it follows that nothing but the adherence of each contracting party to its own engagements can actually secure pacific conduct on its part. To multiply these engagements, and to extend them from the acceptance of facts to the recognition of principles of international law, is therefore the surest way of diminishing the chances of war. The right of negation is limited, says Hegel, by specific agreements and by generally accepted moral principles. The result which the statesmanship of Europe, proceeding on this basis, may secure in the future, more fully than it was secured by the limited system of the Balance of Power directed to limited objects in the past, will be the opposite of peace must be established on artificial bases. These are furnished by three articles: (i) The civil Constitution in every State shall be one which separates the executive power from the legislative. (2) International law is based upon a federation of free States. (3) The civic franchise of members of the general community of the world is to be confined to conditions of universal hospitality. The guarantee of a perpetual peace is furnished by Nature, with whose ends it is in manifest consonance ; and to avoid mistakes or hasty measures, a secret article is to be added, according to which the maxims of philosophers as to the possibility of public peace are to be consulted by those States which are armed for war. In the Appendix, in which, as observed in the text, I venture to think the chief value of this essay lies, Kant demonstrates, with convincing lucidity, the objective identity between the true principles of ethics and those of politics. 40 Historical the result established by Spinoza, who, true to his principle that the natural state of man is a state of war, held that no nation is bound to observe a treaty longer than the interest or danger which caused that treaty continues 1 . It is well known that, apart from the project of the Holy Alliance, to which I need not again refer, our own century has witnessed many efforts in the same direction as that in which the projects enumerated above pointed. These efforts were primarily due to the reaction brought about by the awful struggle against Napoleon, which raised in many benevolent minds the wish that the gates of Janus whose temple the con- queror had not found time to erect, as he had proposed, on the heights of Montmartre might be closed for ever. The London Peace Society was founded in 1816; many similar societies were soon established on the continent of Europe and in America. In 1848, a general congress of representatives of these associations was held at Brussels, where the necessity was urged upon the several Governments of Europe and America of introducing into all international treaties an arbitra- tion clause, by the application of which war would be avoided in the settlement of disputes. 1 For Hegel's argument, taken from his Grundlinien der Philo- sophic des Rechts, see Wheaton, pp. 754-8. His cardinal maxim has been recently repeated in a speech as thoughtful in conception as it is firm in tone the significance of which is by no means limited to its bearing on the question immediately at issue that of Count Moltke in the Debate on the New German Army Law, Feb. i6th, 1874. Nor is it too much to say that the political mind of Germany is at present concentrating itself on the realisation of that idea of the State of which political speculation elsewhere is suggesting the abandonment. The Peace of Europe 41 I unwillingly pass by the efforts made on the other side of the Atlantic in furtherance of such views as these. They had indeed a much earlier beginning than the American Peace Society; for when, in 1825, tne Panama Congress scheme (which proved abortive) was debated at Washington, President Adams could recall the attempts made by Congress after the War of Independence, of which one at least had resulted in the conclusion of a Treaty of amity, navigation, and com- merce (with Prussia). Nor should it be forgotten that the principles which American diplomacy has stedfastly upheld, and caused in part to be accepted by other maritime nations, were here for the first time established as bases of an international agreement. Encouraged by the sanction of the views of the Peace Society on the part of a State Legislature (that of Massachusetts in 1835), tne Committee of the United States Senate on Foreign Relations, in 1851, recommended the adop- tion of an arbitration clause in every American treaty where possible; and the same recommendation was repeated by the same authority in 1853. It is, at the same time, true that a clause of this description was not inserted in the treaty concluded between ourselves and the United States at that very time, though approved, as it is stated, by the British Minister 1 . In Europe isolated attempts have likewise been made to procure for the principle of arbitration as a 1 So I have read that Vattel states how the provision for arbitra- tion in all treaties concluded by the Helvetic Republic is a wise precaution, which has not a little contributed to maintain that Federation in the flourishing condition which secures its liberty, and renders it respected throughout Europe, and yet that he likewise observes how the Swiss, on occasions when their liberty was menaced, have refused to submit their disputes to arbitration. 42 Historical regular expedient for the settlement of international difficulties the sanction of Parliamentary declarations (as an occasional expedient it has, of course, been frequently resorted to; but of this immediately). In the year 1849, the Committee of Foreign Affairs of the French National Assembly rejected a recommendation that the French Government should propose to the other Governments of Europe and America to unite by their representatives in a Congress which should substitute an arbitral jurisdiction for the barbarous usages of war. In the same year, and again in 1873, the subject was brought before the British House of Commons. Between Mr Cobden's motion and that of Mr Henry Richard there are however several points of difference. Mr Cobden asked that our Government should put itself into communication with the Foreign Powers separately, inviting them to enter into treaties binding the respective parties, in the event of any future misunderstanding which could not be arranged by amicable negotiations, to refer the matter in dispute to the decision of arbitrators. Mr Richard proposed that our Government should endeavour to bring about, together with a general improvement in international law, the establishment of a general and permanent system of International Arbitration 1 . It is within recent memory that the latter of these motions, though opposed by the Government, was 1 It may also be noted that, while Mr Cobden thought that the arbitrators had better be private persons, qualified by their special attainments for the decision of particular questions, Mr Richard seems to have left the institution of the Court of arbitrators an open question, but apparently designed it to be composed of persons of an official character. The Peace of Europe 43 accepted by a majority of the House of Commons; that a Royal message subsequently promised the com- munication, at a suitable time, of the views thus sanctioned to Foreign Powers; that the author of the Resolution has since received the congratulations, and by his personal efforts stimulated the activity, of those who share his views abroad, and that the Italian Chamber has unanimously adopted a motion (proposed by Dr Mancini) in general agreement with that which had previously passed the British House of Commons. Reference was made in the debate of 1873 to a step in the direction of the motion which had on a previous occasion been actually taken by the British Govern- ment. But, on a perusal of the records of the Paris Conference of 1856, it becomes obvious how far the principle there adopted falls short of that sanctioned by the House of Commons (and apparently by the Italian Chamber) in 1873. At the Conference held to settle the terms of the Peace concluding the Russian War, Lord Clarendon reminded the Plenipotentiaries that a stipulation already inserted in the Treaty (which bound the Sublime Porte, in the event of any difference with any of the other Powers, to enable the Parties to the Treaty to attempt mediation before war was resorted to) might well receive a more general application, and thus become a barrier against conflicts arising out of unexplained misunderstandings. He, accordingly, pro- posed a resolution in this sense, which should not, how- ever, trench upon the independence of the several Governments. In the discussion which followed 1 , the 1 It was enlivened by a characteristic passage at arms between the Austrian representative, Count Buol, and Count Cavour, with reference to the application of the principle to de facto Governments. 44 Historical proposal of Lord Clarendon was ultimately accepted, but in a modified form, completely safeguarding the independent rights of the Powers and, in point of fact, merely affirming the ' wish ' of the Conference that the mediation of a friendly Power might be sought, so far as circumstances permitted, before war was resorted to; and its hope that the Governments not represented at the Conference would join in the idea which had suggested the 'wish 1 .' The modest recommendation actually protocolled it has once been sought to apply before the Franco-German War of 1870, with what result is known 2 . 1 " Messieurs les plenipotentiaires n'hesitent pas a exp rimer, au nom de leurs gouvernements, le voeu que les fitats entre lesquels s'eleverait un dissentiment serieux, avant d'en appeler aux armes, eussent recours, en tant que les circonstances 1'admettraient, aux bons offices d'une puissance amie. ''Messieurs les plenipotentiaires esperent que les gouvernements non-representes au Congres s'associeront a la pensee qui a inspire le vceu consigne au present protocole." But the Plenipotentiaries, also, "conviennent que le desir exp rime par le Congres n'entraverait en rien la libre appreciation dans les questions qui touchent a sa dignite, qu'aucune puissance ne saurait abandonner." Laveleye, p. 270. 2 There was a rumour, as to the truth of which I am ignorant, of the attempt having been repeated on the occurrence of the recent Virginius difficulty a difficulty which is stated to have been described by an American authority on international law (Dr Woolsey, of Yale) as "an extreme case, which the ordinary law of nations does not meet." The use of arbitration has been suggested in a still more recent instance; for I observe that the 'Midland International Arbitration Union' urged the expediency of settling our difficulty with the Ashantee people "by negotiation, and, if expedient, by arbitration of some friendly potentate, such as the King of Holland." A Cabinet Minister (Mr Bright) stated that he was "glad to hear" of this resolution. (See The Times, Jan. 15, 1874.) Other means have The Peace of Europe 45 Now, with regard to these efforts, it will be observed that they are partly directed to the extension of the use of a political expedient long familiar to diplomacy, partly designed to bring about what the world has not yet seen, an International Code administered by an International Tribunal. The realisation of this latter end would either involve or supersede according to the constitution of the tribunal a general adoption of the method of arbitration. The principle of arbitration itself has frequently been put in force in the diplomatic history of the present century. Already the peace which put an end to the War of American Independence was supplemented by a Treaty (in 1794) providing for the settlement of a boundary difficulty by a commission of arbitrators. Disputes as to claims for losses in war between the United States and France, Spain, Great Britain, and Mexico severally, between Great Britain and France (in the case of the Portendic claims), boundary disputes between the United States and ourselves, and similar difficulties have been settled by jointly-appointed arbitrators, or arbitratory commissions of various descriptions 1 . The usefulness of the method is therefore been preferred, and the distinguished General who has carried the Ashantee War to a successful issue has publicly congratulated himself on having been encumbered in his proceedings by no diplomatic interference. 1 See Laveleye, Part I er . chap, vii: "La Haute Cour Arbitrale est preparee par 1'Arbitrage." Cf., also, A Historical Survey of International Arbitration, reprinted from the North American Review for the London Peace Society. The San Juan difficulty, settled by the arbitration of the Emperor of Germany, belongs to this category of cases. 46 Historical incontestable, and, so far as it acts as a preventive of causes which might be made the pretexts of wars, it has operated in favour of peace. On the other hand, it must be confessed (I speak with such knowledge as I possess of the disputes and difficulties in question) that there was in the case of none of these difficulties any immediate or serious prospect of war in the event of their non-settlement. The defence of the recent settlement of the so- called "Alabama Claims," on the other hand, of which settlement I do not hesitate to assert that most English- men are in their hearts ashamed, lies in the assumption that a real danger of war was thereby averted, as well as the probability of future war diminished. When it shall have been proved that the danger in question actually existed in any serious degree, and when it shall have become manifest that the temper towards one another of the two nations involved has been seriously modified by Great Britain's concessions, the apologetic view proclaimed by politicians will be accepted by historical students. The attempt to induce the other Great Powers to accept the rules agreed upon at Washington between our Government and that of the United States, and acted upon at Geneva, has for the present been post- poned; and it was at least a novel conception of diplomatic action that independent Powers should be invited to subscribe to principles adopted without con- sultation with them. The entire negotiation has, there- fore, not as yet resulted in any general international agreement of the description aimed at by those who applaud it as a hopeful step in the desired direction. The Peace of Europe 47 Meanwhile, the fact remains that there is no great question of the last few years on which a suggestion of arbitration would have been listened to for a moment, except the question of the Alabama 1 , the settlement of which certainly had very peculiar features of its own. The Virginius difficulty has been settled in a different way by one of the very Powers which were parties to the Treaty of Washington. Of the great questions which agitate Europe no Government dreams of referring any one to a settlement by this method. While, therefore, the results of a historical survey induce us confidently to expect that the practice of referring to arbitration questions of the character of those which it has proved able to settle, will probably be resorted to with increasing frequency, it would be more than rash to infer from this the other probability, that the method of arbitration will be resorted to in order to settle questions of primary importance, or to avert immediately impending wars. Least of all is it possible to regard arbitration as an expedient capable 1 See an article in The Saturday Review, Dec. 27, 1873, entitled "The Apostle of Arbitration." The tone of this article may not be pleasant, but can any answer be given to it? To what does the address of the Committee of the Peace Society to the "friends of peace," issued in September 1873, amount, except to a confession that, with the exception of resolutions and congratulatory addresses, nothing has been effected? With regard to the questions of the present, it is difficult not to subscribe to the view expressed in an article in the same journal, Nov. 29, 1873: "When Russia, the United States, and Italy, are respectively prepared to submit or refer to arbitration the occupation of Khiva, the Santiago outrage, and the possession of Rome, the vote of the Italian assembly will deserve a certain amount of practical respect." 48 Historical of a forced universal application ; for, in the words of an eminent writer of practical experience, "arbitration must of necessity be voluntary; and, though it may sometimes be a moral duty to resort to it, cannot be commanded in any form by what is called the positive law of nations 1 ." Of a far more speculative character is the question as to the results which may be looked for from the formation of an International Code, administered by a permanent International Tribunal. An International Code, at least as partially accomplished, must be the indispensable antecedent of the tribunal which is to administer it. Grave doubts are, however, entertained not only as to the possibility of the formation of such a code, but as to its desirability. It is open to question whether the reduction to settled forms of all the principles which at present regulate the conduct of nations towards one another might not prove a source of difficulties rather than an expedient for obviating them. In any case, the undertaking is one of exceeding 1 See a letter to The Times, Oct. 18, 1873, fr m tne Right Hon. Mountague Bernard. It is difficult to understand why, holding such views, Prof. Bernard should have consented to the word obligatory in the following resolution accepted by the Conference for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations at Brussels on October i3th: "That this Conference declares that it regards arbitration as a means essentially just and reasonable, and even obligatory on all nations, of terminating international differences which cannot be settled by negotiation. It abstains from affirming that in all cases, without exemption, this mode of solution is applicable, but it believes that the exceptions are rare, and it is convinced that no difference ought to be considered insoluble until after a clear statement of complaints and reasonable delay, and the exhaustion of all pacific methods of accommodation." The Peace of Europe 49 magnitude, and must occupy a long time. On the other hand, the assimilation of usages affecting the international relations among different States, the removal of discrepancies in the conception of inter- national obligations as expressed in the provisions of municipal law, and, in particular cases, the acceptance by means of treaties of principles of international law as binding, are objects which should engage the con- stant attention of political activity. Every step in advance is here of high value; and (which is of the utmost importance) steps in this direction have been already taken 1 . It is the business of jurists and publicists to prepare public opinion in different countries for the acceptance of views to be in due course adopted and urged by the Governments. Association the great moral engine, for good as for evil, of our age will of course promote with its mighty power the endeavours of individual effort 2 . Though these endeavours, if they are to retain the scientific character which alone will entitle them to become the basis of accepted principles, 1 Thus, certain principles of international maritime law have already been accepted as binding by at least six States; and if the United States have not accepted them, it is only because they desire to see a further principle added. 2 I have no space to attempt an estimate of the proceedings of the Brussels Conference adverted to above. But, whatever criticisms might be justified by the ambitious title of " the Association for the Reform and Codification of the Laws of Nations" there established, no exception can be taken to such a foundation as that of the Institut de droit international, established at Ghent in the previous month. This society (among whose original members are Professor Bluntschli and M. de Laveleye) appears to be founding branch associations, an account of one of which has reached me from Bremen. w. P.I 50 Historical must remain independent of Government support, it cannot be considered unduly sanguine to look for an increase of diplomatic action in the direction of bringing about the acceptance by Governments of principles commended by the gradual determination of instructed public opinion in their favour 1 . When there are no principles or usages of importance left on which any divergence remains between the practice of the more important Governments, it may become time to take into consideration the possibility of the establishment of a permanent judicial commission for determining their application in particular cases as they arise. Lastly, as experience shows the cases to have been extremely rare in which arbitral decisions have been rejected by the parties, it may be that a similar influence would attach to the decisions of such a tribunal when per- manently established. At all events, the choice between a decision of arbiters without reasons assigned and a decision of arbiters on principles adopted in order to define a clear offence against international law would then no longer offer itself as the only method of avoiding an appeal to arms. Thus, it is highly probable that a considerable number of possible causes of war would be prevented; and it would depend on the respect which the working of the Court had acquired, whether the body of States which had agreed to the code would combine to enforce its decisions. But this is only the last step in a progress to be ulti- mately hoped for a step so remote that any discussion of its practicability is at present a mere waste of words. 1 Thus, e.g., as to the question of the supply of arms by neutrals. The Peace of Europe 51 But, to conclude. Suppose this path to be steadily followed ; suppose the concomitant operation of other international treaties, such as that of the blessed Geneva Conference as to the treatment of the sick and wounded in war, a leaf of real beneficence from Kant's visionary essay; suppose the increase of postal, monetary, and well-devised (not ill-devised and retro- grade) commercial treaties between nations which are from day to day growing more dependent upon one another for the very necessaries of their existence 1 . Suppose all this, and yet only the dreamer will conclude that the Peace of Europe, or if the expression be preferred the peace of the world, will be assured by such means. And for this reason: that these means only direct themselves to the removal or prevention of some among the causes of war. Others among these they can only partially affect ; and there are still others which it is to be feared they hardly touch. The natural combativeness of man, the spirit of conquest, illegitimate ambition, desire for aggrandisement pure and simple where is the remedy for these to be sought unless in the progress of individual and, in time, of national enlightenment? And so, too, as to other causes of war, on which I have left myself no space even barely to touch. To the operation of historical of hereditary jealousy can be opposed nothing but the gradual discernment of common interests, and also, let it be hoped, of common ties, with which the markets have no concern. The intervention of States 1 See this subject, which has a most important bearing upon the whole question, most ably argued in Mr F. Seebohm's book On International Reform (1871). 42 52 Historical in the internal affairs of other nations is becoming a thing of the past, as nations recognise more surely the conditions of their own prosperity, and devote them- selves with a clearer consciousness to the duties of their own development. Lewis XIV, of whom so much was said in an earlier part of this Essay, would not have set Europe in flames, had he endeavoured to meet the progress of decay in France itself. The conflict of nationalities and the struggle between entire races, on the other hand, may seem to be in a phase of intensification; but, here again, nothing can operate more potently for the preservation of peace than the advance of instruction, which, while it strengthens the ties of national life, reveals the inadequacy of mere ties of position, descent, or speech in themselves. Fantastic notions as to the paramount significance of mere linguistic or even ethnographical unity will vanish before the progress of Science, which, by exhibiting the multiplicity of such relations, establishes the con- sequent absurdity of regarding any of them as absolute. A nationality is made a nation not by geographical situation only, not by a common language only, not by a common descent only ; but by a common history. Least of all will the war of classes the new and most dire international danger of Europe be effectively prevented by any other means than the spread of the truth that classes, like nations, are interdependent, and that the noble ends of life which education alone reveals are common to all. And thus, an enquiry which has necessarily taken a wide range brings me very near home at its close. My object has been to show how, during nearly the The Peace of Europe 53 whole of the eighteenth century, the European system was, though imperfectly, yet in the main really as well as nominally, secured by a system of general treaties ; that, in the present century, the more special and precise adjustment of this system served its limited end so long as the duties undertaken by the repre- sentative Powers were by them conscientiously per- formed. Lastly, that, this basis of security having been, if not nominally removed, yet at least signally impaired, the remedy for the danger accruing with new force to the Peace of Europe is to be sought, not in an abandonment of the principle of joint action, but in an enlargement and elevation of it, and in the progress of that enlightenment which, instead of enfeebling, strengthens the common action of men and of States. For it is with nations as with individuals. The cultivated, and by culture enlightened, mind is and must be on the side of progress and peace against that of darkness and conflict. The ' obscure men,' like the unformed nation- alities, are at once materials and causes of that which disturbs, unsettles, and retards personal and national and international life. Where the education, and more especially the higher education, of a country is fostered, there lie the best promises of progress and of peace. It is for this reason that I have not thought the subject of this Essay out of harmony with the spirit to which all the contributions to this volume are intended to bear witness. In this spirit, the College was founded in whose career it has been our purpose to commemorate an event significant of endeavours of the past and of hopes for the future ; in this spirit, it has overcome the 54 Historical difficulties of its earlier days ; in this spirit it has, in its new home, begun a second period of united effort. May the noble words of the Elisabethan poet prove true both of it and of the great cause to which it is consecrate : The mortar of these walls, temper 'd in peace, Yet makes the building sure. Postscript (1919). The subject of this Address, delivered on the occasion of the opening of the new buildings of the Owens College, Manchester, in the autumn of 1873, has assumed new aspects in the course of the years which have passed between that date and the peace negotiations of the present year. It may conceivably interest some of my readers to compare with the essay here reprinted a survey contributed by me within the last few months to the S.P.C.K. series of Helps for Students of History, under the title of Securities of Peace. The hopes of the future rest mainly in a security more or less vaguely thought of half a century ago, but only now beginning to take practical shape as the " great design " of the League of Nations. 2. FINLAY'S HISTORY OF GREECE (The Saturday Review, November 9, IT is by publications such as the one before us that the Clarendon Press preeminently vindicates its claim to be regarded as a literary institution of national im- portance, and fairly entitles itself to the gratitude of a whole generation of students. Like the great historian of the Roman Empire, with whom in more respects than one it is no empty compliment to compare him, the late Mr Finlay had the rare good fortune to live to complete the chief work of his life ; but the additional gratification was denied him of bringing out in a collected form the whole series of which it consists, and which in his later years he had revised and enlarged with untiring energy. But, at least, he had gone far to prepare for himself the best monument of his literary life and labours ; and since his lamented death in 1876 which passed all but unnoticed in the very quarter where his services should have most naturally found a fitting record no time has been lost in placing within the reach of every good library his great work in its entirety, as revised and supplemented by himself, and edited by a both competent and modest hand. The historian's own library in the quiet house immediately beneath the Acropolis, with its rich stores of constantly accumulated materials of historical research, and its 1 A History of Greece from its Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time. By George Finlay, LL.D. Edited by H. F. Tozer. 7 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1877. 56 Historical relics of the bygone days of early Philhellenism, knows its master no more; and it is to be regretted that an opportunity should not have been found for transferring so unique an historical collection to some English academical home. Meanwhile, his literary fame, of which he himself spoke so slightingly, is secure. It is true that, if at Athens you ask some extremely intelligent Minister or ex-Minister (for a good many persons there are, or have been, Ministers) what he remembers of Finlay, the chances are that you will be told how he was too much of a recluse to be able to unravel the warp and woof of Hellenic politics, and too uncatholic an observer of all the flies hcemerce that are blown down /Eolus Street to correct with their aid the opinions he had formed within his own learned walls. The Greeks, like all very young and very free peoples, are peculiarly sensitive to foreign criticism; and there is justice in one of the prefatory remarks of the most recent work of an eminent native historian of Greece (Professor Paparrhegopoulos), to the effect that, from certain points of view, it needs a Greek to write the history of his native land. But it is painful to find an English writer echoing the charge brought in Greece against Finlay 's always candid, if sometimes caustic, pen, that it was filled with the gall of hatred against the people of which he, if any man, had earned the right of being the critic. With the whole of his work before us, we may freely avow our belief in the thorough honesty of the spirit which animates it. His bitterness is, no doubt, often excessive, and at times offends against the laws of good literary taste; but its root is not personal malignity (though Mr Finlay had good reason for nursing Finlay's History of Greece 57 grievances of his own), but moral indignation; and his sarcasm is distributed with much impartiality between the citizens of his adopted home and his own country- men. For popularity or favour he certainly did not write, and, if his last volumes are in many respects the reverse of complimentary to the insight and integrity of Hellenic politicians, neither are they to be numbered among the records of Bavarian unselfishness or of British diplomatic skill. He writes without an atom of reverence for the late Lord Russell as a Foreign Minister, and scarcely shrinks from making a mock of Mr Gladstone himself; while the last foreign politician of any note mentioned in these volumes, Count Sponneck, is described by him with the most un- mitigated frankness as " the most ignorant statesman, and the greatest political nuisance, which the influence of the three protecting Powers ever brought into Greece." The tone and temper of his mind undoubtedly inclined him, if not to pessimism, at least to despondency in his views of affairs and men around him; but it cannot have been self-interest only which made him cling to Greece after he had returned to it, and for the second time identified himself with its destinies. In his later years, he came to look back with a sense of keen disappointment upon the hopes which animated Canning in 1825 ; and, speaking of his own book, he says that " it has been its melancholy task to record the errors and the crimes of those who governed Greece much oftener than their merits or virtues." This spirit, in whatever degree justified, imparts to his work a querulous tone to which he had hardly the literary skill to give the Tacitean force of effective sarcasm ; but, though so much 58 Historical must be admitted with regret, it may, we think, at the same time be averred that his reputation as an historian will in the end gain more than it has lost from his fearless disregard of susceptibilities which it would have been easy enough to lull in comfortable flattery. We cannot, of course, undertake to review even the leading features of so vast and voluminous a work, which surveys the successive phases of a history extending over more than two thousand years ; and we must confine ourselves, after noticing certain points which the partial reperusal of its earlier volumes has again brought prominently before us, to touching in particular on the contents and spirit of the supple- mentary chapters which are now for the first time given to the world. We have already indicated that, so far as we have had an opportunity of judging, the editor, Mr Tozer, has done his work unobtrusively and well. His own geographical and ethnological knowledge has enabled him to add many useful notes as occasion required, and to keep the reader alive to the doubtful- ness of such questions as that of the earliest Slavonic settlements in the Peloponnese (see note to i. 338) 1 . At the same time, Mr Tozer has diligently availed himself of more recent French, and especially German, publications on the history of Greece and the Greeks, both mediaeval and modern; including the work of Hertzberg now in course of publication, and the admirable narrative of the Greek Revolution by Karl 1 Dr Henry Fanshawe Tozer, Fellow and Tutor of Exeter College, Oxford, had come to be regarded as one of our foremost authorities in Ancient Geography before he passed away, in June, 1916. Finlay's History of Greece 59 Mendelssohn, which, on account especially of its lucid exposition of the diplomatic history of the subject, would well repay translation. We should have welcomed from a student like Mr Tozer a more complete list of the materials of modern Greek history than is given in the recent short, but lucidly arranged, work of Schmeidler on the history of the kingdom of Greece ; and it may perhaps be worth, noticing that this book itself contains a section worthy of attention, illustrating on the authority of a qualified military observer (Lieutenant von Rundstett) the relations between the Greek army and its organisation, and the revolution which cost King Otho his throne. No division of Finlay's work better exhibits the freedom and breadth of view possessed by its author than its first volume, the " History of Greece under the Romans." The great double problem of later Hellenic history the decay and the survival of the Hellenic nationality had here to be examined, largely in defiance of prejudiced or ignorant witnesses, and without an undue deference to the impressions created by the great modern eulogist of the Roman imperial system in the second century of the Christian era. In contrast with Gibbon who held that "if a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would without hesitation name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus " Finlay points out how partial and exceptional, so far as Greece is con- cerned, are the signs of amelioration in the condition of its inhabitants in this much-vaunted period. Pausanias 60 Historical is a sufficient witness to the depopulation of Greece which continued during the two ensuing centuries. Indirectly, no doubt, this gradual depopulation of the land which, in the touching words of its living native historian, was being deprived of its children like Niobe and the diminution of its wealth, brought with them a compensatory advantage in the decrease of slavery, which advanced still further during the destructive ravages of the barbarians. That Greece should have succeeded in driving back these invaders, and in preserving her population free from the ad- mixture of so foreign an element, is an incontestable proof of the vitality of her national impulses, and perhaps (as Finlay thinks) of her political institutions, but not of the advantages of her connexion with the Roman Empire. And that proceeding, which may be truly said to mark the first real revival of a common Hellenic national life, was very far from being an acquiescence in, or even an anticipation of, any measure of imperial policy. The most important stage in the history of the Greeks since the death of Alexander was the adoption of Christianity by the Hellenic race, and the organisation by the Greeks of a Christian Church, before the Christian religion became the religion of the Empire. Of all ecclesiastical creations known to the history of the world, that of the Greek Church is perhaps the most marvellous in the con- tinuity of its influence upon the destinies of a nation. For, if we cast our eyes back over modern Greek history as a whole, w T e shall find it most true that the Greeks, denationalised by conquests, invasions, and immigrations, and afterwards crushed seemingly out Finlay's History of Greece 61 of existence by long centuries of oppression, were destined to find themselves (so to speak) again at last, by means of two influences which had never been extinguished, though of old they had bitterly conflicted with one another. These influences were those of the Greek Church and of ancient Greek literature. Of the history of the former Finlay's first volume has to relate the earliest, and not the least difficult, chapter. He shows how the progress of Christianity among the Greek race blended the newly established religious communities into one nation, using one language for sacred purposes, and raised the Greek Church to a position of rivalry with the Roman State, before the two were united by Constantine. He further shows how the strength of the Church as a national body was intensified by the atti- tude of opposition maintained by it, as the embodiment of Greek Orthodox Christianity, against the heretical Arianism of a Latin-speaking Court ; and how, on the other hand, it was "the popular element in the social organisation of the Greek people," which "by its union with Christianity infused into society the energy which saved the Eastern Empire" from Goths and Huns, while the Western was lost by its religious and con- sequent political disunion. It is true, as already suggested, that, before long, Greek Christianity destroyed what remained of national attachment to the ancient national culture, and that, in the reign of that political and religious bigot, the Emperor Justinian, the con- nexion between Greek antiquity and the life of the Greek people seemed trampled out for ever. It is likewise true that during this period, when the Church entered into partnership with an Imperial authority 62 Historical about which there was nothing national, a persecuting orthodoxy alienated several of the national Churches of the East, and that Greek Christianity thus indirectly helped to facilitate Persian and afterwards Mohammadan invasions. But, during the disturbed and anarchical ages which followed, after there had ceased to exist any harmony of feeling between the Court at Constantinople and the official or ruling class on the one hand, and the mainly Greek population of the Empire on the other when the Roman Power was approaching its downfall and the inhabitants of Greece proper were being driven seaward out of their ancient seats the Church was more Greek than ever, and came to represent more signally than ever what national sentiment continued to exist. And thus according to a terminology of which we need not here discuss the propriety the period of the so-called Byzantine Empire begins, in the first part of which (the Iconoclast period) both Church and State enter into a new phase of their history. The day seems at hand when, aided by the rapidly accumulating researches of modern historical and literary science, and stimulated by the generous pat- riotism of such national historians as Paparrhegopoulos, whose views have recently found a most able popular exponent in M. Demetrius Bikelas, the literary world of the West will begin to reconsider its accepted view of the " Byzantine " Empire as an empire of degeneracy and decay. When that day comes, the full value of Finlay's long and laborious narrative of the second and third periods of his subject will be more thoroughly ascertained and sifted than it yet has been. We are constrained to hasten on at once to the closing part of Finlay's History of Greece 63 his work a transition more natural in the case of Finlay than of most writers, because from his mind the most recent phases of his subject never seem absent, and, indeed, occasionally introduce themselves with an almost grotesque vivacity. Thus, of Justinian and his administration he writes that "the condition of the Greek population in Achaia seems to have been as little understood by the courtiers of Justinian as that of the newly-established Greek Kingdom by its Bavarian masters and the protecting Powers." The supplementary chapters prepared by the author for the collective edition of his History comprise the agitated period of Greek affairs from the adoption of the constitution of 1844 to the overthrow of King Otho, and thence to the election of King George I and the ratification of the Constitution of 1864. It is, in truth, a comparatively petty theatre to which our eyes have to accustom themselves in following the historian, as he traces with a vigorous and unsparing pen the intrigues and quarrels of competing native politicians, the mis- directed efforts of a dynasty left to its own guidance in the midst of a shower of more or less disinterested advice, and the intervention, hostile" or friendly, in the course of Greek politics on the part of the " protecting " Powers, and more especially of ourselves. If, upon the whole, it may be confessed that the least worthy period in the history of the relations between Greece and Great Britain had come to an end with the personal government of King Otho, yet few Englishmen in the present day will peruse with satisfaction the narrative of the rupture of 1850 and its forcible termination. Mr Finlay's personal concern in the British claims 64 Historical enforced by Lord Palmerston hardly admits of this part of his narrative being accepted as that of an im- partial witness. The Greek invasion of Turkey in 1854, and the subsequent occupation of the Piraeus by French and English forces, belong to the general history of the Eastern question; and our policy in these matters must be judged in connexion with the general question of the wisdom or necessity of our War with Russia. Mr Finlay, while strongly condemning the Greek attempt upon Epirus and Thessaly, and pointing out how the inefficiency of its execution damaged in his opinion even the ulterior prospects of the "Greek idea," effectively exposes the failure of the protecting Powers, on the restoration of peace in 185 6, to accomplish anything for the improvement of the country they had undertaken to protect. The Financial Commission which began its sittings in 1857 and drew up its Report in 1859 did nothing either to help or to enlighten Greece, and morally lowered the controlling influence of the Powers themselves : For after ascertaining and proclaiming that no dependence could be placed on the financial administration of the Greek Government, and that the true position of the public treasury was systematically concealed from the people, the commission kept the knowledge it collected concerning the resources of the country, and the proofs it obtained of the mal-administration of the Government, concealed from the Greeks, for whose benefit it was said that the commission had been established. Even when the members were convinced that King Otho would adopt no financial reforms until compelled by public opinion or the direct interference of the protecting Powers, the com- mission did nothing to form public opinion or to enforce better administration. They agreed to abstain from reforming Finlay's History of Greece 65 abuses if the Greek Government would promise to pay the protecting Powers a small sum on account. When the pro- tecting Powers ascertained the impossibility of direct inter- ference to enforce the literal execution of the twelfth article of the treaty of 1832 [which conferred the Crown on King Otho],. they contented themselves with such a modicum of protection to their own interests as they found practicable. Past mal- administration received their condemnation, and they re- linquished their authority to demand a reform of abuses for the sum of 900,000 francs (40,0007.) with hopes of increase at a future period. And, with regard to the land-tax, the impost which formed, and (though since reduced in amount) still forms, the great hindrance to the material progress of Greece, they contented themselves with mildly recom- mending a modification in the manner of its collection. Left to themselves and to the sanguine hopes of Lord John Russell, the Greeks indulged in a brief period of apparent harmony between Crown and people, and enjoyed such outward signs of material progress as made their appearance in this season of respite from agitation as to foreign affairs. But the outbreak of the Italian War of 1859 revealed the hollowness of the union between the dynasty and the nation. The time was at hand when the obstinate and cunning incompetence of King Otho was to collapse before a sudden wave of rebellion and discontent, and the popularity of the restless Queen Amalia was to prove as fleeting as the sands of her favourite Phalerum. Just before his over- throw, King Otho had enjoyed the passing triumph of temporarily ruining the reputation of the favourite national hero, Admiral Kanares, by an intrigue of which Finlay's account deserves to be read at length. W.P.I 5 66 Historical The brave old sailor, who passed away full of years and honours only the other day, lived to recover the popularity to which his services and his antique simplicity of character and life entitled him ; and others besides those who have shaken his honest hand, and seen him warm into kindly enthusiasm when speaking of his past relations with English seamen, will sympathise with Finlay 's indignant exposure of the trick played upon him by King Otho's contemptible astuteness. The events which followed the downfall of the Bavarian dynasty are too fresh in the memory of Englishmen, whose country now entered into a new phase of its relations with Greece, to require recapitula- tion. Suffice it to say that Finlay severely condemns as unjust, impolitic, and unconstitutional the conditions inserted in the Protocol recording the election of King George. By these, Great Britain engaged to recommend the transfer of part of the Ionian revenues to the new King's civil list, and arranged (as did the two other Protecting Powers) to pay him a contribution for his private expenditure, to be deducted from the sum promised by the Greek Government as a composition for the interest due on the loan of 1832. The cession of the Ionian Islands Mr Finlay regards as an inevitable necessity, since it had become evident "that the British Government must either permit its protectorate to be rendered contemptible by a Parliament that insulted it annually, or else the islands must be governed without a representative Assembly." Certain it is that the way in which the cession was first declared im- possible, and then made, and, still more, the conditions, reasonable as they were in themselves, by which it was Finlay's History of Greece 67 accompanied, prevented its evoking any sentiments of gratitude, except those which were directed to favours to come. This History closes with an interesting, and in part approving, examination of the new Greek Constitution of 1864, and with a doubly characteristic hope that the efforts of the Greeks "to emerge from their state of degradation may not be in vain, and that their complete success may find an able historian." 52 3- ROMAN MANNERS UNDER THE EARLIER EMPERORS (FRIEDLANDER) (The Saturday Review, November 12, 1864 and September 7, NOTWITHSTANDING the labours of modern historians, and of their esquires, the collectors and digesters of what, for want of a better name, are usually called antiquities, it must still take some time to disabuse the popular mind of the erroneous notions engendered by the ancient method of teaching Roman history. This (and we might appeal to the evidence of more than one handbook still in use at our public schools, if not at the Universities) consisted in dragging the breathless student through a long array of facts more or less critic- ally transcribed from Livy,with a cold infusion of certain of Niebuhr's theories, and bringing him to a sudden standstill with the downfall of the Roman Republic and the establishment of the Empire. He was, perhaps, provided with a bare list of the earlier Emperors and their dates, and taught to look upon them as a long train of monsters, only occasionally interspersed with the appearance of an equally abnormal angel of light, named Titus or Trajan. The names of the component provinces of the Roman Empire he was made to learn by heart ; 1 Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms in der Zeit von August bis zum Ausgang der Antonine. Von Ludwig Friedlander. I. and II. Theil. Leipzig: 1862-4. III. Theil. tt. 1871. Roman Manners under the Earlier Emperors 69 but his ideas of its population he was left to form from an assiduous study of the most objectionable of Juvenal's Satires and Martial's Epigrams, and of the sustained invective of Tacitus. The consequences of this method of teaching, or leaving untaught, Roman history were not limited to a fatal ignorance or half-knowledge of one of its most important periods. The student never dreamt that most of that part of our civilisation which we owe to the Romans, including the essential elements of all subsequent systems of law and govern- ment, was derived from the very period which remained to him a blank mystery. The history of the Roman Republic is, and will always remain, a history of its wars, for its constitutional development itself was not only effected, but conditioned, by them. When Augustus gave peace to the Roman Empire, he gave to the world the first real breathing-time it had enjoyed in the course of what is known as ancient history. Generally speaking, this breathing-time continued, without any interruption of real importance, for at least a couple of centuries. The period of the Antonines was the culmination of the reign of peace. Not until the beginnings of the great revolution made them- selves perceptible by which the so-called Middle Ages were to follow on the collapse of Roman Antiquity, not until the great Wandering of the Peoples had com- menced, was there any real danger threatening the security of an Empire including the main part of the known, and the whole of the civilised, world. During this period, therefore, beyond all others, the Roman Empire consolidated itself with a consistency which enabled its Western division to hold its own through a 70 Historical life-and-death struggle covering a further period of equal length. No doubt, also, during this period it nourished those elements of internal corruption which contributed to its ultimate fall. To analyse and digest the elements and the workings of Roman civilisation, in the only period in which it was permitted full play, is the task on which many living and future scholars will have to expend long-continued labours, before anything like a satisfactory result shall have been obtained. To combine the results of their research is the not less difficult duty of the historian. While we gratefully acknowledge the performances of modern historians of the earlier Roman Empire while we, above all, can claim for an English scholar, Mr Merivale, the honour of having achieved in this department what most nearly approaches to com- pleteness neither he nor any of his fellows would, we are sure, desire to regard their labours as final. New materials present themselves while the old are being digested into shape; and the more materials arise, the more welcome they are as contributions towards the yet unachieved work of a living picture of the greatest wonder ever wrought by human endeavour the Roman Empire. In connexion with future works in reference to the period we speak of the first two centuries of the Roman Empire the labours of an antiquarian such as Professor Friedlander of Konigsberg will probably prove of in- estimable value. The two volumes already published by him under' the modest title of Essays on the History of Roman Manners in the time from Augustus to the end of the Antonines by no means profess to be a systematic picture of Roman life during that period. For such an Roman Manners under the Earlier Emperors 71 effort on a larger scale than that of an elementary hand- book it may be doubted whether the materials are yet sufficiently digested; and, at all events, the Professor states that the resources of the University to which he is attached do not place them at his command. There is accordingly a looseness of arrangement in his book which will leave it, even when completed, incomplete; and he passes and repasses from what are called public antiquities to private, with the utmost freedom. We confess that we do not object to the absence of any attempt at giving a fictitious unity to a work of a naturally discursive character by the adoption of a device such as W. A. Becker employed in the composition of his Gallus. The labour of comparing passages, and estimating their relative value as evidence, never seemed to us to be perceptibly lightened by infusing into it a feeble effort at narrative. The idea was taken from Bottiger's Sabina, a twaddling opuscule by a twaddling author, the limited scope of which may have rendered it admissible. But those who still read Gallus or Charicks for the information contained in either are not likely to be entranced by the story by which these works seek to commend themselves to the general public ; and that public may be left to satisfy its craving for anti- quarian research by The Last Days of Pompeii and Hypatia. The story, moreover, in the case of Gallus, is additionally objectionable as converting one of the most disagreeable characters of the reign of Augustus into the flat hero of a flat romance. While the first volume of Professor Friedlander's work is chiefly devoted to a description of Roman society at Rome, dwelling particularly on its relations 72 Historical to the Imperial Court (we would especially direct attention to his remarks on the clientela of the Empire, as distinct from that of more ancient times, and to his exposition of the workings of the Imperial secret police), part of the second is occupied with a subject the novel and exhaustive treatment of which is likely to attract more especial notice. We refer to the lengthy dis- quisition on the subject of the travels of the Romans. It is divided, with the precision of a Scotch sermon, under several heads namely, the means of travel, its manner, its causes, its principal objects, and, lastly, its sources of interest. At the outset, Professor Friedlander reminds his readers that travelling was easier in the greater part of the Roman Empire than it ever was in modern Europe before the present century : a paradox calculated at first sight to take away the breath of us moderns, but as indubitably true as the equally startling fact that the diffusion of literature was far more extensive in the Roman Empire than it was in the modern world before recent improvements in the art of printing. Passing to his last division of the subject, we find Professor Friedlander broadly asserting that the sources of interest to Roman travellers in the countries and places visited by them almost everywhere connected themselves with the reminiscences of the past rather than with the impressions of the present. The Roman was not, like the Greek, the child of the day ; he was, rather, the heir of the past. The historical interest in travel was everywhere, in the first place, fed by the temples, which usually were at the same time the largest and the most beautiful, as well as the most ancient and famous, edifices of each separate locality. A modern Roman Manners under the Earlier Emperors 73 traveller is accustomed to seek out the cathedral or prin- cipal church as the most promising object of visit, even in cities of our own day ; but an ancient temple supplied far more to interest the visitor than even the most famous and beautiful modern cathedral can afford. A temple was, in most cases, not only an edifice, but, as its name implies, a park. It was, also, a museum, not only of statues and pictures dedicated to the fane, but of other objects of art, of the natural curiosities, and of historical relics. As such, it was best calculated to satisfy the longings of a Roman mind, in which the love of history generally prevailed over a purely artistic taste. Professor Friedlander, perhaps, slightly exaggerates this circum- stance, the reason of which is partly to be sought in the natural tendency of the citizen of a community that had forcibly constituted itself the chief inheritor of all the art-treasures of the ancient world to become somewhat biases about art. And he sees in it a new point of analogy between the Romans and a great modern nation, which, notwithstanding the uncompli- mentary character of his remark, we must allow him to indicate in his own words : In truth, this feeling of interest [in art] was for the most part quite superficial and external, conditioned generally by the name of the particular artist and the celebrity of the particular work. " Ut semel vidit, transit et contentus est, ut si picturam aliquant vel statuam vidisset" we read in the Dialogue of Tacitus ; and this might no doubt have been said with truth of the preponderating majority of Roman travellers. They saw in order to have seen ; and in this respect the travels of the Romans of those days resembled those of the English of our own, as well as in their eager and conscientious enquiry into historical reminiscences. 74 Historical On the other hand, Professor Friedlander is of opinion that the interest awakened in the Romans by objects of nature greatly exceeded that called forth by objects of art, though the former feeling was of a different character from modern enthusiasm for beauti- ful scenery. This touches upon a much vexed and agitated question, which derives new light from the Professor's exhaustive treatment of it. He is anxious to show how the interest of the Romans, and of the ancients generally, differed in kind rather than in intensity from that taken by our own times in the same subject. Above all, the ancient love of nature is distinguished from the modern by its religious character. The period of which the work before us treats pre- cludes a more than passing reference to the original sources of this feeling. A Roman of the Empire could not wander under oaks, and on the banks of streams, with the same childlike consciousness of the immediate presence of Dryads and Naiads which moved the natural devotion of a Greek of the Homeric age. The Greeks, even of a later period, preserved this indefinable sense of the religious element in the enjoyment of nature, to an extent which perhaps has been scarcely generally enough recognised. Even an author in whom one would least of all expect to find such a spirit abounds with indications of it; we refer to Aristophanes, from some of whose comedies, especially perhaps from the Clouds, many proofs of this assertion could be drawn. Even if the Greek mythology was not a mere calendar of the powers and workings of nature personified, even if its stories were not mere attempts to clothe in human narrative the Roman Manners under the Earlier Emperors 75 impressions of her phenomena which would of itself prove a capacity for watching nature amounting to the best evidence of a love for it no people, from the evidence of its literary remains, was more open to the influence of nature from this point of view. But even the Romans of the hypercivilised days of the Empire had not lost all vestiges of this feeling, as many passages besides those quoted by M. Friedlander from Seneca, Pliny, and others, tend to show. The second source of their interest in scenery he traces to the circumstance of the celebrity attaching to any place, and derived from poetry and literature. When Lucilius came back from a tour in Sicily, the only subject on which Seneca was anxious to have information from him was the real nature of the whirlpool of Charybdis; "he had already been informed that Scylla was a rock without any danger whatsoever." This is, no doubt, only a bastard kind of interest in scenery ; but do not, we may fairly ask, similar motives play a very important part in the interest taken in whole districts by modern tourists who consider themselves very good judges of the picturesque? Who fill the steamboats on Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine the real lovers of scenery, or the readers of Sir Walter Scott? And does the castled crag of Drachenfels call forth more admiration of its natural beauty, or attempts at remembering the entire stanza in which Byron first ensured attention to its devoted head ? Again, natural curiosities and abnormities were as interesting to the Romans as they are to modern travellers who think they admire the Cave of Fingal or the Giant's Causeway because they are beautiful, but really only wonder at them 76 Historical because they are strange. We are certainly more biases than the crowds of Romans and Greeks who, according to Lucian, made an annual trip to Gades, or the west coast of Gaul, in order to see the ebb and tide of the Atlantic; but some of us, mutatis mutandis, still deserve the reproach of the younger Pliny, that men travel over sea and land to see the wonders of foreign lands, while those of Italy are left unnoticed. But the question, of course, remains, whether the Romans possessed that sense for the pure beauty of natural scenery in itself, the influence of which at the present day few will deny, and which was justly remarked upon by Mr Gladstone, when he opened a park in Lancashire the other day, as a cheering sign of the times. In the sense in which workmen, taking a walk in a park, may be said to be open to the beauties of nature, the Romans were assuredly not one whit behind ourselves. Amoenitas was the term by which they expressed the tranquil beauty of scenery most congenial to them, which, as a rule, they sought by the sea-side. But they appear to have lacked the sense of the romantic, which, notwithstanding its many ludicrous perversions, is an undoubted acquisition of our own times. They seem, as M. Friedlander in- geniously proves from the conspicuousness of its absence in instances where a modern could hardly have failed to introduce it, to have cared neither for the glow of sunset nor for the pale light of the moon. Such expressions as "blue mountains," "glimmering twilight," such a passage as the well-known apostrophe to the sinking sun which M. Friedlander quotes from Faust and others could, of course, be added by the thousand from Roman Manners under the Earlier Emperors 77 our own poets and poetasters he seeks in vain in the ancient writers. Above all, with the Alps at their door, there were no Alpine travellers at Rome. But an enquiry into this last point would not be complete without touching upon another element of modern delight in nature which Professor Friedlander, as a German, has naturally left out. The Romans, with all their refinements of luxury, as well as the ancient Greeks, with their exquisitely natural li\es, were too much in the open air, and took too much active exercise as a matter of course, to be likely to have a very keen appreciation of exceptional air and exercise in their sublimation in Alpine regions. Finally, we are reminded of the absence of effective incitements to travel for its own sake among the Romans, in comparison with those so amply provided in our own times. This was, of course, at once cause and effect, for the Romans could not have failed to cultivate the natural sciences if they had cared for them. And thus it is interesting to find Professor Friedlander quote from Humboldt the three principal causes which the latter states to have, in his own case, excited an early inclination to travel in the tropical districts namely, poetical descriptions of nature, landscape-painting, and the cultivation of tropical plants. Humboldt says that an irrepressible desire to visit the tropics was created in him by Forster's book on the South Sea Islands, by some pictures of the banks of the Ganges in the house of Warren Hastings in London, and by a colossal dragon-tree in the Botanical Gardens at Berlin. No Roman could have received any such enduring impres- sions at home; for description of nature, in the sense 78 Historical of that contained in Forster's book, is one of the most modern branches of literature, and scarcely was such at all before Humboldt himself wrote. Landscape painting was an art nearly unknown to the Greeks and Romans; and, as for tropical plants, Roman horti- culture confined itself to forcing nature into productive- ness and prettiness, without attempting to encourage her to reproduce herself in anything like her own grandeur. The original design of Gibbon was, as is well known, to write a history of the decline and fall of the City of Rome; and it was only gradually that, during the quarter of a century which elapsed between the moment of inspiration among the ruins of the Capitol and the hour of consummation in the garden at Lausanne, his original conception developed into his yet more magnificent performance. The growth of the idea was legitimate and logical; for the vital force which held together the Roman Empire was neither nationality nor religion, but law; and the foundations of Roman law were municipal in their origin and character. It is this which gives to Roman history its continuity, as it gave to the Roman State its endurance; and, just as, in one field of antiquities, Mommsen has, in his most recent work, begun to show that there is no essential break to be assumed at the regifngium y so it is the task of those who specially devote themselves to the illustration of later periods of Roman history and archaeology to prove the consistency between the progress of the Empire and that of the Republic. Thanks to Dean Merivale and others, most of us have by this time unlearnt the Roman Manners under the Earlier Emperors 79 fatal habit of assuming the decay of Roman national life to have commenced punctually with the battle of Actium, and of tracing the downfall of the Empire to an inner disintegration commencing with its establish- ment. We have ceased to marvel why that Empire endured so long, because we have ceased to attribute its fall from a more than dubious cause. Happily, the vulgar teleology is out of date which dismisses whole centuries as prefacing an unforeseen consummation; even the spell of Tacitus is beginning to lose some of its magic ; and students of history are awakened to the conviction that the Romans of the earlier Empire were not living as either conscious or blind victims of an inevitable destiny. When, many years ago, Professor Friedlander began his series of essays on Roman manners during the first two centuries of the Christian era, he also, modestly as well as prudently, took the City as his starting-point. His work, the earlier volumes of which we then noticed with a commendation since fully justified by the general acceptance which they have obtained (though still untranslated into English, they have been translated into French, and have helped to supply some of the materials for Mr Lecky's last book), has naturally and necessarily grown under his hands. The local influences of life in the city of Rome, the customs of the Court and of the three estates of the population, the conditions of social intercourse among the different classes and sexes, the diversions of the Romans in theatre and circus at home and in foreign travel, now give place to topics of even wider interest and more general significance. In his third volume, he undertakes to 80 Historical discuss the whole question of Roman luxury a term which, as we shall see, hardly receives at his hands the definition which it needs ; and, after treating the sub- jects, in this instance cognate to the former, of the fine arts and literature, he proceeds in his concluding chapters to address himself to the religious con- dition of the population under the Empire, necessarily supplementing his survey by a view of philosophy and of the belief in immortality in their relations to the moral condition and progress of the Roman world. The defects of incompleteness and consequent un- evenness are all but inseparable from an attempt of the kind. Even where, as in so thorough a book as Burckhardt's Cultur der Renaissance in Italien y the task is limited in space as well as time, the execution must remain that of a suggestive essay rather than of a perfected work. The infinitely vaster range of Professor Friedlander's subject has not interfered with the modestly tentative spirit in which he has approached it, unlike some writers on kindred topics whom a little learning has sufficed to make wondrous bold. As his book has more and more developed out of a series of essays on Roman manners into a sketch of Roman morals, generalisation has become increasingly dangerous; the materials for anything approaching to an exhaustive description of provincial life in the Roman Empire are still only in course of collection; nor will it be forgotten that the author's limits confine him to a period at the close of which a thorough reorganisation of the Provinces took place. Essentially, therefore, though by no means throughout, he adheres to the standpoint from which Roman Manners under the Earlier Emperors 81 he began his work; and we constantly remember that, up to the time of Hadrian at all events, the real centre of the social as well as of the political life of the Empire was still the City of Rome. Of the several sections of the present volume, those treating of the religious life of the Romans will naturally attract the most general attention. Of the chapter on Luxury in our opinion the least successful in the volume we shall have a word to say presently; the essays on Art and Literature contain less that is open to cavil, though much that invites comment. Professor Friedlander is decidedly of opinion that the Romans were devoid of any innate literary or artistic sense. Certain it is that no literature was ever so susceptible to the sway of fashion as theirs, and that no changes of literary taste have been less the legitimate result of corresponding changes in the general progress of national life. How, for instance, the history of ancient Athens and that of modern France mirror themselves, in spite of the originality or capriciousness of individual authors, in the main phases of their literatures! But to draw conclusions from Roman literature as to Roman tendencies of public opinion and feeling, or even Roman currents of morals and manners, is an infinitely hazardous attempt, and one which has undoubtedly been fruitful of error. Leaving aside for the present the all-important question whether the religious faith and the unbelief of Rome find an adequate expression in her literature, we may instance such a phenomenon as the sudden decline of Roman poetry in the second century. Gibbon, who adverts to the fact, connects it with the degeneracy concerning which he quotes the W.P.I 6 82 Historical laments of Longinus "in somewhat a later period." Dean Merivale has unfortunately not added to his contrast between the Claudian and the Flavian literature and that of the Antonines ; but we incline to Professor Friedlander's view, that the main cause is after all to be sought in the cultivation of a new and attractive school of prose literature among the Greeks, whom the Romans, devoid of any real literary originality, were once more fain to follow. Neither in literature nor in art were the Romans ever essentially aught but imitators ; and, though in one period it became the fashion among them to insist upon the excellence of their ancient poetry, to teach Ennius and Plautus in the schools, and religiously to abstain, as Pronto did in his corre- spondence with his pupils, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Varus, from quoting such moderns as Vergil and Livy, yet how small was the native literary element in the honoured ancients themselves! And, with regard to the fine arts, enormous and multifarious as was the patronage bestowed upon them by the Romans of the Empire, yet what was Roman art except in archi- tecture, where the grandeur of the conditions and means effected a difference which was perhaps more than one of degree but reproduction? This is admirably shown by Professor Friedlander, in the section of his present volume entitled Der Kunstbetrieb (art- industry) : This uniformity is only partially explained by the journeys of the artists and the spread of the works of art by trade. Its main cause is, first, that the development of Greek art had already come to a close when it entered into the service of Roman civilization. This development had been one of un- Roman Manners under the Earlier Emperors 83 exampled fertility. A measureless wealth of ideas and forms had been created by it; and the mode of representation and treat- ment had been most thoroughly perfected in every direction. With this heritage a period of epigoni, which lacked creative power of its own, could keep house for centuries further, without betraying its poverty. This period, then, found a double advantage in faithfully holding fast to tradition one of the main differences between all ancient and modern art. Far from striving after an originality which had become impossible, and from sacrificing the precious gain of former fortunate ages by fruitless experimentalizing, it rather for a long time with praiseworthy intelligence preserved it and turned it to account. Art continued to move in the accustomed spheres, and per- formed its new tasks according to anciently-proved laws If the adherence to tradition in connexion with the want of originality was the one main cause of the uniformity of the art of this period, the other lay in the levelling influence of Roman civilization Decorative and religious art were, for the most part, able to solve their tasks by unchanged reproduction from the existing stores ; monumental art at all events found examples and models here for nearly all subjects; and where simple repetition was inadmissible, it was generally possible "by transformation and development of the original motifs to express new turns of thought," and to convert the existing into some- thing apparently new by means of variations, modifications, separations, and combinations. These remarks, partly based upon Otto Jahn, receive abundant illustration in the course of the second chapter of this volume ; but \ve have no space to enlarge upon them. We may add that Professor Friedlander gives many details as to the social status and professional emoluments of artists and literary men at Rome; and he has much to say about the precarious position of the poets, their dealings with private and public patrons, with booksellers and critics. For what is the essential 62 84 Historical difference between the " early copy " system of our own day and the recitation system of Rome, except that, in the latter, the author was twice blessed, inasmuch as he could force the critic to become acquainted with the whole of the tragedy or epic under review ? We may be certain that the Roman poets would not have dilated so persistently upon the grievance of having to listen to recitations, had it not been their fate to have their good word constantly claimed by members of their own fraternity as well as by dilettanti patrons. The spread of dilettantism in Rome defies comparison. All the Julian Emperors wrote in prose or verse, with the exception of Caligula, who devoted himself to the study of oratory; Titus wrote a beautiful poem about a comet ; and Domitian is saluted by Martial as " the lord of the nine sisters," while one of his poems is compared by that abandoned flatterer Martial to the ^neid itself: Ad Capitolini ccelestia carmina belli Grande cothurnati pone Maronis opus where, as Professor Friedlander points out, the epithet ccelestia has an official character, and should be trans- lated allerhochst, for which transcendent term the English language unhappily lacks an equivalent. Of dilettantism in the fine arts he gives many examples, with Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius at the head of the list ; while in music it is sufficient to remember Nero, though the consuming ambition of that Emperc* 's life to our mind no wholly contemptible trait in his character was to be accounted, not a dilettante , but a real artifex. The argument of the most important chapters of this volume, those on the religious life of the Romans, Roman Manners under the Earlier Emperors 85 hardly admits of condensation into a few words. This part of the book deserves, and will doubtless receive, attentive study. Professor Friedlander is not armed with so vast an array of familiar quotations as Mr Lecky; but the readers of the History of European Morals will find few of the points noted in that work omitted in the German essays. M. Friedlander 's starting-point is the great difference between the literary and monumental sources of our knowledge concerning the religious life of Rome ; and his endeavour is to prove that the former have misled many, or at all events have led them to form an exaggerated and one- sided opinion. But he shows how, even of the Romans possessing a literary education, it was only the minority whose position was irreconcilable with an acceptance of the ancient popular beliefs. And he dwells with emphasis on the religious reaction of the second century, to which Mr Lecky has indeed adverted, but of which he has not traced the causes with similar fulness. On the part of the people at large, Professor Friedlander contends that, in the masses, the popular faith lived on in unchanged strength a proposition which he proves in a way which may at first sight seem paradoxical. For in the power of assimilation (adoption of elements from Eastern religions), as well as in that of creativity (establishment of new divinities, the Emperors among the rest), he sees two proofs of the vigour retained by the ancient faith. But the best proof he finds in the fact that For centuries the popular faith was able to maintain itself against Christianity, and not only this, but even in a certain sense to force the Christians to accord a recognition to its truths. For to deny the actual existence (die reale Existenz) of 86 Historical the heathen gods in general never entered into the thoughts of the Christians, neither did these dispute their superhuman character, or the miracles performed by them; only in their eyes the heathen gods were, of course, powers of darkness, daemons, fallen or seduced angels and souls, to whom God had left the power of harming and tempting men. In connexion with this argument, it is shown how the struggle between the two religions intensified the belief in miracles, how in one case (which can hardly be exceptional) we find the same miracle claimed by both sides, and how it is in other causes than a decay of Pagan faith that we have to seek for an explanation of the ultimate triumph of Christianity. Among these, Gibbon's second cause, the doctrine of a future life, is that to which Professor Friedlander unhesitatingly assigns the first place. The "vague belief in the immortality of the soul," of which Mr Lecky speaks in passing (his remarks on the indifference of the Stoics to the subject do not of course affect the general question), is assuredly a very inadequate term by which to describe the prevalence of the belief in question among many to be found in the educated classes, and its general acceptance among the masses. Juvenal's ridicule of Charon's boat, in which only little children believed, proves nothing; while the sneers of Lucian at the credulity of the vulgar herd are a direct testimony to the contradiction in which the witty sceptic found himself with popular belief. On the other hand, there is the secondary evidence of the belief in ghosts. What Christianity did was to give firmness and security to a tremulous, but conscious, popular belief, and to revise the expectation of immortal life into what it had not hitherto been, the highest and the one indispensable Roman Manners under the Earlier Emperors 87 possession of man. For, though it may be too much to assert, in Mr Lecky's words, that Roman religion had never been an independent source of moral enthusiasm, yet it is most true that religion was with the Romans, no more than with the Greeks, the basis of morality ; while Christianity, by revealing the Divine Will as ordaining the pursuit of virtue, and promising to those who followed its paths the reward bestowed by the Divine Grace, established its creed in a place whence there was no rival for it to oust. Such is the position assumed by Professor Fried- lander, whom it is impossible for us to follow through the whole of the argument of his concluding chapters. They appropriately close a deeply interesting volume, of which we are only obliged to take exception to the earlier portion. And this, not because the classical learning there displayed is less abundant, but because the author, being, as he candidly avows, unfamiliar with political economy, has indulged in a looseness of terminology which it needs no political economist to discover. For, inasmuch as the author undertakes not only to describe Roman luxury under the earlier Emperors, but to compare it with that of modern peoples, and to show what erroneous notions prevail on the subject of their relative extent, he should have let us clearly understand what, in his view, the term luxury implies. We think that even the German word Luxus could hardly be defined to mean nothing more than expenditure upon things not to be included among the necessaries of life. In any case, Professor Friedlander's remarks concerning the relatively excessive expenditure of Romans and moderns are not decisive, inasmuch as 88 Historical he confesses (and with undisputable truth) that no satisfactory data at present exist for a comparison of prices in Imperial Rome and in the countries of modern Europe. But, apart from this, perhaps inevitable, defect in his argument, Professor Friedlander will surely allow that the degree to which a man's or a nation's life is open to the charge of luxury depends upon the propor- tion borne by its useless to its useful expenditure. There is no difficulty in capping a story about Agrip- pina's golden robe with a reference to Charles the Bold's hundred gold-embroidered coats, or in com- paring with the menu of a Pontifical dinner in which Julius Caesar took part (it seems to have been thoroughly Roman i.e., overloaded with shellfish, game, and pork) that of an at least equally magnificent repast partaken of by twenty-four clerics and their friends at Leipzig in the year of Grace 1721. Such stories might doubtless be indefinitely multiplied on either side ; but the main questions to be solved must remain these: How far was Roman luxury, as compared with modern le luxe Anglais, e.g. exceptional among the Romans them- selves; and in what proportion was their private ex- penditure, again if considered from a comparative point of view, directed to luxurious rather than to useful objects? Professor Friedlander has adverted to the former of these questions ; but to neither of them has he, in our opinion, furnished a very satisfactory reply. 4. THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE 1 (The Saturday Review, February 13, 1864) No existing nation can boast that its greatness is en- tirely of home-growth. We are so fond of complacently contrasting our own happy and prosperous island with other countries which have been less swift and successful in the race, that we often forget how much of our happi- ness and prosperity may be due to those very nations which we have outstripped. The insular position of England, and her independent development of institu- tions in a certain degree peculiar to herself into others which will probably to a great extent remain equally so, have not kept her wholly out of contact with many phases of foreign political life of which her own presents no counterpart. Her very commerce, the foundation and mainstay of her European position and influence, is owing in a great measure to impulses first derived by her from foreign enterprise, and to combinations in which she originally had little or no share. Both the good and the evil fortunes of other trading nations have assisted in the establishment of our maritime supremacy. In the East and in the West, in India, Africa and America, English traders have largely benefited by the teaching and the example of foreigners. The debts thus incurred have been often acknowledged ; but it is not so well remembered that it was from a League composed 1 Histoire Commerciale de la Ligue Hanseatique. Par mile Worms. Ouvrage couronne par 1'Institut de France. Paris: Guillau- min et C ie , 1864. 90 Historical of cities of whose names not a few are now half- forgotten, and as to whose federal history a wide- spread ignorance exists, that we received our first lessons, as we also derived our first impulse, in foreign and maritime trade. England accorded to the Hanseatic League the fullest privileges, at a time when her own commerce was still in its infancy. La nation boutiquiere learnt many things before it learnt how to grow rich by trade; and even the struggle against the yoke of foreign ecclesiastical interference had been fought out before English commerce had known how to achieve for itself independence of foreign tutelage. The history of the Hansa, though forming one of those rare portions of German history on which a native writer can look back with almost unalloyed satis- faction, as yet remains unwritten. The industrious compilation of Sartorius cannot be regarded as more than valuable material for future writers, being de- ficient in almost every requisite of completeness. It has been indeed hoped that a distinguished historian, who up to a very recent date presided over the archives of the 'Free and Hanseatic' city of Hamburg, would consent to fill up the gap. The vast and rare erudition of Dr Lappenberg, the advantages of his position, and the many valuable publications he has already issued in connexion with the subject, united to point him out as the man for the work, which many readers both here and in Germany would gladly accept as the fruit of his honoured old age. Meanwhile, a valuable contribution has just been made to Hanseatic history, considered chiefly in its commercial bearings, by a French writer, M. Emile Worms, who has expanded into a considerable The Hanseatic League 91 volume the essay which last year gained him the prize at the French Institute. It is no part of his plan to do more than sum up in the briefest and most annalistic manner the historical events which are necessary for the elucidation of his sketch. He, therefore, merely mentions the earlier Wars with Denmark, through w r hich Liibeck and the Hansa passed to the glorious Peace of 1370 glorious for these ambitious cities, since it contained a clause enacting that, in future, no sovereign should sit on the Danish throne without having first asked and ob- tained the consent of the League ; and he notices with similar brevity the success which for a time attended its efforts on behalf of the union of Schleswig and Holstein names fruitful of war then as now under the ruler of the latter duchy. He is obliged to pass with equal rapidity over the most dramatic part of Hanseatic history the struggle of Liibeck under Wullenwewer against the Scandinavian kingdoms, supported by Dutch and Imperial influence. This episode in which all the European intrigues of the time seem to come to a head, and in which commercial, political, and religious interests are curiously intermingled has, however, been fully elucidated of late, in an elaborate work by Professor Waitz of Gottingen. After the intrepid Burgo- master had defied Church and aristocracy at home, and a world in arms abroad, while he governed Denmark by men of his own stamp at Copenhagen, his power at last collapsed, and he was driven from office and home to end his life on the scaffold. The League had attempted to make its peace with the new King of Denmark, and Liibeck and the other cities were again ruled by the old respectable Town Councils ; but the Hansa soon found 92 Historical that in this Titanic contest its strength had gone from it. Resort was had to embassies, reclamations, and sup- plications, instead of fleets like those which had ridden triumphantly in the Baltic, or of armies like those which Henry VIII's protege', Sir Marcus Meyer, had led to victory and plunder ; but the Hanseatic privileges were never really restored. The Thirty Years' War finished the existence of the League, notwithstanding the pro- mises of Gustavus Adolphus, who, as usual, had been prodigal of fair words, while he was establishing a Swedish Company to ruin the Hanseatic interests. M. Worms' business is, of course, less with these closing scenes than with the rise and spread of that commerce which was the sole basis of the power of the League. He might, we think, have well spared the in- troductory sketch of the annals of commerce from the days of the Phoenicians. The history of his own subject he divides into three periods, and he clearly sketches the commercial relations of the Hansa with every principal European country especially, of course, with England, the Netherlands, and the various Baltic States in each ; and when at last, in his "Epilogue," he indulges him- self in the refreshment of fine writing, he thus, sums up the benefits which European commerce and civilisation owe to the League: If then, in taking the initiative in commercial enterprises, the Hanseates spread these treasures over a large part of the ancient continent, can we without injustice refuse them the homage due to benefactors of the human race ? Can we haggle about gratitude to those who politically and commercially brought the extremities of Europe nearer to one another; who took part in the establishment of the European family, into The Hanseatic League 93 which their powerful aid helped the immense empire of Russia to enter; who gave to the relations of commerce that security which is indispensable to them, by dispersing, at the cost of sustained efforts and the greatest sacrifices, the rovers of the sea and the robbers of the mainland ; who, while all along desirous of retaining the monopoly of commerce, everywhere communi- cated the strongest impulse to agriculture and all the transfor- mations of the rude material; who threw down the majority of the barriers set up in hatred of foreigners, and put an end to the abuses of which the latter were the victims ; who furnished models of commercial and maritime legislation to all modern nations, including France ; who surrounded the right of neutrals with the respect due to it; who never ceased to claim, at least in their own behalf, the most extensive liberty of commerce; who, by the voice of their temporary guest, Grotius, proclaimed the liberty of the seas ; who created the system of the modern herring- and whale-fisheries; who carried out many improve- ments in the art of navigation, and gave to the world scientific men like Nicholas Copernicus the astronomer, Philip Cluvier the geographer, and Otto von Guericke the physicist ; who, in view of the general movement which they called into being, cannot even be considered strangers to the discovery of new Continents, brought about by the initiative of Portugal, where they had founded a flourishing establishment; and who, to sum up, if we will but judge them equitably, must be placed among the founders of the society and prosperity of our own day. Such, M. Worms thinks, was the " providential mis- sion" fulfilled by the Hanseatic League, which has certainly found no half-hearted prophet in him when he places Copernicus and Grotius to its credit, and somewhat ambiguously declares that the Hanseates never ceased to claim liberty of commerce, "at least in their own behalf." They, certainly, had no idea of allowing it to any one else, and half their Wars were caused by their jealousy of the commerce of others, 94 Historical especially of the Low Countries. Nobody will, however, feel inclined to gainsay him when he continues : Have they not dragged various nations out of ignorance by their force alone? Has not the League given them their com- mercial education, and completed the lesson up to the point when the scholars dismissed their teacher ? Was not England, which originally exported nothing but raw wool, under the influence of the Hansa, covered with manufactories, whose stuffs, by their fineness and cheapness, were soon able to compete with the similar products of the Low Countries? Were not the Merchant-adventurers to English commerce what manufactories have been to English industry ? Was it not the Hanseates who first revealed to this island its resources and its power? And has Russia had cause to complain of their interference ? Does she not owe them her first step in the path of civilisation, and was it not by them that she was first introduced into the move- ment of Europe and thus interested in an order of things to which she seemed to be obliged to be thoroughly hostile ? Was it not they who lighted up Scania and the Netherlands, who everywhere called forth rich and vigorous life, everywhere breathed the spirit of democracy and commerce, and, while enriching themselves, enriched every people which they visited ? We scarcely think that M. Worms has overrated the beneficial influence of the Hanseatic League on English commerce. A large space of the volume before us is devoted to this branch of Hanseatic commercial history, which had already received much light from the investigations of Dr Lappenberg. The first trace of an association of German traders dates from the reign of Henry II, when the inhabitants of Cologne received certain privileges in the wine-trade. Richard I increased these, and granted the right of free navigation to the Liibeckers; and Henry III permitted the merchants of The Hanseatic League 95 Liibeck and Hamburg two States which many writers, in the j udgment of M . Worms erroneously , ass ume to have been the original founders of the League to establish a commercial association or hansa (i.e. corporation, or guild) in England. This was the origin of the celebrated Hanseatic Steelyard of London, probably only an ex- tension of the ancient "Guild-hall" of the Cologne traders. It stood in Lower Thames Street, and the last traces of the building were only removed during the past year. Dr Lappenberg has devoted an interesting essay to the subject of this Steelyard and similar Han- seatic establishments at Boston and Lynn ; but, as this work has hitherto been reserved for private circulation, we may be allowed to remind our readers that much of the information contained in it will be found in one of Dr Reinhold Pauli's delightful essays, entitled Pictures of Old England. In the reign of Edward III, the English merchants at last began to apply the lessons taught them by their enterprising guests. A society was formed, calling itself originally by the strange name of the Society of Thomas Becket, but soon known under that of the Merchant- Adventurers. Notwithstanding protective measures in its favour approved by Edward III, the Society was unable to hold its own, and was not revived till the year 1660, from which date it lasted till it succumbed to the broader economy of the present century. The Hanseates continued to carry on a most profitable im- port and export trade in cloth and woollen goods with England, but had often to pay dearly for their favoured position. Their vessels were frequently seized on the most frivolous pretexts. Thus, in one year, 1462, during the War of the Roses, they lost no less than 62 merchant ships, whose value they estimated at 2oo,ooo/. While g6 Historical the lieges plundered, the Kings more civilly took what they wanted in the form of subsidies. At last, in the reign of Henry VI, the Hanseates refused any longer to submit to piracy ; and the King transferred all their rights to the one city of Cologne. All other Hanseates found in England were put to death, and the League (being mistress of the sea) replied by ravaging the English coasts and hanging all prisoners mast-high. The Treaty of Utrecht, concluded under Edward IV, settled matters in favour of the League, who, besides an in- demnity of io,ooo/, were satisfied by the establishment of proper judicial authorities in case of future quarrels, and the cession to them of one of the City-gates (Bishops- gate). Neither of the Tudor Henries molested them in the exercise of their privileges, unpopular as these were ; and Henry VIII, we know, thought highly enough of the chief Hanseatic Governments to consult them, among other authorities, on the subject of his first marriage. The Hanseates were unwise enough to outstep their large franchises, and thus when, in the reign of Edward VI, they were found to be fraudulently importing goods not belonging to Hanseatic owners, they suddenly brought upon themselves utter ruin. A single order of the Privy Council at once swept away all their privileges, and placed them on the same footing as all other foreign merchants. This order, notwithstanding the opposition of Parliament and city, was annulled by Queen Mary, who favoured the friends of Spain and the Emperor. Her successor, on the other hand, crippled and restricted the profits of the Hanseatic merchants in every possible way, limited their annual exportation of cloth to a fixed quantity, and in general made them smart for their attachment to the Spanish interest. But the League The Hanseatic League 97 itself was already crumbling away, and was finally dissolved in 1662, only four years before the great Fire of London swept away all the main portions of the building of the old Hanseatic Steelyard. We have no space to touch on the interesting chapter in which M. Worms traces the cause of the decline and fall of the Hansa. It cannot be said to have been de- stroyed by the Thirty Years' War, whose commence- ment already found the League fallen so low that it could only assist one of its members, Stralsund, during the memorable siege of that city, by its prayers and a loan of 15,000 dollars. Time had brought to inevitable decay a Confederacy whose conditions and purposes were alike of another age, and the want of religious and political harmony among its members did the rest. But with it there passed away from Germany the lead of the commercial world. The modern prosperity of several former members of the League rests on totally new grounds; and it is in venerable Liibeck rather than in opulent Hamburg and busy Bremen that the traditions of its glories must be sought. Postscript (1919). I have taken leave to reprint this review, written at an early date in the course of my historical studies, partly because I am not aware that a history of the Hansa fully meeting the demands of the subject has even now seen the light, and partly for a personal reason to which I may be pardoned for referring. My father, the late Mr John Ward, was the last British Minister- resident to the Hanse Towns; and, more recently, my brother, Sir William Ward, for several years resident at Hamburg as British Consul-General. Liibeck, too, and Bremen were to me familiar ground. My youthful notion of attempting the great historical task which I have mentioned was, I venture to add, encouraged by Dr Lappenberg himself; but it remained a mere vision. W.P.I 5. ELIZABETH OF BOHEMIA 1 (Lecture delivered to the Bowden Literary and Scientific Institute, February 2^th, 1885) WHAT is a heroine ? (I do not mean, the heroine of a novel for novelists must reckon with their readers after their kind but a heroine in history.) Not, of course, every woman that is good and pure and true- hearted ; not even every woman brave enough to under- stand that there is no noble life possible without self-sacrifice, and wise enough to perceive that no peace is to be purchased in the world without resignation. The circumstances of her career must be heroic as well as the qualities which that career exhibits ; the cause for which she strives and suffers must be a cause standing high in the sight of men, her endeavours must be ex- emplary and her deeds must shine forth conspicuous. In one of the poetic tributes which contemporaries laid at the fair feet of Elizabeth of Bohemia, the scholar and diplomatist Sir Henry Wotton claims for his mistress, as according to the highflown fashion of the age the grave statesman called the beautiful Queen, a proud pre- eminence among the ladies of an age rich in lovely and accomplished women. I cannot forbear from quoting 1 This lecture is reprinted, with a few corrections and ad- ditions, although a new edition of Mrs Everett-Green's admirable Life of Elizabeth, to which I had the honour of writing a prefatory note, appeared so late as 1909. The facts of the Queen's life are given in my article on her in vol. xvn of the Dictionary of National Bio- graphy, 1889, of which I have been kindly allowed to make free use in the present reprint. Elizabeth of Bohemia 99 the wellknown lines, if you do not object to a kind of flute-player's prelude: You meaner Beauties of the Night That poorly satisfy our eyes, More by your number, than your light, You common People of the skies : What are you when the Moon shall rise ? You curious Chanters of the Wood, That warble forth Dame Nature's lays, Thinking your Passions understood By your weak accents : what's your praise, When Philomel her voice shall raise ? You Violets that first appear, By your pure purple mantles known, Like the proud Virgins of the year, As if the Spring were all your own : What are you when the Rose is blown ? So, when my Mistress shall be seen In Form and Beauty of her mind, By Vertue first, then Choice, a Queen, Tell me if she were not design'd Th' Eclipse and Glory of her Kind ? Such charming conceits must of course go for what they are worth, and, at the time when they were indited, Elizabeth had conferred no special benefit upon those among whom her lot was cast, beyond that which every happy and hopeful nature, whether in princess or in beggar-maid, sheds upon its surroundings. With how many of us a bright and joyous youth of hope is suc- ceeded by a brief period of fruition and then comes the last act, so much longer in real life than we like to find it on the stage, when we know that, in common phrase, "all is over" with dreams of brilliant success or of 72 ioo Historical perfect happiness, but when there is still time for the mind to show itself strenuous and the soul to prove itself strong! With most men and women, however, fate happily draws no absolutely hard and clear line of demarcation between the period of hope and that of disenchantment, and the life of Elizabeth of Bohemia, the ancestress of so many of our Kings and Queens, is signally tragic because for few human creatures can the season of hope have been brighter, or the time of frui- tion briefer, and because of few have the finest qualities been put to a severer and more protracted test by disappointment, exile, solitude and that which is sharper than all these thanklessness. Whether the way in which she met these trials is worthy to be called heroic, and whether she is to be classed among those heroines of history who hold an unchallenged place in the golden book, I will not take upon myself to decide. At all events, I should ill repay your courtesy in asking me to come here were I to try to interest you by painting one more fancy picture of the Queen of Hearts. It would be strange, indeed, had the daughter of James I and Anne of Denmark the most unkingly of our Kings and the most frivolous of our Queens 1 proved a paragon of lofty dignity; and her biographers are, perhaps, best-advised when, here and there, they are not too minute. Neither, again, was she cast in the mighty mould for mighty it was with all its flaws of her imperial godmother, our English Queen Elizabeth ; nor is she to be remembered as a type of sweet suffering fidelity, like her unfortunate kins- 1 Queen Anne's conversion to Rome, which may now be con- sidered as proved, hardly bears upon her personal characteristics. Elizabeth of Bohemia 101 woman Arabella Stewart, into whose captivity, one likes to think, a ray of light was cast by Princess Elizabeth's wedding, for which the prisoner ordered herself a hand- some robe. Furthermore, the misfortunes of Elizabeth of Bohemia were tempered to her, as our misfortunes are to most of us. When the catastrophe of her career came upon her, it found her with a faithful husband by her side. In days when chivalry had gone very, much out of fashion, not only could she command the loyal devotion of such patriotic servants of the English Crown as Sir Henry Wotton, whose verses I cited just now, and her faithful correspondent, another celebrated diplo- matist, Sir Thomas Roe; but a brave prince, Christian of Halberstadt, sacrificed himself for her cause without desiring or receiving any other guerdon than her thanks. And, during the long years in which a deep gloom had gathered round her prospects, a magnanimous English nobleman, Lord Craven, gave up to her service, seem- ingly for ever, his wealth and what his wealth might have brought him. Finally, though her misfortunes had the sympathy of the body of the English people and of a great part at least of the Protestant world, the accounts we possess of her later life leave it open to doubt whether her lot appeared to her unbearably cruel. Kingdoms and principalities changed hands in the iyth century almost as rapidly as they do in the I9th, and in both ages kings and queens have accustomed themselves to that bitterness of flavour which is said to belong to bread eaten in exile. All this may be true ; and yet, when all has been said, it would be difficult to recall many lives in which such a contrast between good fortune and evil between four and twenty years of the one and two and IO2 Historical forty of the other has been met in a more truly royal spirit than that of Elizabeth of Bohemia. Truly royal because exhibiting a courage that never quails and a self-dependence in which lies the truest human dignity. These qualities seem to me to speak to us out of such as I have seen of the many portraits which remain 1 of the brave and unfortunate Queen in the National Portrait Gallery, at Combe Abbey in Warwickshire, and among the portraits of the House of Hanover and its ancestors at Herrenhausen. They do not all agree in details either of feature or, of course, of costume, though in most of them the Queen wears one of those mighty farthingales which her father (poor man) in vain attempted to force the English Court ladies to moderate. Of the two por- traits at South Kensington, the one has very dark, the other slate-grey eyes. In a contemporary account of her wedding, special mention is made of the long flow of amber-coloured hair which descended to her waist ; but of her appearance in later life we have a different but even more trustworthy account. Elizabeth of Bohemia's granddaughter, the Duchess Elizabeth Charlotte of Orleans, a Palatine princess by birth and a genuine child of that irrepressibly warm-hearted and free- tongued land of orchards and vineyards, in a passage of her voluminous correspondence describes the personal appearance of the Queen of Bohemia, whom she says she remembers as if she had seen her on the day of writing, and notes her black hair, long face and powerful 1 A very charming youthful portrait of Elizabeth, aet. 16 or rather more, in red gold-embroidered dress the property of George Johnstone, M.D. was exhibited at the New Gallery in February and March, 1900. Elizabeth of Bohemia 103 nose. Elizabeth Charlotte adds that there was a great likeness between the Queen and her eldest son, of whom, in his early days, she is found speaking to her father, King James, as her "petit black babie." Alto- gether there can be no doubt that she was one of the "dark ladies" to whom Shakespeare has attributed so peculiar a fascination, and by whom Goethe was so easily subdued. The other feature noticed by Elizabeth Charlotte that feature in which physiognomists con- sider so much of character is to be read was inherited by all those of her numerous children with whose por- traits I am acquainted, notably by Prince Rupert and by the Electress Sophia, the progenitress of our Hanoverian sovereigns. It was by her marriage, in February 1613, to the Elector Palatine Frederick V that Elizabeth, then the only surviving daughter and, besides her brother Charles, the only surviving child of King James I, first became a personage of high political importance in Europe. Her previous life, which had been for the most part spent under the singularly judicious and conscientious care of Lord and Lady Harington at Combe Abbey near Coventry, had been marked by but one incident worth noticing in connexion with her later experiences. Strangely enough if it is remembered that her own destiny was to be shaped by her share in the great reli- gious conflict of her times the part of the country in which her childhood was passed was full of sympathisers with the Church of Rome. If you will take the trouble to look into the first volume of the new edition of Gardiner's Standard History of Stewart England, you will there find a sketch-map showing the section of the 104 Historical midland counties on which the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot depended in their calculations and preparations; it extended from the neighbourhood of Nuneaton north to the neighbourhood of Stratford-on- Avon south, where a resident gentleman of some sub- stance, William Shakespeare by name, can hardly have failed to be interested by the discovery of the conspiracy. In the centre of this district, near Coventry, lies Combe Abbey; and it had been thought an easily manageable item in the scheme of the conspirators to obtain pos- session of the little eight-year old Princess there. They had agreed that, on the day of the intended demonstra- tion-in-chief at Westminster, she should be seized by a body of gentlemen, who were to assemble for the purpose on the pretext of a meet of the hounds ; and, on its being ascertained that the rest of the royal family had been duly blown into atoms, she was to be proclaimed Queen on the principles of the unreformed Church. But the proceedings of those concerned in the plan had attracted attention; Combe Abbey was warned and protected, and the Princess was conveyed in safety to the loyal city of Coventry, where the townsmen armed in her defence. As chance would have it, the young Warwick- shire gentleman, John Digby, who carried to King James the news of his daughter's peril and preservation, was afterwards the diplomatic agent of the policy which left Elizabeth and her children homeless exiles for a long series of years. Neither Englishmen nor, as we shall see, the foreign Powers which, then as now, looked across the Channel with a more or less benevolent interest in our endeavours to play a part in Europe, made the least attempt to Elizabeth of Bohemia 105 disguise their views as to the political meaning of the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth. Though, in the earlier half of his reign in England, her father, King James, had not covered his throne with glory, yet at the close of the year 1612 his quarrel with his Parliaments had hardly more than begun, and his system of foreign policy had not as yet revealed its ineptitude. In general, English patriots were still far from despairing, either of their country or even of the prospect of its speedily once more taking its proper share in deter- mining the great issues of European politics. Neither was King James I himself blind to the responsibilities of his position ; but he viewed them in his own way. In the great conflict between the House of Habsburg in both its branches (Spanish and Austrian) and its foes, to which Europe had breathlessly looked forward, till in 1609 the foremost among the enemies of that house, Henry IV of France, was removed by assassination, James had hoped to play the honourable, the blessed, part of pacificator ; and those who like may sneer at an ambition than which no nobler has ever animated a royal breast. But, as you know, the folly of James lay in his delusion that wise words and well-argued despatches weigh in the political balance against irritation, ambi- tion, passion and real or supposed self-interest. Even in his earlier days, he sought to make himself acceptable beforehand as an arbiter, by connecting himself as closely as possible with the leading Powers on both sides. This, together with a pride of descent natural in a Stewart and a Scotchman, led him to negotiate concern- ing marriages for his children with half the great Houses in Europe. In the first year of his reign, in 1603, he had io6 Historical drunk to the union between his children Henry and Elizabeth and the Dauphin of France and his eldest sister; but, no sooner had negotiations for peace with Spain been opened in the following year, than a Spanish marriage was, at least in passing, spoken of for the Prince of Wales. In 1607, James being specially anxious to conciliate Spanish goodwill on account of his own Catholic subjects, the project was started of marrying the Princess Elizabeth to the son of the Duke of Savoy, the brother-in-law of Philip III of Spain. This scheme likewise came to naught, because Pope Paul V refused to assent to it if, as had been stipulated, the Princess was to keep her own religion. On the other hand, a subsequent demand for his daughter's hand had been refused by King James himself. The youthful King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, was not a potentate that seemed worth purchasing at such a price; how could the House of Stewart mate with the House of Vasa, that had not been royal for quite a century? But, in 1609, as already observed, a change came over the complexion of affairs in Europe; and, soon after- wards, the negotiations began which ended in a double matrimonial alliance between the Houses of France and Spain. It was very clear to James I to which side the balance would now incline, were the religious difficulties in Germany, together with the expiration of the truce between Spain and the United Netherlands, to lead to a European conflict. He, accordingly, concluded a Treaty of Alliance with the Protestant Union the association of German Princes so called and resolved, to the great delight of his people, upon the marriage of Elizabeth of Bohemia 107 his daughter Elizabeth with the young Elector Palatine. The Palatine House boasted a great antiquity ; its head had precedence among the temporal Electors of the Empire next to the King of Bohemia; and, of old, an Elector Palatine after whom Elizabeth afterwards named one of her sons Rupert, had himself wielded the Imperial authority. The territories of the Palatinate, which before the Thirty Years' War extended far to both sides of the Rhine, and were, in one direction, contiguous to those of Bohemia, might perhaps be con- sidered the most enviable of all the principalities in the Empire ; who that has looked down upon part of them from the terrace of the castle at Heidelberg can imagine a fairer prospect of smiling productivity than this land of wine and corn and fruit-trees ? The genius of our greatest landscape-painter could hardly make it seem more radiant than it is in its own summer sunshine; and when, in the evil days of which we are about to speak and in those which followed, its prosperity was trodden down again and again under the iron hoof of war, the rapidity of its recovery was wonderful, and not less so the elasticity of its population, a kindly, light- hearted race in whom nothing seems able to repress the enjoyment of life and of the good things thereof. But, to the politicians of Elizabeth's young days, the marriage had a special significance beyond its generally acceptable nature. The Palatine House had, partly by force of circumstances, partly by the ambitious zeal of some of its Princes and their agents, come to be identi- fied with the active party in the Empire which we might call that of the Advanced Protestant Opposition. Palatine soldiers had fought against the Guises in France io8 Historical and against the Spanish patron of the Guises in the Netherlands; and, under Frederick V's father the Elector Frederick IV, the head of the Protestant Union aforesaid, a vast structure of designs had been formed against the policy, and indeed against the very existence, of the House of Austria. The young Elector Frederick V was not of age at the time of his father's death. But, already as a boy, he had been deeply imbued with the principles of Calvinism and the ideas of anti-Habsburg policy at the Court of the Duke of Bouillon in Sedan, where he received his education; and, as a matter of course , these ideas had been fostered in him by his mother, Louisa Juliana, the daughter of the great William of Orange. The subsequent misfortunes of Frederick V have ensured him much sympathy, and his wife never found any fault with him, except on one occasion when a dispute as to precedence arose between them, and when she had the satisfaction of obtaining her father's most solemn approval. "You may be certain," wrote James to Frederick, "that no father has ever taken more pains than I shall to make his daughter humbly obey her husband ; but, in matters concerning her dignity and the honour of her royal birth, she would be unworthy to live if she gave up what is due to her without my knowledge and approval." Frederick's nature, however, though he had thoroughly assimilated sound Calvinistic principles of belief and the political ambition of the party of which he deemed himself born to be the head, was weak and incapable of forming a judgment for itself a necessity from which no drill, however thorough, will save those who undertake great responsibilities. And so, like other weak men, he was guilty of the rash- Elizabeth of Bohemia 109 ness which springs from indecision, and this unfor- tunately for himself at the most critical point of his career. To Englishmen, however, the Palsgrave, as they called him when he came a-wooing, was a handsome and intelligent young Prince, heir to a great, though rather uncertain, future, the nephew of Maurice Prince of Orange, heroic father's heroic son ; and the marriage between him and the Princess Elizabeth would intimately connect together some of the chief Protestant Houses in Europe as it actually proved, not only the English and the Palatine and Nassau Houses, but also those of Brandenburg, Sweden and Transylvania. The young Elector had already presented himself in England, when a shadow fell across the promising aspect of things by the death on November 6th, 1612, of Elizabeth's elder brother Henry Prince of Wales. The young Prince had been of late distracted by a whole series of suggestions as to Catholic Princesses, by marry- ing one or the other of whom he might contrive a nice balance to the marriage of his sister with a Protestant Prince. Deeply interested in the latter project, he had begun to add to it a scheme of his own of taking the opportunity of his sister's departure to Germany to accompany her thither, where he intended to give judicious considerations and political drawbacks the go-by and choose a wife for himself. But as you know, the poor young Prince's dream, together with many other hopeful visions of which he was the central figure, came to a sudden end. He died in November, 1612, the victim of typhoid fever ; but, since the physicians of his time were unable to diagnose his disease, credulous no Historical Protestants may be pardoned for having attributed it to poison l . The great ones of this earth are not left much time in which to digest their joys or griefs. The brother's funeral was swiftly followed by the sister's wedding. The echoes of both events are still audible in our litera- ture; sometimes it is the same pens which neatly turn both condolences and congratulations. The death of the " young Marcellus of England " was elaborately mourned in Chapman's Epicedium. As for the wedding, the poet and playwright whose learning, experience and fertility of invention could never have found a more magnificent occasion for their exercise Ben Jonson was absent in France. But it was Jonson himself who sarcastically said that "painting and car- pentry are the soul of masque"; and Inigo Jones, the most attractive of architects and an incomparable mechanician, was at home to carry out, in cooperation with poets of the second order, combinations of fiery clouds lined with silver and fixed stars of extraordinary magnitude, and to devise raiment suitable to Virginian priests of the sun, and golden pavilions affording fit sojourn for Olympian knights. But, though the shows 1 [Prince Henry's portrait is perhaps the most charming in the delightful gallery of portraits illustrating Alexander Brown's Genesis of the U. States (2 vols, 1890). The names of brother and sister are united with those of the King and his second son, where one might not have expected to find them, in an ordinance of the Council of Virginia of May 1620, referring to "the foure ancient generall Burroughs, called James City, Henrico, Charles City and Kicowtan (which hereafter shall be called Elizabeth City, by the name of his Maiesties most vertuous and renowned daughter)." Cf. ib., vol. ii. p. 305. Cape Elizabeth on Smith's map of New England was presumably also named after her.] Elizabeth of Bohemia 1 1 1 of that Carnival week (for St Valentine's day, which had been appropriately fixed for the wedding, in the year 1613 coincided with Shrove Sunday) were very brilliant and very expensive one particular set of fireworks, which proved rather a failure than otherwise, cost not less than 9000 we turn with very faint interest to the ample records that are left of them. The odour of the poetical incense of Chapman and Beaumont and the rest has all but vanished with the smell of that futile gunpowder ; and the devices superintended by Francis Bacon have become as stale as those invented by John Taylor, the Water-poet. Indeed, in the midst of the' ' God give them joy, God give them joy" of the multitude, we rather look out, like illnatured crones, for those omens of misfortune of which there were enough and to spare. The bride laughed too much at the wedding, and her father yawned too much at the festivities which followed, and which he finally found himself obliged to cut short in fear of the bill and the House of Commons. But, perhaps, most ominous of all was the fact that there was missing among the representatives of foreign Powers bidden to the ceremony the Spanish Ambassador, who "was, or would be, sick." At last towards the end of April 1613 the young Electress and her husband found themselves on board the Prince Royal, a vessel the name of which must have vividly recalled to her the memory of her brother, whose heart had been in ships and ship-building. In what was the Electress Elizabeth's heart at this time ? In what is the heart of most young ladies of seventeen, whose mothers set them the example of never losing a ball and spend as much time on that castle of perseverance H2 Historical the head-dress of the period as did Anne of Den- mark? For many a day, Elizabeth's life in Germany continued to be one of festivities, masquerades, hunts and banquets entertainments, perhaps at times a little duller 1 than those in England, but hardly less costly and, according to German fashion, more solidly con- tinuous 2 . Nowhere, however, did the fashions of France more signally transform conditions of life in the first quarter of the iyth century than in the Palatinate; and the main share in the change was due to the English marriage of the Elector. This marriage, if the active diplomacy of Count Christian of Anhalt and others proved successful, might lead to great things in the future ; for the present, it led to nothing of more direct benefit to the people than sham-fights and pantomimes, and simul- taneously to an influx such as the streets and lanes of Heidelberg had never seen before of envoys extra- ordinary and dowry-commissioners, of chamberlains and equerries, of ladies-in-waiting and chambermaids, of pages and running footmen and attendants describ- able and indescribable altogether a small army of 374 souls. No Palatine Princess before Elizabeth had required such an allowance for pin-money; none had claimed a chapel for herself with a chaplain and other 1 E.g. The Seven Deadly Sins at Heidelberg. See Nichols, Progresses of King James /, vol. n. p. 618. 2 She suffered after birth of her first child, but " rumbled it away with riding or hunting." Angell, Letters to the Secretary Nicholas, 239. As to her love of shooting, see her letter to Nicholas from "Hugh" (the Hague) September aist, 1654, in Evelyn's Diary, vol. iv. p. 213. [Life at her Court seems to have been too much for Nicholas Ferrar, who probably might, had he chosen, have become her secretary. It must have rather suited Lord Arundel who with his Countess went out with her for a short time.] Elizabeth of Bohemia 113 appurtenances ; in short, she introduced a rage for ex- penditure, in which, unfortunately, as in other concerns she had the full sympathy and support of her husband. His favourite way of spending money was the most bottomless of all building : and he was just engaged in perfecting the palace gardens at Heidelberg in the newest French style with orangerie and water- works, when he quitted his palace and his hereditary lands, to which he was never to return as their master. For the rest, there seems to have been much that was pleasing and refined, and nothing that was gross or offensive, in the life of the Heidelberg Court; where formerly, ac- cording to the testimony of Scaliger, as much wine had been swallowed in the year as in four considerable French towns, but now a tone of elegance and good manners prevailed; and the young Electoral couple set the example of conjugal affection and domestic happiness. It is true that they took existence rather easily at a time when the air was full of rumours of war and trouble ; the French gaiety which, with the French language, the Electress made fashionable in her Court could not but sooner or later seem out of accordance with the grave responsibilities from which her husband could not escape; matters of State. were forgotten in the affairs of Court-life; and the future seemed bright when Elizabeth gave birth to her eldest son, and half the Protestant Powers in Europe were represented round his baptismal font. Fifteen years afterwards, when his parents were in exile and their hopes of restoration had little left to buoy them up, this young Prince (Henry Frederick) was drowned in his father's presence off Haarlem in the Zuider Zee. W. P. I H4 Historical I have no time, though I am not without materials, for filling up this sketch. But it is, I think, well to picture to ourselves Elizabeth as she really was in these brief years of happiness, in order that we may refuse to accept the ordinary version of her conduct in the crisis of her husband's destinies and her own. The great opportunity for which the Palatine diplomatists and their party had so long schemed had come at last, when by the death of the Emperor Matthias in 1619 there was a vacancy on the Imperial throne. The House of Austria and its supporters set up as candidate Ferdinand of Styria, a prince of proved energy and unflinchingly resolved to suppress heresy where it was in his power to do so. This Ferdinand of Styria had been formerly acknow- ledged as successor to the Bohemian and Hungarian thrones; but troubles had broken out between the Utraquists (descendants of the followers of Hus) and the Government in Bohemia. The deed of violence had been committed from which we date the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War; and so far was Ferdinand from being able to establish himself at Prague, that he had been actually menaced by the Bohemian leaders, with an army at their back, in his palace at Vienna. Yet, thanks to his resolution and the prompt decision of his friends, he proved stronger at the election for the Imperial throne than the Elector Palatine, whose opposition, at the head of the Protestant Union, first hesitated and then col- lapsed 1 ; and Ferdinand was elected Emperor. But, on 1 A very curious and little remembered intrigue was that con- nected with the attempt, in which the Palatine party shared, to induce Duke Maximilian of Bavaria to become a candidate for the Imperial throne, while the Bohemian Estates also thought of him for their King. The House of Bavaria, which had a longer memory in Elizabeth of Bohemia 115 the very evening on which the victory of the House of Austria and the defeat of the Palatine policy was proclaimed at Frankfort, the news arrived that the Bohemian Estates had deposed Ferdinand from the Bohemian throne and had elected Frederick V, Elector Palatine 1 , King in his stead. "Thou hast it now." Not by his own action, how- ever, but by that of his busy diplomatists, and by the hopes of the Bohemian Estates that, what with his Protestant Union, and with his English and Dutch and Danish and other connexions, he would be able, with the aid of Bethlen Gabor of Transylvania, to pull their aristocratic Protestant state-machine out of the slough, he had come within reach of a royal Crown. So Frederick ultimately resolved to enter Bohemia, not as some had designed, by way of interposition only, but as King. He had only to stretch forth his hand, and the kingdom was his, with its large dependencies and with the second electoral vote attached to it at the Imperial Diet. He afterwards said that, in accepting, he followed an inner voice, which, he thought, spoke the Will of God in this call. It may well be that such was his belief; for his was a religious nature and, in spite of his lightness of dis- such matters than the House of Habsburg, was slow in forgetting its own magnanimity on the occasion. See M. Doebert, Bayern und (Esterreich (Munich, 1900), p. 14. 1 William von Rappa eloquently recommended the Elector Palatine to the Bohemian Estates. (It will be remembered that Frederick was not far away from the Bohemians when residing at Amberg.) As to the claims to the Bohemian Crown of the Dean of Ely, Humphrey Tindall, who died in 1614, see Bentham's History and Antiquities of the C. and C. Church of Ely. Except his brass and that of Bishop Goodrich all memorials of the kind in the Cathedral were "taken off" in 1541. 82 n6 Historical position, imbued with Calvinistic habits of thought. The policy of acceptance was certainly only advocated by a few of the Protestant Princes around him, and by a single one among his Councillors. Of his foreign allies, Maurice of Orange and the Duke of Bouillon were in favour of acceptance; as for King James of England, he required much fuller information before he could abandon his present attitude, which amounted, not to his being against acceptance, but to his being desirous of not being regarded as having given advice in favour of it. But what of King James' daughter, Frederick's consort, the Electress Elizabeth? Again and again, the assertion has been repeated that it was her urgent representations which determined his acceptance; and the apocryphal saying which I give in its original form has been attributed to her : that she would rather eat sourcrout with a King, than roast meat with an Elector 1 . In truth this view of her conduct, which is altogether unsupported by satisfactory evidence, while it probably does more than justice to her ambition, does less than justice to the best qualities of her nature. I have already spoken incidentally of her granddaughter, the freespoken Elizabeth of Orleans; and we have the unexceptionable testimony of this assuredly wellin- formed personage, to the effect that, at the time of the offer of the Bohemian Crown, the Electress knew nothing whatever about the matter, and in those days thought only about plays, masquerades and the reading of 1 In Larrey's Histoire d'Angleterre, vol. iv. p. 18, this takes the form of a reproach that, if he had not the courage to accept a King's Crown, he should not have married a King's daughter. Elizabeth of Bohemia 117 romances. On the other hand, when the die had been cast, it was something beyond mere thoughts of vanity and earthly ambition which steeled her brave heart for her share in the effort. In the same spirit in which her unfortunate husband believed himself to be following a Higher Voice, when he abandoned the use of the reason- ing faculties bestowed upon him by a Higher Power- in the same spirit in which his last hours in his beloved Palatinate were spent in religious exercises and prayer Elizabeth his wife declared her readiness to bow to the will of God and to suffer, if need were, what He should see fit to ordain. She added, as if to show that what had hitherto been her most precious treasures were no longer such that she would readily, in case of necessity, pledge her jewels and whatever else she possessed in the world. What little has been preserved of their correspondence in this period seems to show that Frederick's resolution was then more positive than Elizabeth's, and that the affection of her "pauvre Ce'ladin" (as he calls himself) for his wife was the determining element in her conduct 1 . Thus, if Elizabeth showed heroism at this crisis, it certainly was heroism of the most strictly feminine type. And if the true account be that which I have given, then she also showed true feminine wisdom ; for no man wishes for good advice, even from his wife, when he has taken a step which it is too late to recall. It is from this time forward that Elizabeth's trials began, and that the true quality of her metal was tested by hard experience. It must be allowed that the part which her husband and she were called upon to play during the twelvemonth which they spent as King and 1 See Sir J. Bromley's Royal Letters, p. 22. n8 Historical Queen at Prague was an extremely difficult one. The pride of the Bohemian Estates was a compound of national self-consciousness and religious stiff-necked- ness 1 ; and, for whatever purpose they had chosen their new King, it was not in order that he should govern them as well as reign over them. As for wider popular sympathy, much was not to be expected from a peasantry a deputation of which had in blissful ignorance saluted King Frederick at the gates of Prague with cries of "Vivat rex Ferdinandus\" The mistakes of which Frederick was guilty were chiefly mistakes of omission ; in his main mistake of commission the maintenance of rigid Calvinistic forms in religious worship among a people which had no sympathy with this type of Protestantism 2 we are not obliged to suppose his wife to have had a share ; for she was no Calvinist and seems never to have had any love for Calvinism. She did her best to make herself and her husband popular checking the insolence provoked in her courtiers by the manners and customs of the outlandish capital, and pleasing all and sundry by that gracious custom of shaking hands, 1 We have it on the authority of Jacob Bohme as an eye-witness of Frederick's entry into Prague that he was well received by the Estates as a body, and after the manner of previous royal entries. 2 The accounts of the Protestant changes introduced by the new comers, and of the differences between the religious notions of the Calvinist King and his Utraquist subjects are curious, but cannot be here examined. (See Peschek, Geschichte der Gegenreformation in Bohmen, vol. I.) The King's unwise action was largely due to the zeal of his Court-preacher, Abraham Scultetus (Schulz). (The Queen had a Court-preacher of her own, who is called Alexander Scapman.) The royal ordinance commanding all Church bells in the kingdom to be taken down and brought to Prague castle, may have had other than Puritanical reasons. Elizabeth of Bohemia 119 which is to this day the delight and wonder of foreign nations in English ladies. But she could hardly be expected to understand that her ways and those of her surroundings were strange to her new subjects ; and that from the holding of balls on great Church holidays to the dresses worn at those balls by the Queen and her ladies, Utraquists found precise reasons enough for wagging their grave heads against their rulers. The birth of a son, on December 27th, could not but increase her popularity; though at this very time her husband is stated to have aroused discontent by proposing to remove the crucifix from its timehonoured place on the bridge. If, towards the close of this period, her spirits occasionally sank, and her husband had to sustain her by loving encouragements, we shall not judge her harshly on that account ; the time was at hand when hers was to seem to observers the more gallant and royal spirit, and the one which met misfortune most un- dauntedly. Before the year 1 620 was out, the battle of Prague had been fought ; Bohemia was lost ; and the question now was only whether the Palatinate could be preserved for the Elector, or at least for his children. " The Palatin- ate" old Louisa Juliana, Frederick's mother, had cried, as from the window of her sickroom she witnessed her son's departure, "has gone into Bohemia." Was he leaving the Palatinate, as well as Bohemia, behind him, when, on the evening of the rout before the walls, the carriage of his Queen headed the long stream of vehicles which flowed out of Prague gates ? All hopes of Hun- garian aid were, on that very evening, found to be at an end ; but an element of comfort might be sought in the fact that in the procession were two English envoys, I2O Historical with whom King Frederick had just been finishing dinner, when the news reached him that the battle was about to begin. Impetuous as usual at the wrong moment, he had rushed on the scene; but, this time, he had come too late. The Queen now entreated her father, King James, to take pity on her and hers, or they would be utterly ruined. For herself, she had resolved, she said, not to desert her husband, and if he was to perish, to perish by his side. And, albeit the harder fate was reserved for her of long surviving the man whom she truly loved, never was promise more faithfully kept. Long after her father's empty words had been succeeded by a feeble and transitory spasm of action; long after her brother, King Charles I, less trustworthy even than King James although less given to the habit of aggravating duplicity by discourse had lost the power to raise a swordblade in her cause, she continued at her post 1 . The flight of Frederick and Elizabeth had at first been directed to Silesia, a dependency at that time of Bohemia; but soon it became clear to him that his subjects had no thought of anything but purchasing the best terms possible for themselves, and he was obliged to send on his wife before him, to find what shelter she could in the territories of his brother-in-law the Elector George William of Brandenburg. This Prince, the Calvinist sovereign of a Lutheran land, was divided between fears of the Swedes and respect for the Emperor. He would probably have preferred to 1 The Elector George William, in 1624, made a feeble attempt to revive the Protestant Union, which, as will be seen, had in the meantime been dissolved. Soon afterwards, his own land was drawn into the vortex of the struggle. Elizabeth of Bohemia 121 obey the Emperor's mandate and keep his Palatine relatives outside his domains ; but, for very shame, he had at last to accede to their request, so far as, at Christmas time 1620, to grant to Queen Elizabeth a momentary refuge in the Brandenburg fortress of Kiistrin. There, she gave birth to her fifth child, Maurice, the troubled circumstances of whose earliest days prefigured his stormy life, with its mysterious end in some distant and unknown sea. The Queen and her followers had hardly bread enough to eat, and, when she was joined by her husband, this only made matters worse. They moved on to Berlin, where there was neither welcome nor safety for them, though a shelter was granted to their young children "our dear little creatures" as Frederick calls them in a touching letter to his wife, at the Elector's Court. Thus it came to pass that the early training of Elizabeth's eldest daughter and namesake fell into the hands of her grandmother Louisa Juliana, who soon afterwards likewise became an exile at Berlin ; and that the girl's nature was moulded into a character very unlike her mother's. Meanwhile, the Queen and her husband journeyed by different routes to Wolfenbuttel in Brunswick, and thence to the Hague, where they were received by Maurice of Orange in the presence of a large assemblage of princes, nobles and foreign ambassadors. Here, then, was a sign that their calamity had not yet deprived them of all friends ; but the Stadholder of the Netherlands had his hands full, nor was the arm of the young Republic long enough to reach far into the Empire. Most was still hoped from England, where, as is not uncommonly the case with us when a question of foreign affairs presents itself in an unmistakable form, 122 Historical the whole population seemed wild with passionate excitement. Only the King and the Prince of Wales took matters coolly ; and, for the present, it was thought sufficient to send Lord Digby (as he now was) to Vienna and other Courts, to see that there was nothing wrong about the Palatinate. Meanwhile, the Protestant Union had dissolved itself, in order to avoid incurring an awk- ward responsibility for the proceedings of its late chief not too soon, for, after many empty words, the Emperor declared that the ban of the Empire pronounced against Frederick must be carried into execution. The Upper Palatinate was occupied by the Duke of Bavaria, who had been created Elector in Frederick's stead, and Spanish troops flooded the Lower. Digby thought himself fortunate to have dissuaded the Protestant condottiere Mansfeld from turning traitor to the Pala- tine cause; but he could or would do little to serve it. Near or far, no ally seemed willing or ready or able to strike a blow for the inheritance of Elizabeth's children ; the Palsgrave was " on leave," according to a cruel con- temporary ballad of which I possess a reprint, adorned by a coarse woodcut representing him with his wife and children, the youngest carried huckaback by his mother, who querulously moralises with her spouse on his downfall 1 . And yet, already in this year 1621, the rumour went that the Rose of Bohemia and, with her, the imperilled cause of German Protestantism had found a true knight, who took no thought of chances of failure like King 1 So unfair was vulgar comment to a Princess who, either at this time or later indignantly refused to listen to the proposal that her eldest son should be allowed to have possession of the Palatinate if he would adopt the Catholic religion. Elizabeth of Bohemia 1 23 James, or of terms of payment like Mansfeld. This was Duke Christian of Brunswick, the Administrator of the bishopric of Halberstadt, whom the fugitive King and Queen may have first met with at Wolfenbiittel, when his brother, the reigning Duke, had been discreetly absent. Christian is described with sufficient accuracy in an English letter of the day as " a Temporal Bishop " ; and very "temporal" is his appearance, in a portrait taken about this time, in an embroidered tunic with white sash, a blond moustache to match his blue eyes, and a love-lock, in Cavalier fashion, curling by his right ear; he was at the time a young soldier of about two-and-twenty years of age, three years younger than his cousin, the titular Queen of Bohemia. Yet either her hard fate or her beautiful eyes made him resolve to devote himself henceforth to her cause; and, according to a story which has been traced with certainty so far back as the year 1646, he obtained possession of one of the Queen's gloves and placed it in his helmet, with a vow that he would return it to her within the walls of Prague, her own reconquered capital. When (supposing the story to be true) this meeting between the cousins occurred is unknown; indeed, strangely enough, there is no actual evidence of their having met before Christian began his campaigns, or of their ever having exchanged letters. On the other hand, we read in a letter from Elizabeth to the faithful Sir Thomas Roe 1 , that 1 Sir Thomas Roe's settlement on the Amazon (of which river he was the discoverer) had excited the interest of Henry Prince of Wales. In 1614, at the request of the East India Company, King James appointed him his Ambassador to the Great Mogul. He returned to England in August 1619, after materially contributing towards the laying of the foundations of Anglo-Indian intercourse. 124 Historical "the due Cristian hath engaged himself onelie for my sake in our quarell"; and more interesting still is the well-known statement of Christian himself to his mother, made at a time when he had lost not only his bishopric, but one of his arms, in the contest. (This latter loss befel him at the battle of Fleurus. When the limb had to be severed from his body the intrepid Duke bade the trumpets sound, exclaiming: "And though both arm and leg be lost, I'll fight the priests at any cost." So ran one of the many popular songs of which this dare-devil bishop was the hero.) To his mother he writes argumentatively, like a boy at school regretting, but at the same time rather proud of the marks left on him by the fray: "As to the charge that I am fond of war, I must confess that I am, inasmuch as this liking is inborn in me and will probably remain in me till my end, and would to God it were not in me ! Likewise, I will confess that since I was fond of war, I might well have engaged myself in a different quarrel from that He then showed much interest in the affairs of the Virginia Company, of whose settlement the King wished him to be chosen Governor. But, before long, he was again engaged in the affairs of the East, and from 1622 to 1626 was Ambassador to the Sublime Porte. In 1629 he headed an embassy to the King of Poland " and other princes and states in the eastern parts," and in 1630 was commissioned to negotiate peace between Poland and Sweden. After negotiating a Treaty with Denmark in 1639, he, in 1641, attended the Diet of Ratisbon, in order to mediate on behalf of the Elector Palatine, to whose interests, as to those of the royal family of England, he was indefatigably devoted. He died in 1644. The Emperor Ferdinand III said of him " I have met with many gallant persons of many nations, but I scarce ever met with an ambassador till now." (Cf. Alexander Brown, Genesis of the United States, pp. 984 ff.) Elizabeth of Bohemia 125 which I actually chose, and thus have neither angered my mother's grace nor risked my land and subjects; but that it has so happened, has been due to no other cause than the great affection which I had for the Queen of Bohemia 1 ." Taking all the evidence together and remembering, in addition, that Bishop Christian came of a romantic stock (he was the son of Duke Henry Julius, well known to literary students as the author of some remarkable plays), we have no reason for doubting that he was to Elizabeth a true knight and an unselfish champion. His enthusiasm in some measure ennobles his share in one of the most savage and turbid periods of the great Religious War; and inclines us to view with something like sympathy his efforts to cut, with the swords of his mercenaries, through what, in his wild way, he desig- nated as the accursed Spanish practices and the crocodile offers of Tilly. He would hear of no half-measures and no mediation ; as swift as lightning in war, and not less deadly, when he descended upon the foe, he was abhorred by the priests, upon whom together with the relics of their saints he laid his ruthless hands, and 1 The quasi-German word affection is a shade or two cooler in significance than our English word affection; moreover, an official paper indited by Christian is extant in which he describes himself as doing chivalrous service to the King (not to the Queen) of Bo- hemia; and it may be thought worth pointing out that Elizabeth's husband expressed the warmest regard for this knightly servant of hers, and that the romantic relation, whatever may have been its temperature, between Christian and Elizabeth never troubled the conjugal love and the confidence in one another of Elizabeth and Frederick. Christian, it may be added, was godfather to their daughter Louisa Hollandina, afterwards Abbess of Maubuisson. Cf. Bromley's Royal Letters t p. 20. 126 Historical feared even by friendly diplomatists, whose proposals he tore into shreds and cast into the mud at their feet. In the campaign of 1624, he fought with an arm of iron ; and was content to take part in a subordinate capacity in the earlier military doings of 1626. Nevertheless, a few months before this he seems to have felt himself neglected by his adored Queen, since a letter from his sister Sophia of Nassau is extant in which she bids him "not entertain such an opinion of la belle, as that she should have forgotten your Worship ; for I know better, since I scarcely receive a letter from her without men- tion of your Worship." Christian's willingness and ability to do service to the Protestant cause, with which Elizabeth's was identified, had been far from exhausted, when, a few months after he had received this sisterly consolation, a fever put an end to his unquiet life. Neither the tardy awakening of Elizabeth's father in England to the craft with which the Spaniards had mocked his hopefulness, nor the regular intervention, in 1626, of her uncle Christian IV of Denmark led to the recovery of the Palatinate by her disinherited husband and their children. The English aid came too late, and was ineffective when it came ; and the Danes were crushed between the united forces of Tilly and Wallenstein. For a time, Elizabeth had been sanguine as to the results which might flow from the accession of her brother Charles I to the throne ; and he was, no doubt, animated by very kindly sentiments towards her. But failure was the doom of every political undertaking in which, during the first period of his rule, Charles and his favourite Buckingham embarked. By the time when this part of Charles's reign drew to its close, he was completely at Elizabeth of Bohemia 127 issue with his Parliament ; and the prospect of his being able effectually to further the interests of his sister and her family was virtually though it might not yet be nominally at an end. So far as I can see, it was in these years, when failure followed upon failure, and hope was baffled after hope, that Elizabeth's character began to develope its real strength. The exiled pair and their children, after re- maining for some time at the Hague, found that supplies ran short, more especially when money was with diffi- culty obtainable in England, and ultimately chiefly resided at Rhenen, a retired place in wooded country on the Rhine, not very far below Arnhem. Evelyn, who saw their abode there, describes it as " a neate Palace or Country House, built after the Italian manner, as I remember." Frederick was, from time to time, absent, fighting in his own cause or in that of his Dutch protectors ; and Elizabeth had to learn, as best she might, to possess her soul in quiet. This must have been hard enough to her active nature, which could scarcely find the excite- ments of the chase sufficient 1 , and to her vehement temper, which occasionally burst out into angry in- vective both against open enemies and against neutral friends. " I wish," she exclaims "the Turk would give the Emperor a sound beating for it is difficult to decide which is the worse devil of the two." And, again : " I have no hopes in the Elector of Saxony he will ever be a beast." And yet, she was gradually learning 1 Of her love of horsemanship mention has already been made. So, in the Stair MSS. (see Appendix to 8th Report of Historical MSS. Commission, Part III, 1881), she writes to Lord Northampton: " I pray commend my love to your ladie; your white horse is a verie good one; I have ridden him." ia8 Historical her lesson, as may be gathered from such notices of her as that sent home as early as 1622 by Dudley Carleton, the English Ambassador at the Hague : " I know not so great a Ladie in the world, nor ever did (though I have seen many Courts) of such natural affections : an obedi- ent Daughter, a loving Sister, and a tender Wife, whose care of her Husband doth augment with his mis- fortunes." She had not lost her high spirit, but she had schooled herself to endure, and thus she helped her husband to continue to endeavour. At last, when, at the eleventh hour for the Protestant cause in the Empire, Gustavus Adolphus appeared as the deliverer, and in the years 1631 and 1632 swept victoriously through the Empire, the Palatine family, too, seemed on the eve of the fulfilment of hopes long deferred and all but abandoned. But the political ambition of the Swedish King had conceived designs in the accomplishment of which the restoration of Frederick V was a merely- secondary incident; the unfortunate Elector, instead of being allowed to command the troops sent to liberate his inheritance, had to follow the northern King like an expectant vassal, and wrote despondently to his wife. And then, the hand of fate once more intervened; Gustavus fell at Liitzen, and a few days afterwards Frederick himself lay dead at Mainz. There is a ghastly epilogue to his melancholy story over which I pass : his heart was buried at the church of Oppenheim in his own Palatinate ; but the rest of his remains were borne about, in haste and fear, from place to place, nor was it till three years afterwards that they were at last composed in peace, on foreign soil, at Metz in Lorraine. Elizabeth of Bohemia 1 29 With this death in the year 1632 begins the most tragic part of Elizabeth's story. Another generation as generations are reckoned was to pass away before in 1662 she, too, found rest. During sixteen years, her life, it is not too much to say, was a continual effort on behalf of her children. On the news of her husband's death, her brother King Charles had invited her to England ; but she, for the present, declined his brotherly hos- pitality, declaring with touching dignity that the custom of her husband's country demanded that, for a year, she should not change her domicile. On the other hand, she strove to induce King Charles to use his influence on behalf of the heir to the Palatinate, her son Charles Lewis, whom she sent to England to attend to his own interests ; and, at one time, she even levied a small army to aid in asserting them. For a brief space of time, while the Swedes were still in the ascendant in the south and the west, the Lower Palatinate was restored to her family ; but the fortune of arms again changed, the intervention of France in the War wholly altered the position of affairs ; and it was only by the most extraordinary per- sistence that, in the Peace of Westphalia, a settlement was obtained, whereby the legitimate claimant recovered a moiety of his inheritance, and with it regained the title of Elector, though without the precedence which had of old appertained to the Palatine House. I am compelled to relinquish my intention of pur- suing, in something like detail, the unwearying endea- vours by which Elizabeth had essentially contributed to this result. During the whole of this time, she had received only very intermittent help from England, and, under the pressure of the Civil War, this finally W. P. I Q 130 Historical altogether stopped. The generosity of the House of Orange necessarily came to an end, when, rather later, the male line of that House was reduced to a solitary infant (afterwards our King William III). With some of the ladies of that House, the Stewart family seems to have been on terms the reverse of pleasant. On the other hand, Elizabeth owed much to the munificence of the Estates of the Dutch Provinces. But she was frequently in terrible straits. Already in 1645, one f her sons describes her Court as worried by rats and mice, but most of all by creditors; and one of her daughters, who confesses that she was at the time young enough to think everything fine fun, says that in those days at her mother's Court the banquets were richer than Cleopatra's, because diamonds as well as pearls had been sacrificed for the providing of them. And yet, Elizabeth was still the recipient of the bounty of the most faithful of all her English friends. It was the pride and pleasure of Lord Craven 1 to pour into her lap a great part of the wealth which he had inherited from his father, sometime Lord Mayor of London, and which the Parliamentary party could not forgive him for declining to spend in a cause which seemed to have claims upon the City. The first Lord Craven was a gallant soldier, whom Gustavus Adolphus himself complimented on 1 What is known concerning the first Earl of Craven and his relations to the Queen of Bohemia, I have endeavoured to put to- gether in my notice of him, in vol. xn of the Dictionary of National Biography. Though it furnishes more information than the Mar- gravine of Anspach (see her Memoirs) found obtainable, additions might probably be made to it ; but the story is one of those which is likely never to be fully told. Elizabeth of Bohemia 131 his prowess, and who suffered in person as well as in pocket for the cause to which he had devoted himself; and his fidelity, tried in battle and prison, was likewise proof against a long exile of twenty years in the Low Countries, during much of which he was in attendance upon the Court of the exiled Queen of Bohemia. There is pathos enough in this devotion, even without the possible conclusion for no evidence on the subject has ever been made public of a secret marriage between Elizabeth and her faithful cavalier. The youngest daughter of Eliza- beth , who afterwards not unworthily played a conspicuous part in history as the Electress Sophia of Hanover and heiress to the English throne, gives in her remarkably frank Memoirs a most graphic description of her mother's Court, its troubles and its humours, and in the course of her reminiscences repeatedly refers to Lord Craven. To her remembrance, he was a kind old gentleman with a purse full of money and with a thousand little trinkets always at the service of the young ones ; and she does not seem to have thought him quite as brilliant a mem- ber of society as he wished to be. Among other things which she heard him say, for the sake of effect, was that, when he liked, he could think of nothing at all ; and, to prove his possession of this peculiar power he would shut his eyes and observe : " At this present time I am thinking of nothing." Did this impertinent young lady suspect the " 'vieux milord" as she calls him, of a tendre for her mother? I fear that Sophia had little reverence in her temperament, and of her mother she nowhere speaks with any warmth 1 . 1 Another faithful attendant on the Queen's exile, to whom she makes frequent humorous reference, was "reverent Dick Harding." 92 132 Historical Elizabeth's relations to her children are the theme of loud admiration on the part of some of her bio- graphers ; but I confess to some scepticism in connexion with this side of her life and nature. We have the testi- mony of her daughter Sophia, that the Queen could not abide young children, to whom she much preferred her dogs and monkeys ; so that she made a rule of sending her daughters to be educated at some little distance from the Hague and Rhenen, till they had fairly grown up. But, apart from this, if one looks a little closer, scant cordiality is observable between herself and most of the members of that numerous family, for which she suffered so bravely and strove so hard. Of her sons she must necessarily have known less than of her daughters ; but, on the part of the ladies, I see few signs of devoted attachment to their mother. Her eldest daughter, Elizabeth 1 , who had been partly educated by her pious Calvinistic grandmother, can hardly have been sym- pathetic to the Queen, in whose nature neither the love of metaphysical speculation nor religious enthusiasm had any place ; and, before her mother's exile in Holland came to an end, this Princess, who had there been the favourite pupil of Descartes, departed to seek the peace of her soul among the Quiet in the Land, to plunge into the deep waters of religious mysticism, and to become, in the retirement of the Protestant convent of Herford a fair saint whom even William Penn could put into his calendar. The second daughter of the Queen who Tom Killigrew was likewise a protege of hers, and she makes a humble suit to King Charles II on his behalf (in the letters to Sir E. Nicholas in Evelyn's Diary and Correspondence, n Jan. 1654-5). 1 See the paper on her in this volume. Elizabeth of Bohemia 133 had sworn that she would rather see one of her sons torn into pieces than become a Roman Catholic fled from her mother's house in secret, in order not only to become a convert to that faith, but to spend the rest of her life as Abbess of a French nunnery. It is true that in this Princess, christened Louisa Hollandina (in honour of her godparents, the States of Holland), while she was still of the world, there was no mystic vein, and that not all her monastic vows sat heavily upon her. Of Sophia I have already spoken she, at least, had in- herited from her mother a clear and vigorous intellect and a readiness to fulfil with a brave and cheerful heart the duties which life imposes ; but I do not think that her mother had taught her to love her very deeply. Among Elizabeth's sons, two of the younger became members of the Church of Rome ; those who came next, in inverse order of birth, were the Princes whose names are most familiar to English ears, the Prince Maurice and the Prince Rupert of our Civil War. The gallant Rupert, certainly, after he had, perforce, for a time sheathed his sword, seems to have spent much of his time with his mother, who cannot but have loved him for his dash and daring and who, it is said, took an interest in the chemical experiments with which the outlawed soldier beguiled his obligatory leisure. His brother Maurice, who, when they had been driven away from English soil, had, like Rupert, continued to fight for the Stewart cause as a privateer at sea, perished, no one knew where, in a storm off the Caribbee Islands that separated the ships of the two brothers many a long year after the same cruel element had, almost before the eyes of his mother, taken from her her 134 Historical eldest-born, Henry Frederick, at that time heir to the lost Palatinate. But from one at least of her children she might have looked for eager gratitude from her second, now her eldest, surviving son, Charles Lewis, who, through her self-sacrificing toil, even more than through his own efforts, had at last recovered his ancestral dignity and part of the land of his fathers. On him her hopes were naturally and necessarily fixed, more especially since the awful tidings had come only a few months after the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia of her royal brother's death on the scaffold at Whitehall. Elizabeth was deeply moved by the catastrophe, being of far too generous a nature to calculate, at such a moment, how much or how little her unfortunate brother had done for her. Ever afterwards, she wore a mourning-ring containing a piece of the King's hair, with a memento mori, after the fashion of those days, in the ghastly shape of a death's head. Her son Charles Lewis, now, largely owing to her exertions, Elector Palatine, was in England at the time of his uncle's execution, which, to do him justice, he had used his best endeavours to avert. In the troublous times in which his lot had fallen, he had sought to make friends where he could find them, and, recognising that it was with the Parliament that the ruling power was likely to lie in England for many a year to come, had counselled his uncle to come to terms with his adversaries, had blamed his brother Rupert for fighting on behalf of the King in the Civil War, and, bowing down in the temple of the Roundheads, had actually tarried in England till the bloody deed of the regicides had been Elizabeth of Bohemia 135 accomplished 1 . His motives had, perhaps, not been altogether those of an ignoble self-interest; for there was a vein of broad and generous statesmanship in Charles Lewis who on his restoration to Heidelberg proved a true father and benefactor to his sorely tried people. But whether or not he may be excused for his conduct in England, is it possible to pardon him for his conduct towards his mother? Though in the settlement of the Peace of West- phalia a money-payment had been stipulated for, as representing Elizabeth's jointure, there was no question of her obtaining it at present. The Palatinate was not only exhausted, it was stripped to the bone by the War ; its population was, literally, the merest fragment of what it had been one-fiftieth, according to contemporary calculations ! Heidelberg was partly in ruins ; the beauti- ful castle, which in Frederick and Elizabeth's day had emulated the chief palaces of Europe in grandeur and splendour, could not even serve as a habitation to their son. Moreover, it was only gradually that he recovered possession even of what had been given back to him ; not till 1652 did the last Spaniard quit the unhappy land. The hopes therefore were doomed to disappoint- ment which Elizabeth had cherished, that she might end 1 "As to Rupert, he did but his dutie....But I ame vexed to some time to knowe how unhandsomlie my sonne the Electour has carried him. You cannot imagine how it angers me to see that he that shoulde be the most kinde and civill shoulde be the least to the King [Charles II]. I hope now you will not blame me for not desiring to live with him. I coulde tell you more, but will not out of charitie, because he is my sonne/' (Letter to Nicholas, from the Hague, October i8th, 1655.) Charles Lewis actually sat in the Westminster Assembly of Divines called in 1642. 136 Historical her days in peace in the good town of Frankenthal, which had formerly been set apart for her, and which she had found decked in may-blossom and roses, when, forty years earlier she had entered it as a bride. In the meantime, however, never had fortune used her more harshly than it did now, when success had at last crown- ed her life-long endeavours. The States, she wrote, had consented to allow her a thousand florins a month, till she could relieve them of her presence but Heaven alone knew when this could be done. Her son the Elector, she reminded him, had not kept his promise of supplying her with money till he could pay her the whole of her jointure. She was, she protested, doing her best; but she had no wherewithal to pay her debts either old or new. As he loved her, let him answer! In return, he sent a little money and many apologies; and, gradually, the poor lady's hopes of seeing the Palatinate once more vanished into nothing. Is her son the Elector to be excused for his neglect ? Certain personal troubles at his own Court may have made him undesirous of his mother's presence; but he did not scruple to receive two of his sisters there. I think his terrible lack of money was at the bottom of his churlishness, and perhaps his wish to be at peace with the powers that were, and to let them forget the past, of which the Queen of Bohemia had been so prominent a part. Thus she had to remain in Holland, a pensioner of her good- natured and patient republican hosts 1 . One after the 1 Her correspondence with Sir Edward Nicholas, about this time, shows that she had not ceased to be a good hater. One of the objects of her dislike was Queen Christina of Sweden whether because of her resentment of King Gustavus Adolphus's treatment of the late Elizabeth of Bohemia 137 other of her daughters left her to marry or to settle in single comfort, according to their several fancies or dispositions. She was left alone. At last came the news, to which, of course, she must have long looked forward, that her nephew Charles, whom she had not long before received at her little Court as a penniless exile, and whom she tried to marry to one of her daughters, had been summoned home to the throne of their common ancestors. Was, then, the sun to shine upon her, after all, in her de- clining years, and, since her days were not to end in the Palatinate, might they end in her native England ? This at least was not denied to her, though even for this she had to wait for many a weary month, and though, at the very last, the English Government requested her to delay her journey. With her old spirit, she replied that she could not turn back now; though, rather later, she consented to wait. At the same time, she assured Rupert that her mind was made up for any kind of welcome, and that she did not intend to play the poor cousin. When she crossed the water at last, no cere- mony greeted her arrival; but a true friend was there to meet her the Earl of Craven, as he was now called who, on the Restoration, had recovered his estates. He hastened to offer the Queen the hospitality of Craven House, his mansion with its beautiful gardens in Elector Frederick, or because of the Danish blood in her. But her chief hatred was reserved for Cromwell "surely, he is the Beast in the Revelations, that all things and all nations doe worship; I wish him the like end, and speedilie." (Evelyn, vol. iv. p. 223.) In April 1655, she hoped that " the King would yett have another fling for it." But the time was not yet. 138 Historical pleasant and fashionable Drury Lane. After a time, she removed to a residence of her own, in Leicester Fields. Her royal nephew, without troubling himself very much about her or her affairs, showed her some of that inexpensive kindness which Charles II was usually willing to bestow. It should, however, be stated that he granted her a pension of which she did not live long enough to enjoy the first year's total, and promised that, if possible, her debts should be paid by Parliament. She was frequently seen with the Court in public; it was on these occasions that she seemed to the observant Pepys, who had the honour of kissing her hand, " a very debonaire, but a plain lady." For the rest, she had some unpleasant correspondence in these days with her son the Elector; but Prince Rupert, who himself now en- joyed great popularity in England, appears to have continued to show an affectionate interest in his mother. The proposal that her eldest daughter should come over to her met with no response. But, as many persons besides the Queen of Bohemia found, times had changed in England, although the King had his own again. Not a poet was alive of those who had sung her charms on St Valentine's Day long ago; hardly one perhaps survived of those thirty gentlemen of the Middle Temple who, at a banquet held on the morrow of the Bohemian catastrophe, had sworn on their drawn swords to live and die in her service. What cavalier cared now for that cause, or in truth cared very much for the cause of Protestantism itself? She herself was hardly more than a revenante, a ghost of the past come back. On February i3th, 1662 a few hours before the morning of what under happier circumstances would Elizabeth of Bohemia 139 have been her golden wedding-day Elizabeth died; and four days afterwards John Evelyn, in whom loyalty and Protestant sentiment were more closely blended than they were in many other English gentlemen of his age, made the following entry in his journal: "This night was buried in Westminster Abbey the Queene of Bohemia, after all her sorrows and afflictions being come to die in the arms of her nephew the King: also this night and the next day fell such a storm of hail, thunder and lightning as never was seen the like in any man's memorie, especially the tempest of wind being South West, which subverted besides huge trees, many houses, innumerable chimnies, and made such havoc at land and sea that severall perish 'd on both. Divers lamentable fires were also kindl'd at this time, so exceedingly was God's hand against this ungrateful and vicious Nation and Court." 6. TILLY 1 (The Saturday Review, January 30, 1864.) THAT sensational class of modern historians which is engaged in the now common process of whitewashing the fumosas imagines of the least popular among our ancestors, starts with much in its favour. It makes war on popular tradition ; and popular tradition is only too closely allied to popular prejudice, which never does things by halves. Thus, Nero, whom, notwithstanding recent efforts on his behalf, it is impossible to acquit of the removal of his mother, wives, and step-brother, has in addition been credited with the burning of Rome , of which he was, in all probability, not less innocent than were the Christians whom he burnt as the incendiaries. Henry VIII, whom even Mr Froude cannot prove not to have executed some of his wives, has acquired the reputation of having thus acted from a sheer fancy for cutting off the heads of his old loves before he was on with the new. At the same time, it is only in very exceptional cases that historical enquiry succeeds in proving the popular view of an historical character to be utterly false and unfounded. Such a case may possibly occur on a further consideration of the arguments of Mr Merivale , and his predecessors and successors , in favour of the Emperor Tiberius. A similar attempt has been made by the industry of F. Forster, on behalf of Wallenstein ; 1 Tilly im Dreissigjdhrigen Kriege. Von Onno Klopp. Stuttgart, 1861. Tilly 141 and many have been turned into thoroughgoing admirers of Schiller's hero by the evidence which Forster has adduced omitting to notice that which he has omitted. A new name has of late been added to the roll of the great misunderstood by M. Onno Klopp, a German Catholic historian of considerable industry and in- genuity. His subject for " rehabilitation" is none other than Tilly, the destroyer of Magdeburg. The new theory, according to which the fame of Tilly is as pure and unsullied as that of Bayard himself, has been pro- pounded by M. Klopp, both in his own name and in that of another historian. Few students of German history are unacquainted with the works of the learned Gfrorer, the biographer both of Gregory VII and of Gustavus Adolphus. A fourth edition of the latter work has been published during the present year, under the editorship of M. Onno Klopp, who supplies the place of the deceased historian. M. Klopp 's notions of an editor's duties in some degree resemble those of which an Association of repute thought fit to suppose the late Mr Turnbull guilty. He has corrected such errors as he " deemed undeniable, especially such as the author himself, had it been granted to him to revise his work once more, would have recognised and corrected." One of these errors of omission occurs in Gfrorer 's account of the fall of Magdeburg. The latter, who is by no means partial to the Protestant cause, vaguely observes that the great conflagration which arose shortly after the capture of the city could not have originated in the burning of two or three houses ordered by Pappenheim, but must have been begun by incendiaries. M. Klopp adds to this passage a dozen lines of his own, attempting 142 Historical to demonstrate that it was not the besiegers, but the besieged, who were the incendiaries, and refers for further proof of his interpolation to his own Life of Tilly. For it is his conduct towards conquered Magde- burg which constitutes the chief crux for the admirers of Bavaria's early military hero. The praises of Tilly are sung by M. Klopp in two bulky volumes, swelled by a vast accumulation of original documents. We say sung, for M. Klopp 's pen moves with a kind of rhythmical fervour not unlike that in which M. de Montalembert has narrated the legends of St Elizabeth. His account of the death of his hero is written in the style of a martyrology : The shadows of death drew near. A cold hand seemed to seize the old man, his eyes were turned aside. The confessor saw it. He raised the cross and cried, " Domine, in te speravi, non confundar in ceternum" At these words the dying man once more lifted up his eyes, his glances sought the cross, a smile played on his features, and his soul had fled. Without, the Swede stormed, and his cannon-balls howled round the resting- place of peace. A noble soul had passed away. The fact that posterity in general has regarded the memory of Tilly with less favourable eyes is attributed by M. Klopp, in the first place, to the figments of Gustavus Adolphus, and of his hired historiographers Spanheim and Chemnitz, who were followed blindly by English "High Church" writers like Harte, and by would-be philosophical historians like Voltaire. He further accounts for it by the prevailing belief that Tilly had a charmed life, and had sold himself to the devil; and, lastly, he inveighs against the mischievous influence of Schiller, whose principle was "to make historical Tilly 143 personages suffer whatever he chose under his hands." With regard to the latter charge, we are ready to concede that Schiller's History of the Thirty Years' War, though meant honestly, was written in no critical spirit. The fault rests less with himself than with those who forced a poet into the chair of a Professor of History. In his dramatic poem of Wallenstein he has little occasion to mention Tilly ; but he has dealt him scant justice in con- trasting the want of discipline in his camp with the good order reigning in that of Gustavus. Tilly, it is true, was not averse from priming his troopers with wine on the morning of a hot day's work (as at Wimpfen and at Magdeburg); but the discipline which he ordinarily maintained was highly to his credit, though it is chiefly to be accounted for by the fact that, of all the armies in the War, that of the League, commanded by him, alone enjoyed full and regular pay, from the well-stored coffers of Maximilian of Bavaria. As for the popular belief that Tilly was fest or gefroren that is, protected from bodily harm by the aid of the Evil One we attach little or no importance to it. The same story was current about many other leaders in the War, and above all about Wallenstein, whose popularity was certainly not diminished, if it was not rather enhanced, by it. We prefer, therefore, to restrict ourselves to a con- sideration of the first explanation offered namely, that Swedish mendacity and calumny attached to Tilly's name the stigma from which M. Klopp desires to free it. The first occasion on which the Swedish historians, and those who follow them, accuse Tilly of barbarity, is his treatment of the Swedish garrison of Neubrandenburg. Its commander refused to capitulate, being without 144 Historical orders from his King. The place was taken, and 2000 soldiers were put to the sword in cold blood. This act, M. Klopp avers, was quite in harmony with the military code of the Thirty Years' War, according to which the garrison of an untenable fortress had either to capitulate or to prepare itself for the worst. Wallenstein and Bernhard of Weimar are said to have acted on the same principle; and Gustavus himself is, on one occasion, stated to have threatened to hang the commander of a town, unless he consented to betray it. This is but a lame parallel, for a threat against one man differs from a massacre of 2000; while, with regard to the other in- stances, it must at all events be allowed that Tilly utterly outstripped his competitors in barbarously obeying a most barbarous law. The true parallel to his conduct is to be found in Sulla's wholesale destruction of the 8000 Samnite prisoners in the Campus Martius. "Neu- brandenburg quarter" became a watchword in the mouth of the Swedes, till a yet bloodier name came to be substituted in its place. It is impossible to ignore the hardihood with which M. Klopp deals with the appalling events of the siege of Magdeburg. He is fully aware that on his conduct there hangs the fame or infamy of his hero. Clear the reputa- tion of Tilly from that sanguinary blot, and he remains a general neither better nor worse than the bulk of the com- manders contemporary with him perhaps a stronger disciplinarian than most of them, and readier to obey orders than many. Even the fate of 200 Saxon villages, which was avenged on the field of Breitenfeld, may be forgiven him as a strategic necessity. His name has been associated with that of Magdeburg by history and by Tilly 145 popular tradition alike ; and by his conduct there it must stand or fall. Accordingly, M. Klopp has taken courage, and applied the very whitest of his whitewash. The following are the concluding words of these volumes : Statues of stone and of bronze have been raised to the worthy and, perchance, to the unworthy also. The idea of a monument to Tilly (except in Bavaria) has scarcely ever entered the soul of a German. And yet Tilly has, if not erected, at all events, preserved to himself a monument. In Magdeburg, to our own days, there stands the glorious Cathedral built by our fathers many hundred years ago. This Cathedral, too, the Swede's plan of destruction would have included in the sea of flames surging around, had not the old man by superhuman exertions covered it with his protecting hand. The Cathedral of Magdeburg was protected by Tilly and saved from the Swede ; the Cathedral of Magdeburg records Tilly's name and Tilly's honour. This is his monument of stone on German ground. To explain the meaning of such a paradox as this, it will be necessary to sum up very briefly M. Klopp 's account of the siege. Magdeburg, he says, had been tempted to resistance by Gustavus Adolphus' promise of succour ; this succour was purposely withheld ; and the Swedish Colonel Falkenberg, sent by the King into the city on the pretence of directing its defence, was secretly commissioned to betray it. He burnt all the outworks ; purposely neglected the defence of the weakest points ; laid mines under the city in order to blow it up ; and, when Tilly by his connivance had effected his entrance, blew up the place accordingly. True, Falken- berg himself had previously perished ; but he had sought death " either from remorse for his enormous neglect, or to place the last seal by his death on the plan of destroy- ing Magdeburg in the interests of the Swedish King." W. P. I 10 146 Historical Of this extraordinary theory it must suffice to say that we must reject it in toto. It rests on the evidence of a rambling letter from an Imperial agent at Hamburg to an Imperial officer, vaguely ascribing a share in the fate of Magdeburg to the King of Sweden; and on an old Catholic pamphlet of the year 1631, entitled Bustum Vir girds Magdeburgicce , and adorned with a woodcut of Gustavus delivering the virgin Magdeburg into the hands of Tilly. On the value of these authorities it is needless to expatiate; but we may add, as an instance of M. Klopp's singular credulity, that he thinks the former ("which cannot be assumed to have been in- vented") originated in the conversation of the Swedish Chancellor Oxenstjerna, who was then at Hamburg, "and must have spoken in this way, perhaps, in the belief that the stratagem could not be kept secret after all." Falkenberg bravely did his duty, and died in doing it; and the mines which he laid were for the purpose of blowing up untenable outworks. One of the Bavarian generals wrote to the Elector to say that a mine had been laid under the New Work (Werkh)\ but M. Klopp insists on preferring the reading of a Hun- garian historian, from the Vienna archives, which gives New Market (Markt). Passing by this very doubtful reading, we note that the first and more important part of M. Klopp's theory, accusing Gustavus of wilfully deserting Magdeburg, is sufficiently disproved by the account which he himself caused to be published imme- diately after the capture of the city. He dared not risk all in an encounter with the armies of Tilly and Pappenheim, superior to his own in numbers, and far superior in efficiency, while both Brandenburg and Saxony hung back, and the very passage of the Elbe was denied to Tilly 147 him. He believed that Magdeburg would have held out longer, for, since the arrival of Falkenberg, the citizens had refused to contribute a single groat to the pay of the 8000 mercenaries within their walls, four-fifths of whom had, in consequence, left the town. Partly on its own head, therefore, and partly on that of the two Electors, was the fate of the city of Magdeburg. It will not have escaped our readers that even this hazardous attempt at shifting the blame of the disaster to the shoulders of the Swedish King cannot avail to account for Tilly's conduct after the capture had once taken place. M. Klopp says, with truth, that it was the horrible custom of the War to allow the soldiery three hours' plundering of a city taken by storm a custom which Gustavus Adolphus (whom we make no pre- tence of regarding as an angel of light) himself followed. The capture was completed at 10 A.M., and the plunder- ing immediately began. At noon, the flames were spreading, and Tilly was obliged to call the soldiers out of the city. Next morning, however, they were allowed to return ; and we are not told whether they were then restricted to their due of one additional hour. M. Klopp requests his readers to place themselves " on the stand- point of these soldiers." Tilly, no doubt, did so; and though M. Klopp has found some pleasing anecdotes of incidental clemency, he makes no attempt to deny the fact that something like 30,000 persons perished, but thinks the majority of deaths attributable to the fire (lit, of course, by Swedish incendiaries !). The Cathedral was certainly preserved by Tilly's efforts, and mass was celebrated in it two days afterwards "just a week," as M. Klopp pathetically calculates, " after the general's IO 2 148 Historical last paternal admonition to the citizens" to surrender. The quotation generally attributed to Tilly appears to have proceeded from the Lutheran preacher at the Cathedral, Bake, who summoned up courage to pro- pitiate the victorious foe by remarking: Venit summa dies et ineluctabile fatum Magd'burgo ! Fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium et ingens Gloria Parthenopes ! We have now done with M. Klopp and " old Tilly," as he delights to salute his hero. "The old skeleton" as Gustavus, on the other hand, used to call him, was a good servant of his masters, and is free from the charges of personal cupidity and private ambition attaching to most other commanders of the great War. He was a man without passions of any kind, and eager only to do his duty. That the duty in question receives an additional sanction from the sacredness of his cause, we cannot agree with M. Klopp, or with historians like Gfrorer and Barthold. His masters were Maximilian of Bavaria, as eager for his personal aggrandisement as were any of the Protestant Princes, and Ferdinand II, who coveted Magdeburg as an appanage for one of his sons. Before we consent to make a hero of their general, we must be shown some element of higher humanity in his character. The absence of all such has condemned him to an ignominy which history not unjustly affixes to the instruments, as well as to the originators, of dark deeds. No remorse, we may well believe, rilled the breast of Tilly, when he rode over the ruins of Magdeburg, as the executioner of his Church and Emperor ; and it is such remorseless- ness, however honest, which posterity rightly repays with its execrations. 7. THE EMPIRE UNDER FERDINAND IIP (The Saturday Review, June 24, 1865.) IN the genial and sympathetic exposition of the method and practice of British law with which Captain Gulliver favoured that estimable monarch the King of the Houyhnhnms, he observed upon the obvious advan- tages of an advocate's not insisting too rigorously upon the justice of his cause. The remark deserves the consideration of others besides forensic advocates - of historians among the rest, who are, at times, apt to forget that perfect virtue has, since the days of Aristides, been as frequently an object of suspicion as of sympathy with the public in whose ears it is too persistently trumpeted. In the vital struggle of the Thirty Years' War, all the Estates of the Empire not to mention numerous foreign potentates were obliged, sooner or later, to choose, and often to change, their side ; and yet there is scarcely a single one among them that has not found an enthusiastic and uncompromising literary defender. Was the conduct of the Elector John George of Saxony at first weak, and afterwards treacherous? K. A. Miiller, writing entirely from MS. sources of the Royal Archives at Dresden, asserts, and is ready to prove, him to have been pious, pure, open, honest, a true friend, and a devoted German patriot. 1 Geschichte des deutschen Retches unter der Regierung Ferdinands III. Nach handschr. Quellen von M. Koch. Vol. I. Vienna, 1865. 150 Historical Were the proceedings of Bernhard of Weimar such as to brand him with the infamy of a traitor to the Father- land and of a self-seeking adventurer? Dr Rose, armed with the authority of the Weimar Archives, has erected a monument to him as /car' t^oyyv the German hero, and well entitled to his name of the Great. Has Maximilian of Bavaria been accused of casting the jew r el of religious and political consistency, before the great War came to an end, into the mire of egoistical intrigue ? Professor Soltl fearlessly appeals to all the unprejudiced to decide in favour of his sincere German patriotism. Sattler will do as much for the Wurttemberg, and Spittler for the Brunswick-Luneburg, dynasties ; while Rommel exalts the Landgravine of Hesse-Cassel to a height of honour hardly suited to a character which hostile critics have accused of a want of common integrity. Over so many virtuous and high-souled Princes it would be grievous to conceive Emperors to have ruled in whose ways the reader of a properly constructed biography could find anything to mend. The Emperors of the Thirty Years' War have, of late, been more for- tunate in their historians than, in their lifetime, they were, with a few exceptions, in their courtiers and generals. Even Ferdinand II, " the pupil of the Jesuits," has found literary champions prepared to approve the policy of the Edict of Restitution, which wellnigh cost him his Crown; and now, Ferdinand III, hitherto deemed one of the least interesting in the long line of uninteresting Habsburgs, is no longer left without his herald. It was, indeed, high time to revive the forgotten efforts of the ingenious Everardus Wassenbergius, The Empire under Ferdinand III 151 whose Panegyricus has slept an undisturbed slumber since it first saw the light, a year before the Peace of Westphalia. If we are unable to hail a more recent attempt in honour of Ferdinand III with the rapture with which the earlier and more unctuous work was greeted by a contemporary ecclesiastic: Caesar Marte potens et Wassenbergius arte Palladis excellens grandia bella gerunt it is both because the glory of Ferdinand III as a warrior has long passed beyond its brief heyday, and because his character as a statesman has not yet acquired a com- pensatory esteem. As a contribution to the documentary history of the German Empire in one of the most momentous crises which it has ever experienced, M. Koch's elaborate work on the reign of Ferdinand III will doubtless pos- sess permanent value. It is written by a tried and skilful pen, and is based throughout on evidence derived at firsthand from the Imperial and other archives. M. Koch is well known as a staunch champion not only of the Austrian, but of the Spanish, Habsburgs. His attack on William the Silent has not received, in this country at least, the attention which the vigour of its arguments, derived as they are from documentary evi- dence, deserves. M. Gachard acknowledges in M. Koch an enemy from whom instruction has been derived, and to whom respect is due. In noticing his most recent effort in a field where it is difficult to walk without stumbling, we are accordingly both bound and willing to acknowledge the claims of a writer of mark and of merit. 152 Historical The present instalment of M. Koch's History only reaches to the year 1643, an< ^ cannot, therefore, pre- sent the reader with a complete picture of the efforts through which the Emperor attained to what, according to the author, was throughout his end and aim peace J . M. Koch has not found it possible, or at all events has not been at the pains, to avoid a straggling and dis- jointed method of narrative which will deter all but the most ardent students from following him through the mazes of negotiation and counter-negotiation, intrigue and counter-intrigue, which preceded the opening of the Peace Conferences at Miinster and Osnabriick. Even Father Bougeant is more lucid than M. Koch ; but, though the path pursued by the excellent Jesuit is straight, it is extremely slippery, and leads to a con- clusion which is the last any impartial student is likely to accept, inasmuch as it involves a recognition of the honesty and sincerity of the policy of Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin. Both historians are obliged to supplement their narratives of the preparations for peace by an account of the contemporary episodes of the War- episodes through which it is difficult to struggle without a sense of weariness. The incompetence of nearly all the Imperial generals is too much even for M. Koch, who is forced to account for it by Court influence, as in the case of Savelli, or to insinuate treason, as in the case of Gotz. The exploits of Bernhard of Weimar and of the Swedish invaders raise such a loathing in his soul that his readers are subjected, again and again, to a reiteration of his view of their motives, as to which he is from the first determined to give no quarter. 1 Vol, ii. was published in 1866. The Empire under Ferdinand HI 153 M. Koch's position is simple and straightforward; for he believes the Emperor to have been righting for the existence of the Empire, to the practical dismember- ment of which all who stood on the opposite side contributed. The only process whereby the ground could be taken away from under the feet of the theory of which he is one of the most distinguished exponents would be to show that the practical destruction of the Imperial idea originated with those very Habsburgs who are now proclaimed its representatives and, in intention, its preservers. The establishment of the dynastic power (Hausmachi) of the House of Austria was incompatible with the life of the German Empire, not the less so because the opponents of the House were necessarily forced to endanger and assail the existence of the Empire at large. Ferdinand III was, personally, a sovereign of no marked characteristics. As a politician, he displayed consistency and a certain amount of energy; but the credit of the Peace of Westphalia is due, not to him, but to his able Minister Trautmannsdorf. The Emperor was, however, unfortunately not always able to with- draw himself from the influence of the Spanish party at his Court, at the head of which stood the Empress Maria, "who had not been changed into so good an Austrian as not to have remained a better Spaniard." She was supported by the Empress-Dowager, a Man- tuan Princess ; and it was their party which exerted its utmost efforts to prevent peace, while at the same time it crippled the conduct of the War by the incompetent generals supported by its influence. As a soldier, Ferdinand Ill's talents were below par. Wallenstein's 154 Historical successor was never destined to rival Wallenstein's fame. His reputation as a general dated from his nominal command in the battle of Nordlingen; but M. Koch reminds us that his services in contributing to that victory were rather those of Moses than those of Joshua: During the battle of Nordlingen, Ferdinand and the Cardinal-Infante attended mass in a tent, and after its termina- tion recited the All Saints' Litany. Thus engaged in prayer, they received the news of victory. On the other hand, he was laborious and zealous in the performance of his Imperial duties ; and his character, by its moderation, in many respects favourably con- trasts with that of his father and predecessor. Ferdi- nand II was a tool in the hands of the Jesuits, and M. Koch is probably justified in attributing to their influence the issue of the fatal Edict. He was, at the same time, prodigal in his domestic expenditure on the strangely combined heads of music and the chase. Ferdi- nand III retained his father's veneration for the Order, whose favourite doctrine of the Immaculate Conception he in vain attempted to induce the Pope to promulgate. But he deprived them of much of their political in- fluence, and of part of their extraordinary revenues. In the expenditure of the Court he, immediately on his accession, effected a large and salutary reduction. In all personal matters his conduct was characterised by reason and good sense. That the Emperor was an Imperialist, none but a writer like M. Droysen, whose ante-dated Prussian fanaticism M. Koch justly derides, could have made a ground of censure. That he was more Papal than the Pope may be explained by the policy of The Empire under Ferdinand HI 155 the Vatican, which at that time drew its inspirations from France, and only relapsed into independent imbecility after the termination of the War. But a stronger hand than that of Ferdinand III was needed to guide the helm of the Empire through the tur- bulent seas of his time. His generals misconducted the War, and he was unable or unwilling to substitute better men in their place. His efforts for peace, which we believe to have been sincere, were futile until jealousy arose between Sweden and France. So soon as these Powers united in a new and definite Treaty of Alliance, the movement for peace was thrown back for years, and all attempts to revive it long continued feeble and practi- cally inane. Over the Princes of the Empire Ferdinand III was unable to acquire any commanding influence. Nearly all of them were ready to treat with him, but none scrupled to break off negotiations at any moment when it might suit their interests. The conduct of the Dukes of Brunswick-Liineburg offers, perhaps, the most note- worthy illustration of this undisguised contempt for the Imperial authority and for the value of an alliance with the Emperor, and no Princes were larger gainers by the Peace than that frankly self-seeking House. On two especially among the many negotiations pre- ceeding the Peace, M. Koch will be found to throw new light. The intrepid Landgravine Amalia of Hesse- Cassel he accuses of having sacrificed the interests of her Confession (the Calvinistic) to her own advantage. It is generally supposed that the Emperor refused to grant her and all other Estates of that Confession the right of its free exercise; but M. Koch proves that this boon was, as a matter of fact, promised, and he throws on the 156 Historical Landgravine the blame of breaking off the negotiation on the pretext of requiring compensation for her troops, but, in reality, because France had just succeeded in binding her by a special agreement. The other question relates to Maximilian of Bavaria's intrigues with France, which have been asserted to have begun as early as 1644. M. Koch shows that the negotiations in which Maxi- milian is accused of having offered to sell Alsace in return for support in his claims on the Palatinate were carried on with the knowledge and cooperation of the Emperor. But he fails to prove that Maximilian may not at the same time have been playing a private game of his own, of which, whenever it was commenced, the results became apparent before the end of the War, which was seriously delayed thereby. We look forward with no little interest to the publication of the second volume of this valuable work. If it is impossible to expect from M. Koch an impartial account of the Peace of Westphalia ; but if, considering his narrative method, we cannot even look forward to a lucid one, we shall at all events not fail to find a candid statement based on contemporary evidence, and on a sound view of the real character of the Thirty Years' War. M. Koch and his fellow-labourers have successfully exploded the antiquated belief that, from first to last, that War was a struggle for religion, and that, in judging the actors in it, we merely need to know under which banner they severally fought. The theory with which Mr Disraeli once favoured the House of Commons, that the War was a struggle of nationalities, only needs exposition in order to meet with a similar fate. Not until the connexion between the Roman Church and The Empire under Ferdinand III 157 the Roman Empire has come to be thoroughly under- stood will it be clearly seen why the Peace of Westphalia was at once, to quote the expressions of a recent English writer, "an abrogation of the sovereignty of Rome, and of the theory of Church and State with which the name of Rome was associated," and how, at the same time, the War and the Peace combined to effect "the trans- ference of power within the Empire, from its Head to its Members." 8. SONGS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 1 (The Saturday Review, July n, 1863.) THE Thirty Years' War, combining in its disastrous course the horrors of a civil and religious struggle with those of a foreign invasion, fills the most melancholy of the many melancholy pages in German history. The Peace which concluded that War left the Empire not only diminished in territory, but bereft of two-thirds, if not of three-fourths, of its population. Over all its lands the fury of war had swept. What theWalloon had spared, the Swede had seized. Danes and Englishmen, Spaniards and Frenchmen, Italians and Croats, had all had their share of the plunder and the Brandschatzung. Nor had German corn and German gold alone been carried away in the struggle. With commerce and art, with literature (destined to slumber for a full century, or lead a sham- life of water-poets and Silesian Schools of clumsy Anacreons), seemed to have vanished the national character of the German language, intellect, and heart. It suffices to have read any German letter of the time, with its barbarous jargon of Latin, Italian, and French overlying a wretched substratum of the native tongue, to understand the remark of Leibniz (who himself pre- ferred to write in Latin or French), that he had found the non-sensual part of the German language utterly 1 Der dreissigjdhrige Krieg. Eine Sammlung von historischen Gedichten und Prosadarstellungen, herausgegeben von Julius Opel und Adolf Cohn. Halle, 1862. Songs of the Thirty Years' War 159 neglected. The domain of intellect, no less than the exhausted soil, was barren from Danzig to Cologne, and the nation was sunk in a slough of mental inertia and weariness from which no Order of the Palm could save it. Religion, for whose sake all these calamities had been brought upon the nation, failed to offer comfort or consolation. The Princes and the nobility were plunged in a Lethe of thoughtless debauchery, and the lower orders in a Lethe of dull despair, " lying abed till nine o'clock," and neither working nor caring for more than the merest sufficiency of daily bread. A feeble pietism, the natural reaction from such a state of godlessness, soon lost itself in gloomy mysticism and fanatical revi- valism. So the German people continued, without hopes and fears, at the mercy of its rulers and its neighbours, till at last the dawn broke on the battle-fields of Silesia and in the chamber where Lessing sat and wrote. It would seem as if a sense of the national degrada- tion which was the fruit of this War, and from which the country to this day has not wholly recovered, had been amongst the curses which have hitherto left the Thirty Years' War without its historian. Schiller's popular work lacks almost all the qualities which a history should possess, except nobility of treatment and grace of style. He had neither the training nor the inborn qualities of an historian; and, moreover, on many questions (such as the fall of his own hero, Wallenstein) the most satisfactory evidence was still under lock and key. The advancing liberality of the age has, during the present century, induced Governments to be less chary of opening their archives. Thus, for instance, the well-known publication, by Forster, of 1 60 Historical Wallenstein's Correspondence has certainly super- seded all previous ''Contributions" to the elucidation of that leader's career, including those of the laborious Murr. And a voluminous German author, Barthold, whose zeal as a politician keeps pace with his dili- gence as an historian, has thrown much light on the greatly neglected latter years of the War. But no com- plete history has as yet been attempted, either by a German or a foreign hand, of the whole War, with its endless shiftings and complications. Whenever such a work is undertaken, it may be safely surmised that it will be found a Herculean task. Immense masses of documentary evidence lie in the archives of almost every European Power engaged or interested in the War ; and what Power at that time considered European did not take some part in it? Thus Neubur, in his "Contri- butions" quotes no less than sixty-five original docu- ments in reference to the siege of Stralsund alone. Meanwhile, an addition of a more entertaining de scription has been made to these materials by Messrs Opel and Cohn, in a publication of Historical Poems and Prose of the Thirty Years' War, accompanied by a short but clear historical synopsis, and brief explanatory notes. This " multisonous chorus of voices of the day," to use the editors' expression, is derived from various sources, such as the Public or University Libraries at Halle, Dresden, Gotha, and Wolfenbiittel, and from the private collections of the widely-read Gustav Freytag and others. It is arranged in seven books six comprising the different periods into which the editors conceive the War naturally to divide itself, with a seventh containing matters referring to "the religious, Songs of the Thirty Years' War 161 political, and social state of affairs during the War." The first impression made by these songs (for in the first six books there is but little prose, and what there is consists of parodies of Scripture, something in the manner of the late Mr Hone) is that they are, with scarce any exception, utter and unmitigated trash. Few of them exhibit the faintest trace of either pathos or wit, and, though there is plenty of indignation, it rarely succeeds in making what the most lenient critic of street poetry would allow to be a " verse." In fact, they might by themselves serve to show the German people's lack of all literary instincts, at the time in which they were pub- lished. Gervinus has remarked that in Germany, in the thirteenth century, poetry descended from the nobility through the scholars to the people, but in the seven- teenth took a converse route, upwards from the people to the scholars, and by means of the latter to the nobility. The Protestant poets in this volume derive their inspiration from their religious hymns, due to the more creative era of the Reformation itself, and from the Bible the Catholics from their own hymns alone, which they imitate, parody, or else interline in the following style: In dulcijubilo, joy has returned for woe, God He has fought for us, And in exilio Has taken thought for us. Deo ter maxima O Alpha es et O! O Alpha es et O! l 1 This particular hymn, as we know from the reminiscences of the Electress Sophia, was also used as a Christmas carol in Lutheran churches and is so used to this day at King's College, Cambridge. w. P. i ii 1 62 Historical In such strains the joy of the Imperialists in Bohemia expresses itself over the defeat and ruin of the unfor- tunate Frederick. Another song against him, in equally ecclesiastical phraseology, exclaims how he Who would perform a miracle Is now become a spectacle. The majority of these poems, however, are by Protes- tant hands, as was to be expected both from the sources of the collection, and from the greater proneness to writing and publishing in the Protestant parts of Germany at the time of the Thirty Years' War, or, indeed, at any other period. The editors, however, probably because their book is published at a very decidedly Protestant institution (the Halle Orphan Asylum), think it necessary to protest their impartiality. Frederick of Bohemia is the hero of the first two books; while, in the third and fourth, Mansfeld and Tilly occupy the most prominent position. Ernst von Mansfeld was, in truth, one of the strangest characters of a time prolific of such adventurers. He was the bastard son of a Spanish general, but spent his life as the undaunted and undauntable foe of the House of Habsburg. His name was second only to that of Wallen- stein in its magic power of attracting mercenaries ; and the destruction of his army never disheartened him, but merely set him about collecting a new force. He was ultimately hunted down into Hungary by Wallen- stein, and, deserted by his Transylvanian allies, escaped It has been published by Novello with Pearsall's full version of the XlVth century melody there is also a version of it by Bach, but I am informed, on excellent authority, that Pearsall's is the simplest and best. Songs of the Thirty Years' War 163 to Venice, where he died in the midst of new plots against the House of Habsburg. Thus, he became the terror of the Emperor and the Catholic party "Cleri- corum Attila," as he is called in a curious German- Latin doggrel entitled "Mansf eld's Tattoo," which is extremely severe on the sins " Lojolitarum, germen malorum' '; on the Pope, who "judaismum et atheismum diligit plurimum" and "diabottcum jam habet gaudium super exilium recte fidelium" \ and on priests in general whose "initium est atrox vitium" But we must confess that the Papist who, in a kind of epigram called " Acta Mansf eldica" takes the contrary view of things, appears to have the best of it, so far as wit goes ; and since this production is, perhaps, the least pointless in the book, we will venture a translation: Ernst Mansfeld, who doth all betray, Is fallen from the faith away, From Austria's house of right divine, And from the County Palatine, Whom he deserted in his need, And all mankind did curse the deed. Nor marvel thou his ways were such ; The reason will account for much ; And reason was there for his fall His midwife will explain it all. When he was born, as she will tell, Down straightway from the bench he fell ; And thus so fond of falling grew, That fall he will his whole life through, Till, when the reck'ning up is cast, He from the gallows falls at last. The fall of Magdeburg is the occasion for a " Lamenta- tion" on a text from Jeremiah, for a "Last Will and 1 64 Historical Testament of the Ladies of Magdeburg," for a "Peni- tential Psalm," and other genuine outbursts of grief; while a sanguinary Papist and not less horrible poet exults in one hundred stanzas of seven lines each over the victory of the "dear worthy cavalier, Count Tilly" an object of veneration since his time to few save Colonel Mitchell and King Louis of Bavaria, but in whose wrath against the devoted city, the pious poet avers, "all the stars, heavens, firmament, planets, moon and elements" participated. The fifth book brings on the scene Gustavus Adol- phus, with his Finlanders and Laplanders and with his victories. The Protestant portion of posterity has always refused to look upon this bold invader in any other light than that in which Dugald Dalgetty regarded him, as the "great and glorious"; and he has, among our- selves, been hailed as one of "God's heroes," par excellence. It may, however, be observed that his death occurred just in time to leave him surrounded with the halo of a religious liberator, while his poor Chancellor Oxenstjerna goes down to posterity as a huckster who bartered Swedish blood for a piece of land. Oxenstjerna only in so far took a different course from that which his master intended to pursue, that the latter would never have returned his sword to the scabbard for so small a consideration as a piece of Pomerania. His hopes were wider than those of his eminent Chancellor, but pro- bably of the same nature as these ; and his purpose in assisting the German Protestants (against the wish of half of them) may, perhaps, have had in it some elements of that of a great reigning sovereign when he undertook to free Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic. The cautious Songs of the Thirty Years' War 165 Elector John George, of Saxony, was as quick to escape from the Swedish alliance as he had been slow to enter into it; but it has rarely been in the power of Electors or Kings of Saxony to choose their own policy. However, in all the Protestant songs in this and the following book, Gustavus is "the dear Swede," "the Conqueror with the Sword of Gideon," "the Crown and Flower of Kings," "the Saviour," and "the Patron of the Gospel and the Church of Christ," while the Saxons are repeatedly treated to a jest about their confectionery, which witticism appears to afford un- ceasing delight to its perpetrators. The last personage who continues in this War to attract popular attention is the commander whose career the poetic muse of Schiller has surrounded with an in- extinguishable interest. In his History, Schiller treats of a very different Wallenstein something of the "Herod," ;< Tyrant," "Mameluke," as which he is saluted in several furious attacks on him in the Sixth Book of this collection. The view Schiller takes of his fall is, as every one now knows, based on the fictions of the Imperial Court at Vienna, which took the safe course of publishing an official statement against him, and suppressing all the documents by which it might be proved or disproved. Yet it seems strange that, now that the documents are published, his defenders should affect to believe in his entire innocence, when it has been demonstrated that, both in his French and in his Swedish negotiations he was, at all events, guilty of "contemplating" treason. We have no wish to enter upon so wellworn a theme ; but, at the same time, we must enter our protest against a view lately put forward to the effect that Wallenstein was 1 66 Historical "a gigantic humbug." This notion is chiefly founded on the supposed fact that he never won a battle; or, as it is expressed in a doggrel epitaph in this book Sans ships he was an admiral, Sans open fight a general. The general who completely outwitted Gustavus at Niirnberg might rest his claim to a more compli- mentary treatment on this achievement alone ; but what shall we say of the battle of Wolgast, in which Wallen- stein nearly annihilated the Danes, and of the battle of the Dessauer bridge, in which he completely an- nihilated the army of Mansfeld? With the death of Wallenstein, and that of Bernard of Weimar, which is sung with deep expressions of grief "to the tune of the Rheinthaler," the national interest in the War begins to flag. The Germans were gradually coming to entertain but one wish in refer- ence to it that it might cease ; and it is in the cabinet of Richelieu that must be sought the chief springs of its continuance, long after the peace of Prague had satisfied a great part of the German Protestants. The editors cease to accompany any further the course of what has become a war of invasion; and their Seventh Book forms merely a kind of supplement to its predecessors. It is full of complaints against the manifold hardships of the times, the rapacity of the foreign soldiery, es- pecially the Spanish, the frivolity of the German youth, the decadence of ancient manners and morals, and the utter collapse of trade. A peculiarly obnoxious class, as in other great wars, were the speculators, who bought up all the heavier coin, and frequently issued it again, Songs of the Thirty Years' War 167 re-coined, in considerably curtailed dimensions. Those who practised this trick are called the "kippers and wippers " to " kip " according to the editorial Glossary, signifying to cut and pare the rim of a coin. But the most interesting part of the last Book consists in a kind of proverbial philosophy, composed by some medi- tative mind on things in general, and not unfrequently indicating considerable liberality and elevation of thought. It is arranged under various heads, such as "From the World," "From the University," "From the College of Jesuits"; and we will, in conclusion, give one or two specimens of the lucubrations of this pensive Protestant, extracted at random from a vast congeries : How a forced or simulated religion commonly leadeth to atheism. How, against him who proceedeth defacto,there availeth no suit. How the life of many women is but as the state of those who walk and talk in their sleep. How there was never less nobility than when every one desireth to be a nobleman. How those that suffer the least are of all the least sufferable. How a truth from Rome is a lie in Germany. The latter aphorism is "from Italy"; and the following is "from England," though we are at a loss to under- stand its inner meaning: How nothing is cheaper than money, and nothing dearer than the courtesy of idle folk. And, finally, we extract a reflection which, often as it must have occurred to the poor suffering Germans of the Thirty Years' War, has probably been uttered by many of their descendants in subsequent generations : How I should like some day to hear a piece of news that is good. 9 . THE EFFECTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR (Lecture at the Royal Institution, March 8, 1912.) WHEN we speak of the Thirty Years' War, and occupy ourselves with discussing the causes, the characteristics or (as I propose, in an avowedly partial and incomplete fashion, to do to-night) the effects of the long struggle called as a whole by that dread name are we at bottom only using it as an historical expression? Let us feel quite sure of our ground at the outset ; for the historical critics of our own day, whose comments have suggested to me that it might be worth while to ask you to go once more over some of the ground that must be already familiar to most of you, are within their right in de- manding that no statement, and no form of words that implies a statement, should be taken at more than its actual value. Gustavus Adolphus, we know, described the Thirty Years' War as the whole of the wars of Europe grown into one; but this was a saying rather than a definition, and one which, from the very nature of the case, could hardly be applied to the earlier part of the struggle the twelve years, let us say, which preceded his own intervention in the affairs of the Empire. The Bohemian, the Palatinate, and the Lower- Saxon or Danish War, were, all of them, still more or less localised; and, to the last, there were certain portions of the Empire notably some of the Austrian Crown-lands in the south which never suffered from the actual The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 169 presence of war. Still, these exceptions amount to relatively little; and the localisation of which I have spoken was not unless it were by King James I ex- pected to endure. Thus, the continuity of place, though imperfect, was such as to justify us in speaking of the Thirty Years' War as one war ; and I think the same may be said of another continuity the cohesion in time of the successive stages of a struggle which lasted for the whole of what we reckon as a human generation. At first sight, indeed, the * Defenestration ' at Prague the incident from which it has always been customary to date the beginning of the Thirty Years' War might seem far removed from the solemn gathering, in the two West- phalian towns, of European diplomacy prepared for its long-protracted labours amidst pomp and circum- stance scarcely inferior to those in which, a century and a half later, it assembled at Vienna to bury the French Revolution and all its works. There were few to cast a thought back, from the solemn formalities ushering in the balanced deliberations of the Westphalian Congress, to the arrogant pertinacity with which the proud Ultra- quist nobles had defied the seemingly decadent authority of the House of Austria, and, at the same time, the revived activity of the hated Roman Curia with whose interests that House was once more identifying its own. Since the signal of irreconcilable war had been given by the hurling of the official servitors of the Imperial policy out of the windows of the Hradschin into the gaping foss below, thirty years had well-nigh passed. Bohemian Protestantism seemed to have gone the way of Austrian ; even of the German Evangelical world only a fraction still stood in arms against the House of Habsburg ; and the 170 Historical problem to be settled concerned, not the briefed rights of a kingdom beneath its sway, but the " satisfaction " of the claims of two great foreign Powers, neither of which had visibly so much as cast a shadow over the situation of things in which the outbreak of the conflict had inter- vened. Yet the continuity of the Great War, which, by prolonging it without a break, gave impetus to the rolling flood, and volume to the effects political, social, moral which it produced, remains incontestable. In- deed, as it would not take long to show, it exemplifies, with almost unsurpassed fullness and variety, what to me has always seemed one of the most appalling features of all great wars and by no means only of those of the obsolete, long-drawn-out, Thirty Years' War sort, of which nowadays military historians can hardly write, or those who have seen what we have seen, read or think, with patience. For what could be more appalling than that the bloody arbitrament of war should be in- voked, and that the whole Iliad of woes which must follow in its train should be brought down upon a nation, perhaps upon more than one nation, for a stated purpose, yet that, this purpose having been either achieved or missed, the conflict, with all its attendant evils, should continue, as it were automatically, for some new end ? That end may be some heightened ambition, or some increased gain, or the settlement, hitherto wholly out of reach, of some long-lived national or international problem; or again, relief may fail to come for no other reason than that the deadly brood of passions once let loose, cannot, without inducements undreamt of at the outset, be called into leash again. The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 171 But I have no desire to draw between this Thirty Years' War and later Wars parallels which the case would not bear; and indeed I, for one, consider the seductive game of so-called historical parallels very rarely worth playing. Think, then, for a moment if only by way of recalling to yourselves the breadth and variety of the ground from which we are to choose some points or passages in illustration of the bearings of our theme- think for a moment of the awful chain, if I may so call it, which made up the totality of this particular struggle. The bold attempt of the Bohemian leaders to determine, by means of a raid upon Vienna, the destinies of their own country and its dependencies, and to secure a free enjoyment of their faith to those in sympathy with them in the Austrian home-duchies, having come to nothing, an offensive shrinks back into a defensive war, and the Bohemian Crown becomes the prize for which militant Calvinism contends with aggressive Catholicism in the persons of the Elector Palatine Frederick V, the repre- sentative agent of the great design against Habsburg, and the Emperor Ferdinand II, the pupil of the Jesuits. That question having been settled on the White Hill, and a Peace patched up with the Transylvanian ally of the Bohemian Revolt, the Winter King's own patrimony, a land of fruits and wine like no other in the Empire, but destined to suffer more terribly than almost any of them under the scourge of this War, lies, like the gladiator's expectant victim, panting in the arena. After a medley, in which even Spaniards and Englishmen have met, though on dry land, as natural foes, the chief captains of the soldiery on both sides, Mansfeld and his fellows, and Wallenstein , already asserting himself as the master of 172 Historical mercenary warfare, shift the main theatre of the struggle to the north-west. It is then that the inflated ambition of Christian IV of Denmark, lacking alike in material strength and in intellectual grasp, impels him to essay the first foreign intervention of importance on behalf of the liberties of the Protestant Estates, endangered by the Reaction, with the aid of League and Emperor; and its failure, after the whole of Jutland has been flooded by Imperial troops, gives their victorious master his great opportunity. But the twofold scheme of restoring to the Church of Rome her former landed wealth by means of the Edict of Restitution, and permanently extending the power of the Emperor by sea as well as by land to the shores of Baltic and North Sea, breaks down, in part or altogether ; and, after daring Heaven to withstand the advance of the Imperial arms, Wallenstein, the new Duke of Mecklenburg, is obliged, in deference to the jealousy of the Princes of the League, to lay down his military command. Then, there appears on the scene, at last, the great soldier-statesman, who entered into the War with the definite purpose this also twofold of safeguarding the security and power of his own Scandinavian king- dom, and of rescuing German Protestantism, of which it is futile to suppose self-interest only to have prompted him to become the champion, in the process. But note how, even in his case, a few months of brilliant though not unbroken success, induce this great strategist and far-sighted politician to change his design into something widely different. Thus, the head of the whole Corpus Evangelicorum now intends to become master of the whole of Germany, under whatever form may prove most The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 173 expedient. The purpose to which Gustavus Adolphus, after his victorious but carefully planned march from Oder to Maine, now addressed himself, he seemed likely to accomplish ; but, should he vanish from the scene, the whole design must at once become a phantasm. He falls at Liitzen, and by that single catastrophe the whole conditions of the struggle are fundamentally changed. And, with them, the character of the conflict itself seems to undergo a metamorphosis. The direct religious issue seems to grow dull and dim with the removal of the Protestant champion; the personalities that carry on the struggle seem to become less vivid to the student of it, as they did to its contemporaries : it has been pointed out how the songs of the Thirty Years' War, of which we have a plentiful and interesting crop for its earlier half, seem to fade away after the death of Gustavus. Meanwhile, Wallenstein has reassumed the com- mand; and, with an outspokenness unprecedented in the history of modern warfare, the system nakedly pro- claims itself of making a great organised mercenary force, not the servitor of nations or other political autho- rities, but the arbiter between them. The great captain concentrates in his native Bohemia the vast armada, by which his master had hoped to restore both the fullness of the Imperial sway and the fixity of Catholic ecclesiastical control but Wallenstein 's own mind is intent upon Peace. And, though his schemes are dark and interfused with personal ambition, there can be no doubt that the Peace at which he aimed was to have been brought about by sacrifices less exacting than those to which the Empire and Germany had actually to submit in the Treaties of Westphalia . After his violent death , the conflict enters into 174 Historical a stage in which Sweden, after at first heading a compact, but not wholly self-directed Alliance, falls back, when defeated at Nordlingen, upon the more limited task of securing what she can of the territorial acquisitions on which she had laid hands so soon as might be after the coming of her King. In her place, France assumes the real control over those Princes who have not turned their thoughts once more to a reconciliation with the Em- peror, and who finally conclude their separate Peace with him at Prague. Half as an auxiliary, half as a paid officer of France, Bernard of Weimar ends his heroic career. But the alliance between the particular ambi- tions of Sweden and France might have led to a very different result, had the great King lived a few years longer who had first concluded it with the far-sighted Cardinal. As it was, their self-centred ambitions seeking to direct the policy and the relations to the Emperor of the German Princes, even of the Catholic Bavarian, on the one hand, and on the other, the close cooperation between the Emperor and Spain, and the consequent inclusion in the War of the revived struggle between Spain and the United Provinces, gave to its latter half its distinctive aspect. That aspect is one of purposes and policies crossing one another, just as the marches of the armies reach from Silesia to West- phalia, and far out to the Baltic shores and to the border- lands of Alsace and Lorraine. The armies themselves had changed their nature ; for the system of mercenary armies of the earlier type had given way to that of standing armies organised by Princes for territorial defence; but the behaviour of the soldiery had not improved in consequence, and the discipline had sunk The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 175 since the days of Tilly and Gustavus, and even since those of Wallenstein. But this, by the way; together with a hint that the Swedish atrocities, which are traditionally connected with the later years of the War, were not so very Swedish in the year 1639, the Swedish armies, which harried so many regions of the Empire, are said to have not contained more than 500 natives of Sweden. Thus, there was added to the horrors and sufferings of war the unutterable weariness inseparable from a conflict to which there seems no end, because the objects for which it is carried on have become unrecognisably disguised or hopelessly confused. When peace came at last, and when the reckoning had to be cast up, as to some of the details , into which we are about to enquire , the one clear gain for the Empire at large, ascribable to the protracted prosecution of this ever shifting War, was the establishment of the principle of parity between the three great Christian Confessions into which that Empire was divided. This gain, the announcement of which found a responsive echo even among the political and religious contentions of distracted England, could not be, and was not, again lost to Germany; but, for the present, a dark shadow was cast over it by the important exception on which the Emperor had successfully insisted. Protestant worship of either kind was excluded from all the do- minions of the House of Austria; and this exception covered that very Bohemian kingdom where the violent resistance to the Catholic Reaction had provoked the outbreak of the Great War. Sic vos non vobis could a more signal instance be suggested of the paradoxical results of war ? 1 76 Historical Among the effects which this War left behind it, and at some of which I propose to invite you to glance in turn, the very first, as the most obvious of all, is the numerical effect upon the population of the Empire. The German economists and political philosophers of the generation which followed upon that of the Thirty Years' War were remarkably alive, as well they might be, to the primary importance for the welfare of a State of a numerous population living under conditions requisite for its due maintenance. But the science of statistics was still unborn, and estimates of the advance or decline of population are, even in quiet times, often only to be accepted with the aid of a good deal of faith. More recent criticism cannot, therefore, be blamed for treating sceptically such traditions as those which have been confidently handed on from generation to generation, and according to which the War and its immediate effects entailed upon Germany a loss of something like 12 millions out of a population of 1 8 or 20 millions. This calculation should not, in my opinion, be contempt- uously rejected as altogether wide of the mark ; but it must be allowed to rest on a basis not so thoroughly trust- worthy as to shut out the possibility of very great exag- geration. (The case stands otherwise, as you know, with the estimate which concludes the Black Death to have swept away more than half the population of England in its visitations about the middle of the fourteenth century.) The estimated loss of population in the course of the Thirty Years' War covers, as has been pointed out, together with an actual decrease, the failure of the ordinary increase of population, even if this be taken at a very low rate indeed. It covers, as a matter of course, The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 177 the loss of female as well as of male population, or, rather, it makes no distinction between them. The omission is somewhat curious, since, besides the number (actually calculated) of the men who fell arms in hand, one would have expected the proportion of the men whom the War struck down to have been greater than that of the women unless, indeed, disease and its parent, want, acted with compensating intensity in the case of the weaker and probably worse-fed sex. This points at what, in fact, is one of the chief difficulties in the way of forming an even approximately correct estimate of the loss of population. But, in circumstances such as those of a destructive war, which disturbs and dislocates all order and system, the statistics of disease are usually beyond reach ; while those of deaths under arms or inflicted by the conquerors in battle are proverbially doubtful, and especially so in the case of armies levied and organised (sometimes in half-bogus companies or regiments) like the mercenary hosts of the earlier part of the Great War. Yet the attempt, as observed, was made, even at the time, to arrive at results which at least appeared to be accurate; and, while one daring but, at the same time, temperate statistician, in 1631, reckoned the Emperor's military losses during the first nine years of the War at 51,011 men, he stated those of the chief leaders on the Protes- tant side (exclusive it would seem of the Bohemian in the first phase of the War) , during the same period , to have reached 57,686. This arouses no confidence, though, curiously enough, we find the author of a broadside, printed in the last year of the War, estimating the num- ber of those who were killed during its course as "at least" 325,000 a number not much out of proportion W.P.I. 12 178 Historical to the earlier calculation. Another difficulty, at which I have also already hinted, is that of the varying inci- dence of the losses due to the War in the several parts of the Empire, and the consequent danger involved in generalising from particular data. The law of average could never have been more severely tried. On the other hand, a large number of statements as to actual losses of population from divers causes are at the same time so overpowering in their magnitude, and so reasonably well authenticated (proceeding as they do from actually official sources administrative statistics, ecclesiastical registers, municipal records and the like), that it is futile either to seek to discredit them one and all, or to treat them as mere isolated phenomena, from which no general conclusions are to be drawn. Such, for instance, are many of the detailed items supporting the total figures which are given as to the decrease in the population of the sorely-tried Palatinate a decrease from something like half a million to less than a tithe of that number. Or, again, in Electoral Saxony, during the critical years 1631 and 163 2, when it was successively occupied by the Imperial and Liguistic forces, more than 900,000 lives are said to have succumbed to the sword or sickness (how we used to be taught to detest the craven policy of the Elector John George, who was all for peace !). In Franconia, which Gustavus had specially marked out for retention by himself, the population sank so low that monastic vows before the age of 60 had to be prohibited, and the marriage of clerics was permitted, while laymen were allowed to take two wives apiece. I confess that I am not impressed by the suggestion that, elsewhere, there may have been a compensatory increase of population. Of course, we need not assume that in all The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 179 the endless instances of the depopulation of villages, which in a very large proportion of them actually amounted to their being altogether emptied, the former inhabitants themselves were literally annihilated and, in the case of the towns, we know that, even in Magde- burg, there was not an end of all things. Many peasants must have shifted their dwelling-place, and we know in what large numbers they took up their refuge in the towns like the people of Attica within the walls of Athens so that in Weimar, for instance, we read that, towards the end of the War, the number of immigrants was double that of the natives. Many men, women and children, too, must have been absorbed into that floating element of population, which, after being unhoused and unsettled by the tide of the War, followed the endless marches of the armies as an untold and untellable con- tingent of beggars and brigands. When peace returned, this vagabond part of the population was not extinguish- ed, but waited to be revived in later days of warfare, as indeed it was very notably in the early Wars of the French Revolution. The vagabonds who represented the homeless element in the population, including swarms of disbanded soldiers, coalesced with the gypsies a class of nomads long regarded as standing outside the social community, but which, being thus reinforced, in Germany remained a more dangerous and in some respects a more important element in the population than elsewhere. My immediate point, how- ever, is the decrease of the calculable in favour of the incalculable element in the population, by the whole- sale uprooting of peasants, whose expulsion from their homes was a direct effect of the War. 180 Historical Altogether, after allowance has been made for in- evitable exaggeration , and when all reasonable deductions have taken place, we shall probably be willing to sub- scribe to the conclusion with which few economic historians of the present day and few statisticians seem prepared to quarrel : that, during the Thirty Years' War, the population of Germany had sunk -to one-half its previous total, or, perhaps, to between one-half and two- thirds. This is the conclusion of Schmoller, the results of whose investigations, especially as to north-eastern and eastern Germany, are authoritative ; and I do not think that any hazard will be run in accepting it. It was the peasantry, in which of course lay the real strength of the greater portion of the Empire, that beyond all doubt suffered most heavily from the effects of the War. Schiller, whose Camp of Wallenstein offers many notable instances of the insight of the imagination into historical truth, knew this, when, in his picture of the War the Peasant is the figure to whom the attention of the spectator is first directed. With the peasantry, there was no question of buying off the encroachments of the soldiery by force or by arrangement ; it is they who have to pay for everything" with the skin off their own bones." Among the agricultural districts of Germany, we have precise governmental information as to part of the rustic population of the Mark Brandenburg : a year or two after the close of the War, their settlements were in number less than half of what they had been at its commencement, and there was at least one countship which had lost all its villages but four. This example is attested beyond cavil ; but the story was much the same in the midlands in Thuringia and in Hesse, and again in the south- The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 181 west ; though here the natural fertility of the soil made a speedy resuscitation of .village life and activity pos- sible, at least where labour could be obtained, instead of, as further north, leaving wide stretches of land to remain uncultivated for many a long year the prey of weeds and water, till they sank into all but hopeless morass. How could the disheartened remnant, without capital of any sort, above all without the beasts of the field, which the War had driven away, restore the face of the land to the semblance of what it had been ? What inducement was there to produce more than the meagre crop yielded by the impoverished soil, when such scant purchasers as could be collected would pay only half the old price for either wheat or rye ? Even in districts specially favoured by nature, like the Palatinate or Wurttemberg, or blessed with a capable ruler like the Elector Charles Lewis, whose heart was set upon re- calling both landlords and peasants to the homeland whither he had himself returned with the Peace, labour was almost impossible to obtain , agricultural wages having risen to four or five times their former height ; and the peasant had long to manage, as best he could, without labourers in other words, to limit his production to what was necessary for the bare subsistence of himself and his family. During this cruel War, the peasant, even if he remained in his cottage on the soil, instead of being hounded out of it or burnt down with it, had not merely to toil at the desperate task of making a livelihood out of his imperilled acre. Besides the taxes and dues im- posed upon him by native or foreign governments, he was subjected to personal services (Frohneri) which so far from being extinguished by the War, frequently rose 1 82 Historical to an unprecedented height during its course in some places to such a height as to convert the condition of the free peasant into that of serfdom, while elsewhere they became so intolerable as to empty the land of its peasantry. Moreover, in times of unrestrained violence and licensed illegality, the instances were numerous of the actual expulsion of peasants from the lands which they held by the landlords, in order that these might possess themselves directly of the vacated holdings. This is the notorious practice of Bauernlegen a rough and ready way of creating large estates which was to exercise a lasting influence in parts of Germany, notably in Mecklenburg. There was nothing to stop this practice but the consequent want of labour in the depopulated estates; but it contributed very distinctly to the de- crease of a starving peasantry, while the landlords, if there was truth in the song, were left to fight it out themselves with the soil: " Of the German War what is the gain? Many counts, barons and noblemen. German blood's very noble at present, Because of the weakness of the peasant." 1 It needs no further illustration for us to understand how in the open country, even in the more fertile parts of Germany, the peasantry very slowly recovered its numbers, and how in others the country very long re-* mained the desert, to which the War had reduced it. The 1 The Reichsritterschaft once a very respectable body so far as its possessions went dwindled away during the War ; and the poverty in which it left some reigning Houses forms a pitiable chapter in the history of the petty principalities of Germany. The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 183 assertion that particular cultures were destroyed by the War, on the other hand, requires more careful considera- tion than can be given to it here ; but I may direct atten- tion to the probability that the supersession of the culture of woad (due to the importation of indigo) was probably only completed by the War ; whereas the culture of the vine was undoubtedly largely reduced and confined to those nobler sorts, which can only gladden the hearts of a limited number of purchasers. In the general bankruptcy which prevailed after the War, when the armies had to be disbanded, and the pay- ments and compensations of various sorts settled though signs of financial collapse were perceptible both during the War and even before its outbreak it was, therefore, not astonishing that the peasant should be the worst sufferer. And this, to whatever section of his class he belonged : whether to that bound to the domains of the several Princes, or the estates of the nobility, or to the free peasants in their own holdings. The peasants' holdings were largely mortgaged like the lands of the nobles themselves, the mortgagees being for the most part the capitalists, large or small, in the towns; and now there was a general stoppage of payment and fear of foreclosing, because of the profitless condition of husbandry, on which I have already dwelt. Hence, a general state of hopeless indebtedness, in which the peasant, unable any longer to obtain the slightest advance of either money or materials, was the earliest, and the most certain, to go under. Within half-a-dozen years from the Peace of Westphalia, the problem had assumed such dimensions that it was brought, as a matter of Imperial interest, before the Diet of Ratisbon. 184 Historical A sort of tabulce novce was proclaimed, a promise being held out to creditors who had made loans to agricul- turists of various classes of repayment of their capital within ten years ; and, in return, the debtors were relieved of three-quarters of the interest due from them since the troubles of the War began, while for the payment of the remaining quarter they were to be allowed a ten years' respite. But, like many another decree of the Diet, this decree, which does not seem to have stood on any firm footing, when it was not either anticipated or superseded by the action of particular Governments, remained ineffectual. Although, then, it may be conceded that the in- tolerable burden of debt placed upon the land, was not wholly due to the War, but began to weigh down the cultivators even before the outbreak of hostilities, yet it was enormously increased by the conflict, which thus crippled, and in many parts of the Empire paralysed, its most important and widespread industry, and with it impaired the vitality of the greater part of its population. Let us turn from the country to the towns. Here again, it would be futile not to allow that some of the causes which contributed to the all but general downfall of the commercial prosperity, and hence of the political influence, of the German towns were already in operation before the outbreak of the War. For many a decade, it was only by holding together at home against the en- croachments of the territorial sovereigns that the fifty- one Free Towns of the Empire had preserved their autonomy behind their ancient walls ; and their prosper- ity had been sapped at its base, ever since the change in the great trade-routes of the world had begun in the The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 185 i5th century, and since, in the i6th,the nations who fol- lowed upon the Spaniards and Portuguese as the leaders of Oceanic intercourse the French, the Dutch, and the English had begun to distance German maritime trade. The day of the Hanseatic merchants seemed gradually drawing to a close even in what they had come to regard as German waters; the English Merchant- Adventurers were busy in the ports of both North Sea and Baltic, and the surviving representatives of the great League were subjected to Danish dues in a land which it had of old regarded as subject to its irresistible control. The Thirty Years' War, however, put an absolute end to the corporate activity of the Hanseatic League, and this, not only because of foreign competition, but, primarily, because the pressure of the War on the inland towns belonging to the League pre- vented them from helping to maintain its organisation by their contributions. When, at the height of the Imperial ascendancy in the period after the Danish War, the ambition of the House of Habsburg, urged on by the brooding genius of Wallenstein, sought to win over the decadent League to an alliance which would have placed its mercantile and naval resources at the disposal or, why not say at the mercy of the Imperial power, the offer was declined. In lieu of it, the Emperor was besought to allow the members of the League to continue a neutrality which had hitherto proved so advantageous though, as they might have added, the advantage was theirs rather than the Empire's. This candid request indicates the attitude which the leading maritime members of the Hanseatic League continued to observe during the 1 86 Historical War. As a matter of fact, two out of the three great maritime towns which after nominally renewing the decrepit League towards the end of the War, preserved down to our own day the ancient name which was all that was left of it Hamburg and Bremen suffered perhaps less than any other of the more important German towns during the course of the conflict; and one of them, Hamburg, which from the beginning of the iyth century onwards, had facilitated the advance through its portals of English trade into Germany, turned the actual state of things to its own account with remarkable skill. Liibeck, the venerable head of the Hansa, was necessarily less favoured by fortune; for the command of the Baltic was one of the main ends to compass which first Denmark and then Sweden entered into the War, and the ultimate ambition of the Scan- dinavian Powers contemplated nothing short of the extinction of German navigation in its waters. Liibeck, instead of any share in the rule of the blue Sea over which she had once been mistress, had to guard her ancient gateways against horsemen and pikemen; and even before the conclusion, at the end of the Danish War, of the Peace called by her name, her citizens are found complaining of the diminution of her fleet, ship after ship ill compensated by the unavoidable increase of her military trained-bands. The credit of her great mer- chant houses was beginning to give way, and a decline was setting in to which there has hardly been a turn till the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Of the other German Baltic ports, in so far as they were within the orbit of the War, nearly all seem to have followed her example, sharing the fortunes of the territories in The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 187 which they were situate or in which the turns of the War incorporated them. Thus, Wismar and Rostock, the twin ports of the ill-starred Mecklenburg duchies, were stricken down by the rush of the conflict which made them for a time the spoils of the great Imperial captain: from the former comes the complaint that in six years not a single vessel had weighed anchor in her harbour, and that her citizens capable of bearing arms had dwindled from 3000 to one-tenth of that number, while from this handful of men had in the same period been extorted contributions amounting to 200,000 dollars. Pomerania, we know, was in Swedish hands; but further east, and beyond the immediate range of the War, Danzig, long famed for the skill with which, like another Ephesus, she had managed to preserve her neutrality in the midst of armed conflicts around her, was little better off than the towns of the Baltic south- west. This was partly due to the consequences of the Polish Wars which paralysed her main trade partly to awful ravages of the plague in the first decade of the War. In central Germany, the statistics of taxation, which here we fortunately have at hand, speak very distinctly of a general decline of taxing-power, bearing out the general conclusions as to depopulation which I have already discussed. But I am now specially concerned with the towns, among which our attention is arrested by the very exceptional case of Leipzig. As, so to speak, the centre of the centre, and the natural meeting-place of the streams of commerce converging from east and west, north and south, Leipzig had suffered, all but incessantly, ever since the first approach and advent 1 88 Historical of the Swedish invaders, and had witnessed a suc- cession of sieges, occupations and great pitched battles on its vast plain, to which it would be difficult to find a parallel. However, after the bloody second battle of Breitenfeld (1642), it remained occupied by a Swedish garrison for a total of eight years (extending even over the actual conclusion of peace) ; and this circumstance gave the sorely tried town a position of assured stability. The Swedish commander Torstensson , who was a shrewd personage and fully alive to his own interest, pro- claimed the Leipzig Fairs to be under his protection, as an institution without which neither Leipzig nor the world at large could exist. Thus, the good town, after all, weathered the storm, and, even while that storm endured, maintained its honourable reputation as a shelter for the sick and poor, and a refuge for fugitives and exiles. Such a reputation may well be looked back upon with pride, proving as it does the beneficent part which even in the worst of times commerce may play on behalf of civilisation. What a contrast the experience of Leipzig in the first War offers to that of the other great midland city, the * bulwark of Protestantism,' which had proved unequal to save itself, and which Gustavus had been prevented from saving by the laws of strategy ! It had crumbled into a heap of ashes, from which, at first, there seemed little hope of recovery. Magdeburg had, before the War, numbered about 40,000 inhabitants a total not very far short of that of the population of Niirnberg, larger than that of Strassburg, more than twice that of Leipzig or Berlin. After the catastrophe to which the steadfast city had been abandoned, the population, huddled together in a handful (100-150) The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 189 of small houses or huts, had sunk into a miserable remnant, which, not until a whole generation after the Peace (1680), had again risen to 7000 or 8000 souls. The trade of the Elbe had irrecoverably gone to the great city at its mouth. Erfurt, formerly not only a famous University but the flourishing commercial capital of busy Thuringia, was entirely shorn of her prosperity ; nor was the condition of the Brunswick and Westphalian towns much better, owing to a chronic pressure of calamity, which no administrative care could withstand, and to the drying-up of the industries which in these regions had been most carefully and contin- uously fostered thus, in particular, the mining industry in Brunswick, and in Westphalia the cloth industry, which had now passed altogether into the hands of the English and the Dutch. On the Rhine, the ancient im- perial cities of Cologne and Aachen had fallen from their former prosperity, and for a long time German trade could here no longer hold up its head against Dutch competition. This rivalry was not so ruinous higher up, on the Maine. Frankfort, which had suffered terribly from pestilence and famine in the earlier part of the War, afterwards, though not in the same measure as Leipzig, showed recuperative power. Very different was, in its results at the end of the War, the experience of the great Franconian towns, Niirnberg and Augsburg, across the history of whose many centuries of vigorous and honourable prosperity the War seemed to have drawn a bar which it would take long to remove. The number of the inhabitants of Augsburg had, in the earlier half of the War, sunk from 80,000 to 17,000 or less and, of the weavers, who with their families, before 190 Historical its outbreak numbered nearly what was now the sum total of the entire population, only a few hundred were left. Thus, in this case, almost an entire industry, which occupied or fed not far short of a quarter of the population, was virtually extinct. Within the ancient walls of Niirnberg, in face of which, in the middle of the War, two of its most formidable commanders and their armies had met, to separate again as after a drawn game, famine and disease had raged with similar results. The great Bavarian city of Ratisbon had ceased to be a trading town ; and as one of our authorities chooses to put it, had to console itself with being the established seat of the Diet a very wordy and windy consolation. The decay of industry, as already observed, is even more striking than that of trade, though the prosperity of the one was of course inseparably bound up with that of the other. The industrial collapse was not due to any falling off in the aptitude of the Germans as technical workmen, or to a more than ordinary un- willingness, fostered by the continued endurance of the gild-system, to make use of new inventions or improve- ments, especially in the matter of machinery; but it was intensified by the continuous competition of other countries, not similarly hampered by a growing de- ficiency of labour. For the cloth-looms of Westphalia and the potteries of Hesse could not, any more than the vineyards and orchards of the Palatinate, be worked without labourers; in Bavaria, too, where the cloth and linen manufactures had attained to considerable prosperity, a complete and lasting stagnation had set in throughout these widespread industries. In Saxony, the recovery seems to have been quicker hastened, The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 191 no doubt, by qualities which have always distinguished her population : intelligence and frugality. But I must not carry the dreary catalogue further ; or I might point out how the War ruined, for a long time, the nascent commercial and industrial prosperity of Brandenburg, which, after the Peace had to be nursed up again by sus- tained administrative efforts, calling for our admiration as fully as does the military prowess generally held to have laid the foundations of the greatness of the Prussian State. On the other hand, I might remind you how those of the Habsburg lands which had not been spared the infliction of the presence of the War Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia had suffered from a depopulation, to the causes of which was here added the ruthlessness of religious intolerance. I, therefore, conclude this part of my remarks by referring, once more, to the hopelessness to which the War had reduced the eco- nomical condition of the Empire at large not always bringing new evils, but always, or almost always, in- tensifying those already in operation. There are, I, for one, have no scruple in allowing, two sides to the question : whether the disunion of Germany which now long continued , and which affected its social and economic interests as well as its political life was not, though an enduring evil, mitigated in some measure by the variety of interests and ideas engendered by a large number of territorial centres. But of the calamitous effects of this division, which the War intensified, upon the economic, the commercial and the industrial condition of the country there can be no doubt ; and one illustra- tion of this truth may suffice. How the evils which beset the economic condition of the country were 1 92 Historical aggravated by the War, even when their origin is to be traced beyond the date of its outbreak, a single instance will prove, in lieu of many, because it touched the very nerve of those relations which we are discussing. It is quite true that the financial condition of many German principalities was extremely bad in the period immediately preceding that of the War, and that this fact should not be overlooked in judging of its general effects upon German finance. Thus, there can be no doubt that the extravagance of many of the Princes in the early years of the century had reached an unprece- dented height, and that the Emperor Rudolf II had set an evil example of prodigality equally reckless in peace and in war, which some of the petty Princes did their utmost to imitate ; while the towns kept pace with the Courts, and ran up municipal debts by a profuse expenditure upon building and, in accordance with the taste of the times, upon the ornamental arts, which de- corated an opulence that not unfrequently meant decay. But the particular evil of which I am about to speak, after all, had its root in the political divisions of the Empire themselves. It was owing to these that an abuse from which other countries besides Germany England and the Netherlands, for instance were to suffer in the days of the great monetary crisis of 1621 disturbed the economic and social life of Germany with un- equalled violence. For, as was pointed out by my friend Dr W. A. Shaw in a valuable paper read by him before the Royal Historical Society some years ago 1 , there was in Germany no central authority which could command 1 Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, New Series, vol. ix (1895). The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 193 general respect and obedience enough to warrant its in- tervening in the matter of the coinage. Thus, while in other countries the secret traffic in coined money was perpetually putting in circulation pieces of diminished value debased money, in a word in place of the better, they could from time to time authoritatively fix monetary standards, and thus again produce order out of disorder. But in Germany this was impossible ; and the only sub- stitute was a fluid system (if system it can be called) of minting unions set up among the Circles of the Empire, or among Princes and cities whose territories were mutually adjacent. The significance of this disunion, and the opportunities of mischief thus supplied for the debasing and circulation of base coin to the Kippers and Wippers, as they were called a pernicious fraternity which, as a strict matter of fact, included the highest minting authorities from the Emperor down to the humbler practitioners of the singularly easy process, to whom the name was applied may be gathered from the list given by Dr Shaw, by way of example, of the independent mints in existence in one or two of the Circles of the Empire. In the Lower Rhenish Circle, if I have reckoned right, they amounted to 66 including, besides temporal Princes and cities, 13 counts and 7 barons, with not less than 8 bishops and 7 abbots. The facilities for sharp practice and fraud were increased by every one of these mints, inasmuch as it was precisely by means of their multiplicity that the Kippers and Wippers made their profits, systematically buying up the better coins, circulating more of the same nominal value coined out of the reminted silver, and drawing their gain out of the balance. (It was a fortunate accident W.P.I. 13 194 Historical that, while the evil was at its height in the earlier part of the War, coining was still a comparatively expensive pro- cess, since the use of machinery was not introduced into it till about the middle of the century or the profit to be made would have been still more tempting.) The value attached to a coin in commercial dealings came to depend upon the individual who tendered or accepted it in payment; an almost universal mutual distrust ensued, and cut away the very basis of all business dealings between man and man, as well as between authority and authority, and community and com- munity. To the uncertainty which war in all its forms inevitably produces, and which, in the case of one con- stantly shifting its seat like the Thirty Years' War, could not but be unintermittent, the condition of the money market signally contributed ; it became, in fact, a money scramble or a money chaos, and helped to send what good money there was in the country out of it in a steady current. The condition of things was one in which trade and industry could not recover themselves, and in which profits could be made only by those whose combined resources of capital were peculiar to themselves. But it would take me too far to go into the special subject of the fortunes of the Jews in the course of the Great War. Enough has been said, though much more might have been added, as to the material disadvantages which the War inflicted upon the Empire or intensified there. It is obvious that these were inevitably ac- companied by experiences in the intellectual and moral life of the nation not less grave and disheartening, and enduringly associated in its traditions with the memories of a long period of suffering. The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 195 Beyond a doubt, the decay of the Universities, which had formerly stood for so much in the progress of the intellectual life of the people, and upon whose recovery of their former position the revival of that life must largely depend, has to be reckoned among the most disastrous effects of the Great War. Here again, the shocks of the War fell on ground ill prepared for offering resistance. The great impetus had nearly spent itself which had been given to the foundation of Universities in Germany by the great humanistic move- ment of the 1 5th and i6th centuries ; and, though it was not altogether stopped in the iyth (the German Uni- versity, that of Altdorf in Bavaria, where Wallenstein, we remember, was as a student subjected to detention in the career, was actually raised to that rank after the actual outbreak of the War), it could only be revived if the spirit which gave birth to it were renewed. But the Lutheran Reformation, speaking broadly, had failed to develop in the atmosphere of true academic freedom the growth of the seed which it had sown; and while, in the latter part of the i6th and earlier years of the lyth century, the study of theology had overshadowed all others, it had arrested that unfettered expansion of the pursuit of letters and science to which the age of Eras- mus, and, at one time at least, Erasmus himself, had looked forward. In the days of summae theologiae and of formulae concordiae, drawn up so as to leave no escape from the network of the absolute, the German Uni- versities, whether Protestant or Catholic, resuscitated methods of study which seemed to bring to life again the scholasticism which the Renascence had striven to cast out ; and the weight laid upon the intellectual aspirations 132 196 Historical of studious youth especially as it came to be drawn in increasing proportions from the classes which count the enjoyment of life as part of their inheritance was greater than it could bear. What wonder, then, that German studentdom took its revenge in a licence which, as of its nature local and temporary, was readily tolerated by authority, and of which in most of the German Universities, even after it had been repressed, the traces were not altogether extinguished. Professor Taubmann, of Wittenberg, who lived almost to the outbreak of the War, and who doubled his office with that of Court-fool to the Elector of Saxony, when on a visit to the palace at Dresden, was asked by its master what the students at Wittenberg were doing ? Where- upon the Professor at once descended into the courtyard of the palace, and digging up some of the cobbles with his sword, proceeded to hurl them at the Elector's windows, shouting, "Down with you, you scoundrel, you pennal\" The Elector was answered, so far as the great Lutheran University was concerned ; but it was very far from being the worst offender of its class. So widespread and palpable were the evils which were produced by this misrule of academic licence, and so effectually did it, in many so-called seats of learning, silence during the War any isolated endeavours at academic study, that we cannot but attribute to the War, a large share in causing the long prevalence of this academical abortion. The terms pennal and pennalism, one of which occurred in the anecdote just cited, acquired in German Universities a historic significance far beyond the intrinsic importance of the follies to which they referred. But the The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 197 follies of youth may affect the welfare of the community as well as of the individual ; and it was pennalism which involved the German Universities of the iyth century in a contempt and alienation from the intellectual and moral progress of the nation far deeper and more en- during than the isolation which, from not dissimilar causes, seemed to threaten the English Universities of a rather earlier age. Pennalism (the derivation of the word is obscure) was the treatment administered to students during their first year by their seniors. After, amidst tremendous mock solemnities, the beanus (bec-jaune, or freshman proper) had passed through the purifying ceremony of the depositio, and had been transformed by the application of scissors, file, saw and axe, he was depleted in purse by the feast by which he had to pay for his admission into the academical world. His first or pennal year then ensued a year of mingled debauchery and tribulation, under the organised direc- tion of his seniors ; and lucky he, if he could pass on to the later stages of his university career without a load of debt, a ruined constitution, and perhaps a half- broken heart. There are phases of university life which have all the sordidness, without any of the poetry, of Villon, and from which even the historic observer may turn with disgust. But if you remember that this was the time when some of the loftiest minds were engaged in speculating on the purposes and methods of education, proposing to themselves at times ideals so high that we are prone to set them down as Utopias if you re- member that this was the age (to mention two names only) of Milton and of Comenius (whose final work was published in the last year of the War) then you will 198 Historical not wonder that, in some of the German contemporaries of these great reformers, doubts arose whether the Universities were really to be looked upon as the true seats of high intellectual culture, and whether the training of the country's youth might not more profitably be carried on elsewhere. Such was the question asked by John Balthasar Schupp, a pamphleteer who should not be overlooked by students of the social history of the War. Of the German Universities, that which had taken the lead in cherishing the new birth of humanistic learning was Erfurt, whose geographical position, as well as its relation to the archiepiscopal see of Mainz, had forced it into the front of the religious conflict, and had thus led to a decay of its academical prosperity which seemed to reach its last stage during the Thirty Years' War. The reason why I mention Erfurt in the present connexion is, that no less a personage than Gustavus Adolphus made an attempt to restore to this city, which occupied a central position in Germany, not far from those regions where he had actually established the seat of his own power as a German Prince, its former aca- demical greatness, and promoted a number of desirable reforms which, shortly after his death (1634), were formulated in a new code. But the War made it im- possible to carry out these attempted changes, nor was it till a generation later in 1664 that a reorganisation, under which Erfurt's prosperity revived, could be effected. May I detain you for a few moments while I trace the effect of the War on the history of two other German Universities one southern and one northern which may even more signally illustrate its direct incidence ? The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 199 The ancient Ruperta Carolina of Heidelberg had, after a long period of fidelity to the Papal traditions of her foundation, in which she rivalled even her rather younger sister Cologne, continued to flourish. She held her head high both under the Lutheran Elector Otto Henry, who left her his library, and whose name still survives with the remains of his castle, and under the Calvinist Frederick the Pious, in whose reign, owing to the confluence of Calvinist fugitives (Peter Ramus was one) with the flower of the Calvinistic youth of Europe, Heidelberg became the earliest German University to which we may ascribe an international character. After a second interval of Lutheran as- cendancy, Heidelberg, under Frederick IV and Fred- erick V, the husband of our younger English Elizabeth, once more became the centre of the Calvinistic anti- Habsburg propaganda, until the Great War broke out, and the honest young Elector, the heir of great designs, to the execution of which nature had not made him equal, was seated on the Bohemian throne, and thence cast forth into a life of homelessness. Thus it came to pass that, in 1622, Heidelberg fell into the avenging clutch of the Catholic League and its general Tilly, and the University, with all its great memories and its greater promise, seemed already to have become a thing of the past. In the four years which ensued upon the capture and partial destruction of Heidelberg castle and town, six students matriculated; and, in 1629, it seemed time for the gradual processes of the Counter-reformation to begin. A Catholic University crept into being, with two faculties, a theological and philosophical, each con- sisting of a single teacher. Within yet a few years, the 2OO Historical Swedes were masters of Heidelberg, and once more, though the great Protestant champion lay dead, the University was brought back to its allegiance to the Reformation. But her vicissitudes were not yet at an end ; and a year had barely passed before the great battle of Nordlingen was fought, and the darkest days of the Palatinate set in. Its capital, after being plundered by the worsted Swedes, was subjected afresh to a siege, and, after this had been raised through the French, was reconquered by the Imperialists, and, during the remainder of the War, subjected to the Bavarian rule, or rather to an alternation of anarchy and military occupa- tion, during both of which violence and rapine, famine and disease, ran their horrid course. These were the scenes, I may observe, in which, naturally enough, the imagination of posterity came, perhaps more than in any others, to picture to itself the awful desolation of the Thirty Years' War. I do not wish to enter very closely on this occasion into the comments of modern critics upon the stories of canni- balism the last horror of barbarous warfare which Khevenhiller's narrative has located in this neighbour- hood ; there are other stories of the same sort which came from other parts of Germany possibly true, possibly false but on the authenticity of any one of them, after all, very little turns. The sufferings of the Palatinate in population and in prosperity may , however , be confidently verified from the detailed accounts of the recovery of the devastated land under Frederick V's son Charles Lewis, to whose private errors history ought to be kind in remembrance of his conception of the duties of a Prince. To the University, after he had recalled it into The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 201 existence some four years after the conclusion of the War, he restored a vigorous life, renewed, let it be said, to his further honour, in the spirit of religious tolerance to which this descendant of the Calvinist Electors was one of the earliest witnesses among the Princes of Europe. One possession, as you know, he could not restore to the University of Heidelberg the famous Palatina the Library of which had been seized by the Bavarians in 1623, when the ban of the Empire was pronounced upon the Electoral House, and had been borne by mules across the Alps, to be incorporated in the Vaticana at Rome. I have no time for telling the curious story of the partial return of the books under Pope Pius VII, in 1815 and 1816, which to them, too, was the epoch of Restoration. But the fate of the Palatina forms a curious episode in the history of the University of which it was long the most cherished treasure. From Heidelberg and its story of successive rapid changes, we turn for a moment to a University whose name is less familiar on modern lips, but whose memory, like that of one or two other Universities, I love to recall in season. The Julius University of Helmstadt had in its day been well endowed by its founder, Duke Julius of Brunswick, and his high-minded son Duke Henry Julius, who, like many Princes of their age, regarded their Universities as the most precious of their pos- sessions, and (if one may so say) as the best of their investments. At the turn of the i6th and iyth centuries, Helmstadt was, next to Wittenberg and Leipzig, the best "frequented" of the Universities of northern Germany, and was more especially sought out for their sons (like Gottingen in after days) by men of position in 2O2 Historical the land. In the years immediately preceding the Great War, the number of its students reached its greatest height, and George Calixtus was already a member of its Theological Faculty. If ever any one teacher has deserved to be called the glory of his University, such was the due of Calixtus, who through a long period of desolation, till he remained all but the single academical teacher within the deserted halls of Helmstadt, held out by her. We may smile at the professor contro- versiarum without anyone to say him nay! But, for my part, there is no figure in the history of learning that I regard with deeper reverence than that of Calixtus, the personification of the principles of peace and tolerance in the midst of a generation bent upon persecution, fire and sword. Helmstadt was under the rule of a territorial Prince, Duke Frederick Ulric (brother of the redoubtable Bishop Christian of Halber- stadt), who was dux pacificus in his way that is, in the way of seeking in turn to be the friend of all sides ; in consequence, his land became one of the cockpits of the War, where indigenous and foreign ambition- Danes, Leaguers, Swedes, Imperialists in turn took up their quarters. The University, of course, began gradually to feel the pressure of the War ; but so firm a root did it seem to have taken in the soil, that it was not till 1625, when the conflict between Christian IV of Denmark and Tilly was approaching its crisis, that the University was (as we know from one of Calixtus 's letters) literally starved out of the town, which had long, and often very unwillingly, harboured it. In 1626, the last of the students had quitted Helmstadt, and Calixtus and a worthy Professor of Physics, named Gran, alone The Effects of the Thirty Yean* War 203 remained to represent all the arts and sciences. In a while, the regime of League and Emperor seeming to have firmly established itself in the town, some of the teachers found their way back from Brunswick; and, under the aegis of Wallenstein, this Northern Protestant University began a new period of existence. Fixity of condition seems to have been its chief requirement for existence; for, when the Swedes came in 1630, and after the death of Frederick Ulric approved a condominium of his heirs, the number of students increased and went steadily up till the end of the War, when it reached the respectable total of 462. With the later history of the University (ultimately united with Erlangen) we cannot occupy ourselves here. Now, in Helmstadt we have a University which, even during the course of the War, contrived after a period of calamity to accommodate itself to that course, and, under more favourable circumstances, kept its head (as one might say) well above water. We are, accordingly, in this instance able to note the main characteristics of university life as affected by the War, and find them exceptional influences , like that of Calixtus , apart , and of such we hear very little those of intellectual stagnation, varied by un- bridled academical licence. Ill-paid professors I spare you the harrowing details as to the more pacific ways in which they supplemented their insufficient income- carried on the work of the Faculties, as best they could ; while some members of the teaching-staff were fain from time to time to exchange the gown for the sword. Thus, one Eberhard Bering, after lecturing on Oriental languages, at different points of his career enlisted as a trooper under the notorious General Hoik and under 204 Historical another Swedish commander (he died in peace, after being in turn professor and schoolmaster). The students at Helmstadt very largely took after this type of pro- fessor, and many of them were fain to treat the War, in the contending armies of which they from time to time served, as an agreeable vacation change, bringing with it the pleasing variety of pay, in the midst of occu- pations nominally more peaceable. Nominally, I say for nowhere shall we find the swashbuckler ways and brutal tone of the students of this period more glaringly exhibited than at Helmstadt, where the students were in constant warfare with their authorities, and the University, as a whole, with the Town. The students brought back with them from their summer campaigns, not only the extravagances of military ways and manners (incredible extravagances of costume among the rest), but fire and sword in the most literal sense, to play a part in their winter amuse- ments, and in spreading dismay among the Philistines. I use the word advisedly, because Helmstadt and Jena, which vied with one another in the excesses of their students, alike claimed the honour of having invented the famous nickname for their natural enemies, the unfortu- nates outside the pale of academic freedom. The aca- demical seal of Helmstadt bore the design of Samson and the lion, which certainly seems suggestive of some traditional foundation for the claim ; on the other hand, at Jena a legend ran of a Lutheran pastor having lamented over the corpse of a student done to death by offended burghers: "The Philistines have been upon thee." Be this as it may, we cannot marvel that the time came at last when the patience of outraged authorities was at an The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 205 end; and two years after the Peace a visitation of the University of Helmstadt took place, which sought to bring order into confusion. Since, however, a common understanding obtained among the students of practi- cally all the German Universities, the evil was of such magnitude that the Imperial authority thought fit to intervene, and, in 1662, an Imperial ordinance was issued to put an end to pennalism, which, perhaps, arrested some of the most intolerable excesses in vogue. I could not refrain from lifting just a corner of the curtain of oblivion which covers the distressful and unpleasing features of German university life in the period of the Thirty Years' War features which were not to be changed in a moment. Happily, to this sphere of life at least, there was also a nobler side. I have already spoken of Calixtus, whom not only the wide learning and the spirit of conciliation, which he had inherited from his master in divinity, Melanchthon, lifted above party, but who pointed the way to that union which the Christian Church has, to this day, failed to achieve, on the basis of the ethics of the Gospel. But the seed that he sowed during the long dreary years of his academical life, was not sown in vain, and no German University was found more ready to receive and apply the lesson which he taught than the other ancient seat of learning of which we have spoken the Palatine University of Heidelberg. The impulse towards intellectual endeavour could never be altogether deadened in Germany ; so that the Universities and with them the grammar schools or gymnasia, recovered in course of time from their forced inactivity, and from the perverted conditions ao6 Historical into which their life degenerated. Moreover, in accord- ance with the tendencies of the times noticeable else- where (in England, e.g.), learned societies, founded for the more intimate prosecution of classical and historical, and more especially scientific studies, helped to add their impulse. Yet progress was languid for a long time after the War. The day seemed to have passed, although it was to dawn again, when Germany, instead of barely keeping pace with the literary and scientific advance of other nations, held a position of intellectual leadership, as she did in the days when the currents of Renascence and Reformation united into one mighty stream. Under the direct influence of the War, which, on the one hand, accustomed the Germans to a long and benumbing domination of foreign influence and, on the other, cut them off from ampler, easier and kindlier conditions of life, in which Princes and cities vied with one another in the endowment of art, learning and research, there began an age of intellectual dependence. Not only do we find a considerable number of Germans many of them under the pressure of necessity acquiring in the great foreign centres of intellectual activity the scholarship or other learning by which they afterwards gained distinction; but the same was the case in the fine arts. Alike in sculpture, painting and architecture Germany sought its models in France and Italy, and in music, the native art par excellence, in which original productivity seemed to have dried up. Most of all was such the case in literature, in which the Germans passed through a century and a half of bondage, first to classical examples, then to Italian, French and Dutch and (in the 1 8th century) to English fashions. And yet, while The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 207 this state of things continued, and in its intellectual life the country seemed more and more to depend upon what it could borrow and assimilate from others, Germany was sinking more and more into the narrow ways and ideas of an inland territory, shut up in its own inherited conditions, which the War had fastened down upon it; while France, the Netherlands and England were expanding their activities into an ever-widening sphere, and stimulating and heightening, in the process, the powers of observation and reproduction possessed by their sons. Of all the effects of the War, this is perhaps the most familiar to us ; and it is this long period of dependence and pettiness in German national life which German historians have justly regarded as an inheritance largely derived from that long epoch of warfare and of woe. Yet, while I repeat these truisms, I should add that the association of the results in question with the Great War, as distinct from the general course of the national history, may, again, be carried too far. The condition of dependence upon foreign nations into which Germany fell for a long period of her history, and which she was not to cast off till after undergoing experiences such as have befallen few other great nations this dependence was largely due to the War and its incidents. Among these were the renewal of the intimate alliance between the Austrian and Spanish branches of the House of Habsburg ; the long-protracted intervention of Sweden and the ultimate interference of France, and the rela- tions in which those Powers were left towards the Empire by the Peace that concluded the War. Sweden was now a State in the Empire ; that France was not 208 Historical similarly included in it was her own choice : she preferred to trust to the principle, now first established, that the conclusion of alliances with foreign Powers was open to any Germanic State at its own discretion. This full measure of dependence was, accordingly, due to the War. But the splitting-up of the nation into an infinitude of sovereign units, which it was impossible to fuse in joint action by the exercise of an acknowledged Imperial authority, and which could only be gathered into groups or camps, under the name of Leagues or Unions, through the special operation of interest, passion or intrigue (though the interest might be that of self preservation and the passion that of religious dominance) was a damnosa haereditas which mounted further back than the conflict. And the fashion of sub- mitting with predisposed readiness to foreign influence as eo ipso irresistible a fashion which from political spread into almost every other aspect or branch of the national life, whether concerned with things intellectual or things material was an old and inrooted evil, which the windiness and want of patriotic self-confidence, fostered by the Great War, no doubt, augmented and exaggerated, but which it cannot be said to have either originated or invented. I had intended to illustrate this observation by tracing, at the hands of Gebauer and other recent authorities, the history of a particular foreign influence which beyond any other has naturally occupied the minds and engaged the researches of modern German historians. But my time is growing short, and I can only ask you to examine for yourselves the earlier, as well as the later, chapters of the story of the French refugees The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 209 in Germany. Of this story, it is, however, difficult to ex- aggerate the importance. It begins with the period of the French Religious Wars, and covers part of the reign (not throughout one of tolerance) of Henry IV himself. Religious and university life were alike animated by the constant influx ; trade, both export and import, flourished, France furnishing the means of gratifying the increased love of luxury of all sorts, while Germany, through its great banks of the south-west, supplied the French monarchs with ready cash in return for many welcome concessions. A particular trade, which specially concerns us, the bookselling trade, with Lyons as a centre, in this era, perhaps even more important than Paris, was ex- tremely active in spreading French influences of all kinds across the border. Thus, the ground had already been diligently prepared, and the intimate relations between German Calvinism and French Protestantism, Liberalism and national policy were steadily contributing to advance the process, when the Thirty Years' War supervened, and by its ultimate issues secured to France a political ascendancy which reacted upon every other kind of international relation. The influence of French manners, to which I in- tended to have more especially directed your attention, is traceable, with curious completeness, though of course in varying degrees of strength, during the periods im- mediately preceding, or forming part of, that of the Thirty Years' War. After the Religious Wars of France were at last over, the Court of Henry IV had become the seat of gallantry, where the pursuit of pleasure was viewed as the principal object of existence, but where, as is common in periods of reaction after troubled and w. P. j. 14 2io Historical turbulent times, a love of refinement and desire for re- straint sought to keep at a distance the coarser forms of self-indulgence. After the assassination of the good King Henry, a new phase of social manners set in, and continued under the Spanish influence of the consort of Louis XIII. A strict etiquette and a deferential accept- ance of religious formalism took the place of easier and pleasanter ways; but there was no corresponding advance in the morality which underlies manners. The earlier age of Louis XIV was preparing itself, which, in its turn, was to be succeeded by yet another age, of still more marked formality and decorum. The Palatine Court, as was natural from its local situation, was most directly open to French influence. The University numbered several French scholars among its teachers, and the electoral palace itself, Heidelberg Castle, was renovated by architects in the French style. It was here that the young Electress Elizabeth, the grand-daughter of Mary Stewart, was received, not long before the War, with French allegorical ceremonial, and with French words of welcome. The Court of Hesse- Cassel, second only to the Palatine in political import- ance as upholding the " system " of the French alliance, was hardly less deeply imbued with French tastes and ways of life. Landgrave Maurice, one of the most far- sighted politicians of his time, was a resolute reformer of manners on the French model, and (in accordance with the change from grosser times) became the founder of a temperance society. In other Courts of the south-west even in Bavaria French influence asserted itself in spite of politics ; in the north less so, with the exception of Anhalt (the home of Prince Christian, the life and soul The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 211 of the Calvinist- French alliance) and, at a rather later date, of the Brunswick Courts, which bequeathed the preference for French speech to our first two Georges. Of all the German Courts, that which remained least open to French inroads upon old-accustomed forms and half-medieval ways of life was the strictly Lutheran Court of Dresden, which, less than a century later, was to outrun all others in its exaggeration of the gallantries familiar to France. There may have been something left-handed in such a compliment as that which Henry IV paid to Count Dohna, a member of a family of celebrated diplomatists, and himself a German nobleman of a new school, when presenting him to the Queen with the question: " Le voild le prendriez-vous pour un Allemand?" But the anecdote supports the view that the Germans a nation which in the middle ages had presented itself in its poetic literature as typifying a refined courtly way of thought and manners were not wholly losers by the admission of influences without which reform from within would not have been easy. Grobianus deserved extirpating quocumque modo ; while there was something in the whole history of German civilisation which safeguarded it from being permanently cor- rupted by the new fashion of dealing with the relations between the sexes. Cyriacus Spangenberg, the author of an Adelspiegel (mirror of nobility), published at the beginning of the iyth century, speaks of the place of woman in society in a tone neither that of Gro- bianism nor of galanterie, and this tone, in spite of the coarsening, as well as the relaxing, influences of the War, German life and literature were to recover, 142 212 Historical even before the ascendancy of French influence had passed away. It might have been amusing, had time allowed, to note how French ways and fashions of life progressed in Germany in the period of the Thirty Years' War, under the influence of the intimate relations between the Calvinist Princes and France which marked its opening period, and of the later political intimacy which culmi- nated in the military compact negotiated by Richelieu with Bernhard of Weimar. French example affected the outward forms of social life : the whole code of compli- ment, of which it seems to have been reserved for the 2Oth century to cast out the last lingering remnants ; the amusements of the upper and middle classes ; games and other diversions ; matters of food and drink and the whole science of the table; besides the vast question of dress, in which the French mode is to be carefully distinguished from the Spanish and partly stands in direct contrast to it. Upon dress, the War exercised a controlling influence peculiar to itself, even the dandies of the day thinking it proper to appear in wide, flapping hats and top-boots y and even the women adopting the quasi-military fashion of head- and neck-gear, short-cut hair and scarf wrapped round the waist. Yet, while these were mere passing whims, the extravagant expenditure on dress proved permanent, and remained unaffected by the advent of soberer Spanish fashions. As in dress, so in speech, the War introduced into the German vocabulary, together with certain Spanish and Italian words, a considerable element of French ; the phraseology of the campaigns (there is one French word) became that of daily con- versation, or allied itself (there is another) with it. The The Effects of the Thirty Years 1 War 213 contemptus linguae Teutonicae, of which Martin Opitz, in his book of that name, complained just before the War (1611), could not but continue to prevail during its course. I must not, however, pursue the subject further, attractive as it is. Lest, however, it should be assumed that to this period was due the first use of French as the language of diplomacy by the side of Latin, I should, perhaps, point out that for this preference the Emperor Charles V, who was accustomed to the regular use of French from his boyhood, should be held responsible. The attention given to the teaching of French and modern languages could not but be increased by the contact which the War, after its fashion, promoted; notice, for instance, the advice urged on this head by Clarendon, who had seen so many men and cities in his enforced travels ; and remember how often war, for one reason or another, leads to the development, as it were in self-defence, of this branch of educational activity. When, at last, the intervention of France had, thanks both to the skill of her policy and to the success of her great generals, been carried to such a point, that even after he had concluded peace with the Protestant Princes of the centre and the north-west, the power of the Emperor could not prevail against it, her weight in the scale could not but determine the conditions of the general pacification, which it gradually became im- possible to defer any longer, so far as the Empire at large was concerned. France, as we have already seen, declined to enter the Empire as one of its com- ponent States ; but its material and moral forces had now been so effectually weakened, and the strength of national sentiment to such an extent impaired though it was not, 214 Historical as has been sometimes supposed, utterly extinguished that albeit peace was signed between France and the Empire, the gates were really flung open to the con- tinuous encroachment of the former Power. The age of Louis XIV was at hand, with all that it meant for Germany the breaking-up of her Imperial defences in the west, in order that the rival ambitions of her Princes might be gratified; the consummation of the rape of Elsass by the long series of" reunions " and by the surprise of Strassburg ; the devastation of the Palatinate in the Orleans War ; the demonstration of the national helplessness and the bitter disappointment (as in the case of the barren victory of Brandenburg over the Swedes) of the hopes even of those who, greatly daring, had relied on themselves. Thus, there seemed no future left for the nation, and its present undoing seemed final. By the end of the century, France was the archfoe, and as such she presented herself to the consciousness of the German people for generations to come. But it was the Great War which had made this result possible, and which had shaped with unmistakable definiteness the successive stages of the national downfall . The political effects proper of the War, though a summary of them is among the commonplaces of modern history, are not on that account the less deserving of careful investigation ; but it was not part of my inten- tion to-night to take you once more over this well- known ground. The War destroyed most of what before its outbreak had remained to recall an earlier and more vigorous life, or substituted for it new and alien formations. So with its military organisation, which had been rent in twain. So with its constitutional The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 215 life, for the Ratisbon Diet, abandoning all thoughts of reconstruction, merely kept going the machinery with- out which the Empire would have lacked even the semblance of unity. The Emperor was driven back upon the traditional policy of his House, which unless it were in the warding-off of the Eastern Peril could no longer even appeal for a common endeavour for national ends. The German Princes came to him for his alliance though a vague prestige and the right of conferring favours of rank or place still attached to it much as they came to any other Power; or they even resisted him in conjunction with other Powers for whose alliance they had now formal warrant for making application. Later historians have pointed out advantages in the decentralisation, which, already before the close of the War, writers such as Hippolithus a Lapide had proclaimed a legitimate political development ; and the great publicists of the next generation, notably Pufendorf , saw in the formation of States with strong absolute governments the true creative process of the new era. This new era came ; but it came slowly, and bore the promise of new conflicts in its bosom. Strong territorial or State organisation, the reconstruction of the service of each State in its army, in the body of its civil officials, in the functions and responsibilities of its sovereign himself such was the work awaiting the new generation, on whose behalf we may say that the Great War had swept the path clear. One word more, before I hasten to a close. Though in no direction of intellectual effort was the age a creative one, which in Germany succeeded that of the Thirty Years' War how could it be such after the 2i6 Historical blight which had fallen on the land? its literary and scientific impulses had not been wholly destroyed. Learned poets and simple Martin Opitz the reformer of the poetic art, Andreas Gryphius the imitator of Shakespeare, Simon Dach, who said that he did not like writing poetry in German, but who produced in it two of the most delightful lyrics (each in its own way) in the language 1 , besides the religious poet of whom I will speak in closing were all at work during the course of the War itself. The Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, founded in 1617 for the preservation, among other things, of the purity of German speech, held up its head during the whole course of the War, and continu- ously grew in numbers, though confining itself to the nobility and the learned class. The accumulation of knowledge progressed steadily, and the desire asserted itself more and more to methodise and systematise it, as we should say, scientifically. The study of law made a fresh advance under such teachers as Conring, another Helmstadt name representative of the many- sided, and in his case almost encyclopaedic, learning of the age Germany's worst age, as one of his biographers calls it. History, which had been silenced in part or altogether in some of the Universities during the War, reasserted her claim to instruct the present by the ex- periences of the past; and, before another generation had come and gone, the poly-history of its predecessor had been superseded by those aspirations to an advance in all the fields of human knowledge which find their incarnation in Leibniz. 1 Der Mensch hat nichts so eigen, and Anke (Aenncheri) von Tharau. The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 217 If this was much to have been saved, there is yet something more to add. The religious life of Germany could not but suffer from the War more than any other side of the national existence. The gain secured, by the Peace which concluded it, to the cause of religious liberty was, as has been seen, marred by uncertainties and exceptions ; while, as to the establishment of the various forms of faith, the fiat of the territorial Prince, not the choice of his subjects, was pronounced to be the determining authority (with a limitation in the case of endowments in force at a certain date, which were to be left intact). But the religious life which underlay, or lay beyond, divergent confessions of faith or articles of belief could not be established or disestablished, settled or unmoored, by treaties and pacifications, and this life the War had constantly spoiled, broken and outraged. Except, in a measure, in the earliest (the Bohemian) section of the War, and perhaps in the first siege of Magdeburg, and on some similar occasions in Silesia, the Palatinate and elsewhere, the War had, even in its earliest stages, not presented itself to the populations in the light of a religious war so much as in that of an endless series of invasions, occupations, devastations, bringing with them all the blankness as well as all the horrors belonging to a struggle carried on for ends to which those who suffered from it were more or less indifferent, or, worst of all, in that of a war carried on for its own sake. Thus, religion, with all the emotions that nourish the religious sense, had been largely thrust out of the issues of the conflict, and had, by some of its agents, been frankly ignored. Meanwhile, those prin- ciples which are the foundations of the social edifice 2i 8 Historical respect for purity, sobriety, chastity, for the very sanctity of life itself had become the playthings of homeless hordes of soldiery ; and men (and with them doubtless women and children) had unlearnt the laws which should govern the relations and the conduct of human beings to- wards God and their neighbours. In their place stalked abroad all the vices of a society unhinged from its ordi- nary conditions rank dishonesty in all the dealings of everyday life, and a shameless disregard of other demands than those of a self-indulgence eager to pluck the fruit of the day before the hour of doom. Yet the voice of religion made heard its whisper here and there its clear admonition after the storms, and in the intervals allowed by darkness and riot; and out of the spiritual anarchy were born, not mere passing murmurings or protests, but what were to proVe the beginnings of new and far-reaching spiritual movements in the land. It should be remembered that, in certain other ways, not hitherto adverted to in this brief lecture, the age of the Thirty Years' War is that in which the spiritual and intellectual life of Germany reached its lowest depths. The superstitious notions and mis- belief which the Protestant Reformation had not only been unsuccessful in overcoming, but which it had allowed to continue their advance, at times almost under its protection the belief in magic and witchcraft, and in the grotesque extravagances of astrology and al- chemy had corrupted all classes, from the highest to the lowest. These fancies had invaded the province of science the strength of the demons, says one theo- logical thinker, is as undeniable as the force of the winds, and Kepler taught that each of the heavenly The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 219 bodies possessed a soul of its own ; they had permeated the art and the practice of medicine ; and, in the case of the peasantry, had congealed themselves into a mass of tenets which might almost be said to constitute a dis- tinct religion. When tremendous catastrophes, which hardly needed to be heralded by signs from heaven, the burning of towns and the destruction of villages, the slaughter of many thousands on the field of battle, the massacre of innumerable women and children, the up- rooting and scattering of whole bodies of population, were witnessed, as it were, from the housetops, in most parts of the land, and in many districts of it seemed al- most to form the regular order of things the still, small voice of which I have spoken, could, of course, only be heard with difficulty and at intervals. Yet, that it did make itself heard, we know from several instances. A notable one is that of the Jesuit poet, Count Frederick Spec, a personality of the Great War which still lacks, so far as I know, its due biographical monument. Trained at Cologne on the lines of orthodoxy, he was serving as priest and preacher in the Minster at Pader- born, when the Order to which Spec belonged was requested by the Bishop of Wiirzburg to provide him with a confessor for a number of witches who had been condemned to be burnt to death in his episcopal capital. The necessity for such a functionary is apparent from the well-authenticated statement, that, in the year of this summons and the following year, 158 persons were publicly burnt to death at Wiirzburg on the charge of witchcraft including three canons of the Cathedral, seventy town-councillors, a doctor of theology, several young noblemen, a blind girl, and two quite young 22 o Historical children 1 . Spec did his duty until the authorities decided that no Jesuits should any longer be allowed to hear such confessions, which interfered with the due administration of justice. His hair had grown white over his work, and, when his missionary activity (this time directed against heresy) led to an attempt against his life, he was allowed to retire for a time into the sylvan solitude of a village near Corvey. There it was that he wrote, or put together, the series of religious hymns or songs which first appeared in a collected form in the last year of the War, some thirteen years after the death of the author, in the midst of his minis- trations at Treves to a population afflicted both by a pestilence and by the ravages of war. The Trutznachti- gall I do not like to translate this compound the Trusty Nightingale, but the meaning is something of the sort with its simple strains, full of deep religious feeling, in- tended partly for singing in church, but not as a series of regular contributions to the liturgy, cheered many a pious heart in those times of stress and sorrow, and conquered for itself a corner of its own in the national literature. While it would be difficult to find a more lurid back- ground for a pious life, vocal with religious emotion, an equally true, though, certainly, a more tranquil picture might be drawn of the life of a devoted Lutheran pastor intent, through all the troubles of the times, on reaching the inmost recesses of his people's souls. I do not take 1 There is something specially pitiful in the case of these young "witches." Elsewhere, we read of that pattern of orthodoxy, the Elector Maximilian, of Bavaria, being in his youth taken by his tutor to assist at the burning of a young female witch. The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 221 as an example of this type the well-known figure of Paul Gerhard, the greatest of Lutheran hymn-writers after Luther, whose sufferings are partly legendary, and who long survived the Thirty Years' War. I would rather refer to the experiences of Johann Arndt, who has been sometimes called the earliest of the Pietists, and who, whether or not he be entitled to that designation, is remembered as having by two books, which he wrote during the War, carried edification and comfort to in- numerable humble homes in the midst of trouble and distress. His True Christianity, which exposed him to some tribulation (which indeed he was hardly spared at any time of his life), and his book of prayers in prose and verse called the Little Paradise, were cherished, in numerous editions; as the Arndtenbuch, by the evangeli- cal population; and his mantle, there can be no doubt, fell upon the long succession of good pious men of whose names the best known to us are those of Spener and Francke. Thus, it came to pass that the Thirty Years' War was instrumental in bringing about, through the very pressure of the evils that followed in its train, a religious reaction against the formalism of contending creeds, and, at the same time, a deep and powerful protest against the rampant irreligion, of which, among the great wars of modern times, this War, by reason of its widespread, all-absorbing character and long duration, was the most productive. Of later German mysticism, the most prominent representative, Jacob Boehme, with whom our great modern English mystic William Law was, later, to familiarise our own religious public, belongs to the period of the Thirty Years' War. But Boehme 's is, to tell the truth, an isolated figure on 222 Historical its canvas; and although there is an undeniable inner connexion between him and his predecessor Weigel, and between them and both the great Pietistic and the great Evangelical Movement, on which I must not dwell here, they stand, historically, apart from the general religious life of the period we have been discussing. For these men abstained from any thought or intention of direct influence upon Christian society and the progress of the world, and withdrew themselves into the sphere of cosmic speculation, seeking to harmonise their idea of religion with that of the world, its creation and government. The Pietists on the other hand, whether we reckon them from Arndt or from his immediate successors, directly addressed themselves to the practical problems which Christianity and Protes- tant Christianity in especial saw before it, instead of carrying on the perennial controversy as to which is the true Christian Church, and what are its relations to the other Christian Churches. Though it was in Calvinist Holland and in the person of Gisbert Voet (the adversary of Descartes, another contemporary of the Great War), that Pietism has been held to have first taken its origin, in a period partly coinciding with that of the War, it was, nevertheless, in the Lutheran body and on German soil that it attained to its first continuous growth and there we must leave it. The real founder and father of Pietism and in saying this we render no injustice to his predecessors and teachers, Arndt or Stoll or others was Philip Jacob Spener, the height of whose ac- tivity begins not long before the last quarter of the century. But the men of "true Christianity," who first proclaimed the demand for free Christian life, not as The Effects of the Thirty Years' War 223 superseding but as betokening that of faith the viri piorum desideriorum, who, while marking the defects of the cure of souls as then administered, and the care of the Church as then deemed sufficient, took the new step of indicating the remedies the men whose strenuous endeavours were decried as pietismus or malum pietisticum, just as their successors in the days of Wesley were lumped together with the despised and loathed enthusiasts these were bred, at least to a large extent, in the evil days of the Great War, amidst its excesses and extravagances, its inhumanity and its godlessness. Thus, they, too, and their work may, in no presumptuous sense, be numbered among its effects. (Postscript, 1919.) I have no desire to add to these fragments of my studies of a subject with which I have occupied myself during many years, without, however, attaining to the fulfilment of the chief ambition of my literary life a History of the Thirty Years' War. While I gradually came to abandon this ambition, I had hoped that the still surviving veteran Professor Moriz Hitter's completion of his German History from 1555 to 1648 (vol. in, The Thirty Years' War, 1908) would remove the necessity, at least for the present generation, of any further attempt to -treat the subject as a whole certainly on the part of anyone not, like himself, master of its documentary materials. But, for reasons which he has himself stated, he ' ' suddenly abbreviated " his narrative of the last thirteen years of the struggle perhaps the most difficult part of it to render generally intelligible. My own attempt to survey the entire course of the War was limited to a series of chapters in vol. IV of the Cambridge Modern History (1906), accompanied by the fullest Bibliography which it was in my power, thanks largely to the Acton Library at Cambridge, to compile. io. GARDINER'S REIGN OF CHARLES I 1 (The Saturday Review, December 22, 1877, April 8, 1882, April 29, 1882.) As Mr Gardiner's History proceeds from stage to stage, it more and more fully establishes its claim to be regarded as one of the most noteworthy productions of recent English historical literature. Works of this kind, in which the results of the author's own research, as well as of that of his predecessors, are presented in a form at once lucid and attractive, but free from the tawdry trappings in which the half-trained historian loves to deck himself, are not so frequent as to allow of their appearance being passed by without a word of cordial congratulation. In his new volumes, though he never lays aside the calm and sober manner to which he has accustomed us, Mr Gardiner seems more frequently impelled than was his wont to give ample expression to the reflexions inspired by the progress of his theme, and to dwell, above all, on the defect in its most prominent personages which is the most fatal failing in kings and statesmen want of sympathy with the moral life of the people. The gravity of tone which is so marked a characteristic of the age with which he has to deal communicates itself not unfrequently to the historian's comments, and dignifies some of the most striking passages of his work. Now and then, as in the sketch 1 This is a reprint of three articles on portions of Gardiner's History of England treating of the reign of Charles I. Of these portions, the first was The Personal Government of Charles I. 2 vols. London, Longmans and Co. 1877. Gardiner 's Reign of Charles I 225 of the character of Olivares, he permits himself what appears to us a rather far-fetched turn of phrase or illustration; but, in general, these volumes derive a peculiar grace from the evidence they furnish of the degree in which their author has imbued himself with the influence of our noblest literature. It is of more direct importance that his method of narration is gradually developing a breadth and variety beyond the reach of less widely instructed writers. In the preface to these volumes, Mr Gardiner, after paying an ungrudging tribute to the labours of the great German historian which have supplemented his own 1 , refers to the confusion "caused by the habit which prevails where it would be least expected, of classifying events rather according to their nature than according to their chronological order, so that the true sequence of the history is lost." We are left in some degree of uncertainty whether Ranke himself is glanced at in this reproach, to which his manner of arranging his Histories seems to some extent to lay him open; and, in any case, we have no desire to take this opportunity of entering into the difficult question as to the most preferable method of historical narration. But it is obvious that no historian can bind himself down to any particular method, to the exclusion of all others. Even Mr Gardiner is obliged to insert, at fitting points, retrospective summaries of Scottish, Irish, and colonial transactions ; and some " fragments " which we are glad to see he promises, illustrating "the progress of the nation in wealth and prosperity and in 1 Ranke's History of England, principally in the Seventeenth Century, made its appearance in an English Translation in 1875, sixteen years after the publication of the first German volume. W.P.I. 15 226 Historical the improvement of the social machinery," are to "find a more appropriate place in a future volume." But he has certainly been able to carry out with remarkable success, and without in any degree falling into the ways, at once perplexing and tedious, of mere annalism, his plan of exhibiting, by as nearly parallel a treatment as possible, the influence mutually exercised upon one another by the foreign and the domestic policy of King Charles's Government. Mr Gardiner has at the same time prevented that misapprehension as to the history of public opinion to which the view of a period of transition is ordinarily exposed, by directing special attention to the slow and gradual growth of the national discontent with the administration of affairs. It would be a very fallacious notion that the personal government of Charles I during these years, big as they were with the germs of resist- ance and revolution, was carried on, from the first, under the eyes of a suspicious and discontented nation. Again and again, Mr Gardiner pauses in the course of his narrative to remind the reader how "tame and quiet" things appeared at home. Thus (in 1631), "it is only here and there that some solitary person puts forth opinions which, read in the light of subsequent events, are seen to be the precursors of the storm ; only here and there that the legal action of the government is put forth to settle controversies which, but for these subsequent events, would not seem to possess any very great im- portance." The case has not altered even with those attempts to secure conformity in ecclesiastical practices which first brought the tendencies of the governing powers into conflict with the sentiments of a great part Gardiner y s Reign of Charles I 227 of the people. It seems strange that, after the last House of Commons had replied to the King's Declaration on Religion by a resolution such as that of January 1629, and after the still more famous resolutions which, on a memor- able day in March, it had insisted on leaving as its legacy to the nation, the pressure exercised in the period pre- ceding Laud's appointment to the Primacy should have carried the incipient rupture no further than it did. " Never," writes Mr Gardiner of public feeling in the spring of 1633, "did there seem to be a fairer prospect of overcoming the irritation that had prevailed for years before." But Laud thought that the country at large could be reduced to order like his own University. He failed to recognise the force of the popular instincts which read, and no doubt often misread, his proceedings by the light of his supposed intentions; and thus, in course of time, he matured a feeling of bitterness which was imperfectly gauged even on the occasions when it found more or less open expression. The persecutions with which his system has been charged have doubtless been grossly exaggerated in the imagina- tion of posterity; and it was well worth while for Mr Gardiner to draw up a list, as complete as it could be made, of all cases of deprivation or suspension of ministers by the High Commission Court during a period of more than two years ensuing upon Laud's accession to the archbishopric of Canterbury. Only two cases of removal from the ministry occur; in one of these, the offence was a gross crime against morality; in the other, the sentence was remitted. Four clergymen were suspended and deprived; but two of these were permitted to exercise their ministry in other cures. 152 228 Historical Eight were suspended only, and, of these again, one with the same alleviation of the sentence ; while that on another was actually remitted. Nevertheless, the effects of the system gradually accumulated an extraordinary mass of illwill, and the logical persistency of Laud, in the end, converted the sentiment which it affronted into a political force of tremendous power. So, again, with regard to the financial policy of the Government. The objections taken to the first writ of Ship-money were apparently transitory, and were confined to London only; and Mr Gardiner is even of opinion that "in an enterprise appealing to the national sentiment no excuses would have been made." The King was unable to see, what a foreign Ambassador could perceive, that it was not only the questionable legality of the measure, but more especially its repugnance to usage, that constituted its grave significance. In the partial resistance offered to the second writ, which extended the levy to the whole country, the King's right to make the demand was at first seldom impugned ; but, as the absence of immediate danger from abroad became manifest, the nation more and more readily interpreted the measure as an arbi- trary assumption of the functions of Parliament; and the third writ was at once opposed with a clear percep- tion of its constitutional bearing. Thus, both in Church and State, it was not so much any particular act of the Government as the blindness to the growth of public opinion exhibited by its whole course of policy which caused that opinion to become a force fatal to the Stewart monarchy even more than it had been propitious to that of the Tudors. The crisis in domestic affairs which the close of Mr Gardiner 's Reign of Charles I 229 Gardiner's second volume approaches coincided with no definite collapse of the foreign policy of Charles I. For some time further, this policy continued to oscillate between its accustomed purposes. It is, indeed, not easy, even for the reader who has learnt patience from the study of the diplomacy of James I, and who has watched the waxen wings of Buckingham's ambition collapsing in the face of calamity upon calamity, to sustain an interest in the feeble efforts of what may be called the foreign policy of Charles I himself. For, while domestic affairs in both Church and State fell more and more under the control of agents devoid neither of capacity nor of resolution, Charles's foreign policy after Buckingham's death was in conduct as well as in conception essentially the King's own. Its object was, as Mr Gardiner says, " merely dynastic," and this in a far more limited sense than that in which the same description has frequently been applied to the policy of Habsburgs or Bourbons. His one set purpose was to right the wrongs of his kin, and to recover the Palatinate for his sister's family. In the pursuit of this end, he derived little aid from the politicians on whom he bestowed his confidence, but to whom the object he had in view was one of small value. The passive caution of Weston preferred to act as a clog upon operations which it could not always prevent; and in Cottington there was little of definite aim, while what there was lay in the direction of Spain. Windebank seems to have been made Secretary of State because he had no opinions a supposition which is borne out by the capacity for receiving impressions which he exhibited in his curious conversations with Panzani as to the possibilities of Reunion with Rome, and con- 230 Historical firmed by the view taken by Clarendon of his position in the Committee of State in 1640. The advocates of a strenuous policy of their own were unwelcome to the councils of Charles. Even Queen Henrietta Maria's influence, fitfully exercised according to her powers, was as yet of little significance, although she was now united in mutual affection with her husband. Roe, after being ill supported as a diplomatic agent, saw his hopes of service at home defeated. Even Elizabeth's faithful agent Nethersole was permanently disgraced for pressing the interests of his mistress with inopportune plainspokenness. For his own confidential diplomacy Charles preferred such an agent as Gerbier, whom Buckingham had patronised, and who took his private instructions from the King himself, in one instance selling the secret of the most daring and delicate intrigue in which Charles engaged during these years. The King was one of those who like to believe what they wish, as Lord Arundel found to his cost when he was despatched to Vienna to carry on the negotiation of the prospects of which so promising an account had been given by John Taylor (who, Mr Gardiner suggests, being a Catholic and half a Spaniard by birth, at bottom cared little for the interests of the Palatine House, and was hopeful because he was indifferent). Such schemes as these had little interest for men like Laud and Wentworth, except in so far as they threatened to involve the country in the dreaded calamity of a foreign war. Laud, though (in 1635) nominally placed at the head of the Committee of Council for Foreign Affairs, "even if he had had the ability and desire to launch England upon a new course of foreign policy, would Gardiner 's Reign of Charles I 231 never have been permitted to do so. Charles would continue, as, in the main, he had been before, his own Foreign Minister." Thus, in 1637, Laud's attitude towards the critical aspect of foreign affairs, when the King thought that he had at last secured the cooperation of France for the recovery of the Palatinate, in return for the promise of a fleet, almost resembles that of an anxious bystander rather than that of a responsible adviser. On the other hand, there is no proof that, previously to this occasion, Wentworth had been con- sulted by his sovereign on any question of the kind. He now gave the candid and useful advice, appropriately margined by Mr Gardiner, "to look at home first." Yet the negotiations with France, as a future volume may show, were continued later in this year 1637, to be succeeded in 1638 by a fresh move, as of old, in the opposite direction. The impotence of the foreign policy of Charles I had its source in something besides his natural and well- warranted unwillingness to engage England in a war by land. From such a contingency he always drew back ; nor, even had he been willing to summon a Parliament, is it at all certain that, questions of grievances apart, national enthusiasm could at that time have been raised for the cause of the Palatinate. The interests of England could not be identified with those of France, or with those of either branch of the House of Habsburg. The notable scheme of which Gerbier was the medium, to set up the Spanish Netherlands as an independent State under the contingent protection of the English Crown, and thus, as it would seem, to secure to the latter a basis of its own for its operations in Continental politics. 232 Historical came to nothing. Ranke, so far as we know, passes it by; Mr Gardiner treats it with the contempt which it deserves. It was started, after the one opportunity had been lost which might have engaged England in the Continental conflict under conditions likely to lead to the recovery of the Palatinate, and at the same time in harmony with the sentiments, if not the interests, of the nation at large. We refer, of course, to the appearance on the scene of war of Gustavus Adolphus, which, but for English reluctance, in Buckingham's days, to accept the conditions of alliance offered by the Swedish King, might have taken place at a much earlier date. Even now, England might have anticipated France and hazarded a Protestant alliance with Sweden and the United Provinces, instead of seeking to effect a per- fectly safe understanding with Gustavus, while at the same time courting the cooperation of the Cardinal. But this was an opportunity beyond the possibilities of a character like that of Charles I ; and the risk, it must be owned, was one such as England had not run even in the days of Queen Elizabeth. "'The great majority of the Privy Council," it appears, spoke strongly in favour of accepting the terms offered by Gustavus Adolphus, which were those of an offensive alliance by land and sea. But Charles, from whose thoughts the idea of summoning a Parliament, for which a desire had begun to manifest itself, was as far as ever, would not bind himself to such a league. He began to haggle for a promise from Gustavus that he would endeavour to recover the Palatinate for the deposed Elector in return for a monthly contribution of money, and, as to the continuance even of this, no pledge was offered. Gardiner's Reign of Charles I 233 Richelieu acted with far greater promptitude, speedily securing the Swedish alliance on terms which enabled him to treat with Bavaria and to guarantee to the latter the possession of the Upper Palatinate. The policy of Charles continued to vacillate, and, while his bargaining with the Swedish King ran parallel with negotiations with France, he was, at the very time of the first great victory of Gustavus still with a view to the restoration of his brother-in-law offering succour to the Emperor. The result was inevitable, and gave rise to free comment in England. Mr Gardiner has illustrated the feeling of the party* at Court which was in favour of more energetic action, and which attributed the half-hearted policy of the English Government to the corrupt influence of Weston, by some curious extracts from two of Massinger's plays belonging to these years. The volunteers whom, following the example of his father, Charles had allowed the Marquess of Hamilton to collect in Scotland and in England for service with the Swedes, are unmistakably alluded to in one of these extracts. The numbers of those collected in England were, as Mr Gardiner says, "more imposing than their quality"; and this remained in substance the extent of the aid given or permitted by Charles to the arms of the Swedish King. While the nation was watching, with the angry sympathy of spectators who would fain be actors, the brilliant career of the Protestant hero, its sudden check and its fatal close, the party which un- blushingly identified English interests with the main- tenance of peace at any price openly congratulated the King on having succeeded in preserving its blessings to an " obdurate " land ; and Mr Gardiner cites with fitting 234 Historical scorn the frivolous effusion of philistinism in which Carew, "himself a royal cupbearer, commented on the death of the Swedish King." Soon after that event, the unfortunate ex-Elector Palatine passed away, leaving to his children the inheritance of their uncle's impotent schemes ; and, yet a little later, there ended in the Tower the life of the patriot whom King Charles hated with unequalled bitterness, and who had saluted the first great victory of Gustavus as the occasion when, "if at once the whole world be not deluded, fortune and hope are met." We need not add how the impression of inherent futility which is produced by a glance at any of the diplomatic efforts of Charles I's Government is deep- ened, as they are found recorded in their chronological sequence, but at a length very far from excessive, in the pages of Mr Gardiner's History. It is the foreign policy of Charles of which a survey is necessary to justify the conclusion that his years of personal govern- ment made his rule become "every year not more odious, but more contemptible." Thus the question of ship-money is placed under a new aspect when it is remembered what humiliation was brought upon England by the impotent attempt to enforce high- sounding claims by the great ship-money fleet. In Mr Gardiner's narrative of domestic affairs there are only a few points on which it is possible for us to touch. He has succeeded in making clear the real nature of the difficulty lying at the root of the struggle which awaited England the hopelessness of the attempt of Charles I to govern without the support of his people. He has explained how impossible it was for the authority of the Gardiner 's Reign of Charles I 235 Judges, who, personally honest and upright, regarded themselves, as the counsellors of the Crown and the defenders of its prerogative, to hold the balance. He has shown how the inability of Laud to recognise the in- sufficiency of the most vigilantly enforced uniformity for the production of real unity, and the self-reliance with which Wentworth waived aside the necessity of conciliating opposition, were alike fatal to the success of the system of which their energy was the motive force. Neither of these men was an idealist; neither busied himself with notions of the Divine right of kings. In serving their Prince they thought to serve the State and the nation with disinterested devotion and absolute fearlessness. In Wentworth 's first period of adminis- trative activity, during his residence in the north, it was the arrogance of the territorial aristocracy that he, above all things, strove to curb; and "the best side of Laud's character was his grand sense of the equality of men before the law. Nothing angered him so much as the claim of a great man to escape a penalty which would fall on others. Nothing brought him into such disfavour with the great as his refusal to admit that the punishment which had raised no outcry when it was meted out to the weak and helpless should be spared in the case of the powerful and wealthy offender." But, in spite of their energy and incorruptibility, both these men were less practically wise, as Mr Gardiner says of one of them, than Eliot himself, who, "if he had no particular medicine to offer for the sickness of the Commonwealth, could lay his hand on the true source of the disease. It had all come, he held, because there had been no sympathy between the King and his people, 236 Historical because the King had not striven to understand their thoughts, or to feel for their misfortunes." It is from this point of view, rather than that of regret or indigna- tion at particular cases of hardship and persecution, that the narrative of Laud's ecclesiastical administration in particular, which Mr Gardiner has retold with great fulness and clearness as to its particular issues, acquires its chief significance. The strength which Puritanism gradually gained is, beyond a doubt, largely due to the blindness which, while repressing it as nonconformity, ignored it as a spiritual tendency. Thus, its cause became to such minds as Milton's the cause of liberty itself, and its victims the martyrs of a very different faith from that which an intolerant bigot such as Prynne can have been conscious of representing. With regard to the financial system of these years Mr Gardiner has rendered excellent service by giving a far fuller and more explicit statement than had hitherto been generally accessible of the receipts and expen- diture, ordinary and extraordinary, of the Crown. We cannot here comment on the details of the tables given by him in an Appendix, some of which are extremely suggestive in various ways as, for example, the items of expenditure on statues and pictures, and on masques. It may, however, be worth pointing out that, as Mr Gardiner says, "the enormous fines which have left such a mark upon the history of this reign were seldom exacted, and became little more than a conventional mode in which the Judges expressed their horror of the offence, except so far as it may have been intended to bring the offender to an early confession of his fault." How important a bearing this circumstance has upon the Gardiner's Reign of Charles I 237 relations between the penal and the financial aspect of these sentences need not be pointed out. Mr Gardiner's account of Portland's (Weston's) system of finance shows that politician to have done little or nothing towards opening new sources of revenue. The compositions for knighthood, with which he paid some of the more press- ing debts of the Crown, are considered by Mr Gardiner the least objectionable of the obsolete, but technically legal, means open to the King of raising money; the forest claims, on the other hand (for which Portland was not responsible), he regards as "nothing short of monstrous." Even here, however, a moderate payment was afterwards declared sufficient to ensure a pardon for the "encroachments" upon which the claims were based, and the unpopularity in which they involved the Government was not balanced by any adequate pecu- niary equivalent. Hallam, who suggests the probability that parts of the enormous forest fines imposed were remitted, refers, in a note, to the proceedings of Charles I with regard to Richmond Park. Mr Gardiner gives a fuller account of this curious episode, which illustrates at once the fearless frankness of Laud, the pliability of Cottington, and the most fatal defect in the character of the King. The brick wall which so visibly defied the rights of the proprietors within its boundary, and which cost several thousands of pounds that could be ill spared, was an instance, in small, of that weak obstinacy which was destined to prove Charles I's ruin. That the judg- ment at which, after many changes of popular feeling, history has arrived on the character of Charles is a just one, is best proved by its reiteration in a work breathing the very spirit of impartiality, nowhere marred by rash- 238 Historical ness in its conclusions, and never ungenerous even when it condemns. It is both natural and becoming 1 that a historian of whose life's work a great part has dealt with a theme full of episodes and complications, and closing with a pitiable catastrophe, should approach the height of his narrative in a spirit of almost solemn seriousness. At the present day, it is difficult to conceive of any man attempting to rewrite the history of the causes and the outbreak of our great Civil War in any interest except that of historical truth ; but, at all events, that man will certainly not be found in Mr Gardiner. He has, it seems, Puritan blood in his veins ; while his own views are unmistakably of that loyal and temperate sort that "reasonableness," to use his own term which befits an academical and literary representative of the national Church. But the volumes which have already secured to him an enduring place among English historians could have left no doubt as to the way in which he would address himself to the completion of a task judiciously planned and carefully carried through its earlier and often (as he confesses) less attractive stages. His work is still unfinished; but he justly observes that with his judgment of the first fourteen months of the Long Parliament his judgment of the civil conflict which brought King Charles I to the scaffold must stand or fall. This latter is not, to our mind, an altogether satisfactory judgment; but it is one formed after a review of the evidence such as very few previous historians could 1 The Fall of the Monarchy of Charles I 1637-1649. By Samuel Rawson Gardiner. Vols. I and n 1637-1642. London, Longmans and Co. 1882. Gardiner 's Reign of Charles I 239 even think of attempting; while it is expressed with a simple dignity to which those who write with a view to the political currents or literary tastes of the passing hour seem rarely able to attain. As a matter of course, Mr Gardiner avoids ornament for its own sake : thus, while throwing out a hint to writers of a different school, with one of whom he was the other day, unprofitably enough, contrasted, he excuses himself from filling in the pic- turesque background to the scene of the signing of the Covenant at the Grey Friars. But what makes him preeminently trustworthy as an authority is that he abstains from treating events and the actors in them from any particular point of view; that, at the risk of giving his narrative an occasionally disjointed appear- ance, he enables the reader to see different currents of events (Scotch, for instance, and English) flowing side by side, now converging, and now intersecting; and that, in estimating the deed, he never overlooks the nature of the doer, be he King Charles or King Pym. Mr Gardiner's method is, in short, one that begets confidence; and no critic of his own or of any coming generation is likely to say of this work, as Southey was prejudiced and peevish enough to write of Hallam's Constitutional History, that it is "a book composed in the worst tem- per, and upon the worst principles." We only regret that, while generously acknowledging the merits of contemporary enquirers in the same field, Mr Gardiner should, towards the close of his second volume, have commented on what he elsewhere calls "the ordinary talk of constitutional historians" after a fashion not unlikely to be misunderstood. The last word on the Revolution of 1641-2 had certainly not been spoken, 240 Historical when, on the one hand, the innovating action of the majority in the Long Parliament, and, on the other, the reasons for suspecting the King's sincerity, had been soberly pointed out. But the arguments were worth considering side by side, as Hallam considered them; and to dismiss them loftily, in view of what we gladly allow to be the nobler argument, is to ignore the force which it seems difficult to deny that they possess. With the late Mr Forster, whose high services to students of this period of history Mr Gardiner warmly acknow- ledges, his quarrel is rather on the score of inaccuracy of detail an inaccuracy very unlike Clarendon's (Hallam's and Forster's indictments of whom are here further substantiated), but at times suggesting an exu- berance of constructive skill. By the way, in his account of the attempt on the Five Members, Mr Gardiner takes occasion to correct an amusing misreading of D'Ewes by Forster, who makes his authority send the communi- cative Frenchman, full of the news of the King's approach, through the roo/, instead of through the troop. As Mr Gardiner suggests, things might have taken a different turn for the Five Members and the state of England, had the self-constituted messenger failed to outstrip the King and his strange company of armed men. To Ranke Mr Gardiner in these volumes only refers in passing, which is the more to be regretted, since any agreement between these two eminent his- torians in conclusions at which they have arrived by independent research would give special value to in- cidental criticism of the one by the other. The stronger interest of Mr Gardiner's narrative undoubtedly does not begin till a comparatively late Gardiner's Reign of Charles I 241 point in the first of these volumes, with the appearance on the scene of Wentworth, as he arrived in London on September 22nd, to become for the first time the inti- mate adviser of Charles. But nowhere is there any failure of insight on the part of the author into the really significant elements of his story. He adequately acknow- ledges the force that the national movement in Scotland derived from the emancipation of the Scottish Church from the control of the Crown. With rarer generosity, he reprobates the unfairness of Straff ord, when, in 1640, he sought to make Ireland submit to heavy sacri- fices for the expected struggle with Scotland, so that, "victorious or vanquished, she would but bring down upon herself the hatred of her more powerful neighbour. ' ' Indeed, it is little short of humiliating to observe the way in which English statesmen, Pym among them, who "saw nothing in Ireland but the English colony alone," and "had no sympathy with the Celtic popu- lation," treated the responsibilities of the dominant towards the dependent island. Not less broad and liberal is the spirit in which Mr Gardiner differs from those critics who hold that Milton wasted his powers in writing political pamphlets of the influence of which the traces will be vainly sought in statutes or ordinances. The question as to the value of Milton's polemical prose writings has been much discussed of late; but Mr Gardiner, in vindicating for them their true place in political literature, at the same time justifies the author who, for their sake, gave pause to the music of his lute. Milton's theories on government were no better suited to the actual England of the day than the Lady of the " Comus " would have been at home at the Court of Henrietta Maria, or w. P.I. 16 242 Historical the Archangel Raphael in the Long Parliament. Yet not for this are they to be condemned. Their permanent value lies in the persistence with which they point to the eternal truth, that all artificial constitutional arrangements, all remodelling of authority in Church or State, all reform in law and administra- tion, will be worthless in the absence of the higher purpose and the resolute will of the individual men who are to make use of political or ecclesiastical institutions. "Love Virtue, she alone is free." Let the mind be cultivated to understand which are the paths of virtue. Let the spirit be attuned to the harmonies of heaven. The work to be done for the soul and intelligence of the individual Englishman was far greater than anything that Parliaments and Presbyteries could accomplish for the external regulation of the community. A historian who is almost as far removed from formalism as from a root-and-branch rationalism will generally be found to possess a keen eye for the possible, and sometimes even for the impossible, via media. In Scottish affairs indeed, at the time when, after the breakdown of his shortsighted negotiations, King Charles first consulted his English Council about his Northern troubles the historian feels constrained to confess that no middle course may have been admissible between Wentworth's notion of all in all, and absolute relinquishment of power. "After all that had passed" and, on the whole, the King's Scottish experience since the introduction of the new edition of the English Prayer-Book which has secured an apocryphal immor- tality to Jeanie Geddes had been as unlucky as his con- duct had been unwise " it was hopeless to expect that Charles's authority would ever again strike root in the Scottish nation." But in the English troubles which ensued, it is only with reluctance that Mr Gardiner brings himself to allow that such a policy as that advo- Gardiner 's Reign of Charles I 243 cated by Bristol was really futile or of mere transitory value. The Great Council summoned by the King to York in September 1 640 was little better than a stopgap ; and Hallam surely errs when he speaks of it as having been convened " as the only alternative of a Parliament," for the King at once announced to the Peers his inten- tion of assembling a Parliament in November. Nor, indeed, would it be easy to show that the advice of the Great Council, where Bristol played a leading part, really determined the course of action pursued with regard to the Scottish demands. At the time of Straf- ford's supreme danger, before that danger had become, humanly speaking, hopeless, Bristol was, with a better prospect of success, striving to save Strafford's life "whilst incapacitating him from office"; and, in this business, it is in truth impossible to say what might have happened had the King stood firm in the face of the well-dressed City mobs. The ecclesiastical policy re- commended by Bristol, if we may accept Mr Gardiner's view that it is represented by the amended form in which he carried the Declaration of the Commons against Toleration, passed by them shortly after the Grand Remonstrance, was again thoroughly " reasonable," and perfectly conciliatory. But it offered no solution; at the most, it only sought to smooth the way for one. On the other hand, what is to be said of the policy of the real leaders of men, those who strongly strove to master the situation, in the dark time before the breaking of the tempest? Among these, it is clear that Laud is not to be reckoned. Concerning his ecclesiastical ideals and the measures by which he strove to realise them opinions may long continue to be divided ; but he, un- 16 2 244 Historical doubtedly, lacked the primary requisite in practical statesmanship, the art of dealing with circumstances and with men as they are. The over-sanguine element in Laud'sdispositionhas,beforenow,been insisted upon, though, in truth, it was closely connected with the qualities which really ennobled his nature and dignified his conduct. On the other hand, it was worth pointing out, as Mr Gardiner has done, that Laud was, at times, too easily frightened, and trusted too little to that great middle party of moderate men who, after all, have in our country usually determined the immediate issue of problems in Church as well as in State. The type se- lected by Mr Gardiner to exemplify this class of men may, at the same time, seem rather oddly chosen ; for the most obvious characteristic of Wither we have been accustomed to find is his conscientious desire to exercise that right of personal judgment which he so nobly defended in his verse. But it is certain that Laud's misfortune in English affairs was his incapacity for either conciliating moderate men, or for charming into politic cooperation with himself interests such as that ardently advocated by the Queen, with which he was too honest to play fast and loose. As to Scottish affairs, his misfortune was to have been blind at the outset. For we see no reason to believe that, after the initial mistake had been committed, he showed any disposition to play, in Scotland, the part of a "Pope of Canterbury"; nor are we sure but that, at all events with regard to the time before he made the vaunt, Charles was in some sense justified in asserting that "he had never taken the advice of any Englishman in the affairs of Scotland." It is difficult, in recalling the devoted labours of a life animated by a rare and noble Gardiner 's Reign of Charles I 245 ambition for Laud's Patriarchate was as grand a conception for the seventeenth century as Adalbert of Bremen's was for the eleventh to restrain a feeling of sympathetic admiration. Yet, with the history of the Reformation spread out before us, we hesitate to sub- scribe to the left-handed tribute of praise that Laud was "engaged in the formation of an instrument which would outlive himself," when he was training a clergy "sure to inculcate the duty of obeying the King at least as loudly as they inculcated the duty of obeying God." In point of fact, Laud did not form this in- strument. It was a product of the Reformation itself, in England as elsewhere. Like Laud's, Straff ord's influence over the King had no sooner begun to be personally exerted than it was hampered by the more or less perverse influence of the Queen, on which Mr Gardiner has quite sufficiently insisted in these volumes. Indeed, there is something likely to stir scepticism in the ubiquitous influence for evil now positive now negative here attributed to Henrietta Maria. Above all, it seems to us that far more satisfactory evidence than the hearsay reports accumu- lated in Mr Gardiner's note (vol. 1^.382) seems requisite before the attempt on the Five Members can be safely described as an endeavour "to impeach the impeachers of the Queen." According to Mr Gardiner, anxiety for his Queen determined Charles to accuse the Five Members, as it had induced him to sacrifice Strafford. " To save her from insult and ruin, he had sacrificed his most faithful Minister." Yet a reference to the previous passage, descriptive of the panic which seized upon London after the Attainder Bill had passed the Lords, 246 Historical will show how purely conjectural is the influence at- tributed to Charles's fears for the safety of his wife upon his decision concerning the fate of his Minister. Apart from the method of the procedure adopted against Strafford, so wisely (as it appears to us) objected to in the first instance by Hampden and Pym, never was a popular instinct more fully justified than that which regarded the great Minister, in the phraseology of the modern historian, "as the author and supporter of all violent and ill-considered actions" in the critical period of Charles I's reign. On his foreign policy, if policy it can be called, as illustrated in these volumes, we hope to touch on another occasion; much of it was mere floundering. But the most striking examples of the recklessness which effaces much of the difference between his statesmanship and Buckingham's are to be found nearer home. The history of Strafford 's Irish policy, of course, lies outside the range of these volumes ; and Mr Gardiner has dealt with it clearly enough on former occasions. The man who excited Irish feeling against himself by nothing so strongly as by the scheme for the colonisation of Connaught, proposed in October 1640, when infuriated by the cool self-possession of the Scottish Commissioners at Ripon, to seethe the Scottish colonists of Ulster in their own blood. Better known than this passing outburst is the much disputed sugges- tion attributed to Strafford concerning the employment of the Irish army for settling the troubles in England. Mr Gardiner's argument, in the passages touching this matter in his first and second volumes respectively, seems to us perfectly satisfactory. The most probable explanation of the conflict between the testimony of Gardiner *s Reign of Charles I 247 Vane on the one hand, and that of Hamilton, North- umberland, Juxon, and Cottington on the other, certainly appears to be that "the words were indeed spoken, but only as a suggestion of the best means of meeting a hypothetical rebellion which never came into actual existence, and which passed out of the minds both of him who spoke and of those who listened almost as soon as the words were uttered." Most assuredly, Strafford's doom was cruel; and while he actually suffered by means of a machinery which the Long Parliament had borrowed from the most despotic traditions of the past, his condemnation upon impeach- ment as a traitor would have amounted to straining the definition of the term hardly less violently in his case than was afterwards done in that of his royal master. But the instinct of his foes in making an end of him was not the less true; and, though his words about the employment of the Irish army were, probably, only the ebullition of the moment, they showed and in a less degree they would have shown, even had they applied to Scotland only the spirit that was in him. In the opinion of Mr Gardiner, who, from the serene height of a historical knowledge to which many things held good appear small, looks down upon the conflicts of abstract political principles, Strafford's activity seems to contrast not unfavourably with that of the Parliamentary politicians who crushed him. Again and again, we are in these volumes reminded of the fact, which it would be difficult to gainsay, that Pym and those who acted with him cannot be looked upon in the light of con- structive reformers. But it is a daring step beyond all this to argue, as Mr Gardiner does, that they were 248 Historical no reformers at all, " no followers of new ideas by which the lives of men might be made brighter and happier than of old," but mere opponents of innovation, who "did not wish to be harassed by constant changes, of which they did not understand the import, and of which they mistrusted the tendency." It is true enough that Pym " had not the eagle eye of the idealist," and that, in the last part of his career, beginning perhaps with his determination to support the Root and Branch Bill, he no longer in all respects controlled the current which he had helped to let loose. But, in charging him with having in the earlier days of the Long Parliament assumed a merely negative attitude, Mr Gardiner appears to us to overlook the shortness of the time during which Pym can really be said to have led the Parliament, and also the magnitude of the work which he actually achieved in it. What practical reforms could be accomplished in the State or in the Church as the Church was con- ceived of by the advocates of change unless the "evil counsellors," of whom the Grand Remonstrance did not without reason complain, were removed, and an end for ever made of the whole system of their " evil counselling"? This was Pym's work, accomplished in the teeth of unscrupulous violence, and in despite of reckless intrigue. Apart from the one question of a reorganisation instead of a destruction of the episcopacy, what opportunity had Pym of raising his voice "for practical reforms"? Even in matters ecclesiastical, his last achievement before his death was, at least in in- tention, a constructive one ; but he did not live to guide the union with Scotland to success, or to witness its failure. Gardiner 's Reign of Charles I 249 The greatness of what Pym, and the Long Parlia- ment in its beginnings, achieved for the future of Eng- land becomes more apparent than ever from the narrative of an historian who, like Mr Gardiner, shuns all exaggeration, and shrinks from a reiteration of the commonplaces, if they be such, of our "constitutional historians" and their followers. The notion that in Charles Fs eleven years of non-parliamentary govern- ment the tide of national discontent had swelled to a mighty wave, behind the dams which it was before long to burst, will not bear examination : In the midst of material prosperity there was no sharp sting of distress to goad the masses to defiance of authority. Men of property and education had, in the intermission of Parliaments, no common centre round which they could rally. Those who were united in political opposition to the Crown were divided by their religious sympathies. The feeling of irritation against Laud's meddlesome interference with habitual usage was indeed universal; but Puritanism was, after all, the creed only of a minority. Yet during these years, while two of the companions of Eliot's imprisonment, Valentine and Strode, continued to be deprived of freedom, the Parliamentary spirit survived in the heroes of the next struggle, as in these victims of the last. The impulse to resistance was given from without, and not from within ; but nowhere has it been so well shown as in this History how the vigilance of the Parliamentary party in England which, indeed, existed before Parliament had been once more assembled was aware of every movement in the progress of the Scottish troubles. When the time came at last, no false 250 Historical step was taken in the accomplishment of the first and necessary work which awaited the representatives of the nation. On the Church question, as Mr Gardiner reminds us, the Long Parliament and Pym, for a time at least, broke down, because he and his followers, with whom the decision lay, were " rather desirous of overthrowing an ecclesiastical despotism which they knew not how to remodel than inspired with any strong preference for any other system to be established in its room." But they had accomplished enough to entitle them to the enduring gratitude of Englishmen; and had, in reality, notwithstanding the long years of revolution which in- tervened, established the English monarchy on the broad and firm basis on which it remains to the present day. We have ventured in these remarks to hint at some- thing which seems to us to partake of a depreciatory tendency in the tone, as well as in the conclusions, of certain passages in these volumes. In another notice, we hope more especially to dwell upon some of the points in the period of history treated in them which the learning and acumen of their author have illustrated with fresh force and fulness. We observed, in a former article, that Mr Gardiner has succeeded in establishing more fully than ever the connexion between the progress of the Scottish troubles in the years 1637-9 an< ^ tne contemporaneous growth of feeling against the existing system of government in England. In truth, Charles I, who professed to manage his Scottish policy for himself, was nowhere less master of the circumstances under which he acted. Already, early in 1638, about the time when poor Archie Arm- Gardiner 's Reign of Charles I 25 1 strong, the King's fool, was caught in the toils of the Star Chamber for having ventured after his own fashion to censure the policy of Archbishop Laud, the King had reason to believe the leaders of the Scottish movement to be in correspondence with persons near himself. In the spring of 1639, when Charles was waiting for more money, and for more men to augment the numbers of his insufficient and undisciplined, rather than dis- affected, army, it was the Scottish gentlemen of the King's bedchamber who "listened to the secrets of the King's unguarded talk, and forwarded his secrets to their countrymen across the Border " ; and, when opera- tions had actually begun with Holland's unlucky march, Sir Edmund Verney assured his son that "we are betrayed in all our intelligence." With the opening of the Short Parliament, it speedily became evident that the Parliamentary leaders were prepared to demur to the war policy for which the Assembly had been sum- moned to supply the means, and for threatening to protest against which it was, as a matter of fact, dis- solved. Mr Hamilton's "important discovery," as Mr Gardiner deservedly calls it, that the Short Parliament was suddenly dissolved to prevent the drawing-up of a petition begging the King to come to terms with the Scots, is here, for the first time, incorporated in the narrative of a standard work of history. But the King was grievously deceived in his expectation that a raid upon the private papers of Pym and his associates would supply evidence of treasonable negotiations with the Scots, such as were afterwards, in the Seven Articles of Treason against the Five Members, actually asserted to have taken place. Many months before that time, how- 252 Historical ever, between the Short and the Long Parliaments, secret communications had almost certainly taken place between the Scots and the English Opposition, if, for convenience sake, that term may be used. Mr Gardiner, by an elaborate argument to which it would be impossible to do justice in a summary, has shown it to be extremely probable that, though the supposed engagement of Mandeville (Manchester) and the other Lords, which induced the Scots to cross the Border in August 1640, was a forgery by Lord Savile, an engagement of the leaders to uphold the cause of the Scots in an honour- able and legal way had been actually signed. If so, it is a strange enough instance of the tergiversations of the times that this very Savile should have afterwards been one of Queen Henrietta Maria's conquests for the cause of her husband. Like Pericles, in the period when at Athens he and the democratic leaders were laying the foundations of a sustained supremacy, Pym refrained from coming to the front till the fulness of the season had arrived. Apart from the more important question of statesmanship proper, the second of the intimates of Lady Carlisle, who, unlike Aspasia, cannot be said to have derogated in her later choice, was a greater master of statecraft than his predecessor. Pym possessed that aptitude for choosing the right time which is nowhere so soon learnt as in the practice of Parliamentary politics. Mr Gardiner has shown how he chose the right times for revealing what he knew of the First and the Second Army Plot; while, in the case of his own designs, he rarely allowed his adversaries to make use of the interval between concep- tion and execution. On the other hand, while it is Gardiner '$ Reign of Charles I 253 impossible to refuse sympathy to the spectacle of Strafford struggling against a sea of troubles, there is something melancholy in the wildness and hopelessness of some of his movements. More especially was he unsuccessful in his foreign policy if, indeed, it is possible to speak of the foreign policy of a Minister of Charles I in the later years of his reign. Already, towards the close of 1638, Charles, wroth with the successes, and apprehensive, to a doubtless excessive degree, of the intrigues, of Richelieu, had begun to turn towards Spain. In a far feebler way, and with an even emptier hand, he seems to have entertained some thought of playing over again his father's game, which, in the days of his youth, he had himself helped to cross. The nation's enthusiasm for the cause of the Palatinate had long flickered out; but Charles appears to have actually thought that, by offering his alliance to Spain, he might recover for his unfortunate nephew at least part of his inheritance. The Spanish negotiations, which were begun while similar overtures to France were still in progress, came to nothing; Olivares at Madrid had contemptuously asked how Charles, who was at that very time drifting into war with his Scottish subjects, would be able to take an active part against France and Holland? Meanwhile, the progress of the French arms, or of the arms paid by France, continued in Germany; and England's influence in the affairs of the Continent had sunk to zero. "The News of Scot- land," wrote Sir Thomas Roe from Hamburg at the end of the year, " is mortal to our reputation abroad." In one sense only was it fortunate for the reputation of King Charles, and for the honour of the English throne, that 254 Historical Spain and France alike distrusted him. So early as the summer of 1638, the Spanish Ambassador in London had, in the name of his Government, refused to King Charles the loan of a body of troops for use in Scotland. A similar request was made, early in 1639, to King Philip's brother, the Cardinal Infante at Brussels, and politely declined. France and Sweden, as the year went on, recked less of the Elector Palatine and England's wishes for him than ever ; and Bernhard of Weimar, on whom Charles and his nephew had for a time placed their hopes, died in June. In referring to the negotia- tions as to the transfer of Breisach to the French, which ensued in October, we notice that Mr Gardiner seems to take the view, which has lately been strongly con- troverted, that the betrayal of Breisach is to be laid to the charge of those who actually gave up the fortress. Shortly afterwards the Elector Palatine was arrested in France and sent to Vincennes, to keep company with Johann von Werth and a too curious Polish prince ; nor was it till nearly a year afterwards that Richelieu covered him with honours and allowed him to go free. More aggrieved than ever by the successes and cold- ness of the Cardinal, Charles had once more sought the friendship of Spain. As Mr Gardiner acutely points out, while there was small probability that Charles would receive more help from Spain than he had received before, an alliance with England was of value to Spain since the Channel had become the only route open for the transmission of her troops to the Spanish Netherlands. Hence arose the series of embroglios which culminated in the famous sea-fight in the Downs between van Tromp and Oquendo, in Gardiner's Reign of Charles I 255 which King Charles's "boasted sovereignty of the seas was flouted in his very harbour by the audacious Nether- landers," while the protection which he had represented to the Spanish Ambassador as secured to the Spanish ships only extended to those of them which had run ashore to escape from their pursuers. Whether or not van Tromp, as Mr Gardiner surmises, acted under advice from Richelieu, the humiliation of King Charles might have seemed complete. Popular rumour asserted that it was in England that the Spanish fleet had really been intended to land troops, and that to the Dutch the English nation owed the defeat of a design formed by its King and his Spanish ally. Shortly before the time of these occurrences, Straf- ford had arrived in England. It is doubtless true that what he " saw in the disgrace of the conflict in the Downs, and in the scornful imprisonment of the Elector by Richelieu, was the necessity of showing a firm front to the Northern traitors, whose rebellion had made it im- possible to avenge such insults." So far as the question of cause and effect was concerned, he could not have judged more correctly. But, either from want of time for reflexion, or from want of the special kind of ex- perience required, the practical spirit which we are asked to admire as distinctive of Strafford among the statesmen of his time, assuredly, deserted him in dealing with foreign affairs. He was a consistent advocate of the Spanish alliance, without perceiving its hopelessness, even from the lowest point of view that of obtaining from Spain a pecuniary advance. The one thing that Spain desired from England was that she should declare war against the Dutch ; in return Spain had nothing to 256 Historical grant or give, not even the new " Spanish marriages," on which Charles was infatuated enough to speculate. Sir Arthur Hopton, the English Agent in Madrid, very distinctly warned the King that he had little or nothing to expect from Spain. But stimulated, no doubt, by the notable discovery of the letter Au Roi which was to fall so unexpectedly flat on the Commons in the Short Parliament, the King continued to build his castles, and Strafford attempted to persuade the Spanish Am- bassadors into an agreement in which the advantages should not be entirely on their side. England was ready to break with the Dutch, so soon as the Scottish troubles were at an end. But for this purpose money was needed ; and this Spain was asked to supply. If there were any distrust as to the security, the King of Spain might seize the property of English merchants whose vessels were in his harbours. The times of the Armada were indeed coming back again with a difference. As the year went on, Strafford lowered his request to half the sum, and even less ; in the end he was fain to be con- tent with 50,000 /. ; if the Cardinal Infante would lend this, he should have the whole of the Irish Customs for his security, and be allowed to levy 6000 men in Ireland and hire twenty ships in England for the Spanish service. It was all in vain ; and, so far as the King was concerned, the Long Parliament would not even allow him to keep his promise of letting Spain take into her service 4000 men of the Irish army, when it was broken up in the autumn of 1641 ; so that he was actually prevented from obliging the Spaniards against what might be his own interests, should he afterwards wish to put the dis- banded army to a use of his own. As for Strafford, his Gardiner's Reign of Charles I 257 endeavours on behalf of the Spanish Alliance, which were of no use to his sovereign's cause, certainly pre- judiced the Minister's. For the good word of France might have weighed with his enemies in his hour of peril, and this aid Richelieu was sure not to allow to be proffered on behalf of so consistent a friend of Spain. Even more humiliating than the requests made to Spain was the entreaty addressed to Rome in May 1640, at the time of the Lambeth riots, when the lives of Catholic priests were in danger from the mob, and bonfires of Catholic books were lit by authority in the streets. StrafFord had, however, certainly no concern in the extraordinary notion of asking the Pope for help in money and men; its author was the Queen, and it was carried out by Secretary Windebank, whose language had seemed to the Papal agent, Rossetti, on his arrival in England, to resemble that of "a zealous Catholic," and of whose manoeuvres as to the treatment of the Catholics Clarendon has so long a story to tell. The answer arrived two months afterwards, when it appeared that six or eight thousand soldiers would be sent "in vessels which would arrive under the pretext of fetching alum" if one preliminary condition were satisfied. The King must become a Catholic. The great difference between Pope Urban VIII's military forces in reality and on paper, which did not prevent that Pontiff from ruining the finances of the Papal State by the costliness of his armaments, leaves it doubtful how many men the alum fleet might actually have brought to England; but the condition was an insuperable ob- stacle. With all his faults, the nature of Charles I was not, like that of his son, capable of simulation or dis- W. P. I. 17 258 Historical simulation in the matter of his religious creed. A later application by the Queen to the Pope's nephew, Cardinal Barberini, proved equally futile. Rome's very safe answer had scarcely arrived, in July 1640, when it was proposed to bring two Danish regiments into England ; but the money was of course needed for the payment of Protestant mercenaries as well as for the securing of Catholic aid. A scheme of Christian IV's(whose desire for extending his power had not been extinguished by failure), according to which the Orkneys should be ceded to Denmark in return for assistance in money or men, was, fortunately, not trans- mitted in time for proposal . On the other hand , when the question was no longer one of foreign troops against the Scots, but of foreign troops against the English, Charles I entered into a negotiation which seems to have by no means remained altogether abortive. Not very long after the fight in the Downs, the Prince of Orange (Frederick Henry) had proposed a marriage between his son and the King's eldest daughter, the Princess Mary ; but Charles, then greatly out of temper with the Dutch, had suggested that his second daughter Elizabeth, then of the age of four, would be more suitable than her sister who, by the way, was her senior by not more than four years. A few weeks after the meeting of the Long Parliament, when the King's hopes had sunk low on every side, the idea of the Dutch marriage was resumed, and (though the evidence as to what really passed in connexion with the marriage treaty concluded not long afterwards is far from conclusive, and seems, indeed, chiefly to lie in the statements of Rossetti) there can be no doubt that Charles was about that time provided with money. The Gardiner's Reign of Charles I 259 Queen-Mother's confident assurance that Prince Wil- liam, on landing in England to fetch his bride, would be accompanied by 20,000 men was not, however, ful- filled ; nor was the probability of a Dutch intervention, we may fairly conclude, so strong now as it was before the catastrophe in 1648, when goodwill at least was not wanting in William II. Just before the outbreak of the Civil War, the Queen had renewed her application in person at the Hague, offering the hand of the Prince of Wales for the Prince of Orange's daughter pre- sumably the eldest, who afterwards became the wife of the Great Elector and had at the same time once more sought aid from Denmark, besides entering into still more visionary schemes. But everything collapsed alike, with the result, as Mr Gardiner puts it, of making Charles " at last discover that it would be better for him to show confidence in his own subjects than to put his trust in foreign aid." Altogether, it would be difficult to conceive of a page of history more full of the signs of weakness and blindness combined than that which describes the later foreign policy of Buckingham's pupil. We have no space left for further discussing the contents of these interesting volumes. As a historical exposition, Mr Gardiner's account of the origin and progress of the separation of the Long Parliament into parties seems to us remarkably clear. It is curious to note, in contrast with the history of more recent struggles between arbitrary Governments and Parliamentary majorities, how repeatedly rumours of official changes, which would have given some of the popular politicians administrative power, were current in the early days of the 260 Historical Long Parliament. Mr Gardiner conjectures that Charles hoped to buy many of his adversaries by lucrative places, and the appointment of St John at all events can hardly be otherwise interpreted, conspicuously though it failed to fulfil its purpose ; since, in Clarendon's words, he "with the same obstinacy opposed everything which might advance the King's service, when he was his solicitor, as ever he had done before." Whether the King ever proposed office to Pym in the two interviews which he accorded to him a few days after he had pledged his royal word to Strafford, is altogether unknown; on a subsequent occasion, on January i, 1642, three days before the attempt at arresting Pym and his fellows, the Chancellorship of the Exchequer was certainly offered to him, though, whether the offer was rejected or with- drawn, again remains a secret. We must, by the way, demur to the constitutional significance attached by Mr Gardiner to the arrangements made between the King and Hyde early in 1642, shortly before the King's departure for the North, which arrangements, to our mind, pos- sessed an essentially private character. We are not sure, moreover, whether it appears with sufficient distinctness from the narrative of Mr Gardiner that Hyde had become the King's private adviser several weeks before the attempted arrest of the Five Members. In the account of the transactions which followed, this History brings out with remarkable clearness the willingness which, in the earlier months of the Long Parliament, existed on the part of the Lords to cooperate with the Commons. The King threw away more than one chance of con- ciliating the Lords; and in return it was to them that was due the real beginning of the measures which Gardiner s Reign of Charles I 261 strove to take the military power out of the King's hands. "With most," says Mr Gardiner, in a generously felt passage towards the end of his second volume, "who took opposite sides now, the heart was right." We thoroughly agree with the observation ; and, as we glance at the parti-coloured map of the divided land, whose Civil War it still remains for the historian to narrate, we, further feel, convinced that, with some of the strongest of those who faced the conflict, the heart would not have been right had they thrust the sword back scabbard. Shortly after the appearance of the notices, reprinted above, of those portions of the late Professor S. R. Gardiner's great historical narrative which deal with a period of supreme importance for our national life, the whole of the earlier part of his History, covering the ground from the accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Great Civil War, was first published in a collected form (10 vols., 1883-4). I have not thought it worth while to reprint the notices of this memorable publication, or of Mr Gardiner's later volumes, contributed by me to several journals ; but I should like to place on record part of my welcome, in the Saturday Review of October i3th, 1883, to the first three volumes of the collected edition to which I have referred : We are glad to join in the congratulations which have from many sides greeted the republication in a new and connected form of Mr Gardiner's standard historical works. Mr Gardiner is not one of those writers of history, occasion- ally to be found even in high literary places, with whom a first edition is something like a rough proof sent forth to be pencilled over with the suggestions of friends and critics, and to be amended with alacrity by the second thoughts of the author himself. On the other hand, he is not so much under the spell of his own judgment on things great or small 262 Historical as to be incapable of modifying an opinion once expressed, or revising a narrative once put together, like some popular favourites for whom, after their books have once been written, archives open and new arguments come to light in vain. His Histories, accordingly, could afford to wait, as the earliest of the series has waited, during the better part of a generation before reaching a second edition; but, now that after an interval of many years they are reissued, their readers are allowed to profit by an untiring research, which has only served to invigorate a judgment always distinguished by soundness as well as by acumen. It is, at the same time, a matter for regret that, at all events in the case of the volumes extending from the accession of James I to the disgrace of Chief Justice Coke, the opportunity for a revised edition, or of any second edition at all, should have been so long in coming. These volumes have for some time been a possession coveted in vain by younger historical students out of reach of accommodating libraries. That a work which is not merely the best book, but, from some points of view, the only book, on a very important period of English history, should have been for some years out of print, without the public demand for it being of such a nature as at once to lead to a reprint, is not a very encourag- ing sign as to the progress of historical studies in this country. However, Mr Gardiner's narrative so far, at least, as he has carried it at present will now, by means of this continuous edition, assume its proper place in the catena classicorum of our national history. There are links enough missing in the chain, it is true ; as to some that we had all hoped to see before long inserted in its sequence death has defeated our expectations; others, placed there for a time by the voice of our age, are not "of that self metal" as their companions, and are only standard histories faute de mieux. But we greatly mistake if in Mr Gardiner's History of England our times have not produced a work destined to teach many a generation after them the true historical antecedents and conditions of the greatest political struggle through which our nation has passed. The mere Gardiner 's Reign of Charles I 263 historical learning of which Mr Gardiner's writings give proof on every page would not perhaps of itself assure to them such a future ; for among the works of English historians round the leaves of which the dust has peacefully gathered there are more solid and thorough books than is sometimes supposed ; and at no time is it so difficult to arrive at a final solution of historical questions as in ours, when even the Vatican seems no longer unwilling to allow its dead to speak. The History which is now placed within the reach of all English students will owe some at least of its vitality to the vein of genuine patriotism which runs through it, un- obtrusively indeed, but unmistakably. It is the patriotism of a scholar who neither wastes his time upon smart com- parisons and half-analogies, nor tries to irrigate by the currents of history some trim little political philosophy of his own, but who knows that the greatness of his country is the work of a succession of ages, each with its own conception of the task incumbent upon it. And, as it is the highest function of the historian to explain the actions of the past in connexion with the moral forces at work in and through them, so Mr Gardiner, by his consistent endeavour to render historical justice to both sides of the great conflict treated by him, illustrates the real conditions of our national stability and of our national progress. He does not underrate the seriousness of that conflict which endured for " eighty-four long and stormy years": but it is not to him either the revolt of reason against unreason, or the vainly resisted self-assertion of natural rights, or, again, the insistence by one side on the performance of a contract ignored by the other. He has a very clear opinion as to the side with which the future lay, but he does not conceal the fact that some of the country's strongest intellectual power and most zealous devotion to the service of the State exerted themselves in an opposite direction. "England," he says in a very note- worthy passage on Bacon's theory of government, which he has done well in substantially reprinting, "had to work out the problem of government unaided by experience, and 264 Historical was entering, like Columbus, upon a new world, where there was nothing to guide her but her own high spirit and the wisdom and virtue of her sons." At the present moment, when marking this extract for quotation in the present note, I should have much liked, had circumstances permitted, to add some comments on a critical dissertation of considerable length and notable acumen, on The Historical Method of Samuel Rawson Gardiner, by Professor Roland G. Usher, of Washington University. Though this inte'resting essay forms No. i of Vol. Ill, Part n of the Washing- ton University Studies (October, 1915), it has only recently reached this country, where it has naturally attracted consider- able attention. For myself, whose name Professor Usher has done me the honour of associating with others of far higher authority among the encomiasts of Gardiner's historical work, I must be contented with subscribing to the judgment of Professor Firth, as expressed in a letter printed in The Times Literary Supplement of November 6th of the present year (1919) : ' Professor Usher's study is a treatise of about 150 pages, sometimes very neat and just, sometimes, it seems to me, erroneous and hyper- critical, but always expressed with respect and restraint. Aften pointing out what he considers mistakes of fact, or wrong conclusions, he winds up by saying that Gardiner's volumes, while they are not a final history of the period, " contain a more careful preliminary sifting of the facts than has yet been made for any period in the political history of England".' Professor Firth's immediate purpose to disprove Professor Usher's account of Gardiner's habits of composition and of revision after publication he accomplishes by testimony which no other man is so well entitled to offer; with his secondary object to show how an anonymous would-be supporter of Professor Usher has discredited his own signature of "His- torian," I have no immediate concern. As to Gardiner's "method " in general, there can be no doubt that he was always learning, always reconsidering and always revising. This he regarded as forming part of the duty of a historian, and more especially of a historian who, like himself, devoted his labours primarily to a record of the national life Gardiner's Reign of Charles I 265 of his own country, and who wrote at a time when the documents of a true narrative of its past were coming to light with un- precedented fulness. Undoubtedly, Gardiner's absolute sin- cerity of mind, which showed itself in every lecture he delivered as well as in every volume he put forth, was beyond that of any but a few other historical writers, and his candour seems inconceivable to not a few historical critics of a later generation. It is idle to apprise us that impartiality has equally been the desire of historians before Agamemnon ; there is more point in the contention that, though his command of documentary evidence was far more extensive than theirs, his power of welding his materials into a consistent whole was, and could not be, equal to the totality of the opportunities that accu- mulated upon him. Thus, Gardiner's "method" may deserve the epithet of "inadequate" applied to it by his critic; but the latter, whose language is usually as self-controlled as his point of view is scholarly, comes dangerously near to the unfairness of mere epigram when he sets down Gardiner's work as " not a history in the true sense, but ' a mass of building materials.'" Would that, in a generation more favourably circumstanced than his, those who may succeed him could be depended on to give their attention to the preliminary stages, of which a necessary one is the ascertaining of contemporary opinion, before they essay "to pass the present tests of unity and consistency!" Should this prove to be the case, the historical students of the future might leave the "method" of their teachers to take care of itself. ii. COLONEL HUTCHINSON AND HIS WIFE 1 (The Saturday Review, March 6, 1886.) IT was time that Mrs Hutchinson's Memoirs of her unfortunate husband, as a standard work of English biography unlikely to be ever out of demand, should be reedited by a competent hand. The descendant of Colonel Hutchinson, by whom they were originally published at the beginning of the present century, was indeed singularly well fitted for his pious task. More- over, in performing it, he was able to make use of various other biographical materials and of the notes of his grandfather and namesake, and to take advantage of the criticisms, by no means altogether friendly, of the Colonel's stepmother, a vigorous old lady who lived to the venerable age of one-hundred-and-two. Mr Julius Hutchinson the younger must have been a man of learning and taste, and the style of his notes has a mellowness which makes them pleasant reading on their own account . What , for instance, could be better of its kind than his descrip- tion (in a note to Vol. n, p. 194 of the present edition) of the" convenient house " which, after leaving the Council of State in 1651, Colonel Hutchinson built himself on his estate at Owthorpe, in the Vale of Belvoir, and of its environments? House and site formed a whole 1 Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, Governor of Notting- ham, by his Widow Lucy. Edited by the Rev. Julius Hutchinson. Revised, with additional notes, by C. H. Firth. 2 vols. London: John C. Nimmo, 1885. Colonel Hutchinson and his Wife 267 which, he writes, "had been deserted near forty years, but resisted the ravages of time so well as to discover the masterly hand by which it had been planned and executed." But, after a succession of reprints of the book had remained content with repeating the notes of the original editor, Mr Firth was well judged in seeking to supplement them. He has, accordingly, to the great benefit of his readers, carefully compared the MS. note-book now in the British Museum, which contains Mrs Hutchinson 's first sketch of a portion of the Memoirs, and is, therefore, substantially identical with them, although at times it "particularizes when they generalize." And, which is of greater importance, he has added in the Appendices to his two volumes a collection of letters by Colonel Hutchinson and others, and two other documents of much interest, which, whether or not they are likely to raise the general estimate of the unlucky Colonel's character and conduct, must certainly be taken into account in judging them. The first of these is the letter to the Speaker, discovered in 1860 by Mrs Everett Green, and since calendared by her among the Domestic State Papers of Charles II, which was written in June 1660 by Mrs Hutchinson in her husband's name to test the feeling of the House of Commons towards him, who was then in hiding as one of the regicides. Her singularly daring and skilful device succeeded, and "in respect of his signal re- pentance" i.e. of that which she had professed on his behalf it was resolved by the Commons that his name should not be placed among those excepted under the special clause in the bill of indemnity and oblivion. He hereupon addressed another petition to the House of 268 Historical Lords, which Mr Firth likewise prints, together with its enclosure, consisting of a certificate by divers con- scientious friends and acquaintances, including Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, and intended to show that the Colonel had, in point of fact, been a zealous Royalist from about the year 1653 onwards. Mr Firth's Second Appendix concludes with a very curious document of a quite different description Mrs Hutchinson's dedi- cation of her translation of Lucretius to Lord Anglesey. She characteristically blames herself for having, even though only by way of a pastime while teaching her children their lessons and working at her embroidery, amused herself with such vain philosophy ; for she has since "learnt to hate all unsanctified excellence, if that impropriety of expression may be permitted." But, perhaps not less characteristically, she shows in her self-depreciation a certain self-consciousness without which the Puritanism of which she is so remarkable a type would be incomplete. The new edition of her Memoirs, which, by the way, is adorned by ten admir- ably etched portraits, is published very opportunely at a time when the labours of the modern historian of the Puritan Revolution have arrived at the eve of the Civil War. The course of the struggle was not otherwise than locally affected by the efforts of Colonel Hutchinson on behalf of the Cause ; but its issue would remain altogether inexplicable were it not for the convinced steadfast- ness among the soberer class of Puritans, in which Mr Gardiner has more distinctly than any previous historian traced conservative elements, and of which Mrs Hutchinson's Memoirs of her husband furnish so enduring a monument. Colonel Hutchinson and his Wife 269 Colonel Hutchinson, although, like some other men, he had the good fortune of being a hero to his wife, had in himself but little of the heroic. The character of him, which his widow specially drew up for the edification of her children, is, notwithstanding the dissatisfaction she herself expressed with "the manner of relating it," an admirable piece of literary workmanship; but the conscientious critic's pen is dipped in rose-water, and, of all the praises bestowed upon a respectable but far from strenuous man, none seems more exaggerated than the phrase, felicitous in itself, that "there was nothing he durst not do or suffer, but sin against God." The Puritanism of Colonel Hutchinson 's earlier days cannot have been of a very pronounced type. His father, who was that way inclined, and who, in the early part of the reign, had suffered imprisonment for refusing to pay taxes or lend money required by the King's illegal com- mission, seems to have acted on no very distinct principles as to the bringing-up of his sons. After his second marriage, he left his elder son and heir in Not- tingham " at board in a very religious house, where new superstitions and pharisaical holiness, straining at gnats and swallowing camels, gave him a little disgust, and was for a while a stumbling-block in his way of purer profession, when he saw among professors such un- suitable miscarriages." Hence he removed of all the colleges in the two Universities to Peterhouse, distin- guished at that time by its devotion to an exuberantly imaginative ritualism. Well might his eyes be opened, in one sense, as he sat under the golden angels in the chapel ; but his wife, who says that he was very popular in "the household," demurely adds that he left it not 270 Historical yet so enlightened as to discern the spring of the prac- tices which he abhorred "in the rights and usages of the English Church." In political feeling, too, it was some time before he broke with the existing condition of things. It cannot have been long before the abolition of the Star Chamber that he engaged in a negotiation for purchasing the chief office in that Court ; and the reason which prevented the settlement of the bargain was not of his own making. When the War broke out, though, like his father, he made no secret of his sym- pathy with the side of the Parliament, and began accord- ingly, in his widow's noticeable phrase, "to be branded with the name of Puritan," he was in no haste to take up arms, for some time, as he phrases it, not finding "a clear call from the Lord." He had, however, before the actual outbreak of the conflict, shown considerable spirit under circumstances of some difficulty in helping to prevent his kinsman, Lord Newark, as Lord-Lieu- tenant of Nottinghamshire, from carrying off in the King's name some powder belonging to the county. Mr Firth shows in his Appendix the futility of the attempt to impugn the veracity of this part of Mrs Hutchinson's narrative, although, according to her wont, she overrates the significance of the part played in the transaction by her husband. It is possibly another instance of the same tendency when, in her account of the taking of a fort near Nottingham by Colonel Hutchinson, then Governor of the Castle, in the fol- lowing year, she denies all credit to his Derbyshire auxiliaries, who, according to Sir John Cell, did the main part of the work. But Sir John's evidence is by no means unexceptionable. Mr Firth's note on him Colonel Hutchinson and his Wife 271 should not be overlooked; for he is one of Mrs Hutchinson 's betes noires, and her account of his wicked devices for obtaining fame, as contrasted with the lofty magnanimity of her husband, may be worth quoting once more, though it may not be new to our readers : . . . certain it is that he was never by his goodwill in a fight, but either by chance or necessity; and that which made his courage the more questioned was the care he took, and the expense he was at, to get it weekly mentioned in the journals, so that when they had nothing else to renown him for, they once put in that the troops of that valiant commander, Sir John Cell, took a dragoon with a plush doublet. Mr Hutchinson, on the other side, that did well for virtue's sake, and not for the vain- glory of it, never would give anything to buy the flatteries of these scribblers; and when one of them had once, while he was in town, made mention of something done at Nottingham, with falsehood, and given Cell the glory of an action wherein he was not concerned, Mr Hutchinson rebuked him for it, whereupon the man begged his pardon, and told him he would write as much for him the next week, but Mr Hutchinson told him he scorned his mercenary pen, warning him not to dare to lie in any of his concernments, whereupon the fellow was awed and he had no more abuse of the kind. This contempt for the enterprise of the "diurnal- makers," quite apart from the element of sound morality which it contains, may seem more surprising in a member of the popular party than in a trenchant Cavalier author like Cleveland ; but it is quite in harmony with the general tone of Mrs Hutchinson herself, who mingles a considerable amount of inbred hauteur with her religious humility. Thus, in speaking of her hus- band's bachelor days, she mentions a young lady, other- wise "ingenuous enough, "but "of base parentage and penurious education." This young person, who was the 272 Historical grandchild of a physician, had conceived a kindness for Mr Hutchinson; but though he civilly "resented" i.e. reciprocated it, "his great heart could never stoop to think of marrying into so mean a stock." On the whole, it is impossible wholly to account for Colonel Hutchinson 's many misfortunes by the con- scientiousness which, as his wife (no doubt sincerely) believed, always obliged him to pursue a straightforward path of his own. His vexatious experiences as Governor of Nottingham Castle, in which capacity he seems always to have been ready to do his duty, and certainly made great personal sacrifices on behalf of "the Cause," suggest no great capacity for conciliating, or as it were commanding, the goodwill of those with whom he had to act. In his quarrels with the Committee at Notting- ham, which twice had to be threshed out in London, the right was probably on his side, as the argument of expediency most certainly was; but, from whatever point of view this little chapter of the domestic history of the Parliamentary party be looked at, it makes but pitiable reading. Already in connexion with these quarrels, the attempt had been made by his adversaries to excite the Presbyterians as a body against him, though, as Mrs Hutchinson candidly allows, Hollis was proof against the manoeuvre. At the time of the detention of the King by the Scots, Colonel Hutchinson began to be reckoned as a member of the Independent party ; and soon afterwards, in consequence of doubts suggested to him by his wife, whose guiding influence on this occasion as elsewhere manifests itself, he adopted the main tenet of the Baptists. Thus, he continued to sit in the House after Pride's Purge, but not in an alto- Colonel Hutchinson and his Wife 273 gather cheerful frame of mind, for Mrs Hutchinson states that he infinitely disliked the action of the army. She, likewise, declares that it was very much against his will that he was made a member of the Court chosen for the King's trial. All this is highly probable, though, at the same time, not easily reconcilable with the hypothesis that he was a man of real force of character. The further assertion that Ireton named him upon the Common- wealth's first Council of State, against his own urgent entreaties, is at least technically incorrect. In his differ- ences with Cromwell, which afterwards counted for so much in his favour, there is nothing discreditable to him, though no implicit reliance can be placed upon a witness so prejudiced as to assert that, in 1649, Cromwell set himself to mould the army to his mind by "weeding out the godly and upright-hearted men, both officers and soldiers, and filling up their rooms with rascally turn- coat Cavaliers, and pitiful sottish beasts of his own alliance.'* Colonel Hutchinson 's scruples about Crom- well's system of government were no doubt genuine, and he may very well have wished to draw back from the Protector, without having the least desire to bring in the King. The Memoirs may be trusted as to the explanation they furnish of the concealment of arms in his house, which, in the certificate presented on his behalf to the Parliament after the Restoration, was boldly represented as a service to the Royal cause. On the other hand, Cromwell must either have judged unusually ill or have dissembled with extraordinary determination, when, not long before his death, he openly entreated the " dear Colonel " to " come in and act among us" according as the certificate told the truth w. p. I. 1 8 274 Historical or the reverse in asserting that the Protector was at this very time in secret intending to put Hutchinson under arrest. We confess that it is hard to see why so high a value should have been put upon his services either as a soldier, though he had done his duty at Nottingham, or as a statesman. On the Council of State, at all events, he had played an insignificant part, except in so far as he had patriotically bought up art-treasures from the collections of the King and other malignants of taste. After Oliver's death, the Colonel was courteous and cautious to Richard, who appointed him High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire ; but in the troublous months which followed he played no really influential part. We find indications enough that his attitude towards Monk was not one of stoical indifference, a course rendered all the more natural to him by his aversion to Lambert. Serious as were the issues involved, there are materials for a scene of high comedy in Mrs Hutchinson 's in- dignant account of her husband's interview with the astute Achitophel of the future, whom the Colonel, "upon the confidence of his friendship," entreated to tell him what were Monk's intentions. Never was there such protesting as Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper's, whom the Colonel, to his dying day, held to be a more execrable traitor than Monk himself. Colonel Hutchinson, as already observed, saved himself with the aid of his wife's daring and sagacity from the vengeance of the Restoration; and perhaps many a stronger man might have stooped as low for such a purpose. Yet for his fame it was well that he was, after all, destined to go through an imprisonment and sufferings which hastened, or rather, as his widow had Colonel Hutchinson and his Wife 275 sufficient reason for believing, actually caused, his death in Sandown Castle. The last eleven months of his life, narrated by his biographer with a solemnity and pathos which to this day render it difficult to read her con- cluding pages without emotion, made a martyr of a man who cannot be called a hero. Of his wife it is sufficient to say that he correctly estimated her character when in his dying message he bade her, " as she is above other women, show herself in this occasion a good Christian, and above the pitch of ordinary women." Mrs Hutch- inson was not faultless, and, to our mind at least, she exhibits, both as a woman and as a writer, some features which are not wholly attractive ; but among those good women of whom the procession is longer than that of Chaucer's Legende, her place is not far from that of Alcestis herself. Opinions may differ as to the way in which her husband bore himself among the Cavaliers and " Castilians," Roundheads and "Worsted-stocking men," and Levellers "sober" or unsober, with whom he was brought into contact or conflict. But he must have been a man of no wholly common mould to have been worshipped by such a wife. 18 2 12. MEMOIRS OF GENERAL LUDLOW (The English Historical Review, July 1895.) "THE justification of the present edition" of the celebrated Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow is, according to Mr C. H. Firth, whose eminence as a historical scholar has never been displayed to more advantage than in his admirable performance of this laborious task, to be found in the two following facts. It is the earliest to restore a number of passages suppressed by the original editor of the Memoirs, traditionally and, as Mr Firth considers, correctly, identified with Isaac Littlebury, who in the crisis of 1699 stubbornly upheld, in opposition to the leaders of his party, the principle of abolishing, or at least reducing, the standing army. These passages, reflecting on the early tergiversations of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, afterwards Lord Shaftesbury, were first recovered by his biographer, the late Mr W. D. Christie, and certainly demanded reinsertion in their proper places in Ludlow 's Memoirs. In Ludlow's opinion, the future Whig leader, after beginning his career with the design of being "a boutefeu between the parliament and the army," helped Monk to wreck the last chance of bringing about a cooperation between both for the preservation of the Commonwealth. The other fact justifying the re- appearance of the Memoirs, in the present attractive edition, consists, as modestly stated by Mr Firth, in its being "the first containing critical and explanatory notes, and adding the letters of Ludlow." The Memoirs of General Ludlow 277 criticism furnished in the notes is largely concerned with a rectification of errors, more especially in chronology, such as the text not unfrequently requires ; but the present editor has likewise supplied a masterly introduction, which at once amplifies and points the summary winding up his excellent notice of Ludlow in the Dictionary of National Biography. And his Appen- dices contain, besides a considerable number of letters by Ludlow, referring to his services in Ireland in 1651-4 and to his brief command there from June 1659 to January 1660, much other valuable matter that has hitherto remained uncollected or undigested. In particular, a lucid sketch is given of the civil war in Wiltshire, in the course of which Ludlow, by his defence of Wardour Castle, gained the greenest of his military laurels; and Mr Firth prints a long series of letters from the English republican exiles in Switzer- land, which first became known to students through the researches of that indefatigable enquirer in various fields, Professor Alfred Stern. Unlike the character and actions of Oliver Cromwell, which overshadow so many a page of this autobiography, those of Edmund Ludlow offer no difficulty or insoluble problem to the interpreting powers of history. Indeed, as may be observed by the way, so simple and direct were the workings of Ludlow's mind that nothing could be more consistent and unhesitating than his interpretation of Cromwell's own conduct and motives. Although Ludlow was a modest man at bottom (see, for instance, his avowal of his unfitness for so great an office as membership of the Council of State, and again his confession of his diffidence in assuming the military 278 Historical command in Ireland after Ireton's death), yet he had not a moment's doubt but that Cromwell's "jealousy" of him was entirely due to the fear lest he should impede the "plot" against the Commonwealth. Still, as he assured Cromwell in their interview after his own forcible detention at Beaumaris, "his dissatisfactions were not grounded upon any animosity" against the archplotter's person. "If my own father were alive, and in his place, they would, I doubted not, be altogether as great." Ludlow, although he refers to the anti- royalist sentiments of this very father, and shows in other ways how widely, though not universally, they were shared by other members of his family, does not waste much time in explaining how he came to choose his own side in the great civil conflict. " I thought the justice of that cause I had engaged in to be so evident that I could not imagine it to be attended with much difficulty." But, deeply imbued though he was with every prejudice against the King and his dynasty, and " against many of the clergy, who had been the principal authors of our miseries," the resolve to which he adhered so steadfastly rested upon a broad basis of principle. For him, monarchy meant irresponsible power "a power which, though it destroys the people by thousands," claimed to "be accountable to none but God for so doing." Thus, the question as to the right way of dealing with King Charles I never presented any difficulties to his mind. When the London mob invaded the House of Commons on 26 July 1647, and the Speaker obsequiously put the question that the King should be invited to come to London "with honour, freedom, and safety," Ludlow gave a loud Memoirs of General Ludlow 279 "No" to the proposal; and he never seems to have entertained any doubt but that the office as well as the person of the King ought to be judged and con- demned. In accordance with a habit to which he resorted as frequently as Cromwell himself, he had divers Old Testament texts at hand to prove the undesirableness of monarchy, just as the " express words of God's law" in a passage in the Book of Numbers "convinced" him that an accommodation with King Charles would have been unjust and wicked. Hence, it was not with his hand only but with his heart (to use his own expression) that he afterwards sub- scribed the Engagement to be faithful to the Common- wealth of England, as it was established without a King or House of Lords; and no consideration, either of personal advantage or of public expediency, could turn him aside from his determination to uphold it in season or out of season. Ludlow 's republicanism was fostered by something besides an intellectual conviction, which gradually grew into a formal dogmatism. Of this some illustrations will be found in the later portions of his Memoirs. (See, for instance, his wish, on arriving in Dublin as Com- mander-in-chief of all the forces in Ireland, to waive all pretensions to precedence for himself over the Commissioners of the Parliament, on the ground that he had always declared it to be his opinion that the military ought to submit to the civil power.) The sentiment or creed, which was a second religion to him throughout a long career, disappointing enough in the failure of its chief purpose to have broken a meaner spirit, was sustained by some noble qualities that, in 280 Historical his case, proved compatible with an unmistakable stubbornness of disposition and a certain narrowness of mind. Above all, he was distinguished by a simplicity which is justly associated with the political opinions maintained by him, and which he exhibits, not only in his avowed contempt for the mere trains and trappings of high office, but, also, in an occasional outburst of masculine sentiment, such as the almost Thucydidean passage containing his reflexions on the funeral of Ireton. To this simplicity there was added in him a species of moral courage which possibly cost him little effort, inasmuch as he knew himself to be by birth and breeding at least the equal of both the friends and the foes with whom he stood face to face in the political arena; so that (as the phrase runs) he could "afford" to despise the scruples of Lord Warwick, who, while ready to ally his own with the Protector's family, could not bring himself to sit in the "Other House" with Colonel Hewson and Colonel Pride. One of these senators had, as Ludlow states, been a shoemaker and the other a drayman; and, he adds, "had they driven no worse trade, I know not why any man should refuse to act with them." Furthermore, the author of these Memoirs may be set down as having been absolutely incorruptible by any consideration affecting his personal interests, down to the offer of a horse and saddle, tendered to him by Luke Toole, " the head of a sept in the county of Wicklo." And yet, he spent of his private estate during his tenure of office in Ireland as freely as many a servant of the Tudor or the Stewart Crown. The qualities to which I have referred, if not exclusively republican virtues, at least sorted well with Memoirs of General Ludlow 281 the political professions put forward by Ludlow from the days when he took up arms for the Parliament to those when he vindicated the conduct of his public life in friendly discourse with the senators of Berne, and set down in his Memoirs the satisfaction with which he had beheld the statue, and become acquainted with the legend, of the Swiss tyrannicide "William Tell." If it be further allowed, that no exception can fairly be taken to the frankness and straightforwardness of Ludlow, either when helping to make or striving to write the history of his times, the interest which has so long attached to his personality seems easily to explain itself ; while the application of epithets emphasising the ob- stinacy of both opinions and character without which such an individuality is inconceivable forms no longer the most satisfactory method of impressing its significance upon posterity. Nothing therefore could be more grati- fying in its way than to be enabled to verify, under the guidance of so scrupulously exact a commentator as Mr Firth, the generous ejaculations of Carlyle, and to find mitigations possible even in an analysis so judicious and well-balanced as that of the late M. Guizot. I have no space left either to illustrate from Mr Firth's invaluable notes the large number of chrono- logical and other inaccuracies pointed out by him in these Memoirs. They are accounted for, partly by the conditions of remoteness of time and place under which they must have been composed, partly, perhaps (and less excusably), by the fact that here and there the author followed other sources which he was unable to control. The reader has to be constantly on his guard against the drawback that much of Ludlow's narrative, though proceeding from a deeply interested contem- 282 Historical porary, is secondhand only; thus, he was in Ireland during those transactions in which, after the " crowning victory " of Worcester, he holds the " evil intentions " of Cromwell to have first distinctly revealed themselves, and he is obliged, inter alia, to appeal to such hearsay evidence as what Hugh Peters afterwards told him he at the time told a friend. On the other hand, he is occasionally obscure where clearness of explanation was alike called for and within his power ; and I am unable to convince myself that he succeeds in showing why he left Irish affairs to take care of themselves in the autumn of 1659. His conduct in England, as the catastrophe of the Commonwealth drew near, was, however, charge- able neither with want of insight nor with want of courage; and, in the end, he was even prepared to run the risk of a more or less formidable military revolt. The story of his exile, which lasted for more than thirty years (with a brief and in its details almost ludicrous interruption, viz. his visit to England in 1689, followed by his escape after proclamation by the new sovereigns), has a strange pathos of its own; but his Memoirs come to an end with the year 1672, and contain little concerning himself for some years previously. Mr Firth concludes that they were, in all probability, written between 1663 and 1673. Within these years falls his correspondence with friends in Holland, with whom he would have been willing to join in hostile operations against England. His re- publican fanaticism sufficiently accounts for this readiness; yet one is glad to think that, in a passage of his Memoirs, he could forget himself sufficiently to dwell on the fact that success is wont to be on the side of those who fight in their country's cause. i 3 . MEMOIRS OF MARY II (The Edinburgh Review, April 1886.) BISHOP BURNET, the faithful friend and trusted counsellor of Queen Mary, has recorded his con- viction that "if ever the sacred remains of her pen are suffered to come abroad, then the world will see with what a searching understanding she penetrated into things." He wrote with knowledge as well as with the enthusiasm of personal devotion, but his prediction has been fulfilled rather in the spirit in which it was conceived than in the terms in which it was expressed. The written remains of the good Queen published since her death are of a nature to increase the admiration felt for her by her contemporaries but because of the moral rather than of the intellectual qualities which they disclose. Three years ago, when an account was given in this Journal 1 of recent publications throwing new light on the period of the Revolution of 1688 and the fall of the House of Stewart, particular attention was directed to a very interesting series of documents almost entirely from Queen Mary's hand. This col- lection, published at the Hague in 1880 by Countess Bentinck, comprised a fragment of memoirs by the Princess of Orange from the beginning to the end of the year 1688, together with a series of meditations by the Queen dating from 1690 and 1691, and a short succes- sion of letters written by her at various times in the six years of her reign. Since the appearance of that 1 Edinburgh Review, vol. CLV, no. cccxviii. 284 Historical notice, though Dr Onno Klopp's History of the Fall of the House of Stuart has continued to drag its slow length along, and has now arrived at its eleventh volume, and though, both in this and in a few other works, noteworthy gleanings have been made from the Austrian and other Archives, little of moment has been added to the memoir-literature of the reign of William and Mary. Quite suddenly, however, the Archives at Hanover have, within the last few months, yielded up a treasure of a biographical value surpassing even that of Countess Bentinck's collection. The newly discovered Memoirs of Queen Mary 1 for the first time place her character in unmistakably clear relief, and prove it one which, though it has suffered from excessive praise almost as much as from hasty blame, deserves to be called truly feminine, and in some respects, we do not scruple to say, heroic. There seems to us no reason for doubting the genuineness of the autobiographical document now published by Dr Doebner , in company with an interesting series of original letters, chiefly from Queen Mary to the Duchess, afterwards Electress, Sophia. The manu- script purports to be a "continuation of the necessary reflections on my life," in a series of annual chapters or sections covering the period from the beginning of 1689 to the close of 1693. It, therefore, carries on the Queen's summary narrative from the point at which its earliest portion came to an end in the fragment 1 Memoirs of Mary, Queen of England (1689 1693), together with her Letters and those of Kings James II and William III to the Electress Sophia of Hanover. Ed. by R. Doebner, London (Nutt); Leipzig (Veit), 1886. Memoirs of Mary II 285 printed by Countess Bentinck. Mary appears to have formed the habit of writing down from time to time, independently of her brief autobiographical Memoirs, such meditations on her experiences and conduct as occurred to her in the hours which she dedicated to religious or devotional exercise. Of these meditations a few specimens were, as we have said, preserved among the Bentinck papers ; but from a passage in the Memoirs now before us it appears that, in 1691, at a time of great anxiety and discouragement, she burnt the bulk of them, fearing they might fall into hands from which she wished to keep them. This passage all but com- pletely tallies with the Queen's statement in one of the fragments published by Countess Bentinck, according to which the Queen was so frightened by rumours, that, though much regretting to separate herself from manu- scripts which had often been of great utility to her, she burnt all her meditations . ' ' The j ournals /'she however there continues, "I put in a bag and tyed by my side, resolving, if anything happened, to have them ready to burn." With regard, then, to the Journals or Memoirs, her custom seems to have been to make her entries as occasion offered and, at the close of each year, to put these materials into a connected shape. This explains the conciseness of the autobiographical annals which have now come to light, and of which the longest section, that for the year 1689, occupies not more than seventeen small pages of print. It also explains the absence, which is much to be regretted, of any memoranda concerning the year 1694, before the actual close of which the Queen died. Although the evidence for the genuineness of these 286 Historical Memoirs is purely internal, it will not, we think, be disputed by anyone who has compared them with Countess Bentinck's fragments, with the indisputably genuine letters of the Queen printed in both collections, and with her letters previously published by Dalrymple. Not only is the tone of the longer as well as of the shorter piece of autobiography both of which were manifestly composed for no eye but that of the authoress, perfectly simple and unaffected ; but the two repeatedly illustrate each other, and are in their turn alike illustrated by the Queen's letters, in points of detail which it would be tedious to enumerate. Concerning the external history of the Memoirs now printed by Dr Doebner, all that is known is that the manuscript formed part of the papers belonging to the so-called Hanoverian Chancery, which was removed from London to Hanover at the time of the termination of the Personal Union between Great Britain and Hanover, in I838 1 . These Memoirs, like the fragments previously published by Countess Bentinck, are certainly not in the Queen's own hand- writing. At first sight, more especially as no memoirs of Queen Mary exist, either among the manuscripts in the British Museum or at the Hague, a difficulty might be found in the circumstance that the portion printed in 1880 is in French, while that now published is in English. Now, Countess Bentinck's MS. is headed Papier s de la Reine Marie, copies des originaux 1 We may take this opportunity of expressing a hope that, at some not distant day, the public may benefit by a systematic examination of the archives of this office sometimes called the German Chancery to which the Electoral (afterwards Royal) Councillors at Hanover regularly forwarded their reports, and over which not a few remark- able statesmen, beginning with Bernstorff and Bothmer, presided. Memoirs of Mary II 287 ecrits de sa main propre, which seems to exclude the notion of its being a translation. Curiously enough, two letters in French from King James II included in the Countess's collection are entirely translations, probably from the English autographs now printed by Dr Doebner; but this may be due to accident. The recently discovered Memoirs have no similar super- scription, but appear to be a copy dating from the middle of the i8th century, and made, if Dr Doebner's printing be exact, without very great care. He is himself inclined to solve the difficulty by supposing that Mary wrote in French while in Holland, and in English after her return to her native country. In this conjecture there is nothing improbable. Bishop Burnet in his " Memorial " describes her as having been almost equally familiar with three languages of course, English, French, and Dutch. After her return to England she may, however, have naturally preferred to write in English. In one of her letters to the Duchess Sophia, dated 1693, we find her for the first time writing in her native tongue to her correspondent, whom she informs that in this language she writes least ill, and a few months later, in another letter to Hanover, she remarks on her "ill French," which she declares she writes " every day worse and worse." For the rest, though Lord Macaulay illustrated the defects of feminine composition in Mary's day by an example taken from the Queen herself, neither is the style of these Memoirs more than ordinarily inaccurate, nor the spelling abnormally bad. Queen Mary still, of course, free from the burden of regal dignity had ended the year 1688, as she 288 Historical writes at the opening of these Memoirs, in "good temper of mind." In other words, she had religiously resigned herself to the performance of the task imposed upon her, as she devoutly believed, by a Higher Power. Without being elated overmuch by the successful issue of her husband's expedition to England, or feeling such sadness as would, in her opinion, have become "the daughter of a distressed king," she restrained even her natural grief at the thought of leaving Holland, and resolved entirely to sacrifice her own will to what she regarded as the will of Heaven. Yet it was a hard effort for her to prepare for quitting a country where (so she writes with inoffensive self-consciousness), she had enjoyed the esteem of the inhabitants, and had led a life both suitable to her humour and, as she thought, not unacceptable to her God. This exordium as it were strikes the keynote of the spirit in which the whole of these Memoirs are written . It is a spirit of deep and convinced piety, impelled towards the observation of rigid principles of conduct by the religious views and habits of life which she had acquired in her adopted country, and by the Pietistic current which so largely affected the Protestantism of her age. Of late, as she observes, she had remained in strict retirement, and had "led the life of a nun," with public prayers four times a day. She speaks with great satisfaction of having, during her residence in the Netherlands, over- come the love of dancing, which -had formerly been one of her "prettiest pleasures in the world," so that she had feared it might be a sin in her to love it too well. Soon afterwards, when she had ascended the English Throne, one of the first reforms essayed by her Memoirs of Mary II 289 towards "making devotion looked on as it ought" was the abolition of the practice of "singing the prayers in the Chapel" Royal at Whitehall. To accomplish this change, and to introduce afternoon sermons in the same place of worship, proved to be within her power; but she could not induce her subjects to " mind the Sunday more." It is well known that, though brought up under the same ecclesiastical teaching as her sister Anne, who " laughed at afternoon sermons," she had no inclination whatever towards the doctrines or practices of the High Church party. On the other hand, her early training under Bishop Compton had implanted, and her marriage with the Prince of Orange had confirmed, in her an abhorrence of the Church of Rome which nerved her for the choice which she was called upon to make in the critical season of her life. Rightly or wrongly, " the good of the public" to which she was, according to her own phrase, willing to sacrifice both her personal inclinations and the misgivings of filial affection, signified to her the cause of the Protestant faith. With these views and sentiments her language on religious subjects, of which we do not propose here to quote any specimens, is in complete accordance. She was a diligent reader of the Bible, and in 1690 read through, "in Lent and one week more," the whole of the New Testament, besides several select chapters of the Old. In every striking incident or experience of her life, whether of a public or a private nature, she perceived a judgment, a punishment, or a warning: whether it were the raising of the siege of Limerick, or the death of her friend Lady Dorset, or the convulsion-fits of the infant Duke of Gloucester, or even the fall of new W. P. I. 19 290 Historical buildings at Kensington. It is clear that the language appropriate to such conceptions had become natural to her, though her modesty inclined her to reserve it mainly for her communings with herself; thus, she asks pardon from a correspondent for "preaching; but tho' it may look like it, 'tis only telling you my thoughts." And, in truth, her religious feeling had depths which removed it far out of the region of sectarianism and partisanship, and finds expression in meditations and prayers, at times breathing the spirit of the serenest piety. If ever a timid mind " I am," she writes, "naturally extream fearfull" has in the carrying out of high resolves been sustained by a strong sense of duty, it was hers. If ever a generous and loving heart has, in sole reliance on help from above, taught itself the lesson of resignation, it was that of this sorely tried lady. She was successively deprived of the aid of nearly every affection which might have responded to her own. Her husband never requited her devotion with an undivided attachment; nor was it till after her death that his love for her revealed itself in a passionate outburst. Her childless- ness was one of the great griefs of her life, though, towards its close, her regrets appear to have calmed down. " I am a very ill judge of this sort of afection," she writes in June 1693 to the Duchess Sophia, who was then bidding adieu to two of her sons on their way to the wars, "and can no more comprehend it than that love of a brothere, which I never had." From her sister, as we shall see, she was gradually estranged, by no fault of her own, but by Anne's obstinacy in following the counsels of the ambitious intriguers to Memoirs of Mary II 29 1 whom she had surrendered her will. Of her father's blessing she no doubt in a sense deprived herself. But these Memoirs should remove the last suspicion that she adopted her husband's as against her father's cause with a light heart, or with anything but a painful, though resistless, sense of a public rather than a private duty. The struggle through which she passed when summoned to England by her husband to "come into her father's place" repeated itself in a different fashion, when King William took his departure for Ireland. She was haunted by the " cruel thought " that her husband and her father would fight in person against each other; "and, if either should have perished in the action, how terrible it must have been to me!" So again, in 1692, when the expedition was threatening from La Hogue, "the fear that my father might fall by our arms, or either of them fall where 'tother was present, was to me the dreadfullest prospect in the world." No doubt, later in the same year, as will be seen, her affection for her father at last received a shock from which it seems never to have recovered. But of its warmth before this time there can be no reasonable doubt; and it is touching to find Mary, in December 1690, thanking the Duchess Sophia for appreciating her sorrow over her father's calamities. Nothing but a high sense of duty could have enabled the Queen to bear up against so much solitary suffering. How incessant were the trials she was fated to undergo, and how not the least among them was the knowledge that her conduct was constantly misinterpreted, a brief recapitulation of the contents of the Memoirs before us may contribute to show. 19 2 292 Historical The departure of the Princess of Orange from Holland in the beginning of the year 1689 was delayed, as that of the Prince in the previous October had been rendered futile, by contrary winds. For the first ten days of January she was occupied in entertaining, at the Hague and at "the house in the wood" hardby, an interesting pair of guests, with whose ways of life and thought, however, she had little in common. The new Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg (afterwards King Frederick I of Prussia), on whose cooperation, as that of the only German Prince actually prepared for war, so much depended for William of Orange, had greatly perturbed him and the States-General by announcing his intention to leave the Dutch frontier for his Baltic provinces, whither he was now on his way 1 . William's remonstrances (which proved in some measure successful) were accordingly strengthened by a most enthusiastic reception given at the Hague to the Elector and his consort, and the Princess of Orange had to do double duty in the absence of her husband. I toock so much care to be civil to the elector and divert the electress, that I gave myself no time for any thing else. The circumstances of time were such we could have no publick entertainments but onely treating them at my severall houses, which I did and played at cards out of complaisance so late at night, that it was ever neer two before I got to bed ; yet I bless my God I did not neglect prayers in the morning, but went both to the French and English once in my own house, but I con- siderd to much the public and my private interest and toock so much care of my guests, that I neglected going to church in 1 See William's letter to Frederick, cited in Droysen's Geschichte derpreuss. Politik, iv. i. 40 note; and ib. p. 50 note, as to the reception at the Hague. Memoirs of Mary II 293 the afternoon when they were there.. .The roth of January the elector and electrice went away ; I left them at the house in the wood, where I had given them a breackfast. The electrice I found not only to have a good face but also to be very agreeable, and I believe she does not want wit, but she has been educated with so much neglect of Religion, that I fear she has very little; the elector is a strange man to look on, but they say he has many good qualities, which I could not judge of in so short a time. As soon as they were gone I bless my God I returnd to my old solitary way of living, and found my self very sensibly touched with a sense of my neglect during their stay. The celebrated couple, whom the Princess had thus, as in duty bound, made welcome to the charms and comforts of the Hague, would probably have had scant pity to spare for her regrets over wasted hours. In the character of the Elector Frederick III vanity was the moving principle, perhaps because nature had been niggardly to his person. Even before his quite recent accession to the electoral dignity, he had given proofs of his ruling passion, though nothing could as yet be known of his "grand design" of securing a royal Crown, which his pertinacity ultimately enabled him to carry out in his own way. We may readily believe that he remained a "problematic" character to his kindly hostess, for he was a potentate whose vices were in part the pretences of ostentation; while, notwith- standing many generous impulses, he was unable to rise to the height of an enduring virtuous affection. He behaved ignobly, though it was not without provocation, to his father, the Great Elector; and if Lord Strafford (then Lord Raby) is to be trusted 1 , he mourned the premature death of his charming Queen 1 See Wentworth Papers, pp. 14, 15. 294 Historical Sophia Charlotte with an extraordinary profusion of black cloth and crape, but with very little real grief. She, too, though one of the most attractive Princesses of her day, could hardly be very sympathetic to her kinswoman the Princess of Orange. Indeed, a sugges- tive contrast might be drawn between the tendencies of thought and sentiment represented by Mary and those of which Sophia Charlotte, like her mother the Electress Sophia, and like their connexion by marriage Caroline of Anspach, was a brilliant type. But though all these Princesses affected the conversation of wits and philosophers, and encouraged a freedom of tone which must have shocked Mary's scrupulous and decorous nature, they had, all of them, warm hearts, and loyally clung to whatever friendships they formed. In the case of the Electress Sophia, this is illustrated by the correspondence printed by Dr Doebner ; and as to Sophia Charlotte, though her witty tongue may occasionally have given pain, yet the chatelaine of Liitzenburg was beloved as well as admired for the beneficent activity of her life; she was a faithful and, an occasional slip in etiquette apart, a most valuable helpmate to her exacting consort, and she died not unworthily of the reasonable religion she had professed and of the great thinker (Leibniz) who, as she said on her death-bed, had still left her some riddles to solve 1 . On the departure of these guests, the Princess had to await her husband's summons to England in what 1 See Varnhagen von Ense's monograph on Queen Sophia Charlotte of Prussia in his Biographische Denkmale, vol. iv. Liitzen- burg was rechristened Charlottenburg in her honour. Memoirs of Mary II 295 seemed to her utter isolation. Even Dykvelt, invaluable both for his knowledge of English affairs and for his fidelity to the House of Orange, had been sent to England by the States-General. She had no fears for herself, but many for her husband, whom, she had been told, an apothecary in France meant to poison. Of this design, which seems to be distinct from the conspiracy against the Prince's life discovered in May 1688 and noticed in the journal for that year, we cannot recall any mention elsewhere. She took comfort when she "chanced to look 1 " at the Ninety-first Psalm, which has cheered many an anxious heart besides hers. And soon the expected summons came, and after a further delay, caused by contrary winds, she set sail for England, where she arrived after a voyage which had begun with "a sea like a looking-glass," and ended with a three days' storm at the mouth of the Thames. She was forced to land at Margate (which, by the way, the editor of these "Memoirs" rather oddly describes as "an island to the north of Dover"), "or where they could," and reached Whitehall in safety before five o'clock on Tuesday, February f . She describes very naturally the conflict of feelings which her situation called forth in her, and the agitation of the Prince as well as herself at their first meeting. The next day after I came, we were proclaimed, and the government put wholy in the princes hand. This pleased me extreamly, but many would not believe it, so that I was fain to force my self to more mirth then became me at that time, and was by many interpreted as ill nature, pride, and the great 1 Very possibly she had had recourse to the sortes biblicce so much in vogue in this age. The German Pietists called this chance searching of Scripture Ddumelung. 296 Historical delight I had to be a queen. But alas, they did little know me, who thought me guilty of that ; I had been only for a regency and wisht for nothing else; I had never [query, ever?] dreaded being queen, liking my condition much better (and indeed I was not deceived); but the good of the public was to be preferd, and I protest, God knows my heart, that what I say is true, that I have had more trouble to bring my self to bear this so envyed estate then I should have had to have been reduced to the lowest condition in the world. My heart is not made for a kingdom, and my inclination leads me to a retired quiet life, so that I have need of all the resignation and self denial in the world, to bear with such a condition as I am now in. Indeed the princes being King has lessend the pain, but not the trouble of what I am like to endure. Obviously, the Queen here refers to the harsh interpretation put upon her behaviour immediately after her arrival at Whitehall a passage in her life which has been on the whole unfairly judged. The odious picture drawn by the Duchess of Marlborough is well known, which already Lord Dartmouth per- ceived to be ridiculously exaggerated. Even Burnet, however, in this instance reflects on Mary's lightness of manner as unbecoming, though he adds that, as she afterwards herself informed him, she was obeying directions, and acting a part which was not very natural to her. In a striking paragraph of the earliest portion of the Memoirs, cited in the article in this Journal already referred to, she was found lamenting her hard fate of having to pretend a gaiety which she could not feel, and which she lacked the skill to simu- late very successfully. In the pages now before us, she repeatedly complains of the still more cruel trial of finding herself charged with a levity of which, in her heart, she knew herself to be innocent. Thus, it seems Memoirs of Mary II 297 clear that the misinterpretation to which she was subjected was due, not to her want of tact on a particular occasion, but to the natural malevolence of a Court and society to which she was hardly less of a stranger than was her husband himself. The world ("by which," as she, with a rare touch of sarcasm, observes," one generally does not mean the best people") found it difficult to quarrel with a Queen at once so kindly and so unpre- tentious in manner 1 , and accordingly blamed her, or affected to blame her, for an inconsistency forced upon her both by her sense of duty and by the necessities of her new position. She was considered too fond of the frivolous gaieties from which in truth she shrank, and too careless of the observances which were so much to her. The world who cannot see the heart . . began to take notice of the change that was in my life, and comparing my way of living in Holland to that here, were much scandalized to see me grown so remiss. It is to her credit that she pursued her course regardless of the comments it provoked from dulness or male- volence, even affecting a cheerfulness which she could not feel. Her heart was far away from the Court gaieties over which she was obliged to preside; thus, on the King's birthday in 1689, though a ball was given at her desire, she tells us : I really thought it no proper time, when war was round about, and my father himself engaged against us.. .Yet such is the depravation of this age and place where I live, none seems to thinck of such things, and so ill custom prevailing, there was a 1 Burnet remarks on her vivacity and cheerfulness, which, how- ever, failed to secure her the respectful attention that was her due "when it appeared that she meddled not in business, so that few found their account in making their court to her." 298 Historical ball, but by my writings may be seen, how I endeavoured to spend that day as also the next, which was Gunpowder Treason, God be praised for it. Yet she could, when need was, present an unflinching countenance to the idle curiosity of the courtiers ; and she relates how, when, early in 1691, the King was at the Hague and not expected to expose himself to the dangers of war, she thought it her duty to visit the theatre once or twice, to play every night at comet or basset, and to have dancing on her sister's birthday. It was not the least serious of Queen Mary's trials that this sister, with whom she had hitherto been on terms so affectionate, and whose conduct during the crisis of their father's fortunes had so well accorded with her own, should, so soon after the beginning of the new reign, have resolved to pursue the tortuous path marked out for her by her confidential advisers. On arriving in England Mary had been "really extream glad to see" Anne; and when, a few months later the child (afterwards called Duke of Gloucester) was born, upon whose puny life so many hopes were based, she looked on her sister's happiness as a particular provi- dence of God, and anxiously awaited the infant's recovery from the early perils of its fragile life. But, towards the end of 1689, the Princess of Denmark, instigated by the greed of the Marlboroughs, renewed her attempts to procure the settlement of a revenue upon herself. The King and Queen were then at Holland House, which had been lent to them by the family of Rich, when the King had found Whitehall disagree with his health ; and the Queen was assiduously superintending the changes in progress to convert Memoirs of Mary II 299 Kensington House into Kensington Palace, where she hoped to find more leisure for religious study and meditation. The Court actually moved thither on December 23. Lord Macaulay's gloss on the Duchess of Marlborough's account of Anne's conduct in the matter of her revenue is fairly borne out by these Memoirs. They make it clear that Anne was induced to persist by Lady Marlborough, who "was like a mad woman," and that the reproof administered by the Queen to the Princess finally put the latter out of humour with her sister, whom she refrained from visiting in her new abode. But the King thought it an ungenerous thing to fall out with a woman, and therefore went to her (Anne) and told her so ; upon which she said he should find by her behaviour she would never give him cause. But, whether or not it was that King William rarely contrived to perform even a gracious act in a gracious way, neither upon this occasion did Prin- cess Anne "say anything" to the Queen. In 1690, the coldness between the sisters continued, more especially as they differed in their ecclesiastical views ; but, at last, by the advice of her uncle Rochester, the Speaker (the unlucky Sir John Trevor), and Lady Marlborough, who saw no other way to carry her point, the Princess begged the King and Queen's pardon, and thus gained what she wanted, or what she was instructed to want. But this reconciliation was only temporary 1 . In the following year (1691) when the King was in Holland, and the 1 It appears from a passage in a letter of the Queen's to Mile. d'Opdam (in Countess Bentinck's collection, p. 123) that during Anne's last confinement (August, 1690) the Queen kept her company. The child was christened Mary. 300 Historical Queen, as we shall see, was in constant apprehension of a catastrophe at home, Anne's name was implicated by rumour in the plots against the stability of the Throne ; and it became manifest that her husband, the unfor- tunate Prince George of Denmark, was to be thrust forward to increase the difficulties of the situation. In passing, we feel bound to express an opinion that this Prince really showed more spirit than he has been usually allowed to have possessed, whenever his inglorious career offered him the shadow of an opportunity. This was very grievous to me to thinck my sister should be concerned in such things; yet t' was plain there was a design of growing popular by the princes resolution of going to sea without asking leave, only telling the King he intended it, which I had order to hinder, and when perswasions would not do, was obliged to send word by Lord Nottingham he should not, which was desired by them as much as avoided by me, that they might have a pretence to raile, and so in discontent go to Tunbridge. A crisis, however, in the relations between the sisters declared itself in 1692, when Lord Marlborough was "put out," and when the Princess Anne, rather than part with dear Mrs Freeman, retired to Sion House. Whatever may be thought of Mary's subsequent conduct to Anne, and whether or not it be a correct statement that the Queen died in peace with her sister, her reflexions on the occasion of the breach between them bespeak a depth of feeling of which Anne was altogether incapable. In a passage manifestly sincere, though undistinguished by lucidity of diction, Queen Mary relates how, on retiring to Sion House, the Princess Anne shewed great passion and kindness for Lady Marlborough, and so much indifference and coldness to me, that it really went Memoirs of Mary II 301 to my heart. But when I saw no kindness could worck upon her, but afterwards when she had had time to consider, and that I did what I could towards a reconciliation without effect, it made me change quite and grow (at least endeavour to grow) as indifferent as she. But in all this I see the hand of God, and look on our disagreeing as a punishment upon us for the irre- gularity by us committed upon the revolution. My husband did his duty and the nation did theirs, and we were to suffer it, and rejoice that it pleased God to do what he did. But as to owr persons it is not as it ought to be, tho' it was unavoidable, and no doubt that it is a just judgment of God, but I trust the Church and nation shall not suffer, but that we in owr private concerns and persons may bear the punishment as in this we do. It may be worth adding that, in the letters written by Queen Mary about this time to the Duchess Sophia, she twice speaks with a manifestly genuine regret of the breach between herself and her sister. Thus, amidst troubles and trials not a few, the first year of the reign came to a close. Queen Mary concludes her review of it with a humble confession of her shortcomings which could hardly, had it become known to those by whom she was so pertinaciously misunderstood, have failed to touch even their ob- durate minds. As to the outward experiences of the year, she avows them to have been unpleasant enough, modestly adding that, as it is not her inclination to meddle in business, so she thinks her most prudent course is to let it alone. Unfortunately for her daily peace of mind, though not for her fame as a sovereign, the remaining years of her life were to inflict on her much of that business for which, in her self-depreciation, she thought herself unfit. Obeying, as usual, the plain call of duty, and acquitting herself as those who never 3O2 Historical disregard such a call are wont to acquit themselves, she continued to the last to assert her incompetence. It was not, she wrote to the Duchess Sophia, by her politics that she would find a place in history; and it seems to have been a private opinion of hers that women should not meddle in such matters at all. She thought her sex incapable of bearing the "violent passions, fears, joys, and troubles" which crowd upon one another in the changeful course of public affairs; "a woman," she writes, "is but a very uselesse and helplesse creature at all times, especially in times of war and difficulty." And now, at a most critical epoch in the career of her husband as well as in the history of her people, to whose love and honour she acknow- ledges "an old English inclination," she was to be left without the aid of "a man's head and hands." The year 1690 began, she relates, with fears of the King's going to Ireland, whither, however, he did not actually set forth till June. But the question as to the nature of the authority which was to control affairs during his absence had to be settled without further ado. With a considerateness not always characteristic of his dealings with his wife, King William left it to her choice whether, in his absence, all things should be done in her name, or whether the executive should be virtually left to the Privy Council, with orders to acquaint her of everything. She replied that the effect of either alternative would be the same, inasmuch as she was entirely a stranger to business, and the real responsibility must therefore in any case lie with the Privy Council. She adds, in a passage too long to extract, that since her marriage she had never been Memoirs of Mary II 303 accustomed to trouble her husband about business, being well aware that he preferred the relief of discourse with her on other topics, and resting assured that God gives wisdom where it is necessary. Thus, should she ever have to act for herself, she would not be left without guidance. The arrangement made by King William in 1690 was doubtless the best possible under the circumstances. As is well known, he named a committee or cabinet- council, afterwards known as the Council of Nine, to assist the Queen in the administration of affairs during his absence, thus, as it proved, taking one step further towards the establishment of a system of government which in its later developments would have been extremely repugnant to him. The list of names, according to these Memoirs, first chosen by William, differed to some extent from that which he ultimately drew up in June, and which is the same as that taken by Lord Macaulay from a paper by Sir John Lowther 1 . The earlier list did not, like the later, include the dread name (for such it must have been to Queen Mary) of Marlborough, or the name of Monmouth; in the later list, Shrewsbury's is wanting, which the Queen must have welcomed in the earlier. We are not, indeed, aware of any evidence beyond that of the more than dubious tittle-tattle of "Jack Howe 2 ," which would 1 We notice that the editor of these Memoirs makes a slip in stating the " Lord Stuart " (i.e. the Lord Steward of the Household) of the text to have been the Earl of Dorset, and the Lord Chamberlain to have been the Earl of Devonshire. The names of the occupants of the two offices should have been reversed. 2 He is Lord Dartmouth's authority in the note to Burnet, vol. v. p. 453. Howe was dismissed from the Vice-Chamberlainship in 1692, and, according to a rumour mentioned by Lord Macaulay, fancied that the Queen was in love with himself. 304 Historical warrant belief in the story of the Queen's partiality for the Duke of Shrewsbury, the irresistible "king of hearts." But she writes, in these Memoirs, that he had been named to her by the King as one whom she might entirely trust. Unhappily, from a strange mixture of motives among which, it now appears, was offended pride, Shrewsbury had resigned his Secretaryship of State in the course of the spring, and, unknown to William and Mary, was already intriguing with St Germains. Of the actual members of the Cabinet Council, the Queen records her impressions with an incisiveness showing that, with every wish to follow the King's recommendations, she was capable of exercising the most undeniable of woman's rights the right of indulging in an opinion of her own. Thus of Caermarthen (Danby) she observes that he was the person who had been particularly recommended to her by the King, and one to whom she "must ever own great obligations, yet of a temper she could never like." Obligations are not always the surest guarantee of goodwill on the part of the obliged; and, though the conclusion of Mary's marriage with William had been largely Danby 's work, even this remembrance could not make palatable the "matchless impudence" which such a professed admirer of his as Dryden noted in one of the most irrepressible of counsellors of the English Crown. Devonshire, whose services to the cause of the Revolution had, as William's gratitude acknowledged, been alike courageous and consistent, the Queen found "weak and obstinate, made a meer tool by party." Dorset, the "best good man" of Rochester's satire > Queen Mary, who was not likely to condone his short- comings because of his esprit, considered "too lazy to Memoirs of Mary II 305 give himself the trouble of business." Pembroke she thought "as mad as most of his family, tho' very good naturd, and a man of honour, but not very steady as I found in the bussiness of Lord Torrington." It does not, however, appear from the Queen's own account of the discussions in Council as to the line to be taken towards Torrington before the shameful battle off Beachy Head, and again just after that disaster, what grounds there were for the above insinuation against Pembroke. On the Queen's own showing, there seems to have been no want of personal spirit in him, and she selected him together with Devonshire to go down to the fleet after the defeat 1 . As for the "madness" of Lord Pembroke, his devotion to "mad mathesis" can alone explain the phrase: Burnet mentions his mathematical learning which "made him a little too speculative and abstracted in his notions." Monmouth, too, whose oddity lay in a different direction, though he for a time held high financial office, the Queen describes as "mad, and his wife who is mader, governs him." Of Nottingham, she says that he was universally distrusted, though the King believed him an honest man. She seems to have herself felt no want of confidence in him, and when, three years later, she records that the King was forced to part with this Minister, her sympathy seems to lie rather with the isolated High Churchman who constituted a Third Party of his own, than with the more eager Whigs to please whom he was induced to retire. On the other hand, she declares that she will say nothing of Marl- 1 See her letter to the King of July 13, 1690, reprinted from Dalrymple in the appendix to Burnet 's Memorial (ed. 1842). w. P. i. 20 306 Historical borough, "because 'tis he I could say the most of, and can never either trust or esteem." Her list concludes with Sir John Lowther, "a very honest but weack man, yet," such are the necessities of party, "chief of the treasury," and Edward Russell (afterwards Earl of Orford), who "was most recommended to me for sincerity, yet," she adds and Queen Anne in after days would have thought her sister's expression tolerably mild "he had his faults." With these advisers, whom, according to her husband's explicit instructions, she was to "follow in all things," Queen Mary in June 1690 entered upon her first period of administration. Already in the spring before the King's departure for Ireland, she had been a prey to the gloomiest apprehensions, and, when afflicted by a sorethroat and believing herself in danger, she had been so reconciled to the prospect of death that, as she says, " I was really rather glad than sorry." With her illness her contentment had increased, though she kept her thoughts to herself; and, on recovering, she had felt unable to rejoice, "neither could I so heartily thanck God as I ought to have done." And now, when her husband had started on what was to be "the terriblest journey " ever undertaken by him, she found herself face to face with responsibilities which might well have weighed down even a more self-reliant nature. The treasury was empty; the troops in the country numbered only a few thousands; and the fleet which was to defend its shores against the French armada was under the command of an indolent and conceited man of pleasure. In these straits she showed, after her fashion, a constancy as heroic as that of Queen Memoirs of Mary II 307 Katherine in the days of danger before Flodden Field. I should have been apt to mistrust my self, and often did fear it was stupidity, not courage, want of knowing my danger, and not constancy of mind, which made me thus, but that I never wanted those who put me perpetually in fear, Lord Presi- dent himself once asking me the question the King had put to me before he went, what I would do in case of any rising or disturbance in the City, which they both thought likely to happen, I gave them both the same answer, which was that I could not tell how much frightened I might be, but I would promise not to be governd by my own or others fears, but follow the advise of those I believed had most courage and judgment. And indeed that was my private resolution, and was resolved in my self, let what would happen, I would never go from White Hall. I had prepard my self for the worst and, when the King went, believed it was likely we should never meet more, but thought as there were many ill people, so it might be that God for owr sins might deliver me into their hands. I knew there was nothing for me to trust to humanly speacking, when the King was gone. And certainly, if any rising had happend upon the apeering of the French fleet, or had they landed after owrs was beaten, I had been in a very bad condition. I knew all this, and as I am by nature timorous, so I feard the worst ; but I knew also that God was above all.. . Thus, she was not altogether cast down either by the bad news of Waldeck's defeat at Fleurus, or by the still worse news of the disgraceful calamity off Beachy Head; and soon her firmness was rewarded by the glorious tidings of the King's victory at the Boyne. After this, the Irish campaign for a time progressed successfully, though it ended by William finding himself obliged to raise the siege of Limerick. On September loth, he was once more with the Queen at Hampton Court. 20 2 308 Historical It may be questioned whether any part of her married life brought truer happiness to Mary than the few remaining months of the year 1690. Not only had a heavy load been taken from her mind by the great Irish victory and her father's consequent return to France, but, though "many accidents had happened" in King William's absence, things had remained quiet in England, and she had herself, as she modestly puts it, been "kept from committing any great fault." The King had returned in perfect health, which "was so great a joy to me that I want words to express it"; and he was not only satisfied, but very much pleased, with her conduct of affairs. Of this he gave the clearest proof by talking more freely to her on political matters than had formerly been his wont. But her dislike of business had not been diminished by her experience of it. She now dropped it without the slightest reluctance, being unable, as she confesses, to enter into the popular notion that when persons have once become used to business they cannot give it over. Her fear was rather that she might be supposed to hanker after it, and this made her afraid ever to open her lips to the leading members of the Council. And yet, though the year had ended so much more hopefully for her than it had begun, she was full of forebodings, and the very "heavenly mindedness and entire resignation" vouch- safed to her seemed to point to some imminent trial. Twice before in her life, she writes, she had felt in the same condition of mind once, when her father King James and his agents were about to seek to undermine her Protestant faith, and, again, on the eve of her husband's expedition to England. Memoirs of Mary II 309 Hardly had King William, early in 1691, started for Holland, there to attend the Conference of the Powers allied against France, than her fears took a more definite shape. Her husband, indeed, returned in safety to England, where he spent the latter half of April; but, before his return, there had supervened the capitulation of Mons, for the relief of which he had in vain made the most strenuous efforts. " Such a mortification," the Queen piously reflects, "was necessary to humble us all." The popular enthusiasm with which her husband had been received at the Hague, and the number of potentates assembled there to meet him, had "raised her vanity," and let her overlook the unsatisfactory condition of things nearer home. Here, she saw all those whom she had been instructed to trust "together by the ears, and a general peevishness and sylleness in them all except Lord Sydney." Unfortunately Henry Sidney, whom the King had put in Shrewsbury's place as Secretary of State, though an excessively pleasant companion and an ac- complished man of letters, carried little political weight. The King's brief visit brought less relief to the Queen than she had looked for. While she was annoyed by a crowd of ladies who thought that, now, being relieved of her administrative duties, she could have nothing to do but to listen to their chat, others, who had begun to understand that her influence now went for something, came "to speak to me, to speak to the King." But she concerned herself in no public business except the filling of the vacant sees, which, she says, the King made it a point of conscience to do well. These Memoirs confirm Burnet's statement as to 310 Historical the conscientious anxiety of Queen Mary about Church preferments, and episcopal appointments in especial. In the present instance, the task was one of peculiar delicacy ; for the vacancies which were filled by Tillot- son and four other divines had been created by the deprivation of nonjuring prelates. Burnet's assertion that Mary never allowed personal considerations to bias her in influencing Church appointments is borne out by the fact that she on this occasion allowed her old tutor Bishop Compton to be for the second time passed over for the primacy. So bitterly was he vexed by this neglect, that, as these Memoirs inform us, a rumour was rife of his being ready, in company with "all our High Churchmen," to join with the nonjurors in forming a malcontent party in the Church 1 . The condition of the Church was but one of the causes of anxiety which depressed Queen Mary after the King's new departure to the continent, at the beginning of May, 1691, and which, as already noticed, 1 While on this subject, we may cite in a note another passage from these Memoirs, referring, as it would seem, to the revenues of the sees which had been left vacant, and of which, thanks to Queen Mary's intervention, a part was now paid to the deprived prelates: " Another thing I did at this time was to propose to the King that of the B[isho]p's revenues he should let them have 2 gn. [sic] and himself 3, for there were 5 now dew. This he consented to, as likewise the ways I with the Archb[isho]p found out for laying it out in charitable uses, that none of it might be made another use of." Yet Tillotson, though not openly named Archbishop till April 1691, is said to have received the revenues of the see of Canterbury from Michaelmas 1690, and there appears to be no trace of the King having ever availed himself towards any of the prelates of the power given to him in the Act of April 24, 1689, of reserving to any twelve clerical nonjurors, after deprivation, any sum not exceeding one-third of their benefices. (See D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft, pp. 273 and 274 note.) Memoirs of Mary II 311 troubled her so deeply as to induce her to burn most of her meditations. The subjection of Ireland was indeed in this year completed; but the King's campaign in Flanders, notwithstanding all the preparations that had been made for it, led to little or no result. At home, the intrigues of the Princess Anne's followers or leaders were very active, and Marlborough, the foremost of them, was, in the midst of the Flemish campaign, carrying on secret dealings with the Pretender. Rumours of treason were rising on every side. At the same time, Queen Mary's tender and compassionate nature was troubled by the pressing question as to how she should deal with two convicted prisoners. One of these, Lord Preston, had been arrested for con- spiracy on the last night of the year 1690; the other, Crone, had been captured after effecting the delivery in London of letters from Mary of Modena, in the previous month of March. The Queen had, before this, reluctantly sanctioned the execution of Ashton, Preston's fellow-conspirator; and she had, further, been much shaken by a distracted appeal from a poor woman whose son had been condemned to death for murder. She was therefore gladdened by being allowed, in the present instances, to use the prerogative of mercy. Lastly, private sorrows and annoyances came about this time to fill her cup. She was much grieved by the death of the Countess of Dorset, one of the Ladies of her Bedchamber and a niece of her old tutor, the Bishop of London, and there were bitter thoughts mixed with her mourning. Her death was the more sensible to me because I lookt on it as a punishment for my sins ; for I must confess and set it down 312 Historical here, that it may keep me from the like again. I own then to my shame that there was one among my Ladies who had been sick, and whom I not only could have spared, but came to near wishing she might make room for Lady Nottingham of whom I had heard so much good and liked so well that I thought my set could not be more mended than by the change. But it pleased God to make room for her another way, by removing Lady Dorset who was really grown very dear to me, and conse- quently the loss of her very sensible. We fear there can be no difficulty in interpreting the painful allusion in this passage. It is well known how the happy relations between the Prince and Princess of Orange, which had been restored or established by the exertions of Burnet, were disturbed by a moral weakness which William shared with the great majority of the Princes of his age 1 . His acknow- ledged mistress, Elizabeth Villiers, afterwards Countess of Orkney, was already, at the time of the Prince's expedition to England, a lady of honour to the Princess, to whom her mother had been governess. Whatever may have been her deficiency in external attractions, she, whom Swift called "the wisest woman he ever knew," was a person of wit and address, and made herself of use to the King in conducting personal negotiations such as required a delicate hand. The letters in the Shrewsbury Correspondence 2 which 1 Already, before Burnet's arrival at the Hague, there had been rumours of the Prince's misconduct; and these diplomatic gossip had done its utmost to send home fresh to England. (See the particulars as to Skelton's reports from the Hague in Correspondence of the Second Earl of Clarendon, vol. I.) The Prince seems, hereupon, to have concentrated his infidelities. 2 They are less amusing than those written by the Countess of Orkney in her old age and preserved among the Suffolk Letters ; but it is curious that they should be written in an English which is at times Memoirs of Mary II 313 illustrate this fact also show that the intimacy between the King and Elizabeth Villiers continued in the year before the Queen's death. The anecdote is well known as to the request which Queen Mary left behind her concerning her husband's mistress; and in 1695 that lady married the gallant officer who was soon after- wards raised to the earldom of Orkney. But this, like her other griefs, Queen Mary had taught herself to bear with resignation ; and she hastens to cover her reference to it in her Memoirs by a grateful record of the kindness shown to her by her husband on his return to England in October, 1691, noting how much more of his company he gave to her after coming home this time than she had formerly been allowed to enjoy. She felt again happy and at ease, while she once more found time for her religious exercises and the study of Scripture, now interspersed with attentive readings in English history. A fire at Kensington, following within a few months upon another at White- hall, she regarded as a warning against too much trust in worldly contentments; and the end of the year found her full of a spirit of submissive trustfulness which was to be her best help in the troubles still in store for her. We have already seen how deeply she was moved by her disagreement with her sister, which came to a head with the disgrace of Marlborough in rather odd or foreign. Probably, the conversation of Elizabeth Villiers, who had spent her later girlhood and early womanhood in Holland, where her sister married William's faithful friend Bentinck, was not the less palatable to the King because of the Dutch which lurked in, and (to him) animated, her English diction. It is a curious coincidence that Charles II should have made the acquaintance of her first cousin, afterwards Duchess of Cleveland, in the Low Countries. 314 Historical January, 1 692 . She could not know that at this very time Anne was inditing a "most penitential and dutyfull" letter to their father, then still at St Germains 1 . Before King William took his departure for Holland in March, in a state of health which caused the Queen the gravest anxiety, he had made certain Ministerial changes, and had sought to gratify the Tories by admitting Rochester and Sir Edward Seymour to the Privy Council. The admission of the latter was distasteful to the Queen. On the other hand, her satisfaction at Rochester's being sworn of the Council may, as Macaulay suggests, have been due to his having taken her side in her dispute with her sister. Burnet, according to his wont, attributes to himself, " in some sort," the restoration of Rochester to his niece's favour, and expresses regret for his mistake in hoping that good might come of the attempt to conciliate him. The Queen's simple expression of pleasure at the favour shown to her uncle raises a doubt whether she required much persuasion to make friends with him, although on her arrival in England she had thought it her duty to treat him coldly 2 . Family feeling was strong in the Stewarts, and Mary had a tender heart. No essential change, however, took place in the composition of the Ministry with which the Queen had once more to undertake the task of government, during the King's absence from the beginning of March to the end of October. Already about the first week in April she fell ill, and although she solemnly declares her greatest trouble to have been that, for the first time in twelve years, she had missed going to church on the 1 Clarke's Life of James II, vol. n. p. 476. 2 See Correspondence of the Second Earl of Clarendon. Memoirs of Mary II 315 Lord's day, it is clear that she felt her life to be in no slight danger. She says that, though resigned, she felt unwilling to die, adding, with characteristic sim- plicity, that, she flattered herself, this unwillingness proceeded only from her concern for worldly matters, i.e. from a fear that some of her debts should remain unpaid, and that the breach would be left open between her husband and her sister. But, before she had thoroughly recovered from this illness, there came the all but crushing news of the projected French invasion, and the "disclosures," the authenticity of which unhappily seemed only too probable, as to "Young's plot." The Queen, who says that she was, also, told of dreadful designs against herself, owns that she was filled with the gravest apprehensions, and thought it her duty to prepare for the worst. "So, having no children to be in pain for, I committed myself to God, and waited, not without patience, for the end." King William, who never showed himself more fully equal to his great destiny than at this crisis, sent Lord Portland to assure the Queen that, in case of any actual landing being effected by the French expedition, he would come in person to protect their Throne. But, to the Queen, even this assurance bore a terrible anxiety with it; for her father, King James, was waiting with the French armada at La Hogue, and thus the dreaded hostile meeting between him and her husband might, after all, take place. She neither could perceive how, " humanly speaking," suchameeting could be prevented, nor look forward with confidence to her successfully preserving the safety of the realm entrusted to her charge. At the same time, she learned that the King 316 Historical of France had proceeded to the siege of Namur, which King William had gone to raise. In this twofold suspense, with the life of her husband in immediate danger, and the fate of her country depending on the event of a single battle, she awaited her doom. "I never," so she ends a graphic description of her fears, "was in that condition in my life." But her release was at hand. She notices that, on the 1 9th of May, the day on which the fighting at La Hogue began, she was "more than ordinarily devout" in her prayers and meditations. Two days afterwards, a victory was announced, and, after a few days more had passed, and the news had come of the subsequent destruction of the French fleet, all doubts were removed as to the magnitude and completeness of the success. Yet, even now, she was too true a woman, and too true a wife, to be able to surrender herself entirely to the satisfaction inspired by the glorious tidings. She could hardly bear the suddenness of the revulsion, and still feared for her husband's personal safety. She records, with a remorsefulness which it would hardly be right to call morbid, and with a sincerity which does her infinite credit, that the reason why she, with the assent of several of the Bishops, delayed the public thanks- giving for the victory till it was too late, lay in her expectation that the sea-fight of the Hogue would be followed immediately by a land battle in Flanders, and that in this King William would in his turn cover himself with glory. Thus it came to pass that in England alone, which had most benefited by the victory, no solemn thanks were returned to the Giver of it. It seemed to her, in her simple pietistic way of reasoning, Memoirs of Mary II 317 as if a swift retribution had followed on this national neglectfulness. While critics, competent or incom- petent, were still wrangling over the mistakes by avoiding which the blow struck against France might have been made more decisive, the tide of success began to turn. Early in August, King William was defeated at Steenkirk. About the same time, the grand naval enterprise, which was to have crowned the advantage gained at La Hogue by the capture of a considerable French port, ended in the return of the expedition, after making "us ridicoulous to all the world by our great preparations to no purpose." Finally, the Queen, whose health was very weak (she regretfully mentions her having a short time before spent "nineteen days of folly" in drinking spa waters at Kensington), was terribly shocked by the report of Grandval's confession at the court-martial which had sentenced to death this would-be assassin of her husband. She seems to have seen no reason for dis- believing the prisoner's account of his interview with her father at St Germains; nor, more especially in view of the conduct of James II with reference to the assassination plot of 1696, is it possible to find any intrinsic improbability in Grandval's statement that James had assented to his murderous proposal. To Queen Mary the catastrophe in her relations with her father seemed to have come at last : The loth of August I received Grandval's try all, in which I saw that which must afflict me while I live, that he who I dare no more name father was consenting to the barbarous murder of my husband. T' is impossible for me to express what I then felt. I was ashamed to loock any body in the face. I fancied I 318 Historical should be pointed out as the daughter of one who was capable of such things, and the people would believe I might by nature have as ill inclinations. I lamented his sin and his shame; I feard it might lessen my husband's kindness to me. It made such impressions upon me that I was uncapable of comfort. As for the printing of the tryal, I could not tell what I should do. The Lords all thought it necessary. I saw it was so, I knew it would be printed beyond sea, but I thought it was a hard thing on one hand for me to publish my own shame, and it might loock as ill on the other to conceal the mercys of God in saving my husband. So I kept the paper by me till the French one came over printed, of which blame was laid upon Ld. Nottingham, who was not in fault ; and I had the trouble of seeing it come out, and the fears of displeasing my husband. But he was so kind as not to take it ill of me or not to love me less for that my great and endless misfortune. Two months later, King William, in the teeth of a severe storm and of the Dunkirk privateers, returned in safety to England. The prospects at home and abroad were still dark enough to excite melancholy thoughts in the Queen, who had, as usual, resigned the entire conduct of business into her husband's hands. There was much distress in England, and together with it, as Burnet relates, "great corruption" and open immorality, so that the King approved the orders given by the Queen in his absence for carrying out rigorously the laws against drunkenness, swearing, and Sunday desecration; while, to herself, the breach with her sister and the discovery of her father's connivance in the design against her husband's life seemed "two very great blows." Thus, in her Memoirs she ends her summary of this year, 1692, with very solemn thoughts, and in the prayer with which the record concludes she once more entreats the forgiveness of Heaven, Memoirs of Mary II 319 most especially for "the neglect of publick praise so justly dew," when a broad ray of success had shone across her and the country's doubts and fears. No such signal encouragement to summarise her experiences in these Memoirs, was granted to her during the last year which she lived. At this time, as she confesses, she hardly dared to commit her reflec- tions to paper, "for 'tis the year I have met the more troubles as to publick matters than any other." In 1693, when King William quitted England for the campaign towards the end of March, the condition in which he left affairs and parties behind him was the reverse of promising. Factiousness was still on the increase, and he had been obliged, as the Queen writes, to court the goodwill of those who least merited it, and to retain them in office, while on the other hand "one who had served him longest and most faithfully was so discouraged that he was ready to leave him." It is not very clear who is here referred to perhaps Portland, who was probably beginning to feel the pangs of jealousy, as Keppel, supported by an influence which the Queen had most reason for abhorring, rose in his master's favour. Or it might conceivably be Burnet, who had been deeply offended by the burning of his Pastoral Letter by order of the factious House of Commons. And, on all sides, the Queen found herself confronted by what she calls a growth of " corruption" in the society around her ; she finds a proof of it in the conduct of "the whole nobility" at Lord Mohun's trial 1 . She felt sick at heart to have, in such times, to 1 As a matter of fact, an overwhelming majority of the House of Lords acquitted the accused peer against the evidence. 320 Historical maintain the authority of the Crown amidst a public who, she writes, were as angry with her as she could be with them. And her misgivings were verified; for her administrative mishaps added to the vexations of the King, who, in the course of the summer, had to digest as best he might the loss of the Smyrna fleet and his own defeat in the great battle of Landen. The Queen records sadly with regard to her conduct of the government, that, "whereas other years the King had almost ever approved all was done, this year he dis- approved allmost everything." Her first piece of ill- fortune arose out of Lord Bellamont's "impertinent behaviour," as she terms it. Probably, he had resented the dismissal of his petitions and charges against Lord Coningsby and Sir Charles Porter, which he thereupon presented to the House of Commons in the form of articles of impeachment 1 . Of greater importance was her inability to bring about harmony of feeling and action in the Council, where both parties were repre- sented. Her narrative fully bears out Lord Macaulay's description of the species of anarchy which towards the close of the year, obliged the King to attempt the gradual formation of a compact Whig Administration the first English Ministry, as it is called by the historian. I found all the Council more than ever divided, the old ones not mightily satisfied with the new comers, and they believing me to much inclined to t' other party, in a great 1 These transactions are not mentioned by Burnet or Macaulay, but will be found detailed in that invaluable work, Collins's Peerage of England, vol. in. p. 269 (2nd edition), art. " Coningsby, Countess of Coningsby." Memoirs of Mary II 321 coldness and strangeness to me ; the man I found the most con- stant in serving the King his own way, and who was the only one who really toock the most and greatest pains to do so, more and more disliked, and people more inveterate against him. The personage in question may have been Caer- marthen (Danby), whom the Whigs, on the whole strengthened by the changes made by the King early in the year, thoroughly detested. But the context seems rather to point to Nottingham, from whom the King, after his return, was "forced to part, to please a party which he cannot trust." When her husband was once more in England, things seemed to the Queen to mend, and her last notice of home affairs records this impression. The Triennial Bill had on its reintroduc- tion been unexpectedly thrown out ; in Supply, the King had obtained the greater part of the army estimates; "everyone" was "resolving to try one year more at least." The Memoirs of Queen Mary contain no phrase more significant of the instability which in the eyes of many Englishmen characterised the regime of which she formed part. Before the year was at an end, during which the lukewarm supporters of her and her consort's Government had magnanimously promised to hold out, the Queen herself was at rest. If, as we believe, the Revolution Settlement proved an enduring benefit to the nation, then it is certain that a grateful recognition is due to the brave and self-sacrificing spirit in which Queen Mary did her part to secure and defend that Settlement. King William never became fully conscious of the value which in his heart he set upon his wife till he had lost her. And, the more her pure and noble character reveals itself to posterity, 322 Historical the more it becomes certain that England, too, has reason to hold in reverence the memory of good Queen Mary. We have left ourselves no space for dwelling separately on the letters of the Queen to the Duchess Sophia, which, together with a few from James II and William III to the same princess, are appended to the Memoirs. Though here for the first time printed from the Hanover Archives, they contain nothing al- together new. But they illustrate afresh such points as the temper of King James before the expedition which cost him his throne, and the grief of Queen Mary for the sake of her father, in whose eyes her husband was a " vemper," (p. 86), and she an unnatural child. Here and there in these letters, she naturally enough shows a vivacity in which she was by no means naturally deficient, though it is altogether absent from the Memoirs. But the good Queen's letters to her lively kinswoman, during a period extending from the middle of 1689 to the middle of 1694, are in every way consistent with the Memoirs themselves, of which they thus help to prove the genuineness 1 . 1 The openness with which the Queen wrote to the Duchess was declared by her to be indigenous to the Low Countries, where she had so long lived, and where her correspondent had been born. Each of them, as Queen Mary adds, had to bear her cross as best she could. See my monograph on The Electress Sophia and the Hanoverian Succession (and ed., 1909) ; and cf., for a Dutch historian's tribute to Maria Stuart, Gemalin van Willem den Derden, F. J. L. Kramer's work published under that title at Utrecht (J. L. Beyers) in 1890. i 4 . LEIBNIZ AS A POLITICIAN 1 (Adamson Memorial Lecture, 1910.) AN early chapter of the book which must be regarded as the chief literary monument of the late Professor Robert Adamson 's great intellectual powers one of those Lectures on the Development of Modern Philosophy in which every sentence seems to fall weightily from unfaltering lips and all superfluity is shunned with uncompromising directness contains a brief explana- tion of the fact that the central idea of Leibniz's philo- sophy was never systematically worked out by him. "No doubt," says Adamson, "the main reason for this is to be found in the enormous varied activity of a public kind which fills the life of Leibniz from 1676 on to his death" [in 1716]. "In all the great movements of religion and politics he shared largely ; expended in- finite time and energy on the perfectly hopeless task of striving to reunite the Protestant and Catholic Churches ; laboured with greater success to bring about, by the foundation of Academies of science in the capitals of Europe, a kind of community of learned men ; and was the first to project what is even yet incomplete a detailed and comprehensive history of the fortunes of various European states. His public work, indeed, would have amply occupied the energies of a more ordinary man. It is not surprising, therefore, that the 1 Delivered at the Owens College, Victoria University, Man- chester, November i5th, 1910. Published by the Manchester University Press: 1911. 324 Historical philosophical writings of these later years are fragmen- tary, that the most important points are often advanced in occasional correspondence, and that the most con- densed statement of his views requires for its elucida- tion reference to a variety of incomplete sketches and plans of undeveloped works never carried into execu- tion." When, by the indulgent choice of old colleagues and friends, I was invited to deliver a lecture in connexion with a foundation established to perpetuate Professor Adamson's memory in this University, in the building- up of which he had a large share, I hardly knew whether I should be doing honour to that memory by accepting the invitation. But, searching, as I may confess to you, for excuses which might, at all events in my own eyes, palliate my presumptuousness in following a natural impulse, I remembered our cooperation in a course of public lectures which we had organised in this College not long before Professor Adamson transferred his services to one of the chosen seminaries of philosophical study north of the Tweed. His friendly disregard of my un- fitness for the match then actually went so far as to allow me to take part with him in a continuous series of discourses, of which, I need hardly say, all the honours remained with him 1 . Thus, it occurred to me that you might be willing, on the present occasion also, to regard what I have to offer you as a sort of supplement or excursus to a passage in one of his own admirable papers. For the rest, I have long thought that, while, 1 Adamson's were afterwards printed, under the title The Re- generation of Germany (n and m), in vol. II of his Development of Modern Philosophy, ed. Prof. W. R. Sorley (1903). Leibniz as a Politician 325 on the one hand, no great man and no great life can be thoroughly understood unless they are viewed under all their main aspects, so nothing can be more futile, when we seek to form or formulate a judgment of a great individual force in history or in life, than the resolute exclusion even of a subsidiary aspect, because its signi- ficance is only secondary. And to no man does this apply more fully than to Leibniz, whose intellectual activity, more varied than that of any but a very few moderns, was singularly consistent with itself, and with the desire for harmony which so largely shaped his thought and swayed his philosophy. I say moderns, for to what ancient sage would not the very notion of an intellectual activity labelled in different directions, like a sign-post, have seemed preposterous? And yet, were I to attempt in the course of this brief hour to present even the merest outline of what Pro- fessor Adamson, using the word in its narrower sense, describes as the public work of Leibniz, no epitome could ever have fallen further short of the relative use- fulness of a summary. I should, in no event, have wished to say anything as to his scientific and historical work proper in the former case, because of my utter incom- petence to offer an estimate of it, in the latter, because its value lies in qualities which, while they are in perfect accordance with the spirit of Leibniz's intellectual labours at large, hardly lend themselves to illustration or exposition on an occasion like the present. I shall return to the Annales Brunsvicenses from a different point of view before I close. Here, it will suffice to quote a few lines from the late Ernst Curtius's brilliant oration on the Leibniz Day of the Berlin 326 Historical Academy in 1873. "Though no theoretical connexion exists between those Annals and the doctrine of monads, yet Leibniz in his historical labours once more proved himself the great organiser of intellectual work, rightly perceiving what was really necessary for the foundation of a science of history, viz., the collection of documents and the investigation of sources, and thus setting a splendid example of painstaking and self-denying labour on the material at his disposal." For, apart from these, there was hardly a field of human knowledge bearing on government and society with which he was unfamiliar and the cultivation of which he failed to advance ; so that the very limitation which I have sought to impose upon myself by treating of Leibniz as a politician only by no means, as a matter of fact, excludes all that I am forced to omit. Leibniz for instance, was a trained student of Law both civil and canonical, and, like all great jurists for I do not know what exception could be cited to the generalisa- tion he was, at all events in principle, an advocate of legal reform. The penal system which he found in existence in his own country was a special object of his critical study, and of the procedure in vogue against witches and witchcraft one of the lingering blemishes on the face of Western civilisation he was a resolute opponent. He was, again, a political economist in days when the very basis for the application of economic principles was almost everywhere wanting. He was interested in the progress of industry and trade, pre- dicting, almost a century before it became a great his- torical fact, the enormous value of the use of machinery in what continued, by a long-lived misnomer, to be Leibniz as a Politician 327 called manufacturing industry. But he was not less solicitous for the maintenance and development of agriculture, and is found upbraiding the Whigs of his day for depressing its interests in favour of commerce, the supposed backbone of their political party. He was remarkably alive to questions of finance and taxation ; he carefully watched the beginnings of a system of insurances, and was intent upon measures for improving the sanitary condition of the people, and protecting it against the spread of infectious diseases, even where their cure remained an unsolved problem. In reading some of the political pamphlets on which I am about to touch, and which turn on the successful conduct of wars, I have been repeatedly struck with the attention he gives to the health of armies, and to the sufficiency of the commissariat on which it so largely depends, as im- portant elements in their effectiveness. I need hardly say that education was a theme very near to his heart, and that in two directions in particular his farsighted- ness asserted itself, in this field, to an extraordinary degree. On the one hand, he perceived the place which (to translate his speculations into the language of the present day) science would come to occupy by the side of the other studies. Humanism, he was convinced, had no prescriptive right to rule the progress of human culture any more than the scholasticism which it had superseded. And we humanists of a later age, who have learnt to ignore the old bugbear at which during the better part of our lives, north or south, we have been constantly told to tremble the fear, i.e., of the classics being driven to the wall may accept quite cheerfully the sort of apologue which I find in a passage of a letter from 328 Historical Leibniz to Thomas Burnet: "I do not for a moment envy the excellent Mr Dryden" it seems to bring two epochs of Western intellectual life rather closely together to find Leibniz writing about Dryden as a contemporary "because his Virgil has put more than 1000 into his pocket. But I wish that Mr Halley could secure the same sum at least four times over, so as to be able to travel round the world and discover for us the secret of the variation of the compass ; and I wish that Mr Newton could obtain it tenfold and a good deal over, in order to be able to continue his profound meditations without interruption." You see how Leibniz thought of the endowment of research; and, if his indefatigable exertions at Vienna, at Berlin, and else- where in favour of those Academies and Societies whose true purpose is the promotion, viribus unitis, of great researches in the whole boundless realm of human knowledge, be taken into account, I should be at a loss to say what other individual has ever equalled him in advancing the highest of all forms of educational work. One cannot but speculate on the satisfaction with which he would have regarded such conceptions on the value of organised University research as have lately been brought to the eve of practical realisation at Berlin, on the occasion of the centenary of its great University 1 an institution which he may almost be said to have fore- seen. On the other hand, he showed himself fully aware of the importance of literary expression as one of the chief agencies by which national self-knowledge and national 1 The foundation of the University of Berlin was completed in 1810. Leibniz as a Politician 329 self-reliance are trained and matured. He perceived that the vernacular (what an unfortunate term! let me say, the mother-tongue) is the instrument with which Providence has supplied a nation resolved on having and holding these possessions; and, a few years before the foundation-deed of the Berlin Academy declared the preservation and the study of the German language to be one of its chief tasks, Leibniz had promulgated the principles then first officially approved. And, if the style of his numerous German compositions in prose and in verse still offers an unmistakable, and at times uncomfortable, contrast to the care and elegance of those in Latin or in French, he never shrank from using his native tongue unless occasion demanded more cosmo- politan speech. So far as I know, his communications to the Emperor were all in German; nor had he for- gotten Luther's principle of plain speech for plain folk. You may think that I am losing my way before I have reached the threshold which I have invited you to cross with me, and I will therefore say nothing of Leibniz's labours for the communication of the results of research as well as for its prosecution, nor ask you to consider his claims to the title of the originator of the modern encyclopaedia. But there is a different instance of his constructive efforts as a man of action which I cannot pass by not only because it completely harmonises with his endeavours as a politician, but because at times it intimately associates itself with them, and almost forms part of them. For there can be no doubt whatever that the religious question continued to be a vital element in European politics, and in those of the Empire in particular, long after the conflicts which 330 Historical culminated in the Thirty Years' War had nominally come to an end. The efforts, then, of Leibniz for Religious Reunion, i.e., for a formal closing of the great schism of the West by means of a reconciliation between Rome and the Protestant Churches, were among those of his labours which were doomed to disappointment whether, like certain others on which we shall have to touch, to absolute failure, is more than those of us can pronounce who lack the gift of prophecy. How unwearying those labours were in the present instance, is known to us not only from the arguments carried on by him, alike with the protagonists in a discussion which lasted over the better part of a human generation, from the Eagle of Meaux downwards, and with the parliament of lesser participants ecclesiastics and doctors and more or less enthusiastic women. We also know it from, at least, two long correspondences, of which one is familiar to all who are interested in the life and labours of Leibniz, while, in both, this subject of Religious Reunion is a constantly recurring theme. The letters exchanged between Leibniz and the Duchess, afterwards Electress, Sophia of Hanover are, as you know, of great biographical interest, so far as the life and opinions of an illustrious lady fit ancestress of a long line of English sovereigns are concerned. Gifted with extraordinary acuteness of perception and a lively interest in things intellectual, at the same time .perfectly self-possessed, and, when needful, self- restrained, in the difficulties of life and hers seemed almost endless in maidenhood, marriage, and old age she, unlike her quondam quasi-suitor, after- wards King Charles II, seems while saying many witty Leibniz as a Politician 331 things, never to have done an unwise one. What is of more importance, her opinions, so far as we can judge from a series of personal records quite exceptionally full and varied, were rarely on any side but that of good sense and right feeling. At the same time, as Leibniz very well knew, even matters in which she felt an interest had to be presented to her in lucid and attractive form. She was a princess first, after all, and not a philosopher, like her aunt the Princess Palatine Elizabeth, with whom Descartes had corresponded on scientific topics as with an equal. Nor did she profess to care for what was lengthy or intricate, or involved an unreasonable amount of application in the mastering of it. Religious questions she approached, like all other questions, with a sincere love of truth, but without much interest in theological issues and formulae. This defect (if it is to be accounted such) was partly due to the natural constitution of her mind, partly (one cannot but conjec- ture) to the experiences of her life, which had been so full of these contentions and of their untoward effects upon the problem of getting on in the world as to breed in her a good deal of indifference towards them. The other correspondent to whom Leibniz had as it were to render a continuous account of the progress of his endeavours in the Reunion question was a spirit of another sort. Landgrave Ernest of Hesse-Rheinfels was one of the younger sons of Landgrave Maurice of Hesse-Cassel, who had shared in the designs and ideas of the French King Henry IV and of Geneva. His edifice of a Protestant polity, constructed with infinite trouble, had been ruthlessly swept away early in the Thirty Years' War, and his dynasty was only 332 Historical by the most careful steering brought safe out of the waves of that ruinous conflict. After its close, Landgrave Ernest, although he had gallantly come forward to proffer the services of his sword to the Emperor against the Turks, soon gave himself up to his endeavours to keep up a petty principality of his own on the Rhine, and to have his own way in it. He had become a convert to the Church of Rome, and being anxious to induce others to follow his example, carried on his propaganda by all the means in his power, publishing a treatise called The Discreet Catholic, and, with less discretion than might have been expected from its author, establishing at Rheinfels a sort of college for ladies, of whom several were converts like himself, and in whom, despite of his sceptical kinsfolk, he cherished a platonic interest. To Leibniz, he made no secret of his wish that, as they shared in many common interests, so they might be united in the same Church; but, since this could not be, he was content to discuss projects of Reunion, though he opined that Pietists and Chiliasts and other visionaries, as he called them (including no less a name than that of Spener in his denunciation), must be looked upon as obstacles in the path. The toleration which is, in some measure at least, the product of indifference, and the intolerance which springs from impatience of all private judgment but one's Own neither of these offered a support on which Leibniz could hope to depend in his long-sustained effort to assert as the basis of Reunion the existing inner unity of the Christian Church at large. For this, the in essen- tialibus unitas of St Augustine, was the principle which Leibniz as a Politician 333 he continued to assert in both the chief phases of the movement in which he bore a part. The more hopeful of these, which extended over the last quarter of the i yth century, with the exception of the last five years, is reflected in the correspondence (included in that between the Duchess Sophia and Leibniz), of which the central figure is Royas de Spinola, Bishop of Tina in Croatia, and afterwards of Wiener-Neustadt. This prelate had the full authority of the Emperor Leopold in carrying on his endeavours, as well as the tacit approval of Pope Innocent XL Leibniz, who had not taken the initiative in the Bishop's scheme, warmly approved of his method, which was neither that of discussion nor that of concession. The inefficacy of the former is clearly enough illustrated by historical experience ; and some of us may remember one of the essays of Clarendon (certainly no Reunionist) in which he blandly asserts the uselessness of religious confer- ences between Roman Catholics and Reformed, inas- much as argument has never converted a single human being: those who are converted are converted in some different way. In concession (condescendance) on the other hand, there is always something that cannot be con- ceded ; Leibniz himself had told the Landgrave that he would join the Church of Rome if he did not feel that certain tenets which he must reserve would, "peut-gtre," not be conceded, and he could not risk the peut-etre. What then was Bishop Spinola 's method? To induce the Church of Rome to regard as not absolutely alienated from herself those who, while material, i.e., nominal, heretics, were ready to submit to a Council of the Church recognised by them as such, and to induce the Protestants, 334 Historical for their part, to declare that readiness. You will perceive at once how this method carries us back to days when resort to it was still formally possible. Was it possible to revive the conditions of the times of Charles V in the age of Leopold I and Lewis XIV? Of course, the application of the method involved a large amount of tentative discussion as to the questions of major and of minor moment which would have to be reserved or waived, were such a basis of negotiation to be regarded as within the sphere of practical politics. And, on this head, it is impossible to observe without interest some of us might add, without sympathy which among the controversies of lesser moment Leibniz regards as mere matters of phrase and formula; while, as to others, he shows how not even all Catholics and all Protestants are agreed among themselves, and while yet others seem to him to possess intrinsic importance, but not such as to outweigh the blessings of Christian Reunion. Lewis XIV, at least, did not choose to fall behind Leopold I by rejecting as impossible a contingency against which, by his approval of the Bishop of Tina's initial proceedings, the Emperor had shown himself unwilling to shut the door. When, therefore, the Duchess Sophia put herself in communication on the subject with her sister, that queer saint the Abbess of Maubuisson near Paris, it was with the knowledge of the King of France that other persons were drawn into the correspondence. Above all, an exchange of letters ensued between Leibniz and Bossuet, which, after being carried on for about four years, was dropped, and again taken up for a short time in 1699, partly with the aid of the enthusiasm of Mme de Brinon. Leibniz as a Politician 335 The earlier part of this correspondence was really little more than a continuous account rendered by Leibniz to Bossuet of the proceedings of Spinola, sup- plemented by arguments of his own. When, after Spinola 's death, it was resumed once more, Leibniz explained in a letter to the Elector George Lewis (afterwards King George I), why this last opportunity should, in his judgment, not be rejected. His hopes were small ; but it was well to do so much for Christian charity and, if possible, to induce the Church of Rome, or some representative Roman theologians, to agree upon a basis on which posterity might construct the most acceptable scheme of Reunion that could be devised, so as to anticipate future attempts in which everything would have to be sacrificed. The hope, as we know, proved futile; the political horizon, which had, in a measure, cleared with the Peace of Ryswyk, was soon blacker than ever; a clause of that Peace itself had seriously alarmed German Protestants; and, at home, the last period of the religious policy of Lewis XIV was that of the undisputed ascendancy of the principles of Madame de Maintenon 1 . It would, I fear, take me too far on the present occasion, were I to seek to illustrate with any degree of detail the connexion between the religious and the political conceptions of Leibniz ; and it is to his work as 1 Leibniz's lesser project of a Union among the Protestant Con- fessions must be left aside here, though it had important bearings both upon the politics of the Empire, and the prospects of the English Succession. For his letter on the subject to Burnet, written about the end of 1698, and the Bishop's reply, see H. C. Foxcroft, Life of Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury (Cambridge, 1907), pp. 361 -4- 336 Historical a politician proper that I now turn. This may be said to cover the whole of his life, from the time when, after being refused the doctorate of Law by the University of his own native Leipzig on account of his youthfulness (he was then twenty years of age), he had been promoted to this degree at Altdorf, but, declining the professor- ship offered him there, had entered the service of the Elector of Mainz. From this time forth, he became a courtier and a placeman, but without ever surrendering his independence of judgment or doing violence to his sense of self-respect. He was only too well aware of the prejudice existing in the official world against taking the advice of scholars and bookmen ; when, in later days, he seemed on the point of permanently entering into the Imperial service at Vienna, he was anxious to do so in the recognised position of Councillor of State as well as that of Librarian. The difference between the position of an official and that of an unofficial adviser was to be brought home to him with painful distinct- ness, when, after the death of the Electress Sophia, the " Master" (as with her usual humorous twinkle she was in the habit of calling her eldest son, whose qualities certainly included that of knowing his own mind) speedily adjusted the relations between himself and Leibniz to those between employer and employed. But, though Leibniz was a courtier and very well understood the necessity for a deferential attitude and the nuances of expression in writing as well as in speaking which that attitude implies, no great publicist, from Burke to Gentz to the leaders of modern journalism in the days of Louis-Philippe and Queen Victoria, has ever been more desirous of placing himself in touch Leibniz as a Politician 337 with a popular, and, if possible, a numerous, audience. Accordingly, the political writings of Leibniz are some- times confidential memoranda, addressed to sovereigns and Ministers, sometimes pamphlets in the latter case almost always anonymous or pseudonymous, launched upon the sea of unlimited publicity. In yet other instances, they are something between the two species, resembling those ballons d'essai of which later examples have been started in the sphere of higher journalism sometimes suggesting to those in authority ideas to the conception of which they may not have chanced, or not have ventured , to rise , sometimes , again , inspired by those in authority with a view to ascertaining how far public opinion will follow. This relation between authority and public opinion was not so well organised at the end of the iyth and beginning of the i8th century as it may have been in our days; but statesmen have never been able to operate quite without the support of public opinion and public opinion, in its turn, usually needs a little assistance in the process of forming itself. Leibniz, indeed, compares one of his more popular tracts a scheme for a descent on Biscay after the battle of La Hogue to one of the letters which at Venice members of the pensive public were invited to place in the lion's mouth in the Palace of St Mark, to be used or ignored, as the case might be, in the counsels of the Signoria. It would serve no purpose in this brief address to seek to discriminate between the varieties among his contributions to political literature, of which I can only mention a few specimens. For my primary object is to indicate the way in which the great optimist, the W. P. I. 22 338 Historical thinker who was convinced that in the end all things would work together to the fulfilment of the Divine plan, regarded some of the chief political problems of his age and was anxious to see them treated by those upon whose action or inaction it depended in what sense they would be solved. Leibniz was only in his twenty- third year when, in 1667, he was introduced into the service of the Elector of Mainz (John Philip von Schonborn) by the Elector's former Minister, Johann Christian von Boineburg. Both these men were very remarkable personalities and must be reckoned, not only among the ablest German politicians of their day, but as belonging to the select band of statesmen who were true patriots at heart. Yet the name of the Elector is associated in history with the first Confederation of the Rhine a transaction which, when all has been said that can be urged as to its ultimate purposes, nevertheless redounded to the advantage of France and to the increase of her influence in Germany. Boineburg, after, as Minister of the Elector, openly declaring him- self an adversary of that influence, had through French intrigue, facilitated perhaps by some indiscretion on his own part, been actually put under arrest by his master; and, though, on his clearing himself from the charges against him, John Philip had entreated him to resume his former post, he had preferred to remain out of office, while in full possession of the electoral favour and confidence. The political ideas of the pair were really in harmony and centred in the desire, while strengthening the Empire internally, to maintain in European affairs a balance between France and Austria, Leibniz as a Politician 339 and to preserve the peace which was indispensable for Germany. The material ruin in which the Thirty Years' War had involved the land (for I think we may confidently reject the doubts which have been recently thrown on this commonly received view of the effects of the War) still stared every patriot in the face, and was only here and there at last giving way to better things. " Germany," so Leibniz wrote many years after John Philip's death, "was scarcely beginning to breathe again, and peopled almost entirely by a generation under age if war broke out afresh, there was reason to fear that this generation would be destroyed before it had reached maturity, and that a great part of the unhappy land would be all but turned into a desert." These were the impressions under which a policy of peace seemed indispensable to the patriotic Elector of Mainz, who, as Leibniz says, could not conceive that the predominance of France would assert itself with the extraordinary rapidity which its progress was actually to display. And these were the conditions with which, as well as with the stagnant sluggishness prevailing in many parts of the Empire, and with the mistrust of the House of Austria bred by War and Peace alike in so many of its Princes and their subjects, those politicians and political thinkers had to contend who, like Leibniz, gradually came to recognise that the Western was not less imminent than the Eastern peril. Leibniz's earliest political tract 1 was written for the 1 It seems to have been preceded, in the same year, by an original mdmoire, entitled De Foedere Rhenano, dealing with the Alliance, mentioned in the text, about to be concluded by Mainz with Trier and Lorraine. 34 Historical use of Boineburg, when, after his restoration to the Elector's favour, that statesman in 1668 attended the Polish election diet as plenipotentiary for the German candidate (Count Palatine Philip William of Neuburg). Neither he nor either of the candidates really favoured by France and Austria respectively was chosen; and thus, after a fashion, the desired balance may be said to have been observed. What interests us in the tract is Leibniz's deprecation of yet another possibility (which likewise remained unrealised), viz., the choice of the Russian candidate. Russia, writes the far-sighted young politician, who in his later years was to be greatly attracted by the civilising policy and the high personal intelligence of Peter the Great, would, by the virtual appropriation of Poland, become a dangerous colossus, and the Turk would be duplicated. But these were relatively remote speculations. In his second pamphlet, and one which its com- prehensiveness of view already entitles to be numbered among the notable political deliverances of its author, his thoughts are already directly turned to the West. The Confederation of the Rhine had fallen to pieces, and the eyes of the Elector of Mainz, w r ith Boineburg once more in his secrets, had been opened by the War of Devolution to the aggressive policy of Lewis XIV. But the Elector and those who thought with him were not yet willing to hurry Germany into a decision which might be fatal to her prosperity, unprepared as she was for a struggle. The choice, therefore, had lain, for some little time, between risking all by joining the celebrated perhaps unduly celebrated Triple Alliance which had in a measure stayed the advance of the Leibniz as a Politician 341 French arms, or playing a waiting game, and mean- while organising resistance at home. Securitas Publica (the way of establishing the security of the German Empire) to cite the title of the treatise as usually abbre- viated was written, in 1670-1, between two Wars. Its immediate occasion was to provide a basis of dis- cussion at an interview between the Electors of Mainz and Trier at Schwalbach, where they were to decide on the policy to be adopted by them and the Duke of Lorraine, with whom they had combined in the so- called Alliance of Limburg, and who was now trembling how to save his duchy from the embraces of France. While Leibniz was in the middle of his disquisition, Marshal Crequi had overrun Lorraine and thereby strengthened the writer's argument. In a very interest- ing survey of the chief States of Europe and of their relations to France, he demonstrates how the conclusion is inevitable that Lewis XIV has a design upon the United Provinces ; but that to join the Triple Alliance and enter upon immediate war would be perdition for Germany, and more especially for the defenceless States of the South West. Better form an alliance between these German States of the West, which could for the present give no offence to France, but without includ- ing her as a predominant partner, as in the case of the Confederation of the Rhine, and thus gradually prepare for the conflict which must come sooner or later but the later the better. Both the negative and the positive part of the advice was followed. The Triple Alliance was left to put an end to itself Leibniz did not know that Charles IPs Secret Treaty of Dover (1670) with Lewis XIV had 342 Historical already destroyed this diplomatic masterpiece; and an alliance of German States was formed at Marienburg, which with excellent intentions proved a dead letter. The invasion of the United Provinces by France, with England on her side, became more imminent than ever, and a European War, in which (as events proved) the Emperor could not remain neutral, even if he would, must almost inevitably follow. Was Germany, like Holland, to fall helpless into the victor's hands? Or might the blow, if it could not be met, be diverted? This calculation, rather than a dream of bringing the kingdom of the Pharaohs within the range of Western civilisation, which owed an ancient debt to that mysterious land, was, it cannot be doubted, the real raison d'etre of Leibniz's famous "Egyptian plan." Far from being a mere scholar's fancy, this design had, in germ, long impregnated the political atmo- sphere of the West, allying itself with the lingering enthusiasms of the Crusades, and with the desire for a condign revanche which the failure of St Louis had every now and then called forth in the sons of France. Bacon, whose influence upon Leibniz was probably far greater in the matter of political and social projects than it was in philosophy, had, in the dedication to his Holy Warre, suggested that the Princes of Christendom should unite against the Turk, instead of inflicting damage upon one another. This was shortly after the beginning of the Thirty Years' War; thirteen years after its close, Cardinal Mazarin, probably not actuated altogether by religious motives, left a legacy for carrying on a war against the Ottoman Power; and, after the accession of Lewis XIV, Boileau and Fenelon in letters, Leibniz as a Politician 343 and others in apocalyptic prophecies, appealed in the same sense to the receptive mind of the King. In 1664, French troops, forming a contingent furnished by Lewis XIV as a member of the Confederation of the Rhine, took part in Montecuculi's splendid victory at St Gotthard on the Raab over the Grand-vizier Ahmed Koprili, and, in the same year, the French flag was planted at Gigeri on the Algiers coast, as a place of security against the Moslem pirates, the pest of the Mediterranean. It is unnecessary further to illustrate the growth of an idea which took hold of Leibniz at a very early date, and which no doubt was met half-way by the fascination always exercised over his imagination by the redis- covered East, whether Near or Far. To go no further back, towards the close of the treatise mentioned, the Securitas Publica, he had dwelt on the probability that in the future, when the scope of all expeditions of war would be remote, France, too, would find her sphere of action at a distance, and, as she had done in the days of St Louis, would carry the arms of Christen- dom into the Levant and into Egypt in particular. In 1671 only a few months before Lewis XIV definitely announced to the Elector of Mainz his intention of invading the United Provinces Leibniz composed his Fabula Ludovisia, in which St Louis is supposed to appear in a dream to his reigning namesake, and to bid him undertake an expedition to Egypt; which rather sudden proposal Lewis XIV, on awaking, dutifully promises to carry out. (There is no reason for wondering at the employment by Leibniz of this or similar devices for arresting attention on so serious 344 Historical a subject : he made constant use of them, from dialogue and poem to epigrammatic couplet and even mild anagram; for, like all born publicists may I say, all born teachers he held by the principle of repeating many times, if possible in many different ways, the thing that it is primarily intended to impress on readers or hearers.) When, in the same year, Duke John Frederick of Hanover, Leibniz's subsequent patron, who was persona gratissima with the French King and Court, visited Mainz, Leibniz hoped for a personal introduc- tion through him to the Great Monarch; and it was afterwards intended that the same purpose should be effected by the Elector of Mainz, to whom Leibniz's scheme had by that time been communicated by Boineburg. In the end, however, it was agreed to send a general statement of the nature of the scheme to Paris beforehand, reserving details for a later opportunity. In February 1672, Boineburg was informed by Pom- ponne, then French Minister for Foreign Affairs, that the King wished for further explanations from the author of the preliminary memorandum. Thereupon, Leibniz (taking occasion, according to his wont, to combine various scientific projects with his great political design) at once started for Paris, where he arrived in March 1672. In the same month, France and England declared war against the Dutch, and, in two months' time, a great part of the United Provinces had been overrun by the French forces, with King Lewis XIV at their head. From the camp at Doesburg, Pomponne sent a rather nonchalant message, that Holy Wars had gone out of fashion ; and it might have been supposed that Leibniz at Paris would, hereupon, have Leibniz as a Politician 345 been satisfied to concentrate his attention upon subjects of common interest between himself and Antoine Arnauld, the inventor of the pendulum, and Christian Huyghens, the discoverer of Saturn's ring. Not so; for, although the Dutch War had not been averted, there still seemed a possibility that its worst apprehended consequences might be avoided. It had long been known that there was considerable diplomatic tension between the French Government and the Sublime Porte; and, in June, 1672, an open rupture between the two Governments occurred at Adrianople, and people in France began to talk about a Turkish War the very issue involved in Leibniz's design. It therefore seemed, after all, well worth his while during his days of waiting at Paris, with more or less hopefulness, for the return of the King from his Dutch campaign, to compose a full statement of that design for the use of the Great Monarch. The statement drawn up by him was afterwards known as De Expeditione Aegyptiaca Regi Francice proponenda Justa Dissertatio ; while a shorter form of the same a first draft, or more probably a summary which he intended for Boineburg, was preserved under the title of Consilium Aegyptiacum. My account of the contents of these documents must necessarily be quite brief, and pretermit preamble, illustrations and peroration. In a word, then, the Egyptian scheme is here represented as the greatest and the most important undertaking upon which France could possibly enter ; for its accomplishment implies the acquisition by her of the arbitrium of the known world and the military leadership of Christendom. It is, at 346 Historical the same time, the easiest and the least dangerous of great designs open to France, and its failure would not be fatal to her. Moreover, no time could be so favour- able for carrying it out as the present. The conquest of Egypt by France would be the conquest of the Holland of the East, and would at the same time bring about the overthrow of the actual Holland, whose strength lies in her colonies and in the trade of the East Indies. The master of Egypt can render either infinite service or infinite disservice to the world the latter by stopping trade as the Turks have done, the former by developing it through the union of Mediterranean and Red Sea by means of a canal. All this comes home; and it is almost by way of a mere parenthesis (though we know how much is some- times hidden in parentheses) that it is pointed out how, in comparison with such gains as these, the conquest of a few towns on the Rhine or in the Low Countries is worth very little; while, moreover, the kindling of a great European war would be insensate on the part of a Power which would thus raise resistance against itself on all sides. Contrariwise, what could stand in the way of the two great imperial Houses, if they were agreed on dividing the world between them France taking the Eastern half of the whole ? If this part of the argument may not seem wholly free from objections, it must be allowed that the portion of the treatise which deals with the way in which the project could be easily carried out with the forces that would be necessary for the purpose, with the methods of providing for them and for the occupation of the country, and with the existing condition of the Turkish Leibniz as a Politician 347 empire as encouraging the enterprise is to all appear- ance unanswerable, and full, not only of sound practical sense, but of a knowledge of detail which might have commended itself to the best informed of the King's advisers. Departmental knowledge on the part of these advisers was not the least among the causes of the greatness of Lewis and his monarchy ; and a very strong point in Leibniz as a politician was that he never spoke without his book. Even the facilities for retreat, should the expedition unexpectedly prove unsuccessful, are carefully outlined ; and, in short, the whole project is so satisfactorily expounded that the author is war- ranted in dealing quite succinctly with the question of the justice of the enterprise he proposes a Holy War ; conducing to the benefit of humanity, and to the advance of the Christian faith and the liberation of sufferers, while offering an opportunity of revenge for the wrongs inflicted upon France. The memorandum never reached Lewis XIV; for he never asked to see it. In June 1673, his Government arrived at an understanding with the Porte, and his interest contingent as it was in the design came to an end. But it was not forgotten by Leibniz, though he now speedily passed from France into England, and there seemed absorbed in the Differential Calculus and Newton. Several allusions to its central thought are to be found in his later writings, more especially in the half- ironical The Great King's Main Design of 1687 or '8, when, on the eve of the most shameless of all Lewis XIV's wars of aggression the Orleans War he asks why, if so jealous of the Austrian successes against the Turks, the King of France did not take part in the 348 Historical attack upon their dominions, more especially upon Egypt, since all these lay at his mercy. The two versions of Leibniz's Egyptian Plan were not, however, destined to remain buried among his papers at Hanover, though both of them reposed there unnoticed for something like a century and a quarter. I cannot pass on without reminding you of the circum- stances in which the Design first became known to the world, and thus gained a notoriety which in the Europe of the Napoleonic Age would have been inconceivable without some sort of connexion with Napoleon himself. Before, in 1798, Napoleon set forth on that Egyptian expedition which was primarily intended as a blow against Great Britain with what ulterior conceptions or visions I will not here pause to enquire ; but in India, too, England owed France a revanche he could not have known anything of Leibniz's Design. But the British Government (through the vigilance of the Han- overian Regency, which may probably be traced back to the historian Johannes von Miiller's knowledge of the existence of the document) had received a copy of the larger memorial from Hanover. In this country we have always liked to "focus" our ideas about foreign policy as definitely as possible; and it was not till 1803, shortly before the renewal of hostilities between England and France, that the British Ministry thought it worth while to publish, in pamphlet form, a very effective summary of Leibniz's memoir. Clearly, the purpose of this publication was not so much to open the eyes of Britons to vast schemes of visionary conquest which, in imitation of those suggested to Lewis XIV by Leibniz, the First Consul might have formed, as to Leibniz as a Politician 349 revive certain very distinct references in the famous writer's statement to the importance of which the possession of Malta might prove to France. These references, incidental to the days of Lewis XIV, seemed to call very speedily for publication and comment in the days of Napoleon. You know that, after the Peace of Amiens, we found ourselves unable to evacuate Malta, and that, largely in consequence of this inability on our part, war broke out anew between England and France, before this very year 1803 had come to a close. The French immediately seized Hanover, and General Mortier, who commanded the occupying troops (which were by no means popular there) obtained a copy of the design in its shorter form, the Consilium Aegyptiacum aforesaid. Thus it found its way to the First Consul, who may or may not have been edified by its perusal, and into the library of the French Academy, where Thiers and Michaud read it and deduced incorrect conclusions from it, which I have no time for discussing. One more remark, and I will leave the subject of the celebrated Design. Nothing could be more childish than to conclude that the treatment of Leibniz in this matter by Lewis XIV (which political considerations are amply sufficient to explain) provoked him to the subsequent attacks made by him upon the Great Monarch and arch-disturber of the Peace of Europe. I have made myself acquainted with many of these attacks both those of which Leibniz was beyond doubt the author and those of which the indefatigable Pfleiderer (who discovered not less than twelve anony- mous pamphlets of the sort, bound up in a single volume), with more or less certainty, attributes to him; 35 Historical and in none of them can I perceive any trace of a pettiness which would have been wholly foreign to the nature of Leibniz. He had to undergo, and underwent without loss of dignity, provocations of a much severer sort from a quarter where he deserved every considera- tion ; while from Lewis XIV he had nothing to expect, and in the King's refusal to receive him could have found very little to resent. The most notable of these polemical invectives is the Mars Christianissimus the Most Christian War God which belongs to the middle of the dreary period between the Peace, which was no peace, of Nymegen and the outbreak of the so-called Orleans War in 1688, when Lewis XIV, in Leibniz's words, threw off the mask and, on pretexts which were themselves so many insults, took the Empire by the throat. The Mars Christianissimus, written during the siege of Vienna, is a satire of uncommon force, and is marked by an almost savage irony not usually associated with the urbane lucidity of its author. The moderation of the King by which is meant his ruthless enforcement of the principle un roy, une foy, une loy is the theme on which the satire harps. Pomponne has shown the way out of the stipulations of the Peace of Westphalia ; Louvois has made men see the stuff of which German Princes are made. This is as it should be. That is just, according to Plato, which is of advantage to the strong; and Moses had a law to himself when he spoiled the Egyptians. The fact that he is commissioned with unheard of power shows Whose Vicar Lewis XIV is, while the Pope only registers His decrees. And so forth, with sarcasms almost savage in their bitterness, Leibniz as a Politician 351 and a parade of charges made by others against France and her King, as to which the writer pretends to hold up deprecatory hands. There is, strange as the compari- son may seem, a touch of Swift in all this- though the object of the veiled invective is a very different one from that of any of Swift's famous pamphlets. Before he indited this exceptionally trenchant satire, Leibniz had passed into the service of Duke John Frederick of Hanover (1676), and, on the Duke's death three years afterwards, into that of his brother Duke (afterwards Elector) Ernest Augustus and his consort Sophia, the youngest daughter of Elizabeth of Bohemia and the future acknowledged heiress of the English Crown. The two brothers resembled each other in many respects ; they were, alike, very much intent upon the honour and glory of their House, and very careful of their own comfort; they preferred Venice and Paris the former in those days the chosen abode of luxurious pleasure to Osnabriick and Hanover; but they did what they could to make their own Courts bright and enjoyable and, in a measure, refined. Yet they differed in both their religious and their political opinions; John Frederick became an ardent Roman Catholic, while Ernest Augustus, like his eldest son after him, remained a staunch Lutheran, without being much affected by the freer ways of thinking which his wife had brought from her brother's Court at Heidel- berg. In politics, John Frederick was one of those German Princes who followed the lead of Lewis XIV so long as it was possible; while Ernest Augustus, with his eldest brother George William of Celle, though not so soon as he, became one of the mainstays of the 352 Historical Imperial and anti-French cause, influenced, no doubt, by the distinction gained by his sons in the Imperial service against the Turks, and by his own desire to secure for the furtherance of his dynastic ambition the goodwill of the Emperor. That Leibniz should have served both these Princes with equal zeal and devotion for his biographical memoir of John Frederick is written in the courtliest strain of panegyric does not seem very wonderful, more especially as his service to the elder brother was of so short duration. But it helps to account for the fact that the years following on the succession of Ernest Augustus to Hanover (from 1680 to about 1695) were, to judge from Leibniz's literary activity as well as from his correspondence in them, the period of his career most congenial to himself as a politician the aspect of his intellectual activities to which I must confine myself here. Leibniz, as he had only too much occasion for reminding the Elector George Lewis, both before and after the Elector had become King George I, was a faithful servant of the House of Hanover. None of the three chief steps towards the consummation of its greatness the establishment of primogeniture as safe- guarding the unity of the Liineburg-Celle dominions, the attainment of the electoral dignity, and the securing of the English Succession was taken without his co- operation; but he laboured with the greatest zeal and the most effective application of his powers when he felt himself to be working at the same time for the advantage of the House of Hanover and for the general system of European policy which he had at heart. Thus, while he was in the service of John Frederick, I am not aware Leibniz as a Politician 353 that he produced more than one political piece of any consequence and this was the disquisition, written by him under a pseudonym of rather pedantic sound (Ccesarinus Fuerstenerius), on a topic which could hardly be held to be of European interest, though the original Latin version (he afterwards brought out a French replica in dialogue form) went through six editions in a single year. It treated the burning question of the right of German Princes not Electors (Fiirsten not Kurfiirsten) to send ambassadors, instead of mere agents (legati not deputati) to congresses and conferences ; but it treated this question both with a great deal of legal and historical learning, and also with a great deal of common sense which no doubt was the novelty accounting for the success of the publication. It was, in fact, a plea for the principle that actual power should be the recognised measure of formal rights. As these were days in which Princes desired to have the privileges of Electors, and Electors to have the title of Kings I do not say that analogies to this tendency could not be found in later times when Kings are made almost as fast as they are unmade Leibniz's admirably stated plea cannot be said to have been inopportune. But how wide became his range of topics, and how varied were his opportunities, when from the contentionuculte (as he elsewhere calls them) of German domestic politics he passed into the domain of general European affairs! And here it would be quite im- possible to attempt anything like a survey, or to enter upon even so much as an enumeration of the sheaves of political writings of which he was author French, German and Latin, with translations, by his own or w. p. i. 23 3 54 Historical other hands, into different European tongues gathered into their editions of his works by Klopp and Foucher de Careil, and supplemented by the researches of Pflei- derer. One tractate discusses the necessity of pausing when things were going badly against the Turks, and when the Great Elector of Brandenburg was still in one of those spiral phases of his policy which give so much trouble to historians convinced of his mission a necessity which led to the Truce of Ratisbon in 1684. Another is concerned with the French declaration of war in 1688, answered by a counter-manifesto on the part of the Emperor Leopold, which was wrongly attributed to Leibniz by his biographer Guhrauer, but which was analysed in a memorandum certainly written by him for the use of the Imperial Ministers and summing up, with not less force than elaboration (it extends through twenty chapters), the whole case against France, as amounting to a systematic violation of the public law of nations. A third (written after the battle of Fleurus) treats the outlook at the end of the campaign of 1691 , when a new effort seemed necessary if the cause was not to collapse. Here, Leibniz, in a series of "consultations," shows how closely he had followed both the conduct of the War and the behaviour in it of the Allies and of the neutrals. These are but specimens of the efforts of his indefatigable pen in the period of his service under Ernest Augustus ; and I only wish I had time to illustrate the completeness, the vigour and the general effectiveness (that, I think, is the right word) of these productions. In 1698, Ernest Augustus was succeeded as Elector by his son George Lewis ; but, largely no doubt because Leibniz as a Politician 355 of Leibniz's devoted attachment to the widowed Electress Sophia, and of her continuous pleasure in his society and correspondence, he remained in the service of the House. But the marriage of her daughter Sophia Charlotte to the Elector Frederick of Branden- burg (afterwards King Frederick I of Prussia) had already for some years caused Leibniz to become a frequent visitor at Berlin. This Princess (a woman of perhaps bolder mind than her mother, though less distinguished by the kindly humour which in the latter almost invariably tempered the expression of an acute intelligence) was, in her turn, much attached to Leibniz and glad of his frequent presence where "the infinitely small " (as it is to be feared she paraphrased the idiosyncrasy of her consort) was the ordinary pabulum of existence. Moreover, he was fully aware of the long- standing friction between the two electoral Houses, and he did his best, both by a skilful exposition of means whereby petty grievances between them could be re- moved, and in every other way in his power, to aid Sophia Charlotte in accomplishing the purpose for which she had been married to so uninspiring a husband. There can be no doubt of the loyalty of his exertions on this head, and he greeted the attainment by Sophia Charlotte's consort of the object of his life the royal Prussian Crown with cordial sympathy; but it seems little short of absurd to represent him as actuated by the belief that the future of Germany lay with Prussia, and not with Austria. Not only was he after- wards attracted to Vienna, as it is impossible to ignore, more potently than he ever had been to any other capital; not only is it probable that, but for certain 23 2 356 Historical ecclesiastical influences, he would have found a per- manent place in the Emperor's service ; but no political principle was more consistently upheld by him than this, that the strengthening, not the weakening, of the Imperial authority, of which in this age there was no thought of divesting the House of Habsburg, was essential to the preservation of the European system. It is from this point of view, as much as from that of preventing the overthrow of this system by the undue aggrandisement of France, that he treats the question of the Spanish Succession, and comments on the progress of the War for its settlement carried on (from 1702 onwards) during thirteen years. In the first of his pamphlets belonging to this period, he denounces as poltroonery the rejection of the Habsburg claims to the entire Spanish monarchy by the Partition Treaties ; and his activity in the critical months ending with the acceptance by France of the last will of Charles II was extreme. (These writings fill a volume -and-a-half of Foucher de Careil, where they are 'arranged' in wild chronological disorder.) And here should once more be noted Leibniz's literary inventiveness of mise-en-scene . A Venetian sets his fellow Signori right on the subject of their interests in the struggle; a Dutchman of Amsterdam retorts on a sophistical publication pur- porting to come from Antwerp, "but fabricated in a French shop"; Cardinal Portocarrero and the Admiral of Castile confer in a dialogue serving as a prelude to a manifesto drawn up by Leibniz for the use of Archduke Charles, when in 1703 he was preparing for a roundabout journey into Spain. Leibniz concealed himself beneath all these disguises ; nor was there an Leibniz as a Politician 357 important phase in the War which he fails to accompany with his comments. It is quite true that what may be called the Hanoverian interest is not lost sight of, the conferring of a great command upon the Elector George Lewis being repeatedly urged; but, except in one pamphlet (1703) where it is stated, probably with perfect correctness, that this demand would certainly have been granted had William III lived long enough, it is only incidentally introduced. What was the dominant thought in the mind of Leibniz as a politician during these years may be gathered, even more than from his writings on the War, from those concerning the Peace which ended it. The most important of these, the well-known La Paix cT Utrecht inexcusable (1713), was written not only with the object of exposing the conduct of the Maritime Powers, which in the case of England was so cynical as hardly to need exposure for, though the Peace of Utrecht may be defended, the methods by which it was brought to pass cannot. This treatise was, also, designed to justify the Emperor in holding out alone; and, even during the negotiations afterwards carried on at Rastadt, Leibniz stuck to his guns, professing to tender to the Emperor for his own earsonly advice which nothing but conviction and trust in the future could have induced him to offer, when the eleventh hour had all but passed. In such a mood Leibniz was perhaps unlikely to respond with much fervour to the well-known Project of a Perpetual Peace, forwarded to him by his amiable fellow-philosopher, the Abbe Bernardin de St Pierre. Even amiable philo- sophers, when they touch the border of politics, are apt to say dangerous things; and Leibniz, in 1715, was 358 Historical not prepared to listen to the suggestion that a suitable step towards the establishment of Eternal Peace would be the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. His own dream was an Alliance of Nations; but the Empire, strengthened as he desired to see it, seemed to him the natural nucleus of such an alliance, rather than an obstacle in the path towards it. In the meantime, at least one of the political ends had been accomplished for which he had laboured long and unintermittently, though at first with very doubtful prospects of success and at last with small thanks from those who had benefited by his efforts. The English Succession was settled; and, though his honoured mistress and correspondent, the Electress Sophia, had gone to her rest, the House of Hanover had been established upon the English Throne. I should not attempt on this occasion, even were time left to me, to summarise the history of what was done, and what with still greater wisdom was left undone, by the House of Hanover to bring about this consummation; but I should like, before I close, to say a very few words as to Leibniz's share in these transactions, though even to this I can only refer under some aspects. In January 1700 when there was as yet no apprehension of the death of William III or of the impossibility of averting the outbreak of a European war Leibniz and the active English Ambassador, Cresset, were present at an interview between the Dowager Electress and her brother-in-law of Celle, the intimate friend of William III ; and at this meeting the line of conduct was settled which, on the whole (though not without some occasional deviation), was faithfully observed by the Electress and Leibniz as a Politician 359 her son. In July, the Duke of Gloucester died, and the Electress became heiress presumptive to the Throne . But this event, though it called for increased vigilance, made no alteration in the conclusions reached at Celle. They were elaborated by Leibniz in the Considerations on the Rights of the House of Brunswick to the English Succession, drawn up by him after the meeting. What interests us in this state-paper, is not only its bearing on the immediate issue, on which I need not dwell, but the far-sightedness of some of its wider deductions. As to the justice of the claims of the House of Bruns- wick and it was this consideration of justice which (as we know to her honour) troubled the Electress Sophia as it did many an honest Englishman of the time he argues that the exclusion of Roman Catholics and the descendants of Roman Catholics from the succession is not a matter for the consideration of anyone except the English people ; and France (he rather sophistically adds), which proposes to place the Duke of Anjou on the Spanish Throne in accordance with the will of the Spanish nation, should be the last to object. As to the actual end in view (and here he may have thought of the unconcealed apathy of the future King George I towards the prospect of adding to his sovereign authority as Elector that of a constitutional ruler over- sea), it is perfectly true that a King of England has need of a great deal of prudence and moderation in order to govern a difficult people and one very jealous of its liberty 1 . On the other hand, the glory of a Prince 1 If you look at the historical records of the latter half of the seventeenth and the early years of the eighteenth century, you will find that we were thought a very difficult and a very unstable people epithets which in later times we have been accustomed to apply to our neighbours rather than to ourselves. 360 Historical lies, not in attaching himself to his ease and his pleasures, but in the consciousness that he is great only for the purpose of securing the welfare of all. These are noble words, and worthy, not of a servant of Princes or princelings, but of one who fitly aspired to be the adviser of the ruler of a great and free nation. This task, however, was not to be his ; and perhaps we may think it well that Leibniz was not destined to be lumped by English prejudice a prejudice, let us allow, not without a certain amount of provocation with the rest of the German counsellors and favourites of our first Hanoverian King. As a matter of fact, the height of his activity belongs to the earlier rather than the later stages of the Succession question to the- period inter- vening between the death of the Duke of Gloucester (July 1700) and the Act of Settlement which named the Electress Sophia and her descendants as successors after the now childless Queen Anne (August 1701), and the conclusion (in the following month) of the Grand Alliance at the Hague. These two events were never dissociated from one another in the minds of Leibniz ; and, in another set of Considerations on the matter of the English Succession, he showed that they had alike been present to the mind of William III, when he delivered his speech from the throne (February 1701), of which the Act of Settlement had been the direct result. The War of the Spanish Succession was, in the eyes of both William and Leibniz, the War of the English Succession also; and in the Peace of Utrecht, which settled the Spanish question, he was actually desirous of inserting specific conditions that would, in his opinion, have placed the settlement of the English beyond the reach of doubt. Leibniz as a Politician 361 But this was later. Even when he was at what I have described as the height of his political influence, he held no official political position at Hanover, and was in no sense Minister of the Electress Dowager, though the reports of her special agent in London, Falaiseau, passed through his hands. With Bothmer, who in the early years of the century began to be largely entrusted with the conduct of Hanoverian diplomacy in its relations to both England and the United Provinces, he seems generally to have been on excellent terms. But, from 1705 onwards, when after the reunion of Celle and Hanover Bernstorff became the leading Minister of the Elector George Lewis, and when BernstorfFs righthand man, the Huguenot Robethon, was charged by him with reports on the progress of the Succession question, Leibniz's communications with the Electress Dowager on the subject become essentially those of a private correspondent. They are not the less interesting on that account, or the less well-informed. Thus, he knew of the fateful change of Ministry in England long before it actually took place in 1710 : "I have," he writes, " friends of importance among both Whigs and Tories, who from time to time supply me with good information because I am known to have the entree here with the padronanza " (as who should say, I have the key of the house). " There are some people in England who would like me to pay a visit to that country, and I find that things would be explained to me there which could not be com- municated by the ordinary channel. But I avoid that, in order not to excite jealousy." Leibniz, in political enquiries as in historical research, was always desirous of securing information at firsthand. But, in the present 362 Historical instance, no such opportunity was, in point of fact, accorded to him; and he had to content himself with correspondence and interviews with English agents who came to Hanover, and with the consciousness that, so far as in him lay, he had from first to last neglected no opportunity and left no stone unturned towards the achievement of the great result. Before it was achieved, his best friend and patroness the old Electress Sophia had taken her last walk in the gardens of Herrenhausen, and some of those who knew, or professed to know, attributed her breakdown to the agitation caused by the anger of Queen Anne at a forward step in the relations between the two Courts the demand of a writ of summons for the Electoral Prince to the House of Lords of which she strongly disapproved. Leibniz, though he heartily applauded this step, was not responsible for it ; and with the death of the old Electress his political influence and favour at Hanover were likewise at an end. For the Elector George Lewis, who soon afterwards, on Queen Anne's decease, ascended the English Throne as King George I, Leibniz was, as has been well said, nothing more than an admirable instrument, when argumentative memorials were required in support of the interests of his dynasty. His advice was not valued, or required, by George and his Ministers ; when he tendered some very sound counsel through the Electoral Princess as to the expediency of forming a Ministry out of both parties instead of out of Whigs and none but Whigs, the excellent Caroline was instructed to inform him that such matters could be best managed on the spot. She was the youngest of the three high-minded and high- Leibniz as a Politician 363 spirited women who enjoyed and valued his friendship ; but neither she nor the old Electress Sophia can be said to have had a will of her own in politics, while Queen Sophia Charlotte, who had one in all things, could not, in this sphere, often exercise it except in- directly. And Caroline had special reasons for not importuning her father-in-law, King George I, who disliked her almost as much as he disliked his son, her husband. When Leibniz indicated that he would gladly serve as historiographer royal in England, he was plainly told to finish the historiographical task he had undertaken at home. I am glad, almost, that time prevents me from dwelling on an episode in the career of Leibniz un- happily, it was the closing episode which reflects little credit on Bernstorff and on BernstorfFs master. I might say that the whole story reflects little credit on the earlier successors of George I, but that it would, perhaps, be unreasonable to expect any of them, after George II, to have remembered Leibniz or the great historical under- taking which his father and his father's Ministers had for years urged, and more than ordered, the great scholar to complete. And George II did actually go so far as to command the publication of the Origines Guelficez (in which, as treating of the dynasty,he naturally took more interest than in the companion work, which had a wider basis and a wider scope) ; and four out of the five folios of this part of the undertaking which Leibniz had left to be executed by his assistant, successor and indefatigable backbiter Eckhart, were actually published in 1753. The Annales Brunsvicenses , which Leibniz himself had in substance completed, had to wait nearly 364 Historical a century longer, when, in the years 1843-5, tnev were published as part of Pertz's Monumenta Germanice. Thus it was as a portion of a great national historical collection, not as the record of one particular principality, that the great historical work which Leibniz had been unable to lay at the feet of George I was given to the world. It is not as a historian that I have spoken of Leibniz to you today. I wished to add a note it is no more to my dear friend and honoured colleague's chapter, only from the point of view of the political endeavours of the great man whose labours are to me familiar from this side only or chiefly. I leave it to those of you who have studied Leibniz as a philosopher, and who know how as such he strove to bring all his ideas mathema- tical, linguistic and the rest into harmony with his philosophical conceptions of the purposes of the Universe to decide whether the lesser side of his activity is out of harmony with the greater. I should be surprised if such were your conclusion with regard either to his religious or even to his purely temporal politics; or, rather, I should attribute it to the imperfect and frag- mentary nature of my note. Genius is not pieced together out of dissimilar or discordant elements ; and the self- education of a great man, which is the highest type of all education, has for its end, unattainable yet never to be renounced, the perfection of all the powers which he holds in trust. No doubt, Leibniz attempted too much. No doubt, in the words of the most eminent of his biographical critics (Kuno Fischer), Leibniz's original fault was the impulse, which he found irresistible, towards multiplying the tasks and problems of his Leibniz as a Politician 365 intellectual life, together with the spheres of his personal activity and the duties they involved, in a measure which no human mind and no single career could ever fully meet. That was his fault but it was not a fault which posterity can visit heavily on one who, as I have already reminded you, did perhaps more than any other modern has done to suggest and supply means and methods both for the distribution of higher intellectual work and for the cooperation of those devoted to it in learned bodies justly recognising research in the widest sense of the word as the crown of their endeavours. That, I say, was his fault; his merit was the willing sacrifice of himself to the cause of progress, which is the cause of truth, however large be the unavoidable admixture of transitory error. The genius of Leibniz, his love of truth, which is eternal, and his aspirations for harmony, which is from on high these were true to themselves even in that secondary and subsidiary branch of his intellectual activity to which, for this reason, I have thought it not unfitting to call your attention today. 15- ELIZABETH, PRINCESS PALATINE 1 (Owens College Historical Essays, 1902.) NEITHER criticism nor its caricature, scandal, is likely to undo the eponymous association with a great national epoch of the Queen Elizabeth whom, in her turn, Spenser's magnificent flattery identified with the Queen of his own poetic imaginings. Unmistakably typical, again, is the figure of Elizabeth of Bohemia, the sole surviving daughter of the great Queen's successor on the English Throne, and admired hardly less, if less rigorously censured, by her contemporaries and pos- terity than Helen of Troy herself. For the experiences of the unfortunate Winter-king's high-resolved consort bring before us, more vividly perhaps than any other chapter of biography dating from her times, their unceasing contentions and their insoluble problems the great unsettlement of the Thirty Years' War. It was not so much the downfall of her personal fortunes and those of her dynasty the termination of the earliest stage of the conflict as the long and weary period of passion ensuing which overcast with its noxious gloom a radiance beyond that of all meaner lights. For (to vary the figure, in accordance with a favourite license 1 This paper is expanded from a lecture originally prepared for delivery at the Royal Institution in January 1901 the month of the decease of the most august of all the direct descendants of the Palatine House. It was afterwards included in Historical Essays by Members of the Owens College, Manchester, published in commemoration of its Jubilee (1851-1901) and ed. by Professors T. F.Tout and James Tait. Longmans, Green and Co., 1902; reissued at Manchester, 1907. Elizabeth, Princess Palatine 367 of the writers of her age) from the risk of decay incurred by growths lightly planted in an uncongenial soil even noble natures rarely remain exempt. Such a nature was, I think, that of the Queen of Hearts. In any case, few will be disposed to judge harshly one whose high spirit remained unquelled by the catastrophe that ended her brief and delusive greatness, and who sustained this spirit through a long life of privations and of even more bitter disappointments. Yet there was undoubtedly a certain want of ballast in her, as there was a certain want of depth in her husband; neither of which deficiencies must be overlooked, if we desire to account for the tendency to both intellectual and spiritual self-isolation so perceptible in their eldest daughter. In the record of the dethroned Queen of Bohemia's wanderings by her husband's side, with her children holding her hand or carried by her huck-a- back, as in the old woodcut in the annals of the long-protracted exile during which she and her family ate the bread of bitterness provided by their Dutch hosts and in the lame epilogue of their participation, such as it was, in the blessings of the Peace and the good things of the Restoration hardly a touch is missing that might serve to illustrate the struggles of an impetuous nature, ever ready to take arms against a sea of troubles, but incapable of lifting itself into the sunshine above the waves. Three sons and a daughter the third Elizabeth who is the subject of this study had been born to the Elector Palatine Frederick V and his consort before, in 1620, by the battle of Prague they " lost the Palatinate in Bohemia." A fourth boy, christened Maurice, after 368 Historical the great Stadholder and commander, was born at one of the earliest resting-places of their flight; in all, this faithful wife for such she most certainly was gave birth to thirteen children, of whom only four died before reaching maturity. Their characters, like their fortunes (which cannot be pursued here), were curiously varied; and so, as may here be specially noticed, were the remedies to which they had resort in their manifold straits and difficulties. For one thing, this family, after suffering so much misfortune and loss because of the leadership at one time assumed by its chief among the partisans of militant Calvinism, furnished several in- stances of the practice, only too common in this period, of treating forms of faith as so many counters in the absorbing game for thrones, or for other great political or social prizes. A lofty indignation against this practice took possession of the soul of the eldest sister, the Princess Palatine Elizabeth, who, as will be seen, never departed from her profession of the Calvinistic beliefs in which she had been nurtured, and who allowed neither personal interest, nor philosophic doubt, nor religious enthusiasm to detach her from it. Very different was the case with other members of her family; yet it was not only the fanatics and the worldly-wise whose judgment went with their choice rather than with her own. Thus, in 1646, she was sorely perturbed by the news of the conversion to the Church of Rome of her younger brother Edward, who could in no other way secure forgiveness from the Regent of France (Anne of Austria) for his secret marriage with the wealthy heiress Anne of Gonzaga, elder daughter of the Duke of Nevers. But Descartes, in a letter breathing the Elizabeth, Princess Palatine 369 cool of the evening, expressed his surprise that the Princess should feel annoyed by an incident which but few people were likely to fail to approve. Catholics must of course applaud it, and Protestants would see reason for remembering that either they or their ancestors before them had likewise found occasion to change their form of faith. Moreover and this was the great philosopher's main point those in whose home Fortune has not taken up her abode must seek her out where they can, and by such divers ways as stand open to them if some of them, at least, are to succeed in finding her 1 . Unlike the Queen of Bohemia and her eldest daughter, several of her children early learnt in the school of adversity the lesson of the needfulness of self-help if not quocunque modo, at least without too scrupulous a self-censure. The eldest surviving 2 brother, Charles Lewis, who as Elector Palatine at last recovered part of his fair patrimony, though he gained little happiness or contentment there- with, was accounted one of the learned Princes of his age, and gave sufficient proof of his intellectual liberalism by his desire to secure for his revived University of Heidelberg the teaching of Spinoza 3 . Quite towards the close of his life, he gave expression to his desire for religious Reunion by consecrating a church to " Sancta Concordia"; and he would willingly have made the Palatinate, which owed to him a temporary renewal of 1 Descartes to Madame Elizabeth, (Euvres de Descartes (ed. Cousin), IX. 371. 2 The Electoral Prince Henry Frederick was drowned in the Zuider Zee, January 17, 1629. 3 Erdmannsdorffer, Deutsche Geschichte, I. 795 ; and cf. the por- trait of Charles Lewis in vol. u. of Hausser's Geschichte der Pfalz. w. P. i. 24 370 Historical its material prosperity, a refuge for all persecuted religious creeds. All this should be remembered in favour of a Prince only too fond of displaying the cynical colouring of his mind. In the days of his adversity he had shifted his cloak with the wind, at one time aspiring to the hand of the daughter of the Emperor Ferdinand II, the pupil of the Jesuits, at another taking the Covenant to mark his sympathy with the Parliamentary party, of which one radical member has been thought to have not improbably suggested him as a substitute for his uncle, Charles I, on the tottering English throne 1 . The next two brothers, the Palatine Princes Rupert and Maurice, are more familiar personages in the history of our great Civil Conflict Rupert, who was prevented neither by what there was in him of genius, nor by his defects, from playing the long game open to a man of action, and Maurice, who followed his elder faithfully down to the day of his own seaman's we need not say, pirate's death. The younger pair of brothers, Edward and Philip, had, in their turn, been brought up in common; but, after Edward's Franco-Italian marriage and conversion to Rome, Philip had accepted a commission from the English Parliament to levy soldiery for their service, and had only been prevented from executing it by the suspicion of his employers that he would take the force over to the King. Thus he returned to the Hague, and having been thence driven forth by the dark affair to which reference will be made below, died in the service of Spain 2 . 1 See as to Vane's projects and the visit of Charles Lewis to England in 1644, Gardiner, The Great Civil War, i. 480. 2 At the siege of Rethel in 1655. Elizabeth, Princess Palatine 371 Elizabeth and the three of her younger sisters who survived their infancy might be held to have been more fortunate than their brothers; but the weight of calamity and dishonour hanging over their House must have been felt by them all, though differences of temperament and character, as well as of fortune, made each of them feel it in her own way. Of the third, indeed, of these four sisters the Princess who received in baptism the names of her more celebrated aunt by marriage, Queen Henrietta Maria we only know that, largely owing to her elder sister Elizabeth's ardour in the Protestant cause, she was (in 1651) given in marriage to Prince Sigismund 1 , a younger brother of the ardent George Rakoczy II of Transylvania, and that she died a few months afterwards. But for the second and for the youngest of the sisterhood fate had favours to spare 1 This was not the only effort of the Princess Palatine Elizabeth as a Protestant match-maker. She took an active part in the endea- vours of the Court of Heidelberg to secure a suitable marriage with a Prince of her own confession for the Elector Charles Lewis's daughter Elizabeth Charlotte ("Lisclotte "), afterwards Duchess of Orleans one of the most true-hearted, as she was one of the most quick-witted, women of her own, or of any other, age. For a time, the design was entertained of bringing about a match between her and William of Orange (afterwards King William III) ; but at Heidelberg a preference was felt for the young Electoral Prince of Brandenburg, Charles Emilius (d. 1674), to whom our Princess Elizabeth had direct- ed attention; but he was contracted elsewhere. In 1670, Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, died, "to the infinite grief," it was said, "of all Europe "; and the "Princess Palatine " Anne in 1671 brought about the engagement of her niece, Elizabeth Charlotte, to the widower. Charles Lewis showed the utmost indifference to the change of faith imposed upon his daughter, who had to go through the solemn farce of asking his pardon for surprising as well as grieving him by her conversion (cf. Erdmannsdorffer, i. 499). It may be added that the Duchess of Orleans, as her letters show, remained a sturdy Protestant at heart. 24 2 372 Historical if we are to esteem as such either a long life of self- indulgent tranquillity or a greatness beginning after death. Louisa Hollandina, the god-daughter of the States of Holland, was one of those amiable and accomplished persons for she was distinguished both by linguistic and more especially by artistic gifts, and did honour to the instruction of Gerard Honthorst 1 who save themselves a great deal of worry by declining to take life too seriously. It is not known what had been her personal attitude (if any) towards the curious project, to which the attention of historians has only quite recently been directed, and which belongs to the year 1642, when she was twenty years of age, of marrying her to the young Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg, who was only two years her senior 2 . A destiny awaited her very different from that of becoming the partner in life of the Great Elector, who in the midst of many political tergiversations always remained true to the principles of Protestantism. After, some five years later, she had, probably in consequence of family troubles to be adverted to below, secretly quitted her mother's Court and betaken herself across 1 A portrait by her of her mother, the Queen of Bohemia, is at Coombe Abbey. 2 I owe my knowledge of this project, on which Guhrauer only touches in passing, to an interesting paper styled "The Advent of the Great Elector," read before the Royal Historical Society on April 20, 1901, by Mr W. F. Reddaway, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and now published, in the Transactions of the Society, xv. 151-170. See in particular pp. 162-4, where Mr Reddaway prints the interesting instructions given to Joseph Avery, Resident at Hamburg, for the conduct of this negotiation, by Charles I, who thus testified to his steadfast interest in the fortunes of the Palatine House, at an already advanced period of his reign (after the arrest of the Five Members)* Elizabeth^ Princess Palatine 373 the Belgian frontier, she not less unexpectedly became a member of the Church of Rome. She was received with open arms by the French Court, and afterwards endowed with an agreeable sinecure as Abbess of Maubuisson, near Paris, where she lived a long life at first a merry, and always a contented one, even after Madame de Brinon had assumed the keepership of her conscience and where she died, in her 8yth year, sincerely regretted by her niece the Duchess of Orleans, an incomparable judge of character and conversion 1 . In the correspondence between Descartes and Louisa Hollandina's elder sister Elizabeth (with whom she cannot have had much in common, though they do not appear to have quarrelled even at the crisis of the family's cohesion) the reader unexpectedly comes across a few extremely complimentary letters, pur- porting to be addressed by the sage to the genial Abbess, as having contrived to convey his letters to Elizabeth, at that time no longer a resident at the Hague. But Louisa Hollandina, who can hardly be claimed as a disciple of the Cartesian school of thought, afterwards expressly disclaimed this tribute, pointing out that not she, but her youngest sister Sophia, had taken the trouble and displayed the tact which called it forth 2 . Sophia's destiny, through a life scarcely less protracted and considerably more important than that of Louisa, imposed upon her almost continuously the duty of taking trouble and showing tact and this 1 As to Louisa Hollandina and Maubuisson, see Guhrauer, Leibniz, n. 36-7; and cf. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, and the corre- spondence of the Duchess of Orleans. 2 See (Euvres des Descartes (ed. Cousin), EX. 460, note. 374 Historical far oftener for the sake of others than for her own. Her husband, the first Elector of Hanover, and her eldest son, the first Hanoverian King of Great Britain, were alike non-demonstrative men; but so much as this they would, I think, both of them have been at most times prepared to acknowledge. Yet the Electress Sophia to call her by the title that crowned a series of efforts and manoeuvres in which she had a signal share was something altogether different from a dynastic schemer, and something more than even a princess of regal ambitions. She governed her life with rare prudence, and amidst its innumerable trials and galling humiliations she, with the aid of an unfailing sense of humour, preserved intact the dignity of the mother of our Kings to be. But, over and above all this, she never ceased to apply her mental faculties to a quick survey and clear control of the abundant material which she caused to be constantly supplied to them; and thus she preserved to the last that intel- lectual freshness and elasticity without which there is no profit either in length or in fulness of life. No injustice is, surely, done to her friendship with Leibniz by thus indicating what would seem to have constituted her chief debt to the incomparable activity and versatility of his genius ; how far she saw into its depths, it is by no means easy to gather from their correspondence. Her attitude towards religion rested on a broad rationalism satisfactory to herself, and, on the whole, her friendship with Leibniz bears but little resemblance to that of her sister with Descartes 1 . In any case, notwith- 1 In her recently-published correspondence with Frederick I of Prussia (edited by E. Berner, 1901, p. 123), Sophia bids the King Elizabeth, Princess Palatine 375 standing all her sterling, and in some respects even great qualities, we miss in Sophia the refinement and, in a sense, even the elevation of spirit which are so conspicuous in Elizabeth and which instruction and intelligence are unable of themselves to produce. The Princess Palatine Elizabeth 1 had, in addition to hereditary influences which could in no case have failed to exercise their effect, been subjected, through virtually the whole of her childhood, to the continuous discipline of a Calvinistic regime of life. Her father's intellectual training, conducted with the care traditional in the Palatine House, had received its particular colour from its close connexion with French Calvinism, with which he had been brought into intimate contact in his youth at the Court of the Duke of Bouillon at Sedan. The guardians of his mother's girlhood at Coombe Abbey had been the Puritan Lord and Lady order a letter of Leibniz on the question of Old or New Style to be read to him some afternoon when he is in need of a nap : " for me by myself the letter is too beautiful." 1 The materials for a biography of the Princess Palatine Elizabeth are by no means scanty, and several attempts have been made to put them into form. The most elaborate of these is the exhaustive essay by G. E. Guhrauer (the biographer of Leibniz) printed under the title of Elizabeth, Pfalzgrdfin bis Rhein, Aebtissin von Herford, in Raumer's Historisches Taschenbuch for 1850 and 1851 (cited below as Guhrauer, i. and n.). In 1862 M. Foucher de Careil published his admirable Descartes et la Princesse Palatine, ou De ^Influence du Cartdsianisme sur les Femmes du XVII e Siecle, and in 1890 M. J. Bertrand revived in the Revue des Deux Mondes (vol. en.) the re- membrance of Une Amie de Descartes. These authorities, together with Victor Cousin's edition of the CEuvres de Descartes (n vols. 1824-6), containing the philosopher's correspondence with the Princess, and the articles on her life and that of Anna Maria von Schurmann in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographic, have been freely used in the present paper. 376 Historical Harington. Less than two years after Elizabeth's own birth (which took place at Heidelberg in 1618, the first year of the Thirty Years' War) her parents had become homeless fugitives; but already when, just a twelve- month before, they had taken their way from the Palatinate to Bohemia, they had been glad to entrust both her and her brother Charles Lewis to the care of their grandmother, Louisa Juliana, the widow of the Elector Palatine Frederick IV. After the battle of Prague, the Electress-Dowager fled with her charges from Heidel- berg to Berlin, the capital of her son-in-law, the Elector George William of Brandenburg. The two children, together with their infant brother Maurice, born at Kiistrin on Christmas Day 1620, remained in her care after their parents had found a refuge in Holland; but the two Princes were afterwards taken away to be educated in that country. Elizabeth, on the contrary, seems to have resided with her grandmother till she was in the ninth year of her age, chiefly in the rather remote locality of Krossen in Silesia 1 . Louisa Juliana, with whose personality many English readers are familiar, had inherited from her father the stead- fastness which friend and foe alike acknowledged to be characteristic of William the Silent. The trust in Providence, that sufficed him as a basis of religious beliefs which he was content to clothe in the outward form of a profession of Calvinism, animated the whole 1 Krossen was the capital of the duchy of that name, which, after forming part of the Silesian duchy of Glogau, was inherited by Barbara, daughter of the Elector Albert Achilles of Brandenburg, from her husband, Duke Henry of Glogau. For Louisa Juliana see Miss E. C. Bunnett's Louise Juliane, Electress Palatine, and her Times (1862). Elizabeth, Princess Palatine 377 of his daughter's life. Her married years were devoted to the cause of the Calvinistic advance which had for a time found a centre in her adopted country ; her later life was consecrated to the upbringing of her grand- children, of whom she says, in her early testament, that those only should be the instructors who would testify to our Christian confession of faith not by their words only, but also by the conduct of their lives. Upon her eldest grand-daughter she spent the full tenderness of her saintly nature ; and, in the codicil which she added to her will on her death-bed, she prayed that the Lord might be a father to Elizabeth, and might never forsake her. From such inspirations as these, Elizabeth passed, as a child about nine years of age, to the parental home at the Hague if home be a fit name for a nest where a family of fugitives had license to scheme or dream in the very centre of the political life of Europe 1 . The Palatine Princesses were, like many exiles of inferior degree, cosmopolitans by necessity, and spoke half-a- dozen languages as a matter of course perhaps some- times with diplomatic facility rather than with literary precision. We are told that, of the sisters, Elizabeth alone spoke no Dutch; it is more surprising, perhaps, that her High-German should occasionally read so queerly 2 . So far as the religious beliefs of the Palatine children were concerned, they were all taught the 1 By far the best picture of the life of the Palatine family in their Dutch exile is to be found in the Memoirs of the Duchess (afterwards Electress) Sophia (1879), which contain several references, touched with Sophia's habitual satire, to her eldest sister. 2 In, for instance, her letter to the Great Elector concerning the Labadists, ap. Guhrauer, n. 461-2. 378 Historical Heidelberg Catechism, although their mother kept an English chaplain on her own behalf. Disposition and training alike helped to make the tenets of Calvinism mean more to Elizabeth than to any of her brothers and sisters ; and the very laxity of life allowed by the ways and habits of their mother's Court (more especially after the death of their father in 1631), and welcomed by their own more sanguine or less meditative dispositions, may have inclined her to desire a higher standard for her own guidance. The type of Calvinism most likely to attract a mind both thinking and enthusiastic, such as we may assume Elizabeth's to have been already in her girlhood, represented a notable advance upon that which, in the very year of her birth, had prevailed at the Synod of Dort. The principles proclaimed by that Synod in matters of conduct as well as of doctrine were, so to speak, officially accepted by the House of Orange, with whose fortunes those of the House of Stewart were to be closely connected; and the compact (if it may be so called) between Maurice of Nassau and the rigid, which was at the same time the popular, faction acquired the greatest possible significance for the future of the Dutch people. Everyone knows how the agitation which smote down John of Barneveld went hand in hand with the design of purging the Church and the Universities, and of recasting the entire moral training of the nation. It has been less generally observed that to the Synod of Dort are traceable the beginnings of a movement for the regeneration of religious life by means of a select number of pious persons Pietists, as they came to be called holding themselves aloof Elizabeth, Princess Palatine 379 from the professing ecclesiastical community at large 1 . The decree of the Synod providing for conventicles for adults, whether those who had lacked adequate religious instruction, or those who were otherwise disposed to strengthen their Christian faith by friendly and familiar discourse, became the starting-point of Calvinistic Pietism, as Spener's Collegia Pietatis began the corresponding, but rather later, movement in Lutheran Germany. The contrast between the two growths was largely due to the differences inherent in the soil whence they respectively sprang : on the one side, monarchical and aristocratic, on the other, instinct with the equally potent political and social traditions of the Low Countries, and more especially with the tradition, which connects the heretical Beghardsand Beguines with the orthodox Brethren and Sisters of the Common Life, of free self-consecration to religious ends. The tendency common to both these developments of Pietism was to a revival of those exclusive conceptions of a religious life, which, since they could not end, as they had ended in the Church of Rome, by absorption into the monastic system, could only result in separation and sectarianism. And such was the actual result in the Netherlands, in a period lying beyond the range of the present essay ; just as the movement had, already in the earlier part of the 1 7th century, begun to take the same direction in England, under the influence of Dutch Anabaptism in its later and more refined form. To the Princess Elizabeth, in the days of her girl- hood and early womanhood at the Hague and afterwards 1 See the development of this subject in the first volume of A. Ritschl's classical Geschichte des Pietismus (1880). 380 Historical at Rhenen, near Arnhem, Calvinism, purified and renewed as it deemed itself to be in consequence of the great Synod, must have seemed incarnate in the person of Gisbert Voet. To us, he seems specially prominent among the Calvinistic Pietists, of whom he was one of the earliest, if not the earliest, because, in urging the practice of piety, he so unsparingly insisted on prohibi- tions which the world at large accepted as the note of Pietistic exclusiveness. The misuse of the Divine Name ; the desecration of the Sabbath; the abominations of dancing (except when carried on by persons of the same sex, or in private by husband and wife) and of theatrical amusements ; the practices of usury and stock- jobbing ; the excessive adornment of hair, face, or dress ; the custom of duelling, and the use of arms in personal self-defence ; the frequenting of banquets and drinking- bouts ; the drinking of healths ; the playing of games of hazard all these worldly customs or abuses were reprobated by Voet, side by side with what he regarded as offences against the doctrinal principles of Presby- terianism or as direct copyings of Roman Catholic precedent. Yet though, even after the days of her girlhood were at an end, there is no reason for supposing Elizabeth to have remained an entire stranger to the gaieties of her mother's Court 1 , the attitude assumed by Voet in the perennial conflict between Precisianism and the world might not have rendered her unwilling to sit at the feet of so celebrated an academical teacher, 1 See Sorbiere's letter in Foucher de Careil, p. 15, note, dated 1642. After describing the water-parties which were in fashion among the ladies of the Court, disguised as bourgeoises, he adds: "Elisabeth, 1'ainee des Princesses de Boheme, etoit quelquefois de la partie." Elizabeth, Princess Palatine 381 had he not come forward as the determined adversary of Descartes. For it was, as we shall see immediately, her intercourse with this great teacher which for several years went far to satisfy the yearnings of her spirit for something beyond "the daily round, the common task" of life. Not that she is to be supposed to have shrunk from marriage ; her abstractedness, at which her sister Sophia could not help laughing a little, was the result, rather than the cause, of the solitude of heart to which she was doomed. Some of the letters of even her later life show a vivacity resembling Sophia's own, and a high spirit reminding us that she, too, was her mother's daughter 1 . As to her projects of marriage, already in her fifteenth year King Ladislas IV of Poland had been a suitor for her hand. This was just before the time when the great defeat of the Swedes at Nordlingen (1634) seemed to have finally extinguished the hopes of the Palatine House. Nothing, therefore, could have been more welcome to it than the prospect of a union between the Princess and the tolerant and liberal- minded young King of Poland, whose personal interest in the plan of a religious Reunion acquired additional importance from the fact that he believed himself to have claims upon the Swedish throne. But Ladislas IV, although greatly interested in Elizabeth ("ad quam maxime applicarat animum"), could not prevail upon the large fanatical majority of the Polish Diet to assent to his marriage with the heretical "Englishwoman"; and the attempt subsequently made through the Polish diplomatist Zawadzki, on his second visit to the Courts 1 See her correspondence with the Great Elector concerning the Labadists. 382 Historical of King Charles I and the Queen of Bohemia early in 1636, to cut the knot by inducing Elizabeth to become a convert to Rome, was frustrated by her emphatic refusal, in which she was supported both by her mother and by her eldest brother. Thus, honourably both to herself and her House, ended this memorable episode 1 ; and, instead of one of the poorest Princesses in Europe, the high-minded Jagellon wedded a daughter of one of its wealthiest families (Maria Gonzaga). It was about this time that the Electoral Prince (afterwards known as the Great Elector) Frederick William of Brandenburg, whose mother (Elizabeth Charlotte) was a sister of the Elector Palatine Frederick V, became a frequent visitor at his aunt's Court at Rhenen. Mention has already been made of the project of a marriage between him and his cousin, Elizabeth's sister Louisa Hollandina, at the bottom of which plan probably lay the wish to secure to him the duchy of Cleves during the lifetime of his father. Very possibly, but for the Polish negotiations, his choice might have fallen on the eldest sister; but in any case the design was frustrated by the Imperialist policy of the Elector George William and his Minister Schwarzen- berg 2 . In 1646, six years after he had become Elector, Frederick William married the pious Louisa Henrietta, daughter of Henry Frederick, Prince of Orange; but, whatever may have been the nature of his sentiments in his younger days towards her Palatine kinswoman, Elizabeth was, as will be seen, certainly never forgotten by him ; and it is difficult to resist the impression that 1 For a full account of it see Guhrauer, 11. 17-33. 2 Ibid. pp. 33-5 Elizabeth, Princess Palatine 383 his attachment to her was reciprocated by a tenderness beyond that of mere cousinhood 1 . Fancy-free or not, then, Elizabeth remained un- married, and nothing can be more certain, as to the earlier part of her womanhood, than that during this period her chief happiness was derived from an intimacy which may be said to have made her famous, and from the studies which it suggested or stimulated. This intimacy has been very fully described and dis- cussed; nor, though unfortunately the Princess could never be prevailed upon to make public her own letters to Descartes, which were returned to her after his death, is there any difficulty in forming from his letters to her, taken in conjunction with all that is known concerning him and his writings, a clear con- ception of the relation between the pair. Intellectual curiosity was undoubtedly the foundation of Elizabeth's interest in Descartes, and the devotion which he offered to her in return and which, as Auguste Comte averred, suffices to show that the value of women was not really underrated by him, was primarily due to his gratification at being appreciated by a personage of so much dis- tinction. European society in the earlier half of the iyth century was far from being deficient in learned ladies such as the Elizabeth Weston (Madame Leon) who died at Prague in 1612, having, it is said, been commended to the notice of the Emperor Rudolf II by King James I 2 , and the famous Anna Maria von 1 Her brother Charles Lewis had heard that she had named him her heir (Foucher de Careil, p. 84). 2 Guhrauer, I. 38 seqq., and cf. the notice of her in the Dictionary of National Biography. 384 Historical Schurmann, "the wonder of her age and glory of her sex"- poetess, artist in wax, scholar and theologian who in 1638 put forth as a trumpet-blast her solution of the problema practicum: " Num fcemince Christiana conveniat studium Utter arum?" Moreover, the Princess Elizabeth resided in a country where, under influences which cannot here be examined, the intellectual emancipation of women had made such strides as to attract the satirical notice of foreign observers 1 . But the experience was unparalleled of a woman entering into so complete an understanding of the works of a great thinker that Henry More (when still a Cartesian) could describe her as "infinitely wiser and more philosophical than all the wise men and philosophers of Europe 2 ." Curiously enough, Descartes, who regarded philosophical and scientific study proper as unsuited for forming part of general female education, and who had a wholesome horror of exposing women to the twin perils of intellectual pruriency and intel- lectual pedantry, was ready to welcome Elizabeth and other gifted women as methodical searchers after truth ; and with the highest type of educated ladies, though not with the precieuses ridicules of science, Carte- sianism unmistakably came into sympathetic contact. On the other hand, it happened that Anna Maria von Schurmann, the champion of the high capacity of women as students, had so identified herself with the spirit of the University of Utrecht, represented by 1 See the curious scene between "Dutch-women and an English gentlewoman " in the tragedy of Sir John van Olden Barnavelt, acted 1619-20, and supposed to be the joint production of Fletcher and Massinger. 2 (Euvres de Descartes, x. 179. Elizabeth, Princess Palatine 385 Voet, as to be full of animosity against the philosophical and scientific teaching of Descartes, and of veneration for the scholastic theology and philosophy to which it was antagonistic 1 . For the rest, the Princess Elizabeth's friendship with Descartes by no means rested altogether on com- munity of philosophical and scientific interests. He gave her good, and at times remarkably candid, counsel as to her personal health and happiness ; and in return he looked for some sympathy from her in persecutions which, being a man of the world and one who had seen service under arms, he was not accustomed to bear with any affectation of meekness. Moreover, he was really intent upon serving the cause of the Palatine family, so much so that this motive in the end contributed to his undertaking the journey to the remote northern capital where he was to find his grave 2 . At the same time, it appears to me nothing short of absurd to seek in the relations between the Princess and the philo- 1 Cf. Foucher de Careil, pp. 28-38. I have no space for pursuing further this very interesting subject, but I cannot refrain from re- peating the quotation from Moliere which, as M. Foucher de Careil observes, clinches the matter in favour both of the requirements and of the reservations insisted on by Descartes : "Je consens qu'une femme ait des clartes de tout; Mais je ne lui veux point la passion choquante De se rendre savante afin d'etre savante ; Et j'aime que souvent, aux questions qu'on fait, Elle sache ignorer les choses qu'elle sait." Les Femmes Savantes, Act i. sc. 3. 2 I must not here touch on the relations between Descartes and Queen Christina of Sweden, in which I cannot help thinking that so far as the Princess Elizabeth was concerned he, with the best intentions, showed a certain want of tact. A very instructive contrast might be drawn between these two ladies from the point of view of their intellectual qualities and preferences. Cf. Guhrauer, I. 98 seqq. W.P.I. 25 386 Historical sopher for traces of that particular passion which, according to the latter, cannot subsist without hope 1 . These relations had probably not been in progress for more than a year, before (in 1644) he dedicated to Elizabeth his Prindpia Philosophic?, paying her the extraordinary compliment that he had never met with anyone who so thoroughly understood both the mathematical and metaphysical portions of his writings, in comparison with which praise it may be doubted whether the Princess, though still young and fair 2 , paid much attention to the inevitable tribute to the charms of her person. Nor can I believe that, when Descartes followed up the singularly attractive com- mentary composed by him for her on Seneca de Vita Beata by composing on her behalf, also in letter form, the original Treatise on the Passions of the Soul just adverted to, he intended it to bear any personal significance. This treatise, published with considerable enlargements in the year 1649 (which ended Descartes' sojourn in Holland, first at the delightful retreat of Eyndegeest, near the Hague (1641-3), and then further away from Utrecht and Voet, at Egmond, near Alk- maar), is essentially metaphysical in purpose and character, though it includes not a little of ethical discourse. But if we must though I am slow to perceive why we should read such a book, by such a man, with an eye to the personal experiences of its writer, I am convinced that any illustration of those of Descartes which may be derived from this treatise will 1 See the Traiti des Passsiom de VAme. 2 Sorbiere, who visited Descartes about this time, describes her beauty and form as those of a heroine. Elizabeth, Princess Palatine 387 be found to bear, not on his sentiments towards Elizabeth, but on the spirit which actuated him in the sustained endeavour of his career 1 . Descartes had not seen the Princess Elizabeth for some three years before his death, at Stockholm, in February 1650. In June 1646 the catastrophe had oc- curred which broke up the Queen of Bohemia's family, and which led, sooner or later, to her being estranged from at least one of her sons and two of her daughters. Colonel d 'Epinay, a French nobleman said to have attained a previous notoriety by his successes as a squire of dames, had established himself in so influential a position at the Court of the Queen of Bohemia, whose personal favours he was even rumoured to have se- cured, that he had attracted the ill will of Prince Philip, the youngest but one of her sons. Returning home one evening late with a single companion, the Prince was assaulted by four Frenchmen, against whom he was defending himself when he recognised Epinay as one of his assailants and called out his name. The French- man thereupon fled; but, on the following day, Philip met his adversary in the public marketplace, and, rushing upon him, engaged him in a hand-to-hand struggle, which ended in the death of Epinay. The sensation created by this event found expres- sion in many rumours, among which was the story that the Princess Elizabeth had instigated her unhappy brother's deed, and that the Queen drove her as well as him from her side. But there is no proof that Elizabeth was sent away by her mother, with whom 1 See the noble passage on "virtuous humility," (Euvres, iv. 167-8. 25 2 388 Historical two years later she is found on friendly terms 1 . Nothing, however, is more probable than that she may have pleaded the cause of her brother Philip with her mother, as their elder brother Charles Lewis is known to have done, and that her absence from Holland, which extended over a year or thereabouts (1646-7), may have been due to the family trouble. She divided this period between Berlin and Krossen, where her aunt, the Electress Dowager of Brandenburg, was now keeping a Court of her own in her dower-house, and where she seems to have frequently met with the young Elector Frederick William and his gifted sister, Hedwig Sophia (afterwards Landgravine of Hesse-Cassel), to whose instruction she is said to have given particular attention. At Berlin, she actively exerted herself to introduce the methods and teaching of Descartes into what was still a very remote centre of intelligence. But it was not many years afterwards that the new University of Duisburg, founded by her kinsman in his duchy of Cleves, became a conspicuous seat of the philosophy of which she was a disciple. She seems to have returned to Holland before, in the latter part of 1648, she paid a visit to her brother Charles Lewis, whom the Peace had for the second time, and finally, restored to Heidelberg, the capital of the much-vext, and now truncated, Palatinate. Descartes perhaps unaware of the depth of her dissatisfaction, perhaps not caring to gauge the influence upon her of what 1 See the undated letter from Charles Lewis in Bromley's Royal Letters, p. 309 (not 109, as cited by Guhrauer), evidently written at the time of the negotiations for the Peace of Westphalia; and cf., as to a later date (1655), ibid. p. 188. Elizabeth, Princess Palatine 389 may, for want of a better term, be called the dynastic sentiment bade her content herself like the mariner whom a storm casts into port 1 . And when, a few months later, she was all but overwhelmed physically as well as mentally by the dire news of the tragedy of the death of King Charles I on the scaffold, her friend had no consolations to offer her but such as hardly deserve to be called philosophical 2 . As a matter of fact, they fell short of the occasion, for Elizabeth's was not the nature to be contented with the reflexion that her resort in the midst of her troubles to the relaxation of verse-making had reminded her correspondent of Socrates in prison. It was perhaps hardly necessary to seek for so august a parallel. Unfortunately, Heidelberg Castle itself, where in 1651 Elizabeth (after another visit to Berlin) once more became a sojourner, was full of family worries connected with the uncomfortable relations of the Elector Charles Lewis as a son, a brother, and a husband. In the last of these, which, eight years later, came to a head by his morganatic union with Louisa von Degenf eld, Elizabeth, in accordance with the straightness of her moral nature, took the part of her unbending sister-in-law, the Electress Charlotte, against a brother who, with all his faults, must have had some amiable qualities. In his desire to do what he could towards reviving the prosperity of his diminished Electorate, he incurred the reproach of niggardliness towards his own Palatine 1 See his very curious letter of October 1648 (CEuvres, x. 164). He had previously urged upon her the expediency of the acceptance by her brother of the " half-loaf " which was all that he could expect to obtain. 2 See his letters of February 1649 (ibid. 297). 39O Historical relatives, and Elizabeth, either about this or at a later time, complained to Rupert of "Timon's" not having paid her six thousand rixdollars "out of a clear debt," and of his withholding her annuity 1 . Yet they had not a little in common, and she was warmly interested in the Elector's high-minded efforts to revive the University of Heidelberg, where she might almost be said to have herself filled a chair so high was the reputation which she acquired in the academical world there as a regular expounder ex cathedra of Cartesianism 2 . Elizabeth's lively sister Sophia at first resided with her at Heidelberg. They were always on kindly terms, though the younger sister's witty tongue never spared the elder's habits of abstraction and reserve 3 . On Sophia's marriage, in 1658, with Duke Ernest Augustus, then still a portionless Prince of the House of Bruns- wick-Llineburg (so that the Queen of Bohemia blamed the Elector Charles Lewis for promoting so poor a match), Elizabeth's position became still more isolated. Thus, in 1662, when her sister-in-law at last quitted Heidelberg, Elizabeth followed her to Cassel. Here, in the society of the high-souled Landgravine Hedwig Sophia, the protectress in his later years of John Durie, 1 Bromley, Royal Letters, p. 254. 2 Guhrauer, I. 121, citing his own treatise De Joachimo Jungio (Breslau, 1846), an eminent Cartesian, at this time Rector of the Gymnasium at Hamburg. The ecclesiastical historian Hottinger of Zurich dedicated to Elizabeth in enthusiastic terms the fifth volume of his Ecclesiastical History, comparing her to Olympia Fulvia Morata, Melanchthon's correspondent, who in her day lectured privately at Heidelberg (where she died). 3 See the Memoiren der Herzogin Sophie, esp. pp. 38 and 48. It is noticeable that Sophia explicitly attributes the change which she at this time observed in her elder sister to the influence of their stay at Berlin, at the Court of the pious Louisa Henrietta. Elizabeth, Princess Palatine 391 the indefatigable apostle of Christian Union 1 , the two Princesses afterwards came to differ in their religious views, but the years at Cassel seem to have been years of peace for Elizabeth, who moreover could now look forward in her turn to obtaining, sooner or later, an "establishment" and a haven of rest of her own. In 1 66 1 her kind kinsman the Elector of Brandenburg had named her Coadjutrix of the Abbess of Herford 2 , the Countess Palatine Elizabeth Louisa. Her coadjutorship lasted six years, and in 1667 she was herself proclaimed Abbess in Herford Minster, from the high altar in front of which she was thirteen years later laid to rest. The Herford foundation, situate in the north- eastern corner of the present Prussian province of Westphalia, was originally a Benedictine nunnery, dating from the Carolingian age, and its Abbess held immediately of the Holy Roman Empire, of which she was entitled a Princess and Prelatess 3 . Here it might 1 See Dr Westby- Gibson's notice of him in the Dictionary of National Biography. 2 Not"Erfurt,"pacetheNouvelleBiographieGenfrale. TheQueen of Bohemia oddly spells the name "Neyford." 3 Herford, a prosperous Hanse-town, where a House of the Brethren of the Common Life had been founded in 1428, at an early date in the history of the Lutheran Reformation opened its arms to the new movement, which was resisted by the Abbess, Anne of Limburg. The consequence of this conflict between Abbey and Town was the transfer of the sovereign rights of the Abbess to the Protector of the foundation, the Count of Ravensberg, who was also Duke of Cleves-Jiilich, though she still retained her position as an Estate of the Empire, while the city continued to be regarded as im- mediate. After the death of Anne of Limburg in 1565, the Abbesses elected by the Chapter were Lutherans ; in the course of the Thirty Years' War, however, the Countess Margaret of Lippe was chosen as the first Abbess of the Reformed (Calvinist) Faith, and a com- promise was arranged which left the Chapter free to choose its head 392 Historical have seemed as if Elizabeth was likely to spend the remainder of her days, in the enjoyment of that beata tranquillitas which, in circumstances like hers, is often thought to be so readily obtainable by persons of studious or meditative disposition. But agitations often take their rise from the very fount of tranquillity. I do not know whether we ought to date the beginning of those which troubled the later years of this noble woman's life so far back as a visit which, only a year after she was named Coadjutrix of the Abbess of Herford, she had paid to Krossen on the occasion of the wedding of her cousin, the Countess Palatine Elizabeth Charlotte and George III, Duke of Liegnitz 1 . The mother of the bride, Elizabeth's aunt, the Countess Palatine Maria Eleonora (a younger sister of the Elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg), was a deeply pious woman and a zealous Calvinist, who, though not aiming at a reputation for learning, acquired in her old age a knowledge of Hebrew. With a view to facilitating this study for herself and others, she induced the celebrated John Cocceius, professor of divinity at from either of the Protestant Churches ; so that there was no need for Elizabeth to "accommodate herself" to Lutheranism. In 1609, tne Elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg and the Count Palatine of Neuburg contested the succession of the House of Cleves; and Ravensberg finally fell to the share assigned to Brandenburg. Thus, after Herford itself had been twice taken by force, the city was in 1652 definitively annexed by the Great Elector, though its internal constitution remained unchanged. But the immediacy of the abbey continued, and the Abbess was represented at the Diet. She had a Court of her own, with regular (even hereditary) officers; and con- nected with her and her Chapter was a foundation for the education of young ladies of family, which lasted for seven years after the secularisation of the Abbey in 1803. 1 Guhrauer, i. 126 seqq. Elizabeth, Princess Palatine 393 Ley den, to compile a Hebrew- German lexicon (which he afterwards published with a dedication to herself) ; and he on the present occasion accompanied her to Krossen. The powerful influence of this "Spener of the Reformed Church" upon the religious life of Calvinism sprang from his exaltation of direct Biblical teaching over that of formulated dogma 1 . Although his theology had drawn down upon him the thunders of Voet, it is easy to perceive how his academical and ministerial activity brought Cocceius into harmony with the enthusiasm intent upon reviving primitive conceptions of Christian life; and to a sensitive spirit which, like the Princess Elizabeth's, had cause enough to be weary of the world, his teaching might well seem fitted to direct her, like the pointing of the Unerring Finger, into new ways. The teachings of Cocceius were carried further, though still within the limits of established Calvinism, by the third leading personage in the history of Calvinistic Pietism, Jodocus van Lodensteyn. He would seem to have, from self- distrust, hesitated on the very brink of schism ; but the movement in this direction was consciously advanced by his followers. Indeed, the very name of "Loden- steyners," commonly given to the Dutch Pietists, shows how the current was popularly identified with his influence. At such crises, when those possessed of the strongest hold upon popular sympathy and support are sometimes induced by a sense of responsibility or by diffidence to stand still or draw back, others are rarely wanting who will press forward without waiting for a signal in the skies or on the face of things, and 1 See, for this and what follows, more especially Ritschl, u.s. 394 Historical often with the result either of immediate collapse or of what, to human eyes at least, seems ultimate failure. It was with a fiery soul of this latter sort that, when the Abbess Elizabeth had held her new dignity for not more than three years, the quiet course of her life was unexpectedly brought into contact. The friend to whom was due the opening of this singular episode in the history of Princess Elizabeth and in that of Calvinistic Pietism was no other than the famous Anna Maria von Schurmann, whose figure has already flitted though the word sounds inappropriate across these pages. The charms which she has herself depicted were beginning to fade, and not less evanescent seemed in her own eyes the intellectual triumphs of her earlier days, and the value of those attainments and that knowledge which had made her incomparable. Her attention, long concentrated upon the controversies which in this period pervaded the religious life of the Netherlands, had finally fastened itself, as has that of many a highly-gifted woman in different ages of civilisation, upon a typical representa- tive of dissatisfaction with the world and its ecclesias- tical machinery, and of aspirations directed towards that Kingdom whose advent they believe themselves predestined to hasten. Jean de Labadie 1 was a member of the Society of Jesus, when in 1635 he was ordained a priest of the 1 There is no necessity for enumerating here, in addition to books already cited, the manifold materials for a sketch of the career of Labadie, which I must not on the present occasion attempt. How strongly he continued to attract curiosity as late as the middle of the eighteenth century is shown, inter alia, by the references to him in that curious work, Amory's Life of John Bunch. Elisabeth, Princess Palatine 395 Church of Rome; indeed, in the opinion of some of the unco' wise, he remained a Jesuit to the last. It is certain that, from an early date, he was possessed by the idea that he was born to become a reformer of the Church of Christ on earth, and that he manifested a consciousness of this purpose already in the preaching activity which laid the foundations of his celebrity. His insistence upon the study of the Bible, where already at this stage he declared himself to have found an all- sufficient rule of both faith and life, gathered round him (at first with episcopal sanction) a special congregation or fraternity, and thus led to the beginnings of the prohibitions and persecutions which attempted to block his progress. By 1650 he had sought the shelter of the Reformed congregation at Montauban, and had adopted its form of faith. Soon afterwards, as pastor extra- ordinary at Orange, he threw himself into the movement against the corruptions of social life which was then stirring the Calvinist Church 1 . From Orange he was obliged to make his way to Geneva, where during the next seven years he worked at his scheme of the true Church, which must begin as a separate one (une e'glise a part), consisting of members in whose case a visible renovation of the conduct of life betokened inner union with God. Among those who actively assisted Labadie at Geneva in his endeavours to carry out this design was a brother of Anna Maria von Schurmann ; and the influence which he exercised upon his sister, together 1 It was at Orange that Labadie received a sympathetic letter from Milton, urging him to come to England. Had he responded to this summons, his arrival here would nearly, though not quite, have coincided with the beginnings of the Society of Friends. See Masson's Life, vol. v. pp. 592-4. 396 Historical with the sense of desolation which came over her after his death, determined her to associate herself promi- nently with the next step of Labadie towards secession. In 1666, he exchanged his efforts in the populous centre of Southern Calvinism for the pastorate of the small Walloon (French-speaking) congregation at Middelburg in Zealand the very place where, in 1581, Robert Browne, imbued with the ideas of the Dutch Ana- baptists, had set up the first congregation of "indepen- dent" English worshippers 1 . At Middelburg, Labadie found the Pietistic movement, as we may call it, in full operation, and, urged on by the zeal of Anna von Schurmann and other disciples, carried it to its inevitable issue. A three years' conflict between him and the Synod of the Walloon Congregations in the United Provinces, more or less formal in origin, ended with his deposition and excommunication. He and his followers, numbering in all about one-third of the thousand members of his Walloon congregation, and including considerably more women than men among those of them who belonged to the higher classes of society, were now schismatics. Banished as such by the Middelburg magistrates, they found a passing refuge in the neighbouring town of Veere, and thence soon made their way to Amsterdam. Here, they first put into practice the conditions of a "common life" which afterwards involved them in so much obloquy; Anna Maria, with a kind of bravado more sad than silly, became a dweller in the CoenobiumywaiKavS/H/coi/ ; and Labadie sought to attract to it at least one other 1 H. Weingarten, Die Revolutionskirchen England's (1888), pp. 20 seqq. Elizabeth) Princess Palatine 397 beautiful soul, whose religious ideas were, I think, in some essentials widely different from his own 1 . But Amsterdam, as is well known, has, like some other great cities, been perennially provided with a Janhagel of its own; and the mobile, which deemed itself called upon to deal with Labadie and the Labadists, soon made continuance there impossible for them. It was at this crisis that Anna Maria von Schurmann bethought herself of the devotion of the Abbess of Herford to serious studies, which, as she says (with an inevitable touch of exaggeration), had lasted for some forty years, and of the old friendly relations between Elizabeth and herself 2 . Obviously on her original suggestion, and after a preliminary enquiry entrusted by the Princess to a Commissioner whose prejudiced conclusions she calmly ignored, Elizabeth offered to Labadie and his flock the hospitality of Herford or rather that of the "liberties" belonging to the Abbey over which she presided. The freedom and the loyalty of spirit which dictated this decision are severally attested by the twofold fact, that Labadie had only two years previously with the utmost bitterness attacked Cartesianism in the person of a prominent repre- sentative (Professor von Wolzogen of Utrecht), while Labadie 's denunciation of bibliolatry and appeal to the all-sufficient testimony of the inner voice might well seem to her to bear an analogy to the philosophical 1 Antoinette Bourignon, of whom, had I an opportunity for saying it, there is much, if only for John Byrom's sake, I should like to attempt to say. 2 See the passage from EuxX^pia, the manifesto of her opinions and record of her experiences published by Anna von Schurmann in 1673, cited by Guhrauer, II. 456 seqq. 398 Historical teaching of which she had gloried in being a disciple. By November 1670, the Labadists, amounting in the first instance to some fifty persons a number which must afterwards have been increased to between three and four hundred persons were gathered at Herford under her protection. With Labadie came I von, a man of unmistakable administrative capacity, under whom the Labadist community reached its numerical maxi- mum, and to whom is due the most important (though fragmentary) record of the career of its founder, together with du Lignon and two Wesel theologians, Henry and Peter Schluter 1 , and a bevy of enthusiastic women, headed by Anna Maria and the ladies van Sommelsdyck, to whose Friesland connexion the Labadists afterwards owed the long years of goodwill or toleration granted to them in that province. Before extending her hospitality at Herford to the Labadists, Elizabeth (whose princely instinct of savoir faire was at times as marked as was that of her sister Sophia) had taken care to assure herself of the approval of the Great Elector of Brandenburg, which she asked in a straightforward and quite unsentimental letter 2 . Although he had shortly before received from the Cleves Administration a protest against the proposed immigra- tion of the Labadists, the wise as well as generous spirit of toleration, which in my opinion perhaps constitutes Frederick William's highest title to fame, prompted him to assent to his kinswoman's request, and, early in 1 Labadie seems himself to have been an eloquent preacher and talker rather than a theologian, and is said to have borrowed most of his exegetic material from Cocceius. 2 Printed both by Guhrauer, n. 460, and by Foucher de Careil, p. 67. Elizabeth, Princess Palatine 399 November 1670, Labadie and his following arrived at Herford, as the phrase is, with bag and baggage, includ- ing the printing-press of the community. The greatest excitement at once arose among the inhabitants of the Lutheran city. The populace at once began to mob the strangers, in whom they saw a sort of Quakers ; and the Town Council forwarded to the Elector a complaint against the Abbess, who, they asserted, had declared herself as a Princess of the Empire, accountable to no authority but that of its Head, and had threatened the town, in the event of its resistance, with an incursion of a thousand dragoons. Between the Elector and the Abbess, on the other hand, a temperate correspondence ensued, in which the latter dwelt on the violence of the action of the Town Council, which had actually prohibited the supply of the necessaries of life to the immigrants; and, in November, the Elector decided to send a mixed commission of divines and councillors to examine the charges against the Labadists, meanwhile ordering the Herf orders, at their peril, to abstain from any molestation of the strangers. It seems to have been during the interval which ensued that the Duchess Sophia was moved by curiosity to pay a visit to Herford from the neighbouring Osnabriick, accompanied by her nephew the Electoral Prince Palatine Charles. No more amusing episode is to be found in the history of religious enthusiasm than the extant narrative of the private enquiry instituted by the Weltkind Sophia into the proceedings of her sister's protege or should we say prophet 1 ? At table, Elizabeth had to stop Sophia's 1 See the Epistola de J. Labadio, by " Paulus Hachenbergius," the Electoral Prince's governor, quoted by Guhrauer, n. 479 seqq. 400 Historical "unjust" comments on the antecedents of "the very holy man"; but an eloquent sermon from Labadie himself failed to curb her mocking tongue, and the last remark recorded of her concerning her sister's devotion to the Labadist community was that it was accounted for by her economical and frugal principles of domestic management. The apprehensions which had caused the Great Elector to appoint his commission referred to the Labadist principle of a community of property, and to the rumour that with this was combined the practice of another kind of community. As to the former, there could be no doubt; the only question was whether, being wholly restricted to a small congregation, it was to be regarded as dangerous; and, in view of at least one actual subsequent experience, it would be difficult to answer this question in the negative. As to the practice of a community of women, the rumours con- cerning it were largely due to the harmless bravado of the mature maidens who took up their abode with the prophet; an actual charge of immorality against him was promptly enquired into by Elizabeth's command, and entirely disproved. The Elector's Commission of enquiry, which she had at first welcomed, she afterwards, with a very clear and spirited recognition of the demands of her own dignity, contrived to reduce to a transaction in writing; and the opinions of the Commissioners, which were separately drawn up, pointed on the whole to toleration, accompanied by admonition and guaran- tees. The Herford Town Council should not, perhaps, be too readily blamed for the exertions which it made, in the meantime, to rid the town of its unwelcome Elizabeth^ Princess Palatine 401 guests, however little reason there may be for supposing that, at this stage in the history of Labadism, the logic of its principles of life and conduct overleapt itself. Application was made to neighbouring potentates ; the opinion of the Town Council of Amsterdam and other cities was asked ; and, finally, complaint was made as to the action of the Abbess to the Imperial Kammergericht at Speier. This body, with quite extraordinary celerity, in October 1671 despatched a mandate to her, ordering the expulsion of Labadie and his following, under a penalty of thirty marks of gold, and, in case of refusal, summoned both her and the * ' Quakers and Anabaptists ' ' protected by her before the tribunal within sixty days, to show cause why they should not be placed under the ban of the Empire. Elizabeth's spirit was not in the least cowed by the judicial thunder ; she continued to extend her protection to the Labadists, assigning them a country-seat of hers as their residence; and, after preferring a counter-complaint to the Elector, early in 1672 journeyed in person to Berlin, to induce him to intervene actively on her side. But her well-intentioned and sympathetic kinsman could not, at so critical a time, afford to run any risks ; and his final edict to the Herf orders, of May 1672, while censuring them for their indecent complaint at Speier, apprised them that the Imperial mandate was altogether unnecessary, inasmuch as they would in any case have been afforded redress. The Elector's edict, facing both ways with charac- teristic candour, prepares us for the solution of the Labadist difficulty at Herford brought about by the course of events on the great theatre of European W. P. I 26 402 Historical politics. The outbreak of the War, which seemed destined to place the United Provinces at the mercy of Louis XIV, also threatened Herford and the sur- rounding district with invasion by his ally, the martial Bishop of Minister. Labadie, therefore, had nothing for it but to fly with the large majority of his followers to Altona in Holstein, leaving only a fraction of his congregation behind at Herford, where they remained for a few years longer under the protection of the Abbess. The further fortunes of Labadie and the Labadists must here be left aside; the community survived the death of its founder (which took place in 1674), and for some time seemed to flourish in security at Wieuwerd near Leeuwarden in Friesland, where Anna Maria von Schurmann, after testifying, in her EvKA.77pta, to the satisfaction which she had found in its midst > died in 1678, in the seventy-first year of her age 1 . The Princess Elizabeth's courageous intervention in what seemed to her the cause of holiness, but what to us of a later generation may probably rather seem to have been the cause of tolerance, had thus come to an abrupt end. But her own life was not to reach its tranquil close without yet one further experience, which shows how the very depths of her nature had been stirred by the spiritual movement of which Labadism was only a phase or an excrescence. Already at the time of Labadie 's sojourn at Amsterdam, a personal 1 By the middle of the i8th century the last trace of the Labadist community had vanished in Europe ; the slight settlement in Mary- land had come to an end several years sooner, being sustained by no genuine missionary effort, such as might have imparted to the enter- prise a more enduring vitality. Elizabeth, Princess Palatine 403 attempt had been made by George Keith and Robert Barclay to bring about a union between the Labadists and the Quakers, but it had been rejected 1 . In 1671, William Penn, who, two years earlier, had wholly thrown in his lot with the latter sect, and whose hand had since been indefatigably stretched forth in search of support and sympathy for it, had, after his second release from Newgate, travelled in the Low Countries and Germany, and had on this occasion, in his turn, made the acquaint- ance of Labadie, without arriving at an understanding with him 2 . In 1674 (or thereabouts, for the chronology of these transactions seems rather uncertain) direct communications were opened by the English Friends with the Princess Elizabeth, who still afforded a kindly shelter at Herford to the half-forgotten remnant of the Labadists ; and she, in the first instance, received a visit from some prominent female members of the Society 3 . Early in 1677, both Penn and George Fox wrote to the Princess, and, in May, she answered the former in a brief but very touching letter, thanking him for his interest in her spiritual progress, and protesting that what she had done for the Saviour's "true disciples" was " not so much as a cup of cold water," and " afforded them no true refreshment." It was later in the same 1 Guhrauer, n. 455. 2 This journey is noticed in Mr J. M. Rigg's account of Penn in the Dictionary of National Biography. 3 One of these is stated to have been Isabel Yeomans, a daughter of Thomas and Margaret Fell (now Mrs Fox), who had herself on a previous occasion pleaded with the Queen of Bohemia and other members of the royal family on behalf of the Quakers. Guhrauer and Foucher de Careil call her "Isobella Fella." For what follows see William Penn's Journal of his Travels in Holland and Germany in 1677, which has been frequently reprinted. 404 Historical year that Penn and Robert Barclay, in the course of those "travels in Holland and Germany in the service of the Gospel" of which Penn has left a well-known record, spent three days at Herford, whither, after paying a visit to the Palatinate, he returned before sailing for England. With the Princess was, on both occasions, her intimate friend, Countess Anna Maria van Hoorn, a Canoness of the Herford foundation, who was in full sympathy with her religious sentiments. Inasmuch as Penn's account of these interviews and the text of the letters interchanged by him and the Princess are easily accessible, it is needless to recur to them here. It is clear that her intercourse with Penn deeply moved the spirit of Elizabeth, but that, even in their last interview, she was not brought, or could not bring herself, to the kind of declaration or manifestation which in her spiritual interest he laboured to obtain 1 . For myself, neither the long and passionate appeals of Penn, nor even the narrative of the spiritual struggles of Elizabeth and her companion at the final interview, touch me like a letter from her to Penn not included in his journal, but received by him after his return to London 2 . In this, she declares that she adheres to what she said to him before parting, and that she longs to feel the Divine Presence in her heart, and to obey it. 1 The exclamation "Ilfaut que je rompe il faut que je rompe" which has been attributed to the Princess, seems to have been made, not by her, but by the Countess. Penn, however, speaks of them both as being "much broken " or "exceedingly broken " this being the expression employed by him elsewhere to denote a condition be- tokening the presence of the Divine Spirit. 2 Quoted by Guhrauer and Foucher de Careil (from Marsillac's Vie de Guillaume Penn). Elisabeth, Princess Palatine 405 "But teach others I cannot, not being directly in- structed by God myself." In other words, intense as was the spiritual longing within her, it could not prevail over that perfect candour without which those cannot love God to whom He is Truth. Five years after Penn had parted from her, and two years after her death, he inserted in an enlarged edition of his treatise No Cross, no Crown, among the testimonies to the significance of "serious dying as well as living "- and whether we say "serious" or "holy" is of little consequence a sketch of her character and ways of life, which is so noble a monument of her worth that I deeply regret to be unable to copy it at length into these pages. It shows how conscientiously as well as ably she fulfilled the official which included judicial as well as administrative duties of her position; how simply and how meekly she bore herself even to the poorest of her dependants ; and how slight a store she set by the princely dignity of which she was at no time unconscious. Elizabeth (as Penn had to note in paying this last tribute to her deserts) survived her farewell to him for only a brief space of time. Her last years were not free from personal anxieties partly caused by the troubles of the times, partly by dynastic difficulties ; the effort which she consented to make to persuade her sister- in-law, the Electress Palatine, to agree to a divorce proved futile; thus, her line 1 of the Palatine House seemed doomed to extinction, unless her brother Rupert could be prevailed upon to return to the land of his fathers and to marry. Her endeavours to this 1 Pfalz-Simmern. 406 Historical end again broke down; nor can she have recognised a compensation for this failure in the succession of the Bishop of Osnabriick and her sister Sophia to the inheritance of Hanover. While she may fairly be supposed to have met her family disappointments more calmly than in former days, when Descartes had sought to allay them by his arguments, she certainly never abandoned the literary and scientific interests which, with the aid of his genius, had so long been her chief consolation amidst the troubles of life. Not only does she seem to have encouraged the pursuit of liberal studies at Herford, and to have enriched the Abbey library (unhappily now long dispersed) with valuable books and MSS.; but she continued, so far as she was able, her intercourse with contemporary leaders of thought. She corresponded with Leibniz, whose ac- quaintance she probably made on the visit to Herford of his patron, Duke John Frederick of Hanover, not long before that Prince's death, and with Descartes' mystical follower, Malebranche, who exercised so unique an influence upon the religious thought of his age 1 . In the face of such evidence of sustained intel- lectual vigour and freshness, we shall probably be slow to overestimate the significance of the statement that, in her last days, she was surrounded by Pietists, and that, for some time before her death, the sound of music had not been allowed to reach her ears. A letter ad- dressed by her to her sister, the Abbess of Maubuisson, on October 31, 1679, was discovered in the British 1 " Ses derniers correspondants," says Foucher de Careil, p. 77, rather too epigrammatically for a complete preservation of the re- quisite balance, "furent Malebranche et Leibniz, c'est-d-dire Descartes plus chre'tien et plus scientifique." Elizabeth) Princess Palatine 407 Museum by M. Foucher de Careil 1 , which shows that, already by this date, illness and suffering had apprised her of the nearness of death, and that she had given herself up to preparing for it. She died at Herford on February n, 1680, in the sixty-third year of her age. The inscription on her grave in the choir of the Abbey Church celebrates the erudition which secured to her the admiration of the great and the learned throughout Christendom, and the personal virtue which was her highest claim to remembrance. It may be thought that, notwithstanding all this praise in stone, she achieved little that endured, whether for her House, or for her sex, or for the moral and intellectual progress of her kind. I do not say that this was so; but if it was, I should be content to write her epitaph in the words with which she took her last leave of William Penn, * Know and be assured, tho' my Condition subjects me to divers Temptations, yet my Soul hath strong Desires after the best Things 2 .' 1 Pp. 74-5. 2 No Cross, no Crown (2nd ed., 1682). OF VQLUME I CAMBRIDGE : PRINTED BY J. B. PEACE, M.A-, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL IBRARY FAOU] A 001 411026 6