THE THIRD 
 
 REAT War 
 
 RELATION TO 
 HISTORY 
 
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The 
 Third Great War 
 
 In Relation to 
 Modern History 
 
 BY 
 
 LAURIE MAGNUS, M.A. 
 
 BRISTOL 
 J. W. Arrowsmith Ltd., Quay Street 
 
 LONDON 
 SiMPKiN, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent and Co. Limitbd 
 
 1914 
 
s> 
 
 i"*-^ 
 
 w^*^ 
 
 " Machiavelli is the earliest conscious and articulate exponent 
 of certain living forces in the present world. Religion, progressive 
 enlightenment, the perpetual vigilance of public opinion, have 
 not reduced his empire, or disputed the justice of his conception 
 of mankind. He obtains a new lease of authority from causes 
 that are still prevailing, and from doctrines that are apparent 
 in politics, philosophy and science. . . . We find him near 
 our common level, and perceive that he is not a vanishing type, 
 but a constant and contemporary influence. Where it is 
 impossible to praise, to defend, or to excuse, the burden of blame 
 may be lightened by adjustment and distribution, and he is 
 more rationally intelligible by lights falling not only from the 
 century in which he wrote, but from our own, which has seen 
 the course of its history diverted twenty-five times by actual 
 or attempted crime." (1891.) 
 
 Lord Acton. 
 
TO MY FRIENDS 
 
 IN 
 BRISTOL NORTH 
 
 297715 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This little book of modern history is constructed out 
 of the material for a course of lectures which I have 
 been invited to deliver in Bristol in connection with 
 the Workers' Educational Association. It is neither 
 a " history '* of the present war, nor a recapitulation 
 of its immediate causes. It is limited to an attempt 
 to discuss the Allied campaign against the Hohenzollern 
 in the light of our former Allied campaigns against the 
 Bourbon and the Buonaparte. This aim involves 
 a discussion of the Settlements which were made in 
 1713 and 1815, and of events subsequent to those 
 Settlements. The facts thus ascertained may be useful 
 in guiding opinion on the new Settlement in Europe 
 to be made after the present war. 
 
 I am much indebted to Mr. C. Sanford Terry, 
 Burnett-Fletcher Professor of History in the University 
 of Aberdeen, for his help in reading the proof- 
 sheets. 
 
 L. M. 
 
 The Athen^um, 
 
 Pall Mall, S.W., 
 
 November, 1914. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 9 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THEY CALLED IT PEACE (1648) . . . I7 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 THE CHESSBOARD OF KINGS (THE AGE OF LOUIS 
 
 XIV) . 34 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 STALEMATE (THE PEACE OF UTRECHT, I713) . 53 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE EVIL THAT MEN DO (LOUIS XIV'S IMITATORS) 69 
 
 chapter vi 
 sword and pen in prussia (the repression 
 
 of culture by militarism) . . . 90 
 
 chapter vii 
 the giants (the age of the '' benevolent *' 
 
 despots) 107 
 
 Vll 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 THE COMMONS (THE FRENCH REVOLUTION) . I27 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 THE TITAN (NAPOLEON, AND THE TREATY OF 
 
 PARIS, 1815) 144 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 CONCLUDING REMARKS 165 
 
 GLOSSARY AND INDEX 177 
 
 VUl 
 
The Third Great War 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 " In history there is nothing isolated '\ wrote 
 Lord Bryce^ in 1862 ; and Mr. J. A. R. Marriott, 
 using a French phrase for the continuity of historical 
 tradition, declares that, '* In no European State, 
 ancient or modern, have les niceurs folitiques 
 exercised a more profound or more persistent 
 influence than in the kingdom ruled by the 
 HohenzoUern '' ^ Both statements are profoundly 
 true : there is nothing isolated in history, least 
 of all a war of eight nations ; and the history of 
 HohenzoUern rule in Prussia exhibits a tenacity 
 
 ^ Holy Roman Empire, 3. 
 
 » The Logic of History, in " The Nineteenth Century and 
 After ", October, 19 14. 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 of purpose and a political consistency, without 
 parallel in ancient or modern times. 
 ' The first business of a nation in arms is to prosecute 
 her war to victory. But the final object of war is 
 peace ; unless peace is re-established on a surer 
 footing than before, a grievous wrong is committed 
 against patriotism and against posterity. Those 
 who see the face of warfare require no stimulus to 
 imagination. But the rest must supply from their 
 own resources the fire which fortifies resolve. They 
 must learn in the slower school of history why their 
 country fights and what for. They must be seized 
 of the truth of the two propositions above, if they 
 are to be ready, when the time comes, to help to 
 devise terms of peace : not temporary terms of 
 satiety, nor brittle terms of revenge ; but terms 
 of a lasting and just peace, founded securely on the 
 twin bases of national honour and political sagacity. 
 We are engaged in the third ^reat war which a 
 coalition of nations in Europe has waged against 
 a would-be absolutist. The first w^as against 
 Louis XIV, who died in 1715, shortly after the 
 Peace of Utrecht. The second was against Napoleon, 
 whose power was broken in 1815 at Waterloo ; and 
 there is at least a presumption that the war of 1914-15 
 against Wilhelm II is not '* isolated " in history ; 
 that what we should try to isolate is rather the 
 causation of such occurrences than the circum- 
 stances surrounding the latest of them. These 
 
 10 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 circumstances are in everyone's recollection. 
 England's case has been admirably set out in a 
 dozen leaflets and pamphlets, documented, as 
 historians say, by the correspondence of ambassadors 
 and plenipotentiaries ^ But the ultimate causes of 
 this war lie further back than June 28th, 1914. The 
 dead hand of the murdered Archduke reached out 
 of his new-made grave to dim Habsburgs and 
 Hohenzollems in the past, and joined our twentieth 
 century, with its gracious and humane endeavours, 
 to the martial ideals of his military ancestors. 
 Nemo repente fit turpissimus ; the seeds of Prussian 
 turpitude were sown before Bernhardi and Treitschke, 
 even before their common master, Prince Bismarck, 
 whose sense of the logic of history was always 
 governed by a logic of present facts. No man 
 in this country wanted war. Some thought to avert 
 war by ignoring it ; others sought to prevent war 
 by preparing for it ; but there was no military party, 
 not even a military clique. The chief Liberal War 
 Ministers since Wilhelm II became German Emperor 
 have been Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and 
 Lord Haldane, a man of peace and a man of law ; 
 nor does the name of Lord Midleton, who held that 
 office from 1895 to 1902, suggest a military camarilla. 
 War was thrust upon us from without. We were 
 
 1 See Great Bntain and the European Crisis, officially published 
 at id., and Why we are at War, by Members of the Oxford Faculty 
 of Modern History, 2S. net. 
 
 II 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 interrupted in the tenor of our way. We had been 
 intent on the business of Hfe : on advancing in a 
 hundred ways at once and through every department 
 of State the enhghtened work of social reform. Our 
 eyes were fixed on Ufe, when we were summoned to 
 turn them to death : to death on the battlefield, death 
 in the trenches, death at sea ; to death by shell, 
 death by bayonet, death from cruelty, death from 
 want ; above all, to the death of the young. 
 
 It is not within our present purpose to dwell on 
 these aspects of war. There are compensations to 
 set against them : the splendour of manhood, the 
 rally of the Empire, the loyalty of Ireland ; good 
 out of evil, sweetness out of foulness. We draw 
 attention to this stoppage in the march of civilisation, 
 to this sudden turning of our eyes from life to death, 
 in order to emphasize our contention that the causes 
 of this war lie deeper than the events of 1914. 
 The contrast is too shattering to be explained by 
 the facts narrated in the Blue-book. Those facts 
 supplied a motive-power to forces which had been 
 formed through centuries. One pretext would have 
 served as well as another. Others, indeed, were 
 suggested in 1911 and before. The pretext of 1914 
 was merely more complete than those ; it was 
 speedier, more accurate, more adequate ; but it 
 was only a pretext all the same. The true causes 
 lay behind the pretext, as heredity lies behind 
 psychology, and psychology behind action. Why is 
 
 12 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 there militarism in Prussia ? Why is Wilhelm II the 
 scourge of Europe ? These questions, too, must 
 find repHes, if we are to draw the threads of a lasting 
 peace out of the tangled skein of the European 
 situation. Europe made peace in 1713, and made 
 it again in 1815, and will make it again, we trust, 
 in I9r|. Let us see to it that the new peace is a true 
 peace. Let us see to it that we leave no fatal legacy 
 for our descendants in 2015. The peace of 1915 must 
 exclude the possibility of such happenings as led 
 through the acts of aggression of 1866 and 1870 to 
 the Armageddon of to-day. We are fighting for life, 
 not for vengeance ; for the right to continue securely 
 in the course of social regeneration which we started 
 in the shadow of this war. Louvain and Reims are 
 not causes, but effects. Prussia's mihtarism itself 
 and the unchartered ambition of her King may be 
 found by this investigation to be not causes, but 
 effects. We are fighting to counteract the causes. 
 The new peace, whenever it is signed, must deal 
 with the ultimate causes. The avengers of Louvain's 
 library will ensure our liberty of thought ; the 
 avengers of Reims cathedral will ensure our liberty 
 of conscience. It is our business, as trustees for the 
 coming age, so to draft a treaty of peace as to ensure, 
 if foresight may, that the causes of past evils shall 
 disappear. The Peace of Utrecht did not exclude 
 them, for Napoleon succeeded Louis XIV. The 
 Congress of Vienna did not exclude them, for 
 
 13 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 Bismarck succeeded Napoleon, and waged war 
 a second time against Louis XIV, as a great historian 
 pithily expressed it. And the ceremony of Versailles 
 did not exclude them, for Wilhelm II has succeeded 
 Bismarck. 1713 ; 1815 ; 1914 : it is time to take 
 thought for the future. For the sake of ourselves 
 as well as of our descendants, we must build our 
 peace on sure foundations. Every year is a part 
 of the new century. Next year is as much a part 
 of it as that distant year 2015. For the sake of next 
 year and the year after, for the sake of each of the 
 next hundred years, we must discover and avoid 
 the mistakes which were made at Utrecht and 
 Vienna. We must read history intelligently, and 
 direct our reading to an investigation of the ultimate 
 causes of the present war. In this way only shall we 
 isolate them for removal. The new peace must be 
 the people's peace, not a truce for tired kings and 
 bankrupt ministers. It is the people's blood that has 
 been shed, the people's treasure that has been spilt, 
 the people's homes that have been ruined. It was 
 the people's hopes which war arrested, and the 
 people's rights must govern the new peace. 
 
 Newspapers cannot help us here. Pictorial histories 
 of the war tell us nothing of its bases in the past. 
 The white-papers are silent about causes prior to the 
 date of their diplomacy ; and it is precisely this 
 concentration upon the immediate case for the war, 
 and this neglect of the ultimate factors, which makes 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 a study of the past imperative, if the future is to 
 profit by its experience. A study of the history of 
 two centuries will help us to select the right and to 
 reject the wrong for the page of history to be com- 
 menced at the new peace. Not in the carelessness 
 of victory, nor in the weariness of strife, but solemnly, 
 deliberately, and out of full knowledge should a free 
 and a generous people inscribe their terms upon that 
 page. For thus only can they be sure that nothing 
 which they admit to it or omit from it will stain it 
 with their children's blood. 
 
 There is one word more to be added by way of 
 introduction to this inquiry. It has been said in 
 print already, and it is likely to be said more 
 emphatically as the hour of reconstruction draws 
 nearer. " When the new Europe arises out of the 
 ashes of the old, it is not very hazardous to prophesy 
 that diplomacy, with its secret methods, its belief 
 in phrases and abstract principles, and its assumption 
 of a special professional knowledge, will find the 
 range of its powers and the sphere of its authority 
 sensibly curtailed " ^ We may subscribe cheerfully 
 to this prophecy, and we may even concede the prior 
 statement, that " Democracy, though it is supposed 
 to be incompetent to manage foreign relations, 
 could hardly have made a worse mess of it than the 
 highly-trained Chancelleries " * : it could certainly 
 
 ^ Outis, Armageddon — and After, in " The Fortnightly Review", 
 October, 191 4. ' Ibid, 
 
 15 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 not have widened the fields of carnage. But if we 
 admit such hghts across the darkness of the battle- 
 field, let us be certain that they burn with a pure 
 flame. '* Abstract principles '\ " professional know- 
 ledge ", and the clear intention of our Foreign Office 
 did not avail to prevent this war ; still less will war 
 be prevented by open prejudice and ignorance. If 
 democracy is to contract the powers and to curtail 
 the authority of its diplomatists, its own powers 
 must be skilful to replace them, and its own authority 
 must command respect. Secrecy need not alarm us 
 overmuch. Every foreman of works is aware that 
 responsibility and control entail confidential action. 
 The point is that, when historians reveal the secrets 
 of a responsible diplomatist — 
 
 " Whatever record leap to light, 
 He never shall be shamed '\ 
 
 May it be in the spirit of this resolve that the new 
 diplomacy comes to settle the problems bequeathed 
 to it by the old. Its knowledge need not be pro- 
 fessionalized, nor should its powers be shortened ; 
 but power must wait on knowledge, as the present 
 crisis has waited on past crises. *' In history there 
 is nothing isolated *' ; and it is towards a judgment 
 on related facts that the ensuing chapters are 
 directed. 
 
 i6 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THEY CALLED IT PEACE 
 
 In the flood of fact and conjecture as to the origins 
 of the European crisis, the Peace of Westphaha, 
 which was signed on October 24th, 1648, is a visible 
 and veritable landmark. Like most agreements, it 
 represented a compromise of wills, No one got 
 exactly what he wanted ; least of all, the head of 
 Christendom, Pope Innocent X, whose opposition 
 was as impotent, however, as the death of Pius X 
 and the election of Benedict XV were indifferent 
 to the warring States in the summer of 1914% But 
 the Peace of Westphalia emerges out of the troubled 
 waters of the Thirty Years' War. We may consult 
 it, as we should consult the men and women, if we 
 had the opportunity, who contracted it. The fathers 
 ate sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on 
 edge. 
 
 The who 's who of that fateful date reveals some 
 striking personalities. 
 
 There was Queen Christina of Sweden, daughter 
 of Gustavus Adolphus, and the only Swedish 
 sovereign who made Stockholm a kind of northern 
 
 ^7 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 Athens. She was born in 1626 and died in 1689. 
 She was six years old at her accession, and twenty-two 
 at the date of the Peace. Six years later she abdicated 
 — voluntarily, perhaps even a little showily — on her 
 conversion to the Church of Rome. The Queen's 
 statesmanship and learning are attested beyond 
 dispute ; and it is interesting to note that Descartes, 
 the French rationalist philosopher, spent the last 
 year of his life at her court, and was induced to 
 compose a ballet, or operetta, in celebration of the 
 peace, entitled La Naissance de la Paix : truly, 
 a concession to royal charm by the author of the 
 Discourse on Method. 
 
 There was Cardinal Mazarin (1602-1661) of France, 
 a Sicilian (Giulio Mazarini) by birth, who had been 
 naturalised in 1639. We know the kind of man he 
 was. There is a portrait of him at Chantilly by his 
 contemporary, Philippe de Champaigne, showing his 
 lofty brow and faultless features, and the silken 
 stateliness of the master of craft ; and there is the 
 pen-portrait of him quoted by Lord Morley : ** His 
 ambition raised him above self-love, and he was so 
 scientifically cool that even adversaries never 
 appeared to him in the light of enemies to be hated, 
 but only as obstacles to be moved or turned " ^ \ 
 a diplomatist after Machiavelli's model. His chance 
 came at the death of Richelieu (1642), who had 
 
 ^ From Mignet, the French historian, in Morley's Oliver 
 Cromwell, 440. 
 
 18 
 
THEY CALLED IT PEACE 
 
 dominated France till then, and whom Mazarin 
 succeeded as chief adviser to King Louis XI I L 
 The King died in the following year, and Mazarin 
 consolidated his position as first minister at the 
 French court, in close confidence, if not in the closest 
 intimacy, with the Queen-Mother, Anne of Austria, 
 Regent during the minority of her son, Louis XIV. 
 The young King, who was ten years of age at the 
 date of the Peace of Westphalia, reigned till 171 5, 
 and was justly known as *' le grand Monarque ". 
 
 There was Frederick WilHam (1620-1688), 
 Elector of Brandenburg, who was not less justly 
 known as *' der grosse Kurf first " (the Great Elector). 
 He acceded in 1640. Sweden has declined ; the 
 Bourbons are dethroned ; the Stewarts are deposed ; 
 but there is still a Hohenzollern in Brandenburg ^ 
 It was in the reign of Frederick William's son. 
 Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg and King 
 Frederick I of Prussia, who achieved royalty in 
 1701, that *' the name of Prussia '\ according to 
 Ranke, '* became inseparable from an idea of military 
 
 ^ In 141 1, Burgrave Frederick VI of Nuremberg became 
 Elector I of Brandenburg, in return for favours received by 
 the Emperor Sigismund. Prior to that date the new Electorate 
 had been a mere Margravate. The first Elector was directly 
 descended from Conrad of Hohenzollern {d. 1291, temp. Barbar- 
 ossa), 25th lineal ancestor of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The Kaiser 
 has often referred to the promotion of his family — Margrave, 
 Elector, King, Emperor, — and has lost no opportunity of 
 impressing on his " faithful Mark of Brandenburg *' the moral 
 of its Hohenzollern association, 
 
 19 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 power and glory ", The Great Elector, the last of 
 his line to die in the inferior rank, established the 
 bases of that idea. According to one authority, he 
 was '' the first sovereign to display the principles 
 of seventeenth-century Machiavellianism, stripped o^ 
 their cloak of Italian refinement, in all the hideous 
 brutality of German coarseness " ^ According to 
 another, *' he first taught the Northern and North- 
 Eastern Powers who impeded the growth of his 
 State, and the Great European Powers to boot, that 
 nothing save the interests of that State itself, as they 
 might from time to time present themselves to its 
 rulers, would in the future decide the course of its 
 political action '' ^ According to a third, *' ' London ' 
 was the last but one, ' Amsterdam ' the last word 
 which he uttered, busy till death with the thought 
 of the great enterprise which was to secure his State, 
 to protect Germany and Europe from the domination 
 of France, and to save the evangel " ». According 
 to a fourth, '' The programme of State-law which 
 Frederick WilHam set before his successors, more 
 than two centuries ago, should still be the model for 
 our rulers. ... In harmony with the juristic 
 writings of Pufendorf, he sought salvation in a 
 
 ^ Periods of European History: v, 174; The Ascenda?7cy of 
 France, By H. O. Wakeman. 
 
 * Cambridge Modern History : v, 657 {by Sir A. W. Ward). 
 
 * Geschichte des Preussischen Staates, 211. By Dr. Ernst 
 Berner. 2nd edn. Bonn, 1896. 
 
 ao 
 
THEY CALLED IT PEACE 
 
 deliberate and benevolent Absolutism " ^ : a sinister 
 figure among the peace-makers, and an omen of 
 times to come. 
 
 There was Waldeck, Count and Prince, Frederick 
 William's would-be Mazarin, who, like Bismarck, 
 toiled night and day for the HohenzoUern against 
 the Habsburg, and who served the Protestant cause 
 in the North under the Great Elector, King Charles X 
 of Sweden (Queen Christina's successor), and 
 William III of Orange successively. 
 
 There was the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand IIL 
 who was elected in 1637, ^^^ c^i^d twenty years after. 
 He was the son of Ferdinand II, the Emperor of 
 '' Wallenstein", Prince of Friedland, hero of Schiller's 
 three dramas, and he had been King of Hungary 
 since 1625. At this time, and till 1806, when the 
 last Roman Emperor, Francis II, resigned the 
 trappings of an empty dignity, the Emperor was the 
 nominal lay head of the Christian Powers of Central 
 Europe. He owed his title to election, and governed 
 kingdoms or archduchies of his own. The Electors* 
 choice from 1438 fell with two exceptions upon a 
 Habsburg, and the Imperial title stretched right 
 back to Augustus Caesar, in the century before 
 Christ. Marcus Aurelius, in the second century, a.d., 
 has a place of honour in this line. The early 
 Emperors were crowned at Rome, and Frederick I 
 
 ^ Dev Grosse Kurfiirst, in, 12, By Martin Phiiippson. Bciiii>, 
 1903. 
 
 21 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 (Barbarossa), at his coronation in 1152, added the 
 epithet '' Holy " to the old title of the Roman Empire. 
 Gradually, the Empire declined. The ceremony at 
 Rome became more meaningless and infrequent, and 
 the territorial insecurity of the Habsburgs, threatened 
 from the North and East, diminished the con- 
 stitutional authority derived from their Imperial 
 sway. The holder of the Imperial title was the 
 earlier Sick Man of Europe. The day was presently 
 to dawn when a Buonaparte and a Hohenzollern 
 were to assume Imperial rank ; and when the 
 Habsburg line of Roman Emperors was to dissemble 
 its lost Elective dignities under the pretentious style 
 of Hereditary Emperors of Austria: — 
 
 " Now does he feel his title 
 Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe 
 Upon a dwarfish thief *' ^, 
 
 That day was still distant in 1648 ; but the circum- 
 stances in which the Emperor Ferdinand was now 
 making peace in Westphalia with the Kings of Sweden 
 and France admitted the course of happenings which 
 raised rival Emperors, so-called, in France and in 
 Sweden's ally, Brandenburg. 
 
 There was Maximilian, Elector of Bavaria, who, 
 with Count von Tilly (died 1632), commander of his 
 forces, had been responsible for some of the worst 
 outrages committed in the course of the war. These 
 
 ^ Shakespeare, Macbeth, v, ii. 
 22 
 
THEY CALLED IT PEACE 
 
 included the sack of Magdeburg, where, however, 
 the cathedral was spared, and the extrusion of the 
 Calvinists from Heidelberg, where, however, the 
 library was not destroyed, but was deported to 
 Rome ^ 
 
 There were Charles I of England and Oliver 
 Cromwell, the mightiest Protestant and perhaps the 
 greatest man of his age, just arriving at the 
 Protectorate of 1649. There was the Pope in Rome ; 
 and the Bourbon King Philip IV of Spain, whose 
 daughter, Maria Theresa, was married in 1660 to 
 her cousin, Louis XIV of France, as in the last 
 generation Anne, daughter of Philip III, had been 
 married to Louis XIII ; whence, since neither 
 Philip had a brother, the various treaties of partition 
 and the long war of the Spanish succession (1702- 
 1713), to which we shall come in due course. 
 
 Among these high and mighty personages, negotia- 
 tions were opened at the towns of Miinster* and 
 Osnabriick* in 1642. It v/as not till 1645 that the 
 double set of envoys got seriously to work ; and 
 their formalities, entertainments, squabbles, and the 
 shifting fortunes of the unsuspended war considerably 
 protracted the proceedings. Their number, too, was 
 unmanageable. Nominally, terms were to be settled 
 
 ^ Maximilian's poor scruples of vandalism were too fine for the 
 Bavarian troops in France and Belgium, 19 14. 
 
 * Betw^een the Emperor and France (Catholic allies). 
 
 * Between the Emperor and Sweden (Protestant allies). 
 
 23 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 between France and Sweden on the one part and the 
 Emperor Ferdinand on the other. Actually, every 
 Christian Power was involved as an ally of one or 
 other of the principal negotiants, and all except 
 three — England, Poland and Muscovy — sent repre- 
 sentatives to the Congress. Nor did the presence of 
 mediators from the Papal Court, Venice, and 
 Denmark tend to expedite their labours. The events 
 were as formidable as the personages. If Mazarin, 
 Christina, Ferdinand, Frederick William, and the rest 
 had been as intent upon the future of Europe as they 
 were upon their own present aims their ambassadors 
 would still have been confronted with well-nigh 
 insuperable difficulties. Problems of dynasties, 
 territories, religions, and constitutions were almost 
 inextricably mixed, and the best intentions of the 
 most noble-minded plenipotentiaries could hardly 
 have escaped confusion. 
 
 The Peace of Westphaha marks a stage in the 
 progress of Europe from the Reformation of Luther in 
 the sixteenth century to the Empire of Napoleon in 
 the nineteenth, and the Thirty Years' War, which 
 it terminated — this at least is to its credit, — partook 
 of the nature of both events. It was always partly 
 and at first wholly a religious war. The object sought 
 and attained was to secure for the followers of Luther 
 and Calvin the same rights within the Empire as 
 were enjoyed by adherents to the Catholic Church. 
 Of the disputes between Lutherans and Calvinists, 
 
THEY CALLED IT PEACE 
 
 of the persecution of Calvinists in France, of their 
 massacre in Piedmont, which drew from Milton one 
 of his finest sonnets {'* Avenge, O Lord, thy 
 slaughtered saints "), of the fatal policy of Louis XIV 
 in revoking (1685) the Edict of Nantes and driving 
 his Huguenot subjects to England, Brandenburg, 
 the Netherlands, and other Protestant countries, 
 of all the suffering and cruelty, the bitter and violent 
 polemics, the martyrdom, the misery, and the glory 
 which date from 1521, when Luther met the Diet at 
 Worms, and echoes of which are still heard to-day, 
 this is not the place to speak. We are dealing here 
 with the political issues arising out of these Wars of 
 Religion, which rent the Holy Roman Empire and 
 tossed its wreck on the nineteenth century, despoiled 
 of its holiness, divorced from Rome, and disunited 
 in its constitution. The point is that certain of the 
 warring States had a majority of Protestant in- 
 habitants, certain others a Catholic majority. As 
 early as 1555, in the temporary Peace of Augsburg, 
 this accident was legalized in the principle of cujus 
 regio, ejus religio, or, let each country establish its 
 own church. 
 
 We are still not concerned with problems of 
 religion as such, and must guard against suggesting 
 any view on the vexed question of Church Establish- 
 ment, But the settlement, even in appearance, 
 contained some obvious vices. It limited the 
 possible alternatives to the churches of Wittenberg 
 
 25 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 and Rome. For Zwinglians and Calvinists, still 
 less for ''infidels" and Jews, there was no room 
 in the thoughts of the negotiators. These were 
 fixing the frontiers of States, not enlarging the 
 boundaries of toleration. But in fact it was worse 
 than in appearance. The choice of religion was the 
 prince's ; the compulsion of region was the people's. 
 The prince selected his church, and his subjects had 
 either to attend it or to find their way to a more 
 hospitable soil. The present terror of banishment 
 by their territorial lord replaced the distant terror 
 of the ban by the Holy Father in Rome. We cannot 
 do more than mention the *' ecclesiastical reserva- 
 tion ", by which Catholic bishops who abjured their 
 faith forfeited their lands and dignities. Enough 
 has been said to show how the dynastic and 
 territorial issues involved in the Thirty Years' W'^ar 
 arose out of the religious issues challenged by Luther 
 at the Reformation ; how that movement, which 
 began so nobly as the Renaissance of the North, 
 ended in tyrannies more odious than the wrongs 
 which it set out to destroy ; and how the struggle 
 for liberty of faith through the length and breadth 
 of the Empire was turned by the policy of its rulers 
 to the service of their own particularism. 
 
 This, broadly, was the state of affairs which 
 engaged the diplomacy of the envoys. Mazarin, 
 scheming for France ; the Protestant sovereigns of 
 Sweden and Brandenburg ; Ferdinand, clutching at 
 
 26 
 
THEY CALLED IT PEACE 
 
 the pillars of the crumbling Holy Roman Empire : 
 were they likely to do otherwise than sow the 
 furrow^ed fields of Europe with the dragon's teeth of 
 territorial aspiration ? Considering the personages 
 and the circumstances, the wonder is that they 
 patched a peace at all. A series of arrangements 
 was reached of great detail and complexity. Thus, 
 the regional rehgions, multiplied to include Calvinism, 
 were to be maintained in their status quo as at January 
 1st, 1624. No charter of toleration was promulgated ; 
 the Austrian Archduke would have resisted it, even 
 if the Pope's opposition had been nullified : but a 
 rough-and-ready map was adopted to fix the distri- 
 bution of creeds ; the rest was left to domestic 
 enterprise. Next, the French frontier was advanced 
 to the Rhine, through Verdun, Toul, and Metz to 
 Austria's Alsace, where Strasburg was retained by 
 the Empire. Pomerania was divided at the mouth 
 of the Oder ; the western half went to Sweden, the 
 eastern half was confirmed to Brandenburg. The 
 western frontier of that Electorate was extended 
 to the Harz mountains, and its thumb was fastened 
 on the duchies of Ravensberg, Mark and Cleves 
 (between the Rhine and the Meuse). Sweden came 
 over to Bremen, at the mouths of the Elbe and the 
 Weser. Bavaria spread on her northern boundary, 
 at the expense of the Empire, which had also to 
 make room for Saxony and others, to admit the right 
 of States within the Empire to form their own foreign 
 
 27 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 alliances S and to give Holland and Switzerland their 
 independence. 
 
 On all this business and much more the peace- 
 makers at Miinster and Osnabriick consumed their 
 time and their ink ; but when they went their ways 
 home, what was the upshot of it all ? 
 
 1. The Protestant triumphs of Luther and 
 Calvin had weakened the chain of religion which 
 had bound the Empire together. 
 
 2. The partition of the Empire into States, 
 independent in policy and faith, drew attention 
 to military and naval frontiers and caused a 
 scramble for the Sick Man of Austria's Imperial 
 powers. 
 
 3. The contraction in scope and influence of 
 the Catholic Holy Roman Empire, and its 
 reduction to an appanage of the Habsburg dynasty 
 in Austria, led {a) to the idea of a Northern 
 Protestant federation, and (b) to the ambition of 
 the French Bourbons to excel the Austrian 
 Habsburgs. 
 
 * Lord Morley {op. cit., 439) puts the significance of this 
 concession very luminously : " France, though predominantly 
 Catholic ever since Francis I, had favoured German princes and 
 Protestant powers, from no special care for the reformed faith, 
 but because the Protestant powers were the adversaries of the 
 Emperor, the head of the Catholic party in Europe ". We may 
 add to this political cause the genuine humanism of King Francis 
 and his sister, Queen Margaret of Navarre, which responded to 
 the intellect of reformers. 
 
 28 
 
THEY CALLED IT PEACE 
 
 4. Was the chief Northern Protestant State to 
 be Sweden with its feet on the mainland, or 
 Brandenburg with its fingers West and East ? 
 
 5. The French menace to the House of 
 Habsburg and the Northern menace to its appanage 
 of Empire, and their mutual approaches, shifted 
 the centre of Austrian policy, and directed it to 
 Italy and the Near East. 
 
 6. Brandenburg's leaning to the East affected 
 Poland and Muscovy. 
 
 Thus, 
 
 7. Russia was menaced on two fronts ; by 
 Brandenburg on her North- West, and by Austria 
 on her South- West ; 
 
 And 
 
 8. The question of Turkey in Europe was 
 raised by the rivalry of Austria and Russia for 
 the road to Constantinople. 
 
 Accordingly, 
 
 9. The Peace of Westphalia provided material 
 for three main disputes : 
 
 i. Between France and Austria, 
 ii. Between Brandenburg-Prussia and 
 
 Russia, 
 iii. Between Austria and Russia. 
 
 It was highly inflammable material. Twice it 
 burst into flame, and twice it was supposed to be 
 quenched : at Utrecht in 1713, at Vienna in 1815. 
 
 29 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 It lit other fires in its path ; and a third great 
 war is now in progress, with the same national 
 divisions, on a vaster and a crueller scale. Surely, 
 after 267 years, an asbestos peace must be 
 devised. 
 
 10. There was also the further dispute between 
 the moribund Catholic Empire of the Habsburgs and 
 the nascent Protestant Power in the North, which 
 w^as settled by the victory of Prussia in 1866. The 
 proof of that settlement is the alliance between 
 Austria and Prussia-Germany (including Catholic 
 members of the dead Empire, such as Bavaria 
 and Saxony) in the present devastating war. 
 which has united France and Russia against the 
 common foe, and which, from causes to be shown, 
 has drawn England into their alliance. 
 These, then, are the salient features of the paci- 
 fication of Europe at the close of the Thirty Years' 
 War. The horrors of that war are immeasurable. 
 It left the countries now known as Germany 
 not only exhausted, but demoralized; almost 
 decivilized. 
 
 This, too, needs a brief explanation. The positive 
 aspect which had been assumed by the humanizing 
 virtues of the Renaissance when it crossed the Alps 
 into Germany was already deterrent to wide culture. 
 The concentration on texts and criticism, the 
 theology of Reuchlin^ and Agricola*, the mordant 
 
 1 1455-1522. a 1443-1485. 
 
 30 
 
THEY CALLED IT PEACE 
 
 Letters of Obscure Men^, which a briUiant band of 
 humanists at Erfurt wrote to expose the obscurantists 
 of Cologne : these and other signs of Northern 
 scholarship indicate the change of complexion which 
 ensued when the Italian Renaissance changed its 
 clime. The German Renaissance fostered an applied 
 rather than a spontaneous delight in learning, 
 modernism, Hellenism ; thus differing in kind from 
 the French Renaissance under Francis I * and his 
 sister, the broad-minded Queen Margaret * of 
 Navarre, whose patronage was extended to Marot* 
 and even to Rabelais ^ ; and different, too, from the 
 tolerant sympathies of the great Dutch humanist, 
 Erasmus «. It was harder, more purposive, more 
 objective. Even so, it might have reinforced the 
 genius which was released at last in Shakespeare 
 and Milton in England, Moli^re and Pascal in France, 
 Hooft and Vondel. in the Netherlands, Cervantes 
 and Calderon in Spain, if its current had not been 
 turned awry. *' The German Renaissance is the 
 
 ^ Letters purporting to be written by monks at Cologne 
 but really written by scholars at Erfurt : a famous pasquinade, 
 showing how the wind was blowing in the direction of Church 
 reform. The chief author was Ulrich v. Hutten, 1488-1523. 
 
 * 1494-1547. Acceded 15 1 5. He founded the Royal Library 
 (now BibliofMque Nationale) in Paris. 
 
 * 1492-1549. Married, 1527, Henri d'Albret, King of Navarre. 
 Their daughter became the mother of King Henri IV of France. 
 Margaret wrote the Heptameron, 
 
 * 0, 1496-1544. « 1495-1553- ^ 1466-1536. 
 
 31 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 Reformation " ^ ; but the fertilizing stream of 
 Renaissance culture, narrow in Germany from the 
 start, was blocked altogether by the wars which 
 ensued on the Lutheran reforms. Almost it seemed 
 
 " That this most famous stream in bogs and sands 
 Should perish " » ; 
 
 so disastrous to the States of Germany, in economy, 
 in population, and in aesthetics, were the results of 
 the campaigns which the Peace of Westphalia closed. 
 Truly, they made a desert and called it a peace. 
 
 German culture recovered from the shock ; 
 recovered magnificently, indeed. We shall come in 
 due course to its flowering-time, with Kant and 
 Goethe at the close of the eighteenth century. 
 Then we may have to refer back to this long period 
 of blight, stricken by the Thirty Years' War. The 
 testimony is universal and cumulative. German 
 writers speak of the War as of a new invasion of 
 the Huns or a foretaste of Napoleon's invasion. 
 Prof. Herford sympathetically says : '' If the 
 extraordinarily gifted, yet relatively barbarous, 
 Germany of the sixteenth century was, in pure 
 literature, of any moment for its neighbours, it 
 was chiefly in so far as it made Hterary capital of 
 its barbarism''*. Grobian, the Ship of Folly, 
 
 ^ Cambridge Modern History, i, 575 (by Sir Richard Jebb). 
 * Wordsworth. 
 
 8 Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany in 
 th$ Sixteenth Century, xxviii. By C. H. Herford, Cambridge, 1886. 
 
 32 
 
THEY CALLED IT PEACE 
 
 farce, folkbook and satire, were the Teuton contri- 
 bution to the century, which in other and happier 
 lands was reaping the harvest of the Renaissance. 
 It is not a matter for moral judgment, nor for 
 admiration or the reverse : it is a mere matter of 
 fact, important in the history of modem Europe, 
 which includes the re-building of Germany, that 
 German culture was belated. It was robbed of the 
 nursery of the Renaissance, which more fortunate 
 peoples have enjoyed. It was reared on blood 
 instead of milk, and the effects are palpable to this 
 day. 
 
 33 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE CHESSBOARD OF KINGS 
 
 The First Great War which broke the Peace of 
 WestphaUa is the War of the Spanish Succession. 
 Like the Second and the Third, which is devastating 
 Europe to-day, it was waged by a coaHtion of 
 AUies against a would-be Absolutist. It lasted 
 from 1702-1713. The Allies were England, Holland, 
 the Empire, Prussia and Hesse. Their common 
 enemy was France, and the pacts which closed the 
 War are known as the Peace of Utrecht. 
 
 As in 1914, so in 1702 it is incorrect to say that 
 war broke out. War had never been shut in. There 
 was almost continuous fighting from 1648 to 1702. 
 The War of the Spanish Succession was an end not 
 a beginning to warfare. Similarly, some years hence, 
 when the history of the Third Great War is written, 
 it will be shown that the period of peace, 1871 to 
 1914, was full of miscellaneous fighting, especially 
 in South-Eastem Europe, in which, though German 
 arms were not engaged, German policy and German 
 aims were very active. The Third Great War, like 
 the First, was planned through a series of years in 
 the mind of the responsible war-lord. And the 
 
 34 
 
THE CHESSBOARD OF KINGS 
 
 analogy may be pressed more closely. The situation 
 in Germany after 1871 and in France after 1648, 
 when each had concluded an advantageous peace, 
 had definite points of resemblance, which lie partly 
 in the character of their rulers, and still more in 
 the nature of their rule. In Germany Bismarck 
 was supreme from 1862 to 1891, when he was 
 replaced by Kaiser Wilhelm at the age of thirty-two. 
 In France Mazarin was supreme from 1643 to 1661, 
 when he was replaced by King Louis at the age of 
 twenty-two. In forty years King Louis was con- 
 fronted with a European coalition ; it has taken 
 the Kaiser little more than half that time. Louis 
 XIV was a greater man than Wilhelm II ; more 
 competent, more kingly, more refined ; but neither 
 was as great as he had been made, the one by Mazarin, 
 Richelieu's pupil, the other by Bismarck, a second 
 Richelieu. Each monarch was his own foreign 
 minister. Each fell, it will be written, by his foreign 
 policy. King Louis's secret treaties are notorious. 
 He tried to strike separate blows by neutraHzing 
 possible combinations. He had a secret with 
 Charles II about the Dutch, a secret with the Emperor 
 about the Spanish, secrets with himself about both. 
 More clumsily but not less craftily. Kaiser Wilhelm 
 in 1912 tried to bind England to neutrality in the 
 event of his attack on France. But England in 
 1912 had outlived the seventeenth century, and the 
 diplomatic tradition of the Stewarts. The clumsy 
 
 35 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 imitation of a bad model was thrown back at its 
 shameless fabricators. Yet another point of 
 resemblance occurs, though analogies are often 
 fallacious. King Louis's secret treaty with King 
 Charles could not be renewed in 1688, when James II 
 was shaking on his throne. But the War Lord did 
 not despair. There were other means to the same 
 end. '' It was also the view of some of Louis's 
 advisers that a civil war in England would best 
 ensure EngUsh neutrality during the continental 
 war " \ Some of Kaiser Wilhelm's advisers made 
 a like calculation in 1914. Being smaller men, 
 they worked on a smaller scale. In 1688 the civil 
 war which was to neutralize England was nothing 
 less than a dynastic revolution : William III ousted 
 James II. In 1914, though passions ran high, 
 Parliamentary forms were observed. Both calcu- 
 lations miscarried. Two and two made four in 
 sober England, though King Louis and Kaiser 
 Wilhelm reckoned otherwise. Each mistook the 
 English temper. But in 1688 the error was a blunder ; 
 in the twentieth century it was a crime. 
 
 We may widen the area of comparison. Louis 
 called himself le Roi Soleil, He took the sun as his 
 emblem, and satellites followed in his system. 
 Meanwhile, he was true to the kindred points of 
 vanity and aggression : the vanity of spectacular 
 imperialism, the aggression of territorial militarism. 
 
 * Cambridge Modern History, v, 52 (by Arthur Hassall). 
 
 36 
 
THE CHESSBOARD OF KINGS 
 
 Historians write of King Louis : "He openly aimed 
 at acquiring complete military preponderance in 
 Europe '* ; such an aim is a public danger to modem 
 States ; at *' the ecclesiastical independence of 
 France " ; this meant a second Rome in Paris, not a 
 tolerant attitude towards non-Catholics ; '* and the 
 Imperial dignity for himself or his son " ^; this meant 
 a parade of titles which the Habsburgs had worn to a 
 thread. But the thread was strong as a cord to 
 enmesh the present in the past. Louis, like Napoleon 
 after him, claimed Charlemagne * out of the Middle 
 Ages as Emperor of the French. As a fact, 
 Charlemagne was neither French nor German, but 
 Frankish, which was something of both^ Kaiser 
 Wilhelm, too, has a patron-Emperor ; a pattern 
 laid up in the Middle Ages. The Kaiser's Imperial 
 pretensions go back to Frederick Barbarossa (1152 
 A.D.), " who is still, as the half-mythic type of 
 Teuton character, honoured by picture and statue, 
 in song and in legend, through the breadth of the 
 German lands '' *. English taste called a plague on 
 both houses, as long as their sentimental atavism 
 
 1 Ibid., 55. 
 
 2 Carolus IMagnus ; Charles I the Great ; Roman Emperor, 
 Soo A.D. 
 
 * " It is no longer necessary to show how little the modern 
 French, the sons of the Latinised Kelt, have to do with the 
 Teutonic Charles ". Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, 68 (1898). 
 
 * Ibid., 117. 
 
 37 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 \\as confined to domestic politics. For England, 
 except during the connection of her Royal house 
 with the Electors of Hanover, has never been 
 interested in the Empire as such. With an insularity, 
 excessive perhaps in view of her continental wars, 
 she has hardly realized the lure of the Imperial 
 title to a French or German monarch. But when 
 a Bourbon, a Buonaparte, or a Hohenzollem, in the 
 eighteenth, nineteenth, or twentieth century, 
 attempts to translate this claim into terms of 
 military preponderance, a coalition allies itself to 
 crush him ; and England is a member of that 
 alliance. This happened in 1702 ; it happened 
 again to Napoleon ; we see it happening to-day. 
 *' France wages two wars at once for two distinct 
 objects " S another historian says of King Louis. 
 The one object was the Holy Roman Empire, to be 
 wrested from the Habsburg of Austria ; the second 
 was the trade of the New World, to be wrested 
 from the Habsburg of Spain. Thus, the War of the 
 Spanish Succession was a war for the shadow of 
 empire and for the substance of sea-power ; for 
 an old title and a new trident. Whether or not 
 Louis XIV, if he had won the sea-power, would have 
 revived the empire, as Napoleon revived it, is 
 unknown. But not otherwise, in 1871, the title 
 was renewed at Versailles ; and in 1914 the grandson 
 of the first German Emperor (new style) makes 
 
 ^ Sir John Seeley, Expansion of England, 96. 
 
 38 
 
THE CHESSBOARD OF KINGS 
 
 his bid for the trident ^ Bismarck's Germany, hke 
 Richelieu's France, wages two wars for two distinct 
 objects ; not at once, however, but successively. 
 We must still beware of false analogies ; but the 
 likeness is close enough to warrant a careful exam- 
 ination of the situation in the First Great War 
 (1702-1713) of AUies against Absolutism. Their 
 victory did not avert the Second and the Third 
 Great Wars ; but, if like causes produce like results, 
 we may yet isolate them for removal before a 
 fourth. 
 
 This, at least, is certain to-day. The sentiment 
 of Europe has moved away from the worn-out 
 symbols of Machiavellism. Its sanction was derived 
 from The Prince {II Principe), by the Florentine 
 
 1 Lest we should be thought to be pushing a parallel too far, 
 the following passages are submitted from the Speeches of Kaiser 
 Wilhelm II. On February 26th, 1897, he said at Brandenburg : 
 " The one man who succeeded in uniting our country to some 
 extent was Frederick Barbarossa. After his day, our Fatherland 
 declined, and it seemed that never would the man arise to weld 
 it together again. But Providence created this instrument, and 
 sought out the man whom we reverence as the first great Kaiser 
 of the new German Empire .... If this hero had lived in 
 the Middle Ages, he would have been canonized as a saint. 
 Pilgrims would have come from all countries to offer up prayers 
 at his shrine .... The memory of Kaiser Wilhelm the Great 
 summons us to do our duty. We devote ourselves to him and 
 to his memory, as the Spaniards of old were devoted to their 
 Cid ". In the same year at Cologne the Kaiser said : " Since 
 the Great Kaiser welded the Empire together anew, other tasks 
 are now set before us. We must grasp the trident in our fist ". 
 
 39 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 statesman, Machiavelli \ whose doctrine was openly 
 directed to a benevolent military despotism in the 
 distracted Italy of his day. It was an ad hoc doctrine 
 of absolutism, with definite limits of time and space. 
 His disciples in the seventeenth century sought, as 
 Treitschke has sought since, to apply his methods 
 to other purposes. They employed a violent 
 restorative under conditions of normal civic sanity. 
 And they found, as Machiavelli failed to find, apt 
 pupils in their princes. Richelieu under Louis XIII ; 
 Mazarin, aggrandizing France during Louis XIV's 
 minority ; Oxenstjerna under Gustavus Adolphus ; 
 Oxenstjerna again, aggrandizing Sweden during 
 Queen Christina's minority ; King Charles XII of 
 Sweden, who fell *' like Lucifer '' at Pultava in 
 1709 ; Peter the Great of Russia, who overcame 
 him, and won the keys of the Baltic ; the Great 
 Elector of Brandenburg, with his Saxon Machiavelli, 
 von Pufendorf ^ ; the Stewart, the Habsburg, the 
 
 ^ 1469-15 27. There is an excellent edition of The Prince in 
 Dent's Everyman Library. It should be observed that 
 Machiavelli's aim was to drive the invader out of Florence and 
 to restore the Medici dynasty in a stronger scion than Piero, the 
 incompetent son of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Machiavelli wrote 
 consistently for " the new prince ", the prince who would have 
 to instal himself ; and it is at least legitimate to hope that he 
 would have prescribed a different regimen in the age of Louis 
 XIV ; a fortiori, of Wilhelm II. 
 
 2 Author of Jus Natures tt Gentium, 1672. Ranke mentions 
 Seckendorf's FUrstenstaat (1656) as the favourite reading of the 
 Great Elector. From Ranke 's reference it seems also to have 
 been composed on Machiavellian lines. 
 
 40 
 
THE CHESSBOARD OF KINGS 
 
 Orange ; the anti-Orange, John de Witt, Grand 
 Pensionary of Holland ; above all, the Bourbon 
 Louis, who inherited the France of Richelieu and 
 Mazarin, and played for bigger stakes than either — 
 these trampled the continent of Europe into a chess- 
 board for kings. They defaced the signs of their 
 century. In respect to their Machiavellian policy, 
 they belong to an antiquated convention, devised 
 for other manners and other times. 
 
 Even Treitschke finds his Wilhelm. It is a 
 melancholy reflection, which conveys a warning for 
 the future, that Machiavelli's theory has so vital a 
 power for evil as to invest even mediocre talent 
 with its sceptre and its orb. ** He obtains a new 
 lease of authority from causes that are still prevailing, 
 and from doctrines that are apparent in politics, 
 philosophy, and science " ^ The Machiavellians 
 overran Europe in the seventeenth century ; but 
 the fall of Louis XIV did not terminate Machiavellism. 
 The Holy Roman Empire, long a-dying, expired in 
 1806 ; but the ghosts of Charlemagne and 
 Barbarossa still haunted the pillows of kings. Ana 
 the combination of Machiavellism and Empire they 
 call Realpolitik. Yesterday, a Buonaparte ; the 
 day before, a Bourbon ; to-day, a Hohenzollern : 
 we defend to-morrow. Let the dead past bury its 
 dead. " Louis's mistakes, serious though they 
 were, did not prevent his rule from conferring real 
 
 ^ The late Lord Acton. See the extract prefixed to this book. 
 
 41 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 benefits on France '' ^ vSo be it. Let France return 
 thanks. She paid her debt to the Bourbons in the 
 Revolution of 1793. They have been. Napoleon 
 has been. To-morrow is the peoples', not the kings'. 
 Antwerp shall have been sacked for the last time. 
 There is nothing in modem life to justify the scenes 
 in Belgium of the autumn of 1914. Imperial 
 MiHtarism is out of date ; a twentieth-century 
 anachronism ; a useless danger, Uke appendicitis, 
 demanding the surgeon's knife. The Western 
 Emperors must follow the Western Empire into 
 the land of shadows from which they came. The 
 Imperial lure has proved a snare. It is our business 
 to assert new principles, derived from the conditions 
 of modern Hfe. The '' causes that are still prevailing " 
 are the legacy of a twice-scotched past ; the 
 *' doctrines " that support it are the superstitions 
 of a false " politics, philosophy, and science." 
 Once more, we must isolate the causes, in order 
 finally to remove them. 
 
 LEtat, c'est mot, was Louis's maxim of rule, and 
 he professed in his memoirs an invincible distrust 
 of Parliamentary government after the English 
 model ; *' it is the worst evil that can happen to a 
 man in our position ". Je serai d I'avenir mon 
 premier ministre (in future I shall be my own Prime 
 Minister), he declared on the morrow of Mazarin's 
 
 "^ Louis XIV. By Arthur Hassall, 427; "Heroes of the 
 Nations ", 
 
 42 
 
THE CHESSBOARD OF KINGS 
 
 death to his Privy Council in the Louvre ; March 
 loth, 1661. Louis was the State. Louis was Prime 
 Minister. Thirdly, Louis was King by Divine 
 right. This was his own firm belief as to the intention 
 and will of God. It was confirmed by the doctrine 
 of Bossuet ^ the greatest preacher and orator of his 
 age, who, in his treatise on The State, derived from 
 Holy Writ, laid down the tenet that : '' No one, 
 whether single or corporate, has the right of 
 resistance to a king. Kings are responsible solely 
 to God, who will demand their accounts. Such 
 accounts will be the more severely scrutinized, since 
 God alone can demand them ''. And the historian 
 adds : *' This terrible responsibility to God is the 
 counterpoise to absolute authority which Bossuet 
 accords to earthly kings ''. 
 
 We must remember the times, if we are fully to 
 comprehend the man. It was the period of 
 Machiavellian statecraft, and the period of the 
 Catholic Empire. By the theory of the one, the 
 prince-political was committed to a course of State 
 aggrandizement ; by the theory of the other, the 
 prince-religious might acquire a dominion equivalent 
 to but more solid than the Pope's. 
 
 The times have changed ; but has the man ? 
 The illusion of the dead Empire still clings to the 
 title renewed for Kaiser Wilhelm by his grandfather, 
 
 1 1627-1704. The following quotation is from Lanson, 
 Histoire de la Litidrature frangaise, 584. 
 
 43 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 whom he worships as a saint. A pinchbeck Bossuet 
 in Prussia still discourses of the Divine right of 
 Kings. The monarch who breathes this incense is 
 again his whole State and his own Prime Minister. 
 The differences are, the inferior breed alike of the 
 man and his flatterers, and the insurrection in the 
 conscience of Europe of the principle of the people's 
 rights : the will of that populace assemUee which 
 Louis XIV scorned, and which a later Louis was to 
 dread. The evils of such a regimen are palpable 
 and monstrous. The King's ministers are reduced 
 to mere executants of his instructions. The longer 
 he reigns, the more plausibly he argues that he found 
 them and educated them himself. This was Louis's 
 view of Colbert ^ his great Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer ; this was Kaiser Wilhelm's view of 
 von Billow and Mi quel, when he '' discovered " 
 them in 1897. The King's subjects are reduced to 
 mere milch-cows for his taxes. Commerce and 
 education alike subserve the Imperial ambitions of 
 the Royal army and navy. Independent opinion 
 is discouraged : an unctuous plea of God's will, 
 revealed to his vice-regent on earth, justifies the 
 persecution of Jansenism ^ by Louis ; of Socialism 
 ^ 1619-1683. 
 
 2 Cornells Jansen, 1 585-1638, was Catholic bishop of Ypres. 
 His Christianity was founded on St. Augustine, and had affinities 
 with Calvinism. It was adopted by the solitaires of Port Royal in 
 France, who counted Pascal among their disciples ; and the Port 
 Royalist Schools, finally suppressed in 1710, incurred the jealousy 
 of the Jesuits. 
 
 44 
 
THE CHESSBOARD OF KINGS 
 
 by Kaiser Wilhelm. Why Prussia in the second 
 half of the nineteenth century should have proved 
 as docile to absolutism as France two centuries 
 earlier is a question to which we shall come back. 
 It is part of the fruits of belated culture, to which 
 reference was made in the last chapter. Here we 
 have been concerned to observe the repetition in 
 1914 of certain features in the chain of causation 
 which led to the Grand AUiance of 1702. 
 
 It was united by a common danger, and by the 
 opportunities of a common defence ^ Louis XIV 
 had been at work for forty years within the four 
 comers of his policy. Step by step, and not without 
 false steps, with rare patience and consummate 
 craft, he had pursued his composite end. It would 
 occupy more than one chapter to follow these steps 
 in detail, or even clearly to distinguish between 
 the ecclesiastical and territorial-dynastic threads*. 
 Generally, his objects were : 
 
 I. To complete the belt of fortresses on the 
 East and North-East of France, by annexing the 
 duchies of Burgundy (Franche Comte) and 
 Lorraine, and by taking Belgium (Spanish Nether- 
 
 1 Holland and England had been at war in 1664, as Russia and 
 England in 1854. 
 
 * Mr. Arthur Hassall's Louis XIV in Messrs. Putnam's 
 ** Heroes of the Nations " is an excellent popular account. Mr. 
 Hassall is also the author of Mazarhi in Messrs. Macmillan's 
 " Foreign Statesmen ", and of several chapters in the Cambridge 
 Modern History, vol. v, " The Age of Louis XIV ". 
 
 45 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 lands) from Spain ; thus extending the French 
 frontiers to the Rhine and the Scheldt ; 
 
 2. To make the Mediterranean a French lake, 
 and to nullify the natural barrier of the Pyrenees, 
 by placing a Bourbon on the throne of Spain ; 
 Thus, 
 
 3. To extend the French Colonial Empire; 
 And 
 
 4. To substitute a Bourbon ascendancy for 
 the Habsburg ascendancy in Europe. 
 
 Arms and diplomacy were engaged in unresting 
 operation on this programme. One Power after 
 another was cajoled or intimidated into advancing 
 it. A few scenes of the forty years' drama may be 
 selected in illustration. 
 
 1659. The Peace of the Pyrenees, supplementary 
 to the Peace of Westphalia, gave Louis access to 
 Spain, and a Spanish consort, Maria Theresa, 
 daughter of Philip IV by his first marriage with 
 Elizabeth, daughter of Henry IV of France. 
 
 1662. The purchase of Dunkirk from England 
 gave Louis much the same maritime advantage as 
 Germany derived in 1890 from her acquisition of 
 Heligoland. 
 
 1667-1668. The War of Devolution. Louis's 
 Devolution-theory was brutal in its ingenuity. By 
 a local Flemish law, landed property of a man who 
 had married twice passed to any child of his first 
 
 46 
 
THE CHESSBOARD OF KINGS 
 
 marriage (the daughters after the sons) before passing 
 to the sons of his second marriage. Philip IV of 
 Spain, who was also King of Belgium (Spanish 
 Netherlands) died in 1665. He left two daughters 
 by his first marriage, of whom the elder was Louis's 
 consort, Queen Maria Theresa, and one son by his 
 second, the new King Charles II of Spain. There- 
 upon, Louis claimed the Spanish Netherlands by 
 Flemish law for his wife. He backed his argument by 
 force, and bribed the Empire to neutrality by a secret 
 treaty as to the disposition of the Spanish oversea 
 dominions when Charles II, who was always ailing, 
 should follow Philip IV to the grave. Holland, 
 Sweden and England — Holland first, Sweden 
 reluctantly, and the Stewart King of England 
 half-heartedly — formed a kind of Triple Alliance to 
 resist the Royal highway robber. It was one of 
 Belgium's many martyrdoms at the hands of envious 
 kings. Peace was made at Aix-la-Chapelle, when 
 Louis lost Burgundy, but received the coveted line 
 of North-Eastem fortresses : Lille — Toumai — 
 Charleroi. 
 
 1672-1679. Louis next turned his attention to 
 the Dutch, who had objected to his theory of 
 Devolution. The history of the United Provinces 
 in this age would require a volume to itself ^ : here 
 we must be content to observe that a course of 
 tortuous diplomacy placed Louis in the favourable 
 
 ^ Motley's D^itch Republic is the standard work. 
 47 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 position of attacking the Dutch with Sweden and 
 England on his side. An alliance was again formed 
 against him. The Orange prince who subsequently 
 became King William III of England was joined 
 by the Empire and Brandenburg, and, later, by 
 Denmark, Spain, and other Powers. England 
 presently dropped out, leaving France and Sweden 
 to face Europe. The Treaty of Nimwegen concluded 
 this war, which had ravaged Belgium once more. 
 Louis regained Burgundy and Lorraine, but 
 surrendered Charleroi and other towns secured at 
 the previous '* peace '\ 
 
 1679-1684. The next move on the board is known 
 by the name of *' Reunions '\ Louis appointed 
 commissions under this name to seize (under pretext 
 of adjudication) certain territories of the Rhine 
 frontier, which, he alleged, w^ere intended to be 
 included in the *' dependencies '' of the ceded towns. 
 Strasburg was fortified in this wise ; and the Truce 
 of Ratisbon, 1684, confirmed Louis for twenty years 
 in the possession of his seizures. 
 
 These typical examples illustrate the theory of 
 Absolutism in its best practical order. The State 
 with " military preponderance " and with an 
 acquiescent and a docile population could wait, and 
 creep, and push, and always draw nearer to its goal. 
 We have necessarily omitted the recital of intrigue 
 and honest brokerage (in the Bismarckian sense) by 
 which Louis took advantage of his neighbours. 
 
 48 
 
THE CHESSBOARD OF KINGS 
 
 Any trouble which preoccupied the Habsburg brought 
 grist to the Bourbon's mill. Turk or Pole : it was 
 indifferent ; the Empire's danger was Louis's 
 opportunity. He held all the strings in his hand, 
 and there were even occasions when it seemed that 
 he was not completely in his own confidence. 
 
 However imperfectly rehearsed, it is a dreary 
 catalogue of aggression. We are not writing a history 
 of King Louis. The Louis Quatorze style of furniture ; 
 the decorations and gardens at Versailles ; the letters 
 of Madame de Sevigne ; Moliere's comedies and 
 Racine's tragedies ; the military prowess of French 
 generals : all this is nothing to our purpose. From 
 1661 to 1702, Europe, ostensibly pacified after the 
 Thirty Years' War, was harried from battlefield to 
 battlefield and from treaty to treaty for no other 
 object save the aggrandizement of King Louis. The 
 welfare of nations did not interest him ; the advance 
 of the Turks did not rally his Catholic sentiment 
 to the Empire ; his country had no voice in its own 
 fate ; he was bound to no parliament and no minister. 
 Slowly, steadily, unperturbed, in the sure conviction 
 that might was right, he moved his pieces towards 
 victory. Twice an alliance was formed against him ; 
 and twice he came out stronger from the conflict. 
 
 1686--1698. The League and War of Augsburg. 
 After 1684 it was Louis's constant aim to secure in 
 permanency the terms of the Truce of Ratisbon. But 
 his *' secondary age " had begun. The roi Soldi was 
 
 49 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 moving to his sunset. His great finance-minister, 
 Colbert, died. He married Madame de Maintenon. 
 He revoked the Edict of Nantes. He had the worse 
 in a dispute with the Pope. French Absolutism, like 
 Prussian Militarism at a later day, began to be 
 recognised for what it was. In 1686 the League of 
 Augsburg was formed between Spain, Sweden, the 
 Empire, the German Princes, and the United 
 Provinces, to devise a concerted resistance. Two 
 years later, our Dutch King William succeeded 
 James II, Louis's pliant friend, and the War of the 
 League began. Yet once more Belgium was ravaged. 
 The French fought the English at sea, and beat 
 them at Beachy Head, and were beaten by them at 
 La Hogue. The War was closed in 1698 by the 
 Treaty of Ryswick, which was less favourable to 
 Louis than any before. 
 
 1702-1713. The War of the Spanish Succession. 
 The League dispersed, the Treaty was indeterminate, 
 and we can see now a little more clearly what the 
 Spanish Succession meant, alike to Louis and to 
 Europe. If it is not literally true that the *' Spanish 
 Succession question was the pivot which turned the 
 whole foreign policy of Louis XIV *\ yet Mignet's 
 statement accurately represents the importance 
 always attached to it at the back or in the front of 
 the monarch's mind. Belgium was the Spanish 
 Netherlands, with its significance to Dutch and English 
 sea-power. Spain's Colonial possessions tempted 
 
 50 
 
THE CHESSBOARD OF KINGS 
 
 France in much the same way as the French Colonial 
 possessions tempted Germany in 1914 ; and a 
 Bourbon rule in France and Spain would have meant 
 a Bourbon Mediterranean littoral. In the year-long 
 duel between the Bourbon and the Habsburg, fought 
 on every field in Europe, and ominous to every 
 people's rights, one issue was always present, and 
 was still not decided by the terms of the Peace of 
 Ryswick : who was to succeed Charles II of Spain, 
 when his thin thread of life should snap ? 
 
 We shall come in the next chapter to the immediate 
 causes of the w^ar, and to its termination in the 
 Peace of Utrecht. Marlborough's ^ victorious 
 campaign at Blenheim (1704), Ramillies (1706), 
 Oudenarde (1708), and Malplaquet (1709), and his 
 recall by Queen Anne, must be sought from other 
 sources, where the repeated anguish of Belgium will 
 surely appeal to present sympathy. Here we have 
 tried to expose some of the ultimate causes, which 
 necessitated the Grand Alliance against the aggression 
 of France. It was an unusual, even a fortuitous 
 combination, which united Holland and England 
 under William III and Marlborough, and brought the 
 Empire into line with Brandenburg. But however 
 unusual the circumstances, we have seen, and tried 
 to show, that the situation, as it developed, had 
 analogies with the situation of to-day. And the 
 conclusion inevitably suggests itself, and may be 
 
 ^ John Churchill, ist Duke of Marlborough, 1650-1722. 
 51 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 strengthened in the course of our inquiry : since 
 two great wars have not sufficed to remove the power 
 of evil from one man's overweening ambition, the 
 means must be found after the third. For no culture 
 — and we shall return to this, — whether in the style 
 of Louis Quatorze, or of Empire, or of Kultur, is 
 worth the blood shed in Belgium during the last 
 three centuries ; no boons of government bestowable 
 by the most benevolent Absolutism are worth the 
 liberties of free peoples ; no Empire, however holy, 
 is comparable to democracy. If these truths are 
 established at last, the sacrifices of the third Grand 
 Alliance will not have been made in vain. 
 
 52 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 STALEMATE 
 
 Genealogy is never exciting ; but the fruits of this 
 family-tree brought so much woe into the world that 
 attention may be directed to the table on the 
 following page. 
 
 King Charles II of Spain, although he had married 
 twice, died childless in 1700. His sisters, Maria and 
 Margaret, were married respectively to Louis XIV 
 of France and the Emperor Leopold I ; and 
 these heads of the rival houses of Bourbon and 
 Habsburg were fully aware of the state of their 
 brother-in-law's health, and of the prospects which it 
 offered to their own offspring. The daughter of 
 Margaret and Leopold was the wife of the Elector of 
 Bavaria, and their son. Prince Joseph Ferdinand, 
 being neither all Bourbon nor all Habsburg, was the 
 first favourite for the Spanish crown. Unfortunately, 
 he died in 1699 ^^ ^^^ immature age of five or six ; 
 and his death, like that of Francis Ferdinand on 
 June 28th, 1914, served to hasten the catastrophe 
 which his accession might have locaHzed or averted. 
 The Royal cousins' choice now lay between two 
 
 53 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 
 
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 54 
 
STALEMATE 
 
 younger sons in the direct line of descent : the 
 Bourbon Duke of Anjou and the Habsburg Archduke 
 of Austria. The Duke was Louis's second grandson, 
 the Archduke was Leopold's second son, and both 
 had a common ancestor in King Philip III of Spain. 
 The Duke of Anjou won the stakes, and duly became 
 Philip V at the death of Charles II in 1700. The 
 Archduke of Austria, we may add, had the consola- 
 tion of succeeding his brother as Emperor Charles VI 
 in 1711. 
 
 So a Bourbon reigned in Paris, and a Bourbon 
 reigned in Madrid, and a stately ceremony such as 
 Louis loved was arranged at Versailles, and a honeyed 
 ambassador remarked *' II n'y a plus de Pyrenees " , 
 and the Royal grandfather and the Royal grandson 
 bowed and smiled. But it wais not w^ell with King 
 Louis. And it was not well with King Philip. After 
 the unexpected death of the little Prince of Bavaria, 
 it had been obvious to Louis that a fresh compromise 
 would have to be reached between his dynastic and 
 territorial ambitions. What he wanted was a Pan- 
 Bourbon Empire, the diplomatic demolition of the 
 Pyrenees, a Franco-Spanish command in the 
 Mediterranean, a French military predominance from 
 the Scheldt and Rhine to the Atlantic, and the 
 reversion of the Spanish Indies and other colonies. 
 He had helped himself to as much as he could while 
 he was waiting for dead men's shoes ; but, without 
 more fighting than he cared for, he was not likely to 
 
 55 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 get all he wanted. It was a very delicate position, 
 and his diplomacy was correspondingly tortuous : 
 the essential feature of it was, that he signed a 
 Partition Treaty with the English and the Dutch, by 
 which the Archduke Charles was to become King of 
 Spain, and France was to benefit by the scramble. 
 But in the last hour of his unhappy life King 
 Charles II made a will, leaving his kingdom and all 
 that it conveyed to the Duke of Anjou. Historians 
 are commonly much more interested in King Louis 
 than in King Charles ; yet imagination may play for a 
 moment on the motives of the dying, childless King, 
 who, knowing all the plots for the division of his 
 insecure possessions, deliberately bequeathed them 
 to the Bourbon. Did he know Louis better than 
 Louis knew himself ? In a final effort to keep Spain 
 whole, did he wittingly tempt his brother-in-law to 
 make a bid for the biggest stakes of all : dynastic 
 and territorial at once ? While the schemers and 
 prelates came and went, did the King resolve the 
 knotty problem by a simple equation in psychology ? 
 We are not told. What we do know is, that, after a 
 brief hesitation between the treaty and the will, 
 Louis accepted the will ; and Philip, whom Louis's 
 treaty would have excluded from Spain, was not 
 more grateful than the facts required. 
 
 The treaty was just " a scrap of paper ", of the 
 kind which Absolutists in all ages preserve or tear up 
 as they choose. No doubt we shall learn at last that 
 
 56 
 
STALEMATE 
 
 it is the Absolutism which creates the peril. In this 
 instance, King William of England shrugged his 
 shoulders resentfully ; it would be time enough to 
 think of active measures when the two Bourbon 
 kings should show a lead. 
 
 We may pause here to point out certain features 
 of resemblance between the situations then and now. 
 The Pan-German scheme of Kaiser Wilhelm in 
 anticipation of the break-up of the Dual Monarchy 
 has more than an accidental likeness to King Louis's 
 Pan-Bourbonism. France had grown and Spain had 
 declined, like Germany and Austria since 1866 ; and 
 the bigger power in each pair was anxious in self- 
 interest to acquire a benevolent control over the 
 smaller. Pan-Bourbonism threatened the Empire, 
 as Pan-Germanism threatens Russia, and each alike 
 was a menace to the maritime States in the 
 Mediterranean and the oceans. Both made a battle- 
 field of Belgium, the Spanish Netherlands of the day ; 
 and both aspired to a leadership (which France at 
 any rate had achieved) in the arts of civilization. 
 
 The watching nations had not long to wait. The 
 strong wine of Bourbonism mounted. There was 
 the treaty-obligation to be flouted ; and it was 
 prudent to grapple King Philip by military bonds to 
 France. Accordingly, Louis showed his hand. He 
 " reserved '' Philip's right of succession to the throne 
 of France : a reservation which acquired real mean- 
 ing when the Dauphin and his son died in 1711-12, 
 
 57 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 and the young life of King Louis's great-grandson 
 (Louis XV, 1715) stood alone between Philip and the 
 French throne. Next, in 1701, when the English 
 ex-King James II died in exile, Louis *' recognized " 
 his son as the true King James III of England. This 
 action directly contravened the terms of Anglo - 
 French treaties, and its effect in England was as 
 clumsy and ill-judged as Kaiser Wilhelm's calcula- 
 tion on the Ulster problem in 1914. Instead of 
 fostering seeds of discord, it unified England to a 
 man. Thirdly, in 1701, as in 1914, the gage was 
 thrown down in Belgium (Spanish Netherlands), 
 w^here Louis replaced with French troops the Dutch 
 garrisons in the fortresses. 
 
 The day had come, and the First Great War of 
 AUies against Absolutism in Europe. The Emperor 
 had lost the throne of Spain, intended for his younger 
 son the Archduke Charles. Holland saw the hand 
 of the Bourbon stretching from the Spanish Nether- 
 lands to the Dutch. Prussia and Hesse were con- 
 cerned to protect the frontiers of the German 
 principalities. England saw France screening Spain 
 in an effort to undo the Armada. — King William died 
 in March, 1702. In the following May, the war broke 
 out which was to decorate the reign of Queen Anne 
 with the laurels of liberty and justice. 
 
 It did not end as it began. A ten years* war is 
 exhausting. '* For the moment the nation is 
 inspired with enthusiasm for the cause ; and it is 
 
 58 
 
STALEMATE 
 
 not to be doubted that the Government will obtain 
 the national support it requires. The danger is that, 
 bye and bye, a sense of weariness and even of 
 depression may supervene. Increased want of 
 employment, loss of trade, financial difficulties, a 
 hard TOUter, temporary reverses on sea and land — 
 these and many other causes may encourage the 
 ' peace at any price ' fanatics, the faint-hearted and 
 the fickle, to join in the cry of ' stop the war * " ^ 
 These words are profoundly true. Written in 1914, 
 they refer to the Third Great War ; but the historical 
 imagination which inspires them is derived from two 
 centuries ago. For England's enthusiasm waned. 
 A sense of weariness supervened, and a slackening of 
 national support. Marlborough was recalled in 
 171 1 : his initiative had been checked some time 
 before ; and the '' stop the war '' party at home 
 insisted on a separate peace between England and 
 France. They forgot, or chose to forget, their 
 obligation to their Allies, and they laid no store by 
 the condition, which alone could satisfy the Emperor, 
 that Philip V should be deposed from the Spanish 
 throne. The new Grand Alliance has been wiser. 
 The agreement solemnly ratified between France, 
 Russia and England to make peace jointly, not 
 severally, precludes, we may hope, the privy deaUngs 
 of the Government of Queen Anne in 1711 ; it is one 
 
 ^ Our Duty and Our Interest in the War. By G. W. Prothero. 
 John Murray, 19 14 ; 2d. 
 
 59 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 of the lessons of history which has not been taught in 
 vain. There are others still to be learned, if military 
 Absolutism in Europe is to be crushed for ever at its 
 third venture. 
 
 The Treaty of Utrecht was signed in 1713. Its 
 preliminaries had been arranged between England 
 and France. Holland reluctantly assented to them, 
 and Prussia and Hesse acquiesced. The outraged 
 Empire still held out, the more bitterly, since Charles 
 VI had succeeded (1711) his brother as Emperor, and 
 felt a personal ignominy in confirming Philip V's 
 accession. But Charles was helpless without his 
 Allies, and the Treaties ol Rastadt and Baden 
 completed in 1714 the pacification of Europe after 
 twelve years' uninterrupted warfare. 
 
 The terms of the peace are to be considered in 
 relation to the objects of the war. King Louis had 
 always been aware that the public safety of Europe 
 would be deemed inconsistent with the full scope of 
 his ambitions. In each treaty of partition since 
 1668, he had used the Bourbon claim to the Spanish 
 throne as an instrument of bargain for Spanish soil. 
 None of these treaties provided for the Duke of 
 Anjou's succession ; neither before nor after the death 
 of the neutral Bavarian candidate. The Duke of 
 Anjou succeeded under the terms of the late King's 
 will. The Spanish crown was a bonus, as it were, to 
 the Bourbon dividend in Spain, when the estate 
 should rank for distribution. It was more than 
 
 60 
 
STALEMATE 
 
 Louis had expected, through all the long and busy 
 years in which, by arms and diplomacy, he had 
 affirmed his right to the lion's share. We lay strong 
 emphasis on this point, because the Utrecht conven- 
 tions admitted Philip as King of Spain. True, it 
 was expressly provided that no king of Spain or 
 France should at the same time be king of both 
 countries ; but this windy speculation — more 
 practical, as shown, after 171^2 — had been little more 
 than a challenge thrown out by Louis in 1701. 
 Twelve years' war must have cured him of such 
 vanity. The point is that, owing mainly to England's 
 desertion from her Allies, Louis got his own way about 
 the Bourbon succession in Spain. The torn treaty 
 was left unmended. The diplomatists of Europe 
 handed down the *' scrap of paper " theory to the 
 next Absolutist. We are not concerned in this 
 connection with the wisdom or otherwise of recog- 
 nizing Philip as King of Spain. During the course 
 of the war Portugal had joined the Grand Alliance, 
 and at one time the Marquis of Ruvigny ^ in com- 
 mand of the English forces in that country, had 
 occupied Madrid and proclaimed Charles of Austria 
 King of Spain. But Spain rallied to King Philip, 
 and the Empire's short-lived triumph was perhaps 
 a warning to the Allies not to force a foreign monarch 
 on the Spaniards. There was also the further 
 objection that the former Habsburg candidate was 
 
 1 1 648- 1 7 20 ; 1st Earl of Galway. 
 61 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 now Roman Emperor, and therefore no longer in 
 the running. Still, diplomacy has resources, and 
 the Utrecht peace-makers might have found other 
 means of chastening King Louis and of asserting the 
 sacredness of treaties, even short of deposing King 
 Philip. We shall see in the next chapter and in 
 later episodes of European history the evil precedent 
 of this example. — With Spain, Philip kept the 
 Indies. 
 
 Of more positive interest — until international 
 morahty becomes positive — is the effect of the Peace 
 of Utrecht on the balance of power in Europe. 
 Louis, we remember, had aimed not merely at 
 Bourbon crowns but also at Bourbon frontiers. In 
 this in the main he was disappointed. France kept 
 Alsace with Strasburg, thus expanding the rights 
 secured to her by the Peace of Westphalia ; but 
 she was compelled to evacuate certain fortresses 
 which she had seized on the East bank of the Rhine. 
 Dunkirk, ill-gotten, was dismantled. The Dutch 
 were restored to the garrisons from which King 
 Louis had removed them on the eve of the war : 
 Ypres — Toumai — Mons — Namur ; names of tragic 
 import in history. This barrier was re-adjusted at 
 a later date even more to France's disfavour. The 
 adjacent Spanish Netherlands (Belgium) were trans- 
 ferred — it was virtually a retransference — to the 
 Habsburg Empire, which also acquired the Bourbon 
 Italian provinces except Nice and Sicily, which were 
 
 62 
 
STALEMATE 
 
 ceded to the Duke of Savoy. Prussia was given 
 steps Eastward, and certain German Electorates 
 were strengthened or confirmed. 
 
 We omit to comment in this place on the English 
 acquisition of Newfoundland (subj ect to fishing rights) , 
 Hudson's Bay, Nova Scotia, and St. Christopher's 
 from France ; of Gibraltar and Minorca from Spain 
 (thus shattering Bourbon plans in the Mediterranean), 
 and of certain privileges in the slave-trafiic with 
 Spanish America. The commercial advantages of 
 the Peace rested almost wholly with England, 
 whose general, the Duke of Marlborough, had chiefly 
 contributed to the Allies' success ; and this, with 
 the Dutch claim to their barrier, and with the 
 Empire's claim to compensation for the crown of 
 Spain, carried out the essential conditions of the 
 Treaty of the Hague, concluded in 1701 by the 
 parties to the Grand Alliance. One fact of importance 
 calls for mention. By the terms of the Treaty of 
 Utrecht two new kings were recognised in Europe : 
 King Frederick William^ of Prussia and King 
 Victor Amadeus of Sicily. Later, the same Prussian 
 house became German Emperors ; the same Savoy 
 house became Kings of Italy. 
 
 If we widen our survey at this point, and look 
 back from the details of the Peace to the general 
 
 1 He had acceded, 17 13. His father, Elector Frederick II of 
 Brandenburg, had taken the style of King Frederick of Prussia 
 in 1 701. See p. 19. 
 
 63 
 
THE THIRD GREATj^WAR 
 
 ideas which underlay it, one aspect comes in view 
 of grave importance at the present day. The 
 essential object of the Allies was to reduce the power 
 of the French menace. France had been defeated 
 in battle, and now her dominion was curtailed ; 
 and in order to keep her in subjection, or, rather in 
 equipoise of weight, it was necessary to strengthen 
 other States up to or near the French standard. 
 In other words, the necessity arose of restoring a 
 balance of power. This consideration prevailed to 
 win the assent of the Allies to the ambition of the 
 houses of HohenzoUern and Savoy, who now entered 
 the charmed circle of kings. But the new kingdoms 
 of Prussia and Sicily would not be strong enough 
 in power or prestige to counterweigh the two Bourbon 
 kingdoms, however much diminished, of France 
 and Spain. England could hold them in the New 
 World, as far as it affected the calculations of the 
 map-makers at Utrecht ; what was much more 
 urgent in their eyes were the military scales in 
 Europe. Students of politics must judge for them- 
 selves if the selection of Austria for this purpose 
 has resulted to the advantage of the nations. It 
 is important to observe, however, that the Allies 
 in 1713 had really no visible alternative. The 
 choice of Austria was dictated by the fact that the 
 war had grown out of the rivalry of the Habsburg 
 and the Bourbon ; and students, in forming their 
 opinion, may conceivably take into account the 
 
 64 
 
STALEMATE 
 
 fact that the Bourbon dynasty in the predominant 
 partner of France has since been brought to a close. 
 The following relevant considerations will perhaps 
 be useful in guiding such a judgment. 
 
 We pointed out in Chapter II that the Habsburg 
 Emperor in Austria was the earlier Sick Man of 
 Europe, and that a war between Austria and France, 
 or between the Habsburg and Bourbon houses, 
 was inevitable after the Peace of Westphalia. We 
 showed that the centre of conflict had shifted from 
 religions to territories, and that the growth of the 
 Protestant Powers, to which France had been 
 Consistently friendly, had diminished the Empire's 
 prestige. We showed, too, that this loss of prestige 
 and the increasing self-dependence of the German 
 States, the former jewels in the Imperial diadem, 
 were creating . a new European problem, now 
 familiar as the Near-Eastern Question : Brandenburg 
 would drive Russia down, and Austria, receding 
 from the West, would seek new conquests from the 
 Turk. Events after 1648 fully bore out this view. 
 In 1683, Vienna was besieged by the Turks. In 
 1687, the Turks were defeated, and the crown of 
 Hungary was made hereditary in the male Habsburg 
 line. In 1699, the Peace of Carlowitz confirmed the 
 status quo. How astutely King Louis of France 
 utilized these wars of half a century to the advantage 
 of the Bourbon against the Habsburg has been 
 mentioned before, and would take a volume of 
 
 65 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 diplomacy to expound. The point is, that the 
 Habsburg house formed a Unk between two traditions, 
 the first rooted in the past, the second to fructify 
 in the future ; and the second arose out of the 
 first in the course of the seventeenth century. It 
 was the Phoenix of legend — with a difference. The 
 Habsburg rose from his own ashes ; but he had 
 sunk on the pyre of a Roman Empire, and he rose 
 in the cradle of a Dual Monarchy. Formally, the 
 change, as we saw, was not consummated till 1806. 
 Practically, the Peace of Utrecht, following the 
 Peace of Westphalia, admitted it and made provision 
 for it. The Empire, which had died in the Thirty 
 Years' War, was to be quietly interred by Napoleon. 
 Meanwhile, the Dual Monarchy had been created by 
 the W^ar of the Spanish Succession. 
 
 This is why we speak of a stalemate as the result 
 of that war. Neither Bourbon nor Habsburg was 
 defeated. The Bourbon reigned in France and 
 Spain, and the chessboard of kings was still spread 
 for new variations of the old game. Europe, willingly 
 or not, had to accommodate itself to the Habsburg 
 transformation, and to accept the Emperor where 
 it found him. The fiction of electing the Emperor 
 was still nominally maintained : it even gave 
 opportunities for intrigue, as in Mazarin's opposition 
 to the election of Leopold I in 1658 ; and it lent 
 pretensions of power to certain minor principalities. 
 But, as Habsburg after Habsburg had been elected 
 
 66 
 
STALEMATE 
 
 with two exceptions since 1438, for all practical 
 purposes the Dual Monarchy was co-terminous 
 with the Empire. The dynastic continuity of the 
 Habsburg created an illusion of identity. 
 
 If the Dual Monarchy had performed its functions 
 well, it would not be necessary to press this argument. 
 The ready sympathy might go out to the old man 
 crowned with many sorrows. But personal sympathy 
 is one thing, international interests are another ; 
 Europe has left off its mourning for the sorrows of 
 the Bourbons and the Stewarts. Students of history 
 will recognize the fact that the Catholic Holy Roman 
 Empire was undermined by the religious wars of 
 the sixteenth century. The very title of Emperor 
 became profane, and was adopted in later years by 
 other potentates. The territorial wars of the 
 seventeenth century, into which the religious wars 
 had merged, erected a State in Europe, situated in 
 the country of the House traditionally associated 
 with the Empire, ruled by the head of that house, 
 and fattened by the balancers of power on the 
 spoils of that House's ancient enemies. It was not 
 the Empire, though it looked like it. Like the 
 elusive Homer of criticism, it was another man under 
 the same name. The evil lay in his endowment 
 with his old prejudices and prepossessions. The 
 whole Habsburg tradition was opposed to his 
 success : its friendships, its enmities, its self-esteem. 
 The past leadership of the Germanic Empire was 
 
 67 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 the worst possible school for new Slavonic and 
 Oriental tasks. We urge these considerations for 
 what they are worth, in view of the settlement to 
 come. In the settlement of 1713-14 there appeared, 
 as has been said, no alternative. For the then 
 Emperor Charles VI had distinct claims on the 
 diplomatists at Utrecht. He had been cheated 
 twelve years before of the reversion of the Kingdom 
 of Spain ; and, though he could not have combined 
 it with his present position as Emperor, he was 
 entitled to some compensation. It is possible that 
 a longer-sighted policy would have counselled the 
 deposition of King PhiHp, thus adjusting a family 
 dispute within the confines of the family : it is 
 certain that the interests of Europe have not 
 ultimately been advanced by the course actually 
 adopted ; that the new Austria, as distinct from 
 the old Empire, did not prove a satisfactory pro- 
 prietor of Belgium and parts of Northern Italy ; 
 that she has not served Europe w^ell in the Near 
 East ; that she has never recovered the authority 
 which she lost in her religious wars ; that the 
 traditional grievance of the Habsburg against 
 France is no longer of any interest to Europe ; 
 and that a situation, unforeseen at Utrecht, has 
 arisen from the relations of Austria with the then 
 Electorate of Brandenburg, just promoted to a 
 kingdom, to which we shall come in the next 
 chapter. 
 
 68 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE EVIL THAT MEN DO 
 
 Louis XIV died in 1715 aged seventy-seven years, 
 during seventy-two of which he had been King of 
 France. In the last four years of his life there had 
 died his only son, two of his grandsons, and his elder 
 great-grandson. His surviving grandson had been 
 King of Spain since 1700, and his second great- 
 grandson accordingly succeeded as Louis XV ^ of 
 France. He reigned till 1774, and was succeeded 
 in turn by his grandson, Louis XVI, who died under 
 the guillotine in 1793. Thus, in a hundred and fifty 
 years, from 1643 to 1793, there were only three kings 
 of France : the first '' surpassed all contemporary 
 despots in his sense of unbounded and irresponsible 
 dominion " ^ ; the third was executed by his subjects. 
 The first was king of the greatest military power 
 in Europe ; the third was king of revolutionaries. 
 Louis XIV cost France dear. His reign and the 
 
 1 Louis XV, like his great-grandfather and predecessor, was 
 five years old when he acceded. The Regent till 1723 was Philip, 
 son of the Duke of Orleans, brother to Louis XIV. It is interest- 
 ing to note that the Regent was married to Fran9oise de Bourbon, 
 natural daughter to Louis XIV, and that the crown of France 
 reverted to this branch in the person of Louis Philippe, King of 
 the French, 1830-1848. 
 
 * Cambridge Modern History, viii, 36 (by Prof. F. C. Montague). 
 
 69 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 example of his reign teach a lesson — minatory or 
 hortatory, according to the school of the moralist — 
 from their contrast with the period when the memory 
 of his reign was stamped out. Compare the seventy 
 years of French history which closed in 1715 with the 
 seventy years just closing at the end of 1914 ; instead 
 of the dominion of le roi Soleil — Monarchy, Consulate, 
 Empire, Republic ; instead of territorial aggrandize- 
 ment — the loss of Alsace-Lorraine. Indeed, reviewing 
 the hundred years since Louis's second successor paid 
 the penalty of his ancestor's greatness, we may say, 
 without affecting a moral bias, that Louis XIV cost 
 France too dear. Louis XVI was beheaded ; his 
 son disappeared during the Terror ; his two brothers 
 had turbulent reigns ; his cousin, Louis Philippe, 
 ended in storm. Nor was the Spanish house of 
 Bourbon, for which Louis XIV plunged Europe into 
 war, much more fortunate in its record of deposition, 
 CarHsm, restoration. And the annals of the 
 Bourbons are the history of France, as dictated by 
 Louis XIV : 
 
 *' They lie like circle-strewn soaked Autumn-leaves 
 Which stain the forest scarlet, her fair sons ! 
 And of their death her life is : of their blood, 
 From many streams now urging to a flood, 
 No more divided, France shall rise afresh. 
 Of them she learns the lesson of the flesh — 
 That till the chasing out of its last vice 
 The flesh was fashioned but for sacrifice " ^ 
 
 ^ George Meredith, Odes in Contribution to the Song of Ftench 
 History, 65. 
 
 70 
 
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO 
 
 France rises afresh. She has paid the cost, and 
 more besides ; and it will be our privilege, we trust, 
 to watch the fulfilment of Meredith's prophecy. But 
 the fate of Louis XVI and the misfortunes of his 
 successors were not revealed to the " contemporary 
 despots " whom Louis XIV excited to emulation. 
 Upon these the splendour of his court, the prowess of 
 his generals, the foresight of his policy, and the 
 widening of his frontiers, made an ineffaceable 
 impression of permanence in change and of 
 resistance amid shocks. To them it seemed, 
 and might well seem, that in a little Versailles 
 of their own, with little echoes of BoileauS 
 and little editions of Colbert ^ and Turenne% 
 they could repeat on a scale commensurate with 
 their means the brilliant exploits of their 
 prototype. A generation of " benevolent '' despots 
 sprang from these imitative princelings, and filled 
 the canvas of the eighteenth century with the 
 overwhelming figures of Catherine II of Russia, 
 Frederick the Great of Prussia, the Emperor 
 Joseph II, and Napoleon himself ; till Carlyle wrote 
 in 1840, " The History of the World is but the 
 
 1 Nicholas Boileau, 1 636-171 1 ; French critic; ''lawgiver of 
 Parnassus ". 
 
 2 Jean Baptiste Colbert, 1619-1683 ; reformer of French 
 finances. 
 
 3 D'Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne, 1611-1675 ; Louis XIV's 
 greatest general. 
 
 71 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 Biography of Great Menu's and von Sybel^ 
 Treitschke's forerunner, founded the Prussian school 
 of history in the spirit of this belief. " He was resolved 
 that Austria should gain well-rounded, and if possible 
 extended frontiers on every side, and thus come forth 
 from the centre of Europe as the first of European 
 Powers/' So wrote Sybel of Joseph II, who kept 
 Frederick's portrait in his bedchamber ; and the 
 description would apply, reading France or Germany 
 for Austria, to King Louis in the seventeenth or 
 
 ^ Lectures on Heroes and Hero-Worship, I. 
 
 * Heinrich v. Sybel, i8 17-1895 ; German historian ; founded 
 the so-called Prussian school of history in reaction from the 
 judicial objectivity of the Berlin school founded by von Ranke 
 ( 1 795-1 886). Heinrich v. Treitschke, 18 34-1 896, of whom so 
 much has been heard in recent days, was an early adherent to the 
 Prussian school, which has since become exhausted by a reversion 
 to more scientific methods. Carlyle, Froude, and Macaulay had 
 affinities with the Prussian school. It enjoyed the favour of 
 Bismarck, who gave Sybel, Treitschke, and others access to 
 State papers. Treitschke read a moral into German history, and 
 pointed it to the advancement of Prussia ; a view which found 
 many adherents in the epoch 1865-187 5, not only in Germany : 
 among them, Carlyle himself and Lord Bryce, author of the Holy 
 Roman Empire. Treitschke found a military State, and wrote 
 its history as a patriot ; he used it to stimulate recruiting in 
 Prussia : not literally, perhaps, but in a metaphorical sense not 
 far removed from the literal. Late in life, he admitted to dis- 
 illusion ; German unity had not tended to German culture ; and 
 in these views, rather than in the militant views which Bernhardi 
 developed, Treitschke was in agreement with the sage, Friedrich 
 Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1 844-1900, who has been strangely mis- 
 represented by some English writers in this crisis. Nietzsche was 
 a strong anti-Prussian, and denied that military discipline could 
 
 7a 
 
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO 
 
 Kaiser Wilhelm in the twentieth century. For the 
 type, which was destroyed in France, and which 
 is merely a hollow * sham in Austria to-day 
 (though not therefore innocuous) has persisted in 
 Germany as a cult, which makes false pretensions 
 to culture. 
 
 We may try to trace this cult, and to inquire what 
 profit was derived from the example of Louis XIV 
 by the three HohenzoUern rulers who reigned in 
 Brandenburg in his lifetime : 
 
 ever lead to a culture-State. He expressly condemned the 
 " history written on Imperial German lines — and Herr von 
 Treitschke is not ashamed of himself ". He accused his country- 
 men of every crime against culture committed since the sixteenth 
 century, starting with the Reformation, which, in his view, had 
 wrecked the Renaissance, and ending with their failure to 
 appreciate himself ! But professors of the Prussian school of 
 history, in search for a moral sanction for their doctrines, took 
 recourse to the Nietzschean philosophy of the race of 
 " supermen " to be produced by the exercise of the " will to 
 power ", as an amendment of the will to live. This higher species 
 of humankind required for its production the sloughing of the 
 mistaken virtues of pity, sympathy and other foibles, and a 
 conscious sacrifice of weak multitudes in order to make the strong 
 few. Plainly, this theory of evolution fitted the Prussian 
 historians like a glove ; the Treitschkean history became the 
 Nietzschean philosophy teaching by examples, and obtained a 
 strong hold on the German public. 
 
 The whole subject is less important than has been assumed, 
 since the existence of a body of writings exalting war as an 
 instrument of salvation, blessed by God for the practice of man, 
 struck peaceful Englishmen with surprise in the early weeks 
 of the Third Great War. But it is as well to get the facts 
 right. 
 
 73 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 Elector Frederick William, the Great Elector ; 
 reigned 1640-1688. 
 
 Elector Frederick III, King Frederick I ; reigned 
 1688 (King I70i)-i7i3. 
 
 King Frederick WiUiam I ; reigned 1713-1740. 
 The three reigns covered exactly a hundred years, 
 and King Frederick II (Frederick the Great) was on 
 the throne from 1740 to the eve of the French Revo- 
 lution, 1786. 
 
 We last saw the Great Elector at the Peace of 
 Westphalia, 1648, when he was stretching his fingers 
 East and West over the map of Northern Europe. 
 To his central province of Brandenburg, flat, sandy, 
 and unattractive, of which Berhn is the centre, he 
 had added East Pomerania on the right — West 
 Pomerania was Sweden's — with a seaboard on the 
 Baltic, and Magdeburg on the left, with its shoulder 
 on the Harz mountains. On his right frontier was 
 Poland, but across a region of that country, beyond 
 Danzig and the mouth of the Vistula, lay the 
 Elector's duchy of East Prussia, with Konigsberg 
 as its capital, held under the suzerainty of the Polish 
 crown. On his left frontier stretched the Empire, 
 but between the Weser and the Rhine, or between 
 Minden and Cologne, the Elector had been given 
 control over the three little duchies of Ravensberg, 
 Mark and Cleves. Each of these was a separate piece 
 of territory, plumped like three finger-marks on the 
 map; and Cleves, the westernmost of all, had the 
 
 74 
 
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO 
 
 Rhine flowing through it, and was bounded on its 
 left by the United Provinces (Holland). Thus, in 
 order to traverse his dominions, the Elector, starting 
 at Konigsberg, where he w^as fief to the Polish King, 
 would have to step across a big tract of Poland before 
 reaching his Pomeranian acquisition ; he would 
 march from there through Brandenburg, the original 
 home of his race, and would enjoy his extended walk 
 through Magdeburg, till he was pulled up short at 
 the Harz mountains. From there he would stride 
 across the Empire, ruled by his Catholic Emperor, 
 Ferdinand III, into one after another of the three 
 tiny duchies which gave him foothold in the river- 
 valleys. With these jumps, and leaps, and 
 " bunkers '', it would have been an exasperating walk 
 for a more amiable man than Frederick William ; 
 given the HohenzoUern temperament, the example 
 of Louis XIV, and the fact that Brandenburg had 
 been trampled by countless armies during the 
 Thirty Years' War, the Elector was likely to take 
 seriously the favourite pastime of the kings of his 
 age : a scientific rectification of their frontiers. 
 
 The HohenzoUern has been rectifying them ever 
 since. In every half -century which has elapsed 
 since the Great Elector girded his loins after the 
 so-called Peace of Westphalia, his cherished 
 Electorate has been expanded ; till to-day, in the 
 sixth half-century, in an era of economy and peace, 
 w^e see Belgium added to the booty torn by the same 
 
 75 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 savage hands of a Frederick or a William of Branden- 
 burg from the Empire, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, 
 Austria, France. The Bourbon ceased to oppress, not 
 indeed by the action of the diplomatists, who made 
 peace with him in 1713, but by the action of his own 
 subjects eighty years afterwards ; the Buonaparte, as 
 we shall see, came and went, meteoric in his passage 
 and his power ; the HohenzoUern, greedy and 
 rapacious, indifferent to other interests but his own 
 and therefore insensible to honour, has revived in 
 each generation the characteristics of Louis XIV's 
 contemporary ; has shown himself uniformly dis- 
 satisfied with his constantly extended realm ; and 
 still worships in the twentieth century the same gods 
 of mihtarism and absolutism to which he bowed 
 in the fallen temple of the Bourbon. 
 
 The Great Elector began on the right, where he 
 was hemmed between the Swedes and the Poles ; 
 and, as Sweden at that epoch was a great naval and 
 military power in the competent hands of Queen 
 Christina, and as John Casimir, King of Poland, com- 
 manded squadrons of horse which could kick up the 
 dust in Brandenburg, he had to play a waiting^game. 
 He employed himself, much as his descendant has been 
 employing recent years of peace, in educating his 
 subjects to wage war on two frontiers at the same time. 
 His chance came when Queen Christina abdicated, 
 and her successor, Charles X, found himself in 
 conflict with John of Poland. The years 1655 to 
 
 76 
 
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO 
 
 1660, during which this conflict took its course, are 
 particularly interesting in a study of Hohenzollern 
 tactics ; and students may possibly be of opinion 
 that a line of policy which was crooked in the 
 seventeenth century does not become straight in 
 the twentieth, though it may be drawn more heavily 
 and through a wider area. Briefly, what happened 
 is this, and it is well worth attention, Charles X 
 asked the Elector's permission to march through 
 East Pomerania into Poland ; a direct landing in 
 the Gulf of Danzig would have involved a blockade 
 of that port. Frederick William consented. John 
 Casimir and his army were defeated, and the 
 Sw^edes attacked Danzig from the rear. Seeing the 
 Swedes thus engaged, and seeing the Poles recover 
 themselves, the Elector proposed to the King of 
 Poland that they should take joint action with 
 Denmark S always ready for a *' certain liveliness " 
 in the Baltic, in order to defeat Charles X. Charles 
 replied by a blow at Konigsberg, the capital, it will 
 be remembered, of East Prussia, then a duchy under 
 Poland's suzerainty. The result in 1656 was a 
 transference of this suzerainty to Sweden, and the 
 Elector was required to supply his new suzerain 
 with reinforcements. So far, the Elector was worse 
 off, and presently he was meekly taking part in 
 
 ^ Similarly it has been said of Kaiser Wilhelm that his 
 conception of friendship is — always friendship against, never 
 friendship with. 
 
 77 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 a Swedish-Prussian subjugation of Poland. But 
 while Charles and Frederick William were quartered 
 somewhere about Warsaw, the Danish movement 
 against Sweden began, and was joined by Muscovite 
 allies. This brought the Elector back, in alarm for 
 the safety of East Prussia, and Charles had to set sail 
 for Denmark. But before quitting his ally, Charles 
 made a bid for his good faith by contracting the 
 Treaty of Labiau, by which he agreed to release 
 East Prussia from his suzerainty. This was in 
 November, 1656. A few months later, Frederick 
 William concluded another Treaty at W^ehlau, 
 contracting himself to John Casimir of Poland for 
 precisely the same price. The Labiau Treaty freed 
 East Prussia on condition of a Swedish alliance ; 
 the Wehlau Treaty freed East Prussia on condition 
 of a Polish alliance ; and Frederick William put his 
 name to both while Sweden and Poland were at 
 war. Truly, the Hohenzollem's bond was never 
 better than his word. Or shall we extenuate the act 
 with the Prussian historian, Martin Philippson ? 
 ** Neither he nor any one else imagined that he was 
 allied with Sweden through all eternity '' ^ But 
 ten months is a brief eternity. 
 
 The rest of the story is quickly told. Charles X 
 prepared a mighty vengeance, but he died in 
 February, 1660. Peace was then forced on the 
 warring States, chiefly through the instrumentality 
 
 1 Der Grosse Kurfurst, i, 254 ; Berlin, 1897. 
 
 78 
 
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO 
 
 of Mazarin; and the Treaty of Oliva, as it was 
 called, formally created East Prussia an independent 
 duchy of the crowTi of Brandenburg. So Greater 
 Prussia began to grow. 
 
 [; It would be in the highest degree improper to 
 select this episode of past history as typical of German 
 policy to-day, if a new departure had since been made 
 to any purpose : as unfair as if England of George V 
 were to be reproached with the secret treaties of the 
 Stewarts, or the Third French Republic with the 
 statecraft of Louis XIV. But when we see a Hohen- 
 zoUem still directing the diplomacy of his Empire 
 to-day by the same methods and sanctions as were 
 adopted by his ancestor, we ire entitled to ask 
 if it is not to his House rather than to the Bourbon's 
 that the old epigram should be addressed : they 
 learn nothing and they forget nothing. We admit that 
 the Great Elector could quote authority for his 
 action. Where Richelieu gave him a lead, why should 
 he scruple to follow^ ? The point that we suggest for 
 consideration is how far Richelieu's lead is binding 
 on Kaiser Wilhelm to-day, and what steps the Allies 
 shall take, when their war is successfully ended, to 
 prevent a recurrence elsewhere of the evils of the 
 Richelieu tradition. 
 
 Frederick William now devoted himself to setting 
 his house in order : a process of Branden- 
 burgizing Prussia, analogous to the Prussianizing of 
 Germany in a later regime. There was a little 
 
 79 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 trouble with the Junkers ^ of East Prussia, who 
 did not readily submit to the substitution of an 
 independent duke for a feudal suzerain. But their 
 new duke took a short way. He had their leader 
 arrested on Pohsh territory in order to be executed 
 on his own, and, as Poland was content with a 
 formal protest, the revolting nobles said no more. 
 In view of the present relation of these East Prussian 
 gentry to the HohenzoUern Throne, it is worth 
 noting how their loyalty had to be enforced as 
 recently as 1672. Even more interesting perhaps 
 are the facts about other sections of the population. 
 It has been calculated that in the year 1770 about 
 a sixth of the inhabitants of Prussia were foreign 
 immigrants or immigrants' offspring. The policy 
 which led to this result was started by the Great 
 Elector, and was continued by his immediate 
 successors. Brandenburg wanted populating, and 
 ready hospitality was offered to Protestant refugees 
 from the United Provinces, Salzburg* and France. 
 Twenty thousand immigrated in 1687 ; 600,000 
 before 1770. Dutchmen tilled the fields and con- 
 structed the aqueducts of Brandenburg ; Huguenots 
 brought their crafts and introduced their manu- 
 factures. It was a thoroughly * wise policy on 
 Frederick WiUiam's part, and it proves how well 
 
 ^ Landed nobles. 
 
 * Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea is founded on the Salzburg 
 migration. 
 
 80 
 
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO 
 
 he had mastered the art of civil and reUgious 
 government. The bureaucratic system of Prussia 
 dates from his administrative reforms. The Great 
 Elector was less successful in his Brandenburg 
 African Trading Company, in his negotiation with 
 Denmark for colonizing the coast of Coromandel, 
 and in his attempts to provide himself with a navy. 
 These ambitions, too, became a tradition in the 
 family. Nor was the Elector much happier in some 
 later stages of his foreign poHcy. Historians speak 
 of his *' usual impetuousness " — a characteristic 
 which was repeated in his descendants — in reference 
 to his changes of ally from France to the Empire, 
 according as it suited his convenience. His friendly 
 attitude to Louis XIV was of great assistance to 
 that monarch at the time of the boundary com- 
 missions in the Rhine-valley district after the 
 Peace of Nimwegen ^ ; but in 1686 he came down 
 on the side of the Habsburg, and joined the secret 
 League of Augsburg formed to resist the French 
 king. Meanwhile, in 1675, he had defeated Sweden 
 at Fehrbellin, where the military balance in the 
 Baltic was transferred from Swedish hands to 
 those of Brandenburg-Prussia and the growing 
 power of Russia. This transference, we may add 
 here, was completed in 1709, when Peter the Great 
 of Russia defeated Charles XII of Sweden at Pultava. 
 The brave Swede went on fighting till he died in 
 ^ See p. 48. 
 
 81 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 1718, and by the treaties of 1719-1721 his possessions 
 on the mainland were distributed. Russia got the 
 lion's share ; Hanover, Denmark and others had 
 minor portions ; and Prussia, at that date a kingdom 
 ruled by King Frederick William I, obtained a 
 share of West Pomerania, the islands of Riigen 
 and Usedom, and the ports of Stettin and Danzig. 
 Thus the terms of Oliva were enlarged. 
 
 The Great Elector did not live to see these gains. 
 He had tried to force the pace after his victory at 
 Fehrbellin in 1675, but it did not suit French policy 
 at the moment, and the consequent treaty (St. 
 Germain, 1679) brought him little money and less 
 land. He died in 1688, and his son Frederick III 
 succeeded as Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of 
 East Prussia. The father had taken Richeheu as 
 his model ; the son, as was natural in his generation, 
 displayed a like talent in imitating King Louis. 
 Of his French court and his sympathy with French 
 taste this is not the place to speak. Prussia was 
 deeply indebted to foreign influence and example 
 in repairing the ravages to culture caused by the 
 Thirty Years' War ; and the carefully - tended 
 exotic now began to bear fruit. In 1694 the 
 University of Halle was founded, and it rapidly 
 became a centre of learning in Prussia. More 
 pertinent to the Hohenzollern policy was Frederick's 
 ambition to be a king, and he made the recognition 
 of his royal title a condition of his support to the 
 
 82 
 
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO 
 
 Emperor Leopold in the Spanish Partition Treaty, 
 necessitated in 1699 by the death of the Prince of 
 Bavaria ^ Leopold was not very willing. It would 
 be a blow to the prestige of the Empire to have a 
 king among the electors ; and it may be that Leopold 
 was prescient, in his capacity as Archduke of Austria, 
 of what the title would mean in added strength 
 when the Hohenzollern should pull against the 
 Habsburg. But 1866 and its harbingers were far 
 off ; the immediate struggle lay between the 
 Habsburg and the Bourbon. The Hohenzollern 
 could not be kept out, and the price of his support 
 was the royal dignity : Frederick assumed the 
 title before the outbreak of war in 1702 ; and it 
 is to be noted that he derived it from Prussia outside 
 the Empire, not from Brandenburg within. The 
 duchy, recently released from the suzerainty of 
 Sweden or Poland, and still divided by PoUsh 
 territory from Brandenburg, became the kingdom 
 of the Elector on his promotion. The new king 
 died in 1713 ; but when the pacts of Utrecht were 
 complete in 1714, his son, Frederick William I, 
 took his place among the crowned heads of Europe, 
 and Prussia was definitely launched on the career 
 marked out for her since 1648. Prussia against 
 Russia on one side, Prussia against the Empire 
 on the other ; Turkey against Russia on one side, 
 Turkey against the Empire on the other : these 
 
 1 See p. 53. 
 
 83 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 became the pressing problems of the balance of 
 power m Europe, after the Habsburg had settled 
 his account with the Bourbon kings in the West. 
 
 Holland drops out. Sweden drops out. The 
 Peace of Nystad, 1721, replaced Sweden by Russia 
 in the Baltic, and added, as we saw, the coveted 
 strip of Pomerania and the strongholds of Danzig 
 and Stettin to the kingdom of Frederick William I. 
 His next twenty years were devoted, like Bismarck's 
 from 1871 to 1890, to screwing up the tone of his. 
 coxmtrymen to the pitch of their country's new 
 tune. Or if not their national consciousness, at 
 least their mechanical simulation of it. The defences 
 had to march with the frontiers. The likeness in 
 circumstances is really striking, and it is to be 
 remembered that the interval of time was only 
 exactly a hundred and fifty years. In 1721 a new 
 kingdom was established by force of arms on the 
 Baltic, in 1871 a new Empire was established by 
 force of arms on the Rhine ; and the construction 
 of a sense of Royal Prussia preceded on parallel 
 lines the Bismarckian construction of a sense of 
 Imperial Germany. Brandenburg was expanded 
 into Prussia, Prussia into Germany : *' an enlarged 
 Prussia '', as Treitschke calls it ; and the procedure 
 in each instance was the same. There is a strong 
 family likeness in the HohenzoUem. 
 
 King Frederick William's chief concern was to 
 create an army. Louis XIV had had an army ; 
 
 84 
 
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO 
 
 it had brought him territories and power, and the 
 most efficacious argument was still the argument 
 of force. To the formation of an army the King 
 of Prussia gave his days and nights. On it he 
 lavished all the paternal affection of which his 
 recruiter's heart was capable. He watched it, he 
 nursed it, he flogged it. He liked to catch his 
 soldiers young, drafting the sons of his Junkers into 
 Prussian military schools, of the kind which nearly 
 broke the spirit of young Schiller at Stuttgart 
 about 1775. His army discipline was ferocious. 
 He flung his net so wide as to risk a labour-famine 
 in the fields, and he practised so narrow an economy 
 that his scholars had to go without pay in order 
 that his soldiers might be fed. In the end, by 
 kidnapping, enrolment, and conscription, he got a 
 standing army of about 80,000 men, with a well-filled 
 treasury behind them and a well-drilled government 
 in front. In a will which he wrote in 1722 for the 
 guidance of his son, Frederick William laid the 
 curse of Pharaoh and the doom of Absalom upon 
 him if he should reduce military expenditure. He 
 had the largest army in proportion to his population 
 of any ruler in Europe ; and from his time forth 
 political power in Prussia has been founded on a 
 military basis. They called his grandfather the 
 Great Elector, and his son Frederick the Great ; 
 but if greatness, like genius, consists in taking 
 infinite pains, or in working without rest and without 
 
 85 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 haste in the preparation of the means towards an 
 end, then King Frederick WiUiam I was the greatest 
 Hohenzollem of the three. His own father had 
 schemed for a king's crown, and had kept up such 
 seemly state that his consort beUeved he would be 
 consoled in the event of her death by organizing 
 the ceremony of her funeral. The successor to the 
 crown thus acquired was concerned to safeguard 
 his possession : Louis XIV had been the roi Soleil ; 
 Prussia should have her place in the sun. When 
 the provisions of the Peace of Utrecht should once 
 more plunge Europe into warfare, Prussia would be 
 enabled to play her part. 
 
 It was not an unworthy ambition in the age in 
 which he lived. Already Hanover was growing, 
 with her English connection. Already the partition 
 of Poland was becoming as absorbing a question 
 as the partition of Spain had been. Already the 
 House of Savoy was acting the Hohenzollern in 
 Italy, which, unlike Brandenburg, however, had 
 been dreaming of unity since the thirteenth century. 
 Already the old rivalry of Bourbon and Habsburg 
 was complicated by fresh dynastic problems and 
 by fresh claimants for voices in their settlement. 
 The few years of comparative peace had already 
 been broken by wars, which were themselves the 
 omen of greater conflicts in the second half of the 
 eighteenth century. 
 
 Still, however fully we acknowledge Frederick 
 
 86 
 
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO 
 
 William's genius for preparation, and his right to 
 protect his scattered territories, it is impossible 
 not to see how harsh a rule of life he imposed. He 
 had a skilful and an industrious population, with 
 a large infiltration of foreign elements devoted to 
 trades and agriculture. He had a rare opportunity 
 of stimulating national culture, and of infecting 
 the minor princes of North Germany, among whom 
 his Royal title gave him the lead, with ideals of 
 art and taste. There were great men enough in 
 exile from the rigidly Catholic States to sow a dozen 
 centres of Northern learning with the seeds of pure 
 and gracious thought. But this narrow-souled, 
 coarse-grained monarch, with his brutal cane and 
 ready fist, concentrated all his energy and impelled 
 all the talents of his race into the single channel 
 of military efficiency. With so ample a field for 
 selection, and with so responsible and delicate a 
 task as the direction of a new kingdom into the 
 hegemony of European nations, Frederick William 
 deliberately confined himself to the worst and 
 ugliest way, and is redeemed in the eyes of civilization 
 solely by his Protestant zeal, which opened the 
 gates of Prussian cities to refugees from persecution 
 abroad. But the gates closed heavily on the 
 immigrants. They were not allowed to go farther 
 or to go back ; and half of the Prussian standing 
 army consisted of foreigners impressed for service. 
 They talk of culture to-day as the handmaid of 
 
 87 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 the German sword. It was the very negation of 
 culture which Frederick WiUiam imposed on his 
 barren land. Leibniz (1646-1716) was the only 
 German thinker whom English, French and Dutch 
 example had inspired with liberal ideas, and his 
 chief disciple. Christian v. Wolff, was dismissed 
 from Halle University by the King in 1723 ^ 
 Winckelmann was bom in 1717, Kant in 1724, 
 Lessing in 1729, Herder in 1744, Goethe in 1749, 
 and to these great thinkers we shall return ; but 
 who knows how many apostles of enhghtenment 
 were crushed beneath the iron heel of the recruiter- 
 king who hated learning ? He subordinated 
 everything to his army : his God, his family, his 
 subjects. In a beaten people yearning for release 
 from the yoke of tyranny or oppression, such urgency 
 might have been noble. In a new people yearning 
 to express themselves in art, literature and science, 
 ready to make all reasonable sacrifice for the 
 privilege of keeping what they had won, the severe, 
 repressive, all-devouring militarism enforced upon 
 them by their despotic sovereign, and the military 
 tradition which he created, were a crime against 
 the present and the future. 
 
 The King died in 1740, in the same year as the 
 Emperor Charles VI, who was followed in 1746 by 
 his old rival Phihp V of Spain. The stage was being 
 cleared for the giants. Gradually the forces collected 
 
 ^ His successor, Frederick II, reversed the dismissal in 1740. 
 
 88 
 
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO 
 
 which were destined to break to pieces the cement of 
 the Peace of Utrecht. '* It has been an incalculable 
 misfortune for humanity *\ writes Mr. Fisher, *' that 
 the giants were men who could not afford to be 
 honest, for hence it comes about that we are now 
 confronted with millions of educated men who are 
 still the slaves of a barbaric statecraft " ^ The guilt 
 lies heavily on the King of Prussia who laid the 
 burden of that system on his descendants. 
 How heavily, we have now to see. 
 
 * The War : Its Causes and Issues. By H. A. L. Fisher, ii. 
 Longmans, 6d. net. 
 
 89 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 SWORD AND PEN IN PRUSSIA 
 
 Frederick the Great, though his father had reviled 
 him, and had soured such milk of human kindness 
 as flowed from a HohenzoUern heart, continued the 
 family purpose of consolidating and extending his 
 dominions, and of asserting his personal leadership 
 in the Empire over that of the Bourbon and the 
 Habsburg. He left in 1786 an army two and a half 
 times as large as that which his father had extracted 
 from the bleeding soil of his country ; the population 
 had increased threefold ; and Silesia and parts of 
 northern Poland had been torn away from Emperor 
 and King, and patched on to the Prussian frontiers. 
 Whereas the Great Elector had had to leap from his 
 duchy in East Prussia across a tract of Polish territory 
 into Pomerania and Brandenburg, the Great 
 Frederick walked through his own realm from beyond 
 Konigsberg in the East along the Baltic littoral to 
 Stettin, with no Pole or Swede to say him nay. He 
 still kept his fingers in the West, and had planted 
 his thumb on East Friesland, up against the United 
 Netherlands on the coast ; and one long leg stretched 
 South-eastwards in Silesia, following the course of 
 
 90 
 
SWORD AND PEN IN PRUSSIA 
 
 the Oder through Breslau down to GaHcia : truly, 
 a formidable rival to the ancient Catholic Powers. 
 
 We shall learn shortly how he did it. Here we may 
 pause to point out how events reduced the formid- 
 ableness. 
 
 " Deutschland found Prussia ", wrote Carlyle, 
 midway in his stream of hero-worship ; ''a solid 
 and living State round which the Teutonic people 
 should consolidate itself " ^ Perhaps. But first 
 let us make sure when and how Germany found 
 Prussia. It was not in the hero-king's reign, nor by 
 the sign of his culture, nor under the protection of 
 his army. Germany found Prussia in collapse after 
 Napoleon's invasion. The '' solid and living State'' 
 had been crushed at Auerstadt and Jena, on October 
 14th, 1806, twenty years after Frederick the Great's 
 death. His work, and his father's work, had all to be 
 done over again ; and if, as we tried to show in the last 
 chapter, the Bourbons cost France too dear between 
 1643 and 1793 — from Louis XIV's accession to Louis 
 XVI's death by the guillotine, — is this record not 
 equally true, within the same period of time, of the 
 HohenzoUem in Prussia : from the Great Elector's ac- 
 cession in 1640 to Frederick the Great's death in 1786 ? 
 
 UEtat, c'est moi, he could say, more confidently 
 even than King Louis. ** The tension of a tiger 
 crouching for a spring " ^ is Acton's description of 
 
 ^ History of Frederick the Great, xx, 13. 
 
 * Lectures on Modern History, 290. Macmillan, 1906. 
 
 91 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 Prussia at the opening of Frederick the Great's reign ; 
 and a fitting tribute must be paid to the monarch's 
 personal submission to the claims of service to the 
 State. But there was no health in his State. The 
 props that supported it were not sunk in the concrete 
 of national life. A full third of his army were 
 foreigners ; his culture was foreign through and 
 through : French, specifically Voltairean ; and 
 Frederick's personal rule fell to pieces when his 
 personality disappeared. His success impressed 
 men's imagination. His Seven Years' War, to which 
 we shall come, and from which he emerged with 
 distinction, had fired a sense of unity ; Goethe could 
 write and feel : '' The first true and higher self- 
 consciousness came into German poetry through 
 Frederick the Great and the Seven Years' War ". 
 But there was more actuality in Schiller's reflection, 
 in his ode to the German Muse (we translate literally) : 
 
 * No Augustan Age flowered, 
 No Medici's favour 
 
 Smiled on German art ; 
 It was not the nurseling of fame, 
 Nor did its flower unfold 
 
 Under the sunshine of princes. 
 
 *' From the greatest Teuton son. 
 From the Great Frederick's throne 
 
 It went unwanted, unhonoured. 
 Gloriously may the Teuton boast. 
 Higher may his heart beat : 
 
 Himself he made it worthy." 
 
 92 
 
SWORD AND PEN IN PRUSSIA 
 
 The long-postponed literary revival, which 
 flourished in Frederick the Great's age, flourished 
 aloof from Berlin. Leipzig, Ziirich, Gottingen, 
 Heidelberg, Hamburg, Jena, Weimar, — these were 
 the centres of German culture, when Winckelmann 
 brought back from Greece the seeds of the new 
 German Renaissance, which Herder and Lessing 
 tended and Goethe fostered to maturity. The 
 HohenzoUem art was war, and it fell by war in 
 1806. The German culture of to-day is a thing of 
 artificial extraction, by Prussian routine out of 
 HohenzoUem pedantry. *' It is the greatest danger " , 
 wrote Lord Acton, *' that remains to be encountered 
 by the Anglo-Saxon race " ^ Its aim is to exploit 
 the individual for the service of the group, of which 
 the HohenzoUem is the head. It was the aim 
 consistently inculcated by the Prussian mihtary 
 despots of 1640 to 1786 ; and from its grim and 
 forbidding presence the German muse " went 
 unwanted, unhonoured ". 
 
 Such was the Prussia which ** Deutschland found '' 
 in the age of Frederick the Great : to which, in its 
 hour of steep affliction, great-hearted Germans 
 came running, with balm and healing in their hands. 
 Poor, broken idol of the HohenzoUem : how 
 generously they deemed it worth repairing ; how 
 ignobly it requited their generosity. Fichte - 
 
 1 Ibid,, 289. 
 
 2 Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762-1814; Kantian philosopher. 
 
 93 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 hastened from Jena to mend its sore and wounded 
 heart, to distil into its anguish of self-abasement his 
 noble Addresses to the German Nation, through 
 which " the name ' German nation ' first regained 
 a meaning and a value '' ^ Schamhorst ^ hurried 
 from Hanover to mend its shattered arm, bringing 
 with him English ideas of miUtary discipline and 
 honour, for which his sons were fighting under 
 Wellington. Stein ^ Humboldt *, and Hardenberg » 
 renovated its stupid, wooden head, and gave it — if 
 only it could have profited by them — new conceptions 
 of self-government and self-control. These were the 
 Germans who " found Prussia '* : who taught her 
 to find herself ; till Amdt « sang her into freedom 
 from under the conqueror's yoke, and Komer' 
 sought a warrior's death to crown his patriotic poetry. 
 But the new Prussia perished in its cradle. This 
 is the melancholy fact in the history of German 
 culture. The creation of Humboldt and Fichte hardly 
 survived its creators, hardly survived the Battle of 
 Leipzig, October i6th to 19th, 1813, in which 
 
 ^ Biese, Deutsche Litter aturgeschichte, ii, 234. 
 
 ^ G. S. von Scharnhorst, 1756-18 13 ; organizer of the Prussian 
 army against Napoleon. 
 
 3 Baron Heinrich von Stein, 175 7-1 831 ; statesman. 
 
 * Wilhelm von Humboldt, 1767-183 5 ; minister of education. 
 '^ Prince Karl August von Hardenberg, 1750- 1822 ; statesman. 
 
 • Ernst Moritz Arndt, 1 769-1 860 ; poet and historian. 
 
 ' Karl Theodor Komer, 1756-18 13 ; poet; died in battle. 
 
 94 
 
SWORD AND PEN IN PRUSSIA 
 
 Napoleon was defeated and his victory at Jena was 
 avenged. The reaction was speedy and complete. 
 The implacable militarism of the Hohenzollem, 
 backed by the obscurantism of his Junkers and by 
 the poisonous influence of Metternich ^ who had the 
 axe of absolutism to grind, got the Prussia that suited 
 him again. '' For a year or two statesmen as well 
 as poets thought that this patriotic enthusiasm 
 might find permanent expression in a free, 
 independent, and national German State. The 
 quarter of a century which followed the War of 
 Liberation was, however, a period of disillusionment, 
 of hopes belied, promises broken, and reforms 
 deferred. . . . The explanation is not far to seek : 
 nature, it has been said, did not foresee Prussia, 
 and Prussia is the work of man's hands. Monarchy 
 created Prussia to an extent to which it created no 
 other State. . . . Every patriot who wished to 
 serve his country must do so in the civil or military 
 administration '' *. 
 
 This was Prussia's reply to the great-hearted 
 Germans of the Liberation. This was the sacrifice 
 exacted by the Hohenzollem idol from those who 
 had restored it to its shrine. It were better to be 
 dead on the battlefield of liberty with Scharnhorst 
 and Komer than to be alive in Prussia with 
 
 I Prince Metternich, 1773-1859 ; Chancellor of the Austrian 
 Empire. 
 
 * Cambridge Modern History, x, ch. xi (by Professor A. F. 
 Pollard). ^ 
 
 95 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 Hardenberg and Arndt. For *' the net result of the 
 movement for constitutional progress was a bitter 
 disappointment to that portion of the German 
 people which took an interest in public life " ^ And 
 ** those moral effects of the War of Liberation from 
 which so much had at first been hoped, now seemed 
 to have been lost utterly and for ever " *. Students 
 of the history of Prussian culture should revise in 
 the light of these facts such a statement as Carlyle's, 
 which we quote for the last time : ** Deutschland 
 found Prussia ; a solid and living State, round 
 which the Teutonic people should consolidate 
 itself ". 
 
 The facts speak for themselves. Arndt was 
 dismissed from his professorship ; Stein was forced 
 into private life ; Hardenberg's old-age retirement 
 was ante-dated by Mettemich's wish ; free speech 
 was treated as high treason ; seven professors at 
 Gottingen were deprived of their chairs : three, 
 including Jakob Grimm, were expatriated. 
 
 Or take the single case of Heine ^ he was patriot 
 German at heart, fine product of the era of liberation, 
 true brother to Korner and Arndt, own son of Hegel 
 and Goethe. He it was who called Luther's famous 
 hymn " the Marseillaise of the Reformation " ; who 
 called Lessing the prophet of the Third Testament ; 
 and Kant *' the executioner of deism " : everything 
 
 ^ Ibid. 2 Lord Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, 398. 
 
 ^ Heinrich Heine, 1 799-1856 ; poet. 
 
 96 
 
SWORD AND PEN IN PRUSSIA 
 
 that was great in German history appealed to his 
 eager imagination, and urged him to fresh con- 
 structive tasks. But there was no room for him in 
 the country which the HohenzoUem forbad to grow. 
 His Liberal ideas and Jewish origin deprived him of 
 his passport to honour, even to respectability in a 
 State in which the civil and military administration 
 was the narrow highway to fame. The culture, 
 which drove out Grimm, sent Heine into voluntary 
 exile, and wrung from his heart the bitter cry (we 
 translate literally again ^) : 
 
 ** I once possessed a lovely Fatherland. 
 The oaken-tree 
 
 Grew there so tall, the violets peeped soft. 
 It was a dream. 
 
 " It kissed me German- wise, and German spake 
 (You '11 not believe 
 
 How good it sounded), saying ' I love thee ' ! 
 It was a dream.'* 
 
 Like Niobe, weeping for her children, and they 
 were not ; like Ruth, in tears amid the alien corn ; 
 the German muse was repelled by the Hohenzollern 
 idol, reinstated in its Prussian shrine. 
 
 If German testimony be sought to these self- 
 evident facts, the following paragraph may be 
 quoted : 
 
 *' What a singular and astounding spectacle ! 
 Here is a people just recovered from centuries of 
 
 1 In der Fremde, 3. 
 97 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 political misery, having just regained the full 
 sense of its power, just risen with one accord to 
 vindicate its honour and independence; and the 
 very moment that the foreign enemy is vanquished, 
 the very moment that the longed-for opportunity 
 for a thorough national reconstruction has come, 
 this same people again falls a victim to its here- 
 ditary lack of common consciousness, it allows the 
 old sectional animosities to revive, it suffers the 
 leaders in the great struggle for freedom and unity 
 to be pushed aside, it is forced back into the old 
 submission to princely omnipotence '' ^ 
 
 German unity was founded in the end. The 
 German Empire was welded together, despite the 
 disillusionment of the Liberation. But the new 
 nation-builder took no risks. He wanted no Fichte's 
 Addresses, no Stein's constitutional reforms. He 
 had learned his lesson of repression, and he succeeded 
 in teaching it to the HohenzoUern. He has told us 
 how he set to work. '* We should never get nearer 
 to our goal by speeches, leagues, majority-resolutions ; 
 there would have to be a serious conflict, which 
 could only be settled by iron and blood '\ And 
 again : " The Gordian knot of German conditions 
 was not to be loosed by love and dualism, but only 
 
 ^ Kuno Francke, A History of German Literature as Determined 
 by Social Forces, 495-96 ; Bell, 1901. Dr. Francke, though 
 resident at Harvard University, dedicated his book to his fellow- 
 countrymen, " in unalterable loyalty and attachment to our 
 common Fatherland ". 
 
 98 
 
SWORD AND PEN IN PRUSSIA 
 
 by the military clean-cut ; it came to this, to gain 
 the King of Prussia, with his connivance or without 
 it, and therefore the Prussian army, for the service 
 of the national cause ; no matter whether the 
 leadership of Prussia or the union of Germany was 
 put first : both objects marched together. This 
 was clear to me, and I hinted at it in the Budget 
 Committee (Sept. 30th, 1862), in my oft-quoted 
 remark about iron and blood''. And again: 
 ** German patriotism requires a Prince to concen- 
 trate its attachment. . . Historically, the dynasty in 
 Germany with the strongest-marked characteristics 
 is the Prussian. . . . Other European peoples are 
 not dependent on such a medium for their patriotism 
 and their national feeling " ^ Bismarck's authority 
 is unassailable. The smaller men whom he after- 
 wards inspired may have mistaken or exceeded 
 their instructions. These are the words of the man 
 himself : the specification of the architect of the 
 United Germany. He would have no meddling 
 sentimentalists ; no second string of love in his 
 design. German patriotism must hang round a 
 dynasty ; the HohenzoUern dynasty stood highest, and 
 commanded the biggest army ; therefore the King of 
 Prussia must be played, whether he knew it or not, into 
 the top square on the board ; and the iron strokes of 
 1864, 1866 and 1870 hammered this policy home. 
 
 ^ Bismarck, Gedanhen und Erinnerungen, i, 283, 289, 291-2. 
 Stuttgart, 1898. 
 
 99 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 Prince Bismarck was the second successor to King 
 Frederick William L The first successor was 
 Frederick the Great. His '* military clean-cut '* failed 
 at Jena. But the national sense which had been 
 stimulated by his care for the greatness of Prussia 
 rallied the other States to Prussia in the hour of 
 her collapse. '* The fame of Frederick began to 
 supply the place of a common Government and a 
 common capital '* (Carlyle). German literature, 
 German music, German learning, German freedom, 
 German idealism, German Goethe — these combined 
 to reinstate Prussia on the fields of the War of 
 Liberation. Then the reactionaries had their way. 
 They sealed the windows and the doors. The pass- 
 port to the new Prusso-Germany had to be vis6 by a 
 military official ; the love-duaUsts' dream was rudely 
 shattered. So the road was straightened for 
 Bismarck, the recruiter-king's second successor. 
 He profited by Frederick the Great's mistakes. 
 No Napoleon should overthrow him at a new Jena. 
 He closed every loophole of dualism ; he made 
 '* love " a function of militarism, in the sense of a 
 dynastic attachment to the Prince with the biggest 
 standing army. He captured the forces of culture 
 which had sprung up independent of the Prince, and 
 turned them to the Prince's service. Heine's fate 
 acted as a warning. The new style acquired a 
 mihtary edge. The sword governed the pen. 
 
 It looked fair. Lord Bryce has told us how, in 
 
SWORD AND PEN IN PRUSSIA 
 
 the eyes of a contemporary, " every citizen, every 
 soldier, felt that this struggle [1870-71] was a struggle 
 for the greatness and freedom of the nation. . . . 
 Never before for centuries, not even in the War of 
 Liberation of 1813-14, had the whole people felt and 
 acted so completely as one. All saw that the time 
 had now come to give this practically realised unity 
 its formal political expression '* ^ But tranquillity 
 sifts emotions, and the moralist corrects the con- 
 temporary observer. " Think not '\ wrote old Sir 
 Thomas Browne, " that morality is ambulatory ; 
 that vices in one age are not vices in another, or 
 that virtues, which are under the everlasting seal of 
 right reason, may be stamped by opinion''. 
 Frederick the Great's military State, owing to its 
 inherent vices, found its Jena in 1806 ; his successor's 
 State will meet the same fate. 
 
 German unity recovered from the shock, German 
 culture never recovered. The generation which was 
 inspired by the hopes that sprang out of the War of 
 Liberation was extinguished, and was not renewed. 
 There are possibly still those who fear that a second 
 collapse of German unity will destroy national 
 faculties worth preserving. Let history reassure 
 them. They will connive at the destruction of 
 nothing which anyone will miss except for his own 
 good. Culture in Germany has never been 
 nationaUzed ; it was Prussianized by order instead. 
 
 1 Holy Roman Empire, Supplementary Chapter, 416. 
 lOI 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 A national culture meant to Bismarck a dual voice 
 in the nation's affairs, and Prusso-Germany re- 
 pressed such ambitions, as incompatible with the 
 "military clean-cut ''. 
 
 Bismarck taught a false view of culture : hateful 
 to Lessing, hateful to Goethe, hateful to Arndt. 
 Most hateful of all to the freest of all, the leaders of 
 German Romanticism : the brothers Schlegel, 
 Schleiermacher, Schelling, Tieck, Novalis, Wacken- 
 roder ; all born between 1767 and 1775. What was 
 the commonest theme of this group of romantic 
 writers, the Wordsworth and Coleridge of Germany ^ ? 
 Beauty, self-expression, the ego, and the rights of the 
 soul in the universe. This thoime, nascent in 
 Wilhelm Meister, Goethe's romance of the apprentice 
 to experience, was repeated in book after book— in 
 Lucinde, Sternbald, William Lovell, Heinrich von 
 Ofterdingen, and the rest, — and was resumed in the 
 quest of the Blue Flower, which symbolized the 
 paradise on earth, where *' world becomes dream, 
 and dream becomes world " (Novalis). To make 
 the visible correspond with the invisible, the outer 
 with the inner, opportunities with rights, man with 
 God : this was, from first to last, in personal 
 experiment and public profession, their creative, 
 constructive ideal. 
 
 The earth with her bars is about them for ever. 
 
 1 In both countries, 1798 was a cardinal year : The Schlegels' 
 AthencBum was pubhshed in Berlin ; Lyrical Ballads in England. 
 
 102 
 
SWORD AND PEN IN PRUSSIA 
 
 Bismarck broke them with iron and blood ; the 
 HohenzoUem idol sat in its temple of Prusso-German 
 militarism, and the muse *' went unwanted, un- 
 honoured ". They had their Coleridge, their 
 Wordsworth, their romantic morning at the beginning 
 of the nineteenth century. But where was their 
 Tennyson, their Meredith, their Swinburne, as the 
 century declined ? 
 
 We have tried to show in this chapter the divorce 
 between German culture and the German State, and 
 the defeat of the former by the latter. In writing 
 of enemies in war-time, every suspicion of prejudice 
 should be removed ; especially in writing of German 
 culture on the morrow of Louvain and Reims every 
 statement should be abundantly vouched. Accord- 
 ingly, we have quoted freely, and have purposely 
 chosen our authorities from the period before the 
 war : Lord Bryce, Lord Acton, and the Cambridge 
 histories planned according to his design. The 
 best witness of aU is Bismarck, who, in his Reflections 
 and Recollections y laid bare the scaffolding of craft 
 which he used to re-build the fallen State. 
 
 This record would be irrelevant to the present 
 war, and to its political history in the wars and 
 settlements of the past, if it were not for the German 
 pretence of a destiny and a mission to the nations. 
 
 We have shown, and shall show more fully as the 
 narrative proceeds, the fallacy of the Imperial 
 
 103 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 illusion ; how Bourbon, Buonaparte and Hohen- 
 zoUern disputed the inheritance of Charlemagne, 
 and how the Habsburg line of Roman Emperors, 
 who were at the same time Archdukes of Austria 
 and the heads of other States, contrived to keep alive 
 the shadow of Imperial might long after the 
 substance had departed. This illusion, most 
 sedulously fostered during the present reign in 
 Germany, in a period when it has been least 
 appropriate to modern conditions of life and thought, 
 has been cleverly utilized by the State to foster the 
 sense of nationality. The German nation, which 
 still consists of the collection of separate States, 
 among which Bismarck chose Prussia as the possessor 
 of the biggest army, has been brought to believe 
 that its Empire, founded in 1871, represents the 
 Holy Roman Empire, and continues its cultural 
 tradition. Nothing could be further from the truth. 
 The German Empire of 1871 represents Moltke's 
 revision of Schamhorst*s attempt after 1806 
 to repair the disasters of the Prussian army created 
 between 1640 and 1786. Scharnhorst's fellow- 
 workers admitted other than military factors to 
 the re-making of their State. Bismarck admitted 
 none other. He deliberately excluded from such 
 factors the independent culture of the German 
 States ; and that culture withered where it had 
 grown. 
 A German newspaper wrote in the course of the 
 
 104 
 
SWORD AND PEN IN PRUSSIA 
 
 present war, referring, we believe, to Prof. Delbriick : 
 *' Germany has no use for professors who are 
 frightened at the smell of blood '\ This typifies 
 modern German culture. Frederick the Great was 
 indifferent to his professors. They might gather 
 wool and notions as they chose. Bismarck, playing 
 for higher stakes, mounted from indifference to 
 utility. He ironed and blooded the professoriate. 
 They should sow Prussian culture or none. And the 
 professoriate included poets and song-makers, 
 musicians, painters, and actors : the whole pro- 
 fessional class. Not again were they to be at 
 liberty to be liberal. Prusso-Germany could employ 
 them for better uses. They, too, should bring 
 offerings to the idol ; the Hohenzollern had a 
 capacious maw. 
 
 We believe this account to be accurate. We 
 beUeve that German culture was arrested, with 
 other liberal ideas, in the reaction after 1815 ; and 
 that, though Prussian militarism succeeded in 
 making an Empire in 1871, as it had made a Kingdom 
 in 1701, it succeeded at the cost of those forces 
 which had generously hastened to its support when 
 the Kingdom fell in 1806. Those forces, unhonoured 
 by the kings, have been basely utilized by the 
 emperors. They have been attracted into the 
 Prussian system. The overgrown army of King 
 Frederick WiUiam I, like Aaron's rod, has swallowed 
 the rest. 
 
 105 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 pWhat will happen to the arrested culture of 
 Germany if the idol is overthrown again, it is not 
 our business to inquire. German genius, which 
 militarism diverted, flourished independently of 
 militarism, and may so flourish again. This lies on 
 the knees of other gods than those whom Germany 
 has learnt to worship. 
 
 io6 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE GIANTS 
 
 We return to King Frederick II at the head of his 
 father's army. 
 
 He made vigorous use of it. The times were 
 favourable to force, and the ruler who intended to 
 be effective in re-settling the balance of power had 
 to speak with the voice of guns. 
 
 As a fact, the European Wars which disputed the 
 Peace of Utrecht, and which lasted, roughly, a 
 hundred years from 1715 to 1815, were not decided 
 in Europe at all. The old, dreary controversies 
 between rival dynasties and kings, which descended, 
 as we have seen, from the earlier wars of religion, 
 were the tail-end of a bigger conflict, the front of 
 which lay across the seas. This was the struggle 
 between France and England for mastery in Asia 
 and for the trade of the New World. But the 
 movements of the tail and at the front did not 
 always exactly correspond. If it is true that 
 Frederick's aggression was " felt in lands where the 
 name of Prussia was unknown ; and, in order that 
 he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised 
 to defend, black men fought on the coast of 
 
 107 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 Coromandel, and red men scalped each other by the 
 Great Lakes of North America''^; it is still more 
 true that the " ground of discord was not always 
 equally apparent even to the beUigerents themselves, 
 and still less to the rest of the world '' ^. The two 
 ends of the struggle were not even. The wars in 
 Europe and the Colonies were double aspects of a 
 single rivalry. The decisive battles were won in 
 the New World, and all that occurred in the Old was 
 the resultant of forces out of sight. Still, the 
 Continental wars, however obscure, became means 
 to ends of their own : became original, not secondary, 
 movements ; and the possessor of the biggest army 
 had the opportunity of playing the biggest role. 
 " For that end it was necessary that Prussia should 
 be all sting " ^ 
 
 It is with the European end that we are here 
 concerned. Prussia used the distant issues to advance 
 her Continental influence. She stung her rivals in 
 Europe into recognising her military value ; stung 
 the Empire in Silesia, stung France on her frontiers, 
 stung Poland to death. In that age she had little 
 or no interest in Greater Europe as such. Her 
 Colonial ambition was to come later, when Germany, 
 too, " should be all sting ''. Sir Edward Goschen, 
 our Ambassador lately at Berlin, telegraphing to 
 
 1 Macaulay, Essays : " Frederic the Great." 
 
 2 Seeley, Expansion of England, 31 ; the whole of Bk. I, 
 Lecture ii, should be read. ^ Macaulay, ibid. 
 
 108 
 
THE GIANTS 
 
 Sir Edward Grey on July 29th, 1914, stated that he 
 had questioned the German Chancellor about French 
 colonies in the event of England's neutrality in this 
 war, and he had said that he was unable to give an 
 undertaking that they would not be annexed ^ 
 King Frederick the Great of Prussia, relying on his 
 father's army, took precisely the same course in 
 1740 as Kaiser Wilhelm, relying on the same weapon, 
 took in 1914. The annexation of the Austrian 
 province of Silesia was a wholly unprovoked outrage, 
 dictated by the desire for aggrandizement and by 
 the conviction of superior strength. It was worse, 
 for Frederick, like his successor, was talking peace 
 while he was preparing war ; he was even offering 
 military assistance to the Archduchess of Austria at 
 the very moment that he was making ready to rob 
 her. The same aim of robbery under arms dictates 
 the Colonial policy of the present possessor of the 
 army bequeathed by Frederick WiUiam I. His first 
 heir, Frederick's Prussia, employed it for aggression 
 in Europe ; his second heir, Bismarck's Germany, 
 employs it for aggression overseas. It is a hurtful 
 and a fatal legacy. It inflicts infinite pain on 
 entirely unoffending countries, and it destroyed 
 Prussia in 1806. A like fate, we trust, will overtake 
 the like aggressor. 
 And it is right to point out that the circumstances 
 
 ^ See Great Britain and the European Crisis (State-paper), 
 No. 85 ; Id. 
 
 109 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 are more detestable to-day. Then, the Peace of 
 Utrecht contained direct incitements to war. The 
 Emperor Charles VI was never consoled for his loss 
 of the Spanish throne, nor for its confirmation to 
 Philip V after the War of the Spanish Succession. 
 He was almost equally dissatisfied with the division 
 of spoils in Italy, and with the elevation of the 
 Duke of Savoy to the rank of King of Sicily ^ He 
 hated the necessity of recognising Prussia as a 
 kingdom, and his acquisition of the former Spanish 
 Netherlands (Belgium) was as inconvenient to 
 himself as to others. Fresh wars, therefore, were 
 inevitable, even apart from the weakness of Poland, 
 and the growing powers of Prussia and Russia. 
 Though history condemns Frederick's acts, it cannot 
 blame him for all the fighting that took place. His 
 successor is far more blameworthy. To-day there 
 is no Peace of Utrecht, challenging by its provisions 
 dynastic jealousies hardly allayed and territorial 
 ambitions provocatively gratified. The French (and 
 British) Colonies which Germany covets have not 
 been recently distributed by the arbitrary fiat of 
 diplomatists. They are free and independent com- 
 munities, more conscious even than the peoples of 
 the Old World of their right to be governed as they 
 choose. The principle of annexation by force of 
 arms, the treatment of French or British Africa as 
 
 ^ Victor Amadeus II ; he exchanged Sicily for Sardinia in 
 1720. 
 
 IIO 
 
THE GIANTS 
 
 French or Spanish Italy was treated at Utrecht, is 
 repugnant to the conscience of modern law. Austria's 
 quarrel with France and Spain — the Habsburg 
 quarrel with the Bourbon — in and after 17 14, gave 
 Prussia the occasion which she wanted for encroach- 
 ing on Silesia and Poland. Austria's local quarrel 
 with Serbia in 1914 gave Germany no shadow of a 
 claim to snatch a Colonial Empire from Great Britain 
 or France. There was no double war in progress : 
 in Europe and in Greater Europe at the same time. 
 There were no decaying kingdoms to be partitioned ; 
 no peoples to be bodily transferred, like bales of 
 goods, from one owner to another ; there was no 
 Protestant ascendancy to be estabhshed in the North 
 as a counterpoise to the Catholic Empire ; no 
 Imperial illusion to be sustained ; no Pragmatic 
 Sanction to be defied. 
 
 These aspects loomed large in 1740, when Frederick 
 the Great became King of Prussia. 
 
 A " Pragmatic Sanction " was a method reserved 
 to a reigning Sovereign of upsetting the normal 
 course of affairs by personal decree. The Pragmatic 
 Sanction of that date referred to the Austrian 
 succession. Charles VI had no son ; his brother, 
 the late Emperor, had had no son ; and the elective 
 title of Emperor and the hereditary Austrian 
 dominions would both be thrown into the melting- 
 pot when the Habsburg male line failed. Charles VI 
 was unfortunate in this respect. His candidature 
 
 III 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 for the crown of Spain — in his modest rank as the 
 Emperor's second son — had led forty years earUer to 
 the Spanish Succession War ; his death as Emperor 
 without an heir led to the War of the Austrian 
 Succession. 
 
 The object of Charles's Pragmatic Sanction had 
 been to secure the succession for his daughter, 
 Maria Theresa. She could not be elected Emperor, 
 but she could be the Habsburg's heir as Archduchess 
 of Austria, Queen of Hungary, Bohemia, etc. Her 
 father worked for years to win the assent of the 
 Powers to this contemplated arrangement, and, 
 though some required a price for their support, on 
 the whole it was generally guaranteed. Two items 
 of cost are interesting in the light of later events. 
 Frederick Augustus of Saxony demanded Austria's 
 support to his candidature for the throne of Poland, 
 to which he was duly elected in 1733 ; and France 
 obtained the cession of Lorraine, till then a duchy 
 of the Empire. The ousted Duke of Lorraine was 
 transposed to Tuscany, and became the husband of 
 Maria Theresa, and, later, the Emperor Francis L 
 Here it should be noted, however, that Lorraine was 
 never Prussian territory till it was annexed after the 
 war of 1870. — Meanwhile, King Frederick William I 
 was included in the guarantors of the Pragmatic 
 Sanction ; and, when he died, in May, 1740, his son 
 acknowledged the bond. 
 
 Charles died in the following October, and nothing 
 
 112 
 
THE GIANTS 
 
 but a " scrap of paper '' stood between King Frederick 
 and his desires ; between the Prussian Army, which 
 he had recently inherited, and the patrimony of 
 Maria Theresa, which his father and he had 
 guaranteed. Before the brave young Archduchess 
 was aware, her rich province of Silesia was shorn 
 away. 
 
 The invasion of Silesia by Prussia in the late 
 autumn of 1740 was indefensible at the time. 
 Frederick is said to have admitted that his object 
 was *' to make a name.'' Louis XV of France 
 thought him *' mad " ; and it was not till later 
 successes had dazzled the eyes of his subjects that 
 his action was condoned either at home or abroad. 
 By Maria Theresa herself the crime was always 
 unforgiven. 
 
 Looking from the immediate facts to the remoter 
 consequences of the aggression, we are confronted 
 with yet another proof of the continuity of Prussian 
 policy. The newspapers told us the other day that 
 in October, 1914, the Austrian troops were required 
 to take an oath of allegiance to Kaiser Wilhelm. 
 Whether or not it is true that this last humiliation 
 was inflicted upon them, there is no doubt that the 
 Habsburg power has been completely subordinated 
 to the Hohenzollern, and that this object has been 
 achieved step by step, without haste and without 
 rest, since King Frederick's Silesian expedition in 
 October, 1740. Bismarck's war of 1866 and the 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 defeat of Austria at Sadowa was not an isolated 
 episode in the history of Central Europe ; it was a 
 stage in the development of Prussia, or, rather, in 
 Prussia's self-aggrandizement, as planned by the 
 Hohenzollern family from the Peace of Utrecht to 
 this day. There was a time, as we have shown, 
 when the condition of Europe and Greater Europe 
 supplied pretexts for military acts of violence ; 
 though at no time in European history was the 
 invasion of Silesia other than treacherous and 
 unrighteous. But the Protestant feeling in North 
 Germany, the hollow Imperialism of the Habsburg, the 
 attraction of Austria South-eastwards, the constant 
 menace of France and Spain, the Turkish problem 
 and the growth of Russia : these and other temporary 
 ; factors cannot be left out of account in an estimate 
 • of Frederick the Great's attitude towards the weapon 
 w^hich his father had forged. What is inconceivable, 
 however, or what would be inconceivable if it were 
 not true, is that Europe and Greater Europe should 
 still be at the mercy of the same w^eapon, and of the 
 moral obliquity which it causes. All the other 
 factors have disappeared. Political, religious, 
 dynastic : they are all the phantoms of a shade. 
 The sole permanent factor has been the army of 
 King Frederick William I, and the fatal pride of 
 its possession. '' We do not conquer with the pen, 
 but by the sword '\ said Frederick William himself ; 
 " I wanted to make a name ", said his son. 
 
 114 
 
THE GIANTS 
 
 We do not propose to follow the scenes in the 
 military drama which was enacted on the battle- 
 fields of Central Europe between 1740 and 1748, or 
 more precisely, 1763. The War of the Austrian 
 Succession was closed after eight years' fighting by 
 the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, but this Peace was 
 merely an armistice which lasted another eight years. 
 By its terms, Frederick kept Silesia, but he was 
 aware that the struggle would have to be renewed ; 
 France retired from the Austrian Netherlands — 
 the sorely-tried soil of Belgium — though Austria had 
 to consent to the Dutch barrier-towns ; a princi- 
 pality had been carved out of Austrian Italy for 
 Philip, son of Philip V of Spain and of his powerful 
 consort, Elizabeth Famese ; Savoy and Nice went 
 from France to the King of Sardinia ; and there 
 were sundry changes and reconstructions. 
 
 The total effect of them was this : France was 
 weaker ; Austria was stronger ; Prussia and Russia 
 had become effective States. The Archduchess 
 Maria Theresa had saved the Pragmatic Sanction 
 from its threatened wreck ; and, though she had 
 lost some territories, she had strengthened her hold 
 on the rest, and her husband, Francis I, had been 
 Holy Roman Emperor since 1745, thus ensuring the 
 Habsburg Une. If the Habsburg house was con- 
 fronted with the growing jealousy of theHohenzoUem, 
 it had modified the settlement of 1713 by establishing 
 its superiority over the Bourbon. Maria Theresa 
 
 115 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 had wsely concluded a close alliance with the 
 Empress Elizabeth of Russia, granddaughter of 
 Peter the Great, and this diplomatic union between 
 two clever and powerful women was obnoxious to 
 Prussia and France ; especially to Frederick the 
 Great, and the hopes which he had cherished at his 
 accession. In that year, 1740, the Russian crown 
 had just been inherited by a little boy, Ivan VI, 
 and the probability of his long minority, possibly 
 with Prussian influence behind the throne, had given 
 Frederick a sense of confidence in his anti-Austrian 
 poHcy. This confidence was grievously shaken when 
 Elizabeth ousted Ivan in 1741. 
 
 Accordingly, the eight years' truce (1748-56) was 
 devoted by the rulers of Europe to a shuffling of 
 alliances which is known as the diplomatic reversal. 
 Russia and Austria, led respectively by the Empress 
 and Archduchess, combined to contest the might of 
 Prussia, and, primarily, to win back Silesia. France, 
 conscious of her weakness, and recognising that her 
 best hope lay in acquiring powerful friends in Europe 
 while she was fighting England overseas, joined the 
 Austro-Russian coalition. Her price was a slice of 
 Belgium, and she was further attracted to the 
 alliance by the hate — a somewhat personal matter — 
 which King Louis XV and his mistress, the domineer- 
 ing Madame de Pompadour, entertained for Frederick 
 the Great. This threw Frederick back on England, 
 and the Convention of Westminster defined the 
 
 116 
 
THE GIANTS 
 
 relations of England and Prussia, while the Treaty 
 of Versailles united Austria and France. Both were 
 concluded in 1756, and a supplement to the Versailles 
 Treaty was signed at Petrograd in the following year. 
 
 Thus the Peace of Utrecht was shattered, and, 
 forty-two years after its conclusion, the Seven 
 Years' War (1756-63) was begun. 
 
 It sounds more confusing than it is. We remember 
 that the Peace of Utrecht contained the seeds of 
 future warfare. Despite the length of the conflict 
 which it terminated, and despite the sacrifices of 
 the AUie5 in their attempt to overthrow Pan- 
 Bourbonism in Europe, the victors did not act 
 together. They established the dangerous principle, 
 which found an apt pupil in Prussia, that might was 
 synonymous with right. Prussia got herself an army, 
 and put the precept into practice. The result was 
 that, when Prussia threatened Austria (and the 
 forceful occupation of Silesia amounted to more than 
 a threat), Austria came to terms with France against 
 the new power in Central Europe, both trusting to 
 the luck of events to score off each other in the end. 
 To this coalition of old foes was added Prussia's 
 eastern rival, Russia. Meanwhile, the French 
 struggle with England for leadership in the New 
 World had not been settled at Utrecht, and any enemy 
 of France on the Continent was to that extent an 
 ally of England. But such alliances, though they 
 had their uses, were bound to be short-lived. 
 
 117 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 The old feud between Bourbon and Habsburg 
 was too deep to be permanently healed. The old 
 problems of Belgium and Italy could not be solved 
 by shelving them; and, though the pressure of Maria 
 Theresa, backed by her chancellor, von Kaunitz*, 
 prevailed on the unstable self-conceit of King Louis 
 XV of France, it was a flimsy and temporary bond. 
 Similarly, England's future was not destined to be 
 linked with Prussia's. The defence of Hanover was 
 worth gaining, for George II of England was still 
 Elector of that State, but Prussia's territorial ambi- 
 tions were no real concern of England. 
 
 Briefly, the Seven Years' War, was an incident 
 of the greater war overseas. Its abnormal and 
 expedient alliances were contracted from mixed 
 motives on both sides ; and neither France nor 
 England was long-sighted in failing to settle their 
 differences without doubling them by Continental 
 complications. 
 
 Still, things were as they were, and they had to 
 take their course. 
 
 We are not immediately concerned with the 
 military aspects of the Seven Years' War, but its 
 opening scene was so like the opening scene of the 
 present war in Europe as to merit passing considera- 
 tion. Frederick of Prussia, aiming at Austria, 
 decided to strike the first blow, and his quickest way 
 lay through Saxony. The Saxons, to his surprise, 
 
 ^ Prince Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz, 1711-1794. 
 
THE GIANTS 
 
 put up a stout resistance, and their pluck and valour 
 gave time for Austria to mobilize her army and to 
 organize her commands. The invasion of Saxony 
 started in August, 1756, but the occupation was not 
 complete till the following October, when the 
 Saxon court retired to Warsaw. Now, reading 
 France for Austria, Belgium for Saxony, Havre for 
 Warsaw, and 1914 for 1756, the analogy with recent 
 events is obvious. So obvious, indeed, that the 
 German Government of to-day seems to have tried 
 to round it off. The archives at Dresden had proved 
 that Saxony was in communication with Austria 
 and Russia as early as 1746, with a view to taking 
 joint action against Prussia. It would be immensely 
 convenient to Kaiser Wilhelm to prove the same case 
 against Belgium in relation to England and France. 
 The records of the Seven Years' War are more 
 familiar in Germany than here ; and it is difficult to 
 resist the conclusion that the alleged archives at 
 Antwerp, which were said to establish this charge, 
 and to date from 1906, were invented by venal 
 historians on the analogy of the Saxon conquest 
 already repeated in its main features. If this con- 
 jecture is correct, the attempt to fabricate prejudice 
 by false historical suggestion is a gross abuse of the 
 " culture " which makes it possible. 
 
 King Frederick was a hard fighter. His victory 
 at Rossbach over the French (November, 1757) was 
 said by Napoleon at a later date to have pronounced 
 
 119 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 the doom of the Bourbon dynasty. At the time it 
 estabHshed Prussia as a formidable mihtary power, 
 and, by driving France across the Rhine, it enabled 
 Frederick to meet the Austrians in the following 
 month and to defeat them soundly at Leuthen. 
 Pitt ^ was naturally delighted : France was losing 
 America in Germany ; and the successes of British 
 arms at Quebec, Quiberon Bay, and Plassey, helped 
 to convince Choiseul ^ of the drawbacks of the Austrian 
 alliance. Still, Frederick's good generalship would 
 not have availed without the chances of good luck. 
 The allied armies could have crushed him more than 
 once if they had only managed to pull together. 
 But with France suspicious of Austria, and with a 
 pro-Prussian party at Petrograd conspiring with the 
 heir to the throne behind the Empress Elizabeth's 
 back, Frederick kept his flag flying ; thus earning his 
 title of *' the Great'' and the admiration of his martial 
 subjects. And the close of the war was as loose- 
 ended as in 1713. England under Lord Bute was 
 again in a "stop the war" mood; Elizabeth of 
 Russia w^as dead, and her successor reversed her 
 policy ; France was counting her losses, with a frank 
 indifference to Austria ; and Frederick of Prussia was 
 left in undisturbed possession of Silesia. From the 
 point of view of international morality, the Treaties 
 of Paris and Hubertusburg (February,i763) reaffirmed 
 
 1 William Pitt (the elder), Earl of Chatham, 1708-1778. 
 ' Due do Choiseul, French statesman, 1 719-1785. 
 
 120 
 
THE GIANTS 
 
 the evil principle of the Peace of Utrecht : the wrong 
 which had caused the war was admitted as a right 
 at the settlement. 
 
 We rue these precedents to-day. They supphed 
 maxims to Napoleon, who crushed Prussia like a rat ; 
 and, in the meanwhile, they furnished the Prussian 
 War-Lord and the greater monarchs of his day wth 
 a mihtary and diplomatic code hardly better than 
 that which the Peace of Westphalia had ratified as 
 long ago as 1648. " Solemn treaties carried no 
 weight ; national boundaries and race limits were 
 held to be of no importance ; the condition of the 
 labouring classes was little considered. Jealousy 
 and suspicion marked the dealings of the States wiht 
 each other ; corruption and venality characterized 
 the official relations of countries ; secret diplomacy 
 was widespread. . . . Self-interest was the only 
 guiding motive " ^. It was a singularly poor return 
 for what Prussian standards would regard as a 
 hundred years' culture by bloodshed. 
 
 We have reached the last generation before the 
 Second Great War, which re-united Europe against 
 an Absolutist. The chief rulers at this date were : — 
 
 The Empire. Joseph II, son of Francis I and 
 Maria Theresa : 1765-90 (Maria 
 Theresa died in 1780) ; succeeded 
 by his brother, Leopold II : 
 1790-92. 
 
 ^ Periods of European History : vi, the Balance of Power, 284. 
 By Arthur Hassall. 
 
 121 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 France. Louis XV, died 1774 ; succeeded 
 
 by Louis XVI, guillotined 1793. 
 
 Charles III, son of Philip V : 
 1759-88; Charles IV: 1788-1819. 
 
 George III : 1760-1820. 
 
 Catherine II, wife of Peter III, 
 acceded by a palace-revolution : 
 1762-96. 
 
 Augustus III of Saxony ; elected 
 1733, died 1763. (Of this 
 kingdom more anon). 
 
 Frederick II, the Great : 1740-86 ; 
 succeeded by his nephew, Fred- 
 erick William II : 1786-97. 
 
 Charles Emmanuel III, died 1773 ; 
 succeeded by Victor Amadeus 
 III: 1773-96. 
 
 France and Austria, it should be noted, had ratified 
 their military alliance by the marriage, 1770, of 
 Louis XVI as Dauphin to the Archduchess Marie 
 Antoinette, daughter of Maria Theresa and the 
 Emperor. Thus the Emperors Joseph and Leopold 
 were brothers-in-law to the King of France. Joseph's 
 policy, however, was pro-Russian : the Empress 
 Catherine was the object of his admiration ; and the 
 unhappy fate of Marie Antoinette — VAutrichienne, 
 as her subjects called her — was aggravated by her 
 Habsburg origin/ 
 
 Spain. 
 
 England. 
 Russia. 
 
 Poland. 
 
 Prussia. 
 
 Sardinia. 
 
 122 
 
THE GIANTS 
 
 Every date in the foregoing table debouches into 
 the era of Revolution. But every name attached 
 to the dates denotes an apostle of autocracy. 
 Catherine, Frederick, and Joseph, in Russia, Prussia 
 and Austria, were at the height of their power : 
 full of benevolent designs for the compulsory eleva- 
 tion of their peoples, and the consequent enlargement 
 of their revenues ; and equally full of rage if their 
 ideal schemes of State Socialism should fom,ent too 
 much social consciousness. The intellectual 
 impulse, as always, is to be traced to France : in 
 this respect, since the Renaissance, the Athens of 
 modem civilization and a fertile mother of ideas ; 
 Rousseau's^ Social Contract was published in 1762, 
 and it spread like a gospel among the nations. 
 Catherine, Frederick, Joseph, legislated as bene- 
 volently as they dared ; they might even have 
 legislated ten times as beneficently as they did ; 
 Spain and Sardinia followed suit ; but there were 
 secret stirrings of the spring, and . a hidden motion 
 of the sap, which were to confound the giants' wisdom 
 and their might. 
 
 The quality of wisdom was apparent in various 
 measures of royal reform, not pertinent to our 
 present narrative : 
 
 '* How small, of all that human hearts endure, 
 That part which laws or Kings can cause or cure." 
 
 The highest-minded despot-kings — and Joseph II 
 
 1 Jean Jacques Rousseau, French philosopher: 171 2-1 778. 
 123 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 earned this epithet — were to learn the truth of 
 Johnson's aphorism, even if they did not learn how 
 to apply it. 
 
 The quality of might was displayed, hardly dis- 
 guised by disingenuous pleas of wisdom, in the 
 First Partition of Poland, August 5th, 1772. The 
 Kings of Poland were elective, and the intrigues of 
 her powerful neighbour-States to secure the election 
 of a foreign king wrought everlasting mischief to 
 the progress of that limited republic. The latest 
 influence had been Saxon. It will be recalled that 
 the Elector of Saxony had stipulated for the 
 Emperor's support to his candidature for the PoUsh 
 crown, as the price of his adhesion to the Emperor's 
 Pragmatic Sanction. Augustus III was elected 
 accordingly, and died in 1763. It now suited Russia's 
 ambition to wield the chief influence in Poland, and 
 Catherine secured the throne for a native noble, 
 Stanislaus Poniatowski. The obvious result ensued. 
 Poland with a Polish king sought to assert her 
 independence, and she was ill enough advised to 
 enter into relations with Turkey, who declared war 
 against Russia in 1767. The crossing of the Polish 
 by the Eastern Question was too much for the 
 equanimity of Europe : it might have led to a general 
 conflagration ; and, accordingly, the Powers looked 
 on while Russia, Prussia and Austria carved up 
 Poland among themselves. This partition was 
 extended and completed in 1793 and 1795. 
 
 124 
 
THE GIANTS 
 
 To the high-minded despot-kings, to the giants 
 who committed this outrage, it was, we may 
 reasonably beheve, merely a country which they 
 divided : a geographical misplacement which they 
 adjusted ; to their own advantage, no doubt, but 
 likewise to the advantage of the inhabitants. 
 Frederick's road-makers and engineers were set to 
 work in his new West Prussia, spreading the boon 
 of Prussian culture over Poland's sea-front and its 
 hinterland. Why, then, should the Poles complain ? 
 And the spoils of Catherine and Joseph were 
 similarly palUated. But Poland answers for herself. 
 It was a nation, not a country, which they dissected 
 for the rectification of their own frontiers, and it is 
 a nation's heart which is upHfted by the hopes of 
 the Third Great War. 
 
 Other national rights were asserted, however 
 tentatively, during these troubled years of despotism 
 trenching on democracy. There were revolts against 
 Joseph II in Hungary and in the Austrian Nether- 
 lands (Belgium), and it took all the tact of his 
 successor, the Emperor Leopold II, to reconcile the 
 insurgent Belgians to the last few years of Austrian 
 rule. 
 
 There was the War of American Independence, 
 of immense influence as republican example, and 
 most important, too, in its effect on England's 
 Continental reputation. There was the endless, 
 almost trackless, course of bargaining, intrigue, 
 
 125 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 family compacts, dynastic alliances, armed aggres- 
 sion, secret treaties, by which the rulers of Europe — 
 or, more exactly, the rulers in Europe — sought, 
 like Canute, to stem the tide ; and to postpone, 
 even for their own lifetime, the recognition of a force 
 in affairs for which they had failed to make allowance 
 in the balance of power at Utrecht. " Amid the 
 wrecks and dust of this universal decay new powers 
 are fashioning themselves, adapted to the new time 
 and its destinies '* K 
 
 ^ Carlyle, French Revolution, I, ii. 
 
 I2§ 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE COMMONS 
 
 The giants of benevolent despotism met a force 
 greater than their own. Frederick of Prussia was 
 dead : his army and all that it supported had fallen 
 into the feebler hands of his nephew, Frederick 
 WilUam II ; but the Empress Catherine of Russia 
 and the Habsburg Emperor Joseph II — the best- 
 meaning despot of them all — survived to witness 
 the revolt of the Commons of France against the 
 Bourbon King, Louis XVI. Nor was Louis its first 
 or only victim. He perished, as we know, by the 
 guillotine in 1793 ; but the death of the Emperor 
 Joseph on February 20th, 1790, was as much a 
 result of the Revolution as the fate of Louis himself. 
 " Your country has killed me/' he cried, when the 
 Commons' disaffection in France spread to his 
 subjects in the Netherlands. 
 
 Many great and admirable writers have told the 
 story of the French Revolution ^ : the real point in 
 
 1 In French, by Mignet, Sorel, Thiers ; in English, by Carlyle, 
 and Cambridge Modern History, Vol. viii. Among works on a 
 smaller scale may be mentioned, Periods of European History : 
 vii, Revolutionary Europe, by H. Morse Stephens (6th edn., 
 Rivingtons, 1907. 5s. net), and The French Revolution, by 
 Hilaire Belloc (Home University Library, is. net). 
 
 127 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 reading it, perhaps, is to avoid the compartmental 
 fallacy. The ambit of the story is so wide, and it 
 touches such diverse interests of speculation and 
 action, that it is liable to be detached from the rock 
 of history which formed it, and to be treated as an 
 isolated phenomenon. Its dramatic qualities not- 
 withstanding, it is a drama in an epic setting. It 
 rose out of the bed of its own past. It is an incident 
 of the growth of Europe : of the sloughing of its 
 skin of medievalism, and of its continuous adaptation 
 to environment. And it left the process incomplete. 
 If we read the story of the Revolution in relation 
 to its future and its past, we shall see that the Third 
 Great War has resumed the uncompleted process, 
 and is carrying us yet another stage — the final stage, 
 if we are wise — on the long road out of the Middle 
 Ages. The Revolution did not accomplish all it 
 sought. Like the Protestant Reformation in Ger- 
 many, like other rays of the Renaissance, and, 
 indeed, like all human endeavours, the bright hopes 
 which issued from its fount were stained on their 
 passage to reaUty by many colours of experience. 
 
 There were the repeated partitions of Poland, and 
 there was the problem of Belgium, for example. 
 We recollect from several places the unhappy annals 
 of that country : how Austria took it from Spain, 
 and France coveted it from Austria ; how Austria 
 found it a burden, and tried to exchange it for 
 Bavaria ; how England and Holland were affected ; 
 
 128 
 
THE COMMONS 
 
 how it was overrun by successive invaders ; and how 
 it rebelled from Joseph II. If the peace-makers in 
 1713 had thought more of national entities than of 
 international frontiers, they might have affirmed a 
 principle and have established a tradition, which, 
 among other results, would have been efficacious in 
 1815 and 1914 to prevent fresh variations of the 
 Bourbon and Habsburg doctrines. As things were, 
 after many troubled years, a revolution in Belgium 
 ensued immediately on the French ; and the declara- 
 tion of the Belgian Republic (January, 1790), 
 followed by the Austrian re-conquest (December, 
 1790), led to a renewal of the war between Austria 
 and France (April, 1792). There were many changes 
 and cross-currents, but the bare fact remains : the 
 Second Great War began where the First had left 
 off, in the Bourbon-Habsburg rival claims to 
 Belgium. 
 
 Between the old peace and the new war, between 
 1713 and 1792, it will be remembered that there had 
 been a period of alliance. The Treaty of 1756, by 
 which France was committed to help Austria to 
 recover Silesia from Prussia, was confirmed in 1770 
 by the marriage of the Dauphin of France to Maria 
 Theresa's daughter ; and this couple in 1792 were 
 King Louis XVI and his consort. Queen Marie 
 Antoinette. Meanwhile, Maria Theresa's sons were 
 elected Emperor successively : Joseph II in 1765 ; 
 Leopold II in 1790. 
 
 129 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 But the Queen's brothers were not the sole em- 
 barrassment when France renewed her war with 
 Austria. The Bourbon in 1792 was in a wholly 
 different position from that of Louis XIV at the 
 opening of hostilities exactly ninety years before. 
 Louis XIV's wars had been expensive ; Louis XV's 
 favourites had been expensive ; Louis XVFs consort 
 was expensive : the taxpayers had stiffened their 
 necks, and the Royal family were prisoners in their 
 own capital. Philosophers, agitators and malcon- 
 tents had combined to revive old rights. On May 
 5th, 1789, the States-General of representatives of 
 the three estates of the realm (Nobility, Clergy, 
 Commons) met for the first time since 1614. From 
 that day events marched rapidly. The Commons 
 {tiers Stat) found leaders. Within six weeks they 
 nominated themselves the National Assembly. By 
 the solemn oath of the Tennis Court of Versailles 
 (June 2oth), they became the Constituent Assembly : 
 they swore not to disband till France had a new 
 constitution. On July 14th, they captured the 
 Bastille, and added its complement of arms to their 
 trophies from the Hotel des Invalides. On October 
 6th, the National Guard, under the Marquis de 
 Lafayette S brought the King from Paris to 
 Versailles, where the palace had been entered by 
 force. 
 
 We omit* the dubitations of 1790, when the 
 
 1 1757-1834. 
 130 
 
THE COMMONS 
 
 Constituent Assembly turned from action to 
 deliberation. 
 
 " Not in vague dreaj.is of man forgetting men, 
 Nor in vast morrows losing the to-day " ^, 
 
 they should have approached their task of re-building 
 the government of France. But Mirabeau ^ their 
 sagest counsellor, died on April 2nd, 1791, and a 
 fortnight later the King's subjects in Paris were 
 revealed as effective gaolers. Next, on June 21st, 
 came the miserable flight, arrested at Varennes, 
 and the more miserable return to Paris (June 25th) : 
 *' Thus lumbers and creeps the ignominious Royal 
 Procession, through many streets, amid a silent- 
 gazing people ; gets itself at length wriggled out of 
 sight ; vanishing in the Tuileries Palace,— towards 
 its doom of slow torture, peine forte et dure *' ^. 
 
 Opinions hardened after this episode. The new 
 constitution was adopted, and the Constituent 
 Assembly was resolved into a Legislative Assembly, 
 in which Robespierre *, ** the Incorruptible,'' took 
 the lead. The King, too, had defined his attitude ; 
 and the action of his brother-in-law, the Emperor 
 Leopold, who invited the attention of other monarchs 
 to the French menace to monarchy, intensified French 
 sentiment against Austria, and against V Autrichienne, 
 
 ^ William Watson, To Edward Dowden. 
 
 * Count Honor6 de Mirabeau, 1749-1791. 
 
 * Carlyle, op. cit, ; the whole passage, book iv, chapters 4-8, 
 •hould b« consulted. * 1757-1794. 
 
 131 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 Either way, the King incurred suspicion, fostered 
 by the revolutionaries to deep resentment. If he 
 leaned to war, it was observed that an Austrian 
 victory might suit him better than a French : were 
 not Prussia, Russia and Sweden in league with 
 Austria to save his throne ; w^as there not a free- 
 masonry of kings ? And if he leaned to peace, he 
 w^as suspect of yielding to Marie Antoinette, and of 
 preferring his Habsburg kin to the spread of French 
 liberty in Belgium. 
 
 In an epoch of political transformation, this was 
 the greatest change of all. The French war against 
 Austria was no longer a dynastic and territorial 
 campaign, as it liad been in the past. To the 
 miUtant vision of the revolutionaries, it had a 
 missionary and a holy cause : it partook of the nature 
 of a crusade. It was not a kings' war, but the 
 Commons', waged upon physical frontiers to extend 
 the boundaries of the intellect. 
 
 We have the highest contemporary evidence to 
 this sentiment. Wordsworth, in his twenty-third 
 year, was in Paris in 1792, and he has told us with 
 matchless sincerity how he was first attracted and 
 then repulsed by the course of the Revolution : — 
 
 *' Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. 
 But to be young was very Heaven ! O times. 
 In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways 
 Of custom, law, and statute, took at once 
 The attraction of a country in romance /' ! 
 
 132 
 
THE COMMONS 
 
 The ardent poet believed, 
 
 " That a benignant spirit was abroad 
 Which might not be withstood, that poverty. 
 Abject as this, would in a httle time 
 Be found no more, that we should see the earth 
 Unthw^arted in her wish to recompense 
 The meek, the lowly, patient child of toil ; 
 All institutes for ever blotted out 
 That legalised exclusion ; empty pomp 
 AboUshed, sensual state and cruel power, 
 Whether by edict of the one or few ; 
 And, finally, as sum and crown of all, 
 Should see the people havdng a strong hand 
 In framing their own laws ; whence better days 
 To all mankind *' ; 
 
 and especially to the Belgians under Austrian rule. 
 
 Accordingly, 
 
 *' My heart was all 
 Given to the people, and my love was theirs " ; 
 
 and when, to his shame and grief, 
 
 *' Britain opposed the liberties of France,** 
 
 and Burke's phiUppics thundered against her, 
 
 " I rejoiced. 
 Exulted, in the triumph of my soul. 
 When Englishmen by thousands were o*erthro^vn ". 
 
 But disillusion followed exultation : 
 
 *' The goaded land waxed mad ; the crimes of few 
 Spread««ito madness of the many ; blasts 
 From hell came sanctified like airs from heaven '* ; 
 
 and the Reign of Terror succeeded the Reign of 
 
 133 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 Liberty. To the great poet's enduring disappoint- 
 ment : 
 
 " Frenchmen had changed a war of self-defence 
 For one of conquest " *. 
 
 We shall note the features of this change, not in 
 " a poet's mind/' but by the milestones of history. 
 The Commons' war of 1792 became an Empire's 
 war in 1804, and we shall see the Republican crusade 
 transformed by Imperial militarism. But at first, 
 at least, there was a " culture," which France 
 deemed it her destiny to spread : a culture, not of 
 tyranny, but of freedom ; not of a king's might, but 
 of the people's rights. 
 
 We had reached June, 1791. In August, the King 
 of Prussia and the Emperor Leopold circulated a 
 monarchical manifesto, known as the Declaration 
 of Pilnitz, affirming their duty to intervene on behalf 
 of the King of France. It was a kind of trade-union 
 of kings, and the minor princes of the Empire rallied 
 to the defence of their order. War swiftly became 
 inevitable. Its actual outbreak was hastened by 
 two changes in the situation, unfavourable to the 
 cause of the monarchists. On March ist, 1792, 
 occurred the death of the Emperor Leopold, and 
 Gustavus III of Sweden was murdered on March 
 29th. Leopold was succeeded by his son, Francis II, 
 
 ^ See The Prelude, xi, io8 ; ix, 519 ; ix, 123 ; xi, 175 ; x, 
 283 ; -s., "^z^ ', xi, 206. Books ix to xi of this noble poem should 
 be consulted in their entirety. 
 
THE COMMONS 
 
 who became the last of the Roman Emperors and 
 the first Emperor of Austria. At this time, he was 
 twenty-four years old, and was disqualified by his 
 age and experience to cope with the difficult circum- 
 stances into which he was plunged. His sympathy 
 was with his aunt, the Queen of France, and with thf^ 
 monarchical principle, now at stake in her adopted 
 country, which his father and his uncle had upheld. 
 But he missed their sagacity and insight in dealing 
 with his allies. The Emperor Leopold had been able 
 to bring pressure to bear on the Prussian and Russian 
 sovereigns : these would now be leaders where then 
 they had been second. The Seven Years' War was 
 avenging itself on the strange alliances which it had 
 formed. Then, Austria and France had combined 
 to recover Silesia from Prussia. Now, Austria and 
 Prussia were combining, — for what ? Austria, to keep 
 her Netherlands, and to help the Habsburg Queen of 
 France ; Prussia, to get what she could in Poland 
 and elsewhere, while Austria was preoccupied, and, 
 above all, not to stand aside at a time when Austria 
 was posing as the champion of the Germanic 
 princes. — Gustavus of Sweden was succeeded by 
 his infant son, and the new Regent adopted and 
 maintained an attitude of strict neutrality. 
 
 In April, 1792, France invaded Belgium. The 
 French general was Dumouriez^ His first onset 
 
 ^ Charles FranQois Dumouriez, 1757 to 1823, when he died in 
 retirement at Henley-on-Thames. 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 was unsuccessful, and the King suffered for his 
 failure. On the anniversary, almost to a day, of 
 the Royal flight to Varennes, the mob forced its way 
 into the Tuileries, and compelled Louis XVI to don 
 the red cap of liberty (June 20th, 1792). The 
 Germanic monarchs raUied to their union, and 
 issued another manifesto, which added fuel to the 
 revolutionary fire. On August loth, King Louis 
 was " suspended,*' and was removed from the 
 Tuileries to the Temple ; and the rapid Prussian 
 advance caused a sudden fear of prison-breaking 
 which led to wholesale murders through all the 
 prisons of Paris (" September Massacres "), On 
 September 20th, Dumouriez engaged the Prussians, 
 and defeated them at Valmy ; and in the following 
 weeks the forces of the newly-declared French 
 Republic occupied Worms and Mayence, Savoy, 
 Nice, and Brussels. 
 
 They fought, not to conquer, but to liberate ; and 
 this heady doctrine had fatal results. After Belgium, 
 why not Holland ? Her annexation by France 
 would bring her into the orbit of republican ideals, 
 and would aim a convenient blow at England. 
 Perhaps Pitt ^ would not fight ; the Republic had 
 English sympathizers, and it mistook (as foreigners 
 would, even in 1914) the attitude of a Parliamentary 
 Opposition when national interests were involved. 
 So, on February ist, 1793, France declared war on 
 
 1 William Pitt (the younger) ; 1759-1806. 
 136 
 
THE COMMONS 
 
 England and Holland ; and, before the end of the 
 next month, the coalition against the Republic was 
 reinforced by the Empire, Prussia, Portugal, the 
 Bourbon Kings of the SiciUes and Spain, and the 
 Princes of several minor States. Sweden, Denmark 
 and Switzerland were neutral. Russia was, nominally, 
 with the AUies ; actually, the Empress Catherine 
 was engaged in her drastic way in curbing Polish 
 republicanism by dividing Poland for the second 
 time. Prussia took Posen and other provinces with 
 the cities of Danzig and Thom ; Russia took 85,000 
 square miles with nearly 4,000,000 inhabitants ; 
 Austria, unwisely, as events proved, was left without 
 a share in the spoils. 
 
 Meanwhile, on January 23rd, Louis XVI had been 
 beheaded ; and this sign of republican clemency 
 and zeal had its part in shaping opinion in England 
 and elsewhere adversely to Wordsworth's sentiment. 
 At the same time — and this is important, in the 
 Hght of later events — it shifted the centre of gravity 
 in France. The very number of the Republic's 
 enemies compelled the government of the Republic 
 to concentrate all their powers on war. The military 
 interest became predominant. Success in arms was 
 now the first condition of the success of that pro- 
 gramme of Uberation, which had inspired the 
 Commons of France to advance, day by day, from 
 the States-General of May 5th, 1789, to the King's 
 execution on January 23rd, 1793 ; and it was from 
 
 137 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 the ranks of the army that the Buonaparte stepped 
 to the Bourbon's throne. The harsher men now 
 came to the front : "To terrorize the opponents of 
 the revolution ; to arouse popular fanaticism by 
 speeches, by present dangers, by insurrections ; to 
 gather all the threads in their own grasp : the 
 government and the safety of the Republic ; to fill 
 it with the keenest enthusiasm in the names of 
 ' Uberty, equality, fraternity ' ; to maintain it in 
 this violent state of crisis in order to utilize its 
 passions and its force — such was the plan of Danton 
 and the V Mountain ' which had taken him as its 
 leader. He it was who stimulated mob-fever with 
 tales of the Republic's growing perils, and who 
 established, under the style of a revolutionary 
 government, the despotism of the majority in place 
 of legal freedom. Robespierre and Marat went even 
 further than he. They wanted to erect in per- 
 manency forms of government which Danton 
 considered merely temporary " ^ 
 
 We shall not trace in detail the story of rapid 
 decline, when " the goaded land waxed mad '\ The 
 RepubHc suffered in two fields at once : in its external 
 war against foreign foes ; in its internal battle at 
 home ; and the mortality in both fields was disas- 
 trous. The Dauphin, called Louis XVII, disappeared 
 
 * Mignet, Histoire de la Revolution Frangaise, i, 354 (14th 
 edn., Paris, 1883). Georges Danton, 1 759-1 794. Jean Paul 
 Marat, 1 743-1 793. The " Mountain " party was so-called from 
 the elevation of its benches in the Assembly, 
 
 138 
 
THE COMMONS 
 
 in The Terror; Queen Marie Antoinette was 
 guillotined on October i6th, 1793 ; it is computed 
 that the number of victims rose from three a week 
 in April, 1793, to 196 a week in June, 1794. The 
 Terror was a parricidal monster : Danton's turn 
 had come on March 24th ; Robespierre's came on 
 July 28th. Meanwhile, Dumouriez invaded Holland, 
 and was defeated by Anglo-Austrian troops ; March 
 2ist, 1793. From terror of The Terror, he deserted 
 to Austria ; and Spain, Austria, England, Prussia 
 invaded France at different parts. But gradually 
 the Republicans rallied. They sacrificed everything 
 to the army : their spreading gospel of liberty was 
 contracted to a defence of the soil of France. No 
 precaution of the Government was so severe, no 
 appetite of the guillotine so insatiate, but that they 
 bore it for the sake of France. The Terror braced 
 their endurance, and fortified their arm. They began 
 to win back what they had lost. Toulon had been 
 surrendered in August, 1793 ; in December, the 
 Republic regained it, and a certain Napoleon 
 Buonaparte distinguished himself in that exploit. 
 Brussels fell to them again ; they invaded Holland in 
 1794, and fulfilled a dream of purer days by re- 
 habiUtating it^on terms — as the Batavian Republic. 
 In March, 1795, the two Republics entered into 
 alliance. Further successes ensued, and combined 
 with the passing of Robespierre to relax the 
 stringency of The Terror. Its curve had steadily 
 
 139 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 risen as the fortunes of France declined ; with the 
 rise of her fortunes, the curve gradually sank. 
 
 It became possible to make peace. Revolutionary 
 France was now in the third year of the French 
 Republic, and the Allies had nothing more to fight 
 for. Louis XVI was dead : no trade-union of Kings 
 could serve his cause any more. Marie Antoinette 
 was dead, and her nephew, the Emperor Francis, 
 was not concerned about Louis's brothers. He had 
 other cares for his concern. The Russo-Prussian 
 partition of Poland in 1793 had led to a Polish 
 insurrection under the patriot, Kosciusko*; and 
 Catherine and Frederick William II were more 
 resolute against Poland than against France. They 
 had more to gain by suppressing its independence, 
 and Prussian troops were promptly withdrawn from 
 the West to the East, so as not to leave Russia all 
 the dividend. This time, the sordid business was com- 
 pleted. The poor peasants of Poland were too weak 
 to try to repeat, under the covetous eyes of jealous 
 neighbours, the experiment of Batavia (Holland) and 
 France ; and their country was erased from the map. 
 Stanislaus Poniatowski was forced to leave the 
 shrunken remnant of his kingdom ; Kosciusko was 
 defeated and taken prisoner ; and the third and final 
 partition was consummated. This was what pre- 
 occupied the Emperor, who had been left in the 
 lurch two years before. Now, Austria got Cracow 
 
 * Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1746-18 17. 
 140 
 
THE COMMONS 
 
 and Polish Galicia ; Prussia, Wai*saw and its adjoin- 
 ing parts ; and Russia filled up the interstices. — The 
 Empress Catherine II died in 1796. The last 
 survivor of the giants, she was faithful to her order 
 till the end. Though she lived through the French 
 Revolution, and even flirted with liberahsm for a 
 while, she never swerved a hair's-breadth to the 
 cause of the Commons from the Kings*. Still, in the 
 year before her death, she was intent on the same 
 arts of '* benevolence " which she had practised at 
 Poland's expense as long ago as 1772 ; and Frederick 
 the Great's Royal nephew and Maria Theresa's 
 Imperial son degraded their experience of a new epoch 
 by consenting to, and sharing in, the spohation. 
 
 With the Treaties of Basel, 1795, first, in April, 
 between France and Prussia, and, secondly, in August, 
 between France and Spain, a definite period was 
 marked in the history of twenty-three years' warfare : 
 from 1792 to 1815. The Treaties themselves were 
 important, but even more important than their 
 terms were the facts which their conclusion registered. 
 '* France re-entered the comity of nations " ; she 
 had '* re-established her place in Europe " ^ ; and 
 this formula of re-entry and re-establishment acquires 
 a vital significance in relation to the future and the 
 past. The France which had gone to war was a 
 monarchy with its King in gaol ; when the French 
 Republic made peace, foreign courts had put off 
 
 ^ Morse Stephens, op. cit., 157, and Cambridge Modern History, 
 viii, 441. 
 
 14JE 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 their mourning for King Louis. The revolutionaries 
 who went to war, to Hberate Belgium and Holland, 
 and to spread in Poland and Bohemia the pax Gallica 
 of the Rights of Man, had been filled with a spirit of 
 discovery. They were the last offspring of the 
 Renaissance : like Rabelais, at the edge of the 
 Middle Ages, routing the phantoms of the night with 
 the tonic laughter of glad manhood. Their trained 
 soldiers who came back were seasoned men with 
 positive ideas. They wanted pay and fresh employ- 
 ment, and the customary rewards for military 
 exploits. The first condition of re-entry and re- 
 establishment was a resumption of the common aims 
 of statecraft. Those had sown their wheat with 
 whimsey ; these did not mean to gather tares. 
 
 So, the French RepubHc made peace, not propa- 
 ganda : a territorial peace of the old kind, with even 
 more than the old temptations to future militarist 
 ambitions. The first thing was to fix a line to 
 separate Prussia from France, and to protect each 
 from the other's aggression. France demanded the 
 Rhine frontiers. Prussia nominally refused : osten- 
 sibly, from the highest motives ; actually, not to give 
 Austria, who was still at war, the chance of scoring 
 a point in the age-long, wasteful competition for 
 leadership among the Empire States. The Empire 
 was dying, nearly dead : the reigning Emperor, 
 Francis II, was to bury it in 1806 ; and still, in 1795, 
 Hohenzollem and Habsburg were disputing the 
 
 142 
 
THE COMMONS 
 
 insignia of Charlemagne's ghost. But the Hohen- 
 zollem, characteristically, wanted the substance as 
 well ; and a secret clause in the Basel Treaty pro- 
 vided that, for a sum of money to be determined, 
 Prussia would surrender such claims as she possessed 
 on the Rhine. This clause was amplified later in a 
 supplementary treaty (August 5th, 1796), even more 
 dishonourable towards the Emperor on the part of 
 King Frederick WiUiam II. — The French treaty with 
 Spain was equally welcome in both countries. 
 
 The War now entered another phase. The 
 restored *' comity of nations '' restored old causes 
 of warfare. The brief era of Revolution had passed, 
 and the French Republic was the old France under a 
 new name. The old France, but with a difference. 
 The Reign of Terror, stripped of its sanctities, was 
 merely martial law in an extreme form, and the effect 
 of its experience had been to make all France a 
 nation in arms, The martial mobs in the cities were 
 ready to crown with their plaudits the martial heroes 
 from the front. Middle-classes and peasantry alike 
 were drunk with military success ; and with antici- 
 pation of the benefits to accrue from it. What 
 France under Louis XIV had accomplished by the 
 King's behest, the Republic, which had beheaded his 
 successor, would accomplish by common consent. 
 The times were ripe for the man, and the man was 
 now to appear. 
 
 143 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE TITAN 
 
 The history of the twenty years from the Treaty of 
 Basel, 1795, to the Battle of Waterloo, 1815, is 
 dominated in Europe by the personahty of Napoleon 
 Buonaparte ^ And not only in Europe. We hear 
 very much to-day about Wdtpolitik : the tidal 
 action of war and diplomacy, affecting the shores 
 of all the world by their least motion in one part, 
 thus leading to the conception of one mind directing 
 all the tides. German scientific professors have given 
 a name to this idea ; the Corsican adventurer gave 
 it Hfe. 
 
 There are many views of Napoleon. Some of us 
 still remember how our nurse used to frighten us 
 with a legendary bogey of ** Boney '', thus attesting 
 to the reality of the fear and hate which Napoleon 
 had inspired in earlier nurseries, deprived of a father's 
 presence by his wars on land and sea. To others, he 
 is the great legislator and pacificator ; the " super- 
 man " of modern civihzation, who hurled his enormous 
 
 ^ Born in Corsica, 1769; entered French army; became 
 Republican general ; First Consul, 1799 ; Emperor of the French, 
 1804 ; died as British prisoner in St. Helena, 1821. 
 
 144 
 
THE TITAN 
 
 strength against the pillars of the temple of the 
 Middle Ages. And between these extreme views lies 
 the record of his biography, showing with what rare 
 genius he soldered the present on to the past. The 
 French Revolution, from which he sprang, which 
 gave him his soldier's chance of rising by courage 
 and leadership to a station of command, would have 
 impressed its lessons on Europe with far slighter 
 effect if the supremely successful general had not 
 gathered all these lessons into one sign, conspicuous 
 throughout the world. 
 
 Yet he inscribed that sign with the motto of 
 Louis XIV. Though it stretched across the map ot 
 Europe, it bore the blazon rEtat c'est moi. He re- 
 vived Charlemagne in Napoleon, and buried him in 
 Francis II. He renewed the dynastic tradition, 
 planting members of his family as kings and rulers 
 in minor States. There was this grand difference, 
 however, and it is the key to the influence of 
 Napoleon's reforms on the century which has since 
 elapsed. His rule rested on consent. Louis XIV 
 was made by Richelieu ; Kaiser Wilhelm has been 
 made by Bismarck ; Napoleon was self-made. He 
 had behind him no artificial patriotism, compelled 
 by " iron and blood " to rally to an historic name, 
 but '* the opinion of five or six millions of men ", 
 who had asserted their right to free judgment, and 
 who freely acknowledged his lead. He had no name, 
 till he made it known ; no past, till he set Josephine 
 
 H5 
 10 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 aside to marry Marie Louise, daughter of the Emperor 
 Francis of Austria, and created his son (1811) King 
 of Rome. His power, however unhmited, was based 
 on the broad foundation of that populace assemhUe 
 which Louis XIV and the benevolent despots, formed 
 in his Hkeness, had despised. His rule was the 
 quintessence of militarism ; but, reversing the course 
 of militarism in Germany, where King Frederick 
 WiUiam I made the army, and the army made the 
 Prussian nation, the French nation made the army, 
 and the army made the French Emperor. Thus 
 founded. Napoleon's ideas contained promise of 
 progress, nationalism, and enlightenment, and 
 survived the forms in which he clothed them. A clean 
 breath from the revolutionary era, freed from the 
 excesses of the Terror, touched the fringes of old, 
 decaying things, and swept away many stale abuses. 
 England's notion of sea-power was purified by her 
 Napoleonic wars : not merely by the fear of invasion, 
 nor by the quickened genius for naval command, 
 which the contest of wit with Napoleon induced even 
 in Nelson himself, but by the sense of gravity and 
 responsibility which the American War of 
 Independence and the French Wars of Revolution 
 were bound to evoke in the statecraft of a Colonial 
 Power. Fas est et ah hoste doceri (even an enemy's 
 lessons are worth learning), was the maxim of the 
 oldest Imperialists ; and Napoleon, who had 
 challenged the British Empire, left it some matter 
 
 146 
 
THE TITAN 
 
 for reflection when the ordeal had been passed. 
 In Europe, he rendered impossible the continuance 
 under modem conditions of the medieval Holy 
 Roman Empire. He gave national aspirations to 
 Germany, Italy, Holland ; he thrilled the divided 
 parts of Poland, and his policy of breaking-up and 
 re-combining laid bare the popular foundations of 
 movements previously covered with the rust and 
 mildew of inhibitive tradition. 
 
 The twenty years, 1795-1815, are the outside 
 limits of the period in which these mighty forces 
 were at work. We cannot follow the story in detail, 
 but a few facts may be stated in outline. They 
 should assist an understanding of the Second Great 
 War and its legacy. 
 
 1795-1797. The War with Austria, France had 
 neutrahzed Prussia and Spain, but was still at war 
 with Austria and England. She attacked Austria in 
 Italy, where Francis II was most personally vulner- 
 able. General Buonaparte was in command of the 
 French forces, and quickly proved his mettle. He 
 established as a military principle, which Kaiser 
 Wilhelm has applied in the present war, the 
 requisition of food and money from the towns 
 which he took : the campaign was to be self- 
 supporting ; even profitable. He won a decisive 
 victory over the Austrians in August, 1796, on the 
 very day that the King of Prussia was signing his 
 secret Treaty with France for the demarcation of the 
 
 H7 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 Rhine frontier to Austria's disadvantage. In the 
 same month, a Treaty was concluded between France 
 and Spain, by w^hich Spain was to make war on 
 England and France on Portugal ; the immediate 
 result of this alliance was the English naval victory 
 off Cape St. Vincent (February, 1797), in which 
 Nelson served under Sir John Jervis. In this period, 
 too, the Empress Catherine had died (November, 
 1796), and was succeeded by her son, the Emperor 
 Paul. Meanwhile Buonaparte's army was continuing 
 its advance ; and in April, 1797, the Franco-Spanish 
 naval defeat was compensated by negotiations for 
 peace between Austria and France, concluded by 
 Buonaparte in the following autumn. The French 
 Rhine frontier was conceded, curtailing the terri- 
 tories of the Empire, and taking Belgium away from 
 Austria. Whole districts of Italy were treated as 
 counters in the game ; and two results of the five 
 years' warfare were manifest : i, France was set free 
 to tackle England ; ii, the Great Powers of Europe 
 recognized that Napoleon Buonaparte was not only 
 a great general of the French Republic, but a formid- 
 able envoy of the French Government. — It should be 
 added that the Government at this time was in the 
 hands of five Directors, who had been appointed 
 under the Constitution of Year 3 of the new Repub- 
 lican calendar. 
 
 1797-1799. The War in the East. Buonaparte 
 returned to Paris in December, 1797, crowned with 
 
 148 
 
THE TITAN 
 
 the *' glory and celebrity " which were his object in 
 life. His next business was the war against Eng- 
 land ; and he decided to strike at her through India. 
 This avoided the difificulty of channel-transport ; it 
 gratified a taste which Buonaparte shared with 
 Disraeli for adventure in the gorgeous East, and it 
 may have been acceptable to the Directors to find a 
 distant mission for so powerful a general. In the 
 following May (1798), he set sail for Malta, and 
 thence, after its surrender, for Egypt. Before the 
 end of July, he had occupied Alexandria and Cairo, 
 but his fleet was destroyed by Nelson in the Battle 
 of the Nile on August ist. Buonaparte was stranded 
 in Egypt with his army, while the Mediterranean 
 was held by English ships, and an English garrison 
 replaced the French in Malta. He employed his 
 time effectively. Advancing against the Turkish 
 forces, he successfully invaded Palestine, and 
 besieged Acre in the spring of 1799. Retreating from 
 there to Egypt, he re-established his hold on Cairo, 
 and, leaving his army in occupation, reached Paris 
 in the October of that year. His return, as he had 
 foreseen, was timely. England, Austria, and even 
 Russia, now ruled by the Emperor Paul, whose 
 madness did not redeem his badness, were genuinely 
 alarmed at the aggressions of French arms in 
 Switzerland and Italy ; and, in order to raise the 
 necessary troops, the Directory of the French 
 Repubhc had passed its first Conscription Law in 
 
 H9 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 September, 1798. This fact constituted a surrender 
 to militarism on the part of the Repubhcan Govern- 
 ment ; and the step was taken, it should be noted, 
 without reference to Buonaparte : the principle of 
 conscription was established before he took the helm 
 in France. Fighting began in the spring of 1799, 
 and though Russia, particularly, won some victories, 
 the result by the middle of October was, on the whole, 
 favourable to French arms. Buonaparte*s arrival 
 was the signal for fresh enthusiasm. By a new 
 revolution in the government, the five Directors 
 were replaced by three Consuls (November 9th, 
 1799), of whom Buonaparte was one ; and the 
 Constitution of Year 8 of the Republican calendar 
 thus placed the greatest French general at the head 
 of the military State. It was adopted by over 
 3,000,000 votes against a minority of about 1,500 ; 
 a sufficient testimony to the First ConsuFs 
 popularity. 
 
 1799-1804. The Consulate. Fresh testimony was 
 forthcoming when, in May, 1802, the First Consul 
 was made life-Consul, by over 3,500,000 to 8,000, 
 with power to nominate his successor ; and in May, 
 again, 1804, the life-Consul was voted the rank of 
 hereditary Emperor of the French by a majority of 
 more than three and a half millions. On December 
 2nd in that year, the Emperor was crowned in Paris 
 by the Pope, and in the following May he was 
 crowned King of Italy in Milan. The Constitution of 
 
 150 
 
THE TITAN 
 
 Year 12, as it was called, had travelled a long way 
 from the ideals of the authors of the new calendar. 
 
 Meanwhile, much had happened during the Con- 
 sulate. France in 1799 had four chief enemies : 
 England, Austria, Prussia, Russia. England was 
 irreconcilable. King Frederick William III of 
 Prussia, who had succeeded his father in 1797, was 
 a doubtful quantity in the First Consul's calculations, 
 but was certainly more neutral than hostile. Over 
 the Emperor Paul of Russia, the First Consul quickly 
 established a marked personal ascendancy. Paul's 
 mind had only room for one idea at a time, and it 
 took shape now as hatred for England. He was 
 discussing with Buonaparte a joint invasion of India, 
 when, unregrettably, he was assassinated (March 
 23rd, 1801) . A month before, the Treaty of Luneville 
 had been concluded between France and Austria, 
 after a double defeat sustained by Francis II : the 
 sands of the Holy Roman Empire were running out. 
 A year later (March 25th, 1802), the Peace of Amiens 
 brought a welcome truce to hostilities between France 
 and England, who had been successful in the Egyptian 
 campaign of 1800-01. 
 
 The truce lasted little more than a year. The First 
 Consul's ambitions were incompatible with the 
 prosperity of British trade and sea-power, and he 
 hoped, by isolating England, to be able to destroy 
 the foundations of both. Hostilities began afresh in 
 May, 1803, when Spain was friendly to France, 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 Prussia neutral, Austria weary, and the Emperor 
 Alexander of Russia disposed to whole-hearted 
 admiration of the policy and person of the First 
 Consul. But Napoleon's execution (March 21st, 
 1804) of the young Due d'Enghien, the only 
 accessible Bourbon prince (Louis and Charles, the 
 late King's brothers, were in prudent hiding abroad), 
 alienated Alexander's good-will. The pretext was a 
 conspiracy against the Consul's life ; but his victim 
 was not an accomplice. The Russian court went into 
 mourning, and Prussia's neutrality stiffened. The 
 First Consul's reply, as we have seen, was to accept 
 the Imperial title on May i8th, thus deal ng the final 
 blow at the crumbled Holy Roman Empire. Francis II 
 abdicated shortly after, and assumed the high-sound- 
 ing title of Hereditary Emperor of Austria (Francis I), 
 of which country he was constitutionally Archduke. 
 
 1804-1814. The Empire. *' The popularity of 
 Napoleon," it is said, '' which had waxed steadily 
 under the Consulate, slowly waned under the 
 Empire " ^ It is not possible in a narrative on this 
 scale, nor is it requisite to our purpose, to trace the 
 course or the causes of this decline. Our business 
 is with the Emperor's foreign wars ; not with the 
 barrier which Court etiquette interposed between 
 him and his people, and which was combined with 
 the weight of conscription, the press censorship, and 
 other repressive measures, to disguise the value of 
 
 ^ Cambridge Modern History, ix, 113 (by Prof. Pariset). 
 152 
 
THE TITAN 
 
 the legislation which the new Absolutist imposed on 
 his country. The people who had raised him to his 
 eminence, and who had tasted the sweets of power, 
 began gradually to feel that he was ruling for them, 
 no longer by them : an ominous feeling to arouse 
 barely a dozen years after the Revolution. More- 
 over, the Royalist plots, so luridly illustrated the 
 year before, did not cease when the Emperor's new 
 nobility revived the memory of dead times and 
 dormant titles. 
 
 Throughout these happenings, the Emperor was 
 waiting for a fine day to invade England from 
 Boulogne. As Nelson clearly perceived, this policy, 
 however resolute, was bound to be carried out in 
 other parts of Europe than the English Channel ; 
 and, in 1805, Napoleon was once more at war with 
 Austria and Russia. On the anniversary of his 
 coronation by Pope Pius VII in Paris, he defeated 
 the army of the two Emperors at Austerlitz 
 (December 2nd) ; but again, as at Cape St. Vincent, 
 this victory was balanced by the defeat of the allied 
 French and Spanish Fleets at Trafalgar (October 
 2ist). After Austerlitz, Austria made peace, and its 
 terms afford a measure of her prostration. Venice, 
 Istria, and Dalmatia were transferred to French rule 
 in Italy ; Bavaria and Wiirtemberg became King- 
 doms S thus weakening Austrian supremacy, and the 
 
 ^ Their Kings have not repudiated to-day the titles which 
 they accepted from the French Emperor ; this noble scorn is 
 confined to regimental uniforms and university degrees, 
 
 153 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 Emperor Napoleon appointed himself Protector of 
 the Confederation of the Rhine (July, 1806). It was 
 Prussia's turn next. She had played an ignoble 
 part throughout the period of the Consulate and 
 Empire, and had derived disproportionate gain from 
 her not disinterested neutrality. On October 14th, 
 1806, the army created by Frederick William I 
 was crushed under Frederick WiUiam III at 
 Auerstadt and Jena ; and eleven days later Napoleon 
 entered Berlin. — In after years he was disposed to 
 regret that he had not wiped out the HohenzoUern 
 dynasty ; and, though this regret may have been 
 prompted by a recollection of Bliicher at Waterloo, 
 it is legitimate to share it to-day. 
 
 Russia had still to be dealt with in this lightning 
 campaign, and the Battle of Friedland (June 14th, 
 1807) was a fine conclusion to Austerlitz and Jena. 
 Russia's resources are so inexhaustible that the effect 
 of her defeat was not as grave as those of Austria 
 and Prussia. It left her free to make honourable 
 terms, and the two Emperors met at Tilsit on June 
 25th. It was on a raft moored in the river Niemen 
 that Napoleon and Alexander had their interview, 
 while King Frederick William of Prussia " waited 
 in the rain on the river bank to learn his fate." In 
 the end, he owed his Kingdom to Alexander : 
 Napoleon, whom he met the next day, treated him 
 with studied contempt ; and, doubtless, the tradition 
 of that three hours' wetting bit deep into the 
 
 154 
 
THE TITAN 
 
 HohenzoUern memory. The Russian Emperor's 
 romantic temperament had always been attracted to 
 Napoleon, and the French Emperor was not less 
 anxious to please because his vanity was flattered. He 
 hinted at a revival of the two Empires of the West 
 and the East ; and an alliance based on a genuine 
 belief that each would be useful to the other was 
 discussed between the illustrious negotiators, and 
 took shape in the Peace of Tilsit (July 7th, 1807). — A 
 year later, they met again at Erfurt, but a little of 
 the glamour had departed. 
 
 We must pass over the next four busy years ; of 
 extension rather than of consolidation. In 1812 
 Napoleon was at his greatest. He ruled wider 
 territories with more might. He had married the 
 Emperor Francis's daughter, and had created his 
 infant son King of Rome. His brothers, step-son, 
 and nominees were placed on various thrones. But 
 his position at the top of a thousand schemes was not 
 as stable as it looked, (i) Russia, in May, 1812, 
 had made peace with Turkey at Bukharest, and the 
 Emperor Alexander was not in the mood of the 
 interview on the raft in the Niemen. Napoleon had 
 gradually moved away from the dual-Empire idea. 
 He had created a Grand Duchy of Warsaw, which, 
 though it was not a new Poland, was sufficiently like 
 it to constitute an infringement on Russian vested 
 rights ; vested, at least, since 1795. (ii) Prussia 
 had learned from Napoleon how to oppose Napoleon. 
 
 155 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 Always an apt pupil of French example, she had 
 studied absolutism from Richelieu, cosmopolitan 
 scepticism from Voltaire, and was now applying her 
 mind to the French school of ^A;-^os^revolutionary 
 nationalism. The^ application was ministerial and 
 popular ; the Hohenzollem King was impervious to 
 ideas, (iii) Austria, despite the honour paid to the 
 Archduchess Marie Louise, was not reconciled to her 
 shrunken territories, or to her turned Imperial coat, 
 (iv) The Pope had excommunicated (1809) the 
 Emperor whom he had crowned five years before ; 
 and this cause operated with others to strengthen the 
 hopes of the Royalists against the ** parvenu " on the 
 Bourbon throne, (v) Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future 
 Duke of Wellington, had been showing his quality 
 in the Peninsula ; and British sea-borne trade and 
 sea-power still defied Napoleon's attacks. — Add these 
 five symptoms together ; multiply them by the 
 constant factor of the Emperor's increasing Caesarism, 
 Absolutism, Militarism : any name that signifies 
 vast ambition ; and the events of 1812--15 will be 
 more readily seizable. 
 
 The Second Great War, like the First, and in many 
 respects like the Third, was not an outbreak, but a 
 concentration. Russia and England combined to 
 resist the Imperial aggressor. Prussia not only 
 stood out, but in February, 1812, King Frederick 
 William III made a treaty with Napoleon, giving 
 free passage to the French troops through his 
 
 156 
 
THE TITAN 
 
 country, and a reinforcement of 30,000 men. Stein S 
 whom Napoleon had required the King of Prussia to 
 dismiss, joined the Emperor of Russia as adviser on 
 the German problem ; and, while it is fair to point 
 out that Prussia's policy was dictated by prudence, 
 its double face is unpleasantly conspicuous. 
 Napoleon's retreat from Moscow in the winter of 
 1812 is too famous in history to need rehearsal ; 
 and, now that his ally was in sore straits, the King 
 of Prussia yielded to popular sentiment, and, by 
 treaty with Russia in February, 1813, declared war 
 on France, March i6th. Bemadotte, Prince Regent 
 of Sweden, Napoleon's brother-in-law, and formerly 
 a French marshal, joined the Allies' coalition in 
 April ; and Francis of Austria, Napoleon's father-in- 
 law, declared war on France, August 12th. Terms 
 of peace had been offered to the French Emperor, 
 securing him France from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, 
 but had been refused till August 14th, when the 
 acceptance arrived too late. — The combined forces 
 of the Allies took a year to defeat Napoleon, but the 
 task was accomplished at last : on March 31st, 1814, 
 Alexander and Frederick William entered Paris ; 
 on April 6th, Napoleon abdicated ; on the 24th, 
 Louis XVIII entered French territory for the first 
 time since 1791, and Napoleon became Emperor of 
 Elba. The Revolution had swung full-circle, and the 
 Bourbon dynasty was restored. 
 ^ See p. 94. 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 1815. The Hundred Days. A year later, March 
 20th, 1815, the Emperor was in Paris again, and the 
 King was in flight. The last scruple of idealism had 
 vanished, and it was a bid between Buonaparte and 
 Bourbon. At the moment, Napoleon was the higher 
 bidder. On June i8th, his army was crushed at 
 Waterloo by Wellington and Bliicher, who entered 
 Paris on July 3rd. On the 15th, the Emperor 
 surrendered when meditating flight to America, and 
 so passed from the stage of history. 
 
 One word here about the dates of the Peace ; we 
 shall come to the terms immediately : 
 
 May 30th, 1814 ; First Treaty of Paris ; between 
 the Allies and Louis XVIII, through his Chief 
 Minister, Talleyrand ^ 
 
 November ist, 1814 ; opening of Congress of 
 Monarchs at Vienna. 
 
 March 25th, 1815 ; Vienna Treaty of AUiance 
 between Austria, Russia, Prussia and England 
 against France (again under Napoleon), signed 
 / on 
 
 June 8th, 1815 ; ten days before the Battle of 
 Waterloo. ^-^ 
 
 November 20th, 1815 ; Second Treaty of Paris. 
 
 ^ Charles Maurice Talleyrand de P^rigord, 1 754-1 838 ; 
 assisted Buonaparte in his elevation to Consulate and Empire ; 
 opposed his Russian policy ; became Foreign Minister to Louis 
 XVIII (18 14) and Prime Minister after the Hundred Days. Was, 
 later, French Ambassador in London. 
 
 158 
 
THEITITAN 
 
 ■^Ok 
 
 November 28th, 1815 ; Holy Alliance between 
 England, Russia, Austria and Prussia. 
 
 It will be observed that the First Treaty was ratified 
 a month after Napoleon's Elba exile ; that the 
 sittings of the consequent Congress were interrupted 
 by the tidings of his return ; and that the Second 
 Treaty was concluded in the shadow of the Hundred 
 Days, when the ex-Emperor was a prisoner at St. 
 Helena. We shall expect a hardening of counsel 
 between the First and the Second Treaties. 
 
 But, apart altogether from wars and treaties, 
 what was the gain or loss to Europe of the thought, 
 and hope, and action, between 1713 and 1815 ? 
 What moral advance can be recorded in the relations 
 of State to State ? in the relations of peoples to 
 rulers ? in the condition of peoples ? 
 
 These questions are difficult to answer. Yet it is 
 essential to find some grounds for a reply, if we are to 
 enter upon a new settlement with fruitful lessons 
 from the old. Twice the statesmen of the nations 
 have assembled after devastating wars, caused by 
 the ambition of an Absolutist, to re-establish peace 
 in their borders ; on their borders, more precisely. 
 Twice, that peace has been shattered by a new 
 pretender to absolute power. We should not be 
 misled by the fact that a hundred years intervened 
 between Louis XIV and Napoleon I ; between 
 Napoleon and Wilhelm II. As we said at the 
 beginning of this inquiry, and as we have sought to 
 
 159 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 establish in the course of it, every year in a very 
 real sense has been part of the new century. 
 They were fighting in the middle of the eighteenth 
 century they were fighting in the middle of the 
 nineteenth : must they fight in the middle of the 
 twentieth ? 
 
 Still at the present day, so strong is the force of 
 tradition and so consecrated are the forms of diplo- 
 macy, that we hesitate to intrude considerations 
 which may seem inappropriate or eccentric. 
 Morality, for example, and abstract principle, and 
 justice, and liberty, and plain speaking : such con- 
 ceptions are slow to break through the hallowed 
 portals of a practice which has acquired a special 
 language of its own, and which has inured " from 
 precedent to precedent." Even the brief survey 
 which we have attempted has revealed a recurrence 
 of the same problems and of the same method of 
 treating them, from the Peace of Westphalia down- 
 wards. Frontiers, territories, dynasties ; dynasties, 
 territories, frontiers : these are the perpetual pre- 
 occupation of the kings, ambassadors, and pleni- 
 potentiaries, who have been entrusted from time to 
 time with the splendid and responsible task of 
 settling the politics of nations. Yet we can quote 
 good authority — and high as well as good authority — 
 if we venture to attack this wall of inherited pre- 
 judice and convention. The Emperor Alexander of 
 Russia, who was present in person in Vienna through- 
 
 i6o 
 
THE TITAN 
 
 out the negotiations of 1814-15, proposed a Holy 
 Alliance, to which his " brothers '* subscribed, and 
 which was to found their relations with one another 
 on " the sublime truths of religion," and to bind 
 them to govern their dominions by the laws of 
 charity, justice, and peace. To his slightly shocked 
 " brothers '' in Vienna — Francis of Austria and the 
 King of Prussia, — this was just Alexander's way. 
 He had the enthusiast's temperament : the mystic's 
 unpractical dreaminess ; and, since he was Tsar of 
 Russia, he was entitled to his dreams. So they put 
 their names to his proclamation, and the Prince 
 Regent ^ wrote a nice letter, and the sardonic 
 Metternich * smiled, and Lord Castlereagh » felt a 
 little dubious ; and they went on with their peace- 
 proceedings in the old way. The Emperor Alex- 
 ander's dream has been translated into a palace at 
 The Hague ; and the descendants of the Monarchs 
 who indulged his whim have outraged the Holy 
 Alliance by the present war. 
 
 We mentioned good as well as high authority. In 
 a book which has recently been widely read, the 
 author employs a striking epigram to describe the 
 state of Germany to-day : *' Corsica has conquered 
 
 * George, Prince of Wales ; afterwards George IV. 
 
 * Prince Clement Wenceslas von Metternich, 1773-18 59 ; 
 Austrian statesman. 
 
 * Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, afterwards 2nd 
 Marquess of Londonderry, 1 769-1 822 ; British statesman. 
 
 161 
 11 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 Galilee '' K They had conquered Corsica in 1815. 
 They had sent the Corsican to a little island, on which 
 he was to pine and die. Yet, if Galilee stands for 
 right — religious and moral right, — and Corsica for 
 might, by whose fault has it come about that might 
 is triumphant to-day ? Someone, surely, is entitled 
 to ask this question of the diplomatists, however 
 strictly they may guard their preserve. The 
 Monarchs' holy intentions, the Corsican conquest of 
 Galilee : such references arouse curiosity ; and, 
 after all, there is no one else to ask. 
 
 The reply from Vienna to such questionings is by 
 no means encouraging. The moral order of the 
 universe, and the social regeneration of the nations 
 trampled by Napoleon's legions, figured prominently 
 in the programme, and in the many speeches at the 
 many banquets, which Napoleon's hospitable father- 
 in-law provided. The Emperor of Russia interposed 
 to prevent the rapacious King of Prussia from 
 dismembering France in her prostration ^ and this 
 was, perhaps, the only disinterested act which 
 redeemed the course of the Congress. The rest was 
 
 ^ Germany and England. By J. A. Cramb. New York, 
 Dutton ; p. 133. (This edition first contained the recommenda- 
 tion of the Hon. J. H. Choate, sometime United States 
 Ambassador in London.) 
 
 * When BlUcher was in Paris, he was with difficulty dissuaded 
 from blowing up the Bridge of Jena, named after the French 
 victory of 1806, and from imposing a levy of 110,000,000 francs 
 on the city. 
 
 162 
 
THE TITAN 
 
 the rapier-play of diplomatists, highly-trained in the 
 old school, among whom Talleyrand was conspicuous 
 for his success in reaping profit for Louis XVIII out 
 of the suspicions which he sowed between the 
 '* peace-makers/* It was not a difficult task ; the 
 difficulty was, rather, what to choose, and, having 
 chosen, where to stop in the game of reviving old 
 antagonisms between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, 
 in Italy, Poland, and on the Rhine. In the end, it 
 was an ineffective Treaty which at last was arranged 
 under the calculating eyes of Metternich ; unillumined 
 by a spark of true feeling for what the last twenty 
 years had meant to the peoples of Western Europe ; 
 unworthy of the hopes of the Revolution, ignorant 
 or even fearful of its culture, and resolute in following 
 the old paths which had twice led to bloody war. 
 It left urgent problems untouched : Turkey and the 
 Near East, for example. It was a Treaty almost 
 childish in its faith in the policy of the footrule and 
 the scales : State-boundaries and the balance of 
 power ; wholly to be condemned for its neglect of 
 the real and vital things, for which diplomatic 
 practice had no language ; but which Talleyrand had 
 seen, and Metternich had heard, and to which 
 Frederick WiUiam owed his kingdom. It was con- 
 ceived and matured in a hothouse atmosphere ; the 
 atmosphere of Westphaha and Utrecht. The plain 
 lessons of history went unmarked, because treaty- 
 making was an artificial product. Thus, Belgium 
 
 163 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 and Holland were united under the rule of one king ; 
 as if any king's rule could force a union between 
 disparate creeds and contending nationalities. They 
 are not united to-day. Thus, Norway was sundered 
 from Denmark, and joined to Sweden. They, too, 
 are not united to-day. Swedish Finland was given 
 to Russia, and Swedish Pomerania to Prussia. 
 Finland still claims her independence. France lost 
 her provinces on the left bank of the Rhine ; Italy 
 was subjected to foreign princes ; Poland was left 
 in partition ; and the Germanic States were re- 
 formed. — A situation, teeming with seeds of war, 
 was, briefly, the result of the combined wisdom of 
 the monarchs and statesmen who had seen the 
 French Revolution. As in 1791, was their motto ; 
 and, if not, as in 1713. There was little sound 
 thought of any year subsequent to 1815. The sole 
 contribution to the future, except the vague prospects 
 of the Holy Alliance, was Talleyrand's principle of 
 " Legitimacy ", which was another word for vested 
 interests. The unwritten code of Europe was to 
 admit possession as nine-tenths of the law. Step by 
 step, the Third Great War may be traced to the 
 settlement of the Second. If " Corsica has con- 
 quered Galilee '\ a part of the blame must be 
 attributed to the conquerors of the Corsican, who, 
 inevitably, perhaps, at the date and under the 
 conditions of their work, failed to read the signs of 
 the new time. 
 
 X64 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 CONCLUDING REMARKS 
 
 It would be presumptuous, while war is in progress, 
 to discuss the terms of peace. All that can be 
 attempted is to suggest one or two considerations, 
 arising out of the history of the past, which may 
 illiunine the events of the present day, and be useful 
 for future reference. 
 
 The ultimate causes of this Third Great War 
 should now be somewhat clearer. Like the Second 
 and the First, though it found us incredulous and 
 unprepared, it can hardly be said to have broken out. 
 Rather, it brought to a definite issue the several 
 wars since 1815. Nominally, the Two " Kaiser *' 
 War of 1914 arose out of Serbia's alleged reluctance 
 to give adequate satisfaction in the affair of the 
 assassination of the Austrian Heir- Apparent. But 
 even this nominal pretext, which might so easily 
 have been adjusted, was founded, as we now see, 
 on the events which had propelled Austria South- 
 eastwards after she had been driven from the 
 Italian peninsula. Her Holy Roman Empire 
 perished in three stages : its rehgious unity 
 was sundered by Martin Luther ; its imperial 
 
 165 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 trappings were usurped by Napoleon ; its political 
 function was destroyed by Bismarck, at the Battle 
 of Koniggratz (July 3rd, 1866). When the third 
 stage was completed, the HohenzoUem was master 
 of the situation : so much so, that he felt himself 
 able to resuscitate the army of his ex-rival without 
 the remotest fear of its fresh use against his own ; 
 so much so, that he was able to turn his ex-rivars 
 difficulties in the South-east to his own and his ally's 
 advantage by making Turkey a partner to his schemes 
 against her ancient enemy, Russia. Thus, the 
 alliance of the two Kaisers represents the last and 
 worst phase of their long conflict for supremacy in 
 Central Europe. 
 
 This is one aspect of the present war. Another is 
 derived from the Rhine, and, with the Rhine frontier, 
 from Belgium. Viewed in rapid perspective, the 
 incessant sufferings of Belgium form the blackest 
 indictment against the policy of the Great Powers. 
 First, she was the property of Spain ; then of 
 Austria ; then of France ; then she was forcibly 
 united to Holland (1815) ; then she achieved 
 independence and took Leopold of Coburg as her 
 King (July i6th, 1831) ; then her neutrality was 
 guaranteed (November 15th, 1831, and April 19th, 
 1839), and rc-affirmed (August 9th, 1870) ; then it 
 was violated by Germany (August, 1914) ; and now, 
 for a brief time, we trust, her capital and chief cities 
 are in German hands. So many changes, and with 
 
 166 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS 
 
 so much violence, did the Great Powers inflict on 
 an industrious and art-loving country, with a 
 total population no bigger than that of Greater 
 London. Yet it is a living State which they worried 
 hke dogs ; which Austria never could swallow ; 
 which France lickered as a dainty morsel ; and 
 which Germany, when all the misery was done with, 
 has torn to pieces more savagely than ever before. 
 
 One danger is removed from the present war. 
 We are not likely to repeat in the Third War our 
 fatal error in the First, when England yielded to 
 the clamour of the " peace-at-any-price '' party at 
 home, and withdrew from the conflict before its 
 close. 1 Pacifism, before the war, gave us false 
 security and a fooFs paradise ; pacifism, during the 
 war, would bring dishonour and disaster. We have 
 not only our Allies to remember, not only Belgium to 
 redeem, not only to ensure our continued supremacy 
 at sea, but the Two *' Kaiser '* War is waged against 
 ideas as well as armies. Since Frederick WiUiam I 
 of Prussia beat his peasants into swordsmen, and 
 Frederick William III choked the breath of freedom 
 in his realm *, the dominant partner in their alliance 
 has been governed by one idea, which he has now 
 
 1 See page 59. 
 
 2 See page 95. The murder of August von Kotzebue, the 
 poet, by a half -crazy student, on March 23rd, 18 19, gave the 
 King and his poHcemen a pretext for a savage policy of reaction, 
 and for a wholesale suppression of Liberal movements in the 
 press, the universities, the athletic clubs, etc. 
 
 167 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 imposed on his ally, and on the peoples whom they 
 rule. We need not characterize it afresh : the 
 all-pervading, all-subduing Militarism, with the 
 Empire of the Caesars at its back. 
 
 What we may insist on, however, is the fact that 
 this idea is not novel ; and, further, that, though 
 Prussian in its origin, it is German in its distribution. 
 Bismarck did not invent it, nor Treitschke and 
 Bemhardi bring it to birth. It is deeply founded in 
 the history of the Royal houses of Austria and 
 Prussia, and the traditions of either are the inheri- 
 tance of the subjects of both. 
 
 We have tried to explain how this happened ; and 
 the facts have become so important that we may 
 briefly recapitulate the story of the Germanic States, 
 now united in a war for Pan-Germanism. 
 
 First, there was the Holy Catholic Empire, which 
 claimed succession to the Roman Empire and to the 
 tradition of Caesarism. The successive Emperors 
 were elected by the Germanic princes out of the 
 members of their own body, and for nearly four 
 centuries the choice, with the rarest exceptions, 
 invariably fell upon a Habsburg of Austria. Next, 
 Luther's Reformation, and the wars of religion which 
 ensued, established the Protestant Electors of 
 Brandenburg afterwards Kings of Prussia, in a 
 gradually strengthened rivalry to the CathoUc 
 Emperors in Vienna. The HohenzoUem figured 
 more and more as the protector of the Germanic 
 
 1 68 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS 
 
 princes against the encroachments of France, and 
 the Habsburg was more and more troubled by the 
 Turks and other enemies on his further frontiers. 
 Next, the Hohenzollem and Habsburg aHke were 
 reduced to miUtary nothingness by the sweeping 
 victories of the self-made Emperor Napoleon. He, too, 
 had been crowned by the Pope (1804) ; he, too, styled 
 his son King of Rome (181 1) ; and the Holy Roman 
 Empire of Charlemagne lived again in the Empire of 
 the French. In the presence of this common 
 conqueror, the Hohenzollem sulked in his tent, and 
 the Habsburg swiftly consoled himself for the loss 
 of his elective Imperial title by proclaiming his 
 Austrian Archduchy an Hereditary Empire (1806). 
 This, with such additions as could be collected — 
 Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example — is the *' ram- 
 shackle Empire *' of to-day. Next, England and 
 Russia combined to resist the Absolutism of 
 Napoleon ; then Prussia, then Austria, joined 
 them ; and, when the new French Empire was 
 destroyed, and Prussian militarism had been restored, 
 the ambitious Hohenzollem seized his chance. He 
 settled his account with the Habsburg (1866) by 
 tuming him out of the Germanic Confederation ; and 
 next, after extending his frontiers, he revived the 
 " German '* Empire in his own family (1871). Not 
 again as a religious union, for which neither the times 
 were propitious, nor his Protestant faith was suit- 
 able, but on a customs-union [Zollverein) — something 
 
 169 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 positive, practical, and material, — he built up the 
 Imperial idea, which had already caused the fall of 
 Bourbon, Buonaparte, and Habsburg ^ Thus, the 
 upstart Empire of the HohenzoUern has been designed 
 to appeal, as required, to five different classes of 
 customers : i, by the romantic memories of Charle- 
 magne and Barbarossa ; ii, by the loyal traditions 
 of the elective Cathohc Empire ; iii, by the imperia 
 glamour of the conquering and conquered Buonaparte ; 
 iv, by the mihtary doctrine, acquired by Frederick 
 the Great in the school of Louis XIV ; and v, by the 
 self-interest of a modern tariff-girdled State. — ^This 
 is one idea in the present war. Germany calls it, for 
 short, Kultur ; and this composite idea, which has 
 wrought infinite mischief in successive incorporations 
 in the past, must be overthrown with the two 
 Kaisers' armies. 
 
 To some, it may seem a petty thing to wage war 
 against a name. Though to cross the frontier of the 
 Rhine — from the West under Bourbon or Buona- 
 parte ; from the East under Habsburg or Hohen- 
 zoUern — has been the constant ambition of the 
 Empire, whether in its French or its German incor- 
 porations, it may seem enough to settle the frontiers 
 and to leave the Emperors alone. The student must 
 form his own conclusion ; but he may at least recall 
 
 1 And, before them, of the Hohenstaufen dynasty of Emperors, 
 which was wiped out at the Battle of Benevento, 1266, the year 
 after Dante's birth. 
 
 17Q 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS 
 
 the fact that names symbolize ideas, and that men 
 as far removed from pettiness as Napoleon and 
 Bismarck (and Louis XIV might be included) 
 attached great importance to the symbol. Bismarck 
 tells us himself, that *' the assumption of the Kaiser- 
 title by King William of Prussia was a political 
 necessity/' It constituted a profitable source of 
 union and centralization, derived from the memory 
 of times when it meant '' more de jure and less de 
 facto than to-day " S and with this unassailable 
 testimony to the real value — the commercial value — 
 of an Emperor in Western Europe, we venture to 
 suggest that it may be prudent at last to lay 
 Charlemagne's ghost. 
 
 Another idea is involved. As we review the 
 history of Western Europe from 1648 to 19 14, we 
 are struck, it may be recognized, by the prominence 
 of a moral factor, which can be described as justifica- 
 tion by might. Louis XIV counts his soldiers and 
 louis-d'or, and tears up his own solemn treaty for 
 the partition of Spain. Frederick the Great counts 
 his soldiers and thaler, and tears up his assent to the 
 Pragmatic Sanction for the integrity of Austria 
 (including Silesia). Catherine II dismembers quiver- 
 ing Poland. Bismarck, at the appointed time, fights 
 Denmark, Austria, France. Wilhelm II counts his 
 ships and men, and tears up his treaty guaranteeing 
 the integrity of Belgium. How is this idea to be 
 
 ^ Gedanken und Erinnerungen, ii, 115. 
 
 171 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 fought, and a new moral sanction to be substituted ? 
 Do not let us think at all lightly of the difficulty of 
 the peace-makers in this connection. Human nature 
 — Belgium will vouch for it — hardly changes from 
 century to century. Certain acts in the past stand 
 out blackest : the invasion of Silesia in the autumn 
 of 1740 ; of Belgium in the summer of 1914 ; and 
 both were committed by Prussia. But every 
 European State has availed itself, at one time or 
 another, of the sanction of justification by might. 
 Spain, France, Austria, Russia, England : none of 
 these is guiltless ; none can throw stones. Though 
 Germany's attitude may have been the worst, it is 
 acts, not attitudes, that count. 
 
 Indeed, in this matter of degrees of guilt, though 
 it serves no great purpose to discuss them, are we 
 sure that the State which adopts and does not 
 disguise its adoption of that sanction is more morally 
 blameworthy than the State which acts upon it 
 and repudiates it ? In Brandenburg, Prussia, and 
 the German Empire, from 1740 or earlier to this day, 
 German statesmen and generals, except in the brief 
 interval of idealism during the epoch of Liberation 
 (1807-1813), have never disguised their allegiance 
 to it, alike in theory and in practice. Bismarck, for 
 instance, clearly says that the war with Austria 
 (1866) was '' theoretically impossible. But the validity 
 of all treaties between Great Powers,*' he goes on, 
 " is limited by the test of ' the struggle for 
 
 173 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS 
 
 existence/ No great nation will ever be induced to 
 sacrifice its right to live on the altar of treaty- 
 obligations, if it be compelled to choose between the 
 two '\ And again, ** Foreign pohcy is a fluid 
 element. . . . The proviso, ' circumstances being 
 the same,' is tacitly understood to govern all State- 
 treaties which involve specific performance " ^ 
 Thus, the " scrap of paper " point of view, which the 
 German Imperial Chancellor expounded to Sir 
 Edward Goschen on August 4th, 1914, and which 
 genuinely shocked the British nation, and helped to 
 recruit Lord Kitchener's first army, was not a novel 
 view at all. Bismarck expounded it to British 
 statesmen and others as long ago as 1898, and, seeing 
 that it had never been repudiated, there was no good 
 ground to beHeve that it would be abandoned at the 
 eleventh hour. British incredulity did credit to our 
 faith in human perfectibility ; but it has cost us 
 dear. 
 
 This is, perhaps, beside the point ; except that, in 
 devising a substitute for the theory of justification 
 by might, we are still bound to take account of human 
 nature, as exemplified in the history of two hundred 
 years. And not in German history only. The 
 temptation may arise again : in England, Russia, or 
 France ; and we should guard against the easy 
 optimism, which is the first product of war-w^eariness, 
 and which leads to the belief that no nation wiU ever 
 
 1 Ibid., a, 249. 258. 
 
 173 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 go to war. It may be that the peace-makers will 
 decide, that, for some years at least, the chance of a 
 recurrence of warfare will be best met by constant 
 preparation ; and that a neglect of preparation, 
 though jt may not be dangerous at first, will lead in a 
 later generation to worse loss, financial and economic, 
 than its expense would entail. We cannot say ; but 
 this we should say, that the boon of disarmament and 
 peace will be bought too dearly if it results in a fresh 
 recourse to war, twenty, thirty, even forty years 
 hence. We may ask to be fully informed as to the 
 conditions, foreseen and foreseeable, which govern 
 the decision, but the fate of war is so tremendous 
 that no sanguine self-deception on our part must 
 entail its horrors on our descendants. 
 
 But we would not end on a pessimistic note. It 
 may well prove, when the Third Great War is over, 
 that the democracies, knocking at kings' doors, are 
 competent to frame a better treaty than those of 
 Westphalia, Utrecht, and Paris. When the diplo- 
 matists have rectified the frontiers, and have fulfilled 
 legitimate aspirations for rehgious and national 
 independence, pubUc opinion in the Allied States is 
 likely to reinforce these measures by a demand for 
 some sign, or contract, or guarantee, of pacific 
 methods in the future. Public opinion is a more 
 formidable engine than it has been in the past, and, 
 though the so-called solidarity of labour has failed 
 to rally German Socialists from the cause of their 
 
 174 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS 
 
 Fatherland to the call of their comrades in other 
 countries, it may be that the failure of their Father- 
 land will inspire them to seek better government. 
 The memory of the Russian Emperor, Alexander I, 
 will doubtless be recalled at this point : with more 
 open methods of diplomacy and a more direct 
 democratic control, it is not beyond hope that his 
 enlightened scheme of a Holy Alliance of Christian 
 monarchs may develop into an international court 
 of arbitration with the weight of public opinion at 
 its back. 
 
 How this dream is to be translated into reaUty 
 is another matter ; and, as we have said, it may 
 be a matter of a long time. The worst crime against 
 posterity would be to make shift with a premature 
 solution, and to win a few years' industrial prosperity 
 at the cost of another great war, in which lives and 
 savings would be thrown away. The next worst 
 crime, however, would be to fail to make the attempt, 
 with all the knowledge, all the energy, and all the 
 honesty which so grave an enterprise demands. 
 
 One word more in conclusion. The sole condition 
 on which this attempt can be made is the complete 
 success of the AlHes in Europe. A partial success of 
 the enemy, even a stalemate of war, would be fatal 
 to the prospect of an abiding peace. The history of 
 Belgium assures us that she would never permanently 
 acquiesce in German occupation or control. It 
 assures us, too, that such a fate would involve a 
 
 175 
 
THE THIRD GREAT WAR 
 
 similar fate for Holland ; and that the subjection of 
 these two countries would inevitably lead to a repeti- 
 tion of wars and counter-wars till they had regained 
 their independence after a new general conflagration. 
 Even a partial success of the enemy would mean a 
 continuance of the problem of the Rhine frontier ; 
 a constant menace of invasion to England ; a re- 
 curring unrest in South-east Europe, and disturb- 
 ances in the Pacific and the Atlantic. As little 
 would peace have resulted from a victory of 
 Napoleon at Waterloo as it will result from anything 
 less than a complete victory of the AUies over the 
 two Kaisers. We are fighting ideas as well as armies. 
 It is the keen perception of this truth, and the belief 
 that even a non-combatant may do a little service 
 by expressing it, that has caused this book to be 
 written. 
 
 X76 
 
GLOSSARY AND INDEX. 
 
 A. 
 
 Acton, Lord, 93 
 
 African Trading Company of 
 Brandenburg, 81. 
 
 Agricola, 30. 
 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, Peace of, 1748 : 
 truce in War of Austrian 
 Succession, 115. 
 
 Alexander I, Emperor of Russia, 
 acceded 1801 : interview with 
 Napoleon at Tilsit, 154; at 
 Erfurt, 155 ; proposes scheme 
 of Holy Alliance of Monarchs, 
 161. 
 
 Amiens, Peace of, year's truce 
 between England and France, 
 1802-03, 151. 
 
 Anjou, Duke of ; see Philip V, 
 King of Spain. 
 
 Anne, Queen of England, 58. 
 
 Arndt, 94, 96. 
 
 AuerstSdt, Battle of, 1806, sub- 
 jected Prussia to Napoleon, 
 91, 154. 
 
 Augsburg, Peace of, between 
 Catholics and Lutherans in 
 Germany (1555), 25 ; League 
 and War of (1686-98), 49 f. 
 
 Austerlitz, victory of French 
 over Russia and Austria at, 
 1805, 153. 
 
 Austria, and the Eastern Ques- 
 tion, 65 ; defeated by France 
 under Buonaparte, 147, 153. 
 
 Austrian Succession, War of, 
 1740-48 : caused by death of 
 Emperor Charles VI without 
 heir male, 112 ff. 
 
 B. 
 
 Barbarossa, Holy Roman Em- 
 peror, 1 1 52 A.D., 37. 
 
 Basel, Treaties of, 1795, between 
 France and Prussia, and France 
 and Spain, 141. 
 
 12 
 
 177 
 
GLOSSARY AND INDEX 
 
 Belgium, as Spanish Nether- 
 lands, 47, 58 ; transferred to 
 Austria, 62 ; revolt of, 125, 
 127 ; becomes Republic, 129 ; 
 invaded by France, 135 ; 
 history reviewed, 166. 
 
 Bernadotte, Prince Regent of 
 Sweden, 157. 
 
 Bismarck, Prince, re-founds 
 German unity on iron and 
 blood, 98 f. 99 ^, 105, 166 ; his 
 views on the Imperial title, 
 171 ; on treaty-obligations, 
 173. 
 
 Boileau, 71. 
 
 Bourbonism, 57. 
 
 Brandenburg : an Electorate 
 (i.e. a German State ruled by 
 an Elector, so-called because 
 of his vote for the election of 
 the head of the Empire, q.v.), 
 of which the capital was Berlin, 
 and the ruling Prince a 
 HohenzoUern ; territorial ac- 
 quisition of in 1648, 27 ; 
 merged in the kingdom of 
 Prussia, 19. 
 
 Bryce, Lord ; Holy Roman 
 Empire, 9, 37 ^ 96. loi. 
 
 Buonaparte, Napoleon, at siege 
 of Toulon, 139 ; from 1795 to 
 181 5, ch. ix passim. See also 
 Napoleon. 
 
 Campbell - Bannerman, Sir 
 Henry, 11. 
 
 Cape St. Vincent, victory of 
 British fleet at, 148. 
 
 Carlyle, 71, 91, 126, 131. 
 
 Castlereagh, Viscount, 161. 
 
 Catherine II, Empress of Russia, 
 accedes 1762, 122 ; intrigues in 
 Poland, 124, 140; death of, 
 141. 
 
 Charlemagne, Holy Roman Em- 
 peror, 800 A.D. ; 37. 
 
 Charles I, King of England, 23. 
 
 Charles II, King of Spain, 1665- 
 1 700 : in relation to the War of 
 the Spanish Succession, 53 ff. ; 
 death and will of, 56. 
 
 Charles VI, Emperor, formerly 
 candidate for Throne of Spain 
 (see Spanish Succession War), 
 and the Treaty of Utrecht, 68 ; 
 Pragmatic Sanction in the 
 matter of the Austrian Suc- 
 cession, III f. 
 
 Charles X, King of Sweden, 
 76 fi. 
 
 Charles XII, King of Sweden, 
 defeated by Russia, 81 ; death 
 of, 1718, 82. 
 
 Christina, Queen of Sweden ; 
 1626-89 ; party to the Peace 
 of Westphalia, 18. 
 
 178 
 
GLOSSARY AND INDEX 
 
 Colbert, Finance - minister to 
 Louis XIV, 44, 71. 
 
 Conscription in France, under the 
 Republican Government of 
 the Directory, 150. 
 
 Consulate, French, replaces Di- 
 rectory in Year 8 (1799- 1800), 
 150. 
 
 Coromandel, 81, 108. 
 
 Cramb, Mr. J. A., 162. 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 23. 
 
 Cujus regio, ejus teligio (each 
 man's [prince's] country, his 
 own church) ; principle of 
 religious settlement between 
 Catholics and Lutherans 
 adopted at the Peace of 
 Augsburg (i555)> 25. 
 
 Culture in Prusso-Germany, 87, 
 93 ff., 100 f., 105, 119. 
 
 D. 
 
 Danton, 138 f. 
 
 Descartes, Rene, in Sweden, 18. 
 
 Devolution, War of, 1667-68, 
 waged by Louis XIV against 
 Spain in Belgium, 47. 
 
 Diplomacy, old and new, 15. 
 
 Directory, French, instituted in 
 Year 3 (1794-95), 148. 
 
 Dual Monarchy, how it arose, 
 and how it acquitted itself, 
 65 fi. 
 
 Dumouriez, 135, 139. 
 
 Dunkirk, 46, 62. 
 
 Dutchmen in Prussia, 80. 
 
 E. 
 
 Elizabeth, Empress of Russia, 
 acceded 1741, 116. 
 
 Emperor (see also Empire), the 
 associations and temptations 
 of the title to rulers in Western 
 Europe, 38, 104. 
 
 Empire,French, under Napoleon I, 
 152 f. 
 
 Empire, Holy Roman ; collection 
 of Germanic States, whose 
 princes elected an Emperor 
 from their body ; traced its 
 origin to Augustus Casar ; 
 included Charlemagne and 
 Barbarossa ; after 1438, the 
 Emperor, with only two excep- 
 tions, was a Habsburg of 
 Austria ; Francis II resigned 
 the title, 1806, and called 
 himself Hereditary Emperor 
 of Austria ; the rise of Protes- 
 tantism destroyed the religious 
 union of the Empire, and 
 Napoleon's conquests com- 
 pleted the destruction of its 
 hegemony. See pp. 21, 22, 
 64-66, 103-04, 152, 168-70. 
 
 179 
 
GLOSSARY AND INDEX 
 
 Enghien, Due d', execution of, 
 by Napoleon, 1804, 152. 
 
 Erasmus, Dutch humanist, 3 1 . 
 
 F. 
 
 Fehrbellin, Battle of, 1675, 
 between Sweden and Prussia, 
 81. 
 
 Ferdinand III, Emperor ; elected 
 1637 ; died 1657 ; party to 
 the Peace of Westphalia, 2 1 . 
 
 Fichte, 93. 
 
 Francis I, King of France, 
 1515-47, 31- 
 
 Francis II, Roman Emperor, son 
 of Leopold II, accedes 1792, 
 134 ; the problem of the 
 Austro - French War, 135; 
 proclaims himself Hereditary 
 Emperor of Austria and abdi- 
 cates from Roman Empire, 
 152. 
 
 Francis Ferdinand, Archduke of 
 Austria, assassinated June 
 28th, 1914, 53. 
 
 Francke, Kuno, 98. 
 
 Frederick II, King of Prussia* 
 1740-86 ; surnamed " The 
 Great ", 74 ; accession of, 
 90 ; his army, 90 ; hollowness 
 of his power, 92 ; his mistakes 
 avoided by Bismarck, 100 ; 
 
 annexes Austrian province of 
 Silesia, 109 ; indefensible 
 character of the act, inf.; 
 was a guarantor of Pragmatic 
 Sanction of Emperor Charles 
 VI, 112; invasion of Silesia, 
 113 f . ; keeps it, 115; in 
 Seven Years' War, 118 I 
 invades Saxony, 119; his 
 victories, 120. 
 
 Frederick III, Elector of Bran- 
 denburg, 1 688-171 3 : becomes 
 King Frederick I of Prussia, 
 1701, 19; accession, 82; 
 assumes royal title, 83. 
 
 Frederick Augustus, King of 
 Saxony, demands Austria's 
 support to his candidature for 
 the Throne of Poland as the 
 price of his assent to the Prag- 
 matic Sanction of Emperor 
 Charles VI ; is elected accord- 
 ingly, 1733, 112 ; died 1763, 
 124. 
 
 Frederick William, Elector of 
 Brandenburg, 1640-88 ; sur- 
 named " The Great " ; party 
 to the Peace of Westphalia, 
 19 ; his possessions and policy, 
 74 f . ; relations with Sweden 
 and Poland, jy ; makes 
 treaties ad idem with both at 
 the same time, 78 ; Branden- 
 burgizes Prussia, 79 f. ; foreign 
 policy of, 81 ; death of, 82. 
 
 180 
 
GLOSSARY AND INDEX 
 
 Frederick William I, King of 
 Prussia, 1713-40; confirmed 
 as King at Treaty of Utrecht, 
 6^ ; accession of, 83 ; creates 
 Prussian army, 85 ; represses 
 culture, 87 ; death of, 88 ; 
 guarantees Pragmatic Sanc- 
 tion of Emperor Charles VI, 
 112. 
 
 French Revolution, ch. viii 
 passim ; events of 1 789, 1 30 ; 
 of 1790-96, 131 ; Words- 
 worth's evidence, 132 ; the 
 war of 1792, 134 f. ; end of, 
 at Treaties of Basel, 141. 
 
 Friedland, Napoleon's Victory 
 over Russia at, 1807, 154. 
 
 G. 
 
 Galway, ist Earl of, 61. 
 
 George II, King of England, 
 Elector of Hanover, 118. 
 
 George IV, King of England, 
 161. 
 
 German Empire, its origin and 
 aims, 170. 
 
 Goethe, 88, 93. 
 
 Goschen, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward, 
 108. 
 
 Greater Europe and the Conti- 
 nental Wars of the i8th 
 Century, 107 f. 
 
 Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward, 109. 
 
 Grimm, Jakob, 96. 
 
 Gustavus III, King of Sweden, 
 death of, 1792, 134. 
 
 H. 
 Haldane, Lord, 11. 
 
 Halle, University of, founded, 
 1694, 82. 
 
 Hardenberg, 94, 96. 
 
 Heine, 96 f. 
 
 Herder, 88, 93. 
 
 Hohenzollern Militarism, its rise 
 and breakdown, 93 ff. 
 
 Holland, fate linked with 
 Belgium's, 136; becomes Re- 
 public of Batavia, 139. 
 
 Holy Alliance, 181 5, 161 ; its 
 future prospects, 175. 
 
 Hubertusburg, Treaty of, 1763, 
 at close of Seven Years' War, 
 120 f. 
 
 Huguenots, in Prussia, 80. 
 
 Humboldt, 94. 
 
 Hutten, Ulrich von, 31 ^ 
 
 I. 
 
 Innocent X, Pope of Rome, 17. 
 
 Ivan VI, Emperor of Russia, 
 1740-41, 116. 
 
 181 
 
GLOSSARY AND INDEX 
 
 Jena, Battle of, 1806, subjected 
 Prussia to Napoleon, 91, 154. 
 
 John Casimir, King of Poland, ^6. 
 
 Joseph II, Emperor, accedes 
 1765, 121 ; victim of revolu- 
 tion in Austrian Netherlands 
 (Belgium), 127. 
 
 Joseph Ferdinand, Electoral 
 Prince of Bavaria, died 1699 : 
 candidate for the Throne of 
 Spain, 53. 
 
 Junkers, squiredom of East 
 Prussia, coercion of, 80. 
 
 K. 
 
 Kant, 88. 
 
 Kaunitz, Prince von, 118. 
 
 Korner, 94. 
 
 Kosciusko, Thaddeus, Polish 
 patriot, 140. 
 
 Kotzebue, August von, 167*. 
 
 L. 
 
 Labiau, Treaty of, 1656, between 
 Frederick the Great of Prussia 
 and Charles X of Sweden, 'j%. 
 
 Legitimacy, principle of, 164. 
 
 Leibniz, 88. 
 
 Leipzig, Battle of, 181 3, Won 
 Prussian Liberation from 
 Napoleon, 94. 
 
 Leopold, King of the Belgians, 
 1831, 166. 
 
 Leopold II, Emperor, accedes 
 1790, 129 ; espouses cause of 
 his sister. Queen Marie 
 Antoinette of France, 131 ; 
 death of, 1792. 134. 
 
 Lessmg, 88, 93. 
 
 Letters of Obscure Men, 31. 
 
 Leuthen, Battle of, 1757 : 
 Prussian victory over Aus- 
 trians, 120. 
 
 Lorraine, Duchy of, ceded to 
 France, as the price of her 
 support to the Pragmatic 
 Sanction of Emperor Charles 
 VI, 112. 
 
 Lorraine, Duke of, married Maria 
 Theresa, daughter and heiress 
 of Charles VI of Austria, and 
 becomes, later. Emperor 
 Francis I, 112. 
 
 Louis XIV, King of France ; 
 1 638-171 5 ; party to Peace of 
 Westphalia, 19 ; and Kaiser 
 Wilhelm II, 35 ; his aims and 
 policy, 37 ; his Absolutism, 
 42 f . ; his political programme, 
 45 ; the steps he took towards 
 effecting it, 46 S. ; effects, 49 ; 
 his " secondary age," 50 ; 
 proclamation of his grandson, 
 Duke of Anjou, as King Philip 
 V of Spain, 55 ; War of the 
 Spanish Succession, ch. iv ; 
 death of, 69, 
 
 18^ 
 
GLOSSARY AND INDEX 
 
 Louis XV, King of France, 
 acceded 171 5 : relation with 
 Frederick II of Prussia, 116. 
 
 Louis XVI, King of France, 
 acceded 1774 ; marries, as 
 Dauphin, Archduchess Marie 
 Antoinette of Austria, 122 ; 
 his position at the outbreak of 
 the French Revolution, 1789, 
 1 30 ; flees from Paris and is 
 brought back, 131 ; dons red 
 cap of liberty, 1 36 ; is be- 
 headed, 137. 
 
 Louis XVII of France (never 
 reigned), 138. 
 
 Louis XVIII of France, 157. 
 
 Louis Philippe, King of the 
 French, 1830-48, 69^. 
 
 Lou vain, 13. 
 
 Luneville, Treaty of, between 
 France and Austria, 1801, 151. 
 
 Luther, Martin ; hero of Pro- 
 testant Reformation ; at Diet 
 of Worms (1521), 25. 
 
 M. 
 
 Machiavelli, Niccolo, 1469-1527, 
 author of // Principe (The 
 Prince) , favourite text-book of 
 Absolutism, and source-book 
 of Machiavellism, as a recog- 
 nised type of absolutist govern- 
 ment, 39 ff . 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, 108. 
 Marat, 138. 
 Marcus Aurelius, 21. 
 
 Margaret, Queen of Navarre, 
 1527-49, sister to Francis I 
 and mother of Henri IV, King 
 of France, 31. 
 
 Maria Theresa, Archduchess of 
 Austria, daughter of Emperor 
 Charles VI : Pragmatic Sanc- 
 tion of her father to secure her 
 succession, 112 ; marries Duke 
 of Lorraine, afterwards Em- 
 peror Francis I, 112; forms 
 alliance with Elizabeth of 
 Russia, 116; her daughter 
 marries Louis XVI of France, 
 122. 
 
 Marie Antoinette, Archduchess 
 of Austria, daughter of Em- 
 peror Francis I and Maria 
 Theresa, daughter of Emperor 
 Charles VI : marries, 1770, the 
 Dauphin of France, afterwards 
 King Louis XVI, 122 ; is 
 beheaded, 139. 
 
 Marie Louise, Archduchess of 
 Austria, marries Napoleon, 146. 
 
 Marlborough, ist Duke of, 51. 
 
 Marot, French Renaissance poet, 
 
 31. 
 Marriott, Mr. J. A. R., 9. 
 
 183 
 
GLOSSARY AND INDEX 
 
 Maximilian, Elector of Bavaria, 
 
 22. 
 
 Mazarin, Cardinal, 1602-61 ; 
 party to Peace of Westphalia 
 on behalf of Louis XIV of 
 France, 18 f. 
 
 Meredith, George, 70. 
 
 Metternich, Prince, Austrian 
 Chancellor, 1773-18 59, en- 
 courages reaction in Prussia, 
 95 ; at Conquest of Vienna, 
 161. 
 
 Midleton, Lord, 11. 
 
 Mignet, 138. 
 
 Milton, John, 25. 
 
 Mirabeau, 131. 
 
 Morley, Lord, 18. 
 
 N. 
 
 Napoleon I : 1 769-1 821 ; Em- 
 peror of the French, 1804-15, 
 144 ; self-made, 145 ; his 
 principles and ideas, 146 ; 
 defeats Austria, 147 ; his 
 Egyptian campaign, 149 ; 
 elected First Consul, 1 50 ; 
 life-Consul, 1 50 ; Emperor, 
 150 ; executes Due d'Enghien, 
 152 ; scheme of invasion of 
 England, 153 ; enters Berlin, 
 154; increasing despotism of, 
 156 ; commences Second Great 
 War, 156; abdicates, 157; 
 the Hundred Days, 158. 
 
 Nelson, and Napoleon, 146 ; at 
 Cape St. Vincent, 148 ; wins 
 Battle of the Nile, 149 ; 
 Trafalgar, 153. 
 
 Neutrality of Belgium, 166. 
 
 Niemen, river, interview between 
 Napoleon and Alexander on, 
 1807, 154. 
 
 Nietzsche, F. W., his views and 
 their misapplication, 72*. 
 
 Nile, Naval Battle of the, 1798, 
 149. 
 
 Nimwegen, Treaty of, between 
 Louis XIV and the Dutch, 
 1679, 48. 
 
 Novalis, 102. 
 
 Nystad, Peace of, 1721 : effect 
 on balance of power in the 
 Baltic, 84. 
 
 P. 
 
 Pacifism, 167. 
 
 Partition Treaty, for the division 
 of Spain's possessions after 
 death of Charles II : re- 
 pudiated by Louis XIV, 56. 
 
 Paul, Emperor of Russia, ac- 
 ceded 1796, 148 ; Napoleon's 
 influence over, 151; assassina- 
 tion of, 151. 
 
 Peter the Great, of Russia, 
 defeats Charles XII of Sweden 
 at Pultava, 1709, 81. 
 
 184 
 
GLOSSARY AND INDEX 
 
 Philip V, King of Spain, acceded 
 I yoo ; proclaimed at Versailles 
 by his grandfather, Louis XIV 
 of France, thus causing out- 
 break of Spanish Succession 
 War, 55 ; retains the Throne 
 at Peace of Utrecht, 60. 
 
 Pitt, William, the elder, 120. 
 
 Pitt, William, the younger, 136. 
 
 Poland, Constitution and First 
 Partition of, 1772, 124; 
 Second Partition of, 137 ; 
 Third Partition of, 140. 
 
 Pomerania, division of territory 
 in 1648, 27. 
 
 Pompadour, Madame de, 116. 
 
 Poniatowski, Stanislaus, King of 
 Poland, 1763, 124; deposed, 
 140. 
 
 Portugal, joins Grand Alliance in 
 Spanish Succession War, 61. 
 
 Pragmatic Sanction : personal 
 decree of a Monarch to meet 
 special difficulty ; employed 
 by Emperor Charles VI in the 
 matter of the Austrian Suc- 
 cession, III. 
 
 Prothero, Mr. G. W., 59. 
 
 Prussia, becomes a Kingdom by 
 titular change of Elector 
 Frederick III of Brandenburg, 
 1 70 1, 19 ; recognised under his 
 son, King Fredk. Wm. I, by 
 
 terms of Treaty of Utrecht, 
 ^7^?)> 63; receives territorial 
 extension, 6-^ ; foreign ele- 
 ments in population, 80 ; 
 acquires army, 85 ; War of 
 Liberation and subsequent 
 reaction, 95 ff. 
 
 Prussian School of History, 72. 
 
 Pultava, defeat of Sweden by 
 Russia at, 1709, 81. 
 
 R. 
 
 Rabelais, French Renaissance 
 satirist, 31, 142. 
 
 Ranke, 19. 
 
 Ratisbon, Truce of : confirmed 
 Louis XIV for 20 years in his 
 seizures of Rhenish terri- 
 tories, 48. 
 
 Realpolitik, 41. 
 
 Reims, 13. 
 
 Renaissance : intellectual move- 
 ment in Europe, directed to a 
 revolt from the narrow limits 
 of medieval knowledge, and 
 of the hampering bonds of 
 medieval authority ; started 
 in Italy in the early 15 th 
 century ; crossed the Alps into 
 Germany, 30 ; merged in the 
 Reformation, 31-2. 
 
 Reuchlin, 30. 
 
 Rhmions : Rhenish territorial 
 commissions of Louis XIV, 48. 
 
 185 
 
GLOSSARY AND INDEX 
 
 Robespierre, 131, 139. 
 
 Ross bach, Battle of, 1757 ; 
 Prussian victory over French, 
 119. 
 
 Rousseau, 123. 
 
 Ryswick, Treaty of, 1698 : con- 
 cluded the War of the League 
 of Augsburg between Louis 
 XIV and Spain, Sweden, 
 Holland and the Empire, 50. 
 
 Savoy, Royal house of, 63. 
 
 Saxony, invasion of, by Fredk. 
 the Great of Prussia, in Seven 
 Years' War, 118 ; comparison 
 of the invasion to invasion 
 of Belgium, 1914, 119. 
 
 Scharnhorst, 94. 
 
 Schelling, 102. 
 
 Schiller, 85, 92. 
 
 Schlegel, 102. 
 
 Schleiermacher, 102. 
 
 Sea-power and Empire, 38. 
 
 Seeley, Sir John, 108. 
 
 Seven Years' War, 1756-63, 
 118 fif. 
 
 Spanish Succession, War of, 
 1702-13 : the First Great War, 
 between France under Louis 
 XIV and England, Holland, 
 the Empire (Austria), Prussia, 
 
 etc. ; arose out of death 
 (1700) of King Charles II of 
 Spain without an heir, and the 
 rival claims of the French and 
 Austrian next-of-kin : its out- 
 break, 34 ; its ultimate causes, 
 38, 50 f. ; its course, 59 ; con- 
 cluded by Treaty of Utrecht, 
 60 ff. 
 
 Stein, 94, 157. 
 
 Sweden, defeat of at Fehrbellin 
 by Fredk. the Great of 
 Prussia, 81 ; replaced by 
 Russia in the Baltic, 84. 
 
 Sybel. H. von, founder of the 
 Prussian School of German 
 historians, 72. 
 
 Talleyrand, 158. 
 
 Terror, Reign of, in Paris, 133 f. ; 
 its rise and fall, 139. 
 
 Tieck, 102. 
 
 Tilsit, Peace of, 1807, between 
 France and Russia, 153. 
 
 Trafalgar, British Naval victory 
 at, 1805, 153. 
 
 Treaty of Paris, I and II, 
 
 158 ff. 
 
 Treitschke, H. von, Prussian 
 historian, 72 and note. 
 
 Turenne, 71. 
 
 186 
 
GLOSSARY AND INDEX 
 
 U. 
 
 Utrecht, Treaty of. 171 3, be- 
 tween the Allies (England, 
 Holland, Prussia, the Empire) 
 and France at the close of the 
 Spanish Succession War (the 
 First Great War), 60 ff. ; short- 
 comings of, 64 ff. 
 
 Versailles, Convention of, be- 
 tween Austria, France and 
 Russia 1756-57, 117. 
 
 Victor Amadeus, King of Sicily, 
 
 63. 
 Vienna, Congress of, 159 if. 
 
 W. 
 
 Wackenroder, 102. 
 
 Waldeck, Prince, 21. 
 
 Watson, William, 131, 
 
 Wehlau, Treaty of, 1657, between 
 Fredk. the Great of Prussia 
 and the King of Poland, 78. 
 
 Weltpolitik, 144. 
 
 Westminster, Convention of, be- 
 tween Prussia and England, 
 1756, 116. 
 
 Westphalia, Peace of ; October 
 24th, 1648 ; between the 
 Empire on one part and France 
 and Sweden on the other, 
 17 ff. ; objects and results, 
 24 f . ; chief features and up- 
 shot, 28 f. 
 
 Wilhelm II, German Emperor, 
 1888 : his views on Sea- 
 power and Empire, 39 ; his 
 Pan - Germanism compared 
 with lh3 Pan-Bourbonism of 
 King Louis XIV of France, 
 57. 
 
 William III, King of England, 
 58. 
 
 Winckelmann, 88, 93. 
 
 Wolff, Christian von, 88. 
 
 Wordsworth, witnesses French 
 Revolution in Paris, 132 f. 
 
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