THE EVOLUTION OF PRUSSIA.*
Mussas. MARRIOTT and Grant Robertson describe their volume as " a preliminary attempt to fill a conspicuous and somewhat discreditable gap in our historical literature." Ex. (salient biographies and monographs on special periods exist, but they are not aware of any work which fulfils the purpose they have had in view—viz., to set forth " the rise and development of Brandenburg-Prussia and the later Prussianization of Ger- many under the Hohenzollerns as a connected whole, and with due regard to the claims of historical scholarship." There is no need of excuse for such a work. It not only supplies a " long-felt want," but it is peculiarly opportune at the present moment. Viewed in historical perspective, Germany's bid for world-power cannot be regarded as a more outbreak of national megalomania. It is shown in great measure to have its seeds in the Prussian ethos, in the persistence and continuity of purpose which lifted a small principality out of the welter of mediaeval Germany into a predominant place. Olimate, geographical position, and the peculiar amalgam of races which have gone to the snaking of the Prussian typo were all factors in an achievement so remarkable as to explain the belief in a special mission. Yet at more than one crucial moment the consciousness of this mission was lacking, and the Hohenzollerns owed much to good luck as well as to good management. It was mainly in return for the financial aid lent to the Emperor Sigismund that the Burgrave of Nuremberg was invested with the Electorate of Brandenburg, and it was the•pioneer work done by the Teutonic Order of Knights in conquering, colonizing, and utilizing Prussia that paved the way to the gradual absorption of the Duchy of East Prussia by the Hohenzollerns. Here they reaped whore others had sown. And it is curious to be reminded that a House which has long been regarded as entirely typical of North Germany came of Suabian stock, regarded its Southern posses- sions as its true home, and only gradually recognized Branden- burg as its main inheritance. The earlier Electors, as the authors point out, were capable rather than remarkable rulers. They extended thoir dominions by "nibbling and negotiation" rather than conquest. But they never let go their hold on what they had gained, and, most important of all, by strictly estab- lishing prirnogeniture and barring out alienation they secured their dominions against partition, the bane of so many other German States. Junkordom showed itself from the outset, at first in hostility to the Elector, subsequently in close and • Tho Evolution of Prussia : the Making of all Empire. By J. A. R. Marriott, M.A„ and O. Grant Robertson, M.A., U.V.O. Oxford : at the University rms. [Ss. net. privileged co-operation. But we have to wait till the coming of the Great Elector for the emergence of the really formidable features of the Prussian system—the establishment of an efficient autocracy as the head at once of a highly centralized civil administration and the Army ; and the building up of a standing Army, out of all proportion to the area and population of the country, as an engine of unification. State egoism and State militarism were the twin bases of Prussian power. Prussia's early espousal of the principles of the Reformation and her religious toleration were dictated, in the view of the authors, by political rather than moral considerations. In his relations with foreign States the Great Elector was the true forerunner of Frederick the Great ; tortuous in diplomacy, resolute in action. His sense of Prussia's mission was strong, but it was capable of being influenced by opportunism, witness the secret arrangement by which for a few years he accepted French subsidies, a secret which came as a shock to his admirers when it was revealed nearly two hundred years later. Frederick I. is chiefly to be remembered as the ruler under whom Prussia was elevated to a kingdom. Under Frederick William, the father of Frederick the Great, we witness the emergence of the repulsive features of Prussian militarism—the tyranny of the drill-sergeant, the glorification of the military caste, the seed of which the affair of Zabern was only one of many unlovely fruits. Futile as a diplomatist, he yet bequeathed to the son whom he used so brutally the triple inheritance of absolutism, a well-filled treasury, and a large and well-drilled Army. Frederick the Great's achievements and limitations are well set forth. In the spiritual sense it was a case of the beggar on horseback ; but though his father had made him a misanthrope, he laboured unremittingly for those whom he despised, ho never spared himself, and he was at once the most efficient and most hard- working man in his kingdom ; and if he gained territory by robbery, he fought wonderfully to keep it. Tho great strength of Prussia lay in the concentration of power in the hands of a military genius and a great administrator ; its weakness in his disinclination to secure the continuity of what was eminently a ono-man system. There were few great personalities in Prussia outside her rulers before Stein, and the rapid decline which culminated at Jena was inevitable. The " infamous " Treaty of Basle, the second partition of Poland, and the inglorious neutrality of Frederick William III.—though for the moment liberally rewarded—paved the way for the collapse of 1806. Prussia had owed her predominance to a succession of groat rulers and an extraordinarily efficient war machine. Both elements had been wanting since the death of Frederick the Great. But from the hard school of disaster, humiliation, and dismember- ment Prussia emerged with a new and greater lustre. The eight years that followed are perhaps the noblest in her history, and it is curious to note that in the process of regeneration the leading part was played by non-Prussian agents—Stein the Nassauer, Soharnhorst the Hanoverian, Gneisenau the Saxon. Practical patriotism was for the first time leavened by a spirit of idealism which found its expression in the system of national education and in the Emancipation Edict which abolished the personal servitude of the peasantry, and had Stein—the most enlightened spirit of all—carried his first scheme for the reconstitu- tion of Germany at the Congress of Vienna, the evolution of Prussia might have proceeded on wholly different lines and avoided the dangers of megalomania. Motternich's diplomaoy, though amazingly successful for the time, was destined to defeat its own ends, to recoil disastrously on Austria, and to facilitate the Prussianization of Germany.
Wo have left ourselves no space to render justice to the latter stages of Messrs. Marriott and Grant Robinson's interesting survey—the pierod of restoration and reaction ; the revolution of 1848 ; and the rule of Bismarck—and must content ourselves with a general testimony to the skill and conciseness with which they have handled their momentous theme, and the entire absence of animosity displayed throughout. Criticism is not wanting, but the tone of the work is so dispassionate, and the recognition of the great qualities of our enemies so unstinted, that it forms an admirable illustration of the right way of applying the maxim fas est et ab poste doceri to historical investigation.
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