GERMANY FROM CLOVIS TO WILLIAM I.*
THIS American author, who is an old historical hand, has so shaped his title as to disarm criticism of one of its familiar weapons. If we complain of his off-hand assignment of the invention of printing with movable type to Gatenberg of Mayence, when dozens of disputants have maintained the priority in that respect of the Haarlem block-books—if we object to the battle of Ligny being knocked off in four lines— he silences us by the word " short." That adjective is also ready if we remark that the bibliography vouchsafed is utterly insufficient, that the systematic absence of notes makes verification of the text impossible, that dates are few and far between, and genealogies non-existent. The author has previously dealt with portions of German history, and has published a collection of charters, Bulls, &c., so that if his " Literature " stops at writers like, say, Ranks and Giesebrecht, we need not infer that he has shirked study of the necessary Regesta, or the rest of that special science of German invention known as Quellenkunde, at which our easy-going scholarship persistently shrugs its shoulders. Mr. Henderson's speciality is direct narrative, in which he is always clear and picturesque. The average reader may dispense with comment when he reads that in the time of Tacitus the ladies of " smart" Roman society took to blond wigs in order to look like the Germans who had destroyed the legions of • L Short History of Germany. By Ernest P. Henderson. 2 vols. London: and Co. [17s.]
Yarns, that Tiberius loved German turnips, that when Queen Sophie Charlotte took a pinch of snuff during the Coronation at Konigsberg she was reproved by a "lackey." Will he understand when " Burgundy " is habitually used without explanation as if it were a household word like Middlesex or Massachusetts ? Thanks to Mr. Bryce's admirable disen- tanglement of a conundrum formerly almost insoluble, we now know that history has to reckon with a duplex Burgundy,
or Kingdom of Arles, on the Mediterranean, with the North Sea country of Quentin Durward and poor Clarence's dream, with the home of Chambertin wine and Chateau d'Yquem, and several other Burgundies of varying geographical and chronological import. Our author's naked use of " Saxony " is equally misleading. At varying dates that expression denoted a primeval Duchy reaching from the Elbe to the Netherlands, from Hesse to beyond the Eider : an electorate with Wittenberg as capital : an electorate of the house of Wettin, ruled from Meissen, and augmented by Thuringian districts : a purely Saxon edition of that electorate 'minus the said districts, which was the basis of the present kingdom. Again, "Prussia" is a word requiring com- mentary, having also a shifting sense. Another cryptic verbal entity is the Imperial title, of which, as well as of the proper designation of the Empire, even Mr. Bryce has thought it desirable to speak with caution. This ground is too slippery for Mr. Henderson, who calls Charlemagne after his coronation in St. Peter's "King of the Romans " : that was the style assumed by the Emperors who were not actually crowned by the Pope. Viewed as an apparatus of govern- ment, the mediaeval Holy Roman Reich of German Nation, which subsisted, at times under conditions of semi-extinction, from Charlemagne to Maximilian, was not much more effec- tive than the modern Empire of Charles V., which, again, at the close of the Thirty Years' War was a worn-out institution. The official statement of the prerogatives of the Kaiser of the newer pattern filled four folio volumes, but his actual authority was mainly derived from his position as head of the Vienna Hapsburgs. After the Peace of Westphalia the learned Swede, Puffendorf, wrote thus of the Empire of that day :—" It is no more a nation than was the league of Greek states which Agamemnon led against Troy ; it is not an oligarchy, not a monarchy, nor yet a democracy ; it is an abortion—a certain irregular body like unto a monster." A century later Voltaire capped this description by the remark that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. The Kaisers were never Aifreds or Akbars ; but we must not forget their good work as levers who helped to uproot the feudal system—as promoters of those unique sources of German chivalry, riches, poetry, and architecture, the Crusades— as patrons of the civilising agencies of that fountain of Prussian greatness, the Teutonic Order, and protectors of nearly seventy cities, many of which, under the " immediate" sovereignty of their distant overlord, became centres of wealth, industry, University life, literature, and ar•t.
During the century that preceded the reign of Charles V. the reins of the Empire were always in unfit hands. The handsome and eloquent Sigismund (" Super Grammaticam ") might send Huss to the stake, but as a ruler he was a failure. His heir, Frederick the Pacific, reigned for fifty- three years, leaving nothing behind him but the device, " A.E.1.0.U.," with which he even marked his clothes, by • which he meant "Allen Erdreich ist Oesterreich unterthan," or the Latin " Austriae est imperare omni universo " : there his ambition stopped, for he did not appear at a Diet for twenty-seven years, and lived near Vienna because the neigh- bourhood abounded in pears. His son, called in Germany " the last of the Knights," by the Italianq " Massimiliano pochi danari " from his being always in debt, is one of the most striking figures in history, but govern rightly he could not. Described by Machiavelli as being always in a state of violent bodily and mental fever, he kept his coun- cillors in the dark as to his diplomatic and political programme, which he re-edited from day to day. However, he was a military reformer, and won the first battle of Guinegate, —thanks, for aught we know, to some Chief of the Staff. Our author gives an interesting portrait of this crowned dreamer, who wanted to be Pope, backed Perkin Warbeck, and was " designated as eventual heir to the English throne," of which, we think, Edward VI. was a preferable occupant. But we de
not read of his singing birds, or of his hounds, of which he kept seven hundred and fifty couple : or how, in the middle of a bloody campaign, he wrote long instructions about a tame ibex in the Tyrol: or that, when charging his daughter with some political messages to our Henry VIII., he bid her likewise beg for " deux beaux doghes femelles et ung masle." Then Maximilian makes no sign as national patriotic idealist, as central pillar of the German humanist evolution, as friend of art and science, with his prose epics, " Weisskunig " and " Theuerdank," and his activities in medicine and music. Not a word is said of the metaphorical woodcuts by the Kaiser's friend and Court-painter, Albert Rarer, known as Maximilian's " Triumphs," or of the church of Innsbruck, designed by himself, with its matchless array of bronze statues, headed by our own Arthur as symbol of knighthood, keeping watch over the sculptured sarcophagus in which the Imperial remains ideally, though not actually, repose. Certain readers will sigh for poisonings, throat- cuttings, and other bloody personal episodes which tessellate the annals of France and Italy; Mr. Henderson is not to blame if the Germans, with their many wars and risings, never made assassination a fine art. Analogous is the case of the usual ewig weibliche of the irregular category. The peccadillos of the German rulers were mostly of a diluted description. No Margrave or Romischer Kaiser supported a Marozia, Nell Gwynne, or Jean Dubarry, and the not very numerous Transrhenane representatives of those Sultanas were, relatively speaking, modest, self-effacing persons.
Frederick the Great, visiting the tomb of his ancestor, the Great Elector, said, " Messieurs, celui-ci a fait de grandee choses." Our author much abbreviates this potentate, giving only a couple of words, and two patches of paint on a bad map, to the experiment in African colonisation whereby Friedrich Wilhelm L proved himself to be two centuries ahead of his time. Coming to Alter Fritz, the author excludes from his " Literature " the inimitable German classic Archenholtz with Carlyle, and the vast new edition of Frederick's political and military correspondence in course of publication by the Berlin Academy, as well as the large- scale history of the King's wars, by the Berlin General Staff, now advancing to completion. Frederick's recent biographer, Koser, is suitably approved, though we are not warned that this able writer is the Director of the Prussian State Paper Office. In the drum-and-trumpet business our book does not excel; allusion is made to the improve- ment in the trigger by which Pitt's " wonderful man-of- war" hinted at the modern needle-gun, but not to the tactical innovations matured after the victory of Mollwitz, which gave " the myrmidons of Mars " a new life in the battle- field. The author generally calls a spade a spade ; he does not mince the practical significance of the Royal declaration to the Minister Podewils,—" If honesty will help us, we will be honest men ; if duplicity is needed, then let us be rogues." Shortly after the accession of the then "King of Strips" in 1740, the Bishop of Liege meddled with the minute Prussian territory of Heristal. Scoffing at the pacific injunction of his advisers, whose ideas on war—so he worded a Minute on their pacific memorandum—were " like the opinions of an Iroquois on astronomy," Frederick settled the matter by a sudden inva- sion of the episcopal lands. Here Mr. Henderson is very "short," not only on the cunning with which, while making the necessary arrangements, the new ruler hoodwinked his sur- roundings at the Castle of Rheinsberg, but also as to how the Chancelries of Europe interpreted this unexpected thunderbolt as the harbinger of a " prologue coming on." Again, he utterly misreads the artful dodge by which, after the invasion of Silesia, the Prussian troops were smuggled into Breslau without firing a shot. The trickery of Klein-Schnellendorf, whereby the Austrians were bamboozled into the capitulation of Neisse, is properly labelled a " slough of intrigue " ; but left out is the essential episode of the tent, when Alter Fritz checkmated the French Minister, Valory, by adroitly putting his foot on the memorandum of instruction which had acci- dentally dropped from that diplomatist's pocket to the ground. The picture of Frederick's milieu includes Voltaire, the artistic " swan of Padua," Algarotti, and the " flattener of the earth," Maupertuis, with the dogs and horses of Sans Scud, and the mischievous charger Conde,' who kicked a hole in the palace floor. On the flute performances, sonatas, and band music of the pupil of old Qnantz this author is better informed than in regard to Beethoven, whom he calls the " blind King of composers," further making that deaf genius dedicate the " Eroica " Symphony to the memory of—the Duo d'Enghien.
The account of the Bismarckian era is generally correct, and not too complimentary to Prussia : it should be read even by students of Sybel. Its value as a guide to contemporary German problems would have been greater if we had been told of the numerous territorial types of speech, intelligence, character, and habit, the survival of which in the twenty-six States has been so advantageous to the new Federation. An amusing slip is the application to the man of " blood and iron" of Sydney Smith's remark that Lord John Russ...1 was always ready to operate for the atone or take command of the Channel Fleet. The author's vocabulary might be advantageously weeded of a few precious elements; e.g., the fascinating word " dainty," so indispensable in the " what to wear " column of a society journal, does not contri- bute to our appreciation of the artistic qualities of the house- hold gear of the age of Charlemagne.
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