Coachteam Leadership & Coaching historical books

EUROPEAN LEADERS.

BY JOHN LORD, LL.D.,

(Published first as part of LORD'S LECTURES - BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY)

 

Click here to read part 1

 

AUTHORITIES.

A. W. Kinglake's Invasion of the Crimea; C. de Bazancourt's Crimean
Expedition; G. B. McClellan's Reports on the Art of War in Europe in
1855-1856; R. C. McCormick's Visit to the Camp before Sebastopol; J. D.
Morell's Neighbors of Russia, and History of the War to the Siege of
Sebastopol; Pictorial History of the Russian War; Russell's British
Expedition to the Crimea; General Todleben's History of the Defence of
Sebastopol; H. Tyrrell's History of the War with Russia; Fyffe's History
of Modern Europe; Life of Lord Palmerston; Life of Louis Napoleon.

 

LOUIS NAPOLEON.

1808-1873.

THE SECOND EMPIRE.

Prince Louis Napoleon, or, as he afterward became, Emperor Napoleon
III., is too important a personage to be omitted in the sketch of
European history during the nineteenth century. It is not yet time to
form a true estimate of his character and deeds, since no impartial
biographies of him have yet appeared, and since he died less than thirty
years ago. The discrepancy of opinion respecting him is even greater
than that concerning his illustrious uncle.

No one doubts that the first Napoleon was the greatest figure of his
age, and the greatest general that the world has produced, with the
exception alone of Alexander and Caesar. No one questions his
transcendent abilities, his unrivalled fame, and his potent influence on
the affairs of Europe for a quarter of a century, leaving a name so
august that its mighty prestige enabled his nephew to steal his sceptre;
and his character has been so searchingly and critically sifted that
there is unanimity among most historians as to his leading traits,--a
boundless ambition and unscruplous adaptation of means to an end: that
end his self-exaltation at any cost. His enlarged and enlightened
intellect was sullied by hypocrisy, dissimulation, and treachery,
accompanied by minor faults with which every one is familiar, but which
are often overlooked in the immense services he rendered to his country
and to civilization.

Napoleon III., aspiring to imitate his uncle, also contributed important
services, but was not equal to the task he assumed, and made so many
mistakes that he can hardly be called a great man, although he performed
a great _rôle_ in the drama of European politics, and at one time
occupied a superb position. With him are associated the three great
international wars which took place in the interval between the
banishment of Napoleon I. to St. Helena and the establishment of the
French Republic on its present basis,--a period of more than fifty
years,--namely, the Crimean war; the war between Austria, France, and
Italy; and the Franco-Prussian war, which resulted in the humiliation of
France and the exaltation of Prussia.

When Louis Napoleon came into power in 1848, on the fall of Louis
Philippe, it was generally supposed that European nations had sheathed
the sword against one another, and that all future contests would be
confined to enslaved peoples seeking independence, with which contests
other nations would have nothing to do; but Louis Napoleon, as soon as
he had established his throne on the ruins of French liberties, knew no
other way to perpetuate his dominion than by embroiling the nations of
Europe in contests with one another, in order to divert the minds of the
French people from the humiliation which the loss of their liberties had
caused, and to direct their energies in new channels,--in other words,
to inflate them with visions of military glory as his uncle had done, by
taking advantage of the besetting and hereditary weakness of the
national character. In the meantime the usurper bestowed so many
benefits on the middle and lower classes, gave such a stimulus to trade,
adorned his capital with such magnificent works of art, and increased so
manifestly the material prosperity of France, that his reign was
regarded as benignant and fortunate by most people, until the whole
edifice which he had built to dazzle the world tumbled down in a single
day after his disastrous defeat at Sedan,--the most humiliating fall
which any French dynasty ever experienced.

Louis Napoleon offers in his own person an example of those extremes of
fortune which constitute the essence of romantic conditions and appeal
to the imagination. The third son of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland
(brother of Napoleon), and Hortense Beauharnais, daughter of the Empress
Josephine by her first marriage, he was born in Paris, in the palace of
the Tuileries, April 20, 1808. Living in Switzerland, with his mother
and brother (Napoleon Louis), he was well-educated, expert in all
athletic sports,--especially in riding and fencing,--and trained to the
study and practice of artillery and military engineering. The two
brothers engaged in an Italian revolt in 1830; both fell ill, and while
one died the other was saved by the mother's devotion. In 1831 the Poles
made an insurrection, and offered Louis Napoleon their chief command and
the crown of Poland; but the death, in 1832, of the only son of his
uncle aroused Louis's ambition for a larger place, and the sovereignty
of France became his "fixed idea." He studied hard, wrote and published
several political and military works, and in 1836 made a foolish attempt
at a Napoleonic revolt against Louis Philippe. It ended in humiliating
failure, and he was exiled to America, where he lived in obscurity for
about a year; but he returned to Switzerland to see his dying mother,
and then was obliged to flee to England. In 1838 he published his
"Napoleonic Ideas;" in 1840 he made, at Boulogne, another weak
demonstration upon the French throne, and was imprisoned in the
fortress of Ham. Here he did much literary work, but escaped in 1848 to
Belgium, whence he hurried back to Paris when the revolution broke out.
Getting himself elected a deputy in the National Assembly, he took
his seat.

The year 1848, when Louis Napoleon appeared on the stage of history, was
marked by extraordinary political and social agitations, not merely in
France but throughout Europe. It saw the unexpected fall of the
constitutional monarchy in France, which had been during eighteen years
firmly upheld by Louis Philippe, with the assistance of the ablest and
wisest ministers the country had known for a century,--the policy of
which was pacific, and the leading political idea of which was an
alliance with Great Britain. The king fled before the storm of
revolutionary ideas,--as Metternich was obliged to do in Vienna, and
Ferdinand in Naples,--and a provisional government succeeded, of which
Lamartine was the central figure. A new legislative assembly was chosen
to support a republic, in which the most distinguished men of France, of
all opinions, were represented. Among the deputies was Louis Napoleon,
who had hastened from England to take part in the revolution. He sat on
the back benches of the Chamber neglected, silent, and despised by the
leading men in France, but not yet hated nor feared.

When a President of the Republic had to be chosen by the suffrages of
the people, Louis Napoleon unexpectedly received a great majority of the
votes. He had been quietly carrying on his "presidential campaign"
through his agents, who appealed to the popular love for the name
of Napoleon.

The old political leaders, amazed and confounded, submitted to the
national choice, yet stood aloof from a man without political
experience, who had always been an exile when he had not been a
prisoner. Most of them had supposed that Bonapartism was dead; but the
peasantry in the provinces still were enthralled by the majesty and
mighty prestige of that conqueror who had been too exalted for envy and
too powerful to be resisted. To the provincial votes chiefly Louis
Napoleon owed his election as President,--and the election was fair. He
came into power by the will of the nation if any man ever did,--by the
spontaneous enthusiasm of the people for the name he bore, not for his
own abilities and services; and as he proclaimed, on his accession, a
policy of peace (which the people believed) and loyalty to the
Constitution,--Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality, the watchwords of the
Revolution,--even more, as he seemed to represent the party of order, he
was regarded by such statesmen as Thiers and Montalembert as the least
dangerous of the candidates; and they gave their moral support to his
government, while they declined to take office under him.

The new President appointed the famous De Tocqueville as his first prime
minister, who after serving a few months resigned, because he would not
be the pliant tool of his master. Louis Napoleon then had to select
inferior men for his ministers, who also soon discovered that they were
expected to be his clerks, not his advisers. At first he was regarded by
the leading classes with derision rather than fear,--so mean was his
personal appearance, so spiritless his address, so cold and dull was his
eye, and so ridiculous were his antecedents. "The French," said Thiers,
long afterward, "made two mistakes about Louis Napoleon,--the first,
when they took him for a fool; the second, when they took him for a man
of genius." It was not until he began to show a will of his own, a
determination to be his own prime minister, that those around him saw
his dangerous ambition, his concealed abilities, and his unscrupulous
character.

Nothing of importance marked the administration of the President, except
hostility to the Assembly, and their endless debates on the
constitution. Both the President and the Assembly feared the influence
of the ultra-democrats and Red Republicans,--socialists and anarchists,
who fomented their wild schemes among the common people of the large
cities. By curtailing the right of suffrage the Assembly became
unpopular, and Louis Napoleon gained credit as the friend of order
and law.

As the time approached when, by the Constitution, he would be obliged to
lay down his office and return to private life, the President became
restless, and began to plot for the continuance of his power. He had
tasted its sweets, and had no intention to surrender it. If he could
have been constitutionally re-elected, he probably would not have
meditated a _coup d'état_, for it was in accordance with his indolent
character to procrastinate. With all his ambition, he was patient,
waiting for opportunities to arise; and yet he never relinquished an
idea or an intention,--it was ever in his mind: he would simply wait,
and quietly pursue the means of success. He had been trained to
meditation in his prison at Ham; and he had learned to disguise his
thoughts and his wishes. The power which had been developed in him in
the days of his obscurity and adversity was cunning. As a master of
cunning he saw the necessity of reserve, mistrust, and silence.

The first move of the President to gain his end was to secure a revision
of the Constitution. The Assembly, by a vote of three-fourths, could by
the statutes of 1848 order a revision; a revision could remove the
clause which prohibited his re-election, and a re-election was all he
then pretended to want. But the Assembly, jealous of its liberties,
already suspicious and even hostile, showed no disposition to smooth his
way. He clearly saw that some other means must be adopted. He naturally
turned to the army; but the leading generals distrusted him, and were in
the ranks of his enemies. They were all Orléanists or Republicans.

The ablest general in France was probably Changarnier, who had greatly
distinguished himself in Algeria. He had been called, on the change of
government, to the high post of commander of the National Guards and
general of the first military division, which was stationed at Paris. He
had been heard to say that if Louis Napoleon should undertake a _coup
d'état_, he would conduct him as a prisoner to Vincennes. This was
reported to the President, who at once resolved to remove him, both from
hostility and fear. On Changarnier's removal the ministry resigned.
Their places were taken by tools still more subservient.

Nothing now remained but to prepare for the meditated usurpation. The
first thing to be done was to secure an able and unscrupulous minister
of war, who could be depended upon. As all the generals received their
orders from the minister of war, he was the most powerful man in France,
next to the President. Such was military discipline that no subordinate
dared to disobey him.

There were then no generals of ability in France whom Louis Napoleon
could trust, and he turned his eyes to Algeria, where some one might be
found. He accordingly sent his most intimate friend and confidant, Major
Fleury, able but unscrupulous, to Algeria to discover the right kind of
man, who could be bribed. He found a commander of a brigade, by name
Saint-Arnaud, extravagant, greatly in debt, who had done some brave and
wicked things. It was not difficult to seduce a reckless man who wanted
money and preferment. Fleury promised him the high office of minister of
war, when he should have done something to distinguish himself in the
eyes of the Parisians. Saint-Arnaud, who proved that he could keep a
secret, was at once promoted, and a campaign was arranged for him in the
summer of 1851, in which he won some distinction by wanton waste of
life. His exploits were exaggerated, the venal Press sounded his
praises, and he was recalled to Paris and made minister of war; for the
President by the Constitution could nominate his ministers and appoint
the high officers of State. Other officers were brought from Algeria and
made his subordinates. The command of the army of Paris was given to
General Magnan, who was in the secret. The command of the National
Guards was given to a general who promised not to act, for this body was
devoted to the Assembly. M. Maupas, another conspirator, of great
administrative ability, was made prefect of police.

Thus in September, 1851, everything was arranged; but Saint-Arnaud
persuaded the President to defer the _coup d'état_ until winter, when
all the deputies would be in Paris, and therefore could be easily
seized. If scattered over France, they might rally and create a civil
war; for, as we have already said, the Assembly contained the leading
men of the country,--statesmen, generals, editors, and great lawyers,
all hostile to the ruler of the Republic.

So the President waited patiently till winter. Suddenly, without
warning, in the night of the 2d of December, all the most distinguished
members of the Assembly were arrested by the police controlled by
Maupas, and sent to the various prisons,--including Changarnier,
Cavaignac, Thiers, Bedeau, Lamoricière, Barrot, Berryer, De Tocqueville,
De Broglie, and Saint-Hilaire. On the following morning strong bodies of
the military were posted at the Palais Bourbon (where the Assembly held
its sessions), around all the printing-presses, around the public
buildings, and in the principal streets. In the meantime, Morny was made
minister of the interior. Manifestoes were issued which announced the
dissolution of the Assembly and the Council of State, the restoration of
universal suffrage, and a convocation of the electoral college to elect
the Executive. A proclamation was also made to the army, containing
those high-sounding watchwords which no one was more capable of using
than the literary President,--eloquent, since they appealed to
everything dear to the soldiers' hearts, and therefore effective. Louis
Napoleon's short speeches convinced those for whom they were intended.
He was not so fortunate with his books.

The military and the police had now the supreme control of Paris, while
the minister of the interior controlled the municipalities of the
various departments. All resistance was absurd; and yet so tremendous an
outrage on the liberties of the nation provoked an indignation,
especially among the Republicans, which it was hard to suppress. The
people rallied and erected barricades, which of course were swept away
by the cannon of General Magnan, accompanied by needless cruelties and
waste of blood, probably with the view to inspire fear and show that
resistance was hopeless.

Paris and its vicinity were now in the hands of the usurper, supported
by the army and police, and his enemies were in prison. The Assembly was
closed, as well as the higher Courts of Justice, and the Press was
muzzled. Constitutional liberty was at an end; a despot reigned
unopposed. Yet Louis Napoleon did not feel entirely at his ease. Would
the nation at the elections sustain the usurpation? It was necessary to
control the elections; and it is maintained by some historians that
every effort to that end was made through the officials and the police.
Whether the elections were free or not, one thing astonished the
civilized world,--seven millions of votes were cast in favor of Louis
Napoleon; and the cunning and patient usurper took possession of the
Tuileries, re-elected President to serve for ten years. Before the year
closed, in December, 1852, he was proclaimed Emperor of the French by
the vote and the will of the people. The silent, dull, and heavy man had
outwitted everybody; and he showed that he understood the French people
better than all the collected statesmen and generals who had served
under Louis Philippe with so much ability and distinction.

What shall we say of a nation that so ignominiously surrendered its
liberties? All we can say in extenuation is that it was powerless. Such
men as Guizot, Thiers, Cousin, Changarnier, Cavaignac, Molé, Broglie,
Hugo, Villemain, Lamartine, Montalembert, would have prevented the fall
of constitutional government if their hands had not been tied. They were
in prison or exiled. Some twenty-five thousand people had been killed or
transported within a few weeks after the _coup d'état_, and fear seized
the minds of those who were active in opposition, or suspected even of
being hostile to the new government. France, surprised, perplexed,
affrighted, must needs carry on a war of despair, or succumb to the
usurpation. The army and the people alike were governed by terror.

But although France had lost her freedom, it was only for a time; and
although Louis Napoleon ruled as an absolute monarch, his despotism,
sadly humiliating to people of intelligence and patriotism, was not like
that of Russia, or even like that of Prussia and Austria. The great men
of all parties were too numerous and powerful to be degraded or exiled.
They did not resist his government, and they held their tongues in the
cafés and other assemblies where they were watched by spies; but they
talked freely with one another in their homes, and simply kept aloof
from him, refusing to hold office under him or to attend his court,
waiting for their time. They knew that his government was not permanent,
and that the principles of the Revolution had not been disseminated and
planted in vain, but would burst out in some place or other like a
volcano, and blaze to heaven. Men pass away, but principles are
indestructible.

Louis Napoleon was too thoughtful and observant a man not to know all
this. His residence in England and intercourse with so many
distinguished politicians and philosophers had taught him something. He
feared that with all his successes his throne would be overturned
unless he could amuse the people and find work for turbulent spirits.
Consequently he concluded on the one hand to make a change in the
foreign policy of France, and on the other to embellish his capital and
undertake great public works, at any expense, both to find work for
artisans and to develop the resources of the country.

When Louis Napoleon made his first attack on the strong government of
Louis Philippe, at Strasburg, he was regarded as a madman; when he
escaped from Ham, after his failure at Boulogne, he was looked upon by
all Europe as a mere adventurer; and when he finally left England, which
had sheltered him, to claim his seat in the National Assembly of
republican France, and even when made President of the republic by the
suffrages of the nation, he was regarded as an enigma. Some thought him
dull though bold, and others looked upon him as astute and long-headed.
His heavy look, his leaden eye, his reserved and taciturn ways, with no
marked power but that of silence and secrecy, disarmed fear. Neither
from his conversations nor his writings had anybody drawn the inference
that he was anything remarkable in genius or character. His executive
abilities were entirely unknown. He was generally regarded as simply
fortunate from the name he bore and the power he usurped, but with no
striking intellectual gifts,--nothing that would warrant his supreme
audacity. He had never distinguished himself in anything; but was
admitted to be a thoughtful man, who had written treatises of
respectable literary merit. His social position as the heir and nephew
of the great Napoleon of course secured him many friends and followers,
who were attracted to him by the prestige of his name, and who saw in
him the means of making their own fortune; but he was always, except in
a select and chosen circle, silent, non-committal, heavy, reserved, and
uninteresting.

But the President--the Emperor--had been a profound student of the
history of the first Napoleon and his government. He understood the
French people, too, and had learned to make short speeches with great
effect, in which adroitness in selecting watchwords--especially such as
captivated the common people--was quite remarkable. He professed liberal
sentiments, sympathy with the people in their privations and labors, and
affected beyond everything a love of peace. In his manifestoes of a
policy of universal peace, few saw that love of war by which he intended
to rivet the chains of despotism. He was courteous and urbane in his
manners, probably kind in disposition, not bloodthirsty nor cruel,
supremely politic and conciliating in his intercourse with statesmen and
diplomatists, and generally simple and unstilted in his manners. He was
also capable of friendship, and never forgot those who had rendered him
services or kindness in his wanderings. Nor was he greedy of money like
Louis Philippe, but freely lavished it on his generals. Like his uncle,
he had an antipathy to literary men when they would not condescend to
flatter him, which was repaid by uncompromising hostility on their part.
How savage and unrelenting was the hatred of Victor Hugo! How unsparing
his ridicule and abuse! He called the usurper "Napoleon the Little,"
notwithstanding he had outwitted the leading men of the nation and
succeeded in establishing himself on an absolute throne. A small man
could not have shown so much patience, wisdom, and prudence as Louis
Napoleon showed when President, or fought so successfully the
legislative body when it was arrayed against him. If the poet had called
him "Napoleon the Wicked" it would have been more to the point, for only
a supremely unscrupulous and dishonest man could have meditated and
executed the _coup d'état_. His usurpation and treachery were gigantic
crimes, accompanied with violence and murder. Even his crimes, however,
were condoned in view of the good government which he enforced and the
services he rendered; showing that, if he was dishonest and treacherous,
he was also able and enlightened.

But it is not his usurpation of supreme power for which Louis Napoleon
will be most severely judged by his country and by posterity. Cromwell
was a usurper, and yet he is regarded as a great benefactor. It was the
policy which Napoleon III. pursued as a supreme ruler for which he will
be condemned, and which was totally unlike that of Cromwell or Augustus.
It was his policy to embroil nations in war and play the _rôle_ of a
conqueror. The policy of the restored Bourbons and of Louis Philippe was
undeniably that of peace with other nations, and the relinquishment
of that aggrandizement which is gained by successful war. It
was this policy,--upheld by such great statesmen as Guizot and
Thiers,--conflicting with the warlike instincts of the French people,
which made those monarchs unpopular more than their attempts to suppress
the liberty of the Press and the license of popular leaders; and it was
the appeal to the military vanity of the people which made Napoleon III.
popular, and secured his political ascendency.

The quarrel which was then going on between the Greek and Latin monks
for the possession of the sacred shrines at Jerusalem furnished both the
occasion and the pretence for interrupting the peace of Europe, as has
been already stated in the Lecture on the Crimean war. The French
usurper determined to take the side of the Latin monks, which would
necessarily embroil him with the great protector of the Greek faith,
even the Emperor Nicholas, who was a bigot in all matters pertaining to
his religion. He would rally the French nation in a crusade, not merely
to get possession of a sacred key and a silver star, but to come to the
assistance of a power no longer dangerous,--the "sick man," whom
Nicholas had resolved to crush. Louis Napoleon cared but little for
Turkey; but he did not want Constantinople to fall into the hands of the
Russians, and thus make them the masters of the Black Sea. France, it is
true, had but little to gain whoever possessed Constantinople; she had
no possessions or colonies in the East to protect. But in the eye of her
emperor it was necessary to amuse her by a war; and what war would be
more popular than this,--to head off Russia and avenge the march
to Moscow?

Russia, moreover, was the one power which all western Europe had cause
to dread. Ever since the Empress Catherine II., the encroachments and
territorial aggrandizement of this great military empire had been going
on. The Emperor Nicholas was the most powerful sovereign of the world,
having a million of men under arms, ready to obey his nod, with no check
whatever on his imperial will. He had many fine qualities, which
commanded esteem; but he was fitful, uncertain, ambitious, and warlike.
If an aggressive war to secure the "balance of power" could ever be
justified, it would seem to have been necessary in this case. It was an
aggressive war on the part of France, since the four great
Powers--Austria, Prussia, France, and England--were already united to
keep the Czar in check, and demanded his evacuation of the Danubian
provinces which he had invaded. Nicholas, seeing this powerful
combination against him, was ready to yield, and peace might have been
easily secured, and thus the Crimean war been avoided; but Louis
Napoleon did not want peace, and intrigued against it.

Resolved then on war, the real disturber of the peace of Europe, and
goaded on by his councillors,--the conspirators of the 2d of December,
Morny, Fleury, Maupas, etc.,--Louis Napoleon turned around to seek an
ally; for France alone was not strong enough to cope with Russia.
Austria having so much to lose, did not want war, and was afraid of
Nicholas. So was Prussia. It was the policy of both these Powers to keep
on good terms with Nicholas. It always will be the policy of Germany to
avoid a war with Russia, unless supported by England and France. The
great military organization which Bismarck and Moltke effected, the
immense standing army which Germany groans under, arises not from
anticipated dangers on the part of France so much as from fear of
Russia, although it is not the policy of German statesmen to confess it
openly. If France should unite with Russia in a relentless war, Germany
would probably be crushed, unless England came to the rescue. Germany,
placed between two powerful military monarchies, is obliged to keep up
its immense standing army, against its will, as a dire necessity. It is
Russia she is most anxious to conciliate. All the speeches of Bismarck
show this.

In view of this policy, Louis Napoleon turned his eyes to England as his
ally in the meditated war with Russia, notwithstanding the secret
hostilities and jealousies between these nations for five hundred years.
Moreover, the countries were entirely dissimilar: England was governed
by Parliament, based on free institutions; France was a military
despotism, and all who sought to establish parliamentary liberties and
government were banished when their efforts became dangerous or
revolutionary. Louis Napoleon showed great ability for intrigue in
forcing the English cabinet to adopt his warlike policy, when its own
policy was pacific. It was a great triumph to the usurper to see England
drifting into war against the combined influence of the premier, of
Gladstone, of the Quakers, and of the whole Manchester school of
political economists; and, as stated in the Lecture on the Crimean war,
it was an astounding surprise to Nicholas.

But this misfortune would not have happened had it not been for the
genius and intrigues of a statesman who exercised a commanding influence
over English politics; and this was Lord Palmerston, who had spent his
life in the foreign office, although at that time home secretary. But he
was the ruling spirit of the cabinet,--a man versatile, practical,
amiable, witty, and intensely English in all his prejudices. Whatever
office he held, he was always in harmony with public opinion. He was not
a man of great ideas or original genius, but was a ready debater,
understood the temper of the English people, and led them by adopting
their cause, whatever it was. Hence he was the most popular statesman of
the day, but according to Cobden the worst prime minister that England
ever had, since he was always keeping England in hot water and stirring
up strife on the Continent. His supreme policy, with an eye to English
interests on the Mediterranean and in Asia, was to cripple Russia.

Such a man, warlike, restless, and interfering in his foreign policy,
having in view the military aggrandizement of his country, eagerly
adopted the schemes of the French emperor; and little by little these
two men brought the English cabinet into a warlike attitude with Russia,
in spite of all that Lord Aberdeen could do. Slight concessions would
have led to peace; but neither Louis Napoleon nor Palmerston would allow
concessions, since both were resolved on war. Never was a war more
popular in England than that which Louis Napoleon and Palmerston
resolved to have. This explains the leniency of public opinion in
England toward a man who had stolen a sceptre. He was united with Great
Britain in a popular war.

The French emperor, however, had other reasons for seeking the alliance
of England in his war with Russia. It would give him a social prestige;
he would enter more easily into the family of European sovereigns; he
would be called _mon frère_ by the Queen of England, which royal name
Nicholas in his disdain refused to give him. If the Queen of England was
his friend and ally, all other sovereigns must welcome him into their
royal fraternity in spite of his political crimes, which were
universally detested. It is singular that England, after exhausting her
resources by a war of twenty years to dethrone Napoleon I., should
become the firmest ally and friend of Napoleon III., who trampled on all
constitutional liberty. But mutual interests brought them together; for
when has England turned her back on her interests, or what she supposed
to be her interests?

So war became inevitable. Napoleon III. triumphed. His co-operation with
England was sincere and hearty. Yea, so gratified and elated was he at
this stroke of good fortune, that he was ready to promise anything to
his ally, even to the taking a subordinate part in the war. He would
follow the dictation of the English ministers and the English generals.

It was the general opinion that the war would be short and glorious. At
first it was contemplated only to fight the Russians in Bulgaria, and
prevent their march across the Balkans, and thence to Constantinople.
The war was undertaken to assist the Turks in the defence of their
capital and territories. For this a large army was not indispensable;
hence the forces which were sent to Bulgaria were comparatively small.

When Nicholas discovered that he could not force his way to
Constantinople over the Balkans, and had withdrawn his forces from the
Danubian principalities, peace then might have been honorably declared
by all parties. France perhaps might have withdrawn from the contest,
which had effected the end at first proposed. But England not only had
been entangled in the war by the French alliance, but now was resolved
on taking Sebastopol, to destroy the power of Russia on the Euxine; and
France was compelled to complete what she had undertaken, although she
had nothing to gain beyond what she had already secured. To the credit
of Louis Napoleon, he proved a chivalrous and faithful ally, in
continuing a disastrous and expensive war for the glory of France and
the interests of England alone, although he made a separate peace as
soon as he could do so with honor.

It is not my purpose to repeat what I have already written on the
Crimean war, although the more I read and think about it the stronger is
my disapproval, on both moral and political grounds, of that needless
and unfortunate conflict,--unfortunate alike to all parties concerned.
It is a marvel that it did not in the end weaken the power and prestige
of both Palmerston and Napoleon III. It strengthened the hands of both,
as was foreseen by these astute statesmen. Napoleon III. after the war
was regarded as a far-seeing statesman, as well as an able
administrator. People no longer regarded him as a fool, or even a knave.
Success had shut the mouths of his enemies, except of a few obdurate
ones like Thiers and Victor Hugo,--the latter of whom in his voluntary
exile in Guernsey and Jersey still persisted in calling him "Napoleon
the Little." Thiers generally called him _Celui-ci,_--"That fellow."
This illustrious statesman, in his restless ambition and desire of
power, probably would have taken office under the man whom he both
despised and hated; but he dared not go against his antecedents, and was
unwilling to be a mere clerk, as all Louis Napoleon's ministers were,
whatever their abilities. He was supported by the army and the people,
and therefore was master of the situation. This was a fact which
everybody was compelled to acknowledge. It was easy to call him usurper,
tyrant, and fool,--anything; but he both "reigned and governed."

"When peace was finally restored, the empire presented the aspect of a
stable government, resting solidly upon the approval of a contented and
thriving people." This was the general opinion of those who were well
acquainted with French affairs, and of those who visited Paris, which
was then exceedingly prosperous. The city was filled with travellers,
who came to see the glory of success. Great architectural improvements
were then in progress, which gave employment to a vast number of men
theretofore leading a precarious life. The chief of these were the new
boulevards, constructed with immense expense,--those magnificent but
gloomy streets, which, lined with palaces and hotels, excited universal
admiration,--a wise expenditure on the whole, which promoted both beauty
and convenience, although to construct them a quarter of the city was
demolished. The Grand Opera-House arose over the _débris_ of the
demolished houses,--the most magnificent theatre erected in modern
times. Paris presented a spectacle of perpetual fêtes, reviews of
troops, and illuminations, which both amused and distracted the people.
The Louvre was joined to the Tuileries by a grand gallery devoted
chiefly to works of art. The Champs Elysées and the Bois de Boulogne
were ornamented with new avenues, fountains, gardens, flowers, and
trees, where the people could pursue their pleasure unobstructed. The
number of beautiful equipages was vastly increased, and everything
indicated wealth and prosperity. The military was wisely kept out of
sight, except on great occasions, so that the people should not be
reminded of their loss of liberties; the police were courteous and
obliging, and interfered with no pleasures and no ordinary pursuits; the
shops blazed with every conceivable attraction; the fashionable churches
were crowded with worshippers and strangers to hear music which rivalled
that of the opera; the priests, in their ecclesiastical uniform, were
seen in every street with cheerful and beaming faces, for the government
sought their support and influence; the papers were filled with the
movements of the imperial court at races, in hunting-parties, and visits
to the _châteaux_ of the great. The whole city seemed to be absorbed in
pleasure or gain, and crowds swarmed at all places of amusement with
contented faces: there was no outward sign of despotism or unhappiness,
since everybody found employment. Even the idlers who frequented the
crowded cafés of the boulevards seemed to take unusual pleasure at their
games of dominoes and at their tables of beer and wine. Visitors
wondered at the apparent absence of all restraint from government and at
the personal liberty which everybody seemed practically to enjoy. For
ten years after the _coup d'état_ it was the general impression that the
government of Louis Napoleon was a success. In spite of the predictions
and hostile criticisms of famous statesmen, it was, to all appearance at
least, stable, and the nation was prosperous.

The enemies that the emperor had the most cause to dread were these
famous statesmen themselves. Thiers, Guizot, Broglie, Odillon Barrot,
had all been prime ministers, and most of the rest had won their laurels
under Louis Philippe. They either declined to serve under Napoleon III.
or had been neglected by him; their political power had passed away.
They gave vent, whenever they could with personal safety, to their
spleen, to their disappointment, to their secret hostility; they all
alike prophesied evil; they all professed to believe that the emperor
could not maintain his position two years,--that he would be carried off
by assassination or revolution. And joined with them in bitter hatred
was the whole literary class,--like Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and
Cousin,--who hurled curses and defiance from their retreats, or from the
fashionable _salons_ and clubs which they frequented. The old noblesse
stood aloof. St. Germain was like a foreign city rather than a part of
Paris. All the traders among the Legitimists and Orléanists continued in
a state of secret hostility, and threw all the impediments they could
against the government.

The situation of Louis Napoleon was indeed extremely difficult and
critical. He had to fight against the combined influences of rank,
fashion, and intellect,--against an enlightened public opinion; for it
could not be forgotten that his power was usurped, and sustained by
brute force and the ignorant masses. He would have been nothing without
the army. In some important respects he showed marvellous astuteness and
political sagacity,--such, for instance, as in converting England from
an enemy to a friend. But he won England by playing the card of common
interests against Russia.

The emperor was afraid to banish the most eminent men in his empire; so
he tolerated them and hated them,--suspending over their heads the sword
of Damocles. This they understood, and kept quiet except among
themselves. But France was a hotbed of sedition and discontent during
the whole reign of Louis Napoleon, at least among the old government
leaders,--Orléanists, Legitimists, and Republicans alike.

Considering the difficulties and hatreds with which Napoleon III. had to
contend, I am surprised that his reign lasted as long as it did,--longer
than those of Louis XVIII. and Charles X. combined; longer than that of
Louis Philippe, with the aid of the middle classes and the ablest
statesmen of France,--an impressive fact, which indicates great ability
of some kind on the part of the despot. But he paid dearly for his
passion for power in the enormous debts entailed by his first war of
prestige, and in the death of more than a hundred thousand men in the
camps, on the field of battle, and in the hospitals. If he had had any
conscience he would have been appalled; but he had no conscience, any
more than his uncle, when anything stood in his way. The gratification
of his selfish ambition overmastered patriotism and real fame, and
prepared the way for his fall and the ignominy which accompanied it.

Had either of the monarchs who ruled France since the Revolution of 1791
been animated with a sincere desire for the public good, and been
contented to rule as a constitutional sovereign, as they all alike swore
to rule, I do not see why they might not have transmitted their thrones
to their heirs. Napoleon I. certainly could have perpetuated his empire
in his family had he not made such awful blunders as the invasion of
Spain and Russia, which made him unable to contend with external
enemies. Charles X. might have continued to reign had he not destroyed
all constitutional liberty. Louis Philippe might have transmitted his
power to the House of Orléans had he not sacrificed public interests to
his greediness for money and to his dynastic ambition. And Napoleon III.
might have reigned until he died had he fulfilled his promises to the
parties who elevated him; but he could have continued to reign in the
violation of his oaths only so long as his army was faithful and
successful. When at last hopelessly defeated and captured, his throne
instantly crumbled away; he utterly collapsed, and was nothing but a
fugitive. What a lesson this is to all ambitious monarchs who sacrifice
the interest of their country to personal aggrandizement! So long as a
nation sees the monarch laboring for the aggrandizement and welfare of
the country rather than of himself, it will rally around him and
venerate him, even if he leads his subjects to war and enrolls them in
his gigantic armies,--as in the case of the monarchs of Prussia since
Frederic II., and even those of Austria.

Napoleon III. was unlike all these, for with transcendent cunning and
duplicity he stole his throne, and then sacrificed the interests of
France to support his usurpation. That he was an adventurer--as his
enemies called him--is scarcely true; for he was born in the Tuileries,
was the son of a king, and nephew of the greatest sovereign of modern
times. So far as his usurpation can be palliated,--for it never can be
excused,--it must be by his deep-seated conviction that he was the heir
of his uncle, that the government of the empire belonged to him as a
right, and that he would ultimately acquire it by the will of the
people. Had Thiers or Guizot or Changarnier seized the reins, they would
have been adventurers. All men are apt to be called adventurers by their
detractors when they reach a transcendent position. Even such men as
Napoleon I., Cromwell, and Canning were stigmatized as adventurers by
their enemies. A poor artist who succeeds in winning a rich heiress is
often regarded as an adventurer, even though his ancestors have been
respectable and influential for four generations. Most successful men
owe their elevation to genius or patience or persistent industry rather
than to accidents or tricks. Louis Napoleon plodded and studied and
wrote for years with the ultimate aim of ruling France, even though he
"waded through slaughter to a throne;" and he would have deserved his
throne had he continued true to the principles he professed. What a name
he might have left had he been contented only to be President of a great
republic; for his elevation to the Presidency was legitimate, and even
after he became a despot he continued to be a high-bred gentleman in the
English sense, which is more than can be said of his uncle. No one has
ever denied that from first to last Louis Napoleon was courteous,
affable, gentle, patient, and kind, with a control over his feelings and
thoughts absolutely marvellous and unprecedented in a public man,--if we
except Disraeli. Nothing disturbed his serenity; very rarely was he seen
in a rage; he stooped and coaxed and flattered, even when he sent his
enemies to Cayenne.

The share taken by Napoleon III. in the affairs of Italy has already
been treated of, yet a look from that point of view may find place here.
The interference of Austria with the Italian States--not only her own
subjects there, but the independent States as well--has been called "a
standing menace to Europe." It was finally brought to a crisis of
conflict by the King of Sardinia, who had already provided himself with
a friend and ally in the French emperor; and when, on the 29th of April,
1859, Austria crossed the river Ticino in hostile array, the combined
French and Sardinian troops were ready to do battle. The campaign was
short, and everywhere disastrous to the Austrians; so that on July 6 an
armistice was concluded, and on July 12 the peace of Villa Franca ended
the war, with Lombardy ceded to Sardinia, while Nice and Savoy were the
reward of the French,--justifying by this addition to the territory and
glory of France the emperor's second war of prestige.

Louis Napoleon reached the culmination of his fame and of real or
supposed greatness--I mean his external power and grandeur, for I see no
evidence of real greatness except such as may be won by astuteness,
tact, cunning, and dissimulation--when he returned to Paris as the
conqueror of the Austrian armies. He was then generally supposed to be
great both as a general and as an administrator, when he was neither a
general nor an administrator, as subsequent events proved. But his court
was splendid; distinguished foreigners came to do him homage; even
monarchs sought his friendship, and a nod of his head was ominous. He
had delivered Italy as he had humiliated Russia; he had made France a
great political power; he had made Paris the most magnificent city of
the world (though at boundless expense), and everybody extolled the
genius of Hausmann, his engineer, who had created such material glories;
his fêtes were beyond all precedent; his wife gave the law to fashions
and dresses, and was universally extolled for her beauty and graces; the
great industrial exhibition in 1855, which surpassed in attractiveness
that of London in 1851, drew strangers to his capital, and gave a
stimulus to art and industry. Certainly he seemed to be a most fortunate
man,--for the murmurs and intrigues of that constellation of statesmen
which grew up with the restoration of the Bourbons, and the antipathies
of editors and literary men, were not generally known. The army
especially gloried in the deeds of a man whose successes reminded them
of his immortal uncle; while the lavish expenditures of government in
every direction concealed from the eyes of the people the boundless
corruption by which the services of his officials were secured.

But this splendid exterior was deceptive, and a turn came to the
fortunes of Napoleon III.,--long predicted, yet unexpected. Constantly
on the watch for opportunities to aggrandize his name and influence, the
emperor allowed the disorders of civil war in Mexico--resulting in many
acts of injustice to foreigners there--to lead him into a combination
with England and Spain to interfere. This was in 1861, when the United
States were entering upon the terrific struggles of their own civil war,
and were not able to prevent this European interference, although
regarding it as most unfriendly to republican institutions. Within a
year England and Spain withdrew. France remained; sent more troops;
declared war on the government of President Juarez; fought some battles;
entered the City of Mexico; convened the "Assembly of Notables;" and, on
their declaring for a limited hereditary monarchy, the French emperor
proposed for their monarch the Archduke Maximilian,--younger brother of
Francis Joseph the Austrian emperor. Maximilian accepted, and in June,
1864, arrived,--upheld, however, most feebly by the "Notables," and
relying chiefly on French bayonets, which had driven Juarez to the
northern part of the country.

But against the expectation of Napoleon III, the great rebellion in the
United States collapsed, and this country became a military power which
Europe was compelled to respect: a nation that could keep in the field
over a million of soldiers was not to be despised. While the civil war
was in progress the United States government was compelled to ignore the
attempt to establish a French monarchy on its southern borders; but no
sooner was the war ended than it refused to acknowledge any government
in Mexico except that of President Juarez, which Louis Napoleon had
overthrown; so that although the French emperor had bound himself with
solemn treaties to maintain twenty-five thousand French troops in
Mexico, he was compelled to withdraw these forces and leave Maximilian
to his fate. He advised the young Austrian to save himself by
abdication, and to leave Mexico with the troops; but Maximilian felt
constrained by his sense of honor to remain, and refused. In March,
1867, this unfortunate prince was made prisoner by the republicans, and
was unscrupulously shot. His calamities and death excited the compassion
of Europe; and with it was added a profound indignation for the man who
had unwittingly lured him on to his ruin. Louis Napoleon's military
prestige received a serious blow, and his reputation as a statesman
likewise; and although the splendor of his government and throne was as
great as ever, his fall, in the eyes of the discerning, was near
at hand.

By this time Louis Napoleon had become prematurely old; he suffered
from acute diseases; his constitution was undermined; he was no longer
capable of carrying the burdens he had assumed; his spirits began to
fail; he lost interest in the pleasures which had at first amused him;
he found delight in nothing, not even in his reviews and fêtes; he was
completely ennuied; his failing health seemed to affect his mind; he
became vacillating and irresolute; he lost his former energies. He saw
the gulf opening which was to swallow him up; he knew that his situation
was desperate, and that something must be done to retrieve his fortunes.
His temporary popularity with his own people was breaking, too;--the
Mexican _fiasco_ humiliated them. The internal affairs of the empire
were more and more interfered with and controlled by the Catholic
Church, through the intrigues and influence of the empress, a bigoted
Spanish Catholic,--and this was another source of unpopularity, for
France was not a priest-ridden country, and the emperor was blamed for
the growing ecclesiastical power in civil affairs. He had invoked war to
interest the people, and war had saved him for a time; but the
consequences of war pursued him. As he was still an overrated man, and
known to be restless and unscrupulous, Germany feared him, and quietly
armed, making preparations for an attack which seemed only too probable.
His negotiation with the King of Holland for the cession of the Duchy of
Luxemburg, by which acquisition he hoped to offset the disgrace which
his Mexican enterprise had caused, excited the jealousy of Prussia; for
by the treaties of 1815 Prussia obtained the right to garrison the
fortress,--the strongest in Europe next to Gibraltar,--and had no idea
of permitting it to fall into the hands of France.

The irresistible current which was then setting in for the union of the
German States under the rule of Prussia, and for which Bismarck had long
been laboring, as had Cavour for the unity of Italy, caused a great
outcry among the noisy but shallow politicians of Paris, who deluded
themselves with the idea that France was again invincible; and not only
they, but the French people generally, fancied that France was strong
enough to conquer half of Europe, The politicians saw in a war with
Prussia the aggrandizement of French interests, and did all they could
to hasten it on. It was popular with the nation at large, who saw only
one side; and especially so with the generals of the army, who aspired
to new laurels. Napoleon III. blustered and bullied and threatened,
which pleased his people; but in his heart he had his doubts, and had no
desire to attack Prussia so long as the independence of the southern
States of Germany was maintained. But when the designs of Bismarck
became more and more apparent to cement a united Germany, and thus to
raise up a most formidable military power, Louis Napoleon sought
alliances in anticipation of a conflict which could not be much
longer delayed.

First, the French emperor turned to Austria, whom he had humiliated at
Solferino and incensed by the aid which he had given to Victor Emmanuel
to break the Austrian domination in Italy, as well as outraged its
sympathies by his desertion of Maximilian in Mexico. No cordial alliance
could be expected from this Power, unless he calculated on its hostility
to Prussia for the victories she had lately won. Count Beust, the
Austrian chancellor, was a bitter enemy to Prussia, and hoped to regain
the ascendency which Austria had once enjoyed under Metternich. So
promises were made to the French emperor; but they were never kept, and
Austria really remained neutral in the approaching contest, to the great
disappointment of Napoleon III. He also sought the aid of Italy, which
he had reason to expect from the service he had rendered to Piedmont;
but the Garibaldians had embroiled France with the Italian people in
their attempt to overthrow the Papal government, which was protected by
French troops; and Louis Napoleon by the reoccupation of Rome seemed to
bar the union of the Italian people, passionately striving for national
unity. Thus the Italians also stood aloof from France, although Victor
Emmanuel personally was disposed to aid her.

In 1870 France found herself isolated, and compelled, in case of war
with Prussia, to fight single-handed. If Napoleon III. had exercised the
abilities he had shown at the beginning of his career, he would have
found means to delay a conflict for which he was not prepared, or avoid
it altogether; but in 1870 his intellect was shattered, and he felt
himself powerless to resist the current which was bearing him away to
his destruction. He showed the most singular incapacity as an
administrator. He did not really know the condition of his army; he
supposed he had four hundred and fifty thousand effective troops, but
really possessed a little over three hundred thousand, while Prussia had
over one-third more than this, completely equipped and disciplined, and
with improved weapons. He was deceived by the reports of his own
generals, to whom he had delegated everything, instead of looking into
the actual state of affairs himself, as his uncle would have done, and
as Thiers did under Louis Philippe. More than a third of his regiments
were on paper alone, or dwindled in size; the monstrous corruptions of
his reign had permeated every part of the country; the necessary arms,
ammunition, and material of war in general were deplorably deficient; no
official reports could be relied upon, and few of his generals could be
implicitly trusted. If ever infatuation blinded a nation to its fate, it
most signally marked France in 1870.

Nothing was now wanting but the spark to kindle the conflagration; and
this was supplied by the interference of the French government with the
nomination of a German prince to the vacant throne of Spain. The
Prussian king gave way in the matter of Prince Leopold, but refused
further concessions. Leopold was sufficiently magnanimous to withdraw
his claims, and here French interference should have ended. But France
demanded guarantees that no future candidate should be proposed without
her consent. Of course the Prussian king,--seeing with the keen eyes of
Bismarck, and armed to the teeth under the supervision of Moltke, the
greatest general of the age, who could direct, with the precision of a
steam-engine on a track, the movements of the Prussian army, itself a
mechanism,--treated with disdain this imperious demand from a power
which he knew to be inferior to his own. Count Bismarck craftily lured
on his prey, who was already goaded forward by his home war-party, with
the empress at their head; negotiations ceased, and Napoleon III. made
his fatal declaration of hostilities, to the grief of the few statesmen
who foresaw the end.

Even then the condition of France was not desperate if the government
had shown capacity; but conceit, vanity, and ignorance blinded the
nation. Louis Napoleon should have known, and probably did know, that
the contending forces were uneven; that he had no generals equal to
Moltke; that his enemies could crush him in the open field; that his
only hope was in a well-organized defence. But his generals rushed madly
on to destruction against irresistible forces, incapable of forming a
combination, while the armies they led were smaller than anybody
supposed. Napoleon III. hoped that by rapidity of movement he could
enter southern Germany before the Prussian armies could be massed
against him; but here he dreamed, for his forces were not ready at the
time appointed, and the Prussians crossed the Rhine without obstruction.
Then followed the battle of Worth, on the 6th of August, when Marshal
McMahon, with only forty-five thousand men, ventured to resist the
Prussian crown-prince with a hundred thousand, and lost consequently a
large part of his army, and opened a passage through the northern Vosges
to the German troops. On the same day Frossard's corps was defeated by
Prince Frederic Charles near Saarbrücken, while the French emperor
remained at Metz irresolute, infatuated, and helpless. On the 12th of
August he threw up the direction of his armies altogether, and appointed
Marshal Bazaine commander-in-chief,--thus proclaiming his own incapacity
as a general. Bazaine still had more than two hundred thousand men under
his command, and might have taken up a strong position on the Moselle,
or retreated in safety to Chalons; but he fell back on Gravelotte, when,
being defeated on the 18th, he withdrew within the defences of Metz. He
was now surrounded by two hundred and fifty thousand men, and he made no
effort to escape. McMahon attempted to relieve him, but was ordered by
the government at Paris to march to the defence of that city. On this
line, however, he got no farther than Sedan, where all was lost on
September 1,--the entire army and the emperor himself surrendering as
prisoners of war. The French had fought gallantly, but were outnumbered
at every point.

Nothing now remained to the conquerors but to advance to the siege of
Paris. The throne of Napoleon III. was overturned, and few felt sympathy
for his misfortunes, since he was responsible for the overwhelming
calamities which overtook his country, and which his country never
forgave. In less than a month he fell from what seemed to be the
proudest position in Europe, and stood out to the eye of the world in
all the hateful deformity of a defeated despot who deserved to fall. The
suddenness and completeness of his destruction has been paralleled only
by the defeat of the armies of Darius by Alexander the Great. All
delusions as to Louis Napoleon's abilities vanished forever. All his
former grandeur, even his services, were at once forgotten. He paid even
a sadder penalty than his uncle, who never lost the affections of his
subjects, while the nephew destroyed all rational hopes of the future
restoration of his family, and became accursed.

It is possible that the popular verdict in reference to Louis Napoleon,
on his fall, may be too severe. This world sees only success or failure
as the test of greatness. With the support of the army and the
police--the heads of which were simply his creatures, whom he had
bought, or who from selfish purposes had pushed him on in his hours of
irresolution and guided him--the _coup d'état_ was not a difficult
thing, any more than any bold robbery; and with the control of the vast
machinery of government,--that machinery which is one of the triumphs of
civilization,--an irresistible power, it is not marvellous that he
retained his position in spite of the sneers or hostilities of statesmen
out of place, or of editors whose journals were muzzled or suppressed;
especially when the people saw great public improvements going on, had
both bread and occupation, read false accounts of military successes,
and were bewildered by fêtes and outward grandeur. But when the army was
a sham, and corruption had pervaded every office under government; when
the expenses of living had nearly doubled from taxation, extravagance,
bad example, and wrong ideas of life; when trusted servants were turned
into secret enemies, incapable and false; when such absurd mistakes were
made as the expedition to Mexico, and the crowning folly of the war
with Prussia, proving the incapacity and folly of the master-hand,--the
machinery which directed the armies and the bureaus and all affairs of
State itself, broke down, and the catastrophe was inevitable.

Louis Napoleon certainly was not the same man in 1870 that he was in
1850. His burdens had proved too great for his intellect. He fell, and
disappeared from history in a storm of wrath and shame, which also hid
from the eyes of the people the undoubted services he had rendered to
the cause of order and law, and to that of a material prosperity which
was at one time the pride of his country and the admiration of the
whole world.

But a nation is greater than any individual, even if he be a miracle of
genius. When the imperial cause was lost, and the armies of France were
dispersed or shut up in citadels, and the hosts of Germany were
converging upon the capital, Paris resolved on sustaining a
siege--apparently hopeless--rather than yield to a conqueror before the
last necessity should open its gates. The self-sacrifices which its
whole population, supposed to be frivolous and enervated, made to
preserve their homes and their works of art; their unparalleled
sufferings; their patience and self-reliance under the most humiliating
circumstances; their fertility of resources; their cheerfulness under
hunger and privation; and, above everything else, their submission to
law with every temptation to break it,--proved that the spirit of the
nation was unbroken; that their passive virtues rivalled their most
glorious deeds of heroism; that, if light-headed in prosperity, they
knew how to meet adversity; and that they had not lost faith in the
greatness of their future.

Perhaps they would not have made so stubborn a resistance to destiny if
they had realized their true situation, but would have opened their
gates at once to overwhelming foes, as they did on the fall of the first
Napoleon. They probably calculated that Bazaine would make his escape
from Metz with his two hundred thousand men, find his way to the banks
of the Loire, rally all the military forces of the south of France, and
then march with his additional soldiers to relieve Paris, and drive back
the Germans to the Rhine.

But this was not to be, and it is idle to speculate on what might have
been done either to raise the siege of Paris--one of the most memorable
in the whole history of the world--or to prevent the advance of the
Germans upon the capital itself. It is remarkable that the Parisians
were able to hold out so long,--thanks to the genius and precaution of
Thiers, who had erected the formidable forts outside the walls of Paris
in the reign of Louis Philippe; and still more remarkable was the rapid
recovery of the French nation after such immense losses of men and
treasure, after one of the most signal and humiliating overthrows which
history records. Probably France was never stronger than she is to-day
in her national resources, in her readiness for war, and in the apparent
stability of her republican government,--which ensued after the collapse
of the Second Empire. She has been steady, persevering, and even patient
for a hundred years in her struggles for political freedom, whatever
mistakes she has made and crimes she has committed to secure this
highest boon which modern civilization confers. A great hero may fall, a
great nation may be enslaved; but the cause of human freedom will in
time triumph over all despots, over all national inertness, and all
national mistakes.

AUTHORITIES.

Abbott, M. Baxter, S.P. Day, Victor Hugo, Macrae, S.M. Smucker, F.M.
Whitehurst, have written more or less on Louis Napoleon. See Justin
McCarthy's Modern Leaders; Kinglake's Crimean War; History of the
Franco-German War; Lives of Bismarck, Moltke, Cavour; Life of Lord
Palmerston; Life of Nicholas; Life of Thiers; Harriet Martineau's
Biographical Sketches; W.R. Greg's Life of Todleben.

 

PRINCE BISMARCK.

1815-1898.

THE GERMAN EMPIRE.

Before presenting Bismarck, it will be necessary to glance at the work
of those great men who prepared the way not only for him, but also for
the soldier Moltke,--men who raised Prussia from the humiliation
resulting from her conquest by Napoleon.

That humiliation was as complete as it was unexpected. It was even
greater than that of France after the later Franco-Prussian war. Prussia
was dismembered; its provinces were seized by the conqueror; its
population was reduced to less than four millions; its territory was
occupied by one hundred and fifty thousand French soldiers; the king
himself was an exile and a fugitive from his own capital; every sort of
indignity was heaped on his prostrate subjects, who were compelled to
pay a war indemnity beyond their power; trade and commerce were cut off
by Napoleon's Continental system; and universal poverty overspread the
country, always poor, and now poorer than ever. Prussia had no allies
to rally to her sinking fortunes; she was completely isolated. Most of
her fortresses were in the hands of her enemies, and the magnificent
army of which she had been so proud since the days of Frederic the Great
was dispersed. At the peace of Tilsit, in 1807, it looked as if the
whole kingdom was about to be absorbed in the empire of Napoleon, like
Bavaria and the Rhine provinces, and wiped out of the map of Europe like
unfortunate Poland.

But even this did not complete the humiliation. Napoleon compelled the
King of Prussia--Frederic William III.--to furnish him soldiers to fight
against Russia, as if Prussia were already incorporated with his own
empire and had lost her nationality. At that time France and Russia were
in alliance, and Prussia had no course to adopt but submission or
complete destruction; and yet Prussia refused in these evil days to join
the Confederation of the Rhine, which embraced all the German States at
the south and west of Austria and Prussia. Napoleon, however, was too
much engrossed in his scheme of conquering Spain, to swallow up Prussia
entirely, as he intended, after he should have subdued Spain. So, after
all, Prussia had before her only the fortune of Ulysses in the cave of
Polyphemus,--to be devoured the last.

The escape of Prussia was owing, on the one hand, to the necessity for
Napoleon to withdraw his main army from Prussia in order to fight in
Spain; and secondly, to the transcendent talents of a few patriots to
whom the king in his distress was forced to listen. The chief of these
were Stein, Hardenberg, and Scharnhorst. It was the work of Stein to
reorganize the internal administration of Prussia, including the
financial department; that of Hardenberg to conduct the ministry of
foreign affairs; and that of Scharnhorst to reorganize the military
power. The two former were nobles; the latter sprung from the people,--a
peasant's son; but they worked together in tolerable harmony,
considering the rival jealousies that at one time existed among all the
high officials, with their innumerable prejudices.

Baron von Stein, born in 1757, of an old imperial knightly family from
the country near Nassau, was as a youth well-educated, and at the age of
twenty-three entered the Prussian service under Frederic the Great, in
the mining department, where he gained rapid promotion. In 1786 he
visited England and made a careful study of her institutions, which he
profoundly admired. In 1787 he became a sort of provincial governor,
being director of the war and Domaine Chambers at Cleves and Hamm.

In 1804 Stein became Minister of Trade, having charge of excise,
customs, manufactures, and trade. The whole financial administration at
this time under King Frederick William III was in a state of great
confusion, from an unnecessary number of officials who did not work
harmoniously. There was too much "red tape." Stein brought order out of
confusion, simplified the administration, punished corruption, increased
the national credit, then at a very low ebb, and re-established the bank
of Prussia on a basis that enabled it to assist the government.

But a larger field than that of finance was opened to Stein in the war
of 1806. The king intrusted to him the portfolio of foreign
affairs,--not willingly, but because he regarded him as the ablest man
in the kingdom. Stein declined to be foreign minister unless he was
entirely unshackled, and the king was obliged to yield, for the
misfortunes of the country had now culminated in the disastrous defeat
at Friedland. The king, however, soon quarrelled with his minister,
being jealous of his commanding abilities, and unused to dictation from
any source. After a brief exile at Nassau, the peace of Tilsit having
proved the sagacity of his views, Stein returned to power as virtual
dictator of the kingdom, with the approbation of Napoleon; but his
dictatorship lasted only about a year, when he was again discharged.

During that year, 1807, Stein made his mark in Prussian history. Without
dwelling on details, he effected the abolition of serfdom in Prussia,
the trade in land, and municipal reforms, giving citizens
self-government in place of the despotism of military bureaus. He made
it his business to pay off the French war indemnity,--one hundred and
fifty million francs, a great sum for Prussia to raise when dismembered
and trodden in the dust under one hundred and fifty thousand French
soldiers,--and to establish a new and improved administrative system.
But, more than all, he attempted to rouse a moral, religious, and
patriotic spirit in the nation, and to inspire it anew with courage,
self-confidence, and self-sacrifice. In 1808 the ministry became warlike
in spite of its despair, the first glimpse of hope being the popular
rising in Spain. It was during the ministry of Stein, and through his
efforts, that the anti-Napoleonic revolution began.

The intense hostility of Stein to Napoleon, and his commanding
abilities, led Napoleon in 1808 imperatively to demand from the King of
Prussia the dismissal of his minister; and Frederick William dared not
resist. Stein did not retire, however, until after the royal edict had
emancipated the serfs of Prussia, and until that other great reform was
made by which the nobles lost the monopoly of office and exemption from
taxation, while the citizen class gained admission to all posts, trades,
and occupations. These great reforms were chiefly to be traced to Stein,
although Hardenberg and others, like Schön and Niebuhr, had a hand
in them.

Stein also opened the military profession to the citizen class, which
before was closed, only nobles being intrusted with command in the army.
It is true that nobles still continued to form a large majority of
officers, even as peasants formed the bulk of the army. But the removal
of restrictions and the abolition of serfdom tended to create patriotic
sentiments among all classes, on which the strength of armies in no
small degree rests. In the time of Frederic the Great the army was a
mere machine. It was something more when the nation in 1811 rallied to
achieve its independence. Then was born the idea of nationality,--that,
whatever obligations a Prussian owed to the state, Germany was greater
than Prussia itself. This idea was the central principle of Stein's
political system, leading ultimately to the unity of Germany as finally
effected by Bismarck and Moltke. It became almost synonymous with that
patriotism which sustains governments and thrones, the absence of which
was the great defect of the German States before the times of Napoleon,
when both princes and people lost sight of the unity of the nation in
the interests of petty sovereignties.

Stein was a man of prodigious energy, practical good sense, and lofty
character, but irascible, haughty, and contemptuous, and was far from
being a favorite with the king and court. His great idea was the unity
and independence of Germany. He thought more of German nationality than
of Prussian aggrandizement. It was his aim to make his countrymen feel
that they were Germans rather than Prussians, and that it was only by a
union of the various German States that they could hope to shake off the
French yoke, galling and humiliating beyond description.

When Stein was driven into exile at the dictation of Napoleon, with the
loss of his private fortune, he was invited by the Emperor of Russia to
aid him with his counsels,--and it can be scarcely doubted that in the
employ of Russia he rendered immense services to Germany, and had no
little influence in shaping the movements of the allies in effecting the
ruin of the common despot. On this point, however, I cannot dwell.

Count, afterward Prince, Hardenberg, held to substantially the same
views, and was more acceptable to the king as minister than was the
austere and haughty Stein, although his morals were loose, and his
abilities far inferior to those of the former. But his diplomatic
talents were considerable, and his manners were agreeable, like those of
Metternich, while Stein treated kings and princes as ordinary men, and
dictated to them the course which was necessary to pursue. It was the
work of Hardenberg to create the peasant-proprietorship of modern
Prussia; but it was the previous work of Stein to establish free trade
in land,--which means the removal of hindrances to the sale and purchase
of land, which still remains one of the abuses of England,--the ultimate
effect of which was to remove caste in land as well as caste in persons.

The great educational movement, in the deepest depression of Prussian
affairs, was headed by William, Baron von Humboldt. When Prussia lay
disarmed, dismembered, and impoverished, the University of Berlin was
founded, the government contributing one hundred and fifty thousand
thalers a year; and Humboldt--the first minister of public
instruction--succeeded in inducing the most eminent and learned men in
Germany to become professors in this new university. I look upon this
educational movement in the most gloomy period of German history as one
of the noblest achievements which any nation ever made in the cause of
science and literature. It took away the sting of military ascendency,
and raised men of genius to an equality with nobles; and as the
universities were the centres of liberal sentiments and all liberalizing
ideas, they must have exerted no small influence on the war of
liberation itself, as well as on the cause of patriotism, which was the
foundation of the future greatness of Prussia. Students flocked from all
parts of Germany to hear lectures from accomplished and patriotic
professors, who inculcated the love of fatherland. Germany, though
fallen into the hands of a military hero from defects in the
administration of governments and armies, was not disgraced when her
professors in the university were the greatest scholars of the world.
They created a new empire, not of the air, as some one sneeringly
remarked, but of mind, which has gone on from conquering to conquer. For
more than fifty years German universities have been the centre of
European thought and scholastic culture,--pedantic, perhaps, but
original and profound.

Before proceeding to the main subject, I have to speak of one more great
reform, which was the work of Scharnhorst. This was that series of
measures which determined the result of the greatest military struggles
of the nineteenth century, and raised Prussia to the front rank of
military monarchies. It was the _levee en masse_, composed of the youth
of the nation, without distinction of rank, instead of an army made up
of peasants and serfs and commanded by their feudal masters. Scharnhorst
introduced a compulsory system, indeed, but it was not unequal. Every
man was made to feel that he had a personal interest in defending his
country, and there were no exemptions made. True, the old system of
Frederic the Great was that of conscription; but from this conscription
large classes and whole districts were exempted, while the soldiers who
fought in the war of liberation were drawn from all classes alike:
hence, there was no unjust compulsion, which weakens patriotism, and
entails innumerable miseries. It was impossible in the utter exhaustion
of the national finances to raise a sufficient number of volunteers to
meet the emergencies of the times; therefore, if Napoleon was to be
overthrown, it was absolutely necessary to compel everybody to serve in
the army for a limited period, The nation saw the necessity, and made no
resistance. Thus patriotism lent her aid, and became an overwhelming
power. The citizen soldier was no great burden on the government, since
it was bound to his support only for a limited period,--long or short as
the exigency of the country demanded. Hence, large armies were
maintained at comparatively trifling expense.

I need not go into the details of a system which made Prussia a nation
of patriots as well as of soldiers, and which made Scharnhorst a great
national benefactor, sharing with Stein the glory of a great
deliverance. He did not live to see the complete triumph of his system,
matured by genius and patient study; but his work remained to future
generations, and made Prussia invincible except to a coalition of
powerful enemies. All this was done under the eye of Napoleon, and a
dreamy middle class became an effective soldiery. So, too, did the
peasants, no longer subjected to corporal punishment and other
humiliations. What a great thing it was to restore dignity to a whole
nation, and kindle the fires of patriotic ardor among poor and rich
alike! To the credit of the king, he saw the excellence of the new
system, at once adopted it, and generously rewarded its authors.
Scharnhorst, the peasant's son, was made a noble, and was retained in
office until he died. Stein, however, whose overshadowing greatness
created jealousy, remained simply a baron, and spent his last days in
retirement,--though not unhonored, or without influence, even when not
occupying the great offices of state, to which no man ever had a higher
claim. The king did not like him, and the king was still an
absolute monarch.

Frederick William III. was by no means a great man, being jealous,
timid, and vacillating; but it was in his reign that Prussia laid the
foundation of her greatness as a military monarchy. It was not the king
who laid this foundation, but the great men whom Providence raised up in
the darkest hours of Prussia's humiliation. He did one prudent thing,
however, out of timidity, when his ministers waged vigorous and
offensive measures. He refused to arm against Napoleon when Prussia lay
at his mercy. This turned out to be the salvation of Prussia, A weak
man's instincts proved to be wiser than the wisdom of the wise. When
Napoleon's doom was sealed by his disasters in Russia, then, and not
till then, did the Prussian king unite with Russia and Austria to crush
the unscrupulous despot.

The condition of Prussia, then, briefly stated, when Napoleon was sent
to St. Helena to meditate and die, was this: a conquering army, of which
Blücher was one of its greatest generals, had been raised by the _levee
en masse_,--a conscription, indeed, not of peasants alone, obliged to
serve for twenty years, but of the whole nation, for three years of
active service; and a series of administrative reforms had been
introduced and extended to every department of the State, by which
greater economy and a more complete system were inaugurated, favoritism
abolished, and the finances improved so as to support the government and
furnish the sinews of war; while alliances were made with great Powers
who hitherto had been enemies or doubtful friends.

These alliances resulted in what is called the German Confederation, or
Bund,--a strict union of all the various States for defensive purposes,
and also to maintain a general system to suppress revolutionary and
internal dissensions. Most of the German States entered into this
Confederacy, at the head of which was Austria. It was determined in
June, 1815, at Vienna, that the Confederacy should be managed by a
general assembly, called a Diet, the seat of which was located at
Frankfort. In this Diet the various independent States, thirty-nine in
number, had votes in proportion to their population, and were bound to
contribute troops of one soldier to every hundred inhabitants, amounting
to three hundred thousand in all, of which Austria and Prussia and
Bavaria furnished more than half. This arrangement virtually gave to
Austria and Prussia a preponderance in the Diet; and as the States were
impoverished by the late war, and the people generally detested war, a
long peace of forty years (with a short interval of a year) was secured
to Germany, during which prosperity returned and the population nearly
doubled. The Germans turned their swords into pruning-hooks, and all
kinds of industry were developed, especially manufactures. The cities
were adorned with magnificent works of art, and libraries, schools, and
universities covered the land. No nation ever made a more signal
progress in material prosperity than did the German States during this
period of forty years,--especially Prussia, which became in addition
intellectually the most cultivated country in Europe, with twenty-one
thousand primary schools, and one thousand academies, or gymnasia, in
which mathematics and the learned languages were taught by accomplished
scholars; to say nothing of the universities, which drew students from
all Christian and civilized countries in both hemispheres.

The rapid advance in learning, however, especially in the universities
and the gymnasia, led to the discussion of innumerable subjects,
including endless theories of government and the rights of man, by which
discontent was engendered and virtue was not advanced. Strange to say,
even crime increased. The universities became hot-beds of political
excitement, duels, beer-drinking, private quarrels, and infidel
discussion, causing great alarm to conservative governments and to
peaceful citizens generally. At last the Diet began to interfere, for it
claimed the general oversight of all internal affairs in the various
States. An army of three hundred thousand men which obeyed the dictation
of the Diet was not to be resisted; and as this Diet was controlled by
Austria and Prussia, it became every year more despotic and
anti-democratic. In consequence, the Press was gradually fettered, the
universities were closely watched, and all revolutionary movements in
cities were suppressed. Discontent and popular agitations, as usual,
went hand in hand.

As early as 1818 the great reaction against all liberal sentiments in
political matters had fairly set in. The king of Prussia neglected, and
finally refused, to grant the constitutional government which he had
promised in the day of his adversity before the battle of Waterloo;
while Austria, guided by Metternich, stamped her iron heel on everything
which looked like intellectual or national independence.

This memorable reaction against all progress in government, not confined
to the German States but extending to Europe generally, has already been
considered in previous chapters. It was the great political feature in
the history of Europe for ten years after the fall of Napoleon,
particularly in Austria, where hatred of all popular movements raged
with exceeding bitterness, intensified by the revolutions in Spain,
Italy, and Greece. The assassination of Kotzebue, the dramatic author,
by a political fanatic, for his supposed complicity with the despotic
schemes of the Czar, kindled popular excitement into a blazing flame,
but still more fiercely incited the sovereigns of Germany to make every
effort to suppress even liberty of thought.

During the period, then, when ultra-conservative principles animated the
united despots of the various German States, and the Diet controlled by
Metternich repressed all liberal movements, little advance was made in
Prussia in the way of reforms. But a great advance was made in all
questions of political economy and industrial matters. Free-trade was
established in the most unlimited sense between all the states and
provinces of the Confederation. All restraints were removed from the
navigation of rivers; new markets were opened in every direction for the
productions of industry. In 1839 the Zollverein, or Customs-Union, was
established, by which a uniform scale of duties was imposed in Northern
Germany on all imports and exports. But no political reforms which the
king had promised were effected during the life of Frederick William
III. Hardenberg, who with Stein had inaugurated liberal movements, had
lost his influence, although he was retained in power until he died.

For the twenty years succeeding the confederation of the German States
in 1820, constitutional freedom made little or no progress in Germany.
The only advance made in Prussia was in 1823, when the Provincial
Estates, or Diets, were established. These, however, were the mere
shadow of representative government, since the Estates were convoked at
irregular intervals, and had neither the power to initiate laws nor
grant supplies. They could only express their opinions concerning
changes in the laws pertaining to persons and property.

On the 7th of June, 1840, Frederick William III. of Prussia died, and
was succeeded by his son Frederick William IV., a religious and
patriotic king, who was compelled to make promises for some sort of
constitutional liberty, and to grant certain concessions, which although
they did not mean much gave general satisfaction. Among other things the
freedom of the Press was partially guaranteed, with certain
restrictions, and the Zollverein was extended to Brunswick and
Hesse-Homburg. Meantime the government entered with zeal upon the
construction of railways and the completion of the Cathedral of Cologne,
which tended to a more permanent union of the North German States. "We
are not engaged here," said the new monarch, on the inauguration of the
completion of that proudest work of mediaeval art, "with the
construction of an ordinary edifice; it is a work bespeaking the spirit
of union and concord which animates the whole of Germany and all its
persuasions, that we are now constructing." This inauguration, amid
immense popular enthusiasm, was soon followed by the meeting of the
Estates of the whole kingdom at Berlin, which for the first time united
the various Provincial Estates in a general Diet; but its functions were
limited to questions involving a diminution of taxation. No member was
allowed to speak more than once on any question, and the representatives
of the commons were only a third part of the whole assembly. This
naturally did not satisfy the nation, and petitions flowed in for the
abolition of the censorship of the Press and for the publicity of
debate. The king was not prepared to make these concessions in full,
but he abolished the censorship of the Press as to works extending to
above twenty pages, and enjoined the censors of lesser pamphlets and
journals to exercise gentleness and discretion, and not erase anything
which did not strike at the monarchy. At length, in 1847, the desire was
so universal for some form of representative government that a royal
edict convoked a General Assembly of the Estates of Prussia, arranged in
four classes,--the nobles, the equestrian order, the towns, and the
rural districts. The Diet consisted of six hundred and seventy members,
of which only eighty were nobles, and was empowered to discuss all
questions pertaining to legislation; but the initiative of all measures
was reserved to the crown. This National Diet assembled on the 24th of
July, and was opened by the king in person, with a noble speech,
remarkable for its elevation of tone. He convoked the Diet, the king
said, to make himself acquainted with the wishes and wants of his
people, but not to change the constitution, which guaranteed an absolute
monarchy. The province of the Diet was consultative rather than
legislative. Political and military power, as before, remained with the
king. Still, an important step had been taken toward representative
institutions.

It was about this time, as a member of the National Diet, that Otto
Edward Leopold von Bismarck appeared upon the political stage. It was a
period of great political excitement, not only in Prussia, but
throughout Europe, and also of great material prosperity. Railways had
been built, the Zollverein had extended through North Germany, the
universities were in their glory, and into everything fearless thinkers
were casting their thoughtful eyes. Thirty-four years of peace had
enriched and united the German States. The great idea of the day was
political franchise. Everybody aspired to solve political problems, and
wished to have a voice in deliberative assemblies. There was also an
unusual agitation of religious ideas. Rouge had attempted the complete
emancipation of Germany from Papal influences, and university professors
threw their influence on the side of rationalism and popular liberty. On
the whole, there was a general tendency towards democratic ideas, which
was opposed with great bitterness by the conservative parties, made up
of nobles and government officials.

Bismarck arose, slowly but steadily, with the whole force of his genius,
among the defenders of the conservative interests of his order and of
the throne. He was then simply Herr von Bismarck, belonging to an
ancient and noble but not wealthy family, whose seat was Schönhausen,
where the future prince was born, April 1, 1815. The youth was sent to a
gymnasium in Berlin in 1830, and in 1832 to the university of Göttingen
in Hanover, where he was more distinguished for duels, drinking-parties,
and general lawlessness than for scholarship. Here he formed a memorable
friendship with a brother student, a young American,--John Lothrop
Motley, later the historian of the Dutch Republic. Much has been written
of Bismarck's reckless and dissipated life at the university, which
differed not essentially from that of other nobles. He had a grand
figure, superb health, extraordinary animal spirits, and could ride like
a centaur. He spent but three semestres at Göttingen, and then repaired
to Berlin in order to study jurisprudence under the celebrated Savigny;
but he was rarely seen in the lecture-room. He gave no promise of the
great abilities which afterward distinguished him. Yet he honorably
passed his State examination; and as he had chosen the law for his
profession, he first served on leaving the university as a sort of clerk
in the city police, and in 1834 was transferred to Aix-la-Chapelle, in
the administrative department of the district. In 1837 he served in the
crown office at Potsdam. He then entered for a year as a sharpshooter of
the Guards, to absolve his obligation to military service.

The next eight years, from the age of twenty-four, he devoted to
farming, hunting, carousing, and reading, on one of his father's estates
in Pomerania. He was a sort of country squire, attending fairs, selling
wool, inspecting timber, handling grain, gathering rents, and sitting as
a deputy in the local Diet,--the talk and scandal of the neighborhood
for his demon-like rides and drinking-bouts, yet now studying all the
while, especially history and even philosophy, managing the impoverished
paternal estates with prudence and success, and making short visits to
France and England, the languages of which countries he could speak with
fluency and accuracy. In 1847 he married Johanna von Putkammer, nine
years younger than himself, who proved a model wife, domestic and wise,
of whom he was both proud and fond. The same year, his father having
died and left him Schönhausen, he was elected a member of the Landtag, a
quasi-parliament of the eight united Diets of the monarchy; and his
great career began.

Up to this period Bismarck was not a publicly marked man, except in an
avidity for country sports and skill in horsemanship. He ever retained
his love of the country and of country life. If proud and overbearing,
he was not ostentatious. He had but few friends, but to these he was
faithful. He never was popular until he had made Prussia the most
powerful military State in Europe. He never sought to be loved so much
as to be feared; he never allowed himself to be approached without
politeness and deference. He seemed to care more for dogs than men. Nor
was he endowed with those graces of manner which marked Metternich. He
remained harsh, severe, grave, proud through his whole career, from
first to last, except in congenial company. What is called society he
despised, with all his aristocratic tendencies and high social rank. He
was born for untrammelled freedom, and was always impatient under
contradiction or opposition. When he reached the summit of his power he
resembled Wallenstein, the hero of the Thirty Years War,--superstitious,
self-sustained, unapproachable, inspiring awe, rarely kindling love,
overshadowing by his vast abilities the monarch whom he served
and ruled.

No account of the man, however, would be complete which did not
recognize the corner-stone of his character,--an immovable belief in the
feudalistic right of royalty to rule its subjects. Descended from an
ancient family of knights and statesmen, of the most intensely
aristocratic and reactionary class even in Germany, his inherited
instincts and his own tremendous will, backed by a physique of colossal
size and power, made effective his loyalty to the king and the monarchy,
which from the first dominated and inspired him. In the National Diet of
1847, Herr von Bismarck sat for more than a month before he opened his
lips; but when he did speak it became evident that he was determined to
support to the utmost the power of the crown. He was _plus royaliste
que le roi._ In the ordinary sense he was no orator. He hesitated, he
coughed, he sought for words; his voice, in spite of his herculean
frame, was feeble. But sturdy in his loyalty, although inexperienced in
parliamentary usage, he offered a bold front to the liberalism which he
saw to be dangerous to his sovereign's throne. Like Oliver Cromwell in
Parliament, he gained daily in power, while, unlike the English
statesman, he was opposed to the popular side, and held up the monarchy
after the fashion of Strafford. From that time, and in fact until 1866,
when he conquered Austria, Bismarck was very unpopular; and as he rose
in power he became the most bitterly hated man in Prussia,--which hatred
he returned with arrogant contempt. He consistently opposed all reforms,
even the emancipation of the Jews, which won him the favor of
the monarch.

When the revolution of 1848 broke out, which hurled Louis Philippe from
the French throne its flames reached every continental State except
Russia. Metternich, who had been all powerful in Austria for forty
years, was obliged to flee, as well as the imperial family itself. All
the Germanic States were now promised liberal constitutions by the
fallen or dismayed princes. In Prussia, affairs were critical, and the
reformers were sanguine of triumph. Berlin was agitated by mobs to the
verge of anarchy. The king, seriously alarmed, now promised the boon
which he had thus far withheld, and summoned the Second United Diet to
pave the way for a constituent assembly. In this constituent assembly
Bismarck scorned to sit. For six months it sat squabbling and fighting,
but accomplishing nothing. At last, Bismarck found it expedient to enter
the new parliament as a deputy, and again vigorously upheld the absolute
power of the crown. He did, indeed, accept the principle of
constitutional government, but, as he frankly said, against his will,
and only as a new power in the hands of the monarch to restrain popular
agitation and maintain order. Through his influence the king refused the
imperial crown offered by the Frankfort parliament, because he conceived
that the parliament had no right to give it, that its acceptance would
be a recognition of national instead of royal sovereignty, and that it
would be followed probably by civil war. As time went on he became more
and more the leader of the conservatives. I need not enumerate the
subjects which came up for discussion in the new Prussian parliament, in
which Bismarck exhibited with more force than eloquence his loyalty to
the crown, and a conservatism which was branded by the liberals as
mediaeval. But his originality, his boldness, his fearlessness, his
rugged earnestness, his wit and humor, his biting sarcasm, his
fertility of resources, his knowledge of men and affairs, and his
devoted patriotism, marked him out for promotion.

In 1851 Bismarck was sent as first secretary of the Prussian embassy to
the Diet of the various German States, convened at Frankfort, in which
Austria held a predominating influence. It was not a parliament, but an
administrative council of the Germanic Confederation founded by the
Congress of Vienna in 1815. It made no laws, and its sittings were
secret. It was a body which represented the League of Sovereigns, and
was composed of only seventeen delegates,--its main function being to
suppress all liberal movements in the various German States; like the
Congress of Vienna itself. The Diet of Frankfort was pretentious, but
practically impotent, and was the laughingstock of Europe. It was full
of jealousies and intrigues. It was a mere diplomatic conference. As
Austria and Prussia controlled it, things went well enough when these
two Powers were agreed; but they did not often agree. There was a
perpetual rivalry between them, and an unextinguishable jealousy.

There were many sneers at the appointment of a man to this diplomatic
post whose manners were brusque and overbearing, and who had spent the
most of his time, after leaving the university, among horses, cattle,
and dogs; who was only a lieutenant of militia, with a single
decoration, and who was unacquainted with what is called diplomacy. But
the king knew his man, and the man was conscious of his powers.

Bismarck found life at Frankfort intolerably dull. He had a contempt for
his diplomatic associates generally, and made fun of them to his few
intimate friends. He took them in almost at a glance, for he had an
intuitive knowledge of character; he weighed them in his balance, and
found them wanting. In a letter to his wife, he writes: "Nothing but
miserable trifles do these people trouble themselves about. They strike
me as infinitely more ridiculous with their important ponderosity
concerning the gathered rags of gossip, than even a member of the Second
Chamber of Berlin in the full consciousness of his dignity.... The men
of the minor States are mostly mere caricatures of periwig diplomatists,
who at once put on their official visage if I merely beg of them a light
to my cigar."

His extraordinary merits were however soon apparent to the king, and
even to his chief, old General Rochow, who was soon transferred to St.
Petersburg to make way for the secretary. The king's brother William,
Prince of Prussia, when at Frankfort, was much impressed by the young
Prussian envoy to the Bund, and there was laid the foundation of the
friendship between the future soldier-king and the future chancellor,
between whom there always existed a warm confidence and esteem. Soon
after, Bismarck made the acquaintance of Metternich, who had ruled for
so long a time both the Diet and the Empire. The old statesman, now
retired, invited the young diplomatist to his castle at Johannisberg.
They had different aims, but similar sympathies. The Austrian statesman
sought to preserve the existing state of things; the Prussian, to make
his country dominant over Germany. Both were aristocrats, and both were
conservative; but Metternich was as bland and polished as Bismarck was
rough and brusque.

Nothing escaped the watchful eye of Bismarck at Frankfort as the
ambassador of Prussia. He took note of everything, both great and small,
and communicated it to Berlin as if he were a newspaper correspondent.
In everything he showed his sympathy with absolutism, and hence
recommended renewed shackles on the Press and on the universities,--at
that time the hotbed of revolutionary ideas. His central aim and
constant thought was the ascendency of Prussia,--first in royal strength
at home, then throughout Germany as the rival of Austria. Bismarck was
not only a keen observer, but he soon learned to disguise his thoughts.
Nobody could read him. He was frank when his opponents were full of
lies, knowing that he would not be believed. He became a perfect master
of the art of deception. No one was a match for him in statecraft. Even
Prince Gortschakoff became his dupe. By his tact he kept Prussia from
being entangled by the usurpation of Napoleon III., and by the Crimean
war. He saw into the character of the French emperor, and discovered
that he was shallow, and not to be feared. At Frankfort, Bismarck had
many opportunities of seeing distinguished men of all nations; he took
their gauge, and penetrated the designs of cabinets. He counselled his
master to conciliate Napoleon, though regarding him as an upstart; and
he sought the friendship of France in order to eclipse the star of
Austria, whom it was necessary to humble before Prussia could rise. In
his whole diplomatic career at Frankfort it was Bismarck's aim to
contravene the designs of Austria, having in view the aggrandizement of
Prussia as the true head and centre of German nationality. He therefore
did all he could to prevent Austria from being assisted in her war with
Italy, and rejoiced in her misfortunes. In the meantime he made frequent
short visits to Holland, Denmark, Italy, and Hungary, acquired the
languages of these countries, and made himself familiar with their
people and institutions, besides shrewdly studying the characters,
manners, and diplomatic modes of the governing classes of European
nations at large. Cool, untiring, self-possessed, he was storing up
information and experience.

At the end of eight years, in 1859, Bismarck was transferred to St.
Petersburg as the Prussian ambassador to Alexander II. He was then
forty-three years of age, and was known as the sworn foe of Austria. His
free-and-easy but haughty manners were a great contrast to those of his
stiff, buttoned-up, and pretentious predecessors; and he became a great
favorite in Russian court circles. The comparatively small salary he
received,--less than twenty thousand dollars, with a house,--would not
allow him to give expensive entertainments, or to run races in
prodigality with the representatives of England, France, or even
Austria, who received nearly fifty thousand dollars. But no parties were
more sought or more highly appreciated than those which his sensible and
unpretending wife gave in the high society in which they moved. With the
empress-dowager he was an especial favorite, and was just the sort of
man whom the autocrat of all the Russias would naturally like,
especially for his love of hunting, and his success in shooting deer and
bears. He did not go to grand parties any more than he could help,
despising their ostentation and frivolity, and always feeling the
worse for them.

On the 2d of January, 1861, Frederick William IV., who had for some time
been insane, died, and was succeeded by the Prince Regent, William I.,
already in his sixty-fifth year, every inch a soldier and nothing else.
Bismarck was soon summoned to the councils of his sovereign at Berlin,
who was perplexed and annoyed by the Liberal party, which had the
ascendency in the lower Chamber of the general Diet. Office was pressed
upon Bismarck, but before he accepted it he wished to study Napoleon and
French affairs more closely, and was therefore sent as ambassador to
Paris in 1862. He made that year a brief visit to London, Disraeli being
then the premier, who smiled at his schemes for the regeneration of
Germany. It was while journeying amid the Pyrenees that Bismarck was
again summoned to Berlin, the lower Chamber having ridden rough-shod
over his Majesty's plans for army reform. The king invested him with the
great office of President of the Ministry, his abilities being
universally recognized.

It was now Bismarck's mission to break the will of the Prussian
parliament, and to thrust Austria out of the Germanic body. He
considered only the end in view, caring nothing for the means: he had no
scruples. It was his religion to raise Prussia to the same ascendency
that Austria had held under Metternich. He had a master whose will and
ambition were equal to his own, yet whose support he was sure of in
carrying out his grand designs. He was now a second Richelieu, to whom
the aggrandizement of the monarchy which he served and the welfare of
Fatherland were but convertible terms. He soon came into bitter
conflict, not with nobles, but with progressive liberals in the Chamber,
who detested him and feared him, but to whom he did not condescend to
reveal his plans,--bearing obloquy with placidity in the greatness of
the end he had in view. He was a self-sustained, haughty, unapproachable
man of power, except among the few friends whom he honored as boon
companions, without ever losing his discretion,--wearing a mask with
apparent frankness, and showing real frankness in matters which did not
concern secrets of state, especially on the subjects of education and
religion. Like his master, he was more a Calvinist than a Lutheran. He
openly avowed his dependence on Almighty God, and on him alone, as the
hope of nations. In this respect we trace a resemblance to Oliver
Cromwell rather than to Frederic the Great. Bismarck was a compound of
both, in his patriotism and his unscrupulousness.

The first thing that King William and his minister did was to double the
army. But this vast increase of military strength seemed unnecessary to
the Liberal party, and the requisite increase of taxes to support it was
unpopular. Hence, Bismarck was brought in conflict with the lower
Chamber, which represented the middle classes. He dared not tell his
secret schemes without imperilling their success, which led to grave
misunderstandings. For four years the conflict raged between the crown
and the parliament, both the king and Bismarck being inflexible; and the
lower House was equally obstinate in refusing to grant the large
military supplies demanded. At last, Bismarck dissolved the Chambers,
and the king declared that as the Three Estates could not agree, he
should continue to do his duty by Prussia without regard to "these
pieces of paper called constitutions." The next four sessions of the
Chamber were closed in the same manner. Bismarck admitted that he was
acting unconstitutionally, but claimed the urgency of public necessity.
In the public debates he was cool, sarcastic, and contemptuous. The
Press took up the fight, and the Press was promptly muzzled. Bismarck
was denounced as a Catiline, a Strafford, a Polignac; but he retained a
provoking serenity, and quietly prepared for war,--since war, he
foresaw, was sooner or later inevitable. "Nothing can solve the
question," said he, "but blood and iron."

At last an event occurred which showed his hand. In November, 1863,
Frederick VII., the king of Denmark, died. By his death the
Schleswig-Holstein question again burst upon distracted Europe,--Who was
to reign over the two Danish provinces? The king of Denmark, as Duke of
Schleswig and Holstein, had been represented in the Germanic Diet. By
the treaty of London, in 1852, he had undertaken not to incorporate the
duchies with the rest of his monarchy, allowing them to retain their
traditional autonomy. In 1863, shortly before his death, Frederick VII.
by a decree dissolved this autonomy, and virtually incorporated
Schleswig, which was only partly German, with the Danish monarchy,
leaving the wholly German Holstein as before. Bismarck protested against
this violation of treaty obligations. The Danish parliament nevertheless
passed a law which incorporated the province with Denmark; and Christian
IX., the new monarch, confirmed the law.

But a new claimant to the duchies now appeared in the person of
Frederick of Augustenburg, a German prince; and the Prussian Chamber
advocated his claims, as did the Diet itself; but the throne held its
opinion in reserve. Bismarck contrived (by what diplomatic tricks and
promises it is difficult to say) to induce Austria to join with Prussia
in seizing the provinces in question and in dividing the spoil between
them. As these two Powers controlled the Diet at Frankfort, it was easy
to carry out the programme. An Austro-Prussian army accordingly invaded
Schleswig-Holstein, and to the scandal of all Europe drove the Danish
defenders to the wall. It was regarded in the same light as the seizure
of Silesia by Frederic the Great,--a high-handed and unscrupulous
violation of justice and right. England was particularly indignant, and
uttered loud protests. So did the lesser States of Germany, jealous of
the aggrandizement of Prussia. Even the Prussian Chamber refused to
grant the money for such an enterprise.

But Bismarck laughed in his sleeve. This arch-diplomatist had his
reasons, which he did not care to explain. He had in view the weakening
of the power of the Diet, and a quarrel with Austria. True, he had
embraced Austria, but after the fashion of a bear. He knew that Austria
and Prussia would wrangle about the division of the spoil, which would
lead to misunderstandings, and thus furnish the pretext for a war, which
he felt to be necessary before Prussia could be aggrandized and German
unity be effected, with Prussia at its head,--the two great objects of
his life. His policy was marvellously astute; but he kept his own
counsels, and continued to hug his secret enemy.

On the 30th of October, 1864, the Treaty of Vienna was signed, by which
it was settled that the king of Denmark should surrender
Schleswig-Holstein and Lauenburg to Austria and Prussia, and he bound
himself to submit to what their majesties might think fit as to the
disposition of these three duchies. Probably both parties sought an
occasion to quarrel, since their commissioners had received opposite
instructions,--the Austrians defending the claims of Frederick of
Augustenburg, as generally desired in Germany, and the Prussians now
opposing them. Prussia demanded the expulsion of the pretender; to which
Austria said no. Prussia further sounded Austria as to the annexation of
the duchies to herself, to which Austria consented, on condition of
receiving an equivalent of some province in Silesia. "What!" thought
Bismarck, angrily, "give you back part of what was won for Prussia by
Frederic the Great? Never!" Affairs had a gloomy look; but war was
averted for a while by the Convention of Gastein, by which the
possession of Schleswig was assigned to Prussia, and Holstein to
Austria; and further, in consideration of two and a half millions of
dollars, the Emperor Francis Joseph ceded to King William all his rights
of co-proprietorship in the Duchy of Lauenburg.

But the Chamber of Berlin boldly declared this transaction to be null
and void, since the country had not been asked to ratify the treaty. It
must be borne in mind that the conflict was still going on between
Bismarck, as the defender of the absolute sovereignty of the king, and
the liberal and progressive members of the Chamber, who wanted a freer
and more democratic constitution. Opposed, then, by the Chamber,
Bismarck dissolved it, and coolly reminded his enemies that the Chamber
had nothing to do with politics,--only with commercial affairs and
matters connected with taxation. This was the period of his greatest
unpopularity, since his policy and ultimate designs were not
comprehended. So great was the popular detestation in which he was held
that a fanatic tried to kill him in the street, but only succeeded in
wounding him slightly.

In the meantime Austria fomented disaffection in the provinces which
Prussia had acquired, and Bismarck resolved to cut the knot by the
sword. Prussian troops marched to the frontier, and Austria on her part
also prepared for war. It is difficult to see that a real _casus belli_
existed. We only know that both parties wanted to fight, whatever were
their excuses and pretensions; and both parties sought the friendship of
Russia and France, especially by holding out delusive hopes to Napoleon
of accession of territory. They succeeded in inducing both Russia and
France to remain neutral,--mere spectators of the approaching contest,
which was purely a German affair. It was the first care of Prussia to
prevent the military union of her foes in North Germany with her foes in
the south,--which was effected in part by the diplomatic genius of
Bismarck, and in part by occupying the capitals of Hanover, Saxony, and
Hesse-Cassel with Prussian troops, in a very summary way.

The encounter now began in earnest between Prussia and Austria for the
prize of ascendency. Both parties were confident of success,--Austria as
the larger State, with proud traditions, triumphant over rebellious
Italy; and Prussia, with its enlarged military organization and the new
breech-loading needle-gun.

Count von Moltke at this time came prominently on the European stage as
the greatest strategist since Napoleon. He was chief of staff to the
king, who was commander-in-chief. He set his wonderful machinery in
harmonious action, and from his office in Berlin moved his military
pawns by touch of electric wire. Three great armies were soon
centralized in Bohemia,--one of three corps, comprising one hundred
thousand men, led by Prince Charles, the king's nephew; the second, of
four corps, of one hundred and sixteen thousand men, commanded by the
crown prince, the king's son; and the third, of forty thousand, led by
General von Bittenfield. "March separately; strike together," were the
orders of Moltke. Vainly did the Austrians attempt to crush these armies
in detail before they should combine at the appointed place. On they
came, with mathematical accuracy, until two of the armies reached
Gitschin, the objective point, where they were joined by the king, by
Moltke, by Bismarck, and by General von Roon, the war minister. On the
2d of June, 1866, they were opposite Königgrätz (or Sadowa, as the
Austrians called it), where the Austrians were marshalled. On the 3d of
July the battle began; and the scales hung pretty evenly until, at the
expected hour, the crown prince--"our Fritz," as the people
affectionately called him after this, later the Emperor Frederick
William--made his appearance on the field with his army. Assailed on
both flanks and pressed in the centre, the Austrians first began to
slacken fire, then to waver, then to give way under the terrific
concentrated fire of the needle-guns, then to retreat into ignominious
flight. The contending forces were about equal; but science and the
needle-gun won the day, and changed the whole aspect of modern warfare.
The battle of Königgrätz settled this point,--that success in war
depends more on good powder and improved weapons than on personal
bravery or even masterly evolutions. Other things being equal, victory
is almost certain to be on the side of the combatants who have the best
weapons. The Prussians won the day of Königgrätz by their breech-loading
guns, although much was due to their superior organization and
superior strategy.

That famous battle virtually ended the Austro-Prussian campaign, which
lasted only about seven weeks. It was one of those "decisive battles"
that made Prussia the ascendent power in Germany, and destroyed the
prestige of Austria. It added territory to Prussia equal to one quarter
of the whole kingdom, and increased her population by four and a half
millions of people. At a single bound, Prussia became a first-class
military State.

The Prussian people were almost frantic with joy; and Bismarck, from
being the most unpopular man in the nation, became instantly a national
idol. His marvellous diplomacy, by which Austria was driven to the
battlefield, was now seen and universally acknowledged. He obtained
fame, decorations, and increased power. A grateful nation granted to him
four hundred thousand thalers, with which he bought the estate of
Varzin. General von Moltke received three hundred thousand thalers and
immense military prestige. The war minister, Von Roon, also received
three hundred thousand thalers. These three stood out as the three most
prominent men of the nation, next to the royal family.

Never was so short a war so pregnant with important consequences. It
consolidated the German Confederation under Prussian dominance. By
weakening Austria it led to the national unity of Italy, and secured
free government to the whole Austrian empire, since that government
could no longer refuse the demands of Hungary. Above all, "it shattered
the fabric of Ultramontanism which had been built up by the concordat
of 1853."

It was the expectation of Napoleon III that Austria would win in this
war; but the loss of the Austrians was four to one, besides her
humiliation, condemned as she was to pay a war indemnity, with the loss
also of the provinces of Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, Hesse-Cassel,
Nassau, and Frankfort. But Bismarck did not push Austria to the wall,
since he did not wish to make her an irreconcilable enemy. He left open
a door for future and permanent peace. He did not desire to ruin his
foe, but simply to acquire the lead in German politics and exclude
Austria from the Germanic Confederation. Napoleon, disappointed and
furious, blustered, and threatened war, unless he too could come in for
a share of the plunder, to which he had no real claim. Bismarck calmly
replied, "Well, then, let there be war," knowing full well that France
was not prepared, Napoleon consulted his marshals, "Are we prepared,"
asked he, "to fight all Germany?" "Certainly not," replied the marshals,
"until our whole army, like that of Prussia, is supplied with a
breech-loader; until our drill is modified to suit the new weapon; until
our fortresses are in a perfect state of preparedness, and until we
create a mobile and efficient national reserve."

When Carlyle heard the news of the great victories of Prussia, he wrote
to a friend, "Germany is to stand on her feet henceforth, and face all
manner of Napoleons and hungry, sponging dogs, with clear steel in her
hand and an honest purpose in her heart. This seems to me the best news
we or Europe have heard for the last forty years or more."

The triumphal return of the Prussian troops to Berlin was followed on
the 24th of February, 1867, by the opening of the first North German
parliament,--three hundred deputies chosen from the various allied
States by universal suffrage. Twenty-two States north of the Main formed
themselves into a perpetual league for the protection of the Union and
its institutions. Legislative power was to be invested in two
bodies,--the Reichstag, representing the people; and the Bundesrath,
composed of delegates from the allied governments, the perpetual
presidency of which was invested in the king of Prussia. He was also
acknowledged as the commander-in-chief of the united armies; and the
standing army, on a peace footing, was fixed at one per cent of all the
inhabitants. This constitution was drawn by Bismarck himself, not
unwilling, under the unquestioned supremacy of his monarch, to utilize
the spirit of the times, and admit the people to a recognized support of
the crown.

Thus Germany at last acquired a liberal constitution, though not so free
and broad as that of England. The absolute control of the army and navy,
the power to make treaties and declare peace and war, the appointment
of all the great officers of state, and the control of education and
other great interests still remained with the king. The functions of the
lower House seemed to be mostly confined to furnishing the sinews of war
and government,--the granting of money and the regulation of taxes.
Meanwhile, secret treaties of alliance were concluded with the southern
States of Germany, offensive and defensive, in case of war,--another
stroke of diplomatic ability on the part of Bismarck; for the intrigues
of Napoleon had been incessant to separate the southern from the
northern States,--in other words, to divide Germany, which the French
emperor was sanguine he could do. With a divided Germany, he believed
that he was more than a match for the king of Prussia, as soon as his
military preparations should be made. Could he convert these States into
allies, he was ready for war. He was intent upon securing for France
territorial enlargements equal to those of Prussia. He could no longer
expect any thing on the Rhine, and he turned his eyes to Belgium.

The war-cloud arose on the political horizon in 1867, when Napoleon
sought to purchase from the king of Holland the Duchy of Luxemburg,
which was a personal fief of his kingdom, though it was inhabited by
Germans, and which made him a member of the Germanic Confederation if he
chose to join it. In the time of Napoleon I. Luxemburg was defended by
one of the strongest fortresses in Europe, garrisoned by Prussian
troops; it was therefore a menace to France on her northeastern
frontier. As Napoleon III, promised a very big sum of money for this
duchy, with a general protectorate of Holland in case of Prussian
aggressions, the king of Holland was disposed to listen to the proposal
of the French emperor; but when it was discovered that an alliance of
the southern States had been made with the northern States of Germany,
which made Prussia the mistress of Germany, the king of Holland became
alarmed, and declined the French proposals. The chagrin of the emperor
and the wrath of the French nation became unbounded. Again they had been
foiled by the arch-diplomatist of Prussia.

All this was precisely what Bismarck wanted. Confident of the power of
Prussia, he did all he could to drive the French nation to frenzy. He
worked on a vainglorious, excitable, and proud people, at the height of
their imperial power. Napoleon was irresolute, although it appeared to
him that war with Prussia was the only way to recover his prestige after
the mistakes of the Mexican expedition. But Mexico had absorbed the
marrow of the French army, and the emperor was not quite ready for war.
He must find some pretence for abandoning his designs on Luxemburg, any
attempt to seize which would be a plain _casus belli_. Both parties were
anxious to avoid the initiative of a war which might shake Europe to its
centre. Both parties pretended peace; but both desired war.

Napoleon, a man fertile in resources, in order to avoid immediate
hostilities looked about for some way to avoid what he knew was
premature; so he proposed submitting the case to arbitration, and the
Powers applied themselves to extinguish the gathering flames. The
conference--composed of representatives of England, France, Russia,
Austria, Prussia, Holland, and Belgium--met in London; and the result of
it was that Prussia agreed to withdraw her garrison from Luxemburg and
to dismantle the fortress, while the duchy was to continue to be a
member of the German Zollverein, or Customs Union. King William was
willing to make this concession to the cause of humanity; and his
minister, rather than go against the common sentiment of Europe,
reluctantly conceded this point, which, after all, was not of paramount
importance. Thus was war prevented for a time, although everybody knew
that it was inevitable, sooner or later.

The next three years Bismarck devoted himself to diplomatic intrigues in
order to cement the union of the German States,--for the Luxemburg
treaty was well known to be a mere truce,--and Napoleon did the same to
weaken the union. In the meantime King William accepted an invitation of
Napoleon to visit Paris at the time of the Great Exposition; and thither
he went, accompanied by Counts Bismarck and Moltke. The party was soon
after joined by the Czar, accompanied by Prince Gortschakoff, who had
the reputation of being the ablest diplomatist in Europe, next to
Bismarck. The meeting was a sort of carnival of peace, hollow and
pretentious, with fêtes and banquets and military displays innumerable.
The Prussian minister amused himself by feeling the national pulse,
while Moltke took long walks to observe the fortifications of Paris.
When his royal guests had left, Napoleon travelled to Salzburg to meet
the Austrian emperor, ostensibly to condole with him for the unfortunate
fate of Maximilian in Mexico, but really to interchange political ideas.
Bismarck was not deceived, and openly maintained that the military and
commercial interests of north and south Germany were identical.

In April, 1868, the Customs Parliament assembled in Berlin, as the first
representative body of the entire nation that had as yet met. Though
convoked to discuss tobacco and cotton, the real object was to pave the
way for "the consummation of the national destinies."

Bismarck meanwhile conciliated Hanover, whose sovereign, King George,
had been dethroned, by giving him a large personal indemnity, and by
granting home rule to what was now a mere province of Prussia. In
Berlin, he resisted in the Reichstag the constitutional encroachments
which the Liberal party aimed at,--ever an autocrat rather than
minister, having no faith in governmental responsibility to parliament.
Only one master he served, and that was the king, as Richelieu served
Louis XIII. Nor would he hear of a divided ministry; affairs were too
complicated to permit him to be encumbered by colleagues. He maintained
that public affairs demanded quickness, energy, and unity of action; and
it was certainly fortunate for Germany in the present crisis that the
foreign policy was in the hands of a single man, and that man so able,
decided, and astute as Bismarck.

All the while secret preparations for war went on in both Prussia and
France. French spies overran the Rhineland, and German draughtsmen were
busy in the cities and plains of Alsace-Lorraine. France had at last
armed her soldiers with the breech-loading chassepot gun, by many
thought to be superior to the needle-gun; and she had in addition
secretly constructed a terrible and mysterious engine of war called
_mitrailleuse_,--a combination of gun-barrels fired by mechanism. These
were to effect great results. On paper, four hundred and fifty thousand
men were ready to rush as an irresistible avalanche on the Rhine
provinces. To the distant observer it seemed that France would gain an
easy victory, and once again occupy Berlin. Besides her supposed
military forces, she still had a great military prestige. Prussia had
done nothing of signal importance for forty years except to fight the
duel with Austria; but France had done the same, and had signally
conquered at Solferino. Yet during forty years Prussia had been
organizing her armies on the plan which Scharnhorst had furnished, and
had four hundred and fifty thousand men under arms,--not on paper, but
really ready for the field, including a superb cavalry force. The combat
was to be one of material forces, guided by science.

I have said that only a pretext was needed to begin hostilities. This
pretext on the part of the French was that their ambassador to Berlin,
Benedetti, was reported to have been insulted by the king. He was not
insulted. The king simply refused to have further parley with an
arrogant ambassador, and referred him to his government,--which was the
proper thing to do. On this bit of scandal the French politicians--the
people who led the masses--lashed themselves into fury, and demanded
immediate war. Napoleon could not resist the popular pressure, and war
was proclaimed. The arrogant demand of Napoleon, through his ambassador
Benedetti, that the king of Prussia should agree never to permit his
relative, Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern, to accept the vacant throne of
Spain, to which he had been elected by the provisional government of
that country, was the occasion of King William's curt reception of the
French envoy; for this was an insulting demand, not to be endured. It
was no affair of Napoleon, especially since the prince had already
declined the throne at the request of the king of Prussia, as the head
of the Hohenzollern family. But the French nation generally, the
Catholic Church party working through the Empress Eugenie, and, above
all, the excitable Parisians, goaded by the orators and the Press, saw
the possibility of an extension of the Roman empire of Charles V., under
the control of Prussia; and Napoleon was driven to the fatal course,
first, of making the absurd demand, and then--in spite of a wholesome
irresolution, born of his ignorance concerning his own military
forces--of resenting its declinature with war.

In two weeks the German forces were mobilized, and the colossal
organization, in three great armies, all directed by Moltke as chief of
staff to the commander-in-chief, the still vigorous old man who ruled
and governed at Berlin, were on their way to the seat of war. At
Mayence, the king in person, on the 2d of August, 1870, assumed command
of the united German armies; and in one month from that date Prance was
prostrate at his feet.

It would be interesting to detail the familiar story; but my limits will
not permit. I can only say that the three armies of the German forces,
each embracing several corps, were, one under the command of General
Steinmetz, another under Prince Frederic Charles, and the third under
the crown prince,--and all under the orders of Moltke, who represented
the king. The crown prince, on the extreme left, struck the first blow
at Weissenburg, on the 4th of August; and on the 6th he assaulted
McMahon at Worth, and drove back his scattered forces,--partly on
Chalons, and partly on Strasburg; while Steinmetz, commanding the right
wing, nearly annihilated Frossard's corps at Spicheren. It was now the
aim of the French under Bazaine, who commanded two hundred and fifty
thousand men near Metz, to join McMahon's defeated forces. This was
frustrated by Moltke in the bloody battle of Gravelotte, compelling
Bazaine to retire within the lines of Metz, the strongest fortress in
France, which was at once surrounded by Prince Charles. Meanwhile, the
crown prince continued the pursuit of McMahon, who had found it
impossible to effect a junction with Bazaine. At Sedan the armies met;
but as the Germans were more than twice the number of the French, and
had completely surrounded them, the struggle was useless,--and the
French, with the emperor himself, were compelled to surrender as
prisoners of war. Thus fell Napoleon's empire.

After the battle of Sedan, one of the decisive battles of history, the
Germans advanced rapidly to Paris, and King William took up his quarters
at Versailles, with his staff and his councillor Bismarck, who had
attended him day by day through the whole campaign, and conducted the
negotiations of the surrender. Paris, defended by strong fortifications,
resolved to sustain a siege rather than yield, hoping that something
might yet turn up by which the besieged garrison should be relieved,--a
forlorn hope, as Paris was surrounded, especially on the fall of Metz,
by nearly half a million of the best soldiers in the world. Yet that
memorable siege lasted five months, and Paris did not yield until
reduced by extreme, famine; and perhaps it might have held out much
longer if it could have been provisioned. But this was not to be. The
Germans took the city as Alaric had taken Rome, without much waste
of blood.

The conquerors were now inexorable, and demanded a war indemnity of five
milliards of francs, and the cession of Metz and the two province of
Alsace-Lorraine (which Louis XIV had formerly wrested away), including
Strasburg. Eloquently but vainly did old Thiers plead for better terms;
but he pleaded with men as hard as iron, who exacted, however, no more
than Napoleon III would have done had the fortune of war enabled him to
reach Berlin as the conqueror. War is hard under any circumstances, but
never was national humiliation more complete than when the Prussian flag
floated over the Arc de Triomphe, and Prussian soldiers defiled
beneath it.

Nothing was now left for the aged Prussian king but to put upon his head
the imperial crown of Germany, for all the German States were finally
united under him. The scene took place at Versailles in the Hall of
Mirrors, in probably the proudest palace ever erected since the days of
Nebuchadnezzar. Surrounded by princes and generals, Chancellor Bismarck
read aloud the Proclamation of the Empire, and the new German emperor
gave thanks to God. It was a fitting sequence to the greatest military
success since Napoleon crushed the German armies at Jena and Austerlitz.
The tables at last were turned, and the heavy, phlegmatic, intelligent
Teutons triumphed over the warlike and passionate Celts. So much for the
genius of the greatest general and the greatest diplomatist that Europe
had known for half-a-century.

Bismarck's rewards for his great services were magnificent, quite equal
to those of Wellington or Marlborough. He received another valuable
estate, this time from his sovereign, which gift made him one of the
greatest landed proprietors of Prussia; he was created a Prince; he was
decorated with the principal orders of Europe; he had augmented power as
chancellor of confederated Germany; he was virtual dictator of his
country, which he absolutely ruled in the name of a wearied old man
passed seventy years of age. But the minister's labors and vexations do
not end with the Franco-German war During the years that immediately
follow, he is still one of the hardest-worked men in Europe. He receives
one thousand letters and telegrams a day. He has to manage an
unpractical legislative assembly, clamorous for new privileges, and
attend to the complicated affairs of a great empire, and direct his
diplomatic agents in every country of Europe. He finds that the sanctum
of a one-man power is not a bed of roses. Sometimes he seeks rest and
recreation on one of his estates, but labors and public duties follow
him wherever he goes. He is too busy and preoccupied even for pleasure,
unless he is hunting boars and stags. He seems to care but little for
art of any kind, except music; but once in his life has he ever visited
the Museum of Berlin; he never goes to the theatre. He appears as little
as possible in the streets, but when recognized he is stared at as a
wonder. He lives hospitably but plainly, and in a palace with few
ornaments or luxuries. He enshrouds himself in mystery, but not in
gloom. Few dare approach him, for his manners are brusque and rough, and
he is feared more even than he is honored. His aspect is stern and
haughty, except when he occasionally unbends. In his family he is
simple, frank, and domestic; but in public he is the cold and imperative
dictator. Even the royal family are uncomfortable in his commanding and
majestic presence; everybody stands in awe of him but his wife and
children. He caresses only his dogs. He eats but once a day, but his
meal is enough for five men; he drinks a quart of beer or wine without
taking the cup from his mouth; he smokes incessantly, generally a long
Turkish pipe. He sleeps irregularly, disturbed by thoughts which fill
his troubled brain. Honored is the man who is invited to his table, even
if he be the ambassador of a king; for at table the host is frank and
courteous, and not overbearing like a literary dictator. He is well read
in history, but not in art or science or poetry. His stories are
admirable when he is in convivial mood; all sit around him in silent
admiration, for no one dares more than suggest the topic,--he does all
the talking himself. Bayard Taylor, when United States minister at
Berlin, was amazed and confounded by his freedom of speech and apparent
candor. He is frank in matters he does not care to conceal, and simple
as a child when not disputed or withstood; but when opposed fierce as a
lion,--a spoiled man of success, yet not intoxicated with power. Haughty
and irritable, perhaps, but never vain like a French statesman in
office,--a Webster rather than a Thiers.

Such was the man who ruled the German empire with an iron hand for
twenty years or more,--the most remarkable man of power known to history
for seventy-five years; immortal like Cavour, and for his services even
more than his abilities. He had raised Prussia to the front rank among
nations, and created German unity. He had quietly effected more than
Richelieu ever aspired to perform; for Richelieu sought only to build up
a great throne, while Bismarck had united a great nation in patriotic
devotion to Fatherland, which, so far as we can see, is as invincible as
it is enlightened,--enlightened in everything except in
democratic ideas.

I will not dwell on the career and character of Prince Bismarck since
the Franco-Prussian war. After that he was not identified with any great
national movements which command universal interest. His labors were
principally confined to German affairs,--quarrels with the Reichstag,
settlement of difficulties with the various States of the Germanic
Confederation, the consolidation of the internal affairs of the empire
while he carried on diplomatic relations with other great Powers,
efforts to gain the good-will of Russia and secure the general peace of
Europe. These, and a multitude of other questions too recent to be
called historical, he dealt with, in all of which his autocratic
sympathies called out the censures of the advocates of greater liberty,
and diminished his popularity. For twenty years his will was the law of
the German Confederation; though bitterly opposed at times by the
Liberals, he was always sustained by his imperial master, who threw the
burdens of State on his herculean shoulders, sometimes too great to bear
with placidity. His foreign policy was then less severely criticised
than his domestic, which was alternate success and failure.

The war which he waged with the spiritual power was perhaps the most
important event of his administration, and in which he had not
altogether his own way, underrating, as is natural to such a man,
spiritual forces as compared with material. In his memorable quarrel
with Rome he appeared to the least advantage,--at first rigid, severe,
and arbitrary with the Catholic clergy, even to persecution, driving
away the Jesuits (1872), shutting up schools and churches, imprisoning
and fining ecclesiastical dignitaries, intolerant in some cases as the
Inquisition itself. One-fourth of the people of the empire are
Catholics, yet he sternly sought to suppress their religious rights and
liberties as they regarded them, thinking he could control them by
material penalties,--such as taking away their support, and shutting
them up in prison,--forgetting that conscientious Christians, whether
Catholics or Protestants, will in matters of religion defy the mightiest
rulers. No doubt the policy of the Catholics of Germany was extremely
irritating to a despotic ruler who would exalt the temporal over the
spiritual power; and equally true was it that the Pope himself was
unyielding in regard to the liberties of his church, demanding
everything and giving back nothing, in accordance with the uniform
traditions of Papal domination. The Catholics, the world over, look upon
the education of their children as a thing to be superintended by their
own religious teachers,--as their inalienable right and imperative duty;
and any State interference with this right and this duty they regard as
religious persecution, to which they will never submit without hostility
and relentless defiance. Bismarck felt that to concede to the demands
which the Catholic clergy ever have made in respect to religious
privileges was to "go to Canossa,"--where Henry IV. Emperor of Germany,
in 1077, humiliated himself before Pope Gregory VII. in order to gain
absolution. The long-sighted and experienced Thiers remarked that here
Bismarck was on the wrong track, and would be compelled to retreat,
with all his power. Bismarck was too wise a man to persist in attempting
impossibilities, and after a bitter fight he became conciliatory. He did
not "go to Canossa," but he yielded to the dictates of patriotism and
enlightened policy, and the quarrel was patched up.

His long struggles with the Catholics told upon his health and spirits,
and he was obliged to seek long periods of rest and recreation on his
estates,--sometimes, under great embarrassments and irritations,
threatening to resign, to which his imperial master, grateful and
dependent, would never under any circumstances consent. But the
prince-president of the ministers and chancellor of the empire was
loaded down with duties--in his cabinet, in his office, and in the
parliament--most onerous to bear, and which no other man in Germany was
equal to. His burdens at times were intolerable: his labors were
prodigious, and the opposition he met with was extremely irritating to a
man accustomed to have his own way in everything.

Another thing gave him great solicitude, taxed to the utmost his fertile
brain; and that was the rising and wide-spreading doctrines of
Socialism,--which was to Germany what Nihilism is to Russia and
Fenianism was to Ireland; based on discontent, unbelief, and desperate
schemes of unpractical reform, leading to the assassination even of
emperors themselves. How to deal with this terrible foe to all
governments, all laws, and all institutions was a most perplexing
question. At first he was inclined to the most rigorous measures, to a
war of utter extermination; but how could he deal with enemies he could
neither see nor find, omnipresent and invisible, and unscrupulous as
satanic furies,--fanatics whom no reasoning could touch and no laws
control, whether human or divine? As experience and thought enlarged his
mental vision, he came to the conclusion that the real source and spring
of that secret and organized hostility which he deplored, but was unable
to reach and to punish, were evils in government and evils in the
structure of society,--aggravating inequality, grinding poverty,
ignorance, and the hard struggle for life. Accordingly, he devoted his
energies to improve the general condition of the people, and make the
struggle for life easier. In his desire to equalize burdens he resorted
to indirect rather than direct taxation,--to high tariffs and protective
duties to develop German industry; throwing to the winds his earlier
beliefs in the theories of the Manchester school of political economy,
and all speculative ideas as to the blessings of free-trade for the
universe in general. He bought for the government the various Prussian
railroads, in order to have uniformity of rates and remove vexatious
discriminations, which only a central power could effect. In short, he
aimed to develop the material resources of the country, both to insure
financial prosperity and to remove those burdens which press heavily
on the poor.

On one point, however, his policy was inexorable; and that was to suffer
no reduction of the army, but rather to increase it to the utmost extent
that the nation could bear,--not with the view of future conquests or
military aggrandizement, as some thought, but as an imperative necessity
to guard the empire from all hostile attacks, whether from France or
Russia, or both combined. A country surrounded with enemies as Germany
is, in the centre of Europe, without the natural defences of the sea
which England enjoys, or great chains of mountains on her borders
difficult to penetrate and easy to defend, as is the case with
Switzerland, must have a superior military force to defend her, in case
of future contingencies which no human wisdom can foresee. Nor is it
such a dreadful burden to support a peace establishment of four hundred
and fifty thousand men as some think,--one soldier for every one hundred
inhabitants, trained and disciplined to be intelligent and industrious
when his short term of three years of active service shall have expired:
much easier to bear, I fancy, than the burden of supporting five paupers
or more to every hundred inhabitants, as in England and Scotland.

In 1888, Bismarck made a famous speech in the Reichstag to show the
necessity of Prussia's being armed. He had no immediate fears of Russia,
he said; he professed to believe that she would keep peace with Germany.
But he spoke of numerous distinct crises within forty years, when
Prussia was on the verge of being drawn into a general European war,
which diplomacy fortunately averted, and such as now must be warded off
by being too strong for attack. He mentioned the Crimean war in 1853,
the Italian war in 1858, the Polish rebellion in 1863, the
Schleswig-Holstein embroilment, which so nearly set all Europe by the
ears, the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, the Luxemburg dispute in 1867,
the Franco-German war of 1870, the Balkan war of 1877, the various
aspects of the Eastern Question, changes of government in France,
etc.,--each of which in its time threatened the great "coalition war,"
which Germany had thus far been kept out of, but which Bismarck wished
to provide against for the future.

"The long and the short of it is," said he, "that we must be as strong
as we possibly can be in these days. We have the capability of being
stronger than any other nation of equal population in the world, and it
would be a crime if we did not use this capability. We must make still
greater exertions than other Powers for the same ends, on account of our
geographical position. We lie in the midst of Europe. We have at least
three sides open to attack. God has placed on one side of us the
French,--a most warlike and restless nation,--and he has allowed the
fighting tendencies of Russia to become great; so we are forced into
measures which perhaps we would not otherwise make. And the very
strength for which we strive shows that we are inclined to peace; for
with such a powerful machine as we wish to make the German army, no one
would undertake to attack us. We Germans fear God, but nothing else in
the world; and it is the fear of God which causes us to love and
cherish peace."

Such was the avowed policy of Bismarck,--and I believe in his
sincerity,--to foster friendly relations with other nations, and to
maintain peace for the interests of humanity as well as for Germany,
which can be secured only by preparing for war, and with such an array
of forces as to secure victory. It was not with foreign Powers that he
had the greatest difficulty, but to manage the turbulent elements of
internal hostilities and jealousies, and oppose the anarchic forces of
doctrinaires, visionary dreamers, clerical aggressors, and socialistic
incendiaries,--foes alike of a stable government and of
ultimate progress.

In the management of the internal affairs of the empire he cannot be
said to have been as successful as was Cavour in Italy. He was not in
harmony with the spirit of the age, nor was he wise. His persistent
opposition to the freedom of the Press was as great an error as his
persecution of the Catholics; and his insatiable love of power, grasping
all the great offices of State, was a serious offence in the eyes of a
jealous master, the present emperor, whom he did not take sufficient
pains to conciliate. The greatness of Bismarck was not as administrator
of an empire, but rather as the creator of an empire, and which he
raised to greatness by diplomatic skill. His distinguishable excellence
was in the management of foreign affairs; and in this power he has never
been surpassed by any foreign minister.

Contrary to all calculations, this great proud man who has ruled Germany
with so firm a hand for thirty years, and whose services have been
unparalleled in the history of statesmen, was not too high to fall. But
he fell because a young, inexperienced, and ambitious sovereign,--apt
pupil of his own in the divine right of monarchs to govern, and yet
seemingly inspired by a keen sensitiveness to his people's wants and the
spirit of the age,--could not endure his commanding ascendency and
haughty dictation, and accepted his resignation offered in a moment of
pique. He fell even as Wolsey fell before Henry VIII.,--too great a man
for a subject, yet always loyal to the principles of legitimacy and the
will of his sovereign. But he retired at the age of seventy-five, with
princely estates, unexampled honors, and the admiration and gratitude
of his countrymen; with the consciousness of having elevated them to the
proudest position in continental Europe. The aged Emperor William I.
died in 1888, full of years and of honors. His son the Emperor Frederick
died a few months later, leaving a deep respect and a genuine sorrow.
The grandson, the present Emperor William II., has been called "a modern
man, notwithstanding certain proclivities which still adhere to him,
like pieces of the shell of an egg from which the bird has issued." He
is yet an unsolved problem, but may be regarded not without hope for a
wise, strong, and useful reign.

The builder of his country's greatness, however, was too deeply
enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen to remain in shadow. After
more than three years of retirement, Bismarck received from the young
emperor on January 26,1894, an invitation to visit the imperial palace
in Berlin. His journey and reception in the capital were the occasion of
tumultuous public rejoicings, and when the emperor met him, the
reconciliation was complete. The time-worn veteran did not again assume
office, but he was the frequent recipient of appreciative mention by the
kaiser in public rescripts and speeches, and on his seventy-ninth
birthday, April 1,1894, he received from the emperor a greeting by
letter and a steel cuirass, "as a symbol of the German gratitude." On
the same day the castle at Friederichsruh was filled with rare and
costly presents from all over Germany, and "Bismarck banquets" were held
in all the principal cities. It was well that before this grand figure
passed away forever "the German gratitude" to him should have found
expression again, especially from the sovereign who owed to the great
chancellor his own peculiar eminence in the earth.

As for Prince Bismarck, with all his faults,--and no man is perfect,--I
love and honor this courageous giant, who has, under such vexatious
opposition, secured the glory of the Prussian monarchy and the unity of
Germany; who has been conscientious in the discharge of his duties as he
has understood them, in the fear of God,--a modern Cromwell in another
cause, whose fame will increase with the advancing ages.[3]

[Footnote 3: Bismarck died July 30, 1898, mourned by his nation, his
obsequies honored by the Emperor.]

AUTHORITIES.

Professor Seeley's Life of Stein, Hezekiel's Biography of Bismarck, and
the Life of Prince Bismarck by Charles Lowe, are the books to which I am
most indebted for the compilation of this chapter. But one may
profitably read the various histories of the Franco-Prussian war, the
Life of Prince Hardenberg, the Life of Moltke, the Life of Scharnhorst,
and the Life of William von Humboldt. An excellent abridgment of German
History, during this century, is furnished by Professor Müller. The
Speech of Prince Bismarck in the German Reichstag, February, 1888, I
have found very instructive and interesting,--a sort of resume of his
own political life.

 

WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE.

1809-1898.

THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF THE PEOPLE.

It may seem presumptuous for me at the present time to write on
Gladstone, whose public life presents so many sides, concerning which
there is anything but unanimity of opinion,--a man still in full life,
and likely to remain so for years to come;[4] a giant, so strong
intellectually and physically as to exercise, without office, a
prodigious influence in national affairs by the sole force of genius and
character combined. But how can I present the statesmen of the
nineteenth century without including him,--the Nestor among political
personages, who for forty years has taken an important part in the
government of England?

[Footnote 4: This was written by Dr. Lord in 1891. Gladstone died in
1898.]

This remarkable man, like Canning, Peel, and Macaulay, was precocious in
his attainments at school and college,--especially at Oxford, which has
produced more than her share of the great men who have controlled
thought and action in England during the period since 1820. But
precocity is not always the presage of future greatness. There are more
remarkable boys than remarkable men. In England, college honors may have
more influence in advancing the fortunes of a young man than in this
country; but I seldom have known valedictorians who have come up to
popular expectations; and most of them, though always respectable, have
remained in comparative obscurity.

Like the statesmen to whom I have alluded, Gladstone sprang from the
middle ranks, although his father, a princely Liverpool merchant, of
Scotch descent, became a baronet by force of his wealth, character, and
influence. Seeing the extraordinary talents of his third son,--William
Ewart,--Sir John Gladstone spared neither pains nor money on his
education, sending him to Eton in 1821, at the age of twelve, where he
remained till 1827, learning chiefly Latin and Greek. Here he was the
companion and friend of many men who afterward became powerful forces in
English life,--political, literary, and ecclesiastical. At the age of
seventeen we find him writing letters to Arthur Hallam on politics and
literature: and his old schoolfellows testify to his great influence
among them for purity, humanity, and nobility of character, while he was
noted for his aptness in letters and skill in debate. In 1827 the boy
was intrusted to the care of Dr. Turner,--afterward bishop of
Calcutta,--under whom he learned something besides Latin and Greek,
perhaps indirectly, in the way of ethics and theology, and other things
which go to the formation of character. At the age of twenty he entered
Christ Church at Oxford--the most aristocratic of colleges--with more
attainments than most scholars reach at thirty, and was graduated in
1831 "double-first class," distinguished not only for his scholarship
but for his power of debate in the Union Society; throwing in his lot
with Tories and High Churchmen, who, as he afterward confesses, "did not
set a due value on the imperishable and inestimable principles of human
liberty." With strong religious tendencies and convictions, he
contemplated taking orders in the Church; but his father saw things
differently,--and thus, with academic prejudices which most graduates
have to unlearn, he went abroad in 1832 to complete the education of an
English gentleman, spending most of his time in Italy and Sicily, those
eternally interesting countries to the scholar and the artist, whose
wonders can scarcely be exaggerated,--affording a perpetual charm and
study if one can ignore popular degradation, superstition, unthrift, and
indifference to material and moral progress. He who enjoys Italy must
live in the past, or in the realm of art, or in the sanctuaries where
priests hide themselves from the light of what is most valuable in
civilization and most ennobling in human consciousness.

Mr. Gladstone returned to England in the most interesting and exciting
period of her political history since the days of Cromwell,--soon after
the great Reform Bill had been passed, which changed the principle of
representation in Parliament, and opened the way for other necessary
reforms. His personal _éclat_ and his powerful friends gave him an
almost immediate entrance into the House of Commons as member for
Newark. The electors knew but little about him; they only knew that he
was supported by the Duke of Newcastle and preponderating Tory
interests, and were carried away by his youthful eloquence--those
silvery tones which nature gave--and that strange fascination which
comes from magnetic powers. The ancients said that the poet is born and
the orator is made. It appears to me that a man stands but little chance
of oratorical triumphs who is not gifted by nature with a musical voice
and a sympathetic electrical force which no effort can acquire.

On the 29th of January, 1833, at the age of twenty-four, Gladstone
entered upon his memorable parliamentary career, during the ministry of
Lord Grey; and his maiden speech--fluent, modest, and earnest--was in
the course of the debate on the proposed abolition of slavery in the
British colonies. It was in reply to an attack made upon the management
of his father's estates in the treatment of slaves in Demerara. He
deprecated cruelty and slavery alike, but maintained that emancipation
should be gradual and after due preparation; and, insisting also that
slaves were private property, he demanded that the interests of planters
should be duly regarded if emancipation should take place. This was in
accordance with justice as viewed by enlightened Englishmen generally.
Negro emancipation was soon after decreed. All negroes born after August
1,1834, as well as those then six years of age were to be free; and the
remainder were, after a kind of apprenticeship of six years, to be set
at liberty. The sum of £20,000,000 was provided by law as a compensation
to the slave-owners,--one of the noblest acts which Parliament ever
passed, and one of which the English nation has never ceased to boast.

Among other measures to which the reform Parliament gave its attention
in 1833 was that relating to the temporalities of the Irish Church, by
which the number of bishops was reduced from twenty-two to twelve, with
a corresponding reduction of their salaries. An annual tax was also
imposed on all livings above £300, to be appropriated to the
augmentation of small benefices. Mr. Gladstone was too conservative to
approve of this measure, and he made a speech against it.

In 1834 the reform ministry went out of power, having failed to carry
everything before them as they had anticipated, and not having produced
that general prosperity which they had promised. The people were still
discontented, trade still languished, and pauperism increased rather
than diminished.

Under the new Tory ministry, headed by Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Gladstone
became a junior lord of the Treasury. His great abilities were already
recognized, and the premier wanted his services, as Pitt wanted those of
Canning before he was known to fame. Shortly after Parliament assembled,
in February, 1835, Mr. Gladstone was made under-secretary for the
Colonies,--a very young man for such an office. But the Tory ministry
was short-lived, and the Whigs soon returned to power under Lord
Melbourne. During this administration, until the death of William IV. in
1837, there was no display of power or eloquence in Parliament by the
member for Newark of sufficient importance to be here noted, except
perhaps his opposition to a bill for the re-arrangement of church-rates.
As a Conservative and a High Churchman, Gladstone stood aloof from those
who would lay unhallowed hands on the sacred ark of ecclesiasticism. And
here, at least, he has always been consistent with himself. From first
to last he has been the zealous defender and admirer of the English
Church and one of its devoutest members, taking the deepest interest in
everything which concerns its doctrines, its ritual, and its connection
with the State,--at times apparently forgetting politics to come to its
support, in essays which show a marvellous knowledge of both theology
and ecclesiastical history. We cannot help thinking that he would have
reached the highest dignities as a clergyman, and perhaps have been even
more famous as a bishop than as a statesman.

In the Parliament which assembled after Queen Victoria's accession to
the throne, in 1837, the voice of Gladstone was heard in nearly every
important discussion; but the speech which most prominently brought him
into public notice and gave him high rank as a parliamentary orator was
that in 1838, in reference to West India emancipation. The evils of the
negro apprenticeship system, which was to expire in 1840, had been laid
before the House of Lords by the ex-chancellor, Brougham, with his usual
fierceness and probable exaggeration; and when the subject came up for
discussion in the House of Commons Gladstone opposed immediate
abolition, which Lord Brougham had advocated, showing by a great array
of facts that the relation between masters and negroes was generally
much better than it had been represented. But he was on the unpopular
side of the question, and his speech excited admiration without
producing conviction,--successful only as a vigorous argument and a
brilliant oratorical display. The apprenticeship was cut short, and
immediate abolition of slavery decreed.

At that time, Gladstone's "appearance and manners were much in his
favor. His countenance was mild and pleasant; his eyes were clear and
quick; his eyebrows were dark and prominent; his gestures varied but not
violent; his jet black hair was parted from his crown to his brow;" his
voice was peculiarly musical, and his diction was elegant and easy,
without giving the appearance of previous elaboration. How far his
language and thoughts were premeditated I will not undertake to say.
Daniel Webster once declared that there was no such thing as _ex
tempore_ speaking,--a saying not altogether correct, but in the main
confirmed by many great orators who confess to laborious preparation for
their speech-making, and by the fact that many of our famous
after-dinner speakers have been known to send their speeches to the
Press before they were delivered. The case of Demosthenes would seem to
indicate the necessity of the most careful study and preparation in
order to make a truly great speech, however gifted an orator may be; and
those who, like the late Henry Ward Beecher, have astonished their
hearers by their ready utterances have generally mastered certain lines
of fact and principles of knowledge which they have at command, and
which, with native power and art of expression, they present in fresh
forms and new combinations. They do not so much add new stores of fact
to the kaleidoscope of oratory,--they place the familiar ones in new
positions, and produce new pictures _ad infinitum_. Sometimes a genius,
urged by a great impulse, may dash out in an untried course of thought;
but this is not always a safe venture,--the next effort of the kind may
prove a failure. No man can be sure of himself or his ground without
previous and patient labor, except in reply to an antagonist and when
familiar with his subject. That was the power of Fox and Pitt. What gave
charm to the speeches of Peel and Gladstone in their prime was the new
matter they introduced before debate began; and this was the result of
laborious study. To attack such matter with wit and sarcasm is one
thing; to originate it is quite another. Anybody can criticise the most
beautiful picture or the grandest structure, but to paint the one or
erect the other,--_hic labor, hoc opus est_. One of the grandest
speeches ever made, for freshness and force, was Daniel Webster's reply
to Hayne; but the peroration was written and committed to memory, while
the substance of it had been in his thoughts for half a winter, and his
mind was familiar with the general subject. The great orator is
necessarily an artist as much as Pascal was in his _Pensées_; and his
fame will rest perhaps more on his art than on his matter,--since the
art is inimitable and peculiar, while the matter is subject to the
conditions of future, unknown, progressive knowledge. Probably the most
effective speech of modern times was the short address of Abraham
Lincoln at Gettysburg; but this was simply the expression of the
gathered forces of his whole political life.

In the month of July, 1837, Mr. Gladstone was married to Miss Catherine
Glyn, daughter of Sir Stephen Richard Glyn, of Hawarden Castle, in
Flintshire, Wales,--a marriage which proved eminently happy. Eight
children have been the result of this union, of whom but one has died;
all the others have "turned out well," as the saying is, though no one
has reached distinguished eminence. It would seem that Mr. Gladstone,
occupying for forty years so superb a social and public station, has not
been ambitious for the worldly advancement of his children, nor has he
been stained by nepotism in pushing on their fortunes. The eldest son
was a member of Parliament; the second became a clergyman; and the
eldest daughter married a clergyman in a prominent position as
headmaster of Wellington College.

It would be difficult to say when the welfare of the Church and the
triumph of theological truth have not received a great share of Mr.
Gladstone's thoughts and labors. At an early period of his parliamentary
career he wrote an elaborate treatise on the "State in its relation to
the Church." It is said that Sir Robert. Peel threw the book down on the
floor, exclaiming that it was a pity so able a man should jeopardize his
political future by writing such trash; but it was of sufficient
importance to furnish Macaulay a subject for one of his most careful
essays, in which however, though respectful in tone,--patronizing rather
than eulogistic,--he showed but little sympathy with the author. He
pointed out many defects which the critical and religious world has
sustained. In the admirable article which Mr. Gladstone wrote on Lord
Macaulay himself for one of the principal Reviews not many years ago, he
paid back in courteous language, and even under the conventional form of
panegyric, in which one great man naturally speaks of another, a still
more searching and trenchant criticism on the writings of the eminent
historian. Gladstone shows, and shows clearly and conclusively, the
utter inability of Macaulay to grasp subjects of a spiritual and
subjective character, especially exhibited in his notice of the
philosophy of Bacon. He shows that this historian excels only in
painting external events and the outward acts and peculiarities of the
great characters of history,--and even then only with strong prejudices
and considerable exaggerations, however careful he is in sustaining his
position by recorded facts, in which he never makes an error. To the
subjective mind of Gladstone, with his interest in theological subjects,
Macaulay was neither profound nor accurate in his treatment of
philosophical and psychological questions, for which indeed he had but
little taste. Such men as Pascal, Leibnitz, Calvin, Locke, he lets alone
to discuss the great actors in political history, like Warren Hastings,
Pitt, Harley; but in his painting of such characters he stands
pre-eminent over all modern writers. Gladstone does justice to
Macaulay's vast learning, his transcendent memory, and his matchless
rhetoric,--making the heaviest subjects glow with life and power,
effecting compositions which will live for style alone, for which in
some respects he is unapproachable.

Indeed, I cannot conceive of two great contemporary statesmen more
unlike in their mental structure and more antagonistic in their general
views than Gladstone and Macaulay, and unlike also in their style. The
treatise on State and Church, on which Gladstone exhibits so much
learning, to me is heavy, vague, hazy, and hard to read. The subject,
however, has but little interest to an American, and is doubtless much
more highly appreciated by English students, especially those of the
great universities, whom it more directly concerns. It is the argument
of a young Oxford scholar for the maintenance of a Church establishment;
is full of ecclesiastical lore, assuming that one of the chief ends of
government is the propagation of religious truth,--a ground utterly
untenable according to the universal opinion of people in this country,
whether churchmen or laymen, Catholic or Protestant, Conservative
or liberal.

On the fall of the Whig government in 1841, succeeded by that of Sir
Robert Peel, Mr. Gladstone was appointed vice-president of the Board of
Trade and master of the Mint, and naturally became more prominent as a
parliamentary debater,--not yet a parliamentary leader. But he was one
of the most efficient of the premier's lieutenants, a tried and faithful
follower, a disciple, indeed,--as was Peel himself of Canning, and
Canning of Pitt. He addressed the House in all the important
debates,--on railways, on agricultural interests, on the abolition of
the corn laws, on the Dissenters' Chapel Bills, on sugar duties,--a
conservative of conservatives, yet showing his devotion to the cause of
justice in everything except justice to the Catholics in Ireland. He was
opposed to the grant to Maynooth College, and in consequence resigned
his office when the decision of the government was made known,--a rare
act of that conscientiousness for which from first to last he has been
pre-eminently distinguished in all political as well as religious
matters. His resignation of office left him free to express his views;
and he disclaimed, in the name of law, the constitution, and the
history of the country, the voting of money to restore and strengthen
the Roman Catholic Church of Ireland. In deference to Sir Robert Peel
and the general cause of education his opposition was not bitter or
persistent; and the progressive views which have always marked his
career led him to support the premier in his repeal of the corn laws, he
having been, like his chief, converted to the free-trade doctrines of
Cobden. But the retirement of such prominent men as the Duke of
Buccleuch and Lord Stanley (of Alderley) from his ministry, as
protectionists, led to its breaking up in 1846 and an attempt to form a
new one under Lord John Russell, which failed; and Sir Robert Peel
resumed direction of a government pledged to repeal the corn laws of
1815. As the Duke of Newcastle was a zealous protectionist, under whose
influence Mr. Gladstone had been elected member of Parliament, the
latter now resigned his seat as member for Newark, and consequently
remained without a seat in that memorable session of 1846 which repealed
the corn laws.

The ministry of Sir Robert Peel, though successful in passing the most
important bill since that of Parliamentary reform in 1832, was doomed;
as we have already noted in the Lecture on that great leader, it fell on
the Irish question, and Lord John Russell became the head of the
government. In the meantime, Mr. Gladstone was chosen to represent the
University of Oxford in Parliament,--one of the most distinguished
honors which he ever received, and which he duly prized. As the champion
of the English Church represented by the University, and as one of its
greatest scholars, he richly deserved the coveted prize.

On the accidental death of Sir Robert Peel in 1850 the conservative
party became disintegrated, and Mr. Gladstone held himself aloof both
from Whigs and Tories, learning wisdom from Sir James Graham (one of the
best educated and most accomplished statesman of the day), and devoting
himself to the study of parliamentary tactics, and of all great
political questions. It was then that in the interval of public business
he again visited Italy, in the winter of 1850-51; this time not for mere
amusement and recreation, but for the health of a beloved daughter.
While in Naples he was led to examine its prisons (with philanthropic
aim), and to study the general policy and condition of the Neapolitan
government. The result was his famous letters to Lord Aberdeen on the
awful despotism under which the kingdom of the Two Sicilies groaned,
where over twenty thousand political prisoners were incarcerated, and
one-half of the Deputies were driven into exile in defiance of all law;
where the prisons were dens of filth and horror, and all sorts of unjust
charges were fabricated in order to get rid of inconvenient persons. I
have read nothing from the pen of Mr. Gladstone superior in the way of
style to these letters,--earnest and straightforward, almost fierce in
their invective, reminding one in many respects of Brougham's defence of
Queen Caroline, but with a greater array of facts, so clearly and
forcibly put as not only to produce conviction but to kindle wrath. The
government of Naples had sworn to maintain a free constitution, but had
disgracefully and without compunction violated every one of its
conditions, and perpetrated cruelties and injustices which would have
appalled the judges of imperial Rome, and defended them by a casuistry
which surpassed in its insult to the human understanding that of the
priests of the Spanish Inquisition.

The indignation created by Gladstone's letters extended beyond England
to France and Germany, and probably had no slight influence in the final
overthrow of the King of Naples, whose government was the most unjust,
tyrannical, and cruel in Europe, and perhaps on the face of the globe.
Its chief evil was not in chaining suspected politicians of character
and rank to the vilest felons, and immuring them in underground cells
too filthy and horrible to be approached even by physicians, for months
and years before their mock-trials began, but in the utter perversion of
justice in the courts by judges who dared not go counter to the
dictation or even wishes of the executive government with its deadly and
unconquerable hatred of everything which looked like political liberty.
All these things and others Mr. Gladstone exposed with an eloquence
glowing and burning with righteous and fearless indignation.

The Neapolitan government attempted to make a denial of the terrible
charges; but the defence was feeble and inconclusive, and the statesman
who made the accusation was not convicted even of exaggeration, although
the heartless tyrant may have felt that he was no more guilty than other
monarchs bent on sustaining absolutism at any cost and under any plea in
the midst of atheists, assassins, and anarchists. It is said that Warren
Hastings, under the terrible invectives of Burke, felt himself to be the
greatest criminal in the world, even when he was conscious of having
rendered invaluable services to Great Britain, which the country in the
main acknowledged. In one sense, therefore, a statement may be
rhetorically exaggerated, even when the facts which support it are
incontrovertible, as the remorseless logic of Calvin leads to deductions
which no one fully believes,--the _decretum quidem horribile_, as Calvin
himself confessed. But is it easy to convict Mr. Gladstone of other
exaggeration than that naturally produced by uncommon ability to array
facts so as to produce conviction, which indeed is the talent of the
advocate rather than that of the judge?

The year 1848 was a period of agitation and revolution in every country
in Europe; and most governments, being unpopular, were compelled to
suppress riots and insurrections, and to maintain order under exceeding
difficulties. England was no exception; and public discontents had some
justification in the great deficiency in the national treasury, the
distress of Ireland, and the friction which new laws, however
beneficent, have to pass through.

About this time Mr. Disraeli was making himself prominent as an orator,
and as a foe to the administration. He was clever in nicknames and witty
expressions,--as when he dubbed the Blue Book of the Import Duties
Committee "the greatest work of imagination that the nineteenth century
had produced." Mr. Gladstone was no match for this great parliamentary
fencer in irony, in wit, in sarcasm, and in bold attacks; but even in a
House so fond of jokes as that of the Commons he commanded equal if not
greater attention by his luminous statements of fact and the earnest
solemnity of his manner. Benjamin Disraeli entered Parliament in 1837,
as a sort of democratic Tory, when the death of King William IV.
necessitated a general election. His maiden speech as member for
Maidstone was a failure; not because he could not speak well, but
because a certain set determined to crush him, and made such a noise
that he was obliged to sit down, declaring in a loud voice that the time
would come when they should hear him. He was already famous for his
novels, and for a remarkable command of language; the pet of
aristocratic women, and admired generally for his wit and brilliant
conversation, although he provoked criticism for the vulgar finery of
his dress and the affectation of his manners. Already he was intimate
with Lord Lyndhurst, a lion in the highest aristocratic circles, and
universally conceded to be a man of genius. Why should not such a man,
at the age of thirty-three, aspire to a seat in Parliament? His future
rival, Gladstone, though five years his junior, had already been in
Parliament three years, and was distinguished as an orator before
Disraeli had a chance to enter the House of Commons as a supporter of
Sir Robert Peel; but his extraordinary power was not felt until he
attacked his master on the repeal of the corn laws, nor was he the rival
of Mr. Gladstone until the Tory party was disintegrated and broken into
sections. In 1847, however, he became the acknowledged leader of the
most conservative section,--the party of protection,--while Gladstone
headed the followers of Peel.

On the disruption of the Whig administration in 1851 under Lord John
Russell, who was not strong enough for such unsettled times, Lord Derby
became premier, and Disraeli took office under him as chancellor of the
exchequer,--a post which he held for only a short time, the "coalition
cabinet" under Lord Aberdeen having succeeded that of Lord Derby,
keeping office during the Crimean war, and leaving the Tories out in the
cold until 1858.

Of this famous coalition ministry Mr. Gladstone naturally became
chancellor of the exchequer, having exhibited remarkable financial
ability in demolishing the arguments of Disraeli when he introduced his
budget as chancellor in 1851; but although the rivalry between the two
great men began about this time, neither of them had reached the lofty
position which they were destined to attain. They both held subordinate
posts. The prime minister was the Earl of Aberdeen; but Lord Palmerston
was the commanding genius of the cabinet, controlling as foreign
minister the diplomacy of the country in stormy times. He was
experienced, versatile, liberal, popular, and ready in debate. His
foreign policy was vigorous and aggressive, raising England in the
estimation of foreigners, and making her the most formidable Power in
Europe. His diplomatic and administrative talents were equally
remarkable, so that he held office of some kind in every successive
administration but one for fifty years. He was secretary-at-war as far
back as the contest with Napoleon, and foreign secretary in 1830 during
the administration of Lord Grey. His official life may almost be said to
have been passed in the Foreign Office; he was acquainted with all its
details, and as indefatigable in business as he was witty in society, to
the pleasures of which he was unusually devoted. He checked the ambition
of France in 1840 on the Eastern question, and brought about the cordial
alliance between France and England in the Crimean war.

Mr. Gladstone did not agree with Lord Palmerston in reference to the
Crimean war. Like Lord Aberdeen, his policy was pacific, avoiding war
except in cases of urgent necessity; but in this matter he was not only
in the minority in the cabinet but not on the popular side,--the Press
and the people and the Commons being clamorous for war. As already
shown, it was one of the most unsatisfactory wars in English
history,--conducted to a successful close, indeed, but with an immense
expenditure of blood and money, and with such an amount of blundering in
management as to bring disgrace rather than glory on the government and
the country. But it was not for Mr. Gladstone to take a conspicuous part
in the management of that unfortunate war. His business was with the
finances,--to raise money for the public exigencies; and in this
business he never had a superior. He not only selected with admirable
wisdom the articles to be taxed, but in his budgets he made the
minutest details interesting. He infused eloquence into figures; his
audiences would listen to his financial statements for five continuous
hours without wearying. But his greatest triumph as finance minister was
in making the country accept without grumbling an enormous income tax
because he made plain its necessity.

The mistakes of the coalition ministry in the management of the war led
to its dissolution, and Lord Palmerston became prime minister, Lord
Clarendon foreign minister, while Mr. Gladstone retained his post as
chancellor of the exchequer, yet only for a short time. On the
appointment of a committee to examine into the conduct of the war he
resigned his post, and was succeeded by Sir G.C. Lewis. At this crisis
the Emperor Nicholas of Russia died, and the cabinet, with a large
preponderance of Whigs, having everything their own way, determined to
prosecute the war to the bitter end.

Yet the great services and abilities of Gladstone as finance minister
were everywhere conceded, not only for his skill in figures but for his
wisdom in selecting and imposing duties that were acceptable to the
country and did not press heavily upon the poor, thus following out the
policy which Sir Robert Peel bequeathed. Ever since, this has been the
aim as well as the duty of a chancellor of the exchequer whatever party
has been in the ascendent.

>From this time onward Mr. Gladstone was a pronounced free-trader of the
Manchester school. His conscientious studies into the mutual relations
of taxation, production, and commerce had convinced him that national
prosperity lay along the line of freedom of endeavor. He had taken a
great departure from the principles he had originally advocated, which
of course provoked a bitter opposition from his former friends and
allies. He was no longer the standard-bearer of the conservative party,
but swung more and more by degrees from his old policy as light dawned
upon his mind and experience taught him wisdom. Perhaps the most
remarkable characteristics of this man,--opinionated and strong-headed
as he undoubtedly is,--are to be found in the receptive quality of his
mind, by which he is open to new ideas, and in the steady courage with
which he affirms and stands by his convictions when once he has by
reasoning arrived at them. It took thirteen years of parliamentary
strife before the Peelites, whom he led, were finally incorporated with
the Liberal party.

Mr. Gladstone, now without office, became what is called an independent
member of the House, yet active in watching public interests, giving his
vote and influence to measures which he considered would be most
beneficial to the country irrespective of party. Meantime, the continued
mistakes of the war and the financial burdens incident to a conflict of
such magnitude had gradually produced disaffection with the government
of which Lord Palmerston was the head. The ministry, defeated on an
unimportant matter, but one which showed the animus of the country, was
compelled to resign, and the Conservatives--no longer known by the
opprobrious nickname of Tories--came into power (1858) under the
premiership of Lord Derby, Disraeli becoming chancellor of the exchequer
and leader of his own party in the House of Commons. But this
administration also was short-lived, lasting only about a year; and in
June, 1859, a new coalition ministry was again formed under Lord
Palmerston, which continued seven years, Mr. Gladstone returning to his
old post as chancellor of the exchequer.

Mr. Gladstone was at this time fifty years of age. His political career
thus far, however useful and honorable, had not been extraordinary. Mr.
Pitt was prime minister at the age of twenty-eight. Fox, Canning, and
Castlereagh at forty were more famous than Gladstone. His political
promotion had not been as rapid as that of Lord John Russell or Lord
Palmerston or Sir Robert Peel. He was chiefly distinguished for the
eloquence of his speeches, the lucidity of his financial statements, and
the moral purity of his character; but he was not then pre-eminently
great, either for initiative genius or commanding influence. Aside from
politics, he was conceded to be an accomplished scholar and a learned
theologian,--distinguished for ecclesiastical lore rather than as an
original thinker. He had written no great book likely to be a standard
authority. As a writer he was inferior to Macaulay and Newman, nor had
he the judicial powers of Hallam. He could not be said to have occupied
more than one sphere, that of politics,--here unlike Thiers, Guizot, and
even Lyndhurst and Brougham.

In 1858, however, Gladstone appeared in a new light, and commanded
immediate attention by the publication of his "Studies on Homer and the
Homeric Age,"--a remarkable work in three large octavo volumes, which
called into the controversial field of Greek history a host of critics,
like Mr. Freeman, who yet conceded to Mr. Gladstone wonderful classical
learning, and the more wonderful as he was preoccupied with affairs of
State, and without the supposed leisure for erudite studies. This
learned work entitled him to a high position in another sphere than that
of politics. Guizot wrote learned histories of modern political
movements, but he could not have written so able a treatise as
Gladstone's on the Homeric age. Some advanced German critics took
exceptions to the author's statements about early Greek history; yet it
cannot be questioned that he has thrown a bright if not a new light on
the actors of the siege of Troy and the age when they were supposed to
live. The illustrious author is no agnostic. It is not for want of
knowledge that in some things he is not up to the times, but for a
conservative bent of mind which leads him to distrust destructive
criticism. Gladstone has been content to present the ancient world as
revealed in the Homeric poems, whether Homer lived less than a hundred
years from the heroic deeds described with such inimitable charm, or
whether he did not live at all. He wrote the book not merely to amuse
his leisure hours, but to incite students to a closer study of the works
attributed to him who alone is enrolled with the two other men now
regarded as the greatest of immortal poets. Gladstone's admiration for
Homer is as unbounded as that of German scholars for Dante and
Shakspeare. It is hardly to be supposed that this work on the heroic age
was written during the author's retirement from office; it was probably
the result of his life-studies on Grecian literature, which he pursued
with unusual and genuine enthusiasm. Who among American statesmen or
even scholars are competent to such an undertaking?

Two years after this, in 1860, Mr. Gladstone was elected Lord Rector of
the University of Edinburgh in recognition of his scholarly
attainments, and delivered a notable inaugural address on the work of
universities.

The chief duty of Mr. Gladstone during his seven years connection with
the new coalition party, headed by Lord Palmerston, was to prepare his
annual budget, or financial statement, with a proposed scheme of
taxation, as chancellor of the exchequer. During these years his fame as
a finance minister was confirmed. As such no minister ever equalled him,
except perhaps Sir Robert Peel. My limits will not permit me to go into
a minute detail of the taxes he increased and those he reduced. The end
he proposed in general was to remove such as were oppressive on the
middle and lower classes, and to develop the industrial resources of the
nation,--to make it richer and more prosperous, while it felt the burden
of supplying needful moneys for the government less onerous. Nor would
it be interesting to Americans to go into those statistics. I wonder
even why they were so interesting to the English people. One would
naturally think that it was of little consequence whether duties on some
one commodity were reduced, or those on another were increased, so long
as the deficit in the national income had to be raised somehow, whether
by direct or indirect taxation; but the interest generally felt in these
matters was intense, both inside and outside Parliament. I can
understand why the paper-makers should object when it was proposed to
remove the last protective duty, and why the publicans should wax
indignant if an additional tax were imposed on hops; but I cannot
understand why every member of the House of Commons should be present
when the opening speech on the budget was to be made by the chancellor,
why the intensest excitement should prevail, why members should sit for
five hours enraptured to hear financial details presented, why every
seat in the galleries should be taken by distinguished visitors, and all
the journals the next day should be filled with panegyrics or
detractions as to the minister's ability or wisdom.

It would seem that no questions concerning war or peace, or the
extension of the suffrage, or the removal of great moral evils, or
promised boons in education, or Church disestablishment, or threatened
dangers to the State,--questions touching the very life of the
nation,--received so much attention or excited so great interest as
those which affected the small burdens which the people had to bear; not
the burden of taxation itself, but how that should be distributed. I
will not say that the English are "a nation of shopkeepers;" but I do
say that comparatively small matters occupy the thoughts of men in every
country outside the routine of ordinary duties, and form the staple of
ordinary conversation,--among pedants, the difference between _ac_ and
_et_; among aristocrats, the investigation of pedigrees; in society,
the comparative merits of horses, the movements of well-known persons,
the speed of ocean steamers, boat-races, the dresses of ladies of
fashion, football contests, the last novel, weddings, receptions, the
trials of housekeepers, the claims of rival singers, the gestures and
declamation of favorite play-actors, the platitudes of popular
preachers, the rise and fall of stocks, murders in bar-rooms, robberies
in stores, accidental fires in distant localities,--these and other
innumerable forms of gossip, collected by newspapers and retailed in
drawing-rooms, which have no important bearing on human life or national
welfare or immortal destiny. It is not that the elaborate presentations
of financial details for which Mr. Gladstone was so justly famous were
without importance. I only wonder why they should have had such
overwhelming interest to English legislators and the English public; and
why his statistics should have given him claims to transcendent oratory
and the profoundest statesmanship,--for it is undeniable that his
financial speeches brought him more fame and importance in the House of
Commons than all the others he made during those seven years of
parliamentary gladiatorship. One of these triumphantly carried through
Parliament a commercial reciprocity treaty with France, arranged by Mr.
Cobden; and another, scarcely less notable, repealed the duty on
paper,--a measure of great importance for the facilitation of making
books and cheapening newspapers, but both of which were desperately
opposed by the monopolists and manufacturers.

Some of Mr. Gladstone's other speeches stand on higher ground and are of
permanent value; they will live for the lofty sentiments and the
comprehensive knowledge which marked them,--appealing to the highest
intellect as well as to the hearts of those common people of whom all
nations are chiefly composed. Among these might be mentioned those which
related to Italian affairs, sympathizing with the struggle which the
Italians were making to secure constitutional liberty and the unity of
their nation,--severe on the despotism of that miserable king of Naples,
Francis II., whom Garibaldi had overthrown with a handful of men. Mr.
Gladstone, ever since his last visit to Naples, had abominated the
outrages which its government had perpetrated on a gallant and aspiring
people, and warmly supported them by his eloquence. In the same friendly
spirit, in 1858, he advocated in Parliament a free constitution for the
Ionian islands, then under British rule; and when sent thither as
British commissioner he addressed the Senate of those islands, at Corfu,
in the Italian language. The islands were by their own desire finally
ceded to Greece, whose prosperity as an independent and united nation
Mr. Gladstone ever had at heart. The land of Homer to him was
hallowed ground.

On one subject Mr. Gladstone made a great mistake, which he afterward
squarely acknowledged,--and this was in reference to the American civil
war. In 1862, while chancellor of the exchequer, he made a speech at
Newcastle in which he expressed his conviction that Jefferson Davis had
"already succeeded in making the Southern States of America [which were
in revolt] an independent nation." This opinion caused a great sensation
in both England and the United States, and alienated many
friends,--especially as Earl Russell, the minister of foreign affairs,
had refused to recognize the Confederate States. It was the indiscretion
of the chancellor of the exchequer which disturbed some of his warmest
supporters in England; but in America the pain arose from the fact that
so great a man had expressed such an opinion,--a man, moreover, for whom
America had then and still has the greatest admiration and reverence. It
was feared that his sympathies, like those of a great majority of the
upper classes in England at the time, were with the South rather than
the North, and chiefly because the English manufacturers had to pay
twenty shillings instead of eight-pence a pound for cotton. It was
natural for a manufacturing country to feel this injury to its
interests; but it was not magnanimous in view of the tremendous issues
which were at stake, and it was inconsistent with the sacrifices which
England had nobly made in the emancipation of her own slaves in the West
Indies. For England to give her moral support to the revolted Southern
States, founding their Confederacy upon the baneful principle of human
slavery, was a matter of grave lamentation with patriots at the North,
to say nothing of the apparent English indifference to the superior
civilization of the free States and the great cause to which they were
devoted in a struggle of life and death. It even seemed to some that the
English aristocracy were hypocritical in their professions, and at heart
were hostile to the progress of liberty; that the nation as a whole
cared more for money than justice,--as seemingly illustrated by the war
with China to enforce the opium trade against the protest of the Chinese
government, pagan as it was.

Mr. Gladstone had now swung away from the Conservative party. In 1864 he
had vigorously supported a bill for enlarging the parliamentary
franchise by reducing the limit of required rental from £10 to £6,
declaring that the burden of proof rested on those who would exclude
forty-nine-fiftieths of the working-classes from the franchise. He also,
as chancellor of the exchequer, caused great excitement by admitting
the unsatisfactory condition of the Irish Church,--that is, the Church
of England among the Irish people; sustained by their taxes, but
ministering to only one-eighth or one-ninth of the population. These and
other similar evidences of his liberal tendencies alienated his Oxford
constituency, the last people in the realm to adopt liberal measures;
and on the proroguement of Parliament in 1865, and the new election
which followed, he was defeated as member for the University, although
he was a High Churchman and the pride of the University, devoted to its
interests heart and soul. It is a proof of the exceeding bitterness of
political parties that such ingratitude should have been shown to one of
the greatest scholars that Oxford has produced for a century. It was in
this year also that on completing his term as Rector of the University
of Edinburgh he retired with a notable address on the "Place of Ancient
Greece in the Providential Order;" thus anew emphasizing his scholarly
equipment as a son of Oxford.

The Liberal party, however, were generally glad of Gladstone's defeat,
since it would detach him from the University. He now belonged more
emphatically to the country, and was more free and unshackled to pursue
his great career, as Sir Robert Peel had been before him in similar
circumstances. Instead of representing a narrow-minded and bigoted set
of clergymen and scholars, he was chosen at once to represent quite a
different body,--even the liberal voters of South Lancashire, a
manufacturing district.

The death of Lord Palmerston at the age of eighty, October 17, 1865,
made Earl Russell prime minister, while Gladstone resumed under the new
government his post as chancellor of the exchequer, and now became
formally the leader of the Liberals in the House of Commons.

Irish questions in 1866 came prominently to the front, for the condition
of Ireland at that time was as alarming as it was deplorable, with
combined Fenianism and poverty and disaffection in every quarter. So
grave was the state of this unhappy country that the government felt
obliged to bring in a bill suspending the habeas corpus act, which the
chancellor of the exchequer eloquently supported. His conversion to
Liberal views was during this session seen in bringing in a measure for
the abolition of compulsory church-rates, in aid of Dissenters; but
before it could be carried through its various stages a change of
ministry had taken place on another issue, and the Conservatives again
came into power, with Lord Derby for prime minister and Disraeli for
chancellor of the exchequer and leader of his party in the House
of Commons.

This fall of the Liberal ministry was brought about by the Reform Bill,
which Lord Russell had prepared, and which was introduced by the
chancellor of the exchequer amid unparalleled excitement. Finance
measures lost their interest in the fierceness of the political combat.
It was not so important a measure as that of the reform of 1832 in its
political consequences, but it was of importance enough to enlist
absorbing interest throughout the kingdom; it would have added four
hundred thousand new voters. While it satisfied the Liberals, it was
regarded by the Conservatives as a dangerous concession, opening the
doors too widely to the people. Its most brilliant and effective
opponent was Mr. Lowe, whose oratory raised him at once to fame and
influence. Seldom has such eloquence been heard in the House of Commons,
and from all the leading debaters on both sides. Mr. Gladstone outdid
himself, but perhaps was a little too profuse with his Latin quotations.
The debate was continued for eight successive nights. The final division
was the largest ever known: the government found itself in a minority of
eleven, and consequently resigned. Lord Derby, as has been said, was
again prime minister.

The memorable rivalry between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli was now
continued in deeper earnest, and never ceased so long as the latter
statesman was a member of the House of Commons, They were recognized to
be the heads of their respective parties,--two giants in debate; two
great parliamentary gladiators, on whom the eyes of the nation rested.
Mr. Gladstone was the more earnest, the more learned, and the more solid
in his blows. Mr. Disraeli was the more adroit, the more witty, and the
more brilliant in his thrusts. Both were equally experienced. The one
appealed to justice and truth; the other to the prejudices of the House
and the pride of a nation of classes. One was armed with a heavy dragoon
sword; the other with a light rapier, which he used with extraordinary
skill. Mr. G.W.E. Russell, in his recent "Life of Gladstone," quotes the
following passage from a letter of Lord Houghton, May, 1867:--

"I met Gladstone at breakfast. He seems quite awed with the diabolical
cleverness of Dizzy, 'who,' he says, 'is gradually driving all ideas of
political honor out of the House, and accustoming it to the most
revolting cynicism,' There is no doubt that a sense of humor has always
been conspicuously absent from Mr. Gladstone's character."

Sometimes one of these rival leaders was on the verge of victory and
sometimes the other, and both equally gained the applause of the
spectators. Two such combatants had not been seen since the days of Pitt
and Fox,--one, the champion of the people; the other, of the
aristocracy. What each said was read the next day by every family in the
land. Both were probably greatest in opposition, since more
unconstrained. Of the two, Disraeli was superior in the control of his
temper and in geniality of disposition, making members roar with
laughter by his off-hand vituperation and ingenuity in inventing
nicknames. Gladstone was superior in sustained reasoning, in lofty
sentiments, and in the music of his voice, accompanied by that solemnity
of manner which usually passes for profundity and the index of deep
convictions. As for rhetorical power, it would be difficult to say which
was the superior,--though the sentences of both were too long. It would
also be difficult to tell which of the two was the more ambitious and
more tenacious of office. Both, it is said, bade for popularity in the
measures they proposed. Both were politicians. There is, indeed, a great
difference between politicians and statesmen; but a man may be politic
without ceasing to be a lover of his country, like Lord Palmerston
himself; and a man may advocate large and comprehensive views of
statesmanship which are neither popular nor appreciated.

The new Conservative ministry was a short one. Coming into power on the
defeat of the Liberal reform bill introduced by Mr. Gladstone, the Tory
government recognized the popular demand on which that bill had been
based; and though Mr. Disraeli coolly introduced a reform bill of their
own which was really more radical than the Liberal bill had been, and
although at the hands of the opposition it was so modified that the Duke
of Buccleuch declared that the only word unaltered was the initial
"whereas," its passage was claimed as a great Conservative victory.
Shortly after this, the Earl of Derby retired on account of ill-health,
and was succeeded by Mr. Disraeli as premier; but the current of
Liberalism set in so strongly in the ensuing elections that he was
forced to resign in 1868, and Mr. Gladstone now for the first time
became prime minister.

This was the golden period of Gladstone's public services. During
Disraeli's short lease of power, Gladstone had carried the abolition of
compulsory church-rates, and had moved, with great eloquence, the
disestablishment of the English Church in Ireland. On the latter
question Parliament was dissolved, and an appeal made to the country;
and the triumphant success of the Liberals brought Mr. Gladstone into
power with the brightest prospects for the cause to which he was now
committed. He was fifty-nine years old before he reached the supreme
object of his ambition,--to rule England; but in accordance with law,
and in the interest of truth and justice. In England the strongest man
can usually, by persevering energy, reach the highest position to which
a subject may aspire. In the United States, political ambition is
defeated by rivalries and animosities. Practically the President reigns,
like absolute kings, "by the grace of God,"--as it would seem when so
many ordinary men, and even obscure, are elevated to the highest place,
and when these comparatively unknown men often develop when elected the
virtues and abilities of a Saul or a David, as in the cases of Lincoln
and Garfield.

So great was the popularity of Mr. Gladstone at this time, so profound
was the respect he inspired for his lofty character, his abilities, his
vast and varied learning, his unimpeachable integrity and conscientious
discharge of his duties, that for five years he was virtually dictator,
wielding more power than any premier since Pitt, if we except Sir Robert
Peel in his glory. He was not a dictator in the sense that Metternich or
Bismarck was,--not a grand vizier, the vicegerent of an absolute
monarch, controlling the foreign policy, the army, the police, and the
national expenditures. He could not send men to prison without a trial,
or interfere with the peaceful pursuits of obnoxious citizens; but he
could carry out any public measure he proposed affecting the general
interests, for Parliament was supreme, and his influence ruled the
Parliament. He was liable to disagreeable attacks from members of the
opposition, and could not silence them; he might fall before their
attacks; but while he had a great majority of members to back him,
ready to do his bidding, he stood on a proud pedestal and undoubtedly
enjoyed the sweets of power. He would not have been human if he had not.

Yet Mr. Gladstone carried his honors with dignity and discretion. He was
accessible to all who had claims upon his time; he was never rude or
insolent; he was gracious and polite to delegations; he was too
kind-hearted to snub anybody. No cares of office could keep him from
attending public worship; no popular amusements diverted him from his
duties; he was feared only as a father is feared. I can conceive that he
was sometimes intolerant of human infirmities; that no one dared to
obtrude familiarities or make unseemly jokes in his presence; that few
felt quite at ease in his company,--oppressed by his bearing, and awed
by his prodigious respectability and grave solemnity. Not that he was
arrogant and haughty, like a Roman cardinal or an Oxford Don; he was
simply dignified and undemonstrative, like a man absorbed with weighty
responsibilities. I doubt if he could unbend at the dinner-table like
Disraeli and Palmerston, or tell stories like Sydney Smith, or drink too
much wine with jolly companions, or forget for a moment the proper and
the conventional. I can see him sporting with children, or taking long
walks, or cutting down trees for exercise, or given to deep draughts of
old October when thirsty; but to see him with a long pipe, or dallying
with ladies, or giving vent to unseemly expletives, or retailing
scandals,--these and other disreputable follies are utterly
inconceivable of Mr. Gladstone. A very serious man may be an object of
veneration; but he is a constant rebuke to the weaknesses of our common
humanity,--a wet blanket upon frivolous festivities.

Let us now briefly glance at the work done by Gladstone during the five
years when in his first premiership he directed the public affairs of
England,--impatient of opposition, and sensitive to unjust aspersions,
yet too powerful to be resisted in the supreme confidence of his party.

The first thing of note he did was to complete the disestablishment of
the Irish Church,--an arduous task to any one lacking Mr. Gladstone's
extraordinary influence. Here he was at war with his former friends, and
with a large section of the Conservative party,--especially with
ecclesiastical dignitaries, who saw in this measure hostility to the
Church as well as a national sin. It was a dissolution of the union
between the Churches of England and Ireland; a divestment of the
temporalities which the Irish clergy had enjoyed; the abolition of all
ecclesiastical corporations and laws and courts in Ireland,--in short,
the sweeping away of the annuities which the beneficed clergy had
hitherto received out of the property of the Established Church, which
annuities were of the nature of freeholds. It was not proposed to
deprive the clergy of their income, so long as they discharged their
clerical duties; but that the title to their tithes should be vested in
commissioners, so that these church freeholds could not be bought and
sold by non-residents, and churches in decadence should be taken from
incumbents. The peerage rights of Irish bishops were also taken away. It
was not proposed to touch private endowments; and glebe-houses which had
become generally dilapidated were handed over to incumbents by their
paying a fair valuation. Not only did the measure sweep away the abuses
of the Establishment which had existed for centuries,--such as
endowments held by those who performed no duties, which they could
dispose of like other property,--but the _regium donum_ given to
Presbyterian ministers and the Maynooth Catholic College grant, which
together amounted to £70,000, were also withdrawn, although compensated
on the same principles as those which granted a settled stipend to the
actual incumbents of the disestablished churches.

By this measure, the withdrawal of tithes and land rents and other
properties amounted to sixteen millions; and after paying ministers and
actual incumbents their stipends of between seven or eight millions,
there would remain a surplus of seven or eight millions, with which Mr.
Gladstone proposed to endow lunatic and idiot asylums, schools for the
deaf, dumb, and blind, institutions for the training of nurses, for
infirmaries, and hospitals for the needy people of Ireland.

There can be no rational doubt that this reform was beneficent, and it
met the approval of the Liberal party, being supported with a grand
eloquence by John Bright, who had under this ministry for the first time
taken office,--as President of the Board of Trade; but it gave umbrage
to the Irish clergy as a matter of course, to the Presbyterians of
Ulster, to the Catholics as affecting Maynooth, and to the conservatives
of Oxford and Cambridge on general principles. It was a reform not
unlike that of Thomas Cromwell in the time of Henry VIII., when he
dissolved the monasteries, though not quite so violent as the
secularization of church property in France in the time of the
Revolution. It was a spoliation, in one sense, as well as a needed
reform,--a daring and bold measure, which such statesmen as Lords
Liverpool, Aberdeen, and Palmerston would have been slow to make, and
the weak points of which Disraeli was not slow to assail. To the radical
Dissenters, as led by Mr. Miall, it was a grateful measure, which would
open the door for future discussions on the disestablishment of the
English Church itself,--a logical contingency which the premier did not
seem to appreciate; for if the State had a right to take away the
temporalities of the Irish Church when they were abused, the State would
have an equal right to take away those of the English Church should they
hereafter turn out to be unnecessary, or become a scandal in the eyes of
the nation.

One would think that this disestablishment of the Irish Church would
have been the last reform which a strict churchman like Gladstone would
have made; certainly it was the last for a politic statesman to make,
for it brought forth fruit in the next general election. It is true that
the Irish Establishment had failed in every way, as Mr. Bright showed in
one of his eloquent speeches, and to remove it was patriotic. If Mr.
Gladstone had his eyes open, however, to its natural results as
affecting his own popularity, he deserves the credit of being the most
unselfish and lofty statesman that ever adorned British annals.

Having thus in 1869 removed one important grievance in the affairs of
Ireland, Mr. Gladstone soon proceeded to another, and in February, 1870,
brought forward, in a crowded House, his Irish Land Bill. The evil which
he had in view to cure was the insecurity of tenure, which resulted in
discouraging and paralyzing the industry of tenants, especially in the
matter of evictions for non-payment of rent, and the raising of rents on
land which had been improved by them. As they were liable at any time
to be turned out of their miserable huts, the rents had only doubled in
value in ninety years; whereas in England and Scotland, where there was
more security of tenure, rents had quadrupled. This insecurity and
uncertainty had resulted in a great increase of pauperism in Ireland,
and prevented any rise in wages, although there was increased expense of
living. The remedy proposed to alleviate in some respect the condition
of the Irish tenants was the extension of their leases to thirty-three
years, and the granting national assistance to such as desired to
purchase the lands they had previously cultivated, according to a scale
of prices to be determined by commissioners,--thus making improvements
the property of the tenants who had made them rather than of the
landlord, and encouraging the tenants by longer leases to make such
improvements. Mr. Gladstone's bill also extended to twelve months the
time for notices to quit, bearing a stamp duty of half-a-crown. This
measure on the part of the government was certainly a relief, as far as
it went, to the poor people of Ireland. It became law on August 1, 1870.

The next important measure of Mr. Gladstone was to abolish the custom of
buying and selling commissions in the army, which provoked bitter
opposition from the aristocracy. It was maintained by the government
that the whole system of purchase was unjust, and tended to destroy the
efficiency of the army by preventing the advancement of officers
according to merit. In no other country was such a mistake committed. It
is true that the Prussian and Austrian armies were commanded by officers
from the nobility; but these officers had not the unfair privilege of
jumping over one another's heads by buying promotion. The bill, though
it passed the Commons, was thrown out by the Lords, who wished to keep
up the aristocratic quality of army officers, among whom their younger
sons were enrolled. Mr. Gladstone cut the knot by advising her Majesty
to take the decisive step of cancelling the royal warrant under
which--and not by law--purchase had existed. This calling on the Queen
to do by virtue of her royal prerogative what could not be done by
ordinary legislation, though not unconstitutional, was unusual. True, a
privilege which royalty had granted, royalty could revoke; but in
removing this evil Mr. Gladstone still further alienated the army and
the aristocracy.

Among other measures which the premier carried for the public good, but
against bitter opposition, were the secret ballot, and the removal of
University Tests, by which all lay students of whatever religious creed
were admitted to the universities on equal terms. The establishment of
national and compulsory elementary education, although not emanating
from Mr. Gladstone, was also accomplished during his government.

It now began to be apparent that the policy of the prime minister was
reform wherever reform was needed. There was no telling what he would do
next. Had he been the prime minister of an absolute monarch he would
have been unfettered, and could have carried out any reform which his
royal master approved. But the English are conservative and slow to
change, no matter what party they belong to. It seemed to many that the
premier was iconoclastic, and was bent on demolishing anything and
everything which he disliked. Consequently a reaction set in, and Mr.
Gladstone's popularity, by which he had ruled almost as dictator,
began to wane.

The settlement of the Alabama Claims did not add to his popularity.
Everybody knows what these were, and I shall merely allude to them.
During our Civil War, injuries had been inflicted on the commerce of the
United States by cruisers built, armed, and manned in Great Britain, not
only destroying seventy of our vessels, but by reason of the fear of
shippers, resulting in a transfer of trade from American to British
ships. It having been admitted by commissioners sent by Mr. Gladstone to
Washington, that Great Britain was to blame for these and other injuries
of like character, the amount of damages for which she was justly
liable was submitted to arbitration; and the International Court at
Geneva decided that England was bound to pay to the United States more
than fifteen million dollars in gold. The English government promptly
paid the money, although regarding the award as excessive; but while the
judicious rejoiced to see an arbitrament of reason instead of a resort
to war, the pugnacious British populace was discontented, and again
Gladstone lost popularity.

And here it may be said that the foreign policy of Mr. Gladstone was
pacific from first to last. He opposed the Crimean war; he kept clear of
entangling alliances; he maintained a strict neutrality in Eastern
complications, and in the Franco-German embroilment; he never stimulated
the passion of military glory; he ever maintained that--

"There is a higher than the warrior's excellence."

He was devoted to the development of national resources and the removal
of evils which militated against justice as well as domestic prosperity.
His administration, fortunately, was marked by no foreign war. Under his
guidance the nation had steadily advanced in wealth, and was not
oppressed by taxation; he had promoted education as wall as material
thrift; he had attempted to heal disorders in Ireland by benefiting the
tenant class. But he at last proposed a comprehensive scheme for
enlarging higher education in Ireland, which ended his administration.

The Irish University Bill, which as an attempted compromise between
Catholic and Protestant demands satisfied neither party, met with such
unexpected opposition that a majority of three was obtained against the
government. Mr. Gladstone was, in accordance with custom, compelled to
resign or summon a new Parliament. He accepted the latter alternative;
but he did not seem aware of the great change in public sentiment which
had taken place in regard to his reforms. Not one of them had touched
the heart of the great mass, or was of such transcendent importance to
the English people as the repeal of the corn laws had been. They were
measures of great utility,--indeed, based on justice,--but were of a
kind to alienate powerful classes without affecting universal interests.
They were patriotic rather than politic. Moreover, he was not supported
by lieutenants of first-class ability or reputation. His immediate
coadjutors were most respectable men, great scholars, and men of more
experience than genius or eloquence. Of his cabinet, eight of them it is
said were "double-firsts" at Oxford. There was not one of them
sufficiently trained or eminent to take his place. They were his
subordinates rather than his colleagues; and some of them became
impatient under his dictation, and witnessed his decline in popularity
with secret satisfaction. No government was ever started on an ambitious
course with louder pretensions or brighter promises than Mr. Gladstone's
cabinet in 1868. In less than three years their glory was gone. It was
claimed that the bubble of oratory had burst when in contact with fact,
and the poor English people had awoke to the dreary conviction that it
was but vapor after all; that Mr. Disraeli had pricked that bubble when
he said, "Under his influence [Gladstone's] we have legalized
confiscation, we have consecrated sacrilege, we have condoned treason,
we have destroyed churches, we have shaken property to its foundation,
and we have emptied jails."

Everything went against the government. Russia had torn up the Black Sea
treaty, the fruit of the Crimean war; the settlement of the "Alabama"
claims was humiliating; "the generous policy which was to have won the
Irish heart had exasperated one party without satisfying another. He had
irritated powerful interests on all sides, from the army to the licensed
victuallers."

On the appeal to the nation, contrary to Mr. Gladstone's calculations,
there was a great majority against him. He had lost friends and made
enemies. The people seemingly forgot his services,--his efforts to give
dignity to honest labor, to stimulate self-denial, to reduce unwise
expenditures, to remove crying evils. They forgot that he had reduced
taxation to the extent of twelve millions sterling annually; and all the
while the nation had been growing richer, so that the burdens which had
once been oppressive were now easy to bear. It would almost appear that
even Gladstone's transcendent eloquence had lost in a measure its charm
when Disraeli, in one of his popular addresses, was applauded for saying
that he was "a sophistical rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of
his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can
at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of
arguments to malign his opponents and to glorify himself,"--one of the
most exaggerated and ridiculous charges that was ever made against a
public man of eminence, yet witty and plausible.

On the retirement of the great statesman from office in 1875, in sadness
and chagrin, he declined to continue to be the leader of his party in
opposition. His disappointment and disgust must have been immense to
prompt a course which seemed to be anything but magnanimous, since he
well knew that there was no one capable of taking his place; but he
probably had his reasons. For some time he rarely went to the House of
Commons. He left the leaders of his party to combat an opponent whom he
himself had been unable to disarm. Fortunately no questions came up of
sufficient importance to arouse a nation or divert it from its gains or
its pleasures. It was thinking of other things than budgets and the
small extension of the suffrage, or even of the Eastern question. It was
thinking more of steamships and stock speculations and great financial
operations, of theatres, of operas, of new novels, even of ritualistic
observances in the churches, than of the details of government in
peaceful times, or the fireworks of the great magician who had by arts
and management dethroned a greater and wiser man than himself.

Although Mr. Gladstone was only occasionally seen, after his retirement,
in the House of Commons, it must not be supposed that his political
influence was dead. When anything of special interest was to be
discussed, he was ready as before with his voice and vote. Such a
measure as the bill to regulate public worship--aimed at suppressing
ritualism--aroused his ecclesiastical interest, and he was voluminous
upon it, both in and out of Parliament. Even when he was absent from his
seat, his influence remained, and in all probability the new leader of
the Liberals, Lord Hartington, took counsel from him. He was simply
taking a rest before he should gird on anew his armor, and resume the
government of the country.

Meantime, his great rival Disraeli led his party with consummate skill.
He was a perfect master of tactics, wary, vigilant, courteous,
good-natured, seizing every opportunity to gain a party triumph. He was
also judicious in his selection of ministers, nor did he attempt to lord
it over them. He showed extraordinary tact in everything, and in nothing
more than in giving a new title to the Queen as Empress of India. But no
measures of engrossing interest were adopted during his administration.
He was content to be a ruler rather than a reformer. He was careful to
nurse his popularity, and make no parliamentary mistakes. At the end of
two years, however, his labors and cares told seriously on his health.
He had been in Parliament since 1837; he was seventy-one years of age,
and he found it expedient to accept the gracious favor of his sovereign,
and to retire to the House of Lords, with the title of Earl of
Beaconsfield, yet retaining the office of prime minister.

During the five years that Mr. Gladstone remained in retirement, he was
by no means idle, or a silent spectator of political events. He was
indefatigable with his pen, and ever ready with speeches for the
platform and with addresses to public bodies. During this period three
new Reviews were successfuly started,--the "Fortnightly," the
"Contemporary," and the "Nineteenth Century,"--to all of which he was a
frequent contributor, on a great variety of subjects. His articles were
marked by characteristic learning and ability, and vastly increased his
literary reputation. I doubt, however, if they will be much noticed by
posterity. Nothing is more ephemeral than periodical essays, unless
marked by extraordinary power both in style and matter, like the essays
of Macaulay and Carlyle. Gladstone's articles would make the fortune of
ordinary writers, but they do not stand out, as we should naturally
expect, as brilliant masterpieces, which everybody reads and glows while
reading them. Indeed, most persons find them rather dry, whether from
the subject or the style I will not undertake to say. But a great man
cannot be uniformly great or even always interesting. How few men at
seventy will give themselves the trouble to write at all, when there is
no necessity, just to relieve their own minds, or to instruct without
adequate reward! Michael Angelo labored till eighty-seven, and Titian
till over ninety; but they were artists who worked from the love of art,
restless without new creations. Perhaps it might also be said of
Gladstone that he wrote because he could not help writing, since he knew
almost everything worth knowing, and was fond of telling what he knew.

At length Mr. Gladstone emerged again from retirement, to assume the
helm of State. When he left office in 1875, he had bequeathed a surplus
to the treasury of nearly six millions; but this, besides the
accumulation of over five millions more, had been spent in profitless
and unnecessary wars. In 1876 a revolt against Turkish rule broke out in
Bulgaria, and was suppressed with truly Turkish bloodthirstiness and
outrage. "The Bulgarian atrocities" became a theme of discussion
throughout Europe; and in England, while Disraeli and his government
made light of them, Gladstone was aroused to all his old-time vigor by
his humanitarian indignation. Says Russell: "He made the most
impassioned speeches, often in the open air; he published pamphlets,
which rushed into incredible circulations; he poured letter after letter
into the newspapers; he darkened the sky with controversial post-cards;
and, as soon as Parliament met, he was ready with all his unequalled
resources of eloquence, argumentation, and inconvenient inquiry, to
drive home his great indictment against the Turkish government and its
friends and champions in the House of Commons."

Four years of this vigorous bombardment, which included in its objects
the whole range of Disraeli's "brilliant foreign policy" of threat and
bluster, produced its effect, A popular song of the day gave a nickname
to this policy:--

"We don't want to fight, but, by Jingo, if we do,
We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money, too."

And _Jingoism_ became in the mouths of the Liberals a keen weapon of
satire. The government gained the applause of aristocrats and populace,
but lost that of the plain people.

The ninth Victorian Parliament was dying out, and a new election was at
hand. Mr. Gladstone, now at the age of seventy, went to Edinburgh, the
centre of Scottish conservatism, and in several masterly and memorable
speeches, showing that his natural vigor of mind and body had not
abated, he exposed the mistakes and shortcomings of the existing
government and presented the boons which a new Liberal ministry were
prepared to give. And when in 1880 the dissolution of Parliament took
place, he again went to Scotland and offered himself for the county of
Edinburgh, or Midlothian, making a series of astonishing speeches, and
was returned as its representative. The general elections throughout the
kingdom showed that the tide had again turned. There was an immense
Liberal gain. The Earl of Beaconsfield placed his resignation in the
hands of the Queen, and Gladstone was sent for,--once more to be prime
minister of England.

And here I bring to a close this imperfect notice of one of the greatest
men of modern times,--hardly for lack of sufficient material, but
because it is hard to find a proper perspective in viewing matters which
are still the subject of heated contest and turmoil. Once again
Gladstone was seated on the summit of power, and with every prospect of
a long-continued reign. Although an old man, his vigor of mind and body
had not abated. He was never stronger, apparently, than when he was past
seventy years of age. At no previous period of his life was his fame so
extended or his moral influence so great. Certainly no man in England
was more revered than he or more richly deserved his honors. He entered
upon his second premiership with the veneration of the intelligent and
liberal-minded patriots of the realm, and great things were expected
from so progressive and lofty a minister. The welfare of the country it
was undoubtedly his desire and ambition to promote.

But his second administration was not successful. Had the aged premier
been content to steer his ship of State in placid waters, nothing would
have been wanting to gratify moderate desires. It was not, however,
inglorious repose he sought, but to confer a boon for which all future
ages would honor his memory.

That boon was seemingly beyond his power. The nation was not prepared to
follow him in his plans for Irish betterment. Indeed, he aroused English
opposition by his proposed changes of land-tenure in Ireland, and Irish
anger by attempted coercion in suppressing crime and disorder. This, and
the unfortunate policy of his government in Egypt, brought him to
parliamentary defeat; and he retired in June, 1885, declining at the
same time the honor of an earldom proffered by the Queen. The ministry
was wrecked on the rock which has proved so dangerous to all British
political navigators for a hundred years. No human genius seems capable
of solving the Irish question. It is apparently no nearer solution than
it was in the days of William Pitt. In attempts to solve the problem,
Mr. Gladstone found himself opposed by the aristocracy, by the Church,
by the army, by men of letters, by men of wealth throughout the country.
Lord Salisbury succeeded him; but only for a few months, and in January,
1886, Mr. Gladstone was for the third time called to the premiership. He
now advanced a step, and proposed the startling policy of Home Rule for
Ireland in matters distinctly Irish; but his following would not hold
together on the issue, and in June he retired again.

>From then until 1891 he was not in office, but he was indefatigably
working with voice and pen for the Irish cause. He made in his
retirement many converts to his opinions, and was again elevated to
power on the Irish question as an issue in 1891. Yet the English on the
whole seem to be against him in his Irish policy, which is denounced as
unpractical, and which his opponents even declare to be on his part an
insincere policy, entered upon and pursued solely as a bid for power.
It is generally felt among the upper classes that no concession and no
boons would satisfy the Irish short of virtual independence of British
rule. If political rights could be separated from political power there
might be more hope of settling the difficulty, which looks like a
conflict between justice and wisdom. The sympathy of Americans is mostly
on the side of the "grand old man" in his Herculean task, even while
they admit that self-government in our own large cities is a dismal
failure from the balance of power which is held by foreigners,--by the
Irish in the East, and by the Germans in the West. And those who see the
rapid growth of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States,
especially in those sections of the country where Puritanism once had
complete sway, and the immense political power wielded by Roman Catholic
priests, can understand why the conservative classes of England are
opposed to the recognition of the political rights of a people who might
unite with socialists and radicals in overturning the institutions on
which the glory and prospects of a great nation are believed to be
based. The Catholics in Ireland constitute about seven-eighths of the
population, and English Protestants fear to deliver the thrifty
Protestant minority into the hands of the great majority armed with the
tyrannical possibilities of Home Rule. It is indeed a many-sided and
difficult problem. There are instincts in nations, as among individuals,
which reason fails to overcome, even as there are some subjects in
reference to which experience is a safer guide than genius or logic.

Little by little, however, at each succeeding election the Liberal party
gained strength, not only in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, but even in
England also, and their power in Parliament increased; until, in 1893,
after a long and memorable contest, the Commons passed Mr. Gladstone's
Home Rule bill by a pronounced majority. Then it was thrown out by the
Lords, with very brief consideration. This, and other overrulings of the
Lower House by the Peers, aroused deep feeling throughout the nation. In
March, 1894, the venerable Gladstone, whose impaired hearing and sight
warned him that a man of eighty-five--even though a giant--should no
longer bear the burdens of empire, retired from the premiership, his
last speech being a solemn intimation of the issues that must soon arise
if the House of Lords persisted in obstructing the will of the people,
as expressed in the acts of their immediate representatives in the House
of Commons.

But, whatever the outcome of the Irish question, the claim of William
Ewart Gladstone to a high rank among the ruling statesmen of Modern
Europe cannot be gainsaid. Moreover, as his influence has been so
forceful a part of the great onward-moving modern current of democratic
enlargement,--and in Great Britain one of its most discreet and potent
directors,--his fame is secure; it is unalterably a part of the noblest
history of the English people.[5]

[Footnote 5: Mr. Gladstone died May 19, 1898. Perhaps at once the most
intimate and comprehensive account of him is "The Story of Gladstone's
Life," by Justin McCarthy.]

AUTHORITIES.

There is no exhaustive or satisfactory work on Gladstone which has yet
been written. The reader must confine himself at present to the popular
sketches, which are called biographies, of Gladstone, of Disraeli, of
Palmerston, of Peel, and other English statesmen. He may consult with
profit the Reviews of the last twenty-five years in reference to English
political affairs. For technical facts one must consult the Annual
Register. The time has not yet come for an impartial review of the great
actors in this generation on the political stage of either Europe
or America.

 

*** END ***

CONTENTS

WILLIAM IV.

ENGLISH REFORMS.

Social evils in England on the accession of William IV.
Political agitations.
Premiership of Lord Grey.
Aristocratic character of the reformers.
Lord John Russell.
The Reform Bill.
Its final passage.
Henry Brougham.
Lord Melbourne, Prime Minister.
Troubles in Ireland.
O'Connell.
Sir Robert Peel, Prime Minister.
His short administration.
Succeeded by Lord Melbourne.
Abolition of West India slavery.
Thomas Babington Macaulay.
Popular reforms.
Trades unions.
Reform of municipal corporations.
Death of William IV.
Penny postage.
Second ministry of Sir Robert Peel.
The Duke of Wellington.
Agitations for repeal of the Corn Laws.

SIR ROBERT PEEL.

POLITICAL ECONOMY.

Birth and education of Sir Robert Peel.
His conservative views.
His High Church principle.
Enters the Cabinet of Lord Liverpool.
Catholic Emancipation.
Resigns the representation of Oxford.
Member of Tamworth.
Opposes the Reform Bill.
Prime Minister in 1841.
Financial genius.
His sliding scale.
O'Connell's death.
The Factory Question.
Renewed charter of the Bank of England.
Financial measure.
Maynooth Grant.
Agitation for Free Trade.
Anti-Corn Association.
Cobden and Bright.
Free Trade leagues.
Free Trade Hall in Manchester.
Peel converted to Free Trade.
Disraeli leader of the Protectionists.
His virulent assaults on Peel.
Abolition of the Corn Laws.
Irish Coercion Bill.
Fall of the Peel Ministry.
Peel's great speech.
Chartist movement.
Its collapse.
Death of Sir Robert Peel.
Character of Sir Robert Peel.

CAVOUR.

UNITED ITALY.

The Roman Catholic Church.
The temporal power.
General desire of Italians for liberty.
Popular leaders.
The Carbonari.
Charles Albert.
Joseph Mazzini.
Young Italy.
Varied fortunes of Mazzini.
Marquis d'Azeglio.
His aspirations and labors.
Battle of Novara.
King Victor Emmanuel II.
Count Cavour.
His early days.
Prime Minister.
His prodigious labors.
His policy and aims.
His diplomacy.
Alliance with Louis Napoleon.
Garibaldi.
His wanderings and adventures.
Daniele Manin.
Takes part in the freedom of Italy.
Garibaldi in Caprera.
Peace of Villa-Franca.
Liberation of Naples and Sicily.
Flight of Francis II. of Naples.
Battle of Volturno.
Annexation of Naples to Sardinia.
Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy.
Venetian provinces annexed to Italy.
Withdrawal of French troops from Italy.
All Italy united under Victor Emmanuel.

CZAR NICHOLAS.

THE CRIMEAN WAR.

Origin of the Russians.
Extension of Russian conquests.
Conquests of Catherine I.
Conquests of Alexander I.
Conquests of Nicholas.
Treaty of Adrianople.
Ambition and aims of Nicholas.
His character.
Prince Mentchikof.
Lord Stratford.
Causes of the Crimean War.
England and France in alliance with Turkey.
Occupation by Russia of the Danubian provinces.
War declared.
Lord Palmerston.
Lord Aberdeen.
Lord Raglan.
Marshal Saint-Arnaud.
English and French at Varna.
Invasion of the Crimea.
Battle of Alma.
Colonel Todleben.
Siege of Sebastopol.
Battle of Balaklava.
"The Light Brigade".
"The Heavy Brigade".
Battle of Inkerman.
Horrors of the siege.
General disasters.
Florence Nightingale.
Sardinia joins the allies.
Assault of Sebastopol.
Death of Lord Raglan.
Treaty of Paris.
Indecisive results of the war.
The Eastern Question.

LOUIS NAPOLEON.

THE SECOND EMPIRE.

Fortunes and adventures of Louis Napoleon.
The political agitations of 1848.
Louis Napoleon, President of the French Republic.
His Ministers.
The Coup d'État.
Usurpation of Louis Napoleon.
His tools.
His enemies.
Hostility of the leading statesmen of France.
Character of Louis Napoleon.
The Crimean War.
Alliance of France and England.
Lord Palmerston.
Stability of the Empire.
Prosperity of France.
Public Works.
Splendid successes of Napoleon III.
War with Austria.
Peace of Villa-Franca.
Improvements of Paris.
Haussmann.
Mexican War.
Archduke Maxmilian.
Humiliations and shifts of Louis Napoleon.
War with Germany.
Indecision and incapacity of Louis Napoleon.
Battle of Worth.
Marshal Bazaine.
Gravelotte.
Battle of Sedan.
Fall of Napoleon III.
Calamities of France.

PRINCE BISMARCK.

THE GERMAN EMPIRE.

Humiliation of Prussia.
Her great deliverers.
Baron von Stein.
His financial genius.
His intense hatred of Napoleon.
His great reforms.
Disgrace of Stein.
Prince Hardenberg.
Baron von Humboldt.
Scharnhorst.
New military organization.
Frederick William III.
German Confederation,
Diet of Frankfort.
Reaction of liberal sentiments.
Influence of Metternich.
Frederick William IV.
Rise of Bismarck.
Early days.
Politician.
His unpopularity.
Diplomatist at the Diet of Frankfort.
Ambassador at St. Petersburg.
Death of Frederick William IV.
Bismarck, Prime Minister.
Increase of the army.
The Schleswig-Holstein Question.
Treaty of Vienna, 1864.
War between Austria and Prussia.
Count von Moltke.
Battle of Sadowa.
Great increase of Prussian territory and population.
New German Constitution.
War clouds--France and Luxembourg.
Conference at London.
King William at Paris.
Preparations and pretext for war with France.
Mobilization of German troops.
King William at Mayence.
Battle of Gravelotte.
Fall of Louis Napoleon at Sedan.
Siege and surrender of Paris.
King William crowned Emperor of Germany.
Labors of Bismarck.
His character.
Quarrel with the Catholics.
Socialism in Germany.
Bismarck's domestic policy.
Bismarck's famous speech, 1888.
Death of Emperor William.
Retirement of Bismarck.

WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE.

THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF THE PEOPLE.

Precocity of Gladstone.
Life at Oxford.
Enters Parliament.
Negro Emancipation.
Under-Secretary for the Colonies.
Ultra-Conservative principles.
His eloquence as member of Parliament.
His marriage.
Essay on Church and State.
Parliamentary leader.
Represents Oxford.
Letter on the Government of Naples.
Benjamin Disraeli.
Gladstone Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Opposes the Crimean War.
Great abilities as finance minister.
Conversion to Free Trade.
"Studies on Homer".
His mistake about the American War.
Defeat at Oxford.
Irish Questions.
Rivalry between Gladstone and Disraeli.
Gladstone, Prime Minister.
His great popularity.
Disestablishment of Irish Church.
Irish Land Bill.
Radical army changes.
Settlement of the Alabama claims.
Irish University Bill.
Fall of Gladstone's Ministry.
Influence of Gladstone in retirement.
Disraeli as Prime Minister.
Return of Gladstone to power.
His second administration.
Parliamentary defeat of Gladstone.
The Irish Question.
Death.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME X.

Bismarck at Versailles
_After the painting by Carl Wagner_.

William IV., King of England
_After the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence_.

Sir Robert Peel
_From the engraving by Sartain_.

Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield
_From a photograph_.

Camillo Benso di Cavour
_From a photograph_.

Assassination of the Emperor Paul I. of Russia
_After the painting by H. Merté_.

Czar Nicholas I.
_After the painting by Horace Vernet_.

Capture of Napoleon III. at Boulogne
_After the painting by R. Gutschmidt_.

Louis Napoleon III.
_From a photograph_.

Bismarck
_After the painting by Franz von Lenbach_.

Count Von Moltke
_From a photograph from life_.

Proclamation of King William of Prussia as Emperor of
Germany, at Versailles
_After the painting by Anton von Werner_.

William Ewart Gladstone
_After a photograph from life_.

 

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