Treitschke's history of Germany in the nineteenth century
Treitschke, Heinrich von, 1834-1896 | Paul, Eden, 1865-1944 | Paul, Cedar
WPB'.SS < 1 bo CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Date Due i_JAIii7436Z_ -Of^i 1957 HX ^^95BES' liDg-4^JQC9 B R WHl^ F£B5 1960 E g ns^ geoTET^ 'Wiiii^^^m VTJt ? ^ l\^^^ BT Z7 1966 Cornell University Library DD 203.T78 1915a 'TT924 028 110 678 -■ »1 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028110678 HISTORY OF GERMANY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY TREITSCHKE'S HISTORY OF GERMANY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY TRANSLATED BY EDEN 6? CEDAR PAUL WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON VOLUME ONE LONDON JARROLD & SONS, WARWICK LANE G. ALLEN & UNWIN, LTD., MUSEUM ST. 1915 S INTRODUCTION. Satisfaction that an English translation of Heinrich von Treit- sehke's monumental " History of Grermany in the Nineteenth Century " is at last to. appear in English, even though thirty-six years have passed since the appearance of the first and twenty- one years since the appearance of the final volume, will be tempered in many minds by a feeling of regret and almost of shame that this just tribute to a great literary achievement should have been delayed so long. It cannot be pleaded in explanation of past neglect that the History is a work for scholars only, for no famous history appeals more strongly, in virtue alike of its contents and its literary style, to the suffrages of the great public. Year by year German works of ephemeral value are reproduced in English by the score and the hundred, in response to an ever- insistent demand for the latest in caprice or sensation, yet in this country and America this literary masterpiece, one of the fore- most contributions of German scholarship to historical science, has hitherto enjoyed little more than a library reputation, and has remained inaccessible to most readers unable or unwilling to make acquaintance with Treitschke in the original. The reception given to a translated edition of the History will help to decide how far this strange disregard of Treitschke has been merely the acci- dental result of a lack of commercial enterprise on the part of publishers, or due to a genuine want of public appreciation. An Introduction to a standard work of so established a repu- tation as this can only be redeemed from impertinence by perti- nence. Inasmuch as the translation will introduce Treitschke to a new circle of readers, the title to pertinence may perhaps be conceded if in these preliminary words an attempt be made to give to those readers some indication of what the History is and what it has to offer them. The History was neither begun nor ended as Treitschke originally intended. While still engaged in his preparatory spade work, Treitschke found the plan, as he had conceived it, expanding beneath his hands. His first idea was to write only the history of V. History of Germany the Germanic Federation, created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, on the ruins of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which Napoleon had impiously destroyed nine years before. What scholarship and literature wovdd have lost had he adhered to that first design may be imagined. The spectacle of Treitschke exhausting himself in the endless task of writing the dreary, unin- spiring, unheroic annals of the Deutscher Bund, suggests the hardly less congruous spectacle of a Velasquez passing his days in painting Dutch interiors — ^in either case a fate comparable to the rigours which might have been reserved in a tenth Circle for men of genius who had misused their talents. Treitschke, as the special historian of the Bund, might have done the work better than anyone else, but there were other men able to do it well enough. It was not, however, the unattractiveness of the task that led him to abandon the idea of concentrating upon the history of the Bund. He tells us that he had not been long at work before he recognised that a History of the Germanic Federation would be a history for students and specialists. It was not his ambition to write such a work, but to write German history for the German nation. Hence he found it necessary to carry his researches both further back and further forward. As the plan developed he came to fix on the Peace of Westphalia as his starting point. That land- mark gave him just the wide perspective which his scheme, as it had now taken shape, required, for it enabled him to survey in all essential features the beginnings of modern Germany and above all to do full justice to the romantic story of the growth of the Prussian State. It was his intention to bring the narrative down to his own day. Of the History, five portly volumes were published, carrying the story to the revolutionary movements of 1848. The History had not to win its way laboriously into favour hke many great works, for it was born famous. Edition after edition has been published, and its place in the estimation— one might almost say the reverence — of the German nation is perhaps greater to-day than ever. Nor is there any great mystery about this. The immense amount of research and the stores of erudition embodied in the History, the writer's weighty authority alike as professor, publicist, and parliamentarian, and the fascination of his literary style would alone have assured a brilliant success. Yet these were not the recommendations which gave to Treitschke and the History their immense influence over the minds of modern Germany. Two facts, I think, contributed in a special degree to bring •vi. Introduction about this result. The .first was the fact that Treitschke wrote for the most part of events which were part of the Uving tradition of his day, events many of which fell within the memory and even the experience of a large section of his contemporaries. The period between 1871, when the present Empire was established, back to the time when Napoleon's power was at its zenith, spanned barely two generations, yet what a powerful drama had been played in Germany during that short period ! When it opened Prussia still lay humbled and abased beneath a foreign yoke, exhausted in body, impoverished in spirit, atrophied in will ; between Jena and Leipzig she lived through a passion as bitter as ever befell a nation ; in that ordeal her worth and right to live were put to the test of supreme endurance and sacrifice. Redeemed by her own efforts, Prussia came out of the trial victo- rious, and stood again erect, secure henceforth against the enemies of her imity within no less than against those which might threaten from without. Moreover, with Prussia's stripes the rest of Germany was healed. After the fall of Napoleon, the history of Germany for fifty years was mainly one of slow internal reorganisation and develop- ment ; there was the inevitable sway of the pendulum from a sense of buoyant freedom to apathy and reaction, followed in turn, however, by the painful emergence of the German States one by one from the twilight of absolutism into the day-dawn of constitu- tional government. Then came the bitter " conflict " between Crown and Pariiament in Prussia, in which the old system and the new fought with desperate tenacity, without decisive victory on either side, a struggle cariying for both the moral and the warning " Thus far and no farther ! " which has been the jealous watch- word of Prussian parliamentary life from that day to this. And all through this period of change and transition that pompous mockery the Bund continued its futile Diet, cumbered about many things and persistently refusing to recognise that only one thing really mattered, the question whether the future of Germany was to lie with Austria or Prussia. After vainly trying to settle this question by diplomatic wrangling, the rivals fought it out in the two cam- paigns of 1864 and 1866, of which the natural if not necessary sequel was the gigantic war of 1870, when the diapason of the centiuy's longing and endeavour ended full in national unity and a New Empire, with all that the rebirth meant for the political, intellectual, and material development of the German peoples. It was. to this epoch of German history that Treitschke devoted vii. History of Germany himself, and it was to contemporaries who had lived through or in it, and to whom, therefore, its events and vicissitudes were intensely real, that his History was addressed. A nation still in the first enthusiasm of military and political triumph, still dazzled by its successes, and revelling in the consciousness of proved strength and yet greater latent power, could not fail to respond to the appeal of a historian whose eloquent periods breathed a patriotic fervour even greater than its own. Yet even here the secret and the significance of Treitschke's influence are not exhausted. From the German standpoint it is his supreme merit that he voiced the new life and self-consciousness of modern Germany in a way that no other man — no statesman, no writer of any kind, and certainly no historian — ^had done before. At last there stood forth a man, like to that earlier patriot-historian of Bonn, Ernst Moritz Amdt, the " deutschester Mann " of his time, as he was called, who was able and determined to do justice not only to the past of the German nation, but to its present and future, to assert its claims and rights, to formulate its aims and ambitions, and to interpret to the world its individuality and out- look. For two generations the Great Powers had regarded Germany as for practical purposes blotted out of the map of Europe. Ger- many had seemed to accept her fate, hardly venturing to assert a right to recognition, apologising that she dared to stand in the light of her haughty neighbours. Even after the national revival had set in, and the disunited tribes had become a nation, the old attitude of disregard and contumely continued ; to the older states, which had so long monopolised the seats of the mighty, the German Empire was still an upstart and an outsider. For the slights from which Germany suffered, Treitschke gravely blamed Germany herself. In the past there had been too much apology. Treitschke went to the other extreme. With a defiant pride and a high disdain he struck the word apology out of the German vocabu- lary ; his r6le and his mission were to be those of his country's vindicator. Not only was the History to be a vindication of Germany's right to be a united nation and to have her own place in the sun ; it was also intended to justify Prussia's historical right to lead Germany to the promised land of her desires and to be the completer of her appointed and just destiny. That Germany was ordained, by some dispensation unsuspected by ordinary men, to direct the world in progress, as Germany understood it, and Prussia to be her spokesman and interpreter, was to Treitschke so obvious as hardly viii. Introduction to need argument. This Ptolemaic view of history, which regards Germanism as the centre of civilisation, runs through all his political writings, and the invective of which he was a master was specially reserved for those nations which stubbornly refused to adopt this novel order of ideas. What made this attitude and advocacy of Treitschke the more remarkable was the fact that his ancestors were not Germans at all, and that he himself, until he changed his citizenship, was not a Prussian but a Saxon. " I write for Germans." " No nation has greater cause than we to hold in honour the memory of om: hard-struggling fathers, or recalls so seldom how through their blood and tears, their sweat of brain and of hand, the blessing of its unity has been won." " The narrator of German history only half achieves his task if he merely indicates the causality of events and speaks his mind with courage. He should in addition feel himself, and create in the hearts of his readers, joy in the fatherland." In passages Uke these, we may find the key both to Treitschke 's presentation of history and to his singular hold upon the admira- tion and the attachment of his countrymen. His History is what he meant it to be — a. clarion call to national consciousness and an inspiration to national devotion. He stung the national spirit of his countrymen into new and virile life, made pride of race a passion, patriotism a religion, and loyalty an act of worship. This emphasis of nationality and the national standpoint caused him to set at defiance some of the most cherished canons of historical science, for it made detachment and objectivity impos- sible, led him into partisanship and special advocacy, and tempted the free play of prejudice. He says in one place, indeed, that it has been his aim to " speak definitely without harshness, justly without vagueness." That was a counsel of perfection which he may for formality's sake have pinned to his inkstand, Uke a new year's resolution, to be kept as long as possible, but he more often ignored than observed it. For moderation was not his special grace, nor was a judicial temperament his special gift. Impartiality and equanimity are not the only virtues, but they belong to the virtues which are looked for in a historian, and when they are lacking, the greatest work falls short of perfection. Treitschke's History must be read and valued and praised subject to this reservation. " There are many ways of writing history, and each is justified so long as the style adopted is adhered to consistently and severely." To this dictum, which Treitschke laid down for his own guidance, the History is faithful. The examination of his sources must have ix. History of Germany entailed prodigious research in divers fields, but there is no sugges- tion of the antiquary in his pages. For him history was some- thing more and greater than a recital of facts and completed events, if, indeed, in the seamless web of human life any single event can be said to be completed. Regarding history as life, he strove to recreate the national drama ; he put the actors upon the stage again, and made them play over l their parts, not as marionettes, but as living men and women. In so doing, he at times made heroes out of commonplace men and the heroes he turned into demigods, but that was part of his deliberate plan, which was the glorification of his country. The ground covered by the History was not new, but drawing from fuller materials than had been accessible before, he was able to throw new light upon known facts, to bring these facts into new relations, to discuss them from fresh and original points of view, to challenge established verdicts, and thus to invest the most hackneyed episodes with fresh interest. If Treitschke's temper as a historian has received much adverse criticism, his literary style has received no less praise, and deser- vedly so. There is something Byzantine in the structure of the History, in the conjimction of massiveness with a bewildering wealth and variety of ornament, of strength with splendour, gran- deur with dignity, severity with grace. The flow of language is easy and rhythmical ; often it is impetuous ; only when the nervous pen responds to the impulses of an imagination fired by passion, does the stream break bounds. Stung into anger or indignation Treitschke's declamations are at times torrential and overwhelm- ing. Yet the effect is never spoiled by any suggestion of forced rhetoric ; the passion may seem to be extravagant or even misplaced, but it is sincere, and free from artifice; The literary purist will rightly find fault with occasional lapses of taste due to his ardent temperament — without doubt a part, and not the least precious part, of his Slavic inheritance— and to his inability to keep prejudice under control, but these sunspots detract little if at all from the brilliancy of the total effect. It was Treitschke's poignant regret, when the shadow of pre- mature death fell upon him, that he was leaving the great work of his life incomplete. He was cut off at the age of sixty-two and in his intellectual prime, having scarcely brought the story of Germany in the nineteenth century to the end of the 'forties. The History ceases, therefore, at a point which to him must have been specially distressing ; for he had not left behind the revolutidnary Introduction movements of 1848, an episode which he regarded as amongst the most humiUating and hateful in German and particularly in Prussian history. Not only, therefore, did the drama which he was reconstructing remain unfinished, but the still unplayed acts were, for a passionate patriot, amongst the most fascinating of all — above all, the wars of 1864 and 1866, which gave to Prussia a series of new provinces, and put that Power and Austria in their rightful places, Prussia at the head of Germany, Austria thrust out of the imperial heritage ; the formation of the North German Confederation ; and finally the war of 1870, which destroyed one empire and created another, set New Germany on a path of unex- ampled progress and prosperity, yet also, as events have proved, sowed seeds of infinite coming mischief. So far as it was com- pleted, however, the History will be seen to leave no essential phase of the national life unregarded. The political history of the period naturally occupies Treitschke's principal attention, but he also passes in review the economic movements which were of such great importance for the country's later development, the intellectual awakening, and the special tendencies which came to the front in philosophy and literature, in science and art. It is one of the greater ironies of literary history that the last and crowning part of Treitschke's task was left undone. His treatment of the events which ushered in the Empire would not have been faultless or final, but his narrative would have been an epic worthy of the master-pieces of historical literature. "Who will finish my History?" he asked pathetically of his friend and later biographer Hausrath. In putting the question he himself gave the answer. His History no one else could complete. Many other German writers of eminence have described the final episodes in the inspiring story of national unity, some with a knowledge and erudition, others with an intellectual grasp, a conscientiousness, or an earnestness of purpose not unworthy of his own. Well as they have written, however, they have only supple- mented and have not replaced Treitschke. For he, while uniting all these traits, added to them another, and it is this trait which gives to the History its uniqueness. It is the intimate personal element in his work, due to the close identification of the writer with his subject, of his own life with the life of his country. Therefore it is that so much of the History is the faithful reflex and utterance of his own soul. Because he felt deeply, he wrote intensely and often passionately. If often he was prejudiced, at xi. History of Germany times even ungenerous and unjust, towards other nations, the fault lay not with a deliberate intellectual perversity, but with a narrow patriotism which disenabled him to see the hfe of the world, even that of his own country, " truly and to see it whole." If it be conceded that this personal element in his writings was Treitschke's strength as a politician, it was no less his weakness as a historian, yet a weakness counterbalanced by so many excellences that it is easier to condone than condemn it. WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON. Xll. DEDICATORY PREFACE TO MAX DUNCKER. Honoured Friend, accept the dedication of these pages as a sign of our old friendship. During the lengthy preHminary labours you have so often given me ardent encouragement ; it is a pleasure to me to declare to you, first of all, what I have to say to my readers regarding the design and purpose of this book. It was my original plan to write only the history of the Germanic Federation, and after a brief introduction to proceed immediately to the deliberations of the Congress of Vienna. I soon came to recognise, however, that a book which was not intended solely for historical experts must extend further back. The destinies of the Germanic Federation constitute no more than the conclusion of the two hundred years' struggle between the House of Austria and the newly-arising German state ; they would remain incom- prehensible to the reader unless he were well-informed regarding the beginnings of the Prussian monarchy and the destruction of the Holy Empire. In our so recently reunited nation, a national historical tradition common to all cultured persons has not yet been able to develop. That unanimous sense of joyful gratitude which older nations feel towards their political heroes, is by us Germans felt only for the great names of art and science. Opinions still differ widely upon the question, which facts in the medley of our recent history have been genuinely decisive. I therefore resolved, in an introductory book, to describe briefly how the new Germany had come into existence since the Peace of Westphalia. I need not tell a connoisseur how difficult it is to give a concise view of this enormous mass of material. The endless multifariousness and the intertwined determinations of historical life can be adequately exposed only by descriptions of an extremely detailed character. You will readily read between the lines how often in a brief sentence I express my opinion about xiii. History of Germany a difficult disputed problem, how often I have had to ponder every word, so that I could speak definitely without harshness, justly with- out vagueness. The undertaking was all the bolder in that we already possess a comprehensive account of the last decades of the Holy Empire in Hausser's History of Germany, a book whose appear- ance had the significance of a political achievement, and which will always remain an ornament of our historical literature. But since the death of this ever-memorable man, our knowledge of the Napoleonic epoch has been notably enlarged, and not least by your own works. Moreover, the standpoint of historical criticisrn has changed. He who to-day desires to further the understanding of the present through a description of that epoch, must place in the foreground of his narration the internal development of the Prussian state, and the great transformations of spiritual life. In the introductory book I have made no attempt to relate new facts. Nor have I been afraid to repeat from time to time what is already well known, for if the historian attempts always and everywhere to relate novelties he will certainly depart from truth. It has been my endeavour to extract from the confusion of events the most important points of view ; to bring vigorously forward the men and the institutions, the ideas and the changes of destiny, which have created our new nationaUty. Hence the internal affairs of the minor German states are dealt with very briefly. I propose in the second volume, when I come to the description of the South German constitutional struggles, to deal with these relationships in fuller detaU. I trust that you, and other indulgent judges, wiU find that my survey gives an approximately just idea of the great contrasts which destroyed the state structure of our middle ages, and levelled the ground for the secular political formations of the new century. Within such narrow limits it was impossible to give more than the outhnes of the picture. After the destruction of the Old Empire, the description becomes gradually more detailed, and with the days of the first Peace of Paris begins the thorough narration of history which in the second volume I hope to carry forward to the year 1830. For this period, with the permission of the Chancellor and of Baron von Roggenbach, I have utilised the Berlin archives and the archives of the ministry of foreign affairs in Karlsruhe. I cannot express sufficient gratitude for the willingness with which I have always been furnished facilities by the present administration of the archives, at first under your own leadership and subsequently under xiv. Dedicatory Preface that of Heinrich von Sybel. I have never misused this confidence, because it was impossible to do so. In the history of Prussia there is nothing to cloak, nothing to conceal. What errors and sins there have been in the history of this state, have long been known to all the world, thanks to the ill-favour of our neighbours and thanks to the fault-finding spirit of our own people ; honourable research leads in most cases to the recognition that even in times of weakness, Prussian statecraft was better than its reputation. There are many ways of writing history, and each is justified so long as the style adopted is adhered to consistently and strictly. The aim of this book is simply to relate and to judge. If the represen- tation is not to remain altogether formless, I must give to the readers no more than the completed results of the enquiry, without showing them the entire machinery of investigation, or burdening them with polemic disquisitions. When I survey the century and a half which this volume attempts to describe, I feel once more, as I have so often felt when writing it,. the wealth and the simple greatness of the history of our fatherland. No nation has greater cause than we to hold in honour the memory of its struggHng fathers, or recalls so seldom how through their blood and tears, their labour of brain and of hand, the blessing of its unity has been achieved. You, my dear friend, have already, in the Paulskirche, dreamed the dream of the Prussian empire of German nationahty, and have in heart remained younger than many of the precocious younger generation ; for you know how bearable seem the troubles of the present when compared with the distresses of the old days when there was no empire. You will not blame me because now and then, out of the equable peace of historic discourse there sounds a louder tone The narrator of German history fulfils but half his task when he indicates the connection of events and expresses his opinion with frankness ; he should also himself feel and should know how to awaken in the hearts of his readers — ^what many of om: country- men have already forgotten in the disputes and vexations of the moment — a delight in the fatherland. ' HEINRICH VON TREITSCHKE. - Berlin, February loth, 1879. PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. Although Max Duncker has in the interim passed away, I retain this dedication in grateful memory. During the revision of this volume, I have utilised the abundant literature of recent years in order to attain to an independent judgment concerning the beginnings of the War of Liberation, based upon new researches into the archives. The emendations and additions due to this cause are, however, not extensive. T. Berlin, September 2$th, 1894. xvii. TABLE OF CONTENTS. VOL. I. BOOK ONE. INTRODUCTION. THE EXTINCTION OF THE EMPIRE. CHAPTSR PACE I. GERMANY AFTER THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA §1. The Imperial Constitution  DOMINION §1. The Revolutionary War to the Peace of Basle - 120 §2. Frederick William III. The Principal Resolu- tion of the Diet of Deputation. Classical Poetry ------ 169 §3. Dissolution of the Empire. The War of 1806 - 246 III. THE RISE OF PRUSSIA §1. Stein. Scharnhorst. The New Germany - - 313 §2. The Altenstein Ministry. The War of 1809 - 375 -§3. The Confederation of the Rhine. Hardenberg's Administration. The Russian War - - 413 IV. THE WAR OF LIBERATION §1. Its Preparation - - - . ■ 477 §2. The Spring Campaign. The Truce - - 528 §3. The Period of Victories - - - - 553 V. CONCLUSION OF THE WAR " §1. Liberation of the West. Plans  OF THE EMPIRE CHAPTER I. GERMANY AFTER THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA. § I. THE IMPERIAL CONSTITUTION. Despite the antiquity of her history, Germany is the youngest of the great nations of Europe. Twice has she been granted a period of youth, twice has she been through the struggle for the principles of national power and free civilisation. It is a thousand years since she created for herself the glorious kingdom of the Germans ; eight hundred years later she found it necessary to re-establish the state upon an entirely new foundation ; first in our own days did she as a unified power resume her place in the ranks of the nations. Long ago, forced by the overwhelming power of events, she united with her own the imperial crown of Christendom, she adorned her Hfe with all the charms of knightly art and culture, she shrank from neither risk nor sacrifice in order to maintain the leadership s of the western world. In the world-wide campaigns of her great emperors the power of the German monarchy passed away. Upon the ruins of the old kingdom there immediately grew up a new structure of territorial dominions : spiritual and temporal pririces, free cities, counts and knights— a formless medley of inchoate state-structures, but full of marvellous vital energy. Amid the decline of the imperial glory, the princes of Lower Saxony, the knights of the Teutonic Order, and the burghers of the Hanseatic League, completed with sword and plough the greatest work of colonisation which the world had seen since the days of the Romans. The lands between the Elbe and the Niemen were conquered and settled ; for centuries to come the Scandinavian and Slav peoples were subordinated to German commerce and to German culture. But princes and nobles, burghers and peasants, went their separate ways ; the reciprocal hatred of the estates rendered nugatory every attempt to effect the political organisation of the nation's super- , abundant creative energy, to restore in federal form the lost unity of the state. \/ History of Germany Then came Martin Luther, to unite once more for great ends Vtalented men drawn from all sections of our divided people, through the earnestness of the German spirit, the secularised Church was led back into the lofty simplicity of Protestant Chris- tianity, and in that spirit there burgeoned the idea of freeing the State from the dominion of the Church. For the second time our people attained to one of the summits of its civilisation and entered straightway upon the most venturesome revolution ever attempted. In other Teutonic lands, the universal work of Protestantism was to strengthen the authority of the national state, to put an end to the multiplex dominion of the Middle Ages. In the land of its birth it effected merely the dissolution of the old order. During those days of joyful expectation, a foreigner wore our crown, and this was decisive in its influence upon the whole future of the German monarchy ; for the nation hailed the Monk of Wittenberg with shouts of exultation, and, moved to the depths of its being, awaited an entire transformation of the empire. The imperial power, which should have been the leader of the Germans in their struggle with the Papacy, renounced at once ecclesiastical and political reform. The empire of the Haps- burgs chose the Catholic side, led the Latin peoples of Southern Europe into the field against the German heretics, and remained henceforward, until its inglorious fall, the enemy of all that was truly German. Protestantism turned for help to the temporal rulers. These territorial princes justified their right to existence by their work as protectors of the German faith. But the nation was unable to secure the tmiversal victory on German soil of its own especial work, the Reformation, and was likewise unable to rejuvenate its own national state in accordance with the temporal ideas of the new time. The German spirit, inclined, as always, to excessive 1 idealism, was alienated from the struggles of political life by the profundities of the new theology ; impassioned Lutheranism did not understand how to avail itself of the fortunate hour for the work of liberation. Germany so powerful in arms, was ignomini- ously beaten in the Schmalkaldian War, and had for the first time to submit to a foreign yoke. Then came the wild uprising of Maurice of Saxony to rescue German Protestantism and to destroy the Spanish dominion, but to destroy also the ultimate bonds of monarchical order which still served to unite Germany, and the freedom of the estates of the realm assumed henceforward the form of boundless licence. After a rapid succession of partial victories 4 Germany after the Peace of Westphalia and partial defeats, the wearied factions concluded the premature religious peace of Augsburg. Thereupon ensued the most deplorable period of German history. The empire voluntarily quitted the circle of the great powers and renounced all share in European politics. The amorphous mass of Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinistic principalities, immobile and yet unreconciled, passed two genera- tions in idle dreams, whilst at our very gates the armies of the Catholic world-empire were fighting to rob the heretics of the Netherlands of the freedom of belief, and its navies were disputing the command of the sea. Then at length the last and decisive war of the epoch, the war of the religions, broke out. The home of Protestantism became also its battle-ground. All the powers of Europe took part in the war. The scum of all nations was heaped up on German soil. In a disturbance without parallel, the old Germany passed away. Those / who had once aimed at world-dominion were now, by the pitiless justice of history, placed under the feet of the stranger. The Rhine and the Ems, the Elbe and the Weser, the Oder and the Vistula, all the ways to the sea, became " captives of foreign nations " ; on the Upper Rhine were established the outposts of French rule, while the south-east became subject to the dominion of the Hapsburgs and of the Jesuits. Two-thirds of the entire nation were involved in this dreadful war ; the people, degenerating into savagery, carrying on a burdened life amid dirt and poverty, no longer displayed the old greatness of the German character, were no longer animated by the free-spirited and serene heroism of their ^ ancestors. The dominion of an ancient civilisation, that civilisa- tion which alone adorns and ennobles existence, had disappeared into oblivion ; forgotten were even the craft-secrets of the guilds. The nation, which once had sung of Kriemhild's revenge, and which had fortified its heart by the heroic strains of Luther's hymns, now embellished its impoverished speech with foreign tinsel, and those who still remained capable of profound thought wrote French or Latin. The entire life of Germany lay open without defence to the influence of the superior civilisation of the foreigner. Under the urgency of the Swedish distresses, amid the petty sorrows of poverty-stricken everyday life, the very memory of the glories of the wonderful centuries of old disappeared from the minds of the masses ; in the transformed world, the ancient cathedrals, wit- nesses to the former magnificence of German burghership, seemed strange and unfriendly. Not till a century and a half had elapsed were the treasures of ancient German poetry recovered by the S History of Germany laborious research of learned investigators, so that all were astonished at the wealth of the former treasure-house. Never was any other nation so forcibly estranged from itself and from its own past ; not even modern France is separated by so profound a chasm from the days of the old regime. This horrible confusion seemed to foreshadow the destruction of the German name, and yet it proved the beginning of a new life. In those days of misery, in the -time of the ^!eace-of Westphalia, our new history begins. It is to two forces that we owe the restora- tion of our declining nation, which since those days has trans- formed its life politically and economically, in faith, in art, and in 1 science, to make that Ufe ever richer and ever wider in its scope : ^ the force of religious freedom, and the force of the Prussian state. Through the sorrows and struggles of the Thirty Years' War, Germany secured the future of Protestantism in the western world, and at the same time established upon an indestructible basis the characteristics of her own civilisation. The extreme south adhered to the Catholic world of the Romans ; the northern marches touched the hard Lutheranism of Scandinavia ; but the central i regions of Germany remained the common ground of three con- fessions. Of all the great nations, Germany was the only one in which these different creeds competed on equal terms, and Ger- many was therefore compelled to estabhsh in her homes and her schools, throughout her pohticaL and social Ufe, that ecclesiastical peace which had been attained through a long, fierce, and bloody struggle. In earlier days, when the Roman Church was still the Church Universal, bearing in its bosom no more than the germs of Protestantism, it was CathoHcism which had trained our people for civilisation, and which had provided the abimdant ground- work of art and science. But when CathoUcism expelled from herself these powers of freedom, and when, with the assistance of the Latin peoples, she became transformed into a closely knit ecclesiastical party, she was enabled, it is true, through the talent for dominion of the House of Hapsburg, to reconquer for I herself a portion of Germany ; but the spirit of our people remained > ever hostile to the Jesuitic faith. The rich spiritual forces of the Neo-Roman Church flourished in their Latin homelands ; but they could strike no root upon this foreign German soil, in this nation of born heretics. Here sang no Tasso or Calderon, here painted no Rubens or Murillo. Hardly one among the slothful German monks was found to compete in zeal for learning with the diligent 6 Germany after the Peace of Westphalia fathers of the Maurist Congregation. Among the Germans, the Society of Jesus educated many pious priests and many able states- men ; it produced also many ponderous zealots, who, like Father Busenbaum, with uncouth German bluntness disclosed to the world the secret that the end justifies the means. But the entire culture of the Society of Jesus was the work of Roman brains, and Roman also were the stultifying educational methods of the Jesuits. Dearly-bought ecclesiastical tolerance prepared the towns for a restrained freedom, a circumspect boldness of thought, which could never have thrived under the uncontrolled dominion of any single Church. Upon such a soil, so soon as the exhausted people was once more able to produce men of genius, there flourished our new science and poetry, the most vigorous literature of modem history, essentially Protestant, and yet with the freedom and gentle- ness of the secular spirit. Upon our troubled nation this literature once more bestowed the gift of a powerful speech, restored the ideals of humanism, and reawakened self-confidence. Thus for our people even the defeats of the Reformation ultimately proved a blessing. Constrained to carry in one bosom all the great contrasts of European life, Germany became enabled to understand them all, and to control them with the might of thought. Humanity resounded from every breath of her spirit. Her classical litera- ture became more various, bolder, and freer, than that produced by the earlier ripened culture of her neighbours. A century and a half after the decline of the ancient German civilisation it was possible for Holderlin thus to apostrophise the new Germany : "O sacred heart of the peoples, O Fatherland I ', All-patient, thou, like our silent Mother Earth, And misunderstood, although now from thy depths Strangers draw all that they have of the best." Simultaneously there awakened the state-constructive powers of the nation. Amid the disintegration of outworn imperial forms -4 and undeveloped territories, the young Prussian state raised its 7 i History of Germany head ; and in Prussia, henceforward, centred the political life of Germany. Just as nearly a thousand years before, the crown of Wessex had united all the Saxon kingdoms to form the English state, and just as the Kingdom of the Franks, starting from the Isle de France, continued to enlarge throughout the Middle Ages until it had conquered and united the isolated baronies and communes, so also out of the sundered fragments of the German nation did the monarchy of the Brandenburg-Prussian Mark create once more a Fatherland. , It was impossible that the reconstitution of the German I state should now be effected by the emperor and the empire. With the rise of Protestantism, the imperial constitution, which had for long been in an extremely fragile condition, became a hateful lie. The ultimate consequences of aU great human actions remain concealed from the doer. Just as Martin Luther, when he broke loose from the mediaeval Church, was unaware that he was opening the road for the secular science of our days, which would have been a scandal to his piety, so also, when he freed the state from the rule of the Church, did he lay an axe to the roots of that Roman imperialism of which he was himself a faithful subject. As soon as the majority of the nation had adhered to the Protestant doctrine, the theocratic office of the emperor became as untenable as was its principal prop, the support of the spiritual princes. The crowned guardian, and the bishops of the Old Church, could not rule a heretical nation. In the first years of the Reformation, in the Reichstag of 1525, the demand made itself audible that the spiritual prerogatives should pass under the control of the temporal princes ; and at all subsequent great turning- points of the policy of the realm the necessary idea of secularisa- tion continually recurred, springing from the very nature of things. 8 Germany after the Peace of Westphalia But the unsatisfactory balance of forces and counter-forces which interfered with every movement of the empire rendered nugatory even this irrefutable consequence of the Reformation. The majority of the spiritual princes retained their prerogatives, and the fantastic claims to dominion of the Sacra Cesar ea Majestas were also retained, although the German kingship in which was invested this Roman imperial crown had long been devoid of all authority, and although all the prerogatives of the ancient monarchy had long since passed into the hands of the territorial princes. Outside the limits of the imperial heritage two-thirds of the German people became Protestant, and Protestant also became aU the great princely houses, with the exception of the Wittelsbachs and the Albertines. Official Germany, however, remained Catholic. Adherents of the ancient creed retained the majority in the Council of Electors and in the Council of the Princes, and the imperial dominion continued to preserve its semi-priestly character. In virtue of his coronation, the emperor became " Participator in Our Spiritual Office " and made common cause with the Pope and the Church to testify his gratitude for the appropriate ecclesiastical honours ; ex officio, he was prebend of several Catholic foundations, and therefore received Holy Communion in both kinds. Under this Roman theocracy, heresy could not legally exist. The first great political act of the German Lutherans was the Protest of Spires, which gave the new faith its name ; herein it was stated in set terms that the Protestants would not submit to the majority in the empire. In the struggle with the empire which was thus begun Protestantism maintained itself henceforward as an element of continuous sedition. Protestantism enforced the religious peace treaties, which were in flat contradiction with the ancient imperial oath and with the fundamental ideas of the Holy Roman Empire, and constituted a state within the state in order to safe- guard the dearly gained religious freedom against the majority in the Reichstag. The Corpus Evangelicorum, though somewhat milder in form than the Confederations of the Polish Nobles' Republic, was, like these, an anarchistic makeshift utterly opposed to the conception of the state. Nothing but a revolutionary change, nothing but a trans- formation of the Holy Empire into a federation of temporal states, could rescue the nation from such a falsification of its pohtical ' life ; nothing but a national authority which honourably recog- nised its own temporal character could furnish justice alike for Catholics and Protestants on the common ground of the law. 