Introductory material

THRONE-MAKERS

BISMARCK

One by one the nations of the world come to their own, have free play for their faculties, express themselves, and eventually pass onward into silence. Our age has beheld the elevation of Prussia. Well may we ask, “What has been her message? What the path by which she climbed into preëminence?” That she would reach the summit, the work of Frederick the Great in the last century, and of Stein at the beginning of this, portended. It has been Bismarck’s mission to amplify and complete their task. Through him Prussia has come to her own. What, then, does she express?

The Prussians have excelled even the Romans in the art of turning men into machines. Set a Yankee down before a heap of coal and another of iron, and he will not rest until he has changed them into an implement to save the labor of many hands; the Prussian takes flesh and blood, and the will-power latent therein, and converts them into a machine. Such soldiers, such government clerks, such administrators, have never been manufactured elsewhere. Methodical, punctilious, thorough, are those officers and officials. The government which makes them relies not on sudden spurts, but on the cumulative force of habit. It substitutes rule for whim; it suppresses individual spontaneity, unless this can be transformed into energy for the great machine to use. That Prussian system takes a turnip-fed peasant, and in a few months makes of him a military weapon, the length of whose stride is prescribed in centimetres—a machine which presents arms to a passing lieutenant with as much gravity and precision as if the fate of Prussia hinged on that special act. It takes the average tradesman’s son, puts him into the educational mill, and brings him out a professor,—equipped even to the spectacles,—a nonpareil of knowledge, who fastens on some subject, great or small, timely or remote, with the dispassionate persistence of a leech; and who, after many years, revolutionizes our theory of Greek roots, or of microbes, or of religion. Patient and noiseless as the earthworm, this scholar accomplishes a similarly incalculable work.

A spirit of obedience, which on its upper side passes into deference not always distinguishable from servility, and on its lower side is not always free from arrogance, lies at the bottom of the Prussian nature. Except in India, caste has nowhere had more power. The Prussian does not chafe at social inequality, but he cannot endure social uncertainty; he must know where he stands, if it be only on the bootblack’s level. The satisfaction he gets from requiring from those below him every scrape and nod of deference proper to his position more than compensates him for the deference he must pay to those above him. Classification is carried to the fraction of an inch. Everybody, be he privy councilor or chimney-sweep, is known by his office. On a hotel register you will see such entries as “Frau X, widow of a school-inspector,” or “Fräulein Y, niece of an apothecary.”

This excessive particularization, which amuses foreigners, enables the Prussian to lift his hat at the height appropriate to the position occupied by each person whom he salutes. It naturally develops acuteness in detecting social grades, and a solicitude to show the proper degree of respect to superiors and to expect as much from inferiors,—a solicitude which a stranger might mistake for servility or arrogance, according as he looked up or down. Yet, amid a punctilio so stringent, fine-breeding—the true politeness which we associate with the word “gentleman”—rarely exists; for a gentleman cannot be made by the rank he holds, which is external, but only by qualities within himself.

Nevertheless, these Prussians—so unsympathetic and rude compared with their kinsmen in the south and along the Rhine, not to speak of races more amiable still—kept down to our own time a strength and tenacity of character that intercourse with Western Europeans scarcely affected. Frederick the Great tried to graft on them the polished arts and the grace of the French: he might as well have decorated the granite faces of his fortresses with dainty Parisian wall-paper. But when he touched the dominant chord of his race,—its aptitude for system,—he had a large response. The genuine Prussian nature embodied itself in the army, in the bureaucracy, in state education, through all of which its astonishing talent for rules found congenial exercise. One dissipation, indeed, the Prussians allowed themselves, earlier in this century,—they reveled in Hegelianism. But even here they were true to their instinct; for the philosophy of Hegel commended itself to them because it assumed to reduce the universe to a system, and to pigeon-hole God himself.

We see, then, the elements out of which Prussia grew to be a strong state, not yet large in population, but compact and carefully organized. Let us look now at Germany, of which she formed a part.

We are struck at once by the fact that until 1871 Germany had no political unity. During the centuries when France, England, and Spain were being welded into political units by their respective dynasties, the great Teutonic race in Central Europe escaped the unifying process. The Holy Roman Empire—at best a reminiscence—was too weak to prevent the rise of many petty princedoms and duchies and of a few large states, whose rulers were hereditary, whereas the emperor was elective. Thus particularism—what we might call states’ rights—flourished, to the detriment of national union. At the end of the last century, Germany had four hundred independent sovereigns: the most powerful being the King of Prussia; the weakest, some knight whose realm embraced but a few hundred acres, or some free city whose jurisdiction was bounded by its walls. When Napoleon, the great simplifier, reduced the number of little German states, he had no idea of encouraging the formation of a strong, coherent German Empire. To guard against this, which might menace the supremacy of France, he created the kingdoms of Bavaria and Westphalia, and set up the Confederation of the Rhine. After his downfall the German Confederation was organized,—a weak institution, consisting of thirty-nine members, whose common affairs were regulated by a Diet which sat at Frankfort. Representation in this Diet was so unequal that Austria and Prussia, with forty-two million inhabitants, had only one eighth of the votes, while the small states, with but twelve million inhabitants, had seven eighths. Four tiny principalities, with two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants each, could exactly offset Prussia with eight millions. By a similar anomaly, Nevada and New York have an equal representation in the United States Senate.

From 1816 to 1848 Austria ruled the Diet. Yet Austria was herself an interloper in any combination of German states, for her German subjects, through whom she gained admission to the Diet, numbered only four millions; but her prestige was augmented by the backing of her thirty million non-German subjects besides. Prussia fretted at this Austrian supremacy, fretted, and could not counteract it. Beside the Confederation, which so loosely bound the German particularists together, there was a Customs Union, which, though simply commercial, fostered among the Germans the idea of common interests. The spirit of nationality, potent everywhere, awakened also in the Germans a vision of political unity, but for the most part those who beheld the vision were unpractical; the men of action, the rulers, opposed a scheme which enfolded among its possibilities the curtailing of their autocracy through the adoption of constitutional government. No state held more rigidly than Prussia the tenets of absolutism.

Great, therefore, was the general surprise, and among Liberals the joy, at the announcement, in February, 1847, that the King of Prussia had consented to the creation of a Prussian Parliament. He granted to it hardly more power than would suffice for it to assemble and adjourn; but even this, to the Liberals thirsty for a constitution, was as the first premonitory raindrops after a long drought. Among the members of this Parliament, or Diet, was a tall, slim, blond-bearded, massive-headed Brandenburger, thirty-two years old, who sat as proxy for a country gentleman. A few of his colleagues recognized him as Otto von Bismarck; the majority had never heard of him.

Bismarck was born at Schönhausen, Prussia, April 1, 1815. His paternal ancestors had been soldiers back to the time when they helped to defend the Brandenburg March against the inroads of Slav barbarians. His mother was the daughter of an employee in Frederick the Great’s War Office. Thus, on both sides his roots were struck in true Prussian soil. At the age of six he was placed in a Berlin boarding-school, of which he afterward ridiculed the “spurious Spartanism;” at twelve he entered a gymnasium, where for five years he pursued the usual course of studies,—an average scholar, but already noteworthy for his fine physique; at seventeen he went up to the University at Göttingen. In the life of a Prussian, there is but one period between the cradle and the grave during which he escapes the restraints of iron-grooved routine: that period comprises the years he spends at the university. There a strange license is accorded him. By day he swaggers through the streets, leering at the women and affronting the men; by night he carouses. And from time to time he varies the monotony of drinking-bouts by a duel. Such, at least, was the life of the university student in Bismarck’s time. At Göttingen, and subsequently at Berlin, he had the reputation of being the greatest beer-drinker and the fiercest fighter; yet he must also have studied somewhat, for in due time he received his degree in law, and became official reporter in one of the Berlin courts. Then he served as referendary at Aix-la-Chapelle, and passed a year in military service.

At twenty-four he set about recuperating the family fortunes, which had suffered through his father’s incompetence. He took charge of the estates, devoted himself to agriculture, and was known for many miles round as the “mad squire.” Tales of his revels at his country house, of his wild pranks and practical jokes, horrified the neighborhood. Yet here, again, his recklessness did not preclude good results. He made the lands pay, and he tamed into usefulness that restive animal, his body, which was to serve as mount for his mighty soul. Some biographers, referring to his bucolic apprenticeship, have compared him to Cromwell; in his youthful roistering he reminds us of Mirabeau.

To the Diet of 1847 the mad squire came, and during several sittings he held his peace. At last, however, when a Liberal deputy declared that Prussia had risen in arms in 1813, in the hope of getting a constitution quite as much as of expelling the French, the blond Brandenburger got leave to speak. In a voice which seemed incongruously small for his stature, but which carried far and produced the effect of being the utterance of an inflexible will, he deprecated the assertions just made, and declared that the desire to shake off foreign tyranny was a sufficient motive for the uprising in 1813. These words set the House in confusion. Liberal deputies hissed and shouted so that Bismarck could not go on; but, nothing daunted, he took a newspaper out of his pocket and read it, there in the tribune, till order was restored. Then, having added that whoever deemed that motive inadequate held Prussia’s honor cheap, he strode haughtily to his seat, amid renewed jeers and clamor. Such was Bismarck’s parliamentary baptism of fire.

Before the session adjourned, the deputies had come to know him well. They discovered that the mad squire, the blunt “captain of the dikes,” was doubly redoubtable; he had strong opinions, and utter fearlessness in proclaiming them.

His political creed was short,—it comprised but two clauses: “I believe in the supremacy of Prussia, and in absolute monarchy.” More royalist than the King, he opposed every concession which might diminish by a hair’s breadth the royal prerogative. Constitutional government, popular representation, whatever Liberals had been struggling and dying for since 1789, he detested. Democracy, and especially German democracy, he scoffed at. For sixty years reformers had been railing at the absurdities of the Old Régime; they had denounced the injustice of the privileged classes; they had made odious the tyranny of paternalism. Bismarck entered the lists as the champion of “divine right,” and first proved his strength by exposing the defects of democracy.

Those who believe most firmly in democracy acknowledge, nevertheless, that it has many objections, both in theory and in practice. Universal suffrage—the abandoning of the state to the caprice of millions of voters, among whom the proportion of intelligence to ignorance is as one to ten—seems a process worthy of Bedlam. The ballot-box is hardly more accurate than the dice-box, as a test of the fitness of candidates. Popular government means party government, and parties are dogmatic, overbearing, insincere, and corrupt. The men who legislate and administer, chosen by this method, avowedly serve their party, and not the state; and though, by chance, they should be both skilful and honest, they may be overturned by a sudden revulsion of the popular will. Such a system breeds a class of professional politicians,—men who make a business of getting into office, and whose only recommendation is their proficiency in the art of cajoling voters. A government should be managed as a great business corporation is managed: it has to deal with the weightiest problems of finance, and with delicate diplomatic questions, for which the trained efforts of judicious experts are needed; but instead of being intrusted to them, it is given over to politicians elected by multitudes who cannot even conduct their private business successfully, much less entertain large and patriotic views of the common welfare. To decide an election by a show of hands seems not a whit less absurd than to decide it by the aggregate weight or the color of the hair of the voters. We speak of the will of the majority as if it were infallibly right. The vast majority of men to-day would vote that the sun revolves round the earth: should this belief of a million ignoramuses countervail the knowledge of one astronomer? Shall knowledge be the test of fitness in all concerns except government, the most critical, the most far-reaching and responsible of all? Majority rule substitutes mere numbers, bulk, and quantity for quality. Putting a saddle on Intelligence, it bids Ignorance mount and ride whither it will,—even to the devil. It is the dupe of its own folly; for the politicians whom it chooses turn out to be, not the representatives of the people, but the attorneys of some mill or mine or railway.

These and similar objections to democracy Bismarck urged with a sarcasm and directness hitherto unknown in German politics. When half the world was repeating the words “Liberalism,” “Constitution,” “Equality,”—as if the words themselves possessed magic to regenerate society,—he insisted that firm nations must be based upon facts, not phrases. He had the twofold advantage of invariably separating the actual from the apparent, and of being opposed by the most incompetent Liberals in Europe. However noble the ideals of the German reformers, the men themselves were singularly incapable of dealing with realities. Nor should this surprise us; for they had but recently broken away from the machine we have described, and as they had not yet a new machine to work in, they whirled to and fro in vehement confusion, the very rigidity of their previous restraint increasing their dogmatism and their discord.

The revolution of 1848 soon put them to the ordeal. The German Liberals aimed at national unity under a constitution. Like their brothers in Austria and Italy, they enjoyed a temporary triumph; but they could not construct. Their Parliament became a cave of the winds. Their schemes clashed. By the beginning of 1850 the old order was restored.

During this stormy crisis, Bismarck, as deputy in two successive Diets, had resolutely withstood the popular tide. He regarded the revolutionists as men in whom the qualities of knave, fool, and maniac alternately ruled; the revolution itself, he said, had no other motive than “a lust of theft.” One of its leaders he dismissed as a “phrase-watering-pot.” The right of assemblages he ridiculed as furnishing democracy with bellows; a free press he stigmatized as a blood-poisoner. When the imperial crown was offered to the King of Prussia, Bismarck argued against accepting it; he would not see his King degraded to the level of a mere “paper president.”

Such opposition would have made the speaker conspicuous, if only for its audacity. His enemies had learned, however, that it required a strong character to support that audacity continuously. They tried to silence him with abuse; but their abuse, like tar, added fuel to his fire. They tried ridicule; but their ridicule had too much of the German dulness to wound him. They called him a bigoted Junker, or squire. “Remember,” he retorted, “that the names Whig and Tory were first used opprobriously, and be assured that we will yet bring the name Junker into respect and honor.” Many anecdotes are told illustrating his quick repulse of intended insult or his disregard of formality. He was not unwilling that his enemies should remember that he held his superior physical strength in reserve, if his arguments failed. Yet on a hunting-party, or at a dinner, or in familiar conversation, he was the best of companions. Germany has not produced another, unless it were Goethe, so variedly entertaining; and Goethe had no trace of one of Bismarck’s characteristics,—humor. He possessed also tact and a sort of Homeric geniality which, coupled with unbending tenacity, fitted him to succeed as a diplomatist.

In 1851 the King appointed him to represent Prussia at the German Diet, which sat at Frankfort. The outlook was gloomy. Prussia had quelled the revolution, but she had lost prestige. Unable to break asunder the German Confederation or to dominate it, she had signed, at Olmütz, in the previous autumn, a compact which acknowledged the supremacy of her old rival, Austria. While the humiliation still rankled, Bismarck entered upon his career. Hitherto not unfriendly to Austria, because he had looked upon her as the extinguisher of the revolution, which he hated most of all, he began, now that the danger was over, to give a free rein to his jealousy of his country’s hereditary competitor. In the Diet, the Austrian representative presided, the rulings were always in Austria’s favor, the majority of the smaller states allowed Austria to guide them. Bismarck at once showed his colleagues that humility was not his rôle. Finding that the Austrian president alone smoked at the sittings, he took out his own cigar and lighted it,—a trifle, but significant. He resisted every encroachment, and demanded the strictest observance of the letter of the law. Gradually he extended Prussia’s influence among the confederates. He unmasked Austria’s insincerity; he showed how honestly Prussia walked in the path of legality; until he slowly created the impression that wickedness was to be expected from one, and virtue from the other.

During seven years Bismarck held this outpost, winning no outward victory, but storing a vast amount of knowledge about all the states of the Confederation, their rulers and public men, which was subsequently invaluable to him. His dispatches to the Prussian Secretary of State, his reports to the King, form a body of diplomatic correspondence unmatched in fulness, vigor, directness, and insight. With him, there was no ambiguity, no diplomatic circumlocution, no German prolixity. He sketched in indelible outlines the portraits, corporal or mental, of his colleagues. He criticised the policy of Prussia with a brusqueness which must have startled his superior. He reviewed at longer range the political tendencies of Europe. Officially, he kept strictly within the limits of his instructions; but his own personality represented more than he could yet officially declare,—Prussia’s ambition to become the leader of Germany. In all his dispatches, and in all places where caution did not prescribe silence, he reiterated his Cato warning, “Austria must be ousted from Germany.”

Do not suppose, however, that Bismarck’s political greatness was then discerned. Probably, had you inquired of Germans forty years ago, “Who among you is the coming statesman?” not one would have replied, “Bismarck.” At the opera, we cannot mistake the hero, because the moonlight obligingly follows him over the stage; in real life, the hero passes for the most part unrecognized, until his appointed hour; but the historian’s duty is to show how the heroic qualities were indubitably latent in him long before the world perceived them.

In 1859 Bismarck was appointed ambassador at St. Petersburg, where he stayed three years, when he was transferred to Paris. This completed his apprenticeship, for in September, 1862, he was recalled to Berlin to be minister-president.

His promotion had long been mooted. The new King William—a practical, rigid monarch, with no Liberal visions, no desire to please everybody—had been for eighteen months in conflict with his Parliament. He had determined to reorganize the Prussian army; the Liberals insisted that, as Parliament was expected to vote appropriations, it should know how they were spent. William at last turned to Bismarck to help him subjugate the unruly deputies, and Bismarck, with a true vassal’s loyalty, declared his readiness to serve as “lid to the saucepan.” Very soon the Liberals began to compare him with Strafford, and the King with Charles I, but neither of them quailed. “Death on the scaffold, under certain circumstances, is as honorable,” Bismarck said, “as death on the battlefield. I can imagine worse modes of death than the axe.” Hitherto he had strenuously maintained the first article of his creed,—“I believe in the supremacy of Prussia;” henceforth he upheld with equal vigor the second,—“I believe in the autocracy of the King.”

The narrow Constitution limited the King’s authority, making it coequal with that of the Upper and Lower Chambers, but Bismarck quickly taught the deputies that he would not allow “a sheet of paper” to intervene between the royal will and its fulfilment. Year after year the Lower House refused to vote the army budget; year after year Bismarck and his master pushed forward the military organization, in spite of the deputies. Noah was not more unmoved by those who came and scoffed at his huge, expensive, apparently useless ark than were the Prussian minister and his King by their critics, who did not see the purpose of the ark the two were building. Bismarck merely insisted that the army, on which depended the integrity of the nation, could not be subjected to the caprice of parties; it was an institution above parties, above politics, he said, which the King alone must control.

At the same time, the Minister-President actively pursued his other project,—the expulsion of Austria from Germany. When the King of Denmark died, in December, 1863, the succession to the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein was disputed. Bismarck seized the occasion for occupying the disputed territory, in partnership with Austria. England protested, France muttered, but neither cared to risk a war with the allied robbers. When it came to dividing the spoils, Bismarck, who had recently gauged Austria’s strength, struck for the lion’s share. Austria resisted. Bismarck then approved himself a master of diplomacy. Never was he more clever or more unscrupulous, shifting from argument to argument, delaying the open rupture till Prussia was quite ready, feigning willingness to submit the dispute to European arbitration while secretly stipulating conditions which foredoomed arbitration to failure, and invariably giving the impression that Austria refused to be conciliated. As the juggler lets you see the card he wishes you to see, and no other, so Bismarck always kept in full view, amid whatever shuffling of the pack, the apparent legality of Prussia. In the end he drove Austria to desperation.

In June, 1866, war came, with fury. One Prussian army crushed with a single blow the German states which had promised to support Austria; another marched into Bohemia, and, in seven days, confronted the imperial forces at Sadowa. There was fought a great battle, in which the Prussian crown prince repeated the master stroke of Blücher at Waterloo, and then Austria, hopelessly beaten, sued for peace.

Bismarck now showed himself astute in victory. Having ousted Austria from Germany, he had no wish to wreak a vengeance that she could not forgive. Taking none of her provinces, he exacted only a small indemnity. With the German states he was equally discriminating: those which had been inveterately hostile he annexed to Prussia; the others he let off with a fine. He set up the North German Confederation, embracing all the states north of the river Main, in place of the old German Confederation; and thus Prussia, which had now two thirds of the population of Germany, was undisputed master. The four South German states, Bavaria, Würtemberg, Hesse, and Baden, signed a secret treaty, by which they gave the Prussian King the command of their troops in case of war.

Europe, which had witnessed with astonishment these swift proceedings, understood now that a great reality had arisen, and that Bismarck was its heart. In France, surprise gave way to indignation. Were not the French the arbiters of Europe? How had it happened that their Emperor had permitted a first-rate power to organize without their consent? Napoleon III, who knew that his sham empire could last only so long as he furnished his restless subjects food for their vanity, strove to convince them that he had not been outwitted; that he still could dictate terms. He demanded a share of Rhineland to offset Prussia’s aggrandizement; Bismarck refused to cede a single inch. Napoleon bullied; Bismarck published the secret compact with the South Germans. Napoleon forthwith decided that it was not worth while to go to war.

We have all heard of the sportsman who boasted of always catching big strings of fish. But one day, after whipping every pool and getting never a trout, he was fain, on his way home, to stop at the fishmonger’s and buy a salt herring for supper. Not otherwise did Napoleon, who had been very forward in announcing that he would take land wherever he chose, now stoop to offer to buy enough to appease his greedy countrymen. He would pay ninety million francs for Luxemburg, and the King of Holland, to whom it belonged, was willing to sell at that price; but Bismarck would consent only to withdraw the Prussian garrison from the grand duchy, after destroying the fortifications, and to its conversion into a neutral state. That was the sum of the satisfaction Napoleon and his presumptuous Frenchmen got from their first encounter. A few years before, Napoleon, who had had frequent interviews with Bismarck and liked his joviality, set him down as “a not serious man;” whence we infer that the Emperor was a dull reader of character.

Although, by this arrangement, the Luxemburg affair blew over, neither France nor Prussia believed that their quarrel was settled. Deep in the heart of each, instinct whispered that a life-and-death struggle was inevitable. Bismarck, amid vast labor on the internal organization of the kingdom, held Prussia ready for war. He would not be the aggressor, but he would decline no challenge.

In July, 1870, France threw down the glove. When the Spaniards elected Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern to their vacant throne, France demanded that King William should compel Leopold to resign. William replied that, as he had not influenced his kinsman’s acceptance, he should not interfere. The prince, who was not a Prussian, withdrew of his own accord. But the French Secretary of State, the Duc de Gramont, had blustered too loudly to let the matter end without achieving his purpose of humbling the Prussian King. He therefore telegraphed Benedetti, the French Ambassador, to force King William to promise that at no future time should Leopold be a candidate for the Spanish crown. Benedetti delivered his message to William in the public garden at Ems; and William, naturally refusing to bind himself, announced that further negotiations on the subject would be referred to the Foreign Minister.

The following morning Bismarck published a dispatch containing a brief report of the interview; adding, however, that the King “declined to receive the French Ambassador again, and had him told by the adjutant in attendance that his Majesty had nothing further to communicate to the Ambassador.” This deceitful addition produced exactly the effect which Bismarck intended: every German, whether Prussian or not, was incensed to learn that the representative German King had been hectored by the French emissary, and every Frenchman was enraged that the Prussian King had insulted the envoy of the “grand nation.” Bismarck, who had feared that another favorable moment for war was passing, now exulted, and Moltke, who had for years been carrying the future campaign in his head, and whose face grew sombre when peace seemed probable, now smiled a grim, contented smile. In Paris, the ministers, the deputies, the newspapers, and the populace clamored for war. Apparently, Napoleon alone felt a slight hesitation; but he could hesitate no longer when the popular demand became overwhelming. On July 19 France made a formal declaration of war, and the Parisians laid bets that their victorious troops would celebrate the Fête Napoléon—August 15—in Berlin. Had not their War Minister, Lebœuf, assured them that everything was ready, down to the last button on the last gaiter of the last soldier?

We cannot describe here the terrible campaign which followed. In numbers, in equipment, in discipline, in generalship, in everything but bravery, the French were quickly outmatched. When Napoleon groped madly for some friendly hand to stay his fall, he found that Bismarck had cut off succor from him. The South Germans, whom the French had hoped to win over, fought loyally under the command of Prussia; Austria, who might have been persuaded to strike back at her late conqueror, dared not move for fear of Russia, whose friendship Bismarck had secured; and Italy, instead of aiding France, lost no time in completing her own unification by entering Rome when the French garrison was withdrawn. Forsaken and outwitted, the French Empire sank without even an expiring flash of that tinsel glory which had so long bedizened its corruption. And when the French people, lashed to desperation, continued the war which the Empire had brought upon them, they but suffered a long agony of losses before accepting the inevitable defeat. They paid the penalty of their former arrogance in every coin known to the vanquished,—in military ruin, in an enormous indemnity, in the occupation of their land by the victorious Prussians, and in the cession of two rich provinces. Nor was that enough: they had to submit to a humiliation which, to the imagination at least, seems the worst of all,—the proclamation of the Prussian King William as German Emperor in their palace at Versailles, the shrine of French pomp, where two centuries before Louis XIV had embodied the ambition, the glory, and the pride of France. The German cannon bombarding beleaguered Paris paused, while the sovereigns of the German states hailed William as their Emperor.

This consummation of German unity was the logical outcome of an international war, in which all the Germans had been impelled, by mutual interests quite as much as by kinship, to join forces against an alien foe. Twenty years before, Bismarck had opposed German unity, because it would then have made Prussia the plaything of her confederates; in this later scheme he was the chief agent, if not the originator, for he knew that the primacy of Prussia ran no more risk.

Let us pause a moment and look back. Only a decade earlier, in 1861, when Bismarck became minister, Prussia was but a second-rate power, Germany was a medley of miscellaneous states, Austria still held her traditional supremacy, the French Emperor seemed firmly established. Now, in 1871, Austria has been humbled, France crushed, Napoleon whiffed off into outer darkness, and Prussia stands unchallenged at the head of United Germany. Many men—the narrow, patient King, the taciturn Moltke, the energetic Von Roon—have contributed to this result; but to Bismarck rightly belongs the highest credit. Slow to prepare and swift to strike, he it was who measured the full capacity of that great machine, the Prussian army, and let it do its work the moment Fortune signaled; he it was who knew that needle guns and discipline would overcome in the end the long prestige of Austria and the wordy insolence of France. Looking back, we are amazed at his achievements,—many a step seems audacious; but if we investigate, we find that Bismarck had never threatened, never dared, more than his strength at the time warranted. The gods love men of the positive degree, and reward them by converting their words into facts.

Of the German Empire thus formed Bismarck was Chancellor for twenty years. His foreign policy hinged on one necessity,—the isolation of France. To that end he made a Triple Alliance, in which Russia and Austria were his partners first, and afterward Italy took Russia’s place. He prevented the Franco-Russian coalition, which would place Germany between the hammer and the anvil. From 1871 to 1890 he was not less the arbiter of Europe than the autocrat of Germany.

Nevertheless, although in the management of home affairs Bismarck usually prevailed, he prevailed to the detriment of Germany’s progress in self-government. The Empire, like Prussia herself, is based on constitutionalism: what hope is there for constitutionalism, when at any moment the vote of a majority of the people’s representatives can be nullified by an arbitrary prime minister? Bismarck carried his measures in one of two ways: he either formed a temporary combination with mutually discordant parliamentary groups and thereby secured a majority vote, or, when unable to do this, by threatening to resign he gave the Emperor an excuse for vetoing an objectionable bill. Despising representative government, with its interminable chatter, its red tape, its indiscreet meddling, and its whimsical revulsions, Bismarck never concealed his scorn. If he believed a measure to be needed, he went down into the parliamentary market-place, and by inducements, not of money, but of concessions, he won over votes. At one time or another, every group has voted against him and every group has voted for him. When he was fighting the Vatican, for instance, he conciliated the Jews; when Jew-baiting was his purpose, he promised the Catholics favor in return for their support. Being amenable to the Emperor alone, and not, like the British premier, the head of a party, he dwelt above the caprice of parties. Men thought, at first, to stagger him by charges of inconsistency, and quoted his past utterances against his present policy. He laughed at them. Consistency, he held, is the clog of men who do not advance; for himself, he had no hesitation in altering his policy as fast as circumstances required. With characteristic bluntness, he did not disguise his intentions. “I need your support,” he would say to a hostile group, “and I will stand by your bill if you will vote for mine.” “Do ut des” was his motto; “an honest broker” his self-given nickname.

Such a government cannot properly be called representative; it dangles between the two incompatibles, constitutionalism and autocracy. Doubtless Bismarck knew better than the herd of deputies what would best serve at a given moment the interests of Germany; but his methods were demoralizing, and so personal that they made no provision for the future. His system could not be permanent unless in every generation an autocrat as powerful and disinterested as himself should arise to wield it; but nature does not repeat her Bismarcks and her Cromwells. At the end of his career, Germany has still to undergo her apprenticeship in self-government.

Two important struggles, in which he engaged with all his might, call for especial mention.

The first is the Culturkampf, or contest with the Pope over the appointment of Catholic bishops and clergy in Prussia. Bismarck insisted that the Pope should submit his nominations to the approval of the King; Pius IX maintained that in spiritual matters he could be bound by no temporal lord. Bismarck passed stern laws; he withheld the stipend paid to the Catholic clergy; he imprisoned some of them; he broke up the parishes of others. It was the mediæval war of investitures over again, and again the Pope won. Bismarck discovered that against the intangible resistance of Rome his Krupp guns were powerless. After fifteen years of ineffectual battling, the Chancellor surrendered.

Similar discomfiture came to him from the Socialists. When he entered upon his ministerial career, they were but a gang of noisy fanatics; when he quitted it, they were a great political party, holding the balance of power in the Reichstag, and infecting Germany with their doctrines. At first he thought to extirpate them by violence, but they throve under persecution; then he propitiated them, and even strove to forestall them by adopting Socialistic measures in advance of their demands. If the next epoch is to witness the triumph of Socialism, as some predict, then Bismarck will surely merit a place in the Socialists’ Saints’ Calendar; but if, as some of us hope, society revolts from Socialism before experience teaches how much insanity underlies this seductive theory, then Bismarck will scarcely be praised for coquetting with it. For Socialism is but despotism turned upside down; it would substitute the tyranny of an abstraction—the state—for the tyranny of a personal autocrat. It rests on the fallacy that though in every individual citizen there is more or less imperfection,—one dishonest, another untruthful, another unjust, another greedy, another licentious, another willing to grasp money or power at the expense of his neighbor,—yet by adding up all these units, so imperfect, so selfish, and calling the sum “the state,” you get a perfect and unselfish organism, which will manage without flaw or favor the whole business, public, private, and mixed, of mankind. By what miracle a coil of links, separately weak, can be converted into an unbreakable chain is a secret which the prophets of this Utopia have never condescended to reveal. Not more state interference, but less, is the warning of history.

The fact which is significant for us here is that Socialism has best thriven in Germany, where, through the innate tendency of the Germans to a rigid system, the machinery of despotism has been most carefully elaborated, and where the interference of the state in the most trivial affairs of life has bred in the masses the notion that the state can do everything,—even make the poor rich, if they can only control the lever of the huge machine.

Nevertheless, though Bismarck has been worsted in his contest with religious and social ideas, his great achievement remains. He has placed Germany at the head of Europe, and Prussia at the head of Germany. Will the German Empire created by him last? Who can say? The historian has no business with prophecy, but he may point out the existence in the German Empire to-day of conditions that have hitherto menaced the safety of nations. The common danger seems the strongest bond of union among the German states. Defeat by Russia on the east or by France on the west would mean disaster for the South Germans not less than for the Prussians; and this peril is formidable enough to cause the Bavarians, for instance, to fight side by side with the Prussians. But there can be no homogeneous internal government, no compact nation, so long as twenty or more dynasties, coequal in dignity though not in power, flourish simultaneously. Historically speaking, Germany has never passed through that stage of development in which one dynasty swallows up its rivals,—the experience of England, France, and Spain, and even of polyglot Austria.

Again, Germany embraces three unwilling members,—Alsace-Lorraine, Schleswig, and Prussian Poland,—any of which may serve as a provocation for war, and must remain a constant source of racial antipathy. How grievous such political thorns may be, though small in bulk compared to the body they worry, England has learned from Ireland.

Finally, if popular government—the ideal of our century—is to prevail in Germany, the despotism extended and solidified by Bismarck will be swept away. Possibly, Germany could not have been united, could not have humbled Austria and crushed France, under a Liberal system; but will the Germans forever submit to the direction of an iron chancellor, or glow with exultation at the truculence of a strutting autocrat who flourishes his sword and proclaims, “My will is law”? No other modern despotism has been so patriotic, honest, and successful as that of Bismarck; but will the Germans never awake to the truth that even the best despotism convicts those who bow to it of a certain ignoble servility? Or will they, as we have suggested, transform the tyranny of an autocrat into the tyranny of Socialism? We will not predict, but we can plainly see that Germany, whether in her national or in her constitutional condition, has reached no stable plane of development.

And now what shall we conclude as to Bismarck himself? The magnitude of his work no man can dispute. For centuries Europe awaited the unification of Germany, as a necessary step in the organic growth of both. Feudalism was the principle which bound Christendom together during the Middle Age; afterward, the dynastic principle operated to blend peoples into nations; finally, in our time, the principle of nationality has accomplished what neither feudalism nor dynasties could accomplish, the attainment of German unity. In type, Bismarck belongs with the Charlemagnes, the Cromwells, the Napoleons; but, unlike them, he wrought to found no kingdom for himself; from first to last he was content to be the servant of the monarch whom he ruled. As a statesman, he possessed in equal mixture the qualities of lion and of fox, which Machiavelli long ago declared indispensable to a prince. He had no scruples. What benefited Prussia and his King was to him moral, lawful, desirable; to them he was inflexibly loyal; for them he would suffer popular odium or incur personal danger. But whoever opposed them was to him an enemy, to be overcome by persuasion, craft, or force. We discern in his conduct toward enemies no more regard for morality than in that of a Mohawk sachem toward his Huron foe. He might spare them, but from motives of policy; he might persecute them, not to gratify a thirst for cruelty, but because he deemed persecution the proper instrument in that case. His justification would be that it was right that Prussia and Germany should hold the first rank in Europe. The world, as he saw it, was a field in which nations maintained a pitiless struggle for existence, and the strongest survived; to make his nation the strongest was, he conceived, his highest duty. An army of puny-bodied saints might be beautiful to a pious imagination, but they would fare ill in an actual conflict with Pomeranian grenadiers.

Dynamic, therefore, and not moral, were Bismarck’s ideals and methods. To make every citizen a soldier, and to make every soldier a most effective fighting machine by the scientific application of diet, drill, discipline, and leadership, was Prussia’s achievement, whereby she prepared for Bismarck an irresistible weapon. In this application of science to control with greater exactness than ever before the movements of large masses of men in war, and to regulate their actions in peace, consists Prussia’s contribution to government; in knowing how to use the engine thus constructed lies Bismarck’s fame. When Germans were building air-castles, and, conscious of their irresolution, were asking themselves, “Is Germany Hamlet?” Bismarck saw both a definite goal and the road that led to it. The sentimentalism which has characterized so much of the action of our time never diluted his tremendous will. He held that by blood and iron empires are welded, and that this stern means causes in the end less suffering than the indecisive compromises of the sentimentalists. Better, he would say, for ninety-nine men to be directed by the hundredth man who knows than for them to be left a prey to their own chaotic, ignorant, and internecine passions. Thus he is the latest representative of a type which flourished in the age when the modern ideal of popular government had not yet risen. How much of his power was due to his unerring perception of the defects in popular government as it has thus far been exploited, we have already remarked.

The Germans have not yet perceived that one, perhaps the chief source of his success was his un-German characteristics. He would have all Germany bound by rigid laws, but he would not be bound by them himself. He encouraged his countrymen’s passion for conventionality and tradition, but remained the most unconventional of men. Whatever might complete the conversion of Germany into a vast machine he fostered by every art; but he, the engineer who held the throttle, was no machine. In a land where everything was done by prescription, the spectacle of one man doing whatever his will prompted produced an effect not easily computed. Such characteristics are un-German, we repeat, and Bismarck displayed them at all times and in all places. His smoking a cigar in the Frankfort Diet; his opposition to democracy, when democracy was the fashion; his resistance to the Prussian Landtag; his arbitrary methods in the German Parliament,—these are but instances, great or small, of his un-German nature. And his relations for thirty years with the King and Emperor whom he seemed to serve show a similar masterfulness. A single anecdote, told by himself, gives the key to that service.

At the battle of Sadowa King William persisted in exposing himself at short range to the enemy’s fire. Bismarck urged him back, but William was obstinate. “If not for yourself, at least for the sake of your minister, whom the nation will hold responsible, retire,” pleaded Bismarck. “Well, then, Bismarck, let us ride on a little,” the King at last replied. But he rode very slowly. Edging his horse alongside of the King’s mare, Bismarck gave her a stout kick in the haunch. She bounded forward, and the King looked round in astonishment. “I think he saw what I had done,” Bismarck added, in telling the story, “but he said nothing.”

On Bismarck’s private character I find no imputed stain. He did not enrich himself by his office, that hideous vice of our time. He did not, like both Napoleons, convert his palace into a harem; neither did he tolerate nepotism, nor the putting of incompetent parasites into responsible positions as a reward for party service. That he remorselessly crushed his rivals let his obliteration of Count von Arnim witness. That he subsidized a “reptile press,” or employed spies, or hounded his assailants, came from his belief that a statesman too squeamish to fight fire with fire would deserve to be burnt. Many orators have excelled him in grace, few in effectiveness. Regarding public speaking as one of the chief perils of the modern state, because it enables demagogues to dupe the easily swayed masses, he despised rhetorical artifice. His own speech was un-German in its directness, un-German in its humor, and it clove to the heart of a question with the might of a battle-axe,—as, indeed, he would have used a battle-axe itself to persuade his opponents, five hundred years ago. Since Napoleon, no other European statesman has coined so many political proverbs and apt phrases. His letters to his family are delightfully natural, and reveal a man of keen observation, capable of enjoying the wholesome pleasures of life, and brimful of common sense, which a rich gift of humor keeps from the dulness of Philistines and the pedantry of doctrinaires. His intercourse with friends seems to have been in a high degree jovial.

Not least interesting to a biographer are those last years of Bismarck’s life, between March, 1890, and his death, on July 30, 1898, which he passed in eclipse. To be dismissed by a young sovereign who, but for him, might have been merely a petty German prince,—to be told that he, the master throne-maker, was unnecessary to the callow apprentice,—galled the Titan’s heart. Eight years he was destined to endure this mortification; and although his countrymen everywhere hailed him as their hero, the fact of dismissal gave him no repose. Europe has seen no similar spectacle since she bound Napoleon, Prometheus-like, on St. Helena. But Napoleon, chafing his life away there, had at least the satisfaction of reflecting that it took all Europe, allied with Russia’s blizzards and Spain’s heats, to conquer him. Bismarck, storming in his exile from power, felt now scorn, now hate, for the “young fellow” (as he called him) who had turned him out. Here, if ever, Nemesis showed her work. Bismarck’s whole energy had been bent for fifty years on fortifying the autocracy of the Prussian monarchs; and now a young autocrat run from this mould bade him go—and he went. We may believe that it did not solace Bismarck to find that the “young fellow” could get on without him; or to see that in England Gladstone, six years his elder, led his nation till long past eighty; Gladstone,—whom he had so often jeered at as an empty rhetorician,—England, which he despised as the home of representative government. Could it be that constitutionalism was kinder than despotism to master statesmen?

A great man we may surely pronounce him, long to be the wonder of a world in which greatness of any kind is rare. If you ask, “How does he stand beside Washington and Lincoln?” it must be admitted that his methods would have made them blush, but that his patriotism was not less enduring than theirs. With the materials at hand he fashioned an empire; it is futile to speculate whether another, by using different tools, could have achieved the same result. Bismarck knew that though his countrymen might talk eloquently about liberty, they loved to be governed; he knew that their genius was mechanical, and he triumphed by directing them along the line of their genius. He would have failed had he appealed to the love of liberty, by appealing to which Cavour freed Italy; or to the love of glory, by appealing to which Napoleon was able to convert half of Europe into a French province. Bismarck knew that his Prussians must be roused in a different way.

It may be that the empire he created will not last; it is certain that it cannot escape modifications which will change the aspect he stamped upon it; but we may be sure that, whatever happens, the recollection of his Titanic personality will remain. He belongs among the giants, among the few in whom has been stored for a lifetime a stupendous energy,—kinsmen of the whirlwind and the volcano,—whose purpose seems to be to amaze us that the limits of the human include such as they. At the thought of him, there rises the vision of mythic Thor with his hammer, and of Odin with his spear; the legend of Zeus, who at pleasure held or hurled the thunderbolt, becomes credible.

NAPOLEON III

Madame de Staël said of Rienzi and his Romans: “They mistook reminiscences for hopes;” of the second French Empire and the third Napoleon we may say: “They staked their hopes on reminiscences.”

In our individual lives we realize the power of memory, suggestion, association. If we have ever yielded to a vice, we have felt, it may be years after, how the sight of the old conditions revives the old temptation. A glance, a sound, a smell, may be enough to conjure up a long series of events, whether to grieve or to tempt us, with more than their original intensity. So we learn that the safest way to escape the enticement is to avoid the conditions. Recent psychology has at last begun to measure the subtle power of suggestion.

But now, suppose that instead of an individual a whole nation has had a terrific experience of succumbing to temptation, and that a cunning, unscrupulous man, aware of the force of association and reminiscence, deliberately applies both to reproduce those conditions in which the nation first abandoned itself to excess: the case we have supposed is that of France and Louis Napoleon. Before the reality of their story the romances of hypnotism pale.

After Sédan it was the fashion to regard Louis Napoleon as the only culprit in the gilded shame of the Second Empire; we shall see, however, that the great majority of Frenchmen longed for his coming, applauded his victories, and by frequent vote sanctioned his deeds. A free people keeps no worse ruler than it deserves.

The Napoleonic legend, by which Louis Napoleon rose to power, was not his creation, but that of the French: he was simply shrewd, and used it. What was this legend?

When allied Europe finally crushed the great Napoleon at Waterloo, France breathed a sigh of relief. Twenty campaigns had left her exhausted: she asked only for repose. This the Restoration gave her. But the gratification of our transient cravings, however strong they may be, cannot long satisfy; and when the French recovered from their exhaustion, they felt their permanent cravings return. The Bourbons, they soon realized, could not appease those dominant Gallic desires. For the Bourbons had destroyed even that semblance of liberty Napoleon took care to preserve; they persecuted democratic ideas; they brought back the old aristocracy, with its mildewed haughtiness; they babbled of divine right,—as if the worship of St. Guillotine had not supervened. During twenty years France had been the arbitress of Europe; now, under the narrow, forceless Bourbons, she was treated like a second-rate power. Waterloo had meant not only the destruction of Napoleon, from which France derived peace, but also humiliation, which galled Frenchmen more and more as their normal sensitiveness returned.

The Bourbons, knowing that they might be tolerated so long as they were not despised, got up a military promenade into Spain, to prove that France could still meddle in her neighbors’ affairs, and that the Bourbons were not less mighty men of war than the Bonapartes. They captured the Trocadero, and restored vile King Ferdinand and his twenty-six cooks to the throne of Spain; and they hoped that the one-candle power of fame lighted by these exploits would outdazzle the Sun of Austerlitz. But no, the dynasty of Bourbon, long since headless, proved to be rootless too: one evening Charles X played his usual game of whist at St. Cloud; the next, he was posting out of France with all the speed and secrecy he could command.

Louis Philippe, who came next, might have been expected to please everybody: Royalists, because he was himself royal; Republicans, because he was Philippe Egalité’s son; constitutionalists, because he hated autocratic methods; shopkeepers of all kinds, because he was ‘practical.’ And in truth his administration may be called the Golden Age of the bourgeoisie,—the great middle class which, in France and elsewhere, was superseding the old aristocracy. Napoleon had organized a nobility of the sword; after him came the nobility of the purse. Louis Philippe could say that under his rule France prospered: her merchants grew rich; her factories, her railroads, all the organs of commerce, were healthily active. And yet she was discontented. The spectacle of her Citizen King walking unattended in the streets of Paris, his plump thighs encased in democratic trousers, his plump and ruddy face wearing a complacent smile, his whole air that of the senior partner in some old, respectable, and rich firm,—even this failed to satisfy Frenchmen. “He inspires no more enthusiasm than a fat grocer,” was said of him. Frenchmen did not despise money-making, but they wanted something more: they wanted gloire.

Let us use the French word, because the English glory has another meaning. Glory implies something essentially noble,—nay, in the Lord’s Prayer it is a quality attributed to God himself: but gloire suggests vanity; it is the food braggarts famish after. The minute-men at Concord earned true glory; but when the United States, listening to the seductions of evil politicians, attacked and blasted a decrepit power,—fivefold smaller in population, twenty-fold weaker in resources,—they might find gloire among their booty, but glory, never. As prosperity increased, the Gallic appetite for gloire increased. Louis Philippe made several attempts to allay it, but he dared not risk a foreign war, and the failure of his attempts made him less and less respected.

And now arose the Napoleonic legend, at first no more than a bright exhalation in the evening, but gradually taking on the sweep, the definiteness, the fascination, of mirage at noonday. Time enough had elapsed to dull or quite blot out the recollections of the hardships and strains, the millions of soldiers killed and wounded, the taxes, the grievous tyranny; men remembered only the victories, the rewards, and the splendor. A new generation, unacquainted with the havoc of war, had grown up, to listen with fervid envy to the reminiscences of some gray-haired veteran, who had made the great charge at Wagram or ridden behind Ney at Borodino. Those exploits were so stupendous as to seem incredible, and yet they were vouched for by too many survivors to be doubted. Was not Thiers setting forth the marvelous story in nineteen volumes? Were not Béranger and even Victor Hugo singing of the departed grandeur? Were not the booksellers’ shelves loaded with memoirs, lives, historical statements, polemics? Paris, France, seemed to exist merely to be the monument of one man. And wherever the young Frenchman traveled—in Spain, in Italy, along the Rhine or the Danube, to Vienna, or Cairo, or Moscow—he saw the footprints of French valor and French audacity, reminders that Napoleon had made France the mistress of Europe. No Frenchman, were he Bourbon or Republican, but felt proud to think that his countrymen had humbled Prussia and Austria.

Confronted by such recollections, the France of Louis Philippe looked degenerate. It offered nothing to thrill at, to brag over; it sinned in having—what it could not help—a stupendous past just behind it. So the Napoleonic legend grew. The body of the great Emperor was brought home from St. Helena, to perform more miracles than the mummy of a mediæval saint. Power and gloire came to be regarded as the products of a Napoleonic régime: to secure them it was only necessary to put a Bonapartist on the throne.

Contemporaneous with the expansion of this spell, Socialism grew up, and taught that, just as the bourgeoisie had overthrown the old privileged classes in the French Revolution, so now the working classes must emancipate themselves from the tyranny of the bourgeoisie. Political equality without industrial equality seemed a mockery. In this wise the doctrines of a score of Utopians penetrated society to loosen old bonds and embitter class with class. And besides all this, there was the usual wrangle of political parties. The tide of opposition rose, and on February 24, 1848, swept away Louis Philippe and his minister Guizot. Among the many fortune-seekers whom that tide brought to land was Louis Napoleon.

He was born in Paris, April 20, 1808, his mother being Hortense Beauharnais, who had married Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland. The younger Louis could just remember being petted in the Tuileries by the great Emperor: then, like all the Bonapartes, he had been packed off into exile. His youth was chiefly spent on Lake Constance, at Augsburg, and at Thun. In 1831 he had joined the Carbonari plotters in Italy. The next year, through the death of his elder brother and of the great Napoleon’s son, he became the official Pretender to the Bonapartist hopes. People knew him only as a visionary, who talked much about his “star,” and by writings and deeds tried to persuade the world that he too, like his uncle, was a man of destiny. A few adventurers gathered round him, eager to take the one chance in a thousand of his success. Accompanied by some of these, in 1836, he appeared before the French troops at Strasburg, expecting to be acclaimed Emperor and to march triumphantly to Paris. He did go to Paris, escorted by policemen; but his attempt seemed so foolish that Louis Philippe merely paid his passage to America to be rid of him.

The Prince soon returned to Europe and settled in London, where he lived the fast life of the average nobleman. In 1840 he set out on another expedition against France. Carrying a tame eagle with him, he landed at Boulogne: but again neither the soldiers nor populace welcomed him; the eagle seems to have been a spiritless fowl, likewise incapable of arousing enthusiasm; and the Prince shortly after was under imprisonment for life in the fortress of Ham. Nearly six years later he bribed a jailer, escaped to London, and, like Micawber, waited for something to turn up.

The fall of Louis Philippe gave Prince Louis his opportunity. He hurried to Paris, but was considerate, or cunning, enough to hold aloof for a while from disturbing public affairs. In those first months of turmoil many aspirants were destroyed, by their own folly and by mutual collision. Discreetly, therefore, he stood aside and watched them disappear.

Of the several factions, the Socialists and Red Republicans first profited by the Revolution. They organized that colossal folly, the National Workshops, in which 120,000 loafers received from the state good wages for pretending to do work which, had they done it, would have benefited no one. When the state, realizing that it could not continue this preposterous expense, proposed to close the workshops, the loafers became sullen: when the wages were cut off, they throttled Paris. For four days, in June, 1848, they made the streets of Paris their battle-ground, and succumbed only after 30,000 of their number had been killed, wounded, or captured by Cavaignac’s troops. The terror inspired by those idlers of Louis Blanc’s workshops was the corner-stone of the Second Empire.

A few weeks later, Louis Napoleon, elected by five constituencies, took his seat in the Assembly. His uncle’s name was still his only political capital. His own record—the Strasburg and Boulogne episodes—inspired mirth. In person there was nothing commanding about him. An “olive-swarthy paroquet” some one called him. “His gray eyes,” says De Tocqueville, “were dull and opaque, like those thick bull’s-eyes which light the stateroom of a ship, letting the light pass through, but out of which we can see nothing.” In after years “inscrutable” was the word commonly chosen to describe his cold, unblinking gaze. Reserve always characterized his manners; for even when most affable, his intimates felt that he concealed something or simulated something.

In the Assembly he strove for no sudden recognition; outside, however, he and his emissaries busied themselves night and day fanning the embers of Imperialism; and when, in December, 1848, the French people voted for a president, Louis Napoleon received 5,434,000 votes, while Cavaignac, his nearest competitor, had but 1,448,000. How had this come about? Old soldiers and peasants composed the great bulk of his supporters, every one of them glad to vote for “the nephew of the Emperor.” Next, Socialists, blue blouses and others, voted for him because they hated Cavaignac for repressing Red Republicanism in June; and Monarchists of both stripes, believing that he would be an easy tool for their plots, preferred him to the unyielding Cavaignac. Mediocrity and other negative qualities thus availed to transform Louis the Ridiculed into the first President of the Republic. “We made two blunders in the case of Louis Napoleon,” said Thiers; “first in deeming him a fool, and next in deeming him a genius.” Louis Napoleon knew not only how to profit by both of these blunders, but also how to superinduce either belief in the French mind.

Having sworn to uphold the Republic, he began his administration. During several months he let no sign of his ambition flutter into view, but seemed wholly bent on discharging the duties of president. In the spring of 1849, however, he put forth a feeler by engineering the expedition against the Roman Republic. Honest Frenchmen protested, but a majority in the Assembly supported him; and presently the instinct to be revenged on the Romans for defending themselves, and thereby inflicting losses on the French, silenced many who had disapproved of the expedition at the outset. Only the Radicals forcibly resisted, but their revolt was quickly put down. Louis Napoleon gained the prestige of having successfully reasserted French influence in Italy, where, for a generation, it had been supplanted by the influence of Austria. Furthermore, by becoming guardian of the Pope, he propitiated the Clericals, who might some time be useful. That he also roused the wrath of the Red Republicans did not spoil his prospects.

One year, two years passed. Faction discredited faction. Every one looked on the Republic as but a preparation for either Anarchy or the Empire. The Reds, irreconcilable and ferocious, terrorized the imagination of every one else. No doubt the majority of honest Frenchmen—if by honest we mean the really intelligent and patriotic minority—wished a republic, but those Red Extremists had made all Republicans indiscriminately odious; and as the Royalist plotters showed neither courage nor ability, the great multitude of Frenchmen came to regard the Empire or Anarchy as their only alternatives. Most of them, having nothing to gain through disorder, leaned to the side which promised to leash the bloodhounds of murder and pillage. Spasm after spasm of terror swept over Paris, and when Paris shudders in the evening the rest of France shudders by daybreak. Anything to prevent the triumph of the Reds—with their guillotine and their abolition of private ownership of property—became the ruling instinct of all other Frenchmen.

Louis Napoleon, we may be sure, took care to encourage the belief that he alone could save France from the abyss. In addition to his recognized newspaper organs, he employed a literary bureau to spread broadcast his portrait, his biography, and even songs with an Imperialist refrain. He knew the political persuasiveness of cigars and sausages distributed among the troops, and of wine dispensed to their officers. He was by turns modest—declaring that his sole purpose was to obey the Constitution—and bold, announcing that he would not shrink from making France strong and prosperous, whenever Frenchmen intrusted that task to him. In his capacity for waiting, he gave the best proof of his ability; and we must add that the Assembly, by its folly, gave him indispensable aid.

The Assembly, for instance, restricted the suffrage, in the hope that, by preventing workmen from voting, the victory of the Reds might be staved off. Again, the Constitution declared that no president was eligible for reëlection until he had been four years out of office. As the time for thinking of Louis Napoleon’s successor approached, the moderates of all parties urged that the Constitution be amended, so that he might be quietly reëlected,—there being no other candidate who promised to preserve order. But the factious deputies, by a narrow vote, rejected the amendment.

Napoleon now saw his chance, and openly assailed the Assembly. He posed as the champion of universal suffrage, the true representative of the people misrepresented by the factious deputies. They proposed to subject France to the uncertainties of a political campaign: his continuation in office would mean the certain maintenance of order. But Napoleon did not rely on demagogy alone: in secret he plotted a coup d’état.

The trade of house or bank burglar long ago fell into disrepute: not so that of the state burglar, who, if he succeed, may wear ermine jauntily,—for ermine, like charity, covers a multitude of sins. Louis Napoleon, ready to risk everything, laid his plans for stealing the government of France. The venture was less difficult than it seems, for if he could win over four or five men the odds would be with him. He must have the Prefect of Paris, the Commandant of the Garrison, the Ministers of War and of the Interior: others might make assurance double sure, but these were absolutely necessary.

Early in the spring of 1851 he set to work. Chief among his accomplices was his half brother, Morny,—a facile, audacious man, whose reputation, if he had ever had any, would have been lost long since in stock-swindling schemes; after him, in importance, came Persigny, an adventurer who had fastened on Louis Napoleon fifteen years before; Fleury, a major most active and efficient, without qualm, for he foresaw a marshal’s bâton; and Maupas, one of those easy villains who, never having been suspected of honesty, are spared the fatigue of pretending to be better than they are. If we assume that all these gentlemen were Imperialists for revenue only, we shall do them no injustice.

Their first move was to send Fleury to Algiers to secure a general to act as minister of war. He had not to search long; for Saint Arnaud, one of the Algerian officers, guessing Fleury’s purpose, offered his services forthwith. But Saint Arnaud stood only fifty-third in the line of promotion among French generals; some excuse must be found for passing by his fifty-two seniors. In a few weeks the French press and official gazette announced an outbreak of great violence among the Kabyles in Algeria; a little later they reported that the insurrection had been subdued by the energy of General Saint Arnaud; then, another proper interval elapsing, Saint Arnaud had come to Paris as minister of war.

It took less trouble to dismiss the Prefect of the Seine, and to substitute Maupas for him. Magnan, who commanded the troops, had already been corrupted. Half-brother Morny, at the critical moment, would appear in the Ministry of the Interior. The National Guard and the Public Printer could both be counted on,—the latter required for the prompt issuing of manifestoes. Everything being ready, the President, after some brief delays, set December 2—the anniversary of Austerlitz, and of the coronation of the great Napoleon—for committing the crime.

On the evening of December 1, he held his weekly reception at the Elysée; moved with his habitual courtesy among the guests; seemed less stiff than usual,—as if relieved of a burden; then went to his study for a last conference with his fellow-conspirators. The next morning Paris learned that two hundred leading citizens, military and political, including many deputies, had been arrested and taken to Vincennes. Placards declared that the President, having had news of a plot against the state, had stolen a march on the plotters, dissolved the Assembly, proclaimed universal suffrage, and called for a plebiscite to accept or reject the constitution he would frame. At first, the stupefied Parisians knew not what to do. Then the deputies who had escaped arrest met and voted to depose the President; but his gendarmes quickly broke up the meeting, and lodged the deputies in prison. Thanks to the system of centralization which France had long boasted of, Morny, from the Ministry of the Interior, controlled every prefect in France by telegraph. The provinces were informed that Paris had accepted the coup d’état almost before Paris had collected her dazed senses on the morning of the 2d of December.

The chief politicians and other leaders being caged, there was no one left, except among the workingmen, to direct a resistance. They did revolt, and Napoleon and Saint Arnaud gave them free play to raise barricades, to arm and gather. Then the eighty thousand soldiers in Paris surrounded them, stormed their barricades, and made no prisoners. Accompanying this suppression of the mob was the bloodthirsty massacre of a multitude of defenseless men, women, and children who had collected on the boulevards to see the troops move against the barricaders. They were shot down in cold blood, the soldiers (according to general report) having been rendered ferocious by drink. Thus was achieved the crime of the coup d’état.

By this crime Napoleon had demonstrated that he had the necessary force to put down the lawless, and that he did not hesitate to use it; by massacring the innocent throng, he made the army his accomplices, against any risk of their fraternizing with the populace. A fortnight later, 7,439,000 Frenchmen ratified his crime and elected him president for ten years: only 646,000 voted against him. Napoleon the Great, by the coup d’état of the 18th Brumaire, had suppressed the Directory; his imitative nephew could now point to an equally successful 2d of December.

France acquiesced all the more readily because she was put under martial law. One hundred thousand suspects were arrested, and more than ten thousand, were deported to Cayenne and Algeria. Police inquisitions, military commissions, and the other usual devices of tyranny quickly smothered resistance. Under the pretense of suppressing anarchy,—an anarchist meaning any one who did not submit to Louis Napoleon,—persecution supplanted law and justice. Had you asked to see most of the Frenchmen whose names were the most widely known, you would have been told that they were in exile.

Like his uncle, Louis Napoleon waited a little before putting on the purple. Only on December 2, 1852, the anniversary of his crime, did he have himself proclaimed emperor. The mockery of a plebiscite had preceded, and he had assured France and Europe that the “Empire means peace.”

Having reached the throne, he made the following arrangements for staying on it. He organized a Senate and a Council of State, whose members he appointed. The public were allowed to elect members to the Corps Législatif, or Legislature; but as his minions controlled the polls, only such candidates as he preferred were likely to be chosen. He suffered a few opponents to be elected, in order to have it appear that he encouraged discussion. Otherwise, he scarcely took pains to varnish his autocracy. As a deft Chinese carver incloses a tiny figure in a nest of ivory boxes, so did Bonaparte imprison the simulacrum of Liberty in the innermost compartment of the political cage in which he held France captive.

What must the condition of the French people have been that they submitted! How much antecedent incapacity for government, how much cherishing of unworthy ideals, were implied by the success of such an adventurer! And what could patriotism mean, when the French fatherland meant the land of Louis Napoleon, Morny, Maupas, Persigny, and their unspeakable underlings? The new Empire gave France what is called a strong government, by which commercially she throve. Tradesmen, seeing business improve and their hoards grow, chafed less at the loss of political freedom. The working classes were propitiated by public works—the favorite nostrum of socialists and tyrants—organized on a vast scale. Pensions were showered on old soldiers, or their widows. Taxes ran high; the public debt had constantly to be increased: but an air of opulence pervaded France.

Established at home, Napoleon now looked abroad for gloire. Before his elevation, some one had warned him that he would find the French a very hard people to govern. “Not at all,” he replied; “all that they need is a war every four years.” Europe had formally recognized him,—no country being more ready than England to condone his great crime. Queen Victoria, the typical British matron, exchanging visits with the Imperial adventurer made an edifying spectacle! Presently the land-greed of England and the gloire-thirst of France brought the sons of the Britons who had whipped the great Napoleon at Waterloo into an alliance with the sons of the Frenchmen who had there been whipped; and in the summer of 1854 British and French fleets swept through the Bosphorus and across the Black Sea, and landed two armies near Sebastopol. Of the Crimean war which ensued, we need say no more than that it was immoral in conception, blundering in execution, and ineffectual in results. Nevertheless, it supplied Napoleon III with just what he had sought. He extracted from it large quantities of gloire. Marshal’s bâtons and military promotions, the parade of returning troops, the assembling at Paris of the European envoys who were to agree on a treaty of peace,—what did all this show but that Europe had accepted Napoleon III at his own valuation? In Russia’s wilderness of snow the great Napoleon had been ruined; now his nephew posed as the humbler of Russia. The great Napoleon had been finally crushed by England: now his nephew had enticed good, pious England into an alliance, and thereby he had surely avenged his uncle. The last European compact, humiliating to France, had been signed at Vienna: the new compact, signed at Paris, bore witness to the supremacy of France.

That year 1856 marks the acme of Napoleon the Third’s career. It saw him the recognized arbiter of Europe. The world, which worships success, forgot that the suave, impassive master of the Tuileries had been Louis the Ridiculed, a political vagabond and hapless pretender, only ten years before. Now, as arbiter, he would meddle when he chose, and the world should not gainsay him. Moreover, he believed his power so secure that he was willing to forgive those whom he had injured. He had gained what he wanted: why, therefore, should they reject his amnesty?

Unscrupulously selfish till he had attained his ends, Napoleon III had, nevertheless, curious streaks of disinterestedness in his nature. What but Quixotism impelled him to promise to free Italy from her bondage to Austria? He might add thereby to his personal renown, but the French people, who must pay the bills and furnish the soldiers, were offered no adequate compensation. Whatever his motives, he crossed the Alps in the spring of 1859, joined the Piedmontese, and defeated the Austrians in two great battles. But after Solferino he paused, grew anxious, and drew back. Many reasons were hinted at: he had been horrified at the sight of twelve thousand corpses festering in the midsummer heat on the battlefield; he perceived that the campaign must last many months before the Austrians could be dislodged from the Quadrilateral; he dreaded to create in Italy a kingdom strong enough to be a menace to France; he was worried at the mobilization of the Prussian army, foreboding a war on the Rhine. Motives are usually composite: perhaps, therefore, all these, and others, made him resolve to quit Italy with his mission only half achieved. But of all his schemes, that Italian expedition has alone escaped the condemnation of posterity.

Possessing a great talent for scenic display, Napoleon dressed his victories so as to get the fullest spectacular effect from them. He could pose now as the conqueror of Austria, and offset the gloire of his uncle’s Marengo with that of his own Magenta. He had more bâtons and dukedoms to bestow,—more trophies to deposit in the Invalides. The gazettes, the official historians, the court writers, the spell-bound populace, acclaimed the new triumphs. Europe became too small for Imperial France to swagger in. Napoleon the First had meddled in Egypt, and Palestine, and the West Indies; his nephew must do likewise, and seek new worlds to conquer over sea.

Already, however, sober observers noted other symptoms, and soon the list of Imperial reverses grew ominously long. Early in 1860, Central Italy became a part of Victor Emanuel’s kingdom: Napoleon had insisted that it should form a new state for his cousin Plon-Plon. That autumn, Sicily and Naples united themselves to Italy: Napoleon had wished and schemed otherwise. That same year, too, England compelled him to renounce his protectorate over Syria. Then he planned a French empire in Mexico; sent French troops over under Bazaine; set up Maximilian, who appeared to have grafted Napoleonism on our continent. But in 1867 he recalled his army,—“spontaneously” as he said. The world smiled when it reflected that the spontaneity of his withdrawal had been superinduced by a curt message from the United States and the massing of United States troops on the Rio Grande. In 1864 he would have kept Prussia and Austria from robbing Denmark; but as he had only words to risk, they heeded him not. In 1866, when Prussia and Austria went to war, expecting that Austria would be the victor, he had arranged to take a slice of Rhineland while Austria took Silesia. But Prussia was victorious, and so quickly that Napoleon could not save his reputation even as mediator.

At last Europe realized that his nod was not omnipotent,—that Prussia, his enemy, could raise herself to a power of the first rank, not only without but against his sanction. Napoleon also realized that his prestige was tottering. He must have some compensation for Prussia’s aggrandizement. But when he asked for a strip of Rhineland, Bismarck replied: “I will never cede an inch of German soil.” Napoleon, not ready for war, cast about for some other screen to his humiliation; for even in his legislature men now dared to taunt him with allowing Germany to grow perilously strong. To this taunt one of the Imperial spokesmen retorted, “Germany is divided into three fragments, which will never come together.” A day or two later Bismarck published the secret treaties by which North and South Germany had bound themselves to support each other in case of attack.

Thus thwarted, Napoleon schemed to buy the tiny grandduchy of Luxemburg, which had long been garrisoned by Prussian troops. The King of Holland, who owned it, agreed to sell it for ninety million francs. Europe was willing, but Bismarck said no. He would consent to withdraw his troops, to destroy the fortifications, and to convert Luxemburg into a neutral state; more than that he would not allow. And with that Napoleon had to content himself, and to persuade the French—as best he could—that he had frightened the Prussians out of the grandduchy.

In 1863 Bismarck said to a friend: “From a distance, the French Empire seems to be something; near by, it is nothing.” About the same time Napoleon, who had had much friendly intercourse with the Prussian statesman, said: “M. de Bismarck is not a serious man.”

Just as the Luxemburg affair was concluded, all the world went to Paris to attend the Exposition, which was intended to be, and seemed, a symbol of the permanence of the Second Empire. The projectors knew that the immense preparations would enable the government to employ many workmen, who might otherwise be unruly, and that the vast concourse of visitors would bring money to the tradespeople and keep them from grumbling. The ostensible purpose, however, was to dazzle both Frenchmen and strangers by a view of Imperial magnificence; and it was fully achieved.

Paris herself, the Phryne among cities, astonished those who had never seen her, or who had seen her in old days. Where, they asked, were the narrow, crooked streets, in which barricaders once fortified themselves? Were these boulevards, stretching broad and straight,—were these they? And by what magic had the old, irregular dwellings been transformed into miles of tall, stately blocks? New churches, new quays, new parks, new palaces, bearing the impress of grace, symmetry, and a unifying planner, excited the wonder of the cosmopolitan throng of visitors. But the products of industry, the triumphs of the arts of peace, were not allowed to obscure the military glories of the Second Empire. A “Bridge of the Alma” and a “Boulevard of Sebastopol” kept the Crimean prowess in memory; a “Solferino Bridge” and a “Magenta Boulevard” bore witness to the Italian triumphs. And there were pageants, military, courtly, artistic; balls, at which, among the picked beauties of the world, the Empress Eugénie shone most beautiful; banquets, at which Napoleon sat at the head of the table, with monarchs at his right hand and his left deferentially listening. Little did the on-lookers suppose that the master of those magnificent revels had been lately frustrated by M. de Bismarck, who was merely one of the million whose presence in Paris seemed a tribute to Napoleon’s supremacy.

History, it is said, never repeats: but is the saying true? Is there not an old, old story of Belshazzar and the magnificent feast he gave in ancient Babylon, and the mysterious writing on the wall? And was not another Belshazzar repeating the episode in this modern Babylon less than thirty years ago? However that may be, the Exhibition of 1867 was the last triumph of Imperial France.

Imperialism had made a great show, reproducing, so far as it could, the glamour of the First Empire. Judge how potent that First Empire must have been, when mere imitation of it could thus hypnotize France and delude Europe! But Imperialism, generated by a crime and vitalized by corruption and deceit, was not all France. Honest France, excluded in the beginning, could not, would not, be lured in later. Napoleon would have conciliated, but the men whom he needed to conciliate would not even parley. To offset Victor Hugo and patriots of his rigid defiance, the Emperor had the outward acquiescence of Prosper Mérimée, the worldly courtier; of Alfred de Musset, the weak-willed, debauched poet; and of such as they. But he had the conscience of France against him; to offset that he leagued himself with Jesuits and Clericals. Having exhausted the expedients of force, he had tried the arts of flattery; he had intimidated, he had blandished; he had made vice easy and attractive, in order that, though he could not win over the stubborn to his cause, their character might be softened through voluptuousness. Whosoever could be corrupted—let us give him full credit—he did corrupt in masterful fashion; but conscience, in France as elsewhere, is incorruptible.

Despite his complicated machinery for gagging conscience, protests began to be made boldly. One such protest, uttered towards the end of 1868, rang throughout France; and well it might, so audacious was the eloquence of the protester. Several newspapers had opened a subscription for a monument to Baudin, a Republican killed in the coup d’état. The proprietors of these newspapers were arrested. One of them, Delescluze, had for his advocate Léon Gambetta, a vehement young lawyer from the South. Before the judge, and the prosecuting attorneys, and the police—all myrmidons of the Emperor—he arraigned the Empire, closing with these words: “Here for seventeen years you have been absolute masters—‘masters at discretion,’ it is your phrase—of France. Well, you have never dared to say, ‘We will celebrate—we will include among the solemn festivals of France—the Second of December as a national anniversary!’ And yet all the governments which have succeeded each other in the land have honored the day of their birth; there are but two anniversaries—the 18th Brumaire and the 2d of December—which have never been put among the solemnities of origin, because you know that, if you dared to put these, the universal conscience would disavow them!” Gambetta’s invective did not save his client from prison, but his arraignment of the Empire echoed throughout France.

And all the next year, 1869, though Imperialism abated in language none of its pretensions, it showed in deeds many signs of nervousness. No longer did it think it prudent, for instance, to abet the enormous extravagances of Hausmann, the remodeler of Paris. It even talked Liberalism, and set up a seeming Liberal Cabinet, with Ollivier at its head. “All the reform you may give us, we accept,” said Gambetta bluntly; “and we may possibly force you to yield more than you intend; but all you give, and all we take, we shall simply use as a bridge to carry us over to another form of government.” Evidently the conscience of France, expressing itself through the Republican spokesman, could not be placated or seduced.

A still blacker omen ushered in 1870. Pierre Bonaparte, the Emperor’s cousin, shot in cold blood a journalist, Victor Noir. Two hundred thousand persons followed the victim’s hearse; two hundred thousand voices shouted through the streets of Paris, “Vengeance! Down with the Empire! Long live the Republic!” In April the ministers proposed further reforms, and called for another plebiscite, that worn-out Napoleonic device for deceiving public opinion. Seven and a third million votes were dutifully registered for the Empire, and only a million and a half against it; but the Imperialists did not exult,—a majority of voters in Paris, and forty-six thousand soldiers, had voted no.

To be deserted by the Parisians, on whom Napoleon had lavished so much pomp,—that, indeed, was hard; but the disaffection in the army meant danger. One desperate remedy remained,—a foreign war. Victory would bring to Imperialism sufficient prestige to postpone for several years the impending collapse; meanwhile, public attention would be diverted from grievances at home.

Nemesis saw to it that rogues thus minded should not lack opportunity. The Spaniards having elected an obscure German prince to be their king, the French ministers announced that they would never suffer him to reign. Of his own motion, the German prince declined the election, but the French were not appeased. They would humble the King of Prussia by forcing from him a meek promise. King William refused to be bullied; the French ministers proclaimed that France had been insulted. Not Imperialists only, but Frenchmen of all parties clamored for satisfaction. That love of gloire, that mercurial vanity which, twenty years before, had made them an easy prey to Louis Napoleon, now made them abettors of his breakneck venture. He appealed to their patriotism, the last refuge of a scoundrel, and they were beguiled.

War came, the Emperor being, by common report, most reluctant to consent to its declaration. He was its first victim. Five weeks after taking the field, he surrendered with nearly one hundred and ninety thousand men at Sédan. The corruption which through twenty years he had fostered, in all parts of the state where he expected to profit by it, had gangrened the army also, that branch which a military tyrant needs to have honestly administered. And now in his need the army failed him. He had been caught, as every one is caught who imagines that he can be wicked with impunity and still keep virtue for an ally when he needs her. From top to bottom his war department was rotten. Conscripts had, by bribe, evaded service; generals had sworn to false muster-rolls; ministers had connived with dishonest contractors. At Sédan, Napoleon paid the penalty of the corruption which he had erected into a system; at Sédan, moreover, he completed that cycle of parallels and imitations which he had made the business of his life. Just as Prussian Blücher paralyzed the last rally of the great Napoleon at Waterloo, so Prussian Moltke achieved the ignominy of Napoleon the Little at Sédan.

Men forget, even when they do not forgive. Frenchmen, furious at the humiliation of Sédan, cursed Napoleon as the author of it. But after a quarter of a century, although they have not forgiven him, they have come to look on him as victim rather than as villain. Later writers have held him up to be pitied. They describe his long years of suffering from the stone; they paint him during that month of August, 1870, as a poor, abject creature of circumstances, driven to bay by an irresistible foe, buffeted, scorned, despised by his own officers and troops. They show him to us, speechless and in agony, lifted from his horse at Saarbrücken; or huddled into a third-class railway carriage with a crowd of common soldiers escaping from the oncoming Prussians; or sitting, as cheerless as a death’s-head, at a council of war; now lodged in mean quarters; now passing gloomily down regiments on their way to defeat, and never a voice to cry Vive l’Empereur; ever growing more and more haggard and nervous with worry, disaster, and endless cigarettes; continually pelted with telegrams from Empress Eugénie at Paris, “Do this—do that, or the Empire is lost;” until that final early morning interview with Bismarck in the weaver’s cottage at Donchéry. Latter-day Frenchmen, beholding such misery, have forgotten that Napoleon himself was chiefly responsible for it, and have ceased to execrate.

In closing, let us read, from a letter Bismarck wrote to his wife the day after the surrender, a description of the meeting of Napoleon and his conqueror:—

“Vendresse, Sept. 3, 1870. Yesterday morning at five o’clock, after I had been negotiating until one o’clock, A. M., with Moltke and the French generals about the capitulation to be concluded, I was awakened by General Reille, with whom I am acquainted, to tell me that Napoleon wished to speak with me. Unwashed and unbreakfasted, I rode towards Sedan, found the Emperor in an open carriage, with three aides-de-camp and three in attendance on horseback, halted on the road before Sédan. I dismounted, saluted him just as politely as at the Tuileries, and asked for his commands. He wished to see the King. I told him, as the truth was, that his Majesty had his quarters fifteen miles away, at the spot where I am now writing. In answer to Napoleon’s question where he should go, I offered him, as I was not acquainted with the country, my own quarters at Donchéry, a small place in the neighborhood, close by Sédan. He accepted and drove, accompanied by his six Frenchmen, by me and by Carl (who in the mean time had ridden after me), through the lonely morning, towards our lines. Before reaching the spot, he began to be troubled on account of the possible crowd, and he asked me if he could alight in a lonely cottage by the wayside. I had it inspected by Carl, who brought word it was mean and dirty. ‘N’importe’ (No matter), said N., and I ascended with him a rickety, narrow staircase. In an apartment ten feet square, with a deal-table and two rush-bottomed chairs, we sat for an hour; the others were below. A powerful contrast with our last meeting in the Tuileries in ’67. Our conversation was difficult, if I wanted to avoid touching on topics which could not but affect painfully the man whom God’s mighty hand had cast down. I had sent Carl to fetch officers from the town, and to beg Moltke to come.”

That morning the terms of capitulation were drawn up, and the next day Napoleon went a prisoner to Wilhelmshöhe, whence, in due time, he was allowed to depart for England. At Chislehurst, on January 9, 1873, he died, having lived to see not only the extinction of French Imperialism and of the temporal Papacy, but also the creation of the German Empire and the union of Italy. To prevent all of these things had been his aim.

In a life like Garibaldi’s we see what a disinterested genius can do by appealing to men’s noble motives: the career of Louis Napoleon illustrates not less clearly what a man with talents and without scruples can accomplish by appealing to the instincts of vainglory and selfishness and terror; to the instinct which bullies weak nations and hoists the flag where it does not belong; to the instinct which has not the courage to acknowledge an error, but is quick to impute injuries, and declares that there shall be one conscience for politicians and another for citizens. Let us not flatter ourselves that only the French have cherished these stupendous delusions; let us rather take warning by the retribution exacted from them.

KOSSUTH

The history of Hungary is in this respect unique: it records the career of an alien tribe which, cutting its way from Eastern Asia to the heart of Europe, founded there a nation, and this nation, after the friction of a thousand years, still preserves its racial characteristics. In 894 Duke Arpád led his horde of Magyars—whose earlier kinsmen were Huns and Avars—up the valley of the Danube. Long were they a terror to Europe; then, gradually, they had to content themselves with Hungary as their home. They became Christians; they adopted a monarchical government; alongside of their Aryan neighbors, they took on mediæval civilization. Europe, unable to expel or to destroy, acknowledged them as citizens. The time came when the Magyars, in a conflict lasting fivescore years, defended Europe against the invasion of another horde of Asiatic barbarians; till, unsupported by their neighbors, the Magyars succumbed to the Turks in the battle of Mohács in 1526. Afterwards, for one hundred and fifty years, Hungary herself writhed in the hands of the Mussulman; when that bondage ceased, she had a different oppressor,—Austria.