Part 32 (1/2)

Their policy was to appear in the light of victims of persecution.

There was to them no medium between reigning as despots or dying as martyrs. Mediocrity would have degraded them. Ricci, the general of the order, would not permit them to land in Italy, to which country they were sent by the king of Spain. Six thousand priests, in misery and poverty, were sent adrift upon the Mediterranean, and after six months of vicissitude, suffering, and despair, they found a miserable refuge on the Island of Corsica.

[Sidenote: Pope Clement XIV.]

Soon after, the pope, their most powerful protector, died. A successor was to be appointed. But France, Spain, and Portugal, bent on the complete suppression of the Jesuits, resolved that no pope should be elected who would not favor their end. A cardinal was found,--Ganganelli,--who promised the amba.s.sadors that, if elected pope, he would abolish the order. They, accordingly, intrigued to secure his election. The Jesuits, also, strained every nerve, and put forth marvellous talent and art, to secure a pope who would _protect them_. But the amba.s.sadors of the allied powers overreached even the Jesuits. Ganganelli was the plainest, and, apparently, the most unambitious of men. His father had been a peasant; but, by the force of talent and learning, he had arisen, from the condition of his father, to be a Roman cardinal. Under the garb of a saint, he aspired to the tiara. There was only one condition of success; and that was, to destroy the best supporters of that fearful absolutism which had so long enslaved the world. The sacrifice was tremendous; but it was made, and he became a pope. Then commenced in his soul the awful struggle. Should he fulfil his pledge, and jeopardize his cause and throne, and be branded, by the zealots of his church, with eternal infamy? or should he break his word, and array against himself, with awful enmity, the great monarchs of Europe, and perhaps lose the allegiance of their subjects to him as the supreme head of the Catholic Church? The decision was the hardest which mortal man had ever been required to make. Whatever course he pursued was full of danger and disgrace. Poor Ganganelli! he had better remained a cowherd, a simple priest, a bishop, a cardinal,--any thing,--rather than to have been made a pope! But such was his ambition, and he was obliged to reap its penalty. Long did the afflicted pontiff delay to fulfil his pledge; long did he practise all the arts of dissimulation, of which he was such a master. He delayed, he flattered, he entreated, he coaxed. But the monarchs called peremptorily for the fulfilment of his pledge, and all Europe now understood the nature of the contest.

It was between the Jesuits and the monarchs of Europe. Ganganelli was compelled to give his decision. His health declined, his spirits forsook him, his natural gayety fled. He courted solitude, he wept, he prayed. But he must, nevertheless, decide. The Jesuits threatened a.s.sa.s.sination, and exposed, with bitter eloquence, the ruin of his church, if he yielded her privileges to kings. And kings threatened secession from Rome, deposition--ten thousand calamities. His agony became insupportable; but delay was no longer possible. He decided to suppress the order of the Jesuits; and sixty-nine colleges were closed, their missions were broken up, their churches were given to their rivals, and twenty-two thousand priests were left without organization, wealth, or power.

[Sidenote: Death of Ganganelli.]

Their revenge was not an idle threat. One day, the pope, on arising from table, felt an internal shock, followed by great cold. Gradually he lost his voice and strength. His blood became corrupted; and his moral system gave way with the physical. He knew that he was doomed--that he was poisoned--that he must die. The fear of h.e.l.l was now added to his other torments. ”_Compulsus, feci, compulsus, feci!_”--”O, mercy, mercy, I have been compelled!” he cried, and died--died by that slow but sure poison, such as old Alexander VI.

knew so well how to administer to his victims when he sought their wealth. Pope Clement XIV. inflicted, it was supposed, a mortal wound upon his church and upon her best friends. He, indeed, reaped the penalty of ambition; but the cause which he represented did not perish, nor will it lose vitality so long as the principle of evil on earth is destined to contend with the principle of good. On the restoration of the Bourbons, the order of the Jesuits was restored; and their flaming sword, with its double edge, was again felt in every corner of the world.

[Sidenote: Death of Louis XV.]

The Jesuits, on their expulsion, found shelter in Prussia, and protection from the royal infidel who had been the friend of Voltaire.

A schism between the crowned heads of Europe and infidel philosophers had taken place. Frederic, who had sympathized with their bitter mockery, at last perceived the tendency of their writings; that men who a.s.sailed obedience to divine laws would not long respect the inst.i.tutions and governments which mankind had recognized. He perceived, too, the natural union of absolutism in the church with absolutism in the state, and came to the rescue of the great, unchanged, unchangeable, and ever-consistent advocates of despotism.

The frivolous Choiseul, the extravagant Pompadour, and the debauched Sardanapalus of his age, did not perceive the truth which the King of Prussia recognized in his latter days. Nor would it have availed any thing, if they had been gifted with the clear insight of Frederic the Great. The stream, on whose curious banks the great and the n.o.ble of France had been amusing themselves, soon swelled into an overwhelming torrent. That devastating torrent was the French Revolution, whose awful swell was first perceived during the latter years of Louis XV.

He himself caught glimpses of the future; but, with the egotism of a Bourbon, he remarked ”that the throne would last during his time.”

Soon after this heartless speech was made, he was stricken with the small-pox, and died 1774, after a long and inglorious reign. He was deserted in his last hours, and his disgusting and loathsome remains were huddled into their last abode by the workmen of his palace.

Before the reign of Louis XVI. can be described, it is necessary to glance at the career of Frederic the Great, and the condition of the various European states, at a period contemporary with the Seven Years' War--the great war of the eighteenth century, before the breaking out of the French Revolution.

REFERENCES.--For a general view of the reign of Louis XV., see the histories of Lacretelle, Voltaire, and Crowe. The scheme of Law is best explained in Smyth's Lectures, and Anderson's History of Commerce. The struggles between the king and the Parliament of Paris are tolerably described in the History of Adolphus. For a view of the Jansenist Controversy, see Du Pin's Ecclesiastical History, Ranke's History of the Popes, Pascal's Provincial Letters, and Stephens's article in the Edinburgh Review, on the Port Royalists. The fall of the Jesuits has been admirably treated by Quinet. James has written a good sketch of the lives of Fleury and Choiseul. For the manners of the court of Louis XV., the numerous memoirs and letters, which were written during the period, must be consulted; the most amusing of which, and, in a certain sense, instructive, are too infamous to be named.

CHAPTER XXIII.

FREDERIC THE GREAT.

[Sidenote: Frederic William.]

Frederic II. of Prussia has won a name which will be immortal on Moloch's catalogue of military heroes. His singular character extorts our admiration, while it calls forth our aversion, admiration for his great abilities, sagacity, and self-reliance, and disgust for his cruelties, his malice, his suspicions, and his tricks. He had no faith in virtue or disinterestedness, and trusted only to mechanical agencies--to the power of armies--to the principle of fear. He was not indifferent to literature, or the improvement of his nation; but war was alike his absorbing pa.s.sion and his highest glory. Peter the Great was half a barbarian, and Charles XII. half a madman; but Frederic was neither barbarous in his tastes, nor wild in his schemes. Louis XIV.

plunged his nation in war from puerile egotism, and William III.

fought for the great cause of religious and civil liberty; but Frederic, from the excitement which war produced, and the restless ambition of plundering what was not his own.

He was born in the royal palace of Berlin, in 1712--ten years after Prussia had become a kingdom, and in the lifetime of his grandfather, Frederic I. The fortunes of his family were made by his great-grandfather, called the _Great Elector_, of the house of Hohenzollern. He could not make Brandenburg a fertile province; so he turned it into a military state. He was wise, benignant, and universally beloved. But few of his amiable qualities were inherited by his great-grandson. Frederic II. resembled more his whimsical and tyrannical father, Frederic William, who beat his children without a cause, and sent his subjects to prison from mere caprice. When his amba.s.sador, in London, was allowed only one thousand pounds a year, he gave a bounty of thirteen hundred pounds to a tall Irishman, to join his famous body-guard, a regiment of men who were each over six feet high. He would kick women in the streets, abuse clergymen for looking on the soldiers, and insult his son's tutor for teaching him Latin.

But, abating his coa.r.s.eness, his brutality, and his cruelty, he was a Christian, after a certain model. He had respect for the inst.i.tutions of religion, denounced all amus.e.m.e.nts as sinful, and read a sermon aloud, every afternoon, to his family. His son perceived his inconsistencies, and grew up an infidel. There was no sympathy between father and son, and the father even hated the heir of his house and throne. The young prince was kept on bread and water; his most moderate wishes were disregarded; he was surrounded with spies; he was cruelly beaten and imprisoned, and abused as a monster and a heathen.

The cruel treatment which the prince received induced him to fly; his flight was discovered; he was brought back to Berlin, condemned to death as a deserter and only saved from the fate of a malefactor by the intercession of half of the crowned heads of Europe. A hollow reconciliation was effected; and the prince was permitted, at last, to retire to one of the royal palaces, where he amused himself with books, billiards, b.a.l.l.s, and banquets. He opened a correspondence with Voltaire, and became an ardent admirer of his opinions.

[Sidenote: Accession of Frederic the Great.]

In 1740, the old king died, and Frederic II. mounted an absolute throne. He found a well filled treasury, and a splendidly disciplined army. His customary pleasures were abandoned, and dreams of glory filled his ambitious soul.

Scarcely was he seated on his throne before military aggrandizement became the animating principle of his life.