Part 9 (1/2)

It is interesting to recall that it was Luther who gave the first impulse to this movement, by revealing to the people the riches of their own tongue. In his translation of the Bible, and in his hymns, so grandly simple, he created the modern German language.

The influence of Luther was felt in another art, too. The enthusiasm awakened by the singing of his hymns revolutionized the form of ecclesiastical music. In this Golden Age in Germany music, too, had become a great art, with such immortal names as Mozart, Gluck, Haydn, and Beethoven; and the period of great orchestration also had commenced.[1]

Although Frederick's tastes led him so strongly to letters and to music, these two arts had attained this rich development in Germany without any a.s.sistance from him. When he died in 1786 the monument he left was a Kingdom of Prussia; equal in rank with any of the Great Powers of Europe, enlarged in territory, rich in population, with a great army and an overflowing treasury.

As Frederick the Great had no son, this splendid inheritance pa.s.sed to his nephew Frederick William II.

With the new ascendency of Prussia in the German Empire, a process which had long been going on was accelerated. That empire had become a fiction, a form from which the substance had long ago departed; almost its only remaining relic being an Imperial Diet, where thirty solemn old men supposed they were holding the venerated structure together by weaving about it, and repairing, the thin, worn threads of tradition.

The German Empire had in its best time existed by grace of G.o.d and force of circ.u.mstances, more than by reason of a sound and perfect organism. It always struggled with fatal inherent defects. Its life currents never flowed freely and had been growing more and more sluggish for centuries. And now, they had ceased to flow at all.

There was no vital relation whatever between its various parts. Of national feeling there was absolutely none. Lessing, one of the greatest Germans of that time, said, ”Of the love of country I have no conception!”

And what was there to inspire patriotism in this great empty sh.e.l.l of despotism! The shattered lifeless old structure was wrong at its very foundation. It was built upon feudal injustice; that injustice which compelled the people to bear the whole burden of taxation, from which it exempted the n.o.bility and the clergy. England had long ago redressed this grievous wrong. France was just preparing to free herself from it by a tremendous convulsion. Germany had been offered emanc.i.p.ation at the hands of her enlightened and gracious Emperor Joseph, but so spiritless and benumbed had she become that she could not understand his message.

He was attempting a vain task in trying to infuse new life into the empire. There were no living channels to convey the current. The only thing to be done with it was to sweep it away--and the man and the time for doing this were close at hand. The surface calm which existed while Leopold II. was repairing the disorder left by his reforming brother Joseph, was the calm which precedes the hurricane.

[1] See Chart of Civilization in Six Centuries, ”Who, When, and What.”

CHAPTER XV.

The energies which were to transform the face of Europe had been gradually centering in France. They commenced when Voltaire and Rousseau made it the fas.h.i.+on to scoff at the Church. Then, as religion and morality are closely allied, virtue became also a subject of ridicule. The spirit animating this was supposed to be a reforming spirit. It was an effort to free the people from the fetters of ecclesiasticism. Naturally, this led to a.s.saults upon other fetters, other prevailing abuses. The vices of the Court were held up to view--its extravagance and luxury; all of which people were reminded that _they_ had to pay for.

Just at this time the Colonies in North America threw off the English yoke because of this very matter of taxation unjustly imposed, and France enthusiastically helped them to establish a free republic and to humiliate her rival!

Frenchmen returned from the United States and contrasted the fresh vigor and purity of its inst.i.tutions with the decrepit corruptions in France. The current began to flow very swiftly now. A Richelieu or a Louis XIV. would have been powerless to arrest the mad forces which quickly developed. What could the feeble, well-intentioned Louis XVI.

do! He was like a skiff caught in the rus.h.i.+ng rapids of the Niagara River. It was only a question of how long he could hold on to pa.s.sing twigs and branches before he should go over the precipice. In 1793 Europe read with shuddering horror of his execution, and nine months later Maria Theresa's daughter--the beautiful, the adored Marie Antoinette--sat in a cart with her arms pinioned behind her, as she was driven to the scaffold.

The men who had guided this storm in its beginnings had themselves been engulfed in it, and a French republic was proclaimed which had been erected upon a tragedy unparalleled in Europe.

It was a horrible avenging of centuries of wrong and oppression. But its purpose was thoroughly accomplished. No vestige of the old tyrannies remained. If France was again enslaved, the fetters would have to be forged anew!

The powers of Europe were not only filled with horror and indignation at the means by which this was accomplished, but they saw with alarm a pestilential republic, in imitation of that one across the sea, at their very doors.

They formed a combination, called the First Coalition, for its overthrow. If the states of Europe had really acted in concert, the life of the new republic would have been very brief. But Austria was jealous of Prussia, and Prussia was jealous of the close friends.h.i.+p forming between Austria and England, withdrew from the alliance, and made peace with the French republic.

Catherine, Empress of Russia, for reasons of her own also declined to join the coalition. While all Europe was thus engaged she thought it a good time to settle some scores with the Turks and to look after Poland, where a revolution was in progress. So, while the German Empire was engaged in suppressing republicanism in France, Frederick William II. of Prussia offered his services to Catherine to overthrow the independence of Poland.

Kosciusko vainly defended that unhappy country. With the fall of Warsaw, 1794, it ceased to exist as one in the family of nations.

So Austria had been left practically alone to put down the new republic, which was developing wonderful strength while these languid and inefficient efforts were being made against it; for even Austria was diverted by what was going on in Poland, and fearful that she was not going to get her share of the spoils.

Marie Antoinette's brother Leopold had died the year before his sister's execution and his son Francis II. was Emperor of Germany. The government of this new republic which had caused such a stir in Europe was a very simple affair. Five men who were called Directors were at its head, and an obscure young man of twenty-six, named Napoleon Bonaparte, had been given command of the army, with Italy as its field of operations.

No doubt Francis thought it would be an easy matter to deal with France after the more important matter of the part.i.tion of Poland was disposed of. Little did he suspect that the time was approaching when he would, at the bidding of that young man, take off his Imperial crown, and that Napoleon Bonaparte would rise to ascendency in Europe upon the ruins of the German Empire.

In 1796 the young Corsican led a ragged, unpaid army into Italy.