University of Virginia Library

TWO EMPERORS.

FOR the second time within a hundred days the
nation stands at the bier of its Emperor.
After the most fortunate of all her rulers, she laments
the most unfortunate. It seems as if in the
course of the history of our Emperors, not only imperial
splendour was to have a new birth but the
tremendous tragic vicissitudes of fate were also
to be renewed. It was in very truth under the
guidance of God as he so often said in simple
humanity, that the Emperor William I reached
the pinnacle of universal fame, against all human
calculation and reckoning, and far beyond his
own hope. In his steady ascent, however, he
proved fully competent to each new and greater
task, till, arrived at the last limit of life, he ended
his days in a halo of glory. In death also he was
the effective uniter of the Germans, who, to the
accompaniment of the cannon-thunder of his
battles, had, for the first time after centuries,
known the happiness of joy at complete victories,
and now gathered round his funeral vault in the
unanimity of hallowed grief. During the years
when the character of a growing man usually

takes its decisive bent, Prince Wilhelm could only
cherish the ambition, some day as his father's or
brother's Commander-in-Chief, to lead the armies
of Prussia to new victories. Himself almost the
youngest among the champions of the War of
Liberation, he shared with Gneisenau, with Clausewitz,
and all the political thinkers of the Prussian
Army the conviction that Germany's new western
frontier was as untenable as its loose confederation
of States, and that only a third Punic War could
finally decide the old struggle for power between
Gauls and Germans, and secure the independence
of the German State. All through the quiet
period of peace he held fast by this hope. As
early as the year 1840 he copied out in his own
handwriting Becker's song, "Our Rhine, free
German river, they ne'er shall take away," and
finished the last words, "Till the last brave German
warrior beneath its stream is laid," with that
bold flourish of the pen which afterwards in the
Emperor's signature became familiar to the whole
world. Hatred to the French was entirely absent
from his generous disposition, but more sagacious
than all the Prussian statesmen with the possible
exception of Motz, he early grasped the European
situation as it regarded Prussia and recognized
that the latter must grow in order to escape the
intolerable pressure of so many superior military
Powers. Thoroughly imbued with such thoughts,
and being every inch a soldier, he became in a few
years the favourite and the ideal of the Army,
beloved for his friendly courtesy, and feared for
an official severity, which showed even the lowest
camp-follower that a careful and judicial eye was
watching him. He looked upon his people in arms
and their awakened intelligence with the undiminished
enthusiasm of the War of Liberation,
but also with the more sober resolve to develop
singly the ideas of Scharnhorst and adapt them
to the changed times, so that this Army might
always remain the foremost. Outside, in the
smaller States, what was here undertaken in deep
political seriousness, was regarded as idle parade
display. The leaders of public opinion indulged
in radical dreams, expressed enthusiastic admiration
for Poles and Frenchmen and hoped for perpetual
peace. In the conceit of their superfine
culture they could not comprehend what the
Prince's simple martial thoroughness and devotion
to duty signified for the future of the Fatherland.

It was not till the reign of his brother, when the
"Prince of Prussia" had already to reckon with
the possibility of his own accession, that he engaged
in affairs of State. Like his father, he wished to
preserve the foundations of the ancient monarchical
constitution unaltered. "Prussia shall not
cease to be Prussia." Word for word he foretold
to his brother[1] what he was hereafter destined to
experience when the controversy regarding the reorganization
of the Army arose. The Diet, he said,

would misuse its right to control taxes in order to
weaken the power of the Army by shortening the
period of military service, and could, under the
plea of economy, easily deceive even the loyal.
His warning was disregarded, and, just as he had
once for the sake of the State sacrificed his youthful
love, so now he ceased to protest, as soon as the
King had made his decision on the subject. He
chivalrously stepped into the breach in the United
Diet, in order to divert towards himself all the
grudges which had collected against the throne
during that time of ferment.

Then came the storms of the Revolution period.
A mad hatred and huge misunderstanding were
discharged upon his head; only the Army which
knew him understood him. Round the bivouac
fires of the Prussian Guard in Schleswig-Holstein
they sang

And when he returned from the exile which he had
undergone for his brother's sake, he accepted in
obedience to the King the new constitutional
régime. He gladly acknowledged what was right
and vital in the measure, of the Frankfort Parliament;
but he would not sacrifice the privileges
of the German Princes and the strict monarchical
constitution of the Army to doctrinaire attempts
at innovation. The movement which had no
leaders ended in a terrible disappointment. The
Prince found himself compelled to put down the
disturbance in Baden. During the long years of
exhaustion which followed he had plenty of time
to reflect on the causes of the failure, and to ponder
his brother's remark that an Imperial Crown could
be won only on the battle-field.

Then the illness of King Frederick William IV
set him at the head of the State. After a year of
patient waiting, he assumed the regency in virtue
of his own right, firmly tearing asunder the finely-spun
webs of conspiracy, and two years afterwards,
he succeeded to the throne. But once
again after some short days of jubilation and
vague expectancy he had again to experience the
fickleness of popular favour, and commence the
struggle which he had foreseen when heir to
the throne—the struggle which concerned his own
peculiar task—the reconstitution of the Army.
Party hatred increased to an incredible degree,
such as was only possible in the nation which had
waged the Thirty Years' War. Matters came to
such a pitch that the German comic papers caricatured
the honest, manly soldier's face, which
still reflected the smile of Queen Louisa, under
the likeness of a tiger. The struggle about the
constitution of the Army became so hopelessly
complicated, that only the decisive force of military
successes could cut the tangled knot, and
establish the King's right.

And these successes came in those seven great

years when all at once the results of two hundred
years of Prussian history were summed up, when
one after the other, all the problems at which the
Hohenzollern statesmen had laboured through so
many generations, were solved. The last of the
North German marches was wrested from Scandinavian
rule, and thereby the work of the Great
Elector was completed; the Battle of Königgrätz
realized the hope which had been shattered on the
field of Kollin, the hope of the liberation of Germany
from the dominion of Austria; finally, a
succession of incomparable victories, and the
coronation of the Emperor in the hall of the Bourbons,
at Versailles, surpassed all that the combatants
of 1813 had expected from the third Punic
War to which they looked forward. The Prussians
thankfully recognized that their constitution
was more secure than ever under this strong rule;
for immediately after the Bohemian War, the
King, who had been so completely successful in
the affair, voluntarily made legal reparation for
the infringement of constitutional forms, and
when the strife was over, not a word of bitterness to
recall it, came from his lips. But the German
Confederates had, through the victories of this
war—the first they had really waged in common—
at last attained to a healthy national pride, and in
their joy at the new Empire forgotten the rivalries
of many centuries.

In all these strange courses of events, which
might have turned even a sober brain, King William

appeared always and equally firm and sure,
kindly and modest. During the constitutional
struggle he made, according to his own confession,
the severest sacrifice which could have been
demanded from his heart, which always craved
for affection, in bearing the estrangement from
his beloved people. In the same spirit of self-conquest
he formed the difficult resolve to go to
war with Austria, with whom he had been so long
on friendly terms. Yet after his victory he demanded
without any hesitation the acquisitions
which he would never have taken from the hands
of the revolutionaries as the price of a righteous
war. During the sittings of the first North German
Reichstag, he said, smilingly, with his sublime
naïve frankness, to the deputies for Leipzig,
"Yes, I would gladly have kept Leipzig."

In these difficult years he only wavered when,
with his soldierly directness, he could not at
once bring himself to believe in the jesuitry of
cunning opponents. It was thus at Baden, in
1863, when the German Diet invited him in so
apparently friendly and frank a way to the Frankfort
Conference, and again in Ems during the
negotiations with Benedetti. But to regard the
great crisis of history in too petty and minute a
way is to falsify it; it is enough for posterity to
know that after a short hesitation which did honour
to his character, King William made the right
resolve in both cases.

After his return home, the new Emperor said:

"This result had been for a long time in our
thoughts as a possibility. Now it has been brought
to the light. Let us take care that it remains
day." It is true that he himself believed, that
in a "short span of time," as he said, he would
be able to witness only the first beginnings of the
new order in Germany. But the event proved
otherwise and better. He was not only destined
to complete the fundamental laws of the kingdom,
but by the force of his personality to give inward
support to its growth. At first many of the confederate
princes saw in the constitution of the
Empire only a fetter, but they soon all recognized
in it a security for their own rights, because the
indisputable leader of the high German nobility
wore the Imperial crown and his fidelity assured
absolute security to each. So it came to pass,
really through the merit of the Emperor, and
contrary to the frankly uttered expectation of the
Chancellor, that the Federal Council, which at
one time was universally suspected as the representative
of particularism, became the reliable
support of national unity, while the Reichstag
soon again fell a prey to the incalculable caprices
of party-spirit.

The Emperor William never possessed a confidant
who advised him in everything. With a
sure knowledge of men he found out capable
ministers for his Council, and with the magnanimity
of a great man he allowed those, whom he
had tested, a very free hand; but each, even the

Chancellor, only within his own department.
He always remained the Emperor, and held all
the threads of government together in his own
hand.

He first tasted the greatest happiness of life,
when, after escaping by a miracle an attempt at
assassination, he answered the enemies of Society
with that magnanimous Imperial manifesto, in
which he undertook to eradicate the social evils
of the time. Then it was that the nation first
understood completely what they possessed in
their Emperor; and a stream of affectionate
loyalty, such as only springs from the depths of
the German spirit, carried and supported him
through his last years. Europe became accustomed
to revere in the grey-headed victor of so
many battles the preserver of the world's peace;
and it was for the sake of peace that he overcame
his old preference for Russia, and concluded the
Central-European Alliance. In domestic matters
the strong monarchical character of his rule grew
more defined as the years went on; the individual
will of the Emperor maintained his right in the
Parliaments, and was now supported by the cordial
concurrence of a now thoroughly informed public
opinion. The Germans knew that their Emperor
always did what was necessary, and in his simple,
artless, distinct way, always "said what was to
be said," as Goethe expressed it. Even in provinces
which lay remote from the lines on which
his own mental development had proceeded, he

soon found himself at home with his inborn gift
of kingly penetration; however much the nation
owed him in the sphere of artistic production, he
never distinguished with his favour anyone who
was unworthy among the artists and the literati.
Some features in his character recall his ancestors
the Great Elector and the Great King, Frederick
William I and Frederick William III; that which
was peculiar to him was the quiet and happy
harmony of his character. In his simple greatness
there was nothing dazzling or mysterious, except
the almost superhuman vitality of his body and
soul. All could understand him except those
who were blinded by the pride of half-culture;
the immense strength of his character, and his
unswerving devotion to duty served as an example
to all, the simple and the intellectual alike. Thus
he became the most beloved of all the Hohenzollern
rulers. With splendid unanimity the Reichstag
voted him the amount necessary for strengthening
the Army, and up to the last his honest eyes
looked hopefully from the venerable storm-beaten
countenance on all the vital elements of the new
time. Only shortly before his death he spoke with
confidence of the patriotic spirit of the younger
generation in Germany. When he departed, there
was a universal feeling as though Germany could
not live without him, although for years we had
been obliged to expect the end.

What a contrast between the continually ascending
course of life of the great father and the gloomy

destiny of the noble son! Born as heir to the
throne, and joyfully hailed at his birth on the
propitious anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig
by all Prussian hearts, carefully educated for his
princely position by excellent teachers, Prince
Frederick William, as soon as he attained to manhood,
appeared to excel all in manly strength and
beauty. When he married the English Princess
Royal, all the circles of Liberalism expected from
his rule a time of prosperity for the nations, for
England was still reckoned to be the model land
of freedom, and the halo of political legend still
encircled the heads of Leopold of Belgium and of
the House of Coburg, who were delighted at the
marriage. It was soon evident that the Crown
Prince could neither reconcile himself to those
infringements of formal rights which were caused
by the struggle about the constitution, nor to the
plan for incorporating Schleswig-Holstein with
Prussia. But he never consented, like most
English heirs to the throne, to place himself at
the head of the Opposition; and he rejected as un-Prussian
the thought that there could ever be a
party of the Crown Prince. In the Danish War
he accomplished his first great service for the
State; his powerful co-operation helped the still
unexperienced and often hesitating commanders
to decide on a bolder procedure.

Then came the brilliant days of his fame as
Commander-in-Chief, which have secured for
him for ever his place in German history. He

helped towards winning the victory of Königgrätz
by the bold attacking skirmishes of his Silesian
Army and made it decisive by his attack on
Chlum. He delivered the first crushing blows
in the war against France; his fair Germanic giant
figure was the first announcement to the Alsatians
that their old Fatherland was demanding them
back; through his martial deeds and the heart-moving
power of his cheerful popular kindness,
the Bavarian and Swabian warriors were for the
first time quite won over to the cause of German
unity. Never in the German Army will the day
be forgotten when, after fresh and glorious victories,
"Our Fritz," distributed the iron crosses to
his Prussians and Bavarians before the statue of
Louis XIV, in the courtyard of the Palace of
Versailles.

After peace was concluded, the position of the
famous Commander-in-Chief was not an easy one.
As a Field-Marshal he was already too high in
military rank and had too little interest in the
daily duties of a time of peace for it to be easy to
find him a suitable command. Only the most
important of the German military inspections,
the oversight of the South German troops, was
assigned to him, and every year he performed this
duty for some weeks with so much insight, firmness,
and friendliness, that he won almost more
affection in the South than in his Northern home.
The South Germans saw him fully occupied and
exerting all his energies; at home he only seldom

appeared in public life. He was the victim of his
father's extraordinary greatness, and it was that
which constituted his tragic destiny. He passed in
a life of retirement long years of manly vigour,
which according to all human computation he
would have had to pass upon the throne. This
long period indeed brought him a fulness of paternal
happiness and gave him frequent opportunities
for displaying his fine natural eloquence and for
pursuing benevolent projects that were fraught
with blessing for the common weal, but it did not
provide adequate scope for his virile energy.
Already, when a young Prince, the Emperor
William cherished strict and well-weighed principles
regarding the unavoidable limits which
the heir to the throne must impose upon himself;
he knew that the first subject in the Kingdom
must not join in discussion, if he is not to be
tempted to join in rule. Like all the great monarchs
of history, and all the Hohenzollerns with
the solitary exception of King Frederick William
III, he allowed the heir to the throne no participation
in affairs of State.

Only once, after the last attempt on the Emperor's
life, was the Crown Prince commissioned
to represent his father. It was an eventful time;
the Berlin Congress had just assembled, the negotiations
with the Roman Curia had hardly begun,
and the law regarding Socialists was on the point
of being passed. The Crown Prince carried out
all his difficult tasks with masterly discretion,

and Germany should never forget how he, contrary
doubtless to the dictates of his own mild
heart, caused the executioner's axe to fall on the
neck of the Emperor's assailant. By this brave
act he re-enforced the half-obsolete death-punishment
and gave it the weight which it should have
in every properly ordered State.

On the Emperor's recovery the Crown Prince
withdrew to the quiet life of his home, and the
spirit of criticism which pervades the Courts of
all heirs-apparent could not fail to find expression
now and then, but it did so always in a modest
and respectful way. His exertions on behalf of
art were many and fruitful; without him the
Hermes of Praxiteles would not have been awakened
to new life, and the Berlin Technological
Museum would not have been completed in such
classical purity of form. He was the first in the
succession of the Prussian heirs to the throne who
had received a University education and he was
proud to wear the purple mantle of the Rector
of the old Albertina University. In his long life
of retirement, however, the Crown Prince sometimes
lost touch with the powerful progressive
movements of the time and could not fully follow
the new ideas which were in vogue. He thought
to arrest with a few words of angry censure the
anti-semitic movements, the sole cause of which
was the over-weening presumption of the Jews,
and he warned the students of Königsberg against
the dangers of Chauvinism, a sentiment which

after two hundred years of cosmopolitanism, is
as unfamiliar to the Germans as its foreign
name.

But the course of human things looks different
from a throne than when viewed from below. The
nation, knowing the well-beloved Prince as they
did, hoped that, as in the case of his father, his
character would develop with his life-tasks and
that he would show as much energy as a sovereign
as he had displayed when representing his father.
Then the catastrophe overtook him. Three German
physicians—Professors Gerhardt, von Bergmann,
and Tobold—recognized at once the character
of the disease, and spoke the truth fearlessly
as we are accustomed to expect from German men
of science. A cure was still possible and even
probable. But the resolve which would have
saved the patient was lacking, and who can
venture to utter a word of blame, since almost
every layman in similar circumstances
would have made a similar choice. Then the
patient was handed over to an English physician,
who at once, by the unparalleled falsehood
of his reports, cast a stain on the good
name of our ancient and honourable Prussia.
With growing anxiety the Germans began to
surmise that this precious life was in bad hands.
The result was more tragic than their worst fears.
When the Emperor William closed his eyes, a
dying Emperor came up to succeed to the lofty
inheritance.

The greatness of the monarchy, and its superiority
to all republican forms of government rests
essentially on the well-assured and long duration
of the princely office. Its power is crippled when
this assurance is lacking. The reign of the dying
Emperor could only be a sad episode in the history
of the Fatherland, sad on account of the inexpressible
sufferings of the noble patient, sad on
account of the deceitful proceedings of the English
doctor and his dirty journalistic accomplices, and
sad on account of the impudence of the German
Liberal party who obtruded themselves eagerly
on the Emperor as though he belonged to them,
and certainly gained one success, the fall of the
Minister von Puttkamer. The monarchical parties
on the other hand both by a feeling of loyalty
and the prospect of the approaching end were
compelled to preserve comparative silence. At
such times of testing, all the heart-secrets of parties
are revealed. Those who did not know it before
were now obliged to recognize what sycophancy
lurks beneath the banner of free thought, and
how everyone who thought for himself would be
tyrannized over if this party ever came into power.
Fortunately for us, in the whole Empire they have
behind them only the majority of Berlin people,
some learned men who have gone astray in politics,
the mercantile communities of some discontented
trading towns, and the certainly considerable
power of international Judaism. But let us banish
these dark pictures which history has long left

behind. Let us hold fast in reverent recollection
that which lends moral consecration to the tragic
reign of the Emperor Frederick. With a religious
patience, whose greatness only a few of the initiated
can thoroughly understand, with an heroic
strength which outshines all the glories of his
victories on the battlefield, he bore the tortures
of his disease, and bereft of speech he still preserved
in the face of death the old fidelity to duty
of the Hohenzollerns and his warm enthusiasm
for all the unchanging ideals of humanity. In a
way worthy of his father he departed to everlasting
peace, and so long as German hearts beat,
they will remember the royal sufferer who once
appeared to us the happiest and most joyful of
the Germans and now was doomed to end his life
in so much suffering.

In those happy days when the picture of the
"Four Kings"[2] hung in all German shop-windows,
many a one said to himself in sorrowful foreboding
that "it was too great good-fortune." Now the
equalizing justice of Providence has caused the
abundance of joy to be followed by such an excess
of grief as seems too hard for a monarchic people.
Of the four Kings two are no more. But life
belongs to the living. With hopeful confidence
the nation turns her eyes to her young Imperial
lord. All which he has hitherto said to his people,
breathes a spirit of strength and courage, piety
and justice. We know that the good spirit of the

old Emperor's times still remains unlost to the
Empire, and even in the first days of mourning
we lived through a great hour of German history.
With German fidelity all our Princes gathered
around the Emperor and appeared with him
before the representatives of the nation. The
world learned that the German Emperor does not
die, whoever may wear the crown for the moment.
What a change of affairs since the times when on
each New Year's day the German Courts watched
anxiously for the utterances of the mysterious
Cæsar on the Seine! To-day the German speech
from the throne makes no mention of these world-powers
which once presumed to be the only representatives
of civilization, for one can argue as
little with unteachable enemies as with pushing
and doubtful friends. Whether Europe accommodates
itself peacefully to the alteration of the
old relations between the Powers, or whether the
German sword must again be drawn to secure
what has been won, in either case we hope to be
prepared.

Unless all signs are deceptive, this great century
which seemed to begin as a French one, will end
as a German one; by Germany's thoughts and
Germany's deeds will the problem be solved how
a strong hereditary sovereignty can be compatible
with the just claims of modern society. Some
day the time must come, when the nations will
realize that the battles of the Emperor William
not only created a Fatherland for the Germans

but bestowed upon the community of European
States a juster and more reasonable arrangement.
Then will be fulfilled what Emmanuel Geibel once
said to the grey-haired conqueror.