[1] A portrait of Madame de Krüdener and her son as "Venus disarming
Cupid," by Angelica Kauffmann, of this period, is in the Louvre.
[2] He died while she was there in 1792.
[3] The consorts of Alexander I. of Russia and of Gustavus Adolphus
IV. of Sweden were princesses of Baden.
[4] She had been condemned some years previously in Württemberg to
the pillory and three years' imprisonment as a "swindler"
(_Betrügerin_), on her own confession. Her curious history is given
in detail by M. Muhlenbeck.
[5] In 1809 it was obviously inconvenient to have people proclaiming
Napoleon as "the Beast."
[6] Berckheim had been French commissioner of police in Mainz and had
abandoned his post in 1813.
KRUG, WILHELM TRAUGOTT (1770-1842), German philosopher and author, was
born at Radis in Prussia on the 22nd of June 1770, and died at Leipzig
on the 12th of January 1842. He studied at Wittenberg under Reinhard and
Jehnichen, at Jena under Reinhold, and at Göttingen. From 1801 to 1804
he was professor of philosophy at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, after which he
succeeded Kant in the chair of logic and metaphysics at the university
of Königsberg. From 1809 till his death he was professor of philosophy
at Leipzig. He was a prolific writer on a great variety of subjects, in
all of which he excelled as a popularizer rather than as an original
thinker. In philosophy his method was psychological; he attempted to
explain the Ego by examining the nature of its reflection upon the facts
of consciousness. Being is known to us only through its presentation in
consciousness; consciousness only in its relation to Being. Both Being
and Consciousness, however, are immediately known to us, as also the
relation existing between them. By this Transcendental Synthesis he
proposed to reconcile Realism and Idealism, and to destroy the
traditional difficulty between transcendental, or pure, thought and
"things in themselves." Apart from the intrinsic value of his work, it
is admitted that it had the effect of promoting the study of philosophy
and of stimulating freedom of thought in religion and politics. His
principal works are: _Briefe über den neuesten Idealismus_ (1801);
_Versuch über die Principien der philosophischen Erkenntniss_ (1801);
_Fundamentalphilosophie_ (1803); _System der theoretischen Philosophie_
(1806-1810), _System der praktischen Philosophie_ (1817-1819); _Handbuch
der Philosophie_ (1820; 3rd ed., 1828); _Logik oder Denklehre_ (1827);
_Geschichte der Philos. alter Zeit_ (1815; 2nd ed., 1825); _Allgemeines
Handwörterbuch der philosophischen Wissenschaften_ (1827-1834; 2nd ed.,
1832-1838); _Universal-philosophische Vorlesungen für Gebildete
beiderlei Geschlechts_. His work _Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philos.
des XIX. Jahrh._ (1835-1837) contains interesting criticisms of Hegel
and Schelling.
See also his autobiography, _Meine Lebensreise_ (Leipzig, 2nd ed.,
1840).
KRUGER, STEPHANUS JOHANNES PAULUS (1825-1904), president of the
Transvaal Republic, was born in Colesberg, Cape Colony, on the 10th of
October 1825. His father was Caspar Jan Hendrick Kruger, who was born in
1796, and whose wife bore the name of Steyn. In his ancestry on both
sides occur Huguenot names. The founder of the Kruger family appears to
have been a German named Jacob Kruger, who in 1713 was sent with others
by the Dutch East India Company to the Cape. At the age of ten Paul
Kruger--as he afterwards came to be known--accompanied his parents in
the migration, known as the Great Trek, from the Cape Colony to the
territories north of the Orange in the years 1835-1840. From boyhood his
life was one of adventure. Brought up on the borderland between
civilization and barbarism, constantly trekking, fighting and hunting,
his education was necessarily of the most primitive character. He learnt
to read and to write, and was taught the narrowest form of Dutch
Presbyterianism. His literature was almost confined to the Bible, and
the Old Testament was preferred to the New. It is related of Kruger, as
indeed it has been said of Piet Retief and others of the early Boer
leaders, that he believed himself the object of special Divine guidance.
At about the age of twenty-five he is said to have disappeared into the
veldt, where he remained alone for several days, under the influence of
deep religious fervour. During this sojourn in the wilderness Kruger
stated that he had been especially favoured by God, who had communed
with and inspired him. Throughout his life he professed this faith in
God's will and guidance, and much of his influence over his followers is
attributable to their belief in his sincerity and in his enjoyment of
Divine favour. The Dutch Reformed Church in the Transvaal, pervaded by a
spirit and faith not unlike those which distinguished the Covenanters,
was divided in the early days into three sects. Of these the narrowest,
most puritanical, and most bigoted was the Dopper sect, to which Kruger
belonged. His Dopper following was always unswerving in its support, and
at all critical times in the internal quarrels of the state rallied
round him. The charge of hypocrisy, frequently made against Kruger--if
by this charge is meant the mere juggling with religion for purely
political ends--does not appear entirely just. The subordination of
reason to a sense of superstitious fanaticism is the keynote of his
character, and largely the explanation of his life. Where faith is so
profound as to believe the Divine guidance _all_, and the individual
intelligence _nil_, a man is able to persuade himself that any course he
chooses to take is the one he is directed to take. Where bigotry is so
blind, reason is but dust in the balance. At the same time there were
incidents in Kruger's life which but ill conform to any Biblical
standard he might choose to adopt or feel imposed upon him. Even van
Oordt, his eloquent historian and apologist, is cognisant of this fact.
When the lad, who had already taken part in fights with the Matabele and
the Zulus, was fourteen his family settled north of the Vaal and were
among the founders of the Transvaal state. At the age of seventeen Paul
found himself an assistant field cornet, at twenty he was field cornet,
and at twenty-seven held a command in an expedition against the Bechuana
chief Sechele--the expedition in which David Livingstone's mission-house
was destroyed.
In 1853 he took part in another expedition against Montsioa. When not
fighting natives in those early days Kruger was engaged in distant
hunting excursions which took him as far north as the Zambezi. In 1852
the Transvaal secured the recognition of its independence from Great
Britain in the Sand River convention. For many years after this date the
condition of the country was one bordering upon anarchy, and into the
faction strife which was continually going on Kruger freely entered. In
1856-1857 he joined M. W. Pretorius in his attempt to abolish the
district governments in the Transvaal and to overthrow the Orange Free
State government and compel a federation between the two countries. The
raid into the Free State failed; the blackest incident in connexion with
it was the attempt of the Pretorius and Kruger party to induce the
Basuto to harass the Free State forces behind, while they were attacking
them in front.
From this time forward Kruger's life is so intimately bound up with the
history of his country, and even in later years of South Africa, that a
study of that history is essential to an understanding of it (see
TRANSVAAL and SOUTH AFRICA). In 1864, when the faction fighting ended
and Pretorius was president, Kruger was elected commandant-general of
the forces of the Transvaal. In 1870 a boundary dispute arose with the
British government, which was settled by the Keate award (1871). The
decision caused so much discontent in the Transvaal that it brought
about the downfall of President Pretorius and his party; and Thomas
François Burgers, an educated Dutch minister, resident in Cape Colony,
was elected to succeed him. During the term of Burgers' presidency
Kruger appeared to great disadvantage. Instead of loyally supporting the
president in the difficult task of building up a stable state, he did
everything in his power to undermine his authority, going so far as to
urge the Boers to pay no taxes while Burgers was in office. The faction
of which he was a prominent member was chiefly responsible for bringing
about that _impasse_ in the government of the country which drew such
bitter protest from Burgers and terminated in the annexation by the
British in April 1877. At this period of Transvaal history it is
impossible to trace any true patriotism in the action of the majority of
the inhabitants. The one idea of Kruger and his faction was to oust
Burgers from office on any pretext, and, if possible, to put Kruger in
his place. When the downfall of Burgers was assured and annexation
offered itself as the alternative resulting from his downfall, it is
true that Kruger opposed it. But matters had gone too far. Annexation
became an accomplished fact, and Kruger accepted paid office under the
British government. He continued, however, so openly to agitate for the
retrocession of the country, being a member of two deputations which
went to England endeavouring to get the annexation annulled, that in
1878 Sir Theophilus Shepstone, the British administrator, dismissed him
from his service. In 1880 the Boer rebellion occurred, and Kruger was
one of the famous triumvirate, of which General Piet Joubert and
Pretorius were the other members, who, after Majuba, negotiated the
terms of peace on which the Pretoria convention of August 1881 was
drafted. In 1883 he was elected president of the Transvaal, receiving
3431 votes as against 1171 recorded for Joubert.
In November 1883 President Kruger again visited England, this time for
the purpose of getting another convention. The visit was successful, the
London convention, which for years was a subject of controversy, being
granted by Lord Derby in 1884 on behalf of the British government. The
government of the Transvaal being once more in the hands of the Boers,
the country rapidly drifted towards that state of national bankruptcy
from which it had only been saved by annexation in 1877. In 1886, the
year in which the Rand mines were discovered, President Kruger was by no
means a popular man even among his own followers; as an administrator of
internal affairs he had shown himself grossly incompetent, and it was
only the specious success of his negotiations with the British
government which had retained him any measure of support. In 1888 he was
elected president for a second term of office. In 1889 Dr. Leyds, a
young Hollander, was appointed state secretary, and the system of state
monopolies around which so much corruption grew up was soon in full
course of development. The principle of government monopoly in trade
being thus established, President Kruger now turned his attention to the
further securing of Boer political monopoly. The Uitlanders were
increasing in numbers, as well as providing the state with a revenue. In
1890, 1891, 1892, and 1894 the franchise laws (which at the time of the
convention were on a liberal basis) were so modified that all Uitlanders
were practically excluded altogether. In 1893 Kruger had to face a third
presidential election, and on this occasion the opposition he had raised
among the burgers, largely by the favouritism he displayed to the
Hollander party, was so strong that it was fully anticipated that his
more liberal opponent, General Joubert, would be elected. Before the
election was decided Kruger took care to conciliate the volksraad
members, as well as to see that at all the volksraad elections, which
occurred shortly before the presidential election, his supporters were
returned, or, if not returned, that his opponents were objected to on
some trivial pretext, and by this means prevented from actually sitting
in the volksraad until the presidential election was over. The Hollander
and _concessionnaire_ influence, which had become a strong power in the
state, was all in favour of President Kruger. In spite of these facts
Kruger's position was insecure. "General Joubert was, without any doubt
whatever, elected by a very considerable majority."[1] But the figures
as announced gave Kruger a majority of about 700 votes. General Joubert
accused the government of tampering with the returns, and appealed to
the volksraad. The appeal, however, was fruitless, and Kruger retained
office. The action taken by President Kruger at this election, and his
previous actions in ousting President Burgers and in absolutely
excluding the Uitlanders from the franchise, all show that at any cost,
in his opinion, the government must remain a close corporation, and that
while he lived he must remain at the head of it.
From 1877 onward Kruger's external policy was consistently anti-British,
and on every side--in Bechuanaland, in Rhodesia, in Zululand--he
attempted to enlarge the frontiers of the Transvaal at the expense of
Great Britain. In these disputes he usually gained something, and it was
not until 1895 that he was definitely defeated in his endeavours to
obtain a seaport. His internal policy was blind, reckless and
unscrupulous, and inevitably led to disaster. It may be summed up in his
own words when replying to a deputation of Uitlanders, who desired to
obtain the legalization of the use of the English language in the
Transvaal. "This," said Kruger, "is my country; these are my laws. Those
who do not like to obey my laws can leave my country." This rejection of
the advances of the Uitlanders--by whose aid he could have built up a
free and stable republic--led to his downfall, though the failure of the
Jameson Raid in the first days of 1896 gave him a signal opportunity to
secure the safety of his country by the grant of real reforms. But the
Raid taught him no lesson of this kind, and despite the intervention of
the British government the Uitlanders' grievances were not remedied.
In 1898 Kruger was elected president of the Transvaal for the fourth and
last time. In 1899 relations between the Transvaal and Great Britain had
become so strained, by reason of the oppression of the foreign
population, that a conference was arranged at Bloemfontein between Sir
Alfred (afterwards Lord) Milner, the high commissioner, and President
Kruger. Kruger was true to his principles. At every juncture in his life
his object had been to gain for himself and his own narrow policy
everything that he could, while conceding nothing in return. It was for
this reason that he invariably failed to come to any arrangement with
Sir John Brand while the latter was president of the Free State. In
1889, the very year following President Brand's death, he was able to
make a treaty with President Reitz, his successor, which bound each of
the Boer republics to assist the other in case its independence was
menaced, unless the quarrel could be shown to be an unjust one on the
part of the state so menaced. In effect it bound the Free State to share
all the hazardous risk of the reckless anti-British Transvaal policy,
without the Free State itself receiving anything in return. Kruger thus
achieved one of the objects of his life. With such a history of apparent
success, it is not to be wondered at that the Transvaal president came
to Bloemfontein to meet Sir Alfred Milner in no mood for concession. It
is true that he made an ostensible offer on the franchise question, but
that proposal was made dependent on so many conditions that it was a
palpable sham. Every proposition which Sir Alfred Milner made was met by
the objection that it threatened the independence of the Transvaal. This
retort was President Kruger's rallying cry whenever he found himself in
the least degree pressed, either from within or without the state. To
admit Uitlanders to the franchise, to no matter how moderate a degree,
would destroy the independence of the state. In October 1899, after a
long and fruitless correspondence with the British government, war with
Great Britain was ushered in by an ultimatum from the Transvaal.
Immediately after the ultimatum Natal and the Cape Colony were invaded
by the Boers both of the Transvaal and the Free State. Yet one of the
most memorable utterances made by Kruger at the Bloemfontein conference
was couched in the following terms: "We follow out what God says,
'Accursed be he that removeth his neighbour's landmark.' As long as your
Excellency lives you will see that we shall never be the attacking party
on another man's land." The course of the war that followed is described
under TRANSVAAL. In 1900, Bloemfontein and Pretoria having been occupied
by British troops, Kruger, too old to go on commando, with the consent
of his executive proceeded to Europe, where he endeavoured to induce the
European powers to intervene on his behalf, but without success.
From this time he ceased to have any political influence. He took up his
residence at Utrecht, where he dictated a record of his career,
published in 1902 under the title of _The Memoirs of Paul Kruger_. He
died on the 14th of July 1904 at Clarens, near Vevey, on the shores of
the Lake of Geneva, whither he had gone for the sake of his health. He
was buried at Pretoria on the following 16th of December, Dingaan's Day,
the anniversary of the day in 1838 when the Boers crushed the Zulu king
Dingaan--a fight in which Kruger, then a lad of thirteen, had taken
part. Kruger was thrice married, and had a large family. His second wife
died in 1891. When he went to Europe he left his third wife in Lord
Roberts's custody at Pretoria, but she gradually failed, and died there
(July 1901). It was in her grave that the body of her husband was laid.
It is recorded that when a statue to President Kruger at Pretoria was
erected, it was by Mrs. Kruger's wish that the hat was left open at the
top, in order that the rain-water might collect there for the birds to
drink.
See J. F. van Oordt, _P. Kruger en de opkomst d. Zuid-Afrikaansche
Republiek_ (Amsterdam, 1898); the _Memoirs_ already mentioned; F. R.
Statham, _Paul Kruger and his Times_ (1898); and, among works with a
wider scope, G. M. Theal, _History of South Africa_ (for events down
to 1872 only); Sir J. P. Fitzpatrick, _The Transvaal from Within_
(1899); _The Times History of the War in South Africa_ (1900-9); and
A. P. Hillier, _South African Studies_ (1900).