known. What do the movements of Russian and Austrian troops mean?
Frederick asks at Vienna; answer is no answer. We are ready then; Saxony
is the key to Bohemia. Frederick marches into Saxony, demands inspection
of Dresden Archives, with originals of documents known to him; blockades
the Saxons in Pirna, somewhat forcibly requiring not Saxon neutrality,
but Saxon alliance. And meanwhile neither France nor Austria is deaf to
the cries of Saxon-Polish majesty. Austrian Field-Marshal Browne is
coming to relieve the Saxons; is foiled, but not routed, at Lobositz;
tries another move, executing admirably his own part, but the Saxons
fail in theirs; the upshot, capitulation, the Saxon troops forced to
volunteer as Prussians.
For the coming year, 1757, there are arrayed against Frederick four
armies--French, Austrian, Russian, Swedish; help only from a Duke of
Cumberland on the Weser; the last two enemies not presently formidable.
He is not to stand on the defensive, but to go on it; startles the world
by suddenly marching on Prag, in three columns. Before Prag a mighty
battle desperately fought; old Schwerin killed, Austrian Browne wounded
mortally--fatal to Austria; Austrians driven into Prag, with loss of
13,000 men. Not annihilative, since Prag can hold out, though with
prospect of famishing.
But Daun is coming, in no haste--Fabius Cunctator about to be
named--with 60,000 men; does come to Kolin. Frederick attacks; but a
blunder of too-impetuous Mannstein fatally overturns the plan of battle;
to which the resulting disaster is imputed: disaster seemingly
overwhelming and irretrievable, but Daun does not follow up. The siege
of Prag is raised and the Prussian army--much smaller--retreats to
Saxony. And on the west Cumberland is in retreat seawards, after
Hastenbeck, and French armies are advancing; Cumberland very soon
mercifully to disappear, Convention of Kloster-Seven unratified. But
Pitt at last has hold of the reins in England, and Ferdinand of
Brunswick gets nominated to succeed Cumberland--Pitt's selection?
In these months nothing comes but ill-fortune; clouds gathering; but all
leading up to a sudden and startling turning of tables. In October,
Soubise is advancing; and then--Rossbach. Soubise thinks he has
Frederick outflanked, finds himself unexpectedly taken on flank instead;
rolled up and shattered by a force hardly one-third of his own; loses
8,000 men, the Prussians not 600; a tremendous rout, after which
Frederick had no more fighting with the French.
Having settled Soubise and recovered repute, Frederick must make haste
to Silesia, where Prince Karl, along with Fabius Daun, is already
proclaiming Imperial Majesty again, not much hindered by Bevern.
Schweidnitz falls; Bevern, beaten at Breslau, gets taken prisoner;
Prussian army marches away; Breslau follows Schweidnitz. This is what
Frederick finds, three weeks after Rossbach. Well, we are one to three
we will have at Prince Karl--soldiers as ready and confident as the
king, their hero. Challenge accepted by Prince Karl; consummate
manoeuvring, borrowed from Epaminondas, and perfect discipline wreck the
Austrian army at Leuthen; conquest of Silesia brought to a sudden end.
The most complete of all Frederick's victories.
Next year (1758) the first effective subsidy treaty with England takes
shape, renewed annually; England to provide Frederick with two-thirds of
a million sterling. Ferdinand has got the French clear over Rhine
already. Frederick's next adventure, a swoop on Olmütz, is not
successful; the siege not very well managed; Loudon, best of partisan
commanders, is dispatched by Daun to intercept a very necessary convoy;
which means end of siege. Cautious Daun does not strike on the Prussian
retreat, not liking pitched battles.
However, it is now time to face an enemy with whom we have not yet
fought; of whose fighting capacity we incline to think little, in spite
of warnings of Marshal Keith, who knows them. The Russians have occupied
East Prussia and are advancing. On August 25, Frederick comes to
hand-grips with Russia--Theseus and the Minotaur at Zorndorf; with much
ultimate slaughter of Russians, Seidlitz, with his calvary, twice saving
the day; the bloodiest battle of the Seven Years' War, giving Frederick
new views of Russian obstinacy in the field. The Russians finally
retire; time for Frederick to be back in Saxony.
For Daun has used his opportunity to invade Saxony; very cleverly
checked by Prince Henri, while Frederick is on his way back. To Daun's
surprise, the king moves off on Silesia. Daun moved on Dresden.
Frederick, having cleared Silesia, sped back, and Daun retired. The end
of the campaign leaves the two sides much as it found them; Frederick at
least not at all annihilated. Ferdinand also has done excellently well.
_V.--Frederick at Bay_
Not annihilated, but reduced to the defensive; best of his veterans
killed off by now, exchequer very deficient in spite of English subsidy.
The allies form a huge cordon all round; broken into at points during
the spring, but Daun finds at last that Frederick does not mean any
invasion; that he, Daun, must be the invader. But now and hereafter
Fabius Cunctator waits for Russia.
In summer Russia is moving; Soltikoff, with 75,000 men, advancing,
driving back Dohna. Frederick's best captains are all gone now; he tries
a new one, Wedell, who gets beaten at Züllichau. Moreover, Haddick and
Loudon are on the way to join Soltikoff. Frederick plans and carries out
his movements to intercept the Austrians with extraordinary swiftness;
Haddick and Austrian infantry give up the attempted junction, but not so
swift-moving Loudon with his 20,000 horse; interception a partial
failure, and now Frederick must make straight for the Russians.
Just about this time--August 1--Ferdinand has won the really splendid
victory of Minden, on the Weser, a beautiful feat of war; for Pitt and
the English in their French duel a mighty triumph; this is Pitt's year,
but the worst of all in Frederick's own campaigns. His attack now on the
Russians was his worst defeat--at Kunersdorf. Beginning victoriously, he
tried to drive victory home with exhausted troops, who were ultimately
driven in rout by Loudon with fresh regiments (August 9).
For the moment Frederick actually despaired; intended to resign command,
and "not to revive the ruin of his country." But Daun was not capable of
dealing the finishing stroke; managed, however, to take Dresden, on
terms. Frederick, however, is not many weeks in recovering his
resolution; and a certain astonishing march of his brother, Prince
Henri--fifty miles in fifty-six hours through country occupied by the
enemy--is a turning-point. Soltikoff, sick of Daun's inaction, made
ready to go home and England rejoiced over Wolfe's capture of Quebec.
Frederick, recovering, goes too far, tries a blow at Daun, resulting in
disaster of Maxen, loss of a force of 12,000 men. On the other hand,
Hawke finished the French fleet at Quiberon Bay. A very bad year for
Frederick, but a very good one for his ally. Next year Loudon is to
invade Silesia.
It did seem to beholders in this year 1660 that Frederick was doomed,
could not survive; but since he did survive it, he was able to battle
out yet two more campaigns, enemies also getting worn out; a race
between spent horses. Of the marches by which Frederick carried himself
through this fifth campaign it is not possible to give an idea. Failure
to bring Daun to battle, sudden siege of Dresden--not successful,
perhaps not possible at all that it should have succeeded. In August a
dash on Silesia with three armies to face--Daun, Lacy, Loudon, and
possible Russians, edged off by Prince Henri. At Liegnitz the best of
management, helped by good luck and happy accident, gives him a decisive
victory over London's division, despite Loudon's admirable conduct; a
miraculous victory; Daun's plans quite scattered, and Frederick's
movements freed. Three months later the battle of Torgau, fought
dubiously all day, becomes a distinct victory in the night. Neither
Silesia nor Saxony are to fall to the Austrians.
Liegnitz and Torgau are a better outcome of operations than Kunersdorf
and Maxen; the king is, in a sense, stronger, but his resources are more
exhausted, and George III. is now become king in England; Pitt's power
very much in danger there. In the next year most noteworthy is Loudon's
brilliant stroke in capturing Schweidnitz, a blow for Frederick quite
unlooked for.
In January, however, comes bright news from Petersburg: implacable
Tsarina Elizabeth is dead, Peter III. is Tsar, sworn friend and admirer
of Frederick; Russia, in short, becomes suddenly not an enemy but a
friend. Bute, in England, is proposing to throw over his ally,
unforgivably; to get peace at price of Silesia, to Frederick's wrath,
who, having moved Daun off, attacks Schweidnitz, and gets it, not
without trouble. And so, practically, ends the seventh campaign.
French and English had signed their own peace preliminaries, to disgust
of Excellency Mitchell, the first-rate ambassador to Frederick during
these years. Austria makes proffers, and so at last this war ends with
Treaties of Paris and Hubertsburg; issue, as concerns Austria and
Prussia, "as you were before the war."
_VI.--Afternoon and Evening of Frederick's Life_
Frederick's Prussia is safe; America and India are to be English, not
French; France is on the way towards spontaneous combustion in
1789;--these are the fruits of the long war. During the rest of
Frederick's reign--twenty-three years--is nothing of world history to
dwell on. Of the coming combustion Frederick has no perception; for what
remains of him, he is King of Prussia, interesting to Prussia chiefly:
whereof no continuous narrative is henceforth possible to us, only a
loose appendix of papers, as of the extraordinary speed with which
Prussia recovered--brave Prussia, which has defended itself against
overwhelming odds. The repairing of a ruined Prussia cost Frederick much
very successful labour.
Treaty with Russia is made in 1764, Frederick now, having broken with
England, being extremely anxious to keep well with such a country under
such a Tsarina, about whom there are to be no rash sarcasms. In 1769 a
young Kaiser Joseph has a friendliness to Frederick very unlike his
mother's animosity. Out of which things comes first partition of Poland
(1772); an event inevitable in itself, with the causing of which
Frederick had nothing whatever to do, though he had his slice. There was
no alternative but a general European war; and the slice, Polish
Prussia, was very desirable; also its acquisition was extremely
beneficial to itself.
In 1778 Frederick found needful to interpose his veto on Austrian
designs in respect of Bavarian succession; got involved subsequently in
Bavarian war of a kind, ended by intervention of Tsarina Catherine. In
1780 Maria Theresa died; Joseph and Kaunitz launched on ambitious
adventures for imperial domination of the German Empire, making
overtures to the Tsarina for dual empire of east and west, alarming to
Frederick. His answer was the "Fürstenbund," confederation of German
princes, Prussia atop, to forbid peremptorily that the laws of the Reich
be infringed; last public feat of Frederick; events taking an unexpected
turn, which left it without actual effect in European history.
A few weeks after this Fürstenbund, which did very effectively stop
Joseph's schemes, Frederick got a chill, which was the beginning of his
breaking up. In January 1786, he developed symptoms concluded by the
physician called in to be desperate, but not immediately mortal. Four
months later he talked with Mirabeau in Berlin, on what precise errand
is nowise clear; interview reported as very lively, but "the king in
much suffering."
Nevertheless, after this he did again appear from Sans-Souci on
horseback several times, for the last time on July 4. To the last he
continued to transact state business. "The time which I have still I
must employ; it belongs not to me but to the state"--till August 15.
On August 17 he died. In those last days it is evident that chaos is
again big. Better for a royal hero, fallen old and feeble, to be hidden
from such things; hero whom we may account as hitherto the last of the
kings.
* * * * *
GEORGE FINLAY
History of Greece
George Finlay, the historian of Greece, was born on December
21, 1799, at Faversham, Kent, England, where his father, Capt.
J. Finlay, R.E., was inspector of the Government powder mills.
His early instruction was undertaken by his mother, to whose
training he attributed his love of history. He studied law at
Glasgow and Göttingen universities, at the latter of which he
became acquainted with a Greek fellow-student, and resolved to
take part in the struggle for Greek independence. He proceeded
to Greece, where he met Byron and the leaders of the Greek
patriotic forces, took part in many engagements with the
Turks, and conducted missions on behalf of the Greek
provisional government until the independence of Greece was
established. Finlay bought an estate in Attica, on which he
resided for many years. The publication of his great series of
histories of Greece began in 1844, and was completed in 1875
with the second edition, which brought the history of modern
Greece down to 1864. It has been said that Finlay, like
Machiavelli, qualified himself to write history by wide
experience as student, soldier, statesman, and economist. He
died on January 26, 1875.
_I.--Greece Under the Romans_
The conquests of Alexander the Great effected a permanent change in the
political conditions of the Greek nation, and this change powerfully
influenced its moral and social state during the whole period of its
subjection to the Roman Empire.
Alexander introduced Greek civilisation as an important element in his
civil government, and established Greek colonies with political rights
throughout his conquests. During 250 years the Greeks were the dominant
class in Asia, and the corrupting influence of this predominance was
extended to the whole frame of society in their European as well as
their Asiatic possessions. The great difference which existed in the
social condition of the Greeks and Romans throughout their national
existence was that the Romans formed a nation with the organisation of a
single city. The Greeks were a people composed of a number of rival
states, and the majority looked with indifference on the loss of their
independence. The Romans were compelled to retain much of the civil
government, and many of the financial arrangements which they found
existing. This was a necessity, because the conquered were much further
advanced in social civilisation than the conquerors. The financial
policy of Rome was to transfer as much of the money circulating in the
provinces, and the precious metals in the hands of private individuals,
as it was possible into the coffers of the state.
Hence, the whole empire was impoverished, and Greece suffered severely
under a government equally tyrannical in its conduct and unjust in its
legislation. The financial administration of the Romans inflicted, if
possible, a severer blow on the moral constitution of society than on
the material prosperity of the country. It divided the population of
Greece into two classes. The rich formed an aristocratic class, the poor
sank to the condition of serfs. It appears to be a law of human society
that all classes of mankind who are separated by superior wealth and
privileges from the body of the people are, by their oligarchical
constitution, liable to rapid decline.
The Greeks and the Romans never showed any disposition to unite and form
one people, their habits and tastes being so different. Although the
schools of Athens were still famous, learning and philosophy were but
little cultivated in European Greece because of the poverty of the
people and the secluded position of the country.
In the changes of government which preceded the establishment of
Byzantium as the capital of the Roman Empire by Constantine, the Greeks
contributed to effect a mighty revolution of the whole frame of social
life by the organisation which they gave to the Church from the moment
they began to embrace the Christian religion. It awakened many of the
national characteristics which had slept for ages, and gave new vigour
to the communal and municipal institutions, and even extended to
political society. Christian communities of Greeks were gradually melted
into one nation, having a common legislation and a common civil
administration as well as a common religion, and it was this which
determined Constantine to unite Church and State in strict alliance.
From the time of Constantine the two great principles of law and
religion began to exert a favourable influence on Greek society, and
even limited the wild despotism of the emperors. The power of the
clergy, however, originally resting on a more popular and more pure
basis than that of the law, became at last so great that it suffered the
inevitable corruption of all irresponsible authority entrusted to
humanity.
Then came the immigration and ravages of the Goths to the south of the
Danube, and that unfortunate period marked the commencement of the rapid
decrease of the Greek race, and the decline of Greek civilisation
throughout the empire. Under Justinian (527-565), the Hellenic race and
institutions in Greece itself received the severest blow. Although he
gave to the world his great system of civil law, his internal
administration was remarkable for religious intolerance and financial
rapacity. He restricted the powers and diminished the revenues of the
Greek municipalities, closed the schools of rhetoric and philosophy at
Athens, and seized the endowments of the Academy of Plato, which had
maintained an uninterrupted succession of teachers for 900 years. But it
was not till the reign of Heraclius that the ancient existence of the
Hellenic race terminated.
_II.--The Byzantine and Greek Empires_
The history of the Byzantine Empire divides itself into three periods
strongly marked by distinct characteristics. The first commences with
the reign of Leo III., the Isaurian, in 716, and terminates with that of
Michael III., in 867. It comprises the whole history of the predominance
of iconoclasm in the established church, of the reaction which
reinstated the Orthodox in power, and restored the worship of pictures
and images.
It opens with the effort by which Leo and the people of the empire saved
the Roman law and the Christian religion from the conquering Saracen. It
embraces the long and violent struggle between the government and the
people, the emperors seeking to increase the central power by
annihilating every local franchise, and to constitute themselves the
fountains of ecclesiastical as completely as of civil legislation.
The second period begins with the reign of Bazil I., in 867, and during
two centuries the imperial sceptre was retained by members of his
family. At this time the Byzantine Empire attained its highest pitch of
external power and internal prosperity. The Saracens were pursued into
the plains of Syria, the Bulgarian monarchy was conquered, the
Slavonians in Greece were almost exterminated, Byzantine commerce filled
the whole of the Mediterranean. But the real glory of the period
consisted in the respect for the administration of justice which
purified society more generally than it had ever done at any preceding
era of the history of the world.
The third period extends from the accession of Isaac I., in 1057, to the
conquest of the Byzantine Empire by the Crusaders, in 1204. This is the
true period of the decline and fall of the Eastern Empire. The
separation of the Greek and Latin churches was accomplished. The wealth
of the empire was dissipated, the administration of justice corrupted,
and the central authority lost all control over the population.
But every calamity of this unfortunate period sinks into insignificance
compared with the destruction of the greater part of the Greek race by
the savage incursions of the Seljouk Turks in Asia Minor. Then followed
the Crusades, the first three inflicting permanent evils on the Greek
race; while the fourth, which was organised in Venice, captured and
plundered Constantinople. A treaty entered into by the conquerors put an
end to the Eastern Roman Empire, and Baldwin, Count of Flanders, was
elected emperor of the East. The conquest of Constantinople restored the
Greeks to a dominant position in the East; but the national character of
the people, the political constitution of the imperial government, and
the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Orthodox Church were all destitute
of every theory and energetic practice necessary for advancing in a
career of improvement.
Towards the end of the thirteenth century a small Turkish tribe made its
first appearance in the Seljouk Empire. Othman, who gave his name to
this new band of immigrants, and his son, Orkhan, laid the foundation of
the institutions and power of the Othoman Empire. No nation ever
increased so rapidly from such small beginnings, and no government ever
constituted itself with greater sagacity than the Othoman; but no force
or prudence could have enabled this small tribe of nomads to rise with
such rapidity to power if it had not been that the Greek nation and its
emperors were paralysed by political and moral corruption. Justice was
dormant in the state, Christianity was torpid in the Church, orthodoxy
performed the duties of civil liberty, and the priest became the focus
of political opposition. By the middle of the fourteenth century the
Othoman Turks had raided Thrace, Macedonia, the islands of the Aegean,
plundered the large town of Greece, and advanced to the shores of the
Bosphorus.
At the end of the fourteenth century John VI. asked for efficient
military aid from Western Europe to avert the overthrow of the Greek
Empire by the Othoman power, but the Pope refused, unless John consented
to the union of the Greek and Latin Churches and the recognition of the
papal supremacy. In 1438 the Council of Ferrara was held, and was
transferred in the following year to Florence, when the Greek emperor
and all the bishops of the Eastern Church, except the bishop of Ephesus,
adopted the doctrines of the Roman Church, accepted the papal supremacy,
and the union of the two Churches was solemnly ratified in the cathedral
of Florence on July 6, 1439. But little came of the union. The Pope
forgot to sent a fleet to defend Constantinople; the Christian princes
would not fight the battles of the Greeks.
Then followed the conquest, in May 1453, of Constantinople, despite a
desperate resistance, by Mohammed II., who entered his new capital,
riding triumphantly past the body of the Emperor Constantine. Mohammed
proceeded at once to the church of St. Sophia, where, to convince the
Greeks that their Orthodox empire was extinct, the sultan ordered a
moolah to ascend the Bema and address a sermon to the Mussulmans
announcing that St. Sophia was now a mosque set apart for the prayers of
true believers. The fall of Constantinople is a dark chapter in the
annals of Christianity. The death of the unfortunate Constantine,
neglected by the Catholics and deserted by the Orthodox, alone gave
dignity to the final catastrophe.
_III.--Othoman and Venetian_