VIA PACIS
Whatever excellent reasons we may have for doubting the sincerity of
the German peace overtures, and whatever grounds we may have for
criticizing the unfortunate wording of the American Notes, it must be
conceded that President Wilson has rendered a conspicuous service to
the Allies by compelling them to face the formidable difficulties of
the problem of peace. Henceforth it will be impossible for our rulers
to shirk those difficulties. They will have to give us something more
tangible than mere vague and solemn abstractions, than mere rhetorical
phrases and catchwords: they will have to depend on the support of
public opinion. The peace settlement will have to be made by the
nations themselves, and not by a few diplomats. It will have to be
made in the full light of day and not in the secret and murky and
musty atmosphere of chancellories.
As a basis for any discussion on the peace settlement we would lay
down the following propositions:
1. We must take good care to retain a firm hold of fundamental
principles, and we must remain loyal to the conditions which have been
proclaimed from the beginning by the statesmen of the Allies, and
which are summed up in the primary aims, the "crushing of Prussian
militarism and the liberation of small nationalities."
2. We must see to it that none of the secret agreements which may have
been entered into by the diplomats of the Allies shall be allowed to
conflict with those fundamental principles.
3. We must realize that those principles are not particular principles
applicable only to Germany and Austria. They are universal principles,
applicable to all the Powers. "Prussian militarism" must be crushed
everywhere, in Great Britain as well as in Germany, in Finland as well
as in Alsace-Lorraine, in Italy as well as in Austria. Nationalities
must be liberated everywhere, the Ruthenians as well as the Poles, the
Jews as well as the Croatians.
4. We must realize the concrete and deeper meaning of the vague and
somewhat confusing phraseology contained in the words "to crush
Prussian militarism." To "crush Prussian militarism" does not mean
only to crush the German armies. It cannot mean to crush 100,000,000
German and Austrian people. It does not mean the repression of the
legitimate expansion of the Teutonic nations. To "crush Prussian
militarism" means to do away with a sinister political system. It
means exorcising an evil spirit. And we must clearly understand that,
in order to exorcise that evil spirit, we must have the co-operation
of the German people themselves. We must help them to achieve their
own salvation. We must take in the paradoxical and tragic fact that
the awful sacrifice of twenty nations has been mainly a vicarious
sacrifice, and that millions of our soldiers have died for the good of
the enemy as well as for the good of Europe--that they have died to
make Germany and Austria free.
5. We must realize that this war is a holy war and not a punitive
expedition, much less a predatory war. Vengeance must be left to
Almighty God. The punishment of the criminals must be left to the
people themselves.
6. Peace, if it is to be real, and if it is to be permanent, cannot be
achieved by any vindictive policy. From the moment they enter the
peace congress the belligerents cease to be belligerents, and become
allies in a sacred cause--the reconstruction of the world. From the
moment the Central Powers are admitted to cross the threshold of the
Temple of Peace they are readmitted to the community of nations, and
they are admitted on equal terms.
7. A permanent peace excludes the very idea of any future economic
war. We must prevent the Central Powers from entering into any
offensive or defensive economic alliance. We must repudiate the
sinister delusion of a "Mittel Europa" which is haunting the diseased
brains of the Pan-Germanists. On the other hand, we must repudiate any
offensive or defensive economic alliance between the Allied Powers.
The terms of peace must be engraved on clean white marble.
8. If a permanent peace is to be attained we must remove the deeper
causes which brought about the catastrophe. The Central Powers are
immediately and directly responsible for the greatest crime of
history, and they will bear the penalty for generations to come. They
planned the war and forced it on Europe. But the megalomania of the
Teutons has only been one of the contributory causes. The war could
never have taken place but for the universally prevailing and
universally accepted immorality of European foreign policy, which is
writ large in Morocco and Persia, in China and Asia Minor.
9. The principle of nationality, however legitimate in the case of
oppressed nationalities, is not a sufficient foundation for the new
European order. The principle of nationality, which in the case of
small nations leads to the vindication of freedom, on the contrary, in
the case of great Powers, leads to an aggressive imperialism. The
international principle must therefore take the place of the national
principle. Federalism and solidarity must take the place of tribal
rivalry and national isolation.
10. Any permanent peace settlement must involve the unreserved
acceptance of a new political philosophy and the practice of a new
political system. No peace is possible through the old methods of a
balance of power, of alliances and counter-alliances, of assurance and
reassurance treaties. Any balance of power is unstable and precarious
and can only be maintained by a competition of armaments. The
distinction between offensive and defensive alliances is essentially
unreal. Under the old dispensation a defensive alliance became
offensive as soon as it felt strong enough to assume the offensive. It
is the system of alliances which led to armaments, and not the
armaments which were responsible for the alliances. It is therefore
futile to speak of disarmament as long as we do not repudiate the
traditional European principle of the "balance of power."
11. It also follows as a corollary that no peace is possible merely
through a readjustment of boundaries, through compensations and
annexations of territories. We might recast the whole map of Europe,
we might dismember the German Empire, we might dismember the Austrian
Empire, we might dismember the Turkish Empire, and yet entirely fail
to achieve the objects for which we entered the war. On the other
hand, we might achieve those objects without shifting one single
milestone of the political boundaries of Europe.
12. We must clearly realize that the issue of peace and war is not a
military issue, but a political issue, and that the political issue
itself is a moral issue. It is not a _Machtfrage_, but a _Rechtfrage_.
It is not a question to be settled by diplomats of the old school; it
can only be solved by constructive and democratic statesmanship.
13. To say that "we must crush Prussian militarism" is only a vague
and unsatisfactory way of stating that we must establish democratic
government. Militarism is not a matter of foreign policy, but of
domestic policy. Militarism is but the _ultima ratio_ of reaction, and
all nations are allies against the one common enemy, reactionary
government.
14. It is therefore futile to say that the future congress must not
interfere in the internal government of any belligerent Power. If any
European Power after this war were still to be ruled by a reactionary
government based on brute force and oppression, that government would
still have to maintain a large army in order to keep down the
liberties of its people, and such an army would sooner or later be
used against the foreign enemy in the name of imperial national
aspirations, in the name of a higher civilizing mission.
15. Therefore, the one problem before the European Congress is to
establish government in Europe on a constitutional and democratic
basis, and to grant a _Magna Carta_ to all nations, great and small.
The establishment of such a government, and not any annexations or
compensations, would alone guarantee a permanent peace.
16. All civilized nations must be equally interested in the
maintenance of peace and in the establishment of the new international
order. Therefore, all neutral nations, including the United States of
America, must join the congress as signatories and guarantors of the
peace settlement.
17. The new democratic charter shall be placed under the guardianship
of a Supreme Constitutional Court. Such a Court would not be a secret
diplomatic Sanhedrin, but a democratic Tribunal. Such a Court would be
essentially different from the Hague Tribunals of the past, and the
democracies of the world would be directly interested in enforcing its
decrees.
18. There is one immediate sanction to the constitutional settlement
just outlined--namely, the Sovereign Will of the people of Europe.
Revolution is knocking at the door. Unless a constitutional charter be
granted, unless democratic government be firmly established in Europe,
it will be wrested from their rulers by the nations themselves. All
the signs of the times confirm us in the conviction that the only
alternative to the establishment of democratic government for all the
nations participating in the congress is universal civil war. The
peacemakers of to-morrow have it in their power not only to crush
"Prussian militarism," but to prevent an appalling upheaval which
would shake human society to its foundations.
APPENDIX
THE PRIVATE MORALITY OF THE PRUSSIAN KINGS
FREDERICK WILLIAM II.: THE HOHENZOLLERN POLYGAMIST
BY ALBERT SOREL
It is generally assumed, even by those writers who are most strongly
opposed to the sinister policy of the Hohenzollerns, that at least
their domestic relations present an edifying contrast with the private
immorality of the other Royal Houses of Europe. The world has been
made familiar with the Court scandals of the Habsburgs, the Bourbons,
and the Georges, and has heard little of the Hohenzollern Dynasty. But
that is merely because the "amours" and the family squabbles of the
Hohenzollerns are so much less picturesque and so much less
interesting than those of a Henry IV. or of a Louis XIV., and because
they have been hidden under a thick cloud of hypocrisy. The most
brilliant of French historians, Monsieur Albert Sorel, has torn the
veil from this hypocrisy and has laid bare the sordid story of
Frederick William II.
As an illustration of the manner in which the official historians of
Prussia have narrated the history of the dynasty, it is instructive
to compare the following character-sketch of the successor of
Frederick the Great with the idealist portrait of Treitschke ("Germany
History," vol. i.), who would make us believe that Frederick William
II. was a paragon of all the private virtues.
I.
Frederick the Great's base tolerance produced dissolvent effects. Not
proceeding from respect of religious beliefs, it engendered contempt
for them. As, apart from the curb of religion, the new society of
Prussia had no tradition of social morals to rely upon, corruption
entered in and consumed it. The King's scepticism took possession of
his subjects, who translated it into deeds. It was good "form";
everyone in Berlin took it up and conducted himself accordingly. The
leaven of licence and sensuality which mars all the literature of the
century fermented without let or hindrance in those coarse souls. An
immature civilization had overstimulated imaginations and senses
without abating the brutality of the primitive passions. In Prussia
people lacked the delicate taste, the genteel habits, the light wit,
which in France qualified the depravity of the age. A heavy
dissoluteness was paraded in Prussia. Officials, the gentry, women,
all fed their minds on d'Holbach and La Mettrie, taking their
doctrines seriously and applying them to the very letter.
Add to this that in the newly built Prussian capital society, utterly
artificial as it was, an improvised amalgam of incongruous elements,
was predisposed, so to speak, to dissoluteness. Berlin swarmed with
army men who had no family life and whose whole day was not occupied
with military duties. Men of letters, adventurers of the pen and of
the sword, attracted by Frederick's reputation and reduced to intrigue
and all sorts of expedients for a living; a nobility, very poor, very
proud, very exclusive, weighed down by royal discipline and thoroughly
bored; a bourgeoisie enlightened, enriched, but relegated to a place
of its own; between these groups, separated one from the other by
etiquette or prejudice, a sort of demi-monde where they met, chatted
and enjoyed themselves at their ease, the foyer of "French ideas," the
hub of affairs and intrigues--Jewish society, the richest and most
elegant in Berlin. With the marvellous pliancy of their race the Jews
had assimilated the new civilization and took their revenge from the
political exclusion of which they were the victims by bringing
together in their salons all the intellectual men in Berlin, all the
attractive women, all desirous of liberty and freed from prejudice.
Such was Berlin in the days of Frederick.
II.
One of the finest cities in Europe, wrote Forster in 1779; but the
Berliners! Sociability and refined taste, he found, degenerated in
them into sensuality, into libertinage (he might almost say voracity),
freedom of wit and love of shining in shameless licence and
unrestrained debauch of thought. The women in general were abandoned.
An English diplomat, Sir John Harris, afterwards Lord Malmesbury, had
the same impression: Berlin was a town where, if _fortis_ might be
translated by "honourable," you could say that there was not a _vir
fortis nec femina casta_.
If you consider that outside Jewish homes money was scarce, and that
temptations are all the stronger the less means you have of satisfying
them, you can see why in many minds disorder of ideas and corruption
of morals opened a new wound, the most dangerous, in sooth, and the
most repugnant in nations--venality. Mirabeau, in his "Secret
History," indelibly recorded all the vices of _ce noble tripot_,
Berlin. On this head his famous pamphlet is a picture in violent
colours, but true nevertheless. Cynicism there seems merely local
colour. "'Rottenness before Ripeness'--I am very much afraid that must
be the motto of Prussian power.... What cannot money do in a house so
poor?"
III.
It required Frederick's hand of iron to set in motion these
complicated springs, to regulate the unwieldy machine, keep together
these elements collected with no little ingenuity and ready to go to
pieces. But that hand was weighty and hard. There were signs, in the
upper classes at all events--the only classes then taken into
account--of a sort of muffled revolt against this implacable disciple.
Besides, the Prussians entertained queer illusions as to the future.
Frederick had deceived his subjects just as he had deceived himself
regarding the durability of his work. They did not understand to what
an extent their power was the personal power of their King. Proud to
the point of infatuation of the rôle he had made them play, they
imagined it was their own doing, and that Frederick's soul would
survive in them. They expected from a new reign the same glory abroad,
the same security at home, the same relative prosperity, with a yoke
less rough and a discipline less severe, not understanding that the
very roughness of the yoke and the severity of the discipline were
conditions necessary to the duration of the work. The mercantile
protective system, which had built up industry; the administration of
taxes, which poured money into the State coffers; the economy, which
immobilized this money in the treasury, hampered and irritated all who
wished to work and trade, all who reflected on the natural conditions
of commerce and industry; but it was these things alone that enabled
the poorest Government in Europe to be better armed than the richest,
and to keep in the van. In a word, people wanted the spring to relax,
and failed to see that to slacken the spring meant annihilating the
State.
IV.
To reform Frederick's monarchy would have required no less genius than
it took to create it. Reform, however, was indispensable, since
Frederick alone was capable of holding up the composite edifice he had
built. Hence a threatening and wellnigh inevitable catastrophe. "All
will go on almost of its own accord, so long as foreign affairs are
quiet and unbroken," wrote Mirabeau after Frederick's death. "But at
the first gunshot or at the first stormy situation the whole of this
little scaffolding of mediocrity will topple to the ground. How all
these underling Ministers would crumple up! How everyone, from the
distracted chief to the convict-gang, would shout for a pilot! Who
would that pilot be?"
V.
Frederick's nephew, who was called upon to succeed him, was not made
for so great a rôle. In every respect he offered a complete contrast
to the Prince whose weighty heritage he took up. Frederick in person
was infirm and sober; all his prestige lay in the gaze of his great
eyes, which, as Mirabeau put it, "at the will of his heroic soul,
carried fascination or terror." Frederick William II. was a _bel
homme_, highly sanguine, very robust, fond of violent exercise and
coarse pleasures. "The build and strength of a Royal Guardsman," wrote
the French Minister d'Esterno, who had no liking for him. "An enormous
machine of flesh," said an Austrian diplomat who saw him at Pillnitz
in 1791. "The true type of a King," according to Metternich, who was
presented to him in 1792 at Coblenz, at the time of the German crusade
against France and the Revolution. "His stature," he added, "was
gigantic, and his corpulence in keeping. In every company he stood a
head higher than the surrounding crowd. His manners were noble and
engaging." He expressed himself with a certain effort, in little
abrupt phrases. There was nothing in him to recall the implacable and
sovereign irony of Frederick.
"His look," said one apologist, "does not betoken a man of genius, but
German candour shines on his brow." Strange candour, scarcely
recognizable if you take the word in its common and proper sense. It
must be taken, as was then the practice in Germany, through
translations of Rousseau, in the equivocal and refined acceptation
which reconciled innocence with indecency, virtue with every disorder
of the imagination and the heart. Ecstatic and sensual, devout and
licentious, a prey to violent appetites, tormented by scruples,
superstitious and debauched, believing in ghosts, with a tendency
towards cabal, Frederick William had a taste for ethics and a feeling
for religion. He spoke of them with respect, with awe, with emotion.
In his case it was a natural penchant and at the same time a pose, the
attitude of every heir-presumptive towards the crowned head, a way of
winning admiration and captivating by force of contrast.
VI.
He and those around him might be gulled by this "German candour." Not
so Frederick. In his Memoirs he draws his nephew as he was in 1765, at
the age of twenty-one, at the time of his first marriage with
Elizabeth of Brunswick: "The young husband, without any morals, given
over to a life of debauchery, was daily guilty of infidelity to his
wife. The Princess, who was in the flower of her beauty, was shocked
at the slight regard shown for her charms. Soon she plunged into
excesses almost as bad as her husband's." In 1769 they were divorced.
Frederick William married a Princess of Darmstadt. The second
marriage was no happier than the first. The Princess did not
retaliate, though she did not lack incentives to do so. The Prince
lapsed back into his dissolute habits. Apart from many passing
fancies, he had a recognized mistress-in-chief. This person, who
managed always to retain the favour, if not the love, of Frederick
William, was the daughter of a humble musician. She married the
Prince's _valet de chambre_, became Madame Rietz, and was afterwards
made Countess of Lichtenau. Frederick William by the first marriage
had had a daughter, Princess Frederica, who was brought up by the
Queen, the discarded, not to say repudiated, wife of Frederick the
Great. The father, when visiting the girl, fell in love with one of
her maids-of-honour. Her name was Mademoiselle de Voss, and she came
of a good house, being cousin to one of the King's Ministers, M. de
Finckenstein, and sister of a President of the Chamber. "This beauty,
who to my mind is very ugly," wrote Mirabeau, "is a mixture of prudery
and cynicism, of affectation and ingenuousness; she has a natural wit
of a kind, some schooling, manias rather than desires, a gaucherie
which she strives to cover by an appearance of _naïveté_.... All her
charm lies in her complexion, and even that I find wan rather than
white; a very beautiful neck. It was this mixture of unique licence,
they say, which she combined with the airs of innocent ignorance and
vestal severity, that captivated the Prince."
VII.
Frederick William was one of those complex libertines who find in
clever resistance a whet to their passion and a solace to their
scruples. The siege of Mademoiselle de Voss lasted nearly two years.
The outs and ins of this strange romance were the common talk of the
Court. It had not yet reached its dénouement when Frederick the
Great's death stopped its course for several weeks. King from August
17, 1786, onwards, Frederick William seemed to forget everything but
affairs of State. But Mirabeau affirms, after September 8, "the
fervour of the novice began to abate." Mademoiselle de Voss, he added,
was on the point of yielding. The King, to make her comfortable, had
set up an establishment for his daughter Frederica; Mademoiselle de
Voss did the honours. The year passed, however, without the vestal's
surrendering. She loved the King, but the honour of the family still
weighed more with her than love. She set rigorous conditions to her
capitulation: a left-handed marriage, the written consent of the
Queen, and the removal of the titular mistress, Madame Rietz. On this
last point the King was inflexible; he gave in on the other two. The
Queen gave her consent, with the stipulation that there should be no
real divorce or public separation; she kept her title of Queen and her
position as lawful wife. The rest, it appears, was of no great
interest to her. It only remained to conclude the marriage, but, under
the circumstances, that was a delicate and ticklish business.
By hook or by crook a precedent had to be found: the Prussian
Consistory proved amenable, and authorized the marriage. The marriage
was celebrated in July, 1787, in the Chapel Royal of Charlottenburg.
Mademoiselle de Voss took the title of Countess of Ingenheim. Her
happiness was short-lived. She died in the month of March, 1789. "All
Berlin is in mourning," wrote M. d'Esterno. "The Countess of Ingenheim
is cruelly regretted by the people, the royal family, and even the
Queen, much less for the person of the said Countess as because of the
increase of credit which her death will bring to Dame Rietz, the old
habitual mistress, who is said to be very avaricious and a great
intriguer."
VIII.
The literature of the day shed tears over the royal bereavement,
celebrated the "virtues" of this susceptible monarch, and contrasted
with the withering scepticism of Voltaire and the criminal frivolity
of the French the tender abandon with which Frederick William gave
himself up to "nature's sweetest inclination." "Women-haters," wrote
Baron de Trenck, "have been the scourges of humanity. The King of
Prussia has a great soul, full of sensibility; in love he is capable
of a tender attachment: he knows the value of his mistress. Supposing
he gives her a million, the money is divided among the members of the
household who are citizens. He will not rob an honest man of the
spouse who constitutes his happiness, he will not sacrifice Rome for
Cleopatra. He wants to please all by himself. For twenty months he
courted Mademoiselle de Voss, he married her, he was faithful to her,
he wept over her ashes. Every citizen wise enough to know human
weaknesses must wish that if he made a fresh choice it would fall on
an object as worthy of his heart. So let him enjoy a happiness which
belongs to the simple peasant as it does to kings." This hypocritical
twaddle, this licentious casuistry, was "very good style" in Germany
then, and was highly appreciated.
IX.
The distraction which Trenck desired for the afflicted soul of the
King was not long in presenting itself. In 1790, on the anniversary of
the Countess of Ingenheim's death, Mademoiselle Doenhof was presented
at Court. Everyone there was busy consoling Frederick William. A
claimant had even been put forward in the person of a young lady
called Viereck, a friend of Mademoiselle de Voss, who had taken the
latter's place with Princess Frederica. Unhappily for Mademoiselle
Viereck's friends, she was dark and in no way recalled the dear
departed. Mademoiselle Doenhof, on the other hand, was, according to
the French Minister, "so perfectly fair that, while pretty in
artificial light, in daylight she was as yellow as a lemon." With the
same charms as Mademoiselle de Voss, she had the same jumble of
pietism and virtue. It was once more a case of marrying. The King saw
no difficulty in the way. "I am separated from the Queen," he wrote to
Mademoiselle Doenhof; "Madame d'Ingenheim has left me a widower; I
offer you my heart and hand." He made no concealment of it, openly
declaring that he had grounds for repudiating the Queen, but he
refrained from taking action upon them in order to maintain the
dignity of the throne.
The Consistory did not require to deliberate a second time; precedents
had been established, and they were followed. The marriage took place
on April 10, 1790, and it was the Court preacher, Zoellner, who
consecrated it, as he had consecrated that with Mademoiselle de Voss.
The Queen gave the bride girandoles of diamonds. The Queen-Dowager
received her, and everyone at Court made a fuss of her. All the same,
she was no more successful than Mademoiselle de Voss in getting rid of
Madame Rietz. This favourite, who had been given 70,000 crowns to take
her departure, remained, took an officer as her lover, and even got
the King to promote him.
X.
And so, in 1790, the King of Prussia, Mademoiselle de Voss's widower,
had three wives living: the Princess of Brunswick, who was repudiated;
the Princess of Darmstadt, who, although divorced, still kept the rank
of Queen; and Mademoiselle Doenhof, morganatic wife. This third wife,
wrote one diplomat, will not be the last, for "those the King longs
for will also want to be married." The Prince in any case was always
ready. Polygamy, in his eyes, was a prerogative of royalty. As the
result of a Court intrigue in 1792 he had himself separated from
Mademoiselle Doenhof, crowning by this divorce the strange series of
his conjugal evolutions. Then he offered his heart and hand to a lady
called Bethmann, a banker's daughter whom he had known at Frankfurt,
and found very much to his liking. This young person, in the words of
Lord Malmesbury, was "all sentiment and all fire"; but she had
principles and discretion. She had misgivings about the character of
the marriage and the constancy of the bridegroom. She refused, thus
sparing the Berlin casuists the trouble of a deliberation still more
ticklish than before. I know not whether these accommodating
theologians, reared in the school of Voltaire and Frederick, took
these simultaneous marriages very seriously or not; abroad they
afforded subject for ridicule, and Catherine the Great, who herself
did not feel bound to observe so many formalities, was highly amused
at them; "that big lout of a Gu"--such was her name for Frederick
William in her letters to Grimm--"that big lout has just married a
third wife; the libertine never has enough legitimate wives; for a
conscientious libertine, commend me to him."
XI.
Frederick William loved women. Women, however, did not govern him. But
if he escaped the influence of mistresses, he fell under the influence
of favourites, and the people were none the better off. Badly brought
up, kept apart from State affairs by his uncle, distrusting others
because he was very distrustful of himself, he knew nothing of the art
of government, and dallied with vague reform projects. The Ministers
whom Frederick left behind, although very second-rate, made him ill at
ease. He was afraid of being considered under their thumb; besides,
these Ministers represented ideas and a system which he affected to
condemn. "The King will be led just because he is afraid of being so,"
wrote Mirabeau. The fear of being governed by his Ministers delivered
him into the hands of underlings, who promptly gained a mastery over
him by humbling themselves before him, reassuring his suspicious
pride, flattering his passions--above all, exploiting the shortcomings
of his mind. Frederick William desired the good of the State; he had a
hazy but quite keen idea of the necessity of counteracting the
excesses of Frederick's Government; but his intentions rambled, and
his reform fancies, more mystical then political, proceeded not so
much from the idea of the interests of the State as from the influence
of a secret doctrine with which he was imbued. The statesman in him
was but an adept in magic; for Ministers he took mere charlatans.
Skilled conjurers replaced at Potsdam Frederick's "judicious
Ministers."
XII.
Of all these mystical adventurers, the one whose influence was perhaps
the most baneful for the Prussian State was Woellner, a pure intriguer.
Son of a country pastor, he worked his way into the household of
General d'Itzenplitz; after wheedling the mother, he ended by marrying
the daughter. Frederick, who was anything but indulgent to
mis-alliances, had him clapped into prison in Berlin. The hatred of
Woellner for the Philosopher-King dated from that day. At that time he
was a rationalist and a disciple of Wolf; he became a Freemason. But
already in high society in Germany the wind no longer set in the
direction of pure Deism. Woellner, always a perfect sceptic, changed
his convictions. Considering himself as fitted as any other for the
apparition business and the mystery industry, he decided to turn
"honest broker" between the powers of this world and those of the
next, basing his credit with the former on that which he claimed with
the latter. He joined the Rosicrucians, and soon became one of the
leading lights of the Order.
Thus he knew the man who was to counterbalance his favour at the Court
of Berlin and one day share with him Frederick's Government, the Saxon
Bischoffswerder. The son of a small noble, an officer of fortune, come
like so many others to seek service in Prussia, he had wormed his way
into the favour of the Prince-Royal, and had quickly taken him in.
XIII.
Mistresses and favourites, Rosicrucians and valets, theosophists and
_femmes galantes_, on the whole got on very well together and agreed
surprisingly. It was but a step from the laboratory of the
Rosicrucians to the boudoir of Madame Rietz, and these mystic
personages cleared it without a scrap of shame. They formed a close
alliance with the _valet de chambre_ and his wife, the _maîtresse
d'habitude_, who throughout all the matrimonial pranks of the King
managed to preserve her credit by artifices analogous to those which
at Versailles had so long maintained that of Madame de Pompadour.
Around them swarmed a crowd of subordinate intriguers, the "clique,"
as they were called in Berlin, ready for all sorts of jobs behind the
scenes at Court, in the Army, in politics, in diplomacy--above all, in
finance. Needy and greedy, they had a firmly established reputation in
Europe for venality. "I maintain," declared Mirabeau, "that with a
thousand louis you could, if need be, know perfectly all the secrets
of the Berlin Cabinet.... So the Emperor has a faithful record of
every step of the King, day by day, and could know everything he
planned, if he planned anything." These were the methods, as Custine
affirmed in 1792, that every diplomatist in the world employed; all
the Ministers who resided in Berlin used them with more success and
more generally than elsewhere.
XIV.
Such was the strange band of adventurers who pounced on the monarchy
and the treasury of Frederick the Great. Their course of action, very
complex and very powerful, was well designed to captivate a fantastic
and voluptuous bigot. However, they would never have gained more than
an antechamber or alcove influence, they would never have risen to
political influence, had they not known how to pervert the noblest
inclinations of the King, whilst flattering the lowest. Mediocre and
secondary as was his place in the line of the Hohenzollerns,
Frederick William was not devoid of all royal qualities. He was brave,
he was kind-hearted, or rather he was a man of "sensibility"; he
desired the public weal; he had suffered, like the nation, from the
pitiless régime of Frederick; like the whole nation, he wanted to
reform the State by lightening the yoke. He believed himself inspired
from on high, "illumined," and called by Providence to restore the
morals and faith of a country which, he was told, and he himself
believed, was perishing through the scepticism of men's minds and the
looseness of men's morals.
How could he combine such tendencies with such tastes, such
aspirations with such passions, such beliefs with such debauchery? It
was just therein that he showed himself a weak character and a mystic;
that was why he joined theurgic sects instead of submitting to the
Church; why he believed in visions more than in the Gospel, listened
to a ventriloquist mimicking the voice of Frederick instead of
listening to the voices of the Ministers, the great King's disciples;
that is why he distrusted wise, thoughtful, experienced people and
surrendered himself to charlatans and favourites.
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