Of all the monarchs of the earth, at the time when Baha'u'llah,
proclaiming His Message to them, revealed the Suriy-i-Muluk in Adrianople,
the most august and influential were the French Emperor and the Supreme
Pontiff. In the political and religious spheres they respectively held the
foremost rank, and the humiliation both suffered was alike immediate and
complete.
Napoleon III, son of Louis Bonaparte (brother of Napoleon I), was, few
historians will deny, the most outstanding monarch of his day in the West.
"The Emperor," it was said of him, "was the state." The French capital was
the most attractive capital in Europe, the French court "the most
brilliant and luxurious of the XIX century." Possessed of a fixed and
indestructible ambition, he aspired to emulate the example, and finish the
interrupted work, of his imperial uncle. A dreamer, a conspirator, of a
shifting nature, hypocritical and reckless, he, the heir to the Napoleonic
throne, taking advantage of the policy which sought to foster the reviving
interest in the career of his great prototype, had sought to overthrow the
monarchy. Failing in his attempt, he was deported to America, was later
captured in the course of an attempted invasion of France, was condemned
to perpetual captivity, and escaped to London, until, in 1848, the
Revolution brought about his return, and enabled him to overthrow the
constitution, after which he was proclaimed emperor. Though able to
initiate far-reaching movements, he possessed neither the sagacity nor the
courage required to control them.
To this man, the last emperor of the French, who, through foreign
conquest, had striven to endear his dynasty to the people, who even
cherished the ideal of making France the center of a revived Roman
Empire--to such a man the Exile of Akka, already thrice banished by Sultan
'Abdu'l-'Aziz, had transmitted, from behind the walls of the barracks in
which He lay imprisoned, an Epistle which bore this indubitably clear
arraignment and ominous prophecy: "We testify that that which wakened thee
was not their cry [Turks drowned in the Black Sea], but the promptings of
thine own passions, for We tested thee, and found thee wanting.... Hadst
thou been sincere in thy words, thou wouldst not have cast behind thy back
the Book of God [previous Tablet], when it was sent unto thee by Him Who
is the Almighty, the All-Wise. ...For what thou hast done, thy kingdom
shall be thrown into confusion, and thine empire shall pass from thine
hands, as a punishment for that which thou hast wrought."
Baha'u'llah's previous Message, forwarded through one of the French
ministers to the Emperor, had been accorded a welcome the nature of which
can be conjectured from the words recorded in the "Epistle to the Son of
the Wolf": "To this [first Tablet], however, he did not reply. After Our
arrival in the Most Great Prison there reached Us a letter from his
minister, the first part of which was in Persian, and the latter in his
own handwriting. In it he was cordial, and wrote the following: 'I have,
as requested by you, delivered your letter, and until now have received no
answer. We have, however, issued the necessary recommendations to our
Minister in Constantinople and our consuls in those regions. If there be
anything you wish done, inform us, and we will carry it out.' From his
words it became apparent that he understood the purpose of this Servant to
have been a request for material assistance."
In His first Tablet Baha'u'llah, wishing to test the sincerity of the
Emperor's motives, and deliberately assuming a meek and unprovocative
tone, had, after expatiating on the sufferings He had endured, addressed
him the following words: "Two statements graciously uttered by the king of
the age have reached the ears of these wronged ones. These pronouncements
are, in truth, the king of all pronouncements, the like of which have
never been heard from any sovereign. The first was the answer given the
Russian government when it inquired why the war [Crimean] was waged
against it. Thou didst reply: 'The cry of the oppressed who, without guilt
or blame, were drowned in the Black Sea wakened me at dawn. Wherefore, I
took up arms against thee.' These oppressed ones, however, have suffered a
greater wrong, and are in greater distress. Whereas the trials inflicted
upon those people lasted but one day, the troubles borne by these servants
have continued for twenty and five years, every moment of which has held
for us a grievous affliction. The other weighty statement, which was
indeed a wondrous statement, manifested to the world, was this: 'Ours is
the responsibility to avenge the oppressed and succor the helpless.' The
fame of the Emperor's justice and fairness hath brought hope to a great
many souls. It beseemeth the king of the age to inquire into the condition
of such as have been wronged, and it behooveth him to extend his care to
the weak. Verily, there hath not been, nor is there now, on earth anyone
as oppressed as we are, or as helpless as these wanderers."
It is reported that upon receipt of this first Message that superficial,
tricky, and pride-intoxicated monarch flung down the Tablet saying: "If
this man is God, I am two gods!" The transmitter of the second Tablet had,
it is reliably stated, in order to evade the strict surveillance of the
guards, concealed it in his hat, and was able to deliver it to the French
agent, who resided in Akka, and who, as attested by Nabil in his
Narrative, translated it into French and sent it to the Emperor, he
himself becoming a believer when he had later witnessed the fulfillment of
so remarkable a prophecy.
The significance of the somber and pregnant words uttered by Baha'u'llah
in His second Tablet was soon revealed. He who was actuated in provoking
the Crimean War by his selfish desires, who was prompted by a personal
grudge against the Russian Emperor, who was impatient to tear up the
Treaty of 1815 in order to avenge the disaster of Moscow, and who sought
to shed military glory over his throne, was soon himself engulfed by a
catastrophe that hurled him in the dust, and caused France to sink from
her preeminent station among the nations to that of a fourth power in
Europe.
The Battle of Sedan in 1870 sealed the fate of the French Emperor. The
whole of his army was broken up and surrendered, constituting the greatest
capitulation hitherto recorded in modern history. A crushing indemnity was
exacted. He himself was taken prisoner. His only son, the Prince Imperial,
was killed, a few years later, in the Zulu War. The Empire collapsed, its
program unrealized. The Republic was proclaimed. Paris was subsequently
besieged and capitulated. "The terrible Year" marked by civil war,
exceeding in its ferocity the Franco-German War, followed. William I, the
Prussian king, was proclaimed German Emperor in the very palace which
stood as a "mighty monument and symbol of the power and pride of Louis
XIV, a power which had been secured to some extent by the humiliation of
Germany." Deposed by a disaster "so appalling that it resounded throughout
the world," this false and boastful monarch suffered in the end, and till
his death, the same exile as that which, in the case of Baha'u'llah, he
had so heartlessly ignored.
A humiliation less spectacular yet historically more significant awaited
Pope Pius IX. It was to him who regarded himself as the Vicar of Christ
that Baha'u'llah wrote that "the Word which the Son [Jesus] concealed is
made manifest," that "it hath been sent down in the form of the human
temple," that the Word was Himself, and He Himself the Father. It was to
him who styling himself "the servant of the servants of God" that the
Promised One of all ages, unveiling His station in its plenitude,
announced that "He Who is the Lord of Lords is come overshadowed with
clouds." It was he, who, claiming to be the successor of St. Peter, was
reminded by Baha'u'llah that "this is the day whereon the Rock [Peter]
crieth out and shouteth ... saying: 'Lo, the Father is come, and that
which ye were promised in the Kingdom is fulfilled.'" It was he, the
wearer of the triple crown, who later became the first prisoner of the
Vatican, who was commanded by the Divine Prisoner of Akka to "leave his
palaces unto such as desire them," to "sell all the embellished ornaments"
he possessed, and to "expend them in the path of God," and to "abandon his
kingdom unto the kings," and emerge from his habitation with his face "set
towards the Kingdom."
Count Mastai-Ferretti, Bishop of Imola, the 254th pope since the inception
of St. Peter's primacy, who had been elevated to the apostolic throne two
years after the Declaration of the Bab, and the duration of whose
pontificate exceeded that of any of his predecessors, will be permanently
remembered as the author of the Bull which declared the Immaculate
Conception of the Blessed Virgin (1854), referred to in the Kitab-i-Iqan,
to be a doctrine of the Church, and as the promulgator of the new dogma of
Papal Infallibility (1870). Authoritarian by nature, a poor statesman,
disinclined to conciliation, determined to preserve all his authority, he,
while he succeeded through his assumption of an ultramontane attitude in
defining further his position and in reinforcing his spiritual authority,
failed, in the end, to maintain that temporal rule which, for so many
centuries, had been exercised by the heads of the Catholic Church.
This temporal power had, throughout the ages, shrunk to insignificant
proportions. The decades preceding its extinction were fraught with the
gravest vicissitudes. As the sun of Baha'u'llah's Revelation was mounting
to full meridian splendor, the shadows that beset the dwindling patrimony
of St. Peter were correspondingly deepening. The Tablet of Baha'u'llah,
addressed to Pius IX, precipitated its extinction. A hasty glance at the
course of its ebbing fortunes, during those decades, will suffice.
Napoleon I had driven the Pope from his estates. The Congress of Vienna
had reestablished him as their head and their administration in the hands
of the priests. Corruption, disorganization, impotence to ensure internal
security, the restoration of the inquisition, had induced an historian to
assert that "no land of Italy, perhaps of Europe, except Turkey, is ruled
as is this ecclesiastical state." Rome was "a city of ruins, both material
and moral." Insurrections led to Austria's intervention. Five great Powers
demanded the introduction of far-reaching reforms, which the Pope promised
but failed to carry out. Austria again reasserted herself, and was opposed
by France. Both watched each other on the Papal estates until 1838, when,
on their withdrawal, absolutism was again restored. The Pope's temporal
power was now denounced by some of his own subjects, heralding its
extinction in 1870. Internal complications forced him to flee, in the dead
of night and in the disguise of a humble priest, from Rome which was
declared a republic. It was later restored by the French to its former
status. The creation of the kingdom of Italy, the shifting policy of
Napoleon III, the disaster of Sedan, the misdeeds of the Papal government
denounced by Clarendon, at the Congress of Paris, terminating the Crimean
War, as a "disgrace to Europe," sealed the fate of that tottering
dominion.
In 1870, after Baha'u'llah had revealed His Epistle to Pius IX, King
Victor Emmanuel II went to war with the Papal states, and his troops
entered Rome and seized it. On the eve of its seizure, the Pope repaired
to the Lateran and, despite his age and with his face bathed in tears,
ascended on bended knees the Scala Santa. The following morning, as the
cannonade began, he ordered the white flag to be hoisted above the dome of
St. Peter. Despoiled, he refused to recognize this "creation of
revolution," excommunicated the invaders of his states, denounced Victor
Emmanuel as the "robber King" and as "forgetful of every religious
principle, despising every right, trampling upon every law." Rome, "the
Eternal City, on which rest twenty-five centuries of glory," and over
which the Popes had ruled in unchallengeable right for ten centuries,
finally became the seat of the new kingdom, and the scene of that
humiliation which Baha'u'llah had anticipated and which the Prisoner of
the Vatican had imposed upon himself.
"The last years of the old Pope," writes a commentator on his life, "were
filled with anguish. To his physical infirmities was added the sorrow of
beholding, all too often, the Faith outraged in the very heart of Rome,
the religious orders despoiled and persecuted, the Bishops and priests
debarred from exercising their functions."
Every effort to retrieve the situation created in 1870 proved fruitless.
The Archbishop of Posen went to Versailles to solicit Bismarck's
intervention in behalf of the Papacy, but was coldly received. Later a
Catholic party was organized in Germany to bring political pressure on the
German Chancellor. All, however, was in vain. The mighty process already
referred to had to pursue inexorably its course. Even now, after the lapse
of above half a century, the so-called restoration of temporal sovereignty
has but served to throw into greater relief the helplessness of this
erstwhile potent Prince, at whose name kings trembled and to whose dual
sovereignty they willingly submitted. This temporal sovereignty,
practically confined to the miniscule City of the Vatican, and leaving
Rome the undisputed possession of a secular monarchy, has been obtained at
the price of unreserved recognition, so long withheld, of the Kingdom of
Italy. The Treaty of the Lateran, claiming to have resolved once and for
all the Roman Question, has indeed assured to a secular Power, in respect
of the Enclaved City, a liberty of action which is fraught with
uncertainty and peril. "The two souls of the Eternal City," a Catholic
writer has observed, "have been separated from each other, only to collide
more severely than ever before."
Well might the Sovereign Pontiff recall the reign of the most powerful
among his predecessors, Innocent III who, during the eighteen years of his
pontificate, raised and deposed the kings and the emperors, whose
interdicts deprived nations of the exercise of Christian worship, at the
feet of whose legate the King of England surrendered his crown, and at
whose voice the fourth and the fifth crusades were both undertaken.
Might not the process, to which reference has already been made, manifest,
in the course of its operation, during the tumultuous years in store for
mankind, and in this same domain, a commotion still more devastating than
it has yet produced?
The dramatic collapse of both the Third Empire and the Napoleonic dynasty,
the virtual extinction of the temporal sovereignty of the Supreme Pontiff,
in the lifetime of Baha'u'llah, were but the precursors of still greater
catastrophes that may be said to have marked the ministry of 'Abdu'l-Baha.
The forces unleashed by a conflict, the full significance of which still
remains unfathomed, and which may be considered as a prelude to this, the
most devastating of all wars, can well be regarded as the occasion of
these dreadful catastrophes. The progress of the War of 1914-18 dethroned
the House of Romanov, while its termination precipitated the downfall of
both the Hapsburg and Hohenzollern dynasties.