WHILST THE English people, with the example and assistance of the
Dutch, were carrying forward the theory of constitutional government,
a still more important movement in the opposite direction was
proceeding in the North, and new forces were brought into the widening
circle of general history.
The Muscovite empire extended from the frontiers of Poland to the
farthest extremity of China. In numbers and in extent it was the
first of Christian Powers. But it played no part in the concert or
the conflict of Europe, and its existence was almost unnoticed and
unfelt. The people were too backward in the scale of wealth or
knowledge or civilisation to obtain influence even on their
neighbours. Potentially the most formidable force on earth,
practically they were forgotten and unknown. In a single reign, by
the action of one man, Russia passed from lethargy and obscurity to a
dominant position among the nations.
The first need was intercourse with the world--intercourse of trade
for its material progress, intercourse of ideas for its civilisation.
The problem was too obvious to escape the earlier Romanoffs. They
were a clerical dynasty, closely associated with the Church, and
allowing to the Patriarch a position very near the throne. In
politics they were inefficient and unsuccessful; but their Church
policy was charged with far-reaching consequences. In that, they were
superior to the people about them, and they introduced certain
moderate reforms, literary rather than dogmatic, in the externals of
ritual, and in the liturgical books. An illiterate clergy had allowed
abuses to take root, and were excessively intolerant of change. A
schism arose between the established church with its rectified texts
and improved ceremonial, and the large minority who rejected them.
Everybody knows Newman's story of the ancient priest who fell into the
habit, at mass, of saying, "quod ore mumpsimus" instead of "quod ore
sumpsimus," and, when admonished of his error, refused to exchange old
"mumpsimus" for new "sumpsimus." Although "mumpsimus" is the very
motto for the Russian schismatics, and although ignorance and
superstition were the root of the matter, they combined with a dread
of arbitrary change by an arbitrary power, and supplied a basis for
resistance to Erastianism and the fusion of Church and State. This
was the heart of the opposition to the later reforms, to which the
Church in general yielded reluctantly, and the sectaries not at all,
choosing death, and even suicide by fire, to compromise. The
reforming government was driven into persecution by the fanaticism of
these men.
The new spirit began to reign when the young Tsar Peter triumphed over
family intrigues that were supported by the party of reaction. He was
uneducated, unmannerly, uncivilised; but he had a clear notion of that
which his people required, and the energy and force of character to
achieve it. As there were no roads in Russia, and not much material
for making them, the waterway was the easy and natural line to follow.
The Russian rivers flowed to the Caspian and the Euxine, and invited
to the conquest of Persia and Central Asia, or to the deliverance of
the Slavonic and Greek brethren from the Turk. Peter was not carried
away by either prospect. He did indeed send a fleet down the Volga,
and another down the Don. He conquered the Persian coast of the
Caspian, but resisted the temptation of pushing his arms to the Indian
Ocean. He was repeatedly at war with the Turk; but he contented
himself with a humble measure of success.
Poland, for reasons of race and religion, was the national enemy; and
from the death of Sobieski in 1696 there were symptoms that it was
likely to break up. The next king, Augustus of Saxony, in 1702,
proposed the partition of the Polish dominions. His agent, Patkul,
renewed the idea at Berlin in 1704, and Austria did the same in 1712.
At the height of his military success, in 1710, Peter entertained the
idea, only to dismiss it. He preferred to wait. Poland would be
convenient as a helpless neighbour, covering his frontier on a
dangerous side; and its constitution prevented it from becoming
formidable. He was content to make sure that the feeble government
should never undergo reform. He resolutely fixed his thoughts in
another direction, and chose, not the easiest, but the most difficult
line of attack.
Tartars, or Persians, or Zaporogue Cossacks supplied no new element
that could be of service to his people. The Russians had issued from
the long subjection to the Golden Horde, indigent, ignorant,
prejudiced, dishonest and false. A mighty future lay before them, but
they were unfit for such a destiny. The civilising influences they
required could come only from contact with superior races. From them
they must import the goods, they must import the men, that were needed
to raise them, in the arts of peace and war, to a level with others.
The route for both species of commerce was by sea. But Russia touched
the sea only in the North, where it is closed by ice. The way to the
countries that were most advanced, intellectually and socially, to
France and England, especially to Holland and the empire behind it,
was by the Baltic.
There the Swedes stopped the way. Gustavus had conquered the Baltic
provinces, and all the way from Poland to Finland the coast was
inaccessible to the interior of Russia. Sweden was still esteemed a
great Power; and although it was not yet discovered, the new king was,
what Peter never became, a capable and ambitious commander. The main
argument of Peter's reign was the struggle for supremacy with Charles
XII.
Before it broke out, he undertook a journey to make acquaintance with
the foreign countries by which he intended to accomplish the elevation
of his own. That was the time of those grotesque studies in
shipbuilding, tooth-drawing, and useful arts in which he acquired a
sort of technical mastery; and it was then that he learned to think so
highly of the Dutch as a practical people, worthy of imitation. This
preference was not exclusive, and he was eager to borrow what he could
from others--military organisation from Austria, manners from France,
clothes from England, methods of administration from Germany.
Together with the foreign customs he undertook to introduce experts
who were to teach them, until the disciples became equal to their
masters. The Scotsman Gordon and the Genevese Lefort were at the head
of his army and navy. Germans, such as Munnich and Ostermann,
followed; and then there came a vast army of engineers, miners, metal
founders, artificers of almost all kinds, for the roads and bridges,
the ships and palaces, the schools and hospitals that he called into
existence. These things were the sine qua non of civilisation. It
would be long before his own people understood the use of them. They
could only be obtained by importation. To stimulate the demand for
them at home it would be necessary to rely on the progress of
intelligence. That could not be done in a nation consisting mainly of
serfs. The educational part of the enterprise was the one which had
least success, and which he understood least. For such imponderables
he had no scales, and he cared more for the kind of knowledge that was
practically useful than for the interior improvement of the mind,
which constitutes what we call a gentleman. No such exotic could
flourish at his court. He required that those whom he honoured with
his confidence should get as drunk as himself; that they should be
servile and cringing, without moral courage or self-respect, happy to
be insulted, kicked, and spat upon. They might be men of resource,
brave soldiers, clever administrators, but they seldom developed those
elements of character which prevent a man from being corrupt. For
those qualities he had no comprehension. Civilisation, as he
understood it, was material, not moral. He could not imagine
management of men by the nobler motives. He raised the condition of
the country with great rapidity; he did not raise it above his own
level.
While he was on his travels exploring Europe an insurrection broke
out, and the old Russian militia, the Strelitz, mutinied, and plotted
to exterminate the Germans and all the abettors of foreign innovation.
The movement was crushed by Gordon, and Peter on his return was
undisputed master. He then plunged into war with Sweden for the
Baltic provinces--that is, for access to the sea, which was the highway
to all the world. Beaten at first, but not discouraged, he organised
a new army, while Charles XII overran Poland and dictated terms of
peace in the heart of Germany.
It then appeared that the Russians, like most nations when they are
ably commanded, were the raw material of good soldiers. Charles came
back to Russia from his Saxon campaign laden with glory, and marched
on Moscow by Minsk, Mohilev, the Beresina--very much the route which
Napoleon followed. At the instigation of Mazeppa he turned aside to
the Ukraine, in the hope of raising the Cossacks against the Tsar.
At Pultawa, near the Dnieper, he was defeated, and fled for refuge
to Turkey. The work of Gustavus, who had made Sweden so great, was
undone, and Russia succeeded to the vacant place among the Powers.
The supreme object of Peter's policy was attained. He was in
possession of the Baltic coast north of the Dwina. Finland was
restored, but he retained Livonia, Esthonia, Ingria, from Riga to
Viborg. On the Neva, where the Gulf of Finland penetrates farthest
inland, he fixed his capital. The place was a swamp, that swallowed
the tallest trunks of trees, and the workmen perished by fever. But
an island in the mouth of the river made it impregnable by sea. It
was free from traditions and reactionary memories, looking only to the
future and the new things that the commerce with the world would
bring; a gate for the inflow of the forces by which its founder would
transform the nation. As part of the same transformation the Tsar of
Muscovy became Emperor of Russia. It was a claim to the Byzantine
inheritance, and a menace to the Austrian successor of the Western
Empire. This was faint and distant; and Peter remained on friendly
terms with Vienna. But the title was coldly received by Europe, and
was not finally recognised until forty years after his death.
The persuasions by which Peter bent Russia to his will were base and
atrocious; for, although one of the greatest men that have influenced
the course of Christian history, he is undoubtedly the worst of them;
but he was not working for himself; at Pultawa he told his troops that
they were fighting for Russia, not for him. His motive was
impersonal. He had grasped a great ideal, and he served it with
devotion, sacrificing everything to it, and not sparing himself. The
absolute State was the ideal, or rather the idol, for which he toiled,
the State as it had been devised by Machiavelli and Hobbes. To raise
the country by the employment of its own internal forces was an
unpromising and unprofitable enterprise. He, who was himself a
barbarian, could only accomplish his purpose by means of aid from
outside, by the instrumentality of those who had experience of a more
advanced order of things. The borrowed forces could only be applied
by the powers of a despot. That power, moreover, was already
provided. Muscovy had never been governed otherwise than by
irresponsible and irresistible authority. That authority had been
inactive and not deeply felt. Now the same authority interfered to
alter almost everything, except the subjection of the serf to the
landowner.
To enforce the supremacy of the State over society, and of will over
custom, Peter introduced his most characteristic institution. He made
precedence depend on public service, and regulated it according to
rank in the army in fourteen degrees, from the ensign to the marshal.
A new aristocracy superseded the old, and the ancient nobles were
forced to serve, in order to be somebody, when away from the ancestral
home. They were important, not by their possessions or their descent,
but by the position in which they stood towards the emperor. Peter
had imbibed too much of the rationalism of the West to be a
persecutor. He was severe with the schismatics, who existed only as
opponents of change and enemies of civilisation; and as there were no
Jews in Russia, he decreed that in future there should be none. But
he built churches for the foreigners whom he brought into the country,
and did not attempt to sustain the domination of the Muscovite clergy,
who, like the English, professed passive obedience, but obeyed without
approval. When the last patriarch was dying he expressed the wish
that all men of other faith--Catholic, Protestant, and Mahomedan--
should be burnt, and their places of worship levelled with the ground.
Peter's schemes of change were so tremendous that most Russians
recoiled and wished them no success. His own family opposed him, and
became a centre of plotting opposition. He repudiated his wife, and
sent her to the seclusion of a convent. His second empress was a
peasant woman, whose name was Martha, but was called, in Russia,
Catharine. It was uncertain whether her husband was dead. It was
certain that Peter's first wife was living. Nobody minded. But
Alexis, the son of the earlier marriage, took the conservative side,
and became, from 1711, the hope of those who rejected Peter's
anti-national, cosmopolitan, chiefly Dutch and German system of
reform. He longed for the Asiatic twilight of the past, and the
discontented longed for him to succeed. Peter, seeing that he was a
poor creature, wished him to resign his claim. Alexis fled, and
placed himself under the protection of the emperor Charles VI. He was
discovered in the castle of St. Elmo at Naples, and brought back to
Russia, where he was condemned to death, and died of torture. The
plan had been to return to the ancient ways, and to give Petersburg
back to the Swedes, with the command of the coast. The clergy were
mixed up in it, and Peter now secured himself against the Church. He
had left the patriarchate vacant. He now abolished it, and divided
its powers.
A kindred spirit had arisen, capable of carrying out reform in the
Church. Procopovitch had become a united Greek, in order to be
admitted to foreign universities. He studied in Rome, and in Germany
he became familiar with Lutheran theology. He came back with much of
the religious culture of the West, and Peter appointed him to one of
the sees. The bishops protested. They said that he was a heretic
seventeen times over. And they proposed, if they were not believed,
that the matter should be decided by the three eastern patriarchs. It
was a scheme to disconnect the Church from the State, to merge it in
the Eastern Church. Procopovitch defeated his enemies, and drew up
the plan by which the Church was brought under the civil power, much
on the lines of Henry VIII. It was governed, thenceforward, by the
Holy Synod, which was controlled by a great official who represented
the emperor. The clergy ceased to be an obstacle. The government of
the Church by the Synod was part of a plan of government by boards,
which had been suggested by Leibnitz. The empire was governed by a
Senate of eight, of ten, at one time of twenty members. Under the
Senate, which made laws, were ten ministerial departments, or boards,
like our Treasury or Admiralty, which executed them. And there were
eleven governors of provinces, each larger than a European monarchy.
Men fit for such a responsibility could not be found in Russia, and
the empire was badly governed. But it was there. The transformation
was accomplished. And the gigantic force was centred in the hand of a
tyrant.
The concentration was such, the destruction of resisting forces was so
complete, that the machine worked well in the hands of women. For
almost the whole of the seventy years after Peter's death, Russia was
governed by empresses. The last of them, Catharine II, was one of the
ablest and most successful rulers in modern times. For the machine
which Peter created was strong enough to endure. It still exists as
he made it, an amalgam of power and servility, never leading, but
often supplying the deciding force in the history of the world. It
was the empire of Peter the Great that destroyed the empire of
Napoleon.
Such a Power, limited by feeble neighbours, would have been a danger
to the whole of Europe, but that another great Power, founded in the
same generation, became a bulwark against a menacing expansion. The
rise of Prussia preserved the Continent from being submerged. This
new phase of northern monarchy was very unlike that which we have just
considered. Prussia, like Russia, was a military Power, living on the
hope of expansion. But it was infinitely inferior, as to extent and
population. It was not a giant but an athlete; and its future
depended, not on the intrusion of foreign elements, but on its own
development and practical organisation. Nature had done nothing to
promise greatness. The country was open and arid, and the inhabitants
were hard, unimaginative, and poor. Religion had less power over them
than over any other part of Germany. To this day the sky-line of
Berlin is more unbroken by church towers than that of almost any other
city. Neither their situation on the map of Europe nor hereditary
endowment fitted the Prussians for empire. It was the work of the
dynasty that a country which was less than Scotland, and was protected
by no barrier of land or water, became greater than France.
The Prussian people, by which I mean the people of Brandenburg and its
vicinity, were conscious that Nature had not favoured them
excessively, and that they could prosper only by the action of their
government. No people were more submissive, or more ready to suffer,
for the sake of the State. And none have gone farther in asserting
its omnipotence, or in abdicating in its hands. They had no silver
streak, no natural barriers. As a consequence of the Reformation the
dominions of the Teutonic knights were joined in personal union under
the same Hohenzollerns who reigned on the Oder and the Elbe. One was
part of the empire, the other was enclosed in Poland, and they were
separated by Polish territory. They did not help each other, and each
was a source of danger for the other. They could only hope to exist
by becoming stronger. That has been, for two centuries and a half, a
fixed tradition at Berlin with the rulers and the people. They could
not help being aggressive, and they worshipped the authority that
could make them successful aggressors.
The dynasty entered into the spirit of the problem from 1640.
One-half of the electors and kings since then have struggled intensely
for the increase of their power. And they built up their state in
spite of the other half, who had no enterprise or masterful energy.
But before the accession of the great elector, in 1640, Brandenburg
had taken a line of its own in the question of religion which was
eminently favourable to territorial increase. It was more tolerant
than other portions of the empire. The elector was one of the last of
the German princes to join the Reformation. And Saxony retained the
pre-eminence among the Protestants. Early in the seventeenth century
the reigning family became Calvinists. The country was Lutheran. The
position was unfavourable to the exercise of what was called the right
of Reformation, the right of enforcing conformity under pain of exile;
and, between the Calvinist at the head and the Lutherans in every
other office, the Catholics were able to exist. In some provinces,
though not in all, they were definitely tolerated. The great elector
made every effort to attract the fugitive Huguenots. Agents were sent
out to show them the way, and to help them with funds. Whole
districts were peopled by them, and about twenty thousand of them
settled in Berlin and other towns. Like Peter the Great, the great
elector derived his notion of better things from Holland, and he
encouraged Dutch artisans to settle. His dominions were scattered and
unlike. He introduced a system of government that was the same for
all, and was above local or social influences. The estates lost their
ancient authority, and one supreme will governed everything, through a
body of trained administrators such as up to that time existed nowhere
else.
The next elector obtained the royal crown. Prince Eugene said that
the emperor's ministers, who had advised the grant, deserved to be
hanged. But in fact they were not less prescient than he, for they
warned Leopold that Prussia would deprive his family of the empire.
The King of Prussia became the head of the Protestant interest in
Germany. That prerogative had been forfeited by the Elector of Saxony
when he received the crown of Poland and became a Catholic. Rome
alone protested against the Protestant king, and spoke only of a
margrave of Brandenburg until after the death of Frederic II. All the
Catholic Powers acknowledged the new title and disregarded the
protest. For the first time there was a kingdom within the empire, a
kingdom, moreover, which was Protestant. It was a step towards the
break-up of that irrational body.
The second king succeeded in 1713 and died in 1740. He is the Peter
the Great of Prussia. For him, the whole secret of government is the
increase of power at home. His idea was that monarchy cannot be too
absolute. It requires to be wisely administered; but it does not
require to be limited. Concentration cannot be too intense. No enemy
outside is so dangerous as public opinion within. He announced that
he would establish his power on a rock--"un rocher de bronze." He meant
that the power of the State must be independent of the changing
motives of the hour, that it must be directed by a will superior alike
to majority and minority, to interests and classes. He spent his
reign in very deliberately contriving such a machine. The king, he
said, must do his work himself, and not shrink from trouble. He was
perpetually in harness. He was like a madman in his vehemence and his
crudity of speech. But there was method in his fury, and calculating
design and even practical wisdom. He gave an impetus as powerful as
that of the Tsar Peter; but he was superior to him in knowledge of
detail as well as in point of character. He was a hard taskmaster,
but he knew what he was about; and it does not appear that his
subjects desired to be governed in another way or that they would have
been satisfied with a monarch who did not strain their strength to the
uttermost.
The object in which they agreed with him--the supremacy of the
Prussians in Germany--was not to be obtained if they would not go into
training. There was no shrinking. He said, in 1713: "when my son
comes to the throne he must find the vaults crowded with gold," and
the son, in 1740, found eight million thalers. He found, moreover, a
well-equipped army of eighty-three thousand men. This was the special
creation of the energetic king. He was, indeed, a peaceful ruler, and
did not thirst for military glory. Among European Powers he was of
little account, and kept all his violence for home use. When he laid
up treasure, and organised an army that was not so large as that of
France, of Austria, or of Russia, but more concentrated and better
drilled, his people understood that he would some day provide
territory and population to match--an army so excessive, an army six
times as large, in proportion to those of other Powers, was meant to
be employed. The burden was not felt. Of the expense, one-half was
borne by the domain. Of the men, a large portion was recruited abroad,
and relieved the natives of Prussia. After some years, it was felt
that the platoons of giants, which had cost twelve million thalers,
were a wasteful toy, and that the money might have been spent to
advantage among the people. The king attempted to supply their place
by a levy among the the agrarian population, which is reputed the
remote origin of universal service. His economy was so rigid that,
with an income of seven million thalers, he spent five millions on his
armaments. He thus created the force which began what Napoleon
completed, the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. For that which
the father stored, the son expended; and I hope in the next lecture to
tell you how he did it.
He so eclipsed Frederic William that the latter became an obscure
memory, and was spoken of with contempt and disgust by his own people.
Carlyle discovered in him his own ideal, the strong man, and set him
on his legs. And when the army which he created, which had been
remodelled by Frederic, Scharnhorst, Roon, and Moltke, became the
greatest of all armies, Germany remembered its founder and was
grateful for his militarism.
They have made their choice, as we must do. Those who remember with
honour men like Hampden and Washington, regard with a corresponding
aversion Peter the Great and Frederic William I. But without the
first Europe might be French, and without the other it might be
Russian. That which arose in Northern Europe about the time of our
revolution settlement was a new form of practical absolutism.
Theological monarchy had done its time, and was now followed by
military monarchy. Church and State had oppressed mankind together;
henceforth the State oppressed for its own sake. And this was the
genuine idea which came in with the Renaissance, according to which
the State alone governs, and all other things obey. Reformation and
Counter-Reformation had pushed religion to the front: but after two
centuries the original theory, that government must be undivided and
uncontrolled, began to prevail. It is a new type, not to be
confounded with that of Henry VIII, Philip II, or Lewis XIV, and
better adapted to a more rational and economic age. Government so
understood is the intellectual guide of the nation, the promoter of
wealth, the teacher of knowledge, the guardian of morality, the
mainspring of the ascending movement of man. That is the tremendous
power, supported by millions of bayonets, which grew up in the days of
which I have been speaking at Petersburg, and was developed, by much
abler minds, chiefly at Berlin; and it is the greatest danger that
remains to be encountered by the Anglo-Saxon race.