CHAPTER XXXIV.GERMANY UNDER MARIA THERESA AND JOSEPH II.(1740—1790.)Maria Theresa and her Government.—Death of Francis I.—Character of Joseph II.—The Partition of Poland.—The Bavarian Succession.—Last Days of Maria Theresa.—Republican Ideas in Europe.—Joseph II. as a Revolutionist.—His Reforms.—Visit of Pope Pius VI.—Alarm of the Catholics.—Joseph among the People.—The Order of Jesuits dissolved by the Pope.—Joseph II's Disappointments.—His Death.—Progress in Germany.—A German-Catholic Church proposed by four Archbishops.—"Enlightened Despotism."—The small States.—Influence of the great German Authors.1750. MARIA THERESA.In the Empress Maria Theresa, Frederick the Great had an enemy whom he was bound to respect. Since the death of Maximilian II., in 1576, Austria had no male ruler so prudent, just and energetic as this woman. One of her first acts was to imitate the military organization of Prussia: then she endeavored to restore the finances of the country, which had been sadly shattered by the luxury of her predecessors. Her position during the two Silesian Wars and the Seven Years' War was almost the same as that of her opponent: she fought to recover territory, part of which had been ceded to Austria and part of which she had held by virtue of unsettled claims. The only difference was that the very existence of Austria did not depend on the result, as was the case with Prussia.Maria Theresa, like all the Hapsburgs after Ferdinand I., had grown up under the influence of the Jesuits, and her ideas of justice were limited by her religious bigotry. In other respects she was wise and liberal: she effected a complete reorganization of the government, establishing special departments of justice, industry and commerce; she sought to develop the resources of the country, abolished torture, introduced a new criminal code,—in short, she neglected scarcely any important interests of the people, except theireducation and their religious freedom. Nevertheless, she was always jealous of the assumptions of Rome, and prevented, as far as she was able, the immediate dependence of the Catholic clergy upon the Pope.1765.In 1765, her husband, Francis I. (of Lorraine and Tuscany) suddenly died, and was succeeded, as German Emperor, by her eldest son, Joseph II., who was then twenty-four years of age. He was an earnest, noble-hearted, aspiring man, who had already taken his mother's enemy, Frederick the Great, as his model for a ruler. Maria Theresa, therefore, kept the Government of the Austrian dominions in her own hands, and the title of "Emperor" was not much more than an empty dignity while she lived. In August, 1769, Joseph had an interview with Frederick at Neisse, in Silesia, at which the Polish question was discussed. The latter returned the visit, at Neustadt in Moravia, the following year, and the terms of the partition of Poland appear to have been then agreed upon between them. Nevertheless, after the treaty had been formally drawn up and laid before Maria Theresa for her signature, she added these words: "Long after I am dead, the effects of this violation of all which has hitherto been considered right and holy will be made manifest." Joseph, with all his liberal ideas, had no such scruples of conscience. He was easily controlled by Frederick the Great, who, notwithstanding, never entirely trusted him.In 1777 a new trouble arose, which for two years held Germany on the brink of internal war. The Elector Max Joseph of Bavaria, the last of the house of Wittelsbach in a direct line, died without leaving brother or son, and the next heir was the Elector Karl Theodore of the Palatinate. The latter was persuaded by Joseph II. to give up about half of Bavaria to Austria, and Austrian troops immediately took possession of the territory. This proceeding created great alarm among the German princes, who looked upon it as the beginning of an attempt to extend the Austrian sway over all the other States. Another heir to Bavaria, Duke Karl of Zweibrücken (a little principality on the French frontier), was brought forward and presented by Frederick the Great, who, in order to support him, sent two armies into the field. Saxony and some of the smaller States took the same side; even Maria Theresa desired peace, but Joseph II. persisted in his plans until both France and Russia intervened. Thematter was finally settled in May, 1779, by giving Bavaria to the Elector Karl Theodore, and annexing a strip of territory along the river Inn, containing about 900 square miles and 139,000 inhabitants, to Austria.1780. DEATH OF MARIA THERESA.Maria Theresa had long been ill of an incurable dropsy, and on the 29th of November, 1780, she died, in the sixty-fourth year of her age. A few days before her death she had herself lowered by ropes and pulleys into the vault where the coffin of Francis I. reposed. On being drawn up again, one of the ropes parted, whereupon she exclaimed: "He wishes to keep me with him, and I shall soon come!" She wrote in her prayer-book that in regard to matters of justice, the Church, the education of her children, and her obligations towards the different orders of her people, she found little cause for self-reproach; but that she had been a sinner in making war from motives of pride, envy and anger, and in her speech had shown too little charity for others. She left Austria in a condition of order and material prosperity such as the country had not known for centuries.When Frederick the Great heard of her death, he said to one of his ministers: "Maria Theresa is dead; now there will be a new order of things!" He evidently believed that Joseph II. would set about indulging his restless ambition for conquest. But the latter kept the peace, and devoted himself to the interests of Austria, establishing, indeed, a new and most astonishing order of things, but of a totally different nature from what Frederick had expected. Joseph II. was filled with the new ideas of human rights which already agitated Europe. The short but illustrious history of the Corsican Republic, the foundation of the new nation of the United States of America, the works of French authors advocating democracy in society and politics, were beginning to exercise a powerful influence in Germany, not so much among the people as among the highly educated classes. Thus at the very moment when Frederick and Maria Theresa were exercising the most absolute form of despotism, and the smaller rulers were doing their best to imitate them, the most radical theories of republicanism were beginning to be openly discussed, and the great Revolution which they occasioned was only a few years off.1781.Joseph II. was scarcely less despotic in his habits of government than Frederick the Great, and he used his power to force new liberties upon a people who were not intelligentenough to understand them. He stands almost alone among monarchs, as an example of a Revolutionist upon the throne, not only granting far more than was ever demanded of his predecessors, but compelling his people to accept rights which they hardly knew how to use. He determined to transform Austria, by a few bold measures, into a State which should embody all the progressive ideas of the day, and be a model for the world. The plan was high and noble, but he failed because he did not perceive that the condition of a people cannot be so totally changed, without a wise and gradual preparation for it.He began by reforming the entire civil service of Austria; but, as he took the reform into his own hands and had little practical knowledge of the position and duties of the officials, many of the changes operated injuriously. In regard to taxation, industry and commerce, he followed the theories of French writers, which, in many respects, did not apply to the state of things in Austria. He abolished the penalty of death, put an end to serfdom among the peasantry, cut down the privileges of the nobles, and tried, for a short time, the experiment of a free press. His boldest measure was in regard to the Church, which he endeavored to make wholly independent of Rome. He openly declared that the priests were "the most dangerous and most useless class in every country"; he suppressed seven hundred monasteries and turned them into schools or asylums, granted the Protestants freedom of worship and all rights enjoyed by Catholics, and continued his work in so sweeping a manner that the Pope, Pius VI., hastened to Vienna in 1782, in the greatest alarm, hoping to restore the influence of the Church. Joseph II. received him with external politeness, but had him carefully watched and allowed no one to visit him without his own express permission. After a stay of four weeks during which he did not obtain a single concession of any importance, the Pope returned to Rome.Not content with what he had accomplished, Joseph now went further. He gave equal rights to Jews and members of the Greek Church, ordered German hymns to be sung in the Catholic Churches and the German Bible to be read, and prohibited pilgrimages and religious processions. These measures gave the priesthood the means of alarming the ignorant people, who were easily persuaded that the Emperor intended to abolish the Christian religion. They becamesuspicious and hostile towards the one man who was defying the Church and the nobles in his efforts to help them. Only the few who came into direct contact with him were able to appreciate his sincerity and goodness. He was fond of going about alone, dressed so simply that few recognized him, and almost as many stories of his intercourse with the lower classes are told of him in Austria as of Frederick the Great in Prussia. On one occasion he attended a poor sick woman whose daughter took him for a physician: on another he took the plough from the hands of a peasant, and ploughed a few furrows around the field. If his reign had been longer, the Austrian people would have learned to trust him, and many of his reforms might have become permanent; but he was better understood and loved after his death than during his life.1785. JOSEPH II.'S REFORMS.One circumstance must be mentioned, in explanation of the sudden and sweeping character of Joseph II.'s measures towards the Church. The Jesuits, by their intrigues and the demoralizing influence which they exercised, had made themselves hated in all Catholic countries, and were only tolerated in Bavaria and Austria. France, Spain, Naples and Portugal, one after the other, banished the Order, and Pope Clement XIV. was finally induced, in 1773, to dissolve its connection with the Church of Rome. The Jesuits were then compelled to leave Austria, and for a time they found refuge only in Russia and Prussia, where, through a most mistaken policy, they were employed by the governments as teachers. Their expulsion was the sign of a new life for the schools and universities, which were released from their paralyzing sway, and Joseph II. evidently supposed that the Church of Rome itself had made a step in advance. The Archbishop of Mayence and the Bishop of Treves were noted liberals; the latter even favored a reformation of the Catholic Church, and the Emperor had reason to believe that he would receive at least a moral support throughout Germany. He neither perceived the thorough demoralization which two centuries of Jesuit rule had produced in Austria, nor the settled determination of the Papal power to restore the Order as soon as circumstances would permit.Joseph II.'s last years were disastrous to all his plans. In Flanders, which was still a dependency of Austria, the priests incited the people to revolt; in Hungary the nobles were bitterly hostile to him, on account of the abolition ofserfdom, and an alliance with Catharine II. of Russia against Turkey, into which he entered in 1788,—chiefly, it seems, in the hope of achieving military renown—was in every way unfortunate. At the head of an army of 200,000 men, he marched against Belgrade, but was repelled by the Turks, and finally returned to Vienna with the seeds of a fatal fever in his frame. Russia made peace with Turkey before the fortunes of war could be retrieved; Flanders declared itself independent of Austria, and a revolution in Hungary was only prevented by his taking back most of the decrees which had been issued for the emancipation of the people. Disappointed and hopeless, Joseph II. succumbed to the fever which hung upon him: he died on the 20th of February, 1790, only forty-nine years of age. He ordered these words to be engraved upon his tomb-stone: "Here lies a prince, whose intentions were pure, but who had the misfortune to see all his plans shattered!" History has done justice to his character, and the people whom he tried to help learned to appreciate his efforts when it was too late.1790.The condition of Germany, from the end of the Seven Years' War to the close of the eighteenth century, shows a remarkable progress, when we contrast it with the first half of the century. The stern, heroic character of Frederick the Great, the strong, humane aspirations of Joseph II., and the rapid growth of democratic ideas all over the world, affected at last many of the smaller German States. Their imitation of the pomp and state of Louis XIV., which they had practised for nearly a hundred years, came to an end; the princes were now possessed with the idea of "an enlightened despotism"—that is, while retaining their absolute power, they endeavored to exercise it for the good of the people. There were some dark exceptions to this general change for the better. The rulers of Hesse-Cassel and Würtemberg, for example, sold whole regiments of their subjects to England, to be used against the American Colonies in the War of Independence. Although many of these soldiers remained in the United States, and encouraged, by their satisfaction with their new homes, the later German emigration to America, the princes who sold them covered their own memories with infamy, and deservedly so.1790. "ENLIGHTENED DESPOTISM."There was a remarkable movement, about the same time, among the Catholic Archbishops, who were also temporal rulers, in Germany. The dominions of these priestly princes,especially along the Rhine, showed what had been the character of such a form of government. There were about 1,000 inhabitants, fifty of whom were priests and two hundred and sixty beggars, to every twenty-two square miles! The difference between the condition of their States and that of the Protestant territories adjoining them was much more strongly marked than it now is between the Protestant and Catholic Cantons of Switzerland. By a singular coincidence, the chief Catholic Archbishops were at this time men of intelligence and humane aspirations, who did their best to remedy the scandalous misrule of their predecessors. In the year 1786, the Archbishops of Mayence, Treves, Cologne and Salzburg came together at Ems, and agreed upon a plan of founding a national German-Catholic Church, independent of Rome. The priests, in their incredible ignorance and bigotry, opposed the movement, and even Joseph II., who had planned the very same thing for Austria, most inconsistently refused to favor it; therefore the plan failed.It must be admitted, as an apology for the theory of "an enlightened despotism," that there was no representative government in Europe at the time, where there was greater justice and order than in Prussia or in Austria under Joseph II. The German Empire had become a mere mockery; its perpetual Diet at Ratisbon was little more than a farce. Poland, Holland and Sweden, where there was a Legislative Assembly, were in a most unfortunate condition: the Swiss Republic was far from being republican, and even England, under George III., did not present a fortunate model of parliamentary government. The United States of America were too far off and too little known, to exercise much influence. Some of the smaller German States, which were despotisms in the hands of wise and humane rulers, thus played a most beneficent part in protecting, instructing and elevating the people.Baden, Brunswick, Anhalt-Dessau, Holstein, Saxe-Gotha, and especially Saxe-Weimar, became cradles of science and literature. Karl Augustus, of the last-named State, called Herder, Wieland, Goethe, Schiller and other illustrious authors to his court, and created such a distinguished circle in letters and the arts that Weimar was named "the German Athens." The works of these great men, which had been preceded by those of Lessing and Klopstock, gave an immense impetus to the intellectual development of Germany.It was the first great advance made by the people since the days of Luther, and its effect extended gradually to the courts of less intelligent and humane princes. Even the profligate Duke Karl Eugene of Würtemberg reformed in a measure, established the Karl's-School where Schiller was educated, and tried, so far as he knew how, to govern justly. Frederick Augustus of Saxony refrained from imitating his dissolute and tyrannical ancestors, and his land began to recover from its long sufferings. As for the scores of petty States, which contained—as was ironically said—"twelve subjects and one Jew," and were not much larger than an average Illinois farm, they were mostly despotic and ridiculous; but they were too weak to impede the general march of progress.1790.Among the greater States, only Bavaria remained in the background. Although temporarily deprived of his beloved Jesuits, the Elector held fast to all the prejudices they had inculcated, and kept his people in ignorance.
GERMANY UNDER MARIA THERESA AND JOSEPH II.
(1740—1790.)
Maria Theresa and her Government.—Death of Francis I.—Character of Joseph II.—The Partition of Poland.—The Bavarian Succession.—Last Days of Maria Theresa.—Republican Ideas in Europe.—Joseph II. as a Revolutionist.—His Reforms.—Visit of Pope Pius VI.—Alarm of the Catholics.—Joseph among the People.—The Order of Jesuits dissolved by the Pope.—Joseph II's Disappointments.—His Death.—Progress in Germany.—A German-Catholic Church proposed by four Archbishops.—"Enlightened Despotism."—The small States.—Influence of the great German Authors.
1750. MARIA THERESA.
In the Empress Maria Theresa, Frederick the Great had an enemy whom he was bound to respect. Since the death of Maximilian II., in 1576, Austria had no male ruler so prudent, just and energetic as this woman. One of her first acts was to imitate the military organization of Prussia: then she endeavored to restore the finances of the country, which had been sadly shattered by the luxury of her predecessors. Her position during the two Silesian Wars and the Seven Years' War was almost the same as that of her opponent: she fought to recover territory, part of which had been ceded to Austria and part of which she had held by virtue of unsettled claims. The only difference was that the very existence of Austria did not depend on the result, as was the case with Prussia.
Maria Theresa, like all the Hapsburgs after Ferdinand I., had grown up under the influence of the Jesuits, and her ideas of justice were limited by her religious bigotry. In other respects she was wise and liberal: she effected a complete reorganization of the government, establishing special departments of justice, industry and commerce; she sought to develop the resources of the country, abolished torture, introduced a new criminal code,—in short, she neglected scarcely any important interests of the people, except theireducation and their religious freedom. Nevertheless, she was always jealous of the assumptions of Rome, and prevented, as far as she was able, the immediate dependence of the Catholic clergy upon the Pope.
1765.
In 1765, her husband, Francis I. (of Lorraine and Tuscany) suddenly died, and was succeeded, as German Emperor, by her eldest son, Joseph II., who was then twenty-four years of age. He was an earnest, noble-hearted, aspiring man, who had already taken his mother's enemy, Frederick the Great, as his model for a ruler. Maria Theresa, therefore, kept the Government of the Austrian dominions in her own hands, and the title of "Emperor" was not much more than an empty dignity while she lived. In August, 1769, Joseph had an interview with Frederick at Neisse, in Silesia, at which the Polish question was discussed. The latter returned the visit, at Neustadt in Moravia, the following year, and the terms of the partition of Poland appear to have been then agreed upon between them. Nevertheless, after the treaty had been formally drawn up and laid before Maria Theresa for her signature, she added these words: "Long after I am dead, the effects of this violation of all which has hitherto been considered right and holy will be made manifest." Joseph, with all his liberal ideas, had no such scruples of conscience. He was easily controlled by Frederick the Great, who, notwithstanding, never entirely trusted him.
In 1777 a new trouble arose, which for two years held Germany on the brink of internal war. The Elector Max Joseph of Bavaria, the last of the house of Wittelsbach in a direct line, died without leaving brother or son, and the next heir was the Elector Karl Theodore of the Palatinate. The latter was persuaded by Joseph II. to give up about half of Bavaria to Austria, and Austrian troops immediately took possession of the territory. This proceeding created great alarm among the German princes, who looked upon it as the beginning of an attempt to extend the Austrian sway over all the other States. Another heir to Bavaria, Duke Karl of Zweibrücken (a little principality on the French frontier), was brought forward and presented by Frederick the Great, who, in order to support him, sent two armies into the field. Saxony and some of the smaller States took the same side; even Maria Theresa desired peace, but Joseph II. persisted in his plans until both France and Russia intervened. Thematter was finally settled in May, 1779, by giving Bavaria to the Elector Karl Theodore, and annexing a strip of territory along the river Inn, containing about 900 square miles and 139,000 inhabitants, to Austria.
1780. DEATH OF MARIA THERESA.
Maria Theresa had long been ill of an incurable dropsy, and on the 29th of November, 1780, she died, in the sixty-fourth year of her age. A few days before her death she had herself lowered by ropes and pulleys into the vault where the coffin of Francis I. reposed. On being drawn up again, one of the ropes parted, whereupon she exclaimed: "He wishes to keep me with him, and I shall soon come!" She wrote in her prayer-book that in regard to matters of justice, the Church, the education of her children, and her obligations towards the different orders of her people, she found little cause for self-reproach; but that she had been a sinner in making war from motives of pride, envy and anger, and in her speech had shown too little charity for others. She left Austria in a condition of order and material prosperity such as the country had not known for centuries.
When Frederick the Great heard of her death, he said to one of his ministers: "Maria Theresa is dead; now there will be a new order of things!" He evidently believed that Joseph II. would set about indulging his restless ambition for conquest. But the latter kept the peace, and devoted himself to the interests of Austria, establishing, indeed, a new and most astonishing order of things, but of a totally different nature from what Frederick had expected. Joseph II. was filled with the new ideas of human rights which already agitated Europe. The short but illustrious history of the Corsican Republic, the foundation of the new nation of the United States of America, the works of French authors advocating democracy in society and politics, were beginning to exercise a powerful influence in Germany, not so much among the people as among the highly educated classes. Thus at the very moment when Frederick and Maria Theresa were exercising the most absolute form of despotism, and the smaller rulers were doing their best to imitate them, the most radical theories of republicanism were beginning to be openly discussed, and the great Revolution which they occasioned was only a few years off.
1781.
Joseph II. was scarcely less despotic in his habits of government than Frederick the Great, and he used his power to force new liberties upon a people who were not intelligentenough to understand them. He stands almost alone among monarchs, as an example of a Revolutionist upon the throne, not only granting far more than was ever demanded of his predecessors, but compelling his people to accept rights which they hardly knew how to use. He determined to transform Austria, by a few bold measures, into a State which should embody all the progressive ideas of the day, and be a model for the world. The plan was high and noble, but he failed because he did not perceive that the condition of a people cannot be so totally changed, without a wise and gradual preparation for it.
He began by reforming the entire civil service of Austria; but, as he took the reform into his own hands and had little practical knowledge of the position and duties of the officials, many of the changes operated injuriously. In regard to taxation, industry and commerce, he followed the theories of French writers, which, in many respects, did not apply to the state of things in Austria. He abolished the penalty of death, put an end to serfdom among the peasantry, cut down the privileges of the nobles, and tried, for a short time, the experiment of a free press. His boldest measure was in regard to the Church, which he endeavored to make wholly independent of Rome. He openly declared that the priests were "the most dangerous and most useless class in every country"; he suppressed seven hundred monasteries and turned them into schools or asylums, granted the Protestants freedom of worship and all rights enjoyed by Catholics, and continued his work in so sweeping a manner that the Pope, Pius VI., hastened to Vienna in 1782, in the greatest alarm, hoping to restore the influence of the Church. Joseph II. received him with external politeness, but had him carefully watched and allowed no one to visit him without his own express permission. After a stay of four weeks during which he did not obtain a single concession of any importance, the Pope returned to Rome.
Not content with what he had accomplished, Joseph now went further. He gave equal rights to Jews and members of the Greek Church, ordered German hymns to be sung in the Catholic Churches and the German Bible to be read, and prohibited pilgrimages and religious processions. These measures gave the priesthood the means of alarming the ignorant people, who were easily persuaded that the Emperor intended to abolish the Christian religion. They becamesuspicious and hostile towards the one man who was defying the Church and the nobles in his efforts to help them. Only the few who came into direct contact with him were able to appreciate his sincerity and goodness. He was fond of going about alone, dressed so simply that few recognized him, and almost as many stories of his intercourse with the lower classes are told of him in Austria as of Frederick the Great in Prussia. On one occasion he attended a poor sick woman whose daughter took him for a physician: on another he took the plough from the hands of a peasant, and ploughed a few furrows around the field. If his reign had been longer, the Austrian people would have learned to trust him, and many of his reforms might have become permanent; but he was better understood and loved after his death than during his life.
1785. JOSEPH II.'S REFORMS.
One circumstance must be mentioned, in explanation of the sudden and sweeping character of Joseph II.'s measures towards the Church. The Jesuits, by their intrigues and the demoralizing influence which they exercised, had made themselves hated in all Catholic countries, and were only tolerated in Bavaria and Austria. France, Spain, Naples and Portugal, one after the other, banished the Order, and Pope Clement XIV. was finally induced, in 1773, to dissolve its connection with the Church of Rome. The Jesuits were then compelled to leave Austria, and for a time they found refuge only in Russia and Prussia, where, through a most mistaken policy, they were employed by the governments as teachers. Their expulsion was the sign of a new life for the schools and universities, which were released from their paralyzing sway, and Joseph II. evidently supposed that the Church of Rome itself had made a step in advance. The Archbishop of Mayence and the Bishop of Treves were noted liberals; the latter even favored a reformation of the Catholic Church, and the Emperor had reason to believe that he would receive at least a moral support throughout Germany. He neither perceived the thorough demoralization which two centuries of Jesuit rule had produced in Austria, nor the settled determination of the Papal power to restore the Order as soon as circumstances would permit.
Joseph II.'s last years were disastrous to all his plans. In Flanders, which was still a dependency of Austria, the priests incited the people to revolt; in Hungary the nobles were bitterly hostile to him, on account of the abolition ofserfdom, and an alliance with Catharine II. of Russia against Turkey, into which he entered in 1788,—chiefly, it seems, in the hope of achieving military renown—was in every way unfortunate. At the head of an army of 200,000 men, he marched against Belgrade, but was repelled by the Turks, and finally returned to Vienna with the seeds of a fatal fever in his frame. Russia made peace with Turkey before the fortunes of war could be retrieved; Flanders declared itself independent of Austria, and a revolution in Hungary was only prevented by his taking back most of the decrees which had been issued for the emancipation of the people. Disappointed and hopeless, Joseph II. succumbed to the fever which hung upon him: he died on the 20th of February, 1790, only forty-nine years of age. He ordered these words to be engraved upon his tomb-stone: "Here lies a prince, whose intentions were pure, but who had the misfortune to see all his plans shattered!" History has done justice to his character, and the people whom he tried to help learned to appreciate his efforts when it was too late.
1790.
The condition of Germany, from the end of the Seven Years' War to the close of the eighteenth century, shows a remarkable progress, when we contrast it with the first half of the century. The stern, heroic character of Frederick the Great, the strong, humane aspirations of Joseph II., and the rapid growth of democratic ideas all over the world, affected at last many of the smaller German States. Their imitation of the pomp and state of Louis XIV., which they had practised for nearly a hundred years, came to an end; the princes were now possessed with the idea of "an enlightened despotism"—that is, while retaining their absolute power, they endeavored to exercise it for the good of the people. There were some dark exceptions to this general change for the better. The rulers of Hesse-Cassel and Würtemberg, for example, sold whole regiments of their subjects to England, to be used against the American Colonies in the War of Independence. Although many of these soldiers remained in the United States, and encouraged, by their satisfaction with their new homes, the later German emigration to America, the princes who sold them covered their own memories with infamy, and deservedly so.
1790. "ENLIGHTENED DESPOTISM."
There was a remarkable movement, about the same time, among the Catholic Archbishops, who were also temporal rulers, in Germany. The dominions of these priestly princes,especially along the Rhine, showed what had been the character of such a form of government. There were about 1,000 inhabitants, fifty of whom were priests and two hundred and sixty beggars, to every twenty-two square miles! The difference between the condition of their States and that of the Protestant territories adjoining them was much more strongly marked than it now is between the Protestant and Catholic Cantons of Switzerland. By a singular coincidence, the chief Catholic Archbishops were at this time men of intelligence and humane aspirations, who did their best to remedy the scandalous misrule of their predecessors. In the year 1786, the Archbishops of Mayence, Treves, Cologne and Salzburg came together at Ems, and agreed upon a plan of founding a national German-Catholic Church, independent of Rome. The priests, in their incredible ignorance and bigotry, opposed the movement, and even Joseph II., who had planned the very same thing for Austria, most inconsistently refused to favor it; therefore the plan failed.
It must be admitted, as an apology for the theory of "an enlightened despotism," that there was no representative government in Europe at the time, where there was greater justice and order than in Prussia or in Austria under Joseph II. The German Empire had become a mere mockery; its perpetual Diet at Ratisbon was little more than a farce. Poland, Holland and Sweden, where there was a Legislative Assembly, were in a most unfortunate condition: the Swiss Republic was far from being republican, and even England, under George III., did not present a fortunate model of parliamentary government. The United States of America were too far off and too little known, to exercise much influence. Some of the smaller German States, which were despotisms in the hands of wise and humane rulers, thus played a most beneficent part in protecting, instructing and elevating the people.
Baden, Brunswick, Anhalt-Dessau, Holstein, Saxe-Gotha, and especially Saxe-Weimar, became cradles of science and literature. Karl Augustus, of the last-named State, called Herder, Wieland, Goethe, Schiller and other illustrious authors to his court, and created such a distinguished circle in letters and the arts that Weimar was named "the German Athens." The works of these great men, which had been preceded by those of Lessing and Klopstock, gave an immense impetus to the intellectual development of Germany.It was the first great advance made by the people since the days of Luther, and its effect extended gradually to the courts of less intelligent and humane princes. Even the profligate Duke Karl Eugene of Würtemberg reformed in a measure, established the Karl's-School where Schiller was educated, and tried, so far as he knew how, to govern justly. Frederick Augustus of Saxony refrained from imitating his dissolute and tyrannical ancestors, and his land began to recover from its long sufferings. As for the scores of petty States, which contained—as was ironically said—"twelve subjects and one Jew," and were not much larger than an average Illinois farm, they were mostly despotic and ridiculous; but they were too weak to impede the general march of progress.
1790.
Among the greater States, only Bavaria remained in the background. Although temporarily deprived of his beloved Jesuits, the Elector held fast to all the prejudices they had inculcated, and kept his people in ignorance.