KROPOTKIN, PETER ALEXEIVICH,Prince(1842- ), Russian geographer, author and revolutionary, was born at Moscow in 1842. His father, Prince Alexei Petrovich Kropotkin, belonged to the old Russian nobility; his mother, the daughter of a general in the Russian army, had remarkable literary and liberal tastes. At the age of fifteen Prince Peter Kropotkin, who had been designed by his father for the army, entered the Corps of Pages at St Petersburg (1857). Only a hundred and fifty boys—mostly children of the nobility belonging to the court—were educated in this privileged corps, which combined the character of a military school endowed with special rights and of a Court institution attached to the imperial household. Here he remained till 1862, reading widely on his own account, and giving special attention to the works of the French encyclopaedists and to modern French history. Before he left Moscow Prince Kropotkin had developed an interest in the condition of the Russian peasantry, and this interest increased as he grew older. The years 1857-1861 witnessed a rich growth in the intellectual forces of Russia, and Kropotkin came under the influence of the new Liberal-revolutionary literature, which indeed largely expressed his own aspirations. In 1862 he was promoted from the Corps of Pages to the army. The members of the corps had the prescriptive right of choosing the regiment to which they would be attached. Kropotkin had never wished for a military career, but, as he had not the means to enter the St Petersburg University, he elected to join a Siberian Cossack regiment in the recently annexed Amur district, where there were prospects of administrative work. For some time he was aide de camp to the governor of Transbaikalia at Chita, subsequently being appointed attaché for Cossack affairs to the governor-general of East Siberia at Irkutsk. Opportunities for administrative work, however, were scanty, and in 1864 Kropotkin accepted charge of a geographical survey expedition, crossing North Manchuria from Transbaikalia to the Amur, and shortly afterwards was attached to another expedition which proceeded up the Sungari River into the heart of Manchuria. Both these expeditions yielded most valuable geographical results. The impossibility of obtaining any real administrative reforms in Siberia now induced Kropotkin to devote himself almost entirely to scientific exploration, in which he continued to be highly successful. In 1867 he quitted the army and returned to St Petersburg, where he entered the university, becoming at the same time secretary to the physical geography section of the Russian Geographical Society. In 1873 he published an important contribution to science, a map and paper in which he proved that the existing maps of Asia entirely misrepresented the physical formation of the country, the main structural lines being in fact from south-west to north-east, not from north to south, or from east to west as had been previously supposed. In 1871 he explored the glacial deposits of Finland and Sweden for the Russian Geographical Society, and while engaged in this work was offered the secretaryship of that society. But by this time he had determined that it was his duty not to work at fresh discoveries but to aid in diffusing existing knowledge among the people at large, and he accordingly refused the offer, and returned to St Petersburg, where he joined the revolutionary party. In 1872 he visited Switzerland, and became a member of the International Workingmen’s Association at Geneva. The socialism of this body was not, however, advanced enough for his views, and after studying the programme of the more violent Jura Federation at Neuchâtel and spending some time in the company of the leading members, he definitely adopted the creed of anarchism (q.v.) and, on returning to Russia, took an active part in spreading the nihilist propaganda. In 1874 he was arrested and imprisoned, but escaped in 1876 and went to England, removing after a short stay to Switzerland, where he joined the Jura Federation. In 1877 he went to Paris, where he helped to start the socialist movement, returning to Switzerland in 1878, where he edited for the Jura Federation a revolutionary newspaper,Le Révolté, subsequently also publishing various revolutionary pamphlets. Shortly after the assassination of the tsar Alexander II. (1881) Kropotkin was expelled from Switzerland by the Swiss government, and after a short stay at Thonon (Savoy) went to London, where he remained for nearly a year, returning to Thonon towards the end of 1882. Shortly afterwards he was arrested by the French government, and, after a trial at Lyons, sentenced by a police-court magistrate (under a special law passed on the fall of the Commune) to five years’ imprisonment, on the ground that he had belonged to the International Workingmen’s Association (1883). In 1886 however, as the result of repeated agitation on his behalf in the French Chamber, he was released, and settled near London.
Prince Kropotkin’s authority as a writer on Russia is universally acknowledged, and he has contributed largely to theEncyclopaedia Britannica. Among his other works may be namedParoles d’un révolté(1884);La Conquête du pain(1888);L’Anarchie: sa philosophie, son idéal(1896);The State, its Part in History(1898);Fields, Factories and Workshops(1899);Memoirs of a Revolutionist(1900);Mutual Aid, a Factor of Evolution(1902);Modern Science and Anarchism(Philadelphia, 1903);The Desiccation of Asia(1904); The Orography of Asia (1904); andRussian Literature(1905).
KROTOSCHIN(in Polish,Krotoszyn), a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Posen, 32 m. S.E. of Posen. Pop. (1900), 12,373. It has three churches, a synagogue, steam saw-mills,and a steam brewery, and carries on trade in grain and seeds. The castle of Krotoschin is the chief place of a mediatized principality which was formed in 1819 out of the domains of the Prussian crown and was granted to the prince of Thurn and Taxis in compensation for the relinquishment by him of the monopoly of the Prussian postal system, formerly held by his family.
KRÜDENER, BARBARA JULIANA,Baroness von(1764-1824), Russian religious mystic and author, was born at Riga in Livonia on the 11th of November 1764. Her father, Otto Hermann von Vietinghoff, who had fought as a colonel in Catherine II.’s wars, was one of the two councillors for Livonia and a man of immense wealth; her mother,néeCountess Anna Ulrica von Münnich, was a grand-daughter of the celebrated field marshal. Juliana, as she was usually called, was one of a numerous family. Her education, according to her own account, consisted of lessons in French spelling, deportment and sewing; and at the age of eighteen (Sept. 29, 1782) she was married to Baron Burckhard Alexis Constantin von Krüdener, a widower sixteen years her senior. The baron, a diplomatist of distinction, was cold and reserved; the baroness was frivolous, pleasure-loving, and possessed of an insatiable thirst for attention and flattery; and the strained relations due to this incompatibility of temper were embittered by her limitless extravagance, which constantly involved herself and her husband in financial difficulties. At first indeed all went well. On the 31st of January 1784 a son was born to them, named Paul after the grand-duke Paul (afterwards emperor), who acted as god-father. The same year Baron Krüdener became ambassador at Venice,1where he remained until transferred to Copenhagen in 1786.
In 1787 the birth of a daughter (Juliette) aggravated the nervous disorders from which the baroness had for some time been suffering, and it was decided that she must go to the south for her health; she accordingly left, with her infant daughter and her step-daughter Sophie. In 1789 she was at Paris when the states general met; a year later, at Montpellier, she met a young cavalry captain, Charles Louis de Frégeville, and a passionate attachment sprang up between them. They returned together to Copenhagen, where the baroness told her husband that her heart could no longer be his. The baron was coldly kind; he refused to hear of a divorce and attempted to arrange amodus vivendi, which was facilitated by the departure of De Frégeville for the war. All was useless; Juliana refused to remain at Copenhagen, and, setting out on her travels, visited Riga, St Petersburg—where her father had become a senator2—Berlin, Leipzig and Switzerland. In 1798 her husband became ambassador at Berlin, and she joined him there. But the stiff court society of Prussia was irksome to her; money difficulties continued; and by way of climax, the murder of the tsar Paul, in whose favour Baron Krüdener had stood high, made the position of the ambassador extremely precarious. The baroness seized the occasion to leave for the baths of Teplitz, whence she wrote to her husband that the doctors had ordered her to winter in the south. He died on the 14th of June 1802, without ever having seen her again.
Meanwhile the baroness had been revelling in the intellectual society of Coppet and of Paris. She was now thirty-six; her charms were fading, but her passion for admiration survived. She had tried the effect of the shawl dance, in imitation of Emma, Lady Hamilton; she now sought fame in literature, and in 1803, after consulting Châteaubriand and other writers of distinction, published herValérie, a sentimental romance, of which under a thin veil of anonymity she herself was the heroine. In January 1804 she returned to Livonia.
At Riga occurred her “conversion.” A gentleman of her acquaintance when about to salute her fell dying at her feet. The shock overset her not too well balanced mind; she sought for consolation, and found it in the ministrations of her shoemaker, an ardent disciple of the Moravian Brethren. Though she had “found peace,” however, the disorder of her nerves continued, and she was ordered by her doctor to the baths of Wiesbaden. At Königsberg she had an interview with Queen Louise, and, more important still, with one Adam Müller, a rough peasant, to whom the Lord had revealed a prophetic mission to King Frederick William III. “Chiliasm” was in the air. Napoleon was evidently Antichrist; and the “latter days” were about to be accomplished. Under the influence of the pietistic movement the belief was widely spread, in royal courts, in country parsonages, in peasants’ hovels: a man would be raised up “from the north ... from the rising of the sun” (Isa. xli. 25); Antichrist would be overthrown, and Christ would come to reign a thousand years upon the earth. The interview determined the direction of the baroness’s religious development. A short visit to the Moravians at Herrenhut followed; then she went, via Dresden, to Karlsruhe, to sit at the feet of Heinrich Jung-Stilling (q.v.), the high priest of occultist pietism, whose influence was supreme at the court of Baden and infected those of Stockholm and St Petersburg.3By him she was instructed in the chiliastic faith and in the mysteries of the supernatural world. Then, hearing that a certain pastor in the Vosges, Jean Frédéric Fontaines, was prophesying and working miracles, she determined to go to him. On the 5th of June 1801, accordingly, she arrived at the Protestant parsonage of Sainte Marie-aux-Mines, accompanied by her daughter Juliette, her step-daughter Sophie and a Russian valet.
This remained for two years her headquarters. Fontaines, half-charlatan, half-dupe, had introduced into his household a prophetess named Marie Gottliebin Kummer,4whose visions, carefully calculated for her own purposes, became the oracle of the divine mysteries for the baroness. Under this influence she believed more firmly than ever in the approaching millennium and her own mission to proclaim it. Her rank, her reckless charities, and her exuberant eloquence produced a great effect on the simple country folk; and when, in 1809, it was decided to found a colony of the “elect” in order to wait for “the coming of the Lord,” many wretched peasants sold or distributed all they possessed and followed the baroness and Fontaines into Württemberg, where the settlement was established at Catharinenplaisir and the château of Bönnigheim, only to be dispersed (May 1) by an unsympathetic government.5Further wanderings followed: to Lichtenthal near Baden; to Karlsruhe and the congenial society of pietistic princesses; to Riga, where she was present at the death-bed of her mother (Jan. 24, 1811); then back to Karlsruhe. The influence of Fontaines, to whom she had been “spiritually married” (Madame Fontaines being content with the part of Martha in the household, so long as the baroness’s funds lasted), had now waned, and she had fallen under that of Johann Kaspar Wegelin (1766-1833), a pious linen-draper of Strassburg, who taught her the sweetness of “complete annihilation of the will and mystic death.” Her preaching and her indiscriminate charities now began to attract curious crowds from afar; and her appearance everywhere was accompanied by an epidemic of visions and prophesyings, which culminated in the appearance in 1811 of the comet, a sure sign of the approaching end. In 1812 she was at Strassburg, whence she paid more than one visit to J. F. Oberlin (q.v.), the famous pastor of Waldbach in Steinthal (Ban de la Roche), and where she had the glory of converting her host, Adrien de Lazay-Marnesia, the prefect. In 1813 she was at Geneva, where she established the faith of a band of young pietists in revolt against the Calvinist Church authorities—notably Henri Louis Empeytaz, afterwards destined to be the companion of her crowning evangelistic triumph. In September 1814 she was again at Waldbach, where Empeytaz had preceded her; and at Strassburg, where the party was joined by Franz Karl von Berckheim, who afterwards marriedJuliette.6At the end of the year she returned with her daughters and Empeytaz to Baden, a fateful migration.
The empress Elizabeth of Russia was now at Karlsruhe; and she and the pietist ladies of her entourage hoped that the emperor Alexander might find at the hands of Madame de Krüdener the peace which an interview with Jung-Stilling had failed to bring him. The baroness herself wrote urgent letters to Roxane de Stourdza, sister of the tsar’s Rumanian secretary, begging her to procure an interview. There seemed to be no result; but the correspondence paved the way for the opportunity which a strange chance was to give her of realizing her ambition. In the spring of 1815 the baroness was settled at Schlüchtern, a piece of Baden territoryenclavéin Württemberg, busy persuading the peasants to sell all and fly from the wrath to come. Near this, at Heilbronn, the emperor Alexander established his headquarters on the 4th of June. That very night the baroness sought and obtained an interview. To the tsar, who had been brooding alone over an open Bible, her sudden arrival seemed an answer to his prayers; for three hours the prophetess preached her strange gospel, while the most powerful man in Europe sat, his face buried in his hands, sobbing like a child; until at last he declared that he had “found peace.” At the tsar’s request she followed him to Heidelberg and later to Paris, where she was lodged at the Hôtel Montchenu, next door to the imperial headquarters in the Elysée Palace. A private door connected the establishments, and every evening the emperor went to take part in the prayer-meetings conducted by the baroness and Empeytaz. Chiliasm seemed to have found an entrance into the high councils of Europe, and the baroness von Krüdener had become a political force to be reckoned with. Admission to her religious gatherings was sought by a crowd of people celebrated in the intellectual and social world; Châteaubriand came, and Benjamin Constant, Madame Récamier, the duchesse de Bourbon, and Madame de Duras. The fame of the wonderful conversion, moreover, attracted other members of the chiliastic fraternity, among them Fontaines, who brought with him the prophetess Marie Kummer.
In this religious forcing-house the idea of the Holy Alliance germinated and grew to rapid maturity. On the 26th of September the portentous proclamation, which was to herald the opening of a new age of peace and goodwill on earth, was signed by the sovereigns of Russia, Austria and Prussia (seeHoly Alliance; andEurope:History). Its authorship has ever been a matter of dispute. Madame de Krüdener herself claimed that she had suggested the idea, and that Alexander had submitted the draft for her approval. This is probably correct, though the tsar later, when he had recovered his mental equilibrium, reproved her for her indiscretion in talking of the matter. His eyes, indeed, had begun to be opened before he left Paris, and Marie Kummer was the unintentional cause. At the very first séance the prophetess, whose revelations had been praised by the baroness in extravagant terms, had the evil inspiration to announce in her trance to the emperor that it was God’s will that he should endow the religious colony to which she belonged! Alexander merely remarked that he had received too many such revelations before to be impressed. The baroness’s influence was shaken but not destroyed, and before he left Paris Alexander gave her a passport to Russia. She was not, however, destined to see him again.
She left Paris on the 22nd of October 1815, intending to travel to St Petersburg by way of Switzerland. The tsar, however, offended by her indiscretions and sensible of the ridicule which his relations with her had brought upon him, showed little disposition to hurry her arrival. She remained in Switzerland, where she presently fell under the influence of an unscrupulous adventurer named J. G. Kellner. For months Empeytaz, an honest enthusiast, struggled to save her from this man’s clutches, but in vain. Kellner too well knew how to flatter the baroness’s inordinate vanity: the author of the Holy Alliance could be none other than the “woman clothed with the sun” of Rev. xii. 1. She wandered with Kellner from place to place, proclaiming her mission, working miracles, persuading her converts to sell all and follow her. Crowds of beggars and rapscallions of every description gathered wherever she went, supported by the charities squandered from the common fund. She became a nuisance to the authorities and a menace to the peace; Württemberg had expelled her, and the example was followed by every Swiss canton she entered in turn. At last, in August 1817, she set out for her estate in Livonia, accompanied by Kellner and a remnant of the elect.
The emperor Alexander having opened the Crimea to German and Swiss chiliasts in search of a land of promise, the baroness’s son-in-law Berckheim and his wife now proceeded thither to help establish the new colonies. In November 1820 the baroness at last went herself to St Petersburg, where Berckheim was lying ill. She was there when the news arrived of Ypsilanti’s invasion of the Danubian principalities, which opened the war of Greek independence. She at once proclaimed the divine mission of the tsar to take up arms on behalf of Christendom. Alexander, however, had long since exchanged her influence for that of Metternich, and he was far from anxious to be forced into even a holy war. To the baroness’s overtures he replied in a long and polite letter, the gist of which was that she must leave St Petersburg at once. In 1823 the death of Kellner, whom to the last she regarded as a saint, was a severe blow to her. Her health was failing, but she allowed herself to be persuaded by Princess Galitzin to accompany her to the Crimea, where she had established a Swiss colony. Here, at Karasu Bazar, she died on the 25th of December 1824.
Sainte-Beuve said of Madame de Krüdener: “Elle avait un immense besoin que le monde s’occupât d’elle...; l’amour propre, toujours l’amour propre...!” A kindlier epitaph might, perhaps, be written in her own words, uttered after the revelation of the misery of the Crimean colonists had at last opened her eyes: “The good that I have done will endure; the evil that I have done (for how often have I not mistaken for the voice of God that which was no more than the result of my imagination and my pride) the mercy of God will blot out.”
Much information about Madame de Krüdener, coloured by the author’s views, is to be found in H. L. Empeytaz’sNotice sur Alexandre, empereur de Russie(2nd ed., Paris, 1840). TheVie de Madame de Krudener(2 vols., Paris, 1849), by the Swiss banker and Philhellene J. G. Eynard, was long the standard life and contains much material, but is far from authoritative. In English appeared theLife and Letters of Madame de Krüdener, by Clarence Ford (London, 1893). The most authoritative study, based on a wealth of original research, is E. Muhlenbeck’sÉtude sur les origines de la Sainte-Alliance(Paris, 1909), in which numerous references are given.
Much information about Madame de Krüdener, coloured by the author’s views, is to be found in H. L. Empeytaz’sNotice sur Alexandre, empereur de Russie(2nd ed., Paris, 1840). TheVie de Madame de Krudener(2 vols., Paris, 1849), by the Swiss banker and Philhellene J. G. Eynard, was long the standard life and contains much material, but is far from authoritative. In English appeared theLife and Letters of Madame de Krüdener, by Clarence Ford (London, 1893). The most authoritative study, based on a wealth of original research, is E. Muhlenbeck’sÉtude sur les origines de la Sainte-Alliance(Paris, 1909), in which numerous references are given.
(W. A. P.)
1A portrait of Madame de Krüdener and her son as “Venus disarming Cupid,” by Angelica Kauffmann, of this period, is in the Louvre.2He died while she was there in 1792.3The consorts of Alexander I. of Russia and of Gustavus Adolphus IV. of Sweden were princesses of Baden.4She had been condemned some years previously in Württemberg to the pillory and three years’ imprisonment as a “swindler” (Betrügerin), on her own confession. Her curious history is given in detail by M. Muhlenbeck.5In 1809 it was obviously inconvenient to have people proclaiming Napoleon as “the Beast.”6Berckheim had been French commissioner of police in Mainz and had abandoned his post in 1813.
1A portrait of Madame de Krüdener and her son as “Venus disarming Cupid,” by Angelica Kauffmann, of this period, is in the Louvre.
2He died while she was there in 1792.
3The consorts of Alexander I. of Russia and of Gustavus Adolphus IV. of Sweden were princesses of Baden.
4She had been condemned some years previously in Württemberg to the pillory and three years’ imprisonment as a “swindler” (Betrügerin), on her own confession. Her curious history is given in detail by M. Muhlenbeck.
5In 1809 it was obviously inconvenient to have people proclaiming Napoleon as “the Beast.”
6Berckheim had been French commissioner of police in Mainz and had abandoned his post in 1813.
KRUG, WILHELM TRAUGOTT(1770-1842), German philosopher and author, was born at Radis in Prussia on the 22nd of June 1770, and died at Leipzig on the 12th of January 1842. He studied at Wittenberg under Reinhard and Jehnichen, at Jena under Reinhold, and at Göttingen. From 1801 to 1804 he was professor of philosophy at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, after which he succeeded Kant in the chair of logic and metaphysics at the university of Königsberg. From 1809 till his death he was professor of philosophy at Leipzig. He was a prolific writer on a great variety of subjects, in all of which he excelled as a popularizer rather than as an original thinker. In philosophy his method was psychological; he attempted to explain the Ego by examining the nature of its reflection upon the facts of consciousness. Being is known to us only through its presentation in consciousness; consciousness only in its relation to Being. Both Being and Consciousness, however, are immediately known to us, as also the relation existing between them. By this Transcendental Synthesis he proposed to reconcile Realism and Idealism, and to destroy the traditional difficulty between transcendental, or pure, thought and “things in themselves.” Apart from the intrinsic value of his work, it is admitted that it had the effect of promoting the study of philosophy and of stimulating freedom of thought in religion and politics. His principal works are:Briefe über den neuesten Idealismus(1801);Versuch über die Principien der philosophischen Erkenntniss(1801);Fundamentalphilosophie(1803);System der theoretischen Philosophie(1806-1810),System der praktischen Philosophie(1817-1819);Handbuch der Philosophie(1820; 3rd ed., 1828);Logik oder Denklehre(1827);Geschichte der Philos. alter Zeit(1815; 2nd ed., 1825);Allgemeines Handwörterbuch der philosophischen Wissenschaften(1827-1834; 2nd ed., 1832-1838);Universal-philosophische Vorlesungen für Gebildete beiderlei Geschlechts. His workBeiträge zur Geschichte der Philos. des XIX. Jahrh.(1835-1837) contains interesting criticisms of Hegel and Schelling.
See also his autobiography,Meine Lebensreise(Leipzig, 2nd ed., 1840).
See also his autobiography,Meine Lebensreise(Leipzig, 2nd ed., 1840).
KRUGER, STEPHANUS JOHANNES PAULUS(1825-1904), president of the Transvaal Republic, was born in Colesberg, Cape Colony, on the 10th of October 1825. His father was Caspar Jan Hendrick Kruger, who was born in 1796, and whose wife bore the name of Steyn. In his ancestry on both sides occur Huguenot names. The founder of the Kruger family appears to have been a German named Jacob Kruger, who in 1713 was sent with others by the Dutch East India Company to the Cape. At the age of ten Paul Kruger—as he afterwards came to be known—accompanied his parents in the migration, known as the Great Trek, from the Cape Colony to the territories north of the Orange in the years 1835-1840. From boyhood his life was one of adventure. Brought up on the borderland between civilization and barbarism, constantly trekking, fighting and hunting, his education was necessarily of the most primitive character. He learnt to read and to write, and was taught the narrowest form of Dutch Presbyterianism. His literature was almost confined to the Bible, and the Old Testament was preferred to the New. It is related of Kruger, as indeed it has been said of Piet Retief and others of the early Boer leaders, that he believed himself the object of special Divine guidance. At about the age of twenty-five he is said to have disappeared into the veldt, where he remained alone for several days, under the influence of deep religious fervour. During this sojourn in the wilderness Kruger stated that he had been especially favoured by God, who had communed with and inspired him. Throughout his life he professed this faith in God’s will and guidance, and much of his influence over his followers is attributable to their belief in his sincerity and in his enjoyment of Divine favour. The Dutch Reformed Church in the Transvaal, pervaded by a spirit and faith not unlike those which distinguished the Covenanters, was divided in the early days into three sects. Of these the narrowest, most puritanical, and most bigoted was the Dopper sect, to which Kruger belonged. His Dopper following was always unswerving in its support, and at all critical times in the internal quarrels of the state rallied round him. The charge of hypocrisy, frequently made against Kruger—if by this charge is meant the mere juggling with religion for purely political ends—does not appear entirely just. The subordination of reason to a sense of superstitious fanaticism is the keynote of his character, and largely the explanation of his life. Where faith is so profound as to believe the Divine guidanceall, and the individual intelligencenil, a man is able to persuade himself that any course he chooses to take is the one he is directed to take. Where bigotry is so blind, reason is but dust in the balance. At the same time there were incidents in Kruger’s life which but ill conform to any Biblical standard he might choose to adopt or feel imposed upon him. Even van Oordt, his eloquent historian and apologist, is cognisant of this fact.
When the lad, who had already taken part in fights with the Matabele and the Zulus, was fourteen his family settled north of the Vaal and were among the founders of the Transvaal state. At the age of seventeen Paul found himself an assistant field cornet, at twenty he was field cornet, and at twenty-seven held a command in an expedition against the Bechuana chief Sechele—the expedition in which David Livingstone’s mission-house was destroyed.
In 1853 he took part in another expedition against Montsioa. When not fighting natives in those early days Kruger was engaged in distant hunting excursions which took him as far north as the Zambezi. In 1852 the Transvaal secured the recognition of its independence from Great Britain in the Sand River convention. For many years after this date the condition of the country was one bordering upon anarchy, and into the faction strife which was continually going on Kruger freely entered. In 1856-1857 he joined M. W. Pretorius in his attempt to abolish the district governments in the Transvaal and to overthrow the Orange Free State government and compel a federation between the two countries. The raid into the Free State failed; the blackest incident in connexion with it was the attempt of the Pretorius and Kruger party to induce the Basuto to harass the Free State forces behind, while they were attacking them in front.
From this time forward Kruger’s life is so intimately bound up with the history of his country, and even in later years of South Africa, that a study of that history is essential to an understanding of it (seeTransvaalandSouth Africa). In 1864, when the faction fighting ended and Pretorius was president, Kruger was elected commandant-general of the forces of the Transvaal. In 1870 a boundary dispute arose with the British government, which was settled by the Keate award (1871). The decision caused so much discontent in the Transvaal that it brought about the downfall of President Pretorius and his party; and Thomas François Burgers, an educated Dutch minister, resident in Cape Colony, was elected to succeed him. During the term of Burgers’ presidency Kruger appeared to great disadvantage. Instead of loyally supporting the president in the difficult task of building up a stable state, he did everything in his power to undermine his authority, going so far as to urge the Boers to pay no taxes while Burgers was in office. The faction of which he was a prominent member was chiefly responsible for bringing about thatimpassein the government of the country which drew such bitter protest from Burgers and terminated in the annexation by the British in April 1877. At this period of Transvaal history it is impossible to trace any true patriotism in the action of the majority of the inhabitants. The one idea of Kruger and his faction was to oust Burgers from office on any pretext, and, if possible, to put Kruger in his place. When the downfall of Burgers was assured and annexation offered itself as the alternative resulting from his downfall, it is true that Kruger opposed it. But matters had gone too far. Annexation became an accomplished fact, and Kruger accepted paid office under the British government. He continued, however, so openly to agitate for the retrocession of the country, being a member of two deputations which went to England endeavouring to get the annexation annulled, that in 1878 Sir Theophilus Shepstone, the British administrator, dismissed him from his service. In 1880 the Boer rebellion occurred, and Kruger was one of the famous triumvirate, of which General Piet Joubert and Pretorius were the other members, who, after Majuba, negotiated the terms of peace on which the Pretoria convention of August 1881 was drafted. In 1883 he was elected president of the Transvaal, receiving 3431 votes as against 1171 recorded for Joubert.
In November 1883 President Kruger again visited England, this time for the purpose of getting another convention. The visit was successful, the London convention, which for years was a subject of controversy, being granted by Lord Derby in 1884 on behalf of the British government. The government of the Transvaal being once more in the hands of the Boers, the country rapidly drifted towards that state of national bankruptcy from which it had only been saved by annexation in 1877. In 1886, the year in which the Rand mines were discovered, President Kruger was by no means a popular man even among his own followers; as an administrator of internal affairs he had shown himself grossly incompetent, and it was only the specious success of his negotiations with the British government which had retained him any measure of support. In 1888 he was elected president for a second term of office. In 1889 Dr. Leyds, a young Hollander, was appointed state secretary, and the system of state monopolies around which so much corruption grew up was soonin full course of development. The principle of government monopoly in trade being thus established, President Kruger now turned his attention to the further securing of Boer political monopoly. The Uitlanders were increasing in numbers, as well as providing the state with a revenue. In 1890, 1891, 1892, and 1894 the franchise laws (which at the time of the convention were on a liberal basis) were so modified that all Uitlanders were practically excluded altogether. In 1893 Kruger had to face a third presidential election, and on this occasion the opposition he had raised among the burgers, largely by the favouritism he displayed to the Hollander party, was so strong that it was fully anticipated that his more liberal opponent, General Joubert, would be elected. Before the election was decided Kruger took care to conciliate the volksraad members, as well as to see that at all the volksraad elections, which occurred shortly before the presidential election, his supporters were returned, or, if not returned, that his opponents were objected to on some trivial pretext, and by this means prevented from actually sitting in the volksraad until the presidential election was over. The Hollander andconcessionnaireinfluence, which had become a strong power in the state, was all in favour of President Kruger. In spite of these facts Kruger’s position was insecure. “General Joubert was, without any doubt whatever, elected by a very considerable majority.”1But the figures as announced gave Kruger a majority of about 700 votes. General Joubert accused the government of tampering with the returns, and appealed to the volksraad. The appeal, however, was fruitless, and Kruger retained office. The action taken by President Kruger at this election, and his previous actions in ousting President Burgers and in absolutely excluding the Uitlanders from the franchise, all show that at any cost, in his opinion, the government must remain a close corporation, and that while he lived he must remain at the head of it.
From 1877 onward Kruger’s external policy was consistently anti-British, and on every side—in Bechuanaland, in Rhodesia, in Zululand—he attempted to enlarge the frontiers of the Transvaal at the expense of Great Britain. In these disputes he usually gained something, and it was not until 1895 that he was definitely defeated in his endeavours to obtain a seaport. His internal policy was blind, reckless and unscrupulous, and inevitably led to disaster. It may be summed up in his own words when replying to a deputation of Uitlanders, who desired to obtain the legalization of the use of the English language in the Transvaal. “This,” said Kruger, “is my country; these are my laws. Those who do not like to obey my laws can leave my country.” This rejection of the advances of the Uitlanders—by whose aid he could have built up a free and stable republic—led to his downfall, though the failure of the Jameson Raid in the first days of 1896 gave him a signal opportunity to secure the safety of his country by the grant of real reforms. But the Raid taught him no lesson of this kind, and despite the intervention of the British government the Uitlanders’ grievances were not remedied.
In 1898 Kruger was elected president of the Transvaal for the fourth and last time. In 1899 relations between the Transvaal and Great Britain had become so strained, by reason of the oppression of the foreign population, that a conference was arranged at Bloemfontein between Sir Alfred (afterwards Lord) Milner, the high commissioner, and President Kruger. Kruger was true to his principles. At every juncture in his life his object had been to gain for himself and his own narrow policy everything that he could, while conceding nothing in return. It was for this reason that he invariably failed to come to any arrangement with Sir John Brand while the latter was president of the Free State. In 1889, the very year following President Brand’s death, he was able to make a treaty with President Reitz, his successor, which bound each of the Boer republics to assist the other in case its independence was menaced, unless the quarrel could be shown to be an unjust one on the part of the state so menaced. In effect it bound the Free State to share all the hazardous risk of the reckless anti-British Transvaal policy, without the Free State itself receiving anything in return. Kruger thus achieved one of the objects of his life. With such a history of apparent success, it is not to be wondered at that the Transvaal president came to Bloemfontein to meet Sir Alfred Milner in no mood for concession. It is true that he made an ostensible offer on the franchise question, but that proposal was made dependent on so many conditions that it was a palpable sham. Every proposition which Sir Alfred Milner made was met by the objection that it threatened the independence of the Transvaal. This retort was President Kruger’s rallying cry whenever he found himself in the least degree pressed, either from within or without the state. To admit Uitlanders to the franchise, to no matter how moderate a degree, would destroy the independence of the state. In October 1899, after a long and fruitless correspondence with the British government, war with Great Britain was ushered in by an ultimatum from the Transvaal. Immediately after the ultimatum Natal and the Cape Colony were invaded by the Boers both of the Transvaal and the Free State. Yet one of the most memorable utterances made by Kruger at the Bloemfontein conference was couched in the following terms: “We follow out what God says, ‘Accursed be he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark.’ As long as your Excellency lives you will see that we shall never be the attacking party on another man’s land.” The course of the war that followed is described underTransvaal. In 1900, Bloemfontein and Pretoria having been occupied by British troops, Kruger, too old to go on commando, with the consent of his executive proceeded to Europe, where he endeavoured to induce the European powers to intervene on his behalf, but without success.
From this time he ceased to have any political influence. He took up his residence at Utrecht, where he dictated a record of his career, published in 1902 under the title ofThe Memoirs of Paul Kruger. He died on the 14th of July 1904 at Clarens, near Vevey, on the shores of the Lake of Geneva, whither he had gone for the sake of his health. He was buried at Pretoria on the following 16th of December, Dingaan’s Day, the anniversary of the day in 1838 when the Boers crushed the Zulu king Dingaan—a fight in which Kruger, then a lad of thirteen, had taken part. Kruger was thrice married, and had a large family. His second wife died in 1891. When he went to Europe he left his third wife in Lord Roberts’s custody at Pretoria, but she gradually failed, and died there (July 1901). It was in her grave that the body of her husband was laid. It is recorded that when a statue to President Kruger at Pretoria was erected, it was by Mrs. Kruger’s wish that the hat was left open at the top, in order that the rain-water might collect there for the birds to drink.
See J. F. van Oordt,P. Kruger en de opkomst d. Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek(Amsterdam, 1898); theMemoirsalready mentioned; F. R. Statham,Paul Kruger and his Times(1898); and, among works with a wider scope, G. M. Theal,History of South Africa(for events down to 1872 only); Sir J. P. Fitzpatrick,The Transvaal from Within(1899);The Times History of the War in South Africa(1900-9); and A. P. Hillier,South African Studies(1900).
See J. F. van Oordt,P. Kruger en de opkomst d. Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek(Amsterdam, 1898); theMemoirsalready mentioned; F. R. Statham,Paul Kruger and his Times(1898); and, among works with a wider scope, G. M. Theal,History of South Africa(for events down to 1872 only); Sir J. P. Fitzpatrick,The Transvaal from Within(1899);The Times History of the War in South Africa(1900-9); and A. P. Hillier,South African Studies(1900).
1Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, inThe Transvaal from Within, ch. iii.
1Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, inThe Transvaal from Within, ch. iii.
KRUGERSDORP,a town of the Transvaal, 21 m. N.W. of Johannesburg by rail. Pop. (1904), 20,073, of whom 6946 were whites. It is built on the Witwatersrand at an elevation of 5709 ft. above the sea, and is a mining centre of some importance. It is also the starting-point of a railway to Zeerust and Mafeking. Krugersdorp was founded in 1887 at the time of the discovery of gold on the Rand and is named after President Kruger. Within the municipal area is the Paardekraal monument erected to commemorate the victory gained by the Boers under Andries Pretorius in 1838 over the Zulu king Dingaan, and on the 16th of December each year, kept as a public holiday, large numbers of Boers assemble at the monument to celebrate the event. Here in December 1880 a great meeting of Boers resolved again to proclaim the independence of the Transvaal. The formal proclamation was made on Dingaan’s Day, and after the defeat of the British at Majuba Hill in 1881 that victory was also commemorated at Paardekraal on the 16th of December. The monument, which was damaged during the war of 1899-1902,was restored by the British authorities. It was at Doornkop, near Krugersdorp, that Dr L. S. Jameson and his “raiders” surrendered to Commandant Piet Cronje on the 2nd of January 1896 (seeTransvaal:History). At Sterkfontein, 8 m. N.W. of Krugersdorp, are limestone caves containing beautiful stalactites.
KRUMAU(in Czech,Krumlov), is a town in Bohemia situated on the banks of the Moldau (Vitava). It has about 8000 inhabitants, partly of Czech, partly of German nationality. Krumau is principally celebrated because its ancient castle was long the stronghold of the Rosenberg family, known also aspani z ruze, the lords of the rose. Henry II. of Rosenberg (d. 1310) was the first member of the family to reside at Krumau. His son Peter I. (d. 1349) raised the place to the rank of a city. The last two members of the family were two brothers, William, created prince of Ursini-Rosenberg in 1556 (d. 1592), and Peter Vok, who played a very large part in Bohemian history. Their librarian was Wenceslas Brezan, who has left a valuable work on the annals of the Rosenberg family. Peter Vok of Rosenberg, a strong adherent of the Utraquist party, sold Krumau shortly before his death (1611), because the Jesuits had established themselves in the neighbourhood.
The lordship, one of the most extensive in the monarchy, was bought by the emperor Rudolph II. for his natural son, Julius of Austria. In 1622 the emperor Ferdinand II. presented the lordship to his minister, Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg, and in 1625 raised it to the rank of an hereditary duchy in his favour. From the Eggenberg family Krumau passed in 1719 to Prince Adam Franz Karl of Schwarzenberg, who was created duke of Krumau in 1723. The head of the Schwarzenberg family bears the title of duke of Krumau. The castle, one of the largest and finest in Bohemia, preserves much of its ancient character.
See W. Brezan,Zivot Vilema z Rosenberka(Life of William of Rosenberg), 1847; alsoZivot Petra Voka z Rosenberka(Life of Peter Vok of Rosenberg), 1880.
See W. Brezan,Zivot Vilema z Rosenberka(Life of William of Rosenberg), 1847; alsoZivot Petra Voka z Rosenberka(Life of Peter Vok of Rosenberg), 1880.
KRUMBACHER, CARL(1856-1909), German Byzantine scholar, was born at Kürnach in Bavaria on the 23rd of September 1856. He was educated at the universities of Munich and Leipzig, and held the professorship of the middle age and modern Greek language and literature in the former from 1897 to his death. His greatest work is hisGeschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur(from Justinian to the fall of the Eastern Empire, 1453), a second edition of which was published in 1897, with the collaboration of A. Ehrhard (section on theology) and H. Gelzer (general sketch of Byzantine history,A.D.395-1453). The value of the work is greatly enhanced by the elaborate bibliographies contained in the body of the work and in a special supplement. Krumbacher also founded theByzantinische Zeitschrift(1892) and theByzantinisches Archiv(1898). He travelled extensively and the results of a journey to Greece appeared in hisGriechische Reise(1886). Other works by him are:Casia(1897), a treatise on a 9th-century Byzantine poetess, with the fragments;Michael Glykas(1894); “Die griechische Litteratur des Mittelalters” in P. Hinneberg’sDie Kultur der Gegenwart, i. 8 (1905);Das Problem der neugriechischen Schriftsprache(1902), in which he strongly opposed the efforts of the purists to introduce the classical style into modern Greek literature, andPopuläre Aufsätze(1909).