XVIIQUEEN LOUISA OF PRUSSIA.

“Sir, if a state submitAt once, she may be blotted out at onceAnd swallow’d in the conqueror’s chronicle.Whereas in wars of freedom and defenceThe glory and grief of battle won or lost,Solders a race together—yea—tho’ they fail,The names of those who fought and fell are likeA bank’d-up fire that flashes out againFrom century to century, and at lastMay lead them on to victory.”“The Cup.”—Tennyson.

“Sir, if a state submit

At once, she may be blotted out at once

And swallow’d in the conqueror’s chronicle.

Whereas in wars of freedom and defence

The glory and grief of battle won or lost,

Solders a race together—yea—tho’ they fail,

The names of those who fought and fell are like

A bank’d-up fire that flashes out again

From century to century, and at last

May lead them on to victory.”

“The Cup.”—Tennyson.

Itis very difficult for us now to go back in imagination to the time, between eighty and ninety years ago, when the whole of Europe was in danger of being crushed under the tyranny and rapacious cruelty of Napoleon Buonaparte.

This miraculous man, with his insatiable ambition, his almost more than human power and less than human unscrupulousness, had raised himself from a comparatively humble station, not only to be Emperor of France, but to be the conqueror of Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Germany. He dreamed that in his person was to be revived the ancient empire of Charlemagne, and that all the nations of Christendom were to be subject to his universal dominion. He crowned himself in the presence of the Pope, in Paris, in 1804, and the year following he had the iron crown of the kings of Lombardy placed on his head at Milan. Not content with the title of Emperor of France, he styled himself Emperor of the West, conceding for a time to the Czar of Russia the title of Emperor of the East.

No combination of the other Powers seemed capable of withstanding his wonderful military genius. Most of all his foes, he hated England; because, to the eternal honour of our country, be it remembered, England took the lead in rousing the other nations of Europe to resist him. England was the banker of almost every coalition that was formed against him. She supplied men, armies, and armed ships, where she could, and she supplied money to carry on war against Napoleon everywhere. Our great minister, William Pitt, threw himself and all the wealth and power of England into this great struggle against Napoleon. Again and again he revived the spirit of resistance among the other Powers. The rulers and representatives of other countries allowed themselves to be flattered and bribed and threatened into lending themselves to the objects of Napoleon’s inordinate ambition. The Czar consented to meet him on intimate and friendly terms; the Emperor of Austria, notwithstanding the cruel humiliations he had suffered, consented to give his daughter to take the place of the unjustly divorced wife of the Corsican upstart; the less important German princes cringed before him. The hostility of England alone was implacable and unceasing, and what made her even more hated, successful.

There is little doubt that Napoleon fully recognised that England was the main obstacle in the way of the fulfilment of his dream of universal dominion. His most darling project was to crush the power of England, and in 1804-5 he made preparations for the invasion of our country, assembling a vast army at Boulogne for that purpose. So fast did his ambition outrun the bounds of fact and common sense, that he actually had a medal struck to commemorate the conquest of England. On one side was his own head crowned with the laurel wreath of victory; on the other, was a representation of Hercules strangling a giant, with the lying inscription, “Struck in London, 1804.” He wrote to the admiral of the French fleet, which was destined about two months later to be completely destroyed by our great Nelson at Trafalgar: “Set out, lose not a moment, bring our united squadron into the Channel andEngland is ours.” It was at this moment of supreme suspense and danger that Wordsworth wrote that stirring sonnet to the men of Kent, the words of which vibrated through the nation like a trumpet call.

Vanguard of Liberty, ye men of Kent,Ye children of a Soil that doth advanceHer haughty brow against the coast of France,Now is the time to prove your hardiment!To France be words of invitation sent!They from their fields can see the countenanceOf your fierce war, may ken the glittering lance,And hear you shouting forth your brave intent.Left single, in bold parley, ye, of yore,Did from the Norman win a gallant wreath;Confirmed the charters that were yours before;—No parleying now! in Britain is one breath;We all are with you now from shore to shore:—Ye men of Kent, ’tis victory or death!

Vanguard of Liberty, ye men of Kent,

Ye children of a Soil that doth advance

Her haughty brow against the coast of France,

Now is the time to prove your hardiment!

To France be words of invitation sent!

They from their fields can see the countenance

Of your fierce war, may ken the glittering lance,

And hear you shouting forth your brave intent.

Left single, in bold parley, ye, of yore,

Did from the Norman win a gallant wreath;

Confirmed the charters that were yours before;—

No parleying now! in Britain is one breath;

We all are with you now from shore to shore:—

Ye men of Kent, ’tis victory or death!

England’s immediate relief from the danger of invasion did not come from Nelson’s great victory, but from Pitt once more rousing the powers of Austria and Russia to combine against Napoleon. Pitt insisted, in the spring of 1805, on pain of losing the subsidies promised by England, that Austria should at once declare war upon France; and Napoleon was thereupon obliged to withdraw the forces he had assembled in great numbers at Boulogne to meet the new combination that had been formed against him. It was now a question how strong that combination should be. The two great Powers of Austria and Russia had already joined it; the smaller German princes went, some on this side and some on that. The only important Power that showed indecision at this critical moment was Prussia. The King of Prussia, Frederick William III, was a grand-nephew of Frederick the Great; but he bore no resemblance to that sovereign. He was weak and undecided in character, wishing to strengthen and enlarge his kingdom, but without force of character sufficient to decide on a wise line of conduct and to adhere to it. He and his minister, Haugwitz, cast longing eyes upon Hanover, the Electorate of which was then united with the crown of England. The French had seized Hanover, and the possession of this coveted territory was skilfully dangled by Napoleon before the eyes of the King of Prussia. Frederick William III could not arrive at a decision whether he should serve his own interests best by joining the coalition or by remaining friends with Napoleon. While he was hesitating, Napoleon, with his customary disregard of all law, violated a neutral territory, belonging to the Kingdom of Prussia, by taking his army across it. It was like offering one hand in friendship, and boxing the ears of your friend with the other. Angry as the whole of Prussia was by the insult thus offered her, she did not bring herself boldly to join the coalition of England, Austria, and Russia against Napoleon. The vacillating character of the King and the intriguing diplomacy of Haugwitz stood in the way; but it must not be supposed that in the general body of the Prussian people there was not a feeling of shame, anger, and resentment at the policy that had been adopted by their Government.

The embodiment of this strong national feeling was found in the person of the beautiful young Queen Louisa, a princess of the House of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Her character was a complete contrast to that of her husband. She had the decision, vivacity, and high courage which he so much lacked. The two were sincerely devoted to one another; but from the essential differences in their dispositions, they became respectively the heads of the two opposing parties in the State; the party who wished to join the coalition and resist Napoleon, and the party who wished merely to look on and try to reap some advantage from whichever side was favoured by the fortunes of war. It seemed at one time as if the Queen’s influence with her husband had prevailed, and that Prussia was going to join the alliance; but just at this time came the news of the first of Napoleon’s great victories in this campaign, the capitulation of Ulm, and all the fears of the timid party were renewed. Then came the great catastrophe of Austerlitz; Napoleon’s forces had completely crushed the combined armies of Russia and Austria, and Pitt’s last supreme effort against Napoleon had failed. Austerlitz is said to have killed Pitt. He was only forty-seven; but his health had long been feeble, and this last blow to all his hopes was fatal. He died a few weeks after the news reached him, on the 23d January 1806. He attributed the failure of the coalition to the indecision of Prussia. If he was right in this he had a terrible revenge. It is one of the most extraordinary episodes in history that Prussia, which had hesitated to join one of the most powerful alliances that had ever been formed against Napoleon, was destined within a few months to match itself against the conqueror almost single-handed.

Very soon after the battle of Austerlitz the Prussian minister, Haugwitz, waited upon Napoleon and renewed negotiations with him. Napoleon offered Prussia the choice between immediate war, or alliance and the possession of Hanover. A treaty was drawn up accepting the latter alternative; Haugwitz agreed to it, and carried it back to his master for ratification. When the terms of the treaty became known in Berlin, the anger of the patriotic party was unbounded. They felt they were bound by ties of blood and kindred to espouse the cause of their German brethren. They looked upon the proffered bribe of Hanover as hush-money, which was to close their lips from protesting against the oppression of Germany by Napoleon. When Haugwitz returned to Berlin he was treated with marked coldness by the Queen. On receiving the disastrous news of the defeat of Austerlitz, she had called to her side her two elder boys, the younger of whom became the late aged Emperor of Germany, and adjured them to think, from that time forth, only of avenging their unhappy brethren. The King’s brothers sympathised with the Queen’s views, as did also the patriotic statesmen Stein and Hardenburg, and a brave young prince, Louis Ferdinand, the King’s cousin. Miss Hudson, who has written a life of Queen Louisa, says in reference to her position at this crisis, “The Queen did not desire or endeavour to take a leading part, but she did not dissemble her feelings and aspirations, and her name was put foremost by popular report, on account of her superior rank. The Queen did not play any conspicuous part, but she was a constant incentive to the best of the nation to work for their country’s deliverance. It was what she was, not what she did, that made her name a watchword for the enemies of Napoleon.”

Haugwitz had never dreamed that his master would refuse to ratify the treaty; but the outburst of popular anger against it had been so marked, and the advantages it offered to Prussia were in fact so small, that the King declined to sign, and demanded modifications. His vacillation had placed him in a cleft stick. If he refused Napoleon’s terms, he would have to fight with the victorious French army; if he accepted them, and Hanover with them, he would have to fight with England; for it was not probable that the latter country would calmly allow Hanover to be appropriated by another Power without a struggle. While this was the situation of affairs, the King of Prussia, having sent back the treaty to Napoleon to ask for modifications, one of which was to obtain the consent of England to the cession of Hanover, the news came to all the world that Pitt, the most powerful and the most pertinacious of Napoleon’s enemies, was dead. England had lost Nelson and Pitt within a few months. It seemed as if they had been removed to make the pathway of ambition smooth for Napoleon.

Pitt was succeeded in the Ministry by his great rival Fox, the professed admirer of the French Revolution, a man whose measure Napoleon thought he had taken, and whom the Emperor believed he could dupe with fine phrases about universal brotherhood and a union of hearts. Napoleon instantly saw the advantage this change might bring to him. With audacity unparalleled, except by himself, he commenced negotiations with the English Government and offeredthemHanover, notwithstanding that the ink was hardly dry on the treaty in which he had offered it to Prussia. Napoleon, intent for the moment on this fresh project of pacifying England, received Haugwitz, when he presented his master’s modifications of the treaty, with harsh and contemptuous insolence. The conditions of the treaty were made still more onerous than before on Prussia. Napoleon now wanted to force a quarrel between England and Prussia, of which he himself would in any result reap the advantages. He carried on this project for a time so successfully that England did actually declare war against Prussia, but hostilities between them never actually took place, because it became evident that Prussia had only been a cat’s paw in the hand of Napoleon. The new treaty which Napoleon returned to Frederick William was so humiliating to Prussia, that Haugwitz did not dare to take it to Berlin himself, but sent it by another hand. The King was so weak and foolish as to sign it, and from that moment Napoleon poured insult after insult upon the unhappy government which had consented to its own slavery. One of his first acts was to insist on the dismissal of Hardenberg, one of the most trusted of the Prussian ministers. Under the pretext of a new Confederation of the Rhine, it became evident that Napoleon meant to entirely alter the whole constitution of Germany without consulting Prussia, or any of the Powers chiefly concerned. The French ambassador had orders to state that “his master no longer recognised the Germanic constitution.” Under these new humiliations, the war fever burst out more strongly than ever, all over Prussia. Unequal as the contest was, all that was best in the nation preferred any risk to the humble acceptance of the galling tyranny that oppressed them. The young men in Berlin showed what their feelings were by assembling in crowds outside the house of the French ambassador, and sharpening their swords on his doorstep and window sills.

It may very well be believed that Fox, if he had lived, would have carried out Pitt’s policy in resisting Napoleon. Already his eyes must have been opened by the perfidious transactions about Hanover; but while the process of disillusion was proceeding, Fox died, in September 1806, a few months after his great rival. Napoleon stated, in after years, that he considered the death of Fox, at this juncture, was the first great blow his power had received. “Fox’s death,” he often said at St. Helena, “was one of the fatalities of my career.” The English policy of resistance to Napoleon had hardly received more than a temporary check by Fox’s accession to office, and when Prussia finally decided on fighting with Napoleon, she was promised assistance both from Russia and England. The struggle, however, took place under cruel disadvantages to the weaker side. Napoleon was at the head of 200,000 veterans confident of victory, and of the irresistible genius of their commander. Moreover, the French army, or a great portion of it, was even then on Prussian soil. It was impossible that the Prussian army could rely on Frederick William, as the French army relied on its great general. The Queen did all she could by joining the army, and living in camp, with her husband, to the very eve of the battle, to encourage the spirit of the troops, and above all to prevent any change of front at the last moment. The most experienced of the Prussian generals begged the Queen to remain with the army. One of them wrote, “Pray say all you can to induce her to remain. I know what I am asking; her presence with us is quite necessary.”

The final spark which caused the combustible material to burst into the flame of war, was the cruel murder of the Nuremberg bookseller, Palm, by Napoleon, for selling a pamphlet called, “The Humiliation of Germany.” He was decoyed upon neutral territory, and was shot on the 25th August 1806, without even the pretence of a legal trial. Rather more than a month later, Prussia had declared war. Her army was very inferior to that of France. The highest number at which it has been put, even with the Russian auxiliaries, is 60,000. The troops from England did not arrive in time to be of any use. In two great battles, Jena and Auerstadt, fought on the same day, 16th October 1806, the power and independence of Prussia were completely crushed. No wonder that all the world at that moment thought them annihilated! A few days later Napoleon made his triumphal entry into Berlin. He occupied the Royal Palaces there and at Potsdam, from which the Queen had lately fled with her children. It was then that Napoleon covered himself with everlasting infamy by a series of bulletins published in an official gazette calledThe Telegraph, in which he poured every kind of insult and calumny upon the person, character, and influence of the Queen. He ransacked her private apartments, read her correspondence, and sought eagerly, but in vain, for evidence to support the monstrous charges he brought against her. She was among the most womanly of women, devoted to her home, to her children and husband. Every true woman is more sensitive on what touches the honour and sanctity of her home than on any other subject. It was here, therefore, that Napoleon struck at her with all the brute violence and perfidy of his nature. M. Lanfrey, the French historian, says that a volume might be filled with all that he wrote and published against her. He wished to render her odious in the eyes of her people, and held her up to ridicule as well as to calumny. He represented that her pretended patriotism was only put on to hide her guilty passion for “the handsome Emperor of Russia,” that nothing had aroused her from “the grave occupations of dress, in which she had been hitherto absorbed,” but the desire to bring about more frequent opportunities of intercourse with her supposed lover. The stupidity of all this, repeated again and again in bulletin after bulletin, is as wonderful as its wickedness. The effect of it in the minds of the German people is almost as fresh to-day as it was eighty years ago. They had loved and trusted their good, brave Queen, before Napoleon tried to cover her with the mud of his impure imagination. Afterwards, and to this day, they adored her as no modern queen has ever been adored. No stranger can be many days in North Germany now without being forced to ask, “Who is this Queen Louisa, whose portrait is in every shop window, and after whom streets and squares by the dozen are called?” Her name has become the symbol of all that is best in German national life, simplicity of living, patriotism and devotion to duty. M. Lanfrey, whose history of Napoleon has been already quoted, says of the bulletins attacking the Queen, “Such circumstances as these indicate the defect of Napoleon’s moral organisation, amounting, in fact, to an absence of ordinary intelligence. He outraged the most delicate scruples of the human conscience, because such sentiments had no existence in his own heart. He made a grave mistake in treating other men as if they were as utterly devoid as he was himself of all sentiment of honour and morality. He did not perceive that these base insinuations against a fugitive and disarmed woman, by a man who commanded 500,000 soldiers, would produce an effect exactly contrary to what he intended; that they were calculated not only to excite disgust in all noble minds, but were revolting even to the most vulgar.” How little did either the conqueror or the conquered foresee what lay hidden in the womb of time! Prince William, then a delicate child of eight years old, and a fugitive, with his mother, before the victorious army of Napoleon, was destined to become the most powerful sovereign in Europe, to bring to an end the Napoleonic dynasty, and in the chief of the Royal Palaces of France, to be crowned Emperor of a United Germany.

In 1806, however, the fortunes of Queen Louisa and her children were at the lowest ebb. After having lost so much that was more precious than the state and luxury of royalty, the privations of the fugitive Court were not an insupportable trial; the kind peasants brought gifts of money and provisions to their King and Queen, and many acts of faithfulness and devotion cheered and consoled Frederick William and his wife. Even ill-health, which now began to be visible in the Queen, seemed a small misfortune compared with others she had endured. She wrote at this period, June 1807, that her greatest unhappiness was being unable to hope. “Those who have been torn up by the roots ... have lost the faculty of hoping.” Still she felt sustained by the confidence that Prussia, though humiliated, was not disgraced. The country had had fearful odds against it, and had been vanquished, but it had striven to do its duty. “Wrong and injustice on our side would have brought me down to the grave,” she wrote.

A treaty of peace was now about to be drawn up. Napoleon, the Emperor of Russia, and the King of Prussia, met in a grand ceremonial way at Tilsit. The Emperor of Russia was considered by Napoleon sufficiently powerful to be treated with flattery and consideration. The King of Prussia, being helpless, was harshly dealt with; and when the terms of the peace were discussed, Napoleon was inexorable in insisting on an almost complete destruction of the power of Prussia. All the principal fortified towns in Prussia, including Magdeburg, which commanded the Elbe, were to remain in the hands of the French; and the standing army of Prussia was to be limited to 42,000 men.

The idea appears to have occurred to the Emperor of Russia, that if Queen Louisa joined her husband at Tilsit she could induce Napoleon to modify these harsh conditions of peace. Frederick William concurred, and wrote to the Queen, requesting her immediate presence to intercede with Napoleon for more favourable terms. No wonder, when the King’s letter was placed in her hands, that the Queen burst into tears, and said it was the hardest thing she had ever been called upon to bear and do. All her woman’s pride revolted against humbling herself to beg for favours from the man who but the other day had so brutally insulted her. But she thought, how could she, who had urged her sons to die for their country, refuse to sacrifice her just and natural resentment for the same end? She set out without delay, and the famous interview between herself and Napoleon was speedily arranged. He now treated her with every outward mark of respect, and was perhaps surprised to find the fancy picture he had drawn of her, in his infamous bulletins, falsified in every particular. She would not allow him to trifle with her, and lead the conversation away to commonplaces, but went straight to the object which had brought her to Tilsit, the granting of moderate terms of peace to Prussia. She was calm, dignified, and courteous; once only her self-command failed her: “When she spoke of the Prussian people, and of her husband, she could not restrain her tears.” She begged the conqueror at least to grant to Prussia the possession of Magdeburg. The French minister, Talleyrand, who was present at the interview, thought that Napoleon wavered; but a tiger with a kid in his claws does not easily relinquish it, even if an archangel pleads with him. The interview was brought to an end, with no concession promised. The Queen and Emperor met again at a State banquet the same evening, and again the following day at a smaller private gathering. But she had humbled her pride in vain. Her first words after the final leavetaking were, “I have been cruelly deceived.” Napoleon did not hesitate to misrepresent to his wife, the Empress Josephine, the whole bearing of the Queen of Prussia to him: “She is fond of coquetting with me,” he wrote; “but do not be jealous.” But to Talleyrand, who could not be deceived, because he was present at Tilsit at all the interviews that had taken place between the two, Napoleon said, “I knew that I should see a beautiful woman, and a Queen with dignified manners, but I found the most admirable Queen, and at the same time the most interesting woman I had ever met with.” On another occasion he remarked to Talleyrand that the “Queen of Prussia attached too much importance to the dignity of her sex, and to the value of public opinion.” From a man of Napoleon’s gross and low estimate of womanhood, a greater compliment would be impossible.

The French army was withdrawn from Berlin in December 1808. The King and Queen of Prussia did not re-enter their capital till December 1809. In the following July, Louisa died. Spasms of the heart had come on, a short time previously, during the illness of one of her children. They returned with a violence which she had not strength to resist. Her husband and her people felt that she had died of a broken heart. The short-lived rejoicings that had greeted her return to Berlin were now changed into devotion to her memory, and to the cause of German patriotism with which her name will always be associated. The King, his children, and his subjects mourned her loss with unceasing fidelity and reverence. Four years after her death, Frederick William and his Russian allies crushed Napoleon’s army at the battle of Leipzig. On his return to Berlin, the King’s first thought was to lay the laurel wreath of victory on his wife’s tomb. Queen Louisa’s eldest son directed that his heart should be buried at the foot of his mother’s grave, and the same spot was also selected as the last resting-place of her second son, the Emperor William. It will long be remembered that it was here that the late Emperor, then King William of Prussia, knelt alone, in silent meditation and stern resolve, on the sixtieth anniversary of his mother’s death, just at the time of the outbreak of the war of 1870 between France and Germany.

She was only thirty-five years old when she died; but she was able to leave to her children and to her people a name that will be remembered and honoured as long as the German Empire lasts. Her tomb at Charlottenburg is one of the most beautiful monuments to the memory of the dead, which the world contains. The pure white marble statue of the Queen is by the sculptor Rauch, who knew her well, and honoured her as she deserved. Everything about the building is designed with loving care. The words chosen by the King, and placed over the entrance of the temple where the monument lies, are: “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen: and have the keys of hell and of death.”

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