Part 26

While he lived his power stood firm, an object of mingled aversion, admiration, and dread to his subjects. Few indeed loved his government; but those who hated it most, hated it less than they feared it. Had it been a worse government, it might, perhaps, have been overthrown in spite of all its strength. Had it been a weaker government, it would certainly have been overthrown in spite of all its merits. But it had moderation enough to abstain from those oppressions which drive men mad; and it had a force and energy which none but men driven mad by oppression would venture to encounter.

It has often been affirmed, but apparently with little reason, that Oliver died at a time fortunate for his renown, and that, if his life had been prolonged, it would probably have closed amid disgraces and disasters. It is certain that he was, to the last, honored by his soldiers, obeyed by the whole population of the British Islands, and dreaded by all foreign powers; that he was laid among the ancient sovereigns of England with funeral pomp such as London had never before seen, and that he was succeeded by his son Richard as quietly as any king had ever been succeeded by any Prince of Wales.

FREDERICK, THE GREAT ELECTOR

(1620-1688)

Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg surnamed the Great Elector, was the son of the Elector George William. In the distracted state of Germany, during the Thirty Years' War, and the necessary absence of his father with the army, the young prince saw but little of the splendor and indulgences of a court, passing the first years of his life in retirement with his tutors, who were men of learning and experience, and with his mother, first at the castle of Litzlingen, in the forests of the Altmark, and afterward at Custrin. The adventures and the singular fortunes of the family of his mother (who was sister of Frederick, King of Bohemia, husband of the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I. of England), the cruel and barbarous manner in which the war was carried on, and the dangers to which he and his family were exposed, necessarily made a deep impression on his mind. At the age of fifteen he was sent to the University at Leyden, where he especially devoted himself to the classics and to history. Of modern languages he was a proficient in French, Dutch, and Polish. He was afterward in the camp of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, during the siege of Breda, and was much noticed by the prince for his amiable manners and exemplary conduct, as well as for his sound understanding. About this time a widely known society of young persons of both sexes (called Media Nocte) endeavored to draw the prince into its circle at The Hague; but his friend and tutor, the Baron Schulenberg, making him aware of the immoral nature of the society, the prince abruptly left one of their convivial meetings, and resolved immediately to quit The Hague. The Prince of Orange was much surprised at this self-command, and when the prince arrived in the camp before Breda, said to him, "Cousin, your flight is a greater proof of heroism than if I took Breda; he who so early knows how to command himself will always succeed in great deeds." These words, as he himself owned, made a deep impression on him.

His father dying in 1640, the young prince found his dominions reduced to a most deplorable condition by war and bad government. The exactions of Wallenstein in Altmark alone were estimated at twenty millions of gold florins; and in a memorial of the magistrate of Prenzlau, it is stated that the inhabitants are reduced to such dreadful extremities that they not only eat dogs, cats, and even carrion, but that, both in the town and country, they attack and kill each other for food. He commenced his government with a degree of prudence and wisdom rarely found in so young a sovereign. His first care was to correct many crying abuses and to restore order in the finances. His attention was then directed to foreign affairs. In 1642 he received the investiture of Prussia from the King of Poland; in 1643 he concluded a peace with the Swedes, on condition of their evacuating the greater part of his dominions. At the peace of Munster he was not able to enforce his claims to Pomerania and Silesia, but obtained Magdeburg, Wallenstadt, Minden, and part of Pomerania.

It is highly to his credit that it was chiefly owing to him, that the principle of equal rights and privileges for the two great divisions of the Protestant Church was admitted in that famous treaty. Charles Gustavus, King of Sweden, appearing emulous of rivalling Gustavus Adolphus, the elector concluded an alliance with Holland, and sought the friendship of Cromwell and Louis XIV. He was, however, obliged to make in 1655 a treaty with the Swedes, in consequence of which he joined in the invasion of Poland, and greatly contributed to the victory at Warsaw. Austria, Holland, and Poland vehemently protested against this alliance with Sweden. Cromwell, however, who believed the Protestant cause to be in danger from the King of Poland, sent William Jepson as his ambassador to the elector, whom in letters he compliments in the highest terms for his service to the Protestant religion. But Russia and Austria declaring in favor of Poland, he, by the mediation of Austria, concluded a convention with Poland at Wehlau, by one of the stipulations of which he obtained the entire sovereignty of Prussia, and in 1678 completed the conquest of all Pomerania by the taking of Griefswald and Stralsund. The death of Charles Gustavus freed him from an adversary who would probably have endeavored to prevent the execution of this treaty, which was confirmed by the treaty of Oliva. Frederick, now at peace with his neighbors, directed all his attention to promote the welfare of his subjects by favoring all internal improvements; the ruined towns and villages were rebuilt, new roads made, waste lands cultivated, commerce encouraged, and many useful establishments founded.

In 1672, however, Holland being threatened by Louis XIV., he concluded a treaty with the republic, engaging to furnish 20,000 men for its defence. He also contributed to induce the emperor: Denmark, Hesse Cassel, and several German princes to join him against France. But though his advance into Westphalia induced the French to quit Holland, the campaign was rendered unsuccessful by the slowness of the Austrian general, and he was forced to abandon Westphalia to the enemy. The Austrians leaving him, and the Dutch neglecting to send him subsidies, he was obliged to make a convention with France in 1673. The French were to evacuate Westphalia and pay him 800,000 livres, he promising to withdraw from his alliance with Holland, and not to support the enemies of France; yet he reserved to himself the right of assisting the German emperor in case of attack. This happened in 1674, when he invaded Alsace with 16,000 men, and joined the Imperial army; but the Austrian general, Bournonville, avoided a battle, contrary to the advice of Frederick, and Turenne receiving reinforcements obliged the Germans to quit Alsace. In order to free themselves from Frederick, the French instigated the Swedes to invade Pomerania and Altmark, which they attacked in December, 1674, with 16,000 men. Frederick hastened to his dominions, and proceeding with great rapidity and secrecy at the head of only 5,000 men, he totally defeated 11,000 Swedes at Fehrbellin in 1675, and freed his dominions from the enemy. Following up his successes, he took Stettin. In January, 1679, he crossed the Frische Haff and the Gulf of Courland with his army on sledges over the ice, and surprising the Swedes in their winter quarters, compelled them to quit Prussia. He did not reap any real advantage from his success, for Louis XIV. insisted that he should make peace with Sweden and give up all his conquests; and on his refusal, sent an army of 30,000 men to lay waste the duchy of Cleves, and city of Minden, so that he was forced to conclude the treaty of St. Germain, by which he restored all his conquests to Sweden; the French withdrew from his Westphalian dominions, and paid him 300,000 crowns.

After this, we do not find Frederick again in the field. He was indeed engaged in various negotiations; was involved in disputes with France on account of its seizure of Strasbourg and Luxembourg; and in consequence of his reception of 20,000 French Protestants, who left their country on the repeal of the edict of Nantes. Frederick, who had previously obtained from his ambassador, von Spanheim, notice of the intended measure, had made preparations to receive the fugitives, and sent funds to his agents at Frankfort, Amsterdam, and Hamburg, for their assistance. In like manner he protected the proscribed Waldenses. Having in vain interceded for them in a very affecting letter to the Duke of Savoy, he offered to receive 2,000 of them into his dominions. He sent 8,000 men, in 1686, to assist the emperor against the Turks; having in the year preceding renewed his alliance with Holland, when Prince William of Orange was preparing for his expedition to England, Frederick assisted him with several regiments and Marshal von Schomberg, who became so great a favorite with William, and was eventually killed at the battle of the Boyne. As another proof of Frederick's enterprising spirit, it deserves to be noticed that Spain neglecting to pay him the arrears of a subsidy promised him for his co-operation against France, he resolved to commence a war by sea against that power; he fitted out eight frigates which had been employed against Sweden, and sent them in 1680 to capture Spanish ships, and they actually took some rich merchantmen.

We have not space, nor is it necessary, to detail the proceedings of this great prince in consolidating the prosperity of his dominions and the welfare of his subjects. He died in April, 1688, leaving to his son a much enlarged and highly cultivated territory, a well-filled treasury, and an army of 30,000 excellent troops. He was twice married: first, in 1647, to Louisa Henrietta, Princess of Orange, an amiable and accomplished person, author of the celebrated German hymn "Jesus meine Zuversicht." She died in 1667. In the following year Frederick married Dorothea, Duchess Dowager of Brunswick Lueneberg; but though an excellent and virtuous princess, she was not liked by the people, chiefly because she was on ill terms with her step-children, especially the crown-prince. The character of Frederick, both in public and private life, has always been highly esteemed. He was kind, generous, fond of society, and, though rather quick in his temper, extremely placable. He was the real founder of the Prussian monarchy; and as a sovereign he appears to have justly merited the surname of the Great Elector.

LOUIS XIV.[17]

By OLIVER OPTIC

(1638-1715)

[Footnote 17: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

On September 16, 1638, Paris was in a state of intense excitement and rejoicing. The booming of cannon resounded through the city, the people gave thanks in their churches, all the palaces of the nobility were illuminated, and so brilliant were the bonfires and torches in the evening that one could see to read on both sides of the Seine. The poor were feasted as never before, and there was no limit to the enthusiasm.

The occasion of this unbounded rejoicing was the birth of an heir to the throne of France. Louis XIII., the son of Henry IV., the first of the Bourbons, was king. He had married the daughter of Philip III. of Spain, who was called Anne of Austria, after her mother. She was one of the most beautiful women of her time; but for twenty-two years she had lived nearly in a state of separation from her husband, and no living heir to the throne had been born. The king and the queen were not harmonious; and after the lapse of this long period, the birth of a son was regarded as an extraordinary, if not a miraculous event, especially by the devout people of the nation, who called the child the "God-given."

Louis XIII. was personally a brave man, and had some good qualities; but as a ruler he was weak and incapable of governing his kingdom. He admitted Cardinal Richelieu to his cabinet, and the astute politician became his prime-minister, and was the actual ruler of France. The king fully appreciated the vast abilities of his great minister, even while he feared, if he did not hate him, and became but a pliant tool in the hands of the greatest statesman of his time.

It is said that Richelieu was fascinated by the beauty and grace of Anne of Austria, and that she made a bitter enemy of the minister by repelling his courtesies. Be this as it may, they were never friends, except so far as the relations of state compelled them to be such. He died in 1642, naming Cardinal Mazarin as his successor. Before his death he had built up the power of France, and won for her an influential position among the governments of Europe. But he had repressed constitutional liberty, and severely burdened the people with taxation to carry on the wars he advocated.

Two years after the birth of the Dauphin, as the heir to the throne was then called, another son was born to the king, the Duke of Anjou, who afterward became the Duke of Orleans. The brother of the king is called "Monsieur" in France, by courtesy; and he is so designated in various works of the time. Louis XIII. died when his two sons were respectively five and three years old, naming the queen as regent during the minority of the young king. Richelieu had died the year before, and Mazarin had been installed in his place.

The Palais-Royal, which claims the attention of every visitor in Paris at the present time, was built by Richelieu for his own residence, and was called the Palais-Cardinal. At his death he bequeathed it to the king, and it became the residence of Anne of Austria and her two children. The official in charge of the palaces represented that it was not proper for the king to live in the mansion of a subject, and the inscription bearing the former name was removed, and that of the present day was substituted for it; which seemed to many to be an act of ingratitude to the statesman who had presented it to the crown. The chamber which had been occupied by Richelieu was given to Louis, then only five years old. It was a small apartment, for the cardinal built more for effect upon the world than for his own personal comfort; but it was conveniently located for the proper care of the young king, for whose sake alone the name of the palace had been changed.

The Palais-Royal, as enlarged and beautified from time to time by its first occupant, who was ambitious to be more magnificently lodged than the nominal sovereign at the Louvre, was the most splendid royal residence of the time. Corneille, the greatest tragic poet of France, said of it in one of his poems, that "the entire universe cannot present the equal of the magnificent exterior of the Palais-Cardinal;" though, as the stranger looks upon it to-day, the praise of the French Shakespeare seems to be extravagant.

The apartments of the queen-regent were vastly more extensive and elegant than those of his little majesty, and she caused a great deal of money and good taste to be expended in their further ornamentation. Cardinal Mazarin also went to reside with the royal family in this luxurious palace, and his rooms looked out upon the Rue des Bons Enfants (the street of the Good Children), though the name was hardly applicable to those who dwelt in the place. Louis was provided with the surroundings of royalty on a small scale, such as valets, and young nobles as children of honor, even while the young king was pinched in his personal comforts and luxuries. Until he was seven years old Louis was mostly in the hands of the feminine portion of the household, like other children. At this age the governor appointed to take charge of him, the sub-governor, the preceptor, and the valets, entered upon their special functions; the king was practically emancipated from the nursery.

Laporte, a valet who had long been on duty in the royal family, and had served a term in the Bastille for his fidelity, desired to read to the king, when he went to bed, something besides fairy tales; if his juvenile majesty went to sleep the reading would be lost; if not, something instructive would be retained in his memory. He read the history of France, and his charge was interested in it. Permission had been obtained of the preceptor, but Mazarin did not approve of the reading. One evening, to escape from the crowd, the cardinal passed through the room during the reading. Louis closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep. He had already taken a strong aversion to the minister, like the greater portion of the people in general.

On one occasion he called the cardinal "the Grand Turk," and the remark was reported to his mother, who sent for him and scolded him severely for it. The queen-regent did not share the general dislike of the minister, for they were on the most intimate terms of friendship. It was not a matter of record, but it was believed by many, that Mazarin had been privately married to Anne of Austria. The minister had brought his relatives to Paris, where he was in a situation to advance their fortunes. One of his youngest nephews had been appointed an _enfant d'honneur_ of the king, who did not confine his dislike to the minister, but extended it to his family. Two of these were designated to remain with his majesty when he went to bed, and Laporte had been instructed by the queen to give each of them a stand with two candles in it, as an emblem of office and a token of honor. The king had the selection, and he forbade Laporte to give it to the young Mazarin.

The minister was one of the most adroit and cunning diplomats of his time, or any time. He was an Italian by birth, and had been in the military and diplomatic service of the Pope, in which capacity he had been recognized as a man of transcendent abilities by Richelieu, who had retained him in France, where he became a naturalized Frenchman. He was the most obsequious of courtiers, and he made himself indispensable to the queen, who nominally wielded the executive power of the government. He filled one of the most difficult political positions imaginable, and did it with consummate skill, though he very nearly sacrificed himself to the indignation of the people and the nobility in the accomplishment of his purposes.

Richelieu had deprived the representatives of the people of many of their powers and liberties, and the Parliament had attempted to recover them under Mazarin. He caused their leaders to be arrested, which initiated the war of the Fronde, consisting more of a series of riots than of organized warfare. This disturbance compelled the court to retire to St. Germain, where Louis was born. The young king was conveyed there under the protection of the Royal Guard, which forms an exciting scene in the series of Dumas, Pere, "Les Trois Mousquetaires." Though humiliated and banished, Mazarin triumphed in the end. He had the hardihood to arrest the Great Conde, who had made the rebellion a success at one time. The minister was driven from the seat of his power into exile; but diplomacy accomplished what soldiers could not, and after an absence of a year he returned, and established himself so securely that he held his office to the day of his death.

Under Mazarin's direction and skilful intriguing at home and abroad, the influence of France was largely increased beyond her own borders, and the way was paved for triumphs to be achieved after he had himself passed away. In the family, as it were, of such a statesman and such an intriguer, were passed the earliest years of the life of Louis XIV. As the skilful diplomat had overcome the people and the nobility, changing them from the bitterest foes to at least the semblance of friends, so the hatred of the young king was buried under his respect for the vast ability of the minister.

Louis was brought up in the midst of political storms and in the turmoil of civil war. Mazarin was avaricious, and carried his economical notions in household matters to a ridiculous extent, limiting the young king's wardrobe, furniture, garments for underwear and bed use, so that some of the latter did not half cover the limbs of the growing boy, and he was compelled to sleep on a bed covered with ragged sheets. He was a bright boy, and being a king, he realized that he was not supported in the style that became his exalted condition. He was inclined to military recreations and to athletic exercises. He came very early to an understanding of what was necessary to support his character as the ruler of a great nation, and as a boy he cultivated the graces of social life, and was always a gentleman. He was a good horseman, and delighted in this exercise.

The civil war had "hunted him from pillar to post," and it was not till he was a dozen years old that he was permanently settled down in Paris. All these events of his early life had left a powerful impression upon his mind. It was the custom for the children of honor and the king to exchange little presents among themselves. One of these gifts to the juvenile monarch was a golden cannon drawn by a flea, which seemed to indicate a knowledge of his tastes. Another present was a case of surgical instruments, containing all the implements, but weighing only a few grains; and doubtless it suggested the horrors of the battle-field. Another present was a miniature sword of agate, ornamented with gold and rubies. These were all given to him by the same young noble; in return for them Louis was willing to lend the giver the cross-bow of which he made use himself.

"Kings give what they lend, sire," interposed a governess; and then Louis presented it to him, wishing it was something more valuable; for his pocket-money evidently did not permit him to indulge in such expensive gifts as those he had received; but such as they were, he gave them with his whole heart. The recipient of the gift kept it, and regarded it as vastly more valuable than if it had been covered with gold and diamonds from another.

September 7, 1651, was a memorable day in the annals of France, and if it was not marked by the popular rejoicings which had greeted the birth of the king, it was because the people were worn out by the war of the Frondeurs. The grand master of ceremonies had notified the Parliament that Louis XIV. would take the "seat of justice," the place of the monarch in this body on solemn and important occasions, on that day, for the purpose of declaring his majority, and assuming the government. There was a great deal of simple fiction in the formalities, for his majesty was only a boy of fourteen, with far less education than is usually obtained by one of that age at the present time, and was incapable of ruling over a great nation.