Part 16

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 offered _them_ Hanover, 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 called _The 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.”

XVIII

DOROTHY WORDSWORTH

“And were another childhood world my share, I would be born a little sister there.”—GEORGE ELIOT.

A HUNDRED years ago England was particularly rich in great brothers and sisters. There were William and Caroline Herschel, Charles and Mary Lamb, and, perhaps, chief of all, William and Dorothy Wordsworth. These last were certainly the greatest as tested by the position of the brother in the world of literature. He won and maintained a place among the greatest of English poets; but the very greatness of the brother was the cause why the sister is known only as a tributary to his genius. It is not that his achievements dwarf hers by comparison; she made no conscious contribution to literature; she felt from the outset of their life together that he was capable of giving to his countrymen thoughts which the world would not willingly let die, and she deliberately suppressed in herself all cultivation of her own powers, save such as should contribute to support, sustain, and promote his. As Charles Lamb said of his own sister, “If the balance has been against her, it was a noble trade.” There is, however, much evidence that the balance was not against Dorothy Wordsworth. She did not sacrifice herself in vain. She chose to give up all independent cultivation of her own considerable poetic gifts, and also to renounce all hopes of love and marriage, for the sake of devoting her whole life to her brother, and of helping to a freer and nobler utterance the poet who has given us “The Ode on the Intimations of Immortality,” “The Ode to Duty,” “The Happy Warrior,” and a host of songs and sonnets among the most beautiful in our language. The sister freely and generously gave, the brother freely and generously received, and freely and generously acknowledged the value of the gift. Over and over again, in prose and verse, Wordsworth acknowledges all that he owes to his sister; never more warmly than when, on the approach of old age, disease had laid its hand upon her, and the long accustomed support seemed likely to be withdrawn. When Coleridge and Dorothy lay prostrate under the stroke of sickness, Wordsworth wrote at the age of sixty-two: “He and my beloved sister are the two beings to whom my intellect is most indebted, and they are now proceeding, as it were, with equal steps, along the path of sickness, I will not say towards the grave; but I trust towards a blessed immortality.” If Wordsworth, reviewing the past, could speak thus of his sister, it must be of interest to us to endeavour to discern what her influence over him was, and how their life together was passed.

William Wordsworth was born in 1770, at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, the second son of John Wordsworth, a lawyer and land-agent to the Earls of Lonsdale. Dorothy, her parents’ only girl, was twenty months younger than William, and the two children very early showed that close sympathy and tender affection for one another which is often the precious possession of happy family life. Only a few years were spent together by the brother and sister in this joyous playtime of life; but the happiness of this early time is recorded in several of Wordsworth’s poems, especially in the one where he speaks of his sister and their visit together to see the sparrow’s nest—

She looked at it and seemed to fear it; Dreading, tho’ wishing, to be near it: Such heart was in her, being then A little Prattler among men. The Blessing of my later years Was with me when a boy: She gave me eyes, she gave me ears; And humble cares, and delicate fears; A heart, the fountain of sweet tears; And love, and thought, and joy.

William and Dorothy were less than nine and seven respectively when these happy days of childish companionship were closed by the death of their mother in 1778. William was then sent to school, and Dorothy went to live with her maternal grandparents at Penrith. The children were doubly orphaned five years later by the death of their father, in 1783. William and his brothers then passed to the guardianship of their uncles, Richard and Christopher Wordsworth, while Dorothy was made over to the care of other relatives, and spent her time partly at Halifax and

## partly with her mother’s cousin, Dr. Cookson, Canon of Windsor. She and

William, however, by no means forgot their childish affection or let it grow cold. They rarely met at this time, but their meetings were looked forward to by both with ardent and intense pleasure. Each continued to be to the other the dearest and most beloved of friends.

Wordsworth, like most generous young people of his day, was deeply stirred by sympathy with the French Revolution. At its outset he believed it would bring immeasurable blessings to mankind; tyranny, cruelty, and vice were, he believed, to be dismissed from the high places of the earth, and in their stead would reign justice, mercy, peace, and love. It is therefore not difficult to imagine with what agony of disappointment he saw, as he thought, all these high hopes falsified, and the light that had been lit by the Revolution quenched in blood and in a series of massacres more cruel and remorseless than any that had disgraced previous forms of government. For a time the belief in goodness and righteousness seemed shaken in him. To disbelieve in the power of goodness is infidelity; and from this gulf of infidelity Wordsworth was saved by his sister’s influence. This was the first memorable service she rendered to his moral nature. He was saved from becoming permanently soured and narrowed by the sunny radiance of his sister’s sympathy and by her unshaken faith that good is stronger than evil. The brother and sister now resolved to live together; and from that hour Dorothy’s whole life was given to enrich and solace that of her brother, and to help him to give utterance to those great thoughts and words which at last made the whole of England aware that the nation was possessed of another poet.

Wordsworth was now twenty-five years of age; he had passed through his college career at Cambridge and had travelled abroad, and the time had come when it was not unnaturally expected of him that he should settle down to some business or profession that would provide him with an income. Very little had come to the family from inheritance, and parents and guardians are not generally disposed to look with lenient indulgence on a penniless young man of twenty-five who shows a disinclination to any steady work, and is suspected of an ambition to become a poet. Wordsworth’s uncles had been kind and generous guardians, but they could not have been pleased at what must have seemed to them at this time the dilatory, desultory life of their nephew. His sister, however, all the while gave him her warmest sympathy and support. Before any one else had dreamed of it, she recognised her brother’s genius; she not only believed that he would be a poet, but _knew_ that he _was_ a poet. She did not urge him, as a well-intentioned but less perceptive friend might have done, to become a lawyer, or a doctor, or what not; she made it possible, by joining her life to his, and nourishing his genius by the tribute she poured into it from her own, that he should have the quiet sympathetic surroundings without which his poetic imagination could not work.