The Statesmanship of Stein

II

WHILE laying foundations for a better civic system, Stein was obliged to devote immediate and intense thought to the military system. The old Prussian army organization had been, under Frederick the Great, the wonder of the world; and to uphold it as a model had become a tenet of military orthodoxy on both sides of the Atlantic, but above all in Prussia. In spite of the revelation of power given to an army by national feeling and by the awakened consciousness of personal rights, as seen in the French Revolution; in spite of the new light and life thrown into military science and military practice by Napoleon, the leaders in Prussia clung to the old system, boasted of it, and threatened to overwhelm Napoleon with it.

But things had changed since the great Frederick conquered Soubise at Rossbach. The French soldiers of the new revolutionary epoch, feeling themselves citizens of a great republic and apostles of human rights, were very different from the poor creatures of the previous century, who had been sent out to die in battles demanded by the intrigues of Louvois or the whims of Madame de Pompadour; the French marshals, trained in the campaigns of the republic and empire, were very different from poor old Soubise; the command of Napoleon was different indeed from orders issued by Louis XV.

All this had passed unheeded in Germany, and the whole Prussian military fabric, which it had taken nearly two centuries to build, collapsed at Jena. The fact was that, judged by any good modern standard, the old Prussian military system was thoroughly vicious. The fatal weakness of absolutism was shown in this system no less than in the civil administration: a genius like Frederick the Great could do wonders with it, but the men who succeeded him on the throne were powerless to use it to any good purpose.

The officers were chosen, with rare exceptions, from the nobility; all the military talent and ambition in the rest of the nation were virtually excluded; promotion went by seniority or favor; birth went before merit; the better class of officers were thwarted by pedantry; the ordinary class was grossly ignorant; the soldiers were either peasants’ sons, torn from their homes, or the scum of German or foreign cities, huddled together by recruiting officers; the soldier’s career was hopeless, — the usual term of service twenty years, and no promotion above the ranks. Degrading punishments were in constant use; blows with a stick could be inflicted on any veteran at the whim of a petty lieutenant, and for such slight offenses as a misplaced strap or a broken button.

The whole formed an organized system of injustice which touched the vast majority in their dearest interests. This injustice, in the time of Frederick the Great, was of little account: his people regarded it as the inevitable and natural condition of things; but ideas of right were now in the air, and had even reached the cottages of the German boors. The peasant class, which paid the bulk of the taxes, paid also the main tribute of blood; the middle class, which also bore heavy burdens, was excluded from all military honors; the least honor was for those who labored most, the most for those who labored least. Long-standing exemptions of districts, towns, and persons — which once had some reason, but now had none — only added to the general sense of injustice. And substitution was allowed: the rich man’s son could buy exemption; the poor man’s son could not escape. The great mass of antiquated peculiarities in army organization were retained as sacred, — the stiffness, the martinetism, the brutality; the only wonder is that soldiers so treated and trained did not come to regard their country as really their worst enemy.

The first feeling after Jena was that somebody had blundered, but it was soon clear that everybody had blundered. Scapegoats were, of course, sought, and they were near and plenty; the first step that was universally demanded was vengeance upon indifferent, incompetent, beery, sleepy, cowardly officers, who had delivered up important commands, fortresses, towns — sometimes without striking a blow. Many were disgraced; some sentenced to imprisonment and death; but thinking men soon saw that the fault lay deeper, and among those who searched into the causes of the catastrophe most deeply was Stein. It was this search which led him to propose the measures calculated to develop a people no longer to be treated as “dumb, driven cattle.”

The immediate need was for military reform: the whole military system must be recast, and at once. For this, Stein had the best ally possible —General Scharnliorst; and about Scharnhorst stood a body of exceedingly able and patriotic men, like Gneisenau, Boyen, and Grolmann.

Scharnhorst seemed to have stepped into those worst days of Germany out of the best days of Rome; he was a divine gift to his country, like Carnot in the dire trouble of France, or Lincoln, Grant, Stanton, and Sherman in the darkest days of our own Civil War. He was broad in views, simple in tastes, quick in discerning essentials, firm, incorruptible, and, above everything, devoted to his country. By the general body of officers about him he was looked down upon, for he was one of the few Prussian officers of peasant descent. More than this, he was considered a theorist, his real worth being known to few, — but among those few was Stein.

Into his plans for military regeneration Scharnhorst threw not only his whole mind, but his whole heart and soul. Plan after plan he carefully elaborated and discussed: plans for reconstructing the army, for providing a reserve, for developing a militia; all this in the face of enormous difficulties, — the indecision of the King, the suspicion of Napoleon, the poverty of the country, and the inertia of influential people wedded to the old system by self-interest or dread of change.

The fundamental idea of Scharnhorst’s whole system was that every citizen is bound to defend the state; that there shall be few exemptions and no substitutes; that the state has a claim on all the talent within its borders. From this followed the duty of all young men to bear arms; the advancement of officers and soldiers not through influence, but by enterprise, bravery, and character. The recruiting of soldiers abroad was given up; only on rare occasions was a foreigner admitted to service in the army. The plan of Scharnhorst and Stein was that the army should be a school for the whole nation, — a school in the virtues of soldier and citizen. The germs of the whole military system as it exists to-day, with its active service, its reserve, its Landwehr and Landsturm, now began to appear.

But to carry out this whole idea at once was impossible, for the spies of Napoleon were everywhere, and no one noted the slightest indication of a desire to regain liberty and independence so keenly as he. Seeing this movement, which showed the German feeling for liberty aroused by the Spanish uprising, Napoleon forced on Prussia a new treaty, supplementary to the Treaty of Tilsit, which new treaty, besides other degrading conditions, bound Prussia to keep down her army to fortytwo thousand men.

Tyranny had now to be met by cunning. Many of the exterior features of the old system had to be preserved as a disguise. The plan was adopted of giving soldiers leave of absence after a period of thorough drill, and taking fresh recruits in their places, so that the whole body of young Prussians might pass through the army. Everything was done to evade the keenness of the French spies: regiments were marched to exercise, leaving large numbers of sound men in barracks or hospitals; and at last, while nominally keeping up an army of only forty-two thousand men, Scharnhorst had trained and inspired a hundred and fifty thousand.

Troubles arose, too, from the suspicions not only of the French, but of the Prussians themselves. Nervous men, impatient men, frivolous men, were constantly in danger of precipitating a catastrophe. Selfishness and prejudice were also active, and the pressure of individual arid family influence against the new system was at times enormous; the routine men in the army raged against Scharnhorst, and to show the depth of their scorn called him “schoolmaster.” ¹

The poverty of the country was also a great hindrance, and for months the artillery in Silesia could not exercise effectively because Napoleon’s satraps had carried off their powder. For five years Scharnhorst, one of the most open, manly, and frank of men, had to double and turn, concealing his plans and acts, like a hunted criminal, until, at the beck of Napoleon, the King was forced to disgrace him, to remove him from his higher position to a lower, virtually to drive him from the service.

But the great work could not then be stopped, and to these beginnings are due, in great measure, not only the glories of Leipsic and Waterloo, a few years later, but of Düppel, Sadowa, St. Privat, and Sedan. Scharnhorst, with Stein advising and strengthening him, thus began the military system which Moltke completed.

But while Stein stood firmly and hopefully by his great colleague, providing for the wants of the nation and laying plans to baffle Napoleon, he was still occupied with the civic system and with the reorganization of the general administration. Having taken measures for the abolition of monopolies, — the mill monopoly, the millstone monopoly, the butcher, the baker, the huckster monopolies, and a multitude of others; and having rooted up, as far as possible, all barriers against the admission of women to various trades and occupations for which they were fitted, his main strength was thrown into administrative reform. This, in many respects, was the greatest work of all, though he did not remain in office long enough to complete it.

The general administrative system of Prussia had become a muddle like all the rest. There were councils, chambers, directories, departments, cabinets, ministers administrative, ministers territorial, generally working in accordance with outworn needs or ideas, or with the appetites or whims of the persons who happened to sit on the throne. A strong king, like Frederick the Great, did mainly without them; a luxurious king, like Frederick William the Fat, left them to lumber on chaotically; a mediocre king, like Frederick William III, unable to see his way in this jungle, knew no other plan than to lean on a little coterie of favorites, and to avoid any decision as long as possible.

The local administrations were of like quality. Out of these Stein began developing something better. He made no attempt to change suddenly the nature of the people: whatever had helpful life in it, he endeavored to preserve, and, especially, he sought to restore some features introduced by Frederick William I, which, under Frederick the Great, had been lost sight of.

The edict drawn up under his direction proposed to give to the administration of affairs the greatest possible energy and activity, and yet to put all in direct relations with the central government. The whole plan was wrought out carefully and logically; large as a whole, precise as to details, it combined all Stein’s experience, his knowledge of men, his boldness, his caution.

Preliminary to all this was the creation of a Council of State, made up of fitting men from the royal family, ministers, privy councilors of distinction, former ministers, heads of bureaus and of departments; but a far more important change was one which in these days seems exceedingly simple, but which in those seemed almost impossible, — the assignment of a small number of ministers to the main subjects of administration throughout the whole monarchy. These ministers were mainly of the interior, finance, foreign affairs, war, and justice; and, with a few other officials of great experience, formed a cabinet to decide on various weighty and general matters, — with the understanding, which now seems axiomatic, but which then seemed chimerical, that no clique of favorites should stand between the Cabinet and the King.

Various departments, each with a minister at its head, have been added since Stein’s day, — a Ministry of Trade and Commerce, a Ministry of Agriculture, a Ministry of Ecclesiastical, Educational, and Medical Affairs; but his simple system, as a whole, remains as he planned it.

For historical and patriotic reasons, he rejected the example of the French Revolution, and allowed the old territorial divisions to remain, with proper officers, each with functions which could be discharged for the good of the country, but without injury to the new system. The general local system was also carefully studied, and reforms were begun in accordance with experience and sound sense. Stein had expected, indeed, to go further into the lower local organization, but he was too soon driven from office. His successors attempted to deal with it, injuring it in some respects, improving it in others; but taken as a whole, his was a great and fruitful beginning, and it has grown into that system which has made Prussia the most carefully and conscientiously administered nation in the world; — doubtless with sundry disadvantages: with too much interference and control, with too little individual initiative, but, after all, wonderfully perfect. At the present time, one of the most interesting studies for a close political thinker would be a comparison between this system, which seems to hold that government best which governs most, and our own, which, in theory, holds that government best which governs least.

Stein’s object was to secure, in the whole administration, unity, energy, and responsibility. His correspondence and his papers show that he intended later to propose a parliamentary system, with two houses, in which the better national spirit could be brought to bear on the discussion of general affairs and on the enlightened support of the monarchy. Royal edicts put in force his plans as far as he had developed them diming the latter months of 1808, but anything further was prevented by a catastrophe. During the whole year Napoleon was striving to free himself from the fearful complication of his affairs. Up to this time, his conquests had been comparatively simple and easy. Austria, Prussia, and Italy were beneath his feet, and he had now attempted a policy of conquest in the Spanish Peninsula. Here came the first capital folly of his career. Spain was ignorant, corrupt, priest-ridden, but it was not a collection of ill-compacted governments like Germany; it was, with all its faults, a nation, and its uprising against Napoleon’s effort was the beginning of the anti-Napoleonic revolution. At every important point in Spain Napoleon’s marshals were worsted. and at Baylen came a great disgrace: for the first time in his history, one of his armies was forced to capitulate. In the Portuguese part of the Peninsula, where the British forces aided those of the population, he encountered the same desperate resistance. The Emperor’s brother was obliged to flee from the Spanish throne, and finally the great conqueror himself found it necessary to put himself at the head of his army against the Spanish people; but, though for a time he broke down all opposition, this revolt in Spain gave a new idea to all Europe, — the idea that, after all, a people, if united, could throw off his tyranny. Nowhere did this thought spread wider or strike deeper than in Germany, and among those most profoundly influenced by it was Stein.

In the midst of his labor for municipal reform, administrative reform, military reform, Stein devoted himself to impressing this Spanish example upon the leading men of his country, especially by letters, and finally one of these letters fell into the hands of Napoleon. It had become especially dangerous for any man, no matter how high in place, to incur the wrath of the great conqueror; but how great the danger of Stein became has only recently been revealed. For, within the last ten years, the world has received a revelation of the Napoleonic tyranny, in Germany especially, which enables us to see what unbridled autocracy means and to what dangers Stein exposed himself in opposing it. Under the second French empire, there was formed, about the middle of the nineteenth century, a pretentious commission, presided over, finally, by Prince Napoleon, the son of Napoleon’s youngest brother, King Jerome, which published, in a long series of volumes, what claimed to be Napoleon’s complete correspondence. But it was soon found that this correspondence had been carefully expurgated, and since that time various investigators have given to the world letters which the official committee omitted. There could be no more fearful revelation of the tyranny engendered by unlimited power. The conqueror had come to regard any resistance to his plans, or even to his wishes, as a crime worthy of death. The whole world had long known how he had ordered the Duc d’Enghien to be executed at Strasburg for a crime of which he was guiltless, and how he had ordered the bookseller Palm, at Nuremberg, to execution, for having in his possession a simple and noble patriotic pamphlet; but these letters recently published by Lecestre, Brotonne, and others have shown that this cruelty had become, especially after his reverses, a prevailing principle with him.

In these letters we find the great conqueror treating his brothers, whom he had placed on thrones, as mere lackeys, with utter contempt, and with not the slightest recognition of their duties toward the peoples whom he had called them to govern. His letters to them are frequently couched in such terms as no self-respecting man should use toward a lackey. Among the letters also appear simple offhand instructions to his commanders in various parts of Germany, which are really orders to commit murder. As a rule, the moment the spies of the Emperor report any person as troublesome, there comes back a virtual order to punish the offender with death. Orders to shoot this or that troublesome patriot in Germany or Spain are frequent, but perhaps the climax is reached in a dispatch to Junot, to whom Napoleon writes that no doubt the General has disarmed Lisbon, and adds, “Shoot, say, sixty persons.” ²

It was in this frame of mind that Napoleon read Stein’s intercepted letter, and his wrath became at once venomous. At first it was somewhat dissembled, probably with the hope of bringing the culprit more easily within striking distance. The notice of it in the Moniteur, September 8, 1808, was merely contemptuous; but this was the prelude to more severe measures against Prussia, and three months later, Napoleon, from his camp at Madrid, issued his decree placing the German statesman not only under the ban of the Empire, but under the outlawry of Europe.

Beginning with a contemptuous reference to him as “a person named Stein,” this decree proceeds with a notice that his property of every sort in all parts of Germany and in France is confiscated, and it ends with an order to seize him “ wherever he can be caught by our own troops or those of our allies.” This edict was posted in every part of Germany, and even in Poland. Though Stein, from the first discovery of his letter by Napoleon, must have seen its inevitable result, he braved all dangers. His heart was set on the edict for administrative reform, and to this he devoted himself, until, on the 24th of November, the King was at last induced to sign it. And still Stein lingered to render other administrative services, until his family and friends, in utter distress, prevailed upon him to consider his own safety, and possible future services to his country. On the night of January 5, 1809, he took flight in a sledge from Prussia into the snowy mountains of Bohemia, and for three years, amid privations, illness, and suffering, though constantly active, was, by the world at large, unheard-of. There seemed to come to him as complete an effacement of personality and influence as to Luther during his stay in the Wartburg.

Stein’s escape was made none too soon. The simple fact was that in him Napoleon recognized a man who understood the Napoleonic policy thoroughly; who knew, down to the last details, the whole story, not only of the Treaty of Tilsit, but of Napoleon’s violations of it, and of that wholesale plunder, without warrant of the treaty, which Germany was forced to endure during the years which followed it. More than this, the conqueror recognized in Stein a man whose German patriotism was invincible; one who saw the vulnerable point in the Napoleonic system of conquest, as Napoleon himself must have begun to see it at Madrid when the official proclamation against his enemy was issued; one who had the gift, also, of inoculating others with his patriotic spirit. Therefore it was that Napoleon, who had at first urged him upon the King of Prussia as a man whose financial talent and genius could develop the nation for the better support of the French armies, now made him an outlaw, and would certainly, could he have laid his hands upon him, have put him to death.

This was no ordinary case of outlawry, and it brought results which the conqueror little foresaw. It gave Stein a hold on the German heart which all his vast services had failed to gain. It secured him recognition as a leader throughout Europe, from royal palaces to the huts of peasants. It inspired phlegmatic men with indignation, and prosaic men with eloquence. Of this there is a striking example to be found in every wellfurnished library. About the middle of the nineteenth century, Privy Councilor Dr. Pertz, eminent for close historical research, director of the Royal Library at Berlin, gave to the world his Life of Stein. It was in seven octavos, closely printed, a collection which Carlyle would have blasphemed as the work of the arch-fiend Dryasdust; but which, though minute and painstaking almost to a fault, betrays a wholesome enthusiasm. Throughout the whole seven volumes the erudite Privy Councilor restrains himself; but when he reaches this period in Stein’s history, there comes the one outburst of eloquent indignation in the whole vast work. Having given the text of Napoleon’s edict, dated in his camp at Madrid, the historian gives scope to his feelings as follows: —

“ At the quarters of the French troops at Erfurt, at Magdeburg, and at Hanover, the population read with astonishment and sorrow this declaration of war whereby the conqueror of Marengo, Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, and Tudela, the sovereign of France, Italy, Holland, Switzerland, half of Germany and the whole of Spain, singled out one defenseless man from the innumerable numbers of his contemporaries and branded him as his enemy for life and death. But this measure of blind passion, far from reaching its purpose, turned against the man who devised it. Napoleon’s hate pointed out to his enemies their main hope. Innumerable men then read Stein’s name for the first time, but this outlawry at once surrounded his head with the halo of a martyr. The hearts which in all parts of Germany longed for freedom had found their living leader. He became instantly a personage on whom downtrodden peoples far outside the boundaries of Prussia placed their hopes and expectations; and, that the mightiest of this earth might stand in awe of eternal justice, from this ‘ person named Stein,’ six years later, went forth the thought of a European outlawry to which the Emperor of a hundred days was to yield.” ³

But a dark veil hung over this retributory future. The mighty of the earth, whether French or German, considered this outburst of the conqueror’s hate as a decree fixing Stein’s entire future. And the hatred of Napoleon was by no means the worst thing that Stein had to encounter; even more galling to his spirit was the opposition of the German courtiers and nobles, and especially of those who had taken positions under the Napoleonic régime; by these the bitterest epithets were lavished upon him. It became common among a large number of the court and government officials to declare him the worst foe to monarchy. From time to time, Napoleon followed

up the decree of outlawry by charging him with Jacobinism; and not only in Prussia, but throughout Germany. At the Austrian capital, Stein’s efforts to uplift the lower orders of the Prussian people gave strength to this charge. His idea of appealing to the national feeling was declared to be more dangerous than the worst tyrannies of Napoleon; a large body of influential men and women devoted themselves to everything which might thwart his efforts, and some of them kept Napoleon informed regarding him, thus helping to bring on the catastrophe. Seeley, in his Life of Stein, hesitates to believe this, but no one can look over the pages of Pertz and Treitschke without becoming convinced that many of Stein’s German enemies were capable of going to any length in betraying him.

In the midst of this personal catastrophe, he was constantly meditating not merely means of raising the German nation against the Napoleonic tyranny, but new reforms which should strengthen the people for the coming struggle. Just before leaving office, he presented to the King a summary of his views, which has passed into history under the name of “ Stein’s Political Testament.” In this his wish to crown the whole edifice with a legislative system, and to bind the whole together with a constitution, is made clear. As he had changed the rural population from serfs to freemen, the dwellers in cities from ciphers to citizens, and the whole administration from a worn-out machine to a vigorous, living organism, so it now became clear that he washed to change the old Prussian despotism into a limited monarchy, tempered by a national representation, such as came to Prussia forty years later, after the revolutions of 1830 and 1848.

For the time being all these patriotic efforts were brought to naught by what Napoleon considered Stein’s unpardonable sin: his crime in detecting and discussing the vulnerable point in the Napoleonic system, the heel of Achilles. He it was who more than any other had detected and accentuated in his private letters to leading German patriots the significance of that Spanish national uprising against Napoleon in 1808, and thus for the first time had given Europe an idea of the way in which Napoleonic tyranny could be overthrown. To meet this action by Stein, Napoleon was by no means content simply to drive him from office and threaten his fife; the next move was to extort a new treaty from Prussia, grinding down the North German people more wretchedly than ever before.

During Stein’s flight, and, indeed, during his whole outlawry, he remained, in spite of the ruin of his family and the fate which menaced him, calm, thoughtful, and determined as ever. The three years which he passed in Moravia and Bohemia he used to the best possible purpose: though never noisily active, he continued to be the trusted guide and counselor of the men who were to bring in a better future for his country. The influence of his invincible patriotism steadily increased. Napoleon’s new war with Austria, that of 1809, was now clearly drawing on. Had Stein remained in the ministry at Berlin, Prussia would probably have acted energetically and promptly with Austria against the invader, the course of European history would have been different, and six years more of war on the largest scale, and myriads of lives, would doubtless have been spared; but, though Stein left many good men and true in the ministry at Berlin, they had not that strength with which he had been wont to overcome the King’s fatal indecision, and Austria was left to her fate.

There was, indeed, one moment when his own distress and the apparent hopelessness of Germany and of Europe before its oppressor led him to other thoughts. Interesting to an American is a letter written by him in 1811: in tins he says, “I am heartily tired of life and wish it would soon come to an end. To enjoy rest, and independence, it would be best to settle in America, —in Kentucky or Tennessee; there one would find a splendid climate and soil, glorious rivers, and rest and security for a century, not to mention a multitude of Germans; the capital of Kentucky is called Frankfort.”

But this mood seems to have been only momentary, and he soon gave himself to his work for his country as earnestly as ever, always without haste, but without rest, in unison with the best men in Prussia and Austria, — still their most influential leader.

Great men, animated by his example, rebuilt the foundations of the Prussian state at many points. William von Humboldt reorganized the whole system of public instruction, gave new life to higher education, welded together the best ideas of the foremost thinkers of his time, and crowned all with the University of Berlin, which remains to this day the foremost in the world. Fichte issued his Addresses to the German Nation (Reden an die Deutsche Nation), which gave new heart to the whole oncoming array of manly youth. Schleiermacher preached his sermons, which, casting aside the mere husks and rinds of ordinary orthodoxy, developed not sickly cowards, merely or mainly anxious to save their own souls, but men willing to strive for good as good, — willing to die for their country. Arndt wrote his Spirit of the Times (Geist der Zeit), which ran through fifteen editions, and, at a later period, his great song, Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland ? stirring an enthusiasm for German unity and liberty which would-be oppressors have ever since found irresistible.

More and more Stein, proscribed and a fugitive, became a centre of thought: “where he was, was the head of the table.” His famous successor in the Prussian government, Hardenberg, went to meet him secretly in the Silesian mountains, advised with him, and soon Stein’s ideas took shape in new reforms, constitutional and financial. The old religious endowments, Catholic and Protestant, which had absorbed so much treasure, were subjected to heavy forced loans; dead capital was thus made living, and trade and industry relieved from a weight of taxation which was crushing out all business life. A representative system, local and general, was more and more distinctly foreshadowed, and, animated by Stein’s example, Hardenberg even outran Stein’s counsels; in all of Prussia where he had direct control, he exerted himself to transform the peasants from renting tenants into owners of the soil.

Meantime, new catastrophes came. Austria, unsupported by Prussia, endeavored to stand against Napoleon, and, at last, despite official stupidity and sloth, exhibited, especially in the Tyrol, a resisting force never before seen in her campaigns, a national spirit akin to that which had struck Napoleon so severe a blow in Spain, an energy which inflicted upon him, at Aspern, his first great defeat by Germans. Had Stein been at the side of the wavering Frederick William III, Prussia might now have joined in the struggle; but before the Prussian King could make up his mind to give his help Austria was overcome at Wagram, and Stadion, as prime minister, was forced to give way to the arch intriguer, Metternich. Now comes apparently the culmination of the Napoleonic epoch. Metternich marries a daughter of the Austrian House to Napoleon, and thus ushers in upon Europe another long series of sacrifices and sorrows, with that heartbreaking policy of intrigue, political immorality, and reaction, which outlasted Napoleon by more than thirty years.

In these darkest hours Stein never lost heart, but one great change was wrought in him, — he became less and less a Prussian and more and more a German, He would not yield to the oppressor of his country, and, being no longer safe in Austria, he again became an exile.

In Napoleon’s hand were now all the great nations of Continental Europe save one. Alexander of Russia, despite his shameful concessions at the Treaty of Tilsit, shrank from the further iniquities into which Napoleon attempted to draw him; and, as Napoleon allowed no dissent from his plans, war drew on between these two great powers. Therefore it was that, just as King Frederick William had sought Stein’s aid after the downfall of Prussia, so now Emperor Alexander sought Stein at what Europe generally considered the approaching downfall of Russia. Personal prudence counseled Stein to lie quiet, to allow himself to be forgotten, to wait for better days. It was dangerous indeed for him to throw himself against Napoleon, even in Russia. Russia then, as now, was poor, her policy tricky, her officials corrupt, her ruler weak. Napoleon, the greatest conqueror the world ever saw, was at that moment passingover her frontier with more than half a million soldiers, apparently invincible, and should Stein engage himself actively against Napoleon in Russia, a French triumph would bring him to the scaffold, or at least to exile in Asia. How Napoleon treated those who troubled him — whom he affected to despise — was seen in the orders for drumhead courtmartial, which were now sent more frequently than ever to his agents throughout Germany; how he would certainly have treated Stein could he have laid hands upon him is seen in the Emperor’s letters to his minister, Champagny.

But with Stein this weighed nothing. He immediately joined Alexander at his headquarters, and the Emperor at once tendered him high position in the administration of finance or of public instruction. But all this Stein declined, declaring frankly that his main purpose was to act in the interest of Germany. His mission as regarded Russia was to keep up the courage of the Russian Emperor; his special effort as regarded Germany was to arouse her to arms, so as to cut off Napoleon’s army from France. Stein took the lead in this effort, corresponded more actively than ever with German patriots in every part of Europe, spurred or curbed patriotism, as there was need, answered sophists, summoned Arndt to his side and inspired him to write those calls to patriotism which stirred the hearts of the whole German people.

Yet still, throughout Germany, a large party at the various courts, though they dreaded Napoleon much, hated Stein more. His appeals to the people still seemed to these so-called conservatives revolutionary. Their necessary result was an infusion of life and thought into the people which might first, indeed, be directed against the new French oppressor, but which would afterward, probably, be directed against their old German oppressors. Foremost in holding these views was the old Emperor of Austria, and his most trusted minister, Metternich.

In Russia the opposition to Stein was of another sort, but hardly less serious. Napoleon’s successes had spread terror through the court. The awful sacrifices of Russian soldiers during the French invasion, which were hardly less than those of Napoleon’s own troops, filled the leading Russian families with dismay. The steady march of the French, winning battle after battle, and finally entering Moscow, gave the party of peace at any price most cogent arguments; led by the Dowager Empress and others of the imperial household, this party became clamorous. Napoleon, foreseeing his own danger, and knowing Alexander’s wavering character, sent him the most seductive messages and used the most enticing arguments; again he held out the lure of a virtual division of the civilized world between the two Emperors.

Against all this pressure Stein stood firm, and, more than any other, kept Alexander firm. His statesmanlike eye saw Napoleon’s real position, and he made the Russian Emperor see it; he roused the courage of the Russian patriots, and chilled the ardor of the sympathizers with France. But, important as it was to leave no stone unturned against the enemies of his country, at court he was still the sturdy baron of the old German Empire — utterly refusing to become a mere courtier. Such frankness, straightforwardness, and fearlessness as his has never been seen in Russia, before or since. On one occasion the Empress Dowager, the mother of Alexander, received a lesson from him, in the presence of the court, which to this day remains one of the wonders of Russian history. After the battle of Borodino, the Empress, in a temporary fit of enthusiasm, cried out, in Stein’s presence, “If now a single French soldier shall escape from the German borders, I shall be ashamed to confess myself of German descent.” The court chroniclers tell us that Stein immediately became red and white by turns, marched up to the Empress, stood firmly before her, and said, in the hearing of all present, “Your Majesty is most unjust to speak in this manner of so great, so true, so bold a people as that to which you have the good fortune to belong by birth. You should have said, ’I am ashamed, not of the German people, but of my own brothers and cousins, the German princes. Had they done their duty, never had a Frenchman come over the Elbe, Oder or Vistula.’ ” Any one acquainted at all with the Byzantine submission exacted at the Russian Court can understand the consternation spread by these plain words; but, fortunately, the Empress, having something left of her better German ideas and training, answered, “Sir Baron, you are perhaps right. I thank you for the lesson.”

The whole conduct of Stein at this period, and indeed, throughout all the last years of his official life, was due not merely to his hatred for the oppressor of his country, but to a deep faith that Napoleon’s career was a challenge to the Almighty, and that therefore it could not continue. Stein noted well the sacrifices which Napoleon, without fear or remorse, had demanded of the nation which worshiped him. The number of his subjects who during his reign had laid down their lives to exalt him was something over two millions. This devotion meant the annihilation, during every year that the empire continued, of nearly two hundred thousand lives, and these the most vigorous and promising lives which France could offer. This, Stein saw, could not last; and he had a deep conviction that even if it could last it was so monstrous a crime against the Divine Majesty that it must surely be punished.⁴

There can be no doubt that to Stein, more than to any other human being, it is due that, after the burning of Moscow, Alexander refused to enter into any further negotiations with Napoleon; and this refusal it was that brought Napoleon to ruin. The conqueror relied on the pliancy of Alexander, as he had seen him at Tilsit and elsewhere, but he had not reckoned on the firmness inspired by the greatest of German patriots.⁵

Now came the great question of questions, What shall Russia do ? It was the supreme moment — the time of all times. The advice of the elegant diplomatists about the Czar, headed by his Imperial Chancellor, was that she should patch up a peace, curry favor with Napoleon, and thus secure large additions of territory at the expense of Prussia and Turkey. The danger of Germany was imminent ; the danger of the renewal of that old alliance of the French Emperor and the Russian Czar at Tilsit, made more effective than ever to plunder the German people and to blot out German nationality — in fact, to make Prussia a second Poland. Stein, more than any other man, averted this danger; drove the leading intriguers out of the Emperor’s councils; filled his imagination with the idea of becoming, not a robber of Germany, but the savior of Europe. Since Richelieu made the weakling Louis XIII a champion of French unity and a leader against Austrian tyranny in Europe, never until now had a statesman exhibited such power to turn a great sovereign to his own noble purposes. Events conspired to aid him. Stein’s worst enemy in Prussia, General Yorck, who, with a Prussian auxiliary army, had been dragged by Napoleon into Russia, took advantage of the Moscow catastrophe; and, in spite of the King’s loudly proclaimed disapproval, turned against Napoleon, risked his life for high treason, and, for a time, bade defiance to the nominal orders of his own sovereign, Frederick William III.

Stein was no less bold than Yorck. The Russians having conquered that large region centring at Königsberg, all so dear to Prussia, Stein took a commission to go, virtually as a Russian viceroy, into those Prussian frontier provinces; ruled them, raised them, in defiance of their Prussian sovereign, against Napoleon, who was that sovereign’s nominal ally; and worse than this, committed the unpardonable sin in the Prussia of that time by calling together without orders, or even the permission of the Prussian King, a parliament which should make provision for war against the French oppressor.

This was a crowning audacity. King Frederick William and his bureaucrats, though they profited by it, never forgot it. Stein received honors afterward from Prussia, but was never recalled into the Prussian service. To Frederick William he seemed the most dangerous of Germans. To Napoleon, he was certainly the most dangerous; for never, even at the climax of his power, did the Emperor omit a chance to cast a slur upon him, to express his hatred of him, to call him a Jacobin reformer, as dangerous to Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns as the French Jacobins had been to the Bourbons.

So it came that, while the German monarchs, their ministers, and their favorites, were obliged to avail themselves of Stein’s vast abilities as an organizer, they never forgave his appeals to the German people and his efforts to uplift them. Even during the days after the King and his greatest statesman were once more nominally united, his Majesty of Prussia took pains not to invite Stein to dinner; and when the old statesman lay in the attic of a hotel at Breslau, apparently at the point of death from fever, did not even take the pains to inquire after his health, or even to send him a kindly message.

The first struggles of Prussia and Russia against Napoleon after the Moscow collapse resulted doubtfully. Austria and Saxony stood aloof, doing everything possible to bargain with Napoleon at the expense of Prussia. The most amazing offers were made him by Austria and her allies, if he would give up his idea of reëstablishing the empire of Charlemagne. At the Treaty of Reichenbach, Austria, in concert with Russia, and, indeed, Prussia, offered to leave him at the head of an empire greater than any other in Europe by far, — an empire comprising France, Italy, Belgium, Holland, German kingdoms and principalities on the Rhine, and much beside. But Napoleon refused, and now not only Russia and Prussia, but Austria, turned against him, Great Britain aiding them most effectively. The world was weary of Napoleon’s tyranny, and in 1813 all Germany rose in alliance with the three great military monarchies on the continent outside of France. Stein and those who wrought with him had created a German people; Scharnhorst had given it a military training: Arndt, Schleiermacher, Fichte, Jahn, and hundreds of others, nay, thousands of others, had inspired it with a determination to conquer or die. Napoleon, having refused the very moderate terms of Austria, and having invaded Germany with a new army, was at first successful, but this renewed Germany pressed on against him. “The battle of the nations” was fought at Leipsic, and he was driven backward.

To unite Europe for this effort, Stein had to make a great sacrifice. He had urged on Germany a levy en masse; but the Austrian government would not listen to him. For there was still dominant the old fear that the people, once called to rise against the French Emperor, might learn its strength and rise again later, against the Austrian Emperor; therefore it was that Stein’s counsels, just at the moment when they were most valuable, were set aside, and he was obliged to see the lead given to creatures like Metternich.

But while the allies would allow him no place where his counsels would be heard, they were forced to give him a more important place in administration than any other minister had ever held in Europe. They created a great central commission to administer the provinces of Germany, outside of Prussia and Austria, and to restore order and good government in them just as fast as they were retaken from Napoleon. At the head of this commission they placed Stein. His administrative work now became colossal; he was even nicknamed “the German Emperor;” indeed, there were those who seriously proposed to restore the old German Empire and place him permanently at its head. He was called upon, not only to govern Central Europe and France as they were reconquered, but to reorganize all this territory: to divide it into manageable provinces; to appoint its rulers and counselors; to draw from it supplies of money and troops for the allies; and among ten thousand other things, to care for those wounded in the struggles which now ensued, of whom thirty-four thousand were left on his hands after the battle of Leipsic alone.

Reigning princes waited in his antechamber, but the sturdy old baron treated them with scant courtesy. He could never conceal his contempt for most of them, and as a rule, his treatment of them was much like that which Bismarck gave their successors fifty years later at Versailles. The German princelings of Stein’s time had mainly preferred luxury to honor; had shown themselves ready to serve Napoleon or the allies, as might be for their immediate comfort or advantage. Stein’s manly dignity permeated his whole thinking, in simple things as well as in great. A territorial magnate, ranking next to royalty, the Grand Duke of Weimar, attempting to make a filthy joke in a company where the great minister was present, Stein rebuked him with severity and directness. All present were appalled at his boldness, but his “High Transparency” of Weimar was thereby forced to change his style. On another occasion a lofty personage, whom Stein had caused to be thrown into prison on account of fraud in dealings with the government, having obtained a pardon of the King and come to Stein in order to show the pardon to him, Stein drove him forth from the house with his uplifted stick. At a dinner in Berlin, a great noble whose name was soiled with scoundrelism being announced, Stein, in spite of all remonstrance, left the house, declaring that he would never sit under the same roof with such a creature.

Outside of Austria and Prussia, his nickname of “Emperor” was, during that period, the expression of a reality. New dangers arose. Napoleon’s heir was the Austrian Emperor’s grandson, and at various times Austria showed a willingness to preserve Napoleon’s sway in France, restricting him within her natural boundaries, which were then supposed to reach to the Rhine; but Stein’s influence, absent though he was from the central council which seemed to control policies in those days, constantly kept the Emperor Alexander firm against all this, and when Paris was at last taken by the allies, it is not too much to say that no other man had done more to promote this result. Yet no great man at that period was mentioned so little. Europe resounded with the names of the three monarchs, of Metternich, and of Talleyrand, but this sturdy old statesman, infinitely higher in character and in service than any other, was hardly ever heard of.

Afterward, indeed, as thinking men and impartial historians reflected upon the events of that great period, justice began to be done him. Well does one of the greatest of modern jurists declare, in words carefully weighed, that “the heroic determination in 1812 and ’13 to bring a victorious Russian Army from the frontier and to unite it with the unchained might of the German people, to push it, with the rejuvenated Prussian Army, toward the West, and by these and the allied armies to drive Napoleon from position to position and out of Germany, was the work of a genius. For history it is no longer a secret that the genius which brought this expedition of Alexander from the boundaries of Siberia to the hill of Montmartre was the genius of Baron vom Stein. Thereby he reached the summit of his historical mission.” ⁶

At the Vienna Congress, which followed the abdication of Napoleon, Stein exerted himself for German unity and a proper position for Prussia, and of course, was opposed by Metternich, Tallevrand, and all statesmen of their sort. At Napoleon’s return from Elba, Stein’s voice was potent among those who put him under the ban, and, at last, ended his career. During the whole Vienna Congress Stein labored on as best he might for a substantial German unity resting upon a constitution; he would have restored the German Empire, would have introduced deliberative assemblies, and would have brought into them the germs of something very different from the old “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation,” which had, indeed, come to naught before Napoleon had given its quietus. But Metternich was too firmly seated, and the influence of Austria on the petty interest of the lesser German princelings was irresistible. The Federation was created, which dragged on through years of humiliating politics, until it was ended by Bismarck. Stein also tried to have Alsace-Lorraine restored to Germany, but in this too he failed, and it was reserved for Bismarck to realize his idea, at the cost of myriads of precious German lives, half a century later.

French tyranny haring at last been driven from Germany, Stein was no longer listened to, and retired from politics, — regretting the great work left undone, but happy in the great work accomplished; seeing clearly that serious evils were to follow from the reaction, but with a calm faith that better counsels would finally prevail. To the end of his life, he continued to maintain that same independence and fearlessness which led Scharnhorst to say that Stein and Blücher were the only two men he had ever met who feared no human being. One high position was indeed offered him by Prussia, — that of its delegate to the Frankfort Diet. But his strong good sense forbade him to accept it. He saw that with reactionary forces then dominant, and especially in view of Austrian jealousy of Prussia, no further progress was at that time to be made. Instructive is it to reflect that in this position, which Stein refused, Bismarck first gave to the world an earnest of the powers by which, finally, he was to acquire for a new German Empire those provinces of Alsace and Lorraine which Stein had sought to restore to the old Empire.

Another tribute to the old statesman seems strange indeed. It was perhaps the greatest of all testimonies to his character and ability, for it was nothing less than an offer of the presidency of the German Diet at Frankfort, and of all men in the world, it came from the man who had been his most troublesome German enemy, — Metternich. Needless to say that Stein declined it, as he declined various other honors coming from sources which he distrusted.⁷

To the end of his days he remained the same determined hater of all whom he thought evil or unpatriotic, the constant friend of all whom he considered true and intelligent lovers of the country. His old house near the ruins of his ancestral castle still stands, and its most interesting feature is the tower which he attached to it as a monument to the great triumph of right and justice in which he had aided, and as a receptacle for the portraits and other memorials of men who had stood by him in the great war for German freedom.

Two houses has the present writer visited which have revealed to him what a true patriot, cherishing justice and right reason, may accomplish even when apparently deprived of all power. The first of these is this old house of Stein at Nassau. From it, in his latter days, went forth his letters to Von Gagern and others who were leading in the struggle for right reason in Germany. The other is the house at Monticello from which Thomas Jefferson, during the long years after he had laid down official power, sent forth his letters to James Madison and others, which did so much for right reason in the United States.

There was much to stimulate these final efforts of Stein. King Frederick William III of Prussia, in his time of trouble, had given a solemn promise to establish a constitutional government; but, when peace and prosperity returned, reaction set in, and the royal advisers, entangling him in sophisms, led him virtually to break his word. Against this line of action Stein wrote constantly and earnestly. The assassination of Kotzebue by Sand aided reaction, as assassinations generally do; but Stein remained moderate and liberal, still urging a constitution and representation for Prussia, with a beginning, at least, of free institutions in Germany. He was not, indeed, a liberal in the modern sense. The constitution which he then urged would have been monarchic and aristocratic; but embedded in it would have been provision for a large representation of the people, and in this would have been germs sure to develop into a far broader system of self-government. He was no “ fool reformer.” He knew how to estimate the facts and possibilities about him. He did not expect fruit on the day the tree was planted; enough for him to plant a good tree — sure to grow.

It became clear to him that his counsels were, during his time, not to be followed, and he returned in his last years mainly to historical studies. But he found important sources inaccessible, and so came into his mind the idea of establishing a society to care for the German archives, to rescue and preserve the more precious documents of German history from oblivion, and to publish them. Thus was begun the publication of the greatest historical work which any nation has ever undertaken, the Monumenta Germaniœ to this he subscribed a sum very large in proportion to his modest fortune, and from 1819 to the present hour this great work has been continued in furtherance not only of scholarly research, but of German patriotism.⁸

Although he had resigned all hopes of leadership in German or Prussian counsels, and indeed all wish for leadership, in view of the limitations imposed bymen then dominant, he was, from time to time, called upon to make important reports and to give weighty counsels; and in one of these, to the Crown Prince, afterward King Frederick William IV of Prussia, the old statesman made an admirable argument for provincial institutions and administration, as opposed to a centralized bureaucracy. Even in his modest dwelling, so remote from temporarily great men and courtiers, he never ceased to serve his country, and in his last years he took a useful part in the deliberations of the states of Westphalia.

His religion was simple and manly. As his greatest English biographer remarks, “There is no cowering, no terror, no fear of the future. Everything that relates to the saving of the soul is absent.” He was a sincere Christian and took it tor granted that if his soul was worth saving it would be saved. On the 29th of June, 1831. he died, — died as he had lived, a great, true, Christian man; not what is usually called a philanthropist, not a partisan, not the bannerbearer of any momentary outburst of sentiment, but a clear-headed, strong-hearted laborer for right anti justice as the foundations of national greatness.

As a legacy to the German people, and indeed, to mankind, he left the record of his labors; but perhaps even more effective than this record, the remembrance of his character. Perhaps in no human being save our own Washington has the value of character as a great force not to be described, but to be felt, been proved so quietly yet so evidently. The same great jurist who in carefully measured terms has shown us that to Stein, more than to any other German, and indeed, more than to any other man, was due the final removal of the Napoleonic incubus from Europe, speaks of Stein as follows : “ His greatest service in the reform of the administration was derived from his high character and his morally clean, unselfish, experienced and forceful convictions. This carried his measures against the opposition of the provincial nobility and the great body of courtiers. Even Frederick William III had accepted Stein’s ideas before Jena, but his adhesion to these ideas, when they were carried out, was due to his trust in Stein, a trust which Hardenberg could not arouse.” ⁹

No less due to his great character was the confidence which led the autocrat of all the Russias to confide in him against all the power and all the temptations of Napoleon, and which caused the leaders of Europe, even though distrusting Stein’s belief in popular rights, to unite against the universal tyrant. More than to any other, the ideas which began the new Germany were due to this quiet, strong, faithful, persistent, self-respecting statesman, and they were due to him by virtue of one of the noblest characters which human annals can show.

The old statesman was buried near the rock from which he had taken his name. Over his grave was written an epitaph as follows: —

HEINRICH FRIEDRICH KARL IMPERIAL BARON VOM UND ZUM STEIN,

born October 27th, 1757,

died June 29th, 1831,

lies here ;

The last of his knightly race which had ruled on the Lahn for seven hundred years ; Humble before God, high-hearted before men, an enemy of untruth and of injustice, highly gifted in truth and honor, unshaken in proscription and exile, the yielding Fatherland’s unyielding son, in battle and in victory a soldier for German freedom.

“ I have a desire to depart and to be with Christ.” ¹⁰

Some forty years later, at that old rock, in the presence of leading statesmen, thinkers, historians, and poets of Germany, and among them the King of Prussia, who, now that Stein’s main ideas had at last done their work, had become the emperor of a united Germany, there was unveiled a statue of the great statesman; and upon its base was the old well-known play upon his name which had long before been a popular saying: “ Den guten Grundstein, des Bosen Eckstein, der deutschen Edelstein.” (A cornerstone of goodness, a stumbling stone for evil, and a precious stone to Germany.)

Suitable honor was also done him, at last, in the capital of the Prussian monarchy, destined to become the metropolis of the German Empire. In front of the palace of the Prussian legislature stands, in bronze, a noble monument by perhaps the greatest of modern German sculptors. It represents Stein at his best, — firm, foursquare to all the winds that blow. About him stand colossal statues typifying the virtues which he summoned to the uplifting of his country, and about the base are sculptured a series of the greatest scenes in his life, by which he wrought so powerfully to save Prussia, Germany, and European civilization.

Nor was this all. These two monuments had been erected under the two sons of Frederick William III, Frederick William IV and William I; but it was reserved to the great-grandson of the ungrateful sovereign to erect a final memorial. For, in these later days, the present Prussian King and German Emperor, William II, having given to the city of Berlin the long line of statues on either side of I he Avenue of Victory, representing the succession of princes,— thirty-three in all, — who have ruled Prussia during nearly a thousand years, each of these sovereigns having on either side colossal busts in marble of the men who did most to strengthen his reign, he has placed beside the statue representing Frederick William III the bust of the great statesman — to whom that King owed so much and gave so little.

But, better than monuments of marble and bronze, better than eulogies which the foremost German orators have been proud to deliver, is the monument which will ever stand in the heart, and the eulogy which will forever rise to the lips of every thoughtful German whenever the name of Stein shall be spoken. He was the second, in point of time, of the three great German statesmen since the Reformation.

The first of these was Thomasius, mainly a publicist, between whom and the other two it is impossible to make any comparisons, his work being in fields and by methods so utterly different from theirs. As to a comparison between the latter two, the world at large will doubtless award the first place to Bismarck. His work was on the whole more amazing and his triumph more impressive; but, on the other hand, it must be said that Bismarck had at his command forces which, in the freedom war against Napoleon, were wanting to Prussia, and among these a sovereign, William I, standing firmly by him from first to last, despite all intrigues and opposition, Moltke, the greatest soldier since Napoleon, Roon, the greatest of army organizers, an immense army in the most perfect condition, and finally, an uprising of German feeling fully equal to that which Stein had done so much to arouse against the Napoleonic tyranny.

But against the vast and impressive victories of Bismarck should be arrayed the fact that Stein’s work was really more profound, more varied, more devoted to all sorts and conditions of men. In Bismarck’s work, while there is at times a foresight and force almost preternatural, there is nothing which shows such depth of philosophic insight into the very heart of modern politics as Stein’s idea of creating self-respecting men out of downtrodden serfs, self-respecting citizens out of despised burghers, and a vast nation endowed with parliamentary institutions. In this respect Stein is the superior of Bismarck; the only Europeans who have equaled him in this depth of thought and breadth of vision as regards the foundations of modern society are Turgot and Cavour.

Moreover the characters of the two great modern Germans present striking differences. Both could be irritable, and even overbearing, on occasion; both could be humorous, witty, and even fascinating; but as regards straightforwardness, directness, and respect for popular rights, Bismarck is not to be compared with Stein. Nor is there anything which shows in Bismarck such wonderful powers of administration as that which Stein exercised when, in the rear of the great combined armies of the allies, he organized the territories as they were gained, first in Germany, and then throughout France, raisingtroops, raising money, caring for the wounded, settling vexed questions between territorial rulers, and proving himself to rank, in administration, with Cæsar and Napoleon. It must also be confessed with some regret that the final years of Bismarck were infinitely less worthy of a great man than were those of Stein. Quietly settled upon his ancestral estate on the river Lahn, doing everything possible to promote the better development of Prussia and Germany, accepting neglect without complaint, Stein seems, it must be confessed, infinitely more dignified than Bismarck, who displayed, after his retirement, defects of his vast qualities over which those who admire him most will most gladly draw a veil.

While then, Bismarck, by the extent of his work, by its variety, by the evident result of it in the creation of the new German Empire, and by its boldly dramatic character, will always be exalted in the popular mind as the greater statesman, no thinking man who has studied closely the decline and rise of Germany during the nineteenth century can fail to award to Stein a place close beside him, equal as regards services to German nationality, superior as regards services to humanity.

(The End.)