Page:Leibniz as a Politician.djvu/29

 Mars Christianissimus—the most Christian War God—which belongs to the middle of the dreary period from the Peace, which was no peace, of Nimeguen and the outbreak of the so-called Orleans War in 1688, when Louis XIV, in Leibniz's words, threw off the mask, and on pretexts which were themselves so many insults, took the Empire by the throat. The Mars Christianissimus, written during the siege of Vienna, is a satire of uncommon force, and is marked by an almost savage irony not usually associated with the urbane lucidity of its author. The moderation of the King—by which is meant his ruthless enforcement of the principle un roy, une foy, une loy—is the theme on which the satire harps. Pomponne has shown the way out of the stipulations of the Peace of Westphalia; Louvois has made men see the stuff of which German Princes are made. This is as it should be. That is just, according to Plato, which is of advantage to the strong; and Moses had a law of his own when he spoiled the Egyptians. The fact that he is commissioned with unheard of power shows whose Vicar Louis XIV is, while the Pope only registers his decrees. And so forth, with sarcasms almost savage in their bitterness, and a parade of charges made by others against France and her King, as to which the writer pretends to hold up deprecatory hands. There is, strange as the comparison may seem, a touch of Swift in all this—though the object of the veiled invective is a very different one from that of any of Swift s famous pamphlets.

Before he indited this exceptionally trenchant satire, Leibniz had passed into the service of Duke John Frederick of Hanover (1676), and on the Duke s death three years afterwards into that of his brother Duke (after wards Elector) Ernest Augustus and his wife Sophia, the youngest daughter of Elizabeth of Bohemia and the future acknowledged heiress of the English Crown. The two brothers resembled each other in many respects; they were alike very much intent upon the honour and glory of their House, and very careful of their own