Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 135.pdf/175

  and the revival of the German nationality, and time has deliberately ratified their views. Without retrogression, without mistake, except the mistake which in such matters is the most venial that can be committed, that, namely, of over-caution, of excessive hesitation, the edifice which was then founded has been raised higher and higher till it is near completion. The French empire revived again only to fall again with disgrace; France annexed Savoy and Nice, but she lost Alsace and Lorraine; and she did not avenge Waterloo. But Jena has been avenged; the manes of Queen Louise are propitiated; Barbarossa is awake at last.

This being so, we might read over again the history of that age with new feelings. We might cease to think of the German princes of that time as of ninepins whom it amuses us to see bowled over by Napoleon; still more might we cease to think only of Napoleon when we read the history of his fall, as if the heroism and the skill were even then on his side, and his opponents had nothing but luck and superior numbers. Nay, even if we sympathize with France, and with Napoleon himself, we may still recognize that, putting them out of the question altogether, the fall and resurrection of Germany is far more interesting than most passages of history, and that the interest centres on the whole in Prussia. We in England enjoy something of that happiness which proverbially makes the annals of a people dull. Since the seventeenth century nothing has been witnessed here either so painfully interesting as what Prussia witnessed in the unhappy years 1806 and 1807, or so elevating and poetical as her levée en masse and victories in 1813 and 1814. And to the student it is far more interesting than to the seeker of amusement. To the student indeed it is an interest quite independent of its exciting incidents, for it is one of those periods of radical and successful reconstruction of a State which are rare in history, and which abound beyond others in political lessons.

Let us now look more closely at the book before us. At his death, in November 1822, Hardenberg left a considerable collection of papers sealed up, with the direction that they were to lie unopened in the archives for fifty years. This fact is of itself sufficient to destroy the pretensions of the "Mémoires tirées," etc., which our editor describes as "a compilation of heterogeneous materials in which a few genuine documents are lost in a mass of statements partly well-known before, partly unauthenticated," and as "in itself more calculated to bewilder than to instruct." When the fifty years had expired the director of the archives brought the whole collection to Prince Bismarck, who with his own hand broke the seal. The commission was then given to Von Ranke to examine and report upon them. He found them to consist, first of a memoir in Hardenberg's own hand, covering the years 1804-1806 and part of 1807; secondly of a voluminous history — in French, and comprising a large number of official documents — by Friedrich Schöll, well known as one of the authors of the useful "Histoire Abrégée des Traitis." The history deals with the years 1794-1812, while Hardenberg's own memoir, which was intended to be translated into French and incorporated into it, is occupied solely with the years 1804-1807.

Our editor had to consider whether it would be advisable to publish Schöll's work as he found it. There were weighty objections to this course. It was in French, and Hardenberg's memoir was in German, so that they could not be joined together, as had been originally intended, to make one work. Moreover, there was something artificial in the style of Schöll, who had made Hardenberg speak throughout in the first person, and an attempt was discernible to efface the pretty strong tinge of Liberalism which belongs to Hardenberg's administration in order to suit the taste of the restoration period in which Schöll wrote. An alternative course was to publish Hardenberg's memoir with an introduction founded on the materials furnished by Schöll. This also seemed unsatisfactory, because these materials were copious enough to furnish a complete history. The end has been that the public are presented with four volumes, each consisting of from five to six hundred full German pages, of which the second and third contain Hardenberg's memoir, and the first and fourth a history of the whole period from 1793 to the War of Liberation by Ranke. In other words, historical literature is enriched at the same moment by two books, each of the utmost value in its own way, a history of a most memorable period, written by a great master of historical investigation from new documents, and an account of the foreign relations of Prussia in the years which ended with the great catastrophe of Tilsit, by one who was for the greater part of that time himself Prussia's foreign minister.

Hardenberg can hardly be regarded as 