Zigzag Journeys in Northern Lands. The Rhine to the Arctic. A Summer Trip of the Zig-Zag Club Through Holland, Germany, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Butterworth Hezekiah
upon record with thanks.
“Perhaps you may be willing to open our exercises to-night with one of the talks you have planned,” said the President. “It would be a helpful beginning, which we would appreciate.”
“I am not as well prepared as I would like,” said the teacher; “but as I believe in making a first meeting of this kind a sort of a model in its plan and purpose, I will in a free way tell you something of
The life of the Emperor of Germany has been full of thrilling and dramatic scenes.
When he was a boy, Germany – the great Germany of Charlemagne – was divided into states, each having its own ruler. His father was Frederick William III., King of Prussia, and his mother was Louise, an excellent woman; his youth was passed amid the excitements of Napoleon’s conquests. Russia and Prussia combined against Napoleon; Russia was placed at a disadvantage in two doubtful battles, when she deserted the Prussian cause, and made a treaty of peace.
Napoleon then sent for the King of Prussia, to tell him what he would leave him.
The lovely Queen Louise went with the unfortunate king to meet the French conqueror, hoping thereby to obtain more favorable terms. But Napoleon treated her with scorn, boasting that he was like “waxed cloth to rain.”
He, however, offered the queen a rose, in a softer moment.
“Yes,” said Louise, thinking of her kingdom, “but with Magdeburg.”
“It is I who give, and you who take,” answered Napoleon haughtily.
Napoleon took away from Prussia all the lands on the Elbe and the Rhine, and, uniting these to other German states, formed a kingdom for his brother Jerome.
The good Queen Louise pined away with grief and shame at her country’s losses, and died two years after of a broken heart. So the boyhood of William was very sad.
It is said that children fulfil the ideals of their mothers. Poor Louise little thought that her second son would one day be crowned Emperor of all Germany in the palace of the French kings at Versailles.
William was born in 1797; he ascended the throne as King of Prussia in 1861. How widely these dates stand apart!
On the day of his coronation as King of Prussia, he exhibited his own character and religious faith by putting the crown on his own head. “I rule,” he said, “by the favor of God and no one else.”
Under his vigorous rule Prussia grew in military power, and excited the jealousy of the French people. Napoleon III., on a slight pretext, declared war with Prussia. In this war Prussia was victorious.
That was indeed a memorable hour in the emperor’s life when he met the fallen Emperor of the French in the Chateau Bellevue, on a hill of the Meuse overlooking Sedan. The king and the emperor had met before; they then were equals, brother rulers of two of the most powerful nations on earth. They met now as conqueror and captive, and the one held the fate of the other in his hands.
“We were both moved at seeing each other again under such circumstances,” said King William. “I had seen Napoleon only three years before, at the summit of his power. What my feelings were is more than I can describe.”
The king spoke first.
“God has given victory to me in the war that has been declared against me.”
“The war,” said Napoleon, “was not sought by me. I did not desire it. I declared it in obedience to the public sentiment of France.”
“Your Majesty,” said the king, “made the war to meet public opinion; but your ministers created that public opinion.”
“Your artillery, sire, won the battle. The Prussian artillery is the finest in the world.”
“Has your Majesty any conditions to propose?”
“None: I have no power; I am a prisoner.”
“Where is the government in France with which I can treat?”
“In Paris: the empress and the ministers. I am powerless.”
King William, as you know, marched to Paris, and at last made conditions of peace almost as hard as Napoleon I. had made with his father. The German princes in his hour of victory offered him the crown of Southern Germany, and he was crowned at Versailles, in the great hall of mirrors, Emperor of Germany.
Let me now speak of the kaiser’s
It is rare that men and women live to celebrate their seventy-fifth birthday. The age allotted to mortals by the Psalmist is threescore and ten.
But the hale old Emperor of Germany has not only recently commemorated the completion of his eighty-sixth year, but – what is still more striking – at the same time marked the seventy-sixth year of his service as an officer in the Prussian army.
It is related that, on the 22d of March, 1807, on which day William was just ten years old, his father, then King of Prussia, called him into his study and said, —
“My son, I appoint you an officer in my army. You will serve in Company No. 1 of the First Guard Regiment.”
The little prince drew himself up, gave his father a prompt military salute, and retired. An hour later he reappeared before the king, attired in the uniform of his new rank; and, repeating the salute, announced to his royal father that “he was ready for duty.”
Even at so early an age, William was no fancy soldier, holding rank and title, and leaving to humbler officers the duties and hardships. He at once devoted himself to the task of a junior ensign; and from that time onward became an officer in truth, laboring zealously to master the military science, and rising step by step, not by favor, but by merit and seniority.
At the age of eighteen, William was in Blucher’s army at Waterloo, taking an active part in the overthrow of Napoleon, and witnessing that mighty downfall. A little later, he was promoted to the rank of major for cool courage under heavy fire; and from that time on, for nearly half a century, William devoted himself wholly to the military profession.
When he ascended the Prussian throne, there was no more unpopular man in the kingdom. He had put down the revolutionary rising in Berlin with grim and relentless hand; and the people believed that their new monarch was a cruel and haughty tyrant.
It was not until after the great triumph over Austria, in 1866, that the Prussians began to discover that King William was not only a valiant soldier, but an ardent lover of his country, and a kind-hearted, whole-souled father of his people.
For the last sixteen years, no sovereign in Europe has been more devotedly beloved and revered by his subjects. Although William is autocratic, and believes in his “divine right” to rule as sturdily as did his mediæval ancestors, and has not a little contempt for popular clamors and popular rights, his reign has been on the whole brilliantly wise and successful. While this has been in a great measure due to the presence of a group of great men around him, – notably of Bismarck and Von Moltke, – the emperor himself has had no small share in promoting the power and towering fortunes of Germany.
His paternal ways with his people, his military knowledge, his fine, frank, hearty, chivalrous nature, his sound sense in the choice of his advisers, and his perception of the wisdom of their counsels, have much aided in raising Prussia and Germany to their present height in Europe.
Beneath his commanding and rugged exterior there beats a very kindly heart. Many incidents have been related to show the simple good-nature of his character. In his study, on the table at which he writes, there has long remained a rusty old cavalry helmet, the relic of some military association of the emperor.
Whenever the death-warrant of a condemned criminal is brought to him to sign, the emperor looks at it, and then slyly slips the fatal document under the helmet. Sometimes his ministers, anxious that the warrants should be signed, take occasion, in his absence from the study, to pull the papers out from beneath the helmet, just enough to catch their master’s eye.
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