. net.

A useful text-book. See also _Cambridge Mod. Hist_. vol. xii. chap. xxii.

CHAPTER III

GERMANY

"The Germans are vigorously submissive. They employ philosophical
reasonings to explain what is the least philosophic thing in the world,
respect for force and the fear which transforms that respect into
admiration."--MADAME DE STAEL (1810).

"Greatness and weakness are both inseparable from the race whose powerful
and turbid thought rolls on--the largest stream of music and poetry at
which Europe comes to drink."--ROMAIN ROLLAND (_Jean Christophe_).

Sec.1. _The German State_.--The German Nation is one of the oldest in Europe:
the German State is almost the youngest--of the great States quite the
youngest.

Englishmen sometimes wonder why there are so many Royal princes in
Germany--why it is that when a vacant throne has to be filled, or a husband
to be found for a princess of royal standing, Germany seems to provide
such an inexhaustible choice. The reason is that Germany consisted, until
recently, not of one State but of a multitude of States, each of which had
a court and a dynasty and sovereign prerogatives of its own. In 1789, at
the outbreak of the French Revolution, there were 360 of these States of
every sort and size and variety. Some were Kingdoms, like Prussia, some
were Electorates, like Hanover (under our English George III.), some were
Grand Duchies, some were Bishoprics, some were Free Cities, and some
were simply feudal estates in which, owing to the absence of a central
authority, noble families had risen to the rank of independent powers.
These families were the descendants of those "robber-barons" whose castles
on the Rhine and all over South and West Germany the tourist finds so
picturesque. Prince William of Wied, the first Prince of Albania, is a
member of one of them, and is thus entitled to rank with the royalties of
Europe: the father-in-law of ex-King Manoel of Portugal, the Prince of
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a branch of the Kaiser's own family, is another
familiar recent instance. And every one remembers Prince Albert of
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the husband of Queen Victoria.

In 1789 the possibility of a German National State was so remote that
Germans had not even begun to dream of one. Each little Principality was
jealously tenacious of its local rights, or, as we should say, of its
vested interests, as against the common interests of Germany. Most of
them were narrow and paro