The Most Bitter Foe of Nations, and the Way to Its Permanent Overthrow
TekstI turn now to another nation where the serf-mastering spirit wrought out its fearful work in yet a different manner, and on a more gigantic scale,—in a manner so brilliant that it has dazzled the world for centuries, and blazoned its faults as virtues;—on a scale so great that it has sunk art, science, literature, education, commerce and manufactures,—brought misery upon its lower caste,—brought death upon its upper caste,—and has utterly removed its nation from modern geography, and its name from modern history. I point you to Poland.
Look at Polish history as painted by its admirers,—it is noble and beautiful. You see political scenes, military scenes, and individual lives which at once win you.
Go back three centuries, stand on those old towers of Warsaw,—look forth over the Plains of Volo. The nation is gathered there. Its King it elects. The King thus elected is limited in power so that his main function is to do justice. The whole voting body are equals. Each, too, is free. No King, no Noble, is allowed to trench upon his freedom. So free is each that no will of the majority is binding upon him, except by his own consent. Here is equality indeed! Equality pushed so far that each man is not only the equal of every other—but of all others together;—the equal of the combined nation.
These men are brave, hardy, and, as you have seen, free, equal, and allowed more rights than the citizens of any republic before or since.31
But leave now this magnificent body—stretching over those vast plains beyond eye-reach. Tear yourselves away from the brave show—the flash of jeweled sabres and crosiers—the glitter of gilded trappings—the curvetings of noble horses between tents of silk and banners of gold-thread. Go out into the country from which these splendid freemen come.
Here is indeed a revelation! Here is a body of men whom history has forgotten. Strangely indeed—for it is a body far larger than that assembled upon the plains of Volo. There were, perhaps, a hundred thousand; here are millions. These millions are Christians, but they are wretchedly clad and bent with labor. They are indeed stupid,—unkempt,—degraded,—often knavish,—but they love their country,—toil for her,—suffer for her.
To them, in times of national struggles, all the weariness,—to them, in times of national triumphs, none of the honor.
These are the serfs of those brilliant beings prancing and caracoling and flashing on yonder plain of Volo—to the applauding universe.
Evidently then, there has been a mistake here. History and poetry have forgotten to mention a fact supremely important.
The people of Poland are, after all, not free—not equal. The voting is not voting by the people. Freedom and the suffrage are for serf-owners,—equality is between them.
No one can deny that in this governing class were many, very many noble specimens of manhood—yielding ease and life for ideas—readily.
Emperor Henry the Fifth of Germany had tried in vain to overcome them by war. When the Polish ambassador came into his presence, the Emperor pointed to his weapon, and said, "I could not overcome your nobility with these;"—then pointing to an open chest filled with gold, he said, "but I will conquer them with this." The ambassador wore the chains and jewels befitting his rank. Straitway he takes off every ornament, and flings all into the Emperor's chest together.
Yet myriads of such men could not have averted ruin. Polish history proved it day by day.
It was not that these nobles were especially barbarous,—it was not that they were effeminate. It was simply that they maintained one caste above another—allowing a distinction in civil and political rights. The system gave its usual luxuriant fruitage of curses.
First in the material condition. Labor and trade were despised. If, in the useful class, a genius arose, the first exercise of his genius was to get himself out of the useful class. Labor was left to serfs; trade was left to Jews. Cities were contemptible in all that does a city honor. Villages were huddles. The idea thus implanted remains. Of all countries, called civilized, Poland seems to-day, materially, the most hopeless.32
It may be said that this results from Russian invasions;—but it was so before Russian invasions. It may be said that it results from Russian oppression,—but the great central districts of Russia are just as much under the Czar, and they are thriving. It may be said that Poland has been wasted by war;—but Belgium and Holland and the Rhine Palatinate have been far more severely wasted, yet their towns are hives, and their country districts gardens.
Next, as to the Political condition.
A man-mastering caste necessarily develops the individual will morbidly and intensely. The most immediate of political consequences is, of course, a clash between the individual will and the general will.
Trouble then breaks forth in different forms in different countries. In Spain we saw it take shape in Secession;—in Italy we saw it lead to fearful territorial Disunion;—in Poland it first took the form of Nullification.
The nullifying spirit naturally crystallized into an institution. That institution was the Liberum Veto.
By this, in any national assemblage—no matter how great, no matter how important,—the veto of a single noble could stop all proceedings. Every special interest of every petty district or man had power of life and death over the general interest. The whim, or crotchet, or spite of a single man could and did nullify measures vital to the whole nation. In 1652, Sizinski, a noble sitting in the national diet, when great measures were supposed to be unanimously determined upon, left his seat, signifying his dissent. The whole vast machinery was stopped, and Poland made miserable.33
Closely allied to this was another political consequence.
Constant, healthful watchfulness over rights is necessary in any republic; but there is a watchfulness which is not healthful; it is the morbid watchfulness—the jealousy which arises in the minds of a superior caste, living generally in contact with inferiors, and only occasionally in contact with equals.
The Polish citizen lived on his estate. About him were inferiors,—beings who were not citizens—depending on him—doing him homage. But when the same citizen entered that Assembly on the Plains of Volo all this was changed. There he met his equals. Pride then clashed with pride,—faction rose against faction.
The result I will not state in my own words, for fear it may be thought I warp facts to make a historical parallel. I shall translate word for word from Salvandy:
"Confederations were now formed—armed leagues of a number of nobles who chose for themselves a Marshal or President, and opposed decrees to decrees, force to force; contending diets which raised leader against leader, and had the King sometimes as chief, sometimes as captive; an institution deplorable and insensate, which opened to all discontented men a legal way to set their country on fire."34
From the political causes I have named logically flowed another.
In that perpetual anarchy, some factions must be beaten. But a class with traditions and habits of oppression is very different, when beaten, from a society swayed by manufacturing, commercial, and legal interests. These last try to make some arrangement. They yield, and fit matters to the new conditions. They are anxious to get back to their work again. But a class with habits of domineering has its own peculiar pride to deal with. It has leisure to brood over defeat, to whine over lost advantages, to fret over lost consideration, and you generally find it soon plotting more insidiously than before.
So it was with Poland. The beaten factions did what fighting aristocracies always do when fearful of defeat, or embittered by it,—the vilest thing they can do, and the most dangerous—they intrigued for foreign intervention.
Of all things, this is most fatal to nationality. Going openly over to the enemy is bad; but intrigues with foreign powers, hostile by interest and tradition, are unutterably vile.
Yet there is not a nation where a class pursuing separate and distinct rights is tolerated, where such intrigues have not been frequent. More than this, such intrigues have generally been timed with diabolic sagacity.
The time chosen is generally some national emergency—when the nation is writhing in domestic misfortunes, or battling desperately against foreign foes. The Spanish nobles chose their time for intriguing with the Moors for their intervention, when the Spanish nation were in the most desperate struggle—not merely for temporal power, but even for the existence of their religion.
In France, the nobles chose such periods as those when Richelieu was leading the nation against all Europe and a large part of France. In Poland, the nobles chose the times when the nation was struggling against absolute annihilation.35
History, to one not blinded by Polish bravery, is clear here. The real authors of the partition of Poland were not Frederick of Prussia, and Maria Theresa of Austria, and Catherine of Prussia, but those proud nobles who drew surrounding nations to intervene in Polish politics.
The Social condition was also affected naturally. Poland went into the inevitable narcotic phase. Her court during the reigns of its later Kings was a brothel, and her nobles its worthy tenants.
What followed was natural. When the light of the last century streamed in upon this corrupt mass, Zamoiski and men like him tried to purify it,—to enfranchise the subordinate caste,—to work reforms. The Polish Republic refused. Then Providence began a work radical and terrible.
It is sad to see those brave citizen-nobles crushed beneath brute force of Russians, and Austrians, and Prussians. But it was well. One Alexander the First would have done, one Alexander the Second has done more good for Poland than ages of citizen serf-masters flourishing on the Plains of Volo.
The next nation to which I direct you is France.
Of all modern aristocracies, hers has probably been the most hated.36 Guizot, in some respects its apologist, confesses this. Eugenie de Guerin—the most angelic soul revealed to this age—herself of noble descent—declares that the sight even of a ruined chateau made her shudder37 But all that history, rich as it is in illustrations of the noxious qualities of an oppressive aristocracy, I will pass, save as it presents the dealing of statesmen with it, their attempts to thwart it and crush it.
A succession of monarchs and statesmen kept up these attempts during centuries. Philip Augustus, Louis VI. and Louis VII., Suger, St. Louis, Philip the Long, all wrought well at this.
The great thing to notice in that mediaeval French statesmanship is that they attacked the domineering caste in the right way. Every victory over it was followed not merely by setting serfs free, but by giving them civil rights, and, to some extent, political rights. When one of the Kings I have named gave a Charter of Community, he did not merely make the serf a nominal freedman; he also gave him rights, and thus wrought him into a bulwark between the central power and the rage of the former master.38
So far all was good. The great difficulty was that none of those monarchs or statesmen obtained physical power enough to enforce this policy throughout France. It was mainly confined to towns.
But in the middle of the Fifteenth Century came the most persistent man of all—Louis the Eleventh. He gained power throughout the kingdom. If a noble became turbulent, he hunted him; if this failed, he entrapped him. Cages, dungeons, racks, gibbets, he used in extinguishing this sort of political vermin; and he used them freely and beneficially.
His policy seems cruel. Our weak women of both sexes, with whom the tears of a murderer's mistress outweigh the sufferings of a crime-ridden community, will think so. It was really merciful. Louis was, probably, a scoundrel; but he was not a fool, and he saw that the greatest cruelty he could commit would be to make concessions and try to win over the nobility. His hard, sharp sense showed him—what all history shows—that an oppressive caste can be crushed, but that wheedled and persuaded it cannot be.