IV.
The history of Russia proves only too conclusively that again and again the national interests of Russia have been sacrificed to the German dynastic influences. At the end of the Seven Years’ War, Frederick the Great was at his last gasp. Prussia was on the verge of ruin. The Russian Army had entered Berlin; the power of the new military monarchy had been totally broken at Kunersdorf. The death of Elizabeth and the accession of her mad nephew, Peter III., retrieved a desperate situation. For the mad nephew was a German Prince, a Duke of Holstein, and a passionate admirer of Frederick the Great. Peter III. was murdered in 1762. He only reigned a few months, but he reigned sufficiently long to save Prussia from destruction and to surrender all the advantages secured by Russian triumphs and dearly paid for by Russian blood.
V.
There is no more fantastic fairy-tale and there is no more fascinating drama than the life-story of Catherine the Great, which recently has been so brilliantly told by Mr. Francis Gribble. A Cinderella amongst German royalties, a pauper Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, Catherine became the mightiest potentate of her age. Although the nominee of Frederick the Great, she pursued consistently a national Russian policy. And she had good reasons for doing so. For no throne was less secure than the throne of the Romanovs. She had had to remove her husband by murder for fear of being removed herself. She continued to be surrounded by a rabble of unscrupulous adventurers and intriguers. Her only safety lay in becoming a patriotic Russian, and in seeking the support of Russian sentiment and Russian opinion. Whilst Frederick the Great surrounded himself with French advisers, and contemptuously refused even to speak the German language; whilst he declared to the German scholar who presented him with a copy of the “Nibelungen Lied” that this national German epic was not worth a pipe of tobacco, Catherine the Great systematically encouraged Russian literature. Whilst Frederick the Great remained the consistent Atheist on the throne, Catherine the Great professed the utmost zeal for Russian Orthodoxy. All through her reign she avoided as far as possible a conflict with Frederick and his successor. She divided with them the spoils of Poland, or, as Frederick the Great put it in his edifying theological language, she partook of the Eucharistic body of the Polish kingdom in unholy communion with Prussia and Austria. But Catherine saw to it that Russia secured the greater part of the spoils.
VI.
There is a curious and uncanny similarity between the character and the reign of Peter III. and the character and reign of his son, Paul I. Both reigns were brief, yet both reigns had an incalculable influence on European affairs. Both rulers sacrificed national interests to dynastic interests. Both rulers were insane, and both rulers engaged in insane enterprises. Both father and son were murdered with the complicity or connivance of their own family. The Russian armies, on the advent of Peter III., had secured and achieved a dramatic victory over Prussia, but the admiration of Peter III. for Frederick the Great prevented the Russians from reaping the fruits of victory. Suvoroff crossed the Alps and achieved an equally sensational victory over France, but Paul I. was prevented from taking advantage of his victories by his admiration for Napoleon.
VII.
The reign of Alexander I. once more strikingly illustrates the enormous part which subterranean German influences have played in the foreign policy of Russia. After the costly victories of Eylau and Friedland, Napoleon I. had concluded with Alexander I. the Peace of Tilsit. The treaty was fatal to Europe, for it divided the Continent practically between the Russian and French Empires. But it was highly advantageous to Russia, and enormously added to Russian power and Russian prestige.
It was certainly in Russia’s interest to maintain the Alliance. It was broken largely through one of those small dynastic incidents which are of such vast importance under an absolute despotism. One of Napoleon’s main objects was to establish a Napoleonic Dynasty and to be adopted by marriage into one of the ruling families of Europe. The Corsican parvenu passionately desired a matrimonial alliance with the House of Romanov, and repeatedly applied for the hand of one of Alexander’s sisters; the dowager Tsarina, Alexander’s mother, a daughter of the King of Würtemberg, as persistently refused. She had all the pride of birth of a German Princess, and all the hatred of a reactionary against the armed soldier of the Revolution. Foiled at the Court of Petersburg, Napoleon was more successful at the Court of Vienna. A few months after Napoleon’s last overtures had been rejected by Russia, the Habsburgs, who, after the Bourbons, were the most august, the most ancient dynasty of Europe, eagerly accepted what the Romanovs had refused. The war of 1812 with Russia was the result of that pro-German policy of the Russian Court.