Republic or Empire.
Napoleon said that all Europe would ultimately become either Muscovite or Republican. Which shall it be? The answer as deduced from present tendencies might be—Republican: but no thoughtful observer can fail to regard attentively and apprehensively that sullen Sclavonic dominance extending insidiously and simultaneously into India, Persia, Mongolia, Turkey, the Balkans, and Central Europe.
Amalgamation, the mergence of the many into one, sameness—quiescent and content under a powerful, capable, and just administration, seem to be and ever to have been the ideal form of government. The empires of the past—Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, Roman; the Holy Roman Empire and the Socialistic commune of the future—all include as fundamental principle this solidarity. So far, indeed, it has proved a marsh-light leading to the marsh; but we dream that it will yet lead out of and beyond the muddy, bloody marsh and ultimately light up millennial realms of world-wide oneness, goodness, gladness, peace.
Charles XII. of Sweden.
When Charles set out on that expedition having for its object the castigation and possible subjugation of the upstart Tartar hordes weakly held together by Peter of Russia,—all Europe believed that Charles would briefly and successfully accomplish that object.
Sweden was then a power for whose alliance and friendly interest the most powerful monarchs of Europe contended. Louis XIV. of France sought the aid of Charles in the war then waging between France and England; and Marlborough, leader of the English forces in France, went personally to the court of Charles in order to solicit that monarch’s aid or at least his neutrality in the great struggle then in progress.
Charles himself was fully confident of victory; and in his romantic plans drawn up for the future, the overthrow of Peter formed only an episode. A year, perhaps, would be required for the full accomplishment of the Russian enterprise; then he, Charles of Sweden, victor of Moscow and arbiter from the Kremlin, would hastily return to western Europe and begin preparations on a gigantic scale for his master-achievement—the dethronement of the Pope of Rome, and the demolition of the Papacy.
Desire-dream of many; achievement of none: for this magic Gibraltar elusively endures bearing its age-old scars as brightest ornamentations. Charles XII. did not, indeed, attack Rome; but did Pultowa save the Papacy? No: the missiles of the Madman of the North whether hurled in the real or only in that futile future plan, would have been equally ineffectual; the magic rock would, perhaps bear another scar bright shining today as trophy of its past struggle and victory.
The lesson of history would seem to teach mortals to expect the unexpected. At Saratoga, at Valmy, at Pultowa, in the Teutoberger Wald, at Marathon, and at Babylon—the undreamed of, the altogether unanticipated, unprepared for, both by the combatants themselves and the world-spectators—took place.
Charles XII., who had set out from Sweden with an army of eighty-five thousand men, Swedes and allies, escaped from the shambles of Pultowa only by swimming across a river red with blood and thus reaching an alien shore weak, wounded, a fugitive, and comparatively alone. Eighty-five thousand men died for the gratification of the personal ambition of the Swedish king; and, by the irony of fate, for the ruination of their native land and the aggrandizement of Peter the First, subsequently and, perhaps, consequently Peter the Great, of Russia.