Tyrants are exceedingly useful. Nay, we are glad to report that Frederick is not the last.
They still exist in every family, village, city, state, and nation.
For the most part, they exercise their tyranny in petty exactions, with no big plan such as distinguishes the dominating man from the little fellow with the mean temper and his childish ambition to rule, let us say, his dog or his wife.
¶ There is something pathetic in the incessant call this earth has for a strong man. It was so in Germany, and Bismarck was that man.
Cæsar was assassinated because he was said to be a tyrant, yet after his death for 400 years Rome sought in vain for a man strong enough to hold the Empire from going to pieces.
¶ Is there not something puzzling in the devotion of a people to their amiable oppressor? They may rebel against absolutism, as Bavarian hates Prussian, but if the political despot is strong enough to win against foreign foes, as Bismarck did at Koeniggraetz, Sedan and Gravelotte, the people kiss the hand that smites. What greater tests of loyalty do you ask of human nature?
¶ Before 1866, he was without doubt the “best-hated” man in Europe, lampooned, ridiculed, even the victim of attempted assassinations.
At Frankfort mothers sang their children to sleep by the following ditty:
Sleep, darling, sleep,
Be always gentle and good,
Or Vogel von Falkenstein will come
And carry you away in a sack;
Bismarck too will come after him,
And he eats up little children.
¶ Yet within a few years, in his character as Prussian Prime Minister, who against the will of the people achieved the greatness of Prussia, and thereby made possible United Germany, no adulation was too great for our self-same Bismarck, formerly sneered at, despised, vilified, and stoned.