or

and Germany would never have had so intense a vitality, would never have become what it is now. No doubt there was also an element of danger in them, particularly during the first half of this century, when as members of the German Confederation they could band together and support either Austria Prussia in their fatal rivalry. But that danger is past, thanks chiefly to Bismarck's policy, and for the future the smaller principalities that have escaped from his grasp will form the most useful centres of life, and are not likely to be absorbed by Prussia, if well advised. There was a time during the AustroPrussian war in 1866 when everybody expected that Anhalt, being almost an enclave of Prussia, would share the fate of Hanover, Nassau, and the Electorate of Hessia. The reigning duke had the strongest sympathies for Austria. But he had a clever minister, who showed him that there were only two ways open to him under the circumstances, either to abdicate of his own free will, and make as advantageous an arrangement with Prussia as possible, or to say yes to whatever demand was made from Berlin. He chose the latter alternative, and it is reported that it was of him that Bismarck said: "I know what to do with my enemies, but what to do with my friends, I don't."

I cannot resist the temptation of giving here a short sketch of the really glorious history of the duchy and the Dukes of Anhalt, such as it was known to us as boys. Nor should it be supposed that I exaggerate the importance of my native duchy. I doubt, indeed, whether there is any reigning house now that can produce such a splendid record as Anhalt. If it has remained small and lost much of its former political influence, that is due chiefly to a law of inheritance which prevailed in the ducal family. Instead of making the eldest son the ruler of the whole duchy, it was the custom to divide the land among all the princes. Thus instead of one Duchy of Anhalt there were four duchies, Anhalt-Dessau, Anhalt-Cöthen, Anhalt-Zerbst, and AnhaltBernburg, some of them again subdivided. From time to time the duchies were reunited, and so they are at

present, the other branches having died out in 1863, when the late Duke Leopold Friedrich united them permanently into one duchy.

If we go slowly back into the past, and that seems to me the real task of the historian, we shall find that there is no critical epoch in the history of Germany, and of the history of the world, where we do not meet with some of the princes of the small Duchy of Anhalt, standing in the very front of the fight. I only wonder that no one has yet attempted to write a popular history of the four principalities of Anhalt, in order to show the share which they took in the historical development of Germany. I have tried to refresh my memory by reading a carefully written manual, "Anhalt's Geschichte in Wort und Bila," by Dr. Hermann Lorenz, 1893, but instead of quoting his opinion, or the opinions of any historians, as to the personal merits and the historical achievements of the princes of Anhalt, whether as warriors or as rulers, I shall try to quote, wherever it is possible, the judgments pronounced of them by some of their contemporaries, whose names will carry greater weight.

The beginning of the nineteenth century was dominated by Napoleon's invasion and almost annihilation of Germany. Dessau was then ruled by Prince Leopold Friedrich Franz (17401806). He had done an immense amount to raise both the material and the intellectual status of his people, and had well earned the name he is still known by, of "Father Franz." Many of the princes of that time were far in advance of the people, and met, as he did, with considerable difficulty in overcoming the resistance of those whom he wished to benefit by his reforms. He had travelled in Holland, England, and Italy. He avoided France, which he said was dangerous to young princes. and yet he was enlightened enough to erect a monument to Rousseau in his beautiful park at Wörlitz. He loved England. "In England," he used to say, "one becomes a man." Nor did he travel for pleasure only. While in England, he studied agriculture, architecture, gardening, brewing, and various other manufactures, in order to intro

duce as many improvements as possible among his own people. In Italy he studied art, both ancient and modern, under Winckelmann, and this great antiquarian was so delighted with the young prince and his companion that he spoke of their visit as the appearance of two young Greek gods. At that time it was still possible to buy old classical statues and old Italian pictures, and the young prince gladly availed himself of his opportunities as far as his financial resources allowed, and brought home to Dessau many valuable treasures of ancient and modern art. These he arranged in his various palaces and museums, all open to the people, and in the beautiful parks and gardens which he had created after English models in the neighborhood of his capital. After a hundred years some of these parks, particularly that of Wörlitz, can vie with some of the finest parks in England. Like the neighboring duchy of Weimar, Dessau soon attracted visitors from all parts of Germany. Goethe himself and his enlightened patron, the Duke Karl August, were often the guests of the Duke of Dessau, and Goethe has in several places spoken in rapturous terms of the beauties of Wörlitz, and the charm of the duke's society. Wieland, Lavater, Matthison, and other celebrities often passed happy days at Dessau as guests of the duke.

But after Duke Franz had spent all his life in embellishing his land and inspiring his subjects with higher and nobler ideals, the Napoleonic thundercloud, which had long threatened Germany, burst over his head, and threatened to destroy everything that he had planted. After the battle of Jena in 1806 Prussia and the whole of Germany were at the mercy of the great French conqueror, and Napoleon, with his army of one hundred thousand men, who had to be lodged and fed in every town of Germany through which they passed, appeared at Dessau on October 21, 1806. The old prince had to receive him bareheaded at the foot of the staircase of his castle. My mother, then a child of six, remembered seeing her own grand and beautiful prince standing erect before the small and pale Corsican. The

prince, however, in his meeting with the emperor, was not afraid to wear the Prussian order of the Black Eagle on his breast, and when he was asked by Napoleon whether he too had sent a contingent to the Prussian army, he said, "No, sir." "Why not?' asked the emperor. "Because I have not been asked," was the answer. "But if you had been asked?" continued the emperor. "Then I should certainly have sent my soldiers," the prince replied; and he added, "Your Majesty knows the right of the stronger." This was a not very prudent remark to make, but the emperor seems to have liked the outspoken old man. He invited him to inspect with him the bridge over the Elbe which had been burnt by the Prussians to cover their retreat. He demanded that it should be rebuilt at once, and on that condition he promised to grant neutrality to the duchy. Nay, before leaving Dessau, in the morning he went so far as to ask his host whether he could do anything for him. "For myself," the prince replied, "I want nothing." I only ask for mercy for my people, for they are all to me like my children."

The next critical period in the history of Germany is that of Frederick the Great, marked by the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) and the establishment of Prussia as one of the great powers of Europe.

Here again we find a prince of Anhalt as one of the principal actors. The instrument with which Frederick the Great won his victories was his welldrilled army, and the drill master of that army had been Leopold, Fürst zu Anhalt, the field-marshal of Frederick's father. At the head of his grenadiers and by the side of Prince Eugène, Prince Leopold of Dessau had won, or helped to win, the great battles of Höchstadt, Blindheim (corrupted to Blenheim), Turin, and Malplaquet in the War of the Spanish Succession, and had thus helped in establishing against the overweening ambition of Louis XIV.what was then called the political equilibrium of Europe. The Prussian field-marshal was known at the time all over Germany as the "Alte Dessauer," and through Carlyle's Life of Frederick

the Great, his memory has lately been revived in England also. Having completely reorganized the Prussian army and having led it ever so many times to brilliant victories, he was in his time what Bismarck was in our own. But after the death of Frederick I. and Frederick William II., Frederick II., or the Great, disliked the old general's tutelage and dismissed him; much as Bismarck has been dismissed in our own time. The young king wrote to the old field-marshal quite openly: "I shall not be such a fool as to neglect my most experienced officers, but this campaign (in Silesia) I reserve for myself, lest the world should think that the Prussian king cannot go to war without his tutor." His old tutor was very angry, but he did not rebel, and in a state like Prussia, Frederick the Great was probably as right as the present emperor in saying "Let one be king in Prussia." However, after Frederick had once established his own position as a general, he recalled his old tutor, and in the second Silesian War it was the brave warrior who stormed the heights of Kesselsdorf at the head of his old grenadiers, and won one of the most difficult and most decisive victories for his king. The king after the battle took off his hat before his tutor and embraced him in the sight of the whole army. The inscription placed on the field-marshal's monument at Berlin, probably composed by the king himself, is simple and true: "He led the Prussian auxiliary forces victoriously to the Rhine, the Danube, and the Po; he took Stralsund and the island of Rügen. The battle of Kesselsdorf crowned his military career. The Prussian Army owes him its strict discipline and the improvement of its infantry. The successors of Frederick the Great have never forgotten what they owe to the "Alte Dessauer," and they may be counted on in the future also as the stoutest friends and supporters of the illustrious house of Albrecht the Bear, the first Markgrave of Brandenburg.

If stronger testimony to the military genius of the Old Dessauer were wanted from the mouth of his own contemporaries, it might easily be quoted

from the despatches of Prince Eugène. That great general freely admits that the prince's troops surpassed his own in courage and discipline; nay, he adds, "the Prince of Dessau has done wonders in the battle of Turin." The emperor of Austria endorsed this judgment, and added, "that he had earned immortal glory," and he conferred on him the title of Serene Highness.

So much for the eighteenth century. If now we look back to the seventeenth, the century of the Thirty Years' War, we find Anhalt the constant trystingground of the two parties, the Catholic and the Protestant powers, and we see the princes of Anhalt again and again at the head of the Northern or Protestant armies. The Elbe often divided the two, and the bridge over the river near Dessau was contested then as it was during the Napoleonic wars. Well do I remember, when as a boy I went to the Schanzenhaus, a coffee-house near the new bridge over the Elbe, how it was explained to me that these Schanzen or fortifications were what was left of the works erected by Wallenstein; just as I learnt at a later time that my own house at Oxford called Park's End, was so called not because it stood as it does now at the end of the park, but because what is now called the park was originally the parks, i.e., the parks of artillery erected by Cromwell's army against the walls of Oxford.

The right name of my house should therefore have been not Park's End, but Parks' End. A more merciless war than the Thirty Years' War was seldom waged; villages and whole towns vanished from the ground, and many tracts of cultivated land, particularly along the Elbe, were changed into deserts. Yet during all that time the Anhalt princes never wavered. When the Elector of the Palatinate, Frederick II., had been proclaimed king in Bohemia in 1619, his commander-inchief was Prince Christian of Anhalt. When after years of slaughter Gustavus Adolphus came to the assistance of the Protestant powers in Germany and won the decisive battle of Lützen, one of Prince Christian's sons, Prince Ernest, fought at his side and died of his wounds soon after the battle. The

Mark, or the Mark Brandenburg, as his fief, in order to defend it as best he could against these Slavonic inroads. This Albrecht the Bear is the ancestor of the reigning Dukes of Anhalt, the present duke being his nineteenth successor. It was the same Mark Brandenburg which was afterwards to become the cradle of Prussia and indirectly of the German Empire. Albrecht's influence was so great at the time that, after the death of the Emperor Lothar, he succeeded in carrying the election of the Emperor Konrad III., the Hohenstaufen, against the Welfic party, who wished to raise the duke of Bavaria, Henry the Proud, to the Imperial throne of Germany. The emperor rewarded Albrecht's services by taking the Duchy of Saxony away from the Welfic Duke of Bavaria, and bestowing it on him. This led to a bloody war between the two claimants, and ended in the defeat of Albrecht. But though deprived again of his Saxon fief, Albrecht proved so successful against the Sorbs and Wends that he received the title of Markgrave of Brandenburg, and as such became one of the electors of the German Empire. All these fierce fights against the Slavonic races on the western frontier of Germany are now well-nigh forgotten, and only the names of towns and rivers remain to remind

us how much of what is now German soil, between the Elbe and Oder, had for a long time been occupied by Slavonic tribes, uncivilized and pagan. Albrecht had really inherited this task of subduing and expelling these enemies from German soil; for his father, Count Otto, was the grandson of Count Esiko of Ballenstädt (1050), and this Esiko again was the grandson of Count Gero (937). All these princes and their knights had to spend their lives in settling, defending the frontiers or marks of Germany, or what had been German soil before the southward migrations of the German tribes began. They held their fiefs from the German emperors, but were left free to do whatever they deemed necessary in the defence of their strongholds (burgs) and settlements. The first of the Saxon emperors, Henry I. (919-936). was called the Burgenbauer, because he en

couraged all over Germany the building of strongholds which afterwards grew into villages and towns, and thus led gradually to a more civilized life in the German Empire. Wherever it was possible churches were built, bishoprics were founded, monasteries and schools established and supported by

Deral grants of land. A great share in this Eastern conquest fell to the Counts of Anhalt, and their achievements were richly rewarded by the great Saxon emperors, Henry I. and Otto the Great. There can be no doubt that these bloody crusades of the German Markgraves against their pagan enemies in the east of Europe, though less famous, left more lasting and more substantial benefits to Germany than all the Crusades against the Saracens.

I shall carry my historical retrospect no further, but it may easily be imagined how this long and glorious history of the princes of the house of Anhalt made a deep impression on the minds of the young generation, and how even as boys we felt proud of our duke. Though the belief in heredity was not then so strong as it is now-and I must confess that even now my own belief in acquired excellencies being inherited is very small-yet standing before the duke, the descendant and representative of so many glorious ancestors, one felt something like the awe which one feels when looking at an oak that has weathered many a storm, and still sends forth every year its rich green foliage. It was a just pride that made even the schoolboys lift their caps before their stately duke and his noble duchess, and I must confess that something of that feeling has remained with me for life, and the title of Serene Highness with which we addressed our duke, has always sounded to my ears not as an empty title, but a name which expressed what we really felt in the presence of our Ascanian duke.1

As to myself, if as a boy I was not quite so much overawed by the inhabitants of the old stately palace at

1 Ascania seems to have been the Latin rendering of Asgaria, the place of Asgar, now called Aschersleben, one of the old seats of the Princes of Anhalt.