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Updated: June 21, 2025
But it was not in his nature to make the needful concessions. "I must follow my policy in a geometrical line" he said to Lucchesini. England might have Hanover and a few colonies if she would let Sicily go to a Bonaparte: as for Prussia, she might absorb half-a-dozen neighbouring princelings.
The subjection of Germany to Prussia has been a triumph of Hohenzollern diplomacy and deceit, and has been the outcome of a tragic misunderstanding on the part of a politically uneducated and inexperienced people. The German people were tired of their political impotence, of their miserable dynastic quarrels, of their abject subservience to their parasitic princelings.
In Germany, where a shadowy emperor ruled a turbulent crowd of little princelings, the good burghers were more directly at the mercy of their bishops and prelates. These dignitaries were trying to collect large sums of money for the benefit of those enormous churches which were a hobby of the Popes of the Renaissance.
We had a political tea that afternoon: all the leaders of the Levies, old Raja Akbar Khan, Humayun, Taifu, the Nagar Wazir, Shah Mirza, and one or two princelings who had come up to see some fighting, all squatted round our little room on the straw, swigging sweet tea and munching biscuits, quite a friendly gathering; in fact, so much tea was consumed that the mess president swore he would send in a bill.
Nevertheless the rival native princelings intrigued one against the other, and some even enlisted the help of the Turk instead of banding together against him. The Balkans were an easy prey for any strong foe. Even after the Turks had beaten the Serbs severely, Stefan Tvrtko, King of Bosnia, seems only to have regarded this as an advantage to himself.
But what they had suffered hitherto would be as nothing to what they must suffer if the Pope now had his way and if Pier Luigi Farnese were to become their duke an independent prince. He would break the nobles utterly, to remain undisputed master of the territory. That was a conclusion foregone. And yet our princelings saw the evil approaching them, and cowered irresolute to await and suffer it.
The German entry was, on the whole, fairly imposing as a military display; but the stage-management was very bad, and one could not imagine that Napoleon's entry into Berlin had in any way resembled it. Nor could it be said to have equalled the entry of the Allied Sovereigns into Paris in 1814. German princelings in basket-carriages drawn by ponies did not add to the dignity of the spectacle.
That Power had now gained the Rhine boundary; her troops garrisoned the fortresses of Holland and Northern Italy; her chief dictated his will to German princelings and to the once free Switzers; while the Court of Madrid, nay, the Eternal City herself, obeyed his behests.
The German princelings had suffered in their lordly pride and German patriotism by having to bow their heads before the formidable man whose humble vassals they were, and these men, vain of their coat-of-arms, had not seen without a secret spite the crushing superiority of a poor Corsican gentleman. This great conqueror himself was not happy in all his splendor.
With one or two exceptions the violent and evil misgovernment of these turbulent princelings was a scandal to all Italy. They ruled by rapine and murder, and rendered Romagna little better than a nest of brigands.
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