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To him we date the first memorable step which Europe took out of the anarchies of the Merovingian age. His dream was to revive the Empire that had fallen. He was the first to labor, with giant strength, to restore what vice and violence had destroyed. He did not succeed in realizing the great ends to which he aspired, but his aspirations were lofty.
The second and third century made bishops. The next age made archbishops and metropolitans and patriarchs. The age which succeeded was the age of Leo; and the calamities and miseries and anarchies and ignorance of the times, especially the rule of barbarians, seemed to point to a monarchical head, a more theocratic government, a government so august and sacred that it could not be resisted.
There the guides left them, and the little cavalcade moved east into unknown anarchies. The sky grew like brass over their heads, and the land baked and rutted with the sun's heat. It seemed a country empty of man, though sometimes they came on derelict ploughlands and towns of crumbling brick charred and glazed by fire.
Is it necessary for mankind to win its greatest boons by going through a sea of anarchies, madness, assassinations, and massacres? Those who take this view of revolution, it seems to me, are neither wise nor learned. If a king makes war on his subjects, they are warranted in taking up arms in their defence, even if the civil war is followed by enormities.
Moreover, it is incorrect to say that I have "allied myself to one of the prevailing anarchies" or that I have wrongly countenanced the movement to place the cruel and unjust despotism of the Stamboul Government above the interests of humanity.
When that "roaring conflagration of anarchies" broke out, he was in the full maturity of his power and his fame, a wise old statesman, versed in the lessons of human experience, who detested sophistries and abstract theories and violent reforms; a man who while he loved liberty more than any political leader of his day, loathed the crimes committed in its name, and who was sceptical of any reforms which could not be carried on without a wanton destruction of the foundations of society itself.
France, Spain, Sardinia, the Italian Petty Principalities and Anarchies: suppose they tug and tussle, and collapse there as they can? But let France try to look across the Rhine again; and to threaten Teutschland, England, and the Cause of Human Liberty temporal or spiritual!" A very magnificent ground-plan; hung up to kindle the fancy of a young King, who is far too prudent to go into it at all.
"To decree injustice by a law:" inspired Prophets have long since seen, what every clear soul may still see, that of all Anarchies and Devil-worships there is none like this; that this is the "Throne of Iniquity" set up in the name of the Highest, the human Apotheosis of Anarchy itself. "Quiet Anarchy," you exultingly say?
But the baronage or squirearchy of the country were of another mind. These, in the late anarchies, had set up for a kind of kings in their own right. What were pedlers and mechanic fellows made for, if not to be plundered when needful? Arbitrary rule, on the part of these noble robber lords! To these gentlemen a Statthalter coming to inquire into matters was no welcome phenomenon.
Poland is to be stirred up; has not your Czarish Majesty heard of his intrigues there? Courland, which is almost become your Majesty's cunningly snatched by your Majesty's address, like a valuable moribund whale adrift among the shallows, this bad man will have it out to sea again, with the harpoons in it; fairly afloat amid the Polish Anarchies again!" These are but specimens of Bruhl.
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