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Under Frederick William I, money, military might, and divine-right monarchy became the indispensable props of the Hohenzollern rule in Prussia. By a close thrift that often bordered on miserliness King Frederick William I managed to increase his standing army from 38,000 to 80,000 men, bringing it up in numbers so as to rank with the regular armies of such first-rate states as France or Austria.
The story falls naturally into two parts: First, 1789-1791, the comparatively peaceful transformation of the absolute, divine-right monarchy into a limited monarchy, accompanied by a definition of the rights of the individual and a profound change in the social order; second, 1792-1799, the transformation of the limited monarchy into a republic, attended by the first genuine trial of democracy, and attended likewise by foreign war and internal tumult.
It might be that the representatives of the three chief classes of the realm would be able to offer suggestions to the court, whereby the finances could be improved and at the same time the divine-right monarchy and the divinely ordained social distinctions would be unimpaired.
This Parliament the so-called Short Parliament was dissolved, however, after some three weeks of bootless wrangling. In England and Scotland divine-right monarchy had failed. Confident that Charles could neither fight nor buy off the Scotch without parliamentary subsidies, the Long Parliament showed a decidedly stubborn spirit.
Such a theory was carefully worked out by the pedantic Stuart king eighty years before Bishop Bossuet wrote his classic treatise on divine-right monarchy for the guidance of the young son of Louis XIV. To James it seemed quite clear that God had divinely ordained kings to rule, for had not Saul been anointed by Jehovah's prophet, had not Peter and Paul urged Christians to obey their masters, and had not Christ Himself said, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's"? As the father corrects his children, so should the king correct his subjects.
The king is a public person and in him the whole nation is embodied. "As in God are united all perfection and every virtue, so all the power of all the individuals in a community is united in the person of the king." Such was the theory of what is called divine-right monarchy or absolutism.
It was not long before the philosophers were applying the scientists' notions to social conditions. "Is this reasonable?" they asked, or, "Is that rational?" Montesquieu insisted that divine-right monarchy is unreasonable. Voltaire poked fun at the Church and the clergy for being irrational. Rousseau claimed that class inequalities have no basis in reason.
Thereby not only will the Revolution be saved in France, but in the end it will be communicated to the uttermost parts of Europe. When the story opens, France is still the absolute, divine-right monarchy which Louis XIV had perfected and Louis XV had exploited. In the country districts the taxes are distressingly burdensome.
If the French people be permitted with impunity to destroy the very basis of divine-right monarchy and to overturn the whole social fabric of the "old regime," how long, pray, will it be before Prussians, or Austrians, or Russians shall be doing likewise?
From the accession of Henry VII in 1485 to the death of his grand-daughter Elizabeth in 1603, the practice of absolutism, though not the theory of divine-right monarchy, seemed ever to be gaining ground. And all the Tudors asserted their supremacy in the sphere of industry and commerce.
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