Whilst the Illuminati of Germany strove to plunge France and all the rest of the world into anarchy, the Government of Prussia was engaged on another intrigue against the French monarchy. Optimists who believe that the desire of modern Germany to dominate the world was a form of temporary insanity which originated with Nietzsche http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (18 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31
Nesta Webster, The French Revolution
and Bernhardi, and may terminate in a return to the “ peaceful philosophy ” of what they fondly describe as “ old Germany,” would do well to study the policy of that idol of the German people—Frederick the Great.
No event had so seriously disturbed the serenity of Frederick as the marriage of the Dauphin to Marie Antoinette in 1770, since by this union of the royal families of France and Austria the alliance between the two countries—both the hated rivals of Prussia—was definitely sealed. It must be remembered that in the eighteenth century France was the richest and most thickly populated country on the Continent, whilst the Court of Versailles far eclipsed in splendour that of any other kingdom, and in the mind of Frederick the memory of the “ Roi Soleil ” lingered as a constant source of irritation.
Austria, on the other hand, as the head of the German Empire, enjoyed a power and prestige that reduced the little kingdom of Prussia to comparatively small importance.
Meanwhile the Rhine provinces, more French than German in their sympathies, showed no anxiety to unite with Prussia, thereby forming the Germanic Confederation that was the dream of Frederick. To break the alliance between France and Austria became therefore the great ambition of his life, and the one on which he concentrated all his energies.
In Von der Goltz, his ambassador, who arrived at the Court of Louis XV. in 1772, Frederick hoped to find an instrument to carry out his design, which was not to consist in open warfare but in a system of political mischief-making that would sow discord between the Courts of Versailles and Vienna. At the same time Von der Goltz was to act as a spy by getting information out of Maurepas and sending it to the King of Prussia. In this the ambassador at first proved successful, for the frivolous Maurepas loved to be amused and Von der Goltz possessed a merry wit, but the reports he forwarded to Berlin were far from satisfying to his Prussian Majesty. The correspondence that took place between Frederick and the luckless ambassador, whom he treated with brutal sarcasm, is a revelation in Prussian diplomacy. [29] Frederick, it appears, was in the habit of confiding sums of money to his representatives at the various courts of Europe which were to be employed in bribery and corruption. Meanwhile their own personal expenses were but meagrely defrayed. Accordingly Von der Goltz on arriving in France was obliged to borrow money from Necker to pay the rent of his house, which he eventually opened as a gambling-saloon in order to meet his creditors. Appeals to Frederick for financial assistance met only with indignant replies : “ You are a spendthrift ! … Did you not fritter away at the Court of Petersbourg thousands of écus which I entrusted to you for corruptions ? ” In France Frederick is convinced that Von der Goltz is simply amusing himself instead of obtaining information on affairs of state. “ You drive my patience to its limit,” he writes on December 21, 1780, “ by the clumsy way in which http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (19 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31
Nesta Webster, The French Revolution
you fill your post…. One might excuse it in a student who had just left the University, but it is unpardonable in a man of your age who has been so long employed in affairs of state. So if you do not bestir yourself and bring more reflection to bear on them, I shall be obliged to find you a successor in whatever corner of Europe I have to look for him.” To these reproaches Von der Goltz replies with the utmost meekness, even when Frederick goes so far as to accuse him of being occupied with some “ grosse Margot ” instead of attending to his affairs—this suspicion, he makes answer, is unfounded, since neither his health nor his finances permit of such diversions.
The point on which this extraordinary correspondence turns is of course the Queen. As long as Marie Antoinette retains her popularity Frederick realizes that there is little hope for the success of Prussian intrigue. This point needs emphasizing, owing to the curious confusion of thought that exists on the Queen’s policy. No reproach has been more often repeated against Marie Antoinette than that of sympathizing with Austria ; undoubtedly she sympathized with Austria and wished to cement the alliance between the country of her birth and that of her adoption. This was only natural, but the point so continually overlooked is that sympathy with Austria at this date was precisely the opposite of sympathy with Prussia, and this alliance that the Queen was so anxious to maintain was the greatest safeguard France possessed against Prussian aggression. The cry of “l’Autrichienne !” raised against Marie Antoinette throughout the Revolution probably originated therefore in Prussia, and was foolishly taken up by the French people with fatal blindness to their real interests.
No one rejoiced more heartily than Frederick the Great at the estrangement that existed between Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette during the first seven years of their marriage, and in 1776 we find him writing to confide to Von der Goltz his fears that the impending visit of the Emperor Joseph II. to the Court of France may bring about a closer relationship between the husband and wife. In a letter dated December 26, 1776, Frederick points out to his ambassador that the best way to counteract the Emperor’s influence will be for Von der Goltz to repeat to the royal family of France remarks the Emperor is supposed to have made about them : “ It will be a good thing if you can manage by means of subterranean insinuations to increase the dissension between the two Courts. With this object the ambitious views of his Imperial Majesty on Italy, Bavaria, Silesia, Alsace, and even Moldavia will open a vast field to your political career, and if to these you add the sarcasms that prince permitted himself on the subject of his brothers-in-law when he said : ‘ I have three brothers-in-law ; the one at Versailles is an imbecile, the one at Naples is a lunatic, and the one at Parma is a fool,’ it cannot fail to make an impression and to prejudice the Court at which you are against him in such a way that all further understanding will be extremely difficult if not http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (20 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31
Nesta Webster, The French Revolution
impossible. But this,” Frederick adds, “ must be done cleverly ”—a feat of which Von der Goltz was apparently incapable, for the Emperor’s visit resulted in the reconciliation Frederick was so anxious to avoid, and the birth of a princess to the royal family of France destroyed his hopes for the future.
A further check to Prussian intrigue occurred in the dismissal of Maurepas, for his successor Vergennes had no confidence in Von der Goltz, and refused to discuss anything with him. Accordingly in 1784 another ambassador was sent to France in the person of Frederick’s brother, Prince Henry of Prussia, who was instructed to effect an alliance between the Courts of Versailles and Berlin. “ The Prince,” remarks M. de Croze Lemercier, “ came amongst us as a good Prussian … he was charged by his brother Frederick the Great to embroil us with Austria—which he nearly succeeded in doing—and he only flattered our national vanity in order the better to exploit it…. Hatred of Austria was then the fashion (in France), and public opinion was so blind as not to see that we had enemies still more dangerous. The Prince became popular for the same reason that made the unfortunate Marie Antoinette hated.”
Prince Henry certainly succeeded in exciting some degree of sympathy with Prussia at the Court of France, but the Queen, as before, remained the insuperable obstacle. When, three years later, yet another envoy, the Baron von Alvensleben, was despatched by Frederick to report on the state of feeling at Versailles he found the Queen still irreconcilable.
“ The hatred of the Queen for everything that bears the name of Prussian,” he wrote to Frederick, “ is so indisputable, that I have, so to speak, the proofs under my hand.” This, then, was one of the great crimes of the unhappy Queen—that she was anti-Prussian. Those amongst the French who still revile her memory would do well to remember that she was the first and greatest obstacle to those dreams of European domination that, originating with Frederick the Great, culminated in the aggression of 1870 and 1914.
Marie Antoinette paid heavily for her aversion to Prussia. There can be no doubt whatever that certain of the libels and seditious pamphlets published against her before and during the Revolution were circulated by Von der Goltz at the instigation of the King of Prussia. In the course of this book we shall see the further methods employed by Prussia to undermine the monarchy of France and to overthrow the balance of power in Europe by breaking the alliance between the two rivals to her supremacy.
There was thus a double strain of German influence at work behind the French Revolution—the political and the philosophical. The first, inspired by Frederick the Great and carried out by Von der Goltz ; the second, inspired by Weishaupt and http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (21 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31
Nesta Webster, The French Revolution
conducted by Anacharsis Clootz, the Prussian sent to France for the purpose.