The Repeating Tragedy of History: 'He was not a great man'
History does not repeat, except in the sense that every age has its failed leaders. John George of Saxony was one of those.
If you think you should only vote for honest politicians who say what they mean, sincerely work for peace, and have the best interests of your country at heart, I’d like to introduce you to one of those politicians.
This is a short story about a man who led his country into a devastating civil war. Every country knows such men, for they might be the only part of history that actually does repeat.
In a very real sense, Western Civilization as we know it is still guided by political principles agreed to at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The Europe after 1648 was not the Europe before 1618, when a bloody 30-year war broke out after years of “cancel culture” — a celebrated history of throwing people from high windows to settle political and religious differences.
We in America have been engaged in our own defenestration of cultural enemies, and the question is whether we, too, will require (another) bloody civil war to see what “a more perfect union” looks like in 2048. Such a war is avoidable. But the repeating history of failed politicians who “only want peace and prosperity” might doom us to it anyway.
From 1611 to 1656, John George was the leader of the Electorate of Saxony, one of the German territories of the Holy Roman Empire. The area he ruled for three successive Emperors included the cities of Dresden, Leipzig and Chemnitz.
And so, without further ado, an excerpt about Elector John George, from the highly-recommended 1938 history, The Thirty Years War, by C.V. Wedgwood.
John George, Elector of Saxony, was a little over 30; a blonde, broad square-faced man with a florid complexion. His outlook on life was conservative and patriotic; he wore his beard in the native fashion, clipped off his hair and understood not a word of French. His clothes were rich, simple, and sensible, as befitted a prince who was also a good Christian and the father of a family, his table generously supplied with local fruit, game, and beer. Three times a week, he attended a sermon with all his court and partook of the sacrament in the Lutheran fashion. According to his lights, John George bore out his principles, leading an unimpeachable private life in an oppressively domestic atmosphere. Although hunting was a mania with him, he was not without culture, took an intelligent interest in jewelry and goldsmith’s work, and above all in music. Under his patronage, Heinrich Schutz performed his miracle of welding German and Italian influences into music that foreshadowed a later age.
In spite of these claims to culture, John George had preserved the good old German custom of carousing in a manner that shocked men under French or Spanish influence, Frederick of the Palatinate and Ferdinand of Styria. John George, who scorned foreign delicacies, had been known to sit at table, gorging homely foods and swilling native beer for seven hours on end, his sole approach at conversation to box his dwarf’s ears, or pour the dregs of a tankard over a servant’s head as a signal for more. He was not a confirmed drunkard; his brain when he was sober was perfectly clear, and he drank through habit and good fellowship rather than weakness. But he drank too much and too often. Later on it became the fashion to say whenever he made an inept political decision that he had been far gone at the time, and the dispatches of one ambassador at least are punctuated with such remarks as, “He began to be somewhat heated with wine,” and “He seemed to me to be very drunk.” It made diplomacy difficult.
But it did not alter the situation for John George, drunk or sober, was equally enigmatical. Nobody knew which side he would support. There was no harm, perhaps, in keeping the two parties guessing if John George himself knew which side he favored; unhappily he was as much in the dark as his suitors. He wanted above all peace, commercial prosperity, and the integrity of Germany; unlike Frederick or Ferdinand, he had no mission and did not wish to risk present comfort for doubtful future good. Seeing that the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation was in danger of collapsing, he knew no remedy save that of shoring it up again. Between the two parties that were wrenching the structure apart, between German liberties and Hapsburg absolutism, he stood for the first he stood for the solidarity of ancient things. First and last he was a constitutionalist.
Of the three leaders, he was probably the most intelligent, but he had neither Ferdinand’s self-confidence nor Frederick’s confidence in others. He was one of those who, seeking both sides to every question, has not the courage to choose. When he did act, his motives were wise, honest and constructive, but he always acted too late. Two people exercised great, though not decisive, influence on him, his wife and his court preacher. The Electress Magdalena Sybilla was a woman of character, virtuous, kind, conventional, and managing. Her insight was limited; she believed that Lutheranism was right, that the lower orders should know their place, and that a public fast was a seemly way of meeting a political crisis. She controlled the Electoral children and the Electoral household admirably and was partly responsible for the close sympathy engendered between her husband and his people, being one of the first princesses to recognize the importance of a middle class standard of respectability in building up the prestige of a royal family.
The Court Chaplin, Dr. Hoe, was an excitable Viennese of a noble house, whose education among Catholics had given him some understanding of their outlook; the Calvinists, he said, had 40 times four more errors in their creed. On the other hand, he was a sincere Protestant and like his master, a constitutionalist. As venomous a writer as he was an eloquent speaker, he had an unslaked passion for print, first displayed in his 16th year, and was known as a controversialist all over Germany. The Calvinists, making a play on the pronunciation of his name, called him the high priest — Hohepriester. Intellectually vain and socially exclusive, the learned doctor was an easy target for ridicule. “I cannot thank God enough,” he had been heard to say, “for the great and noble gifts that his holy omnipotence has bestowed upon me.”
Posterity has not been kind to John George and his advisors. As the defenders of a nebulous constitution and a divided people, they had a thankless task, and as events showed, they performed it badly, but the Elector must have at least credit for some qualities unusual enough in the years to come. He was always honest, he always said what he meant, he worked sincerely for peace, and for the commonweal of Germany, and if now and again he put Saxony first and grasped more than he should for himself, the fault was of his time, and at least he never asked the foreigner to help him.
History knows him as the man who betrayed the Protestants in 1620, the Emperor in 1631, the Swedes in 1635. In fact, he was almost the only man who preserved consistent policy among the veering schemes of enemies and allies. Had he been different, he might have found a middle road for his country that would have saved her from disaster. It is one of the major tragedies of German history that John George was not a great man.