stiff, hypocritical Prussia, this Tartuffe among states.
At last, when Warsaw fell, there fell also the soft and pious cloak in which Prussia had so well wrapped itself, and then even the dimmest-eyed saw the iron armour of despotism which was hidden under it. It was to the misfortune of Poland that Germany owed this salutary discovery.
Poland! The blood thrills in my veins when I write the word, when I reflect how Prussia behaved to these noblest children of adversity, and how cowardly, how vulgar, how treacherous was her conduct.[1] The writer of history will, from deepest disgust, want words when he narrates what occurred at Fischau; those shameful deeds were better written by an executioner.[2] I hear the red iron already hissing on the lean back of Prussia.
- ↑ In the first draft this sentence ends as follows: "How treacherously the Cabinet of Berlin—I will not say the Prussian people—treated Poland."
- ↑ Heine, in his hatred of Prussia, is here very inconsistent, and forgets, what Von Moltke has pointed out very clearly, that it was the completely feudal and aristocratic nature of Poland, and the intolerable dissensions among its governing class, which chiefly conduced to its overthrow. Before it was "cut into three" by surrounding nations, it had so radically divided itself into a triple community of nobles, Jews, and serfs, that it had become an anomaly in modern Europe. The conduct of its conquerors is not justifiable on such laws of morals as govern
