History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 09
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Title: History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 09
Author: Thomas Carlyle
Release date: June 16, 2008 [eBook #2109]
Most recently updated: July 14, 2008
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2109
Credits: Produced by D.R. Thompson and David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF FRIEDRICH II OF PRUSSIA — VOLUME 09 ***
Produced by D.R. Thompson
HISTORY OF FRIEDRICH II OF PRUSSIA
FREDERICK THE GREAT
By Thomas Carlyle
Volume IX.
BOOK IX. -- LAST STAGE OF FRIEDRICH'S APPRENTICESHIP: LIFE IN RUPPIN. --
1732-1736.
Chapter I. -- PRINCESS ELIZABETH CHRISTINA OF BRUNSWICK-BEVERN.
We described the Crown-Prince as intent to comply, especially in
all visible external particulars, with Papa's will and pleasure;--to
distinguish himself by real excellence in Commandantship of the Regiment
Goltz, first of all. But before ever getting into that, there has
another point risen, on which obedience, equally essential, may be still
more difficult.
Ever since the grand Catastrophe went off WITHOUT taking Friedrich's
head along with it, and there began to be hopes of a pacific settlement,
question has been, Whom shall the Crown-Prince marry? And the debates
about it in the Royal breast and in Tobacco-Parliament, and rumors
about it in the world at large, have been manifold and continual. In the
Schulenburg Letters we saw the Crown-Prince himself much interested, and
eagerly inquisitive on that head. As was natural: but it is not in the
Crown-Prince's mind, it is in the Tobacco-Parliament, and the Royal
breast as influenced there, that the thing must be decided. Who in the
world will it be, then? Crown-Prince himself hears now of this party,
now of that. England is quite over, and the Princess Amelia sunk below
the horizon. Friedrich himself appears a little piqued that Hotham
carried his nose so high; that the English would not, in those
life-and-death circumstances, abate the least from their "Both marriages
or none,"--thinks they should have saved Wilhelmina, and taken his word
of honor for the rest. England is now out of his head;--all romance
is too sorrowfully swept out: and instead of the "sacred air-cities of
hope" in this high section of his history, the young man is looking into
the "mean clay hamlets of reality," with an eye well recognizing them
for real. With an eye and heart already tempered to the due hardness for
them. Not a fortunate result, though it was an inevitable one. We
saw him flirting with the beautiful wedded Wreech; talking to
Lieutenant-General Schulenburg about marriage, in a way which shook the
pipe-clay of that virtuous man. He knows he would not get his choice,
if he had one; strives not to care. Nor does he, in fact, much care; the
romance being all out of it. He looks mainly to outward advantages; to
personal appearance, temper, good manners; to "religious principle,"
sometimes rather in the reverse way (fearing an OVERPLUS rather);--but
always to likelihood of moneys by the match, as a very direct item.
Ready command of money, he feels, will be extremely desirable in a Wife;
desirable and almost indispensable, in present straitened circumstances.
These are the notions of this ill-situated Coelebs.
The parties proposed first and last, and rumored of in Newspapers and
the idle brains of men, have been very many,--no limit to their numbers;
it MAY be anybody: an intending purchaser, though but possessed
of sixpence, is in a sense proprietor of the whole Fair! Through
Schulenburg we heard his own account of them, last Autumn;--but the
far noblest of the lot was hardly glanced at, or not at all, on that
occasion. The Kaiser's eldest Daughter, sole heiress of Austria and
these vast Pragmatic-Sanction operations; Archduchess Maria Theresa
herself,--it is affirmed to have been Prince Eugene's often-expressed
wish, That the Crown-Prince of Prussia should wed the future Empress
[Hormayr, _Allgemeine Geschichte der neueslen Zeit_ (Wien, 1817),
i. 13; cited in Preuss, i. 71.] Which would indeed have saved immense
confusions to mankind! Nay she alone of Princesses, beautiful,
magnanimous, brave, was the mate for such a Prince,--had the Good
Fairies been consulted, which seldom happens:--and Romance itself might
have become Reality in that case: with high results to the very soul
of this young Prince! Wishes are free: and wise Eugene will have been
heard, perhaps often, to express this wish; but that must have been all.
Alas, the preliminaries, political, especially religious, are at once
indispensable and impossible: we have to dismiss that daydream. A
Papal-Protestant Controversy still exists among mankind; and this is one
penalty they pay for not having settled it sooner. The Imperial Court
cannot afford its Archduchess on the terms possible in that quarter.
What the Imperial Court can do is, to recommend a Niece of theirs,
insignificant young Princess, Elizabeth Christina of Brunswick-Bevern,
who is Niece to the Empress; and may be made useful in this way, to
herself and us, think the Imperial Majesties;--will be a new tie upon
the Prussians and the Pragmatic Sanction, and keep the Alliance still
surer for our Archduchess in times coming, think their Majesties. She,
it is insinuated by Seckendorf in Tobacco-Parliament; ought not she,
Daughter of your Majesty's esteemed friend,--modest-minded, innocent
young Princess, with a Brother already betrothed in your Majesty's
House,--to be the Lady? It is probable she will.
Did we inform the reader once about Kaiser Karl's young marriage
adventures; and may we, to remind him, mention them a second time? How
Imperial Majesty, some five-and-twenty years ago, then only King of
Spain, asked Princess Caroline of Anspach, who was very poor, and an
orphan in the world. Who at once refused, declining to think of changing
her religion on such a score;--and now governs England, telegraphing
with Walpole, as Queen there instead. How Karl, now Imperial Majesty,
then King of Spain, next applied to Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel; and met with
a much better reception there. Applied to old Anton Ulrich, reigning
Duke, who writes big Novels, and does other foolish good-natured
things;--who persuaded his Grand-daughter that a change to Catholicism
was nothing in such a case, that he himself should not care in the
least to change. How the Grand-daughter changed accordingly, went to
Barcelona, and was wedded;--and had to dun old Grandpapa, "Why don't you
change, then?" Who did change thereupon; thinking to himself, "Plague on
it I must, then!" the foolish old Herr. He is dead; and his Novels, in
six volumes quarto, are all dead: and the Grand-daughter is Kaiserinn,
on those terms, a serene monotonous well-favored Lady, diligent in her
Catholic exercises; of whom I never heard any evil, good rather, in her
eminent serene position. Pity perhaps that she had recommended her Niece
for this young Prussian gentleman; whom it by no means did "attach to
the Family" so very careful about him at Vienna! But if there lay a sin,
and a punishment following on it, here or elsewhere, in her Imperial
position, surely it is to be charged on foolish old Anton Ulrich; not
on her, poor Lady, who had never coveted such height, nor durst for her
soul take the leap thitherward, till the serene old literary gentleman
showed her how easy it was.
Well, old Anton Ulrich is long since dead, [1714, age 70. Huber, t.
190.] and his religious accounts are all settled beyond cavil; and only
the sad duty devolves on me of explaining a little what and who his
rather insipid offspring are, so far as related to readers of this
History. Anton Ulrich left two sons; the elder of whom was Duke, and
the younger had an Apanage, Blankenburg by name. Only this younger had
children,--serene Kaiserinn that now is, one of them: The elder died
childless, [1731, Michaelis, i. 132.] precisely a few months before
the times we are now got to; reigning Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel,
["Welf-BOOTHS" (Hunted Camp of the Welfs), according to Etymology.
"Brunswick," again, is BRAUN'S-Wick; "Braun" (Brown) being an old
militant Welf in those parts, who built some lodge for himself, as a
convenience there,--Year 880, say the uncertain old Books. Hubner, t.
149; Michaelis, &c.] all but certain Apanages, and does not concern
us farther. To that supreme dignity the younger has now come, and his
Apanage of Blankenburg and children with him;--so that there is now only
one outstanding Apanage (Bevern, not known to us yet); which also will
perhaps get reunited, if we cared for it. Ludwig Rudolf is the name of
this new sovereign Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, or Duke in chief;
age now sixty; has a shining, bustling, somewhat irregular Duchess,
says Wilhelmina; and a nose--or rather almost no nose, for sad reasons!
[Wilhelmina, ii. 121.] Other qualities or accidents I know not of
him,--except that he is Father of the Vienna Kaiserinn; Grandfather of
the Princess whom Seckendorf suggests for our Friedrich of Prussia.
In Ludwig Rudolf's insipid offspring our readers are unexpectedly
somewhat interested; let readers patiently attend, therefore. He
had three Daughters, never any son. Two of his Daughters, eldest and
youngest, are alive still; the middle one had a sad fate long ago. She
married, in 1711, Alexius the Czarowitz of Peter the Great: foolish
Czarowitz, miserable and making others miserable, broke her heart by ill
conduct, ill usage, in four years; so that she died; leaving him only a
poor small Peter II., who is now dead too, and that matter ended all
but the memory of it. Some accounts bear, that she did not die; that she
only pretended it, and ran and left her intolerable Czarowitz. That she
wedded, at Paris, in deep obscurity, an Officer just setting out for
Louisiana; lived many years there as a thrifty soldier's wife; returned
to Paris with her Officer reduced to half-pay; and told him--or told
some select Official person after him, under seven-fold oath, being then
a widow and necessitous--her sublime secret. Sublime secret, which
came thus to be known to a supremely select circle at Paris; and was
published in Books, where one still reads it. No vestige of truth
in it,--except that perhaps a necessitous soldier's widow at Paris,
considering of ways and means, found that she had some trace of likeness
to the Pictures of this Princess, and had heard her tragic story.
Ludwig Rudolf's second Daughter is dead long years ago; nor has
this fable as yet risen from her dust. Of Ludwig Rudolf's other two
Daughters, we have said that one, the eldest, was the Kaiserinn;
Empress Elizabeth Christina, age now precisely forty; with two beautiful
Daughters, sublime Maria Theresa the elder of them, and no son that
would live. Which last little circumstance has caused the Pragmatic
Sanction, and tormented universal Nature for so many years back!
Ludwig Rudolf has a youngest Daughter, also married, and a Mother in
Germany,--to this day conspicuously so;--of whom next, or rather of her
Husband and Family-circle, we must say a word.
Her Husband is no other than the esteemed Friend of Friedrich Wilhelm;
Duke of Brunswick-Bevern, by title; who, as a junior branch, lives on
the Apanage of Bevern, as his Father did; but is sure now to inherit the
sovereignty and be Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel at large, he or his
Sons, were the present incumbent, Ludwig Rudolf, once out. Present
incumbent, we have just intimated, is his Father-in-law; but it is
not on that ground that he looks to inherit. He is Nephew of old Anton
Ulrich, Son of a younger Brother (who was also "Bevern" in Anton's
time); and is the evident Heir-male; old Anton being already fallen into
the distaff, with nothing but three Grand-daughters. Anton's heir
will now be this Nephew; Nephew has wedded one of the Grand-daughters,
youngest of the Three, youngest Daughter of Ludwig Rudolf, Sovereign
Duke that now is; which Lady, by the family she brought him, if no
otherwise, is memorable or mentionable here, and may be called, a Mother
in Germany.
[ANTON ULRICH (1833-1714). Duke in Chief; that is, Duke of
Brunswick-WOLFENBUTTEL.
AUGUST WILHELM, elder Son and Heir (1662, 1714, 1731); had no
children.
LUDWIG RUDOLF, the younger Son (1671, 1731, 1735), apanagad in
Blankenburg: Duke of Brunswick-BLANKENBURG; became WOLFENBUTTEL.
1731, died, 1st March, 1735. No Son; so that now the Bevern
succeeded. Three Daughters:
Elizabeth Christina, the Kaiserinn (1691, 1708, 1750).
Charlotte Christina (1694, 1711, 1715), Alexius of Russia's,
had a FABULOUS end.
Antoinette Amelia (1695, 1712, 1762); Bevern's Wife,--a
"Mother in Germany."
FERDINAND ALBERT (1636-1687), his younger Brother apanaged in
Bevern; that is, Duke of Brunswick-BEVERN.
FERDINAND ALBERT, eldest Son (an elder had perished, 1704, on
the Schellenberg under Marlborough), followed in Bevern (1680,
1687-1704, 1735); Kaiser's soldier, Friedrich Wilhelm's friend;
married his Cousin, Antoinette Amelia ("Mother in Germany," as
we call her). Duke in Chief, 1st March, 1785, on Ludwig Rudolf's
decease; died himself, 3d September same year.
BORN 1713, Karl the Heir (to marry our Friedrich's Sister).
1714, Anton Ulrich (Russia; tragedy of Czar Iwan).
1715, 8th November, Elizabeth Christina (Crown Prince's).
1718, Ludwig Ernst (Holland, 1787).
1721, Ferdinand (Chatham's and England's) of the Seven Years
War.
1722, 1724, 1725, 1732, Four others; Boys the youngest Two,
who were both killed in Friedrich's Wars.]
Father Bevern her Husband, Ferdinand Albert the name of him, is now
just fifty, only ten years younger than his serene Father-in-law, Ludwig
Rudolf:--whom, I may as well say here, he does at last succeed, three
years hence (1735) and becomes Duke of Brunswick in General, according
to hope; but only for a few months, having himself died that same year.
Poor Duke; rather a good man, by all the accounts I could hear;
though not of qualities that shone. He is at present "Duke
of Brunswick-Bevern,"--such his actual nomenclature in those
ever-fluctuating Sibyl's-leaves of German History-Books, Wilhelmina's
and the others;--expectant Duke of Brunswick in General; much a friend
of Friedrich Wilhelm. A kind of Austrian soldier he was formerly, and
will again be for brief times; General-Feldmarschall so styled; but is
not notable in War, nor otherwise at all, except for the offspring
he had by this serene Spouse of his. Insipid offspring, the impatient
reader says; but permits me to enumerate one or two of them:--
1. Karl, eldest Son; who is sure to be Brunswick in General; who is
betrothed to Princess Charlotte of Prussia,--"a satirical creature,
she, fonder of my Prince than of him," Wilhelmina thinks. The wedding
nevertheless took effect. Brunswick in General duly fell in, first to
the Father; then, in a few months more, to Karl with his Charlotte: and
from them proceeded, in due time, another Karl, of whom we shall hear
in this History;--and of whom all the world heard much in the French
Revolution Wars; in 1792, and still more tragically afterwards. Shot,
to death or worse, at the Battle of Jena, October, 1806; "battle lost
before it was begun,"--such the strategic history they give of it. He
peremptorily ordered the French Revolution to suppress itself; and that
was the answer the French Revolution made him. From this Karl, what NEW
Queens Caroline of England and portentous Dukes of Brunswick, sent upon
their travels through the anarchic world, profitable only to Newspapers,
we need not say!--
2. Anton Ulrich; named after his august Great-Grandfather; does not
write novels like him. At present a young gentleman of eighteen; goes
into Russia before long, hoping to beget Czars; which issues dreadfully
for himself and the potential Czars he begot. The reader has heard of
a potential "Czar Iwan," violently done to death in his room, one dim
moonlight night of 1764, in the Fortress of Schlusselburg, middle of
Lake Ladoga; misty moon looking down on the stone battlements, on the
melancholy waters, and saying nothing.--But let us not anticipate.
3. Elizabeth Christina; to us more important than any of them.
Namesake of the Kaiserinn, her august Aunt; age now seventeen; insipid
fine-complexioned young lady, who is talked of for the Bride of our
Crown-Prince. Of whom the reader will hear more. Crown-Prince fears she
is "too religious,"--and will have "CAGOTS" about her (solemn persons
in black, highly unconscious how little wisdom they have), who may be
troublesome.
4. A merry young Boy, now ten, called Ferdinand; with whom England
within the next thirty years will ring, for some time, loud enough: the
great "Prince Ferdinand" himself,--under whom the Marquis of Granby
and others became great; Chatham superintending it. This really was a
respectable gentleman, and did considerable things,--a Trismegistus in
comparison with the Duke of Cumberland whom he succeeded. A cheerful,
singularly polite, modest, well-conditioned man withal. To be slightly
better known to us, if we live. He at present is a Boy of ten, chasing
the thistle's beard.
5. Three other sons, all soldiers, two of them younger than Ferdinand;
whose names were in the gazettes down to a late period;--whom we shall
ignore in this place. The last of them was marched out of Holland, where
he had long been Commander-in-chief on rather Tory principles, in
the troubles of 1787. Others of them we shall see storming forward
on occasion, valiantly meeting death in the field of fight, all
conspicuously brave of character; but this shall be enough of them at
present.
It is of these that Ludwig Rudolf's youngest daughter, the serene
Ferdinand Albert's wife, is Mother in Germany; highly conspicuous in
their day. If the question is put, it must be owned they are all
rather of the insipid type. Nothing but a kind of albuminous simplicity
noticeable in them; no wit, originality, brightness in the way
of uttered intellect. If it is asked, How came they to the least
distinction in this world?--the answer is not immediately apparent. But
indeed they are Welf of the Welfs, in this respect as in others. One
asks, with increased wonder, noticing in the Welfs generally nothing
but the same albuminous simplicity, and poverty rather than opulence
of uttered intellect, or of qualities that shine, How the Welfs came to
play such a part, for the last thousand years, and still to be at it,
in conspicuous places? Reader, I have observed that uttered intellect is
not what permanently makes way, but unuttered. Wit, logical brilliancy,
spiritual effulgency, true or FALSE,--how precious to idle mankind,
and to the Newspapers and History-Books, even when it is false:
while, again, Nature and Practical Fact care next to nothing for it in
comparison, even when it is true! Two silent qualities you will notice
in these Welfs, modern and ancient; which Nature much values: FIRST,
consummate human Courage; a noble, perfect, and as it were unconscious
superiority to fear. And then SECONDLY, much weight of mind, a noble not
too conscious Sense of what is Right and Not-Right, I have found in
some of them;--which means mostly WEIGHT, or good gravitation, good
observance of the perpendicular; and is called justice, veracity,
high-honor, and other such names. These are fine qualities indeed,
especially with an "albuminous simplicity" as vehicle to them. If the
Welfs had not much articulate intellect, let us guess they made a good
use, not a bad or indifferent, as is commoner, of what they had.
WHO HIS MAJESTY'S CHOICE IS; AND WHAT THE CROWN-PRINCE THINKS OF IT.
Princess Elizabeth Christina, the insipid Brunswick specimen, backed
by Seckendorf and Vienna, proves on consideration the desirable to
Friedrich Wilhelm in this matter. But his Son's notions, who as yet
knows her only by rumor, do not go that way. Insipidity, triviality; the
fear of "CAGOTAGE" and frightful fellows in black supremely unconscious
what blockheads they are, haunts him a good deal. And as for any money
coming,--her sublime Aunt the Kaiserinn never had much ready money;
one's resources on that side are likely to be exiguous. He would prefer
the Princess of Mecklenburg, Semi-Russian Catharine or Anna, of whom we
have heard; would prefer the Princess of Eisenach (whose name he does
not know rightly); thinks there are many Princesses preferable. Most of
all he would prefer, what is well known of him in Tobacco-Parliament,
but known to be impossible, this long while back, to go upon a round of
travel,--as for instance the Prince of Lorraine is now doing,--and look
about him a little.
These candid considerations the Crown-Prince earnestly suggests to
Grumkow, and the secret committee of Tobacco-Parliament; earnestly again
and again, in his Correspondence with that gentleman, which goes on very
brisk at present. "Much of it lost," we hear;--but enough, and to spare,
is saved! Not a beautiful correspondence: the tone of it shallow, hard
of heart; tragically flippant, especially on the Crown-Prince's part;
now and then even a touch of the hypocritical from him, slight touch
and not with will: alas, what can the poor young man do? Grumkow--whose
ground, I think, is never quite so secure since that Nosti
business--professes ardent attachment to the real interests of the
Prince; and does solidly advise him of what is feasible, what not, in
head-quarters; very exemplary "attachment;" credible to what length, the
Prince well enough knows. And so the Correspondence is unbeautiful; not
very descriptive even,--for poor Friedrich is considerably under mask,
while he writes to that address; and of Grumkow himself we want no more
"description;" and is, in fact, on its own score, an avoidable article
rather than otherwise; though perhaps the reader, for a poor involved
Crown-Prince's sake, will wish an exact Excerpt or two before we quite
dismiss it.
Towards turning off the Brunswick speculation, or turning on the
Mecklenburg or Eisenach or any other in its stead, the Correspondence
naturally avails nothing. Seckendorf has his orders from Vienna: Grumkow
has his pension,--his cream-bowl duly set,--for helping Beckendorf.
Though angels pleaded, not in a tone of tragic flippancy, but with
the voice of breaking hearts, it would be to no purpose. The Imperial
Majesties have ordered, Marry him to Brunswick, "bind him the better to
our House in time coming;" nay the Royal mind at Potsdam gravitates, of
itself, that way, after the first hint is given. The Imperial will has
become the Paternal one; no answer but obedience. What Grumkow can do
will be, if possible, to lead or drive the Crown-Prince into obeying
smoothly, or without breaking of harness again. Which, accordingly, is
pretty much the sum of his part in this unlovely Correspondence:
the geeho-ing of an expert wagoner, who has got a fiery young Arab
thoroughly tied into his dastard sand-cart, and has to drive him by
voice, or at most by slight crack of whip; and does it. Can we hope, a
select specimen or two of these Documents, not on Grumkow's part, or for
Grumkow's unlovely sake, may now be acceptable to the reader? A Letter
or two picked from that large stock, in a legible state, will show
us Father and Son, and how that tragic matter went on, better than
description could.
Papa's Letters to the Crown-Prince during that final Custrin
period,--when Carzig and Himmelstadt were going on, and there was such
progress in Economics, are all of hopeful ruggedly affectionate tenor;
and there are a good few of them: style curiously rugged, intricate,
headlong; and a strong substance of sense and worth tortuously visible
everywhere. Letters so delightful to the poor retrieved Crown-Prince
then and there; and which are still almost pleasant reading to
third-parties, once you introduce grammar and spelling. This is one
exact specimen; most important to the Prince and us. Suddenly, one
night, by estafette, his Majesty, meaning nothing but kindness,
and grateful to Seckendorf and Tobacco-Parliament for such an idea,
proposes,--in these terms (merely reduced to English and the common
spelling):--
"TO THE CROWN-PRINCE AT CUSTRIN (from Papa). "POTSDAM, 4th February,
1732
"MY DEAR SON FRITZ,--I am very glad you need no more physic. But you
must have a care of yourself, some days yet, for the severe weather;
which gives me and everybody colds; so pray be on your guard (NEHMET
EUCH KUBSCH IN ACHT).
"You know, my dear Son, that when my children are obedient, I love
them much: so, when you were at Berlin, I from my heart forgave you
everything; and from that Berlin time, since I saw you, have thought
of nothing but of your well-being and how to establish you,--not in the
Army only, but also with a right Step-daughter, and so see you married
in my lifetime. You may be well persuaded I have had the Princesses
of Germany taken survey of, so far as possible, and examined by trusty
people, what their conduct is, their education and so on: and so a
Princess has been found, the Eldest one of Bevern, who is well brought
up, modest and retiring, as women ought to be.
"You will without delay (CITO) write me your mind on this. I have
purchased the Von Katsch House; the Feldmarschall," old Wartensleben,
poor Katte's grandfather, "as Governor" of Berlin, "will get that to
live in: and his Government House, [Fine enough old House, or Palace,
built by the Great Elector; given by him to Graf Feldmarschall von
Schomberg, the "Duke Schomberg" who was killed in the Battle of the
Boyne: "same House, opposite the Arsenal, which belongs now (1855) to
his Royal Highness Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia." (Preuss, i. 73;
and _ OEuvres de Frederic,_ xxvi. 12 n.)] I will have made new for you,
and furnish it all; and give you enough to keep house yourself there;
and will command you into the Army, April coming [which is quite a
subordinate story, your Majesty!].
"The Princess is not ugly, nor beautiful. You must mention it to no
mortal;--write indeed to Mamma (DER MAMA) that I have written to
you. And when you shall have a Son, I will let you go on your
Travels,--wedding, however, cannot be before winter next. Meanwhile I
will try aud contrive opportunity that you see one another, a few
times, in all honor, yet so that you get acquainted with her. She is
a God-fearing creature (GOTTESFURCHTIGES MENSCH), which is all in all;
will suit herself to you [be COMPORTABLE to you] as she does to the
Parents-in-law.
"God give his blessing to it; and bless You and your Posterity, and keep
Thee as a good Christian. And have God always before your eyes;--and
don't believe that damnable PARTICULAR tenet [Predestination]; and be
obedient and faithful: so shall it, here in Time and there in Eternity,
go well with thee;--and whoever wishes that from the heart, let him say
Amen.
"Your true Father to the death,
"FRIEDRICH WILHELM.
"When the Duke of Lorraine comes, I will have thee come. I think
thy Bride will be here then. Adieu; God be with you." [_ OEuvres de
Frederic,_ xxvii, part 3d, p. 55.]
This important Missive reached Custrin, by estafette, that same
midnight, 4th-5th February; when Wolden, "Hofmarschall of the Prince's
Court" (titular Goldstick there, but with abundance of real functions
laid on him), had the honor to awaken the Crown-Prince into the joy of
reading. Crown-Prince instantly despatched, by another estafette, the
requisite responses to Papa and Mamma,--of which Wolden does not know
the contents at all, not he, the obsequious Goldstick;--but doubtless
they mean "Yes," Crown-Prince appearing so overjoyed at this splendid
evidence of Papa's love, as the Goldstick could perceive. [Wolden's
LETTER to Friedrich Wilhelm, "5th February, 1732:" in Preuss, ii. part
2d (or URKUNDENOUCH), p. 206. Mamma's answer to the message brought
her by this return estafette, a mere formal VERY-WELL, written from the
fingers outward, exists (_OEuvres,_ xxvi. 65); the rest have happily
vanished.]
What the Prince's actual amount of joy was, we shall learn better
from the following three successive utterances of his, confidentially
despatched to Grumkow in the intermediate days, before Berlin or this
"Duke of Lorraine" (whom our readers and the Crown-Prince are to wait
upon), with actual sight of Papa and the Intended, came in course.
Grumkow's Letters to the Crown-Prince in this important interval are not
extant, nor if they were could we stand them: from the Prince's Answers
it will be sufficiently apparent what the tenor of them was. Utterance
first is about a week after that of the estafette at midnight:--
TO GENERAL FELDMARSCHALL VON GRUMKOW, AT POTSDAM (from the
Crown-Prince).
"CUSTRIN, 11th February, 1732.
"MY DEAR GENERAL AND FRIEND,--I was charmed to learn by your Letter
that my affairs are on so good a footing [Papa so well satisfied with
my professions of obedience]; and you may depend on it I am docile to
follow your advice. I will lend myself to whatever is possible for me;
and provided I can secure the King's favor by my obedience, I will do
all that is within my power.
"Nevertheless, in making my bargain with the Duke of Bevern, manage that
the CORPUS DELICTI [my Intended] be brought up under her Grandmother
[Duchess of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, Ludwig Rudolf's Spouse, an airy
coquettish Lady,--let her be the tutoress and model of my Intended, O
General]. For I should prefer being made a"--what shall we say? by
a light wife,--"or to serve under the haughty FONTANGE [Species
of topknot; so named from Fontange, an unfortunate female of Louis
Fourteenth's, who invented the ornament.] of my Spouse [as Ludwig Rudolf
does, by all accounts], than to have a blockhead who would drive me mad
by her ineptitudes? and whom I should be ashamed to produce.
"I beg you labor at this affair. When one hates romance heroines as
heartily as I do, one dreads those 'virtues' of the ferocious type [LES
VERTUS FAROUCHES, so terribly aware that they are virtuous]; and I had
rather marry the greatest--[unnamable]--in Berlin, than a devotee with
half a dozen ghastly hypocrites (CAGOTS) at her beck. If it were still
MOGLICH [possible, in German] to make her Calvinist [REFORMEE; our
Court-Creed, which might have an allaying tendency, and at least would
make her go with the stream]? But I doubt that:--I will insist, however,
that her Grandmother have the training of her. What you can do to help
in this, my dear Friend, I am persuaded you will do.
"It afflicted me a little that the King still has doubts of me, while I
am obeying in such a matter, diametrically opposite to my own ideas. In
what way shall I offer stronger proofs? I may give myself to the Devil,
it will be to no purpose; nothing but the old song over again, doubt on
doubt.--Don't imagine I am going to disoblige the Duke, the Duchess or
the Daughter, I beseech you! I know too well what is due to them, and
too much respect their merits, not to observe the strictest rules
of what is proper,--even if I hated their progeny and them like the
pestilence.
"I hope to speak to you with open heart at Berlin.--You may think, too,
how I shall be embarrassed, having to do the AMOROSO perhaps without
being it, and to take an appetite for mute ugliness,--for I don't
much trust Count Seckendorf's taste in this article,"--in spite of his
testimonies in Tobacco-Parliament and elsewhere. "Monsieur! Once more,
get this Princess to learn by heart the ECOLE DES MARIS and the ECOLE
DES FEMMES; that will do her much more good than TRUE CHRISTIANITY by
the late Mr. Arndt! [Johann Arndt ("late" this long while back), _Von
wahren Christenthum,_ Magdeburg, 1610.] If, besides, she would learn
steadiness of humor (TOUJOURS DANSER SUR UN PIED), learn music; and,
NOTA BENE, become rather too free than too virtuous,--ah then, my dear
General, then I should feel some liking for her, and a Colin marrying
a Phyllis, the couple would be in accordance: but if she is stupid,
naturally I renounce the Devil and her.--It is said she has a Sister,
who at least has common sense. Why take the eldest, if so? To the King
it must be all one. There is also a Princess Christina Marie of Eisenach
[real name being Christina WILHELMINA, but no matter], who would be
quite my fit, and whom I should like to try for. In fine, I mean to come
soon into your Countries; [Did come, 26th February, as we shall see.]
and perhaps will say like Caesar, VENI, VIDI, VICI."...
Paragraph of tragic compliments to Grumkow we omit. Letter ends in this
way:--
"Your Baireuth News is very interesting; I hope, in September next [time
of a grand problem coming there for Wilhelmina], my Sister will recover
her first health. If I go travelling, I hope to have the consolation of
seeing her for a fortnight or three weeks; I love her more than my
life; and for all my obediences to the King, surely I shall deserve
that recompense. The diversions for the Duke of Lorraine are very well
schemed; but"--but what mortal can now care about them? Close, and seal.
[Forster, iii. 160-162; _OEuvres de Frederic,_ xvi, 37-39.]
As to this Duke of Lorraine just coming, he is Franz Stephan, a pleasant
young man of twenty-five, son of that excellent Duke Leopold Joseph,
whom young Lyttelton of Hagley was so taken with, while touring in those
parts in the Congress-of-Soissons time. Excellent Duke Leopold Joseph is
since dead; and this Franz has succeeded to him,--what succession there
was; for Lorraine as a Dukedom has its neck under the foot of France
this great while, and is evidently not long for this world. Old Fleury,
men say, has his eye upon it. And in fact it was, as we shall see, eaten
up by Fleury within four years' time; and this Franz proved the last
of all the Dukes there. Let readers notice him: a man of high destiny
otherwise, of whom we are to hear much. For ten years past he has lived
about Vienna, being a born Cousin of that House (Grandmother was Kaiser
Leopold's own Sister); and it is understood, nay it is privately settled
he is to marry the transcendent Archduchess, peerless Maria Theresa
herself; and is to reap, he, the whole harvest of that Pragmatic
Sanction sown with such travail of the Universe at large. May be King of
the Romans (which means successor to the Kaisership) any day; and actual
Kaiser one day.
We may as well say here, he did at length achieve these dignities,
though not quite in the time or on the terms proposed. King of the
Romans old Kaiser Karl never could quite resolve to make him,--having
always hopes of male progeny yet; which never came. For his peerless
Bride he waited six years still (owing to accidents), "attachment mutual
all the while;" did then wed, 1738, and was the happiest of men and
expectant Kaisers:--but found, at length, the Pragmatic Sanction to have
been a strange sowing of dragon's-teeth, and the first harvest reapable
from it a world of armed men!--For the present he is on a grand Tour,
for instruction and other objects; has been in England last; and is now
getting homewards again, to Vienna, across Germany; conciliating the
Courts as he goes. A pacific friendly eupeptic young man; Crown-Prince
Friedrich, they say, took much to him in Berlin; did not quite swear
eternal friendship; but kept up some correspondence for a while,
and "once sends him a present of salmon."--But to proceed with the
utterances to Grumkow.
Utterance SECOND is probably of prior date; but introducible here, being
an accidental Fragment, with the date lost:--
TO THE FELDMARSCHALL VON GRUMKOW (from the Crown-Prince; exact date
lost).
"... As to what you tell me of the Princess of Mecklenburg," for whom
they want a Brandenburg Prince,--"could not I marry her? Let her come
into this Country, and think no more of Russia: she would have a dowry
of two or three millions of roubles,--only fancy how I could live with
that! I think that project might succeed. The Princess is Lutheran;
perhaps she objects to go into the Greek Church?--I find none of these
advantages in this Princess of Bevern; who, as many people, even of the
Duke's Court, say, is not at all beautiful, speaks almost nothing,
and is given to pouting (FAISANT LA FACHEE). The good Kaiserinn has so
little herself, that the sums she could afford her Niece would be very
moderate." [Fragment given in _Sechendorfs Leben,_ iii. 249 u.]
"Given to pouting," too! No, certainly; your Insipidity of Brunswick,
without prospects of ready money; dangerous for CAGOTAGE; "not a word to
say for herself in company, and given to pouting:" I do not reckon her
the eligible article!--
Seckendorf, Schulenburg, Grumkow and all hands are busy in this matter:
geeho-ing the Crown-Prince towards the mark set before him. With or
without explosion, arrive there he must; other goal for him is none!--In
the mean while, it appears, illustrious Franz of Lorraine, coming on,
amid the proper demonstrations, through Magdeburg and the Prussian
Towns, has caught some slight illness and been obliged to pause; so
that Berlin cannot have the happiness of seeing him quite so soon as
it expected. The high guests invited to meet Duke Franz, especially
the high Brunswicks, are already there. High Brunswicks, Bevern with
Duchess, and still more important, with Son and with Daughter:--insipid
CORPUS DELICTI herself has appeared on the scene; and Grumkow, we
find, has been writing some description of her to the Crown-Prince.
Description of an unfavorable nature; below the truth, not above it, to
avert disappointment, nay to create some gleam of inverse joy, when the
actual meeting occurs. That is his art in driving the fiery little Arab
ignominiously yoked to him; and it is clear he has overdone it, for
once. This is Friedrich's THIRD utterance to him; much the most emphatic
there is:--
TO THE GENERAL FELDMARSCHALL VON GRUMKOW.
"CUSTRIN, 19th February, 1732.
"Judge, my dear General, if I can have been much charmed with the
description you give of the abominable object of my desires! For the
love of God, disabuse the King in regard to her [show him that she is a
fool, then]; and let him remember well that fools commonly are the most
obstinate of creatures.
"Some months ago he wrote a Letter to Walden," the obsequious Goldstick,
"of his giving me the choice of several Princesses: I hope he will not
give himself the lie in that. I refer you entirely to the Letter, which
Schulenburg will have delivered,"--little Schulenburg called here, in
passing your way; all hands busy. "For there is no hope of wealth,
no reasoning, nor chance of fortune that could change my sentiment as
expressed there [namely, that I will not have her, whatever become of
me]; and miserable for miserable, it is all one! Let the King but think
that it is not for himself that he is marrying me, but for MYself; nay
he too will have a thousand chagrins, to see two persons hating one
another, and the miserablest marriage in the world;--to hear their
mutual complaints, which will be to him so many reproaches for having
fashioned the instrument of our yoke. As a good Christian, let him
consider, If it is well done to wish to force people; to cause divorces,
and to be the occasion of all the sins that an ill-assorted marriage
leads us to commit! I am determined to front everything in the world
sooner: and since things are so, you may in some good way apprise the
Duke" of Bevern "that, happen what may, I never will have her.
"I have been unfortunate (MALHEUREUX) all my life; and I think it is
my destiny to continue so. One must be patient, and take the time as it
comes. Perhaps a sudden tract of good fortune, on the back of all the
chagrins I have made profession of ever since I entered this world,
would have made me too proud. In a word, happen what will, I have
nothing to reproach myself with. I have suffered sufficiently for an
exaggerated crime [that of "attempting to desert;"--Heavens!]--and I
will not engage myself to extend my miseries (CHAGRINS) into future
times. I have still resources:--a pistol-shot can deliver me from my
sorrows and my life: and I think a merciful God would not damn me
for that; but, taking pity on me, would, in exchange for a life of
wretchedness, grant me salvation. This is whitherward despair can lead
a young person, whose blood is not so quiescent as if he were seventy.
I have a feeling of myself, Monsieur; and perceive that, when one hates
the methods of force as much as I, our boiling blood will carry us
always towards extremities.
... "If there are honest people in the world, they must think how to
save me from one of the most perilous passages I have ever been in.
I waste myself in gloomy ideas; I fear I shall not be able to hide my
grief, on coming to Berlin. This is the sad state I am in;--but it will
never make me change from being,"--surely to an excessive degree, the
illustrious Grumkow's most &c. &c.
"FREDERIC."
"I have received a Letter from the King; all agog (BIEN COIFFE) about
the Princess. I think I may still finish the week here. [26th, did
arrive in Berlin: Preuss (in _OEuvres,_ xxvii. part 3d, p. 58 n).] When
his first fire of approbation is spent, you might, praising her all the
while, lead him to notice her faults. Mon Dieu, has he not already seen
what an ill-assorted marriage comes to,--my Sister of Anspach and her
Husband, who hate one another like the fire! He has a thousand vexations
from it every day.... And what aim has the King? If it is to assure
himself of me, that is not the way. Madam of Eisenach might do it; but a
fool not (POINT UNE BETE);--on the contrary, it is morally impossible to
love the cause of our misery. The King is reasonable; and I am persuaded
he will understand this himself." [_OEuvres de Frederic,_ xvi. 41, 42.]
Very passionate pleading; but it might as well address itself to
the east-winds. Have east-winds a heart, that they should feel pity?
JARNI-BLEU, Herr Feldzeugmeister,--only take care he don't overset
things again!
Grumkow, in these same hours, is writing a Letter to the Prince,
which we still have, [Ib. xvi. 43.] How charmed his Majesty is at such
obedience; "shed tears of joy," writes Grumkow, "and said it was the
happiest day of his life." Judge Grumkow's feelings soon after, on this
furious recalcitration breaking out! Grumkow's Answer, which also
we still have [Ib. xvi. pp. 44-46.] is truculence itself in a polite
form:--horror-struck as a Christian at the suicide notion, at the--in
fact at the whole matter; and begs, as a humble individual, not wishful
of violent death and destruction upon self and family, to wash his poor
hands of it altogether. Dangerous for the like of him; "interfering
between Royal Father and Royal Son of such opposite humors, would
break the neck of any man," thinks Grumkow; and sums up with this
pithy reminiscence: "I remember always what, the King said to me at
Wusterhausen, when your Royal Highness lay prisoner in the Castle of
Custrin, and I wished to take your part: _'Nein Grumkow, denket an diese
Stelle, Gott gebe dass ich nicht wahr rede, aber mein Sohn stirht nicht
eines naturlichen Todes; und Gott gebe dass er nicht unter Henkers Hande
komme._ No, Grumkow, think of what I now tell you: God grant it do
not come true,--but my Son won't die a natural death; God grant he do
not come into the Hangman's hands yet!' I shuddered at these words, and
the King repeated them twice to me: that is true, or may I never see
God's face, or have part in the merits of our Lord."--The Crown-Prince's
"pleadings" may fitly terminate here.
DUKE OF LORRAINE ARRIVES IN POTSDAM AND IN BERLIN.
Saturday, 23d February, 1732, his Serene Highness of Lorraine did
at length come to hand. Arrived in Potsdam that day; where the two
Majesties, with the Serene Beverns, with the Prince Alexander
of Wurtemberg, and the other high guests, had been some time in
expectation. Suitable persons invited for the occasion: Bevern, a
titular Austrian Feldmarschall; Prince Alexander of Wurtemberg, an
actual one (poor old Eberhard Ludwig's Cousin, and likely to be Heir
there soon); high quasi-Austrian Serenities;--not to mention Schulenburg
and others officially related to Austria, or acquainted with it. Nothing
could be more distinguished than the welcome of Duke Franz; and the
things he saw and did, during his three weeks' visit, are wonderful to
Fassmann and the extinct Gazetteers. Saw the Potsdam Giants do their
"EXERCITIA," transcendent in perfection; had a boar-hunt; "did divine
service in the Potsdam Catholic Church; "--went by himself to Spandau,
on the Tuesday (26th), where all the guns broke forth, and dinner was
ready: King, Queen and Party having made off for Berlin, in the interim,
to be ready for his advent there "in the evening about, five." Majesties
wait at Berlin, with their Party,--among whom, say the old Newspapers,
"is his Royal Highness the Crown-Prince:" Crown-Prince just come in from
Custrin; just blessed with the first sight of his Charmer, whom he finds
perceptibly less detestable than he expected.
Serene Highness of Lorraine arrived punctually at five, with outburst of
all the artilleries and hospitalities; balls, soirees, EXERCITIA of the
Kleist Regiment, of the Gerns-d'Armes; dinners with Grumkow, dinners
with Seckendorf, evening party with the Margravine Philip (Margravine
in high colors);--one scenic miracle succeeding another, for above a
fortnight to come.
The very first spectacle his Highness saw, a private one, and of no
intense interest to him, we shall mention here for our own behoof. "An
hour after his arrival the Duke was carried away to his Excellency Herr
Creutz the Finance-Minister's; to attend a wedding there, along with
his Majesty. Wedding of Excellency Creutz's only Daughter to the Herr
HOFJAGERMEISTER von Hacke."--HOFJAGERMEISTER (Master of the Hunt), and
more specifically Captain Hacke, of the Potsdam Guard or Giant regiment,
much and deservedly a favorite with his Majesty. Majesty has known,
a long while, the merits military and other of this Hacke; a valiant
expert exact man, of good stature, good service among the Giants and
otherwise, though not himself gigantic; age now turned of thirty;--and
unluckily little but his pay to depend on. Majesty, by way of increment
to Hacke, small increment on the pecuniary side, has lately made him
"Master of the Hunt;" will, before long, make him Adjutant-General, and
his right-hand man in Army matters, were he only rich;--has, in the mean
while, made this excellent match for him; which supplies that defect.
Majesty was the making of Creutz himself; who is grown very rich, and
has but one Daughter: "Let Hacke have her!" his Majesty advised;--and
snatches off the Duke of Lorraine to see it done. [Fassmann, p. 430.]
Did the reader ever hear of Finance-Minister Creutz, once a poor
Regiment's Auditor, when his Majesty, as yet Crown-Prince, found talent
in him? Can readers fish up from their memory, twenty years back,
anything of a terrific Spectre walking in the Berlin Palace, for certain
nights, during that "Stralsund Expedition" or famed Swedish-War time,
to the terror of mankind? Terrific Spectre, thought to be in Swedish
pay,--properly a spy Scullion, in a small concern of Grumkow VERSUS
Creutz? [Antea, vol. v. pp. 356-358; Wilhelmina.] This is the same
Creutz; of whom we have never spoken more, nor shall again, now that his
rich Daughter is well married to Hacke, a favorite of his Majesty's and
ours. It was the Duke's first sight in Berlin; February 26th; prologue
to the flood of scenic wonders there.
But perhaps the wonderfulest thing, had he quite understood it, was that
of the 10th March, which he was invited to. Last obligation laid upon
the Crown-Prince, "to bind him to the House of Austria," that evening.
Of which take this account, external and internal, from authentic
Documents in our hand.
BETROTHAL OF THE CROWN-PRINCE TO THE BRUNSWICK CHARMER, NIECE OF
IMPERIAL MAJESTY, MONDAY EVENING, 10th MARCH, 1732.
Document FIRST is of an internal nature, from the Prince's own hand,
written to his Sister four days before:--
TO THE PRINCESS WILHELMINA AT BAIREUTH.
"BERLIN, 6th March, 1732.
"MY DEAREST SISTER,--Next Monday comes my Betrothal, which will be done
just as yours was. The Person in question is neither beautiful nor
ugly, not wanting for sense, but very ill brought up, timid, and totally
behind in manners and social behavior (MANIERES DU SAVOIR-VIVRE): that
is the candid portrait of this Princess. You may judge by that, dearest
Sister, if I find her to my taste or not. The greatest merit she has is
that she has procured me the liberty of writing to you; which is the one
solacement I have in your absence.
"You never can believe, my adorable Sister, how concerned I am about
your happiness; all my wishes centre there, and every moment of my
life I form such wishes. You may see by this that I preserve still
that sincere friendship which has united our hearts from our tenderest
years:--recognize at least, my dear Sister, that you did me a sensible
wrong when you suspected me of fickleness towards you, and believed
false reports of my listening to tale-bearers; me, who love only you,
and whom neither absence nor lying rumors could change in respect of
you. At least don't again believe such things on my score, and never
mistrust me till you have had clear proof,--or till God has forsaken me,
and I have lost my wits. And being persuaded that such miseries are not
in store to overwhelm me, I here repeat how much I love you, and with
what respect and sincere veneration,--I am and shall be till death, my
dearest Sister,--Your most humble and faithful Brother and Valet,
FRIDERICH."
[_OEuvres de Frederic,_ xxvii. part 1st, p. 5]
That was on the Thursday; Betrothal is on the Monday following. Document
SECOND is from poor old Fassmann, and quite of external nature; which we
much abridge:--
"Monday evening, all creatures are in gala, and the Royal Apartments
upstairs are brilliantly alight; Duke of Lorraine with the other high
strangers are requested to take their place up there, and wait for a
short while. Prussian Majesty, Queen and Crown-Prince with him, proceeds
then, in a solemn official manner, to the Durchlaucht of Bevern's
Apartment, in a lower floor of the Palace; where the Bevern Party,
Duke, Duchess, Son and intended Charmer are. Prussian Majesty asks the
Durchlaucht and Spouse, 'Whether the Marriage, some time treated of,
between that their Princess here present, and this his Crown-Prince
likewise here, is really a thing to their mind?' Serene Spouses answer,
to the effect, 'Yea, surely, very much!' Upon which they all solemnly
ascend to the Royal Apartments [upstairs where we have seen Wilhelmina
dancing before now], where Lorraine, Wurtemberg and the other
sublimities are in waiting. Lorraine and the sublimities form a
semicircle; with the two Majesties, and pair of young creatures, in the
centre. You young creatures, you are of one intention with your parents
in this matter? Alas, there is no doubt of it. Pledge yourselves, then,
by exchange of rings! said his Majesty with due business brevity. The
rings are exchanged: Majesty embraces the two young creatures with great
tenderness;" as do Queen and Serenities; and then all the world takes to
embracing and congratulating; and so the betrothal is a finished
thing. Bassoons and violins, striking up, whirl it off in universal
dancing,--in "supper of above two hundred and sixty persons," princely
or otherwise sublime in rank, with "spouses and noble ladies there" in
the due proportion. [Fassmann, pp. 432, 433.]
Here is fraction of another Note from the Crown-Prince to his Sister at
Baireuth, a fortnight after that event:--
BERLIN, 24th MARCH, 1732 (to Princess Wilhelmina).--... "God be praised
that you are better, dearest Sister! For nobody can love you more
tenderly than I do.--As to the Princess of Bevern [my Betrothed], the
Queen [Mamma, whom you have been consulting on these etiquettes] bids me
answer, That you need not style her `Highness,' and that you may write
to her quite as to an indifferent Princess. As to 'kissing of the
hands,' I assure you I have not kissed them, nor will kiss them; they
are not pretty enough to tempt one that way. God long preserve you in
perfect health! And you, preserve for me always the honor of your good
graces; and believe, my charming Sister, that never brother in the
world loved with such tenderness a sister so charming as mine; in short,
believe, dear Sister, that without compliments, and in literal truth, I
am yours wholly (TOUT A VOUS),
"FRIDERICH."
[Ib. xxvii. part 1st, p. 5.]
This is the Betrothal of the Crown-Prince to an Insipidity of Brunswick.
Insipidity's private feelings, perhaps of a languidly glad sort, are
not known to us; Crown-Prince's we have in part seen. He has decided to
accept his fate without a murmur farther. Against his poor Bride or her
qualities not a word more. In the Schloss of Berlin, amid such tempests
of female gossip (Mamma still secretly corresponding with England), he
has to be very reserved, on this head especially. It is understood he
did not, in his heart, nearly so much dislike the insipid Princess as he
wished Papa to think he did.
Duke Franz of Lorraine went off above a week ago, on the Saturday
following the Betrothal; an amiable serene young gentleman, well liked
by the Crown-Prince and everybody. "He avoided the Saxon Court, though
passing near it," on his way to old Kur-Mainz; "which is a sign,"
thinks Fassmann, "that mutual matters are on a weak footing in that
quarter;"--Pragmatic Sanction never accepted there, and plenty of
intricacies existing. Crown-Prince Friedrich may now go to Ruppin and
the Regiment Goltz; his business and destinies being now all reduced
to a steady condition;--steady sky, rather leaden, instead of the
tempestuous thunder-and-lightning weather which there heretofore was.
Leaden sky, he, if left well to himself, will perhaps brighten a little.
Study will be possible to him; improvement of his own faculties, at
any rate. It is much his determination. Outwardly, besides drilling the
Regiment Goltz, he will have a steady correspondence to keep up with his
Brunswick Charmer;--let him see that he be not slack in that.
Chapter II. -- SMALL INCIDENTS AT RUPPIN.
Friedrich, after some farther pause in Berlin, till things were got
ready for him, went to Ruppin. This is in the Spring of 1732; [Still in
Berlin, 6th March; dates from NAUEN (in the Ruppin neighborhood) for
the first time, 25th April, 1732, among his LETTERS yet extant: Preuss,
_OEuvres de Frederic, _ xxvii. part lst, p. 4; xvi. 49.] and he contin
his residence there till August, 1736. Four important years of young
life; of which we must endeavor to give, in some intelligible condition,
what traces go hovering about in such records as there are.
Ruppin, where lies the main part of the Regiment Goltz, and where the
Crown-Prince Colonel of it dwells, is a quiet dull, little Town, in that
northwestern region; inhabitants, grown at this day to be 10,000, are
perhaps guessable then at 2,000. Regiment Goltz daily rolls its drums in
Ruppin: Town otherwise lifeless enough, except on market-days: and
the grandest event ever known in it, this removal of the Crown-Prince
thither,--which is doubtless much a theme, and proud temporary miracle,
to Ruppin at present. Of society there or in the neighborhood, for such
a resident, we hear nothing.
Quiet Ruppin stands in grassy flat country, much of which is natural
moor, and less of it reclaimed at that time than now. The environs,
except that they are a bit of the Earth, and have a bit of the sky over
them, do not set up for loveliness. Natural woods abound in that region,
also peat-bogs not yet drained; and fishy lakes and meres, of a dark
complexion: plenteous cattle there are, pigs among them;--thick-soled
husbandmen inarticulately toiling and moiling. Some glass-furnaces,
a royal establishment, are the only manufactures we hear of. Not a
picturesque country; but a quiet and innocent, where work is cut out,
and one hopes to be well left alone after doing it. This Crown-Prince
has been in far less desirable localities.
He had a reasonable house, two houses made into one for him, in the
place. He laid out for himself a garden in the outskirts, with what they
call a "temple" in it,--some more or less ornamental garden-house,--from
which I have read of his "letting off rockets" in a summer twilight.
Rockets to amuse a small dinner-party, I should guess,--dinner of
Officers, such as he had weekly or twice a week. On stiller evenings
we can fancy him there in solitude; reading meditative, or musically
fluting;--looking out upon the silent death of Day: how the summer
gloaming steals over the moorlands, and over all lands; shutting up the
toil of mortals; their very flocks and herds collapsing into silence,
and the big Skies and endless Times overarching him and them. With
thoughts perhaps sombre enough now and then, but profitable if he face
them piously.
His Father's affection is returning; would so fain return if it durst.
But the heart of Papa has been sadly torn up: it is too good news to be
quite believed, that he has a son grown wise, and doing son-like! Rumor
also is very busy, rumor and the Tobacco-Parliament for or against; a
little rumor is capable of stirring up great storms in the suspicious
paternal mind. All along during Friedrich's abode at Ruppin, this is a
constantly recurring weather-symptom; very grievous now and then; not to
be guarded against by any precaution;--though steady persistence in the
proper precaution will abate it, and as good as remove it, in course of
time. Already Friedrich Wilhelm begins to understand that "there is much
in this Fritz,"--who knows how much, though of a different type from
Papa's?--and that it will be better if he and Papa, so discrepant in
type, and ticklishly related otherwise, live not too constantly together
as heretofore. Which is emphatically the Crown-Prince's notion too.
I perceive he read a great deal at Ruppin: what Books I know not
specially: but judge them to be of more serious solid quality than
formerly; and that his reading is now generally a kind of studying
as well. Not the express Sciences or Technologies; not these, in any
sort,--except the military, and that an express exception. These he
never cared for, or regarded as the noble knowledges for a king or man.
History and Moral Speculation; what mankind have done and been in this
world (so far as "History" will give one any glimpse of that), and what
the wisest men, poetical or other, have thought about mankind and
their world: this is what he evidently had the appetite for; appetite
insatiable, which lasted with him to the very end of his days.
Fontenelle, Rollin, Voltaire, all the then French lights, and gradually
others that lay deeper in the firmament:--what suppers of the gods
one may privately have at Ruppin, without expense of wine! Such an
opportunity for reading he had never had before.
In his soldier business he is punctual, assiduous; having an interest to
shine that way. And is, in fact, approvable as a practical officer and
soldier, by the strictest judge then living. Reads on soldiering withal;
studious to know the rationale of it, the ancient and modern methods
of it, the essential from the unessential in it; to understand it
thoroughly,--which he got to do. One already hears of conferences,
correspondences, with the Old Dessauer on this head: "Account of the
Siege of Stralsund," with plans, with didactic commentaries, drawn up by
that gunpowder Sage for behoof of the Crown-Prince, did actually
exist, though I know not what has become of it. Now and afterwards
this Crown-Prince must have been a great military reader. From Caesar's
COMMENTARIES, and earlier, to the Chevalier Folard, and the Marquis
Feuquiere; [_Memoires sur la Guerre_ (specially on the Wars of Louis
XIV., in which Feuquiere had himself shone): a new Book at this time
(Amsterdam, 1731; first COMPLETE edition is, Paris, 1770, 4 vols.
4to); at Ruppin, and afterwards, a chief favorite with Friedrich.]
from Epaminondas at Leuctra to Charles XII. at Pultawa, all manner of
Military Histories, we perceive, are at his finger-ends; and he has
penetrated into the essential heart of each, and learnt what it had to
teach him. Something of this, how much we know not, began at Ruppin; and
it did not end again.
On the whole, Friedrich is prepared to distinguish himself henceforth
by strictly conforming, in all outward particulars possible, to the
paternal will, and becoming the most obedient of sons. Partly from
policy and necessity, partly also from loyalty; for he loves his
rugged Father, and begins to perceive that there is more sense in his
peremptory notions than at first appeared. The young man is himself
rather wild, as we have seen, with plenty of youthful petulance and
longings after forbidden fruit. And then he lives in an element of
gossip; his whole life enveloped in a vast Dionysius'-Ear, every word
and action liable to be debated in Tobacco-Parliament. He is very scarce
of money, too, Papa's allowance being extremely moderate, "not above
6,000 thalers (900 pounds)," says Seckendorf once. [Forster, iii. 114
(Seckendorf to Prince Eugene).] There will be contradictions enough
to settle: caution, silence, every kind of prudence will be much
recommendable.
In all outward particulars the Crown-Prince will conform; in the inward,
he will exercise a judgment, and if he cannot conform, will at least
be careful to hide. To do his Commandant duties at Ruppin, and avoid
offences, is much his determination. We observe he takes great charge of
his men's health; has the Regiment Goltz in a shiningly exact condition
at the grand reviews;--is very industrious now and afterwards to get
tall recruits, as a dainty to Papa. Knows that nothing in Nature is
so sure of conciliating that strange old gentleman; corresponds,
accordingly, in distant quarters; lays out, now and afterwards, sums far
too heavy for his means upon tall recruits for Papa. But it is good
to conciliate in that quarter, by every method, and at every
expense;--Argus of Tobacco-Parliament still watching one there; and
Rumor needing to be industriously dealt with, difficult to keep down.
Such, so far as we can gather, is the general figure of Friedrich's life
at Ruppin. Specific facts of it, anecdotes about it, are few in those
dim Books; are uncertain as to truth, and without importance whether
true or not. For all his gravity and Colonelship, it would appear the
old spirit of frolic has not quitted him. Here are two small incidents,
pointing that way; which stand on record; credible enough, though vague
and without importance otherwise. Incident FIRST is to the following
feeble effect; indisputable though extremely unmomentous: Regiment
Goltz, it appears, used to have gold trimmings; the Colonel Crown-Prince
petitioned that they might be of silver, which he liked better. Papa
answers, Yes. Regiment Goltz gets its new regimentals done in silver;
the Colonel proposes they shall solemnly BURN their old regimentals.
And they do it, the Officers of them, SUB DIO, perhaps in the Prince's
garden, stripping successively in the "Temple" there, with such degree
of genial humor, loud laughter, or at least boisterous mock-solemnity,
as may be in them. This is a true incident of the Prince's history,
though a small one.
Incident SECOND is of slightly more significance; and intimates, not
being quite alone in its kind, a questionable habit or method the
Crown-Prince must have had of dealing with Clerical Persons hereabouts
when they proved troublesome. Here are no fewer than three such Persons,
or Parsons, of the Ruppin Country, who got mischief by him. How the
first gave offence shall be seen, and how he was punished: offences
of the second and the third we can only guess to have been perhaps
pulpit-rebukes of said punishments: perhaps general preaching against
military levities, want of piety, nay open sinfulness, in thoughtless
young men with cockades. Whereby the thoughtless young men were again
driven to think of nocturnal charivari? We will give the story in Dr.
Busching's own words, who looks before and after to great distances,
in a way worth attending to. The Herr Doctor, an endless Collector and
Compiler on all manner of subjects, is very authentic always, and does
not want for natural sense: but he is also very crude,--and here and
there not far from stupid, such his continual haste, and slobbery
manner of working up those Hundred and odd Volumes of his:--[See his
Autobiography, which forms _Beitrage,_ B. vi. (the biggest and last
volume).]
"The sanguine-choleric temperament of Friedrich," says this Doctor,
"drove him, in his youth, to sensual enjoyments and wild amusements of
different kinds; in his middle age, to fiery enterprises; and in his old
years to decisions and actions of a rigorous and vehement nature; yet
so that the primary form of utterance, as seen in his youth, never
altogether ceased with him. There are people still among us (1788) who
have had, in their own experience, knowledge of his youthful pranks;
and yet more are living, who know that he himself, at table, would gayly
recount what merry strokes were done by him, or by his order, in those
young years. To give an instance or two.
"While he was at Neu-Ruppin as Colonel of the Infantry Regiment
there, the Chaplain of it sometimes waited upon him about the time of
dinner,--having been used to dine occasionally with the former Colonel.
The Crown-Prince, however, put him always off, did not ask him to
dinner; spoke contemptuously of him in presence of the Officers. The
Chaplain was so inconsiderate, he took to girding at the Crown-Prince
in his sermons. 'Once on a time,' preached he, one day, 'there was Herod
who had Herodias to dance before him; and he,--he gave her John
the Baptist's head for her pains!'" This HEROD, Busching says, was
understood to mean, and meant, the Crown-Prince; HERODIAS, the merry
corps of Officers who made sport for him; JOHN THE BAPTIST'S HEAD was no
other than the Chaplain not invited to dinner! "To punish him for such
a sally, the Crown-Prince with the young Officers of his Regiment went,
one night, to the Chaplain's house," somewhere hard by, with cow's-grass
adjoining to it, as we see: and "first, they knocked in the windows of
his sleeping-room upon him [HINGE-windows, glass not entirely broken,
we may hope]; next there were crackers [SCHWARMER, "enthusiasts," so
to speak!] thrown in upon him; and thereby the Chaplain, and his poor
Wife," more or less in an interesting condition, poor woman, "were
driven out into the court-yard, and at last into the dung-heap
there;"--and so left, with their Head on a Charger to that terrible
extent!
That is Busching's version of the story; no doubt substantially correct;
of which there are traces in other quarters,--for it went farther than
Ruppin; and the Crown-Prince had like to have got into trouble from
it. "Here is piety!" said Rumor, carrying it to Tobacco-Parliament. The
Crown-Prince plaintively assures Grumkow that it was the Officers, and
that they got punished for it. A likely story, the Prince's!
"When King Friedrich, in his old days, recounted this after dinner, in
his merry tone, he was well pleased that the guests, and even the pages
and valets behind his back, laughed aloud at it." Not a pious old King,
Doctor, still less an orthodox one! The Doctor continues: "In a like
style, at Nauen, where part of his regiment lay, he had--by means of
Herr von der Groben, his First-Lieutenant," much a comrade of his, as
we otherwise perceive--"the Diaconus of Nauen and his Wife hunted out of
bed, and thrown into terror of their lives, one night:"--offence of the
Diaconus not specified. "Nay he himself once pitched his gold-headed
stick through Salpius the Church Inspector's window,"--offence again not
specified, or perhaps merely for a little artillery practice?--"and the
throw was so dexterous that it merely made a round hole in the glass:
stick was lying on the floor; and the Prince," on some excuse or other,
"sent for it next morning." "Margraf Heinrich of Schwedt," continues the
Doctor, very trustworthy on points of fact, "was a diligent helper in
such operations. Kaiserling," whom we shall hear of, "First-Lieutenant
von der Groben," these were prime hands; "Lieutenant Buddenbrock [old
Feldmarschall's son] used, in his old days, when himself grown high
in rank and dining with the King, to be appealed to as witness for the
truth of these stories." [Busching, _Beitrage zu der Lebensgeschichte
denkwurdiger Personen,_ v. 19-21. Vol. v.--wholly occupied with _Friedrich
II. King of Prussia_ (Halle, 1788),--is accessible in French and other
languages; many details, and (as Busching's wont is) few or none not
authentic, are to be found in it; a very great secret spleen against
Friedrich is also traceable,--for which the Doctor may have had his
reasons, not obligatory upon readers of the Doctor. The truth is,
Friedrich never took the least special notice of him: merely employed
and promoted him, when expedient for both parties; and he really was a
man of considerable worth, in an extremely crude form.]
These are the two Incidents at Ruppin, in such light as they have. And
these are all. Opulent History yields from a ton of broken nails these
two brass farthings, and shuts her pocket on us again. A Crown-Prince
given to frolic, among other things; though aware that gravity would
beseem him better. Much gay bantering humor in him, cracklings,
radiations,--which he is bound to keep well under cover, in present
circumstances.
Chapter III. -- THE SALZBURGERS.
For three years past there has been much rumor over Germany, of a
strange affair going on in the remote Austrian quarter, down in Salzburg
and its fabulous Tyrolese valleys. Salzburg, city and territory, has an
Archbishop, not theoretically Austrian, but sovereign Prince so styled;
it is from him and his orthodoxies, and pranks with his sovereign
crosier, that the noise originates. Strange rumor of a body of the
population discovered to be Protestant among the remote Mountains, and
getting miserably ill-used, by the Right Reverend Father in those parts.
Which rumor, of a singular, romantic, religious interest for the general
Protestant world, proves to be but too well founded. It has come forth
in the form of practical complaint to the CORPUS EVANGELICORUM at the
Diet, without result from the CORPUS; complaint to various persons;--in
fine, to his Majesty Friedrich Wilhelm, WITH result.
With result at last; actual "Emigration of the Salzburgers:" and
Germany--in these very days while the Crown-Prince is at Berlin
betrothing himself, and Franz of Lorraine witnessing the EXERCITIA and
wonders there--sees a singular phenomenon of a touching idyllic nature
going on; and has not yet quite forgotten it in our days. Salzburg
Emigration was all in motion, flowing steadily onwards, by various
routes, towards Berlin, at the time the Betrothal took place; and seven
weeks after that event, when the Crown-Prince had gone to Ruppin, and
again could only hear of it, the First Instalment of Emigrants arrived
bodily at the Gates of Berlin, "30th April, at four in the afternoon;"
Majesty himself, and all the world going out to witness it, with
something of a poetic: almost of a psalmist feeling, as well as with a
practical on the part of his Majesty. First Instalment this; copiously
followed by others, all that year; and flowing on, in smaller rills
and drippings, for several years more, till it got completed. A notable
phenomenon, full of lively picturesque and other interest to Brandenburg
and Germany;--which was not forgotten by the Crown-Prince in coming
years, as we shall transiently find; nay which all Germany still
remembers, and even occasionally sings. Of which this is in brief the
history.
The Salzburg Country, northeastern slope of the Tyrol (Donau draining
that side of it, Etsch or Adige the Italian side), is celebrated by the
Tourist for its airy beauty, rocky mountains, smooth green valleys,
and swift-rushing streams; perhaps some readers have wandered to
Bad-Gastein, or Ischl, in these nomadic summers; have looked into
Salzburg, Berchtesgaden, and the Bavarian-Austrian boundary-lands; seen
the wooden-clock makings, salt-works, toy-manufactures, of those
simple people in their slouch-hats; and can bear some testimony to the
phenomena of Nature there. Salzburg is the Archbishop's City, metropolis
of his bit of sovereignty that then was. [Tolerable description of it
in the Baron Riesbeck's _Travels through Germany_ (London, 1787,
Translation by Maty, 3 vols. 8vo), i. 124-222;--whose details otherwise,
on this Emigration business, are of no authenticity or value. A kind of
Play-actor and miscellaneous Newspaper-man in that time (not so opulent
to his class as ours is); who takes the title of "Baron" on this
occasion of coming, out with a Book of Imaginary _"Travels."_ Had
personally lived, practising the miscellaneous arts, about Lintz and
Salzburg,--and may be heard on the look of the Country, if on little
else.] A romantic City, far off among its beautiful Mountains, shadowing
(itself in the Salza River, which rushes down into the Inn, into the
Donau, now becoming great with the tribute of so many valleys. Salzburg
we have not known hitherto except as the fabulous resting-place of
Kaiser Barbarossa: but we are now slightly to see it in a practical
light; and mark how the memory of Friedrich Wilhelm makes an incidental
lodgment for itself there.
It is well known there was extensive Protestantism once in those
countries. Prior to the Thirty-Years War, the fair chance was, Austria
too would all become Protestant; an extensive minority among all ranks
of men in Austria too, definable as the serious intelligence of mankind
in those countries, having clearly adopted it, whom the others were sure
to follow. In all ranks of men; only not in the highest rank, which
was pleased rather to continue Official and Papal. Highest rank had its
Thirty-Years War, "its sleek Fathers Lummerlein and Hyacinth in Jesuit
serge, its terrible Fathers Wallenstein in chain-armor;" and, by working
late and early then and afterwards, did manage at length to trample out
Protestantism,--they know with what advantage by this time. Trample out
Protestantism; or drive it into remote nooks, where under sad conditions
it might protract an unnoticed existence. In the Imperial Free-Towns,
Ulm, Augsburg, and the like, Protestantism continued, and under hard
conditions contrives to continue: but in the country parts, except in
unnoticed nooks, it is extinct. Salzburg Country is one of those nooks;
an extensive Crypto-Protestantism lodging, under the simple slouch-hats,
in the remote valleys there. Protestantism peaceably kept concealed,
hurting nobody; wholesomely forwarding the wooden-clock manufacture, and
arable or grazier husbandries, of those poor people. More harmless sons
of Adam, probably, did not breathe the vital air, than those dissentient
Salzburgers; generation after generation of them giving offence to no
creature.
Successive Archbishops had known of this Crypto-Protestantism, and in
remote periods had made occasional slight attempts upon it; but none at
all for a long time past. All attempts that way, as ineffectual for
any purpose but stirring up strife, had been discontinued for many
generations; [Buchholz, i. 148-151.] and the Crypto-Protestantism was
again become a mythical romantic object, ignored by Official persons.
However, in 1727, there came a new Archbishop, one "Firmian", Count
Firmian by secular quality, of a strict lean character, zealous rather
than wise; who had brought his orthodoxies with him in a rigid and very
lean form.
Right Reverend Firmian had not been long in Salzburg till he smelt
out the Crypto-Protestantism, and determined to haul it forth from
the mythical condition into the practical; and in fact, to see his
law-beagles there worry it to death as they ought. Hence the rumors that
had risen over Germany, in 1729: Law-terriers penetrating into human
cottages in those remote Salzburg valleys, smelling out some German
Bible or devout Book, making lists of Bible-reading cottagers; haling
them to the Right Reverend Father-in-God; thence to prison, since they
would not undertake to cease reading. With fine, with confiscation,
tribulation: for the peaceable Salzburgers, respectful creatures,
doffing their slouch-hats almost to mankind in general, were entirely
obstinate in that matter of the Bible. "Cannot, your Reverence; must
not, dare not!" and went to prison or whithersoever rather; a wide cry
rising, Let us sell our possessions and leave Salzburg then, according
to Treaty of Westphalia, Article so-and-so. "Treaty of Westphalia? Leave
Salzburg?" shrieked the Right Reverend Father: "Are we getting into open
mutiny, then? Open extensive mutiny!" shrieked he. Borrowed a couple of
Austrian regiments,--Kaiser and we always on the pleasantest terms,--and
marched the most refractory of his Salzburgers over the frontiers
(retaining their properties and families); whereupon noise rose louder
and louder.
Refractory Salzburgers sent Deputies to the Diet; appealed, complained
to the CORPUS EVANGELICORUM, Treaty of Westphalia in hand,--without
result. CORPUS, having verified matters, complained to the Kaiser, to
the Right Reverend Father. The Kaiser, intent on getting his Pragmatic
Sanction through the Diet, and anxious to offend nobody at present, gave
good words; but did nothing: the Right Reverend Father answered a
Letter or two from the CORPUS; then said at last, He wished to close
the Correspondence, had the honor to be,--and answered no farther, when
written to. CORPUS was without result. So it lasted through 1730; rumor,
which rose in 1729, waxing ever louder into practicable or impracticable
shape, through that next year; tribulation increasing in Salzburg;
and noise among mankind. In the end of 1730, the Salzburgers sent Two
Deputies to Friedrich Wilhelm at Berlin; solid-hearted, thick-soled men,
able to answer for themselves, and give real account of Salzburg and the
phenomena; this brought matters into a practicable state.
"Are you actual Protestants, the Treaty of Westphalia applicable to you?
Not mere fanatic mystics, as Right Reverend Firmian asserts; protectible
by no Treaty?" That was Friedrich Wilhelm's first question; and he set
his two chief Berlin Clergymen, learned Roloff one of them, a divine of
much fame, to catechise the two Salzburg Deputies, and report upon the
point. Their Report, dated Berlin, 30th November, 1730, with specimens
of the main questions, I have read; [Fassmann, pp. 446-448.] and can
fully certify, along with Roloff and friend, That here are orthodox
Protestants, apparently of very pious peaceable nature, suffering hard
wrong;--orthodox beyond doubt, and covered by the Treaty of Westphalia.
Whereupon his Majesty dismisses them with assurance, "Return, and say
there shall be help!"--and straightway lays hand on the business, strong
swift steady hand as usual, with a view that way.
Salzburg being now a clear case, Friedrich Wilhelm writes to the Kaiser;
to the King of England, King of Denmark;--orders preparations to be
made in Preussen, vacant messuages to be surveyed, moneys to be laid
up;--bids his man at the Regensburg Diet signify, That unless this thing
is rectified, his Prussian Majesty will see himself necessitated to take
effectual steps: "reprisals" the first step, according to the old method
of his Prussian Majesty. Rumor of the Salzburg Protestants rises higher
and higher. Kaiser intent on conciliating every CORPUS, Evangelical
and other, for his Pragmatic Sanction's sake, admonishes Right Reverend
Firmian; intimates at last to him, That he will actually have to let
those poor people emigrate if they demand it; Treaty of Westphalia being
express. In the end of 1731 it has come thus far.
"Emigrate, says your Imperial Majesty? Well, they shall emigrate,"
answers Firmian; "the sooner the better!" And straightway, in the dead
of winter, marches, in convenient divisions, some nine hundred of them
over the frontiers: "Go about your business, then; emigrate--to the Old
One, if you like!"--"And our properties, our goods and chattels?" ask
they.--"Be thankful you have kept your skins. Emigrate, I say.!" And the
poor nine hundred had to go out, in the rigor of winter, "hoary old men
among them, and women coming near their time;" and seek quarters in the
wide world mostly unknown to them. Truly Firmian is an orthodox Herr;
acquainted with the laws of fair usage and the time of day. The sleeping
Barbarossa does not awaken upon him within the Hill here:--but in the
Roncalic Fields, long ago, I should not have liked to stand in his
shoes!
Friedrich Wilhelm, on this procedure at Salzburg, intimates to his
Halberstadt and Minden Catholic gentlemen, That their Establishments
must be locked up, and incomings suspended; that they can apply to the
Right Reverend Firmian upon it;--and bids his man at Regensburg signify
to the Diet that such is the course adopted here. Right Reverend Firmian
has to hold his hand; finds both that there shall be Emigration, and
that it must go forward on human terms, not inhuman; and that in fact
the Treaty of Westphalia will have to guide it, not he henceforth. Those
poor ousted Salzburgers cower into the Bavarian cities, till the weather
mend, and his Prussian Majesty's arrangements be complete for their
brethren and them.
His Prussian Majesty has been maturing his plans, all this
while;--gathering moneys, getting lands ready. We saw him hanging
Schlubhut in the autumn of 1731, who had peculated from said moneys; and
surveying Preussen, under storms of thunder and rain on one occasion.
Preussen is to be the place for these people; Tilsit and Memel region,
same where the big Fight of Tannenberg and ruin of the Teutsch Ritters
took place: in that fine fertile Country there are homes got ready for
this Emigration out of Salzburg.
Long ago, at the beginning of this History, did not the reader hear of
a pestilence in Prussian Lithuania? Pestilence in old King Friedrich's
time; for which the then Crown-Prince, now Majesty Friedrich Wilhelm,
vainly solicited help from the Treasury, and only brought about partial
change of Ministry and no help. "Fifty-two Towns" were more or less
entirely depopulated; hundreds of thousands of fertile acres fell to
waste again, the hands that had ploughed them being swept away. The
new Majesty, so soon as ever the Swedish War was got rid of, took this
matter diligently in hand; built up the fifty-two ruined Towns; issued
Proclamations once and again (Years 1719, 1721) to the Wetterau, to
Switzerland, Saxony, Schwaben; [Buchholz, i. 148.] inviting Colonists
to come, and, on favorable terms, till and reap there. His terms are
favorable, well-considered; and are honestly kept. He has a fixed set of
terms for Colonists: their road-expenses thither, so much a day allowed
each travelling soul; homesteads, ploughing implements, cattle, land,
await them at their journey's end; their rent and services, accurately
specified, are light not heavy; and "immunities" from this and that are
granted them, for certain years, till they get well nestled. Excellent
arrangements: and his Majesty has, in fact, got about 20,000 families
in that way. And still there is room for thousands more. So that if the
tyrannous Firmian took to tribulating Salzburg in that manner, Heaven
had provided remedies and a Prussian Majesty. Heaven is very opulent;
has alchemy to change the ugliest substances into beautifulest.
Privately to his Majesty, for months back, this Salzburg Emigration is
a most manageable matter. Manage well, it will be a god-send to his
Majesty, and fit, as by pre-established harmony, into the ancient
Prussian sorrow; and "two afflictions well put together shall become
a consolation," as the proverb promises! Go along then, Right Reverend
Firmian, with your Emigration there: only no foul-play in it,--or
Halberstadt and Minden get locked:--for the rest of the matter we will
undertake.
And so, February 2d, 1732, Friedrich Wilhelm's Proclamation [Copy of
it in Mauvillon, February, 1732, ii. 311.] flew abroad over the world;
brief and business-like, cheering to all but Firmian;--to this purport:
"Come, ye poor Salzburgers, there are homes provided for you. Apply at
Regensburg, at Halle: Commissaries are appointed; will take charge of
your long march and you. Be kind, all Christian German Princes: do not
hinder them and me." And in a few days farther, still early in February
(for the matter is all ready before proclaiming), an actual Prussian
Commissary hangs out his announcements and officialities at Donauworth,
old City known to us, within reach of the Salzburg Boundaries; collects,
in a week or two, his first lot of Emigrants, near a thousand strong;
and fairly takes the road with them.
A long road and a strange: I think, above five hundred miles before we
get to Halle, within Prussian land; and then seven hundred more to
our place there, in the utmost East. Men, women, infants and hoary
grandfathers are here;--most of their property sold,--still on ruinous
conditions, think of it, your Majesty. Their poor bits of preciosities
and heirlooms they have with them; made up in succinct bundles, stowed
on ticketed baggage-wains; "some have their own poor cart and horse,
to carry the too old and the too young, those that cannot walk." A
pilgrimage like that of the Children of Israel: such a pilgrim caravan
as was seldom heard of in our Western Countries. Those poor succinct
bundles, the making of them up and stowing of them; the pangs of simple
hearts, in those remote native valleys; the tears that were not seen,
the cries that were addressed to God only: and then at last the actual
turning out of the poor caravan, in silently practical condition, staff
in hand, no audible complaint heard from it; ready to march; practically
marching here:--which of us can think of it without emotion, sad, and
yet in a sort blessed!
Every Emigrant man has four GROSCHEN a day (fourpence odd) allowed him
for road expenses, every woman three groschen, every child two: and
regularity itself, in the shape of Prussian Commissaries, presides
over it. Such marching of the Salzburgers: host after host of them, by
various routes, from February onwards; above seven thousand of them this
year, and ten thousand more that gradually followed,--was heard of
at all German firesides, and in all European lands. A phenomenon
much filling the general ear and imagination; especially at the first
emergence of it. We will give from poor old authentic Fassmann, as if
caught up by some sudden photograph apparatus, a rude but undeniable
glimpse or two into the actuality of this business: the reader will in
that way sufficiently conceive it for himself.
Glimpse FIRST is of an Emigrant Party arriving, in the cold February
days of 1732, at Nordlingen, Protestant Free-Town in Bavaria: three
hundred of them; first section, I think, of those nine hundred who
were packed away unceremoniously by Firmian last winter, and have been
wandering about Bavaria, lodging "in Kaufbeuern" and various preliminary
Towns, till the Prussian arrangements became definite. Prussian
Commissaries are, by this time, got to Donauworth; but these poor
Salzburgers are ahead of them, wandering under the voluntary principle
as yet. Nordlingen, in Bavaria, is an old Imperial Free-Town;
Protestantism not suppressed there, as it has been all round; scene of
some memorable fighting in the Thirty-Years War, especially of a bad
defeat to the Swedes and Bernhard of Weimar, the worst they had in the
course of that bad business. The Salzburgers are in number three hundred
and thirty-one; time, "first days of February, 1732, weather very cold
and raw." The charitable Protestant Town has been expecting such an
advent:--
"Two chief Clergymen, and the Schoolmaster and Scholars, with some
hundreds of citizens and many young people" went out to meet them;
there, in the open field, stood the Salzburgers, with their wives
and their little ones, with their bullock-carts and baggage-wains,"
pilgriming towards unknown parts of the Earth. "'Come in, ye blessed
of the Lord! Why stand ye without?' said the Parson solemnly, by way of
welcome; and addressed a Discourse to them," devout and yet human,
true every word of it, enough to draw tears from any Fassmann that were
there;--Fassmann and we not far from weeping without words. "Thereupon
they ranked themselves two and two, and marched into the Town," straight
to the Church, I conjecture, Town all out to participate; "and there
the two reverend gentlemen successively addressed them again, from
appropriate texts: Text of the first reverend gentleman was, _And every
one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father,
or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall
receive an hundred-fold, and shall inherit everlasting life._ [Matthew
xix. 29.] Text of the second was, _Now the Lord had said unto Abraham,
Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's
house, unto a land that I will show thee."_ [Genesis xii. 1.] Excellent
texts; well handled, let us hope,--especially with brevity. After which
the strangers were distributed, some into public-houses, others taken
home by the citizens to lodge.
"Out of the Spital there was distributed to each person, for the first
three days, a half-pound of flesh-meat, bread, and a measure of beer.
The remaining days they got in money six CREUTZERS (twopence) each, and
bread. On Sunday, at the Church-doors there was a collection; no less
than eight hundred GULDEN [80 pounds; population, say, three thousand]
for this object. At Sermon they were put into the central part of the
Church," all Nordlingen lovingly encompassing them; "and were taught in
two sermons," texts not given, _What the true Church is built of, and
ought to have;_ Nordlingen copiously shedding tears the while (VIELE
THRANEN VERGOSSEN), as it well might. "Going to Church, and coming from
it, each Landlord walked ahead of his party; party followed two and two.
On other days, there was much catechising of them at different parts
of the Town;"--orthodox enough, you see, nothing of superstition or
fanaticism in the poor people;--"they made a good testimony of their
Evangelical truth.
"The Baggage-wagons which they had with them, ten in number, upon which
some of their old people sat, were brought into the Town. The Baggage
was unloaded, and the packages, two hundred and eighty-one of them in
all [for Fassmann is Photography itself], were locked in the Zoll-Haus.
Over and above what they got from the Spital, the Church-collection and
the Town-chest, Citizens were liberal; daily sent them food, or daily
had them by fours and fives to their own houses to meat." And so let
them wait for the Prussian Commissary, who is just at hand: "they would
not part from one another, these three hundred and thirty-one," says
Fassmann, "though their reunion was but of that accidental nature."
[Fassmann, pp. 439, 440.]
Glimpse SECOND: not dated; perhaps some ten days later; and a Prussian
Commissary with this party:--
"On their getting to the Anspach Territory, there was so incredible
a joy at the arrival of these exiled Brothers in the Faith
(GLAUBENS-BRUDER) that in all places, almost in the smallest hamlets,
the bells were set a-tolling; and nothing was heard but a peal of
welcome from far and near." Prussian Commissary, when about quitting
Anspach, asked leave to pass through Bamberg; Bishop of Bamberg, too
orthodox a gentleman, declined; so the Commissary had to go by Nurnberg
and Baireuth. Ask not if his welcome was good, in those Protestant
places. "At Erlangen, fifteen miles from Nurnberg, where are
French Protestants and a Dowager Margravine of Baireuth,"--Widow of
Wilhelmina's Father-in-law's predecessor (if the reader can count
that); DAUGHTER of Weissenfels who was for marrying Wilhelmina not long
since!--"at Erlangen, the Serene Dowager snatched up fifty of them into
her own House for Christian refection; and Burghers of means had twelve,
fifteen and even eighteen of them, following such example set. Nay
certain French Citizens, prosperous and childless, besieged the
Prussian Commissary to allow them a few Salzburg children for adoption;
especially one Frenchman was extremely urgent and specific: but the
Commissary, not having any order, was obliged to refuse." [Fassmann,
p. 441.] These must have been interesting days for the two young
Margravines; forwarding Papa's poor pilgrims in that manner.
"At Baireuth," other side of Nurnberg, "it was towards Good Friday when
the Pilgrims under their Commissarius arrived. They were lodged in the
villages about, but came copiously into the Town; came all in a body to
Church on Good Friday; and at coming out, were one and all carried off
to dinner, a very scramble arising among the Townsfolk to get hold of
Pilgrims and dine them. Vast numbers were carried to the Schloss:" one
figures Wilhelmina among them, figures the Hereditary Prince and old
Margraf: their treatment there was "beyond belief," says Fassmann; "not
only dinner of the amplest quality and quantity, but much money added
and other gifts." From Baireuth the route is towards Gera and Thuringen,
circling the Bamberg Territory: readers remember Gera, where the Gera
Bond was made?--"At Gera, a commercial gentleman dined the whole party
in his own premises, and his wife gave four groschen to each individual
of them; other two persons, brothers in the place, doing the like. One
of the poor pilgrim women had been brought to bed on the journey, a day
or two before: the Commissarius lodged her in his own inn, for greater
safety; Commissarius returning to his inn, finds she is off, nobody
at first can tell him whither: a lady of quality (VORMEHME DAME) has
quietly sent her carriage for the poor pilgrim sister, and has her in
the right softest keeping. No end to people's kindness: many wept aloud,
sobbing out, 'Is this all the help we can give?' Commissarius said,
'There will others come shortly; them also you can help.'"
In this manner march these Pilgrims. "From Donauworth, by Anspach,
Nurnberg, Baireuth, through Gera, Zeitz, Weissenfels, to Halle," where
they are on Prussian ground, and within few days of Berlin. Other Towns,
not upon the first straight route to Berlin, demand to have a share in
these grand things; share is willingly conceded: thus the Pilgrims, what
has its obvious advantages, march by a good variety of routes. Through
Augsburg, Ulm (instead of Donauworth), thence to Frankfurt; from
Frankfurt some direct to Leipzig: some through Cassel, Hanover,
Brunswick, by Halberstadt and Magdeburg instead of Halle. Starting all
at Salzburg, landing all at Berlin; their routes spread over the Map of
Germany in the intermediate space.
"Weissenfels Town and Duke distinguished themselves by liberality:
especially the Duke did;"--poor old drinking Duke; very Protestant
all these Saxon Princes, except the Apostate or Pseudo-Apostate the
Physically Strong, for sad political reasons. "In Weissenfels Town,
while the Pilgrim procession walked, a certain rude foreign fellow,
flax-pedler by trade, ["HECHELTRAGER," Hawker of flax-combs or
HECKLES;--is oftenest a Slavonic Austrian (I am told).] by creed Papist
or worse, said floutingly, 'The Archbishop ought to have flung you
all into the river, you--!' Upon which a menial servant of the Duke's
suddenly broke in upon him in the way of actuality, the whole crowd
blazing into flame; and the pedler would certainly have got irreparable
damage, had not the Town-guard instantly hooked him away."
April 21st, 1732, the first actual body, a good nine hundred strong,
[Buchholz, i. 156.] got to Halle; where they were received with devout
jubilee, psalm-singing, spiritual and corporeal refection, as at
Nordlingen and the other stages; "Archidiaconus Franke" being prominent
in it,--I have no doubt, a connection of that "CHIEN DE FRANKE,"
whom Wilhelmina used to know. They were lodged in the Waisenhaus (old
Franke's ORPHAN-HOUSE); Official List of them was drawn up here, with
the fit specificality; and, after three days, they took the road again
for Berlin. Useful Buchholz, then a very little boy, remembers the
arrival of a Body of these Salzburgers, not this but a later one in
August, which passed through his native Village, Pritzwalk in the
Priegnitz: How village and village authorities were all awake, with
opened stores and hearts; how his Father, the Village Parson, preached
at five in the afternoon. The same Buchholz, coming afterwards
to College at Halle, had the pleasure of discovering two of the
Commissaries, two of the three, who had mainly superintended in this
Salzburg Pilgrimage. Let the reader also take a glance at them, as
specimens worth notice:--
COMMISSARIUS FIRST: "Herr von Reck was a nobleman from the Hanover
Country; of very great piety; who, after his Commission was done,
settled at Halle; and lived there, without servant, in privacy, from the
small means he had;--seeking his sole satisfaction in attendance on
the Theological and Ascetic College-Lectures, where I used to see him
constantly in my student time."
COMMISSARIUS SECOND: "Herr Gobel was a medical man by profession; and
had the regular degree of Doctor; but was in no necessity to apply his
talents to the gaining of bread. His zeal for religion had moved him to
undertake this Commission. Both these gentlemen I have often seen in my
youth," but do not tell you what they were like farther; "and both their
Christian names have escaped me."
A third Commissarius was of Preussen, and had religious-literary
tendencies. I suppose these three served gratis;--volunteers; but no
doubt under oath, and tied by strict enough Prussian law. Physician,
Chaplain, Road-guide, here they are, probably of supreme quality, ready
to our hand. [Buchholz, _Neueste Preussisch-Brandenburgische Geschichte_
(berlin, 1775, 2 vols. 4to), i. 155 n.]
Buchholz, after "his student time," became a poor Country-schoolmaster,
and then a poor Country-Parson, in his native Altmark. His poor Book
is of innocent, clear, faithful nature, with some vein of "unconscious
geniality" in it here and there;--a Book by no means so destitute of
human worth as some that have superseded it. This was posthumous, this
"NEWEST HISTORY," and has a LIFE of the Author prefixed. He has four
previous Volumes on the _"Ancient History of Brandenburg,"_ which
are not known to me.--About the Year 1745, there were four poor
Schoolmasters in that region (two at Havelberg, one at Seehausen, one at
Werben), of extremely studious turn; who, in spite of the Elbe which ran
between, used to meet on stated nights, for colloquy, for interchange
of Books and the like. One of them, the Werben one, was this Buchholz;
another, Seehausen, was the Winckelmann so celebrated in after years.
A third, one of the Havelberg pair, "went into Mecklenburg in a year or
two, as Tutor to Karl Ludwig the Prince of Strelitz's children,"--whom
also mark. For the youngest of these Strelitz children was no other than
the actual "Old Queen Charlotte" (ours and George III.'s), just ready
for him with her Hornbooks about that time: Let the poor man have what
honor he can from that circumstance! "Prince Karl Ludwig," rather a
foolish-looking creature, we may fall in with personally by and by.
It was the 30th April, 1732, seven weeks and a day since Crown-Prince
Friedrich's Betrothal, that this first body of Salzburg Emigrants,
nine hundred strong, arrived at Berlin; "four in the afternoon, at the
Brandenburg Gate;" Official persons, nay Majesty himself, or perhaps
both Majesties, waiting there to receive them. Yes, ye poor footsore
mortals, there is the dread King himself; stoutish short figure in
blue uniform and white wig, straw-colored waistcoat, and white gaiters;
stands uncommonly firm on his feet; reddish, blue-reddish face, with
eyes that pierce through a man: look upon him, and yet live if you are
true men. His Majesty's reception of these poor people could not but be
good; nothing now wanting in the formal kind. But better far, in all the
essentialities of it, there had not been hitherto, nor was henceforth,
the least flaw. This Salzburg Pilgrimage has found for itself, and will
find, regulation, guidance, ever a stepping-stone at the needful place;
a paved road, so far as human regularity and punctuality could pave one.
That is his Majesty's shining merit. "Next Sunday, after sermon, they
[this first lot of Salzburgers] were publicly catechised in church; and
all the world could hear their pertinent answers, given often in the
very Scripture texts, or express words of Luther."
His Majesty more than once took survey of these Pilgrimage Divisions,
when they got to Berlin. A pleasant sight, if there were leisure
otherwise. On various occasions, too, her Majesty had large parties of
them over to Monbijou, to supper there in the fine gardens; and "gave
them Bibles," among other gifts, if in want of Bibles through Firmian's
industry. Her Majesty was Charity itself, Charity and Grace combined,
among these Pilgrims. On one occasion she picked out a handsome young
lass among them, and had Painter Pesne over to take her portrait.
Handsome lass, by Pesne, in her Tyrolese Hat, shone thenceforth on
the walls of Monbijou; and fashion thereupon took up the Tyrolese Hat,
"which has been much worn since by the beautiful part of the Creation,"
says Buchholz; "but how many changes they have introduced in it no pen
can trace."
At Berlin the Commissarius ceased; and there was usually given the
Pilgrims a Candidatus Theologiae, who was to conduct them the rest of
the way, and be their Clergyman when once settled. Five hundred long
miles still. Some were shipped at Stettin; mostly they marched, stage
after stage,--four groschen a day. At the farther end they found all
ready; tight cottages, tillable fields, all implements furnished, and
stock,--even to "FEDERVIEH," or Chanticleer with a modicum of Hens. Old
neighbors, and such as liked each other, were put together: fields grew
green again, desolate scrubs and scrags yielding to grass and corn.
Wooden clocks even came to view,--for Berchtesgaden neighbors also
emigrated; and Swiss came, and Bavarians and French:--and old trades
were revived in those new localities.
Something beautifully real-idyllic in all this, surely:--Yet do not
fancy that it all went on like clock-work; that there were not jarrings
at every step, as is the way in things real. Of the Prussian Minister
chiefly concerned in settling this new Colony I have heard one saying,
forced out of him in some pressure: "There must be somebody for a
scolding-stock and scape-goat; I will be it, then!" And then the
Salzburg Officials, what a humor they were in! No Letters allowed from
those poor Emigrants; the wickedest rumors circulated about them: "All
cut to pieces by inroad of the Poles;" "Pressed for soldiers by the
Prussian drill-sergeant;" "All flung into the Lakes and stagnant waters
there; drowned to the last individual;" and so on. Truth nevertheless
did slowly pierce through. And the "GROSSE WIRTH," our idyllic-real
Friedrich Wilhelm, was wanting in nothing. Lists of their unjust losses
in Salzburg were, on his Majesty's order, made out and authenticated, by
the many who had suffered in that way there,--forced to sell at a
day's notice, and the like:--with these his Majesty was diligent in the
Imperial Court; and did get what human industry could of compensation,
a part but not the whole. Contradictory noises had to abate. In the end,
sound purpose, built on fact and the Laws of Nature, carried it; lies,
vituperations, rumors and delusion sank to zero; and the true result
remained. In 1738, the Salzburg Emigrant Community in Preussen held,
in all their Churches, a Day of Thanksgiving; and admitted piously that
Heaven's blessing, of a truth, had been upon this King and them. There
we leave them, a useful solid population ever since in those parts;
increased by this time we know not how many fold.
It cost Friedrich Wilhelm enormous sums, say the Old Histories; probably
"ten TONS OF GOLD,"--that is to say, ten hundred thousand thalers;
almost 150,000 pounds, no less! But he lived to see it amply repaid,
even in his own time; how much more amply since;--being a man skilful
in investments to a high degree indeed. Fancy 150,000 pounds invested
there, in the Bank of Nature herself; and a hundred millions invested,
say at Balaclava, in the Bank of Newspaper rumor: and the respective
rates of interest they will yield, a million years hence! This was
the most idyllic of Friedrich Wilhelm's feats, and a very real one the
while.
We have only to add or repeat, that Salzburgers to the number of about
7,000 souls arrived at their place this first year; and in the year or
two following, less noted by the public, but faring steadily forward
upon their four groschen a day, 10,000 more. Friedrioh Wilhelm would
have gladly taken the whole; "but George II. took a certain number," say
the Prussian Books (George II., or pious Trustees instead of him), "and
settled them at Ebenezer in Virginia,"--read, Ebenezer IN GEORGIA, where
General Oglethorpe was busy founding a Colony. [Petition to Parliament,
10th (21st) May, 1733, by Oglethorpe and his Trustees, for 10,000 pounds
to carry over these Salzburgers; which was granted; Tindal's RAPIN
(London, 1769), xx. 184.] There at Ebenezer I calculate they might go
ahead, too, after the questionable fashion of that country, and increase
and swell;--but have never heard of them since.
Salzburg Emigration was a very real transaction on Friedrich Wilhelm's
part; but it proved idyllic too, and made a great impression on the
German mind. Readers know of a Book called _Hermann and Dorothea?_ It is
written by the great Goethe, and still worth reading. The great Goethe
had heard, when still very little, much talk among the elders about this
Salzburg Pilgrimage; and how strange a thing it was, twenty years ago
and more. [1749 was Goethe's birth-year.] In middle life he threw it
into Hexameters, into the region of the air; and did that unreal Shadow
of it; a pleasant work in its way, since he was not inclined for more.
Chapter IV. -- PRUSSIAN MAJESTY VISITS THE KAISER.
Majesty seeing all these matters well in train,--Salzburgers under way,
Crown-Prince betrothed according to his Majesty's and the Kaiser's (not
to her Majesty's, and high-flying little George of England my Brother
the Comedian's) mind and will,--begins to think seriously of another
enterprise, half business, half pleasure, which has been hovering in
his mind for some time. "Visit to my Daughter at Baireuth," he calls it
publicly; but it means intrinsically Excursion into Bohmen, to have a
word with the Kaiser, and see his Imperial Majesty in the body for once.
Too remarkable a thing to be omitted by us here.
Crown-Prince does not accompany on this occasion; Crown-Prince is with
his Regiment all this while; busy minding his own affairs in the
Ruppin quarter;--only hears, with more or less interest, of these
Salzburg-Pilgrim movements, of this Excursion into Bohmen. Here are
certain scraps of Letters; which, if once made legible, will assist
readers to conceive his situation and employments there. Letters
otherwise of no importance; but worth reading on that score. The FIRST
(or rather first three, which we huddle into one) is from "Nauen," few
miles off Ruppin; where one of our Battalions lies; requiring frequent
visits there:--
1. TO GRUMKOW, AT BERLIN (from the Crown-Prince).
"NAUEN, 26th April, 1732.
"MONSIEUR MY DEAREST FRIEND,--I send you a big mass of papers, which a
certain gentleman named Plotz has transmitted me. In faith, I know not
in the least what it is: I pray you present it [to his Majesty, or in
the proper quarter], and make me rid of it.
"To-morrow I go to Potsdam [a drive of forty miles southward], to see
the exercise, and if we do it here according to pattern. NEUE BESEN
KEHREN GUT [New brooms sweep clean, IN GERMAN]; I shall have to
illustrate my new character" of Colonel; "and show that I am EIN
TUCHTIGER OFFICIER (a right Officer). Be what I may, I shall to you
always be", &c. &c.
NAUEN, 7th MAY, 1732. "... Thousand thanks for informing me how
everything goes on in the world. Things far from agreeable, those
leagues [imaginary, in Tobacco-Parliament] suspected to be forming
against our House! But if the Kaiser don't abandon us;... if God second
the valor of 80,000 men resolved to spend their life,... let us hope
there will nothing bad happen.
"Meanwhile, till events arrive, I make a pretty stir here (ME TREMOUSSE
ICI D'IMPORTANCE), to bring my Regiment to its requisite perfection,
and I hope I shall succeed. The other day I drank your dear health,
Monsieur; and I wait only the news from my Cattle-stall that the Calf
I am fattening there is ready for sending to you. I unite Mars and
Housekeeping, you see. Send me your Secretary's name, that I may address
your Letters that way,"--our Correspondence needing to be secret in
certain quarters.
... "With a" truly infinite esteem, "FREDERIC."
NAUEN, 10th MAY, 1732. "You will see by this that I am exact to follow
your instruction; and that the SCHULZ of Tremmen [Village in the
Brandenburg quarter, with a SCHULZ or Mayor to be depended on], becomes
for the present the mainspring of our correspondence. I return you all
the things (PIECES) you had the goodness to communicate to me,--except
_Charles Douze,_ [Voltaire's new Book; lately come out, "Bale, 1731."]
which attaches me infinitely. The particulars hitherto unknown which
he reports; the greatness of that Prince's actions, and the perverse
singularity (BIZARRERIE) of his fortune: all this, joined to the lively,
brilliant and charming way the Author has of telling it, renders this
Book interesting to the supreme degree.... I send you a fragment of my
correspondence with the most illustrious Sieur Crochet," some French
Envoy or Emissary, I conclude: "you perceive we go on very sweetly
together, and are in a high strain. I am sorry I burnt one of his
Letters, wherein he assured me he would in the Versailles Antechamber
itself speak of me to the King, and that my name had actually been
mentioned at the King's Levee. It certainly is not my ambition to choose
this illustrious mortal to publish my renown; on the contrary, I
should think it soiled by such a mouth, and prostituted if he were the
publisher. But enough of the Crochet: the kindest thing we can do for
so contemptible an object is to say nothing of him at all." [_OEuvres de
Frederic,_ xvi. 49, 51.]--...
Letter SECOND is to Jaagermeister Hacke, Captain of the Potsdam Guard;
who stands in great nearness to the King's Majesty; and, in fact,
is fast becoming his factotum in Army-details. We, with the Duke of
Lorraine and Majesty in person, saw his marriage to the Excellency
Creutz's Fraulein Daughter not long since; who we trust has made him
happy;--rich he is at any rate, and will be Adjutant-General before
long; powerful in such intricacies as this that the Prince has fallen
into.
The Letter has its obscurities; turns earnestly on Recruits tall and
short; nor have idle Editors helped us, by the least hint towards
"reading" it with more than the EYES. Old Dessauer at this time is
Commandant at Magdeburg; Buddenbrock, perhaps now passing by Ruppin, we
know for a high old General, fit to carry messages from Majesty,--or,
likelier, it may be Lieutenant Buddenbrock, his Son, merely returning to
Ruppin? We can guess, that the flattering Dessauer has sent his Majesty
five gigantic men from the Magdeburg regiments, and that Friedrich is
ordered to hustle out thirty of insignificant stature from his own, by
way of counter-gift to the Dessauer;--which Friedrich does instantly,
but cannot, for his life, see how (being totally cashless) he is to
replace them with better, or replace them at all!
2. TO CAPTAIN HACKE, OF THE POTSDAM GUARD.
"RUPPIN, 15th July, 1732.
"MEIN GOTT, what a piece of news Buddenbrock has brought me! I am to get
nothing out of Brandenburg, my dear Hacke? Thirty men I had to shift out
of my company in consequence [of Buddenbrock's order]; and where am I
now to get other thirty? I would gladly give the King tall men, as the
Dessauer at Magdeburg does; but I have no money; and I don't get, or
set up for getting, six men for one [thirty short for five tall], as he
does. So true is that Scripture: To him that hath shall be given; and
from him that hath not shall be taken away even that he hath.
"Small art, that the Prince of Dessau's and the Magdeburg Regiments are
fine, when they have money at command, and thirty men GRATIS over
and above! I, poor devil, have nothing; nor shall have, all my days.
Prithee, dear Hacke (BITTE IHN, LIEBER HACKE), think of all that: and
if I have no money allowed, I must bring Asmus [Recruit unknown to
me] alone as Recruit next year; and my Regiment will to a certainty be
rubbish (KROOP). Once I had learned a German Proverb--
'VERSPRECHEN UND HALTEN (To promise and to keep)
ZIEMT WOHL JUNGEN UND ALTEN (Is pretty for young and for old)!'
"I depend alone on you (IHN), dear Hacke; unless you help, there is a
bad outlook. To-day I have knocked again [written to Papa for money];
and if that does not help, it is over. If I could get any money to
borrow, it would do; but I need not think of that. Help me, then, dear
Hacke! I assure you I will ever remember it; who, at all times, am my
dear Herr Captain's devoted (GANZ ERGEBENER) servant and friend,
"FRIDERICH."
[In German: _OEuvres,_ xxvii. part 3d, p. 177.]
To which add only this Note, two days later, to Seckendorf;
indicating that the process of "borrowing" has already, in some form,
begun,--process which will have to continue: and to develop itself;--and
that his Majesty, as Seckendorf well knows, is resolved upon his
Bohemian journey:--
3. TO THE GENERAL FELDZEUGMEISTER GRAF VON SECKENDORF.
"RUPPIN, 17th July, 1732.
"MY VERY DEAR GENERAL,--I have written to the King, that I owed you
2,125 THALERS for the Recruits; of which he says there are 600 paid:
there remain, therefore, 1,525, which he will pay you directly.
"The King is going to Prague: I shall not be of the party [as you will].
To say truth, I am not very sorry; for it would infallibly give rise to
foolish rumors in the world. At the same time, I should have much wished
to see the Emperor, Empress, and Prince of Lorraine, for whom I have a
quite particular esteem. I beg you, Monsieur, to assure him of it;--and
to assure yourself that I shall always be,--with a great deal of
consideration, MONSIEUR, MON TRES-CHER GENERAL, &c. FREDERIC."
And now--for the Bohemian Journey, "Visit at Kladrup" as they call
it;--Ruppin being left in this assiduous and wholesome, if rather
hampered condition.
Kaiser Karl and his Empress, in this summer of 1732, were at Karlsbad,
taking the waters for a few weeks. Friedrich Wilhelm, who had long, for
various reasons, wished to see his Kaiser face to face, thought this
would be a good opportunity. The Kaiser himself, knowing how it stood
with the Julich-and-Berg and other questions, was not anxious for such
an interview; still less were his official people; among whom the
very ceremonial for such a thing was matter of abstruse difficulty.
Seckendorf accordingly had been instructed to hunt wide, and throw in
discouragements, so far as possible;--which he did, but without effect.
Friedrich Wilhelm had set his heart upon the thing; wished to behold for
once a Head of the Holy Roman Empire, and Supreme of Christendom;--also
to see a little, with his own eyes, into certain matters Imperial.
And so, since an express visit to Karlsbad might give rise to newspaper
rumors, and will not suit, it is settled, there shall be an accidental
intersection of routes, as the Kaiser travels homeward,--say in some
quiet Bohemian Schloss or Hunting-seat of the Kaiser's own, whither
the King may come incognito; and thus, with a minimum of noise, may
the needful passage of hospitality be done. Easy all of this: only the
Vienna Ministers are dreadfully in doubt about the ceremonial,
Whether the Imperial hand can be given (I forget if for kissing or for
shaking)?--nay at last they manfully declare that it cannot be given;
and wish his Prussian Majesty to understand that it must be refused.
[Forster, i. 328.] "RES SUMMAE CONSEQUENTIAE," say they; and shake
solemnly their big wigs.--Nonsense (NARRENPOSSEN)! answers the Prussian
Majesty: You, Seckendorf, settle about quarters, reasonable food,
reasonable lodgings; and I will do the ceremonial.
Seckendorf--worth glancing into, for biographical purposes, in this
place--has written to his Court: That as to the victual department, his
Majesty goes upon good common meat; flesh, to which may be added all
manner of river-fish and crabs: sound old Rhenish is his drink, with
supplements of brown and of white beer. Dinner-table to be spread always
in some airy place, garden-house, tent, big clean barn,--Majesty likes
air, of all things;--will sleep, too, in a clean barn or garden-house:
better anything than being stifled, thinks his Majesty. Who, for the
rest, does not like mounting stairs. [Seckendorf's Report (in Forster,
i. 330).] These are the regulations; and we need not doubt they were
complied with.
Sunday, 27th July, 1732, accordingly, his Majesty, with five or six
carriages, quits Berlin, before the sun is up, as is his wont: eastward,
by the road for Frankfurt-on-Oder; "intends to look at Schulenburg's
regiment," which lies in those parts,--Schulenburg's regiment for
one thing: the rest is secret from the profane vulgar. Schulenburg's
regiment (drawn up for Church, I should suppose) is soon looked at;
Schulenburg himself, by preappointment, joins the travelling party,
which now consists of the King and Eight:--known figures, seven,
Buddenbrock, Schulenburg, Waldau, Derschau, Seckendorf; Grumkow, Captain
Hacke of the Potsdam Guard; and for eighth the Dutch Ambassador,
Ginkel, an accomplished knowing kind of man, whom also my readers have
occasionally seen. Their conversation, road-colloquy, could it interest
any modern reader? It has gone all to dusk; we can know only that it
was human, solid, for most part, and had much tobacco intermingled. They
were all of the Calvinistic persuasion, of the military profession;
knew that life is very serious, that speech without cause is much to be
avoided. They travelled swiftly, dined in airy places: they are a FACT,
they and their summer dust-cloud there, whirling through the vacancy of
that dim Time; and have an interest for us, though an unimportant one.
The first night they got to Grunberg; a pleasant Town, of vineyards
and of looms, across the Silesian frontier. They are now turning more
southeastward; they sleep here, in the Kaiser's territory, welcomed by
some Official persons; who signify that the overjoyed Imperial Majesty
has, as was extremely natural, paid the bill everywhere. On the morrow,
before the shuttles awaken, Friedrich Wilhelm is gone again; towards
the Glogau region, intending for Liegnitz that night. Coursing
rapidly through the green Silesian Lowlands, blue Giant Mountains
(RIESENGEBIRGE) beginning to rise on the southwestward far away. Dines,
at noon, under a splendid tent, in a country place called Polkwitz,
["Balkowitz," say Pollnitz (ii. 407) and Forster; which is not the
correct name.] with country Nobility (sorrow on them, and yet thanks to
them) come to do reverence. At night he gets to Liegnitz.
Here is Liegnitz, then. Here are the Katzbach and the Blackwater
(SCHWARZWASSER), famed in war, your Majesty; here they coalesce; gray
ashlar houses (not without inhabitants unknown to us) looking on. Here
are the venerable walls and streets of Liegnitz; and the Castle which
defied Baty Khan and his Tartars, five hundred years ago. [1241, the
Invasion, and Battle here, of this unexpected Barbarian.]--Oh, your
Majesty, this Liegnitz, with its princely Castle, and wide rich
Territory, the bulk of the Silesian Lowland, whose is it if right were
done? Hm, his Majesty knows full well; in Seckendorf's presence, and
going on such an errand, we must not speak of certain things. But the
undisputed truth is, Duke Friedrich II., come of the Sovereign Piasts,
made that ERBVERBRUDERUNG, and his Grandson's Grandson died childless:
so the heirship fell to us, as the biggest wig in the most benighted
Chancery would have to grant;--only the Kaiser will not, never would;
the Kaiser plants his armed self on Schlesien, and will hear no
pleading. Jagerndorf too, which we purchased with our own money---No
more of that; it is too miserable! Very impossible too, while we have
Berg and Julich in the wind!--
At Liegnitz, Friedrich Wilhelm "reviews the garrison, cavalry and
infantry," before starting; then off for Glatz, some sixty miles before
we can dine. The goal is towards Bohemia, all this while; and his
Majesty, had he liked the mountain-passes, and unlevel ways of the Giant
Mountains, might have found a shorter road and a much more picturesque
one. Road abounding in gloomy valleys, intricate rock-labyrinths, haunts
of Sprite RUBEZAHL, sources of the Elbe and I know not what. Majesty
likes level roads, and interesting rock-labyrinths built by man rather
than by Nature. Majesty makes a wide sweep round to the east of all
that; leaves the Giant Mountains, and their intricacies, as a blue
Sierra far on his right,--had rather see Glatz Fortress than the caverns
of the Elbe; and will cross into Bohemia, where the Hills are fallen
lowest. At Glatz during dinner, numerous Nobilities are again in
waiting. Glatz is in Jagerndorf region; Jagerndorf, which we purchased
with our own money, is and remains ours, in spite of the mishaps of the
Thirty-Years War;--OURS, the darkest Chancery would be obliged to
say, from under the immensest wig! Patience, your Majesty; Time brings
roses!--
From Glatz, after viewing the works, drilling the guard a little, not to
speak of dining, and despatching the Nobilities, his Majesty takes
the road again; turns now abruptly westward, across the Hills at their
lowest point; into Bohemia, which is close at hand. Lewin, Nachod,
these are the Bohemian villages, with their remnant of Czechs; not a
prosperous population to look upon: but it is the Kaiser's own
Kingdom: "King of Bohemia" one of his Titles ever since Sigismund
SUPER-GRAMMATICAM'S time. And here now, at the meeting of the waters
(Elbe one of them, a brawling mountain-stream) is Jaromierz, respectable
little Town, with an Imperial Officiality in it,--where the Official
Gentlemen meet us all in gala, "Thrice welcome to this Kingdom, your
Majesty!"--and signify that they are to wait upon us henceforth, while
we do the Kaiser's Kingdom of Bohemia that honor.
It is Tuesday night, 29th July, this first night in Bohemia. The
Official Gentlemen lead his Majesty to superb rooms, new-hung with
crimson velvet, and the due gold fringes and tresses,--very grand
indeed; but probably not so airy as we wish. "This is the way the Kaiser
lodges in his journeys; and your Majesty is to be served like him." The
goal of our journey is now within few miles. Wednesday, 30th July, 1732,
his Majesty awakens again, within these crimson-velvet hangings with
the gold tresses and fringes, not so airy as he could wish; despatches
Grumkow to the Kaiser, who is not many miles off, to signify what honor
we would do ourselves.
It was on Saturday last that the Kaiser and Kaiserinn, returning
from Karlsbad, illuminated Prag with their serene presence; "attended
high-mass, vespers," and a good deal of other worship, as the meagre old
Newspapers report for us, on that and the Sunday following. And then,
"on Monday, at six in the morning," both the Majesties left Prag, for
a place called Chlumetz, southwestward thirty miles off, in the Elbe
region, where they have a pretty Hunting Castle; Kaiser intending
"sylvan sport for a few days," says the old rag of a Newspaper, "and
then to return to Prag." It is here that Grumkow, after a pleasant
morning's drive of thirty miles with the sun on his back, finds Kaiser
Karl VI.; and makes his announcements, and diplomatic inquiries what
next.
Had Friedrich Wilhelm been in Potsdam or Wusterhausen, and heard that
Kaiser Karl was within thirty miles of him, Friedrich Wilhelm would have
cried, with open arms, Come, come! But the Imperial Majesty is otherwise
hampered; has his rhadamanthine Aulic Councillors, in vast amplitude of
wig, sternly engaged in study of the etiquettes: they have settled
that the meeting cannot be in Chlumetz; lest it might lead to
night's lodgings, and to intricacies. "Let it be at Kladrup," say the
Ample-wigged; Kladrup, an Imperial Stud, or Horse-Farm, half a dozen
miles from this; where there is room for nothing more than dinner. There
let the meeting be, to-morrow at a set hour; and, in the mean time, we
will take precautions for the etiquettes. So it is settled, and Grumkow
returns with the decision in a complimentary form.
Through Konigsgratz, down the right bank of the Upper Elbe, on the
morrow morning, Thursday, 31st July, 1732, Friedrich Wilhelm rushes on
towards Kladrup; finds that little village, with the Horse-edifices,
looking snug enough in the valley of Elbe;--alights, welcomed by Prince
Eugenio von Savoye, with word that the Kaiser is not come, but steadily
expected soon. Prinoe Eugenio von Savoye: ACH GOTT, it is another thing,
your Highness, than when we met in the Flanders Wars, long since;--at
Malplaquet that morning, when your Highness had been to Brussels,
visiting your Lady Mother in case of the worst! Slightly grayer your
Highness is grown; I too am nothing like so nimble; the great Duke, poor
man, is dead!--Prince Eugenio von Savoye, we need not doubt, took snuff,
and answered in a sprightly appropriate manner.
Kladrup is a Country House as well as a Horse-Farm: a square court is
the interior, as I gather; the Horse-buildings at a reverent distance
forming the fourth side. In the centre of this court,--see what a
contrivance the Aulic Councillors have hit upon,--there is a wooden
stand built, with three staircases leading up to it, one for each
person, and three galleries leading off from it into suites of rooms: no
question of precedence here, where each of you has his own staircase
and own gallery to his apartment! Friedrich Wilhelm looks down like
a rhinoceros on all those cobwebberies. No sooner are the Kaiser's
carriage-wheels heard within the court, than Friedrich Wilhelm rushes
down, by what staircase is readiest; forward to the very carriage-door;
and flings his arms about the Kaiser, embracing and embraced, like mere
human friends glad to see one another. On these terms, they mount the
wooden stand, Majesty of Prussia, Kaiser, Kaiserinn, each by his own
staircase; see, for a space of two hours, the Kaiser's foals and horses
led about,--which at least fills up any gap in conversation that may
threaten to occur. The Kaiser, a little man of high and humane air, is
not bright in talk; the Empress, a Brunswick Princess of fine carriage,
Grand-daughter of old Anton Ulrich who wrote the Novels, is likewise
of mute humor in public life; but old Nord-Teutschland, cradle of one's
existence; Brunswick reminiscences; news of your Imperial Majesty's
serene Father, serene Sister, Brother-in-law the Feldmarschall
and Insipid Niece whom we have had the satisfaction to betroth
lately,--furnish small-talk where needful.
Dinner being near, you go by your own gallery to dress. From the
drawing-room, Friedrich Wilhelm leads out the Kaiserinn; the Kaiser, as
Head of the world, walks first, though without any lady. How they drank
the healths, gave and received the ewers and towels, is written duly in
the old Books, but was as indifferent to Friedrich Wilhelm as it is to
us; what their conversation was, let no man presume to ask. Dullish, we
should apprehend,--and perhaps BETTER lost to us? But where there are
tongues, there are topics: the Loom of Time wags always, and with it the
tongues of men. Kaiser and Kaiserinn have both been in Karlsbad lately;
Kaiser and Kaiserinn both have sailed to Spain, in old days, and been in
sieges and things memorable: Friedrich Wilhelm, solid Squire Western
of the North, does not want for topics, and talks as a solid rustic
gentleman will. Native politeness he knows on occasion; to etiquette, so
far as concerns his own pretensions, he feels callous altogether,--dimly
sensible that the Eighteenth Century is setting in, and that solid
musketeers and not goldsticks are now the important thing. "I felt mad
to see him so humiliate himself," said Grumkow afterwards to Wilhelmina,
"J'ENRAGEAIS DANS MA PEAU:" why not?
Dinner lasted two hours; the Empress rising, Friedrich Wilhelm leads her
to her room; then retires to his own, and "in a quarter of an hour"
is visited there by the Kaiser; "who conducts him," in so many minutes
exact by the watch, "back to the Empress,"--for a sip of coffee, as one
hopes; which may wind up the Interview well. The sun is still a good
space from setting, when Friedrich Wilhelm, after cordial adieus,
neglectful of etiquette, is rolling rapidly towards Nimburg, thirty
miles off on the Prag Highway; and Kaiser Karl with his Spouse move
deliberately towards Chlumetz to hunt again. In Nimburg Friedrich
Wilhelm sleeps, that night;--Imperial Majesties, in a much-tumbled
world, of wild horses, ceremonial ewers, and Eugenios of Savoy and
Malplaquet, probably peopling his dreams. If it please Heaven, there may
be another private meeting, a day or two hence.
Nimburg, ah your Majesty, Son Fritz will have a night in Nimburg
too;--riding slowly thither amid the wrecks of Kolin Battle, not to
sleep well;--but that happily is hidden from your Majesty. Kolin,
Czaslau (Chotusitz), Elbe Teinitz,--here in this Kladrup region, your
Majesty is driving amid poor Villages which will be very famous by and
by. And Prag itself will be doubly famed in war, if your Majesty
knew it, and the Ziscaberg be of bloodier memory than the Weissenberg
itself!--His Majesty, the morrow's sun having risen upon Nimburg, rolls
into Prag successfully about eleven A.M., Hill of Zisca not disturbing
him; goes to the Klein-Seite Quarter, where an Aulic Councillor with
fine Palace is ready; all the cannon thundering from the walls at his
Majesty's advent; and Prince Eugenio, the ever-present, being there to
receive his Majesty,--and in fact to invite him to dinner this day at
half-past twelve. It is Friday, 1st of August, 1732.
By a singular chance, there is preserved for us in Fassmann's Book, what
we may call an Excerpt from the old _Morning Post_ of Prag, bringing
that extinct Day into clear light again; recalling the vanished
Dinner-Party from the realms of Hades, as a thing that once actually
WAS. The List of the Dinner-guests is given complete; vanished ghosts,
whom, in studying the old History-Books, you can, with a kind of
interest, fish up into visibility at will. There is Prince Eugenio von
Savoye at the bottom of the table, in the Count-Thun Palace where he
lodges; there bodily, the little man, in gold-laced coat of unknown cut;
the eyes and the tempers bright and rapid, as usual, or more; nose not
unprovided with snuff, and lips in consequence rather open. Be seated,
your Majesty, high gentlemen all.
A big chair-of-state stands for his Majesty at the upper end of the
table: his Majesty will none of it; sits down close by Prince Eugene at
the very bottom, and opposite Prince Alexander of Wurtemberg, whom we
had at Berlin lately, a General of note in the Turkish and other wars:
here probably there will be better talk; and the big chair may preside
over us in vacancy. Which it does. Prince Alexander, Imperial General
against the Turks, and Heir-Apparent of Wurtemberg withal, can speak of
many things,--hardly much of his serene Cousin the reigning Duke; whose
health is in a too interesting state, the good though unlucky man.
Of the Gravenitz sitting now in limbo, or travelling about disowned,
TOUJOURS UN LAVEMENT SES TROUSSES, let there be deep silence. But the
Prince Alexander can answer abundantly on other heads. He comes to his
inheritance a few months hence; actual reigning Duke, the poor serene
Cousin having died: and perhaps we shall meet, him transiently again.
He is Ancestor of the Czars of Russia, this Prince Alexander, who is now
dining here in the body, along with Friedrich Wilhelm and Prince
Eugene: Paul of Russia, unbeautiful Paul, married the second time, from
Mumpelgard (what the French call Montbeillard, in Alsace), a serene
Grand-daughter of his, from whom come the Czars,--thanks to her or
not. Prince Alexander is Ancestor withal of our present "Kings of
Wurtemberg," if that mean anything: Father (what will mean something) to
the serene Duke, still in swaddling-clothes, [Born 21st January,
1732; Carl Eugen the name of him (Michaelis, iii. 450).] who will
be son-in-law to Princess Wilhelmina of Baireuth (could your Majesty
foresee it); and will do strange pranks in the world, upon poet Schiller
and others. Him too, and Brothers of his, were they born and become
of size, we shall meet. A noticeable man, and not without sense, this
Prince Alexander; who is now of a surety eating with us,--as we find by
the extinct _Morning Post_ in Fassmann's old Book.
Of the others eating figures, Stahrembergs, Sternbergs, Kinsky
Ambassador to England, Kinsky Ambassador to France, high Austrian
dignitaries, we shall say nothing;--who would listen to us? Hardly can
the Hof-Kanzler Count von Sinzendorf, supreme of Aulic men, who holds
the rudder of Austrian State-Policy, and probably feels himself loaded
with importance beyond most mortals now eating here or elsewhere,--gain
the smallest recognition from oblivious English readers of our time. It
is certain he eats here on this occasion; and to his Majesty he does not
want for importance. His Majesty, intent on Julich and Berg and other
high matters, spends many hours next day, in earnest private dialogue
with him. We mention farther, with satisfaction, that Grumkow and
Ordnance-Master Seckendorf are both on the list, and all our Prussian
party, down to Hacke of the Potsdam grenadiers, friend Schulenburg
visibly eating among the others. Also that the dinner was glorious
(HERRLICH), and ended about five. [Fassmann, p. 474.] After which his
Majesty went to two evening parties, of a high order, in the Hradschin
Quarter or elsewhere; cards in the one (unless you liked to dance, or
grin idle talk from you), and supper in the other.
His Majesty amused himself for four other days in Prag, interspersing
long earnest dialogues with Sinzendorf, with whom he spent the greater
part of Saturday, [Pollnitz, ii. 411.]--results as to Julion and Berg of
a rather cloudy nature. On Saturday came the Kaiser, too, and Kaiserinn,
to their high Nouse, the Schloss in Prag; and there occurred, in the
incognito form, "as if by accident," three visits or counter-visits, two
of them of some length. The King went dashing about; saw, deliberately
or in glimpses, all manner of things,--from "the Military Hospital" to
"the Tongue of St. Nepomuk" again. Nepomuk, an imaginary Saint of those
parts; pitched into the Moldau, as is fancied and fabled, by wicked King
Wenzel (King and Deposed-Kaiser, whom we have heard of), for speaking
and refusing to speak; Nepomuk is now become the Patron of Bridges, in
consequence; stands there in bronze on the Bridge of Prag; and still
shows a dried Tongue in the world: [_Die Legende vom heiligen Johann von
Nepomuk, _von D. Otto Abel (Berlin, 1855); an acute bit of
Historical Criticism.] this latter, we expressly find, his Majesty saw.
On Sunday, his Majesty, nothing of a strait-laced man, attended divine
or quasi-divine worship in the Cathedral Church,--where high Prince
Bishops delivered PALLIUMS, did histrionisms; "manifested the ABSURDITAT
of Papistry" more or less. Coming out of the Church, he was induced to
step in and see the rooms of the Schloss, or Imperial Palace. In one of
the rooms, as if by accident, the Kaiser was found lounging:--"Extremely
delighted to see your Majesty!"--and they had the first of their long or
considerable dialogues together; purport has not transpired. The second
considerable dialogue was on the morrow, when Imperial Majesty, as if
by accident, found himself in the Count-Nostitz Palace, where Friedrich
Wilhelm lodges. Delighted to be so fortunate again! Hope your Majesty
likes Prag? Eternal friendship, OH JA:--and as to Julich and Berg?
Particulars have not transpired.
Prag is a place full of sights: his Majesty, dashing about in
all quarters, has a busy time; affairs of state (Julich and Berg
principally) alternating with what we now call the LIONS. Zisca's
drum, for instance, in the Arsenal here? Would your Majesty wish to see
Zisca's own skin, which he bequeathed to be a drum when HE had done
with it?"NARRENPOSSEN!"--for indeed the thing is fabulous, though in
character with Zisca. Or the Council-Chamber window, out of which "the
Three Prag Projectiles fell into the Night of things," as a modern
Historian expresses it? Three Official Gentlemen, flung out one
morning, [13th (23d) May, 1618 (Kohler, p. 507).] 70 feet, but fell on
"sewerage," and did not die, but set the whole world on fire? That is
too certain, as his Majesty knows: that brought the crowning of the
Winter-King, Battle of the Weissenberg, Thirty-Years War; and lost us
Jagerndorf and much else.
Or Wallenstein's Palace,--did your Majesty look at that? A thing worth
glancing at, on the score of History and even of Natural-History. That
rugged son of steel and gunpowder could not endure the least noise in
his sleeping-room or even sitting-room,--a difficulty in the soldiering
way of life;--and had, if I remember, one hundred and thirty houses torn
away in Prag, and sentries posted all round in the distance, to secure
silence for his much-meditating indignant soul. And yonder is the
Weissenberg, conspicuous in the western suburban region: and here in the
eastern, close by, is the Ziscaberg;--O Heaven, your Majesty, on
this Zisca-Hill will be a new "Battle of Prag," which will throw the
Weissenberg into eclipse; and there is awful fighting coming on in these
parts again!
The THIRD of the considerable dialogues in Prag was on this same Monday
night; when his Majesty went to wait upon the Kaiserinn, and the Kaiser
soon accidentally joined them. Precious gracious words passed;--on Berg
and Julich nothing particular, that we hear;--and the High Personages,
with assurances of everlasting friendship, said adieu; and met no
more in this world. On his toilet-table Friedrich Wilhelm found a gold
Tobacco-box, sent by the highest Lady extant; gold Tobacco-box, item
gold Tobacco-stopper or Pipe-picker: such the parting gifts of her
Imperial Majesty. Very precious indeed, and grateful to the honest
heart;--yet testifying too (as was afterwards suggested to the royal
mind) what these high people think of a rustic Orson King; and how they
fling their nose into the air over his Tabagies and him.
On the morrow morning early, Friedrich Wilhelm rolls away again
homewards, by Karlsbad, by Baireuth; all the cannon of Prag saying
thrice, Good speed to him. "He has had a glorious time," said the Berlin
Court-lady to Queen Sophie one evening, "no end of kindness from
the Imperial Majesties: but has he brought Berg and Julich in his
pocket?"--Alas, not a fragment of them; nor of any solid thing whatever,
except it be the gold Tobacco-box; and the confirmation of our claims
on East-Friesland (cheap liberty to let us vindicate them if we can),
if you reckon that a solid thing. These two Imperial gifts, such as they
are, he has consciously brought back with him;--and perhaps, though as
yet unconsciously, a third gift of much more value, once it is developed
into clearness: some dim trace of insight into the no-meaning of these
high people; and how they consider US as mere Orsons and wild Bisons,
whom they will do the honor to consume as provision, if we behave well!
The great King Friedrich, now Crown-Prince at Ruppin, writing of this
Journey long afterwards,--hastily, incorrectly, as his wont is, in
regard to all manner of minute outward particulars; and somewhat
maltreating, or at least misplacing, even the inward meaning, which was
well known to him WITHOUT investigation, but which he is at no trouble
to DATE for himself, and has dated at random,--says, in his thin rapid
way, with much polished bitterness:--
"His [King Friedrich Wilhelm's] experience on this occasion served to
prove that good-faith and the virtues, so contrary to the corruption of
the age, do not succeed in it. Politicians have banished sincerity (LA
CANDEUR) into private life: they look upon themselves as raised quite
above the laws which they enjoin on other people; and give way without
reserve to the dictates of their own depraved mind.
"The guaranty of Julich and Berg, which Seckendorf had formally
promised in the name of the Emperor, went off in smoke; and the Imperial
Ministers were in a disposition so opposed to Prussia, the King saw
clearly [not for some years yet] that if there was a Court in Europe
intending to cross his interests, it was certainly that of Vienna. This
Visit of his to the Emperor was like that of Solon to Croesus [Solon not
I recognizable, in the grenadier costume, amid the tobacco-smoke, and
dim accompaniments?]--and he returned to Berlin, rich still in his own
virtue. The most punctilious censors could find no fault in his conduct,
except a probity carried to excess. The Interview ended as those of
Kings often do: it cooled [not for some time yet], or, to say better,
it extinguished the friendship there had been between the two Courts.
Friedrich Wilhelm left Prag full of contempt [dimly, altogether
unconsciously, tending to have some contempt, and in the end to be full
of it] for the deceitfulness and pride of the Imperial Court: and the
Emperor's Ministers disdained a Sovereign who looked without interest on
frivolous ceremonials and precedences. Him they considered too ambitious
in aiming at the Berg-and-Julich succession: them he regarded [came to
regard] as a pack of knaves, who had broken their word, and were not
punished for it."
Very bitter, your Majesty; and, in all but the dates, true enough.
But what a drop of concentrated absinthe follows next, by way of
finish,--which might itself have corrected the dating!
"In spite of so many subjects of discontent, the King wedded his Eldest
Son [my not too fortunate self], out of complaisance to the
Vienna Court, with a Princess of Brunswick-Bevern, Niece to the
Empress:"--bitter fact; necessitating change of date in the paragraphs
just written. [_OEuvres de Frederic (Memoires de Brandenbourg),_ i. 162,
163.]
Friedrich Wilhelm, good soul, cherishes the Imperial gifts, Tobacco-box
included;--claps the Arms of East-Friesland on his escutcheon; will take
possession of Friesland, if the present Duke die heirless, let George of
England say what he will. And so he rolls homeward, by way of Baireuth.
He stayed but a short while in Karlsbad; has warned his Wilhelmina that
he will be at Baireuth on the 9th of the month. [Wilhelmina, ii. 55.]
Wilhelmina is very poorly; "near her time," as wives say; rusticating
in "the Hermitage," a Country-House in the vicinity of Baireuth; Husband
and Father-in-law gone away, towards the Bohemian frontier, to hunt
boars. Oh, the bustle and the bother that high Lady had; getting her
little Country House stretched out to the due pitch to accommodate
everybody,--especially her foolish Sister of Anspach and foolish
Brother-in-law and suite,--with whom, by negligence of servants and
otherwise, there had like to have risen incurable quarrel on the matter.
But the dexterous young Wife, gladdest; busiest and weakliest of hopeful
creatures, contrived to manage everything, like a Female Fieldmarshal,
as she was. Papa was delighted; bullied the foolish Anspach people,--or
would have done so, had not I intervened, that the matter might die.
Papa was gracious, happy; very anxious about me in my interesting state.
"Thou hast lodged me to perfection, good Wilhelmina. Here I find my
wooden stools, tubs to wash in; all things as if I were at Potsdam:--a
good girl; and thou must take care of thyself, my child (MEIN KIND)."
At dinner, his Majesty, dreading no ill, but intent only on the
practical, got into a quiet, but to me most dreadful, lecture to the old
Margraf (my Father-in-law) upon debt and money and arrears: How he, the
Margraf, was cheated at every turn, and led about by the nose, and
kept weltering in debt: how he should let the young Margraf go into the
Offices, to supervise, and withal to learn tax-matters and economics
betimes. How he (Friedrich Wilhelm) would send him a fellow from Berlin
who understood such things, and would drill his scoundrels for him!
To which the old Margraf, somewhat flushed in the face, made some
embarrassed assent, knowing it in fact to be true; and accepted the
Berlin man:--but he made me (his poor Daughter-in-law) smart for
it afterwards: "Not quite dead YET, Madam; you will have to wait a
little!"--and other foolish speech; which required to be tempered down
again by a judicious female mind.
Grumkow himself was pleasant on this occasion; told us of Kladrup, the
Prag etiquettes; and how he was like to go mad seeing his Majesty so
humiliate himself. Fraulein Grumkow, a niece of his, belonging to the
Austrian court, who is over here with the rest, a satirical intriguing
baggage, she, I privately perceive, has made a conquest of my foolish
Brother-in-law, the Anspach Margraf here;--and there will be jealousies,
and a cat-and-dog life over yonder, worse than ever! Tush, why should
we talk?--These are the phenomena at Baireuth; Husband and Father-in-law
having quitted their boar-hunt and hurried home.
After three days, Friedrich Wilhelm rolled away again; lodged, once
more, at Meuselwitz, with abstruse Seckendorf, and his good old Wife,
who do the hospitalities well when they must, in spite of the single
candle once visible. On the morrow after which, 14th August, 1732,
his Majesty is off again, "at four in the morning," towards Leipzig,
intending to be home that night, though it is a long drive. At Leipzig,
not to waste time, he declines entering the Town; positively will not,
though the cannon-salvos are booming all round;--"breakfasts in the
suburbs, with a certain Horse-dealer (ROSS-HANDLER) now deceased:" a
respectable Centaur, capable, no doubt, of bargaining a little about
cavalry mountings, while one eats, with appetite and at one's ease.
Which done, Majesty darts off again, the cannon-salvos booming out a
second time;--and by assiduous driving gets home to Potsdam about eight
at night. And so has happily ENDED this Journey to Kladrup: [Fassmann,
pp. 474-479; Wilhelmina, ii. 46-55; Pollnitz, ii. 407-412; Forster, i.
328-334.]
Chapter V. -- GHOST OF THE DOUBLE-MARRIAGE RISES; TO NO PURPOSE.
We little expected to see the "Double-Marriage" start up into vitality
again, at this advanced stage; or, of all men, Seckendorf, after riding
25,000 miles to kill the Double-Marriage, engaged in resuscitating it!
But so it is: by endless intriguing, matchless in History or Romance,
the Austrian Court had, at such expense to the parties and to itself,
achieved the first problem of stifling the harmless Double-Marriage;
and now, the wind having changed, it is actually trying its hand the
opposite way.
Wind is changed: consummate Robinson has managed to do his
thrice-salutary "Treaty of Vienna;" [16th March, 1731, the TAIL of it
(accession of the Dutch, of Spain, &c.) not quite coiled up till 20th
February, 1732: Scholl, i. 218-222.] to clout up all differences
between the Sea-Powers and the Kaiser, and restore the old Law of
Nature,--Kaiser to fight the French, Sea-Powers to feed and pay him
while engaged in that necessary job. And now it would be gratifying
to the Kaiser, if there remained, on this side of the matter, no rent
anywhere, if between his chief Sea ally and his chief Land one,
the Britannic Majesty and the Prussian, there prevailed a complete
understanding, with no grudge left.
The honor of this fine resuscitation project is ascribed to Robinson by
the Vienna people: "Robinson's suggestion," they always say: how far
it was, or whether at all it was or not, nobody at present knows. Guess
rather, if necessary, it had been the Kaiser's own! Robinson, as the
thing proceeds, is instructed from St. James's to "look on and not
interfere;" [Despatches, in State-Paper Office] Prince Eugene, too,
we can observe, is privately against it, though officially urgent, and
doing his best. Who knows,--or need know?
Enough that High Heads are set upon it; that the diplomatic wigs are all
wagging with it, from about the beginning of October, 1732; and rumors
are rife and eager, occasionally spurting out into the Newspapers:
Double-Marriage after all, hint the old Rumors: Double-Marriage somehow
or other; Crown-Prince to have his English Princess, Prince Fred of
England to console the Brunswick one for loss of her Crown-Prince; or
else Prince Karl of Brunswick to--And half a dozen other ways; which
Rumor cannot settle to its satisfaction. The whispers upon it, from
Hanover, from Vienna, at Berlin, and from the Diplomatic world in
general, occasionally whistling through the Newspapers, are manifold and
incessant,--not worthy of the least attention from us here. [Forster,
iii. 111, 120, 108, 113, 122.] What is certain is, Seckendorf, in the
end of October, is corresponding on it with Prince Eugene; has got
instructions to propose the matter in Tobacco-Parliament; and does
not like it at all. Grumkow, who perhaps has seen dangerous clouds
threatening to mount upon him, and never been quite himself again in the
Royal Mind since that questionable NOSTI business, dissuades earnestly,
constantly. "Nothing but mischief will come of such a proposal," says
Grumkow steadily; and for his own share absolutely declines concern in
it.
But Prince Eugene's orders are express; remonstrances, cunctations only
strengthen the determination of the High Heads or Head: Forward with
this beautiful scheme! Seckendorf, puckered into dangerous anxieties,
but summoning all his cunning, has at length, after six weeks'
hesitation, to open it, as if casually, in some favorable hour, to his
Prussian Majesty. December 5th, 1732, as we compute;--a kind of epoch in
his Majesty's life. Prussian Majesty stares wide-eyed; the breath as
if struck out of him; repeats, "Julich and Berg absolutely secured, say
you? But--hm, na!"--and has not yet taken in the unspeakable dimensions
of the occurrence. "What? Imperial Majesty will make me break my word
before all the world? Imperial Majesty has been whirling me about, face
now to the east, face straightway round to the west: Imperial Majesty
does not feel that I am a man and king at all; takes me for a mere
machine, to be seesawed and whirled hither and thither, like a rotatory
Clothes-horse, to dry his Imperial Majesty's linen upon. TAUSEND
HIMMEL--!"
The full dimensions of all this did not rise clear upon the intellect of
Prussian Majesty,--a slow intellect, but a true and deep, with terrible
earthquakes and poetic fires lying under it,--not at once, or for
months, perhaps years to come. But they had begun to dawn upon him
painfully here; they rose gradually into perfect clearness: all things
seen at last as what they were;--with huge submarine earthquake for
consequence, and total change of mind towards Imperial Majesty and the
drying of his Pragmatic linen, in Friedrich Wilhelm. Amiable Orson, true
to the heart; amiable, though terrible when too much put upon!
This dawning process went on for above two years to come, painfully,
reluctantly, with explosions, even with tears. But here, directly on the
back of Seckendorf's proposal, and recorded from a sure hand, is what
we may call the peep-of-day in that matter: First Session of
Tobacco-Parliament, close after that event. Event is on the 5th
December, 1732; Tobacco Session is of the 6th;--glimpse of it is given
by Speaker Grumkow himself; authentic to the bone.
SESSION OF TOBACCO-PARLIAMENT, 6th DECEMBER, 1732.
Grumkow, shattered into "headache" by this Session, writes Report of
it to Seckendorf before going to bed. Look, reader, into one of the
strangest Political Establishments; and how a strange Majesty comports
himself there, directly after such proposal from Vienna to marry with
England still!--"Schwerin" is incidentally in from Frankfurt-on-Oder,
where his Regiment and business usually lie: the other Honorable Members
we sufficiently know. Majesty has been a little out of health lately;
perceptibly worse the last two days. "Syberg" is a Gold-cook (Alchemical
gentleman, of very high professions), came to Berlin some time ago;
whom his Majesty, after due investigation, took the liberty to hang.
[Forster, iii. 126.] Readers can now understand what speaker Grumkow
writes, and despatches by his lackey, in such haste:--
"I never saw such a scene as this evening. Derschau, Schwerin,
Buddenbrock, Rochow, Flanz were present. We had been about an hour in
the Red Room [languidly doing our tobacco off and on], when he [the
King] had us shifted into the Little Room: drove out the servants; and
cried, looking fixedly at me: 'No, I cannot endure it any longer! ES
STOSSET MIR DAS HERZ AB,' cried he, breaking into German: 'It crushes
the heart out of me; to make me do a bit of scoundrelism, me, me! I say;
no, never! Those damned intrigues; may the Devil take them!'--
"EGO (Grumkow). 'Of course, I know of nothing. But I do not comprehend
your Majesty's inquietude, coming thus on the sudden, after our common
indifferent mood.'
"KING. 'What, make me a villain! I will tell it right out. Certain
damned scoundrels have been about betraying me. People that should
have known me better have been trying to lead me into a dishonorable
scrape'--("Here I called in the hounds, JE ROMPIS LES CHIENS," reports
Grumkow, "for he was going to blab everything; I interrupted, saying):--
"EGO. 'But, your Majesty, what is it ruffles you so? I know not what you
talk of. Your Majesty has honorable people about you; and the man
who lets himself be employed in things against your Majesty must be a
traitor.'
"KING. 'Yes, JA, JA. I will do things that will surprise them. I--'
"And, in short, a torrent of exclamations: which I strove to soften
by all manner of incidents and contrivances; succeeding at last,"--by
dexterity and time (but, at this point, the light is now blown out, and
we SEE no more):--"so that he grew quite calm again, and the rest of the
evening passed gently enough.
"Well, you see what the effect of your fine Proposal is, which you said
he would like! I can tell you, it is the most detestable incident that
could have turned up. I know, you had your orders: but you may believe
and depend on it, he has got his heart driven rabid by the business, and
says, 'Who knows now whether that villain Syberg' Gold-cook, that was
hanged the other day, 'was not set on by some people to poison me?' In a
word, he was like a madman.
"What struck me most was when he repeated, 'Only think! Think! Who would
have expected it of people that should have known me; and whom I
know, and have known, better than they fancy!'"--Pleasant passage for
Seckendorf to chew the cud upon, through the night-watches!
"In fine, as I was somewhat confused; and anxious, above all, to keep
him from exploding with the secret, I cannot remember everything, But
Derschau, who was more at his ease, will be able to give you a full
account. He [the King] said more than once: 'THIS was his sickness; the
thing that ailed him, this: it gnawed his heart, and would be the
death of him!' He certainly did not affect; he was in a very
convulsive condition. [JARNI-BLEU, here is a piece of work, Herr
Seckendorf!]--Adieu, I have a headache." Whereupon to bed.
"GRUMKOW."
[Forster, iii. 135, 136.]
This Hansard Report went off direct to Prince Eugene; and ought to have
been a warning to the high Vienna heads and him. But they persisted
not the less to please Robinson or themselves; considering his Prussian
Majesty to be, in fact, a mere rotatory Clothes-horse for drying the
Imperial linen on; and to have no intellect at all, because he was
without guile, and had no vulpinism at all. In which they were very much
mistaken indeed. History is proud to report that the guileless Prussian
Majesty, steadily attending to his own affairs in a wise manner, though
hoodwinked and led about by Black-Artists as he had been, turned out
when Fact and Nature subsequently pronounced upon it, to have had more
intellect than the whole of them together,--to have been, in a manner,
the only one of them that had any real "intellect," or insight into Fact
and Nature, at all. Consummate Black-art Diplomacies overnetting the
Universe, went entirely to water, running down the gutters to the last
drop; and a prosperous Drilled Prussia, compact, organic in every part,
from diligent plough-sock to shining bayonet and iron ramrod, remained
standing. "A full Treasury and 200,000 well-drilled men would be the one
guarantee to your Pragmatic Sanction," Prince Eugene had said. But that
bit of insight was not accepted at Vienna; Black-art, and Diplomatic
spider-webs from pole to pole, being thought the preferable method.
Enough, Seckendorf was ordered to manipulate and soothe down the
Prussian Majesty, as surely would be easy; to continue his galvanic
operations on the Double-Match, or produce a rotation in the purposes of
the royal breast. Which he diligently strove to do, when once admitted
to speech again;--Grumkow steadily declining to meddle, and only Queen
Sophie, as we can fancy, auguring joyfully of it. Seckendorf, admitted
to speech the third day after that explosive Session, snuffles his
softest, his cunningest;--continues to ride diligently, the concluding
portion (such it proved) of his 25,000 miles with the Prussian Majesty
up and down through winter and spring; but makes not the least progress,
the reverse rather.
Their dialogues and arguings on the matter, here and elsewhere, are lost
in air; or gone wholly to a single point unexpectedly preserved for us.
One day, riding through some village, Priort some say his Majesty calls
it, some give another name,--advocate Seckendorf, in the fervor of
pleading and arguing, said some word, which went like a sudden flash of
lightning through the dark places of his Majesty's mind, and never would
go out of it again while he lived after. In passionate moments, his
Majesty spoke of it sometimes, a clangorous pathos in his tones, as of
a thing hideous, horrible, never to be forgotten, which had killed
him,--death from a friend's hand. "It was the 17th of April, 1733, [All
the Books (Forster, ii. 142, for one) mention this utterance of his
Majesty, on what occasion we shall see farther on; and give the date
"1732," not 1733: but except as amended above, it refuses to have any
sense visible at this distance. The Village of Priort is in the Potsdam
region.] riding through Priort, a man said something to me: it was as if
you had turned a dagger about in my heart. That man was he that killed
me; there and then I got my death!"
A strange passion in that utterance: the deep dumb soul of his Majesty,
of dumb-poetic nature, suddenly brought to a fatal clearness about
certain things. "O Kaiser, Kaiser of the Holy Roman Empire; and this is
your return for my loyal faith in you? I had nearly killed my Fritz, my
Wilhelmina, broken my Feekin's heart and my own, and reduced the world
to ruins for your sake. And because I was of faith more than human, you
took me for a dog? O Kaiser, Kaiser!"--Poor Friedrich Wilhelm, he spoke
of this often, in excited moments, in his later years; the tears running
down his cheeks, and the whole man melted into tragic emotion: but if
Fritz were there, the precious Fritz whom he had almost killed for their
sake, he would say, flashing out into proud rage, "There is one that
will avenge me, though; that one! DA STEHT EINER, DER MICH RACHEN
WIRD!" [Forster, ii. 153.] Yes, your Majesty; perhaps that one. And it
will be seen whether YOU were a rotatory Clothes-horse to dry their
Pragmatic linen upon, or something different a good deal.
Chapter VI. -- KING AUGUST MEDITATING GREAT THINGS FOR POLAND.
In the New-year's days of 1733, the topic among diplomatic gentlemen,
which set many big wigs wagging, and even tremulously came out in the
gray leaves of gazetteers and garreteers of the period, was a royal
drama, dimly supposed to be getting itself up in Poland at this time.
Nothing known about it for certain; much guessed. "Something in the
rumor!" nods this wig; "Nothing!" wags that, slightly oscillating; and
gazetteers, who would earn their wages, and have a peck of coals apiece
to glad them in the cold weather, had to watch with all eagerness the
movements of King August, our poor old friend, the Dilapidated-Strong,
who is in Saxony at present; but bound for Warsaw shortly,--just about
lifting the curtain on important events, it is thought and not thought.
Here are the certainties of it, now clear enough, so far as they deserve
a glance from us.
January 10th, 1733, August the Dilapidated-Strong of Poland has been in
Saxony, looking after his poor Electorate a little; and is on the road
from Dresden homewards again;--will cross a corner of the Prussian
Dominions, as his wont is on such occasions. Prussian Majesty, if not
appearing in person, will as usual, by some Official of rank, send a
polite Well-speed-you as the brother Majesty passes. This time, however,
it was more than politeness; the Polish Majesty having, as was thought,
such intricate affairs in the wind. Let Grumkow, the fittest man in all
ways, go, and do the greeting to his old Patroon: greeting, or whatever
else may be needed.
Patroon left Dresden,--"having just opened the Carnival" or fashionable
Season there, opened and nothing more,--January 10th, 1733; [Fassmann,
_Leben Friedrich Augusti des Grossen,_ p. 994.] being in haste home
for a Polish Diet close at hand. On which same day Grumkow, we suppose,
drives forth from Berlin, to intersect him, in the Neumark, about
Crossen; and have a friendly word again, in those localities, over jolly
wine. Intersection took place duly;--there was exuberant joy on the part
of the Patroon; and such a dinner and night of drinking, as has seldom
been. Abstruse things lie close ahead of August the Dilapidated-Strong,
important to Prussia, and for which Prussia is important; let Grumkow
try if he can fish the matter into clearness out of these wine-cups. And
then August, on his side, wishes to know what the Kaiser said at Kladrup
lately; there is much to be fished into clearness.
Many are the times August the Strong has made this journey; many are
the carousals, on such and other occasions, Grumkow and he have had.
But there comes an end to all things. This was their last meeting, over
flowing liquor or otherwise, in the world. Satirical History says,
they drank all night, endeavoring to pump one another, and with such
enthusiasm that they never recovered it; drank themselves to death
at Crossen on that occasion. [_OEuvres de Frederic (Memoires de
Brandenbourg),_ i. 163.] It is certain August died within three weeks;
and people said of Grumkow, who lived six years longer, he was never
well after this bout. Is it worth any human Creature's while to look
into the plans of this precious pair of individuals? Without the least
expense of drinking, the secrets they were pumping out of each other are
now accessible enough,--if it were of importance now. One glance I may
perhaps commend to the reader, out of these multifarious Note-books in
my possession:--
"August, by change of his religion, and other sad operations, got to be
what they called the King of Poland, thirty five years ago; but,
though looking glorious to the idle public, it has been a crown of
stinging-nettles to the poor man,--a sedan-chair running on rapidly,
with the bottom broken out! To say nothing of the scourgings he got,
and poor Saxony along with him, from Charles XII., on account of this
Sovereignty so called, what has the thing itself been to him? In Poland,
for these thirty-five years, the individual who had least of his real
will done in public matters has been, with infinite management, and
display of such good-humor as at least deserves credit, the nominal
Sovereign Majesty of Poland. Anarchic Grandees have been kings over him;
ambitious, contentious, unmanageable;--very fanatical too, and never
persuaded that August's Apostasy was more than a sham one, not even when
he made his Prince apostatize too. Their Sovereignty has been a mere
peck of troubles, disgraces and vexations: for those thirty-five
years, an ever-boiling pot of mutiny, contradiction, insolence, hardly
tolerable even to such nerves as August's.
"August, for a long time back, has been thinking of schemes to clap
some lid upon all that. To make the Sovereignty hereditary in his House:
that, with the good Saxon troops we have, would be a remedy;--and in
fact it is the only remedy. John Casimir (who abdicated long ago, in
the Great Elector's time, and went to Paris,--much charmed with Ninon
de l'Enclos there) told the Polish Diets, With their LIBERUM VETO, and
'right of confederation' and rebellion, they would bring the country
down under the feet of mankind, and reduce their Republic to zero one
day, if they persisted. They have not failed to persist. With some
hereditary King over it, and a regulated Saxony to lean upon: truly
might it not be a change to the better? To the worse, it could hardly
be, thinks August the Strong; and goes intent upon that method, this
long while back;--and at length hopes now, in few days longer, at the
Diet just assembling, to see fruits appear, and the thing actually
begin.
"The difficulties truly are many; internal and external:--but there
are calculated methods, too. For the internal: Get up, by bribery,
persuasion, some visible minority to countenance you; with these
manoeuvre in the Diets; on the back of these, the 30,000 Saxon troops.
But then what will the neighboring Kings say? The neighboring Kings,
with their big-mouthed manifestoes, pities for an oppressed Republic,
overwhelming forces, and invitations to 'confederate' and revolt:
without their tolerance first had, nothing can be done. That is the
external difficulty. For which too there is a remedy. Cut off sufficient
outlying slices of Poland; fling these to the neighboring Kings to
produce consent: Partition of Poland, in fact; large sections of its
Territory sliced away: that will be the method, thinks King August.
"Neighboring Kings, Kaiser, Prussia, Russia, to them it is not grievous
that Poland should remain in perennial anarchy, in perennial impotence;
the reverse rather: a dead horse, or a dying, in the next stall,--he
at least will not kick upon us, think the neighboring Kings. And
yet,--under another similitude,--you do not like your next-door neighbor
to be always on the point of catching fire; smoke issuing, thicker or
thinner, through the slates of his roof, as a perennial phenomenon?
August will conciliate the neighboring Kings. Russia, big-cheeked Anne
Czarina there, shall have not only Courland peaceably henceforth, but
the Ukraine, Lithuania, and other large outlying slices; that surely
will conciliate Russia. To Austria, on its Hungarian border, let us
give the Country of Zips;--nay there are other sops we have for Austria.
Pragmatic Sanction, hitherto refused as contrary to plain rights of
ours,--that, if conceded to a spectre-hunting Kaiser? To Friedrich
Wilhelm we could give West-Preussen; West-Preussen torn away three
hundred years ago, and leaving a hiatus in the very continuity of
Friedrich Wilhelm: would not that conciliate him? Of all enemies or
friends, Friedrich Wilhelm, close at hand with 80,000 men capable of
fighting at a week's, notice, is by far the most important.
"These are August's plans: West-Preussen for the nearest Neighbor; Zips
for Austria; Ukraine, Lithuania, and appendages for the Russian Czarina:
handsome Sections to be sliced off, and flung to good neighbors; as it
were, all the outlying limbs and wings of the Polish Territory sliced
off; compact body to remain, and become, by means of August and Saxon
troops, a Kingdom with government, not an imaginary Republic without
government any longer. In fact, it was the 'Partition of Poland,' such
as took effect forty years after, and has kept the Newspapers weeping
ever since. Partition of Poland,--MINUS the compact interior held under
government, by a King with Saxon troops or otherwise. Compact interior,
in that effective partition, forty years after, was left as anarchic as
ever; and had to be again partitioned, and cut away altogether,--with
new torrents of loud tears from the Newspapers, refusing to be comforted
to this day.
"It is not said that Friedrich Wilhelm had the least intention of
countenancing August in these dangerous operations, still less of going
shares with August; but he wished much, through Grumkow, to have some
glimpse into the dim program of them; and August wished much to know
Friedrich Wilhelm's and Grumkow's humor towards them. Grumkow and August
drank copiously, or copiously pressed drink on one another, all night
(11th-12th January, 1733, as I compute; some say at Crossen, some say
at Frauendorf a royal domain near by), with the view of mutually fishing
out those secrets;--and killed one another in the business, as is
rumored."
What were Grumkow's news at home-coming, I did not hear; but he
continues very low and shaky;--refuses, almost with horror, to have the
least hand in Seckendorf's mad project, of resuscitating the English
Double-Marriage, and breaking off the Brunswick one, at the eleventh
hour and after word pledged. Seckendorf himself continues to dislike and
dissuade: but the High Heads at Vienna are bent on it; and command new
strenuous attempts;--literally at the last moment; which is now come.
Chapter VII. -- CROWN-PRINCE'S MARRIAGE.
Since November last, Wilhelmina is on visit at Berlin,--first visit
since her marriage;--she stays there for almost ten months; not under
the happiest auspices, poor child. Mamma's reception of her, just
off the long winter journey, and extenuated with fatigues and sickly
chagrins, was of the most cutting cruelty: "What do you want here? What
is a mendicant like you come hither for?" And next night, when Papa
himself came home, it was little better. "Ha, ha," said he, "here you
are; I am glad to see you." Then holding up a light, to take view of
me: "How changed you are!" said he: "What is little Frederika [my little
Baby at Baireuth] doing?" And on my answering, continued: "I am sorry
for you, on my word. You have not bread to eat; and but for me you might
go begging. I am a poor man myself, not able to give you much; but I
will do what I can. I will give you now and then a twenty or a thirty
shillings (PAR DIX OU DOUZE FLORINS), as my affairs permit: it will
always be something to assuage your want. And you, Madam," said he,
turning to the Queen, "you will sometimes give her an old dress; for
the poor child has n't a shift to her back." [Wilhelmina, ii. 85.] This
rugged paternal banter was taken too literally by Wilhelmina, in her
weak state; and she was like "to burst in her skin," poor Princess.
So that,--except her own good Hereditary Prince, who was here "over from
Pasewalk" and his regimental duties, waiting to welcome her; in whose
true heart, full of honest human sunshine towards her, she could always
find shelter and defence,--native Country and Court offer little to the
brave Wilhelmina. Chagrins enough are here: chagrins also were there. At
Baireuth our old Father Margraf has his crotchets, his infirmities
and outbreaks; takes more and more to liquor; and does always keep
us frightfully bare in money. No help from Papa here, either, on the
finance side; no real hope anywhere (thinks Seckendorf, when we consult
him), except only in the Margraf's death: "old Margraf will soon drink
himself dead," thinks Seckendorf; "and in the mean while there
is Vienna, and a noble Kaiserinn who knows her friends in case of
extremity!" thinks he. [Wilhelmina, ii. 81-111.] Poor Princess, in her
weak shattered state, she has a heavy time of it; but there is a tough
spirit in her; bright, sharp, like a swift sabre, not to be quenched in
any coil; but always cutting its way, and emerging unsubdued.
One of the blessings reserved for her here, which most of all concerns
us, was the occasional sight of her Brother. Brother in a day or two
["18th November," she says; which date is wrong, if it were of moment
(see _OEuvres de Frederic,_ xxvii. part 1st, where their CORRESPONDENCE
is).] ran over from Ruppin, on short leave, and had his first interview.
Very kind and affectionate; quite the old Brother again; and "blushed"
when, at supper, Mamma and the Princesses, especially that wicked
Charlotte (Papa not present), tore up his poor Bride at such a rate.
"Has not a word to answer you, but YES or NO," said they; "stupid as a
block." "But were you ever at her toilette?" said the wicked Charlotte:
"Out of shape, completely: considerable waddings, I promise you: and
then"--still worse features, from that wicked Charlotte, in presence
of the domestics here. Wicked Charlotte; who is to be her Sister-in-law
soon;--and who is always flirting with my Husband, as if she liked that
better!--Crown-Prince retired, directly after supper: as did I, to my
apartment, where in a minute or two he joined me.
"To the question, How with the King and you? he answered, 'That his
situation was changing every moment; that sometimes he was in favor,
sometimes in disgrace;--that his chief happiness consisted in absence.
That he led a soft and tranquil life with his Regiment at Ruppin; study
and music his principal occupations; he had built himself a House there,
and laid out a Garden, where he could read, and walk about.' Then as to
his Bride, I begged him to tell me candidly if the portrait the Queen
and my Sister had been making of her was the true one. 'We are alone,'
replied he, 'and I will conceal nothing from you. The Queen, by her
miserable intrigues, has been the source of our misfortunes. Scarcely
were you gone when she began again with England; wished to substitute
our Sister Charlotte for you; would have had me undertake to contradict
the King's will again, and flatly refuse the Brunswick Match;--which I
declined. That is the source of her venom against this poor Princess.
As to the young Lady herself, I do not hate her so much as I pretend; I
affect complete dislike, that the King may value my obedience more.
She is pretty, a complexion lily-and-rose; her features delicate; face
altogether of a beautiful person. True, she has no breeding, and dresses
very ill: but I flatter myself, when she comes hither, you will have the
goodness to take her in hand. I recommend her to you, my dear Sister;
and beg your protection for her.' It is easy to judge, my answer would
be such as he desired." [Wilhelmina, ii. 89.]
For which small glimpse of the fact itself, at first-hand, across a
whirlwind of distracted rumors new and old about the fact, let us be
thankful to Wilhelmina. Seckendorf's hopeless attempts to resuscitate
extinct English things, and make the Prussian Majesty break his word,
continue to the very last; but are worth no notice from us. Grumkow's
Drinking-bout with the Dilapidated-Strong at Crossen, which follows now
in January, has been already noticed by us. And the Dilapidated-Strong's
farewell next morning,--"Adieu, dear Grumkow; I think I shall not see
you again!" as he rolled off towards Warsaw and the Diet,--will require
farther notice; but must stand over till this Marriage be got done. Of
which latter Event,--Wilhelmina once more kindling the old dark Books
into some light for us,--the essential particulars are briefly as
follows.
Monday, 8th June, 1733, the Crown-Prince is again over from Ruppin:
King, Queen and Crown-Prince are rendezvoused at Potsdam; and they set
off with due retinues towards Wolfenbuttel, towards Salzdahlum the Ducal
Schloss there; Sister Wilhelmina sending blessings, if she had them, on
a poor Brother in such interesting circumstances. Mamma was "plunged
in black melancholy;" King not the least; in the Crown-Prince nothing
particular to be remarked. They reached Salzdahlum, Duke Ludwig Rudolf
the Grandfather's Palace, one of the finest Palaces, with Gardens,
with antiques, with Picture-Galleries no end; a mile or two from
Wolfenbuttel; built by old Anton Ulrich, and still the ornament of
those parts;--reached Salzdahlum, Wednesday the 10th; where Bride,
with Father, Mother, much more Grandfather, Grandmother, and all the
sublimities interested, are waiting in the highest gala; Wedding to be
on Friday next.
Friday morning, this incident fell out, notable and somewhat
contemptible: Seckendorf, who is of the retinue, following his bad
trade, visits his Majesty who is still in bed:--"Pardon, your Majesty:
what shall I say for excuse? Here is a Letter just come from Vienna; in
Prince Eugene's hand;--Prince Eugene, or a Higher, will say something,
while it is still time!" Majesty, not in impatience, reads the little
Prince's and the Kaiser's Letter. "Give up this, we entreat you for
the last time; marry with England after all!" Majesty reads, quiet as a
lamb; lays the Letter under his pillow; will himself answer it; and
does straightway, with much simple dignity, to the effect, "For certain,
Never, my always respected Prince!" [Account of the Interview by
Seckendorf, in Forster, iii, 148-155; Copy of the answer itself is in
the State-Paper Office here.] Seckendorf, having thus shot his last
bolt, does not stay many hours longer at Salzdahlum;--may as well quit
Friedrich Wilhelm altogether, for any good he will henceforth do upon
him. This is the one incident between the Arrival at Salzdahlum and the
Wedding there.
Same Friday, 12th June, 1733, at a more advanced hour, the Wedding
itself took effect; Wedding which, in spite of the mad rumors and
whispers, in the Newspapers, Diplomatic Despatches and elsewhere, went
off, in all respects, precisely as other weddings do; a quite human
Wedding now and afterwards. Officiating Clergyman was the Reverend Herr
Mosheim: readers know with approval the _Ecclesiastical History_ of
Mosheim: he, in the beautiful Chapel of the Schloss, with Majesties
and Brunswick Sublimities looking on, performed the ceremony: and
Crown-Prince Friedrich of Prussia has fairly wedded the Serene Princess
Elizabeth Christina of Brunswick-Bevern, age eighteen coming, manners
rather awkward, complexion lily-and-rose;--and History is right glad
to have done with the wearisome affair, and know it settled on any
tolerable terms whatever. Here is a Note of Friedrich's to his dear
Sister, which has been preserved:--
TO PRINCESS WILHELMINA OF BAIREUTH, AT BERLIN.
"SALZDAHLUM, Noon, 19th June, 1733.
"MY DEAR SISTER,--A minute since, the whole Ceremony was got finished;
and God be praised it is over! I hope you will take it as a mark of my
friendship that I give you the first news of it.
"I hope I shall have the honor to see you again soon; and to assure you,
my dear Sister, that I am wholly yours (TOUT A VOUS). I write in great
haste; and add nothing that is merely formal. Adieu. [_OEuvres,_ xxvii.
part 1st, p. 9.]
FREDERIC."
One Keyserling, the Prince's favorite gentleman, came over express,
with this Letter and the more private news; Wilhelmina being full of
anxieties. Keyserling said, The Prince was inwardly "well content with
his lot; though he had kept up the old farce to the last; and pretended
to be in frightful humor, on the very morning; bursting out upon his
valets in the King's presence, who reproved him, and looked rather
pensive,"--recognizing, one hopes, what a sacrifice it was. The Queen's
Majesty, Keyserling reported, "was charmed with the style and ways of
the Brunswick Court; but could not endure the Princess-Royal [new
Wife], and treated the two Duchesses like dogs (COMME DES CHIENS)."
[Wilhelmina, ii. 114.] Reverend Abbot Mosheim (such his title; Head
Churchman, theological chief of Helmstadt University in those parts,
with a couple of extinct little ABBACIES near by, to help his stipend)
preached next Sunday, "On the Marriage of the Righteous,"--felicitous
appropriate Sermon, said a grateful public; [Text, Psalm, xcli. 12;
"Sermon printed in Mosheim's _Works."_]--and in short, at Salzdahlum
all goes, if not as merry as some marriage-bells, yet without jarring to
the ear.
On Tuesday, both the Majesties set out towards Potsdam again; "where his
Majesty," having business waiting, "arrived some time before the Queen."
Thither also, before the week ends, Crown-Prince Friedrich with his
Bride, and all the Serenities of Brunswick escorting, are upon the
road,--duly detained by complimentary harangues, tedious scenic
evolutions at Magdeburg and the intervening Towns;--grand entrance of
the Princess-Royal into Berlin is not till the 27th, last day of the
week following. That was such a day as Wilhelmina never saw; no sleep
the night before; no breakfast can one taste: between Charlottenburg
and Berlin, there is a review of unexampled splendor; "above eighty
carriages of us," and only a tent or two against the flaming June sun:
think of it! Review begins at four a.m.;--poor Wilhelmina thought she
would verily have died, of heat and thirst and hunger, in the crowded
tent, under the flaming June sun; before the Review could end itself,
and march into Berlin, trumpeting and salvoing, with the Princess-Royal
at the head of it. [Wilhelmina, ii. 127-129.]
Of which grand flaming day, and of the unexampled balls and effulgent
festivities that followed, "all Berlin ruining itself in dresses and
equipages," we will say nothing farther; but give only, what may
still have some significance for readers, Wilhelmina's Portrait of the
Princess-Royal on their first meeting, which had taken place at Potsdam
two days before. The Princess-Royal had arrived at Potsdam too, on that
occasion, across a grand Review; Majesty himself riding out, Majesty and
Crown-Prince, who had preceded her a little, to usher in the poor young
creature;--Thursday, June 25th, 1733:--
"The King led her into the Queen's Apartment; then seeing, after she had
saluted us all, that she was much heated and dispowdered (DEPOUDREE),
he bade my Brother take her to her own room. I followed them thither. My
Brother said to her, introducing me: 'This is a Sister I adore, and am
obliged to beyond measure. She has had the goodness to promise me that
she will take care of you, and help you with her good counsel; I wish
you to respect her beyond even the King and Queen, and not to take
the least step without her advice: do you understand?' I embraced the
Princess-Royal, and gave her every assurance of my attachment; but she
remained like a statue, not answering a word. Her people not being come,
I repowdered her myself, and readjusted her dress a little, without the
least sign of thanks from her, or any answer to all my caressings. My
Brother got impatient at last; and said aloud: 'Devil's in the blockhead
(PESTE SOIT DE LA BETE): thank my Sister, then!' She made me a courtesy,
on the model of that of Agnes in the ECOLE DES FEMMES. I took her back
to the Queen's Apartment; little edified by such a display of talent.
"The Princess-Royal is tall; her figure is not fine: stooping slightly,
or hanging forward, as she walks or stands, which gives her an awkward
air. Her complexion is of dazzling whiteness, heightened by the
liveliest colors: her eyes are pale blue, and not of much promise
for spiritual gifts. Mouth small; features generally small,--dainty
(MIGNONS) rather than beautiful:--and the countenance altogether is so
innocent and infantine, you would think this head belonged to a child
of twelve. Her hair is blond, plentiful, curling in natural locks. Teeth
are unhappily very bad, black and ill set; which are a disfigurement in
this fine face. She has no manners, nor the least vestige of tact; has
much difficulty in speaking and making herself understood: for most part
you are obliged to guess what she means; which is very embarrassing."
[Wilhelmina, ii. 119-121.]
The Berlin gayeties--for Karl, Heir-Apparent of Brunswick, brother to
this Princess-Royal, wedded his Charlotte, too, about a week hence [2d
July, 1733.]--did not end, and the serene Guests disappear, till far
on in July. After which an Inspection with Papa; and then Friedrich
got back to Ruppin and his old way of life there. Intrinsically the
old studious, quietly diligent way of life; varied by more frequent
excursions to Berlin;--where as yet the Princess-Royal usually resides,
till some fit residence be got ready in the Ruppin Country for a wedded
Crown-Prince and her.
The young Wife had an honest guileless heart; if little articulate
intellect, considerable inarticulate sense; did not fail to learn tact,
perpendicular attitude, speech enough;--and I hope kept well clear of
pouting (FAIRE LA FACHEE), a much more dangerous rock for her. With the
gay temper of eighteen, and her native loyalty of mind, she seems to
have shaped herself successfully to the Prince's taste; and growing
yearly gracefuler and better-looking was an ornament and pleasant
addition to his Ruppin existence. These first seven years, spent at
Berlin or in the Ruppin quarter, she always regarded as the flower of
her life. [Busching (Autobiography, _Beitrage,_ vi.) heard her say so,
in advanced years.]
Papa, according to promise, has faithfully provided a Crown-Prince
Palace at Berlin; all trimmed and furnished, for occasional residences
there; the late "Government House" (originally SCHOMBERG House),
new-built,--which is, to this day, one of the distinguished Palaces
of Berlin. Princess-Royal had Schonhausen given her; a pleasant Royal
Mansion some miles out of Berlin, on the Ruppin side. Furthermore, the
Prince-Royal, being now a wedded man, has, as is customary in such case,
a special AMT (Government District) set apart for his support; the "Amt
of Ruppin," where his business lies. What the exact revenues of Ruppin
are, is not communicated; but we can justly fear they were far too
frugal,--and excused the underhand borrowing, which is evident enough
as a painful shadow in the Prince's life henceforth. He does not seem to
have been wasteful; but he borrows all round, under sevenfold secrecy,
from benevolent Courts, from Austria, Russia, England: and the only
pleasant certainty we notice in such painful business is, that, on his
Accession, he pays with exactitude,--sends his Uncle George of England,
for example, the complete amount in rouleaus of new coin, by the first
courier that goes. [Despatch (of adjacent date) in the State-Paper
Office here.]
A thought too frugal, his Prussian Majesty; but he means to be kind,
bountiful; and occasionally launches out into handsome munificence.
This very Autumn, hearing that the Crown-Prince and his Princess fancied
Reinsberg; an old Castle in their Amt Ruppin, some miles north
of them,--his Majesty, without word spoken, straightway purchased
Reinsberg, Schloss and Territory, from the owner; gave it to his
Crown-Prince, and gave him money to new-build it according to his mind.
[23d Oct. 1733-16th March, 1734 (Preuss, i. 75).] Which the Crown-Prince
did with much interest, under very wise architectural advice, for the
next three years; then went into it, to reside;--yet did not cease
new-building, improving, artistically adorning, till it became in all
points the image of his taste.
A really handsome princely kind of residence, that of Reinsberg:--got up
with a thrift that most of all astonishes us. In which improved locality
we shall by and by look in upon him again. For the present we must to
Warsaw, where tragedies and troubles are in the wind, which turn out to
be not quite without importance to the Crown-Prince and us.
Chapter VIII. -- KING AUGUST DIES; AND POLAND TAKES FIRE.
Meanwhile, over at Warsaw, there has an Event fallen out. Friedrich,
writing rapidly from vague reminiscence, as he often does, records it
as "during the marriage festivities;" [_OEuvres (Memoires de
Brandenbourg),_ i. 163.] but it was four good months earlier. Event we
must now look at for a moment.
In the end of January last, we left Grumkow in a low and hypochondriacal
state, much shaken by that drinking-bout at Crossen, when the Polish
Majesty and he were so anxious to pump one another, by copious priming
with Hungary wine. About a fortnight after, in the first days of
February following (day is not given), Grumkow reported something
curious. "In my presence," says Wilhelmina, "and that of forty persons,"
for the thing was much talked about, "Grumkow said to the King one
morning: 'Ah Sire, I am in despair; the poor Patroon is dead! I was
lying broad awake, last night: all on a sudden, the curtains of my bed
flew asunder: I saw him; he was in a shroud: he gazed fixedly at me:
I tried to start up, being dreadfully taken; but the phantom
disappeared!'" Here was an illustrious ghost-story for Berlin, in a day
or two when the Courier came. "Died at the very time of the phantom;
Death and phantom were the same night," say Wilhelmina and the
miraculous Berlin public,--but do not say WHAT night for either of them
it was. [Wilhelmina, ii. 98. Event happened, 1st February; news of it
came to Berlin, 4th February: Fassmann (p. 485); Buchholz; &c.] By help
of which latter circumstance the phantom becomes reasonably unmiraculous
again, in a nervous system tremulous from drink. "They had been sad at
parting," Wilhelmina says, "having drunk immensities of Hungary wine;
the Patroon almost weeping over his Grumkow: 'Adieu, my dear Grumkow,'
said he; 'I shall never see you more!'"
Miraculous or not, the catastrophe is true: August, the once Physically
Strong, lies dead;--and there will be no Partition of Poland for the
present. He had the Diet ready to assemble; waiting for him, at Warsaw;
and good trains laid in the Diet, capable of fortunate explosion under
a good engineer. Engineer, alas! The Grumkow drinking-bout had awakened
that old sore in his foot: he came to Warsaw, eager enough for business;
but with his stock of strength all out, and Death now close upon him.
The Diet met, 26th-27th January; engineer all alert about the good
trains laid, and the fortunate exploding of them; when, almost on the
morrow--"Inflammation has come on!" said the Doctors, and were futile
to help farther. The strong body, and its life, was done; and nothing
remained but to call in the Archbishop, with his extreme unctions and
soul-apparatus.
August made no moaning or recalcitrating; took, on the prescribed terms,
the inevitable that had come. Has been a very great sinner, he confesses
to the Archbishop: "I have not at present strength to name my many and
great sins to your Reverence," said he; "I hope for mercy on the"--on
the usual rash terms. Terms perhaps known to August to be rash; to have
been frightfully rash; but what can he now do? Archbishop thereupon
gives absolution of his sins; Archbishop does,--a baddish, unlikely kind
of man, as August well knows. August "laid his hand on his eyes," during
such sad absolution-mummery; and in that posture had breathed his last,
before it was well over. ["Sunday, 1st February, 1733, quarter past
4 A.M." (Fassmann, _Leben Frederici Augusti Konigs in Pohlen,_ pp.
994-997).] Unhappy soul; who shall judge him?--transcendent King of
edacious Flunkies; not without fine qualities, which he turned to such a
use amid the temptations of this world!
POLAND HAS TO FIND A NEW KING.
His death brought vast miseries on Poland; kindled foolish Europe
generally into fighting, and gave our Crown-Prince his first actual
sight and experience of the facts of War. For which reason, hardly for
another, the thing having otherwise little memorability at present,
let us give some brief synopsis of it, the briefer the better. Here,
excerpted from multifarious old Note-books, are some main heads of the
affair:--
"On the disappearance of August the Strong, his plans of Partitioning
Poland disappeared too, and his fine trains in the Diet abolished
themselves. The Diet had now nothing to do, but proclaim the coming
Election, giving a date to it; and go home to consider a little whom
they would elect. ["Interregnum proclaimed," 11th February; Preliminary
Diet to meet 21st April;--meets; settles, before May is done, that the
Election shall BEGIN 25th August: it must END in six weeks thereafter,
by law of the land.] A question weighty to Poland. And not likely to be
settled by Poland alone or chiefly; the sublime Republic, with LIBERUM
VETO, and Diets capable only of anarchic noise, having now reached such
a stage that its Neighbors everywhere stood upon its skirts; asking,
'Whitherward, then, with your anarchy? Not this way;--we say, that
way!'-and were apt to get to battle about it, before such a thing could
be settled. A house, in your street, with perpetual smoke coming through
the slates of it, is not a pleasant house to be neighbor to! One honest
interest the neighbors have, in an Election Crisis there, That the house
do not get on fire, and kindle them. Dishonest interests, in the way of
theft and otherwise, they may have without limit.
"The poor house, during last Election Crisis,--when August the Strong
was flung out, and Stanislaus brought in; Crisis presided over by
Charles XII., with Czar Peter and others hanging on the outskirts, as
Opposition party,--fairly got into flame; [Description of it in Kohler,
_Munzbelustigungen,_ vi. 228-230.] but was quenched down again by that
stout Swede; and his Stanislaus, a native Pole, was left peaceably as
King for the years then running. Years ran; and Stanislaus was thrown
out, Charles himself being thrown out; and had to make way for August
the Strong again:--an ejected Stanislaus: King only in title; known to
most readers of this time. [Stanislaus Lesczinsky, "Woywode of Posen,"
born 1677: King of Poland, Charles XII. superintending, 1704 (age then
27); driven out 1709, went to Charles XII. at Bender; to Zweibruck,
1714; thence, on Charles's death, to Weissenburg (Alsace, or Strasburg
Country): Daughter married to Louis XV., 1725. Age now 56.--Hubner, t.
97; _Histoire de Stanislas I., Roi de Pologlne_ (English Translation,
London, 1741), pp. 96-126; &c.]
"Poor man, he has been living in Zweibruck, in Weissenburg and such
places, in that Debatable French-German region,--which the French
are more and more getting stolen to themselves, in late
centuries:--generally on the outskirts of France he lives; having
now connections of the highest quality with France. He has had fine
Country-houses in that Zweibruck (TWO-BRIDGE, Deux-Ponts) region;
had always the ghost of a Court there; plenty of money,--a sinecure
Country-gentleman life;--and no complaints have been heard from him.
Charles XII., as proprietor of Deux-Ponts, had first of all sent him
into those parts for refuge; and in general, easy days have been the lot
of Stanislaus there.
"Nor has History spoken of him since, except on one small occasion:
when the French Politician Gentlemen, at a certain crisis of their game,
chose a Daughter of his to be Wife for young Louis XV., and bring
royal progeny, of which they were scarce. This was in 1724-1725; Duc de
Bourbon, and other Politicians male and female, finding that the best
move. A thing wonderful to the then Gazetteers, for nine days; but not
now worth much talk. The good young Lady, it is well known, a very pious
creature, and sore tried in her new station, did bring royal progeny
enough,--and might as well have held her hand, had she foreseen what
would become of them, poor souls! This was a great event for Stanislaus,
the sinecure Country-gentleman, in his French-German rustication. One
other thing I have read of him, infinitely smaller, out of those ten
years: in Zweibruck Country, or somewhere in that French-German region,
he 'built a pleasure-cottage,' conceivable to the mind, 'and called it
SCHUHFLICK (Shoe-Patch),' [Busching, _Erdbeschreibung,_ v. 1194.]--a
name that touches one's fancy on behalf of the innocent soul. Other
fact I will not remember of him. He is now to quit Shoe-Patch and his
pleasant Weissenburg Castle; to come on the public stage again, poor
man; and suffer a second season of mischances and disgraces still worse
than the first. As we shall see presently;--a new Polish Election Crisis
having come!
"What individual the Polish Grandees would have chosen for King if
entirely left alone to do it? is a question not important; and indeed
was never asked, in this or in late Elections. Not the individual who
could have BEEN a King among them were they, for a long time back, in
the habit of seeking after; not him, but another and indeed reverse kind
of individual,--the one in whom there lay most NOURISHMENT, nourishment
of any kind, even of the cash kind, for a practical Polish Grandee. So
that the question was no longer of the least importance, to Poland or
the Universe; and in point of fact, the frugal Destinies had ceased
to have it put, in that quarter. Not Grandees of Poland; but Intrusive
Neighbors, carrying Grandees of Poland 'in their breeches-pocket' (as
our phrase is), were the voting parties. To that pass it was come. Under
such stern penalty had Poland and its Grandees fallen, by dint of false
voting: the frugal Destinies had ceased to ask about their vote; and
they were become machines for voting with, or pistols for fighting
with, by bad Neighbors who cared to vote! Nor did the frugal Destinies
consider that the proper method, either; but had, as we shall see,
determined to abolish that too, in about forty years more."
OF THE CANDIDATES; OF THE CONDITIONS. HOW THE ELECTION WENT.
It was under such omens that the Polish Election of 1733 had to transact
itself. Austria, Russia, Prussia, as next Neighbors, were the chief
voting parties, if they cared to intrude;--which Austria and Russia were
clear for doing; Prussia not clear, or not beyond the indispensable
or evidently profitable. Seckendorf, and one Lowenwolde the Russian
Ambassador at Berlin, had, some time ago, in foresight of this
event, done their utmost to bring Friedrich Wilhelm into
co-operation,--offering fine baits, "Berg and Julich" again, among
others;--but nothing definite came of it: peaceable, reasonably safe
Election in Poland, other inte
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