History of Friedrich II of Prussia
Chapter 60 : But the dexterous young Wife, gladdest; busiest and weakliest of hopeful creatures, con

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 Ans.p.a.ch 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 embarra.s.sed a.s.sent, 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 Ans.p.a.ch 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 appet.i.te and at one's ease.

Which done, Majesty darts off again, the cannon-salvos booming out a second time;--and by a.s.siduous driving gets home to Potsdam about eight at night. And so has happily ENDED this Journey to Kladrup: [Fa.s.smann, 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, n.o.body 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 d.a.m.ned 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 d.a.m.ned scoundrels have been about betraying me. People that should have known me better have been trying to lead me into a dishonorable sc.r.a.pe'--("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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 pa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sion 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, flas.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.ses. 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 fas.h.i.+onable Season there, opened and nothing more,--January 10th, 1733; [Fa.s.smann, _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 a.s.sembling, 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: Part.i.tion 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.