History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7
by
Thomas Carlyle
Part 2 out of 3
where silence was better, did likewise very authentically remain,
--and still remains. Nothing of genuine and human that Friedrich
Wilhelm did but remained and remains an inheritance, not the
smallest item of IT lost or losable;--and the rude foolish
Boor-King (singular enough!) is found to be the only one that has
gained by the game."--
Chapter IV.
EXCELLENCY HOTHAM QUITS BERLIN IN HASTE.
While the Camp at Radewitz is dissolving itself in this manner, in
the last days of June, Captain Guy Dickens, the oracles at Windsor
having given him their response as to Prince Friedrich's wild
project, is getting under way for Berlin again,--whither also
Hotham has returned, to wait for Dickens's arrival, and directly
thereupon come home. Dickens is henceforth to do the British
Diplomacy here, any Diplomacy there can well be; Dickens once
installed, Hotham will, right gladly, wash his hands of this
Negotiation, which he considers to be as good as dead for a
longish while past. First, however, he has one unexpected
adventure to go through in Berlin; of most unexpected celebrity in
the world: this once succinctly set forth, History will dismiss
him to the shades of private life.
Guy Dickens, arriving we can guess about the 8th or 9th of July,
brings two important Documents with him to Berlin, FIRST, the
English Response (in the shape of "Instructions" to himself, which
may be ostensible in the proper quarter) in regard to the
Crown-Prince's project of flight into England. Response which is
no other than might have been expected in the circumstances:
"Britannic Majesty sorry extremely for the Crown-Prince's
situation; ready to do anything in reason to alleviate it.
Better wait, however: Prussian Majesty will surely perhaps relent
a little: then also the affairs of Europe are in a ticklish state.
Better wait. As to that of taking temporary refuge in France,
Britannic Majesty thinks that will require a mature deliberation
(MURE DELIBERATION). Not even time now for inquiry of the French
Court how they would take it; which his Britannic Majesty thinks
an indispensable preliminary,"--and so terminates. The meaning, we
perceive, is in sum: "Hm, you won't, surely? Don't; at least Don't
yet!" But Dryasdust, and any readers who have patience, can here
take the Original Paper; which is written in French (or French of
Stratford at the Bow), probably that the Crown-Prince, if needful,
might himself read it, one of these days:--
"Monsieur Guy Dickens pourrait donner au Prince les assurances les
plus fortes de la compassion que le Roi a du triste etat ou il se
trouve, et du desir sincere de Sa Majeste de concourir par tout ce
qui dependra d'elle a l'en tirer. M. Guy Dickens pourrait lui
communiquer en meme terns les Instructions donnees a Monsieur
Hotham [ our Answer to the Outrageous propositions, which
amounts to nothing, and may be spared the reader ], et
lui marquer qu'on avait lieu d’esperer que Sa Majeste Prussienne
ne refuserait pas au moins de s'expliquer un peu plus en detail
qu'elle n'a fait jusqu'ici. Qu'en attendant les suites que cette
negociation pourrait avoir, Sa Majeste etait d'avis que le Prince
ferait bien de differer un peu l'execution de son dessein connu:
Que la situation ou les affaires de l'Europe se trouvaient dans ce
moment critique ne paraissait pas propre a l'execution d'un
dessein de cette nature: Que pour ce qui est de l'intention ou le
Prince a temoigne etre, de se retirer en France, Sa Majeste croit
qu'elle demande une mure deliberation, et que le peu de tems qui
reste ne promet pas meme qu'on puisse s'informer de ce que la Cour
de France pourrait penser la-dessus; dont Sa Majeste trouvait
cependant absolument necessaire de l'assurer, avant de pouvoir
conseiller a un Prince qui lui est si cher de se retirer en ce
pays la." [Prussian Despatches, vol. xii.: No date or signature;
bound up along with Harrington's Despatch, "Windsor, 20th June
[1st July] 1730,"--on the morrow of which day we may fancy Captain
Dickens took the road for Berlin again,--where we auspiciously see
him on Monday, 10th July, probably a night or two after his
arrival.] This is Document FIRST; of no concernment to Hotham at
this stage; but only to us and our Crown-Prince. Document SECOND
would at one time have much interested Hotham: it is no other than
a Grumkow Original seized at St. Mary Axe, such as Hotham once
solicited, "strong enough to break Grumkow's back." Hotham now
scarcely hopes it will be "strong enough." No matter; he presents
it as bidden. On introducing Dickens as successor, Monday, 10th
July, he puts the Document into his Prussian Majesty's hand: and--
the result was most unexpected! Here is Hotham's Despatch to Lord
Harrington; which it will be our briefest method to give, with
some minimum of needful explanation intercalated here and there:--
"TO THE LORD HARRINGTON (from Sir Charles Hotham).
"BERLIN, 30th June (11th July), 1730.
"MY LORD,--Though the conduct of his Prussian Majesty has been
such, for some time past, that one ought to be surprised at
nothing he does,--it is nevertheless with great concern that I now
have to acquaint your Lordship with an extravagancy of his which
happened yesterday," Monday, 10th July, 1730.
"The King of Prussia, had appointed me to be with him about noon,
with Captain Guy Dickens [who has just returned from England, on
what secret message your Lordship knows!].--We both attended his
Prussian Majesty, and I presented Captain Guy Dickens to him, who
delivered his credentials: after which the King talked to us a
quarter of an hour about indifferent matters. Seeing him in a very
good humor, I took that opportunity of telling him, 'That as
General Grumkow had denied his having held a Secret Correspondence
with Reichenbach, or having written the Letters I had some time
ago delivered to his Majesty, I was now ordered by the King
my Master to put into his hands an Original Letter of
General Grumkow'"--
--Where is that Original Letter? ask some minute readers.
Minute readers, the IPSISSIMUM CORPUS of it is lost to mankind.
Official Copy of it lies safe here in the State-Paper Office
(Prussian Despatches, volume xli.; without date of its own, but
near a Despatch dated 20th June, 1730); has, adjoined to it, an
Autograph jotting by George Second to the effect, "Yes, send it,"
and also some preliminary scribbles by Newcastle, to the like
purport. No date of its own, we say, though, by internal evidence
and light of FASSMANN, [p. 404.] it is conclusively datable
"Berlin, 20th May," if anybody cared to date it. The Letter
mentions lightly that "pretended discovery [the St.-Mary-Axe one,
laid on the table of Tobacco-Parliament, 6th May or soon after],
innocent trifles all _I_ wrote; hope you burnt them, nevertheless,
according to promise: yours to me I did burn as they came, and
will defy the Devil to produce;" brags of his Majesty's fine
spirits;--and is, Jotting and all, as insignificant a Letter as
any other portion of the "Rookery Colloquy," though its fate was a
little more distinguished. Prussian Dryasdust is expected to give
it in FAC-SIMILE, one day,--surely no British Under-Secretary
will exercise an unwise discretion, and forbid him that
small pleasure!--
"which was an undeniable proof of all the rest, and could not but
convince his Prussian Majesty of the truth of them."--Well?
"He took the Letter from me, cast his eye upon it; and seeing it
to be Grumkow's hand, said to me with all the anger imaginable
[fancy the thunder-burst!], 'Messieurs, j'ai eu assez de
ces choses la;' threw the Letter upon the ground, and
immediately turning his back went out of the room, and shut the
door upon us,"
--probably with a slam! And that is the naked truth concerning
this celebrated Intercepted Letter. Majesty answered explosively,
--his poor heart being in a burdened and grieved condition, not
unlike growing a haunted one,--"I have had enough of that stuff
before!" pitched the new specimen away, and stormily whirled out
with a slam of the door. That he stamped with his foot, is
guessable. That he "lifted his foot as if to kick the Honorable
English Excellency," [Wilhelmina, i. 228.] which the English
Excellency never could have stood, but must have died on the
spot,--of this, though several Books have copied it from
Wilhelmina, there is no vestige of evidence: and the case is bad
enough without this.
"Your Lordship will easily imagine that Captain Guy Dickens and I
were not a little astonished at this most extraordinary behavior.
I took up the Letter he had thrown upon the floor [IPSISSIMUM
CORPUS of it lost to mankind, last seen going into Hotham's pocket
in this manner]; and returning home, immediately wrote one to his
Prussian Majesty, of which a copy is here enclosed."--
Let us read that essential Piece: sound substance, in very stiff
indifferent French of Stratford, --which may as well be made
English at once:--
"TO HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF PRUSSIA.
"SIRE,--It is with the liveliest grief that I find myself under
the necessity,--after what has passed today at the audience I had
of your Majesty, where I neither did nor said anything in regard
to that Letter of Monsieur Grumkow's or to putting it into your
Majesty's hands, that was not by my Master's order,--it is, I say,
Sire, with the liveliest grief that I am obliged to inform your
Majesty of the necessity there lies on me to despatch a Courier to
London to apprise the King my Master of an incident so surprising
as the one that has just happened. For which reason I beg
(SUPPLIE) your Majesty will be pleased to cause the necessary
Orders for Post-horses to be furnished me, not only for the said
Courier, but also for myself,--since, after what has just
happened, it is not proper for me to prolong my stay here
( faire un plus long sejour ici ).
"I have the honor to be, your Majesty's, &c. &c. &c.
"CHARLES HOTHAM."
"About two hours afterwards, General Borck came to me; and told me
He was in the utmost affliction for what had happened;
and beseeched me to have a little patience, and that he hoped
means would be found to make up the matter to me. Afterwards he
communicated to me, by word of mouth, the Answer the King of
Prussia had given to the last Orders I had received by Captain
Guy Dickens,"--Orders, "Come home immediately," to which the
"Answer" is conceivable.
"I told him that, after the treatment I had received at noon, and
the affront put upon the King my Master's character, I could no
longer receive nor charge myself with anything that came from his
Prussian Majesty. That as to what related to me personally, it was
very easily made up; but having done nothing but in obedience to
the King my Master's orders, it belonged to him only to judge what
satisfaction was due for the indignity offered to his character.
Wherefore I did not look upon myself as authorized to listen to
any expedients till I knew his Majesty's pleasure upon the matter.
"In the evening, General Borck wrote a Letter to Captain Guy
Dickens and two to me, the Copies of which are enclosed,"--fear
not, reader! "The purport of them was to desire That I would take
no farther notice of what had happened, and that the King of
Prussia desired I would come and dine with him next day."--
Engaged otherwise, your Majesty, next day! "The Answer to these
Letters I also enclose to your Lordship,"--reader not to be
troubled with it. "I excused myself from dining with the King of
Prussia, not thinking myself at liberty to appear any more at
Court till I received his Majesty's," my own King's, "commands,
and told General Borck that I looked upon myself as indispensably
obliged to acquaint the King my Master with everything that had
passed, it being to no purpose to think of concealing it, since
the thing was already become public, and would soon be known in
all the Courts of Europe.
"This, my Lord, is the true state of this unaccountable accident.
You will see, by General Borck's Letter, that the King of Prussia,
being now returned to his senses, is himself convinced of the
extravagancy of this proceeding; and was very desirous of having
it concealed;--which was impossible; for the whole Town knew it an
hour after it had happened.
"As to my own part, I am not a little concerned at this
unfortunate incident. As it was impossible to foresee this fit
of madness in the King of Prussia, there was no guarding against
it: and after it had happened, I thought I could do no less than
resent it in the manner I have done,--without prostituting the
character with which the King has been pleased to honor me.
I hope, however, this affair will be attended with no ill
consequences: for the King of Prussia himself is at present so
ashamed of his behavior, that he says, He will order Count
Degenfeld [Graf von Degenfeld, going at a leisurely pace to remove
NOSTI from his perch among you] [Supra, p. 197.] to hasten his
journey to England, with orders to endeavor to make up the
affair immediately.
"As I had already received the King's Orders, by Captain Guy
Dickens, To return home forthwith, I thought, after what had
happened, the sooner I left this place the better; and the rather
because it might be proper I should make a report of it to his
Majesty. I shall therefore set out a few hours after this
Messenger; and will make all the expedition possible.
"The King of Prussia sets out for Anspach on Saturday next,"--
11th July is Tuesday, Saturday next will be 15th July, which
proves correct. [Fassmann, p. 410.] "I am, with the utmost
respect, My Lord, Your Lordship's most obedient and most humble
servant,
CHARLES HOTHAM."
[State-Paper Office: Prussian Despatches, vol. xli.]
No sooner was the door slammed to than his Majesty began to
repent. At sight of the demand for Post-horses, he repented
bitterly; sent Borck to ask Hotham to dinner, with what success we
have seen. Sent Borck to negotiate, to correspond, to consult with
Dickens, to do his utmost in pacifying Hotham. All which
Correspondence exists, but is not worth giving. Borck's
remonstrances are in rugged soldier-like style, full of
earnestness and friendliness. Do not wreck, upon trifles, a noble
interest we have in common; King is jealous about foreign
interference with his Ministers, but meant nothing; I tell you it
is nothing I--Hotham is polite, good-tempered; but remains
inflexible: With myself, on my own score, it were soon settled, or
is already settled; but with the King my Master,--no expedient but
post-horses! The Diplomatist world of Berlin is in a fuss;
Queen Sophie and "the Minister of Denmark," with other friendly
Ministers, how busy! "All day," this day and the next, "they spent
in comings and goings" [Wilhelmina, i. 229, 230.] advising Hotham
to relent: Hotham could not relent. The Crown-Prince himself
writes, urged by a message from his Mother; Crown-Prince sends
Katte off from Potsdam with this Billet [Ib. i. 230.] (if this be
a correct copy to translate from)
TO HIS EXCELLENCY MONSIEUR THE CHEVALIER HOTHAM.
"POTSDAM, 11th July, 1730.
"MONSIEUR,--Having learned by M. de Leuvener," the Danish
Minister, a judicious well-affected man, "what the King my
Father's ultimate intentions are, I cannot doubt but you will
yield to his desires. Think, Monsieur, that my happiness and my
Sister's depend on the resolution you shall take, and that your
answer will mean the union or the disunion forever of the two
Houses! I flatter myself that it will be favorable, and that you
will yield to my entreaties. I never shall forget such a service,
but recognize it all my life by the most perfect esteem," with
which I now am, TOUT A VOUS,
"FREDERIC."
This Billet Katte delivers: but to this also Hotham remains
inexorable; polite, hopeful even: No harm will come;
Degenfeld will go, I myself will help when at home; but for the
present, no resource but post-horses! Which they at last yield
him, the very post-horses ready to weep.
And so Hotham, spirited judicious English gentleman, rolls off
homewards, ["Wednesday," 12th (Dickens).] a few hours after his
Courier,--and retires honorably into the shades of private life,
steady there thenceforth. He has not been successful in Berlin:
surely his Negotiation is now OUT in all manner of senses!
Long ago (to use our former ignoble figure) he had "laid down the
bellows, though there was still smoke traceable:" but now, by this
Grumkow Letter, he has, as it were, struck the POKER through the
business; and that dangerous manoeuvre, not proving successful,
has been fatal and final! Queen Sophie and certain others may
still flatter themselves; but it is evident the Negotiation is at
last complete. What may lie in flight to England and rash
desperate measures, which Queen Sophie trembles to think of, we do
not know: but by regular negotiation this thing can never be.
It is darkly apprehended the Crown-Prince still meditates Flight;
the maternal heart and Wilhelmina's are grieved to see Lieutenant
Katte so much in his confidence--could wish him a wiser councillor
in such predicaments and emergencies! Katte is greatly flattered
by the Prince's confidence; even brags of it in society, with his
foolish loose tongue. Poor youth, he is of dissolute ways;
has plenty of it unwise intellect," little of the "wise" kind;
and is still under the years of discretion. Towards Wilhelmina
there is traceable in him something,--something as of almost
loving a bright particular star, or of thrice-privately
worshipping it for his own behoof. And Wilhelmina, during the late
Radewitz time, when Mamma "gave four Apartments (or Royal Soirees)
weekly," was severe upon him, and inaccessible in these Court
Soirees. A rash young fool; carries a loose tongue:--still worse,
has a Miniature, recognizable as Wilhelmina; and would not give
it up, either for the Queen's Majesty or me!--"Thousand and
thousand pardons, High Ladies both; my loose tongue shall be
locked: but these two Miniatures, the Prince and Princess Royal,
I copied them from two the Prince had lent me and has got back,
ask me not for these;--never, oh, I cannot ever!"--Upon which
Wilhelmina had to take a high attitude, and pass him speechless in
the Soirees. The foolish fellow:--and yet one is not heartily
angry either; only reserved in the Soirees; and anxious about
one's Brother in such hands.
Friedrich Wilhelm repents much that Hotham explosion; is heard
saying that he will not again treat in person with any Envoy from
foreign parts, being of too hot temper, but will leave his
Ministers to do it. [Dickens's Despatch, Berlin, 22d July (n.s.),
1730.] To Queen Sophie he says coldly, "Wilhelmina's marriage,
then, is off; an end to IT. Abbess of Herford [good Protestant
refuge for unprovided Females of Quality, which is in our gift],
let her be Abbess there;"--and writes to the then extant Abbess to
make Wilhelmina "Coadjutress," or Heir-Apparent to that
Chief-Nunship! Nay what is still more mortifying, my Brother says,
"On the whole, I had better, had not I?" The cruel Brother;
but indeed the desperate!--for things are mounting to a pitch in
this Household.
Queen Sophie's thoughts,--they are not yet of surrender; that they
will never be, while a breath of life is left to Queen Sophie and
her Project: we may fancy Queen Sophie's mood. Nor can his Majesty
be in a sweet temper; his vexations lately have been many.
First, England is now off, not off-and-on as formerly:
that comfortable possibility, hanging always in one's thoughts, is
fairly gone; and now we have nothing but the Kaiser to depend on
for Julich and Berg, and the other elements of our salvation in
this world! Then the St.-Mary-Axe discoveries, harassing shadows
of suspicion that will rise from them, and the unseemly Hotham
catastrophe and one's own blame in it; Womankind and Household
still virtually rebellious, and all things going awry; Majesty is
in the worst humor;--bullies and outrages his poor Crown-Prince
almost worse than ever. There have been rattan-showers, hideous to
think of, descending this very week [Guy Dickens's Despatch, 18th
July, 1730.] on the fine head, and far into the high heart of a
Royal Young Man; who cannot, in the name of manhood, endure, and
must not, in the name of sonhood, resist, and vainly calls to all
the gods to teach him WHAT he shall do in this intolerable
inextricable state of matters.
Fate and these two Black-Artists have driven Friedrich Wilhelm
nearly mad; and he, in turn, is driving everybody so. He more than
suspects Friedrich of an intention to fly; which is horrible to
Friedrich Wilhelm: and yet he bullies him occasionally, as a
spiritless wretch, for bearing such treatment. "Cannot you
renounce the Heir-Apparentship, then; your little Brother is a
fine youth. Give it up; and go, unmolested, to the--in fact to the
Devil: Cannot you?"--"If your Majesty, against the honor of my
Mother, declare that I am not your eldest son: Yes, so;
not otherwise, ever!" modestly but steadily persists the young
man, whenever this expedient is proposed to him,--as perhaps it
already sometimes is. Whereat the desperate Father can only snort
indignantly futile. A case growing nearly desperate.
Desperate, yes, on all hands: unless one had the "high mast" above
alluded to, with two pulleys and ropes; and could see a certain
Pair of Scoundrels mount rapidly thither, what hope is there for
anybody? A violent crisis does not last, however; that is one
certainty in it. Either these agonistic human beings, young and
old, will all die, all go to Bedlam, with their intolerable woes;
or else something of explosive nature will take place among them.
The maddest boil, unless it kill you with its torments, does at
length burst, and become an abscess.
Of course Captain Dickens, the instant Hotham was gone, hastened
privily to see the Crown-Prince; saw Katte and him "at the Gate of
the Potsdam Palace at midnight," [Wilhelmina; Ranke, i. 301.] or
in some other less romantic way;--read him the Windsor Paper of
"INSTRUCTIONS" known to us; and preached from that text.
No definite countenance from England, the reverse rather, your
Highness sees;--how can there be? Give it up, your Highness;
at least delay it!--Crown-Prince does not give it up a whit;
whether he delays it, we shall see.
A busy week for the Crown-Prince and Katte, this of the Hotham
Catastrophe; who have many consultations, the Journey to Anspach
being on Saturday next! Crown-Prince has given him in keeping a
writing-case with private letters; 1,000 ducats of money, money
raised by loan, by picking jewels off some miniatures of honor,
and the like sore methods. Katte has his very coat, a gray
top-coat or travelling roquelaure, in keeping;--and their schemes
are many. Off we must and will be, by some opportunity. Could not
Katte get a "Recruiting Furlough," leave to go into the REICH on
that score; and join one there? Lieutenant Keith is at Wesel;
ready, always ready. Into France, into Holland, England? If the
English would not,--there is war to be in Italy, say all the
Newspapers: why not a campaign as Volunteers in Italy, till we saw
how matters went? Anything and all things are preferable to
ignominy like this. No dog could, endure it!
Chapter V.
JOURNEY TO THE REICH.
On Saturday the 15th July, 1730, early in the morning as his wont
was, Friedrich Wilhelm, with a small train of official military
persons, rolled off from Potsdam, towards Leipzig, on that same
journey of his, towards Anspach and the Reich. To Anspach, to see
our poor young daughter, lately married there; therefrom we can
have a run into the Reich, according to circumstances. In this
wide route there lie many Courts and scenes, which it might
behoove us to look into; Courts needing to be encouraged to stand
for the Kaiser's rights, against those English, French and
intrusive Foreigners of the Seville Treaty. We may hope at least
to ease our own heavy mind, and have the chaff somewhat blown out
of it, by this rushing through the open atmosphere.--Such, so far
as I can gather, were Friedrich Wilhelm's objects in this Journey;
which turned out to be a more celebrated one than he expected.
The authentic records of it are slight, the rumors about it have
been many. [Forster (iii. 1-11) contains Seckendorf's Narrative,
as sent to Vienna; Preuss (iv. 470), a Prussian RELATIO EX ACTIS:
these are the only two ORIGINAL pieces which I have seen;
Excerpts of others (correct doubtlees, but not in a very distinct
condition) occur in Ranke, i. 294-340.] After painful sifting
through mountains of dust and ashes for a poor cinder of a fact
here and there, our duty is, to tell the English reader one good
time, what certainties, or available cinders, have anywhere turned
up. Crown-Prince Friedrich, it has been decided, after some
consultation, shall go with his Majesty. Better he go with us, to
be under our own eyes, lest he run away, or do other mischief.
Old General Buddenbrock, old Colonel Waldau, and
Lieutenant-Colonel Rochow travel in the same carriage with the
Prince; are to keep a strict watch over him, one of them at least
to be always by him. Old General Buddenbrock, a grim but human old
military gentleman, who has been in all manner of wars: he fought
at Steenkirk even, and in the Siege of Namur, under Dutch William;
stood, through Malplaquet and much else, under Marlborough;
did the Siege of Stralsund too, and descent on Rugen there, which
was not his first acquaintance with Karl of Sweden; and is a
favorite old friend of Friedrich Wilhelm's. A good old gentleman,
though very strict; now hard on sixty. He is chief of the Three.
Old Waldau, not younger, though still only Colonel of Horse,
likewise celebrates the Malplaquet anniversary; a Pomeranian man,
and silent smoker in the Tabagie, well seen by the master there.
To these two elderly authorities, Lieutenant-Colonel Rochow, still
only about forty, and probably sharper of eye, is adjoined as
active partner. I conclude, the Prince and Buddenbrock ride face
forward; Buddenbrock can tell him about so many things, if he is
conversable: about Dutch William; about Charles XII., whose Polish
fights he witnessed, as an envoy from Berlin, long ago. A Colonel
Krocher, I find, is general manager of the Journey;--and it does
not escape notice that Friedrich, probably out of youthful
curiosity, seems always very anxious to know, to the uttermost
settled point, where our future stages are to be. His Royal
Highness laid in a fair stock of District Maps, especially of the
Rhine Countries, at Leipzig, too; [Forster, iii. 2.] and is
assiduous in studying them,--evidently very desirous to know the
face of Germany, the Rhine Countries in particular?
Potsdam, Wittenberg, Leipzig, the wheels rush rapidly on, stage
succeeding stage; and early in the afternoon we are at Leipzig,--
never looking out at Luther's vestiges, or Karl V.'s, or thinking
about Luther, which thou and I, good English reader, would surely
have done, in crossing Wittenberg and the birthplace of
Protestantism. At Leipzig we were thinking to have dined. At the
Peter's Gate there,--where at least fresh horses are, and a
topographic Crown-Prince can send hastily to buy maps,--
a General Hopfgarten, Commandant of the Town, is out with the
military honors; he has, as we privately know, an excellent dinner
ready in the Pleissenburg Fortress yonder, [Fassmann, p. 410.]--
but he compliments to a dreadful extent! Harangues and compliments
in no end of florid inflated tautologic ornamental balderdash;
repeating and again repeating, What a never-imagined honor it is;
in particular saying three times over, How the Majesty of Saxony,
King August, had he known, would have wished for wings to fly
hither; and bowing to the very ground, "as if, in the Polish
manner, he wished to clasp your feet," said Friedrich Wilhelm
afterwards. I can fancy Friedrich Wilhelm somewhat startled!
How, at the first mention of this idea of big August, with his
lame foot, taking wing, and coming like a gigantic partridge, with
lame foot and cocked-hat, Friedrich Wilhelm grinned. How, at the
second mention, and Polish threat of your feet, Friedrich Wilhelm,
who hates all lies, and cares not for salutations in the
market-place, jerks himself impatiently and saves his feet. At the
third mention, clear it is, Friedrich Wilhelm utters the word,
"ANSPANNEN, Horses!"--and in very truth takes to the road again;
hungry indeed, but still angrier; leaving Hopfgarten bent into the
shape of a parabola, and his grand dinner cooling futile, in what
tragic humor we can imagine. [Ib. p. 411.] Why has no Prussian
Painter done that scene? Let another Chodowiecki, when another
comes, try whether he cannot.
Friedrich Wilhelm regretted the dinner, regretted to hurt the good
man's feelings; but could stand it no longer. He rushes off for
Meuselwitz, where Seckendorf, with at least silence, and some cold
collation instead of dinner, is awaiting him. Twenty miles off is
Meuselwitz; up the flat valley of the Pleisse River towards
Altenburg; through a region memorable, were we not so hungry.
Famed fights have had their arena here; Lutzen, the top of its
church-steeple visible on your right, it is there where the great
Gustavus fell two hundred years ago: on that wide champaign, a
kind of Bull-ring of the Nations, how many fights have been, and
will be! Altenburg one does not see to-night: happy were we but at
Meuselwitz, a few miles nearer; and had seen what dinner the old
Feldzeugmeister has.
Dinner enough, we need not doubt. The old Feldzeugmeister has a
big line Schloss at Meuselwitz; his by unexpected inheritance;
with uncommonly fine gardens; with a good old Wife, moreover,
blithe though childless;--and he is capable of "lighting more than
one candle" when a King comes to visit him. Doubtless the man
hurls his thrift into abeyance; and blazes out with conspicuous
splendor, on this occasion. A beautiful Castle indeed, this
Meuselwitz of his; the towers of Altenburg visible in the
distance; Altenburg, where Kunz von Kauffungen stole the two
little Princes; centuries ago;--where we do not mean to pause at
this time. On the morrow morning,--unless they chose to stay over
Sunday; which I cannot affirm or deny,--Seckendorf also has made
his packages; and joins himself to Friedrich. Wilhelm's august
travelling party. Doing here a portion of the long space (length
of the Terrestrial Equator in all) which he is fated to accomplish
in the way of riding with that Monarch.
From Meuselwitz, through Altenburg, Gera, Saalfeld, to Coburg, is
our next day's journey. Up one fork of the Leipzig Pleisse, then
across the Leipzig Elster, these streams now dwindling to brooks;
leading us up to the water-shed or central Hill-countries between
the Mayn and Saale Rivers; where the same shower will run partly,
on this hand, northward by the Elster, Pleisse or other
labyrinthic course, into the Saale, into the Elbe; and partly, on
the other hand, will flow southward into the Mayn; and so, after
endless windings in the Fir Mountains (FICHTEL-GEBIRGE), get by
Frankfurt into the Rhine at Mainz. Mayn takes the south end of
your shower; Saale takes the north,--or farther east yonder,
shower will roll down into the same grand Elbe River by the Mulde
(over which the Old Dessauer is minded to build a new stone
bridge; Wallenstein and others, as well as Time, have ruined many
bridges there). That is the line of the primeval mountains, and
their ever-flowing rain-courses, in those parts.
At Gera, dim, old Town,--does not your Royal Highness well know
the "Gera Bond (GERAISCHE VERTRAG)"? Duhan: did not forget to
inform you of that? It is the corner-stone of the House of
Brandenburg's advancement in the world. Here, by your august
ancestors, the Law of Primogeniture was settled, and much rubbish
was annihilated in the House of Brandenburg: Eldest Son always to
inherit the Electorate unbroken; after Anspach and Baireuth no
more apanages, upon any cause or pretext whatsoever; and these
themselves to lapse irrevocable to the main or Electoral House,
should they ever fall vacant again. Fine fruit of the decisive
sense that was in the Hohenzollerns; of their fine talent for
annihilating rubbish,--which feat, if a man can do it, and keep
doing it, will more than most others accelerate his course in this
world. It was in this dim old Town of Gera, in the Year 1598, by
him that had the twenty-three children, that the "GERA BOND" was
brought to parchment. But indeed it was intrinsically only a
renewal, more solemnly sanctioned, of Albert Achilles's HAUS
ORDNUNG (House-Order), done in 1478, above a century earlier.--
But see, we are under way again. His Prussian Majesty rushes
forward without pause; will stop nowhere, except where business
demands; no Majesty of his day travels at such a speed. Orlamunde
an hour hence,--your Royal Highness has heard of Orlamunde and its
famed Counts of a thousand years back, when Kaiser Redbeard was in
the world, and the Junior Hohenzollern, tired of hawking, came
down from the Hills to him? Orlamunde (OrlaMOUTH) is not far off,
on our right; and this itself is the Orla; this pleasant streamlet
we are now quitting, which has borne us company for some time:
this too will get into the Saale, and be at Magdeburg, quite
beyond the Dessauer's Bridge, early to-morrow. Ha, here at last is
Saalfeld, Town and Schloss, and the incipient Saal itself:
his Serene Highness Saalfeld-Coburg's little REZIDENZ;--probably
his Majesty will call on him, in passing? I have no doubt he does;
and transacts the civilities needful.
Christian Ernst, whose Schloss this is, a gentleman of his
Majesty's age (born 1683), married an amiable FRAULEIN not of
quality, whom indeed the Kaiser has ennobled: he lives here,--
I think, courting the shade rather; and rules conjointly with his
younger Brother, or Half-Brother, Franz Josias, who resides at
Coburg. Dukes of Saalfeld-Coburg, such is their style, and in good
part their possession; though, it is well known to this travelling
party and the world, there has been a Lawsuit about Coburg this
half-century and more; and though somewhere about 200 "CONCLUSA,"
[Michaelis, i. 524, 518; Busching, Erdbeschreibung,
italic> vi. 2464; OErtel, t. 74; Hubner, t. 166.] or Decrees of
Aulic Council, have been given in favor of the Saalfelders, their
rivals of Meiningen never end. Nor will end yet, for five years
more to come; till, in 1735, "206 CONCLUSA being given," they do
end, and leave the Saalfelders in peaceable possession;
who continue so ever since to this day. [Carlyle's
Miscellanies, vi. ? PRINZENRAUB.] How long his
Majesty paused in that Schloss of Saalfeld, or what he there did,
or what he spake,--except perhaps encourage Christian Ernst to
stand by a Kaiser's Majesty against these French insolences, and
the native German, Spanish, English derelictions of duty,--we are
left to the vaguest guess of fancy, And must get on to Coburg for
the night.
At Coburg, in its snug valley, under the FESTUNG or Hill Castle,--
where Martin Luther sat solitary during the Diet of Augsburg (Diet
known to us, our old friend Margraf George of Anspach
hypothetically "laying his head on the block? there, and the great
Kaiser, Karl V., practically burning daylight, with pitiable
spilling of wax, in the CORPUS-CHRISTI procession there), [Antea,
vol. v. p. 197.]--where Martin Luther sat solitary, and wrote that
celebrated Letter about 16 Crows holding THEIR Parliament all
round," and how "the pillars of the world were never seen by
anybody, and yet the world is held up, in these dumb continents of
space;"--at Coburg, we will not doubt, his Majesty found Franz
Josias at home, and illuminated to receive him. Franz Josias, a
hearty man of thirty-five, he too will stand by the Kaiser in
these coming storms? With a weak contingent truly, perhaps some
score or two of fighters: but many a little makes a mickle!--
remark, however; two points, of a merely genealogical nature.
First, that Franz Josias has, or rather is going to have, a
Younger Son, [Friedrich Josias: 1737-1815.] who in some sixty
years hence will become dreadfully celebrated in the streets of
Paris, as "Austrian Coburg." The Austrian Coburg of
Robes-Pierre and Company. An immeasurable terror and portent,--not
much harm in him, either, when he actually comes, with nothing but
the Duke of York and Dunkirk for accompaniment,--to those
revolutionary French of 1792-1794. This is point FIRST.
Point SECOND is perhaps still more interesting; this namely:
That Franz Josias has an Eldest Son (boy of six when Friedrich
Wilhelm makes his visit),--a GRANDSON'S GRANDSON of whom is, at
this day, Prince of Wales among the English People, and to me a
subject of intense reflection now and then!--
From Coburg, Friedrich Wilhelm, after pause again unknown, rushed
on to Bamberg; new scenes and ever new opening on the eyes of our
young Hero and his Papa. The course is down the valley of the Itz,
one of the many little valleys in the big slope of the Rodach;
for the waters are now turned, and all streams and brooks are
gurgling incessantly towards the Mayn. Towards Frankfurt, Mainz
and the Rhine,--far enough from the Saale, Mulde, or the Old
Dessauer's Bridge to-day; towards Rotterdam and the uttermost
Dutch swamps today. Near upon Bamberg we cross the Mayn itself;
Red Mayn and White conjoined, coming from Culmbach and Baireuth,--
mark that, your Highness. A country of pleasant hills and vines:
and in an hour hence, through thick fir woods,--each side of your
road horribly decked with gibbeted thieves swinging aloft,
[Pollnitz, Memoirs and Letters (English
Translation, London, 1745), i. 209. Let me say again, this is a
different Book from the "MEMOIRS of Pollnitz;" and a still
different from the MEMOIREN, or "Memoirs of Brandenburg BY
Pollnitz:" such the excellence of nomenclature in that old fool!]
--you arrive at Bamberg, chief of Bishoprics, the venerable town;
whose Bishop, famous in old times, is like an Archbishop, and
"gets his pallium direct from the Pope,"--much good may it do him!
"Is bound, however, to give up his Territory, if the Kaiser
elected is landless,"--far enough from likely now. And so you are
at last fairly in the Mayn Valley; River Mayn itself a little step
to north;--long course and many wide windings between you and
Mainz or Frankfurt, not to speak of Rotterdam, and the ultimate
Dutch swamps.
At Bamberg why should a Prussian Majesty linger, except for
picturesque or for mere baiting purposes? At Bamberg are certain
fat Catholic Canons, in indolent, opulent circumstances; and a
couple of sublime Palaces, without any Bishop in them at present.
Nor indeed does one much want Papist Bishops, wherever they get
their pallium; of them as well keep to windward! thinks his
Majesty. And indeed there is no Bishop here. The present Bishop of
Bamberg--one of those Von Schonborns, Counts, sometimes Cardinals,
common in that fat Office,--is a Kaiser's Minister of State;
lives at Vienna, enveloped in red tape, as well as red hat and
stockings; and needs no exhortation in the Kaiser's favor. Let us
yoke again, and go.--Fir woods all round, and dead malefactors
blackening in the wind: this latter point I know of the then
Bamberg; and have explanation of it. Namely, that the
Prince-Bishop, though a humane Catholic, is obliged to act so.
His small Domain borders on some six or seven bigger
sovereignties; and, being Ecclesiastical, is made a cesspool to
the neighboring scoundrelism; which state of things this Prince
Bishop has said shall cease. Young Friedrich may look, therefore,
and old Friedrich Wilhelm and Suite; and make of it what they can.
"Bamberg, through Erlangen, to Nurnberg;" so runs the way.
At Erlangen there loiters now, recruiting, a certain Rittmeister
von Katte, cousin to our Potsdam Lieutenant and confidant; to him
this transit of the Majesty and Crown-Prince must be an event like
few, in that stagnant place. French Refugees are in Erlangen, busy
building new straight streets; no University as yet;--nay a high
Dowager of Baireuth is in it, somewhat exuberant Lady (friend
Weissenfels's Sister) on whom Friedrich Wilhelm must call in
passing. This high Widow of Baireuth is not Mother of the present
Heir-Apparent there, who will wed our Wilhelmina one day;--ah no,
his Mother was "DIVORCED for weighty reasons;"[Hubner, t. 181.]
and his Father yet lives, in the single state; a comparatively
prosperous gentleman these four years last past; Successor, since
four years past, of this Lady's Husband, who was his
Cousin-german. Dreadfully poor before that, the present Margraf of
Baireuth, as we once explained; but now things are looking up with
him again, some jingle of money heard in the coffers of the man;
and his eldest Prince, a fine young fellow, only apt to stammer a
little when agitated, is at present doing the return part of the
Grand Tour,--coming home by Geneva they say.
Rittmeister von Katte, I doubt not, witnesses this transit of the
incognito Majesty, this call upon the exuberant Dowager; but can
have little to say to it, he. I hope he is getting tall recruits
here in the Reich; that will be the useful point for him. He is
our Lieutenant Katte's Cousin, an elder and wiser man than the
Lieutenant. A Reichsgraf's and Field-marshal's nephew, he ought to
get advanced in his profession;--and can hope to do so when he has
deserved it, not sooner at all, in that thrice-fortunate Country.
Let the Rittmeister here keep himself well apart from what is NOT
his business, and look out for tall men.
Bamberg is halfway-house between Coburg and Nurnberg;
whole distance of Coburg and Nurnberg,--say a hundred and odd
miles,--is only a fair day's driving for a rapid King. And at
Nurnberg, surely, we must lodge for a night and portion of a day,
if not for more. On the morrow, it is but a thirty-five miles
drive to Anspach; pleasant in the summer evening, after all the
sights in this old Nurnberg, "city of the Noricans (NORICORUM
BURGUN)." Trading Staple of the German world in old days;
Toy-shop of the German world in these new. Albert Durer's and Hans
Sach's City,--mortals infinitely indifferent to Friedrich Wilhelm.
But is it not the seed-ground of the Hohenzollerns, this Nurnberg,
memorable above cities to a Prussian Majesty? Yes, there in that
old white Castle, now very peaceable, they dwelt; considerably
liable to bickerings and mutinous heats; and needed all their
skill and strength to keep matters straight. It is now upon seven
hundred years since the Cadet of Hohenzollern gave his hawk the
slip, patted his dog for the last time, and came down from the
Rough-Alp countries hitherward. And found favor, not unmerited I
fancy, with the great Kaiser Redbeard, and the fair Heiress of the
Vohburgs; and in fact, with the Earth and with the Heavens in some
degree. A loyal, clever, and gallant kind of young fellow, if your
Majesty will think? Much has grown and waned since that time: but
the Hohenzollerns, ever since, are on the waxing hand;--unless
this accursed Treaty of Seville and these English Matches put a
stop to them?
Alas, it is not likely Friedrich Wilhelm, in the hurry and grating
whirl of things, had many poetic thoughts in him, or pious aurora
memories from the Past Ages, instead of grumbly dusty provocations
from the present,--his feeling, haste mainly, and need of getting
through! The very Crown-Prince, I should guess, was as good as
indifferent to this antique Cadet of the Hohenzollerns; and looked
on Nurnberg and the old white Castle with little but ENNUI:
the Princess of England, and black cares on her beautiful account
and his own, possess him too exclusively. But in truth we do not
even know what day they arrived or departed; much less what they
did or felt in that old City. We know only that the pleasant
little town of Anspach, with its huge unfinished SCHLOSS, lay
five-and-thirty miles away; and that thither was the next and
quasi-final bit of driving. Southwestward thirty-five miles;
through fine summer hills and dales; climbing always, gently, on
the southward hand; still drained by the Mayn River, by the
Regnitz and other tributaries of the Mayn:--half-way is
Heilsbronn, [Not Heilbronn, the well-known, much larger Town, in
Wurtemberg, 80 or 100 miles to westward. Both names (which are
applied to still other places) signify HEALTH-WELL, or even
HOLY-WELL,--these two words, HEALTHY and HOLY (what is very
remarkable), being the same in old Teutonic speech.] with its old
Monastery; where the bones of our Hohenzollern Forefathers rest,
and Albert Achilles's "skull, with no sutures visible." On the
gloomy Church-walls their memorials are still legible: as for the
Monastery itself, Margraf George, tour memorable Reformation
friend, abolished that,--purged the monks away, and put
Schoolmasters in their stead; who were long of good renown in
those parts, but have since gone to Erlangen, so to speak.
The July sunset streaming over those old spires of Heilsbronn
might awaken thoughts in a Prussian Majesty, were he not in
such haste.
At Anspach, what a thrice-hospitable youthfully joyful welcome
from the young married couple there! Margravine Frederika is still
not qnite sixteen; "beautiful as Day," and rather foolish:
fancy her joy at sight of Papa's Majesty and Brother Fritz;
and how she dances about, and perhaps bakes "pastries of the
finest Anspach flour." Ah, DID you send me Berlin sausages, then,
you untrue Papa? Well, I will bake for you, won't I;--Sarah
herself not more loyally {whom we read of in GENESIS), that time
the Angels entered HER tent in a hungry condition!--
Anspach, as we hint, has an unfinished Palace, of a size that
might better beseem Paris or London; Palace begun by former
Margraves, left off once and again for want of cash; stands there
as a sad monument of several things;--the young family living
meanwhile in some solid comfortable wing, or adjacent edifioe, of
natural dimensions. They are so young, as we say, and not too
wise. By and by they had a son, and then a second son;
which latter came to manhood, to old age; and made some noise in
the foolish parts of the Newspapers,--winding up finally at
Hammersmith, as we often explain;--and was the last of the
Anspach-Baireuth Margraves. I have heard farther that Frederika
did not want for temper, as the Hohenzollerns seldom do; that her
Husband likewise had his own stock of it, rather scant of wisdom
withal; and that their life was not quite symphonious always,
--especially cash being short. The Dowager Margravine, Margraf's
Mother, had governed with great prudence during her Son's long
minority. I think she is now, since the marriage, gone to reside
at her WITTWENSITZ (Dowager-Seat) of Feuchtwang (twenty miles
southwest of us); but may have oome up to welcome the Majesties
into these parts. Very beautiful, I hear; still almost young and
charming, though there is a mortal malady upon her, which she
knows of. [Pollnitz, Memoirs and Letters,
i. 209 (date, 29th September, 1729;--needs WATCHING before
believing).] Here are certain Seckendorfs too, this is the
Feldzeugmeister's native country;--and there are resources for a
Royal Travelling-Party. How long the Royal Party stayed at Anspach
I do not know; nor what they did there,--except that
Crown-Prince Friedrich is said to have privately asked the young
Margraf to lend him a pair of riding-horses, and say nothing of
it; who, suspecting something wrong, was obliged to make
protestations and refuse.
As to the Crown-Prince, there is no doubt but here at last things
are actually coming to a crisis with him. To say truth, it has
been the young man's fixed purpose ever since he entered on this
Journey, nay was ever since that ignominy in the Camp of Radewitz,
to run away;--and indeed all this while he has measures going on
with Katte at Berlin of the now-or-never sort. Rash young
creatures, elder of them hardly above five-and-twenty yet:
not good at contriving measures. But what then? Human nature
cannot stand this always; and it is time there were an end of
deliberating. Can we ever have such a chance again?--What I find
of certain concerning Friedrich while at Anspach is, That there
comes by way of Erlangen, guided forward from that place by the
Rittmeister von Katte, a certain messenger and message, which
proved of deep importance to his Royal Highness. The messenger was
Lieutenant Katte's servant: who has come express from Berlin
hither. He inquired, on the road, as he was bidden, at Erlangen,
of Master's Cousin, the experienced Rittmeister, Where his Royal
Highness at present was, that he might deliver a Letter to him?
The Master's Cousin, who answered naturally, "At Anspach," knew
nothing, and naturally could get to know nothing, of what the
message in this Letter was. But he judged, from
cross-questionings, added to dim whispering rumors he had heard,
that it was questionable, probably in an extreme degree.
Wherefore, along with his Cousin the Lieutenant's messenger to
Anspach, the Rittmeister forwarded a Note of his own to
Lieutenant-Colonel Rochow, of this purport, "As a friend, I warn
you, have a watchful eye on your high charge!"--and, for his own
share, determined to let nothing escape him in his corner of the
matter. This note to Rochow, and the Berlin Letter for the
Crown-Prince reach Anspach by the same hand; Lieutenant Katte's
express, conscious of nothing, delivering them both. Rochow and
the Rittmeister, though the poor Prince does not know it, are
broad awake to all movements he and the rash Lieutenant may make.
Lieutenant Katte, in this Letter now arrived, complains: "That he
never yet can get recruiting furlough; whether it be by accident,
or that Rochow has given my Colonel a hint, no furlough yet to be
had: will, at worst, come without furlough and in spite of all men
and things, whenever wanted. Only--Wesel still, if I might
advise!" This is the substance of Katte's message by express.
Date must be the end of July, 1730; but neither Date nor Letter is
now anywhere producible, except from Hearsay.
Deeply pondering these things, what shall the poor Prince do?
From Canstatt, close by Stuttgard, a Town on our homeward route,--
from Canstatt, where Katte was to "appear in disguise," had the
furlough been got, one might have slipt away across the Hills.
It is but eighty miles to Strasburg, through the Kniebiss Pass,
where the Murg, the Kinzig, and the intricate winding mountain
streams and valleys start Rhine-ward: a labyrinthic
rock-and-forest country, where pursuit or tracking were
impossible. Near by Strasburg is Count Rothenburg's Chateau;
good Rothenburg, long Minister in Berlin,--who saw those
PROFOSSEN, or Scavenger-Executioners in French Costume long since,
and was always good to me:--might not that be a method? Lieutenant
Keith indeed is in Wesel, waiting only a signal. Suppose he went
to the Hague, and took soundings there what welcome we should
have? No, not till we have actually run; beware of making noise!--
The poor Prince is in unutterable perplexity; can only answer
Katte by that Messenger of his, to the effect (date and Letter
burnt like the former): "Doubt is on every hand; doubt,--and yet
CERTAINTY. Will write again before undertaking anything."
And there is no question he did write again; more than once:
letters by the post, which his faithful Lieutenant Katte in Berlin
received; one of which, however, stuck on the road; and this one,
--by some industry of postmasters spirited into vigilance, as is
likeliest, though others say by mere misaddressing, by "want of
BERLIN on the address,"--fell into the hands of vigilant
RITTMEISTER Katte at Erlangen. Who grew pale in reading it, and
had to resolve on a painful thing! This was, I suppose, among the
last Letters of the series; and must have been dated, as I guess,
about the 29th of July, 1730; but they are now all burnt, huddled
rapidly into annihilation, and one cannot say!--
Certain it is that the Royal Travelling-Party left Anspach in a
few days, to go, southward still, "by the OEttingen Country
towards Augsburg." [Fassmann, p. 410.] Feuchtwang (WET Wang, not
Durrwang or DRY Wang) is the first stage; here lives the Dowager
Margravine of Anspach: here the Prince does some inconceivably
small fault "lets a knife, which he is handing to or from the
Serene Lady, fall," [Ranke, i. 304 ("from a Letter the Prince had
written to Katte").] who, as she is weak, may suffer by the
jingle; for which Friedrich Wilhelm bursts out on him like the
Irish Rebellion,--to the silent despair of the poor Prince.
The poor Prince meditates desperate resolutions, but has to keep
them strictly to himself.
Doubtless the Buddenbrock Trio, good old military gentlemen, would
endeavor to speak comfort to him, when they were on the road
again. Here is Nordlingen, your Highness, where Bernhard of
Weimar, for his over-haste, got so beaten in the Thirty-Years War;
would not wait till the Swedes were rightly gathered:
what general, if he have reinforcement at hand, would not wait for
it? The waters now, you observe, run all into the Wornitz, into
the Donau: it is a famed war-country this; known to me well in my
young Eugene-Marlborough days!--"Hm, Ha, yes!" For the Prince is
preoccupied with black cares; and thinks Blenheim and the
Schellenberg businesses befell long since, and were perhaps simple
to what he has now on hand. That Feuchtwang scene, it would
appear, has brought him to a resolution. There is a young page
Keith of the party, Lieutenant Keith of Wesel's Brother; of this
page Keith, who is often busy about horses, he cautiously makes
question, What help may be in him? A willing mind traceable in
this poor lad, but his terrors great.
To Donauworth from Anspach, through Feuchtwang and Nordlingen, is
some seventy or eighty miles. At Donauworth one surely ought to
lodge, and see the Schellenberg on the morrow; nay drive to the
Field of Hochstadt (Blenheim, BLINDHEIM), which is but a few miles
farther up the River? Buddenbrock was there, and Anhalt-Dessau:
for their very sake, were there nothing farther, one surely ought
to go? Such was the probability, a visit to Blenheim field in
passing. And surely, somewhere in those heart-rending masses of
Historical Rubbish, I did at last find express evanescent mention
of the fact,--but cannot now say where;--the exact record, or
conceivable image of which, would have been a perceptible pleasure
to us. Alas, in those dim dreary Books, all whirling dismal round
one's soul, like vortices of dim Brandenburg sand, how should
anything human be searched out and mentioned to us; and a
thousand, things not-human be searched out, and eternally
suppressed from us, for the sake of that? I please myself figuring
young Friedrich looking at the vestiges of Marlborough, even in a
preoccupied uncertain manner. Your Majesty too, this is the very
"Schellenberg (or JINGLE-HILL)," this Hill we are now skirting, on
highways, on swift wheels; which overhangs Donauworth, our
resting-place this hot July evening. Yes, your Majesty, here was a
feat of storming done,--pang, pang!--such a noise as never jingled
on that Hill before: like Doomsday come; and a hero-head to rule
the Doomsday, and turn it to heroic marching music. A very pretty
feat of war, your Majesty! His Majesty well knows it; feat of his
Marlborough's doing, famed everywhere for the twenty-six years
last past; and will go to see the Schellenberg and its Lines.
The great Duke is dead four years; sank sadly, eclipsed under
tears of dotage of his own, and under human stupidity of other
men's! But Buddenbrock is still living, Anhalt-Dessau and others
of us are still alive a little while!
Hochstadt itself--Blenheim, as the English call it, meaning
BLINDHEIM, the other village on the Field--is but a short way up
the River; well worth such a detour. By what way they drove to the
field of honor and back from it, I do not know. But there,
northward, towards the heights, is the little wood where
Anhalt-Dessau stood at bay like a Molossian dog, of consummate
military knowledge; and saved the fight in Eugene's quarter of it.
That is visible enough; and worth looking at. Visible enough the
rolling Donau, Marlborough's place; the narrow ground, the
bordering Hills all green at this season;--and down old
Buddenbrock's cheek, end Anhalt's, there would roll an iron tear
or two. Augsburg is but some thirty miles off, once we are across
the Donau,--by the Bridge of Donauworth, or the Ferry of
Hochstadt,--swift travellers in a long day, the last of July, are
soon enough at Augsburg.
As for Friedrich, haunted and whipt onwards by that scene at
Feuchtwang, he is inwardly very busy during this latter part of
the route. Probably there is some progress towards gaining Page
Keith, Lieutenant Keith of Wesel's Brother; some hope that Page
Keith, at the right moment, can be gained: the Lieutenant at Wesel
is kept duly advised. To Lieutenant Katte at Berlin Friedrich now
writes, I should judge from Donauworth or Augsburg, "That he has
had a scene at Feuchtwang; that he can stand it no longer.
That Canstatt being given up, as Katte cannot be there to go
across the Kniebiss with us, we will endure till we are near
enough the Rhine. Once in the Rhineland, in some quiet Town there,
handy for Speyer, for French Landau,"--say Sinzheim; last stage
hitherward of Heidelberg, but this we do not write,--"there might
it not be? Be, somewhere, it shall and must! You, Katte, the
instant you hear that we are off, speed you towards the Hague;
ask for 'M. le Comte d'Alberville;' you will know that gentleman
WHEN you see him: Keith, our Wesel friend, will have taken the
preliminary soundings;--and I tell you, Count d'Alberville, or
news of him, will be there. Bring the great-coat with you, and the
other things, especially the 1,000 gold ducats. Count d'Alberville
at the Hague, if all have gone right:--nay if anything go wrong,
cannot he, once across the Rhine, take refuge in the convents in
those Catholic regions? Nobody, under the scapulary, will suspect
such a heretic as him. Speed, silence, vigilance! And so adieu!"
A letter of such purport Friedrich did write; which Letter,
moreover, the Lieutenant Katte received: it was not this, it was
another, that stuck upon the road, and fell into the Rittmeister's
hand. This is the young Prince's ultimate fixed project, brought
to birth by that slight accident of dropping the knife at
Feuchtwang; [Ranke, i. 304.] and hanging heavy on his mind during
this Augsburg drive. At Augsburg, furthermore, "he bought, in all
privacy, red cloth, of quantity to make a top-coat;" red, the gray
being unattainable in Katte's hands: in all privacy; though the
watchful Rochow had full knowledge of it, all the same.
Chapter VI.
JOURNEY HOMEWARDS FROM THE REICH; CATASTROPHE ON JOURNEY HOMEWARDS
The travelling Majesty of Prussia went diligently up and down,
investigating ancient Augsburg: saw, I doubt not, the FUGGEREI, or
ancient Hospice of the Fuggers,--who were once Weavers in those
parts, and are now Princes, and were known to entertain Charles V.
with fires of cinnamon, nay with transient flames of Bank-bills on
one old occasion. Saw all the Fuggeries, I doubt not; the ancient
Luther-and-Melanchthon relics, Diet-Halls and notabilities of this
renowned Free Town;--perhaps remembered Margraf George, and
loud-voiced Kurfurst Joachim with the Bottle-nose (our DIRECT
Ancestor, though mistaken in opinion on some points!), who were
once so audible there.
One passing phenomenon we expressly know he saw; a human, not a
historically important one. Driving through the streets from place
to place, his Majesty came athwart some questionable quaint
procession, ribbony, perhaps musical; Majesty questioned it:
"A wedding procession, your Majesty!"--"Will the Bride step out,
then, and let us see how she is dressed!" "VOM HERZEN GERN;
will have the honor." Bride stept out, with blushes,--handsome we
will hope; Majesty surveyed her, on the streets of Augsburg,
having a human heart in him; and (says Fassmann, as if with
insidious insinuation) "is said to have made her a present."
She went her way; fulfilled her destiny in an anonymous manner:
Friedrich Wilhelm, loudly named in the world, did the like;
and their two orbits never intersected again.--Some forty-five
miles south of Augsburg, up the Wertach River, more properly up
the Mindel River, lies Mindelheim, once a name known in England
and in Prussia; once the Duke of Marlborough's "Principality:"
given him by a grateful Kaiser Joseph; taken from him by a
necessitous Kaiser Karl, Joseph's Brother, that now is. I know not
if his Majesty remembers that transaction, now while in these
localities; but know well, if he does, he must think it a
shabby one.
On the same day, 1st August, 1730, we quit Augsburg; set out
fairly homewards again. The route bends westward this time;
towards Frankfurt-on-Mayn; there yachts are to be ready; and mere
sailing thenceforth, gallantly down the Rhine-stream,--such a
yacht-voyage, in the summer weather, with no Tourists yet
infesting it,--to end, happily we will hope, at Wesel, in the
review of regiments, and other business. First stage, first pause,
is to be at Ludwigsburg, and the wicked old Duke of Wurtemberg's;
thither first from Augsburg. We cross the Donau at Dillingen, at
Gunzberg, or I know not where; and by to-morrow's sunset, being
rapid travellers, find ourselves at Ludwigsburg,--clear through
Canstatt, Stuttgard, and certainly no Katte waiting there!
Safe across the intermediate uplands, here are we fairly in the
Neckar Country, in the Basin of the Rhine again; and old Duke
Eberhard Ludwig of Wurtemberg bidding us kindly welcome, poor old
bewildered creature, who has become the talk of Germany in those
times. Will English readers consent to a momentary glance into his
affairs and him? Strange things are going on at Lndwigsburg;
nay the origin of Ludwigsburg, and that the Duke should be there
and not at Stuttgard, is itself strange. Let us take this Excerpt,
headed LUDWIGSBURG in 1730, and then hasten on:--
LUDWIGSBURG IN 1730.
"Duke Eberhard Ludwig, now an elderly gentleman of fifty-four, has
distinguished himself in his long reign, not by political
obliquities and obstinacies, though those also were not wanting,
but by matrimonial and amatory; which have rendered him
conspicuous to his fellows-creatures, and still keep him
mentionable in History, briefly and for a sad reason.
Duke Eberhard Ludwig was duly wedded to an irreproachable Princess
of Baden-Durlach (Johanna Elizabeth) upwards of thirty years ago;
and he duly produced one Son in consequence, with other good
results to himself and her. But in course of time Duke Eberhard
Ludwig took to consorting with bad creatures; took, in fact, to
swashing about at random in the pool of amatory iniquity, as if
there had been no law known, or of the least validity, in
that matter.
"Perceiving which, a certain young fellow, Gravenitz by name, who
had come to him from the Mecklenbnrg regions, by way of pushing
fortune, and had got some pageship or the like here in Wurtemberg,
recollected that he had a young Sister at home; pretty and artful,
who perhaps might do a stroke of work here. He sends for the young
Sister; very pretty indeed, and a gentlewoman by birth, though
penniless. He borrows clothes for her (by onerous contract with
the haberdashers, it is said, being poor to a degree); he easily
gets her introduced to the Ducal Soirees; bids her--She knows what
to do? Right well she knows what; catches, with her piquant face,
the dull eye of Eberhard Ludwig, kindles Eberhard Ludwig, and will
not for something quench him. Not she at all: How can SHE; your
Serene Highness, ask her not! A virtuous young lady, she, and come
of a stainless Family!--In brief, she hooks, she of all the fishes
in the pool, this lumber of a Duke; enchants him, keeps him
hooked; and has made such a pennyworth of him, for the last twenty
years and more, as Germany cannot match. [Michaelis, iii. 440.]
Her brother Gravenitz the page has become Count Gravenitz the
prime minister, or chief of the Governing Cabal; she Countess
Gravenitz and Autocrat of Wurtemberg. Loaded with wealth, with
so-called honors, she and hers, there go they, flaunting sky-high;
none else admitted to more than the liberty of breathing in
silence in this Duchy; --the poor Duke Eberhard Ludwig making no
complaint; obedient as a child to the bidding of his Gravenitz.
He is become a mere enchanted simulacrum of a Duke; bewitched
under worse than Thessalian spells; without faculty of willing,
except as she wills; his People and he the plaything of this Circe
or Hecate, that has got hold of him. So it has lasted for above
twenty years. Gravenitz has become the wonder of Germany;
and requires, on these bad grounds, a slight mention in Human
History for some time to come. Certainly it is by the Gravenitz
alone that Eberhard Ludwig is remembered; and yet, down since
Ulrich with the Thumb, [Ulricus POLLEX (right thumb bigger than
left); died A.D. 1265 (Michaelis, iii. 262).] which of those
serene abstruse Beutelsbachers, always an abstruse obstinate set,
has so fixed himself in your memory?--
"Most persons in Wurtemberg, for quiet's sake, have complied with
the Gravenitz; though not without protest, and sometimes spoken
protest. Thus the Right Reverend Osiander (let us name Osiander,
Head of the Church in Wurtemberg) flatly refused to have her name
inserted in the Public Prayers; 'Is not she already prayed for?'
said Osiander: 'Do we not say, DELIVER US FROM EVIL?' said the
indignant Protestant man. And there is one other person that never
will comply with her: the lawful Wife of Eberhard Ludwig.
Serene Lady, she has had a sad existenoe of it; the voice of her
wrongs audible, to little purpose, this long while, in Heaven and
on Earth. But it is not in the power of reward or punishment to
bend her female will in the essential point: 'Divorce, your
Highness? When _I_ am found guilty, yes. Till then, never, your
Highness, never, never,' in steadv CRESCENDO tone:--so that his
Highness is glad to escape again, and drop the subject. On which
the Serene Lady again falls silent. Gravenitz, in fact, hopes
always to be wedded with the right, nay were it only with the left
hand: and this Serene Lady stands like a fateful monument
irremovably in the way. The Serene Lady steadily inhabits her own
wing of the Ducal House, would not exchange it for the Palace of
Aladdin; looks out there upon the grand equipages, high doings,
impure splendors of her Duke and his Gravenitz with a clear-eyed
silence, which seems to say more eloquently than words, 'MENE,
MENE, YOU are weighed!' In the land of Wurtemberg, or under the
Sun, is no reward or punishment that can abate this silence.
Speak of divorce, the answer is as above: leave divorce lying,
there is silence looking forth clear-eyed from that particular
wing of the Palace, on things which the gods permit for a time.
"Clear-eyed silence, which, as there was no abating of it, grew at
last intolerable to the two sinners. 'Let us remove,' said the
Gravenitz, 'since her Serene Highness will not: build a new
charming Palace,--say at our Hunting Seat, among those pleasant
Hills in the Waiblingen region,--and take the Court, out thither.'
And they have done so, in these late bad years; taking out with
them by degrees all the Courtier Gentry, all the RATHS, Government
Boards, public businesses; and building new houses for them,
there. ["From 1727 to 1730" was this latter removal.
A hunting-lodge, of Eberhard Ludwig's building, and named by him
LUGWIGSBURG, stood here since 1705; nucleus of the subsequent
palace, with its "Pheasantries," its "Favoritas," &c. &c.
The place had originally been monastic (Busching,
Erdbeschreibung, vi. 1519).] Founding, in fact, a
second Capital for Wurtemberg, with what distress, sulky misery
and disarrangement, to Stuttgard and the old Capital, readers can
fancy. There it stands, that Ludwigsburg, the second Capital of
Wurtemberg, some ten or twenty miles from Stuttgard the first:
a lasting memorial of Circe Gravenitz and her Ludwig. Has not she,
by her incantations, made the stone houses dance out hither?
It remains to this day a pleasant town, and occasional residence
of sovereignty. WAIBLINGEN, within an hour's ride, has got
memorability on other grounds;--what reader has not heard of
GHIBELLINES, meaning Waiblingens? And in another hour up the
River, you will come to Beutelsbach itself, where Ulrich with the
Thumb had his abode (better luck to him!), and generated this
Lover of the Gravenitz, and much other nonsense loud now and then
for the last four centuries in the world!--
"There is something of abstruse in all these Beutelsbachers, from
Ulrich with the Thumb downwards: a mute ennui, an inexorable
obstinacy; a certain streak of natural gloom which no illumination
can abolish. Veracity of all kinds is great in them; sullen
passive courage plenty of it; active courage rarer; articulate
intellect defective: hence a strange stiff perversity of conduct
visible among them, often marring what wisdom they have;--it is
the royal stamp of Fate put upon these men. What are called
fateful or fated men; such as are often seen on the top places of
the world, making an indifferent figure there. Something of this,
I doubt not, is concerned in Eberhard Ludwig's fascination; and we
shall see other instances farther down in this History.
"But so, for twenty years, the absurd Duke, transformed into a
mere Porcus by his Circe in that scandalous miraculous manner, has
lived; and so he still lives. And his Serene Wife, equally
obstinate, is living at Stuttgard, happily out of his sight now.
One Son, a weakly man, who had one heir, but has now none, is her
only comfort. His Wife is a Prussian Margravine (Friedrich
Wilhelm's HALF-AUNT), and cultivates Calvinism in the Lutheran
Country: this Husband of hers, he too has an abstruse life, not
likely to last. We need not doubt 'the Fates' are busy, and the
evil demons, with those poor fellow-beings! Nay it is said the
Circe is becoming much of a Hecate now; if the bewitched Duke
could see it. She is getting haggard beyond the power of rouge;
her mind, any mind she has, more and more filled with spleen,
malice, and the dregs of pride run sour. A disgusting creature,
testifies one Ex-Official gentleman, once a Hofrath under her, but
obliged to run for life, and invoke free press in his defence:
[ Apologie de Monsieur Forstner de Breitembourg, &c.
italic> (Paris, 1716; or "a Londres, aux depens de la Compagnie,
1745"): in Spittler, Geschichte Wurtembergs
(Spittlers WERKE, Stuttgard und Tubingen, 1828; vol. v.), 497-539.
Michaelis, iii. 428-439, gives (in abstruse Chancery German) a
Sequel to this fine affair of Forstner's.] no end to the foul
things she will say, of an unspeakable nature, about the very Duke
her victim, testifies this Ex-Official: malicious as a witch, says
he, and as ugly as one in spite of paint,--'TOUJOURS UN LAVEMENT A
SES TROUSSES.' Good Heavens!"
But here is the august Prussian Travelling-Party: shove aside your
bewitchments and bewilderments; hang a decent screen over many
things! Poor Eberhard Ludwig, who is infinitely the gentleman,
bestirs himself a good deal to welcome old royal friends; nor do
we hear that the least thing went awry during this transit of the
royalties. "Field of Blenheim, says your Majesty? Ah me!"--
For Eberhard Ludwig knows that ground; stood the World-Battle
there, and so much has come and gone since then: Ah me indeed!
Friedrich Wilhelm and he have met before this, and have much to
tell one another; Treaty of Seville by no means their only topic.
Nay the flood of cordiality went at length so far, that at last
Friedrich Wilhelm, the conscientious King, came upon the most
intimate topics: Gravenitz; the Word of God; scandal to the
Protestant Religion: no likely heir to your Dukedom; clear peril
to your own soul. Is not her Serene Highness an unexceptionable
Lady, heroic under sore woes; and your wedded Wife above all?--
'M-NA, and might bring Heirs too: only forty come October:--
Ah Duke, ah Friend! AVISEZ LA FIN, Eberhard Ludwig; consider the
end of it all; we are growing old fellows now! The Duke,
I conceive, who was rather a fat little man, blushed blue, then
red, and various colors; at length settling into steady pale, as
it were, indicating anthracitic white-heat: it is certain he said
at length, with emphasis, "I will!" And he did so, by and by.
Friedrich Wilhelm sent a messenger to Stuttgard to do his
reverence to the high injured Lady there, perhaps to show her afar
off some ray of hope if she could endure. Eberhard Ludwig, raised
to a white-heat, perceives that in fact he is heartily tired of
this Circe-Hecate; that in fact she has long been an intolerable
nightmare to him, could he but have known it.
And his Royal Highness the Crown-Prince all this while? Well, yes;
his Royal Highness has got a Court Tailor at Ludwigsburg; and, in
all privacy (seen well by Rochow), has had the Augsburg red cloth
cut into a fine upper wrappage, over coat or roquelaure for
himself; intending to use the same before long. Thus they
severally, the Father and the Son; these are their known acts at
Ludwigsburg, That the Father persuaded Eberhard Ludwig of the
Gravenitz enormity, and that the Son got his red top-coat ready.
On Thursday, 3d of August (late in the afternoon, as I perceive),
they, well entertained, depart towards Mannheim, Kur-Pfalz
(Elector Palatine) old Karl Philip of the Pfalz's place; hope to
be there on the morrow some time, if all go well. Gloomy much
enlightened Eberhard takes leave of them, with abstruse but
grateful feelings; will stand by the Kaiser, and dismiss that
Gravenitz nightmare by the first opportunity.
As accordingly he did. Next Summer, going on a visit northward,
specially to Berlin, [There for some three weeks, "till 9th June,
1731, with a suite of above fifty persons" (Fassmann, pp. 421,
422).] he left order that the Gravenitz was to be got out of his
sight, safe stowed away, before his return. Which by the proper
officers, military certain of them, was accomplished,--by fixed
bayonets at last, and not without futile demur on the part of the
Gravenitz. Poor Eberhard Ludwig, "he published in the pulpits,
That he was now minded to lead a better life,"--had time now been
left him. Same year, 1731, November being come, gloomy Eberhard
Ludwig lost, not unexpectedly, his one Son,--the one Grandson was
gone long since. The serene steadfast Duchess now had her Duke
again, what was left of him: but he was fallen into the sere and
yellow leaf; in two years more, he died childless; [31st October,
1733: Michaelis, iii. 441.] and his Cousin, Karl Alexander, an
Austrian Feldmarschall of repute, succeeded in Wurtemberg.
With whom we may transiently meet, in time coming; with whom,
and perhaps less pleasantly with certain of his children; for they
continue to this day,--with the old abstruse element still too
traceable in them.
Old Karl Philip, Kurfurst of the Pfalz, towards whom Friedrich
Wilhelm is now driving, with intent to be there to-morrow evening,
is not quite a stranger to readers here; and to Friedrich Wilhelm
he is much the reverse, perhaps too much. This is he who ran away
with poor Prince Sobieski's Bride from Berlin, at starting in
life; who fell upon his own poor Protestant Heidelbergers and
their Church of the Holy Ghost (being himself Papist, ever since
that slap on the face to his ancestor); and who has been in many
quarrels with Friedrich Wilhelm and others. A high expensive
sovereign gentleman, this old Karl Philip; not, I should suppose,
the pleasantest of men to lodge with. One apprehends, he cannot
be peculiarly well disposed to Friedrich Wilhelm, after that sad
Heidelberg passage of fence, twelve or eleven years ago. Not to
mention the inextricable Julich-and-Berg business, which is a
standing controversy between them.
Poor old Kurfurst, he is now within a year of seventy. He has had
crosses and losses; terrible campaignings against the Turk, in old
times; and always such a stock of quarrels, at home, as must have
been still worse to bear. A life of perpetual arguing, squabbling
and battling,--one's neighbors being such an unreasonable set!
Brabbles about Heidelberg Catechism, and Church of the Holy Ghost,
so that foreign Kings interfered, shaking their whips upon us.
Then brabbles about boundaries; about inheritances, and detached
properties very many,--clearly mine, were the neighbors
reasonable! In fact this sovereign old gentleman has been in the
Kaiser's courts, or even on the edge of fight, oftener than most
other men; and it is as if that first adventure, of the Sobieski
wedding turned topsy-turvy, had been symbolical of much that
followed in his life.
We remember that unpleasant Heidelberg affair: how hopeful it once
looked; fact DONE, Church of the Holy Ghost fairly ours;
your CORPUS EVANGELICORUM fallen quasi-dead; and nothing now for
it but protocolling by diplomatists, pleading in the Diets by men
in bombazine, never like ending at all;--when Friedrich Wilhelm
did suddenly end it; suddenly locked up his own Catholic
establishments and revenues, and quietly inexorable put the key in
his pocket; as it were, drew his own whip, with a "Will you whip
MY Jew?"--and we had to cower out of the affair, Kaiser himself
ordering us, in a most humiliated manner! Readers can judge
whether Kur-Pfalz was likely to have a kindly note of Friedrich
Wilhelm in that corner of his memory. The poor man felt so
disgusted with Heidelberg, he quitted it soon after. He would not
go to Dusseldorf (in the Berg-and-Julich quarter), as his
Forefathers used to do; but set up his abode at Mannheim, where he
still is. Friedrich Wilhelm, who was far from meaning harm or
insolence in that Heidelberg affair, hopes there is no grudge
remaining. But so stand the facts: it is towards Mannheim, not
towards Heidelberg that we are now travelling!--For the rest, this
scheme of reprisals, or whipping your Jew if you whip mine,
answered so well, Friedrich Wilhelm has used it, or threatened to
use, as the real method, ever since, where needful; and has saved
thereby much bombazine eloquence, and confusion to mankind, on
several occasions.
But the worst between these two High Gentlemen is that
Julich-and-Berg controversy; which is a sore still running, and
beyond reach of probable surgery. Old Karl Philip has no male
Heir; and is like to be (what he indeed proved) the last of the
NEUBERG Electors Palatine. What trouble there rose with the first
of them, about that sad business; and how the then Brandenburger,
much wrought upon, smote the then Neuburger across the very face,
and drove him into Catholicism, we have not forgotten; how can we
ever?--It is one hundred and sixteen years since that after-dinner
scene; and, O Heavens, what bickering and brabbling and confused
negotiation there has been; lawyers' pens going almost continually
ever since, shadowing out the mutual darkness of sovereignties;
and from time to time the military implements brandishing
themselves, though loath generally to draw blood! For a hundred
and sixteen years:--but the Final Bargain, lying on parchment in
the archives of both parties, and always acknowledged as final,
was to this effect: "You serene Neuburg keep what you have got;
we serene Brandenburg the like: Cleve with detached pertinents
ours; Julich-and-Berg mainly yours. And let us live in perpetual
amity on that footing. And, note only furthermore, when our Line
fails, the whole of these fine Duchies shall be yours: if your
Line fail, ours." That was the plain bargain, done solemnly in
1624, and again more solemnly and brought to parchment with
signature in 1666, as Friedrich Wilhelm knows too well. And now
the very case is about to occur; this old man, childless at
seventy, is the last of the Neuburgs. May not one reasonably
pretend that a bargain should be kept?
"Tush," answers old Karl Philip always: "Bargain?" And will not
hear reason against himself on the subject; not even when the
Kaiser asks him,--as the Kaiser really did, after that
Wusterhausen Treaty, but could get only negatives. Karl Philip has
no romantic ideas of justice, or of old parchments tying up a man.
Karl Philip had one Daughter by that dear Radzivil Princess,
Sobieski's stolen Bride; and he never, by the dear Radzivil or her
dear successor, [See Buchholz, i. 61 n.] had any son, or other
daughter that lived to wed. One Daughter, we say; a first-born,
extremely precious to him. Her he married to the young fortunate
Sulzbach Cousin, Karl Joseph Heir-Apparent of Sulzbach, who, by
all laws, was to succeed in the Pfalz as well,--Karl Philip
thinking furthermore, "He and she, please Heaven, shall hold fast
by Dusseldorf too, and that fine Julich-and-Berg Territory, which
is mine. Bargains?" Such was, and is, the old man's inflexible
notion. Alas, this one Daughter died lately, and her Husband
lately; [She in 1728; he in 1729: their eldest Daughter was born
1721 (Hubner, t. 140; Michaelis, ii. 101, 123).] again leaving
only Daughters; will not this change the notion? Not a whit,--
though Friedrich Wilhelm may have fondly hoped it by possibility
might, Not a whit: Karl Philip cherishes his little
Grand-daughter, now a child of nine, as he did her Mother and her
Mother's Mother; hopes one day to see her wedded (as he did) to a
new Heir-Apparent of the Pfalz and Sulzbach; and, for her behoof,
will hold fast by Berg and Julich, and part with no square inch of
it for any parchment.
What is Friedrich Wilhelm to do? Seek justice for himself by his
80,000 men and the iron ramrods? Apparently he will not get it
otherwise. He is loath to begin that terrible game. If indeed
Europe do take fire, as is likely at Seville or elsewhere--But in
the meanwhile how happy if negotiation would but serve! Alas, and
if the Kaiser, England; Holland and the others, could be brought
to guarantee me,--as indeed they should (to avoid a CASUS BELLI),
and some of them have said they will! Friedrich Wilhelm tried this
Julich-and-Berg Problem by the pacific method, all his life;
strenuously, and without effect. Result perhaps was coming
nevertheless; at the distance of another hundred years!--One thing
I know: whatever rectitude and patience, whatever courage,
perseverance, or other human virtue he has put into this or
another matter, is not lost; not it nor any fraction of it, to
Friedrich Wilhelm and his sons' sons; but will well avail him and
them, if not soon, then later, if not in Berg and Julich, then in
some other quarter of the Universe, which is a wide Entity and a
long-lived! Courage, your Majesty!
So stand matters as Friedrich Wilhelm journeys towards Mannheim:
human politeness will have to cloak well, and keep well down, a
good many prickly points in the visit ahead. Alas, poor Friedrich
Wilhelm has got other matter to think of, by the time we arrive
in Mannheim.
CATASTROPHE ON JOURNEY HOMEWARDS.
The Royal Party, quitting Ludwigsburg,--on Thursday, 3d August,
1730, some hours after dinner, as I calculate it,--had but a
rather short journey before them: journey to a place called
Sinzheim, some fifty or sixty miles; a long way short of
Heidelberg; the King's purpose being to lodge in that dilapidated
silent Town of Sinzheim, and leave both Heidelberg and Mannheim,
with their civic noises, for the next day's work. Sinzheim, such
was the program, as the Prince and others understood it; but by
some accident, or on better calculation, it was otherwise decided
in the royal mind: not at Sinzheim, intricate decayed old Town,
shall we lodge to-night, but five or six miles short of it, in the
naturally silent Village of Steinfurth, where good clean empty
Barns are to be found. Which latter is a favorite method of his
Majesty, fond always of free air and the absence of fuss.
Shake-downs, a temporary cooking apparatus, plenty of tobacco, and
a tub to wash in: this is what man requires, and this without
difficulty can be got. His Majesty's tastes are simple;
simple, and yet good and human. Here is a small Royal Order, which
I read once, and ever since remember,--though the reference is now
blown away, and lost in those unindexed Sibylline Farragos, the
terror of human nature;--let us copy it from memory, till some
deliverer arise with finger on page. [Probably in Rodenbeck's
Beitrage, --but long sad searching there,
and elsewhere, proves unavailing at present. Historical Farragos
without INDEX; a hundred, or several hundred, blind sacks of
Historical clippings, generally authentic too if useless, and not
the least scrap of LABEL on them:--are not these a handy article!]
"At Magdeburg, on this Review-Journey, have dinner for me, under a
certain Tree you know of, outside the ramparts." Dinner of one
sound portion solid, one ditto liquid, of the due quality; readied
honestly,--and to be eaten under a shady Tree; on the
Review-ground itself, with the summer sky over one's head.
Could Jupiter Tonans, had he been travelling on business in those
parts, have done better with his dinner?--
"At Sinzheim?" thinks his Royal Highness; and has spoken privily
to the Page Keith. To glide out of their quarters there, in that
waste negligent old Town (where post-horses can be had), in the
gray of the summer's dawn? Across the Rhine to Speyer is but three
hours riding; thence to Landau, into France, into--? Enough, Page
Keith has undertaken to get horses, and the flight shall at last
be. Husht, husht. To-morrow morning, before the sparrow wake,
it is our determination to be upon the road!
Ruins of the Tower of Stauffen, HOHEN or High STAUFFEN, where
Kaiser Barbarossa lived once, young and ruddy, and was not yet a
MYTH, "winking and nodding under the Hill at Salzburg,"--yes, it
is but a few miles to the right there, were this a deliberate
touring party. But this is a rapid driving one; knows nothing
about Stauffen, cares nothing.--We cannot fancy Friedrich
remembered Barbarossa at all; or much regarded Heilbronn itself,
the principal and only famous Town they pass this day. The St.
Kilian's Church, your Highness, and big stone giant at the top of
the steeple yonder,--adventurous masons and slater people get upon
the crown of his head, sometimes, and stand waving flags.
[Buddaus, Lexicon, ii. ? Heilbronn.]
The Townhouse too (RATHHAUS), with its amazing old Clock?
And Gotz von Berlichingen, the Town-Councillors once had him in
prison for one night, in the "Gotz's Tower" here; your Highness
has heard of "Gotz with the Iron Hand"? Berlichingens still live
at Jaxthausen, farther down the Neckar Valley, in these parts;
and show the old HAND, considerably rusted now. Heilbronn, the
most famous City on the Neckar; and its old miraculous Holy
Well--? What cares his Highness! Weinsberg again, which is but a
few miles to the right of us,--there it was that the Besieged
Wives did that astonishing feat, 600 years ago; coming out, as the
capitulation bore, "with their most valuable property," each
brought her Husband on her back (were not the fact a little
uncertain!)--whereby the old Castle has, to this day, the name
"WEIBERTREUE, Faithfulness of Women." Welf's Duchess, Husband on
back, was at the head of those women; a Hohenzollern ancestor of
yours, I think I have heard, was of the besieging party. [Siege is
notorious enough; A.D. 1140: Kohler Reichshistorie,
italic> p. 167, who does not mention the story of the women;
Menzel (Wolfgang), Geschichte der Deutschen,
p. 287, who takes no notice that it is a highly mythical story,--
supported only by the testimony of one poor Monk in Koln, vaguely
chronicling fifty years after date and at that good distance.]
Alas, thinks his Royal Highness, is there not a flower of Welfdom
now in England; and I, unluckiest of Hohenzollerns, still far away
from her here! It is at Windsor, not in Weinsberg, or among the
ruins of WEIBERTREUE, that his Highness wishes to be.
At Heilbronn our road branches off to the left; and we roll
diligently towards Sinzheim, calculating to be there before
nightfall. Whew! Something has gone awry at Sinzheim: no right
lodging in the waste Inns there; or good clean Barns, of a
promising character, are to be had nearer than there:
we absolutely do not go to Sinzheim to-night; we are to stop at
Steinfurth, a small quiet Hamlet with Barns, four or five miles
short of that! This was a great disappointment to the Prince,--and
some say, a highly momentous circumstance in his History: ["Might
perhaps have succeeded at Sinzheim" (Seckendorf's
Relation of the Crown-Prince's meditated Flight,
p. 2;--addressed to Prince Eugene few days afterwards; given in
Forster, iii. 1-13).]--however, he rallies in the course of the
evening; speaks again to Page Keith. "Steinfurth [STONY-FORD, over
the Brook here]; be it at Steinfurth, all the same!" Page Keith
will manage to get horses for us here, no less. And Speyer and the
Ferry of the Rhine are within three hours. Favor us, Silence and
all ye good genii!--
On Friday morning, 4th August, 1730, "usual hour of starting,
3 A.M.," not being yet came, the Royal Party lies asleep in two
clean airy Barns, facing one another, in the Village of
Steinfurth; Barns facing one another, with the Heidelberg Highway
and Village Green asleep in front between them; [Compare
Wilhelmina, i. 259 (her Account of the Flight: "Heard it from my
Brother,"--and report it loosely after a dozen years!).] for it is
little after two in the morning, the dawn hardly beginning to
break. Prince Friedrich, with his Trio of Vigilance, Buddenbrock,
Waldau, Rochow, lies in one Barn; Majesty, with his Seckendorf and
party, is in the other: apparently all still locked in sleep?
Not all: Prince Friedrich, for example, is awake;--the Trio is
indeed audibly asleep; unless others watch for them, their six
eyes are closed. Friedrich cautiously rises; dresses; takes his
money, his new red roquelaure, unbolts the Barn-door, and walks
out. Trio of Vigilance is sound asleep, and knows nothing:
alas, Trio of Vigilance, while its own six eyes are closed, has
appointed another pair to watch.
Gummersbach the Valet comes to Rochow's bolster: "Hst, Herr
Oberst-Lieutenant, please awaken! Prince Royal is up, has on his
top-coat, and is gone out of doors!" Rochow starts to his
habiliments, or perhaps has them ready on; in a minute or two,
Rochow also is forth into the gray of the morning;--finds the
young Prince actually on the Green there; in his red roquelaure,
leaning pensively on one of the travelling carriages.
"Guten Morgen, Ihro Konigliche Hoheit!" [Ranke, 1. 305.]
--Fancy such a salutation to the young man! Page Keith, at this
moment, comes with a pair of horses, too: "Whither with the nags,
Sirrah?" Rochow asked with some sharpness. Keith, seeing how it
was, answered without visible embarrassment, "Herr, they are mine
and Kunz the Page's horses" (which, I suppose, is true); "ready at
the usual hour!" Keith might add.--"His Majesty does not go till
five this morning;--back to the stables!" beckoned Rochow;
and, according to the best accounts, did not suspect anything, or
affected not to do so.
Page Keith returned, trembling in his saddle. Friedrich strolled
towards the other Barn,--at least to be out of Rochow's company.
Seckendorf emerges from the other Barn; awake at the common hour:
"How do you like his Royal Highness in the red roquelaure?" asks
Rochow, as if nothing had happened. Was there ever such a baffled
Royal Highness; or young bright spirit chained in the Bear's Den
in this manner? Our Steinfurth project has gone to water; and it
is not to-day we shall get across the Rhine!--Not to-day; nor any
other day, on that errand, strong as our resolutions are! For new
light, in a few hours afterwards, pours in upon the project;
and human finesse, or ulterior schemes, avail nothing henceforth.
"The Crown-Prince's meditated Flight" has tried itself, and
failed. Here and so that long meditation ENDS; this at Steinfurth
was all the over-act it could ever come to. In few hours more
it will melt into air; and only the terrible consequences
will remain!--
By last night's arrangement, the Prince with his Trio was to set
out an hour before his Father, which circumstance had helped Page
Keith in his excuses. Naturally the Prince had now no wish to
linger on the Green of Steinfurth, in such a posture of affairs:
"Towards Heidelberg, then; let us see the big Tun there: ALLONS!"
How the young Prince and his Trio did this day's journey; where he
loitered, what he saw, said or thought, we have no account: it is
certain only that his Father, who set out from Steinfurth an hour
after him, arrived in Mannheim several hours before him; and, in
spite of Kurfurst Karl Philip's welcome, testified the liveliest
inquietude on that unaccountable circumstance.
Beautiful Rhine-stream, thrice-beautiful trim Mannheim;--yes, all
is beautiful indeed, your Serenity! But where can the Prince be?
he kept ejaculating. And Karl Philip had to answer what he could.
Of course the Prince may be lingering about Heidelberg, looking
at the big Tun and other miracles:--"I had the pleasure to repair
that world-famous Tub or Tun, as your Majesty knows; which had
lain half burnt, ever since Louis XIV. with his firebrand
robberies lay upon us, and burnt the Pfalz in whole, small honor
to him! I repaired the Tun: [Kohler, Munzbelustigungen
(viii. 418-424; 145-152), who gives a view of the
world's wonder, lying horizontal with stairs running up to it.
Big Tuns of that kind were not uncommon in Germany; and had uses,
if multiplex dues of wine were to be paid IN NATURA:
the Heidelberg, the biggest of them, is small to the
Whitbread-and-Company, for porter's-ale, in our time.] it is
probably the successfulest feat I did hitherto; and well worth
looking at, had your Majesty had time!"--"JA WOHL;--but he came
away an hour before me!"--The polite Karl Philip, at length, sent
off one of his own Equerries to ride towards Heidelberg, or even
to Steinfurth if needful, and see what was become of the Prince.
This Official person met the Prince, all in order, at no great
distance; and brought him safe to Papa's presence again.
Why Papa was in such a fuss about this little circumstance?
Truly there has something come to Papa's knowledge since he
started, perhaps since he arrived at Mannheim. Page Keith, who
rides always behind the King's coach, has ridden this day
in an agony of remorse and terror; and at length (probably in
Mannheim, once his Majesty is got to his Apartments, or now that
he finds his Majesty so anxious there) has fallen on his knees,
and, with tears and obtestations, made a clean breast. Page Keith
has confessed that the Crown-Prince and he were to have been in
Speyer, or farther, at this time of the day; flying rapidly into
France. "God's Providence alone prevented it! Pardon, pardon:
slay me, your Majesty; but there is the naked truth, and the
whole of it, and I have nothing more to say!" Hereupon ensues
despatch of the Equerry; and hereupon, as we may conjecture, the
Equerry's return with Fritz and the Trio is an unspeakable relief
to Friedrich Wilhelm.
Friedrich Wilhelm now summons Buddenbrock and Company straightway;
shows, in a suppressed-volcanic manner, with questions and
statements,--obliged to SUPPRESS oneself in foreign hospitable
Serene Houses,--what atrocity of scandal and terror has been on
the edge of happening: "And you three, Rochow, Waldau,
Buddenbrock, mark it, you three are responsible; and shall answer,
I now tell you, with your heads. Death the penalty, unless you
bring HIM to our own Country again,--'living or dead,'" added the
Suppressed-Volcano, in low metallic tone; and the sparkling eyes
of him, the red tint, and rustling gestures, make the words too
credible to us. [Ranke, i. 307.]
What Friedrich Wilhelm got to speak about with the old Kur-Pfalz,
during their serene psssages of hospitality at Mannheim, is not
very clear to me; his Prussian Majesty is privately in such a
desperate humor, and the old Kur-Pfalz privately so discrepant on
all manner of points, especially on the Julich-and-Berg point.
They could talk freely about the old Turk Campaigns, Battle of
Zentha, [11th September, 1697; Eugene's crowning feat;--breaking
of the Grand Turk's back in this world; who has staggered about,
less and less of a terror and outrage, more and more of a nuisance
growing unbearable, ever since that day. See Hormayr (iii. 97-101)
for some description of this useful bit of Heroism.] and
Prince Eugene; very freely about the Heidelberg Tun. But it is
known old Karl Philip had his agents at the Congress of Soissons,
to secure that Berg-and-Julich interest for the Sulzbachs and him:
directly in the teeth of Friedrich Wilhelm. How that may have
gone, since the Treaty of Seville broke out to astonish mankind,--
will be unsafe to talk about. For the rest, old Karl Philip has
frankly adopted the Pragmatic Sanction; but then he has, likewise,
privately made league with France to secure him in that
Julich-and-Berg matter, should the Kaiser break promise;--league
which may much obstruct said Sanction. Nay privately he is casting
glances on his Bavarian Cousin, elegant ambitious Karl Albert.
Kurfurst of Baiern,--are not we all from the same Wittelsbach
stock, Cousins from of old?--and will undertake, for the same
Julich-and-Bergobject, to secure Bavaria in its claims on the
Austrian Heritages in defect of Heirs Male in Austria. [Michaelis,
ii. 99-101.] Which runs directly into the throat of said Pragmatic
Sanction; and engages to make it, mere waste sheepskin, so to
speak! Truly old Karl Philip has his abstruse outlooks, this way,
that way; most abstruse politics altogether:--and in fact we had
better speak of the Battle of Zentha and the Heidelberg Tun, while
this Visit lasts.
On the morrow, Saturday, August 5th, certain Frenchmen from the
Garrison of Landau come across to pay their court and dine.
Which race of men Friedrich Wilhelm does not love; and now less
than ever, gloomily suspicious they may be come on parricide
Fritz's score,--you Rochow and Company keep an eye! By night and
by day an eye upon him! Friedrich Wilhelm was, no doubt, glad to
get away on the morrow afternoon; fairly out into the
Berg-Strasse, into the summer breezes and umbrageous woods, with
all his pertinents still safe about him; rushing towards Darmstadt
through the Sunday stillness, where he will arrive in the evening,
time enough. ["Sunday Evening arrive at Darmstadt," says
Seckendorf (in Forster, iii. 3), but by mistake calls it the "7th"
instead of "6th."]
The old Prince of Darmstadt, Ernst Ludwig, Landgraf of
Hessen-Darmstadt, age now sixty-three, has a hoary venerable
appearance, according to Pollnitz, "but sits a horse well, walks
well, and seems to enjoy perfect health,"--which we are glad to
hear of. What more concerns us, "he lives usually, quite retired,
in a small house upon the Square," in this extremely small
Metropolis of his, "and leaves his Heir-Apparent to manage all
business in the Palace and elsewhere." [Pollnitz, Memoirs
and Letters, ii. 66.] poor old Gentleman, he has the
biggest Palace almost in the world; only he could not finish it
for want of funds; and it lies there, one of the biggest
futilities, vexatious to look upon. No doubt the old Gentleman has
had vexations, plenty of them, first and last. He is now got
disgusted with the affairs of public life, and addicts himself
very much to "turning ivory," as the more eligible employment.
He lives in that small house of his, among his turning-lathes and
ivory shavings; dines in said small house, "at a table for four
persons:" only on Sunday, and above all on this Sunday, puts off
his apron; goes across to the Palace; dines there in state, with
his Heir and the Grandees. He has a kinship by affinity to
Friedrich Wilhelm; his Wife (dead long years since), Mother of
this Heir-Apparent, was an Anspach Princess, Aunt to the now Queen
Caroline of England. Poor old fellow, these insignificancies, and
that he descends direct from Philip the Magnanimous of Hessen
(Luther's Philip, who insisted on the supplementary Wife), are all
I know of him; and he is somewhat tragic to me there, turning
ivory in this extremely anarchic world. What the passages between
him and Friedrich Wilhelm were, on this occasion, shall remain
conjectural to all creatures. Friedrich Wilhelm said, this Sunday
evening at Darmstadt to his own Prince: "Still here, then?
I thought you would have been in Paris by this time!"--To which
the Prince, with artificial firmness, answered, He could
certainly, if he had wished; [Seckendorf (in Forster, iii.),
p. 3.] and being familiar with reproaches, perhaps hoped it was
nothing.
From Darmstadt to Frankfurt-on-Mayn is not quite forty miles, an
easy morning drive; through the old Country called of
Katzen-ellenbogen; CATS-ELBOW, a name ridiculous to hear.
[CATTIMELIBOCUM, that is, CATTUM-MELIBOCUM (CATTI a famed Nation,
MELIBOCUS the chief Hill or Fortress of their Country), is said to
be the original;--which has got changed; like ABALLABA into
"Appleby," or GOD ENCOMPASS US into "The Goat and Compasses,"
among ourselves.] Berg-Strasse and the Odenwald (FOREST of the
OTTI) are gone; but blue on the northeast yonder, if your Royal
Highness will please to look, may be seen summits of the SPESSART,
a much grander forest,--tall branchy timbers yonder, one day to be
masts of admirals, when floated down as far as Rotterdam,
whitherward one still meets them going. Spessart;--and nearer,
well hidden on the right, is an obscure village called DETTINGEN,
not yet become famous in the Newspapers of an idle world; of an
England surely very idle to go thither seeking quarrels! All which
is, naturally, in the highest degree indifferent to a Crown-Prince
so preoccupied.--They reach Frankfurt, Monday, still in good time.
Behold, at Frankfurt, the Trio of Vigilance, Buddenbrock and
Company (horrible to think of!) signify, "That we have the King's
express orders Not to enter the Town at all with your Royal
Highness. We, for our part, are to go direct into one of the Royal
Yachts, which swing at anchor here, and to wait in the same till
his Majesty have done seeing Frankfurt, and return to us." Here is
a message for the poor young Prince: Detected, prisoner, and a
volcanic Majesty now likely to be in full play when he returns!--
Gilt weathercock on the Mayn Bridge (which one Goethe used to look
at, in the next generation)--this, and the steeple-tops of
Frankfurt, especially that steeple-top with the grinning skull of
the mutinous malefactor on it, warning to mankind what mutiny
leads to; this, then, is what we are to see of Frankfurt; and with
such a symphony as our thoughts are playing in the background.
Unhappy Son, unhappy Father, once more!
Nay Friedrich Wilhelm got new lights in Frankfurt: Rittmeister
Katte had an estafette waiting for him there. Estafette with a
certain Letter, which the Rittmeister had picked up in Erlangen,
and has shot across by estafette to wait his Majesty here.
Majesty has read with open eyes and throat: Letter from the
Crown-Prince to Lieutenant Katte in Berlin: treasonous
Flight-project now indisputable as the sun at noon!--His Majesty
stept on board the Yacht in such humor as was never seen before:
"Detestable rebel and deserter, scandal of scandals--!"--it is
confidently written everywhere (though Seckendorf diplomatically
keeps silence), his Majesty hustled and tussled the unfortunate
Crown-Prince, poked the handle of his cane into his face and made
the nose bleed,--"Never did a Brandenburg face suffer the like of
this!" cried the poor Prince, driven to the edge of mad ignition
and one knows not what: when the Buddenbrocks, at whatever peril
interfered; got the Prince brought on board a different Yacht;
and the conflagration moderated for the moment. The Yachts get
under way towards Mainz and down the Rhine-stream. The Yachts
glide swiftly on the favoring current, taking advantage of what
wind there may be: were we once ashore at Wesel in our own
country,--wait till then, thinks his Majesty!
And so it was on these terms that Friedrich made his first
acquaintance with the beauties of the Rhine;--readers can judge
whether he was in a temper very open to the picturesque. I know
not that they paused at Mainz, or recollected Barbarossa's
World-Tournament, or the Hochheim vineyards at all: I see the
young man's Yacht dashing in swift gallop, not without danger,
through the Gap of Bingen; dancing wildly on the boiling
whirlpools of St. Goar, well threading the cliffs;--the young man
gloomily insensible to danger of life, and charm of the
picturesque. Coblenz (CONFLUENTIA), the Moselle and
Ehrenbreitstein: Majesty, smoking on deck if he like, can look at
these through grimly pacifying tobacco; but to the Crown-Prince
life itself is fallen haggard and bankrupt.
Over against Coblenz, nestled in between the Rhine and the foot of
Ehrenbreitstein, [Pollnitz, Memoirs and Letters,
italic> iii. 180.] there, perhaps even now, in his Hunting Lodge
of Kerlich yonder, is his Serene Highness the fat little Kurfurst
of Trier, one of those Austrian Schonborns (Brother to him of
Bamberg); upon whom why should we make a call? We are due at Bonn;
the fortunate young Kurfurst of Koln, richest Pluralist in the
Church, expects us at his Residence there. Friedrich Wilhelm views
the fine Fortress of Ehrenbreitstein:--what would your Majesty
think if this were to be yours in a hundred years; this and much
else, by way of compound-interest for the Berg-and-Julich and
other outstanding debts? Courage, your Majesty!--On the fat little
Kurfurst, at Kerlich here, we do not call: probably out hunting;
"hunts every day," [Busching, Beitrage,
iv. 201.] as if it were his trade, poor little soul.
At Bonn, where we do step ashore to lodge with a lean Kurfurst,
Friedrich Wilhelm strictly charges, in my (Seckendorf's) hearing,
the Trio of Vigilance to have an eye; to see that they bring the
Prince on board again, "LIVING OR DEAD."--No fear, your Majesty.
Prince listened with silent, almost defiant patience, "MIT GROSSER
GEDULD." [Seckendorf (in Forster, iii. 4).] At Bonn the Prince
contrived to confide to Seckendorf, "That he had in very truth
meant to run away: he could not, at the age he was come to, stand
such indignities, actual strokes as in the Camp of Radewitz;--and
he would have gone long since, had it not been for the Queen and
the Princess his Sister's sake. He could not repent what he had
done: and if the King did not cease beating him in that manner,
&c., he would still do it. For loss of his own life, such a life
as his had grown, he cared little; his chief misery was, that
those Officers who had known of the thing should come to
misfortune by his means. If the King would pardon these poor
gentlemen, he would tell him everything. For the rest, begged
Seckendorf to help him in this labyrinth;--nothing could ever so
oblige him as help now;" and more of the like sort. These things
he said, at Bonn, to Seckendorf, the fountain of all his woes.
[Ibid.] What Seckendorf's reflections on this his sad handiwork
now were, we do not know. Probably he made none, being a
strong-minded case-hardened old stager; but resolved to do what he
could for the poor youth. Somewhere on this route, at Bonn more
likely than elsewhere, Friedrich wrote in pencil three words to
Lieutenant Keith at Wesel, and got it to the Post-Office:
"SAUVEZ-VOUS, TOUT EST DECOUVERT (All is found out;--away)!"
[Wilhelmina (i. 265) says it was a Page of the Old Dessauer's, a
comrade of Keith's, who, having known in time, gave him warning.
Certain it is, this Note of Friedrich's, which the Books generally
assign as cause, could not have done it (infra, p. 275, and the
irrefragable date there).]
Clement August, expensive Kurfurst of Koln (Elector of Cologne, as
we call it), who does the hospitalities here at Bonn, in a grand
way, with "above a hundred and fifty chamberlains" for one item,--
glance at him, reader; perhaps we shall meet the man again. He is
younger Brother of the elegant ambitious Karl Albert, Kurfurst of
Bavaria, whom we have transiently heard of: sons both of them are
of that "Elector of Bavaria" who haunts us in the Marlborough
Histories,--who joined Louis XIV. in the Succession War, and got
hunted about at such a rate, after Blenheim especially. His Boys,
prisoners of the Kaiser, were bred up in a confiscated state, as
sons of a mere private gentleman; nothing visibly ahead of them,
at one time, but an obscure and extremely limited destiny of that
kind;--though now again, on French favor, and the turn of
Fortune's inconstant wheel, they are mounting very high.
Bavaria came all back to the old Elector of Bavaria;
even Marlborough's "Principality of MINDELHEIM" came. [At the
Peace of Baden (corollary to UTRECHT), 1714. Elector had been
"banned" (GEACHTET, solemnly drummed out), 1706; nothing but
French pay to live upon, till he got back: died 26th February,
1726, when Karl Albert succeeded (Michaelis, ii. 255).] And the
present Kurfurst, who will not do the Pragmatic Sanction at all,--
Kurfurst Karl Albert of Baiern, our old Karl Philip of Mannheim's
genealogical "Cousin;"--we heard of abstruse colleaguings there,
tendencies to break the Pragmatic Sanction altogether, and reduce
it to waste sheepskin! Not impossible Karl Albert will go high
enough. And this Clement August the cadet, he is Kurfurst of Koln;
by good election-tactics, and favor of the French, he has managed
to succeed an Uncle here: has succeeded at Osnabruck in like
fashion;--poor old Ernst August of Osnabruck (to whom we once saw
George I. galloping to die, and who himself soon after died), his
successor is this same Clement August, the turn for a CATHOLIC
Bishop being come at Osnabruck, and the French being kind.
Kurfurst of Koln, Bishop of Osnabruck, ditto of Paderborn and
Munster, ditto now of Hildesheim; richest Pluralist of the Church.
Goes about here in a languid expensive manner; "in green coat
trimmed with narrow silver-lace, small bag-wig done with French
garniture (SCHLEIFE) in front; and has red heels to his shoes."
A lanky indolent figure, age now thirty; "tall and slouching of
person, long lean face, hook-nose, black beard, mouth somewhat
open." [Busching ( Beitrage, iv. 201-204:
from a certain Travelling Tutor's MS. DIARY of 1731; where also is
detail of the Kurfurst's mode of Dining,--elaborate but dreary,
both mode and detail). His Schloss is now the Bonn University.]
Has above one hundred and fifty chamberlains;--and, I doubt not,
is inexpressibly wearisome to Friedrich Wilhelm in his Majesty's
present mood. Patience for the moment, and politeness above all
things!--The Trio of Vigilance had no difficulty with Friedrich;
brought him on board safe again next day, and all proceeded on
their voyage; the Kurfurst in person politely escorting as far
as Koln.
Koln, famed old City of the Three Kings, with its famed Cathedral
where those three gentlemen are buried, here the Kurfurst ceases
escorting; and the flat old City is left, exciting what
reflections it can. The architectural Dilettanti of the world
gather here; St. Ursula and her Eleven Thousand Virgins were once
massacred here, your Majesty; an English Princess she, it is said.
"NARREN-POSSEN (Pack of nonsense)!" grumbles Majesty.--Pleasant
Dusseldorf is much more interesting to his Majesty; the pleasant
Capital of Berg, which ought to be ours, if right could be done;
if old Pfalz would give up his crotchets; and the bowls, in the
big game playing at Seville and elsewhere, would roll fair!
Dusseldorf and that fine Palace of the Pfalzers, which ought to be
mine;--and here next is Kaiserswerth, a place of sieges,
cannonadings, known to those I knew. 'M-NA, from father to son and
grandson it goes on, and there is no end to trouble and war!--
His Majesty's next lodging is at Mors; old gaunt Castle in the
Town of Mors, which (thanks to Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau and the
Iron Ramrods) is now his Majesty's in spite of the Dutch.
There the lodging is, at an hour's drive westward from the
Rhine-shore:--where his Majesty quitted the River, I do not know;
nor whether the Crown-Prince went to Mors with him, or waited in
his Yacht; but guess the latter. His Majesty intends for Geldern
on the morrow, on matters of business thither, for the Town is
his: but what would the Prince, in the present state of things, do
there?--At Mors, Seckendorf found means to address his Majesty
privately, and snuffled into him suggestions of mercy to the
repentant Prince, and to the poor Officers whom he was so anxious
about. "Well, if he WILL confess everything, and leave off his
quirks and concealments: but I know he won't!" answered Majesty.
In that dilapidated Castle of Mors,--look at it, reader, though in
the dark; we may see it again, or the shadow of it, perhaps by
moonlight. A very gaunt old Castle; next to nothing living in it,
since the old Dessauer (by stratagem, and without shot fired)
flung out the Dutch, in the Treaty-of-Utrecht time; Mors Castle
and Territory being indisputably ours, though always withheld from
us on pretexts. [Narrative of the march thither (Night of 7th
November, 1712), and dexterous surprisal of the place, in
Leopoldi von Anhalt-Dessau Leben und Thaten
(Anonymous, by RANFFT), pp. 85-90;--where the Despatch of the
astonished Dutch Commandant himself, to their High Mightinesses,
is given. Part of the Orange Heritage, this Mors,--came by the
Great Elector's first Wife;--but had hung SUB LITE (though the
Parchments were plain enough) ever since our King William's death,
and earlier. Neuchatel, accepted instead of ORANGE, and not even
of the value of Mors, was another item of the same lot.
Besides which, we shall hear of old Palaces at Loo and other
dilapidated objects, incidentally in time coming.]
At Geldern, in the pressure of business next day, his Majesty got
word from Wesel, that Lieutenant Keith was not now to be found in
Wesel. "Was last seen there (that we can hear of) certain hours
before your Majesty's All-gracious Order arrived. Had saddled his
own horse; came ambling through the Brunen Gate, 'going out to
have a ride,' he said; and did not return."--"Keith gone,
scandalous Keith, whom I pardoned only few weeks ago; he too is in
the Plot! Will the very Army break its oath, then?" His Majesty
bursts into fire and flame, at these new tidings; orders that
Colonel Dumoulin (our expertest rogue-tracer) go instantly on the
scent of Keith, and follow him till found and caught. Also, on the
other hand, that the Crown-Prince be constituted prisoner;
sail down to Wesel, prisoner in his Yacht, and await upon the
Rhine there his Majesty's arrival. Formidable omens, it
is thought.
His Majesty, all business done in Geldern, drives across to Wesel;
can see Fritz's Yacht waiting duly in the River, and black Care
hovering over her. It is on the evening of the 12th of August,
1730. And so his Majesty ends this memorable Tour into the Reich;
but has not yet ended the gloomy miseries, for himself and others,
which plentifully sprung out of that.
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