Carlyle's "History of Friedrich II of Prussia"




BOOK V.

DOUBLE-MARRIAGE PROJECT, AND WHAT ELEMENT IT FELL INTO.
1723-1726.

Chapter I.

DOUBLE-MARRIAGE IS DECIDED ON.


We saw George I. at Berlin in October, 1723, looking out upon his
little Grandson drilling the Cadets there; but we did not mention
what important errand had brought his Majesty thither.

Visits between Hanover and Berlin had been frequent for a long
time back; the young Queen of Prussia, sometimes with her husband,
sometimes without, running often over to see her Father; who, even
after his accession to the English crown, was generally for some
months every year to be met with in those favorite regions of his.
He himself did not much visit, being of taciturn splenetic nature:
but this once he had agreed to return a visit they had lately made
him,--where a certain weighty Business had been agreed upon,
withal; which his Britannic Majesty was to consummate formally, by
treaty, when the meeting in Berlin took effect. His Britannic
Majesty, accordingly, is come; the business in hand is no other
than that thrice-famous "Double-Marriage" of Prussia with England;
which once had such a sound in the ear of Rumor, and still bulks
so big in the archives of the Eighteenth Century; which worked
such woe to all parties concerned in it; and is, in fact, a
first-rate nuisance in the History of that poor Century, as
written hitherto. Nuisance demanding urgently to be abated;--
were that well possible at present. Which, alas, it is not, to any
great degree; there being an important young Friedrich
inextricably wrapt up in it, to whom it was of such vital or
almost fatal importance! Without a Friedrich, the affair could be
reduced to something like its real size, and recorded in a few
pages; or might even, with advantage, be forgotten altogether, and
become zero. More gigantic instance of much ado about nothing has
seldom occurred in human annals;--had not there been a Friedrich
in the heart of it.

Crown-Prince Friedrich is still very young for
marriage-speculations on his score: but Mamma has thought good to
take matters in time. And so we shall, in the next ensuing parts
of this poor History, have to hear almost as much about Marriage
as in the foolishest Three-volume Novel, and almost to still less
purpose. For indeed, in that particular, Friedrich's young Life
may be called a ROMANCE FLUNG HELLS-OVER-HEAD;--Marriage being the
one event there, round which all events turn,--but turn in the
inverse or reverse way (as if the Devil were in them); not only
towards no happy goal for him or Mamma, or us, but at last towards
hardly any goal at all for anybody! So mad did the affair grow;--
and is so madly recorded in those inextricable, dateless, chaotic
Books. We have now come to regions of Narrative, which seem to
consist of murky Nothingness put on boil; not land, or water, or
air, or fire, but a tumultuously whirling commixture of all the
four;--of immense extent too. Which must be got crossed, in some
human manner. Courage, patience, good reader!


QUEEN SOPHIE DOROTHEE HAS TAKEN TIME BY THE FORELOCK.

Already, for a dozen years, this matter has been treated of.
Queen Sophie Dorothee, ever since the birth of her Wilhelmina, has
had the notion of it; and, on her first visit afterwards to
Hanover, proposed it to "Princess Caroline,"--Queen Caroline of
England who was to be, and who in due course was;--an excellent
accomplished Brandenburg-Anspach Lady, familiar from of old in the
Prussian Court: "You, Caroline, Cousin dear, have a little Prince,
Fritz, or let us call him FRED, since he is to be English; little
Fred, who will one day, if all go right, be King of England. He is
two years older than my little Wilhelmina: why should not they
wed, and the two chief Protestant Houses, and Nations, thereby be
united?" Princess Caroline was very willing; so was Electress
Sophie, the Great-Grandmother of both the parties; so were the
Georges, Father and Grandfather of Fred: little Fred himself was
highly charmed, when told of it; even little Wilhelmina, with her
dolls, looked pleasantly demure on the occasion. So it remained
settled in fact, though not in form; and little Fred (a florid
milk-faced foolish kind of Boy, I guess) made presents to his
little Prussian Cousin, wrote bits of love-letters to her; and all
along afterwards fancied himself, and at length ardently enough
became, her little lover and intended,--always rather a little
fellow:--to which sentiments Wilhelmina signifies that she
responded with the due maidenly indifference, but not in an
offensive manner.

After our Prussian Fritz's birth, the matter took a still closer
form: "You, dear Princess Caroline, you have now two little
Princesses again, either of whom might suit my little Fritzchen;
let us take Amelia, the second of them, who is nearest his age?"
"Agreed!" answered Princess Caroline again. "Agreed!" answered all
the parties interested: and so it was settled, that the Marriage
of Prussia to England should be a Double one, Fred of Hanover and
England to Wilhelmina, Fritz of Prussia to Amelia; and children
and parents lived thenceforth in the constant understanding that
such, in due course of years, was to be the case, though nothing
yet was formally concluded by treaty upon it. [Pollnitz, 
Memoiren,  ii. 193.]

Queen Sophie Dorothee of Prussia was always eager enough for
treaty, and conclusion to her scheme. True to it, she, as needle
to the pole in all weathers; sometimes in the wildest weather,
poor lady. Nor did the Hanover Serene Highnesses, at any time,
draw back or falter: but having very soon got wafted across to
England, into new more complex conditions, and wider anxieties in
that new country, they were not so impressively eager as Queen
Sophie, on this interesting point. Electress Sophie, judicious
Great-Grandmother, was not now there: Electress Sophie had died
about a month before Queen Anne; and never saw the English Canaan,
much as she had longed for it. George I., her son, a taciturn,
rather splenetic elderly Gentleman, very foreign in England, and
oftenest rather sulky there and elsewhere, was not in a humor to
be forward in that particular business.

George I. had got into quarrel with his Prince of Wales, Fred's
Father,--him who is one day to be George II., always a rather
foolish little Prince, though his Wife Caroline was Wisdom's self
in a manner:--George I. had other much more urgent cares than that
of marrying his disobedient foolish little Prince of Wales's
offspring; and he always pleaded difficulties, Acts of Parliament
that would be needed, and the like, whenever Sophie Dorothee came
to visit him at Hanover, and urge this matter. The taciturn,
inarticulately thoughtful, rather sulky old Gentleman, he had
weighty burdens lying on him; felt fretted and galled, in many
ways; and had found life, Electoral and even Royal, a deceptive
sumptuosity, little better than a more or less extensive "feast of
SHELLS," next to no real meat or drink left in it to the hungry
heart of man. Wife sitting half-frantic in the Castle of Ahlden,
waxing more and more into a gray-haired Megaera (with whom Sophie
Dorothee under seven seals of secrecy corresponds a little, and
even the Prince of Wales is suspected of wishing to correspond);
a foolish disobedient Prince of Wales; Jacobite Pretender people
with their Mar Rebellions, with their Alberoni combinations;
an English Parliament jangling and debating unmelodiously, whose
very language is a mystery to us, nothing but Walpole in dog-latin
to help us through it: truly it is not a Heaven-on-Earth
altogether, much as Mother Sophie and her foolish favorite, our
disobedient Prince of Wales, might long for it! And the Hanover
Tail, the Robethons, Bernstorfs, Fabrices, even the Blackamoor
Porters,--they are not beautiful either, to a taciturn Majesty of
some sense, if he cared about their doings or them. Voracious,
plunderous, all of them; like hounds, long hungry, got into a rich
house which has no master, or a mere imaginary one. "MENTERIS
IMPUDENTISSIME," said Walpole in his dog-latin once, in our Royal
presence, to one of these official plunderous gentlemen, "You tell
an impudent lie!"--at which we only laughed. [Horace Walpole,
 Reminiscences of George I. and George II. 
(London, 1786.)]

His Britannic Majesty by no means wanted sense, had not his
situation been incurably absurd. In his young time he had served
creditably enough against the Turks; twice commanded the
REICHS-Army in the Marlborough Wars, and did at least testify his
indignation at the inefficient state of it. His Foreign Politics,
so called, were not madder than those of others. Bremen and Verden
he had bought a bargain; and it was natural to protect them by
such resources as he had, English or other. Then there was the
World-Spectre of the Pretender, stretching huge over Creation,
like the Brocken-Spectre in hazy weather;--against whom how
protect yourself, except by cannonading for the Kaiser at Messina;
by rushing into every brabble that rose, and hiring the parties
with money to fight it out well? It was the established method in
that matter; method not of George's inventing, nor did it cease
with George. As to Domestic Politics, except it were to keep
quiet, and eat what the gods had provided, one does not find that
he had any.--The sage Leibnitz would very fain have followed him
to England; but, for reasons indifferently good, could never be
allowed. If the truth must be told, the sage Leibnitz had a wisdom
which now looks dreadfully like that of a wiseacre! In Mathematics
even,--he did invent the Differential Calculus, but it is certain
also he never could believe in Newton's System of the Universe,
nor would read the PRINCIPIA at all. For the rest, he was in
quarrel about Newton with the Royal Society here; ill seen, it is
probable, by this sage and the other. To the Hanover Official
Gentlemen devouring their English dead-horse, it did not appear
that his presence could be useful in these parts. [Guhrauer,
 Gottfried Freiherr von Leibnitz, eine Biographie  (Breslau, 1842); Ker of Kersland,  Memoirs of
Secret Transactions  (London, 1727).

Nor are the Hanover womankind his Majesty has about him,
quasi-wives or not, of a soul-entrancing character; far indeed
from that. Two in chief there are, a fat and a lean: the lean,
called "Maypole" by the English populace, is "Duchess of Kendal,"
with excellent pension, in the English Peeragy; Schulenburg the
former German name of her; decidedly a quasi-wife (influential,
against her will, in that sad Konigsmark Tragedy, at Hanover long
since), who is fallen thin and old. "Maypole,"--or bare Hop-pole,
with the leaves all stript; lean, long, hard;--though she once had
her summer verdures too; and still, as an old quasi-wife, or were
it only as an old article of furniture, has her worth to the royal
mind, Schulenburgs, kindred of hers, are high in the military
line; some of whom we may meet.

Then besides this lean one, there is a fat; of whom Walpole
(Horace, who had seen her in boyhood) gives description.
Big staring black eyes, with rim of circular eyebrow, like a
coach-wheel round its nave, very black the eyebrows also; vast red
face; cheeks running into neck, neck blending indistinguishably
with stomach,--a mere cataract of fluid tallow, skinned over and
curiously dizened, according to Walpole's portraiture.
This charming creature, Kielmannsegge by German name, was called
"Countess of Darlington" in this country--with excellent pension,
as was natural. They all had pensions: even Queen Sophie Dorothee,
I have noticed in our State-Paper Office, has her small pension,
"800 pounds a year on the Irish Establishment:" Irish
Establishment will never miss such a pittance for our poor Child,
and it may be useful over yonder!--This Kielmannsegge, Countess of
Darlington was, and is, believed by the gossiping English to have
been a second simultaneous Mistress of his Majesty's; but seems,
after all, to have been his Half-Sister and nothing more.
Half-Sister (due to Gentleman Ernst and a Countess Platen of bad
Hanover fame); grown dreadfully fat; but not without shrewdness,
perhaps affection; and worth something in this dull foreign
country, mere cataract of animal oils as she has become. These Two
are the amount of his Britannic Majesty's resources in that
matter; resources surely not extensive, after all!--

His Britannic Majesty's day, in St. James's, is not of an
interesting sort to him; and every evening he comes precisely at a
certain hour to drink beer, seasoned with a little tobacco, and
the company of these two women. Drinks diligently in a sipping
way, says Horace; and smokes, with such dull speech as there may
be,--not till he is drunk, but only perceptibly drunkish; raised
into a kind of cloudy narcotic Olympus, and opaquely superior to
the ills of life; in which state he walks uncomplainingly to bed.
Government, when it can by any art be avoided, he rarely meddles
with; shows a rugged sagacity, where he does and must meddle:
consigns it to Walpole in dog-latin,--laughs at his "MENTIRIS."
This is the First George; first triumph of the Constitutional
Principle, which has since gone to such sublime heights among us,
--heights which we at last begin to suspect might be depths,
leading down, all men now ask: Whitherwards? A much-admired
invention in its time, that of letting go the rudder, or setting a
wooden figure expensively dressed to take charge of it, and
discerning that the ship would sail of itself so much more easily!
Which it will, if a peculiarly good seaboat, in certain kinds of
sea,--for a time. Till the Sinbad "Magnetic Mountains" begin to be
felt pulling, or the circles of Charybdis get you in their sweep;
and then what an invention it was!--This, we say, is the new
Sovereign Man, whom the English People, being in some perplexity
about the Pope aud other points, have called in from Hanover, to
walk before them in the ways of heroism, and by command and by
example guide Heavenwards their affairs and them. And they hope
that he will do it? Or perhaps that their affairs will go thither
of their own accord? Always a singular People!--

Poor George, careless of these ulterior issues, has always trouble
enough with the mere daily details, Parliamentary insolences,
Jacobite plottings, South-Sea Bubbles; and wishes to hunt, when he
gets over to Hanover, rather than to make Marriage-Treaties.
Besides, as Wilhelmina tells us, they have filled him with lies,
these Hanover Women and their emissaries: "Your Princess
Wilhelmina is a monster of ill-temper, crooked in the back and
what not," say they. If there is to be a Marriage, double or
single, these Improper Females must first be persuaded to consent.
[ Memoires de Bareith. ] Difficulties enough.
And there is none to help; Friedrich Wilhelm cares little about
the matter, though he has given his Yes,--Yes, since you will.

But Sophie Dorothee is diligent and urgent, by all opportunities;
--and, at length, in 1723, the conjuncture is propitious.
Domestic Jacobitism, in the shape of Bishop Atterbury, has got,
itself well banished; Alberoni and his big schemes, years ago they
are blown into outer darkness; Charles XII. is well dead, and of
our Bremen and Verden no question henceforth; even the Kaiser's
Spectre-Hunt, or Spanish Duel, is at rest for the present, and the
Congress of Cambrai is sitting, or trying all it can to sit:
at home or abroad, there is nothing, not even Wood's Irish
Halfpence, as yet making noise. And on the other hand, Czar Peter
is rumored (not without foundation) to be coming westward, with
some huge armament; which, whether "intended for Sweden" or not,
renders a Prussian alliance doubly valuable.

And so now at last, in this favorable aspect of the stars, King
George, over at Herrenhausen, was by much management of his
Daughter Sophie's, and after many hitches, brought to the mark.
And Friedrich Wilhelm came over too; ostensibly to bring home his
Queen, but in reality to hear his Father-in-law's compliance to
the Double-Marriage,--for which his Prussian Majesty is willing
enough, if others are willing. Praised be Heaven, King George has
agreed to everything; consents, one propitious day (Autumn 1723,
day not otherwise dated),--Czar Peter's Armament, and the
questionable aspects in France, perhaps quickening his volitions a
little. Upon which Friedrich Wilhelm and Queen Sophie have
returned home, content in that matter; and expect shortly his
Britannic Majesty's counter-visit, to perfect the details, and
make a Treaty of it.

His Britannic Majesty, we say, has in substance agreed to
everything. And now, in the silence of Nature, the brown leaves of
October still hanging to the trees in a picturesque manner, and
Wood's Halfpence not yet begun to jingle in the Drapier's Letters
of Dean Swift,--his Britannic Majesty is expected at Berlin.
At Berlin; properly at Charlottenburg a pleasant rural or suburban
Palace (built by his Britannic Majesty's late noble Sister, Sophie
Charlotte, "the Republican Queen," and named after her, as was
once mentioned), a mile or two Southwest of that City. There they
await King George's counter-visit.

Poor Wilhelmina is in much trepidation about it; and imparts her
poor little feelings, her anticipations and experiences, in
readable terms:--

"There came, in those weeks, one of the Duke of Gloucester's
gentlemen to Berlin,"--DUKE OF GLOUCESTER is Fred our intended,
not yet Prince of Wales, and if the reader should ever hear of a
DUKE OF EDINBURGH, that too is Fred,--"Duke of Gloucester's
gentlemen to Berlin," says Wilhelmina: "the Queen had Soiree
(APPARTEMENT); he was presented to her as well as to me. He made
me a very obliging compliment on his Master's part; I blushed, and
answered only by a courtesy. The Queen, who had her eye on me, was
very angry I had answered the Duke's compliments in mere silence;
and rated me sharply (ME LAVA LA TETE D'IMPORTANCE) for it; and
ordered me, under pain of her indignation, to repair that fault
to-morrow. I retired, all in tears, to my room; exasperated
against the Queen and against the Duke; I swore I would never
marry him, would throw myself at the feet--" And so on, as young
ladies of vivacious temper, in extreme circumstances, are wont:
--did speak, however, next day, to my Hanover gentleman about his
Duke, a little, though in an embarrassed manner. Alas, I am yet
but fourteen, gone the 3d of July last: tremulous as aspen-leaves;
or say, as sheet-lightning bottled in one of the thinnest human
skins; and have no experience of foolish Dukes and affairs!--

"Meanwhile," continues Wilhelmina, "the King of England's time of
arrival was drawing nigh. We repaired, on the 6th of October, to
Charlottenburg to receive him. The heart of me kept beating, and I
was in cruel agitations. King George [my Grandfather, and Grand
Uncle] arrived on the 8th, about seven in the evening;"--dusky
shades already sinking over Nature everywhere, and all paths
growing dim. Abundant flunkies, of course, rush out with torches
or what is needful. "The King of Prussia, the Queen and all their
Suite received him in the Court of the Palace, the 'Apartments'
being on the ground-floor. So soon as he had saluted the King and
Queen, I was presented to him. He embraced me; and turning to the
Queen said to her, 'Your daughter is very big of her age!' He gave
the Queen his hand, and led her into her apartment, whither
everybody followed them. As soon as I came in, he took a light
from the table, and surveyed me from head to foot. I stood
motionless as a statue, and was much put out of countenance.
All this went on without his uttering the least word. Having thus
passed me in review, he addressed himself to my Brother, whom he
caressed much, and amused himself with, for a good while."
Pretty little Grandson this, your Majesty;--any future of history
in this one, think you? "I," says Wilhelmina, "took the
opportunity of slipping out;"--hopeful to get away; but could not,
the Queen having noticed.

"The Queen made me a sign to follow her; and passed into a
neighboring apartment, where she had the English and Germans of
King George's Suite successively presented to her. After some talk
with these gentlemen, she withdrew; leaving me to entertain them,
and saying: 'Speak English to my Daughter; you will find she
speaks it very well.' I felt much less embarrassed, once the Queen
was gone; and picking up a little courage, I entered into
conversation with these English. As I spoke their language like my
mother-tongue, I got pretty well out of the affair, and everybody
seemed charmed with me. They made my eulogy to the Queen; told her
I had quite the English air, and was made to be their Sovereign
one day. It was saying a great deal on their part: for these
English think themselves so much above all other people, that they
imagine they are paying a high compliment when they tell any one
he has got English manners.

"Their King [my Grandpapa] had got Spanish manners, I should say:
he was of an extreme gravity, and hardly spoke a word to anybody.
He saluted Madam Sonsfeld [my invaluable thrice-dear Governess]
very coldly; and asked her 'If I was always so serious, and if my
humor was of the melancholy turn?' 'Anything but that, Sire,'
answered the other: 'but the respect she has for your Majesty
prevents her from being as sprightly as she commonly is.'
He wagged his head, and answered nothing. The reception he had
given me, and this question, of which I heard, gave me such a
chill, that I never had the courage to speak to him,"--was merely
looked at with a candle by Grandpapa.

"We were summoned to supper at last, where this grave Sovereign
still remained dumb. Perhaps he was right, perhaps he was wrong;
but I think he followed the proverb, which says, Better hold your
tongue than speak badly. At the end of the repast he felt
indisposed. The Queen would have persuaded him to quit table;
they bandied compliments a good while on the point; but at last
she threw down her napkin, and rose. The King of England naturally
rose too; but began to stagger; the King of Prussia ran up to help
him, all the company ran bustling about him; but it was to no
purpose: he sank on his knees; his peruke falling on one side,
and his hat [or at least his head, Madam!] on the other.
They stretched him softly on the floor; where he remained a good
hour without consciousness. The pains they took with him brought
back his senses, by degrees, at last. The Queen and the King [of
Prussia] were in despair all this while. Many have thought this
attack was a herald of the stroke of apoplexy which came by and
by,"--within four years from this date, and carried off his
Majesty in a very gloomy manner.

"They passionately entreated him to retire now," continues
Wilhelmina; "but he would not by any means. He led out the Queen,
and did the other ceremonies, according to rule; had a very bad
night, as we learned underhand;" but persisted stoically
nevertheless, being a crowned Majesty, and bound to it.
He stoically underwent four or three other days, of festival,
sight-seeing, "pleasure" so called;--among other sights, saw
little Fritz drilling his Cadets at Berlin;--and on the fourth
day (12th October, 1723, so thinks Wilhelmina) fairly "signed the
Treaty of the Double-Marriage," English Townshend and the Prussian
Ministry having settled all things. [Wilhelmina,  Memoires
de Bareith,  i. 83, 87,--In Coxe ( Memoirs of
Sir Robert Walpole,  London, 1798), ii. 266, 272, 273,
are some faint hints, from Townshend, of this Berlin journey.]

"Signed the Treaty," thinks Wilhelmina, "all things being
settled." Which is an error on the part of Wilhelmina.
Settled many or all things were by Townshend and the others:
but before signing, there was Parliament to be apprised, there
were formalities, expenditure of time; between the cup and the
lip, such things to intervene;--and the sad fact is, the
Double-Marriage Treaty never was signed at all!--However, all
things being now settled ready for signing, his Britannic Majesty,
next morning, set off for the GOHRDE again, to try if there were
any hunting possible.

This authentic glimpse, one of the few that are attainable, of
their first Constitutional King, let English readers make the most
of. The act done proved dreadfully momentous to our little Friend,
his Grandson; and will much concern us!

Thus, at any rate, was the Treaty of the Double-Marriage settled,
to the point of signing,--thought to be as good as signed. It was
at the time when Czar Peter was making armaments to burn Sweden;
when Wood's Halfpence (on behalf of her Improper Grace of Kendal,
the lean Quasi-Wife, "Maypole" or Hop-pole, who had run short of
money, as she often did) were about beginning to jingle in
Ireland; [Coxe (i. 216, 217, and SUPPLY the dates); Walpole to
Townshend, 13th October, 1723 (ib. ii. 275):  "The
Drapier's Letters"  are of 1724.] when Law's Bubble
"System" had fallen, well flaccid, into Chaos again; when Dubois
the unutterable Cardinal had at length died, and d'Orleans the
unutterable Regent was unexpectedly about to do so,--in a most
surprising Sodom-and-Gomorrah manner. [2d December, 1723:
Barbier,  Journal Historique du Regne de Louis XV.  (Paris, l847), i. 192, 196; Lacretelle,  Histoire
de France, 18me siecle;  &c.] Not to mention other
dull and vile phenomena of putrid fermentation, which were
transpiring, or sluttishly bubbling up, in poor benighted rotten
Europe here or there;--since these are sufficient to date the
Transaction for us; and what does not stick to our Fritz and his
affairs it is more pleasant to us to forget than to remember, of
such an epoch.

Hereby, for the present, is a great load rolled from Queen Sophie
Dorothee's heart. One, and, that the highest, of her abstruse
negotiations, cherished, labored in, these fourteen years, she has
brought to a victorious issue,--has she not? Her poor Mother, once
so radiant, now so dim and angry, shut in the Castle of Ahlden,
does not approve this Double-Marriage; not she for her part;--as
indeed evil to all Hanoverian interests is now chiefly her good,
poor Lady; and she is growing more and more of a Megaera every
day. With whom Sophie Dorothee has her own difficulties and
abstruse practices; but struggles always to maintain, under
seven-fold secrecy, some thread of correspondence and pious
filial ministration wherever possible; that the poor exasperated
Mother, wretchedest and angriest of women, be not quite cut off
from the kinship of the living, but that some soft breath of pity
may cool her burning heart now and then. [In  Memoirs of
Sophia Dorothea  (London, 1845), ii. 385, 393, are
certain fractions of this Correspondence, "edited" in an amazing
manner.] A dark tragedy of Sophie's, this; the Bluebeard Chamber
of her mind, into which no eye but her own must ever look.


PRINCESS AMELIA COMES INTO THE WORLD.

In reference to Queen Sophie, and chronologically if not otherwise
connected with this Double-Marriage Treaty, I will mention one
other thing. Her Majesty had been in fluctuating health, all
summer; unaccountable symptoms turning up in her Majesty's
constitution, languors, qualms, especially a tendency to swelling
or increase of size, which had puzzled and alarmed her Doctors and
her. Friedrich Wilhelm, on conclusion of the Marriage-Treaty, had
been appointed to join his Father-in-law, Britannic George, at the
Gohrde, in some three weeks' time, and have a bout of hunting.
On the 8th of November, bedtime being come, he kissed his
Wilhelmina and the rest, by way of good-by; intending to start
very early on the morrow:--long journey (150 miles or so), to be
done all in one day. In the dead of the night, Queen Sophie was
seized with dreadful colics,--pangs of colic or who knows what;--
Friedrich Wilhelm is summoned; rises in the highest alarm;
none but the maids and he at hand to help; and the colic, or
whatever it may be, gets more and more dreadful.

Colic? O poor Sophie, it is travail, and no colic; and a clever
young Princess is suddenly the result! None but Friedrich Wilhelm
and the maid for midwives; mother and infant, nevertheless, doing
perfectly well. Friedrich Wilhelm did not go on the morrow, but
next day; laughed, ever and anon in loud hahas, at the part he had
been playing; and was very glad and merry. How the experienced
Sophie, whose twelfth child this is, came to commit such an
oversight is unaccountable; but the fact is certain, and made a
merry noise in Court circles. [Pollnitz, ii. 199; Wilhelmina,
i. 87, 88.]

The clever little Princess, now born in this manner, is known
by name to idle readers. She was christened AMELIA; and we shall
hear of her in time coming. But there was, as the Circulating
Libraries still intimate, a certain loud-spoken braggart of the
histrionic-heroic sort, called Baron Trenck, windy, rash, and not
without mendacity, who has endeavored to associate her with his
own transcendent and not undeserved ill-luck; hinting the poor
Princess into a sad fame in that way. For which, it would now
appear, there was no basis whatever! Most condemnable Trenck;--
whom, however, Robespierre guillotined finally, and so settled
that account and others.

Of Sophie Dorothee's twelve children, including this Amelia, there
are now eight living, two boys, six girls; and after Amelia, two
others, boys, are successively to come: ten in all, who grew to be
men and women. Of whom perhaps I had better subjoin a List;
now that the eldest Boy and Girl are about to get settled in life;
and therewith close this Chapter.


FRIEDRICH WILHELM'S TEN CHILDREN.

Marriage to Sophie Dorothee, 28th November, 1706.

A little Prince, born 23d November, 1707, died in six months.
Then came,
  l. FREDERIKA SOPHIE WILHELMINA, ultimately Margravine of
Baireuth, after strange adventures in the marriage-treaty way.
Wrote her  Memoires  there, about 1744.
Of whom we shall hear much. Left a Daughter, her one child;
Daughter badly married, to "Karl reigning Duke of Wurtemberg"
(Poet Schiller's famous Serene Highness there), from whom she had
to separate, &c., with anger enough, by and by.

After Wilhelmina in the Family series came a second Prince, who
died in the eleventh month. Then, 24th January, 1712,
  2. FRIEDRICH.

After whom (1713) a little Princess, who died in few months.
And then,
  3. FREDERIKA LOUISA, born 28th September, 1714; age now about
nine. Margravine of Anspach, 30th May, 1729; Widow 1757.
Her one Son, born 1736, was the LADY-CRAVEN'S Anspach.
Frederika Louisa died 4th February, 1734.
  4. PHILIPPINA CHARLOTTE, born 13th of March, 1716; became
Duchess of Brunswick (her Husband was Eldest Brother of the
"Prince Ferdinand" so famous in England in the Seven-Years War);
her Son was the Duke who invaded France in 1792, and was
tragically hurled to ruin in the Battle of Jena, 1806. The Mother
lived till 1801; Widow since 1780.

After whom, in 1717, again a little Prince, who died within two
years (our Fritz then seven,--probably the first time Death ever
came before him, practically into his little thoughts in this
world): then,
  5. SOPHIE DOROTHEE MARIA, born 25th January, 1719; Margravine of
Schwedt, 1734 (eldest Magraf of Schwedt, mentioned above as a
comrade of the Crown-Prince). Her life not very happy; she died
1765. Left no son (Brother-in-law succeeded, last of the Schwedt
MARGRAVES): her Daughter, wedded to Prince Friedrich Eugen, a
Prussian Officer, Cadet of Wurtemberg and ultimately Heir there,
is Ancestress of the Wurtemberg Sovereignties that now are, and
also (by one of HER daughters married to Paul of Russia) of all
the Czar kindred of our time. [Preuss, iv. 278; Erman, 
Vie de Sophie Charlotte,  p. 2722.]
  6. LOUISA ULRIQUE, born 24th July, 1720; married Adolf
Friedrich, Heir-Apparent, subsequemly King of Sweden, 17th July,
1744; Queen (he having acceded) 6th April, 1751; Widow 1771;
died, at Stockholm, 16th July, 1782. Mother of the subsequent
Kings; her Grandson the DEPOSED> [OErtel, p. 83; Hubner,
tt. 91, 227.]
  7. AUGUST WILHELM, born 9th August, 1722; Heir-Apparent after
Friedrich (so declared by Friedrich, 30th June, 1744); Father of
the Kings who have since followed. He himself died, in sad
circumstances, as we shall see, 12th June, 1758.
  8. ANNA AMELIA, born 9th November, 1723,--on the terms we
have seen.
  9. FRIEDRICH HEINRICH LUDWIG, born l8th January, 1726;--the
famed Prince Henri, of whom we shall hear.
  10. AUGUST FERDINAND, born 23d May, 1730: a brilliant enough
little soldier under his Brother, full of spirit and talent, but
liable to weak health;--was Father of the "Prince Louis
Ferdinand," a tragic Failure of something considerable, who went
off in Liberalism, wit, in high sentiment, expenditure and
debauchery, greatly to the admiration of some persons; and at
length rushed desperate upon the Frenoh, and found his quietus
(10th October, 1806), four days before the Battle of Jena.



Chapter II.

A KAISER HUNTING SHADOWS.

Treaty of Double-Marriage is ready for signing, once the needful
Parliamentary preludings are gone through; Treaty is signed,
thinks Wilhelmina,--forgetting the distance between cup and lip!--
As to signing, or even to burning, and giving up the thought of
signing, alas, how far are we yet from that! Imperial
spectre-huntings and the politics of most European Cabinets will
connect themselves with that; and send it wandering wide enough,--
lost in such a jungle of intrigues, pettifoggings, treacheries,
diplomacies domestic and foreign, as the course of true-love never
got entangled in before.

The whole of which extensive Cabinet operations, covering square
miles of paper at this moment,--having nevertheless, after ten
years of effort, ended in absolute zero,--were of no worth even to
the managers of them; and are of less than none to any mortal now
or henceforth. So that the method of treating them becomes a
problem to History. To pitch them utterly out of window, and out
of memory, never to be mentioned in human speech again: this is
the manifest prompting of Nature;--and this, were not our poor
Crown-Prince and one or two others involved in them, would be our
ready and thrice-joyful course. Surely the so-called "Politics of
Europe" in that day are a thing this Editor would otherwise with
his whole soul, forget to all eternity! "Putrid fermentation,"
ending, after the endurance of much mal-odor, in mere zero to you
and to every one, even to the rotting bodies themselves:--is there
any wise Editor that would connect himself with that? These are
the fields of History which are to be, so soon as humanly
possible, SUPPRESSED; which only Mephistopheles, or the bad Genius
of Mankind, can contemplate with pleasure.

Let us strive to touch lightly the chief summits, here and there,
of that intricate, most empty, mournful Business,--which was
really once a Fact in practical Europe, not the mere nightmare of
an Attorney's Dream;--and indicate, so far as indispensable, how
the young Friedrich, Friedrich's Sister, Father, Mother, were
tribulated, almost heart-broken and done to death, by means of it.


IMPERIAL MAJESTY ON THE TREATY OF UTRECHT.

Kaiser Karl VI., head of the Holy Romish Empire at this time, was
a handsome man to look upon; whose life, full of expense,
vicissitude, futile labor and adventure, did not prove of much use
to the world. Describable as a laborious futility rather. He was
second son of that little Leopold, the solemn little Herr in red
stockings, who had such troubles, frights, and runnings to and fro
with the sieging Turks, liberative Sobieskis, acquisitive Louis
Fourteenths; and who at length ended in a sea of futile labor,
which they call the Spanish Succession War.

This Karl, second son, had been appointed "King of Spain" in that
futile business; and with much sublimity, though internally in an
impoverished condition, he proceeded towards Spain, landing in
England to get cash for the outfit;--arrived in Spain; and roved
about there as Titular-King for some years, with the fighting
Peterboroughs, Galways, Stahrembergs; but did no good there,
neither he nor his Peterboroughs. At length, his Brother Joseph,
Father Leopold's successor, having died, [17th April, 1711.] Karl
came home from Spain to be Kaiser. At which point, Karl would have
been wise to give up his Titular Kingship in Spain; for he never
got, nor will get, anything but futile labor from hanging to it.
He did hang to it nevertheless; and still, at this date of
George's visit and long afterwards, hangs,--with notable
obstinacy. To the woe of men and nations: punishment doubtless of
his sins and theirs!--

Kaiser Karl shrieked mere amazement and indignation, when the
English tired of fighting for him and it. When the English said to
their great Marlborough: "Enough, you sorry Marlborough! You have
beaten Louis XIV. to the suppleness of wash-leather, at our
bidding; that is true, and that may have had its difficulties:
but, after all, we prefer to have the thing precisely as it would
have been without any fighting. You, therefore, what is the good
of you? You are a--person whom we fling out like sweepings, now
that our eyesight returns, and accuse of common stealing.
Go and be--!"

Nothing ever had so disgusted and astonished Kaiser Karl as this
treatment,--not of Marlborough, whom he regarded only as he would
have done a pair of military boots or a holster-pistol of superior
excellence, for the uses that were in him,--but of the Kaiser Karl
his own sublime self, the heart and focus of Political Nature;
left in this manner, now when the sordid English and Dutch
declined spending blood and money for him farther. "Ungrateful,
sordid, inconceivable souls," answered Karl, "was there ever,
since the early Christian times, such a martyr as you have now
made of me!" So answered Karl, in diplomatic groans and shrieks,
to all ends of Europe. But the sulky English and Allies,
thoroughly tired of paying and bleeding, did not heed him;
made their Peace of Utrecht [Peace of Utrecht, 11th April, 1713;
Peace of Rastadt (following upon the Preliminaries of Baden),
6th March, 1714.] with Louis XIV., who was now beaten supple;
and Karl, after a year of indignant protests and futile attempts
to fight Louis on his own score, was obliged to do the like.
He has lost the Spanish crown; but still holds by the shadow of
it; will not quit that, if he can help it. He hunts much, digests
well; is a sublime Kaiser, though internally rather poor, carrying
his head high; and seems to himself, on some sides of his life, a
martyred much-enduring man.


IMPERIAL MAJESTY HAS GOT HAPPILY WEDDED.

Kaiser Karl, soon after the time of going to Spain had decided
that a Wife would be necessary. He applied to Caroline of Anspach,
now English Princess of Wales, but at that time an orphaned
Brandenburg-Anspach Princess, very Beautiful, graceful, gifted,
and altogether unprovided for; living at Berlin under the
guardianship of Friedrich the first King. Her young Mother had
married again,--high enough match (to Kur-Sachsen, elder Brother
of August the Strong, August at that time without prospects of the
Electorate);--but it lasted short while: Caroline's Mother and
Saxon Stepfather were both now, long since, dead. So she lived at
Berlin brilliant though unportioned;--with the rough cub Friedrich
Wilhelm much following her about, and passionately loyal to her,
as the Beast was to Beauty; whom she did not mind except as a cub
loyal to her; being five years older than he. [Forster, i. 107.]
Indigent bright Caroline, a young lady of fine aquiline features
and spirit, was applied for to be Queen of Spain; wooer a handsome
man, who might even be Kaiser by and by. Indigent bright Caroline
at once answered, No. She was never very orthodox in Protestant
theology; but could not think of taking up Papistry for
lucre's and ambition's sake: be that always remembered on
Caroline's behalf.

The Spanish Majesty next applied at Brunswick Wolfenbuttel;
no lack of Princesses there: Princesa Elizabeth, for instance;
Protestant she too, but perhaps not so squeamish? Old Anton
Ulrich, whom some readers know for the idle Books, long-winded
Novels chiefly, which he wrote, was the Grandfather of this
favored Princess; a good-natured old gentleman, of the idle
ornamental species, in whose head most things, it is likely, were
reduced to vocables, scribble and sentimentality; and only a
steady internal gravitation towards praise and pudding was
traceable as very real in him. Anton Ulrich, affronted more or
less by the immense advancement of Gentleman Ernst and the
Hanoverian or YOUNGER Brunswick Line, was extremely glad of the
Imperial offer; and persuaded his timid Grand-daughter, ambitious
too, but rather conscience-stricken, That the change from
Protestant to Catholic, the essentials being so perfectly
identical in both, was a mere trifle; that he himself, old as he
was, would readily change along with her, so easy was it.
Whereupon the young Lady made the big leap; abjured her religion;
[1st May, 1707, at Bamberg.]--went to Spain as Queen (with sad
injury to her complexion, but otherwise successfully more or
less);--and sits now as Empress beside her Karl VI. in a grand
enough, probably rather dull, but not singularly unhappy manner.

She, a Brunswick Princess, with Nephews and Nieces who may concern
us, is Kaiserinn to Kaiser Karl: for aught I know of her, a kindly
simple Wife, and unexceptionable Sovereign Majesty, of the sort
wanted; whom let us remember, if we meet her again one day. I add
only of this poor Lady, distinguished to me by a Daughter she had,
that her mind still had some misgivings about the big leap she had
made in the Protestant-Papist way. Finding Anton Ulrich still
continue Protestant, she wrote to him out of Spain:--"Why, O
honored Grandpapa, have you not done as you promised? Ah, there
must be a taint of mortal sin in it, after all!" Upon which the
absurdly situated old Gentleman did change his religion; and is
marked as a Convert in all manner of Genealogies and Histories;--
truly an old literary gentleman ducal and serene, restored to the
bosom of the Church in a somewhat peculiarly ridiculous manner.
{Michaelis, i. 131.]--But to return.


IMPERIAL MAJESTY AND THE TERMAGANT OF SPAIN.

Ever after the Peace of Utrecht, when England and Holland declined
to bleed for him farther, especially ever since his own Peace of
Rastadt made with Louis the year after Kaiser Karl had utterly
lost hold of the Crown of Spain; and had not the least chance to
clutch that bright substance again. But he held by the shadow of
it, with a deadly Hapsburg tenacity; refused for twenty years,
under all pressures, to part with the shadow: "The Spanish
Hapsburg Branch is dead; whereupon do not I, of the Austrian
Branch, sole representative of Kaiser Karl the Fifth, claim, by
the law of Heaven, whatever he possessed in Spain, by law of
ditto? Battles of Blenheim of Malplaquet, Court-intrigues of Mrs.
Masham and the Duchess: these may bring Treaties of Utrecht, and
what you are pleased to call laws of Earth;--but a Hapsburg Kaiser
knows higher laws, if you would do a thousand Utrechts; and by
these, Spain is his!"

Poor Kaiser Karl: he had a high thought in him really though a
most misguided one. Titular King of Men; but much bewildered into
mere indolent fatuity, inane solemnity, high sniffing pride
grounded on nothing at all; a Kaiser much sunk in the sediments of
his muddy Epoch. Sure enough, he was a proud lofty solemn Kaiser,
infinitely the gentleman in air and humor; Spanish gravities,
ceremonials, reticences;--and could, in a better scene, have
distinguished himself by better than mere statuesque immovability
of posture, dignified endurance of ennui, and Hapsburg tenacity in
holding the grip. It was not till 1735, after tusslings and
wrenchings beyond calculation, that he would consent to quit
the Shadow of the Crown of Spain; and let Europe BE at peace
on that score.

The essence of what is called the European History of this Period,
such History as a Period sunk dead in spirit, and alive only in
stomach, can have, turns all on Kaiser Karl, and these his
clutchings at shadows. Which makes a very sad, surprising History
indeed; more worthy to be called Phenomena of Putrid Fermentation,
than Struggles of Human Heroism to vindicate itself in this
Planet, which latter alone are worthy of recording as "History"
by mankind.

On the throne of Spain, beside Philip V. the melancholic new
Bourbon, Louis XIV.'s Grandson, sat Elizabeth Farnese, a termagant
tenacious woman, whose ambitious cupidities were not inferior in
obstinacy to Kaiser Karl's, and proved not quite so shadowy as
his. Elizabeth also wanted several things: renunciation of your
(Kaiser Karl's) shadowy claims; nay of sundry real usurpations you
and your Treaties have made on the actual possessions of Spain,--
Kingdom of Sicily, for instance; Netherlands, for instance;
Gibraltar, for instance. But there is one thing which, we observe,
is indispensable throughout to Elizabeth Farnese: the future
settlement of her dear Boy Carlos. Carlos, whom as Spanish
Philip's second Wife she had given to Spain and the world, as
Second or supplementary INFANT there,--a troublesome gift to Spain
and others.

"This dear Boy, surely he must have his Italian Apanages, which,
you have provided for him: Duchies of Parma and Piacenza, which
will fall heirless soon. Security for these Italian Apanages, such
as will satisfy a Mother: Let us introduce Spanish garrisons into
Parma and Piacenza at once! How else can we be certain of getting
those indispensable Apanages, when they fall vacant?" On this
point Elizabeth Farnese was positive, maternally vehement;
would take no subterfuge, denial or delay: "Let me perceive that
I shall have these Duchies: that, first of all; or else not that
only, but numerous other things will be demanded of you!"

Upon which point the Kaiser too, who loved his Duchies, and hoped
yet to keep them by some turn of the game, never could decide to
comply. Whereupon Elizabeth grew more and more termagant; listened
to wild counsels; took up an Alberoni, a Ripperda, any wandering
diplomatic bull-dog that offered; and let them loose upon the
Kaiser and her other gainsayers. To the terror of mankind, lest
universal war should supervene. She held the Kaiser well at bay,
mankind well in panic; and continually there came on all Europe,
for about twenty years, a terror that war was just about to break
out, and the whole world to take fire. The History so called of
Europe went canting from side to side; heeling at a huge rate,
according to the passes and lunges these two giant figures,
Imperial Majesty and the Termagant of Spain, made at one another,
--for a twenty years or more, till once the duel was decided
between them.

There came next to no war, after all; sputterings of war twice
over,--1718, Byng at Messina, as we saw; and then, in 1727, a
second sputter, as we are to see:--but the neighbors always ran
with buckets, and got it quenched. No war to speak of; but such
negotiating, diplomatizing, universal hope, universal fear, and
infinite ado about nothing, as were seldom heard of before.
For except Friedrich Wilhelm drilling his 50,000 soldiers (80,000
gradually, and gradually even twice that number), I see no Crowned
Head in Europe that is not, with immeasurable apparatus, simply
doing ZERO. Alas, in an age of universal infidelity to Heaven,
where the Heavenly Sun has SUNK, there occur strange
Spectre-huntings. Which is a fact worth laying to heart.--Duel of
Twenty Years with Elizabeth Farnese, about the eventualities of
Parma and Piacensa, and the Shadow of the lost Crown of Spain;
this was the first grand Spectrality of Kaiser Karl's existence;
but this was not the whole of them.


IMPERIAL MAJESTY'S PRAGMATIC SANCTION.

Kaiser Karl meanwhile was rather short of heirs; which formed
another of his real troubles, and involved him in much
shadow-hunting. His Wife, the Serene Brunswick Empress whom we
spoke of above, did at length bring him children, brought him a
boy even; but the boy died within the year; and, on the whole,
there remained nothing but two Daughters; Maria Theresa the elder
of them, born 1717,--the prettiest little maiden in the world;--
no son to inherit Kaiser Karl. Under which circumstances Kaiser
Karl produced now, in the Year 1724, a Document which he had
executed privately as long ago as 1713, only his Privy Councillors
and other Official witnesses knowing of it then; [19th April, 1713
(Stenzel, iii. 5222).] and solemnly publishes it to the world, as
a thing all men are to take notice of. All men had notice enough
of this Imperial bit of Sheepskin, before they got done with it,
five-and-twenty years hence. [Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748.]
A very famous Pragmatic Sanction; now published for the
world's comfort!

By which Document, Kaiser Karl had formally settled, and fixed
according to the power he has, in the shape of what they call a
Pragmatic Sanction, or unalterable Ordinance in his Imperial
House, "That, failing Heirs-male, his Daughters, his Eldest
Daughter, should succeed him; failing Daughters, his Nieces;
and in short, that Heirs-female ranking from their kinship to
Kaiser Karl, and not to any prior Kaiser, should be as good as
Heirs-male of Karl's body would have been." A Pragmatic Sanction
is the high name he gives this document, or the Act it represents;
"Pragmatic Sanction" being, in the Imperial Chancery and some
others, the received title for Ordinances of a very irrevocable
nature, which a sovereign makes, in affairs that belong wholly to
himself, or what he reckons his own rights. [A rare kind of Deed,
it would seem; and all the more solemn. In 1438, Charles VI. of
France, conceding the Gallican Church its Liberties, does, it by
"SANCTION PRAGMATIQUE;" Carlos III. of Spain (in 1759, "settling
the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies on his third son") does the like,
--which is the last instance of "PRAGMATIC SANCTION" in
this world.]

This Pragmatic Sanction of Kaiser Karl's, executed 19th April,
1713, was promulgated, "gradually," now here now there, from 1720
to 1724, {Stenzel, pp. 522, 523.]--in which later year it became
universally public; and was transmitted to all Courts and
Sovereignties, as an unalterable law of Things Imperial.
Thereby the good man hopes his beautiful little Theresa, now seven
years old, may succeed him, all as a son would have done, in the
Austrian States and Dignities; and incalculable damages, wars, and
chances of war, be prevented, for his House and for all the world.

The world, incredulous of to-morrow, in its lazy way, was not
sufficiently attentive to this new law of things. Some who were
personally interested, as the Saxon Sovereignty, and the Bavarian,
denied that it was just: reminded Kaiser-Karl that he was not the
Noah or Adam of Kaisers; and that the case of Heirs-female was not
quite a new idea on sheepskin. No; there are older Pragmatic
Sanctions and settlements, by prior Kaisers of blessed memory;
under which, if Daughters are to come in, we, descended from
Imperial Daughters of older standing, shall have a word to say!--
To this Kaiser Karl answers steadily, with endless argument, That
every Kaiser is a Patriarch, and First Man, in such matters;
and that so it has been pragmatically sanctioned by him, and that
so it shall and must irrevocably be. To the other Powers, and
indolent impartial Sovereigns of the world, he was lavish in
embassies; in ardent representations; and spared no pains in
convincing them that to-morrow would surely come, and that then it
would be a blessedness to have accepted this Pragmatic Sanction,
and see it lying for you as a Law of Nature to go by, and avoid
incalculable controversies.

This was another vast Shadow, or confused high-piled continent of
shadows, to which our poor Kaiser held with his customary
tenacity. To procure adherences and assurances to this dear
Pragmatic Sanction, was, even more than the shadow of the Spanish
Crown, and above all after he had quitted that, the one grand
business of his Life henceforth. With which he kept all Europe in
perpetual travail and diplomacy; raying out ambassadors, and less
ostensible agents, with bribes, and with entreaties and proposals,
into every high Sovereign Court and every low; negotiating
unweariedly by all methods, with all men. For it was his
evening-song and his morning-prayer; the grand meaning of Life to
him, till Life ended. You would have said, the first question he
asks of every creature is, "Will you covenant for my Pragmatic
Sanction with me? Oh, agree to it; accept that new Law of
Nature: when the morrow comes, it will be salutary for you!"

Most of the Foreign Potentates idly accepted the thing,--as things
of a distant contingent kind are accepted;--made Treaty on it,
since the Kaiser seemed so extremely anxious. Only Bavaria, having
heritable claims, never would. Saxony too (August the Strong),
being in the like case, or a better, flatly refused for a long
time; would not, at all,--except for a consideration.
Bright little Prince Eugene, who dictated square miles of Letters
and DIplomacies on the subject (Letters of a steady depth of
dulness, which at last grows almost sublime), was wont to tell his
Majesty: "Treatying, your Majesty? A well-trained Army and a full
Treasury; that is the only Treaty that will make this Pragmatic
Sanction valid!" But his Majesty never would believe. So the
bright old Eugene dictated,--or, we hope and guess, he only gave
his clerks some key-word, and signed his name (in three languages,
"Eugenio von Savoye") to these square miles of dull epistolary
matter,--probably taking Spanish snuff when he had done. For he
wears it in both waistcoat-pockets;--has (as his Portraits still
tell us) given up breathing by the nose. The bright little soul,
with a flash in him as of Heaven's own lightning; but now growing
very old and snuffy.

Shadow of Pragmatic Sanction, shadow of the Spanish Crown,--it was
such shadow-huntings of the Kaiser in Vienna, it was this of the
Pragmatic Sanction most of all, that thwarted our Prussian
Double-Marriage, which lay so far away from it. This it was that
pretty nearly broke the hearts of Friedrich, Wilhelmina, and their
Mother and Father. For there never was such negotiating; not for
admittance to the Kingdom of Heaven, in the pious times. And the
open goings-forth of it, still more the secret minings and
mole-courses of it, were into all places. Above ground and below,
no Sovereign mortal could say he was safe from it, let him agree
or not. Friedrich Wilhelm had cheerfully, and with all his heart,
agreed to the Pragmatic Sanction; this above ground, in sight of
the sun; and rashly fancied he had then done with it. Till, to his
horror, he found the Imperial moles, by way of keeping assurance
doubly sure, had been under the foundations of his very house for
long years past, and had all but brought it down about him in the
most hideous manner!--


THIRD SHADOW: IMPERIAL MAJESTY'S OSTEND COMPANY.

Another object which Kaiser Karl pursued with some diligence in
these times, and which likewise proved a shadow, much disturbance
as it gave mankind, was his "Ostend East-India Company."
The Kaiser had seen impoverished Spain, rich England, rich
Holland; he had taken up a creditable notion about commerce and
its advantages. He said to himself, Why should not my Netherlands
trade to the East, as well as these English and Dutch, and grow
opulent like them? He instituted (OCTROYA) an "Ostend East-India
Company," under due Patents and Imperial Sheepskins, of date 17th
December, 1722, [Buchholz, i. 88; Pfeffel,  Abrege
Chronologique de l'Histoire d'Allemagne  (Park, 1776),
ii. 522.] gave it what freedom he could to trade to the East.
"Impossible!" answered the Dutch, with distraction in their
aspect; "Impossible, we say; contrary to Treaty of Westphalia, to
Utrecht, to Barrier Treaty; and destructive to the best interests
of mankind, especially to us and our trade-profits! We shall have
to capture your ships, if you ever send any."

To which the Kaiser counterpleaded, earnestly, diligently, for the
space of seven years,--to no effect. "We will capture your ships
if you ever send any," answered the Dutch and English. What ships
ever could have been sent from Ostend to the East, or what ill
they could have done there, remains a mystery, owing to the
monopolizing Maritime Powers.

The Kaiser's laudable zeal for commerce had to expend itself in
his Adriatic Territories,--giving privileges to the Ports of
Trieste and Fiume; [Hormayr,  OEsterreichischer Plutarch,
 x. 101.] making roads through the Dalmatian
Hill-Countries, which are useful to this day;--but could not
operate on the Netherlands in the way proposed. The Kaiser's
Imperial Ostend East-India Company, which convulsed the Diplomatic
mind for seven years to come, and made Europe lurch from side to
side in a terrific manner, proved a mere paper Company; never sent
any ships, only produced Diplomacies, and "had the honor to be."
This was the third grand Shadow which the Kaiser chased, shaking
all the world, poor crank world, as he strode after it; and this
also ended in zero, and several tons of diplomatic correspondence,
carried once by breathless estaffettes, and now silent,
gravitating towards Acheron all of them, and interesting to the
spiders only.

Poor good Kaiser: they say he was a humane stately gentleman,
stately though shortish; fond of pardoning criminals where he
could; very polite to Muratori and the Antiquaries, even to
English Rymer, in opening his Archives to them,--and made roads in
the Dalmatian Hill-Country, which remain to this day. I do not
wonder he grew more and more saturnine, and addicted to solid
taciturn field-sports. His Political "Perforce-Hunt (PARFORCE
JAGD)," with so many two-footed terriers, and legationary beagles,
distressing all the world by their baying and their burrowing, had
proved to be of Shadows; and melted into thin air, to a very
singular degree!



Chapter III.

THE SEVEN CRISES OR EUROPEAN TRAVAIL-THROES.

In process of this so terrific Duel with Elizabeth Farnese, and
general combat of the Shadows, which then made Europe quake, at
every new lunge and pass of it, and which now makes Europe yawn to
hear the least mention of it, there came two sputterings of actual
War. Byng's sea-victory at Messina, 1718; Spanish "Siege of
Gibraltar," 1727, are the main phenomena of these two Wars,--
England, as its wont is, taking a shot in both, though it has now
forgotten both. And, on the whole, there came, so far as I can
count, Seven grand diplomatic Spasms or Crises,--desperate general
European Treatyings hither and then thither, solemn Congresses two
of them, with endless supplementary adhesions by the minor powers.
Seven grand mother-treaties, not to mention the daughters, or
supplementary adhesions they had; all Europe rising spasmodically
seven times, and doing its very uttermost to quell this terrible
incubus; all Europe changing color seven times, like a lobster
boiling, for twenty years. Seven diplomatic Crises, we say, marked
changings of color in the long-suffering lobster; and two
so-called Wars,--before this enormous zero could be settled.
Which high Treaties and Transactions, human nature, after much
study of them, grudges to enumerate. Apanage for Baby Carlos,
ghost of a Pragmatic Sanction; these were a pair of causes for
mankind! Be no word spoken of them, except with regret and on
evident compulsion.

For the reader's convenience we must note the salient points;
but grudge to do it. Salient points, now mostly wrapt in Orcus,
and terrestrially interesting only to the spiders,--except on an
occasion of this kind, when part of them happens to stick to the
history of a memorable man, To us they are mere bubblings-up of
the general putrid fermentation of the then Political World;
and are too unlovely to be dwelt on longer than indispensable.
Triple Alliance, Quadruple Alliance, Congress of Cambrai, Congress
of Soissons; Conference of Pardo, Treaty of Hanover, Treaty of
Wusterhausen, what are they? Echo answers, What? Ripperda and the
Queen of Spain, Kaiser Karl and his Pragmatic Sanction, are fallen
dim to every mind. The Troubles of Thorn (sad enough
Papist-Protestant tragedy in their time),--who now cares to know
of them? It is much if we find a hearing for the poor Salzburg
Emigrants when they get into Preussen itself. Afflicted human
nature ought to be, at last, delivered from the palpably
superfluous; and if a few things memorable are to be remembered,
millions of things unmemorable must first be honestly buried and
forgotten! But to our affair,--that of marking the chief
bubblings-up in the above-said Universal Putrid Fermentation, so
far as they concern us.

CONGRESS OF CAMBRAI.

We already saw Byng sea fighting in the Straits of Messina;
that was part of Crisis Second,--sequel, in powder-and-ball, of
Crisis First, which had been in paper till then. The Powers had
interfered, by Triple, by Quadruple Alliance, to quench the
Spanish-Austrian Duel (about Apanage for Baby Carlos, and a
quantity of other Shadows): "Triple Alliance" [4th January, 1717.]
was, we may say, when France, England, Holland laboriously sorted
out terms of agreement between Kaiser and Termagant: "Quadruple"
[18th July, 1718.] was when Kaiser, after much coaxing, acceded,
as fourth party; and said gloomily, "Yes, then." Byng's Sea-fight
was when Termagant said, "No, by--the Plots of Alberoni!
Never will I, for my part, accede to such terms!" and attacked the
poor Kaiser in his Sicilies and elsewhere. Byng's Sea-fight, in
aid of a suffering Kaiser and his Sicilies, in consequence.
Furthermore, the French invaded Spain, till Messina were retaken;
nay the English, by land too, made a dash at Spain, "Descent on
Vigo" as they call it,--in reference to which take the following
stray Note:--

"That same year [1719, year after Byng's Sea-fight, Messina just
about recaptured], there took effect, planned by the vigorous
Colonel Stanhope, our Minister at Madrid, who took personal share
in the thing, a 'Descent on Vigo,' sudden swoop-down upon Town and
shipping in those Gallician, north-west regions. Which was
perfectly successful,--Lord Cobham leading;--and made much noise
among mankind. Filled all Gazettes at that time;--but now, again,
is all fallen silent for us,--except this one thrice-insignificant
point, That there was in it, 'in Handyside's Regiment,' a
Lieutenant of Foot, by name STERNE, who had left, with his poor
Wife at Plymouth, a very remarkable Boy called Lorry, or LAWRENCE;
known since that to all mankind. When Lorry in his LIFE writes,
'my Father went on the Vigo expedition,' readers may understand
this was it. Strange enough: that poor Lieutenant of Foot is now
pretty much all that is left of this sublime enterprise upon Vigo,
in the memory of mankind;--hanging there, as if by a single hair,
till poor TRISTRAM SHANDY be forgotten too." [ Memoirs of
Laurence Sterne, written by himself for his Daughter (see Annual
Register,  Year 1775, pp. 50-52).]

In short, the French and even the English invaded Spain;
English Byng and others sank Spanish ships: Termagant was obliged
to pack away her Alberoni, and give in. She had to accede to
"Quadruple Alliance," after all; making it, so to speak, a
Quintuple one; making Peace, in fact, [17th February, 1720.]--
general Congress to be held at Cambrai and settle the details.

Congress of Cambrai met accordingly; in 1722,--"in the course of
the year," Delegates slowly raining in,--date not fixable to a day
or month. Congress was "sat," as we said,--or, alas, was only
still endeavoring to get seated, and wandering about among the
chairs,--when George I. came to Charlottenburg that evening,
October, 1723, and surveyed Wilhelmina with a candle. More inane
Congress never met in this world, nor will meet. Settlement proved
so difficult; all the more, as neither of the quarrelling parties
wished it. Kaiser and Termagant, fallen as if exhausted, had not
the least disposition to agree; lay diplomatically gnashing their
teeth at one another, ready to fight again should strength return.
Difficult for third parties to settle on behalf of such a pair.
Nay at length the Kaiser's Ostend Company came to light: what will
third parties, Dutch and English especially, make of that?

This poor Congress---let the reader fancy it--spent two years in
"arguments about precedencies," in mere beatings of the air;
could not get seated at all, but wandered among the chairs, till
"February, 1724." Nor did it manage to accomplish any work
whatever, even then; the most inane of Human Congresses;
and memorable on that account, if on no other. There, in old
stagnant Cambrai, through the third year and into the fourth, were
Delegates, Spanish, Austrian, English, Dutch, French, of solemn
outfit, with a big tail to each,--"Lord Whitworth" whom I do not
know, "Lord Polwarth" (Earl of Marchmont that will be, a friend of
Pope's), were the English Principals: [Scholl, ii. 197.]--there,
for about four years, were these poor fellow-creatures busied,
baling out water with sieves. Seen through the Horn-Gate of
Dreams, the figure of them rises almost grand on the mind.

A certain bright young Frenchman, Francois Arouet,--spoiled for a
solid law-career, but whose OEDIPE we saw triumphing in the
Theatres, and who will, under the new name of VOLTAIRE, become
very memorable to us,--happened to be running towards Holland that
way, one of his many journeys thitherward; and actually saw this
Congress, then in the first year of its existence. Saw it,
probably dined with it. A Letter of his still extant, not yet
fallen to the spiders, as so much else has done, testifies to this
fact. Let us read part of it, the less despicable part,--as a
Piece supremely insignificant, yet now in a manner the one
surviving Document of this extraordinary Congress; Congress's own
works and history having all otherwise fallen to the spiders
forever. The Letter is addressed to Cardinal Dubois;--for Dubois,
"with the face like a goat," [Herzogin von Orleans, BRIEFE.] yet
lived (first year of this Congress); and Regent d'Orleans lived,
intensely interested here as third party:--and a goat-faced
Cardinal, once pimp and lackey, ugliest of created souls,
Archbishop of this same Cambrai "by Divine permission" and
favor of Beelzebub, was capable of promoting a young fellow if
he chose:--

"TO HIS EMINENCE CARDINAL DUBOIS (from Arouet Junior).

"CAMBRAI, July, 1722.

". . . We are just arrived in your City, Monseigneur; where, I
think, all the Ambassadors and all the Cooks in Europe have given
one another rendezvous. It seems as if all the Ministers of
Germany had assembled here for the purpose of getting their
Emperor's health drunk. As to Messieurs the Ambassadors of Spain,
one of them hears two masses a day, and the other manages the
troop of players. The English Ministers [a LORD POLWARTH and a
LORD WHITWORTH] send many couriers to Champagne, and few to
London. For the rest, nobody expects your Eminence here; it is not
thought you will quit the Palais-Royal to visit the sheep of your
flock in these parts [no!], it would be too bad for your Eminence
and for us all. . . . Think sometimes, Monseigneur, of a man who
[regards your goat-faced Eminence as a beautiful ingenious
creature; and such a hand in conversation as never was).
The one thing I will ask [of your goat-faced Eminence] at Paris
will be, to have the goodness to talk to me." [ OEuvres
de Voltaire,  97 vols. (Paris, l825-1834),
lxviii. 95, 96.]

Alas, alas!--The more despicable portions of this Letter we omit,
as they are not history of the Congress, but of Arouet Junior on
the shady side. So much will testify that this Congress did exist;
that its wiggeries and it were not always, what they now are, part
of a nightmare-vision in Human History.--

Elizabeth Farnese, seeing at what rate the Congress of Cambrai
sped, lost all patience with it; and getting more and more
exasperations there, at length employed one Ripperda, a surprising
Dutch Black-Artist whom she now had for Minister, to pull the
floor from beneath it (so to speak), and send it home in that
manner. Which Ripperda did. An appropriate enough catastrophe,
comfortable to the reader; upon which perhaps he will not grudge
to read still another word?


  CONGRESS OF CAMBRAI GETS THE FLOOR PULLED FROM UNDER IT.

Termagant Elizabeth had now one Ripperda for Minister;
a surprising Dutch adventurer, once secretary of some Dutch
embassy at Madrid; who, discerning how the land lay, had broken
loose from that subaltern career, had changed his religion,
insinuated himself into Elizabeth's royal favor; and was now "Duke
de Ripperda," and a diplomatic bull-dog of the first quality, full
of mighty schemes and hopes; in brief, a new Alberoni to the
Termagant Queen. This Ripperda had persuaded her (the third year
of our inane Congress now running out, to no purpose), That he, if
he were sent direct to Vienna, could reconcile the Kaiser to her
Majesty, and bring them to Treaty, independently of Congresses.
He was sent accordingly, in all privacy; had reported himself as
laboring there, with the best outlooks, for some while past;
when, still early in 1725, there occurred on the part of France,--
where Regent d'Orleans was now dead, and new politics bad come in
vogue,--that "sending back," of the poor little Spanish:
Infanta, ["5th April, 1725, quitted Paris" (Barbier, 
Journal du Regne de Louis XV.,  i. 218).] and marrying
of young Louis XV. elsewhere, which drove Elizabeth and the Court
of Spain, not unnaturally, into a very delirium of indignation.

Why they sent the poor little Lady home on those shocking terms?
It seems there was no particular reason, except that French Louis
was now about fifteen, and little Spanish Theresa was only eight;
and that, under Duc de Bourbon, the new Premier, and none of the
wisest, there was, express or implicit, "an ardent wish to see
royal progeny secured." For which, of course, a wife of eight
years would not answer. So she was returned; and even in a
blundering way, it is said,--the French Ambassador at Madrid
having prefaced his communication, not with light adroit
preludings of speech, but with a tempest of tears and howling
lamentations, as if that were the way to conciliate King Philip
and his Termagant Elizabeth. Transport of indignation was the
natural consequence on their part; order to every Frenchman to be
across the border within, say eight-and-forty hours; rejection
forever of all French mediation at Cambrai or elsewhere;
question to the English, "Will you mediate for us, then?" To which
the answer being merely "Hm!" with looks of delay,--order by
express to Ripperda, to make straightway a bargain with the
Kaiser; almost any bargain, so it were made at once. Ripperda made
a bargain: Treaty of Vienna, 30th April, 1725: [Scholl, ii. 201;
Coxe,  Walpole,  i. 239-250.] "Titles and
Shadows each of us shall keep for his own lifetime, then they
shall drop. As to realities again, to Parma and Piacenza among the
rest, let these be as in the Treaty of Utrecht; arrangeable in the
lump;--and indeed, of Parma and Piacenza perhaps the less we say,
the better at present." This was, in substance, Ripperda's Treaty;
the Third great European travail-throe, or change of color in the
long-suffering lobster. Whereby, of course, the Congress of
Cambrai did straightway disappear, the floor miraculously
vanishing under it; and sinks--far below human eye-reach by this
time--towards the Bottomless Pool, ever since. Such was the
beginning, such the end of that Congress, which Arouet LE JEUNE,
in 1722, saw as a contemporary Fact, drinking champagne in
Ramillies wigs, and arranging comedies for itself.


FRANCE AND THE BRITANNIC MAJESTY TRIM THE SHIP AGAIN:
HOW FRIEDRICH WILHELM CAME INTO IT. TREATY OF HANOVER, 1725.

The publication of this Treaty of Vienna (30th April, 1725),--
miraculous disappearance of the Congress of Cambrai by withdrawal
of the floor from under it, and close union of the Courts of Spain
and Vienna as the outcome of its slow labors,--filled Europe, and
chiefly the late mediating Powers, with amazement, anger, terror.
Made Europe lurch suddenly to the other side, as we phrased it,--
other gunwale now under water. Wherefore, in Heaven's name, trim
your ship again, if possible, ye high mediating Powers. This the
mediating Powers were laudably alert to do. Duc de Bourbon, and
his young King about to marry, were of pacific tendencies;
anxious for the Balance: still more was Fleury, who succeeded
Duc de Bourbon. Cardinal Fleury (with his pupil Louis XV. under
him, producing royal progeny and nothing worse or better as yet)
began, next year, his long supremacy in France; an aged reverend
gentleman, of sly, delicately cunning ways, and disliking war, as
George I. did, unless when forced on him: now and henceforth, no
mediating power more anxious than France to have the ship in trim.

George and Bourbon laid their heads together, deeply pondering
this little less than awful state of the Terrestrial Balance;
and in about six months they, in their quiet way, suddenly came
out with a Fourth Crisis on the astonished populations, so as to
right the ship's trim again, and more. "Treaty of Hanover," this
was their unexpected manoeuvre; done quietly at Herrenhausen, when
his Majesty next went across for the Hanover hunting-season.
Mere hunting:--but the diplomatists, as well as the beagles, were
all in readiness there. Even Friedrich Wilhelm, ostensibly intent
on hunting, was come over thither, his abstruse Ilgens, with their
inkhorns, escorting him: Friedrich Wilhelm, hunting in unexpected
sort, was persuaded to sign this Treaty; which makes it unusually
interesting to us. An exceptional procedure on the part of
Friedrich Wilhelm, who beyond all Sovereigns stays well at home,
careless of affairs that are not his:--procedure betokening
cordiality at Hanover; and of good omen for the Double-Marriage?

Yes, surely;--and yet something more, on Friedrich Wilhelm's part.
His rights on the Cleve-Julich Countries; reversion of Julich and
Berg, once Karl Philip shall decease:--perhaps these high Powers,
for a consideration, will guarantee one's undoubted rights there?
It is understood they gave promises of this kind, not too
specific. Nay we hear farther a curious thing: "France and
England, looking for immediate war with the Kaiser, advised
Friedrich Wilhelm to assert his rights on Silesia." Which would
have been an important procedure! Friedrich Wilhelm, it is added,
had actual thoughts of it; the Kaiser, in those matters of the
RITTER-DIENST, of the HEIDELBERG PROTESTANTS, and wherever a
chance was, had been unfriendly, little less than insulting, to
Friedrich Wilhelm: "Give me one single Hanoverian brigade, to show
that you go along with me!" said his Prussian Majesty;--but the
Britannic never altogether would. [ OEuvres de Frederic,
 i. 153.] Certain it is, Friedrich Wilhelm signed:
a man with such Fighting-Apparatus as to be important in a Hanover
Treaty. "Balance of Power, they tell me, is in a dreadful way:
certainly if one can help the Balance a little, why not?
But Julich and Berg, one's own outlook of reversion there, that
is the point to be attended to:--Balance, I believe, will somehow
shift for itself!" On these principles, Friedrich Wilhelm signed,
while ostensibly hunting. [Fassmann, p. 368; Forster, 
Urkundenbuch,  p. 67.] Treaty of Hanover, which was to
trim the ship again, or even to make it heel the other way, dates
itself 3d September, 1725, and is of this purport: "We three,
France, England, Prussia to stand by each other as one man, in
case any of us is attacked,--will invite Holland, Denmark, Sweden
and every pacific Sovereignty to join us in such convention,"--
as they all gradually did, had Friedrich Wilhelm but stood firm.

For it is a state of the Balances little less than awful.
Rumor goes that, by the Ripperda bargain, fatal to mankind, Don
Carlos was to get the beautiful young Maria Theresa to wife:
that would settle the Parma-Piacenza business and some others;
that would be a compensation with a witness! Spain and Austria
united, as in Karl V.'s time; or perhaps some Succession War, or
worse, to fight over again!--

Fleury and George, as Duc de Bourbon and George had done, though
both pacific gentlemen, brandished weapons at the Kaiser; strongly
admonishing him to become less formidable, or it would be worse
for him. Possible indeed, in such a shadow-hunting, shadow-hunted
hour! Fleury and George stand looking with intense anxiety into a
certain spectral something, which they call the Balance of Power;
no end to their exorcisms in that matter. Truly, if each of the
Royal Majesties and Serene Highnesses would attend to his own
affairs,--doing his utmost to better his own land and people, in
earthly and in heavenly respects, a little,--he would find it
infinitely profitabler for himself and others. And the Balance of
Power would settle, in that case, as the laws of gravity ordered:
which is its one method of settling, after all diplomacy!--Fleury
and George, by their manifestoing, still more by their levying of
men, George I. shovelling out his English subsidies as usual,
created deadly qualms in the Kaiser; who still found it unpleasant
to "admit Spanish Garrisons in Parma;" but found likewise his
Termagant Friend inexorably positive on that score; and knew not
what would become of him, if he had to try fighting, and the
Sea-Powers refused him cash to do it.

Hereby was the ship trimmed, and more; ship now lurching to the
other side again. George I. goes subsidying Hessians, Danes;
sounding manifestoes, beating drums, in an alarming manner:
and the Kaiser, except it were in Russia, with the new Czarina
Catherine I. (that brown little woman, now become Czarina [8th
February, 1725. Treaty with Kaiser (6th August, 1726) went to
nothing on her death, 11th May, 1727.]), finds no ally to speak
of. An unlucky, spectre-hunting, spectre-hunted Kaiser; who, amid
so many drums, manifestoes, menaces, is now rolling eyes that
witness everywhere considerable dismay. This is the Fourth grand
Crisis of Europe; crisis or travail-throe of Nature, bringing
forth, and unable to do it, Baby Carlos's Apanage and the
Pragmatic Sanction. Fourth conspicuous change of color to the
universal lobster, getting itself boiled on those sad terms, for
twenty years. For its sins, we need not doubt; for its own
long-continued cowardices, sloths and greedy follies, as well as
those of Kaiser Karl!--

At this Fourth change we will gladly leave the matter, for a time;
much wishing it might be forever. Alas, as if that were possible
to us! Meanwhile, let afflicted readers, looking before and after,
readier to forget than to remember in such a case, accept this
Note, or Summary of all the Seven together, by way of help:--


TRAVAIL-THROES OF NATURE FOR BABY CARLOS'S ITALIAN APANAGE;
SEVEN IN NUMBER.

  l. Triple Alliance, English, Dutch, French (4th January, 1717),
saying, "Peace, then! No Alberoni-plotting; no Duel-fighting
permitted!" Same Powers, next year, proposing Terms of Agreement;
Kaiser gloomily accepting them; which makes it Quadruple Alliance
(18th July, 1718); Termagant indignantly refusing,--with attack on
the Kaiser's Sicilies.
  2. First Sputter of War; Byng's Sea-fight, and the other
pressures, compelling Termagant: Peace (26th January, 1720);
Congress of Cambrai to settle the Apanage and other points.
  3. Congress of Cambrai, a weariness to gods and men, gets the
floor pulled from under it (Ripperda's feat, 30th April, 1725);
so that Kaiser and Termagant stand ranked together, Apanage wrapt
in mystery,--to the terror of mankind.
  4. Treaty of Hanover (France, England, Prussia, 3d September,
1725) restores the Balances, and more. War imminent.
Prussia privately falls off,--as we shall see.

[These first Four lie behind us, at this point; but there are
Three others still ahead, which we cannot hope to escape
altogether; namely:]

  5. Second Sputter of War: Termagant besieges Gibraltar (4th
March, 1727--6th March, 1728): Peace at that latter date;--
Congress of Soissons to settle the Apanage and other points, as
formerly.
  6. Congress of Soissons (14th June, 1728--9th November, 1729),
as formerly, cannot in the least: Termagaut whispers England;--
there is Treaty of Seville (9th November, 1729), France and
England undertaking for the Apanage. Congress vanishes; Kaiser is
left solitary, with the shadow of Pragmatic Sanction, in the night
of things. Pause of an awful nature:--but Fleury does not hasten
with the Apanage, as promised. Whereupon, at length,
  7. Treaty of Vienna (16th March, 1731): Sea-Powers, leading
Termagant by the hand, Sea-Powers and no France, unite with Kaiser
again, according to the old laws of Nature;--and Baby Carlos gets
his Apanage, in due course;--but does not rest content with it,
Mamma nor he, very long!

Huge spectres and absurd bugaboos, stalking through the brain of
dull thoughtless pusillanimous mankind, do, to a terrible extent,
tumble hither and thither, and cause to lurch from side to side,
their ship of state, and all that is embarked there,
BREAKFAST-TABLE, among other things. Nevertheless, if they were
only bugaboos, and mere Shadows caused by Imperial hand-lanterns
in the general Night of the world,--ought they to be spoken of in
the family, when avoidable?



Chapter IV.

DOUBLE-MARRIAGE TREATY CANNOT BE SIGNED.

Hitherto the world-tides, and ebbs and flows of external Politics,
had, by accident, rather forwarded, than hindered the
Double-Marriage. In the rear of such a Treaty of Hanover,
triumphantly righting the European Balances by help of Friedrich
Wilhelm, one might have hoped this little domestic Treaty would,
at last, get itself signed. Queen Sophie did hasten off to
Hanover, directly after her husband had left it under those
favorable aspects: but Papa again proved unmanageable; the Treaty
could not be achieved.

Alas, and why not? Parents and Children, on both sides, being
really desirous of it, what reason is there but it should in due
time come to perfection, and, without annihilating Time and Space,
make four lovers happy? No reason. Rubs doubtless had arisen since
that Visit of George I., discordant procedures, chiefly about
Friedrich Wilhelm's recruiting operations in the Hanover
territory, as shall be noted by and by: but these the ever-wakeful
enthusiasm of Queen Sophie, who had set her whole heart with a
female fixity on this Double-Marriage Project, had smoothed down
again: and now, Papa and Husband being so blessedly united in
their World Politics, why not sign the Marriage-Treaty?
Honored Majesty-Papa, why not!--"Tush, child, you do not
understand. In these tremendous circumstances, the celestial Sign
of the BALANCE just about canting, and the Obliquity of the
Ecliptic like to alter, how can one think of little marriages?
Wait till the Obliquity of the Ecliptic come steadily to its
old pitch!"--

Truth is, George was in general of a slow, solemn, Spanish turn of
manners; "intolerably proud, too, since he got that English
dignity," says Wilhelmina: he seemed always tacitly to look down
on Friedrich Wilhelm, as if the Prussian Majesty were a kind of
inferior clownish King in comparison. It is certain he showed no
eagerness to get the Treaty perfected. Again and again, when
specially applied to by Queen Sophie, on Friedrich Wilhelm's
order, he intimated only: "It was a fixed thing, but not to be
hurried,--English Parliaments were concerned in it, the parties
were still young," and so on;--after which brief answer he would
take you to the window, and ask, "If you did not think the
Herrenhausen Gardens and their Leibnitz waterworks, and
clipped-beech walls were rather fine?" [Pollnitz, 
Memoiren,  ii. 226, 228, &c.]

In fact, the English Parliaments, from whom money was so often
demanded for our fat Improper Darlingtons, lean Improper Kendals
and other royal occasions, would naturally have to make a
marriage-revenue for this fine Grandson of ours;--Grandson Fred,
who is now a young lout of, eighteen; leading an extremely
dissolute life, they say, at Hanover; and by no means the most
beautiful of mortals, either he or the foolish little Father of
him, to our old sad heart. They can wait, they can wait! said
George always.

But undoubtedly he did intend that both Marriages should take
effect: only he was slow; and the more you hurried him, perhaps
the slower. He would have perfected the Treaty "next year," say
the Authorities; meant to do so, if well let alone: but Townshend
whispered withal, "Better not urge him." Surly George was always a
man of his word; no treachery intended by him, towards Friedrich
Wilhelm or any man. It is very clear, moreover, that Friedrich
Wilhelm, in this Autumn 1725, was, and was like to be, of high
importance to King George; a man not to be angered by dishonorable
treatment, had such otherwise been likely on George's part.
Nevertheless George did not sign the Treaty "next year" either,--
such things having intervened;--nor the next year after that, for
reasons tragically good on the latter occasion!

These delays about the Double-Marriage Treaty are not a pleasing
feature of it to Friedrich Wilhelm; who is very capable of being
hurt by slights; who, at any rate, dislikes to have loose thrums
flying about, or that the business of to-day should be shoved over
upon to-morrow. And so Queen Sophie has her own sore difficulties;
driven thus between the Barbarians (that is, her Husband), and the
deep Sea (that is, her Father), to and fro. Nevertheless, since
all parties to the matter wished it, Sophie and the younger
parties getting even enthusiastic about it; and since the matter
itself was good, agreeable so far to Prussia and England, to
Protestant Germany and to Heaven and Earth,--might not Sophie
confidently hope to vanquish these and other difficulties; and so
bring all things to a happy close?

Had it not been for the Imperial Shadow-huntings, and this rickety
condition of the celestial Balance! Alas, the outer elements
interfered with Queen Sophie in a singular manner. Huge foreign
world-movements, springing from Vienna and a spectre-haunted
Kaiser, and spreading like an avalanche over all the Earth,
snatched up this little Double-Marriage question; tore it along
with them, reeling over precipices, one knew not whitherward, at
such a rate as was seldom seen before. Scarcely in the Minerva
Press is there record of such surprising, infinite and
inextricable obstructions to a wedding or a double-wedding.
Time and space, which cannot be annihilated to make two lovers
happy, were here turned topsy-turvy, as it were, to make four
lovers,--four, or at the very least three, for Wilhelmina will not
admit she was ever the least in love, not she, poor soul, either
with loose Fred or his English outlooks,--four young creatures,
and one or more elderly persons, superlatively wretched;
and even, literally enough, to do all but kill some of them.

What is noteworthy too, it proved wholly inane, this huge
world-ocean of Intrigues and Imperial Necromancy; ran dry at last
into absolute nothing even for the Kaiser, and might as well not
have been. And Mother and Father, on the Prussian side, were
driven to despair and pretty nearly to delirium by it; and our
poor young Fritz got tormented, scourged, and throttled in body
and in soul by it, till he grew to loathe the light of the sun,
and in fact looked soon to have quitted said light at one stage of
the business.

We are now approaching Act Second of the Double-Marriage, where
Imperial Ordnance-Master Graf von Seckendorf, a Black-Artist of
supreme quality, despatched from Vienna on secret errand, "crosses
the Palace Esplanade at Berlin on a summer evening of the year
1726;" and evokes all the demons on our little Crown-Prince and
those dear to him. We must first say something of an important
step, shortly antecedent thereto, which occurred in the
Crown-Prince's educational course.



Chapter V.

CROWN-PRINCE GOES INTO THE POTSDAM GUARDS.

Amid such commotion of the foreign elements and the domestic, an
important change occurs in the Crown-Prince's course of schooling.
It is decided that, whatever be his progress in the speculative
branches, it is time he should go into the Army, and practically
learn soldiering. In his fourteenth year, 3d May, 1725, [Preuss,
i. 26; 106; and  Buch fur Jedermann  (a minor
book of his, on the same subject, Berlin, 1837), ii. 13.] not long
before the Treaty of Hanover, he was formally named Captain, by
Papa in War-council. Grenadier Guards, Potsdam Lifeguards, to be
the regiment; and next year he is nominated Major, and, a vacancy
occurring, appointed to begin actual duty. It is on the "20th of
August, 1726, that he flrat leads out his battalion to the
muster," on those terms. His age is not yet fifteen by four
months;--a very tiny Major among those Potsdam giants; but by
rank, we observe, he rides; and his horse is doubtless of the due
height. And so the tiny Cadet-drillinga have ended; long Files of
Giants, splendent in gold-lace and grenadier-caps, have succeeded;
and earnest work instead of mimic, in that matter, has begun.

However it may have fared with his other school-lessons, here now
is a school-form he is advanced to, in which there will be no
resource but learning. Bad spelling might be overlooked by those
that had charge of it; bad drilling is not permissible on any
terms. We need not doubt the Crown-Prince did his soldier-duty
faithfully, and learned in every point the conduct of an officer:
penalty as of Rhadamanthus waited upon all failure there. That he
liked it is by no means said; he much disliked it, and his
disgusts were many. An airy young creature:--and it was in this
time to give one instance, that that shearing of his locks
occurred: which was spoken of above, where the Court-Chirurgus
proved so merciful. To clog the winged Psyche in ever-returning
parade-routine and military pipe-clay,--it seems very cruel.
But it is not to be altered: in spite of one's disgusts, the dull
work, to the last item of it, has daily to be done. Which proved
infinitely beneficial to the Crown-Prince, after all. Hereby, to
his Athenian-French elegancies, and airy promptitudes and
brilliancies, there shall lie as basis an adamantine Spartanism
and Stoicism; very rare, but very indispensable, for such a
superstructure. Well exemplified, through after life, in
this Crown-Prince.


OF THE POTSDAM GIANTS, AS A FACT.

His regiment was the Potsdam Grenadier Guard; that unique
giant-regiment, of which the world has heard so much in a vague
half-mythical way. The giant-regiment was not a Myth, however, but
a big-boned expensive Fact, tramping very hard upon the earth at
one time, though now gone all to the ghostly state. As it was a
CLASS-BOOK, so to speak, of our Friedrich's,--Class-Book (printed
in huge type) for a certain branch of his schooling, the details
of which are so dim, though the general outcome of it proved so
unforgettable,--readers, apart from their curiosity otherwise, may
as well take a glimpse of it on this occasion. Vanished now,
and grown a Giant Phantom, the like of it hardly again to be in
this world; and by accident, the very smallest Figure ever ranked
in it makes it memorable there!--

With a wise instinct, Friedrich Wilhelm had discerned that all
things in Prussia must point towards his Army; that his Army was
the heart and pith; the State being the tree, every branch and
leaf bound, after its sort, to be nutritive and productive for the
Army's behoof. That, probably for any Nation in the long-run, and
certainly for the Prussian Nation straightway, life or death
depends on the Army: Friedrich Wilhelm's head, in an inarticulate
manner, was full of this just notion; and all his life was spent
in organizing it to a practical fact. The more of potential
battle, the more of life is in us: a MAXIMUM of potential battle,
therefore; and let it be the OPTIMUM in quality! How Friedrich
Wilhelm cared, day and night, with all his heart and all his soul,
to bring his Army to the supreme pitch, we have often heard;
and the more we look into his ways, the more we are impressed with
that fact. It was the central thing for him; all other things
circulating towards it, deriving from it: no labor too great, and
none too little, to be undergone for such an object. He watched
over it like an Argus, with eyes that reached everywhere.
Discipline shall be as exact as Euclid;--short of perfection we do
not stop! Discipline and ever better discipline; enforcement of
the rule in all points, improvement of the rule itself where
possible, were the great Drill-sergeant's continual care.
Daily had some loop fallen, which might have gone ravelling far
enough; but daily was he there to pick it up again, and keep the
web unrent and solidly progressive.

We said, it was the "poetic ideal" of Friedrich Wilhelm; who is a
dumb poet in several particulars,--and requires the privileges of
genius from those that READ his dumb poem. It must be owned he
rises into the fantastic here and there; and has crotchets of
ultraperfection for his Army, which are not rational at all.
Crotchets that grew ever madder, the farther he followed them.
This Lifeguard Regiment of foot, for instance, in which the
Crown-Prince now is,--Friedrich Wilhelm got it in his Father's
time, no doubt a regiment then of fair qualities; and he has kept
drilling it, improving it, as poets polish stanzas, unweariedly
ever since:--and see now what it has grown to! A Potsdam Giant
Regiment, such as the world never saw, before or since.
Three Battalions of them,--two always here at Potsdam doing formal
lifeguard duty, the third at Brandenburg on drill; 800 to the
Battalion,--2,400 sons of Anak in all. Sublime enough, hugely
perfect to the royal eye, such a mass of shining giants, in their
long-drawn regularities and mathematical manoeuvrings,--like some
streak of Promethean lightning, realized here at last, in the
vulgar dusk of things!

Truly they are men supreme in discipline, in beauty of equipment;
and the shortest man of them rises, I think, towards seven feet,
some are nearly nine feet high. Men from all countries; a hundred
and odd come annually, as we saw, from Russia,--a very precious
windfall: the rest have been collected, crimped, purchased out of
every European country, at enormous expense, not to speak of other
trouble to his Majesty. James Kirkman, an Irish recruit of good
inches, cost him 1,200 pounds before he could be got inveigled,
shipped and brought safe to hand. The documents are yet in
existence; [Forster,  Handbuch der Geschichte, Geographie
und Statistik des Preussischen Reichs  (Berlin, 1820),
iv. 130, 132;--not in a very lucid state.] and the Portrait of
this Irish fellow-citizen himself, who is by no means a beautiful
man. Indeed, they are all portrayed; all the privates of this
distinguished Regiment are, if anybody cared to look at them--
Redivanoff from Moscow" seems of far better bone than Kirkman,
though still more stolid of aspect. One Hohmann, a born Prussian,
was so tall, you could not, though yourself tall, touch his bare
crown with your hand; August the Strong of Poland tried, on one
occasion, and could not. Before Hohmann turned up, there had been
"Jonas the Norwegian Blacksmith,", also a dreadfully tall monster.
Giant "Macdoll,"--who was to be married, no consent asked on
EITHER side, to the tall young woman, which latter turned out to
be a decrepit OLD woman (all Jest-Books know the myth),--he also
was an Irish Giant; his name probably M'Dowal. [Forster, 
Preussens Helden im Krieg und Frieden  (Berlin, l848),
i. 531; no date to the story, no evidence what grain of truth may
be in it.] This Hohmann was now FLUGELMANN ("fugleman" as we have
named it, leader of the file), the Tallest of the Regiment, a very
mountain of pipe-clayed flesh and bone.

Here, in reference to one other of those poor Giants, is an
Anecdote from Fassmann (who is very full on this subject of the
Giants; abstruse Historical Fassmann, often painfully cited by
us): a most small Anecdote, but then an indisputably certain one;
--which brings back to us, in a strange way, the vanished Time and
its populations; as the poorest authentic wooden lucifer may do,
kindling suddenly, and' peopling the void Night for moments, to
the seeing eye!--

Fassmann, a very dark German literary man, in obsolete costume and
garniture, how living or what doing we cannot guess, found himself
at Paris, gazing about, in the year 1713; where, among other
things, the Fair of St. Germain was going on. Loud, large Fair of
St. Germain, "which lasts from Candlemas to the Monday before
Easter;" and Fassmann one day took a walk of contemplation through
the same. Much noise, gesticulation, little meaning. Show-booths,
temporary theatres, merry-andrews, sleight-of-hand men; and a vast
public, drinking, dancing, gambling, flirting, as its wont is.
Nothing new for us there; new only that it all lies five
generations from us now. Did "the Old Pretender," who was then in
his expectant period, in this same village of St. Germain, see it
too, as Fassmann did? And Louis XIV., he is at Versailles;
drooping fast, very dull to his Maintenon. And our little Fritz in
Berlin is a child in arms;--and the world is all awake as usual,
while Fassmann strolls through this noisy inanity of show-booths,
in the year 1713.

Strolling along, Fassmann came upon a certain booth with an
enormous Picture hung aloft in front of it: "Picture of a very
tall man, in HEYDUC livery, coat reaching to his ankles, in grand
peruke, cap and big heron-plume, with these words, 'LE GEANT
ALLEMAND (German Giant),' written underneath. Partly from
curiosity, partly "for country's sake," Fassmann expended
twopence; viewed the gigantic fellow-creature; admits he had never
seen one so tall; though "Bentenrieder, the Imperial Diplomatist,"
thought by some to be the tallest of men, had come athwart him
once. This giant's name was Muller; birthplace the neighborhood of
Weissenfels;--"a Saxon like myself. He had a small German Wife,
not half his size. He made money readily, showing himself about,
in France, England, Holland;"--and Fassmann went his way, thinking
no more of the fellow.--But now, continues Fassmann:--

"Coming to Potsdam, thirteen years after, in the spring of 1726,
by his Majesty's order, to"--in fact, to read the Newspapers to
his Majesty, and be generally useful, chiefly in the
Tobacco-College, as we shall discover,--"what was my surprise to
find this same 'GEANT ALLEMAND' of St. Germain ranked among the
King's Grenadiers! No doubt of the identity: I renewed
acquaintance with the man; his little German Wife was dead;
but he had got an English one instead, an uncommonly shifty
creature. They had a neat little dwelling-house [as most of the
married giants had], near the Palace: here the Wife sold beer
[brandy not permissible on any terms], and lodged travellers;--
I myself have lodged there on occasion. In the course of some
years, the man took swelling in the legs; good for nothing as a
grenadier; and was like to fall heavy on society. But no, his
little Wife snatched him up, easily getting his discharge;
carried him over with her to England, where he again became a
show-giant, and they were doing very well, when last heard of,"--
in the Country-Wakes of George II.'s early time. And that is the
real Biography of one Potsdam Giant, by a literary gentleman who
had lodged with him on occasion. [Fassmann, pp. 723-730.]

The pay of these sublime Footguards is greatly higher than common;
they have distinguished privileges and treatment: on the other
hand, their discipline is nonpareil, and discharge is never to be
dreamt of, while strength lasts. Poor Kirkman, does he sometimes
think of the Hill of Howth, and that he will never see it more?
Kirkman, I judge, is not given to thought;--considers that he has
tobacco here, and privileges and perquisites; and that Howth, and
Heaven itself, is inaccessible to many a man.


FRIEDRICH WILHELM'S RECRUITING DIFFICULTIES.

Tall men, not for this regiment only, had become a necessary of
life to Friedrich Wilhelm. Indispensable to him almost as his
daily bread, To his heart there is no road so ready as that of
presenting a tall man or two. Friedrich Wilhelm's regiments are
now, by his exact new regulations, levied and recruited each in
its own Canton, or specific district: there all males as soon as
born are enrolled; liable to serve, when they have grown to years
and strength. All grown men (under certain exceptions, as of a
widow's eldest son, or of the like evidently ruinous cases) are
liable to serve; Captain of the Regiment and AMTMANN of the Canton
settle between them which grown man it shall be. Better for you
not to be tall! In fact it is almost a kindness of Heaven to be
gifted with some safe impediment of body, slightly crooked back or
the like, if you much dislike the career of honor under Friedrich
Wilhelm. A general shadow of unquiet apprehension we can well
fancy hanging over those rural populations, and much unpleasant
haggling now and then;--nothing but the King's justice that can be
appealed to. King's justice, very great indeed, but heavily
checked by the King's value for handsome soldiers.

Happily his value for industrial laborers and increase of
population is likewise great. Townsfolk, skilful workmen as the
theory supposes, are exempt; the more ingenious classes,
generally, his Majesty exempts in this respect, to encourage them
in others. For, on the whole, he is not less a Captain of Work, to
his Nation, than of other things. What he did for Prussia in the
way of industries, improvements, new manufactures, new methods;
in settling "colonies," tearing up drowned bogs and subduing them
into dry cornfields; in building, draining, digging, and
encouraging or forcing others to do so, would take a long chapter.
He is the enemy of Chaos, not the friend of it, wherever you meet
with him.

For example, Potsdam itself. Potsdam, now a pleasant, grassy,
leafy place, branching out extensively in fine stone architecture,
with swept pavements; where, as in other places, the traveller
finds land and water separated into two firmaments,--Friedrich
Wilhelm found much of it a quagmire, land and water still
weltering in one. In these very years, his cuttings, embankments,
buildings, pile-drivings there, are enormous; and his perseverance
needs to be invincible. For instance, looking out, one morning
after heavy rain, upon some extensive anti-quagmire operations and
strong pile-drivings, he finds half a furlong of his latest heavy
piling clean gone. What in the world has become of it? Pooh, the
swollen lake has burst it topsy-turvy; and it floats yonder,
bottom uppermost, a half-furlong of distracted liquid-peat.
Whereat his Majesty gave a loud laugh, says Bielfeld, [Baron de
Bielfeld,  Lettres Familieres  (second
edition, a Leide, 1767), i. 31.] and commenced anew. The piles now
stand firm enough, like the rest of the Earth's crust, and carry
strong ashlar houses and umbrageous trees for mankind; and trivial
mankind can walk in clean pumps there, shuddering or sniggering at
Friedrich Wilhelm, as their humor may be.

No danger of this "Canton-system" of recruitment to the more
ingenious classes, who could do better than learn drill. Nor, to
say truth, does the poor clayey peasant suffer from it, according
to his apprehensions. Often perhaps, could he count profit and
loss, he might find himself a gainer: the career of honor turns
out to be, at least, a career of practical Stoicism and
Spartanism; useful to any peasant or to any prince. Cleanliness,
of person and even of mind; fixed rigor of method, sobriety,
frugality, these are virtues worth acquiring. Sobriety in the
matter of drink is much attended to here: his Majesty permits no
distillation of strong-waters in Potsdam, or within so many miles;
[Fassmann, p. 728.] nor is sale of such allowed, except in the
most intensely select manner. The soldier's pay is in the highest
degree exiguous; not above three halfpence a day, for a common
foot-soldier, in addition to what rations he has:--but it is found
adequate to its purpose, too; supports the soldier in sound
health, vigorously fit for his work; into which points his Majesty
looks with his own eyes, and will admit no dubiety. Often, too, if
not already OFTENEST (as it ultimately grew to be), the
peasant-soldier gets home for many months of the year, a
soldier-ploughman; and labors for his living in the old way.
His Captain (it is one of the Captain's perquisites, who is
generally a veteran of fifty, with a long Spartan training, before
he gets so high) pockets the pay of all these furloughs,
supernumerary to the real work of the regiment;--and has certain
important furnishings to yield in return.

At any rate, enrolment, in time of peace, cannot fall on many:
three or four recruits in the year, to replace vacancies, will
carry the Canton through its crisis. For we are to note withal,
the third part of every regiment can, and should by rule, consist
of "foreigners,"--men not born Prussians. These are generally men
levied in the Imperial Free-towns; "in the REICH" or Empire, as
they term it; that is to say, or is mainly to say, in the
countries of Germany that are not Austrian or Prussian. For this
foreign third-part too, the recruits must be got; excuses not
admissible for Captain or Colonel; nothing but recruits of the due
inches will do. Captain and Colonel (supporting their enterprise
on frugal adequate "perquisites," hinted of above) have to be on
the outlook; vigilantly, eagerly; and must contrive to get them.
Nay, we can take supernumerary recruits; and have in fact always
on hand, attached to each regiment, a stock of such. Any number of
recruits, that stand well on their legs, are welcome; and for a
tall man there is joyin Potsdam, almost as if he were a wise man
or a good man.

The consequence is, all countries, especially all German
countries, are infested with a new species of predatory
two-legged animals: Prussian recruiters. They glide about, under
disguise if necessary; lynx-eyed, eager almost as the Jesuit
hounds are; not hunting the souls of men, as the spiritual Jesuits
do, but their bodies in a merciless carnivorous manner. Better not
to be too tall, in any country, at present! Irish Kirkman could
not be protected by the aegis of the British Constitution itself.
In general, however, the Prussian recruiter, on British ground,
reports, That the people are too well off, that there is little to
be done in those parts. A tall British sailor, if we pick him up
strolling about Memel or the Baltic ports, is inexorably claimed
by the Diplomatists; no business do-able till after restoration of
him; and he proves a mere loss to us. [Despatches in the
State-Paper Office.] Germany, Holland, Switzerland, the
Netherlands, these are the fruitful fields for us, and there we do
hunt with some vigor.

For example, in the town of Julich there lived and worked a tall
young carpenter: one day a well-dressed positive-looking gentleman
("Baron von Hompesch," the records name him) enters the shop;
wants "a stout chest, with lock on it, for household purposes;
must be of such and such dimensions, six feet six in length
especially, and that is an indispensable point,--in fact it will
be longer than yourself, I think, Herr Zimmermann: what is the
cost; when can it be ready?" Cost, time, and the rest are settled.
"A right stout chest, then; and see you don't forget the size;
if too short, it will be of no use to me: mind;"--"JA WOHL!
GEWISS!" And the positive-looking, well-clad gentleman goes his
ways. At the appointed day he reappears; the chest is ready;--
we hope, an unexceptionable article? "Too short, as I dreaded!"
says the positive gentleman. "Nay, your honor," says the
carpenter, "I am certain it is six feet six!" and takes out his
foot-rule.--"Pshaw, it was to be longer than yourself." "Well, it
is."--"No it isn't!" The carpenter, to end the matter, gets into
his chest; and will convince any and all mortals. No sooner is he
in, rightly flat, than the positive gentleman, a Prussian
recruiting officer in disguise, slams down the lid upon him;
locks it; whistles in three stout fellows, who pick up the chest,
gravely walk through the streets with it, open it in a safe place;
and find-horrible to relate--the poor carpenter dead; choked by
want of air in this frightful middle-passage of his. [Forster,
ii. 305, 306; Pollnitz, ii. 518, 519.] Name of the Town is given,
Julich as above; date not. And if the thing had been only a
popular Myth, is it not a significant one? But it is too true;
the tall carpenter lay dead, and Hompesch got "imprisoned for
life" by the business.

Burgermeisters of small towns have been carried off; in one case,
"a rich merchant in Magdeburg," whom it cost a large sum to get
free again. [Stenzel, iii. 356.] Prussian recruiters hover about
barracks, parade-grounds, in Foreign Countries; and if they see a
tall soldier (the Dutch have had instances, and are indignant at
them), will persuade him to desert,--to make for the country where
soldier-merit is understood, and a tall fellow of parts will get
his pair of colors in no-time.

But the highest stretch of their art was probably that done on the
Austrian Ambassador,--tall Herr von Bentenrieder; tallest of
Diplomatists; whom Fassmann, till the Fair of St. Germain, had
considered the tallest of men. Bentenrieder was on his road as
Kaiser's Ambassador to George I., in those Congress-of-Cambrai
times; serenely journeying on; when, near by Halberstadt, his
carriage broke. Carriage takes some time in mending; the tall
Diplomatic Herr walks on, will stretch his long legs, catch a
glimpse of the Town withal, till they get it ready again. And now,
at some Guard-house of the place, a Prussian Officer inquires, not
too reverently of a nobleman without carriage, "Who are you?"
"Well," answered he smiling, "I am BOTSCHAFTER (Message-bearer)
from his Imperial Majesty. And who may you be that ask?"--"To the
Guard-house with us!" Whither he is marched accordingly. "Kaiser's
messenger, why not?" Being a most tall handsome man, this Kaiser's
BOTSCHAFTER, striding along on foot here, the Guard-house
Officials have decided to keep him, to teach him Prussian
drill-exercise;--and are thrown into a singular quandary, when his
valets and suite come up, full of alarm dissolving into joy, and
call him "Excellenz!" [Pollnitz, ii. 207-209.]

Tall Herr von Bentenrieder accepted the prostrate apology of these
Guard-house Officials. But he naturally spoke of the matter to
George I.; whose patience, often fretted by complaints on that
head, seems to have taken fire at this transcendent instance of
Prussian insolency. In consequence of this adventure, he
commenced, says Pollnitz, a system of decisive measures;
of reprisals even, and of altogether peremptory, minatory
procedures, to clear Hanover of this nuisance; and to make it
cease, in very fact, and not in promise and profession merely.
These were the first rubs Queen Sophie met with, in pushing on the
Double-Marriage; and sore rubs they were, though she at last got
over them. Coming on the back of that fine Charlottenburg Visit,
almost within year and day, and directly in the teeth of such
friendly aspects and prospects, this conduct on the part of his
Britannic Majesty much grieved and angered Friedrich Wilhelm;
and in fact involved him in considerable practical troubles.

For it was the signal of a similar set of loud complaints, and
menacing remonstrances (with little twinges of fulfilment here and
there) from all quarters of Germany; a tempest of trouble and
public indignation rising everywhere, and raining in upon
Friedrich Wilhelm and this unfortunate Hobby of his. No riding of
one's poor Hobby in peaoe henceforth. Friedrich Wilhelm always
answered, what was only superficially the fact, That HE knew
nothing of these violences and acts of ill-neighborship; he, a
just King, was sorrier than any man to hear of them; and would
give immediate order that they should end. But they always went on
again, much the same; and never did end. I am sorry a just King,
led astray by his Hobby, answers thus what is only superficially
the fact. But it seems he cannot help it: his Hobby is too strong
for him; regardless of curb and bridle in this instance. Let us
pity a man of genius, mounted on so ungovernable a Hobby;
leaping the barriers, in spite of his best resolutions.
Perhaps the poetic temperament is more liable to such morbid
biases, influxes of imaginative crotchet, and mere folly that
cannot he cured? Friedrich Wilhelm never would or could dismount
from his Hobby: but he rode him under much sorrow henceforth;
under showers of anger and ridicule;--contumelious words and
procedures, as it were SAXA ET FAECES, battering round him,
to a heavy extent; the rider a victim of Tragedy and Farce both
at once.


QUEEN SOPHIE'S TROUBLES: GRUMKOW WITH THE OLD DESSAUER,
AND GRUMKOW WITHOUT HIM.

Queen Sophie had, by delicate management, got over those first
rubs, aud arrived at a Treaty of Hanover, and clear ground again;
far worse rubs lay ahead; but smooth travelling, towards such a
goal, was not possible for this Queen. Poor Lady, her Court, as we
discern from Wilhelmina and the Books, is a sad welter of
intrigues, suspicions; of treacherous chambermaids, head-valets,
pickthank scouts of official gentlemen and others striving to
supplant one another. Satan's Invisible World very busy against
Queen Sophie! Under any terms, much more under those of the
Double-Marriage, her place in a kindly but suspicious Husband's
favor was difficult to maintain. Restless aspirants, climbing this
way or that, by ladder-steps discoverable in this abstruse
element, are never wanting, and have the due eavesdropping
satellites, now here, now there. Queen Sophie and her party have
to walk warily, as if among precipices and pitfalls. Of all which
wide welter of extinct contemptibilities, then and there so
important, here and now become minus quantities, we again notice
the existence, but can undertake no study or specification
whatever. Two Incidents, the latter of them dating near the point
where we now are, will sufficiently instruct the reader what a
welter this was, in which Queen Sophie and her bright little Son,
the new Major of the Potsdam Giants, had to pass their existence.

Incident First fell out some six years ago or more,--in 1719, year
of the Heidelberg Protestants, of Clement the Forger, when his
Majesty "slept for weeks with a pistol under his pillow," and had
other troubles. His Majesty, on one of his journeys, which were
always many, was taken suddenly ill at Brandenburg, that year:
so violently ill, that thinking himself about to die, he sent for
his good Queen, and made a Will appointing her Regent in case of
his decease. His Majesty quite recovered before long. But Grumkow
and the old Dessauer, main aspirants; getting wind of this Will,
and hunting out the truth of it,--what a puddling of the waters
these two made in consequence; stirring up mire and dirt round the
good Queen, finding she had been preferred to them! [Wilhelmina,
i. 26, 29.] Nay Wilhelmina, in her wild way, believes they had,
not long after, planned to "fire a Theatre" about the King, one
afternoon, in Berlin City, and take his life, thereby securing for
themselves such benefit in prospect as there might be! Not a doubt
of it, thinks Wilhelmina: "The young Margraf, [Born 1700 (see
vol. v. p. 393.] our precious Cousin, of Schwedt, is not he
Sister's-son of that Old Dessauer? Grandson of the Great Elector,
even as Papa is. Papa once killed (and our poor Crown-Prince also
made away with),--that young Margraf, and his blue Fox-tiger of an
Uncle over him, is King in Prussia! Obviously they meant to burn
that Theatre, and kill Papa!" This is Wilhelmina's distracted
belief; as, doubtless, it was her Mother's on the day in question:
a jealous, much-suffering, transcendently exasperated Mother, as
we see.

Incident Second shows us those, two rough Gentlemen fallen out of
partnership, into open quarrel and even duel. "Duel at the
Copenick Gate," much noised of in the dull old Prussian Books,--
though always in a reserved manner; not even the DATE, as if that
were dangerous, being clearly given! It came in the wake of that
Hanover Treaty, as is now guessed; the two having taken opposite
sides on that measure, and got provoked into ripping up old sores
in general. Dessau was AGAINST King George and the Treaty, it
appears; having his reasons, family-reasons of old standing:
Grumkow, a bribable gentleman, was FOR,--having also perhaps his
reasons. Enough, it came to altercations, objurgations between
the two; which rose ever higher,--rose at length to
wager-of-battle. Indignant challenge on the part of the Old
Dessauer; which, however, Grumkow, not regarded as a BARESARK in
the fighting way, regrets that his Christian principles do not,
forsooth, allow him to accept. The King is appealed to; the King,
being himself, though an orthodox Christian, yet a still more
orthodox Soldier, decides That, on the whole, General Grumkow
cannot but accept this challenge from the Field-marshal Prince
of Dessau.

Dessau is on the field, at the Copenick Gate, accordingly,--
late-autumn afternoon (I calculate) of the year 1725;--waits
patiently till Grumkow make his appearance. Grumkow, with a chosen
second, does at last appear; advances pensively with slow steps.
Gunpowder Dessau, black as a silent thunder-cloud, draws his
sword: and Grumkow--does not draw his; presents it undrawn, with
unconditional submission and apology: "Slay me, if you like, old
Friend, whom I have injured!" Whereat Dessau, uttering no word,
uttering only some contemptuous snort, turns his back on the
phenomenon; mounts his horse and rides home. [Pollnitz, ii. 212,
214.] A divided man from this Grumkow henceforth. The Prince
waited on her Majesty; signified his sorrow for past
estrangements; his great wish now to help her, but his total
inability, being ousted by Grumkow: We are for Halle, Madam, where
our Regiment is; there let us serve his Majesty, since we cannot
here! [Wilhelmina, i. 90, 93.] --And in fact the Old Dessauer
lives mostly there in time coming; sunk inarticulate in tactics of
a truly deep nature, not stranding on politics of a shallow;--
a man still memorable in the mythic traditions of that place.
Better to drill men to perfection, and invent iron ramrods,
against the day they shall be needed, than go jostling, on such
terms, with cattle of the Grumkow kind! And thus, we perceive,
Grumkow is in, and the Old Dessauer out; and there has been
"a change of Ministry," change of "Majesty's-Advisers," brought
about;--may the Advice going be wiser now!

What the young Crown-Prince did, said, thought, in such
environment, of backstairs diplomacies, female sighs and
aspirations, Grumkow duels, drillings in the Giant Regiment, is
not specified for us in the smallest particular, in the extensive
rubbish-books that have been written about him. Ours is, to
indicate that such environment was: how a lively soul, acted on by
it, did not fail to react, chameleon-like taking color from it,
and contrariwise taking color against it, must be left to the
reader's imagination--One thing we have gathered and will not
forget, That the Old Dessauer is out, and Grumkow in, that the
rugged Son of Gunpowder, drilling men henceforth at Halle, and in
a dumb way meditating tactics as few ever did, has no share in the
foul enchantments that now supervene at court.



Chapter VI.

ORDNANCE-MASTER SECKENDORF CROSSES THE PALACE ESPLANADE.

The Kaiser's terror and embarrassment at the conclusion of the
Hanover Treaty, as we saw, were extreme. War possible or likely;
and nothing but the termagant caprices of Elizabeth Farnese to
depend on: no cash from the Sea-Powers; only cannonshot, invasion
and hostility, from their cash and them: What is to be done?
To "caress the pride of Spain;" to keep alive the hopes, in that
quarter, of marrying their Don Carlos, the supplementary Infant,
to our eldest Archduchess; which indeed has set the Sea-Powers
dreadfully on fire, but which does leave Parma and Piacenza quiet
for the present, and makes the Pragmatic Sanction too an affair of
Spain's own: this is one resource, though a poor one, and a
dangerous. Another is, to make alliance with Russia, by well
flattering the poor little brown Czarina there: but is not that a
still poorer? And what third is there!--

There is a third worth both the others, could it be got done:
To detach Friedrich Wilhelm from those dangerous Hanover
Confederates, and bring him gently over to ourselves. He has an
army of 60,000, in perfect equipment, and money to maintain them
so. Against us or for us,--60,000 PLUS or 60,000 MINUS;--that will
mean 120,000 fighting men; a most weighty item in any field there
is like to be. If it lie in the power of human art, let us gain
this wild irritated King of Prussia. Dare any henchman of ours
venture to go, with honey-cakes, with pattings and cajoleries, and
slip the imperial muzzle well round the snout of that rugged
ursine animal? An iracund bear, of dangerous proportions, and
justly irritated against us at present? Our experienced
FELDZEUGMEISTER, Ordnance-Master and Diplomatist, Graf von
Seckendorf, a conscientious Protestant, and the cunningest of men,
able to lie to all lengths,--dare he try it? He has fought in all
quarters of the world; and lied in all, where needful; and saved
money in all: he will try it, and will succeed in it too!
[Pollnitz, ii. 235; Stenzel, iii. 544; Forster, ii. 59,
iii. 235, 239.]

The Second Act, therefore, of this foolish World-Drama of the
Double-Marriage opens,--on the 11th May, 1726, towards sunset, in
the TABAGIE of the Berlin Palace, as we gather from laborious
comparison of windy Pollnitz with other indistinct witnesses of a
dreary nature,--in the following manner:--

Prussian Majesty sits smoking at the window; nothing particular
going on. A square-built shortish steel-gray Gentleman, of
military cut, past fifty, is strolling over the SCHLOSSPLATZ
(spacious Square in front of the Palace), conspicuous amid the
sparse populations there; pensively recreating himself, in the
yellow sunlight and long shadows, as after a day's hard labor or
travel. "Who is that?" inquires Friedrich Wilhelm, suspending his
tobacco. Grumkow answers cautiously, after survey: He thinks it
must be Ordnance-Master Seckendorf; who was with him to-day;
passing on rapidly towards Denmark, on business that will not
wait.--"Experienced Feldzeugmeister Graf von Seckendorf, whom we
stand in correspondence with, of late, and were expecting about
this time? Whom we have known at the Siege of Stralsund, nay
ever since the Marlborough times and the Siege of Menin, in war
and peace; and have always reckoned a solid reasonable man and
soldier: Why has he not come to us?"--"Your Majesty," confesses
Grumkow, "his business is so pressing! Business in Denmark will
not wait. Seckendorf owned he had come slightly round, in his
eagerness to see our grand Review at Tempelhof the day after
to-morrow: What soldier would omit the sight (so he was pleased to
intimate) of soldiering carried to the non-plus-ultra? But he
hoped to do it quite incognito, among the general public;--and
then to be at the gallop again: not able to have the honor of
paying his court at this time."--"Court? NARREN-POSSEN
(Nonsense)!" answers Friedrich Wilhelm,--and opening the window,
beckons Seckendorf up, with his own royal head and hand.
The conversation of a man who had rational sense, and could tell
him anything, were it only news af foreign parts in a rational
manner, was always welcome to Friedrich Wilhelm.

And so Seckendorf, how can he help it, is installed in the
Tabagie; glides into pleasant conversation there. A captivating
talker; solid for religion, for the rights of Germany against
intrusive French and others: such insight, orthodoxy, sense and
ingenuity; pleasant to hear; and all with the due quantity of oil,
though he "both snuffles and lisps;" and has privately, in case of
need, a capacity of lying,--for he curiously distils you any lie,
in his religious alembics, till it become tolerable to his
conscience, or even palatable, as elixirs are;--capacity of
double-distilled lying probably the greatest of his day.--
Seckendorf assists at the grand Review, 13th May, 1726; witnesses
with unfeigned admiration the non-plus-ultra of manoeuvring, and,
in fact, the general management, military and other, of this
admirable King. [Pollnitz, ii. 235; Fassmann, pp. 367, 368.]
Seckendorf, no question of it, will do his Denmark business
swiftly, then, since your Majesty is pleased so to wish.
Seckendorf, sure enough, will return swiftly to such a King, whose
familiar company, vouchsafed him in this noble manner, he likes,--
oh, how he likes it!

In a week or two, Seckendorf is back to Berlin; attends his
Majesty on the annual Military Tour through Preussen; attends him
everywhere, becoming quite a necessary of life to his Majesty;
and does not go away at all. Seckendorf's business, if his Majesty
knew it, will not lead him "away;" but lies here on this spot;
and is now going on; the magic-apparatus, Grumkow the mainspring
of it, getting all into gear! Grumkow was once clear for King
George and the Hanover Treaty, having his reasons then; but now he
has other reasons, and is clear against those foreign connections.
"Hm, hah--Yes, my estimable, justly powerful Herr von Grumkow,
here is a little Pension of 1,600 ducats (only 500 pounds as yet),
which the Imperial Majesty, thinking of the service you may do
Prussia and Germany and him, graciously commands me to present;--
only 500 pounds by the year as yet; but there shall be no lack of
money if we prosper!" [Forster, iii. 233, 232; see also iv. 172,
121, 157, &c.]

And so there are now two Black-Artists, of the first quality, busy
on the unconscious Friedrich Wilhelm; and Seckendorf, for the next
seven years, will stick to Friedrich Wilhelm like his shadow;
and fascinate his whole existence and him, as few wizards could
have done. Friedrich Wilhelm, like St. Paul in Melita, warming his
innocent hands at the fire of dry branches here kindled for him,--
that miracle of a venomous serpent is this that has fixed itself
upon his finger? To Friedrich Wilhelm's enchanted sense it seems a
bird-of-paradise, trustfully perching there; but it is of the
whip-snake kind, or a worse; and will stick to him tragically, if
also comically, for years to come. The world has seen the comedy
of it, and has howled scornful laughter upon Friedrich Wilhelm for
it: but there is a tragic side, not so well seen into, where tears
are due to the poor King; and to certain others horsewhips, and
almost gallows-ropes, are due!--Yes, had Seckendorf and Grumkow
both been well hanged, at this stage of the affair, whereby the
affair might have soon ended on fair terms, it had been welcome to
mankind; welcome surely to the present Editor; for one; such a
saving to him, of time wasted, of disgust endured! And indeed it
is a solacement he has often longed for, in these dreary
operations of his. But the Fates appointed otherwise; we have all
to accept our Fate!--

Grumkow is sworn to Imperial orthodoxy, then,--probably the
vulpine MIND (so to term it) went always rather that way, and only
his interest the other;--Grumkow is well bribed, supplied for
bribing others where needful; stands orthodox now, under peril of
his very head. All things have been got distilled into the
palatable state, spiritual and economic, for oneself and one's
grand Trojan-Horse of a Grumkow; and the adventure proceeds apace.
Seckendorf sits nightly in the TABAGIE (a kind of "Smoking
Parliament," as we shall see anon); attends on all promenades and
journeys: one of the wisest heads, and so pleasant in discourse,
he is grown indispensable, and a necessary of life to us.
Seckendorf's Biographer computes, "he must have ridden, in those
seven years, continually attending his Majesty, above 5,000 German
miles," [Anonymous (Seckendorf's Grand-Nephew)  Versuch
einer Lebensbeschreibung des Feldmarschalls Grafen von Seckendorf
 (Leipzig, 1792, 1794), i. 6.]--that is 25,000
English miles; or a trifle more than the length of the
Terrestrial Equator.

In a month or two, [13th August, 1726 (Preuss, i. 37).]
Seckendorf--since Majesty vouchsafes to honor us by wishing it--
contrives to get nominated Kaiser's Minister at Berlin: unlimited
prospects of Tabagie, and good talk, now opening on Majesty.
And impartial Grumkow, in Tabagie or wherever we are, cannot but
admit, now and then, that the Excellenz Herr Graf Ordnance-Master
has a deal of reason in what he says about Foreign Politics, about
intrusive French and other points. "Hm, Na," muses Friedrich
Wilhelm to himself, "if the Kaiser had not been so lofty on us in
that Heidelberg-Protestant affair, in the Ritter-Dienst business,
in those damned 'recruiting' brabbles; always a very high-sniffing
surly Kaiser to us!" For in fact the Kaiser has, all along, used
Friedrich Wilhelm bitterly ill; and contemplates no better usage
of him, except in show. Usage? thinks the Kaiser: A big Prussian
piece of Cannon, whom we wish to enchant over to us! Did LAZY PEG
complain of her "usage"?--So that the Excellenz and Grumkow have a
heavy problem of it; were they not so diligent, and the Cannon
itself well disposed. "Those BLITZ FRANZOSEN (blasted French)!"
growls Friedrich Wilhelm sometimes, in the Tobacco-Parliament:
[Forster, ii. 12, &c.] for he hates the French, and would fain
love his Kaiser; being German to the bone, and of right loyal
heart, though counted only a piece of cannon by some. For one
thing, his Prussian Majesty declines signing that Treaty of
Hanover a second time: now when the Dutch accede to it, after
almost a year's trouble with them, the Prussian Ambassador,
singular to observe, "has no orders to sign;" leaves the English
with their Hollanders and Blitz Franzosen to sign by themselves,
this time. [9th August, 1726. (Boyer,  The Political State
of Great Rrilain,  a monthly periodical, vol. xxxii.
p. 77, which is the number for July, 1726.)] "We will wait, we
will wait!" thinks his Prussian Majesty:--"Who knows?"

"But then Julich and Berg!" urges he always; "Britannic Majesty
and the Blitz Franzosen were to secure me the reversion there.
That was the essential point!"--For this too Excellenz has a
remedy; works out gradually a remedy from headquarters, the
amiable dexterous man: "Kaiser will do the like, your Majesty;
Kaiser himself will secure it you!"--In brief, some three months
after Seckendorf's instalment as Kaiser's Minister, not yet five
months since his appearance in the Schlossplatz that May evening,
--it is now Hunting-season, and we are at Wusterhausen;
Majesty, his two Black-Artists and the proper satellites on both
sides all there,--a new and opposite Treaty, in extreme privacy,
on the 12th of October, 1726, is signed at that sequestered
Hunting-Schloss: "Treaty of Wusterhausen" so called; which was
once very famous and mysterious, and caused many wigs to wag.
Wigs to wag, in those days especially, when knowledge of it was
first had; the rather as only half knowledge could be had of it;--
or can, mourns Dryasdust, who has still difficulties about some
"secret articles" in the Document. [Buchholz, i. 94 n.] Courage,
my friend; they are now of no importance to any creature.

The essential purport of this Treaty, [Given IN EXTENSO (without
the secret articles) in Forster, iv. 159-166.] legible to all
eyes, is, "That Friedrich Wilhelm silently drops the Hanover
Treaty and Blitz Franzosen; and explicitly steps over to the
Kaiser's side; stipulates to assist the Kaiser with so many
thousand, if attacked in Germany by any Blitz Franzose or
intrusive Foreigner whatever. In return for which, the Kaiser,
besides assisting Prussia in the like case with a like quotity of
thousands, engages, in circuitous chancery language, To be
helpful, and humanly speaking effectua1, in that grand matter of
Julich and Berg;--somewhat in the following strain: 'To our
Imperial mind it does appear the King of Prussia has manifest
right to the succession in Julich and Berg; right grounded on
express ERBVERGLEICH of 1624, not to speak of Deeds subsequent:
the Imperial mind, as supreme judge of such matters in the Reich,
will not fail to decide this Cause soon and justly, should it come
to that. But we hope it may take a still better course: for the
Imperial mind will straightway set about persuading Kur-Pfalz to
comply peaceably; and even undertakes to have something done, that
way, before six months pass.'" [Art. v. in Forster, ubi supra.]

Humanly speaking, surely the Imperial mind will be effectual in
the Julich and Berg matter. But it was very necessary to use
circuitous chancery language,--inasmuch as the Imperial mind,
desirous also to secure Kur-Pfalz's help in this sore crisis, had,
about three months ago, [Treaty with Kur-Pfalz, 16th August, 1726
(Forster, ii. 71).] expressly engaged to Kur-Pfalz, That Julich
and Berg should NOT go to Friedrich Wilhelm in terms of the old
Deed, but to Kur-Pfalz's Cousins of Sulzbach, whom the old
gentleman (in spite of Deeds) was obstinate to prefer! There is no
doubt about that fact, about that self-devouring pair of facts.
To such straits is a Kaiser driven when he gets deep into
spectre-hunting.

This is the once famous, now forgotten, "Treaty of Wusterhausen,
12th October, 1726;" which proved so consolatory to the Kaiser in
that dread crisis of his Spectre-Hunt; and the effects of which
are very visible in this History, if nowhere else. It caught up
the Prussian-English Double-Marriage; launched it into the huge
tide of Imperial Spectre Politics, into the awful swaggings and
swayings of the Terrestrial LIBRA in general; and nearly broke the
heart of several Royal persons; of a memorable Crown-Prince, among
others. Which last is now, pretty much, its sole claim to be ever
mentioned again by mankind. As there was no performance, nor an
intention of any, in that Julich-Berg matter, Excellenz Seckendorf
had the task henceforth of keeping, by art-magic or the
PRETERnatural method,--that is, by mere help of Grumkow and the
Devil,--his Prussian Majesty steady to the Kaiser nevertheless.
Always well divided from the English especially. Which the
Excellency Seckendorf managed to do. For six or seven years
coming; or, in fact, till these Spectre-chasings ended, or ran
else-whither for consummation. Steady always, jealous of the
English; sometimes nearly mad, but always ready as a primed
cannon: so Friedrich Wilhelm was accordingly managed to be kept;--
his own Household gone almost into delirium; he himself looking
out, with loyally fierce survey, for any Anti-Kaiser War: "When do
we go off, then?"--though none ever came. And indeed nothing came;
and except those torments to young Friedrich and others, it was
all Nothing. One of the strangest pieces of Black-Art ever done.

Excellenz Seckendorf, whom Friedrich Wilhelm so loves, is by no
means a beautiful man; far the reverse. Bodily,--and the spirit
corresponds,--a stiff-backed, petrified, stony,
inscrutable-looking, and most unbeautiful old Intriguer.
Portraits of him, which are frequent, tell all one story.
The brow puckered together, in a wide web of wrinkles from each
temple, as if it meant to hide the bad pair of eyes, which look
suspicion; inquiry, apprehension, habit of double-distilled
mendacity; the indeterminate projecting chin, with its thick,
chapped under-lip, is shaken out, or shoved out, in mill-hopper
fashion,--as if to swallow anything there may be, spoken thing or
other, and grind it to profitable meal for itself. Spiritually he
was an old Soldier let for hire; an old Intriguer, Liar, Fighter,
what you like. What we may call a human Soul standing like a
hackney-coach, this half-century past, with head, tongue, heart,
conscience, at the hest of a discerning public and its shilling.

There is considerable faculty, a certain stiff-necked strength in
the old fellow; in fact, nature had been rather kind to him;
and certainly his Uncle and Guardian--the distinguished Seckendorf
who did the HISTORIA LUTHERANISMI, a RITTER, and man of good mark,
in Ernst THE PIOUS of Saxe-Gotha's time--took pains about his
education. But Nature's gifts have not prospered with him:
how could they, in that hackney-coach way of life?
Considerable gifts, we say; shrunk into a strange bankruptcy in
the development of them. A stiff-backed, close-fisted old
gentleman, with mill-hopper chin,--with puckery much-inquiring
eyes, which have never discovered any noble path for him in this
world. He is a strictly orthodox Protestant; zealous about
external points of moral conduct; yet scruples not, for the
Kaiser's shilling, to lie with energy to all lengths; and fight,
according to the Reichs-Hofrath code, for any god or man. He is
gone mostly to avarice, in these mature years; all his various
strengths turned into strength of grasping. He is now fifty-four;
a man public in the world, especially since he became the Kaiser's
man: but he has served various masters, in various capacities, and
been in many wars;--and for the next thirty years we shall still
occasionally meet him, seldom to our advantage.

He comes from Anspach originally; and has kindred Seckendorfs in
office there, old Ritters in that Country. He inherited a handsome
castle and estate, Meuselwitz, near Altenburg in the Thuringen
region, from that Uncle, Ernst of Saxe-Gotha's man, whom we spoke
of; and has otherwise gained wealth; all which he holds like a
vice. Once, at Meuselwitz, they say, he and some young secretary,
of a smartish turn, sat working or conversing, in a large room
with only one candle to illuminate it: the secretary, snuffing the
candle, snuffed it out: "Pshaw," said Seckendorf impatiently,
"where did you learn to handle snuffers?" "Excellenz, in a place
where there were two lights kept!" replied the 0ther. [
Sechendorje Leben  (already cited), i. 4.]--For the
rest, he has a good old Wife at Meuselwitz, who is now old, and
had never any children; who loves him much, and is much loved by
him, it would appear: this is really the best fact I ever knew of
him,--poor bankrupt creature; gone all to spiritual rheumatism, to
strict orthodoxy, with unlimited mendacity; and avarice as the
general outcome! Stiff-backed, close-fisted strength, all grown
wooden or stony; yet some little well of human Sympathy does lie
far in the interior: one wishes, after all (since he could not be
got hanged in time for us), good days to his poor old Wife and
him! He both lisps and snuffles, as was mentioned; writes
cunningly acres of despatches to Prince Eugene; never swears,
though a military man, except on great occasions one oath,
JARNI-BLEU,--which is perhaps some flash-note version of
CHAIR-DE-DIEU, like PARBLEU, 'Zounds and the rest of them, which
the Devil cannot prosecute you for; whereby an economic man has
the pleasure of swearing on cheap terms.

Herr Pollnitz's account of Seckendorf is unusually emphatic;
babbling Pollnitz rises into a strain of pulpit eloquence,
inspired by indignation, on this topic: "He affected German
downrightness, to which he was a stranger; and followed, under a
deceitful show of piety, all the principles of Machiavel. With the
most sordid love of money he combined boorish manners. Lies [of
the distilled kind chiefly] had so become a habit with him, that
he had altogether lost notion of employing truth in speech. It was
the soul of a usurer, inhabiting now the body of a war-captain,
now transmigrating into that of a huckster. False oaths, and the
abominablest basenesses, cost him nothing, so his object might be
reached. He was miserly with his own, but lavish with his Master's
money; daily he gave most striking proofs of both these habitudes.
And this was the man whom we saw, for a space of time, at the head
of the Kaiser's Armies, and at the helm of the State and of the
German Empire," [Pollnitz, ii. 238.]--having done the Prussian
affair so well.

This cunning old Gentleman, to date from the autumn of 1726, may
be said to have taken possession of Friedrich Wilhelm; to have
gone into him, Grumkow and he, as two devils would have done in
the old miraculous times: and, in many senses, it was they, not
the nominal proprietor, that lived Friedrich Wilhelm's life.
For the next seven years, a figure went about, not doubting it was
Friedrich Wilhelm; but it was in reality Seckendorf-and-Grumkow
much more. These two, conjurer and his man, both invisible, have
caught their royal wild Bear; got a rope round his muzzle;--and so
dance him about; now terrifying, now exhilarating all the market
by the pranks he plays! Grumkow, a very Machiavel after his sort,
knew the nature of the royal animal as no other did. Grumkow,
purchased by his Pension of 500 pounds, is dog-cheap at the Money,
as Seckendorf often urges at Vienna, Is he not? And they add a
touch of extraordinary gift now and then, 40,000 florins (4,000
pounds) on one occasion: [In 1732: Forster, iii. 232.] for
"Grumkow DIENET EHRLICH (serves honorably)," urges Seckendorf;
and again, "If anybody deserves favor [GNADE, meaning extra pay],
it is this gentleman;"--WAHRLICH! Purchased Grumkow has ample
money at command, to purchase other people needed; and does
purchase; so that all things and persons can be falsified and
enchanted, as need is. By and by it has got so far, that Friedrich
Wilhelm's Ambassador at London maintains a cipher-correspondence
with Grumkow; and writes to Friedrich Wilhelm, not what is passing
in city or court there, but what Grumkow wishes Friedrich Wilhelm
to think is passing.

Of insinuations, by assent or contradiction, potent if you know
the nature of the beast; of these we need not speak.
Tabaks-Collegium has become a workshop:--human nature can fancy
it! Nay human nature can still read it in the British State-Paper
Office, to boundless stupendous extent;--but ought mostly to
suppress it when read.

This is a very strange part of Friedrich Wilhelm's history;
and has caused much wonder in the world: Wilhelmina's Book rather
aggravating than assuaging that feeling, on the part of
intelligent readers. A Book written long afterwards, from her
recollections, from her own oblique point of view; in a
beautifully shrill humor; running, not unnaturally, into confused
exaggerations and distortions of all kinds. Not mendaciously
written anywhere, yet erroneously everywhere. Wilhelmina had no
knowledge of the magical machinery that was at work: she vaguely
suspects Grumkow and Seckendorf; but does not guess, in the mad
explosions of Papa, that two devils have got into Papa, and are
doing the mischief. Trusting to memory alone, she misdates,
mistakes, misplaces; jumbles all things topsy-turvy;--giving, on
the whole, an image of affairs which is altogether oblique,
dislocated, exaggerative; and which, in fine, proves
unintelligible, if you try to construe it into a fact or thing
DONE. Yet her Human Narrative, in that wide waste of merely Pedant
Maunderings, is of great worth to us. A green tree, a leafy grove,
better or worse, in the wilderness of dead bones and sand,--how
welcome! Many other Books have been written on the matter; but
these to my experience, only darken it more and more.
Pull Wilhelmina STRAIGHT, the best you can; deduct a twenty-five
or sometimes even a seventy-five per cent, from the exaggerative
portions of her statement; you will find her always true, lucid,
charmingly human; and by far the best authority on this part of
her Brother's History. State-Papers to some extent have also been
printed on the matter; and of written State-Papers, here in
England and elsewhere, this Editor has, had several
hundred-weights distilled for him: but except as lights hung out
over Wilhelmina, nothing yet known, of published or manuscript,
can be regarded as good for much.

O Heavens, had one but seven-league boots, to get across that
inane country,--a bottomless whirlpool of dust and cobwebs in many
places;--where, at any rate, we had so little to do! Elucidating,
rectifying, painfully contrasting, comparing, let us try to work
out some conceivable picture of this strange Imperial MUCH ADO
ABOUT NOTHING; and get our unfortunate Crown-Prince, and our
unfortunate selves, alive through it.



Chapter VII.

TOBACCO-PARLIAMENT.

In these distressing junctures, it may cheer the reader's spirits,
and will tend to explain for him what is coming, if we glance a
little into the Friedrich-Wilhelm TABAGIE (TABAKS-COLLEGIUM or
Smoking College), more worthy to be called Tobacco-Parliament, of
which there have already been incidental notices. Far too
remarkable an Institution of the country to be overlooked
by us here.

Friedrich Wilhelm, though an absolute Monarch, does not dream of
governing without Law, still less without Justice, which he knows
well to be the one basis for him and for all Kings and men.
His life-effort, prosecuted in a grand, unconscious, unvarying and
instinctive way, may be defined rather as the effort to find out
everywhere in his affairs what was justice; to make regulations,
laws in conformity with that, and to guide himself and his Prussia
rigorously by these. Truly he is not of constitutional turn;
cares little about the wigs and formalities of justice, pressing
on so fiercely towards the essence and fact of it; he has been
known to tear asunder the wigs and formalities, in a notably
impatient manner, when they stood between him and the fact.
But Prussia has its Laws withal, tolerably abundant, tolerably
fixed and supreme: and the meanest Prussian man that could find
out a definite Law, coming athwart Friedrich Wilhelm's wrath,
would check Friedrich Wilhelm in mid-volley,--or hope with good
ground to do it. Hope, we say; for the King is in his own and his
people's eyes, to some indefinite extent, always himself the
supreme ultimate Interpreter, and grand living codex, of the
Laws,--always to some indefinite extent;--and there remains for a
subject man nothing but the appeal to PHILIP SOBER, in some rash
cases! On the whole, however, Friedrich Wilhelm is by no means a
lawless Monarch; nor are his Prussians slaves by any means:
they are patient, stout-hearted, subject men, with a very
considerable quantity of radical fire, very well covered in;
prevented from idle explosions, bound to a respectful demeanor,
and especially to hold their tongues as much as possible.

Friedrich Wilhelm has not the least shadow of a Constitutional
Parliament, nor even a Privy-Council, as we understand it;
his Ministers being in general mere Clerks to register and execute
what he had otherwise resolved upon: but he had his
TABAKS-COLLEGIUM, Tobacco-College, Smoking Congress, TABAGIE,
which has made so much noise in the world, and which, in a rough
natural way: affords him the uses of a Parliament, on most cheap
terms, and without the formidable inconveniences attached to that
kind of Institution. A Parliament reduced to its simplest
expression, and, instead of Parliamentary eloquence, provided with
Dutch clay-pipes and tobacco: so we may define this celebrated
Tabagie of Friedrich Wilhelm's.

Tabagies were not uncommon among German Sovereigns of that epoch:
George I. at Hanover had his Smoking-room, and select smoking
Party on an evening; and even at London, as we noticed, smoked
nightly, wetting his royal throat with thin beer, in presence of
his fat and of his lean Mistress, if there were no other company.
Tobacco,--introduced by the Swedish soldiers in the Thirty-Years
War, say some; or even by the English soldiers in the Bohemian or
Palatinate beginnings of said War, say others;--tobacco, once
shown them, was enthusiastically adopted by the German
populations, long in want of such an article; and has done
important multifarious functions in that country ever since.
For truly, in Politics, Morality, and all departments of their
Practical and Speculative affairs, we may trace its influences,
good and bad, to this day.

Influences generally bad; pacificatory but bad, engaging you in
idle cloudy dreams;--still worse, promoting composure among the
palpably chaotic and discomposed; soothing all things into lazy
peace; that all things may be left to themselves very much, and to
the laws of gravity and decomposition. Whereby German affairs are
come to be greatly overgrown with funguses in our Time; and give
symptoms of dry and of wet rot, wherever handled. George I., we
say, had his Tabagie; and other German Sovereigns had: but none of
them turned it to a Political Institution, as Friedrich Wilhelm
did. The thrifty man; finding it would serve in that capacity
withal. He had taken it up as a commonplace solace and amusement:
it is a reward for doing strenuously the day's heavy labors, to
wind them up in this manner, in quiet society of friendly human
faces, into a contemplative smoke-canopy, slowly spreading into
the realm of sleep and its dreams. Friedrich Wilhelm was a man of
habitudes; his evening Tabagie became a law of Nature to him,
constant as the setting of the sun. Favorable circumstances,
quietly noticed and laid hold of by the thrifty man, developed
this simple evening arrangement of his into a sort of Smoking
Parliament, small but powerful, where State-consultations, in a
fitful informal way, took place; and the weightiest affairs might,
by dexterous management, cunning insinuation and manoeuvring from
those that understood the art and the place, be bent this way or
that, and ripened towards such issue as was desirable.

To ascertain what the true course in regard to this or the other
high matter will be; what the public will think of it; and, in
short, what and how the Executive-Royal shall DO therein:
this, the essential function of a Parliament and Privy-Council,
was here, by artless cheap methods, under the bidding of mere
Nature, multifariously done; mere taciturnity and sedative smoke
making the most of what natural intellect there might be.
The substitution of Tobacco-smoke for Parliamentary eloquence is,
by some, held to be a great improvement. Here is Smelfungus's
opinion, quaintly expressed, with a smile in it, which perhaps is
not all of joy:--

"Tobacco-smoke is the one element in which, by our European
manners, men can sit silent together without embarrassment, and
where no man is bound to speak one word more than he has actually
and veritably got to say. Nay, rather every man is admonished and
enjoined by the laws of honor, and even of personal ease, to stop
short of that point; at all events, to hold his peace and take to
his pipe again, the instant he has spoken his meaning, if he
chance to have any. The results of which salutary practice, if
introduced into Constitutional Parliaments, might evidently be
incalculable. The essence of what little intellect and insight
there is in that room: we shall or can get nothing more out of any
Parliament; and sedative, gently soothing, gently clarifying
tobacco-smoke (if the room were well ventilated, open atop, and
the air kept good), with the obligation to a MINIMUM of speech,
surely gives human intellect and insight the best chance they can
have. Best chance, instead of the worst chance as at present:
ah me, ah me, who will reduce fools to silence again in any
measure? Who will deliver men from this hideous nightmare of
Stump-Oratory, under which the grandest Nations are choking to a
nameless death, bleeding (too truly) from mouth and nose and ears,
in our sad days?"

This Tobacco-College is the Grumkow-and-Seckendorf chief field of
action. These two gentlemen understand thoroughly the nature of
the Prussian Tobacco-Parliament; have studied the conditions of it
to the most intricate cranny: no English Whipper-in or eloquent
Premier knows his St. Stephen's better, or how to hatch a measure
in that dim hot element. By hint, by innuendo; by contemplative
smoke, speech and forbearance to speak; often looking one way and
rowing another,--they can touch the secret springs, and guide in a
surprising manner the big dangerous Fireship (for such every
State-Parliament is) towards the haven they intend for it.
Most dexterous Parliament-men (Smoke-Parliament); no Walpole, no
Dundas, or immortal Pitt, First or Second, is cleverer in
Parliamentary practice. For their Fireship, though smaller than
the British, is very dangerous withal. Look at this, for instance:
Seckendorf, one evening, far contrary to his wont, which was
prostrate respect in easy forms, and always judicious submission
of one's own weaker judgment, towards his Majesty,--has got into
some difficult defence of the Kaiser; defence very difficult, or
in reality impossible. The cautious man is flustered by the
intricacies of his position, by his Majesty's indignant
counter-volleys, and the perilous necessity there is to do the
impossible on the spur of the instant;--gets into emphasis,
answers his Majesty's volcanic fire by incipient heat of his own;
and, in short, seems in danger of forgetting himself, and kindling
the Tobacco-Parliament into a mere conflagration. That will be an
issue for us! And yet who dare interfere? Friedrich Wilhelm's
words, in high clangorous metallic plangency, and the pathos of a
lion raised by anger into song, fall hotter and hotter;
Seckendorf's puckered brow is growing of slate-color;
his shelf-lip, shuttling violently, lisps and snuffles mere
unconciliatory matter:--What on earth will become of us?--"Hoom!
Boom!" dexterous Grumkow has drawn a Humming-top from his pocket,
and suddenly sent it spinning. There it hums and caracoles,
through the bottles and glasses; reckless what dangerous breakage
and spilth it may occasion. Friedrich Wilhelm looked aside to it
indignantly. "What is that?" inquired he, in metallic tone still
high. "Pooh, a toy I bought for the little Prince August, your
Majesty: am only trying it!" His Majesty understood the hint,
Seckendorf still better; and a jolly touch of laughter, on both
sides, brought the matter back into the safe tobacco-clouds again.
[Forster, ii. 110.]

This Smoking Parliament or (TABAKS-COLLEGIUM of his Prussian
Majesty was a thing much talked of in the world; but till
Seckendorf and Grumkow started their graud operations there, its
proceedings are not on record; nor indeed till then had its
political or parliamentary function become so decidedly evident.
It was originally a simple Smoking-Club; got together on hest of
Nature, without ulterior intentions:--thus English PARLIAMENTA
themselves are understood to have been, in the old Norman time,
mere royal Christmas-Festivities, with natural colloquy or
PARLEYING between King and Nobles ensuing thereupon, and what
wisest consultation concerning the arduous things of the realm the
circumstances gave rise to. Such parleyings or consultations,--
always two in number in regard to every matter, it would seem, or
even three; one sober, one drunk, and one just after being drunk,
--proving of extreme service in practice, grew to be Parliament,
with its three readings, and what not.

A Smoking-room,--with wooden furniture, we can suppose,--in each
of his Majesty's royal Palaces, was set apart for this evening
service, and became the Tabagie of his Majesty. A Tabagie-room in
the Berlin Schloss, another in the Potsdam, if the cicerone had
any knowledge, could still be pointed out:--but the Tobacco-PIPES
that are shown as Friedrich Wilhelm's in the KUNSTKAMMER or Museum
of Berlin, pipes which no rational smoker, not compelled to it,
would have used, awaken just doubt as to the cicerones; and you
leave the Locality of the Tabagie a thing conjectural. In summer
season, at Potsdam and in country situations, Tabagie could be
held under a tent: we expressly know, his Majesty held Tabagie at
Wusterhausen nightly on the Steps of the big Fountain, in the
Outer Court there. Issuing from Wusterhausen Schloss, and its
little clipped lindens, by the western side; passing the sentries,
bridge and black ditch, with live Prussian eagles, vicious black
bears, you come upon the royal Tabagie of Wusterhausen; covered by
an awning, I should think; sending forth its bits of smoke-clouds,
and its hum of human talk, into the wide free Desert round.
Any room that was large enough, and had height of ceiling, and
air-circulation and no cloth-furniture, would do: and in each
Palace is one, or more than one, that has been fixed upon and
fitted out for that object.

A high large Room, as the Engravings (mostly worthless) give it
us: contented saturnine human figures, a dozen or so of them,
sitting round a large long Table, furnished for the occasion;
long Dutch pipe in the mouth of each man; supplies of knaster
easily accessible; small pan of burning peat, in the Dutch fashion
(sandy native charcoal, which burns slowly without smoke), is at
your left hand; at your right a jug, which I find to consist of
excellent thin bitter beer. Other costlier materials for drinking,
if you want such, are not beyond reach. On side-tables stand
wholesome cold-meats, royal rounds of beef not wanting, with bread
thinly sliced and buttered: in a rustic but neat and abundant way,
such innocent accommodations, narcotic or nutritious, gaseous,
fluid and solid, as human nature, bent on contemplation and an
evening lounge, can require. Perfect equality is to be the rule;
no rising, or notice taken, when anybody enters or leaves. Let the
entering man take his place and pipe, without obligatory remarks:
if he cannot smoke, which is Seckendorf's case for instance, let
him at least affect to do so, and not ruffle the established
stream of things. And so, Puff, slowly Pff!--and any comfortable
speech that is in you; or none, if you authentically have not any.

Old official gentlemen, military for most part; Grumkow, Derschau,
Old Dessauer (when at hand), Seckendorf, old General Flans (rugged
Platt-Deutsch specimen, capable of TOCADILLE or backgammon,
capable of rough slashes of sarcasm when he opens his old beard
for speech): these, and the like of these, intimate confidants of
the King, men who could speak a little, or who could be socially
silent otherwise,--seem to have been the staple of the
Institution. Strangers of mark, who happened to be passing, were
occasional guests; Ginckel the Dutch Ambassador, though foreign
like Seckendorf, was well seen there; garrulous Pollnitz, who has
wandered over all the world, had a standing invitation.
Kings, high Princes on visit, were sure to have the honor.
The Crown-Prince, now and afterwards, was often present;
oftener than he liked,--in such an atmosphere, in such an element.
"The little Princes were all wont to come in," doffing their bits
of triangular hats, "and bid Papa good-night. One of the old
Generals would sometimes put them through their exercise; and the
little creatures were unwilling to go away to bed."

In such Assemblage, when business of importance, foreign or
domestic, was not occupying the royal thoughts,--the Talk, we can
believe, was rambling and multifarious: the day's hunting, if at
Wusterhausen; the day's news, if at Berlin or Potsdam;
old reminiscences, too, I can fancy, turning up, and talk, even in
Seckendorf's own time, about Siege of Menin (where your Majesty
first did me the honor of some notice), Siege of Stralsund, and--
duly on September 11th at least--Malplaquet, with Marlborough and
Eugene: what Marlborough said, looked: and especially Lottum, late
Feldmarschall Lottum; [Died 1719.] and how the Prussian Infantry
held firm, like a wall of rocks, when the horse were swept away,--
rocks highly volcanic, and capable of rolling forward too;
and "how a certain Adjutant [Derschau smokes harder, and blushes
brown] snatched poor Tettau on his back, bleeding to death, amid
the iron whirlwinds, and brought him out of shot-range." [
Militair-Lexikon,  iv. 78, ? Major-General von Tettau,
and i. 348, ? Derschau. This was the beginning of Derschau's favor
with Friedrich Wilhelm, who had witnesssd this piece of faithful
work.]--"Hm, na, such a Day, that, Herr Feldzeugmeister, as we
shall not see again till the Last of the Days!"

Failing talk, there were Newspapers in abundance; scraggy Dutch
Courants, Journals of the Rhine, FAMAS, Frankfurt ZEITUNGS;
with which his Majesty exuberantly supplied himself;--being
willing to know what was passing in the high places of the world,
or even what in the dark snuffy Editor's thoughts was passing.
This kind of matter, as some picture of the actual hour, his
Majesty liked to have read to him, even during meal-time.
Some subordinate character, with clear windpipe,--all the better
too, if he be a book-man, cognizant of History, Geography, and can
explain everything,--usually reads the Newspaper from some high
seat behind backs, while his Majesty and Household dine. The same
subordinate personage may be worth his place in the Tabagie,
should his function happen to prove necessary there.
Even book-men, though generally pedants and mere bags of wind and
folly, are good for something, more especially if rich mines of
quizzability turn out to be workable in them.


  OF GUNDLING, AND THE LITERARY MEN IN TOBACCO-PARLIAMENT. 

Friedrich Wilhelm had, in succession or sometimes simultaneously,
a number of such Nondescripts, to read his Newspapers and season
his Tabagie;--last evanescent phasis of the old Court-Fool
species;--who form a noticeable feature of his environment.
One very famous literary gentleman of this description, who
distanced every competitor, in the Tabagie and elsewhere, for
serving his Majesty's occasions, was Jakob Paul Gundling; a name
still laughingly remembered among the Prussian People.
Gundling was a Country-Clergyman's son, of the Nurnberg quarter;
had studied, carrying off the honors, in various Universities;
had read, or turned over, whole cartloads of wise and foolish
Books (gravitating, I fear, towards the latter kind); had gone the
Grand Tour as travelling tutor, "as companion to an English
gentleman." He had seen courts, perhaps camps, at lowest cities
and inns; knew in a manner, practically and theoretically, all
things, and had published multifarious Books of his own. [List of
them, Twenty-one in number, mostly on learned Antiquarian
subjects,--in Forster, ii. 255, 256.] The sublime long-eared
erudition of the man was not to be contested; manifest to
everybody; thrice and four times manifest to himself, in the
first place.

In the course of his roamings, and grand and little tours, he had
come to Berlin in old King Friedrich's time; had thrown powder in
the eyes of men there, and been appointed to Professorships in the
Ritter-Academy, to Chief-Heraldships,--"Historiographer Royal,"
and perhaps other honors and emoluments. The whole of which were
cut down by the ruthless scythe of Friedrich Wilhelm, ruthlessly
mowing his field clear, in the manner we saw at his Accession.
Whereby learned grandiloquent Gundling, much addicted to liquor by
this time, and turning the corner of forty, saw himself cast forth
into the general wilderness; that is to say, walking the streets
of Berlin, with no resources but what lay within himself and his
own hungry skin. Much given to liquor too. How he lived, for a
year or two after this,--erudite pen and braggart tongue his only
resources,--were tragical to say. At length a famous
Tavern-keeper, the "LEIPZIGE POLTER-HANS (Leipzig Kill-Cow, or
BOISTEROUS-JACK)," as they call him, finding what a dungeon of
erudite talk this Gundling was, and how gentlemen got entertained
by him, gave Gundling the run of his Tavern (or, I fear, only a
seat in the drinking-room); and it was here that General Grumkow
found him, talking big, and disserting DE OMNI SCIBILI, to the
ancient Berlin gentlemen over their cups. A very Dictionary of a
man; who knows, in a manner, all things; and is by no means
ignorant that he knows them: Would not this man suit his Majesty?
thought Grumkow; and brought him to Majesty, to read the
Newspapers and explain everything. Date is not given, or hinted
at; but incidentally we find Gundling in full blast "in the year
1718;" [Von Loen,  Kleine Schriften, i. 201 (cited in
Forster, i. 260).] and conclude his instalment was a year or two
before. Gundling came to his Majesty from the Tap-room of
Boisterous-Jack; read the Newspapers, and explained everything:
such a Dictionary-in-breeches (much given to liquor) as his
Majesty had got, was never seen before. Working into the man, his
Majesty, who had a great taste for such things, discovered in him
such mines of college-learning, court-learning, without end;
self-conceit, and depth of appetite, not less considerable:
in fine, such Chaotic Blockheadism with the consciousness of being
Wisdom, as was wondrous to behold,--as filled his Majesty,
especially, with laughter and joyful amazement. Here are mines of
native Darkness and Human Stupidity, capable of being made to
phosphoresce and effervesce,--are there not, your Majesty?
Omniscient Gundling was a prime resource in the Tabagie, for many
years to come. Man with sublimer stores of long-eared Learning
and Omniscience; man more destitute of Mother-wit, was nowhere to
be met with. A man, bankrupt of Mother-wit;--who has Squandered
any poor Mother-wit he had in the process of acquiring his sublime
long-eared Omniscience; and has retained only depth of appetite,--
appetite for liquor among other things, as the consummation and
bottomless cesspool of appetites:--is not this a discovery we have
made, in Boisterous-Jack's, your Majesty!

The man was an Eldorado for the peculiar quizzing humor of his
Majesty; who took immense delight in working him, when occasion
served. In the first years, he had to attend his Majesty on all
occasions of amusement; if you invite his Majesty to dinner,
Gundling too must be of the party. Daily, otherwise, Gundling was
at the Tabagie; getting drunk, if nothing better. Vein after vein,
rich in broad fun (very broad and Brobdignagian, such as suits
there), is discovered in him: without wit himself, but much the
cause of wit. None oftener shook the Tabagie with inextinguishable
Hahas: daily, by stirring into him, you could wrinkle the Tabagie
into grim radiance of banter and silent grins.

He wore sublime clothes: Friedrich Wilhelm, whom we saw dress up
his regimental Scavenger-Executioners in French costume, for Count
Rothenburg's behoof, made haste to load Gundling with Rathships,
Kammerherrships, Titles such as fools covet;--gave him tolerable
pensions too, poor devil, and even functions, if they were of the
imaginary or big insignificant sort. Above all things, his Majesty
dressed him, as the pink of fortunate ambitious courtiers.
Superfine scarlet coat, gold buttonholes, black-velvet facings and
embroideries without end: "straw-colored breeches; red silk
stockings," with probably blue clocks to them, "and shoes with red
heels:" on his learned head sat an immense cloud-periwig of white
goat's-hair (the man now growing towards fifty); in the hat a red
feather:--in this guise he walked the streets, the gold Key of
KAMMERHERR (Chamberlain) conspicuously hanging at his coat-breast;
and looked proudly down upon the world, when sober. Alas, he was
often not sober; and fiends in human shape were ready enough to
take advantage of his unguarded situation. No man suffered ruder
tarring-and-feathering;--and his only comfort was his bane withal,
that he had, under such conditions, the use of the royal cellars,
and could always command good liquor there.

His illustrious scarlet coat, by tumblings in the ditch, soon got
dirty to a degree; and exposed him to the biting censures of his
Majesty, anxious for the respectability of his Hofraths. One day,
two wicked Captains, finding him prostrate in some lone place, cut
off his Kammerherr KEY; and privately gave it to his Majesty.
Majesty, in Tabagie, notices Gundling's coat-breast: "Where is
your Key, then, Herr Kammerherr?" "Hm, hah--unfortunately lost it,
Ihro Majestat!"--"Lost it, say you?" and his Majesty looks
dreadfully grave.--"Key lost?" thinks Tabagie, grave Seckendorf
included: "JARNI-BLEU, that is something serious!" "As if a
Soldier were to drink his musket!" thinks his Majesty: "And what
are the laws, if an ignorant fellow is shot, and a learned wise
one escapes?" Here is matter for a deliberative Tabagie; and to
poor Gundling a bad outlook, fatal or short of fatal. He had
better not even drink much; but dispense with consolation, and
keep his wits about him, till this squall pass. After much
deliberating, it is found that the royal clemency can be extended;
and an outlet devised, under conditions. Next Tabagie, a servant
enters with one of the biggest trays in the world, and upon it a
"Wooden Key gilt, about an ell long;" this gigantic implement is
solemnly hung round the repentant Kammerherr; this he shall wear
publicly as penance, and be upon his behavior, till the royal mind
can relent. Figure the poor blockhead till that happen!
"On recovering his metal key, he goes to a smith, and has it fixed
on with wire."

What Gundling thought to himself, amid these pranks and hoaxings,
we do not know. The poor soul was not born a fool; though he had
become one, by college-learning, vanity, strong-drink, and the
world's perversity and his own. Under good guidance, especially if
bred to strict silence, he might have been in some measure a
luminous object,--not as now a phosphorescent one, shining by its
mere rottenness! A sad "Calamity of Authors" indeed, when it
overtakes a man!--Poor Gundling probably had lucid intervals now
and then; tragic fits of discernment, in the inner-man of him.
He had a Brother, also a learned man, who retained his senses;
and was even a rather famed Professor at Halle; whose Portrait,
looking very academic, solemn and well-to-do, turns up in old
printshops; whose Books, concerning "Henry the Fowler ( De
Henrico Aucupe )," "Kaiser Conrad I.," and other dim
Historical objects, are still consultable,--though with little
profit, to my experience. The name of this one was NICOLAUS
HIERONYMUS; ours is JAKOB PAUL, the senior brother,--once the hope
of the House, it is likely, and a fond Father's pride,--in that
poor old Nurnberg Parsonage long ago!

Jakob Paul likewise continued to write Books, on Brandenburg
Heraldries, Topography, Genealogies: even a "LIFE" or two of some
old Brandenburg Electors are still extant from his hand; but not
looked at now by any mortal. He had been, perhaps was again,
Historiographer Royal; and felt bound to write such Books: several
of them he printed; and we hear of others still manuscript, "in
five folio volumes written fair." He held innumerable half-mock
Titles and Offices; among others, was actual President of the
Berlin Royal Society, or ACADEMIE DES SCIENCES, Leibnitz's pet
daughter,--there Gundling actually sat in Office; and drew the
salary, for one certainty. "As good he as another," thought
Friedrich Wilhelm: "What is the use of these solemn fellows, in
their big perukes, with their crabbed X+Y's, and scientiflc
Pedler's-French; doing nothing that I can see, except annually the
 Berlin Almanac,  which they live upon?
Let them live upon it, and be thankful; with Gundling for their
head man."

Academy of Sciences makes its ALMANAC, and some peculium of profit
by it; lectures perhaps a little "on Anatomy" (good for something,
that, in his Majesty's mind); but languishes--without
encouragement during the present reign. Has his Majesty no prize
questions to propose, then? None, or worse. He once officially put
these learned Associates upon ascertaining for him "Why Champagne
foamed?" They, with a hidden vein of pleasantry, required
"material to experiment upon." Friedrich Wilhelm sent them a
dozen, or certain dozens; and the matter proved insoluble to this
day. No King, scarcely any man, had less of reverence for the
Sciences so called; for Academic culture, and the art of the
Talking-Schoolmaster in general! A King obtuse to the fine Arts,
especially to the vocal Arts, in a high degree. Literary fame
itself he regards as mountebank fame; the art of writing big
admirable folios is little better to him than that of vomiting
long coils of wonderful ribbon, for the idlers of the
market-place; and he bear-baits his Gundling, in this manner,
as phosphorescent blockhead of the first magnitude, worthy
of nothing better.

Nay, it is but lately (1723 the exact year) that he did his
ever-memorable feat in regard to Wolf and his Philosophy, at
Halle. Illustrious Wolf was recognized, at that time, as the
second greater Leibnitz, and Head-Philosopher of Nature, who "by
mathematical method" had as it were taken Nature in the fact, and
illuminated everything, so that whosoever ran might read,--which
all manner of people then tried to do, but, have now quite ceased
trying "by the Wolf-method:"--Immortal Wolf, somewhat of a stiff,
reserved humor, inwardly a little proud, and not wanting in
private contempt of the contemptible, had been accused of
heterodoxy by the Halle Theologians. Immortal Wolf, croakily
satirical withal, had of course defended himself; and of course
got into a shoreless sea of controversy with the Halle
Theologians; pestering his Majesty with mere wars, and rumors of
war, for a length of time, from that Halle University.
[In Busching ( Beitrage,  i. l-140) is rough
authentic account of Wolf, and especially of all that,--with
several curious LETTERS of Wolf's.] So that Majesty, unable to
distinguish top or bottom in such a coil of argument; or to do
justice in the case, however willing and anxious, often
passionately asked: "What, in God's name, is the real truth of
it?" Majesty appointed Commissions to inquire; read Reports;
could for a long while make out nothing certain. At last came a
decision on the sudden;--royal mind suddenly illuminated, it is a
little uncertain how. Some give the credit of it to Gundling,
which is unlikely; others to "Two Generals" of piouis orthodox
turn, acquainted with Halle;--and I have heard obscurely that it
was the Old Dessauer, who also knew Halle; and was no doubt
wearied to hear nothing talked of there but injured Philosopher
Wolf, and injuring Theologian Lange, or VICE VERSA. Some practical
military man, not given to take up with shadows, it likeliest was.
"In God's name, what is the real truth of all that?" inquired his
Majesty, of the practical man: "DOES Wolf teach hellish doctrines;
as Lange says, or heavenly, as himself says?" "Teaches babble
mainly, I should think, and scientific Pedler's French," intimated
the practical man: "But they say he has one doctrine about oaths,
and what he calls foundation of duty, which I did not like. Not a
heavenly doctrine that. Follow out that, any of your Majesty's
grenadiers might desert, and say he had done no sin against God!"
[Busching, i. 8; Benekendorf,  Karakterzilge aus dem Leben
Konig Friedrich Wilhelm I.  (Anonymous, Berlin, 1787),
ii. 23.] Friedrich Wilhelm flew into a paroxysm of horror;
instantly redacted brief Royal Decree [15th November (Busching
says 8th), 1723.] (which is still extant among the curiosities of
the Universe), ordering Wolf to quit Halle and the Prussian
Dominions, bag and baggage, forevermore, within eighb-and-forty
hours, "BEY STRAFE DES STRANGES, under pain of the halter!"

Halter: the Head-Philosopher of Nature, found too late, will be
hanged, as if he were a sheep-stealer; hanged, and no mistake!
Poor Wolf gathered himself together, wife and baggage; girded up
his loins; and ran with the due despatch. He is now found
sheltered under Hessen-Darmstadt, at Marburg, professing something
there; and all the intellect of the world is struck with
astonishment, and with silent or vocal pity for the poor man.--
It is but fair to say, Friedrich Wilhelm, gradually taking notice
of the world's humor in regard to this, began to have his own
misgivings; and determined to read some of Wolf's Books for
himself. Reading in Wolf, he had sense to discern that here was a
man of undeniable talent and integrity; that the Practical
Military judgment, loading with the iron ramrod, had shot wide of
the mark, in this matter; and, in short, that a palpable bit of
foul-play had been done. This was in 1733;--ten years after the
shot, when his Majesty saw, with his own eyes, how wide it had
gone. He applied to Wolf earnestly, more than once, to come back
to him: Halle, Frankfurt, any Prussian University with a vacancy
in it, was now wide open to Wolf. But Wolf knew better: Wolf, with
bows down to the ground, answered always evadingly;--and never
would come back till the New Reign began.

Friedrich Wilhelm knew little of Book-learning or Book-writing;
and his notion of it is very shocking to us. But the fact is,
O reader, Book-writing is of two kinds: one wise, and may be among
the wisest of earthly things; the other foolish, sometimes far
beyond what can be reached by human nature elsewhere.
Blockheadism, Unwisdom, while silent, is reckoned bad;
but Blockheadism getting vocal, able to speak persuasively,--have
you considered that at all? Human Opacity falling into
Phosphorescence; that is to say, becoming luminous (to itself and
to many mortals) by the very excess of it, by the very bursting of
it into putrid fermentation;--all other forms of Chaos are cosmic
in comparison!--Our poor Friedrich Wilhelm had seen only Gundlings
among the Book-writing class: had he seen wiser specimens, he
might have formed, as he did in Wolf's case, another judgment.
Nay in regard to Gundling himself, it is observable how, with his
unutterable contempt, he seems to notice in him glimpses of the
admirable (such acquirements, such dictionary-faculties, though
gone distracted!),--and almost has a kind of love for the absurd
dog. Gundling's pensions amount to something like 150 pounds;
an immense sum in this Court. [Forster, i. 263, 284 (if you can
RECONCILE the two passages).] A blockhead admirable in some sorts;
and of immense resource in Tobaoco-Parliament when business
is slack!--

No end to the wild pranks, the Houyhnhnm horse-play they had with
drunken Gundling. He has staggered out in a drunk state, and
found, or not clearly FOUND till the morrow, young bears lying in
his bed;--has found his room-door walled up; been obliged to grope
about, staggering from door to door and from port to port, and
land ultimately in the big Bears' den, who hugged and squeezed him
inhumanly there. Once at Wusterhausen, staggering blind-drunk out
of the Schloss towards his lair, the sentries at the Bridge
(instigated to it by the Houyhnhnms, who look on) pretend to
fasten some military blame on him: Why has he omitted or committed
so-and-so? Gundling's drunk answer is unsatisfactory. "Arrest,
Herr Kammerrath, is it to be that, then!" They hustle him about,
among the Bears which lodge there;--at length they lay him
horizontally across two ropes;--take to swinging him hither and
thither, up and down, across the black Acherontic Ditch, which is
frozen over, it being the dead of winter: one of the ropes, LOWER
rope, breaks; Gundling comes souse upon the ice with his
sitting-part; breaks a big hole in the ice, and scarcely with
legs, arms and the remaining rope, can be got out undrowned.
[Forster (i. 254-280); founding, I suppose, on  Leben und
Thaten des Freiherrn Paul von Gundling  (Berlin,
1795); probably not one of the exactest Biographies.]

If, with natural indignation, he shut his door, and refuse to come
to the Tabagie, they knock in a panel of his door; and force him
out with crackers, fire-works, rockets and malodorous projectiles.
Once the poor blockhead, becoming human for a moment, went clean
away; to Halle where his Brother was, or to some safer place:
but the due inveiglements, sublime apologies, increase of titles,
salaries, were used; and the indispensable Phosphorescent
Blockhead, and President of the Academy of Pedler's-French, was
got back. Drink remained always as his consolation; drink, and the
deathless Volumes he was writing and printing. Sublime returns
came to him;--Kaiser's Portrait set in diamonds, on one occasion,
--for his Presentation-Copies in high quarters: immortal fame, is
it not his clear portion; still more clearly abundance of good
wine. Friedrich Wilhelm did not let him want for Titles;--raised
him at last to the Peerage; drawing out the Diploma and Armorial
Blazonry, in a truly Friedrich-Wilhelm manner, with his own hand.
The Gundlings, in virtue of the transcendent intellect and merits
of this Founder Gundling, are, and are hereby declared to be, of
Baronial dignity to the last scion of them; and in "all
RITTER-RENNEN (Tournaments), Battles, Fights, Camp-pitchings,
Sealings, Siguetings, shall and may use the above-said Shield of
Arms,"--if it can be of any advantage to them. A Prussian Majesty
who gives us 150 pounds yearly, with board and lodging and the run
of his cellar, and honors such as these, is not to be lightly
sneezed away, though of queer humors now and then. The highest
Personages, as we said, more than once made gifts to Gundling;
miniatures set in diamonds; purses of a hundred ducats:
even Gundling, it was thought, might throw in a word, mad or
otherwise, which would bear fruit. It was said of him, he never
spoke to harm anybody with his Majesty. The poor blown-up
blockhead was radically not ill-natured,--at least, if you let his
"phosphorescences" alone.

But the grandest explosious, in Tobacco-Parliament, were
producible, when you got Two literary fools; and, as if with
Leyden-jars, positive and negative, brought their vanities to bear
on one another. This sometimes happened, when Tobacbo-Parliament
was in luck. Friedrich Wilhelm had a variety of Merry-Andrew Raths
of the Gundling sort, though none ever came up to Gundling, or
approached him, in worth as a Merry-Andrew.

Herr Fassmann, who wrote Books, by Patronage or for the Leipzig
Booksellers, and wandered about the world as a star or comet of
some magnitude, is not much known to my readers:--but he is too
well known to me, for certain dark Books of his which I have had
to read. [ Life of Friedrich Wilhelm, 
occasionally cited here;  Life of August the Strong;
 &c.] A very dim Literary Figure; undeniable,
indecipherable Human Fact, of those days; now fallen quite extinct
and obsolete; his garniture, equipment, environment all very dark
to us. Probably a too restless, imponderous creature, too much of
the Gundling type; structure of him GASEOUS, not solid; Perhaps a
little of the coxcomb naturally; much of the sycophant on
compulsion,--being sorely jammed into corners, and without
elbow-room at all, in this world. Has, for the rest, a
recognizable talent for "Magazine writing,"--for Newspaper
editing, had that rich mine, "California of the Spiritually
Vagabond," been opened in those days. Poor extinct Fassmann, one
discovers at last a vein of weak geniality in him; here and there,
real human sense and eyesight, under those strange conditions;
and his poor Books, rotted now to inanity, have left a small
seed-pearl or two, to the earnest reader. Alas, if he WAS to
become "spiritually vagabond" ("spiritually" and otherwise),
might it not perhaps be wholesome to him that the California
was NOT discovered?--

Fassmann was by no means such a fool as Gundling; but, he was much
of a fool too. He had come to Berlin, about this time, [1726, as
he himself says (supra p. 8).] in hopes of patronage from the King
or somebody; might say to himself, "Surely I am a better man than
Gundling, if the Berlin Court has eyesight." By the King, on some
wise General's recommending it, he was, as a preliminary,
introduced to the Tabagie at least. Here is the celebrated
Gundling; there is the celebrated Fassmann. Positive Leyden-jar,
with negative close by: in each of these two men lodges a
full-charged fiery electric virtue of self-conceit; destructive
each of the other;--could a conductor be discovered.
Conductors are discoverable, conductors are not wanting; and many
are the explosions between these mutually-destructive human
varieties;--welcomed with hilarious, rather vacant, huge
horse-laughter, in this Tobacco-Parliament and Synod of
the Houyhnhnms.

Of which take this acme; and then end. Fassmann, a fellow not
without sarcasm and sharpness, as you may still see, has one
evening provoked Gundling to the transcendent pitch,--till words
are weak, and only action will answer. Gundling, driven to the
exploding point, suddenly seizes his Dutch smoking-pan, of
peat-charcoal ashes and red-hot sand; and dashes it in the face of
Fassmann; who is of course dreadfully astonished thereby, and has
got his very eyebrows burnt, not to speak of other injuries.
Stand to him, Fassmann! Fassmann stands to him tightly, being the
better man as well as the more satirical; grasps Gundling by the
collar, wrenches him about, lays him at last over his knee,
sitting-part uppermost; slaps said sitting-part (poor sitting-part
that had broken the ice of Wusterhausen) with the hot pan,--nay
some say, strips it and slaps. Amid the inextinguishable
horse-laughter (sincere but vacant) of the Houyhnhnm Olympus.

After which, his Majesty, as epilogue to such play, suggests, That
feats of that nature are unseemly among gentlemen; that when
gentlemen have a quarrel, there is another way of settling it.
Fassmann thereupon challenges Gundling; Gundling accepts; time and
place are settled, pistols the weapon. At the appointed time and
place Gundling stands, accordingly, pistol in hand; but at sight
of Fassmann, throws his pistol away; will not shoot any man, nor
have any man shoot him. Fassmann sternly advances; shoots his
pistol (powder merely) into Gundling's sublime goat's-hair wig:
wig blazes into flame; Gundling falls shrieking, a dead man, to
the earth; and they quench and revive him with a bucket of water.
Was there ever seen such horse-play? Roaring laughter, huge, rude,
and somewhat vacant, as that of the Norse gods over their ale at
Yule time;--as if the face of the Sphinx were to wrinkle itself in
laughter; or the fabulous Houyhnhnms themselves were there to mock
in their peculiar fashion.

His Majesty at length gave Gundling a wine-cask, duly figured;
"painted black with a white cross," which was to stand in his room
as MEMENTO-MORI, and be his coffin. It stood for ten years;
Gundling often sitting to write in it; a good screen against
draughts. And the poor monster was actually buried in this cask;
[Died 11th April, 1731, age 58: description of the Burial "at
Bornstadt near Potsdam," in Forster, i. 276.] Fassmann pronouncing
some funeral oration,--and the orthodox clergy uttering, from the
distance, only a mute groan. "The Herr Baron von Gundling was a
man of many dignities, of much Book-learning; a man of great
memory," admits Fassmann, "but of no judgment," insinuates he,--
LOOKING FOR the Judgment (EXPECTANS JUDICIUM)," says Fassmann,
with a pleasant wit. Fassmann succeeded to all the emoluments and
honors; but did not hold them; preferred to run away before long:
and after him came one and the other, whom the reader is not to be
troubled with here. Enough if the patient reader have seen, a
little, into that background of Friedrich Wilhelm's existence;
and, for the didactic part, have caught up his real views or
instincts upon Spiritual Phosphorescence, or Stupidity grown
Vocal, which are much sounder than most of us suspect.

These were the sports of the Tobacco-Parliament; and it was always
meant primarily for sport, for recreation: but there is no doubt
it had a serious function as well. "Business matters," adds
Beneckendorf, who had means of knowing, [Benekendorf, 
Karakterzuge,  i. 137-149; vi. 37.] "were often a
subject of colloquy in the TABAKS-COLLEGIUM. Not that they were
there finished off, decided upon, or meant to be so. But Friedrich
Wilhelm often purposely brought up such things in conversation
there, that he might learn the different opinions of his generals
and chief men, without their observing it,"--and so might profit
by the Collective Wisdom, in short.



Chapter VIII.

SECKENDORF'S RETORT TO HER MAJESTY.

The Treaty of Wusterhausen was not yet known to Queen Sophie, to
her Father George, or to any external creature: but that open
flinching, and gradual withdrawal, from the Treaty of Hanover was
too well known; and boded no good to her pet project. Female
sighs, male obduracies, and other domestic phenomena, are to be
imagined in consequence. "A grand Britannic Majesty indeed;
very lofty Father to us, Madam, ever since he came to be King of
England: Stalking along there, with his nose in the air;
not deigning the least notice of us, except as of a thing that may
be got to fight for him! And he does not sign the Double-Marriage
Treaty, Madam; only talks of signing it,--as if we were a starved
coach-horse, to be quickened along by a wisp of hay put upon the
coach-pole close ahead of us always!"--"JARNI-BLEU!" snuffles
Seckendorf with a virtuous zeal, or looks it; and things are not
pleasant at the royal dinner-table.

Excellenz Seckendorf, we find at this time, "often has his Majesty
to dinner:" and such dinners; fitting one's tastes in all points,
--no expense regarded (which indeed is the Kaiser's, if we knew
it)! And in return, Excellenz is frequently at dinner with his
Majesty; where the conversation; if it turn on England, which
often happens, is more and more an offence to Queen Sophie.
Seckendorf studies to be polite, reserved before the Queen's
Majesty at her own table; yet sometimes he lisps out, in his vile
snuffling tone, half-insinuations, remarks on our Royal Kindred,
which are irritating in the extreme. Queen Sophie, the politest of
women, did once, says Pollnitz, on some excessive pressure of that
lisping snuffling unendurability, lose her royal patience and
flame out. With human frankness, and uncommonly kindled eyes, she
signified to Seckendorf, That none who was not himself a kind of
scoundrel could entertain such thoughts of Kings and gentlemen!
Which hard saying kindled the stiff-backed rheumatic soul of
Seckendorf (Excellenz had withal a temper in him, far down in the
deeps); who answered: "Your Majesty, that is what no one else
thinks of me. That is a name I have never permitted any one to
give me with impunity." And verily, he kept his threat in that
latter point, says Pollnitz. [ii. 244.]

At this stage, it is becoming, in the nature of things, unlikely
that the projected Double-Marriage, or any union with England, can
ever realize itself for Queen Sophie and her House. The Kaiser has
decreed that it never shall. Here is the King already irritated,
grown indisposed to it; here is the Kaiser's Seckendorf, with
preternatural Apparatus, come to maintain him in that humor.
To Queen Sophie herself, who saw only the outside of Seckendorf
and his Apparatus, the matter doubtless seemed big with
difficulties; but to us, who see the interior, the difficulties
are plainly hopeless. Unless the Kaiser's mind change, unless many
fixed things change, the Double-Marriage is impossible.

One thing only is a sorrow; and this proved an immeasurable one:
That they did not, that Queen Sophie did not, in such case,
frankly give it up: Double-Marriage is not a law of Nature; it is
only a project at Hanover that has gone off again. There will be a
life for our Crown-Prince, and Princess, without a marriage with
England!-It is greatly wise to recognize the impossible, the
unreasonably difficult, when it presents itself: but who of men is
there, much more who of women that can always do it?

Queen Sophie Dorothee will have this Double-Marriage, and it shall
be possible. Pour Lady, she was very obstinate; and her Husband
was very arbitrary. A rough bear of a Husband, yet by no means an
unloving one; a Husband who might have been managed. She evidently
made a great mistake in deciding not to obey this man; as she had
once vowed. By perfect prompt obedience she might have had a very
tolerable life with the rugged Orson fallen to her lot; who was a
very honest-hearted creature. She might have done a pretty stroke
of female work, withal, in taming her Orson; might have led him by
the muzzle far enough in a private way,--by obedience.

But by disobedience, by rebellion open or secret? Friedrich
Wilhelm was a Husband; Friedrich Wilhelm was a King; and the most
imperative man then breathing. Disobedience to Friedrich Wilhelm
was a thing which, in the Prussian State, still more in the Berlin
Schloss and vital heart of said State, the laws of Heaven and of
Earth had not permitted, for any man's or any woman's sake, to be.
The wide overarching sky looks down on no more inflexible
Sovereign Man than him in the red-collared blue coat and white
leggings, with the bamboo in his hand. A peaceable, capacious, not
ill-given Sovereign Man, if you will let him have his way. But to
bar his way; to tweak the nose of his sovereign royalty, and
ignominiously force him into another way: that is an enterprise no
man or devil, or body of men or devils, need attempt.
Seckendorf and Grumkow, in Tobacco-Parliament, understand it
better. That attempt is impossible, once for all. The first step
in such attempt will require to be assassination of Friedrich
Wilhelm; for you may depend on it, royal Sophie, so long as he is
alive, the feat cannot be done. O royal Sophie, O pretty Feekin,
what a business you are making of it!

The year 1726 was throughout a troublous one to Queen Sophie.
Seckendorf's advent; King George's manifestoing; alarm of imminent
universal War, nay sputters of it actually beginning (Gibraltar
invested by the Spaniards, ready for besieging, it is said):
nor was this all. Sophie's poor Mother, worn to a tragic Megaera,
locked so long in the Castle of Ahlden, has taken up wild plans of
outbreak, of escape by means of secretaries, moneys in the Bank of
Amsterdam, and I know not what; with all which Sophie,
corresponding in double and triple mystery, has her own terrors
and sorrows, trying to keep it down. And now, in the depth of the
year, the poor old Mother suddenly dies. [13th November, 1726:
 Memoirs of Sophia Dorothea, Consort of George I.  (i. 386),--where alao some of her concluding Letters
("edited" as if by the Nightmares) can be read, but next to no
sense made of them.] Burnt out in this manner, she collapses into
ashes and long rest; closing so her nameless tragedy of thirty
years' continuance:--what a Bluebeard-chamber in the mind of
Sophie! Nay there rise quarrels about the Heritage of the
Deceased, which will prove another sorrow.



END OF BOOK V