Book: History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 20

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The Visit took place accordingly; Seidlitz, a man known in Gotha
ever since his fine scenic-military procedures there in 1757,
accompanied the King. Of the lucent individualities invited to meet
him, all are now lost to me, except one Putter, a really learned
Gottingen Professor (deep in REICHS-HISTORY and the like), whom the
Duchess has summoned over. By the dim lucency of Putter, faint to
most of us as a rushlight in the act of going out, the available
part of our imagination must try to figure, in a kind of
Obliterated-Rembrandt way, this glorious Evening; for there was but
one,--December 3d-4th,--Friedrich having to leave early on the 4th.
Here is Putter's record, given in the third person:--

"During dinner, Putter, honorably present among the spectators of
this high business, was beckoned by the Duchess to step near the
King [right hand or left, Putter does not say]; but the King
graciously turned round, and conversed with Putter."
The King said:--

KING. "In German History much is still buried; many important
Documents lie hidden in Monasteries." Putter answered "schicklich--
fitly;" that is all we know of Putter's answer.

KING (thereupon). "Of Books on Reichs-History I know only the PERE
BARRI." [ Barri de Beaumarchais, 10 vols. 4to,
Paris, 1748: I believe, an extremely feeble Pillar of Will-o'-Wisps
by Night;--as I can expressly testify Pfeffel to be (Pfeffel,
Abrege Chronologique de l'Histoire d'Allemagne, italic> 2 vols. 4to, Paris, 1776), who has succeeded Barri as
Patent Guide through that vast SYLVA SYLVARUM aud its pathless
intricacies, for the inquiring French and English.]

PUTTER. ... "Foreigners have for most part known only, in regard to
our History, a Latin work written by Struve at Jena."
[Burkhard Gotthelf Struve, Syntagma Historiae Germanicus
(1730, 2 vols. folio).]

KING. "Struv, Struvius; him I don't know."

PUTTER. "It is a pity Barri had not known German."

KING. "Barri was a Lorrainer; Barri must have known German!"--Then
turning to the Duchess, on this hint about the German Language, he
told her, "in a ringing merry tone, How, at Leipzig once, he had
talked with Gottsched [talk known to us] on that subject, and had
said to him, That the French had many advantages; among others,
that a word could often be used in a complex signification, for
which you had in German to scrape together several different
expressions. Upon which Gottsched had said, 'We will have that
mended (DAS WOLLEN WIR NOCH MACHEN)!' These words the King repeated
twice or thrice, with such a tone that you could well see how the
man's conceit had struck him;"--and in short, as we know already,
what a gigantic entity, consisting of wind mainly, he took this
elevated Gottsched to be.

Upon which, Putter retires into the honorary ranks again;
silent, at least to us, and invisible; as the rest of this Royal
Evening at Gotha is. ["Putter's Selbstbiographie italic> (Autobiography), p. 406:" cited in Preuss, ii. 277 n.]
Here, however, is the Letter following on it two days after:--


FRIEDRICH TO THE DUCHESS OF SACHSEN-GOTHA.

"LEIPZIG, 6th December, 1762.

"MADAM,--I should never have done, my adorable Duchess, if I
rendered you account of all the impressions which the friendship
you lavished on me has made on my heart. I could wish to answer it
by entering into everything that can be agreeable to you [conduct
of my Recruiters or Commissariat people first of all]. I take the
liberty of forwarding the ANSWERS which have come in to the Two
MEMOIRES you sent me. I am mortified, Madam, if I have not been
able to fulfil completely your desires: but if you knew the
situation I am in, I flatter myself you would have some
consideration for it.

"I have found myself here [in Leipzig, as elsewhere] overwhelmed
with business, and even to a degree I had not expected.
Meanwhile, if I ever can manage again to run over and pay you in
person the homage of a heart which is more attached to you than
that of your near relations, assuredly I will not neglect the first
opportunity that shall present itself.

"Messieurs the English [Bute, Bedford and Company, with their
Preliminaries signed, and all my Westphalian Provinces left in a
condition we shall hear of] continue to betray. Poor M. Mitchell
has had a stroke of apoplexy on hearing it. It is a hideous thing
(CHOSE AFFREUSE); but I will speak of it no more. May you, Madam,
enjoy all the prosperities that I wish for you, and not forget a
Friend, who will be till his death, with sentiments of the highest
esteem and the most perfect consideration,--Madam, your Highness's
most faithful Cousin and Servant, FRIEDRICH."
[ OEuvres de Frederic, xzvii. 201.]

For a fortnight past, Friedrich has had no doubt that general Peace
is now actually at hand. November 25th, ten days before this visit,
a Saxon Privy-Councillor, Baron von Fritsch, who, by Order from his
Court, had privately been at Vienna on the errand, came privately
next, with all speed, to Friedrich (Meissen, November 25th):
[Rodenbeck, ii. 193.] "Austria willing for Treaty; is your Majesty
willing?" "Thrice-willing, I; my terms well known!" Friedrich would
answer,--gladdest of mankind to see general Pacification coming to
this vexed Earth again. The Dance of the Furies, waltzing itself
off, HOME out of this upper sunlight: the mad Bellona steeds
plunging down, down, towards their Abysses again, for a season!--

This was a result which Friedrich had foreseen as nearly certain
ever since the French and English signed their Preliminaries.
And there was only one thing which gave him anxiety; that of his
Rhine Provinces and Strong Places, especially Wesel, which have
been in French hands for six years past, ever since Spring, 1757.
Bute stipulates That those places and countries shall be evacuated
by his Choiseul, as soon as weather and possibility permit;
but Bute, astonishing to say, has not made the least stipulation as
to whom they are to be delivered to,--allies or enemies, it is all
one to Bute. Truly rather a shameful omission, Pitt might
indignantly think,--and call the whole business steadily, as he
persisted to do, "a shameful Peace," had there been no other
article in it but this;--as Friedrich, with at least equal emphasis
thought and felt. And, in fact, it had thrown him into very great
embarrassment, on the first emergence of it.

For her Imperial Majesty began straightway to draw troops into
those neighborhoods: "WE will take delivery, our Allies playing
into our hand!" And Friedrich, who had no disposable troops, had to
devise some rapid expedient; and did. Set his Free-Corps agents and
recruiters in motion: "Enlist me those Light people of Duke
Ferdinand's, who are all getting discharged; especially that
BRITANNIC LEGION so called. All to be discharged; re-enlist them,
you; Ferdinand will keep them till you do it. Be swift!" And it is
done;--a small bit of actual enlistment among the many prospective
that were going on, as we noticed above. Precise date of it not
given; must have been soon after November 3d. There were from 5 to
6,000 of them; and it was promptly done. Divided into various
regiments; chief command of them given to a Colonel Bauer, under
whom a Colonel Beckwith whose name we have heard: these, to the
surprise of Imperial Majesty, and alarm of a pacific Versailles,
suddenly appeared in the Cleve Countries, handy for Wesel, for
Geldern; in such posts, and in such force and condition as
intimated, "It shall be we, under favor, that take delivery!"
Snatch Wesel from them, some night, sword in hand: that had been
Bauer's notion; but nothing of that kind was found necessary;
mere demonstration proved sufficient. To the French Garrisons the
one thing needful was to get away in peace; Bauer with his brows
gloomy is a dangerous neighbor. Perhaps the French Officers
themselves rather favored Friedrich than his enemies. Enough, a
private agreement, or mutual understanding on word of honor, was
come to: and, very publicly, at length, on the 11th and 12th days
of March, 1763 (Peace now settled everywhere), Wesel, in great
gala, full of field-music, military salutations and mutual dining,
saw the French all filing out, aud Bauer and people filing in, to
the joy of that poor Town. [Preuss, ii. 342.]

Soon after which, painful to relate, such the inexorable pressure
of finance, Bauer and people were all paid off, flung loose again:
ruthlessly paid off by a necessitous King! There were about 6,000
of those poor fellows,--specimens of the bastard heroic, under
difficulties, from every country in the world; Beckwith and I know
not what other English specimens of the lawless heroic; who were
all cashiered, officer and man, on getting to Berlin. As were the
earlier Free-Corps, and indeed the subsequent, all and sundry,
"except seven," whose names will not be interesting to you.
Paid off, with or without remorse, such the exhaustion of finance;
Kleist, Icilius, Count Hordt and others vainly repugning and
remonstrating; the King himself inexorable as Arithmetic.
"Can maintain 138,000 of regular, 12,000 of other sorts; not a man
more!" Zealous Icilius applied for some consideration to his
Officers: "partial repayment of the money they have spent from
their own pocket in enlistment of their people now discharged!"
Not a doit. The King's answer is in autograph, still extant; not in
good spelling, but with sense clear as light: "SEINE OFFICIERS
HABEN WIE DIE RABEN GESTOLLEN SIE KRIGEN NICHTS, Your Officers
stole like ravens;--they get Nothing." [Preuss, ii. 320.]
Lessing's fine play of MINNA VON BARNHELM testifies to considerable
public sympathy for these impoverished Ex-Military people.
Pathetic truly, in a degree; but such things will happen.
Irregular gentlemen, to whom the world 's their oyster,--said
oyster does suddenly snap to on them, by a chance. And they have to
try it on the other side, and say little!--But we are forgetting
the Peace-Treaty itself, which still demands a few words.

Kleist's raid into the Reich had a fine effect on the Potentates
there; and Plotho's Offer was greedily complied with; the Kaiser,
such his generosity, giving "free permission." We spoke of Privy-
Councillor von Fritsch, and his private little word with Friedrich
at Meissen, on November 25th. The Electoral-Prince of Saxony, it
seems, was author of that fine stroke; the history of it this.
Since November 3d, the French and English have had their
preliminaries signed; and all Nations are longing for the like.
"Let us have a German Treaty for general Peace," said the Kurprinz
of Saxony, that amiable Heir-Apparent whom we have seen sometimes,
who is rather crooked of back, but has a sprightly Wife. "By all
means," answered Polish Majesty: "and as I am in the distance, do
you in every way further it, my Son!" Whereupon despatch of Fritsch
to Vienna, and thence to Meissen; with "Yes" to him from both
parties. Plenipotentiaries are named: "Fritsch shall be ours:
they shall have my Schloss of Hubertsburg for Place of Congress,"
said the Prince. And on Thursday, December 30th, 1762, the Three
Dignitaries met at Hubertsburg, and began business.

This is the Schloss in Torgau Country which Quintus Icilius's
people, Saldern having refused the job, willingly undertook
spoiling; and, as is well known, did it, January 22d, 1761; a thing
Quintus never heard the end of. What the amount of profit, or the
degree of spoil and mischief, Quintus's people made of it, I could
not learn; but infer from this new event that the wreck had not
been so considerable as the noise was; at any rate, that the
Schloss had soon been restored to its pristine state of brilliancy.
The Plenipotentiaries,--for Saxony, Fritsch; for Austria, a Von
Collenbach, unknown to us; for Prussia, one Hertzberg, a man
experienced beyond his years, who is of great name in Prussian
History subsequently,--sat here till February 15th, 1763, that is
for six weeks and five days. Leaving their Protocols to better
judges, who report them good, we will much prefer a word or two
from Friedrich himself, while waiting the result they come to.


FRIEDRICH TO PRINCE HENRI (home at Berlin).

"LEIPZIG, 14th JANUARY, 1763. ... Am not surprised you find Berlin
changed for the worse: such a train of calamities must, in the end,
make itself felt in a poor and naturally barren Country, where
continual industry is needed to second its fecundity and keep up
production. However, I will do what I can to remedy this dearth (LA
DISETTE), at least as far as my small means permit. ...

"No fear of Geldern and Wesel; all that has been cared for by Bauer
and the new Free-Corps. By the end of February Peace will be
signed; at the beginning of April everybody will find himself at
home, as in 1756.

"The Circles are going to separate: indifferent to me, or nearly
so; but it is good to be plucking out tiresome burning sticks,
stick after stick. I hope you amuse yourself at Berlin: at Leipzig
nothing but balls and redouts; my Nephews diverting themselves
amazingly. Madam Friedrich, lately Garden-maid at Seidlitz [Village
in the Neumark, with this Beauty plucking weeds in it,--little
prescient of such a fortune], now Wife to an Officer of the Free
Hussars, is the principal heroine of these Festivities."
[Schoning, iii. 528.]

LEIPZIG, 25th JANUARY, 1763. "Thanks for your care about my
existence. I am becoming very old, dear Brother; in a little while
I shall be useless to the world and a burden to myself: it is the
lot of all creatures to wear down with age,-- but one is not, for
all that, to abuse one's privilege of falling into dotage.

"You still speak without full confidence of our Negotiation
business [going on at Hubertsburg yonder]. Most certainly the
chapter of accidents is inexhaustible; and it is still certain
there may happen quantities of things which the limited mind of man
cannot foresee: but, judging by the ordinary course, and such
degrees of probability as human creatures found their hopes on, I
believe, before the month of February entirely end, our Peace will
be completed. In a permanent Arrangement, many things need
settling, which are easier to settle now than they ever will be
again. Patience; haste without speed is a thriftless method."
[Ib. iii. 529.]

February 5th, the trio at Hubertsburg got their Preliminaries
signed. On the tenth day thereafter, the Treaty itself was signed
and sealed. All other Treaties on the same subject had been guided
towards a contemporary finis: England and France, ready since the
3d of November last, signed and ended February 10th. February 11th,
the Reich signed and ended; February 15th, Prussia, Austria,
Saxony; and the THIRD SILESIAN or SEVEN-YEARS WAR was completely
finished. [Copy of the treaty in Helden-Geschichte, italic> vii. 624 et seq.; in Seyfarth, Beylagen, italic> iii. 479-495; in ROUSSET, in WENCK, in &c. &c.]

It had cost, in loss of human lives first of all, nobody can say
what: according to Friedrich's computation, there had perished of
actual fighters, on the various fields, of all the nations,
853,000; of which above the fifth part, or 180,000, is his own
share: and, by misery and ravage, the general Population of Prussia
finds itself 500,000 fewer; nearly the ninth man missing. This is
the expenditure of Life. Other items are not worth enumerating, in
comparison; if statistically given, you can find the most approved
guesses at them by the same Head, who ought to be an authority.
[ OEuvres de Frederic, v. 230-234; Preuss,
iii. 349-351.] It was a War distinguished by--Archenholtz will tell
you, with melodious emphasis, what a distinguished, great and
thrice-greatest War it was. There have since been other far bigger
Wars,--if size were a measure of greatness; which it by no means
is! I believe there was excellent Heroism shown in this War, by
persons I could name; by one person, Heroism really to be called
superior, or, in its kind, almost of the rank of supreme;--and that
in regard to the Military Arts and Virtues, it has as yet, for
faculty and for performance, had no rival; nor is likely soon to
have. The Prussians, as we once mentioned, still use it as their
school-model in those respects. And we-- O readers, do not at least
you and I thank God to have now done with it!--

Of the Peace-Treaties at Hubertsburg, Paris and other places, it is
not necessary that we say almost anything. They are to be found in
innumerable Books, dreary to the mind; and of the 158 Articles to
be counted there, not one could be interesting at present.
The substance of the whole lies now in Three Points, not mentioned
or contemplated at all in those Documents, though repeatedly
alluded to and intimated by us here.

The issue, as between Austria and Prussia, strives to be, in all
points, simply AS-YOU-WERE; and, in all outward or tangible points,
strictly is so. After such a tornado of strife as the civilized
world had not witnessed since the Thirty-Years War.
Tornado springing doubtless from the regions called Infernal;
and darkening the upper world from south to north, and from east to
west for Seven Years long;--issuing in general AS-YOU-WERE!
Yes truly, the tornado was Infernal; but Heaven too had silently
its purposes in it. Nor is the mere expenditure of men's diabolic
rages, in mutual clash as of opposite electricities, with reduction
to equipoise, and restoration of zero and repose again after seven
years, the one or the principal result arrived at.
Inarticulately, little dreamt of at the time by any by-stander, the
results, on survey from this distance, are visible as Threefold.
Let us name them one other time:--

1. There is no taking of Silesia from this man; no clipping of him
down to the orthodox old limits; he and his Country have palpably
outgrown these. Austria gives up the Problem: "We have lost
Silesia!" Yes; and, what you hardly yet know,--and what, I
perceive, Friedrich himself still less knows,--Teutschland has
found Prussia. Prussia, it seems, cannot be conquered by the whole
world trying to do it; Prussia has gone through its Fire-Baptism,
to the satisfaction of gods and men; and is a Nation henceforth.
In and of poor dislocated Teutschland, there is one of the Great
Powers of the World henceforth; an actual Nation. And a Nation not
grounding itself on extinct Traditions, Wiggeries, Papistries,
Immaculate Conceptions; no, but on living Facts,--Facts of
Arithmetic, Geometry, Gravitation, Martin Luther's Reformation, and
what it really can believe in:--to the infinite advantage of said
Nation and of poor Teutschland henceforth. To be a Nation; and to
believe as you are convinced, instead of pretending to believe as
you are bribed or bullied by the devils about you; what an
advantage to parties concerned! If Prussia follow its star-- As it
really tries to do, in spite of stumbling! For the sake of Germany,
one hopes always Prussia will; and that it may get through its
various Child-Diseases, without death: though it has had sad
plunges and crises,--and is perhaps just now in one of its worst
Influenzas, the Parliamentary-Eloquence or Ballot-Box Influenza!
One of the most dangerous Diseases of National Adolescence;
extremely prevalent over the world at this time,--indeed
unavoidable, for reasons obvious enough. "SIC ITUR AD ASTRA;"
all Nations certain that the way to Heaven is By voting, by
eloquently wagging the tongue "within those walls"! Diseases, real
or imaginary, await Nations like individuals; aud are not to be
resisted, but must be submitted to, and got through the best you
can. Measles and mumps; you cannot prevent them in Nations either.
Nay fashions even; fashion of Crinoline, for instance (how
infinitely more, that of Ballot-Box and Fourth-Estate!),--are you
able to prevent even that? You have to be patient under it, and
keep hoping!

2. In regard to England. Her JENKINS'S-EAR CONTROVERSY is at last
settled. Not only liberty of the Seas, but, if she were not wiser,
dominion of them; guardianship of liberty for all others
whatsoever: Dominion of the Seas for that wise object. America is
to be English, not French; what a result is that, were there no
other! Really a considerable Fact in the History of the World.
Fact principally due to Pitt, as I believe, according to my best
conjecture, and comparison of probabilities and circumstances.
For which, after all, is not everybody thankful, less or more?
O my English brothers, O my Yankee half-brothers, how oblivious are
we of those that have done us benefit!--

These are the results for England. And in the rear of these, had
these and the other elements once ripened for her, the poor Country
is to get into such merchandisings, colonizings, foreign-settlings,
gold-nuggetings, as lay beyond the drunkenest dreams of Jenkins
(supposing Jenkins addicted to liquor);--and, in fact, to enter on
a universal uproar of Machineries, Eldorados, "Unexampled
Prosperities," which make a great noise for themselves in the very
days now come. Prosperities evidently not of a sublime type:
which, in the mean while, seem to be covering the at one time
creditably clean and comely face of England with mud-blotches,
soot-blotches, miscellaneous squalors and horrors; to be preaching
into her amazed heart, which once knew better, the omnipotence of

SHODDY; filling her ears and soul with shriekery and metallic
clangor, mad noises, mad hurries mostly no-whither;--and are
awakening, I suppose, in such of her sons as still go into
reflection at all, a deeper and more ominous set of Questions than
have ever risen in England's History before. As in the foregoing
case, we have to be patient and keep hoping.

3. In regard to France. It appears, noble old Teutschland, with
such pieties and unconquerable silent valors, such opulences human
and divine, amid its wreck of new and old confusions, is not to be
cut in Four, and made to dance to the piping of Versailles or
another. Far the contrary! To Versailles itself there has gone
forth, Versailles may read it or not, the writing on the wall:
"Thou art weighed in the balance, and found wanting" (at last even
"FOUND wanting")! France, beaten, stript, humiliated;
sinful, unrepentant, governed by mere sinners and, at best, clever
fools (FOUS PLEINS D'ESPRIT),--collapses, like a creature whose
limbs fail it; sinks into bankrupt quiescence, into nameless
fermentation, generally into DRY-ROT. Rotting, none guesses
whitherward;--rotting towards that thrice-extraordinary
Spontaneous-Combustion, which blazed out in 1789. And has kindled,
over the whole world, gradually or by explosion, this unexpected
Outburst of all the chained Devilries (among other chained things),
this roaring Conflagration of the Anarchies; under which it is the
lot of these poor generations to live,--for I know not what length
of Centuries yet. "Go into Combustion, my pretty child!" the
Destinies had said to this BELLE FRANCE, who is always so fond of
shining and outshining: "Self-Combustion;--in that way, won't you
shine, as none of them yet could?" Shine; yes, truly,--till you are
got to CAPUT MORTUUM, my pretty child (unless you gain new wisdom!)
--But not to wander farther:--

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16th, Friedrich, all Saxon things being now
settled,--among the rest, "eight Saxon Schoolmasters" to be a model
in Prussia,--quitted Leipzig, with the Seven-Years War safe in his
pocket, as it were. Drove to Moritzburg, to dinner with the amiable
Kurprinz and still more amiable Wife: "It was to your Highness that
we owe this Treaty!" A dinner which readers may hear of again.
At Moritzburg; where, with the Lacys, there was once such rattling
and battling. After which, rapidly on to Silesia, and an eight days
of adjusting and inspecting there.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30th, Friedrich arrives in Frankfurt-on-Oder, on
the way homeward from Silesia: "takes view of the Field of
Kunersdorf" (reflections to be fancied); early in the afternoon
speeds forward again; at one of the stages (place called Tassdorf)
has a Dialogue, which we shall hear of; and between 8 and 9 in the
evening, not through the solemn receptions and crowded streets,
drives to the Schloss of Berlin. "Goes straight to the Queen's
Apartment," Queen, Princesses and Court all home triumphantly some
time ago; sups there with the Queen's Majesty and these bright
creatures,--beautiful supper, had it consisted only of cresses and
salt; and, behind it, sound sleep to us under our own roof-tree
once more. [Rodenbeck, ii. 211, 212; Preuss, ii. 345, 346; &c. &c.]
Next day, "the King made gifts to," as it were, to everybody;
"to the Queen about 5,000 pounds, to the Princess Amelia 1,000
pounds," and so on; and saw true hearts all merry round him,--
merrier, perhaps, than his own was.

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