Book: History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 21

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Carlyle's "History of Friedrich II of Prussia"
Book XXI
Processed by D.R. Thompson
drthom@ihug.co.nz



BOOK XXI.

AFTERNOON AND EVENING OF FRIEDRICH'S LIFE.

1763-1786.



Chapter I.

PREFATORY.

The Twelve Hercules-labors of this King have ended here; what was
required of him in World-History is accomplished. There remain to
Friedrich Twenty-three Years more of Life, which to Prussian
History are as full of importance as ever; but do not essentially
concern European History, Europe having gone the road we now see it
in. On the grand World-Theatre the curtain has fallen for a New
Act; Friedrich's part, like everybody's for the present, is played
out. In fact, there is, during the rest of his Reign, nothing of
World-History to be dwelt on anywhere. America, it has been
decided, shall be English; Prussia be a Nation. The French, as
finis of their attempt to cut Germany in Four, find themselves sunk
into torpor, abeyance and dry-rot; fermenting towards they know not
what. Towards Spontaneous Combustion in the year 1789, and for long
years onwards!

There, readers, there is the next milestone for you, in the History
of Mankind! That universal Burning-up, as in hell-fire, of Human
Shams. The oath of Twenty-five Million men, which has since become
that of all men whatsoever, "Rather than live longer under lies, we
will die!"--that is the New Act in World-History. New Act,--or, we
may call it New PART; Drama of World-History, Part Third. If Part
SECOND was 1,800 years ago, this I reckon will be Part THIRD.
This is the truly celestial-infernal Event: the strangest we have
seen for a thousand years. Celestial in one part; in the other,
infernal. For it is withal the breaking out of universal mankind
into Anarchy, into the faith and practice of NO-Government,--that
is to say (if you will be candid), into unappeasable Revolt against
Sham-Governors and Sham-Teachers,--which I do charitably define to
be a Search, most unconscious, yet in deadly earnest, for true
Governors and Teachers. That is the one fact of World-History worth
dwelling on at this day; and Friedrich cannot be said to have had
much hand farther in that.

Nor is the progress of a French or European world, all silently
ripening and rotting towards such issue, a thing one wishes to
dwell on. Only when the Spontaneous Combustion breaks out;
and, many-colored, with loud noises, envelops the whole world in
anarchic flame for long hundreds of years: then has the Event come;
there is the thing for all men to mark, and to study and scrutinize
as the strangest thing they ever saw. Centuries of it yet lying
ahead of us; several sad Centuries, sordidly tumultuous, and good
for little! Say Two Centuries yet,--say even Ten of such a process:
before the Old is completely burnt out, and the New in any state of
sightliness? Millennium of Anarchies;--abridge it, spend your
heart's-blood upon abridging it, ye Heroic Wise that are to come!
For it is the consummation of All the Anarchies that are and were;
--which I do trust always means the death (temporary death) of
them! Death of the Anarchies: or a world once more built wholly on
Fact better or worse; and the lying jargoning professor of Sham-
Fact, whose name is Legion, who as yet (oftenest little conscious
of himself) goes tumulting and swarming from shore to shore, become
a species extinct, and well known to be gone down to Tophet!--

There were bits of Anarchies before, little and greater: but till
that of France in 1789, there was none long memorable; all were
pygmies in comparison, and not worth mentioning separately.
In 1772 the Anarchy of Poland, which had been a considerable
Anarchy for about three hundred years, got itself extinguished,--
what we may call extinguished;--decisive surgery being then first
exercised upon it: an Anarchy put in the sure way of extinction.
In 1775, again, there began, over seas, another Anarchy much more
considerable,--little dreaming that IT could be called an Anarchy;
on the contrary, calling itself Liberty, Rights of Man; and singing
boundless Io-Paeans to itself, as is common in such cases;
an Anarchy which has been challenging the Universe to show the like
ever since. And which has, at last, flamed up as an independent
Phenomenon, unexampled in the hideously SUICIDAL way;--and does
need much to get burnt out, that matters may begin anew on truer
conditions. But neither the PARTITION OF POLAND nor the AMERICAN
WAR OF INDEPENDENCE have much general importance, or, except as
precursors of 1789, are worth dwelling on in History. From us here,
so far as Friedrich is concerned with them, they may deserve some
transient mention, more or less: but World-History, eager to be at
the general Funeral-pile and ultimate Burning-up of Shams in this
poor World, will have less and less to say of small tragedies and
premonitory symptoms.

Curious how the busy and continually watchful and speculating
Friedrich, busied about his dangers from Austrian encroachments,
from Russian-Turk Wars, Bavarian Successions, and other troubles
and anarchies close by, saw nothing to dread in France; nothing to
remark there, except carelessly, from time to time, its beggarly
decaying condition, so strangely sunk in arts, in arms, in finance;
oftenest an object of pity to him, for he still has a love for
France;--and reads not the least sign of that immeasurable, all-
engulfing FRENCH REVOLUTION which was in the wind! Neither Voltaire
nor he have the least anticipation of such a thing. Voltaire and he
see, to their contentment, Superstition visibly declining:
Friedrich rather disapproves the heat of Voltaire's procedures on
the INFAME. "Why be in such heat? Other nonsense, quite equal to
it, will be almost sure to follow. Take care of your own skin!"
Voltaire and he are deeply alive, especially Voltaire is, to the
horrors and miseries which have issued on mankind from a Fanatic
Popish Superstition, or Creed of Incredibilities,--which (except
from the throat outwards, from the bewildered tongue outwards) the
orthodox themselves cannot believe, but only pretend and struggle
to believe. This Voltaire calls "THE INFAMOUS;" and this--what name
can any of us give it? The man who believes in falsities is very
miserable. The man who cannot believe them, but only struggles and
pretends to believe; and yet, being armed with the power of the
sword, industriously keeps menacing and slashing all round, to
compel every neighbor to do like him: what is to be done with such
a man? Human Nature calls him a Social Nuisance; needing to be
handcuffed, gagged and abated. Human Nature, if it be in a
terrified and imperilled state, with the sword of this fellow
swashing round it, calls him "Infamous," and a Monster of Chaos.
He is indeed the select Monster of that region; the Patriarch of
all the Monsters, little as he dreams of being such. An Angel of
Heaven the poor caitiff dreams himself rather, and in cheery
moments is conscious of being:--Bedlam holds in it no madder
article. And I often think he will again need to be tied up (feeble
as he now is in comparison, disinclined though men are to manacling
and tying); so many helpless infirm souls are wandering about, not
knowing their right hand from their left, who fall a prey to him.
"L'INFAME" I also name him,--knowing well enough how little he, in
his poor muddled, drugged and stupefied mind, is conscious of
deserving that name. More signal enemy to God, and friend of the
Other Party, walks not the Earth in our day.

Anarchy in the shape of religious slavery was what Voltaire and
Friedrich saw all round them. Anarchy in the shape of Revolt
against Authorities was what Friedrich and Voltaire had never
dreamed of as possible, and had not in their minds the least idea
of. In one, or perhaps two places you may find in Voltaire a grim
and rather glad forethought, not given out as prophecy, but felt as
interior assurance in a moment of hope, How these Priestly Sham
Hierarchies will be pulled to pieces, probably on the sudden, once
people are awake to them. Yes, my much-suffering M. de Voltaire, be
pulled to pieces; or go aloft, like the awakening of Vesuvius, one
day,--Vesuvius awakening after ten centuries of slumber, when his
crater is all grown grassy, bushy, copiously "tenanted by wolves" I
am told; which, after premonitory grumblings, heeded by no wolf or
bush, he will hurl bodily aloft, ten acres at a time, in a very
tremendous manner! [First modern Eruption of Vesuvius, A.D. 1631,
after long interval of rest.] A thought like this, about the
Priestly Sham-Hierarchies, I have found somewhere in Voltaire:
but of the Social and Civic Sham-Hierarchies (which are likewise
accursed, if they knew it, and indeed are junior co-partners of the
Priestly; and, in a sense, sons and products of them, and cannot
escape being partakers of their plagues), there is no hint, in
Voltaire, though Voltaire stood at last only fifteen years from the
Fact (1778-1793); nor in Friedrich, though he lived almost to see
the Fact beginning.

Friedrich's History being henceforth that of a Prussian King, is
interesting to Prussia chiefly, and to us little otherwise than as
the Biography of a distinguished fellow-man, Friedrich's Biography,
his Physiognomy as he grows old, quietly on his own harvest-field,
among his own People: this has still an interest, and for any
feature of this we shall be eager enough; but this withal is the
most of what we now want. And not very much even of this;
Friedrich the unique King not having as a man any such depth and
singularity, tragic, humorous, devotionally pious, or other, as to
authorize much painting in that aspect. Extreme brevity beseems us
in these circumstances: and indeed there are,--as has already
happened in different parts of this Enterprise (Nature herself, in
her silent way, being always something of an Artist in such
things),--other circumstances, which leave us no choice as to that
of detail. Available details, if we wished to give them, of
Friedrich's later Life, are not forthcoming: masses of incondite
marine-stores, tumbled out on you, dry rubbish shot with uncommon
diligence for a hundred years, till, for Rubbish-Pelion piled on
Rubbish-Ossa, you lose sight of the stars and azimuths;
whole mountain continents, seemingly all of cinders and sweepings
(though fragments and remnants do lie hidden, could you find them
again):---these are not details that will be available!
Anecdotes there are in quantity; but of uncertain quality;
of doubtful authenticity, above all. One recollects hardly any
Anecdote whatever that seems completely credible, or renders to us
the Physiognomy of Friedrich in a convincing manner. So remiss a
creature has the Prussian Clio been,--employed on all kinds of
loose errands over the Earth and the Air; and as good as altogether
negligent of this most pressing errand in her own House. Peace be
with her, poor slut; why should we say one other hard word on
taking leave of her to all eternity!--

The Practical fact is, what we have henceforth to produce is more
of the nature of a loose Appendix of Papers, than of a finished
Narrative. Loose Papers,--which, we will hope, the reader can, by
industry, be made to understand and tolerate: more we cannot do for
him. No continuous Narrative is henceforth possible to us. For the
sake of Friedrich's closing Epoch, we will visit, for the last
time, that dreary imbroglio under which the memory of Friedrich,
which ought to have been, in all the epochs of it, bright and
legible, lies buried; and will try to gather, as heretofore, and
put under labels. What dwells with oneself as human may have some
chance to be humanly interesting. In the wildest chaos of marine-
stores and editorial shortcomings (provided only the editors speak
truth, as these poor fellows do) THIS can be done. Part the living
from the dead; pick out what has some meaning, leave carefully what
has none; you will in some small measure pluck up the memory of a
hero, like drowned honor by the locks, and rescue it,
into visibility.

That Friedrich, on reaching home, made haste to get out, of the
bustle of joyances and exclamations on the streets; proceeded
straight to his music-chapel in Charlottenburg, summoning the
Artists, or having them already summoned; and had there, all alone,
sitting invisible wrapt in his cloak, Graun's or somebody's grand
TE-DEUM pealed out to him, in seas of melody,--soothing and
salutary to the altered soul, revolving many things,--is a popular
myth, of pretty and appropriate character; but a myth only, with no
real foundation, though it has some loose and apparent.
[In PREUSS, ii. 46, all the details of it.] No doubt, Friedrich had
his own thoughts on entering Berlin again, after such a voyage
through the deeps; himself, his Country still here, though solitary
and in a world of wild shipwrecks. He was not without piety; but it
did not take the devotional form, and his habits had nothing of
the clerical.

What is perfectly known, and much better worth knowing, is the
instantaneous practical alacrity with which he set about repairing
that immense miscellany of ruin; and the surprising success he had
in dealing with it. His methods, his rapid inventions and
procedures, in this matter, are still memorable to Prussia;
and perhaps might with advantage be better known than they are in
some other Countries. To us, what is all we can do with them here,
they will indicate that this is still the old Friedrich, with his
old activities and promptitudes; which indeed continue unabated,
lively in Peace as in War, to the end of his life and reign.

The speed with which Prussia recovered was extraordinary.
Within little more than a year (June 1st, 1764), the Coin was all
in order again; in 1765, the King had rebuilt, not to mention other
things, "in Silesia 8,000 Houses, in Pommern 6,500." [Rodenbeck,
ii. 234, 261.] Prussia has been a meritorious Nation; and, however
cut and ruined, is and was in a healthy state, capable of
recovering soon. Prussia has defended itself against overwhelming
odds,--brave Prussia; but the real soul of its merit was that of
having merited such a King to command it. Without this King, all
its valors, disciplines, resources of war, would have availed
Prussia little. No wonder Prussia has still a loyalty to its great
Friedrich, to its Hohenzollern Sovereigns generally. Without these
Hohenzollerns, Prussia had been, what we long ago saw it, the
unluckiest of German Provinces; and could never have had the
pretension to exist as a Nation at all. Without this particular
Hohenzollern, it had been trampled out again, after apparently
succeeding. To have achieved a Friedrich the Second for King over
it, was Prussia's grand merit.

An accidental merit, thinks the reader? No, reader, you may believe
me, it is by no means altogether such. Nay, I rather think, could
we look into the Account-Books of the Recording Angel for a course
of centuries, no part of it is such! There are Nations in which a
Friedrich is, or can be, possible; and again there are Nations in
which he is not and cannot. To be practically reverent of Human
Worth to the due extent, and abhorrent of Human Want of Worth in
the like proportion, do you understand that art at all? I fear,
not,--or that you are much forgetting it again! Human Merit, do you
really love it enough, think you;--human Scoundrelism (brought to
the dock for you, and branded as scoundrel), do you even abhor it
enough? Without that reverence and its corresponding opposite-pole
of abhorrence, there is simply no possibility left. That, my
friend, is the outcome and summary of all virtues in this world,
for a man or for a Nation of men. It is the supreme strength and
glory of a Nation;--without which, indeed, all other strengths, and
enormities of bullion and arsenals and warehouses, are no strength.
None, I should say;--and are oftenest even the REVERSE.

Nations who have lost this quality, or who never had it, what
Friedrich can they hope to be possible among them? Age after age
they grind down their Friedrichs contentedly under the hoofs of
cattle on their highways; and even find it an excellent practice,
and pride themselves on Liberty and Equality. Most certain it is,
there will no Friedrich come to rule there; by and by, there will
none be born there. Such Nations cannot have a King to command
them; can only have this or the other scandalous swindling Copper
Captain, constitutional Gilt Mountebank, or other the like
unsalutary entity by way of King; and the sins of the fathers are
visited upon the children in a frightful and tragical manner,
little noticed in the Penny Newspapers and Periodical Literatures
of this generation. Oh, my friends--! But there is plain Business
waiting us at hand.



Chapter II.

REPAIRING OF A RUINED PRUSSIA.

That of Friedrich's sitting wrapt in a cloud of reflections
Olympian-Abysmal, in the music-chapel at Charlottenburg, while he
had the Ambrosian Song executed for him there, as the preliminary
step, was a loose myth; but the fact lying under it is abundantly
certain. Few Sons of Adam had more reason for a piously thankful
feeling towards the Past, a piously valiant towards the Future.
What king or man had seen himself delivered from such strangling
imbroglios of destruction, such devouring rages of a hostile world?
And the ruin worked by them lay monstrous and appalling all round.
Friedrich is now Fifty-one gone; unusually old for his age;
feels himself an old man, broken with years and toils; and here
lies his Kingdom in haggard slashed condition, worn to skin and
bone: How is the King, resourceless, to remedy it? That is now the
seemingly impossible problem. "Begin it,--thereby alone will it
ever cease to be impossible!" Friedrich begins, we may say, on the
first morrow morning. Labors at his problem, as he did in the march
to Leuthen; finds it to become more possible, day after day, month
after month, the farther he strives with it.

"Why not leave it to Nature?" think many, with the Dismal Science
at their elbow. Well; that was the easiest plan, but it was not
Friedrich's. His remaining moneys, 25 million thalers ready for a
Campaign which has not come, he distributes to the most
necessitous: "all his artillery-horses" are parted into plough-
teams, and given to those who can otherwise get none: think what a
fine figure of rye and barley, instead of mere windlestraws,
beggary and desolation, was realized by that act alone. Nature is
ready to do much; will of herself cover, with some veil of grass
and lichen, the nakedness of ruin: but her victorious act, when she
can accomplish it, is that of getting YOU to go with her
handsomely, and change disaster itself into new wealth. Into new
wisdom and valor, which are wealth in all kinds; California mere
zero to them, zero, or even a frightful MINUS quantity!
Friedrich's procedures in this matter I believe to be little less
didactic than those other, which are so celebrated in War: but no
Dryasdust, not even a Dryasdust of the Dismal Science, has gone
into them, rendered men familiar with them in their details and
results. His Silesian Land-Bank (joint-stock Moneys, lent on
security of Land) was of itself, had I room to explain it, an
immense furtherance. [Preuss, iii. 75; OEuvres de
Frederic, vi. 84.] Friedrich, many tell us, was as
great in Peace as in War: and truly, in the economic and material
provinces, my own impression, gathered painfully in darkness, and
contradiction of the Dismal-Science Doctors, is much to that
effect. A first-rate Husbandman (as his Father had been); who not
only defended his Nation, but made it rich beyond what seemed
possible; and diligently sowed annuals into it, and perennials
which flourish aloft at this day.

Mirabeau's Monarchie Prussienne, in 8 thick
Volumes 8vo,--composed, or hastily cobbled together, some Twenty
years after this period,--contains the best tabular view one
anywhere gets of Friedrich's economics, military and other
practical methods and resources:--solid exact Tables these are, and
intelligent intelligible descriptions, done by Mauvillon FILS, the
same punctual Major Mauvillon who used to attend us in Duke
Ferdinand's War;--and so far as Mirabeau is concerned, the Work
consists farther of a certain small Essay done in big type, shoved
into the belly of each Volume, and eloquently recommending, with
respectful censures and regrets over Friedrich, the Gospel of Free
Trade, dear to Papa Mirabeau. The Son is himself a convert; far
above lying, even to please Papa: but one can see, the thought of
Papa gives him new fire of expression. They are eloquent, ruggedly
strong Essays, those of Mirabeau Junior upon Free Trade:
--they contain, in condensed shape, everything we were privileged
to hear, seventy years later, from all organs, coach-horns, jews-
harps and scrannel-pipes, PRO and CONTRA, on the same sublime
subject: "God is great, and Plugson of Undershot is his Prophet.
Thus saith the Lord, Buy in the cheapest market, sell in the
dearest!" To which the afflicted human mind listens what it can;--
and after seventy years, mournfully asks itself and Mirabeau,
"M. le Comte, would there have been in Prussia, for example, any
Trade at all, any Nation at all, had it always been left 'Free'?
There would have been mere sand and quagmire, and a community of
wolves and bisons, M. le Comte. Have the goodness to terminate that
Litany, and take up another!"

We said, Friedrich began his problem on the first morrow morning;
and that is literally true, that or even MORE. Here is how
Friedrich takes his stand amid the wreck, speedy enough to begin:
this view of our old friend Nussler and him is one of the Pieces we
can give,--thanks to Herr Busching and his Beitrage italic> for the last time! Nussler is now something of a Country
Gentleman, so to speak; has a pleasant place out to east of Berlin;
is LANDRATH (County Chairman) there, "Landrath of Nether-Barnim
Circle;" where we heard of the Cossacks spoiling him: he, as who
not, has suffered dreadfully in these tumults. Here is Busching's
welcome Account.


LANDRATH NUSSLER AND THE KING (30th March-3d April, 1763).

"MARCH 30th, 1763, Friedrich, on his return to Berlin, came by the
route of Tassdorf,"--Tassdorf, in Nether-Barnim Circle (40 odd
miles from Frankfurt, and above 15 from Berlin);--"and changed
horses there. During this little pause, among a crowd assembled to
see him, he was addressed by Nussler, Landrath of the Circle, who
had a very piteous story to tell. Nussler wished the King joy of
his noble victories, and of the glorious Peace at last achieved:
'May your Majesty reign in health and happiness over us many years,
to the blessing of us all!'--and recommended to his gracious care
the extremely ruined, and, especially by the Russians, uncommonly
devastated Circle, for which," continues Busching "this industrious
Landrath had not hitherto been able to extract any effective help."
Generally for the Provinces wasted by the Russians there had
already some poor 300,000 thalers (45,000 pounds) been allowed by a
helpful Majesty, not over-rich himself at the moment; and of this,
Nether-Barnim no doubt gets its share: but what is this to such
ruin as there is? A mere preliminary drop, instead of the bucket
and buckets we need!--Busching, a dull, though solid accurate kind
of man, heavy-footed, and yet always in a hurry, always slipshod,
has nothing of dramatic here; far from it; but the facts themselves
fall naturally into that form,--in Three Scenes:--


I. TASSDORF (still two hours from Berlin), KING, NUSSLER AND A
CROWD OF PEOPLE, Nussler ALONE DARING TO SPEAK.

KING (from his Carriage, ostlers making despatch). "What is your
Circle most short of?"

LANDRATH NUSSLER. "Of horses for ploughing the seedfields of rye to
sow them, and of bread till the crops come."

KING. "Rye for bread, and to sow with, I will give; with horses I
cannot assist."

NUSSLER. "On representation of Privy-Councillor van Brenkenhof [the
Minister concerned with such things], your Majesty has been pleased
to give the Neumark and Pommern an allowance of Artillery and
Commissariat Horses: but poor Nether-Barnim, nobody will speak for
it; and unless your Majesty's gracious self please to take pity on
it, Nether-Barnim is lost!" (A great many things more he said, in
presence of a large crowd of men who had gathered round the King's
Carriage as the horses were being changed; and spoke with such
force and frankness that the King was surprised, and asked:)--

KING. "Who are you?" (has forgotten the long-serviceable man!)

NUSSLER. "I am the Nussler who was lucky enough to manage the
Fixing of the Silesian Boundaries for your Majesty!"

KING. "JA, JA, now I know you again! Bring me all the Landraths of
the Kurmark [Mark of Brandenburg Proper, ELECTORAL Mark] in a body;
I will speak with them."

NUSSLER. "All of them but two are in Berlin already."

KING. "Send off estafettes for those two to come at once to Berlin;
and on Thursday," day after to-morrow, "come yourself, with all the
others, to the Schloss to me: I will then have some closer
conversation, and say what I can and will do for helping of the
country," (King's Carriage rolls away, with low bows and blessings
from Nussler and everybody).

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