Book: History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 21

T >> Thomas Carlyle >> History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 21




Here is a Historian King who uses no rouge-pot in his Narratives,--
whose word, which is all we shall say of it at present, you find to
be perfectly trustworthy, and a representation of the fact as it
stood before himself! What follows needs no vouching for:
"This acquisition was one of the most important we could make,
because it joined Pommern to East Prussia [ours for ages past], and
because, rendering us masters of the Weichsel River, we gained the
double advantage of being able to defend that Kingdom [Ost-
Preussen], and to draw considerable tolls from the Weichsel, as all
the trade of Poland goes by that River."

Yes truly! Our interests are very visible: and the interests and
wishes and claims of Poland,--are they nowhere worthy of one word
from you, O King? Nowhere that I have noticed: not any mention of
them, or allusion to them; though the world is still so convinced
that perhaps they were something, and not nothing! Which is very
curious. In the whole course of my reading I have met with no
Autobiographer more careless to defend himself upon points in
dispute among his Audience, and marked as criminal against him by
many of them. Shadow of Apology on such points you search for in
vain. In rapid bare summary he sets down the sequel of facts, as if
assured beforehand of your favorable judgment, or with the
profoundest indifference to how you shall judge them; drops his
actions, as an Ostrich does its young, to shift for themselves in
the wilderness, and hurries on his way. This style of his,
noticeable of old in regard to Silesia too, has considerably hurt
him with the common kind of readers; who, in their preconceived
suspicions of the man, are all the more disgusted at tracing in
him, not the least anxiety to stand well with any reader, more than
to stand ill, AS ill as any reader likes!

Third parties, it would seem, have small temptation to become his
advocates; he himself being so totally unprovided with thanks for
you! But, on another score, and for the sake of a better kind of
readers, there is one third party bound to remark: 1. That hardly
any Sovereign known to us did, in his general practice, if you will
examine it, more perfectly respect the boundaries of his neighbors;
and go on the road that was his own, anxious to tread on no man's
toes if he could avoid it: a Sovereign who, at all times, strictly
and beneficently confined himself to what belonged to his real
business and him. 2. That apparently, therefore, he must have
considered Poland to be an exceptional case, unique in his
experience: case of a moribund Anarchy, fallen down as carrion on
the common highways of the world; belonging to nobody in
particular; liable to be cut into (nay, for sanitary reasons
requiring it, if one were a Rhadamanthus Errant, which one is
not!)--liable to be cut into, on a great and critically stringent
occasion; no question to be asked of IT; your only question the
consent of by-standers, and the moderate certainty that nobody got
a glaringly disproportionate share! That must have been, on the
part of an equitable Friedrich, or even of a Friedrich accurate in
Book-keeping by Double Entry, the notion silently formed
about Poland.

Whether his notion was scientifically right, and conformable to
actual fact, is a question I have no thought of entering on;
still less, whether Friedrich was morally right, or whether there
was not a higher rectitude, granting even the fact, in putting it
in practice. These are questions on which an Editor may have his
opinion, partly complete for a long time past, partly not complete,
or, in human language, completable or pronounceable at all; and may
carefully forbear to obtrude it on his readers; and only advise
them to look with their own best eyesight, to be deaf to the
multiplex noises which are evidently blind, and to think what they
find thinkablest on such a subject. For, were it never so just,
proper and needful, this is by nature a case of LYNCH LAW;
upon which, in the way of approval or apology, no spoken word is
permissible. Lynch being so dangerous a Lawgiver, even when an
indispensable one!--

For, granting that the Nation of Poland was for centuries past an
Anarchy doomed by the Eternal Laws of Heaven to die, and then of
course to get gradually buried, or eaten by neighbors, were it only
for sanitary reasons,--it will by no means suit, to declare openly
on behalf of terrestrial neighbors who have taken up such an idea
(granting it were even a just one, and a true reading of the silent
but inexorably certain purposes of Heaven), That they, those
volunteer terrestrial neighbors, are justified in breaking in upon
the poor dying or dead carcass, and flaying and burying it, with
amicable sharing of skin and shoes! If it even were certain that
the wretched Polish Nation, for the last forty years hastening with
especial speed towards death, did in present circumstances, with
such a howling canaille of Turk Janissaries and vultures of
creation busy round it, actually require prompt surgery, in the
usual method, by neighbors,--the neighbors shall and must do that
function at their own risk. If Heaven did appoint them to it,
Heaven, for certain, will at last justify them; and in the mean
while, for a generation or two, the same Heaven (I can believe) has
appointed that Earth shall pretty unanimously condemn them.
The shrieks, the foam-lipped curses of mistaken mankind, in such
case, are mankind's one security against over-promptitude (which is
so dreadfully possible) on the part of surgical neighbors.

Alas, yes, my articulate-speaking friends; here, as so often
elsewhere, the solution of the riddle is not Logic, but Silence.
When a dark human Individual has filled the measure of his wicked
blockheadisms, sins and brutal nuisancings, there are Gibbets
provided, there are Laws provided; and you can, in an articulate
regular manner, hang him and finish him, to general satisfaction.
Nations too, you may depend on it as certain, do require the same
process, and do infallibly get it withal; Heaven's Justice, with
written Laws or without, being the most indispensable and the
inevitablest thing I know of in this Universe. No doing without it;
and it is sure to come:--and the Judges and Executioners, we
observe, are NOT, in that latter case, escorted in and out by the
Sheriffs of Counties and general ringing of bells; not so, in that
latter case, but far otherwise!--

And now, leaving that vexed question, we will throw one glance--
only one is permitted--into the far more profitable question, which
probably will one day be the sole one on this matter, What became
of poor West-Preussen under Friedrich? Had it to sit, weeping
unconsolably, or not? Herr Dr. Freytag, a man of good repute in
Literature, has, in one of his late Books of Popular History,
[G. Freytag, Neue Bilder aus dem Leben des deutschen
Volkes (Leipzig, 1862).] gone into this subject, in a
serious way, and certainly with opportunities far beyond mine for
informing himself upon it:--from him these Passages have been
excerpted, labelled and translated by a good hand:--

ACQUISITION OF POLISH PRUSSIA. "During several Centuries, the much-
divided Germans had habitually been pressed upon, and straitened
and injured, by greedy conquering neighbors; Friedrich was the
first Conqueror who once more pushed forward the German Frontier
towards the East; reminding the Germans again, that it was their
task to carry Law, Culture, Liberty and Industry into the East of
Europe. All Friedrich's Lands, with the exception only of some Old-
Saxon territory, had, by force and colonization, been painfully
gained from the Sclave. At no time since the migrations of the
Middle Ages, had this struggle for possession of the wide Plains to
the east of Oder ceased. When arms were at rest, politicians
carried on the struggle."

PERSECUTION OF GERMAN PROTESTANTS IN POLAND. "In the very 'Century
of Enlightenment' the persecution of the Germans became fanatical
in those Countries: one Protestant Church after the other got
confiscated; pulled down; if built of wood, set on fire: its Church
once burnt, the Village had lost the privilege of having one.
Ministers and schoolmasters were driven away, cruelly maltreated.
'VEXA LUTHERANURN, DABIT THALERUM (Wring the Lutheran, you will
find money in him),' became the current Proverb of the Poles in
regard to Germans. A Protestant Starost of Gnesen, a Herr von UNRUH
of the House of Birnbaum, one of the largest proprietors of the
country, was condemned to die, and first to have his tongue pulled
out and his hands cut off,--for the crime of having copied into his
Note-book some strong passages against the Jesuits, extracted from
German Books. Patriotic 'Confederates of Bar,' joined by all the
plunderous vagabonds around, went roaming and ravaging through the
country, falling upon small towns and German villages. The Polish
Nobleman, Roskowski [a celebrated "symbolical" Nobleman, this], put
on one red boot and one black, symbolizing FIRE and DEATH; and in
this guise rode about, murdering and burning, from places to place;
finally, at Jastrow, he cut off the hands, feet, and lastly the
head of the Protestant Pastor, Willich by name, and threw the limbs
into a swamp. This happened in 1768."

IN WHAT STATE FRIEDRICH FOUND THE POLISH PROVINCES. "Some few only
of the larger German Towns, which were secured by walls, and some
protected Districts inhabited exclusively by Germans,--as the
NIEDERUNG near Dantzig, the Villages under the mild rule of the
Cistercians of Oliva, and the opulent German towns of the Catholic
Ermeland,--were in tolerable circumstances. The other Towns lay in
ruins; so also most of the Hamlets (HOFE) of the open Country.
Bromberg, the city of German Colonists, the Prussians found in
heaps and ruins: to this hour it has not been possible to ascertain
clearly how the Town came into this condition. [ "Neue
Preussische Provinzialblotter, Year 1854, No. 4,
p. 259."] No historian, no document, tells of the destruction and
slaughter that had been going on, in the whole District of the
NETZE there, during the last ten years before the arrival of the
Prussians, The Town of Culm had preserved its strong old walls and
stately churches; but in the streets, the necks of the cellars
stood out above the rotten timber and brick heaps of the tumbled
houses: whole streets consisted merely of such cellars, in which
wretched people were still trying to live. Of the forty houses in
the large Market-place of Culm, twenty-eight had no doors, no
roofs, no windows, and no owners. Other Towns were in
similar condition,"

"The Country people hardly knew such a thing as bread; many had
never in their life tasted such a delicacy; few Villages possessed
an oven. A weaving-loom was rare, the spinning-wheel unknown.
The main article of furniture, in this bare scene of squalor, was
the Crucifix and vessel of Holy-Water under it [and "POLACK!
CATHOLIK!" if a drop of gin be added].--The Peasant-Noble
[unvoting, inferior kind] was hardly different from the common
Peasant: he himself guided his Hook Plough (HACKEN-PFLUG), and
clattered with his wooden slippers upon the plankless floor of his
hut. ... It was a desolate land, without discipline, without law,
without a master. On 9,000 English square miles lived 500,000
souls: not 55 to the square mile."

SETS TO WORK. "The very rottenness of the Country became an
attraction for Friedrich; and henceforth West-Preussen was, what
hitherto Silesia had been, his favorite child; which, with infinite
care, like that of an anxious loving mother, he washed, brushed,
new-dressed, and forced to go to school and into orderly habits,
and kept ever in his eye. The diplomatic squabbles about this
'acquisition' were still going on, when he had already sent [so
early as June 4th, 1772, and still more on September 13th of that
Year [See his new DIALOGUE with Roden, our Wesel acquaintance, who
was a principal Captain in this business (in PREUSS, iv. 57, 58:
date of the Dialogue is "11th May, 1772;"--Roden was on the ground
4th June next; but, owing to Austrian delays, did not begin till
September 13th).]] a body of his best Official People into this
waste-howling scene, to set about organizing it. The Landschaften
(COUNTIES) were divided into small Circles; in a minimum of time,
the land was valued, and an equal tax put upon it; every Circle
received its LANDRATH, Law-Court, Post-office and Sanitary Police.
New Parishes, each with its Church and Parson, were called into
existence as by miracle; a company of 187 Schoolmasters--partly
selected and trained by the excellent Semler [famous over Germany,
in Halle University and SEMINARIUM, not yet in England]-- were sent
into the Country: multitudes of German Mechanics too, from brick-
makers up to machine-builders. Everywhere there began a digging, a
hammering, a building; Cities were peopled anew; street after
street rose out of the heaps of ruins; new Villages of Colonists
were laid out, new modes of agriculture ordered. In the first Year
after taking possession, the great Canal [of Bromberg] was dug;
which, in a length of fifteen miles, connects, by the Netze River,
the Weichsel with the Oder and the Elbe: within one year after
giving the order, the King saw loaded vessels from the Oder, 120
feet in length of keel," and of forty tons burden, "enter the
Weichsel. The vast breadths of land, gained from the state of swamp
by drainage into this Canal, were immediately peopled by
German Colonists.

"As his Seven-Years Struggle of War may be called super-human, so
was there also in his present Labor of Peace something enormous;
which appeared to his contemporaries [unless my fancy mislead me]
almost preternatural, at times inhuman. It was grand, but also
terrible, that the success of the whole was to him, at all moments,
the one thing to be striven after; the comfort of the individual of
no concern at all. When, in the Marshland of the Wetze, he counted
more the strokes of the 10,000 spades, than the sufferings of the
workers, sick with the marsh-fever in the hospitals which he had
built for them; [Compare PREUSS, iv. 60-71.] when, restless, his
demands outran the quickest performance,--there united itself to
the deepest reverence and devotedness, in his People, a feeling of
awe, as for one whose limbs are not moved by earthly life
[fanciful, considerably!]. And when Goethe, himself become an old
man, finished his last Drama [Second Part of FAUST], the figure of
the old King again rose on him, and stept into his Poem; and his
Faust got transformed into an unresting, creating, pitilessly
exacting Master, forcing on his salutiferous drains and fruitful
canals through the morasses of the Weichsel." [G. Freytag,
Neue Bilder aus dem Leben des deutschen Volkes
(Leipzig, 1862), pp. 397-408.]

These statements and pencillings of Freytag, apart from here and
there a flourish of poetic sentiment, I believe my readers can
accept as essentially true, and a correct portrait of the fact.
And therewith, CON LA BOCCA DOLCE, we will rise from this Supper of
Horrors. That Friedrich fortified the Country, that he built an
impregnable Graudentz, and two other Fortresses, rendering the
Country, and himself on that Eastern side, impregnable henceforth,
all readers can believe. Friedrich has been building various
Fortresses in this interim, though we have taken no notice of them;
building and repairing many things;--trimming up his Military quite
to the old pitch, as the most particular thing of all. He has his
new Silesian Fortress of Silberberg,--big Fortress, looking into
certain dangerous Bohemian Doors (in Tobias Stusche's Country, if
readers recollect an old adventure now mythical);--his new Silesian
Silberberg, his newer Polish Graudentz, and many others, and
flatters himself he is not now pregnable on any side.

A Friedrich working, all along, in Poland especially, amid what
circumambient deluges of maledictory outcries, and mendacious
shriekeries from an ill-informed Public, is not now worth
mentioning. Mere distracted rumors of the Pamphleteer and Newspaper
kind: which, after hunting them a long time, through dense and
rare, end mostly in zero, and angry darkness of some poor human
brain,--or even testify in favor of this Head-Worker, and of the
sense he shows, especially of the patience. For example: that of
the "Polish Towns and Villages, ordered" by this Tyrant "to
deliver, each of them, so many marriageable girls; each girl to
bring with her as dowry, furnished by her parents, 1 feather-bed,
4 pillows, 1 cow, 3 swine and 3 ducats,"--in which desirable
condition this tyrannous King "sent her into the Brandenburg States
to be wedded and promote population." [Lindsey, LETTERS ON POLAND
(Letter 2d). p. 61: Peyssonnel (in some. French Book of his,
"solemnly presented to Louis XVI. and the Constituent Assembly;"
cited in PREUSS, iv. 85); &c. &c.] Feather-beds, swine and ducats
had their value in Brandenburg; but were marriageable girls such a
scarcity there? Most extraordinary new RAPE OF THE SABINES;
for which Herr Preuss can find no basis or source,--nor can I;
except in the brain of Reverend Lindsey and his loud LETTERS ON
POLAND above mentioned.

Dantzig too, and the Harbor-dues, what a case! Dantzig Harbor, that
is to say, Netze River, belongs mainly to Friedrich, Dantzig City
not,--such the Czarina's lofty whim, in the late Partition
Treatyings; not good to contradict, in the then circumstances;
still less afterwards, though it brought chicanings more than
enough. "And she was not ill-pleased to keep this thorn in the
King's foot for her own conveniences," thinks the King;
though, mainly, he perceives that it is the English acting on her
grandiose mind: English, who were apprehensive for their Baltic
trade under this new Proprietor, and who egged on an ambitious
Czarina to protect Human Liberty, and an inflated Dantzig
Burgermeister to stand up for ditto; and made a dismal shriekery in
the Newspapers, and got into dreadful ill-humor with said
Proprietor of Dantzig Harbor, and have never quite recovered from
it to this day. Lindsey's POLISH LETTERS are very loud again on
this occasion, aided by his SEVEN DIALOGUES ON POLAND; concerning
which, partly for extinct Lindsey's sake, let us cite one small
passage, and so wind up.

MARCH 2d, 1775, in answer to Voltaire, Friedrich writes: ...
"The POLISH DIALOGUES you speak of are not known to me. I think of
such Satires, with Epictetus: 'If they tell any truth of thee,
correct thyself; if they are lies, laugh at them.' I have learned,
with years, to become a steady coach-horse; I do my stage, like a
diligent roadster, and pay no heed to the little dogs that will
bark by the way." And then, three weeks after:--

"I have at length got the SEVEN DIALOGUES ON POLAND; and the whole
history of them as well. The Author is an Englishman named Lindsey,
Parson by profession, and Tutor to the young Prince Poniatowski,
the King of Poland's Nephew,"--Nephew Joseph, Andreas's Son, NOT
the undistinguished Nephew: so we will believe for poor loud
Lindsey's sake! "It was at the instigation of the Czartoryskis,
Uncles of the King, that Lindsey composed this Satire,--in English
first of all. Satire ready, they perceived that nobody in Poland
would understand it, unless it were translated into French;
which accordingly was done. But as their translator was unskilful,
they sent the DIALOGUES to a certain Gerard at Dantzig, who at that
time was French Consul there, and who is at present a Clerk in your
Foreign Office under M. de Vergennes. This Gerard, who does not
want for wit, but who does me the honor to hate me cordially,
retouched these DIALOGUES, and put them into the condition they
were published in. I have laughed a good deal at them: here and
there occur coarse things (GROSSIERETES), and platitudes of the
insipid kind: but there are traits of good pleasantry. I shall not
go fencing with goose-quills against this sycophant. As Mazarin
said, 'Let the French keep singing, provided they let us keep
doing.'" [ OEuvres de Frederic, xxiii.
319-321: "Potsdam, 2d March, 1775," and "25th March" following.
See PREUSS, iii. 275, iv. 85.]



Chapter V.

A CHAPTER OF MISCELLANIES.

After Neustadt, Kaiser Joseph and the King had no more Interviews.
Kaunitz's procedures in the subsequent Pacification and Partition
business had completely estranged the two Sovereigns: to friendly
visiting, a very different state of mutual feeling had succeeded;
which went on, such "the immeasurable ambition" visible in some of
us, deepening and worsening itself, instead of improving or
abating. Friedrich had Joseph's Portrait hung in conspicuous
position in the rooms where he lived; somebody noticing the fact,
Friedrich answered: "Ah, yes, I am obliged to keep that young
Gentleman in my eye." And, in effect, the rest of Friedrich's
Political Activity, from this time onwards, may be defined as an
ever-vigilant defence of himself, and of the German Reich, against
Austrian Encroachment: which, to him, in the years then running,
was the grand impending peril; and which to us in the new times has
become so inexpressibly uninteresting, and will bear no narrative,
Austrian Encroachment did not prove to be the death-peril that had
overhung the world in Friedrich's last years!--

These, accordingly, are years in which the Historical interest goes
on diminishing; and only the Biographical, were anything of
Biography attainable, is left. Friedrich's industrial, economic and
other Royal activities are as beautiful as ever; but cannot to our
readers, in our limits, be described with advantage. Events of
world-interest, after the Partition of Poland, do not fall out, or
Friedrich is not concerned in them. It is a dim element;
its significance chiefly German or Prussian, not European. What of
humanly interesting is discoverable in it,--at least, while the
Austrian Grudge continues in a chronic state, and has no acute
fit,--I will here present in the shape of detached Fragments,
suitably arranged and rendered legible, in hopes these may still
have some lucency for readers, and render more conceivable the
surrounding masses that have to be left dark. Our first Piece is of
Winter, or late Autumn, 1771,--while the solution of the Polish
Business is still in its inchoative stages; perfectly complete in
the Artist's own mind; Russia too adhering; but Kaunitz so
refractory and contradictory.


HERR DOCTOR ZIMMERMANN, THE FAMOUS AUTHOR OF THE BOOK
"ON SOLITUDE," WALKS REVERENTIALLY BEFORE FRIEDRICH'S
DOOR IN THE DUSK OF AN OCTOBER EVENING: AND HAS A
ROYAL INTERVIEW NEXT DAY.

Friday Evening, 25th October, 1771, is the date of Zimmermann's
walk of contemplation,--among the pale Statues and deciduous
Gardenings of Sans-Souci Cottage (better than any Rialto, at its
best),--the eternal stars coming out overhead, and the transitory
candle-light of a King Friedrich close by.

"At Sans-Souci," says he, in his famed Book, "where that old God of
War (KRIEGSGOTT) forges his thunder-bolts, and writes Works of
Intellect for Posterity; where he governs his People as the best
father would his house; where, during one half of the day, he
accepts and reads the petitions and complaints of the meanest
citizen or peasant; comes to help of his Countries on all sides
with astonishing sums of money, expecting no payment, nor seeking
anything but the Common Weal; and where, during the other half, he
is a Poet and Philosopher:--at Sans-Souci, I say, there reigns all
round a silence, in which you can hear the faintest breath of every
soft wind. I mounted this Hill for the first time in Winter [late
Autumn, 25th October, 1771, edge of Winter], in the dusk. When I
beheld the small Dwelling-House of this Convulser of the World
close by me, and was near his very chamber, I saw indeed a light
inside, but no sentry or watchman at the Hero's door; no soul to
ask me, Who I was, or What I wanted. I saw nothing; and walked
about as I pleased before this small and silent House." [Preuss, i.
387 ("from EINSAMKEIT," Zimmermann's SOLITUDE, "i. 110; Edition of
Leipzig, 1784").]

Yes, Doctor, this is your Kriegsgott; throned in a free-and-easy
fashion. In regard to that of Sentries, I believe there do come up
from Potsdam nightly a corporal and six rank-and-file; but perhaps
it is at a later hour; perhaps they sit within doors, silent, not
to make noises. Another gentleman, of sauntering nocturnal habits,
testifies to having, one night, seen the King actually asleep in
bed, the doors being left ajar. [Ib. i. 388.]--As Zimmermann had a
DIALOGUE next day with his Majesty, which we propose to give;
still more, as he made such noise in the world by other Dialogues
with Friedrich, and by a strange Book about them, which are still
ahead,--readers may desire to know a little who or what the
Zimmermann is, and be willing for a rough brief Note upon him,
which certainly is not readier than it is rough:--

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