DIPLOMATIC INTRIGUES.
The Herstal Affair.--The Summons.--Voltaire’s Manifesto.--George II.
visits Hanover.--The Visit of Wilhelmina to Berlin.--Unpopularity
of the King.--Death of the Emperor Charles VI.
On the River Maas, a few miles north of the present city of Liege,
there was a celebrated castle called Herstal. For many generations
feudal lords had there displayed their pomp and power; and it had
been the theatre not only of princely revelry, but of many scenes of
violence and blood. A surrounding territory of a few thousand acres,
cultivated by serfs, who were virtually slaves, was the hereditary
domain of the petty lords of the castle. A few miles south of the
castle there was a monastery called Liege, which was a dependency of
the lords of Herstal.
Amid the vicissitudes of the revolving centuries the rollicking
lords grew poor, and the frugal monks grew rich. A thrifty city rose
around the monastery, and its bishop wielded a power, temporal and
spiritual, more potent than had ever issued from the walls of the now
crumbling and dilapidated castle. In some of the perplexing diplomatic
arrangements of those days, the castle of Herstal, with its surrounding
district, was transferred to Frederick William of Prussia. The
peasants, who had heard of the military rigor of Prussia, where almost
every able-bodied man was crowded into the army, were exceedingly
troubled by this transfer, and refused to take the oath of allegiance
to their new sovereign, who had thus succeeded to the ownership of
themselves, their flocks, and their herds. The gleaming sabres of
Frederick William’s dragoons soon, however, brought them to terms. Thus
compelled to submission, they remained unreconciled and irritated.
Upon the withdrawal of the Prussian troops, the authority of Frederick
William over the Herstal people also disappeared, for they greatly
preferred the milder rule of the Bishop of Liege.
The bishop denied that Frederick William had any claim to Herstal. He
brought forward a prior claim of his own in behalf of the Church. The
Duke of Lorraine, when proprietor of the castle and its dependencies,
had pawned it to the bishop for a considerable sum of money. This
money, the bishop averred, had never been repaid. Consequently he
claimed the property as still in his possession.
George Ludwig, Count of Berg, who at this time was Bishop of Liege,
was a feeble old man, tottering beneath the infirmities of eighty-two
years. He did not venture upon physical resistance to the power of
Prussia, but confined himself to protests, remonstrances, and to the
continued exercise of his own governmental authority. As Herstal was
many leagues distant from Berlin, was of comparatively little value,
and could only be reached by traversing foreign states, Frederick
William offered to sell all his claims to it for about eighty thousand
dollars. The proposal not being either accepted or rejected by the
bishop, the king, anxious to settle the question before his death, sent
an embassador to Liege, with full powers to arrange the difficulty by
treaty. For three days the embassador endeavored in vain to obtain an
audience. He then returned indignantly to Berlin. The king, of course,
regarded this treatment as an insult. The bishop subsequently averred
that the audience was prevented by his own sickness. Such was the
posture of affairs when Frederick William died.
Upon the accession of Frederick the Second, as officers were dispatched
through the realm to exact oaths of allegiance, the Herstal people,
encouraged by the bishop, refused to acknowledge fealty to the new
king. Frederick was now in the district of Cleve, in the near vicinity
of Herstal. He sent the following very decisive summons to the “Prince
Bishop of Liege,” dated Wesel, September 4, 1740:
“MY COUSIN,--Knowing all the assaults made by you upon my
indisputable rights over my free barony of Herstal, and how the
seditious ringleaders there, for several years past, have been
countenanced by you in their detestable acts of disobedience
against me, I have commanded my privy counselor, Rambonet, to
repair to your presence, and in my name to require from you,
within two days, a distinct and categorical answer to this
question:
“Whether you are still minded to assert your pretended
sovereignty over Herstal, and whether you will protect the rebels
at Herstal in their disorders and abominable disobedience?
“In case you refuse, or delay beyond the term, the answer
which I hereby of right demand, you will render yourself alone
responsible, before the world, for the consequences which
infallibly will follow. I am, with much consideration, my cousin,
your very affectionate cousin,
FREDERICK.”
Rambonet presented the peremptory missive, and waited forty-eight hours
for the answer. He then returned to Wesel without any satisfactory
reply. Frederick immediately issued a manifesto, declaring the reasons
for his action, and ordered two thousand men, horse and foot, who were
all ready for the emergence, to advance immediately to Maaseyk, one
of the principal towns of the bishop, take possession of it and of
the surrounding region, quarter themselves upon the people, enforce
liberal contributions, and remain there until the bishop should come to
terms.[34]
The solid, compact army, with infantry, artillery, and cavalry in the
best possible condition, advanced at the double-quick. Arriving at the
gates of Maaseyk, not a moment was spent in parleying. “Open the gates
instantly,” was the summons, “or we shall open them with the petard.”
With great courtesy of words, but pitiless energy of action, General
Borck, who was in command, fulfilled his commission. A contribution
was exacted of fifteen thousand dollars, to be paid within three days;
sufficient rations were to be furnished daily for the troops, or
the general, it was stated, would be under the painful necessity of
collecting them for himself. Two hundred and fifty dollars a day were
to be provided for the general’s private expenses. Remonstrances were
of no avail. Resistance was not to be thought of.
The poor old bishop called loudly upon the Emperor of Germany for help.
The territory of the Bishop of Liege was under the protection of the
empire. The Emperor Charles VI. immediately issued a decree ordering
Frederick to withdraw his troops, to restore the money which he had
extorted, and to settle the question by arbitration, or by an appeal to
the laws of the empire. This was the last decree issued by Charles VI.
Two weeks after he died.
Frederick paid no regard to the remonstrance of the emperor. The
bishop, in his distress, applied to the French for aid, and then
to the Dutch, but all in vain. He then sent an embassy to Berlin,
proposing to purchase Herstal. The king consented to sell upon the
same terms his father had offered, adding to the sum the expenses of
his military expedition and other little items, bringing the amount up
to one hundred and eighty thousand dollars. The money was paid, and
the Herstal difficulty was settled. This was Frederick’s first act of
foreign diplomacy. Many severely censured him for the violent course he
pursued with a power incapable of resistance. All admitted the energy
and sagacity which he had developed in the affair.
Voltaire, in his _Memoirs_, says that he drew up the manifesto for
Frederick upon this occasion. “The pretext,” he writes, “for this fine
expedition was certain rights which his majesty pretended to have over
a part of the suburbs. It was to me he committed the task of drawing
up the manifesto, which I performed as well as the nature of the case
would let me, never suspecting that a king, with whom I supped, and who
called me his friend, could possibly be in the wrong. The affair was
soon brought to a conclusion by the payment of a million of livres,
which he exacted in good hard ducats, and which served to defray the
expenses of his tour to Strasbourg, concerning which he complained so
loudly in his poetic prose epistle.
“I represented to him that perhaps it was not altogether prudent to
print his _Anti-Machiavel_ just at the time that the world might
reproach him with having violated the principles he taught. He
permitted me to stop the impression. I accordingly took a journey into
Holland purposely to do him this trifling service. But the bookseller
demanded so much money that his majesty, who was not in the bottom of
his heart vexed to see himself in print, was better pleased to be so
for nothing, than to pay for not being so. I could not avoid feeling
some remorse at being concerned in printing this _Anti-Machiavelian_
book at the very moment that the King of Prussia, who had a hundred
millions in his coffers, was robbing the poor people of Liege of
another, by the hand of the privy counselor Rambonet.”[35]
It must be borne in mind that these words were written after Voltaire
had quarreled with Frederick, and when it seems to have been his desire
to represent all the acts of the king in as unfavorable a light as
possible. Frederick himself, about eight years after the settlement of
the Herstal difficulty, gave the following as his version of the affair:
“A miserable Bishop of Liege thought it a proud thing to insult the
late king. Some subjects of Herstal, which belongs to Prussia, had
revolted. The bishop gave them his protection. Colonel Kreutzen was
sent to Liege to compose the thing by treaty, with credentials and full
power. Imagine it; the bishop would not receive him! Three days, day
after day, he saw this envoy apply at his palace, and always denied him
entrance. These things had grown past endurance.”
Frederick returned to Berlin by a circuitous route, which occupied
ten days. His uncle, King George II. of England, whom he exceedingly
disliked, was then on a visit to his Hanoverian possessions. Frederick
passed within a few miles of his Britannic majesty without deigning
to call upon him. The slight caused much comment in the English
papers. It was regarded as of national moment, for it implied that in
the complicated policy which then agitated the courts of Europe the
sympathies of Prussia would not be with England.
Soon after this, Frederick’s next younger brother, Augustus William,
who was heir-presumptive to the throne in default of a son by
Frederick, was betrothed to Louisa Amelia of Brunswick, younger sister
of Frederick’s bride.
About the middle of October Wilhelmina came to Berlin to see her
brothers again. Nine years had passed since her marriage, and seven
since her last sad visit to the home of her childhood, in which
inauspicious visit the wretchedness of her early years had been renewed
by the cruelty of her reception. In Wilhelmina’s journal we find the
following allusion to this her second return to Berlin:
“We arrived at Berlin the end of October. My younger brothers, followed
by the princes of the blood and by all the court, received us at the
bottom of the stairs. I was led to my apartment, where I found the
reigning queen, my sisters, and the princesses. I learned, with much
chagrin, that the king was ill of tertian ague. He sent me word that,
being in his fit, he could not see me, but that he depended on having
that pleasure to-morrow. The queen-mother, to whom I went without
delay, was in a dark condition. Her rooms were all hung in their
lugubrious drapery. Every thing was as yet in the depth of mourning for
my father. What a scene for me! Nature has her rights. I can say with
truth I have almost never in my life been so moved as on this occasion.
My interview with my mother was very touching.”
The next morning Frederick hastened to greet his sister. Wilhelmina
was not pleased with his appearance. The cares of his new reign
entirely engrossed his mind. The dignity of an absolute king did not
sit gracefully upon him. Though ostentatiously demonstrative in his
greeting, the delicate instincts of Wilhelmina taught her that her
brother’s caresses were heartless. He was just recovering from a fit of
the ague, and looked emaciate and sallow. The court was in mourning.
During those funereal days no festivities could be indulged in. The
queen-mother was decorously melancholy; she seems to have been not only
disappointed, but excessively chagrined, to find that she was excluded
by her son from the slightest influence in public affairs. The distant,
arrogant, and assuming airs of the young king soon rendered him
unpopular.
“A general discontent,” writes Wilhelmina, “reigned in the country.
The love of his subjects was pretty much gone. People spoke of him
in no measured terms. Some accused him of caring nothing about those
who helped him as Prince Royal. Others complained of his avarice as
surpassing that of the late king. He was accused of violence of temper,
of a suspicious disposition, of distrust, haughtiness, dissimulation.
I would have spoken to him about these had not my brother Augustus
William and the queen regnant dissuaded me.”
Frederick invited his sister to visit him at Reinsberg, to which place
either business or pleasure immediately called him. After the lapse of
two days, Wilhelmina, with the neglected Queen Elizabeth, repaired to
the enchanting chateau, hoping to find, amid its rural scenes, that
enjoyment which she never yet had been able to find in the sombre halls
of the Berlin palace. Here quite a gay company was assembled. Frederick
was very laboriously occupied during the day in affairs of state.
But in the evening he appeared in the social circles, attracting the
attention of all by his conversational brilliance, and by the apparent
heartiness with which he entered into the amusements of the court. He
took an active part in some private theatricals, and none were aware
of the profound schemes of ambition which, cloaked by this external
gayety, were engrossing his thoughts.
On the 25th of October a courier arrived, direct from Vienna, with
the startling intelligence that the Emperor Charles VI. had died five
days before. The king was at the time suffering from a severe attack
of chills and fever. There was quite a long deliberation in the court
whether it were safe to communicate the agitating intelligence to
his majesty while he was so sick. They delayed for an hour, and then
cautiously informed the king of the great event. Frederick listened in
silence; uttered not a word; made no sign.[36] Subsequent events proved
that his soul must have been agitated by the tidings to its profoundest
depths. The death of the emperor, at that time, was unexpected. But
it is pretty evident that Frederick had, in the sombre recesses of
his mind, resolved upon a course of action when the emperor should
die which he knew would be fraught with the most momentous results.
In fact, this action proved the occasion of wars and woes from which,
could the king have foreseen them, he would doubtless have shrunk back
appalled.
The Emperor Charles VI. left no son. He therefore promulgated a new law
of succession in a decree known throughout Europe as the “Pragmatic
Sanction.” By the custom of the realm the sceptre could descend only to
male heirs. But by this decree the king declared that the crown of the
house of Hapsburg should be transmitted to his daughter, Maria Theresa.
This law had been ratified by the estates of all the kingdoms and
principalities which composed the Austrian monarchy. All the leading
powers of Europe--England, France, Spain, _Prussia_, Russia, Poland,
Sweden, Denmark, and the Germanic body--had bound themselves by treaty
to maintain the “Pragmatic Sanction.” It was a peaceable and wise
arrangement, acceptable to the people of Austria and to the dynasties
of Europe as a means of averting a war of succession, which might
involve all the nations of the Continent in the conflict.
The death-scene of the emperor was an event which must interest every
reader. Upon his return from a hunting excursion into Hungary, he was
attacked, on Thursday evening, October 16th, by slight indisposition,
which was supposed to have been caused by eating imprudently of
mushrooms. His sickness, baffling the skill of the doctors, increased,
and by Saturday night became alarming. On Tuesday it was thought that
he was dying. The pope’s nuncio administered to him the sacrament of
the Lord’s Supper. His majesty manifested great composure in view of
the sublime change before him, and said to one who was weeping at his
bedside,
“I am not afraid in contemplating the dread tribunal before which I
must now so soon appear. I am certain of my cause. Look at me! A man
that is certain of his cause can enter on such a journey with good
courage and a composed mind.”
To his physicians, who were doubtful respecting the nature of his
disease, he said, “If Doctor Gazelli were here you would soon know what
is my complaint. As it is, you will only learn after you have dissected
me.”
He then requested to be shown the cup in which his heart would be
placed after that operation. His daughter, Maria Theresa, who had
married the Grand-duke Francis, was in a delicate state of health. The
death of her father would place the weighty crown upon her youthful
brow. Grief and agitation threw her helpless upon her bed. So important
was her life to the world that the emperor was unwilling that, in her
then condition, she should enter the death-chamber. “Tell my Theresa,”
said he, in faint and dying accents, “that I bless her, notwithstanding
her absence.”
The empress had fainted away at the bedside, and had been borne, in
the arms of the attendants, into her daughter Maria Theresa’s chamber.
She was now summoned, with the younger children, for the final adieu.
As the empress, almost delirious with grief, re-entered the apartment,
she threw herself upon the bed of her dying husband, and exclaimed, in
frenzied tones, “Do not leave me! Do not leave me!”
During all the day of Wednesday weeping friends stood around the bed,
as the lamp of life flickered in its socket. Every moment it was
expected that the emperor would breathe his last. At two o’clock the
next morning the spirit took its flight, and the lifeless clay alone
remained. The grief-stricken empress closed the eyes of her departed
husband, kissed his hands, and “was carried out more dead than alive.”
Thus ended the male line of the house of Hapsburg, after five centuries
of royal sway. The emperor died on the 20th of October 1740, in the
fifty-sixth year of his age.
As Frederick received the tidings of this death, he rose, dressed
himself, and his ague disappeared, to return no more. A courier was
immediately dispatched, at the top of his speed, to summon to his
presence General Schwerin and M. Podewils, his chief minister. Two days
must elapse before they could reach him. In the mean time, the king,
taking counsel of no one, was maturing his plans, and making quiet but
vigorous preparations for their execution. He wrote the next day to
Voltaire, in allusion to the emperor’s death,
“I believe that there will, by June next, be more talk of cannon,
soldiers, trenches, than of actresses and dancers for the ballet. This
small event changes the entire system of Europe. It is the little stone
which Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream, loosening itself and rolling
down on the image made of four metals, which it shivers to ruin.”
On the southeast frontier of Prussia, between that kingdom, and Poland,
and Hungary, there was an Austrian realm called Silesia. The country
embraced a territory of twenty thousand square miles, being about
twice as large as the State of Vermont. The population was about two
millions. For more than a century Silesia had been a portion of the
Austrian kingdom. Time, and the assent of Europe, had sanctioned the
title.
[Illustration: THE DEATH-SCENE OF THE EMPEROR.]
But the young King Frederick was very ambitious of enlarging the
borders of his Liliputian realm, and of thus attaining a higher
position among the proud and powerful monarchs who surrounded him.
Maria Theresa, who had inherited the crown of Austria, was a remarkably
beautiful, graceful, and accomplished young lady, in the twenty-fourth
year of her age. She was a young wife, having married Francis, Duke of
Lorraine. Her health, as we have mentioned, was at that time delicate.
Frederick thought the opportunity a favorable one for wresting Silesia
from Austria, and annexing it to his own kingdom. The queen was
entirely inexperienced, and could not prove a very formidable military
antagonist. Her army was in no respect, either in number, discipline,
or _materiel_, prepared for war. Her treasury was deplorably empty.
There was also reason for Frederick to hope that several claimants
would rise in opposition to her, disputing the succession.
On the other hand, Frederick himself was in the very prime of manhood.
He was ambitious of military renown. He had a compact army of one
hundred thousand men, in better drill and more amply provided with all
the apparatus of war than any other troops in Europe. The frugality of
his father had left him with a treasury full to overflowing. To take
military possession of Silesia would be a very easy thing. There was
nothing to obstruct the rush of his troops across the frontiers. There
were no strongly garrisoned fortresses, and not above three thousand
soldiers in the whole realm. No one even suspected that Frederick
would lay any claim to the territory, or that there was the slightest
danger of invasion. The complicated claim which he finally presented,
in official manifestoes, was founded upon transactions which had taken
place a hundred years before. In conversation with his friends he did
not lay much stress upon any legitimate title he had to the territory.
He frankly admitted, to quote his own words, that “ambition, interest,
the desire of making people talk about me, carried the day, and I
decided for war.”[37]
The general voice of history has severely condemned the Prussian king
for this invasion of Silesia. Frederick probably owed his life to the
interposition of the father of Maria Theresa, when the young prince
was threatened with the scaffold by his own father. Prussia was bound
by the most solemn guarantees to respect the integrity of the Austrian
states. There was seemingly a great want of magnanimity in taking
advantage of the extreme youth, inexperience, and delicate health
of the young queen, who was also embarrassed by an empty treasury
and a weakened and undisciplined army. Frederick had also made, in
his _Anti-Machiavel_, loud protestations of his love of justice and
magnanimity. Mr. Carlyle, while honestly stating these facts, still
does not blame Frederick for seizing the opportunity which the death of
the emperor presented for him to enlarge his dominions by plundering
the domain of Maria Theresa.
[Illustration: MAP OF SILESIA.]
“It is almost touching,” Mr. Carlyle writes, “to reflect how
unexpectedly, like a bolt out of the blue, all this had come upon
Frederick, and how it overset his fine programme for the winter at
Reinsberg, and for his life generally. Not the Peaceable magnanimities,
but the Warlike, are the thing appointed Frederick this winter, and
mainly henceforth. Those ‘golden or soft radiances’ which we saw
in him, admirable to Voltaire and to Frederick, and to an esurient
philanthropic world, it is not those, it is the ‘steel bright or
stellar kind’ that are to become predominant in Frederick’s existence;
grim hail-storms, thunders, and tornado for an existence to him instead
of the opulent genialities and halcyon weather anticipated by himself
and others.
“Indisputably enough to us, if not yet to Frederick, ‘Reinsberg and
Life to the Muses’ are done. On a sudden, from the opposite side of
the horizon, see miraculous Opportunity rushing hitherward; swift,
terrible, clothed with lightning like a courser of the gods; dare you
clutch _him_ by the thunder-mane, and fling yourself upon him, and make
for the Empyrean by that course rather? Be immediate about it, then;
the time is now or never! No fair judge can blame the young man that he
laid hold of the flaming Opportunity in this manner, and obeyed the new
omen. To seize such an Opportunity and perilously mount upon it was the
part of a young, magnanimous king, less sensible to the perils and more
to the other considerations than one older would have been.”[38]