THE PARTITION OF POLAND.
The King patronizes literary and scientific Men.--Anecdotes.--
The Family Quarrel.--Birth of Frederick William III.--Rapid
Recuperation of Prussia.--The King’s Tour of Observation.--Desolate
Aspect of the Country.--Absolutism of Frederick.--Interview between
Frederick and D’Alembert.--Unpopularity of Frederick.--Death of the
King of Poland.--Plans for the Partition of Poland.--Intrigues of
Catharine.--Interview between Frederick and the Emperor Joseph.--
Poland seized by Russia, Prussia, and Austria.--The Division of the
Spoil.--Remorse of Maria Theresa.--Indifference of Frederick to
public Opinion.
There still remained to Frederick twenty-three years of life. He now
engaged very vigorously in the endeavor to repair the terrible ravages
of war by encouraging agriculture, commerce, and all useful arts. He
invited the distinguished French philosophers Helvetius and D’Alembert
to visit his court, and endeavored, though unavailingly, to induce them
to take up their residence in Berlin. They were both in sympathy with
the king in their renunciation of Christianity.
There are many anecdotes of Frederick floating about in the journals
whose authenticity can not be vouched for. The two following are
doubtless authentic. Frederick, as he was riding through the streets of
Berlin, saw a crowd looking upon a picture which was posted high up on
a wall. He requested his groom to see what it was. The servant returned
with the reply, “It is a caricature of your majesty, seated on a stool,
with a coffee-mill between your knees, grinding with one hand, and
picking up the beans which have fallen with the other,”
“Take it down,” said the king, “and hang it lower, that the people may
not hurt their necks in looking at it.”
The crowd heard what he said. With bursts of laughter they tore the
caricature in pieces, scattered it to the winds, and greeted the king,
as he rode away, with enthusiastic shouts of “Our Fritz forever.”
The Crown Prince Frederick had married the daughter of the Duke of
Brunswick. She was a very beautiful, proud, high-spirited woman. Her
husband was a worthless fellow, dissolute in the extreme. She, stung to
madness, and unrestrained by Christian principle, retaliated in kind.
A divorce was the result. The discarded princess retired to the castle
of Stettin, where she lived in comparative seclusion, though surrounded
with elegance.
[Illustration: FREDERICK THE GREAT, ÆT. 59.]
Upon one occasion she ordered a very rich silk dress directly from
Lyons. The custom-house dues were heavy. The custom-house officer
detained the dress until the dues should be paid. The haughty princess,
exceedingly indignant, sent an order to him to bring the dress
instantly to her, and she would pay the demand. As soon as he entered
her apartment, she snatched the dress from his hands, and with her open
palm gave him two slaps in the face, ordering him immediately to leave
the house[175]
The officer drew up a statement of the facts, and sent it to the king,
with the complaint that he had been dishonored in discharging the
duties intrusted to him by his majesty. The king sent the following
reply:
“To the custom-house officer at Stettin. The loss of the excise dues
shall fall to my score. The dress shall remain with the princess;
the slaps to him who received them. As to the pretended dishonor, I
entirely relieve the complainant from that. Never can the appliance of
a beautiful hand dishonor the face of an officer of customs.”
Frederick, with his own pen, gives the following account of this
family quarrel, which resulted in the divorce of the Crown Prince and
Elizabeth:
“Not long ago we mentioned the Prince of Prussia’s marriage with
Elizabeth of Brunswick. The husband, young and dissolute, given up to
a profligate life, from which his relatives could not correct him, was
continually committing infidelities to his wife. The princess, who
was in the flower of her beauty, felt outraged by such neglect of her
charms. Her vivacity and the good opinion she had of herself brought
her upon the thought of avenging her wrongs by retaliation. Speedily
she gave into excesses scarcely inferior to those of her husband.
Family quarrels broke out, and were soon publicly known. The antipathy
which ensued took away all hope of succession. The brothers of the
king, Henry and Ferdinand, avowed frankly that they would never consent
to have, by some accidental birth, their rights of succession to the
crown carried off. In the end, there was nothing for it but proceeding
to a divorce.”[176]
Within three months after the divorce, the Crown Prince, anxious for
an heir, married, on the 18th of April, 1769, the Princess Frederica
Louisa, of Hesse-Darmstadt. A son was born to them, who became
Frederick William III.
Under the energetic administration of Frederick, Prussia began, very
rapidly, to recover from the desolation which had overwhelmed it. The
coin, in a little more than a year, was restored to its purity. In
the course of two years Frederick rebuilt, in different parts of his
realms, fourteen thousand five hundred houses. The army horses were
distributed among the impoverished farmers for plow teams. Early in
June, 1763, the king set out on a general tour of inspection.
“To form an idea,” he writes, “of the general subversion, and how great
were the desolation and discouragement, you must represent to yourself
countries entirely ravaged, the very traces of the old habitations
hardly discoverable. Of the towns some were ruined from top to bottom;
others half destroyed by fire. Of thirteen thousand houses the very
vestiges were gone. There was no field in seed, no grain for the food
of the inhabitants. Sixty thousand horses were needed if there were
to be plowing carried on. In the provinces generally there were half
a million population less than in 1756; that is to say, upon four
millions and a half the ninth man was wanting. Noble and peasant had
been pillaged, ransomed, foraged, eaten out by so many different
armies; nothing now left them but life and miserable rags.
“There was no credit by trading people even for the necessaries of
life. There was no police in the towns. To habits of equity and order
there had succeeded a vile greed of gain and an anarchic disorder. The
silence of the laws had produced in the people a taste for license.
Boundless appetite for gain was their main rule of action. The noble,
the merchant, the farmer, the laborer, raising emulously each the price
of his commodity, seemed to endeavor only for their mutual ruin. Such,
when the war ended, was the fatal spectacle over these provinces, which
had once been so flourishing. However pathetic the description may be,
it will never approach the touching and sorrowful impression which the
sight of it produced.”
The absolutism of Frederick placed all legislative, judicial,
and executive powers in his hands. He was law-maker, judge, and
executioner. The liberty, property, and lives of his subjects were at
his disposal. He could call others to assist him in the government, but
they were merely servants to do his bidding.
“During the war,” writes Frederick, “the councilors and ministers
had successively died. In such time of trouble it had been impossible
to replace them. The embarrassment was to find persons capable of
filling these different employments. We searched the provinces, where
good heads were found as rare as in the capital. At length five chief
ministers were pitched upon.”
The rich abbeys of the Roman Catholics were compelled to establish
manufactures for weaving damasks and table-cloths. Some were converted
into oil-mills, or “workers in copper, wire-drawers, the flaxes and
metals, with water-power, markets, and so on.”
While on this tour of inspection, the celebrated French philosopher
D’Alembert, by appointment, met the king at Geldern, and accompanied
him to Potsdam. D’Alembert was in entire sympathy with the king in his
renunciation of Christianity. In 1755 D’Alembert had, by invitation,
met Frederick at Wesel, on the Rhine. In a letter to Madame Du Deffand,
at Paris, dated Potsdam, June 25, 1763, D’Alembert wrote:
“I will not go into the praises of King Frederick, now my host. I will
merely send you two traits of him, which will indicate his way of
thinking and feeling. When I spoke to him of the glory which he had
acquired, he answered, with the greatest simplicity,
“‘There is a furious discount to be deducted from said glory. Chance
came in for almost the whole of it. I would far rather have written
Racine’s _Athalie_ than have performed all the achievements of this
war.’
“The other trait I have to give you is this. On the 15th of February
last, the day of concluding this peace, which is so glorious to him,
some one said to him, ‘It is the finest day of your majesty’s life.’
The king replied,
“‘The finest day of life is the day on which one quits it.’”[177]
Helvetius, another of the distinguished French deistical philosophers,
was invited to Berlin to assist the king in his financial operations.
To aid the mechanics in Berlin, and to show to the world that the king
was not so utterly impoverished as many imagined, Frederick, on the
11th of June, 1763, laid the foundation of the sumptuous edifice called
“The New Palace of Sans Souci.”
Frederick, though now at peace with all the world, found no nation
in cordial alliance with him. He had always disliked England, and
England returned the dislike with interest. The Duchess of Pompadour,
who controlled France, hated him. Maria Theresa regarded him as a
highway robber who had snatched Silesia from her and escaped with it.
Frederick, thus left without an ally, turned to his former subject,
now Catharine II., whom he had placed on the throne of Russia. On the
11th of April, 1764, one year after the close of the Seven Years’
War, he entered into a treaty of alliance with the Czarina Catharine.
The treaty was to continue eight years. In case either of the parties
became involved in war, the other party was to furnish a contingent of
twelve thousand men, or an equivalent in money.
On the 5th of October, 1763, Augustus, the unhappy King of Poland,
had died at Dresden, after a troubled reign of thirty years. The
crown was elective. The turbulent nobles, broken up into antagonistic
and envenomed cliques, were to choose a successor. Catharine, as
ambitious as she was able and unprincipled, resolved to place one of
her creatures upon the throne, that Poland, a realm spreading over
a territory of 284,000 square miles, and containing a population of
20,000,000, might be virtually added to her dominions. Carlyle writes:
“My own private conjecture, I confess, has rather grown to be, on
much reading of those _Rulhières_ and distracted books, that the
czarina--who was a grandiose creature, with considerable magnanimities,
natural and acquired; with many ostentations, some really great
qualities and talents; in effect, a kind of she Louis Quatorze (if
the reader will reflect on that royal gentleman, and put him into
petticoats in Russia, and change his improper females for improper
males)--that the czarina, very clearly resolute to keep Poland hers,
had determined with herself to do something very handsome in regard to
Poland; and to gain glory, both with the enlightened philosophe classes
and with her own proud heart, by her treatment of that intricate
matter.”
In the court of the czarina there was a very handsome young Pole,
Stanislaus Poniatowski, who had been an acknowledged lover of
Catharine. Though Catharine had laid him aside for other favorites, she
still regarded him with tender feelings. He was just the man to do her
bidding. By skillful diplomacy she caused him to be elected King of
Poland. That kingdom was now entirely in her hands, so far as it was in
the power of its monarch to place it there.
This, however, stirred up great strife in Poland. The nobles were
roused. Scenes of confusion ensued. The realm was plunged into a state
of anarchy. Frederick, being in cordial co-operation with the czarina
in all her measures, instructed his minister in Warsaw to follow
her policy in every particular. It has generally been supposed that
Frederick was the first to propose the banditti division of the kingdom
of Poland between Prussia, Russia, and Austria by means of their united
armies. This is not certain. But, whoever may have at first made the
suggestion, it is very certain that Frederick cordially and efficiently
embarked in the enterprise.[178]
Poniatowski was elected King of Poland on the 7th of September, 1764,
and crowned on the 25th of November. He was then thirty-two years
of age, and the scarcely disguised agent of Catharine. Two or three
years passed of wars and rebellions, and all the usual tumult of
this tumultuous world. In August, 1765, the Emperor Francis died. He
was at Innsprück, attending the marriage festivities of his second
son Leopold. About nine o’clock in the evening of the 18th, while
sauntering through the rooms in the midst of the brilliant gala, he was
struck with apoplexy. He staggered for a moment, fell into the hands of
his son Joseph, and instantly died.
Joseph, the oldest son of Maria Theresa and Francis, by the will of
his mother became emperor. But Maria Theresa still swayed the sceptre
of imperial power, through the hands of her son, as she had formerly
done through the hands of her amiable and pliant husband. The young
emperor was fond of traveling. He visited all the battle-fields of the
Seven Years’ War, and put up many monuments. Through his minister at
Berlin, he expressed his particular desire to make the acquaintance of
Frederick. The interview took place at Neisse on the 25th of August,
1769. His majesty received the young emperor on the grand staircase of
the palace, where they cordially embraced each other.
“Now are my wishes fulfilled,” said the emperor, “since I have the
honor to embrace the greatest of kings and soldiers.”
“I look upon this day,” the king replied, “as the fairest of my life;
for it will become the epoch of uniting two houses which have been
enemies too long, and whose mutual interests require that they should
strengthen, not weaken, one another.”
There were dinner-parties, and military reviews, and operas to beguile
the time. The interview lasted three days. The king and the emperor
often walked out arm in arm. Frederick wrote:
“The emperor has a frankness of manner which seems natural to him.
In his amiable character, gayety and great vivacity are prominent
features.”
Under cover of these festivities important political matters were
discussed. The question of the partition of Poland arose, and
arrangements were made for another interview. Soon after this,
Frederick sent to Catharine a sketch of a plan for partitioning several
provinces in Poland--Russia, Prussia, and Austria each taking a share.
“To which Petersburg, intoxicated with its own outlooks on Turkey, paid
not the least attention.”[179] The second interview, of five days,
commenced on the 3d of September, 1770, at Neustadt, near Austerlitz,
which has since become so famous.
The Prince De Ligne, in a long letter to Stanislaus, King of Poland,
gives an interesting account of several conversations which ensued. In
this narrative he writes:
“I forget how the conversation changed. But I know that it grew so free
that, seeing somebody coming to join in it, the king warned him to take
care, saying that it was not safe to converse with a man doomed by the
theologians to everlasting fire. I felt as if he somewhat overdid this
of his ‘being doomed,’ and that he boasted too much of it. Not to hint
at the dishonesty of these free-thinking gentlemen, who very often
are thoroughly afraid of the devil, it is at least bad taste to make
display of such things. And it was with the people of bad taste whom he
had about him, and some dull skeptics of his own academy, that he had
acquired the habit of mocking at religion.”
The king was not a little vain of the keen thrusts he could
occasionally give the clergy. In a letter to Marie-Antoine, Electress
of Saxony, dated Potsdam, May 3, 1768, he, with much apparent
complacency, records the following witty achievement:
“It is a pity for the human race, madam, that men never can be
tranquil. But they never can be any where. Even the little town
of Neufchâtel has had its troubles. Your royal highness will be
astonished to learn how. A parson there had set forth in a sermon that,
considering the immense mercy of God, the pains of hell could not
last forever. The synod shouted murder at such scandal, and has been
struggling ever since to get the parson exterminated. The affair was of
my jurisdiction, for your royal highness must know that I am pope in
that country. Here is my decision:
“‘Let the parsons who make for themselves a cruel and barbarous God be
eternally damned, as they desire and deserve; and let those parsons who
conceive God gentle and merciful enjoy the plenitude of his mercy.’
“However, madam, my sentence has failed to calm the minds. The schism
continues, and the number of damnatory theologians prevail over the
others.”[180]
The king could be very courteous. He gave a dinner-party, at which
General Loudon, one of the most efficient of the Austrian generals, and
who had often been successfully opposed to Frederick, was a guest. As
he entered the king said,
“General Loudon, take a seat by my side. I had much rather have you
with me than opposite me.” _Mettez vous auprès de moi. J’aime mieux
vous avoir à côté de moi que vis-à-vis._[181]
Catharine was at this time engaged vigorously in a war with the Turks.
Frederick, by his treaty with the czarina, was compelled to assist her.
This ambitious woman, endowed with extraordinary powers, was pushing
her conquests toward Constantinople, having formed the resolve to annex
that imperial city to the empire, and thus to open through the Straits
of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles new avenues for Russian commerce.
Count Von Kaunitz, an able but proud and self-conceited man, was prime
minister of the Emperor of Germany. His commanding mind exerted quite
a controlling influence over his imperial master. Kaunitz records the
following conversation as having taken place at this interview between
himself and Frederick:[182]
“These Russian encroachments upon the Turk,” said Kaunitz, “are
dangerous to the repose of Europe. His imperial majesty can never
consent that Russia should possess the provinces of Moldavia and
Wallachia. He will much rather go to war. These views of Russia are
infinitely dangerous to every body. They are as dangerous to your
majesty as to others. I can conceive of no remedy against them but
this. Prussia and Austria must join frankly in protest and absolute
prohibition of them.”
“I have nothing more at heart,” Frederick replied, “than to stand well
with Austria. I wish always to be her ally, never her enemy. But the
prince sees how I am situated. Bound by express treaty with her czarish
majesty, I must go with Russia in any war. I will do every thing in my
power to conciliate her majesty with the emperor--to secure such a
peace at St. Petersburg as may meet the wishes of Vienna.”[183]
Singularly enough, the very next day Frederick received an express
from the Divan requesting him, with the aid of Austria, to mediate
peace with Russia. The Turks had encountered such reverses that they
were anxious to sheathe the sword. Frederick with great joy undertook
the mediation. But he found the mediation far more difficult than
he had imagined. Catharine and Maria Theresa, so totally different
in character, entertained a rooted aversion to each other. The
complications were so great that month after month the deliberations
were continued unavailingly. Maria Theresa was unrelentingly opposed to
the advance of Russia upon Constantinople.
Thus originated with the Empress Catharine, one hundred years ago, the
idea of driving the Turks out of Europe, and of annexing Constantinople
to her majestic empire. From that time until now the question has
been increasingly agitating the courts of Europe. Every day, now, the
“Eastern Question” is assuming greater importance. The following map
very clearly shows the commanding position of Constantinople, and the
immense strength, both in a military and a commercial point of view, it
would give to the Russian empire.
Meneval, private secretary of Napoleon I., records that, in one of
the interviews of the emperor with Alexander, the czar offered to
co-operate with Napoleon in all his plans if the emperor would consent
that Russia should take Constantinople. The French emperor replied,
after a moment’s hesitation,
“Constantinople! never. It is the empire of the world.”
[Illustration: MAP OF THE EAST.]
There can be but little doubt, however, that the Bosphorus and the
Dardanelles will ere long be in the hands of Russia. “I know that I or
my successors,” said the Czar Nicholas, “must have Constantinople. You
might as well arrest a stream in its descent from a mountain as the
Russians in their advance to the Hellespont.”[184]
There was a famine in Poland, and the famine was followed by
pestilence. A general state of tumult and discord ensued. Maria Theresa
had gathered a large army on the frontiers of Hungary to watch the
designs of Russia upon Turkey. Availing herself of this disturbed state
of Poland, Maria Theresa marched her troops into one of its provinces
called Zips, which had once belonged to Hungary, and quietly extended
her boundaries around the acquisition. Catharine was much exasperated
by the measure.
The czarina had, about that time, invited Prince Henry, the warlike
brother of Frederick, to visit her. They had met as children when the
czarina was daughter of the commandant at Stettin. Henry was received
with an extraordinary display of imperial magnificence. In the midst
of this routine of feasting, balls, and masquerades, Catharine one day
said to Henry, with much pique, referring to these encroachments on the
part of Maria Theresa,
“It seems that in Poland the Austrians have only to stoop and pick
up what they like. If the court of Vienna has the intention to
dismember that kingdom, its neighbors will have the right to take their
share.”[185]
Frederick caught eagerly at the suggestion, as the remark was reported
to him by his brother. He drew up a new plan of partition, which he
urged with all his powers of address upon both Russia and Austria. The
conscience of Maria Theresa was strongly opposed to the deed. Catharine
and Kaunitz were very greedy in their demands. Circumstances assumed
such an aspect that it was very difficult for Maria Theresa to oppose
the measure. At length, through the extraordinary efforts of Frederick,
on the 5th of August, 1772, the following agreement was adopted:
Russia took 87,500 square miles. Austria received 62,500. The share
which fell to Frederick was but 9456 square miles. Small in respect to
territory as was Frederick’s share, it was regarded, in consequence of
its position and the nature of the country, equally valuable with the
other portions.
“Frederick’s share,” writes Mr. Carlyle, “as an anciently Teutonic
country, and as filling up the always dangerous gap between his Ost
Prussen and him, has, under Prussian administration, proved much the
most valuable of the three, and, next to Silesia, is Frederick’s most
important acquisition.”
In carrying out these measures of partition, which the world has
usually regarded as one of the most atrocious acts of robbery on
record, resort was had both to bribery and force. The King of Poland
was the obsequious servant of Catharine. A common fund was raised by
the three powers to bribe the members of the Polish diet. Each of the
confederate powers also sent an army to the Polish frontiers, ready
to unite and crush the distracted people should there be any forcible
resistance. Thus the deed was accomplished.
Maria Theresa was a devout woman, governed by stern convictions of
duty. Her moral nature recoiled from this atrocious act. But she felt
driven to it by the pressure brought upon her by her own cabinet, her
powerful and arrogant prime minister, and by the courts of Prussia and
Russia. While, therefore, very reluctantly giving her assent to the
measure, she issued the following extraordinary document:
“When all my lands were invaded, and I knew not where in the world to
be brought to bed in, I relied on my good right and the help of God.
But in this thing, where not only public law cries to Heaven against
us, but also all natural justice and sound reason, I must confess never
in my life to have been in such trouble, and I am ashamed to show my
face. Let the prince (Kaunitz) consider what an example we are giving
to all the world, if, for a miserable piece of Poland, or of Moldavia,
or Wallachia, we throw our honor and reputation to the winds. I see
well that I am alone, and no more in vigor. Therefore I must, though to
my very great sorrow, let things take their course.”[186]
A few days afterward, in an official document, she writes: “I consent,
since so many great and learned men will have it so. But long after I
am dead, it will be known what this violating of all that was hitherto
held sacred and just will give rise to.”[187]
Frederick had cultivated a supreme indifference to public opinion. Not
believing in any God, in any future retribution, or in any immortality,
and regarding men merely as the insects of an hour, like the myriad
polyps which, beneath the ocean, rear their stupendous structures
and perish, his sense of right and wrong must necessarily have been
very different from that which a believer in the Christian faith is
accustomed to cherish. In allusion to this subject, he writes:
“A new career came to open itself to me. And one must have been either
without address or buried in stupidity not to have profited by an
opportunity so advantageous. I seized this unexpected opportunity by
the forelock. By dint of negotiating and intriguing, I succeeded in
indemnifying our monarchy for its past losses by incorporating Polish
Prussia with my old provinces. This acquisition was one of the most
important we could make, because it joined Pommern to East Prussia,
and because, rendering us masters of the Weichsel River, we gained the
double advantage of being able to defend that kingdom (East Prussia),
and to draw considerable tolls from the Weichsel, as all the trade of
Poland goes by that river.”
The region thus annexed to Prussia was in a deplorable state of
destitution and wretchedness. Most of the towns were in ruins. War had
so desolated the land that thousands of the people were living in the
cellars of their demolished houses.
“The country people hardly knew such a thing as bread. Many had never
tasted such a delicacy. Few villages possessed an oven. A weaving-loom
was rare; a spinning-wheel unknown. The main article of furniture in
this bare scene of squalor was a crucifix, and a vessel of holy water
under it. It was a desolate land, without discipline, without law,
without a master. On nine thousand English square miles lived five
hundred thousand souls--not fifty-five to the square mile.”[188]
With extraordinary energy and sagacity Frederick set about developing
the resources of his new acquisition. Houses were built. Villages
rose as by magic. Marshes were drained. Emigrants, in large numbers,
mechanics and farmers, were transported to the new lands. Canals
were dug. Roads were improved, and new ones opened. One hundred and
eighty-seven school-masters were sent into the country. Every where
there was plowing, ditching, building.
“As Frederick’s seven years’ struggle of war may be called superhuman,
so was there also, in his present labor of peace, something enormous,
which appeared to his contemporaries 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 was of no concern at all.”[189]
The weal or woe of a single human polyp was, in the view of Frederick,
entirely unimportant in comparison with the great enterprises he was
ambitious of achieving. For this dismemberment of Poland Frederick was
severely assailed in a book entitled “Polish Dialogues.” In answer to a
letter from Voltaire, he wrote, under date of March 2, 1775:
“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.”