In regard to Friedrich, the Court-Martial needs no amendment from
the King; the sentence on Friedrich, a Lieutenant-Colonel guilty of
desertion, is, from President and all members except two, Death as by
law. The two who dissented, invoking royal clemency and pardon, were
Major-Generals by rank,--Schwerin, as some write, one of them, or if not
Schwerin, then Linger; and for certain, Donhof,--two worthy gentlemen
not known to any of my readers, nor to me, except as names, The rest are
all coldly of opinion that the military code says Death. Other codes and
considerations may say this and that, which it is not in their province
to touch upon; this is what the military code says: and they leave it
there.
The Junius Brutus of a Royal Majesty had answered in his own heart
grimly, Well then! But his Councillors, Old Dessauer, Grumkow,
Seckendorf, one and all interpose vehemently. "Prince of the Empire,
your Majesty, not a Lieutenant-Colonel only! Must not, cannot;"--nay
good old Buddenbrock, in the fire of still unsuccessful pleading, tore
open his waistcoat: "If your Majesty requires blood, take mine; that
other you shall never get, so long as I can speak!" Foreign Courts
interpose; Sweden, the Dutch; the English in a circuitous way, round
by Vienna to wit; finally the Kaiser himself sends an Autograph; [Date,
11th October, 1730 (Forster, i. 380).] for poor Queen Sophie has applied
even to Seckendorf, will be friends with Grumkow himself, and in her
despair is knocking at every door. Junius Brutus is said to have
had paternal affections withal. Friedrich Wilhelm, alone against the
whispers of his own heart and the voices of all men, yields at last in
this cause. To Seckendorf, who has chalked out a milder didactic plan of
treatment, still rigorous enough, [His Letter to the King, 1st November,
1730 (in Forster, i. 375, 376).] he at last admits that such plan is
perhaps good; that the Kaiser's Letter has turned the scale with him;
and the didactic method, not the beheading one, shall be tried. That
Donhof and Schwerin, with their talk of mercy, with "their eyes upon
the Rising Sun," as is evident, have done themselves no good, and shall
perhaps find it so one day. But that, at any rate, Friedrich's life
is spared; Katte's execution shall suffice in that kind. Repentance,
prostrate submission and amendment,--these may do yet more for the
prodigal, if he will in heart return. These points, some time before the
8th of November, we find to be as good as settled.
The unhappy prodigal is in no condition to resist farther. Chaplain
Muller had introduced himself with Katte's dying admonition to the
Crown-Prince to repent and submit. Chaplain Muller, with his wholesome
cooling-powders, with his ghostly counsels, and considerations of
temporal and eternal nature,--we saw how he prospered almost beyond
hope. Even on Predestination, and the real nature of Election by Free
Grace, all is coming right, or come, reports Muller. The Chaplain's
Reports, Friedrich Wilhelm's grimly mollified Responses on the same:
they are written, and in confused form have been printed; but shall
be spared the English reader. And Grumkow has been out at Custrin,
preaching to the same purport from other texts: Grumkow, with the
thought ever present to him, "What if Friedrich Wilhelm should die?"
is naturally an eloquent preacher. Enough, it has been settled (perhaps
before the day of Katte's death, or at the latest three days after it,
as we can see), That if the Prince will, and can with free conscience,
take an Oath ("no mental reservation," mark you!) of contrite
repentance, of perfect prostrate submission, and purpose of future
entire obedience and conformity to the paternal mind in all things,
"GNADENWAHL" included,--the paternal mind may possibly relax his durance
a little, and put him gradually on proof again. [King's Letter to
Muller, 8th November (Forster, i. 379).]
Towards which issue, as Chaplain Muller reports, the Crown-Prince is
visibly gravitating, with all his weight and will. The very GNADENWAHL
is settled; the young soul (truly a lover of Truth, your Majesty) taps
on his ceiling, my floor being overhead, before the winter sun rises,
as a signal that I must come down to him; so eager to have error and
darkness purged away. Believes himself, as I believe him, ready to
undertake that Oath; desires, however, to see it first, that he may
maturely study every clause of it.--Say you verily so? answers Majesty.
And MAY my ursine heart flow out again, and blubber gratefully over a
sinner saved, a poor Son plucked as brand from the burning?"God, the
Most High, give His blessing on it, then!" concludes the paternal
Majesty: "And as He often, by wondrous guidances, strange paths and
thorny steps, will bring men into the Kingdom of Christ, so may
our Divine Redeemer help that this prodigal son be brought into His
communion. That his godless heart be beaten till it is softened and
changed; and so he be snatched from the claws of Satan. This grant us
the Almighty God and Father, for our Lord Jesus Christ and His passion
and death's sake! Amen!--I am, for the rest, your well-affectioned King,
FRIEDRICH WILHELM (WUSTERHAUSEN, 8th NOVEMBER, 1730)." [Forster, i.
379.]
CROWN-PRINCE BEGINS A NEW COURSE.
It was Monday, 6th November, when poor Katte died. Within a fortnight,
on the second Sunday after, there has a Select Commission, Grumkow,
Borck, Buddenbrock, with three other Soldiers, and the Privy Councillor
Thulmeyer, come out to Custrin: there and then, Sunday, November 19th,
[Nicolai, exactest of men, only that Documents were occasionally less
accessible in his time, gives (ANEKDOTEN, vi. 187), "Saturday, November
25th," as the day of the Oath; but, no doubt, the later inquirers,
Preuss (i. 56) and others, have found him wrong in this small instance.]
these Seven, with due solemnity, administer the Oath (terms of Oath
conceivable by readers); Friedrich being found ready. He signs the Oath,
as well as audibly swears it: whereupon his sword is restored to him,
and his prison-door opened. He steps forth to the Town Church with his
Commissioners; takes the sacrament; listens, with all Custrin, to an
illusive Sermon on the subject; "text happily chosen, preacher handling
it well." Text was Psalm Seventy-seventh, verse eleventh (tenth of our
English version), _And I said, This is my infirmity; but I will remember
the years of the right hand of the Host High;_ or, as Luther's version
more intelligibly gives it, _This I have to suffer; the right hand of
the Most High can change all._ Preacher (not Muller but another) rose
gradually into didactic pathos; Prince, and all Custrin, were weeping,
or near weeping, at the close of the business. [Preuss, i. 56.]
Straight from Church the Prince is conducted, not to the Fortress, but
to a certain Town Mansion, which he is to call his own henceforth, under
conditions: an erring Prince half liberated, and mercifully put on proof
again. His first act here is to write, of his own composition, or helped
by some official hand, this Letter to his All-serenest Papa; which must
be introduced, though, except to readers of German who know the "DERE"
(TheirO), "ALLERDURCHLAUCHTIGSTER," and strange pipe-clay solemnity
of the Court-style, it is like to be in great part lost in any
translation:--
"CUSTRIN, 19th November, 1730.
"ALL-SERENEST AND ALL-GRACIOUSEST FATHER,--To your Royal Majesty, my
All-graciousest Father, have,"--I.E. "I have," if one durst write the
"I,"--"by my disobedience as TheirO [YourO] subject and soldier, not
less than by my undutifulness as TheirO Son, given occasion to a just
wrath and aversion against me. With the All-obedientest respect I submit
myself wholly to the grace of my most All-gracious Father; and beg him,
Most All-graciously to pardon me; as it is not so much the withdrawal of
my liberty in a sad arrest (MALHEUREUSEN ARREST), as my own thoughts of
the fault I have committed, that have brought me to reason: Who, with
all-obedientest respect and submission, continue till my end,
"My All-graciousest King's and Father's faithfully obedientest Servant
and Son,
"FRIEDRICH."
[Preuss, i. 56, 57; and Anonymous, _Friedrichs des Grossen Briefe an
seinen Vater_ (Berlin, Posen und Bromberg, 1838), p. 3.]
This new House of Friedrich's in the little Town of Custrin, he finds
arranged for him on rigorously thrifty principles, yet as a
real Household of his own; and even in the form of a Court, with
Hofmarschall, Kammerjunkers, and the other adjuncts;--Court reduced to
its simplest expression, as the French say, and probably the cheapest
that was ever set up. Hafmarschall (Court-marshal) is one Wolden, a
civilian Official here. The Kammerjunkers are Rohwedel and Natzmer;
Matzmer Junior, son of a distinguished Feldmarschall: "a good-hearted
but foolish forward young fellow," says Wilhelmina; "the failure of a
coxcomb (PETIT-MAITRE MANQUE)." For example, once, strolling about in
a solemn Kaiser's Soiree in Vienna, he found in some quiet corner the
young Duke of Lorraine, Franz, who it is thought will be the divine
Maria Theresa's husband, and Kaiser himself one day. Foolish Natzmer
found this noble young gentleman in a remote corner of the Soiree; went
up, nothing loath, to speak graciosities and insipidities to him: the
noble young gentleman yawned, as was too natural, a wide long yawn;
and in an insipid familiar manner, foolish Natzmer (Wilhelmina and the
Berlin circles know it) put his finger into the noble young gentleman's
mouth, and insipidly wagged it there. "Sir, you seem to forget where
you are!" said the noble young gentleman; and closing his mouth with
emphasis, turned away; but happily took no farther notice. [Wilhelmina,
i. 310.] This is all we yet know of the history of Natzmer, whose
heedless ways and slap-dash speculations, tinted with natural ingenuity
and good-humor, are not unattractive to the Prince.
Hofmarschall and these two Kammerjunkers are of the lawyer species; men
intended for Official business, in which the Prince himself is now to
be occupied. The Prince has four lackeys, two pages, one valet. He wears
his sword, but has no sword-tash (PORTE EPEE), much less an officer's
uniform: a mere Prince put upon his good behavior again; not yet a
soldier of the Prussian Army, only hoping to become so again. He wears
a light-gray dress, "HECHTGRAUER (pike-gray) frock with narrow silver
cordings;" and must recover his uniform, by proving himself gradually a
new man.
For there is, along with the new household, a new employment laid out
for him in Custrin; and it shall be seen what figure he makes in that,
first of all. He is to sit in the DOMANEN-KAMMER or Government Board
here, as youngest Rath; no other career permitted. Let him learn
Economics and the way of managing Domain Lands (a very principal item of
the royal revenues in this Country): humble work, but useful; which he
had better see well how he will do. Two elder Raths are appointed to
instruct him in the Economic Sciences and Practices, if he show faculty
and diligence;--which in fact he turns out to do, in a superior degree,
having every motive to try.
This kind of life lasted with him for the next fifteen months, all
through the year 1731 and farther; and must have been a very singular,
and was probably a highly instructive year to him, not in the Domain
Sciences alone. He is left wholly to himself. All his fellow-creatures,
as it were, are watching him. Hundred-eyed Argus, or the Ear of
Dionysius, that is to say, Tobacco-Parliament with its spies and
reporters,--no stirring of his finger can escape it here. He has
much suspicion to encounter: Papa looking always sadly askance, sadly
incredulous, upon him. He is in correspondence with Grumkow; takes
much advice from Grumkow (our prompter-general, president in the
Dionysius'-Ear, and not an ill-wisher farther); professes much
thankfulness to Grumkow, now and henceforth. Thank you for flinging me
out of the six-story window, and catching me by the coat-skirts!--Left
altogether to himself, as we said; has in the whole Universe nothing
that will save him but his own good sense, his own power of discovering
what is what, and of doing what will be behooveful therein.
He is to quit his French literatures and pernicious practices, one and
all. His very flute, most innocent "Princess," as he used to call his
flute in old days, is denied him ever since he came to Custrin;--but by
degrees he privately gets her back, and consorts much with her; wails
forth, in beautiful adagios, emotions for which there is no other
utterance at present. He has liberty of Custrin and the neighborhood;
out of Custrin he is not to lodge, any night, without leave had of the
Commandant. Let him walk warily; and in good earnest study to become a
new creature, useful for something in the Domain Sciences and otherwise.