Gibraltar still keeps sputtering; ardent ineffectual bombardment from
the one side, sulky, heavy blast of response now and then from the
other: but the fire does not spread; nor will, we may hope. It is true,
Sweden and Denmark have joined the Treaty of Hanover, this spring;
and have troops on foot, and money paid them; But George is pacific;
Gibraltar is impregnable; let the Spaniards spend their powder there.
As for the Kaiser, he is dreadfully poor; inapt for battle himself. And
in the end of this same May, 1727, we hear, his principal ally, Czarina
Catherine, has died;--poor brown little woman, Lithuanian housemaid,
Russian Autocrat, it is now all one;--dead she, and can do nothing.
Probably the Kaiser will sit still? The Kaiser sits still; with eyes
bent on Gibraltar, or rolling in grand Imperial inquiry and anxiety
round the world; war-outlooks much dimmed for him since the end of May.
Alas, in the end of June, what far other Job's-post is this that reaches
Berlin and Queen Sophie? That George I., her royal Father, has suddenly
sunk dead! With the Solstice, or Summer pause of the Sun, 21st or 22d
June, almost uncertain which, the Majesty of George I. did likewise
pause,--in his carriage, on the road to Osnabruck,--never to move
more. Whereupon, among the simple People, arose rumors of omens,
preternaturalisms, for and against: How his desperate Megaera of a Wife,
in the act of dying, had summoned him (as was presumable), to appear
along with her at the Great Judgment-Bar within year and day; and how he
has here done it. On the other hand, some would have it noted, How "the
nightingales in Herrenhausen Gardens had all ceased singing for the
year, that night he died,"--out of loyalty on the part of these little
birds, it seemed presumable. [See Kohler, _Munzbelustigungen,_ x. 88.]
What we know is, he was journeying towards Hanover again, hopeful of
a little hunting at the Gorhde; and intended seeing Osnabruck and his
Brother the Bishop there, as he passed. That day, 21st June, 1727, from
some feelings of his own, he was in great haste for Osnabruck; hurrying
along by extra-post, without real cause save hurry of mind. He had left
his poor old Maypole of a Mistress on the Dutch Frontier, that morning,
to follow at more leisure. He was struck by apoplexy on the road,--arm
fallen powerless, early in the day, head dim and heavy; obviously an
alarming case. But he refused to stop anywhere; refused any surgery but
such as could be done at once. "Osnabruck! Osnabruck!" he
reiterated, growing visibly worse. Two subaltern Hanover Officials,
"Privy-Councillor von Hardenberg, KAMMERHERR (Chamberlain) von Fabrice,
were in the carriage with him;" [Gottfried, _Historische Chronik_
(Frankfurt, 1759), iii. 872. Boyer, _The Political State of Great
Britain,_ vol. xxxiii. pp. 545, 546.] King chiefly dozing, and at last
supported in the arms of Fabrice, was heard murmuring, "C'EST FAIT DE
MOI ('T is all over with me)!" And "Osnabruck! Osnabruck!" slumberously
reiterated he: To Osnabruck, where my poor old Brother, Bishop as they
call him, once a little Boy that trotted at my knee with blithe face,
will have some human pity on me! So they rushed along all day, as at the
gallop, his few attendants and he; and when the shades of night fell,
and speech had now left the poor man, he still passionately gasped some
gurgle of a sound like "Osnabruck;"--hanging in the arms of Fabrice,
and now evidently in the article of death. What a gallop, sweeping
through the slumber of the world: To Osnabruck, Osnabruck!
In the hollow of the night (some say, one in the morning), they reach
Osnabruck. And the poor old Brother,--Ernst August, once youngest of six
brothers, of seven children, now the one survivor, has human pity in the
heart of him full surely. But George is dead; careless of it now.
[Coxe (i. 266) is "indebted to his friend Nathaniel Wraxall" for these
details,--the since famous Sir Nathaniel, in whose _Memoirs_ (vague, but
NOT mendacious, not unintelligent) they are now published more at large.
See his _Memoirs of the Courts of Berlin, Dresden,_ &c. (London. 1799),
i. 35-40; also _Historical Memoirs_ (London, 1836), iv. 516-518.] After
sixty-seven years of it, he has flung his big burdens,--English crowns,
Hanoverian crownlets, sulkinesses, indignations, lean women and fat, and
earthly contradictions and confusions,--fairly off him; and lies there.
The man had his big burdens, big honors so called, absurd enough some
of them, in this world; but he bore them with a certain gravity and
discretion: a man of more probity, insight and general human faculty
than he now gets credit for. His word was sacred to him. He had the
courage of a Welf, or Lion-Man; quietly royal in that respect at least.
His sense of equity, of what was true and honorable in men and things,
remained uneffaced to a respectable degree; and surely it had resisted
much. Wilder puddle of muddy infatuations from without and from within,
if we consider it well,--of irreconcilable incoherences, bottomless
universal hypocrisies, solecisms bred with him and imposed on him,--few
sons of Adam had hitherto lived in.
He was, in one word, the first of our Hanover Series of English Kings;
that hitherto unique sort, who are really strange to look at in the
History of the World. Of whom, in the English annals, there is hitherto
no Picture to be had; nothing but an empty blur of discordant nonsenses,
and idle, generally angry, flourishings of the pen, by way of Picture.
The English Nation, having flung its old Puritan, Sword-and-Bible Faith
into the cesspool,--or rather having set its old Bible-Faith, MINUS
any Sword, well up in the organ-loft, with plenty of revenue, there to
preach and organ at discretion, on condition always of meddling with
nobody's practice farther,--thought the same (such their mistake) a
mighty pretty arrangement; but found it hitch before long. They had to
throw out their beautiful Nell-Gwynn Defenders of the Faith; fling
them also into the cesspool; and were rather at a loss what next to do.
"Where is our real King, then? Who IS to lead us Heavenward, then; to
rally the noble of us to him, in some small measure, and save the rest
and their affairs from running Devilward?"--The English Nation being in
some difficulty as to Kings, the English Nation clutched up the readiest
that came to hand; "Here is our King!" said they,--again under mistake,
still under their old mistake. And, what was singular, they then avenged
themselves by mocking, calumniating, by angrily speaking, writing and
laughing at the poor mistaken King so clutched!--It is high time the
English were candidly asking themselves, with very great seriousness
indeed, WHAT it was they had done, in the sight of God and man, on that
and the prior occasion? And above all, What it is they will now propose
to do in the sequel of it! Dig gold-nuggets, and rally the IGnoble of
us?--
George's poor lean Mistress, coming on at the usual rate of the road,
was met, next morning, by the sad tidings. She sprang from her carriage
into the dusty highway; tore her hair (or headdress), half-frantic;
declared herself a ruined woman; and drove direct to Berlin, there
to compose her old mind. She was not ill seen at Court there; had her
connections in the world. Fieldmarshal Schulenburg, who once had the
honor of fighting (not to his advantage) with Charles XII., and had
since grown famous by his Anti-Turk performances in the Venetian
service, is a Brother of this poor Maypole's; and there is a Nephew of
hers, one of Friedrich Wilhelm's Field-Officers here, whom we shall meet
by and by. She has been obliging to Queen Sophie on occasions; they can,
and do, now weep heartily together. I believe she returned to England,
being Duchess of Kendal, with heavy pensions there; and "assiduously
attended divine ordinances, according to the German Protestant form,
ever afterwards." Poor foolish old soul, what is this world, with all
its dukeries!--
The other or fat Mistress, "Cataract of fluid Tallow," Countess of
Darlington, whom I take to have been a Half-Sister rather, sat sorrowful
at Isleworth; and kept for many years a Black Raven, which had come
flying in upon her; which she somehow understood to be the soul,
or connected with the soul, of his Majesty of happy memory. [Horace
Walpole, _Reminiscences._] Good Heavens, what fat fluid-tallowy stupor,
and entirely sordid darkness, dwells among mankind; and occasionally
finds itself lifted to the very top, by way of sample!--
Friedrich Wilhelm wept tenderly to Brigadier Dubourgay, the British
Minister at Berlin (an old military gentleman, of diplomatic merit,
who spells rather ill), when they spoke of this sad matter. My poor
old Uncle; he was so good to me in boyhood, in those old days, when I
blooded Cousin George's nose! Not unkind, ah, only proud and sad;
and was called sulky, being of few words and heavy-laden. Ah me, your
Excellenz; if the little nightingales have all fallen silent, what may
not I, his Son and nephew, do?--And the rugged Majesty blubbered with
great tenderness; having fountains of tears withal, hidden in the rocky
heart of him, not suspected by every one. [Dubourgay's Despatches, in
the State-Paper Office.]
I add only that the Fabrice, who had poor George in his arms that night,
is a man worth mentioning. The same Fabrice (Fabricius, or perhaps
GOLDSCHMIDT in German) who went as Envoy from the Holstein-Gottorp
people to Charles XII. in his Turkish time; and stayed with his Swedish
Majesty there, for a year or two, indeed till the catastrophe came. His
Official LETTERS from that scene are in print, this long while, though
considerably forgotten; [_Anecdotes du Sejour du Roi de Suide a Bender,
ou Lettres de M. le Baron de Fabrice pour servir d'elaircissement a
l'Histoire de Charles XII._ (Hambourg, 1760, 8vo).] a little Volume,
worth many big ones that have been published on that subject. The same
Fabrice, following Hanover afterwards, came across to London in due
course; and there he did another memorable thing: made acquaintance with
the Monsieur Arouet, then a young French Exile there, Arouet Junior
("LE JEUNE or L. J."), who,--by an ingenious anagram, contrived in his
indignation at such banishment,--writes himself VOLTAIRE ever since; who
has been publishing a HENRIADE, and doing other things. Now it was by
questioning this Fabrice, and industriously picking the memory of him
clean, that M. de Voltaire wrote another book, much more of an "Epic"
than Henri IV.,--a HISTORY, namely, OF CHARLES XII.; [See Voltaire,
_OEuvres Completes_, ii. 149, xxx. 7, 127. Came out in 1731 (ib. xxx.
Avant-Propos, p. ii).] which seems to me the best-written of all his
Books, and wants nothing but TRUTH (indeed a dreadful want) to make it
a possession forever. VOLTAIRE, if you want fine writing; ADLERFELD
and FABRICE, if you would see the features of the Fact: these three are
still the Books upon Charles XII.
HIS PRUSSIAN MAJESTY FALLS INTO ONE OF HIS HYPOCHONDRIACAL FITS.
Before this event, his Majesty was in gloomy humor; and special
vexations had superadded themselves. Early in the Spring, a difficult
huff of quarrel, the consummation of a good many grudges long
subsisting, had fallen out with his neighbor of Saxony, the Majesty of
Poland, August, whom we have formerly heard of, a conspicuous Majesty
in those days; called even "August the Great" by some persons in his
own time; but now chiefly remembered by his splendor of upholstery,
his enormous expenditure in drinking and otherwise, also by his three
hundred and fifty-four Bastards (probably the maximum of any King's
performance in that line), and called August DER STARKE, "August the
Physically Strong." This exemplary Sovereign could not well be a man
according to Friedrich Wilhelm's heart: accordingly they had their huffs
and little collisions now and then: that of the Protestant Directorate
and Heidelberg Protestants, for instance; indeed it was generally
about Protestantism; and more lately there had been high words and
correspondings about the "Protestants of Thorn" (a bad tragedy, of
Jesuit intrusion and Polish ferocity, enacted there in 1724); [Account
of it in Buchholz, i. 98-102.]--in which sad business Friedrich Wilhelm
loyally interfered, though Britannic George of blessed memory and others
were but lukewarm; and nothing could be done in it. Nothing except angry
correspondence with King August; very provoking to the poor soul, who
had no hand but a nominal one in the Thorn catastrophe, being driven
into it by his unruly Diet alone.
In fact, August, with his glittering eyes and excellent physical
constitution, was a very good-humored fellow; supremely pleasant in
society; and by no means wishful to cheat you, or do you a mischief in
business,--unless his necessities compelled him; which often were great.
But Friedrich Wilhelm always kept a good eye on such points; and had
himself suffered nothing from the gay eupeptic Son of Belial, either in
their old Stralsund copartnery or otherwise. So that, except for these
Protestant affairs,--and alas, one other little cause,--Friedrich
Wilhelm had contentedly left the Physically Strong to his own course,
doing the civilities of the road to him when they met; and nothing ill
had fallen out between them. This other little cause--alas, it is the
old story of recruiting; one's poor Hobby again giving offence! Special
recruiting brabbles there had been; severe laws passed in Saxony about
these kidnapping operations: and always in the Diets, when question rose
of this matter, August had been particularly loud in his denouncings.
Which was unkind, though not unexpected. But now, in the Spring of 1727,
here has a worse case than any arisen.
Captain Natzmer, of I know not what Prussian Regiment, "Sachsen-Weimar
Cuirassiers" [_Militair-Lexikon,_ iii. 104.] or another, had dropt over
into Saxony, to see what could be done in picking up a tall man or two.
Tall men, one or two, Captain Natzmer did pick up, nay a tall deserter
or two (Saxon soldier, inveigled to desert); but finding his operations
get air, he hastily withdrew into Brandenburg territory again. Saxon
Officials followed him into Brandenburg territory; snapt him back into
Saxon; tried him by Saxon law there;--Saxon law, express in such case,
condemns him to be hanged; and that is his doom accordingly.
"Captain Natzmer to swing on the gallows? Taken on Brandenburg territory
too, and not the least notice given me?" Friedrich Wilhelm blazes into
flaming whirlwind; sends an Official Gentleman, one Katsch, to his
Excellenz Baron von Suhm (the Crown-Prince's cultivated friend), with
this appalling message: "If Natzmer be hanged, for certain I will use
reprisals; you yourself shall swing!" Whereupon Suhm, in panic, fled
over the marches to his Master; who bullied him for his pusillanimous
terrors; and applied to Friedrich Wilhelm, in fine frenzy of indignant
astonishment, "What, in Heaven's name, such meditated outrage on the law
of nations, and flat insult to the Majesty of Kings, can have meant?"
Friedrich Wilhelm, the first fury being spent, sees that he is quite out
of square; disavows the reprisals upon Suhm. "Message misdelivered by my
Official Gentleman, that stupid Katsch; never did intend to hang Suhm;
oh, no;" with much other correspondence; [In Mauvillon (ii. 189-195)
more of it than any one will read.]--and is very angry at himself, and
at the Natzmer affair, which has brought him into this bad pass. Into
open impropriety; into danger of an utter rupture, had King August
been of quarrelsome turn. But King August was not quarrelsome; and then
Seckendorf and the Tobacco-Parliament,--on the Kaiser's score, who wants
Pragmatic Sanction and much else out of these two Kings, and can at no
rate have them quarrel in the present juncture,--were eager to quench
the fire. King August let Natzmer go; Suhm returned to his post;
[Pollnitz, ii. 254.] and things hustled themselves into some uneasy
posture of silence again;--uneasy to the sensitive fancy of Friedrich
Wilhelm above all. This is his worst collision with his Neighbor of
Saxony; and springing from one's Hobby again!--
These sorrows, the death of George I., with anxieties as to George II.
and the course he might take; all this, it was thought, preyed upon his
Majesty's spirits;--Wilhelmina says it was "the frequent carousals with
Seckendorf," and an affair chiefly of the royal digestive-apparatus.
Like enough;--or both might combine. It is certain his Majesty fell into
one of his hypochondrias at this time; talked of "abdicating" and other
gloomy things, and was very black indeed. So that Seckendorf and Grumkow
began to be alarmed. It is several months ago he had Franke the Halle
Methodist giving ghostly counsel; his Majesty ceased to have the
Newspapers read at dinner; and listened to lugubrious Franke's
exhortations instead. Did English readers ever hear of Franke? Let them
make a momentary acquaintance with this famous German Saint. August
Hermann Franke, a Lubeck man, born 1663; Professor of Theology, of
Hebrew, Lecturer on the Bible; a wandering, persecuted, pious man.
Founder of the "Pietists," a kind of German Methodists, who are still
a famed Sect in that country; and of the WAISENHAUS, at Halle, grand
Orphan-house, built by charitable beggings of Franke, which also still
subsists. A reverend gentleman, very mournful of visage, now sixty-four;
and for the present, at Berlin, discoursing of things eternal, in what
Wilhelmina thinks a very lugubrious manner. Well; but surely in a
very serious manner! The shadows of death were already round this poor
Franke; and in a few weeks more, he had himself departed. [Died 8th
June, 1727.] But hear Wilhelmina, what account she gives of her own
and the young Grenadier-Major's behavior on these mournful occasions.
Seckendorf's dinners she considers to be the cause; all spiritual,
sorrows only an adjunct not worth mentioning. It is certain enough.
"His Majesty began to become valetudinary; and the hypochondria which
tormented him rendered his humor very melancholy. Monsieur Franke,
the famous Pietist, founder of the Orphan-house at Halle University,
contributed not a little to exaggerate that latter evil. This reverend
gentleman entertained the King by raising scruples of conscience about
the most innocent matters. He condemned all pleasures; damnable all of
them, he said, even hunting and music. You were to speak of nothing
but the Word of God only; all other conversation was forbidden. It was
always he that carried on the improving talk at table; where he did
the office of reader, as if it had been a refectory of monks. The King
treated us to a sermon every afternoon; his valet-de-chambre gave out a
psalm, which we all sang; you had to listen to this sermon with as much
devout attention as if it had been an apostle's. My Brother and I had
all the mind in the world to laugh; we tried hard to keep from laughing;
but often we burst out. Thereupon reprimand, with all the anathemas
of the Church hurled out on us; which we had to take with a contrite
penitent air, a thing not easy to bring your face to at the moment. In
a word, this dog of a Franke [he died within few months, poor soul, CE
CHIEN DE FRANKE] led us the life of a set of Monks of La Trappe.
"Such excess of bigotry awakened still more gothic thoughts in the King.
He resolved to abdicate the crown in favor of my Brother. He used to
talk, He would reserve for himself 10,000 crowns a year; and retire with
the Queen and his Daughters to Wusterhausen. There, added he, I will
pray to God; and manage the farming economy, while my wife and girls
take care of the household matters. You are clever, he said to me; I
will give you the inspection of the linen, which you shall mend and
keep in order, taking good charge of laundry matters. Frederika [now
thirteen, married to ANSPACH two years hence], who is miserly, shall
have charge of all the stores of the house. Charlotte [now eleven,
Duchess of BRUNSWICK by and by] shall go to market and buy our
provisions; and my Wife shall take charge of the little children, [says
Friedrich Wilhelm], and of the kitchen." [Little children are:
1. Sophie Dorothee, now eight, who married Margraf of Schwedt, and was
unhappy;
2. Ulrique, a grave little soul of seven, Queen of Sweden afterwards;
3. August Wilhelm, age now five, became Father of a new Friedrich
Wilhelm, who was King by and by, and produced the Kings that still are;
4. Amelia, now four, born in the way we saw; and
5. HENRI, still in arms, just beginning to walk. There will be a Sixth
and no more (son of this Sixth, a Berlin ROUE was killed, in 1806, at
the Battle of Jena, or a day or two before); but the Sixth is not yet
come to hand.]
Poor Friedrich Wilhelm; what an innocent IDYLLIUM;--which cannot be
executed by a King. "He had even begun to work at an Instruction, or
Farewell Advice, for my Brother; and to point towards various steps,
which alarmed Grumkow and Seckendorf to a high degree." [Wilhelmina,
_Memoires de Bareith,_ i. 108.]
"Abdication," with a Crown-Prince ready to fall into the arms of
England, and a sudden finis to our Black-Art, will by no means
suit Seckendorf and Grumkow! Yet here is Winter coming; solitary
Wusterhausen, with the misty winds piping round it, will make matters
worse: something must be contrived; and what? The two, after study,
persuade Fieldmarshal Flemming over at Warsaw (August the Strong's chief
man, the Flemming of Voltaire's CHARLES XII.; Prussian by birth, though
this long while in Saxon service), That if he the Fieldmarshal were to
pay, accidentally, as it were, a little visit to his native Brandenburg
just now, it might have fine effects on those foolish Berlin-Warsaw
clouds that had risen. The Fieldmarshal, well affected in such a case,
manages the little visit, readily persuading the Polish Majesty; and
dissipates the clouds straightway,--being well received by Friedrich
Wilhelm, and seconded by the Tobacco-Parliament with all its might. Out
at Wusterhausen everything is comfortably settled. Nay Madam Flemming,
young, brilliant, and direct from the seat of fashion; it was she that
first "built up" Wilhelmina's hair on just principles, and put some
life into her appearance. [Wilhelmina, i. 117.] And now the Fieldmarshal
(Tobacco-Parliament suggesting it) hints farther, "If his Prussian
Majesty, in the mere greatness of his mind, were to appear suddenly in
Dresden when his royal Friend was next there,--what a sunburst after
clouds were that; how welcome to the Polish Majesty!"--"Hm, Na, would
it, then?"--The Polish Majesty puts that out of question; specially
sends invitation for the Carnival-time just coming; and Friedrich
Wilhelm will, accordingly, see Dresden and him on that occasion. [Ib. i.
108, 109; Pollnitz, ii. 254; Fassman, p. 374.] In those days, Carnival
means "Fashionable Season," rural nobility rallying to head-quarters for
a while, and social gayeties going on; and in Protestant Countries it
means nothing more.
This, in substance, was the real origin of Friedrich Wilhelm's sudden
visit to Dresden, which astonished the world, in January next. It makes
a great figure in the old Books. It did kindle Dresden Carnival and the
Physically Strong into supreme illumination, for the time being; and
proved the seal of good agreement, and even of a kind of friendliness
between this heteroclite pair of Sovereigns,--if anybody now cared for
those points. It is with our Crown-Prince's share in it that we are
alone concerned; and that may require a Chapter to itself.