“Si ce garçon me ressemble, Sire, il n’aura pas une goutte de sang
dans ses veines qui ne soit à vous.”
M. de Schlözer, who is himself a native of Lübeck, has described the later
years of Chasot’s life in that city with great warmth and truthfulness.
The diplomatic relations of the town with Russia and Denmark were not
without interest at that time, because Peter III., formerly Duke of
Holstein, had declared war against Denmark in order to substantiate his
claims to the Danish crown. Chasot had actually the pleasure of fortifying
Lübeck, and carrying on preparations for war on a small scale, till Peter
was dethroned by his wife, Catherine. All this is told in a very
comprehensive and luminous style; and it is not without regret that we
find ourselves in the last chapter, where M. de Schlözer describes the
last meetings of Chasot and Frederic in 1779, 1784, and 1785. Frederic had
lost nearly all his friends, and he was delighted to see the _matador de
sa jeunesse_ once more. He writes:—
“Une chose qui n’est presque arrivée qu’à moi est que j’ai perdu
tous mes amis de cœur et mes anciennes connaissances; ce sont des
plaies dont le cœur saigne long-temps, que la philosophie apaise,
mais que sa main ne saurait guérir.”
How pleasant for the king to find at least one man with whom he could talk
of the old days of Rheinsberg,—of Fräulein von Schack and Fräulein von
Walmoden, of Cæsarion and Jordan, of Mimi and le Tourbillon! Chasot’s two
sons entered the Prussian service, though, in the manner in which they are
received, we find Frederic again acting more as king than as friend.
Chasot in 1784 was still as lively as ever, whereas the king: was in bad
health. The latter writes to his old friend, “Si nous ne nous revoyons
bientôt, nous ne nous reverrons jamais;” and when Chasot had arrived,
Frederic writes to Prince Heinrich, “Chasot est venu ici de Lübeck; il ne
parle que de mangeaille, de vins de Champagne, du Rhin, de Madère, de
Hongrie, et du faste de messieurs les marchands de la bourse de Lübeck.”
Such was the last meeting of these two knights of the _Ordre de Bayard_.
The king died in 1786, without seeing the approach of the revolutionary
storm which was soon to upset the throne of the Bourbons. Chasot died in
1797. He began to write his memoirs in 1789, and it is to some of their
fragments, which had been preserved by his family, and were handed over to
M. Kurd de Schlözer, that we owe this delightful little book. Frederic the
Great used to complain that Germans could not write history:—
“Ce siècle ne produisit aucun bon historien. On chargea Teissier
d’écrire l’histoire de Brandebourg: il en fit le panégyrique.
Pufendorf écrivit la vie de Frédéric-Guillaume, et, pour ne rien
omettre, il n’oublia ni ses clercs de chancellerie, ni ses valets
de chambre dont il put recueillir les noms. Nos auteurs ont, ce me
semble, toujours péché, faute de discerner les choses essentielles
des accessoires, d’éclaircir les faits, de reserrer leur prose
traînante et excessivement sujette aux inversions, aux nombreuses
épithètes, et d’écrire en pédants plutôt qu’en hommes de génie.”
We believe that Frederic would not have said this of a work like that of
M. de Schlözer; and as to Chasot, it is not too much to say that, after
the days of Mollwitz and Hohenfriedberg, the day on which M. de Schlözer
undertook to write his biography was perhaps the most fortunate for his
fame.
1856.