Captain Turner fell into an ambush and was slain with thirty-eight men.
Hadley was attacked on a lecture-day, while the people were at meeting;
but the Indians were repulsed by the bravery of Goffe, one of the fugitive
regicides, long concealed in that town. Seeing this venerable unknown man
come to their rescue, and then suddenly disappear, the inhabitants took him
for an angel.
Major Church, at the head of a body of two hundred volunteers, English and
Indians, energetically hunted down the hostile bands in Plymouth colony.
The interior tribes about Mount Wachusett were invaded and subdued by a
force of six hundred men, raised for that purpose. Many fled to the north
to find refuge in Canada--guides and leaders, in after-years, of those
French and Indian war parties by which the frontiers of New England were so
terribly harassed. Just a year after the fast at the commencement of the
war, a thanksgiving was observed for success in it.
No longer sheltered by the River Indians, who now began to make their
peace, and even attacked by bands of the Mohawks, Philip returned to his
own country, about Mount Hope, where he was still faithfully supported by
his female confederate and relative, Witamo, squaw-sachem of Pocasset.
Punham, also, the Shawomet vassal of Massachusetts, still zealously carried
on the war, but was presently killed. Philip was watched and followed by
Church, who surprised his camp, killed upward of a hundred of his people,
and took prisoners his wife and boy.
The disposal of this child was a subject of much deliberation. Several of
the elders were urgent for putting him to death. It was finally resolved to
send him to Bermuda, to be sold into slavery--a fate to which many other of
the Indian captives were subjected. Witamo shared the disasters of Philip.
Most of her people were killed or taken. She herself was drowned while
crossing a river in her flight, but her body was recovered, and the head,
cut off, was stuck upon a pole at Taunton, amid the jeers and scoffs of the
colonial soldiers, and the tears and lamentations of the Indian prisoners.
Philip still lurked in the swamps, but was now reduced to extremity. Again
attacked by Church, he was killed by one of his own people, a deserter to
the colonists. His dead body was beheaded and quartered, the sentence of
the English law upon traitors. One of his hands was given to the Indian who
had shot him, and on the day appointed for a public thanksgiving his head
was carried in triumph to Plymouth.
The popular rage against the Indians was excessive. Death or slavery was
the penalty for all known or suspected to have been concerned in shedding
English blood. Merely having been present at the Swamp Fight was adjudged
by the authorities of Rhode Island sufficient foundation for sentence of
death, and that, too, notwithstanding they had intimated an opinion that
the origin of the war would not bear examination. The other captives
who fell into the hands of the colonists were distributed among them as
ten-year servants. Roger Williams received a boy for his share. Many chiefs
were executed at Boston and Plymouth on the charge of rebellion; among
others, Captain Tom, chief of the Christian Indians at Natick, and
Tispiquin, a noted warrior, reputed to be invulnerable, who had surrendered
to Church on an implied promise of safety.
A large body of Indians, assembled at Dover to treat of peace, were
treacherously made prisoners by Major Waldron, who commanded there. Some
two hundred of these Indians, claimed as fugitives from Massachusetts, were
sent by water to Boston, where some were hanged and the rest shipped off to
be sold as slaves. Some fishermen of Marblehead having been killed by
the Indians at the eastward, the women of that town, as they came out of
meeting on a Sunday, fell upon two Indian prisoners who had just been
brought in, and murdered them on the spot.
The same ferocious spirit of revenge which governed the contemporaneous
conduct of Berkeley in Virginia toward those concerned in Bacon's rebellion
swayed the authorities of New England in their treatment of the conquered
Indians. By the end of the year the contest was over in the South, upward
of two thousand Indians having been killed or taken. But some time elapsed
before a peace could be arranged with the Eastern tribes, whose haunts it
was not so easy to reach.
In this short war of hardly a year's duration the Wampanoags and
Narragansetts had suffered the fate of the Pequots. The Niantics alone,
under the guidance of their aged sachem Ninigret, had escaped destruction.
Philip's country was annexed to Plymouth, though sixty years afterward,
under a royal order in council, it was transferred to Rhode Island. The
Narragansett territory remained as before, under the name of King's
Province, a bone of contention between Connecticut, Rhode Island, the
Marquis of Hamilton, and the Atherton claimants. The Niantics still
retained their ancient seats along the southern shores of Narragansett Bay.
Most of the surviving Narragansetts, the Nipmucks, and the River Indians,
abandoned their country and migrated to the north and west. Such as
remained, along with the Mohegans and other subject tribes, became more
than ever abject and subservient.
The work of conversion was now again renewed, and, after such overwhelming
proofs of Christian superiority, with somewhat greater success. A second
edition of the Indian Old Testament, which seems to have been more in
demand than the New, was presently published, revised by Eliot, with the
assistance of John Cotton, son of the "Great Cotton," and minister of
Plymouth. But not an individual exists in our day by whom it can be
understood. The fragments of the subject tribes, broken in spirit, lost
the savage freedom and rude virtues of their fathers without acquiring
the laborious industry of the whites. Lands were assigned them in various
places, which they were prohibited by law from alienating. But this very
provision, though humanely intended, operated to perpetuate their indolence
and incapacity. Some sought a more congenial occupation in the whale
fishery, which presently began to be carried on from the islands of
Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. Many perished by enlisting in the military
expeditions undertaken in future years against Acadia and the West Indies.
The Indians intermarried with the blacks, and thus confirmed their
degradation by associating themselves with another oppressed and
unfortunate race. Gradually they dwindled away. A few hundred sailors and
petty farmers, of mixed blood, as much African as Indian, are now the sole
surviving representatives of the aboriginal possessors of Southern New
England.
On the side of the colonists the contest had also been very disastrous.
Twelve or thirteen towns had been entirely ruined and many others partially
destroyed. Six hundred houses had been burned, near a tenth part of all in
New England. Twelve captains, and more than six hundred men in the prime of
life, had fallen in battle. There was hardly a family not in mourning. The
pecuniary losses and expenses of the war were estimated at near a million
of dollars.
%GROWTH OF PRUSSIA UNDER THE GREATELECTOR%
HIS VICTORY AT FEHRBELLIN
A.D. 1675
THOMAS CARLYLE
It was the good-fortune of Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, who
is known in history as the "Great Elector," to lay a firm foundation for
Prussian monarchy. Under his father, George William, the Tenth Elector,
Brandenburg had lost much of its former importance. When Frederick William
came into his inheritance in 1640 he found a weak and disunited state,
little more than a group of provinces, with foreign territories lying
between them, and governed by differing laws.
The great problem before the Elector was how to become actual ruler of his
ill-joined possessions, and his first aim was to weld them together, that
he might make himself absolute monarch. By forming an army of mercenaries
he established his authority. His whole life was occupied with warlike
affairs. He remained neutral during the last stages of the Thirty Years'
War, but was always prepared for action. He freed Prussia from Polish
control and drove the Swedes from Brandenburg.
This last was his most famous success. It was won by his victory over the
Swedes under Wrangel, at Fehrbellin. Carlyle's characteristic narrative and
commentary on this and other triumphs of the Great Elector place him before
the reader as one of the chief personages of the Hohenzollern race and a
leading actor in European history.
Brandenburg had sunk very low under the Tenth Elector, in the unutterable
troubles of the times, but it was gloriously raised up again by his Son
Friedrich Wilhelm, who succeeded in 1640. This is he whom they call the
"Great Elector" ("_Grosse Kurfuerst_"), of whom there is much writing and
celebrating in Prussian Books. As for the epithet, it is not uncommon among
petty German populations, and many times does not mean too much: thus Max
of Bavaria, with his Jesuit Lambkins and Hyacinths, is by Bavarians called
"Maximilian the Great." Friedrich Wilhelm, both by his intrinsic qualities
and the success he met with, deserves it better than most. His success, if
we look where he started and where he ended, was beyond that of any other
man in his day. He found Brandenburg annihilated, and he left Brandenburg
sound and flourishing--a great country, or already on the way toward
greatness: undoubtedly a most rapid, clear-eyed, active man. There was a
stroke in him swift as lightning, well aimed mostly, and of a respectable
weight withal, which shattered asunder a whole world of impediments for him
by assiduous repetition of it for fifty years.
There hardly ever came to sovereign power a young man of twenty under
more distressing, hopeless-looking circumstances. Political significance
Brandenburg had none--a mere Protestant appendage dragged about by a Papist
Kaiser. His Father's Prime Minister was in the interest of his enemies;
not Brandenburg's servant, but Austria's. The very Commandants of his
Fortresses, Commandant of Spandau more especially, refused to obey
Friedrich Wilhelm on his accession--"were bound to obey the Kaiser in the
first place." He had to proceed softly as well as swiftly, with the most
delicate hand, to get him of Spandau by the collar, and put him under lock
and key, as a warning to others.
For twenty years past Brandenburg had been scoured by hostile armies,
which, especially the Kaiser's part of which, committed outrages new in
human history. In a year or two hence Brandenburg became again the theatre
of business. Austrian Gallas, advancing thither again (1644) with intent
"to shut up Tortenson and his Swedes in Jutland," where they had been
chastising old Christian IV, now meddlesome again for the last time, and
never a good neighbor to Sweden, Gallas could by no means do what he
intended; on the contrary, he had to run from Tortenson what feet could
do, was hunted, he and his _Merode_-Bruder (beautiful inventors of the
"Marauding" Art), "till they pretty much all died (_crepirten_)," says
Kohler. No great loss to society, the death of these Artists, but we can
fancy what their life, and especially what the process of their dying, may
have cost poor Brandenburg again.
Friedrich Wilhelm's aim, in this as in other emergencies, was sun-clear
to himself, but for most part dim to everybody else. He had to walk very
warily, Sweden on one hand of him, suspicious Kaiser on the other; he had
to wear semblances, to be ready with evasive words and advance noiselessly
by many circuits. More delicate operation could not be imagined; but
advance he did, advance and arrive. With extraordinary talent, diligence,
and felicity, the young man wound himself out of this first fatal position;
got those foreign Armies pushed out of his country, and kept them out. His
first concern had been to find some vestige of revenue, to put that upon
a clear footing, and by loans or otherwise to scrape a little ready money
together, on the strength of which a small body of soldiers could be
collected about him, and drilled into real ability to fight and obey.
This as a basis; on this followed all manner of things, freedom from
Swedish-Austrian invasions as the first thing.
He was himself, as appeared by and by, a fighter of the first quality
when it came to that, but never was willing to fight if he could help it;
preferred rather to shift, manoeuvre, and negotiate, which he did in a most
vigilant, adroit, and masterly manner. But by degrees he had grown to have,
and could maintain it, an Army of twenty-four thousand men, among the best
troops then in being. With or without his will, he was in all the great
Wars of his time--the time of Louis XIV--who kindled Europe four times
over, thrice in our Kurfuerst's day. The Kurfuerst's Dominions, a long,
straggling country, reaching from Memel to Wesel, could hardly keep out
of the way of any war that might rise. He made himself available, never
against the good cause of Protestantism and German Freedom, yet always in
the place and way where his own best advantage was to be had. Louis XIV
had often much need of him; still oftener, and more pressingly, had Kaiser
Leopold, the little Gentleman "in scarlet stockings, with a red feather
in his hat," whom Mr. Savage used to see majestically walking about, with
Austrian lip that said nothing at all. His twenty-four thousand excellent
fighting-men, thrown in at the right time, were often a thing that could
turn the balance in great questions. They required to be allowed for at
a high rate, which he well knew how to adjust himself for exacting and
securing always.
When the Peace of Westphalia (1648) concluded that Thirty-Years'
Conflagration, and swept the ashes of it into order again, Friedrich
Wilhelm's right to Pommern was admitted by everybody, and well insisted on
by himself; but right had to yield to reason of state, and he could not get
it. The Swedes insisted on their expenses; the Swedes held Pommern, had all
along held it--in pawn, they said, for their expenses. Nothing for it but
to give the Swedes the better half of Pommern--_Fore_-Pommern so they call
it, ("Swedish Pomernia" thenceforth), which lies next the Sea; this, with
some Towns and cuttings over and above, was Sweden's share. Friedrich
Wilhelm had to put up with _Hinder_-Pommern, docked furthermore of the Town
of Stettin, and of other valuable cuttings, in favor of Sweden, much to
Friedrich Wilhelm's grief and just anger, could he have helped it.
They gave him Three secularized Bishoprics, Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Minden
with other small remnants, for compensation, and he had to be content with
these for the present. But he never gave up the idea of Pommern. Much of
the effort of his life was spent upon recovering Fore-Pommern; thrice eager
upon that, whenever lawful opportunity offered. To no purpose, then; he
never could recover Swedish Pommern; only his late descendants, and that by
slowish degrees, could recover it all. Readers remember that Burgermeister
of Stettin, with the helmet and sword flung into the grave and picked out
again, and can judge whether Brandenburg got its good luck quite by lying
in bed.
Once, and once only, he had a voluntary purpose toward War, and it remained
a purpose only. Soon after the Peace of Westphalia, old Pfalz-Neuburg, the
same who got the slap on the face, went into tyrannous proceedings against
the Protestant part of his subjects in Juelic-Cleve, who called to
Friedrich Wilhelm for help. Friedrich Wilhelm, a zealous Protestant, made
remonstrances, retaliations; ere long the thought struck him, "Suppose,
backed by the Dutch, we threw out this fantastic old gentleman, his
Papistries, and pretended claims and self, clear out of it?" This was
Friedrich Wilhelm's thought, and he suddenly marched troops into the
Territory with that view. But Europe was in alarm; the Dutch grew faint.
Friedrich Wilhelm saw it would not do. He had a conference with old
Pfalz-Neuburg: "Young gentleman, we remember how your Grandfather made
free with us and our august countenance! Nevertheless, we--" In fine, the
"statistics of Treaties" was increased by One, and there the matter rested
till calmer times.
In 1666 an effective Partition of these litigated Territories was
accomplished; Prussia to have the Duchy of Cleve-Proper, the Counties of
Mark and Ravensberg, with other Patches and Pertinents; Neuburg, what was
the better share, to have Juelich Duchy and Berg Duchy. Furthermore, if
either of the Lines failed, in no sort was a collateral to be admitted; but
Brandenburg was to inherit Neuburg, or Neuburg Brandenburg, as the case
might be. A clear Bargain this at last, and in the times that had come it
proved executable so far; but if the reader fancies the Lawsuit was at last
out in this way, he will be a simple reader. In the days of our little
Fritz,[1] the Line of Pfalz-Neuburg was evidently ending; but that
Brandenburg, and not a collateral, should succeed it, there lay the quarrel
open still, as if it had never been shut, and we shall hear enough about
it.
[Footnote 1: Frederick the Great]
Friedrich Wilhelm's first actual appearance in War, Polish-Swedish War
(1655-1660), was involuntary in the highest degree; forced upon him for the
sake of his Preussen, which bade fair to be lost or ruined without blame of
his or its. Nevertheless, here too he made his benefit of the affair. The
big King of Sweden had a standing quarrel, with his big cousin of Poland,
which broke out into hot War; little Preussen lay between them, and
was like to be crushed in the collision. Swedish King was Karl Gustav,
Christina's Cousin, Charles XII's Grandfather: a great and mighty man, lion
of the North in his time; Polish King was one John Casimir; chivalrous
enough, and with clouds of forward Polish chivalry about him, glittering
with barbaric gold. Friedrich III, Danish King for the first time being, he
also was much involved in the thing. Fain would Friedrich Wilhelm have kept
out of it, but he could not. Karl Gustav as good as forced him to join; he
joined; fought along with Karl Gustav an illustrious Battle, "Battle of
Warsaw," three days long (July 28-30, 1656), on the skirts of Warsaw;
crowds "looking from the upper windows" there; Polish chivalry, broken at
last, going like chaff upon the winds, and John Casimir nearly ruined.
Shortly after which, Friedrich Wilhelm, who had shone much in the Battle,
changed sides. An inconsistent, treacherous man? Perhaps not, O reader;
perhaps a man advancing "in circuits," the only way he has; spirally, face
now to east, now to west, with his own reasonable private aim sun-clear to
himself all the while.
John Casimir agreed to give up the "Homage of Preussen" for this service; a
grand prize for Friedrich Wilhelm. What the Teutsch Ritters strove for in
vain, and lost their existence in striving for, the shifty Kurfuerst has
now got: Ducal Prussia, which is also called East Prussia, is now a free
sovereignty, and will become as "Royal" as the other Polish part, or
perhaps even more so, in the course of time--Karl Gustav, in a high frame
of mind, informs the Kurfuerst that he has him on his books, and will pay
the debt one day.
A dangerous debtor in such matters, this Karl Gustav. In these same months,
busy with the Danish part of the Controversy, he was doing a feat of war
which set all Europe in astonishment. In January, 1658, Karl Gustav marches
his Army, horse, foot, and artillery, to the extent of Twenty thousand,
across the Baltic ice, and takes an island without shipping--Island of
Fuenen, across the Little Belt--three miles of ice, and a part of the sea
_open_, which has to be crossed on planks; nay, forward from Fuenen, when
once there, he achieves ten whole miles more of ice, and takes Zealand
itself, to the wonder of all mankind: an imperious, stern-browed,
swift-striking man, who had dreamed of a new Goth Empire: the mean
Hypocrites and Fribbles of the South to be coerced again by noble Norse
valor, and taught a new lesson; has been known to lay his hand on his
sword while apprising an Embassador (Dutch High Mightiness) what his royal
intentions were: "not the sale or purchase of groceries, observe you, Sir!
My aims go higher." Charles XII's Grandfather, and somewhat the same type
of man.
But Karl died short while after; left his big, wide-raging Northern
Controversy to collapse in what way it could. Sweden and the fighting
parties made their "Peace of Oliva" (Abbey of Oliva, near Dantzig, May 1,
1660), and this of Preussen was ratified, in all form, among other points.
No Homage more; nothing now above Ducal Prussia but the Heavens, and great
times coming for it. This was one of the successfulest strokes of business
ever done by Friedrich Wilhelm, who had been forced, by sheer compulsion,
to embark in that big game. "Royal Prussia," the Western _Polish_
Prussia--this too, as all Newspapers know, has in our times gone the same
road as the other, which probably after all, it may have had in Nature,
some tendency to do? Cut away, for reasons, by the Polish sword, in that
Battle of Tannenberg, long since, and then, also for reasons, cut back
again: that is the fact, not unexampled in human History.
Old Johann Casimir, not long after that Peace of Oliva, getting tired of
his unruly Polish chivalry and their ways, abdicated, retired to Paris,
and "lived much with Ninon de l'Enclos and her circle" for the rest of his
life. He used to complain of his Polish chivalry that there was no solidity
in them, nothing but outside glitter, with tumult and anarchic noise; fatal
want of one essential talent, the talent of Obeying; and has been heard to
prophesy that a glorious Republic, persisting in such courses, would arrive
at results which would surprise it.
Onward from this time Friedrich Wilhelm figures in the world, public men
watching his procedure, Kings anxious to secure him, Dutch Printsellers
sticking up his Portraits for a hero-worshipping Public. Fighting hero,
had the Public known it, was not his essential character, though he had
to fight a great deal. He was essentially an Industrial man; great in
organizing, regulating, in constraining chaotic heaps to become cosmic for
him. He drains bogs, settles colonies in the waste places of his Dominions,
cuts canals; unweariedly encourages trade and work. The Friedrich-Wilhelm's
Canal, which still carries tonnage from the Oder to the Spree, is a
monument of his zeal in this way; creditable, with the means he had. To
the poor French Protestants in the Edict-of-Nantes Affair, he was like an
empress Benefit of Heaven: one Helper appointed, to whom the help itself
was profitable. He munificently welcomed them to Brandenburg; showed really
a noble piety and human self-pity, as well as judgment; nor did Brandenburg
and he want their reward. Some twenty thousand nimble French souls,
evidently of the best French quality, found a home there; made "waste sands
about Berlin into pot-herb gardens"; and in the spiritual Brandenburg, too,
did something of horticulture, which is still noticeable.
Certainly this Elector was one of the shiftiest of men; not an unjust man
either; a pious, God-fearing man rather, stanch to his Protestantism and
his Bible; not unjust by any means, nor, on the other hand, by any means
thin-skinned in his interpretings of justice: Fairplay to myself always, or
occasionally even the Height of Fairplay. On the whole, by constant energy,
vigilance, adroit activity, by an ever-ready insight and audacity to seize
the passing fact by its right handle, he fought his way well in the world;
left Brandenburg a flourishing and greatly increased Country, and his own
name famous enough.