In the New-year's days of 1733, the topic among diplomatic gentlemen,
which set many big wigs wagging, and even tremulously came out in the
gray leaves of gazetteers and garreteers of the period, was a royal
drama, dimly supposed to be getting itself up in Poland at this time.
Nothing known about it for certain; much guessed. "Something in the
rumor!" nods this wig; "Nothing!" wags that, slightly oscillating; and
gazetteers, who would earn their wages, and have a peck of coals apiece
to glad them in the cold weather, had to watch with all eagerness the
movements of King August, our poor old friend, the Dilapidated-Strong,
who is in Saxony at present; but bound for Warsaw shortly,--just about
lifting the curtain on important events, it is thought and not thought.
Here are the certainties of it, now clear enough, so far as they deserve
a glance from us.
January 10th, 1733, August the Dilapidated-Strong of Poland has been in
Saxony, looking after his poor Electorate a little; and is on the road
from Dresden homewards again;--will cross a corner of the Prussian
Dominions, as his wont is on such occasions. Prussian Majesty, if not
appearing in person, will as usual, by some Official of rank, send a
polite Well-speed-you as the brother Majesty passes. This time, however,
it was more than politeness; the Polish Majesty having, as was thought,
such intricate affairs in the wind. Let Grumkow, the fittest man in all
ways, go, and do the greeting to his old Patroon: greeting, or whatever
else may be needed.
Patroon left Dresden,--"having just opened the Carnival" or fashionable
Season there, opened and nothing more,--January 10th, 1733; [Fassmann,
_Leben Friedrich Augusti des Grossen,_ p. 994.] being in haste home
for a Polish Diet close at hand. On which same day Grumkow, we suppose,
drives forth from Berlin, to intersect him, in the Neumark, about
Crossen; and have a friendly word again, in those localities, over jolly
wine. Intersection took place duly;--there was exuberant joy on the part
of the Patroon; and such a dinner and night of drinking, as has seldom
been. Abstruse things lie close ahead of August the Dilapidated-Strong,
important to Prussia, and for which Prussia is important; let Grumkow
try if he can fish the matter into clearness out of these wine-cups. And
then August, on his side, wishes to know what the Kaiser said at Kladrup
lately; there is much to be fished into clearness.
Many are the times August the Strong has made this journey; many are
the carousals, on such and other occasions, Grumkow and he have had.
But there comes an end to all things. This was their last meeting, over
flowing liquor or otherwise, in the world. Satirical History says,
they drank all night, endeavoring to pump one another, and with such
enthusiasm that they never recovered it; drank themselves to death
at Crossen on that occasion. [_OEuvres de Frederic (Memoires de
Brandenbourg),_ i. 163.] It is certain August died within three weeks;
and people said of Grumkow, who lived six years longer, he was never
well after this bout. Is it worth any human Creature's while to look
into the plans of this precious pair of individuals? Without the least
expense of drinking, the secrets they were pumping out of each other are
now accessible enough,--if it were of importance now. One glance I may
perhaps commend to the reader, out of these multifarious Note-books in
my possession:--
"August, by change of his religion, and other sad operations, got to be
what they called the King of Poland, thirty five years ago; but,
though looking glorious to the idle public, it has been a crown of
stinging-nettles to the poor man,--a sedan-chair running on rapidly,
with the bottom broken out! To say nothing of the scourgings he got,
and poor Saxony along with him, from Charles XII., on account of this
Sovereignty so called, what has the thing itself been to him? In Poland,
for these thirty-five years, the individual who had least of his real
will done in public matters has been, with infinite management, and
display of such good-humor as at least deserves credit, the nominal
Sovereign Majesty of Poland. Anarchic Grandees have been kings over him;
ambitious, contentious, unmanageable;--very fanatical too, and never
persuaded that August's Apostasy was more than a sham one, not even when
he made his Prince apostatize too. Their Sovereignty has been a mere
peck of troubles, disgraces and vexations: for those thirty-five
years, an ever-boiling pot of mutiny, contradiction, insolence, hardly
tolerable even to such nerves as August's.
"August, for a long time back, has been thinking of schemes to clap
some lid upon all that. To make the Sovereignty hereditary in his House:
that, with the good Saxon troops we have, would be a remedy;--and in
fact it is the only remedy. John Casimir (who abdicated long ago, in
the Great Elector's time, and went to Paris,--much charmed with Ninon
de l'Enclos there) told the Polish Diets, With their LIBERUM VETO, and
'right of confederation' and rebellion, they would bring the country
down under the feet of mankind, and reduce their Republic to zero one
day, if they persisted. They have not failed to persist. With some
hereditary King over it, and a regulated Saxony to lean upon: truly
might it not be a change to the better? To the worse, it could hardly
be, thinks August the Strong; and goes intent upon that method, this
long while back;--and at length hopes now, in few days longer, at the
Diet just assembling, to see fruits appear, and the thing actually
begin.
"The difficulties truly are many; internal and external:--but there
are calculated methods, too. For the internal: Get up, by bribery,
persuasion, some visible minority to countenance you; with these
manoeuvre in the Diets; on the back of these, the 30,000 Saxon troops.
But then what will the neighboring Kings say? The neighboring Kings,
with their big-mouthed manifestoes, pities for an oppressed Republic,
overwhelming forces, and invitations to 'confederate' and revolt:
without their tolerance first had, nothing can be done. That is the
external difficulty. For which too there is a remedy. Cut off sufficient
outlying slices of Poland; fling these to the neighboring Kings to
produce consent: Partition of Poland, in fact; large sections of its
Territory sliced away: that will be the method, thinks King August.
"Neighboring Kings, Kaiser, Prussia, Russia, to them it is not grievous
that Poland should remain in perennial anarchy, in perennial impotence;
the reverse rather: a dead horse, or a dying, in the next stall,--he
at least will not kick upon us, think the neighboring Kings. And
yet,--under another similitude,--you do not like your next-door neighbor
to be always on the point of catching fire; smoke issuing, thicker or
thinner, through the slates of his roof, as a perennial phenomenon?
August will conciliate the neighboring Kings. Russia, big-cheeked Anne
Czarina there, shall have not only Courland peaceably henceforth, but
the Ukraine, Lithuania, and other large outlying slices; that surely
will conciliate Russia. To Austria, on its Hungarian border, let us
give the Country of Zips;--nay there are other sops we have for Austria.
Pragmatic Sanction, hitherto refused as contrary to plain rights of
ours,--that, if conceded to a spectre-hunting Kaiser? To Friedrich
Wilhelm we could give West-Preussen; West-Preussen torn away three
hundred years ago, and leaving a hiatus in the very continuity of
Friedrich Wilhelm: would not that conciliate him? Of all enemies or
friends, Friedrich Wilhelm, close at hand with 80,000 men capable of
fighting at a week's, notice, is by far the most important.
"These are August's plans: West-Preussen for the nearest Neighbor; Zips
for Austria; Ukraine, Lithuania, and appendages for the Russian Czarina:
handsome Sections to be sliced off, and flung to good neighbors; as it
were, all the outlying limbs and wings of the Polish Territory sliced
off; compact body to remain, and become, by means of August and Saxon
troops, a Kingdom with government, not an imaginary Republic without
government any longer. In fact, it was the 'Partition of Poland,' such
as took effect forty years after, and has kept the Newspapers weeping
ever since. Partition of Poland,--MINUS the compact interior held under
government, by a King with Saxon troops or otherwise. Compact interior,
in that effective partition, forty years after, was left as anarchic as
ever; and had to be again partitioned, and cut away altogether,--with
new torrents of loud tears from the Newspapers, refusing to be comforted
to this day.
"It is not said that Friedrich Wilhelm had the least intention of
countenancing August in these dangerous operations, still less of going
shares with August; but he wished much, through Grumkow, to have some
glimpse into the dim program of them; and August wished much to know
Friedrich Wilhelm's and Grumkow's humor towards them. Grumkow and August
drank copiously, or copiously pressed drink on one another, all night
(11th-12th January, 1733, as I compute; some say at Crossen, some say
at Frauendorf a royal domain near by), with the view of mutually fishing
out those secrets;--and killed one another in the business, as is
rumored."
What were Grumkow's news at home-coming, I did not hear; but he
continues very low and shaky;--refuses, almost with horror, to have the
least hand in Seckendorf's mad project, of resuscitating the English
Double-Marriage, and breaking off the Brunswick one, at the eleventh
hour and after word pledged. Seckendorf himself continues to dislike and
dissuade: but the High Heads at Vienna are bent on it; and command new
strenuous attempts;--literally at the last moment; which is now come.