So that, as we said, there are two elements for young Fritz, and
highly diverse ones, from both of which he is to draw nourishment, and
assimilate what he can. Besides that Edict-of-Nantes French element, and
in continual contact and contrast with it, which prevails chiefly in the
Female Quarters of the Palace,--there is the native German element
for young Fritz, of which the centre is Papa, now come to be King, and
powerfully manifesting himself as such. An abrupt peremptory young King;
and German to the bone. Along with whom, companions to him in his social
hours, and fellow-workers in his business, are a set of very rugged
German sons of Nature; differing much from the French sons of Art.
Baron Grumkow, Leopold Prince of Anhalt-Dessau (not yet called the "OLD
Dessauer," being under forty yet), General Glasenap, Colonel Derschau,
General Flans; these, and the other nameless Generals and Officials,
are a curious counterpart to the Camases, the Hautcharmoys and Forcades,
with their nimble tongues and rapiers; still more to the Beausobres,
Achards, full of ecclesiastical logic, made of Bayle and Calvin kneaded
together; and to the high-frizzled ladies rustling in stiff silk, with
the shadow of Versailles and of the Dragonnades alike present to them.
Born Hyperboreans these others; rough as hemp, and stout of fibre as
hemp; native products of the rigorous North. Of whom, after all our
reading, we know little.--O Heaven, they have had long lines of rugged
ancestors, cast in the same rude stalwart mould, and leading their rough
life there, of whom we know absolutely nothing! Dumb all those preceding
busy generations; and this of Friedrich Wilhelm is grown almost dumb.
Grim semi-articulate Prussian men; gone all to pipe-clay and mustache
for us. Strange blond-complexioned, not unbeautiful Prussian
honorable women, in hoops, brocades, and unintelligible head-gear and
hair-towers,--ACH GOTT, they too are gone; and their musical talk,
in the French or German language, that also is gone; and the hollow
Eternities have swallowed it, as their wont is, in a very surprising
manner!--
Grumkow, a cunning, greedy-hearted, long-headed fellow, of the old
Pomeranian Nobility by birth, has a kind of superficial polish put upon
his Hyperboreanisms; he has been in foreign countries, doing legations,
diplomacies, for which, at least for the vulpine parts of which, he has
a turn. He writes and speaks articulate grammatical French; but neither
in that, nor in native Pommerish Platt-Deutsch, does he show us much,
except the depths of his own greed, of his own astucities and stealthy
audacities. Of which we shall hear more than enough by and by.
OF THE DESSAUER, NOT YET "OLD."
As to the Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, rugged man, whose very face is the
color of gunpowder, he also knows French, and can even write in it, if
he like,--having duly had a Tutor of that nation, and strange adventures
with him on the grand tour and elsewhere;--but does not much practise
writing, when it can be helped. His children, I have heard, he expressly
did not teach to read or write, seeing no benefit in that effeminate
art, but left them to pick it up as they could. His Princess, all
rightly ennobled now,--whom he would not but marry, though sent on the
grand tour to avoid it,--was the daughter of one Fos an Apothecary at
Dessau; and is still a beautiful and prudent kind of woman, who seems
to suit him well enough, no worse than if she had been born a Princess.
Much talk has been of her, in princely and other circles; nor is his
marriage the only strange thing Leopold has done. He is a man to keep
the world's tongue wagging, not too musically always; though himself
of very unvocal nature. Perhaps the biggest mass of inarticulate human
vitality, certainly one of the biggest, then going about in the world. A
man of vast dumb faculty; dumb, but fertile, deep; no end of ingenuities
in the rough head of him:--as much mother-wit, there, I often guess, as
could be found in whole talking parliaments, spouting themselves away in
vocables and eloquent wind!
A man of dreadful impetuosity withal. Set upon his will as the one
law of Nature; storming forward with incontrollable violence: a very
whirlwind of a man. He was left a minor; his Mother guardian. Nothing
could prevent him from marrying this Fos the Apothecary's Daughter; no
tears nor contrivances of his Mother, whom he much loved, and who took
skilful measures. Fourteen months of travel in Italy; grand tour, with
eligible French Tutor,--whom he once drew sword upon, getting some
rebuke from him one night in Venice, and would have killed, had not the
man been nimble, at once dexterous and sublime:--it availed not. The
first thing he did, on re-entering Dessau, with his Tutor, was to call
at Apothecary Fos's, and see the charming Mamsell; to go and see his
Mother, was the second thing. Not even his grand passion for war could
eradicate those; he went to his grand passion for Dutch William's wars;
the wise mother still counselling, who was own aunt to Dutch William,
and liked the scheme. He besieged Namur; fought and besieged up and
down,--with insatiable appetite for fighting and sieging; with great
honor, too, and ambitions awakening in him;--campaign after campaign:
but along with the flamy-thundery ideal bride, figuratively called
Bellona, there was always a soft real one, Mamsell Fos of Dessau, to
whom he continued constant. The Government of his Dominions he left
cheerfully to his Mother, even when he came of age: "I am for learning
War, as the one right trade; do with all things as you please, Mamma,--
only not with Mamsell, not with her!"--
Readers may figure this scene too, and shudder over it. Some rather
handsome male Cousin of Mamsell, Medical Graduate or whatever he was,
had appeared in Dessau:--"Seems, to admire Mamsell much; of course, in a
Platonic way," said rumor:--"He? Admire?" thinks Leopold;--thinks a
good deal of it, not in the philosophic mood. As he was one day passing
Fos's, Mamsell and the Medical Graduate are visible, standing together
at the window inside. Pleasantly looking out upon Nature,--of course
quite casually, say some Histories with a sneer. In fact, it seems
possible this Medical Graduate may have been set to act shoeing-horn;
but he had better not. Leopold storms into the House, "Draw, scandalous
canaille, and defend yourself!"--And in this, or some such way, a
confident tradition says, he killed the poor Medical Graduate there and
then. One tries always to hope not: but Varnhagen is positive, though
the other Histories say nothing of it. God knows. The man was a Prince;
no Reichshofrath, Speyer-Wetzlar KAMMER, or other Supreme Court, would
much trouble itself, except with formal shakings of the wig, about such
a peccadillo. In fine, it was better for Leopold to marry the Miss
Fos; which he actually did (1698, in his twenty-second year), "with
the left-hand,"--and then with the right and both hands; having got her
properly ennobled before long, by his splendid military services. She
made, as we have hinted, an excellent Wife to him, for the fifty or
sixty ensuing years.
This is a strange rugged specimen, this inarticulate Leopold; already
getting mythic, as we can perceive, to the polished vocal ages; which
mix all manner of fables with the considerable history he has. Readers
will see him turn up again in notable forms. A man hitherto unknown
except in his own country; and yet of very considerable significance to
all European countries whatsoever; the fruit of his activities, without
his name attached, being now manifest in all of them. He invented the
iron ramrod; he invented the equal step; in fact, he is the inventor of
modern military tactics. Even so, if we knew it: the Soldiery of every
civilized country still receives from this man, on parade-fields and
battle-fields, its word of command; out of his rough head proceeded
the essential of all that the innumerable Drill-sergeants, in various
languages, daily repeat and enforce. Such a man is worth some transient
glance from his fellow-creatures,--especially with a little Fritz
trotting at his foot, and drawing inferences from him.
Dessau, we should have said for the English reader's behoof, was
and still is a little independent Principality; about the size of
Huntingdonshire, but with woods instead of bogs;--revenue of it, at this
day, is 60,000 pounds, was perhaps not 20, or even 10,000 in Leopold's
first time. It lies some fourscore miles southwest of Berlin, attainable
by post-horses in a day. Leopold, as his Father had done, stood by
Prussia as if wholly native to it. Leopold's Mother was Sister of that
fine Louisa, the Great Elector's first Wife; his Sister is wedded to
the Margraf of Schwedt, Friedrich Wilhelm's half-uncle. Lying in such
neighborhood, and being in such affinity to the Prussian House, the
Dessauers may be said to have, in late times, their headquarters at
Berlin. Leopold and Leopold's sons, as his father before him had done,
without neglecting their Dessau and Principality, hold by the Prussian
Army as their main employment. Not neglecting Dessau either; but going
thither in winter, or on call otherwise; Leopold least of all neglecting
it, who neglects nothing that can be useful to him.
He is General Field-Marshal of the Prussian Armies, the foremost man
in war-matters with this new King; and well worthy to be so. He is
inventing, or brooding in the way to invent, a variety of things,--"iron
ramrods," for one; a very great improvement on the fragile ineffective
wooden implement, say all the Books, but give no date to it; that is the
first thing; and there will be others, likewise undated, but posterior,
requiring mention by and by. Inventing many things;--and always well
practising what is already invented, and known for certain. In a
word, he is drilling to perfection, with assiduous rigor, the Prussian
Infantry to be the wonder of the world. He has fought with them, too, in
a conclusive manner; and is at all times ready for fighting.
He was in Malplaquet with them, if only as volunteer on that occasion.
He commanded them in Blenheim itself; stood, in the right or Eugene wing
of that famed Battle of Blenheim, fiercely at bay, when the Austrian
Cavalry had all fled;--fiercely volleying, charging, dexterously
wheeling and manoeuvring; sticking to his ground with a mastiff-like
tenacity,--till Marlborough, and victory from the left, relieved him and
others. He was at the Bridge of Cassano; where Eugene and Vendome came
to hand-grips;--where Mirabeau's Grandfather, COL-D'ARGENT, got
his six-and-thirty wounds, and was "killed" as he used to term it.
[Carlyle's _Miscellanies,_ v. ? Mirabeau.] "The hottest fire I ever
saw," said Eugene, who had not seen Malplaquet at that time. While
Col-d'Argent sank collapsed upon the Bridge, and the horse charged
over him, and again charged, and beat and were beaten three several
times,--Anhalt-Dessau, impatient of such fiddling hither and thither,
swashed into the stream itself with his Prussian Foot: swashed through
it, waist-deep or breast-deep; and might have settled the matter, had
not his cartridges got wetted. Old King Friedrich rebuked him angrily
for his impetuosity in this matter, and the sad loss of men.
Then again he was at the Storming of the Lines of Turin,--Eugene's feat
of 1706, and a most volcanic business;--was the first man that got-over
the entrenchment there. Foremost man; face all black with the smoke of
gunpowder, only channelled here and there with rivulets of sweat;--not
a lovely phenomenon to the French in the interior! Who still fought
like madmen, but were at length driven into heaps, and obliged to run. A
while before they ran, Anhalt-Dessau, noticing some Captain posted with
his company in a likely situation, stept aside to him for a moment, and
asked, "Am I wounded, think you?--No? Then have you anything to drink?"
and deliberately "drank a glass of aqua-vitae," the judicious Captain
carrying a pocket-pistol of that sort, in case of accident; and likewise
"eat, with great appetite, a bit of bread from one of the soldiers'
haversacks; saying, He believed the heat of the job was done, and that
there was no fear now!"--[_Des weltberumkten Leopoldi, &c._ (Anonymous,
by Ranfft, cited above), pp. 42-45, 52, 65.]
A man that has been in many wars; in whose rough head, are schemes
hatching. Any religion he has is of Protestant nature; but he has not
much,--on the doctrinal side, very little. Luther's Hymn, _Eine feste
Burg ist unser Gott,_ he calls "God Almighty's grenadier-march." On
joining battle, he audibly utters, with bared head, some growl of rugged
prayer, far from orthodox at times, but much in earnest: that lifting
of his hat for prayer, is his last signal on such occasions. He is very
cunning as required, withal; not disdaining the serpentine method when
no other will do. With Friedrich Wilhelm, who is his second-cousin
(Mother's grand-nephew, if the reader can count that), he is from of
old on the best footing, and contrives to be his Mentor in many things
besides War. Till his quarrel with Grumkow, of which we shall hear,
he took the lead in political advising, too; and had schemes, or was
thought to have, of which Queen Sophie was in much terror.
A tall, strong-boned, hairy man; with cloudy brows, vigilant swift eyes;
has "a bluish tint of skin," says Wilhelmina, "as if the gunpowder still
stuck to him." He wears long mustaches; triangular hat, plume and other
equipments, are of thrifty practical size. Can be polite enough
in speech; but hides much of his meaning, which indeed is mostly
inarticulate, and not always joyful to the by-stander. He plays rough
pranks, too, on occasion; and has a big horse-laugh in him, where there
is a fop to be roasted, or the like. We will leave him for the present,
in hope of other meetings.
Remarkable men, many of those old Prussian soldiers: of whom one wishes,
to no purpose, that there had more knowledge been attainable. But the
Books are silent; no painter, no genial seeing-man to paint with his
pen, was there. Grim hirsute Hyperborean figures, they pass mostly mute
before us: burly, surly; in mustaches, in dim uncertain garniture, of
which the buff-belts and the steel, are alone conspicuous. Growling in
guttural Teutsoh what little articulate meaning they had: spending,
of the inarticulate, a proportion in games, of chance, probably too
in drinking beer; yet having an immense overplus which they do not so
spend, but endeavor to utter in such working as there may be. So have
the Hyperboreans lived from of old. From the times of Tacitus and
Pytheas, not to speak of Odin and Japhet, what hosts of them have
marched across Existence, in that manner;--and where is the memory that
would, even if it could, speak of them all!--
We will hope the mind of our little Fritz has powers of assimilation.
Bayle-Calvin logics, and shadows of Versailles, on this hand, and
gunpowder Leopolds and inarticulate Hyperboreans on that: here is a wide
diversity of nutriment, all rather tough in quality, provided for the
young soul. Innumerable unconscious inferences he must have drawn in his
little head! Prince Leopold's face, with the whiskers and blue skin,
I find he was wont, at after periods, to do in caricature, under the
figure of a Cat's;--horror and admiration not the sole feelings raised
in him by the Field-Marshal.--For bodily nourishment he had "beer-soup;"
a decided Spartan tone prevailing, wherever possible, in the breeding
and treatment of him.
And we need not doubt, by far the most important element of his
education was the unconscious Apprenticeship he continually served to
such a Spartan as King Friedrich Wilhelm. Of whose works and ways he
could not help taking note, angry or other, every day and hour; nor in
the end, if he were intelligent, help understanding them, and learning
from them. A harsh Master and almost half-mad, as it many times seemed
to the poor Apprentice; yet a true and solid one, whose real wisdom was
worth that of all the others, as he came at length to recognize.