This Siege of Stralsund, the last military scene of Charles XII., and
the FIRST ever practically heard of by our little Fritz, who is now
getting into his fourth year, and must have thought a great deal about
it in his little head,--Papa and even Mamma being absent on it, and such
a marching and rumoring going on all round him,--proved to be otherwise
of some importance to little Fritz.
Most of his Tutors were picked up by the careful Papa in this Stralsund
business. Duhan de Jandun, a young French gentleman, family-tutor to
General Count Dohna (a cousin of our Minister Dohna's), but fonder of
fighting than of teaching grammar; whom Friedrich Wilhelm found doing
soldier's work in the trenches, and liked the ways of; he, as the
foundation-stone of tutorage, is to be first mentioned. And then Count
Fink von Finkenstein, a distinguished veteran, high in command (of whose
qualities as Head-Tutor, or occasional travelling guardian Friedrich
Wilhelm had experience in his own young days [_Biographisches Lexikon
aaler Helden und Militairpersonen, welche sich in Preussischen Diensten
berumht gemacht haben_ (4 vols. Berlin, 1788), i. 418, ? Finkenatein.--A
praiseworthy, modest, highly correct Book, of its kind; which we
shall, in future, call _Militair-Lexikon,_ when referring to it.]); and
Lieutenant-Colonel Kalkstein, a prisoner-of-war from the Swedish side,
whom Friedrich Wilhelm, judging well of him, adopts into his own service
with this view: these three come all from Stralsund Siege; and were
of vital moment to our little Fritz in the subsequent time. Colonel
Seckendorf, again, who had a command in the four thousand Saxons here,
and refreshed into intimacy a transient old acquaintance with Friedrich
Wilhelm,--is not he too of terrible importance to Fritz and him? As we
shall see in time!--
For the rest, here is another little incident. We said it had been a
disappointment to Papa that his little Fritz showed almost no appetite
for soldiering, but found other sights more interesting to him than the
drill-ground. Sympathize, then, with the earnest Papa, as he returns
home one afternoon,--date not given, but to all appearance of that
year 1715, when there was such war-rumoring, and marching towards
Stralsund;--and found the little Fritz, with Wilhelmina looking over
him, strutting about, and assiduously beating a little drum.
The paternal heart ran over with glad fondness, invoking Heaven to
confirm the omen. Mother was told of it; the phenomenon was talked
of,--beautifulest, hopefulest of little drummers. Painter Pesne, a
French Immigrant, or Importee, of the last reign, a man of great skill
with his brush, whom History yet thanks on several occasions, was
sent for; or he heard of the incident, and volunteered his services. A
Portrait of little Fritz drumming, with Wilhelmina looking on; to which,
probably for the sake of color and pictorial effect, a Blackamoor,
aside with parasol in hand, grinning approbation, has been added,--was
sketched, and dexterously worked out in oil, by Painter Pesne. Picture
approved by mankind there and then. And it still hangs on the wall, in a
perfect state, in Charlottenburg Palace; where the judicious tourist may
see it without difficulty, and institute reflections on it.
A really graceful little Picture; and certainly, to Prussian men,
not without weight of meaning. Nor perhaps to Picture-Collectors and
Cognoscenti generally, of whatever country,--if they could forget, for
a moment, the correggiosity of Correggio, and the learned babble of the
Sale-room and varnishing Auctioneer; and think, "Why it is, probably,
that Pictures exist in this world, and to what end the divine art of
Painting was bestowed, by the earnest gods, upon poor mankind?" I could
advise it, once, for a little! Flaying of Saint Bartholomew, Rape of
Europa, Rape of the Sabines, Piping and Amours of goat-footed Pan,
Romulus suckled by the Wolf: all this, and much else of fabulous,
distant, unimportant, not to say impossible, ugly and unworthy, shall
pass without undue severity of criticism, in a Household of such
opulence as ours, where much goes to waste, and where things are not on
an earnest footing for this long while past! As Created Objects, or as
Phantasms of such, pictorially done, all this shall have much worth,
or shall have little. But I say, Here withal is one not phantasmal;
of indisputable certainty, home-grown, just commencing business, who
carried it far!
Fritz is still, if not in "long-clothes," at least in longish and
flowing clothes, of the petticoat sort, which look as of dark-blue
velvet, very simple, pretty and appropriate; in a cap of the same; has
a short raven's feather in the cap; and looks up, with a face and
eyes full of beautiful vivacity and child's enthusiasm, one of the
beautifulest little figures, while the little drum responds to his bits
of drumsticks. Sister Wilhelmina, taller by some three years, looks on
in pretty marching attitude, and with a graver smile. Blackamoor, and
accompaniments elegant enough; and finally the figure of a grenadier, on
guard, seen far off through an opening,--make up the background.
We have engravings of this Picture; which are of clumsy poor quality,
and misrepresent it much: an excellent Copy in oil, what might be called
almost a fac-simile and the perfection of a Copy, is now (1854) in Lord
Ashburton's Collection here in England. In the Berlin Galleries,--which
are made up, like other Galleries, of goat-footed Pan, Europa's Bull,
Romulus's She-Wolf, and the correggiosity of Correggio; and contain, for
instance, no Portrait of Frederick the Great; no Likenesses at all, or
next to none at all, of the noble series of Human Realities, or of
any part of them, who have sprung not from the idle brains of dreaming
Dilettanti, but from the Head of God Almighty, to make this poor
authentic Earth a little memorable for us, and to do a little work that
may be eternal there:--in those expensive Halls of "High Art" at Berlin,
there were, to my experience, few Pictures more agreeable than this of
Pesne's. Welcome, like one tiny islet of Reality amid the shoreless sea
of Phantasms, to the reflective mind, seriously loving and seeking
what is worthy and memorable, seriously hating and avoiding what is the
reverse, and intent not to play the dilettante in this world.
The same Pesne, an excellent Artist, has painted Friedrich as
Prince-Royal: a beautiful young man with MOIST-looking enthusiastic eyes
of extraordinary brilliancy, smooth oval face; considerably resembling
his Mother. After which period, authentic Pictures of Friedrich are
sought for to little purpose. For it seems he never sat to any
Painter, in his reigning days; and the Prussian Chodowiecki, [Pronounce
KODOV-YETSKI;--and endeavor to make some acquaintance with this
"Prussian Hogarth," who has real worth and originality.] Saxon Graff,
English Cunningham had to pick up his physiognomy from the distance,
intermittently, as they could. Nor is Rauch's grand equestrian Sculpture
a thing to be believed, or perhaps pretending much to be so. The
commonly received Portrait of Friedrich, which all German limners can
draw at once,--the cocked-hat, big eyes and alert air, reminding you of
some uncommonly brisk Invalid Drill-sergeant or Greenwich Pensioner, as
much as of a Royal Hero,--is nothing but a general extract and average
of all the faces of Friedrich, such as has been tacitly agreed upon;
and is definable as a received pictorial-myth, by no means as a fact, or
credible resemblance of life.
But enough now of Pictures. This of the Little Drummer, the painting and
the thing painted which remain to us, may be taken as Friedrich's first
appearance on the stage of the world; and welcomed accordingly. It is
one of the very few visualities or definite certainties we can lay hold
of, in those young years of his, and bring conclusively home to our
imagination, out of the waste Prussian dust-clouds of uninstructive
garrulity which pretend to record them for us. Whether it came into
existence as a shadowy emanation from the Stralsund Expedition, can only
be matter of conjecture. To judge by size, these figures must have been
painted about the year 1715; Fritz some three or four years old, his
sister Wilhelmina seven.
It remains only to be intimated, that Friedrich Wilhelm, for his part,
had got all he claimed from this Expedition: namely, Stettin with the
dependent Towns, and quietness in Pommern. Stettin was, from of old, the
capital of his own part of Pommern; thrown in along with the other parts
of Pommern, and given to Sweden (from sheer necessity, it was avowed),
at the Peace of Westphalia, sixty years ago or more:--and now, by
good chance, it has come back. Wait another hundred years, and perhaps
Swedish Pommern altogether will come back! But from all this Friedrich
Wilhelm is still far. Stettin and quiet are all he dreams of demanding
there.
Stralsund he did not reckon his; left it with the Danes, to hold in pawn
till some general Treaty. Nor was there farther outbreak of war in those
regions; though actual Treaty of Peace did not come till 1720, and
make matters sure. It was the new Queen of Sweden, Ulrique
Eleonora (Charles's younger Sister, wedded to the young Landgraf of
Hessen-Cassel),--much aided by an English Envoy,--who made this Peace
with Friedrich Wilhelm. A young English Envoy, called Lord Carteret, was
very helpful in this matter; one of his first feats in the diplomatic
world. For which Peace, [Stockholm, 21st January, 1720: in Mauvillon
(i. 380-417) the Document itself at large.] Friedrich Wilhelm was so
thankful, good pacific armed-man, that happening to have a Daughter born
to him just about that time, he gave the little creature her Swedish
Majesty's name; a new "Ulrique," who grew to proper stature, and became
notable in Sweden, herself, by and by. [Louisa Ulrique, born 24th July,
1720; Queen of Sweden in time coming.]