Amid such commotion of the foreign elements and the domestic, an
important change occurs in the Crown-Prince's course of schooling. It is
decided that, whatever be his progress in the speculative branches, it
is time he should go into the Army, and practically learn soldiering.
In his fourteenth year, 3d May, 1725, [Preuss, i. 26; 106; and _Buch fur
Jedermann_ (a minor book of his, on the same subject, Berlin, 1837),
ii. 13.] not long before the Treaty of Hanover, he was formally named
Captain, by Papa in War-council. Grenadier Guards, Potsdam Lifeguards,
to be the regiment; and next year he is nominated Major, and, a vacancy
occurring, appointed to begin actual duty. It is on the "20th of August,
1726, that he first leads out his battalion to the muster," on those
terms. His age is not yet fifteen by four months;--a very tiny Major
among those Potsdam giants; but by rank, we observe, he rides; and his
horse is doubtless of the due height. And so the tiny Cadet-drillings
have ended; long Files of Giants, splendent in gold-lace and
grenadier-caps, have succeeded; and earnest work instead of mimic, in
that matter, has begun.
However it may have fared with his other school-lessons, here now is a
school-form he is advanced to, in which there will be no resource but
learning. Bad spelling might be overlooked by those that had charge of
it; bad drilling is not permissible on any terms. We need not doubt the
Crown-Prince did his soldier-duty faithfully, and learned in every point
the conduct of an officer: penalty as of Rhadamanthus waited upon all
failure there. That he liked it is by no means said; he much disliked
it, and his disgusts were many. An airy young creature:--and it was
in this time to give one instance, that that shearing of his locks
occurred: which was spoken of above, where the Court-Chirurgus proved so
merciful. To clog the winged Psyche in ever-returning parade-routine and
military pipe-clay,--it seems very cruel. But it is not to be altered:
in spite of one's disgusts, the dull work, to the last item of it,
has daily to be done. Which proved infinitely beneficial to the
Crown-Prince, after all. Hereby, to his Athenian-French elegancies,
and airy promptitudes and brilliancies, there shall lie as basis an
adamantine Spartanism and Stoicism; very rare, but very indispensable,
for such a superstructure. Well exemplified, through after life, in this
Crown-Prince.
OF THE POTSDAM GIANTS, AS A FACT.
His regiment was the Potsdam Grenadier Guard; that unique
giant-regiment, of which the world has heard so much in a vague
half-mythical way. The giant-regiment was not a Myth, however, but a
big-boned expensive Fact, tramping very hard upon the earth at one time,
though now gone all to the ghostly state. As it was a CLASS-BOOK, so
to speak, of our Friedrich's,--Class-Book (printed in huge type) for a
certain branch of his schooling, the details of which are so dim, though
the general outcome of it proved so unforgettable,--readers, apart from
their curiosity otherwise, may as well take a glimpse of it on this
occasion. Vanished now, and grown a Giant Phantom, the like of it hardly
again to be in this world; and by accident, the very smallest Figure
ever ranked in it makes it memorable there!--
With a wise instinct, Friedrich Wilhelm had discerned that all things
in Prussia must point towards his Army; that his Army was the heart and
pith; the State being the tree, every branch and leaf bound, after
its sort, to be nutritive and productive for the Army's behoof. That,
probably for any Nation in the long-run, and certainly for the Prussian
Nation straightway, life or death depends on the Army: Friedrich
Wilhelm's head, in an inarticulate manner, was full of this just notion;
and all his life was spent in organizing it to a practical fact. The
more of potential battle, the more of life is in us: a MAXIMUM of
potential battle, therefore; and let it be the OPTIMUM in quality! How
Friedrich Wilhelm cared, day and night, with all his heart and all his
soul, to bring his Army to the supreme pitch, we have often heard; and
the more we look into his ways, the more we are impressed with that
fact. It was the central thing for him; all other things circulating
towards it, deriving from it: no labor too great, and none too little,
to be undergone for such an object. He watched over it like an Argus,
with eyes that reached everywhere. Discipline shall be as exact as
Euclid;--short of perfection we do not stop! Discipline and ever better
discipline; enforcement of the rule in all points, improvement of the
rule itself where possible, were the great Drill-sergeant's continual
care. Daily had some loop fallen, which might have gone ravelling far
enough; but daily was he there to pick it up again, and keep the web
unrent and solidly progressive.
We said, it was the "poetic ideal" of Friedrich Wilhelm; who is a dumb
poet in several particulars,--and requires the privileges of genius
from those that READ his dumb poem. It must be owned he rises into the
fantastic here and there; and has crotchets of ultraperfection for his
Army, which are not rational at all. Crotchets that grew ever madder,
the farther he followed them. This Lifeguard Regiment of foot, for
instance, in which the Crown-Prince now is,--Friedrich Wilhelm got it
in his Father's time, no doubt a regiment then of fair qualities; and he
has kept drilling it, improving it, as poets polish stanzas, unweariedly
ever since:--and see now what it has grown to! A Potsdam Giant Regiment,
such as the world never saw, before or since. Three Battalions of
them,--two always here at Potsdam doing formal lifeguard duty, the third
at Brandenburg on drill; 800 to the Battalion,--2,400 sons of Anak in
all. Sublime enough, hugely perfect to the royal eye, such a mass
of shining giants, in their long-drawn regularities and mathematical
manoeuvrings,--like some streak of Promethean lightning, realized here
at last, in the vulgar dusk of things!
Truly they are men supreme in discipline, in beauty of equipment; and
the shortest man of them rises, I think, towards seven feet, some are
nearly nine feet high. Men from all countries; a hundred and odd come
annually, as we saw, from Russia,--a very precious windfall: the rest
have been collected, crimped, purchased out of every European country,
at enormous expense, not to speak of other trouble to his Majesty. James
Kirkman, an Irish recruit of good inches, cost him 1,200 pounds before
he could be got inveigled, shipped and brought safe to hand. The
documents are yet in existence; [Forster, _Handbuch der Geschichte,
Geographie und Statistik des Preussischen Reichs_ (Berlin, 1820), iv.
130, 132;--not in a very lucid state.] and the Portrait of this Irish
fellow-citizen himself, who is by no means a beautiful man. Indeed, they
are all portrayed; all the privates of this distinguished Regiment are,
if anybody cared to look at them--Redivanoff from Moscow seems of
far better bone than Kirkman, though still more stolid of aspect. One
Hohmann, a born Prussian, was so tall, you could not, though yourself
tall, touch his bare crown with your hand; August the Strong of Poland
tried, on one occasion, and could not. Before Hohmann turned up, there
had been "Jonas the Norwegian Blacksmith,", also a dreadfully tall
monster. Giant "Macdoll,"--who was to be married, no consent asked on
EITHER side, to the tall young woman, which latter turned out to be a
decrepit OLD woman (all Jest-Books know the myth),--he also was an Irish
Giant; his name probably M'Dowal. [Forster, _ Preussens Helden im Krieg
und Frieden_ (Berlin, l848), i. 531; no date to the story, no evidence
what grain of truth may be in it.] This Hohmann was now FLUGELMANN
("fugleman" as we have named it, leader of the file), the Tallest of the
Regiment, a very mountain of pipe-clayed flesh and bone.
Here, in reference to one other of those poor Giants, is an Anecdote
from Fassmann (who is very full on this subject of the Giants; abstruse
Historical Fassmann, often painfully cited by us): a most small
Anecdote, but then an indisputably certain one;--which brings back to
us, in a strange way, the vanished Time and its populations; as the
poorest authentic wooden lucifer may do, kindling suddenly, and'
peopling the void Night for moments, to the seeing eye!--
Fassmann, a very dark German literary man, in obsolete costume and
garniture, how living or what doing we cannot guess, found himself at
Paris, gazing about, in the year 1713; where, among other things, the
Fair of St. Germain was going on. Loud, large Fair of St. Germain,
"which lasts from Candlemas to the Monday before Easter;" and Fassmann
one day took a walk of contemplation through the same. Much noise,
gesticulation, little meaning. Show-booths, temporary theatres,
merry-andrews, sleight-of-hand men; and a vast public, drinking,
dancing, gambling, flirting, as its wont is. Nothing new for us there;
new only that it all lies five generations from us now. Did "the Old
Pretender," who was then in his expectant period, in this same village
of St. Germain, see it too, as Fassmann did? And Louis XIV., he is at
Versailles; drooping fast, very dull to his Maintenon. And our little
Fritz in Berlin is a child in arms;--and the world is all awake as
usual, while Fassmann strolls through this noisy inanity of show-booths,
in the year 1713.
Strolling along, Fassmann came upon a certain booth with an enormous
Picture hung aloft in front of it: "Picture of a very tall man, in
HEYDUC livery, coat reaching to his ankles, in grand peruke, cap and
big heron-plume, with these words, 'LE GEANT ALLEMAND (German Giant),'
written underneath. Partly from curiosity, partly "for country's sake,"
Fassmann expended twopence; viewed the gigantic fellow-creature; admits
he had never seen one so tall; though "Bentenrieder, the Imperial
Diplomatist," thought by some to be the tallest of men, had come athwart
him once. This giant's name was Muller; birthplace the neighborhood of
Weissenfels;--"a Saxon like myself. He had a small German Wife, not
half his size. He made money readily, showing himself about, in France,
England, Holland;"--and Fassmann went his way, thinking no more of the
fellow.--But now, continues Fassmann:--
"Coming to Potsdam, thirteen years after, in the spring of 1726, by his
Majesty's order, to"--in fact, to read the Newspapers to his Majesty,
and be generally useful, chiefly in the Tobacco-College, as we shall
discover,--"what was my surprise to find this same 'GEANT ALLEMAND'
of St. Germain ranked among the King's Grenadiers! No doubt of the
identity: I renewed acquaintance with the man; his little German Wife
was dead; but he had got an English one instead, an uncommonly shifty
creature. They had a neat little dwelling-house [as most of the married
giants had], near the Palace: here the Wife sold beer [brandy not
permissible on any terms], and lodged travellers;--I myself have lodged
there on occasion. In the course of some years, the man took swelling in
the legs; good for nothing as a grenadier; and was like to fall heavy
on society. But no, his little Wife snatched him up, easily getting his
discharge; carried him over with her to England, where he again became a
show-giant, and they were doing very well, when last heard of,"--in the
Country-Wakes of George II.'s early time. And that is the real Biography
of one Potsdam Giant, by a literary gentleman who had lodged with him on
occasion. [Fassmann, pp. 723-730.]
The pay of these sublime Footguards is greatly higher than common; they
have distinguished privileges and treatment: on the other hand, their
discipline is nonpareil, and discharge is never to be dreamt of, while
strength lasts. Poor Kirkman, does he sometimes think of the Hill of
Howth, and that he will never see it more? Kirkman, I judge, is not
given to thought;--considers that he has tobacco here, and privileges
and perquisites; and that Howth, and Heaven itself, is inaccessible to
many a man.
FRIEDRICH WILHELM'S RECRUITING DIFFICULTIES.
Tall men, not for this regiment only, had become a necessary of life to
Friedrich Wilhelm. Indispensable to him almost as his daily bread, To
his heart there is no road so ready as that of presenting a tall man
or two. Friedrich Wilhelm's regiments are now, by his exact new
regulations, levied and recruited each in its own Canton, or specific
district: there all males as soon as born are enrolled; liable to serve,
when they have grown to years and strength. All grown men (under certain
exceptions, as of a widow's eldest son, or of the like evidently ruinous
cases) are liable to serve; Captain of the Regiment and AMTMANN of the
Canton settle between them which grown man it shall be. Better for you
not to be tall! In fact it is almost a kindness of Heaven to be gifted
with some safe impediment of body, slightly crooked back or the like, if
you much dislike the career of honor under Friedrich Wilhelm. A general
shadow of unquiet apprehension we can well fancy hanging over those
rural populations, and much unpleasant haggling now and then;--nothing
but the King's justice that can be appealed to. King's justice, very
great indeed, but heavily checked by the King's value for handsome
soldiers.
Happily his value for industrial laborers and increase of population is
likewise great. Townsfolk, skilful workmen as the theory supposes, are
exempt; the more ingenious classes, generally, his Majesty exempts in
this respect, to encourage them in others. For, on the whole, he is not
less a Captain of Work, to his Nation, than of other things. What he did
for Prussia in the way of industries, improvements, new manufactures,
new methods; in settling "colonies," tearing up drowned bogs and
subduing them into dry cornfields; in building, draining, digging, and
encouraging or forcing others to do so, would take a long chapter. He is
the enemy of Chaos, not the friend of it, wherever you meet with him.
For example, Potsdam itself. Potsdam, now a pleasant, grassy, leafy
place, branching out extensively in fine stone architecture, with swept
pavements; where, as in other places, the traveller finds land and water
separated into two firmaments,--Friedrich Wilhelm found much of it a
quagmire, land and water still weltering in one. In these very years,
his cuttings, embankments, buildings, pile-drivings there, are enormous;
and his perseverance needs to be invincible. For instance, looking
out, one morning after heavy rain, upon some extensive anti-quagmire
operations and strong pile-drivings, he finds half a furlong of his
latest heavy piling clean gone. What in the world has become of it?
Pooh, the swollen lake has burst it topsy-turvy; and it floats yonder,
bottom uppermost, a half-furlong of distracted liquid-peat. Whereat his
Majesty gave a loud laugh, says Bielfeld, [Baron de Bielfeld, _Lettres
Familieres_ (second edition, a Leide, 1767), i. 31.] and commenced anew.
The piles now stand firm enough, like the rest of the Earth's crust, and
carry strong ashlar houses and umbrageous trees for mankind; and trivial
mankind can walk in clean pumps there, shuddering or sniggering at
Friedrich Wilhelm, as their humor may be.
No danger of this "Canton-system" of recruitment to the more ingenious
classes, who could do better than learn drill. Nor, to say truth, does
the poor clayey peasant suffer from it, according to his apprehensions.
Often perhaps, could he count profit and loss, he might find himself
a gainer: the career of honor turns out to be, at least, a career of
practical Stoicism and Spartanism; useful to any peasant or to any
prince. Cleanliness, of person and even of mind; fixed rigor of method,
sobriety, frugality, these are virtues worth acquiring. Sobriety in
the matter of drink is much attended to here: his Majesty permits no
distillation of strong-waters in Potsdam, or within so many miles;
[Fassmann, p. 728.] nor is sale of such allowed, except in the most
intensely select manner. The soldier's pay is in the highest degree
exiguous; not above three halfpence a day, for a common foot-soldier,
in addition to what rations he has:--but it is found adequate to its
purpose, too; supports the soldier in sound health, vigorously fit for
his work; into which points his Majesty looks with his own eyes, and
will admit no dubiety. Often, too, if not already OFTENEST (as it
ultimately grew to be), the peasant-soldier gets home for many months of
the year, a soldier-ploughman; and labors for his living in the old way.
His Captain (it is one of the Captain's perquisites, who is generally a
veteran of fifty, with a long Spartan training, before he gets so high)
pockets the pay of all these furloughs, supernumerary to the real work
of the regiment;--and has certain important furnishings to yield in
return.
At any rate, enrolment, in time of peace, cannot fall on many: three or
four recruits in the year, to replace vacancies, will carry the Canton
through its crisis. For we are to note withal, the third part of every
regiment can, and should by rule, consist of "foreigners,"--men not born
Prussians. These are generally men levied in the Imperial Free-towns;
"in the REICH" or Empire, as they term it; that is to say, or is mainly
to say, in the countries of Germany that are not Austrian or Prussian.
For this foreign third-part too, the recruits must be got; excuses
not admissible for Captain or Colonel; nothing but recruits of the due
inches will do. Captain and Colonel (supporting their enterprise on
frugal adequate "perquisites," hinted of above) have to be on the
outlook; vigilantly, eagerly; and must contrive to get them. Nay, we can
take supernumerary recruits; and have in fact always on hand, attached
to each regiment, a stock of such. Any number of recruits, that stand
well on their legs, are welcome; and for a tall man there is joy in
Potsdam, almost as if he were a wise man or a good man.
The consequence is, all countries, especially all German countries, are
infested with a new species of predatory two-legged animals: Prussian
recruiters. They glide about, under disguise if necessary; lynx-eyed,
eager almost as the Jesuit hounds are; not hunting the souls of men, as
the spiritual Jesuits do, but their bodies in a merciless carnivorous
manner. Better not to be too tall, in any country, at present! Irish
Kirkman could not be protected by the aegis of the British Constitution
itself. In general, however, the Prussian recruiter, on British ground,
reports, That the people are too well off, that there is little to be
done in those parts. A tall British sailor, if we pick him up
strolling about Memel or the Baltic ports, is inexorably claimed by the
Diplomatists; no business do-able till after restoration of him; and
he proves a mere loss to us. [Despatches in the State-Paper Office.]
Germany, Holland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, these are the fruitful
fields for us, and there we do hunt with some vigor.
For example, in the town of Julich there lived and worked a tall young
carpenter: one day a well-dressed positive-looking gentleman ("Baron von
Hompesch," the records name him) enters the shop; wants "a stout chest,
with lock on it, for household purposes; must be of such and such
dimensions, six feet six in length especially, and that is an
indispensable point,--in fact it will be longer than yourself, I think,
Herr Zimmermann: what is the cost; when can it be ready?" Cost, time,
and the rest are settled. "A right stout chest, then; and see you don't
forget the size; if too short, it will be of no use to me: mind;"--"JA
WOHL! GEWISS!" And the positive-looking, well-clad gentleman goes his
ways. At the appointed day he reappears; the chest is ready;--we hope,
an unexceptionable article? "Too short, as I dreaded!" says the positive
gentleman. "Nay, your honor," says the carpenter, "I am certain it is
six feet six!" and takes out his foot-rule.--"Pshaw, it was to be longer
than yourself." "Well, it is."--"No it isn't!" The carpenter, to end the
matter, gets into his chest; and will convince any and all mortals. No
sooner is he in, rightly flat, than the positive gentleman, a Prussian
recruiting officer in disguise, slams down the lid upon him; locks it;
whistles in three stout fellows, who pick up the chest, gravely walk
through the streets with it, open it in a safe place; and find-horrible
to relate--the poor carpenter dead; choked by want of air in this
frightful middle-passage of his. [Forster, ii. 305, 306; Pollnitz, ii.
518, 519.] Name of the Town is given, Julich as above; date not. And if
the thing had been only a popular Myth, is it not a significant one?
But it is too true; the tall carpenter lay dead, and Hompesch got
"imprisoned for life" by the business.
Burgermeisters of small towns have been carried off; in one case, "a
rich merchant in Magdeburg," whom it cost a large sum to get free
again. [Stenzel, iii. 356.] Prussian recruiters hover about barracks,
parade-grounds, in Foreign Countries; and if they see a tall soldier
(the Dutch have had instances, and are indignant at them), will
persuade him to desert,--to make for the country where soldier-merit is
understood, and a tall fellow of parts will get his pair of colors in
no-time.
But the highest stretch of their art was probably that done on
the Austrian Ambassador,--tall Herr von Bentenrieder; tallest of
Diplomatists; whom Fassmann, till the Fair of St. Germain, had
considered the tallest of men. Bentenrieder was on his road as Kaiser's
Ambassador to George I., in those Congress-of-Cambrai times; serenely
journeying on; when, near by Halberstadt, his carriage broke. Carriage
takes some time in mending; the tall Diplomatic Herr walks on, will
stretch his long legs, catch a glimpse of the Town withal, till they get
it ready again. And now, at some Guard-house of the place, a Prussian
Officer inquires, not too reverently of a nobleman without carriage,
"Who are you?" "Well," answered he smiling, "I am BOTSCHAFTER
(Message-bearer) from his Imperial Majesty. And who may you be that
ask?"--"To the Guard-house with us!" Whither he is marched accordingly.
"Kaiser's messenger, why not?" Being a most tall handsome man, this
Kaiser's BOTSCHAFTER, striding along on foot here, the Guard-house
Officials have decided to keep him, to teach him Prussian
drill-exercise;--and are thrown into a singular quandary, when his
valets and suite come up, full of alarm dissolving into joy, and call
him "Excellenz!" [Pollnitz, ii. 207-209.]
Tall Herr von Bentenrieder accepted the prostrate apology of these
Guard-house Officials. But he naturally spoke of the matter to George
I.; whose patience, often fretted by complaints on that head, seems to
have taken fire at this transcendent instance of Prussian insolency. In
consequence of this adventure, he commenced, says Pollnitz, a system
of decisive measures; of reprisals even, and of altogether peremptory,
minatory procedures, to clear Hanover of this nuisance; and to make it
cease, in very fact, and not in promise and profession merely.
These were the first rubs Queen Sophie met with, in pushing on the
Double-Marriage; and sore rubs they were, though she at last got over
them. Coming on the back of that fine Charlottenburg Visit, almost
within year and day, and directly in the teeth of such friendly aspects
and prospects, this conduct on the part of his Britannic Majesty much
grieved and angered Friedrich Wilhelm; and in fact involved him in
considerable practical troubles.
For it was the signal of a similar set of loud complaints, and menacing
remonstrances (with little twinges of fulfilment here and there) from
all quarters of Germany; a tempest of trouble and public indignation
rising everywhere, and raining in upon Friedrich Wilhelm and this
unfortunate Hobby of his. No riding of one's poor Hobby in peace
henceforth. Friedrich Wilhelm always answered, what was only
superficially the fact, That HE knew nothing of these violences and acts
of ill-neighborship; he, a just King, was sorrier than any man to hear
of them; and would give immediate order that they should end. But they
always went on again, much the same; and never did end. I am sorry
a just King, led astray by his Hobby, answers thus what is only
superficially the fact. But it seems he cannot help it: his Hobby is too
strong for him; regardless of curb and bridle in this instance. Let us
pity a man of genius, mounted on so ungovernable a Hobby; leaping
the barriers, in spite of his best resolutions. Perhaps the poetic
temperament is more liable to such morbid biases, influxes of
imaginative crotchet, and mere folly that cannot be cured? Friedrich
Wilhelm never would or could dismount from his Hobby: but he rode
him under much sorrow henceforth; under showers of anger and
ridicule;--contumelious words and procedures, as it were SAXA ET FAECES,
battering round him, to a heavy extent; the rider a victim of Tragedy
and Farce both at once.
QUEEN SOPHIE'S TROUBLES: GRUMKOW WITH THE OLD DESSAUER, AND GRUMKOW
WITHOUT HIM.
Queen Sophie had, by delicate management, got over those first rubs, aud
arrived at a Treaty of Hanover, and clear ground again; far worse rubs
lay ahead; but smooth travelling, towards such a goal, was not possible
for this Queen. Poor Lady, her Court, as we discern from Wilhelmina
and the Books, is a sad welter of intrigues, suspicions; of treacherous
chambermaids, head-valets, pickthank scouts of official gentlemen and
others striving to supplant one another. Satan's Invisible World very
busy against Queen Sophie! Under any terms, much more under those of the
Double-Marriage, her place in a kindly but suspicious Husband's favor
was difficult to maintain. Restless aspirants, climbing this way or
that, by ladder-steps discoverable in this abstruse element, are never
wanting, and have the due eavesdropping satellites, now here, now there.
Queen Sophie and her party have to walk warily, as if among precipices
and pitfalls. Of all which wide welter of extinct contemptibilities,
then and there so important, here and now become minus quantities, we
again notice the existence, but can undertake no study or specification
whatever. Two Incidents, the latter of them dating near the point where
we now are, will sufficiently instruct the reader what a welter this
was, in which Queen Sophie and her bright little Son, the new Major of
the Potsdam Giants, had to pass their existence.
Incident First fell out some six years ago or more,--in 1719, year of
the Heidelberg Protestants, of Clement the Forger, when his Majesty
"slept for weeks with a pistol under his pillow," and had other
troubles. His Majesty, on one of his journeys, which were always many,
was taken suddenly ill at Brandenburg, that year: so violently ill, that
thinking himself about to die, he sent for his good Queen, and made a
Will appointing her Regent in case of his decease. His Majesty quite
recovered before long. But Grumkow and the old Dessauer, main aspirants;
getting wind of this Will, and hunting out the truth of it,--what a
puddling of the waters these two made in consequence; stirring up mire
and dirt round the good Queen, finding she had been preferred to them!
[Wilhelmina, i. 26, 29.] Nay Wilhelmina, in her wild way, believes they
had, not long after, planned to "fire a Theatre" about the King, one
afternoon, in Berlin City, and take his life, thereby securing for
themselves such benefit in prospect as there might be! Not a doubt of
it, thinks Wilhelmina: "The young Margraf, [Born 1700 (see vol. v. p.
393.)] our precious Cousin, of Schwedt, is not he Sister's-son of that
Old Dessauer? Grandson of the Great Elector, even as Papa is. Papa once
killed (and our poor Crown-Prince also made away with),--that young
Margraf, and his blue Fox-tiger of an Uncle over him, is King in
Prussia! Obviously they meant to burn that Theatre, and kill Papa!" This
is Wilhelmina's distracted belief; as, doubtless, it was her Mother's
on the day in question: a jealous, much-suffering, transcendently
exasperated Mother, as we see.
Incident Second shows us those, two rough Gentlemen fallen out of
partnership, into open quarrel and even duel. "Duel at the Copenick
Gate," much noised of in the dull old Prussian Books,--though always in
a reserved manner; not even the DATE, as if that were dangerous, being
clearly given! It came in the wake of that Hanover Treaty, as is now
guessed; the two having taken opposite sides on that measure, and got
provoked into ripping up old sores in general. Dessau was AGAINST King
George and the Treaty, it appears; having his reasons, family-reasons
of old standing: Grumkow, a bribable gentleman, was FOR,--having also
perhaps his reasons. Enough, it came to altercations, objurgations
between the two; which rose ever higher,--rose at length to
wager-of-battle. Indignant challenge on the part of the Old Dessauer;
which, however, Grumkow, not regarded as a BARESARK in the fighting way,
regrets that his Christian principles do not, forsooth, allow him to
accept. The King is appealed to; the King, being himself, though an
orthodox Christian, yet a still more orthodox Soldier, decides That,
on the whole, General Grumkow cannot but accept this challenge from the
Field-marshal Prince of Dessau.
Dessau is on the field, at the Copenick Gate, accordingly,--late-autumn
afternoon (I calculate) of the year 1725;--waits patiently till Grumkow
make his appearance. Grumkow, with a chosen second, does at last appear;
advances pensively with slow steps. Gunpowder Dessau, black as a silent
thunder-cloud, draws his sword: and Grumkow--does not draw his; presents
it undrawn, with unconditional submission and apology: "Slay me, if
you like, old Friend, whom I have injured!" Whereat Dessau, uttering
no word, uttering only some contemptuous snort, turns his back on the
phenomenon; mounts his horse and rides home. [Pollnitz, ii. 212, 214.]
A divided man from this Grumkow henceforth. The Prince waited on her
Majesty; signified his sorrow for past estrangements; his great wish now
to help her, but his total inability, being ousted by Grumkow: We are
for Halle, Madam, where our Regiment is; there let us serve his Majesty,
since we cannot here! [Wilhelmina, i. 90, 93.]--And in fact the Old
Dessauer lives mostly there in time coming; sunk inarticulate in tactics
of a truly deep nature, not stranding on politics of a shallow;--a man
still memorable in the mythic traditions of that place. Better to drill
men to perfection, and invent iron ramrods, against the day they shall
be needed, than go jostling, on such terms, with cattle of the Grumkow
kind! And thus, we perceive, Grumkow is in, and the Old Dessauer
out; and there has been "a change of Ministry," change of
"Majesty's-Advisers," brought about;--may the Advice going be wiser now!
What the young Crown-Prince did, said, thought, in such environment,
of backstairs diplomacies, female sighs and aspirations, Grumkow duels,
drillings in the Giant Regiment, is not specified for us in the smallest
particular, in the extensive rubbish-books that have been written about
him. Ours is, to indicate that such environment was: how a lively soul,
acted on by it, did not fail to react, chameleon-like taking color
from it, and contrariwise taking color against it, must be left to the
reader's imagination--One thing we have gathered and will not forget,
That the Old Dessauer is out, and Grumkow in, that the rugged Son
of Gunpowder, drilling men henceforth at Halle, and in a dumb
way meditating tactics as few ever did, has no share in the foul
enchantments that now supervene at court.