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History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 19
T >> Thomas Carlyle >> History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 19 Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 Prepared by D.R. Thompson
BOOK XIX.
FRIEDRICH LIKE TO BE OVERWHELMED IN
THE SEVEN-YEARS WAR.
1759-1760.
Chapter I.
PRELIMINARIES TO A FOURTH CAMPAIGN.
The posting of the Five Armies this Winter--Five of them in
Germany, not counting the Russians, who have vanished to Cimmeria
over the horizon, for their months of rest--is something wonderful,
and strikes the picturesque imagination. Such a Chain of Posts, for
length, if for nothing else! From the centre of Bohemia eastward,
Daun's Austrians are spread all round the western Silesian Border
and the southeastern Saxon; waited on by Prussians, in more or less
proximity. Next are the Reichsfolk; scattered over Thuringen and
the Franconian Countries; fronting partly into Hessen and Duke
Ferdinand's outskirts:--the main body of Duke Ferdinand is far to
westward, in Munster Country, vigilant upon Contades, with the
Rhine between. Contades and Soubise,--adjoining on the Reichsfolk
are these Two French Armies: Soubise's, some 25,000, in Frankfurt-
Ems Country, between the Mayn and the Lahn, with its back to the
Rhine; then Contades, onward to Maes River and the Dutch Borders,
with his face to the Rhine,--and Duke Ferdinand observant of him on
the other side. That is the "CORDON of Posts" or winter-quarters
this Year. "From the Giant Mountains and the Metal Mountains, to
the Ocean;--to the mouth of Rhine," may we not say; "and back again
to the Swiss Alps or springs of Rhine, that Upper-Rhine Country
being all either French or Austrian, and a basis for Soubise?"
[Archenholtz, i. 306.] Not to speak of Ocean itself, and its winged
War-Fleets, lonesomely hovering and patrolling; or of the Americas
and Indies beyond!
"This is such a Chain of mutually vigilant Winter-quarters," says
Archenholtz, "as was never drawn in Germany, or in Europe, before."
Chain of about 300,000 fighting men, poured out in that lengthy
manner. Taking their winter siesta there, asleep with one eye open,
till reinforced for new business of death and destruction against
Spring. Pathetic surely, as well as picturesque. "Three Campaigns
there have already been," sighs the peaceable observer:
"Three Campaigns, surely furious enough; Eleven Battles in them,"
[Stenzel, v. 185. This, I suppose, would be his enumeration:
LOBOSITZ (1756); PRAG, KOLIN, Hastenbeck, Gross-Jagersdorf,
ROSSBACH, Breslau, LEUTHEN, (1757); Crefeld, ZORNDORF, HOCHKIRCH
(1758): "eleven hitherto in all."] a Prag, a Kolin, Leuthen,
Rossbach;--must there still be others, then, to the misery of poor
mankind?" thus sigh many peaceful persons. Not considering what
are, and have been, the rages, the iniquities, the loud and silent
deliriums, the mad blindnesses and sins of mankind; and what
amount, of CALCINING these may reasonably take. Not calcinable in
three Campaigns at all, it would appear! Four more Campaigns are
needed: then there will be innocuous ashes in quantity; and a
result unexpected, and worth marking in World-History.
It is notably one of Friedrich's fond hopes,--of which he keeps up
several, as bright cloud-hangings in the haggard inner world he now
has,--that Peace is just at hand; one right struggle more, and
Peace must come! And on the part of Britannic George and him,
repeated attempts were made,--one in the end of this Year
1759;--but one and all of them proved futile, and, unless for
accidental reasons, need not be mentioned here. Many men, in all
nations, long for Peace; but there are Three Women at the top of
the world who do not; their wrath, various in quality, is great in
quantity, and disasters do the reverse of appeasing it.
The French people, as is natural, are weary of a War which yields
them mere losses and disgraces; "War carried on for Austrian whims,
which likewise seem to be impracticable!" think they. And their
Bernis himself, Minister of Foreign Affairs, who began this sad
French-Austrian Adventure, has already been remonstrating with
Kaunitz, and grumbling anxiously, "Could not the Swedes, or
somebody, be got to mediate? Such a War is too ruinous!" Hearing
which, the Pompadour is shocked at the favorite creature of her
hands; hastens to dismiss him ("Be Cardinal then, you ingrate of a
Bernis; disappear under that Red Hat!")--and appoints, in his
stead, one Choiseul (known hitherto as STAINVILLE, Comte de
Stainville, French Excellency at Vienna, but now made Duke on this
promotion), Duc de Choiseul; [Minister of Foreign Affairs, "11th
November, 1758" (Barbier, iv. 294).] who is a Lorrainer, or Semi-
Austrian, by very birth; and probably much fitter for the place.
A swift, impetuous kind of man, this Choiseul, who is still rather
young than otherwise; plenty of proud spirit in him, of shifts,
talent of the reckless sort; who proved very notable in France for
the next twenty years.
French trade being ruined withal, money is running dreadfully low:
but they appoint a new Controller-General; a M. de Silhouette, who
is thought to have an extraordinary creative genius in Finance.
Had he but a Fortunatus-Purse, how lucky were it! With Fortunatus
Silhouette as purse-holder, with a fiery young Choiseul on this
hand, and a fiery old Belleisle on that, Pompadour meditates great
things this Year,--Invasions of England; stronger German Armies;
better German Plans, and slashings home upon Hanover itself, or the
vital point;--and flatters herself, and her poor Louis, that there
is on the anvil, for 1759, such a French Campaign as will perhaps
astonish Pitt and another insolent King. Very fixed, fell and
feminine is the Pompadour's humor in this matter. Nor is the
Czarina's less so; but more, if possible; unappeasable except by
death. Imperial Maria Theresa has masculine reasons withal;
great hopes, too, of late. Of the War's ending till flat
impossibility stop it, there is no likelihood.
To Pitt this Campaign 1759, in spite of bad omens at the outset,
proved altogether splendid: but greatly the reverse on Friedrich's
side; to whom it was the most disastrous and unfortunate he had yet
made, or did ever make. Pitt at his zenith in public reputation;
Friedrich never so low before, nothing seemingly but extinction
near ahead, when this Year ended. The truth is, apart from his
specific pieces of ill-luck, there had now begun for Friedrich a
new rule of procedure, which much altered his appearance in the
world. Thrice over had he tried by the aggressive or invasive
method; thrice over made a plunge at the enemy's heart, hoping so
to disarm or lame him: but that, with resources spent to such a
degree, is what he cannot do a fourth time: he is too weak
henceforth to think of that.
Prussia has always its King, and his unrivalled talent; but that is
pretty much the only fixed item: Prussia VERSUS France, Austria,
Russia, Sweden and the German Reich, what is it as a field of
supplies for war! Except its King, these are failing, year by year;
and at a rate fatally SWIFT in comparison. Friedrich cannot now do
Leuthens, Rossbachs; far-shining feats of victory, which astonish
all the world. His fine Prussian veterans have mostly perished;
and have been replaced by new levies and recruits; who are inferior
both in discipline and native quality;--though they have still,
people say, a noteworthy taste of the old Prussian sort in them;
and do, in fact, fight well to the last. But "it is observable,"
says Retzow somewhere, and indeed it follows from the nature of the
case, "that while the Prussian Army presents always its best kind
of soldiers at the beginning of a war, Austria, such are its
resources in population, always improves in that particular, and
its best troops appear in the last campaigns." In a word, Friedrich
stands on the defensive henceforth; disputing his ground inch by
inch: and is reduced, more and more, to battle obscurely with a
hydra-coil of enemies and impediments; and to do heroisms which
make no noise in the Gazettes. And, alas, which cannot figure in
History either,--what is more a sorrow to me here!
Friedrich, say all judges of soldiership and human character who
have studied Friedrich sufficiently, "is greater than ever," in
these four Years now coming. [Berenhorst, in Kriegskunst;
Retzow; &c.] And this, I have found more and more to
be a true thing; verifiable and demonstrable in time and place,--
though, unluckily for us, hardly in this time or this place at all!
A thing which cannot, by any method, be made manifest to the
general reader; who delights in shining summary feats, and is
impatient of tedious preliminaries and investigations,--especially
of MAPS, which are the indispensablest requisite of all. A thing,
in short, that belongs peculiarly to soldier-students; who can
undergo the dull preliminaries, most dull but most inexorably
needed; and can follow out, with watchful intelligence, and with a
patience not to be wearied, the multifarious topographies, details
of movements and manoeuvrings, year after year, on such a Theatre
of War. What is to be done with it here! If we could, by
significant strokes, indicate, under features true so far as they
went, the great wide fire-flood that was raging round the world;
if we could, carefully omitting very many things, omit of the
things intelligible and decipherable that concern Friedrich
himself, nothing that had meaning: IF indeed--! But it is idle
preluding. Forward again, brave reader, under such conditions as
there are!
Friedrich's Winter in Breslau was of secluded, silent, sombre
character, this time; nothing of stir in it but from work only:
in marked contrast with the last, and its kindly visitors and
gayeties. A Friedrich given up to his manifold businesses, to his
silent sorrows. "I have passed my winter like a Carthusian monk,"
he writes to D'Argens: "I dine alone; I spend my life in reading
and writing; and I do not sup. When one is sad, it becomes at last
too burdensome to hide one's grief continually; and it is better to
give way to it by oneself, than to carry one's gloom into society.
Nothing solaces me but the vigorous application required in steady
and continuous labor. This distraction does force one to put away
painful ideas, while it lasts: but, alas, no sooner is the work
done, than these fatal companions present themselves again, as if
livelier than ever. Maupertuis was right: the sum of evil does
certainly surpass that of good:--but to me it is all one; I have
almost nothing more to lose; and my few remaining days, what
matters it much of what complexion they be?" ["Breslau, 1st March,
1759," To D'Argens ( OEuvres de Frederic,
xix. 56).]
The loss of his Wilhelmina, had there been no other grief, has
darkened all his life to Friedrich. Readers are not prepared for
the details of grief we could give, and the settled gloom of mind
they indicate. A loss irreparable and immeasurable; the light of
life, the one loved heart that loved him, gone. His passionate
appeals to Voltaire to celebrate for him in verse his lost
treasure, and at least make her virtues immortal, are perhaps known
to readers: [ODE SUR LA MORT DE S. A. S. MADAME LA PRINCESSE DE
BAREITH (in OEuvres de Voltaire, xviii.
79-86): see Friedrich's Letter to him (6th November, 1758);
with Voltaire's VERSES in Answer (next month); Friedrich's new
Letter (Breslau, 23d January 1759), demanding something more,--
followed by the ODE just cited (Ib. lxxii. 402; lxxviii. 82, 92;
or OEuvres de Frederic, xxiii. 20-24: &c.]
alas, this is a very feeble kind of immortality, and Friedrich too
well feels it such. All Winter he dwells internally on the sad
matter, though soon falling silent on it to others.
The War is ever more dark and dismal to him; a wearing, harassing,
nearly disgusting task; on which, however, depends life or death.
This Year, he "expects to have 300,000 enemies upon him;" and "is,
with his utmost effort, getting up 150,000 to set against them."
Of business, in its many kinds, there can be no lack! In the
intervals he also wrote considerably: one of his Pieces is a SERMON
ON THE LAST JUDGMENT; handed to Reader De Catt, one evening:--to De
Catt's surprise, and to ours; the Voiceless in a dark Friedrich
trying to give itself some voice in this way! [ OEuvres de
Frederic, xv. 1-10 (see Preuss's PREFACE there;
Formey, SOUVENIRS, i. 37; &c. &c.] Another
Piece, altogether practical, and done with excellent insight,
brevity, modesty, is ON TACTICS; [REFLEXIONS SUR LA TACTIQUE:
in OEuvres de Frederic, xxviii. 153-166.]--
properly it might be called, "Serious very Private Thoughts,"
thrown on paper, and communicated only to two or three, "On the new
kind of Tactics necessary with those Austrians and their Allies,"
who are in such overwhelming strength. "To whose continual
sluggishness, and strange want of concert, to whose incoherency of
movements, languor of execution, and other enormous faults, we have
owed, with some excuse for our own faults, our escaping of
destruction hitherto,"--but had better NOT trust that way any
longer! Fouquet is one of the highly select, to whom he
communicates this Piece; adding along with it, in Fouquet's case,
an affectionate little Note, and, in spite of poverty, some
New-year's Gift, as usual,--the "Widow's Mite [300 pounds, we
find]; receive it with the same heart with which it was set apart
for you: a small help, which you may well have need of, in these
calamitous times." ["Breslau, 23d December, 1758;" with Fouquet's
Answer, 2d January, 1759: in OEuvres de Frederic, italic> xx. 114-117.] Fouquet much admires the new Tactical
Suggestions;--seems to think, however, that the certainly
practicable one is, in particular, the last, That of "improving our
Artillery to some equality with theirs." For which, as may appear,
the King has already been taking thought, in more ways than one.
Finance is naturally a heavy part of Friedrich's Problem; the part
which looks especially impossible, from our point of vision!
In Friedrich's Country, the War Budget does not differ from the
Peace one. Neither is any borrowing possible; that sublime Art, of
rolling over on you know not whom the expenditure, needful or
needless, of your heavy-laden self, had not yet--though England is
busy at it--been invented among Nations. Once, or perhaps twice,
from the STANDE of some willing Province, Friedrich negotiated some
small Loan; which was punctually repaid when Peace came, and was
always gratefully remembered. But these are as nothing, in face of
such expenses; and the thought how he did contrive on the Finance
side, is and was not a little wonderful. An ingenious Predecessor,
whom I sometimes quote, has expressed himself in these words:--
"Such modicum of Subsidy [he is speaking of the English Subsidy in
1758], how useful will it prove in a Country bred everywhere to
Spartan thrift, accustomed to regard waste as sin, and which will
lay out no penny except to purpose! I guess the Prussian Exchequer
is, by this time, much on the ebb; idle precious metals tending
everywhere towards the melting-pot. At what precise date the
Friedrich-Wilhelm balustrades, and enormous silver furnitures, were
first gone into, Dryasdust has not informed me: but we know they
all went; as they well might. To me nothing is so wonderful as
Friedrich's Budget during this War. One day it will be carefully
investigated, elucidated and made conceivable and certain to
mankind: but that as yet is far from being the case. We walk about
in it with astonishment; almost, were it possible, with
incredulity. Expenditure on this side, work done on that:
human nature, especially British human nature, refuses to conceive
it. Never in this world, before or since, was the like.
The Friedrich miracles in War are great; but those in Finance are
almost greater. Let Dryasdust bethink him; and gird his flabby
loins to this Enterprise; which is very behooveful in these
Californian times!"--
The general Secret of Prussian Thrift, I do fear, is lost from the
world. And how an Army of about 200,000, in field and garrison,
could be kept on foot, and in some ability to front combined
Europe, on about Three Million Sterling annually ("25 million
THALERS"=3,150,000 pounds, that is the steady War-Budget of those
years), remains to us inconceivable enough;--mournfully miraculous,
as it were; and growing ever more so in the Nugget-generations that
now run. Meanwhile, here are what hints I could find, on the
Origins of that modest Sum, which also are a wonder: [Preuss, ii.
388-392; Stenzel, v. 137-141.]--
"The hoarded Prussian Moneys, or 'TREASURES' [two of them, KLEINE
SCHATZ, GROSSE SCHATZ, which are rigidly saved in Peace years, for
incidence of War], being nearly run out, there had come the English
Subsidy: this, with Saxony, and the Home revenues and remnants of
SCHATZ had sufficed for 1758; but will no longer suffice. Next to
Saxony, the English Subsidy (670,000 pounds due the second time
this year) was always Friedrich's principal resource: and in the
latter years of the War, I observe, it was nearly twice the amount
of what all his Prussian Countries together, in their ravaged and
worn-out state, could yield him. In and after 1759, besides Home
Income, which is gradually diminishing, and English Subsidy, which
is a steady quantity, Friedrich's sources of revenue are
mainly Two:--
"FIRST, there is that of wringing money from your Enemies, from
those that have deserved ill of you,--such of them as you can come
at. Enemies, open or secret, even Ill-wishers, we are not
particular, provided only they lie within arm's-length. Under this
head fall principally three Countries (and their three poor
Populations, in lieu of their Governments): Saxony, Mecklenburg (or
the main part of it, Mecklenburg-SCHWERIN), and Anhalt; from these
three there is a continual forced supply of money and furnishings.
Their demerits to Friedrich differ much in intensity; nor is his
wringing of them--which in the cases of Mecklenburg and Saxony
increases year by year to the nearly intolerable pitch--quite in
the simple ratio of their demerits; but in a compound ratio of that
and of his indignation and of his wants.
"Saxony, as Prime Author of this War, was from the first laid hold
of, collared tightly: 'Pay the shot, then, what you can' (in the
end it was almost what you cannot)! As to Mecklenburg-Schwerin, the
grudge against Prussia was of very old standing, some generations
now; and the present Duke, not a very wise Sovereign more than his
Ancestors, had always been ill with Friedrich; willing to spite and
hurt him when possible: in Reichs Diet he, of all German Princes,
was the first that voted for Friedrich's being put to Ban of the
Reich,--he; and his poor People know since whether that was a wise
step! The little Anhalt Princes, too, all the Anhalts, Dessau,
Bernburg, Cothen, Zerbst [perhaps the latter partially excepted,
for a certain Russian Lady's sake], had voted, or at least had
ambiguously half-voted, in favor of the Ban, and done other
unfriendly things; and had now to pay dear for their bits of
enmities. Poor souls, they had but One Vote among them all Four;--
and they only half gave it, tremulously pulling it back again.
I should guess it was their terrors mainly, and over-readiness to
reckon Friedrich a sinking ship; and to leap from the deck of him,
--with a spurn which he took for insolent! The Anhalt-Dessauers
particularly, who were once of his very Army, half Prussians for
generations back, he reckoned to have used him scandalously ill.
"This Year the requisition on the Four Anhalts--which they submit
to patiently, as people who have leapt into the wrong ship--is, in
precise tale: of money, 330,000 thalers (about 50,000 pounds);
recruits, 2,200; horses, 1,800. In Saxony, besides the fixed Taxes,
strict confiscation of Meissen Potteries and every Royalty, there
were exacted heavy 'Contributions,' more and more heavy, from the
few opulent Towns, chiefly from Leipzig; which were wrung out,
latterly, under great severities,--'chief merchants of Leipzig all
clapt in prison, kept on bread-and-water till they yielded,'--AS
great severities as would suffice, but NOT greater; which also was
noted. Unfortunate chief merchants of Leipzig,--with Bruhl and
Polish Majesty little likely to indemnify them! Unfortunate Country
altogether. An intelligent Saxon, who is vouched for as impartial,
bears witness as follows: 'And this I know, that the oppressions
and plunderings of the Austrians and Reichsfolk, in Saxony, turned
all hearts away from them; and it was publicly said, We had rather
bear the steady burden of the Prussians than such help as these our
pretended Deliverers bring.' [Stenzel (citing from KRIEGSKANZLEI,
which I have not), v. 137 n.] Whereby, on the whole, the poor
Country got its back broken, and could never look up in the world
since. Resource FIRST was abundantly severe.
"Resource SECOND is strangest of all;--and has given rise to
criticism enough! It is no other than that of issuing base money;
mixing your gold and silver coin with copper,--this, one grieves to
say, is the Second and extreme resource. (A rude method--would we
had a better--of suspending Cash-payments, and paying by bank-notes
instead!' thinks Friedrich, I suppose. From his Prussian Mints,
from his Saxon [which are his for the present], and from the little
Anhalt-Bernburg Mint [of which he expressly purchased the sad
privilege,--for we are not a Coiner, we are a King reduced to
suspend Cash-payments, for the time being], Friedrich poured out
over all Germany, in all manner of kinds, huge quantities of bad
Coin. This, so long as it would last, is more and more a copious
fountain of supply. This, for the first time, has had to appear as
an item in War-Budget 1759: and it fails in no following, but
expands more and more. It was done through Ephraim, the not lovely
Berlin Jew, whom we used to hear of in Voltaire's time;--through
Ephraim and two others, Ephraim as President: in return for a net
Sum, these shall have privilege to coin such and such amounts, so
and so alloyed; shall pay to General Tauentzien, Army Treasurer, at
fixed terms, the Sums specified: 'Go, and do it; our Mint-Officers
sharply watching you; Mint-Officers, and General Tauentzien [with a
young Herr Lessing, as his Chief Clerk, of whom the King knows
nothing]; Go, ye unlovely!' And Ephraim and Company are making a
great deal of money by the unlovely job. Ephraim is the pair of
tongs, the hand, and the unlovely job, are a royal man's.
Alas, yes. And none of us knows better than King Friedrich, perhaps
few of us as well, how little lovely a job it was; how shockingly
UNkingly it was,--though a practice not unknown to German Kings and
Kinglets before his time, and since down almost to ours.
[In STENZEL (v. 141) enumeration of eight or nine unhappy
Potentates, who were busy with it in those same years.] In fact,
these are all unkingly practices;--and the English Subsidy itself
is distasteful to a proud Friedrich: but what, in those
circumstances, can any Friedrich do?
"The first coinages of Ephraim had, it seems, in them about 3-7ths
of copper; something less than the half, and more than the third,"
--your gold sovereign grown to be worth 28s. 6d. "But yearly it
grew worse; and in 1762 [English Subsidy having failed] matters had
got inverted; and there was three times as much copper as silver.
Commerce, as was natural, went rocking and tossing, as on a sea
under earthquakes; but there was always ready money among
Friedrich's soldiers, as among no other: nor did the common people,
or retail purchasers, suffer by it. 'Hah, an Ephraimite!' they
would say, grinning not ill-humoredly, at sight of one of these
pieces; some of which they had more specifically named 'BLUE-GOWNS'
[owing to a tint of blue perceivable, in spite of the industrious
plating in real silver, or at least "boiling in some solution" of
it]; these they would salute with this rhyme, then current:--
"Von aussen schon, van innen schlimm;
Von aussen Friedrich, von innen Ephraim.
Outside noble, inside slim:
Outside Friedrich, inside Ephraim.
"By this time, whatever of money, from any source, can be scraped
together in Friedrich's world, flows wholly into the Army-Chest, as
the real citadel of life. In these latter years of the War,
beginning, I could guess, from 1759, all Civil expenditures, and
wages of Officials, cease to be paid in money; nobody of that kind
sees the color even of bad coin; but is paid only in 'Paper
Assignments,' in Promises to Pay 'after the Peace.' These Paper
Documents made no pretence to the rank of Currency: such holders of
them as had money, or friends, and could wait, got punctual payment
when the term did arrive; but those that could not, suffered
greatly; having to negotiate their debentures on ruinous terms,--
sometimes at an expense of three-fourths.--I will add Friedrich's
practical Schedule of Amounts from all these various Sources;
and what Friedrich's own view of the Sources was, when he could
survey them from the safe distance.
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