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History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 1
T >> Thomas Carlyle >> History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 1
Poor Voltaire wrote that Vie Privee in a
state little inferior to the Frenzy of John Dennis,--how brought
about we shall see by and by. And this is the Document which
English readers are surest to have read, and tried to credit as
far as possible. Our counsel is, Out of window with it, he that
would know Friedrich of Prussia! Keep it awhile, he that would
know Francois Arouet de Voltaire, and a certain numerous
unfortunate class of mortals, whom Voltaire is sometimes
capable of sinking to be spokesman for, in this world!--Alas,
go where you will, especially in these irreverent ages,
the noteworthy Dead is sure to be found lying under infinite dung,
no end of calumnies and stupidities accumulated upon him. For the
class we speak of, class of "flunkies doing saturnalia
below stairs," is numerous, is innumerable; and can
well remunerate a "vocal flunky" that will serve their purposes on
such an occasion!--
Friedrich is by no means one of the perfect demigods; and there
are various things to be said against him with good ground. To the
last, a questionable hero; with much in him which one could have
wished not there, and much wanting which one could have wished.
But there is one feature which strikes you at an early period of
the inquiry, That in his way he is a Reality; that he always means
what he speaks; grounds his actions, too, on what he recognizes
for the truth; and, in short, has nothing whatever of the
Hypocrite or Phantasm. Which some readers will admit to be an
extremely rare phenomenon. We perceive that this man was far
indeed from trying to deal swindler-like with the facts around
him; that he honestly recognized said facts wherever they
disclosed themselves, and was very anxious also to ascertain their
existence where still hidden or dubious. For he knew well, to a
quite uncommon degree, and with a merit all the higher as it was
an unconscious one, how entirely inexorable is the nature of
facts, whether recognized or not, ascertained or not; how vain all
cunning of diplomacy, management and sophistry, to save any mortal
who does not stand on the truth of things, from sinking, in the
long-run. Sinking to the very mud-gods, with all his diplomacies,
possessions, achievements; and becoming an unnamable object,
hidden deep in the Cesspools of the Universe. This I hope to make
manifest; this which I long ago discerned for myself, with
pleasure, in the physiognomy of Friedrich and his life.
Which indeed was the first real sanction, and has all along been
my inducement and encouragement, to study his life and him.
How this man, officially a King withal, comported himself in the
Eighteenth Century, and managed not to be a Liar and Charlatan as
his Century was, deserves to be seen a little by men and kings,
and may silently have didactic meanings in it.
He that was honest with his existence has always meaning for us,
be he king or peasant. He that merely shammed and grimaced with
it, however much, and with whatever noise and trumpet-blowing,
he may have cooked and eaten in this world, cannot long have any.
Some men do COOK enormously (let us call it COOKING, what a man
does in obedience to his HUNGER merely, to his desires and
passions merely),--roasting whole continents and populations,
in the flames of war or other discord;--witness the Napoleon above
spoken of. For the appetite of man in that respect is unlimited;
in truth, infinite; and the smallest of us could eat the entire
Solar System, had we the chance given, and then cry, like
Alexander of Macedon, because we had no more Solar Systems to cook
and eat. It is not the extent of the man's cookery that can much
attach me to him; but only the man himself, and what of strength
he had to wrestle with the mud-elements, and what of victory he
got for his own benefit and mine.
4. ENCOURAGEMENTS, DISCOURAGEMENTS.
French Revolution having spent itself, or sunk in France and
elsewhere to what we see, a certain curiosity reawakens as to what
of great or manful we can discover on the other side of that still
troubled atmosphere of the Present and immediate Past. Curiosity
quickened, or which should be quickened, by the great and all-
absorbing question, How is that same exploded Past ever to settle
down again? Not lost forever, it would appear: the New Era has not
annihilated the old eras: New Era could by no means manage that;--
never meant that, had it known its own mind (which it did not):
its meaning was and is, to get its own well out of them;
to readapt, in a purified shape, the old eras, and appropriate
whatever was true and NOT combustible in them: that was the poor
New Era's meaning, in the frightful explosion it made of itself
and its possessions, to begin with!
And the question of questions now is: What part of that exploded
Past, the ruins and dust of which still darken all the air,
will continually gravitate back to us; be reshaped, transformed,
readapted, that so, in new figures, under new conditions, it may
enrich and nourish us again? What part of it, not being
incombustible, has actually gone to flame and gas in the huge
world-conflagration, and is now GASEOUS, mounting aloft; and will
know no beneficence of gravitation, but mount, and roam upon the
waste winds forever,--Nature so ordering it, in spite of any
industry of Art? This is the universal question of afflicted
mankind at present; and sure enough it will be long to settle.
On one point we can answer: Only what of the Past was TRUE will
come back to us. That is the one ASBESTOS which survives all fire,
and comes out purified; that is still ours, blessed be Heaven,
and only that. By the law of Nature nothing more than that;
and also, by the same law, nothing less than that. Let Art,
struggle how it may, for or against,--as foolish Art is seen
extensively doing in our time,--there is where the limits of it
will be. In which point of view, may not Friedrich, if he was a
true man and King, justly excite some curiosity again; nay some
quite peculiar curiosity, as the lost Crowned Reality there was
antecedent to that general outbreak and abolition? To many it
appears certain there are to be no Kings of any sort, no
Government more; less and less need of them henceforth, New Era
having come. Which is a very wonderful notion; important if true;
perhaps still more important, just at present, if untrue! My hopes
of presenting, in this Last of the Kings, an exemplar to my
contemporaries, I confess, are not high.
On the whole, it is evident the difficulties to a History of
Friedrich are great and many: and the sad certainty is at last
forced upon me that no good Book can, at this time, especially in
this country, be written on the subject. Wherefore let the reader
put up with an indifferent or bad one; he little knows how much
worse it could easily have been!--Alas, the Ideal of history,
as my friend Sauerteig knows, is very high; and it is not one
serious man, but many successions of such, and whole serious
generations of such, that can ever again build up History towards
its old dignity. We must renounce ideals. We must sadly take up
with the mournfulest barren realities;--dismal continents of
Brandenburg sand, as in this instance; mere tumbled mountains of
marine-stores, without so much as an Index to them!
Has the reader heard of Sauerteig's last batch of
Springwurzeln, a rather curious valedictory Piece?
"All History is an imprisoned Epic, nay an imprisoned Psalm and
Prophecy," says Sauerteig there. I wish, from my soul, he had
DISimprisoned it in this instance! But he only says, in
magniloquent language, how grand it would be if disimprisoned;--
and hurls out, accidentally striking on this subject, the
following rough sentences, suggestive though unpractical, with
which I shall conclude:--
"Schiller, it appears, at one time thought of writing an
Epic Poem upon Friedrich the Great, 'upon some action
of Friedrich's,' Schiller says. Happily Schiller did not do it.
By oversetting fact, disregarding reality, and tumbling time and
space topsy-turvy, Schiller with his fine gifts might no doubt
have written a temporary 'epic poem,' of the kind read an
admired by many simple persons. But that would have helped little,
and could not have lasted long. It is not the untrue imaginary
Picture of a man and his life that I want from my Schiller,
but the actual natural Likeness, true as the face itself,
nay TRUER, in a sense. Which the Artist, if there is one,
might help to give, and the Botcher (Pfuscher) italic> never can! Alas, and the Artist does not even try it;
leaves it altogether to the Botcher, being busy otherwise!--
"Men surely will at length discover again, emerging from these
dismal bewilderments in which the modern Ages reel and stagger
this long while, that to them also, as to the most ancient men,
all Pictures that cannot be credited are--Pictures of an idle
nature; to be mostly swept out of doors. Such veritably, were it
never so forgotten, is the law! Mistakes enough, lies enough will
insinuate themselves into our most earnest portrayings of the
True: but that we should, deliberately and of forethought,
rake together what we know to be not true, and introduce that in
the hope of doing good with it? I tell you, such practice was
unknown in the ancient earnest times; and ought again to become
unknown except to the more foolish classes!" That is Sauerteig's
strange notion, not now of yesterday, as readers know:--and he
goes then into "Homer's Iliad," the "Hebrew Bible," "terrible
Hebrew VERACITY of every line of it;" discovers an alarming
"kinship of Fiction to lying;" and asks, If anybody can compute
"the damage we poor moderns have got from our practices of fiction
in Literature itself, not to speak of awfully higher provinces?
Men will either see into all this by and by," continues he;
"or plunge head foremost, in neglect of all this, whither they
little dream as yet!--
"But I think all real Poets, to this hour, are Psalmists and
Iliadists after their sort; and have in them a divine impatience
of lies, a divine incapacity of living among lies. Likewise, which
is a corollary, that the highest Shakspeare producible is properly
the fittest Historian producible;--and that it is frightful to
see the Gelehrte Dummkopf [what we here may
translate, DRYASDUST] doing the function of History, and the
Shakspeare and the Goethe neglecting it. 'Interpreting events;'
interpreting the universally visible, entirely INdubitable
Revelation of the Author of this Universe: how can Dryasdust
interpret such things, the dark chaotic dullard, who knows the
meaning of nothing cosmic or noble, nor ever will know?
Poor wretch, one sees what kind of meaning HE educes from Man's
History, this long while past, and has got all the world to
believe of it along with him. Unhappy Dryasdust, thrice-unhappy
world that takes Dryasdust's reading of the ways of God!
But what else was possible? They that could have taught better
were engaged in fiddling; for which there are good wages going.
And our damage therefrom, our DAMAGE,--yes, if thou be still human
and not cormorant,--perhaps it will transcend all Californias,
English National Debts, and show itself incomputable in continents
of Bullion!--
"Believing that mankind are not doomed wholly to dog-like
annihilation, I believe that much of this will mend. I believe
that the world will not always waste its inspired men in mere
fiddling to it. That the man of rhythmic nature will feel more and
more his vocation towards the Interpretation of Fact; since only
in the vital centre of that, could we once get thither, lies all
real melody; and that he will become, he, once again the Historian
of Events,--bewildered Dryasdust having at last the happiness to
be his servant, and to have some guidance from him. Which will be
blessed indeed. For the present, Dryasdust strikes me like a
hapless Nigger gone masterless: Nigger totally unfit for self-
guidance; yet without master good or bad; and whose feats in that
capacity no god or man can rejoice in.
"History, with faithful Genius at the top and faithful Industry at
the bottom, will then be capable of being written. History will
then actually BE written,--the inspired gift of God employing
itself to illuminate the dark ways of God. A thing thrice-
pressingly needful to be done!--Whereby the modern Nations may
again become a little less godless, and again have their 'epics'
(of a different from the Schiller sort), and again have several
things they are still more fatally in want of at present!"--
So that, it would seem, there WILL gradually among mankind,
if Friedrich last some centuries, be a real Epic made of his
History? That is to say (presumably), it will become a perfected
Melodious Truth, and duly significant and duly beautiful bit of
Belief, to mankind; the essence of it fairly evolved from all the
chaff, the portrait of it actually given, and its real harmonies
with the laws of this Universe brought out, in bright and dark,
according to the God's Fact as it was; which poor Dryasdust
and the Newspapers never could get sight of, but were always
far from!--
Well, if so,--and even if not quite so,--it is a comfort to
reflect that every true worker (who has blown away chaff &c.),
were his contribution no bigger than my own, may have brought the
good result NEARER by a hand-breadth or two. And so we will end
these preludings, and proceed upon our Problem, courteous reader.
Chapter II.
FRIEDRICH'S BIRTH.
Friedrich of Brandenburg-Hohenzollern, who came by course of
natural succession to be Friedrich II. of Prussia, and is known in
these ages as Frederick the Great, was born in the palace of
Berlin, about noon, on the 24th of January, 1712. A small infant,
but of great promise or possibility; and thrice and four times
welcome to all sovereign and other persons in the Prussian Court,
and Prussian realms, in those cold winter days. His Father,
they say, was like to have stifled him with his caresses,
so overjoyed was the man; or at least to have scorched him in the
blaze of the fire; when happily some much suitabler female nurse
snatched this little creature from the rough paternal paws,--and
saved it for the benefit of Prussia and mankind. If Heaven will
but please to grant it length of life! For there have already been
two little Princekins, who are both dead; this Friedrich is the
fourth child; and only one little girl, wise Wilhelmina, of almost
too sharp wits, and not too vivacious aspect, is otherwise yet
here of royal progeny. It is feared the Hohenzollern lineage,
which has flourished here with such beneficent effect for three
centuries now, and been in truth the very making of the Prussian
Nation, may be about to fail, or pass into some side branch.
Which change, or any change in that respect, is questionable,
and a thing desired by nobody.
Five years ago, on the death of the first little Prince, there
had surmises risen, obscure rumors and hints, that the Princess
Royal, mother of the lost baby, never would have healthy children,
or even never have a child more: upon which, as there was but one
other resource,--a widowed Grandfather, namely, and except the
Prince Royal no son to him,--said Grandfather, still only about
fifty, did take the necessary steps: but they have been entirely
unsuccessful; no new son or child, only new affliction,
new disaster has resulted from that third marriage of his.
And though the Princess Royal has had another little Prince,
that too has died within the year;--killed, some say on the other
hand, by the noise of the cannon firing for joy over it! [Forster,
Friedrich Wilhelm I., Konig von Preussen
(Potsdam, 1834), i. 126 (who quotes Morgenstern, a contemporary
reporter). But see also Preuss, Friedrich der Grosse mit
seinen Verwandten und Freunden (Berlin, 1838),
pp. 379-380] Yes; and the first baby Prince, these same parties
farther say, was crushed to death by the weighty dress you put
upon it at christening time, especially by the little crown it
wore, which had left a visible black mark upon the poor soft
infant's brow! In short, it is a questionable case; undoubtedly a
questionable outlook for Prussian mankind; and the appearance of
this little Prince, a third trump-card in the Hohenzollern game,
is an unusually interesting event. The joy over him, not in Berlin
Palace only, but in Berlin City, and over the Prussian Nation, was
very great and universal;--still testified in manifold dull,
unreadable old pamphlets, records official and volunteer,--which
were then all ablaze like the bonfires, and are now fallen dark
enough, and hardly credible even to the fancy of this new Time.
The poor old Grandfather, Friedrich I. (the first King of
Prussia),--for, as we intimate, he was still alive, and not very
old, though now infirm enough, and laden beyond his strength with
sad reminiscences, disappointments and chagrins,--had taken much
to Wilhelmina, as she tells us; [ Memoires de Frederique
Sophie Wilhelmine de Prusse, Margrave de Bareith, Soeur d
Frederic-le-Grand (London, 1812), i. 5.] and would
amuse himself whole days with the pranks and prattle of the little
child. Good old man: he, we need not doubt, brightened up into
unusual vitality at sight of this invaluable little Brother of
hers; through whom he can look once more into the waste dim future
with a flicker of new hope. Poor old man: he got his own back
half-broken by a careless nurse letting him fall; and has slightly
stooped ever since, some fifty and odd years now: much against his
will; for he would fain have been beautiful; and has struggled all
his days, very hard if not very wisely, to make his existence
beautiful,--to make it magnificent at least, and regardless of
expense;--and it threatens to come to little. Courage, poor
Grandfather: here is a new second edition of a Friedrich, the
first having gone off with so little effect: this one's back is
still unbroken, his life's seedfield not yet filled with tares and
thorns: who knows but Heaven will be kinder to this one?
Heaven was much kinder to this one. Him Heaven had kneaded of
more potent stuff: a mighty fellow this one, and a strange;
related not only to the Upholsteries and Heralds' Colleges,
but to the Sphere-harmonies and the divine and demonic powers;
of a swift far-darting nature this one, like an Apollo clad in
sunbeams and in lightnings (after his sort); and with a back which
all the world could not succeed in breaking!--Yes, if, by most
rare chance, this were indeed a new man of genius, born into the
purblind rotting Century, in the acknowledged rank of a king
there,--man of genius, that is to say, man of originality and
veracity; capable of seeing with his eyes, and incapable of not
believing what he sees;--then truly!--But as yet none knows;
the poor old Grandfather never knew.
Meanwhile they christened the little fellow, with immense
magnificence and pomp of apparatus; Kaiser Karl, and the very
Swiss Republic being there (by proxy), among the gossips;
and spared no cannon-volleyings, kettle-drummings, metal crown,
heavy cloth-of-silver, for the poor soft creature's sake; all of
which, however, he survived. The name given him was Karl Friedrich
(Charles Frederick); Karl perhaps, and perhaps also not, in
delicate compliment to the chief gossip, the above-mentioned.
Kaiser, Karl or Charles VI.? At any rate, the KARL, gradually or
from the first, dropped altogether out of practice, and went as
nothing: he himself, or those about him, never used it; nor,
except in some dim English pamphlet here and there, have I met
with any trace of it. Friedrich (RICH-in-PEACE, a name of old
prevalence in the Hohenzollern kindred), which he himself wrote
FREDERIC in his French way, and at last even FEDERIC (with a very
singular sense of euphony), is throughout, and was, his sole
designation. Sunday 31st January, 1712, age then precisely one
week: then, and in this manner, was he ushered on the scene,
and labelled among his fellow-creatures. We must now look round
a little; and see, if possible by any method or exertion, what
kind of scene it was.
Chapter III.
FATHER AND MOTHER: THE HANOVERIAN CONNECTION.
Friedrich Wilhelm, Crown-Prince of Prussia, son of Friedrich I.
and Father of this little infant who will one day be Friedrich
II., did himself make some noise in the world as second King of
Prussia; notable not as Friedrich's father alone; and will much
concern us during the rest of his life. He is, at this date,
in his twenty-fourth year: a thick-set, sturdy, florid, brisk
young fellow; with a jovial laugh in him, yet of solid grave ways,
occasionally somewhat volcanic; much given to soldiering, and
out-of-door exercises, having little else to do at present. He has
been manager, or, as it were, Vice-King, on an occasional absence
of his Father; he knows practically what the state of business is;
and greatly disapproves of it, as is thought. But being bound to
silence on that head, he keeps silence, and meddles with nothing
political. He addicts himself chiefly to mustering, drilling and
practical military duties, while here at Berlin; runs out, often
enough, wife and perhaps a comrade or two along with him, to hunt,
and take his ease, at Wusterhausen (some fifteen or twenty miles
[English miles,--as always unless the contrary be stated.
The German MEILE is about five miles English; German STUNDE about
three.] southeast of Berlin), where he has a residence amid the
woody moorlands.
But soldiering is his grand concern. Six years ago, summer 1706,
[Forster, i. 116] at a very early age, he went to the wars,--grand
Spanish-Succession War, which was then becoming very fierce in the
Netherlands; Prussian troops always active on the Marlborough-
Eugene side. He had just been betrothed, was not yet wedded;
thought good to turn the interim to advantage in that way.
Then again, spring 1709, after his marriage and after his Father's
marriage, "the Court being full of intrigues," and nothing but
silence recommendable there, a certain renowned friend of his,
Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, of whom we shall yet hear a
great deal,--who, still only about thirty, had already covered
himself with laurels in those wars (Blenheim, Bridge of Casano,
Lines of Turin, and other glories), but had now got into
intricacies with the weaker sort, and was out of command,--agreed
with Friedrich Wilhelm that it would be well to go and serve there
as volunteers, since not otherwises. [Varnhagen von Ense,
Furst Leopold von Anhalt-Dessau (in
Biographische Denkmale, 2d edition, Berlin, 1845),
p. 185. Thaten und Leben des weltberuhmten Furstens
Leopoldi von Anhalt-Dessau (Leipzig, 1742), p. 73.
Forster, i. 129.] A Crown-Prince of Prussia, ought he not to learn
soldiering, of all things; by every opportunity? Which Friedrich
Wilhelm did, with industry; serving zealous apprenticeship under
Marlborough and Eugene, in this manner; plucking knowledge, as the
bubble reputation, and all else in that field has to be plucked,
from the cannon's mouth. Friedrich Wilhelm kept by Marlborough,
now as formerly; friend Leopold being commonly in Eugene's
quarter, who well knew the worth of him, ever since Blenheim and
earlier. Friedrich Wilhelm saw hot service, that campaign of 1709;
siege of Tournay, and far more;--stood, among other things,
the fiery Battle of Malplaquet, one of the terriblest and
deadliest feats of war ever done. No want of intrepidity and
rugged soldier-virtue in the Prussian troops or their Crown-
Prince; least of all on that terrible day, 11th September, 1709;--
of which he keeps the anniversary ever since, and will do all his
life, the doomsday of Malplaquet always a memorable day to him.
[Forster, i. 138.] He is more and more intimate with Leopold,
and loves good soldiering beyond all things. Here at Berlin he has
already got a regiment of his own, tallish fine men; and strives
to make it in all points a very pattern of a regiment.
For the rest, much here is out of joint, and far from satisfactory
to him. Seven years ago [1st February, 1705.] he lost his own
brave Mother and her love; of which we must speak farther by and
by. In her stead he has got a fantastic, melancholic, ill-natured
Stepmother, with whom there was never any good to be done; who in
fact is now fairly mad, and kept to her own apartments. He has to
see here, and say little, a chagrined heart-worn Father flickering
painfully amid a scene much filled with expensive futile persons,
and their extremely pitiful cabals and mutual rages; scene chiefly
of pompous inanity, and the art of solemnly and with great labor
doing nothing. Such waste of labor and of means: what can one do
but be silent? The other year, Preussen (PRUSSIA Proper, province
lying far eastward, out of sight) was sinking under pestilence
and black ruin and despair: the Crown-Prince, contrary to wont,
broke silence, and begged some dole or subvention for these poor
people; but there was nothing to be had. Nothing in the treasury,
your Royal Highness:--Preussen will shift for itself; sublime
dramaturgy, which we call his Majesty's Government, costs so much!
And Preussen, mown away by death, lies much of it vacant ever
since; which has completed the Crown-Prince's disgust; and,
I believe, did produce some change of ministry, or other
ineffectual expedient, on the old Father's part. Upon which the
Crown-Prince locks up his thoughts again. He has confused
whirlpools, of Court intrigues, ceremonials, and troublesome
fantasticalities, to steer amongst; which he much dislikes, no man
more; having an eye and heart set on the practical only, and being
in mind as in body something of the genus ROBUSTUM, of the genus
FEROX withal. He has been wedded six years; lost two children,
as we saw; and now again he has two living.
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