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History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7
T >> Thomas Carlyle >> History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 Prepared by D.R. Thompson
Carlyle's "History of Friedrich II of Prussia"
BOOK VII.
FEARFUL SHIPWRECK OF THE
DOUBLE-MARRIAGE PROJECT.
February-November, 1730.
Chapter I.
ENGLAND SENDS THE EXCELLENCY HOTHAM TO BERLIN.
Things, therefore, are got to a dead-lock at Berlin: rebellious
Womankind peremptorily refuse Weissenfels, and take to a bed of
sickness; inexpugnable there, for the moment. Baireuth is but a
weak middle term; and there are disagreements on it. Answer from
England, affirmative or even negative, we have yet none.
Promptly affirmative, that might still avail, and be an honorable
outcome. Perhaps better pause till that arrive, and declare
itself?--Friedrich Wilhelm knows nothing of the Villa mission, of
the urgencies that have been used in England: but, in present
circumstances, he can pause for their answer.
MAJESTY AND CROWN-PRINCE WITH HIM MAKE A RUN TO DRESDEN
To outward appearance, Friedrich Wilhelm, having written that
message to Baireuth, seems easier in mind; quiet with the Queen;
though dangerous for exploding if Wilhelmina and the Prince come
in view. Wilhelmina mostly squats; Prince, who has to be in view,
gets slaps and strokes "daily (JOURNELLEMENT)," says the
Princess,--or almost daily. For the rest, it is evident enough,
Weissenfels, if not got passed through the Female Parliament, is
thrown out on the second reading, and so is at least finished.
Ought we not to make a run to Dresden, therefore, and apprise the
Polish Majesty? Short run to Dresden is appointed for February
18th; [Fassmann, p. 404.] and the Prince-Royal, perhaps suspected
of meditating something, and safer in his Father's company than
elsewhere, is to go. Wilhelmina had taken leave of him, night of
the 17th, in her Majesty's Apartment; and was in the act of
undressing for bed, when,--judge of a young Princess's terror
and surprise,--
"There stept into the anteroom," visible in the half-light there,
a most handsome little Cavalier, dressed, not succinctly as
Colonel of the Potsdam Giants, but "in magnificent French style.--
I gave a shriek, not knowing who it was; and hid myself behind a
screen. Madam de Sonsfeld, my Governess, not less frightened than
myself, ran out" to see what audacious person, at such undue hour,
it could be. "But she returned next moment, accompanying the
Cavalier, who was laughing heartily, and whom I recognized for my
Brother. His dress so altered him, he seemed a different person.
He was in the best humor possible.
"'I am come to bid you farewell once more, my dear Sister,' said
he: 'and as I know the friendship you have for me, I will not keep
you ignorant of my designs. I go, and do not come back. I cannot
endure the usage I suffer; my patience is driven to an end. It is
a favorable opportunity for flinging off that odious yoke; I will
glide out of Dresden, and get across to England; where I do not
doubt I shall work out your deliverance too, when I am got
thither. So I beg you, calm yourself, We shall soon meet again in
places where joy shall succeed our tears, and where we shall have
the happiness to see ourselves in peace, and free from these
persecutions.'" [Wilhelmina, i. 205.]
Wilhelmina stood stupefied, in silence for some moments;--argued
long with her Brother; finally got him to renounce those wild
plans, or at least postpone them; and give her his word that he
would attempt nothing on the present occasion. This small Dresden
Excursion of February, 1730, passed, accordingly, without
accident, It was but the prelude to a much grander Visit now
agreed upon between the neighboring Majesties. For there is a
grand thing in the wind. Something truly sublime, of the
scenic-military kind, which has not yet got a name; but shall soon
have a world-wide one,--"Camp of Muhlberg," "Camp of Radewitz," or
however to be named,--which his Polish Majesty will hold in those
Saxon parts, in a month or two. A thing that will astonish all the
world, we may hope; and where the King and Prince of Prussia are
to attend as chief guests.
It was during this brief absence in February, or directly after
Friedrich Wilhelm had returned, that Queen Sophie had that fit of
real sickness we spoke of. Scarcely was his Majesty got home, when
the Queen, rather ambiguous in her sicknesses of late, fell really
and dangerously ill: so that Friedrich Wilhelm, at last recognizing
it for real, came hurrying in from Potsdam; wept loud and
abundantly, poor man; declared in private, "He would not
survive his Feekin;" and for her sake solemnly pardoned
Wilhelmina, and even Fritz,--till the symptoms mended.
[Wilhelmina, i. 306.]
HOW VILLA WAS RECEIVED IN ENGLAND.
Meanwhile Dr. Villa, in England, has sped not ill. Villa's
eloquence of truth; the Grumkow-Reichenbach Correspondence in
St. Mary Axe: these two things produce their effect. These on the
one hand; and then on the other, certain questionable aspects of
Fleury, after that fine Soissons Catastrophe to the Kaiser;
and certain interior quarrels in the English Ministry, partly
grounded thereon:--"On the whole, why should not we detach
Friedrioh Wilhelm from the Kaiser, if we could, and comply with a
Royal Sister?" think they at St. James's.
Political men take some interest in the question; "Why neglect
your Prince of Wales?" grumbles the Public: "It is a solid
Protestant match, eligible for Prince Fred and us!"--"Why bother
with the Kaiser and his German puddles?" asks Walpole:
"Once detach Prussia from him, the Kaiser will perhaps sit still,
and leave the world and us free of his Pragmatics and his
Sanctions and Apanages."--"Quit of him? German puddles?" answers
Townshend dubitatively,--who has gained favor at headquarters by
going deeply into said puddles; and is not so ardent for the
Prussian Match; and indeed is gradually getting into quarrel with
Walpole and Queen Caro1ine. {Coxe, i. 332-339.] These things are
all favorable to Dr. Villa.
In fact, there is one of those political tempests (dreadful to the
teapot, were it not experienced in them) going on in England, at
this time,--what we call a Change of Ministry;--daily crisis
laboring towards fulfilment, or brewing itself ripe. Townshend and
Walpole have had (how many weeks ago Coxe does not tell us) that
meeting in Colonel Selwyn's, which ended in their clutching at
swords, nay almost at coat-collars: [Ib. p. 335.] honorable
Brothers-in-law: but the good Sister, who used to reconcile them,
is now dead. Their quarrels, growing for some years past, are
coming to a head. "When the firm used to be Townshend and Walpole,
all was well; when it had to become Walpole and Townshend, all was
not well!" said Walpole afterwards.
Things had already gone so far, that Townshend brought
Chesterfield over from the Hague, last Autumn;--a Baron de
Montesquieu, with the ESPRIT DE LOIS in his head, sailed with Lord
Chesterfield on that occasion, and is now in England "for two
years;"--but Chesterfield could not be made Secretary; industrious
Duke of Newcastle stuck so close by that office, and by the skirts
of Walpole. Chesterfield and Townshend VERSUS Walpole, Colonel
Stanhope (Harrington) and the Pelhams: the Prussian Match is a
card in that game; and Dr. Villa's eloquence of truth is not lost
on Queen Caroline, who in a private way manages, as always, to
rule pretty supreme in it.
There lies in the State-Paper Office, [Close by Despatch
(Prussian): "London, 8th February (o.s.) 1729-1730."] without date
or signature, a loose detached bit of writing, in scholastic
style, but brief and to the purpose, which is evidently the
Memorial of Villa; but as it teaches us nothing that we do not
already know, it need not be inserted here. The man, we can
perceive farther, continued useful in those Official quarters,
answering questions about Prussia, helping in the St.-Mary-Axe
decipherings, and in other small ways, for some time longer;
after which he vanishes again from all record,--whether to teach
English farther, or live on some modicum of pension granted, no
man knows. Poor old Dove, let out upon the Deluge in serge gown:
he did bring back a bit of olive, so to speak;--had the presage
but held, as it did in Noah's case!
In a word, the English Sovereignties and Ministries have
determined that an Envoy Extraordinary (one Hotham, they think
of), with the due solemnity, be sent straightway to Berlin;
to treat of those interesting matters, and officially put the
question there. Whom Dubourgay is instructed to announce to his
Prussian Majesty, with salutation from this Court. As Dubourgay
does straightway, with a great deal of pleasure. [Despatches:
London, 8th February; Berlin, 2d March, 1780] How welcome to his
Majesty we need not say.
And indeed, after such an announcement (1st March, 1730, the day
of it), they fell into cheerful dialogue; and the Brigadier had
some frank conversation with his Majesty about the "Arbitration
Commission" then sitting at Brunswick, and European affairs in
general. Conversation which is carefully preserved for us in the
Brigadier's Despatch of the morrow. It never was intrinsically of
much moment; and is now fallen very obsolete, and altogether of
none: but as a glance at first-hand into the dim old thoughts of
Friedrich Wilhelm, the reader may take it with him:--
"The King said next, That though we made little noise, yet he knew
well our design--was to kindle a fire in other parts of Lower
Germany. To which I answered, That if his Majesty would give me
favorable hearing, I could easily persuade him of the peaceable
intentions of our Allies. 'Well,' says he, 'the Emperor will
abandon the Netherlands, and who will be master of them? I see the
day when you will make France so powerful, that it will be
difficult to bring them to reason again.'--DUBOURGAY: 'If the
Emperor abandoned the Netherlands, they would be governed by their
own Magistrate, and defended by their own Militia. As to the
French, we are too well persuaded of the benefit of our Allies,
to--' Upon which the King of Prussia said, 'It appeared plainly we
had a mind to dispose as we pleased of Kingdoms and provinces in
Italy, so that probably our next thought would be to do the same
in Germany.'--DUBOURGAY: 'The allotments made in favor of Don
Carlos have been made with the consent of the Emperor and the
whole Empire. We could not suffer a longer interruption of our
commerce with Spain, for the sake of the small difference between
the Treaty of Seville and the Quadruple Alliance, in regard to the
Garrison,'"--to the introducing of Spanish Garrisons, at once,
into Parma and Piacenza; which was the special thunder-bolt of the
late Soissons Catastrophe,or Treaty of Seville.--"'Well, then,'
says his Prussian Majesty, 'you must allow, then, there IS an
infraction of the Quadruple Alliance, and that the Emperor will
make war!' 'I hope not,' said I: (but if so, a Ten-Years War, in
conjunction with the Allies of Seville, never would be so bad as
the interruption of our Commerce with Old and New Spain for
one year.'
"The King of Prussia's notion about our DISPOSING OF PROVINCES IN
GERMANY," adds Dubourgay, "is, I believe, an insinuation of
Seckendorf, who, I doubt not, has made him believe we intended to
do so with respect to Berg and Julich."
Very probably:--but Hotham is getting under way, hopeful to spoil
that game. Prussian Majesty, we see, is not insensible to so much
honor; and brightens into hopefulness and fine humor in
consequence. What radiancy spread over the Queen's side of the
House we need not say. The Tobacco-Parliament is like to have a
hard task.--Friedrich Wilhelm privately is well inclined to have
his Daughter married, with such outlooks, if it can be done.
The marriage of the Crown-Prince into such a family would also be
very welcome; only--only--There are considerations on that side.
There are reasons; still more there are whims, feelings of the
mind towards an unloved Heir-Apparent: upon these latter chiefly
lie the hopes of Seckendorf and the Tobacco-Parliament.
What the Tobacco-Parliament's specific insinuations and
deliberations were, in this alarming interim, no Hansard gives
us a hint. Faint and timid they needed, at first, to be;
such unfavorable winds having risen, blowing off at a sad rate the
smoke of that abstruse Institution.--"JARNI-BLEU!" snuffles the
Feldzeugmeister to himself. But "SI DEUS EST NOBISCUM," as Grumkow
exclaims once to his beautiful Reichenbach, or NOSTI as he calls
him in their slang or cipher language, "If God is with us, who can
prevail against us?" For the Grumkow can quote Scripture;
nay solaces himself with it, which is a feat beyond what the Devil
is competent to.
EXCELLENCY HOTHAM ARRIVES IN BERLIN.
The Special Envoy to be sent to Berlin on this interesting
occasion is a dignified Yorkshire Baronet; Sir Charles Hotham,
"Colonel of the Horse-Grenadiers;" he has some post at Court, too,
and is still in his best years. His Wife is Chesterfield's Sister;
he is withal a kind of soldier, as we see;--a man of many
sabre-tashes, at least, and acquainted with Cavalry-Drill, as well
as the practices of Goldsticks: his Father was a General Officer
in the Peterborough Spanish Wars. These are his eligibilities,
recommending him at Berlin, and to Official men at home. Family is
old enough: Hothams of Scarborough in the East Riding; old as
WILHELMUS BASTARDUS; and subsists to our own day. This Sir Charles
is lineal Son of the Hothams who lost their heads in the Civil
War; and he is, so to speak, lineal UNCLE of the Lords Hotham that
now are. For the rest, a handsome figure, prompt in French, and
much the gentleman. So far has Villa sped.
Hotham got to Berlin on Sunday, 2d April, 1730. He had lingered a
little, waiting to gather up some skirts of that
Reichenbach-Grumkow Correspondence, and have them ready to show in
the proper Quarter. For that is one of the chief arrows in his
quiver. But here he is at last: and on Monday, he is introduced at
Charlottenburg to the Prussian Majesty; and finds an abundant
welcome to himself and his preliminaries. "Marriage into that fine
high Country (MAGNIFIKE LAND) will be welcome to my Daughter, I
believe, as flowers in May: to me also how can it be other than
welcome!--'Farther instructions,' you say? Yes, surely; and terms
honorable on both sides. Only say nothing of it, I had rather tell
the girl myself." [Ranke, i. 284.] To that frank purport spoke his
Majesty;--and invites the Excellency Hotham to stay dinner.
Great dinner at Charlottenburg, accordingly; Monday, 3d April,
1730: the two English Excellencies Hotham and Dubourgay, then
General Borck, Knyphausen, Grumkow, Seckendorf and others;--
"where," says Hotham, giving Despatch about it, "we all got
immoderately drunk." Of which dinner there is sordid narrative,
from Grumkow to his NOSTI (to his Reichenbach, in cant speech),
still visible through St. Mary Axe, were it worth much attention
from us. Passages of wit, loaded with allusion, flew round the
table: "A German ducat is change for an English half-guinea," and
the like sprightly things. Nay at one time, Hotham's back being
turned, they openly drink,--his Majesty in a state of
exhilaration, having blabbed the secret:--"To the health of
Wilhelmina Princess of Wales!" Upon which the whole Palace of
Charlottenburg now bursts into tripudiation; the very valets
cuttiug capers, making somersets,--and rushing off with the news
to Berlin. Observable, only, that Hotham and Dubourgay sat silent
in the tripudiation; with faces diplomatically grave.
Several points to be settled first; no hallooing till we are out
of the wood.
News came to Berlin Schloss, doubtless at full gallop, which would
only take a quarter of an hour. This is Wilhelmina's experience of
it. Afternoon of Monday, 3d of April, 1730, in the Schloss of
Berlin,--towards sunset, some ornamental seam in one's hand:--
"I was sitting quiet in my Apartment, busy with work, and some one
reading to me, when the Queen's Ladies rushed in, with a torrent
of domestics in the rear; who all bawled out, putting one knee to
the ground, 'They were come to salute the Princess of Wales.'
I fairly believed these poor people had lost their wits;
they would not cease overwhelming me with noise and tumult, their
joy was so great they knew not what they did. When the farce had
lasted some time, they at last told me"--what our readers know.
What the demure Wilhelmina professes she cared next to nothing
about. "I was so little moved by it, that I answered, going on
with my work, 'Is that all?' Which greatly surprised them.
A while afterwards my Sisters and several Ladies came also to
congratulate me. I was much loved; and I felt more delighted at
the proofs each gave me of that than at what occasioned them.
In the evening I went to the Queen's: you may readily conceive her
joy. On my first entrance, she called me 'her dear Princess of
Wales;' and addressed Madam de Sonsfeld as 'Milady.' This latter
took the liberty of hinting to her, that it would be better to
keep quiet; that the King having yet given no notice of this
business, might be provoked at such demonstration, and that the
least trifle could still ruin all her hopes. The Countess
Finkenstein joining her remonstrances to Sonsfeld's, the Queen,
though with regret, promised to moderate herself."
[Wilhelmina, i. 215.]
This is the effulgent flaming-point of the long-agitated English
Match, which we have so often caught in a bitterly smoking
condition. "The King indeed spoke nothing of it to us, on his
return to Berlin in a day or two," says Wilhelmina; "which we
thought strange." But everybody considered it certain, nothing but
the details left to settle. "Hotham had daily conferences with the
King." "Every post brought letters from the Prince of Wales:" of
which Wilhelmina saw several,--this for one specimen, general
purport of the whole: "I conjure you, my dear Hotham, get these
negotiations finished! I am madly in love (AMOUREUX COMME UN FOU),
and my impatience is unequalled." {Ib. i. 218.] Wilhelmina thought
these sentiments "very, romantic" on the part of Prince Fred,
"who had never seen me, knew me only by repute:"--and answered
his romances and him with tiffs of laughter, in a prettily
fleering manner.
Effulgent flame-point;--which was of very brief duration indeed,
and which sank soon into bitterer smoke than ever, down almost to
the choking state. There are now six weeks of Diplomatic History
at the Court of Berlin, which end far otherwise than they began.
Weeks well-nigh indecipherable; so distracted are they, by
black-art and abstruse activities above ground and below, and so
distractedly recorded for us: of which, if it be humanly possible,
we must try to convey some faint notion to mankind.
Chapter II.
LANGUAGE OF BIRDS: EXCELLENCY HOTHAM PROVES UNAVAILING.
Already next morning, after that grand Dinner at Charlottenburg,
Friedrich Wilhelm, awakening with his due headache, thought, and
was heard saying, He had gone too far! Those gloomy looks of
Hotham and Dubourgay, on the occasion; they are a sad memento that
our joyance was premature. The English mean the Double-Marriage;
and Friedrich Wilhelm is not ready, and never fairly was, for more
than the Single. "Wilhelmina Princess of Wales, yes with all my
heart; but Friedrich to an English Princess--Hm, na;"--and in a
day more: ["Instruction to his Ministers, 5th April," cited by
Ranke, i. 285 n.] plainly "No." And there it finally rests; or if
rocked about, always settles there again.
And why, No?--Truly, as regarded Crown-Prince Friedrich's
marriage, the question had its real difficulties: and then, still
more, it had its imaginary; and the subterranean activities were
busy! The witnesses, contemporaneous and other, assign three
reasons, or considerations and quasi-reasons, which the
Tobacco-Parliament and Friedrich Wilhelm's lively fancy could
insist upon it till they became irrefragable:--
FIRST, his rooted discontent with the Crown-Prince, some even say
his jealousy of the Crown-Prince's talents, render it unpleasant
to think of promoting him in any way. SECOND, natural German
loyalty, enlivened by the hope of Julich and Berg, attaching
Friedrich Wilhelm to the Kaiser's side of things, repels him with
a kind of horror from the Anti-Kaiser or French-English side.
"Marry my Daughter, if you like; I shall be glad to salute her as
Princess of Wales; but no union in your Treaty-of-Seville
operations: in politics go you your own road, if that is it, while
I go mine; no tying of us, by Double or other Marriages, to go one
road." THIRD, the magnificence of those English. "Regardless of
expense," insinuates the Tobacco-Parliament; "they will send their
grand Princess hither, with no end of money; brought up in
grandeur to look down on the like of us. She can dazzle, she can
purchase: in the end, may there not be a Crown-Prince Party,
capable of extinguishing your Majesty here in your own Court, and
makiug Prussia a bit of England; all eyes being turned to such
sumptuous Princess and her Crown-Prince,--Heir-Apparent, or
'Rising Sun' as we may call him!"--
These really are three weighty almost dreadful considerations to a
poetic-tempered King and Smoking Parliament. Out of which there is
no refuge except indeed this plain fourth one: "No hurry about
Fritz's marriage; [Friedrich Wilhelm to Reichenbach (13th May),
infra.] he is but eighteen gone; evidently too young for
housekeeping. Thirty is a good time for marrying. 'There is, thank
God, no lack of royal lineage; I have two other Princes,'"--and
another just at hand, if I knew it.
To all which there is to be added that ever-recurring invincible
gravitation towards the Kaiser, and also towards Julich and Berg,
by means of him,--well acted on by the Tobacco-Parliament for the
space of those six weeks. During which, accordingly, almost from
the first day after that Hotham Dinner of April 3d, the answer of
the royal mind, with superficial fluctuations, always is:
"Wilhelmina at once, if you choose; likely enough we might agree
about Crown-Prince Friedrich too, if once all were settled; but of
the Double-Marriage, at this present time, HORE NIT, [Ranke,
i. 285 n.] I will have nothing to say." And as the English answer
steadily, "Both or none!"--meaning indeed to draw Prussia away
from the Kaiser's leading-strings, and out of his present
enchanted condition under the two Black-Artists he has about him,
the Negotiation sinks again into a mere smoking, and extinct or
plainly extinguishing state.
The Grumkow-NOSTI Cipher Correspondence might be reckoned as
another efficient cause; though, in fact, it was only a big
concomitant symptom, much depended on by both parties, and much
disappointing both. In the way of persuading or perverting
Friedrich Wilhelm's judgment about England, this deep-laid piece
of machinery does not seem to have done much, if anything;
and Hotham, who with the English Court had calculated on it (on
their detection of it) as the grand means of blowing Grumkow out
of the field, produced a far opposite result on trying, as we
shall see! That was a bit of heavy ordnance which disappointed
everybody. Seized by the enemy before it could do any mischief;
enemy turned it round on the inventor; fired it off on the
inventor, and--it exploded through the touch-hole; singeing some
people's whiskers: nothing more!--
A PEEP INTO THE NOSTI-GRUMKOW CORRESPONDENCE CAUGHT UP IN ST. MARY AXE.
Would the reader wish to look into this Nosti-Grumkow
Correspondence at all? I advise him, not. Good part of it still
lies in the Paper-Office here; [Prussian Despatches, vols. xl.
xli.: in a fragmentary state; so much of it as they had caught up,
and tried to make use of;--far too much.] likely to be published
by the Prussian Dryasdust in coming time: but a more sordid mass
of eavesdroppings, kitchen-ashes and floor-sweepings, collected
and interchanged by a pair of treacherous Flunkies (big bullying
Flunky and little trembling cringing one, Grumkow and
Reichenbach), was never got together out of a gentleman's
household. To no idlest reader, armed even with barnacles, and
holding mouth and nose, can the stirring-up of such a dust-bin be
long tolerable. But the amazing problem was this Editor's, doomed
to spell the Event into clearness if he could, and put dates,
physiognomy and outline to it, by help of such Flunky-Sanscrit!--
That Nosti-Grumkow Correspondence, as we now have it in the
Paper-Office,--interpretable only by acres of British Despatches,
by incondite dateless helpless Prussian Books ("printed Blotches
of Human Stupor," as Smelfungus calls them): how gladly would one
return them all to St. Mary Axe, there to lie through Eternity!
It is like holding dialogue with a rookery; asking your way
(perhaps in flight for life, as was partly my own case) by
colloquy with successive or even simultaneous Rookeries.
Reader, have you tried such a thing? An adventure, never to be
spoken of again, when once DONE!
Wilhelmina pretends to give quotations [Wilhelmina, i. 233-235.]
from this subterranean Grumkow-Reichenbach Correspondence;
but hers are only extracts from some description or remembrance;
hardly one word is close to the original, though here and there
some outline or shadow of a real passage is traceable.
What fractional elements, capable of gaining some vestige of
meaning when laid together in their cosmic order, I could pick
from the circumambient immensity not cosmic, are here for the
reader's behoof. Let him skip, if, like myself, he is weary;
for the substance of the story is elsewhere given. Or perhaps he
has the curiosity to know the speech of birds? With abridgment, by
occasional change of phrase, above all by immense omission,--here,
in specimen, is something like what the Rookery says to poor
Friedrich Wilhelm and us, through St. Mary Axe and the Copyists in
the Foreign Office! Friedrich Wilhelm reads it (Hotham gives him
reading of it) some weeks hence; we not till generations
afterwards. I abridge to the utmost;--will mark in single commas
what is not Abridgment but exact Translation;--with rigorous
attention to dates, and my best fidelity to any meaning there
may be:--
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