History of Friedrich II of Prussia Volume X Part 3

"REINSBERG, 26th October, 1736.

... "Yesterday I went across to Mirow. To give my Most All-gracious Father an idea of the place, I cannot liken it to anything higher than Gross-Kreutz [term of comparison lost upon us; say GARRAT, at a venture, or the CLACHAN OF ABERFOYLE]: the one house in it, that can be called a house, is not so good as the Parson's there. I made straight for the Schloss; which is pretty much like the Garden-house in Bornim: only there is a rampart round it; and an old Tower, considerably in ruins, serves as a Gateway to the House.

"Coming on the Drawbridge, I perceived an old stocking-knitter disguised as Grenadier, with his cap, cartridge-box and musket laid to a side, that they might not hinder him in his knitting-work. As I advanced, he asked, 'Whence I came, and whitherward I was going?' I answered, that 'I came from the Post-house, and was going over this Bridge:' whereupon the Grenadier, quite in a pa.s.sion, ran to the Tower; where he opened a door, and called out the Corporal. The Corporal seemed to have hardly been out of bed; and in his great haste, had not taken time to put on his shoes, nor quite b.u.t.ton his breeches; with much flurry he asked us, 'Where we were for, and how we came to treat the Sentry in that manner?' Without answering him at all, we went our way towards the Schloss.

"Never in my life should I have taken this for a Schloss, had it not been that there were two gla.s.s lamps fixed at the door-posts, and the figures of two Cranes standing in front of them, by way of Guards.

We made up to the House; and after knocking almost half an hour to no purpose, there peered out at last an exceedingly old woman, who looked as if she might have nursed the Prince of Mirow's father. The poor woman, at sight of strangers, was so terrified, she slammed the door to in our faces. We knocked again; and seeing there could nothing be made of it, we went round to the stables; where a fellow told us, 'The young Prince with his Consort was gone to Neu-Strelitz, a couple of miles off [ten miles English]; and the d.u.c.h.ess his Mother, who lives here, had given him, to make the better figure, all her people along with him; keeping n.o.body but the old woman to herself.'

"It was still early; so I thought I could not do better than profit by the opportunity, and have a look at Neu-Strelitz. We took post-horses; and got thither about noon. Neu-Strelitz is properly a Village; with only one street in it, where Chamberlains, Office-Clerks, Domestics all lodge, and where there is an Inn. I cannot better describe it to my Most All-gracious Father than by that street in Gumbinnen where you go up to the Town-hall,--except that no house here is whitewashed. The Schloss is fine, and lies on a lake, with a big garden; pretty much like Reinsberg in situation.

"The first question I asked here was for the Prince of Mirow: but they told me he had just driven off again to a place called Kanow; which is only a couple of miles English from Mirow, where we had been.

Buddenbrock, who is acquainted with Neu-Strelitz, got me, from a chamberlain, something to eat; and in the mean while, that Bohme came in, who was Adjutant in my Most All-gracious Father's Regiment [not of Goltz, but King's presumably]: Bohme did not know me till I hinted to him who I was. He told me, 'The Duke of Strelitz was an excellent seamster;'" fit to be Tailor to your Majesty in a manner, had not Fate been cruel, "'and that he made beautiful dressing-gowns (Ca.s.sAQUINS) with his needle.' This made me curious to see him: so we had ourselves presented as Foreigners; and it went off so well that n.o.body recognized me. I cannot better describe the Duke than by saying he is like old Stahl [famed old medical man at Berlin, dead last year, physiognomy not known to actual readers], in a blond Abbe's-periwig. He is extremely silly (BLODE); his Hofrath Altrock tells him, as it were, everything he has to say." About fifty, this poor Duke; shrunk into needlework, for a quiet life, amid such tumults from Schwerin and elsewhere.

"Having taken leave, we drove right off to Kanow; and got thither about six. It is a mere Village; and the Prince's Pleasure-House (l.u.s.tHAUS) here is nothing better than an ordinary Hunting-Lodge, such as any Forest-keeper has. I alighted at the Miller's; and had myself announced" at the l.u.s.tHAUS, "by his maid: upon which the Major-Domo (HAUS-HOFMEISTER) came over to the Mill, and complimented me; with whom I proceeded to the Residenz," that is, back again to Mirow, "where the whole Mirow Family were a.s.sembled. The Mother is a Princess of Schwartzburg, and still the cleverest of them all," still under sixty; good old Mother, intent that her poor Son should appear to advantage, when visiting the more opulent Serenities. "His Aunt also," mother's sister, "was there. The Lady Spouse is small; a Niece to the Prince of Hildburghausen, who is in the Kaiser's service: she was in the family-way; but (ABER) seemed otherwise to be a very good Princess.

"The first thing they entertained me with was, the sad misfortune come upon their best Cook; who, with the cart that was bringing the provisions, had overset, and broken his arm; so that the provisions had all gone to nothing. Privately I have had inquiries made; there was not a word of truth in the story. At last we went to table; and, sure enough, it looked as if the Cook and his provisions had come to some mishap; for certainly in the Three Crowns at Potsdam [worst inn, one may guess, in the satirical vein], there is better eating than here.

"At table, there was talk of nothing but of all the German Princes who are not right in their wits (NICHT RECHT KLUG)," as Mirow himself, your Majesty knows, is reputed to be!" There was Weimar, [Wilhelmina's acquaintance; wedded, not without difficulty, to a superfluous Baireuth Sister-in-law by Wilhelmina (_ Memoires de Wilhelmina,_ ii. 185-194): Grandfather of Goethe's Friend;--is nothing like fairly out of his wits; only has a flea (as we may say) dancing occasionally in the ear of him.

Perhaps it is so with the rest of these Serenities, here fallen upon evil tongues?] Gotha, Waldeck, Hoym, and the whole lot of them, brought upon the carpet:--and after our good Host had got considerably drunk, we rose,--and he lovingly promised me that 'he and his whole Family would come and visit Reinsberg.' Come he certainly will; but how I shall get rid of him, G.o.d knows.

"I most submissively beg pardon of my Most All-gracious Father for this long Letter; and"--we will terminate here. [_OEuvres de Frederic,_ xxvii. part 3d, pp. 104-106.]

Dilapidated Mirow and its inmates, portrayed in this satirical way, except as a view of Serene Highnesses fallen into Sleepy Hollow, excites little notice in the indolent mind; and that little, rather pleasantly contemptuous than really profitable. But one fact ought to kindle momentary interest in English readers: the young foolish Herr, in this dilapidated place, is no other than our "Old Queen Charlotte's" Father that is to be,--a kind of Ancestor of ours, though we little guessed it! English readers will scan him with new curiosity, when he pays that return visit at Reinsberg. Which he does within the fortnight:--

"TO HIS PRUSSIAN MAJESTY (from the Crown-Prince).

"REINSBERG, 6th November, 1736.

... "that my Most All-gracious Father has had the graciousness to send us some Swans. My Wife also has been exceedingly delighted at the fine Present sent her.... General Praetorius," Danish Envoy, with whose Court there is some tiff of quarrel, "came hither yesterday to take leave of us; he seems very unwilling to quit Prussia.

"This morning about three o'clock, my people woke me, with word that there was a Stafette come with Letters,"--from your Majesty or Heaven knows whom! "I spring up in all haste; and opening the Letter,--find it is from the Prince of Mirow; who informs me that 'he will be here to-day at noon.' I have got all things in readiness to receive him, as if he were the Kaiser in person; and I hope there will be material for some amus.e.m.e.nt to my Most All-gracious Father, by next post."--Next post is half a week hence:--

"TO HIS PRUSSIAN MAJESTY (from the Crown-Prince).

"REINSBERG, 11th Novemher.

... "The Prince of Mirow's visit was so curious, I must give my Most All-gracious Father a particular report of it. In my last, I mentioned how General Praetorius had come to us: he was in the room, when I entered with the Prince of Mirow; at sight of him Praetorius exclaimed, loud enough to be heard by everybody, 'VOILA LE PRINCE CAJUCA!'

[Nickname out of some Romance, fallen extinct long since.] Not one of us could help laughing; and I had my own trouble to turn it so that he did not get angry.

"Scarcely was the Prince got in, when they came to tell me, for his worse luck, that Prince Heinrich," the Ill Margraf, "was come;--who accordingly trotted him out, in such a way that we thought we should all have died with laughing. Incessant praises were given him, especially for his fine clothes, his fine air, and his uncommon agility in dancing.

And indeed I thought the dancing would never end.

"In the afternoon, to spoil his fine coat,"--a contrivance of the Ill Margraf's, I should think,--"we stept out to shoot at target in the rain: he would not speak of it, but one could observe he was in much anxiety about the coat. In the evening, he got a gla.s.s or two in his head, and grew extremely merry; said at last, 'He was sorry that, for divers state-reasons and businesses of moment, he must of necessity return home;'--which, however, he put off till about two in the morning.

I think, next day he would not remember very much of it.

"Prince Heinrich is gone to his Regiment again;" Praetorius too is off;--and we end with the proper KOW-TOW. [_OEuvres de Frederic,_ xvii.

part 3d, p. 109.]

These Strelitzers, we said, are juniors to infatuated Schwerin; and poor Mirow is again junior to Strelitz: plainly one of the least opulent of Residences. At present, it is Dowager Apanage (WITTWEN-SITZ) to the Widow of the late Strelitz of blessed memory: here, with her one Child, a boy now grown to what manhood we see, has the Serene Dowager lived, these twenty-eight years past; a Schwartzburg by birth, "the cleverest head among them all." Twenty-eight years in dilapidated Mirow: so long has that Tailoring Duke, her eldest STEP-SON (child of a prior wife) been Supreme Head of Mecklenburg-Strelitz; employed with his needle, or we know not how,--collapsed plainly into tailoring at this date. There was but one other Son; this clever Lady's, twenty years junior,--"Prince of Mirow" whom we now see. Karl Ludwig Friedrich is the name of this one; age now twenty-eight gone. He, ever since the third month of him, when the poor Serene Father died ("May, 1703"), has been at Mirow with Mamma; getting what education there was,--not too successfully, as would appear. Eight years ago, "in 1726," Mamma sent him off upon his travels; to Geneva, Italy, France: he looked in upon Vienna, too; got a Lieutenant-Colonelcy in the Kaiser's Service, but did not like it; soon gave it up; and returned home to vegetate, perhaps to seek a wife,--having prospects of succession in Strelitz. For the Serene Half-Brother proves to have no children: were his tailoring once finished in the world, our Prince of Mirow is Duke in Chief. On this basis the wedded last year; the little Wife has already brought him one child, a Daughter; and has (as Friedrich notices) another under way, if it prosper. No lack of Daughters, nor of Sons by and by: eight years hence came the little Charlotte,--subsequently Mother of England: much to her and our astonishment. [Born (at Mirow) 19th May, 1744; married (London), 8th September, 1761; died, 18th November, 1818 (Michaelis, ii.

445, 446; Hubner, t. 195; OErtel, pp. 43, 22).]

The poor man did not live to be Duke of Strelitz; he died, 1752, in little Charlotte's eighth year; Tailor Duke SURVIVING him a few months.

Little Charlotte's Brother did then succeed, and lasted till 1794; after whom a second Brother, father of the now Serene Strelitzes;--who also is genealogically notable. For from him there came another still more famous Queen: Louisa of Prussia; beautiful to look upon, as "Aunt Charlotte" was not, in a high degree; and who showed herself a Heroine in Napoleon's time, as Aunt Charlotte never was called to do. Both Aunt and Niece were women of sense, of probity, propriety; fairly beyond the average of Queens. And as to their early poverty, ridiculous to this gold-nugget generation, I rather guess it may have done them benefits which the gold-nugget generation, in its Queens and otherwise, stands far more in want of than it thinks.

But enough of this Prince of Mirow, whom Friedrich has accidentally unearthed for us. Indeed there is no farther history of him, for or against. He evidently was not thought to have invented gunpowder, by the public. And yet who knows but, in his very simplicity, there lay something far beyond the Ill Margraf to whom he was so quizzable? Poor down-pressed brother mortal; somnambulating so pacifically in Sleepy Hollow yonder, and making no complaint!

He continued, though soon with less enthusiasm, and in the end very rarely, a visitor of Friedrich's during this Reinsberg time. Patriotic English readers may as well take the few remaining vestiges, too, before quite dismissing him to Sleepy Hollow. Here they are, swept accurately together, from that Correspondence of Friedrich with Papa:--

"REINSBERG, 18th NOVEMBER, 1736.... report most submissively that the Prince of Mirow has again been here, with his Mother, Wife, Aunt, Hofdames, Cavaliers and entire Household; so that I thought it was the Flight out of Egypt [Exodus of the Jews]. I begin to have a fear of those good people, as they a.s.sured me they would have such pleasure in coming often!"

"REINSBERG, 1st FEBRUARY, 1737." Let us give it in the Original too, as a specimen of German spelling:--

_"Der Prints von Mihrau ist vohr einigen thagen hier gewessen und haben wier einige Wa.s.ser schwermer in der See ihm zu Ehren gesmissen, seine frau ist mit eber thoten Printzesin nieder geKomen.--Der General schulenburg ist heute hier gekommen und wirdt morgen"_--That is to say:--

"The Prince of Mirow was here a few days ago; and we let off, in honor of him, a few water-rockets over the Lake: his Wife has been brought to bed of a dead Princess. General Schulenburg [with a small s] came hither to-day; and to-morrow will"...

"REINSBERG, 28th MARCH, 1737.... Prince von Mirow was here yesterday; and tried shooting at the popinjay with us; he cannot see rightly, and shoots always with help of an opera-gla.s.s."

"RUPPIN, 20th OCTOBER, 1737. The Prince of Mirow was with us last Friday; and babbled much in his high way; among other things, white-lied to us, that the Kaiserinn gave him a certain porcelain snuff-box he was handling; but on being questioned more tightly, he confessed to me he had bought it in Vienna." [_Briefe an Vater,_ p. 71 (CARET in _OEuvres_ ); pp. 85-114.--See Ib. 6th November, 1737, for faint trace of a visit; and 25th September, 1739, for another still fainter, the last there is.]

And so let him somnambulate yonder, till the two Queens, like winged Psyches, one after the other, manage to emerge from him.

Friedrich's Letters to his Father are described by some Prussian Editors as "very attractive, SEHR ANZIEHENDE BRIEFE;" which, to a Foreign reader, seems a strange account of them. Letters very hard to understand completely; and rather insignificant when understood. They turn on Gifts sent to and sent from, "swans," "hams," with the unspeakable thanks for them; on recruits of so many inches; on the visitors that have been; they a.s.sure us that "there is no sickness in the regiment," or tell expressly how much:--wholly small facts; nothing of speculation, and of ceremonial pipe-clay a great deal. We know already under what nightmare conditions Friedrich wrote to his Father! The att.i.tude of the Crown-Prince, sincerely reverent and filial, though obliged to appear ineffably so, and on the whole struggling under such mountains of enc.u.mbrance, yet loyally maintaining his equilibrium, does at last acquire, in these Letters, silently a kind of beauty to the best cla.s.s of readers. But that is nearly their sole merit. By far the most human of them, that on the first visit to Mirow, the reader has now seen; and may thank us much that we show him no more of them. [_Friedrich des Grossen Briefe an seinen Vater_ (Berlin, 1838)]. Reduced in size, by suitable omissions; and properly spelt; but with little other elucidation for a stranger: in _OEuvres,_ xxvii. part 3d, pp, 1-123 (Berlin, 1856).

Chapter IV. -- NEWS OF THE DAY.

While these Mirow visits are about their best, and much else at Reinsberg is in comfortable progress, Friedrich's first year there just ending, there come accounts from England of quarrels broken out between the Britannic Majesty and his Prince of Wales. Discrepancies risen now to a height; and getting into the very Newspapers;--the Rising Sun too little under the control of the Setting, in that unquiet Country!

Prince Fred of England did not get to the Rhine Campaign, as we saw: he got some increase of Revenue, a Household of his own; and finally a Wife, as he had requested: a Sachsen-Gotha Princess; who, peerless Wilhelmma being unattainable, was welcome to Prince Fred. She is in the family-way, this summer 1737, a very young lady still; result thought to be due--When? Result being potential Heir to the British Nation, there ought to have been good calculation of the time when! But apparently n.o.body had well turned his attention that way. Or if Fred and Spouse had, as is presumable, Fred had given no notice to the Paternal Majesty,--"Let Paternal Majesty, always so cross to me, look out for himself in that matter." Certain it is, Fred and Spouse, in the beginning of August, 1737, are out at Hampton Court; potential Heir due before long, and no preparation made for it. August 11th in the evening, out at solitary Hampton Court; the poor young Mother's pains came on; no Chancellor there, no Archbishop to see the birth,--in fact, hardly the least medical help, and of political altogether none. Fred, in his flurry, or by forethought,--instead of das.h.i.+ng off expresses, at a gallop as of Epsom, to summon the necessary persons and appliances, yoked wheeled vehicles and rolled off to the old unprovided Palace of St. James's, London, with his poor Wife in person! Unwarned, unprovided; where nevertheless she was safely delivered that same night,--safely, as if by miracle. The crisis might have taken her on the very highway: never was such an imprudence. Owing, I will believe, to Fred's sudden flurry in the unprovided moment,--unprovided, by reason of prior desuetudes and discouragements to speech, on Papa's side. A shade of malice there might also be. Papa doubts not, it was malice aforethought all of it. "Had the potential Heir of the British Nation gone to wreck, or been born on the highway, from my quarrels with this bad Fred, what a sc.r.a.pe had I been in!" thinks Papa, and is in a towering permanence of wrath ever since; the very Newspapers and coffee-houses and populaces now all getting vocal with it.

Papa, as it turned out, never more saw the face of Fred. Judicious Mamma, Queen Caroline, could not help a visit, one visit to the poor young Mother, so soon as proper: coming out from the visit, Prince Fred obsequiously escorting her to her carriage, found a crowd of people and populace, in front of St. James's; and there knelt down on the street, in his fine silk breeches, careless of the mud, to "beg a Mother's blessing," and show what a son he was, he for his part, in this sad discrepancy that had risen! Mamma threw a silent glance on him, containing volumes of mixed tenor; drove off; and saw no more of Fred, she either. I fear, this kneeling in the mud tells against Prince Fred; but in truth I do not know, nor even much care. [Lord Hervey, _Memoirs of George the Second,_ ii. 362-370, 409.] What a noise in England about nothing at all!--What a noisy Country, your Prussian Majesty! Foolish "rising sun" not restrainable there by the setting or s.h.i.+ning one; opposition parties bowling him about among the constellations, like a very mad object!--

But in a month or two, there comes worse news out of England; falling heavy on the heart of Prussian Majesty: news that Queen Caroline herself is dead. ["Sunday evening, 1st December (20th Nov.), 1737." Ib. pp.

510-539.] Died as she had lived, with much constancy of mind, with a graceful modest courage and endurance; sinking quietly under the load of private miseries long quietly kept hidden, but now become too heavy, and for which the appointed rest was now here. Little George blubbered a good deal; fidgeted and fl.u.s.tered a good deal: much put about, poor foolish little soul. The dying Caroline recommended HIM to Walpole; advised his Majesty to marry again. _"Non, j'aurai des maitresses_ (No, I'll have mistresses)!" sobbed his Majesty pa.s.sionately. _"Ah, mon Dieu, cela n'empeche pas_" (that does not an experience of the case). There is something stoically tragic in the history of Caroline with her flighty vaporing little King: seldom had foolish husband so wise a wife. "Dead!"

thought Friedrich Wilhelm, looking back through the whirlwinds of life, into sunny young scenes far enough away: "Dead!"--Walpole continued to manage the little King; but not for long; England itself rising in objection. Jenkins's Ear, I understand, is lying in cotton; and there are mad inflammable strata in that Nation, capable of exploding at a great rate.

From the Eastern regions our Newspapers are very full of events: War with the Turk going on there; Russia and Austria both doing their best against the Turk. The Russians had hardly finished their Polish-Election fighting, when they decided to have a stroke at the Turk,--Turk always an especial eye-sorrow to them, since that "Treaty of the Pruth," and Czar Peter's sad rebuff there:--Munnich marched direct out of Poland through the Ukraine, with his eye on the Crimea and furious business in that quarter. This is his second Campaign there, this of 1737; and furious business has not failed. Last year he stormed the Lines of Perecop, tore open the Crimea; took Azoph, he or Lacy under him; took many things: this year he had laid his plans for Oczakow;--takes Oczakow,--fiery event, blazing in all the Newspapers, at Reinsberg and elsewhere. Concerning which will the reader accept this condensed testimony by an eye-witness?

"OCZAKOW, 13th JULY, 1737. Day before yesterday, Feldmarschall Munnich got to Oczakow, as he had planned,"--strong Turkish Town in the nook between the Black Sea and the estuary of the Dnieper;--"with intention to besiege it. Siege-train, stores of every sort, which he had set afloat upon the Dnieper in time enough, were to have been ready for him at Oczakow. But the flotilla had been detained by shallows, by waterfalls; not a boat was come, nor could anybody say when they were coming. Meanwhile nothing is to be had here; the very face of the earth the Turks have burnt: not a blade of gra.s.s for cavalry within eight miles, nor a stick of wood for engineers; not a hole for covert, and the ground so hard you cannot raise redoubts on it: Munnich perceives he must attempt, nevertheless.

"On his right, by the sea-sh.o.r.e, Munnich finds some remains of gardens, palisades; sc.r.a.pes together some vestige of shelter there (five thousand, or even ten thousand pioneers working desperately all that first night, 11th July, with only half success); and on the morrow commences firing with what artillery he has. Much outfired by the Turks inside;--his enterprise as good as desperate, unless the Dnieper flotilla come soon. July 12th, all day the firing continues, and all night; Turks extremely furious: about an hour before daybreak, we notice burning in the interior, 'Some wooden house kindled by us, town got on fire yonder,'--and, praise to Heaven, they do not seem to succeed in quenching it again. Munnich turns out, in various divisions; intent on trying something, had he the least engineer furniture;--hopes desperately there may be promise for him in that internal burning still visible.

"In the centre of Munnich's line is one General Keith, a deliberate stalwart Scotch gentleman, whom we shall know better; Munnich himself is to the right: Could not one try it by scalade; keep the internal burning free to spread, at any rate? 'Advance within musket-shot, General Keith!' orders Munnich's Aide-de-Camp cantering up. 'I have been this good while within it,' answers Keith, pointing to his dead men.

Aide-de-Camp canters up a second time: 'Advance within half musket-shot, General Keith, and quit any covert you have!' Keith does so; sends, with his respects to Feldmarschall Munnich, his remonstrance against such a waste of human life. Aide-de-Camp canters up a third time: 'Feldmarschall Munnich is for trying a scalade; hopes General Keith will do his best to co-operate!' 'Forward, then!' answers Keith; advances close to the glacis; finds a wet ditch twelve feet broad, and has not a stick of engineer furniture. Keith waits there two hours; his men, under fire all the while, trying this and that to get across; Munnich's scalade going off ineffectual in like manner:--till at length Keith's men, and all men, tire of such a business, and roll back in great confusion out of shot-range. Munnich gives himself up for lost. And indeed, says Mannstein, had the Turks sallied out in pursuit at that moment, they might have chased us back to Russia. But the Turks did not sally. And the internal conflagration is not quenched, far from it;--and about nine A.M. their Powder-Magazine, conflagration reaching it, roared aloft into the air, and killed seven thousand of them," [Mannstein, pp.

151-156.]--