Character of the Crown Prince.—Stratagem of the Emperor Joseph II.—Death of the Empress Catharine of Russia.—Matrimonial Alliance of Russia and Prussia.—Death of the King of Bavaria.—Attempt to Annex Bavaria to Austria.—Unexpected Energy of Frederick.—Court Intrigues.—Preparations for War.—Address to the Troops.—Declaration of War.—Terror in Vienna.—Irritability of Frederick.—Death of Voltaire.—Unjust Condemnation of the Judges.—Death of Maria Theresa.—Anecdote.—The King’s Fondness for Children.—His Fault-finding Spirit.—The King’s Appearance.—The Last Review.—Statement of Mirabeau.—Anecdote related by Dr. Moore.—Frederick’s Fondness for Dogs.—Increasing Weakness. —Unchanging Obduracy toward the Queen.—The Dying Scene.
Toward the end of the year 1775 the king had an unusually severe attack of the gout. It was erroneously reported that it was a dangerous attack of the dropsy, and that he was manifestly drawing near to his end. The Crown Prince, who was to succeed him, was a man of very little character. The Emperor551 of Germany, Joseph II., thought the death of Frederick would present him an opportunity of regaining Silesia for Austria. The Austrian army was immediately put in motion and hurried to the frontiers of Silesia, to seize the province the moment the king should expire. This was openly done, and noised abroad. Much to the disappointment of the emperor, the king got well. Amidst much ridicule, the troops returned to their old quarters.190
Frederick was probably not surprised at this act on the part of the emperor. He undoubtedly had sufficient candor to admit that it was exactly what he should have done under similar circumstances.
Catharine of Russia had a son, Paul, her heir to the throne. It so chanced that she died just at the time Prince Henry of Prussia was visiting St. Petersburg. Through his agency Paul was induced to take as a second wife a niece of Frederick’s, the eldest daughter of Eugene of Würtemberg. Thus the ties between Russia and Prussia were still more strengthened, so far as matrimonial alliances could strengthen them. The wedding took place in Berlin on the 18th of October, 1776.
Several years now passed away with nothing specially worthy of record. Frederick did not grow more amiable as he advanced in years. Though Frederick was often unreasonable, petulant, and unjust, and would seldom admit that he had been in the wrong, however clear the case, it can not be doubted that it was his general and earnest desire that justice should be exercised in all his courts.
In September, 1777, the King of Bavaria died. The emperor thought it a good opportunity to annex Bavaria to Austria. “Do but look on the map,” says Carlyle, in his peculiar style of thought and expression: “you would say, Austria without Bavaria is like a human figure with its belly belonging to somebody else. Bavaria is the trunk or belly of the Austrian dominions, shutting off all the limbs of them each from the other; making for central part a huge chasm.”
France would hardly object, since she was exhausted with long wars. England was busy in the struggle with her North American colonies. Russia was at war with the Turks. There was no power to be feared but Prussia.
552 “Frederick,” said Kaunitz, “is old and broken. He can not live long. Having suffered so much, he has an absolute horror of war. We need not fear that he will again put his armies in motion.”
But no sooner did Frederick get an intimation that Austria was contemplating this enlargement of her domains than he roused himself to prevent it with all the vigor of his earlier years. It was a very delicate matter; for Charles Theodore, the elector, and his nephew August Christian, heir to the electorate, a young gentleman of very illustrious pedigree, but of a very slender purse, had both been bribed by Austria secretly to co-operate in the movement. The reader will be interested in Carlyle’s account, slightly abbreviated, of Frederick’s skill in diplomacy:
“Heir is a gallant enough young gentleman. Frederick judges that he probably will have haggled to sign any Austrian convention for dismemberment of Baiern, and that he will start into life upon it so soon as he sees hope.
“‘A messenger to him,’ thinks Frederick; ‘a messenger instantly; and who?’ For that clearly is the first thing. And a delicate thing it is; requiring to be done in profoundest secrecy, by hint and innuendo rather than speech—by somebody in a cloak of darkness, who is of adroit quality, and was never heard of in diplomatic circles before, not to be suspected of having business of mine on hand.
“Frederick bethinks him that in a late visit to Weimar he had noticed, for his fine qualities, a young gentleman named G?rtz, late tutor to the young Duke Karl August, a wise, firm, adroit-looking young gentleman, who was farther interesting as brother to Lieutenant General Von G?rtz, a respectable soldier of Frederick’s. Ex-tutor at Weimar, we say, and idle for the moment; hanging about court there, till he should find a new function.
“Of this ex-tutor Frederick bethinks him; and in the course of that same day—for there is no delay—Frederick, who is at Berlin, beckons General G?rtz to come over to him from Potsdam instantly.
“‘Hither this evening, and in all privacy meet me in the palace at such an hour’ (hour of midnight or thereby); which of553 course G?rtz, duly invisible to mankind, does. Frederick explains: an errand to München; perfectly secret, for the moment, and requiring great delicacy and address; perhaps not without risk, a timorous man might say: will your brother go for me, think you? G?rtz thinks he will.
“‘Here is his instruction, if so,’ adds the king, handing him an autograph of the necessary outline of procedure—not signed, nor with any credential, or even specific address, lest accident happen. ‘Adieu, then, herr general lieutenant; rule is, shoes of swiftness, cloak of darkness: adieu!’
“And G?rtz senior is off on the instant, careering toward Weimar, where he finds G?rtz junior, and makes known his errand. G?rtz junior stares in the natural astonishment; but, after some intense brief deliberation, becomes affirmative, and in a minimum of time is ready and on the road.
“G?rtz junior proved to have been an excellent choice on the king’s part, and came to good promotion afterward by his conduct in this affair. G?rtz junior started for München on the instant, masked utterly, or his business masked, from profane eyes; saw this person, saw that, and glided swiftly about, swiftly and with sure aim; and speedily kindled the matter, and had smoke rising in various points. And before January was out, saw the Reisch-Diet, at Regensburg, much more the general gazetteerage every where, seized of this affair, and thrown into paroxysms at the size and complexion of it: saw, in fact, a world getting into flame—kindled by whom or what nobody could guess for a long time to come. G?rtz had great running about in his cloak of darkness, and showed abundant talent of the kind needed. A pushing, clear-eyed, stout-hearted man; much cleverness and sureness in what he did and forebore to do. His adventures were manifold; he had much traveling about: was at Regensburg, at Mannheim; saw many persons whom he had to judge of on the instant, and speak frankly to, or speak darkly, or speak nothing; and he made no mistake.
“We can not afford the least narrative of G?rtz and his courses: imagination, from a few traits, will sufficiently conceive them. He had gone first to Karl Theodor’s minister: ‘Dead to it, I fear; has already signed?’ Alas! yes. Upon which to Zweibrück, the heir’s minister, whom his master had distinctly ordered to sign,554 but who, at his own peril, gallant man, delayed, remonstrated, had not yet done it; and was able to answer:
“‘Alive to it, he? Yes, with a witness, were there hope in the world!’ which threw G?rtz upon instant gallop toward Zweibrück Schloss in search of said heir, the young Duke August Christian; who, however, had left in the interim (summoned by his uncle, on Austrian urgency, to consent along with him), but whom G?rtz, by dexterity and intuition of symptoms, caught up by the road, with what a mutual joy! As had been expected, August Christian, on sight of G?rtz, with an armed Frederick looming in the distance, took at once into new courses and activities. From him no consent now; far other: treaty with Frederick; flat refusal ever to consent: application to the Reich, application even to France, and whatever a gallant young fellow could do.
“Frederick was in very weak health in these months; still considered by the gazetteers to be dying. But it appears he is not yet too weak for taking, on the instant necessary, a world-important resolution; and of being on the road with it, to this issue or to that, at full speed before the day closed. ‘Desist, good neighbor, I beseech you. You must desist, and even you shall:’ this resolution was entirely his own, as were the equally prompt arrangements he contrived for executing it, should hard come to hard, and Austria prefer war to doing justice.”191
While pushing these intrigues of diplomacy, Frederick was equally busy in marshaling his armies, that the sword might contribute its energies to the enforcement of his demands. One hundred thousand troops were assembled in Berlin, in the highest state of discipline and equipment, ready to march at a moment’s warning.
On Sunday, April 5, 1778, Frederick reviewed these troops, and addressed his officers in a speech, which was published in the newspapers to inform Austria what she had to expect. Eager as Frederick was to enlarge his own dominions, he was by no means disposed to grant the same privilege to other and rival nations. The address of Frederick to his officers was in reality a declaration to the Austrian court.
“Gentlemen,” said Frederick, “I have assembled you here for a555 public object. Most of you, like myself, have often been in arms with one another, and are grown gray in the service of our country. To all of us is well known in what dangers, toils, and renown we have been fellow-sharers. I doubt not in the least that all of you, as myself, have a horror of bloodshed; but the danger which now threatens our countries not only renders it a duty, but puts us in the absolute necessity, to adopt the quickest and most effectual means for dissipating at the right time the storm which threatens to break out upon us.
“I depend with complete confidence on your soldierly and patriotic zeal, which is already well and gloriously known to me, and which, while I live, I will acknowledge with the heartiest satisfaction. Before all things I recommend to you, and prescribe as your most sacred duty, that in every situation you exercise humanity on unarmed enemies. In this respect, let there be the strictest discipline kept among those under you.
“To travel with the pomp of a king is not among my wishes, and all of you are aware that I have no pleasure in rich field-furniture; but my increasing age, and the weakness it brings, render me incapable of riding as I did in my youth. I shall, therefore, be obliged to make use of a post-chaise in times of marching, and all of you have liberty to do the same. But on the day of battle you shall see me on horseback; and there, also, I hope my generals will follow that example.”
Kaunitz, the Austrian prime minister, was by no means prepared for this decisive action. In less than a week Frederick had one hundred thousand soldiers on the frontiers. Austria had not ten thousand there to meet them. Kaunitz, quite alarmed, assumed a supplicatory tone, and called for negotiation.
“Must there be war?” he said. “I am your majesty’s friend. Can we not, in mutual concession, find agreement?”
The result was a congress of three persons, two Prussians and one Austrian, which congress met at Berlin on the 24th of May, 1778. For two months they deliberated. The Austrians improved the delay in making very vigorous preparations for war. Frederick really wished to avoid the war, for he had seen enough of the woes of battle. They could come to no agreement.
On the 3d of July Frederick issued his declaration of war. On that very day his solid battalions, one hundred thousand556 strong, with menacing banners and defiant bugle-notes, crossed the border, and encamped on Bohemian ground. At the same moment, the king’s brother, Prince Henry, with another army of one hundred thousand men, commenced a march from the west to co-operate in an impetuous rush upon Vienna. These tidings caused the utmost consternation in the Austrian capital. An eye-witness writes:
“The terror in Vienna was dreadful. I will not attempt to describe the dismay the tidings excited among all ranks of people. Maria Theresa, trembling for her two sons who were in the army, immediately dispatched an autograph letter to Frederick with new proposals for a negotiation.”
Frederick had not grown old gracefully. He was domineering, soured, and irritable, finding fault with every body and every thing. As his troops were getting into camp at Jaromirtz on the 8th of July, the king, weary with riding, threw himself upon the ground for a little rest, his adjutants being near him. A young officer was riding by. Frederick beckoned to him, and wrote, with his pencil, an order of not the slightest importance, and said to the officer, aloud, in the hearing of all, purposely to wound their feelings,
“Here, take that order to General Lossow, and tell him that he is not to take it ill that I trouble him, as I have none in my suite that can do any thing.” It often seemed to give Frederick pleasure, and never pain, to wound the feelings of others.
“On arriving with his column,” writes General Schmettau, “where the officer—a perfectly skillful man—had marked out the camp, the king would lift his spy-glass, gaze to right and left, riding round the place at perhaps a hundred yards distance, and begin, ‘Look here, sir, what a botching you have made of it again!’
“And then, grumbling and blaming, would alter the camp till it was all out of rule, and then say,
“‘See there; that is the way to mark out camps.’”192
Through the efforts of Maria Theresa there was another brief conference, but it amounted to nothing. Neither party wished for war. But Austria craved the annexation of Bavaria, and Frederick was determined that Austria should not thus be enlarged.557 Thus the summer passed away in unavailing diplomacy and in equally unavailing military man?uvrings. While engaged in these adventures, Frederick received the tidings of the death of Voltaire, who breathed his last on the 20th of May, 1778. The soul of Frederick was too much seared by life’s stern conflicts to allow him to manifest, or probably to feel, any emotion on the occasion. He, however, wrote a eulogy upon the renowned littérateur, which, though written by a royal pen, attracted but little attention.
During the winter Russia and France interposed in behalf of peace. The belligerents agreed to submit the question to their decision. Austria was permitted to take a small slice of Bavaria, and for a time the horrors of war were averted.
Soon after this an event occurred very characteristic of the king—an event which conspicuously displayed both his good and bad qualities. A miller was engaged in a lawsuit against a nobleman. The decree of the court, after a very careful examination, was unanimously in favor of the nobleman; the king, who had impulsively formed a different opinion of the case, was greatly exasperated. He summoned the four judges before him, denounced them in the severest terms of vituperation, would listen to no defense, and dismissed them angrily from office.
“May a miller,” he exclaimed, fiercely, “who has no water, and consequently can not grind, have his mill taken from him? Is that just? Here is a nobleman wishing to make a fish-pond. To get more water for his pond, he has a ditch dug to draw into it a small stream which drives a water-mill. Thereby the miller loses his water, and can not grind. Yet, in spite of this, it is pretended that the miller shall pay his rent, quite the same as at the time when he had full water for his mill. Of course he can not pay his rent. His incomings are gone.
“And what does the court of Cüstrin do? It orders the mill to be sold, that the nobleman may have his rent! Go you, sir,” addressing the grand chancellor, “about your business, this instant. Your successor is appointed; with you I have nothing more to do.” The other three were assailed in the same way, but still more vehemently, as the king’s wrath flamed higher and higher. “Out of my sight,” he exclaimed at last; “I will make an example of you which shall be remembered.”
558
CONDEMNATION OF THE JUDGES.
The next day, December 11, 1779, the king issued the following protocol in the newspapers:
“The king’s desire always was and is that every body, be he high or low, rich or poor, get prompt justice. Wherefore, in respect to this most unjust sentence against the miller Arnold, pronounced in the Neumark, and confirmed here in Berlin, his majesty will establish an emphatic example, to the end that all559 the courts of justice in the king’s provinces may take warning thereby, and not commit the like glaring unjust acts. For let them bear in mind that the least peasant, yea, what is still more, that even a beggar, is, no less than his majesty, a human being, and one to whom due justice must be meted out. All men being equal before the law, if it is a prince complaining against a peasant, or vice versa, the prince is the same as the peasant before the law.
“Let the courts take this for their rule; and whenever they do not carry out justice in a straightforward manner, without any regard of person and rank, they shall have to answer to his majesty for it.”
The discarded judges were arrested, imprisoned for a year, and fined a sum of money equal to the supposed loss of the miller. In this case the judges had heard both sides of the question, and the king but one side. The question had been justly decided. The case was so clear that the new judges appointed by the king, being conscientious men, could not refrain from sustaining the verdict. Still the king, who would never admit that he was in the wrong, ordered no redress for those who had thus suffered for righteousness sake. After Frederick’s death the court compelled the miller to refund the money which had been so unjustly extorted for damages.
On the 29th of November, 1780, Maria Theresa died. The extraordinary character which she had developed through life was equally manifested in the hour of death. She died of congestion of the lungs, which created a painful and suffocating difficulty of breathing. Her struggles for breath rendered it impossible for her to lie upon the bed. Bolstered in her chair, she leaned her head back as if inclined to sleep.
“Will your majesty sleep, then?” inquired an attendant.
“No,” the empress replied; “I could sleep, but I must not. Death is too near. He must not steal upon me. These fifteen years I have been making ready for him; I will meet him awake.”
For fifteen years she had been a mourning widow. Her husband had died on the 18th of August. The 18th day of every month had since then been a day of solitary prayer. On the 18th of every August she descended into the tomb, and sat for560 a season engaged in prayer by the side of the mouldering remains of her spouse.
MARIA THERESA AT THE TOMB OF HER HUSBAND.
The Emperor Joseph had been embarrassed in his ambitious plans by the conscientious scruples of his mother. He now entered into a secret alliance with the Czarina Catharine, by which he engaged to assist her in her advance to Constantinople, while she, in her turn, was to aid him in his encroachments and annexations to establish an empire in the West as magnificent as the czarina hoped to establish in the East.
Delighted with this plan, and sanguine in the hope of its successful accomplishment, the czarina named her next grandson Constantine. Austria and Russia thus became allied, with all their sympathies hostile to Frederick. Old age and infirmities were stealing upon the king apace. Among the well-authenticated561 anecdotes related of him, the following is given by Carlyle:
“Loss of time was one of the losses Frederick could least stand. In visits, even from his brothers and sisters, which were always by his own express invitation, he would say some morning (call it Tuesday morning), ‘You are going on Wednesday, I am sorry to hear’ (what you never heard before). ‘Alas! your majesty, we must.’ ‘Well, I am sorry; but I will lay no constraint on you. Pleasant moments can not last forever.’ This trait is in the anecdote-books; but its authenticity does not rest on that uncertain basis. Singularly enough, it comes to me individually, by two clear stages, from Frederick’s sister, the Duchess of Brunswick, who, if any body, would know it well.”
We have often spoken of the entire neglect with which the king treated his virtuous and amiable queen. Preuss relates the following incident:
“When the king, after the Seven Years’ War, now and then in carnival season dined with the queen in her apartments, he usually said not a word to her. He merely, on entering, on sitting down at table, and leaving it, made the customary bows, and sat opposite to her. Once the queen was ill of gout. The table was in her apartments, but she was not there. She sat in an easy-chair in the drawing-room. On this occasion the king stepped up to the queen and inquired about her health. The circumstance occasioned among the company present, and all over the town, as the news spread, great wonder and sympathy. This is probably the last time he ever spoke to her.”193
“The king was fond of children; he liked to have his grand-nephews about him. One day, while the king sat at work in his cabinet, the younger of the two, a boy of eight or nine, was playing ball about the room, and knocked it once and again into the king’s writing operation, who twice or oftener flung it back to him, but next time put it in his pocket, and went on. ‘Please your majesty, give it me back,’ begged the boy, and again begged: majesty took no notice; continued writing. Till at length came, in the tone of indignation, ‘Will your majesty give me my ball, then?’ The king looked up; fou............