History of Friedrich II of Prussia Volume XX Part 20

Plenipotentiaries are named: "Fritsch shall be ours: they shall have my Schloss of Hubertsburg for Place of Congress," said the Prince. And on Thursday, December 30th, 1762, the Three Dignitaries met at Hubertsburg, and began business.

This is the Schloss in Torgau Country which Quintus Icilius's people, Saldern having refused the job, willingly undertook spoiling; and, as is well known, did it, January 22d, 1761; a thing Quintus never heard the end of. What the amount of profit, or the degree of spoil and mischief, Quintus's people made of it, I could not learn; but infer from this new event that the wreck had not been so considerable as the noise was; at any rate, that the Schloss had soon been restored to its pristine state of brilliancy. The Plenipotentiaries,--for Saxony, Fritsch; for Austria, a Von Collenbach, unknown to us; for Prussia, one Hertzberg, a man experienced beyond his years, who is of great name in Prussian History subsequently,--sat here till February 15th, 1763, that is for six weeks and five days. Leaving their Protocols to better judges, who report them good, we will much prefer a word or two from Friedrich himself, while waiting the result they come to.

FRIEDRICH TO PRINCE HENRI (home at Berlin).

"LEIPZIG, 14th JANUARY, 1763.... Am not surprised you find Berlin changed for the worse: such a train of calamities must, in the end, make itself felt in a poor and naturally barren Country, where continual industry is needed to second its fecundity and keep up production.

However, I will do what I can to remedy this dearth (LA DISETTE), at least as far as my small means permit....

"No fear of Geldern and Wesel; all that has been cared for by Bauer and the new Free-Corps. By the end of February Peace will be signed; at the beginning of April everybody will find himself at home, as in 1756.

"The Circles are going to separate: indifferent to me, or nearly so; but it is good to be plucking out tiresome burning sticks, stick after stick. I hope you amuse yourself at Berlin: at Leipzig nothing but b.a.l.l.s and redouts; my Nephews diverting themselves amazingly. Madam Friedrich, lately Garden-maid at Seidlitz [Village in the Neumark, with this Beauty plucking weeds in it,--little prescient of such a fortune], now Wife to an Officer of the Free Hussars, is the princ.i.p.al heroine of these Festivities." [Schoning, iii. 528.]

LEIPZIG, 25th JANUARY, 1763. "Thanks for your care about my existence. I am becoming very old, dear Brother; in a little while I shall be useless to the world and a burden to myself: it is the lot of all creatures to wear down with age,--but one is not, for all that, to abuse one's privilege of falling into dotage.

"You still speak without full confidence of our Negotiation business [going on at Hubertsburg yonder]. Most certainly the chapter of accidents is inexhaustible; and it is still certain there may happen quant.i.ties of things which the limited mind of man cannot foresee: but, judging by the ordinary course, and such degrees of probability as human creatures found their hopes on, I believe, before the month of February entirely end, our Peace will be completed. In a permanent Arrangement, many things need settling, which are easier to settle now than they ever will be again. Patience; haste without speed is a thriftless method."

[Ib. iii. 529.]

February 5th, the trio at Hubertsburg got their Preliminaries signed. On the tenth day thereafter, the Treaty itself was signed and sealed.

All other Treaties on the same subject had been guided towards a contemporary finis: England and France, ready since the 3d of November last, signed and ended February 10th. February 11th, the Reich signed and ended; February 15th, Prussia, Austria, Saxony; and the THIRD SILESIAN or SEVEN-YEARS WAR was completely finished. [Copy of the treaty in _Helden-Geschichte,_ vii. 624 et seq.; in Seyfarth, _Beylagen,_ iii.

479-495; in ROUSSET, in WENCK, in &c. &c.]

It had cost, in loss of human lives first of all, n.o.body can say what: according to Friedrich's computation, there had perished of actual fighters, on the various fields, of all the nations, 853,000; of which above the fifth part, or 180,000, is his own share: and, by misery and ravage, the general Population of Prussia finds itself 500,000 fewer; nearly the ninth man missing. This is the expenditure of Life. Other items are not worth enumerating, in comparison; if statistically given, you can find the most approved guesses at them by the same Head, who ought to be an authority. [_OEuvres de Frederic,_ v. 230-234; Preuss, iii. 349-351.] It was a War distinguished by--Archenholtz will tell you, with melodious emphasis, what a distinguished, great and thrice-greatest War it was. There have since been other far bigger Wars,--if size were a measure of greatness; which it by no means is! I believe there was excellent Heroism shown in this War, by persons I could name; by one person, Heroism really to be called superior, or, in its kind, almost of the rank of supreme;--and that in regard to the Military Arts and Virtues, it has as yet, for faculty and for performance, had no rival; nor is likely soon to have. The Prussians, as we once mentioned, still use it as their school-model in those respects. And we--O readers, do not at least you and I thank G.o.d to have now done with it!--

Of the Peace-Treaties at Hubertsburg, Paris and other places, it is not necessary that we say almost anything. They are to be found in innumerable Books, dreary to the mind; and of the 158 Articles to be counted there, not one could be interesting at present. The substance of the whole lies now in Three Points, not mentioned or contemplated at all in those Doc.u.ments, though repeatedly alluded to and intimated by us here.

The issue, as between Austria and Prussia, strives to be, in all points, simply AS-YOU-WERE; and, in all outward or tangible points, strictly is so. After such a tornado of strife as the civilized world had not witnessed since the Thirty-Years War. Tornado springing doubtless from the regions called Infernal; and darkening the upper world from south to north, and from east to west for Seven Years long;--issuing in general AS-YOU-WERE! Yes truly, the tornado was Infernal; but Heaven too had silently its purposes in it. Nor is the mere expenditure of men's diabolic rages, in mutual clash as of opposite electricities, with reduction to equipoise, and restoration of zero and repose again after seven years, the one or the princ.i.p.al result arrived at. Inarticulately, little dreamt of at the time by any by-stander, the results, on survey from this distance, are visible as Threefold. Let us name them one other time:--

1. There is no taking of Silesia from this man; no clipping of him down to the orthodox old limits; he and his Country have palpably outgrown these. Austria gives up the Problem: "We have lost Silesia!" Yes; and, what you hardly yet know,--and what, I perceive, Friedrich himself still less knows,--Teutschland has found Prussia. Prussia, it seems, cannot be conquered by the whole world trying to do it; Prussia has gone through its Fire-Baptism, to the satisfaction of G.o.ds and men; and is a Nation henceforth. In and of poor dislocated Teutschland, there is one of the Great Powers of the World henceforth; an actual Nation. And a Nation not grounding itself on extinct Traditions, Wiggeries, Papistries, Immaculate Conceptions; no, but on living Facts,--Facts of Arithmetic, Geometry, Gravitation, Martin Luther's Reformation, and what it really can believe in:--to the infinite advantage of said Nation and of poor Teutschland henceforth. To be a Nation; and to believe as you are convinced, instead of pretending to believe as you are bribed or bullied by the devils about you; what an advantage to parties concerned!

If Prussia follow its star--As it really tries to do, in spite of stumbling! For the sake of Germany, one hopes always Prussia will; and that it may get through its various Child-Diseases, without death: though it has had sad plunges and crises,--and is perhaps just now in one of its worst Influenzas, the Parliamentary-Eloquence or Ballot-Box Influenza! One of the most dangerous Diseases of National Adolescence; extremely prevalent over the world at this time,--indeed unavoidable, for reasons obvious enough. "SIC ITUR AD ASTRA;" all Nations certain that the way to Heaven is By voting, by eloquently wagging the tongue "within those walls"! Diseases, real or imaginary, await Nations like individuals; and are not to be resisted, but must be submitted to, and got through the best you can. Measles and mumps; you cannot prevent them in Nations either. Nay fas.h.i.+ons even; fas.h.i.+on of Crinoline, for instance (how infinitely more, that of Ballot-Box and Fourth-Estate!),--are you able to prevent even that? You have to be patient under it, and keep hoping!

2. In regard to England. Her JENKINS'S-EAR CONTROVERSY is at last settled. Not only liberty of the Seas, but, if she were not wiser, dominion of them; guardians.h.i.+p of liberty for all others whatsoever: Dominion of the Seas for that wise object. America is to be English, not French; what a result is that, were there no other! Really a considerable Fact in the History of the World. Fact princ.i.p.ally due to Pitt, as I believe, according to my best conjecture, and comparison of probabilities and circ.u.mstances. For which, after all, is not everybody thankful, less or more? O my English brothers, O my Yankee half-brothers, how oblivious are we of those that have done us benefit!--

These are the results for England. And in the rear of these, had these and the other elements once ripened for her, the poor Country is to get into such merchandisings, colonizings, foreign-settlings, gold-nuggetings, as lay beyond the drunkenest dreams of Jenkins (supposing Jenkins addicted to liquor);--and, in fact, to enter on a universal uproar of Machineries, Eldorados, "Unexampled Prosperities,"

which make a great noise for themselves in the very days now come.

Prosperities evidently not of a sublime type: which, in the mean while, seem to be covering the at one time creditably clean and comely face of England with mud-blotches, soot-blotches, miscellaneous squalors and horrors; to be preaching into her amazed heart, which once knew better, the omnipotence of

SHODDY; filling her ears and soul with shriekery and metallic clangor, mad noises, mad hurries mostly no-whither;--and are awakening, I suppose, in such of her sons as still go into reflection at all, a deeper and more ominous set of Questions than have ever risen in England's History before. As in the foregoing case, we have to be patient and keep hoping.

3. In regard to France. It appears, n.o.ble old Teutschland, with such pieties and unconquerable silent valors, such opulences human and divine, amid its wreck of new and old confusions, is not to be cut in Four, and made to dance to the piping of Versailles or another. Far the contrary! To Versailles itself there has gone forth, Versailles may read it or not, the writing on the wall: "Thou art weighed in the balance, and found wanting" (at last even "FOUND wanting")! France, beaten, stript, humiliated; sinful, unrepentant, governed by mere sinners and, at best, clever fools (FOUS PLEINS D'ESPRIT),--collapses, like a creature whose limbs fail it; sinks into bankrupt quiescence, into nameless fermentation, generally into DRY-ROT. Rotting, none guesses whitherward;--rotting towards that thrice-extraordinary Spontaneous-Combustion, which blazed out in 1789. And has kindled, over the whole world, gradually or by explosion, this unexpected Outburst of all the chained Devilries (among other chained things), this roaring Conflagration of the Anarchies; under which it is the lot of these poor generations to live,--for I know not what length of Centuries yet. "Go into Combustion, my pretty child!" the Destinies had said to this BELLE FRANCE, who is always so fond of s.h.i.+ning and outs.h.i.+ning: "Self-Combustion;--in that way, won't you s.h.i.+ne, as none of them yet could?" s.h.i.+ne; yes, truly,--till you are got to CAPUT MORTUUM, my pretty child (unless you gain new wisdom!)--But not to wander farther:--

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16th, Friedrich, all Saxon things being now settled,--among the rest, "eight Saxon Schoolmasters" to be a model in Prussia,--quitted Leipzig, with the Seven-Years War safe in his pocket, as it were. Drove to Moritzburg, to dinner with the amiable Kurprinz and still more amiable Wife: "It was to your Highness that we owe this Treaty!" A dinner which readers may hear of again. At Moritzburg; where, with the Lacys, there was once such rattling and battling. After which, rapidly on to Silesia, and an eight days of adjusting and inspecting there.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30th, Friedrich arrives in Frankfurt-on-Oder, on the way homeward from Silesia: "takes view of the Field of Kunersdorf"

(reflections to be fancied); early in the afternoon speeds forward again; at one of the stages (place called Ta.s.sdorf) has a Dialogue, which we shall hear of; and between 8 and 9 in the evening, not through the solemn receptions and crowded streets, drives to the Schloss of Berlin. "Goes straight to the Queen's Apartment," Queen, Princesses and Court all home triumphantly some time ago; sups there with the Queen's Majesty and these bright creatures,--beautiful supper, had it consisted only of cresses and salt; and, behind it, sound sleep to us under our own roof-tree once more. [Rodenbeck, ii. 211, 212; Preuss, ii. 345, 346; &c. &c.] Next day, "the King made gifts to," as it were, to everybody; "to the Queen about 5,000 pounds, to the Princess Amelia 1,000 pounds,"

and so on; and saw true hearts all merry round him,--merrier, perhaps, than his own was.