History of Friedrich II of Prussia Volume IX Part 2

That was on the Thursday; Betrothal is on the Monday following. Doc.u.ment SECOND is from poor old Fa.s.smann, and quite of external nature; which we much abridge:--

"Monday evening, all creatures are in gala, and the Royal Apartments upstairs are brilliantly alight; Duke of Lorraine with the other high strangers are requested to take their place up there, and wait for a short while. Prussian Majesty, Queen and Crown-Prince with him, proceeds then, in a solemn official manner, to the Durchlaucht of Bevern's Apartment, in a lower floor of the Palace; where the Bevern Party, Duke, d.u.c.h.ess, Son and intended Charmer are. Prussian Majesty asks the Durchlaucht and Spouse, 'Whether the Marriage, some time treated of, between that their Princess here present, and this his Crown-Prince likewise here, is really a thing to their mind?' Serene Spouses answer, to the effect, 'Yea, surely, very much!' Upon which they all solemnly ascend to the Royal Apartments [upstairs where we have seen Wilhelmina dancing before now], where Lorraine, Wurtemberg and the other sublimities are in waiting. Lorraine and the sublimities form a semicircle; with the two Majesties, and pair of young creatures, in the centre. You young creatures, you are of one intention with your parents in this matter? Alas, there is no doubt of it. Pledge yourselves, then, by exchange of rings! said his Majesty with due business brevity. The rings are exchanged: Majesty embraces the two young creatures with great tenderness;" as do Queen and Serenities; and then all the world takes to embracing and congratulating; and so the betrothal is a finished thing. Ba.s.soons and violins, striking up, whirl it off in universal dancing,--in "supper of above two hundred and sixty persons," princely or otherwise sublime in rank, with "spouses and n.o.ble ladies there" in the due proportion. [Fa.s.smann, pp. 432, 433.]

Here is fraction of another Note from the Crown-Prince to his Sister at Baireuth, a fortnight after that event:--

BERLIN, 24th MARCH, 1732 (to Princess Wilhelmina).--... "G.o.d be praised that you are better, dearest Sister! For n.o.body can love you more tenderly than I do.--As to the Princess of Bevern [my Betrothed], the Queen [Mamma, whom you have been consulting on these etiquettes] bids me answer, That you need not style her 'Highness,' and that you may write to her quite as to an indifferent Princess. As to 'kissing of the hands,' I a.s.sure you I have not kissed them, nor will kiss them; they are not pretty enough to tempt one that way. G.o.d long preserve you in perfect health! And you, preserve for me always the honor of your good graces; and believe, my charming Sister, that never brother in the world loved with such tenderness a sister so charming as mine; in short, believe, dear Sister, that without compliments, and in literal truth, I am yours wholly (TOUT A VOUS),

"FRIDERICH."

[Ib. xxvii. part 1st, p. 5.]

This is the Betrothal of the Crown-Prince to an Insipidity of Brunswick.

Insipidity's private feelings, perhaps of a languidly glad sort, are not known to us; Crown-Prince's we have in part seen. He has decided to accept his fate without a murmur farther. Against his poor Bride or her qualities not a word more. In the Schloss of Berlin, amid such tempests of female gossip (Mamma still secretly corresponding with England), he has to be very reserved, on this head especially. It is understood he did not, in his heart, nearly so much dislike the insipid Princess as he wished Papa to think he did.

Duke Franz of Lorraine went off above a week ago, on the Sat.u.r.day following the Betrothal; an amiable serene young gentleman, well liked by the Crown-Prince and everybody. "He avoided the Saxon Court, though pa.s.sing near it," on his way to old Kur-Mainz; "which is a sign,"

thinks Fa.s.smann, "that mutual matters are on a weak footing in that quarter;"--Pragmatic Sanction never accepted there, and plenty of intricacies existing. Crown-Prince Friedrich may now go to Ruppin and the Regiment Goltz; his business and destinies being now all reduced to a steady condition;--steady sky, rather leaden, instead of the tempestuous thunder-and-lightning weather which there heretofore was.

Leaden sky, he, if left well to himself, will perhaps brighten a little.

Study will be possible to him; improvement of his own faculties, at any rate. It is much his determination. Outwardly, besides drilling the Regiment Goltz, he will have a steady correspondence to keep up with his Brunswick Charmer;--let him see that he be not slack in that.

Chapter II. -- SMALL INCIDENTS AT RUPPIN.

Friedrich, after some farther pause in Berlin, till things were got ready for him, went to Ruppin. This is in the Spring of 1732; [Still in Berlin, 6th March; dates from NAUEN (in the Ruppin neighborhood) for the first time, 25th April, 1732, among his LETTERS yet extant: Preuss, _OEuvres de Frederic, _ xxvii. part lst, p. 4; xvi. 49.] and he contin his residence there till August, 1736. Four important years of young life; of which we must endeavor to give, in some intelligible condition, what traces go hovering about in such records as there are.

Ruppin, where lies the main part of the Regiment Goltz, and where the Crown-Prince Colonel of it dwells, is a quiet dull, little Town, in that northwestern region; inhabitants, grown at this day to be 10,000, are perhaps guessable then at 2,000. Regiment Goltz daily rolls its drums in Ruppin: Town otherwise lifeless enough, except on market-days: and the grandest event ever known in it, this removal of the Crown-Prince thither,--which is doubtless much a theme, and proud temporary miracle, to Ruppin at present. Of society there or in the neighborhood, for such a resident, we hear nothing.

Quiet Ruppin stands in gra.s.sy flat country, much of which is natural moor, and less of it reclaimed at that time than now. The environs, except that they are a bit of the Earth, and have a bit of the sky over them, do not set up for loveliness. Natural woods abound in that region, also peat-bogs not yet drained; and fishy lakes and meres, of a dark complexion: plenteous cattle there are, pigs among them;--thick-soled husbandmen inarticulately toiling and moiling. Some gla.s.s-furnaces, a royal establishment, are the only manufactures we hear of. Not a picturesque country; but a quiet and innocent, where work is cut out, and one hopes to be well left alone after doing it. This Crown-Prince has been in far less desirable localities.

He had a reasonable house, two houses made into one for him, in the place. He laid out for himself a garden in the outskirts, with what they call a "temple" in it,--some more or less ornamental garden-house,--from which I have read of his "letting off rockets" in a summer twilight.

Rockets to amuse a small dinner-party, I should guess,--dinner of Officers, such as he had weekly or twice a week. On stiller evenings we can fancy him there in solitude; reading meditative, or musically fluting;--looking out upon the silent death of Day: how the summer gloaming steals over the moorlands, and over all lands; shutting up the toil of mortals; their very flocks and herds collapsing into silence, and the big Skies and endless Times overarching him and them. With thoughts perhaps sombre enough now and then, but profitable if he face them piously.

His Father's affection is returning; would so fain return if it durst.

But the heart of Papa has been sadly torn up: it is too good news to be quite believed, that he has a son grown wise, and doing son-like! Rumor also is very busy, rumor and the Tobacco-Parliament for or against; a little rumor is capable of stirring up great storms in the suspicious paternal mind. All along during Friedrich's abode at Ruppin, this is a constantly recurring weather-symptom; very grievous now and then; not to be guarded against by any precaution;--though steady persistence in the proper precaution will abate it, and as good as remove it, in course of time. Already Friedrich Wilhelm begins to understand that "there is much in this Fritz,"--who knows how much, though of a different type from Papa's?--and that it will be better if he and Papa, so discrepant in type, and ticklishly related otherwise, live not too constantly together as heretofore. Which is emphatically the Crown-Prince's notion too.

I perceive he read a great deal at Ruppin: what Books I know not specially: but judge them to be of more serious solid quality than formerly; and that his reading is now generally a kind of studying as well. Not the express Sciences or Technologies; not these, in any sort,--except the military, and that an express exception. These he never cared for, or regarded as the n.o.ble knowledges for a king or man.

History and Moral Speculation; what mankind have done and been in this world (so far as "History" will give one any glimpse of that), and what the wisest men, poetical or other, have thought about mankind and their world: this is what he evidently had the appet.i.te for; appet.i.te insatiable, which lasted with him to the very end of his days.

Fontenelle, Rollin, Voltaire, all the then French lights, and gradually others that lay deeper in the firmament:--what suppers of the G.o.ds one may privately have at Ruppin, without expense of wine! Such an opportunity for reading he had never had before.

In his soldier business he is punctual, a.s.siduous; having an interest to s.h.i.+ne that way. And is, in fact, approvable as a practical officer and soldier, by the strictest judge then living. Reads on soldiering withal; studious to know the rationale of it, the ancient and modern methods of it, the essential from the unessential in it; to understand it thoroughly,--which he got to do. One already hears of conferences, correspondences, with the Old Dessauer on this head: "Account of the Siege of Stralsund," with plans, with didactic commentaries, drawn up by that gunpowder Sage for behoof of the Crown-Prince, did actually exist, though I know not what has become of it. Now and afterwards this Crown-Prince must have been a great military reader. From Caesar's COMMENTARIES, and earlier, to the Chevalier Folard, and the Marquis Feuquiere; [_Memoires sur la Guerre_ (specially on the Wars of Louis XIV., in which Feuquiere had himself shone): a new Book at this time (Amsterdam, 1731; first COMPLETE edition is, Paris, 1770, 4 vols.

4to); at Ruppin, and afterwards, a chief favorite with Friedrich.]

from Epaminondas at Leuctra to Charles XII. at Pultawa, all manner of Military Histories, we perceive, are at his finger-ends; and he has penetrated into the essential heart of each, and learnt what it had to teach him. Something of this, how much we know not, began at Ruppin; and it did not end again.

On the whole, Friedrich is prepared to distinguish himself henceforth by strictly conforming, in all outward particulars possible, to the paternal will, and becoming the most obedient of sons. Partly from policy and necessity, partly also from loyalty; for he loves his rugged Father, and begins to perceive that there is more sense in his peremptory notions than at first appeared. The young man is himself rather wild, as we have seen, with plenty of youthful petulance and longings after forbidden fruit. And then he lives in an element of gossip; his whole life enveloped in a vast Dionysius'-Ear, every word and action liable to be debated in Tobacco-Parliament. He is very scarce of money, too, Papa's allowance being extremely moderate, "not above 6,000 thalers (900 pounds)," says Seckendorf once. [Forster, iii. 114 (Seckendorf to Prince Eugene).] There will be contradictions enough to settle: caution, silence, every kind of prudence will be much recommendable.

In all outward particulars the Crown-Prince will conform; in the inward, he will exercise a judgment, and if he cannot conform, will at least be careful to hide. To do his Commandant duties at Ruppin, and avoid offences, is much his determination. We observe he takes great charge of his men's health; has the Regiment Goltz in a s.h.i.+ningly exact condition at the grand reviews;--is very industrious now and afterwards to get tall recruits, as a dainty to Papa. Knows that nothing in Nature is so sure of conciliating that strange old gentleman; corresponds, accordingly, in distant quarters; lays out, now and afterwards, sums far too heavy for his means upon tall recruits for Papa. But it is good to conciliate in that quarter, by every method, and at every expense;--Argus of Tobacco-Parliament still watching one there; and Rumor needing to be industriously dealt with, difficult to keep down.

Such, so far as we can gather, is the general figure of Friedrich's life at Ruppin. Specific facts of it, anecdotes about it, are few in those dim Books; are uncertain as to truth, and without importance whether true or not. For all his gravity and Colonels.h.i.+p, it would appear the old spirit of frolic has not quitted him. Here are two small incidents, pointing that way; which stand on record; credible enough, though vague and without importance otherwise. Incident FIRST is to the following feeble effect; indisputable though extremely unmomentous: Regiment Goltz, it appears, used to have gold tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs; the Colonel Crown-Prince pet.i.tioned that they might be of silver, which he liked better. Papa answers, Yes. Regiment Goltz gets its new regimentals done in silver; the Colonel proposes they shall solemnly BURN their old regimentals.

And they do it, the Officers of them, SUB DIO, perhaps in the Prince's garden, stripping successively in the "Temple" there, with such degree of genial humor, loud laughter, or at least boisterous mock-solemnity, as may be in them. This is a true incident of the Prince's history, though a small one.

Incident SECOND is of slightly more significance; and intimates, not being quite alone in its kind, a questionable habit or method the Crown-Prince must have had of dealing with Clerical Persons hereabouts when they proved troublesome. Here are no fewer than three such Persons, or Parsons, of the Ruppin Country, who got mischief by him. How the first gave offence shall be seen, and how he was punished: offences of the second and the third we can only guess to have been perhaps pulpit-rebukes of said punishments: perhaps general preaching against military levities, want of piety, nay open sinfulness, in thoughtless young men with c.o.c.kades. Whereby the thoughtless young men were again driven to think of nocturnal charivari? We will give the story in Dr.

Busching's own words, who looks before and after to great distances, in a way worth attending to. The Herr Doctor, an endless Collector and Compiler on all manner of subjects, is very authentic always, and does not want for natural sense: but he is also very crude,--and here and there not far from stupid, such his continual haste, and s...o...b..ry manner of working up those Hundred and odd Volumes of his:--[See his Autobiography, which forms _Beitrage,_ B. vi. (the biggest and last volume).]

"The sanguine-choleric temperament of Friedrich," says this Doctor, "drove him, in his youth, to sensual enjoyments and wild amus.e.m.e.nts of different kinds; in his middle age, to fiery enterprises; and in his old years to decisions and actions of a rigorous and vehement nature; yet so that the primary form of utterance, as seen in his youth, never altogether ceased with him. There are people still among us (1788) who have had, in their own experience, knowledge of his youthful pranks; and yet more are living, who know that he himself, at table, would gayly recount what merry strokes were done by him, or by his order, in those young years. To give an instance or two.

"While he was at Neu-Ruppin as Colonel of the Infantry Regiment there, the Chaplain of it sometimes waited upon him about the time of dinner,--having been used to dine occasionally with the former Colonel.

The Crown-Prince, however, put him always off, did not ask him to dinner; spoke contemptuously of him in presence of the Officers. The Chaplain was so inconsiderate, he took to girding at the Crown-Prince in his sermons. 'Once on a time,' preached he, one day, 'there was Herod who had Herodias to dance before him; and he,--he gave her John the Baptist's head for her pains!'" This HEROD, Busching says, was understood to mean, and meant, the Crown-Prince; HERODIAS, the merry corps of Officers who made sport for him; JOHN THE BAPTIST'S HEAD was no other than the Chaplain not invited to dinner! "To punish him for such a sally, the Crown-Prince with the young Officers of his Regiment went, one night, to the Chaplain's house," somewhere hard by, with cow's-gra.s.s adjoining to it, as we see: and "first, they knocked in the windows of his sleeping-room upon him [HINGE-windows, gla.s.s not entirely broken, we may hope]; next there were crackers [SCHWARMER, "enthusiasts," so to speak!] thrown in upon him; and thereby the Chaplain, and his poor Wife," more or less in an interesting condition, poor woman, "were driven out into the court-yard, and at last into the dung-heap there;"--and so left, with their Head on a Charger to that terrible extent!

That is Busching's version of the story; no doubt substantially correct; of which there are traces in other quarters,--for it went farther than Ruppin; and the Crown-Prince had like to have got into trouble from it. "Here is piety!" said Rumor, carrying it to Tobacco-Parliament. The Crown-Prince plaintively a.s.sures Grumkow that it was the Officers, and that they got punished for it. A likely story, the Prince's!

"When King Friedrich, in his old days, recounted this after dinner, in his merry tone, he was well pleased that the guests, and even the pages and valets behind his back, laughed aloud at it." Not a pious old King, Doctor, still less an orthodox one! The Doctor continues: "In a like style, at Nauen, where part of his regiment lay, he had--by means of Herr von der Groben, his First-Lieutenant," much a comrade of his, as we otherwise perceive--"the Diaconus of Nauen and his Wife hunted out of bed, and thrown into terror of their lives, one night:"--offence of the Diaconus not specified. "Nay he himself once pitched his gold-headed stick through Salpius the Church Inspector's window,"--offence again not specified, or perhaps merely for a little artillery practice?--"and the throw was so dexterous that it merely made a round hole in the gla.s.s: stick was lying on the floor; and the Prince," on some excuse or other, "sent for it next morning." "Margraf Heinrich of Schwedt," continues the Doctor, very trustworthy on points of fact, "was a diligent helper in such operations. Kaiserling," whom we shall hear of, "First-Lieutenant von der Groben," these were prime hands; "Lieutenant Buddenbrock [old Feldmarschall's son] used, in his old days, when himself grown high in rank and dining with the King, to be appealed to as witness for the truth of these stories." [Busching, _Beitrage zu der Lebensgeschichte denkwurdiger Personen,_ v. 19-21. Vol. v.--wholly occupied with _Friedrich II. King of Prussia_ (Halle, 1788),--is accessible in French and other languages; many details, and (as Busching's wont is) few or none not authentic, are to be found in it; a very great secret spleen against Friedrich is also traceable,--for which the Doctor may have had his reasons, not obligatory upon readers of the Doctor. The truth is, Friedrich never took the least special notice of him: merely employed and promoted him, when expedient for both parties; and he really was a man of considerable worth, in an extremely crude form.]

These are the two Incidents at Ruppin, in such light as they have. And these are all. Opulent History yields from a ton of broken nails these two bra.s.s farthings, and shuts her pocket on us again. A Crown-Prince given to frolic, among other things; though aware that gravity would beseem him better. Much gay bantering humor in him, cracklings, radiations,--which he is bound to keep well under cover, in present circ.u.mstances.

Chapter III. -- THE SALZBURGERS.

For three years past there has been much rumor over Germany, of a strange affair going on in the remote Austrian quarter, down in Salzburg and its fabulous Tyrolese valleys. Salzburg, city and territory, has an Archbishop, not theoretically Austrian, but sovereign Prince so styled; it is from him and his orthodoxies, and pranks with his sovereign crosier, that the noise originates. Strange rumor of a body of the population discovered to be Protestant among the remote Mountains, and getting miserably ill-used, by the Right Reverend Father in those parts.

Which rumor, of a singular, romantic, religious interest for the general Protestant world, proves to be but too well founded. It has come forth in the form of practical complaint to the CORPUS EVANGELICORUM at the Diet, without result from the CORPUS; complaint to various persons;--in fine, to his Majesty Friedrich Wilhelm, WITH result.

With result at last; actual "Emigration of the Salzburgers:" and Germany--in these very days while the Crown-Prince is at Berlin betrothing himself, and Franz of Lorraine witnessing the EXERCITIA and wonders there--sees a singular phenomenon of a touching idyllic nature going on; and has not yet quite forgotten it in our days. Salzburg Emigration was all in motion, flowing steadily onwards, by various routes, towards Berlin, at the time the Betrothal took place; and seven weeks after that event, when the Crown-Prince had gone to Ruppin, and again could only hear of it, the First Instalment of Emigrants arrived bodily at the Gates of Berlin, "30th April, at four in the afternoon;"

Majesty himself, and all the world going out to witness it, with something of a poetic: almost of a psalmist feeling, as well as with a practical on the part of his Majesty. First Instalment this; copiously followed by others, all that year; and flowing on, in smaller rills and drippings, for several years more, till it got completed. A notable phenomenon, full of lively picturesque and other interest to Brandenburg and Germany;--which was not forgotten by the Crown-Prince in coming years, as we shall transiently find; nay which all Germany still remembers, and even occasionally sings. Of which this is in brief the history.

The Salzburg Country, northeastern slope of the Tyrol (Donau draining that side of it, Etsch or Adige the Italian side), is celebrated by the Tourist for its airy beauty, rocky mountains, smooth green valleys, and swift-rus.h.i.+ng streams; perhaps some readers have wandered to Bad-Gastein, or Ischl, in these nomadic summers; have looked into Salzburg, Berchtesgaden, and the Bavarian-Austrian boundary-lands; seen the wooden-clock makings, salt-works, toy-manufactures, of those simple people in their slouch-hats; and can bear some testimony to the phenomena of Nature there. Salzburg is the Archbishop's City, metropolis of his bit of sovereignty that then was. [Tolerable description of it in the Baron Riesbeck's _Travels through Germany_ (London, 1787, Translation by Maty, 3 vols. 8vo), i. 124-222;--whose details otherwise, on this Emigration business, are of no authenticity or value. A kind of Play-actor and miscellaneous Newspaper-man in that time (not so opulent to his cla.s.s as ours is); who takes the t.i.tle of "Baron" on this occasion of coming, out with a Book of Imaginary _"Travels."_ Had personally lived, practising the miscellaneous arts, about Lintz and Salzburg,--and may be heard on the look of the Country, if on little else.] A romantic City, far off among its beautiful Mountains, shadowing (itself in the Salza River, which rushes down into the Inn, into the Donau, now becoming great with the tribute of so many valleys. Salzburg we have not known hitherto except as the fabulous resting-place of Kaiser Barbarossa: but we are now slightly to see it in a practical light; and mark how the memory of Friedrich Wilhelm makes an incidental lodgment for itself there.

It is well known there was extensive Protestantism once in those countries. Prior to the Thirty-Years War, the fair chance was, Austria too would all become Protestant; an extensive minority among all ranks of men in Austria too, definable as the serious intelligence of mankind in those countries, having clearly adopted it, whom the others were sure to follow. In all ranks of men; only not in the highest rank, which was pleased rather to continue Official and Papal. Highest rank had its Thirty-Years War, "its sleek Fathers Lummerlein and Hyacinth in Jesuit serge, its terrible Fathers Wallenstein in chain-armor;" and, by working late and early then and afterwards, did manage at length to trample out Protestantism,--they know with what advantage by this time. Trample out Protestantism; or drive it into remote nooks, where under sad conditions it might protract an unnoticed existence. In the Imperial Free-Towns, Ulm, Augsburg, and the like, Protestantism continued, and under hard conditions contrives to continue: but in the country parts, except in unnoticed nooks, it is extinct. Salzburg Country is one of those nooks; an extensive Crypto-Protestantism lodging, under the simple slouch-hats, in the remote valleys there. Protestantism peaceably kept concealed, hurting n.o.body; wholesomely forwarding the wooden-clock manufacture, and arable or grazier husbandries, of those poor people. More harmless sons of Adam, probably, did not breathe the vital air, than those dissentient Salzburgers; generation after generation of them giving offence to no creature.

Successive Archbishops had known of this Crypto-Protestantism, and in remote periods had made occasional slight attempts upon it; but none at all for a long time past. All attempts that way, as ineffectual for any purpose but stirring up strife, had been discontinued for many generations; [Buchholz, i. 148-151.] and the Crypto-Protestantism was again become a mythical romantic object, ignored by Official persons.

However, in 1727, there came a new Archbishop, one "Firmian", Count Firmian by secular quality, of a strict lean character, zealous rather than wise; who had brought his orthodoxies with him in a rigid and very lean form.

Right Reverend Firmian had not been long in Salzburg till he smelt out the Crypto-Protestantism, and determined to haul it forth from the mythical condition into the practical; and in fact, to see his law-beagles there worry it to death as they ought. Hence the rumors that had risen over Germany, in 1729: Law-terriers penetrating into human cottages in those remote Salzburg valleys, smelling out some German Bible or devout Book, making lists of Bible-reading cottagers; haling them to the Right Reverend Father-in-G.o.d; thence to prison, since they would not undertake to cease reading. With fine, with confiscation, tribulation: for the peaceable Salzburgers, respectful creatures, doffing their slouch-hats almost to mankind in general, were entirely obstinate in that matter of the Bible. "Cannot, your Reverence; must not, dare not!" and went to prison or whithersoever rather; a wide cry rising, Let us sell our possessions and leave Salzburg then, according to Treaty of Westphalia, Article so-and-so. "Treaty of Westphalia? Leave Salzburg?" shrieked the Right Reverend Father: "Are we getting into open mutiny, then? Open extensive mutiny!" shrieked he. Borrowed a couple of Austrian regiments,--Kaiser and we always on the pleasantest terms,--and marched the most refractory of his Salzburgers over the frontiers (retaining their properties and families); whereupon noise rose louder and louder.

Refractory Salzburgers sent Deputies to the Diet; appealed, complained to the CORPUS EVANGELICORUM, Treaty of Westphalia in hand,--without result. CORPUS, having verified matters, complained to the Kaiser, to the Right Reverend Father. The Kaiser, intent on getting his Pragmatic Sanction through the Diet, and anxious to offend n.o.body at present, gave good words; but did nothing: the Right Reverend Father answered a Letter or two from the CORPUS; then said at last, He wished to close the Correspondence, had the honor to be,--and answered no farther, when written to. CORPUS was without result. So it lasted through 1730; rumor, which rose in 1729, waxing ever louder into practicable or impracticable shape, through that next year; tribulation increasing in Salzburg; and noise among mankind. In the end of 1730, the Salzburgers sent Two Deputies to Friedrich Wilhelm at Berlin; solid-hearted, thick-soled men, able to answer for themselves, and give real account of Salzburg and the phenomena; this brought matters into a practicable state.

"Are you actual Protestants, the Treaty of Westphalia applicable to you?

Not mere fanatic mystics, as Right Reverend Firmian a.s.serts; protectible by no Treaty?" That was Friedrich Wilhelm's first question; and he set his two chief Berlin Clergymen, learned Roloff one of them, a divine of much fame, to catechise the two Salzburg Deputies, and report upon the point. Their Report, dated Berlin, 30th November, 1730, with specimens of the main questions, I have read; [Fa.s.smann, pp. 446-448.] and can fully certify, along with Roloff and friend, That here are orthodox Protestants, apparently of very pious peaceable nature, suffering hard wrong;--orthodox beyond doubt, and covered by the Treaty of Westphalia.

Whereupon his Majesty dismisses them with a.s.surance, "Return, and say there shall be help!"--and straightway lays hand on the business, strong swift steady hand as usual, with a view that way.

Salzburg being now a clear case, Friedrich Wilhelm writes to the Kaiser; to the King of England, King of Denmark;--orders preparations to be made in Preussen, vacant messuages to be surveyed, moneys to be laid up;--bids his man at the Regensburg Diet signify, That unless this thing is rectified, his Prussian Majesty will see himself necessitated to take effectual steps: "reprisals" the first step, according to the old method of his Prussian Majesty. Rumor of the Salzburg Protestants rises higher and higher. Kaiser intent on conciliating every CORPUS, Evangelical and other, for his Pragmatic Sanction's sake, admonishes Right Reverend Firmian; intimates at last to him, That he will actually have to let those poor people emigrate if they demand it; Treaty of Westphalia being express. In the end of 1731 it has come thus far.

"Emigrate, says your Imperial Majesty? Well, they shall emigrate,"

answers Firmian; "the sooner the better!" And straightway, in the dead of winter, marches, in convenient divisions, some nine hundred of them over the frontiers: "Go about your business, then; emigrate--to the Old One, if you like!"--"And our properties, our goods and chattels?" ask they.--"Be thankful you have kept your skins. Emigrate, I say.!" And the poor nine hundred had to go out, in the rigor of winter, "h.o.a.ry old men among them, and women coming near their time;" and seek quarters in the wide world mostly unknown to them. Truly Firmian is an orthodox Herr; acquainted with the laws of fair usage and the time of day. The sleeping Barbarossa does not awaken upon him within the Hill here:--but in the Roncalic Fields, long ago, I should not have liked to stand in his shoes!

Friedrich Wilhelm, on this procedure at Salzburg, intimates to his Halberstadt and Minden Catholic gentlemen, That their Establishments must be locked up, and incomings suspended; that they can apply to the Right Reverend Firmian upon it;--and bids his man at Regensburg signify to the Diet that such is the course adopted here. Right Reverend Firmian has to hold his hand; finds both that there shall be Emigration, and that it must go forward on human terms, not inhuman; and that in fact the Treaty of Westphalia will have to guide it, not he henceforth. Those poor ousted Salzburgers cower into the Bavarian cities, till the weather mend, and his Prussian Majesty's arrangements be complete for their brethren and them.

His Prussian Majesty has been maturing his plans, all this while;--gathering moneys, getting lands ready. We saw him hanging Schlubhut in the autumn of 1731, who had peculated from said moneys; and surveying Preussen, under storms of thunder and rain on one occasion.