History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 15
TekstTHE KAISER KARL VII. GETS SECURED FROM OPPRESSIONS, IN A TRAGIC WAY. FRIEDRICH PROPOSES PEACE, BUT TO NO PURPOSE
A still sadder cross for Friedrich, in the current of foreign Accidents and Diplomacies, was the next that befell; exactly a month later,—at Munchen, 20th January, 1745. Hardly was Belleisle's back turned, when her Hungarian Majesty, by her Bathyani and Company, broke furiously in upon the poor Kaiser and his Seckendorf-Segur defences. Belleisle had not reached the Harz, when all was going topsy-turvy there again, and the Donau-Valley fast falling back into Austrian hands. Nor is that the worst, or nearly so.
"MUNCHEN, 20th JANUARY, 1745. This day poor Kaiser Karl laid down his earthly burden here, and at length gave all his enemies the slip. He had been ill of gout for some time; a man of much malady always, with no want of vexations and apprehensions. Too likely the Austrians will drive him out of Munchen again; then nothing but furnished lodgings, and the French to depend upon. He had been much chagrined by some Election, just done, in the Chapter of Salzburg. [Adelung, iv. 249, 276, 313.] The Archbishop there—it was Firmian, he of the SALZBURG EMIGRATION, memorable to readers—had died, some while ago. And now, in flat contradiction to Imperial customs, prerogatives, these people had admitted an Austrian Garrison; and then, in the teeth of our express precept, had elected an Austrian to their benefice: what can one account it but an insult as well as an injury? And the neuralgic maladies press sore, and the gouty twinges; and Belleisle is seized, perhaps with important papers of ours; and the Seckendorf-Segur detachments were ill placed; nay here are the Austrians already on the throat of them, in midwinter! It is said, a babbling valet, or lord-in-waiting, happened to talk of some skirmish that had fallen out (called a battle, in the valet rumor), and how ill the French and Bavarians had fared in it, owing to their ill behavior. And this, add they, proved to be the ounce-weight too much for the so heavy-laden back.
"The Kaiser took to bed, not much complaining; patient, mild, though the saddest of all mortals; and, in a day or two, died. Adieu, adieu, ye loved faithful ones; pity me, and pray for me! He gave his Wife, poor little fat devout creature, and his poor Children (eldest lad, his Heir, only seventeen), a tender blessing; solemnly exhorted them, To eschew ambition, and be warned by his example;—to make their peace with Austria; and never, like him, try COM' E DURO CALLE, and what the charity of Christian Kings amounts to. This counsel, it is thought, the Empress Dowager zealously accedes to, and will impress upon her Son. That is the Austrian and Cause-of-Liberty account: King Friedrich, from the other side, has heard a directly opposite one. How the Kaiser, at the point of death, exhorted his son, 'Never forget the services which the King of France and the King of Prussia have done us, and do not repay them with ingratitude.' [ OEuvres de Frederic, iii. 92;—and see (PER CONTRA) in Adelung, iv. 314 A; in Coxe, &c.] The reader can choose which he will, or reject both into the region of the uncertain. 'Karl Albert's pious and affectionate demeanor drew tears from all eyes,' say the by-standers: 'the manner in which he took leave of his Empress would have melted a heart of stone.' He was in his forty-eighth year; he had been, of all men in his generation, the most conspicuously unhappy."
What a down-rush of confusion there ensued on this event, not to Bavaria alone, but to all the world, and to King Friedrich more than another, no reader can now take the pains of conceiving. The "Frankfurt Union," then, has gone to air! Here is now no "Kaiser to be delivered from oppression:" here is a new Kaiser to be elected,—"Grand-Duke Franz the man," cry the Pragmatic Potentates with exultation, "no Belleisle to disturb!"—and questions arise innumerable thereupon, Will France go into electioneering again? The new Kur-Baiern, only seventeen, poor child, cannot be set up as candidate. What will France do with HIM; what he with France? Whom can the French try as Candidate against the Grand-Duke? Kur-Sachsen, the Polish Majesty again? Belleisle himself must have paused uncertain over such a welter,—and probably have done, like the others, little or nothing in it, but left it to collapse by natural gravitation.
Hungarian Majesty checked her Bavarian Armaments a little: "If perhaps this young Kur-Baiern will detach himself from France, and on submissive terms come over to us?" Whereupon, at Munchen, and in the cognate quarters, such wriggling, dubitating and diplomatizing, as seldom was,—French, Anti-French (Seckendorf busiest of all), straining every nerve in that way, and for almost three months, nothing coming of it,—till Hungarian Majesty sent her Barenklaus and Bathyanis upon them again; and these rapidly solved the question, in what way we shall see!
Friedrich has still his hopes of Bavaria, so grandiloquent are the French in regard to it; who but would hope? The French diplomatize to all lengths in Munchen, promising seas and mountains; but they perform little; in an effectual manner, nothing. Bavarian "Army raised to 60,000;" counts in fact little above half that number; with no General to it but an imaginary one; Segur's actual French contingent, instead of 25,000, is perhaps 12,000;—and so of other things. Add to all which, Seckendorf is there, not now as War-General, but as extra-official "Adviser;" busier than ever,—"scandalous old traitor!" say the French;—and Friedrich may justly fear that Bavaria will go, by collapse, a bad road for him.
Friedrich, a week or two after the Kaiser's death, seeing Bavarian and French things in such a hypothetic state, instructs his Ambassador at London to declare his, Friedrich's, perfect readiness and wish for Peace: "Old Treaty of Breslau and Berlin made indubitable to me; the rest of the quarrel has, by decease of the Kaiser, gone to air." To which the Britannic Majesty, rather elated at this time, as all Pragmatic people are, answers somewhat in a careless way, "Well, if the others like it!" and promises that he will propose it in the proper quarter. So that henceforth there is always a hope of Peace through England; as well as contrariwise, especially till Bavaria settle itself (in April next), a hope of great assistance from the French. Here are potentialities and counter-potentialities, which make the Bavarian Intricacy very agitating to the young King, while it lasts. And indeed his world is one huge imbroglio of Potentialities and Diplomatic Intricacies, agitating to behold. Concerning which we have again to remark how these huge Spectres of Diplomacy, now filling Friedrich's world, came mostly in result to Nothing;—shaping themselves wholly, for or against, in exact proportion, direct or inverse, to the actual Quantity of Battle and effective Performance that happened to be found in Friedrich himself. Diplomatic Spectralities, wide Fatamorganas of hope, and hideous big Bugbears blotting out the sun: of these, few men ever had more than Friedrich at this time. And he is careful, none carefuler, not to neglect his Diplomacies at any time;—though he knows, better than most, that good fighting of his own is what alone can determine the value of these contingent and aerial quantities,—mere Lapland witchcraft the greater part of them.
A second grand Intricacy and difficulty, still more enigmatic, and pressing the tighter by its close neighborhood, was that with the Saxons. "Are the Saxons enemies; are they friends? Neutrals at lowest; bound by Treaty to lend Austria troops; but to lend for defence merely, not for offence! Could not one, by good methods, make friends with his Polish Majesty?" Friedrich was far from suspecting the rages that lurked in the Polish Majesty, and least of all owing to what. Owing to that old MORAVIAN-FORAY business; and to his, Friedrich's, behavior to the Saxons in it; excellent Saxons, who had behaved so beautifully to Friedrich! That is the sad fact, however. Stupid Polish Majesty has his natural envies, jealousies, of a Brandenburg waxing over his head at this rate. But it appears, the Moravian Foray entered for a great deal into the account, and was the final overwhelming item. Bruhl, by much descanting on that famous Expedition,—with such candid Eye-witnesses to appeal to, such corroborative Staff-officers and appliances, powerful on the idle heart and weak brain of a Polish Majesty,—has brought it so far. Fixed indignation, for intolerable usage, especially in that Moravian-Foray time: fixed; not very malignant, but altogether obstinate (as, I am told, that of the pacific sheep species usually is); which carried Bruhl and his Polish Majesty to extraordinary heights and depths in years coming! But that will deserve a section to itself by and by.
A third difficulty, privately more stringent than any, is that of Finance. The expenses of the late Bohemian Expedition, "Friedrich's Army costing 75,000 pounds a month," have been excessive. For our next Campaign, if it is to be done in the way essential, there are, by rigorous arithmetic, "900,000 pounds" needed. A frugal Prussia raises no new taxes; pays its Wars from "the Treasure," from the Fund saved beforehand for emergencies of that kind; Fund which is running low, threatening to be at the lees if such drain on it continue. To fight with effect being the one sure hope, and salve for all sores, it is not in the Army, in the Fortresses, the Fighting Equipments, that there shall be any flaw left! Friedrich's budget is a sore problem upon him; needing endless shift and ingenuity, now and onwards, through this war:—already, during these months, in the Berlin Schloss, a great deal of those massive Friedrich-Wilhelm plate Sumptuosities, especially that unparalleled Music-Balcony up stairs, all silver, has been, under Fredersdorf's management, quietly taken away; "carried over, in the night-time, to the Mint." [Orlich, ii. 126-128.]
And, in fact, no modern reader, not deeper in that distressing story of the Austrian-Succession War than readers are again like to be, can imagine to himself the difficulties of Friedrich at this time, as they already lay disclosed, and kept gradually disclosing themselves, for months coming; nor will ever know what perspicacity, patience of scanning, sharpness of discernment, dexterity of management, were required at Friedrich's hands;—and under what imminency of peril, too; victorious deliverance, or ruin and annihilation, wavering fearfully in the balance for him, more than once, or rather all along. But it is certain the deeper one goes into that hideous Medea's Caldron of stupidities, once so flamy, now fallen extinct, the more is one sensible of Friedrich's difficulties; and of the talent for all kinds of Captaincy,—by no means in the Field only, or perhaps even chiefly,—that was now required of him. Candid readers shall accept these hints, and do their best:—Friedrich himself made not the least complaint of men's then misunderstanding him; still less will he now! We, keeping henceforth the Diplomacies, the vaporous Foreshadows, and general Dance of Unclean Spirits with their intrigues and spectralities, well underground, so far as possible, will stick to what comes up as practical Performance on Friedrich's part, and try to give intelligible account of that.
Valori says, he is greatly changed, and for the better, by these late reverses of fortune. All the world notices it, says Valori. No longer that brief infallibility of manner; that lofty light air, that politely disdainful view of Valori and mankind: he has now need of men. Complains of nothing, is cheerful, quizzical;—ardently busy to "grind out the notches," as our proverb is; has a mild humane aspect, something of modesty, almost of piety in him. Help me, thou Supreme Power, Maker of men, if my purposes are manlike! Though one does not go upon the Prayers of Forty-Hours, or apply through St. Vitus and such channels, there may be something of authentic petition to Heaven in the thoughts of that young man. He is grown very amiable; the handsomest young bit of Royalty now going. He must fight well next Summer, or it will go hard with him!
Chapter VI.—VALORI GOES ON AN ELECTIONEERING MISSION TO DRESDEN
Some time in January, a new Frenchman, a "Chevalier de Courten," if the name is known to anybody, was here at Berlin; consulting, settling about mutual interests and operations. Since Belleisle is snatched from us, it is necessary some Courten should come; and produce what he has got: little of settlement, I should fear, of definite program that will hold water; in regard to War operations chiefly a magazine of clouds. [Specimens of it, in Ranke, iii. 219.] For the rest, the Bavarian question; and very specially, Who the new Emperor is to be?"King of Poland, thinks your Majesty?"—"By all means," answers Friedrich, "if you can! Detach him from Austria; that will be well!" Which was reckoned magnanimous, at least public-spirited, in Friedrich; considering what Saxony's behavior to him had already been. "By all means, his Polish Majesty for Kaiser; do our utmost, Excellencies Valori, Courten and Company!" answers Friedrich,—and for his own part, I observe, is intensely busy upon Army matters, looking after the main chance.
And so Valori is to go to Dresden, and manage this cloud or cobwebbery department of the thing; namely, persuade his Polish Majesty to stand for the Kaisership: "Baiern, Pfalz, Koln, Brandenburg, there are four votes, Sire; your own is five: sure of carrying it, your Polish Majesty; backed by the Most Christian King, and his Allies and resources!" And Polish Majesty does, for his own share, very much desire to be Kaiser. But none of us yet knows how he is tied up by Austria, Anti-Friedrich, Anti-French considerations; and can only "accept if it is offered me:" thrice-willing to accept, if it will fall into my mouth; which, on those terms, it has so little chance of doing!—Saxony and its mysterious affairs and intentions having been, to Friedrich, a riddle and trouble and astonishment, during all this Campaign, readers ought to know the fact well;—and no reader could stand the details of such a fact. Here, in condensed form, are some scraps of Excerpt; which enable us to go with Valori on this Dresden Mission, and look for ourselves:—
1. FRIEDRICH'S POSITION TOWARDS SAXONY
"... By known Treaty, the Polish Majesty is bound to assist the Hungarian with 12,000 men, 'whenever invaded in her own dominions.' Polish Majesty had 20,000 in the field for that object lately,—part of them, 8,000 of them, hired by Britannic subsidy, as he alleges. The question now is, Will Saxony assist Austria in invading Silesia, with or without Britannic subsidy? Friedrich hopes that this is impossible! Friedrich is deeply unaware of the humor he has raised against himself in the Saxon Court-circles; how the Polish Majesty regards that Moravian Foray; with what a perfect hatred little Bruhl regards him, Friedrich; and to what pitch of humor, owing to those Moravian-Foray starvings, marchings about and inhuman treatment of the poor Saxon Army, not to mention other offences and afflictive considerations, Bruhl has raised the simple Polish Majesty against Friedrich. These things, as they gradually unfolded themselves to Friedrich, were very surprising. And proved very disadvantageous at the present juncture and for a long time afterwards. To Friedrich disadvantageous and surprising; and to Saxony, in the end, ruinous; poor Saxony having got its back broken by them, and never stood up in the world since! Ruined by this wretched little Bruhl; and reduced, from the first place in Northern Teutschland, to a second or third, or no real place at all."
2. THERE IS A, "UNION OF WARSAW" (8th January, 1745); AND STILL MORE SPECIALLY A "TREATY OF WARSAW" (8th January-18th May, 1745)
"January 8th, 1745, before the Old Dessauer got ranked in Schlesien against Traun, there had concluded itself at Warsaw, by way of counterpoise to the 'Frankfurt Union,' a 'Union of Warsaw,' called also 'Quadruple Alliance of Warsaw;' the Parties to which were Polish Majesty, Hungarian ditto, Prime-Movers, and the two Sea-Powers as Purseholders; stipulating, to the effect: 'We Four will hold together in affairs of the Reich VERSUS that dangerous Frankfurt Union; we will'—do a variety of salutary things; and as one practical thing, 'There shall be, this Season, 30,000 Saxons conjoined to the Austrian Force, for which we Sea-Powers will furnish subsidy.'—This was the one practical point stipulated, January 8th; and farther than this the Sea-Powers did not go, now or afterwards, in that affair.
"But there was then proposed by the Polish and Hungarian Majesties, in the form of Secret Articles, an ulterior Project; with which the Sea-Powers, expressing mere disbelief and even abhorrence of it, refused to have any concern now or henceforth. Polish Majesty, in hopes it would have been better taken, had given his 30,000 soldiers at a rate of subsidy miraculously low, only 150,000 pounds for the whole: but the Sea-Powers were inexorable, perhaps almost repented of their 150,000 pounds; and would hear nothing farther of secret Articles and delirious Projects.
"So that the 'Union of Warsaw' had to retire to its pigeon-hole, content with producing those 30,000 Saxons for the immediate occasion; and there had to be concocted between the Polish and Hungarian Majesties themselves what is now, in the modern Pamphlets, called a 'TREATY of Warsaw,'—much different from the innocent, 'UNION of Warsaw;' though it is merely the specifying and fixing down of what had been shadowed out as secret codicils in said 'Union,' when the Sea-Power parties obstinately recoiled. Treaty of Warsaw let us continue to call it; though its actual birth-place was Leipzig (in the profoundest secrecy, 18th May, 1745), above four months after it had tried to be born at Warsaw, and failed as aforesaid. Warsaw Union is not worth speaking of; but this other is a Treaty highly remarkable to the reader,—and to Friedrich was almost infinitely so, when he came to get wind of it long after.
"Treaty which, though it proved abortional, and never came to fulfilment in any part of it, is at this day one of the remarkablest bits of sheepskin extant in the world. It was signed 18th May, 1745; [Scholl, ii. 350.] and had cost a great deal of painful contriving, capable still of new altering and retouching, to hit mutual views: Treaty not only for reconquering Silesia (which to the Two Majesties, though it did not to the Sea-Powers, seems infallible, in Friedrich's now ruined circumstances), but for cutting down that bad Neighbor to something like the dimensions proper for a Brandenburg Vassal;—in fact, quite the old 'Detestable Project' of Spring, 1741, only more elaborated into detail (in which Britannic George knows better than to meddle!)—Saxony to have share of the parings, when we get them. 'What share?' asked Saxony, and long keeps asking. 'A road to Warsaw; Strip of Country carrying us from the end of the Lausitz, which is ours, into Poland, which we trust will continue ours, would be very handy! Duchy of Glogau; some small paring of Silesia, won't your Majesty?' 'Of my Silesia not one hand-breadth,' answered the Queen impatiently (though she did at last concede some outlying hand-breadths, famed old 'Circle of Schwiebus,' if I recollect); and they have had to think of other equivalent parings for Saxony's behoof (Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Saale-Circle, or one knows not what); and have had, and will have, their adoes to get it fixed. Excellent bearskin to be slit into straps; only the bear is still on his feet!—Polish Majesty and Hungarian, Polish with especial vigor, Bruhl quite restless upon it, are—little as Valori or any mortal could dream of it—engaged in this partition of the bearskin, when Valori arrives. Of their innocent Union of Warsaw, there was, from the first, no secret made; but the Document now called 'TREATY of Warsaw' needs to lie secret and thrice-secret; and it was not till 1756 that Friedrich, having unearthed it by industries of his own, and studied it with great intensity for some years, made it known to the world." [Adelung, v. 308. 397; Ranke, iii. 231 (who, for some reason of his own, dates "3d May" instead of 18th].
Treaties, vaporous Foreshadows of Events, have oftenest something of the ghost in them; and are importune to human nature, longing for the Events themselves; all the more if they have proved abortional Treaties, and become doubly ghost-like or ghastly. Nevertheless the reader is to note well this Treaty of Warsaw, as important to Friedrich and him; and indeed it is perhaps the remarkablest Treaty, abortional or realized, which got to parchment in that Century. For though it proved abortional, and no part of it, now or afterwards, could be executed, and even the subsidy and 30,000 Saxons (stipulated in the "UNION of Warsaw") became crow's-meat in a manner,—this preternatural "Treaty of Warsaw," trodden down never so much by the heel of Destiny, and by the weight of new Treaties, superseding it or presupposing its impossibility or inconceivability, would by no means die (such the humor of Bruhl, of the Two Majesties and others); but lay alive under the ashes, carefully tended, for Ten or Twenty Years to come;—and had got all Europe kindled again, for destruction of that bad Neighbor, before it would itself consent to go out! And did succeed in getting Saxony's back broken, if not the bad Neighbor's,—in answer to the humor of little Bruhl; unfortunate Saxony to possess such a Bruhl!
In those beautiful Saxon-Austrian developments of the Treaty of Warsaw, Czarina Elizabeth, bobbing about in that unlovely whirlpool of intrigues, amours, devotions and strong liquor, which her History is, took (ask not for what reason) a lively part:—and already in this Spring of 1745, they hope she could, by "a gift of two millions for her pleasures" (gift so easy to you Sea-Powers), be stirred up to anger against Friedrich. And she did, in effect, from this time, hover about in a manner questionable to Friedrich; though not yet in anger, but only with the wish to be important, and to make herself felt in Foreign affairs. Whether the Sea-Powers gave her that trifle of pocket-money ("for her pleasures"), I never knew; but it is certain they spent, first and last, very large amounts that way, upon her and hers; especially the English did, with what result may be considered questionable.
As for Graf von Bruhl, most rising man of Saxony, once a page; now by industry King August III.'s first favorite and factotum; the fact that he cordially hates Friedrich is too evident; but the why is not known to me. Except indeed, That no man—especially no man with three hundred and sixty-five fashionable suits of clothes usually about him, different suit each day of the year—can be comfortable in the evident contempt of another man. Other man of sarcastic bantering turn, too; tongue sharp as needles; whose sayings many birds of the air are busy to carry about. Year after year, Bruhl (doubtless with help enough that way, if there had needed such) hates him more and more; as the too jovial Czarina herself comes to do, wounded by things that birds have carried. And now we will go with Valori,—seeing better into some things than Valori yet can.