Chapter V. — JOURNEY TO THE REICH.
On Saturday the 15th July, 1730, early in the morning as his wont was, Friedrich Wilhelm, with a small train of official military persons, rolled off from Potsdam, towards Leipzig, on that same journey of his, towards Anspach and the Reich. To Anspach, to see our poor young daughter, lately married there; therefrom we can have a run into the Reich, according to circumstances. In this wide route there lie many Courts and scenes, which it might behoove us to look into; Courts needing to be encouraged to stand for the Kaiser's rights, against those English, French and intrusive Foreigners of the Seville Treaty. We may hope at least to ease our own heavy mind, and have the chaff somewhat blown out of it, by this rushing through the open atmosphere.—Such, so far as I can gather, were Friedrich Wilhelm's objects in this Journey; which turned out to be a more celebrated one than he expected. The authentic records of it are slight, the rumors about it have been many. [Forster (iii. 1-11) contains Seckendorf's Narrative, as sent to Vienna; Preuss (iv. 470), a Prussian RELATIO EX ACTIS: these are the only two ORIGINAL pieces which I have seen; Excerpts of others (correct doubtless, but not in a very distinct condition) occur in Ranke, i. 294-340.] After painful sifting through mountains of dust and ashes for a poor cinder of a fact here and there, our duty is, to tell the English reader one good time, what certainties, or available cinders, have anywhere turned up. Crown-Prince Friedrich, it has been decided, after some consultation, shall go with his Majesty. Better he go with us, to be under our own eyes, lest he run away, or do other mischief. Old General Buddenbrock, old Colonel Waldau, and Lieutenant-Colonel Rochow travel in the same carriage with the Prince; are to keep a strict watch over him, one of them at least to be always by him. Old General Buddenbrock, a grim but human old military gentleman, who has been in all manner of wars: he fought at Steenkirk even, and in the Siege of Namur, under Dutch William; stood, through Malplaquet and much else, under Marlborough; did the Siege of Stralsund too, and descent on Rugen there, which was not his first acquaintance with Karl of Sweden; and is a favorite old friend of Friedrich Wilhelm's. A good old gentleman, though very strict; now hard on sixty. He is chief of the Three.
Old Waldau, not younger, though still only Colonel of Horse, likewise celebrates the Malplaquet anniversary; a Pomeranian man, and silent smoker in the Tabagie, well seen by the master there. To these two elderly authorities, Lieutenant-Colonel Rochow, still only about forty, and probably sharper of eye, is adjoined as active partner. I conclude, the Prince and Buddenbrock ride face forward; Buddenbrock can tell him about so many things, if he is conversable: about Dutch William; about Charles XII., whose Polish fights he witnessed, as an envoy from Berlin, long ago. A Colonel Krocher, I find, is general manager of the Journey;—and it does not escape notice that Friedrich, probably out of youthful curiosity, seems always very anxious to know, to the uttermost settled point, where our future stages are to be. His Royal Highness laid in a fair stock of District Maps, especially of the Rhine Countries, at Leipzig, too; [Forster, iii. 2.] and is assiduous in studying them,—evidently very desirous to know the face of Germany, the Rhine Countries in particular?
Potsdam, Wittenberg, Leipzig, the wheels rush rapidly on, stage succeeding stage; and early in the afternoon we are at Leipzig,—never looking out at Luther's vestiges, or Karl V.'s, or thinking about Luther, which thou and I, good English reader, would surely have done, in crossing Wittenberg and the birthplace of Protestantism. At Leipzig we were thinking to have dined. At the Peter's Gate there,—where at least fresh horses are, and a topographic Crown-Prince can send hastily to buy maps,—a General Hopfgarten, Commandant of the Town, is out with the military honors; he has, as we privately know, an excellent dinner ready in the Pleissenburg Fortress yonder, [Fassmann, p. 410.]—but he compliments to a dreadful extent! Harangues and compliments in no end of florid inflated tautologic ornamental balderdash; repeating and again repeating, What a never-imagined honor it is; in particular saying three times over, How the Majesty of Saxony, King August, had he known, would have wished for wings to fly hither; and bowing to the very ground, "as if, in the Polish manner, he wished to clasp your feet," said Friedrich Wilhelm afterwards. I can fancy Friedrich Wilhelm somewhat startled! How, at the first mention of this idea of big August, with his lame foot, taking wing, and coming like a gigantic partridge, with lame foot and cocked-hat, Friedrich Wilhelm grinned. How, at the second mention, and Polish threat of your feet, Friedrich Wilhelm, who hates all lies, and cares not for salutations in the market-place, jerks himself impatiently and saves his feet. At the third mention, clear it is, Friedrich Wilhelm utters the word, "ANSPANNEN, Horses!"—and in very truth takes to the road again; hungry indeed, but still angrier; leaving Hopfgarten bent into the shape of a parabola, and his grand dinner cooling futile, in what tragic humor we can imagine. [Ib. p. 411.] Why has no Prussian Painter done that scene? Let another Chodowiecki, when another comes, try whether he cannot.
Friedrich Wilhelm regretted the dinner, regretted to hurt the good man's feelings; but could stand it no longer. He rushes off for Meuselwitz, where Seckendorf, with at least silence, and some cold collation instead of dinner, is awaiting him. Twenty miles off is Meuselwitz; up the flat valley of the Pleisse River towards Altenburg; through a region memorable, were we not so hungry. Famed fights have had their arena here; Lutzen, the top of its church-steeple visible on your right, it is there where the great Gustavus fell two hundred years ago: on that wide champaign, a kind of Bull-ring of the Nations, how many fights have been, and will be! Altenburg one does not see to-night: happy were we but at Meuselwitz, a few miles nearer; and had seen what dinner the old Feldzeugmeister has.
Dinner enough, we need not doubt. The old Feldzeugmeister has a big line Schloss at Meuselwitz; his by unexpected inheritance; with uncommonly fine gardens; with a good old Wife, moreover, blithe though childless;—and he is capable of "lighting more than one candle" when a King comes to visit him. Doubtless the man hurls his thrift into abeyance; and blazes out with conspicuous splendor, on this occasion. A beautiful Castle indeed, this Meuselwitz of his; the towers of Altenburg visible in the distance; Altenburg, where Kunz von Kauffungen stole the two little Princes; centuries ago;—where we do not mean to pause at this time. On the morrow morning,—unless they chose to stay over Sunday; which I cannot affirm or deny,—Seckendorf also has made his packages; and joins himself to Friedrich. Wilhelm's august travelling party. Doing here a portion of the long space (length of the Terrestrial Equator in all) which he is fated to accomplish in the way of riding with that Monarch.
From Meuselwitz, through Altenburg, Gera, Saalfeld, to Coburg, is our next day's journey. Up one fork of the Leipzig Pleisse, then across the Leipzig Elster, these streams now dwindling to brooks; leading us up to the water-shed or central Hill-countries between the Mayn and Saale Rivers; where the same shower will run partly, on this hand, northward by the Elster, Pleisse or other labyrinthic course, into the Saale, into the Elbe; and partly, on the other hand, will flow southward into the Mayn; and so, after endless windings in the Fir Mountains (FICHTEL-GEBIRGE), get by Frankfurt into the Rhine at Mainz. Mayn takes the south end of your shower; Saale takes the north,—or farther east yonder, shower will roll down into the same grand Elbe River by the Mulde (over which the Old Dessauer is minded to build a new stone bridge; Wallenstein and others, as well as Time, have ruined many bridges there). That is the line of the primeval mountains, and their ever-flowing rain-courses, in those parts.
At Gera, dim, old Town,—does not your Royal Highness well know the "Gera Bond (GERAISCHE VERTRAG)"? Duhan: did not forget to inform you of that? It is the corner-stone of the House of Brandenburg's advancement in the world. Here, by your august ancestors, the Law of Primogeniture was settled, and much rubbish was annihilated in the House of Brandenburg: Eldest Son always to inherit the Electorate unbroken; after Anspach and Baireuth no more apanages, upon any cause or pretext whatsoever; and these themselves to lapse irrevocable to the main or Electoral House, should they ever fall vacant again. Fine fruit of the decisive sense that was in the Hohenzollerns; of their fine talent for annihilating rubbish,—which feat, if a man can do it, and keep doing it, will more than most others accelerate his course in this world. It was in this dim old Town of Gera, in the Year 1598, by him that had the twenty-three children, that the "GERA BOND" was brought to parchment. But indeed it was intrinsically only a renewal, more solemnly sanctioned, of Albert Achilles's HAUS ORDNUNG (House-Order), done in 1478, above a century earlier.—
But see, we are under way again. His Prussian Majesty rushes forward without pause; will stop nowhere, except where business demands; no Majesty of his day travels at such a speed. Orlamunde an hour hence,—your Royal Highness has heard of Orlamunde and its famed Counts of a thousand years back, when Kaiser Redbeard was in the world, and the Junior Hohenzollern, tired of hawking, came down from the Hills to him? Orlamunde (OrlaMOUTH) is not far off, on our right; and this itself is the Orla; this pleasant streamlet we are now quitting, which has borne us company for some time: this too will get into the Saale, and be at Magdeburg, quite beyond the Dessauer's Bridge, early to-morrow. Ha, here at last is Saalfeld, Town and Schloss, and the incipient Saal itself: his Serene Highness Saalfeld-Coburg's little REZIDENZ;—probably his Majesty will call on him, in passing? I have no doubt he does; and transacts the civilities needful.
Christian Ernst, whose Schloss this is, a gentleman of his Majesty's age (born 1683), married an amiable FRAULEIN not of quality, whom indeed the Kaiser has ennobled: he lives here,—I think, courting the shade rather; and rules conjointly with his younger Brother, or Half-Brother, Franz Josias, who resides at Coburg. Dukes of Saalfeld-Coburg, such is their style, and in good part their possession; though, it is well known to this travelling party and the world, there has been a Lawsuit about Coburg this half-century and more; and though somewhere about 200 "CONCLUSA," [Michaelis, i. 524, 518; Busching, Erdbeschreibung, vi. 2464; OErtel, t. 74; Hubner, t. 166.] or Decrees of Aulic Council, have been given in favor of the Saalfelders, their rivals of Meiningen never end. Nor will end yet, for five years more to come; till, in 1735, "206 CONCLUSA being given," they do end, and leave the Saalfelders in peaceable possession; who continue so ever since to this day. [Carlyle's Miscellanies, vi.? PRINZENRAUB.] How long his Majesty paused in that Schloss of Saalfeld, or what he there did, or what he spake,—except perhaps encourage Christian Ernst to stand by a Kaiser's Majesty against these French insolences, and the native German, Spanish, English derelictions of duty,—we are left to the vaguest guess of fancy, And must get on to Coburg for the night.
At Coburg, in its snug valley, under the FESTUNG or Hill Castle,—where Martin Luther sat solitary during the Diet of Augsburg (Diet known to us, our old friend Margraf George of Anspach hypothetically "laying his head on the block? there, and the great Kaiser, Karl V., practically burning daylight, with pitiable spilling of wax, in the CORPUS-CHRISTI procession there), [Antea, vol. v. p. 197.]—where Martin Luther sat solitary, and wrote that celebrated Letter about 16 Crows holding THEIR Parliament all round," and how "the pillars of the world were never seen by anybody, and yet the world is held up, in these dumb continents of space;"—at Coburg, we will not doubt, his Majesty found Franz Josias at home, and illuminated to receive him. Franz Josias, a hearty man of thirty-five, he too will stand by the Kaiser in these coming storms? With a weak contingent truly, perhaps some score or two of fighters: but many a little makes a mickle!—remark, however; two points, of a merely genealogical nature. First, that Franz Josias has, or rather is going to have, a Younger Son, [Friedrich Josias: 1737-1815.] who in some sixty years hence will become dreadfully celebrated in the streets of Paris, as "Austrian Coburg." The Austrian Coburg of Robes-Pierre and Company. An immeasurable terror and portent,—not much harm in him, either, when he actually comes, with nothing but the Duke of York and Dunkirk for accompaniment,—to those revolutionary French of 1792-1794. This is point FIRST. Point SECOND is perhaps still more interesting; this namely: That Franz Josias has an Eldest Son (boy of six when Friedrich Wilhelm makes his visit),—a GRANDSON'S GRANDSON of whom is, at this day, Prince of Wales among the English People, and to me a subject of intense reflection now and then!—
From Coburg, Friedrich Wilhelm, after pause again unknown, rushed on to Bamberg; new scenes and ever new opening on the eyes of our young Hero and his Papa. The course is down the valley of the Itz, one of the many little valleys in the big slope of the Rodach; for the waters are now turned, and all streams and brooks are gurgling incessantly towards the Mayn. Towards Frankfurt, Mainz and the Rhine,—far enough from the Saale, Mulde, or the Old Dessauer's Bridge to-day; towards Rotterdam and the uttermost Dutch swamps today. Near upon Bamberg we cross the Mayn itself; Red Mayn and White conjoined, coming from Culmbach and Baireuth,—mark that, your Highness. A country of pleasant hills and vines: and in an hour hence, through thick fir woods,—each side of your road horribly decked with gibbeted thieves swinging aloft, [Pollnitz, Memoirs and Letters (English Translation, London, 1745), i. 209. Let me say again, this is a different Book from the "MEMOIRS of Pollnitz;" and a still different from the MEMOIREN, or "Memoirs of Brandenburg BY Pollnitz:" such the excellence of nomenclature in that old fool!]—you arrive at Bamberg, chief of Bishoprics, the venerable town; whose Bishop, famous in old times, is like an Archbishop, and "gets his pallium direct from the Pope,"—much good may it do him! "Is bound, however, to give up his Territory, if the Kaiser elected is landless,"—far enough from likely now. And so you are at last fairly in the Mayn Valley; River Mayn itself a little step to north;—long course and many wide windings between you and Mainz or Frankfurt, not to speak of Rotterdam, and the ultimate Dutch swamps.
At Bamberg why should a Prussian Majesty linger, except for picturesque or for mere baiting purposes? At Bamberg are certain fat Catholic Canons, in indolent, opulent circumstances; and a couple of sublime Palaces, without any Bishop in them at present. Nor indeed does one much want Papist Bishops, wherever they get their pallium; of them as well keep to windward! thinks his Majesty. And indeed there is no Bishop here. The present Bishop of Bamberg—one of those Von Schonborns, Counts, sometimes Cardinals, common in that fat Office,—is a Kaiser's Minister of State; lives at Vienna, enveloped in red tape, as well as red hat and stockings; and needs no exhortation in the Kaiser's favor. Let us yoke again, and go.—Fir woods all round, and dead malefactors blackening in the wind: this latter point I know of the then Bamberg; and have explanation of it. Namely, that the Prince-Bishop, though a humane Catholic, is obliged to act so. His small Domain borders on some six or seven bigger sovereignties; and, being Ecclesiastical, is made a cesspool to the neighboring scoundrelism; which state of things this Prince Bishop has said shall cease. Young Friedrich may look, therefore, and old Friedrich Wilhelm and Suite; and make of it what they can.
"Bamberg, through Erlangen, to Nurnberg;" so runs the way. At Erlangen there loiters now, recruiting, a certain Rittmeister von Katte, cousin to our Potsdam Lieutenant and confidant; to him this transit of the Majesty and Crown-Prince must be an event like few, in that stagnant place. French Refugees are in Erlangen, busy building new straight streets; no University as yet;—nay a high Dowager of Baireuth is in it, somewhat exuberant Lady (friend Weissenfels's Sister) on whom Friedrich Wilhelm must call in passing. This high Widow of Baireuth is not Mother of the present Heir-Apparent there, who will wed our Wilhelmina one day;—ah no, his Mother was "DIVORCED for weighty reasons;"[Hubner, t. 181.] and his Father yet lives, in the single state; a comparatively prosperous gentleman these four years last past; Successor, since four years past, of this Lady's Husband, who was his Cousin-german. Dreadfully poor before that, the present Margraf of Baireuth, as we once explained; but now things are looking up with him again, some jingle of money heard in the coffers of the man; and his eldest Prince, a fine young fellow, only apt to stammer a little when agitated, is at present doing the return part of the Grand Tour,—coming home by Geneva they say.
Rittmeister von Katte, I doubt not, witnesses this transit of the incognito Majesty, this call upon the exuberant Dowager; but can have little to say to it, he. I hope he is getting tall recruits here in the Reich; that will be the useful point for him. He is our Lieutenant Katte's Cousin, an elder and wiser man than the Lieutenant. A Reichsgraf's and Field-marshal's nephew, he ought to get advanced in his profession;—and can hope to do so when he has deserved it, not sooner at all, in that thrice-fortunate Country. Let the Rittmeister here keep himself well apart from what is NOT his business, and look out for tall men.
Bamberg is halfway-house between Coburg and Nurnberg; whole distance of Coburg and Nurnberg,—say a hundred and odd miles,—is only a fair day's driving for a rapid King. And at Nurnberg, surely, we must lodge for a night and portion of a day, if not for more. On the morrow, it is but a thirty-five miles drive to Anspach; pleasant in the summer evening, after all the sights in this old Nurnberg, "city of the Noricans (NORICORUM BURGUN)." Trading Staple of the German world in old days; Toy-shop of the German world in these new. Albert Durer's and Hans Sach's City,—mortals infinitely indifferent to Friedrich Wilhelm. But is it not the seed-ground of the Hohenzollerns, this Nurnberg, memorable above cities to a Prussian Majesty? Yes, there in that old white Castle, now very peaceable, they dwelt; considerably liable to bickerings and mutinous heats; and needed all their skill and strength to keep matters straight. It is now upon seven hundred years since the Cadet of Hohenzollern gave his hawk the slip, patted his dog for the last time, and came down from the Rough-Alp countries hitherward. And found favor, not unmerited I fancy, with the great Kaiser Redbeard, and the fair Heiress of the Vohburgs; and in fact, with the Earth and with the Heavens in some degree. A loyal, clever, and gallant kind of young fellow, if your Majesty will think? Much has grown and waned since that time: but the Hohenzollerns, ever since, are on the waxing hand;—unless this accursed Treaty of Seville and these English Matches put a stop to them?
Alas, it is not likely Friedrich Wilhelm, in the hurry and grating whirl of things, had many poetic thoughts in him, or pious aurora memories from the Past Ages, instead of grumbly dusty provocations from the present,—his feeling, haste mainly, and need of getting through! The very Crown-Prince, I should guess, was as good as indifferent to this antique Cadet of the Hohenzollerns; and looked on Nurnberg and the old white Castle with little but ENNUI: the Princess of England, and black cares on her beautiful account and his own, possess him too exclusively. But in truth we do not even know what day they arrived or departed; much less what they did or felt in that old City. We know only that the pleasant little town of Anspach, with its huge unfinished SCHLOSS, lay five-and-thirty miles away; and that thither was the next and quasi-final bit of driving. Southwestward thirty-five miles; through fine summer hills and dales; climbing always, gently, on the southward hand; still drained by the Mayn River, by the Regnitz and other tributaries of the Mayn:—half-way is Heilsbronn, [Not Heilbronn, the well-known, much larger Town, in Wurtemberg, 80 or 100 miles to westward. Both names (which are applied to still other places) signify HEALTH-WELL, or even HOLY-WELL,—these two words, HEALTHY and HOLY (what is very remarkable), being the same in old Teutonic speech.] with its old Monastery; where the bones of our Hohenzollern Forefathers rest, and Albert Achilles's "skull, with no sutures visible." On the gloomy Church-walls their memorials are still legible: as for the Monastery itself, Margraf George, tour memorable Reformation friend, abolished that,—purged the monks away, and put Schoolmasters in their stead; who were long of good renown in those parts, but have since gone to Erlangen, so to speak. The July sunset streaming over those old spires of Heilsbronn might awaken thoughts in a Prussian Majesty, were he not in such haste.
At Anspach, what a thrice-hospitable youthfully joyful welcome from the young married couple there! Margravine Frederika is still not quite sixteen; "beautiful as Day," and rather foolish: fancy her joy at sight of Papa's Majesty and Brother Fritz; and how she dances about, and perhaps bakes "pastries of the finest Anspach flour." Ah, DID you send me Berlin sausages, then, you untrue Papa? Well, I will bake for you, won't I;—Sarah herself not more loyally {whom we read of in GENESIS), that time the Angels entered HER tent in a hungry condition!—
Anspach, as we hint, has an unfinished Palace, of a size that might better beseem Paris or London; Palace begun by former Margraves, left off once and again for want of cash; stands there as a sad monument of several things;—the young family living meanwhile in some solid comfortable wing, or adjacent edifice, of natural dimensions. They are so young, as we say, and not too wise. By and by they had a son, and then a second son; which latter came to manhood, to old age; and made some noise in the foolish parts of the Newspapers,—winding up finally at Hammersmith, as we often explain;—and was the last of the Anspach-Baireuth Margraves. I have heard farther that Frederika did not want for temper, as the Hohenzollerns seldom do; that her Husband likewise had his own stock of it, rather scant of wisdom withal; and that their life was not quite symphonious always,—especially cash being short. The Dowager Margravine, Margraf's Mother, had governed with great prudence during her Son's long minority. I think she is now, since the marriage, gone to reside at her WITTWENSITZ (Dowager-Seat) of Feuchtwang (twenty miles southwest of us); but may have come up to welcome the Majesties into these parts. Very beautiful, I hear; still almost young and charming, though there is a mortal malady upon her, which she knows of. [Pollnitz, Memoirs and Letters, i. 209 (date, 29th September, 1729;—needs WATCHING before believing).] Here are certain Seckendorfs too, this is the Feldzeugmeister's native country;—and there are resources for a Royal Travelling-Party. How long the Royal Party stayed at Anspach I do not know; nor what they did there,—except that Crown-Prince Friedrich is said to have privately asked the young Margraf to lend him a pair of riding-horses, and say nothing of it; who, suspecting something wrong, was obliged to make protestations and refuse.
As to the Crown-Prince, there is no doubt but here at last things are actually coming to a crisis with him. To say truth, it has been the young man's fixed purpose ever since he entered on this Journey, nay was ever since that ignominy in the Camp of Radewitz, to run away;—and indeed all this while he has measures going on with Katte at Berlin of the now-or-never sort. Rash young creatures, elder of them hardly above five-and-twenty yet: not good at contriving measures. But what then? Human nature cannot stand this always; and it is time there were an end of deliberating. Can we ever have such a chance again?—What I find of certain concerning Friedrich while at Anspach is, That there comes by way of Erlangen, guided forward from that place by the Rittmeister von Katte, a certain messenger and message, which proved of deep importance to his Royal Highness. The messenger was Lieutenant Katte's servant: who has come express from Berlin hither. He inquired, on the road, as he was bidden, at Erlangen, of Master's Cousin, the experienced Rittmeister, Where his Royal Highness at present was, that he might deliver a Letter to him? The Master's Cousin, who answered naturally, "At Anspach," knew nothing, and naturally could get to know nothing, of what the message in this Letter was. But he judged, from cross-questionings, added to dim whispering rumors he had heard, that it was questionable, probably in an extreme degree. Wherefore, along with his Cousin the Lieutenant's messenger to Anspach, the Rittmeister forwarded a Note of his own to Lieutenant-Colonel Rochow, of this purport, "As a friend, I warn you, have a watchful eye on your high charge!"—and, for his own share, determined to let nothing escape him in his corner of the matter. This note to Rochow, and the Berlin Letter for the Crown-Prince reach Anspach by the same hand; Lieutenant Katte's express, conscious of nothing, delivering them both. Rochow and the Rittmeister, though the poor Prince does not know it, are broad awake to all movements he and the rash Lieutenant may make.
Lieutenant Katte, in this Letter now arrived, complains: "That he never yet can get recruiting furlough; whether it be by accident, or that Rochow has given my Colonel a hint, no furlough yet to be had: will, at worst, come without furlough and in spite of all men and things, whenever wanted. Only—Wesel still, if I might advise!" This is the substance of Katte's message by express. Date must be the end of July, 1730; but neither Date nor Letter is now anywhere producible, except from Hearsay.
Deeply pondering these things, what shall the poor Prince do? From Canstatt, close by Stuttgard, a Town on our homeward route,—from Canstatt, where Katte was to "appear in disguise," had the furlough been got, one might have slipt away across the Hills. It is but eighty miles to Strasburg, through the Kniebiss Pass, where the Murg, the Kinzig, and the intricate winding mountain streams and valleys start Rhine-ward: a labyrinthic rock-and-forest country, where pursuit or tracking were impossible. Near by Strasburg is Count Rothenburg's Chateau; good Rothenburg, long Minister in Berlin,—who saw those PROFOSSEN, or Scavenger-Executioners in French Costume long since, and was always good to me:—might not that be a method? Lieutenant Keith indeed is in Wesel, waiting only a signal. Suppose he went to the Hague, and took soundings there what welcome we should have? No, not till we have actually run; beware of making noise!—The poor Prince is in unutterable perplexity; can only answer Katte by that Messenger of his, to the effect (date and Letter burnt like the former): "Doubt is on every hand; doubt,—and yet CERTAINTY. Will write again before undertaking anything."
And there is no question he did write again; more than once: letters by the post, which his faithful Lieutenant Katte in Berlin received; one of which, however, stuck on the road; and this one,—by some industry of postmasters spirited into vigilance, as is likeliest, though others say by mere misaddressing, by "want of BERLIN on the address,"—fell into the hands of vigilant RITTMEISTER Katte at Erlangen. Who grew pale in reading it, and had to resolve on a painful thing! This was, I suppose, among the last Letters of the series; and must have been dated, as I guess, about the 29th of July, 1730; but they are now all burnt, huddled rapidly into annihilation, and one cannot say!—
Certain it is that the Royal Travelling-Party left Anspach in a few days, to go, southward still, "by the OEttingen Country towards Augsburg." [Fassmann, p. 410.] Feuchtwang (WET Wang, not Durrwang or DRY Wang) is the first stage; here lives the Dowager Margravine of Anspach: here the Prince does some inconceivably small fault "lets a knife, which he is handing to or from the Serene Lady, fall," [Ranke, i. 304 ("from a Letter the Prince had written to Katte").] who, as she is weak, may suffer by the jingle; for which Friedrich Wilhelm bursts out on him like the Irish Rebellion,—to the silent despair of the poor Prince. The poor Prince meditates desperate resolutions, but has to keep them strictly to himself.
Doubtless the Buddenbrock Trio, good old military gentlemen, would endeavor to speak comfort to him, when they were on the road again. Here is Nordlingen, your Highness, where Bernhard of Weimar, for his over-haste, got so beaten in the Thirty-Years War; would not wait till the Swedes were rightly gathered: what general, if he have reinforcement at hand, would not wait for it? The waters now, you observe, run all into the Wornitz, into the Donau: it is a famed war-country this; known to me well in my young Eugene-Marlborough days!—"Hm, Ha, yes!" For the Prince is preoccupied with black cares; and thinks Blenheim and the Schellenberg businesses befell long since, and were perhaps simple to what he has now on hand. That Feuchtwang scene, it would appear, has brought him to a resolution. There is a young page Keith of the party, Lieutenant Keith of Wesel's Brother; of this page Keith, who is often busy about horses, he cautiously makes question, What help may be in him? A willing mind traceable in this poor lad, but his terrors great.
To Donauworth from Anspach, through Feuchtwang and Nordlingen, is some seventy or eighty miles. At Donauworth one surely ought to lodge, and see the Schellenberg on the morrow; nay drive to the Field of Hochstadt (Blenheim, BLINDHEIM), which is but a few miles farther up the River? Buddenbrock was there, and Anhalt-Dessau: for their very sake, were there nothing farther, one surely ought to go? Such was the probability, a visit to Blenheim field in passing. And surely, somewhere in those heart-rending masses of Historical Rubbish, I did at last find express evanescent mention of the fact,—but cannot now say where;—the exact record, or conceivable image of which, would have been a perceptible pleasure to us. Alas, in those dim dreary Books, all whirling dismal round one's soul, like vortices of dim Brandenburg sand, how should anything human be searched out and mentioned to us; and a thousand, things not-human be searched out, and eternally suppressed from us, for the sake of that? I please myself figuring young Friedrich looking at the vestiges of Marlborough, even in a preoccupied uncertain manner. Your Majesty too, this is the very "Schellenberg (or JINGLE-HILL)," this Hill we are now skirting, on highways, on swift wheels; which overhangs Donauworth, our resting-place this hot July evening. Yes, your Majesty, here was a feat of storming done,—pang, pang!—such a noise as never jingled on that Hill before: like Doomsday come; and a hero-head to rule the Doomsday, and turn it to heroic marching music. A very pretty feat of war, your Majesty! His Majesty well knows it; feat of his Marlborough's doing, famed everywhere for the twenty-six years last past; and will go to see the Schellenberg and its Lines. The great Duke is dead four years; sank sadly, eclipsed under tears of dotage of his own, and under human stupidity of other men's! But Buddenbrock is still living, Anhalt-Dessau and others of us are still alive a little while!
Hochstadt itself—Blenheim, as the English call it, meaning BLINDHEIM, the other village on the Field—is but a short way up the River; well worth such a detour. By what way they drove to the field of honor and back from it, I do not know. But there, northward, towards the heights, is the little wood where Anhalt-Dessau stood at bay like a Molossian dog, of consummate military knowledge; and saved the fight in Eugene's quarter of it. That is visible enough; and worth looking at. Visible enough the rolling Donau, Marlborough's place; the narrow ground, the bordering Hills all green at this season;—and down old Buddenbrock's cheek, end Anhalt's, there would roll an iron tear or two. Augsburg is but some thirty miles off, once we are across the Donau,—by the Bridge of Donauworth, or the Ferry of Hochstadt,—swift travellers in a long day, the last of July, are soon enough at Augsburg.
As for Friedrich, haunted and whipt onwards by that scene at Feuchtwang, he is inwardly very busy during this latter part of the route. Probably there is some progress towards gaining Page Keith, Lieutenant Keith of Wesel's Brother; some hope that Page Keith, at the right moment, can be gained: the Lieutenant at Wesel is kept duly advised. To Lieutenant Katte at Berlin Friedrich now writes, I should judge from Donauworth or Augsburg, "That he has had a scene at Feuchtwang; that he can stand it no longer. That Canstatt being given up, as Katte cannot be there to go across the Kniebiss with us, we will endure till we are near enough the Rhine. Once in the Rhineland, in some quiet Town there, handy for Speyer, for French Landau,"—say Sinzheim; last stage hitherward of Heidelberg, but this we do not write,—"there might it not be? Be, somewhere, it shall and must! You, Katte, the instant you hear that we are off, speed you towards the Hague; ask for 'M. le Comte d'Alberville;' you will know that gentleman WHEN you see him: Keith, our Wesel friend, will have taken the preliminary soundings;—and I tell you, Count d'Alberville, or news of him, will be there. Bring the great-coat with you, and the other things, especially the 1,000 gold ducats. Count d'Alberville at the Hague, if all have gone right:—nay if anything go wrong, cannot he, once across the Rhine, take refuge in the convents in those Catholic regions? Nobody, under the scapulary, will suspect such a heretic as him. Speed, silence, vigilance! And so adieu!" A letter of such purport Friedrich did write; which Letter, moreover, the Lieutenant Katte received: it was not this, it was another, that stuck upon the road, and fell into the Rittmeister's hand. This is the young Prince's ultimate fixed project, brought to birth by that slight accident of dropping the knife at Feuchtwang; [Ranke, i. 304.] and hanging heavy on his mind during this Augsburg drive. At Augsburg, furthermore, "he bought, in all privacy, red cloth, of quantity to make a top-coat;" red, the gray being unattainable in Katte's hands: in all privacy; though the watchful Rochow had full knowledge of it, all the same.
Chapter VI. — JOURNEY HOMEWARDS FROM THE REICH; CATASTROPHE ON JOURNEY HOMEWARDS.
The travelling Majesty of Prussia went diligently up and down, investigating ancient Augsburg: saw, I doubt not, the FUGGEREI, or ancient Hospice of the Fuggers,—who were once Weavers in those parts, and are now Princes, and were known to entertain Charles V. with fires of cinnamon, nay with transient flames of Bank-bills on one old occasion. Saw all the Fuggeries, I doubt not; the ancient Luther-and-Melanchthon relics, Diet-Halls and notabilities of this renowned Free Town;—perhaps remembered Margraf George, and loud-voiced Kurfurst Joachim with the Bottle-nose (our DIRECT Ancestor, though mistaken in opinion on some points!), who were once so audible there.
One passing phenomenon we expressly know he saw; a human, not a historically important one. Driving through the streets from place to place, his Majesty came athwart some questionable quaint procession, ribbony, perhaps musical; Majesty questioned it: "A wedding procession, your Majesty!"—"Will the Bride step out, then, and let us see how she is dressed!" "VOM HERZEN GERN; will have the honor." Bride stept out, with blushes,—handsome we will hope; Majesty surveyed her, on the streets of Augsburg, having a human heart in him; and (says Fassmann, as if with insidious insinuation) "is said to have made her a present." She went her way; fulfilled her destiny in an anonymous manner: Friedrich Wilhelm, loudly named in the world, did the like; and their two orbits never intersected again.—Some forty-five miles south of Augsburg, up the Wertach River, more properly up the Mindel River, lies Mindelheim, once a name known in England and in Prussia; once the Duke of Marlborough's "Principality:" given him by a grateful Kaiser Joseph; taken from him by a necessitous Kaiser Karl, Joseph's Brother, that now is. I know not if his Majesty remembers that transaction, now while in these localities; but know well, if he does, he must think it a shabby one.
On the same day, 1st August, 1730, we quit Augsburg; set out fairly homewards again. The route bends westward this time; towards Frankfurt-on-Mayn; there yachts are to be ready; and mere sailing thenceforth, gallantly down the Rhine-stream,—such a yacht-voyage, in the summer weather, with no Tourists yet infesting it,—to end, happily we will hope, at Wesel, in the review of regiments, and other business. First stage, first pause, is to be at Ludwigsburg, and the wicked old Duke of Wurtemberg's; thither first from Augsburg. We cross the Donau at Dillingen, at Gunzberg, or I know not where; and by to-morrow's sunset, being rapid travellers, find ourselves at Ludwigsburg,—clear through Canstatt, Stuttgard, and certainly no Katte waiting there! Safe across the intermediate uplands, here are we fairly in the Neckar Country, in the Basin of the Rhine again; and old Duke Eberhard Ludwig of Wurtemberg bidding us kindly welcome, poor old bewildered creature, who has become the talk of Germany in those times. Will English readers consent to a momentary glance into his affairs and him? Strange things are going on at Lndwigsburg; nay the origin of Ludwigsburg, and that the Duke should be there and not at Stuttgard, is itself strange. Let us take this Excerpt, headed LUDWIGSBURG in 1730, and then hasten on:—
LUDWIGSBURG IN 1730.
"Duke Eberhard Ludwig, now an elderly gentleman of fifty-four, has distinguished himself in his long reign, not by political obliquities and obstinacies, though those also were not wanting, but by matrimonial and amatory; which have rendered him conspicuous to his fellows-creatures, and still keep him mentionable in History, briefly and for a sad reason. Duke Eberhard Ludwig was duly wedded to an irreproachable Princess of Baden-Durlach (Johanna Elizabeth) upwards of thirty years ago; and he duly produced one Son in consequence, with other good results to himself and her. But in course of time Duke Eberhard Ludwig took to consorting with bad creatures; took, in fact, to swashing about at random in the pool of amatory iniquity, as if there had been no law known, or of the least validity, in that matter.
"Perceiving which, a certain young fellow, Gravenitz by name, who had come to him from the Mecklenbnrg regions, by way of pushing fortune, and had got some pageship or the like here in Wurtemberg, recollected that he had a young Sister at home; pretty and artful, who perhaps might do a stroke of work here. He sends for the young Sister; very pretty indeed, and a gentlewoman by birth, though penniless. He borrows clothes for her (by onerous contract with the haberdashers, it is said, being poor to a degree); he easily gets her introduced to the Ducal Soirees; bids her—She knows what to do? Right well she knows what; catches, with her piquant face, the dull eye of Eberhard Ludwig, kindles Eberhard Ludwig, and will not for something quench him. Not she at all: How can SHE; your Serene Highness, ask her not! A virtuous young lady, she, and come of a stainless Family!—In brief, she hooks, she of all the fishes in the pool, this lumber of a Duke; enchants him, keeps him hooked; and has made such a pennyworth of him, for the last twenty years and more, as Germany cannot match. [Michaelis, iii. 440.] Her brother Gravenitz the page has become Count Gravenitz the prime minister, or chief of the Governing Cabal; she Countess Gravenitz and Autocrat of Wurtemberg. Loaded with wealth, with so-called honors, she and hers, there go they, flaunting sky-high; none else admitted to more than the liberty of breathing in silence in this Duchy;—the poor Duke Eberhard Ludwig making no complaint; obedient as a child to the bidding of his Gravenitz. He is become a mere enchanted simulacrum of a Duke; bewitched under worse than Thessalian spells; without faculty of willing, except as she wills; his People and he the plaything of this Circe or Hecate, that has got hold of him. So it has lasted for above twenty years. Gravenitz has become the wonder of Germany; and requires, on these bad grounds, a slight mention in Human History for some time to come. Certainly it is by the Gravenitz alone that Eberhard Ludwig is remembered; and yet, down since Ulrich with the Thumb, [Ulricus POLLEX (right thumb bigger than left); died A.D. 1265 (Michaelis, iii. 262).] which of those serene abstruse Beutelsbachers, always an abstruse obstinate set, has so fixed himself in your memory?—
"Most persons in Wurtemberg, for quiet's sake, have complied with the Gravenitz; though not without protest, and sometimes spoken protest. Thus the Right Reverend Osiander (let us name Osiander, Head of the Church in Wurtemberg) flatly refused to have her name inserted in the Public Prayers; 'Is not she already prayed for?' said Osiander: 'Do we not say, DELIVER US FROM EVIL?' said the indignant Protestant man. And there is one other person that never will comply with her: the lawful Wife of Eberhard Ludwig. Serene Lady, she has had a sad existence of it; the voice of her wrongs audible, to little purpose, this long while, in Heaven and on Earth. But it is not in the power of reward or punishment to bend her female will in the essential point: 'Divorce, your Highness? When I am found guilty, yes. Till then, never, your Highness, never, never,' in steady CRESCENDO tone:—so that his Highness is glad to escape again, and drop the subject. On which the Serene Lady again falls silent. Gravenitz, in fact, hopes always to be wedded with the right, nay were it only with the left hand: and this Serene Lady stands like a fateful monument irremovably in the way. The Serene Lady steadily inhabits her own wing of the Ducal House, would not exchange it for the Palace of Aladdin; looks out there upon the grand equipages, high doings, impure splendors of her Duke and his Gravenitz with a clear-eyed silence, which seems to say more eloquently than words, 'MENE, MENE, YOU are weighed!' In the land of Wurtemberg, or under the Sun, is no reward or punishment that can abate this silence. Speak of divorce, the answer is as above: leave divorce lying, there is silence looking forth clear-eyed from that particular wing of the Palace, on things which the gods permit for a time.
"Clear-eyed silence, which, as there was no abating of it, grew at last intolerable to the two sinners. 'Let us remove,' said the Gravenitz, 'since her Serene Highness will not: build a new charming Palace,—say at our Hunting Seat, among those pleasant Hills in the Waiblingen region,—and take the Court, out thither.' And they have done so, in these late bad years; taking out with them by degrees all the Courtier Gentry, all the RATHS, Government Boards, public businesses; and building new houses for them, there. ["From 1727 to 1730" was this latter removal. A hunting-lodge, of Eberhard Ludwig's building, and named by him LUGWIGSBURG, stood here since 1705; nucleus of the subsequent palace, with its "Pheasantries," its "Favoritas," &c. &c. The place had originally been monastic (Busching, Erdbeschreibung, vi. 1519).] Founding, in fact, a second Capital for Wurtemberg, with what distress, sulky misery and disarrangement, to Stuttgard and the old Capital, readers can fancy. There it stands, that Ludwigsburg, the second Capital of Wurtemberg, some ten or twenty miles from Stuttgard the first: a lasting memorial of Circe Gravenitz and her Ludwig. Has not she, by her incantations, made the stone houses dance out hither? It remains to this day a pleasant town, and occasional residence of sovereignty. WAIBLINGEN, within an hour's ride, has got memorability on other grounds;—what reader has not heard of GHIBELLINES, meaning Waiblingens? And in another hour up the River, you will come to Beutelsbach itself, where Ulrich with the Thumb had his abode (better luck to him!), and generated this Lover of the Gravenitz, and much other nonsense loud now and then for the last four centuries in the world!—
"There is something of abstruse in all these Beutelsbachers, from Ulrich with the Thumb downwards: a mute ennui, an inexorable obstinacy; a certain streak of natural gloom which no illumination can abolish. Veracity of all kinds is great in them; sullen passive courage plenty of it; active courage rarer; articulate intellect defective: hence a strange stiff perversity of conduct visible among them, often marring what wisdom they have;—it is the royal stamp of Fate put upon these men. What are called fateful or fated men; such as are often seen on the top places of the world, making an indifferent figure there. Something of this, I doubt not, is concerned in Eberhard Ludwig's fascination; and we shall see other instances farther down in this History.
"But so, for twenty years, the absurd Duke, transformed into a mere Porcus by his Circe in that scandalous miraculous manner, has lived; and so he still lives. And his Serene Wife, equally obstinate, is living at Stuttgard, happily out of his sight now. One Son, a weakly man, who had one heir, but has now none, is her only comfort. His Wife is a Prussian Margravine (Friedrich Wilhelm's HALF-AUNT), and cultivates Calvinism in the Lutheran Country: this Husband of hers, he too has an abstruse life, not likely to last. We need not doubt 'the Fates' are busy, and the evil demons, with those poor fellow-beings! Nay it is said the Circe is becoming much of a Hecate now; if the bewitched Duke could see it. She is getting haggard beyond the power of rouge; her mind, any mind she has, more and more filled with spleen, malice, and the dregs of pride run sour. A disgusting creature, testifies one Ex-Official gentleman, once a Hofrath under her, but obliged to run for life, and invoke free press in his defence: [Apologie de Monsieur Forstner de Breitembourg, &c. (Paris, 1716; or "a Londres, aux depens de la Compagnie, 1745"): in Spittler, Geschichte Wurtembergs (Spittlers WERKE, Stuttgard und Tubingen, 1828; vol. v.), 497-539. Michaelis, iii. 428-439, gives (in abstruse Chancery German) a Sequel to this fine affair of Forstner's.] no end to the foul things she will say, of an unspeakable nature, about the very Duke her victim, testifies this Ex-Official: malicious as a witch, says he, and as ugly as one in spite of paint,—'TOUJOURS UN LAVEMENT A SES TROUSSES.' Good Heavens!"
But here is the august Prussian Travelling-Party: shove aside your bewitchments and bewilderments; hang a decent screen over many things! Poor Eberhard Ludwig, who is infinitely the gentleman, bestirs himself a good deal to welcome old royal friends; nor do we hear that the least thing went awry during this transit of the royalties. "Field of Blenheim, says your Majesty? Ah me!"—For Eberhard Ludwig knows that ground; stood the World-Battle there, and so much has come and gone since then: Ah me indeed!
Friedrich Wilhelm and he have met before this, and have much to tell one another; Treaty of Seville by no means their only topic. Nay the flood of cordiality went at length so far, that at last Friedrich Wilhelm, the conscientious King, came upon the most intimate topics: Gravenitz; the Word of God; scandal to the Protestant Religion: no likely heir to your Dukedom; clear peril to your own soul. Is not her Serene Highness an unexceptionable Lady, heroic under sore woes; and your wedded Wife above all?—'M-NA, and might bring Heirs too: only forty come October:—Ah Duke, ah Friend! AVISEZ LA FIN, Eberhard Ludwig; consider the end of it all; we are growing old fellows now! The Duke, I conceive, who was rather a fat little man, blushed blue, then red, and various colors; at length settling into steady pale, as it were, indicating anthracitic white-heat: it is certain he said at length, with emphasis, "I will!" And he did so, by and by. Friedrich Wilhelm sent a messenger to Stuttgard to do his reverence to the high injured Lady there, perhaps to show her afar off some ray of hope if she could endure. Eberhard Ludwig, raised to a white-heat, perceives that in fact he is heartily tired of this Circe-Hecate; that in fact she has long been an intolerable nightmare to him, could he but have known it.
And his Royal Highness the Crown-Prince all this while? Well, yes; his Royal Highness has got a Court Tailor at Ludwigsburg; and, in all privacy (seen well by Rochow), has had the Augsburg red cloth cut into a fine upper wrappage, over coat or roquelaure for himself; intending to use the same before long. Thus they severally, the Father and the Son; these are their known acts at Ludwigsburg, That the Father persuaded Eberhard Ludwig of the Gravenitz enormity, and that the Son got his red top-coat ready. On Thursday, 3d of August (late in the afternoon, as I perceive), they, well entertained, depart towards Mannheim, Kur-Pfalz (Elector Palatine) old Karl Philip of the Pfalz's place; hope to be there on the morrow some time, if all go well. Gloomy much enlightened Eberhard takes leave of them, with abstruse but grateful feelings; will stand by the Kaiser, and dismiss that Gravenitz nightmare by the first opportunity.
As accordingly he did. Next Summer, going on a visit northward, specially to Berlin, [There for some three weeks, "till 9th June, 1731, with a suite of above fifty persons" (Fassmann, pp. 421, 422).] he left order that the Gravenitz was to be got out of his sight, safe stowed away, before his return. Which by the proper officers, military certain of them, was accomplished,—by fixed bayonets at last, and not without futile demur on the part of the Gravenitz. Poor Eberhard Ludwig, "he published in the pulpits, That he was now minded to lead a better life,"—had time now been left him. Same year, 1731, November being come, gloomy Eberhard Ludwig lost, not unexpectedly, his one Son,—the one Grandson was gone long since. The serene steadfast Duchess now had her Duke again, what was left of him: but he was fallen into the sere and yellow leaf; in two years more, he died childless; [31st October, 1733: Michaelis, iii. 441.] and his Cousin, Karl Alexander, an Austrian Feldmarschall of repute, succeeded in Wurtemberg. With whom we may transiently meet, in time coming; with whom, and perhaps less pleasantly with certain of his children; for they continue to this day,—with the old abstruse element still too traceable in them.
Old Karl Philip, Kurfurst of the Pfalz, towards whom Friedrich Wilhelm is now driving, with intent to be there to-morrow evening, is not quite a stranger to readers here; and to Friedrich Wilhelm he is much the reverse, perhaps too much. This is he who ran away with poor Prince Sobieski's Bride from Berlin, at starting in life; who fell upon his own poor Protestant Heidelbergers and their Church of the Holy Ghost (being himself Papist, ever since that slap on the face to his ancestor); and who has been in many quarrels with Friedrich Wilhelm and others. A high expensive sovereign gentleman, this old Karl Philip; not, I should suppose, the pleasantest of men to lodge with. One apprehends, he cannot be peculiarly well disposed to Friedrich Wilhelm, after that sad Heidelberg passage of fence, twelve or eleven years ago. Not to mention the inextricable Julich-and-Berg business, which is a standing controversy between them.
Poor old Kurfurst, he is now within a year of seventy. He has had crosses and losses; terrible campaignings against the Turk, in old times; and always such a stock of quarrels, at home, as must have been still worse to bear. A life of perpetual arguing, squabbling and battling,—one's neighbors being such an unreasonable set! Brabbles about Heidelberg Catechism, and Church of the Holy Ghost, so that foreign Kings interfered, shaking their whips upon us. Then brabbles about boundaries; about inheritances, and detached properties very many,—clearly mine, were the neighbors reasonable! In fact this sovereign old gentleman has been in the Kaiser's courts, or even on the edge of fight, oftener than most other men; and it is as if that first adventure, of the Sobieski wedding turned topsy-turvy, had been symbolical of much that followed in his life.
We remember that unpleasant Heidelberg affair: how hopeful it once looked; fact DONE, Church of the Holy Ghost fairly ours; your CORPUS EVANGELICORUM fallen quasi-dead; and nothing now for it but protocolling by diplomatists, pleading in the Diets by men in bombazine, never like ending at all;—when Friedrich Wilhelm did suddenly end it; suddenly locked up his own Catholic establishments and revenues, and quietly inexorable put the key in his pocket; as it were, drew his own whip, with a "Will you whip MY Jew?"—and we had to cower out of the affair, Kaiser himself ordering us, in a most humiliated manner! Readers can judge whether Kur-Pfalz was likely to have a kindly note of Friedrich Wilhelm in that corner of his memory. The poor man felt so disgusted with Heidelberg, he quitted it soon after. He would not go to Dusseldorf (in the Berg-and-Julich quarter), as his Forefathers used to do; but set up his abode at Mannheim, where he still is. Friedrich Wilhelm, who was far from meaning harm or insolence in that Heidelberg affair, hopes there is no grudge remaining. But so stand the facts: it is towards Mannheim, not towards Heidelberg that we are now travelling!—For the rest, this scheme of reprisals, or whipping your Jew if you whip mine, answered so well, Friedrich Wilhelm has used it, or threatened to use, as the real method, ever since, where needful; and has saved thereby much bombazine eloquence, and confusion to mankind, on several occasions.
But the worst between these two High Gentlemen is that Julich-and-Berg controversy; which is a sore still running, and beyond reach of probable surgery. Old Karl Philip has no male Heir; and is like to be (what he indeed proved) the last of the NEUBERG Electors Palatine. What trouble there rose with the first of them, about that sad business; and how the then Brandenburger, much wrought upon, smote the then Neuburger across the very face, and drove him into Catholicism, we have not forgotten; how can we ever?—It is one hundred and sixteen years since that after-dinner scene; and, O Heavens, what bickering and brabbling and confused negotiation there has been; lawyers' pens going almost continually ever since, shadowing out the mutual darkness of sovereignties; and from time to time the military implements brandishing themselves, though loath generally to draw blood! For a hundred and sixteen years:—but the Final Bargain, lying on parchment in the archives of both parties, and always acknowledged as final, was to this effect: "You serene Neuburg keep what you have got; we serene Brandenburg the like: Cleve with detached pertinents ours; Julich-and-Berg mainly yours. And let us live in perpetual amity on that footing. And, note only furthermore, when our Line fails, the whole of these fine Duchies shall be yours: if your Line fail, ours." That was the plain bargain, done solemnly in 1624, and again more solemnly and brought to parchment with signature in 1666, as Friedrich Wilhelm knows too well. And now the very case is about to occur; this old man, childless at seventy, is the last of the Neuburgs. May not one reasonably pretend that a bargain should be kept?
"Tush," answers old Karl Philip always: "Bargain?" And will not hear reason against himself on the subject; not even when the Kaiser asks him,—as the Kaiser really did, after that Wusterhausen Treaty, but could get only negatives. Karl Philip has no romantic ideas of justice, or of old parchments tying up a man. Karl Philip had one Daughter by that dear Radzivil Princess, Sobieski's stolen Bride; and he never, by the dear Radzivil or her dear successor, [See Buchholz, i. 61 n.] had any son, or other daughter that lived to wed. One Daughter, we say; a first-born, extremely precious to him. Her he married to the young fortunate Sulzbach Cousin, Karl Joseph Heir-Apparent of Sulzbach, who, by all laws, was to succeed in the Pfalz as well,—Karl Philip thinking furthermore, "He and she, please Heaven, shall hold fast by Dusseldorf too, and that fine Julich-and-Berg Territory, which is mine. Bargains?" Such was, and is, the old man's inflexible notion. Alas, this one Daughter died lately, and her Husband lately; [She in 1728; he in 1729: their eldest Daughter was born 1721 (Hubner, t. 140; Michaelis, ii. 101, 123).] again leaving only Daughters; will not this change the notion? Not a whit,—though Friedrich Wilhelm may have fondly hoped it by possibility might, Not a whit: Karl Philip cherishes his little Grand-daughter, now a child of nine, as he did her Mother and her Mother's Mother; hopes one day to see her wedded (as he did) to a new Heir-Apparent of the Pfalz and Sulzbach; and, for her behoof, will hold fast by Berg and Julich, and part with no square inch of it for any parchment.
What is Friedrich Wilhelm to do? Seek justice for himself by his 80,000 men and the iron ramrods? Apparently he will not get it otherwise. He is loath to begin that terrible game. If indeed Europe do take fire, as is likely at Seville or elsewhere—But in the meanwhile how happy if negotiation would but serve! Alas, and if the Kaiser, England; Holland and the others, could be brought to guarantee me,—as indeed they should (to avoid a CASUS BELLI), and some of them have said they will! Friedrich Wilhelm tried this Julich-and-Berg Problem by the pacific method, all his life; strenuously, and without effect. Result perhaps was coming nevertheless; at the distance of another hundred years!—One thing I know: whatever rectitude and patience, whatever courage, perseverance, or other human virtue he has put into this or another matter, is not lost; not it nor any fraction of it, to Friedrich Wilhelm and his sons' sons; but will well avail him and them, if not soon, then later, if not in Berg and Julich, then in some other quarter of the Universe, which is a wide Entity and a long-lived! Courage, your Majesty!
So stand matters as Friedrich Wilhelm journeys towards Mannheim: human politeness will have to cloak well, and keep well down, a good many prickly points in the visit ahead. Alas, poor Friedrich Wilhelm has got other matter to think of, by the time we arrive in Mannheim.