Du Bois arrived in Europe only to find that the doom of Gross-Friedrichsburg was already irrevocably sealed. The parsimonious Frederick William I., the father of Frederick the Great, had ascended the Prussian throne, and his careful mind, completely absorbed by plans of immediate economy, was incapable of taking such flights into the distance and the future as were necessary for the appreciation of the value of colonial policy. The African settlements had been doing badly and had become unremunerative, and his only thought was to dispose of them as speedily as possible for hard cash, which could be either hoarded or spent on his solitary extravagance—seven-foot grenadiers. Immediately after his accession, he instructed his representative in London that he was prepared to "transfer his forts on the coast of Guinea to anyone else upon easy conditions." He was not long in finding a purchaser in that very Dutch West India Company which had from the outset been a thorn in the side of the Great Elector's colonial enterprise. On November 22nd, 1717, Gross-Friedrichsburg and its dependent territory passed from Hohenzollern rule for the sum of 6,000 ducats and twelve negro boys, of whom it was stipulated that six should be adorned with golden chains.
The signing of the contract and its execution were, however, two very different things. The redoubtable Jan Cuny had not been reckoned with, and when two Dutch vessels arrived to take over the fort they found him in possession and flying the Prussian flag. The order for the transfer of the fort was shown to his emissaries, who, after a good deal of delay, were sent on board the ships, but this he flatly refused to recognise, declaring that he would yield up his trust only to a vessel belonging to the King of Prussia. The commander of the Dutch expedition, Captain van der Hoeven, thought he would make short work of this insolent chieftain, and landed a body of fifty men to take the fort by storm. But Cuny once again showed the generalship which had raised him to the eminence of a Prussian deputy-governor. A force of 1,800 natives fusilladed the landing party from an ambuscade and killed nearly every one of them. Hoeven was only able to save himself by swimming back to his ship, with three bullets in his body, and retired to the nearest Dutch settlement to excogitate a fresh plan of campaign.
Cuny, however, was flushed by his success, and not at all inclined to give up the prestige which he derived from a fortress bristling with guns and well furnished with small arms and ammunition. For seven long years he held out, repulsing the repeated attacks of the Dutch, and it was only when his supplies were exhausted and an overwhelming force had been put into the field against him, that he withdrew from his defences and vanished into the jungle from which he had come.
Simultaneously with Gross-Friedrichsburg, there was transferred from the Prussian King to the Dutch Company yet another African colony, of which mention has yet to be made. This was the island of Arguin, which lies off the coast of what is now French territory to the south of Cape Blanco, and in some maps is given the ominous name of Agadir. The islet, which was one of the principal centres of the gum trade, had been first occupied by the Portuguese in 1441, but had passed by conquest to Holland, and from the latter to France. After the peace of Nymegen, in 1678, however, the French Senegal Company found itself unable to maintain a garrison in Arguin, and obtained permission from Louis XIV. to blow up the fort which had been erected there. The island then fell into the hands of the native ruler of Arguin, on the mainland, and remained subject to him till two ships of the Great Elector appeared off its coasts in October, 1685.
On the strength of a treaty concluded by the commander of the expedition with the King of Arguin, Frederick William seems to have claimed jurisdiction right along the coast of Africa from the Canary Isles to the Senegal River. These pretensions were not allowed to pass undisputed, and, towards the end of 1687, a couple of French vessels appeared off the fort and demanded its evacuation by the Germans. As this was refused they made an attempt to seize it by force, but, meeting with a stubborn resistance, abandoned the attack, and, after an unsuccessful endeavour to assert their rights during the peace negotiations at Ryswick, the French seemed to reconcile themselves to the new situation, for they even proposed commercial co-operation with the occupants of the Arguin fort.
After the death of the Great Elector, Arguin suffered, like Gross-Friedrichsburg, through the indifference of his successor, and the difficulty of communication arising from the War of the Spanish Succession. When a relief ship arrived in 1714, it found that the Governor had been captured by the natives, with whom he had quarrelled; and the remnant of the Arguin garrison was in so deplorable a condition, that "in a few days they must have perished of hunger."
The transfer of Arguin to the Dutch proved as difficult as that of Gross-Friedrichsburg. In 1717 the French had renewed their claims to the island, and, a few years later, the Senegal Company, landing 700 men and heavy guns, laid siege to the fort. After holding out for a few weeks, the commander, Jan Wynen, a Dutchman, withdrew secretly by night with his force in order to escape the humiliation of a formal surrender, and when its new owners at last arrived to take possession of it the colony was actually in French hands. It was in both cases a foreigner who last kept the flag flying over what were to be the only German colonies established till the final quarter of the nineteenth century. With the colonies disappeared the force with which they had been won, the fleet, and it too had to wait long, though not quite so long, before it experienced a revival.
It is interesting to reflect how the history of the world might have been changed if the Great Elector's two immediate successors had united to his far-reaching schemes of "world-policy" his determination in carrying them out, and had bequeathed to the greater Frederick prosperous colonial possessions and a formidable navy. As it was, the naval episodes of the reign of this gifted monarch only show how pitifully and completely the dawning sea-power of his grandfather had passed away.
In the Seven Years' War, the shores of Prussia were continually ravaged by Swedish frigates, and as nothing could be effected by the armed fishing boats and coasting vessels which were all that could be pitted against them, Field-Marshal Lehwald, to whom the protection of that part of Prussia had been entrusted, appealed for help to the corporation of merchants at Stettin. That body responded with energy and promptitude, and, with great haste, a flotilla of four galliots, four large fishing boats, and four coasting vessels were transformed into "ships of war." In August, 1759, this improvised fleet ventured out of the Oder to attack the Swedes, but it was so completely overthrown after several days' fighting that the experiment was never repeated.
In the meanwhile Frederick had been inveigled into another maritime adventure, which was to prove just as barren of positive results. Early in the war several Englishmen communicated to the King their readiness to fit out privateers to prey on the commerce of Austria and Sweden, both of which countries had seized Prussian merchantmen. They protested in all cases that their principal motive was a desire to serve the cause of a monarch whom they admired and revered, and who was, as a matter of fact, at that time the ally of England. But at the same time they promised him "prodigious profits" from the enterprise, and it was admittedly the latter consideration which induced the King to listen to their proposals. Though his own Ministers expressed strong doubts, and the English Government urged that he would run the risk of embroiling himself with neutral States, he issued a number of letters of marque. The advice which had been given him proved to have been only too well founded. Not only were there no "prodigious profits," but the blunders of the royal officials and the indiscretions of the ships under his flag involved the King in voluminous diplomatic correspondence and long and fruitless litigation.