On the 1st day of June Frederic had been conveyed by boat to Potsdam, where he wished to spend his remaining weeks in the most familiar of his former homes, the New Palace, the name of which he changed to Friedrichskron. He was already a dying man. Two clever observers, who were on the little pier at Gleinicke, described to me the appearance of the Emperor when he was carried up out of the cabin to land. Said one: “He was crouched down, wretched, scared, and pallid, like a man going to execution.” The other added: “Say rather like an enfeebled maniac in charge of his keepers.”
Yet, broken and crushed as he was, he was Kaiser to the last. The announcement of Putt-kamer’s downfall came on June 11th. Frederic died on June 15th.
It was in the late forenoon of that rainy, gray summer day that the black and white royal standard above the palace fell—signifying that the eighth King of Prussia was no more. A moment later orderlies were running hither and thither outside; the troops within the palace park hastily threw themselves into line, and detachments were at once marched to each of the gates to draw a cordon between Friedrichskron and all the world besides.
In an inner room in the great palace the elder son of the dead Kaiser, all at once become William II, German Emperor, King in Prussia, eighteen times a Duke, twice a Grand Duke, ten times a Count, fifteen times a Seigneur, and three times a Margrave—this young man, with fifty-four titles thus suddenly plumped down upon him, * seated himself to write proclamations to his Army and his Navy.
* With the possible exception of the Emperor of Austria,
William is the most betitled man in Europe. Beside being
German Emperor and King of Prussia, he is Margrave of
Brandenburg, and the two Lausitzes; Grand Duke of Lower
Rhineland and Posen; Duke of Silesia, Glatz, Saxony,
Westphalia, Engern, Pomerania, Luneburg, Holstein-Schleswig,
Magdeburg, Bremen, Geldern, Cleve, Juliers and Berg,
Crossen, Lauenburg, Mecklenburg, of the Wends and of the
Cassubes; Landgrave of Hesse and Thuringia; Prince of
Orange; Count-Prince of Henneburg; Count of the Mark, of
Ravensberg, of Hohenstein, of Lingen and Tecklenburg, of
Mansfeld, Sigmaringen, Veringen, and of Hohenzollern;
Burgrave of Nuremberg; Seigneur of Frankfurt, Rügen, East
Friesland, Paderborn, Pyrmont, Halber-stadt, Münster,
Minden, Osnabrück, Hildesheim, Verden, Kammin, Fulda, Nassau
and Moers.
CHAPTER VI.—UNDER THE SWAY OF THE BISMARCKS
During the three days between the death and burial of Frederic the world saw and heard nothing of his successor save these two proclamations to the Army and Navy. This in itself was sufficiently strange. It was like a slap in the face of nineteenth-century civilization that this young man, upon whom the vast task of ruling an empire rich in historical memories of peaceful progress had devolved, should take such a barbaric view of his position. In this country which gave birth to the art of printing, this Germany wherein Dürer and Cranach worked and Luther changed the moral history of mankind and Lessing cleared the way for that noble band of poets of whom Goethe stands first and Wagner is not last, it seemed nothing less than monstrous that a youth called to be Emperor should see only columns of troops and iron-clads.
The purport of these proclamations, shot forth from the printing press while the news of Frederic’s death was still in the air, fitted well the precipitancy of their appearance. William delivered a long eulogy upon his grandfather, made only a passing allusion to his father, recited the warlike achievements and character of his remoter ancestors, and closed by saying: “Thus we belong to each other, I and the army; thus we were born for one another; and firmly and inseparably will we hold together, whether it is God’s will to give us peace or storm.”