FREDERICK AT KATTE’S EXECUTION.
The body of Katte remained upon the scaffold during the short wintry day, and at night was buried in one of the bastions of the fortress. This cruel tragedy was enacted more than a century ago; but there are few who even now can read the record without having their eyes flooded, through the conflicting emotions of sympathy for the sufferers and indignation against the tyrant who could perpetrate such crimes.
When Frederick returned to consciousness his misery plunged him into a high fever. Delirium ensued, during which Chaplain Müller, who remained with him, says that he frequently attempted to destroy himself. As the fever abated and he became more tranquil, floods of tears gushed from his eyes. He for some time refused to take any nourishment. It seemed to him now that every hope in life was forever blighted. He had no doubt that his own death was fully decided upon, and that he would soon be led to his execution. In his moments of delirious anguish he at times longed for death to come as speedily as possible. And again it seemed awful to have his young life—for he was then but eighteen years of age—cut off by the bloody sword.[17]
Chaplain Müller seems to have enjoyed the confidence of the king to an unusual decree. He was ordered to remain at Cüstrin, and to have daily interviews with the prince, to instruct him in religion. The king professed to be eminently a religious man. While torturing the body and the mind of the prince in every way, he expressed great anxiety for the salvation of his soul. It is not strange that the example of such a father had staggered the faith of the son. Illogically he renounced that religion which condemned, in the severest terms, the conduct of the father, and which caused the king often to tremble upon his throne, appalled by the declaration, “Know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.”
The young prince had also become dissolute in life. The sacred volume denounced such a career as offensive to God, as sure to bring down upon the guilty prince the divine displeasure in this life, and, if unrepented of, in the life to come. No man who believes the Bible to be true can, with any comfort whatever, indulge in sin. The prince wished to indulge his passions without restraint. He therefore, thus living, found it to be a necessity to renounce that religion which arrayed against his sinful life all the terrors of the final judgment. A wicked life and true Christian faith can not live in peace together. The one or the other must be abandoned. Frederick chose to abandon Christian faith.
It seems that the Crown Prince had an inquiring mind. He was interested in metaphysical speculations. He had adopted, perhaps, as some excuse for his conduct, the doctrine of predestination, that God hath foreordained whatsoever cometh to pass. The idea that there is a power, which Hume calls philosophical necessity, which Napoleon calls destiny, which Calvin calls predestination, by which all events are controlled, and that this necessity is not inconsistent with free agency, is a doctrine which ever has commanded the assent, and probably ever will, of many of the strongest thinkers in the world.
“The heresy about predestination,” writes Carlyle, “or the election by free grace, as his majesty terms it, according to which a man is preappointed, from all eternity, either to salvation or the opposite, which is Fritz’s notion, and indeed Calvin’s, and that of many benighted creatures, this editor among them, appears to his majesty an altogether shocking one. What! may not deserter Fritz say to himself, even now, or in whatever other deeps of sin he may fall into, ‘I was foredoomed to it? How could I or how can I help it?’ The mind of his majesty shudders as if looking over the edge of an abyss.”
Chaplain Müller was especially directed to argue with Frederick upon this point, and, if possible, to convert him to Christianity. The correspondence which ensued between the king and Müller is preserved. The king wrote to the chaplain, under date of November 3d, 1730:
“I have been assured that you are an honest and pious clergyman, and a faithful minister of the Word of God. Since, therefore, you are going to Cüstrin, on account of the execution of Lieutenant Katte, I command you, after the execution, to pay a visit to the Prince Royal; to reason with him and to represent to him that whosoever abandons God is also abandoned by God; and that, when God has abandoned a man, and has taken away his grace from him, that man is incapable of doing what is good, and can only do what is evil. You will exhort him to repent, and to ask pardon for the many sins he has committed, and into which he has seduced others, one of whom has been just punished with death.