Pious people say, The darkest hour is often nearest the dawn. And a dawn this proved to be for Friedrich. And the fact grew always the longer the brighter;—and before Campaign time, had ripened into real daylight and sunrise. The dates should have been precise; but are not to be had so: here is the nearest we could come. January 14th, writing to Henri, the King has a mysterious word about "possibilities of an uncommon sort,"—rumors from Petersburg, I could conjecture; though perhaps they are only Turk or Tartar-Khan affairs, which are higher this year than ever, and as futile as ever. But, on JANUARY 19th, he has heard plainly,—with what hopes (if one durst indulge them)!—that the implacable Imperial Woman, INFAME CATIN DU NORD, is verily dead. Dead; and does not hate me any more. Deliverance, Peace and Victory lie in the word!—Catin had long been failing, but they kept it religiously secret within the Court walls: even at Petersburg nobody knew till the Prayers of the Church were required: Prayers as zealous as you can,—the Doctors having plainly intimated that she is desperate, and that the thing is over. On CHRISTMAS-DAY, 1761, by Russian Style, 5th JANUARY, 1762, by European, the poor Imperial Catin lay dead;—a death still more important than that of George II. to this King.
Peter III., who succeeded has lang been privately a sworn friend and admirer of the King; and hastens, not too SLOWLY as the King had feared, but far the reverse, to make that known to all mankind. That, and much else,—in a far too headlong manner, poor soul! Like an ardent, violent, totally inexperienced person (enfranchised SCHOOL-BOY, come to the age of thirty-four), who has sat hitherto in darkness, in intolerable compression; as if buried alive! He is now Czar Peter, Autocrat, not of Himself only, but of All the Russias;—and has, besides the complete regeneration of Russia, two great thoughts: FIRST, That of avenging native Holstein, and his poor martyr of a Father now with God, against the Danes;—and,
SECOND, what is scarcely second in importance to the first, and indeed is practically a kind of preliminary to it, That of delivering the Prussian Pattern of Heroes from such a pattern of foul combinations, and bringing Peace to Europe, while he settles the Holstein-Danish business. Peter is Russian by the Mother's side; his Mother was Sister of the late Catin, a Daughter, like her, of Czar Peter called the Great, and of the little brown Catharine whom we saw transiently long ago. His Holstein Business shall concern us little; but that with Friedrich, during the brief Six Months allowed him for it,—for it, and for all his remaining businesses in this world,—is of the highest importance to Friedrich and us.
Peter is one of the wildest men; his fate, which was tragical, is now to most readers rather of a ghastly grotesque than of a lamentable and pitiable character. Few know, or have ever considered, in how wild an element poor Peter was born and nursed; what a time he has had, since his fifteenth year especially, when Cousin of Zerbst and he were married. Perhaps the wildest and maddest any human soul had, during that Century. I find in him, starting out from the Lethean quagmires where he had to grow, a certain rash greatness of idea; traces of veritable conviction, just resolution; veritable and just, though rash. That of admiration for King Friedrich was not intrinsically foolish, in the solitary thoughts of the poor young fellow; nay it was the reverse; though it was highly inopportune in the place where he stood. Nor was the Holstein notion bad; it was generous rather, noble and natural, though, again, somewhat impracticable in the circumstances.
The summary of the Friedrich-Peter business is perhaps already known to most readers, and can be very briefly given; nor is Peter's tragical Six Months of Czarship (5th JANUARY-9th JULY, 1762) a thing for us to dwell on beyond need. But it is wildly tragical; strokes of deep pathos in it, blended with the ghastly and grotesque: it is part of Friedrich's strange element and environment: and though the outer incidents are public enough, it is essentially little known. Had there been an AEschylus, had there been a Shakspeare!—But poor Peter's shocking Six Months of History has been treated by a far different set of hands, themselves almost shocking to see: and, to the seriously inquiring mind, it lies, and will long lie, in a very waste, chaotic, enigmatic condition. Here, out of considerable bundles now burnt, are some rough jottings, Excerpts of Notes and Studies,—which, I still doubt rather, ought to have gone in AUTO DA FE along with the others. AUTO DA FE I called it; Act of FAITH, not Spanish-Inquisitional, but essentially Celestial many times, if you reflect well on the poisonous consequences, on the sinfulness and deadly criminality, of Human Babble,—as nobody does nowadays! I label the different Pieces, and try to make legible;—hasty readers have the privilege of skipping, if they like. The first Two are of preliminary or prefatory nature,—perhaps still more skippable than those that will by and by follow.
1. GENEALOGY OF PETER. "His grandfather was Friedrich IV., Duke of Holstein-Gottorp and Schleswig, Karl XII.'s brother-in-law; on whose score it was (Denmark finding the time opportune for a stroke of robbery there) that Karl XII., a young lad hardly eighteen, first took arms; and began the career of fighting that astonished Denmark and certain other Neighbors who had been too covetous on a young King. This his young Brother-in-law, Friedrich of Holstein-Gottorp (young he too, though Karl's senior by ten years), had been reinstated in his Territory, and the Danes sternly forbidden farther burglary there, by the victorious Karl; but went with Karl in his farther expeditions. Always Karl's intimate, and at his right hand for the next two years: fell in the Battle of Clissow, 19th July, 1702; age not yet thirty-one.
"He left as Heir a poor young Boy, at this time only two years old. His young Widow Hedwig survived him six years. [Michaelis, ii. 618-629.] Her poor child grew to manhood; and had tragic fortunes in this world; Danes again burglarious in that part, again robbing this poor Boy at discretion, so soon as Karl XII. became unfortunate; and refusing to restore (have not restored Schleswig at all [A.D. 1864, HAVE at last had to do it, under unexpected circumstances!]):—a grimly sad story to the now Peter, his only Child! This poor Duke at last died, 18th June, 1739, age thirty-nine; the now Peter then about 11,—who well remembers tragic Papa; tragic Mamma not, who died above ten years before. [Michaelis, ii. 617; Hubner, tt. 227, 229.]
"Czar Peter called the Great had evidently a pity for this unfortunate Duke, a hope in his just hopes; and pleaded, as did various others, and endeavored with the unjust Danes, mostly without effect. Did, however, give him one of his Daughters to wife;—the result of whom is this new Czar Peter, called the Third: a Czar who is Sovereign of Holstein, and has claims of Sovereignty in Sweden, right of heirship in Schleswig, and of damages against Denmark, which are in litigation to this day. The Czarina CATIN, tenderly remembering her Sister, would hear of no Heir to Russia but this Peter. Peter, in virtue of his paternal affinities, was elected King of Sweden about the same time; but preferred Russia,—with an eye to his Danes, some think. For certain, did adopt the Russian Expectancy, the Greek religion so called; and was," in the way we saw long years ago, "married (or to all appearance married) to Catharina Alexiewna of Anhalt-Zerbst, born in Stettin; [Herr Preuss knows the house: "Now Dr. Lehmann's [at that time the Governor of Stettin's], in which also Czar Paul's second Spouse [Eugen of Wurtemberg a NEW Governor's Daughter], who is Mother of the Czars that follow, was born:" Preuss, ii. 310, 311. Catharine, during her reign, was pious in a small way to the place of her cradle; sent her successive MEDALS &c. to Stettin, which still has them to show.] a Lady who became world-famous as Czarina of the Russias.
"Peter is an abstruse creature; has lived, all this while, with his Catharine an abstruse life, which would have gone altogether mad except for Catharine's superior sense. An awkward, ardent, but helpless kind of Peter, with vehement desires, with a dash of wild magnanimity even: but in such an inextricable element, amid such darkness, such provocations of unmanageable opulence, such impediments, imaginary and real,—dreadfully real to poor Peter,—as made him the unique of mankind in his time. He 'used to drill cats,' it is said, and to do the maddest-looking things (in his late buried-alive condition);—and fell partly, never quite, which was wonderful, into drinking, as the solution of his inextricabilities. Poor Peter: always, and now more than ever, the cynosure of vulturous vulpine neighbors, withal; which infinitely aggravated his otherwise bad case!—
"For seven or eight years, there came no progeny, nor could come; about the eighth or ninth, there could, and did: the marvellous Czar Paul that was to be. Concerning whose exact paternity there are still calumnious assertions widely current; to this individual Editor much a matter of indifference, though on examining, his verdict is: 'Calumnies, to all appearance; mysteries which decent or decorous society refuses to speak of, and which indecent is pretty sure to make calumnies out of.' Czar Paul may be considered genealogically genuine, if that is much an object to him. Poor Paul, does not he father himself, were there nothing more? Only that Peter and this Catharine could have begotten such a Paul. Genealogically genuine enough, my poor Czar,—that needed to be garroted so very soon!