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Part 2 out of 4
In a like sense, Maria Theresa had already (December 2d) sent forth
her Manifesto or Patent, solemnly apprising her ever-faithful
Silesian Populations, "That the Treaty of Breslau, not by her
fault, is broken; palpably a Treaty no longer. That they,
accordingly, are absolved from all oaths and allegiance to the King
of Prussia; and shall hold themselves in readiness to swear anew to
her Majesty, which will be a great comfort to such faithful
creatures; suffering, as her Majesty explains to them that they
have done, under Prussian tyranny for these two years past.
Immediate dead-lift effort there shall be; that is certain:
and 'the Almighty God assisting, who does not leave such injustices
unpunished, We have the fixed Christian hope, Omnipotence blessing
our arms, of almost immediately (EHESTENS) delivering you from this
temporary Bondage (BISHERIGEN JOCH).' You can pray, in the mean
while, for the success of her Majesty's arms; good fighting, aided
by prayer, in a Cause clearly Heaven's, will now, to appearance,
bring matters swiftly round again, to the astonishment and
confusion of bad men." [In
ii. 1194-1198; Ib. 1201-1206, is Friedrich's Answer, "19th
December, 1744."]
These are her Majesty's views; intensely true, I doubt not, to her
devout heart. Robinson and the English seem not to be enthusiastic
in that direction; as indeed how can they? They would fain be
tender of Silesia, which they have guaranteed; fain, now and
afterwards, restrain her Majesty from driving at such a pace down
hill: but the declivity is so encouraging, her Majesty is not to be
restrained, and goes faster and faster for the time being.
And indeed, under less devout forms, the general impression, among
Pragmatic people, Saxon, Austrian, British even, was, That
Friedrich had pretty much ruined himself, and deserved to do so;
that this of his being mere "Auxiliary" to a Kaiser in distress was
an untenable pretext, now justly fallen bankrupt upon him.
The evident fact, That he had by his "Frankfurt Union," and
struggles about "union," reopened the door for French tribulations
and rough-ridings in the Reich, was universally distasteful;
all chance of a "general union of German Princes, in aid of their
Kaiser," was extinct for the present.
Friedrich's rapidity had served him ill with the Public, in this as
in some other instances! Friedrich, contemplating his situation,
not self-delusively, but with the candor of real remorse, was by no
means yet aware how very bad it was. For six months coming, partly
as existing facts better disclosed themselves, as France, Saxony
and others showed what spirit they were of; partly as new sinister
events and facts arrived one after the other,--his outlook
continued to darken and darken, till it had become very dark
indeed. There is perennially the great comfort, immense if you can
manage it, of making front against misfortune; of looking it
frankly in the face, and doing with a resolution, hour by hour,
your own utmost against it. Friedrich never lacked that comfort;
and was not heard complaining. But from December 13th, 1744, when
he hastened home to Berlin, under such aspects, till June 4th,
1745, when aspects suddenly changed, are probably the worst six
months Friedrich had yet had in the world. During which, his
affairs all threatening to break down about him, he himself,
behooving to stand firm if the worst was not to realize itself, had
to draw largely on what silent courage, or private inexpugnability
of mind, was in him,--a larger instalment of that royal quality (as
I compute) than the Fates had ever hitherto demanded of him.
Ever hitherto; though perhaps nothing like the largest of all,
which they had upon their Books for him, at a farther stage!
As will be seen. For he was greatly drawn upon in that way, in his
time. And he paid always; no man in his Century so well; few men,
in any Century, better. As perhaps readers may be led to guess or
acknowledge, on surveying and considering. To see, and
sympathetically recognize, cannot be expected of modern readers,
in the present great distance, and changed conditions of men
and things.
Friedrich, after despatching Nassau to cut out Einsiedel, had
delivered the Silesian Army to the Old Dessauer, who is to command
in chief during Winter; and had then hastened to Berlin,--many
things there urgently requiring his presence; preparations,
reparations, not to speak of diplomacies, and what was the heaviest
item of all, new finance for the coming exertions. In Schweidnitz,
on Leopold's appearance, there had been an interview, due
consultings, orderings; which done, Friedrich at once took the
road; and was at Berlin, Monday, December 14th,--precisely in the
time while Nassau and Einsiedel were marching with torchlights in
Rubezahl's Country, and near ending their difficult enterprise
better or worse.
Friedrich, fastening eagerly on Home business, is astonished and
provoked to learn that the Austrians, not content with pushing him
out of Bohmen, are themselves pushing into Schlesien,--so Old
Leopold reports, with increasing emphasis day by day; to whom
Friedrich sends impatient order: Hurl them out again; gather what
force you need, ten thousand, or were it twenty or thirty thousand,
and be immediate about it; "I will as soon be pitched
(HERAUSGESCHMISSEN) out of the Mark of Brandenburg as out of
Schlesien:" no delay, I tell you! And as the Old Dessauer still
explains that the ten or fifteen thousand he needs are actually
assembling, and cannot be got on march quite in a moment, Friedrich
dashes away his incipient Berlin Operations; will go himself and do
it. Haggle no more, you tedious Old Dessauer:--
BERLIN, "19th DECEMBER," 1744. "On the 21st [Monday, one week after
my arriving], I leave Berlin, and mean to be at Neisse on the 24th
at latest. Your Serenity will in the interim make out the Order-of-
Battle [which is also Order-of-March] for what regiments are come
in. For I will, on the 25th, without delay, cross the Neisse, and
attack those people, cost what it may,--to chase them out of
Schlesien and Glatz, and follow them so far as possible.
Your Serenity will therefore take your measures, and provide
everything, so far as in this short time you can, that the project
may be executable the moment I arrive." [Friedrich to the Old
Dessauer (
And rushed off accordingly, in a somewhat flamy humor; but at
Schweidnitz, where the Old Dessauer met him again, became convinced
that the matter was weightier than he thought; not one of
Tolpatchery alone, but had Traun himself in it. Upon which
Friedrich candidly drew bridle; hastened back, and, with a loss of
four days, was at his Potsdam Affairs again. To which he stuck
henceforth, ardently, and I think rather with increase of gloom,
though without spurt of impatience farther, for three months to
come. Before his return,--nay, had he known, it was the night
before he went away,--a strange little thing had happened in the
opposite or Western parts: surprising accident to Marechal de
Belleisle; which now lies waiting his immediate consideration.
But let us finish Silesia first.
OLD DESSAUER REPELS THE SILESIAN INVASION (Winter, 1744-45).
"This Silesian Affair includes due inroad of Pandours; or indeed
two inroads, southwest and southeast; and in the southwest, or
Traun quarter, regulars are the main element of it. Traun, 20,000
strong, PLUS stormy-enough Pandour ACCOMPANIMENT, is by this time
through into Glatz; in three columns;--is master of all Glatz,
except the Rock-Fortress itself; and has spread himself, right and
left, along the Neisse River, and from the southwest northwards, in
a skilful and dangerous manner. In concert with whom, far to the
east, are Pandour whirlwinds on their own footing (brand-new
'Insurrection' of them, got thus far) starting from Olmutz and
Brunn; scouring that eastern country, as far as Namslau northward
[a place we were at the taking of, in old Brieg times]; much more,
infesting the Mountains of the South. A rather serious thing;
with Traun for general manager of it."
With Traun, we say: poor Prince Karl is off, weeks ago; on the
saddest of errands. His beautiful young Wife,--Hungarian Majesty's
one Sister, Vice-Regents of the Netherlands he and she, conspicuous
among the bright couples of the world,--she had a bad lying-in
(child still-born), while those grand Moldau Operations went on;
has been ill, poor lady, ever since; and, at Brussels, on December
16th, she herself lies dead, Prince Karl weeping over her and the
days that will not return. Prince Karl's felicities, private and
public, had been at their zenith lately, which was very high
indeed; but go on declining from this day. Never more the Happiest
of Husbands (did not wed again at all); still less the Greatest of
Captains, equal or superior to Caesar in the Gazetteer judgment,
with distracted EULOGIES, BIOGRAPHIES and such like filling the
air: before long, a War-Captain of quite moderate renown; which we
shall see sink gradually into no renown at all, and even (unjustly)
into MINUS quantities, before all end. A mad world, my masters!
"Between Traun on the southwest hand, and his Pandours on the
southeast, the small Prussian posts have all been driven in upon
Troppau-Jagerndorf region; more and more narrowed there;--and, in
fine (two days before this new Interview of Leopold and the
impatient King at Schweidnitz), have had to quit the Troppau-
Jagerndorf position; to quit the Hills altogether, and are now in
full march towards Brieg. Of which march I should say nothing, were
it not that Marwitz, Father of Wilhelmina's giggling Marmitzes,
commanded;--and came by his death in the course of it; though our
Wilhelmina is not now there, pen in hand, to tell us what the
effects at Baireuth were. Marwitz had been left for dead on the
Field of Mollwitz; lay so all night, but was nursed to some kind of
strength again by those giggling young women; and came back to
Schlesien, to posts of chief trust, for the last year or two,--was
guarding the Mountains, and even invading Mahren, during the late
Campaign;--but saw himself reduced latterly to Jagerndorf and
Troppau; and had even to retreat out of these. And in the whirlpool
of hurries thereupon,--how is not very clear; by apoplexy, say
some; by accidental pistol from a servant of his own; in actual
skirmish with Pandours,--too certainly, one way or the other, on
December 23d (just during that second Interview at Schweidnitz),
brave old Marwitz did suddenly sink dead, and is ended.
creatures, and your loud weeping will not mend it at all!
"Friedrich, looking candidly into these phenomena, could not but
see that: what with Tolpatcheries, what with Traun's 20,000
regulars, and the whole Army at their back, his Silesian Border is
girt in by a very considerable inroad of Austrians,-- huge Chain of
them, in horse-shoe form, 300 miles long, pressing in; from beyond
Glatz and Landshut, round by the southern Mountains, and up
eastward again as far as Namslau, nothing but war whirlwinds in
regular or irregular form, in the centre of them Traun;--and that
the Old Dessauer really must have time to gird himself for dealing
with Traun and them.
"It was not till January 9th that Old Leopold, 25,000 strong,
equipped to his mind, which was a difficult matter, crossed the
Neisse River; and marched direct upon Traun, with Ziethen charging
ahead. Actually marched; after which the main wrestle was done in a
week. January 16th, Old Leopold got to Jagerndorf; found the actual
Traun concentrated at Jagerndorf; and drew up, to be ready for
assault to-morrow morning,--had not Traun, candidly computing,
judged it better to glide wholly away in the night-time, diligently
towards Mahren, breaking the bridges behind him. And so, in effect,
to give up the Silesian Invasion for this time. After which, though
there remained a good deal of rough tussling with Pandour details,
and some rugged exploits of fight, there is--except that of Lehwald
in clearing of Glatz--nothing farther that we can afford to speak
of. Lehwald's exploit, Lehwald VERSUS Wallis (same Wallis who
defended Glogau long since), which came to be talked of, and got
name and date, 'Action of Habelschwert, February 14th,' something
almost like a pitched fight on the small scale, is to the
following effect:--
"PLOMNITZ, NEAR HABELSCHWERT, 14th FEBRUARY, 1745. Old General
Lehwald, marching in the hollow ground near Habelschwert (hollow of
the young Neisse River, twenty miles south of Glatz), with intent
to cut that Country free; the Enemy, whom he is in search of,
appears in great force,--posted on the uphill ground ahead, half-
frozen difficult stream in front of them, cannon on flank, Pandour
multitude in woods; all things betokening inexpugnability on the
part of the Enemy. So that Lehwald has to take his measures; study
well where the vital point is, the root of that extensive Austrian
junglery, and cut in upon the same. By considerable fire of effort,
the uphill ground, half-frozen stream, sylvan Pandours, cannon-
batteries, and what inexpugnabilities there may be, are subdued;
Austrian wide junglery, the root of it slit asunder rolls homeward
simultaneously, not too fast: nay it halted, and re-ranked itself
twice over, finding woods and quaggy runlets to its mind; but was
always slit out again, disrooted, and finally tumbled home, having
had enough. 'Wenzel Wallis,' Friedrich asserts with due scorn, 'was
all this while in a Chapel; praying ardently,' to St. Vitus, or one
knows not whom; 'without effect; till they shouted to him, "Beaten,
Sir! Off, or you are lost!" upon which he sprang to saddle, and
spurred with both heels (PIQUA DES DEUX).' [
clearing the Glatz Country with one good cut: a skilful Captain;
now getting decidedly oldish, close on sixty; whom we shall meet
again a dozen years hence, still in harness.
"The old Serene Highness himself, face the color of gun-powder, and
bluer in the winter frost, went rushing far and wide in an open
vehicle, which he called his 'cart;' pushing out detachments,
supervising everything; wheeling hither and thither as needful;
sweeping out the Pandour world, and keeping it out: not much of
fighting needed, but 'a great deal of marching [murmurs Friedrich],
which in winter is as bad, and wears down the force of the
battalions.' Of all which we give no detail: sufficient to fancy,
in this manner, the Old Dessauer flapping his wide military wings
in the faces of the Pandour hordes, with here and there a hard
twitch from beak or claws; tolerably keeping down the Pandour
interest all Winter. His sons, Leopold and Dietrich, were under
him, occasionally beside him; the Junior Leopold so worn down with
feverish gout he could hardly sit on horseback at all, while old
Papa went tearing about in his cart at that rate."
von Anhalt-Dessau, im Januar und Februar,
232; &c.]
There was, on the 21st of February, TE-DEUM sung in the churches of
Berlin "for the Deliverance of Silesia from Invasion." Not that
even yet the Pandours would be quite quiet, or allow Old Leopold to
quit his cart; far from it. And they returned in such increased and
tempestuous state, as will again require mention, with the earliest
Spring:--precursors to a second, far more serious and deadly
"Invasion of Silesia;" for which it hangs yet on the balance
whether there will be a TE-DEUM or a MISERERE to sing!
Hungarian Majesty, disappointed of Silesia,--which, it seems, is
not to be had "all at once (EHESTENS)," in the form of miracle,--
makes amends by a rush upon Seckendorf and Bavaria; attacks
Seckendorf furiously ("Bathyani pressing up the Donau Valley, with
Browne on one hand, and Barenklau on the other") in midwinter;
and makes a terrible hand of him; reducing his "Reconquest of
Bavaria" to nothing again, nay to less. Of which in due time.
(November, 1744-April, 1745; April-August, 1745).
It is not divine miracle, Friedrich knows well, that has lost him
his late Bohemian Conquests without battle fought: it was rash
choosing of a plan inexecutable without French co-operation,--
culpable blindness to the chance that France would break its
promises, and not co-operate. Had your Majesty forgotten the Joint-
Stock Principle, then? His Majesty has sorrowful cause to remember
it, from this time, on a still larger scale!
Reflections, indignant or exculpatory, on the conduct of the French
in this Business are useless to Friedrich, and to us. The
performance, on their part, has been nearly the worst;--though
their intentions, while the Austrian Dragon had them by the throat,
were doubtless enthusiastically good! But, the big Austrian Dragon
being jerked away from Elsass, by Friedrich's treading on his tail,
500 miles off, they were charmed, quite into new enthusiasm, to be
rid of said Dragon: and, instead of chasing HIM according to
bargain, took to destroying his DEN, that he might be harmless
thenceforth. Freyburg is a captured Town, to the joy and glory of
admiring France; and Friedrich's Campaign has gone the road we see!
The Freyburg Illuminations having burnt out, there might rise, in
the triumphant mind, some thought of Friedrich again,--perhaps
almost of a remorseful nature? Certain it is, the French intentions
are now again magnanimous, more so than ever; coupled now with some
attempts at fulfilment, too; which obliges us to mention them here.
They were still a matter of important hope to Friedrich; hope which
did not quite go out till August coming. Though, alas, it did then
go out, in gusts of indignation on Friedrich's part! And as the
whole of these magnanimous French intentions, latter like former,
again came to zero, we are interested only in rendering them
conceivable to readers for Friedrich's sake,--with the more
brevity, the better for everybody. Two grand French Attempts there
were; listen, on the threshold, a little:--
... "It is certain the French intend gloriously; regardless of
expense. They are dismantling Freyburg, to render it harmless
henceforth. But, withal, in answer to the poor Kaiser's shrieks,
they have sent Segur [our old Linz friend], with 12,000, to assist
Seckendorf; 'the bravest troops in the world,'"--who did bravely
take one beating (at Pfaffenhofen, as will be seen), and go home
again. ("They have Coigny guarding those fine Brisgau Conquests.
And are furthermore diplomatizing diligently, not to say
truculently, in the Rhine Countries; bullying poor little fat
Kur-Trier, lean Kur-Koln and others, 'To join the Frankfurt Union'
(not one of whom would, under menace),--though 'it is the clear
duty of all Reich's-Princes with a Kaiser under oppression:'--and
have marched Maillebois, directly after Freyburg, into the Middle-
Rhine Countries, to Koln Country, to Mainz Country, and to and
fro, in support of said compulsory diplomacies;--but without the
least effect."
To the "Middle-Rhine Countries," observe, and under Maillebois,
then under Conti, little matter under whom: only let readers
recollect the name of it;--for it is the FIRST of the French
Attempts to do something of a joint-stock nature; something for
self AND Allies, instead of for self only. It caused great alarm in
those months, to Britannic George and others; and brought out poor
Duc d'Ahremberg with portions (no English included) of the poor
Pragmatic Army, to go marching about in the winter slushes, instead
of resting in bed, [Adelung, iv. 276, 420 ("December, 1744-June,
1745").]--and is indeed a very loud business in the old Gazettes
and books, till August coming. Business which almost broke poor
D'Ahremberg's heart, he says, "till once I got out of it" (was
TURNED out, in fact): Business of Pragmatic Army, under
D'Ahremberg, VERSUS Middle-Rhine Army under Maillebois, under
Conti; Business now wholly of Zero VERSUS Zero to us,--except for a
few dates and reflex glimmerings upon King Friedrich. Result
otherwise-- We shall see the Result!
"Attempt SECOND was still more important to Friedrich; being
directed upon the Kaiser and Bavaria. Belleisle is to go thither
and take survey; Belleisle thither first: you may judge if the
intention is sincere! Valori is quite eloquent upon it.
Directly after Freyburg, says he, Sechelles, that first of
Commissaries, was sent to Munchen. Sechelles cleared up the chaos
of Accounts; which King Louis then instantly paid. 'Your Imperial
Majesty shall have Magazines also,' said Louis, regardless of
expense; 'and your Army, with auxiliaries (Segur and 25,000 of them
French), shall be raised to 60,000.' Belleisle then came: 'We will
have Ingolstadt, the first thing, in Spring.' Alas, Belleisle had
his Accident in the Harz; and all went aback, from that time."
[Valori, i. 322-329.] Aback, too indisputably, all!--"And
Belleisle's Accident?" Patience, readers.
"The truth is, Attempt SECOND, and chief, broke down at once
[Bathyani beating it to pieces, as will be seen],--the ruins of it
painfully reacting on Attempt FIRST; which had the like fate some
months later;--and there was no THIRD made. And, in fact, from the
date of that latter down-break, August, or end of July, 1745 [and
quite especially from "September 13th," by which time several
irrevocable things had happened, which we shall hear of], the
French withdrew altogether out of German entanglements;
and concentrated themselves upon the Netherlands, there to demolish
his Britannic Majesty, as the likelier enterprise. This was a
course to which, ever since the Exit of Broglio and the Oriflamme,
they had been more and more tending and inclining, 'Nothing for us
but loss on loss, to be had in Germany!' and so they at last
frankly gave up that bad Country. They fought well in the
Netherlands, with great splendor of success, under Saxe VERSUS
Cumberland and Company. They did also some successful work in
Italy;--and left Friedrich to bear the brunt in Germany; too glad
if he or another were there to take Germany off their hand!
Friedrich's feelings on his arriving at this consummation, and
during his gradual advance towards it, which was pretty steady all
along from those first 'drenched-hen (POULES MOUILLEES)'
procedures, were amply known to Excellency Valori, and may be
conceived by readers,"--who are slightly interested in the dates of
them at farthest. And now for the Belleisle Accident, with these
faint preliminary lights.
HARZ MOUNTAINS (20th December, 1744).
Siege of Freyburg being completed, and the River and most other
things (except always the bastions, which we blow up) being let
into their old channels there, Marechal de Belleisle, who is to
have a chief management henceforth,--the Most Christian King
recognizing him again as his ablest man in war or peace,--sets
forth on a long tour of supervision, of diplomacy and general
arrangement, to prepare matters for the next Campaign. Need enough
of a Belleisle: what a business we have made of it, since Friedrich
trod on the serpent's tail for us.! Nothing but our own Freyburg to
show for ourselves; elsewhere, mere down-rush of everything
whitherward it liked;--and King Friedrich got into such a humor!
Friedrich must be put in tune again; something real and good to be
agreed on at Berlin: let that be the last thing, crown of the
whole. The first thing is, look into Bavaria a little; and how the
Kaiser, poor gentleman, in want of all requisites but good-will,
can be put into something of fighting posture.
"In the end of November, Marechal Duc de Belleisle, with his
Brother the Chevalier (now properly the Count, there having been
promotions), and a great retinue more, alights at Munchen;
holds counsel with the poor Kaiser for certain days:--Money wanted;
many things wanted; and all things, we need not doubt, much fallen
out of square. 'Those Seckendorf troops in their winter-quarters,'
say our French Inspectors and Segur people, as usual, 'do but look
on it, your Excellency! Scattered, along the valleys, into the very
edge of Austria; Austria will swallow them, the first thing, next
year; they will never rendezvous again except in the Austrian
prisons. Surely, Monseigneur, only a man ignorant of war, or with
treasonous intention [or ill-off for victuals],--could post troops
in that way? Seckendorf is not ignorant of war!' say they.
[Valori, i. 206.] For, in fact, suspicion runs high; and there is
no end to the accusations just and unjust; and Seckendorf is as ill
treated as any of us could wish. Poor old soul. Probably nobody in
all the Earth, but his old Wife in the Schloss of Altenburg, has
any pity for him,--if even she, which I hope. He has fought and
diplomatized and intrigued in many countries, very much; and in his
old days is hard bested. Monseigueur, whose part is rather that of
Jove the Cloud-compeller, is studious to be himself noiseless amid
this noise; and makes no alteration in the Seckendorf troops;
but it is certain he meant to do it, thinks Valori."
And indeed Seckendorf, tired of the Bavarian bed-of-roses, had
privately fixed with himself to quit the same;--and does so,
inexorable to the very Kaiser, on New-Year arriving.
Thorring (our old friend DRUM Thorring), if that be an improvement.
Marechal de Belleisle has still a long journey ahead, and
infinitely harder problems than these,--assuagement of the King of
Prussia, for example. Let us follow his remarkable steps.
"WEDNESDAY, 9th DECEMBER, 1744, the Marechal leaves Munchen,
northwards through OEttingen and the Bamberg-Anspach regions
towards Cassel;--journey of some three hundred and fifty miles:
with a great retinue of his own; with an escort of two hundred
horse from the Kaiser; these latter to prevent any outfall or
insult in the Ingolstadt quarter, where the Austrians have a
garrison, not at all very tightly blocked by the Seckendorf people
thereabouts. No insult or outfall occurring, the Marechal dismisses
his escort at OEttingen; fares forward in his twenty coaches and
fourgons, some score or so of vehicles:--mere neutral Imperial
Countries henceforth, where the Kaiser's Agent, as Marechal de
Belleisle can style himself, and Titular Prince of the German
Empire withal, has only to pay his way. By Donauworth, by
OEttingen; over the Donau acclivities, then down the pleasant
Valley of the Mayn. [See REVIEW OF THE CASE OF MARSHAL BELLEISLE
(or Abstract of it,
1745, pp. 366-373); &c. &c.]
"SUNDAY, 13th DECEMBER, Marechal de Belleisle arrives at Hanau
[where we have seen Conferences held before now, and Carteret,
Prince Karl and great George our King very busy], there to confer
with Marshals Coigny, Maillebois and other high men, Commanders in
those Rhine parts. Who all come accordingly, except Marechal
Maillebois, who is sorry that he absolutely cannot; but will surely
do himself the honor as Monseigneur returns." As Monseigneur
returns! "And so, on Monday, 14th, Monseigneur starts for Cassel;
say a hundred miles right north; where we shall meet Prince Wilhelm
of Hessen-Cassel, a zealous Ally; inform him how his Troops, under
Seckendorf, are posted [at Vilshofen yonder; hiding how perilous
their post is, or promising alterations]; perhaps rest a day or
two, consulting as to the common weal: How the King of Prussia
takes our treatment of him? How to smooth the King of Prussia, and
turn him to harmony again? We are approaching the true nodus of our
business, difficulty of difficulties; and Wilhelm, the wise
Landgraf, may afford a hint or two. Thus travels magnanimous
Belleisle in twenty vehicles, a man loaded with weighty matters, in
these deep Winter months; suffering dreadfully from rheumatic
neuralgic ailments, a Doctor one of his needfulest equipments;
and has the hardest problem yet ahead of him.
"Prince Wilhelm's consultations are happily lost altogether;
buried from sight forever, to the last hint,--all except as to what
road to Berlin would be the best from Cassel. By Leipzig, through
low-lying country, is the great Highway, advisable in winter;
but it runs a hundred and thirty miles to right, before ever
starting northward; such a roundabout. Not to say that the Saxons
are allies of Austria,--if there be anything in that.
Enemies, they, to the Most Christian King: though surely, again, we
are on Kaiser's business, nay we are titular 'Prince of the Reich,'
for that matter, such the Kaiser's grace to us? Well; it is better
perhaps to AVOID the Saxon Territory. And, of course, the
Hanoverian much more; through which lies the other Great Road!
'Go by the Harz,' advises Landgraf Wilhelm: 'a rugged Hill Country;
but it is your hypotenuse towards Berlin; passes at once, or nearly
so, from Cassel Territory into Prussian: a rugged road, but a
shorter and safer.' That is the road Belleisle resolves upon.
Twenty carriages; his Brother the Chevalier and himself occupy one;
and always the courier rides before, ordering forty post-horses to
be ready harnessed.
"SUNDAY, 20th DECEMBER, 1744. In this way they have climbed the
eastern shin of the Harz Range, where the Harz is capable of wheel-
carriages; and hope now to descend, this night, to Halberstadt;
and thence rapidly by level roads to Berlin. It is sinking towards
dark; the courier is forward to Elbingerode, ordering forty horses
to be out. Roughish uphill road; winter in the sky and earth,
winter vapors and tumbling wind-gusts: westward, in torn storm-
cloak, the Bracken, with its witch-dances; highland Goslar, and
ghost of Henry the Fowler, on the other side of it. A multifarious
wizard Country, much overhung by goblin reminiscences, witch-
dances, sorcerers'-sabbaths and the like,--if a rheumatic gentleman
cared to look on it, in the cold twilight. Brrh! Waste chasmy
uplands, snow-choked torrents; wild people, gloomy firs! Here at
last, by one's watch 5 P.M., is Elbingerode, uncomfortable little
Town; and it is to be hoped the forty post-horses are ready.
"Behold, while the forty post-horses are getting ready, a thing
takes place, most unexpected;--which made the name of Elbingerode
famous for eight months to come. Of which let us hastily give the
bare facts, Fancy making of them what she can. Was Monseigneur
aware that this Elbingerode, with a patch of territory round it, is
Hanoverian ground; one of those distracted patches or ragged
outskirts frequent in the German map? Prussia is not yet, and
Hessen-Cassel has ceased to be. Undoubtedly Hanoverian!
Apparently the Landgraf and Monseigneur had not thought of that.
But Munchhausen of Hanover, spies informing him, had. The Bailiff
(Vogt, AdVOCATus) has gathered twenty JAGER [official Game-keepers]
with their guns, and a select idle Sunday population of the place
with or without guns: the Vogt steps forward, and inquires for
Monseigneur's passport. 'No passport, no need of any!'--'Pardon!'
and signifies to Monseigneur, on the part of George Elector of
Hanover, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, that
Monseigneur is arrested!
"Monseigneur, with compressed or incompressible feelings,
indignantly complies,--what could he else, unfortunate rheumatic
gentleman?--and is plucked away in such sudden manner, he for one,
out of that big German game of his raising. The twenty vehicles are
dragged different roads; towards Scharzfels, Osterode, or I know
not where,--handiest roads to Hanover;--and Monseigneur himself has
travelling treatment which might be complained of, did not one
disdain complaint: 'my Brother parted from me, nay my Doctor, and
my Interpreter;'"--not even speech possible to me. [Letter of
Belleisle next morning, "Neuhof, 21st December, 9 A.M." (in
Hanover,--by no possibility "to Valori," as the distracted French
Editor has given it!] That was the Belleisle Accident in the Harz,
Sunday Evening, 20th December, 1744.
"Afflicted indignant Valori, soon enough apprised, runs to
Friedrich with the news,--greets Friedrich with it just alighting
from that Silesian run of his own. Friedrich, not without several
other things to think of, is naturally sorry at such news;
sorry for his own sake even; but not overmuch. Friedrich refuses
'to despatch a party of horse,' and cut out Marechal de Belleisle.
"That will never do, MON CHER!'--and even gets into FROIDES
PLAISANTERIES: 'Perhaps the Marechal did it himself?
Tallard, prisoner after Blenheim, made PEACE, you know, in
England?'--and the like; which grieved the soul of Valori, and
convinced him of Friedrich's inhumanity, in a crying case.
"Belleisle is lugged on to Hanover; his case not doubtful to
Munchhausen, or the English Ministry,--though it raised great
argument, (was the capture fair, was it unfair? Is he entitled to
exchange by cartel, or not entitled?' and produced, in the next
eight months, much angry animated pamphleteering and negotiation.
For we hear by and by, he is to be forwarded to Stade, on the
Hamburg sea-coast, where English Seventy-fours are waiting for him;
his case still undecided;--and, in effect, it was not till after
eight months that he got dismissal. 'Lodged handsomely in Windsor
Palace,' in the interim; free on his parole, people of rank very
civil to him, though the Gazetteers were sometimes ill-tongued,--
had he understood their PATOIS, or concerned himself about such
things. ["TUESDAY, 18th FEBRUARY [lst March, 1745], Marshal
Belleisle landed at Harwich; lay at Greenwich Palace, having
crossed Thames at the Isle of Dogs: next morning, about 10, set
out, in a coach-and-six, Colonel Douglas and two troops of horse
escorting; arrived 3 P.M.,--by Camberwell, Clapham, Wandsworth,
over Kingston and Staines Bridges,--at Windsor Castle, and the
apartments ready for him." (
great pomp and civilities (ib. p. 442). See Adelung, iv. 299, 346;
v. 83, 84.]
"It was a current notion among contemporary mankind, this of
Friedrich, that Belleisle's capture might be a mere collusion,
meant to bring about a Peace in that Tallard fashion,--wide of the
truth as such a notion is, far as any Peace was from following.
To Britannic George and his Hanoverians it had merely seemed, Here
was a chief War-Captain and Diplomatist among the French; the pivot
of all these world-wide movements, as Valori defines him;
which pivot, a chance offering, it were well to twitch from its
socket, and see what would follow. Perhaps nothing will follow;
next to nothing? A world, all waltzing in mad war, is not to be
stopped by acting on any pivot; your waltzing world will find new
pivots, or do without any, and perhaps only waltz the more madly
for wanting the principal one."
This withdrawal of Belleisle, the one Frenchman respected by
Friedrich, or much interested for his own sake in things German, is
reckoned a main cause why the French Alliance turned out so ill for
Friedrich; and why French effort took more and more a Netherlands
direction thenceforth, and these new French magnanimities on
Friedrich's behalf issued in futility again. Probably they never
could have issued in very much: but it is certain that, from this
point, they also do become zero; and that Friedrich, from his
French alliance, reaped from first to last nothing at all, except a
great deal of obloquy from German neighbors, and from the French
side endless trouble, anger and disappointment in every particular.
Which 'might be a joy (though not unmixed) to Britannic Majesty and
the subtle followers who had ginned this fine Belleisle bird in its
flight over the Harz Range? Though again, had they passively let
him wing his way, and he had GOT "to be Commander and Manager," as
was in agitation,--he, Belleisle and in Germany, instead of
Marechal de Saxe with the Netherlands as chief scene,--what an
advantage might that have been to them!
A still sadder cross for Friedrich, in the current of foreign
Accidents and Diplomacies, was the next that befell; exactly a
month later,--at Munchen, 20th January, 1745. Hardly was
Belleisle's back turned, when her Hungarian Majesty, by her
Bathyani and Company, broke furiously in upon the poor Kaiser and
his Seckendorf-Segur defences. Belleisle had not reached the Harz,
when all was going topsy-turvy there again, and the Donau-Valley
fast falling back into Austrian hands. Nor is that the worst, or
nearly so.
"MUNCHEN, 20th JANUARY, 1745. This day poor Kaiser Karl laid down
his earthly burden here, and at length gave all his enemies the
slip. He had been ill of gout for some time; a man of much malady
always, with no want of vexations and apprehensions. Too likely the
Austrians will drive him out of Munchen again; then nothing but
furnished lodgings, and the French to depend upon. He had been much
chagrined by some Election, just done, in the Chapter of Salzburg.
[Adelung, iv. 249, 276, 313.] The Archbishop there--it was Firmian,
he of the SALZBURG EMIGRATION, memorable to readers--had died, some
while ago. And now, in flat contradiction to Imperial customs,
prerogatives, these people had admitted an Austrian Garrison;
and then, in the teeth of our express precept, had elected an
Austrian to their benefice: what can one account it but an insult
as well as an injury? And the neuralgic maladies press sore, and
the gouty twinges; and Belleisle is seized, perhaps with important
papers of ours; and the Seckendorf-Segur detachments were ill
placed; nay here are the Austrians already on the throat of them,
in midwinter! It is said, a babbling valet, or lord-in-waiting,
happened to talk of some skirmish that had fallen out (called a
battle, in the valet rumor), and how ill the French and Bavarians
had fared in it, owing to their ill behavior. And this, add they,
proved to be the ounce-weight too much for the so heavy-laden back.
"The Kaiser took to bed, not much complaining; patient, mild,
though the saddest of all mortals; and, in a day or two, died.
Adieu, adieu, ye loved faithful ones; pity me, and pray for me!
He gave his Wife, poor little fat devout creature, and his poor
Children (eldest lad, his Heir, only seventeen), a tender blessing;
solemnly exhorted them, To eschew ambition, and be warned by his
example;--to make their peace with Austria; and never, like him,
try COM' E DURO CALLE, and what the charity of Christian Kings
amounts to. This counsel, it is thought, the Empress Dowager
zealously accedes to, and will impress upon her Son. That is the
Austrian and Cause-of-Liberty account: King Friedrich, from the
other side, has heard a directly opposite one. How the Kaiser, at
the point of death, exhorted his son, 'Never forget the services
which the King of France and the King of Prussia have done us, and
do not repay them with ingratitude.' [
in Coxe, &c.] The reader can choose which he will, or reject both
into the region of the uncertain. 'Karl Albert's pious and
affectionate demeanor drew tears from all eyes,' say the by-
standers: 'the manner in which he took leave of his Empress
would have melted a heart of stone.' He was in his forty-eighth
year; he had been, of all men in his generation, the most
conspicuously unhappy."
What a down-rush of confusion there ensued on this event, not to
Bavaria alone, but to all the world, and to King Friedrich more
than another, no reader can now take the pains of conceiving.
The "Frankfurt Union," then, has gone to air! Here is now no
"Kaiser to be delivered from oppression:" here is a new Kaiser to
be elected,--"Grand-Duke Franz the man," cry the Pragmatic
Potentates with exultation, "no Belleisle to disturb!"--and
questions arise innumerable thereupon, Will France go into
electioneering again? The new Kur-Baiern, only seventeen, poor
child, cannot be set up as candidate. What will France do with HIM;
what he with France? Whom can the French try as Candidate against
the Grand-Duke? Kur-Sachsen, the Polish Majesty again? Belleisle
himself must have paused uncertain over such a welter,--and
probably have done, like the others, little or nothing in it, but
left it to collapse by natural gravitation.
Hungarian Majesty checked her Bavarian Armaments a little:
"If perhaps this young Kur-Baiern will detach himself from France,
and on submissive terms come over to us?" Whereupon, at Munchen,
and in the cognate quarters, such wriggling, dubitating and
diplomatizing, as seldom was,--French, Anti-French (Seckendorf
busiest of all), straining every nerve in that way, and for almost
three months, nothing coming of it,--till Hungarian Majesty sent
her Barenklaus and Bathyanis upon them again; and these rapidly
solved the question, in what way we shall see!
Friedrich has still his hopes of Bavaria, so grandiloquent are the
French in regard to it; who but would hope? The French diplomatize
to all lengths in Munchen, promising seas and mountains; but they
perform little; in an effectual manner, nothing. Bavarian "Army
raised to 60,000;" counts in fact little above half that number;
with no General to it but an imaginary one; Segur's actual French
contingent, instead of 25,000, is perhaps 12,000;--and so of other
things. Add to all which, Seckendorf is there, not now as War-
General, but as extra-official "Adviser;" busier than ever,--
"scandalous old traitor!" say the French;--and Friedrich may justly
fear that Bavaria will go, by collapse, a bad road for him.
Friedrich, a week or two after the Kaiser's death, seeing Bavarian
and French things in such a hypothetic state, instructs his
Ambassador at London to declare his, Friedrich's, perfect readiness
and wish for Peace: "Old Treaty of Breslau and Berlin made
indubitable to me; the rest of the quarrel has, by decease of the
Kaiser, gone to air." To which the Britannic Majesty, rather elated
at this time, as all Pragmatic people are, answers somewhat in a
careless way, "Well, if the others like it!" and promises that he
will propose it in the proper quarter. So that henceforth there is
always a hope of Peace through England; as well as contrariwise,
especially till Bavaria settle itself (in April next), a hope of
great assistance from the French. Here are potentialities and
counter-potentialities, which make the Bavarian Intricacy very
agitating to the young King, while it lasts. And indeed his world
is one huge imbroglio of Potentialities and Diplomatic Intricacies,
agitating to behold. Concerning which we have again to remark how
these huge Spectres of Diplomacy, now filling Friedrich's world,
came mostly in result to Nothing;--shaping themselves wholly, for
or against, in exact proportion, direct or inverse, to the actual
Quantity of Battle and effective Performance that happened to be
found in Friedrich himself. Diplomatic Spectralities, wide
Fatamorganas of hope, and hideous big Bugbears blotting out the
sun: of these, few men ever had more than Friedrich at this time.
And he is careful, none carefuler, not to neglect his Diplomacies
at any time;--though he knows, better than most, that good fighting
of his own is what alone can determine the value of these
contingent and aerial quantities,--mere Lapland witchcraft the
greater part of them.
A second grand Intricacy and difficulty, still more enigmatic, and
pressing the tighter by its close neighborhood, was that with the
Saxons. "Are the Saxons enemies; are they friends? Neutrals at
lowest; bound by Treaty to lend Austria troops; but to lend for
defence merely, not for offence! Could not one, by good methods,
make friends with his Polish Majesty?" Friedrich was far from
suspecting the rages that lurked in the Polish Majesty, and least
of all owing to what. Owing to that old MORAVIAN-FORAY business;
and to his, Friedrich's, behavior to the Saxons in it; excellent
Saxons, who had behaved so beautifully to Friedrich! That is the
sad fact, however. Stupid Polish Majesty has his natural envies,
jealousies, of a Brandenburg waxing over his head at this rate.
But it appears, the Moravian Foray entered for a great deal into
the account, and was the final overwhelming item. Bruhl, by much
descanting on that famous Expedition,--with such candid Eye-
witnesses to appeal to, such corroborative Staff-officers and
appliances, powerful on the idle heart and weak brain of a Polish
Majesty,--has brought it so far. Fixed indignation, for intolerable
usage, especially in that Moravian-Foray time: fixed; not very
malignant, but altogether obstinate (as, I am told, that of the
pacific sheep species usually is); which carried Bruhl and his
Polish Majesty to extraordinary heights and depths in years coming!
But that will deserve a section to itself by and by.
A third difficulty, privately more stringent than any, is that of
Finance. The expenses of the late Bohemian Expedition, "Friedrich's
Army costing 75,000 pounds a month," have been excessive. For our
next Campaign, if it is to be done in the way essential, there are,
by rigorous arithmetic, "900,000 pounds" needed. A frugal Prussia
raises no new taxes; pays its Wars from "the Treasure," from the
Fund saved beforehand for emergencies of that kind; Fund which is
running low, threatening to be at the lees if such drain on it
continue. To fight with effect being the one sure hope, and salve
for all sores, it is not in the Army, in the Fortresses, the
Fighting Equipments, that there shall be any flaw left!
Friedrich's budget is a sore problem upon him; needing endless
shift and ingenuity, now and onwards, through this war:--already,
during these months, in the Berlin Schloss, a great deal of those
massive Friedrich-Wilhelm plate Sumptuosities, especially that
unparalleled Music-Balcony up stairs, all silver, has been, under
Fredersdorf's management, quietly taken away; "carried over, in the
night-time, to the Mint." [Orlich, ii. 126-128.]
And, in fact, no modern reader, not deeper in that distressing
story of the Austrian-Succession War than readers are again like to
be, can imagine to himself the difficulties of Friedrich at this
time, as they already lay disclosed, and kept gradually disclosing
themselves, for months coming; nor will ever know what
perspicacity, patience of scanning, sharpness of discernment,
dexterity of management, were required at Friedrich's hands;--and
under what imminency of peril, too; victorious deliverance, or ruin
and annihilation, wavering fearfully in the balance for him, more
than once, or rather all along. But it is certain the deeper one
goes into that hideous Medea's Caldron of stupidities, once so
flamy, now fallen extinct, the more is one sensible of Friedrich's
difficulties; and of the talent for all kinds of Captaincy,--by no
means in the Field only, or perhaps even chiefly,--that was now
required of him. Candid readers shall accept these hints, and do
their best:--Friedrich himself made not the least complaint of
men's then misunderstanding him; still less will he now!
We, keeping henceforth the Diplomacies, the vaporous Foreshadows,
and general Dance of Unclean Spirits with their intrigues and
spectralities, well underground, so far as possible, will stick to
what comes up as practical Performance on Friedrich's part, and try
to give intelligible account of that.
Valori says, he is greatly changed, and for the better, by these
late reverses of fortune. All the world notices it, says Valori.
No longer that brief infallibility of manner; that lofty light air,
that politely disdainful view of Valori and mankind: he has now
need of men. Complains of nothing, is cheerful, quizzical;--
ardently busy to "grind out the notches," as our proverb is; has a
mild humane aspect, something of modesty, almost of piety in him.
Help me, thou Supreme Power, Maker of men, if my purposes are
manlike! Though one does not go upon the Prayers of Forty-Hours, or
apply through St. Vitus and such channels, there may be something
of authentic petition to Heaven in the thoughts of that young man.
He is grown very amiable; the handsomest young bit of Royalty now
going. He must fight well next Summer, or it will go hard with him!
Chapter VI.
Some time in January, a new Frenchman, a "Chevalier de Courten," if
the name is known to anybody, was here at Berlin; consulting,
settling about mutual interests and operations. Since Belleisle is
snatched from us, it is necessary some Courten should come;
and produce what he has got: little of settlement, I should fear,
of definite program that will hold water; in regard to War
operations chiefly a magazine of clouds. [Specimens of it, in
Ranke, iii. 219.] For the rest, the Bavarian question; and very
specially, Who the new Emperor is to be? "King of Poland, thinks
your Majesty?"--"By all means," answers Friedrich, "if you can!
Detach him from Austria; that will be well!" Which was reckoned
magnanimous, at least public-spirited, in Friedrich; considering
what Saxony's behavior to him had already been. "By all means, his
Polish Majesty for Kaiser; do our utmost, Excellencies Valori,
Courten and Company!" answers Friedrich,--and for his own part,
I observe, is intensely busy upon Army matters, looking after the
main chance.
And so Valori is to go to Dresden, and manage this cloud or
cobwebbery department of the thing; namely, persuade his Polish
Majesty to stand for the Kaisership: "Baiern, Pfalz, Koln,
Brandenburg, there are four votes, Sire; your own is five: sure of
carrying it, your Polish Majesty; backed by the Most Christian
King, and his Allies and resources!" And Polish Majesty does, for
his own share, very much desire to be Kaiser. But none of us yet
knows how he is tied up by Austria, Anti-Friedrich, Anti-French
considerations; and can only "accept if it is offered me:" thrice-
willing to accept, if it will fall into my mouth; which, on those
terms, it has so little chance of doing!--Saxony and its mysterious
affairs and intentions having been, to Friedrich, a riddle and
trouble and astonishment, during all this Campaign, readers ought
to know the fact well;--and no reader could stand the details of
such a fact. Here, in condensed form, are some scraps of Excerpt;
which enable us to go with Valori on this Dresden Mission, and look
for ourselves:--
"... By known Treaty, the Polish Majesty is bound to assist the
Hungarian with 12,000 men, 'whenever invaded in her own dominions.'
Polish Majesty had 20,000 in the field for that object lately,--
part of them, 8,000 of them, hired by Britannic subsidy, as he
alleges. The question now is, Will Saxony assist Austria in
invading Silesia, with or without Britannic subsidy?
Friedrich hopes that this is impossible! Friedrich is deeply
unaware of the humor he has raised against himself in the Saxon
Court-circles; how the Polish Majesty regards that Moravian Foray;
with what a perfect hatred little Bruhl regards him, Friedrich;
and to what pitch of humor, owing to those Moravian-Foray
starvings, marchings about and inhuman treatment of the poor Saxon
Army, not to mention other offences and afflictive considerations,
Bruhl has raised the simple Polish Majesty against Friedrich.
These things, as they gradually unfolded themselves to Friedrich,
were very surprising. And proved very disadvantageous at the
present juncture and for a long time afterwards. To Friedrich
disadvantageous and surprising; and to Saxony, in the end, ruinous;
poor Saxony having got its back broken by them, and never stood up
in the world since! Ruined by this wretched little Bruhl;
and reduced, from the first place in Northern Teutschland, to a
second or third, or no real place at all."
2. THERE IS A, "UNION OF WARSAW" (8th January, 1745);
(8th January-18th May, 1745).
"January 8th, 1745, before the Old Dessauer got ranked in Schlesien
against Traun, there had concluded itself at Warsaw, by way of
counterpoise to the 'Frankfurt Union,' a 'Union of Warsaw,' called
also 'Quadruple Alliance of Warsaw;' the Parties to which were
Polish Majesty, Hungarian ditto, Prime-Movers, and the two
Sea-Powers as Purseholders; stipulating, to the effect: 'We Four
will hold together in affairs of the Reich VERSUS that dangerous
Frankfurt Union; we will'--do a variety of salutary things; and as
one practical thing, 'There shall be, this Season, 30,000 Saxons
conjoined to the Austrian Force, for which we Sea-Powers will
furnish subsidy.'--This was the one practical point stipulated,
January 8th; and farther than this the Sea-Powers did not go, now
or afterwards, in that affair.
"But there was then proposed by the Polish and Hungarian Majesties,
in the form of Secret Articles, an ulterior Project; with which the
Sea-Powers, expressing mere disbelief and even abhorrence of it,
refused to have any concern now or henceforth. Polish Majesty, in
hopes it would have been better taken, had given his 30,000
soldiers at a rate of subsidy miraculously low, only 150,000 pounds
for the whole: but the Sea-Powers were inexorable, perhaps almost
repented of their 150,000 pounds; and would hear nothing farther of
secret Articles and delirious Projects.
"So that the 'Union of Warsaw' had to retire to its pigeon-hole,
content with producing those 30,000 Saxons for the immediate
occasion; and there had to be concocted between the Polish and
Hungarian Majesties themselves what is now, in the modern
Pamphlets, called a 'TREATY of Warsaw,'--much different from the
innocent, 'UNION of Warsaw;' though it is merely the specifying and
fixing down of what had been shadowed out as secret codicils in
said 'Union,' when the Sea-Power parties obstinately recoiled.
Treaty of Warsaw let us continue to call it; though its actual
birth-place was Leipzig (in the profoundest secrecy, 18th May,
1745), above four months after it had tried to be born at Warsaw,
and failed as aforesaid. Warsaw Union is not worth speaking of;
but this other is a Treaty highly remarkable to the reader,--and to
Friedrich was almost infinitely so, when he came to get wind of it
long after.
"Treaty which, though it proved abortional, and never came to
fulfilment in any part of it, is at this day one of the
remarkablest bits of sheepskin extant in the world. It was signed
18th May, 1745; [Scholl, ii. 350.] and had cost a great deal of
painful contriving, capable still of new altering and retouching,
to hit mutual views: Treaty not only for reconquering Silesia
(which to the Two Majesties, though it did not to the Sea-Powers,
seems infallible, in Friedrich's now ruined circumstances), but for
cutting down that bad Neighbor to something like the dimensions
proper for a Brandenburg Vassal;--in fact, quite the old
'Detestable Project' of Spring, 1741, only more elaborated into
detail (in which Britannic George knows better than to meddle!)--
Saxony to have share of the parings, when we get them.
'What share?' asked Saxony, and long keeps asking. 'A road to
Warsaw; Strip of Country carrying us from the end of the Lausitz,
which is ours, into Poland, which we trust will continue ours,
would be very handy! Duchy of Glogau; some small paring of Silesia,
won't your Majesty?' 'Of my Silesia not one hand-breadth,' answered
the Queen impatiently (though she did at last concede some outlying
hand-breadths, famed old 'Circle of Schwiebus,' if I recollect);
and they have had to think of other equivalent parings for Saxony's
behoof (Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Saale-Circle, or one knows not
what); and have had, and will have, their adoes to get it fixed.
Excellent bearskin to be slit into straps; only the bear is still
on his feet!--Polish Majesty and Hungarian, Polish with especial
vigor, Bruhl quite restless upon it, are--little as Valori or any
mortal could dream of it--engaged in this partition of the
bearskin, when Valori arrives. Of their innocent Union of Warsaw,
there was, from the first, no secret made; but the Document now
called 'TREATY of Warsaw' needs to lie secret and thrice-secret;
and it was not till 1756 that Friedrich, having unearthed it by
industries of his own, and studied it with great intensity for some
years, made it known to the world." [Adelung, v. 308. 397;
Ranke, iii. 231 (who, for some reason of his own, dates "3d May"
instead of 18th}.]
Treaties, vaporous Foreshadows of Events, have oftenest something
of the ghost in them; and are importune to human nature, longing
for the Events themselves; all the more if they have proved
abortional Treaties, and become doubly ghost-like or ghastly.
Nevertheless the reader is to note well this Treaty of Warsaw, as
important to Friedrich and him; and indeed it is perhaps the
remarkablest Treaty, abortional or realized, which got to parchment
in that Century. For though it proved abortional, and no part of
it, now or afterwards, could be executed, and even the subsidy and
30,000 Saxons (stipulated in the "UNION of Warsaw") became crow's-
meat in a manner,--this preternatural "Treaty of Warsaw," trodden
down never so much by the heel of Destiny, and by the weight of new
Treaties, superseding it or presupposing its impossibility or
inconceivability, would by no means die (such the humor of Bruhl,
of the Two Majesties and others); but lay alive under the ashes,
carefully tended, for Ten or Twenty Years to come;--and had got all
Europe kindled again, for destruction of that bad Neighbor, before
it would itself consent to go out! And did succeed in getting
Saxony's back broken, if not the bad Neighbor's,--in answer to the
humor of little Bruhl; unfortunate Saxony to possess such a Bruhl!
In those beautiful Saxon-Austrian developments of the Treaty of
Warsaw, Czarina Elizabeth, bobbing about in that unlovely whirlpool
of intrigues, amours, devotions and strong liquor, which her
History is, took (ask not for what reason) a lively part:--and
already in this Spring of 1745, they hope she could, by "a gift of
two millions for her pleasures" (gift so easy to you Sea-Powers),
be stirred up to anger against Friedrich. And she did, in effect,
from this time, hover about in a manner questionable to Friedrich;
though not yet in anger, but only with the wish to be important,
and to make herself felt in Foreign affairs. Whether the Sea-Powers
gave her that trifle of pocket-money ("for her pleasures"), I never
knew; but it is certain they spent, first and last, very large
amounts that way, upon her and hers; especially the English did,
with what result may be considered questionable.
As for Graf von Bruhl, most rising man of Saxony, once a page;
now by industry King August III.'s first favorite and factotum;
the fact that he cordially hates Friedrich is too evident; but the
why is not known to me. Except indeed, That no man--especially no
man with three hundred and sixty-five fashionable suits of clothes
usually about him, different suit each day of the year--can be
comfortable in the evident contempt of another man. Other man of
sarcastic bantering turn, too; tongue sharp as needles;
whose sayings many birds of the air are busy to carry about.
Year after year, Bruhl (doubtless with help enough that way, if
there had needed such) hates him more and more; as the too jovial
Czarina herself comes to do, wounded by things that birds have
carried. And now we will go with Valori,--seeing better into some
things than Valori yet can.
3. VALORI'S ACCOUNT OF HIS MISSION (in compressed form).
[Valori, i. 211-219.]
"Valori [I could guess about the 10th of February, but there is no
date at all] was despatched to Dresden with that fine project,
Polish Majesty for Kaiser: is authorized to offer 60,000 men, with
money corresponding, and no end of brilliant outlooks;--must keep
back his offers, however, if he find the people indisposed.
Which he did, to an extreme degree; nothing but vague talk,
procrastination, hesitation on the part of Bruhl. This wretched
little Bruhl has twelve tailors always sewing for him, and three
hundred and sixty-five suits of clothes: so many suits, all
pictured in a Book; a valet enters every morning, proposes a suit,
which, after deliberation, with perhaps amendments, is acceded to,
and worn at dinner. Vainest of human clothes-horses; foolishest
coxcomb Valori has seen: it is visibly his notion that it was he,
Bruhl, by his Saxon auxiliaries, by his masterly strokes of policy,
that checkmated Friedrich, and drove him from Bohemia last Year;
and, for the rest, that Friedrich is ruined, and will either shirk
out of Silesia, or be cut to ribbons there by the Austrian force
this Summer. To which Valori hints dissent; but it is ill received.
Valori sees the King; finds him, as expected, the fac-simile of
Bruhl in this matter; Jesuit Guarini the like: how otherwise?
They have his Majesty in their leash, and lead him as they please.
"At four every morning, this Guarini, Jesuit Confessor to the King
and Queen, comes to Bruhl; Bruhl settles with him what his Majesty
shall think, in reference to current business, this day;
Guarini then goes, confesses both Majesties; confesses, absolves,
turns in the due way to secular matters. At nine, Bruhl himself
arrives, for Privy Council: 'What is your Majesty pleased to think
on these points of current business?' Majesty serenely issues his
thoughts, in the form of orders; which are found correct to
pattern. This is the process with his Majesty. A poor Majesty,
taking deeply into tobacco; this is the way they have him benetted,
as in a dark cocoon of cobwebs, rendering the whole world invisible
to him. Which cunning arrangement is more and more perfected every
year; so that on all roads he travels, be it to mass, to hunt, to
dinner, any-whither in his Palace or out of it, there are faithful
creatures keeping eye, who admit no unsafe man to the least glimpse
of him by night or by day. In this manner he goes on; and before
the end of him, twenty years hence, has carried it far. Nothing but
disgust to be had out of business;--mutinous Polish Diets too, some
forty of them, in his time, not one of which did any business at
all, but ended in LIBERUM VETO, and Billingsgate conflagration,
perhaps with swords drawn: [See Buchholz, 154; &c.]--business more
and more disagreeable to him. What can Valori expect, on this
heroic occasion, from such a King?
"The Queen herself, Maria Theresa's Cousin, an ambitious
hard-favored Majesty,--who had sense once to dislike Bruhl, but has
been quite reconciled to him by her Jesuit Messenger of Heaven
(which latter is an oily, rather stupid creature, who really wishes
well to her, and loves a peaceable life at any price),--even she
will not take the bait. Valori was in Dresden nine days (middle
part of February, it is likely); never produced his big bait, his
60,000 men and other brilliancies, at all. He saw old Feldmarschall
Konigseck passing from Vienna towards the Netherlands Camp;
where he is to dry-nurse (so they irreverently call it, in time
coming) his Royal Highness of Cumberland, that magnificent English
Babe of War, and do feats with him this Summer." Konigseck, though
Valori did not know it, has endless diplomacies to do withal;
inspections of troops, advisings, in Hanover, in Holland, in
Dresden here; [Anonymous,
p. 186.]--and secures the Saxon Electoral-Vote for his Grand-Duke
in passing. "The welcome given to Konigseck disgusted Valori;
on the ninth day he left; said adieu, seeing them blind to their
interest; and took post for Berlin,"--where he finds Friedrich much
out of humor at the Saxon reception of his magnanimities. [Valori,
i. 211-219;
For details on Bruhl, see
noted Pamphleteer of the time: exists in English too, or partly
exists; but is unreadable, except on compulsion; and totally
unintelligible till after very much inquiry elsewhere.]
This Saxon intricacy, indecipherable, formidable, contemptible, was
the plague of Friedrich's life, one considerable plague, all
through this Campaign. Perhaps nothing in the Diplomatic sphere of
things caused him such perplexity, vexation, indignation.
An insoluble riddle to him; extremely contemptible, yet,--with a
huge Russia tacked to it, and looming minatory in the distance,--
from time to time, formidable enough. Let readers keep it in mind,
and try to imagine it. It cost Friedrich such guessing, computing,
arranging, rearranging, as would weary the toughest reader to hear
of in detail. How Friedrich did at last solve it (in December
coming), all readers will see with eyes!--
Early in March it becomes surmisable that Maillebois's Middle-Rhine
Army will not go a good road. Maillebois has been busy in those
countries, working extensive discontent; bullying mankind "to join
the Frankfurt Union," to join France at any rate, which nobody
would consent to; and exacting merciless contributions, which
everybody had to consent to and pay.--And now, on D'Ahremberg's
mere advance, with that poor Fraction of Pragmatic Army, roused
from its winter sleep, Maillebois, without waiting for
D'Ahremberg's attack, rapidly calls in his truculent detachments,
and rolls confusedly back into the Frankfurt regions. [Adelung, iv.
276-352 (December, 1744-March, 1745).] Upon which D'Ahremberg--if
by no means going upon Maillebois's throat--sets, at least, to
coercing Wilhelm of Hessen, our only friend in those parts; who is
already a good deal disgusted with the Maillebois procedures, and
at a loss what to do on the Kaiser's death, which has killed the
Frankfurt Union too. Wise Wilhelm consents, under D'Ahremberg's
menaces, to become Neutral; and recall his 6,000 out of Baiern,--
wishes he had them home beside him even now!
With an Election in the wind, it is doubly necessary for the
French, who have not even a Candidate as yet, to stand supreme and
minatory in the Frankfurt Country; and to King Friedrich it is
painfully questionable, whether Maillebois can do it. "Do it we
will; doubt not that, your Majesty!" answer Valori and the French;
--and study to make improvements, reinforcements, in their Rhine
Army. And they do, at least, change the General of their Middle-
Rhine Army,--that is to say, recall Prince Conti out of Italy,
where he has distinguished himself, and send Maillebois thither in
his stead,--who likewise distinguishes himself THERE, if that could
be a comfort to us! Whether the distinguished Conti will maintain
that Frankfurt Country in spite of the Austrians and their Election
movements, is still a question with Friedrich, though Valori
continued assuring him (always till July came) that, it was beyond
question. "Siege of Tournay, vigorous Campaign in the Netherlands
(for behoof of Britannic George)!" this is the grand French program
for the Year. This good intention was achieved, on the French part;
but this, like Aaron's rod among the serpents, proved to have EATEN
the others as it wriggled along!--
Those Maillebois-D'Ahremberg affairs throw a damp on the Bavarian
Question withal;--in fact, settle the Bavarian Question; her
Hungarian Majesty, tired of the delays, having ordered Bathyani to
shoulder arms again, and bring a decision. Bathyani, with Barenklau
to right of him, and Browne (our old Silesian friend) to left, goes
sweeping across those Seckendorf-Segur posts, and without
difficulty tumbles everything to ruin, at a grand rate. The traitor
Seckendorf had made such a choice of posts,--left unaltered by Drum
Thorring;--what could French valor do? Nothing; neither French
valor, nor Bavarian want of valor, could do anything but whirl to
the right-about, at sight of the Austrian Sweeping-Apparatus;
and go off explosively, as in former instances, at a rate almost
unique in military annals. Finished within three weeks or so!--
We glance only at two points of it. March 21st, Bathyani stood to
arms (to BESOMS we might call it), Browne on the left, Barenklau on
the right: it was March 21st when Bathyani started from Passau, up
the Donau Countries;--and within the week coming, see:--
"VILSHOFEN, 28th MARCH, 1745. Here, at the mouth of the Vils River
(between Inn and Iser), is the first considerable Post;
garrison some 4,000; Hessians and Prince Friedrich the main
part,--who have their share of valor, I dare say; but with such
news out of Hessen, not to speak of the prospects in this Country,
are probably in poorish spirits for acting. General Browne summons
them in Vilshofen, this day; and, on their negative, storms in upon
them, bursts them to pieces; upon which they beat chamade. But the
Croats, who are foremost, care nothing for chamade: go plundering,
slaughtering; burn the poor Town; butcher [in round numbers] 3,000
of the poor Hessians; and wound General Browne himself, while he
too vehemently interferes." [Adelung, iv. 356, and the half-
intelligible Foot-note in Ranke, iii. 220.] This was the finale of
those 6,000 Hessians, and indeed their principal function, while in
French pay;--and must have been, we can Judge how surprising to
Prince Friedrich, and to his Papa on hearing of it!
Note another point.
Precisely about this time twelvemonth, "March 16th, 1746," the same
Prince Friedrich, with remainder of those Hessians, now again
completed to 6,000, and come back with emphasis to the Britannic
side of things, was--marching out of Edinburgh, in much state, with
streamers, kettle-drums, Highness's coaches, horses, led-horses, on
an unexpected errand. [Henderson (Whig Eye-witness).
History of the Rebellion,
reprint from the Edinburgh edition), pp. 104, 106, 107.]
Toward Stirling, Perth; towards Killiecrankie, and raising of what
is called "the Siege of Blair in Athol" (most minute of "sieges,"
but subtending a great angle there and then);--much of unexpected,
and nearer home than "Tournay and the Netherlands Campaign," having
happened to Britannic George in the course of this year, 1746!
"Really very fine troops, those Hessians [observes my orthodox Whig
friend]: they carry swords as well as guns and bayonets;
their uniform is blue turned up with white: the Hussar part of
them, about 500, have scimitars of a great length; small horses,
mostly black, of Swedish breed; swift durable little creatures,
with long tails." Honors, dinners, to his Serene Highness had been
numerous, during the three weeks we had him in Edinburgh;
"especially that Ball, February 21st (o.s.), eve of his Consort the
Princess Mary's Birthday [EVE of birthday, "let us dance the
auspicious morning IN] was, for affluence of Nobility and Gentry of
both sexes," a sublime thing. ...
PFAFFENHOFEN, APRIL 15th. "Unfortunate Segur, the Segur of Linz
three years ago,--whose conduct was great, according to Valori, but
powerless against traitors and fate!--was again, once more,
unfortunate in those parts. Unfortunate Segur drew up at
Pfaffenhofen (centre of the Country, many miles from Vilshofen) to
defend himself, when fallen upon by Barenklau, in that manner;
but could not, though with masterly demeanor; and had to retreat
three days, with his face to the enemy, so to speak, fighting and
manoeuvring all the way: no shelter for him either but Munchen, and
that, a most temporary one. Instead of taking Straubingen, taking
Passau, perhaps of pushing on to Vienna itself, this is what we
have already come to. No Rhine Army, Middle-Rhine Army, Coigny,
Maillebois, Conti, whoever it was, should send us the least
reinforcement, when shrieked to. No outlook whatever but rapid
withdrawal, retreat to the Rhine Army, since it will not stir to
help us." [Adelung, iv. 360.]
"The young Kur-Baiern is still polite, grateful [to us French],
overwhelms us with politeness; but flies to Augsburg, as his Father
used to do. Notable, however, his poor fat little Mother won't,
this time: 'No, I will stay here, I for one, and have done with
flying and running; we have had enough of that!' Seckendorf, quite
gone from Court in this crisis, reappears, about the middle of
April, in questionable capacity; at a place called Fussen, not far
off, at the foot of the Tyrol Hills;--where certain Austrian
Dignitaries seem also to be enjoying a picturesque Easter!
Yes indeed: and, on APRIL 22d, there is signed a 'PEACE OF FUSSEN'
there; general amicable AS-YOU-WERE, between Austria and Bavaria
('Renounce your Anti-Pragmatic moonshine forevermore, vote for our
Grand-Duke; there is your Bavaria back, poor wretches!')--
and Seckendorf, it is presumable, will get his Turkish
arrears liquidated.
"The Bavarian Intricacy, which once excelled human power, is
settled, then. Carteret and Haslang tried it in vain [dreadful
heterodox intentions of secularizing Salzburg, secularizing Passau,
Regensburg, and loud tremulous denial of such];--Carteret and
Wilhelm of Hesseu [Conferences of Hanau, which ruined Carteret], in
vain; King Friedrich, and many Kings, in vain: a thing nobody could
settle;--and it has at last settled itself, as the generality of
ill-guided and unlucky things do, by collapse. Delirium once out,
the law of gravity acts; and there the mad matter lies."
"Bought by Austria, that old villain!" cry the French.
Friedrich does not think the Austrians bought Seckendorf, having no
money at present; but guesses they may have given him to understand
that a certain large arrear of payment due ever since those Turkish
Wars,--when Seckendorf, instead of payment, was lodged in the
Fortress of Gratz, and almost got his head cut off,--should now be
paid down in cash, or authentic Paper-money, if matters become
amicable. [
done, in Friedrich's despite;--who seems angrier at the old stager
for this particular ill-turn than for all the other many; and long
remembers it, as will appear.
Chapter VII.
Here, sure enough, are sad new intricacies in the Diplomatic,
hypothetic sphere of things; and clouds piling themselves ahead, in
a very minatory manner to King Friedrich. Let King Friedrich, all
the more, get his Fighting Arrangements made perfect. Diplomacy is
clouds; beating of your enemies is sea and land. Austria and the
Gazetteer world consider Friedrich to be as good as finished:
but that is privately far from being Friedrich's own opinion;--
though these occurrences are heavy and dismal to him, as none of us
can now fancy.
Herr Ranke has got access, in the Archives, to a series of private
utterances by Friedrich,--Letters from him, of a franker nature
than usual, and letting us far deeper into his mind;--which must
have been well worth reading in the original, in their fully dated
and developed condition. From Herr Ranke's Fragmentary Excerpts,
let us, thankful for what we have got, select one or two.
The Letters are to Minister Podewils at Berlin; written from
Silesia (Neisse and neighborhood), where, since the middle of
March, Friedrich has been, personally pushing on his Army
Preparations, while the above sinister things befell.
KING FRIEDRICH TO PODEWILS, IN BERLIN (under various dates,
March-April, 1745).
NEISSE, 29th MARCH. ... "We find ourselves in a great crisis. If we
don't, by mediation of England, get Peace, our enemies from
different sides [Saxony, Austria, who knows if not Russia withal!]
will come plunging in against me. Peace I cannot force them to.
But if they must have War, we will either beat them, or none of us
will see Berlin again." [Ranke, iii. 236 et seqq.]
APRIL (no day given). ... "In any case, I have my troops well
together. The sicknesses are ceasing; the recruitments are coming
in: shortly all will be complete. That does not hinder us from
making Peace, if it will only come; but, in the contrary case,
nobody can accuse me of neglecting what was necessary."
APRIL 17th (still from Neisse). ... "I toil day and night to
improve our situation. The soldiers will do their duty. There is
none among us who will not rather have his backbone broken than
give up one foot-breadth of ground. They must either grant us a
good Peace, or we will surpass ourselves by miracles of daring;
and force the enemy to accept it from us."
APRIL 20th. "Our situation is disagreeable; constrained, a kind of
spasm: but my determination is taken. If we needs must fight, we
will do it like men driven desperate. Never was there a greater
peril than that I am now in. Time, at its own pleasure, will untie
this knot; or Destiny, if there is one, determine the event.
The game I play is so high, one cannot contemplate the issue with
cold blood. Pray for the return of my good luck."--Two days hence,
the poor young Kur-Baiern, deaf to the French seductions and
exertions, which were intense, had signed his "Peace of Fussen"
(22d April 1745),--a finale to France on the German Field, as may
be feared! The other Fragments we will give a little farther on.
Friedrich had left Berlin for Silesia March 15th; rather sooner
than he counted on,--Old Leopold pleading to be let home.
At Glogau, at Breslau, there had been the due inspecting:
Friedrich got to Neisse on the 23d (Bathyani just stirring in that
Bavarian Business, Vilshofen and the Hessians close ahead); and on
the 27th, had dismissed Old Leopold, with thanks and sympathies,--
sent him home, "to recover his health." Leopold's health is
probably suffering; but his heart and spirits still more. Poor old
man, he has just lost--the other week, "5th February" last--his
poor old Wife, at Dessau; and is broken down with grief. The soft
silk lining of his hard Existence, in all parts of it, is torn
away. Apothecary Fos's Daughter, Reich's Princess, Princess of
Dessau, called by whatever name, she had been the truest of Wives;
"used to attend him in all his Campaigns, for above fifty years
back." "Gone, now, forever gone!"--Old Leopold had wells of strange
sorrow in the rugged heart of him,--sorrow, and still better
things,--which he does not wear on his sleeve. Here is an incident
I never can forget;--dating twelve or thirteen years ago (as is
computable), middle of July, 1732.
"Louisa, Leopold's eldest Daughter, Wife of Victor Leopold,
reigning Prince of Anhalt-Bernburg, lay dying of a decline."
Still only twenty-three, poor Lady, though married seven years ago;
--the end now evidently drawing nigh. "A few days before her
death,--perhaps some attendant sorrowfully asking, 'Can we do
nothing, then?'--she was heard to say, 'If I could see my Father at
the head of his Regiment, yet once!'"--Halle, where the Regiment
lies, is some thirty or more miles off; and King Friedrioh Wilhelm,
I suppose, would have to be written to:--Leopold was ready the
soonest possible; and, "at a set hour, marched, in all pomp, with
banner flying, music playiug, into the SCHLOSS-HOF (Palace Court)
of Bernburg; and did the due salutations and manoeuvrings,--his
poor Daughter sitting at her window, till they ended;"--figure
them, the last glitter of those muskets, the last wail of that
band-music!--"The Regiment was then marched to the Waisenhaus
(ORPHAN-HOUSE), where the common men were treated with bread and
beer; all the Officers dining at the Prince's Table. All the
Officers, except Leopold alone, who stole away out of the crowd;
sat himself upon the balustrade of the Saale Bridge, and wept into
the river." [LEBEN (12mo; not Rannft's, but Anonymous like his),
p. 234 n.]--Leopold is now on the edge of seventy; ready to think
all is finished with him. Perhaps not quite, my tough old friend;
recover yourself a little, and we shall see!
Old Leopold is hardly home at Dessau, when new Pandour Tempests,
tides of ravaging War, again come beating against the Giant
Mountains, pouring through all passes; from utmost Jablunka,
westward by Jagerndorf to Glatz, huge influx of wild riding hordes,
each with some support of Austrian grenadiers, cannoniers;
threatening to submerge Silesia. Precursors, Friedrich need not
doubt, of a strenuous regular attempt that way, Hungarian Majesty's
fixed intention, hope and determination is, To expel him
straightway from Silesia. Her Patent circulates, these three
months; calling on all men to take note of that fixed fact,
especially on all Silesian men to note it well, and shift their
allegiance accordingly. Silesian men, in great majority,--our
friend the Mayor of Landshut, for example?--are believed to have no
inclination towards change: and whoever has, had clearly better not
show any till he see! [In Ranke (iii. 234), there is vestige of
some intended "voluntary subscription by the common people of
Glatz," for Friedrich's behoof;--contrariwise, in Orlich (ii. 380,
"6th February, 1745," from the Dessau Archives), notice of one
individual, suspected of stirring for Austria, whom "you are to put
under lock and key;"--but he runs off, and has no successor, that I
hear of.]--
Friedrich's thousand-fold preliminary orderings, movements,
rearrangings in his Army matters, must not detain us here;--still
less his dealings with the Pandour element, which is troublesome,
rather than dangerous. Vigilance, wise swift determination, valor
drilled to its work, can deal with phenomena of that nature, though
never so furious and innumerable. Not a cheering service for
drilled valor, but a very needful one. Continual bickerings and
skirmishings fell out, sometimes rising to sharp fight on the small
scale:--Austrian grenadiers with cannon are on that Height to left,
and also on this to right, meaning to cut off our march;
the difficult landscape furnished out, far and wide, with Pandour
companies in position: you must clash in, my Burschen; seize me
that cannon-battery yonder; master such and such a post,--there is
the heart of all that network of armed doggery; slit asunder that,
the network wholly will tumble over the Hills again. Which is
always done, on the part of the Prussian Burschen; though sometimes
not, without difficulty.--His Majesty is forming Magazines at
Neisse, Brieg, and the principal Fortresses in those parts;
driving on all manner of preparations at the rapidest rate of
speed, and looking with his own eyes into everything. The regiments
are about what we may call complete, arithmetically and otherwise;
the cavalry show good perfection in their new mode of manoeuvring;
--it is to be hoped the Fighting Apparatus generally will give fair
account of itself when the time comes. Our one anchor of hope, as
now more and more appears.
On the Pandour element he first tried (under General Hautcharmoi,
with Winterfeld as chief active hand) a direct outburst or two,
with a view to slash them home at once. But findiug that it was of
no use, as they always reappeared in new multitudes, he renounced
that; took to calling in his remoter outposts; and, except where
Magazines or the like remained to be cared for, let the Pandours
baffle about, checked only by the fortified Towns, and more and
more submerge the Hill Country. Prince Karl, to be expected in the
form of lion, mysteriously uncertain on which side coming to invade
us,--he, and not the innumerable weasel kind, is our important
matter! By the end of April (news of the PEACE OF FUSSEN coming
withal), Friedrich had quitted Neisse; lay cantoned, in Neisse
Valley (between Frankenstein and Patschkau, "able to assemble in
forty-eight hours"); studying, with his whole strength, to be ready
for the mysterious Prince Karl, on whatever side he might arrive;
--and disregarding the Pandours in comparison.
The points of inrush, the tideways of these Pandour Deluges seem to
be mainly three. Direct through the Jablunka, upon Ratibor Country,
is the first and chief; less direct (partly supplied by REFLUENCES
from Ratibor, when Ratibor is found not to answer), a second
disembogues by Jagerndorf; a third, the westernmost, by Landshut.
Three main ingresses: at each of which there fall out little
Fights; which are still celebrated in the Prussian Books, and
indeed well deserve reading by soldiers that would know their
trade. In the Ratibor parts, the invasive leader is a General
Karoly, with 12,000 under him, who are the wildest horde of all:
"Karoly lodges in a wood: for himself there is a tent;
his companions sleep under trees, or under the open sky, by the
edge of morasses." [Ranke, iii. 244.] It was against this Karoly
and his horde that Hautcharmoi's little expedition, or express
attacking party to drive them home again, was shot out (8th-2lst
April). Which did its work very prettily; Winterfeld, chief hand in
it, crowning the matter by a "Fight of Wurbitz," [Orlich, ii. 136
(21st April).]--where Winterfeld, cutting the taproot, in his usual
electric way, tumbles Karoly quite INTO the morasses, and clears
the country of him for a time. For a time; though for a time only;
--Karoly or others returning in a week or two, to a still higher
extent of thousands; mischievous as ever in those Ratibor-Namslau
countries. Upon which, Friedrich, finding this an endless business,
and nothing like the most important, gives it up for the present;
calls in his remoter detachments; has his Magazines carted home to
the Fortress Towns,--Karoly trying, once or so, to hinder in that
operation, but only again getting his crown broken. ["Fight of
Mocker," May 4th (Orlich, ii. 141).] Or if carting be too
difficult, still do not waste your Magazine:--Margraf Karl, for
instance, is ordered to Jagerndorf with his Detachment, "to eat the
Magazine;" hungry Pandours looking on, till he finish. On which
occasion a renowned little Fight took place (Fight of Neustadt, or
of Jagerndorf-Neustadt), as shall be mentioned farther on.
So that, for certain weeks to come, the Tolpatcheries had free
course, in those Frontier parts; and were left to rove about, under
check only of the Garrison Towns; Friedrich being obliged to look
elsewhere after higher perils, which were now coming in view.
In which favorable circumstances, Karoly and Consorts did, at last,
make one stroke in those Ratibor countries; that of Kosel, which
was greatly consolatory. [26th May, 1743 (Orlich, ii. 156-158).]
"By treachery of an Ensign who had deserted to them [provoked by
rigor of discipline, or some intolerable thing], they glided
stealthily, one night, across the ditches, into Kosel" (a half-
fortified place, Prussian works only half finished): which, being
the Key of the Oder in those parts, they reckoned a glorious
conquest; of good omen and worthy of TE-DEUMS at Vienna. And they
did eagerly, without the least molestation, labor to complete the
Prussian works at Kosel: "One garrison already ours!"--which was
not had from them without battering (and I believe, burning), when
General von Nassau came to inquire after it; in Autumn next.
Friedrich had always hoped that the Saxons, who are not yet in
declared War with him, though bound by Treaty to assist the Queen
of Hungary under certain conditions, would not venture on actual
Invasion of his Territories; but in this, as readers anticipate,
Friedrich finds himself mistaken. Weissenfels is hastening from the
Leitmeritz northwestern quarter, where he has wintered, to join
Prince Karl, who is gathering himself from Olmutz and his
southeastern home region; their full intention is to invade Silesia
together, and they hope now at length to make an end of Friedrich
and it. These Pandour hordes, supported by the necessary grenadiers
and cannoniers, are sent as vanguard; these cannot themselves beat
him; but they may induce him (which they do not) to divide his
Force; they may, in part, burn him away as by slow fire, after
which he will be the easier to beat. Instead of which, Friedrich,
leaving the Pandours to their luck, lies concentrated in Neisse
Valley; watching, with all his faculties, Prince Karl's own advent
(coming on like Fate, indubitable, yet involved in mysteries
hitherto); and is perilously sensible that only in giving that a
good reception is there any hope left him.
Prince Karl "who arrived in Olmutz April 30th," commands in chief
again,--saddened, poor man, by the loss of his young Wife, in
December last; willing to still his grief in action for the cause
SHE loved;--but old Traun is not with him this year: which is a
still more material circumstance. Traun is to go this year, under
cloak not of Prince Karl, but of Grand-Duke Franz, to clear those
Frankfurt Countries for the KAISERWAHL and him. Prince Conti lies
there, with his famous "Middle-Rhine Army" (D'Ahremberg, from the
western parts, not nearly so diligent upon him as one could wish);
and must, at all rates, be cleared away. Traun, taking command of
Bathyani's Army (now that it has finished the Bavarian job), is
preparing to push down upon Conti, while Bathyani (who is to
supersede the laggard D'Ahremberg) shall push vigorously up;--and
before summer is over, we shall hear of Traun again, and Conti will
have heard!--
Friedrich's indignation, on learning that the Saxons were actually
on march, and gradually that they intended to invade him, was
great; and the whole matter is portentously enigmatic to him, as he
lies vigilant in Neisse Valley, waiting on the When and the How.
Indignation;--and yet there is need of caution withal. To be ready
for events, the Old Dessauer has, as one sure measure, been
requested to take charge, once more, of a "Camp of Observation" on
the Saxon Frontier (as of old, in 1741); and has given his consent:
["April 25th" consents (Orlich, ii. 130).] "Camp of Magdeburg,"
"Camp of Dieskau;" for it had various names and figures; checkings
of your hand, then layings of it on, heavier, lighter and again
heavier, according to one's various READINGS of the Saxon Mystery;
and we shall hear enough about it, intermittently, till December
coming: when it ended in a way we shall not forget!--On which take
this Note:--
"The Camp of Observation was to have begun May 1st; did begin
somewhat later, 'near Magdeburg,' not too close on the Frontier,
nor in too alarming strength; was reinforced to about 30,000;
in which state [middle of August] it stept forward to Wieskau, then
to Dieskau, close on the Saxon Border; and became,--with a Saxon
Camp lying close opposite, and War formally threatened, or almost
declared, on Saxony by Friedrich,--an alarmingly serious matter.
Friedrich, however, again checked his hand; and did not consummate
till November-December. But did then consummate; greatly against
his will; and in a way flamingly visible to all men!"
[Orlich, ii. 130, 209, 210:
Friedrich's own incidental utterances (what more we have of
Fractions from the Podewils Letters), in such portentous aspect of
affairs, may now be worth giving. It is not now to Jordan that he
writes, gayly unbosoming himself, as in the First War,--poor Jordan
lies languishing, these many months; consumptive, too evidently
dying:--Not to Jordan, this time; nor is the theme "GLOIRE" now,
but a far different!
FRIEDRICH TO PODEWILS (as before, April-May, 1745).
April 20th or so, Orders are come to Berlin (orders, to Podewils's
horror at such a thought), Whitherward, should Berlin be assaulted,
the Official Boards, the Preciosities and household gods are to
betake themselves:--to Magdeburg, all these, which is an
impregnable place; to Stettin, the Two Queens and Royal Family, if
they like it better. Podewils in horror, "hair standing on end,"
writes thereupon to Eichel, That he hopes the management, "in a
certain contingency," will be given to Minister Boden; he Podewils,
with his hair in that posture, being quite unequal to it.
Friedrich answers:--
"APRIL 26th. ... 'I can understand how you are getting uneasy, you
Berliners. I have the most to lose of you all; but I am quiet, and
prepared for events. If the Saxons take part,' as they surely will,
'in the Invasion of Silesia, and we beat them, I am determined to
plunge into Saxony. For great maladies, there need great remedies.
Either I will maintain my all, or else lose my all. [Hear it,
friend; and understand it,--with hair lying flat!] It is true, the
disaffection of the Russian Court, on such trifling grounds, was
not to be expected; and great misfortune can befall us.
Well; a year or two sooner, a year or two later,--it is not worth
one's while to bother about the very worst. If things take the
better turn, our condition will be surer and firmer than it was
before. If we have nothing to reproach ourselves with, neither need
we fret and plague ourselves about bad events, which can happen to
any man.'--'I am causing despatch a secret Order for Boden [on YOU
know what], which you will not deliver him till I give sign.'"--
On hearing of the Peace of Fussen, perhaps a day or so later,
Friedrich again writes:--
"APRIL [no distinct date; Neisse still? QUITS Neisse, April 28th].
... Peace of Fussen, Bavaria turned against me? 'I can say nothing
to it,--except, There has come what had to come. To me remains only
to possess myself in patience. If all alliances, resources, and
negotiations fail, and all conjunctures go against me, I prefer to
perish with honor, rather than lead an inglorious life deprived of
all dignity. My ambition whispers me that I have done more than
another to the building up of my House, and have played a
distinguished part among the crowned heads of Europe. To maintain
myself there, has become as it were a personal duty; which I will
fulfil at the expense of my happiness and my life. I have no choice
left: I will maintain my power, or it may go to ruin, and the
Prussian name be buried under it. If the enemy attempt anything
upon us, we will either beat him, or we will all be hewed to
pieces, for the sake of our Country, and the renown of Brandenburg.
No other counsel can I listen to.'"
SAME LETTER, OR ANOTHER? (Herr Ranke having his caprices!) ...
"You are a good man, my Podewils, and do what can be expected of
you" (Podewils has been apologizing for his terrors; and referring
hopefully "to Providence"): "Perform faithfully the given work on
your side, as I on mine; for the rest, let what you call
'Providence' decide as it likes [UNE PROVIDENCE AVEUGLE? Ranke, who
alone knows, gives "BLINDE VORSEHUNG." What an utterance, on the
part of this little Titan! Consider it as exceptional with him,
unusual, accidental to the hard moment, and perhaps not so impious
as it looks!]--Neither our prudence nor our courage shall be liable
to blame; but only circumstances that would not favor us. ...
"I prepare myself for every event. Fortune may be kind or be
unkind, it shall neither dishearten me nor uplift me. If I am to
perish, let it be with honor, and sword in hand. What the issue is
to be-- Well, what pleases Heaven, or the Other Party (J'AI JETE LE
BONNET PAR DESSUS LES MOULINS)! Adieu, my dear Podewils; become as
good a philosopher as you are a politician; and learn from a man
who does not go to Elsner's Preaching [fashionable at the time],
that one must oppose to ill fortune a brow of iron; and, during
this life, renounce all happiness, all acquisitions, possessions
and lying shows, none of which will follow us beyond the grave."
[Ranke, iii. pp. 238-241.]
"By what points the Austrian-Saxon Armament will come through upon
us? Together will it be, or separately? Saxons from the Lausitz,
Austrians from Bohmen, enclosing us between two fires?"--were
enigmatic questions with Friedrich; and the Saxons especially are
an enigma. But that come they will, that these Pandours are their
preliminary veiling-apparatus as usual, is evident to him; and that
he must not spend himself upon Pandours; but coalesce, and lie
ready for the main wrestle. So that from April 28th, as above
noticed, Friedrich has gone into cantonments, some way up the
Neisse Valley, westward of Neisse Town; and is calling in his
outposts, his detachments; emptying his Frontier Magazines;--
abandoning his Upper-Silesian Frontier more and more, and in the
end altogether, to the Pandour hordes; a small matter they,
compared to the grand Invasion which is coming on. Here, with
shiftings up the Neisse Valley, he lies till the end of May;
watching Argus-like, and scanning with every faculty the Austrian-
Saxon motions and intentions, until at length they become clear to
him, and we shall see how he deals with them.
His own lodging, or head-quarter, most of this time (4th May-27th
May), is in the pleasant Abbey of Camenz (mythic scene of that
BAUMGARTEN-SKIRMISH business, in the First Silesian War). He has
excellent Tobias Stusche for company in leisure hours; and the
outlook of bright Spring all round him, flowering into gorgeous
Summer, as he hurries about on his many occasions, not of an
idyllic nature. [Orlich, ii. 139; Ranke, iii. 242-249.] But his
Army is getting into excellent completeness of number, health,
equipment, and altogether such a spirit as he could wish. May 22d,
here is another snatch from some Note to Podewils, from this balmy
Locality, potential with such explosions of another kind.
CAMENZ, MAY 22d. ... "The Enemies are making movements; but nothing
like enough as yet for our guessing their designs. Till we see,
therefore, the thunder lies quiet in us (LA FOUDRE REPOSE EN MES
MAINS). Ah, could we but have a Day like that May Eleventh!"
[Ranke, iii. 248 n.]
What "that May Eleventh" is or was? Readers are curious to know;
especially English readers, who guess FONTENOY. And Historic Art,
if she were strict, would decline to inform them at any length;
for really the thing is no better than a "Victory on the Scamander,
and a Siege of Pekin" (as a certain observer did afterwards define
it), in reference to the matter now on hand! Well, Pharsalia,
Arbela, the Scamander, Armageddon, and so many Battles and
Victories being luminous, by study, to cultivated Englishmen, and
one's own Fontenoy such a mystery and riddle,--Art, after
consideration, reluctantly consents to be indulgent; will produce
from her Paper Imbroglios a slight Piece on the subject, and print
instead of burning.
Chapter VIII.
THE MARTIAL BOY AND HIS ENGLISH versus THE LAWS 0F NATURE.
"Glorious Campaign in the Netherlands, Siege of Tournay, final ruin
of the Dutch Barrier!" this is the French program for Season 1745,
--no Belleisle to contradict it; Belleisle secure at Windsor, who
might have leant more towards German enterprises. And to this his
Britannic Majesty (small gain to him from that adroitness in the
Harz, last winter!) has to make front. And is strenuously doing so,
by all methods; especially by heroic expenditure of money, and
ditto exposure of his Martial Boy. Poor old Wade, last year,--
perhaps Wade did suffer, as he alleged, from "want of sufficient
authority in that mixed Army"? Well, here is a Prince of the Blood,
Royal Highness of Cumberland, to command in chief. With a Konigseck
to dry-nurse him, may not Royal Highness, luck favoring, do very
well? Luck did not favor; Britannic Majesty, neither in the
Netherlands over seas, nor at home (strange new domestic wool, of a
tarry HIGHLAND nature, being thrown him to card, on the sudden!),
made a good Campaign, but a bad. And again a bad (1746) and again
(1747), ever again, till he pleased to cease altogether. Of which
distressing objects we propose that the following one glimpse be
our last.
BATTLE OF FONTENOY (11th May, 1745).
... "In the end of April, Marechal de Saxe, now become very famous
for his sieges in the Netherlands, opened trenches before Tournay;
King Louis, with his Dauphin, not to speak of mistresses, play-
actors and cookery apparatus (in wagons innumerable), hastens to be
there. A fighting Army, say of 70,000, besides the garrisons; and
great things, it is expected, will be done; Tournay, in spite of
strong works and Dutch garrison of 9,000, to be taken in the first
"Of the Siege, which was difficult and ardent, we will remember
nothing, except the mischance that befell a certain 'Marquis de
Talleyrand' and his men, in the trenches, one night. Night of the
8th-9th May, by carelessness of somebody, a spark got into the
Marquis's powder, two powder-barrels that there were; and, with
horrible crash, sent eighty men, Marquis Talleyrand and Engineer
Du Mazis among them, aloft into the other world; raining down their
limbs into the covered way, where the Dutch were very inhuman to
them, and provoked us to retaliate. [Espagnac, ii. 27.] Du Mazis I
do not know; but Marquis de Talleyrand turns out, on study of the
French Peerages, to be Uncle of a lame little Boy, who became Right
Reverend Tallyrand under singular conditions, and has made the name
very current in after-times!--
"Hearing of this Siege, the Duke of Cumberland hastened over from
England, with intent to raise the same. Mustered his 'Allied Army'
(once called 'Pragmatic'),--self at the head of it; old Count
Konigseck, who was NOT burnt at Chotusitz, commanding the small
Austrian quota [Austrians mainly are gone laggarding with
D'Ahremberg up the Rhine]; and a Prince of Waldeck the Dutch,--on
the plain of Anderlecht near Brussels, May 4th; [Anonymous,
26.] and found all things tolerably complete. Upon which,
straightway, his Royal Highness, 60,000 strong let us say, set
forth; by slowish marches, and a route somewhat leftward of the
great Tournay Road [no place on it, except perhaps STEENKERKE, ever
heard of by an English reader]; and on Sunday, 9th May, [Espagnac,
ii. 27.] precisely on the morrow after poor Talleyrand had gone
aloft, reached certain final Villages: Vezon, Maubray, where he
encamps, Briffoeil to rear; Camp looking towards Tournay and the
setting sun,--with Fontenoy short way ahead, and Antoine to left of
it, and Barry with its Woods to right:--small peaceable Villages,
which become famous in the Newspapers shortly after. [Patch of Map
at p. 440.] Royal Highness, resting here at Vezon, is but some six
or seven miles from Tournay; in low undulating Country, woody here
and there, not without threads of running water, and with frequent
Villages and their adjuncts: the part of it now interesting to us
lies all between the Brussels-Tournay Road and the Scheld River,--
all in immediate front of his Royal Highness,--to southeastward
from beleaguered Tournay, where said Road and River intersect.
How shall he make some impression on the Siege of Tournay?
That is now the question; and his Royal Highness struggles to
manoeuvre accordingly.
Marechal de Saxe, whose habit is much that of vigilance,
forethought, sagacious precaution, singular in so dissolute a man,
has neglected nothing on this occasion. He knows every foot of the
ground, having sieged here, in his boyhood, once before. Leaving
the siege-trenches at Tournay, under charge of a ten or fifteen
thousand, he has taken camp here; still with superior force (56,000
as they count, Royal Highness being only 50,000 ranked), barring
Royal Highness's way. Tournay, or at least the Marechal's trenches
there, are on the right bank of the Scheld; which flows from
southeast, securing all on that hand. The broad Brussels Highway
comes in to him from the east;--north of that he has nothing to
fear, the ground being cut with bogs; no getting through upon him,
that way, to Tournay and what he calls the 'Under Scheld.'
The 'Upper Scheld' too, avail them nothing. There is only that
triangle to the southeast, between Road and River, where the Enemy
is now manoeuvring in front of him, from which damage can well
come; and he has done his best to be secure there. Four villages or
hamlets, close to the Scheld and onwards to the Great Road,--
Antoine, Fontenoy, Barry, Ramecroix, with their lanes and boscages,
--make a kind of circular base to his triangle; base of some six or
eight miles; with hollows in it, brooks, and northward a
considerable Wood [BOIS DE BARRY, enveloping Barry and Ramecroix,
which do not prove of much interest to us, though the BOIS does of
a good deal]. In and before each of those villages are posts and
defences; in Antoine and Fontenoy elaborate redoubts, batteries,
redans connecting: in the Wood (BOIS DE BARRY), an abattis, or wall
of felled trees, as well as cannon; and at the point of the Wood,
well within double range of Fontenoy, is a Redoubt, called of Eu
(REDOUTE D'EU, from the regiment occupying it), which will much
concern his Royal Highness and us. Saxe has a hundred pieces of
cannon [say the English, which is correct], consummately disposed
along this space; no ingress possible anywhere, except through the
cannon's throat; torrents of fire and cross-fire playing on you.
He is armed to the teeth, as they say; and has his 56,000 arranged
according to the best rules of tactics, behind this murderous line
of works. If his Royal Highness think of breaking in, he may count
on a very warm reception indeed.
"Saxe is only afraid his Royal Highness will not. Outside of these
lines, with a 50,000 dashing fiercely round us, under any kind of
leading; pouncing on our convoys; harassing and sieging US,--our
siege of Toumay were a sad outlook. And this is old Austrian
Konigseck's opinion, too; though, they say, Waldeck and the Dutch
(impetuous in theory at least) opined otherwise, and strengthened
Royal Highness's view. Two young men against one old: 'Be it so,
then!' His Royal Highness, resolute for getting in, manoeuvres and
investigates, all Monday 10th; his cannon is not to arrive
completely till night; otherwise he would be for breaking in at
once: a fearless young man, fearless as ever his poor Father was;
certainly a man SANS PEUY, this one too; whether of much AVIS, we
shall see anon.
"Tuesday morning early, 11th May, 1745, cannon being up, and
dispositions made, his Royal Highness sallies out; sees his men
taking their ground: Dutch and Austrians to the left, chiefly
opposite Antoine; English, with some Hanoverians, in the centre and
to the right; infantry in front, facing Fontenoy, cavalry to rear
flanking the Wood of Barry,--Konigseck, Ligonier and others able,
assisting to plant them advantageously; cannon going, on both
sides, the while; radiant enthusiasm, SANS PEUR ET SANS AVIS,
looking from his Royal Highness's face. He has been on horseback
since two in the morning; cannon started thundering between five
and six,--has killed chivalrous Grammont over yonder (the Grammont
of Dettingen), almost at the first volley. And now about the time
when ploughers breakfast (eight A.M., no ploughing hereabouts
to-day!), begins the attack, simultaneously or in swift succession,
on the various batteries which it will be necessary to attack
and storm.
"The attacks took place; but none of them succeeded. Dutch and
Austrians, on the extreme left, were to have stormed Antoine by the
edge of the River; that was their main task; right skirt of them to
help US meanwhile with Fontenoy. And they advanced, accordingly;
but found the shot from Antoine too fierce: especially when a
subsidiary battery opened from across the River, and took them in
flank, the Dutch and Austrians felt astonished; and hastily drew
aside, under some sheltering mound or earthwork they had found for
themselves, or prudently thrown up the night before. There, under
their earthwork, stood the Dutch and Austrians; patiently expecting
a fitter time,--which indeed never occurred; for always, the
instant they drew out, the batteries from Antoine, and from across
the River, instantly opened upon them, and they had to draw in
again. So that they stood there, in a manner, all day; and so to
speak did nothing but patiently expect when it should be time to
run. For which they were loudly censured, and deservedly.
Antoine is and remains a total failure on the part of the Dutch
and Austrians.
"Royal Highness in person, with his English, was to attack
Fontenoy;--and is doing so, by battery and storm, at various
points; with emphasis, though without result. As preliminary, at an
early stage he had sent forward on the right, by the Wood of Barry,
a Brigadier Ingoldsby 'with Semple's Highlanders' and other force,
to silence 'that redoubt yonder at the point of the Wood,'--
redoubt, fort, or whatever it be (famous REDOUTE D'EU, as it turned
out!),--which guards Fontenoy to north, and will take us in flank,
nay in rear, as we storm the cannon of the Village.
Ingoldsby, speed imperative on him, pushed into the Wood; found
French light-troops ('God knows how many of them!') prowling about
there; found the Redoubt a terribly strong thing, with ditch,
drawbridge, what not; spent thirty or forty of his Highlanders, in
some frantic attempt on it by rule of thumb;--and found 'He would
need artillery' and other things. In short, Ingoldsby, hasten what
he might, could not perfect the preparations to his mind, had to
wait for this and for that; and did not storm the Redoubt d'Eu at
all; but hung fire, in an unaccountable manner. For which he had to
answer (to Court-Martial, still more to the Newspapers) afterwards;
and prove that it was misfortune merely, or misfortune and
stupidity combined. Too evident, the REDOUTE D'EU was not taken,
then or thenceforth; which might have proved the saving of the
whole affair, could Ingoldsby have managed it. Royal Highness
attacked Fontenoy, and re-attacked, furiously, thrice over; and had
to desist, and find Fontenoy impossible on those terms.
"Here is a piece of work. Repulsed at all those points; and on the
left and on the right, no spirit visible but what deserves repulse!
His Royal Highness blazes into resplendent PLATT-DEUTSCH rage, what
we may call spiritual white-heat, a man SANS PEUR at any rate, and
pretty much SANS AVIS; decides that he must and will be through
those lines, if it please God; that he will not be repulsed at his
part of the attack, not he for one; but will plunge through, by
what gap there is [900 yards Voltaire measures it
QUINZE, c. xv. "BATAILLE DE FONTENOI,"--elaborately exact on all
sucb points).]] between Fontenoy and that Redoubt with its laggard
Ingoldsby; and see what the French interior is like! He rallies
rapidly, rearranges; forms himself in thin column or columns [three
of them, I think,--which gradually got crushed into one, as they
advanced, under caunon-shot on both hands],--wheeling his left
round, to be rear, his right to be head of said column or columns.
In column, the cannon-shot from Fontenoy on the left, and Redoubt
d'Eu on our right, will tell less on us; and between these two
death-dealing localities, by the hollowest, least shelterless way
discoverable, we mean to penetrate: (Forward, my men, steady and
swift, till we are through the shot-range, and find men to grapple
with, instead of case-shot and projectile iron!' Marechal de Saxe
owned afterwards, 'He should have put an additional redoubt in that
place, but he did not think any Army would try such a thing'
(cannon batteries playing on each hand at 400 yards distance);--nor
has any Army since or before!
"These columns advance, however; through bushy hollows, water-
courses, through what defiles or hollowest grounds there are;
endure the cannon-shot, while they must; trailing their own heavy
guns by hand, and occasionally blasting out of them where the
ground favors;--and do, with indignant patience, wind themselves
through, pretty much beyond direct shot-range of either d'Eu or
Fontenoy. And have actually got into the interior mystery of the
French Line of Battle,--which is not a little astonished to see
them there! It is over a kind of blunt ridge, or rising ground,
that they are coming: on the crown of this rising ground, the
French regiment fronting it (GARDES FRANCAISES as it chanced to be)
notices, with surprise, field-cannon pointed the wrong way;
actual British artillery unaccountably showing itself there.
Regiment of GARDES rushes up to seize said field-pieces: but, on
the summit, perceives with amazement that it cannot; that a heavy
volley of musketry blazes into it (killing sixty men); that it will
have to rush back again, and report progress: Huge British force,
of unknown extent, is readjusting itself into column there, and
will be upon us on the instant. Here is news!
"News true enough. The head of the English column comes to sight,
over the rising ground, close by: their officers doff their hats,
politely saluting ours, who return the civility: was ever such
politeness seen before? It is a fact; and among the memorablest of
this Battle. Nay a certain English Officer of mark--Lord Charles
Hay the name of him, valued surely in the annals of the Hay and
Tweeddale House--steps forward from the ranks, as if wishing
something. Towards whom [says the accurate Espagnac] Marquis
d'Auteroche, grenadier-lieutenant, with air of polite
interrogation, not knowing what he meant, made a step or two:
'Monsieur,' said Lord Charles (LORD CHARLES-HAY), 'bid your people
fire (FAITES TIRER VOS GENS)!' 'NON, MONSIEUR, NOUS NE TIRONS
JAMAIS LES PREMIERS (We never fire first).' [Espagnac, ii. 60 (of
the ORIGINAL, Toulouse, 1789); ii. 48 of the German Translation
(Leipzig, 1774), our usual reference. Voltaire, endlessly informed
upon details this time, is equally express: "MILORD CHARLES HAY,
FRANCAISES, TIREZ!' To which Count d'Auteroche with a loud voice
answered" &c. (
Grand-Nephew, Paris, 1860), p. 151;--a poor, considerably noisy and
unclean little Book; which proves unexpectedly worth looking at, in
regard to some of those poor Battles and personages and
occurrences: the Bohemian Belleisle-Broglio part, to my regret, if
to no other person's, has been omitted, as extinct, or
undecipherable by the Grand-Nephew.] After YOU, Sirs! Is not this a
bit of modern chivalry? A supreme politeness in that sniffing
pococurante kind; probably the highest point (or lowest) it ever
went to. Which I have often thought of."
It is almost pity to disturb an elegant Historical Passage of this
kind, circulating round the world, in some glory, for a century
past: but there has a small irrefragable Document come to me, which
modifies it a good deal, and reduces matters to the business form.
Lord Charles Hay, "Lieutenant-Colonel," practical Head, "of the
First Regiment of Foot-guards," wrote, about three weeks after (or
dictated in sad spelling, not himself able to write for wounds), a
Letter to his Brother, of which here is an Excerpt at first hand,
with only the spelling altered: ... "It was our Regiment that
attacked the French Guards: and when we came within twenty or
thirty paces of them, I advanced before our Regiment; drank to them
[to the French, from the pocket-pistol one carries on such
occasions], and told them that we were the English Guards, and
hoped that they would stand till we came quite up to them, and not
swim the Scheld as they did the Mayn at Dettingen [shameful THIRD-
BRIDGE, not of wood, though carpeted with blue cloth there]!
Upon which I immediately turned about to our own Regiment;
speeched them, and made them huzza,"--I hope with a will.
"An Officer [d'Auteroche] came out of the ranks, and tried to make
his men huzza; however, there were not above three or four in their
Brigade that did." ["Ath, May ye 20th, o.s." (to John, Fourth
Marquis of Tweeddale, last "Secretary of State for Scotland," and a
man of figure in his day): Letter is at Yester House, East Lothian;
Excerpt PENES ME.] ...
Very poor counter-huzza. And not the least whisper of that sublime
"After you, Sirs!" but rather, in confused form, of quite the
reverse; Hay having been himself fired into ("fire had begun on my