_ BOOK X. AT REINSBERG. 1736-1740
CHAPTER IV. NEWS OF THE DAY
While these Mirow visits are about their best, and much else at Reinsberg is in comfortable progress, Friedrich's first year there just ending, there come accounts from England of quarrels broken out between the Britannic Majesty and his Prince of Wales. Discrepancies risen now to a height; and getting into the very Newspapers;--the Rising Sun too little under the control of the Setting, in that unquiet Country!
Prince Fred of England did not get to the Rhine Campaign, as we saw: he got some increase of Revenue, a Household of his own; and finally a Wife, as he had requested: a Sachsen-Gotha Princess; who, peerless Wilhelmma being unattainable, was welcome to Prince Fred. She is in the family-way, this summer 1737, a very young lady still; result thought to be due--When? Result being potential Heir to the British Nation, there ought to have been good calculation of the time when! But apparently nobody had well turned his attention that way. Or if Fred and Spouse had, as is presumable, Fred had given no notice to the Paternal Majesty,--"Let Paternal Majesty, always so cross to me, look out for himself in that matter." Certain it is, Fred and Spouse, in the beginning of August, 1737, are out at Hampton Court; potential Heir due before long, and no preparation made for it. August 11th in the evening, out at solitary Hampton Court; the poor young Mother's pains came on; no Chancellor there, no Archbishop to see the birth,--in fact, hardly the least medical help, and of political altogether none. Fred, in his flurry, or by forethought,--instead of dashing off expresses, at a gallop as of Epsom, to summon the necessary persons and appliances, yoked wheeled vehicles and rolled off to the old unprovided Palace of St. James's, London, with his poor Wife in person! Unwarned, unprovided; where nevertheless she was safely delivered that same night,--safely, as if by miracle. The crisis might have taken her on the very highway: never was such an imprudence. Owing, I will believe, to Fred's sudden flurry in the unprovided moment,--unprovided, by reason of prior desuetudes and discouragements to speech, on Papa's side. A shade of malice there might also be. Papa doubts not, it was malice aforethought all of it. "Had the potential Heir of the British Nation gone to wreck, or been born on the highway, from my quarrels with this bad Fred, what a scrape had I been in!" thinks Papa, and is in a towering permanence of wrath ever since; the very Newspapers and coffee-houses and populaces now all getting vocal with it.
Papa, as it turned out, never more saw the face of Fred. Judicious Mamma, Queen Caroline, could not help a visit, one visit to the poor young Mother, so soon as proper: coming out from the visit, Prince Fred obsequiously escorting her to her carriage, found a crowd of people and populace, in front of St. James's; and there knelt down on the street, in his fine silk breeches, careless of the mud, to "beg a Mother's blessing," and show what a son he was, he for his part, in this sad discrepancy that had risen! Mamma threw a silent glance on him, containing volumes of mixed tenor; drove off; and saw no more of Fred, she either. I fear, this kneeling in the mud tells against Prince Fred; but in truth I do not know, nor even much care. [Lord Hervey,
Memoirs of George the Second, ii. 362-370, 409.] What a noise in England about nothing at all!--What a noisy Country, your Prussian Majesty! Foolish "rising sun" not restrainable there by the setting or shining one; opposition parties bowling him about among the constellations, like a very mad object!--
But in a month or two, there comes worse news out of England; falling heavy on the heart of Prussian Majesty: news that Queen Caroline herself is dead. ["Sunday evening, 1st December (20th Nov.), 1737." Ib. pp. 510-539.] Died as she had lived, with much constancy of mind, with a graceful modest courage and endurance; sinking quietly under the load of private miseries long quietly kept hidden, but now become too heavy, and for which the appointed rest was now here. Little George blubbered a good deal; fidgeted and flustered a good deal: much put about, poor foolish little soul. The dying Caroline recommended HIM to Walpole; advised his Majesty to marry again.
"Non, j'aurai des maitresses (No, I'll have mistresses)!" sobbed his Majesty passionately.
"Ah, mon Dieu, cela n'empeche pas" (that does not an experience of the case). There is something stoically tragic in the history of Caroline with her flighty vaporing little King: seldom had foolish husband so wise a wife. "Dead!" thought Friedrich Wilhelm, looking back through the whirlwinds of life, into sunny young scenes far enough away: "Dead!"--Walpole continued to manage the little King; but not for long; England itself rising in objection. Jenkins's Ear, I understand, is lying in cotton; and there are mad inflammable strata in that Nation, capable of exploding at a great rate.
From the Eastern regions our Newspapers are very full of events: War with the Turk going on there; Russia and Austria both doing their best against the Turk. The Russians had hardly finished their Polish-Election fighting, when they decided to have a stroke at the Turk,--Turk always an especial eye-sorrow to them, since that "Treaty of the Pruth," and Czar Peter's sad rebuff there:--Munnich marched direct out of Poland through the Ukraine, with his eye on the Crimea and furious business in that quarter. This is his second Campaign there, this of 1737; and furious business has not failed. Last year he stormed the Lines of Perecop, tore open the Crimea; took Azoph, he or Lacy under him; took many things: this year he had laid his plans for Oczakow;--takes Oczakow,--fiery event, blazing in all the Newspapers, at Reinsberg and elsewhere. Concerning which will the reader accept this condensed testimony by an eye-witness?
"OCZAKOW, 13th JULY, 1737. Day before yesterday, Feldmarschall Munnich got to Oczakow, as he had planned,"--strong Turkish Town in the nook between the Black Sea and the estuary of the Dnieper;--"with intention to besiege it. Siege-train, stores of every sort, which he had set afloat upon the Dnieper in time enough, were to have been ready for him at Oczakow. But the flotilla had been detained by shallows, by waterfalls; not a boat was come, nor could anybody say when they were coming. Meanwhile nothing is to be had here; the very face of the earth the Turks have burnt: not a blade of grass for cavalry within eight miles, nor a stick of wood for engineers; not a hole for covert, and the ground so hard you cannot raise redoubts on it: Munnich perceives he must attempt, nevertheless.
"On his right, by the sea-shore, Munnich finds some remains of gardens, palisades; scrapes together some vestige of shelter there (five thousand, or even ten thousand pioneers working desperately all that first night, 11th July, with only half success); and on the morrow commences firing with what artillery he has. Much outfired by the Turks inside;--his enterprise as good as desperate, unless the Dnieper flotilla come soon. July 12th, all day the firing continues, and all night; Turks extremely furious: about an hour before daybreak, we notice burning in the interior, 'Some wooden house kindled by us, town got on fire yonder,'--and, praise to Heaven, they do not seem to succeed in quenching it again. Munnich turns out, in various divisions; intent on trying something, had he the least engineer furniture;--hopes desperately there may be promise for him in that internal burning still visible.
"In the centre of Munnich's line is one General Keith, a deliberate stalwart Scotch gentleman, whom we shall know better; Munnich himself is to the right: Could not one try it by scalade; keep the internal burning free to spread, at any rate? 'Advance within musket-shot, General Keith!' orders Munnich's Aide-de-Camp cantering up. 'I have been this good while within it,' answers Keith, pointing to his dead men. Aide-de-Camp canters up a second time: 'Advance within half musket-shot, General Keith, and quit any covert you have!' Keith does so; sends, with his respects to Feldmarschall Munnich, his remonstrance against such a waste of human life. Aide-de-Camp canters up a third time: 'Feldmarschall Munnich is for trying a scalade; hopes General Keith will do his best to co-operate!' 'Forward, then!' answers Keith; advances close to the glacis; finds a wet ditch twelve feet broad, and has not a stick of engineer furniture. Keith waits there two hours; his men, under fire all the while, trying this and that to get across; Munnich's scalade going off ineffectual in like manner:--till at length Keith's men, and all men, tire of such a business, and roll back in great confusion out of shot-range. Munnich gives himself up for lost. And indeed, says Mannstein, had the Turks sallied out in pursuit at that moment, they might have chased us back to Russia. But the Turks did not sally. And the internal conflagration is not quenched, far from it;--and about nine A.M. their Powder-Magazine, conflagration reaching it, roared aloft into the air, and killed seven thousand of them," [Mannstein, pp. 151-156.]--
So that Oczakow was taken, sure enough; terms, life only: and every remaining Turk packs off from it, some "twenty thousand inhabitants young and old" for one sad item.--A very blazing semi-absurd event, to be read of in Prussian military circles,--where General Keith will be better known one day.
Russian War with the Turk: that means withal, by old Treaties, aid of thirty thousand men from the Kaiser to Russia. Kaiser, so ruined lately, how can he send thirty thousand, and keep them recruited, in such distant expedition? Kaiser, much meditating, is advised it will be better to go frankly into the Turk on his own score, and try for slices of profit from him in this game. Kaiser declares war against the Turk; and what is still more interesting to Friedrich Wilhelm and the Berlin Circles, Seckendorf is named General of it. Feldzeugmeister now Feldmarschall Seckendorf, envy may say what it will, he has marched this season into the Lower-Donau Countries,--going to besiege Widdin, they say,--at the head of a big Army (on paper, almost a hundred and fifty thousand, light troops and heavy)--virtually Commander-in-Chief; though nominally our fine young friend Franz of Lorraine bears the title of Commander, whom Seckendorf is to dry-nurse in the way sometimes practised. Going to besiege Widdin, they say. So has the poor Kaiser been advised. His wise old Eugene is now gone; [Died 30th April, 1736.] I fear his advisers,--a youngish Feldzeugmeister, Prince of Hildburghausen, the chief favorite among them,--are none of the wisest. All Protestants, we observe, these favorite Hildburghausens, Schmettaus, Seckendorfs of his; and Vienna is an orthodox papal Court;--and there is a Hofkriegsrath (Supreme Council of War), which has ruined many a General, poking too meddlesomely into his affairs! On the whole, Seckendorf will have his difficulties. Here is a scene, on the Lower Donau, different enough from that at Oczakow, not far from contemporaneous with it. The Austrian Army is at Kolitz, a march or two beyond Belgrade:--
"KOLITZ, 2d JULY, 1737. This day, the Army not being on march, but allowed to rest itself, Grand Duke Franz went into the woods to hunt. Hunting up and down, he lost himself; did not return at evening; and, as the night closed in and no Generalissimo visible, the Generalissimo AD LATUS (such the title they had contrived for Seckendorf) was in much alarm. Generalissimo AD LATUS ordered out his whole force of drummers, trumpeters: To fling themselves, postwise, deeper and deeper into the woods all round; to drum there, and blow, in ever-widening circle, in prescribed notes, and with all energy, till the Grand Duke were found. Grand Duke being found, Seckendorf remonstrated, rebuked; a thought too earnestly, some say, his temper being flurried,"--voice snuffling somewhat in alt, with lisp to help:--"so that the Grand Duke took offence; flung off in a huff: and always looked askance on the Feldmarschall from that time;" [See
Lebensgeschichte des Grafen van Schmettau (by his Son: Berlin, 1806), i. 27.]--quitting him altogether before long; and marching with Khevenhuller, Wallis, Hildburghausen, or any of the subordinate Generals rather. Probably Widdin will not go the road of Oczakow, nor the Austrians prosper like the Russians, this summer.
Pollnitz, in Tobacco-Parliament, and in certain Berlin circles foolishly agape about this new Feldmarschall, maintains always, Seckendorf will come to nothing; which his Majesty zealously contradicts,--his Majesty, and some short-sighted private individuals still favorable to Seckendorf. [Pollnitz,
Memoiren, ii. 497-502.] Exactly one week after that singular drum-and-trumpet operation on Duke Franz, the Last of the Medici dies at Florence; [9th July (
Fastes de Louis XV., p. 304).] and Serene Franz, if he knew it, is Grand Duke of Tuscany, according to bargain: a matter important to himself chiefly, and to France, who, for Stanislaus and Lorraine's sake, has had to pay him some 200,000 pounds a year during the brief intermediate state. _