On the whole, it is evident the
difficulties
to a His-
tory of Friedrich are great and many: and the sad cer-
tainty is at last forced upon me that no good Book can,
at this time, especially in this country, be written on
the subject .
tory of Friedrich are great and many: and the sad cer-
tainty is at last forced upon me that no good Book can,
at this time, especially in this country, be written on
the subject .
Thomas Carlyle
The wages of lying, you
behold, are death. Lying means damnation in this
Universe; and Beelzebub, never so elaborately decked
in crowns and mitres, is not God! " This was a reve-
lation truly to be named of the Eternal, in our poor
Eighteenth Century; and has greatly altered the com-
plexion of said Century to the Historian ever since.
Whereby, in short, that Century is quite confiscate,
fallen bankrupt, given up to the auctioneers; -- Jew-
brokers sorting out of it at this moment, in a confused
distressing manner, what is still valuable or saleable.
And, in fact, it lies massed up in our minds as a dis-
astrous wrecked inanity, not useful to dwell upon; a
kind of dusky chaotic background, on which the figures
that had some veracity in them, -- a small company,
and ever growing smaller as our demands rise in strict-
ness, -- are delineated for us. -- "And yet it is the
Century of our own Grandfathers? " cries the reader.
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? CHaP. I. ] PROEM: ENGLISH PREPOSSESSIONS.
15
Yes, reader; truly. It is the ground out of which we
ourselves have sprung; whereon now we have our im-
mediate footing, and first of all strike down our roots
for nourishment: -- and, alas, in large sections of the
practical world, it (what we specially mean by it) still
continues flourishing all round us! To forget it quite
is not yet possible, nor would be profitable. What to
do with it, and its forgotten fooleries and 'Histories,'
worthy only of forgetting? -- Well: so much of it as
by nature adheres; what of it cannot be disengaged
from our Hero and his operations: approximately so
much, and no more! Let that be our bargain in re-
gard to it.
3. English Prepossessions.
With such wagonloads of Books and Printed Re-
cords as exist on the subject of Friedrich, it has al-
ways seemed possible, even for a stranger, to acquire
some real understanding of him; -- though practically,
here and now, I have to own, it proves difficult beyond
conception. Alas, the Books are not cosmic, they are
chaotic; and turn out unexpectedly void of instruction
to us. Small use in a talent of writing, if there be not
first of all the talent of discerning, of loyally recogni-
sing; of discriminating what is to be written! Books
born mostly of Chaos, -- which want all things, even
an Index, -- are a painful object. In sorrow and disgust,
you wander over those multitudinous Books; you dwell
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? 16
[book I.
BIETH AND PARENTAGE.
in endless regions of the superficial, of the nugatory:
to your bewildered sense it is as if no insight into the
real heart of Friedrich and his affairs were anywhere
to be had. Truth is, the Prussian Dryasdust, other-
wise an honest fellow, and not afraid of labour, excels
all other Dryasdusts yet known; I have often sorrow-
fully felt as if there were not in Nature, for darkness,
dreariness, immethodic platitude, anything comparable
to him. He writes big Books wanting in almost every
quality; and does not even give an Index to them. He
has made of Friedrich's History a wide-spread, in-
organic, trackless matter; dismal to your mind, and
barren as a continent of Brandenburg sand! -- Enough,
he could do no other: I have striven to forgive him.
Let the reader now forgive me; and think sometimes
what probably my raw-material was! --
Curious enough, Friedrich lived in the Writing Era,
-- morning of that strange Era which has grown to
such a noon for us; -- and his favourite society, all
his reign, was with the literary or writing sort. Nor
have they failed to write about him, they among the
others, about him and about him; and it is notable
how little real light, on any point of his existence or
environment, they have managed to communicate. Dim
indeed, for most part a mere epigrammatic sputter of
darkness visible, is the "picture" they have fashioned
to themselves of Friedrich and his Country and his
Century. Men not "of genius," apparently? Alas, no;
men fatally destitute of true eyesight, and of loyal
heart first of all. So far as I have noticed, there was
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? CHAP. I. ] PROEM: ENGLISH PREPOSSESSIONS. 17
not, with the single exception of Mirabeau for one
hour, any man to be called of genius, or with an
adequate power of human discernment, that ever per-
sonally looked on Friedrich. Had many such men
looked successively on his History and him, we had
not found it now in such a condition. Still altogether
chaotic as a History; fatally destitute even of the In-
dexes and mechanical appliances: Friedrich's self, and
his Country, and his Century, still undeciphered; very
dark phenomena, all three, to the intelligent part of
mankind.
In Prussia there has long been a certain stubborn
though planless diligence in digging for the outward
details of Friedrich's Life-History; though as to or-
ganising them, assorting them, or even putting labels
on them; much more as to the least interpretation or
human delineation of the man and his affairs, -- you
need not inquire in Prussia. In France, in England,
it is still worse. There an immense ignorance prevails
even as to the outward facts and phenomena of Frie-
drich's life; and instead of the Prussian no-interpreta-
tion, you find, in these vacant circumstances, a great
promptitude to interpret. Whereby judgments and pre-
possessions exist among us on that subject, especially
on Friedrich's character, which are very ignorant in-
deed.
To Englishmen, the sources of knowledge or con-
viction about Friedrich, I have observed, are mainly
these two. First, for his Public Character: it was an
all-important fact, not to it, but to this country in re- Carlyle, Frederic the Great. I. 2
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? 18
[book I.
BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.
gard to it, That George II. , seeing good to plunge
head foremost into German Politics, and to take Ma-
ria Theresa's side in the Austrian-Succession War of
1740-48, -- needed to begin by assuring his Parlia-
ment and Newspapers, profoundly dark on the matter,
that Friedrich was a robber and villain for taking the
other side. Which assurance, resting on what basis
we shall see by and by, George's Parliament and
Newspapers cheerfully accepted, nothing doubting. And
they have reechoed and reverberated it, they and the
rest of us, ever since, to all lengths, down to the pre-
sent day; as a fact quite agreed upon, and the pre-
liminary item in Friedrich's character. Robber and
villain to begin with; that was one settled point.
Afterwards when George and Friedrich came to be
allies, and the grand fightings of the Seven-Years War
took place, George's Parliament and Newspapers settled
a second point, in regard to Friedrich: "One of the
greatest soldiers ever born. " This second item the Bri-
tish Writer fully admits ever since: but he still adds to
it the quality of robber, in a loose way; --and images
to himself a royal Dick Turpin, of the kind known in
Review-Articles, and Disquisitions on Progress of the
Species, and labels it Frederick; very anxious to collect
new babblement of lying Anecdotes, false Criticisms,
hungry French Memoirs, which will confirm him in
that impossible idea. Had such proved, on survey, to
be the character of Friedrich, there is one British
Writer whose curiosity concerning him would pretty
soon have died away; nor could any amount of un-
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? CHAP. i. ] PKOEM: ENGLISH PREPOSSESSIONS. 19
wise desire to satisfy that feeling in fellow-creatures
less seriously disposed have sustained him alive, in
those baleful Historic Acherons and Stygian Fens, where
he has had to dig and to fish so long, far away from
the upper light! -- Let me request all readers to blow
that sorry chaff entirely out of their minds; and to be-
lieve nothing on the subject except what they get some
evidence for.
Second English source relates to the Private Cha-
racter. Friedrich's Biography or Private Character,
the English, like the French, have gathered chiefly
from a scandalous libel by Voltaire, which used to be
called Vie Prive'e du Roi de Prusse (Private Life of the
King of Prussia): * libel undoubtedly written by Vol-
taire, in a kind of fury; but not intended to be pub-
lished by him; nay burnt and annihilated, as he after-
wards imagined. No line of which, that cannot be
otherwise proved, has a right to be believed; and large
portions of which can be proved to be wild exaggera-
tions and perversions, or even downright lies, -- written
in a mood analogous to the Frenzy of John Dennis.
This serves for the Biography or Private Character of
Friedrich; imputing all crimes to him, natural and un-
natural; -- offering indeed, if combined with facts
* First printed, from a stolen copy, at Geneva, 1784; first proved to be
Voltaire's (which some of his admirers had striven to doubt), Paris, 1788;
stands avowed ever since, in all the Editions of his Works (ii. 9-118 of the
Edition by Baudouin Freres, 97 vols. , Paris, 1825-1834), nnder the title Mi-
moires pour tervir a la Vie de M. de Voltaire, -- with patches of repetition
in the thing called Commentaire Historique, which follows ibid. at great
length.
2*
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? 20
[book I.
BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.
otherwise known, or even if well considered by itself,
a thoroughly flimsy, incredible and impossible image.
Like that of some flaming Devil's Head, done in phos-
phorus on the walls of the black-hole, by an Artist
whom you had locked up there (not quite without
reason) overnight.
Poor Voltaire wrote that Vie Privee in a state little
inferior to the Frenzy of John Dennis, -- how brought
about we shall see by and by. And this is the Docu-
ment which English readers are surest to have read,
and tried to credit as far as possible. Our counsel is,
Out of window with it, he that would know Friedrich
of Prussia! Keep it awhile, he that would know
Francois Arouet de Voltaire, and a certain numerous
unfortunate class of mortals, whom Voltaire is some-
times capable of sinking to be spokesman for, in this
world! -- Alas, go where you will, especially in these
irreverent ages, the noteworthy Dead is sure to be
found lying under infinite dung, no end of calumnies
and stupidities accumulated upon him. For the class
we speak of, class of "flunkeys doing saturnalia below
stairs," is numerous, is innumerable; and can well re-
munerate a "vocal flunkey" that will serve their pur-
poses on such an occasion! --
Friedrich is by no means one of the perfect demi-
gods; and there are various things to be said against
him with good ground. To the last, a questionable
hero; with much in him which one could have wished
not there, and much wanting which one could have
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? CHAP. I. J PROEM: ENGLISH PREPOSSESSIONS.
21
wished. But there is one feature which strikes you at
an early period of the inquiry, That in his way he is
a Reality; that he always means what he speaks;
grounds his actions, too, on what he recognises for the
truth; and, in short, has nothing whatever of the Hy-
pocrite or Phantasm. Which some readers will admit
to be an extremely rare phenomenon.
We perceive that this man was far indeed from
trying to deal swindler-like with the facts around him;
that he honestly recognised said facts wherever they
disclosed themselves, and was very anxious also to
ascertain their existence where still hidden or dubious.
For he knew well, to a quite uncommon degree, and
with a merit all the higher as it was an unconscious
one, how entirely inexorable is the nature of facts,
whether recognised or not, ascertained or not; how vain
all cunning of diplomacy, management and sophistry,
to save any mortal who does not stand on the truth of
things, from sinking, in the longrun. Sinking to the
very Mudgods, with all his diplomacies, possessions,
achievements; and becoming an unnameable object,
hidden deep in the Cesspools of the Universe. This I
hope to make manifest; this which I long ago discerned
for myself, with pleasure, in the physiognomy of Fried-
rich and his life. Which indeed was the first real
sanction, and has all along been my inducement and
encouragement, to study his life and him. How this
man, officially a King withal, comported himself in the
Eighteenth Century, and managed not to be a Liar
and Charlatan as his Century was, deserves to be seen
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? 22
[BOOK I.
BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.
a little by men and kings, and may silently have
didactic meanings in it
.
He that was honest with his existence has always
meaning for us, be he king or peasant. He that merely
shammed and grimaced with it, however much, and
with whatever noise and trumpet-blowing, he may have
cooked and eaten in this world, cannot long have any.
Some men do cook enormously (let us call it cooking,
what a man does in obedience to his hunger merely, to
his desires and passions merely), -- roasting whole
continents and populations, in the flames of war or
other discord; -- witness the Napoleon above spoken
of. For the appetite of man in that respect is unli-
mited; in truth, infinite; and the smallest of us could
eat the entire Solar System, had we the chance given,
and then cry, like Alexander of Macedon, because we
had no more Solar Systems to cook and eat. It is not
the extent of the man's cookery that can much attach
me to him; but only the man himself, and what of
strength he had to wrestle with the mud-elements, and
what of victory he got for his own benefit and mine.
4. Encouragements, Discouragements.
French Revolution having spent itself, or sunk in
France and elsewhere to what we see, a certain curio-
sity reawakens as to what of great or manful we can
discover on the other side of that still troubled atmo-
sphere of the Present and immediate Past. Curiosity
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? chaP, i. ] feoem: encouragements, discouragements. 23
quickened, or which should be quickened, by the great
and all-absorbing question, How is that same exploded
Past ever to settle down again? Not lost forever, it
would appear: the New Era has not annihilated the old
eras; New Era could by no means manage that; --
never meant that, had it known its own mind (which
it did not): its meaning was and is, to get its own well
out of them; to readapt, in a purified shape, the old
eras, and appropriate whatever was true and not com-
bustible in them: that was the poor New Era's meaning,
in the frightful explosion it made of itself and its pos-
sessions, to begin with!
And the question of questions now is: What part
of that exploded Past, the ruins and dust of which still
darken all the air, will continually gravitate back to
us; be reshaped, transformed, readapted, that so, in
new figures, under new conditions, it may enrich and
nourish us again? What part of it, not being incom-
bustible, has actually gone to flame and gas in the
huge world-conflagration; and is now gaseous, mounting
aloft; and will know no beneficence of gravitation, but
mount, and roam upon the waste winds forever, -- Na-
ture so ordering it, in spite of any industry of Art?
This is the universal question of afflicted mankind at
present; and sure enough it will be long to settle.
On one point we can answer: Only what of the
Past was true will come back to us. That is the one
asbestos which survives all fire, and comes out purified;
that is still ours, blessed be Heaven, and only that.
By the law of Nature nothing more than that; and
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[book I.
BIKTH AND PARENTAGE.
also, by the same law, nothing less than that . Let
Art struggle how it may, for or against, -- as foolish
Art is seen extensively doing in our time, -- there is
where the limits of it will be. In which point of view, may not Friedrich, if he was a true man and King,
justly excite some curiosity again; nay some quite pe-
culiar curiosity, as the last Crowned Reality there was,
antecedent to that general outbreak and abolition? To
many it appears certain there are to be no Kings of
any sort, no Government more; less and less need of
them henceforth, New Era having come. Which is a
very wonderful notion; important if true; perhaps still
more important, just at present, if untrue! My hopes
of presenting, in this Last of the Kings, an exemplar
to my contemporaries, I confess, are not high.
On the whole, it is evident the difficulties to a His-
tory of Friedrich are great and many: and the sad cer-
tainty is at last forced upon me that no good Book can,
at this time, especially in this country, be written on
the subject . Wherefore let the reader put up with an
indifferent or bad one; he little knows how much worse
it could easily have been! -- Alas, the Ideal of History,
as my friend Sauerteig knows, is very high; and it is
not one serious man, but many successions of such, and
whole serious generations of men, that can ever again
build up History towards its old dignity. We must re-
nounce ideals. We must sadly take-up with the mourn-
fullest barren realities; -- dismal continents of Branden-
burg sand, as in this instance; mere tumbled mountains
of marine-stores, without so much as an Index to them!
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? ChAP. i. ] proem: encourAgements, discourAgements. 25
Has the reader heard of Sauerteig's last batch of
Springwurzel, a rather curious valedictory Piece? "All
"History is an imprisoned Epic, nay an imprisoned
"Psalm and Prophecy," says Sauerteig there. I wish,
from my soul, he had disimprisoned it in this instance!
But he only says, in magniloquent language, how grand it
would be if disimprisoned;-- and hurls out, accidentally
striking on this subject, the following rough sentences,
suggestive though unpractical, with which I shall con-
clude:
"Schiller, it appears, at one time thought of writing
"an Epic Poem upon Friedrich the Great, 'upon some
"action of Friedrich's,' Schiller says. Happily Schiller
"did not do it. By oversetting fact, disregarding reality,
"and tumbling time and space topsyturvy, Schiller with
"his fine gifts might no doubt have written a temporary
"'epic poem,' of the kind read and admired by many
"simple persons. But that would have helped little,
"and could not have lasted long. It is not the untrue
"imaginary Picture of a man and his life that I want
"from my Schiller, but the actual natural Likeness,
"true as the face itself, nay truer, in a sense. Which
"the Artist, if there is one, might help to give, and
"the Botcher (Pfuscher) never can! Alas, and the Artist
"does not even try it; leaves it altogether to the Botcher,
"being busy otherwise! --
"Men surely will at length discover again, emerging
"from these dismal bewilderments in which the modern
"Ages reel and stagger this long while, that to them
"also as to the most ancient men, all Pictures that
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[book T.
BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.
"cannot be credited are -- Pictures of an idle nature;
"to be mostly swept out of doors. Such veritably,
"were it never so forgotten, is the law! Mistakes
"enough, lies enough will insinuate themselves into our
"most earnest portrayings of the True: but that we
"should, deliberately and of forethought, rake together
"what we know to be not true, and introduce that in
"the hope of doing good with it? I tell you, such
"practice was unknown in the ancient earnest times;
"and ought again to become unknown except to the
"more foolish classes! " That is Sauerteig's strange
notion, not now of yesterday, as readers know: -- and
he goes then into "Homer's Iliad," the "Hebrew Bible,"
"terrible Hebrew veracity of every line of it;" discovers
an alarming "kinship of Fiction to lying;" and asks,
If anybody can compute "the damage we poor moderns
"have got from our practices of fiction in Literature it-
"self, not to speak of awfully higher provinces? Men
"will either see into all this by and by," continues he;
"or plunge head foremost, in neglect of all this, whither
"they little dream as yet! --
"But I think all real Poets, to this hour, are Psalmists
"and Hiadists after their sort; and have in them a divine
"impatience of lies, a divine incapacity of living among
"lies. Likewise, which is a corollary, that the highest
"Shakspeare producible is properly the fittest Historian
"producible; -- and that it is frightful to seethe Gelehrte
"Dummkopf (what we here may translate, Dryasdust)
"doing the function of History, and the Shakspeare
"and the Goethe neglecting it. 'Interpreting events;'
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? CHAP. I. ] PROEM: ENCOURAGEMENTS, DISCOURAGEMENTS. 27
"interpreting the universally visible, entirely indubitable
"Revelation of the Author of this Universe: how can
"Dryasdust interpret such things, the dark chaotic
"dullard, who knows the meaning of nothing cosmic or
"noble, nor ever will know? Poor wretch, one sees
"what kind of meaning he educes from Man's History,
"this long while past, and has got all the world to be-
"lieve of it along with him. Unhappy Dryasdust, thrice
"unhappy world that takes Dryasdust's reading of the
"ways of God! But what else was possible? They
"that could have taught better were engaged in fid-
dling; for which there are good wages going. And our
"damage therefrom, our damage, -- yes, if thou be
"still human and not cormorant, -- perhaps it will
"transcend all Californias, English National Debts, and
"show itself incomputable in continents of Bullion! --
"Believing that mankind are not doomed wholly to
"doglike annihilation, I believe that much of this will
"mend. I believe that the world will not always waste
"its inspired men in mere fiddling to it. That the man
"of rhythmic nature will feel more and more his voca-
"tion towards the Interpretation of Fact; since only in
"the vital centre of that, could we once get thither,
"lies all real melody; and that he will become, he,
"once again the Historian of Events, -- bewildered
"Dryasdust having at last the happiness to be his ser-
"vant, and to have some guidance from him. Which
"will be blessed indeed. For the present, Dryasdust
"strikes me like a hapless Nigger gone masterless:
"Nigger totally unfit for selfguidance; yet without
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? 28
[book i.
BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.
"master good or bad; and whose feats in that capacity
"no god or man can rejoice in.
"History, with faithful Genius at the top and faith-
"ful Industry at the bottom, will then be capable of
"being written. History will then actually be written,--
"the inspired gift of God employing itself to illuminate
"the dark ways of God. A thing thrice pressingly
"needful to be done! Whereby the modern Nations
"may again become a little less godless, and again
"have their 'epics' (of a different from the Schiller
"sort), and again have several things they are still
"more fatally in want of at present! " --
So that, it would seem, there will gradually among
mankind, if Friedrich last some centuries, be a real
Epic made of his History? That is to say (presumably),
it will become a perfected Melodious Truth, and duly
significant and duly beautiful bit of Belief, to mankind;
the essence of it fairly evolved from all the chaff, the
portrait of it actually given, and its real harmonies with
the laws of this Universe brought out, in bright and
dark, according to the God's Fact as it was; which
poor Dryasdust and the Newspapers never could get
sight of, but were always far from! --
Well, if so, -- and even if not quite so, -- it is a
comfort to reflect that every true worker (who has blown
away chaff, &c), were his contribution no bigger than
my own, may have brought the good result nearer by
a handbreadth or two. And so we will end these pre-
ludings, and proceed upon our Problem, courteous reader.
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? CIUP. II. ]
29
fkiedeich's birth.
CHAPTER H.
FRIEDRICn's BIRTH.
Fkeedrich op Brandenburg-Hohenzollern, who
came by course of natural succession to be Friedrich II.
of Prussia, and is known in these ages as Frederick
the Great, was born in the Palace of Berlin, about
noon, on the 24th of January 1712. A small infant,
but of great promise or possibility; and thrice and four
times welcome to all sovereign and other persons in
the Prussian Court, and Prussian realms, in those cold
winter days. His Father, they say, was like to have
stifled him with his caresses, so overjoyed was the
man; or at least to have scorched him in the blaze of
the fire; when happily some much suitabler female
nurse snatched this little creature from the rough
paternal paws, -- and saved it for the benefit of
Prussia and mankind. If Heaven will but please to
grant it length of life! For there have already been
two little Princekins, who are both dead; this Friedrich
is the fourth child; and only one little girl, wise
Wilhelmina, of almost too sharp wits, and not too
vivacious aspect, is otherwise yet here of royal pro-
geny. It is feared the Hohenzollern lineage, which has
flourished here with such beneficent effect, for three
centuries now, and been in truth the very making of
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? 30
[book L
BIBTH AND PARENTAGE.
the Prussian Nation, may be about to fail, or pass into
some side branch. Which change, or any change in
that respect, is questionable, and a thing desired by
nobody.
Five years ago, on the death of the first little
Prince, there had surmises risen, obscure rumours and
hints, that the Princess Royal, mother of the lost baby,
never would have healthy children, or even never have
a child more: upon which, as there was but one other
resource, -- a widowed Grandfather, namely, and ex-
cept the Prince Royal no son to him, -- said Grand-
father, still only about fifty, did take the necessary
steps: but they have been entirely unsuccessful; no
new son or child, only new affliction, new disaster has
resulted from that third marriage of his. And though
the Princess Royal has had another little Prince, that
too has died within the year; -- killed some say on
the other hand, by the noise of the cannon firing for
joy over it! * Yes; and the first baby Prince, these
same parties farther say, was crushed to death by the
weighty dress you put upon it at christening time,
especially by the little crown it wore, which had left
a visible black mark upon the poor soft infant's brow!
In short, it is a questionable case; undoubtedly a ques-
tionable outlook for Prussian mankind; and the ap-
pearance of this little Prince, a third trump-card in the
* Fb'rster: Friedrich Wilhelm I. , Kdnig (ion Preutsen (Potsdam, 1834),
i. 126 (who quotes Morgenstern, a contemporary reporter). But see also
Pienss: Friedrich der Grosse mit semen Verwandten und Freunden (Berlin,
1838), pp. 879-80.
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? chAP. n. ]
31
friedeich's birth.
Hohenzollern game, is an unusually interesting event
.
The joy over him, not in Berlin Palace only, but in
Berlin City, and over the Prussian Nation, was very
great and universal; -- still testified in manifold dull,
unreadable old pamphlets, records official and volunteer,
-- which were then all ablaze like the bonfires, and
are now fallen dark enough, and hardly credible even
to the fancy of this new Time.
The poor old Grandfather, Friedrich I. (the first
King of Prussia), -- for, as we intimate, he was still
alive, and not very old, though now infirm enough,
and laden beyond his strength with sad reminiscences,
disappointments and chagrins, -- had taken much to
Wilhelmina, as she tells us;* and would amuse himself
whole days with the pranks and prattle of the little
child. Good old man: he, we need not doubt, bright-
ened up into unusual vitality at sight of this invalu-
able little Brother of her's; through whom he can look
once more into the waste dim future with a flicker of
new hope. Poor old man: he got his own back half-
broken by a careless nurse letting him fall; and has
slightly stooped ever since, some fifty and odd years
now: much against his will; for he would fain have
been beautiful; and has struggled all his days, very
hard if not very wisely, to make his existence beauti-
ful, -- to make it magnificent at least, and regardless
of expense; -- and it threatens to come to little.
Courage, poor Grandfather: here is a new second edi-
* Memoires de Frederique Sophie Wilhelmine de Prusse, Margrave de
Bareith, Sceur de Frederic-le-Grand (London, 1812), J. 5.
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? 32
[book I.
BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.
tion of a Friedrich, the first having gone off with so
little effect: this one's back is still unbroken, his life's
seedfield not yet filled with tares and thorns: who
knows but Heaven will be kinder to this one? Heaven
was much kinder to this one. Him Heaven had kneaded
of more potent stuff: a mighty fellow this one, and a
strange; related not only to the Upholsteries and
Heralds' Colleges, but to the Sphereharmonies and the
divine and demonic Powers; of a swift far-darting
nature this one, like an Apollo clad in sun-beams and
in lightnings (after his sort); and with a back which
all the world could not succeed in breaking! -- Yes,
if, by most rare chance, this were indeed a new man
of genius, born into the purblind rotting Century, in
the acknowledged rank of a king there, -- man of
genius, that is to say, man of originality and veracity;
capable of seeing with his eyes, and incapable of
not believing what he sees; -- then truly! -- But as
yet none knows; the poor old Grandfather never knew.
Meanwhile they christened the little fellow, with
immense magnificence and pomp of apparatus; Kaiser
Karl, and the very Swiss Republic being there (by
proxy), among the gossips; and spared no cannon-vol-
lyings, kettle-drummings, metal crown, heavy cloth-of-
silver, for the poor soft creature's sake; all of which,
however, he survived. The name given him was Karl
Friedrich (Charles Frederick); Karl perhaps, and per-
haps also not, in delicate compliment to the chief gos-
sip, the above-mentioned Kaiser, Karl or Charles VI. ?
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? CRAP. n. J
33
friedrich's BUtTH.
At any rate, the Karl, gradually or from the first,
dropped altogether out of practice, and went as
nothing: he himself, or those about him, never used it;
nor, except in some dim English pamphlet here and
there, have I met with any trace of it. Friedrich (Rich-
in-Peace, a name of old prevalence in the Hohenzol-
lern kindred), which he himself wrote Frederic in his
French way, and at last even Federio (with a very
singular sense of euphony), is throughout, and was, his
sole designation.
Sunday, 31st January 1712, age then precisely one
week: then, and in this manner, was he ushered on
the scene, and labelled among his fellow-creatures.
We must now look round a little; and see, if possible
by any method or exertion, what kind of scene it was.
Carlyle, Frederic the Great. I.
3
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? 34
[book I.
BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.
CHAPTEE m.
FATHER AND MOTHER: THE HANOVERIAN CONNEXION.
Friedrich Wilhelm , Crown-Prince of Prussia, son
of Friedrich I. , and Father of this little infant who will
one day be Friedrich II. , did himself make some noise
in the world as second King of Prussia; notable not as
Friedrich's father alone; and will much concern us
during the rest of his life. He is, at this date, in his
twenty-fourth year: a thick-set, sturdy, florid, brisk
young fellow; with a jovial laugh in him, yet of solid
grave ways, occasionally somewhat volcanic; much given
to soldiering, and out-of-door exercises, having little
else to do at present. He has been manager, or, as
it were, Vice-King, on an occasional absence of his
Father; he knows practically what the state of business
is; and greatly disapproves of it, as is thought . But
being bound to silence on that head, he keeps silence,
and meddles with nothing political. He addicts him-
self chiefly to mustering, drilling and practical military
duties, while here at Berlin; runs out, often enough,
wife and perhaps a comrade or two along with him,
to hunt, and take his ease, at Wusterhausen (some
fifteen miles* southwest of Berlin), where he has a re-
sidence amid the woody moorlands.
* English miles, -- as always unless the contrary be stated. The
German Meile la about five miles English; German Slutide about three.
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behold, are death. Lying means damnation in this
Universe; and Beelzebub, never so elaborately decked
in crowns and mitres, is not God! " This was a reve-
lation truly to be named of the Eternal, in our poor
Eighteenth Century; and has greatly altered the com-
plexion of said Century to the Historian ever since.
Whereby, in short, that Century is quite confiscate,
fallen bankrupt, given up to the auctioneers; -- Jew-
brokers sorting out of it at this moment, in a confused
distressing manner, what is still valuable or saleable.
And, in fact, it lies massed up in our minds as a dis-
astrous wrecked inanity, not useful to dwell upon; a
kind of dusky chaotic background, on which the figures
that had some veracity in them, -- a small company,
and ever growing smaller as our demands rise in strict-
ness, -- are delineated for us. -- "And yet it is the
Century of our own Grandfathers? " cries the reader.
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? CHaP. I. ] PROEM: ENGLISH PREPOSSESSIONS.
15
Yes, reader; truly. It is the ground out of which we
ourselves have sprung; whereon now we have our im-
mediate footing, and first of all strike down our roots
for nourishment: -- and, alas, in large sections of the
practical world, it (what we specially mean by it) still
continues flourishing all round us! To forget it quite
is not yet possible, nor would be profitable. What to
do with it, and its forgotten fooleries and 'Histories,'
worthy only of forgetting? -- Well: so much of it as
by nature adheres; what of it cannot be disengaged
from our Hero and his operations: approximately so
much, and no more! Let that be our bargain in re-
gard to it.
3. English Prepossessions.
With such wagonloads of Books and Printed Re-
cords as exist on the subject of Friedrich, it has al-
ways seemed possible, even for a stranger, to acquire
some real understanding of him; -- though practically,
here and now, I have to own, it proves difficult beyond
conception. Alas, the Books are not cosmic, they are
chaotic; and turn out unexpectedly void of instruction
to us. Small use in a talent of writing, if there be not
first of all the talent of discerning, of loyally recogni-
sing; of discriminating what is to be written! Books
born mostly of Chaos, -- which want all things, even
an Index, -- are a painful object. In sorrow and disgust,
you wander over those multitudinous Books; you dwell
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? 16
[book I.
BIETH AND PARENTAGE.
in endless regions of the superficial, of the nugatory:
to your bewildered sense it is as if no insight into the
real heart of Friedrich and his affairs were anywhere
to be had. Truth is, the Prussian Dryasdust, other-
wise an honest fellow, and not afraid of labour, excels
all other Dryasdusts yet known; I have often sorrow-
fully felt as if there were not in Nature, for darkness,
dreariness, immethodic platitude, anything comparable
to him. He writes big Books wanting in almost every
quality; and does not even give an Index to them. He
has made of Friedrich's History a wide-spread, in-
organic, trackless matter; dismal to your mind, and
barren as a continent of Brandenburg sand! -- Enough,
he could do no other: I have striven to forgive him.
Let the reader now forgive me; and think sometimes
what probably my raw-material was! --
Curious enough, Friedrich lived in the Writing Era,
-- morning of that strange Era which has grown to
such a noon for us; -- and his favourite society, all
his reign, was with the literary or writing sort. Nor
have they failed to write about him, they among the
others, about him and about him; and it is notable
how little real light, on any point of his existence or
environment, they have managed to communicate. Dim
indeed, for most part a mere epigrammatic sputter of
darkness visible, is the "picture" they have fashioned
to themselves of Friedrich and his Country and his
Century. Men not "of genius," apparently? Alas, no;
men fatally destitute of true eyesight, and of loyal
heart first of all. So far as I have noticed, there was
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? CHAP. I. ] PROEM: ENGLISH PREPOSSESSIONS. 17
not, with the single exception of Mirabeau for one
hour, any man to be called of genius, or with an
adequate power of human discernment, that ever per-
sonally looked on Friedrich. Had many such men
looked successively on his History and him, we had
not found it now in such a condition. Still altogether
chaotic as a History; fatally destitute even of the In-
dexes and mechanical appliances: Friedrich's self, and
his Country, and his Century, still undeciphered; very
dark phenomena, all three, to the intelligent part of
mankind.
In Prussia there has long been a certain stubborn
though planless diligence in digging for the outward
details of Friedrich's Life-History; though as to or-
ganising them, assorting them, or even putting labels
on them; much more as to the least interpretation or
human delineation of the man and his affairs, -- you
need not inquire in Prussia. In France, in England,
it is still worse. There an immense ignorance prevails
even as to the outward facts and phenomena of Frie-
drich's life; and instead of the Prussian no-interpreta-
tion, you find, in these vacant circumstances, a great
promptitude to interpret. Whereby judgments and pre-
possessions exist among us on that subject, especially
on Friedrich's character, which are very ignorant in-
deed.
To Englishmen, the sources of knowledge or con-
viction about Friedrich, I have observed, are mainly
these two. First, for his Public Character: it was an
all-important fact, not to it, but to this country in re- Carlyle, Frederic the Great. I. 2
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? 18
[book I.
BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.
gard to it, That George II. , seeing good to plunge
head foremost into German Politics, and to take Ma-
ria Theresa's side in the Austrian-Succession War of
1740-48, -- needed to begin by assuring his Parlia-
ment and Newspapers, profoundly dark on the matter,
that Friedrich was a robber and villain for taking the
other side. Which assurance, resting on what basis
we shall see by and by, George's Parliament and
Newspapers cheerfully accepted, nothing doubting. And
they have reechoed and reverberated it, they and the
rest of us, ever since, to all lengths, down to the pre-
sent day; as a fact quite agreed upon, and the pre-
liminary item in Friedrich's character. Robber and
villain to begin with; that was one settled point.
Afterwards when George and Friedrich came to be
allies, and the grand fightings of the Seven-Years War
took place, George's Parliament and Newspapers settled
a second point, in regard to Friedrich: "One of the
greatest soldiers ever born. " This second item the Bri-
tish Writer fully admits ever since: but he still adds to
it the quality of robber, in a loose way; --and images
to himself a royal Dick Turpin, of the kind known in
Review-Articles, and Disquisitions on Progress of the
Species, and labels it Frederick; very anxious to collect
new babblement of lying Anecdotes, false Criticisms,
hungry French Memoirs, which will confirm him in
that impossible idea. Had such proved, on survey, to
be the character of Friedrich, there is one British
Writer whose curiosity concerning him would pretty
soon have died away; nor could any amount of un-
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? CHAP. i. ] PKOEM: ENGLISH PREPOSSESSIONS. 19
wise desire to satisfy that feeling in fellow-creatures
less seriously disposed have sustained him alive, in
those baleful Historic Acherons and Stygian Fens, where
he has had to dig and to fish so long, far away from
the upper light! -- Let me request all readers to blow
that sorry chaff entirely out of their minds; and to be-
lieve nothing on the subject except what they get some
evidence for.
Second English source relates to the Private Cha-
racter. Friedrich's Biography or Private Character,
the English, like the French, have gathered chiefly
from a scandalous libel by Voltaire, which used to be
called Vie Prive'e du Roi de Prusse (Private Life of the
King of Prussia): * libel undoubtedly written by Vol-
taire, in a kind of fury; but not intended to be pub-
lished by him; nay burnt and annihilated, as he after-
wards imagined. No line of which, that cannot be
otherwise proved, has a right to be believed; and large
portions of which can be proved to be wild exaggera-
tions and perversions, or even downright lies, -- written
in a mood analogous to the Frenzy of John Dennis.
This serves for the Biography or Private Character of
Friedrich; imputing all crimes to him, natural and un-
natural; -- offering indeed, if combined with facts
* First printed, from a stolen copy, at Geneva, 1784; first proved to be
Voltaire's (which some of his admirers had striven to doubt), Paris, 1788;
stands avowed ever since, in all the Editions of his Works (ii. 9-118 of the
Edition by Baudouin Freres, 97 vols. , Paris, 1825-1834), nnder the title Mi-
moires pour tervir a la Vie de M. de Voltaire, -- with patches of repetition
in the thing called Commentaire Historique, which follows ibid. at great
length.
2*
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[book I.
BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.
otherwise known, or even if well considered by itself,
a thoroughly flimsy, incredible and impossible image.
Like that of some flaming Devil's Head, done in phos-
phorus on the walls of the black-hole, by an Artist
whom you had locked up there (not quite without
reason) overnight.
Poor Voltaire wrote that Vie Privee in a state little
inferior to the Frenzy of John Dennis, -- how brought
about we shall see by and by. And this is the Docu-
ment which English readers are surest to have read,
and tried to credit as far as possible. Our counsel is,
Out of window with it, he that would know Friedrich
of Prussia! Keep it awhile, he that would know
Francois Arouet de Voltaire, and a certain numerous
unfortunate class of mortals, whom Voltaire is some-
times capable of sinking to be spokesman for, in this
world! -- Alas, go where you will, especially in these
irreverent ages, the noteworthy Dead is sure to be
found lying under infinite dung, no end of calumnies
and stupidities accumulated upon him. For the class
we speak of, class of "flunkeys doing saturnalia below
stairs," is numerous, is innumerable; and can well re-
munerate a "vocal flunkey" that will serve their pur-
poses on such an occasion! --
Friedrich is by no means one of the perfect demi-
gods; and there are various things to be said against
him with good ground. To the last, a questionable
hero; with much in him which one could have wished
not there, and much wanting which one could have
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? CHAP. I. J PROEM: ENGLISH PREPOSSESSIONS.
21
wished. But there is one feature which strikes you at
an early period of the inquiry, That in his way he is
a Reality; that he always means what he speaks;
grounds his actions, too, on what he recognises for the
truth; and, in short, has nothing whatever of the Hy-
pocrite or Phantasm. Which some readers will admit
to be an extremely rare phenomenon.
We perceive that this man was far indeed from
trying to deal swindler-like with the facts around him;
that he honestly recognised said facts wherever they
disclosed themselves, and was very anxious also to
ascertain their existence where still hidden or dubious.
For he knew well, to a quite uncommon degree, and
with a merit all the higher as it was an unconscious
one, how entirely inexorable is the nature of facts,
whether recognised or not, ascertained or not; how vain
all cunning of diplomacy, management and sophistry,
to save any mortal who does not stand on the truth of
things, from sinking, in the longrun. Sinking to the
very Mudgods, with all his diplomacies, possessions,
achievements; and becoming an unnameable object,
hidden deep in the Cesspools of the Universe. This I
hope to make manifest; this which I long ago discerned
for myself, with pleasure, in the physiognomy of Fried-
rich and his life. Which indeed was the first real
sanction, and has all along been my inducement and
encouragement, to study his life and him. How this
man, officially a King withal, comported himself in the
Eighteenth Century, and managed not to be a Liar
and Charlatan as his Century was, deserves to be seen
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[BOOK I.
BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.
a little by men and kings, and may silently have
didactic meanings in it
.
He that was honest with his existence has always
meaning for us, be he king or peasant. He that merely
shammed and grimaced with it, however much, and
with whatever noise and trumpet-blowing, he may have
cooked and eaten in this world, cannot long have any.
Some men do cook enormously (let us call it cooking,
what a man does in obedience to his hunger merely, to
his desires and passions merely), -- roasting whole
continents and populations, in the flames of war or
other discord; -- witness the Napoleon above spoken
of. For the appetite of man in that respect is unli-
mited; in truth, infinite; and the smallest of us could
eat the entire Solar System, had we the chance given,
and then cry, like Alexander of Macedon, because we
had no more Solar Systems to cook and eat. It is not
the extent of the man's cookery that can much attach
me to him; but only the man himself, and what of
strength he had to wrestle with the mud-elements, and
what of victory he got for his own benefit and mine.
4. Encouragements, Discouragements.
French Revolution having spent itself, or sunk in
France and elsewhere to what we see, a certain curio-
sity reawakens as to what of great or manful we can
discover on the other side of that still troubled atmo-
sphere of the Present and immediate Past. Curiosity
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? chaP, i. ] feoem: encouragements, discouragements. 23
quickened, or which should be quickened, by the great
and all-absorbing question, How is that same exploded
Past ever to settle down again? Not lost forever, it
would appear: the New Era has not annihilated the old
eras; New Era could by no means manage that; --
never meant that, had it known its own mind (which
it did not): its meaning was and is, to get its own well
out of them; to readapt, in a purified shape, the old
eras, and appropriate whatever was true and not com-
bustible in them: that was the poor New Era's meaning,
in the frightful explosion it made of itself and its pos-
sessions, to begin with!
And the question of questions now is: What part
of that exploded Past, the ruins and dust of which still
darken all the air, will continually gravitate back to
us; be reshaped, transformed, readapted, that so, in
new figures, under new conditions, it may enrich and
nourish us again? What part of it, not being incom-
bustible, has actually gone to flame and gas in the
huge world-conflagration; and is now gaseous, mounting
aloft; and will know no beneficence of gravitation, but
mount, and roam upon the waste winds forever, -- Na-
ture so ordering it, in spite of any industry of Art?
This is the universal question of afflicted mankind at
present; and sure enough it will be long to settle.
On one point we can answer: Only what of the
Past was true will come back to us. That is the one
asbestos which survives all fire, and comes out purified;
that is still ours, blessed be Heaven, and only that.
By the law of Nature nothing more than that; and
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[book I.
BIKTH AND PARENTAGE.
also, by the same law, nothing less than that . Let
Art struggle how it may, for or against, -- as foolish
Art is seen extensively doing in our time, -- there is
where the limits of it will be. In which point of view, may not Friedrich, if he was a true man and King,
justly excite some curiosity again; nay some quite pe-
culiar curiosity, as the last Crowned Reality there was,
antecedent to that general outbreak and abolition? To
many it appears certain there are to be no Kings of
any sort, no Government more; less and less need of
them henceforth, New Era having come. Which is a
very wonderful notion; important if true; perhaps still
more important, just at present, if untrue! My hopes
of presenting, in this Last of the Kings, an exemplar
to my contemporaries, I confess, are not high.
On the whole, it is evident the difficulties to a His-
tory of Friedrich are great and many: and the sad cer-
tainty is at last forced upon me that no good Book can,
at this time, especially in this country, be written on
the subject . Wherefore let the reader put up with an
indifferent or bad one; he little knows how much worse
it could easily have been! -- Alas, the Ideal of History,
as my friend Sauerteig knows, is very high; and it is
not one serious man, but many successions of such, and
whole serious generations of men, that can ever again
build up History towards its old dignity. We must re-
nounce ideals. We must sadly take-up with the mourn-
fullest barren realities; -- dismal continents of Branden-
burg sand, as in this instance; mere tumbled mountains
of marine-stores, without so much as an Index to them!
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? ChAP. i. ] proem: encourAgements, discourAgements. 25
Has the reader heard of Sauerteig's last batch of
Springwurzel, a rather curious valedictory Piece? "All
"History is an imprisoned Epic, nay an imprisoned
"Psalm and Prophecy," says Sauerteig there. I wish,
from my soul, he had disimprisoned it in this instance!
But he only says, in magniloquent language, how grand it
would be if disimprisoned;-- and hurls out, accidentally
striking on this subject, the following rough sentences,
suggestive though unpractical, with which I shall con-
clude:
"Schiller, it appears, at one time thought of writing
"an Epic Poem upon Friedrich the Great, 'upon some
"action of Friedrich's,' Schiller says. Happily Schiller
"did not do it. By oversetting fact, disregarding reality,
"and tumbling time and space topsyturvy, Schiller with
"his fine gifts might no doubt have written a temporary
"'epic poem,' of the kind read and admired by many
"simple persons. But that would have helped little,
"and could not have lasted long. It is not the untrue
"imaginary Picture of a man and his life that I want
"from my Schiller, but the actual natural Likeness,
"true as the face itself, nay truer, in a sense. Which
"the Artist, if there is one, might help to give, and
"the Botcher (Pfuscher) never can! Alas, and the Artist
"does not even try it; leaves it altogether to the Botcher,
"being busy otherwise! --
"Men surely will at length discover again, emerging
"from these dismal bewilderments in which the modern
"Ages reel and stagger this long while, that to them
"also as to the most ancient men, all Pictures that
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? 26
[book T.
BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.
"cannot be credited are -- Pictures of an idle nature;
"to be mostly swept out of doors. Such veritably,
"were it never so forgotten, is the law! Mistakes
"enough, lies enough will insinuate themselves into our
"most earnest portrayings of the True: but that we
"should, deliberately and of forethought, rake together
"what we know to be not true, and introduce that in
"the hope of doing good with it? I tell you, such
"practice was unknown in the ancient earnest times;
"and ought again to become unknown except to the
"more foolish classes! " That is Sauerteig's strange
notion, not now of yesterday, as readers know: -- and
he goes then into "Homer's Iliad," the "Hebrew Bible,"
"terrible Hebrew veracity of every line of it;" discovers
an alarming "kinship of Fiction to lying;" and asks,
If anybody can compute "the damage we poor moderns
"have got from our practices of fiction in Literature it-
"self, not to speak of awfully higher provinces? Men
"will either see into all this by and by," continues he;
"or plunge head foremost, in neglect of all this, whither
"they little dream as yet! --
"But I think all real Poets, to this hour, are Psalmists
"and Hiadists after their sort; and have in them a divine
"impatience of lies, a divine incapacity of living among
"lies. Likewise, which is a corollary, that the highest
"Shakspeare producible is properly the fittest Historian
"producible; -- and that it is frightful to seethe Gelehrte
"Dummkopf (what we here may translate, Dryasdust)
"doing the function of History, and the Shakspeare
"and the Goethe neglecting it. 'Interpreting events;'
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? CHAP. I. ] PROEM: ENCOURAGEMENTS, DISCOURAGEMENTS. 27
"interpreting the universally visible, entirely indubitable
"Revelation of the Author of this Universe: how can
"Dryasdust interpret such things, the dark chaotic
"dullard, who knows the meaning of nothing cosmic or
"noble, nor ever will know? Poor wretch, one sees
"what kind of meaning he educes from Man's History,
"this long while past, and has got all the world to be-
"lieve of it along with him. Unhappy Dryasdust, thrice
"unhappy world that takes Dryasdust's reading of the
"ways of God! But what else was possible? They
"that could have taught better were engaged in fid-
dling; for which there are good wages going. And our
"damage therefrom, our damage, -- yes, if thou be
"still human and not cormorant, -- perhaps it will
"transcend all Californias, English National Debts, and
"show itself incomputable in continents of Bullion! --
"Believing that mankind are not doomed wholly to
"doglike annihilation, I believe that much of this will
"mend. I believe that the world will not always waste
"its inspired men in mere fiddling to it. That the man
"of rhythmic nature will feel more and more his voca-
"tion towards the Interpretation of Fact; since only in
"the vital centre of that, could we once get thither,
"lies all real melody; and that he will become, he,
"once again the Historian of Events, -- bewildered
"Dryasdust having at last the happiness to be his ser-
"vant, and to have some guidance from him. Which
"will be blessed indeed. For the present, Dryasdust
"strikes me like a hapless Nigger gone masterless:
"Nigger totally unfit for selfguidance; yet without
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? 28
[book i.
BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.
"master good or bad; and whose feats in that capacity
"no god or man can rejoice in.
"History, with faithful Genius at the top and faith-
"ful Industry at the bottom, will then be capable of
"being written. History will then actually be written,--
"the inspired gift of God employing itself to illuminate
"the dark ways of God. A thing thrice pressingly
"needful to be done! Whereby the modern Nations
"may again become a little less godless, and again
"have their 'epics' (of a different from the Schiller
"sort), and again have several things they are still
"more fatally in want of at present! " --
So that, it would seem, there will gradually among
mankind, if Friedrich last some centuries, be a real
Epic made of his History? That is to say (presumably),
it will become a perfected Melodious Truth, and duly
significant and duly beautiful bit of Belief, to mankind;
the essence of it fairly evolved from all the chaff, the
portrait of it actually given, and its real harmonies with
the laws of this Universe brought out, in bright and
dark, according to the God's Fact as it was; which
poor Dryasdust and the Newspapers never could get
sight of, but were always far from! --
Well, if so, -- and even if not quite so, -- it is a
comfort to reflect that every true worker (who has blown
away chaff, &c), were his contribution no bigger than
my own, may have brought the good result nearer by
a handbreadth or two. And so we will end these pre-
ludings, and proceed upon our Problem, courteous reader.
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? CIUP. II. ]
29
fkiedeich's birth.
CHAPTER H.
FRIEDRICn's BIRTH.
Fkeedrich op Brandenburg-Hohenzollern, who
came by course of natural succession to be Friedrich II.
of Prussia, and is known in these ages as Frederick
the Great, was born in the Palace of Berlin, about
noon, on the 24th of January 1712. A small infant,
but of great promise or possibility; and thrice and four
times welcome to all sovereign and other persons in
the Prussian Court, and Prussian realms, in those cold
winter days. His Father, they say, was like to have
stifled him with his caresses, so overjoyed was the
man; or at least to have scorched him in the blaze of
the fire; when happily some much suitabler female
nurse snatched this little creature from the rough
paternal paws, -- and saved it for the benefit of
Prussia and mankind. If Heaven will but please to
grant it length of life! For there have already been
two little Princekins, who are both dead; this Friedrich
is the fourth child; and only one little girl, wise
Wilhelmina, of almost too sharp wits, and not too
vivacious aspect, is otherwise yet here of royal pro-
geny. It is feared the Hohenzollern lineage, which has
flourished here with such beneficent effect, for three
centuries now, and been in truth the very making of
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? 30
[book L
BIBTH AND PARENTAGE.
the Prussian Nation, may be about to fail, or pass into
some side branch. Which change, or any change in
that respect, is questionable, and a thing desired by
nobody.
Five years ago, on the death of the first little
Prince, there had surmises risen, obscure rumours and
hints, that the Princess Royal, mother of the lost baby,
never would have healthy children, or even never have
a child more: upon which, as there was but one other
resource, -- a widowed Grandfather, namely, and ex-
cept the Prince Royal no son to him, -- said Grand-
father, still only about fifty, did take the necessary
steps: but they have been entirely unsuccessful; no
new son or child, only new affliction, new disaster has
resulted from that third marriage of his. And though
the Princess Royal has had another little Prince, that
too has died within the year; -- killed some say on
the other hand, by the noise of the cannon firing for
joy over it! * Yes; and the first baby Prince, these
same parties farther say, was crushed to death by the
weighty dress you put upon it at christening time,
especially by the little crown it wore, which had left
a visible black mark upon the poor soft infant's brow!
In short, it is a questionable case; undoubtedly a ques-
tionable outlook for Prussian mankind; and the ap-
pearance of this little Prince, a third trump-card in the
* Fb'rster: Friedrich Wilhelm I. , Kdnig (ion Preutsen (Potsdam, 1834),
i. 126 (who quotes Morgenstern, a contemporary reporter). But see also
Pienss: Friedrich der Grosse mit semen Verwandten und Freunden (Berlin,
1838), pp. 879-80.
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? chAP. n. ]
31
friedeich's birth.
Hohenzollern game, is an unusually interesting event
.
The joy over him, not in Berlin Palace only, but in
Berlin City, and over the Prussian Nation, was very
great and universal; -- still testified in manifold dull,
unreadable old pamphlets, records official and volunteer,
-- which were then all ablaze like the bonfires, and
are now fallen dark enough, and hardly credible even
to the fancy of this new Time.
The poor old Grandfather, Friedrich I. (the first
King of Prussia), -- for, as we intimate, he was still
alive, and not very old, though now infirm enough,
and laden beyond his strength with sad reminiscences,
disappointments and chagrins, -- had taken much to
Wilhelmina, as she tells us;* and would amuse himself
whole days with the pranks and prattle of the little
child. Good old man: he, we need not doubt, bright-
ened up into unusual vitality at sight of this invalu-
able little Brother of her's; through whom he can look
once more into the waste dim future with a flicker of
new hope. Poor old man: he got his own back half-
broken by a careless nurse letting him fall; and has
slightly stooped ever since, some fifty and odd years
now: much against his will; for he would fain have
been beautiful; and has struggled all his days, very
hard if not very wisely, to make his existence beauti-
ful, -- to make it magnificent at least, and regardless
of expense; -- and it threatens to come to little.
Courage, poor Grandfather: here is a new second edi-
* Memoires de Frederique Sophie Wilhelmine de Prusse, Margrave de
Bareith, Sceur de Frederic-le-Grand (London, 1812), J. 5.
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? 32
[book I.
BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.
tion of a Friedrich, the first having gone off with so
little effect: this one's back is still unbroken, his life's
seedfield not yet filled with tares and thorns: who
knows but Heaven will be kinder to this one? Heaven
was much kinder to this one. Him Heaven had kneaded
of more potent stuff: a mighty fellow this one, and a
strange; related not only to the Upholsteries and
Heralds' Colleges, but to the Sphereharmonies and the
divine and demonic Powers; of a swift far-darting
nature this one, like an Apollo clad in sun-beams and
in lightnings (after his sort); and with a back which
all the world could not succeed in breaking! -- Yes,
if, by most rare chance, this were indeed a new man
of genius, born into the purblind rotting Century, in
the acknowledged rank of a king there, -- man of
genius, that is to say, man of originality and veracity;
capable of seeing with his eyes, and incapable of
not believing what he sees; -- then truly! -- But as
yet none knows; the poor old Grandfather never knew.
Meanwhile they christened the little fellow, with
immense magnificence and pomp of apparatus; Kaiser
Karl, and the very Swiss Republic being there (by
proxy), among the gossips; and spared no cannon-vol-
lyings, kettle-drummings, metal crown, heavy cloth-of-
silver, for the poor soft creature's sake; all of which,
however, he survived. The name given him was Karl
Friedrich (Charles Frederick); Karl perhaps, and per-
haps also not, in delicate compliment to the chief gos-
sip, the above-mentioned Kaiser, Karl or Charles VI. ?
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? CRAP. n. J
33
friedrich's BUtTH.
At any rate, the Karl, gradually or from the first,
dropped altogether out of practice, and went as
nothing: he himself, or those about him, never used it;
nor, except in some dim English pamphlet here and
there, have I met with any trace of it. Friedrich (Rich-
in-Peace, a name of old prevalence in the Hohenzol-
lern kindred), which he himself wrote Frederic in his
French way, and at last even Federio (with a very
singular sense of euphony), is throughout, and was, his
sole designation.
Sunday, 31st January 1712, age then precisely one
week: then, and in this manner, was he ushered on
the scene, and labelled among his fellow-creatures.
We must now look round a little; and see, if possible
by any method or exertion, what kind of scene it was.
Carlyle, Frederic the Great. I.
3
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? 34
[book I.
BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.
CHAPTEE m.
FATHER AND MOTHER: THE HANOVERIAN CONNEXION.
Friedrich Wilhelm , Crown-Prince of Prussia, son
of Friedrich I. , and Father of this little infant who will
one day be Friedrich II. , did himself make some noise
in the world as second King of Prussia; notable not as
Friedrich's father alone; and will much concern us
during the rest of his life. He is, at this date, in his
twenty-fourth year: a thick-set, sturdy, florid, brisk
young fellow; with a jovial laugh in him, yet of solid
grave ways, occasionally somewhat volcanic; much given
to soldiering, and out-of-door exercises, having little
else to do at present. He has been manager, or, as
it were, Vice-King, on an occasional absence of his
Father; he knows practically what the state of business
is; and greatly disapproves of it, as is thought . But
being bound to silence on that head, he keeps silence,
and meddles with nothing political. He addicts him-
self chiefly to mustering, drilling and practical military
duties, while here at Berlin; runs out, often enough,
wife and perhaps a comrade or two along with him,
to hunt, and take his ease, at Wusterhausen (some
fifteen miles* southwest of Berlin), where he has a re-
sidence amid the woody moorlands.
* English miles, -- as always unless the contrary be stated. The
German Meile la about five miles English; German Slutide about three.
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