The Crown of Wild Olive
concerning this Duchy, and the thing Johann Sigismund had claimed
legally in 1609 was actually handed over to Johann Sigismund's
descendant in the seventh generation. "These litigated duchies are now
the Prussian provinces, Juelich, Berg, Cleve, and the nucleus of
Prussia's possessions in the Rhine country."
X. George Wilhelm. Read pp. 325 to 327 (231, 233) on this Elector and
German Protestantism, now fallen cold, and somewhat too little
dangerous. But George Wilhelm is the only weak prince of all the twelve.
For another example how the heart and life of a country depend upon its
prince, not on its council, read this, of Gustavus Adolphus, demanding
the cession of Spandau and Kuestrin:
Which cession Kurfuerst George Wilhelm, though giving all his
prayers to the good cause, could by no means grant. Gustav
had to insist, with more and more emphasis, advancing at
last with military menace upon Berlin itself. He was met by
George Wilhelm and his Council, "in the woods of Coepenick,"
short way to the east of that city; there George Wilhelm and
his Council wandered about, sending messages, hopelessly
consulting, saying among each other, "Que faire? ils ont des
canons." For many hours so, round the inflexible Gustav, who
was there like a fixed mile-stone, and to all questions and
comers had only one answer.
On our special question of war and its consequences, read this of the
Thirty Years' one:
But on the whole, the grand weapon in it, and towards the
latter times, the exclusive one, was hunger. The opposing
armies tried to starve one another; at lowest, tried each
not to starve. Each trying to eat the country or, at any
rate, to leave nothing eatable in it; what that will mean
for the country we may consider. As the armies too
frequently, and the Kaiser's armies habitually, lived
without commissariat, often enough without pay, all horrors
of war and of being a seat of war, that have been since
heard of, are poor to those then practised, the detail of
which is still horrible to read. Germany, in all eatable
quarters of it, had to undergo the process; tortured, torn
to pieces, wrecked, and brayed as in a mortar, under the
iron mace of war. Brandenburg saw its towns seized and
sacked, its country populations driven to despair by the one
party and the other. Three times--first in the
Wallenstein-Mecklenburg times, while fire and sword were the
weapons, and again, twice over, in the ultimate stages of
the struggle, when starvation had become the
method--Brandenburg fell to be the principal theatre of
conflict, where all forms of the dismal were at their
height. In 1638, three years after that precious "Peace of
Prag,"... the ravages of the starving Gallas and his
Imperialists excelled all precedent,... men ate human flesh,
nay, human creatures ate their own children. "Que faire? ils
ont des canons!"
"We have now arrived at the lowest nadir point" (says Carlyle) "of the
history of Brandenburg under the Hohenzollerns." Is this then all that
Heavy Peg and our nine Kurfuersts have done for us?
Carlyle does not mean that; but even he, greatest of historians since
Tacitus, is not enough careful to mark for us the growth of national
character, as distinct from the prosperity of dynasties.
A republican historian would think of this development only, and suppose
it to be possible without any dynasties.
Which is indeed in a measure so, and the work now chiefly needed in
moral philosophy, as well as history, is an analysis of the constant and
prevalent, yet unthought of, influences, which, without any external
help from kings, and in a silent and entirely necessary manner, form, in
Sweden, in Bavaria, in the Tyrol, in the Scottish border, and on the
French sea-coast, races of noble peasants; pacific, poetic, heroic,
Christian-hearted in the deepest sense, who may indeed perish by sword
or famine in any cruel thirty years' war, or ignoble thirty years'
peace, and yet leave such strength to their children that the country,
apparently ravaged into hopeless ruin, revives, under any prudent king,
as the cultivated fields do under the spring rain. How the rock to which
no seed can cling, and which no rain can soften, is subdued into the
good ground which can bring forth its hundredfold, we forget to watch,
while we follow the footsteps of the sower, or mourn the catastrophes of
storm. All this while, the Prussian earth--the Prussian soul--has been
thus dealt upon by successive fate; and now, though laid, as it seems,
utterly desolate, it can be revived by a few years of wisdom and of
peace.
Vol. I. Book III. Chap, xviii.--The Great Elector, Friedrich Wilhelm.
Eleventh of the dynasty:--
There hardly ever came to sovereign power a young man of
twenty under more distressing, hopeless-looking
circumstances. Political significance Brandenburg had none;
a mere Protestant appendage, dragged about by a Papist
Kaiser. His father's Prime Minister, as we have seen, was in
the interest of his enemies; not Brandenburg's servant, but
Austria's. The very commandants of his fortresses,
Commandant of Spandau more especially, refused to obey
Friedrich Wilhelm on his accession; "were bound to obey the
Kaiser in the first place."
For twenty years past Brandenburg had been scoured by
hostile armies, which, especially the Kaiser's part of
which, committed outrages new in human history. In a year or
two hence, Brandenburg became again the theatre of business,
Austrian Gallas advancing thither again (1644) with intent
"to shut up Torstenson and his Swedes in Jutland." Gallas
could by no means do what he intended; on the contrary, he
had to run from Torstenson--what feet could do; was hunted,
he and his Merode Brueder (beautiful inventors of the
"marauding" art), till they pretty much all died (crepirten)
says Koehler. No great loss to society, the death of these
artists, but we can fancy what their life, and especially
what the process of their dying, may have cost poor
Brandenburg again!
Friedrich Wilhelm's aim, in this as in other emergencies,
was sun-clear to himself, but for most part dim to everybody
else. He had to walk very warily, Sweden on one hand of him,
suspicious Kaiser on the other: he had to wear semblances,
to be ready with evasive words, and advance noiselessly by
many circuits. More delicate operation could not be
imagined. But advance he did; advance and arrive. With
extraordinary talent, diligence, and felicity the young man
wound himself out of this first fatal position, got those
foreign armies pushed out of his country, and kept them out.
His first concern had been to find some vestige of revenue,
to put that upon a clear footing, and by loans or otherwise
to scrape a little ready-money together. On the strength _of
which a small body of soldiers could be collected about him,
and drilled into real ability to fight and obey_. This as a
basis: on this followed all manner of things, freedom from
Swedish-Austrian invasions, as the first thing. He was
himself, as appeared by-and-by, a fighter of the first
quality, when it came to that; but never was willing to
fight if he could help it. Preferred rather to shift,
manoeuvre, and negotiate, which he did in most vigilant,
adroit, and masterly manner. But by degrees he had grown to
have, and could maintain it, an army of twenty-four thousand
men, among the best troops then in being.
To wear semblances, to be ready with evasive words, how is this, Mr.
Carlyle? thinks perhaps the rightly thoughtful reader.
Yes, such things have to be; There are lies and lies, and there are
truths and truths. Ulysses cannot ride on the ram's back, like Phryxus;
but must ride under his belly. Read also this, presently following:
Shortly after which, Friedrich Wilhelm, who had shone much
in the battle of Warsaw, into which he was dragged against
his will, changed sides. An inconsistent, treacherous man?
Perhaps not, O reader! perhaps a man advancing "in
circuits," the only way he has; spirally, face now to east,
now to west, with his own reasonable private aim sun-clear
to him all the while?
The battle of Warsaw, three days long, fought with Gustavus, the
grandfather of Charles XII., against the Poles, virtually ends the
Polish power:
Old Johann Casimir, not long after that peace of Oliva,
getting tired of his unruly Polish chivalry and their ways,
abdicated--retired to Paris, and "and lived much with Ninon
de l'Enclos and her circle," for the rest of his life. He
used to complain of his Polish chivalry, that there was no
solidity in them; nothing but outside glitter, with tumult
and anarchic noise; fatal want of one essential talent, _the
talent of obeying_; and has been heard to prophesy that a
glorious Republic, persisting in such courses, would arrive
at results which would surprise it.
Onward from this time, Friedrich Wilhelm figures in the
world; public men watching his procedure; kings anxious to
secure him--Dutch print-sellers sticking up his portraits
for a hero-worshipping public. Fighting hero, had the public
known it, was not his essential character, though he had to
fight a great deal. He was essentially an industrial man;
great in organizing, regulating, in constraining chaotic
heaps to become cosmic for him. He drains bogs, settles
colonies in the waste places of his dominions, cuts canals;
unweariedly encourages trade and work. The Friedrich
Wilhelm's Canal, which still carries tonnage from the Oder
to the Spree, is a monument of his zeal in this way;
creditable with the means he had. To the poor French
Protestants in the Edict-of-Nantes affair, he was like an
express benefit of Heaven; one helper appointed to whom the
help itself was profitable. He munificently welcomed them
to Brandenburg; showed really a noble piety and human pity,
as well as judgment; nor did Brandenburg and he want their
reward. Some twenty thousand nimble French souls, evidently
of the best French quality, found a home there; made "waste
sands about Berlin into potherb gardens;" and in spiritual
Brandenburg, too, did something of horticulture which is
still noticeable.
Now read carefully the description of the man, p. 352 (224-5); the story
of the battle of Fehrbellin, "the Marathon of Brandenburg," p. 354
(225); and of the winter campaign of 1679, p. 356 (227), beginning with
its week's marches at sixty miles a day; his wife, as always, being with
him;
Louisa, honest and loving Dutch girl, aunt to our William of
Orange, who trimmed up her own "Orange-burg"
(country-house), twenty miles north of Berlin, into a little
jewel of the Dutch type, potherb gardens, training-schools
for young girls, and the like, a favorite abode of hers when
she was at liberty for recreation. But her life was busy and
earnest; she was helpmate, not in name only, to an ever busy
man. They were married young; a marriage of love withal.
Young Friedrich Wilhelm's courtship; wedding in Holland; the
honest, trustful walk and conversation of the two sovereign
spouses, their journeyings together, their mutual hopes,
fears, and manifold vicissitudes, till death, with stern