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History Of Friedrich II of Prussia [Books I - XIV], a non-fiction book by Thomas Carlyle |
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Book 3. The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg. 1412-1718 - __ Third Act, And What The Kurfurst Suffered In It |
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_ BOOK III. THE HOHENZOLLERNS IN BRANDENBURG. 1412-1718 (Chapter XVI cont.)
Poor man, it was his fate to stand in the range of these huge collisions,--Bridge of Dessau, Siege of Stralsund, Sack of Magdeburg, Battle of Leipzig,--where the Titans were bowling rocks at one another; and he hoped, by dexterous skipping, to escape share of the game. To keep well with his Kaiser,--and such a Kaiser to Germany and to him,--this, for George Wilhelm, was always the first commandment. If the Kaiser confiscate your Uncles, against law; seize your Pommern; rob you on the public highways,--George Wilhelm, even in such case, is full of dubitations. Nay his Prime-Minister, one Schwartzenberg, a Catholic, an Austrian Official at one time,--Progenitor of the Austrian Schwartzenbergs that now are,--was secretly in the Kaiser's interest, and is even thought to have been in the Kaiser's pay, all along. Gustav, at his first landing, had seized Pommern, and swept it clear of Austrians, for himself and for his own wants; not too regardful of George Wilhelm's claims on it. He cleared out Frankfurt-on-Oder, Custrin and other Brandenburg Towns, in a similar manner,--by cannon and storm, when needful;--drove the Imperialists and Tilly forth of these countries. Advancing, next year, to save Magdeburg, now shrieking under Tilly's bombardment, Gustav insisted on having, if not some bond of union from his Brother-in-law of Brandenburg, at least the temporary cession of two Places of War for himself, Spandau and Custrin, indispensable in any farther operation. Which cession Kurfurst 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 Copenick," 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, what can one do; they have got cannon?" [OEvres de Frederic le Grand (Berlin, 1846-1856 et seqq.: Memoires de Brandebourg), i. 38. For the rest, Friedrich's Account of the Transaction is very loose and scanty: see Pauli (iv. 568) and his minute details.] For many hours so; round the inflexible Gustav,--who was there like a fixed milestone, and to all questions and comers had only one answer!--"Que faire; ils ont des canons?" This was the 3d May, 1631. This probably is about the nadir-point of the Brandenburg-Hohenzollern History. The little Friedrich, who became Frederick the Great, in writing of it, has a certain grim banter in his tone; and looks rather with mockery on the perplexities of his poor Ancestor, so fatally ignorant of the time of day it had now become. On the whole, George Wilhelm did what is to be called nothing, in the Thirty-Years War; his function was only that of suffering. He followed always the bad lead of Johann George, Elector of Saxony; a man of no strength, devoutness or adequate human worth; who proved, on these negative grounds, and without flagrancy of positive badness, an unspeakable curse to Germany. Not till the Kaiser fulminated forth his Restitution-Edict, and showed he was in earnest about it (1629-1631), "Restore to our Holy Church what you have taken from her since the Peace of Passau!"--could this Johann George prevail upon himself to join Sweden, or even to do other than hate it for reasons he saw. Seized by the throat in this manner, and ordered to DELIVER, Kur-Sachsen did, and Brandenburg along with him, make Treaty with the Swede. [8th February, 1631 (Kohler, Reichs-Historie, pp. 526-531.) in consequence of which they two, some months after, by way of co-operating with Gustav on his great march Vienna-ward, sent an invading force into Bohemia, Brandenburg contributing some poor 3,000 to it; who took Prag, and some other open Towns; but "did almost nothing there," say the Histories, "except dine and drink." It is clear enough they were instantly scattered home [October, 1633 (Stenzel, i. 503).) at the first glimpse of Wallenstein dawning on the horizon again in those parts. Gustav having vanished (Field of Lutzen, 6th November, 1632 [Pauli, iv. 576.]), Oxenstiern, with his high attitude, and "Presidency" of the "Union of Heilbronn," was rather an offence to Kur-Sachsen, who used to be foremost man on such occasions. Kur-Sachsen broke away again; made his Peace of Prag, [1635, 20th May (Stenzel, i. 513).] whom Brandenburg again followed; Brandenburg and gradually all the others, except the noble Wilhelm of Hessen-Cassel alone. Miserable Peace; bit of Chaos clouted up, and done over with Official varnish;--which proved to be the signal for continuing the War beyond visible limits, and rendering peace impossible. After this, George Wilhelm retires from the scene; lives in Custrin mainly; mere miserable days, which shall be invisible to us. He died in 1640; and, except producing an active brave Son very unlike himself, did nothing considerable in the world. "Que faire; ils ont des canons!" Among the innumerable sanguinary tusslings of this War are counted Three great Battles, Leipzig, Lutzen, Nordlingen. Under one great Captain, Swedish Gustav, and the two or three other considerable Captains, who appeared in it, high passages of furious valor, of fine strategy and tactic, are on record. 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. [Curious incidental details of the state it was reduced to, in the Rhine and Danube Countries, turn up in the Earl of Arundel and Surrey's TRAVELS ("Arundel of the Marbles") as Ambassador Extraordinary to the Emperor Ferdinando II. in 1636 (a small Volume, or Pamphlet, London, 1637).] Brandenburg saw its towns sieged and sacked, its country populations driven to despair, by the one party and the other. Three times,--first in the Wallenstein Mecklenburg period, 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 Swedes (Banier VERSUS Gallas) starving out the Imperialists in those Northwestern parts, the ravages of the starving Gallas and his Imperialists excelled all precedent; and the "famine about Tangermunde had risen so high that men ate human flesh, nay human creatures ate their own children." [1638: Pauli, iv. 604.] "Que faire; ils ont des canons!" _ |
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