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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 14. The Surrounding European War Does Not End. August, 1742-July, 1744 - __ Britannic Majesty Holds His Conferences Of Hanau |
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_ BOOK XIV. THE SURROUNDING EUROPEAN WAR DOES NOT END. August, 1742-July, 1744 (Chapter V cont.)
HANAU, 7th July-1st AUGUST, 1743. "Poor Kaiser Karl had left Augsburg June 26th,--while his Broglio was ferrying at Donauworth, and his Seckendorf treatying for Armistice at Nieder-Schonfeld,--the very day before Dettingen. What a piece of news to him, that Dettingen, on his return to Frankfurt! "A few days after Dettingen, July 3d, Noailles, who is still within call, came across to see this poor stepson of Fortune; gives piteous account of him, if any one were now curious on that head: How he bitterly complains of Broglio, of the no-subsidies sent, and is driven nearly desperate;--not a penny in his pocket, beyond all. Upon which latter clause Noailles munificently advanced him a $6,000. 'Draught of 40,000 crowns, in my own name; which doubtless the King, in his compassion, will see good to sanction.' [Campagnes de Noailles (Amsterdam, 1760: this is a Sequel, or rather VICE VERSA, to that which we have called DES TROIS MARECHAUX, being of the same Collection), i. 316-328.] His feelings on the loss of Dettingen may be pictured. But he had laid his account with such things;--prepared for the worst, since that Interview with Broglio and Conti; one plan now left, 'Peace, cost what it will!' "The poor Kaiser had already, as we saw, got into hopes of bargaining with his Britannic Majesty; and now he instantly sets about it, while Hanau is victorious head-quarters. Britannic Majesty is not himself very forward; but Carteret, I rather judge, had taken up the notion; and on his Majesty's and Carteret's part, there is actually the wish and attempt to pacificate the Reich; to do something tolerable for the poor Kaiser, as well as satisfactory to the Hungarian Majesty,--satisfactory, or capable of being (by the Purse-holder) insisted on as such. "And so the Landgraf of Hessen, excellent Wilhelm, King George's friend and gossip, is come over to that little Town of Hanau, which is his own, in the Schloss of which King George is lodged: and there, between Carteret and our Landgraf,--the King of Prussia's Ambassador (Herr Klinggraf), and one or two selectly zealous Official persons, assisting or watching,--we have 'Conferences of Hanau' going on; in a zealous fashion; all parties eager for Peace to Kaiser and Reich, and in good hope of bringing it about. The wish, ardent to a degree, had been the Kaiser's first of all. The scheme, I guess, was chiefly of Carteret's devising; who, in his magnificent mind, regardless of expense, thinks it may be possible, and discerns well what a stroke it will be for the Cause of Liberty, and how glorious for a Britannic Majesty's Adviser in such circumstances. July 7th, the Conferences began; and, so frank and loyal were the parties, in a week's time matters were advanced almost to completion, the fundamental outlines of a bargain settled, and almost ready for signing. "'Give me my Bavaria again!' the Kaiser had always said: 'I am Head of the Reich, and have nothing to live upon!' On one preliminary, Carteret had always been inexorable: 'Have done with your French auxiliaries; send every soul of them home; the German soil once cleared of them, much will be possible; till then nothing.' KAISER: 'Well, give me back my Bavaria; my Bavaria, and something suitable to live upon, as Head of the Reich: some decent Annual Pension, till Bavaria come into paying condition,--cannot you, who are so wealthy? And Bavaria might be made a Kingdom, if you wished to do the handsome thing. I will renounce my Austrian Pretensions, quit utterly my French Alliances; consent to have her Hungarian Majesty's august Consort made King of the Romans [which means Kaiser after me], and in fact be very safe to the House of Austria and the Cause of Liberty.' To all this the thrice-unfortunate gentleman, titular Emperor of the World, and unable now to pay his milk-scores, is eager to consent. To continue crossing the Abysses on bridges of French rainbow? Nothing but French subsidies to subsist on; and these how paid,--Noailles's private pocket knows how! 'I consent,' said the Kaiser; 'will forgive and forget, and bygones shall be bygones all round!' 'Fair on his Imperial Majesty's part,' admits Carteret; 'we will try to be persuasive at Vienna. Difficult, but we will try.' In a meek matters had come to this point; and the morrow, July 15th, was appointed for signing. Most important of Protocols, foundation-stone of Peace to Teutschland; King Friedrich and the impartial Powers approving, with Britannic George and drawn sword presiding. "King Friedrich approves heartily; and hopes it will do. Landgraf Wilhelm is proud to have saved his Kaiser,--who so glad as the Landgraf and his Kaiser? Carteret, too, is very glad; exulting, as he well may, to have composed these world-deliriums, or concentrated them upon peccant France, he with his single head, and to have got a value out of that absurd Pragmatic Army, after all. A man of magnificent ideas; who hopes 'to bring Friedrich over to his mind;' to unite poor Teutschland against such Oriflamme Invasions and intolerable interferences, and to settle the account of France for a long while. He is the only English Minister who speaks German, knows German situations, interests, ways; or has the least real understanding of this huge German Imbroglio in which England is voluntarily weltering. And truly, had Carteret been King of England, which he was not,--nay, had King Friedrich ever got to understand, instead of misunderstand, what Carteret WAS,--here might have been a considerable affair! "But it now, at the eleventh hour, came upon magnificent Carteret, now seemingly for the first time in its full force, That he Carteret was not the master; that there was a bewildered Parliament at home, a poor peddling Duke of Newcastle leader of the same, with his Lords of the Regency, who could fatally put a negative on all this, unless they were first gained over. On the morrow, July 15th, Carteret, instead of signing, as expected, has to--purpose a fortnight's delay till he consult in England! Absolutely would not and could not sign, till a Courier to England went and returned. To Landgraf Wilhelm's, to Klinggraf's and the Kaiser's very great surprise, disappointment and suspicion. But Carteret was inflexible: 'will only take a fortnight,' said he; 'and I can hope all will yet be well!' "The Courier came back punctually in a fortnight. His Message was presented at Hanau, August 1st,--and ran conclusively to the effect: 'No! We, Noodle of Newcastle, and my other Lords of Regency, do not consent; much less, will undertake to carry the thing through Parliament: By no manner of means!' So that Carteret's lately towering Affair had to collapse ignominiously, in that manner; poor Carteret protesting his sorrow, his unalterable individual wishes and future endeavors, not to speak of his Britannic Majesty's,--and politely pressing on the poor Kaiser a gift of 15,000 pounds (first weekly instalment of the 'Annual Pension' that HAD, in theory, been set apart for him); which the Kaiser, though indigent, declined. [Adelung, iii. B, 206, 209-212; see Coxe, Memoirs of Pelham (London, 1829), i. 75, 469.]' "The disgust of Landgraf Wilhelm was infinite; who, honest man, saw in all this merely an artifice of Carteret's, To undo the Kaiser with his French Allies, to quirk him out of his poor help from the French, and have him at their mercy. 'Shame on it!' cried Landgraf Wilhelm aloud, and many others less aloud, Klinggraf and King Friedrich among them: 'What a Carteret!' The Landgraf turned away with indignation from perfidious England; and began forming quite opposite connections. 'You shall not even have my hired 6,000, you perfidious! Thing done with such dexterity of art, too!' thought the Landgraf,--and continued to think, till evidence turned up, after many months. [CARTERET PAPERS (in British Museum), Additional MSS. No. 22,529 (May, 1743-January, 1745); in No. 22,527 (January-September, 1742) are other Landgraf-Wilhelm pieces of Correspondence.] This was Friedrich's opinion too,--permanently, I believe;--and that of nearly all the world, till the thing and the Doer of the thing were contemptuously forgotten. A piece of Machiavelism on the part of Carteret and perfidious Albion,--equal in refined cunning to that of the Ships with foul bottom, which vanished from Cadiz two years ago, and were admired with a shudder by Continental mankind who could see into millstones! "This is the second stroke of Machiavellian Art by those Islanders, in their truly vulpine method. Stroke of Art important for this History; and worth the attention of English readers,--being almost of pathetic nature, when one comes to understand it! Carteret, for this Hanau business, had clangor enough to undergo, poor man, from Germans and from English; which was wholly unjust. 'His trade,' say the English--(or used to say, till they forgot their considerable Carteret altogether)--'was that of rising in the world by feeding the mad German humors of little George; a miserable trade.' Yes, my friends;--but it was not quite Carteret's, if you will please to examine! And none say, Carteret did not do his trade, whatever it was, with a certain greatness,--at least till habits of drinking rather took him, Poor man: impatient, probably, of such fortune long continued! For he was thrown out, next Session of Parliament, by Noodle of Newcastle, on those strange terms; and never could get in again, and is now forgotten; and there succeeded him still more mournful phenomena,--said Noodle or the poor Pelhams, namely,--of whom, as of strange minus quantities set to manage our affairs, there is still some dreary remembrance in England. Well!"-- Carteret, though there had been no Duke of Newcastle to run athwart this fine scheme, would have had his difficulties in making her Hungarian Majesty comply. Her Majesty's great heart, incurably grieved about Silesia, is bent on having, if not restoration one day, which is a hope she never quits, at any rate some ample (cannot be too ample) equivalent elsewhere. On the Hanau scheme, united Teutschland, with England for soul to it, would have fallen vigorously on the throat of France, and made France disgorge: Lorraine, Elsass, the Three Bishoprics,--not to think of Burgundy, and earlier plunders from the Reich,--here would have been "cut and come again" for her Hungarian Majesty and everybody!--But Diana, in the shape of his Grace of Newcastle, intervenes; and all this has become chimerical and worse. It was while Carteret's courier was gone to England and not come back, that King Louis made the above-mentioned mild, almost penitent, Declaration to the Reich, "Good people, let us have Peace; and all be as we were! I, for my share, wish to be out of it; I am for home!" And, in effect, was already home; every Frenchman in arms being, by this time, on his own side of the Rhine, as we shall presently observe. For, the same day, July 26th, while that was going on at Frankfurt, and Carteret's return-courier was due in five days, his Britannic Majesty at Hanau had a splendid visit,--tending not towards Peace with France, but quite the opposite way. Visit from Prince Karl, with Khevenhuller and other dignitaries; doing us that honor "till the evening of the 28th." Quitting their Army,--which is now in these neighborhoods (Broglio well gone to air ahead of it; Noailles too, at the first sure sniff of it, having rushed double-quick across the Rhine),--these high Gentlemen have run over to us, for a couple of days, to "congratulate on Dettingen;" or, better still, to consult, face to face, about ulterior movements. "Follow Noailles; transfer the seat of war to France itself? These are my orders, your Majesty. Combined Invasion of Elsass: what a slash may be made into France [right handselling of your Carteret Scheme] this very year!" "Proper, in every case!" answers the Britannic Majesty; and engages to co-operate. Upon which Prince Karl--after the due reviewing, dinnering, ceremonial blaring, which was splendid to witness [Anonymous, Duke of Cumberland, pp. 65, 86.]--hastens back to his Army (now lying about Baden Durlach, 70,000 strong); and ought to be swift, while the chance lasts. _ |
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