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History Of Friedrich II of Prussia [Books XV - XXI], a non-fiction book by Thomas Carlyle |
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Book 20. Friedrich Is Not To Be Overwhelmed: The Seven-Years War Gradually Ends--25th April, 1760-15th February, 1763 - Chapter 6. Winter-Quarters 1760-1761 |
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_ BOOK XX. FRIEDRICH IS NOT TO BE OVERWHELMED: THE SEVEN-YEARS WAR GRADUALLY ENDS--25th April, 1760-15th February, 1763 Chapter VI. WINTER-QUARTERS 1760-1761 A melancholy little event, which afterwards proved unexpectedly unfortunate for Friedrich, had happened in England ten days before the Battle of Torgau. Saturday, 25th October, 1760, George II., poor old gentleman, suddenly died. He was in his 77th year; feeble, but not feebler than usual,--unless, perhaps, the unaccountable news from Kloster Kampen may have been too agitating to the dim old mind? On the Monday of this week he had, "from a tent in Hyde Park," presided at a Review of Dragoons; and on Thursday, as his Coldstream Guards were on march for Portsmouth and foreign service, "was in his Portico at Kensington to see them pass;"--full of zeal always in regard to military matters, and to this War in particular. Saturday, by sunrise he was on foot; took his cup of chocolate; inquired about the wind, and the chances of mails arriving; opened his window, said he would have a turn in the Gardens, the morning being so fine. It was now between 7 and 8. The valet then withdrew with the chocolate apparatus; but had hardly shut the door, when he heard a deep sigh, and fall of something,--"billet of wood from the fire?" thought he;--upon which, hurrying back, he found it was the King, who had dropt from his seat, "as if in attempting to ring the bell." King said faintly, "Call Amelia," and instantly died. Poor deaf Amelia (Friedrich's old love, now grown old and deaf) listened wildly for some faint sound from those lips now mute forever. George Second was no more; his grandson George Third was now King. [Old Newspapers (in Gentleman's Magazine, xxx. 486-488).] Intrinsically taken, this seemed no very great event for Friedrich, for Pitt, for England or mankind: but it proved otherwise. The merit of this poor King deceased, who had led his Nation stumbling among the chimney-pots at such a rate in these mad German Wars for Twenty Years past, was, That he did now stand loyal to the Enterprise, now when it had become sane indeed; now when the Nation was broad awake, and a Captain had risen to guide it out of that perilous posture, into never-expected victory and triumph! Poor old George had stood by his Pitt, by his Ferdinand, with a perfect loyalty at all turns; and been devoted, heart and soul and breeches-pocket, to completely beating Bourbon's oppressive ideas out of Bourbon's head. A little fact, but how important, then and there! Under the Successor, all this may be different:--ghastly beings, Old Tutors, Favorites, Mother's-Favorites, flit, as yet invisible, on the new backstairs:--should Bute and Company get into the foreground, people will then know how important it was. Walpole says:-- "The Yorkes [Ex-Chancellor Hardwicke people] had long distasted this War:" yes, and been painfully obliged to hold their tongues: "but now," within a month or so of the old King's death, "there was published, under Lord Hardwicke's countenance, a Tract setting forth the burden and ill policy of our German measures. It was called CONSIDERATIONS ON THE GERMAN WAR; was ably written, and changed many men's minds." This is the famous "Mauduit Pamphlet:" first of those small stones, from the sling of Opposition not obliged to be dormant, which are now beginning to rattle on Pitt's Olympian Dwelling-place,--high really as Olympus, in comparison with others of the kind, but which unluckily is made of GLASS like the rest of them! The slinger of this first resounding little missile, Walpole informs us, was "one Mauduit, formerly a Dissenting Teacher,"--son of a Dissenting Minister in Bermondsey, I hear, and perhaps himself once a Preacher, but at present concerned with Factorage of Wool on the great scale; got soon afterwards promoted to be Head of the Custom-house in Southampton, so lovely did he seem to Bute and Company. "How agreeable his politics were to the interior of the Court, soon appeared by a place [Southampton Custom-house] being bestowed on him by Lord Bute." A fortunate Mauduit, yet a stupidly tragical; had such a destiny in English History! Hear Walpole a little farther, on Mauduit, and on other things then resonant to Arlington Street in a way of their own. "TO SIR HORACE MANN [at Florence]:-- "NOVEMBER 14th, 1760 [tenth night after Torgau].... We are all in guns and bonfires for an unexpected victory of the King of Prussia over Daun; but as no particulars are yet arrived, there are doubters." "DECEMBER 5th, 1760. I have received the samples of brocadella.... I shall send you a curious Pamphlet, the only work I almost ever knew that changed the opinions of many. It is called CONSIDERATIONS ON THE PRESENT GERMAN WAR, ["London: Printed for John Wilkie, at the Bible, in St. Paul's Churchyard, 1761," adds my poor Copy (a frugal 12mo, of pp. 144), not adding of what edition.] and is written by a wholesale Woollen-Draper [connected with Wool, in some way] "Factor at Blackwell Hall," if that mean Draper:--and a growing man ever after; came to be "Agent for Massachusetts," on the Boston-TEA occasion, and again did Tracts; was "President of the"--in short, was a conspicuous Vice-President, so let us define him, of The general Anti-Penalty or Life-made-Soft Association, with Cause of civil and religious Liberty all over the World, and such like; and a Mauduit comfortably resonant in that way till he died [Chalmers, BIOG. DICTIONARY; Nichols, LITERARY ANECDOTES; &c. &c.]; but the materials are supposed to be furnished by the faction of the Yorkes. The confirmation of the King of Prussia's victory near Torgau does not prevent the disciples of the Pamphlet from thinking that the best thing which could happen for us would be to have that Monarch's head shot off. [Hear, hear!]-- "There are Letters from the Hague [what foolish Letters do fly about, my friend!], that say Daun is dead of his wounds. If he is, I shall begin to believe that the King of Prussia will end successfully at last. [Oh!] It has been the fashion to cry down Daun; but, as much as the King of Prussia may admire himself [does immensely, according to our Selwyn informations], I dare say he would have been glad to be matched with one much more like himself than one so opposite as the Marshal." "JANUARY 2d, 1761. The German War is not so popular as you imagine, either in the Closet or in the Nation." [Walpole, Letters to Sir Horace Mann (Lond. 1843), i. 6, 7.] (Enough, enough.) The Mauduit Pamphlet, which then produced such an effect, is still to be met in old Collections and on Bookstalls; but produces little save weariness to a modern reader. "Hanover not in real danger," argues he; "if the French had it, would not they, all Europe ordering them, have to give it up again?" Give it up,--GRATIS, or in return for Canada and Pondicherry, Mauduit's does not say. Which is an important omission! But Mauduit's grand argument is that of expense; frightful outlay of money, aggravated by ditto mismanagement of same. A War highly expensive, he says--(and the truth is, Pitt was never stingy of money: "Nearly the one thing we have in any plenty; be frank in use of that, in an Enterprise so ill-provided otherwise, and involving life and death!" thinks Pitt);--"dreadfully expensive," urges Mauduit, and gives some instances of Commissariat moneys signally wasted,--not by Pitt, but by the stupidity of Pitt's War Offices, Commissariat Offices, Offices of all kinds; not to be cured at once by any Pitt:--How magazines of hay were shipped and reshipped, carried hither, thither, up this river, down that (nobody knowing where the war-horses would be that were to eat it); till at length, when it had reached almost the value of bohea tea, the right place of it was found to be Embden (nearest to Britain from the first, had one but known), and not a horse would now taste it, so spoiled was the article; all horses snorted at it, as they would have done at bohea, never so expensive. [Mauduit (towards the end) has a story of that tenor,--particulars not worth verifying.] These things are incident to British warfare; also to Swedish, and to all warfares that have their War Offices in an imaginary state,--state much to be abhorred by every sane creature; but not to be mended all at once by the noblest of men, into whose hands they are suddenly thrust for saving his Nation. Conflagration to be quenched; and your buckets all in hideous leakage, like buckets of the Danaides:--your one course is, ply them, pour with them, such as they are. Mauduit points out farther the enormous fortunes realized by a swindling set of Army-Furnishers, Hebrews mainly, and unbeautiful to look on. Alas, yes; this too is a thing incident to the case; and in a degree to all such cases, and situations of sudden crisis;--have not we seen Jew Ephraim growing rich by the copper money even of a Friedrich? Christian Protestants there are, withal, playing the same game on a larger scale. Herr Schimmelmann ("MOULDY-man") the Dane, for instance,--Dane or Holsteiner,--is coining false money for a Duke of Holstein-Plon, who has not a Seven-Years War on his hands. Diligently coining, this Mouldy Individual; still more successfully, is trading in Friedrich's Meissen China (bought in the cheapest market, sold in the dearest); has at Hamburg his "Auction of Meissen Porcelain," steadily going on, as a new commercial institution of that City;--and, in short, by assiduously laboring in such harvest-fields, gathers a colossal fortune, 100,000 pounds, 300,000 pounds, or I will not remember what. Gets "ennobled," furthermore, by a Danish Government prompt to recognize human merit: Elephant Order, Dannebrog Order; no Order good enough for this Mouldy-man of merit; [Preuss, ii. 391, 282, &c.]--and is, so far as I know, begetting "Nobles," that is to say, Vice-Kings and monitory Exemplars, for the Danish People, to this day. Let us shut down the iron lid on all that. Mauduit's Pamphlet, if it raised in the abhorrent unthinking English mind some vague notion, as probably it did, that Pitt was responsible for these things, or was in a sort the cause or author of them, might produce some effect against him. "What a splash is this you are making, you Great Commoner; wetting everybody's feet,--as our Mauduit proves;--while the Conflagration seems to be going out, if you let it alone!" For the heads of men resemble--My friend, I will not tell you what they, in multitudinous instances, resemble. But thus has woollen Mauduit, from his private camp ("Clement's Lane, Lombard Street," say the Dictionaries), shot, at a very high object, what pigeon's-egg or small pebble he had; the first of many such that took that aim; with weak though loud-sounding impact, but with results--results on King Friedrich in particular, which were stronger than the Cannonade of Torgau! As will be seen. For within year and day,--Mauduit and Company making their noises from without, and the Butes and Hardwickes working incessantly with such rare power of leverage and screwage in the interior parts,--a certain Quasi-Olympian House, made of glass, will lie in sherds, and the ablest and noblest man in England see himself forbidden to do England any service farther: "Not needed more, Sir! Go you,--and look at US for the remainder of your life!" _ |
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