: 6th-24th April 1778. shouted, crowned, raised to the immortal gods by a repentant Paris world: "Greatest of men,-You were not a miscreant and malefactor, then on the contrary, you were a spiritual Hercules, a heroic Son of Light; Slayer of the Nightmare Monsters, and foul Dragons and Devils that were preying on us: to you shall not we now say, Long life, with all our throats and all our hearts," -and so quench you at last! Which they managed to do, poor repentant souls. The tottering wayworn Voltaire, over-agitated in this way, took to bed; never rose again; and on that day twomonths was dead. His light all done; to King Friedrich, or to any of us, no flash of radiancy from him any more forever. This April 6th, Friedrich gets on march,—perhaps about 100,000 strong,―for Schönwalde, in the Neisse-Schweidnitz neighbourhood; and there, in the course of the week, has cantoned himself, and sits completing his magazines and appliances for actual work of war. is a considerable brandish; and a good deal astonishes Kaunitz and the Vienna people, who have not 10,000 at present on those Frontiers, and nothing whatever in a state of readiness. "Dangerous really!" Kaunitz admits; and sets new regiments on march from Hungary, from the Netherlands, from all ends of the Earth where they are. Tempers his own insolent talk, too; but strives to persuade himself that it is "Menace merely. He won't; he abhors war." Kaunitz had hardly exaggerated Friedrich's abhorrence of war; though it turned out there were things which Friedrich abhorred still more. Schönwalde, headquarter of this alarming Prussian cantonment, is close on the new Fortress of Silberberg, a beautiful new impregnability, looking into those Valleys of the Warta, of the young Neisse, which are the road to Bohemia or from it,-where the Pandour torrents used to issue into the first Silesian Wars; where In Duvernet, and still better in Longchamp et Wagnière, ample account of these interesting occurrences. 6th-24th April 1778. Friedrich himself was once to have been snapped up, but was not quite,-and only sang Mass as Extempore Abbot, with Tobias Stusche, in the Monastery of Camenz, according to the myth which readers may remember. No more can Pandours issue that way; only Prussians can enter in. Friedrich's windows in the Schloss of Schönwalde, which are on the left-hand, if you be touring in those parts,-look out direct upon Silberberg, and have its battlements between them and the 3-o'clock Sun. In the Town of Silberberg, Friedrich has withal a modest little lodging,-lodging still known,-where he can alight for an hour or a night, in the multifarious businesses that lead him to and fro. A beautiful place,' says Schöning; 'where the King stayed twelve weeks' or more; waiting till the Bavarian-Austrian case should ripen better. At Schönwalde, what was important in his private circle, he heard of Lord Marischal's death, then of Voltaire's; not to mention that of English Pitt, and perhaps others interesting to him.8 "Now was the time," cry Schmettau and the unfavourable, "when he might have walked across into Eastern Bohemia, into Mähren, whither you like; to Vienna itself, and taken Austria by the throat at discretion: 'Do justice, then, will you! Let go Bavaria, or-' In his young years, would not he have done so? His Plan, long since laid down, was grand: To march into Mähren, leaving Silesia guarded; nay leav ing Bohemia to be invaded,-for Prince Henri, and the Saxons, who are a willing handful, and will complete Henri likewise to 100,000, were to do that feat the 7 Schöning, iv. (Introductory Part.) • Voltaire died, May 30th; Marischal, May 25th; Pitt, May 11th ;and 'May 4th, in the Cantonment here, died General von Rentzel, the same who, as Lieutenant Rentzel, sixty years ago, had taught the little 'Crown-Prince his drill' (Rödenbeck, iii. 187). 6th-24th April 1778. while;-march into Mähren, on to Vienna if he chose; laying all flat. Infallible," say the Schmettau people. "He had the fire of head to contrive it at all; but worn down and grown old, he could not execute his great thoughts." Which is obviously absurd, Friedrich's object not being to lay Austria flat, or drive animosities to the sanguinary point, and kindle all Europe into war; but merely to extract, with the minimum of violence, something like justice from Austria on this Bavarian matter. For which end, he may justly consider slow pressure preferable to the cutting method. His problem is most ticklish, not allowed for by Schmettau. The encampment round Schönwalde, especially as there was nothing ready thereabouts on the Austrian side, produced a visible and great effect on the negotiations; and notably altered the high Kaunitz tone towards Friedrich. "Must two great Courts quarrel, then, for the sake of a small one?" murmured Kaunitz, plaintively now, to himself and to the King,-to the King not in a very distinct manner, though to himself the principle is long since clear as an axiom in Politics: "Great Courts should understand one another; then the small would be less troublesome." For a quarter of a century, this has been the Kaunitz faith. In 1753, when he miraculously screwed round the French into union with the Austrians to put down an upstart Prussia, this was his grand fulcrum, the immovable rock in which the great Engineer fixed down his political capstans, and levered and screwed. He did triumphantly wind matters round,-though whether they much profited him when round, may be a question. But the same grand principle, in the later instance of partitioning Poland, has it not proved eminently triumphant, successful in all points? And, doubtless, this King of Prussia recognises it, if made worth his 6th-24th April 1778. while, thinks Kaunitz. In a word, Kaunitz's next utterance is wonderfully changed. The great Engineer speaks almost like a Bishop on this new text. "Let the Two Courts," says he, "put themselves each in the other's place; each think what it would want;" and in fact each, in a Christian manner, try to do as it would be done by! How touching in the mouth of a Kaunitz, with something of pathos, of plaintiveness, almost of unction in it! "There is no other method of agreeing," urges he: "War is a terrible method, disliked by both of us. Austria wishes this of Bavaria; but his Prussian Majesty's turn will come, perhaps now is (let him say and determine); we will make it worth his while." This is of April 24th; notable change since the cantoning round Schönwalde. Germany at large, though it lay so silent, in its bed-rid condition, was in great anxiety. Never had the Holy Romish Reich such a shock before: "Meaning to partition us like Poland?" thought the Reich, with a shudder. "They can, by degrees, if they think good; these Two Great Sovereigns!" Courage, your Durchlauchts: one of the Two great ones has not that in his thoughts; has, and will have, the reverse of that; which will be your anchorage in the storms of fate for a long time to come! Nor was it, as will shortly appear to readers,-Kaunitz's immediate intention at all: enough if poor we can begin it, set it fairly under way; let some unborn happier Kaunitz, the last of a series, complete such blessed consummation; in a happier time, far over the practical horizon at present. This we do gather to have been Kaunitz's real view; and it throws a light on the vexed Partition-of-Poland question, and gives weight to Dohm's assertion, That Kaunitz was the actual beginner there. 6th-24th April 1778. Weeks before Friedrich heard of this remarkable Memorial, and ten days before it was brought to paper, there came to Friedrich another unexpected remarkable Document: a Letter from Kaiser Joseph himself, who is personally running about in these parts, over in Bohemia, endeavouring to bring Army matters to a footing; and is no doubt shocked to find them still in such backwardness, with a Friedrich at hand. The Kaiser's Letter, we perceive, is pilot-balloon to the Kaunitz episcopal Document, and to an actual meeting of Prussian and Austrian Ministers on the Bavarian point; and had been seen to be a salutary measure by an Austria in alarm. It asks, as the Kaunitz Memorial will, though in another style, "Must there be war then? Is there no possibility left in negotiation and mutual concession? I am your Majesty's friend and admirer; let us try." This was an unexpected and doubtless a welcome thing to Friedrich; who answers eagerly, and in a noble style both of courtesy and of business sense: upon which there followed two other Imperial Letters with their two Royal answers; and directly afterwards the small Austrian-Prussian Congress we spoke of, Finkenstein and Hertzberg on the Prussian part, Cobenzl on the Austrian (Congress sitting at Berlin), which tried to agree, but could not; and to which Kaunitz's Memorial of April 24th was meant as some helpful sprinkling of presidential quasi-episcopal oil. : Oil merely for it turned out, Kaunitz had no thought at present of partitioning the German Reich with Friedrich; but intended merely to keep his own seized por In Euvres de Frédéric (vi. 183-193), Three successive Letters from the Kaiser (of dates, 'Olmütz,' 'Litau,' 'Königsgrätz,' 13th-19th April 1778), with King's Answers (Schönwalde," all of them, and 14-20th April), totally without interest to the general reader. |