History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 6 [48]
is a Tobacco-Parliament withal;--and the royal mind, sensitive, imaginative as a poet's, as a woman's, and liable to transports as of a Norse Baresark, is of uncertain movement. Such a load of intricacies and exaggerated anxieties hanging on it, the royal mind goes like the most confused smoke-jack, sure only to HAVE revolutions; and we know how, afar from Soissons, and at home in Tobacco-Parliament, the machine is influenced! Enough, the explosive procedures continue, and are on the increasing hand.
Majesty's hunting at Wusterhausen was hardly done, when that alarming Treaty of Seville came to light (9th November, 1729), France and England ranked by the side of Spain, disposing of Princes and Apanages at their will, and a Kaiser left sitting solitary,--which awakens the domestic whirlwinds at Berlin, among other results. "CANAILLE ANGLAISE, English Doggery!" and similar fine epithets, addressed to Wilhelmina and the Crown-Prince, fly about; not to speak of occasional crockery and other missiles. Friedrich Wilhelm has forbidden these two his presence altogether, except at dinner: Out of my sight, ye Canaille Anglaise; darken not the sunlight for me at all!
This is in the Wusterhausen time,--Hanover Imminency only two months gone. And Mamma sends for us to have private dialogues in her Apartment there, with spies out in every direction to make signal of Majesty's return from his hunt,--who, however, surprises as on one occasion, so that we have to squat for hours, and almost get suffocated. [Wilhelmina, i. 172.] Whereupon the Crown-Prince, who will be eighteen in a couple of months, and feels the indignity of such things, begs of Mamma to be excused in future. He has much to suffer from his Father again, writes Dubourgay in the end of November: "it is difficult to conceive the vile stratagems that are made use of to provoke the Father against the Son." [Dubourgay, 28th November, 1729.] Or again, take this, as perhaps marking an epoch in the business, a fortnight farther on:--
DECEMBER 10th 1729. "His Prussian Majesty cannot bear the sight of either the Prince or Princess Royal: The other day, he asked the Prince: 'Kalkstein makes you English; does not he?'" Kalkstein, your old Tutor, Borck, Knyphausen, Finkenstein, they are all of that vile clique! "To which the Prince answered, 'I respect the English because I know the people there love me;' upon which the King seized him by the collar, struck him fiercely with his cane," in fact rained showers of blows upon him; "and it was only by superior strength," thinks Dubourgay, "that the poor Prince escaped worse. There is a general apprehension of something tragical taking place before long."
Truly the situation is so violent, it cannot last. And in effect a wild thought, not quite new, ripens to a resolution in the Crown-Prince under such pressures: In reference to which, as we grope and guess, here is a Billet to Mamma, which Wilhelmina has preserved. Wilhelmina omits all trace of date, as usual; but Dubourgay, in the above Excerpt, probably supplies that defect:--
FRIEDRICH TO HIS MOTHER (Potsdam, December, 1729).
"I am in the uttermost despair. What I had always apprehended has at last come on me. The King has entirely forgotten that I am his Son. This morning I came into his room as usual; at the first sight of me," or at the first passage of Kalkstein-dialogue with me, "he sprang forward, seized me by the collar, and struck me a shower of cruel blows with his rattan. I tried in vain to screen myself, he was in so terrible a rage, almost out of himself; it was only weariness," not my superior strength, "that made him give up."
"I am driven to extremity. I have too much honor to endure such treatment; and I am resolved to put an end to it in one way or another." [Wilhelmina, i. 175.]
Is not this itself sufficiently tragical? Not the first stroke he had got, we can surmise; but the first torrent of strokes, and open beating like a slave;--which to a proud young man and Prince, at such age, is indeed INtolerable. Wilhelmina knows too well what he meaus
Majesty's hunting at Wusterhausen was hardly done, when that alarming Treaty of Seville came to light (9th November, 1729), France and England ranked by the side of Spain, disposing of Princes and Apanages at their will, and a Kaiser left sitting solitary,--which awakens the domestic whirlwinds at Berlin, among other results. "CANAILLE ANGLAISE, English Doggery!" and similar fine epithets, addressed to Wilhelmina and the Crown-Prince, fly about; not to speak of occasional crockery and other missiles. Friedrich Wilhelm has forbidden these two his presence altogether, except at dinner: Out of my sight, ye Canaille Anglaise; darken not the sunlight for me at all!
This is in the Wusterhausen time,--Hanover Imminency only two months gone. And Mamma sends for us to have private dialogues in her Apartment there, with spies out in every direction to make signal of Majesty's return from his hunt,--who, however, surprises as on one occasion, so that we have to squat for hours, and almost get suffocated. [Wilhelmina, i. 172.] Whereupon the Crown-Prince, who will be eighteen in a couple of months, and feels the indignity of such things, begs of Mamma to be excused in future. He has much to suffer from his Father again, writes Dubourgay in the end of November: "it is difficult to conceive the vile stratagems that are made use of to provoke the Father against the Son." [Dubourgay, 28th November, 1729.] Or again, take this, as perhaps marking an epoch in the business, a fortnight farther on:--
DECEMBER 10th 1729. "His Prussian Majesty cannot bear the sight of either the Prince or Princess Royal: The other day, he asked the Prince: 'Kalkstein makes you English; does not he?'" Kalkstein, your old Tutor, Borck, Knyphausen, Finkenstein, they are all of that vile clique! "To which the Prince answered, 'I respect the English because I know the people there love me;' upon which the King seized him by the collar, struck him fiercely with his cane," in fact rained showers of blows upon him; "and it was only by superior strength," thinks Dubourgay, "that the poor Prince escaped worse. There is a general apprehension of something tragical taking place before long."
Truly the situation is so violent, it cannot last. And in effect a wild thought, not quite new, ripens to a resolution in the Crown-Prince under such pressures: In reference to which, as we grope and guess, here is a Billet to Mamma, which Wilhelmina has preserved. Wilhelmina omits all trace of date, as usual; but Dubourgay, in the above Excerpt, probably supplies that defect:--
FRIEDRICH TO HIS MOTHER (Potsdam, December, 1729).
"I am in the uttermost despair. What I had always apprehended has at last come on me. The King has entirely forgotten that I am his Son. This morning I came into his room as usual; at the first sight of me," or at the first passage of Kalkstein-dialogue with me, "he sprang forward, seized me by the collar, and struck me a shower of cruel blows with his rattan. I tried in vain to screen myself, he was in so terrible a rage, almost out of himself; it was only weariness," not my superior strength, "that made him give up."
"I am driven to extremity. I have too much honor to endure such treatment; and I am resolved to put an end to it in one way or another." [Wilhelmina, i. 175.]
Is not this itself sufficiently tragical? Not the first stroke he had got, we can surmise; but the first torrent of strokes, and open beating like a slave;--which to a proud young man and Prince, at such age, is indeed INtolerable. Wilhelmina knows too well what he meaus