Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 68, No. 421, November 1850

The twenty-six trumpeters, who supplied the place of conversation at the royal dinners, were scattered among the regiments. The hundred Swiss – the decorated slaves, whom Switzerland, with all her boast of freedom, was in the habit of sending to play the menial to the European sovereigns – were dismissed to do duty in the ranks of the line. The hoards of pearls and diamonds, and gold and silver plate, which it had been the pride and the folly of the late king to amass, were sold to pay his debts and to raise troops.

The old court had been overrun with French fashions, the French language – everything French. The king set about reforming those anti-national propensities: he dressed the regimental provosts, or army floggers and executioners, in the full French costume, to render it ridiculous; the embroidered coats and huge wigs of his privy councillors and chamberlains he ordered to be worn by the court fool on gala days.

But the discipline of the Prussian army was the peculiar distinction of this singular reign. Of all European nations, Prussia is the one to which an army is the most important. The exposed condition of a long and irregular territory, wholly without a natural frontier, with neither mountain range nor bordering river for its protection, and surrounded by warlike and powerful nations, required an army, to keep it in existence. The Alps or Pyrenees, the Rhine and the Danube, the Dniester and the Po, might protect their several countries from invasion; but the levels of Prussia required a force always on foot, prompt and prepared. To frontierless Prussia a powerful army was as peculiarly essential as a Royal Navy is to the British Isles. In all the early difficulties of his predecessor's debt, the king had raised the Prussian army to upwards of forty thousand men; and, before he died, his muster-roll amounted to nearly eighty thousand of the finest troops on the Continent. It gives a curious contrast of the nature of belligerency in the nineteenth century, to know that the Prussian army now reckons three hundred thousand men, and that, on the first rumour of war, it would probably number half-a-million.

The new school of finance makes inquiries of this kind important; for since every country must be prepared to defend itself, and troops require to be paid, the whole question of national safety depends on the national force. The Manchester financiers tell us that reduction is the true secret of strength, and that fleets and armies are only provocatives to war. The older school held, that to be prepared for war was the best security for peace; that the reduction which extinguished the national force was only an invitation to insult; and that it was a wiser policy to give the soldier his pay for our protection, than to give an invader every shilling we were worth in the shape of plunder. Frederick-William was of the old school; and, by showing that he was always prepared for war, he secured peace, even in the most quarrelsome of all countries, Germany, through a reign of twenty-seven years. The organisation of the Prussian army was even then a phenomenon in Europe: its provision, its government, its recruiting, and, above all, its manœuvring, attracted universal admiration, and doubled the impression of its numbers on the general mind.

These facts have an interest beyond their mere effect at the time; they are the testimonials of talent, evidences of the power of mind, encouragements to original conception, substantial declarations that men should always try to invigorate, improve, and advance inventions, however apparently perfect. There is always a field beyond.

Why a German duchy was suffered thus to rise into European influence – to extend from a province into a territory, now containing sixteen millions of souls, and to change from a dependent electorate into a kingdom, now acting as the barrier of Northern Germany against the gigantic monarchy of St Petersburg – is a question which ought to be asked by the politician, and which may well excite the study of the philosopher.

The true value of history consists in developing principles. Memoirs and biographies, the anecdotes of vigorous minds, and the narratives of leading events, all have their obvious value; but history has a distinction of its own. It is more than a tissue of striking recollections; it is superior to a fine arrangement of facts; it is the spirit of great facts, a system displaying the science of influential things.

Events are, of course, its material, but it is only as the materials of architecture furnish the means of erecting the palace or the temple: the mind of the architect must supply the beauty and grandeur of the edifice. Without that constructive genius, history is only a compilation.

It is certainly in no superstition, that we strongly incline to account for the rise of Prussia in the necessity of a protection for Protestantism in Northern Germany. The whole tenor of its annals substantiates the conception. Prussia, at an early period, felt a singular sympathy with the Protestantism of Germany. The especial scene of persecution was Poland, where neither royal compact nor popular declaration was able to secure the faith of the Scriptures from the outrages of Romanism. The Treaty of Oliva, in 1660, had, like the Edict of Nantes, been the charter of Protestantism; but, like the Edict, it had been broken, and the life of the Polish Protestant was a scene of suffering. The "Great Elector" had signalised his Christianity, and perhaps raised his country, by giving protection to the sufferers. His descendant, Frederick-William, followed his honourable example. When the Starost Umruh, in 1715, was sentenced to have his tongue cut out, and to be beheaded, for his Protestant opinions, he fled to Prussia, and was protected by Frederick-William. The Diet of Grodno commenced a persecution by declaring the Polish Protestants to have forfeited both their civil and religious privileges. Frederick-William answered this act of infidelity and tyranny by a royal remonstrance to the diet, and by a letter to the King of England, advocating the persecuted cause. In the Treaty of Stockholm, in 1720, he inserted a stipulation, binding the Swedish Government to make common cause with the Protestants of Germany. In Western Germany, persecution had long exhibited its irrational policy, and exercised its cruel power. At Heidelberg, Popish advisers and confessors had poisoned the mind of the Elector, and acts of violence had taken place. The Protestants, in their distress, applied to Prussia. The King, in conjunction with the British monarch, and the Elector of Hesse, adopted their defence; issuing, at the same time, the effective menace that, if the persecution in the Palatinate were not stopped, he would shut up every Romish chapel, convent, and institution, and sequestrate every dollar of their revenue in Prussia, while the persecution lasted.

The same impulse acted throughout the century. Frederick II. was an infidel: the national policy continued unchanged. As a Voltairist, he was an ostentatious advocate of toleration, which, though in both Frederick and his teacher the work of the scoffer, yet produced the effect of forbidding all religious tyranny. Even the war for the possession of Silesia, though difficult to be explained in its question of right, had the result of weakening the Popish influence in Germany. Maria-Theresa was the prop of Popery, while Frederick II. was universally regarded as the champion of Protestantism; and his final success, by enfeebling the supremacy of the empress, showed that a kingdom of Protestantism possessed the means of resisting an empire of Popery hitherto supposed irresistible. If Prussia had been crushed in that contest, the prestige of Popery would again have risen to its old height in Germany, Protestantism would unquestionably have felt the blow to its foundations, and the probable consequence would have been to throw the Continent at the feet of Rome.

Frederick the Great was born on the 24th of January 1712, in the palace at Berlin. At his baptism, the sponsors were at least sufficiently numerous and stately; they were the Emperor Charles VI., the Dowager-empress, the Czar Peter, the States-general of Holland, the Canton of Berne, the Electant Prince of Hanover, and the Dowager-duchess of Mecklenburg.

Frederick was born Prince of Prussia and Orange; but after the cession of Orange to France, by the Peace of Utrecht, the name was given up, though the Crown of Prussia retained the title and the arms.

The popular feeling, on this occasion, was connected with a simple yet curious circumstance. An American Aloe, which had been forty-four years in the royal garden, suddenly threw out a profusion of blossoms. Thousands flocked to see this fine production of nature, which, on a stem thirty-one feet high, exhibited 7277 blossoms! The multitude gave it an almost mystic meaning, and conceived the plant (which, in all this profusion of beauty, was decaying) to be emblematic of the failing health of the old king, and the new prospects of honour under his grandson. Poems and pictures of the Aloe were spread through the kingdom. The omen was as imaginative as one of the poetic superstitions of Greece, and the imagination was realised.

The education of the future possessor of a sceptre is an important topic. In Germany the education of the higher orders generally embraces a sort of encyclopædia of accomplishments. The young heir to the throne thus learned music and painting, in addition to mathematics and languages. In music he became a proficient, and with his favourite instrument, the flute, could sustain his part in an orchestra. But, the chief object of his education, as that of all the German princes, being military, he learned all of the art of war that could be taught; the perfection of the art he was yet to learn in the field, and give evidence of his acquirement only in his memorable victories.

One misfortune of this education possessed and perverted him through life. Germany was, in literature, but a province of France. The licentiousness of French sentiment had tempted the rising generation to abandon the manly feelings of the Reformers. It is to the honour of our country that the principles of true religion, like those of true liberty, then found their defence within her borders; and in the existing, and still darker, period of German infidelity, the battle is still fought by the theology of England.

Adversity seems essential to the education of all great princes. Frederick was not without his share of this stern pupillage. The eccentricities of his royal father, his own waywardness, and the roughness of court discipline, produced continual collisions in the royal family, and the prince remained for some years in a kind of honourable exile from Berlin. During this period, however, he cultivated his powerful understanding to its height; but made the singular mistake of believing that he was born for a hermit, a sentimentalist, and a writer of French verses. In this fantastic spirit, he gave his immediate friends names from Greece and Rome; and was surrounded by Hephæstion, Diophanes, Cæsarion, and Quintus Icilius. Even the place of his retirement, Rheinsberg, was transformed into Remusberg, to meet a tradition that Remus was not killed by Romulus, but, flying from Rome, had settled in the spot which was afterwards to teach sentiment and solitude to the Prince of Prussia.

Those are traits worth remembering in the history of human nature. Who could have conceived the most daring of warriors, the most subtle of politicians, and the most ambitious of kings, in the writer of letters such as these? —

"My house, indeed, is not a place for those who are fond of noisy pleasures; but are not tranquillity, quiet, and the search for truth, to be preferred to the giddy and turbulent diversions of this world?

"On the 25th I am going to Amaltheu, my beloved garden at Ruppin. I am quite impatient to see again my vines, my cherries, and my melons; there, free from all useless cares, I shall live entirely for myself. My whole soul is now intent on philosophy. It renders me incomparable services, and I am deeply indebted to it. My spirit is less agitated by impetuous emotions. I repress the first working of my passions, and I never make a choice until I have maturely considered it."

All his letters are in the same strain of studious quiet, of steady self-control, and of systematic love of retirement. He sometimes even turns enthusiast, and he thus writes to Voltaire, then known chiefly as the author of the Henriade– (his worse celebrity, as the impugner of all religion, was still at a distance.) In a letter, in 1738, he addresses the Frenchman in this rapturous effusion: —

"At Rheinsberg, to be perfectly happy, we want only a Voltaire. But, though you live far from us, still you are in our midst. Your portrait adorns my library; it hangs over the bookcase which contains our Golden Fleece, immediately above your works, and opposite to the place where I generally sit, that I may always have it in my view. I might almost say, that your picture is to me as the statue of Memnon, which, when the sun's rays fell on it, emitted harmonious sounds, and imparted inspiration to the mind of every one who looked upon it."

In another letter he writes —

"In pagan antiquity, men offered to the gods the first fruits of the harvest and of the vintage… In the Romish church, they devote not only the firstborn, not only the younger sons, but whole kingdoms, as we see in the instance of St Louis, who renounced his in favour of the Virgin Mary. For my part, I have no first fruits of the earth, no children, and no kingdom to devote; but I devote to you the first fruits of my muse in the year 1739. Were I a pagan, I would address you by the name of Apollo; were I a Papist, I might have chosen you for my patron saint, or my confessor; but, being none of these, I am content to admire you as a philosopher, to love you as a poet, and to esteem you as a friend."

But this romance was soon to be exchanged for reality; the elegancies of royal idleness were to be forgotten in the sound of cannon, and the fictions of a pampered fancy were to be thrown into the shade by the vicissitudes of one of the most sanguinary struggles that Europe had ever seen.

In 1740, Frederick had ascended the throne. He was at Potsdam, and confined to his chamber by illness, when the death of the Emperor Charles was announced to him. This event broke up the peace of Germany.

The Emperor, Charles VI., having no issue after a marriage of four years, established a new law of succession, known as the Pragmatic Sanction. The heirship of Austria had hitherto been limited to males; but, by the new law, the undivided monarchy was to devolve first to his own daughters, or, if they should not be living at the time of his death, to the daughters of his elder brother Joseph, Electresses of Saxony and Bavaria, and so on, always to the nearest relatives.

The death of the Emperor obviously threatened to involve all Europe, and especially Germany, in convulsion; for the mere publication of the Pragmatic Sanction, in 1724, had produced counter declarations from no less than three princes of the empire, who regarded their rights as invaded. The Elector of Bavaria, who was married to a daughter of the Emperor Joseph I., founded a claim to the Austrian dominions on the will of Ferdinand I.; France was disposed to enter into an alliance with Prussia; Sweden and Russia would have been inevitably involved in the war. And it was of this complication of events that the young Prussian monarch took advantage to make an assault upon Austria. For one hundred years Prussia had complained of the loss of Silesia. Her successive kings had severally impeached its seizure by Austria, and the Great Elector had still earlier bequeathed the recovery of the province to the gallantry, or the good fortune, of his successors. Frederick, now at the head of a powerful army, with a full treasury, and seeing an approaching contest for the possession of Austria itself, regarded this as a favourable moment for the recovery of his ancestral territory.

Frederick, having now completed all his preparations, sent an envoy to Vienna, to offer his alliance to Maria-Theresa, and his vote to her husband at the election of emperor, provided she would give up Silesia. But knowing the contempt with which the Austrian cabinet regarded the minor princes of Germany, and also knowing the advantage of promptitude, where the object is possession, he at once set his army in motion for the Silesian frontier. His proposal was, as he had foreseen, rejected; and on its rejection, without a moment's delay, he rushed over the frontier. He found, as he had expected, the Austrian government wholly unprepared. The whole disposable force of Austria, for the defence of Silesia, amounted to 3000 men. The invading army amounted to 28,000. Breslau the capital, Glogau the principal fortress, every town, speedily fell before him. In a note to his friend Jordan, who had attempted to dissuade him from the enterprise, he wrote, in a mixture of scoffing and exultation —

"My gentle M. Jordan, my kind, my mild, my peace-loving M. Jordan, I acquaint your serenity that Silesia is as good as conquered. I prepare you for most important plans, and announce to you the greatest luck that the womb of fortune ever produced. For the present this must be enough for you. Be my Cicero in defending my enterprise; in its execution I will be your Cæsar."

We now advert to the distinguished public servant whose correspondence throws the principal light on this important period of our foreign policy – the British envoy to the court of Berlin.

Andrew Mitchell was born in Edinburgh in 1708, son of one of the ministers of St Giles's, king's chaplain for Scotland. His mother, Margaret Cunningham, was a descendant of Lord Glencairn. Mitchell adopted the law as his profession, was admitted to the Middle Temple, and was called to the English bar in 1738. Besides a knowledge of the Scotch law, he was a man of general and rather elegant acquirement, having left among his papers observations on the Ciceronian philosophy, on the chief European histories, on morals, models, statues, and classic objects in general. He was also a member of the Royal Society.

Mitchell was evidently either sustained by active interest, or an opinion of his talents; for on the appointment of the Marquis of Tweeddale to the secretaryship for Scotland, he fixed on Mitchell as his undersecretary. In 1747, he was elected member for the county of Aberdeen. In 1756, he was appointed as British representative at the court of Frederick II.

In the more decorous style of modern diplomacy, we can seldom find examples of the court-candour with which the royal personages of the last age spoke of each other. George II. called Frederick-William "my brother the corporal." Frederick-William called George II. "my brother the dancing-master." Of course those opinions made their way to the last ears which ought to have heard them, and they left stings. But the necessities of the time overcame the bitterness of the sarcasms. Some of the letters of the elder Horace Walpole, Sir Robert's brother, who had been ambassador at Paris and the Hague, then the chief scenes of foreign diplomacy, probably expressed the chief feeling of English public men in his day, as they certainly were soon embodied in their policy. Of Frederick II. he says, —

"I know the character of that prince. I know how little he is to be trusted, and I would not have trusted him without good security for the execution of his engagements… I need not tell you that the house of Brandenburg is a rising house. The economy of the late king, the spirit of discipline he introduced into his army, the ambition, talents, and active genius of the present monarch, must render that house a powerful friend or formidable enemy."

He gives an equally decisive opinion of the Austrian policy —

"I apprehend that the principal object of the court of Vienna will be to distract, divide, and devour the Prussian dominions. Their pride, their vengeance, and, above all, their bigotry will naturally lead them to destroy a Protestant power that has dared to offend them."

At length it was ascertained that a private negotiation had been commenced between Austria and France, the result of which must expose the Electoral dominions to invasion by France. An alliance with Prussia was immediately concluded. The account subsequently given by Thiébault, in his Memoirs of the Prussian Court, gives a strong impression of Mitchell's manliness and intelligence: —

"Sir Andrew Mitchell, Knight of the Order of the Garter, [a mistake for the Bath,] had been for several years the English ambassador at Berlin, when I first arrived there. Some time, however, elapsed before I had the least acquaintance with him, not only because it was little to be expected that Englishmen should be desirous of the society of Frenchmen, but also because Sir Andrew Mitchell was of the number of those meritorious characters who stand in no need of perpetual society for existence, and have the philosophy to prefer being occasionally alone. When he first arrived in Berlin, he had caused the persons who necessarily invited him to their houses considerable perplexity; for he played at no game of cards, so that his hosts constantly said, – 'What shall we do with the Englishman, who never plays at cards?' In a few days, however, the contest was, who should withhold himself from the card-table, and have the advantage of conversing with a man in whom they had discovered every requisite to afford the highest pleasure in colloquial intercourse. In reality, his understanding was no less admirable than the virtues of his character. Of this I cannot give a more substantial proof, than by observing that he was united in the strictest bonds of friendship with the author of L'Esprit des Loix."

Some of the shrewd bons-mots of the diplomatic Scot are given by the Frenchman. On one occasion, when the English mail had three times been due, the king said to him at the levée – "Have you not the spleen, M. Mitchell, when the mail is thus delayed?" The reply was, – "No, Sire, not when it is delayed, but often enough when it duly arrives."

The English cabinet having promised to send a fleet to the Baltic, to prevent the Russians from sending troops against the king, and the fleet not appearing, Frederick was chagrined; at length he ceased to invite the envoy to the royal table. One day some of the servants, meeting him, asked, – "Is it dinner-time, M. Mitchell?" The significant retort was, – "Gentlemen, no fleet, no dinner." This was told to Frederick, and the invitations were renewed.

The next bon-mot is happier still. After the taking of Port Mahon, and the retreat of the unfortunate Admiral Byng, the king, meeting the envoy, said, – "You have made a bad beginning, M. Mitchell; your trial of Admiral Byng is but a bad plaster for the disease; you have made an unlucky campaign." "Sire," observed Mitchell, "we hope, with God's assistance, to make a better one next year."

"With God's assistance, sir! I did not know that you had such an ally," said the king.

"We hope we have, Sire; and he is the only one of our allies that costs us nothing," was the pungent reply.

In the latter portion of the war against Napoleon, it was the custom to send British officers to attend the headquarters of the Allies, and diplomatists frequently moved along with the armies. But the instance of Mitchell's moving along with the Prussian monarch was, we believe, the first example of the kind. On this subject, we have a lively letter from the Earl of Holdernesse, then Secretary of State to the envoy: —

"Dear Sir, – I heartily wish you health and success in the new trade you are going to undertake. However, do not grow too much a soldier, and set a bad precedent for the rest of your black brethren of the ink-bottle. Observation is our business, not fighting. Remember, if you do get a knock of the pate, vous en emporterez la peine, et l'on dira – Que diable y avoit-il à faire. Yet I would not advise you to follow the steps of the minister of Mayence at Dettingen, who, during the time of action, came up to Lord Granville's coach, crying out, 'Je proteste contre toute violence.'

"I can find no trace in the office books of any particular allowance made to Foreign Ministers for such sort of expeditions; but I am persuaded I shall adjust it easily with the Duke of Newcastle. Once more, adieu. Our constant toast now here is, 'Success to the King of Prussia.' He grows vastly popular among us. For my part, I always add a gulp more to my old friend Mitchell."

A letter from the envoy, addressed to the King of Prussia, makes the formal request that he may be allowed to follow the headquarters – a permission which was immediately conceded by the king. The object of this request, (suggested by the English Ministry,) was twofold – to have an intelligent observer of the politics of Prussia on the spot; and to supply George II. with anecdotes of war, for which he conceived himself to have a peculiar talent; and on which subject the despatches of the envoy were always read by him with peculiar interest.

The envoy was not long without material. Before he left Berlin, he had the following despatch to write to the Earl of Holdernesse —

"My Lord, – This morning, about seven o'clock, Monsieur Oppen, an officer in the Guards, arrived here from the Prussian army. He had no letters, only a scrap of paper without date, which he was directed to deliver to the queen-mother, in which was written with a pencil, in the king's own hand, that his troops had beaten the Austrians, platte couture, that he reckoned his loss about two thousand, and that of the Austrians at four thousand men."

This was a hard-fought but indecisive action. The Austrians, under Marshal Browne, were the assailants; and the engagement continued from morning till past midday, when they retreated; but they numbered two-thirds more than the Prussians, their force being nearly seventy thousand to about forty thousand.