
FRIEDRICH TO PRINCE HENRI (home at Berlin).

"LEIPZIG, 14th JANUARY, 1763. ... Am not surprised you find Berlin
changed for the worse: such a train of calamities must, in the end,
make itself felt in a poor and naturally barren Country, where
continual industry is needed to second its fecundity and keep up
production. However, I will do what I can to remedy this dearth (LA
DISETTE), at least as far as my small means permit. ...

"No fear of Geldern and Wesel; all that has been cared for by Bauer
and the new Free-Corps. By the end of February Peace will be
signed; at the beginning of April everybody will find himself at
home, as in 1756.

"The Circles are going to separate: indifferent to me, or nearly
so; but it is good to be plucking out tiresome burning sticks,
stick after stick. I hope you amuse yourself at Berlin: at Leipzig
nothing but balls and redouts; my Nephews diverting themselves
amazingly. Madam Friedrich, lately Garden-maid at Seidlitz [Village
in the Neumark, with this Beauty plucking weeds in it,--little
prescient of such a fortune], now Wife to an Officer of the Free
Hussars, is the principal heroine of these Festivities."
[Schoning, iii. 528.]

LEIPZIG, 25th JANUARY, 1763. "Thanks for your care about my
existence. I am becoming very old, dear Brother; in a little while
I shall be useless to the world and a burden to myself: it is the
lot of all creatures to wear down with age,-- but one is not, for
all that, to abuse one's privilege of falling into dotage.

"You still speak without full confidence of our Negotiation
business [going on at Hubertsburg yonder]. Most certainly the
chapter of accidents is inexhaustible; and it is still certain
there may happen quantities of things which the limited mind of man
cannot foresee: but, judging by the ordinary course, and such
degrees of probability as human creatures found their hopes on, I
believe, before the month of February entirely end, our Peace will
be completed. In a permanent Arrangement, many things need
settling, which are easier to settle now than they ever will be
again. Patience; haste without speed is a thriftless method."
[Ib. iii. 529.]

February 5th, the trio at Hubertsburg got their Preliminaries
signed. On the tenth day thereafter, the Treaty itself was signed
and sealed. All other Treaties on the same subject had been guided
towards a contemporary finis: England and France, ready since the
3d of November last, signed and ended February 10th. February 11th,
the Reich signed and ended; February 15th, Prussia, Austria,
Saxony; and the THIRD SILESIAN or SEVEN-YEARS WAR was completely
finished. [Copy of the treaty in <italic> Helden-Geschichte, <end
italic> vii. 624 et seq.; in Seyfarth, <italic> Beylagen, <end
italic> iii. 479-495; in ROUSSET, in WENCK, in &c. &c.]

It had cost, in loss of human lives first of all, nobody can say
what: according to Friedrich's computation, there had perished of
actual fighters, on the various fields, of all the nations,
853,000; of which above the fifth part, or 180,000, is his own
share: and, by misery and ravage, the general Population of Prussia
finds itself 500,000 fewer; nearly the ninth man missing. This is
the expenditure of Life. Other items are not worth enumerating, in
comparison; if statistically given, you can find the most approved
guesses at them by the same Head, who ought to be an authority.
[<italic> OEuvres de Frederic, <end italic> v. 230-234; Preuss,
iii. 349-351.] It was a War distinguished by--Archenholtz will tell
you, with melodious emphasis, what a distinguished, great and
thrice-greatest War it was. There have since been other far bigger
Wars,--if size were a measure of greatness; which it by no means
is! I believe there was excellent Heroism shown in this War, by
persons I could name; by one person, Heroism really to be called
superior, or, in its kind, almost of the rank of supreme;--and that
in regard to the Military Arts and Virtues, it has as yet, for
faculty and for performance, had no rival; nor is likely soon to
have. The Prussians, as we once mentioned, still use it as their
school-model in those respects. And we-- O readers, do not at least
you and I thank God to have now done with it!--

Of the Peace-Treaties at Hubertsburg, Paris and other places, it is
not necessary that we say almost anything. They are to be found in
innumerable Books, dreary to the mind; and of the 158 Articles to
be counted there, not one could be interesting at present.
The substance of the whole lies now in Three Points, not mentioned
or contemplated at all in those Documents, though repeatedly
alluded to and intimated by us here.

The issue, as between Austria and Prussia, strives to be, in all
points, simply AS-YOU-WERE; and, in all outward or tangible points,
strictly is so. After such a tornado of strife as the civilized
world had not witnessed since the Thirty-Years War.
Tornado springing doubtless from the regions called Infernal;
and darkening the upper world from south to north, and from east to
west for Seven Years long;--issuing in general AS-YOU-WERE!
Yes truly, the tornado was Infernal; but Heaven too had silently
its purposes in it. Nor is the mere expenditure of men's diabolic
rages, in mutual clash as of opposite electricities, with reduction
to equipoise, and restoration of zero and repose again after seven
years, the one or the principal result arrived at.
Inarticulately, little dreamt of at the time by any by-stander, the
results, on survey from this distance, are visible as Threefold.
Let us name them one other time:--

1. There is no taking of Silesia from this man; no clipping of him
down to the orthodox old limits; he and his Country have palpably
outgrown these. Austria gives up the Problem: "We have lost
Silesia!" Yes; and, what you hardly yet know,--and what, I
perceive, Friedrich himself still less knows,--Teutschland has
found Prussia. Prussia, it seems, cannot be conquered by the whole
world trying to do it; Prussia has gone through its Fire-Baptism,
to the satisfaction of gods and men; and is a Nation henceforth.
In and of poor dislocated Teutschland, there is one of the Great
Powers of the World henceforth; an actual Nation. And a Nation not
grounding itself on extinct Traditions, Wiggeries, Papistries,
Immaculate Conceptions; no, but on living Facts,--Facts of
Arithmetic, Geometry, Gravitation, Martin Luther's Reformation, and
what it really can believe in:--to the infinite advantage of said
Nation and of poor Teutschland henceforth. To be a Nation; and to
believe as you are convinced, instead of pretending to believe as
you are bribed or bullied by the devils about you; what an
advantage to parties concerned! If Prussia follow its star-- As it
really tries to do, in spite of stumbling! For the sake of Germany,
one hopes always Prussia will; and that it may get through its
various Child-Diseases, without death: though it has had sad
plunges and crises,--and is perhaps just now in one of its worst
Influenzas, the Parliamentary-Eloquence or Ballot-Box Influenza!
One of the most dangerous Diseases of National Adolescence;
extremely prevalent over the world at this time,--indeed
unavoidable, for reasons obvious enough. "SIC ITUR AD ASTRA;"
all Nations certain that the way to Heaven is By voting, by
eloquently wagging the tongue "within those walls"! Diseases, real
or imaginary, await Nations like individuals; aud are not to be
resisted, but must be submitted to, and got through the best you
can. Measles and mumps; you cannot prevent them in Nations either.
Nay fashions even; fashion of Crinoline, for instance (how
infinitely more, that of Ballot-Box and Fourth-Estate!),--are you
able to prevent even that? You have to be patient under it, and
keep hoping!

2. In regard to England. Her JENKINS'S-EAR CONTROVERSY is at last
settled. Not only liberty of the Seas, but, if she were not wiser,
dominion of them; guardianship of liberty for all others
whatsoever: Dominion of the Seas for that wise object. America is
to be English, not French; what a result is that, were there no
other! Really a considerable Fact in the History of the World.
Fact principally due to Pitt, as I believe, according to my best
conjecture, and comparison of probabilities and circumstances.
For which, after all, is not everybody thankful, less or more?
O my English brothers, O my Yankee half-brothers, how oblivious are
we of those that have done us benefit!--

These are the results for England. And in the rear of these, had
these and the other elements once ripened for her, the poor Country
is to get into such merchandisings, colonizings, foreign-settlings,
gold-nuggetings, as lay beyond the drunkenest dreams of Jenkins
(supposing Jenkins addicted to liquor);--and, in fact, to enter on
a universal uproar of Machineries, Eldorados, "Unexampled
Prosperities," which make a great noise for themselves in the very
days now come. Prosperities evidently not of a sublime type:
which, in the mean while, seem to be covering the at one time
creditably clean and comely face of England with mud-blotches,
soot-blotches, miscellaneous squalors and horrors; to be preaching
into her amazed heart, which once knew better, the omnipotence of

SHODDY; filling her ears and soul with shriekery and metallic
clangor, mad noises, mad hurries mostly no-whither;--and are
awakening, I suppose, in such of her sons as still go into
reflection at all, a deeper and more ominous set of Questions than
have ever risen in England's History before. As in the foregoing
case, we have to be patient and keep hoping.

3. In regard to France. It appears, noble old Teutschland, with
such pieties and unconquerable silent valors, such opulences human
and divine, amid its wreck of new and old confusions, is not to be
cut in Four, and made to dance to the piping of Versailles or
another. Far the contrary! To Versailles itself there has gone
forth, Versailles may read it or not, the writing on the wall:
"Thou art weighed in the balance, and found wanting" (at last even
"FOUND wanting")! France, beaten, stript, humiliated;
sinful, unrepentant, governed by mere sinners and, at best, clever
fools (FOUS PLEINS D'ESPRIT),--collapses, like a creature whose
limbs fail it; sinks into bankrupt quiescence, into nameless
fermentation, generally into DRY-ROT. Rotting, none guesses
whitherward;--rotting towards that thrice-extraordinary
Spontaneous-Combustion, which blazed out in 1789. And has kindled,
over the whole world, gradually or by explosion, this unexpected
Outburst of all the chained Devilries (among other chained things),
this roaring Conflagration of the Anarchies; under which it is the
lot of these poor generations to live,--for I know not what length
of Centuries yet. "Go into Combustion, my pretty child!" the
Destinies had said to this BELLE FRANCE, who is always so fond of
shining and outshining: "Self-Combustion;--in that way, won't you
shine, as none of them yet could?" Shine; yes, truly,--till you are
got to CAPUT MORTUUM, my pretty child (unless you gain new wisdom!)
--But not to wander farther:--

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16th, Friedrich, all Saxon things being now
settled,--among the rest, "eight Saxon Schoolmasters" to be a model
in Prussia,--quitted Leipzig, with the Seven-Years War safe in his
pocket, as it were. Drove to Moritzburg, to dinner with the amiable
Kurprinz and still more amiable Wife: "It was to your Highness that
we owe this Treaty!" A dinner which readers may hear of again.
At Moritzburg; where, with the Lacys, there was once such rattling
and battling. After which, rapidly on to Silesia, and an eight days
of adjusting and inspecting there.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30th, Friedrich arrives in Frankfurt-on-Oder, on
the way homeward from Silesia: "takes view of the Field of
Kunersdorf" (reflections to be fancied); early in the afternoon
speeds forward again; at one of the stages (place called Tassdorf)
has a Dialogue, which we shall hear of; and between 8 and 9 in the
evening, not through the solemn receptions and crowded streets,
drives to the Schloss of Berlin. "Goes straight to the Queen's
Apartment," Queen, Princesses and Court all home triumphantly some
time ago; sups there with the Queen's Majesty and these bright
creatures,--beautiful supper, had it consisted only of cresses and
salt; and, behind it, sound sleep to us under our own roof-tree
once more. [Rodenbeck, ii. 211, 212; Preuss, ii. 345, 346; &c. &c.]
Next day, "the King made gifts to," as it were, to everybody;
"to the Queen about 5,000 pounds, to the Princess Amelia 1,000
pounds," and so on; and saw true hearts all merry round him,--
merrier, perhaps, than his own was.





End of Project Gutenberg's Etext History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 20


