HumanitiesWeb.org - History of Friedrich II of Prussia - Frederick the Great (Chapter III. - Father and Mother: The Hanoverian Connection.) by Thomas Carlyle
History of Friedrich II of Prussia - Frederick the Great Chapter III. - Father and Mother: The Hanoverian Connection.
by Thomas Carlyle
Friedrich Wilhelm, Crown-Prince of Prussia, son of Friedrich I.
and Father of this little infant who will one day be Friedrich
II., did himself make some noise in the world as second King of
Prussia; notable not as Friedrich's father alone; and will much
concern us during the rest of his life. He is, at this date,
in his twenty-fourth year: a thick-set, sturdy, florid, brisk
young fellow; with a jovial laugh in him, yet of solid grave ways,
occasionally somewhat volcanic; much given to soldiering, and
out-of-door exercises, having little else to do at present. He has
been manager, or, as it were, Vice-King, on an occasional absence
of his Father; he knows practically what the state of business is;
and greatly disapproves of it, as is thought. But being bound to
silence on that head, he keeps silence, and meddles with nothing
political. He addicts himself chiefly to mustering, drilling and
practical military duties, while here at Berlin; runs out, often
enough, wife and perhaps a comrade or two along with him, to hunt,
and take his ease, at Wusterhausen (some fifteen or twenty miles
[English miles,--as always unless the contrary be stated.
The German MEILE is about five miles English; German STUNDE about
three.] southeast of Berlin), where he has a residence amid the
woody moorlands.
But soldiering is his grand concern. Six years ago, summer 1706,
[Forster, i. 116] at a very early age, he went to the wars,--grand
Spanish-Succession War, which was then becoming very fierce in the
Netherlands; Prussian troops always active on the Marlborough-
Eugene side. He had just been betrothed, was not yet wedded;
thought good to turn the interim to advantage in that way.
Then again, spring 1709, after his marriage and after his Father's
marriage, "the Court being full of intrigues," and nothing but
silence recommendable there, a certain renowned friend of his,
Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, of whom we shall yet hear a
great deal,--who, still only about thirty, had already covered
himself with laurels in those wars (Blenheim, Bridge of Casano,
Lines of Turin, and other glories), but had now got into
intricacies with the weaker sort, and was out of command,--agreed
with Friedrich Wilhelm that it would be well to go and serve there
as volunteers, since not otherwises. [Varnhagen von Ense,
Furst Leopold von Anhalt-Dessau (in
Biographische Denkmale, 2d edition, Berlin, 1845),
p. 185. Thaten und Leben des weltberuhmten Furstens
Leopoldi von Anhalt-Dessau (Leipzig, 1742), p. 73.
Forster, i. 129.] A Crown-Prince of Prussia, ought he not to learn
soldiering, of all things; by every opportunity? Which Friedrich
Wilhelm did, with industry; serving zealous apprenticeship under
Marlborough and Eugene, in this manner; plucking knowledge, as the
bubble reputation, and all else in that field has to be plucked,
from the cannon's mouth. Friedrich Wilhelm kept by Marlborough,
now as formerly; friend Leopold being commonly in Eugene's
quarter, who well knew the worth of him, ever since Blenheim and
earlier. Friedrich Wilhelm saw hot service, that campaign of 1709;
siege of Tournay, and far more;--stood, among other things,
the fiery Battle of Malplaquet, one of the terriblest and
deadliest feats of war ever done. No want of intrepidity and
rugged soldier-virtue in the Prussian troops or their Crown-
Prince; least of all on that terrible day, 11th September, 1709;--
of which he keeps the anniversary ever since, and will do all his
life, the doomsday of Malplaquet always a memorable day to him.
[Forster, i. 138.] He is more and more intimate with Leopold,
and loves good soldiering beyond all things. Here at Berlin he has
already got a regiment of his own, tallish fine men; and strives
to make it in all points a very pattern of a regiment.
For the rest, much here is out of joint, and far from satisfactory
to him. Seven years ago [1st February, 1705.] he lost his own
brave Mother and her love; of which we must speak farther by and
by. In her stead he has got a fantastic, melancholic, ill-natured
Stepmother, with whom there was never any good to be done; who in
fact is now fairly mad, and kept to her own apartments. He has to
see here, and say little, a chagrined heart-worn Father flickering
painfully amid a scene much filled with expensive futile persons,
and their extremely pitiful cabals and mutual rages; scene chiefly
of pompous inanity, and the art of solemnly and with great labor
doing nothing. Such waste of labor and of means: what can one do
but be silent? The other year, Preussen (PRUSSIA Proper, province
lying far eastward, out of sight) was sinking under pestilence
and black ruin and despair: the Crown-Prince, contrary to wont,
broke silence, and begged some dole or subvention for these poor
people; but there was nothing to be had. Nothing in the treasury,
your Royal Highness:--Preussen will shift for itself; sublime
dramaturgy, which we call his Majesty's Government, costs so much!
And Preussen, mown away by death, lies much of it vacant ever
since; which has completed the Crown-Prince's disgust; and,
I believe, did produce some change of ministry, or other
ineffectual expedient, on the old Father's part. Upon which the
Crown-Prince locks up his thoughts again. He has confused
whirlpools, of Court intrigues, ceremonials, and troublesome
fantasticalities, to steer amongst; which he much dislikes, no man
more; having an eye and heart set on the practical only, and being
in mind as in body something of the genus ROBUSTUM, of the genus
FEROX withal. He has been wedded six years; lost two children,
as we saw; and now again he has two living.
His wife, Sophie Dorothee of Hanover, is his cousin as well.
She is brother's-daughter of his Mother, Sophie Charlotte:
let the reader learn to discriminate these two names.
Sophie Charlotte, late Queen of Prussia, was also of Hanover:
she probably had sometimes, in her quiet motherly thought,
anticipated this connection for him, while she yet lived. It is
certain Friedrich Wilhelm was carried to Hanover in early
childhood: his Mother,--that Sophie Charlotte, a famed Queen and
lady in her day, Daughter of Electress Sophie, and Sister of the
George who became George I. of England by and by,--took him
thither; some time about the beginning of 1693, his age then five;
and left him there on trial; alleging, and expecting, he might
have a better breeding there. And this, in a Court where Electress
Sophie was chief lady, and Elector Ernst, fit to be called
Gentleman Ernst, ["Her Highness (the Electress Sophie) has the
character of the merry debonnaire Princess of Germany; a lady of
extraordinary virtues and accomplishments; mistress of the
Italian, French, High and Low Dutch, and English languages,
which she speaks to perfection. Her husband (Elector Ernst) has
the title of the Gentleman of Germany; a graceful and," &c. &c.
W. Carr, Remarks of the Governments of the severall Parts
of Germanie, Denmark, Sweedland (Amsterdam, 1688),
p. 147. See also Ker of Kersland (still more
emphatic on this point, soepius )] the
politest of men, was chief lord,--and where Leibnitz, to say
nothing of lighter notabilities, was flourishing,--seemed a
reasonable expectation. Nevertheless, it came to nothing,
this articulate purpose of the visit; though perhaps the deeper
silent purposes of it might not be quite unfulfilled.
Gentleman Ernst had lately been made "Elector" ( Kurfurst,
instead of Herzog ),--his
Hanover no longer a mere Sovereign Duchy, but an Electorate
henceforth, new "NINTH Electorate," by Ernst's life-long exertion
and good luck ;--which has spread a fine radiance, for the time,
over court and people in those parts; and made Ernst a happier man
than ever, in his old age. Gentleman Ernst and Electress Sophie,
we need not doubt, were glad to see their burly Prussian grandson,
--a robust, rather mischievous boy of five years old;--and
anything that brought her Daughter oftener about her (an only
Daughter too, and one so gifted) was sure to be welcome to the
cheery old Electress, and her Leibnitz and her circle. For Sophie
Charlotte was a bright presence, and a favorite with sage and gay.
Uncle George again, " Kurprinz Georg Ludwig"
(Electoral Prince and Heir-Apparent), who became George I. of
England; he, always a taciturn, saturnine, somewhat grim-visaged
man, not without thoughts of his own but mostly inarticulate
thoughts, was, just at this time, in a deep domestic intricacy.
Uncle George the Kurprinz was painfully detecting, in these very
months, that his august Spouse and cousin, a brilliant not
uninjured lady, had become an indignant injuring one; that she had
gone, and was going, far astray in her walk of life! Thus all is
not radiance at Hanover either, Ninth Elector though we are;
but, in the soft sunlight, there quivers a streak of the blackness
of very Erebus withal. Kurprinz George, I think, though he too is
said to have been good to the boy, could not take much interest in
this burly Nephew of his just now!
Sure enough, it was in this year 1693, that the famed Konigsmark
tragedy came ripening fast towards a crisis in Hanover; and next
year the catastrophe arrived. A most tragic business; of which the
little Boy, now here, will know more one day. Perhaps it was on
this very visit, on one visit it credibly was, that Sophie
Charlotte witnessed a sad scene in the Schloss of Hanover
high words rising, where low cooings had been more appropriate;
harsh words, mutually recriminative, rising ever higher; ending,
it is thought, in THINGS, or menaces and motions towards things
(actual box on the ear, some call it),--never to be forgotten or
forgiven! And on Sunday 1st of July, 1694, Colonel Count Philip
Konigsmark, Colonel in the Hanover Dragoons, was seen for the last
time in this world. From that date, he has vanished suddenly
underground, in an inscrutable manner: never more shall the light
of the sun, or any human eye behold that handsome blackguard man.
Not for a hundred and fifty years shall human creatures know,
or guess with the smallest certainty, what has become of him.
And shortly after Konigsmark's disappearance, there is this sad
phenomenon visible: A once very radiant Princess (witty, haughty-
minded, beautiful, not wise or fortunate) now gone all ablaze into
angry tragic conflagration; getting locked into the old Castle of
Ahlden, in the moory solitudes of Luneburg Heath: to stay there
till she die,--thirty years as it proved,--and go into ashes and
angry darkness as she may. Old peasants, late in the next century,
will remember that they used to see her sometimes driving on the
Heath,--beautiful lady, long black hair, and the glitter of
diamonds in it; sometimes the reins in her own hand, but always
with a party of cavalry round her, and their swords drawn.
[ Die Herzogin von Ahlden (Leipzig, 1852),
p. 22. Divorce was, 28th December, 1694; death, 13th November,
1726,--age then 60.] "Duchess of Ahlden," that was her title in
the eclipsed state. Born Princess of Zelle; by marriage, Princess
of Hanover ( Kurprinzessin ); would have been
Queen of England, too, had matters gone otherwise than they did.--
Her name, like that of a little Daughter she had, is Sophie
Dorothee: she is Cousin and Divorced Wife of Kurprinz George;
divorced, and as it were abolished alive, in this manner. She is
little Friedrich Wilhelm's Aunt-in-law; and her little Daughter
comes to be his Wife in process of time. Of him, or of those
belonging to him, she took small notice, I suppose, in her then
mood, the crisis coming on so fast. In her happier innocent days
she had two children, a King that is to be, and a Queen;
George II. of England, Sophie Dorothee of Prussia; but must not
now call them hers, or ever see them again.
This was the Konigsmark tragedy at Hanover; fast ripening towards
its catastrophe while little Friedrich Wilhelm was there. It has
been, ever since, a rumor and dubious frightful mystery to
mankind: but within these few years, by curious accidents (thefts,
discoveries of written documents, in various countries, and
diligent study of them), it has at length become a certainty and
clear fact, to those who are curious about it. Fact surely of a
rather horrible sort;--yet better, I must say, than was suspected:
not quite so bad in the state of fact as in that of rumor.
Crime enough is in it, sin and folly on both sides; there is
killing too, but NOT assassination (as it turns out); on the whole
there is nothing of atrocity, or nothing that was not accidental,
unavoidable;--and there is a certain greatness of DECORUM on the
part of those Hanover Princes and official gentlemen, a depth of
silence, of polite stoicism, which deserves more praise than it
will get in our times. Enough now of the Konigsmark tragedy;
[A considerable dreary mass of books, pamphlets, lucubrations,
false all and of no worth or of less, have accumulated on this
dark subject, during the last hundred and fifty years; nor has the
process yet stopped,--as it now well might. For there have now two
things occurred in regard to it FIRST: In the year 1847, a Swedish
Professor, named Palmblad, groping about for other objects in the
College Library of Lund (which is in the country of the Konigsmark
connections), came upon a Box of Old Letters,--Letters undated,
signed only with initials, and very enigmatic till well searched
into,--which have turned out to be the very Autographs of the
Princess and her Konigsmark; throwing of course a henceforth
indisputable light on their relation. SECOND THING: A cautious
exact old gentleman, of diplomatic habits (understood to be "Count
Von Schulenburg-Klosterrode of Dresden"), has, since that event,
unweariedly gone into the whole matter; and has brayed it
everywhere, and pounded it small; sifting, with sublime patience,
not only those Swedish Autographs, but the whole mass of lying
books, pamphlets, hints and notices, old and recent; and bringing
out (truly in an intricate and thrice-wearisome, but for the first
time in an authentic way) what real evidence there is. In which
evidence the facts, or essential fact, lie at last indisputable
enough. His Book, thick Pamphlet rather, is that same
Herzogin von Ahlden (Leipzig, 1852) cited above.
The dreary wheelbarrowful of others I had rather not mention again;
but leave Count von Schulenburg to mention and describe them,--
which he does abundantly, so many as had accumulated up to that
date of 1852, to the affliction more or less of sane mankind.]
contemporaneous with Friedrich Wilhelm's stay at Hanover, but not
otherwise much related to him or his doings there.
He got no improvement in breeding, as we intimated; none at all;
fought, on the contrary, with his young Cousin (afterwards our
George II.), a boy twice his age, though of weaker bone; and gave
him a bloody nose. To the scandal and consternation of the French
Protestant gentlewomen and court-dames in their stiff silks:
"Ahee, your Electoral Highness!" This had been a rough unruly boy
from the first discovery of him. At a very early stage, he, one
morning while the nurses were dressing him, took to investigating
one of his shoe buckles; would, in spite of remonstrances, slobber
it about in his mouth; and at length swallowed it down,--beyond
mistake; and the whole world cannot get it up! Whereupon, wild
wail of nurses; and his "Mother came screaming," poor mother:--
It is the same small shoe-buckle which is still shown, with a
ticket and date to it, "31 December, 1692," in the Berlin
Kunstkammer ; for it turned out harmless, after all
the screaming; and a few grains of rhubarb restored it safely
to the light of day; henceforth a thrice-memorable shoe-buckle.
[Forster, i. 74. Erman, Memoires de Sophie Charlotte
(Berlin, 1801), p. 130.]
Another time, it is recorded, though with less precision of
detail, his Governess the Dame Montbail having ordered him to do
something which was intolerable to the princely mind, the princely
mind resisted in a very strange way: the princely body, namely,
flung itself suddenly out of a third-story window, nothing but the
hands left within; and hanging on there by the sill, and fixedly
resolute to obey gravitation rather than Montbail, soon brought
the poor lady to terms. Upon which, indeed, he had been taken from
her, and from the women altogether, as evidently now needing
rougher government. Always an unruly fellow, and dangerous to
trust among crockery. At Hanover he could do no good in the way of
breeding: sage Leibnitz himself, with his big black periwig and
large patient nose, could have put no metaphysics into such a boy.
Sublime Theodicee (Leibnitzian
"justification of the ways of God") was not an article this
individual had the least need of, nor at any time the least value
for. "Justify? What doomed dog questions it, then? Are you for
Bedlam, then?"--and in maturer years his rattan might have been
dangerous! For this was a singular individual of his day;
human soul still in robust health, and not given to spin its
bowels into cobwebs. He is known only to have quarrelled much with
Cousin George, during the year or so he spent in those parts.
But there was another Cousin at Hanover, just one other, little
Sophie Dorothee (called after her mother), a few months older than
himself; by all accounts, a really pretty little child, whom he
liked a great deal better. She, I imagine, was his main resource,
while on this Hanover visit; with her were laid the foundations of
an intimacy which ripened well afterwards. Some say it was already
settled by the parents that there was to be a marriage in due
time. Settled it could hardly be; for Wilhelmina tells us,
[ Memoires de la Margrave de Bareith, i. l.]
her Father had a "choice of three" allowed him, on coming to wed;
and it is otherwise discernible there had been eclipses and
uncertainties, in the interim, on his part. Settled, no; but hoped
and vaguely pre-figured, we may well suppose. And at all events,
it has actually come to pass; "Father being ardently in love with
the Hanover Princess," says our Margravine, "and much preferring
her to the other two," or to any and all others. Wedded, with
great pomp, 28th November, 1706; [Forster, i. 117.]--and Sophie
Dorothee, the same that was his pretty little Cousin at Hanover
twenty years ago, she is mother of the little Boy now born
and christened, whom men are to call Frederick the Great in
coming generations.
Sophie Dorothee is described to us by courtier contemporaries
as "one of the most beautiful princesses of her day:"
Wilhelmina, on the other hand, testifies that she was never
strictly to be called beautiful, but had a pleasant attractive
physiognomy; which may be considered better than strict beauty.
Uncommon grace of figure and look, testifies Wilhelmina; much
dignity and soft dexterity, on social occasions; perfect in all
the arts of deportment; and left an impression on you at once
kindly and royal. Portraits of her, as Queen at a later age,
are frequent in the Prussian Galleries; she is painted sitting,
where I best remember her. A serious, comely, rather plump,
maternal-looking Lady; something thoughtful in those gray still
eyes of hers, in the turn of her face and carriage of her head,
as she sits there, considerately gazing out upon a world which
would never conform to her will. Decidedly a handsome, wholesome
and affectionate aspect of face. Hanoverian in type, that is to
say, blond, florid, slightly PROFUSE;--yet the better kind of
Hanoverian, little or nothing of the worse or at least the worst
kind. The eyes, as I say, are gray, and quiet, almost sad;
expressive of reticence and reflection, of slow constancy rather
than of SPEED in any kind. One expects, could the picture speak,
the querulous sound of maternal and other solicitude; of a temper
tending towards the obstinate, the quietly unchangeable;--loyal
patience not wanting, yet in still larger measure royal impatience
well concealed, and long and carefully cherished. This is what I
read in Sophie Dorothee's Portraits,--probably remembering what
I had otherwise read, and come to know of her. She too will not a
little concern us in the first part of this History. I find, for
one thing, she had given much of her physiognomy to the Friedrich
now born. In his Portraits as Prince-Royal, he strongly resembles
her; it is his mother's face informed with youth and new fire,
and translated into the masculine gender: in his later Portraits,
one less and less recognizes the mother.
Friedrich Wilhelm, now in the sixth year of wedlock, is still very
fond of his Sophie Dorothee,-- "Fiechen" (Feekin
diminutive of Sophie ), as he calls
her; she also having, and continuing to have, the due wife's
regard for her solid, honest, if somewhat explosive bear.
He troubles her a little now and then, it is said, with whiffs of
jealousy; but they are whiffs only, the product of accidental
moodinesses in him, or of transient aspects, misinterpreted,
in the court-life of a young and pretty woman. As the general
rule, he is beautifully good-humored, kind even, for a bear;
and, on the whole, they have begun their partnership under good
omens. And indeed we may say, in spite of sad tempests that arose,
they continued it under such. She brought him gradually no fewer
than fourteen children, of whom ten survived him and came to
maturity: and it is to be admitted their conjugal relation,
though a royal, was always a human one; the main elements of it
strictly observed on both sides; all quarrels in it capable of
being healed again, and the feeling on both sides true, however
troublous. A rare fact among royal wedlocks, and perhaps a unique
one in that epoch.
The young couple, as is natural in their present position, have
many eyes upon them, and not quite a paved path in this confused
court of Friedrich I. But they are true to one another; they seem
indeed to have held well aloof from all public business or private
cabal; and go along silently expecting, and perhaps silently
resolving this and that in the future tense; but with moderate
immunity from paternal or other criticisms, for the present.
The Crown-Prince drills or hunts, with his Grumkows, Anhalt-
Dessaus: these are harmless employments;--and a man may have
within his own head what thoughts he pleases, without offence so
long as he keeps them there. Friedrich the old Grandfather lived
only thirteen months after the birth of his grandson: Friedrich
Wilhelm was then King; thoughts then, to any length, could become
actions on the part of Friedrich Wilhelm.
