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
