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Chapter III. — FRIEDRICH WILHELM IS KING

With the death of old King Friedrich, there occurred at once vast changes in the Court of Berlin; a total and universal change in the mode of living and doing business there. Friedrich Wilhelm, out of filial piety, wore at his father's funeral the grand French peruke and other sublimities of French costume; but it was for the last time: that sad duty once done, he flung the whole aside, not without impatience, and on no occasion wore such costume again. He was not a friend to French fashions, nor had ever been; far the contrary. In his boyhood, say the Biographers, there was once a grand embroidered cloth-of-gold, or otherwise supremely magnificent, little Dressing-gown given him; but he would at no rate put it on, or be concerned with it; on the contrary, stuffed it indignantly "into the fire;" and demanded wholesome useful duffel instead.

He began his reform literally at the earliest moment. Being summoned into the apartment where his poor Father was in the last struggle, he could scarcely get across for KAMMERJUNKER, KAMMERHERRN, Goldsticks, Silversticks, and the other solemn histrionic functionaries, all crowding there to do their sad mimicry on the occasion: not a lovely accompaniment in Friedrich Wilhelm's eyes. His poor Father's death-struggle once done, and all reduced to everlasting rest there, Friedrich Wilhelm looked in silence over the Unutterable, for a Short space, disregardful of the Goldsticks and their eager new homaging; walked swiftly away from it to his own room, shut the door with a slam; and there, shaking the tears from his eyes, commenced by a notable duty,—the duty nearest hand, and therefore first to be done, as it seemed to him. It was about one in the afternoon, 25th February, 1713; his Father dead half an hour before: "Tears at a Father's death-bed, must they be dashed with rage by such a set of greedy Histrios?" thought Friedrich Wilhelm. He summoned these his Court-people, that is to say, summoned their OBER-HOFMARSCHALL and representative; and through him signified to them, That, till the Funeral was over, their service would continue; and that on the morrow after the Funeral, they were, every soul of them, discharged; and from the highest Goldstick down to the lowest Page-in-waiting, the King's House should be swept entirely clean of them;—said House intending to start afresh upon a quite new footing. [Forster, i. 174; Pollnitz, Memoiren, ii. 4.] Which spread such a consternation among the courtier people, say the Histories, as was never seen before.

The thing was done, however; and nobody durst whisper discontent with it; this rugged young King, with his plangent metallic voice, with his steady-beaming eyes, seeming dreadfully in earnest about it, and a person that might prove dangerous if you crossed him. He reduced his Household accordingly, at once, to the lowest footing of the indispensable; and discharged a whole regiment of superfluous official persons, court-flunkies, inferior, superior and supreme, in the most ruthless manner. He does not intend keeping any OBER-HOFMARSCHALL, or the like idle person, henceforth; thinks a minimum of the Goldsticks ought to suffice every man.

Eight Lackeys, in the ante-chambers and elsewhere, these, with each a JAGERBURSCH (what we should call an UNDER-KEEPER) to assist when not hunting, will suffice: Lackeys at "eight THALERS monthly," which is six shillings a week. Three active Pages, sometimes two, instead of perhaps three dozen idle that there used to be. In King Friedrich's time, there were wont to be a thousand saddle-horses at corn and hay: but how many of them were in actual use? Very many of them were mere imaginary quadrupeds; their price and keep pocketed by some knavish STALLMEISTER, Equerry or Head-groom. Friedrich Wilhelm keeps only thirty Horses; but these are very actual, not imaginary at all; their corn not running into any knave's pocket; but lying actually in the mangers here; getting ground for you into actual four-footed speed, when, on turf or highway, you require such a thing. About, thirty for the saddle,—with a few carriage-teams, are what Friedrich Wilhelm can employ in any reasonable measure: and more he will not have about him.

In the like ruthless humor he goes over his Pension-list; strikes three fourths of that away, reduces the remaining fourth to the very bone. In like humor, he goes over every department of his Administrative, Household and other Expenses: shears everything down, here by the hundred thalers, there by the ten, willing even to save HALF A THALER. He goes over all this three several times;—his Papers, the three successive Lists he used on that occasion, have been printed. [Rodenbeck, Beitrage zur Bereicherung der Lebembeschreibungen Friedrich Wilhelms I. und Friedrichs des Grossen (Berlin, 1836), pp. 99-127.] He has satisfied himself, in about two months, what, the effective minimum is; and leaves it so. Reduced to below the fifth of what it was; 55,000 THALERS, instead of 276,000. [Stenzel, iii. 237.]

By degrees he went over, went into and through, every department of Prussian Business, in that fashion; steadily, warily, irresistibly compelling every item of it, large and little, to take that same character of perfect economy and solidity, of utility pure and simple. Needful work is to be rigorously well done; needless work, and ineffectual or imaginary workers, to be rigorously pitched out of doors. What a blessing on this Earth; worth purchasing almost at any price! The money saved is something, nothing if you will; but the amount of mendacity expunged, has any one computed that? Mendacity not of tongue; but the far feller sort, of hand, and of heart, and of head; short summary of all Devil's-worship whatsoever. Which spreads silently along, once you let it in, with full purse or with empty; some fools even praising it: the quiet DRY-ROT of Nations! To expunge such is greatly the duty of every man, especially of every King. Unconsciously, not thinking of Devil's-worship, or spiritual dry-rot, but of money chiefly, and led by Nature and the ways she has with us, it was the task of Friedrich Wilhelm's life to bring about this beneficent result in all departments of Prussian Business, great and little, public and even private. Year after year, he brings it to perfection; pushes it unweariedly forward every day and hour. So that he has Prussia, at last, all a Prussia made after his own image; the most thrifty, hardy, rigorous and Spartan country any modern King ever tied over; and himself (if he thought of that) a King indeed. He that models Nations according to his own image, he is a King, though his sceptre were a walking-stick; and, properly no other is.

Friedrich Wilhelm was wondered at, and laughed at, by innumerable mortals for his ways of doing; which indeed were very strange. Not that he figured much in what is called Public History, or desired to do so; for, though a vigilant ruler, he did not deal in protocolling and campaining,—he let a minimum of that suffice him. But in court soirees, where elegant empty talk goes on, and of all materials for it scandal is found incomparably the most interesting. I suppose there turned up no name oftener than that of his Prussian Majesty; and during these twenty-seven years of his Reign, his wild pranks and explosions gave food for continual talk in such quarter.

For he was like no other King that then existed, or had ever been discovered. Wilder Son of Nature seldom came into the artificial world; into a royal throne there, probably never. A wild man, wholly in earnest, veritable as the old rocks,—and with a terrible volcanic fire in him too. He would have been strange anywhere; but among the dapper Royal gentlemen of the Eighteenth Century, what was to be done with such an Orson of a King?—Clap him in Bedlam, and bring out the ballot-boxes instead? The modern generation, too, still takes its impression of him from these rumors,—still more now from Wilhelmina's Book; which paints the outside savagery of the royal man, in a most striking manner; and leaves the inside vacant, undiscovered by Wilhelmina or the rumors.

Nevertheless it appears there were a few observant eyes even of contemporaries, who discerned in him a surprising talent for "National Economics" at least. One Leipzig Professor, Saxon, not Prussian by nation or interest, recognizes in Friedrich Wilhelm "DEN GROSSEN WIRTH (the great Manager, Husbandry-man, or Landlord) of the epoch;" and lectures on his admirable "works, arrangements and institutions" in that kind. [Rodenbeck's Beitrage (p. 14),—Year, or Name of Lecturer, not mentioned.] Nay the dapper Royal gentlemen saw, with envy, the indubitable growth of this mad savage Brother; and ascribed it to "his avarice," to his mean ways, which were in such contrast to their sublime ones. That he understood National Economics has now become very certain. His grim semi-articulate Papers and Rescripts, on these subjects, are still almost worth reading, by a lover of genuine human talent in the dumb form. For spelling, grammar, penmanship and composition, they resemble nothing else extant; are as if done by the paw of a bear: indeed the utterance generally sounds more like the growling of a bear than anything that could be handily spelt or parsed. But there is a decisive human sense in the heart of it; and there is such a dire hatred of empty bladders, unrealities and hypocritical forms and pretences, what he calls "wind and humbug (WIND UND BLAUER DUNST)," as is very strange indeed. Strange among all mankind; doubly and trebly strange among the unfortunate species called Kings in our time. To whom,—for sad reasons that could be given,—"wind and blue vapor (BLAUER DUNST)," artistically managed by the rules of Acoustics and Optics, seem to be all we have left us!—

It must be owned that this man is inflexibly, and with a fierce slow inexorable determination, set upon having realities round him. There is a divine idea of fact put into him; the genus sham was never hatefuler to any man. Let it keep out of his way, well beyond the swing of that rattan of his, or it may get something to remember! A just man, too; would not wrong any man, nor play false in word or deed to any man. What is Justice but another form of the REALITY we love; a truth acted out? Of all the humbugs or "painted vapors" known, Injustice is the least capable of profiting men or kings! A just man, I say; and a valiant and veracious: but rugged as a wild bear; entirely inarticulate, as if dumb. No bursts of parliamentary eloquence in him, nor the least tendency that way. His talent for Stump-Oratory may be reckoned the minimum conceivable, or practically noted a ZERO. A man who would not have risen in modern Political Circles; man unchoosable at hustings or in caucus; man forever invisible, and very unadmirable if seen, to the Able Editor and those that hang by him. In fact, a kind of savage man, as we say; but highly interesting, if you can read dumb human worth; and of inexpressible profit to the Prussian Nation.

For the first ten years of his reign, he had a heavy, continual struggle, getting his finance and other branches of administration extricated from their strangling imbroglios of coiled nonsense, and put upon a rational footing. His labor in these years, the first of little Fritz's life, must have been great; the pushing and pulling strong and continual. The good plan itself, this comes not of its own accord; it is the fruit of "genius" (which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all): given a huge stack of tumbled thrums, it is not in your sleep that you will find the vital centre of it, or get the first thrum by the end! And then the execution, the realizing, amid the contradiction, silent or expressed, of men and things? Explosive violence was by no means Friedrich Wilhelm's method; the amount of slow stubborn broad-shouldered strength, in all kinds, expended by the man, strikes us as very great. The amount of patience even, though patience is not reckoned his forte.

That of the RITTER-DIENST (Knights'-Service), for example, which is but one small item of his business, the commuting of the old feudal duty of his Landholders to do Service in Wartime, into a fixed money payment: nothing could be fairer, more clearly advantageous to both parties; and most of his "Knights" gladly accepted the proposal: yet a certain factious set of them, the Magdeburg set, stirred up by some seven or eight of their number, "hardly above seven or eight really against me," saw good to stand out; remonstrated, recalcitrated; complained in the Diet (Kaiser too happy to hear of it, that he might have a hook on Friedrich Wilhelm); and for long years that paltry matter was a provocation to him. [1717-1725. Forster, ii. 162-165, iv. 31-34; Stenzel, iii. 316-319; Samuel Buchholz, Neueste Preussisch-Brandenburgische Geschichte (Berlin, 1775), i. 197.] But if your plan is just, and a bit of Nature's plan, persist in it like a law of Nature. This secret too was known to Friedrich Wilhelm. In the space of ten years, by actual human strength loyally spent, he had managed many things; saw all things in a course towards management. All things, as it were, fairly on the road; the multiplex team pulling one way, in rational human harness, not in imbroglios of coiled thrums made by the Nightmares.

How he introduced a new mode of farming his Domain Lands, which are a main branch of his revenue, and shall be farmed on regular lease henceforth, and not wasted in peculation and indolent mismanagement as heretofore; [Forster, ii. 206, 216.] new modes of levying his taxes and revenues of every kind: [Ib. ii. 190, 195.] How he at last concentrated, and harmonized into one easy-going effective GENERAL DIRECTORY, [Completed 19th January, 1723 (Ib. ii. 172).] the multifarious conflicting Boards, that were jolting and jangling in a dark use-and-wont manner, and leaving their work half done, when he first came into power: [Dohm, Denkwurdigkeiten meiner Zeit (Lemgo und Hanover, 1814-1819), iv. 88.] How he insisted on having daylight introduced to the very bottom of every business, fair-and-square observed as the rule of it, and the shortest road adopted for doing it: How he drained bogs, planted colonies, established manufactures, made his own uniforms of Prussian wool, in a LAGERHAUS of his own: How he dealt with the Jew Gompert about farming his Tobacoo;—how, from many a crooked case and character he, by slow or short methods, brought out something straight; would take no denial of what was his, nor make any demand of what was not; and did prove really a terror to evildoers of various kinds, especially to prevaricators, defalcators, imaginary workers, and slippery unjust persons: How he urged diligence on all mortals, would not have the very Apple-women sit "without knitting" at their stalls; and brandished his stick, or struck it fiercely down, over the incorrigibly idle:—All this, as well as his ludicrous explosions and unreasonable violences, is on record concerning Friedrich Wilhelm, though it is to the latter chiefly that the world has directed its unwise attention, in judging of him. He was a very arbitrary King. Yes, but then a good deal of his ARBITRIUM, or sovereign will, was that of the Eternal Heavens as well; and did exceedingly behoove to be done, if the Earth would prosper. Which is an immense consideration in regard to his sovereign will and him! He was prompt with his rattan, in urgent cases; had his gallows also, prompt enough, where needful. Let him see that no mistakes happen, as certainly he means that none shall!

Yearly he made his country richer; and this not in money alone (which is of very uncertain value, and sometimes has no value at all, and even less), but in frugality, diligence, punctuality, veracity,—the grand fountains from which money, and all real values and valors spring for men. To Friedrich Wilhelm in his rustio simplicity, money had no lack of value; rather the reverse. To the homespun man it was a success of most excellent quality, and the chief symbol of success in all kinds. Yearly he made his own revenues, and his people's along with them and as the source of them, larger: and in all states of his revenue, he had contrived to make his expenditure less than it; and yearly saved masses of coin, and "reposited them in barrels in the cellars of his Schloss,"—where they proved very useful, one day. Much in Friedrich Wilhelm proved useful, beyond even his expectations. As a Nation's HUSBAND he seeks his fellow among Kings, ancient and modern. Happy the Nation which gets such a Husband, once in the half-thousand years. The Nation, as foolish wives and Nations do, repines and grudges a good deal, its weak whims and will being thwarted very often; but it advances steadily, with consciousness or not, in the way of well-doing; and afterlong times the harvest of this diligent sowing becomes manifest to the Nation and to all Nations.

Strange as it sounds in the Republic of Letters, we are tempted to call Friedrich Wilhelm a man of genius;—genius fated and promoted to work in National Husbandry, not in writing Verses or three-volume Novels. A silent genius. His melodious stanza, which he cannot bear to see halt in any syllable, is a rough fact reduced to order; fact made to stand firm on its feet, with the world-rocks under it, and looking free towards all the winds and all the stars. He goes about suppressing platitudes, ripping off futilities, turning deceptions inside out. The realm of Disorder, which is Unveracity, Unreality, what we call Chaos, has no fiercer enemy. Honest soul, and he seemed to himself such a stupid fellow often; no tongue-learning at all; little capable to give a reason for the faith that was in him. He cannot argue in articulate logic, only in inarticulate bellowings, or worse. He must DO a thing, leave it undemonstrated; once done, it will itself tell what kind of thing it is, by and by. Men of genius have a hard time, I perceive, whether born on the throne or off it; and must expect contradictions next to unendurable,—the plurality of blockheads being so extreme!

I find, except Samuel Johnson, no man of equal veracity with Friedrich Wilhelm in that epoch: and Johnson too, with all his tongue-learning, had not logic enough. In fact, it depends on how much conviction you have. Blessed be Heaven, there is here and there a man born who loves truth as truth should be loved, with all his heart and all his soul; and hates untruth with a corresponding perfect hatred. Such men, in polite circles, which understand that certainly truth is better than untruth, but that you must be polite to both, are liable to get to the end of their logic. Even Johnson had a bellow in him; though Johnson could at any time withdraw into silence, HIS kingdom lying all under his own hat. How much more Friedrich Wilhelm, who had no logic whatever; and whose kingdom lay without him, far and wide, a thing he could not withdraw from. The rugged Orson, he needed to be right. From utmost Memel down to Wesel again, ranked in a straggling manner round the half-circumference of Europe, all manner of things and persons were depending on him, and on his being right, not wrong, in his notion.

A man of clear discernment, very good natural eyesight; and irrefragably confident in what his eyes told him, in what his belief was;—yet of huge simplicity withal. Capable of being coaxed about, and led by the nose, to a strange degree, if there were an artist dexterous enough, daring enough! His own natural judgment was good, and, though apt to be hasty and headlong, was always likely to come right in the end; but internally, we may perceive, his modesty, self-distrust, anxiety and other unexpected qualities, must have been great. And then his explosiveness, impatience, excitability; his conscious dumb ignorance of all things beyond his own small horizon of personal survey! An Orson capable enough of being coaxed and tickled, by some first-rate conjurer;—first-rate; a second-rate might have failed, and got torn to pieces for his pains. But Seckendorf and Grumkow, what a dance they led him on some matters,—as we shall see, and as poor Fritz and others will see!

He was full of sensitiveness, rough as he was and shaggy of skin. His wild imaginations drove him hither and thither at a sad rate. He ought to have the privileges of genius. His tall Potsdam Regiment, his mad-looking passion for enlisting tall men; this also seems to me one of the whims of genius,—an exaggerated notion to have his "stanza" polished to the last punctilio of perfection; and might be paralleled in the history of Poets. Stranger "man of genius," or in more peculiar circumstances, the world never saw!

Friedrich Wilhelm, in his Crown-Prince days, and now still more when he was himself in the sovereign place, had seen all along, with natural arithmetical intellect, That his strength in this world, as at present situated, would very much depend upon the amount of potential-battle that lay in him,—on the quantity and quality of Soldiers he could maintain, and have ready for the field at any time. A most indisputable truth, and a heartfelt one in the present instance. To augment the quantity, to improve the quality, in this thrice-essential particular: here lay the keystone and crowning summit of all Friedrich Wilhelm's endeavors; to which he devoted himself, as only the best Spartan could have done. Of which there will be other opportunities to speak in detail. For it was a thing world-notable; world-laughable, as was then thought; the extremely serious fruit of which did at length also become notable enough.

In the Malplaquet time, once on some occasion, it is said, two English Officers, not well informed upon the matter, and provoking enough in their contemptuous ignorance, were reasoning with one another in Friedrich Wilhelm's hearing, as to the warlike powers of the Prussian State, and Whether the King of Prussia could on his own strength maintain a standing army of 15,000? Without subsidies, do you think, so many as 15,000? Friedrich Wilhelm, incensed at the thing and at the tone, is reported to have said with heat: "Yes, 30,000!" [Forster, i. 138.] whereat the military men slightly wagged their heads, letting the matter drop for the present. But he makes it good by degrees; twofold or threefold;—and will have an army of from seventy to a hundred thousand before he dies, ["72,000 field-troops, 30,000 garrison-troops" (Gestandnisse eines OEster reichischen Veterans, Breslau, 1788, i. 64).] the best-drilled of fighting men; and what adds much to the wonder, a full Treasury withal. This is the Brandenburg Spartan King; acquainted with National Economics. Alone of existing Kings he lays by money annually; and is laying by many other and far more precious things, for Prussia and the little Boy he has here.

Friedrich Wilhelm's passion for drilling, recruiting and perfecting his army attracted much notice: laughing satirical notice; in the hundred months of common rumor, which he regarded little; and notice iracund and minatory, when it led him into collision with the independent portions of mankind, now and then. This latter sort was not pleasant, and sometimes looked rather serious; but this too he contrived always to digest in some tolerable manner. He continued drilling and recruiting,—we may say not his Army only, but his Nation in all departments of it,—as no man before or since ever did: increasing, by every devisable method, the amount of potential-battle that lay in him and it.

In a military, and also in a much deeper sense, he may be defined as the great Drill-sergeant of the Prussian Nation. Indeed this had been the function of the Hohenzollerns all along; this difficult, unpleasant and indispensable one of drilling. From the first appearance of Burggraf Friedrich, with good words and with HEAVY PEG, in the wreck of anarchic Brandenburg, and downwards ever since, this has steadily enough gone on. And not a little good drilling these populations have had, first and last; just orders given them (wise and just, which to a respectable degree were Heaven's orders as well): and certainly Heavy Peg, for instance,—Heavy Peg, bringing Quitzow's strong House about his ears,—was a respectable drummer's cat to enforce the same. This has been going on these three hundred years. But Friedrich Wilhelm completes the process; finishes it off to the last pitch of perfection. Friedrich Wilhelm carries it through every fibre and cranny of Prussian Business, and so far as possible, of Prussian Life; so that Prussia is all a drilled phalanx, ready to the word of command; and what we see in the Army is but the last consummate essence of what exists in the Nation everywhere. That was Friedrich Wilhelm's function, made ready for him, laid to his hand by his Hohenzollern foregoers; and indeed it proved a most beneficent function.

For I have remarked that, of all things, a Nation needs first to be drilled; and no Nation that has not first been governed by so-called "Tyrants," and held tight to the curb till it became perfect in its paces and thoroughly amenable to rule and law, and heartily respectful of the same, and totally abhorrent of the want of the same, ever came to much in this world. England itself, in foolish quarters of England, still howls and execrates lamentably over its William Conqueror, and rigorous line of Normans and Plantagenets; but without them, if you will consider well, what had it ever been? A gluttonous race of Jutes and Angles, capable of no grand combinations; lumbering about in pot-bellied equanimity; not dreaming of heroic toil and silence and endurance, such as leads to the high places of this Universe, and the golden mountain-tops where dwell the Spirits of the Dawn. Their very ballot-boxes and suffrages, what they call their "Liberty," if these mean "Liberty," and are such a road to Heaven, Anglo-Saxon high-road thither,—could never have been possible for them on such terms. How could they? Nothing but collision, intolerable interpressure (as of men not perpendicular), and consequent battle often supervening, could have been appointed those undrilled Anglo-Saxons; their pot-bellied equanimity itself continuing liable to perpetual interruptions, as in the Heptarchy time. An enlightened Public does not reflect on these things at present; but will again, by and by. Looking with human eyes over the England that now is, and over the America and the Australia, from pole to pole; and then listening to the Constitutional litanies of Dryasaust, and his lamentations on the old Norman and Plantagenet Kings, and his recognition of departed merit and causes of effects,—the mind of man is struck dumb!