"Duc de Bouillon has lost his equipage; our Hussars took it at Landau [other side the Rhine, a while ago]. Here we stand in mud to the ears; fifteen of the Regiment Alt-Baden have sunk altogether in the mud. Mud comes of a water-spout, or sudden cataract of rain, there was in these Heidelberg Countries;two villages, Fuhrenheim and Sandhausen, it swam away, every stick of them (GANZ UND GAR).
"Captain van Stojentin, of Regiment Flans," one of our eight Regiments here, "has got wounded in the head, in an affair of honor; he is still alive, and it is hoped he will get through it.
"The Drill-Demon has now got into the Kaiser's people too:
Prince Eugene is grown heavier with his drills than we ourselves.
He is often three hours at it;--and the Kaiser's people curse us for the same, at a frightful rate. Adieu. If the Devil don't get thee, he ought. Therefore VALE. [<italic> OEuvres de Frederic, <end italic> xxvii. part 3d, p. 181.]
"FRIEDRICH."
No laurels to be gained here; but plenty of mud, and laborious hardship,--met, as we perceive, with youthful stoicism, of the derisive, and perhaps of better forms. Friedrich is twenty-two and some months, when he makes his first Campaign. The general physiognomy of his behavior in it we have to guess from these few indications. No doubt he profited by it, on the military side;and would study with quite new light and vivacity after such contact with the fact studied of. Very didactic to witness even "the confusions of this Army," and what comes of them to Armies!
For the rest, the society of Eugene, Lichtenstein, and so many Princes of the Reich, and Chiefs of existing mankind, could not but be entertaining to the young man; and silently, if he wished to read the actual Time, as sure enough he, with human and with royal eagerness, did wish,--they were here as the ALPHABET of it to him: important for years coming. Nay it is not doubted, the insight he here got into the condition of the Austrian Army and its management--"Army left seven days without bread," for one instance--gave him afterwards the highly important notion, that such Army could be beaten if necessary!--Wilhelmina says, his chief comrade was Margraf Heinrich;--the ILLMargraf; who was cut by Friedrich, in after years, for some unknown bad behavior. Margraf Heinrich "led him into all manner of excesses," says Wilhelmina,--probably in the language of exaggeration. He himself tells her, in one of his LETTERS, a day or two before Papa's departure: "The Camp is soon to be close on Mainz, nothing but the Rhine between Mainz and our right wing, where my place is; and so soon as Serenissimus goes [LESERENISSIME, so he irreverently names Papa], I mean to be across for some sport," [<italic> OEuvres de Frederic, <end italic>
xxvii. part 1st, p. 17 (10th August).]--no doubt the Ill Margraf with me! With the Elder Margraf, little Sophie's Betrothed, whom he called "big clown" in a Letter we read, he is at this date in open quarrel,--"BROUILLE A TOUTE OUTRANCE with the mad Son-in-law, who is the wildest wild-beast of all this Camp." [Ibid.]
Wilhelmina's Husband had come, in the beginning of August; but was not so happy as he expected. Considerably cut out by the Ill Heinrich. Here is a small adventure they had; mentioned by Friedrich, and copiously recorded by Wilhelmina: adventure on some River,--which we could guess, if it were worth guessing, to have been the Neckar, not the Rhine. French had a fortified post on the farther side of this River; Crown-Prince, Ill Margraf, and Wilhelmina's Husband were quietly looking about them, riding up the other side: Wilhelmina's Husband decided to take a pencil-drawing of the French post, and paused for that object.
Drawing was proceeding unmolested, when his foolish Baireuth Hussar, having an excellent rifle (ARQUEBUSE RAYEE) with him, took it into his head to have a shot at the French sentries at long range. His shot hit nothing; but it awakened the French animosity, as was natural; the French began diligently firing; and might easily have done mischief. My Husband, volleying out some rebuke upon the blockhead of a Hussar, finished his drawing, in spite of the French bullets; then rode up to the Crown-Prince and Ill Margraf, who had got their share of what was going, and were in no good-humor with him. Ill Margraf rounded things into the Crown-Prince's ear, in an unmannerly way, with glances at my Husband;--who understood it well enough; and promptly coerced such ill-bred procedures, intimating, in a polite impressive way, that they would be dangerous if persisted in. Which reduced the Ill Margraf to a spiteful but silent condition. No other harm was done at that time; the French bullets all went awry, or "even fell short, being sucked in by the river," thinks Wilhelmina. [Wilhelmina, ii. 208, 209; <italic> OEuvres de Frederic, <end italic> xxvii. part 1st, p. 19.]
A more important feature of the Crown-Prince's life in these latter weeks is the news he gets of his father. Friedrich Wilhelm, after quitting the Electoral Yacht, did his reviewing at Wesel, at Bielefeld, all his reviewing in those Rhine and Weser Countries;then turned aside to pay a promised visit to Ginkel the Berlin Dutch Ambassador, who has a fine House in those parts; and there his Majesty has fallen seriously ill. Obliged to pause at Ginkel's, and then at his own Schloss of Moyland, for some time;does not reach Potsdam till the 14th September, and then in a weak, worsening, and altogether dangerous condition, which lasts for months to come. [Fassmann, pp. 512-533: September, 1734-January, 1735.] Wrecks of gout, they say, and of all manner of nosological mischief; falling to dropsy. Case desperate, think all the Newspapers, in a cautious form; which is Friedrich Wilhelm's own opinion pretty much, and that of those better informed.