I fear his advisers,--a youngish Feldzeugmeister, Prince of Hildburghausen, the chief favorite among them,--are none of the wisest. All Protestants, we observe, these favorite Hildburghausens, Schmettaus, Seckendorfs of his; and Vienna is an orthodox papal Court;--and there is a Hofkriegsrath (Supreme Council of War), which has ruined many a General, poking too meddlesomely into his affairs! On the whole, Seckendorf will have his difficulties. Here is a scene, on the Lower Donau, different enough from that at Oczakow, not far from contemporaneous with it.
The Austrian Army is at Kolitz, a march or two beyond Belgrade:--"KOLITZ, 2d JULY, 1737. This day, the Army not being on march, but allowed to rest itself, Grand Duke Franz went into the woods to hunt. Hunting up and down, he lost himself; did not return at evening; and, as the night closed in and no Generalissimo visible, the Generalissimo AD LATUS (such the title they had contrived for Seckendorf) was in much alarm. Generalissimo AD LATUS ordered out his whole force of drummers, trumpeters: To fling themselves, postwise, deeper and deeper into the woods all round; to drum there, and blow, in ever-widening circle, in prescribed notes, and with all energy, till the Grand Duke were found. Grand Duke being found, Seckendorf remonstrated, rebuked; a thought too earnestly, some say, his temper being flurried,"--voice snuffling somewhat in alt, with lisp to help:--"so that the Grand Duke took offence;flung off in a huff: and always looked askance on the Feldmarschall from that time;" [See <italic> Lebensgeschichte des Grafen van Schmettau <end italic> (by his Son: Berlin, 1806), i. 27.]--quitting him altogether before long; and marching with Khevenhuller, Wallis, Hildburghausen, or any of the subordinate Generals rather. Probably Widdin will not go the road of Oczakow, nor the Austrians prosper like the Russians, this summer.
Pollnitz, in Tobacco-Parliament, and in certain Berlin circles foolishly agape about this new Feldmarschall, maintains always, Seckendorf will come to nothing; which his Majesty zealously contradicts,--his Majesty, and some short-sighted private individuals still favorable to Seckendorf. [Pollnitz, <italic>
Memoiren, <end italic> ii. 497-502.] Exactly one week after that singular drum-and-trumpet operation on Duke Franz, the Last of the Medici dies at Florence; [9th July (<italic> Fastes de Louis XV., <end italic> p. 304).] and Serene Franz, if he knew it, is Grand Duke of Tuscany, according to bargain: a matter important to himself chiefly, and to France, who, for Stanislaus and Lorraine's sake, has had to pay him some 200,000 pounds a year during the brief intermediate state.
OF BERG AND JULICH AGAIN; AND OF LUISCIUS WITH THE ONE RAZOR.
These remote occurrences are of small interest to his Prussian Majesty, in comparison with the Pfalz affair, the Cleve-Julich succession, which lies so near home. His Majesty is uncommonly anxious to have this matter settled, in peace, if possible.
Kaiser and Reich, with the other Mediating Powers, go on mediating; but when will they decide? This year the old Bishop of Augsburg, one Brother of the older Kur-Pfalz Karl Philip, dies;nothing now between us and the event itself, but Karl Philip alone, who is verging towards eighty: the decision, to be peaceable, ought to be speedy! Friedrich Wilhelm, in January last, sent the expert Degenfeld, once of London, to old Karl Philip;and has him still there, with the most conciliatory offers:
"Will leave your Sulzbachs a part, then; will be content with part, instead of the whole, which is mine if there be force in sealed parchment; will do anything for peace!" To which the old Kur-Pfalz, foolish old creature, is steadily deaf; answers vaguely, negatively always, in a polite manner; pushing his Majesty upon extremities painful to think of. "We hate war;but cannot quite do without justice, your Serenity," thinks Friedrich Wilhelm: "must it be the eighty thousand iron ramrods, then?" Obstinate Serenity continues deaf; and Friedrich Wilhelm's negotiations, there at Mannheim, over in Holland, and through Holland with England, not to speak of Kaiser and Reich close at hand, become very intense; vehemently earnest, about this matter, for the next two years. The details of which, inexpressibly uninteresting, shall be spared the reader.
Summary is, these Mediating Powers will be of no help to his Majesty; not even the Dutch will, with whom he is specially in friendship: nay, in the third year it becomes fatally manifest, the chief Mediating Powers, Kaiser and France, listening rather to political convenience, than to the claims of justice, go direct in Kur-Pfalz's favor;--by formal treaty of their own, ["Versailles, 13th January, 1739" (Olrich, <italic> Geschichte der Schlesischen Kriege, <end italic> i. 13); Mauvillon, ii 405-446; &c.] France and the Kaiser settle, "That the Sulzbachers shall, as a preliminary, get provisional possession, on the now Serenity's decease; and shall continue undisturbed for two years, till Law decide between his Prussian Majesty and them." Two years;Law decide;--and we know what are the NINE-POINTS in a Law-case!
This, at last, proved too much for his Majesty. Majesty's abstruse dubitations, meditations on such treatment by a Kaiser and others, did then, it appears, gloomily settle into fixed private purpose of trying it by the iron ramrods, when old Kur-Pfalz should die,--of marching with eighty thousand men into the Cleve Countries, and SO welcoming any Sulzbach or other guests that might arrive.
Happily old Kur-Pfalz did not die in his Majesty's time;survived his Majesty several years: so that the matter fell into other hands,--and was settled very well, near a century after.