Various

If there is such a thing in diplomacy as a natural ally, Prussia is the natural ally of England. Each possesses exactly what the other wants—the power of Prussia consisting in an immense army, the power of England in an unrivalled fleet: for though the British troops have shown themselves at least equal to any troops in the world, the genius of the nation looks chiefly to naval pre-eminence; and though, in the course of time, Prussia may be in possession of naval honours, nothing can be clearer than that its present strength depends on its soldiery.

The close alliance of England with Prussia is now a century old. We find the great Lord Chatham taking the most open interest in the successes of Frederick II., and establishing the principle that the independence of Prussia is essential to the balance of Europe. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the north of Germany was divided among a cluster of petty sovereignties—of all forms of a national system the surest to foster political intrigues, to invite the intermeddling of foreigners, the one to offer the strongest inducements to invasion, and to provide the feeblest means of defence. The formidable power of France, within twenty miles of England, must always fix the eye of the English statesman; and no more essential operation for our national tranquillity could be conceived than the solid establishment of a kingdom on the northern frontier of France, which might make that proverbially impetuous and ambitious nation aware, that an attempt to assault England could not be made without incurring the hazard of an assault on her own most exposed frontier.

But another power had arisen to render the balance of Europe still more precarious. Russia, at the beginning of the century, known but as a land of semi-barbarism, had suddenly started into a massive force, which threatened the absorption of Germany. Possessing the highest advantages for a great military empire, with harbours commanding the North, a population of sixty millions, a territory almost boundless and almost unassailable, and a government which, under all the changes of individual character in its princes, has retained in its policy the same character of continual progress, of restless interference in European politics, and of bold ambition—Russia must, in all the views of the English statesman, assume an interest of the most pressing order. To interpose an iron barrier to the ambition of Russia necessarily became the principle of English policy, and the English politician naturally looked for that barrier in the vigorous administration and steady strength of the resources of Prussia.

The eighteenth century may be called the Century of Sovereigns. There was no period, before or since, in which so many remarkable personages sat on the thrones of Europe—William III., Louis XIV., Charles XII., the Czar Peter, Maria Theresa of Austria, Catherine II., and Frederick II. of Prussia—each possessed either of great intellectual or great political qualities; all capable of distinction, if they had been born in the humbler conditions of mankind; but all developing, in the duties and labours of thrones, those qualities in a degree which made them, for their day, the great impulses of Europe, and which have placed them in an immovable rank among the high recollections of history.

But, to the Englishman, whether politician or philosopher, Prussia is the most important, from its position, the nature of its connexion with our country, the singularity of its origin, and the especial dependence of its early advance to sovereignty on the vigour of an individual mind.

Gibbon remarks that the oldest royal genealogy of Europe scarcely ascends to the eighth century. The genealogy of the Prussian throne, whether by the zeal of the herald, or the truth of the historian, nearly reaches that cloudy period. Its pedigree is dubiously traced up to the founder of the great Swabian family of Hohenzollern, of whom the first supposed ancestor was a Count Thalasso of Zollern. The family then either fell into obscurity, or rested in contentment with its ancestral possessions, until the thirteenth century, when it started on the national eye as the Burgraves of Nurnberg. But it again slumbered for eight generations, until the difficulties of the Emperor Sigismund drove him to apply to the resources of the family, then probably grown rich, as the chief personages of an opulent German community. The service was repaid by the Viceroyalty of Brandenburg, and the subsequent donation of the actual territory, with the title of Elector, and the office of archchamberlain of the empire.

The imperial gratitude probably continued to be reminded of its duties by fresh loans, for the electorate continued to receive frequent additions of territory, until, early in the seventeenth century, the annexation of the duchy of Prussia placed the Elector in an imposing rank among the dependant princes of the Continent. In the middle of this century a man of distinguished ability, fortunately for Prussia, ascended the electoral throne. Germany was then ravaged by the memorable Thirty Years' War. Frederick the Great afterwards expressed the embarrassments of the new reign in a few pithy words, as was his custom: "My great ancestor," said this graphic describer, "was a prince without territory, an elector without power, and an ally without a friend."

But talent and time are the true elements of success in every condition of life. By economy the Elector restored his finances; by common sense he reclaimed his half-savage subjects; and by sound policy he continued to augment his dominions, without doing violence to his neighbours. The peace of Westphalia, (1648,) which established the imperial system, gave him the additional importance attached to the possession of the archbishopric of Magdeburg, of Halberstadt, and of the actual sovereignty of ducal Prussia, hitherto held as a Polish fief.

But those were the victories of peace; he was at length forced to exhibit his qualities for war. In 1674, as a prince of the empire, he was compelled to furnish his contingent to its army against France. Louis XIV., in revenge, let loose the Swedes in Pomerania to invade Brandenburg. The reputation of the Swedish troops had risen to the highest rank in the Thirty Years' War, and they were regarded as all but invincible. The Prussian Elector, justly alarmed at this new peril of his dominions, appealed to his allies. But German alliances (in those days at least) were slippery, and German succours are habitually slow. Wearied by their delays, the Elector determined to act for himself. Breaking up from Franconia, he transferred his little army of eight thousand men suddenly to Magdeburg. The Swedes, encamped on the Havel, and contemptuous of Prussian strategy, took no trouble to ascertain his movements. The whole expedition was conducted with equal vigour and dexterity. On his arrival in Magdeburg, the gates were kept shut for four-and-twenty hours: thus all intelligence to the enemy was cut off. At nightfall he sallied forth; by daybreak he reached and assaulted the Swedish headquarters, took their baggage and cannon, and hunted the troops from post to post until their dispersion was total.

This battle was one of the instances in which the most important results have followed from slight events. The battle would have been in later times scarcely more than an affair of advanced guards, for the Swedes had but eight thousand, and the Prussians engaged were but five thousand five hundred. But, to have beaten the most distinguished soldiery in Europe, to have surprised the most disciplined, and to have gained the victory with inferior numbers, instantly drew the eyes of Europe on the Elector. His dominions were subjected to no further insult; the character of the Prussian army was raised; and Prussia made the first actual stride to northern supremacy.

This eminent man died in 1688, after a career which earned the panegyric even of his fastidious descendant, Frederick II., who thus described him, almost a hundred years after:—

"He possessed all the qualities which can make a man great, and Providence afforded him abundant opportunities of developing them. He gave proofs of prudence at an age when youth, in general, exhibits nothing but errors. He never abused the heroic virtues, but applied his valour to the defence of his dominions, and the assistance of his allies. He had a sound judgment, which made him a great statesman; and was active and affable, which made him a good sovereign. His soul was the seat of virtue; prosperity could not inflate, nor adversity depress it. He was the restorer of his country, the arbiter of his equals, and the founder of the power of Brandenburg. His life was his panegyric."

Frederick, the eldest son of the great elector, by his marriage with a sister of George I. then Elector of Hanover, became connected with English politics; sent six thousand men to the assistance of the Prince of Orange in his invasion of England; joined the Allies, with twenty thousand men, in revenging the havoc of the Palatinate; and, in the Grand Alliance of 1691, sent fifteen thousand troops to join the army of William III.

But Prussia was continually progressive, and in 1700 she was to make that advance in rank of which nations are as ambitious as their princes. In this year Prussia obtained from the Emperor the long-coveted title of kingdom; and the monarch, as Frederick I., took his place among European sovereigns. He died in 1713, and was succeeded by the prince-royal, Frederick-William. The character of the deceased monarch was, long after, given with epigrammatic contemptuousness by Frederick II.

"In person short and deformed, with a haughty manner and a commonplace countenance, violent from temper, mild from carelessness, he confounded vanities with acts of greatness, and was fonder of show than of utility. He sold the blood of his subjects to England and Holland, as the Tartars sell their cattle to the Podolian butchers for slaughter; he oppressed the poor to make the rich fatter still. He wished to pledge the royal domains to buy the Pitt diamond; and he sold to the Allies twenty thousand men, to have it said that he kept thirty thousand."

Royal extravagance is never pardoned, and the memory of this princely spendthrift prepared popularity for his rigid successor. The Memoirs of the Margravine of Bareith have thrown that successor into ridicule; and it must be acknowledged, that his early acts were calculated to throw all the courtiers of Europe into mingled astonishment and indignation. Immediately on his accession, he ordered the grand-marshal of the palace to bring him the list of the royal establishment. The king took a pen, and crossed out the whole. The grand-marshal, in horror at this sweeping style of reform, lost his speech, and fled from the royal presence. Meeting an officer in the antechamber, the latter, seeing his countenance of consternation, asked what had happened. The grand-marshal showed him the list, and the officer translated it for the benefit of the levÉe—"Gentlemen, our good master is dead, and the new king sends you all to the d—l!"

The twenty-six trumpeters, who supplied the place of conversation at the royal dinners, were scattered among the regiments. The hundred Swiss—the decorated slaves, whom Switzerland, with all her boast of freedom, was in the habit of sending to play the menial to the European sovereigns—were dismissed to do duty in the ranks of the line. The hoards of pearls and diamonds, and gold and silver plate, which it had been the pride and the folly of the late king to amass, were sold to pay his debts and to raise troops.

The old court had been overrun with French fashions, the French language—everything French. The king set about reforming those anti-national propensities: he dressed the regimental provosts, or army floggers and executioners, in the full French costume, to render it ridiculous; the embroidered coats and huge wigs of his privy councillors and chamberlains he ordered to be worn by the court fool on gala days.

But the discipline of the Prussian army was the peculiar distinction of this singular reign. Of all European nations, Prussia is the one to which an army is the most important. The exposed condition of a long and irregular territory, wholly without a natural frontier, with neither mountain range nor bordering river for its protection, and surrounded by warlike and powerful nations, required an army, to keep it in existence. The Alps or Pyrenees, the Rhine and the Danube, the Dniester and the Po, might protect their several countries from invasion; but the levels of Prussia required a force always on foot, prompt and prepared. To frontierless Prussia a powerful army was as peculiarly essential as a Royal Navy is to the British Isles. In all the early difficulties of his predecessor's debt, the king had raised the Prussian army to upwards of forty thousand men; and, before he died, his muster-roll amounted to nearly eighty thousand of the finest troops on the Continent. It gives a curious contrast of the nature of belligerency in the nineteenth century, to know that the Prussian army now reckons three hundred thousand men, and that, on the first rumour of war, it would probably number half-a-million.

The new school of finance makes inquiries of this kind important; for since every country must be prepared to defend itself, and troops require to be paid, the whole question of national safety depends on the national force. The Manchester financiers tell us that reduction is the true secret of strength, and that fleets and armies are only provocatives to war. The older school held, that to be prepared for war was the best security for peace; that the reduction which extinguished the national force was only an invitation to insult; and that it was a wiser policy to give the soldier his pay for our protection, than to give an invader every shilling we were worth in the shape of plunder. Frederick-William was of the old school; and, by showing that he was always prepared for war, he secured peace, even in the most quarrelsome of all countries, Germany, through a reign of twenty-seven years. The organisation of the Prussian army was even then a phenomenon in Europe: its provision, its government, its recruiting, and, above all, its manoeuvring, attracted universal admiration, and doubled the impression of its numbers on the general mind.

These facts have an interest beyond their mere effect at the time; they are the testimonials of talent, evidences of the power of mind, encouragements to original conception, substantial declarations that men should always try to invigorate, improve, and advance inventions, however apparently perfect. There is always a field beyond.

Why a German duchy was suffered thus to rise into European influence—to extend from a province into a territory, now containing sixteen millions of souls, and to change from a dependent electorate into a kingdom, now acting as the barrier of Northern Germany against the gigantic monarchy of St Petersburg—is a question which ought to be asked by the politician, and which may well excite the study of the philosopher.

The true value of history consists in developing principles. Memoirs and biographies, the anecdotes of vigorous minds, and the narratives of leading events, all have their obvious value; but history has a distinction of its own. It is more than a tissue of striking recollections; it is superior to a fine arrangement of facts; it is the spirit of great facts, a system displaying the science of influential things.

Events are, of course, its material, but it is only as the materials of architecture furnish the means of erecting the palace or the temple: the mind of the architect must supply the beauty and grandeur of the edifice. Without that constructive genius, history is only a compilation.

It is certainly in no superstition, that we strongly incline to account for the rise of Prussia in the necessity of a protection for Protestantism in Northern Germany. The whole tenor of its annals substantiates the conception. Prussia, at an early period, felt a singular sympathy with the Protestantism of Germany. The especial scene of persecution was Poland, where neither royal compact nor popular declaration was able to secure the faith of the Scriptures from the outrages of Romanism. The Treaty of Oliva, in 1660, had, like the Edict of Nantes, been the charter of Protestantism; but, like the Edict, it had been broken, and the life of the Polish Protestant was a scene of suffering. The "Great Elector" had signalised his Christianity, and perhaps raised his country, by giving protection to the sufferers. His descendant, Frederick-William, followed his honourable example. When the Starost Umruh, in 1715, was sentenced to have his tongue cut out, and to be beheaded, for his Protestant opinions, he fled to Prussia, and was protected by Frederick-William. The Diet of Grodno commenced a persecution by declaring the Polish Protestants to have forfeited both their civil and religious privileges. Frederick-William answered this act of infidelity and tyranny by a royal remonstrance to the diet, and by a letter to the King of England, advocating the persecuted cause. In the Treaty of Stockholm, in 1720, he inserted a stipulation, binding the Swedish Government to make common cause with the Protestants of Germany. In Western Germany, persecution had long exhibited its irrational policy, and exercised its cruel power. At Heidelberg, Popish advisers and confessors had poisoned the mind of the Elector, and acts of violence had taken place. The Protestants, in their distress, applied to Prussia. The King, in conjunction with the British monarch, and the Elector of Hesse, adopted their defence; issuing, at the same time, the effective menace that, if the persecution in the Palatinate were not stopped, he would shut up every Romish chapel, convent, and institution, and sequestrate every dollar of their revenue in Prussia, while the persecution lasted.

The same impulse acted throughout the century. Frederick II. was an infidel: the national policy continued unchanged. As a Voltairist, he was an ostentatious advocate of toleration, which, though in both Frederick and his teacher the work of the scoffer, yet produced the effect of forbidding all religious tyranny. Even the war for the possession of Silesia, though difficult to be explained in its question of right, had the result of weakening the Popish influence in Germany. Maria-Theresa was the prop of Popery, while Frederick II. was universally regarded as the champion of Protestantism; and his final success, by enfeebling the supremacy of the empress, showed that a kingdom of Protestantism possessed the means of resisting an empire of Popery hitherto supposed irresistible. If Prussia had been crushed in that contest, the prestige of Popery would again have risen to its old height in Germany, Protestantism would unquestionably have felt the blow to its foundations, and the probable consequence would have been to throw the Continent at the feet of Rome.

Frederick the Great was born on the 24th of January 1712, in the palace at Berlin. At his baptism, the sponsors were at least sufficiently numerous and stately; they were the Emperor Charles VI., the Dowager-empress, the Czar Peter, the States-general of Holland, the Canton of Berne, the Electant Prince of Hanover, and the Dowager-duchess of Mecklenburg.

Frederick was born Prince of Prussia and Orange; but after the cession of Orange to France, by the Peace of Utrecht, the name was given up, though the Crown of Prussia retained the title and the arms.

The popular feeling, on this occasion, was connected with a simple yet curious circumstance. An American Aloe, which had been forty-four years in the royal garden, suddenly threw out a profusion of blossoms. Thousands flocked to see this fine production of nature, which, on a stem thirty-one feet high, exhibited 7277 blossoms! The multitude gave it an almost mystic meaning, and conceived the plant (which, in all this profusion of beauty, was decaying) to be emblematic of the failing health of the old king, and the new prospects of honour under his grandson. Poems and pictures of the Aloe were spread through the kingdom. The omen was as imaginative as one of the poetic superstitions of Greece, and the imagination was realised.

The education of the future possessor of a sceptre is an important topic. In Germany the education of the higher orders generally embraces a sort of encyclopÆdia of accomplishments. The young heir to the throne thus learned music and painting, in addition to mathematics and languages. In music he became a proficient, and with his favourite instrument, the flute, could sustain his part in an orchestra. But, the chief object of his education, as that of all the German princes, being military, he learned all of the art of war that could be taught; the perfection of the art he was yet to learn in the field, and give evidence of his acquirement only in his memorable victories.

One misfortune of this education possessed and perverted him through life. Germany was, in literature, but a province of France. The licentiousness of French sentiment had tempted the rising generation to abandon the manly feelings of the Reformers. It is to the honour of our country that the principles of true religion, like those of true liberty, then found their defence within her borders; and in the existing, and still darker, period of German infidelity, the battle is still fought by the theology of England.

Adversity seems essential to the education of all great princes. Frederick was not without his share of this stern pupillage. The eccentricities of his royal father, his own waywardness, and the roughness of court discipline, produced continual collisions in the royal family, and the prince remained for some years in a kind of honourable exile from Berlin. During this period, however, he cultivated his powerful understanding to its height; but made the singular mistake of believing that he was born for a hermit, a sentimentalist, and a writer of French verses. In this fantastic spirit, he gave his immediate friends names from Greece and Rome; and was surrounded by HephÆstion, Diophanes, CÆsarion, and Quintus Icilius. Even the place of his retirement, Rheinsberg, was transformed into Remusberg, to meet a tradition that Remus was not killed by Romulus, but, flying from Rome, had settled in the spot which was afterwards to teach sentiment and solitude to the Prince of Prussia.

Those are traits worth remembering in the history of human nature. Who could have conceived the most daring of warriors, the most subtle of politicians, and the most ambitious of kings, in the writer of letters such as these?—

"My house, indeed, is not a place for those who are fond of noisy pleasures; but are not tranquillity, quiet, and the search for truth, to be preferred to the giddy and turbulent diversions of this world?

"On the 25th I am going to Amaltheu, my beloved garden at Ruppin. I am quite impatient to see again my vines, my cherries, and my melons; there, free from all useless cares, I shall live entirely for myself. My whole soul is now intent on philosophy. It renders me incomparable services, and I am deeply indebted to it. My spirit is less agitated by impetuous emotions. I repress the first working of my passions, and I never make a choice until I have maturely considered it."

All his letters are in the same strain of studious quiet, of steady self-control, and of systematic love of retirement. He sometimes even turns enthusiast, and he thus writes to Voltaire, then known chiefly as the author of the Henriade—(his worse celebrity, as the impugner of all religion, was still at a distance.) In a letter, in 1738, he addresses the Frenchman in this rapturous effusion:—

"At Rheinsberg, to be perfectly happy, we want only a Voltaire. But, though you live far from us, still you are in our midst. Your portrait adorns my library; it hangs over the bookcase which contains our Golden Fleece, immediately above your works, and opposite to the place where I generally sit, that I may always have it in my view. I might almost say, that your picture is to me as the statue of Memnon, which, when the sun's rays fell on it, emitted harmonious sounds, and imparted inspiration to the mind of every one who looked upon it."

In another letter he writes—

"In pagan antiquity, men offered to the gods the first fruits of the harvest and of the vintage.... In the Romish church, they devote not only the firstborn, not only the younger sons, but whole kingdoms, as we see in the instance of St Louis, who renounced his in favour of the Virgin Mary. For my part, I have no first fruits of the earth, no children, and no kingdom to devote; but I devote to you the first fruits of my muse in the year 1739. Were I a pagan, I would address you by the name of Apollo; were I a Papist, I might have chosen you for my patron saint, or my confessor; but, being none of these, I am content to admire you as a philosopher, to love you as a poet, and to esteem you as a friend."

But this romance was soon to be exchanged for reality; the elegancies of royal idleness were to be forgotten in the sound of cannon, and the fictions of a pampered fancy were to be thrown into the shade by the vicissitudes of one of the most sanguinary struggles that Europe had ever seen.

In 1740, Frederick had ascended the throne. He was at Potsdam, and confined to his chamber by illness, when the death of the Emperor Charles was announced to him. This event broke up the peace of Germany.

The Emperor, Charles VI., having no issue after a marriage of four years, established a new law of succession, known as the Pragmatic Sanction. The heirship of Austria had hitherto been limited to males; but, by the new law, the undivided monarchy was to devolve first to his own daughters, or, if they should not be living at the time of his death, to the daughters of his elder brother Joseph, Electresses of Saxony and Bavaria, and so on, always to the nearest relatives.

The death of the Emperor obviously threatened to involve all Europe, and especially Germany, in convulsion; for the mere publication of the Pragmatic Sanction, in 1724, had produced counter declarations from no less than three princes of the empire, who regarded their rights as invaded. The Elector of Bavaria, who was married to a daughter of the Emperor Joseph I., founded a claim to the Austrian dominions on the will of Ferdinand I.; France was disposed to enter into an alliance with Prussia; Sweden and Russia would have been inevitably involved in the war. And it was of this complication of events that the young Prussian monarch took advantage to make an assault upon Austria. For one hundred years Prussia had complained of the loss of Silesia. Her successive kings had severally impeached its seizure by Austria, and the Great Elector had still earlier bequeathed the recovery of the province to the gallantry, or the good fortune, of his successors. Frederick, now at the head of a powerful army, with a full treasury, and seeing an approaching contest for the possession of Austria itself, regarded this as a favourable moment for the recovery of his ancestral territory.

Frederick, having now completed all his preparations, sent an envoy to Vienna, to offer his alliance to Maria-Theresa, and his vote to her husband at the election of emperor, provided she would give up Silesia. But knowing the contempt with which the Austrian cabinet regarded the minor princes of Germany, and also knowing the advantage of promptitude, where the object is possession, he at once set his army in motion for the Silesian frontier. His proposal was, as he had foreseen, rejected; and on its rejection, without a moment's delay, he rushed over the frontier. He found, as he had expected, the Austrian government wholly unprepared. The whole disposable force of Austria, for the defence of Silesia, amounted to 3000 men. The invading army amounted to 28,000. Breslau the capital, Glogau the principal fortress, every town, speedily fell before him. In a note to his friend Jordan, who had attempted to dissuade him from the enterprise, he wrote, in a mixture of scoffing and exultation—

"My gentle M. Jordan, my kind, my mild, my peace-loving M. Jordan, I acquaint your serenity that Silesia is as good as conquered. I prepare you for most important plans, and announce to you the greatest luck that the womb of fortune ever produced. For the present this must be enough for you. Be my Cicero in defending my enterprise; in its execution I will be your CÆsar."

We now advert to the distinguished public servant whose correspondence throws the principal light on this important period of our foreign policy—the British envoy to the court of Berlin.

Andrew Mitchell was born in Edinburgh in 1708, son of one of the ministers of St Giles's, king's chaplain for Scotland. His mother, Margaret Cunningham, was a descendant of Lord Glencairn. Mitchell adopted the law as his profession, was admitted to the Middle Temple, and was called to the English bar in 1738. Besides a knowledge of the Scotch law, he was a man of general and rather elegant acquirement, having left among his papers observations on the Ciceronian philosophy, on the chief European histories, on morals, models, statues, and classic objects in general. He was also a member of the Royal Society.

Mitchell was evidently either sustained by active interest, or an opinion of his talents; for on the appointment of the Marquis of Tweeddale to the secretaryship for Scotland, he fixed on Mitchell as his undersecretary. In 1747, he was elected member for the county of Aberdeen. In 1756, he was appointed as British representative at the court of Frederick II.

In the more decorous style of modern diplomacy, we can seldom find examples of the court-candour with which the royal personages of the last age spoke of each other. George II. called Frederick-William "my brother the corporal." Frederick-William called George II. "my brother the dancing-master." Of course those opinions made their way to the last ears which ought to have heard them, and they left stings. But the necessities of the time overcame the bitterness of the sarcasms. Some of the letters of the elder Horace Walpole, Sir Robert's brother, who had been ambassador at Paris and the Hague, then the chief scenes of foreign diplomacy, probably expressed the chief feeling of English public men in his day, as they certainly were soon embodied in their policy. Of Frederick II. he says,—

"I know the character of that prince. I know how little he is to be trusted, and I would not have trusted him without good security for the execution of his engagements.... I need not tell you that the house of Brandenburg is a rising house. The economy of the late king, the spirit of discipline he introduced into his army, the ambition, talents, and active genius of the present monarch, must render that house a powerful friend or formidable enemy."

He gives an equally decisive opinion of the Austrian policy—

"I apprehend that the principal object of the court of Vienna will be to distract, divide, and devour the Prussian dominions. Their pride, their vengeance, and, above all, their bigotry will naturally lead them to destroy a Protestant power that has dared to offend them."

At length it was ascertained that a private negotiation had been commenced between Austria and France, the result of which must expose the Electoral dominions to invasion by France. An alliance with Prussia was immediately concluded. The account subsequently given by ThiÉbault, in his Memoirs of the Prussian Court, gives a strong impression of Mitchell's manliness and intelligence:—

"Sir Andrew Mitchell, Knight of the Order of the Garter, [a mistake for the Bath,] had been for several years the English ambassador at Berlin, when I first arrived there. Some time, however, elapsed before I had the least acquaintance with him, not only because it was little to be expected that Englishmen should be desirous of the society of Frenchmen, but also because Sir Andrew Mitchell was of the number of those meritorious characters who stand in no need of perpetual society for existence, and have the philosophy to prefer being occasionally alone. When he first arrived in Berlin, he had caused the persons who necessarily invited him to their houses considerable perplexity; for he played at no game of cards, so that his hosts constantly said,—'What shall we do with the Englishman, who never plays at cards?' In a few days, however, the contest was, who should withhold himself from the card-table, and have the advantage of conversing with a man in whom they had discovered every requisite to afford the highest pleasure in colloquial intercourse. In reality, his understanding was no less admirable than the virtues of his character. Of this I cannot give a more substantial proof, than by observing that he was united in the strictest bonds of friendship with the author of L'Esprit des Loix."

Some of the shrewd bons-mots of the diplomatic Scot are given by the Frenchman. On one occasion, when the English mail had three times been due, the king said to him at the levÉe—"Have you not the spleen, M. Mitchell, when the mail is thus delayed?" The reply was,—"No, Sire, not when it is delayed, but often enough when it duly arrives."

The English cabinet having promised to send a fleet to the Baltic, to prevent the Russians from sending troops against the king, and the fleet not appearing, Frederick was chagrined; at length he ceased to invite the envoy to the royal table. One day some of the servants, meeting him, asked,—"Is it dinner-time, M. Mitchell?" The significant retort was,—"Gentlemen, no fleet, no dinner." This was told to Frederick, and the invitations were renewed.

The next bon-mot is happier still. After the taking of Port Mahon, and the retreat of the unfortunate Admiral Byng, the king, meeting the envoy, said,—"You have made a bad beginning, M. Mitchell; your trial of Admiral Byng is but a bad plaster for the disease; you have made an unlucky campaign." "Sire," observed Mitchell, "we hope, with God's assistance, to make a better one next year."

"With God's assistance, sir! I did not know that you had such an ally," said the king.

"We hope we have, Sire; and he is the only one of our allies that costs us nothing," was the pungent reply.

In the latter portion of the war against Napoleon, it was the custom to send British officers to attend the headquarters of the Allies, and diplomatists frequently moved along with the armies. But the instance of Mitchell's moving along with the Prussian monarch was, we believe, the first example of the kind. On this subject, we have a lively letter from the Earl of Holdernesse, then Secretary of State to the envoy:—

A letter from the envoy, addressed to the King of Prussia, makes the formal request that he may be allowed to follow the headquarters—a permission which was immediately conceded by the king. The object of this request, (suggested by the English Ministry,) was twofold—to have an intelligent observer of the politics of Prussia on the spot; and to supply George II. with anecdotes of war, for which he conceived himself to have a peculiar talent; and on which subject the despatches of the envoy were always read by him with peculiar interest.

The envoy was not long without material. Before he left Berlin, he had the following despatch to write to the Earl of Holdernesse—

This was a hard-fought but indecisive action. The Austrians, under Marshal Browne, were the assailants; and the engagement continued from morning till past midday, when they retreated; but they numbered two-thirds more than the Prussians, their force being nearly seventy thousand to about forty thousand.

But a more important success immediately followed. The Saxon army, amounting to sixteen thousand, had been surrounded in their fortified camp at Pirna; the fortifications were so strong that the only hope of reducing them was by famine. To the universal astonishment, they suddenly quitted this impregnable position, and marched into a defile, where they could neither advance nor retreat. The king offered them conditions, which they accepted; and Mitchell, who had waited at Berlin only for the royal permission to join the army, arrived just in time to see the surrender; and what was more curious still, the quiet transfer of their allegiance to the Prussian service. He thus writes—

"October 21, 1756.

But we are not to suppose that this association with the mighty of the earth, and these exhibitions of capitulating armies were without their drawbacks. The Prussian king's politics were always subtle, the English cabinet was already tottering, and the campaign was already prolonged into winter. The envoy's correspondence at length sinks into complaint, and his description of his harassed life might make a man shrink from the honours of travelling diplomacy. He writes in November from Seidlitz—

Correspondence of this intimate kind gives us a true view of that life which the world in general sees so gilded and glittering. It thus has a value superior to even its historical interest. It tells the humbler conditions of life to be content with their fate; and perhaps demonstrates that, like the traveller among mountains, the higher man goes, the more slippery is his path, and the more stormy his atmosphere. The Secretary of State thus writes:—

"November, 1766.

The next campaign was one of still greater political perplexity, and of still more desperate fighting. It was signalised by the then unheard-of number of four pitched battles; but the French war has since accustomed history to more ruinous and more frequent conflicts. The first engagement was the battle of Prague, thus hastily sketched in a flying despatch to Lord Holdernesse:—

"May 6.

This victory cost a terrible sacrifice of human life. The victors had eighteen thousand men hors-de-combat; the vanquished had twenty-four thousand killed, wounded, and taken. The struggle was long doubtful. At one period of the day, the Prussian infantry, moving through a defile, recoiled from the showers of ball which swept the head of the defile; the Marshal rushed forward to the front, and, taking a standard from its bearer, led back the column, and charged the enemy. In this charge the gallant old man was struck by a ball, and fell. He was seventy-two.

This battle was useless, for all its fruits were lost immediately after; but in a military sense it was justifiable, for it was fought to prevent the junction of Marshal Daun with General Browne, whose army protected Prague. Its effects in England, however, were greatly to increase the popular feeling in favour of Frederick. A letter from Lord Holdernesse gives a strong picture of the public excitement:—

"May 20, 1757.

But, from the beginning, the struggle was unequal between Austria and Prussia. Nothing but a miracle could make a country then but of five millions vanquish a country of thirty; and the prodigious rapidity with which the Austrian armies were recruited after the severest losses, made perpetual battles actually necessary to keep them at bay. The Prussians had blockaded Prague. An Austrian force of forty-two thousand, or upwards, was advancing to raise the blockade; and Frederick, with his usual promptitude, rushed to meet it on its march, with thirty-two thousand. The armies met at Kaurzim, (better known as Kolin.) The battle began at noon, and was carried into night. The Prussians attacked: the Austrian positions were too strong for even the impetuosity and the perseverance of their brave assailants. The Prussians, after driving them from two heights, were ascending the third, when, from some mistake, their flank was exposed. The Austrian cavalry, then the finest on the Continent, took instant advantage of the misfortune, charged, and threw the whole movement into confusion. The battle was lost; and though the king retained the honour of the day by resting that night on the field, the result was unequivocal, in a retrograde march next day, and the raising of the blockade of Prague.

This battle diminished his army by thirteen thousand men! The king exposed himself with almost desperation. At last his staff remonstrated with him on his gallant obstinacy, and one of his officers even exclaimed, "Does your Majesty mean to storm those batteries alone?"

Frederick was now in the deepest distress. The Austrian hussars had advanced to the gates of Berlin, and even levied a contribution on the city. The scandalous convention by which the Hanoverian army laid down its arms, let loose its French assailants; and Prussia was about to be crushed by a weight of force then unexampled in European hostilities. On this occasion the envoy speaks in the spirit of a man who saw no hope for the king, but to save himself by a negotiation in which he must concede everything, or take his chance of an honourable death in the field. But he strikingly reminds the British Cabinet of the probable consequences of disaster to Prussia.

The British envoy, sagacious as he certainly was, here adopted the common error of conceiving that the safety of England depended on her Continental allies. The cry has been repeated in every war in which England has been subsequently engaged; and the British diplomatist at foreign courts has habitually employed his ingenuity in the elaborate effort to warn us that the national existence depended at one time on the triumph of Prussia; at another, of Austria; or, at another, of Spain. All these are follies. The whole Continent, not merely alienated from us, but combined against us, was not able to shake the strength of England, during the last and bloodiest of all wars, urged by the last and bloodiest of all ambitions. In this foolish spirit, it has been echoed from one desponding party to another, that England was saved from ruin by the march from Moscow, then by the battle of Leipzig, then by the battle of Waterloo. England would have survived, if Napoleon had grasped every province of Prussia, if Leipzig had been a field of German massacre, and if Waterloo had only exhibited the bravery without the fortune of the British army. This style of talking is trifling and pusillanimous—it exhibits an utter forgetfulness of history, and an utter ignorance of the actual capacities of the country. England, if true to herself, is unconquerable, and might look on Continental battles with no more personal consideration of the consequences than if they were battles in the clouds. Still, it will fully be admitted, that our Continental alliances ought to be scrupulously sustained; that, in the event of war with any of the Continental powers, it must be of importance to have as few enemies, and as many friends as we can; and that there can be no more short-sighted sense of the true interests of England than insult to foreign thrones, under the shallow pretext of forwarding the privileges of the people. Monarchs are the natural allies of a monarchy—rebels are the natural enemies of all government; and the attempt to create liberty on the Continent, by encouraging the absurdities of the rabble, is only to waste the noble influence of England in the most hopeless of all projects, and to degrade the national character by the abuse of the national principles.

The proverbial uncertainty of war was now about to be vividly illustrated by a new phase of Frederick's varied career. The French army, under the Prince Soubise, had poured into the centre of Germany in great force, and Marshal Keith, a gallant Scot, distinguished in the service of Prussia, was sent to check their irruption. The result was one of the most extraordinary victories on record. Frederick had arrived at Rosbach with but eighteen thousand men; the French and Imperialists, amounting to sixty thousand, made sure of his capture. It was even said that the Prince de Soubise had already sent a courier to Paris announcing it, and the ruin of the whole army. The French officers, in the spirit of their nation, actually scoffed at the idea of war with so small a kingdom as Prussia. They said "it was doing Monsieur le Marquis de Brandenbourg too much honour to carry on a sort of war with him."

On the 6th of November, Soubise advanced; the King then formed his plan of attack. It was to fall on the enemy before they had time to form. The general of cavalry, Seydlitz, was to turn the enemy's horse, and fall on their infantry in the act of formation. The two armies moved parallel to each other, until Seydlitz had turned the enemy's right unseen. The Prussian infantry were in movement after him; but seeing, with the quick eye of a thorough soldier, a favourable moment, he galloped in front of his squadrons, threw up his meerschaum in the air, as the signal for attack, and plunged into the enemy's columns. Two Austrian cuirassier regiments and two French battalions fought stoutly, but they were overwhelmed. All thenceforth was confusion. Though the king's infantry had scarcely been engaged, the enemy's infantry had been driven together in a mass, and, on nightfall, had broken up. By six in the evening the victory was complete. Six thousand prisoners were taken, with five generals and three hundred officers. The Allied army lost, on the whole, ten thousand men; the Prussians about four hundred in killed and wounded. They took seventy guns, fifteen standards, &c.

This victory spread universal exultation through Germany. It was scarcely to be called a German defeat, for the weight of the action fell on the French. It was regarded as a trial of strength between the German and the Frenchman. The victory made the king a National champion.

Many years after the battle, the inhabitants of the vicinity erected a pillar as its memorial. In the disastrous days of Prussia in our time, Napoleon, after surveying the scene of the battle, ordered the pillar to be conveyed to Paris. But, on the day before the first entrance of the Allies into Paris, in 1814, the veterans of the Invalides threw the pillar into the Seine, that it might not be restored to the Prussians. After the victory of Leipzig, however, an iron column was placed on the site of the old memorial.

The victory gave occasion to one of Frederick's bons-mots. The conversation at table turned on the comparative style of living among the German princes; the king pronounced that of the Prince Hildburg-Hausen to be the most magnificent, "for," said he, "he keeps thirty thousand runners." (The prince had commanded the German troops who were beaten along with Soubise.)

But all was vicissitude in this campaign. While the king was triumphing in one quarter, he was all but ruined in another. The Duke of Bevern, commanding in Silesia, was attacked by a force so overpowering that the province was soon in the hands of the Austrians. Their purpose was now to fall upon the king, and extinguish him. Frederick, in this knowledge, made an appeal to the loyalty of his generals; and, declaring that he had no alternative but victory or death, offered to give his dismission to any officer who was unwilling to follow him farther. The whole levÉe burst into protestations of fidelity; and the king marched to fight the Austrians at Leuthen, under the command of Prince Charles of Lorraine, assisted by the most distinguished of their generals, Marshal Daun. But this was the battle of despair. In the king's last speech to his officers, he said—"Should I fall, and not be able to remunerate the services which you have rendered me, the country must do it. Now, go to the camp, and repeat to the regiments what I have said to you."

On the morning of the 5th, at daybreak, the Prussians moved. On their march they fell in with cavalry pushed forward under the well-known General Wostitz. The Austrians were instantly overwhelmed, and Wostitz, furious at his misfortune, rushing into the midst of the Prussian cavalry, received fourteen wounds, of which he died two days after.

Among the prisoners was a deserter, a Frenchman. The king questioned him, "Why did you leave me?" "The fact is," answered the deserter, "things were going on very badly with us." "Come, come," replied Frederick, probably amused by the fellow's nonchalance in a moment of such peril to himself, "let us fight another battle to-day. If I am beaten, we shall desert together to-morrow." He then sent him back to join his old regiment.

The king's manoeuvre, on his advance, was so dexterous that, even to the experienced eye of Daun, he appeared to be in retreat. "The Prussians are off," said he to Prince Charles; "let us not disturb them." The cautious marshal always practised the maxim of "a bridge of gold for a retreating enemy." But the hasty Prince resolved on a battle. He was speedily to feel the hazard of such an antagonist as Frederick. The manoeuvre was intended to throw the whole force of the Prussians on the Austrian left wing. It succeeded perfectly. The wing was turned, and, after a brief resistance, was driven from the field. The village of Leuthen, the centre of their position, was then stormed; but the Austrian artillery was powerful, and every attack cost great slaughter. The battle was now for a while doubtful—but it was at last decided by a charge of cavalry. The Austrian general, Luchesi, had attempted to fall with his troopers on the Prussian flank; but, in the act, he was unexpectedly charged by the main body of the Prussian cavalry. Luchesi fell, his cavalry were broken, and the battle was at an end. The rest was the capture of the separate posts of the Austrians, and the pursuit of the right wing, which, though not engaged, had disbanded. This success was unexampled. The Prussians took twenty thousand prisoners, one hundred and sixteen guns, fifty-one pair of colours, and four thousand baggage waggons. The Austrians left seven thousand four hundred men on the field. The victors lost, in killed and wounded, six thousand men. This victory produced a prodigious effect on the public opinion of Europe. To have won two pitched battles, with inferior numbers, and in the midst of political difficulties, with all his conquests torn from him, and his capital insulted and laid under contribution, appeared like the work of romance. The king was, from that moment, the first of European generals. He was the invincible Frederick the Great in German lips; the Protestant hero, by a still more honourable title, in England. Germany then first felt that she had poets, and a theme for poetry. Bards sprang up on every side, and the Prussian king's exploits were sung in palace, cottage, and bivouac. The war-songs of Glein exhibited the true fire of poetry, and form stirring and noble records of the time to this day.

Mitchell's correspondence, on this important occasion, was exulting. On the 9th December, he writes—

The envoy, in his subsequent letters, collects intelligence from all quarters, and sends it in fragments.

The merit of this diligence may be estimated from the difficulty of correspondence in those days of convulsion. In his first despatch on this subject, so important to the English cabinet, he says,—

We then have a curious specimen of the spirit of diplomacy.

"To the Earl of Holdernesse.

"December 1757.

Napoleon, in his memoirs of the campaigns of the great European generals, gave a high place to the battle of Leuthen, pronounced it a masterpiece, and declared it of itself sufficient to fix Frederick in the foremost rank of generalship.

During this memorable year, the envoy frequently attended the headquarters, and shared not merely the privations but the dangers of the campaign. Of this period he kept a diary, containing the more remarkable particulars, and giving a curious picture of the harassing life, even of the highest rank, once engaged in war. But of this service there was soon to be an interruption. The Hanoverian Convention had soured the King of Prussia's mind against the English cabinet: the failure of the expedition against Rochfort—a failure, however, which arose simply from a precipitate embarkation, (for the English troops had, until that moment, driven everything before them)—and the delay of sending a fleet to the Baltic, were topics of irritation at the Prussian court, which, of course, were first visited on the head of the envoy, and which, in turn, he visited (with whatever reserve) on the head of the British cabinet. But Chatham had then succeeded to the direction of affairs, and he was not a man to take remonstrance patiently. The immediate result was the mission of Yorke to Berlin, and the recall of Mitchell. But another change in the public councils made Yorke's mission only temporary, and Mitchell was ordered to remain "until further orders."

The brilliant successes of Rosbach and Leuthen had raised the King's military name to the highest rank, but they only increased the number of his enemies. The Russians, fresh in the field, admirably equipped for the campaign, and longing to gather German laurels, had poured down upon his army, exhausted as it was by incessant fighting, and almost hopeless of seeing an end to the war, but still proud of their reputation, and confident in their King. A letter from the envoy to Lord Holdernesse gives an animated though brief account of their first collision.

"Field of Battle, Zorndorf, 26th August 1753.

This was a tremendous conflict, and the particulars of the loss on both sides made it amount to nearly 24,000, killed and wounded, of which the Prussian loss was about 4000. The Russians lost ninety pieces of cannon, standards, and several military chests, containing 858,000 roubles. The subsequent despatches give us some idea of the feelings of men in the field, even though not actually combatants. In one of these the envoy says,—

All now was anxiety.

Such is the life of kings and generals.

It is remarkable, in nearly all the great Prussian victories, how much the King owed to his cavalry. The battles of Rosbach and Leuthen were actually won by cavalry charges, and the value of cavalry seems to have been fully appreciated by Frederick. It is equally remarkable, that they scarcely appear to have been used since, except to repulse a charge, or to follow a broken enemy. There is a fashion in those things. Napoleon relied on artillery. Wellington relied on infantry. The Russian and German generals, in the French war, relied upon redoubts and fieldworks—a tactic perhaps partly imposed on them by the nature of their troops, which were new to discipline, and, though brave, were unprepared for manoeuvring. But novelty has great effect in war, and the first general who will try the momentum of cavalry on a large scale will probably beat his enemy. The common objection, that cavalry costs too much to bring it into the field in force, is absurd: nothing can be too costly which wins the battle.

The envoy now went to Dresden, where the Austrian generals had collected a force, and commenced the siege. Here he was the spectator of some severe attacks, and had his share in the wretchedness of war. On the Austrian demonstration, the general commanding in the city ordered the suburbs to be set on fire, to deprive the enemy of their cover for the assault.

Marshal Daun next day remonstrated against this act, as contrary to the laws of war. The Prussian general replied "that the Marshal knew better, and that he must do his duty; but that if the Marshal wished to save the rest of the suburbs, he had only to withdraw his troops." Daun replied "that he would receive no directions how he was to attack." The military repartees passed away, but the people were ruined.

The name of Dresden was familiarised to English ears in the last war by the battles fought round it, and the sufferings of its inhabitants. It is difficult to think of those calamities, and of the calamities to which every Continental city is exposed in the first breaking out of hostilities, without a sense of the superior security of our country, and, it is to be hoped, without a sense of the gratitude due for that security to the Supreme Disposer of the fates of nations. Of war England knows little but by her victories.

The close of the Seven Years' War, in 1763, released the envoy from the more arduous part of his service; and in 1765 he returned to England, and was made a Knight of the Bath, then an honour much more restricted than now—the number being few, and the reward unshared, but by public ministers and military men of the first distinction. His health at this period had been declining, and, retaining his envoyship to the last, and with the same vigour of faculties, he died by a short illness in June 1771. Sir Andrew Mitchell was evidently a man of high spirit, clear understanding, and active intelligence. His Journals are brief, yet interesting; and if, instead of writing a Diary, he had given us a History, no man would have rendered a more important account of one of the most important periods of Europe.

The remaining career of Frederick we pass, as a portion of universal history. His battles, his share in the fatal partition of Poland, the vigorous administration which raised Prussia from a third-rate state to a first, and from a population of five millions to one of three times the number, are matters of high interest to the political philosopher. In the character of Frederick II., there was much that no man of religious principle can applaud; but the habits of France had been rendered infidel by the effects of Popery on a lively and ingenious people. The religion which Voltaire and his followers saw from day to day was not Christianity—the miracles of supposed saints, and the worship of a supposed Queen of Heaven, which revolted the common sense of mankind, extinguished the implicit faith of these keen-witted Frenchmen. The infidel was only a scoffer at a graver infidelity. The wit of the Frenchman made his scoff popular; and the German, destined to be always an imitator, was proud to follow the laugh, without attempting to examine the logic, of Voltaire.

The later history of Prussia has grown in importance with the growing pressure of our time. Prussia is no longer a struggling state; she is a great European power. No longer a dependent on the policy of Europe, she constitutes a prime mover of that policy. The French have trampled her under foot, apparently only to give her the great lesson that the strength of a nation is in the national virtue. The cause, which was lost by the army, was restored by the population. There was no army in Europe which fell into such instant ruin; there was no population of Europe which started on its feet with such invincible vigour. No defeat was so desperate, no victory so memorable. The peasant restored the monarchy.

Prussia has since been scourged in the common insurgency of the Continent; yet even that suffering will be of infinite value, if it shall remind her that the safety of thrones is in the religion of the people. The connexion is evident. Revolution is the natural tempter of man; it offers opulence to the poor, rank to the vain, agitation to the active, and power to the ambitious. To resist these original stimulants of our nature, what is there in the arm of kings, in the frowns of law, or in the morals of philosophy? There must be a protector, not to be found among the dubious impulses or infirm decencies of this world. That only protector is Religion!

Germany is irreligious. Its Protestant population is infidel, its Popish is sunk in the depths of superstition. In neither is it Christian. Individuals may still protest, in the once famous land of Protestantism; but the volumes with which Germany is now inundating the world are hostile to every principle of the Gospel. Germany must return to the Bible before her monarchs can sit safely in their palaces. The offer of Constitutions to their people is only the offer of wine to the intoxicated. It is the abuse of a noble gift, and the conversion of a source of natural vigour into the nutriment of a habitual vice. Prussia has now a great vocation. Whatever share of rational liberty exists in Germany is to be sought for at her hands. She possesses the most enlightened intellect, the most vigorous learning, and the most inquiring spirit of Germany. Every man who wishes well to the progress of the Continent must give his aspirations to the progress of Prussia. But her superior advantages will only insure the keener suffering, unless guided by superior virtue.

Her late interference in the war of the Northern Duchies was suspicious; and the passion for naval power, and the hope of acquiring the protectorate of Northern and Central Germany, may have betrayed her into encroachments on her neighbours. But these dreams seem to be past; and it must depend wholly on herself whether she shall disappoint a noble experiment, or shall establish an imperishable name; whether her emblem shall be the scaffold or the altar; whether she shall be the great magazine of political combustion, or the great armoury of political defence to Europe; whether the shade of the royal tree shall shelter the fugitive principles of rational freedom, or direct the lightnings upon them. There can be no question that we live in times of vast political peril: the pealing of the tempest has scarcely sunk behind our march, when clouds gather on it before. New expedients are required to revive the preservative power of old principles. Religion is on its trial among ourselves; but here it will not meet its catastrophe. The Continent will be the scene of the great conflict; and Prussia, more probably than any other portion of the Continent, will witness the severity of the struggle. It may be decided even within the lapse of a few years, and by the exercise of her own wisdom, whether her throne shall stand forth the barren centre of German revolution, or a magnificent creation of power—a central temple, to which the nations of the Continent shall come for the sacred fire, appointed to administer virtue to the living generation, and illustrate posterity.