in the most chaotic circuitous ways, through endless hazards, at a hundred or a hundred thousand times the natural expense, ultimately get it done! This was the case of the poor English in those Wars.
"They were Wars extraneous to England little less than to France; neither Nation had real business in them; and they seem to us now a very mad object on the part of both. But they were not gratuitously gone into, on the part of England; far from that. England undertook them, with its big heart very sorrowful, strange spectralities bewildering it; and managed them (as men do sleep-walking) with a gloomy solidity of purpose, with a heavy-laden energy, and, on the whole, with a depth of stupidity, which were very great. Yet look at the respective net results. France lies down to rot into grand Spontaneous-Combustion, Apotheosis of Sansculottism, and much else; which still lasts, to her own great peril, and the great affliction of neighbors. Poor England, after such enormous stumbling among the chimney-pots, and somnambulism over all the world for twenty years, finds on awakening, that she is arrived, after all, where she wished to be, and a good deal farther! Finds that her own important little errand is somehow or other, done;—and, in short, that 'Jenkins's Ear [as she named the thing] HAS been avenged,' and the Ocean Highways 'opened' and a good deal more, in a most signal way! For the Eternal Providences—little as poor Dryasdust now knows of it, mumbling and maundering that sad stuff of his—do rule; and the great soul of the world, I assure you once more, is JUST. And always for a Nation, as for a man, it is very behooveful to be honest, to be modest, however stupid!"—
By this time, however,—Mollwitz having fallen out, and Belleisle being evidently on the steps,—his Britannic Majesty recognizes clearly, and insists upon it, strengthened by his Harringtons and everybody of discernment, That, nefarious or not, this Friedrich will require to be bargained with. That, far from breaking in upon him, and partitioning him (how far from it!), there is no conceivable method of saving the Celestial Balances till HE be satisfied, in some way. This is the one step his Britannic Majesty has yet made, out of these his choking imbroglios; and truly this is one. Hyndford, his best negotiator, is on the road for Friedrich's Camp; Robinson at Vienna, has been directed to say and insist, "Bargain with that man; he must be bargained with, if our Cause of Liberty is to be saved at all?"—
And now, having opened the dust-bin so far, that the reader's fancy might be stirred without affliction to his lungs and eyes, let us shut it down again,—might we but hope forever! That is too fond a hope. But the background or sustaining element made imaginable, the few events deserving memory may surely go on at a much swifter pace.
Chapter II. — CAMP OF STREHLEN
Friedrich's Silesian Camps this Summer, Camp of Strehlen chiefly, were among the strangest places in the world. Friedrich, as we have often noticed, did not much pursue the defeated Austrians, at or near Mollwitz, or press them towards flat ruin in their Silesian business: it is clear he anxiously wished a bargain without farther exasperation; and hoped he might get it by judicious patience. Brieg he took, with that fine outburst of bombardment, which did not last a week: but Brieg once his, he fell quiet again; kept encamping, here there, in that Mollwitz-Neisse region, for above three months to come; not doing much, beyond the indispensable; negotiating much, or rather negotiated with, and waiting on events. [In Camp of Mollwitz (nearer Brieg than the Battle-field was) till 28th May (after the Battle seven weeks); then to Camp at Grotkau (28th May-9th June, twelve days); thence (9th June) to Friedewalde, Herrnsdorf; to Strehlen (21st June-20th August, nine or ten weeks in all). See Helden-Geschichte, i. 924, ii. 931; Rodenbeck, Orlich, &c.]
Both Armies were reinforcing themselves; and Friedrich's, for obvious reasons, in the first weeks especially, became much the stronger. Once in May, and again afterwards, weary of the pace things went at, he had resolved on having Neisse at once; on attacking Neipperg in his strong camp there, and cutting short the tedious janglings and uncertainties. He advanced to Grotkau accordingly, some twelve or fifteen miles nearer Neisse (28th May,—stayed till 9th June), quite within wind of Neipperg and his outposts; but found still, on closer inspection, that he had better wait;—and do so withal at a greater distance from Neipperg and his Pandour Swarms. He drew back therefore to Strehlen, northwestward, rather farther from Neisse than before; and lay encamped there for nine or ten weeks to come. Not till the beginning of August did there fall out any military event (Pandour skirmishing in plenty, but nothing to call an event); and not till the end of August any that pointed to conclusive results. As it was at Strehlen where mostly these Diplomacies went on, and the Camp of Strehlen was the final and every way the main one, it may stand as the representative of these Diplomatizing Camps to us, and figure as the sole one which in fact it nearly was.
Strehlen is a pleasant little Town, nestled prettily among its granite Hills, the steeple of it visible from Mollwitz; some twenty-five miles west of Brieg, some thirty south of Breslau, and about as far northwest of Neisse: there Friedrich and his Prussians lie, under canvas mainly, with outposts and detachments sprinkled about under roofs:—a Camp of Strehlen, more or less imaginable by the reader. And worth his imagining; such a Camp, if not for soldiering, yet for negotiating and wagging of diplomatic wigs, as there never was before. Here, strangely shifted hither, is the centre of European Politics all Summer. From the utmost ends of Europe come Ambassadors to Strehlen: from Spain, France, England, Denmark, Holland,—there are sometimes nine at once, how many successively and in total I never knew. [Helden-Geschichte, i. 932.] They lodge generally in Breslau; but are always running over to Strehlen. There sits, properly speaking, the general Secret Parliament of Europe; and from most Countries, except Austria, representatives attend at Strehlen, or go and come between Breslau and Strehlen, submissive to the evils of field-life, when need is. A surprising thing enough to mankind, and big as the world in its own day; though gone now to small bulk,—one Human Figure pretty much all that is left of memorable in it to mankind and us.
French Belleisle we have seen; who is gone again, long since, on his wide errands; fat Valori too we have seen, who is assiduously here. The other figures, except the English, can remain dark to us. Of Montijos, the eminent Spaniard, a brown little man, magnificent as the Kingdom of the Incas, with half a page of titles (half a peck, five-and-twenty or more, of handles to his little name, if you should ever require it); who, finding matters so backward at Frankfurt, and nothing to do there, has been out, in the interim, touring to while away the tedium; and is here only as sequel and corroboration of Belleisle,—say as bottle-holder, or as high-wrought peacock's-tail, to Belleisle:—of the eminent Montijos I have to record next to nothing in the shape of negotiation ("Treaty" with the Termagant was once proposed by him here, which Friedrich in his politest way declined); and shall mention only, That his domestic arrangements were sumptuous and commodious in the extreme. Let him arrive in the meanest village, destitute of human appliances, and be directed to the hut where he is to lodge,—straightway from the fourgons and baggage-chests of Montijos is produced, first of all, a round of arras hangings, portable tables, portable stove, gold plate and silver; thus, with wax-lights, wines of richest vintage, exquisite cookeries, Montijos lodges, a king everywhere, creating an Aladdin's palace everywhere; able to say, like the Sage Bias, OMNIA MEA NAECUM PORTO. These things are recorded of Montijos. What he did in the way of negotiation has escaped men's memory, as it could well afford to do.
Of Hyndford's appurtenances for lodging we already had a glimpse, through Busching once;—pointing towards solid dinner-comforts rather than arras hangings; and justifying the English genius in that respect. The weight of the negotiations fell on Hyndford; it is between him and French Valori that the matter lies, Montijos and the others being mere satellites on their respective sides. Much battered upon, this Hyndford, by refractory Hanoverians pitting George as Elector against the same George as King, and egging these two identities to woful battle with each other,—"Lay me at his Majesty's feet" full length, and let his Majesty say which is which, then! A heavy, eating, haggling, unpleasant kind of mortal, this Hyndford; bites and grunts privately, in a stupid ferocious manner, against this young King: "One of the worst of men; who will not take up the Cause of Liberty at all, and is not made in the image of Hyndford at all." They are dreadfully stiff reading, those Despatches of Hyndford: but they have particles of current news in them; interesting glimpses of that same young King;—likewise of Hyndford, laid at his Majesty's feet, and begging for self and brothers any