Karl Gustav died, short while after; [13th February, 1660, age 38.] left his big wide-raging Northern Controversy to collapse in what way it could. Sweden and the fighting-parties made their "Peace of Oliva" (Abbey of Oliva, near Dantzig, 1st May, 1660); and this of Preussen was ratified, in all form, among the other points. No homage more; nothing now above Ducal Prussia but the Heavens; and great times coming for it. This was one of the successfulest strokes of business ever done by Friedrich Wilhelm; who had been forced, by sheer compulsion, to embark in that big game.—"Royal Prussia," the Western or POLISH Prussia: this too, as all Newspapers know, has, in our times, gone the same road as the other. Which probably, after all, it may have had, in Nature, some tendency to do? Cut away, for reasons, by the Polish sword, in that Battle of Tannenberg, long since; and then, also for reasons, cut back again! That is the fact;—not unexampled in human History.
Old Johann Casimir, not long after that Peace of Oliva, getting tired of his unruly Polish chivalry and their ways, abdicated;—retired to Paris; and "lived much with Ninon de l'Enclos and her circle," for the rest of his life. He used to complain of his Polish chivalry, that there was no solidity in them; nothing but outside glitter, with tumult and anarchic noise; fatal want of one essential talent, the talent of Obeying; and has been heard to prophesy that a glorious Republic, persisting in such courses, would arrive at results which would surprise it.
Onward from this time, Friedrich Wilhelm figures in the world; public men watching his procedure; Kings anxious to secure him—Dutch printsellers sticking up his Portraits for a hero-worshipping Public. Fighting hero, had the Public known it, was not his essential character, though he had to fight a great deal. He was essentially an Industrial man; great in organizing, regulating, in constraining chaotic heaps to become cosmic for him. He drains bogs, settles colonies in the waste-places of his Dominions, cuts canals; unweariedly encourages trade and work. The FRIEDRICH-WILHELM'S CANAL, which still carries tonnage from the Oder to the Spree, [Executed, 1662–1668; fifteen English miles long (Busching, ERDBESCHREIBUNG, vi, 2193).] is a monument of his zeal in this way; creditable, with the means he had. To the poor French Protestants, in the Edict-of-Nantes Affair, he was like an express Benefit of Heaven: one Helper appointed, to whom the help itself was profitable. He munificently welcomed them to Brandenburg; showed really a noble piety and human pity, as well as judgment; nor did Brandenburg and he want their reward. Some 20,000 nimble French souls, evidently of the best French quality, found a home there;—made "waste sands about Berlin into potherb gardens;" and in the spiritual Brandenburg, too, did something of horticulture, which is still noticeable. [Erman (weak Biographer of Queen Sophie-Charlotte, already cited), Memoires pour sevir a l'Histoire den Refugies Francais dans les Etats du Roi de Prusse (Berlin, 1782–1794), 8 tt. 8vo.]
Certainly this Elector was one of the shiftiest of men. Not an unjust man either. A pious, God-fearing man rather, stanch to his Protestantism and his Bible; not unjust by any means—nor, on the other hand, by any means thick-skinned in his interpretings of justice: Fair-play to myself always; or occasionally even the Height of Fair-play! On the whole, by constant energy, vigilance, adroit activity, by an ever-ready insight and audacity to seize the passing fact by its right handle, he fought his way well in the world; left Brandenburg a flourishing and greatly increased Country, and his own name famous enough.
A thick-set stalwart figure; with brisk eyes, and high strong irregularly Roman nose. Good bronze Statue of him, by Schluter, once a famed man, still rides on the LANGE-BRUCKE (Long-Bridge) at Berlin; and his Portrait, in huge frizzled Louis-Quatorze wig, is frequently met with in German Galleries. Collectors of Dutch Prints, too, know him: here a gallant, eagle-featured little gentleman, brisk in the smiles of youth, with plumes, with truncheon, caprioling on his war-charger, view of tents in the distance;—there a sedate, ponderous, wrinkly old man, eyes slightly puckered (eyes BUSIER than mouth); a face well-ploughed by Time, and not found unfruitful; one of the largest, most laborious, potent faces (in an ocean of circumambient periwig) to be met with in that Century. [Both Prints are Dutch; the Younger, my copy of the Younger, has lost the Engraver's Name (Kurfurst's age is twenty-seven); the Elder is by MASSON, 1633, when Friedrich Wilhelm was sixty-three.] There are many Histories about him, too; but they are not comfortable to read. [G. D. Geyler, Leben und Thaten Friedrich Wihelms des Grossen (Frankfort and Leipzig, 1703), folio. Franz Horn, Das Leben Friedrich Wilhelms des Grossen (Berlin, 1814). Pauli, Staats-Geschichte, Band v. (Halle, 1764). Pufendorf, De rebus gestis Friderici Wilhelmi Magni Electoris Brandenburgensis Commentaria (Lips. et Berol. 1733, fol.)] He also has wanted a sacred Poet; and found only a bewildering Dryasdust.
His Two grand Feats that dwell in the Prussian memory are perhaps none of his greatest, but were of a kind to strike the imagination. They both relate to what was the central problem of his life—the recovery of Pommern from the Swedes. Exploit First is the famed "Battle of FEHRBELLIN (Ferry of BellEEN)," fought on the 18th June, 1675. Fehrbellin is an inconsiderable Town still standing in those peaty regions, some five-and-thirty miles northwest of Berlin; and had for ages plied its poor Ferry over the oily-looking, brown, sluggish stream called Rhin, or Rhein in those parts, without the least notice from mankind, till this fell out. It is a place of pilgrimage to patriotic Prussians, ever since Friedrich Wilhelm's exploit there. The matter went thus:—
Friedrich Wilhelm was fighting, far south in Alsace, on Kaiser Leopold's side, in the Louis-Fourteenth War; that second one, which ended in the treaty of Nimwegen. Doing his best there—when the Swedes, egged on by Louis XIV., made war upon him; crossed the Pomeranian marches, troop after troop, and invaded his Brandenburg Territory with a force which at length amounted to some 16,000 men. No help for the moment: Friedrich Wilhelm could not be spared from his post. The Swedes, who had at first professed well, gradually went into plunder, roving, harrying, at their own will; and a melancholy time they made of it for Friedrich Wilhelm and his People. Lucky if temporary harm were all the ill they were likely to do; lucky if—! He stood steady, however; in his solid manner, finishing the thing in hand first, since that was feasible. He then even retired into winter-quarters, to rest his men; and seemed to have left the Swedish 16,000 autocrats of the situation; who accordingly went storming about at a great rate.
Not so, however; very far indeed from so. Having rested his men for certain months, Friedrich Wilhelm silently in the first days of June (1675) gets them under march again; marches, his Cavalry and he as first instalment, with best speed from Schweinfurt, [Stenzel, ii. 347.] which is on the river Main, to Magdeburg; a distance of two hundred miles. At Magdeburg, where he rests three days, waiting for the first handful of foot and a field-piece or two, he learns that the Swedes are in three parties wide asunder; the middle party of them within forty miles of him. Probably stronger, even this middle one, than his small body (of "six thousand Horse, twelve hundred Foot and three guns");—stronger, but capable perhaps of being surprised, of being cut in pieces, before the others can come up? Rathenau is the nearest skirt of this middle party: thither goes the Kurfurst, softly, swiftly, in the June night (16–17th June, 1675); gets into Rathenau, by brisk stratagem; tumbles out the Swedish Horse-regiment there, drives it back towards Fehrbellin.
He himself follows hard;—swift riding enough, in the summer night, through those damp Havel lands, in the old Hohenzollern fashion: and indeed old Freisack Castle, as it chances—Freisack, scene of Dietrich von Quitzow and LAZY PEG long since—is close by! Follows hard, we say: strikes in upon this midmost party (nearly twice his number, but Infantry for the most part); and after fierce fight, done with good talent on both sides, cuts it into utter ruin, as proposed. Thereby he has left the Swedish Army as a mere head and tail WITHOUT body; has entirely demolished the Swedish Army. [Stenzel, ii. 350–357.] Same feat intrinsically as that done by Cromwell, on Hamilton and the Scots, in 1648. It was, so to speak, the last visit Sweden paid to Brandenburg, or the last of any consequence; and ended the domination of the Swedes in those quarters. A thing justly to be forever remembered by Brandenburg;—on a smallish modern scale, the Bannockburn, Sempach, Marathon, of Brandenburg. [See Pauli, v. 161–169; Stenzel, ii. 335, 340–347, 354; Kausler, Atlas des plus memorables Batailles, Combats et Sieges, or Atlas der merkwurdigsten Schlachten, Treffen und Belagerungen (German and French, Carlsruhe and Freiburg, 1831), p. 417, Blatt 62.]
Exploit Second was four years later; in some sort a corollary to this; and a winding-up of the Swedish business. The Swedes,