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 ILL Margraf; 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 [LE SERENISSIME, so he irreverently names Papa], I mean to be across for some sport," [
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;
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. Here are thoughts for a Crown-Prince; well affected to his Father, yet suffering much from him which is grievous. To by-standers, one now makes a different figure: "A Crown-Prince, who may be King one of these days,--whom a little adulation were well spent upon!" From within and from without come agitating influences; thoughts which must be rigorously repressed, and which are not wholly repressible. The soldiering Crown-Prince, from about the end of September, for the last week or two of this Campaign, is secretly no longer quite the same to himself or to others.
GLIMPSE OF LIEUTENANT CHASOT, AND OF OTHER ACQUISITIONS.
We have still two little points to specify, or to bring up from the rearward whither they are fallen, in regard to this Campaign. After which the wearisome Campaign shall terminate; Crown-Prince leading his Ten Thousand to Frankfurt, towards their winter- quarters in Westphalia; and then himself running across from Frankfurt (October 5th), to see Wilhelmina for a day or two on the way homewards:--with much pleasure to all parties, my readers and me included!
FIRST point is, That, some time in this Campaign, probably towards the end of it, the Crown-Prince, Old Dessauer and some others with them, "procured passports," went across, and "saw the French Camp," and what new phenomena were in it for them. Where, when, how, or with what impression left on either side, we do not learn. It was not much of a Camp for military admiration, this of the French. [
The SECOND little point is of date perhaps two months anterior to that of the French Camp; and is marked sufficiently in this Excerpt from our confused manuscripts.
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