Chapter V. — CROWN-PRINCE GOES INTO THE POTSDAM GUARDS
Amid such commotion of the foreign elements and the domestic, an important change occurs in the Crown-Prince's course of schooling. It is decided that, whatever be his progress in the speculative branches, it is time he should go into the Army, and practically learn soldiering. In his fourteenth year, 3d May, 1725, [Preuss, i. 26; 106; and Buch fur Jedermann (a minor book of his, on the same subject, Berlin, 1837), ii. 13.] not long before the Treaty of Hanover, he was formally named Captain, by Papa in War-council. Grenadier Guards, Potsdam Lifeguards, to be the regiment; and next year he is nominated Major, and, a vacancy occurring, appointed to begin actual duty. It is on the "20th of August, 1726, that he first leads out his battalion to the muster," on those terms. His age is not yet fifteen by four months;—a very tiny Major among those Potsdam giants; but by rank, we observe, he rides; and his horse is doubtless of the due height. And so the tiny Cadet-drillings have ended; long Files of Giants, splendent in gold-lace and grenadier-caps, have succeeded; and earnest work instead of mimic, in that matter, has begun.
However it may have fared with his other school-lessons, here now is a school-form he is advanced to, in which there will be no resource but learning. Bad spelling might be overlooked by those that had charge of it; bad drilling is not permissible on any terms. We need not doubt the Crown-Prince did his soldier-duty faithfully, and learned in every point the conduct of an officer: penalty as of Rhadamanthus waited upon all failure there. That he liked it is by no means said; he much disliked it, and his disgusts were many. An airy young creature:—and it was in this time to give one instance, that that shearing of his locks occurred: which was spoken of above, where the Court-Chirurgus proved so merciful. To clog the winged Psyche in ever-returning parade-routine and military pipe-clay,—it seems very cruel. But it is not to be altered: in spite of one's disgusts, the dull work, to the last item of it, has daily to be done. Which proved infinitely beneficial to the Crown-Prince, after all. Hereby, to his Athenian-French elegancies, and airy promptitudes and brilliancies, there shall lie as basis an adamantine Spartanism and Stoicism; very rare, but very indispensable, for such a superstructure. Well exemplified, through after life, in this Crown-Prince.
OF THE POTSDAM GIANTS, AS A FACT
His regiment was the Potsdam Grenadier Guard; that unique giant-regiment, of which the world has heard so much in a vague half-mythical way. The giant-regiment was not a Myth, however, but a big-boned expensive Fact, tramping very hard upon the earth at one time, though now gone all to the ghostly state. As it was a CLASS-BOOK, so to speak, of our Friedrich's,—Class-Book (printed in huge type) for a certain branch of his schooling, the details of which are so dim, though the general outcome of it proved so unforgettable,—readers, apart from their curiosity otherwise, may as well take a glimpse of it on this occasion. Vanished now, and grown a Giant Phantom, the like of it hardly again to be in this world; and by accident, the very smallest Figure ever ranked in it makes it memorable there!—
With a wise instinct, Friedrich Wilhelm had discerned that all things in Prussia must point towards his Army; that his Army was the heart and pith; the State being the tree, every branch and leaf bound, after its sort, to be nutritive and productive for the Army's behoof. That, probably for any Nation in the long-run, and certainly for the Prussian Nation straightway, life or death depends on the Army: Friedrich Wilhelm's head, in an inarticulate manner, was full of this just notion; and all his life was spent in organizing it to a practical fact. The more of potential battle, the more of life is in us: a MAXIMUM of potential battle, therefore; and let it be the OPTIMUM in quality! How Friedrich Wilhelm cared, day and night, with all his heart and all his soul, to bring his Army to the supreme pitch, we have often heard; and the more we look into his ways, the more we are impressed with that fact. It was the central thing for him; all other things circulating towards it, deriving from it: no labor too great, and none too little, to be undergone for such an object. He watched over it like an Argus, with eyes that reached everywhere. Discipline shall be as exact as Euclid;—short of perfection we do not stop! Discipline and ever better discipline; enforcement of the rule in all points, improvement of the rule itself where possible, were the great Drill-sergeant's continual care. Daily had some loop fallen, which might have gone ravelling far enough; but daily was he there to pick it up again, and keep the web unrent and solidly progressive.
We said, it was the "poetic ideal" of Friedrich Wilhelm; who is a dumb poet in several particulars,—and requires the privileges of genius from those that READ his dumb poem. It must be owned he rises into the fantastic here and there; and has crotchets of ultraperfection for his Army, which are not rational at all. Crotchets that grew ever madder, the farther he followed them. This Lifeguard Regiment of foot, for instance, in which the Crown-Prince now is,—Friedrich Wilhelm got it in his Father's time, no doubt a regiment then of fair qualities; and he has kept drilling it, improving it, as poets polish stanzas, unweariedly ever since:—and see now what it has grown to! A Potsdam Giant Regiment, such as the world never saw, before or since. Three Battalions of them,—two always here at Potsdam doing formal lifeguard duty, the third at Brandenburg on drill; 800 to the Battalion,—2,400 sons of Anak in all. Sublime enough, hugely perfect to the royal eye, such a mass of shining giants, in their long-drawn regularities and mathematical manoeuvrings,—like some streak of Promethean lightning, realized here at last, in the vulgar dusk of things!
Truly they are men supreme in discipline, in beauty of equipment; and the shortest man of them rises, I think, towards seven feet, some are nearly nine feet high. Men from all countries; a hundred and odd come annually, as we saw, from Russia,—a very precious windfall: the rest have been collected, crimped, purchased out of every European country, at enormous expense, not to speak of other trouble to his Majesty. James Kirkman, an Irish recruit of good inches, cost him 1,200 pounds before he could be got inveigled, shipped and brought safe to hand. The documents are yet in existence; [Forster, Handbuch der Geschichte, Geographie und Statistik des Preussischen Reichs (Berlin, 1820), iv. 130, 132;—not in a very lucid state.] and the Portrait of this Irish fellow-citizen himself, who is by no means a beautiful man. Indeed, they are all portrayed; all the privates of this distinguished Regiment are, if anybody cared to look at them—Redivanoff from Moscow seems of far better bone than Kirkman, though still more stolid of aspect. One Hohmann, a born Prussian, was so tall, you could not, though yourself tall, touch his bare crown with your hand; August the Strong of Poland tried, on one occasion, and could not. Before Hohmann turned up, there had been "Jonas the Norwegian Blacksmith,", also a dreadfully tall monster. Giant "Macdoll,"—who was to be married, no consent asked on EITHER side, to the tall young woman, which latter turned out to be a decrepit OLD woman (all Jest-Books know the myth),—he also was an Irish Giant; his name probably M'Dowal. [Forster, Preussens Helden im Krieg und Frieden (Berlin, l848), i. 531; no date to the story, no evidence what grain of truth may be in it.] This Hohmann was now FLUGELMANN ("fugleman" as we have named it, leader of the file), the Tallest of the Regiment, a very mountain of pipe-clayed flesh and bone.
Here, in reference to one other of those poor Giants, is an Anecdote from Fassmann (who is very full on this subject of the Giants; abstruse Historical Fassmann, often painfully cited by us): a most small Anecdote, but then an indisputably certain one;—which brings back to us, in a strange way, the vanished Time and its populations; as the poorest authentic wooden lucifer may do, kindling suddenly, and' peopling the void Night for moments, to the seeing eye!—
Fassmann, a very dark German literary man, in obsolete costume and garniture, how living or what doing we cannot guess, found himself at Paris, gazing about, in the year 1713; where, among other things, the Fair of St. Germain was going on. Loud, large Fair of St. Germain, "which lasts from Candlemas to the Monday before Easter;" and Fassmann one day took a walk of contemplation through the same. Much noise, gesticulation, little meaning. Show-booths, temporary theatres, merry-andrews, sleight-of-hand men; and a vast public, drinking, dancing, gambling, flirting, as its wont is. Nothing new for us there; new only that it all lies five generations from us now. Did "the Old Pretender," who was then in his expectant period, in this same village of St. Germain, see it too, as Fassmann did? And Louis XIV., he is at Versailles; drooping fast, very dull to his Maintenon. And our little Fritz in Berlin is a child in arms;—and the world is all awake as usual, while Fassmann strolls through this noisy inanity of show-booths, in the year 1713.
Strolling along, Fassmann came upon a certain booth with an enormous Picture hung aloft in front of it: "Picture of a very tall man, in HEYDUC livery, coat reaching to his ankles, in grand peruke, cap and big heron-plume, with these words, 'LE GEANT ALLEMAND (German Giant),' written underneath. Partly from curiosity, partly "for country's sake," Fassmann expended twopence; viewed the gigantic fellow-creature; admits he had never seen one so tall; though "Bentenrieder, the Imperial Diplomatist," thought by some to be the tallest of men, had come athwart him once. This giant's name was Muller; birthplace the neighborhood of Weissenfels;—"a Saxon like myself. He had a small German Wife, not half his size. He made money readily, showing himself about, in France, England, Holland;"—and Fassmann went his way, thinking no more of the fellow.—But now, continues Fassmann:—
"Coming to Potsdam, thirteen years after, in the spring of 1726, by his Majesty's order, to"—in fact, to read the Newspapers to his Majesty, and be generally useful, chiefly in the Tobacco-College, as we shall discover,—"what was my surprise to find this same 'GEANT ALLEMAND' of St. Germain ranked among the King's Grenadiers! No doubt of the identity: I renewed acquaintance with the man; his little German Wife was dead; but he had got an English one instead, an uncommonly shifty creature. They had a neat little dwelling-house [as most of the married giants had], near the Palace: here the Wife sold beer [brandy not permissible on any terms], and lodged travellers;—I myself have lodged there on occasion. In the course of some years, the man took swelling in the legs; good for nothing as a grenadier; and was like to fall heavy on society. But no, his little Wife snatched him up, easily getting his discharge; carried him over with her to England, where he again became a show-giant, and they were doing very well, when last heard of,"—in the Country-Wakes of George II.'s early time. And that is the real Biography of one Potsdam Giant, by a literary gentleman who had lodged with him on occasion. [Fassmann, pp. 723-730.]
The pay of these sublime Footguards is greatly higher than common; they have distinguished privileges and treatment: on the other hand, their discipline is nonpareil, and discharge is never to be dreamt of, while strength lasts. Poor Kirkman, does he sometimes think of the Hill of Howth, and that he will never see it more? Kirkman, I judge, is not given to thought;—considers that he has tobacco here, and privileges and perquisites; and that Howth, and Heaven itself, is inaccessible to many a man.
FRIEDRICH WILHELM'S RECRUITING DIFFICULTIES
Tall men, not for this regiment only, had become a necessary of life to Friedrich Wilhelm. Indispensable to him almost as his daily bread, To his heart there is no road so ready as that of presenting a tall man or two. Friedrich Wilhelm's regiments are now, by his exact new regulations, levied and recruited each in its own Canton, or specific district: there all males as soon as born are enrolled; liable to serve, when they have grown to years and strength. All grown men (under certain exceptions, as of a widow's eldest son, or of the like evidently ruinous cases) are liable to serve; Captain of the Regiment and AMTMANN of the Canton settle between them which grown man it shall be. Better for you not to be tall! In fact it is almost a kindness of Heaven to be gifted with some safe impediment of body, slightly crooked back or the like, if you much dislike the career of honor under Friedrich Wilhelm. A general shadow of unquiet apprehension we can well fancy hanging over those rural populations, and much unpleasant haggling now and then;—nothing but the King's justice that can be appealed to. King's justice, very great indeed, but heavily checked by the King's value for handsome soldiers.
Happily his value for industrial laborers and increase of population is likewise great. Townsfolk, skilful workmen as the theory supposes, are exempt; the more ingenious classes, generally, his Majesty exempts in this respect, to encourage them in others. For, on the whole, he is not less a Captain of Work, to his Nation, than of other things. What he did for Prussia in the way of industries, improvements, new manufactures, new methods; in settling "colonies," tearing up drowned bogs and subduing them into dry cornfields; in building, draining, digging, and encouraging or forcing others to do so, would take a long chapter. He is the enemy of Chaos, not the friend of it, wherever you meet with him.
For example, Potsdam itself. Potsdam, now a pleasant, grassy, leafy place, branching out extensively in fine stone architecture, with swept pavements; where, as in other places, the traveller finds land and water separated into two firmaments,—Friedrich Wilhelm found much of it a quagmire, land and water still weltering in one. In these very years, his cuttings, embankments, buildings, pile-drivings there, are enormous; and his perseverance needs to be invincible. For instance, looking out, one morning after heavy rain, upon some extensive anti-quagmire operations and strong pile-drivings, he finds half a furlong of his latest heavy piling clean gone. What in the world has become of it? Pooh, the swollen lake has burst it topsy-turvy; and it floats yonder, bottom uppermost, a half-furlong of distracted liquid-peat. Whereat his Majesty gave a loud laugh, says Bielfeld, [Baron de Bielfeld, Lettres Familieres (second edition, a Leide, 1767), i. 31.] and commenced anew. The piles now stand firm enough, like the rest of the Earth's crust, and carry strong ashlar houses and umbrageous trees for mankind; and trivial mankind can walk in clean pumps there, shuddering or sniggering at Friedrich Wilhelm, as their humor may be.
No danger of this "Canton-system" of recruitment to the more ingenious classes, who could do better than learn drill. Nor, to say truth, does the poor clayey peasant suffer from it, according to his apprehensions. Often perhaps, could he count profit and loss, he might find himself a gainer: the career of honor turns out to be, at least, a career of practical Stoicism and Spartanism; useful to any peasant or to any prince. Cleanliness, of person and even of mind; fixed rigor of method, sobriety, frugality, these are virtues worth acquiring. Sobriety in the matter of drink is much attended to here: his Majesty permits no distillation of strong-waters in Potsdam, or within so many miles; [Fassmann, p. 728.] nor is sale of such allowed, except in the most intensely select manner. The soldier's pay is in the highest degree exiguous; not above three halfpence a day, for a common foot-soldier, in addition to what rations he has:—but it is found adequate to its purpose, too; supports the soldier in sound health, vigorously fit for his work; into which points his Majesty looks with his own eyes, and will admit no dubiety. Often, too, if not already OFTENEST (as it ultimately grew to be), the peasant-soldier gets home for many months of the year, a soldier-ploughman; and labors for his living in the old way. His Captain (it is one of the Captain's perquisites, who is generally a veteran of fifty, with a long Spartan training, before he gets so high) pockets the pay of all these furloughs, supernumerary to the real work of the regiment;—and has certain important furnishings to yield in return.
At any rate, enrolment, in time of peace, cannot fall on many: three or four recruits in the year, to replace vacancies, will carry the Canton through its crisis. For we are to note withal, the third part of every regiment can, and should by rule, consist of "foreigners,"—men not born Prussians. These are generally men levied in the Imperial Free-towns; "in the REICH" or Empire, as they term it; that is to say, or is mainly to say, in the countries of Germany that are not Austrian or Prussian. For this foreign third-part too, the recruits must be got; excuses not admissible for Captain or Colonel; nothing but recruits of the due inches will do. Captain and Colonel (supporting their enterprise on frugal adequate "perquisites," hinted of above) have to be on the outlook; vigilantly, eagerly; and must contrive to get them. Nay, we can take supernumerary recruits; and have in fact always on hand, attached to each regiment, a stock of such. Any number of recruits, that stand well on their legs, are welcome; and for a tall man there is joy in Potsdam, almost as if he were a wise man or a good man.
The consequence is, all countries, especially all German countries, are infested with a new species of predatory two-legged animals: Prussian recruiters. They glide about, under disguise if necessary; lynx-eyed, eager almost as the Jesuit hounds are; not hunting the souls of men, as the spiritual Jesuits do, but their bodies in a merciless carnivorous manner. Better not to be too tall, in any country, at present! Irish Kirkman could not be protected by the aegis of the British Constitution itself. In general, however, the Prussian recruiter, on British ground, reports, That the people are too well off, that there is little to be done in those parts. A tall British sailor, if we pick him up strolling about Memel or the Baltic ports, is inexorably claimed by the Diplomatists; no business do-able till after restoration of him; and he proves a mere loss to us. [Despatches in the State-Paper Office.] Germany, Holland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, these are the fruitful fields for us, and there we do hunt with some vigor.
For example, in the town of Julich there lived and worked a tall young carpenter: one day a well-dressed positive-looking gentleman ("Baron von Hompesch," the records name him) enters the shop; wants "a stout chest, with lock on it, for household purposes; must be of such and such dimensions, six feet six in length especially, and that is an indispensable point,—in fact it will be longer than yourself, I think, Herr Zimmermann: what is the cost; when can it be ready?" Cost, time, and the rest are settled. "A right stout chest, then; and see you don't forget the size; if too short, it will be of no use to me: mind;"—"JA WOHL! GEWISS!" And the positive-looking, well-clad gentleman goes his ways. At the appointed day he reappears; the chest is ready;—we hope, an unexceptionable article? "Too short, as I dreaded!" says the positive gentleman. "Nay, your honor," says the carpenter, "I am certain it is six feet six!" and takes out his foot-rule.—"Pshaw, it was to be longer than yourself." "Well, it is."—"No it isn't!" The carpenter, to end the matter, gets into his chest; and will convince any and all mortals. No sooner is he in, rightly flat, than the positive gentleman, a Prussian recruiting officer in disguise, slams down the lid upon him; locks it; whistles in three stout fellows, who pick up the chest, gravely walk through the streets with it, open it in a safe place; and find-horrible to relate—the poor carpenter dead; choked by want of air in this frightful middle-passage of his. [Forster, ii. 305, 306; Pollnitz, ii. 518, 519.] Name of the Town is given, Julich as above; date not. And if the thing had been only a popular Myth, is it not a significant one? But it is too true; the tall carpenter lay dead, and Hompesch got "imprisoned for life" by the business.
Burgermeisters of small towns have been carried off; in one case, "a rich merchant in Magdeburg," whom it cost a large sum to get free again. [Stenzel, iii. 356.] Prussian recruiters hover about barracks, parade-grounds, in Foreign Countries; and if they see a tall soldier (the Dutch have had instances, and are indignant at them), will persuade him to desert,—to make for the country where soldier-merit is understood, and a tall fellow of parts will get his pair of colors in no-time.
But the highest stretch of their art was probably that done on the Austrian Ambassador,—tall Herr von Bentenrieder; tallest of Diplomatists; whom Fassmann, till the Fair of St. Germain, had considered the tallest of men. Bentenrieder was on his road as Kaiser's Ambassador to George I., in those Congress-of-Cambrai times; serenely journeying on; when, near by Halberstadt, his carriage broke. Carriage takes some time in mending; the tall Diplomatic Herr walks on, will stretch his long legs, catch a glimpse of the Town withal, till they get it ready again. And now, at some Guard-house of the place, a Prussian Officer inquires, not too reverently of a nobleman without carriage, "Who are you?" "Well," answered he smiling, "I am BOTSCHAFTER (Message-bearer) from his Imperial Majesty. And who may you be that ask?"—"To the Guard-house with us!" Whither he is marched accordingly. "Kaiser's messenger, why not?" Being a most tall handsome man, this Kaiser's BOTSCHAFTER, striding along on foot here, the Guard-house Officials have decided to keep him, to teach him Prussian drill-exercise;—and are thrown into a singular quandary, when his valets and suite come up, full of alarm dissolving into joy, and call him "Excellenz!" [Pollnitz, ii. 207-209.]
Tall Herr von Bentenrieder accepted the prostrate apology of these Guard-house Officials. But he naturally spoke of the matter to George I.; whose patience, often fretted by complaints on that head, seems to have taken fire at this transcendent instance of Prussian insolency. In consequence of this adventure, he commenced, says Pollnitz, a system of decisive measures; of reprisals even, and of altogether peremptory, minatory procedures, to clear Hanover of this nuisance; and to make it cease, in very fact, and not in promise and profession merely. These were the first rubs Queen Sophie met with, in pushing on the Double-Marriage; and sore rubs they were, though she at last got over them. Coming on the back of that fine Charlottenburg Visit, almost within year and day, and directly in the teeth of such friendly aspects and prospects, this conduct on the part of his Britannic Majesty much grieved and angered Friedrich Wilhelm; and in fact involved him in considerable practical troubles.
For it was the signal of a similar set of loud complaints, and menacing remonstrances (with little twinges of fulfilment here and there) from all quarters of Germany; a tempest of trouble and public indignation rising everywhere, and raining in upon Friedrich Wilhelm and this unfortunate Hobby of his. No riding of one's poor Hobby in peace henceforth. Friedrich Wilhelm always answered, what was only superficially the fact, That HE knew nothing of these violences and acts of ill-neighborship; he, a just King, was sorrier than any man to hear of them; and would give immediate order that they should end. But they always went on again, much the same; and never did end. I am sorry a just King, led astray by his Hobby, answers thus what is only superficially the fact. But it seems he cannot help it: his Hobby is too strong for him; regardless of curb and bridle in this instance. Let us pity a man of genius, mounted on so ungovernable a Hobby; leaping the barriers, in spite of his best resolutions. Perhaps the poetic temperament is more liable to such morbid biases, influxes of imaginative crotchet, and mere folly that cannot be cured? Friedrich Wilhelm never would or could dismount from his Hobby: but he rode him under much sorrow henceforth; under showers of anger and ridicule;—contumelious words and procedures, as it were SAXA ET FAECES, battering round him, to a heavy extent; the rider a victim of Tragedy and Farce both at once.