the herstal affair.—the summons.—voltaire’s manifesto.—george ii. visits hanover.—the visit of wilhelmina to berlin.—unpopularity of the king.—death of the emperor charles vi.
on the river maas, a few miles north of the present city of liege, there was a celebrated castle called herstal. for many generations feudal lords had there displayed their pomp and power; and it had been the theatre not only of princely revelry, but of many scenes of violence and blood. a surrounding territory of a few thousand acres, cultivated by serfs, who were virtually slaves, was the hereditary domain of the petty lords of the castle. a few miles south of the castle there was a monastery called liege, which was a dependency of the lords of herstal.
amid the vicissitudes of the revolving centuries the rollicking lords grew poor, and the frugal monks grew rich. a thrifty city rose around the monastery, and its bishop wielded a power, temporal and spiritual, more potent than had ever issued from the walls of the now crumbling and dilapidated castle. in some of the perplexing diplomatic arrangements of those days, the castle of herstal, with its surrounding district, was transferred to frederick william of prussia. the peasants, who had heard of the military rigor of prussia, where almost every able-bodied man was crowded into the army, were exceedingly troubled by this transfer, and refused to take the oath of allegiance to their new sovereign, who had thus succeeded to the ownership of themselves, their flocks, and their herds. the gleaming sabres of frederick william’s dragoons soon, however, brought them to terms. thus compelled to submission, they remained unreconciled and irritated. upon the withdrawal of the prussian troops, the authority of frederick william over the herstal people also disappeared, for they greatly preferred the milder rule of the bishop of liege.
the bishop denied that frederick william had any claim to207 herstal. he brought forward a prior claim of his own in behalf of the church. the duke of lorraine, when proprietor of the castle and its dependencies, had pawned it to the bishop for a considerable sum of money. this money, the bishop averred, had never been repaid. consequently he claimed the property as still in his possession.
george ludwig, count of berg, who at this time was bishop of liege, was a feeble old man, tottering beneath the infirmities of eighty-two years. he did not venture upon physical resistance to the power of prussia, but confined himself to protests, remonstrances, and to the continued exercise of his own governmental authority. as herstal was many leagues distant from berlin, was of comparatively little value, and could only be reached by traversing foreign states, frederick william offered to sell all his claims to it for about eighty thousand dollars. the proposal not being either accepted or rejected by the bishop, the king, anxious to settle the question before his death, sent an embassador to liege, with full powers to arrange the difficulty by treaty. for three days the embassador endeavored in vain to obtain an audience. he then returned indignantly to berlin. the king, of course, regarded this treatment as an insult. the bishop subsequently averred that the audience was prevented by his own sickness. such was the posture of affairs when frederick william died.
upon the accession of frederick the second, as officers were dispatched through the realm to exact oaths of allegiance, the herstal people, encouraged by the bishop, refused to acknowledge fealty to the new king. frederick was now in the district of cleve, in the near vicinity of herstal. he sent the following very decisive summons to the “prince bishop of liege,” dated wesel, september 4, 1740:
“my cousin,—knowing all the assaults made by you upon my indisputable rights over my free barony of herstal, and how the seditious ringleaders there, for several years past, have been countenanced by you in their detestable acts of disobedience against me, i have commanded my privy counselor, rambonet, to repair to your presence, and in my name to require from you, within two days, a distinct and categorical answer to this question:
208 “whether you are still minded to assert your pretended sovereignty over herstal, and whether you will protect the rebels at herstal in their disorders and abominable disobedience?
“in case you refuse, or delay beyond the term, the answer which i hereby of right demand, you will render yourself alone responsible, before the world, for the consequences which infallibly will follow. i am, with much consideration, my cousin, your very affectionate cousin,
frederick.”
rambonet presented the peremptory missive, and waited forty-eight hours for the answer. he then returned to wesel without any satisfactory reply. frederick immediately issued a manifesto, declaring the reasons for his action, and ordered two thousand men, horse and foot, who were all ready for the emergence, to advance immediately to maaseyk, one of the principal towns of the bishop, take possession of it and of the surrounding region, quarter themselves upon the people, enforce liberal contributions, and remain there until the bishop should come to terms.34
the solid, compact army, with infantry, artillery, and cavalry in the best possible condition, advanced at the double-quick. arriving at the gates of maaseyk, not a moment was spent in parleying. “open the gates instantly,” was the summons, “or we shall open them with the petard.”
with great courtesy of words, but pitiless energy of action, general borck, who was in command, fulfilled his commission. a contribution was exacted of fifteen thousand dollars, to be paid within three days; sufficient rations were to be furnished daily for the troops, or the general, it was stated, would be under the painful necessity of collecting them for himself. two hundred and fifty dollars a day were to be provided for the general’s private expenses. remonstrances were of no avail. resistance was not to be thought of.
209 the poor old bishop called loudly upon the emperor of germany for help. the territory of the bishop of liege was under the protection of the empire. the emperor charles vi. immediately issued a decree ordering frederick to withdraw his troops, to restore the money which he had extorted, and to settle the question by arbitration, or by an appeal to the laws of the empire. this was the last decree issued by charles vi. two weeks after he died.
frederick paid no regard to the remonstrance of the emperor. the bishop, in his distress, applied to the french for aid, and then to the dutch, but all in vain. he then sent an embassy to berlin, proposing to purchase herstal. the king consented to sell upon the same terms his father had offered, adding to the sum the expenses of his military expedition and other little items, bringing the amount up to one hundred and eighty thousand dollars. the money was paid, and the herstal difficulty was settled. this was frederick’s first act of foreign diplomacy. many severely censured him for the violent course he pursued with a power incapable of resistance. all admitted the energy and sagacity which he had developed in the affair.
voltaire, in his memoirs, says that he drew up the manifesto for frederick upon this occasion. “the pretext,” he writes, “for this fine expedition was certain rights which his majesty pretended to have over a part of the suburbs. it was to me he committed the task of drawing up the manifesto, which i performed as well as the nature of the case would let me, never suspecting that a king, with whom i supped, and who called me his friend, could possibly be in the wrong. the affair was soon brought to a conclusion by the payment of a million of livres, which he exacted in good hard ducats, and which served to defray the expenses of his tour to strasbourg, concerning which he complained so loudly in his poetic prose epistle.
“i represented to him that perhaps it was not altogether prudent to print his anti-machiavel just at the time that the world might reproach him with having violated the principles he taught. he permitted me to stop the impression. i accordingly took a journey into holland purposely to do him this trifling service. but the bookseller demanded so much money that his majesty, who was not in the bottom of his heart vexed to see210 himself in print, was better pleased to be so for nothing, than to pay for not being so. i could not avoid feeling some remorse at being concerned in printing this anti-machiavelian book at the very moment that the king of prussia, who had a hundred millions in his coffers, was robbing the poor people of liege of another, by the hand of the privy counselor rambonet.”35
it must be borne in mind that these words were written after voltaire had quarreled with frederick, and when it seems to have been his desire to represent all the acts of the king in as unfavorable a light as possible. frederick himself, about eight years after the settlement of the herstal difficulty, gave the following as his version of the affair:
“a miserable bishop of liege thought it a proud thing to insult the late king. some subjects of herstal, which belongs to prussia, had revolted. the bishop gave them his protection. colonel kreutzen was sent to liege to compose the thing by treaty, with credentials and full power. imagine it; the bishop would not receive him! three days, day after day, he saw this envoy apply at his palace, and always denied him entrance. these things had grown past endurance.”
frederick returned to berlin by a circuitous route, which occupied ten days. his uncle, king george ii. of england, whom he exceedingly disliked, was then on a visit to his hanoverian possessions. frederick passed within a few miles of his britannic majesty without deigning to call upon him. the slight caused much comment in the english papers. it was regarded as of national moment, for it implied that in the complicated policy which then agitated the courts of europe the sympathies of prussia would not be with england.
soon after this, frederick’s next younger brother, augustus william, who was heir-presumptive to the throne in default of a son by frederick, was betrothed to louisa amelia of brunswick, younger sister of frederick’s bride.
about the middle of october wilhelmina came to berlin to see her brothers again. nine years had passed since her marriage, and seven since her last sad visit to the home of her childhood, in which inauspicious visit the wretchedness of her early years had been renewed by the cruelty of her reception. in211 wilhelmina’s journal we find the following allusion to this her second return to berlin:
“we arrived at berlin the end of october. my younger brothers, followed by the princes of the blood and by all the court, received us at the bottom of the stairs. i was led to my apartment, where i found the reigning queen, my sisters, and the princesses. i learned, with much chagrin, that the king was ill of tertian ague. he sent me word that, being in his fit, he could not see me, but that he depended on having that pleasure to-morrow. the queen-mother, to whom i went without delay, was in a dark condition. her rooms were all hung in their lugubrious drapery. every thing was as yet in the depth of mourning for my father. what a scene for me! nature has her rights. i can say with truth i have almost never in my life been so moved as on this occasion. my interview with my mother was very touching.”
the next morning frederick hastened to greet his sister. wilhelmina was not pleased with his appearance. the cares of his new reign entirely engrossed his mind. the dignity of an absolute king did not sit gracefully upon him. though ostentatiously demonstrative in his greeting, the delicate instincts of wilhelmina taught her that her brother’s caresses were heartless. he was just recovering from a fit of the ague, and looked emaciate and sallow. the court was in mourning. during those funereal days no festivities could be indulged in. the queen-mother was decorously melancholy; she seems to have been not only disappointed, but excessively chagrined, to find that she was excluded by her son from the slightest influence in public affairs. the distant, arrogant, and assuming airs of the young king soon rendered him unpopular.
“a general discontent,” writes wilhelmina, “reigned in the country. the love of his subjects was pretty much gone. people spoke of him in no measured terms. some accused him of caring nothing about those who helped him as prince royal. others complained of his avarice as surpassing that of the late king. he was accused of violence of temper, of a suspicious disposition, of distrust, haughtiness, dissimulation. i would have spoken to him about these had not my brother augustus william and the queen regnant dissuaded me.”
212 frederick invited his sister to visit him at reinsberg, to which place either business or pleasure immediately called him. after the lapse of two days, wilhelmina, with the neglected queen elizabeth, repaired to the enchanting chateau, hoping to find, amid its rural scenes, that enjoyment which she never yet had been able to find in the sombre halls of the berlin palace. here quite a gay company was assembled. frederick was very laboriously occupied during the day in affairs of state. but in the evening he appeared in the social circles, attracting the attention of all by his conversational brilliance, and by the apparent heartiness with which he entered into the amusements of the court. he took an active part in some private theatricals, and none were aware of the profound schemes of ambition which, cloaked by this external gayety, were engrossing his thoughts.
on the 25th of october a courier arrived, direct from vienna, with the startling intelligence that the emperor charles vi. had died five days before. the king was at the time suffering from a severe attack of chills and fever. there was quite a long deliberation in the court whether it were safe to communicate the agitating intelligence to his majesty while he was so sick. they delayed for an hour, and then cautiously informed the king of the great event. frederick listened in silence; uttered not a word; made no sign.36 subsequent events proved that his soul must have been agitated by the tidings to its profoundest depths. the death of the emperor, at that time, was unexpected. but it is pretty evident that frederick had, in the sombre recesses of his mind, resolved upon a course of action when the emperor should die which he knew would be fraught with the most momentous results. in fact, this action proved the occasion of wars and woes from which, could the king have foreseen them, he would doubtless have shrunk back appalled.
the emperor charles vi. left no son. he therefore promulgated a new law of succession in a decree known throughout213 europe as the “pragmatic sanction.” by the custom of the realm the sceptre could descend only to male heirs. but by this decree the king declared that the crown of the house of hapsburg should be transmitted to his daughter, maria theresa. this law had been ratified by the estates of all the kingdoms and principalities which composed the austrian monarchy. all the leading powers of europe—england, france, spain, prussia, russia, poland, sweden, denmark, and the germanic body—had bound themselves by treaty to maintain the “pragmatic sanction.” it was a peaceable and wise arrangement, acceptable to the people of austria and to the dynasties of europe as a means of averting a war of succession, which might involve all the nations of the continent in the conflict.
the death-scene of the emperor was an event which must interest every reader. upon his return from a hunting excursion into hungary, he was attacked, on thursday evening, october 16th, by slight indisposition, which was supposed to have been caused by eating imprudently of mushrooms. his sickness, baffling the skill of the doctors, increased, and by saturday night became alarming. on tuesday it was thought that he was dying. the pope’s nuncio administered to him the sacrament of the lord’s supper. his majesty manifested great composure in view of the sublime change before him, and said to one who was weeping at his bedside,
“i am not afraid in contemplating the dread tribunal before which i must now so soon appear. i am certain of my cause. look at me! a man that is certain of his cause can enter on such a journey with good courage and a composed mind.”
to his physicians, who were doubtful respecting the nature of his disease, he said, “if doctor gazelli were here you would soon know what is my complaint. as it is, you will only learn after you have dissected me.”
he then requested to be shown the cup in which his heart would be placed after that operation. his daughter, maria theresa, who had married the grand-duke francis, was in a delicate state of health. the death of her father would place the weighty crown upon her youthful brow. grief and agitation threw her helpless upon her bed. so important was her life to the world that the emperor was unwilling that, in her214 then condition, she should enter the death-chamber. “tell my theresa,” said he, in faint and dying accents, “that i bless her, notwithstanding her absence.”
the empress had fainted away at the bedside, and had been borne, in the arms of the attendants, into her daughter maria theresa’s chamber. she was now summoned, with the younger children, for the final adieu. as the empress, almost delirious with grief, re-entered the apartment, she threw herself upon the bed of her dying husband, and exclaimed, in frenzied tones, “do not leave me! do not leave me!”
during all the day of wednesday weeping friends stood around the bed, as the lamp of life flickered in its socket. every moment it was expected that the emperor would breathe his last. at two o’clock the next morning the spirit took its flight, and the lifeless clay alone remained. the grief-stricken empress closed the eyes of her departed husband, kissed his hands, and “was carried out more dead than alive.” thus ended the male line of the house of hapsburg, after five centuries of royal sway. the emperor died on the 20th of october 1740, in the fifty-sixth year of his age.
as frederick received the tidings of this death, he rose, dressed himself, and his ague disappeared, to return no more. a courier was immediately dispatched, at the top of his speed, to summon to his presence general schwerin and m. podewils, his chief minister. two days must elapse before they could reach him. in the mean time, the king, taking counsel of no one, was maturing his plans, and making quiet but vigorous preparations for their execution. he wrote the next day to voltaire, in allusion to the emperor’s death,
“i believe that there will, by june next, be more talk of cannon, soldiers, trenches, than of actresses and dancers for the ballet. this small event changes the entire system of europe. it is the little stone which nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream, loosening itself and rolling down on the image made of four metals, which it shivers to ruin.”
on the southeast frontier of prussia, between that kingdom, and poland, and hungary, there was an austrian realm called silesia. the country embraced a territory of twenty thousand square miles, being about twice as large as the state of vermont.215 the population was about two millions. for more than a century silesia had been a portion of the austrian kingdom. time, and the assent of europe, had sanctioned the title.
the death-scene of the emperor.
but the young king frederick was very ambitious of enlarging the borders of his liliputian realm, and of thus attaining a higher position among the proud and powerful monarchs who surrounded him. maria theresa, who had inherited the crown of austria, was a remarkably beautiful, graceful, and accomplished216 young lady, in the twenty-fourth year of her age. she was a young wife, having married francis, duke of lorraine. her health, as we have mentioned, was at that time delicate. frederick thought the opportunity a favorable one for wresting silesia from austria, and annexing it to his own kingdom. the queen was entirely inexperienced, and could not prove a very formidable military antagonist. her army was in no respect, either in number, discipline, or materiel, prepared for war. her treasury was deplorably empty. there was also reason for frederick to hope that several claimants would rise in opposition to her, disputing the succession.
on the other hand, frederick himself was in the very prime of manhood. he was ambitious of military renown. he had a compact army of one hundred thousand men, in better drill and more amply provided with all the apparatus of war than any other troops in europe. the frugality of his father had left him with a treasury full to overflowing. to take military possession of silesia would be a very easy thing. there was nothing to obstruct the rush of his troops across the frontiers. there were no strongly garrisoned fortresses, and not above three thousand soldiers in the whole realm. no one even suspected that frederick would lay any claim to the territory, or that there was the slightest danger of invasion. the complicated claim which he finally presented, in official manifestoes, was founded upon transactions which had taken place a hundred years before. in conversation with his friends he did not lay much stress upon any legitimate title he had to the territory. he frankly admitted, to quote his own words, that “ambition, interest, the desire of making people talk about me, carried the day, and i decided for war.”37
the general voice of history has severely condemned the prussian king for this invasion of silesia. frederick probably217 owed his life to the interposition of the father of maria theresa, when the young prince was threatened with the scaffold by his own father. prussia was bound by the most solemn guarantees to respect the integrity of the austrian states. there was seemingly a great want of magnanimity in taking advantage of the extreme youth, inexperience, and delicate health of the young queen, who was also embarrassed by an empty treasury and a weakened and undisciplined army. frederick had also made, in his anti-machiavel, loud protestations of his love of justice and magnanimity. mr. carlyle, while honestly stating these facts, still does not blame frederick for seizing the opportunity which the death of the emperor presented for him to enlarge his dominions by plundering the domain of maria theresa.
map of silesia.
“it is almost touching,” mr. carlyle writes, “to reflect how unexpectedly, like a bolt out of the blue, all this had come upon frederick, and how it overset his fine programme for the winter at reinsberg, and for his life generally. not the peaceable magnanimities, but the warlike, are the thing appointed frederick this winter, and mainly henceforth. those ‘golden or soft radiances’ which we saw in him, admirable to voltaire and to frederick, and to an esurient philanthropic world, it is not218 those, it is the ‘steel bright or stellar kind’ that are to become predominant in frederick’s existence; grim hail-storms, thunders, and tornado for an existence to him instead of the opulent genialities and halcyon weather anticipated by himself and others.
“indisputably enough to us, if not yet to frederick, ‘reinsberg and life to the muses’ are done. on a sudden, from the opposite side of the horizon, see miraculous opportunity rushing hitherward; swift, terrible, clothed with lightning like a courser of the gods; dare you clutch him by the thunder-mane, and fling yourself upon him, and make for the empyrean by that course rather? be immediate about it, then; the time is now or never! no fair judge can blame the young man that he laid hold of the flaming opportunity in this manner, and obeyed the new omen. to seize such an opportunity and perilously mount upon it was the part of a young, magnanimous king, less sensible to the perils and more to the other considerations than one older would have been.”
