'Na, hear now, you can write to my Kammer [BOARD, Board-of-Works that does NOT sit idle!], what it is that I want reclaimed to the plough; the money for it I will give.' [TO ME] 'And you, you go to Berlin, and explain to my Geheimer-Rath Michaelis, by word of mouth, what it is I want reclaimed.'
"His Majesty now stept into his carriage again [was Gortz sitting all the while, still in silence? Or had he perhaps got out at the bottom of the hill, and sat down to a contemplative pipe of tobacco, the smoke of which, heart-cheering to Gortz, was always disagreeable to Friedrich? Nobody knows!]--and drove down the hill;there the horses were changed. And now, as his Majesty's order was that I should 'attend him to the Stollen hills,' I went up to the carriage, and asked:--ICH. "'Does your Majesty command that I should yet accompany farther' ["BEFEHLEN, command," in the plural is polite, "your Majesty, that I yet farther shall WITH"]?
KING. "'No, my son; ride, in God's name, home.'--"The Herr Amtsrath [Klau-si-us] then accompanied his Majesty to Rathenow, where he [THEY: His Majesty is plural] lodged in the Post-house. At Rathenow, during dinner, his Majesty was uncommonly cheerful: he dined with Herr Lieutenant-Colonel von Backhof of the Carabineers, and the Herr Lieutenant-Colonel von Backhof himself has related that his Majesty said:--"'My good Von Backhof (MEIN LIEBER VON BACKHOF): if He [you] have not for a long time been in the Fehrbellin neighborhood, go there.'" Fehrbellin, the Prussian BANNOCKBURN; where the Great Elector cut the hitherto invincible Swedes IN TWO, among the DAMSand intricate moory quagmires, with a vastly inferior force, nearly all of cavalry (led by one DERFLINGER, who in his apprentice time had been a TAILOR); beat one end of them all to rags, then galloped off and beat the other into ditto; quite taking the conceit out of the Swedes, or at least clearing Prussia of them forever and a day:
a feat much admired by Friedrich: "'Go there,' he says.
'That region is uncommonly improved [as I saw to-day]! I have not for a long time had such a pleasant drive. I decided on this journey because I had no REVIEW on hand; and it has given me such pleasure that I shall certainly have another by and by.'
"'Tell me now: how did you get on in the last War [KARTOFFEL KRIEG, no fighting, only a scramble for proviant and "potatoes"]?
Most likely ill! You in Saxony too could make nothing out.
The reason was, we had not men to fight against, but cannons!
I might have done a thing or two; but I should have sacrificed more than the half of my Army, and shed innocent human blood. In that case I should have deserved to be taken to the Guard-house door, and to have got a sixscore there (EINEN OFFFENTLICHEN PRODUKT)!
Wars are becoming frightful to carry on.'
"'This was surely touching to hear from the mouth of a great Monarch,' said Herr Lieutenant-Colonel von Backhof to me, and tears came into that old soldier's eyes." Afterwards his Majesty had said:--"Of the Battle of Fehrbellin I know everything, almost as if Imyself had been there! While I was Crown-Prince, and lay in Ruppin, there was an old townsman, the man was even then very old: he could describe the whole Battle, and knew the scene of it extremely well.
Once I got into a carriage, took my old genius with me, who showed me all over the ground, and described everything so distinctly, Iwas much contented with him. As we were coming back, I thought:
Come, let me have a little fun with the old blade;--so I asked him:
'Father, don't you know, then, why the two Sovereigns came to quarrel with one another?'--'O ja, your Royal HighnessES [from this point we have Platt-Deutsch, PRUSSIAN dialect, for the old man's speech; barely intelligible, as Scotch is to an ingenious Englishman], DAT WILL ICK SE WOHL SEGGEN, I can easily tell you that. When our Chorforste [Kurfursts, Great Elector] was young, he studied in Utrecht; and there the King of Sweden happened to be too. And now the two young lords picked some quarrel, got to pulling caps [fell into one another's hair], AND DIT IS NU DE PICKEDAVON, and this now was the upshot of it.'--His Majesty spoke this in Platt-Deutsch, as here given;--but grew at table so weary that he (they) fell asleep." So far Backhof;--and now again Fromme by way of finish:--"Of his Majesty's journey I can give no farther description.
For though his Majesty spoke and asked many things else; it would be difficult to bring them all to paper." And so ends the DAY WITHFRIEDRICH THE GREAT; very flat, but I dare say very TRUE:--a Daguerrotype of one of his Days.
End
