4th Dec., 1741.

reader too, in his great ignorance, will accept in defect of better. Scene is Landshut, among the Giant Mountains on the Bohemian Border of Silesia: an old stone Town, where there is from of old a busy trade in thread and linen; Town consisting, as is common there, of various narrow winding streets comparable to spider-legs, and of a roomy central market-place comparable to the body of the spider; wide irregular Market-place with the wooden spouts (dry for the moment) all projecting round it. Time, 4th December, 1741 (doubtless in the forenoon); unusual crowd of population simmering about the Market-place, and full audience of the better sort gravely attentive in the interior of the Rathhaus; Bürgermeister Spener loquitur? (liable to abridgment here and there, on warning given);

I enter, then, in the name of the Most Holy Trinity, upon an Office, to which Divine Providence has appointed, and the gracious and potent hand of a great King has raised me. Great as is the dignity" (giddy height of Mayoralty in Landshut)," though undeserved, which the Ever Merciful has thus conferred upon me, equally great and much greater is the burden connected therewith. I confess-_" He confesses, in high-stalking, earnest wooden language, very foreign to us in every way, (1°.) That his shoulders are too weak; but that he trusts in God. For (2°.) it is God's doing; and He that has called Spener will give Spener strength; the essential work being to do God's will, to promote his honor and the common weal. (3°.) That he comes out of a smaller Office (Office not distinctly specified, but seems to have been a Senior Rathship), and has taken upon him the Mayoralty of this Town (an evident fact!); but that the labor and responsibility are dreadfully increased; and that the point is not increase of honor, of respectability, or income, but of heavy duties. (A sonorous, pious-minded Spener; much more in earnest than readers now think!)

"It is easy," intimates he, "to govern a Town, if,” as some have perhaps done, "you follow simply your own will, regardless of the sighs and complaints your subjects utter for injustice undergone-indifferent to the thought that the caprice of one Town Sovereign is to be glorified by so many thousand tears" (dim glance into the past history of Landshut!). "Such Town Sovereign persecutes innocence, stops his ears to its cry, flourishes his sharp scourge-no one shall complain; for is it not justice? thinks such a Town Sovereign. The reason is, He does not know himself, poor man; has had his eye always on the duties of

2 Helden-Geschichte, ii., 416.

4th Dec., 1741. his subjects toward him, and rarely or never on his toward them. A Sovereign Mayor that governs by fear, he must live in continual fear of every one, and of himself withal. A weak basis, and capable of total overturn in one day. On the contrary, the love of your burgher subjects—that, if you can kindle it, will go on like a house on fire (Ausbruch eines Feueres), and streams of water won't put it out."**"And” (let us now take Spener's very words), " if a man keep the fear of God before his eyes, there will be no need for any other kind of fear.

"I will therefore, you especially High-honored Gentlemen, study to direct all my judicial endeavors to the honor of the Great God, and to inviolable fidelity toward my most gracious King and Lord" (Friedrich, by Decision of Providence-at Mollwitz and elsewhere).

"To the Citizens of this Town, from of old so dear to me, and now by Royal grace committed to my charge, and therefore doubly and trebly to be held dear, I mean to devote myself altogether. I will, on every occasion and occurrence, still more expressly than aforetime, stand by them; and when need is, not fail to bring their case before the just Throne of our Anointed” (Friedrich, by Decision of Providence). "Justice and fairness I will endeavor, under whatever complexities, to make my loadstar. Yes, I shall and will, by means of this my Office, equip myself with weapons whereby I may be capable to damp such humors (Intelligentien), should such still be (but I believe there are now none such), as may repugn against the Royal interest, with possibility of being dangerous; and to put a bridle on mouths that are unruly. And, to say much in little compass, I will be faithful to God, to my King, and to this Town.

Having now the honor and happiness to be put into an Official friendship with those Gentlemen who, as Bürgermeisters, and as old and as new Members of Council, have for long years made themselves renowned among us, I will entertain, in respect of the former" (the old), "a firm confidence that the zeal they have so strongly manifested for behoof of the most serene Archducal House of Austria will henceforth burn in them for our most Beloved Land's-Prince whom God has now given us; that the fire of their lately plighted truth and devotion toward his Royal Majesty shall shine, not in words only, but in works, and be extinguished only with their lives." (Can that be, O Spener or Speer? Are we alarm-clocks, that need only to be wound up, and told at what hour, and for whom?) God, who puts Kings in and casts them out, has given to us a no less potent Sovereign than supremely loving Land'sFather, who, by the renown of his more than royal virtues, had taken captive the hearts of his future subjects and children still sooner than even by his arms, familiar otherwise to victory, he did the Land. And who shall be puissant and mighty enough now to lead men's minds in a VOL. III.-R

4th Dec., 1741.

contrary direction; to control the Most High Power, ruler over hearts and Lands, who had decreed it should be so, and again to change this change?" (Hear Spener: he has taken great pains with his Discourse, and understands composition!)

"This change, High-honored Gentlemen" of the Catholic persuasion, "is also for you a not unhappy one. For our now as pious as wise King will, especially in one most vital point, take pattern by the King of all Kings, and means to be lord of his subjects only, not of the consciences of his subjects. He requires nothing from you but what you are already bound by God, by conscience, and duty, to render, to wit, obedience and inviolable unbroken fidelity. And by that, and without more asked than that, you will render yourselves worthy of his protection, and become partakers of the Royal favor. Nay, you will render yourselves all the worthier in that high quarter, and the more meritorious toward our civic commonweal, the more you, High-honored Gentlemen" of the Catholic persuasion, "accept with all frankness of colleague-love and amity, me and the Evangelical brother Raths now introduced by Royal grace and power, and make the new position generously tenable and available to us, and thereby bind with us the more firmly the band of peace and colleague-unity for helping up this dear, and, for some years, greatly fallen Town along with us.

"We, for our poor part, will, one and all, strive only to surpass each other in obedience and faith to our Most Gracious King. We will, as Regents of the Citizenry committed to us, go before them with a good example, and prove to all and every one that, little and in war untenable as our Landshut is, it shall, in extent and impregnability of faith toward its Most Dearest Land's-Prince, approve itself unconquerable. As well I as-" Professes now, in the most intricate phraseology, that he, and Fischer, and Umminger (giving not only the titles, but a succinct history of all three, in a single sentence, before he comes to the verb!) bring a true heart, &c., &c. Or would the reader perhaps like to see it în naturâ, as a specimen of German human nature, and the art these Silesian spinners have in drawing out their yarns?

"As well I as" (1°.) "The Titular Herr Johann David Fischer, distinguished trader and merchant of this Town, who, by his tradings in and beyond our Silesian Countries, has made himself renowned, and by his merit and address in particular instances” (delicate instances known to Landshut, not to us) "has made himself beloved, who has now been installed as Raths-Senior; and also as” (2°.) “The Titular Herr Johann Casper Rüffer, well-respected Citizen, and Revenue-office Manager here, who for many years has with much fidelity and vigilance managed the Revenue-office, and who, for his experience in the economic constitution of this Town, has been all-graciously nominated Raths

4th Dec., 1741.

Herr; and not less" (3°.) "The Titular Johann Jacob Umminger, whilom Advocate at Law in Breslau, who, for his good studies in Law, and manifested skill in the practice of Law, has been all-graciously nominated Supernumerary Councilor and Notary's Adjunct among usAs well I as these Three not only assure you, High-honored Gentlemen, of all imaginable estimation and return of love on our part, but do likewise assure all and sundry these respectable Herren Town Jurats" (specially present), "representing here the universal well-beloved Citizenry of our Town, that we bring a heart sincere, and intent only on aiming at the welfare of a Citizenry so love-worthy. We have the firm purpose, by God's grace, so to order our walk, and so to conduct our government, that we may, one day, when summoned from our judgment-seats to answer before the Universal Judgment-seat of Christ, be able to say, with that Pious King and Judge of Israel, 'Lord, thou knowest if we have walked uprightly before Thee.' And we hope to understand that the rewards of justice in that Life will be much more than those of injustice in this.

"We believe that the Most High will in so far bless these our honest purposes and wholesome endeavors as that the actual fruits thereof will in time coming, and when Peace, now soon expected (which God grant), has returned to us, be manifest; and that if, in our Office, as is common, we should rather have thorns of persecution than roses of recompense to expect, yet to each of us there will at last accrue praise in the Earth and reward in Heaven." (Hear Spener!)

"Meanwhile we will unite all our wishes that the Almighty may vouchsafe to his Royal Majesty, our now All-dearest Duke and Land'sFather, many long years of life and of happy reign, and maintain this All-highest Royal-Prussian and Elector-Brandenburgic House in supremest splendor and prosperity undisturbed to the end of all Days; and along with it, our Town-Council, and whole Merchantry and Citizenry, safe under this Prussian Sceptre, in perpetual blessing, peace, and unity" (what a modest prayer!): "to all which may Heaven speak its powerful Amen!”3

Whereupon solemn waving of hats; indistinct sough of loyal murmur from the universal Landshut Population; after which, continued to the due extent, they return to their spindles and shuttles again.

3 Helden-Geschichte, ii., 416-22.

Oct.-Dec., 1741.

CHAPTER VII.

FRIEDRICH PURPOSES TO MEND THE KLEIN-SCHNELLENDORF FAILURE: FORTUNES OF THE BELLEISLE ARMAMENT.

WE shall not dwell upon the movements of the French into Germany for the purpose of overwhelming Austria, and setting up Four subordinate little Sovereignties to take their orders from Louis XV. The plan was of the mad sort, not recognized by Nature at all; the diplomacy was wide, expensive, grandiose, but vain and baseless; nor did the soldiering that followed take permanent hold of men's memory. Human nature can not afford to follow out these loud inanities; and, at a certain distance of time, is bound to forget them, as ephemera of no account in the general sum. Difficult to say what profit human nature could get out of such transactions. There was no good soldiering on the part of the French, except by gleams here and there; bad soldiering for the most part, and the cause was radically bad. Let us be brief with it; try to snatch from it, huge rotten heap of old exuviæ and forgotten noises and deliriums, what fractions of perennial may turn up for us, carefully forgetting the

rest.

Maillebois with his 40,000, we have seen how they got to Osnabrück, and effectually stilled the war-fervor of little George II.; sent him home, in fact, to England a checkmated man, he riding out of Osnabrück by one gate, the French at the same moment marching in by the other. There lies Maillebois ever since, and will lie, cantoned over Westphalia, "not nearer than three leagues to the boundary of Hanover," for a year and more. There let Maillebois lie till we see him called away elsewhither; upon which the gallant little George, checkmate being lifted, will get into notable military activity, and attempt to draw his sword again, though without success, owing to the laggard Dutch; which also, as British subjects, if not otherwise, the readers of this Book will wish to see something of. Maillebois did not quite keep his stipulated distance of "three leagues from the