See Feder, Kurfurstinn Sophie; Hoppe, Geschichte der Stadt Hannover; &c.] Sophie Charlotte, "Republican Queen" of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm's Mother, whom we knew long since, was the one Daughter. Her also Uncle Ernst saw die, in his youth, as we may remember. They are all dead. And now the Heritages are to settle, at least the recent part of them. Let Kannegiesser keep his eyes open. Kannegiesser is an expert high-mannered man; but said to be subject to sharpness of temper; and not in the best favor with the Hanover people.
That is Cause FIRST.
CAUSE SECOND: THE TROUBLES OF MECKLENBURG.
Then, secondly, there is the business of Mecklenburg; deplorable Business for Mecklenburg, and for everybody within wind of it,--my poor readers included. Readers remember--what reader can ever forget?--that extraordinary Duke of Mecklenburg, the "Unique of Husbands," as we had to call him, who camE with his extraordinary Duchess, to wait on her Uncle Peter, the Russian (say rather SAMOEIDIC) Czar, at Magdeburg, a dozen years ago? We feared it was in the fates we might meet that man again; and so it turns out!
The Unique of Husbands has proved also to be the unluckiest of Misgoverning Dukes in his Epoch; and spreads mere trouble all round him. Mecklenburg is in a bad way, this long while, especially these ten years past. "Owing to the Charles-Twelfth Wars," or whatever it was owing to, this unlucky Duke had fallen into want of more money; and impoverished Mecklenburg alleged that it was in no condition to pay more. Almost on his accession, while the tar-barrels were still blazing, years before we ever saw him, he demanded new subvention from his RITTERS (the "Squires" of the Country); subvention new in Mecklenburg, though common in other sovereign German States, and at one time in Mecklenburg too.
The Ritters would not pay; the Duke would compel them:
Ritters appeal to Kaiser in Reichshofrath, who proves favorable to the Ritters. Duke still declines obeying Kaiser; asserts that "he is himself in such matter the sovereign:" Kaiser fulminates what of rusty thunder he has about him; to which the Duke, flung on his back by it, still continues contumacious in mind and tongue:
and so between thunder and contumacy, as between hammer and stithy, the poor Country writhes painfully ever since, and is an affliction to everybody near it.
For ten years past, the unluckiest of Misgoverning Dukes has been in utter controversy with his Ritters;--at law with them before the Courts of the Empire, nay occasionally trying certain of them himself, and cutting off their heads; getting Russian regiments, and then obliged to renounce Russian regiments;--in short, a very great trouble to mankind thereabouts. [Michaelis, ii. 416-435.]
So that the Kaiser in Reichshofrath, about the date indicated (Year 1719), found good to send military coercion on him;and intrusted that function to the Hanover-Brunswick people, to George I. more especially; to whom, as KREIS-HAUPTMANN" ("Captain of the Circle," Circle of Lower-Saxony, where the contumacy had occurred), such function naturally fell. The Hanover Sovereignty, sending 13,000 men, horse, foot and artillery into Mecklenburg, soon did their function, with only some slight flourishes of fighting on the part of the contumacious Duke,--in which his chief Captain, one Schwerin, distinguishes himself: Kurt von Schwerin, whom we shall know better by and by, for he went into the Prussian service shortly after. Colonel von Schwerin did well what was in him; but could not save a refractory Duke, against such odds.
The contumacious Duke was obliged to fly his country;--deposed, or, to begin with, suspended, a Brother of his being put in as interim Duke:--and the Unique of Husbands and paragon of Mismanaging Dukes lives about Dantzig ever since, on a Pension allowed him by his interim Brother; contumacious to the last;and still stirring up strife, though now with diminished means, Uncle Peter being now dead, and Russian help much cut off.
The Hanover Sovereignties did their function soon enough:
but their "expenses for it," these they have in vain demanded ever since. No money to be got from Mecklenburg; and Mecklenburg owes us "ten tons of gold,"--that is to say, 1,000,000 thalers, "tou"being the tenth part of a million in that coin. Hanover, therefore, holds possession--and has held ever since, with competent small military force--of certain Districts in Mecklenburg: Taxes of these will subsist our soldiery in the interim, and yield interest; the principal once paid, we at once give them up; principal, by these schedules, if you care to count them, is one million thalers (ten TONNEN GOLDES, as above said), or about 150,000 pounds. And so it has stood for ten years past;Mecklenburg the most anarchic of countries, owing to the kind of Ritters and kind of Duke it has. Poor souls, it is evident they have all lost their beaten road, and got among the IGNES FATUI and peat-pools: none knows the necessities and sorrows of this poor idle Duke himself! In his young years, before accession, he once tried soldiering; served one campaign with Charles XII., but was glad to "return to Hamburg" again, to the peaceable scenes of fashionable life there. [See German Spy
