Nor is Bielfeld with his Book a thing of much moment to Friedrich or to us. Bielfeld too has a light airy vein of talk;loves Voltaire and the Philosophies in a light way;--knows the arts of Society, especially the art of flattering; and would fain make himself agreeable to the Crown-Prince, being anxious to rise in the world. His Father is a Hamburg Merchant, Hamburg "Sealing-wax Manufacturer," not ill off for money: Son has been at schools, high schools, under tutors, posture-masters;swashes about on those terms, with French ESPRIT in his mouth, and lace ruffles at his wrists; still under thirty; showy enough, sharp enough; considerably a coxcomb, as is still evident. He did transiently get about Friedrich, as we shall see; and hoped to have sold his heart to good purpose there;--was, by and by, employed in slight functions; not found fit for grave ones. In the course of some years, he got a title of Baron; and sold his heart more advantageously, to some rich Widow or Fraulein; with whom he retired to Saxony, and there lived on an Estate he had purchased, a stranger to Prussia thenceforth.
His Book ( Lettres Familieres et Autres,
all turning on Friedrich), which came out in 1763, at the height of Friedrich's fame, and was much read, is still freely cited by Historians as an Authority. But the reading of a few pages sufficiently intimates that these "Letters" never can have gone through a terrestrial Post-office; that they are an afterthought, composed from vague memory and imagination, in that fine Saxon retreat;--a sorrowful ghost-like "TRAVELS OFANACHARSIS," instead of living words by an eye-witness! Not to be cited "freely" at all, but sparingly and under conditions.
They abound in small errors, in misdates, mistakes;small fictions even, and impossible pretensions:--foolish mortal, to write down his bit of knowledge in that form!
For the man, in spite of his lace ruffles and gesticulations, has brisk eyesight of a superficial kind: he COULD have done us this little service (apparently his one mission in the world, for which Nature gave him bed and board here); and he, the lace ruffles having gone into his soul, has been tempted into misdoing it!--Bielfeld and Bielfeld's Book, such as they are, appear to be the one conquest Friedrich got of Freemasonry;no other result now traceable to us of that adventure in Korn's Hotel, crowning event of the Journey to Loo.
SECKENDORF GETS LODGED IN GRATZ.
Feldmarschall Seckendorf, after unheard-of wrestlings with the Turk War, and the Vienna War-Office (HOFKRIEGSRATH), is sitting, for the last three weeks,--where thinks the reader?--in the Fortress of Gratz among the Hills of Styria; a State-Prisoner, not likely to get out soon! Seckendorf led forth, in 1737, "such an Army, for number, spirit and equipment," say the Vienna people, "as never marched against the Turk before;" and it must be owned, his ill success has been unparalleled. The blame was not altogether his; not chiefly his, except for his rash undertaking of the thing, on such terms as there were. But the truth is, that first scene we saw of him,--an Army all gone out trumpeting and drumming into the woods to FIND its Commander-in-Chief,--was an emblem of the Campaign in general. Excellent Army; but commanded by nobody in particular; commanded by a HOFKRIEGSRATH at Vienna, by a Franz Duke of Tuscany, by Feldmarschall Seckendorf, and by subordinates who were disobedient to him: which accordingly, almost without help of the Turk and his disorderly ferocity, rubbed itself to pieces before long. Roamed about, now hither now thither, with plans laid and then with plans suddenly altered, Captain being Chaos mainly; in swampy countries, by overflowing rivers, in hunger, hot weather, forced marches; till it was marched gradualIy off its feet; and the clouds of chaotic Turks, who did finally show face, had a cheap pennyworth of it. Never was such a campaign seen as this of Seckendorf in 1737, said mankind.
Except indeed that the present one, Campaign of 1738, in those parts, under a different hand, is still worse; and the Campaign of 1739, under still a different, will be worst of all!--Kaiser Karl and his Austrians do not prosper in this Turk War, as the Russians do,--who indeed have got a General equal to his task: Munnich, a famed master in the art of handling Turks and War-Ministries:
real father of Russian Soldiering, say the Russians still.
[See MANNSTEIN for Munnich's plans with the Turk (methods and devices of steady Discipline in small numbers VERSUS impetuous Ferocity in great); and Berenhorst ( Betrachtungen uber die Kriegskunst, Leipzig, 1796), a first-rate Authority, for examples and eulogies of them.]
Campaign 1737, with clouds of chaotic Turks now sabring on the skirts of it, had not yet ended, when Seckendorf was called out of it; on polite pretexts, home to Vienna; and the command given to another. At the gates of Vienna, in the last days of October, 1737, an Official Person, waiting for the Feldmarschall, was sorry to inform him, That he, Feldmarschall Seckendorf, was under arrest; arrest in his own house, in the KOHLMARKT (Cabbage-market so called), a captain and twelve musketeers to watch over him with fixed bayonets there; strictly private, till the HOFKRIEGSRATH had satisfied themselves in a point or two. "Hmph!" snuffled he;with brow blushing slate-color, I should think, and gray eyes much alight. And ever since, for ten months or so, Seckendorf, sealed up in the Cabbage-market, has been fencing for life with the HOFKRIEGSRATH; who want satisfaction upon "eighty-six" different "points;" and make no end of chicaning to one's clear answers.
And the Jesuits preach, too: "A Heretic, born enemy of Christ and his Kaiser; what is the use of questioning!" And the Heathen rage, and all men gnash their teeth, in this uncomfortable manner.
