History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 17. Томас Карлейль
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Berlin Society; and for one thing, as Winterfeld discovers, is 'madly in love' with some Chambermaid or quasi-chambermaid (let us call her Chambermaid), 'Daughter of the Castellan at Charlottenburg.' Winterfeld, through the due channels, applied to this Chambermaid, 'Get me a small secret Copy of such and such Despatches, out of your Weingarten; it will be well for you and him; otherwise perhaps not well!' Chambermaid, hope urging, or perhaps hope and fear, did her best; Weingarten had to yield the required product and products, as required. By this Weingarten, from some date not long after Menzel's first mysterious Dresden Excerpts, the necessary Austrian glosses, so far as possible to Weingarten on the indications given him, have been regularly had, for the two or three years past.
"Weingarten first came to be seriously suspected June, 1756 (Weingarten Junior, let us still say, for there was a Senior of unstained fidelity); 'June 15th,' Excellency Peubla pointedly demands him from Friedrich and the Berlin Police: 'Weingarten Junior, my SECOND Secretar, fugitive and traitor; hidden somewhere!' ["BERLIN, 22d JUNE: Every research making for Mr. Weingatten,—in vain hitherto" (Gentleman's Magazine, xxvi., i. e. for 1756, p. 363).] Excellency Peubla is answered, 24th June: 'We would so fain catch him, if we could! We have tried at Stendal,—not there: tried his Mother-in-law; knows nothing: have forborne laying up his poor Wife and Children; and hope her Imperial Majesty will have pity on that poor creature, who is fallen so miserable.' [Helden-Geschichte, iii. 713.] So that Excellency Peubla had nothing for it but to compose himself; to honor the unstainable fidelity of Weingarten Senior by a public piece of promotion, which soon ensued; and let the Junior run. Weingarten Junior, on the first suspicion, had vanished with due promptitude,—was not to be unearthed again. We perceive he has married his Charlottenburg Beauty, and there are helpless babies. It seems, he lived long years after, in the Altmark, as a Herr von Weiss,'—his reflections manifold, but unknown. [Retzow, i. 37.] What is much notabler, Cogniazzo, the Austrian Veteran, heard Weingarten's MASTER, Graf von Peubla, talk of the 'GRAND MYSTERE,' soon after, and how Friedrich had heard of it, not from Weingarten alone, but from Gross-Furst PETER, Russian Heir-Apparent! [Cogniazzo, i. 225.]
"As to Menzel, he did not get away. Menzel, as we saw, lasted in free activity till 1757; and was then put under lock and key. Was not hanged; sat prisoner for twenty-seven years after; overgrown with hair, legs and arms chained together, heavy iron bar uniting both ankles; diet bread-and-water;—for the rest, healthy; and died, not very miserable it is said, in 1784. Shocking traitors, Weingarten and he."
Yes, a diabolical pair, they, sure enough:—and the thing they betrayed against their Masters, was that a celestial thing? Servants of the Devil do fall out; and Servants not of the Devil are fain, sometimes, to raise a quarrel of that kind!—
The then world, as we said, was one loud uproar of logic on the right reading and the wrong of those Sibylline Documents: "Did your King of Prussia interpret them aright, or even try it? Did not he use them as a cloak for highway robbery, and swallowing of a peaceable Saxony, bad man that he surely is?" For Friedrich's demeanor, this time again, when it came to the acting point, was of eminent rapidity; almost a swifter lion-spring than ever; and it brought on him, in the aerial or vocal way, its usual result: huge clamor of rage and logic from uninformed mankind. Clamorous rage and logic, which has now sunk irresuscitably dead;—nothing of it much worth mentioning to modern readers, scarcely even its HIC JACET (in Footnotes, for the benefit of the curious!),—and it is, at last, a thing not doubtful to anybody that Friedrich, in that matter did read aright. So that now the loud uproar is reduced to one small question with us, What did he read in those Menzel Documents? What Fact lying in them was it that Friedrich had to read? Here, smelted down by repeated roastings, is succinct answer;—for the ultimate fragment of incombustible here as elsewhere, will go into a nutshell, once the continents of Diplomatist-Gazetteer logic and disorderly stable-litter, threatening to heap themselves over the very stars, have been faithfully burnt away.
Readers heard of a "Union of Warsaw," early in 1745, concluded by the Sea-Powers and the Saxon-Polish and Hungarian Majesties: very harmless UNION of Warsaw, public to all the world,—but with a certain thrice-secret "TREATY of Warsaw" (between Polish and Hungarian Majesty themselves two, the Sea-Powers being horror-struck by mention of it) which had followed thereupon, in an eager and wonderful manner. Thrice-secret Treaty, for Partitioning Friedrich, and settling the respective shares of his skin. Treaty which, to denote its origin, we called of Warsaw; though it was not finished there (shares of skin so difficult to settle), and "Treaty of LEIPZIG, 18th May, 1745," is its ALIAS in Books:—of which Treaty, as the Sea-Powers had recoiled horror-struck, there was no whisper farther, to them or to the rest of exoteric mankind;—though it has been one of the busiest Entities ever since. From the Menzel Documents, I know not after what circuitous gropings and searchings, Friedrich first got notice of that Treaty: [Now printed in OEuvres de Frederic, iv. 40-42.] figure his look on discovering it!
We said it was the remarkablest bit of sheepskin in its Century. Readers have heard too, That it was proposed to Bruhl, by a grateful Austria, directly on signing the Peace of Dresden: "Our Partition-Treaty stands all the same, does it not?"—and in what humor Bruhl answered: "Hah? Get Russia to join!" Both these facts, That there is a Treaty of Warsaw and that this is the Austrian-Saxon temper and intention towards him and it, Friedrich learned from the Menzel Documents. And if the reader will possess himself of these two facts, and understand that they are of a germinative, most vital quality, indestructible by the times and the chances; and have been growing and developing themselves, day and night ever since, in a truly wonderful manner,—the reader knows in substance what Menzel had to reveal.
Russia was got to join;—there are methods of operating on Russia, and kindling a poor fat Czarina into strange suspicions and indignations. In May, 1746, within six months of the Peace of Dresden, a Treaty of Petersburg, new version of the Warsaw one, was brought to parchment; Czarina and Empress-Queen signing,—Bruhl dying to sign, but not daring. How Russia has been got to join, and more and more vigorously bear a hand; how Bruhl's rabidities of appetite, and terrors of heart, have continued ever since; how Austria and Russia,—Bruhl aiding with hysterical alacrity, haunted by terror (and at last mercifully EXCUSED from signing),—have, year after year, especially in this last year, 1755, brought the matter nearer and nearer perfection; and the Two Imperial Majesties, with Bruhl to rear, wait only till they are fully ready, and the world gives opportunity, to pick a quarrel with Friedrich, and overwhelm and partition him, according to covenant: This, wandering through endless mazes of detail, is in sum what the Menzel Documents disclose to Friedrich and us. How, in a space of ten years, the small seed-grain of a Treaty of Warsaw, or Treaty of Petersburg, planted and nourished in that manner, in the Satan's Invisible World, has grown into a mighty Tree there,—prophetic of Facts near at hand; which were extremely sanguinary to the Human Race for the next Seven Years.
This is the sum-total: but for Friedrich's sake, and to illustrate the situation, let us take a few glances more, into the then Satan's Invisible World, which had become so ominously busy round Friedrich and others. The Czarina, we say, was got to engage; 22d May, 1746, there came a Treaty of Petersburg duly valid, which is that of Warsaw under a new name: and still Bruhl durst not, for above a year coming,—not till August 15th, 1747; [MEMOIRE RAISONNE (in Gesammelte Nachrichten ), i. 459.] and then, only in a hypothetic half-and-half way, with fear and trembling, though with hunger unspeakable, in sight of the viands. A very wretched Bruhl, as seen in these Menzel Documents. On poor Polish Majesty Bruhl has played the sorcerer, this long while, and ridden him as he would an enchanted quadruped, in a shameful manner: but how, in turn (as we study Menzel), is Bruhl himself hagridden, hunted by his own devils, and leads such a ghastly phantasmal existence yonder, in the Valley of the Shadow of CLOTHES,—mere Clothes, metaphorical and literal! ["MONTREZ-MOI DES VERTUS, PAS DES CULOTTES (Have you no virtues then to show me; nothing but pain of breeches)!" exclaimed an impatient French Traveller, led about in Bruhl's Palace one day: Archenholtz, Geschichte des Siebenjahrigen Krieges, i. 63.] Wretched Bruhl, agitated with hatreds of a rather infernal nature, and with terrors of a not celestial, comes out on our sympathies, as a dog almost pitiable,—were that possible, with twelve tailors sewing for him, and a Saxony getting shoved over the precipices by him.
A famishing dog in the most singular situation. What he dare do, he does, and with such a will. But there is almost only