Chapter VIII (3)

It was indeed a forlorn country, without discipline, without law, and without a master; it was a wilderness, with only a population of 500,000 on 600 square miles--not 850 to the mile. And the Prussian King treated his acquisition like an untenanted prairie; almost at his pleasure he fixed boundary stones, or removed them some miles further. And then he began, in his admirable way, the culture of the country; the very rottenness of its condition was attractive to him, and West Prussia became, as Silesia had hitherto been, his favourite child, that he washed and brushed, and dressed in new clothes, sent to school, controlled, and kept under his eyes, with incessant care like a true mother. The diplomatic contention about the acquisition still continued, but he sent a troop of his best officials into the wilderness; the districts were divided into small circles; the whole surface of the country valued in the shortest time, and equally taxed; and every circle provided with a provincial magistrate, a judicature, a post, and a sanitary police. New parishes were called into life as if by magic; a company of 187 schoolmasters were introduced into the country; the worthy Semler had sought out and drilled some of them. Numbers of German artisans were hired, machine and brick makers; digging, hammering, and building began all over the country; the cities were reinhabited; street upon street arose out of the heaps of ruins; the Starosties were changed into crown property; new villages were built and colonised, and new agriculture enjoined. In the course of the first year after taking possession of the country, the great canal was dug, three German miles in length, uniting the Vistula by means of the Netze with the Oder and Elbe; a year after, the King had given directions for this work, he saw loaded boats from the Oder, 120 feet long, passing from the East to the Vistula. By means of the new water-wheels, wide districts of country were drained and occupied by German colonists. The King worked indefatigably; he praised and blamed; and, however great the zeal of his officials, they could seldom do enough for him. In consequence of this, the wild Sclavonian tares, which had shot up, not only there but also in the German fields, were brought under, so that even the Polish districts got accustomed to the new order of things; and West Prussia, in the war after 1806, proved itself almost as Prussian as the old provinces.

Whilst the grey-headed King was creating and looking after everything, one year passed after another over his thoughtful head; all about him was more tranquil, but void and lonely, and small was the circle of men in whom he confided. He had laid his flute aside, and the new French literature appeared to him insipid and prosy; sometimes it seemed as if a new life sprouted up under him in Germany, to which he was a stranger. Unweariedly did he labour for the improvement of his army and the welfare of his people; ever less did he value his tools, and ever higher and more passionate was his feeling of the great duties of his position.

But if his struggles in the Seven Years' War may be called superhuman, equally so did his labours now appear to contemporaries. There was something great, but also terrible, in the way in which he made the prosperity of the whole his highest and constant object, disregarding the comfort of individuals. When, in front of the ranks, he dismissed from the service with bitter words of blame the Colonel of a regiment which had made a great blunder at a review; when, in the marsh lands of the Netze, he calculated more the strokes of the ten thousand spades than the hardships of the labourers, who lay, stricken with marsh fever, in the hospital he had erected for them; when be overstepped in his demands what the most rapid action could accomplish,--terror as of one who moved in an unearthly element mingled with the deep reverence and devotion of his people. Like Fate, he appeared to the Prussians, incalculable, inexorable, and omniscient; superintending the smallest as well as the greatest things. When they related to one another that he had endeavoured to control Nature also, but that his orange-trees had been frozen by the last spring frosts, then they secretly rejoiced that there were limits even for their King, but still more that he had borne it with such good humour, and had made his bow to the cold days of May.

With touching sympathy the people collected all the sayings of the King in which there was any human feeling that brought him more into communion with them. So lonely were his house and garden, that the imaginations of his Prussians continually hovered about the consecrated spot. If any one was so fortunate as to come into the neighbourhood of the castle on a warm moonlight night, he would perhaps find open doors without a guard, and he could see the great King in his bedroom, sleeping on his camp-bed. The scent of the flowers, the night song of the birds, and the quiet moonlight were the only guards, almost the whole regal state, of the lonely man.

For fourteen years after the acquisition of West Prussia, did the oranges of Sans Souci bloom; then did Nature reassert her empire over the great King. He died alone, only surrounded by his servants.

In the bloom of life he was completely wrapped up in ambitious feelings; he had wrested from fate all the high and splendid garlands of life,--he, the prince of poets and philosophers, the historian and the General. No triumph that he had ever gained contented him; all earthly fame had become to him accidental, uncertain, and valueless; an iron feeling of duty, incessantly working, was all that remained to him. Amid the dangerous alternation of warm enthusiasm and cool acuteness, his soul had reached its maturity. He had, in his own mind, surrounded with a poetical halo, certain individuals; and he despised the multitude about him. But in the struggles of life his egotism disappeared; he lost almost all that was personally dear to him, and he ended by caring little for individuals, whilst the need of living for the whole became ever stronger in him. With the most refined self-seeking, he had desired the highest for himself; and at last, regardless of himself, he gave himself up for the public weal and the lowest. He had entered life as an idealist, and his ideal had not been destroyed by the most fearful experiences, but rather ennobled, exalted, and purified; he had sacrificed many men to his State, but no man so much as himself.

Great and uncommon did this appear to his contemporaries; greater still to us, who can perceive, even in the present time, the traces of his activity in the character of our people, our political life, our arts, and literature.