Chapter II: The First German Fleet

In one of the window niches on the ground floor of the Military Museum (Zeughaus) at Berlin lies an old and dilapidated 8-pounder gun. In its deep and disfiguring coat of rust it is an inconspicuous object, and, amid that rich and varied collection of artillery from all the ages, the eye of the casual visitor will not rest upon it for more than a disparaging moment. And yet few of the treasures of the museum have a more interesting history to tell, for it is the sole remaining relic of the first serious experiment in naval and colonial policy ever made by a German ruler. On an elevation rising from the beach of Cape Three Points, on the Gold Coast, now British territory, are still to be seen the crumbling ruins of the fort of Gross-Friedrichsburg, built there by the Elector of Brandenburg in 1681, and when the German corvette _Sophie_ visited the spot, with pious purpose, in 1884, this corroded gun was unearthed from beneath the weeds and brushwood that have overgrown the decayed ramparts.

Frederick William, the Great Elector, has been exemplary for many of his successors. Frederick the Great rightly considered him the most able of the previous Princes of the house of Hohenzollern, while the present German Emperor has made a special cult of his memory, and assuredly had a symbolic intention when he appeared at a fancy-dress ball disguised as the first of his ancestors who equipped a fleet and founded a colony.

When Frederick William was called to the Brandenburg throne in 1641 at the age of twenty, Germany was still in the throes of the Thirty Years' War, and no part of the Empire had suffered more than his Electorate from the consequences of that unspeakable calamity. Of all the causes which have contributed to impede the normal development of the painstaking and industrious German race, none had so malign an influence as that stupendous conflict. It not merely delayed civilization, but over vast tracts of country positively exterminated it. At the close of the war many once flourishing towns had absolutely disappeared from the face of the earth, and where formerly a numerous peasantry had tilled its fertile fields a howling wilderness extended in all directions as far as the eye could reach. In North Germany to-day an apparently purposeless pond, or a detached clump of venerable trees, still shows where once a village stood, and bears mute witness to the ruthless barbarity with which the religious partition of Central Europe was brought about.

When an end was put to the bloodshed and rapine by the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the population of Germany had been reduced to one half--in some districts to one tenth--of its former dimensions. Many portions of the Empire are even to-day not so thickly inhabited as they were before the war. Industry and commerce had migrated to England, France, and Holland; and Leipzig and Frankfort were the only German towns that had retained any trade worthy of mention. The Hansa, with its fleets of warships and merchantmen, was but a memory of the past. Königsberg had no longer a ship of its own; the trade of Dantzig and Stettin was almost entirely carried in foreign bottoms; and even Hamburg, which directly had been but comparatively little touched by the thirty years of chaos and turmoil, and had benefited from its exceptional connection with England, was left commercially crippled. At a Hanse Parliament held in 1630, only Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bremen were represented. Germany had been so drained of money that barter had generally taken the place of purchase by coin; wages were paid in the products of labour, grain, ore, and manufactured goods, and even state officials in some cases received their salaries in kind.

Even before the war broke out, Brandenburg, a country of barren soil and few natural resources, had stood far below the rest of Germany both materially and intellectually. In 1600 the twin towns, Berlin and Cöln, which faced one another from opposite banks of the Spree, and have since been merged to form the colossal capital of the new Empire, contained together no more than 14,000 souls. Brandenburg and Frankfort-on-Oder each had a population of 10,000. Only two other towns, Stendal and Salzwedel, could boast more than 5,000 inhabitants. And it was of the mere ruins of this country that Frederick William formed the foundation-stone of the Prussian Kingdom and of the German Empire of to-day.

If the Thirty Years' War had produced any form of national consolidation, if it had increased the authority of the Empire or resulted in the absorption of the smaller States by the larger, that would at least have been some compensation to Germany for its long and terrible ordeal. But exactly the opposite was the case. The war ceased simply because no one had the will or the strength to continue it, and a miserable compromise was the result. The only gainers were the Princes, who, as the wielders of the armed forces, had been able to enhance their power, and now acquired a larger measure of independence in their relationships to the Emperor. Their number remained legion. In the Germany mapped out by the Westphalian negotiators there were eight electors, sixty-nine spiritual and ninety-six temporal Princes, sixty-one imperial towns, and a multitude of Counts and Barons exercising various degrees of sovereign power.

Frederick William's claim to the title "Great," which was bestowed upon him by his own generation, has been contested, but may be allowed to pass. As military leader, diplomatist, organizer, and administrator, he certainly had unusual gifts. Above all, he excelled in duplicity and treachery. The most eminent living German historian has said of him that "both in internal and external politics he acted with an unscrupulousness so manifest that it cannot be palliated," and can find no better excuse for his many deeds of "faithlessness" and "double-dealing" than that, in this respect, he was merely "the master of the diplomatic art of his day." The Elector was actuated solely by his own personal and dynastic interests, and was utterly devoid of "German" patriotism, for in return for the liberal subsidies on which he prospered, he undertook, in a secret treaty, to support the candidature of the French King or Dauphin for the Imperial German throne, and he was mainly responsible for the truce which left Strasburg in French hands for nearly two centuries. During the incessant wars which filled up most of his reign he fought both with and against every other belligerent. His sword was always at the disposal of the highest bidder, either of hard cash or of territorial extension, and by adroit choice of the moment for changing sides he generally made a profitable bargain. True, he was obliged to restore the western portion of Pomerania which he had conquered from the Swedes, but he obtained a much more important acquisition--the recognition of his full sovereignty in what is now East Prussia.

That region had been wrested from the Slavs by the German orders of chivalry, founded at the time of the Crusades, and had subsequently become an evangelical duchy, ruled by a junior branch of the house of Hohenzollern, as a fief of the Kingdom of Poland. On the extinction of the ducal line, it had reverted to the rulers of Brandenburg, and by a timely sale of his military assistance, first to the Swedes and then to the Poles, the Great Elector induced both to admit his unrestricted and unqualified rights of sovereignty in the duchy. His successor persuaded the Emperor to agree to his assumption of the kingly title for this territory, and it is an interesting fact--especially in view of the last development of the German Empire, which in its present constitutional form and in much else is dependent upon Catholic support--that this elevation was largely brought about by the intervention of two Jesuit fathers. It was from the Kingdom of Prussia which was thus established, and which was a completely independent State altogether outside the competencies of the Holy Roman Empire, that arose the Hohenzollern ascendency in Germany, and round it that the new German Empire crystallized. For this reason the episode is quite germane to our present purpose.

The Germans excel as diligent pupils and patient imitators, and the Great Elector was no exception to this rule. From his fourteenth to his eighteenth year he had been educated under the care of Frederick Henry, the Statthalter of Holland, then the chief Sea-Power of the world, from whom he had imbibed many ideas as to the importance of navies, colonies, and sea-borne trade. His connection with the Netherlands was maintained and strengthened by his marriage with an Orange Princess, the aunt of William III. of England, and many Dutchmen entered his service. Among them was an ex-admiral, Gijsels by name, who assiduously kept alive the dreams of sea-power which the Elector had brought back with him from Holland. It was on his prompting that, in 1659, when Frederick William was embroiled with the Swedes, and found his operations hampered by the lack of a fleet, an enquiry as to the possibility of remedying this deficiency was ordered by the Elector. The investigation resulted, for the time being, only in the compilation of a memorandum as to a "Brandenburg-Imperial admiralty," and some fruitless attempts to obtain ships in the Netherlands.

But Gijsels' projects went far beyond a mere fleet. All the world was then discussing the colonizing activity of the western European States, and Frederick William's predecessor on the Electoral throne had conceived abortive plans for founding an East Indian trading company. What the ex-admiral proposed to the Elector in 1660 was, that Brandenburg, Austria, and Spain should combine for the purpose of securing a colonial ascendency, which was to be arrived at by playing off England, France, and Holland against one another. Negotiations to this end seem actually to have been commenced, but they broke down over the jealous suspicions of the diplomatists approached, and the perpetual turning of the European kaleidoscope.

During the next fifteen years the idea of a Brandenburg navy appears to have been allowed to sleep. In the meantime a very remarkable book had been published, which should be mentioned here because it contains the essential elements of the programme of the most modern naval agitation in Germany. The author was Johann Becher, by profession a chemist, but in his leisure a political seer of the type of Friedrich List, whose great forerunner he was. His work, "Political Discourse on the Causes of the Rise and Decline of Towns and Countries," was published in 1667. Becher had travelled much, and he wrote:

"In Germany there is hardly any longer trade or commerce; all business is going to ruin; no money is to be found with either great or small; on the other hand look at Holland, how rich she is and how she grows richer every day; that could not be if she feared the sea as much as our nation of High Germany."

Becher then addressed to his countrymen the following impassioned exhortation:

"Up, then, brave German; act so that on the map, besides New Spain, New France, New England, there shall in the future be found also New Germany. You are as little lacking as other nations in the intelligence and resolution to do such things; yea, you have all that is necessary; you are soldiers and peasants, alert, laborious, diligent, and indefatigable."

Becher had held positions at various German Courts, and it is not improbable that his appeal fell upon sympathetic ears among the entourage of the Great Elector. But however that may be, the war of Denmark and Brandenburg against Sweden, which broke out in 1675, did actually, for the first time in history, witness a fleet at the disposal of a member of the dynasty that now occupies the imperial throne in Germany. True, it was not yet the actual property of the Elector, but of Benjamin Raule, an enterprising Dutch merchant, who had migrated to Denmark, and now laid a naval project before the Brandenburg sovereign. His proposals were readily acceded to, and he received permission to fit out a flotilla of two frigates and ten smaller vessels, and to operate with them under the Brandenburg flag against the Swedes. The Elector merely stipulated that he should receive 6 per cent. of the value of all prizes captured. Raule's vessels rendered substantial service in the capture of Stettin, and of that much-coveted strip of the Pomeranian coast which was so essential to the realisation of Frederick William's maritime aspirations.

The Elector's hopes were disappointed by the Treaty of St. Germain, under which he was compelled to restore this precious booty to the intrusive Scandinavians, but in the meantime his naval plans had taken a wider scope in fresh contracts with the resourceful Dutchman. In the first of these, Raule undertook, for a monthly subsidy of 5,000 thalers,[5] to maintain a fleet of eight frigates and a fire-ship, mounting altogether 182 guns. Shortly afterwards the terms of the agreement were extended, and at the commencement of the year 1680, twenty-eight ships of war, with a total of 502 guns, were flying the red eagle of Brandenburg.

Though robbed by the peace of the coast-line and seaports on which he had counted as the base of his maritime power and the recruiting ground for his fleet, the Elector did not allow himself to be discouraged, and he very soon found fresh work for his little flotilla to do. The greatest master of German mercenaries at that date, he had, a few years previously, hired a portion of his army to Spain for use against the French. As repeated applications for the price of this support had proved unavailing, he now determined to collect the debt, which amounted to 1,800,000 thalers, by forcible distraint.

Accordingly six ships, which were followed at an interval of some months by three others, were sent out to attempt to intercept the silver fleet on its way to the Spanish Netherlands. The vessels were almost without exception commanded by Dutchmen, but were mainly manned by Germans, though the crews included many English, Dutch, Danish and Norwegian sailors. Naturally the soldiers carried on board were drawn from the Brandenburg army; and orders were given that they should be trained in ship's work "because we are disposed to use the same permanently for the navy."

Though the flotilla did not fulfil either its immediate or its ultimate purpose, the expedition was notable for two reasons. In the first place, a large Spanish warship, the _Carolus Secundus_, with a valuable cargo of lace on board, was captured, and so became the first war vessel that was actually the property of a Hohenzollern State. In the second place, the quest of the Spanish silver resulted in a sea-fight, which, in respect both of the force engaged and the losses sustained, still heads the record of naval warfare under a Hohenzollern flag.

A detachment of four ships, cruising in the neighbourhood of Cape St. Vincent, sighted a fleet of a dozen Spanish frigates, which had put out for the special purpose of chasing the Germans from the sea. The Brandenburg commander, thinking that this was the anxiously-expected silver flotilla, bore down upon it, and did not realise his mistake till it was too late to avoid something of a conflict. Before he could succeed in manoeuvring his ships out of range of his overwhelmingly superior enemy, he had lost ten men killed and thirty wounded; and since that day Germany had fought no more terrible battle on the sea until the war broke out in 1914.

Another section of the Elector's fleet cruised for several months in West Indian waters without achieving much result, while the retaliatory measures adopted by the Spaniards secured a safe passage for the silver ships and rendered it prudent for Frederick William to abandon his daring and risky enterprise.

Meanwhile the Elector had allotted his infant navy a task of a different character. Soon after entering the service of Brandenburg, Raule had drawn up plans of colonization, and in the same year in which the fruitless search for the silver convoy began, he obtained permission to try his luck on the Gold Coast, and got together a syndicate to finance the undertaking. The Elector was wary, and declined to risk pecuniary participation, but he ordered that "twenty good healthy musketeers, together with two non-commissioned officers," should be placed under Raule's command. One of the principal objects of the expedition was to secure a share in the profitable trade in slaves which was then carried on between the West Coast of Africa and North America, but modern German historians for the most part ignore this feature of the enterprise.

The two vessels despatched on this errand reached the Gold Coast in safety, but aroused the resentment of the Dutch already settled there, who confiscated one of them, and compelled the other to quit African waters. However, the leader of the expedition had by that time managed to conclude what served the purposes of a treaty with certain native chiefs, who thereby placed themselves under the suzerainty of the Elector, and consented to the erection of a fort in the district under their control.

On the strength of this questionable document, an "African Company" for the "improvement of shipping and commerce wherein the best prosperity of a country consists," was called into existence in the year 1682. In the charter of incorporation, the Elector promised to protect the Company against "all and everyone who may undertake to trouble, incommode, or to any extent injure the same in its actions in free places on the coasts of Guinea and Angola"; but both the naval and the military commanders were charged to keep at a respectful distance from "all Dutch Company fortresses, as well as those of other potentates, such as England, France, Denmark, etc." The capital of the Company was the modest sum of 50,000 thalers. Of this Frederick William contributed only 8,000, and the Electoral Prince 2,000 thalers, while almost half of the total was supplied by Raule, who had by now become "Director-General of the Brandenburg Navy."

The two frigates in which the second Gold Coast expedition shipped cast anchor off Cape Three Points on December 27th, 1682, but some difficulty was experienced in finding the chiefs who had "signed" the provisional treaty and who were each to have received a ratification engrossed in letters of gold, "a silver-gilt cup, and a portrait of his Electoral Highness." Frederick William had also issued instructions that his black allies and their wives were to be entertained on board the warships.

After a great deal of trouble, some other chieftains of the "Moors," as they are called in the official correspondence relating to this matter, were hunted out and induced to contract a second and definite treaty; and on January 1st, 1683, with due ceremony and much beating of drums, blowing of trumpets, and firing of guns, the Brandenburg flag was hoisted over "the first German colony." The flagstaff had been planted on a little eminence, which was subsequently, with all speed, transformed into the fort Gross-Friedrichsburg, and no doubt the rusty cannon now in the Zeughaus at Berlin is one of the half-dozen which had been mounted on the hill on the previous day in preparation for the great occasion.

In the following year the headquarters of the African Company was removed from Pillau to Emden. This latter town was not situated on Brandenburg soil, and the manner in which the Elector secured a footing in it is both instructive and characteristic of his easy methods of intervening and making a good bargain wherever an opportunity presented itself. It chanced that at that time the Estates of East Frisia were at loggerheads with their ruler, and they appealed to Frederick William for assistance. Nothing loth, he landed a force by night, and by a surprise attack seized the castle of Greetsiel, which thus became his naval base. By an agreement with the town of Emden he subsequently acquired the right to station within its walls a "compagnie de marine" for the service of the African Corporation. This force, which was gradually increased to three, and temporarily to four, companies, and ultimately received the name of the "Marine Battalion," was drawn upon to man both the ships and the forts in Africa.

The transfer to Emden brought other advantages besides an ice-free port, a base on the North Sea, and an abbreviation of the route to Gross-Friedrichsburg, for the East Frisian Estates and the Elector of Cologne were both persuaded to invest largely in the African Company in consequence of the change.

In the year of the Emden agreement, the Brandenburg Navy was formally founded by the establishment of an "Admiralty" at Berlin. The Cabinet order by which this institution was created shows that the fleet then in full possession of the State comprised 10 ships, with 240 guns, while Raule was still under contract to provide 17 further vessels. The permanent personnel consisted of 1 vice-commodore, 5 naval captains, 3 officers of Marines, 12 mates, and 120 seamen. In 1686, the Elector took the Company entirely into his own hands, and simultaneously acquired a station on the island of St. Thomas, in the West Indies, as a place of call for the ships engaged in the slave traffic. He had also at that time made preparations for forming an East Indian trading company (at a much earlier date he had unsuccessfully attempted to acquire Tranquebar, on the Coromandel Coast, from the Danes) and for fitting out an expedition to China and Japan. These schemes, however, came to nothing.

The settlement at Cape Three Points had by no means an easy existence. Fever made fearful ravages among the garrison, which, when the first reliefs arrived, after an interval of nearly a year and threequarters, had been reduced by sickness from ninety to sixteen men. Everything that was needed for the construction of the fort, even building-stone, had to be brought thousands of miles across the sea from Germany. The Dutch traders in the neighbourhood had at once raised objections to the new colony, and, as their protests were unheeded, stirred up the natives against its members. It was only after prolonged negotiations at The Hague that the Elector secured a full recognition of his right to the settlement. And none the less the Dutch West India Company continued to harass the German colonists, appropriating their ships, and turning them out of a couple of subsidiary fortifications which they had erected at other points along the coast. Gross-Friedrichsburg and Taccroma, another of the four Brandenburg stations on the Guinea littoral, for several years maintained themselves only by the menace of their guns. These untoward events are believed to have preyed upon the mind of the Great Elector, and to have hastened his end. At the time of his death, in April, 1688, Brandenburg and Holland were on the brink of war over the Gold Coast affair.

His successor on the Electoral throne in one very important respect reaped what Frederick William had sown, for he obtained the title of King of Prussia, by virtue of which, far more than from any specifically imperial prerogatives, William II. holds his present power in Germany. Frederick I. was a vain man, who was more interested in appearances than in realities, and cared more for the pomp and ceremonies of Court life than for the solid business of colonisation and slave-trading. As a source of revenue, with which to defray the cost of his empty extravagances, the African undertaking was feebly encouraged to continue its work; but, deprived of the directing brain and the stimulating enthusiasm of its founder, it soon sickened and languished. Accada and Taccarary, the two settlements which had been seized by the Dutch, were delivered up after a lengthy squabble, but the fortifications of the latter had been destroyed, and they were not rebuilt.

At first the trade of the colony, which had called into existence a flourishing shipyard at Havelberg, near the junction of the Navel and the Elbe, was fairly satisfactory, and the spirit of the Brandenburg Navy was raised by the successful operations of a couple of its frigates against French merchantmen, but in 1697 the Company fell upon evil days. It suffered pecuniary loss, both through the capture of some of its ships by the French and through the peculations of several officials, whose multiple dishonesty hints at a scandalous laxity of control. The invaluable Raule, too, fell into disfavour, and spent four years in gaol, though he was reinstated in his position on being liberated. At last the Company was no longer able to send out ships of its own, and for eight years, during the War of the Spanish Succession, the garrison of Gross-Friedrichsburg was left entirely to itself. For a considerable portion of that time five large Brandenburg ships of war were rotting in the harbours of Emden and Hamburg, when they might have been much more profitably employed in attempting to keep up communications with the perishing colonists. When at last reliefs reached Gross-Friedrichsburg only seven men out of an original force of 1,700 were fit for duty.

What little credit attaches to the last days of the first German colony is the due of Jan Cuny, a native chief, who had placed himself under Brandenburg protection, apparently for the purpose of obtaining support against the English and Dutch settlements of the vicinity, with both of which he was at feud. It is characteristic of the period that, while Prussians were fighting shoulder to shoulder with English and Dutch on the continent of Europe, they were in open conflict with them on the West Coast of Africa. Frederick I. at one time thought it necessary to protest, through his Minister at London, against the difficulties which the English were causing him on the Gold Coast.

All the trouble seems to have arisen out of the demand made by a Dutch official at Axim for the surrender of a female relative of Cuny whom he claimed as a slave. Jan was evidently a man of considerable parts. He led his army with great discretion and resourcefulness, and no doubt the Prussians at Gross-Friedrichsburg thought it to their advantage to be on good terms with so formidable a warrior, especially as he was the sworn foe of their jealous European neighbours. At any rate, the relations between Cuny and the fort became both cordial and confiding, and when the last Governor of Gross-Friedrichsburg, Du Bois, discouraged by the indifference and neglect of the home authorities, sailed for Emden to enter remonstrances, he entrusted the protection of the colony to his black ally.

Du Bois arrived in Europe only to find that the doom of Gross-Friedrichsburg was already irrevocably sealed. The parsimonious Frederick William I., the father of Frederick the Great, had ascended the Prussian throne, and his careful mind, completely absorbed by plans of immediate economy, was incapable of taking such flights into the distance and the future as were necessary for the appreciation of the value of colonial policy. The African settlements had been doing badly and had become unremunerative, and his only thought was to dispose of them as speedily as possible for hard cash, which could be either hoarded or spent on his solitary extravagance--seven-foot grenadiers. Immediately after his accession, he instructed his representative in London that he was prepared to "transfer his forts on the coast of Guinea to anyone else upon easy conditions." He was not long in finding a purchaser in that very Dutch West India Company which had from the outset been a thorn in the side of the Great Elector's colonial enterprise. On November 22nd, 1717, Gross-Friedrichsburg and its dependent territory passed from Hohenzollern rule for the sum of 6,000 ducats and twelve negro boys, of whom it was stipulated that six should be adorned with golden chains.

The signing of the contract and its execution were, however, two very different things. The redoubtable Jan Cuny had not been reckoned with, and when two Dutch vessels arrived to take over the fort they found him in possession and flying the Prussian flag. The order for the transfer of the fort was shown to his emissaries, who, after a good deal of delay, were sent on board the ships, but this he flatly refused to recognise, declaring that he would yield up his trust only to a vessel belonging to the King of Prussia. The commander of the Dutch expedition, Captain van der Hoeven, thought he would make short work of this insolent chieftain, and landed a body of fifty men to take the fort by storm. But Cuny once again showed the generalship which had raised him to the eminence of a Prussian deputy-governor. A force of 1,800 natives fusilladed the landing party from an ambuscade and killed nearly every one of them. Hoeven was only able to save himself by swimming back to his ship, with three bullets in his body, and retired to the nearest Dutch settlement to excogitate a fresh plan of campaign.

Cuny, however, was flushed by his success, and not at all inclined to give up the prestige which he derived from a fortress bristling with guns and well furnished with small arms and ammunition. For seven long years he held out, repulsing the repeated attacks of the Dutch, and it was only when his supplies were exhausted and an overwhelming force had been put into the field against him, that he withdrew from his defences and vanished into the jungle from which he had come.

Simultaneously with Gross-Friedrichsburg, there was transferred from the Prussian King to the Dutch Company yet another African colony, of which mention has yet to be made. This was the island of Arguin, which lies off the coast of what is now French territory to the south of Cape Blanco, and in some maps is given the ominous name of Agadir. The islet, which was one of the principal centres of the gum trade, had been first occupied by the Portuguese in 1441, but had passed by conquest to Holland, and from the latter to France. After the peace of Nymegen, in 1678, however, the French Senegal Company found itself unable to maintain a garrison in Arguin, and obtained permission from Louis XIV. to blow up the fort which had been erected there. The island then fell into the hands of the native ruler of Arguin, on the mainland, and remained subject to him till two ships of the Great Elector appeared off its coasts in October, 1685.

On the strength of a treaty concluded by the commander of the expedition with the King of Arguin, Frederick William seems to have claimed jurisdiction right along the coast of Africa from the Canary Isles to the Senegal River. These pretensions were not allowed to pass undisputed, and, towards the end of 1687, a couple of French vessels appeared off the fort and demanded its evacuation by the Germans. As this was refused they made an attempt to seize it by force, but, meeting with a stubborn resistance, abandoned the attack, and, after an unsuccessful endeavour to assert their rights during the peace negotiations at Ryswick, the French seemed to reconcile themselves to the new situation, for they even proposed commercial co-operation with the occupants of the Arguin fort.

After the death of the Great Elector, Arguin suffered, like Gross-Friedrichsburg, through the indifference of his successor, and the difficulty of communication arising from the War of the Spanish Succession. When a relief ship arrived in 1714, it found that the Governor had been captured by the natives, with whom he had quarrelled; and the remnant of the Arguin garrison was in so deplorable a condition, that "in a few days they must have perished of hunger."

The transfer of Arguin to the Dutch proved as difficult as that of Gross-Friedrichsburg. In 1717 the French had renewed their claims to the island, and, a few years later, the Senegal Company, landing 700 men and heavy guns, laid siege to the fort. After holding out for a few weeks, the commander, Jan Wynen, a Dutchman, withdrew secretly by night with his force in order to escape the humiliation of a formal surrender, and when its new owners at last arrived to take possession of it the colony was actually in French hands. It was in both cases a foreigner who last kept the flag flying over what were to be the only German colonies established till the final quarter of the nineteenth century. With the colonies disappeared the force with which they had been won, the fleet, and it too had to wait long, though not quite so long, before it experienced a revival.

It is interesting to reflect how the history of the world might have been changed if the Great Elector's two immediate successors had united to his far-reaching schemes of "world-policy" his determination in carrying them out, and had bequeathed to the greater Frederick prosperous colonial possessions and a formidable navy. As it was, the naval episodes of the reign of this gifted monarch only show how pitifully and completely the dawning sea-power of his grandfather had passed away.

In the Seven Years' War, the shores of Prussia were continually ravaged by Swedish frigates, and as nothing could be effected by the armed fishing boats and coasting vessels which were all that could be pitted against them, Field-Marshal Lehwald, to whom the protection of that part of Prussia had been entrusted, appealed for help to the corporation of merchants at Stettin. That body responded with energy and promptitude, and, with great haste, a flotilla of four galliots, four large fishing boats, and four coasting vessels were transformed into "ships of war." In August, 1759, this improvised fleet ventured out of the Oder to attack the Swedes, but it was so completely overthrown after several days' fighting that the experiment was never repeated.

In the meanwhile Frederick had been inveigled into another maritime adventure, which was to prove just as barren of positive results. Early in the war several Englishmen communicated to the King their readiness to fit out privateers to prey on the commerce of Austria and Sweden, both of which countries had seized Prussian merchantmen. They protested in all cases that their principal motive was a desire to serve the cause of a monarch whom they admired and revered, and who was, as a matter of fact, at that time the ally of England. But at the same time they promised him "prodigious profits" from the enterprise, and it was admittedly the latter consideration which induced the King to listen to their proposals. Though his own Ministers expressed strong doubts, and the English Government urged that he would run the risk of embroiling himself with neutral States, he issued a number of letters of marque. The advice which had been given him proved to have been only too well founded. Not only were there no "prodigious profits," but the blunders of the royal officials and the indiscretions of the ships under his flag involved the King in voluminous diplomatic correspondence and long and fruitless litigation.

To accelerate the process of destroying the enemy's trade, a number of blank letters of marque, ministerially signed and stamped with the royal seal, were sent out to the Prussian Minister in London, and he somewhat imprudently lent a couple of these to an interesting adventurer, named Erskine Douglas, who said that he wished to show them to shipowners with whom he was in treaty for the equipment of privateers. Douglas claimed to be a relative of the Prussian Field-Marshal Keith, who was of Scottish origin, and he brought letters of introduction from well-known members of the English nobility, so the Minister may perhaps be excused for entrusting the documents to him. But his confidence was gravely abused, for Douglas, having come to an agreement with the firm of Dunbar and Eyre, filled in the forms on his own responsibility, and two privateers were sent out with these fraudulent credentials.

Shortly afterwards, one of these ships, the _Lissa_, put into Emden with a rich Swedish prize. Lying in the harbour was an English man-of-war, and the captain of this ship, declaring that the English sailors on board the _Lissa_ were all either deserters or men who had bound themselves to serve in the British Navy, required that they should be given up to him. As compliance was refused, he went on board the _Lissa_ with an armed escort, and, disregarding all the protests of its captain, took away with him twenty-six members of the crew. This action was regarded by Frederick as an infraction of Prussian rights of sovereignty, and representations to that effect were made in London before it was discovered in how irregular a manner the _Lissa_ had become possessed of her papers. The matter was then discreetly allowed to drop. The Swedes, for their part, contested the legality of the capture, but the Prussian Government ruled that the letter of marque was valid, although it had not actually been issued by royal authority. At the same time Prussia advanced the strange view that, in the event of the owners of the _Lissa_ having had cognizance of the deception which had been practised, King Frederick was entitled to the whole value of the prize. Instructions were, however, given that the _Lissa_ should be deprived of her charter, but before they could be executed she had sailed for England.

Another of Douglas's privateersmen, the _Prince Ferdinand_, under a Captain Merryfield, had betaken herself to the Mediterranean, where, in a nine-months' cruise, she captured thirteen prizes, but caused so much confusion that the King thought it wiser to put a stop to the whole undertaking. The immediate ground for this step was the complaints of the Ottoman Government, with which Frederick was negotiating with a view to obtaining its support in the prosecution of the war. The appropriation of a couple of female negro slaves belonging to a pasha, who were on board one of the ships captured by Merryfield, seems to have had at least as much weight in the Turkish grievance as the more substantial losses of the merchants of Salonika. As Prussia had no territory and very little diplomatic representation on the shores of the Mediterranean, Merryfield was obliged to take his prizes into neutral harbours and place them in the custody of the English Consuls. They were the subjects of endless law suits, tedious international wrangling, and practically no profits. Merryfield's wild career was terminated by a charge of secretly selling neutral goods from one of his prizes to his own advantage. At the instance of the Prussian Government he was flung into gaol at Malta. He remained in prison five years, and even at the end of that term would not have regained his liberty if the Grand Master of the Maltese Knights had not refused to pay for his maintenance any longer.

Hardly less chequered were the fortunes of Captain Wake, the only regularly accredited Prussian privateer of whom anything is known. The operations of his ship, the _Embden_, in the Mediterranean also resulted in ceaseless bickerings, and he was delayed in Cagliari for two years by disputes of one sort or another. At last, growing weary, he set off to Berlin to prosecute his claims to a Swedish ship which he had seized, but of which the authorities at Cagliari would not permit him to dispose. Four and a half years after the capture, she was adjudged his good prize; but before he could enter into possession of her she was sunk at her moorings by a violent storm.

The total gain of the Prussian Government from the activity of these three privateers was quite negligible; while, on the other hand, the trouble and annoyance caused by them was immeasurable. The anticipations that the seas would be swept of Austrian and Swedish commerce by a swarm of vessels under the Prussian flag proved to have been quite illusory, and it was a particular disappointment to Frederick that the German shipowners looked askance at the whole business, and in no single instance applied for letters of marque.

A noteworthy feature of the episode is that Frederick's Government, reversing the practice of the Hansa, laid down for its privateers the rule that a neutral flag covered the enemy's goods, and that neutral goods were safe from capture even when under the enemy's flag. This, it is maintained, has ever since been Prussian tradition.

A final word is due to the "Société de Commerce Maritime"--now under the name "Seehandlung," the State bank of the Kingdom of Prussia--which was established by Frederick the Great in 1772, "to carry on shipping under the Prussian flag, and trade with the ports of Spain and all other places where reasonable and certain prospects of substantial profits from imports and exports are to be found." It was vessels of this corporation which, towards the close of the first half of the nineteenth century, bore a German flag for the first time round the world, and its foundation shows that the Great Elector's ideas were only dormant and not dead.

Frederick's immediate purpose was to open up the markets of South America to Silesian linen, but, in consequence of the rigid protectionist policy of Spain, it was only possible to do this by transhipment at Spanish ports. The original capital of the company was 1,200,000 thalers, in shares of 500 thalers each, and of these 2,100 were the property of the King. The Société was granted the exclusive right of trading in English, French, and Spanish salt, and in Polish wax, and was also endowed with many other privileges. It did not at first prove a very profitable venture, and its early days were also clouded over by the defalcations of one of its managers. In course of time it became little more than a branch of the Royal Treasury and the negotiator of State loans, but in the thirties of last century it passed under the control of a man who determined to restore to it something of its original character, and laid out a considerable capital in English-built ships. At that period German merchantmen seldom ventured beyond Bordeaux and Lisbon; but the vessels of the Seehandlung repeatedly encircled the globe, showed their flag in the remotest harbours of Orient and Occident, and established directly that export to South America of the wares of the Riesengebirge which Frederick the Great had in his mind when he called the company into existence.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: Thaler then = about 4s. 6d.]