Chapter VII: Part 7

Halting often in his descent to note the outlets of the many streams tributary to the all-absorbing Mississippi, among others the Missouri and the Ohio--at the embouchure of the latter erecting a fort--he did not reach the ocean mouths of the "Father of Waters" till April 5th, that brightest day of his eventful life. With elated heart, he took formal possession of the country--eminently in the name of the reigning sovereign of France; as he gave to it, at the same time, the distinctive appellation of Louisiana. Thus was completed the discovery and exploration of the Mississippi, from the Sault St. Antony to the sea; a line more than six hundred leagues in length.

%KING PHILIP'S WAR%

A.D. 1675

RICHARD HILDRETH

This was the most extensive and most important of the Indian wars of the early European settlers in North America. It led to the practical extermination of the red men in New England.

Various policies toward the natives were pursued by different colonists in different parts of the country. In New England the first white settlers found themselves in contact with several powerful tribes, chief among which were the Mohegans, the Narragansetts, and the Pequots.

Some attempt was made to convert and civilize these savages, but it was not long before the English colonists were at war with the Pequots, the most dreaded of the tribes in southern New England. This contest(1636-1638) was mainly carried on for the colonists by the settlers of Connecticut. It resulted in the almost complete extermination of the Pequot tribe.

After the union of the New England colonies (1643), formed principally for common defence against the natives, there was no considerable conflict between whites and Indians until the outbreak of King Philip's War, here described by Hildreth.

Except in the destruction of the Pequots, the native tribes of New England had as yet undergone no very material diminution. The Pokanokets or Wampanoags, though somewhat curtailed in their limits, still occupied the eastern shore of Narragansett Bay. The Narragansetts still possessed the western shore. There were several scattered tribes in various parts of Connecticut; though, with the exception of some small reservations, they had already ceded all their lands. Uncas, the Mohegan chief, was now an old man. The Pawtucket or Pennacook confederacy continued to occupy the falls of the Merrimac and the heads of the Piscataqua. Their old sachem, Passaconaway, regarded the colonists with awe and veneration. In the interior of Massachusetts and along the Connecticut were several other less noted tribes. The Indians of Maine and the region eastward possessed their ancient haunts undisturbed; but their intercourse was principally with the French, to whom, since the late peace with France, Acadia had been again yielded up. The New England Indians were occasionally annoyed by war parties of Mohawks; but, by the intervention of Massachusetts, a peace had recently been concluded.

Efforts for the conversion and civilization of the Indians were still continued by Eliot and his coadjutors, supported by the funds of the English society. In Massachusetts there were fourteen feeble villages of these praying Indians, and a few more in Plymouth colony. The whole number in New England was about thirty-six hundred, but of these near one-half inhabited the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard.

A strict hand was held by Massachusetts over the Narragansetts and other subject tribes, contracting their limits by repeated cessions, not always entirely voluntary. The Wampanoags, within the jurisdiction of Plymouth, experienced similar treatment. By successive sales of parts of their territory, they were now shut up, as it were, in the necks or peninsulas formed by the northern and eastern branches of Narragansett Bay, the same territory now constituting the continental eastern portion of Rhode Island. Though always at peace with the colonists, the Wampanoags had not always escaped suspicion. The increase of the settlements around them, and the progressive curtailment of their limits, aroused their jealousy. They were galled, also, by the feudal superiority, similar to that of Massachusetts over her dependent tribes, claimed by Plymouth on the strength of certain alleged former submissions. None felt this assumption more keenly than Pometacom, head chief of the Wampanoags, better known among the colonists as King Philip of Mount Hope, nephew and successor of that Massasoit, who had welcomed the Pilgrims to Plymouth. Suspected of hostile designs, he had been compelled to deliver up his fire-arms and to enter into certain stipulations. These stipulations he was accused of not fulfilling; and nothing but the interposition of the Massachusetts magistrates, to whom Philip appealed, prevented Plymouth from making war upon him. He was sentenced instead to pay a heavy fine and to acknowledge the unconditional supremacy of that colony.

A praying Indian, who had been educated at Cambridge and employed as a teacher, upon some misdemeanor had fled to Philip, who took him into service as a sort of secretary. Being persuaded to return again to his former employment, this Indian accused Philip anew of being engaged in a secret hostile plot. In accordance with Indian ideas, the treacherous informer was waylaid and killed. Three of Philip's men, suspected of having killed him, were arrested by the Plymouth authorities, and, in accordance with English ideas, were tried for murder by a jury half English, half Indians, convicted upon very slender evidence, and hanged. Philip retaliated by plundering the houses nearest Mount Hope. Presently he attacked Swanzey, and killed several of the inhabitants. Plymouth took measures for raising a military force. The neighboring colonies were sent to for assistance. Thus, by the impulse of suspicion on the one side and passion on the other, New England became suddenly engaged in a war very disastrous to the colonists and utterly ruinous to the native tribes. The lust of gain, in spite of all laws to prevent it, had partially furnished the Indians with fire-arms, and they were now far more formidable enemies than they had been in the days of the Pequots. Of this the colonists hardly seem to have thought. Now, as then, confident of their superiority, and comparing themselves to the Lord's chosen people driving the heathen out of the land, they rushed eagerly into the contest, without a single effort at the preservation of peace. Indeed, their pretensions hardly admitted of it. Philip was denounced as a rebel in arms against his lawful superiors, with whom it would be folly and weakness to treat on any terms short of absolute submission.

A body of volunteers, horse and foot, raised in Massachusetts, marched under Major Savage, four days after the attack on Swanzey, to join the Plymouth forces. After one or two slight skirmishes, they penetrated to the Wampanoag villages at Mount Hope, but found them empty and deserted. Philip and his warriors, conscious of their inferiority, had abandoned their homes. If the Narragansetts, on the opposite side of the bay, did not openly join the Wampanoags, they would, at least, be likely to afford shelter to their women and children. The troops were therefore ordered into the Narragansett country, accompanied by commissioners to demand assurances of peaceful intentions, and a promise to deliver up all fugitive enemies of the colonists--pledges which the Narragansetts felt themselves constrained to give.

Arrived at Taunton on their return from the Narragansett country, news came that Philip and his warriors had been discovered by Church, of Plymouth colony, collected in a great swamp at Pocasset, now Tiverton, the southern district of the Wampanoag country, whence small parties sallied forth to burn and plunder the neighboring settlements. After a march of eighteen miles, having reached the designated spot, the soldiers found there a hundred wigwams lately built, but empty and deserted, the Indians having retired deep into the swamp. The colonists followed; but the ground was soft; the thicket was difficult to penetrate; the companies were soon thrown into disorder. Each man fired at every bush he saw shake, thinking an Indian might lay concealed behind it, and several were thus wounded by their own friends. When night came on, the assailants retired with the loss of sixteen men.

The swamp continued to be watched and guarded, but Philip broke through, not without some loss, and escaped into the country of the Nipmucks, in the interior of Massachusetts. That tribe had already commenced hostilities by attacking Mendon. They waylaid and killed Captain Hutchinson, a son of the famous Mrs. Hutchinson, and sixteen out of a party of twenty sent from Boston to Brookfield to parley with them. Attacking Brookfield itself, they burned it, except one fortified house. The inhabitants were saved by Major Willard, who, on information of their danger, came with a troop of horse from Lancaster, thirty miles through the woods, to their rescue. A body of troops presently arrived from the eastward, and were stationed for some time at Brookfield.

The colonists now found that by driving Philip to extremity they had roused a host of unexpected enemies. The River Indians, anticipating an intended attack upon them, joined the assailants. Deerfield and Northfield, the northernmost towns on the Connecticut River, settled within a few years past, were attacked, and several of the inhabitants killed and wounded. Captain Beers, sent from Hadley to their relief with a convoy of provisions, was surprised near Northfield and slain, with twenty of his men. Northfield was abandoned, and burned by the Indians.

"The English at first," says Gookin, "thought easily to chastise the insolent doings and murderous practice of the heathen; but it was found another manner of thing than was expected; for our men could see no enemy to shoot at, but yet felt their bullets out of the thick bushes where they lay in ambush. The English wanted not courage or resolution, but could not discover nor find an enemy to fight with, yet were galled by the enemy." In the arts of ambush and surprise, with which the Indians were so familiar, the colonists were without practice. It is to the want of this experience, purchased at a very dear rate in the course of the war, that we must ascribe the numerous surprises and defeats from which the colonists suffered at its commencement.

Driven to the necessity of defensive warfare, those in command on the river determined to establish a magazine and garrison at Hadley. Captain Lathrop, who had been despatched from the eastward to the assistance of the river towns, was sent with eighty men, the flower of the youth of Essex county, to guard the wagons intended to convey to Hadley three thousand bushels of unthreshed wheat, the produce of the fertile Deerfield meadows. Just before arriving at Deerfield, near a small stream still known as Bloody Brook, under the shadow of the abrupt conical Sugar Loaf, the southern termination of the Deerfield Mountain, Lathrop fell into an ambush, and, after a brave resistance, perished there with all his company. Captain Moseley, stationed at Deerfield, marched to his assistance, but arrived too late to help him. Deerfield was abandoned, and burned by the Indians. Springfield, about the same time, was set on fire, but was partially saved by the arrival, with troops from Connecticut, of Major Treat, successor to the lately deceased Mason in the chief command of the Connecticut forces. An attack on Hatfield was vigorously repelled by the garrison.

Meanwhile, hostilities were spreading; the Indians on the Merrimac began to attack the towns in their vicinity; and the whole of Massachusetts was soon in the utmost alarm. Except in the immediate neighborhood of Boston, the country still remained an immense forest, dotted by a few openings. The frontier settlements could not be defended against a foe familiar with localities, scattered in small parties, skilful in concealment, and watching with patience for some unguarded or favorable moment. Those settlements were mostly broken up, and the inhabitants, retiring toward Boston, spread everywhere dread and intense hatred of "the bloody heathen."

Even the praying Indians and the small dependent and tributary tribes became objects of suspicion and terror. They had been employed at first as scouts and auxiliaries, and to good advantage; but some few, less confirmed in the faith, having deserted to the enemy, the whole body of them were denounced as traitors. Eliot the apostle, and Gookin, superintendent of the subject Indians, exposed themselves to insults, and even to danger, by their efforts to stem this headlong fury, to which several of the magistrates opposed but a feeble resistance. Troops were sent to break up the praying villages at Mendon, Grafton, and others in that quarter. The Natick Indians, "those poor despised sheep of Christ," as Gookin affectionately calls them, were hurried off to Deer Island, in Boston harbor, where they suffered excessively from a severe winter. A part of the praying Indians of Plymouth colony were confined, in like manner, on the islands in Plymouth harbor.

Not content with realities sufficiently frightful, superstition, as usual, added bugbears of her own. Indian bows were seen in the sky, and scalps in the moon. The northern lights became an object of terror. Phantom horsemen careered among the clouds or were heard to gallop invisible through the air. The howling of wolves was turned into a terrible omen. The war was regarded as a special judgment in punishment of prevailing sins. Among these sins the General Court of Massachusetts, after consultation with the elders, enumerated: Neglect in the training of the children of church members; pride, in men's wearing long and curled hair; excess in apparel; naked breasts and arms, and superfluous ribbons; the toleration of Quakers; hurry to leave meeting before blessing asked; profane cursing and swearing; tippling-houses; want of respect for parents; idleness; extortion in shopkeepers and mechanics; and the riding from town to town of unmarried men and women, under pretence of attending lectures--"a sinful custom, tending to lewdness."

Penalties were denounced against all these offences; and the persecution of the Quakers was again renewed. A Quaker woman had recently frightened the Old South congregation in Boston by entering that meeting-house clothed in sackcloth, with ashes on her head, her feet bare, and her face blackened, intending to personify the small-pox, with which she threatened the colony, in punishment for its sins.

About the time of the first collision with Philip, the Tarenteens, or Eastern Indians, had attacked the settlements in Maine and New Hampshire, plundering and burning the houses, and massacring such of the inhabitants as fell into their hands. This sudden diffusion of hostilities and vigor of attack from opposite quarters made the colonists believe that Philip had long been plotting and had gradually matured an extensive conspiracy, into which most of the tribes had deliberately entered for the extermination of the whites. This belief infuriated the colonists and suggested some very questionable proceedings.

It seems, however, to have originated, like the war itself, from mere suspicions. The same griefs pressed upon all the tribes; and the struggle once commenced, the awe which the colonists inspired thrown off, the greater part were ready to join in the contest. But there is no evidence of any deliberate concert; nor, in fact, were the Indians united. Had they been so, the war would have been far more serious. The Connecticut tribes proved faithful, and that colony remained untouched. Uncas and Ninigret continued friendly; even the Narragansetts, in spite of so many former provocations, had not yet taken up arms. But they were strongly suspected of intention to do so, and were accused by Uncas of giving, notwithstanding their recent assurances, aid and shelter to the hostile tribes.

An attempt had lately been made to revive the union of the New England colonies. At a meeting of commissioners, those from Plymouth presented a narrative of the origin and progress of the present hostilities. Upon the strength of this narrative the war was pronounced "just and necessary," and a resolution was passed to carry it on at the joint expense, and to raise for that purpose a thousand men, one-half to be mounted dragoons. If the Narragansetts were not crushed during the winter, it was feared they might break out openly hostile in the spring; and at a subsequent meeting a thousand men were ordered to be levied to cooperate in an expedition specially against them.

The winter was unfavorable to the Indians; the leafless woods no longer concealed their lurking attacks. The frozen surface of the swamps made the Indian fastnesses accessible to the colonists. The forces destined against the Narragansetts--six companies from Massachusetts, under Major Appleton; two from Plymouth, under Major Bradford; and five from Connecticut, under Major Treat--were placed under the command of Josiah Winslow, Governor of Plymouth since Prince's death--son of that Edward Winslow so conspicuous in the earlier history of the colony. The Massachusetts and Plymouth forces marched to Petasquamscot, on the west shore of Narragansett Bay, where they made some forty prisoners.

Being joined by the troops from Connecticut, and guided by an Indian deserter, after a march of fifteen miles through a deep snow they approached a swamp in what is now the town of South Kingston, one of the ancient strongholds of the Narragansetts. Driving the Indian scouts before them, and penetrating the swamp, the colonial soldiers soon came in sight of the Indian fort, built on a rising ground in the morass, a sort of island of two or three acres, fortified by a palisade and surrounded by a close hedge a rod thick. There was but one entrance, quite narrow, defended by a tree thrown across it, with a block-house of logs in front and other on the flank.

It was the "Lord's day," but that did not hinder the attack. As the captains advanced at the heads of their companies the Indians opened a galling fire, under which many fell. But the assailants pressed on and forced the entrance. A desperate struggle ensued. The colonists were once driven back, but they rallied and returned to the charge, and, after a two-hours' fight, became masters of the fort. Fire was put to the wigwams, near six hundred in number, and all the horrors of the Pequot massacre were renewed. The corn and other winter stores of the Indians were consumed, and not a few of the old men, women, and children perished in the flames. In this bloody contest, long remembered as the "Swamp Fight," the colonial loss was terribly severe. Six captains, with two hundred thirty men, were killed or wounded; and at night, in the midst of a snow-storm, with a fifteen-miles' march before them, the colonial soldiers abandoned the fort, of which the Indians resumed possession. But their wigwams were burned; their provisions destroyed; they had no supplies for the winter; their loss was irreparable. Of those who survived the fight many perished of hunger.

Even as a question of policy this attack on the Narragansetts was more than doubtful. The starving and infuriated warriors, scattered through the woods, revenged themselves by attacks on the frontier settlements. Lancaster was burned, and forty of the inhabitants killed or taken; among the rest, Mrs. Rolandson, wife of the minister, the narrative of whose captivity is still preserved. Groton, Chelmsford, and other towns in that vicinity were repeatedly attacked. Medfield, twenty miles from Boston, was furiously assaulted, and, though defended by three hundred men, half the houses were burned. Weymouth, within eighteen miles of Boston, was attacked a few days after. These were the nearest approaches which the Indians made to that capital.

For a time the neighborhood of the Narragansett country was abandoned. The Rhode Island towns, though they had no part in undertaking the war, yet suffered the consequences of it. Warwick was burned and Providence was partially destroyed. Most of the inhabitants sought refuge in the islands; but the aged Roger Williams accepted a commission as captain for the defence of the town he had founded. Walter Clarke was presently chosen governor in Coddington's place, the times not suiting a Quaker chief magistrate.

The whole colony of Plymouth was overrun. Houses were burned in almost every town, but the inhabitants, for the most part, saved themselves in their garrisons, a shelter with which all the towns now found it necessary to be provided. Captain Pierce, with fifty men and some friendly Indians, while endeavoring to cover the Plymouth towns, fell into an ambush and was cut off. That same day, Marlborough was set on fire; two days after, Rehoboth was burned. The Indians seemed to be everywhere. Captain Wadsworth, marching to the relief of Sudbury, fell into an ambush and perished with fifty men. The alarm and terror of the colonists reached again a great height. But affairs were about to take a turn. The resources of the Indians were exhausted; they were now making their last efforts.

A body of Connecticut volunteers, under Captain Denison, and of Mohegan and other friendly Indians, Pequots and Niantics, swept the entire country of the Narragansetts, who suffered, as spring advanced, the last extremities of famine. Canochet, the chief sachem, said to have been a son of Miantonomoh, but probably his nephew, had ventured to his old haunts to procure seed corn with which to plant the rich intervals on the Connecticut, abandoned by the colonists. Taken prisoner, he conducted himself with all that haughty firmness esteemed by the Indians as the height of magnanimity. Being offered his life on condition of bringing about a peace he scorned the proposal. His tribe would perish to the last man rather than become servants to the English. When ordered to prepare for death he replied: "I like it well; I shall die before my heart is soft or I shall have spoken anything unworthy of myself." Two Indians were appointed to shoot him, and his head was cut off and sent to Hartford.

The colonists had suffered severely. Men, women, and children had perished by the bullets of the Indians or fled naked through the wintry woods by the light of their blazing houses, leaving their goods and cattle a spoil to the assailants. Several settlements had been destroyed and many more had been abandoned; but the oldest and wealthiest remained untouched. The Indians, on the other hand, had neither provisions nor ammunition. While attempting to plant corn and catch fish at Montague Falls, on the Connecticut River, they were attacked with great slaughter by the garrison of the lower towns, led by Captain Turner, a Boston Baptist, and at first refused a commission on that account, but, as danger increased, pressed to accept it.

Yet this enterprise was not without its drawbacks. As the troops returned, Captain Turner fell into an ambush and was slain with thirty-eight men. Hadley was attacked on a lecture-day, while the people were at meeting; but the Indians were repulsed by the bravery of Goffe, one of the fugitive regicides, long concealed in that town. Seeing this venerable unknown man come to their rescue, and then suddenly disappear, the inhabitants took him for an angel.

Major Church, at the head of a body of two hundred volunteers, English and Indians, energetically hunted down the hostile bands in Plymouth colony. The interior tribes about Mount Wachusett were invaded and subdued by a force of six hundred men, raised for that purpose. Many fled to the north to find refuge in Canada--guides and leaders, in after-years, of those French and Indian war parties by which the frontiers of New England were so terribly harassed. Just a year after the fast at the commencement of the war, a thanksgiving was observed for success in it.

No longer sheltered by the River Indians, who now began to make their peace, and even attacked by bands of the Mohawks, Philip returned to his own country, about Mount Hope, where he was still faithfully supported by his female confederate and relative, Witamo, squaw-sachem of Pocasset. Punham, also, the Shawomet vassal of Massachusetts, still zealously carried on the war, but was presently killed. Philip was watched and followed by Church, who surprised his camp, killed upward of a hundred of his people, and took prisoners his wife and boy.

The disposal of this child was a subject of much deliberation. Several of the elders were urgent for putting him to death. It was finally resolved to send him to Bermuda, to be sold into slavery--a fate to which many other of the Indian captives were subjected. Witamo shared the disasters of Philip. Most of her people were killed or taken. She herself was drowned while crossing a river in her flight, but her body was recovered, and the head, cut off, was stuck upon a pole at Taunton, amid the jeers and scoffs of the colonial soldiers, and the tears and lamentations of the Indian prisoners.

Philip still lurked in the swamps, but was now reduced to extremity. Again attacked by Church, he was killed by one of his own people, a deserter to the colonists. His dead body was beheaded and quartered, the sentence of the English law upon traitors. One of his hands was given to the Indian who had shot him, and on the day appointed for a public thanksgiving his head was carried in triumph to Plymouth.

The popular rage against the Indians was excessive. Death or slavery was the penalty for all known or suspected to have been concerned in shedding English blood. Merely having been present at the Swamp Fight was adjudged by the authorities of Rhode Island sufficient foundation for sentence of death, and that, too, notwithstanding they had intimated an opinion that the origin of the war would not bear examination. The other captives who fell into the hands of the colonists were distributed among them as ten-year servants. Roger Williams received a boy for his share. Many chiefs were executed at Boston and Plymouth on the charge of rebellion; among others, Captain Tom, chief of the Christian Indians at Natick, and Tispiquin, a noted warrior, reputed to be invulnerable, who had surrendered to Church on an implied promise of safety.

A large body of Indians, assembled at Dover to treat of peace, were treacherously made prisoners by Major Waldron, who commanded there. Some two hundred of these Indians, claimed as fugitives from Massachusetts, were sent by water to Boston, where some were hanged and the rest shipped off to be sold as slaves. Some fishermen of Marblehead having been killed by the Indians at the eastward, the women of that town, as they came out of meeting on a Sunday, fell upon two Indian prisoners who had just been brought in, and murdered them on the spot.

The same ferocious spirit of revenge which governed the contemporaneous conduct of Berkeley in Virginia toward those concerned in Bacon's rebellion swayed the authorities of New England in their treatment of the conquered Indians. By the end of the year the contest was over in the South, upward of two thousand Indians having been killed or taken. But some time elapsed before a peace could be arranged with the Eastern tribes, whose haunts it was not so easy to reach.

In this short war of hardly a year's duration the Wampanoags and Narragansetts had suffered the fate of the Pequots. The Niantics alone, under the guidance of their aged sachem Ninigret, had escaped destruction. Philip's country was annexed to Plymouth, though sixty years afterward, under a royal order in council, it was transferred to Rhode Island. The Narragansett territory remained as before, under the name of King's Province, a bone of contention between Connecticut, Rhode Island, the Marquis of Hamilton, and the Atherton claimants. The Niantics still retained their ancient seats along the southern shores of Narragansett Bay. Most of the surviving Narragansetts, the Nipmucks, and the River Indians, abandoned their country and migrated to the north and west. Such as remained, along with the Mohegans and other subject tribes, became more than ever abject and subservient.

The work of conversion was now again renewed, and, after such overwhelming proofs of Christian superiority, with somewhat greater success. A second edition of the Indian Old Testament, which seems to have been more in demand than the New, was presently published, revised by Eliot, with the assistance of John Cotton, son of the "Great Cotton," and minister of Plymouth. But not an individual exists in our day by whom it can be understood. The fragments of the subject tribes, broken in spirit, lost the savage freedom and rude virtues of their fathers without acquiring the laborious industry of the whites. Lands were assigned them in various places, which they were prohibited by law from alienating. But this very provision, though humanely intended, operated to perpetuate their indolence and incapacity. Some sought a more congenial occupation in the whale fishery, which presently began to be carried on from the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. Many perished by enlisting in the military expeditions undertaken in future years against Acadia and the West Indies. The Indians intermarried with the blacks, and thus confirmed their degradation by associating themselves with another oppressed and unfortunate race. Gradually they dwindled away. A few hundred sailors and petty farmers, of mixed blood, as much African as Indian, are now the sole surviving representatives of the aboriginal possessors of Southern New England.

On the side of the colonists the contest had also been very disastrous. Twelve or thirteen towns had been entirely ruined and many others partially destroyed. Six hundred houses had been burned, near a tenth part of all in New England. Twelve captains, and more than six hundred men in the prime of life, had fallen in battle. There was hardly a family not in mourning. The pecuniary losses and expenses of the war were estimated at near a million of dollars.

%GROWTH OF PRUSSIA UNDER THE GREATELECTOR%

HIS VICTORY AT FEHRBELLIN

A.D. 1675

THOMAS CARLYLE

It was the good-fortune of Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, who is known in history as the "Great Elector," to lay a firm foundation for Prussian monarchy. Under his father, George William, the Tenth Elector, Brandenburg had lost much of its former importance. When Frederick William came into his inheritance in 1640 he found a weak and disunited state, little more than a group of provinces, with foreign territories lying between them, and governed by differing laws.

The great problem before the Elector was how to become actual ruler of his ill-joined possessions, and his first aim was to weld them together, that he might make himself absolute monarch. By forming an army of mercenaries he established his authority. His whole life was occupied with warlike affairs. He remained neutral during the last stages of the Thirty Years' War, but was always prepared for action. He freed Prussia from Polish control and drove the Swedes from Brandenburg.

This last was his most famous success. It was won by his victory over the Swedes under Wrangel, at Fehrbellin. Carlyle's characteristic narrative and commentary on this and other triumphs of the Great Elector place him before the reader as one of the chief personages of the Hohenzollern race and a leading actor in European history.

Brandenburg had sunk very low under the Tenth Elector, in the unutterable troubles of the times, but it was gloriously raised up again by his Son Friedrich Wilhelm, who succeeded in 1640. This is he whom they call the "Great Elector" ("_Grosse Kurfuerst_"), of whom there is much writing and celebrating in Prussian Books. As for the epithet, it is not uncommon among petty German populations, and many times does not mean too much: thus Max of Bavaria, with his Jesuit Lambkins and Hyacinths, is by Bavarians called "Maximilian the Great." Friedrich Wilhelm, both by his intrinsic qualities and the success he met with, deserves it better than most. His success, if we look where he started and where he ended, was beyond that of any other man in his day. He found Brandenburg annihilated, and he left Brandenburg sound and flourishing--a great country, or already on the way toward greatness: undoubtedly a most rapid, clear-eyed, active man. There was a stroke in him swift as lightning, well aimed mostly, and of a respectable weight withal, which shattered asunder a whole world of impediments for him by assiduous repetition of it for fifty years.

There hardly ever came to sovereign power a young man of twenty under more distressing, hopeless-looking circumstances. Political significance Brandenburg had none--a mere Protestant appendage dragged about by a Papist Kaiser. His Father's Prime Minister was in the interest of his enemies; not Brandenburg's servant, but Austria's. The very Commandants of his Fortresses, Commandant of Spandau more especially, refused to obey Friedrich Wilhelm on his accession--"were bound to obey the Kaiser in the first place." He had to proceed softly as well as swiftly, with the most delicate hand, to get him of Spandau by the collar, and put him under lock and key, as a warning to others.

For twenty years past Brandenburg had been scoured by hostile armies, which, especially the Kaiser's part of which, committed outrages new in human history. In a year or two hence Brandenburg became again the theatre of business. Austrian Gallas, advancing thither again (1644) with intent "to shut up Tortenson and his Swedes in Jutland," where they had been chastising old Christian IV, now meddlesome again for the last time, and never a good neighbor to Sweden, Gallas could by no means do what he intended; on the contrary, he had to run from Tortenson what feet could do, was hunted, he and his _Merode_-Bruder (beautiful inventors of the "Marauding" Art), "till they pretty much all died (_crepirten_)," says Kohler. No great loss to society, the death of these Artists, but we can fancy what their life, and especially what the process of their dying, may have cost poor Brandenburg again.

Friedrich Wilhelm's aim, in this as in other emergencies, was sun-clear to himself, but for most part dim to everybody else. He had to walk very warily, Sweden on one hand of him, suspicious Kaiser on the other; he had to wear semblances, to be ready with evasive words and advance noiselessly by many circuits. More delicate operation could not be imagined; but advance he did, advance and arrive. With extraordinary talent, diligence, and felicity, the young man wound himself out of this first fatal position; got those foreign Armies pushed out of his country, and kept them out. His first concern had been to find some vestige of revenue, to put that upon a clear footing, and by loans or otherwise to scrape a little ready money together, on the strength of which a small body of soldiers could be collected about him, and drilled into real ability to fight and obey. This as a basis; on this followed all manner of things, freedom from Swedish-Austrian invasions as the first thing.

He was himself, as appeared by and by, a fighter of the first quality when it came to that, but never was willing to fight if he could help it; preferred rather to shift, manoeuvre, and negotiate, which he did in a most vigilant, adroit, and masterly manner. But by degrees he had grown to have, and could maintain it, an Army of twenty-four thousand men, among the best troops then in being. With or without his will, he was in all the great Wars of his time--the time of Louis XIV--who kindled Europe four times over, thrice in our Kurfuerst's day. The Kurfuerst's Dominions, a long, straggling country, reaching from Memel to Wesel, could hardly keep out of the way of any war that might rise. He made himself available, never against the good cause of Protestantism and German Freedom, yet always in the place and way where his own best advantage was to be had. Louis XIV had often much need of him; still oftener, and more pressingly, had Kaiser Leopold, the little Gentleman "in scarlet stockings, with a red feather in his hat," whom Mr. Savage used to see majestically walking about, with Austrian lip that said nothing at all. His twenty-four thousand excellent fighting-men, thrown in at the right time, were often a thing that could turn the balance in great questions. They required to be allowed for at a high rate, which he well knew how to adjust himself for exacting and securing always.

When the Peace of Westphalia (1648) concluded that Thirty-Years' Conflagration, and swept the ashes of it into order again, Friedrich Wilhelm's right to Pommern was admitted by everybody, and well insisted on by himself; but right had to yield to reason of state, and he could not get it. The Swedes insisted on their expenses; the Swedes held Pommern, had all along held it--in pawn, they said, for their expenses. Nothing for it but to give the Swedes the better half of Pommern--_Fore_-Pommern so they call it, ("Swedish Pomernia" thenceforth), which lies next the Sea; this, with some Towns and cuttings over and above, was Sweden's share. Friedrich Wilhelm had to put up with _Hinder_-Pommern, docked furthermore of the Town of Stettin, and of other valuable cuttings, in favor of Sweden, much to Friedrich Wilhelm's grief and just anger, could he have helped it.

They gave him Three secularized Bishoprics, Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Minden with other small remnants, for compensation, and he had to be content with these for the present. But he never gave up the idea of Pommern. Much of the effort of his life was spent upon recovering Fore-Pommern; thrice eager upon that, whenever lawful opportunity offered. To no purpose, then; he never could recover Swedish Pommern; only his late descendants, and that by slowish degrees, could recover it all. Readers remember that Burgermeister of Stettin, with the helmet and sword flung into the grave and picked out again, and can judge whether Brandenburg got its good luck quite by lying in bed.

Once, and once only, he had a voluntary purpose toward War, and it remained a purpose only. Soon after the Peace of Westphalia, old Pfalz-Neuburg, the same who got the slap on the face, went into tyrannous proceedings against the Protestant part of his subjects in Juelic-Cleve, who called to Friedrich Wilhelm for help. Friedrich Wilhelm, a zealous Protestant, made remonstrances, retaliations; ere long the thought struck him, "Suppose, backed by the Dutch, we threw out this fantastic old gentleman, his Papistries, and pretended claims and self, clear out of it?" This was Friedrich Wilhelm's thought, and he suddenly marched troops into the Territory with that view. But Europe was in alarm; the Dutch grew faint. Friedrich Wilhelm saw it would not do. He had a conference with old Pfalz-Neuburg: "Young gentleman, we remember how your Grandfather made free with us and our august countenance! Nevertheless, we--" In fine, the "statistics of Treaties" was increased by One, and there the matter rested till calmer times.

In 1666 an effective Partition of these litigated Territories was accomplished; Prussia to have the Duchy of Cleve-Proper, the Counties of Mark and Ravensberg, with other Patches and Pertinents; Neuburg, what was the better share, to have Juelich Duchy and Berg Duchy. Furthermore, if either of the Lines failed, in no sort was a collateral to be admitted; but Brandenburg was to inherit Neuburg, or Neuburg Brandenburg, as the case might be. A clear Bargain this at last, and in the times that had come it proved executable so far; but if the reader fancies the Lawsuit was at last out in this way, he will be a simple reader. In the days of our little Fritz,[1] the Line of Pfalz-Neuburg was evidently ending; but that Brandenburg, and not a collateral, should succeed it, there lay the quarrel open still, as if it had never been shut, and we shall hear enough about it.

[Footnote 1: Frederick the Great]

Friedrich Wilhelm's first actual appearance in War, Polish-Swedish War (1655-1660), was involuntary in the highest degree; forced upon him for the sake of his Preussen, which bade fair to be lost or ruined without blame of his or its. Nevertheless, here too he made his benefit of the affair. The big King of Sweden had a standing quarrel, with his big cousin of Poland, which broke out into hot War; little Preussen lay between them, and was like to be crushed in the collision. Swedish King was Karl Gustav, Christina's Cousin, Charles XII's Grandfather: a great and mighty man, lion of the North in his time; Polish King was one John Casimir; chivalrous enough, and with clouds of forward Polish chivalry about him, glittering with barbaric gold. Friedrich III, Danish King for the first time being, he also was much involved in the thing. Fain would Friedrich Wilhelm have kept out of it, but he could not. Karl Gustav as good as forced him to join; he joined; fought along with Karl Gustav an illustrious Battle, "Battle of Warsaw," three days long (July 28-30, 1656), on the skirts of Warsaw; crowds "looking from the upper windows" there; Polish chivalry, broken at last, going like chaff upon the winds, and John Casimir nearly ruined.

Shortly after which, Friedrich Wilhelm, who had shone much in the Battle, changed sides. An inconsistent, treacherous man? Perhaps not, O reader; perhaps a man advancing "in circuits," the only way he has; spirally, face now to east, now to west, with his own reasonable private aim sun-clear to himself all the while.

John Casimir agreed to give up the "Homage of Preussen" for this service; a grand prize for Friedrich Wilhelm. What the Teutsch Ritters strove for in vain, and lost their existence in striving for, the shifty Kurfuerst has now got: Ducal Prussia, which is also called East Prussia, is now a free sovereignty, and will become as "Royal" as the other Polish part, or perhaps even more so, in the course of time--Karl Gustav, in a high frame of mind, informs the Kurfuerst that he has him on his books, and will pay the debt one day.

A dangerous debtor in such matters, this Karl Gustav. In these same months, busy with the Danish part of the Controversy, he was doing a feat of war which set all Europe in astonishment. In January, 1658, Karl Gustav marches his Army, horse, foot, and artillery, to the extent of Twenty thousand, across the Baltic ice, and takes an island without shipping--Island of Fuenen, across the Little Belt--three miles of ice, and a part of the sea _open_, which has to be crossed on planks; nay, forward from Fuenen, when once there, he achieves ten whole miles more of ice, and takes Zealand itself, to the wonder of all mankind: an imperious, stern-browed, swift-striking man, who had dreamed of a new Goth Empire: the mean Hypocrites and Fribbles of the South to be coerced again by noble Norse valor, and taught a new lesson; has been known to lay his hand on his sword while apprising an Embassador (Dutch High Mightiness) what his royal intentions were: "not the sale or purchase of groceries, observe you, Sir! My aims go higher." Charles XII's Grandfather, and somewhat the same type of man.

But Karl died short while after; left his big, wide-raging Northern Controversy to collapse in what way it could. Sweden and the fighting parties made their "Peace of Oliva" (Abbey of Oliva, near Dantzig, May 1, 1660), and this of Preussen was ratified, in all form, among other points. No Homage more; nothing now above Ducal Prussia but the Heavens, and great times coming for it. This was one of the successfulest strokes of business ever done by Friedrich Wilhelm, who had been forced, by sheer compulsion, to embark in that big game. "Royal Prussia," the Western _Polish_ Prussia--this too, as all Newspapers know, has in our times gone the same road as the other, which probably after all, it may have had in Nature, some tendency to do? Cut away, for reasons, by the Polish sword, in that Battle of Tannenberg, long since, and then, also for reasons, cut back again: that is the fact, not unexampled in human History.

Old Johann Casimir, not long after that Peace of Oliva, getting tired of his unruly Polish chivalry and their ways, abdicated, retired to Paris, and "lived much with Ninon de l'Enclos and her circle" for the rest of his life. He used to complain of his Polish chivalry that there was no solidity in them, nothing but outside glitter, with tumult and anarchic noise; fatal want of one essential talent, the talent of Obeying; and has been heard to prophesy that a glorious Republic, persisting in such courses, would arrive at results which would surprise it.

Onward from this time Friedrich Wilhelm figures in the world, public men watching his procedure, Kings anxious to secure him, Dutch Printsellers sticking up his Portraits for a hero-worshipping Public. Fighting hero, had the Public known it, was not his essential character, though he had to fight a great deal. He was essentially an Industrial man; great in organizing, regulating, in constraining chaotic heaps to become cosmic for him. He drains bogs, settles colonies in the waste places of his Dominions, cuts canals; unweariedly encourages trade and work. The Friedrich-Wilhelm's Canal, which still carries tonnage from the Oder to the Spree, is a monument of his zeal in this way; creditable, with the means he had. To the poor French Protestants in the Edict-of-Nantes Affair, he was like an empress Benefit of Heaven: one Helper appointed, to whom the help itself was profitable. He munificently welcomed them to Brandenburg; showed really a noble piety and human self-pity, as well as judgment; nor did Brandenburg and he want their reward. Some twenty thousand nimble French souls, evidently of the best French quality, found a home there; made "waste sands about Berlin into pot-herb gardens"; and in the spiritual Brandenburg, too, did something of horticulture, which is still noticeable.

Certainly this Elector was one of the shiftiest of men; not an unjust man either; a pious, God-fearing man rather, stanch to his Protestantism and his Bible; not unjust by any means, nor, on the other hand, by any means thin-skinned in his interpretings of justice: Fairplay to myself always, or occasionally even the Height of Fairplay. On the whole, by constant energy, vigilance, adroit activity, by an ever-ready insight and audacity to seize the passing fact by its right handle, he fought his way well in the world; left Brandenburg a flourishing and greatly increased Country, and his own name famous enough.

A thickset, stalwart figure, with brisk eyes, and high, strong, irregularly-Roman nose. Good bronze Statue of him, by Schlueter, once a famed man, still rides on the _Lange-Bruecke_ (Long Bridge) at Berlin; and his Portrait, in huge frizzled Louis-Quatorze wig, is frequently met with in German Galleries. Collectors of Dutch Prints, too, know him; here a gallant, eagle-featured little gentleman, brisk in the smiles of youth, with plumes, with truncheon, caprioling on his war-charger, view of tents in the distance; there a sedate, ponderous wrinkly old man, eyes slightly puckered (eyes _busier_ than mouth), a face well plowed by Time, and not found unfruitful; one of the largest, most laborious potent faces (in an ocean of circumambient periwig) to be met with in that Century. There are many Histories about him, too, but they are not comfortable to read. He also has wanted a sacred Poet, and found only a bewildering Dryasdust.

His two grand Feats that dwell in the Prussian memory are perhaps none of his greatest, but were of a kind to strike the imagination. They both relate to what was the central problem of his life--the recovery of Pommern from the Swedes. Exploit First is the famed Battle of Fehrbellin (Ferry of Belleen), fought on June 18, 1675. Fehrbellin is an inconsiderable Town still standing in those peaty regions, some five-and-thirty miles northwest of Berlin, and had for ages plied its poor Ferry over the oily-looking, brown sluggish stream called Rhin, or Rhein in those parts, without the least notice from mankind till this fell out. It is a place of pilgrimage to patriotic Prussians ever since Friedrich Wilhelm's exploit there. The matter went thus:

Friedrich Wilhelm was fighting, far south in Alsace, on Kaiser Leopold's side, in the Louis XIV War--that second one, which ended in the Treaty of Nimwegen. Doing his best there, when the Swedes, egged on by Louis XIV, made war upon him; crossed the Pomeranian marshes, troop after troop, and invaded his Brandenburg Territory with a force which at length amounted to sixteen thousand men. No help for the moment; Friedrich Wilhelm could not be spared from his post. The Swedes, who had at first professed well, gradually went into plunder, roving, harrying at their own will; and a melancholy time they made of it for Friedrich Wilhelm and his People. Lucky if temporary harm were all the ill they were likely to do; lucky if---- He stood steady, however; in his solid manner finishing the thing in hand first, since that was feasible. He then even retired into winter-quarters to rest his men, and seemed to have left the Swedish sixteen thousand autocrats of the situation, who accordingly went storming about at a great rate.

Not so, however; very far, indeed, from so. Having rested his men for certain months, Friedrich Wilhelm silently, in the first days of June, 1675, gets them under march again; marches his Cavalry and he as first instalment, with best speed from Schweinfurt, which is on the River Mayn, to Magdeburg, a distance of two hundred miles. At Magdeburg, where he rests three days, waiting for the first handful of Foot and a field-piece or two, he learns that the Swedes are in three parties wide asunder, the middle party of them within forty miles of him. Probably stronger, even this middle one, than his small body (of "Six thousand Horse, Twelve hundred Foot, and three guns")--stronger, but capable, perhaps, of being surprised, of being cut in pieces before the others can come up? Rathenau is the nearest skirt of this middle party: thither goes the Kurfuerst, softly, swiftly, in the June night (June 16-17, 1675); gets into Rathenau by brisk stratagem; tumbles out the Swedish Horse regiment there, drives it back toward Fehrbellin.

He himself follows hard; swift riding enough in the summer night through those damp Havel lands, in the old Hohenzollern fashion; and, indeed, old Freisack Castle, as it chances--Freisack, scene of Dietrich von Quitzow and _Lazy Peg_ long since--is close by. Follows hard, we say; strikes in upon this midmost party (nearly twice his number, but Infantry for most part); and after fierce fight, done with good talent on both sides, cuts it into utter ruin, as proposed; thereby he has left the Swedish Army as a mere head and tail without body; has entirely demolished the Swedish Army. Same feat intrinsically as that done by Cromwell on Hamilton and the Scots in 1648. It was, so to speak, the last visit Sweden paid to Brandenburg, or the last of any consequence, and ended the domination of the Swedes in those quarters--a thing justly to be forever remembered by Brandenburg; on a smallish modern scale, the Bannockburn, Sempach, Marathon of Brandenburg.

Exploit Second was four years later--in some sort a corollary to this, and a winding up of the Swedish business. The Swedes, in further prosecution of their Louis XIV speculation, had invaded Preussen this time, and were doing sad havoc there. It was in the dead of winter--Christmas, 1678--more than four hundred miles off; and the Swedes, to say nothing of their own havoc, were in a case to take Koenigsberg, and ruin Prussia altogether, if not prevented. Friedrich Wilhelm starts from Berlin, with the opening Year, on his long march; the Horse-troops first, Foot to follow at their swiftest; he himself (his Wife, his ever-true "Louisa," accompanying, as her wont was) travels toward the end, at the rate of "sixty miles a day." He gets in still in time; finds Koenigsberg unscathed; nay, it is even said the Swedes are extensively falling sick, having after a long famine found infinite "pigs near Insterburg," in those remote regions, and indulged in the fresh pork overmuch.

I will not describe the subsequent manoeuvres, which would interest nobody; enough if I say that on January 16, 1679, it had become of the highest moment for Friedrich Wilhelm to get from Carwe (Village near Elbing), on the shore of the _Frische Haf_, where he was, through Koenigsberg, to Gilge on the _Curische Haf_, where the Swedes are, in a minimum of time. Distance, as the crow flies, is about a hundred miles; road, which skirts the two _Hafs_ (wide shallow _Washes_, as we should name them), is of rough quality and naturally circuitous. It is ringing frost to-day, and for days back. Friedrich Wilhelm hastily gathers all the sledges, all the horses of the district; mounts Four thousand men in sledges; starts with speed of light, in that fashion; scours along all day, and after the intervening bit of land, again along, awakening the ice-bound silences. Gloomy _Frische Haf_, wrapped in its Winter cloud-coverlids, with its wastes of tumbled sand, its poor frost-bound fishing-hamlets, pine hillocks--desolate- looking, stern as Greenland, or more so, says Busching, who travelled there in winter-time--hears unexpected human voices, and huge grinding and trampling; the Four thousand, in long fleet of sledges, scouring across it in that manner. All day they rush along--out of the rimy hazes of morning into the olive-colored clouds of evening again--with huge, loud-grinding rumble, and do arrive in time at Gilge. A notable streak of things, shooting across those frozen solitudes in the New Year, 1679; little short of Karl Gustav's feat, which we heard of in the other or Danish end of the Baltic, twenty years ago, when he took islands without ships.