Young Friedrich Wilhelm's courtship, wedding in Holland;the honest trustful walk and conversation of the two Sovereign Spouses, their journeyings together, their mutual hopes, fears and manifold vicissitudes; till Death, with stern beauty, shut it in:
--all is human, true and wholesome in it; interesting to look upon, and rare among sovereign persons.
Not but that he had his troubles with his womankind. Even with this his first Wife, whom he loved truly, and who truly loved him, there were scenes; the Lady having a judgment of her own about everything that passed, and the Man being choleric withal.
Sometimes, I have heard, "he would dash his hat at her feet,"saying symbolically, "Govern you, then, Madam! Not the Kurfurst-Hat; a Coif is my wear, it seems!" [Forster, <italic>
Friedrich Wilhelm I. Konig von Preussen <end italic> (Potsdam, 1834), i. 177.] Yet her judgment was good; and he liked to have it on the weightiest things, though her powers of silence might halt now and then. He has been known, on occasion, to run from his Privy-Council to her apartment, while a complex matter was debating, to ask her opinion, hers too, before it was decided.
Excellent Louisa; Princess full of beautiful piety, good-sense and affection; a touch of the Nassau-Heroic in her. At the moment of her death, it is said, when speech had fled, he felt, from her hand which lay in his, three slight, slight pressures: "Farewell!"thrice mutely spoken in that manner,--not easy to forget in this world. [Wegfuhrer, <italic> Leben der Kurfurstin Luise <end italic> (Leipzig, 1838), p. 175.]
His second Wife, Dorothea,--who planted the Lindens in Berlin, and did other husbandries, of whom we have heard, fell far short of Louisa in many things; but not in tendency to advise, to remonstrate, and plaintively reflect on the finished and unalterable. Dreadfully thrifty lady, moreover; did much in dairy produce, farming of town-rates, provision-taxes: not to speak again of that Tavern she was thought to have in Berlin, and to draw custom to in an oblique manner! What scenes she had with Friedrich her stepson, we have seen. "Ah, I have not my Louisa now; to whom now shall I run for advice or help!" would the poor Kurfurst at times exclaim.
He had some trouble, considerable trouble now and then, with mutinous spirits in Preussen; men standing on antique Prussian franchises and parchments; refusing to see that the same were now antiquated, incompatible, not to say impossible, as the new Sovereign alleged; and carrying themselves very stiffly at times.
But the Hohenzollerns had been used to such things; a Hohenzollern like this one would evidently take his measures, soft but strong, and ever stronger to the needful pitch, with mutinous spirits.
One Burgermeister of Konigsberg, after much stroking on the back, was at length seized in open Hall, by Electoral writ,--soldiers having first gently barricaded the principal streets, and brought cannon to bear upon them. This Burgermeister, seized in such brief way, lay prisoner for life; refusing to ask his liberty, though it was thought he might have had it on asking. [Horn, <italic> Das Leben Friedrich Wilhelms des Grossen <end italic> (Berlin, 1814), p. 68.]
Another gentleman, a Baron von Kalkstein, of old Teutsch-Bitter kin, of very high ways, in the Provincial Estates (STANDE) and elsewhere, got into lofty almost solitary opposition, and at length into mutiny proper, against the new "Non-Polish SOVEREIGN,"and flatly refused to do homage at his accession in that new capacity. [Supra, pp. 383, et seqq.] Refused, Kalkstein did, for his share; fled to Warsaw; and very fiercely, in a loud manner, carried on his mutinies in the Diets and Court-Conclaves there;his plea being, or plea for the time, "Poland is our liege lord [which it was not always], and we cannot be transferred to you, except by our consent asked and given," which too had been a little neglected on the former occasion of transfer. So that the Great Elector knew not what to do with Kalkstein; and at length (as the case was pressing) had him kidnapped by his Ambassador at Warsaw; had him "rolled into a carpet" there, and carried swiftly in the Ambassador's coach, in the form of luggage, over the frontier, into his native Province, there to be judged, and, in the end (since nothing else would serve him), to have the sentence executed, and his head cut off. For the case was pressing! [Horn, pp. 80-82.]--These things, especially this of Kalkstein, with a boisterous Polish Diet and parliamentary eloquence in the rear of him, gave rise to criticism; and required management on the part of the Great Elector.
Of all his Ancestors, our little Fritz, when he grew big, admired this oue. A man made like himself in many points. He seems really to have loved and honored this one. In the year 1750 there had been a new Cathedral got finished at Berlin; the ancestral bones had to be shifted over from the vaults of the old one,--the burying-place ever since Joachim II., that Joachim who drew his sword on Alba. "King Friedrich, with some attendants, witnessed the operation, January, 1750. When the Great Kurfurst's coffin came, he made them open it; gazed in silence on the features for some time, which were perfectly recognizable; laid his hand on the hand long dead, and said, <italic> 'Messieurs, celui-ci a fait de grandes choses <end italic> (This one did a great work)!'" [See Preuss, i. 270.]