Charles reached his frigate about nightfall, but made little way from the place, owing to defect of wind. They say, he even heard the chamade beating in Stralsund next day, and that a Danish frigate had nearly taken him; both which statements are perhaps also a little mythical. Certain only that he vanished at this point into Scandinavia; and general Europe never saw him more.
Vanished into a cloud of untenable schemes, guided by Alberoni, Baron Gortz and others; wild schemes, financial, diplomatic, warlike, nothing not chimerical in them but his own unquenchable real energy;--and found his death (by assassination, as appears)in the trenches of Frederickshall, among the Norway Hills, one winter night, three years hence. Assassination instigated by the Swedish Official Persons, it is thought. The bullet passed through both his temples; he had clapt his hand upon the hilt of his sword, and was found leant against the parapet, in that attitude, --gone upon a long march now. So vanished Charles Twelfth;the distressed Official Persons and Nobility exploding upon him in that rather damnable way,--anxious to slip their muzzles at any cost whatever. A man of antique character; true as a child, simple, even bashful, and of a strength and valor rarely exampled among men. Open-hearted Antique populations would have much worshipped such an Appearance;--Voltaire, too, for the artificial Moderns, has made a myth of him, of another type; one of those impossible cast-iron gentlemen, heroically mad, such as they show in the Playhouses, pleasant but not profitable, to an undiscerning Pub1ic. [See Adlerfeld (<italic> Military History of Charles XII.
<end italic> London, 1740, 3 vols., "from the Swedish," through the French) and Kohler (<italic> Munzbelustigungen, <end italic>
ubi supra), for some authentic traits of his life and him.]
The last of the Swedish Kings died in this way; and the unmuzzled Official Persons have not made much of kinging it in his stead.
Charles died; and, as we may say, took the life of Sweden along with him; for it has never shone among the Nations since, or been much worth mentioning, except for its misfortunes, spasmodic impotences and unwisdoms.
Stralsund instantly beat the chamade, as we heard; and all was surrender and subjection in those regions. Surrender; not yet pacification, not while Charles lived; nor for half a century after his death, could Mecklenburg, Holstein-Gottorp, and other his confederates, escape a sad coil of calamities bequeathed by him to them. Friedrich Wilhelm returned to Berlin, victorious from his first, which was also his last Prussian War, in January, 1716;and was doubtless a happy man, NOT "to be buried in the Schlosskirche (under penalty of God's curse)," but to find his little Fritz and Feekin, and all the world, merry to see him, and all things put square again, abroad as at home. He forbade the "triumphal entry" which Berlin was preparing for him; entered privately; and ordered a thanksgiving sermon in all the churches next Sunday.
THE DEVIL IN HARNESS: CREUTZ THE FINANCE-MINISTER.
In the King's absence nothing particular had occurred,--except indeed the walking of a dreadful Spectre, three nights over, in the corridors of the Palace at Berlin; past the doors where our little Prince and Wilhelmina slept: bringing with it not airs from Heaven, we may fear, but blasts from the Other place! The stalwart sentries shook in their paces, and became "half-dead" from terror.
"A horrible noise, one night," says Wilhelmina, "when all were buried in sleep: all the world started up, thinking it was fire;but they were much surprised to find that it was a Spectre."Evident Spectre, seen to pass this way, "and glide along that gallery, as if towards the apartments of the Queen's Ladies."Captain of the Guard could find nothing in that gallery, or anywhere, and withdrew again:--but lo, it returns the way it went!
Stalwart sentries were found melted into actual deliquium of swooning, as the Preternatural swept by this second time.
"They said, It was the Devil in person; raised by Swedish wizards to kill the Prince-Royal." [Wilhelmina, <italic> Memoires de Bareith, i. 18.]l Poor Prince-Royal; sleeping sound, we hope;little more than three years old at this time, and knowing nothing of it!--All Berlin talked of the affair. People dreaded it might be a "Spectre" of Swedish tendencies; aiming to burn the Palace, spirit off the Royal Children, and do one knew not what?
Not that at all, by any means! The Captain of the Guard, reinforcing himself to defiance even of the Preternatural, does, on the third or fourth apparition, clutch the Spectre; finds him to be--a prowling Scullion of the Palace, employed here he will not say how; who is straightway locked in prison, and so exorcised at least. Exorcism is perfect; but Berlin is left guessing as to the rest,--secret of it discoverable only by the Queen's Majesty and some few most interior parties. To the following effect.
Spectre-Scullion, it turns out, had been employed by Grumkow, as spy upon one of the Queen's Maids of Honor,--suspected by him to be a No-maid of Dishonor, and of ill intentions too,--who lodges in that part of the Palace: of whom Herr Grumkow wishes intensely to know, "Has she an intrigue with Creutz the new Finance-Minister, or has she not?" "Has, beyond doubt!" the Spectre-Scullion hopes he has discovered, before exorcism.
Upon which Grumkow, essentially illuminated as to the required particular, manages to get the Spectre-Scullion loose again, not quite hanged; glozing the matter off to his Majesty on his return:
for the rest, ruins entirely the Creutz speculation; and has the No-maid called of Honor--with whom Creutz thought to have seduced the young King also, and made the young King amenable--dismissed from Court in a peremptory irrefragable manner. This is the secret of the Spectre-Scullion, fully revealed by Wilhelmina many years after.