Accurate Professor Ranke has read somewhere,--does not comfortably say where, nor comfortably give the least date,--this passage, or what authorizes him to write it. "In that Pleasure-Camp of Muhlberg, where the eyes of so many strangers were directed to him, the Crown-Prince was treated like a disobedient boy, and one time even with strokes (KORPERLICH MISSHANDELT), to make him feel he was only considered as such. The enraged King, who never weighed the consequences of his words, added mockery to his manual outrage. He said, 'Had I been treated so by my Father, I would have blown my brains out: but this fellow has no honor, he takes all that comes!'" [Ranke, <italic> Neun Bucher Preussischer Geschichte <end italic> (Berlin, 1847), i. 297.] EINMAL KORPERLICHMISSHANDELT: why did not the Professor give us time, occasion, circumstances, and name of some eye-witness? For the fact, which stands reported in the like fashion in all manner of Histories, we shall otherwise find to be abundantly certain; and it produced conspicuous definite results. It is, as it were, the one fact still worth human remembrance in this expensive Radewitz and its fooleries; and is itself left in that vague inert state,--irremediable at present.
Beaten like a slave; while lodged, while figuring about, like a royal highness, in this sumptuous manner! It appears clearly the poor Prince did hereupon, in spite of his word given to Wilhelmina, make up his mind to run. Ingenious Ranke, forgetting again to date, knows from the Archives, that Friedrich went shortly afterwards to call on Graf von Hoym, one day. Speaking to Graf von Hoym, who is Saxon First-Minister, and Factotum of the arrangements here, he took occasion cursorily to ask, Could not a glimpse of Leipzig, among all these fine things, be had? Order for horses to or at Leipzig, for "a couple of officers" (Lieutenant Keith and self),--quietly, without fuss of passes and the like, Herr Graf?--The Herr Graf glances into it with eyes which have a twinkle in them: SCHWERLICH, Royal Highness. They are very strict about passes. Do not try it, Royal Highness! [Ranke, ib.;Forster, i. 365, and more especially iii. 4 (Seckendorf's Narrative there).] And Friedrich did desist, in that direction, poor youth; but tried it the more in others. Very busy, in deep secrecy, corresponding with Lieutenant Katte at Berlin, consulting tragically with Captain Guy Dickens here.--Whether any hint or whisper came to the Prussian Majesty from Graf von Hoym?
Lieutenant Keith was, shortly after, sent to Wesel to mind his soldiering there, far down the Rhine Country in the Garrison of Wesel; [Wilhelmina told us lately (supra, p. 149), Keith HAD been sent to Wesel; but she has misdated as usual.] better there than colleaguing with a Fritz, and suggesting to him idle truancies or worse.
With Katte at Berlin the desperate Prince has concocted another scheme of Flight, this Hoym one being impossible; scheme executable by Katte and him, were this Radewitz once over. And as for his consultations with Guy Dickens, the result of them is:
Captain Dickens, on the 16th of June, with eyes brisk enough, and lips well shut, sets out from Radewitz express for London. This is what I read as abstract of HOTHAM'S DESPATCH, 16th June, 1730, which Dickens is to deliver with all caution at St. James's:
"Crown-Prince has communicated to Dickens his plan of escape;'could no longer bear the outrages of his Father.' Is to attend his Father to Anspath shortly (JOURNEY TO THE REICH, of which we shall hear anon), and they are to take a turn to Stuttgard:
which latter is not very far from Strasburg on the French side of the Rhine. To Strasburg he will make his escape; stay six weeks or a couple of months (that his Mother be not suspected); and will then proceed to England. Hopes England will take such measures as to save his Sister from ruin." These are his fixed resolutions:
what will England do in such abstruse case?--Captain Dickens speeds silently with his Despatch; will find Lord Harrington, not Townshend any more; [Resigned 15th May, 1730: Despatch to Hotham, as farewell, of that date.] will copiously open his lips to Harrington on matters Prussian. A brisk military man, in the prime of his years; who might do as Prussian Envoy himself, if nothing great were going on? Harrington's final response will take some deliberating.
Hotham, meanwhile, resumes his report, as we too must do, of the Scenic Exhibitions;--and, we can well fancy, is getting weary of it; wishing to be home rather, "as his business here seems ended."[Preceding Despatch (of 16th June).] One day he mentions a rumor (inane high rumors being prevalent in such a place); "rumor circulated here, to which I do not give the slightest credit, that the Prince-Royal of Prussia is to have one of the Archduchesses,"perhaps Maria Theresa herself! Which might indeed have saved immensities of trouble to the whole world, as well as to the Pair in question, and have made a very different History for Germany and the rest of us. Fancy it! But for many reasons, change of religion, had there been no other, it was an impossible notion.
"May be," thinks Hotham, "that the Court of Vienna throws out this bait to continue the King's delusion,"--or a snuffle from Seckendorf, without the Court, may have given it currency in so inane an element as Radewitz.