THE GREAT ELECTOR: FEHRBELLIN AND GILGE.

BY THOMAS CARLYLE.

(From "Frederick the Great.")

[THOMAS CARLYLE, Scotch moralist, essayist, and historian, was born at Ecclefechan, December 4, 1795. He studied for the ministry at Edinburgh University, taught school, studied law, became a hack writer and tutor; in 1826 married Jane Welsh, and in 1828 removed to a farm at Craigenputtoch, where he wrote essays and "Sartor Resartus "; in 1834 removed to his final home in Cheyne Row, Chelsea. His "French Revolution" was issued in 1837. He lectured for three years, "Heroes and Hero Worship" gathering up one course. His chief succeeding works were "Chartism Past and Present," "Cromwell's Letters," "Latter-day Pamphlets," "Life of Sterling," and "Frederick the Great. He died February 4, 1881.]

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-worshiping 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-ofNantes affair, he was like an express Benefit of Heaven: one Helper appointed, to whom the help itself was profitable. munificently welcomed them to Brandenburg; showed really a noble piety and human pity, as well as judgment; nor did Brandenburg and he want their reward. Some 20,000 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.

He

Certainly this Elector was one of the shiftiest of men. Not an unjust man either. A pious, God-fearing man rather, Staunch to his Protestantism and his Bible; not unjust by any means, -nor, on the other hand, by any means thick-skinned in his interpretings of justice: Fairplay to myself always; or

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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.

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 the 18th June 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-Fourteenth 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 marches, troop after troop, and invaded his Brandenburg Territory with a force which at length amounted to some 16,000 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 even then retired into winter-quarters, to rest his men and seemed to have left the Swedish 16,000 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 installment, with best speed from Schweinfurt, which is on the river Mayn, to Magdeburg; a distance of

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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 "Sixthousand 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 Kurfürst, softly, swiftly, in the June night (16th-17th June 1675); gets into Rathenau by brisk stratagem; tumbles-out the Swedish Horse-regiment there, drives it back towards 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 the first 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 farther prosecution of their Louis-Fourteenth 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 other havoc, were in a case to take Königsberg, 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, towards the end, at the rate of "Sixty miles a day." He gets in still in time, finds Königsberg

unscathed. Nay it is even said, the Swedes are extensivoly falling sick; having after a long famine, found infinite "pigs, near Insterburg," in those remote regions, and indulged in the fresh pork over-much.

ous.

I will not describe the subsequent maneuvers, which would interest nobody: enough if I say that on the 16th of January 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 Königsberg, 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 circuitIt is ringing frost to-day, and for days back:- Friedrich Wilhelm hastily gathers all the sledges, all the horses of the district; mounts some Four-thousand men in sledges; starts, with the 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, wrapt 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 Büsching, who traveled there in winter-time, hears unexpected human noises, 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.

This Second Exploit is still a thing to be remembered by Hohenzollerns and Prussians. The Swedes were beaten here, on Friedrich Wilhelm's rapid arrival; were driven into disastrous rapid retreat Northward; which they executed in hunger and cold; fighting continually, like Northern bears, under the grim sky; Friedrich Wilhelm sticking to their skirts, -holding by their tail, like an angry bearward with a steel whip in his hand. A thing which, on the small scale, reminds one of Napoleon's experience. Not till Napoleon's huge fighting-flight, a Hundred-and-thirty-four years after, did I read of such a transaction in those parts. The Swedish invasion of Preussen had gone utterly to ruin.