Frederick the Great

by Nancy Mitford

  Frederick had already got the famous dancer Barbarina whom he had practically kidnapped from Venice and the arms of her Scotch lover, James Mackenzie. Mackenzie was the brother of Lord Bute, who was to be Frederick’s implacable enemy in years to come, some think for reasons not unconnected with this episode. La Barbarina was paid more than a Cabinet Minister, and soon had a nice little nest-egg in the English funds; but she was too attractive to men to stay long at the opera. The King himself was thought to have had skirmishes with her (her limbs were those of a boy); she had an affair with Algarotti during which Frederick said that the Italian showed a sordid cupidity; finally she caused a scandal by marrying young Cocceji, the son of Frederick’s Chancellor. The Cocceji family were so furious that Frederick had to banish the couple to Silesia. There she found a nobleman whom she preferred to her husband, managed to get a divorce, married him, had a large family and was heard of no more.

  Algarotti reappeared at Berlin. Frederick sent him a note summoning him to Potsdam:

  Your brilliant imagination, your genius and your gifts are passports to any civilized country. It is now six years since you dived out of my sight and I’ve only had secondhand news of you; all the same I am delighted that you have surfaced at last. Are you often going to dive like this? To what extent have we got pretensions as regards your person? You will answer all these questions when I see you.

  The answers seem to have been satisfactory and the Venetian was decorated with the new order Pour le Mérite, which was exclusively for Prussian subjects. His title of Count had been given him by Frederick. But Algarotti was a restless creature. He began to feel ill at Berlin. Frederick sent him to take the waters at Eger; it was very dull there and he asked for leave to go and stay with Prince Lobkowitz at Sagan—the doctor thought the journey would be good for him. Short leave was granted. But the weather changed; he sweated and suffocated during meals, and the doctor thought the journey to Berlin would not be good for him. All these fevers and feeblenesses, Frederick said, could only mean that Algarotti was in love. He told him to answer this letter in person, which he did. Frederick, who was a great believer in exercise, advised him to go out riding. Algarotti hated riding; he said it would be tiresome if, in order to activate the blood, he were to break a few vertebrae in his neck.

  A new secretary, Claude Étienne Darget in some ways took the place of Jordan; like Jordan he was a good, almost saintly man, and devoted to the King. He had been attached to Valory and had shown courage and loyalty during the Silesian war when Hungarians broke into the house where he and Valory were billeted, bent on kidnapping His Excellency. Darget calmly pretended to be the ambassador and they took him away—it was a brave act on his part as these irregulars were highly so in their behaviour, and almost anything might have happened to him—luckily they did him no harm. Darget, like many of Frederick’s associates, was a hypochondriac. D’Argens was another; Voltaire and Algarotti used poor health, real or imaginary, to further various designs. The King himself, who was never really well, seldom out of pain, hardly mentioned the fact; in no way did it interfere either with his work or with his amusements. Rothenburg, dying now, in agony, from his wound, was utterly stoical.

  The moans and groans of healthy people exasperated the King or made him laugh. ‘One does as one wishes with the body—when the soul says quick march it obeys.’ His intellectual friends, his beaux esprits, were incapable of saying ‘quick march!’ and he was very much inclined to tease them. He ends a note to Darget: ‘Good-bye—I wish you a good job in the privy, abundant urination and those agreeable movements of nature which reassure you as to your virility.’ To d’Argens, prolific in new illnesses, ‘As I’m clearly never going to see you again in this world I’ll give you a rendezvous in the valley of Jehoshaphat and there hand over to you the pictures in Sans Souci which you have coveted for so long.’ ‘One is entitled to like being ill but overeating is incompatible with health, nor is total rest good for the body.’ D’Argens played up to Frederick’s teasing and enjoyed it until, years later, Frederick went too far. The illness of Rothenburg was deeply distressing to the King. He loved him and he prized him because, like Schwerin in the older generation, he was not only an excellent soldier but also able to shine in any company. The same could not be said of the other young general, Winterfeldt, with whom the King shared his military secrets. He could be very funny in his own way but he had no French and used to beg the King to give him a regiment and let him leave the court where he felt bored and out of it. But Frederick could not do without him. Winterfeldt had a beautiful wife, whom he had met while on a mission to St Petersburg. She was the stepdaughter of Marshal Münnich. He had smuggled her out of Russia and she had been obliged to leave all her jewels and possessions behind.

  In 1748 peace was signed at Aix-la-Chapelle; it almost amounted to a status quo ante. Louis XV gave up his huge acquisitions in the Netherlands thinking that, if he kept them, war would soon break out again. He said he went to the conference table as a king and not a tradesman. He did, however, take Parma as an establishment for his daughter and her husband, the Infante Philip of Spain. (They founded the family of Bourbon-Parma.) The chief beneficiary of this cruel war was the King of Prussia who had started it eight years ago: he was now seen to hold the balance between France and Austria.

  Soon afterwards Maurice de Saxe stayed a few days with Frederick, whom he fascinated, and who picked his brains shamelessly. He said he ought to have a school for generals. He apologized for keeping him up so late, having only thought selfishly of his own longing to learn from him. Saxe was desperately ill and a few months later he died, aged fifty-four, saying that his life had been a beautiful dream. His book on warfare, Mes Rêveries, was always by Frederick’s bed.

  The King now acquired two new Keith brothers, very different from the wretched fellows who had helped with his escape. There was an amazing quantity of Scotch and Irish Jacobites in all European armies; as they were splendid fighters, many aristocrats rose to the highest rank. Even humble fellows often got on very well. General the Hon. James Keith led Russian troops to victory against the Turks and was then empowered to treat with the Sultan’s envoy. They exchanged many a formal salutation, after which Keith was astounded to hear, from under the turban and over the beard: ‘Unco happy . . . sae far frae hame.’ The envoy had been the bell-ringer at Keith’s village in Scotland. James Keith, more and more aware of the uncertainties of serving in Russia, where at any moment you might suffer a dreadful fate such as having your tongue cut out, got away with some difficulty and offered his sword to Frederick. The two men liked each other at once, and Frederick was so delighted to have him and, knowing that other courts would welcome such a first-class officer, so keen to keep him, that he gave him a Field Marshal’s baton and cast about for ways of making him happy. When Keith mentioned the fact that his adored elder brother was living at Treviso in extreme poverty Frederick immediately invited him to Berlin.

  Lord Keith, born about 1690, was hereditary Earl Marischal of Scotland and had owned vast estates there. His family was Jacobite on both sides, and his mother, daughter of the titular Duke of Perth, wrote a famous ballad called Lady Keith’s Lament: ‘And I’ll be Lady Keith again when the King comes o’er the water.’ Her sons both took part in the 1715 Rising but Lord Keith’s orderly soul was outraged by the confusion of that campaign. After the Battle of Sherriffmuir his groom was murdered and his baggage stolen by a fellow officer, the young Laird of Bohaldy, with a party of MacGregors. The battle itself was a mess. ‘And we ran and they ran and they ran and we ran and we ran but they ran awa’, man.’ Lord Keith, though always faithful to ‘James III’, partly for the sake of his adorable mother, Mary of Modena, lost his ardour for the cause and if there was one thing he could not abide thereafter it was Jacobites. Nevertheless, from a sense of duty, he took part in Alberoni’s rising (1719), and when it failed he escaped from Scotland by the skin of his teeth. His land was confiscated by George I and he was condemned to death in
his absence. But King George could not prevent him from using his title of Earl Marischal, and to the end of his days he subscribed himself ‘Maréchal d’Écosse’—the foreigners among whom he lived called him ‘Milord Maréchal’. He settled at Valencia, whose climate he loved and which was his base for many years. He travelled incessantly and was at home in the courts of Spain, France and Russia—there were few important or interesting people in Europe whom he did not know. He kept in touch with his King, now living in Rome, but could never endure Charles Edward: the aberrant behaviour of the Bonnie Prince repelled him; he saw no future for him. He felt that he had done enough for the cause, which had cost him everything except his life, and he took no part in the ’45.

  Milord Maréchal was always accompanied by what he called his menagerie: ‘a little horde of Tartars with whom I get on very well’. They were Ermetulla the Turkish lady, Stepan the Tibetan, Ibraham the Kalmuck, and Mocha the Nigger. Ermetulla was the daughter of a janissary. A little girl at the Battle of Ochakov (1737), she ran beside the horse of James Keith, hanging upon his stirrup. He took charge of her and gave her to his brother. When she was grown up Milord Maréchal thought he would like to sleep with her, but she said, ‘I am your property but I have always loved you as a father and would prefer to go on doing so’. And thus it was. Her contemporaries all agree that Ermetulla was a tremendous bore. Stepan was related to the Grand Lama of Tibet and Lord Keith called him ‘my chaplain’ or ‘my illegitimate son’; the two black boys were ‘my bastards’.

  As soon as Frederick saw Milord Maréchal he conceived the warmest feelings for him, and until his death thirty years later Keith was an intimate friend of the King’s. ‘I have a sad and Calvinistic phiz’, he said of himself and no doubt this was a change from the phizzes of Algarotti and Co. Part of the charm that the Keith brothers had for Frederick was that they were honest-to-God gentlemen who could be treated as equals without becoming uppish and could be counted on not to have hurt feelings or to suffer ill-concealed agonies of jealousy. Lord Keith was extremely well-read and had a dry and pawky wit; he shone at the supper parties and everybody liked him. He and his brother lived in Berlin but did not share a house—James Keith had a beautiful Swedish mistress, an orphan, whom, like Ermetulla, he had picked up at the wars. He had her educated and when she was old enough they lived together and produced several children. Probably she did not take to the little horde of Tartars. Frederick made a good allowance to Lord Keith, who now was more at his ease than at any time since leaving Scotland. He was also given the Order of the Black Eagle which he wore in preference to the Thistle. The English looked upon the friendship with no good eye and Legge, a stop-gap minister at Berlin, went so far as to complain of Frederick’s reception of the brothers, both under sentence of death in London. The King observed that it would not occur to him to choose King George’s friends for him. Valory, having taken a long leave, was replaced as French minister at Berlin by Lord Tyrconnel, another Jacobite.

  Frederick’s feelings for the various English ministers accredited to him were seldom indifferent—he loved or he hated them. Gidikins (Guy Dickens) had become an old family friend; Hotham was greatly liked; Robinson was regarded as a joke and was so regarded in London; Hyndford was loathed; Villiers (later Lord Clarendon), who had negotiated the Peace of Dresden, was loved. The most hated of all was the one who now appeared at Berlin, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams. He was only there three weeks before going off on a visit to Poland. Heads of State never care for foreign ambassadors who leave their post to intrigue in neighbouring countries; the Kings of Prussia were particularly ticklish about Poland on account of the situation of East Prussia. As the Kings of Poland were elected, there was always uncertainty about the succession; Augustus III was not old but he did not seem a good life; and the day he died anything might happen. This preoccupied Frederick—one wondered what the English minister might be up to. He was, in fact, trying to find out what the Prussians and the French were up to. He distributed a few bribes among highly placed officials and came away with a portrait of Augustus III framed in diamonds.

  Hanbury Williams was an odious man, a busybody and a gossip with a violent temper. But he was very funny and has left, chiefly in letters to Henry Fox, a hilarious picture of life at Berlin—yes, at Berlin, not at Potsdam since Frederick took such an intense dislike to him that he was invited to none but official functions. After his first reception, which was short but civil, the two men never exchanged a word. Horace Walpole wrote to Mann: ‘Sir Charles Williams is to teach the King of Prussia to fetch and carry.’ He had no chance to administer this lesson. He frequented the two Queens and went to anybody else who would invite him, but the dazzling centre of attraction at Sans Souci was closed to him and he spent much of his time supperless and alone. This was embittering to a man who was accustomed to be sought after for his wit, who had an exaggerated idea of the importance of ambassadors and who liked good company and rich living. His pen, when he wrote to London, was dipped in sparkling vinegar. Nobody could turn a better phrase. He called Frederick’s friends ‘the he-muses’, and said, ‘No female is allowed to approach this court. Males wash the linen, nurse the children, make and unmake the beds.’

  Hanbury Williams describes dining with the Queen Mother, saying that after every dish of eatables a dish of non-eatables was handed round. He likes Frederick’s wife:

  It is a melancholy sight to see this Queen. She is a good woman and must have been extremely handsome. It is impossible to hate her and although his unnatural tastes won’t allow him to live with her, common humanity ought to teach him to permit her to enjoy her separate state in comfort. Instead of this he never misses an opportunity of mortifying this inoffensive and oppressed Queen. The Queen Mother assists her dearly loved son in this by never showing her common civility.

  However, a few days later the Queen Mother gave a banquet for her daughter-in-law’s birthday. Hanbury Williams often got things wrong. He said that Ermetulla was Lord Keith’s mistress, which nobody who knew them ever thought. He said: ‘The thing his Prussian Majesty has in the greatest abhorrence is matrimony. No man, however great a favourite, must think of it—if he does he is certain not to be preferred.’ But Frederick had encouraged Keyserling, the greatest favourite of all, to marry; Maupertuis married the daughter of a minister at Berlin; d’Argens and the greatly cherished Winterfeldt were also happily married. One would like to know of a single case proving Hanbury Williams’s point.

  Of Wilhelmine the Minister wrote:

  There is a little Bitch Royal for you. She is an atheist and talks about fate and destiny and makes a joke of a future state. She speaks of dying as of going to dinner . . . she thinks all time lost that is not spent with books or with such people she has heard other people say are learned. She passes her whole time between conversing with her brother’s beaux esprits, writing volumes and being read to, for as she has weak eyes she cannot read herself . . .

  Now for a little about the compleatest tyrant that God ever sent for a scourge to an offending people. I had rather be a post horse with Sir J. Hind-Cotton on my back than his First Minister, his brother or his wife. He has abolished all distinctions. There is nothing here but an absolute Prince and a People all equally miserable, all equally trembling before him and all equally detesting his iron government. There is not so much distance between a curate and a bishop as there is between the King of Prussia and his immediate successor the Prince of Prussia, who dares not go out of Berlin one mile without his tyrant’s leave nor miss supping every night with his Mamma. Another of his brothers is at this moment sent to banishment in a country town and a third [Prince Henry, no doubt] is in frequent danger of being put in irons for daring in conversation sometimes to have an opinion of his own. It is known that Princess Amalie has a mind to be married to the Duke of Deux Ponts. But he, Nero, told her that she must never marry. And his reason is that she is to be Abbess of Quedlinburg which is worth about £5,000 a year. He will have her spend that money in
Berlin. Besides that he does not care to pay her her fortune which is quite £20,000.

  He makes a great rout with his Mother; but people who know him well say he does not love her and that the duty he has accustomed himself to pay her makes Berlin disagreeable to him and therefore it is that he resides at Potsdam . . . She is an old gossip with all the tittle-tattle of that sort of people . . .

  Berlin is a very fine and large town but thinly inhabited. It is big enough to contain 300,000 souls and yet without the garrison there is not above 80,000 inhabitants. And among these there is not one at whose house you can dine or sup without a formal invitation; and that is a thing that very seldom happens. The one place that is open is the courts of the two Queens.

  But Hanbury Williams found them pretty dull. The only amusing house, that of the Jacobite Lady Tyrconnel, was closed to him. One of the few people he liked in Berlin was the Prince of Prussia, who had ‘great modesty and sweetness and has not that contemptuous insolence with which his Prussian Majesty speaks to everyone. The Prince likes every woman better than his wife, the Queen’s sister, which is sad as they are two such amiable princesses.’ He never once heard German spoken at Berlin.

  Can we doubt that if Sir Charles had been favoured with Nero’s friendship he would have written differently? He made no headway in Prussia, and left after a stay of only eight months. He is to a great extent responsible for Frederick’s unpopularity in England to this day.

  14. The Poet