He gave his Wife, poor little fat devout creature, and his poor Children (eldest lad, his Heir, only seventeen), a tender blessing;solemnly exhorted them, To eschew ambition, and be warned by his example;--to make their peace with Austria; and never, like him, try COM' E DURO CALLE, and what the charity of Christian Kings amounts to. This counsel, it is thought, the Empress Dowager zealously accedes to, and will impress upon her Son. That is the Austrian and Cause-of-Liberty account: King Friedrich, from the other side, has heard a directly opposite one. How the Kaiser, at the point of death, exhorted his son, 'Never forget the services which the King of France and the King of Prussia have done us, and do not repay them with ingratitude.' [ OEuvres de Frederic, iii. 92;--and see (PER CONTRA) in Adelung, iv. 314 A;in Coxe, &c.] The reader can choose which he will, or reject both into the region of the uncertain. 'Karl Albert's pious and affectionate demeanor drew tears from all eyes,' say the by-standers: 'the manner in which he took leave of his Empress would have melted a heart of stone.' He was in his forty-eighth year; he had been, of all men in his generation, the most conspicuously unhappy."What a down-rush of confusion there ensued on this event, not to Bavaria alone, but to all the world, and to King Friedrich more than another, no reader can now take the pains of conceiving.
The "Frankfurt Union," then, has gone to air! Here is now no "Kaiser to be delivered from oppression:" here is a new Kaiser to be elected,--"Grand-Duke Franz the man," cry the Pragmatic Potentates with exultation, "no Belleisle to disturb!"--and questions arise innumerable thereupon, Will France go into electioneering again? The new Kur-Baiern, only seventeen, poor child, cannot be set up as candidate. What will France do with HIM;what he with France? Whom can the French try as Candidate against the Grand-Duke? Kur-Sachsen, the Polish Majesty again? Belleisle himself must have paused uncertain over such a welter,--and probably have done, like the others, little or nothing in it, but left it to collapse by natural gravitation.
Hungarian Majesty checked her Bavarian Armaments a little:
"If perhaps this young Kur-Baiern will detach himself from France, and on submissive terms come over to us?" Whereupon, at Munchen, and in the cognate quarters, such wriggling, dubitating and diplomatizing, as seldom was,--French, Anti-French (Seckendorf busiest of all), straining every nerve in that way, and for almost three months, nothing coming of it,--till Hungarian Majesty sent her Barenklaus and Bathyanis upon them again; and these rapidly solved the question, in what way we shall see!
Friedrich has still his hopes of Bavaria, so grandiloquent are the French in regard to it; who but would hope? The French diplomatize to all lengths in Munchen, promising seas and mountains; but they perform little; in an effectual manner, nothing. Bavarian "Army raised to 60,000;" counts in fact little above half that number;with no General to it but an imaginary one; Segur's actual French contingent, instead of 25,000, is perhaps 12,000;--and so of other things. Add to all which, Seckendorf is there, not now as War-General, but as extra-official "Adviser;" busier than ever,--"scandalous old traitor!" say the French;--and Friedrich may justly fear that Bavaria will go, by collapse, a bad road for him.
Friedrich, a week or two after the Kaiser's death, seeing Bavarian and French things in such a hypothetic state, instructs his Ambassador at London to declare his, Friedrich's, perfect readiness and wish for Peace: "Old Treaty of Breslau and Berlin made indubitable to me; the rest of the quarrel has, by decease of the Kaiser, gone to air." To which the Britannic Majesty, rather elated at this time, as all Pragmatic people are, answers somewhat in a careless way, "Well, if the others like it!" and promises that he will propose it in the proper quarter. So that henceforth there is always a hope of Peace through England; as well as contrariwise, especially till Bavaria settle itself (in April next), a hope of great assistance from the French. Here are potentialities and counter-potentialities, which make the Bavarian Intricacy very agitating to the young King, while it lasts. And indeed his world is one huge imbroglio of Potentialities and Diplomatic Intricacies, agitating to behold. Concerning which we have again to remark how these huge Spectres of Diplomacy, now filling Friedrich's world, came mostly in result to Nothing;--shaping themselves wholly, for or against, in exact proportion, direct or inverse, to the actual Quantity of Battle and effective Performance that happened to be found in Friedrich himself. Diplomatic Spectralities, wide Fatamorganas of hope, and hideous big Bugbears blotting out the sun: of these, few men ever had more than Friedrich at this time.
And he is careful, none carefuler, not to neglect his Diplomacies at any time;--though he knows, better than most, that good fighting of his own is what alone can determine the value of these contingent and aerial quantities,--mere Lapland witchcraft the greater part of them.