[History of Friedrich II. of Prussia Vol. IX. (of XXI.) by Thomas Carlyle]@TWC D-Link bookHistory of Friedrich II. of Prussia Vol. IX. (of XXI.) CHAPTER VI 6/7
For which too there is a remedy.
Cut off sufficient outlying slices of Poland; fling these to the neighboring Kings to produce consent: Partition of Poland, in fact; large sections of its Territory sliced away: that will be the method, thinks King August. "Neighboring Kings, Kaiser, Prussia, Russia, to them it is not grievous that Poland should remain in perennial anarchy, in perennial impotence; the reverse rather: a dead horse, or a dying, in the next stall,--he at least will not kick upon us, think the neighboring Kings.
And yet,--under another similitude,--you do not like your next-door neighbor to be always on the point of catching fire; smoke issuing, thicker or thinner, through the slates of his roof, as a perennial phenomenon? August will conciliate the neighboring Kings.
Russia, big-cheeked Anne Czarina there, shall have not only Courland peaceably henceforth, but the Ukraine, Lithuania, and other large outlying slices; that surely will conciliate Russia.
To Austria, on its Hungarian border, let us give the Country of Zips;--nay there are other sops we have for Austria. Pragmatic Sanction, hitherto refused as contrary to plain rights of ours,--that, if conceded to a spectre-hunting Kaiser? To Friedrich Wilhelm we could give West-Preussen; West-Preussen torn away three hundred years ago, and leaving a hiatus in the very continuity of Friedrich Wilhelm: would not that conciliate him? Of all enemies or friends, Friedrich Wilhelm, close at hand with 80,000 men capable of fighting at a week's, notice, is by far the most important. "These are August's plans: West-Preussen for the nearest Neighbor; Zips for Austria; Ukraine, Lithuania, and appendages for the Russian Czarina: handsome Sections to be sliced off, and flung to good neighbors; as it were, all the outlying limbs and wings of the Polish Territory sliced off; compact body to remain, and become, by means of August and Saxon troops, a Kingdom with government, not an imaginary Republic without government any longer.
<<Back Index Next>> D-Link book Top TWC mobile books
|