[History of Friedrich II. of Prussia Vol. X. (of XXI.) by Thomas Carlyle]@TWC D-Link bookHistory of Friedrich II. of Prussia Vol. X. (of XXI.) CHAPTER V 14/20
He did transiently get about Friedrich, as we shall see; and hoped to have sold his heart to good purpose there;--was, by and by, employed in slight functions; not found fit for grave ones.
In the course of some years, he got a title of Baron; and sold his heart more advantageously, to some rich Widow or Fraulein; with whom he retired to Saxony, and there lived on an Estate he had purchased, a stranger to Prussia thenceforth. His Book (_Lettres Familieres et Autres,_ all turning on Friedrich), which came out in 1763, at the height of Friedrich's fame, and was much read, is still freely cited by Historians as an Authority.
But the reading of a few pages sufficiently intimates that these "Letters" never can have gone through a terrestrial Post-office; that they are an afterthought, composed from vague memory and imagination, in that fine Saxon retreat;--a sorrowful ghost-like "TRAVELS OF ANACHARSIS," instead of living words by an eye-witness! Not to be cited "freely" at all, but sparingly and under conditions.
They abound in small errors, in misdates, mistakes; small fictions even, and impossible pretensions:--foolish mortal, to write down his bit of knowledge in that form! For the man, in spite of his lace ruffles and gesticulations, has brisk eyesight of a superficial kind: he COULD have done us this little service (apparently his one mission in the world, for which Nature gave him bed and board here); and he, the lace ruffles having gone into his soul, has been tempted into misdoing it!--Bielfeld and Bielfeld's Book, such as they are, appear to be the one conquest Friedrich got of Freemasonry; no other result now traceable to us of that adventure in Korn's Hotel, crowning event of the Journey to Loo. SECKENDORF GETS LODGED IN GRATZ. Feldmarschall Seckendorf, after unheard-of wrestlings with the Turk War, and the Vienna War-Office (HOFKRIEGSRATH), is sitting, for the last three weeks,--where thinks the reader ?--in the Fortress of Gratz among the Hills of Styria; a State-Prisoner, not likely to get out soon! Seckendorf led forth, in 1737, "such an Army, for number, spirit and equipment," say the Vienna people, "as never marched against the Turk before;" and it must be owned, his ill success has been unparalleled. The blame was not altogether his; not chiefly his, except for his rash undertaking of the thing, on such terms as there were.
But the truth is, that first scene we saw of him,--an Army all gone out trumpeting and drumming into the woods to FIND its Commander-in-Chief,--was an emblem of the Campaign in general.
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