History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 13 — John Shaqi
History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 13Carlyle, Thomas
History
History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 13
Carlyle, Thomas
Frederick II, King of Prussia, 1712-1786; Prussia (Germany) -- History -- Frederick II, 1740-1786; Social problems
"Our great-grandfathers lived in perpetual terror that they would be
devoured by France; that French ambition would overset the Celestial
Balance, and proceed next to eat the British Nation. Stand upon your
guard then, one would have said: Look to your ships, to your defences,
to your industries; to your virtues first of all,--your VIRTUTES,
manhoods, conformities to the Divine Law appointed you; which are
the great and indeed sole strength to any Man or Nation! Discipline
yourselves, wisely, in all kinds; more and more, till there be no
anarchic fibre left in you. Unanarchic, disciplined at all points, you
might then, I should say, with supreme composure, let France, and the
whole World at its back, try what they could do upon you and the unique
little Island you are so lucky as to live in?--Foolish mortals: what
Potentiality of Battle, think you (not against France only, but against
Satanas and the Ministers of Chaos generally), would a poor Friedrich
Wilhelm, not to speak of better, have got out of such a Possession, had
it been his to put in drill! And drill is not of soldiers only; though
perhaps of soldiers first and most indispensably of all; since 'without
Being,' as my Friend Oliver was wont to say, 'Well-being is not
possible.' There is military drill; there is industrial, economic,
spiritual; gradually there are all kinds of drill, of wise discipline,
of peremptory mandate become effective everywhere, 'OBEY the Laws of
Heaven, or else disappear from these latitudes!' Ah me, if one dealt in
day-dreams, and prophecies of an England grown celestial,--celestial she
should be, not in gold nuggets, continents all of beef, and seas all
of beer, Abolition of Pain, and Paradise to All and Sundry, but in
that quite different fashion; and there, I should say, THERE were the
magnificent Hope to indulge in! That were to me the 'Cause of Liberty;'
and any the smallest contribution towards that kind of 'Liberty' were a
sacred thing!--
"Belleisle again may, if he pleases, call his the Cause of Sovereignty.
A Sovereign Louis, it would appear, has not governing enough to do
within his own French borders, but feels called to undertake Germany as
well;--a gentleman with an immense governing faculty, it would appear?
Truly, good reader, I am sick of heart, contemplating those empty
sovereign mountebanks, and empty antagonist ditto, with their Causes of
Liberty and Causes of Anti-Liberty; and cannot but wish that we had got
the ashes of that World-Explosion, of 1789, well riddled and smelted,
and the poor World were quit of a great many things!"--
My Constitutional Historian of England, musing on Belleisle and his
Anti-Pragmatic industries and grandiosities,--"how Chief-Bully Belleisle
stept down into the ring as a gay Volunteer, and foolish Chief-Defender
George had to follow dismally heroic, as a Conscript of Fate,"--drops
these words: in regard to the Wages they respectively had:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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