He had some trouble, considerable trouble, now and then, with mutinous
spirits in Preussen; men standing on antique Prussian franchises and
parchments, refusing to see that the same were now antiquated incompatible,
nor to say impossible, as the new Sovereign alleged, and carrying
themselves very stiffly at times. But the Hohenzollerns had been used
to such things; a Hohenzollern like this one would evidently take his
measures, soft but strong, and even stronger to the needful pitch, with
mutinous spirits. One Buergermeister of Koenigsberg, after much stroking
on the back, was at length seized in open Hall by Electoral writ, soldiers
having first gently barricaded the principal streets, and brought cannon to
bear upon them. This Buergermeister, seized in such brief way, lay prisoner
for life, refusing to ask his liberty, though it was thought he might have
had it on asking.
Another gentleman, a Baron von Kalkstein, of old Teutsch-Ritter kin, of
very high ways, in the Provincial Estates _(Staende)_ and elsewhere, got
into lofty, almost solitary, opposition, and at length, into mutiny proper,
against the new "Non-Polish" Sovereign, and flatly refused to do homage at
his accession--refused, Kalkstein did, for his share; fled to Warsaw; and
very fiercely, in a loud manner, carried out his mutinies in the Diets and
Court Conclaves there, his plea being, or plea for the time, "Poland is our
liege lord" (which it was not always), "and we cannot be transferred to
you except by our consent asked and given," which, too, had been a little
neglected on the former occasion of transfer; so that the Great Elector
knew not what to do with Kalkstein, and at length (as the case was
pressing) had him kidnapped by his Embassador at Warsaw; had him "rolled in
a carpet" there, and carried swiftly in the Embassador's coach, in the
form of luggage, over the frontier, into his native Province, there to be
judged, and, in the end (since nothing else would serve him), to have the
sentence executed, and his head cut off; for the case was pressing. These
things, especially this of Kalkstein, with a boisterous Polish Diet and
parliamentary eloquence in the rear of him, gave rise to criticisms, and
required management on the part of the Great Elector.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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