History of Friedrich II of Prussia, vol 4 | Page 8

Soldiery of every
civilized country still receives from this man, on parade-fields and
battle-fields, its word of command; out of his rough head proceeded the
essential of all that the innumerable Drill-sergeants, in various
languages, daily repeat and enforce. Such a man is worth some
transient glance from his fellow-creatures,--especially with a little Fritz
trotting at his foot, and drawing inferences from him.
Dessau, we should have said for the English reader's behoof, was and
still is a little independent Principality; about the size of
Huntingdonshire, but with woods instead of bogs;--revenue of it, at this
day, is 60,000 pounds, was perhaps not 20, or even 10,000 in Leopold's
first time. It lies some fourscore miles southwest of Berlin, attainable

by post-horses in a day. Leopold, as his Father had done, stood by
Prussia as if wholly native to it. Leopold's Mother was Sister of that
fine Louisa, the Great Elector's first Wife; his Sister is wedded to the
Margraf of Schwedt, Friedrich Wilhelm's half-uncle. Lying in such
neighborhood, and being in such affinity to the Prussian House, the
Dessauers may be said to have, in late times, their headquarters at
Berlin. Leopold and Leopold's sons, as his father before him had done,
without neglecting their Dessau and Principality, hold by the Prussian
Army as their main employment. Not neglecting Dessau either; but
going thither in winter, or on call otherwise; Leopold least of all
neglecting it, who neglects nothing that can be useful to him.
He is General Field-Marshal of the Prussian Armies, the foremost man
in war-matters with this new King; and well worthy to be so. He is
inventing, or brooding in the way to invent, a variety of things,--"iron
ramrods," for one; a very great improvement on the fragile ineffective
wooden implement, say all the Books, but give no date to it; that is the
first thing; and there will be others, likewise undated, but posterior,
requiring mention by and by. Inventing many things;--and always well
practising what is already invented, and known for certain. In a word,
he is drilling to perfection, with assiduous rigor, the Prussian Infantry
to be the wonder of the world. He has fought with them, too, in a
conclusive manner; and is at all times ready for fighting.
He was in Malplaquet with them, if only as volunteer on that occasion.
He commanded them in Blenheim itself; stood, in the right or Eugene
wing of that famed Battle of Blenheim, fiercely at bay, when the
Austrian Cavalry had all fled;--fiercely volleying, charging, dexterously
wheeling and manoeuvring; sticking to his ground with a mastiff-like
tenacity,--till Marlborough, and victory from the left, relieved him and
others. He was at the Bridge of Cassano; where Eugene and Vendome
came to hand-grips;-- where Mirabeau's Grandfather,
COL-D'ARGENT, got his six-and-thirty wounds, and was "killed" as
he used to term it. [Carlyle's Miscellanies, v. ?
Mirabeau.] "The hottest fire I ever saw," said Eugene, who had not seen
Malplaquet at that time. While Col-d'Argent sank collapsed upon the
Bridge, and the horse charged over him, and again charged, and beat

and were beaten three several times,--Anhalt-Dessau, impatient of such
fiddling hither and thither, swashed into the stream itself with his
Prussian Foot: swashed through it, waist-deep or breast-deep; and
might have settled the matter, had not his cartridges got wetted. Old
King Friedrich rebuked him angrily for his impetuosity in this matter,
and the sad loss of men.
Then again he was at the Storming of the Lines of Turin,--Eugene's feat
of 1706, and a most volcanic business;--was the first man that got-over
the entrenchment there. Foremost man; face all black with the smoke of
gunpowder, only channelled here and there with rivulets of sweat;--not
a lovely phenomenon to the French in the interior! Who still fought like
madmen, but were at length driven into heaps, and obliged to run. A
while before they ran, Anhalt-Dessau, noticing some Captain posted
with his company in a likely situation, stept aside to him for a moment,
and asked, "Am I wounded, think you.?--No? Then have you anything
to drink?" and deliberately "drank a glass of aqua-vitae," the judicious
Captain carrying a pocket-pistol of that sort, in case of accident; and
likewise "eat, with great appetite, a bit of bread from one of the
soldiers' haversacks; saying, He believed the heat of the job was done,
and that there was no fear now!"-- Des weltberumkten Leopoldi,
&c. (Anonymous, by Ranfft, cited above), pp. 42-45, 52,
65.]
A man that has been in many wars; in whose rough head, are schemes
hatching. Any religion he has is of Protestant nature; but he has not
much,--on the doctrinal side, very little. Luther's Hymn, Eine
feste Burg ist unser Gott, he calls "God Almighty's
grenadier-march." On