So that Tottleben had fairly to fire upon the vagabonds once or twice; and force on the unwilling Lacy some coercion of them within limits. For the three days of his continuance,--it was but three days in all,--Lacy was as the evil genius of Berlin; Tottleben and his Russians the good. Their discipline was so excellent;all Cossacks and loose rabble strictly kept out beyond the Walls.
To Bachmann, Russian Commandant, the Berliners, on his departure, had gratefully got ready a money-gift of handsome amount: 'By no means,' answered Bachmann: 'your treatment was according to the mildness of our Sovereign Czarina. For myself, if I have served you in anything, the fact that for three days I have been Commandant of the Great Friedrich's Capital is more than a reward to me.'
"Tottleben and Lacy, during those three days of Russian and Austrian joint dominion, had a stormy time of it together.
'Destroy the LAGER-HAUS,' said Lacy: Lager-Haus, where they manufacture their soldiers' uniforms; it is the parent of all cloth-manufacturing in Prussia; set up by Friedrich Wilhelm,--not on free-trade principles. 'The Lager-Haus, say you? I doubt, it is now private property; screened by our Capitulation;'--which it proves to be. 'You shall blow up the Arsenal!' said Lacy, with vehemence and truculence. A noble edifice, as travellers yet know:
fancy its fragments flying about among the populous streets, plunging through the roofs of Palaces, and great houses all round.
Lacy was inexorable; Tottleben had to send a Russian Party (one wishes they had been Croats) on this sad errand. They proceeded to the Powder-Magazine for explosive material, as preliminary;they were rash in handling the gunpowder there, which blew up in their hands; sent itself and all of them into the air; and saved the poor Arsenal: 'Not powder enough now left for our own artillery uses,' urged Tottleben.
"Saxon and Austrian Parties were in the Palaces about,--at Potsdam, at Charlottenburg, Schonhausen (the Queen's), at Friedrichsfeld (the Margraf Karl's), some of whom behaved well, some horribly ill.
In Charlottenburg, certain Saxon Bruhl-Dragoons, who by their conduct might have been Dragoons of Attila, smashed the furnitures, the doors, cutting the Pictures, much maltreating the poor people;and, what was reckoned still more tragical, overset the poor Polignac Collection of Antiques and Classicalities; not only knocking off noses and arms, but beating them small, lest reparation by cement should be possible. Their Officers, Pirna people, looking quietly on. A scandalous proceeding, thought everybody, friend or foe,--especially thought Friedrich;whose indignation at this ruin of Charlottenburg came out in way of reprisal by and by. At Potsdam, on the other hand, Prince Esterhazy, with perhaps Hungarians among his people, behaved like a very Prince; received from the Castellan an Attestation that he had scrupulously respected everything; and took, as souvenir, only one Picture of little value; Prince de Ligne, who was under him, carrying off, still more daintily, one goose-quill, immortal by having been a pen of the Great Friedrich's.
"Tottleben, with no feeling other than Official tempered by Human, was in great contrast with Lacy, and very beneficent to Berlin during the three days it lay under the TRIBULA, or harrow of War.
But the Tutelary Angel of Berlin, then and afterwards for weeks and months, till all scores got settled, was the Gotzkowsky mentioned above." Whom we shall see again helpful at Leipzig;a man worth marking in these tumults. "If Tottleben was the temporal Armed King, this Gotzkowsky was the Spiritual King, PAPAor Universal Father, armed only with charities, pieties, prayers, ever shiningly attended by self-sacrifices on Gotzkowsky's part;which averted woes innumerable (Lager-Haus only one of a long list); and which 'surpassed all belief,' write the Berlin Magistracy, as if in tears over such heroism. Truly a Prince of Merchants, this Gotzkowsky, not for his vast enterprises, and the mere 1,500 workmen he employs, but for the still greater heart that dwells in him. Had begun as a travelling Pedler; used to call at Reinsberg, with female haberdasheries exquisitely chosen ('GALLANTERIE wares' the Germans call them), for the then Princess Royal; not unnoticed by Friedrich, who recognized the broad sense, solidity and great thoughts of the man. Of all which Friedrich has known far more since then, in various branches of Prussian commerce improved by Gotzkowsky's managements. A truly notable Gotzkowsky;became bankrupt at last, one is sorry to hear; and died in affliction and neglect,--short of the humblest wages for so much good work done in the world! [Preuss, ii. 257, &c. &c.;GESCHICHTE EINES PATRIOTISCHEN KAUFMANNS (Berlin, 1769, by Gotzkowsky himself).]
