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, P
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