His Two grand Feats that dwell in the Prussian memory are perhaps none of his greatest, but were of a kind to strike the imagination. They both relate to what was the central problem of his life,--the recovery of Pommern from the Swedes. Exploit First is the famed "Battle of FEHRBELLIN (Ferry of BellEEN)," fought on the 18th June, 1675. Fehrbellin is an inconsiderable Town still standing in those peaty regions, some five-and-thirty miles northwest of Berlin; and had for ages plied its poor Ferry over the oily-looking, brown, sluggish stream called Rhin, or Rhein in those parts, without the least notice from mankind, till this fell out. It is a place of pilgrimage to patriotic Prussians, ever since Friedrich Wilhelm's exploit there. The matter went thus:--Friedrich Wilhelm was fighting, far south in Alsace, on Kaiser Leopold's side, in the Louis-Fourteenth War; that second one, which ended in the treaty of Nimwegen. Doing his best there,--when the Swedes, egged on by Louis XIV., made war upon him; crossed the Pomeranian marches, troop after troop, and invaded his Brandenburg Territory with a force which at length amounted to some 16,000men. No help for the moment: Friedrich Wilhelm could not be spared from his post. The Swedes, who had at first professed well, gradually went into plunder, roving, harrying, at their own will;and a melancholy time they made of it for Friedrich Wilhelm and his People. Lucky if temporary harm were all the ill they were likely to do; lucky if--! He stood steady, however; in his solid manner, finishing the thing in hand first, since that was feasible. He then even retired into winter-quarters, to rest his men; and seemed to have left the Swedish 16,000 autocrats of the situation; who accordingly went storming about at a great rate.
Not so, however; very far indeed from so. Having rested his men for certain months, Friedrich Wilhelm silently in the first days of June (1675) gets them under march again; marches, his Cavalry and he as first instalment, with best speed from Schweinfurt, [Stenzel, ii. 347.] which is on the river Main, to Magdeburg;a distance of two hundred miles. At Magdeburg, where he rests three days, waiting for the first handful of foot and a field-piece or two, he learns that the Swedes are in three parties wide asunder; the middle party of them within forty miles of him.
Probably stronger, even this middle one, than his small body (of "six thousand Horse, twelve hundred Foot and three guns");--stronger, but capable perhaps of being surprised, of being cut in pieces, before the others can come up? Rathenau is the nearest skirt of this middle party: thither goes the Kurfurst, softly, swiftly, in the June night (16-17th June, 1675); gets into Rathenau, by brisk stratagem; tumbles out the Swedish Horse-regiment there, drives it back towards Fehrbellin.
He himself follows hard;--swift riding enough, in the summer night, through those damp Havel lands, in the old Hohenzollern fashion: and indeed old Freisack Castle, as it chances,--Freisack, scene of Dietrich von Quitzow and LAZY PEG long since,--is close by! Follows hard, we say: strikes in upon this midmost party (nearly twice his number, but Infantry for the most part);and after fierce fight, done with good talent on both sides, cuts it into utter ruin, as proposed. Thereby he has left the Swedish Army as a mere head and tail WITHOUT body; has entirely demolished the Swedish Army. [Stenzel, ii. 350-357.] Same feat intrinsically as that done by Cromwell, on Hamilton and the Scots, in 1648.
It was, so to speak, the last visit Sweden paid to Brandenburg, or the last of any consequence; and ended the domination of the Swedes in those quarters. A thing justly to be forever remembered by Brandenburg;--on a smallish modern scale, the Bannockburn, Sempach, Marathon, of Brandenburg. [See Pauli, v. 161-169;Stenzel, ii. 335, 340-347, 354; Kausler, <italic> Atlas des plus memorables Batailles, Combats et Sieges, <end italic> or <italic> Atlas der merkwurdigsten Schlachten, Treffen und Belagerungen <end italic> (German and French, Carlsruhe and Freiburg, 1831), p. 417, Blatt 62.]
Exploit Second was four years later; in some sort a corollary to this; and a winding-up of the Swedish business. The Swedes, in farther prosecution of their Louis-Fourteenth speculation, had invaded Preussen this time, and were doing sad havoc there. It was in the dead of winter, Christmas, 1678, more than four hundred miles off; and the Swedes, to say nothing of their other havoc, were in a case to take Konigsberg, and ruin Prussia altogether, if not prevented. Friedrich Wilhelm starts from Berlin, with the opening Year, on his long march; the Horse-troops first, Foot to follow at their swiftest; he himself (his Wife, his ever-true "Louisa," accompanying, as her wont was) travels, towards the end, at the rate of "sixty miles a day." He gets in still in time, finds Konigsberg unscathed. Nay it is even said, the Swedes are extensively falling sick; having, after a long famine, found infinite "pigs, near Insterburg," in those remote regions, and indulged in the fresh pork overmuch.