e one to despair, and make him tear his hair for rage and grief, when
he sees the state of things here, and must perceive that the Elector is
nothing and the Stadtholder everything. To his adherents he gives offices
and dignities, and those whom he knows to be attached to the interests of
the Electoral family he removes from court, and replaces by his favorites
and servants. Upon the Colonels von Kracht and von Rochow he has bestowed
good positions, making them commandants of Berlin and Spandow, with double
salaries, but me, whom he knows to be the faithful servant of the
Electoral family, he has banished from court and sent to Kuestrin with only
half as high a salary as the other two have. From the Electoral privy
council he has also removed all those gentlemen who were bold enough to
lift up their voices against him, and has introduced such men as say yes
to everything that he desires and asks. No longer does an honest, upright
word reach the Electoral ear, and while the whole people lament and cry
out against Schwarzenberg, fearing him as they do the devil himself, our
Elector fancies that his Stadtholder is as much beloved by the people of
the Mark Brandenburg as by the Emperor at Vienna. But it is just so;
Catholics and Imperialists will Schwarzenberg make us; ever he presses us
further and further from our comrades in the faith, the Swedes and Dutch;
ever he draws us closer to the Catholics; and if he could succeed in
making the Elector Catholic, removing all Evangelists and Reformers from
court, and putting Catholics in their places, then he would rejoice and
obtain a high reward from the Emperor and Pope."

"And you believe, Burgsdorf, that he will do such a thing, and esteem such
a thing possible?" asked the Electoral Prince, with a sly smile.

"I believe that he will, and we all believe so. And with the Stadtholder
to will is to do, for he carries through all that he undertakes. But we
will not suffer it, Prince, we will not be turned into Imperialists and
Catholics. We will hold to our Elector and our religion; we will not
suffer and submit to our Elector's being any longer in dependence upon
Emperor and empire, and nothing at all but a powerless tool in
Schwarzenberg's hands. We want a free Elector, who has courage and power
to defy the Emperor himself, and league himself with the Swedes against
him. For the Swedes are our rightful allies, not merely because the mother
of the little Queen Christina is sister