before my departure, most assuredly I should have replied without
hesitation, 'It is Count Schwarzenberg!' But I have since then found out
that I had done the count injustice in many things through my inexperience
and want of foresight; that he is a very great and experienced statesman
and politician, who with his far-seeing glances can discern much more
clearly than I with my unpracticed eyes the relations of things. Who knows
but that, after all, the peace of Prague has been a real blessing to our
land. When I behold its present pitiable and languishing condition as a
neutral, how can I avoid reflecting with horror upon what might have been
the state of things had we joined any decided war party. Had we sided
with the Swedes, the enmity of the powerful Emperor, vastly surpassing us
in material resources, would long since have destroyed us root and branch,
and my dear father would have most probably shared the same lamentable
fate as the Elector of the Palatinate, his brother-in-law, or the Margrave
of Liegnitz and Jägerndorf, his cousin. He must have wandered with wife
and children an exile in foreign lands, or died of grief among strangers.
On the other hand, had we sided with the Emperor against the Swedes, a
raging, implacable foe would have quartered himself in the heart of our
dominions, and not merely Pomerania, but the Mark and the duchy of Prussia
would have been overrun-by his warlike hordes. But on my journey hither I
have witnessed the misery and unspeakable wretchedness of our land, and
asked myself with heavy, sorrowing heart what would have become of our
unhappy country in times of war if neutrality could reduce it to such
poverty and plunge it in such want and suffering. And then I was forced to
acknowledge that Count Schwarzenberg had acted right well as Stadtholder
in the Mark in wishing, before all things, to preserve the Mark intrusted
to him from yet greater calamity, by holding it to that neutrality, being
alike impartial between the Emperor and the Swedes. I therefore begged his
pardon in my heart for having often accused him unjustly before, for he is
indeed a faithful and zealous servant to his master, and especially