admitted into the council chamber of his Prince, half an atheist, half an
intriguer, and half a spy, in the pay of Frederick the Great of Prussia.
His entry upon the stage at Berlin, and particularly the first parts he
was destined to act, was curious and extraordinary; whether he acquitted
himself better in this capacity than he has since in his political one is
not known. He was afterwards sent to this capital to execute a
commission, of which he acquitted himself very ill; exposing himself
rashly, without profit or service to his employer. Frederick II.,
dreading the tediousness of a proposed congress at Augsburg, wished to
send a private emissary to sound the King of France. For this purpose he
chose Edelsheim as a person least liable to suspicion. The project of
Frederick was to idemnify the King of Poland for his first losses by
robbing the ecclesiastical Princes of Germany. This, Louis XV. totally
rejected; and Edelsheim returned with his answer to the Prussian Monarch,
then at Freyburg. From thence he afterwards departed for London, made
his communications, and was once again sent back to Paris, on pretence
that he had left some of his travelling trunks there; and the Bailli de
Foulay, the Ambassador of the Knights of Malta, being persuaded that the
Cabinet of Versailles was effectually desirous of peace, was, as he had
been before, the mediator. The Bailli was deceived. The Duc de
Choiseul, the then Prime Minister, indecently enough threw Edelsheim into
the Bastille, in order to search or seize his papers, which, however,
were secured elsewhere. Edelsheim was released on the morrow, but
obliged to depart the kingdom by the way of Turin, as related by
Frederick II. in his "History of the Seven Years' War." On his return he
was disgraced, and continued so until 1778; when he again was used as
emissary to various Courts of Germany. In 1786 the Elector of Baden sent
him to Berlin, on the ascension of Frederick William II., as a
complimentary envoy. This Monarch, when he saw him, could not forbear
laughing at the high wisdom of the Court that selected such a personage