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Updated: June 12, 2025
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.
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.
Baron Edelsheim is a great amateur of knighthoods. On days of great festivities his face is, as it were, illuminated with the lustre of his stars; and the crosses on his coat conceal almost its original colour. Every petty Prince of Germany has dubbed him a chevalier; but Emperors and Kings have not been so unanimous in distinguishing his desert, or in satisfying his desires.
They distrusted my skill in the management of the weapon I had chosen; for reasons of their own they carried a case of pistols to the field. Prince Otto was attended by Count Loepel and a Major Edelsheim of his army, fresh from the garrison fortress of Mainz, gentlemen perfectly conversant with the laws of the game, which my worthy comrades were not.
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."
'Ludere qui nescit campestribus abstinet armis! Bandelmeyer sang out. 'You observed? said Major Edelsheim, and received another disconcerting discharge of a Latin line. The prince frowned and made use of some military slang. Was his honour now satisfied? Not a whit.
In the afternoon, utterly tired out, we too determined to shift our quarters to Edelsheim, and, engaging a large jolting vehicle, were borne through mire, rain and mist from the Elephant to the Hof. Long before we reached the door we saw cheerful lights gleaming from the long rows of windows. Anton, Moidel, the aunt, Uncle Johann were at the door to receive us and our belongings.
He applied to the police commissary, who, within twenty hours, signed a declaration affirming that Edelsheim was the most inoffensive and least dangerous of all imbecile creatures that ever entered the Cabinet of a Prince; that he had never drawn a sword, worn a dagger, or fired a pistol in his life; that the inquiries about his real character were sneered at in every part of the Electorate, as nowhere they allowed him common sense, much less a character; all blamed his presumption, but none defended his capacity.
'He meant to teach me that this was not a laughing matter. Major Edelsheim had misunderstood Bandelmeyer; no offer of an apology had been made.
"Write to my chancellor of the Legion of Honour, Lacepede, to send him a patent, and do you inform him of this favour." It is reported at Carlsruhe, the capital of Baden, that Baron Edelsheim has composed his own epitaph, in which he claims immortality, because under his Ministry the Margravate of Baden was elevated into an Electorate!!! PARIS, August, 1805.
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