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In 1794 Prince Karl Lichnowski, who had been a pupil of Mozart, and who, as well as his wife Christiane, was fanatico per la musica, proposed that Beethoven should come and live at his palace.
Attempts to stop the messenger before he reached the coast appear to have failed. At any rate, we know that all through July 31st and August 1st Lichnowski, in London, was bombarded with dispatches ordering him to send the messenger with the letter back to Berlin as soon as he reached the embassy. "The courier never got as far as Carlton House Terrace.
Someone in the War party at the Court of Berlin got wind of the fateful letter and sent word to someone in the German embassy in London the Prussian jingoes were well represented there by Kühlmann and others of his ilk to intercept the letter. "The letter was intercepted. How it was done and by whom we have never found out, but Lichnowski never saw that letter. Nor did the courier leave London.
The German Government refused to accept the idea of such a conference, but at the same time the German Ambassador in London, Prince Lichnowski, was instructed to say that the principle of such a conference, or at least of mediation by the four Powers, was agreeable to Berlin.
It is the gambling and not the game itself to which the kaiser is opposed. In fact, he is very fond of a game of cards, provided the stakes are merely nominal, and I have known him to play an entire evening after a dinner at the castle of Kuckelna, which marked the close of a great pheasant "drive" organized in his honor by Prince Lichnòwski.
His dress was very common, quite a contrast to the elegant attire customary in those days, especially in our circles.... He was very proud, and I have known him refuse to play, even when Countess Thun, the mother of Princess Lichnowski, had fallen on her knees before him as he lay on the sofa to beg him to.
He did not make use of the regular courier: he sent the letter by a man of his own choosing, who had special instructions to hand the letter in person to Prince Lichnowski, the German ambassador. Lichnowski was to deliver the missive personally to its destined recipient. "Almost as soon as the letter was away, the Kaiser seems to have realised what he had done, to have repented of his action.
This was the promise made by the Kaiser. Here was the motive of the war. How it was provoked is told by Prince Lichnowski, the Ambassador of Germany to London. He shows how he had reached agreements for a treaty which would show the good will of Great Britain. Berlin refused to sign it unless it should be kept secret.
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