Section 246 Morgan Prussia. — II
After some time the king inquired for the five recruits, and was indignant when he was told of the impossibility of enlisting them. “Send the fellow himself,” he exclaimed, “and let him bring them back.” The order was given; but Morgan was broken-hearted “at the idea of so long an absence from the regiment.” He applied to the colonel to have the order revoked, or at least given to some one else. But this was out of the question, for the king’s word was always irrevocable; and Morgan, with a disconsolate face, prepared to set out upon his mission. But a new difficulty struck him. “How was he to make his brothers come, unless he showed them the recruiting money?” This objection was at last obviated by the advance of a sum equal to about three hundred pounds sterling, as a first instalment for the purchase of his family. Like a loyal grenadier the Irishman was now ready to attempt anything for his colonel or his king, and Morgan began his journey. But, as he was stepping out of the gates of Potsdam, another difficulty occurred; and he returned to tell the colonel that of all people existing the Irish were the most apt to doubt a traveller’s story, they being in the habit of a good deal of exercise in that style themselves1; and that when he should go back to his own country, and tell them of the capital treatment and sure promotion that a soldier met with in the guards, the probability was, that they would laugh in his face. As to the money, “there were some who would not scruple to say that he stole it, or tricked some one out of it. But, undoubtedly, when they saw him walking back only as a common soldier, he was sure they would not believe a syllable, let him say what he would about rising in the service.”
The objection was intelligible enough, and the colonel represented it to the king, who, doubly outrageous at the delay, swore a grenadier’s oath, ordered Morgan to be made a sub-lieutenant, and, with sword and epaulets, sent him instantly across the Rhine to convince his five brothers of the rapidity of Prussian promotion. Morgan flew to his home in the county of Carlow, delighted the firesides for many a mile round with his having outwitted a king and a whole battalion of grenadiers, laid out his recruiting money on land, and became a man of estate at the expense of the Prussian treasury.
One ceremony remains to be recorded. Once a year, on the anniversary of the day on which he left Potsdam and its giants behind, he climbed a hill within a short distance of his house, turned himself in the direction of Prussia, and, with the most contemptuous gesture which he could contrive, bade good-bye to his majesty. The ruse was long a great source of amusement, and its hero, like other heroes, bore through life the name earned by his exploit—Morgan Prussia.—King George The Fourth.
Notes
1 they being — themselves, da auch sie im Erzählen von dergleichen Geschichten eine große Fertigkeit besäßen.