until hunger enforced surrender (for Frederick wished to shed no blood,
he wanted to amalgamate the Saxon troops with his own), much precious
time was lost, time of which Austria made good use. Frederick stopped
in Dresden, where he sought by means of ingratiating forms to make his
Draconian regulations more palatable; his purpose being to win over
public opinion by proving from the Saxon archives the necessity he had
been under. But here too he encountered resistance so embittered that
in breaking it down he brought the world, if that were possible, even
more than ever about his ears. The state papers were in the castle,
in the custody of the Queen of Poland, who was living there with her
children. Frederick she loathed; and she stoutly resisted all his
efforts to get hold of the documents. Frederick, however, was not
the man to shrink from using force against a lady. He sent a general
to the Queen, with definite instructions to procure the casket in
which the documents were, using force if necessary. The scene in the
Queen’s apartments is variously depicted. In any case it must have
been extremely humiliating to Augustus’s wife. She fought with all her
strength and with all her pride against surrendering the papers. We are
told that she defended with her own body the door to the cabinet; other
accounts say that she sat on the chest where they were kept; others,
again, that the casket was in her bed, and that Frederick’s general,
after prostrating himself, did not hesitate to violate this place
too. In the end the Queen had to comply, and Frederick got the papers.
He speedily had them published. But the advantage of publication was
outweighed by the harm done by this fresh evidence of his brutality.
The Queen called the foreign ambassadors together, gave them a vivid
account of what had happened, and declared that all the rulers of
Europe had been insulted in her person. Her daughter, who was dauphine
in France, threw herself publicly at the feet of Louis XV and implored
him, with sobs, to avenge her mother’s sufferings--a scene which moved
all Europe to tears of sympathy and righteous anger. The French envoy
in Berlin received orders to break off relations peremptorily. The
Prussian ambassador was forbidden the court at Versailles. Add to all
this that the Queen of Poland died soon after, killed, so everybody
said, by the ignominy she had suffered. For Frederick retorted upon her
conspiracies and agitations by having her closely watched, and she was
not spared further affronts. The King of Prussia, so we are told by
Count Vitzthum, treated the Queen not like a person of royal blood, but
like a canteen woman imprisoned in the middle of a hostile army. And it
killed her. The indignation against Frederick was boundless.
It was, in fact, so deep and general that a heart less stout, a temper
less sardonic than his might have quailed before it--yes, perhaps even
this heart did sometimes quail. In France, a country where he had
close intellectual ties, he passed for a savage, simply; they called
him nothing but the barbarian, the “monster of the north.” Indeed,
he might have searched the whole globe over for a sign of sympathy
and understanding and found none--no spot on earth where he did not
pass for the enemy of mankind, a ravening beast, to draw whose fangs
would be a moral act and a safe-guard to the public. He must be struck
down, must be rendered for ever powerless. Not only must Silesia be
taken from him; Prussia must be reduced to the position which was hers
before the Thirty Years’ War, the king of it once more a petty marquis,
powerless for harm. Yes, the hour had struck when the civilized
states must root out the Prussian spirit and rid the planet from this
poisonous growth. Even those who could still think objectively had to
admit that there was nothing left for Prussia but to sink under the
scorn and hatred heaped upon her by the world.
Quite aside from the material resources which such hatred had at its
disposition, the hatred remains in and for itself a thing to shudder
at. To fear that which is of the spirit is no disgrace; it involves
less cowardice than does fear of physical force. It is upon the
imponderables that the best hopes of victory are based; thus there is
nothing weak or foolish about taking cognizance of the imponderable and
the irrational where it sides against you. The hatred and revulsion
which Prussia roused might be as uninstructed and misguided as ever;
but the question which had to be raised was this: was it conceivable,
or humanly possible, that one man could bear up against the weight of
so general a feeling and carry off the victory? It takes more constancy
of spirit to confront a preponderance of moral feeling than to defy a
superior body of troops. Frederick had to admit to himself that in
case of his defeat the world’s rejoicing and the world’s scorn would
alike be unbounded; that he should get no justice, and not only that,
but that he should actually have been in the wrong. Even on this
ground, it was bitterly necessary for him to conquer. He was not in the
right, in so far as right is a convention, the voice of the majority,
the judgment of humanity. His right was the right of the rising
power, a problematical, still illegitimate, untested right, which had
first to be fought for and won. Defeated, he was the most wretched of
adventurers--_un fou_, as Louis of France called him. Only when success
had shown him to be the agent of destiny, only then would he be in the
right, and proved to have been always in the right. For every deed that
deserves the name is in truth a trial of fate, an effort to create a
right, to guide destiny and realize the course of development. And the
hatred felt against the doer of the deed is, psychologically speaking,
nothing else than an effort to influence the verdict of fate against
him--a naïve and irrational effort, because the verdict is settled
beforehand, but still a spiritual weight and pressure which might well
frighten the bravest. King Frederick is called the Great, not only
because of the audacity with which he laid siege to destiny, but also
and especially because he had the strength to bear up--alone, with
almost superhuman nervous strength--under so heavy a burden of hate.
But all the bitterness of soul, all the cynic disbelief in justice,
which characterizes him who thus tempts fate, speaks in those words
he uttered: “Poor mortals that we are! The world judges our acts not
according to our motives, but according to their success. There is
nothing left for us but to achieve it.”
So now they got their forces together, bodies of troops, armies, in
almost ridiculous superfluity, to overcome him and carve him up in
the shortest possible time at the least expense to each of them.
Each one looked forward to his share. Elizabeth of Russia displayed
great tenacity, she was far from dead yet, she hastened to join the
Versailles concordat and signed a special understanding with Austria,
by virtue of which she was to send eighty thousand men against
Frederick and harry the Prussian coast with her fleet. France, which
up to now had let herself be entreated, showed suddenly a hysterical
zeal. By the invasion of Saxony, she shrieked, the Peace of Westphalia
had been violated, shamefully violated, and the honour of all the
guarantors of that peace demanded that they speedily unite to execute
the evil-doer. A second Versailles Treaty arose, stating that France
would contribute a hundred thousand men and pay twelve million gulden
of yearly subsidy to Austria, until such time as the latter was once
more secure in the possession of Silesia, and Prussia reduced to the
dimensions she had before the Thirty Years’ War (according to which
contract France ought still to be paying to this day). The war against
Prussia, the alliance with Austria, was now so popular in Paris that
the French Academy offered a prize for the best verses in praise of
it; but the French government found the idea silly and suppressed
the offer. And that was not all. Frederick found that he had fallen
foul of the “Empire.” His act, they said, was a breach of peace of
the “_Reich_.” The Emperor commanded him to cease his unheard-of and
wicked sedition, to indemnify King Augustus and withdraw from Saxony.
He ordered all Frederick’s generals to leave their godless lord,
and not to partake in his hideous crime. And as all that did not
in the slightest avail, the whole of Germany (that blind Germany!)
rose against Frederick, sixty princes declared that his proceedings
constituted a predatory attack, and an imperial punitive campaign
was solemnly resolved upon. Sweden, one of the signatories to the
Westphalian Peace, and in leading-strings to France, had perforce to
resign herself to the conquest of Pomerania. And thus populations to
the tune of a hundred million rose against some five; fourteen princes
against one; seven hundred thousand of troops against two hundred and
sixty thousand. Frederick was putting it mildly when he said he was
risking his skin. Nobody had any doubt it would be all up with him in
the shortest possible time.
It will give me the very greatest pleasure to cite from his letters of
the period. They have a way of making one’s memory act in a contrary
direction--namely, forward and not back, a distinctly thrilling kind of
memory.
To the Marquis d’Argens in Berlin: “The French have gone mad. You
cannot imagine the disgraceful things they are saying about me. You
would think that the whole salvation of France depended on the house
of Austria; and the Dauphine’s dreams have made much more impression
than my manifesto against Saxony and the Austrians. In short, my dear
friend, I deplore the consequences of the earthquake that has addled
the brains of all the statesmen in Europe, and I wish them peace,
health, and contentment.”
To Privy Counsellor von Knyphausen of the Paris legation: “It is due
to the Austrian intrigues that I am obliged to recall you. When you
will have left Paris, nothing will stem the tide of slander against me.
My enemies will invent so many stories that the French will only see
with their eyes and hear with their ears. Well, if they want to be my
enemies, very well; it is their own choice.”
To his sister of Bayreuth: “But since things have been pushed to this
point, we must hope now that Providence, if it deigns to mix in poor
human affairs, will not permit the arrogance and malice of my enemies
to triumph over my just cause.”
To Schwerin: “We shall have, my dear Marshal, to confront many
foes--but I am not afraid. I have capital generals, admirable troops,
and if heaven preserve my understanding I hope also to give a good
account of myself.... But we must exert ourselves to the uttermost,
we must crush our enemies, we must fear no numbers, but rather count
it an honour that such a difficult task is ours to perform. We pay
rope-dancers, but not men who merely walk on solid ground; so in
this world all the glory is for those who triumph over difficulties.
Farewell, my dear Marshal, I embrace you.”
To his sister Amalie: “The coming campaign is to me what Pharsalus was
to the Romans, or Leuctra to the Greeks, or Denain to the French, or
the siege of Vienna to the Austrians. Such epochs are decisive, they
change the face of Europe. Before the decision one must endure fearful
hazards; but afterwards the sky is again clear and bright. Our duty
is now not to despair, but to foresee each event, and bear with quiet
countenance what Providence vouchsafes us, without arrogance at good
fortune, or depression at bad.”
To his sister of Bayreuth: “Germany is facing a severe crisis. I must
defend her freedom, her privileges, and her religion. If I am defeated
this time, it will be in this cause. But I am of good cheer; and
however great the number of my foes, I have faith in the goodness of my
cause, the admirable courage of my troops, and their steadfast will,
from the commanding officer down to the lowest soldier.”
To the same: “I am in the position of a traveller surrounded by a
band of rascals and about to be murdered in order that the murderers
may divide their booty among themselves. Since the League of Cambrai
there has been no instance of a conspiracy such as this villainous
triumvirate has forged against me. The thing is contemptible, a
disgrace to humanity and human morals. Has the world ever seen such
a spectacle as three powerful princes banding themselves together to
destroy a fourth who has never done them any harm? I have never had
any differences either with France or with Russia, and certainly not
with Sweden.... _O tempora, O mores!_ One might as well be living
among tigers, leopards, and lynxes as in this supposedly so civilized
century, contemporary of the murderers, thieves, and perjurers who
govern this poor world. Happy is he, my dear sister, who lives
unknown, and has been wise enough from his youth up to abjure any kind
of fame! Since no one knows him, none can envy, and his happiness
cannot make him the prey of every sharper.... They have laid a plot
against me, and the court of Vienna has been pleased to insult me; this
was more than my honour could endure. So the struggle begins and the
band of rascals fling themselves upon me; such is my fate.”
To Minister von Finckenstein: “Be not so fearful. Nothing is lost as
yet and nothing desperate. So long as I am alive I will stand firm and
defend myself like a lion.”
To his sister of Bayreuth: “We must all console ourselves with the
thought that our century is an epoch in the history of the world, and
that we have witnessed events so extraordinary that the course of
things has not for long brought forth their like. That means much for
our curious minds, but little for our happiness. Well, these villains
of emperors, empresses, and kings are forcing me this coming year to
dance upon a tight-rope. I console myself with the hope of giving one
or another of them a good crack over the nose with the balance-pole.
But when that is done, then peace must finally ensue. What a sacrifice
of men! What horrible butchery! I shudder to think of it. But I must
steel my heart and arm myself for murder and massacre; I must face the
odds heroically; though they are always frightful when you see them
close at hand.”
To Earl Marischal Keith: “You say my enemies malign me, even in the
far-away Escorial. I am used to that. I hear nothing but untruths
about myself. I have had more than my fill of the vulgar lies and
contemptible libels spread by hatred and venom all over Europe. But
one can get used to anything. Louis XIV must get just as sick of the
flatteries that are poured into his ears as I am of the shameful things
they say about me. These are unworthy weapons, which a great prince
ought never to employ against his peers; for he inevitably lowers
himself at the same time and exposes to the scorn of the vulgar things
which it is to the common interest of princes to hold in honour.”
To Finckenstein: “It seems unhappily that we are not yet at the end of
our task. We have too many enemies to be able to gain such superiority
over them as to enforce peace. All Europe is marching against us; it
seems to be the fashion to be our enemy, and a title of honour to
contribute to our destruction.”
To Voltaire: “You, who do not fight yourself, do not for God’s sake
laugh at others; be tranquil, be happy, that you have no persecutors,
and learn to be care-free and enjoy the repose you have at last
attained after chasing after it for sixty years.... Are you still, at
sixty, so lacking in common sense? And learn, in your old age, how you
ought to write to me. Please note that certain liberties are permitted
to writers and wits; but when they become impertinent it is too
much.... But enough, I have forgiven all, in a truly Christian spirit.
On the whole, you have given me more pleasure than pain. Your writing
has more power to cheer me than your scratches to hurt.... You cry
out for peace so loudly that I am fain to tell you to turn that lofty
impertinence of yours, which so well becomes you, against those who
are responsible for the delay in concluding peace.... Despite all your
efforts, I will never sign a peace save on conditions consonant with my
country’s honour. The people of your native land, puffed up as they are
with folly and vanity, may rely upon it that I mean what I say.”
To Ferdinand of Brunswick: “Unless France signs a peace with England
we are hopelessly lost; we have too many enemies, too many people
are disheartened by our disasters, and the morale of our troops has
plainly deteriorated. There is nothing left but for you to think up
an inscription for my tombstone. The great calamity will not come to
pass before the middle of August; but by then all will be lost beyond
repair. You know that I am usually not a pessimist; but now there is no
possibility of seeing anything else but black.”
To d’Argens: “The French are amusing asses. I like an enemy that makes
me laugh; I hate my grumpy Austrians, swollen with impudence and pride,
no good for anything except to make one yawn.”
To the same: “You value life as a sybarite, I look at death like a
stoic. Never will I survive that moment in which I am forced to sign
a disadvantageous peace; no eloquence, no inducement, can drive me to
subscribe to my own disgrace. I have told you, and I repeat: never will
I put pen to a shameful peace. I am firmly resolved to stake all upon
this campaign, to perform the most desperate deeds, to conquer or find
an honourable end.”
“The defence,” says Rancke, “earned him high esteem in the states of
Europe. In defending himself, King Frederick became the great man of
his century.”--That is true, and yet not true--in so far, that is,
as it considers Frederick’s war against Europe to have been a purely
defensive one. The dispute among historians as to whether it really
was that--and not rather a war of aggression--waxes louder than ever
today; but the situation is far too complicated, too involved, to
permit of a simple and final answer. In its very last analysis this
gigantic struggle was an offensive war; for the young, the rising
power is always, psychologically speaking, the aggressor, and the
others, the existing powers, are on the defensive against it. Somewhat
more superficially speaking, it was a defensive war, for Prussia was
actually “encircled” and was to be destroyed with all possible speed.
Then it was, again, an offensive war in that Frederick obligingly
picked the quarrel. Yet, once more, it was a war of defence, for
when the odds are one to five, that is tantamount to defence, even
though it was the one who actually declared war against the five--or,
rather, as a matter of fact, failed to declare it. And, fifthly,
it was an offensive war: on the ground that the most desperate and
difficult defence must always needs save itself by attacking. “Attack,
attack! Keep on their heels! _Attaquez donc toujours!_” To that tune,
instinctively, he had always disciplined his troops, he had even made
it instinctive with them; and to it he carried on war, unmindful of the
voices of those who urged him to keep on the defensive--in situations
like that of the year 1759, when the Russians were on his left, and
Daun on his right, and Sweden in his rear.
What friends he had were not worthy of the name. England regarded him
as her soldier against France, she was satisfied to have him hold
France in check in Europe while she quietly annexed the French colonies
in the New World; but, in the interests of business, she refused to
relieve him in the Baltic, against Russia; she paid subsidies as
long as it pleased her, and when it pleased her no longer she left
off. As we know, the war lasted seven years--seven is always the
number of years the princes and the miller’s sons have to serve in
the fairy-tale; but it was a seven years’ test a little severer than
ever falls to their lot; it was, without exaggeration, the severest
test ever a human soul has had to stand upon this earth. To stand it
required such passive and active qualities, such a measure of endurance
and patience, of inventive and resourceful energy, as neither before
nor since, to my knowledge, a man has ever displayed or had occasion
to display. Seven years long did King Frederick march hither and yon,
fighting, beating here one enemy and there another, being beaten
himself too, sometimes almost destroyed; staggering erect again because
he thought of something else which might still be tried; trying it,
with incredible, improbable success and coming safe off once more.
Always in his shabby uniform, booted and spurred, with his uniform
hat on his head, breathing, year in, year out, the dust of his own
troops, in an atmosphere of sweat, leather, blood, and powder smoke,
he would walk up and down in his tent, between two battles, a dismal
defeat and an incredible victory, and play on his flute, or scribble
French verses, or write quarrelsome letters to Voltaire. His mother
died, without his even seeing her; he felt now more forsaken than ever.
His favourite sister died--“_mon Dieu, ma sœur de Bayreuth!_”--and
his anguish at the loss testifies to the tenderness of his iniquitous
heart. In time he himself became grotesque; he was not unconscious of
the frightful comicality of his existence, he compared himself with Don
Quixote, with the Wandering Jew. “The ox must plough the furrow,” he
would say, “the nightingale must sing, the dolphin swim, and I--I must
make war.” He imagined himself condemned to carry on war up to the day
of judgment; he became a spectre to himself. The dreadful weariness of
spectres he knew, their pathetic yearning for rest. “The happy dead!
They are saved from all cares and troubles.” He kept poison always
upon him for the last emergency; but though the last emergency seemed
many times to have arrived, he did not take it, for always some other
plan occurred to him, and the emergency passed. Beneath the frightful
punishment, the cruel vicissitudes, the ceaseless tension, “the nicest
little creature in the kingdom” aged rapidly. He lost his teeth, his
hair went white on one side, his back got bent, his figure leaner and
leaner, he suffered from gout. And besides that, from diarrhœa. It was,
in fact, the tortures of the damned he suffered. But his fame grew
apace--his transgression, his breach of the rights of nations were
forgotten, but his fame as of the chosen of God grew and spread like
a tree and overshadowed the century. It was not alone that he routed
the hosts of Marshal Soubise at Rossbach--that same Marshal Soubise
who stole Alsace and set fire to the Palatinate--and became a hero to
all Germany, a symbol round which their torn loyalties might once more
twine. His deeds, and his sufferings, won him the sympathies of the
people of all nations. Yes, his defeats not less than his victories
occupied near and far the hearts of men, and the grotesque, the
Quixotic flavour, in his personality helped magnify him in the popular
eye and elevate him to a legendary fame: his picture, with the wry
mouth, the sparkling blue eyes, the three-cornered hat, the cane, the
star, the shoulder-cord--it hung in cottage and hall; while he still
lived he was a hero of legend. From now on he was called _der alte
Fritz_: an awe-inspiring name, to anybody with a sense of awe; for it
is really in the highest degree awe-inspiring to find the dæmon become
a household word and given a nickname.
He had outlived the hate, the psychic resistance, of the world; and
thereby had withdrawn an indispensable prop from the morale of his
foes. The rest was done by his radicalism, his readiness to go all
lengths, the depth of his resolution, which seemed to his opponents at
once so offensive and so frightful, like a strange and savage dog--in
the end they all shuddered before him. His moral advantage was that it
was always, with him, a matter of life and death, and that gave him a
sense of absolute values of which the others knew nothing. I will not
speak of his genius as a strategist, being a layman in that field.
And I wish not to speak of his “luck”; for it is always stupid to
distinguish luck from a man’s other merits and count it as undeserved,
instead of part of all the rest. Still, if you like, he was lucky. He
was on the brink of destruction when Elizabeth of Russia surrendered to
her love-affairs and left a poor simpleton named Peter to reign, said
Peter admiring Frederick to the point of idolatry, so that he struck
a peace with him at once. But the King had to win a few more battles
before the others saw at last that it was hopeless, and retired from
the field tired out. He went back home.
He had won nothing tangible, and his territories were ravaged,
depopulated, impoverished, run wild. But Prussia endured, not a village
lost; Silesia was safe, and the end and aim of the Great Coalition a
total failure. It was a deep humiliation for the continent at the hands
of a single man. The verdict of destiny, all the probabilities to the
contrary, had been rendered in his favour; it was impossible to dispute
it in the long run. They had to make way for Prussia, for Germany,
to follow its own path--a path which has since proved as steep and
fateful, as full of manifold and instructive turns of fortune, as any
path a people ever trod.