FREDERIC THE GREAT

(April 1842) _Frederic the Great and his Times. Edited, with an

Introduction, By THOMAS CAMPBELL, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1842._

|THIS work, which has the high honour of being introduced to the world

by the author of Lochiel and Hohenlinden, is not wholly unworthy of so

distinguished a chaperon. It professes, indeed, to be no more than a

compilation; but it is an exceedingly amusing compilation, and we shall

be glad to have more of it. The narrative comes down at present only

to the commencement of the Seven Years’ War, and therefore does not

comprise the most interesting portion of Frederic’s reign.

It may not be unacceptable to our readers that we should take this

opportunity of presenting them with a slight sketch of the life of the

greatest king that has, in modern times, succeeded by right of birth

to a throne. It may, we fear, be impossible to compress so long and

eventful a story within the limits which we must prescribe to

ourselves. Should we be compelled to break off, we may perhaps, when the

continuation of this work appears, return to the subject.

The Prussian monarchy, the youngest of the great European, states, but

in population and revenue the fifth among them, and in art, science, and

civilisation entitled to the third, if not to the second place, sprang

from a humble origin. About the beginning of the fifteenth century, the

marquisate of Brandenburg was bestowed by the Emperor Sigismund on

the noble family of Hohenzollern. In the sixteenth century that family

embraced the Lutheran doctrines. It obtained from the King of Poland,

early in the seventeenth century, the investiture of the duchy of

Prussia. Even after this accession of territory, the chiefs of the house

of Hohenzollern hardly ranked with the Electors of Saxony and Bavaria.

The soil of Brandenburg was for the most part sterile. Even round

Berlin, the capital of the province, and round Potsdam, the favourite

residence of the Margraves, the country was a desert. In some places,

the deep sand could with difficulty be forced by assiduous tillage to

yield thin crops of rye and oats. In other places, the ancient forests,

which the conquerors of the Roman Empire had descended on the Danube,

remained untouched by the hand of man. Where the soil was rich it was

generally marshy, and its insalubrity repelled the cultivators whom its

fertility attracted. Frederic William, called the Great Elector, was

the prince to whose policy his successors have agreed to ascribe their

greatness. He acquired by the peace of Westphalia several valuable

possessions, and among them the rich city and district of Magdeburg; and

he left to his son Frederic a principality as considerable as any which

was not called a kingdom.

Frederic aspired to the style of royalty. Ostentatious and profuse,

negligent of his true interests and of his high duties, insatiably eager

for frivolous distinctions, he added nothing to the real weight of the

state which he governed; perhaps he transmitted his inheritance to his

children impaired rather than augmented in value; but he succeeded in

gaining the great object of his life, the title of King. In the year

1700 he assumed this new dignity. He had on that occasion to undergo all

the mortifications which fall to the lot of ambitious upstarts. Compared

with the other crowned heads of Europe, he made a figure resembling that

which a Nabob or a Commissary, who had bought a title, would make in the

Company of Peers whose ancestors had been attainted for treason against

the Plantagenets. The envy of the class which Frederic quitted, and the

civil scorn of the class into which he intruded himself, were marked

in very significant ways. The Elector of Saxony at first refused to

acknowledge the new Majesty. Lewis the Fourteenth looked down on

his brother King with an air not unlike that with which the Count in

Moliere’s play regards Monsieur Jourdain, just fresh from the mummery of

being made a gentleman. Austria exacted large sacrifices in return for

her recognition, and at last gave it ungraciously.

Frederic was succeeded by his son, Frederic William, a prince who must

be allowed to have possessed some talents for administration, but whose

character was disfigured by odious vices, and whose eccentricities were

such as had never before been seen out of a madhouse. He was exact and

diligent in the transacting of business; and he was the first who formed

the design of obtaining for Prussia a place among the European powers,

altogether out of proportion to her extent and population by means of

a strong military organisation. Strict economy enabled him to keep up

a peace establishment of sixty thousand troops. These troops were

disciplined in such a manner, that, placed beside them, the household

regiments of Versailles and St. James’s would have appeared an awkward

squad. The master of such a force could not but be regarded by all his

neighbours as a formidable enemy and a valuable ally.

But the mind of Frederic William was so ill regulated, that all his

inclinations became passions, and all his passions partook of the

character of moral and intellectual disease. His parsimony degenerated

into sordid avarice. His taste for military pomp and order became a

mania, like that of a Dutch burgomaster for tulips, or that of a member

of the Roxburghe Club for Caxtons. While the envoys of the Court of

Berlin were in a state of such squalid poverty as moved the laughter

of foreign capitals, while the food placed before the princes and

princesses of the blood-royal of Prussia was too scanty to appease

hunger, and so bad that even hunger loathed it, no price was thought too

extravagant for tall recruits. The ambition of the King was to form a

brigade of giants, and every country was ransacked by his agents for

men above the ordinary stature. These researches were not confined to

Europe. No head that towered above the crowd in the bazaars of Aleppo,

of Cairo, or of Surat, could escape the crimps of Frederic William. One

Irishman more than seven feet high, who was picked up in London by the

Prussian ambassador, received a bounty of near thirteen hundred pounds

sterling, very much more than the ambassador’s salary. This extravagance

was the more absurd, because a stout youth of five feet eight, who might

have been procured for a few dollars, would in all probability have

been a much more valuable soldier. But to Frederic William, this huge

Irishman was what a brass Otho, or a Vinegar Bible, is to a collector of

a different kind.

It is remarkable, that though the main end of Frederic William’s

administration was to have a great military force, though his reign

forms an important epoch in the history of military discipline, and

though his dominant passion was the love of military display he was yet

one of the most pacific of princes. We are afraid that his aversion to

war was not the effect of humanity, but was merely one of his thousand

whims. His feeling about his troops seems to have resembled a miser’s

feeling about his money. He loved to collect them, to count them, to see

them increase; but he could not find it in his heart to break in upon

the precious hoard. He looked forward to some future time when his

Patagonian battalions were to drive hostile infantry before them like

sheep; but this future time was always receding; and it is probable

that, if his life had been prolonged thirty years, his superb army would

never have seen any harder service than a sham fight in the fields

near Berlin. But the great military means which he had collected were

destined to be employed by a spirit far more daring and inventive than

his own.

Frederic, surnamed the Great, son of Frederic William, was born in

January 1712. It may safely be pronounced that he had received from

nature a strong and sharp understanding, and a rare firmness of temper

and intensity of will. As to the other parts of his character, it is

difficult to say whether they are to be ascribed to nature, or to the

strange training which he underwent. The history of his boyhood is

painfully interesting. Oliver Twist in the parish workhouse, Smike

at Dotheboys Hall, were petted children when compared with this heir

apparent of a crown. The nature of Frederic William was hard and bad,

and the habit of exercising arbitrary power had made him frightfully

savage. His rage constantly vented itself to right and left in curses

and blows. When his Majesty took a walk, every human being fled before

him, as if a tiger had broken loose from a menagerie. If he met a lady

in the street, he gave her a kick, and told her to go home and mind her

brats. If he saw a clergyman staring at the soldiers, he admonished the

reverend gentleman to betake himself to study and prayer, and enforced

this pious advice by a sound caning, administered on the spot. But it

was in his own house that he was most unreasonable and ferocious. His

palace was hell, and he the most execrable of fiends, a cross between

Moloch and Puck. His son Frederic and his daughter Wilhelmina,

afterwards Margravine of Bareuth, were in an especial manner objects of

his aversion. His own mind was uncultivated. He despised literature.

He hated infidels, papists, and metaphysicians, and did not very well

understand in what they differed from each other. The business of life,

according to him, was to drill and to be drilled. The recreations suited

to a prince, were to sit in a cloud of tobacco smoke, to sip Swedish

beer between the puffs of the pipe, to play backgammon for three

halfpence a rubber, to kill wild hogs, and to shoot partridges by the

thousand. The Prince Royal showed little inclination either for the

serious employments or for the amusements of his father. He shirked the

duties of the parade; he detested the fume of tobacco; he had no taste

either for backgammon or for field sports. He had an exquisite ear,

and performed skilfully on the flute. His earliest instructors had

been French refugees, and they had awakened in him a strong passion for

French literature and French society. Frederic William regarded these

tastes as effeminate and contemptible, and, by abuse and persecution,

made them still stronger. Things became worse when the Prince Royal

attained that time of life at which the great revolution in the human

mind and body takes place. He was guilty of some youthful indiscretions,

which no good and wise parent would regard with severity. At a later

period he was accused, truly or falsely, of vices from which History

averts her eyes, and which even Satire blushes to name, vices such that,

to borrow the energetic language of Lord Keeper Coventry, “the depraved

nature of man, which of itself carrieth man to all other sin, abhorreth

them.” But the offences of his youth were not characterised by any

peculiar turpitude. They excited, however, transports of rage in

the King, who hated all faults except those to which he was himself

inclined, and who conceived that he made ample atonement to Heaven for

his brutality, by holding the softer passions in detestation. The Prince

Royal, too, was not one of those who are content to take their religion

on trust. He asked puzzling questions, and brought forward arguments

which seemed to savour of something different from pure Lutheranism. The

King suspected that his son was inclined to be a heretic of some sort or

other, whether Calvinist or Atheist his Majesty did not very well

know. The ordinary malignity of Frederic William was bad enough. He now

thought malignity a part of his duty as a Christian man, and all the

conscience that he had stimulated his hatred. The flute was broken:

the French books were sent out of the palace: the Prince was kicked and

cudgelled, and pulled by the hair. At dinner the plates were hurled at

his head: sometimes he was restricted to bread and water: sometimes he

was forced to swallow food so nauseous that he could not keep it on his

stomach. Once his father knocked him down, dragged him along the floor

to a window, and was with difficulty prevented from strangling him with

the cord of the curtain. The Queen, for the crime of not wishing to

see her son murdered, was subjected to the grossest indignities. The

Princess Wilhelmina, who took her brother’s part, was treated almost

as ill as Mrs. Brownrigg’s apprentices. Driven to despair, the unhappy

youth tried to run away. Then the fury of the old tyrant rose to

madness. The Prince was an officer in the army: his flight was therefore

desertion; and, in the moral code of Frederic William, desertion was the

highest of all crimes. “Desertion,” says this royal theologian, in one

of his half-crazy letters, “is from hell. It is a work of the children

of the Devil. No child of God could possibly be guilty of it.” An

accomplice of the Prince, in spite of the recommendation of a court

martial, was mercilessly put to death. It seemed probable that the

Prince himself would suffer the same fate. It was with difficulty that

the intercession of the States of Holland, of the Kings of Sweden and

Poland, and of the Emperor of Germany, saved the House of Brandenburg

from the stain of an unnatural murder. After months of cruel suspense,

Frederic learned that his life would be spared. He remained, however,

long a prisoner; but he was not on that account to be pitied. He found

in his gaolers a tenderness which he had never found in his father;

his table was not sumptuous, but he had wholesome food in sufficient

quantity to appease hunger: he could read the Henriade without being

kicked, and could play on his flute without having it broken over his

head.

When his confinement terminated he was a man. He had nearly completed

his twenty-first year, and could scarcely be kept much longer under the

restraints which had made his boyhood miserable. Suffering had matured

his understanding, while it had hardened his heart and soured his

temper. He had learnt self-command and dissimulation; he affected to

conform to some of his father’s views, and submissively accepted a wife,

who was a wife only in name, from his father’s hand. He also served

with credit, though without any opportunity of acquiring brilliant

distinction, under the command of Prince Eugene, during a campaign

marked by no extraordinary events. He was now permitted to keep a

separate establishment, and was therefore able to indulge with caution

his own tastes. Partly in order to conciliate the King, and partly, no

doubt, from inclination, he gave up a portion of his time to military

and political business, and thus gradually acquired such an aptitude

for affairs as his most intimate associates were not aware that he

possessed.

His favourite abode was at Rheinsberg, near the frontier which separates

the Prussian dominions from the Duchy of Mecklenburg. Rheinsberg, is

a fertile and smiling spot, in the midst of the sandy waste of the

Marquisate. The mansion, surrounded by woods of oak and beech, looks

out upon a spacious lake. There Frederic amused himself by laying out

gardens in regular alleys and intricate mazes, by building obelisks,

temples, and conservatories, and by collecting rare fruits and flowers.

His retirement was enlivened by a few companions, among whom he seems

to have preferred those who, by birth or extraction, were French. With

these intimates he dined and supped well, drank freely, and amused

himself sometimes with concerts, and sometimes with holding chapters of

a fraternity which he called the Order of Bayard; but literature was his

chief resource.

His education had been entirely French. The long ascendency which Lewis

the Fourteenth had enjoyed, and the eminent merit of the tragic and

comic dramatists, of the satirists, and of the preachers who had

flourished under that magnificent prince, had made the French

language predominant in Europe. Even in countries which had a national

literature, and which could boast of names greater than those of Racine,

of Moliere, and of Massillon, in the country of Dante, in the country

of Cervantes, in the country of Shakspeare and Milton, the intellectual

fashions of Paris had been to a great extent adopted. Germany had not

yet produced a single masterpiece of poetry or eloquence. In Germany,

therefore, the French taste reigned without rival and without limit.

Every youth of rank was taught to speak and write French. That he should

speak and write his own tongue with politeness, or even with accuracy

and facility, was regarded as comparatively an unimportant object.

Even Frederic William, with all his rugged Saxon prejudices, thought it

necessary that his children should know French, and quite unnecessary

that they should be well versed in German. The Latin was positively

interdicted. “My son,” his Majesty wrote, “shall not learn Latin; and,

more than that, I will not suffer anybody even to mention such a thing

to me.” One of the preceptors ventured to read the Golden Bull in the

original with the Prince Royal. Frederic William entered the room, and

broke out in his usual kingly style.

“Rascal, what are you at there?”

“Please your Majesty,” answered the preceptor, “I was explaining the

Golden Bull to his Royal Highness.”

“I’ll Golden Bull you, you rascal!” roared the Majesty of Prussia. Up

went the King’s cane away ran the terrified instructor; and Frederic’s

classical studies ended for ever. He now and then affected to quote

Latin sentences, and produced such exquisitely Ciceronian phrases as

these: “Stante pede morire”--“De gustibus non est disputandus,”--“Tot

verbas tot spondera.” Of Italian, he had not enough to read a page of

Metastasio with ease; and of the Spanish and English, he did not, as far

as we are aware, understand a single word.

As the highest human compositions to which he had access were those

of the French writers, it is not strange that his admiration for those

writers should have been unbounded. His ambitious and eager temper early

prompted him to imitate what he admired. The wish, perhaps, dearest to

his heart was, that he might rank among the masters of French rhetoric

and poetry. He wrote prose and verse as indefatigably as if he had been

a starving hack of Cave or Osborn; but Nature, which had bestowed

on him, in a large measure, the talents of a captain and of an

administrator, had withheld from him those higher and rarer gifts,

without which industry labours in vain to produce immortal eloquence and

song. And, indeed, had he been blessed with more imagination, wit, and

fertility of thought, than he appears to have had, he would still have

been subject to one great disadvantage, which would, in all probability,

have for ever prevented him from taking a high place among men of

letters. He had not the full command of any language. There was no

machine of thought which he could employ with perfect ease, confidence,

and freedom. He had German enough to scold his servants, or to give the

word of command to his grenadiers; but his grammar and pronunciation

were extremely bad. He found it difficult to make out the meaning even

of the simplest German poetry. On one occasion a version of Racine’s

Iphigenie was read to him. He held the French original in his hand; but

was forced to own that, even with such help, he could not understand the

translation. Yet, though he had neglected his mother tongue in order

to bestow all his attention on French, his French was, after all, the

French of a foreigner. It was necessary for him to have always at his

beck some men of letters from Paris to point out the solecisms and false

rhymes of which, to the last, he was frequently guilty. Even had he

possessed the poetic faculty, of which, as far as we can judge, he was

utterly destitute, the want of a language would have prevented him

from being a great poet. No noble work of imagination, as far as we

recollect, was ever composed by any man, except in a dialect which he

had learned without remembering how or when, and which he had spoken

with perfect ease before he had ever analysed its structure. Romans of

great abilities wrote Greek verses; but how many of those verses have

deserved to live? Many men of eminent genius have, in modern times,

written Latin poems; but, as far as we are aware, none of those poems,

not even Milton’s, can be ranked in the first class of art, or even very

high in the second. It is not strange, therefore, that, in the French

verses of Frederic, we can find nothing beyond the reach of any man

of good parts and industry, nothing above the level of Newdigate and

Seatonian poetry. His best pieces may perhaps rank with the worst

in Dodsley’s collection. In history, he succeeded better. We do not,

indeed, find, in any of his voluminous Memoirs, either deep reflection

or vivid painting. But the narrative is distinguished by clearness,

conciseness, good sense, and a certain air of truth and simplicity,

which is singularly graceful in a man who, having done great things,

sits down to relate them. On the whole, however, none of his writings

are so agreeable to us as his Letters, particularly those which are

written with earnestness, and are not embroidered with verses.

It is not strange that a young man devoted to literature, and acquainted

only with the literature of France, should have looked with profound

veneration on the genius of Voltaire. “A man who has never seen the

sun,” says Calderon, in one of his charming comedies, “cannot be blamed

for thinking that no glory can exceed that of the moon. A man who

has seen neither moon nor sun, cannot be blamed for talking of the

unrivalled brightness of the morning star.” Had Frederic been able to

read Homer and Milton or even Virgil and Tasso, his admiration of the

Henriade would prove that he was utterly destitute of the power of

discerning what is excellent in art. Had he been familiar with Sophocles

or Shakspeare, we should have expected him to appreciate Zaire more

justly. Had he been able to study Thucydides and Tacitus in the original

Greek and Latin, he would have known that there were heights in the

eloquence of history far beyond the reach of the author of the Life of

Charles the Twelfth. But the finest heroic poem, several of the most

powerful tragedies, and the most brilliant and picturesque historical

work that Frederic had ever read, were Voltaire’s. Such high and various

excellence moved the young Prince almost to adoration. The opinions of

Voltaire on religious and philosophical questions had not yet been

fully exhibited to the public. At a later period, when an exile from

his country, and at open war with the Church, he spoke out. But when

Frederic was at Rheinsberg, Voltaire was still a courtier; and, though

he could not always curb his petulant wit, he had as yet published

nothing that could exclude him from Versailles, and little that a divine

of the mild and generous school of Grotius and Tillotson might not read

with pleasure. In the Henriade, in Zaire, and in Alzire, Christian piety

is exhibited in the most amiable form; and, some years after the period

of which we are writing, a Pope condescended to accept the dedication

of Mahomet. The real sentiments of the poet, however, might be clearly

perceived by a keen eye through the decent disguise with which he veiled

them, and could not escape the sagacity of Frederic, who held similar

opinions, and had been accustomed to practise similar dissimulation.

The Prince wrote to his idol in the style of a worshipper; and Voltaire

replied with exquisite grace and address. A correspondence followed,

which may be studied with advantage by those who wish to become

proficients in the ignoble art of flattery. No man ever paid compliments

better than Voltaire. His sweetest confectionery had always a delicate,

yet stimulating flavour, which was delightful to palates wearied by the

coarse preparations of inferior artists. It was only from his hand that

so much sugar could be swallowed without making the swallower sick.

Copies of verses, writing-desks, trinkets of amber, were exchanged

between the friends. Frederic confided his writings to Voltaire; and

Voltaire applauded, as if Frederic had been Racine and Bossuet in

one. One of his Royal Highness’s performances was a refutation of

Machiavelli. Voltaire undertook to convey it to the press. It was

entitled the Anti-Machiavel, and was an edifying homily against

rapacity, perfidy, arbitrary government, unjust war, in short, against

almost everything for which its author is now remembered among men.

The old King uttered now and then a ferocious growl at the diversions of

Rheinsberg. But his health was broken; his end was approaching; and his

vigour was impaired. He had only one pleasure left, that of seeing tall

soldiers. He could always be propitiated by a present of a grenadier of

six feet four or six feet five; and such presents were from time to time

judiciously offered by his son.

Early in the year 1740, Frederic William met death with a firmness and

dignity worthy of a better and wiser man; and Frederic, who had just

completed his twenty-eighth year, became King of Prussia. His character

was little understood. That he had good abilities, indeed, no person who

had talked with him, or corresponded with him, could doubt. But the easy

Epicurean life which he had led, his love of good cookery and good wine,

of music, of conversation, of light literature, led many to regard him

as a sensual and intellectual voluptuary. His habit of canting about

moderation, peace, liberty, and the happiness which a good mind derives

from the happiness of others, had imposed on some who should have known

better. Those who thought best of him, expected a Telemachus after

Fenelon’s pattern. Others predicted the approach of a Medicean age, an

age propitious to learning and art, and not unpropitious to pleasure.

Nobody had the least suspicion that a tyrant of extraordinary military

and political talents, of industry more extraordinary still, without

fear, without faith, and without mercy, had ascended the throne.

The disappointment of Falstaff at his old boon-companion’s coronation

was not more bitter than that which awaited some of the inmates of

Rheinsberg. They had long looked forward to the accession of their

patron, as to the event from which their own prosperity and greatness

was to date. They had at last reached the promised land, the land which

they had figured to themselves as flowing with milk and honey; and they

found it a desert. “No more of these fooleries,” was the short, sharp

admonition given by Frederic to one of them. It soon became plain that,

in the most important points, the new sovereign bore a strong family

likeness to his predecessor. There was indeed a wide difference between

the father and the son as respected extent and vigour of intellect,

speculative opinions, amusements, studies, outward demeanour. But the

groundwork of the character was the same in both. To both were common

the love of order, the love of business, the military taste, the

parsimony, the imperious spirit, the temper irritable even to

ferocity, the pleasure in the pain and humiliation of others. But these

propensities had in Frederic William partaken of the general unsoundness

of his mind, and wore a very different aspect when found in company

with the strong and cultivated understanding of his successor. Thus,

for example, Frederic was as anxious as any prince could be about

the efficiency of his army. But this anxiety never degenerated into

a monomania, like that which led his father to pay fancy prices for

giants. Frederic was as thrifty about money as any prince or any private

man ought to be. But he did not conceive, like his father, that it was

worth while to eat unwholesome cabbages for the purpose of saving four

or five rixdollars in the year. Frederic was, we fear, as malevolent as

his father; but Frederic’s wit enabled him often to show his malevolence

in ways more decent than those to which his father resorted, and to

inflict misery and degradation by a taunt instead of a blow. Frederic,

it is true, by no means relinquished his hereditary privilege of kicking

and cudgelling. His practice, however, as to that matter, differed in

some important respects from his father’s. To Frederic William, the

mere circumstance that any persons whatever, men, women, or children,

Prussians or foreigners, were within reach of his toes and of his cane,

appeared to be a sufficient reason for proceeding to belabour them.

Frederic required provocation as well as vicinity; nor was he ever

known to inflict this paternal species of correction on any but his born

subjects; though on one occasion M. Thiebault had reason, during a few

seconds, to anticipate the high honour of being an exception to this

general rule.

The character of Frederic was still very imperfectly understood either

by his subjects or by his neighbours, when events occurred which

exhibited it in a strong light. A few months after his accession died

Charles the Sixth, Emperor of Germany, the last descendant, in the male

line, of the House of Austria.

Charles left no son, and had, long before his death, relinquished all

hopes of male issue. During the latter part of his life, his principal

object had been to secure to his descendants in the female line the many

crowns of the House of Hapsburg. With this view, he had promulgated a

new law of succession, widely celebrated throughout Europe under the

name of the Pragmatic Sanction. By virtue of this law, his daughter, the

Archduchess Maria Theresa, wife of Francis of Lorraine, succeeded to the

dominions of her ancestors.

No sovereign has ever taken possession of a throne by a clearer title.

All the politics of the Austrian cabinet had, during twenty years, been

directed to one single end, the settlement of the succession. From

every person whose rights could be considered as injuriously affected,

renunciations in the most solemn form had been obtained. The new law

had been ratified by the Estates of all the kingdoms and principalities

which made up the great Austrian monarchy. England, France, Spain,

Russia, Poland, Prussia, Sweden, Denmark, the Germanic body, had bound

themselves by treaty to maintain the Pragmatic Sanction. That instrument

was placed under the protection of the public faith of the whole

civilised world.

Even if no positive stipulations on this subject had existed, the

arrangement was one which no good man would have been willing to

disturb. It was a peaceable arrangement. It was an arrangement

acceptable to the great population whose happiness was chiefly

concerned. It was an arrangement which made no change in the

distribution of power among the states of Christendom. It was an

arrangement which could be set aside only by means of a general war;

and, if it were set aside, the effect would be, that the equilibrium

of Europe would be deranged, that the loyal and patriotic feelings of

millions would be cruelly outraged, and that great provinces which had

been united for centuries would be torn from each other by main force.

The sovereigns of Europe were, therefore, bound by every obligation

which those who are intrusted with power over their fellow-creatures

ought to hold most sacred, to respect and defend the rights of the

Archduchess. Her situation and her personal qualities were such as might

be expected to move the mind of any generous man to pity, admiration,

and chivalrous tenderness. She was in her twenty-fourth year. Her

form was majestic, her features beautiful, her countenance sweet and

animated, her voice musical, her deportment gracious and dignified, In

all domestic relations she was without reproach. She was married to a

husband whom she loved, and was on the point of giving birth to a child,

when death deprived her of her father. The loss of a parent, and the

new cares of empire, were too much for her in the delicate state of her

health. Her spirits were depressed, and her cheek lost its bloom. Yet

it seemed that she had little cause for anxiety. It seemed that justice,

humanity, and the faith of treaties would have their due weight, and

that the settlement so solemnly guaranteed would be quietly carried into

effect. England, Russia, Poland, and Holland, declared in form their

intention to adhere to their engagements. The French ministers made a

verbal declaration to the same effect. But from no quarter did the young

Queen of Hungary receive stronger assurances of friendship and support

than from the King of Prussia.

Yet the King of Prussia, the Anti-Machiavel, had already fully

determined to commit the great crime of violating his plighted faith, of

robbing the ally whom he was bound to defend, and of plunging all

Europe into a long, bloody, and desolating war; and all this for no end

whatever, except that he might extend his dominions, and see his name

in the gazettes. He determined to assemble a great army with speed and

secrecy, to invade Silesia before Maria Theresa should be apprised of

his design, and to add that rich province to his kingdom.

We will not condescend to refute at length the pleas which the compiler

of the Memoirs before us has copied from Doctor Preuss. They amount

to this, that the House of Brandenburg had some ancient pretensions to

Silesia, and had in the previous century been compelled, by hard usage

on the part of the Court of Vienna, to waive those pretensions. It is

certain that, whoever might originally have been in the right, Prussia

had submitted. Prince after prince of the House of Brandenburg had

acquiesced in the existing arrangement. Nay, the Court of Berlin

had recently been allied with that of Vienna, and had guaranteed the

integrity of the Austrian states. Is it not perfectly clear that, if

antiquated claims are to be set up against recent treaties and long

possession, the world can never be at peace for a day? The laws of

all nations have wisely established a time of limitation, after which

titles, however illegitimate in their origin, cannot be questioned.

It is felt by everybody, that to eject a person from his estate on

the ground of some injustice committed in the time of the Tudors would

produce all the evils which result from arbitrary confiscation, and

would make all property insecure. It concerns the commonwealth--so runs

the legal maxim--that there be an end of litigation. And surely this

maxim is at least equally applicable to the great commonwealth of

states; for in that commonwealth litigation means the devastation of

provinces, the suspension of trade and industry, sieges like those

of Badajoz and St. Sebastian, pitched fields like those of Eylau and

Borodino. We hold that the transfer of Norway from Denmark to Sweden was

an unjustifiable proceeding; but would the King of Denmark be therefore

justified in landing, without any new provocation in Norway, and

commencing military operations there? The King of Holland thinks, no

doubt, that he was unjustly deprived of the Belgian provinces. Grant

that it were so. Would he, therefore, be justified in marching with an

army on Brussels? The case against Frederic was still stronger, inasmuch

as the injustice of which he complained had been committed more than

a century before. Nor must it be forgotten that he owed the highest

personal obligations to the House of Austria. It may be doubted whether

his life had not been preserved by the intercession of the prince whose

daughter he was about to plunder.

To do the King justice, he pretended to no more virtue than he had. In

manifestoes he might, for form’s sake, insert some idle stories about

his antiquated claim on Silesia; but in his conversations and Memoirs he

took a very different tone. His own words are: “Ambition, interest, the

desire of making people talk about me, carried the day; and I decided

for war.”

Having resolved on his course, he acted with ability and vigour. It

was impossible wholly to conceal his preparations; for throughout the

Prussian territories regiments, guns, and baggage were in motion.

The Austrian envoy at Berlin apprised his court of these facts, and

expressed a suspicion of Frederic’s designs; but the ministers of Maria

Theresa refused to give credit to so black an imputation on a young

prince, who was known chiefly by his high professions of integrity and

philanthropy. “We will not,” they wrote, “we cannot, believe it.”

In the meantime the Prussian forces had been assembled. Without any

declaration of war, without any demand for reparation, in the very

act of pouring forth compliments and assurances of goodwill, Frederic

commenced hostilities. Many thousands of his troops were actually in

Silesia before the Queen of Hungary knew that he had set up any claim to

any part of her territories. At length he sent her a message which could

be regarded only as an insult. If she would but let him have Silesia,

he would, he said, stand by her against any power which should try to

deprive her of her other dominions; as if he was not already bound to

stand by her, or as if his new promise could be of more value than the

old one.

It was the depth of winter. The cold was severe, and the roads heavy

with mire. But the Prussians pressed on. Resistance was impossible. The

Austrian army was then neither numerous nor efficient. The small portion

of that army which lay in Silesia was unprepared for hostilities. Glogau

was blockaded; Breslau opened its gates; Ohlau was evacuated. A few

scattered garrisons still held out; but the whole open country was

subjugated: no enemy ventured to encounter the King in the field;

and, before the end of January 1741, he returned to receive the

congratulations of his subjects at Berlin.

Had the Silesian question been merely a question between Frederic and

Maria Theresa, it would be impossible to acquit the Prussian King

of gross perfidy. But when we consider the effects which his policy

produced, and could not fail to produce, on the whole community of

civilised nations, we are compelled to pronounce a condemnation still

more severe. Till he began the war, it seemed possible, even probable,

that the peace of the world would be preserved. The plunder of the great

Austrian heritage was indeed a strong temptation; and in more than one

cabinet ambitious schemes were already meditated. But the treaties

by which the Pragmatic Sanction had been guaranteed were express and

recent. To throw all Europe into confusion for a purpose clearly unjust,

was no light matter. England was true to her engagements. The voice of

Fleury had always been for peace. He had a conscience. He was now

in extreme old age, and was unwilling, after a life which, when his

situation was considered, must be pronounced singularly pure, to carry

the fresh stain of a great crime before the tribunal of his God. Even

the vain and unprincipled Belle-Isle, whose whole life was one wild

day-dream of conquest and spoliation, felt that France, bound as she

was by solemn stipulations, could not, without disgrace, make a direct

attack on the Austrian dominions. Charles, Elector of Bavaria, pretended

that he had a right to a large part of the inheritance which the

Pragmatic Sanction gave to the Queen of Hungary; but he was not

sufficiently powerful to move without support. It might, therefore, not

unreasonably be expected that, after a short period of restlessness, all

the potentates of Christendom would acquiesce in the arrangements made

by the late Emperor. But the selfish rapacity of the King of Prussia

gave the signal to his neighbours. His example quieted their sense of

shame. His success led them to underrate the difficulty of dismembering

the Austrian monarchy. The whole world sprang to arms. On the head of

Frederic is all the blood which was shed in a war which raged during

many years and in every quarter of the globe, the blood of the column

of Fontenoy, the blood of the mountaineers who were slaughtered at

Culloden. The evils produced by his wickedness were felt in lands where

the name of Prussia was unknown; and, in order that he might rob a

neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast

of Coromandel, and red men scalped each other by the Great Lakes of

North America.

Silesia had been occupied without a battle; but the Austrian troops were

advancing to the relief of the fortresses which still held out. In the

spring Frederic rejoined his army. He had seen little of war, and

had never commanded any great body of men in the field. It is not,

therefore, strange that his first military operations showed little of

that skill which, at a later period, was the admiration of Europe. What

connoisseurs say of some pictures painted by Raphael in his youth,

may be said of this campaign. It was in Frederic’s early bad manner.

Fortunately for him, the generals to whom he was opposed were men of

small capacity. The discipline of his own troops, particularly of the

infantry, was unequalled in that age; and some able and experienced

officers were at hand to assist him with their advice. Of these, the

most distinguished was Field-Marshal Schwerin, a brave adventurer of

Pomeranian extraction, who had served half the governments in Europe,

had borne the commissions of the States-General of Holland and of the

Duke of Mecklenburg, had fought under Marlborough at Blenheim, and had

been with Charles the Twelfth at Bender.

Frederic’s first battle was fought at Molwitz; and never did the career

of a great commander open in a more inauspicious manner. His army was

victorious. Not only, however, did he not establish his title to the

character of an able general; but he was so unfortunate as to make

it doubtful whether he possessed the vulgar courage of a soldier. The

cavalry, which he commanded in person, was put to flight. Unaccustomed

to the tumult and carnage of a field of battle, he lost his

self-possession, and listened too readily to those who urged him to save

himself. His English grey carried him many miles from the field, while

Schwerin, though wounded in two places, manfully upheld the day. The

skill of the old Field-Marshal and the steadiness of the Prussian

battalions prevailed; and the Austrian army was driven from the field

with the loss of eight thousand men.

The news was carried late at night to a mill in which the King had taken

shelter. It gave him a bitter pang. He was successful; but he owed his

success to dispositions which others had made, and to the valour of

men who had fought while he was flying. So unpromising was the first

appearance of the greatest warrior of that age.

The battle of Molwitz was the signal for a general explosion throughout

Europe. Bavaria took up arms. France, not yet declaring herself a

principal in the war, took part in it as an ally of Bavaria. The two

great statesmen to whom mankind had owed many years of tranquillity,

disappeared about this time from the scene, but not till they had both

been guilty of the weakness of sacrificing their sense of justice and

their love of peace to the vain hope of preserving their power. Fleury,

sinking under age and infirmity, was borne down by the impetuosity of

Belle-Isle. Walpole retired from the service of his ungrateful country

to his woods and paintings at Houghton; and his power devolved on

the daring and eccentric Carteret. As were the ministers, so were the

nations. Thirty years during which Europe had, with few interruptions,

enjoyed repose, had prepared the public mind for great military efforts.

A new generation had grown up, which could not remember the siege of

Turin or the slaughter of Malplaquet; which knew war by nothing but its

trophies; and which, while it looked with pride on the tapestries at

Blenheim, or the statue in the Place of Victories, little thought by

what privations, by what waste of private fortunes, by how many bitter

tears, conquests must be purchased.

For a time fortune seemed adverse to the Queen of Hungary. Frederic

invaded Moravia. The French and Bavarians penetrated into Bohemia,

and were there joined by the Saxons. Prague was taken. The Elector of

Bavaria was raised by the suffrages of his colleagues to the Imperial

throne, a throne which the practice of centuries had almost entitled the

House of Austria to regard as a hereditary possession.

Yet was the spirit of the haughty daughter of the Caesars unbroken.

Hungary was still hers by an unquestionable title; and although her

ancestors had found Hungary the most mutinous of all their kingdoms,

she resolved to trust herself to the fidelity of a people, rude indeed,

turbulent, and impatient of oppression, but brave, generous, and

simple-hearted. In the midst of distress and peril she had given birth

to a son, afterwards the Emperor Joseph the Second. Scarcely had she

arisen from her couch, when she hastened to Presburg. There, in the

sight of an innumerable multitude, she was crowned with the crown and

robed with the robe of St. Stephen. No spectator could restrain his

tears when the beautiful young mother, still weak from child-bearing,

rode, after the fashion of her fathers, up the Mount of Defiance,

unsheathed the ancient sword of state, shook it towards north and south,

east and west, and, with a glow on her pale face, challenged the four

corners of the world to dispute her rights and those of her boy. At the

first sitting of the Diet she appeared clad in deep mourning for her

father, and in pathetic and dignified words implored her people to

support her just cause. Magnates and deputies sprang up, half drew their

sabres, and with eager voices vowed to stand by her with their lives and

fortunes. Till then, her firmness had never once forsaken her before the

public eye; but at that shout she sank down upon her throne, and wept

aloud. Still more touching was the sight when, a few days later, she

came again before the Estates of her realm, and held up before them the

little Archduke in her arms. Then it was that the enthusiasm of Hungary

broke forth into that war-cry which soon resounded throughout Europe,

“Let us die for our King, Maria Theresa!”

In the meantime, Frederic was meditating a change of policy. He had no

wish to raise France to supreme power on the Continent, at the expense

of the House of Hapsburg. His first object was to rob the Queen of

Hungary. His second object was that, if possible, nobody should rob her

but himself. He had entered into engagements with the powers leagued

against Austria; but these engagements were in his estimation of no more

force than the guarantee formerly given to the Pragmatic Sanction.

His plan now was to secure his share of the plunder by betraying his

accomplices. Maria Theresa was little inclined to listen to any such

compromise; but the English Government represented to her so strongly

the necessity of buying off Frederic, that she agreed to negotiate. The

negotiation would not, however, have ended in a treaty, had not the

arms of Frederic been crowned with a second victory. Prince Charles of

Lorraine, brother-in-law to Maria Theresa, a bold and active, though

unfortunate general, gave battle to the Prussians at Chotusitz, and

was defeated. The King was still only a learner of the military art. He

acknowledged, at a later period, that his success on this occasion was

to be attributed, not at all to his own generalship, but solely to the

valour and steadiness of his troops. He completely effaced, however, by

his personal courage and energy, the stain which Molwitz had left on his

reputation.

A peace, concluded under the English mediation, was the fruit of this

battle. Maria Theresa ceded Silesia: Frederic abandoned his allies:

Saxony followed his example; and the Queen was left at liberty to

turn her whole force against France and Bavaria. She was everywhere

triumphant. The French were compelled to evacuate Bohemia, and with

difficulty effected their escape. The whole line of their retreat might

be tracked by the corpses of thousands who had died of cold, fatigue,

and hunger. Many of those who reached their country carried with them

the seeds of death. Bavaria was overrun by bands of ferocious warriors

from that bloody debatable land which lies on the frontier between

Christendom and Islam. The terrible names of the Pandoor, the Croat,

and the Hussar, then first became familiar to Western Europe. The

unfortunate Charles of Bavaria, vanquished by Austria, betrayed by

Prussia, driven from his hereditary states, and neglected by his allies,

was hurried by shame and remorse to an untimely end. An English army

appeared in the heart of Germany, and defeated the French at Dettingen.

The Austrian captains already began to talk of completing the work of

Marlborough and Eugene, and of compelling France to relinquish Alsace

and the three Bishoprics.

The Court of Versailles, in this peril, looked to Frederic for help. He

had been guilty of two great treasons: perhaps he might be induced to

commit a third. The Duchess of Chateauroux then held the chief influence

over the feeble Lewis. She, determined to send an agent to Berlin; and

Voltaire was selected for the mission. He eagerly undertook the task;

for, while his literary fame filled all Europe, he was troubled with a

childish craving for political distinction. He was vain, and not

without reason, of his address, and of his insinuating eloquence: and he

flattered himself that he possessed boundless influence over the King

of Prussia. The truth was that he knew, as yet, only one corner of

Frederic’s character. He was well acquainted with all the petty vanities

and affectations of the poetaster; but was not aware that these foibles

were united with all the talents and vices which lead to success in

active life, and that the unlucky versifier who pestered him with reams

of middling Alexandrines, was the most vigilant, suspicious, and severe

of politicians.

Voltaire was received with every mark of respect and friendship, was

lodged in the palace, and had a seat daily at the royal table. The

negotiation was of an extraordinary description. Nothing can be

conceived more whimsical than the conferences which took place between

the first literary man and the first practical man of the age, whom a

strange weakness had induced to exchange their parts. The great poet

would talk of nothing but treaties and guarantees, and the great King of

nothing but metaphors and rhymes. On one occasion Voltaire put into his

Majesty’s hands a paper on the state of Europe, and received it back

with verses scrawled on the margin. In secret they both laughed at each

other. Voltaire did not spare the King’s poems; and the King has left

on record his opinion of Voltaire’s diplomacy. “He had no credentials,”

says Frederic, “and the whole mission was a joke, a mere farce.”

But what the influence of Voltaire could not effect, the rapid progress

of the Austrian arms effected. If it should be in the power of Maria

Theresa and George the Second to dictate terms of peace to France, what

chance was there that Prussia would long retain Silesia? Frederic’s

conscience told him that he had acted perfidiously and inhumanly towards

the Queen of Hungary. That her resentment was strong she had given ample

proof; and of her respect for treaties he judged by his own. Guarantees,

he said, were mere filigree, pretty to look at, but too brittle to bear

the slightest pressure. He thought it his safest course to ally himself

closely to France, and again to attack the Empress Queen. Accordingly,

in the autumn of 1744, without notice, without any decent pretext,

he recommenced hostilities, marched through the electorate of Saxony

without troubling himself about the permission of the Elector, invaded

Bohemia, took Prague, and even menaced Vienna.

It was now that, for the first time, he experienced the inconstancy

of fortune. An Austrian army under Charles of Lorraine threatened his

communications with Silesia. Saxony was all in arms behind him. He found

it necessary to save himself by a retreat. He afterwards owned that his

failure was the natural effect of his own blunders. No general, he

said, had ever committed greater faults. It must be added, that to the

reverses of this campaign he always ascribed his subsequent successes.

It was in the midst of difficulty and disgrace that he caught the first

clear glimpse of the principles of the military art.

The memorable year 1745 followed. The war raged by sea and land, in

Italy, in Germany, and in Flanders; and even England, after many years

of profound internal quiet, saw, for the last time, hostile armies set

in battle array against each other. This year is memorable in the life

of Frederic, as the date at which his noviciate in the art of war may be

said to have terminated. There have been great captains whose precocious

and self-taught military skill resembled intuition. Conde, Clive, and

Napoleon are examples. But Frederic was not one of these brilliant

portents. His proficiency in military science was simply the proficiency

which a man of vigorous faculties makes in any science to which he

applies his mind with earnestness and industry. It was at Hohenfriedberg

that he first proved how much he had profited by his errors, and by

their consequences. His victory on that day was chiefly due to his

skilful dispositions, and convinced Europe that the prince who, a few

years before, had stood aghast in the rout of Molwitz, had attained in

the military art a mastery equalled by none of his contemporaries,

or equalled by Saxe alone. The victory of Hohenfriedberg was speedily

followed by that of Sorr.

In the meantime, the arms of France had been victorious in the Low

Countries. Frederic had no longer reason to fear that Maria Theresa

would be able to give law to Europe, and he began to meditate a fourth

breach of his engagements. The Court of Versailles was alarmed and

mortified. A letter of earnest expostulation, in the handwriting of

Lewis, was sent to Berlin; but in vain. In the autumn of 1745, Frederic

made Peace with England, and, before the close of the year, with Austria

also. The pretensions of Charles of Bavaria could present no obstacle

to an accommodation. That unhappy Prince was no more; and Francis of

Lorraine, the husband of Maria Theresa, was raised, with the general

assent of the Germanic body, to the Imperial throne.

Prussia was again at peace; but the European war lasted till, in the

year 1748, it was terminated by the treaty of Aix-la Chapelle. Of all

the powers that had taken part in it, the only gainer was Frederic. Not

only had he added to his patrimony the fine province of Silesia: he

had, by his unprincipled dexterity, succeeded so well in alternately

depressing the scale of Austria and that of France, that he was

generally regarded as holding the balance of Europe, a high dignity for

one who ranked lowest among kings, and whose great-grandfather had

been no more than a Margrave. By the public, the King of Prussia was

considered as a politician destitute alike of morality and decency,

insatiably rapacious, and shamelessly false; nor was the public much

in the wrong. He was at the same time, allowed to be a man of parts, a

rising general, a shrewd negotiator and administrator. Those qualities

wherein he surpassed all mankind, were as yet unknown to others or to

himself; for they were qualities which shine out only on a dark ground.

His career had hitherto, with little interruption, been prosperous;

and it was only in adversity, in adversity which seemed without hope or

resource, in adversity which would have overwhelmed even men celebrated

for strength of mind, that his real greatness could be shown.

He had, from the commencement of his reign, applied himself to public

business after a fashion unknown among kings. Lewis the Fourteenth,

indeed, had been his own prime minister, and had exercised a general

superintendence over all the departments of the Government; but this was

not sufficient for Frederic. He was not content with being his own prime

minister: he would be his own sole minister. Under him there was no

room, not merely for a Richelieu or a Mazarin, but for a Colbert, a

Louvois, or a Torcy. A love of labour for its own sake, a restless and

insatiable longing to dictate, to intermeddle, to make his power felt, a

profound scorn and distrust of his fellow-creatures, made him unwilling

to ask counsel, to confide important secrets, to delegate ample powers.

The highest functionaries under his government were mere clerks, and

were not so much trusted by him as valuable clerks are often trusted

by the heads of departments. He was his own treasurer, his own

commander-in-chief, his own intendant of public works, his own minister

for trade and justice, for home affairs and foreign affairs, his own

master of the horse, steward, and chamberlain. Matters of which no chief

of an office in any other government would ever hear, were, in this

singular monarchy, decided by the King in person. If a traveller wished

for a good place to see a review, he had to write to Frederic, and

received next day, from a royal messenger, Frederic’s answer signed by

Frederic’s own hand. This was an extravagant, a morbid activity. The

public business would assuredly have been better done if each department

had been put under a man of talents and integrity, and if the King had

contented himself with a general control. In this manner the advantages

which belong to unity of design, and the advantages which belong to the

division of labour, would have been to a great extent combined. But such

a system would not have suited the peculiar temper of Frederic. He could

tolerate no will, no reason, in the State, save his own. He wished

for no abler assistance than that of penmen who had just understanding

enough to translate and transcribe, to make out his scrawls, and to put

his concise Yes and No into an official form. Of the higher intellectual

faculties, there is as much in a copying machine, or a lithographic

press, as he required from a secretary of the cabinet.

His own exertions were such as were hardly to be expected from a human

body or a human mind. At Potsdam, his ordinary residence, he rose at

three in summer and four in winter. A page soon appeared, with a large

basket full of all the letters which had arrived for the King by the

last courier, despatches from ambassadors, reports from officers of

revenue, plans of buildings, proposals for draining marshes, complaints

from persons who thought themselves aggrieved, applications from persons

who wanted titles, military commissions, and civil situations. He

examined the seals with a keen eye; for he was never for a moment free

from the suspicion that some fraud might be practised on him. Then he

read the letters, divided them into several packets, and signified his

pleasure, generally by a mark, often by two or three words, now and then

by some cutting epigram. By eight he had generally finished this part

of his task. The adjutant-general was then in attendance, and received

instructions for the day as to all the military arrangements of

the kingdom. Then the King went to review his guards, not as kings

ordinarily review their guards, but with the minute attention and

severity of an old drill-sergeant. In the meantime the four cabinet

secretaries had been employed in answering the letters on which the King

had that morning signified his will. These unhappy men were forced to

work all the year round like negro slaves in the time of the sugar-crop.

They never had a holiday. They never knew what it was to dine. It was

necessary that, before they stirred, they should finish the whole of

their work. The King, always on his guard against treachery, took from

the heap a handful of letters at random, and looked into them to see

whether his instructions had been exactly followed. This was no bad

security against foul play on the part of the secretaries; for if one

of them were detected in a trick, he might think himself fortunate if

he escaped with five years of imprisonment in a dungeon. Frederic then

signed the replies, and all were sent off the same evening.

The general principles on which this strange government was conducted,

deserve attention. The policy of Frederic was essentially the same as

his father’s; but Frederic, while he carried that policy to lengths to

which his father never thought of carrying it, cleared it at the same

time from the absurdities with which his father had encumbered it. The

King’s first object was to have a great, efficient, and well-trained

army. He had a kingdom which in extent and population was hardly in

the second rank of European powers; and yet he aspired to a place not

inferior to that of the sovereigns of England, France, and Austria. For

that end it was necessary that Prussia should be all sting. Lewis the

Fifteenth, with five times as many subjects as Frederic, and more than

five times as large a revenue, had not a more formidable army. The

proportion which the soldiers in Prussia bore to the people seems

hardly credible. Of the males in the vigour of life, a seventh part

were probably under arms; and this great force had, by drilling, by

reviewing, and by the unsparing use of cane and scourge, been taught

to form all evolutions with a rapidity and a precision which would have

astonished Villars or Eugene. The elevated feelings which are necessary

to the best kind of army were then wanting to the Prussian service. In

those ranks were not found the religious and political enthusiasm which

inspired the pikemen of Cromwell, the patriotic ardour, the thirst of

glory, the devotion to a great leader, which inflamed the Old Guard of

Napoleon. But in all the mechanical parts of the military calling, the

Prussians were as superior to the English and French troops of that day

as the English and French troops to a rustic militia.

Though the pay of the Prussian soldier was small, though every rixdollar

of extraordinary charge was scrutinised by Frederic with a vigilance and

suspicion such as Mr. Joseph Hume never brought to the examination of an

army estimate, the expense of such an establishment was, for the means

of the country, enormous. In order that it might not be utterly ruinous,

it was necessary that every other expense should be cut down to the

lowest possible point. Accordingly Frederic, though his dominions

bordered on the sea, had no navy. He neither had nor wished to have

colonies. His judges, his fiscal officers, were meanly paid. His

ministers at foreign courts walked on foot, or drove shabby old

carriages till the axle-trees gave way. Even to his highest diplomatic

agents, who resided at London and Paris, he allowed less than a thousand

pounds sterling a year. The royal household was managed with a frugality

unusual in the establishments of opulent subjects, unexampled in any

other palace. The King loved good eating and drinking, and during great

part of his life took pleasure in seeing his table surrounded by guests;

yet the whole charge of his kitchen was brought within the sum of two

thousand pounds sterling a year. He examined every extraordinary

item with a care which might be thought to suit the mistress of

a boarding-house better than a great prince. When more than four

rixdollars were asked of him for a hundred oysters, he stormed as if he

had heard that one of his generals had sold a fortress to the Empress

Queen. Not a bottle of champagne was uncorked without his express order.

The game of the royal parks and forests, a serious head of expenditure

in most kingdoms, was to him a source of profit. The whole was farmed

out; and though the farmers were almost ruined by their contract, the

King would grant them no remission. His wardrobe consisted of one fine

gala dress, which lasted him all his life; of two or three old coats fit

for Monmouth Street, of yellow waistcoats soiled with snuff, and of huge

boots embrowned by time. One taste alone sometimes allured him beyond

the limits of parsimony, nay, even beyond the limits of prudence, the

taste for building. In all other things his economy was such as we might

call by a harsher name, if we did not reflect that his funds were drawn

from a heavily taxed people, and that it was impossible for him, without

excessive tyranny, to keep up at once a formidable army and a splendid

court.

Considered as an administrator, Frederic had undoubtedly many titles to

praise. Order was strictly maintained throughout his dominions. Property

was secure. A great liberty of speaking and of writing was allowed.

Confident in the irresistible strength derived from a great army, the

King looked down on malcontents and libellers with a wise disdain; and

gave little encouragement to spies and informers. When he was told

of the disaffection of one of his subject, he merely asked, “How many

thousand men can he bring into the field?” He once saw a crowd staring

at something on a wall. He rode up and found that the object of

curiosity was a scurrilous placard against himself. The placard had been

posted up so high that it was not easy to read it. Frederic ordered his

attendants to take it down and put it lower. “My people and I,” he said,

“have come to an agreement which satisfies us both. They are to say what

they please, and I am to do what I please.” No person would have dared

to publish in London satires on George the Second approaching to the

atrocity of those satires on Frederic, which the booksellers at Berlin

sold with impunity. One bookseller sent to the palace a copy of the most

stinging lampoon that perhaps was ever written in the world, the Memoirs

of Voltaire, published by Beaumarchais, and asked for his Majesty’s

orders. “Do not advertise it in an offensive manner,” said the King;

“but sell it by all means. I hope it will pay you well.” Even among

statesmen accustomed to the licence of a free press, such steadfastness

of mind as this is not very common.

It is due also to the memory of Frederic to say that he earnestly

laboured to secure to his people the great blessing of cheap and speedy

Justice. He was one of the first rulers who abolished the cruel and

absurd practice of torture. No sentence of death, pronounced by the

ordinary tribunals, was executed without his sanction; and his sanction,

except in cases of murder, was rarely given. Towards his troops he acted

in a very different manner. Military offences were punished with such

barbarous scourging that to be shot was considered by the Prussian

soldier as a secondary punishment. Indeed, the principle which pervaded

Frederic’s whole policy was this, that the more severely the army

is governed, the safer it is to treat the rest of the community with

lenity.

Religious persecution was unknown under his government, unless some

foolish and unjust restrictions which lay upon the Jews may be regarded

as forming an exception. His policy with respect to the Catholics of

Silesia presented an honourable contrast to the policy which, under

very similar circumstances, England long followed with respect to the

Catholics of Ireland. Every form of religion and irreligion found an

asylum in the States. The scoffer whom the parliaments of France had

sentenced to a cruel death, was consoled by a commission in the Prussian

service. The Jesuit who could show his face nowhere else, who in Britain

was still subject to penal laws, who was proscribed by France, Spain,

Portugal, and Naples, who had been given up even by the Vatican, found

safety and the means of subsistence in the Prussian dominions.

Most of the vices of Frederic’s administration resolve selves into

one vice, the spirit of meddling. The indefatigable activity of his

intellect, his dictatorial temper, his military habits, all inclined him

to this great fault. He drilled his people as he drilled his grenadiers.

Capital and industry were diverted from their natural direction by a

crowd of preposterous regulations. There was a monopoly of coffee, a

monopoly of tobacco, a monopoly of refined sugar. The public money, of

which the King was generally so sparing, was lavishly spent in ploughing

bogs, in planting mulberry trees amidst the sand, in bringing sheep from

Spain to improve the Saxon wool, in bestowing prizes for fine yarn,

in building manufactories of porcelain, manufactories of carpets,

manufactories of hardware, manufactories of lace. Neither the experience

of other rulers, nor his own, could ever teach him that something more

than an edict and a grant of public money was required to create a

Lyons, a Brussels, or a Birmingham.

For his commercial policy, however, there was some excuse. He had on his

side illustrious examples and popular prejudice. Grievously as he erred,

he erred in company with his age. In other departments his meddling was

altogether without apology. He interfered with the course of justice as

well as with the course of trade; and set up his own crude notions

of equity against the law as expounded by the unanimous voice of the

gravest magistrates. It never occurred to him that men whose lives were

passed in adjudicating on questions of civil right were more likely to

form correct opinions on such questions than a prince whose attention

was divided among a thousand objects, and who had never read a law-book

through. The resistance opposed to him by the tribunals inflamed him to

fury. He reviled his Chancellor. He kicked the shins of his judges. He

did not, it is true, intend to act unjustly. He firmly believed that

he was doing right, and defending the cause of the poor against the

wealthy. Yet this well-meant meddling probably did far more harm than

all the explosions of his evil passions during the whole of his long

reign. We could make shift to live under a debauchee or a tyrant; but to

be ruled by a busybody is more than human nature can bear.

The same passion for directing and regulating appeared in every part of

the King’s policy. Every lad of a certain station in life was forced to

go to certain schools within the Prussian dominions. If a young Prussian

repaired, though but for a few weeks, to Leyden or Gottingen for the

purpose of study, the offence was punished with civil disabilities,

and sometimes with the confiscation of property. Nobody was to travel

without the royal permission. If the permission were granted, the

pocket-money of the tourist was fixed by royal ordinance. A merchant

might take with him two hundred and fifty rixdollars in gold, a noble

was allowed to take four hundred; for it may be observed, in passing,

that Frederic studiously kept up the old distinction between the nobles

and the community. In speculation, he was a French philosopher, but in

action, a German prince. He talked and wrote about the privileges of

blood in the style of Sieyes; but in practice no chapter in the empire

looked with a keener eye to genealogies and quarterings.

Such was Frederic the Ruler. But there was another Frederic, the

Frederic of Rheinsberg, the fiddler and flute-player, the poetaster

and metaphysician. Amidst the cares of State the King had retained his

passion for music, for reading, for writing, for literary society. To

these amusements he devoted all the time that he could snatch from the

business of war and government; and perhaps more light is thrown on his

character by what passed during his hours of relaxation, than by his

battles or his laws.

It was the just boast of Schiller that, in his country, no Augustus, no

Lorenzo, had watched over the infancy of poetry. The rich and energetic

language of Luther, driven by the Latin from the schools of pedants,

and by the French from the palaces of kings, had taken refuge among

the people. Of the powers of that language Frederic had no notion. He

generally spoke of it, and of those who used it, with the contempt of

ignorance. His library consisted of French books; at his table nothing

was heard but French conversation. The associates of his hours of

relaxation were, for the most part, foreigners. Britain furnished to the

royal circle two distinguished men, born in the highest rank, and

driven by civil dissensions from the land to which, under happier

circumstances, their talents and virtues might have been a source of

strength and glory. George Keith, Earl Marischal of Scotland, had taken

arms for the House of Stuart in 1715; and his younger brother James,

then only seventeen years old, had fought gallantly by his side. When

all was lost they retired together to the Continent, roved from country

to country, served under various standards, and so bore themselves as to

win the respect and good-will of many who had no love for the Jacobite

cause. Their long wanderings terminated at Potsdam; nor had Frederic any

associates who deserved or obtained so large a share of his esteem.

They were not only accomplished men, but nobles and warriors, capable of

serving him in war and diplomacy, as well as of amusing him at supper.

Alone of all his companions, they appear never to have had reason to

complain of his demeanour towards them. Some of those who knew the

palace best pronounced that the Lord Marischal was the only human being

whom Frederic ever really loved.

Italy sent to the parties at Potsdam the ingenious and amiable

Algarotti, and Bastiani, the most crafty, cautious, and servile of

Abbes. But the greater part of the society which Frederic had assembled

round him, was drawn from France. Maupertuis had acquired some celebrity

by the journey which he had made to Lapland, for the purpose of

ascertaining, by actual measurement, the shape of our planet. He was

placed in the chair of the Academy of Berlin, a humble imitation of

the renowned academy of Paris. Baculard D’Arnaud, a young poet, who was

thought to have given promise of great things, had been induced to quit

his country, and to reside at the Prussian Court. The Marquess D’Argens

was among the King’s favourite companions, on account, as it should

seem, of the strong opposition between their characters. The parts

of D’Argens were good, and his manners those of a finished French

gentleman; but his whole soul was dissolved in sloth, timidity, and

self-indulgence. He was one of that abject class of minds which are

superstitious without being religious. Hating Christianity with a

rancour which made him incapable of rational inquiry, unable to see in

the harmony and beauty of the universe the traces of divine power and

wisdom, he was the slave of dreams and omens, would not sit down to

table with thirteen in company, turned pale if the salt fell towards

him, begged his guests not to cross their knives and forks on their

plates, and would not for the world commence a journey on Friday. His

health was a subject of constant anxiety to him. Whenever his head

ached, or his pulse beat quick, his dastardly fears and effeminate

precautions were the jest of all Berlin. All this suited the King’s

purpose admirably. He wanted somebody by whom he might be amused, and

whom he might despise. When he wished to pass half an hour in easy

polished conversation, D’Argens was an excellent companion; when he

wanted to vent his spleen and contempt, D’Argens was an excellent butt.

With these associates, and others of the same class, Frederic loved to

spend the time which he could steal from public cares. He wished his

supper parties to be gay and easy. He invited his guests to lay aside

all restraint, and to forget that he was at the head of a hundred and

sixty thousand soldiers, and was absolute master of the life and liberty

of all who sat at meat with him. There was, therefore, at these parties

the outward show of ease. The wit and learning of the company were

ostentatiously displayed. The discussions on history and literature were

often highly interesting. But the absurdity of all the religions known

among men was the chief topic of conversation; and the audacity with

which doctrines and names venerated throughout Christendom were treated

on these occasions startled even persons accustomed to the society

of French and English freethinkers. Real liberty, however, or real

affection, was in this brilliant society not to be found. Absolute kings

seldom have friends: and Frederic’s faults were such as, even where

perfect equality exists, make friendship exceedingly precarious. He had

indeed many qualities which, on a first acquaintance were captivating.

His conversation was lively; his manners, to those whom he desired to

please, were even caressing. No man could flatter with more delicacy. No

man succeeded more completely in inspiring those who approached him with

vague hopes of some great advantage from his kindness. But under this

fair exterior he was a tyrant, suspicious, disdainful, and malevolent.

He had one taste which may be pardoned in a boy, but which, when

habitually and deliberately indulged by a man of mature age and strong

understanding, is almost invariably the sign of a bad heart--a taste for

severe practical jokes. If a courtier was fond of dress, oil was flung

over his richest suit. If he was fond of money, some prank was

invented to make him disburse more than he could spare. If he was

hypochondriacal, he was made to believe that he had the dropsy. If he

had particularly set his heart on visiting a place, a letter was forged

to frighten him from going thither. These things, it may be said, are

trifles. They are so; but they are indications, not to be mistaken, of a

nature to which the sight of human suffering and human degradation is an

agreeable excitement.

Frederic had a keen eye for the foibles of others, and loved to

communicate his discoveries. He had some talent for sarcasm, and

considerable skill in detecting the sore places where sarcasm would

be most acutely felt. His vanity, as well as his malignity, found

gratification in the vexation and confusion of those who smarted under

his caustic jests. Yet in truth his success on these occasions

belonged quite as much to the king as to the wit. We read that Commodus

descended, sword in hand, into the arena, against a wretched gladiator,

armed only with a foil of lead, and, after shedding the blood of the

helpless victim, struck medals to commemorate the inglorious victory.

The triumphs of Frederic in the war of repartee were of much the same

kind. How to deal with him was the most puzzling of questions. To appear

constrained in his presence was to disobey his commands, and to spoil

his amusement. Yet if his associates were enticed by his graciousness to

indulge in the familiarity of a cordial intimacy, he was certain to make

them repent of their presumption by some cruel humiliation. To resent

his affronts was perilous; yet not to resent them was to deserve and

to invite them. In his view, those who mutinied were insolent and

ungrateful; those who submitted were curs made to receive bones and

kickings with the same fawning patience. It is, indeed, difficult to

conceive how anything short of the rage of hunger should have induced

men to bear the misery of being the associates of the Great King. It

was no lucrative post. His Majesty was as severe and economical in

his friendships as in the other charges of his establishment, and as

unlikely to give a rixdollar too much for his guests as for his dinners.

The sum which he allowed to a poet or a philosopher was the very

smallest sum for which such poet or philosopher could be induced to sell

himself into slavery; and the bondsman might think himself fortunate,

if what had been so grudgingly given was not, after years of suffering,

rudely and arbitrarily withdrawn.

Potsdam was, in truth, what it was called by one of its most illustrious

inmates, the Palace of Alcina, At the first glance it seemed to be a

delightful spot, where every intellectual and physical enjoyment

awaited the happy adventurer. Every newcomer was received with eager

hospitality, intoxicated with flattery, encouraged to expect prosperity

and greatness. It was in vain that a long succession of favourites who

had entered that abode with delight and hope, and who, after a short

term of delusive happiness, had been doomed to expiate their folly by

years of wretchedness and degradation, raised their voices to warn the

aspirant who approached the charmed threshold. Some had wisdom enough to

discover the truth early, and spirit enough to fly without looking back;

others lingered on to a cheerless and unhonoured old age. We have no

hesitation in saying that the poorest author of that time in London,

sleeping on a bulk, dining in a cellar, with a cravat of paper, and

a skewer for a shirt-pin, was a happier man than any of the literary

inmates of Frederic’s Court.

But of all who entered the enchanted garden in the inebriation

of delight, and quitted it in agonies of rage and shame, the most

remarkable was Voltaire. Many circumstances had made him desirous of

finding a home at a distance from his country. His fame had raised him

up enemies. His sensibility gave them a formidable advantage over him.

They were, indeed, contemptible assailants. Of all that they wrote

against him, nothing has survived except what he has himself preserved.

But the constitution of his mind resembled the constitution of those

bodies in which the slightest scratch of a bramble, or the bite of a

gnat, never fails to fester. Though his reputation was rather raised

than lowered by the abuse of such writers as Freron and Desfontaines,

though the vengeance which he took on Freron and Desfontaines was such,

that scourging, branding, pillorying, would have been a trifle to it,

there is reason to believe that they gave him far more pain than he ever

gave them. Though he enjoyed during his own lifetime the reputation of

a classic, though he was extolled by his contemporaries above all poets,

philosophers, and historians, though his works were read with as much

delight and admiration at Moscow and Westminster, at Florence and

Stockholm, as at Paris itself, he was yet tormented by that restless

jealousy which should seem to belong only to minds burning with the

desire of fame, and yet conscious of impotence. To men of letters who

could by no possibility be his rivals, he was, if they behaved well to

him, not merely just, not merely courteous, but often a hearty friend

and a munificent benefactor. But to every writer who rose to a celebrity

approaching his own, he became either a disguised or an avowed enemy. He

slily depreciated Montesquieu and Buffon. He publicly, and with violent

outrage, made war on Rousseau. Nor had he the heart of hiding his

feelings under the semblance of good humour or of contempt. With all his

great talents, and all his long experience of the world, he had no more

self-command than a petted child, or a hysterical woman. Whenever he

was mortified, he exhausted the whole rhetoric of anger and sorrow to

express his mortification. His torrents of bitter words, his stamping

and cursing, his grimaces and his tears of rage, were a rich feast

to those abject natures, whose delight is in the agonies of powerful

spirits and in the abasement of immortal names. These creatures had now

found out a way of galling him to the very quick. In one walk, at

least, it had been admitted by envy itself that he was without a living

competitor. Since Racine had been laid among the great men whose dust

made the holy precinct of Port-Royal holier, no tragic poet had appeared

who could contest the palm with the author of Zaire, of Alzire, and of

Merope. At length a rival was announced. Old Crebillon, who, many years

before, had obtained some theatrical success, and who had long been

forgotten, came forth from his garret in one of the meanest lanes near

the Rue St. Antoine, and was welcomed by the acclamations of envious men

of letters, and of a capricious populace. A thing called Catiline, which

he had written in his retirement, was acted with boundless applause. Of

this execrable piece it is sufficient to say, that the plot turns on a

love affair, carried on in all the forms of Scudery, between Catiline,

whose confidant is the Praetor Lentulus, and Tullia, the daughter of

Cicero. The theatre resounded with acclamations. The King pensioned the

successful poet; and the coffee-houses pronounced that Voltaire was a

clever man, but that the real tragic inspiration, the celestial fire

which had glowed in Corneille and Racine, was to be found in Crebillon

alone.

The blow went to Voltaire’s heart. Had his wisdom and fortitude been in

proportion to the fertility of his intellect, and to the brilliancy

of his wit, he would have seen that it was out of the power of all the

puffers and detractors in Europe to put Catiline above Zaire; but he

had none of the magnanimous patience with which Milton and Bentley left

their claims to the unerring judgment of time. He eagerly engaged in an

undignified competition with Crebillon, and produced a series of plays

on the same subjects which his rival had treated. These pieces were

coolly received. Angry with the court, angry with the capital, Voltaire

began to find pleasure in the prospect of exile. His attachment for

Madame du Chatelet long prevented him from executing his purpose. Her

death set him at liberty; and he determined to take refuge at Berlin.

To Berlin he was invited by a series of letters, couched in terms of

the most enthusiastic friendship and admiration. For once the rigid

parsimony of Frederic seemed to have relaxed. Orders, honourable

offices, a liberal pension, a well-served table, stately apartments

under a royal roof, were offered in return for the pleasure and honour

which were expected from the society of the first wit of the age.

A thousand louis were remitted for the charges of the journey. No

ambassador setting out from Berlin for a court of the first rank, had

ever been more amply supplied. But Voltaire was not satisfied. At a

later period, when he possessed an ample fortune, he was one of the most

liberal of men; but till his means had become equal to his wishes, his

greediness for lucre was unrestrained either by justice or by shame. He

had the effrontery to ask for a thousand louis more, in order to enable

him to bring his niece, Madame Denis, the ugliest of coquettes, in his

company. The indelicate rapacity of the poet produced its natural effect

on the severe and frugal King. The answer was a dry refusal. “I did

not,” said his Majesty, “solicit the honour of the lady’s society.” On

this, Voltaire went off into a paroxysm of childish rage. “Was there

ever such avarice? He has hundreds of tubs full of dollars in his

vaults, and haggles with me about a poor thousand louis.” It seemed that

the negotiation would be broken off; but Frederic, with great dexterity,

affected indifference, and seemed inclined to transfer his idolatry to

Baculard D’Arnaud. His Majesty even wrote some bad verses, of which

the sense was, that Voltaire was a setting sun, and that D’Arnaud was

rising. Good-natured friends soon carried the lines to Voltaire. He was

in his bed. He jumped out in his shirt, danced about the room with rage,

and sent for his passport and his post-horses. It was not difficult to

foresee the end of a connection which had such a beginning.