THE TEN YEARS’ PEACE, 1746–1756
Two Silesian wars, episodes in the eight years of general turmoil
produced by the Austrian Succession question, had now been brought by
Frederick to a fortunate end. The Hapsburgs once more possessed the
Imperial crown, but the Hohenzollerns were masters of Silesia and their
days of vassalage were over.
The course of history has shown that by gaining Silesia Prussia enabled
herself to become in time the principal German state. From this time
onward, the Teutonic elements in the Hapsburg realm became more and
more outweighed by the rest, until in 1866 Austria, as a Power whose
political centre was Buda-Pest, was finally expelled from Germany. In
1745, it is true, the full significance of the transfer of Silesia was
felt rather than understood. But it was felt strongly enough to prevent
Frederick from deluding himself with the vain belief that Austria would
be easily reconciled to her loss, or that she regarded the Peace of
Dresden as more sacred than the Peace of Berlin. The Queen, it was
said, could not behold a Silesian without tears. Her spirit was so
high that she is believed to have thought seriously of becoming her own
commander-in-chief, and her resources grew greater with every year of
peace.
Frederick’s task of holding what he had so lightly seized in 1740
therefore grew no less difficult as time went on. He had good reason
for remaining constant to the principle which he professed at Dresden:
“I would not henceforth attack a cat, except to defend myself.” His
policy, as he wrote in his Testament of 1752, was to maintain peace
as long as might be possible without lowering the dignity of Prussia.
“We have drawn upon ourselves the envy of Europe by the acquisition
of Silesia,” he confessed. “It has put all our neighbours on the
alert; there is none who does not distrust us.” The ink of the Treaty
of Dresden was hardly dry ere new plans were mooted to blot it out.
The attitude of Russia towards the victor was menacing, that of
Poland defiant, and it was easy to see that Austria and Saxony had an
understanding with the Northern Powers which boded him no good.
Frederick was, however, no longer a novice in diplomacy and he knew
his own mind. Evading all efforts to tempt him back into the whirlpool
of war, he watched its successive phases till the Peace of 1748. He
saw the Queen turn her energies to Italy, while the Sea Powers, who
could not maintain themselves in the Netherlands without her aid, hired
troops in the only market open to them and brought 35,000 Russians
to the Rhine. But the value of this new factor in the politics of
Western Europe had not been tested when the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle
was patched up. Then the exhausted combatants entered upon the task of
reconstruction, in which Frederick had more than two years’ start of
them. To him the peace brought a guarantee by all Europe of the treaty
by which he held Silesia.
Imperfect as it was, for it settled no great question, the Peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle gave pause to the armed strife of Europe for eight
years. Prussia therefore enjoyed a full decade of rest before 1756,
when the third and greatest of her struggles for Silesia began. She
dared not put off her harness, but she stood at ease. After the peace
her army still numbered 135,000 men. But the crowned commander-in-chief
had now a leisure unattainable in time of war. His excuse for deserting
his ally at Dresden was that he wished to enjoy life and to labour for
the good of his subjects. Now his opportunity had come. It would be
strange if a reign of less than six years had destroyed the ideal which
Frederick championed in his early treatise on kingcraft. Prussia and
Europe might well expect that he would be, like the great-grandfather
of whom he wrote the words, “as great in peace as in the bosom of
victory,” and that he would apply his untrammelled power to remedy
whatever defects his enlightened insight might still discover in the
Prussian State. Frederick the Warrior had cleared the way for Frederick
the Reformer. Ought not Prussian history in the fifties to be a story
of regeneration?
The King himself, however, practically omits the record of this
decade from his history of the reign. He assigns as the reason that
“political intrigues which lead to nothing deserve no more notice than
teasing in society, and the particulars of the internal administration
do not afford sufficient material for history.” His great English
admirer holds that this routine work in itself was eminent, that
“one day these things will deserve to be studied to the bottom;
and to be set forth, by writing hands that are competent, for the
instruction and example of Workers,” but that “of Frederick’s success
in his Law-Reforms, in his Husbandries, Commerces and Furtherances,
conspicuously great as it was, there is no possibility of making
careless readers cognisant at this day.” Carlyle then explains that
the visit of Voltaire to Frederick and their quarrel is one of the few
things perfectly knowable in this period and the only thing which the
populations care to hear.
The following chapter of this book is written in the belief that
readers of the story of Frederick may well demand, above all else,
whether he is justly termed “The Great,” and if so, in virtue of what
achievements? Unless we are willing to answer that the title is his of
right because he seized Silesia and held it against great odds, these
questions compel us to enquire into his home administration. We know
well that the ruler is strong only because he wields the collective
strength of his nation, and that his chief task is to render the
nation stronger and to improve the machinery by which its strength is
collected and exerted. A great ruler is one who, when the difficulties
which he had to contend with are taken into account, is perceived to
have accomplished much more in the performance of this task than could
be expected from an ordinary man. If we find that Frederick improved
the lot of his subjects in a remarkable degree, or that he invented
beneficial institutions, or devised a system by which the future of
government in Prussia was assured and progress made easy, then we shall
have to concede to him a right to the title of Great other than that
which conquest may confer.
It is of high importance to ascertain at the outset of the enquiry how
far Frederick was free to act as he pleased and to what extent he was
fettered by constitutional or social ties. His whole manner of life,
indeed, was such as to suggest the most complete freedom. From the
moment of his father’s death he was master of his people and of his
policy as few European potentates have ever been. Autocracy as well as
diligence is stamped upon even the externals of his everyday existence.
Though his stature was not quite five feet seven inches, his ablutions,
when performed at all, slight and few, and his dress of the shabbiest,
no one ever suggested that his presence lacked kingliness. He usually
wore an old grey hat of soft felt, a faded blue uniform smeared with
the snuff in which he indulged immoderately, and boots which through
neglect were of a reddish colour. But his bearing, stern and caressing
by turns, his clarion voice, and his glance which, as a contemporary
owned, nothing could resist, made him the cynosure of whatever company
he was in. The absence of the customary trappings of royalty rendered
the King of Prussia less formidable to the poor, whom he patronised,
while it marked his contempt for the official and middle classes, whom
he sometimes allowed to kiss the skirts of his dirty coat.
Frederick, it need hardly be said, was fully conscious of his own
superiority to his subjects in birth, address, and talent. During
his incognito visit to Strasburg in 1740, Marshal Broglie remarked
the contrast between Frederick and Algarotti on the one hand and the
awkward Germans of the party on the other. The vivacity of the King’s
circle was almost all imported from abroad. Many years later the
French philosopher d’Alembert stated that Frederick himself was the
only man in Prussia with whom it was possible to hold conversation
as the word was understood in France. The man who by right of birth
was absolute ruler of Prussia had some reason to believe that he was
also the greatest poet, historian, philosopher, critic, administrator,
legislator, statesman, captain, and general in his dominions.
[Illustration: SANS-SOUCI. CARYTID FRONT.]
There is perhaps no more conclusive proof of his wisdom than that
his consciousness of this unique endowment did not cause his home
policy to become tyrannical and his foreign policy grandiose. From
the second fault he was saved by his keen eye for realities, which
taught him that, as he confessed, Prussia was playing a part among
the Great Powers without being in fact the equal of the rest. That he
never became a tyrant, was probably due in part to natural humanity
and in part to the philosophy which was his pride. He was often harsh
towards his subjects, but he proclaimed that his duty was to make them
happy and he never shed their blood. His threats to execute his
ministers were mere insults. But philosophy did not check one evil to
which he was inclined by nature and impelled by situation. Nothing
short of human sympathy could have mitigated his contempt for the
populace, which gathered strength with years. “My dear Sulzer,” he
replied to an educational theorist who urged that men were naturally
inclined to good, “you do not know that curséd race as I do.” “It is
more probable,” he held, “that we sprang from evil spirits, if such
things could exist, than from a Being whose nature is good.” As he rode
through the streets of his capital on one famous occasion, he came
upon a group of the discontented staring at a seditious cartoon. “Hang
it lower down,” was his scornful order, “so that they need not strain
their necks to see it.”
To the service of those whom he termed the rabble, none the less,
Frederick devoted a great share of a life of incessant labour. Every
day, Sunday and week-day alike, was parcelled out so as to contain
the greatest possible amount of work. “It is not necessary that I
should live,” wrote the King, “but it is necessary that I should act.”
He toiled for the State and for himself, and, with the exception of
regular visits to his mother and Madame de Camas, he admitted few
social claims upon his time. His Queen never even saw his favourite
home, Sans Souci, which he built in the park at Potsdam in 1747. She
knew so little of his affairs that she gave a party at Schönhausen
while he was lying _in extremis_. The consideration which he denied
to her he did not give to others whose title to it was less strong.
As he grew older, he curtailed even the short time that he had been
wont to spend in his capital, and divided the bulk of the year between
seclusion at Potsdam and the inspection of his provinces.
His habit was to rise at dawn or earlier. The first three or four hours
of the morning were allotted to toilet, correspondence, a desultory
breakfast of strong coffee and fruit, preceded by a deep draught of
cold water flavoured with fennel leaves, and flute-playing as an
accompaniment to meditation on business. Then came one or two hours
of rapid work with his secretaries, followed by parade, audiences,
and perhaps a little exercise. Punctually at noon Frederick sat down
to dinner, which was always the chief social event of the day and in
later life became his only solid meal. He supervised his kitchen like a
department of State. He considered and often amended the bill of fare,
which contained the names of the cooks responsible for every dish.
After dinner he marked with a cross the courses which had merited his
approval. He inspected his household accounts with minute care and
proved himself a master of domestic economy. The result was a dinner
that Voltaire considered fairly good for a country in which there was
no game, no decent meat, and no spring chickens.
Two hours, sometimes even four, were spent at table. Occasionally the
time was devoted to the discussion of important business with high
officials, but in general Frederick used it to refresh himself after
his six or seven hours of toil. He ate freely, preferring highly spiced
dishes, drank claret mixed with water, and talked incessantly. He was
a skilful and agreeable host, putting his guests instantly at their
ease, and, by Voltaire’s account, calling forth wit in others. After
dismissing the company he returned to his flute, and then put the
final touches to the morning’s business. After this he drank coffee
and passed some two hours in seclusion. During this period he nerved
himself for fresh grappling with affairs by plunging into literature.
In the year 1749 he produced no less than forty works. About six
o’clock he was ready to receive his lector or to converse with artists
and learned men. At seven began a small concert, in which Frederick
himself used often to perform. Supper followed, but was brief, unless
the conversation was of unusual interest. Otherwise the King went
to bed at about nine o’clock and slept five or six hours. In later
life he gave up suppers, but continued to invite a few friends for
conversation. He then allowed himself rather more sleep. In his last
years he lost the power to play his flute and with it, apparently, the
desire to hear music.
The sketch which has been given of Frederick’s daily life suggests that
whatever his power might be, it was not subjected to the interference
of others. At Potsdam there was no place for the ordinary influences
which were brought to bear upon Kings. Frederick would not endure the
presence of any woman, and, strictly speaking, he had no courtiers.
His intimates were not politicians, but wits and men of letters, for
the most part of foreign birth. Even those who accused him of hideous
vices admitted that he never suffered his accomplices to have the
smallest influence over him. Eichel and the two other secretaries who
worked with the King every day were slaves rather than counsellors.
They lived in such seclusion that, according to the French ambassador,
Eichel was never seen by any human being. During Frederick’s last
illness, he forced their successors to attend him at four o’clock
in the morning, so that the few weeks that might yet remain to him
should be serviceable to the State. One of them fell to the ground
in a fit, but the King merely summoned another, and went on with the
business. Through their hands passed Frederick’s correspondence with
his ministers, whom he rarely saw. “In his orders of two lines,”
grumbled a subordinate, “he announced no reasons.” He was of course
obliged to listen to the ambassadors of foreign Powers. As though to
avenge himself for this, he tolerated no suggestions from his own. He
desired spies rather than advisers, and often chose men of inferior
intelligence to fill high diplomatic posts. On every hand we find
tokens that Frederick looked to his own breast alone for inspiration in
the exercise of his power.
To realise how unfettered was the authority that Frederick wielded we
must consider the peculiar structure of the society over which he ruled
and of the machinery by which he ruled it. Frederick’s Prussia was a
state which just a century of strong monarchical rule had manufactured
out of a number of Hohenzollern fiefs. Its basis still remained feudal.
There were few social classes, and strong barriers separated class
from class. The career open to a Prussian was strictly limited by his
birth. Between town and country the law reared a dividing wall, unseen
but impassable. Townsmen alone were allowed to become manufacturers,
merchants, and civil servants. They paid a special tax, the “Excise,”
levied on the articles which they consumed. They had magistrates of
their own choosing, a relic of the municipal independence which the
Great Elector had broken down.
To the countryfolk, on the other hand, the King looked for his army.
They were divided into two great classes; the nobles, who alone might
become officers, and the peasants, who were still serfs tied to the
estates of their lords. The nobles enjoyed exemption from ordinary
taxes and paid only a small feudal rent to the Crown. Upon the
shoulders of the peasants fell the heavy burden of the “Contribution,”
a direct payment in money. Neither they nor the nobles might become
craftsmen or engage in commerce. The barrier which separated the two
classes of countryfolk was as firm as that which separated both from
the dwellers in towns. New patents of nobility were rarely granted by
the King, but all the children of a noble were nobles. Even the soil
was divided into noble-lands and peasant-lands, and neither class might
acquire the portion of the other.
It is easy to see that this system of rigid class division was unlikely
to ensure to every Prussian the career for which he was best fitted. In
Frederick’s eyes, however, it possessed two supreme merits, and for the
sake of these he was willing to make it eternal. It provided a gigantic
army and it contained no germ of opposition to the Crown.
Prussia under Frederick was practically one vast camp. Every
social class had a military function to perform. The King was
commander-in-chief and paymaster-general. The nobles formed the corps
of officers. Some of the peasants were called on to bear arms while the
rest laboured in the fields to produce the necessary supplies of food.
The burghers, who have been styled the commissariat department of the
army, armed and clothed the troops, and helped to provide funds with
which to hire the foreigners of whom half the army was composed.
It was possible to entrust to foreigners so great a share in Prussian
wars because the framework of the army was of iron. The native half of
each regiment was drawn from a particular locality. It consisted of
peasants led by the lords whom they had been accustomed from infancy
to obey. The regiment was ruled in a fashion almost patriarchal by a
commander who gave it his own name. Under this system _esprit de corps_
became a passion, and none knew better than Frederick how to turn it to
good account. To the army “Prussia” was a name which within the memory
of their fathers had been arbitrarily assigned to the dominions of the
elder branch of the House of Hohenzollern. Where national patriotism
was in its infancy, local patriotism was all the more intense, and it
was by playing upon this that Frederick, the Father of all his lands,
called forth many marvellous feats of arms.
But the King, though he fostered profitable sentiment, was far too
wary to trust to it over much. He had other expedients for attracting
nobles to the colours and for keeping the ranks full. He withdrew his
royal favour from those of noble birth who were so unpatriotic as
either to avoid his service or to leave it in a few years. The social
arrangements which have been outlined above were yet more powerful in
securing a supply of officers. The nobles were numerous, poor, and
brave. They must find some career, and what other lay open to them?
When Frederick’s father began to impress cadets, many parents even
tried to prove that they were not of noble birth. But with them, as
with many other classes of the discontented, firm government in the
long run brought cheerful obedience. “The King’s bread is the best,”
became their maxim. Frederick marked his appreciation of their worth by
rarely giving commissions to men of lower rank. It was not the least
of his gains that he thus acquired military authority over the most
influential class in his dominions.
He made sure of the common man by stern discipline. Although the
Prussian members of each regiment were bound together by social and
local bonds, by no means all of them were willing to fight for the
King. They were conscripts, not volunteers, and they were released only
when they became unfit to serve. Not a few deserted to the enemy under
stress of war. The foreigners who were their comrades under arms were
a varied host. Some were mercenaries, some deserters from the enemy,
some keen fighting men who were glad to serve in the finest army in the
world. Many had been kidnapped or pressed or tempted into the Prussian
service by false promises or admitted when their own countries were too
hot to hold them. Frederick’s directions to Prussian commanders for
the march are based on the assumption that many of the men will desire
to run away. When in time of war some of the peasants volunteered, the
astonished King asked what finer deed the Romans of old had performed.
His standing remedy against disintegration was “to make the discipline
so stern and the punishments so severe that the men would learn to fear
their own superiors more than the enemy.”
“The punishments were barbarous,” writes Professor Martin
Philippson. “Thrashing was customary. Imprisonment, sharpened
by all kinds of chastisement and torment, was not rare. The
most terrible of all was running the gauntlet, in which the
offender was stripped to the waist and forced to run from
twenty to thirty times through a living lane of hundreds of
soldiers armed with rods, while the officers looked to it that
every man laid on lustily. Hundreds of wretched men gave up the
ghost under these tortures.”
Yet of the rank and file it may be said with more confidence than of
any other section of Frederick’s subjects that they loved the King.
Enough, perhaps, has been said to suggest that where classes were so
sharply divided there was little likelihood of any national resistance
to the Crown and that the Prussian military system gave Frederick a
peculiar authority over two great sections of his people. A further
source of power consisted in his enormous wealth. In every province
the Crown possessed vast domains amounting in all to nearly one-third
of the soil of Prussia. The result was that Frederick was lord of
innumerable peasants and by far the greatest capitalist in his
dominions. To him the nobles looked for help in time of dearth, while
the townsmen expected him to bear the initial loss of new industrial
enterprises. His domestic policy was directed towards the maintenance
of this position. For him the notion of taxes fructifying in the
pockets of the people had no charm. His ideal was that of subjects
paying the greatest possible amount of taxes to be administered by the
head of the State. Under his father’s rule the limit of profitable
taxation had already been reached, but Frederick was able to make
the collectors stricter than before. Though no spot in the Mark or
Pomerania or Magdeburg was more than twenty miles from a border, the
frontiers of his straggling dominions were watched with a vigilance
which became proverbial. An Italian priest, whom he begged to smuggle
him through the gate of heaven under his cassock, professed that he
would be charmed to do so, provided that the search for contraband were
not so keen as in Prussia. Liberty of commerce and remission of taxes
were not among the ideals of a King who claimed to direct all the
economic activities of his people.
The Prussian clergy had less power than the moneyed interest, and less
desire than the landed interest, to oppose or influence the will of the
King. His absolutism was favoured by the fact that in his dominions
several jealous churches existed side by side, and that he alone could
be the umpire in their disputes. His own point of view was perfectly
clear. He valued pastors because they taught their people to obey their
superiors and not to rob and murder, as, in the King’s opinion, they
would do if unrestrained. If the pastors accomplished this duty with
reasonable success they might, without fear of his displeasure use any
ritual or proclaim any doctrine of which their congregations approved.
Frederick regarded the Protestant teaching as far more useful than
the Romanist, but was determined to protect each in the enjoyment
of its rights and privileges. He professed himself willing to build
mosques for Turks and heathen if they would people the land. He was
the official head of the Lutheran Church, whose clergy then, as
always, preached the divine right of Kings. The King for his part
usually jeered at their faith only in private. At times, however, he
allowed his contempt for their observances to appear. When several
congregations appealed to him to condemn a new hymn-book he despatched
a refusal, and added with his own hand, “Everyone is free to sing ‘Now
all the woods are resting’ and more of such stupid nonsense.” In the
same spirit he answered the clergy of Potsdam who begged him not to
block out the light from their church, “Blessed are they which have not
seen and yet have believed.”
Frederick’s relations with his many papist subjects ran all the
smoother because the contemporary Popes were as a rule too much
engrossed by troubles within their own flock to engage in unnecessary
aggressions. His treatment of the papists in his hereditary dominions
was always carried out in the spirit of his answer to the monks of
Cleves. Though hardly meritorious in the eyes of the Holy Father, it
was too upright to give reasonable cause of offence. Near the royal
palace in Berlin rose the Hedwigs-Kirche, a temple modelled on the
Pantheon at Rome and built by the heretic King for the use of Romanists.
In the conquered provinces, however, a more difficult problem
confronted him. The Romanists, who formed the bulk of the population
of Upper Silesia and were powerful even in Breslau, could not be
expected to accept with pleasure the head of an alien church as their
supreme lord. The Prussian confiscation of one-half the net revenues
of the conventual houses and at a later date the disgrace of Cardinal
Schaffgotsch were measures dictated by needs of State, but not on
that account less unwelcome to the Church. The papists of Silesia,
particularly the clergy and the Jesuits, long continued to hope for the
restoration of Hapsburg rule.
Even in Silesia, however, Frederick’s policy of impartial firmness
disarmed his religious opponents in the end. While his neighbours
were expelling the Jesuits from their dominions and confiscating the
estates of the Church, his doors stood open to the fugitives and the
original settlement of the relations between Church and State remained
unvaried. It must not be forgotten, too, that the King of Prussia was
the patron and paymaster of a vast number of ecclesiastics of all
creeds. This fact finds illustration in one of the practical jokes
which he played upon his needy friend Pöllnitz. Although he had already
changed his religion in hope of a lucrative marriage, Frederick tempted
him by hinting that a rich canonry in Silesia was vacant. Next day, as
he expected, Pöllnitz came to tell him that he had again recanted and
was now eligible for the post. The King replied that the appointment
was already made, but that he had still a place of Rabbi to dispose
of—“Turn Jew and you shall have it.” With the same cynicism he exhorted
and often compelled the clergy to practise apostolic poverty. “We
free them from the cares of this world,” he wrote to Voltaire after
a sweeping measure of confiscation, “so that they may labour without
distraction to win the Heavenly Jerusalem which is their true home.”
It is not surprising if Carlyle is justified in stating that under
Frederick “the reverend men feel themselves to be a body of Spiritual
Sergeants, Corporals and Captains, to whom obedience is the rule and
discontent a thing not to be indulged in by any means.”
If, then, it is vain to look either to any class of society or to the
military or ecclesiastical organisations for a possible check upon
Frederick’s absolutism, the remainder of our quest must be confined
within two fields—the Judiciary and the Executive. It is idle to
imagine parliaments in Frederick’s Prussia. His ancestors had freed
themselves from the privileged assemblies which grew up in the several
provinces under the feudal system. To this day his successors upon the
Prussian throne reject the claims of their subjects to what William II.
stigmatised as “the freedom to govern themselves badly according to
their own desires.” Nor was the absence of parliament atoned for by the
influence of public opinion. Society at Berlin occasionally ventured to
mark its disapproval of the King’s action. It was, however, a narrow
caste, which lacked even the wit to temper despotism by epigram. The
King, though he endowed his capital with many handsome buildings, took
little pains to conciliate its inhabitants by living in their midst,
and on occasion did not scruple to play upon their stupidity. “In 1767,
the King found the public at Berlin inclined to tattle on the chance
of another war. To turn their attention he immediately composed and
sent to the newspapers a full account of a wonderful hail-storm stated,
though without the smallest foundation in fact, to have taken place
in Potsdam on the 27th of February in that year. Not only did this
imaginary narrative engross for some time, as he desired, the public
conversation, but it gave rise to some grave philosophical treatises on
the supposed phenomenon.” (Mahon.)
Many despotisms have, however, been tempered by the judicial system
of the nation or by the established machinery of administration. We,
therefore, turn finally to the judges and civil officers of Prussia
for some check upon Frederick’s power. But we find that in the
department of law he was as absolute as in any other. His subjects were
no longer entitled to carry their suits to the Imperial courts, and
the King at once supplied the deficiency, and kept his judges under
by making himself in person an accessible and swift tribunal of final
appeal (1744).
In this connexion the case of Miller Arnold is of world-wide celebrity.
A miller living near the Polish border was condemned by his lord to
be evicted for persistent non-payment of rent. He appealed to the
chief court of the province for restitution, alleging that another
noble, who afterwards bought the mill, had deprived him of water by
restoring a fish-pond higher up the stream. When the court decided
against him, he availed himself of the privilege of petition which
Frederick accorded to all his subjects. The King deputed one of his
colonels to investigate the matter in company with a member of the
provincial court. The colonel reported in favour of Arnold, but his
colleague upheld the previous decision. The King, convinced that his
colonel was in the right and that a poor man was being robbed of his
livelihood by a legal quibble, ordered the provincial court to make a
fresh enquiry. This second investigation only served to confirm their
previous view of the case, though an expert in drainage was of opinion
that the fish-pond really restricted the flow of water to the mill.
They declined to alter their verdict and Frederick ordered the judges
at Berlin to revise it.
The judges obeyed and revised the depositions with great care. Once
more sentence was pronounced against Arnold. Thereupon the King
determined to make an example of those who in his name oppressed the
poor under form of law. He summoned before him the Chancellor and
the three judges at whose door he supposed the guilt to lie. To the
Chancellor he addressed six words only: “March, thy place is filled
already.” The three judges were first rated like malefactors and then
flung into the common gaol.
It would be tedious to recite all the items of the King’s vengeance.
His hand fell as heavily upon the provincial court as upon the judges
at Berlin. When the Minister of Justice refused to pronounce sentence
against them, Frederick himself condemned them to loss of office, a
year’s imprisonment, and the payment of all that Arnold had lost. Thus
the miller triumphed, though he had in truth suffered no loss of water
power. Not till the succeeding reign was his knavery exposed and the
royal decree reversed.
These proceedings, which took place in the later years of the reign,
serve to show that Frederick was strong enough to trample the law
and its ministers underfoot. In general, however, he proved himself
practical, impartial, and firm in all that pertained to the judicial
system. The story that a miller of Potsdam refused to sell his
wind-mill to the King and answered his threats with a reference to
the courts, has been destroyed by modern criticism. “The laws must
speak and the sovereign be silent,” was, however, one of his maxims.
The distrust of lawyers which caused him to prefer the verdict of one
colonel to that of many judges did much to inspire the sweeping changes
for which the years following the Peace of Dresden are illustrious.
Frederick’s law-reforms were in great part achieved by the aged
jurist Cocceji, who, with the King’s support, triumphed over all
the interested opposition of lawyers and of his rivals. In the
course of the years 1747 and 1748, he abolished superfluous courts,
raised the fees for litigation, quickened the procedure, established
satisfactory tests for judges and advocates, reduced the numbers of
these functionaries, and did away at one stroke with the whole class
of solicitors. The violence of these reforms is a fresh proof of the
King’s omnipotence. He might by a stroke of the pen have given binding
force to the _Codex Fridericianus_, a famous code of law which Cocceji
drew up on principles of his own choosing.
It is evident that in Prussia the judges were forced to be “lions under
the throne.” The civil service gave less proof of courage and was
equally impotent to oppose the will of the King. Its structure might
have been designed for the very purpose of preventing any official save
the King from enjoying any substantial power or prominence. The lower
agents, who could not be dangerous, had no colleagues, but all the
higher functions were performed by boards. The villages were governed
by the bailiffs of their lords, and thus a vast number of petty local
officers were directly responsible to the representative of the Crown.
Above the bailiffs stood the Sheriff (_Landrat_), who was nominated by
the local nobles, but appointed by the King and acted as his factotum.
One young _Landrat_ strove to convince Frederick that there were
locusts in his country by sending him some live specimens in a box.
They escaped in the palace, and the angry King straightway altered the
conditions of the office, decreeing that in future no one should be
eligible who was under thirty-five years of age.
In the towns royal commissioners were charged with the collection of
the “Excise” and with duties of general supervision. But at the next
stage collegiate administration begins. _Landrat_ and commissioner
alike were responsible to the Provincial Chamber for War and Domains—a
body such as that on which Frederick had served while a prisoner at
Cüstrin. The individual members of the Chamber served the Crown as
inspectors in their province and as special commissioners to carry out
the public works which the King constantly initiated. The Chamber as
a whole reviewed the work of the lower officials and reported to the
General Directory, a clumsy corporation of ministers, which in its turn
reported to the King. It is hardly necessary to observe that Frederick
conceded to no person or body in this hierarchy the right to stand
between himself and any business with which he chose to interfere. He,
like his father, often preferred the evidence of his own eyes and of
his soldiers to the statements of his civil servants.
The General Directory had been created by Frederick William in 1723.
“We wish,” he frankly stated, “that any odium, however
undeserved, should fall not on us ... but on the
_General-Ober-Finanz-Kriegs-und-Domänen-Directorium_ [General
Supreme Financial War and Domains Directory] or on one or other
of the members of the same, unless it shall prove possible to
make the public change its bad opinion.”
The members were instructed to give such a turn to the business that
this aim might be realised, “because,” as the King expressed it, “we
wish to be frugal as regards the love and affection of our subjects and
of the friendship of our neighbours.”
The new body, as its name implies, was primarily concerned with
finance, which lay at the root of all Prussian government. It was
called into being at the moment when Frederick William amalgamated
two machines for collecting and expending revenue. It presided over
the administration of the old feudal revenue which came from the
Domains and over that of the new national revenue which came from the
Contribution and Excise,—taxes imposed for the support of the apparatus
of war. Foreign affairs and justice, each of which formed the charge
of two or three other ministers, lay outside the sphere of the General
Directory.
This consisted of four departments, each of which supervised the
general administration on one great section of the soil of Prussia.
The North-east, the Centre, the West, and the districts lying between
the Centre and the West formed four distinct spheres of government,
each of which was the special charge of a chief minister and several
assistants. To these sectional departments, however, were assigned
various minor charges extending over the whole kingdom. Thus the
second department, which governed the Electoral Mark and Magdeburg,
at one time also fulfilled the functions of commissary-general for
all Prussia. It had in addition oversight over questions of salt,
millstones, cards, and stamps, in whatever locality they might arise.
If the chief of the department had four or five assistants a certain
specialisation was possible, but he was obliged to reckon with the
contingency that one or more of them might be commissioned to spend
part of their time in another department.
The General Directory, as Frederick found it, contained four
departments, but five chief ministers. The fifth, whose functions were
the general supervision of justice and of finance, was in Frederick
William’s conception a royal spy upon his colleagues. If they were
idle, deceitful, or inharmonious, it was his duty to report the facts
to the King, “that His Majesty may get no short measure anywhere and
may not be tricked.”
It is easy to see that this machine of government, however cumbrous,
was admirably designed to serve a despotic king. An army of clerks and
inspectors was always at his disposal. If he desired to know what was
passing in the furthest corner of his dominions, a curt note of enquiry
to the General Directory sufficed to set the machine in motion. The
Directory met five times a week, with no vacations. At its bidding,
commissioners were appointed by the Provincial Chamber to ascertain the
facts. In due course the Chamber received, digested, and annotated
their report, and supplied the necessary information to the Directory.
There, in the department which presided over the province in question,
the papers were again sifted and abstracted.
The Directory could not often be hoodwinked by its subordinates, for
Frederick William had furnished it with an army of local spies. Check
after check was applied. When the member of the department before whom
the affair was brought had satisfied himself, he procured the assent
of his colleagues. The department procured the assent of the Directory
as a whole. The Directory then reported to the confidential servants
of the King. Eventually the most concise and accurate information
obtainable, together with a table of arguments for and against a given
course of action, was laid before the King by Eichel and his colleagues
in the Cabinet. Frederick had only to glance at the paper and scrawl
a few words upon it in the morning and in the afternoon to sign a
royal order embodying his decision. Then General Directory, Provincial
Chamber, Sheriff, and Bailiff set to work in turn to procure the
execution of his commands.
It was objected that little Prussia had thirteen or fourteen ministers
when France required no more than five. But the multiplication of high
officials had this advantage—that it prevented them from leaving the
real conduct of affairs in the hands of obscure subordinates. Not only
must every State paper be signed by one or more ministers, but every
signature implied actual knowledge of its contents. The system, too,
prevented the rise of any single man or board that could challenge
comparison with the King by reason of its ascendancy in any great
function of government. Even Cocceji appeared to the people merely as a
royal commissioner appointed to accomplish a definite mission.
Corruption on any great scale was impossible. The public accounts
passed under so many eyes that the King of Prussia could never, like
Charles VI., be deprived of three-fourths of his revenue before it
reached the exchequer. It was useless to bribe Frederick’s ministers
to betray him, for they had not the power. They were there to give him
information and to obey his behests. He seldom asked them for advice.
“Good counsel does not come from a great number,” was his maxim.
Newton, he maintained, could not have discovered the law of gravitation
if he had been collaborating with Leibnitz and Descartes. As Minerva
sprang armed from the head of Jupiter, so must a policy spring from the
head of the prince.
Frederick, therefore, admitted no man or body of men as his colleague,
in the work of government. The officers of the Directory, Justice,
and Foreign Affairs were not allowed to form a conclave which might
meddle with questions of general welfare. As a body they were wont to
appear before the King only once a year. As individuals they seldom
communicated with him save in writing. The ministers of Foreign Affairs
had not even the privilege of writing about all of the important
matters which fell within the scope of their department. Their master
kept the conduct of weighty negotiations within his own Cabinet and
corresponded with his ambassadors direct. Eichel was his sole familiar.
Secrecy, which the King termed the soul of public business, was thus
preserved inviolable. “To pry into my secrets,” he boasted, “they must
first corrupt me.”
This is not the place to marshal the disadvantages to the State which
the Prussian system of administration involved. At this stage it
is sufficient to note that it placed absolute power in Frederick’s
hands and that he regarded it as a monument of the highest wisdom.
“If you depart from the principles and the system that our father has
introduced,” ran his warning to his brother and heir, “you will be the
first to suffer by it.”
The ten years of peace were therefore not devoted to structural
reform. In the first year of his reign Frederick had created a fifth
department of the General Directory. To it he entrusted first the trade
and manufactures of the whole kingdom and later the posts and the
settlement of immigrants from other lands. In 1746 he established in
like manner a sixth department, that of Military Affairs. These changes
merely developed the system of Frederick William a little further.
By a new departure, however, the Government of Silesia was made
independent of the General Directory. For reasons which the King never
stated, Münchow became the only minister for the province, and he was
responsible to Frederick alone. With this addition the whole framework
of government was stereotyped by an ordinance of 1748.
The years 1746–1756 are notable for Frederick’s use of his machine
rather than for the changes which he made in it. He now displayed
in action the principles of domestic policy which were the fruit of
his early training and the guide of his later years. His ideal is as
simple to understand as it was difficult to realise in practice. He
allowed his subjects to think as they pleased on condition that they
acted as he pleased. Neither in home nor in foreign policy did the King
recognise any bounds to the assistance that he might demand from the
dwellers within his dominions.
The main object of his foreign policy was to extend the borders of
Prussia to the utmost limit consistent with the safety of the State.
His home policy was to bring within those borders the greatest possible
number of men, to prevent them from falling below a certain moderate
level of righteousness, comfort, and knowledge, to organise a huge
army, to collect a vast revenue, and to enable Prussia as far as
possible to supply all the needs of every one of her people. Other
states were useful to her because they supplied recruits to her army,
teachers for her artisans, and gold and silver in exchange for her
surplus manufactures. The gold and silver were drawn into the treasury
by taxation and used to build villages, to establish new manufactures,
to hire more soldiers, and to fill Frederick’s war-chest. Then, by
war or a display of force which made war superfluous, a new province
would be joined to Prussia and the routine of development, taxation,
armament, and acquisition could begin anew.
It does not appear that Frederick regarded any single part of this
programme as weightier than the rest. In spite of all his economies
and accumulations he was no miser, cherishing money for its own sake.
He hoarded treasure so that his army might be sure of pay in time of
war and his subjects sure of help in case of devastating calamity.
On the same principle he maintained and added to the huge Government
granaries, which bought in years of plenty and sold, at high but not
exorbitant prices, in years of dearth. Frederick did not refuse to
make some profit from the institution, but his main object was to
confer upon the State the inestimable boon of freedom from famine.
The establishment of public warehouses for wool, silk, and cotton was
similarly designed to guard against glut and shortage. It was merely a
new adaptation of the policy of the Staple, which England had discarded
at the end of the Middle Ages. But it secured a market to the Prussian
producer and an unfailing source of supply to the Prussian manufacturer
and placed the whole traffic in raw materials under the supervision and
control of the State.
Frederick is as little open to the charge of megalomania as to that of
avarice. He was singularly free from foibles. He frankly admits that
the adventure of 1740 was partly inspired by the desire to make himself
a name. But before the Peace of Dresden his lust of mere conquest seems
to have been extinguished. Thenceforward his armaments and acquisitions
were strictly regulated by reasons of State, and in his conception of
statecraft domestic policy stood on a par with foreign. He likened
the Finances, Foreign Policy, and the Army to three steeds harnessed
abreast to the car of State, and himself to the charioteer who directed
them and urged them on.
Frederick’s most striking innovations in the department of home affairs
were made during his later years. It will therefore be necessary in
a subsequent chapter to give further illustrations of the working of
his principles and to calculate the results which he accomplished.
All through his reign, however, the process of internal improvement
and interference was carried on in conformity with these ideas.
Agriculture, as the basis of all, had the first claim upon the King’s
attention, and he made unceasing efforts to render every acre of the
land productive and to provide it with a cultivator. If in the course
of his innumerable journeys he observed a waste place that seemed
capable of improvement he would commend it to the Provincial Chamber
as a site for a certain number of new villages of a given size. If
the suggestion proved feasible it was carried out at the expense of
the State, which reaped its profit in course of time from the new
taxpayers, producers, and recruits, who were thus included in the
commonwealth.
The most signal of these victories in time of peace was the reclaiming
of huge swamps lying along the Oder below Frankfurt, In July, 1747,
the King appointed commissioners, including the famous mathematician
Euler, and placed troops at their disposal. The task demanded not only
dams and drainage works, but also in parts excavation of a new bed for
the great river. It was urged forward by Frederick with all speed. He
often inspected the works and exacted a report of their progress week
by week. Boats were commandeered by force from the reluctant villagers.
Some of those whose fishing rights were done away conjured the King,
“falling at his feet,” so ran their petition, “most submissively in
deepest woe and dejection as a most terrified band fearing the fatal
stroke,” that he would lay to heart the ruin which his measures would
inevitably bring upon them. The King drily answered that they might let
him know when they had suffered any actual harm and compensated them
with reclaimed land.
Early in 1753 Frederick was able to make arrangements to people the
new province which he had thus conquered from the domain of Chaos. The
landowners, who had shared in the general opposition to the enterprise,
were compelled to resign to the State their claim to a large percentage
of the reclaimed land and to provide a prescribed number of peasants
for the remainder. Born Prussians were as a rule declared ineligible,
for here was an opportunity of tempting valuable fresh blood into the
State. Freedom from military service to the third generation, exemption
from taxes for some years, and at first actual assistance were the
terms offered to many immigrants. The result was that Frederick secured
an influx of new subjects from far and wide. The Rhineland, Würtemburg,
Mecklenburg, Swedish Pomerania, Saxony, Bohemia, Poland, and the
mountains of Austria—all sent contingents. He laid out more than
500,000 thalers in all and secured a rental of 20,000. More than 250
villages were created. Thanks in great part to this policy of internal
colonisation, the numbers of the people steadily rose. At his accession
Frederick had ruled over rather more than 2,200,000 people. Thirteen
years later the number in the old provinces had become more than
one-sixth greater, while East Frisia added 90,000 souls and Silesia
some 1,200,000 more. In 1756 the total exceeded 4,000,000.
The decade which followed the Peace of Dresden, though uneventful in
comparison with the periods of seven years which it divides, was thus
by no means barren. For Frederick it was indeed a period of manifold
activity. It was signalised by the establishment of Sans Souci and by
the memorable visit of Voltaire. For three years (1750–1753) the King
enjoyed the constant exchange of homage with the cynosure of the world
of letters, who described his new home, Potsdam, as “Sparta and Athens
joined in one, nothing but reviewing and poetry day by day.” Each of
the two friends revered the genius and despised the character of the
other. The sequel was a desperate quarrel, and the flight and arrest of
Voltaire. When he was suffered to pass beyond the reach of Frederick’s
sceptre he strove to avenge himself with the pen which had lavished
exquisite flattery upon the King for many years and which was often to
resume the old style in the future.
Literary effort and witty company were, however, only the King’s solace
in a life of labour. Day by day he scanned the political horizon,
resolved to take no action which would not serve the State, and to
shrink from nothing if Prussian interests were threatened. Day by
day, too, he urged forward the labours of peace and the preparations
for war. While Silesia was being gradually assimilated and the old
Prussia developed, Frederick was making use of his new possession, East
Frisia, in a tardy and only moderately successful endeavour to further
commerce overseas. Commerce in Frederick’s opinion ranked far below
agriculture and manufactures in value to a state with ideals such as
those which he had chosen for Prussia. He therefore devoted far more of
his energy to the task of forwarding Prussian industry, which he argued
gave employment to a thousand times as many men, brought more gold and
silver into the country, and remained more amenable to State control.
At the same time he was steadily accumulating treasure and perfecting
his military force. In the fateful year 1756 he had upwards of
14,000,000 thalers stored up for war. The standing army then numbered
more than 150,000 men.
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