The celebrated King of Prussia was in no respect indebted for his
personal greatness to the virtues or example of his immediate
progenitors. His grandfather Frederic I., the first of the House of
Brandenburg who assumed the title of King, was a weak and empty prince,
whose character was taken by his own wife to exemplify the idea of
infinite littleness. His father, Frederic William, was a man of a
violent and brutal disposition, eccentric and intemperate, whose
principal, and almost sole pleasure and pursuit, was the training and
daily superintendence of an army disproportionately greater than the
extent of his dominions seemed to warrant. It is however to the credit
of Frederic William as a ruler, that, notwithstanding this expensive
taste, his finances on the whole were well and economically
administered; so that on his death he left a quiet and happy, though not
wealthy country, a treasure of nine millions of crowns, amounting to
more than a year’s revenue, and a well-disciplined army of 76,000 men.
Thus on his accession, Frederic II. (or as, in consequence of the
ambiguity of his father’s name, he is sometimes called, Frederic III.)
found, ready prepared, men and money, the instruments of war; and for
this alone was he indebted to his father. He was born January 24, 1712.
From Frederic William, parental tenderness was not to be expected. His
treatment of his whole family, wife and children, was brutal: but he
showed a particular antipathy to his eldest son, from the age of
fourteen upwards, for which no reason can be assigned, except that the
young prince manifested a taste for literature, and preferred books and
music to the routine of military exercises. From this age, his life was
embittered by continual contradiction, insult, and even personal
violence. In 1730, he endeavoured to escape by flight from his father’s
control: but this intention being revealed, he was arrested, tried as a
deserter, and condemned to death by an obedient court-martial; and the
sentence, to all appearance, would have been carried into effect, had it
not been for the interference of the Emperor of Germany, Charles VI. of
Austria. The king yielded to his urgent entreaties, but with much
reluctance, saying, “Austria will some day perceive what a serpent she
warms in her bosom.” In 1732, Frederic procured a remission of this ill
treatment by contracting, much against his will, a marriage with
Elizabeth Christina, a princess of the house of Brunswick. Domestic
happiness he neither sought nor found; for it appears that he never
lived with his wife. Her endowments, mental and personal, were not such
as to win the affections of so fastidious a man, but her moral qualities
and conduct are highly commended; and, except in the resolute avoidance
of her society, her husband through life treated her with high respect.
From the time of his marriage to his accession, Frederic resided at
Rheinsberg, a village some leagues north-east of Berlin. In 1734, he
made his first campaign with Prince Eugene, but without displaying, or
finding opportunity to display, the military talents by which he was
distinguished in after-life. From 1732 however to 1740, his time was
principally devoted to literary amusements and society. Several of his
published works were written during this period, and among them the
‘Anti-Machiavel’ and ‘Considerations on the Character of Charles XII.:’
he also devoted some portion of his time to the study of tactics. His
favourite companions were chiefly Frenchmen: and for French manners,
language, cookery and philosophy, he displayed through life a very
decided preference.
The early part of Frederic’s life gave little promise of his future
energy as a soldier and statesman. The flute, embroidered clothes, and
the composition of indifferent French verses, seemed to occupy the
attention of the young dilettante. His accession to the throne, May 31,
1740, called his dormant energies at once into action. He assumed the
entire direction of government, charging himself with those minute and
daily duties which princes generally commit to their ministers. To
discharge the multiplicity of business which thus devolved on him, he
laid down strict rules for the regulation of his time and employments,
to which, except when on active service, he scrupulously adhered. Until
an advanced period of life he always rose at four o’clock in the
morning; and he bestowed but a few minutes on his dress, in respect of
which he was careless, even to slovenliness. But peaceful employments
did not satisfy his active mind. His father, content with the possession
of a powerful army, had never used it as an instrument of conquest:
Frederic, in the first year of his reign, undertook to wrest from
Austria the province of Silesia. On that country, which, from its
adjoining situation, was a most desirable acquisition to the Prussian
dominions, it appears that he had some hereditary claims, to the
assertion of which the time was favourable. At the death of Charles VI.,
in October 1740, the hereditary dominions of Austria devolved on a young
female, the afterwards celebrated Maria Theresa. Trusting to her
weakness, Frederic at once marched an army into Silesia. The people,
being chiefly Protestants, were ill affected to their Austrian rulers,
and the greater part of the country, except the fortresses, fell without
a battle into the King of Prussia’s possession. In the following
campaign, April 10, 1741, was fought the battle of Molwitz, which
requires mention, because in this engagement, the first in which he
commanded, Frederic displayed neither the skill nor the courage which
the whole of his subsequent life proved him really to possess. It was
said that he took shelter in a windmill, and this gave rise to the
sarcasm, that at Molwitz the King of Prussia had covered himself with
glory and with flour. The Prussians however remained masters of the
field. In the autumn of the same year they advanced within two days’
march of Vienna; and it was in this extremity of distress, that Maria
Theresa made her celebrated and affecting appeal to the Diet of Hungary.
A train of reverses, summed up by the decisive battle of Czaslaw, fought
May 17, 1742, in which Frederic displayed both courage and conduct,
induced Austria to consent to the treaty of Breslaw, concluded in the
same summer, by which Silesia, with the exception of a small district,
was ceded to Prussia, of which kingdom it has ever since continued to
form a part.
But though Prussia for a time enjoyed peace, the state of European
politics was far from settled, and Frederic’s time was much occupied by
foreign diplomacy, as well as by the internal improvements which always
were the favourite objects of his solicitude. The rapid rise of Prussia
was not regarded with indifference by other powers. The Austrian
government was inveterately hostile, from offended pride, as well as
from a sense of injury; Saxony took part with Austria; Russia, if not an
open enemy, was always a suspicious and unfriendly neighbour; and George
II. of England, the King of Prussia’s uncle, both feared and disliked
his nephew. Under these circumstances, upon the formation of the triple
alliance between Austria, England, and Sardinia, Frederic concluded a
treaty with France and the Elector of Bavaria, who had succeeded Charles
VI. as Emperor of Germany; and anticipated the designs of Austria upon
Silesia, by marching into Bohemia in August, 1744. During two campaigns
the war was continued to the advantage of the Prussians, who, under the
command of Frederic in person, gained two signal victories with inferior
numbers, at Hohenfriedberg and Soor. At the end of December, 1745, he
found himself in possession of Dresden, the capital of Saxony, and in
condition to dictate terms of peace to Austria and Saxony, by which
Silesia was again recognised as part of the Prussian dominions.
Five years were thus spent in acquiring and maintaining possession of
this important province. The next ten years of Frederic II.’s life
passed in profound peace. During this period he applied himself
diligently and successfully to recruit his army, and renovate the
drained resources of Prussia. His habits of life were singularly
uniform. He resided chiefly at Potsdam, apportioning his time and his
employments with methodical exactness; and, by this strict attention to
method, he was enabled to exercise a minute superintendence over every
branch of government, without estranging himself from social pleasures,
or abandoning his literary pursuits. After the peace of Dresden he
commenced his ‘Histoire de mon Temps,’ which, in addition to the history
of his own wars in Silesia, contains a general account of European
politics. About the same period he wrote his ‘Memoirs of the House of
Brandenburg,’ the best of his historical works. He maintained an active
correspondence with Voltaire, and others of the most distinguished men
of Europe. He established, or rather restored, the Academy of Sciences
of Berlin, and was eager to enrol eminent foreigners among its members,
and to induce them to resort to his capital; and the names of Voltaire,
Euler, Maupertuis, La Grange, and others of less note, testify his
success. But his avowed contempt for the German, and admiration of the
French literature and language, in which all the transactions of the
Society were carried on, gave an exotic character to the institution,
and crippled the national benefits which might have been expected to
arise from it. In 1751, after a considerable expenditure of flattery,
Frederic induced Voltaire to take up his residence at Potsdam. From this
step he anticipated much pleasure and advantage, and for a time every
thing appeared to proceed according to his wishes. The social suppers in
which he loved to indulge after the labours of the day, were enlivened
by the poet’s brilliant talents; and the poet’s gratitude for the royal
friendship and condescension was manifested in his assiduous correction
of the royal writings. For a time each was delighted with the other; but
the mutual regard which these two singular characters had conceived was
soon dissipated upon closer acquaintance, and after many undignified
quarrels, they parted in the spring of 1753 in a manner discreditable to
both. In the cause of education Frederic was active, both by favouring
the universities, to which he sought to secure the services of the best
professors, and by the establishment of schools wherever the
circumstances of the neighbourhood rendered it desirable. It is said
that he sometimes founded as many as sixty schools in a single year.
This period of his reign is also marked by the commencement of that
revision of the Prussian law (a confused and corrupt mixture of Roman
and Saxon jurisprudence) which led to the substitution of an entirely
new code. In this important business the Chancellor Cocceii took the
lead; but the system established by him underwent considerable
alterations from time to time, and at last was remodelled in 1781. For
the particular merits or imperfections of the code, the lawyers who drew
it up are answerable, rather than the monarch; but the latter possesses
the high honour of having proved himself, in this and other instances,
sincerely desirous to assure to his subjects a pure and ready
administration of justice. Sometimes this desire, joined to a certain
love and habit of personal inquiry into all things, led the king to a
meddling and mischievous interference with the course of justice, as in
the instance of the miller Arnold, which probably is familiar to most
readers; but in all cases his intention seems to have been pure, and his
conduct proves him sincere in the injunction to his judges:—“If a suit
arises between me and one of my subjects, and the case is a doubtful
one, you should always decide against me.” If, as in the celebrated
imprisonment of Baron Trenck, he chose to perform an arbitrary action,
he did it openly, not by tampering with courts of justice: but these
despotic measures were not frequent, and few countries have ever enjoyed
a fuller practical license of speech and printing, than Prussia under a
simply despotic form of government, administered by a prince naturally
of impetuous passions and stern and unforgiving temper. That temper,
however, was kept admirably within bounds, and seldom suffered to appear
in civil affairs. His code is remarkable for the abolition of torture,
and the toleration granted to all religions. The latter enactment,
however, required no great share of liberality from Frederic, who avowed
his indifference to all religions alike. In criminal cases he was
opposed to severe punishments, and was always strongly averse to
shedding blood. To his subjects, both in person and by letter, he was
always accessible, and to the peasantry in particular he displayed
paternal kindness, patience, and condescension. But, on the other hand,
his military system was frightfully severe, both in its usual discipline
and in its punishments. Numbers of soldiers deserted, or put an end to
their lives, or committed crimes that they might be given up to justice.
Yet his kindness and familiarity in the field, and his fearless exposure
of his own person, endeared him exceedingly to his soldiers, and many
pleasing anecdotes, honourable to both parties, are preserved,
especially during the campaigns of the Seven Years’ War.
During this peace Austria had recruited her strength, and with it her
inveterate hostility to Prussia; and it became known to Frederic that a
secret agreement for the conquest and partition of his territories
existed between Austria, Russia, and Saxony. The circumstances of the
times were such that, though neither France nor England were cordially
disposed towards him, it was yet open to him to negotiate an alliance
with either. Frederic chose that of England; and France, forgetting
ancient enmities, and her obvious political interest, immediately took
part with Austria. The odds of force apparently were overwhelming; but,
having made up his mind, the King of Prussia displayed his usual
promptitude. He demanded an explanation of the views of the court of
Vienna, and, on receiving an unsatisfactory answer, signified that he
considered it a declaration of war. Knowing that the court of Saxony,
contrary to existing treaties, was secretly engaged in the league
against him, he marched an army into the electorate in August, 1756,
and, almost unopposed, took military possession of it. He thus turned
the enemy’s resources against himself, and drew from that unfortunate
country continual supplies of men and money, without which he could
scarcely have supported the protracted struggle which ensued, and which
is celebrated under the title of the Seven Years’ War. The events of
this war, however interesting to a military student, are singularly
unfit for concise narration, and that from the very circumstances which
displayed the King of Prussia’s talents to most advantage. Attacked on
every side, compelled to hasten from the pursuit of a beaten, to make
head in some other quarter against a threatening enemy, the activity,
vigilance, and indomitable resolution of Frederic must strike all those
who read these campaigns at length, and with the necessary help of maps
and plans, though his profound tactical skill and readiness in
emergencies may be fully appreciable only by the learned. But when these
complicated events are reduced to a bare list of marches and
countermarches, victories and defeats, the spirit vanishes, and a mere
_caput mortuum_ remains. The war being necessarily defensive, Frederic
could seldom carry the seat of action into an enemy’s country. The
Prussian dominions were subject to continual ravage, and that country,
as well as Saxony, paid a heavy price that the possession of Silesia
might be decided between two rival sovereigns. Upon the whole, the first
campaigns were favourable to Prussia; but the confessed superiority of
that power in respect of generals (for the King was admirably supported
by Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, Prince Henry of Prussia, Schwerin,
Keith, and others) could not always countervail the great superiority of
force with which it had to contend. The celebrated victory won by the
Prussians at Prague, May 6, 1757, was balanced by a severe defeat at
Kolin, the result, as Frederic confesses, of his own rashness; but, at
the end of autumn, he retrieved the reverses of the summer, by the
brilliant victories of Rosbach, and Leuthen or Lissa. In 1758,
Frederic’s contempt of his enemy lulled him into a false security, in
consequence of which he was surprised and defeated at Hochkirchen. But
the campaigns of 1759 and 1760 were a succession of disasters by which
Prussia was reduced to the verge of ruin; and it appears, from
Frederic’s correspondence, that, in the autumn of the latter year, his
reverses led him to contemplate suicide, in preference to consenting to
what he thought dishonourable terms of peace. The next campaign was
bloody and indecisive; and in the following year the secession of Russia
and France induced Austria, then much exhausted, to consent to a peace,
by which Silesia and the other possessions of Frederic were secured to
him as he possessed them before the war. So that this enormous expense
of blood and treasure produced no result whatever, except that of
establishing the King of Prussia’s reputation as the first living
general of Europe. Peace was signed at the castle of Hubertsburg, near
Dresden, Feb. 15, 1763.
The brilliant military reputation which Frederic had acquired in this
arduous contest did not tempt him to pursue the career of a conqueror.
He had risked every thing to maintain possession of Silesia; but if his
writings speak the real feelings of his mind, he was deeply sensible to
the sufferings and evils which attend upon war. “The state of Prussia,”
he himself says, in the ‘Histoire de mon Temps,’ “can only be compared
to that of a man riddled with wounds, weakened by loss of blood, and
ready to sink under the weight of his misfortunes. The nobility was
exhausted, the commons ruined, numbers of villages were burnt, of towns
ruined. Civil order was lost in a total anarchy: in a word, the
desolation was universal.” To cure these evils Frederic applied his
earnest attention; and by grants of money to those towns which had
suffered most; by the commencement and continuation of various great
works of public utility; by attention to agriculture; by draining
marshes, and settling colonists in the barren, or ruined portions of his
country; by cherishing manufactures (though not always with a useful or
judicious zeal), he succeeded in repairing the exhausted population and
resources of Prussia with a rapidity the more wonderful, because his
military establishment was at the same time recruited and maintained at
the enormous number, considering the size and wealth of the kingdom, of
200,000 men. One of his measures deserves especial notice, the
emancipation of the peasants from hereditary servitude. This great
undertaking he commenced at an early period of his reign, by giving up
his own seignorial rights over the serfs on the crown domains: he
completed it in the year 1766, by an edict abolishing servitude
throughout his dominions. In 1765, he commenced a gradual alteration in
the fiscal system of Prussia, suggested in part by the celebrated
Helvetius. In the department of finance, though all his experiments did
not succeed, he was very successful. He is said, in the course of his
reign, to have raised the annual revenue to nearly double what it had
been in his father’s time, and that without increasing the pressure of
the people; and from his last biographer, he has obtained the praise of
having “arrived, as far as any sovereign ever did, at perfection in that
part of finance, which consists in the extracting as much as possible
from the people, without overburthening or impoverishing them; and
receiving into the royal coffers the sums so extracted, with the least
possible deductions.”
In such cares and in his literary pursuits, among which we may
especially mention his ‘History of the Seven Years War,’ passed the time
of Frederic for ten years. In 1772, he engaged in the nefarious project
for the first partition of Poland. Of the iniquity of that project it is
not necessary to speak; the universal voice of Europe has condemned it.
It does not seem, however, that the scheme originated, as has been said,
with Frederic: on the contrary, it appears to have been conceived by
Catherine II., and matured in conversations with Prince Henry, the King
of Prussia’s brother, during a visit to St. Petersburg. By the treaty of
partition, which was not finally arranged till 1777, Prussia gained a
territory of no great extent, but of importance from its connecting
Prussia Proper with the electoral dominions of Brandenburg and Silesia,
and giving a compactness to the kingdom, of which it stood greatly in
need. Frederic made some amends for his conduct in this matter, by the
diligence with which he laboured to improve his acquisition. In this, as
in most circumstances of internal administration, he was very
successful; and the country, ruined by war, misgovernment, and the
brutal sloth of its inhabitants, soon assumed the aspect of cheerful
industry.
The King of Prussia once more led an army into the field, when, on the
death of the Elector of Bavaria, childless, in 1778, Joseph II. of
Austria conceived the plan of re-annexing to his own crown, under the
plea of various antiquated feudal rights, the greater part of the
Bavarian territories. Stimulated quite as much by jealousy of Austria,
as by a sense of the injustice of this act, Frederic stood out as the
assertor of the liberties of Germany, and proceeding with the utmost
politeness from explanation to explanation, he marched an army into
Bohemia in July, 1778. The war, however, which was terminated in the
following spring by the peace of Teschen, was one of manœuvres, and
partial engagements; in which Frederic’s skill in strategy shone with
its usual lustre, and success, on the whole, rested with the Prussians.
By the terms of the treaty, the Bavarian dominions were secured, nearly
entire, to the rightful collateral heirs, whose several claims were
settled, while certain minor stipulations were made in favour of
Prussia.
A few years later, in 1785, Frederic again found occasion to oppose
Austria, in defence of the integrity of the Germanic constitution. The
Emperor Joseph, in prosecution of his designs on Bavaria, had formed a
contract with the reigning elector, to exchange the Austrian provinces
in the Netherlands for the Electorate. Dissenting from this arrangement,
the heir to the succession entrusted the advocacy of his rights to
Frederic, who lost no time in negotiating a confederation among the
chief powers of Germany, (known by the name of the Germanic League,) to
support the constitution of the empire, and the rights of its several
princes. By this timely step Austria was compelled to forego the desired
acquisition.
At this time Frederic’s constitution had begun to decay. He had long
been a sufferer from gout, the natural consequence of indulgence in good
eating and rich cookery, to which throughout his life he was addicted.
Towards the end of the year he began to experience great difficulty of
breathing. His complaints, aggravated by total neglect of medical
advice, and an extravagant appetite, which he gratified by eating to
excess of the most highly seasoned and unwholesome food, terminated in a
confirmed dropsy. During the latter months of his life he suffered
grievously from this complication of disorders; and through this period
he displayed remarkable patience, and consideration for the feelings of
those around him. No expression of suffering was allowed to pass his
lips; and up to the last day of his life he continued to discharge with
punctuality those political duties which he had imposed upon himself in
youth and strength. Strange to say, while he exhibited this
extraordinary self-control in some respects, he would not abstain from
the most extravagant excesses in diet, though they were almost always
followed by a severe aggravation of his sufferings. Up to August 15,
1786, he continued, as usual, to receive and answer all communications,
and to despatch the usual routine of civil and military business. On the
following day he fell into a lethargy, from which he only partially
recovered. He died in the course of the night of August 16.
The published works of the King of Prussia were collected in
twenty-three volumes, 8vo. Amsterdam, 1790. We shall here mention, as
completing the body of his historical works, the “Mémoires depuis la
Paix de Hubertsbourg,” and “Mémoires de la Guerre de 1778.” Among his
poems, the most remarkable is the “Art de la Guerre;” but these, as
happens in most cases, where the writer has thought fit to employ a
foreign language, have been little known or esteemed, since their author
ceased to rivet the attention of the world by the brilliance of his
actions, and the singularity of his character. A list of Frederic’s
works is given at the end of the article in the “Biographie
Universelle.” For his campaigns, see the works of Lloyd and Templehoff,
and Jomini’s “Histoire critique et militaire des Guerres de Frédéric
II.” Among the numerous lives of him, we may refer to the “Essai sur la
Vie et le Règne de Frédéric II.,” by the Abbé Denina, who had been
employed in the King of Prussia’s service. Much that relates to him is
to be found among the writings of Voltaire. The lives by Gillies and
Lord Dover will satisfy the curiosity of the English reader.
[Illustration:
[Gate of the Palace at Potsdam.]
]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by B. Holl._