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. Louis 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 labor 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 labor, 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, dispatches 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. Louis 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 vigor 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
perform 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 ardor, 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
rix-dollar of extraordinary charge was scrutinized 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 axletrees 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 rix-dollars 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 subjects, 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 license 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
labored 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 honorable 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 his 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 themselves 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 rix-dollars 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 demeanor towards them. Some of those who knew the palace
best pronounced that 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 favorite 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. His
was one of that abject class of minds which are superstitious without
being religious. Hating Christianity with a rancor 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.