With the death of old King Friedrich, there occurred at once vast
changes in the Court of Berlin; a total and universal change in the mode
of living and doing business there. Friedrich Wilhelm, out of filial
piety, wore at his father's funeral the grand French peruke and other
sublimities of French costume; but it was for the last time: that sad
duty once done, he flung the whole aside, not without impatience, and
on no occasion wore such costume again. He was not a friend to French
fashions, nor had ever been; far the contrary. In his boyhood, say
the Biographers, there was once a grand embroidered cloth-of-gold, or
otherwise supremely magnificent, little Dressing-gown given him; but he
would at no rate put it on, or be concerned with it; on the contrary,
stuffed it indignantly "into the fire;" and demanded wholesome useful
duffel instead.
He began his reform literally at the earliest moment. Being summoned
into the apartment where his poor Father was in the last struggle, he
could scarcely get across for KAMMERJUNKER, KAMMERHERRN, Goldsticks,
Silversticks, and the other solemn histrionic functionaries, all
crowding there to do their sad mimicry on the occasion: not a
lovely accompaniment in Friedrich Wilhelm's eyes. His poor Father's
death-struggle once done, and all reduced to everlasting rest there,
Friedrich Wilhelm looked in silence over the Unutterable, for a Short
space, disregardful of the Goldsticks and their eager new homaging;
walked swiftly away from it to his own room, shut the door with a slam;
and there, shaking the tears from his eyes, commenced by a notable
duty,--the duty nearest hand, and therefore first to be done, as it
seemed to him. It was about one in the afternoon, 25th February, 1713;
his Father dead half an hour before: "Tears at a Father's death-bed,
must they be dashed with rage by such a set of greedy Histrios?" thought
Friedrich Wilhelm. He summoned these his Court-people, that is to say,
summoned their OBER-HOFMARSCHALL and representative; and through him
signified to them, That, till the Funeral was over, their service would
continue; and that on the morrow after the Funeral, they were, every
soul of them, discharged; and from the highest Goldstick down to the
lowest Page-in-waiting, the King's House should be swept entirely clean
of them;--said House intending to start afresh upon a quite new footing.
[Forster, i. 174; Pollnitz, _Memoiren,_ ii. 4.] Which spread such a
consternation among the courtier people, say the Histories, as was never
seen before.
The thing was done, however; and nobody durst whisper discontent with
it; this rugged young King, with his plangent metallic voice, with
his steady-beaming eyes, seeming dreadfully in earnest about it, and
a person that might prove dangerous if you crossed him. He reduced
his Household accordingly, at once, to the lowest footing of the
indispensable; and discharged a whole regiment of superfluous official
persons, court-flunkies, inferior, superior and supreme, in the most
ruthless manner. He does not intend keeping any OBER-HOFMARSCHALL, or
the like idle person, henceforth; thinks a minimum of the Goldsticks
ought to suffice every man.
Eight Lackeys, in the ante-chambers and elsewhere, these, with each a
JAGERBURSCH (what we should call an UNDER-KEEPER) to assist when not
hunting, will suffice: Lackeys at "eight THALERS monthly," which is six
shillings a week. Three active Pages, sometimes two, instead of perhaps
three dozen idle that there used to be. In King Friedrich's time, there
were wont to be a thousand saddle-horses at corn and hay: but how
many of them were in actual use? Very many of them were mere imaginary
quadrupeds; their price and keep pocketed by some knavish STALLMEISTER,
Equerry or Head-groom. Friedrich Wilhelm keeps only thirty Horses; but
these are very actual, not imaginary at all; their corn not running
into any knave's pocket; but lying actually in the mangers here; getting
ground for you into actual four-footed speed, when, on turf or highway,
you require such a thing. About, thirty for the saddle,--with a few
carriage-teams, are what Friedrich Wilhelm can employ in any reasonable
measure: and more he will not have about him.
In the like ruthless humor he goes over his Pension-list; strikes three
fourths of that away, reduces the remaining fourth to the very bone.
In like humor, he goes over every department of his Administrative,
Household and other Expenses: shears everything down, here by the
hundred thalers, there by the ten, willing even to save HALF A THALER.
He goes over all this three several times;--his Papers, the three
successive Lists he used on that occasion, have been printed.
[Rodenbeck, _Beitrage zur Bereicherung der Lebembeschreibungen Friedrich
Wilhelms I. und Friedrichs des Grossen_ (Berlin, 1836), pp. 99-127.] He
has satisfied himself, in about two months, what, the effective minimum
is; and leaves it so. Reduced to below the fifth of what it was; 55,000
THALERS, instead of 276,000. [Stenzel, iii. 237.]
By degrees he went over, went into and through, every department of
Prussian Business, in that fashion; steadily, warily, irresistibly
compelling every item of it, large and little, to take that same
character of perfect economy and solidity, of utility pure and
simple. Needful work is to be rigorously well done; needless work, and
ineffectual or imaginary workers, to be rigorously pitched out of doors.
What a blessing on this Earth; worth purchasing almost at any price!
The money saved is something, nothing if you will; but the amount of
mendacity expunged, has any one computed that? Mendacity not of tongue;
but the far feller sort, of hand, and of heart, and of head; short
summary of all Devil's-worship whatsoever. Which spreads silently along,
once you let it in, with full purse or with empty; some fools even
praising it: the quiet DRY-ROT of Nations! To expunge such is greatly
the duty of every man, especially of every King. Unconsciously, not
thinking of Devil's-worship, or spiritual dry-rot, but of money chiefly,
and led by Nature and the ways she has with us, it was the task of
Friedrich Wilhelm's life to bring about this beneficent result in all
departments of Prussian Business, great and little, public and even
private. Year after year, he brings it to perfection; pushes it
unweariedly forward every day and hour. So that he has Prussia, at
last, all a Prussia made after his own image; the most thrifty, hardy,
rigorous and Spartan country any modern King ever tied over; and himself
(if he thought of that) a King indeed. He that models Nations according
to his own image, he is a King, though his sceptre were a walking-stick;
and, properly no other is.
Friedrich Wilhelm was wondered at, and laughed at, by innumerable
mortals for his ways of doing; which indeed were very strange. Not that
he figured much in what is called Public History, or desired to do
so; for, though a vigilant ruler, he did not deal in protocolling and
campaining,--he let a minimum of that suffice him. But in court soirees,
where elegant empty talk goes on, and of all materials for it scandal
is found incomparably the most interesting. I suppose there turned up
no name oftener than that of his Prussian Majesty; and during these
twenty-seven years of his Reign, his wild pranks and explosions gave
food for continual talk in such quarter.
For he was like no other King that then existed, or had ever been
discovered. Wilder Son of Nature seldom came into the artificial
world; into a royal throne there, probably never. A wild man, wholly in
earnest, veritable as the old rocks,--and with a terrible volcanic fire
in him too. He would have been strange anywhere; but among the dapper
Royal gentlemen of the Eighteenth Century, what was to be done with such
an Orson of a King?--Clap him in Bedlam, and bring out the ballot-boxes
instead? The modern generation, too, still takes its impression of him
from these rumors,--still more now from Wilhelmina's Book; which paints
the outside savagery of the royal man, in a most striking manner; and
leaves the inside vacant, undiscovered by Wilhelmina or the rumors.
Nevertheless it appears there were a few observant eyes even of
contemporaries, who discerned in him a surprising talent for "National
Economics" at least. One Leipzig Professor, Saxon, not Prussian by
nation or interest, recognizes in Friedrich Wilhelm "DEN GROSSEN WIRTH
(the great Manager, Husbandry-man, or Landlord) of the epoch;" and
lectures on his admirable "works, arrangements and institutions" in that
kind. [Rodenbeck's _Beitrage_ (p. 14),--Year, or Name of Lecturer,
not mentioned.] Nay the dapper Royal gentlemen saw, with envy, the
indubitable growth of this mad savage Brother; and ascribed it to "his
avarice," to his mean ways, which were in such contrast to their sublime
ones. That he understood National Economics has now become very certain.
His grim semi-articulate Papers and Rescripts, on these subjects, are
still almost worth reading, by a lover of genuine human talent in the
dumb form. For spelling, grammar, penmanship and composition, they
resemble nothing else extant; are as if done by the paw of a bear:
indeed the utterance generally sounds more like the growling of a bear
than anything that could be handily spelt or parsed. But there is a
decisive human sense in the heart of it; and there is such a dire hatred
of empty bladders, unrealities and hypocritical forms and pretences,
what he calls "wind and humbug (WIND UND BLAUER DUNST)," as is very
strange indeed. Strange among all mankind; doubly and trebly strange
among the unfortunate species called Kings in our time. To whom,--for
sad reasons that could be given,--"wind and blue vapor (BLAUER DUNST),"
artistically managed by the rules of Acoustics and Optics, seem to be
all we have left us!--
It must be owned that this man is inflexibly, and with a fierce slow
inexorable determination, set upon having realities round him. There is
a divine idea of fact put into him; the genus sham was never hatefuler
to any man. Let it keep out of his way, well beyond the swing of that
rattan of his, or it may get something to remember! A just man, too;
would not wrong any man, nor play false in word or deed to any man. What
is Justice but another form of the REALITY we love; a truth acted out?
Of all the humbugs or "painted vapors" known, Injustice is the least
capable of profiting men or kings! A just man, I say; and a valiant and
veracious: but rugged as a wild bear; entirely inarticulate, as if dumb.
No bursts of parliamentary eloquence in him, nor the least tendency
that way. His talent for Stump-Oratory may be reckoned the minimum
conceivable, or practically noted a ZERO. A man who would not have risen
in modern Political Circles; man unchoosable at hustings or in caucus;
man forever invisible, and very unadmirable if seen, to the Able Editor
and those that hang by him. In fact, a kind of savage man, as we
say; but highly interesting, if you can read dumb human worth; and of
inexpressible profit to the Prussian Nation.
For the first ten years of his reign, he had a heavy, continual
struggle, getting his finance and other branches of administration
extricated from their strangling imbroglios of coiled nonsense, and put
upon a rational footing. His labor in these years, the first of little
Fritz's life, must have been great; the pushing and pulling strong and
continual. The good plan itself, this comes not of its own accord; it
is the fruit of "genius" (which means transcendent capacity of taking
trouble, first of all): given a huge stack of tumbled thrums, it is
not in your sleep that you will find the vital centre of it, or get the
first thrum by the end! And then the execution, the realizing, amid
the contradiction, silent or expressed, of men and things? Explosive
violence was by no means Friedrich Wilhelm's method; the amount of slow
stubborn broad-shouldered strength, in all kinds, expended by the man,
strikes us as very great. The amount of patience even, though patience
is not reckoned his forte.
That of the RITTER-DIENST (Knights'-Service), for example, which is but
one small item of his business, the commuting of the old feudal duty of
his Landholders to do Service in Wartime, into a fixed money payment:
nothing could be fairer, more clearly advantageous to both parties;
and most of his "Knights" gladly accepted the proposal: yet a certain
factious set of them, the Magdeburg set, stirred up by some seven or
eight of their number, "hardly above seven or eight really against me,"
saw good to stand out; remonstrated, recalcitrated; complained in the
Diet (Kaiser too happy to hear of it, that he might have a hook
on Friedrich Wilhelm); and for long years that paltry matter was
a provocation to him. [1717-1725. Forster, ii. 162-165, iv.
31-34; Stenzel, iii. 316-319; Samuel Buchholz, _Neueste
Preussisch-Brandenburgische Geschichte_ (Berlin, 1775), i. 197.] But if
your plan is just, and a bit of Nature's plan, persist in it like a law
of Nature. This secret too was known to Friedrich Wilhelm. In the space
of ten years, by actual human strength loyally spent, he had managed
many things; saw all things in a course towards management. All things,
as it were, fairly on the road; the multiplex team pulling one way, in
rational human harness, not in imbroglios of coiled thrums made by the
Nightmares.
How he introduced a new mode of farming his Domain Lands, which are
a main branch of his revenue, and shall be farmed on regular lease
henceforth, and not wasted in peculation and indolent mismanagement as
heretofore; [Forster, ii. 206, 216.] new modes of levying his taxes and
revenues of every kind: [Ib. ii. 190, 195.] How he at last concentrated,
and harmonized into one easy-going effective GENERAL DIRECTORY,
[Completed 19th January, 1723 (Ib. ii. 172).] the multifarious
conflicting Boards, that were jolting and jangling in a dark
use-and-wont manner, and leaving their work half done, when he first
came into power: [Dohm, _Denkwurdigkeiten meiner Zeit_ (Lemgo und
Hanover, 1814-1819), iv. 88.] How he insisted on having daylight
introduced to the very bottom of every business, fair-and-square
observed as the rule of it, and the shortest road adopted for doing it:
How he drained bogs, planted colonies, established manufactures, made
his own uniforms of Prussian wool, in a LAGERHAUS of his own: How he
dealt with the Jew Gompert about farming his Tobacoo;--how, from many
a crooked case and character he, by slow or short methods, brought out
something straight; would take no denial of what was his, nor make any
demand of what was not; and did prove really a terror to evildoers
of various kinds, especially to prevaricators, defalcators, imaginary
workers, and slippery unjust persons: How he urged diligence on all
mortals, would not have the very Apple-women sit "without knitting" at
their stalls; and brandished his stick, or struck it fiercely down, over
the incorrigibly idle:--All this, as well as his ludicrous explosions
and unreasonable violences, is on record concerning Friedrich Wilhelm,
though it is to the latter chiefly that the world has directed its
unwise attention, in judging of him. He was a very arbitrary King. Yes,
but then a good deal of his ARBITRIUM, or sovereign will, was that of
the Eternal Heavens as well; and did exceedingly behoove to be done, if
the Earth would prosper. Which is an immense consideration in regard
to his sovereign will and him! He was prompt with his rattan, in urgent
cases; had his gallows also, prompt enough, where needful. Let him see
that no mistakes happen, as certainly he means that none shall!
Yearly he made his country richer; and this not in money alone (which
is of very uncertain value, and sometimes has no value at all, and even
less), but in frugality, diligence, punctuality, veracity,--the grand
fountains from which money, and all real values and valors spring for
men. To Friedrich Wilhelm in his rustio simplicity, money had no lack of
value; rather the reverse. To the homespun man it was a success of most
excellent quality, and the chief symbol of success in all kinds. Yearly
he made his own revenues, and his people's along with them and as
the source of them, larger: and in all states of his revenue, he had
contrived to make his expenditure less than it; and yearly saved
masses of coin, and "reposited them in barrels in the cellars of his
Schloss,"--where they proved very useful, one day. Much in Friedrich
Wilhelm proved useful, beyond even his expectations. As a Nation's
HUSBAND he seeks his fellow among Kings, ancient and modern. Happy the
Nation which gets such a Husband, once in the half-thousand years. The
Nation, as foolish wives and Nations do, repines and grudges a good
deal, its weak whims and will being thwarted very often; but it advances
steadily, with consciousness or not, in the way of well-doing; and
afterlong times the harvest of this diligent sowing becomes manifest to
the Nation and to all Nations.
Strange as it sounds in the Republic of Letters, we are tempted to call
Friedrich Wilhelm a man of genius;--genius fated and promoted to work
in National Husbandry, not in writing Verses or three-volume Novels. A
silent genius. His melodious stanza, which he cannot bear to see halt in
any syllable, is a rough fact reduced to order; fact made to stand firm
on its feet, with the world-rocks under it, and looking free towards
all the winds and all the stars. He goes about suppressing platitudes,
ripping off futilities, turning deceptions inside out. The realm of
Disorder, which is Unveracity, Unreality, what we call Chaos, has no
fiercer enemy. Honest soul, and he seemed to himself such a stupid
fellow often; no tongue-learning at all; little capable to give a reason
for the faith that was in him. He cannot argue in articulate logic,
only in inarticulate bellowings, or worse. He must DO a thing, leave it
undemonstrated; once done, it will itself tell what kind of thing it is,
by and by. Men of genius have a hard time, I perceive, whether born
on the throne or off it; and must expect contradictions next to
unendurable,--the plurality of blockheads being so extreme!
I find, except Samuel Johnson, no man of equal veracity with Friedrich
Wilhelm in that epoch: and Johnson too, with all his tongue-learning,
had not logic enough. In fact, it depends on how much conviction you
have. Blessed be Heaven, there is here and there a man born who loves
truth as truth should be loved, with all his heart and all his soul; and
hates untruth with a corresponding perfect hatred. Such men, in polite
circles, which understand that certainly truth is better than untruth,
but that you must be polite to both, are liable to get to the end of
their logic. Even Johnson had a bellow in him; though Johnson could at
any time withdraw into silence, HIS kingdom lying all under his own hat.
How much more Friedrich Wilhelm, who had no logic whatever; and whose
kingdom lay without him, far and wide, a thing he could not withdraw
from. The rugged Orson, he needed to be right. From utmost Memel down to
Wesel again, ranked in a straggling manner round the half-circumference
of Europe, all manner of things and persons were depending on him, and
on his being right, not wrong, in his notion.
A man of clear discernment, very good natural eyesight; and irrefragably
confident in what his eyes told him, in what his belief was;--yet of
huge simplicity withal. Capable of being coaxed about, and led by the
nose, to a strange degree, if there were an artist dexterous enough,
daring enough! His own natural judgment was good, and, though apt to
be hasty and headlong, was always likely to come right in the end; but
internally, we may perceive, his modesty, self-distrust, anxiety
and other unexpected qualities, must have been great. And then his
explosiveness, impatience, excitability; his conscious dumb ignorance
of all things beyond his own small horizon of personal survey! An
Orson capable enough of being coaxed and tickled, by some first-rate
conjurer;--first-rate; a second-rate might have failed, and got torn to
pieces for his pains. But Seckendorf and Grumkow, what a dance they led
him on some matters,--as we shall see, and as poor Fritz and others will
see!
He was full of sensitiveness, rough as he was and shaggy of skin. His
wild imaginations drove him hither and thither at a sad rate. He
ought to have the privileges of genius. His tall Potsdam Regiment, his
mad-looking passion for enlisting tall men; this also seems to me one
of the whims of genius,--an exaggerated notion to have his "stanza"
polished to the last punctilio of perfection; and might be paralleled
in the history of Poets. Stranger "man of genius," or in more peculiar
circumstances, the world never saw!
Friedrich Wilhelm, in his Crown-Prince days, and now still more when
he was himself in the sovereign place, had seen all along, with natural
arithmetical intellect, That his strength in this world, as at present
situated, would very much depend upon the amount of potential-battle
that lay in him,--on the quantity and quality of Soldiers he could
maintain, and have ready for the field at any time. A most indisputable
truth, and a heartfelt one in the present instance. To augment the
quantity, to improve the quality, in this thrice-essential particular:
here lay the keystone and crowning summit of all Friedrich Wilhelm's
endeavors; to which he devoted himself, as only the best Spartan could
have done. Of which there will be other opportunities to speak in
detail. For it was a thing world-notable; world-laughable, as was then
thought; the extremely serious fruit of which did at length also become
notable enough.
In the Malplaquet time, once on some occasion, it is said, two English
Officers, not well informed upon the matter, and provoking enough
in their contemptuous ignorance, were reasoning with one another in
Friedrich Wilhelm's hearing, as to the warlike powers of the Prussian
State, and Whether the King of Prussia could on his own strength
maintain a standing army of 15,000? Without subsidies, do you think,
so many as 15,000? Friedrich Wilhelm, incensed at the thing and at the
tone, is reported to have said with heat: "Yes, 30,000!" [Forster, i.
138.] whereat the military men slightly wagged their heads, letting the
matter drop for the present. But he makes it good by degrees; twofold or
threefold;--and will have an army of from seventy to a hundred thousand
before he dies, ["72,000 field-troops, 30,000 garrison-troops"
(_Gestandnisse eines OEster reichischen Veterans,_ Breslau, 1788, i.
64).] the best-drilled of fighting men; and what adds much to the
wonder, a full Treasury withal. This is the Brandenburg Spartan King;
acquainted with National Economics. Alone of existing Kings he lays
by money annually; and is laying by many other and far more precious
things, for Prussia and the little Boy he has here.
Friedrich Wilhelm's passion for drilling, recruiting and perfecting his
army attracted much notice: laughing satirical notice; in the hundred
months of common rumor, which he regarded little; and notice iracund and
minatory, when it led him into collision with the independent portions
of mankind, now and then. This latter sort was not pleasant, and
sometimes looked rather serious; but this too he contrived always
to digest in some tolerable manner. He continued drilling and
recruiting,--we may say not his Army only, but his Nation in all
departments of it,--as no man before or since ever did: increasing, by
every devisable method, the amount of potential-battle that lay in him
and it.
In a military, and also in a much deeper sense, he may be defined as the
great Drill-sergeant of the Prussian Nation. Indeed this had been the
function of the Hohenzollerns all along; this difficult, unpleasant and
indispensable one of drilling. From the first appearance of Burggraf
Friedrich, with good words and with HEAVY PEG, in the wreck of anarchic
Brandenburg, and downwards ever since, this has steadily enough gone
on. And not a little good drilling these populations have had, first
and last; just orders given them (wise and just, which to a respectable
degree were Heaven's orders as well): and certainly Heavy Peg, for
instance,--Heavy Peg, bringing Quitzow's strong House about his
ears,--was a respectable drummer's cat to enforce the same. This has
been going on these three hundred years. But Friedrich Wilhelm completes
the process; finishes it off to the last pitch of perfection. Friedrich
Wilhelm carries it through every fibre and cranny of Prussian Business,
and so far as possible, of Prussian Life; so that Prussia is all a
drilled phalanx, ready to the word of command; and what we see in the
Army is but the last consummate essence of what exists in the Nation
everywhere. That was Friedrich Wilhelm's function, made ready for him,
laid to his hand by his Hohenzollern foregoers; and indeed it proved a
most beneficent function.
For I have remarked that, of all things, a Nation needs first to be
drilled; and no Nation that has not first been governed by so-called
"Tyrants," and held tight to the curb till it became perfect in its
paces and thoroughly amenable to rule and law, and heartily respectful
of the same, and totally abhorrent of the want of the same, ever came
to much in this world. England itself, in foolish quarters of England,
still howls and execrates lamentably over its William Conqueror, and
rigorous line of Normans and Plantagenets; but without them, if you will
consider well, what had it ever been? A gluttonous race of Jutes and
Angles, capable of no grand combinations; lumbering about in pot-bellied
equanimity; not dreaming of heroic toil and silence and endurance,
such as leads to the high places of this Universe, and the golden
mountain-tops where dwell the Spirits of the Dawn. Their very
ballot-boxes and suffrages, what they call their "Liberty," if these
mean "Liberty," and are such a road to Heaven, Anglo-Saxon high-road
thither,--could never have been possible for them on such terms. How
could they? Nothing but collision, intolerable interpressure (as of men
not perpendicular), and consequent battle often supervening, could
have been appointed those undrilled Anglo-Saxons; their pot-bellied
equanimity itself continuing liable to perpetual interruptions, as in
the Heptarchy time. An enlightened Public does not reflect on these
things at present; but will again, by and by. Looking with human eyes
over the England that now is, and over the America and the Australia,
from pole to pole; and then listening to the Constitutional litanies of
Dryasaust, and his lamentations on the old Norman and Plantagenet Kings,
and his recognition of departed merit and causes of effects,--the mind
of man is struck dumb!