January, 1712. It may safely be pronounced that he had received from
nature a strong and sharp understanding, and a rare firmness of temper
and intensity of will. As to the other parts of his character, it is
difficult to say whether they are to be ascribed to nature, or to the
strange training which he underwent. The history of his boyhood is
painfully interesting. Oliver Twist in the parish workhouse, Smike at
Dotheboy’s Hall, were petted children when compared with this wretched
heir apparent of a crown. The nature of Frederic William was hard
and bad, and the habit of exercising arbitrary power had made him
frightfully savage. His rage {153}constantly vented itself to right
and left in curses and blows. When his Majesty took a walk, every human
being fled before him, as if a tiger had broken loose from a menagerie.
If he met a lady in the street, he gave her a kick, and told her to go
home and mind her brats. If he saw a clergyman staring at the soldiers,
he admonished the reverend gentleman to betake himself to study and
prayer, and enforced this pious advice by a sound caning, administered
on the spot. But it was in his own house that he was most unreasonable
and ferocious. His palace was hell, and he the most execrable of fiends,
a cross between Moloch and Puck. His son Frederic and his daughter
Wilhelmina, afterwards Margravine of Bareuth, were in an especial manner
objects of his aversion. His own mind was uncultivated. He despised
literature. He hated infidels, papists, and metaphysicians, and did not
very well understand in what they differed from each other. The
business of life, according to him, was to drill and to be drilled. The
recreations suited to a prince, were to sit in a cloud of tobacco smoke,
to sip Swedish beer between the puffs of the pipe, to play backgammon
for three halfpence a rubber, to kill wild hogs, and to shoot partridges
by the thousand. The Prince Royal showed little inclination either for
the serious employments or for the amusements of his father. He shirked
the duties of the parade: he detested the fume of tobacco: he had no
taste either for backgammon or for field sports. He had an exquisite ear
and performed skilfully on the flute. His earliest instructors had
been French refugees, and they had awakened in him a strong passion for
French literature and French society. Frederic William regarded
these tastes as effeminate and contemptible, {154}and by abuse and
persecution, made them still stronger. Things became worse when the
Prince Royal attained that time of life at which the great revolution
in the human mind and body takes place. He was guilty of some youthful
indiscretions, which no good and wise parent would regard with severity.
At a later period He was accused, truly or falsely, of vices from which
history averts her eyes, and which even Satire blushes to name, vices
such that, to borrow the energetic language of Lord Keeper Coventry,
“the depraved nature of man, which of itself carrieth man to all
other sin, abhorreth them.” But the offences of his youth were not
characterized by any degree of turpitude. They excited, however,
transports of rage in the King, who hated all faults except those to
which he was himself inclined, and who conceived that he made ample
atonement to Heaven for his brutality, by holding the softer passions in
detestation. The Prince Royal, too, was not one of those who are content
to take their religion on trust. He asked puzzling questions, and
brought forward arguments which seemed to savour of something different
from pure Lutheranism. The King suspected that his son was inclined to
be a heretic of some sort or other, whether Calvinist or Atheist his
Majesty did not very well know. The ordinary malignity of Frederic
William was bad enough. He now thought malignity a part of his duty as a
Christian man, and all the conscience that he had stimulated his hatred.
The flute was broken: the French books were sent out of the palace: the
Prince was kicked and cudgelled, and pulled by the hair. At dinner the
plates were hurled at his head: sometimes he was restricted to bread and
water: sometimes he was forced to swallow food so nauseous that he
could not keep it on his stomach. {155}Once his father knocked him
down, dragged him along the floor to a window, and was with difficulty
prevented from strangling him with the cord of the curtain. The Queen,
for the crime of not wishing to see her son murdered, was subjected
to the grossest indignities. The Princess Wilhelmina, who took
her brother’s part, was treated almost as ill as Mrs. Brownrigg’s
apprentices.
Driven to despair, the unhappy youth tried to run away. Then the fury of
the old tyrant rose to madness. The Prince was an officer in the army:
his flight was therefore desertion; and, in the moral code of Frederic
William, desertion was the highest of all crimes. “Desertion,” says this
royal theologian, in one of his half crazy letters, “is from hell. It is
a work of the children of the Devil. No child of God could possibly
be guilty of it.” An accomplice of the Prince, in spite of the
recommendation of a court martial, was mercilessly put to death. It
seemed probable that the Prince himself would suffer the same fate. It
was with difficulty that the intercession of the States of Holland, of
the Kings of Sweden and Poland, and of the Emperor of Germany, saved the
House of Brandenburg from the stain of an unnatural murder. After months
of cruel suspense, Frederic learned that his life would be spared. He
remained, however, long a prisoner; but he was not on that account to be
pitied. He found in his gaolers a tenderness which he had never found
in his father; his table was not sumptuous, but he had wholesome food
in sufficient quantity to appease hunger: he could read the Henriade
without being kicked, and could play on his flute without having it
broken over his head.
When his confinement terminated he was a man. He had nearly completed
his twenty-first year, and {156}could scarcely be kept much longer
under the restraints which had made his boyhood miserable. Suffering had
matured his understanding, while it had hardened his heart and soured
his temper. He had learnt self-command and dissimulation: he affected to
conform to some of his father’s views, and submissively accepted a wife,
who was a wife only in name, from his father’s hand. He also served
with credit, though without any opportunity of acquiring brilliant
distinction, under the command of Prince Eugene, during a campaign
marked by no extraordinary events. He was now permitted to keep a
separate establishment, and was therefore able to indulge with caution
his own tastes. Partly in order to conciliate the King, and partly, no
doubt, from inclination, he gave up a portion of his time to military
and political business, and thus gradually acquired such an aptitude
for affairs as his most intimate associates were not aware that he
possessed.
His favourite abode was at Rheinsberg, near the frontier which separates
the Prussian dominions from the Duchy of Mecklenburg. Rheinsberg is
a fertile and smiling spot, in the midst of the sandy waste of the
Marquisate. The mansion, surrounded by woods of oak and beech, looks
out upon a spacious lake. There Frederic amused himself by laying out
gardens in regular alleys and intricate mazes, by building obelisks,
temples, and conservatories, and by collecting rare fruits and flowers.
His retirement was enlivened by a few companions, among whom he seems
to have preferred those who, by birth or extraction, were French. With
these inmates he dined and supped well, drank freely, and amused himself
sometimes with concerts, and sometimes with holding chapters of a
fraternity which he called the Order of Bayard; but literature was his
chief resource. {157}His education had been entirely French. The long
ascendency which Lewis the Fourteenth had enjoyed, and the eminent
merit of the tragic and comic dramatists, of the satirists, and of the
preachers who had flourished under that magnificent prince, had made
the French language predominant in Europe. Even in countries which had
a national literature, and which could boast of names greater than those
of Racine, of Molière, and of Massillon, in the country of Dante, in
the country of Cervantes, in the country of Shakspeare and Milton,
the intellectual fashions of Paris had been to a great extent adopted.
Germany had not yet produced a single masterpiece of poetry or
eloquence. In Germany, therefore, the French taste reigned without rival
and without limit. Every youth of rank was taught to speak and write
French. That he should speak and write his own tongue with politeness,
or even with accuracy and facility, was regarded as comparatively an
unimportant object. Even Frederic William, with all his rugged Saxon
prejudices, thought it necessary that his children should know French,
and quite unnecessary that they should be well versed in German. The
Latin was positively interdicted. “My son,” his Majesty wrote, “shall
not learn Latin; and, more than that, I will not suffer anybody even to
mention such a thing to me.” One of the preceptors ventured to read
the Golden Bull in the original with the Prince Royal. Frederic William
entered the room, and broke out in his usual kingly style.
“Rascal, what are you at there?”
“Please your Majesty,” answered the preceptor, “I was explaining the
Golden Bull to his Royal Highness.”
“I’ll Golden Bull you, you rascal!” roared the {158}Majesty of Prussia.
Up went the King’s cane; away ran the terri lied instructor; and
Frederic’s classical studies ended for ever. He now and then affected to
quote Latin sentences, and produced such exquisitely Ciceronian
phrases as these:--“Stante pede morire,”--“De gustibus non est
disputandus,”--“Tot verbas tot spondera.” Of Italian, he had not enough
to read a page of Metastasio with ease; and of the Spanish and English,
he did not, as for as we are aware, understand a single word.
As the highest human compositions to which he had access were those
of the French writers, it is not strange that his admiration for those
writers should have been unbounded. His ambitious and eager temper early
prompted him to imitate what he admired. The wish, perhaps, dearest his
heart was, that he might rank among the masters of French rhetoric and
poetry. He wrote prose and verse as indefetigably as if he had been a
starving hack of Cave or Osborn; but Nature, which had bestowed on him,
in a large measure, the talents of a captain and of an administrator,
had withheld from him those higher and rarer gifts, without which
industry labors in vain to produce immortal eloquence and song. And,
indeed, had he been blessed with more imagination, wit, and fertility of
thought, than he appears to have had, he would still have been subject
to one great disadvantage, which would, in all probability, have for
ever prevented him from taking a high place among men of letters. He had
not the full command of any language. There was no machine of thought
which he could employ with perfect ease, confidence, and freedom. He had
German enough to scold his servants, or to give the word of command to
his grenadiers; but his grammar and {159}pronunciation were extremely
bad. He found it difficult to make out the meaning even of the simplest
German poetry. On one occasion a version of Racine’s Iphigénie was read
to him. He held the French original in his hand; but was forced to own
that, even with such help, he could not understand the translation. Yet,
though he had neglected his mother tongue in order to bestow all
his attention on French, his French was, after all, the French of a
foreigner. It was necessary for him to have always at his beck some men
of letters from Paris to point out the solecisms and false rhymes of
which, to the last, he was frequently guilty. Even had he possessed
the poetic faculty, of which, as far as we can judge, he was utterly
destitute, the want of a language would have prevented him from being
a great poet. No noble work of imagination, as far as we recollect,
was ever composed by any man, except in a dialect which he had learned
without remembering bow or when, ana which he had spoken with perfect
ease before he had ever analysed its structure. Romans of great
abilities wrote Greek verses; but how many of those verses have deserved
to live? Many men of eminent genius have, in modern times, written
Latin poems; but, as for as we are aware, none of those poems, not even
Milton’s, can be ranked in the first class of art, or even very high in
the second. It is not strange, therefore, that, in the French verses of
Frederic, we can find nothing beyond the reach of any man of good parts
and industry, nothing above the level of Newdigate and Seatonian poetry.
His best pieces may perhaps rank with the worst in Dodsley’s collection.
In history, he succeeded better. We do not, indeed, find, in any part of
his voluminous Memoirs, either deep reflection {160}or vivid pointing.
But the narrative is distinguished by clearness, conciseness, good
sense, and a certain air of truth and simplicity, which is singularly
graceful in a man who, having done great things, sits down to relate
them. On the whole, however, none of his writings are so agreeable to us
as his Letters, particularly those which are written with earnestness,
and are not embroidered with verses.
It is not strange that a young man devoted to literature, and acquainted
only with the literature of France, should have looked with profound
veneration on the genius of Voltaire. “A man who has never seen the
sun,” says Calderon, in one of his charming comedies, “cannot be blamed
for thinking that no glory can exceed that of the moon. A man who
has seen neither moon nor sun, cannot be blamed for talking of the
unrivalled brightness of the morning star.” Had Frederic been able to
read Homer and Milton, or even Virgil and Tasso, his admiration of
the Henriade would prove that he was utterly destitute of the power of
discerning what is excellent in art. Had he been familiar with Sophocles
or Shakspeare, we should have expected him to appreciate Zaire more
justly. Had he been able to study Thucydides and Tacitus in the original
Greek and Latin, he would have known that there were heights in the
eloquence of history far beyond the reach of the author of the Life of
Charles the Twelfth. But the finest heroic poem, several of the most
powerful tragedies, and the most brilliant and picturesque historical
work that Frederic had ever read were Voltaire’s. Such high and various
excellence moved the young prince almost to adoration. The opinions of
Voltaire on religious and philosophical questions had not yet been fully
exhibited to the public. At a later period, {161}when an exile from
his country, and at open war with the Church, he spoke out. But when
Frederic was at Rheinsberg, Voltaire was still a courtier; and, though
He could not always curb his petulant wit, he had as yet published
nothing that could exclude him from Versailles, and little that a divine
of the mild and generous school of Grotius and Tillotson might not read
with pleasure. In the Henriade, in Zaire, and in Alzire, Christian piety
is exhibited in the most amiable form; and, some years after the period
of which we are writing, a Pope condescended to accept the dedication
of Mahomet. The real sentiments of the poet, however, might be clearly
perceived by a keen eye through the decent disguise with which he veiled
them, and could not escape the sagacity of Frederic, who held similar
opinions, and had been accustomed to practice similar dissimulation.
The Prince wrote to his idol in the style of a worshipper; and Voltaire
replied with exquisite grace and address. A correspondence followed,
which may be studied with advantage by those who wish to become
proficients in the ignoble art of flattery. No man ever paid compliments
better than Voltaire. His sweetest confectionery had always a delicate,
yet stimulating flavour, which was delightful to palates wearied by the
coarse preparations of inferior artists. It was only from his hand that
so much sugar could be swallowed without making the swallower sick.
Copies of verses, writing desks, trinkets of amber, were exchanged
between the friends. Frederic confided his writings to Voltaire; and
Voltaire applauded, as if Frederic had been Racine and Bossuet in
one. One of his Royal Highness’s performances was a refutation of
Machiavelli. Voltaire undertook to convey it to the press. It was
entitled {162}the Anti-Machiavel, and was an edifying homily against
rapacity, perfidy, arbitrary government, unjust war, in short, against
almost every thing for which its author is now remembered among men.
The old King uttered now and then a ferocious growl at the diversions of
Rheinsberg. But his health was broken; his end was approaching, and his
vigour was impaired. He had only one pleasure left, that of seeing tall
soldiers. He could always be propitiated by a present of a grenadier of
six feet four or six feet five; and such presents were from time to time
judiciously offered by his son.
Early in the year 1740, Frederic William met death with a firmness
and dignity worthy of a better wiser man; and Frederic, who had just
completed his twenty-eighth year, became King of Prussia. His character
was little understood. That he had good abilities, indeed, no person
who had talked with him, or corresponded with him, could doubt. But the
easy, Epicurean life which he had led, his love of good cookery and good
wine, of music, of conversation, of light literature, led many to regard
him as a sensual and intellectual voluptuary. His habit of canting about
moderation, peace, liberty, and the happiness which a good mind derives
from the happiness of others, had imposed on some who should have
known better. Those who thought best of him expected a Telemachus after
Fénélon’s pattern. Others predicted the approach of a Medicean age, an
age propitious to learning and art, and not unpropitious to pleasure.
Nobody had the least suspicion that a tyrant of extraordinary military
and political talents, of industry more extraordinary still, without
fear, without faith, and without mercy, had ascended the throne.
{163}The disappointment of Falstaff at his old boon-companion’s
coronation was not more bitter than that which awaited some of the
inmates of Rheinsberg. They had long looked forward to the accession
of their patron, as to the event from which their own prosperity and
greatness was to date. They had at last reached the promised land,
the land which they had figured to themselves as flowing with milk and
honey; and they found it a desert. “No more of these fooleries,” was the
short, sharp admonition given by Frederic to one of them. It soon became
plain that, in the most important points, the new sovereign bore a
strong family likeness to his predecessor. There was indeed a wide
difference between the father and the son as respected extent and
vigour of intellect, speculative opinions, amusements, studies, outward
demeanour. But the groundwork of the character was the same in both. To
both were common the love of order, the love of business, the military
taste, the parsimony, the imperious spirit, the temper irritable even to
ferocity, the pleasure in the pain and humiliation of others. But these
propensities had in Frederic William partaken of the general unsoundness
of his mind, and wore a very different aspect when found in company
with the strong and cultivated understanding of his successor. Thus,
for example, Frederic was as anxious as any prince could be about
the efficiency of his army. But this anxiety never degenerated into
a monomania, like that which led his father to pay fancy prices for
giants. Frederic was as thrifty about money as any prince or any private
man ought to be. But he did not conceive, like his father, that it was
worth while to eat unwholesome cabbages for the sake of saving four or
five rixdollars in the year. Frederic was, we fear, as malevolent as
his {164}father; but Frederic’s wit enabled him often to show his
malevolence in ways more decent than those to which his father resorted,
and to inflict misery and degradation by a taunt instead of a blow.
Frederic, it is true, by no means relinquished his hereditary privilege
of kicking and cudgelling. His practice, however, as to that matter,
differed in some important respects from his father’s. To Frederic
William, the mere circumstance that any persons whatever, men, women, or
children, Prussians or foreigners, were within reach of his toes and of
his cane, appeared to be a sufficient reason for proceeding to belabour
them. Frederic required provocation as well as vicinity; nor was he ever
known to inflict this paternal species of correction on any but his born
subjects; though on one occasion M. Thiebault had reason, during a few
seconds, to anticipate the high honour of being an exception to this
general rule.
The character of Frederic was still very imperfectly understood either
by his subjects or by his neighbours, when events occurred which
exhibited it in a strong light. A few months after his accession died
Charles the Sixth, Emperor of Germany, the last descendant, in the male
line, of the House of Austria.
Charles left no son, and had, long before his death, relinquished all
hopes of male issue. During the latter part of his life, his principal
object had been to secure to his descendants in the female line the many
crowns of the house of Hapsburg. With this view, He had promulgated a
new law of succession, widely celebrated throughout Europe under the
name of the Pragmatic Sanction. By virtue of this law, his daughter, the
Archduchess Maria Theresa, wife of Francis of Loraine, succeeded to the
dominions of her ancestors. {165}No sovereign has ever taken possession
of a throne by a clearer title. All the politics of the Austrian
cabinet had, during twenty years, been directed to one single end, the
settlement of the succession. From every person whose rights could be
considered as injuriously affected, renunciations in the most solemn
form had been obtained. The new law had been ratified by the Estates
of all the kingdoms and principalities which made up the great Austrian
monarchy. England, France, Spain, Russia, Poland, Prussia, Sweden,
Denmark, the Germanic body, had bound themselves by treaty to maintain
the Pragmatic Sanction. That instrument was placed under the protection
of the public faith of the whole civilised world.
Even if no positive stipulations on this subject had existed, the
arrangement was one which no good man would have been willing to
disturb. It was a peaceable arrangement. It was an arrangement
acceptable to the great population whose happiness was chiefly
concerned. It was an arrangement which made no change in the
distribution of power among the states of Christendom. It was an
arrangement which could be set aside, only by means of a general war;
and, if it were set aside the effect would be, that the equilibrium
of Europe would be deranged, that the loyal and patriotic feelings of
millions would be cruelly outraged, and that great provinces which had
been united for centuries would be torn from each other by main force.
The sovereigns of Europe were, therefore, bound by every obligation
which those who are intrusted with power over their fellow-creatures
ought to hold most sacred, to respect and defend the rights of the
Archduchess. Her situation and her personal qualities were such as
might be expected to move the mind of any generous man {166}to pity,
admiration, and chivalrous tenderness. She was in her twenty-fourth
year. Her form was majestic, her features beautiful, her countenance
sweet and animated, her voice musical, her deportment gracious and
dignified. In all domestic relations she was without reproach. She was
married to a husband whom she loved, and was on the point of giving
birth to a child, when death deprived her of her father. The loss of
a parent, and the new cares of empire, were too much for her in the
delicate state of her health. Her spirits were depressed, and her cheek
lost its bloom. Yet it seemed that she had little cause for anxiety.
It seemed that justice, humanity, and the faith of treaties would have
their due weight, and that the settlement so solemnly guaranteed would
be quietly carried into effect. England, Russia, Poland, and Holland,
declared in form their intention to adhere to their engagements. The
French ministers made a verbal declaration to the same effect. But from
no quarter did the young Queen of Hungary receive stronger assurances of
friendship and support than from the King of Prussia.
Yet the King of Prussia, the Anti-Machiavel, had already fully
determined to commit the great crime of violating his plighted faith, of
robbing the ally whom he was bound to defend, and of plunging all
Europe into a long, bloody, and desolating war; and all this for no end
whatever, except that he might extend his dominions, and see his name
in the gazettes. He determined to assemble a great army with speed and
secrecy, to invade Silesia before Maria Theresa should be apprised of
his design, and to add that rich province to his kingdom.