in his instructions for the education of his successor, frederick prescribed a thorough course of european history from the time of the emperor charles v. (1519–1556) to his own reign. this had been the favourite study of his own youth, so that at his accession he realised to the full that modern europe owed little of its political contour to chance, but much to the aspirations and struggles of the several states during the last two centuries. for modern europe was no older than charles v. right through the middle ages the christian world maintained that supreme authority, like truth, ought to be one, and that every christian should look up to the emperor in matters temporal as he looked up to the pope in matters spiritual. on the secular side, however, this theory had crumbled beneath its own weight. even a charlemagne could not really rule the world. as the various races of mankind who lived in england, france, spain, and scandinavia gradually came under the sway of a few national rulers, the emperor dwindled into a dignified president of german princes. his lordship of the world57 survived only in distracting claims to rule more widely and more exclusively than his attenuated power could warrant. two sharp shocks heralded modern times. first columbus bestowed upon his masters, the kings of spain, a new world which had never heard of pope and emperor and which the emperor at least did not pretend to sway. then luther, wrestling blindly with the papacy, shattered the central pillar of the medi?val world, and modern history, the biography of a group of independent states, began.
these states, however, did not enjoy unchallenged independence. each had to work out its own religious settlement, and—if it embraced the reformation—had to repel, with whatever help it could find, the rescue-work of the pope and his allies. to the end of the sixteenth century, through the careers of charles v., elizabeth, william of orange, henry of navarre, romanist and protestant states always tended to fall apart into two hostile camps. even in frederick’s time religious affinity always counted for something. he had laid history to heart and, as we shall see, profited in his dealings with england by the old cry of “church in danger.” on his lips the cry was a mere ruse. the day of crusades was over. in the sixteenth century spain, austria, and italy rejected the reformation; england established its own church; france came to terms with the huguenots. at the great peace of westphalia germany established parity between the warring creeds, a boon tardily won by thirty years of desolation. thenceforward affairs of state came first in every58 land. louis xiv.’s revocation of the edict of nantes in 1685 proved that religious aggression was to be feared only as the sequel of undue political preponderance. from the birth of modern states down to our own time, the bugbear of the nations has been world-rule and their watchword equilibrium.
the first prince who threatened to restore in fact if not in form the world-rule which had broken down in the middle ages was charles v., the scion and pattern of the house of hapsburg, whose career is the narrative of european politics from 1519 to 1556. france, which he threatened most, took the lead against him, began the long duel between bourbon and hapsburg, and thus guarded the liberties of europe till the close of the thirty years’ war (1648). then louis xiv. threatened to make france in her turn mistress of the world. the equilibrium which he, as absolute ruler of the foremost state of europe, seemed to have overthrown, was painfully re-established at utrecht (1713). a new and greater thirty years’ war was thus brought to an end. it left the states weary and timid, dreading france as a century earlier they had dreaded spain, clinging to peace lest the whole fabric of europe should collapse and with it the gains which they had made or hoped to make should vanish. france, conscious of weakness in spite of the glories of louis xiv., turned to diplomacy and won lorraine. england, ridden on a loose rein by walpole, followed her natural bent towards the sea. for austria and the hapsburg charles vi., the great59 problem was to keep what had already been heaped together. only spain was not afraid to break the peace, and in the long run she gained parts of italy by her boldness.
most of the territorial profits made by european powers during the years 1713–1740 were made at the expense of charles vi., either as head of the hapsburgs or as emperor. as it became certain that he would have no son, he grew more and more reckless in sacrificing the welfare of the empire to that of his house. the future of his heir was indeed precarious. for there was not and never had been an austria in the same sense in which there was an england, a france, or a spain; that is, a well-knit nation, preferring ruin to dismemberment. “austria” meant the dominions of the elder branch of the house of hapsburg just as “prussia” under frederick i. meant the dominions of the elder branch of the house of hohenzollern. in the case of the hapsburg agglomeration, however, the subjects were too many, too miscellaneous, and too rich for the work of a frederick william to be possible. germans, hungarians, and italians were only the chief among a motley crowd of races which had come under the sceptre of charles vi.’s ancestors and which he strained every nerve to hand down to his daughter undispersed.
the method which charles selected was to proclaim that his dominions were one and indivisible, and descended to a female heir if no male were forthcoming. this he did by the famous pragmatic sanction, a document which for fifteen years, from60 1725 to 1740, was the pivot of european politics. from state after state charles purchased a guarantee of the pragmatic sanction, which amounted to an undertaking to recognise his daughter, maria theresa, as heir to the hapsburg dominions. for this he yielded to spain broad lands in italy, for this he sacrificed commercial prospects to the sea-powers england and holland, for this he consented that lorraine should pass from germany to france, for this he followed russia into a turkish war which cost him great tracts on either side the danube. for this, too, he committed what was perhaps the most dangerous of all his blunders. he played fast and loose with a time-honoured ally, and estranged the king of prussia.
ever since the peace of westphalia had given them freedom to make alliances where they would, the policy of the hohenzollerns had been to maintain a good understanding with austria. it might, indeed, happen, as after 1679, when louis xiv. hired them, that some other course became so advantageous that for the moment they adopted it. in general however, the emperor had most to give. to him the german princes still looked for investiture, for arbitration, and for promotion, and if a state desired to exercise its troops, who was so likely as the lord of the long hapsburg frontiers to be at war? king frederick william might reasonably hope that the power which had given his father the crown, which had led prussians to victory before turin, and which had permitted him to keep conquests in swedish pomerania (1720), would reward his devoted61 service by favouring his pretensions to inheritance on the rhine.
though a forceful squire, as a statesman the king lacked imagination. he was master of the finest soldiers in europe, yet he dared not vindicate his claims to jülich-berg without the help of the emperor, and he could not understand that the emperor might be reluctant to help the master of the finest soldiers in europe. such was, however, the truth. the rise of the hohenzollerns had long been watched at vienna with not unnatural jealousy. even against the turk prussians were but sparingly enlisted. the gift of the crown had been hotly opposed and bitterly regretted. when frederick william cried, “the emperor will have to spurn me from him with his feet: i am his unto death, faithful to the last drop of my blood,” it was already a hapsburg maxim that a new vandal kingdom must not arise on the shores of the baltic.
the statesmen at vienna valued the prussian alliance enough to employ grumbkow and the austrian ministers at berlin to hoodwink frederick william. as we have seen, they lavished pocket-money and sacrificed a bride in the hope of securing ascendancy over his son. but they blundered greatly when to please england and thereby to further the pragmatic sanction, they bade the king break off a marriage which all the world knew was fixed for the very next day, and they blundered still more when to please france and holland with the same end in view they withdrew the promise of supporting him in jülich-berg. in 1732 frederick william, for the only time62 in his life, met charles vi. face to face and the truth with regard to the relations between hapsburg and hohenzollern began to dawn upon him. all his life he had been the vassal of an emperor whom he had imagined as a german overlord, heir to the dignity of the c?sars, who when the time was ripe would look with paternal complacency upon the prussian claims. the vision faded and revealed a rival monarch, pompous, contemptuous, and shifty. the shock of disillusionment was terrible, but before his death he saw clearly. once, it is said, he pointed to frederick with the words, “there stands one who will avenge me.” it is certain that with failing breath he warned his son against the policy of vienna.
thus, even supposing that frederick’s view of politics had been no wider than his father’s, that he had come to the throne resolved merely to keep up a great army and to win jülich-berg, he would none the less have possessed remarkable freedom of action. in foreign politics he was fettered by only one great treaty, that of berlin (december, 1728), by which prussia undertook to maintain the pragmatic sanction. but it was possible to contend that this agreement, which was made in secret to secure the emperor’s assistance in jülich-berg, became void in 1739, when austria entered into conflicting engagements with france.
circumstances, too, were favourable to frederick’s liberty. the very existence of the pragmatic sanction, a violent remedy against dissolution, was a guarantee that austria would be harmless for years to come. if charles vi. and his heir were63 loath to uphold prussia on the rhine, they would be very unlikely to risk their own existence by taking up arms against her. in other quarters prussia had little to fear. hanover, the parvenu electorate which lay like a broad barrier across the direct road from berlin to the west, had become a dependency of england in 1714, and therefore was not dangerous. whatever might be the wishes of george ii., it was certain that walpole would not spend blood and treasure to maintain the house of pfalz-sulzbach, prussia’s rival in jülich-berg, at düsseldorf. the dutch, it is true, felt themselves menaced by a prussian garrison in cleves, but their course had by this time become that of a mere cock-boat in the wake of great britain. france alone remained to be considered, and france, with a frontier fifty leagues from berg, was guided by a walpole of her own, cardinal fleury, now nearing the close of his eighty-seventh year. if then frederick elected to make prussia more considerable among the powers of the west by pressing his claims to berg he could fling his sword into the scales of justice without great fear that a stronger hand would turn the balance against him.
adventure in the rhine countries had much to commend it to the young king. his house undoubtedly possessed some title to berg, and it had been the secular policy of the hohenzollerns to forego no claim without arguing to the death. the busy and fertile rhineland was a gold-mine in comparison with the sterile mark. frederick, as an enthusiast for the higher civilisation of the west, might well64 feel drawn towards a duchy which lay more than half-way along the direct line from his capital to paris. and, greatest merit of all in the eyes of a dynasty of merchants, berg was eminently salable. the rhenish duchies were like good accommodation-lands in the midst of thriving farms. many rulers would always be glad of them and their price would therefore be high.
but the arguments against staking all on berg were also strong. a statesman trained between the elbe and the oder could hardly be unaware that prussia’s heritage in the west was a mere windfall and that by interest as by situation she belonged to the system of the north. her natural outlook was towards the baltic, which formed the only free road between her centre and her eastern wing. it was by foregoing lands on the baltic that she had gained rich bishoprics to the westward in 1648. baltic powers, poland, russia, and above all sweden, had steadily influenced her politics since the advent of the great elector. history and geography alike seemed to beckon young frederick to the sea. let us therefore cast a glance at those among his neighbours whom he had to take account of, whatever plan he might devise.
frederick william the first.
after the painting by f. w. weideman.
just as the traditional enemy of the bourbon was the hapsburg, so the traditional enemy of the hohenzollern was the vasa. this gifted house had ruled in sweden since 1520 and had chosen for their country a path which it was not strong enough to follow to the end. they had striven to turn the baltic into a swedish lake by conquering all its65 coasts. success seemed nearest when in 1630 gustavus landed in germany, and at the point of the sword compelled his kinsman of brandenburg to favour his adventure. the result of these bold steps was for sweden a swift blaze of glory; for brandenburg a decade of misery inflicted in great part by swedish hands. in 1648 the great treaty compensated the swedes for their work by driving the great elector from the mouth of the oder. their ambition to be masters of the baltic shores, however, remained, and the great elector suffered much at their hands before the peace of oliva (1660) confirmed his sovereignty over ost-preussen. what happened at fehrbellin and after it has been already told. the meteoric career of charles xii. (1697–1718), who began by humbling prussia, but ended by losing stettin to her, is no part of our story, except in so far as it interested and influenced young frederick. it suffices that in 1740 sweden was factious and impotent, and that her aged king still held that part of pomerania which prussia did not possess. to acquire western pomerania was therefore a possible object for frederick’s ambition.
the central mass of the hohenzollern dominions touched along almost the whole of its eastern frontier a power whose decline was even more visible than that of sweden. the polish republic, which almost encircled ost-preussen, formed perhaps the strangest spectacle that europe has ever seen. a vaster country than any of the western powers, poland remained in the middle ages. her constitution, indeed, seemed to have no other end than to make66 progress impossible. there were only two classes, nobles and serfs, the free and the unfree. but where every freeman was noble, many nobles were poor. these served for hire, and were distinguished, it is said, from men of lower birth by the privilege of being flogged upon a turkey carpet. the direction of this vast country rested with a few thousand feudal chiefs who elected a nominal king from within their own body or outside it. they made the laws themselves, but a single dissentient voice could wreck the work of a whole diet, as the annual session of parliament was termed, and of late years this right had commonly been exercised. what trade there was, was left to the despised class of german burghers. the fighting force grew every year more feeble. while austria could boast a eugene and russia a peter, while the parade-ground at potsdam was trodden by ever-growing masses of men who handled modern weapons with the precision given by daily practice, the poles were blindly trusting in feudal levies generalled by a puppet king.
at frederick’s accession, however, poland still possessed two elements of strength besides her vast bulk and the knightly courage of her sons. these were the saxon connexion and the port of danzig. two years earlier, at the price of war with france (1733–1738) and loss of lands in italy, charles vi. had secured the polish crown for the son of the late king, augustus iii., the elector of saxony. the emperor made this sacrifice to win support for the pragmatic sanction and to propitiate russia, who looked upon poland as her own if the french candidate67 were expelled. and, as the road from dresden to warsaw passed through the hapsburg province of silesia, augustus had good reason to be faithful to the daughter of charles vi.
poland none the less promised much to a king of prussia who could wait. her artificial connexion with saxony, established by foreign powers against the will of a majority of the poles, could only weaken the frail bonds which bound the state together. poland, all the world had long known, would one day fall in pieces, and who should hinder prussia from gathering some of them? for the moment, however, augustus could defend his new dominions. a king of prussia in a fever to act at once could not assail poland without laying bare his flank to saxony and to her imperial ally.
but could prussia in 1740 afford to wait? if augustus’s dream were to be fulfilled would not she be in jeopardy? the elector hoped that the emperor would cede to him a part of lower silesia, so that prussia might be for ever divided and hemmed in by a saxon-polish state. had we no other guide than the map, we might be tempted to guess that it was to avert this peril that frederick seized silesia. if it were true it were a grievous fault. augustus, who was no statesman, might dream of a hereditary crown, but a firm saxony-poland was in fact impossible. dresden and warsaw were centuries apart. out of two such halves no strong whole could be compounded. the one was german, the other slav; the one industrial, the other primitive; the one lutheran, the other partly romanist and partly68 orthodox. compounds so discordant could have found no abiding unity in a monarchy based on the treason of their common head against the constitution of each. nor could such a state have barred for a decade the path of the muscovite colossus which peter had already roused and which catherine and alexander were soon to reinspire.
in weighing frederick’s wisdom we must not forget that the share of poland which he might expect that prussia was destined to acquire, and which did, in fact, fall to her during his own lifetime, would change ost-preussen from an isolated province into a strong limb of a well-knit state. it gave her the lower waters of a third great arterial river—the vistula. but it came to her in 1774 shorn of its chief glory, the old portal of the vistula and strong tower of poland, the matchless town of danzig. frederick had seen that fair city, a hearth of german culture among the slavs, with its giant marienkirche towering over a mass of battlements and gates and churches of stately civic halls and mansions hardly less stately, the whole forming a venice of the north beside which his capital was but a market town. he must have taken note of the foundation of all this grandeur, great warehouses on busy wharves, canals crowded with masts and hulls from many lands. and he cannot have been blind to the fact that within a few miles of this prize lay ost-preussen, and that, since augustus had surrendered curland, within a few miles of ost-preussen lay russia. seldom has a king had clearer warning to look before he leaped.
69 thus, without departing from the policy of the men who had made prussia what she was, the young king had his choice between adventure on the rhine or across the peene and a policy of expectant watchfulness on the vistula. but if he were capable of building upon the foundations of his forefathers the loftiest structure that they would bear, then a still more glorious conquest might be his. lord of stettin and of the ports of ost-preussen, he might claim a share in what all the nations coveted, the empire of the sea.
it is one of the most grotesque facts in history that the emperor william ii., when he cried, “our future lies upon the water,” should have been uttering as prophecy what ought to have been commonplace for a century and a half. even in 1740 the truth that the new world offered a fairer career than the old was not hidden from statesmen less astute than frederick. since the armada foundered in 1588, the nations of europe had been realising it one by one. spain and portugal, the first in the field, still held a vast heritage across the ocean, but their monopoly was not as unchallenged as of old. first the dutch, who as subjects of spain had monopolised that carrying-trade which seemed to be beneath the dignity of an iberian gentleman, enriched themselves so rapidly that they were able to throw off the yoke of philip ii. and to establish a colonial and commercial empire of their own. then england, tardily comprehending the changing conditions of life, grappled with their little republic in a long and doubtful struggle. finally weight told, and after70 the revolution of 1688 england under her dutch king led the way and holland followed in a campaign against a rival dangerous to both. for france had been guided by colbert into the path of greatness beyond the seas, and it was by grasping at spain and the indies that louis xiv. aroused the keenest apprehensions that he might become dictator of the world. only at the cost of two mighty wars had the danger from france been averted for a generation. by the peace of utrecht (1713) the sea powers gained security for themselves and for their commerce, but the prize of north america still remained to be fought for between france and england.
in the early years of the eighteenth century other competitors put to sea. under peter the great, the new land power, russia, struggled to become maritime, though her horizon, as yet, hardly extended beyond european waters. but in 1722 the emperor charles vi. made his port of ostend the headquarters of a new imperial east india company, and england, france, and holland joined in an outcry against german competition. nine years later they were appeased. the hapsburg sacrificed the future of his house to its past. to purchase guarantees of the pragmatic sanction he withdrew his support from the company, which none the less was able to maintain itself for more than sixty years.
if then the tide had set so strongly towards distant continents that even conservative ill-knit austria was swept along with it, we may well ask, what of prussia? the history of our own time makes the question more pertinent. north germany71 has shown beyond dispute not only that she can now build ships, a fact which proves little or nothing as to her powers in the past, but also that she can fill them with brave and skilful seamen, whose character only many generations of worthy forefathers could create. these forefathers were the prussians of frederick’s day, poor, fearless, and docile, living on the borders of the baltic, speeding and welcoming its fleets at memel, at pillau, at colberg, and above all at stettin. why, it may be wondered, was frederick blind to the signs of the times? why did not he at the very outset of his reign hasten to employ the power of the crown, which frederick william had raised so high, to equip a prussian baltic company, a prussian west africa company, even a prussian east india company?
never was the political situation more favourable to such an enterprise than when frederick grasped the reins. no neighbour could enforce a veto upon prussian maritime enterprise. poland was in the last stage of impotence and decay. russia, who might form a good customer, was not yet equipped for conquest. austria could not afford to offend a german ally. sweden had lost her sting and her province of pomerania was a hostage at frederick’s mercy. the sea powers would view the enterprise askance, but they too had given hostages to prussia. if england played foul, the master of eighty thousand men could overrun hanover in a fortnight and the dutch would think twice ere they provoked the lord of cleves. of all powers denmark, the surly janitor of the baltic, was perhaps the best able to72 injure prussian commerce with impunity, but the heir of the great elector might be trusted to find a way with denmark. thus europe seemed to invite prussia to follow the destiny which nature prescribed, and which led to wealth. firmly governed, armed to the teeth, learned, protestant, and rich, she might have pursued her old opportunist policy on the mainland with full confidence that the future would bring her wider boundaries and yet greater strength.
in an earlier generation and with smaller means the great elector had perceived that the true path for prussia lay across the seas. balked of stettin, he strove to make pillau and memel his london and amsterdam. his little armada of ten frigates attacked the spaniards with success. in a humble way there began to be brandenburgish west indies, and in 1683 fort great-fredericksburgh was built upon the brandenburgish gold coast. but the great elector’s son and grandson lacked either his firm hand or his imagination. while frederick i. was squabbling with the dutch about armchairs, the dutch were driving his subjects from west africa. frederick william, the apostle of domestic economy, was impatient of flunkeys, universities, and colonies, the several extravagances of his father and of his grandfather. would frederick ii. prove himself more enlightened?
we see with amazement that he did not. a prince who was accounted clever, who had spent the first decade of manhood in pondering on high politics, who revered the memory of the great73 elector, and followed the fortunes of england with keen interest—how could such an one ignore what the movement of the times and the course of after events seem to point out so clearly? among his first acts was the establishment of a new department of manufactures. he commanded the head of it to take measures for improving the condition of existing industries, for introducing new ones, and for bringing in foreign capital and foreign hands. why did he not at the same time establish a department of marine? why did he wait till east frisia fell to prussia before making even a half-hearted effort to win profit from the sea?
a partial explanation may lie in the fact that frederick lacked the inspiration drawn from travel. the stupid fears of frederick william that his son would become too frenchified in his life or too austrian in his politics had closed to frederick the doors of the best school of his time. who knows how much profit the great elector brought to his state from his education in holland, or peter the great from his journeys in the west? save at danzig, frederick had hardly seen with his own eyes the dignity which commerce might create. save for two stolen days in strasburg in the first months of his reign, a secret visit to holland in 1755, and a meeting with the emperor in moravia in 1770, he was fated never to gain fresh knowledge of what would now be foreign lands except at the head of his army.
again, frederick’s political economy was unfavourable to prussian commerce. at cüstrin he learned from hille that the only trade by which a74 country can profit is that which adds to its stock of gold and silver. his father had carried this idea to its logical conclusion. he had seized the precious metals and locked them up. like a timid farmer who thinks that the bank will break, he had hidden in his cellars the hoard which represented the economies of a lifetime. frederick therefore found a treasure of more than twenty-six million marks, at a time when the weekly wage of a common soldier hardly exceeded one.
it seems clear that a policy of hoarding could be wise only when war was in sight. in time of war that government would be happiest which had most coined money with which to pay its troops. but in time of peace not even frederick william could take a breed from barren metal by keeping it locked up. profit could be drawn from it in either of two ways. the coined metal might be spent to advantage, so that the state bought something, such as a school, or a farm, or a flock of sheep, which would in the future be worth more than the sum laid out. or it might be lent to citizens who would pay for the use of it and establish with its aid some business which might be taxed. by locking up the surplus funds of the country, however, the king stifled commerce at the birth. frederick did not detect the fallacy, and germany waited till the nineteenth century for her commercial rise.
though nimble-witted and fond of philosophy, the king was hardly profound. his lector, the swiss de catt, tells a significant story of his first discussion with a singular stranger on a dutch75 vessel, whom he did not suspect to be the lord of prussia. frederick, he says,
“tried to prove that creation was impossible. at this last point i stood out in opposition. ‘but how can one create something out of nothing?’ said he. ‘that is not the question,’ answered i, ‘the question is, whether such a being as god can or cannot give existence to what has yet none?’ he seemed embarrassed and added, ‘but the universe is eternal.’ ‘you are in a circle,’ said i, ‘how will you get out of it?’ ‘i skip over it,’ said he, laughing; and then began to speak of other things.”
he wrote incessantly on history and politics, always with the clearness and sprightliness that seem inseparable from the french tongue which he employed, and always with the confidence of a journalist and of a king. of his ancestor joachim i. he says: “he received the surname of nestor in the same way as louis xiii. that of ‘the just’; that is, for no reason that any one can discover”—and this is a very fair example of his style. sense, lucidity, concise statement, even wit, distinguish his writings. he made so many confident generalisations on political affairs that some have almost of necessity proved correct. but of deep insight, still less of great constructive power, there is little trace.
in freedom from illusions, however, frederick surpassed some rival statesmen. this was abundantly illustrated at the very outset of his reign. he saw, as charles vi. could not, that the claim of the emperor to be lord of the world rested on no firm76 basis. early in 1737 he had written: “if the emperor dies to-day or to-morrow, what revolutions will come to pass! every one will wish to share his estate, and we shall see as many factions as there are sovereigns.” the discovery, indeed, was by no means new. more than a century earlier gustavus adolphus had told the germans that their constitution was rotten. but frederick informs the emperor pointedly that he is only first among his peers. he was equally clear-sighted in the choice of means to spread his views. william the silent had perceived a fact dark to many statesmen since his time—that the public opinion of europe is worth much and that it may be courted through the press. frederick had already composed the earliest of his many pamphlets, which he intended to publish anonymously as the work of an englishman, to rouse the sea powers against france.
more significant than all else was the fact that he viewed his own strength with clearer eyes than his father’s. frederick william had never been able to convince himself that prussia was a strong state: frederick wears no blinkers and with his accession the day of half measures is over. two years before this he had written to grumbkow words which express his real opinion of the old policy of his house. the affair of berg, which he as crown prince earnestly hoped would enable him to win fame on the battle-field, had then entered upon a phase adverse to prussian expectations. austria had been prevailed on to join with france and the sea powers in claiming that it should be referred to77 the arbitration of a congress, and frederick william, though disgusted, had decided to give way. of this decision grumbkow approved, writing, “i am persuaded that a king of prussia, like a king of sardinia, will always have more need of the fox’s hide than of the lion’s.” frederick replies (march, 1738):
“i confess that i perceive in the answer a conflict between greatness and humiliation to which i can never agree. the answer is like the declaration of a man who has no stomach for fighting and yet wishes to seem as if he had. there were only two solutions, either to reply with noble pride, with no evasions in the shape of petty negotiations whose real value will soon be recognised, or to bow ourselves under the degrading yoke that they wish to lay upon us. i am no subtle politician to couple together a set of contradictory threats and submissions, i am young, i would perhaps follow the impetuosity of my nature; under no circumstances would i do anything by halves.”
close observers held that a change of king would be followed by a change of policy and that frederick was likely to attempt great things. what these would be no one, with the possible exception of the young king himself, had the least idea. what in the opinion of the present writer they should have been is sufficiently indicated above. what they were, will be shown in the following chapter.
at first, for all his determination to lose no time, the results of his accession seemed but small. no78 human being could maintain that he was swayed by his affections. though duhan, keith, and katte’s father received some measure of compensation for their sufferings, frederick’s behaviour towards those concerned in his early struggles emboldened the wits to say that his memory was excellent as far back as 1730. his rheinsberg friends expected to share the spoils of office. they were disappointed in a way that has reminded macaulay of the treatment of falstaff by henry v. frederick was as masterful as his father. the aged prince of anhalt-dessau, who had created the prussian army, and the aged general von schulenburg, who had risked all rather than condemn katte to death, were humiliated by royal reprimands. grumbkow, with whom he had corresponded for more than eight years in terms of affectionate intimacy, might have caused him a moment’s embarrassment, but he had just died—“for me the greatest conceivable gain,” the king assured his sister. he broke up his father’s useless and costly regiment of giant grenadiers, a measure which frederick william had himself advised, but he increased the effective strength of the army by nearly ten thousand men. at the same time he sounded, more clearly even than his ancestor george william, the note of religious toleration for which brandenburg had been honourably distinguished in the time of her greatest peril. “in this country,” he instructed his officials, “every one shall get to heaven in his own way.”
view of glatz in the eighteenth century.
from an old print.
the crowned philosopher always recognised the79 difference between the things which were c?sar’s and the things which were god’s. the scion of a calvinist house, he began his reign by authorising the lutherans to restore their ritual, which had been arbitrarily simplified by his father. he was soon to court the favour of breslau by supplying her with protestant preachers, and of glatz by bestowing vestments upon a statue of the virgin. when romanist europe expelled the jesuits, he seized the opportunity of picking up well-trained teachers cheap. some of his papist subjects had a fancy for buying handkerchiefs which bore the effigies of saints. frederick, eager to encourage the linen manufacture, bade his officials find out which saints were the most popular and adjust the supply to the demand.
a story cited by carlyle illuminates frederick’s views upon the relations between church and state. he was questioning the monks of cleve, to whom the old dukes had assigned an income from the royal forest-dues for masses to be said on their behalf. “‘you still say those masses then?’ ‘certainly, your majesty.’ ‘and what good does anybody get out of them?’ ‘your majesty, those old sovereigns are to obtain heavenly mercy by them, to be delivered out of purgatory by them.’ ‘purgatory? it is a sore thing for the forests, all this while! and they are not yet out, those poor souls, after so many hundred years of praying?’ monks have a fatal apprehension, no. ‘when will they be out, and the thing complete?’ monks cannot say. ‘send me a courier whenever it is complete!’80 sneers the king,” and leaves them to finish the te deum which they had begun to greet his arrival.
lastly, the forms with which frederick took up the kingship showed that the fears of his father and the hopes of enlightened men were alike without foundation. it became clear that the philosopher-king, though he relieved famine and tempted learned foreigners to berlin, would not revert to the ill-timed pageantry of his grandfather. nor—though he freed the press and restricted to a few cases the use of torture—would he anticipate the glory of some hohenzollern who is still unborn by fostering a spirit of individual liberty among his people. impatient of coronation, which he classed among the “useless and frivolous ceremonies which ignorance and superstition have established,” he received the homage of his subjects by proxy everywhere save in ost-preussen, brandenburg, and cleve. at k?nigsberg he paid homage to the memory of liberties which his ancestors had crushed, and which he had no intention of animating anew. the ceremony at berlin was made memorable by one of his rare displays of feeling. when he appeared on the balcony of the castle and looked down upon the surging crowd in the square below, he was so affected that he remained standing many minutes, silent and buried in thought. then, recovering himself, he bowed to the multitude, and rode off to attend a military review.
europe 1740
g. p. putnam’s sons. london, & new york.
it is, however, on his journey to wesel, his rhenish capital, that he reveals most clearly how the crown prince has changed into the king. wilhelmina had found him of late so careless, even so uncivil, a correspondent81 that the news of his coming to baireuth prostrated her with joy. he seemed to her so altered in countenance and developed in form that, just as after his imprisonment at cüstrin, she hardly recognised him. but a less welcome change was only too perceptible. wilhelmina found her brother’s caresses forced, his conversation trivial, their sister, the margravine of ansbach, more favoured than herself. the remainder of the journey proved that frederick at least remained true to the french. at frankfort he disguised himself for a flying visit to strasburg. there his little party put up at an inn, sent the landlord to invite officers to their table, and visited the theatre. the mask was penetrated by a runaway prussian whose tall brother had been kidnapped for the army and who recognised the son of his former king. the greatest pleasure of all came last. at wesel, besides dealing with the affair of herstal, which will be described in the next chapter, frederick for the first time paid homage in person to voltaire.
at the end of october wilhelmina visited berlin, but her brother welcomed her coldly. she found abundant proofs that he had become inscrutable. she describes in her memoirs how the queen mother had shut herself up, equally astonished and mortified at her complete exclusion from affairs of state. “some complained of the little care he had to reward those who had been attached to him as prince royal; others, of his avarice, which they said surpassed that of the late king; others of his passions; others again of his suspicions, of his mistrust,82 of his pride, and of his dissimulation.” this criticism from an unwonted quarter may possibly be explained away. it has been suggested that the king’s treatment of his sister at baireuth was due to the same policy of repelling every possible claimant to influence his policy, which may be held to excuse the snubs inflicted upon dessau and schulenburg and the dignified exile of frederick’s mother and wife. his conduct at rheinsberg, whither wilhelmina followed him, does not admit of the same excuse.
“the little spare time that he had,” she complains, “was spent in the company of wits or men of letters. such were voltaire, maupertuis, algarotti, and jordan. i saw the king but seldom. i had no ground for being satisfied with our interviews. the greater part of them was spent either in embarrassed words of politeness or in outrageous witticisms on the bad state of the margrave’s finances; indeed he often ridiculed him and the princes of the empire, which i felt very much.”
