Part 28

Frederick the Great, born on January 24, 1712, at Berlin, succeeded to the throne of Prussia in 1740, and died on August 17, 1786, at Potsdam, being the third king of Prussia, the regal title having been acquired by his grandfather, whose predecessors had borne the title of Elector of Brandenburg. Building on the foundations laid by his great-grandfather and his father, he raised his comparatively small and poor kingdom to the position of a first-class military power, and won for himself rank with the greatest of all generals, often matching his troops victoriously against forces of twice and even thrice their number. In Thomas Carlyle he found an enthusiastic biographer, somewhat prone, however, to find for actions of questionable public morality a justification in "immutable laws" and "veracities," which to other eyes is a little akin to Wordsworth's apology for Rob Roy. But whether we accept Carlyle's estimate of him or no, the amazing skill, tenacity, and success with which he stood at bay virtually against all Europe, while Great Britain was fighting as his ally her own duel in France in the Seven Years' War, constitutes an unparallelled achievement. "Frederick the Great" was begun about 1848, the concluding volumes appearing in 1865. (Carlyle, see LIVES AND LETTERS.)

I.--Forebears and Childhood

About the year 1780 there used to be seen sauntering on the terrace of Sans-Souci a highly interesting, lean, little old man of alert though slightly stooping figure, whose name among strangers was King Friedrich II., or Frederick the Great of Prussia, and at home among the common people was Vater Fritz--Father Fred. A king every inch of him, though without the trappings of a king; in a Spartan simplicity of vesture. In 1786 his speakings and his workings came to finis in this world of time. Editors vaguely account this man the creator of the Prussian monarchy, which has since grown so large in the world.

He was born in the palace of Berlin, about noon, on January 24, 1712; a small infant, but of great promise and possibility. Friedrich Wilhelm, Crown Prince of Prussia, father of this little infant, did himself make some noise in the world as second king of Prussia.

The founder of the line was Conrad of Hohenzollern, who came to seek his fortune under Barbarossa, greatest of all the kaisers. Friedrich I. of that line was created Elector of Brandenburg in 1415; the eleventh in succession was Friedrich Wilhelm, the "Great Elector," who in 1640 found Brandenburg annihilated, and left it in 1688 sound and flourishing, a great country, or already on the way towards greatness; a most rapid, clear-eyed, active man. His son got himself made King of Prussia, and was Friedrich I., who was still reigning when his grandson, Frederick the Great, was born. Not two years later Friedrich Wilhelm is king.

Of that strange king and his strange court there is no light to be had except from the book written by Frederick's little sister, Wilhelmina, when she grew to size and knowledge of good and evil--a flickery wax taper held over Frederick's childhood. In the breeding of him there are two elements noticeable, widely diverse--the French and the German. Of his infantine history the course was in general smooth. The boy, it was said, was of extraordinary vivacity; only he takes less to soldiering than the paternal heart could wish. The French element is in his governesses--good Edict-of-Nantes ladies.

For the boy's teachers, Friedrich Wilhelm has rules for guidance strict enough. He is to be taught useful knowledge--history of the last hundred and fifty years, arithmetic, fortification; but nothing useless of Latin and the like. Spartan training, too, which shall make a soldier of him. Whereas young Fritz has vivacities, a taste for music, finery, and excursions into forbidden realms distasteful and incomprehensible to Friedrich Wilhelm. We perceive the first small cracks of incurable division in the royal household, traceable from Fritz's sixth or seventh year; a divulsion splitting ever wider, new offences super-adding themselves. This Fritz ought to fashion himself according to his father's pattern, and he does not. These things make life all bitter for son and for father, necessitating the proud son to hypocrisies very foreign to him had there been other resource.

The boy in due time we find (at fifteen) attached to the amazing regiment of giants, drilling at Potsdam; on very ill terms with his father, however, who sees in him mainly wilful disobedience and frivolity. Once, when Prussia and Hanover seem on the verge of war over an utterly trivial matter, our crown prince acquires momentary favour. The Potsdam Guards are ordered to the front, and the prince handles them with great credit. But the favour is transitory, seeing that he is caught reading French books, and arrayed in a fashion not at all pleasing to the Spartan parent.

II.--The Crown Prince Leaves Kingship

The life is indeed so intolerable that Fritz is with difficulty dissuaded from running away. The time comes when he will not be dissuaded, resolves that he will endure no longer. There were only three definite accomplices in the wild scheme, which had a very tragical ending. Of the three, Lieutenant Keith, scenting discovery, slipped over the border and so to England; his brother, Page Keith, feeling discovery certain, made confession, after vigilance had actually stopped the prince when he was dressed for the flight. There was terrible wrath of the father over the would-be "deserter and traitor," and not less over the other accomplice, Lieutenant Katte, who had dallied too long. The crown prince himself was imprisoned; court-martial held on the offenders; a too-lenient sentence was overruled by the king, and Katte was executed. The king was near frenzied, but beyond doubt thought honestly that he was doing no more than justice demanded.

As for the crown prince himself, deserting colonel of a regiment, the court-martial, with two dissentients, condemned him to death; sentence which the Junius Brutus of a king would have duly carried out. But remonstrance is universal, and an autograph letter from the kaiser seemingly decisive. Frederick was, as it were, retired to a house of his own and a court of his own--court very strictly regulated--at Cüstrin; not yet a soldier of the Prussian army, but hoping only to become so again; while he studied the domain sciences, more particularly the rigidly economical principles of state finance as practised by his father. The tragedy has taught him a lesson, and he has more to learn. That period is finally ended when he is restored to the army in 1732.

Reconciliation, complete submission, and obedience, a prince with due appreciation of facts has now made up his mind to; very soon shaped into acceptance of paternal demand that he shall wed Elizabeth of Brunswick-Bevern, insipid niece of the kaiser. In private correspondence he expresses himself none too submissively, but offers no open opposition to the king's wishes.

The charmer of Brunswick turned out not so bad as might have been expected; not ill-looking; of an honest, guileless heart, if little articulate intellect; considerable inarticulate sense; after marriage, which took place in June 1733, shaped herself successfully to the prince's taste, and grew yearly gracefuller and better-looking. But the affair, before it came off, gave rise to a certain visit of Friedrich Wilhelm to the kaiser, of which in the long run the outcome was that complete distrust of the kaiser displaced the king's heretofore determined loyalty to him.

Meanwhile an event has fallen out at Warsaw. Augustus, the physically strong, is no more; transcendent king of edacious flunkies, father of 354 children, but not without fine qualities; and Poland has to find a new king. His death kindled foolish Europe generally into fighting, and gave our crown prince his first actual sight and experience of the facts of war. Stanislaus is overwhelmingly the favourite candidate, supported, too, by France. The other candidate, August of Saxony, secures the kaiser's favour by promise of support to his Pragmatic Sanction; and the appearance of Russian troops secures "freedom of election" and choice of August by the electors who are not absent. August is crowned, and Poland in a flame. Friedrich Wilhelm cares not for Polish elections, but, as by treaty bound, provides 10,000 men to support the kaiser on the Rhine, while he gives asylum to the fugitive Stanislaus. Crown prince, now twenty-two, is with the force; sees something of warfare, but nothing big.

War being finished, Frederick occupied a mansion at Reinsberg with his princess, and things went well, if economically, with much correspondence with the other original mind of those days, Voltaire. But big events are coming now. Mr. Jenkins's ear re-emerges from cotton-wool after seven years, and Walpole has to declare war with Spain in 1739. Moreover, Friedrich Wilhelm is exceedingly ill. In May 1740 comes a message--Frederick must come to Potsdam quickly if he is to see his father again. The son comes. "Am not I happy to have such a son to leave behind me?" says the dying king. On May 31 he dies. No baresark of them, nor Odin's self, was a bit of truer stuff.

III.--The Silesian Wars

Shall we, then, have the philosopher-king, as Europe dimly seems to half expect? He begins, indeed, with opening corn magazines, abolishing legal torture; will have freedom of conscience and the Press; encourage philosophers and men of letters. In those days he had his first meeting with Voltaire, recorded for us by the Frenchman twenty years later; for his own reasons, vitriolically and with inaccuracies, the record amounting to not much. Frederick was suffering from a quartan fever. Of which ague he was cured by the news that Kaiser Carl died on October 20, and Maria Theresa was proclaimed sovereign of the Hapsburg inheritance, according to the Pragmatic Sanction.

Whereupon, without delay, Frederick forms a resolution, which had sprung and got to sudden fixity in the head of the young king himself, and met with little save opposition from all others--to make good his rights in Silesia. A most momentous resolution; not the peaceable magnanimities, but the warlike, are the thing appointed for Frederick henceforth.

In mid-December the troops entered Silesia; except in the hills, where Catholics predominate, with marked approbation of the population, we find. Of warlike preparation to meet the Prussians is practically none, and in seven weeks Silesia is held, save three fortresses easy to manage in spring. Will the hold be maintained?

Meanwhile, France will have something to say, moved by a figure not much remembered, yet notable, Marshal Belleisle; perhaps, after Frederick and Voltaire, the most notable of that time. A man of large schemes, altogether accordant with French interests, but not, unfortunately, with facts and law of gravitation. For whom the first thing needful is that Grand Duke Franz, husband of Maria Theresa, shall not be elected kaiser; who shall be is another matter--why not Karl Albert of Bavaria as well as another?

After brief absence, Frederick is soon back in Silesia, to pay attention to blockaded Glogau and Brieg and Neisse; harassed, however, by Austrian Pandours out of Glatz, a troublesome kind of cavalry. The siege of Neisse is to open on April 4, when we find Austrian Neipperg with his army approaching; by good fortune a dilatory Neipperg; of which comes the battle of Mollwitz.

In which fight victory finally rested with Prussians and Schwerin, who held the field, Austrians retiring, but not much pursued; demonstration that a new military power is on the scene (April 10). A victory, though, of old Friedrich Wilhelm, and his training and discipline, having in it as yet nothing of young Frederick's own.

A battle, however, which in effect set going the conflagration unintelligible to Englishmen, known as War of the Austrian Accession. In which we observe a clear ground for Anglo-Spanish War, and Austro-Prussian War; but what were the rest doing? France is the author of it, as an Anti-Pragmatic war; George II. and Hanover are dragged into it as a Pragmatic war; but the intervention of France at all was barefacedly unjust and gratuitous. To begin with, however, Belleisle's scheming brings about election to kaisership of Karl Albert of Bavaria, principal Anti-Pragmatic claimant to the Austrian heritage.

Brieg was taken not long after Mollwitz, and now many diplomatists come to Frederick's camp at Strehlen. In effect, will he choose English or French alliance? Will England get him what will satisfy him from Austria? If not, French alliance and war with Austria--which problem issues in treaty with France--mostly contingent. Diplomatising continues, no one intending to be inconveniently loyal to engagements; so that four months after French treaty comes another engagement or arrangement of Klein Schnelendorf--Frederick to keep most of Silesia, but a plausible show of hostilities--nothing more--to be maintained for the present. In consequence of which Frederick solemnly captures Neisse.

The arrangement, however, comes to grief, enough of it being divulged from Vienna to explode it. Out of which comes the Moravian expedition; by inertness of allies turned into a mere Moravian foray, "the French acting like fools, and the Saxons like traitors," growls Frederick.

Raid being over, Prince Karl, brother of Grand Duke Franz, comes down with his army, and follows the battle of Chotusitz, also called of Czaslau. A hard-fought battle, ending in defeat of the Austrians; not in itself decisive, but the eyes of Europe very confirmatory of the view that the Austrians cannot beat the Prussians. From a wounded general, too, Frederick learns that the French have been making overtures for peace on their own account, Prussia to be left to Austria if she likes, of which is documentary proof.

No need, then, for Frederick to be scrupulous about making his own terms. His Britannic Majesty is urgent that Maria Theresa should agree with Frederick. Out of which comes Treaty of Breslau, ceding Silesia to Prussia; and exceeding disgust of Belleisle, ending the first Silesian War.

With which Frederick would have liked to see the European war ended altogether; but it went on, Austria, too, prospering. He tries vainly to effect combinations to enforce peace. George of England, having at last fairly got himself into the war, and through the battle of Dettingen, valorously enough; operations emerging in a Treaty of Worms (September 1743), mainly between England and Austria, which does not guarantee the Breslau Treaty. An expressive silence! "What was good to give is good to take." Is Frederick, then, not secure of Silesia? If he must guard his own, he can no longer stand aside. So the Worms Treaty begets an opposition treaty, chief parties Prussia, France, and Kaiser Karl Albert of Bavaria, signed at Frankfurt-on-Maine, May 1744.