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THE LIFE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT

BY

NORWOOD YOUNG

BY

NORWOOD YOUNG

 

THE RISE OF THE HOHENZOLLERNS

FREDERICK WILLIAM I.

FATHER AND SON

MARRIAGE FOR FREEDOM

THE RHEINSBERG PHILOSOPHER

BORN TO BE A KING .

THE FIRST SILESIAN WAR

1. The Irruption into Silesia

2. Frederick’s First Battle

3. The Klein-Schnellendorf Trick

4. The Peace of Breslau

VIII.THE SECOND SILESIAN WAR .

1. The Bohemian Failure .

2. The Victories of Hohenfriedberg AND Soor

3. The Peace of Dresden .

IX. SANS SOUCI AND VOLTAIRE

X. THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR .

1. The Maker OF THE WAR

2. The Fate of Saxony

3. Defeat at Kolin

4. Victories at Rossbach and Leuthen

5. Repulse at Zorndorf and Defeat at Hochkirch

6.Defeat at Kunersdorf

7.Victories at LiEgnitz and Torgau

8.Death of the Czarina Elizabeth

9.The Peace of Hubertsburg

10. The Protestant Hero

XI. RECUPERATION .

XII. ENLIGHTENED DESPOTISM

XIII. THIS PARTITION OF POLAND

XIV. HABSBURG AND HOHENZOLLERN

XV. CONCLUSION

 

CHAPTER I

THE RISE OF THE HOHENZOLLERNS

 

The castle of Hohenzollern stands above the town of Zollern, in the Swabian Alps, between the Black Forest and the Lake of Constance. The name suggests that the Counts of Hohenzollern were descended from the collector of customs at Zollern, the place where duties were paid. However that may be, they prospered. Members of the family became Burgraves of Nuremberg, of Anspach, and of Culmbach. They made profitable marriages and they lent out money. Frederick II, Burgrave of Nuremberg, made an advance, in the year 1411, to the Margrave and Elector Sigismund of Brandenburg, and gave him other valuable assistance in obtaining election as Emperor. In return, Emperor Sigismund sent him to administer his Margravate of Brandenburg.

Brandenburg was an inhospitable district of sand and marsh on the Elbe, inhabited by a people of Slavonic origin, the Wends. A large part of its original population had journeyed south at the time of the great Völkerwanderung, migration of peoples, in the fourth century and onwards. As they marched towards Rome their places had been taken by others from north and east— Wends, Huns, Czechs, Letts, and others. These tribes remained in a condition of barbarism. The influence of Rome was never strong in the districts west of the Elbe ; to the east of that river, Roman conquest and civilisation never penetrated at all.

When the Hohenzollern, Frederick II of Nuremberg, arrived in 1412, he found the Margravate in the hands of a number of turbulent nobles who disputed his authority. He attacked their fortresses with cannon, among them a large piece nick-named Die faule Grete, lazy Greta: the name indicated the slowness of the loading owing to the unusual size of the gun. With this superior machinery Frederick battered down the walls, captured the fortresses, and overcame the opposition of the nobility. Having thus established his position, he obtained from the Emperor investiture as Margrave and Elector of Brandenburg, and in return cancelled the Emperor’s debt. The Princes who at that time elected each Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire were seven in number: Mainz, Trier, Cologne, Saxony, Pfalz (Palatinate), Bohemia, and Brandenburg. With Kürfurst Friedrich I begins the Hohenzollern dynasty of Brandenburg.

His son, Albert Achilles, made a Disposition in 1473, by which the Mark or March of Brandenburg was to devolve upon the eldest son in each generation, and under no circumstances was to be divided. This disposition has been one of the chief causes of the rise of the Hohenzollern dynasty. While other German ruling families were con­stantly at feud among themselves, with divided powers, the head of the Hohenzollern was always a powerful Prince. The Dispositio Achillea increased the Hohenzollern supre­macy in the Mark and gave an established influence abroad. The danger of a divided inheritance was shown on the death of the Elector John George, in 1598. He had one son by his first wife, and other sons by his second and third wives. The third wife induced him to make a will giving to her eldest son a portion of the Mark. But Joachim Frederick, the eldest son by the first wife, in­voked the Dispositio Achillea, and, with the support of the Emperor, succeeded in obtaining from the Landtag an annulment of his father’s will, and the inheritance of the whole of the Mark of Brandenburg. The principle of primogeniture in Brandenburg was reaffirmed at the same time by the compact known as the Gera Bund.

The Reformation further strengthened the position of the Elector. The people of Brandenburg followed Luther. Elector Joachim II, perceiving that the downfall of the Pope must be to the advantage of the secular power, and as Frederick the Great remarked, that a Protestant King had more independence than a Catholic, also accepted the reformed religion. He dissolved the monas­teries and confiscated their property, which was converted into Electoral domains. The Elector became the chief landowner with absolute ownership of a considerable part of the State. The Church never had the power in these non-Roman lands of the north that it obtained nearer the fountainhead. The Margraves were, from the begin­ning, but little under ecclesiastical influence, and the Reformation freed them still further.

At the close of the Crusades, the Knights of the Teutonic Order of Crusaders migrated to the Polish Province of East Prussia on the Baltic; they subdued the savage inhabitants and converted them to Christianity. Their sway gradually extended over the Baltic lands of Prussia east and west. But with prosperity came decay. In 1466 a revolt, supported by Poland, took from the Teutonic Knights the Province of West Prussia, and forced them to do homage to Poland for East Prussia. In 1512 the Knights elected as their Grandmaster, Albert, a Hohenzollern of the younger line. Albert put an end to the religious nature of the order. He became Duke of East Prussia, a secular prince of a hereditary duchy. He died in 1568, and was succeeded by his son Albert Frederick; when he died without issue in 1618, the reigning Elector of Brandenburg, John Sigismund, succeeded in obtaining the succession. The family had now advanced from Counts of Hohenzollern to Burgraves of Nuremberg, Margraves and Electors of Brandenburg, and Dukes of East Prussia.

John Sigismund adopted for his family the Calvinist form of Protestantism. His Brandenburg subjects re­mained Lutheran. This difference of belief between Prince and people still further emancipated the Elector from Church influence, and it gave the enormous privilege of religious toleration to Brandenburg at a time when persecution in matters of faith was tearing the world asunder.

His son, the Elector George William, endeavoured, while Germany was on fire from end to end during the Thirty Years’ War, to maintain a policy of neutrality in the very heart of the furnace. Brandenburg was swept by the armed forces of Catholics and Protestants in turn, and suffered terrible devastation. The atrocities committed by Germans in the Thirty Years’ War have never been equalled in the history of civilised nations. When the war ended at last in 1648, the population of Brandenburg had been reduced by more than one-half. George William died in 1640, and was succeeded by the first Hohenzollern of note, Frederick William, the Great Elector.

By the Treaty of Westphalia, 1648, Catholics and Pro­testants were granted equality before the law. In practice, some princes continued to discriminate against the heretics among their subjects. The Brandenburg Elector, Frederick William, gave a real religious freedom. Himself a Calvinist in a Lutheran population, religious toleration was a necessity for him as much as for his people.

The Peace of Westphalia reduced the power of the Emperor to little more than a name. A number of petty German princes obtained practical independence of their suzerain, in foreign as well as in domestic affairs. They were given the liberty to make their own treaties of alliance, and could no longer be called upon to fight for the Emperor without the Empire’s express consent.

Freed from imperial control, Frederick William determined to centralise the administration of his disjointed possessions in his own person. He spoke of them as ‘the members of one head,’ a conception which the inhabitants were slow to accept. The spirit of particularism has always been prevalent among the Germans. It is the ultimate outcome of an uncontrolled personal vanity and jealousy. From the individual it affects the aggregate unit of village or town, of district or principality, of kingdom or empire. It was the task of the Hohenzollerns to suppress local independence by imposing the unifying influence of their own supremacy. Frederick William was the first to work systematically towards the establishment of the Elector’s domination. He asserted, hypocritically, that he was labouring not for his own private advantage, but for the benefit of his people, a pretence which may cover the most tyrannical designs.

The struggle with the local parliaments was, in each case, severe, but all the Landtags were in the end overcome by fraud or by violence. In the Mark the Elector obtained from the Landtag, after repeated prorogation, the money votes that he demanded. They were given upon certain conditions to which the Elector gave his express consent, but which he did not hesitate to repudiate at the first opportunity. He demanded increased supplies, and when they were refused he levied requisitions by force, declaring that he considered himself justified in doing so for the defence of the country, even contrary to the will of the Landtag. No effective opposition was given to this despotic act.

In East Prussia the Elector’s Calvinism was much disliked and the Province lay far distant, a large district of Poland separating it from Brandenburg. The Hohenzollern was an alien, whose authority was recent and who was a vassal of Poland. Resistance here threatened to become revolution. Frederick William seized one of the Prussian leaders named Roth, and imprisoned him without trial. Roth remained incarcerated for sixteen years, until his death. Kalkstein, a Prussian Junker of the landed aristocracy, was accused of treason, tried by legal process and condemned to imprisonment for life, but the sentence was commuted by the Elector to a heavy fine, and to detention on his property until the money was paid. Without complying with the condition as to payment of the fine, Kalkstein escaped to Warsaw. The Brandenburg representative in Poland, named Brandt, demanded extradition, but the request was refused. Frederick William instructed Brandt to seize Kalkstein in Polish territory. The order was carried out. Kalkstein was captured and taken to East Prussia. Poland protested against the breach of territorial rights. The Elector disavowed the act of his representative and went through the form of punishing him, but he kept Kalkstein in his hands. He was tortured, tried by a special commission, contrary to the law, condemned to death and executed. Thus was the spirit of liberty quenched in East Prussia, as in Brandenburg, by fraud, illegality and violence.

The tyranny of the Elector was exercised through a Secret Council of State, the members nominated by himself to carry out his orders. Through that body he centralised the administration over all his dominions in his own person at Berlin.

A tyrant requires an army under his unfettered control. The local militias were semi-independent. Frederick William needed a force answering to himself alone, over which the provincial diets could exert no influence. He sent out agents to obtain recruits at a specified fee per head. The impressment was conducted, often by violence and fraud, among the least respectable members of the population. The subjects of neighbouring princes formed a considerable proportion of the whole. There was no reciprocity, foreign recruiters being excluded from the Elector’s dominions, and it was made a penal offence for his people to enlist under a foreign flag. By these methods he obtained an army which in the later years of his reign numbered twenty-five thousand to thirty thou­sand men, an enormous force, in proportion to population, to be maintained in time of peace. The Elector’s standing army, the first of its kind in Europe, enabled him to exercise a tyranny at home, and to obtain abroad an influence far in excess of that to which he would otherwise have been entitled.

He used the army to draw from his people the money required for its maintenance. He levied requisitions by force. He taxed his subjects unmercifully, extracting from them, in their impoverished condition, a revenue far greater in proportion to population, as well as to wealth, than other princes were able or willing to extort. He minted coins which were not worth their nominal value, and subsequently compelled his subjects to sell, them back to him at their real worth, a proceeding which amounted to confiscation by means of fraud. All this, he protested, was done, not for his own advantage, but solely from concern for the welfare of his people. Thereby he earned the admiration and imitation of his greatest successors, King Frederick William I and King Frederick the Great.

The foreign policy of Frederick William was directed to two main objects, the acquisition of Western Pomerania from Sweden, and the abolition of the suzerainty of Poland over East Prussia. When Charles Gustavus, King of Sweden, attacked Poland in 1655, the opportunity came to offer the Brandenburg Elector’s assistance first to one side and then to the other, to sell it to the highest bidder. Charles Gustavus inflicted a defeat upon the Poles and threatened the Elector’s territory of East Prussia. Frederick William made terms with the victor. By the Treaty of Konigsberg, 17th January 1656, he agreed to accept the King of Sweden as his overlord for East Prussia; he was promised in return a small addition to the Duchy. In June he concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with Sweden against Poland. He joined his forces with those of Charles Gustavus, and the allies inflicted upon the Poles a severe defeat at the battle of Warsaw, 28th-30th July 1656. On the 20th November 1656 Frederick William made another treaty of alliance with Sweden, by which he obtained Swedish recognition of his unfettered sovereignty in East Prussia. This engagement did not prevent him from negotiating for imperial support, in return for a promise that he would not attack Poland, nor give his ally, Sweden, any real assistance. At this point Denmark intervened on behalf of the Poles, and the King of Sweden retired to attack the Danes. The Hohenzollern took advantage of the absence of the Swedes, his allies, to come to terms with Poland. He entered into a treaty of alliance with Poland, receiv­ing in return the abandonment of Polish suzerainty over East Prussia. The ally of Sweden against Poland and of Poland against Sweden, his task now was to postpone as long as possible a rupture with Charles Gustavus. He sent the King a falsified copy of the new treaty, with letters of excuse and explanation, and proposed a renewal of the old alliance; but Charles Gustavus declined even to receive the perfidious Elector’s emissaries. The posi­tion had become perilous for Brandenburg.

The Imperial election following the death of the Emperor Ferdinand, enabled the Elector to sell his vote to Leopold, in return for a promise of assistance on his becoming Emperor. Supported then by Imperial, Polish and Danish troops, Frederick William turned against his former ally, Sweden, and succeeded in conquering the greater part of Swedish Pomerania. But France intervened on behalf of Sweden and forced upon the victorious allies the Peace of Oliva, 3rd May 1660. The Elector was forced to give back Swedish Pomerania, but he obtained a recognition of the freedom of East Prussia from vassalage to Poland.

Twelve years of peace followed. In 1672 France attacked the United Provinces. On the 6th May Frederick William entered into an alliance with Holland, on the 23rd June with Austria. But treaties were with the Elector mere tricks to deceive. A treaty with France followed, on the 21st June 1673. The Elector promised to give no assistance to the enemies of France, that is, to Austria and Holland, his allies by treaty. The treaty with France was followed, in December, by a convention with Sweden. The Elector had now made treaties with Holland and Austria and with their antagonists, Sweden and France; he had engagements of alliance with each one of the four belligerents. By the latest treaties he was making friends with his natural enemy on the north and assisting France to invade Germany. Other German princes could not regard with the Hohenzollern’s indiffer­ence the advance of French troops into their country. The Empire declared war upon France. Frederick William turned again. He rejoined his original allies Holland and Austria in a Coalition which included also Spain and the Empire.

On the 18th June 1675, he defeated the Swedes at Fehrbellin. This was the first Brandenburg victory, single handed, against an enemy of reputation. From that date Frederick William was given, by his subjects, the title of the Great Elector. He followed up his success by forcing Stettin to capitulate in December 1677, and Stralsund in October 1678. Swedish Pomerania was captured. But the jealousies of rival German princes, especially of the Electors of Saxony and Bavaria and the Duke of Hanover, the hostility of Poland and France, the unfriendly attitude of Holland and Austria, all aroused as much by his treachery as by his military success, left the Great Elector without a friend. The provision in the treaty of alliance, made at his own suggestion, by which separate treaties were expressly permitted, was used against him. Holland, Spain and Austria made separate treaties of peace with France. The Great Elector had for some time been endeavouring to obtain a separate treaty for himself with France ; he had even promised his vote at the next Imperial election to the French candidate. In spite of these negotiations and of all his past treacheries, he raised accusations of perfidy against his allies, who had succeeded in doing what he had attempted in vain. Louis xiv. declined to dishonour his alliance with Sweden ; he insisted that the Elector of Brandenburg should return Swedish Pomerania to Sweden. Surrounded by jealous rivals, or by princes whom he had cheated in the past, the Great Elector was obliged to comply. By the Treaty of St. Germain, 29th June 1691, he restored his conquests to the hated Swedes.

He made approaches to the Power that had dealt him this heavy blow. A secret treaty of alliance with France was concluded on the 25th October 1679, and it was followed by other treaties of the same nature. The subservience to France lasted nominally for six years. Relations had already become less cordial when Louis XIV, in an evil hour for France, was persuaded to return to the policy of religious persecution, by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 17th October 1685. Frederick William replied by the Edict of Potsdam, 8th November 1685, declaring his readiness to receive Huguenot- refugees and to give them assistant on arrival six years.. Large numbers took advantage of the invitation, much to the advantage of Berlin and Brandenburg.

In spite of his alliance with France, the Great Elector, on the 1st April 1686, entered into a definite alliance with Austria. The Elector was to receive an annual subsidy and to obtain the cancellation of debts. He abandoned certain claims he had made in Silesia, and received as compensation the small territory of Schwiebus, on the Polish border. The treaty states that the Elector “re­nounces in perpetuity, for himself, his heirs and successors, in genere and in specie, all pretensions that have been or may be made to the Duchies of Jägerndorf, Liegnitz, Brieg and Wohlau.” Unknown to him, his eldest son, Frederick, had already, on the 10th March, promised to return Schwiebus, on his succession to the Electorate.

After the death of his first wife, mother of the Electoral Prince Frederick, the Great Elector married a lady by whom he had other sons. Under her influence he made dispositions by will in their behalf against the interests of the Electoral Prince, and contrary to the law of primo­geniture established for the family by the Dispositio Achillea and the Gera Bund. The Emperor Leopold was named executor of the Great Elector’s will. These circum­stances explain, if they cannot excuse, the Electoral Prince Frederick’s compact with the Emperor by which, unknown to his father, he promised to give back Schwiebus in return for immediate monetary assistance and a promise of the Emperor’s good offices in cancelling the Great Elector’s dispositions in favour of his sons by his second wife.

The Silesian claims which the Great Elector bartered for the small territory of Schwiebus, were evidently re­garded by him as of very small value. They were, in fact, absurd and derisory. They concerned the Duchies of Jägerndorf, Liegnitz, Brieg and Wohlau, in Silesia. The Duke of Jägerndorf, who died in 1603 without children, left the Duchy by will to a distant Hohenzollern kinsman, the Elector Joachim Frederick of Brandenburg. The Emperor Rudolf refused to acknowledge the succession of the Brandenburg prince ; but the Prince obtained possession, and on his death in 1608 his second son, John George, inherited the Duchy under his father’s will. John George joined the Elector Palatine in war against the Emperor. Defeated at the battle of the White Mountain, he was proscribed by the Empire, and the Duchy fell into the Empire according to law. That, in spite of all this, the Hohenzollerns should have asserted a claim to Jägerndorf is enough to throw a preliminary suspicion against them in all similar matters.

The claim on the Duchies of Liegnitz-Brieg-Wohlau was of the same worthless nature. It was based upon an Erbverbrüderung, or compact of inheritance, made in 1537 between Duke Frederick of Liegnitz and Joachim II, Elector of Brandenburg. By this agreement, if the male Brandenburg line failed the Bohemian properties of the Hohenzollerns would go to Liegnitz, and if the Liegnitz line failed the Silesian Duchies would go to Brandenburg. The Silesian Prince was a Protestant, and it was to pre­serve his Duchies under a Protestant ruler that he made the agreement. The Erbverbrüderung was an attempt to evade the law of the Empire, by which, in case of a failure of male heirs, the Liegnitz territory would lapse to the overlord. The Emperor Charles V entered a formal protest. His successor, Ferdinand I, in 1546, cancelled the compact and obtained the consent of the Liegnitz Duke to the cancellation, but not of the Brandenburg Elector. In 1675 there was a failure of heirs in the Liegnitz family, and the Duchies lapsed, by law, to the Emperor and King of Bohemia, as overlord.

The Great Elector made it a principle throughout his life to formulate demands of the utmost extravagance, in the hope that at least something might be gained. At the Congress of Westphalia he astonished and shocked the plenipotentiaries by the outrageous nature of his claims. The Silesian pretensions were advanced on the same plan, and they obtained for Brandenburg the small property of Schwiebus, little enough, but more than they were worth, which was nothing.

A knowledge of the outlines of the career of the Great Elector is essential for a proper understanding of the life of Frederick the Great and of the growth of Prussia. The Great Elector laid the foundations. He established the despotism of the Hohenzollerns over their subjects, in small affairs and in great, pretending that it was all for their own good, and that it entailed great labour and self-sacrifice upon the Prince; he inaugurated a centralised bureaucracy for his scattered dominions; he created the first standing army of modern times; in time of war his army was far the largest in Europe, in proportion to population; he gained a victory over the Swedes, at that time the most renowned fighters in Europe; to pay for the army he taxed his subjects heavily and issued a debased coinage, at their expense; he made religious toleration a reality in his dominions; he made it a principle to advance preposterous claims at every oppor­tunity in the expectation that some gain might result; he exhibited a perfidy and treachery to friends and foes, a contempt for treaty engagements, a disregard of all honour, which have seldom been equalled. His great grandson, Frederick the Great, studied his career and followed his example, especially in the shameless use of hypocrisy and deceit. The two Hohenzollern princes, upon whom the appellation of Great has been conferred by their admiring subjects, take rank among the criminal princes of history, in the matter of dishonour.

 

CHAPTER II

FREDERICK WILLIAM I

 

On the death of the Great Elector, 9th May 1688, the Emperor Leopold, carrying out his promise, cancelled the testamentary dispositions in favour of the sons by the second marriage, and thus secured for the Electoral Prince Frederick the inheritance of the whole of his father’s territories. The service thus rendered to the house of Hohenzollern was of the utmost value, for if their lands had become divided, the authority and power of the head of the house would have been vitally diminished.

In accordance with his promise as Electoral Prince, Frederick had now to restore Schwiebus. He showed no inclination to carry out his part of the bargain. He pro­posed to keep what the Emperor had given him and withhold what he had promised in return. For six years he contrived to hold on to Schwiebus, but Imperial pres­sure at last compelled him to fulfil his bargain. He made a great virtue of this elementary duty. “I must and will keep my word,” he said. “I leave it to my successors to obtain justice with regard to Silesia.” He admitted that he was bound by treaty to give up Schwiebus (for value received), and yet maintained that his doing so revived claims which had never had any legal force, and had been expressly abandoned by his father by a formal treaty.

The Elector Frederick married Sophia Charlotte, sister of George, Elector of Hanover, afterwards George I of England. The prestige acquired by the Great Elector, and the brilliance of the Elector Frederick’s wife and her family, inspired the desire for an enhanced dignity. Frederick had seen a Dutchman become King of England, Hanover raised to an Electorate that its Prince might become King of England, and the Elector of Saxony chosen King of Poland, as Augustus II. He longed for a similar elevation, and by plying the Emperor Leopold with persistent petitions, at last obtained a promise of the much coveted honour. He was to be a king, like his Hanoverian and Saxon neighbours, of a province outside the German Empire. The remote, barren, and barbarous domain of East Prussia was to be his kingdom. Con­temptible compared with either England or Poland, at least it gave him a nominal equality to his neighbours, and a precedence over other German princes.

Prince Eugène opposed the concession. He told the Emperor that he was making a mistake in thus stimu­lating the Brandenburg ambitions. Leopold I pointed to the insignificance of the new kingdom, and the almost contemptible title of ‘König in Preussen,’ King in Prussia. But that was precisely an incentive to struggle for a further Hohenzollern promotion. As Frederick the Great said, years afterwards, the Crown was the seed of ambition for the House. In return for the gift the Emperor obtained a treaty, 16th November 1700, renewing the Treaty of 1686, by which the Great Elector had renounced all claims to the Silesian Duchies; and Frederick engaged also to furnish the Empire with an army of eight thousand men in certain contingencies, and to support the Habsburg candidate whenever an Emperor was about to be elected.

Frederick made a triumphal progress from Berlin to East Prussia, a coronation procession all the way. On the 18th January 1701, he crowned himself, with all possible gorgeous ceremony, at Königsberg. He was a King in Prussia, not in Brandenburg.

The English connection continued by the marriage, on the 28th November 1706, of the new king’s son, Frederick William, now a Crown Prince, to the daughter of George I, Sophia Dorothea, his first cousin.

Two sons were born to the Crown Prince, but neither of them lived. The third child, born on the 3rd July 1709, a girl, survived, and was named Frederica Sophia Wil­helmina. On the 24th January 1712, a third son was born, and this boy was healthy and inspired the greatest hopes. Being born in the Coronation month of January, his grandfather insisted that the christening should take place in the same month, and that the child should be given his own name, Frederick, which had brought such good fortune to the family. This boy was destined to make the name famous.

On the death of Frederick I in 1718, his son, Frederick William I, gave him a magnificent funeral; that pious duty fulfilled, he set about the task of reducing expendi­ture in every direction. The gorgeous Frederick left behind him heavy debts, and quantities of jewellery; his son sold the precious stones to liquidate the debts. He proceeded to dismiss the Master of the Ceremonies, the Herald-at-Arms, and most of the ornamental Court func­tionaries. All display was dispensed with. The corona­tion of Frederick I cost six million thalers, that of his son two thousand five hundred.

Frederick William I cut down the civil list in the same merciless fashion, reducing the expense to one-fifth of what it had been. He regulated the expenditure in his own household in a spirit which went beyond economy, to parsimony. There was not always a reasonable supply of food for the household on his own table. Many of his retrenchments were mean and unworthy, and earned for him the character of a miser, but though the reaction from his father’s extravagance was excessive, the general principle was wise, and the State derived great benefit from the frugality which was forced upon all whom the King could reach.

He devoted himself to the business of his kingdom. He worked harder than any monarch of the time. It was not for the sake of his people, who were merely a part of the material of which he made use, similar to cattle and sheep, and other property. He regarded himself as the manager of the estate and its workpeople, on behalf of ‘the King in Prussia.’ He said that in Brandenburg his position was that of an official, placed by divine grace in the employment of that Potentate, for whom he had to exert all his energies, early and late. He set an example which has influenced even the most self-indulgent of his successors. A high standard of work has, on the whole, been maintained on the Prussian throne. To Frederick William I much of the credit may justly be given.

He kept under his own control the whole machinery of the State, supervising, examining, directing all the officials; and he also made his influence felt in every household in the land. The prestige of the Crown enabled Frederick William I to rule as an absolute autocrat, without any consideration for the feelings or desires of his subjects. He declared openly that he intended to be obeyed implicitly by all, and would tolerate no arguments or objections. He spoke of his supreme sovereignty as a Rock of Bronze. Every State in Germany had its Landstände, parliaments of a kind, which had some power, except Prussia. The submissiveness of the subject and paternal dictatorship of the King, which are so long characteristic of Prussia, began with the Great Elector Frederick William, and the masterful King, his namesake and descendant.

The methods of agriculture were improved, waste lands were brought into cultivation, swamps were drained, canals cut, and roads made. Churches and schools were built, and attendance at school was made compulsory, long before the value of education was recognised to the same extent in other countries. The net receipts from the Crown lands were nearly doubled, the national revenue trebled, during the reign of Frederick William I.

These improvements in the State enabled the King to indulge in the creation of a large army. His father left him a nominal 30,000 men. By the end of his reign Frederick William I had raised the peace army to the enormous figure of 90,000, out of a population of no more than 2,250,000 persons. That is four times the proportion of the German Empire at the outbreak of the war of 1914. In the time of Frederick William I, when the proportion of soldiers to population in all other countries was very small compared with what it has since become, the Prussian army was regarded as an almost incredible portent, the eccentric fancy of a madman. More than half of the soldiers were re­cruited outside Prussia; but that consideration, explaining the possibility of the existence of such an army, did not increase the world’s opinion of the sanity of its creator. The Great Elector was the first to maintain a standing army, but the military  power of Prussia was the work of King Frederick William I. He was the first King to prefer a military uniform to Court robes.

He treasured his soldiers with the feeling of a miser.  He loved to look upon them on parade, and observe their numbers. He would not expend them; rather would he submit to insult and, wrong. With an army at his back, superior to that of the Austrian Empire, and second only to that of France, the chief military nation of the world, his conduct in times of crisis was pusillanimous, even cowardly.

He had a strange passion for big soldiers. As a boy he collected a band of tall youths in the Wusterhausen hunt­ing district, and played the drill-sergeant to them. On his accession to the throne he formed a whole regiment of giants, all of them above six feet in height. Officers were sent out to search the whole of Germany, and even foreign countries. The King’s passion soon became a real mania. He even allowed his foreign policy, his alliances, and questions of peace and war, to become subservient to his collection of tall men. His father loved jewels and flunkeys, while the son cut down all such luxuries and lived a cheese­paring existence in order to indulge in his weakness for big soldiers. This passion cost him almost as much as the diamonds of Frederick I; and it brought upon him serious quarrels with his neighbours, due to his forcible seizure of foreign recruits. The first two Prussian kings were obvious parvenus, each in his own way, in their delight in show and display.

Frederick William I instituted a sort of informal Parlia­ment of his friends, who met every afternoon and drank beer and smoked pipes together. There was a large bare table in the centre of the hall, with a jug of beer, a glass and a clay pipe, placed by the side of each chair ; baskets filled with coarse tobacco were on the table. Every guest had to drink and smoke, whether he liked it or not. The company sat for hours, many becoming gradually heated with their liquor; a noisy violence marked the later stages of the meeting. Vulgar jokes were made, and rude remarks passed. The King would invite respectable and learned men, ply them with liquor and play practical jokes upon them. To be drunk was no disgrace, rather the contrary. The King, indeed, suspected of sinister designs, or at least of unfriendly coldness, those who kept their senses. He broached before these companions the most important questions of State, hoping in such an informal meeting to elicit genuine opinions and unguarded remarks. But the guests were under no illusions, and the crafty among them watched closely the King, con­trived to remain stealthily sober, and to surprise their master into hasty revelations. At the Tabaks Collegium or Tabagie public matters came up for discussion, and great decisions were taken. Those who attended regu­larly became, by that fact alone, the most important men in the country.

With all his eccentricities the position of Frederick William I in history is secure, for he was the creator of the Prussian system, which was destined to dominate the whole German Empire.

 

CHAPTER III

FATHER AND SON

 

George I contrived to spend some months of every year at his fine palace of Herrenhausen, Hanover. In the autumn of 1723 he was visited there by his daughter, Sophia Dorothea, the wife of Frederick William I. She had set her heart upon a double marriage between the two families, Brunswick and Brandenburg. Wilhelmina, Princess of Prussia, was to marry Frederick, eldest son of the Prince of Wales, and Frederick, Prussian Crown Prince—afterwards Frederick the Great—was to marry Princess Amelia, the second daughter of the Prince of Wales. The two chief Protestant houses, already closely related, were to be still further conjoined. The Branden­burg parents were first cousins, and it was proposed that the children also should marry their first cousins. King George returned the visit. On the 8th October 1723, he arrived at Charlottenburg, the palace built by Sophia Charlotte, wife of Frederick I, in the suburbs of Berlin. There he was shown the young people. Arriving in the evening he took a candle from the table and held it close to Wilhelmina, to have a good look at her, a candi­date for the position of Queen of England in the future; the only remark he made was that she was big for her age. Frederick, aged eleven, he caressed and played with. The children were delighted with the proposals, which meant promotion for the house of Brandenburg. They acquired grand ideas, and learned to despise their plain Prussian father and his homely Court.

In this they were encouraged by their mother, who contrasted the frugality and meanness of all her surround­ings with the Court festivities, the elegance and refine­ment to which she had been accustomed at Hanover. She was not proud of her rude, uncouth husband, who smoked tobacco in pipes, and was often intoxicated, who could talk of nothing but drilling soldiers, shooting animals, and saving money, and who could not express himself, even in his own language, in any but crude and vulgar terms. French was the language used by the Queen and her children, except in the presence of the King. French literature, manners, dress, were ostentatiously preferred against all the King’s desires and inclinations. The Queen taught her children, especially the two eldest, Wilhelmina and Frederick, to despise their German father, to regard him and his boon companions as objects of derision. Wilhelmina early acquired superior airs and graces, and a habit of caustic comment on every thing Prussian. Frederick, growing up in this unhealthy atmosphere, learned to be supercilious and underhand.

The King was determined that every individual in his dominions, his wife and children as much as the common people, should bend to his will. Physical blows, applied often with a cane, were his chief arguments. His eldest son received many. On a cold day Frederick wore gloves ; he was caned for his effeminacy. He preferred the French three-pronged fork to the German two-pronged—another beating. Though he was now a major in the Potsdam Life Guards he wore his hair long, in the French fashion, contrary to the Prussian military regulations. His father sent for the Court barber, and ordered the flowing locks to be cut off, in his presence.

Seckendorf, an Austrian agent who became one of the King’s trusted advisers, reported to Prince Eugene, on the 27th June 1725. After referring to the continual drilling that went on from morning till night, the inces­sant activity of the King, his heavy eating and drinking, and his heated and excited condition, he went on : “The Crown Prince, although he is only in his fourteenth year, must accommodate himself to this way of life, and although the King loves him tenderly, he fatigues him with early rising and similar hardships all the day long, so that already in his young years he looks old and stiff, and walks as if he had gone through many campaigns.

“The expectation of the King is that the Prince should by his own inclinations prefer the soldier’s career to all scientific accomplishments, that he should acquire thrift and frugality, and should enjoy no ease or pleasure except what the King himself appreciates. It is, however, quite noticeable that this way of life is against the Crown Prince’s inclination, and consequently will in time pro­duce just the contrary effect.”

That was what happened. The tastes of the Crown Prince Frederick were influenced primarily by opposition to his father. He made fun of religion and of the teachers given him by the King; he delighted in playing the flute; he arrayed himself in an ornamental dressing-gown of gorgeous colours; he spoke of his military uniform as a shroud; he was neither God-fearing nor military, but an effeminate dilettante and fop. His father now openly showed his dislike of his eldest son, and ostentatiously caressed and praised his second son William, who was still only a child of tender age. The King allowed it to be seen that he would have preferred William for his successor.

Frederick was very unhappy. He had come to the most sensitive age, when the child is done with and the first tentative and exciting steps are being taken, from the boy to the young man. His father was in a chronic state of fury, or sullen rage, so that the son’s life became unbearable, and his look of “black melancholy” was observed by all. He wrote to a friend, Lieutenant von Borcke, who was ill, apologising for being such poor company to him. “I need amusement myself to dissipate my gloom.” He begged von Borcke not to die. “Death is the thing that I dread most for my friends, and least for myself.”

Great problems of foreign politics now came to estrange still further the King from the Crown Prince.

The Emperor Charles VI had no son, his eldest surviv­ing child being a daughter, Maria Theresa, born at Vienna, 13th May 1717. His elder brother, the Emperor Joseph I, who died in 1711, left two daughters: the eldest, Maria Josepha, was married to the Elector of Saxony, the younger, Maria Amelia, to the Elector of Bavaria. To set at rest any claims that his nieces might have on the succession to the Habsburg dominions, Charles VI exe­cuted a solemn deed, known as a Pragmatic Sanction, by which his daughter, Maria Theresa was made his heiress. The deed was published in 1720. But Charles’s father, the Emperor Leopold I, had already, in 1703, in default of male heirs either to himself or to his eldest son Joseph, settled the inheritance in favour of the eldest daughter of Joseph, Maria Josepha, with reversion to the second daughter Maria Amelia. Therefore it became necessary for Charles VI, in order to ensure the carrying out of his will, to obtain the formal recognition of the Pragmatic Sanction by all interested parties. The new law was duly accepted and proclaimed throughout the Habsburg dominions. The two elder claimants, Maria Josepha and Maria Amelia, were both forced to resign their claims. All Austrian opposition being removed, it became hence­forth the chief aim of the Emperor’s diplomacy to obtain guarantees of the Pragmatic Sanction from Foreign Powers.

Spain was the first to be won over, in 1725. But the Maritime Powers held aloof. The Ostend East India Company, founded by Charles VI in 1722, was a cause of offence. England and Holland formed a League, which France joined, against the Empire. The adhesion of Prussia was invited to this League. Frederick William I had two principal desires, the reversion to the Duchies of Jülich and Berg, to which he had a claim on the death of the Elector Palatine ; and an agreement about the English marriages. He was satisfied on both hands. By the Treaty of Herrenhausen, 3rd September 1725, he joined the League ; the good offices of England, France, and Holland were promised, by a secret clause, to obtain Jülich and Berg for him; and though no contract was signed with regard to the English marriages, George I gave satisfactory verbal assurances to his nephew of his interest in the matter.

On the 12th October 1726 this treaty was followed by another, signed at Wusterhausen, between Prussia and Austria. Prussia engaged to support the Pragmatic Sanction, and to defend the Emperor if attacked; the Emperor promised his influence to obtain for Prussia the Duchy of Berg on the death of the Elector Palatine, if the rival claimant, Theodore of Sulzbach, could be made content with Julich. This treaty was affirmed and its provisions repeated by the Treaty of Berlin, 23rd December 1728. The agreement with Austria, made at the time when Austrian relations with England were strained, augured ill for the marriage schemes of the Queen, Wilhelmina, and Frederick. They were bitterly disappointed, and did not cease to conspire together to upset the plans of the King. He had to face in his own home a sullen, pertinacious opposition, an English Hanoverian party. Frederick, Prince of Wales, sent messages from Hanover to Wilhelmina, and Frederick, Prussian Crown Prince, wrote secretly to Queen Caroline, declaring that he would never marry any but the English Princess Amelia. Queen Sophia Dorothea wrote to Caroline in the same sense. The King learned what was going on, and there were constant scenes.

Frederick was subjected to blows and other humilia­tions. At table he was not allowed to sit in his proper place, but was sent lower down, and his father would help all the children and the guests, before him; some­times, indeed, the Crown Prince’s plate was returned empty to the attendant, and the Queen had to contrive some secret method of sending her son a box of cold meat, after the meal.

At the autumn visit to Wusterhausen this year, Frederick was as miserable as ever. He wrote again his melancholy letters to von Borcke. “The King continues in a bad temper; he scolds everybody, is pleased with none, not even with himself. He is still terribly angry with me ... Tomorrow I am obliged to hunt, the next day is Sunday, and on Monday I am obliged to hunt again... I got up at five o’clock this morning, and it is now mid­night. I am so weary of all I see, that I should like to efface it from my memory, as though it had never been... One learns at last, by the lapse of time, to become indifferent. I have reached that stage now, and in spite of all that may happen to me, I play the flute, read, and love my friends better than myself.” These are sad reve­lations of what the boy of sixteen was suffering. “We have accursed scenes every day; I am so tired of them that I had rather beg my bread than live any longer on this footing.” The whole tone of the Society was hateful. “We have here,” writes Frederick, “the most idiotic collec­tion of people of all sorts and kinds, and ill-assorted, for neither the tempers, nor the ages, nor the inclinations of those who compose it agree, which utterly prevents any connected conversation.”

In desperation he wrote to his father :

Wusterhausen,

Saturday, the 11th Sept, 1728.

‘ My dear Papa,—I have for some time not been able to take the resolution to go to my dear Papa, partly because I was dissuaded, but principally because I had reason to fear an even worse reception than usual; and from fear that my present prayer would vex my dear Papa more, have preferred to send it in writing. I beg therefore, my dear Papa, to be gracious to me, and I can after long reflection assert that my conscience has not accused me in the slightest degree of anything as to which I should reproach myself; but if I should, against my will and intention, have done anything to vex my dear Papa, I herewith most submissively beg for forgiveness, and I hope that my dear Papa will drive away that cruel hate which I have had sufficient cause to notice in all his treatment of me. I could not otherwise bear it, as I have hitherto always supposed I had a gracious father and now I should have to consider the contrary. I hold then the completest confidence and hope that my dear Papa will reflect upon all this and be gracious to me again ; meanwhile I assure him that  I will not willingly let my time be wasted, and in spite of his disfavour I remain, with the most submissive and filial respect, my dear Papa’s most obedient servant and son,

                                 FRIDERICH.’

 

The reply was cold and severe :

“That self-willed evil disposition, which does not love its father, for when one does everything required and especially loves one’s father, one does what he wishes not only when he is present, but when he does not see what is done; which besides knows well that I can tolerate no effeminate fellow who has no manly inclinations, who, to his shame, can neither ride nor shoot, and at the same time is uncleanly in person, has his hair long and curled like a fool. All this I have a thousand times reprimanded, but all in vain, and there is no improvement in anything. Besides, haughty, proud as an upstart, speaking to none but a few persons, and is not popular or affable, and makes grimaces with his face as if he were a fool, and does nothing according to my wishes until he is driven by force, nothing from love, and has no pleasure in anything save follow­ing his own way, as nothing else is of any value. This is the answer.

Fr. W.”

 

The King had good cause for dissatisfaction with his son. His own ideal was that of a God-fearing prince, manly and soldierlike, hardworking, economical, plainly dressed and cleanly in person, and entirely devoted to the welfare of the State. His son scoffed at religion, shirked soldiering, fell into debt, was foppish, in dress and of dissolute habits; he could not ride with any comfort, disliked shooting, and cared only for playing the flute, and reading French books; he kept himself to an exclu­sive small set, treating with contempt his father’s friends and, indeed, everything German. Here was very real cause for anxiety with regard to the future, and it seemed that Frederick William’s life work was to be scattered to the winds, and the Prussian kingdom brought to ruin by an effeminate, dissolute, irreligious French trifler. The King became so enraged, and indulged in such vio­lence towards all who came near him, that it Was thought he would go mad, and there was talk, in anti-Austrian circles, now known as “the Crown Prince’s party,” of a Regency. The King retaliated by threatening the Queen with imprisonment in the fortress of Spandau, the Princess Royal with a poor marriage, and the Crown Prince with disinheritance.

The Tobacco Parliament went with the King to Wusterhausen, and Frederick was compelled to join the party. He was offended by the manners, the speech, the pipe-smoking, the drunkenness, the whole tone of the society which his father enjoyed. He passed the time in the Tabagie, he tells Borcke, by “cracking nuts, an occupation worthy of the place we are in.”

He longed to escape from the area of the King’s influ­ence. He wished to travel, to see something of the world. At least he thought he might be allowed to pay a visit to Dresden. One day, at the tobacco meeting, Frederick, being seated next to the Saxon Minister, Suhm, begged for his assistance in the project. To show his willing subjection to his father’s tastes, Frederick set himself deliberately to get drunk, and began to assert in a loud voice that he loved the King. “What does he say?” asked Frederick William. Suhm replied that the Prince was drunk. “Nonsense,” said the King, “he is pretending. But what does he say?”. Suhm answered, “The Prince says that although the King forces him to drink too much, he loves him very dearly.” “He is pretending,” repeated the King. Suhm gave his word of honour that the Prince was really and truly drunk. “I have just pinched him, and he felt nothing,” he reported. Frederick had sufficient self-control to go up to the King, kiss his hands, and protest that he loved him. “Good,” said Frederick William. “Let him only be a man of honour.” At this affecting scene there was much weeping, as the Prince was helped away to bed.

The King was delighted at this exhibition of his power, and pleased that Frederick had it in him to get drunk, but he mistrusted the affair; he feared that Frederick had been pretending, that he really had no wish to be intoxicated, and had kept his head throughout.

The King wrote to Frederick’s tutors that they were to point out that “all effeminate, lascivious, and womanly occupations are highly unsuitable to a man; they are all very well for coxcombs and puppies. The Prince minces in his walk, in his laugh, and in his language. He does not sit upright on his horse; he drops his head and is not firm in his saddle. He is haughty, he must be taught to be polite and obliging to everybody, to have a sincere and open nature; he is to obey pleasantly, of his own free will, not with a disagreeable face.” All this severity produced merely obstinate opposition, and made the young man so miserable, that he fell an easy victim to the temptations that were thrust upon him. One of the King’s pages, named Keith, was Frederick’s assistant and companion in these excesses.

In June 1730 the King took his son with him on a visit to Saxony. An army of thirty thousand men had been collected at the camp of Mühlberg, for reviews and sham fights. At this camp Frederick William behaved in the most outrageous manner to his son, dealing him repeated blows, in public, with his cane, pulling his hair, and sending him to take part in a military review in a dishevelled condition. He added taunts to his blows. “Had I been treated thus by my father,” he said, “I should have killed myself, but it makes no difference to you ; you will put up with anything.” He tried to induce his son to renounce his right of succession to the throne.

Frederick, aged eighteen and a half, was suffering more than any man could be expected to bear. To be so mal­treated and scoffed at, in the presence of German princes gathered together for grand festivities, was humiliation beyond human endurance. He began to make plans for escape, either to France or to England. There was some unreality about the scheme, for no serious effort was made to conceal it. It seems probable that Frederick intended to make a protest, but not an actual escape. He approached Guy Dickens, the British Attaché, asking for the protection of England. The King had arranged to make a tour to the south of Germany and thence to Wesel. Frederick told Dickens that if he went with his father he would escape to Strassburg, and thence through France to England. Dickens reported this conversation; the answer from George II was, that he would pay the Prince’s debts if he would promise to abandon his project. Frederick accepted the money, asking for fifteen thousand thalers, though his debts were not more than seven thou­sand, but confined himself to a promise that if his father did not take him on the journey, and left him behind at Potsdam, he would not move from there. His most pressing need was to be relieved of the society of his father, to have a little liberty, and be spared ill-treatment.

The King hesitated for some time about taking his son on the journey. He knew that Frederick talked of escape. At length he decided it would be safer to have him by his side, rather than free to follow his own inclination at Potsdam, but he was to be carefully watched. Colonel Rochow, the Prince’s tutor, was to be assisted by General Buddenbrock and Colonel Waldau, who were given strict orders never to let the Prince out of their sight.

The 15th July was fixed for the day of departure. On the evening of the 14th Frederick had a secret meeting with his friend, Lieutenant Katte, in the garden of the palace at Potsdam. Katte was to get leave, to collect money for expenses, and to join him at a place which would be named later.

On the 15th July the royal party left Potsdam, travel­ling south as far as Augsburg, and then west. At Feuchtwang they dined with the Dowager Margravine of Anspach. Frederick had the misfortune to drop his fork on the floor, and was immediately subjected to violent insults by the King. The former taunts were repeated. “If my father had treated me as I treat you,” said Frederick William, “I should have made my escape a thousand times over, but you have no courage and are a coward.” Frederick wrote to Katte that there had been a scene at Feuchtwang, and that he could stand it no longer. Katte was to go to the Hague, and await the arrival of Count d’Aberville, the name, taken from a novel, which Frederick proposed to adopt. He also wrote to Keith, now a lieu­tenant, telling him to make for the Hague, from Wesel. He showed himself to Rochow in a new red cloak of French design, which had been made secretly for him. He knew that Rochow was watching him, and that his appearance in this highly coloured garment, of an unusual shape in Germany, would attract observation, and would be reported to the King. A man who is bent upon secret flight would hardly prepare conspicuous clothing and exhibit himself in it to those whose duty it was to guard him.

At Steinfurth Frederick spoke to a page, and arranged that two of the pages’ horses should be ready early in the following morning. Steinfurth was some three hours’ ride from Speyer, where the Rhine could be crossed, and in another two hours the French frontier would be reached. The page at once warned Rochow. Frederick made no attempt to win over his valet, Gummersbach, who had been appointed to his post by Rochow, with express instructions to watch and report.

At 2.30 a.m. of the 5th August Frederick was up and dressed ; he declined all answer to the valet’s request for orders, but made no attempt to bind him to secrecy. He put on his flaming red cloak, and went out to wait for the page with the horses. Gummersbach informed Colonel Rochow that the Prince was up ; Rochow arrived before the horses, and found Frederick standing about, in his red cloak. He went up to him and said, “Guten morgen, Ihro Königliche Hoheit”—“Good morning, Your Royal Highness.” Frederick returned the greeting, and then went indoors. When the page arrived with the horses, Rochow ordered him to take them back to the stables. Buddenbrock and Waldau now appeared, and Seckendorf emerged from the King’s quarters. Frederick came out again. Rochow said to Seckendorf, “How do you like His Royal Highness in his red coat?”. Frederick saw that it would be advisable to put away that symbol of revolt. He returned to his room and took off the cloak. Then the page went to the King and confessed all. The King sent for Rochow, and told him that he, Budden­brock and Waldau should all have to answer for it with their heads if the Crown Prince was not delivered to him in due course, dead or alive, at Wesel, where the return journey to Berlin was to commence. Rochow assured the King that the Prince could not have escaped. The valet was to be trusted, and he had taken all needful precautions.

At Wesel the King sent for his son. He demanded his reason for attempting to desert. “Because you do not treat me as your son, but like a slave.” “You are a cowardly deserter, you have no honour.” “I have as much as you,” answered Frederick; “I have only done what, as you have told me a hundred times, you would have done in my place.” The King is said thereupon to have drawn his sword with the intention of killing his son, but General Mosel, who was present, interposed his own person until the King had recovered from the mad impulse.

Frederick was sent to Cüstrin, sixty miles east of Berlin. He was kept in solitary confinement, in a prisoner’s cell containing the absolute minimum of furniture. His uniform was taken away, and a brown prison dress sub­stituted; his food was limited to a cost of sixpence for dinner and fourpence for supper; it was cut small for him, as he was not allowed a knife. He was not permitted to leave the room on any pretext; three times a day an attendant entered, remaining not more than four minutes on each occasion; two captains were to be present to see that no words passed, no remarks of any kind being permitted; no books were allowed, nor writing materials. The conditions were very severe for a young man not yet aged nineteen. After some days, in the hope of being allowed a little communication with human life, he asked to take the Communion, but the request was refused, and complete silence settled once more upon him.

The King gave forth terrible threats, spoke of most bloody vengeance on all who had been adherents of the Crown Prince, including even the Queen and Wilhelmina. He wished more than ever for the death or abdication of his son; but he found himself confronted by grave diffi­culties. As heir to the Elector of Brandenburg, the Crown Prince held a high place in the Empire. To put him to death without consulting the Emperor, would endanger the good relations established by the Treaties of Wusterhausen and Berlin. A renunciation of the suc­cession might be obtained under a threat of imprisonment for life, but the consent of the Empire would be necessary, and grave difficulties would arise when the throne became vacant. There might be a disputed succession which, in so young a kingdom, would be disastrous for the country and dangerous for the dynasty. In the end the King sent Keith, Katte, and the Crown Prince before a court-martial.

The affair of Keith was simple. He had fled from Wesel to the Hague, and thence to England. He had deserted and was condemned to death, the penalty pre­scribed by law; but as he was out of reach he could only be hanged in effigy.

Katte had not deserted, but he had contemplated doing so, and he had given the Crown Prince active assistance in the preliminaries of his scheme. The sentence of the court was imprisonment for life. With regard to the Crown Prince, the court declared itself incompetent to decide. The members avoided the word desertion, speak­ing of an intention to “retire,” or to “absent himself,” and evidently did not consider the Prince merited any very severe punishment.

The King’s vengeance was turned against Katte, through whom he could touch his son. He overruled the sentence of the court-martial and ordered Katte to be beheaded.

The first intimation of Katte’s impending fate was taken to Frederick on the morning fixed for the execution, 5th November 1730. He was awaked with the news that Katte had been brought to Cüstrin, and arrangements had been made for the execution to take place under his windows.

He became much agitated, declared that to save Katte he would renounce the crown, consent to perpetual im­prisonment, even give his own life; he implored his attendants to send a messenger to the King with these offers, but no such request could be complied with, as he must have known. There is indeed a suspicion that, though genuinely distressed at Katte’s fate, and conscious of his own responsibility in the matter, Frederick was not blind to the value, for himself, of a very demonstrative exhibition of sorrow. His misery and humiliation were great; he desired that the King should know it.

The last scene of tragedy was really too much for him. When Katte came forward between his guards, and looked up, Frederick was intensely moved, kissed his hand towards his friend, and cried out, in an agonised tone:

“Mon cher Katte, je vous demande pardon mille fois.” 

Katte bowed and replied, « Monseigneur, n’en pensez pas, je vous prie. » 

At this the Prince fainted, or collapsed with closed eyes, that he might not see the actual behead­ing. Later in the day he came again to the window, and looked where Katte’s body still lay, by express order of the King, covered by a black cloth. He saw it removed for burial at 2 p.m.

The King received intercessions on behalf of the Crown Prince from the Courts of England, Holland, Sweden and Russia, and, more important than all, an autograph letter of intercession from the hand of the Emperor him­self. These representations were inspired by motives of humanity. The life of the Crown Prince was of no value to any one of these Powers. The Emperor, indeed, had reason to regard the young man as anything but a friend, and his minister, Bartenstein, protested against the Imperial intercession on behalf of a Prince, whose lean­ings were anti-Austrian. The return that Frederick made for the Emperor’s friendly interference was, as we shall see, a treacherous attack at the first opportunity. But it is an exaggeration to assert, as some have done, that the Emperor saved Frederick’s life. Frederick William i. was forced by public opinion, by consideration of his popularity both at home and abroad, to abandon his cruel impulse. He pretended that he had done so only out of deference for his Emperor.

Frederick had achieved his aim. He had protested, by the only means in his power, against being beaten like a slave. His father never struck him again. But he had still to undergo a long ordeal of severe discipline. His punishment had scarcely begun.

 

 

CHAPTER IV

MARRIAGE FOR FREEDOM

 

The Crown Prince was given a stool in the office of the Audit of Accounts for the Departments of War and Agriculture, at Cüstrin. He was glad to do a junior clerk’s work, because he thereby escaped the society of his father, and brought to an end the tension of the past weeks. His relief was shown in a gay and sprightly demeanour. He supposed that his trials would soon be over.

He lived in a small house under the care of Hofmarschall von Wolden, with two chamberlains, von Natzmer and von Rohwedel. He was given his sword, but not his uniform, and was compelled to wear a grey, civilian suit. He was not, at first, allowed any other society, nor any books, least of all his flute.

Von Wolden in one of his reports to the King, remarked that the Prince adhered to the predestination heresy. The King sent a furious letter. “If he wishes to go to the devil, let him go! I have nothing to reproach myself with… After a time you will come to know that saint, my son, better and better. You will see that he has no good in him, except his tongue. Oh, against his tongue I have nothing to say. The scoundrel declines to be shaved… He walks on the tips of his toes. He does not plant his feet firmly on the ground. He walks bent double…  He never looks an honest man straight in the face.” No doubt this far from attractive portrait of Frederick was accurate; he was, now and ever after, shifty, false, endowed with a caustic tongue; he was never of the upstanding, straightforward kind, either mentally or physically.

A sum of £22, 5s. per month was allowed him for all his expenses, including the pay of three footmen and a cook, and for rent, food, light, and fire. He had to keep exact accounts, for his father examined every item. In the summer Frederick asked for a thinner suit of clothes. “It is not the fashion either in Prussia or Branden­burg, it is a French fashion,” was the forbidding reply.

He was not allowed any amusement. When the office work was finished, he went to his small house, and passed the rest of the day, as best he could, in the society of his three companions. They soon became heartily sick of each other. Frederick was bored and dispirited, and his health suffered. The officers complained also. Wolden wrote to Grumkow, “We in this convent will all collapse if this sort of existence continues for some time.” The King was pleased with these reports, for he desired to be assured that his son was feeling the effects of his anger.

Hille, Director of the Finance Department at Cüstrin, gave Frederick, among his lessons in finance, one which may have had its influence upon subsequent events. He showed how the trade of the River Oder, which passed through the King’s dominions in Pomerania, was con­trolled by the merchants of Silesia. “There is no hope of successful commerce for Brandenburg, as long as the Silesians are not deprived of their immediate commerce. How is that to be brought about ? We must leave to others, higher and cleverer than ourselves, the settle­ment of that question”. Thus early was Frederick’s attention directed to the value of Silesia.

One of his companions, von Natzmer, obtained leave of absence. Frederick wrote him in February 1731, a letter in which he observed that the territories of the King were separated, and surrounded by enemies. It was essential, for mere defence, to have friends and allies among the neighbours. “The plan which is the natural outcome from this foundation should be to obtain more and more the aggrandisement of the House.” He pro­posed the acquisition of West Prussia, Hithev, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, and Jülich-Berg, “which it is absolutely necessary to acquire for aggrandisement on that side, so as not to leave these unfortunate countries of Cleves, the Mark, etc., solitary and without companions.” These Cleves countries could produce an army of thirty thou­sand men. He did not propose to discuss questions of right, nor how these projects were to be carried out. “I desire merely to prove the political necessity, from the situation of the Prussian territories, of acquiring the pro­vinces I have mentioned. I think that must be the plan upon which any wise and faithful minister of the House should work, leaving always the lesser object to obtain the greater.” At the age of nineteen Frederick had already made up his mind that his career as King was to be one of conquest.

The Cüstrin existence became more and more depress­ing. A letter was sent to General Grumkow, who was in the confidence of the King, signed by Wolden, Natzmer and Rohwedel, which said that the Prince was ready to make a declaration that he had abandoned the English marriage, and was willing to consider a marriage with the house of Austria, provided he was not asked to change his religion, which no consideration of whatever import­ance would induce him to do. The reply of Grumkow was disappointing. He said that the King had “very sinister ideas as to the character of the Prince,” as he had fully stated to him (Grumkow) only the day before. ‘(1) He considers the Prince a dissimulator in a super­lative degree. (2) He is persuaded that the Prince has never loved him, but much the contrary, even something more. (3) He is as pleased as a King at Cüstrin, simply because he is not in the society of his father, hating what­ever implies fatigue and work. (4) He believes that it suffices for something to give him pleasure for it to give dislike to the Prince”. The King understood his son.

His companions also had no illusions. Hille wrote to Grumkow that, upon a question of accounts the Crown Prince had said “that it was very extraordinary that a gentleman should be obliged to render an account to a bourgeois.” “Upon that,” says Hille, “I could not restrain myself from saying that indeed everything seemed re­versed in the world, and that it was never more visible than when one reflected that princes who had no common sense or were amused by nothing but trifles, were in com­mand of reasonable people. It remained at that. If he is annoyed I have enjoyed the pleasure of telling him the truth, which he will not hear every day”. Wolden wrote to the King, “The Prince has all the qualities of a Grand Seigneur.” The attendants disliked his airs, his con­tempt for all who were not of noble birth; and they thought him a trifler. The King continued displeased. He wrote :

—You must tell my son that he should drive out of his head French and English customs, and consider none but the Prussian, he must be faithful to his father and lord, and keep a German heart, drive from his heart all French foppishness, and damnable political falseness.

In the end Frederick succeeded in satisfying his father of his complete submission. On the 15th August, the King’s birthday, he was admitted into the presence of his father; he wept, fell on his knees, and kissed the King’s feet, and the word of pardon was pronounced.

There followed some alleviation of the rigours of Cüstrin. The Prince was to visit the estates whose finances he had been examining, and to consider what improvements might be practicable. He was to make himself familiar with husbandry in all its branches, agriculture, grazing, forestry, brewing, in short everything. He might invite two guests to dinner, and dine out twice a week. He was not to be allowed any female society, nor French books, nor worldly German books, nor any music. He was to be encouraged to ride and drive, to shoot stags, and game, and to clean his own guns.

Frederick adopted from this time forward a very humble style in addressing his father. Three days after the inter­view of pardon he wrote :

 ‘Cüstrin, the 18/7/ August 1731.

Most gracious King and Father,—I thank God a thousand times for having turned the heart of my most gracious father towards me, so that the grave faults I have committed have been dissolved by pardon. Had I not recognition of the undeserved nature of such pardon, I should not deserve to be called a man. And, to show my most gracious father, how you have in that way won my heart, that it has become impossible to keep anything secret from you, I must declare that you have extended to me a greater pardon than you realised. Yes, I must with rue and shame admit that I have been much more guilty than you have suspected, and have acted very seriously against you.” [Then follows a confession of the correspondence with Queen Caroline about the English marriages.] “I beg you by the grace of the wounds of Christ, to forgive me also this, and I swear to you that for the rest of my days I will think no more of an English Princess and these intrigues, and will endeavour by my entire submission, my complete obedience and sincere faithfulness in all things, to repair my bad conduct. I lay myself wholly at my most gracious father’s disposal. You know best what is good for me. In the meantime I beg you, most humbly, to be assured that with most humble respect and everlasting thankfulness and childlike submission, I remain,—of my most gracious King and Father,—the most faithful and obedient servant and son,

Fridrich.”

Frederick was now nineteen and a half years of age. He continued to write to the most gracious of all fathers, in the same tone of servility, until the moment when the King’s death released him, nine years later. Practice indeed helped him to an increased perfection of abject­ness. The letters written when he was a married man in control of a separate establishment of his own, continued to be thick with expressions of abasement.

Wilhelmina for some time persisted in her demand for the English marriage. When she had been confined to her apartments for a year, she was told that unless she resigned her fate entirely to the King she would be im­prisoned for life, but if she surrendered she would be released, and the lot of her brother would also be alleviated. Under this pressure she gave up the English throne, which had so long been an ambitious dream, and accepted, at the King’s command, the Margrave of Baireuth for her husband. She was then permitted to throw herself at the feet of the King, who began by abusing her, and con­cluded with embraces. Her betrothal was officially cele­brated on the 1st June 1731.

Frederick’s demeanour had now become so satisfactory to his father that, on the 30th November 1731, he was allowed to appear in uniform at a grand dinner given by Seckendorf, at which the King and the chief officials were present. As Colonel-designate of the Goltz Regiment of infantry at Ruppin, he went to reside at that place on the 29th February 1732.

He had to accept a wife chosen for him by the King. Austrian influence put forward the Princess Elizabeth Christina of Brunswick-Bevern, a niece of the Empress, after whom she was named, and first cousin of Maria Theresa, the heiress to the Habsburg dominions. Frederick desired a marriage with no less a person than Maria Theresa herself. He still entertained high ambitions. The Bevern match was a great disappointment, after his English hopes and Austrian visions. He and Wilhelmina were being well punished for their pretensions.

Hille reported that the Prince on being asked whether, if the Princess proved to be ugly and silly, he would be able to love her and live well with her, replied, “Certainly not. I should put her aside, as soon as I was the master. I must be excused for getting over the trouble as best I can.” He said the same to Count Schulenburg. “If the King insists upon my marrying I will obey; having done that I will put aside my wife and live as I please.” Schu­lenburg said that the King would take his daughter-in-­law’s part, to which Frederick rejoined that he would see to it that she did not venture to complain. Schulen­burg remarked upon the immorality of such conduct, but Frederick declared that he was determined to enjoy himself in his own way. He was young and intended to profit by his youth.

He was disturbed at what had been told him about Elizabeth Christina. He wrote to Grumkow, 11th February 1732, that he could not endure a stupid woman who would enrage him with her ineptitude, and whom he would be ashamed to produce in public. On the 19th he talked of suicide: “I have still some resources, and a pistol shot would deliver me from my sorrows and of my life. I believe that the good God would not condemn me, and taking pity upon me, will in exchange for a life of misery accord me salvation.”

Frederick feared, above everything, to be connected with the German plainness and piety which were ridi­culed by the French leaders of fashion. He was morbidly sensitive to French criticism in all matters of behaviour and taste. He understood that Elizabeth Christina was a typical German Princess, who was easily embarrassed, and did not venture to join in conversation amongst her elders. His father approved of her. He described her to Frederick as “well brought-up, modest and retiring, as women should be, and she was Godfearing.” These were the very qualities which Frederick dreaded.

On the same day that he wrote in this despairing strain to Grumkow, he sent to his father a letter of complete submissiveness, in the usual abject terms :—

 ‘ Cüstrin, the 19th February 1732.

‘ Most gracious King and Father,—I have today had the honour to receive the letter of my most gracious father, and I am glad that my most gracious father is pleased with the Princess. Whatever it may be, I will live in conformity with the command of my most gracious father; and nothing is so near to my heart as to have the opportunity to exhibit my blind obedience to my most gracious father, and I await in the humblest sub­missiveness all the further commands of my most gracious father. I can swear that I should be really delighted to have the honour to be allowed to see again my most gracious father, as I feel for him the most genuine love and respect. For the rest I beg for the continued gracious­ness of my most gracious father, and assure him that nothing in the world can turn me away from him, as I remain to the end of my life with the most humble respect and submissiveness,” etc.

The King must have smiled when he found his son swearing that he longed for the society of his father, for it was notorious that he feared nothing in the world more, and that he was prepared to bind himself for life to any woman, in order that by the status of marriage he should be free to remain away from his father. The most powerful threat which the King employed, to force him to an uncongenial marriage, was precisely that of being summoned, in case of disobedience, to undergo an inter­minable dose of his father’s society.

Frederick was summoned to Potsdam, where he was introduced to his Princess. He continued to complain of his father’s choice, but he was not as dissatisfied with his fiancée as he averred. In conversation with Wilhel­mina he said, “We are alone, and I have no secrets from you. I will tell you how matters stand. I do not dis­like the Princess as much as I pretend; I affect to be unable to tolerate her, in order to give great prominence to my obedience to the King.” After a long delay, due to the King’s hesitation, the marriage took place on the 12th June 1733.

The King would not give his son a reasonable allowance, with the result that Frederick was obliged to borrow money. One large item in his expenditure was incurred in the purchase of the giant recruits whom he sent as propitia­tory offerings to his father. He told Guy Dickens that the furnishing of these monsters was a heavy tax upon him, but that, since his disgrace, it was the only means he had of paying court to his father and obtaining a quiet life. Seckendorf, on behalf of the Emperor Charles vi., advanced special sums for this definite object; we have records of 2000 florins for one batch of giants and 1300 ducats for another. The Emperor accorded in addition an annual allowance of 2500 ducats. George II also sent money to his nephew, who begged and borrowed in all directions. He obtained from Seckendorf a pension for his old tutor, Duhan, who was still in disgrace ; and he also induced the Emperor to supply Wilhelmina with a little much-needed pocket money. It was made quite plain that the Emperor expected friendship and attach­ment to the Austrian Court in return for all this assist­ance. Seckendorf wrote on the 13th April 1733: “I will not fail to make a faithful report to His Imperial Majesty of the expressions of gratitude which Your Royal Highness uses in your gracious letter, for the attention which H.I.M. has for some time given to all which concerns the welfare of Y.R.H. The union and perfect understanding between the houses of Austria and Branden- ’ burg has produced reciprocal advantages for more than ten years past. H.I.M. will be pleased to see Y.R.H. continue in the principles which are so salutary for the public good; and as H.M. the King, your father, has now for some years given practical evidence of his friendship for the Emperor, H.I.M. would be glad to know that Y.R.H. desires to enter into the same views.”

Frederick took the money, when he had need of it, on these conditions, and subsequently repudiated the moral obligation at the first opportunity.

 

CHAPTER V

THE RHEINSBERG PHILOSOPHER

 

At Ruppin, where the Crown Prince was quartered, there was no suitable accommodation for his wife. The King bought for his son the castle of Rheinsberg, situated twelve miles to the north of Ruppin. At Frederick’s desire extensive alterations were made in the house. These were spread over so long a period, that Elizabeth Christina was not installed at Rheinsberg with her husband till the summer of 1736, three years after her marriage. In the meantime Frederick lived at Ruppin, and his wife at her palace of Schönhausen, near Berlin; they met only three or four times a year, when Frederick came to Berlin.

He was still under the suspicious and jealous control of his father. He was compelled to give much time to his military duties as commander of the Ruppin garrison. He wrote to Grumkow, “I have drilled, I drill, I shall drill, that is all my news.” But in spite of his dislike for all occupations that his father forced him to adopt, he came to take an interest in his work. When war threatened he wrote to Grumkow, “I shall be delighted, for I fear that otherwise the strength of my arm may decay in repose. At present I have still time to become a military student. At thirty one has no longer the disposition for learning, and such a business as that of war deserves something better than the application of old age. The soldier must be reared and nourished, and practical experience, rather premature than late, should be his teacher. War outside our confines and limits can but be useful and necessary, it corrects luxury and ostentation, teaches sobriety and abstinence, it makes the body capable of supporting fatigues and uproots all that is effeminate.” He approves and desires war, so long as it is conducted in the enemy’s territory.

Frederick’s prospect of seeing something of warfare was due to the death of Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. Augustus before his death had been endeavouring to ensure the election to the Polish kingdom of his son, also named Augustus. He hoped to make it hereditary in his family. He was prepared to give Courland to Russia, West Prussia to Frederick William, and a small territory, the County of Zips, to Austria, with a guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction. If this scheme had been carried out Poland, though reduced in area, would have survived as a separate State, escaping the complete partition which was her ultimate fate. Poland would have been to Saxony what East Prussia was to Brandenburg, the source of kingship. But the plan had no friends. None of Poland’s neighbours, save Saxony, desired the anarchy in the country to come to an end, least of all that Poland should be defended against their designs by a strong German State. Prussia, Russia and Austria all looked forward to a partition. Augustus might have succeeded in overcoming this opposition, but before the plan had reached the practical stage, he died, 1st February 1733. The story is that Grumkow, sent by Frederick William to find out the maximum that Augustus was prepared to give for Prussian support, engaged with him in a drinking contest, in the hope of surprising the secret. Augustus accepted the challenge, confident of his powers, expecting to be able to outwit Grumkow and discover what Frederick William would accept. The future of Poland was decided in this glorious battle. Neither of the combatants revealed their secrets, but Augustus died within three weeks, and Grumkow never quite recovered the effects of the debauch. His training at the Tabagie enabled him to survive. Thus the last hope of Poland was drowned in wine.

Against the young Augustus, France put forward as candidate for election, Stanislaus Leczinski, the father-­in-law of Louis XV. He was elected King by the Diet of Warsaw, on the 6th September 1733. Russia immedi­ately sent troops into Warsaw to upset the election. Stanislaus fled, and the Diet was forced to rescind the first vote and proceed to the election of Augustus III, 5th October 1733. The reply of France was to send troops into Lorraine. The Imperial Diet then voted for war.

On the 7th June 1734, the Prussian soldiers joined the Imperial army, under Eugène, on the Rhine. The French were besieging Philipsburg, and the Imperialists were endeavouring to break up the siege. Frederick reached the Imperial camp on the 7th July, and was introduced to Eugene on the same day. He stood much in awe of the hero, and spoke of him with the utmost respect; but he remarked, in a letter to his father, that he had found it difficult to reach him through the crowd of generals by whom he was surrounded. In a letter to de Camas, of the 11th September, he observed that the present campaign was a school for useful observation of “the con­fusion and disorder which reign in this army.” He thought that if prompt and vigorous measures had been taken, the siege might have been raised. The poor opinion he obtained of the Austrian organisation and command on this occasion had much to do with the fateful decision to rob Maria Theresa of Silesia.

In the autumn of this year the King was attacked by serious illness. The Crown Prince wrote to him letters in which he expressed his despair at the grave reports, and his trust in God’s grace to prolong his father’s existence. But, at the same time he was writing to Wilhelmina in a very different strain: “The news we have of the King is very bad; he is in a sad way, and is not expected to live long. I have taken the resolution to console myself for what may happen ; for, after all, I am quite persuaded that as long as he lives, I shall not have any sort of good time, and I think I shall find a hundred reasons against one which shall make you forget him fast enough, for what gives you tenderness for him is, my very dear sister, that you have not seen him for a very long time; but if you were to see him again, I think you would leave him to repose in peace without regret. Let us then console ourselves together.’ Soon afterwards he was 'writing to the King that he would willingly give his life for his.”

On the 12th October, Frederick was received at Potsdam with tenderness by his father, who called him Fritzchen. The King was suffering from dropsy, his legs and body were enormously swollen, and he had difficulty in breath­ing. He was himself convinced that his illness would be fatal. He had no confidence in Frederick, and said to him: “If you do not manage well, and everything goes topsy-turvy, I shall laugh at you from the grave.” Frederick gave way to copious weeping, much to the admiration of the household; “he cried the eyes out of his head,” an attendant reported, but we know what his sentiments were.

Expecting his father’s early death, Frederick fell into the temptation which has so often been the undoing of an over-eager heir. He acted as if he was already in command. He gave Grumkow advice, which sounded very like a command, to suspend the negotiations for peace. He approached La Chetardie, the French Ambas­sador, and urged him to prevent any final agreement from being reached, pending the expected event. He suggested that it would be to the advantage of France to obtain his support against Russia and the Empire. On the other hand, he could exercise pressure against France. Stanislaus was at Konigsberg, in the power of the King of Prussia. Frederick would not think of violating his asylum, which would be sacred, he would never commit such a disgraceful act, but, after all, Stanislaus was in his hands, and it was only right that he should make profit from that fact, on behalf of the country over which God had made him master, that he might give due attention to its needs. This pronounce­ment is typically Prussian. Frederick begins, as is customary, with the moral flourish; having established his own high character, he proceeds to remark that for the sake of his people he may be obliged to perpetrate the infamy. He went on to announce that his own plans were made, and to suggest to La Chetardie that he should induce his Government to give instant attention to the proposals, without waiting for the last moment, so that there should be no delay in immediate action when the time came. If there was one thing in the world he loved it was the French nation. He wished to give free course to his affection. “So long as my country’s advantage is served, you may lead me as far as you like.”

If his father had died at this time, Frederick would have marched troops secretly and swiftly into either Jülich-Berg or Silesia. He would have solicited and obtained a French alliance. His action when King, in marching into Silesia and inducing France to join him, is foreshadowed.

The King heard of his eldest son’s intrigues and ordered him back to Ruppin, much to the young man’s annoyance. He wrote from Ruppin to Wilhelmina: “Just imagine, the King has conceived the idea of sending me here, while he is in the last agonies. All the doctors agree in giving him no more than a fortnight of life.” But a greater trial was in store. After some months of desperate struggle the King definitely recovered, though his health was never quite re-established. Frederick’s feelings were bitter. He wrote to Wilhelmina: “You may consider, my very dear sister, that thanks to God, he has the constitution of a Turk, and that he will survive his posterity, if he so desires and if he takes care of himself… Disgusted with the world in every direction as I am, I give myself to reflections, which make me realise more and more that no stable and permanent happiness is to be found here below, and that the more one knows the world, the more one is disgusted with it, finding more vexation and un­happiness than matter for joy and happiness.” This was indeed a disappointing world. The tears had been wasted.

The war of the Polish Succession ended in the discom­fiture of Austria, and the aggrandisement of her enemies. Spain captured the two Sicilies, France kept Lorraine, giving in return an approval of the Pragmatic Sanction. Francis, Duke of Lorraine, obtained Tuscany in exchange, and the hand of Maria Theresa, heiress to the Austrian dominions. Prussia obtained nothing.

In the summer of 1736, Frederick and Elizabeth Christina went to live at Rheinsberg. They were now for the first time closely associated; and the four years spent together at Rheinsberg were the happiest in the lives of both of them. Frederick was at last free from the imme­diate interference of his father. He was under orders to look after the troops in his command, and to report on the welfare of the district, and he had to carry out these duties in a thorough and conscientious manner, but he was no longer expected to give an account of his every thought and act throughout the day. He could choose his own friends, and spend most of his time entirely as he pleased. He was summoned to Berlin for the great reviews in the spring, and he had to accompany his father on tours of inspection. He dreaded the approach of these duties, and returned to Rheinsberg with relief. On one of these occasions he wrote to a friend that, arrived safely at Rheinsberg, he was breathing deep draughts of liberty.

No children came to the young couple. The relations between a Prussian king and his eldest son could never be satisfactory to both parties; but a younger brother was an even more undesirable successor. Prince William, now aged fourteen, had always been ostentatiously pre­ferred by his father, with the inevitable result that the brothers disliked each other. Frederick desired a son, whom he could train himself, and who would keep off a fraternal rival.

Frederick chose for his companions at Rheinsberg men who had a taste for literature or art. He installed as pastor one Deschamps, the son of a French refugee, whose merit in Frederick’s eyes was that he had translated into French Wolf’s treatise on logic. Keiserling, whom he nicknamed Césarion, could write in Latin, Greek, French and German, and he was a capable musician and com­poser. He was Frederick’s most intimate friend, though fourteen years the senior. Jordan, the son of a French Protestant refugee, had travelled in Holland, France and England, and published a small book about his experi­ences. He had been received by Voltaire. Frederick made him his librarian and literary assistant; he was called upon sometimes to revise and correct Frederick’s prose or verse. Bielfeld was introduced to Frederick when he was paying a visit with his father to the Prince of Orange at the Hague, in 1738. The conversation at table turned upon freemasonry, which Frederick William immediately denounced in his savage manner. The spirit of opposition to his father had become an instinct with Frederick. He determined to become a freemason. The ceremony of initiation was performed at Brunswick, on the return journey. Bielfeld took a prominent part, and thereby earned his place at Rheinsberg. Frederick as King gave freemasonry his patronage and protection. Others in the Rheinsberg circle were the Baron de la Motte Fouqué, a French officer named Chasot, who gave the latest French tone; and Stille, an officer who subsequently rose to distinction : his Campagnes du roi de Prusse became a well-known book.

All these were men of intelligence, with inclinations for knowledge, literature and art. Frederick had for them genuine feelings of friendship. Etiquette and rank were not allowed to interfere. Conversation was free and untrammelled and wandered on to all subjects.

The Bayard Order of Rheinsberg consisted of twelve knights who adopted symbolical names. Frederick called himself ‘ The Constant,’ his brother William, aged fourteen, ‘ The Sober,’ Fouqué, ‘ The Chaste,’ the Duke of Bevern, ‘ The Chevalier of the Golden Quiver.’ The sign of the Order was a sword resting upon a laurel wreath, with the words, ‘Sans peur et sans reproche.’ Each knight wore a ring, with a sword engraved upon it, and the words, ‘Vivent les sans quartiers,’ to indicate the pitiless warfare the knights were to wage. When it came to real fighting King Frederick commanded that no quarter was to be given. The Bayard Order was not dissolved by the pro­motion of its founder to the throne. In 1745 Prince Henry became one of the knights, with the title of ‘ The Jovial.’ Many years later the deserted Queen Elizabeth Christina signed herself in the Preface to a book of religious medi­tations, ‘Constance.’

Frederick rose early and worked all the morning in the room in the tower, which he called his ‘Holy of Holies.’ All the suite were present at the midday meal; after it coffee was taken in the Crown Princess’s room. Frederick would sometimes fish in the lake. He was fond of boat­ing; water parties were formed. In the evening there was music. Frederick played the flute; Graun, a noted tenor, sang; and the chapel musicians, fifteen in number, assisted. Quantz, the flute player at the Saxon Court, obtained permission to pay visits to Rheinsberg, where he gave Frederick lessons on his instrument and also in­structed him in composition. Occasionally there was dancing, in the apartments of the Crown Princess. Theatrical performances were given, in which Frederick took a part.

Frederick spent much of his time in writing indifferent French verse, a habit which continued throughout his life. It was a fashionable amusement. He was also a prolific writer of letters. His chief correspondents during the Rheinsberg period were, Jordan, his librarian; Duhan de Jaudun, his old tutor; de Suhm, representative of Saxony at Berlin; de Camas, a Prussian officer; Man­teuffel, a retired Saxon official who lived at Berlin, and was, unknown to Frederick, a spy; Frederick’s sister Wilhelmina; and Voltaire.

The writing was neat and clear, the spelling uncertain, the punctuation careless. The signature was ‘Frederic,’ until April 1732; then ‘Frederic’ (without accents) up to June 1737; from that time forward to his death, ‘Federic.’ He said there were too many letters r in the German language ; obliged to retain the two r’s in Fried­rich, he cut out one from the French form of his name.

French was the language of all his private correspond­ence. It was, at best, Huguenot French, a little out of date; and it was adulterated with Germanisms, as Frederick knew and admitted. He never had the French type of mind, in spite of all his efforts at imitation. He was always a German trying to be French. He said of his countrymen : “The Germans are not deficient in intellect. Good sense is their portion; they are rather like the English. The Germans are laborious and profound; when once they have become seized of an affair they labour it. Their books are of an appalling diffuseness. If their heaviness could be corrected and they could be familiarised a little with the graces, I should not despair of my nation producing great men. France and England are the only two States in which the arts are in much consideration. It is in these countries that other nations should obtain their instruction. Those who are unable to make the journey in person can at least draw under­standing and light from the writings of their most cele­brated authors.” But Frederick never learned English.

It was fashionable to have no illusions about oneself. Good breeding demanded that a man should be ready at all moments with self-depreciations, to be on guard against exhibiting what Frederick in a letter to de Suhm describes as,  “that foolish vanity which makes a man entertain a marvellous idea of himself.” For idleness he had a positive loathing. After an attack of illness he wrote : “The doctor, more cruel than the malady itself, condemns me to take daily exercise, time which I am obliged to take from my hours of study. These charlatans wish to interdict my self-instruction; soon they will be saying that I must give up thinking. But, when every­thing is considered and taken into account, I prefer to be sick in body than to be crippled in mind.”

He used to date his final repudiation of the Christian religion, from the year 1736, when he went to Rheinsberg, but the break had really occurred much earlier. The comparative safety at Rheinsberg, the freedom from his father’s interference, enabled him to exhibit his opinions without fear. He had been led to them originally by the excess of religious instruction to which he had been subjected, by revolt against all that his father tried to force upon him, and by a refusal to submit to any form of personal surrender. Then came the decision that, when he was King, he would not submit to be controlled, as his father had been, by the ministers of the Church; and, finally, he believed that the Christian religion forbade the career of conquest and aggression that he had planned for himself.

He wrote, in August 1736, a long letter to Voltaire, and received in reply a letter of compliments. A regular correspondence ensued. Frederick praised Voltaire as a poet, a thinker, a lover of truth and of the human race. Voltaire replied by describing Frederick as a unique prince, whose existence was a guarantee for the welfare of his people, and an example to all princes for all time. Frederick sympathised with Voltaire for the persecu­tion his writings had brought upon him, denounced these efforts at preventing the spread of truth, and offered Voltaire all the assistance in his power. Verses were exchanged. Frederick begged Voltaire to correct his, which Voltaire, after repeated pressure, ultimately did. For example he pointed out that ‘trompette does not rhyme with tête, for tête is long and pette is short, and rhyme is for the ear and not for the eyes… 

…Défaites, for the same reason, does not rhyme with conquêtes’... 

Je n’eus point reçu l‘existence, you should say je n’eusse: and for la sagesse avait pourvue, you should say pourvu. May it please Y. R. H. do not write opinion with a g, and deign to give this word the four syllables of which it is composed; in such matters great princes and great geniuses must yield to the pedants. All the great­ness of your genius can do nothing against syllables, and you are not the master to put a g where it does not exist. While I am on syllables I would beg also Y. R. H. to write vice with a c and not with ss. With attention to these small matters, you may be of the Académie française when you please, and, Prince apart, you would do it honour : few of the Academicians express themselves with as much force as my Prince, the great reason being, that he thinks more than they do.”

In the contest of compliments Frederick had less ability but more sincerity. Voltaire sent letters to Keiserling and Jordan. Frederick replied, “Your two letters have produced very different effects upon those to whom I have given them. Césarion (Keiserling) who had the gout has been cured by joy, and Jordan, who was quite well, was threatened with apoplexy from the same emotion, thus may the same cause produce very different results… Nothing is wanting at Rheinsberg but a Voltaire to make us perfectly happy; in spite of your absence, your person is, so to speak, inherent in us. You are always with us. Your portrait presides in my library; it hangs above the cupboard which preserves our golden fleece; it is placed just above your works, and facing the position which I take, so that I have it always before my eyes.” To this Voltaire replied, “There were once, accord­ing to the tales of antiquity, people who had genii who helped them in their great enterprises. My genius is at Rheinsberg. Ah! Monseigneur, in spite of the three hundred leagues, I feel my heart pressed quite close to that of Y. R. H.”

Frederick gained much from this correspondence. Apart from the improvement in his French, his mind was nourished and stimulated. He was twenty-four, Vol­taire was forty. The elder man took great pains with his pupil, writing often, and at considerable length. Voltaire also derived advantage. It was something in those days, even for an immortal, to be accepted by a Crown Prince as his friend.

Aware that he had a sympathetic listener, Frederick indulged in abuse of the Church and its ministers. “As for the theologians,” he wrote, “it seems they resemble each other, to whatever religion or nation they may belong ; their aim always is to arrogate to themselves despotic authority over the conscience. That suffices to make them jealous.”

Under the influence of the Church, inquiries into natural phenomena were regarded as irreligious and unbecoming. It required some courage and independence of spirit for a man of fashion to confess to an interest in science. Frederick wrote of Lord Baltimore, who had been intro­duced at Rheinsberg: “This Lord is a very sensible man, who is well informed, and who considers, with us, that a knowledge of the sciences is not derogatory to the nobility, and does not degrade an illustrious rank.” In this spirit Frederick criticised Madame du Chatelet’s theory of the origin of fire, and discussed with her the phenomenon of the creation of ice in the summer. He made experiments with a pneumatic machine on the nature of a vacuum. He put a watch wound up, and a pea buried in earth, inside the vacuum, to see what would happen. He puzzled over the theory of a vacuum in space: and he tried to explain the causes of wind, and why there was more wind in the winter solstice.

He plied Voltaire with philosophical speculations. Voltaire wrote to him : “All metaphysics, in my opinion, consists of two things : the first, what all men of sense know; the second, what they never will know.” Frederick replied: “I give up to you willingly divine Aristotle, divine Plato, and all the heroes of scholastic philosophy. They were men who had recourse to words to hide their ignorance. Their followers believed in them on account of their reputation, and through whole centuries men have been content to repeat, without understanding, what they said. It is no longer permissible, in our days, to use words in other than their proper meaning.”

He believed in predestination : “I found all I have to say to you upon the providence, the wisdom, and the prescience of God. Either God is wise or he is not. If he is wise, he cannot leave anything to chance ; he must propose some object, an end in all that he does, and thence we deduce his prescience, his providence and the doctrine of irrevocable destiny”

He did not believe in free-will, because it must come from God, which is a contradiction. Another argument against free-will he found in the laws of gravity, of attrac­tion, of movement, and in the subjection of such vast bodies as the stars to the immutable laws of nature. “If the whole universe is subjected to fixed and permanent laws, how is it that Messrs. Clarke and Newton come and tell me that man, that creature so small, so imperceptible in comparison with the vast universe, what am I saying, that miserable reptile who himself crawls on the surface of this world which is but a point in the universe, that this miserable creature alone should have the privilege of being able to act as he chooses, not governed by any law, and in despite of his Creator?...  Since without God the world could not have been created and, since, as I have proved, man is not free, it follows that since there is a God, there must be an absolute necessity, and since there is an absolute necessity, man must as result be sub­ject to it and cannot have liberty.”

Frederick put the guilt for all crime upon God. “Neither free-will nor absolute fate absolves or exculpates the Divinity from being a participator in crime; for whether God gives us the liberty to do wrong, or pushes us straight to crime, comes to much the same thing; it is only a little more or less. If you seek for the origin of evil you cannot avoid attributing it to God.”

He made real efforts to understand the subject. He read and re-read Wolf’s Metaphysics, which was trans­lated from the German into French for him by de Suhm. In the end he found it impossible to believe definitely in the immortality of the soul, nor in man’s complete freedom of action. He wrote to Voltaire, 3rd February 1739 : “What thinks in us is assuredly an effect or result of the mechanism of our living machine.”

With some arrogance there was yet, when in the pre­sence of men of ability, an engaging modesty in this Prince. He earnestly desired to fit himself for the society of the foremost men of the day, as poet, philosopher, student of natural phenomena. His voluminous corre­spondence with Voltaire is a proof of his sincerity in these praiseworthy aims. While other princes thought only of fine manners and self-indulgences, the Prussian was bent upon the cultivation of the mental qualities. He had also a genuine curiosity about the world, a desire to understand men and things. There is no evidence of exceptional ability, but the aspiration after excellence is such that a career of prominence and success may con­fidently be predicted.

His father, in the meantime, was being subjected to humiliations. He made war with his mouth only, and thus earned both enmity and derision. Grasping in his demands, he neglected to give them any courageous support. The Emperor treated him with disdain. He did not think it necessary to inform his ally that preliminaries of peace had been signed at Vienna, in October 1735. Nor did he take the trouble to announce to the Elector of Brandenburg the marriage of Maria Theresa, the heiress to the Austrian dominions, to Duke Francis of Lorraine, in February 1736. The Emperor went on to unfriendly acts. He issued an order that no more Prussian recruit­ing should be permitted in his dominions.

Frederick William I was stirred to the depth by this treatment. He wrote to his son : “That is the return for the contributed ten thousand men and all the defer­ence I have shown the Emperor, and you can conclude that it helps nothing even to sacrifice oneself for him. So long as they have need of one they flatter, but as soon as they think they no longer require one’s assistance they remove the mask and ignore all acknowledgment. The reflections which must occur to you will enable you to be careful to avoid similar occurrences.” When the Crown Prince came to Potsdam, 2nd May 1736, the King, before his Court, and in his son’s presence, indulged in violent abuse of the Emperor. Turning at last to his son he said, with tears in his eyes, “Here stands one who will avenge me.” He wrote to Seckendorf, “After my death the house of Brandenburg will abandon the Emperor for another party, because it has been too treacherously handled.” He dictated an account of his diplomatic fortunes. “That it may be a warning to my son, the Crown Prince, that he may be on his guard in the future against being played with as I myself have been hitherto”.

Frederick William had no friends, and the Prussian claim on the Jülich-Berg Duchies had no supporters. Austria regretted the bestowal of a crown upon the Hohenzollerns, who were an aggressive and ungrateful race. France did not desire a Prussian extension on the Rhine. Both these Catholic powers preferred the Catholic claimant, Theodore of Sulzbach. George II regarded every exten­sion of Prussian strength as a threat to Hanover. Holland also objected to a Prussian advance in her direction. Frederick William’s huge army could only be considered as a threat to the security of all the neighbouring countries. The Sulzbach prince had no similar powers for mischief; yet, while the mere existence of the Prussian army con­stituted a menace, the Prussian King, irresolute and timid, was despised. In January 1737 France and Austria agreed with England and Holland to adjudicate upon the Jülich-Berg succession. This meant that Prussia had small chance of making good her claim.

Frederick’s comments on the situation are to be found in his letters to Grumkow. On the 14th February 1737 he wrote : “What I should do in this case, and what I suppose that the King will do, would be to establish above everything good relations with the Emperor; to make the Dutch believe that I have need of their negotiations, but not to engage myself in any way with them, and in the meantime to advance all the forty squadrons of dragoons with those of the hussars towards the Cleves country, to leave two regiments of cavalry with the garrisons in the towns of Prussia, and to collect all the infantry and the rest of the heavy cavalry in the marches, so that on the instant that anybody showed any inten­tion of opposing my design, I should be ready to fall upon him; and the forty squadrons should have orders at the proper time to march into Julich and Berg, and to take possession of the two Duchies. Then if negotiations ensued, all that could be done would be to make us give up Jülich and we should keep Berg, whereas if we invade Berg only, we should still have to give up the half. You may perhaps be in a position to make use of my reflections ; if you find them good you may appropriate them. The most important thing to remember is, to send off the dragoons without delay and before the event has occurred, for if we are not ready at the moment of the death of the Elector, our chance is gone. Would it not perhaps be possible to gain over some of the Palatinate officers who are in quarters with their regiments in the Duchies, so that they might deliver up the towns to us as soon as the occasion has come ?”

Later on in the year, when the hostility to Prussia was still more marked, Frederick wrote to Grumkow, 9th November 1737, “God knows that I desire a long life for the King: but if the case of the succession (of Jülich-Berg) does not arise in his lifetime, it will be seen that there will be no ground for accusing me of sacrificing my interests to other Powers. I am afraid rather that I may be reproached for too much temerity and vivacity. It seems that Heaven has destined the King to make every preparation that wisdom and prudence require to be made before commencing a war. Who knows if Pro­vidence does not reserve me to make a glorious use of these preparations, and to employ them for the accom­plishment of designs for which the foresight of the King has destined them?”

On the 10th February 1738 France, Austria, England and Holland presented identical notes in Berlin, propos­ing a conference for adjudicating upon the Jülich-Berg succession, giving the provisional possession to the Sulzbach claimant, and demanding a Prussian promise to abstain from interference for two years. Frederick William’s reply was a demand for fuller information as to the provisional arrangement. Frederick was disgusted with his father’s conduct. He wrote to Grumkow, 4th March 1738 : “I must confess that the reply to the mediators seems to me a conflict between grandness and unworthiness with which I am not in accord. The reply is like that of a man who does not wish to fight, but pre­tends that he is eager to do so; there were only two possible courses : either to reply with a noble pride and decline to stoop to petty negotiations whose real value would soon be exposed, or to bow under the shameful yoke which it is intended to impose. I am not in politics so fine that I can bring in accord the contrast of threats and submissions, I am young, I should be led perhaps by the impetuosity of my temperament, in any case I should not do things by halves... While prudence is very suitable for preserving what one possesses, boldness alone can make acquisitions.”

These letters exhibit the Frederick of history. He was intensely hurt by the discomfiture and weakness of his father. His own policy would be daring. He would place a force of cavalry and infantry on the Jülich-Berg border, and take the precaution of winning over (by bribery) the Palatine officers. On the death of the Elector he would instantly rush in his cavalry, and with the connivance of the bought officers, obtain control over the two Duchies. If superior force was threatened against him he would bargain, and would probably be able to retain Berg, which was really all that he could expect.

As he was unable to act, Frederick sat down to write out his views on the political situation. On the 19th April 1738 he announced to Voltaire the despatch to him of his Considerations sur l’état present du corps politique de l’Europe, He hoped to have it published anonymously in London; he begged Voltaire to keep the authorship secret.

“It is a permanent principle among Princes,” says Frederick, “to aggrandise themselves as much as they can.” With that aim Austria has created the Pragmatic Sanction, and obtained the assent to it of the various Courts, the object being to make the Empire hereditary in the house of Habsburg, to get rid of the right of elec­tion, and to make Germany subject to an arbitrary monarch. France aimed at conquests in Flanders, Luxem­burg, Treves, and Liège. “I foresee further, so far as France is concerned, projects still greater and more vast; and the moment that Providence has marked down for execution of these grand designs seems to be that of the death of His Imperial Majesty. What more suitable moment for giving the law to Europe?”. These prognostications were not happy, nor had they at the time any adequate justification. There was no sign of the existence of any such designs on the part either of France or of Austria. Frederick’s own mind was bent upon schemes of conquest, and he thought, or pretended to think, that others were making schemes which he would have to counter.

Voltaire, when acknowledging the receipt of Frederick’s political essay, protested that France and Austria had no such aggressive designs; he suggested that H.R.H. was indulging in pleasantry, but Frederick replied that he was quite serious.

Frederick observes that, “It is an established principle in the policy of invasion, that the first step in the conquest of a country is to obtain a position there, and this is what is most difficult.” He speaks of the “insupportable haughtiness which the Imperial Court affects, not only towards its inferiors but to its equals.” He concludes, “In one word, it is a disgrace and an ignominy for a Prince to lose his estates ; and it is an injustice and a criminal rapacity to conquer those over which one has no legiti­mate right.” Prussia must defend herself against the ambitions of France and Austria. Frederick considered that his honest, and weak, father was being bullied and cheated by unscrupulous and powerful neighbours. They appeared to be inspired by the doctrines contained in Machiavelli’s Prince. He resolved to write a repudia­tion of Machiavelli’s principles.

Basing his argument upon the essential wickedness of mankind, Machiavelli contended that for so great an object as the founding of a powerful Italian State, it was necessary for a Prince to make use of fraud and force without scruple. No considerations of any sort should be allowed to interfere. Some examples of his teaching may be given.

In Chapter XV he says that there is so much “differ­ence between how we live and how we ought to live, that he who leaves that which is done for that which ought to be done, studies his ruin rather than his safety : because a man who should profess to be honest in all his dealings would necessarily come to ruin among so many that are dishonest. Whence it behoves every Prince, desirous of maintaining his powers to learn how to be dishonest, and to make use or not of this knowledge according to circumstances. Let him be heedless of the risk of infamy for such vices, without which it is hardly possible for him to save his State.”

In Chapter XVII, Machiavelli says : “In general it is certainly far better to be considered merciful; neverthe­less mercy must not be badly employed. Caesar Borgia was esteemed a cruel man; nevertheless that cruelty of his set Romagna to rights, united it and brought it to a state of peace and good faith. And, in fact, he was more merciful than the Florentines who, in order to avoid cruelty, allowed Pistoja to be destroyed by factions. It would be better, were it possible, to be loved and feared at the same time ; but as that is not possible, it is better to be feared, when you have to choose the alternative.”

Chapter XVIII is headed : “How far a Prince is obliged by his Promise.” It begins, “How honourable it is for a Prince to keep his word, and act rather with integrity than collusion I suppose everybody understands ; never­theless experience has proved in our own times that the Princes who have achieved great deeds, are those who have held good faith of small account, and have known how to bewilder men’s brains by cunning, and in the end have succeeded better than those whose actions have been ruled by honour… A Prince should know how to assume the beast nature of both the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot defend himself against snares, nor the fox against wolves… Therefore a prudent lord neither could nor should observe faith, when such observance might be to his injury, and when the motives that caused him to promise it are at an end. Were all men good this precept would not be good; but since men are bad and would not keep faith with you, you are not bound to keep faith with them… It is neces­sary to give a good colouring to. your nature and be a great dissembler and dissimulator, because men then readily allow themselves to be deceived… A Prince may be obliged, for the maintenance of his State, to act against faith, against charity, against humanity, integrity and religion. He should take care that in his aspect as in his words he may seem all piety, faith, humanity, integrity and religion, but  I will dare to say that it is to his injury upon them, while it is useful to him to appear them”

Many efforts have been made to soften and extenuate the plain words of Machiavelli. Some have contended that, as he was impelled to write by the chaotic condition of the Italian States, his remarks must be regarded as applicable only to the time and place with which he was dealing. But the basis of his reasoning was his belief in the unalterable wickedness of man; and if he had been speaking only of an exceptional case, he would have made that evident. Machiavelli has also been copiously and indiscriminately abused, and not without excuse, for his doctrines are contrary to the ideals of civilisation, and their adoption by a king and a nation can only bring upon them the hostility of all civilised peoples. The mere fact that, while many princes have in the past acted in accordance with the Machiavellian principles, not one of them has been willing to admit that construction upon his conduct, is sufficient proof of the universal abhorrence they arouse. But Machiavelli was an honest man, as his open advocacy of dishonesty attests. We do not expect cheats and hypocrites to applaud him publicly.

Though Frederick may not have realised it, the candour of the Italian was the real cause of his own disapproval. The Crown Prince had not yet been in a position to make use of force, but for fraud he had already shown much readiness and capacity. His father had made frequent references to his son’s wiles, and Grumkow’s prophecy, “Junior will cheat them all,” was based upon intimate acquaintance. Frederick was impelled to embark upon a refutation of the doctrine that a Prince may make use of fraud, in order to conceal his own inclinations and intentions. So we find him belabouring Machiavelli with opprobrious epithets. “He is an infamous corrupter, a monster, sophist of crime, doctor of crime, charlatan of crime, tiger, infamous criminal, unworthy of his creation, the most wicked, the most criminal of men, a demon of hell, a monster whom hell itself could hardly produce, he makes one shudder with horror and indignation,— and so on”. Voltaire at last objected. “When you have abused Machiavelli soundly, it might be well, after that, to restrict yourself to argument,” he wrote. Frederick protested too much. He betrayed his anxiety lest those who knew him should suspect the reality of his disapproval.

The Réfutation is wordy and rambling, half as long again as the literary masterpiece which it attacked. Voltaire wrote to Frederick, 20th February 1740 : “I like and admire the whole tone of the work, and from that standpoint, I go on to say with hardihood to Your Royal Highness, that some of the chapters are rather long.” With Frederick’s permission, Voltaire cut out many abusive epithets, most of the passages that might give offence to reigning princes, and some of the irrelevant matter, reducing the whole from 136 to 101 pages. The amended and shortened version was published under the style of L'Anti-Machiavel, ou Examen du Prince de Machiavel. The original title was Réfutation du Prince de Machiavel. From this latter work our extracts are taken.

Frederick begins by asserting that “The maxims of Machiavelli are as contrary to good morals as the system of Descartes to that of Newton”; but nowhere does he stop to explain how or why Machiavelli’s maxims are contrary to ‘good morals,’ nor does he say what he understands by these words.

He complains that, “Interest is everything with Machia­velli. According to his way of thinking, actions the most unjust and atrocious become legitimate, when they have interest or ambition for their object.” “I speak not with him,” says Frederick scornfully, “of religion, nor of morals, but merely of interest; that will suffice to confound him.” So the refutation aims at nothing more than the demonstration that in practice unjust and atrocious actions do not pay. “Must one discuss, must one argue to demonstrate the advantages of virtue over vice, of beneficence over the desire to do injuries, of generosity over treachery? I think that every reasonable man knows well enough his interests to realise which is the most profitable of the two, and to abhor the man who, without feeling doubt or hesitation, decides in favour of crime.” Thus interest is everything with Frederick as with Machiavelli, and the question of ethics is abandoned. “Virtue should be the sole begettor of our actions, for who says virtue says reason ; they are inseparable things and will always be so, for those who wish their conduct to be consecutive. Let us then be reasonable, since a little reason is all that distinguishes us from the beasts, and it is only goodness which can liken us to that Being infinitely good, from whom we derive our existence.” Frederick does not realise that ‘ virtue,’ should be defined: nor has he perceived that Machiavelli also bases his idea of political ‘virtue’ upon reason. This was pointed out to him by Voltaire, who wrote, 23rd February 1740, “It seems to me that sometimes Machiavelli retrenches himself in one territory and Y.R.H. beats him in another.”

Basing himself then on utility and success, Frederick proceeds to observe that the Prince should make his people happy, because “A contented people will not think of revolt, a happy people fears more to lose its Prince, who is also their benefactor, than the Sovereign himself can have cause to apprehend the diminution of his power.’ In these remarks Frederick is thinking of his father, whose tyranny was resented by his people as well as by his eldest son. He has not noticed that Machiavelli insists, several times, that the Prince must 4 preserve the affections of his people.”

Frederick says that in the time of Machiavelli when the arts were in their infancy (such is his knowledge of the cinquecento) the baleful glory of the conqueror, with the great and striking actions which impose a certain respect by their grandeur, were preferred to kindness, equity, clemency, and all the virtues. Machiavelli might therefore say that, in his time, it was natural to desire to make conquests, and that a conqueror could not fail to acquire glory; we reply today that it is natural to man to desire to preserve his estate and to enlarge it by legitimate means, but that envy is not natural to any but souls born bad, and that the desire to aggrandise oneself with the spoils of another will not present itself so readily to the mind of an honest man, nor to those who desire the esteem of the world.’ Frederick does not show how the natural desire to enlarge an estate can be gratified without despoiling anybody; and as the desirer is to be his own judge of what constitutes 4 legiti­mate means,’ naked conquest may be justified whenever desired.

“I ask what could induce a man to aggrandise himself, for what reason he could form the design of raising his power upon the misery and destruction of other men, and how he can believe that he will make himself illus­trious by creating miseries.” This is beside the mark, because Machiavelli does not advocate the conquest of strange lands. He proposes the precise opposite, a rebel­lion against foreign oppression and the unification of a number of small domains in the hands of a powerful native Prince, governing a united people.

Frederick makes a remark upon which his own career throws a curious light:— “The new conquests of a Sovereign do not make the estates which he already possesses more opulent or more rich, his people obtain no advantage, and he deceives himself if he imagines that such conquests will bring him happiness. His ambition will not be satisfied with the first conquest, he will become insatiable, and in consequence always dissatisfied with himself.”

These references to the nefariousness of all designs upon one’s neighbour’s property are so inconsistent with Frederick’s policy, both before and after the date of the essay, that the charge of hypocrisy inevitably arises. In the letter to Natzmer, of February 1731, Frederick dis­cussed how Prussia could acquire neighbouring terri­tories, West Prussia, and the Jülich-Berg Duchies. In the letter to Grumkow, he proposed an attack without warning upon the Duchies. In the Considerations he observed how natural it was that every Prince should desire aggrandisement. It is difficult to believe that while he was denouncing Machiavelli’s supposed advocacy of foreign conquest, Frederick had shut out of his mind his own fixed and declared intention to despoil his neigh­bours at the first opportunity.

He writes : “There are only three legitimate ways of becoming master of a country; either by succession, or by the election of the people who have the power, or when, by a war justly undertaken, one conquers some province from the enemy.” After justifying purely defen­sive wars he says, “The wars which sovereigns undertake for the maintenance of certain rights or of certain claims which are disputed, are not less just than the first.” He is thinking of Prussian claims upon Jülich-Berg or any other lands. These sentences bring down the whole peaceful edifice, for the Prince may conquer a neighbour whenever he desires, by pleading “just undertaking”, or “claims.” All wars of aggression, including those of Frederick himself, have been excused by the use of such expressions.

With regard to Machiavelli’s advocacy of cruelty in certain conditions, and his desire that his Prince should be feared more than loved, Frederick declares, “that any King whose policy has no other aim but to make himself feared, will be reigning over slaves; that he will not be able to expect great actions from his subjects, for what is done out of fear or timidity has always shown marks of the same qualities; that a Prince with the gift of making himself loved will reign over hearts, because his subjects will find it agreeable to have him for their master, and that there are a great many examples in history of great and fine actions done out of love and fidelity… I conclude then that a cruel Prince exposes himself to be betrayed more than one who is good-natured, for cruelty is insupportable, and one is soon tired of being in fear, and kindness is always lovable and one does not tire of loving it.” The last paragraph contains a refer­ence to the King’s treatment of his eldest son.

The doctrine of being loved rather than feared Frederick would not apply to the army. “I admit that an army cannot continue without severity, for how would it be possible to keep to their duty, libertines, debauchees, criminals, poltroons, cowards, men of gross, mechanical, and animal nature, if they were not to some extent con­trolled by the fear of punishment?”. The soldiers are the only people who are under the complete control of the King. Frederick agreed with his father that they should be made to fear their officers more than the enemy, regardless of the spirit of love, which begets great and fine actions, and forgetting his assertion that fear makes cowards.

“The world is like a game of cards, in which are engaged some honest men and some thieves who cheat. In order that a Prince, who has to join in the game, should not be cheated, he must know how cheating at cards is done, not that he may ever practise what he has discovered from such lessons, but that he may not be the dupe of the others.  In one word, no consideration should be strong enough to permit an honest man to be false to his obligation.., Princes should not employ ruse and finesse except to discover the designs of their enemies. For if they make a sincere profession of probity, they will unfailingly obtain the confidence of Europe; they will be fortunate without cheating, and powerful by their virtue alone.”

Very good : but then we have this : Cheating is even a defect in politics, when it is carried too far. This gives the whole case away; for it appears that the high moral principles which have been so proudly displayed do not refer to politics, the chief business of a Prince. In politics cheating is admissible, but care should be taken that it should not go too far. What that means Frederick illustrates by an anecdote of a French official, who protested against being employed to cheat in a trumpery affair, “It is known that I am an honest man, reserve therefore my character for probity for some occa­sion when the welfare of France is at stake.” The inference is, as Frederick observes, that one can cheat only once. To make a second attempt while the first is still remem­bered, that is going “too far.”

“I admit, besides, that there are annoying necessities when a Prince cannot avoid breaking his treaties and his affiances ; yet he should do this in a proper manner, acquainting his allies in good time, and only when the welfare of his people and a very great necessity compel him.” Frederick the Great found these ‘annoying neces­sities’ recur with frequency, and he always forgot to acquaint his ally in good time.

Much of the Refutation is devoted to the assertion of copy-book maxims. “We should always remember not to do to others what we would not wish them to do to us.” It was for Frederick a matter of importance, that he should affirm and reaffirm his own personal endorse­ment of the accepted moral precepts. Having pro­claimed, over and over again, and in loud tones, his irre­vocable attachment to justice and kindness, having bestowed resounding abuse on the man who had depreciated the practical value of those qualities, having thus, at small cost and without discussion, proved his own ‘virtue,’ the Prussian was then at liberty to act as the exigencies of the moment might seem to him to require. Necessity, claims, just undertakings, discovery of hostile machinations, self-defence, might be alleged as excuse for any injustice or unkindness, any cruelties or treacheries, that might hold out a prospect of gain.

Frederick’s study of Machiavelli confirmed him in his opinions. He was a secret and furtive Machiavelli. The Italian was honest: the real opinions and intentions of the Prussian have to be discovered by close examination of his words. It is strange that their meaning has been so long misunderstood. They reveal the future. It can be foreseen that when the Crown Prince becomes a King he will attack his neighbours in order to annex their territory, and will shrink from no fraud or violence to attain his object, alleging, if challenged, just claims and powerful necessities.

 

CHAPTER VI

BORN TO BE A KING

 

In the autumn of 1739 Frederick William was again seri­ously ill, suffering from dropsy and other ailments; before the year was out it had become evident that this time there would be no recovery. When all hope had been abandoned, he sent for Frederick and instructed him as to the state of public affairs. On the 9th February 1740 he wrote to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau, “I expect and prepare myself for death, and have spoken openly to my eldest son in all necessary matters.’ The King was confirmed, by this discussion with Frederick, in the con­viction that had been growing upon him, that his suc­cessor would after all do him credit. He perceived at least that Frederick would be as despotic as himself, and the thought gave him pleasure ; a mild, easy-going rule by the son would have cast odium on the memory of the father. The King said to Frederick, “There is a Frederick William in thee,” meaning that his son would be a hard, domineering master, like his father.

The death of the King occurred on the 31st May 1740. At the age of twenty-eight Frederick obtained the coveted place. He was the first of the Hohenzollerns born to be a King. As he said, later on, “Frederick I, in elevating Prussia to a Kingdom, had by that vanity for grandeur placed a germ of ambition in his posterity, which would sooner or later bring forth fruit.” In the first born Royalty the germ was bound to be exceptionally vigorous.

The difference between a King and an Elector was not one of degree but of quality. A King was anointed; he was of divine essence, the agent and partner of God; while an Elector was no more than the local magnate who owed feudal obligations to the Emperor. Once a King, always and everywhere a King. The Brandenburg sub­jects of the Elector were designated Prussians, not Brandenburgers, to emphasise the kingship of the Elector. When Louis XV called Frederick scornfully the ‘Marquis de Brandebourg,’ he challenged the Royal status in Germany of the Elector. George I did not call his Electoral troops in Hanover Englishmen, but Hanoverians. The Hohenzollern despot made the most of his kingship. In Branden­burg he was the only Prussian; the name was dynastic, not national. It was through the army that it was forced upon the Electorate. The King being Prussian his soldiers were Prussians. So the name derived from a barbarous and distant territory spread ultimately over a large part of Germany.

One of Frederick’s early acts as King was to mitigate the use of torture. He remembered what he had suffered, in prison at Cüstrin, from the fear of being put upon the rack. He knew that he was not of the stuff to endure such a trial with credit, and could not bear the thought of the agonies inflicted upon prisoners. But he made exceptions in cases of wholesale murder, or of conspiracy, or ‘bei dem Crimen laesae Majestatis und Landes-verra-therei,’ for the crimes of lèse-majesté and high treason. Offences against the King’s Majesty and against the State stood in a separate category, as the greatest of all crimes. Terrible cruelties continued to be practised during his reign on criminals who were about to be executed. Flogging in the army was never so frequent and so severe as in Frederick’s time.

The death of Frederick William I proved a terrible misfortune for the new Queen. Frederick wrote at once to his wife: “Madame, God has just taken away the King at half-past three this afternoon. He thought of you” (he had dictated an affectionate letter to his daughter-in-­law on the day of his death) “and drew from us all tears of real compassion. You cannot imagine with what firmness he met death. You will come, if you please, on Wednesday or Thursday to Berlin. Knobelsdorff should repair thither at once. We will lodge in our old house. As soon as you have arrived you must begin by paying your respects to the Queen, and then you will come to Charlotten­burg, if I am there. I have not time for more. Adieu.”

This letter indicates the existence of good relations, and it is in accord with the intimate and even affectionate spirit of Frederick’s previous letters to his wife. But his mother now intervened with disastrous effect. She had fought pertinaciously for a British connection, and had never forgiven Elizabeth Christina for not being a British Princess. She had also always been jealous of her daughter-­in-law. When Elizabeth received a letter from Frederick, his mother expected one also. “Madame,” wrote Frederick to his wife, 10th August 1739, “Please do not let it be known that I am writing to you, as I am not writing also to the Queen.” To this insistent jealousy was now added the knowledge that the new Queen took precedence over her, and the fear that she might undergo the total eclipse which Queen-Dowagers often experience. She was on the spot at Berlin, while her rival was still at Rheinsberg. She took advantage of her influence over her son, to remind him that he had been married by compulsion, and that, while submitting to the unavoidable, he had declared that he would not have anything to do with his bride. Frederick had almost forgotten that, in the happy days at Rheinsberg. He had been attracted, in spite of himself, by his wife’s charming person and her sweet and lovable nature. But now he returned to his original feelings; he would avenge his father’s tyranny upon his wife. On the 1st June he wrote to her from Berlin :

‘ Madame,—When you have arrived you will go at once to the Queen, to show your respect, and you will endeavour to do so more markedly than hitherto; then you may remain here, your presence being necessary, until I write to you. Receive few people, or none at all. Tomorrow I will decide upon the mourning for the ladies, and I will send you the result. Adieu; I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you again in good health.”

Insist­ence is now laid on the wife’s submission to her mother­-in-law, and there is no reference to the meeting at Charlot­tenburg, or in their former Berlin house. The old rancour against the forced subjection to his father’s will was revived.

Frederick never lived with his wife again. He seldom admitted her into his presence. He scarcely ever wrote to her, and then in the coldest and most formal terms. As she had no children, it was made plain to her that her existence was a nuisance. He never visited her at her Palace of Schönhausen, nor did he ever invite her to Sans Souci, which she never saw. Formal meetings took place, at long intervals, at Berlin. In Frederick’s voluminous correspondence there is scarcely a single mention of her, in his poems none at all.

When her brother was killed fighting for Prussia, at the battle of Soor, Frederick sent her this cruel letter: “Madame,—You may have heard what happened yester­day. I lament and regret the dead; my brothers and Ferdinand are well. They say Prince Louis” (another brother of the Queen’s, who was fighting on the Austrian side) “is wounded. I am, with much esteem,” etc. On this occasion the Queen of Prussia gave expression to the only complaint from her of which we have any know­ledge. She wrote to her brother Ferdinand : “I am accus­tomed to his ways, but I am none the less affected by them, above all on such an occasion, where one of my brothers has lost his life in his service; it is too cruel to behave in such a way. Patience, I have nothing to reproach myself, and I do my duty; the good God will help me to bear this with many other things.” A few days later Frederick sent a few sentences intended for condolence, but he added coldly that it was her brother’s own fault, that he would not accept advice, and that he was surprised that he had not been killed long before.

When Prince William died, Elizabeth Christina sent her husband a long, warm-hearted letter of sympathy for the loss of his brother. When Frederick departed for the Seven Years’ War, she wrote him a tender letter of affec­tion, “God preserve you, and give us soon peace and tranquillity, and crown with glory and happiness all your laudable enterprises, and may it all develop to your satisfaction. These are the very sincere wishes which emanate from a heart totally attached and devoted to you, and full of a tender and sincere affection, but also quite penetrated with sorrow and affliction when I think that perhaps we are seeing you confront danger once more; I cannot think of it without great pain.” Frederick’s acknowledgment was forbidding and unmannerly: “Madame, the multitude of business has prevented me from writing to you before this. It is to take leave of you that I address to you this letter, desiring for you health and contentment in the troubles which are about to arise, I am”, etc.’

This must surely be reckoned the blackest of all the black spots on the memory of Frederick the Great. He would have derived great advantage from a continuation of the Rheinsberg relations. He lived henceforth a lonely life, into which no feminine influence entered, for even his mother was kept away as much as possible. He might have been happy with a wife and other women about him. He had to admit his wife’s amiability. “Madame,” he wrote on one occasion, “those who know you cannot avoid loving you, and the goodness of your heart deserves appreciation.” But the past tyranny of his father, the present jealousy of his mother, the lack of children, and his own stony heart combined to prevent him from enjoying the benefit of her sweet presence.

On the 1st June 1740, the day after his father’s death, the new King expounded the theory of his Government to his ministers. He said, “You have hitherto made a difference between the interests of the master and those of his people ; you thought you were doing your duty by applying yourselves only to the first without troubling about the rest. I do not blame you, knowing that the late King had his reasons for not disapproving, but I have mine for thinking differently on the matter. I consider the interests of my Estates are mine, and I have none which are contrary to theirs. Therefore do not adhere to that separation of interests, and be warned once for all that I regard as my interest only that which may contribute to the comfort and happiness of my people.” These were mere words. Frederick was more despotic than his father. While pretending, like his ancestor, the Great Elector, that he worked solely for the good of his people, his first thought always was of himself and the Hohenzollern dynasty. His father had been honest; he was a hypocrite.

There was to be real freedom of conscience.  “All religions”, wrote Frederick, “must be tolerated, for, each one must seek salvation in his own way.” This was no innovation; it was the traditional Hohenzollern policy; but Frederick’s father, under the influence of the Church, had banished the philosopher Wolf, closed the Academy of Science, and suppressed, as far as in him lay, all intellectual inquiries. Frederick’s freedom from subservience to the clergy enabled him to give the Academy of Science new life, to send for Wolf, Maupertuis, and other men of note in philosophy, science, and the arts. Voltaire himself was induced ultimately to accept the King’s pressing invitation.

The Tabagie, or Tobacco Parliament, was, of course, abolished; the pipe smoking, the drunkenness, the un­seemly familiarities, were revolting to Frederick, for whom such scenes were impossible. The Court fools were dismissed. The boars and stags and other game in the royal preserves were killed, and the establishments broken up. Frederick took no interest in the killing of game, which had been one of his father’s chief occupations. The giant grenadiers were dismissed. They had been a useless expense and a cause of ridicule. The regiment continued to be noted for tall men, but all the unwieldy knock-kneed monstrosities were cut out. The money thus saved was spent in forming new regiments.

Voltaire urged the publication of the refutation of Machiavelli. When he heard that Frederick William was dying he wrote to Frederick, on the 10th March 1740 : “The more you are about to refute Machiavelli by your conduct, the more I hope that you will allow the antidote prepared by your pen to be printed.” Frederick replied, 26th April, “I abandon you my work, persuaded that it will be improved in your hands.” But when he became King, a short experience of the Prussian system of Govern­ment, coupled with his new sense of responsibility, changed his intentions. On the 23rd June he wrote to Voltaire, “For the love of God buy up the whole edition of the Anti-Machiavel”. De Camas told Voltaire that Frederick’s objection was, that there were one or two passages which might displease certain Powers. These were accordingly softened, but there had never been any real ground for apprehension on that head. Frederick’s real objection to publication was that it might bring upon him the charge of hypocrisy. “The work is not yet worthy of publication,” he said; “one must chew and chew at a work of that nature, that it may not appear in an incongruous manner before the eyes of a public always inclined to be satirical.” Immediately on his accession Frederick plunged eagerly into the fray of international politics, making use of dissimulation for the purpose of aggrandisement. It was too ‘incongruous’ that the world should be informed that as Crown Prince he had denounced what was now his policy. But it was too late to withdraw. In spite of Voltaire’s efforts to prevent it, the Dutch printer to whom he had sent the manuscript, brought out an edition in September. Voltaire’s edition, in which he cast doubts on the authen­ticity of the Dutchman’s, appeared soon after. Frederick received a copy on the 17th October. He was dissatisfied with it and talked of issuing an authentic and corrected version, but by that time he had other things of more importance to think about.

The long-hoped-for meeting with Voltaire took place on the 11th September, at Castle Moyland, near Cleves. Frederick was suffering from quartern ague, and asked Voltaire, who was at Brussels, to visit him. Voltaire arrived in the evening, and remained at the castle till the 14th. They were both very satisfied with this meeting.

Frederick wrote to Jordan, from Potsdam, 24th September : “I have seen this Voltaire, whom I was so curious to know; but when I saw him I had my Quartern fever, and my mind was as weak as my body. Indeed, in the society of men of his stamp one must not be ill; one should even be in very good health, better than usual, if that can be managed. He has the eloquence of Cicero, the sweet­ness of Pliny, and the wisdom of Agrippa; he combines, in fact, the virtues and talents of three of the greatest men of antiquity. His mind is always at work; every drop of ink from his pen bears evidence of his intellect. He declaimed to us Mahomet i., an admirable tragedy he has produced; he transported us out of ourselves, and I could only admire him and be silent.”

That Voltaire in his turn was delighted with Frederick is evident from two letters which he wrote to private friends. To Ciderville, 18th October, “I have seen one of the most amiable of men, a man who would be the charm of society, who would be sought everywhere, if he was not a King, a philosopher without austerity, full of sweetness, complaisance, pleasantness, forgetting that he is a King as soon as he is with his friends, and forgetting it so completely that he almost made me forget it also, and that I had to make an effort to remember that I saw seated at the foot of my bed a Sovereign who possessed an army of 100,000 men.” To Henault he wrote, 31st October: “I do not know precisely whether there have been greater Kings, but there has never been a more amiable man. It is a miracle of nature that the son of a crowned ogre, brought up among beasts, has fathomed, in the desert, all that refinement and all those natural graces which at Paris only a small number of persons possess, and which nevertheless make the reputation of Paris.” These letters were not written, like some others of Voltaire’s, in the hope of their being seen by Frederick. They express the real admiration felt by Voltaire for the character and accomplishments of Frederick, which were so far superior to the general average among Kings.

The reference to the 100,000 men is significant. Nobody ever thought of Frederick William I as the master of a large army, because it was so plain that his soldiers were collected merely for purposes of parade and display. Voltaire already perceived that the refuter of Machiavelli intended to make his army give him a position among the Great Powers.

To the already enormous army left him by his father, Frederick added sixteen new infantry battalions. They were for use, not ornament; for war, not the drill ground. This was the great change that came with the new reign. Frederick intended to make his army fight. He was, indeed, impatient for the opportunity, ready to pick a quarrel on a slight pretext. He was determined that his reign should be marked by an aggressive war.

Two events would furnish the opportunity,—the death of the Elector Palatine, and the death of the Emperor. Charles VI was only fifty-five years of age and apparently in good health, while the Elector Palatine was seventy, and had long been ailing. To be ready for the more likely event, Frederick prepared a large entrenched camp at Wesel. He intended, in accordance with the plan revealed to Grumkow, to be in a position to throw a large force into Jülich-Berg at the shortest notice. He expected opposition from England, Holland, France and Austria, but hoped, when once in possession of the Duchies, to obtain at least a cession of part of them, believing that the jealousies of the Powers would prevent any deter­mined opposition.

The death of the Emperor would suit him better. Nothing stood between him and Silesia, except the military force of Austria, for which he had small respect, and the Pragmatic Sanction, which he supposed that no Power would adhere to. Except from Austria, he expected no serious objection to a Prussian conquest of Silesia. Bavaria had already denounced the Pragmatic Sanction, and France was Bavaria’s old ally and Austria’s old enemy. Spain and Sardinia also had anti-Austrian ambitions. If the Emperor died a splendid opportunity would arise for the Prussian King, whose army was always ready, and would be the first in the field.

On the 25th October 1740 the news arrived that the Emperor Charles VI had died at Vienna five days earlier.

 

CHAPTER VII

THE FIRST SILESIAN WAR

1. 

THE Irruption into Silesia

On the 26th October, the day after he received the news of the death of the Emperor Charles VI, Frederick wrote to Voltaire : “This is the occasion for a complete change in the old system of politics; this is the loosened stone rolling on to the image of the four metals, which Nebuchad­nezzar saw, and which destroyed them all.” To Algarotti he wrote: “All has been foreseen, all arrangements made. So it is merely a question of carrying out plans which I have long had in my head.” Orders were at once issued for the instant, swift preparation of the army, with the utmost secrecy, for an immediate advance into Silesia. On the 28th occurred the death of the Czarina Anne, the friend and ally of Austria, an event which further encouraged Frederick in his designs.

The Elector of Bavaria raised a formal protest against the inheritance by Maria Theresa of the domains of her father, the Emperor Charles VI. The Elector put forward a worthless claim of his own through his ancestress Anna, daughter of Ferdinand I. All the other Powers who had guaranteed the Pragmatic Sanction, Prussia included, sent friendly assurances to Vienna.

On the 10th November Frederick wrote to Guy Dickens, the British Ambassador at Berlin, that in reply to in­quiries from the Dutch Government as to his intentions, he had answered that, “before receiving the assurance of a firm concert between Great Britain and the Republic, I could not declare myself, but that that liaison having j been formed, and seeing that the Republic intended to make an actual increase of its troops, all will go well. You perceive what this means, and you will consider, no doubt, that my reply has been just in the situation in which we are. For the rest I shall never be false to the sentiments of friendship which I entertain, and which I owe to His Majesty the King Your Master.—

I am, Your very affectionate   ‘Federic.'

‘P.S.—It rests with you at present to profit from all that I am doing for you, and if I do it without being bound as an ally, what may it not become when we are in alliance? ’

The postscript was in the King’s handwriting.

This letter is artfully worded. It was intended, without making any binding statement, to give the impression that Frederick was on the side of England and Holland, in support of Maria Theresa, and that he desired to enter into a formal alliance with those Powers on her behalf. It was received in that sense, the treacherous character of the new King not having yet been exposed.

At Vienna it was feared that France, the hereditary enemy, would encourage Bavaria to dispute the acces­sion of Maria Theresa. But there was every confidence in England and Prussia. England stood by her word. Lord Harington wrote to Mr. Robinson, the British Minister at Vienna: “England and Holland will remain in strict alliance with Austria. The King cannot doubt of taking the most effectual means to secure the concur­rence of the King of Prussia.” Robinson reported, 9th November 1740, “The King of Prussia has already answered and in a manner, as I am told, to the entire satisfaction of the Great Duke.” On the 16th : “His Prussian Majesty has been expeditious in giving repeated marks of his good intentions for this Court.”The Grand Duke Francis, husband of Maria Theresa, said to de Borcke, the Prussian Ambassador, “There is nothing but his Prussian Majesty and the King of Great Britain, that I can rely on.” On the 5th December Robinson wrote of “the most generous offers made by his Prussian Majesty of his friendship.” And on the 10th, he reported that the Grand Duke had said, that “persuaded as he was that the King of Prussia was the Prince in the world qui se piquait le plus d'honneur, he could have no bad intentions against the Queen”.

At Berlin Guy Dickens was witness of the military preparations; the troop movements made it evident that an advance into Silesia was in prospect. He reported, on the 3rd December 1740: “After the declarations made by His Prussian Majesty at Vienna, London, and at the Hague, and after the letter he wrote me, on the tenth of last month, one would almost think it was impossible for a Prince who had the least regard to honour, truth and justice, to act the part he is going to do; but it is plain his only view was to deceive us, and to conceal, for a while, his ambitious and mischievous designs”. The fraud perpetrated by the encouraging letter of the 10th November had become revealed.

On the 3rd December Frederick sent an official letter of explanation to George II. In a postscript he added, in his own handwriting: “The expedition which I am about to undertake is risky, but it is the only means to save Germany, which the Court of Vienna is ready to seize in conjunction with France.” He had the strange audacity to assert that he was acting in defence of Germany against the rapacious ambition of a young woman, who was still uncertain of her own position.

On the 4th December the troops left Berlin. On the 6th Guy Dickens obtained an audience with the King, which he reported as follows : “His Prussian Majesty asking me with some vivacity what I meant by the Indi­visibility of the Austrian Succession, I answered: the Pragmatick Sanction.” “Do you intend then,” said he, “to support it? I hope not, for it is not my intention.” I told His Prussian Majesty, that according to our engage­ments, we were obliged to do it, and so was he too, to which he replied, “That he had no such engagements, and if his Father had, he was not obliged by them, nor would he stick to any which he had not himself contracted and ratified”; observing this young Prince closer, I put him in mind of the letter he had been pleased to honour me with, of the tenth of last month, after which, and the Declaration made by his Majesty’s order in England, and at the Hague, I did not doubt the King our Master as well as Holland, would be greatly surprised to hear of the military preparations carrying on here, without any concert and communication with them, especially as they were Powers with whom he had so lately shown a desire to contract a close friendship and alliance, and though I could have no orders to speak to his Prussian Majesty upon these matters, yet I should be glad if he would be so kind as to let me know in what manner I was to write about these motions, which would draw the attention of all the Powers in Europe, as soon as they should be acquainted with them. When I mentioned this, His Prussian Majesty grew red in the face, and said, that he knew I could yet have no instructions to ask him that question, and if I had done it by order, he had an answer ready for me, That we had no right to inquire into his designs, and that he had never asked us any questions about our armaments at sea, and that all he did was to wish that we may not be beaten by the Spaniards.

When the details of this conversation reached Vienna, Robinson reported, 14th December : “This Court founds its heaviest reproach of the King of Prussia as who, upon Mr. Guy Dickens’ having mentioned the guaranty given by the late King of Prussia of the Pragmatic Sanction, should have answered that he did not think himself bound by any of his father’s engagements.” The Chan­cellor said to Robinson, “He denies his being bound to his father’s treaties, while he talked of nothing to Mr. Botta’ (the Austrian Ambassador at Berlin) ‘but of his friendship for this Court, and his good intentions which time would discover.” Borcke told the credulous Robin­son that he had been instructed “to assure this Court of His Prussian Majesty’s most absolute and entire friend­ship, to conjure the Queen and His Highness not to be alarmed, that time would show the extent of the good­ness of His Majesty’s intentions. That his entrance into Silesia was inevitable, nay necessary, for the balance of Europe, for the preservation of the very constitution of the Empire, and for the safety of the House of Austria in particular.” The simple Robinson reported, 5th December, that Frederick’s “professions of friendship had, to my knowledge, such marks of sincerity, that it was not possible to believe he made them only to put a quite opposite conduct the better into execution, that there would be something so black in such a proceeding as made it incredible ... in a word, if I was not the most mistaken man in the world, there was not a Prince besides the King my master, upon whose true intentions I could at present so much rely as those of the young King of Prussia, whose only fault, if he had one, was to have expressed too much zeal at first, for the service of this Court, to be digested by everybody here.”

To the French Ambassador, the Marquis de Beauvau, Frederick intimated that he was playing a game from which France would benefit, for if he obtained the aces he would share them.

To the Austrian, Marchese Botta, Frederick said : “I am going to Silesia, but, you understand, as a good friend; not so much to establish any rights I may have, as to defend the hereditary rights of the Queen against all her enemies, especially Saxony and Bavaria, who are ready to attack her. I want to place the Imperial Crown on the head of the Grand Duke.” Botta replied, “I must beg your Majesty to observe that neither Saxony nor Bavaria makes any sign of attacking us, and should they think of doing so, my sovereign is able to defend herself, if Your Majesty will only be content with looking on, especially as those two Powers would find it difficult to act in concert.” Saxony had given explicit support to the Pragmatic Sanction.

The extent and variety of the falsehoods is amazing. They began with such expressions of friendship at Vienna, that the Grand Duke told the Prussian Ambassador that he could rely only upon Prussia and England. This was followed by assurance of a close concord with Holland and England in their, support of Maria Theresa. Behind these deceitful assertions the attack on Austria was prepared. Then came the shameless, explanation in the letter to George II describing the onslaught on Maria Theresa as the only means to save Germany from her aggressive rapacity, supported by France. This did not prevent Frederick from assuring the French ambassador  that he would divide the spoils with France. He even  had the extraordinary importance to tell the Austrian Ambassador that he was attacking Maria Theresa by­way of defending her hereditary rights, and in order to place the Imperial Crown on the head of her husband.

Frederick has left behind him clear statements, both in contemporary documents and in subsequent writings, as to the motives by which he was influenced.

To Podewils, his secretary, he wrote, on the 1st November: “I give you a problem to solve. When one has the advantage should one exploit it or not ? I am ready with my troops and everything; if I do not turn that position to account, I am holding in my hands a possession of which I do not know how to make use ; if I exploit it, it will be said that I had the ability to make use of the advantage I have over my neighbours.”

Podewils was disturbed as to the justice of the case. He ventured to reply to the King on the 7th November: “On the question of right, I am obliged to say with pro­found respect to Your Majesty that, whatever well founded pretensions the House of Brandenburg may have had formerly upon the Duchies of Liegnitz, Brieg and Wohlau, on Ratibor and Oppeln, on the Principality of Jägerndorf and the circle of Schwiebus, in Silesia, there exist solemn treaties which the House of Austria will bring forward, by which the House of Brandenburg has let itself be induced, although fraudulently, to renounce these considerable pretensions in exchange for trifles.” Frederick’s note in reply was : “As for the question of right that is for the ministers, for you; it is time to work at it in secret, as the orders have been given to the troops. As for the question of actuality, you may rely upon me for that.”

In the Histoire de Mon Temps, Frederick writes of the desire for glory, with which the King (Frederick) was animated, and that motives not less powerful urged him to give at the beginning of his reign, evidence of vigour and firmness, to make the nation respected in Europe. All good citizens had their feelings ulcerated by the lack of consideration which the Powers showed for the late King, especially in the last years of his reign, and the disgrace attached by the world to the name of Prussian. To include everything that could animate the liveliness of a young Prince arrived at the position of power, let us add that Frederick I, in elevating Prussia to a Kingdom, had by that vanity for grandeur, placed a germ of ambition in his posterity, which would, sooner or later, bring forth fruit. The Kingdom which he had left to his descendants was, if the expression may be allowed, a sort of hermaphrodite, which had in it more of an Electorate than of a Kingdom. There was some glory to be obtained in clearing up this situation, and this sentiment was assuredly one of those which fortified the King in the grand enter­prises to which so many motives called him. Then he sets out the weakness of Austria, the confusion in Russia, the certainty of obtaining support either from France or England, and, as compared with Julich-Berg, the greater size and importance of Silesia, and its continuity to his own dominions. Add to these reasons an army quite ready for action, the money all found, and perhaps the desire to make a name. These were the causes of the war which the King declared against Marja Theresa of Austria, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia. I It is not pretended that he was actuated by concern for the welfare of his people. He was out for personal glory. He wrote to Jordan, 3rd March 1741: “My age, the fire of the passions, the desire of glory, even curiosity, to hide nothing from you, in fine, a secret instinct, have dragged me from the sweetness of the repose which I was enjoying, and the satisfaction of seeing my name in the Gazettes, and thereafter in history, has seduced me.” To Voltaire, 23rd December : “Such are my occupations (war labours) which I should give up willingly to another, if that phantom called glory did not so often appear before me. In truth, it is a great folly, but a folly of which it is very difficult to be rid, when once one has been infected.” The desire for ‘glory’ was stimulated by his position as the first Hohenzollern born a Royal Prince; it was also inspired by a determination that he should not be regarded as a negligible coward and fool, like his father.

Frederick left Berlin on the 13th December 1740, joined his troops at Crossen next day, and led them, 21,000 strong, into the north of Silesia on the 16th. Two days later, his special envoy, Gotter, demanded an audience with the Grand Duke Francis. Gotter was instructed to offer, in return for Silesia, the Imperial Crown, and an alliance with Prussia, Russia, England and Holland.  As it was to be expected, writes Frederick in the Histoire de Mon Temps,  that these offers would be rejected, in such an event Count Gotter was authorised to declare war upon the Queen of Hungary. The army had been more diligent than the embassy; it entered Silesia two days before the arrival of Count Gotter at Vienna. The Grand Duke was thus confronted with a fait accompli. His reply was, as Frederick had foreseen, a refusal. “While he (Frederick) has a man in Silesia, we have not a word to say to him. We will perish first, or save ourselves at any risk or hazard; but if either he is not entered and will abstain from entering, or if entering, will return, we will immediately treat with him at Berlin. There are means of gratifying the King, without his pressing to extort from us what is not in our power to grant.” The reference is to the Duchies of Julich and Berg, one of which Frederick might have obtained. But he wanted Silesia and the glory of a victorious war.

On entering Silesia, Frederick sent to Foreign Courts the following statement:

“The King, when making his troops enter Silesia, has not been influenced in that proceeding by any evil inten­tions against the Court of Vienna; and still less by any desire to trouble the repose of the Empire.

“His Majesty considered himself indispensably obliged to have recourse, without delay, to this means of vindi­cating the incontestable rights of his house upon that Duchy, founded upon ancient family and confraternity agreements between the Electors of Brandenburg and the Princes of Silesia, as well as upon other respectable titles.

“The present circumstances, and the reasonable fear of seeing himself forestalled by those who formulate pre­tensions upon the succession of the late Emperor, have demanded promptitude in this enterprise and vigour in its execution.

“But if these reasons have not permitted the King to enter into explanations beforehand with the. Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, they will never prevent His Majesty from always taking the interests of the house of Austria strongly to heart, and from being that house’s firmest support and help under any circumstances that may arise.” 

He was taking the interests of Maria Theresa strongly to his own heart.

Frederick speaks of the rights of his house upon the Duchy of Silesia. There never had been any such claim. The only territories that had ever been demanded by any of his ancestors, were certain small Duchies which together formed about one-third of Silesia.

2. 

Frederick’s First Battle

The Prussian army in December 1740 numbered 100,000 men. It had a better weapon than its Conti­nental rivals. Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau provided the grenadiers of his regiment with iron ramrods in 1698, and in 1699 gave them to the whole regiment. The iron ramrod could be handled energetically, while the wooden ramrod was liable to break under such treat­ment, and had to be used with leisurely care, the result being that the iron ramrod enabled the musket to be fired three times as fast as could be achieved with the wooden. Frederick William I supplied the whole Prussian army, infantry and cavalry, with iron ramrods in 1718 and 1719. George I introduced them into the British army in 1726. Forty-two years after iron ramrods had been supplied by Prince Leopold to his regiment, twenty-two years after they had been given to the whole Prussian army, fourteen years after they had been adopted in England, Austria still continued to use the obviously inferior wooden ramrod. The Prussian military autho­rities were in earnest. The iron ramrod typifies the spirit that permeated the whole Prussian army, from top to bottom; it gave assurance of victory whenever the con­ditions were approximately equal.

The artillery consisted of 3, 6, 12, and 24 pound cannons, 18 pound howitzers, 50 and 75 pound mortars. The lighter pieces had an effective range of 1600 yards with shot, of 400 to 500 yards with grape.

The cavalry were treated as mounted infantry, most of the corps being officially designated, ‘Regiments on horseback.’ They were taught to regard the carbine as their chief weapon. The horses, being regarded merely as the carriers of men trained in musketry, were given little care, and did not last long.

One of the weak points of the Prussian army was that more than half of the men were non-Prussians, recruited from other German States or from foreign countries. The population of the Prussian territories was two and a half millions, of the Austrian thirteen millions, but that dis­parity was of little military significance, the Prussian army being drawn from all parts of the German Empire, including Austria itself. The result of the Prussian system was that desertion was rife, chiefly owing to the severity of the discipline. There was no patriotic sentiment in a Prussian army. It was a professional, mercenary force, given to pillage and to merciless methods.                                     .

The strength of the Prussian army lay in its general discipline, and in particular, the drill-perfection of the infantry, with the consequent ease of movement, which no other army could imitate; and the iron ramrods and other useful and practical equipment, which no other army could equal.

The Austrians numbered 108,000 men, but owing to the necessity of keeping substantial garrisons in the Netherlands and Italy the army for operations in Silesia and Bohemia was smaller than that which Frederick could put into that field. The Austrian infantry was inferior in discipline and in equipment to the Prussian. The Austrian cavalry had a great and deserved reputa­tion. They were true horsemen; they charged straight, discharged their pistols at twenty yards, and then used the sabre.

The King’s plan was to take firm possession of the greater part of Silesia with all possible speed, before any organised resistance could be offered, and then to defend it against Austrian attack and bargain for a legal cession. Siege material was collected, and forwarded by the river Oder, for use against Glogau and Breslau. The Great Elector had himself prepared to enforce his claim upon Silesia in this way, and Frederick had carefully studied his plan.

Leaving a force to invest Glogau, Frederick went on with the main body towards Breslau, the capital of Silesia. Breslau was a free town. Its citizens were proud of the fact that they had upheld the independence of their town throughout the turmoil of the Thirty Years’ War, and they expected to come out of the present troubles with equal credit. They had already refused to admit the troops which the Austrian Commander, General Browne, wished to place as a garrison in the city. When Frederick arrived, on the 1st January 1741, he, likewise, was refused admittance, although Breslau was Protestant, and Frederick represented himself as the protector of Protestants against the tyranny of the Catholic Austrians.

He sent in assurances that he would respect the neu­trality of the city; he asked only that he should be allowed to enter, with a personal bodyguard of 30 men. At the same time, he seized several of the gates of the city, and pushed forward a force of 400 men, who obtained admission into the Dom-Insel, or Cathedral Island, on the right bank of the river Oder. These combined arguments prevailed and, on condition that the Prussian army kept outside the walls, Frederick was permitted, on the 3rd January, to enter the city with his bodyguard. He drove out the Austrian officials, replacing them with Prussians, took over the post-office, opening the letters to obtain information of Austrian movements, and while technically respecting the privileges of a free town, made himself master of the city. The Dom-Insel was within the walls, but being separated by the river Oder from the larger part of the city, Frederick made that an excuse for retaining his troops there, in defiance of his promise. The neutrality engagements were made in order to be broken. Frederick wrote to Podewils, 2nd January 1741, “Breslau from today belongs to me.”

He was meeting with scarcely any opposition in Silesia. On the 9th January Ohlau was captured, on the 13th Ottmachau. Neisse was too strong; the bombardment of the 19th to 21st January failed. On the 25th Frederick left his troops to return to Berlin. In six weeks he had overrun the whole of Silesia, with the exception of the fortresses Glogau, Brieg, and Neisse, which were all three invested. The secrecy of his preparations, and the dis­honest exhibition of friendship by which they had been covered, had enabled him to take the Austrians unawares.

Frederick renewed his offer to Maria Theresa, of support against all rivals, and the Imperial Crown for her husband, in exchange for a good part of Silesia. He seems to have expected that Maria Theresa, being a woman, would be cowed and disheartened by his easy triumph, and would accept his offer. If she had done so he would have tricked her over the bargain, for he refused to explain what he meant by ‘a good part’ of Silesia. To his surprise these proposals were rejected with scorn. He had not expected a determined opposition. When he found himself obliged to fight in earnest to retain the booty he had seized, he gave up, and never again repeated the talk of ‘glory.’

Diplomatic exchanges were active during the winter. Frederick wrote to Cardinal Fleury, the Minister of Louis XV, proposing an alliance, and he offered the Elector of Bavaria the imperial crown and acquisition of Bohemia.  Fleury declared that France’s guarantee of the Prag­matic Sanction could not prejudice the rights of third parties, Bavaria to wit. On the other side, George n. declined to repudiate his guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction. Lord Harington wrote to Robinson, 27th February 1741, “The King disapproves the King of Prussia’s behaviour, and will fulfil his engagements, as soon as a plan of operations can be agreed on”.’

The Austrian army was placed under the command of General Neipperg, aged fifty-seven, twice Frederick’s age. At the end of March, Neipperg advanced from Olmütz and pressed across the Moravian mountains, still deep in snow. His object was to relieve Neisse and Brieg, and capture the Prussian park of artillery at Ohlau. Frederick was on his right flank, at Jägerndorf. By the 3rd April Neipperg had advanced to within a day’s march of Neisse, while Frederick, still at Jägerndorf, with an inferior force, was twenty miles on his right rear. Neipperg might have tried a dash at his enemy, but he preferred to march on in a dignified and leisurely manner. Frederick, at last aware of his danger, retreated quickly, collecting detachments as he went. On the 8th April, Neipperg was at Grottkau, and Frederick about twelve miles to the N.E., between him and Brieg. The King decided jo attack next day.

With the prospect of his first battle very much in mind, he wrote two curious and interesting letters. To his brother and heir, Prince William, he wrote :

fPogarell, 8th April 1741.

‘ My very dear Brother,—The enemy has just entered Silesia. We are separated by no more than a mile. Tomorrow should decide our fortunes. If I die, do not forget a brother who has always loved you very tenderly. Dying, I recommend you to my very dear mother, my domestics, and my first battalion. I have informed Eichel and Schumacher of all my wishes. Always remember me, but console yourself for my loss; the glory of the Prussian arms and the honour of the House inspire my actions, and will guide me up to my death. You are my sole heir; dying, I recommend to you those I have loved most during my life, Keyserling, etc., you know, better than I can say it, the tenderness and all the feelings of the most inviolable friendship with which I am ever, My very dear brother, your faithful brother and servant till death, 

                        Federic.’

The frequent reference to approaching death is remark­able. To Jordan, Frederick wrote in the same lugubrious strain :

Pogarell, 8th April 1741.

My dear Jordan,—There will be a battle tomorrow. Thou knowest the chances of war; the life of Kings is not more respected than that of private persons. I cannot tell what may happen to me. If my destiny is ended, remember a friend who loves thee tenderly always; if Heaven prolongs my days, I will write to thee from tomorrow, and thou wilt learn of our victory.

Farewell, dear friend ; I will love thee till death.

 

These are strange confidences. We are not surprised to learn that the writer of these letters could not sleep at night, from anxiety about the danger of the coming battle. His thoughts ran upon death, he was kept awake by the fear of it.

Frederick’s tepid ardour was further cooled by the snow which began to fall on the morning of the 9th. He declined to move. Neipperg, though no longer young, was not afraid of snow; he marched on and by evening was within three miles of Brieg, and six miles of Ohlau, and lay right across his enemy’s line of communication. He and his troops conceived a certain contempt for their enemy. Frederick was now compelled to attack; he had only one day’s reserve of supplies for his troops, and Neipperg barred his only road of retreat. Necessity forced him to give orders for the attack next morning, 10th April 1741. His fears and anxieties were such that for the second night in succession he could get no sleep.

The rival forces at the battle of Mollwitz were as follows :

                                Prussian.              Austrian

Infantry                  16,800                      8,600

Cavalry                     4,600                       6,800

Guns                                         

Light                                                37                         17

Heavy                                                16                          2

Artillerywen              350                            100

                                  ----------                     ------------

                                    21,750                      15,500

 

The Prussians had a superiority one in numbers, and their iron ramrods enabled them to fire three shots to the enemy’s one; their infantry fire was thus six to the Austrian one. They had a superi­ority of two to one in light guns, and eight to one in heavy guns. The Austrians had a superiority in cavalry of 50 per cent., but the total Prussian excess in all arms was nearly as much.

At 10 a.m. the Prussian army began its march upon the Austrians, who were posted in and about the village of Mollwitz. Frederick disposed his army in the regula­tion two lines, each line having the infantry in the centre and cavalry on the flanks. The heavy guns were in advance of the first line, and the regimental guns close in front of each regiment. Two grenadier battalions of infantry were placed between the squadrons of cavalry on the right flank, in support of the inferior arm. The length of the front was a little more than two miles. It was found that there was not nearly that amount of distance between the village and wood of Hermsdorf on the right, and the village of Neudorf and a marshy brook on the left. The miscalculation was so serious that a substantial reduction of the front had to be made. Two grenadier battalions were retired from the first line, and placed between the two lines on the right flank; a mus­ketry battalion was moved to the rear line; another musketry battalion placed between the two lines, and the cavalry of the left flank was pushed across the brook on the left. The excessive original length of the front was due to the orders of Frederick, but in his account of the battle, he put the blame upon General Schulenburg, who was in command of the cavalry on the right. Frederick accused him of pressing unduly on his left, a mistake which would soon have been rectified, if the King had allowed him space on his right. Schulenburg fell in the battle while leading a gallant charge. It was easy for Frederick to place upon the dead man the blame for what was the result of the King’s own act.

The constriction of the front having forced out the cavalry from the left flank, and produced some disorder there, the left did not advance at the same rate as the cavalry on the right. The left was thus refused, while the right projected towards the enemy.

At 1.30 p.m. the Prussian guns moved out and opened fire upon a body of Austrian cavalry on the enemy’s left, which was covering the Austrian deployment. Neipperg gave strict orders that no attack was to be made until the whole of his troops was in line, but the cavalry under Romer were suffering under the fire ; and they galloped forth upon the cavalry and grenadiers of the protruding Prussian right flank. Schulenburg’s 14 squadrons were inevitably overpowered by the Austrian 36 squadrons.

The Prussian cavalry was swept away; some of the horse­men made for safety through the opening on the right between the lines of infantry, and some fled across the front of the first line, and were prevented from breaking through it only by their own infantry, who fired upon them. Frederick himself was among this last body of fugitives. This was to be the glory of which he had dreamed. He was flying before the enemy, and was pre­vented from reaching safety behind his troops by their own fire upon the panic-stricken mob to which he belonged. It was lucky that no Prussian bullet hit him. He galloped on to the left until he had reached the extreme end of the line, whence he obtained admittance between the two lines of infantry.

Schulenburg, though severely wounded by a sword cut in the face, had not fled, and was making a desperate effort to retrieve the day. He succeeded in rallying a couple of squadrons, and with this handful led a hopeless charge, in which he met a gallant soldier’s death.

The Austrian cavalry had now only the Prussian in­fantry to deal with, but they proved a stubborn foe. The point of the attack, the Prussian right flank, was especially strong, with its stiffening of five extra regiments, two of them facing right, so that three sides of a square were formed. Though the Prussians suffered heavily; their fire, discipline, and tenacity prevented any breakdown. Some of the Austrian horsemen succeeded in forcing their way between the two lines, where they drew the fire of the infantry of the second line ; others penetrated behind the second line and charged back, but the men faced about and beat them off. The horsemen then galloped to pillage the Prussian camp, half a mile further to the rear. The Austrian cavalry of the right met with similar success, charging and dispersing the cavalry of the Prussian left. It was now 8.30 p.m. Seeing the success of his cavalry, Neipperg ordered a general advance of his infantry.

Frederick had by this time found shelter between the two lines of unbroken Prussian infantry. He believed the battle to be lost, and although his experienced adviser, General Schwerin, thought that the infantry would still win the day, the King either himself suggested, or readily accepted from Schwerin the suggestion, that he should not remain, to endanger a life so valuable to the State. It is not likely that Schwerin would have approved of such a proposal, and supported it, unless he had convinced him­self that it was desired. He must have perceived that Frederick was in the frame of mind when such advice would be welcome. On receiving it the King acted with eager promptitude. Sending a message to Prince Leopold of Dessau that the battle was lost, he galloped from the field.

Immediately after Frederick’s hasty retirement, the Prussian preponderance in infantry and artillery made itself felt, as Schwerin had anticipated. The Austrians could not withstand the superior gun and musket fire of the enemy. Schwerin in his turn ordered an advance, to which no effective opposition could be given; and the inevitable defeat, which Romer’s cavalry had merely post­poned, had to be accepted. At 7 p.m. Neipperg gave orders for retreat. He was not followed, or molested, though there were fresh Prussian forces in a position to attack him. In the course of the night he reached Grott-kau, and so brought his army safely back to Neisse.

The losses of the Austrians were 4,550 killed, wounded, prisoners, and missing; of the Prussians 4,850, of whom 7 officers and 770 men were missing—desertions in all probability.

The facts with regard to the numbers engaged at Mollwitz have long been misrepresented. It was given out at the time that the forces were equal, and that the Prussian army created by Frederick William I had given proof of its mettle. It was supposed that the new Prussian drill, which had been scoffed at as fit only for the show ground, had proved its worth on the battlefield. Such is the in­fluence of success that to the victor all virtue is ascribed. The Prussian cavalry had made no stand against the Austrian. The Prussian infantry had proved stubborn under cavalry attack, and the value of their iron ramrods in giving increased rapidity of fire, had been demonstrated; but infantry and artillery had been in such superior numbers that no real test of their fighting efficiency had been provided. The world was misinformed. The victory was regarded as proof of that superiority of the Prussian army, which was to be witnessed in due course, but had not yet been demonstrated. Thus the moral effect of the battle was immense, although the issue of it should never have been in doubt. The credit for the victory was given to that seeming madman, the dead King, Frederick William I.

For his son the experiences of the day were bitter. Frederick rode off the field, accompanied by a sparse following, towards Oppeln; it was in that direction that his army, if defeated, would have to make its retreat. But without the army’s protection, the course taken by the fugitives exposed them to the danger of being attacked by some of the numerous parties of Austrian light cavalry which swarmed all over the district. It would have been much safer to have remained with the army, as Schwerin himself afterwards remarked. He knew it at the time, but was obliged to bow to Frederick’s urgent anxieties, and to take upon himself the blame.

About an hour after the King’s departure, Schwerin sent a squadron of mounted men after him with the news of the Austrian discomfiture, but Frederick rode too fast for them. He reached Oppeln in the night, expecting to find a Prussian garrison, but the town had been occupied that morning by Austrian troops, and his demand for admission was answered by shots. A body of fifty hussars was sent out from the fort, and they succeeded in making prisoners of most of the King’s attendants, who exposed themselves to save their master. Frederick had the best horse, and succeeded in escaping, with two followers. He galloped straight back towards the spot where last he had been among friends, the field of Mollwitz. At 2 a.m. he reached the village of Lowen, near the battlefield. He found shelter in a mill-house. It is said that here he broke down, uttering wild ejaculations of despair. He sent forward one of his followers, and thus obtained the news that he had won a great victory. He rejoined his troops at Mollwitz in the morning of the 11th April, having covered at least sixty miles in his flight. The army had not learned of his absence. To conceal it further he drew a plan of the battle, and caused it to be distributed among the officers, and he issued a description of the fight.

Writing again to Prince Leopold of Dessau, with an account of the victory, Frederick excused his first letter, in which he had announced the loss of the battle, by the remark that for two days he had not slept or eaten, an admission that his flight had been due to loss of nerve.

There must be few, if any, examples in history of a commander escaping from the field while he still has a superiority of nearly two to one in unbroken infantry, and of three or four to one in artillery. The flight of the commander, leaving an army much superior in resources, and unshaken, and his return as soon as he is assured that his troops have gained a victory, in his absence, must surely be a unique event.

3. 

The Klein-Schnellendorf Trick

The treacherous attack upon Austria, and the hypo­critical pretences by which it was accompanied, received the immediate condemnation of Europe, and elicited pro­tests even in Prussia itself. Frederick’s own ministers were aghast. We have seen how Podewils tried to dis­suade him from his project. The British Ambassador at Vienna summed up the attitude of Frederick’s repre­sentatives at Vienna, as follows :  “In a word,” reports Robinson, “nothing is omitted by the two ministers, Borcke and Gotter, to show the King all the rashness, the injustice, and ill consequences, both to himself and all Europe, of his present attempt”.’ But after the  battle of Mollwitz, when the outrage appeared destined to end in triumph, little further was said against it. Indeed certain Powers did not hesitate to join in the scramble for the dominions which Maria Theresa seemed unable to defend. Saxony, Sardinia, Spain and France, all now showed hostile intentions, though all, like Prussia, had pledged themselves—for value received, in each case— to support the Pragmatic Sanction, and had accepted the accession of Maria Theresa without demur. England alone adhered to her pledge.

Cardinal Fleury, on receiving Frederick’s proposal for an alliance, hesitated for a time. In a discussion with Marshal Belleisle, the Cardinal spoke of the dangers of the war, and especially of any alliance with the King of Prussia.  “What a character!” exclaimed Fleury. “What he is doing in Silesia cannot be excused; there is nothing to justify it. How can any confidence be placed in such a man! He makes all sorts of advances, and plies me with flatteries, but these false caresses only put me on my guard. And what motive can be alleged for casting aside the obligations of the Pragmatic Sanction?” Valori, the French Minister at the Prussian Court, wrote : “The King of Prussia does not answer as he ought to do; I am for turning to the other side, and no longer being the dupe of a Prince who opens negotiations everywhere, and thinks he can work miracles by coming to conclu­sions nowhere.... As I can speak quite plainly to you, Sir, I am not afraid to say that levity, pride, and  presumption form the basis of his character, and you may pity me for having to steer clear through all this.”! Frederick, for his part, always suspected France of harbouring sinister designs. To join him against Austria and thereby encounter the hostility of England, for no other purpose save the wresting of the Imperial Crown from the House of Habsburg, seemed incredible folly. He suspected that France aimed at perpetuating the dissensions of the German States, and the aggrandisement of Bavaria as a rival to Prussia.

The war party in France overcame the reluctance of Fleury. The Cardinal sent Belleisle to Frederick’s camp to discuss the proposed French intervention. Frederick was negotiating with England, Austria, and France. He wrote to his Minister, Podewils, 12th May 1741, from the camp at Mollwitz: ‘To go on playing the part of an honest man, among knaves, is perilous; to be nice with deceivers is a desperate business, and of doubtful success. Wha then is to be done? War and negotiation : that is precisely what your very humble servant and his ministers are doing. If there if anything to be gained by being honest we will be so, and if it is advisable to deceive, let us be cheats”.  Frederick was putting forth the common excuse of all criminals, that he did wrong in self-defence, to anticipate the wrong-doing of others. The most shameful acts are justified in that way. The only test is success. If anything is to be gained by honesty that principle may be employed, but on no other condition.

On the 18th May France entered into an engagement to assist Bavaria against Maria Theresa. On the 28th an alliance was made between Spain and Bavaria. Spain put forward claims on Lombardy and Bavaria On Bohemia. On the 5th June France concluded a treaty with Prussia, by which Frederick was promised Breslau and Lower Silesia, and in return abandoned his claim on Jülich-Berg, and promised his vote for the Elector of Bavaria in the coming imperial election. The hereditary enemy of Germany was thus encouraged to invade that country, by the Prussian King.

Two French armies crossed the Rhine. The ‘Army of Bohemia,’ under Marshal Belleisle, consisting of 42,000 men, crossed at Strassburg on the 15th August, and advanced to the assistance of Bavaria. The ‘Army of Westphalia,’ under Marshal Maillebois, 36,000 strong, crossed a few weeks later into Westphalia, where it threatened both Holland and Hanover, if any attempt should be made by Holland or George II to help Maria Theresa.

The accession of Maria Theresa raised no immediate enthusiasm in her dominions. The Grand Duke Francis, her husband, was not popular, and it was feared that he would exercise a controlling influence over the destinies of the country. But Maria Theresa, apart from the attraction of her youth, her beauty, and her sex, was endowed with considerable abilities, a strong character, a sweet nature, a charming and gracious personality. She soon found her way to the hearts of her subjects. When enemies arose on every side the loyalty towards her, of Hungarians especially, became ever more warm and enthusiastic.

On the 13th March 1741 she gave birth to a son and heir, the future Emperor Joseph. On the 25th June she was crowned Queen of Hungary, at Presburg. After the ceremony, with the crown shining on her head, and mounted on a fine black horse, she galloped up the König­shügel hill, and, in accordance with the traditions of her House, when arrived at the top, she drew her sword and waved it to the four quarters of the earth, as token that she would defend her country against all enemies whence­soever they might come. Robinson reported: ‘ The Queen is grace itself; when she raised her sword and bade defiance to the four quarters of the world, it was easy to see that she needed neither that weapon, nor any other, to make a conquest of those who approach her”. When Robinson met Frederick, he spoke with enthusiasm of Maria Theresa. Frederick had only contempt for such feelings. He said to Valori, the French Ambassador, “Will you believe, he (Robinson) said to me, if I could only see her, I should fall in love with her, and would be thinking of giving her crowns, rather than depriving her of them!”. The English nation was enthusiastic for Maria Theresa. Subscriptions were raised in England to assist her against her enemies, and there was a clamour for active intervention on her behalf.

Frederick ordered Schwerin to take possession of Breslau, in defiance of his guarantee to the town of its independ­ence and neutrality. On the 18th August Schwerin, carrying out the scheme which Frederick had confided to him, introduced a regiment into the town on the pre­tence that it was only going to march through, to defend the region on the other side from an expected Austrian attack. Other troops were collected at the gates, and bread wagons were sent forward to block gates and drawbridges, while the soldiers slipped past, to join the first regiment, which had quietly taken possession of the ramparts and strong positions in its neighbourhood. The town thus found itself under the control of the Prussian soldiers before any resistance could be organised. The syndics and aidermen who were known, though Protestants, to be anti-Prussian, had been invited to witness a military display at Frederick’s camp, so that no strong protests should be raised in the city. By this characteristic trickery did Frederick break his word, and obtain pos­session of Breslau. He was so pleased with his cunning that he explains, with obvious self-satisfaction, how it was done, in the Histoire de Mon Temps.

With so large a part of Europe against her, Maria Theresa was obliged to open negotiations for peace. She offered Luxemburg to France, and other portions of her dominions to Bavaria and Spain, on the condition that her husband Francis should be given the Imperial Crown. To Prussia she offered Lower Silesia, in return for Frederick’s assistance with 10,000 men, and his vote on behalf of her husband. Fleury and Frederick com­municated to each other these proposals, and each assured his ally that they had been rejected as a matter of course. Fleury’s answer to Maria Theresa conveyed the refusal with all customary politeness. Frederick rejected the Austrian overtures in a rough, bullying manner. Robin­son, who was conducting the negotiations on behalf of Maria Theresa, was told that his presence was no longer agreeable. “Drive away that rascal of a negotiator,” wrote the King to Podewils.  “I cannot tolerate him. It would be infamous in me to enter into negotiations with Austria and England, and besides I should be risking a good deal.”

But a few days later, on the 9th September, Lord Hyndford, now the British Ambassador to Prussia, received through Goltz, Frederick’s representative, categorical proposals for a peace on the basis of the cession of Lower Silesia. “In return we will go no further. We will lay siege to Neisse proforma; the commander shall surrender and depart. We will go quietly into winter quarters, and they may take their army where they like.” Goltz read these conditions to Hyndford, and then tore up the paper into small pieces. He said that the King would not appear himself in the matter, and that if it was dis­covered, both the King and he would deny it.

To deceive his allies, and particularly Valori, who was in his camp at the time, Frederick wrote to Hyndford :—

Camp near Neisse, 14/A September 1741.

 My Lord,—I have received the new project of alliance which the indefatigable Robinson has sent you. I con­sider it as chimerical as the first, and you can only reply to the court of Vienna that the Elector of Bavaria will be the Emperor, and that my engagements with the very Christian King and the Elector of Bavaria are so solemn, so indissoluble, and so inviolable, that I shall not abandon those faithful allies to enter into a liaison with a Court which cannot be, and will never be, anything but irrecon­cilable towards me; that nothing now can help them, and that they must resign themselves to endure all the rigour of their destiny. Are these people fools, my Lord, that they should imagine that I should commit the treason of turning my arms in their favour against my friends, and do you not see yourself how gross is the bait which is offered me?

‘I beg you not to trouble me any more with propositions of that sort, and to believe that I am enough of an honest man to decline to violate my engagements. 

                       Federic.’

This letter is cunningly worded. To conceal his treachery and avoid the most naked falsehood, Frederick declares that he does not intend to enter into a liaison with Austria, or turn his arms against his friends, or violate his engagements. In the most literal sense this was not in­correct. He refused the bait of an offensive alliance with Austria against his present allies; and by the pro­posed truce, he was not violating his engagement not to make a peace without the consent of his allies. So he was an honest man

On the 15th September Frederick wrote to the Elector of Bavaria, sending a copy of Hyndford’s proposals, and his reply, and saying : “Your Electoral Highness will see by the enclosed, which I am sending him, how useless are the artifices of our enemies, and to what extent I am faithful to him.” In spite of these assurances, on the very next day he wrote to Podewils to inform Lord Hyndford that if he would go to the camp at Neisse it would not only be a constant satisfaction to have him, but that it would confer a pleasure upon His Royal Majesty if he could travel to him at once, as His Royal Majesty had a particular desire to see him. Other urgent messages were sent to Hyndford requesting him to start at once.

Having sent for Lord Hyndford to assist him in coming to an agreement with Austria, Frederick on the same day, the 16th September, wrote to Baron Schmettau, for the information of the Elector of Bavaria, that the efforts of Hyndford would not change his constant and unshakeable friendship for His Electoral Highness, and that no effort nor intrigues would ever succeed in making me desert him. On the 20th September he wrote that 4 from love for his Electoral Highness, and an attachment to his in­terests and a friendship perhaps without example he had refused the advantageous proposal which the court of Vienna had made through Lord Hyndford. On the 22nd he wrote to the Elector himself, to the same effect, protesting that his heart was inseparable from that of the Elector, that he could never have a friend more entirely to his taste  he regarded the connection between them as indissoluble and eternal. “The Austrians do not desist from their negotiations, but Your Electoral Highness may rest assured that they will not make any greater progress than in the past, ... my engagements are too sacred that I should break them, in all my life.” But only four days before he had sent Major Goltz to Neipperg to inquire what authority had been received from Vienna, and had instructed Goltz to tell Neipperg that though the King could not at present promise Austria more than a benevolent neutrality; in the spring he might be able to give active assistance, as he could not tolerate that France and Bavaria should bring about the grave injury to Austria which they contemplated. On the 28th Frederick wrote to Hyndford that the proposed agreement must be kept an inviolable secret; on the 2nd October he wrote to Cardinal Fleury that: ‘ The King may rest assured that I shall never make bad use of his confidence, and will behave towards him with all possible sincerity and fidelity.’ As for the Austrian proposals through Lord Hyndford : ‘I have been constant in refusing to enter into such engage­ments, and will always behave in the same way.’

A week later the bargaining with Austria, which he took such pains to deny, came to the desired conclusion. The Austrian situation was desperate. On the 14th September a Franco-Bavarian army, under the command of the Elector of Bavaria, captured Linz, and held Vienna at its mercy. On the 19th Saxony joined Prussia, France, and Bavaria, in return for a promise of the whole of Moravia. Russia protested, but her hands were full, Sweden having declared war and invaded Finland at the instigation of France. The danger to Hanover from the French army at Dusseldorf and the Prussians at Magdeburg, made George n. give a promise of neutrality. Maria Theresa was forced to consent to Frederick’s proposals.

A meeting between Frederick and the representatives of Austria and England was arranged, for the conclusion of a separate agreement, at a house in the village of Klein-Schnellendorf. Before setting forth for the betrayal of his allies, Frederick had the hardihood to sit down and write to Marshal Belleisle a letter in which he expressed his admiration for “the great part played by the King of France in supporting the Elector, and confounding the evil designs of the King of England,” and concluded : “I am with all imaginable esteem and friendship, My dear Marshal, Your very faithful friend, Federic.” It is not easy to understand how any man can have written such a letter at such a moment; He had been writing, similar false letters, and was to write many more. But that he should compose an unnecessary letter, merely in order to enjoy “the consciousness of his treacherous cunning, surely gives evidence of a most abnormal love of deception”

The very faithful friend went forth to a secret meet­ing, at which were present, for Prussia, himself and Major Goltz, for Austria, Marshal Neipperg and General Lentulus, and for England Lord Hyndford. A Protocol had been drawn up by Lord Hyndford, embodying Frederick’s proposals. Neisse was, after a sham siege of fifteen days, to capitulate, the garrison being permitted to depart with all military honours, wagons being pro­vided for them up to the border of Moravia. ‘Article 5. After the capture of the town of Neisse His Majesty the King of Prussia will not make any offensive movements against Her Majesty the Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, nor against the King of England as Elector of Hanover, nor against any other of the Queen’s present allies, until the general peace. Article 6. The King of Prussia will never demand anything more from Her Majesty the Queen of Hungary, than Lower Silesia with the town of Neisse. Article 7. An endeavour will be made to make a definitive treaty towards the end of the coming month of December.’

By the treaty to be then made the Queen of Hungary would cede to His Prussian Majesty all Lower Silesia as far as the River Neisse, including the town of Neisse, and on the other side of the Oder, as far as the limits of the Duchy of Oppeln. On the 16th October Neipperg would retire his army towards Moravia, and thence where he might please. A part of the Prussian army would take up winter quarters in Upper Silesia, until April 1742. ‘Article 18. These articles which have been agreed upon shall be kept as an inviolable secret, which I, the undersigned, Count Hyndford, Marshal Count Neipperg and Major General Lentulus, have promised on our word of honour to the King of Prussia, on the demand of His Majesty.” The Prussians made no promises of secrecy.

The Protocol was signed by Hyndford only; it was expressly stated that this signature bound both Prussia and Austria. Frederick refused to sign, because he intended to repudiate all knowledge of the affair, and to denounce it, if published, as the malicious invention of his enemies.

In various letters written to his ministers and to his allies before the Klein-Schnellendorf treachery, Frederick declared that any such agreement on his part would be infame, such as no man of honour would enter into. After­wards, in the Histoire de Mon Temps, he attempted some excuse. “This is a delicate affair. The conduct of the King was shady (scabreux); it is necessary to explain its most secret motives.” Frederick had thus applied to his own conduct the severe French epithets infame and scabreux. His explanation consisted in a statement of what he gained by his treachery; he elaborated the subject at some length. Incidentally, he remarked that France was meditating a similar treachery towards him —the common excuse of criminals.

Frederick had been standing motionless for six months. The recollection of Mollwitz made him fear to attack, though he had a superiority over Neipperg of more than two to one. He resorted to trickery. He got rid of Neipperg, And acquired Lower Silesia, with Neisse, by an agreement which, by means of the secrecy clause he intended to deny to his allies, and to repudiate when­ever he chose.

Neipperg withdrew fifteen hundred of the best troops of the garrison of Neisse, and informed the commander that he was to capitulate fourteen days after being attacked. He abandoned his camp on the 14th, and Frederick made a show of following, but gave orders that no attacks were to be made. Neipperg issued similar instructions. These curious proceedings aroused suspicions. Belleisle wrote to Paris, on the 17th October: ‘The King of Prussia has gone into winter quarters without following up Neipperg. He could do no greater injury to the Elector of Bavaria and to the common cause ... If it were possible to admit suspicions of the honesty and uprightness of the King they would arise on every side.·  The sham siege of Neisse began on the 19th October, and the stipulated capitulation, after the exchange of a few shots, followed on the 31st. It was plain to all observers, especially to the soldiers on both sides, that the affair had not been conducted on warlike lines. There was a widespread conviction that an arrangement of some sort must have been come to.

Frederick denied it with his usual superabundant facility. He wrote to the Elector of Bavaria on the 14th, 22nd, and 28th October. He said that he was about to give Neipperg a good beating, and in the mean­time was his very faithful friend. He sent similar letters to Belleisle and Valori. He expected Neisse to hold out several weeks, he said, having encountered greater diffi­culties than he had expected. To Cardinal Fleury he wrote on the 29th, that “the crafty and perfidious Court of Vienna” had made him certain proposals, which he described as ridiculous; that “he was inviolably attached to the Cardinal’s interests;  the alliance of the King, your master, is for me the most flattering period of my life; there is nothing that I will shrink from to cultivate it assiduously.” On the 2nd November he brought his honour to bear. He wrote to the Elector of Bavaria:  “I can assure him positively and upon my honour, that I have not made peace with the Austrians, and that I will never make it until Your Electoral Highness is satis­fied; “he was his “very faithful friend, cousin and brother.’ It is true that Frederick had not yet concluded a defini­tive treaty of peace, but he had agreed to make such a treaty, and he had already urged Hyndford to have the peace treaty drawn up and signed as soon as possible. This did not prevent him from entering into treaties, on the 1st November, with Saxony and Bavaria, in which a partition of the Austrian dominions was agreed upon. On the 4th November he sent to his Ambassadors cate­gorical instructions to deny all rumours of a compact with the Austrian Court. On the 8th he wrote to the Elector of Saxony and also to Belleisle, indignantly denouncing the reports, and adding that he would always observe the engagements he had made with his faithful allies and friends.

Frederick knew that the truce with Austria could not be kept secret. In the Histoire de Mon Temps, he says, “a truce gave the King the means for recovering breath, and he was sure to be able to break it whenever he might find it desirable, because the policy of the Court of Vienna would force it to divulge the mystery.... The King was quite certain that it could not fail to happen.” The revelation would not be to the advantage of Austria. Strict injunctions were issued from the Austrian side, that the secret was to be rigorously kept. But, in spite of them, there were leakages which gave Frederick the excuse he wanted. If necessary, he would have con­trived to spread the news himself, in some underhand manner. The equivocal military movements led to inquiries which the Austrians failed to repudiate with sufficient vehemence. This was all that Frederick wanted, as it enabled him, having obtained Neisse and the with­drawal of Neipperg, to turn against Austria once more whenever a good opportunity should offer, without having to admit the intervening treachery to his allies. In this way he tricked both sides. Maria Theresa was cheated out of the stronghold of Neisse, and Neipperg’s army was let loose upon his allies. Frederick would then come ' to their assistance, and wrest further territories from Maria Theresa.

He made no secret of his contempt for treaties. Hyndford reports, Jan. 9th, 1742: “Upon all occasions he declares his disregard of treaties and guarantees, and the opinion that no faith or ties should bind a Prince any longer, when he is in a condition to break them to his advantage.” On the 17th May Hyndford writes : “What dependence is to be had upon a Prince who has neither truth, honour, nor religion? Who looks upon treaties as upon matrimony, to bind fools, and who turns into ridicule the most sacred things?’’

Frederick left the army in possession of Neisse on the 2nd November. On the 7th he received the formal homage of his new subjects at Breslau. He was now in acknow­ledged possession of Lower Silesia and the Neisse fortress, and had obtained all that had been promised him by the Klein-Schnellendorf agreement. He returned to Berlin on the 11th, and awaited there the moment for an advan­tageous repudiation of his compact.

On the 26th November a combined force of French, Saxons, and Bavarians attacked, and carried by storm the fortress of Prague. This success had a great influence upon the attitude of hesitating Princes. It encouraged Spain and Savoy; it ensured the election of Charles Albert of Bavaria to the Imperial dignity; it brought Prussia back at once to the side of its former allies. When the news reached Frederick he drank the health of Charles Albert, the new ‘King of Bohemia,’ and gave orders that troops were to be sent to the assistance of his allies. Proposals being received from Austria for the definite conclusion of the peace of Klein-Schnellendorf, accom­panied by a suggestion that the terms should include a promise of the Brandenburg vote for the Grand Duke Francis in the Imperial election, Frcderick replied that he did not intend to proceed with the peace agreement. He said to Hyndford : “If they (the Austrians) had kept the secret, as they ought to have done for their own interest, I could have preserved for them Moravia and the two Austrias, but it was certainly not my interest to let them keep Bohemia or Upper Silesia, for sooner or later they would have been very troublesome neighbours to me. But as to Moravia, they could not have had so easy access from thence. They have had a double view in divulging the secret; first, to make me suspected by my allies ; and next, by keeping some of the Electors in suspense, they had conceived hopes of the Imperial dignity, which neither France nor I could ever consent to. You see, my lord, I speak openly to you. They have been guilty of another folly in suffering Prague to be taken under their nose, without risking a battle. If they had been successful I do not know what I should have done. But now we have 130,000 men against 70,000 of theirs.”

Frederick here admits that the stipulation in the Klein- Schnellendorf agreement, that he would never demand more than Lower Silesia and Neisse, was one of the many frauds of which he was guilty ; for he tells Hyndford that while he would have kept Moravia (which he had promised to Saxony) and the two Austrias for Maria Theresa, he never intended to leave her in possession of Bohemia or Upper Silesia. Frederick also makes it plain that it was the Austrian discomfiture at Prague, not the failure to keep the secret that determined his conduct.

A coup d’état in Russia gave him further encouragement. The Regent Anne, though German in birth and breeding, and served by ministers of German origin, had become a Russian in spirit. Sweden having attacked Russia at the instance of France, Anne and her anti-French adviser Oestermann, pursued a policy of friendship towards Austria and England, the enemies of France and of her ally Prussia. On the 6th December 1741, the Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great, over­threw, with the help of the Guard, the government of the Regent Anne. The infant Czar Ivan was, with his mother, kept under guard, and Elizabeth was proclaimed Czarina. Frederick supposed, mistakenly, that the change would enure to his advantage. The daughter of Peter the Great was to prove herself the bitterest of all his enemies. In the meantime it seemed that, with the dis­appearance of Anne and Oestermann, he had nothing to fear from Russia.

 

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4. The Peace of Breslau

Frederick’s second unprovoked and treacherous attack upon Maria Theresa began with the sudden seizure of the

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fortress of Olmutz, in Moravia. The Austrians, relying upon the Klein-Schnellendorf pledge, had prepared no defence, and the Prussians under Schwerin entered the place on the 27th December 1741. Though this was an act of war Frederick pretended, with unnecessary hypo­crisy, in a letter to Voltaire, 3rd January 1742, that he was taking up once more his crook and lyre, never to lay them down again.

Austria had improved her position, and was about to attack the Franco-Bavarians, with good hopes of success. Frederick received appeals for assistance from both France and Bavaria. He was asked for only a small force, under a Prussian general, for it was supposed that, having obtained Lower Silesia, he had little inducement to re-enter the fray. His designs upon Upper Silesia, and his desire for a great personal triumph, were not under­stood. Frederick’s reply to the modest requests of his allies was that he would command the troops himself. He pressed his personal assistance to an embarrassing extent. On the 19th January, at Dresden, he explained to a council of the allies, collected to hear him, how he proposed to defeat the Austrians. It was expected that he would lead his troops to the assistance of the allies in Bohemia. His objections to that course were many, though they could not all be avowed. He had a personal dislike for the French Commander, Broglie, and he did not desire intimate relations with the French, believing that they distrusted him owing to the Klein-Schnellendorf treachery. He was not disposed to accept any form of co-operation with an independent commander. He wrote to Belleisle that a King of Prussia could not serve under another; which meant that there could be no junction of his troops with any others unless he was placed in com­mand of the united forces.

Frederick proposed to lead a Prussian force from Olmutz into the heart of Moravia. The Saxon army, with a French contingent, would advance from Bohemia and capture Iglau, while he moved on Brunn. There Saxons and French would join him, and would fall under his command.

H

114 THE LIFE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT

That was the attraction of the scheme. He was to be accepted as the natural commander of Saxon, and even of French troops. His prestige would be enhanced, and if he succeeded in reaching Vienna a great personal triumph would be achieved. All this would be obtained without exposing his own country—which throughout the Silesian wars remained in absolute safety—or his newly-acquired Silesian province, or even any substantial part of his army. He proposed to use the minimum of Prussian troops, making the Saxons bear the brunt of the fighting. Their losses would, he considered, be his gain. If the Saxon army was destroyed, his own power would be increased.

In the Histoire de Mon Temps Frederick says : ‘ The expedition into Moravia was the only one that the circum­stances permitted to be undertaken, because it made the King more indispensable, and placed him in the position of being equally sought by both parties ; the King decided upon it, but quite determined at the same time not to employ upon it more than the smallest possible number of his troops, and the greatest quantity that his allies could be induced to give him.’ There was also the con­sideration that if he joined Broglie and the others, it would be difficult to obtain Upper Silesia for himself by a separate peace with Austria. It would be dangerous to betray his allies while his troops were mingled with theirs.

The Council at Dresden,—Augustus, Valori, Count Maurice de Saxe, and others—heard these proposals with dismay. French and Saxons felt some natural hesita­tion about placing any of their troops under the control of a Prince who had already betrayed them, and might do so again. Frederick threatened to withdraw his assistance altogether unless his plan was accepted. Under this pressure it was agreed that the Saxons, with French support, should move upon Iglau, but no promise was given of any further advance.

These decisions came too late to save the town of Linz. Segur, the French commander, was forced to capitulate to the Austrian General Khevenhuller on the 24th January 1742. On the same day, Charles Albert, Elector of

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aA'

Bavaria, was elected Emperor Frankfort, taking the title of Charles vn. To obtain the vote of the Elector Palatine, Frederick had given up his claim to Julich-Berg. The new Emperor was crowned with all the customary ornate ceremonies at Frankfort on the 12th February. On that day his capital, Munich, capitulated to the Austrians. The humiliating position of the Holy Roman Emperor, poor in troops and in money, his capital in the hands of his enemy, gave rise to bitter jests. In Frankfort itself a medal was struck, having on one side the head of the Grand Duke Francis, with the legend ‘ Aut Caesar aut nihil ’ ; on the other side appeared the Emperor Charles vn., with the words, ‘ Et Caesar et nihil.’

Frederick reached Olmutz on the 20th January. That the allies had good reason to distrust him, is shown by the approach he made to Hyndford on the 30th, with regard to a possible accommodation with Austria. On the 4th February, an Austrian emissary brought pro­posals from Vienna, which Frederick would neither accept nor reject. These dealings with the enemy became known to the allies, and increased their disinclination to place their troops under Frederick’s control. However, they went, forward, in accordance with the Dresden compact, and captured Iglau on the 15th February. The French then retired. The Saxons were about to do the same, but Frederick appealed to the Elector Augustus, who consented to allow his army to advance with the Prussians as far as Znaim. The combined force under Frederick was now within a few days’ march of Vienna. The danger to the capital drew back the bulk of the Austrian forces from their favourable position in Bohemia. Frederick’s incursion into Moravia had relieved the pres­sure upon Broglie and the Bavarians.

Schwerin advised the King to advance, in spite of the growing Austrian strength, and deal a blow, if not on Vienna, then on Presburg, further east. But he was still timid, not having recovered from the Mollwitz shock* Taking the Saxons with him he retired to Brunn and laid siege to the fortress. Maria Theresa appealed again

116 THE LIFE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT

•x

to her Hungarians, who responded nobly. Irregular bands harassed the Prussian troops and interfered with their communications, and the Moravian peasants joined in the ’guerilla warfare against the invaders. Frederick retaliated with savage ferocity, burning and looting, and killing even women, but the effect was to increase the stubborn defiance of the people; his position became precarious, as his men were cut off in small parties, and the difficulty of obtaining supplies was serious. Schwerin advised an attempt to capture Brunn by storm, but Frederick would not run the risk of failure. He asserted that Brunn could not be taken without siege guns, and put the blame upon the Saxons for his want of them. He remained in front of Brunn, where his influence upon events could be but small. The Austrians renewed their march into Bohemia, advancing so far that they threatened Prague. The Saxons now had every reason to feel anxious about their communications and the safety of their country, denuded of troops. Broglie sent a formal demand for the assistance of the Saxon army, which Frederick could not refuse. He dismissed the Saxons, who went back into their own country. He had to admit that his Moravian enterprise had failed. He retired from Moravia to Chrudim, where he could either move on Prague or fall back further into Silesia, by way of Glatz and Neisse.

In public he placed the failure of the Moravian enter­prise upon his allies. In private he gave a truer explana­tion. Writing to Jordan, on the 5th May 1742, he said, ‘ Moravia, which is a very bad country, could not be held for want of provisions, and the town of Brunn could not be taken because the Saxons had no cannons.’ The real blame lay entirely with himself. He had been warned of the obstacles an army would encounter in the Moravian mountains, and the difficulty of obtaining supplies. He insisted on that enterprise from motives of personal ambi­tion and vanity, and in order to spare his own troops while making use of those of his allies. If he had contributed a larger Prussian force the enterprise should have suc­ceeded. It was his own fault that no siege guns were

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taken for the attack on Briinn. These military blunders might have been retrieved but for the recoil upon himself of his past treachery. Saxons and French had good cause to distrust the man who had already betrayed both friend and foe, and was at this very time in full negotia­tion with the enemy.

The failure of Frederick’s scheme gave such encourage­ment to Maria Theresa that she refused all the overtures which he continued to send her. After each rejection he lowered his terms, but he declined her final offer of the whole of Silesia, in return for his active support against France and Bavaria.

The command of the Austrian troops in Moravia was confided to Prince Charles of Lorraine, brother-in-law of Maria Theresa. He followed the retreating Prussians and regained Olmiitz on the 23rd April 1742. Moving with the greatest deliberation, in spite of the impatient messages sent to him from Vienna, he came upon the main Prussian army under Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau near Chotusitz, on the 16th May. Frederick with a vanguard had overshot the line of the Austrian march, thus giving his enemy the opportunity to attack Prince Leopold before the King could hasten back to his assistance.

This Prince Charles attempted to do. He ordered a night attack on the army of Prince Leopold. At 8 p.m. the march commenced; it was a clear night with a full moon, and the enemy lay, unconscious of his danger, not more than seven miles distant. By midnight the army should have reached the position for attack, but at 5 a.m. it was still a mile short, and at that hour Prince Leopold himself saw the Austrian troops on the move. The Prussians were soon under arms. The Austrians march­ing forward in dignified deliberation did not come into contact with the enemy till 7.30 a.m. At that hour Frederick’s contingent returned from Kuttenberg. The enemy was now united and ready. Thus, owing to the slowness of Prince Charles, the only effect of the night march had been to deprive the Austrian soldier of his repose, just before a great battle.

118 THE LIFE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT

The numbers at the battle of Chotusitz, 17th May 1742,

were as follows :

 

Prussians.

Austrians.

Infantry . .

.

. 18,400

15,450

Heavy Cavalry .

.

. 8,600

7,200

Hussars . .

.

. 1,000

3,000

Croats . .

•

•

2,500

 

 

28,000

28,150

Guns.

 

Prussians.

Austrians.

Light . .

.

. 78

35

Heavy . .

.

. 4

nil

In infantry and heavy cavalry the Prussians had an excess of 4350, in artillery a preponderance of more than two to one. Against this the Austrian superiority of 4500 in light troops afforded no adequate compensation. The Prussians had the advantage.

Both armies formed in two lines, the infantry in the centre, and cavalry on the flanks. The Prussians were divided into two parts, the village of Chotusitz separating the right, which was the larger portion under the im­mediate command of the King, from the left under Prince Leopold.

The battle began with a Prussian cannonade of the Austrian left and centre, which was followed by an im­petuous charge of cavalry on the Austrian cavalry opposed to them. Frederick had not forgotten the Austrian cavalry charge at Mollwitz—he would never forget it— and resolved to forestall it. He had given great attention to the mounted arm since that fight, and his troopers were eager to retrieve their laurels. The first shock drove back the Austrians, but the combat becoming a confused hand- to-hand fighting, not approved by Prussian theories of discipline, the Prussian troopers were, as their drill had taught them to expect, ordered to unclose and reform, in preparation for another charge. This respite enabled the Austrians to recover ; before the Prussians could repeat

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the charge they were attacked on their extreme right flank by two regiments of Hussars, and while they were dealing with this diversion, they were assaulted in front by the reformed enemy cavalry. They gave way, and, once beaten, were driven right off the field of battle. But lack of discipline then redressed the balance. The victorious Austrian cavalry had penetrated behind the Prussian line ; seeing the Prussian camp unprotected before them, they rushed on to indulge in pillage. In this way they nullified their triumph, being lost to Prince Charles’s fighting force, just as much as if they had fled before their enemies. The cavalry of the Austrian right attacked the horsemen of the Prussian left, beat them, and then wTent on to pillage the Prussian camp on that side. Thus the bulk of the cavalry of both sides, victors and vanquished, was elimi­nated from the contest, and the issue was left to the in­fantry and artillery, in which Prussia had the advantage.

Refusing their left, the Austrian centre and right ad­vanced against the weaker of the enemy formations, under Prince Leopold. The Prussians fought well, but by 9 a.m. the village of Chotusitz was in Austrian hands. Still, the infantry of Prince Leopold continued a tenacious resistance in spite of heavy losses. For three hours Frederick, with more than half the army, watched the outnumbered force under Prince Leopold waging an un­equal conflict. The King was still afraid of the Mollwitz cavalry. It was not until he had assured himself that those terrible horsemen were no longer fighting, that he gave orders for an advance to the assistance of Leopold’s badly mauled infantry. The troops under the King’s command were then permitted to abandon their long-held defensive. At 11 a.m. they began to fire on the Austrian left flank. To these fresh forces, with their overwhelming numbers, and enfilading fire, no effective resistance could be offered. The Austrian left was crushed, and a general retreat followed. Frederick made no attempt to interfere, though he had the whole Austrian army at his mercy. His fresh infantry, the greater part of his whole army, stood spectators of the retirement of their defeated enemy.

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There was no thought of pursuit. The Prussians camped, at once, on the field of battle.

The Austrian loss was 3000 killed and wounded, and 3350 missing, of whom 1200 were prisoners. They lost 17 cannon.1 The Prussian casualties were over 4000 in killed and wounded, and 700 missing, most of them prisoners. The victors suffered most in the fighting. Half their loss was sustained by the cavalry. Of the remainder practically the whole fell on Leopold’s infantry ; the troops with the King, though twice as numerous, lost only 270 men.

Frederick’s inaction, while his cavalry was being driven off the field and the infantry, under Prince Leopold was ■" 'being severely handled, suggests not merely caution but ~e vefFtimidity. He"allowed the enemy cavalry to sweep past his flanks and plunder the camp in his rear, without offering any opposition. To prevent a cavalry attack on his right flank he had placed three grenadier battalions there, to close the entrance between his first and second lines, but these troops, with the whole of his right flank and his centre, were never under fire. On his extreme left, in the front line, the Bevern regiment lost 42 men, in the second line the Groeben lost 48, and the Prince Ferdi­nand 125. Of the total of 270 casualties for the whole of the infantry under his immediate control, 215 were sustained by these three regiments, while the remainder, forming one-half of the infantry in his army, lost only 55 men. By keeping his own force inactive, Frederick gave the Austrians the opportunity to attack the Prussian left with an overwhelming superiority, destroy it, and then treat his own corps in the same manner. This would have happened, but for the failure of the Austrians to concentrate a sufficient force for the attack. Frederick was exposing his army to a terrible risk. If he had made early use of the large force of excellent infantry under his immediate command, which comprised, with two bat­talions of the Guard and five of Grenadiers, the best

1 Oesterreichische General Stabswerk. Der oesterreichische Erbfolge- krieg, vol. iii. p. 682.

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troops in his army, it is probable that the Austrians would have been not merely defeated, but with marshy pools at their backs, would have sustained a very severe disaster. Even as it was, they were entirely in his power when the retreat began, and he would not allow his men to follow up their success.

Podewils urged Frederick to follow energetically, to destroyTiis~ehemy once forjdl, but the King was unwilling to ~take~anyrisks that mightlbe~avoided by_negotiation. He renewed his proposals forX separate peace with Austria. Maria Theresa would have preferred a peace with France, which might have enabled her to wrest back Silesia from Prussia. France had obtained nothing from the war, save the Imperial Crown for her Bavarian ally, and the hu­miliation of her Austrian enemy. There was little pros­pect of any further return for the expenditure of treasure and troops. But Fleury would not desert his allies, and Maria Theresa had no alternative but to accept the peace offered. She gave Lord Hyndford full power to enter into negotiations with Podewils, offering Lower Silesia and, if necessary and in the ultimate resort, Upper Silesia also.

In the meantime, Prince Charles had forced Broglie to make a hasty retreat to Prague. Frederick became alarmed. Judging others by himself he expected Fleury would conclude a separate peace, and he feared that after their Klein-Schnellendorf experience, the Austrians might regard his proposal with suspicion. His own past treachery made him distrust Fleury, and expect to be distrusted himself. In this disagreeable situation he saw the Austrians pressing his allies, and threatening a substantial triumph.

He wrote to Podewils a letter of panic, ordering him to conclude an immediate peace. Assuming that Maria Theresa would cede Lower Silesia, the strip on the further side of the Neisse, and the town and country of Glatz, Podewils was to obtain as much more as he could, but in any case, within half a day, or twelve hours, to sign and have signed, the preliminaries of peace on the above

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122 THE LIFE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT i

basis. There was to be no delay, to obtain the King’s approval. 4 I sleep in repose,’ he wrote, 6 assured that Captain Sydow ’ (who took the letter) 4 will bring me back the preliminaries signed.’ Frederick’s alarm and anxiety were extreme. Fortunately for him Podewils kept his head, and proved too cunning for Hyndford. The English­man was most anxious for a cessation of the war between Prussia and Austria. Podewils, without revealing his lowest terms or his master’s fears, extracted from the easy Hyndford the whole Austrian offer, which was more than Frederick, in his panic, had been willing to accept. The preliminaries were signed by Podewils and Hynd­ford at Breslaur on the 11th June 1742. Frederick was kto obtain thc^whole of Silesia, with some small exceptions ; he was also to have the town and county of Glatz. Always expecting acts of dishonour, Frederick was now tormented with the fear that Maria Theresa, on learning of the retreat of the French, would repudiate the agreement, in spite of the complete authority given to Hyndford. He was relieved when the Queen ratified what she could not in honour disavow. He expressed his delight to Podewils, 23rd June : 41 have received with great joy the treaty of peace.’ The final treaty was concluded at Berlin on the 28th July 1742.

Frederick communicated to his allies the separate peace that he had made. He would have preferred silence but, as he wrote to Podewils, 41 have not been able to conceal the peace, there are such preparations to be made with regard to the march of the troops, the transport of the sick, the sale of the magazines, the armistice.’ So he had to write explanatory letters. To Charles vn., he said that he did so in the bitterness of his heart. His plea was that the military position was hopeless, defeat certain, and he had to save himself. Charles vii. knew, of course, —what even the civilian Podewils had perceived—that, after the battle of Chotusitz, Frederick had Austria in his power; by following up the victory he could have ended the war, but, as he said to Podewils more than once, a separate peace suited him better than a general one. His

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object was to obtain for himself Silesia and peace, while leaving France and Bavaria still at war with Austria. 4 Seeing myself thus brought to a situation in which my sword could be of no further assistance to His Majesty,’ (Charles vn.) 41 assure Him that my pen will always be at his service ; my heart will never deny itself to Your Imperial Majesty, and if there are things which impossi­bility alone prevents me from accomplishing, Your Majesty will find me always the same in all that depends upon my faculties, yielding only to necessity, but firm in my engagements,’—and much more of the same sort of hypo­crisy.

To Cardinal Fleury Frederick wrote in the same strain : 4 It is known to you,’ he begins, 4 that from the moment that wTe made mutual engagements, I have done all that lay in me to second with an inviolable fidelity the arms of the King your master.’ (Of course it was known to Fleury that Frederick had betrayed the King his master at Klein- Schnellendorf, and again by the treaty now in question.) 4 Even when, to disturb my resolution, the Queen on several occasions made me the most advantageous offers, no reason of interest could avail to persuade me, much less to arrest the operations which I was resolved to under­take solely for the advantage of my allies.’ (This is just a hardy falsehood, for he had done precisely what he here denies, as all the world knew.) 41 was compelled, though in the bitterness of my heart, to save myself from an in­evitable shipwreck and to gain port as best I might. Necessity and powerlessness alone can conquer me; nobody is blamed for not doing the impossible. In all that is possible, you will find in me an invariable fidelity.’ ... 4 The events of this war form, so to say, a tissue of the marks of loyal friendship, which I have exhibited towards my allies.’ Fleury returned a cold answer.

Before finally deciding upon this particular treachery, Frederick had written out two papers, an 4 Exposition of the reasons I may have for remaining in the alliance with France,’ and an 4 Exposition of the reasons I might have to make peace with the Queen of Hungary.’ He began

124 THE LIFE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT

the former with the remark, 4 It is not well to violate one’s word without cause; up to the present time I have had no ground for complaint against France or my allies. One obtains the reputation of being a changeable and unreliable man, if one does not carry out a project one has made, and if one passes often from one side to the other.’ Among the reasons for making peace with Austria, we find, 4 The treaty which I have made with my allies bears nothing more than a simple guarantee, without any stipulation as to the number of troops.’ . . . 4 A fortu­nate end to this war would make France the arbiter of the universe.’ . . . He feared 4 Reverses of fortune which might take from me all that I have gained, and a general war which might perhaps, in the direction of Hanover, extend into my country.’

Frederick perceived that it was better not to 6 violate one’s word without cause,’ he realised that his reputation might suffer if he passed 4 often ’ from one side to the other. But in practice such considerations always proved of inferior potency, when opposed to more material interests. He observed that a treaty of alliance, without stipulation as to details of assistance, was worthless. He repeated that contention in the Lettre de M, le Comte de* * *.’!

To Jordan Frederick explained himself clearly, 15th June 1742 : 4 It will not be you who will condemn me, but those stoics whose dry temperament and hot brain incline them to rigid morality. I reply to them that they will do well to follow their maxims, but that the field of romance is more adapted to such severe practice than the continent which we inhabit, and that, after all, a private person has quite other reasons for being honest to those of a sovereign. In the case of a private person, there is nothing in question save the interest of an indi­vidual ; he must always sacrifice it for the good of society. Thus the strict observation of moral law is in him a duty, the rule being, “ It is better that one man should suffer than that a whole nation should perish.” In the case

1 Preussische Staatsschriften, i. p. 335.

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of a sovereign, the interest of a great nation is in his care, it is his duty to forward it; to succeed he must sacrifice himself, all the more his engagements, when they begin to become contrary to the welfare of his people.’

The reference to self-sacrifice is hypocritical. Frederick enjoyed cheating. He laid down the doctrine that a sovereign is above all law. He has only to deal with other sovereigns, and they are to be overcome by fraud and violence. That was always the Hohenzollern principle.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SECOND SILESIAN WAR

1; The Bohemian Failure

After the defection of Prussia affairs went badly with France and Bavaria. Prince Charles regained Prague, though Belleisle cleverly succeeded in withdrawing the French troops. The whole of Bohemia fell once more into Austrian hands. In the following spring, on the 12th May 1743, Maria Theresa was crowned Queen of Bohemia in Prague. Bavaria, the Kaiser’s own dominion, was overrun by Austrian forces. On the 9th June Munich, Charles vii.’s capital, was again entered by Austrian troops. On the 27th a force of British and Hanoverians, commanded by King George n. in person, obtained a victory over the French at the battle of Dettingen. Sardinia and Saxony entered into treaties with Austria.

Frederick decided to intervene. To his minister, Mardefeld, at Moscow, Jie wrote : ‘ I-have no reason to doubt that as soon as the Queen of Hungary has finished her war against France, she intends to fall with all her forces, and perhaps those of her allies, upon me.’ In a private note Tie wrote : 1 The~waf~ therefore, which the King of Prussia should make, is a? war" forced upon him, to circumvent~tlie~evil designs of "liis~ehemies . . ., and so a virtue must-be made of Necessity.’

* Necessity ’ gave him the excuse for breaking one more treaty, and attacking Austria for the third time. By the first assault he repudiated the Prussian guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction; by the second he cheated over the Klein-Schnellendorf bargain, by which he had obtained Lower Silesia; now he violated the Treaty of Breslau, which gave him Upper Silesia, in order to extract further territory from Maria Theresa.

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127

Pretending that he was spurred to action by the neces­sity of preventing the humiliation of the Emperor, he formed the Union of Frankfort, which was joined by Bavaria, the Elector Palatine, the Landgrave of Hesse- Cassel, and other Princes. Then, regardless of the interests of Germany, he entered into a secret alliance with France, by a treaty signed on the 5th June 1744. Prussia was to obtain the portions of Silesia excepted by the Treaty of Breslau, and further substantial gains in Bohemia, while France was to acquire certain portions of the Netherlands. He endeavoured to obtain complete secrecy for this treaty in order, as he wrote to Rothenburg, at Paris, that the French alliance 6 may not appear as the reason for my action, but the pretext for my operations should rather be the treaty for confederal union which I am about to conclude with the Emperor, and with other States of the Empire for the support of the Emperor, for the re-establish­ment of the repose of the Empire and the pacification of Germany.’ He insisted upon the importance of concealing the French alliance, writing to the Due de Noailles, 4 you cannot imagine the harm it will do me in Germany.’ He issued a manifesto, which concluded with the words : ‘ In short, the King demands nothing for himself, and his own personal interests are not in question; but his Majesty has recourse to arms for no purpose but to recover liberty for the Empire, the dignity of the Emperor, and the repose o»f Europe.’ This was for the public, but there are several passages in his writings in which he lays it down as an axiom that war should never be entered upon without the promise of gain. He wrote to Eichel at Potsdam, 4 How can they ’ (his allies) 4 make such diffi­culties about the cession of three miserable circles in Bohemia, and the towns of Pardubitz and Kolin ? ’ The object of the new attack is here revealed.

He could not shake off the fear that France might pay him out in his own coin, by making a separate peace with Austria. He knew that the French could not trust him, and supposed that they would wish to punish him for his treachery, while obtaining themselves the advantages

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s.

of peace. France had little to gain by prosecuting the war, and in the position of Louis xv. Frederick would un­doubtedly have been guilty of further treachery. Al­though he must have known what France and the world thought of his conduct and his character, he had the cool hardihood, when writing to the Due de Noailles, to remark that he was sure that Louis xv. would know better than to make a peace 4 which would for ever deprive him of the confidence of all the Princes of Europe.’

He demanded and, through the intervention of the Emperor Charles vn., obtained free passage for his troops through Saxony. Joined by a column from Silesia he appeared before Prague on the 2nd September with an army of 72,000 men, with 182 field guns, and 56 heavy guns, for the attack upon the fortress. After a bombard­ment of several days Prague was captured on the 16th September.

Frederick then took the venturesome step of marching south. On the 30th September his advanced guard cap­tured Budweis, and on the 4th October his main body was within a day’s march of that town. Here he stood between the Austrians under Prince Charles and Vienna. He expected great successes from this movement. He wrote to Podewils that the enemy 4 would be obliged either to retreat to Austria, or see himself cut off from Austrian territory.’ But, if he stood between the Austrians and Vienna, it was all the easier for them to place themselves between him and his base. Prince Charles, acting under the advice of a capable Austrian, General Traun, recrossed the Rhine, and by forced marches reached Mirotitz, on the 4th October, where he was directly in the rear of the Prussians. Saxony had now joined Austria, and a Saxon force of 20,000 men was in the field, marching to a junction with Prince Charles and Traun.

Frederick found himself in an untenable position, with both Austrians and Saxons threatening his communications. He turned back and marched straight at his enemy in the hope of obtaining a battle, but Traun could always find a strong defensive position among the hills, woods, and

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swamps of the wild Bohemian country, where Frederick could not attack him with any hope of success. Nor could the King afford to remain standing, for he was suffering continual heavy losses, owing to the breakdown of his commissariat, the hostility of the people, and the swarms of Hungarian irregulars who had responded to Maria Theresa’s call, and harassed the Prussians at every step. Small parties of his men were daily cut off, wagons were captured, and his army lost large numbers from sickness and desertion. He was outmanoeuvred by Traun, who threatened to cut off his only avenue of retreat, by way of Koniggratz, into Silesia. He was com­pelled to make for the crossings over the Elbe at his best speed. Traun followed, forced a passage across the Elbe at Teltschitz, on the 19th November 1744, and drove the Prussians before him. Early in December the Austrians entered Glatz and burst into Silesia at several points.

Frederick had achieved a failure even worse than the Moravian expedition. From this time the ‘ levity 5 which had been noticed in him began to disappear. When he returned to Berlin it was observed that he had taken on a less flippant and conceited demeanour; he had now a serious air. He had become sobered in the severe school of failure.

2. The Victories of Hohenfriedberg and Soor

Frederick affected to regard the Austrian pursuit of his army into Silesia as a wanton and treacherous repudia­tion of the Treaty of Breslau. He pretended that he might make war on Maria Theresa when and where he chose, but that she, when attacked, was bound to confine herself to the defensive. He had the strange audacity to bring such absurd contentions to the notice of the guarantors of the Silesian treaties, and to demand their assistance. He declared that unless England changed sides at once, he would consider himself absolved from the obligation of making the payments stipulated by those

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130 THE LIFE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT

treaties, referring to certain Silesian loans he had under­taken to repay to the English lenders.

An event now occurred which changed completely the situation of affairs—the death of the Emperor Charles vn., on the 20th January 1745. This put an end to Frederick’s excuse for the war, from the consequences of which it now became his one desire to escape. He made further desperate efforts to induce one or other of the Powers engaged to give sympathetic hearing to his demand for peace. He even hinted that, if it would help him out of the war, his vote might be given for Maria Theresa’s husband, the Grand Duke Francis, at the coming Imperial election.1 This proposal to betray his French ally came to the ears of the French Court, and Frederick had to make some lame efforts to exculpate himself.

The new Elector of Bavaria, son of the Emperor Charles vii., was too young to hope for the Imperial Crown. By the Treaty of Fussen, 22nd April 1745, he guaranteed the Pragmatic Sanction, promised his vote for the Grand Duke Francis, and received back his hereditary domains. Hesse-Cassel and Wurtemburg became parties to the agreement. The death of Charles vn. loosened the ties which had bound the minor German States to the cause of Bavaria and her Prussian and French allies.

Frederick fell easily into the vein of tragic determina­tion. He wrote to Podewils, ‘ We will keep our hold on Silesia, or you will see nothing again of us save our bones.’ (6th April) . . . ‘ The military arm will do its duty; not one of us but will break his back rather than lose one inch of this land by our supineness.’ (17th April) ... ‘ If we must fight, we will do so as desperate men; in fact, never has there been a greater crisis than mine; it must be left to time to dissipate the smoke, and to destiny, if there is such a thing, to decide the event. I work myself

1 'This may seem to be an impossible scheme of treachery,’ says the American author, Tuttle. ' Yet it was so far from being impossible that it actually formed one part, and the large part, of Frederick’s diplomacy for several weeks to come.’ History of Prussia under Frederick the Great, i, p. 291.

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into a fever, and the game I am playing is so serious that it is impossible to look forward calmly to the issue. Good­bye ; for greater security write to me in future in cypher. Offer up some prayers for the succour of my happy star. If the Saxons set foot in Silesia, my troops at Magdeburg must put all Saxony to fire and sword; there must be no further consideration, I shall either perish or keep what I hold.’ (19th April) ... ‘ If all my resources, all my negotiations, in a word, all combinations declare against me, I prefer to perish with honour rather than be deprived for the rest of my life of all glory and reputa­tion. I have regarded it as an honour to have contributed more than any other to the aggrandisement of my house ; I have played a distinguished part among the crowned heads of Europe ; these are so many personal engage­ments that I have taken, and which I am quite resolved to sustain even at the cost of my fortune and my life.’

This was written by the man who fled from his first battlefield, and exhibited timidity on the second occasion. It was mere vulgar boasting, for he knew that there was no excuse for the tragic pose. He wrote to Podewils (8th May), 6 We have great reason to hope that we have arrived at the moment for the humiliation of the Queen of Hungary and of the Saxons.’ On the 18th, 4 As for the Austrians, we have nothing to fear from those fellows. . . . If the Saxons do not join in, the Austrians are less than nothing, and if they come together—we do not fear them.’ When the decisive battle was imminent he wrote (26th May), 41 have, in truth, no fear for the event.’

In the meantime the French obtained, under Marshal Saxe, a signal victory over a combined force of Dutch, English and Hanoverians under the Duke of Cumberland, at Fontenoy, on the 11th May 1745. This success helped Frederick, but far more important for him was the landing of Prince Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, in Scot­land on the 25th July 1745. The Stuart danger, more than the non-success at Fontenoy, brought about the

132 THE LIFE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT recall of the British troops. France had now an easy task in the conquest of Flanders.

A still greater advantage was derived by Frederick from the impending Imperial election. To ensure the choice of her husband the Grand Duke Francis, Maria Theresa sent her most capable general, Traun, to Frank­fort with a substantial army. These troops, and their commander, would have been of more military value to the Austrian cause, either against Marshal Saxe in Flanders or against Frederick in Silesia. In the latter direction they might have achieved great results, for the defeat of the Prussians would have regained Silesia, and obtained the Imperial Crown at the same time. The relegation of the capable Traun to an army of demonstration, and the confiding to the feeble Prince Charles of an army of action, was a remarkable folly.

Joined by a Saxon contingent, Prince Charles advanced with the main Austrian army over the mountains into Silesia. Frederick lay in wait for him, and just as the Austrians began to descend from the hills, he attacked them, near the village of Hohenfriedberg, on the 4th June 1745.

The numbers engaged in the battle were :

 

Prussian.

Austrian.

Saxon.

Allies.

Infantry   .

38,600

24,700

12,800

37,500

Cavalry .  .

19,900

11,900

6,400

18,300

 

58,500

36,600

19,200

55,800

Guns.

Prussian.

Austrian.

Saxon.

Allies.

Three pounders

138

45

36

81

Heavy guns .

54

24

16

40

 

192

69

52

121

These figures do not include the artillerymen, of whom the Prussians, with their preponderance in guns, must have had the larger number. The Prussians had, in all

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arms, about 3000 men more than the Allies, and a great superiority in guns.1

The General Orders issued by Frederick before the battle are printed in the 1746 and 1775 editions of the Histoire de Mon Temps. In Par. 8 of the 1746 edition we find, 6 the cavalry will give no quarter in the heat of the action ’ : the 1775 edition says, 6 the cavalry will make no prisoners in the heat of the action.’ One may assume that the 1746 edition gives the original order, and that the criticism it evoked, induced Frederick to issue a false version, by which it should appear that the order was merely that the cavalry should not stop in their pursuit, for the sake of making prisoners. The real order was, that they were to give no quarter, which means that they were to kill all, wounded and unwounded, who might fall into their power.

The Saxons were in an advanced position, separated from the Austrian main body. Frederick sent against them a superior force. At 5 a.m. the battle opened with a cavalry combat which ended in a Prussian victory. This was followed by an infantry and artillery attack in overwhelming strength, which soon overcame all resist­ance. In accordance with Frederick’s order no quarter was given. At 7 a.m. the whole Saxon army, with its Austrian supports, was in full retreat, followed by the Prussians.

The Austrians were slow in preparing for battle. It was not till 7 a.m., just as the Saxon defence had collapsed, that the Austrian cavalry came into contact with the Prussian cavalry; after an obstinate struggle of about an hour, the Prussians definitely gained the upper hand. The infantry now became hotly engaged in a fire contest, supported by artillery. The Prussians, as always, proved superior; on both flanks the Austrians, after an hour’s fighting, began to give way. In the centre they more than

1 G. Keibel, Die Schlacht von Hohenfriedberg, pp. Ill, 123, 141, 151. German General Staff, Die Kriege Friedrichs des Grossen, vol. vi. p. 218. Austrian General Staff, Oesterreichische Erbfolge Krieg, vol. vii. pp. 438, 454, 462, 478 : Appendix xxxviii.

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held their own, for by an error in the Prussian deployment, a large gap, sufficient for two whole battalions, had been left in the Prussian centre, with the result that a brigade, under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, completely exposed on its left to a concentrated Austrian fire, suffered heavily ; the Hacke regiment lost half its total strength, the Bevern regiment over a third. The Baireuth Dragoons had not taken part in the cavalry fight, and stood just behind the gap in the Prussian infantry. Seeing both Austrian flanks in disorder, General von Gessler and the regiment’s commander, Colonel Schwerin, led the Baireuth troopers in an impetuous charge through the gap, straight at the Austrian centre. They were met at twenty paces by a salvo of fire, but rode on, and succeeded in breaking up the infantry of the first and second Austrian lines. It was now 8.30 a.m., and the whole Austrian army was in retreat.

The losses in the

battle were as follows :— 1

Killed.

Wounded.

Prisoners and Missing.

Total.

Prussians   .

. 905

3775

71

4,751

Austrians   .

. 1800

2830

5655

10,285

Saxons .   .

. 1320

920

1210

3,450

13,735

The Allies lost 66 cannons (chiefly regimental guns), 6 howitzers, 76 flags, and 7 standards.

The Prussians lost 7 per cent, of their number, the Austrians 28 per cent., the Saxons 18 per cent. The chief Austrian loss was in prisoners, while the chief Saxon was in killed. The proportion of killed to wounded were, Prussians 1 to 4, Austrians 1 to 1|, Saxons 1| to 1. These extraordinary Austrian and Saxon figures were the result of Frederick’s express order that the cavalry were to give no quarter, and his known desire that small mercy was to be given by any of his soldiers to the Austrians, and 1 Keibel, pp. 424, 438, 441.

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none to the Saxons. It is plain that, in accordance with Frederick’s wish and command, many of the Austrian wounded, and a large proportion of the Saxon, were de­liberately murdered. Natzmer says : 4 Our fellows were beside themselves with joy over the rumoured order to give no pardon to the Saxons.’ Stille remarks, 4 It was rare to see them given quarter, and the officers had all the difficulty in the world to save some unfortunates. I had that experience myself, at my own risk.’

By attacking Saxons first and Austrians afterwards, Frederick fought two separate battles. The victory would have been easier if he had used a portion of his army twice over. Some of the regiments sent against the Saxons might, when that enemy was in retreat, have been drawn back to join in the fight against the Austrians. The ten battalions which, with a fifty per cent, preponder­ance in numbers, and supported by cavalry and artillery, were engaged in murdering the Saxon grenadiers, sustained a total loss of only twenty-three men. They were being wasted in such work.

Frederick was so delighted with this victory that he burst out into praise of God. He said to his officers: 41 thank God from my heart for the gift of victory, may He always vouchsafe the same.’ And to Valori he said : 4 My dear friend, God has taken me specially under His protection, and has afflicted my enemies with blindness.’ Valori’s comment, in his Memoirs, is 4 See how they are mistaken who say that he does not believe in God.’ But Frederick’s Deity was the God of war.

He did nothing to press his advantage. Prince Charles was allowed several days in which to make good an un­hurried retreat, and it was not until he was well out of reach that the Prussians followed. Prince Charles reached Koniggratz on the 20th June, and Frederick was not in that neighbourhood until the 28th. Both armies took up strong positions, and remained stationary, watching each other. Thus the victory of Hohenfriedberg, which might have been utilised to end the war, achieved nothing more than the clearance of Silesia from the enemy.

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As the days went by without any response being re­ceived to Frederick’s overtures for peace, it became evident that the Prussians could not maintain their position. The populace was hostile, the Austrian pandours and other light troops almost surrounded the Prussian camp, and made the receipt of supplies precarious. Meanwhile Prince Charles had been reinforced. Having done nothing for two months, Frederick broke up his camp on the 23rd August, and began the retreat towards Silesia.

The Scottish rising under Prince Charles Edward pre­vented England from taking any further active part in the war, and made the Ministers of George n. more than ever anxious to bring about a peace on the Continent. Frederick’s desires were in the same direction. On the 26th August, by the preliminaries of the Convention of Hanover, he abandoned his ally, France, once again. George ii. and Frederick n. agreed to restore the statics quo (including Saxony); they guaranteed each other’s possessions ; and Frederick promised his vote for the Grand Duke Francis in the coming Imperial election, provided Austria first agreed to these terms of peace. England urged Maria Theresa to join, but she expected to become Empress without the Prussian vote, and would not accept defeat. Her husband Francis was elected Emperor at Frankfort, on the 13th September 1745.

For three months after Hohenfriedberg Prince Charles remained stationary in the neighbourhood of Koniggratz. Explicit orders reached him to advance and attack the Prussians. On the 29th September, accordingly, he marched forward, crossed the Elbe, and reached with his vanguard a strong position on the Grauer Koppe, near Burghersdorf, while the main army lay between that out­post and the village of Soor. The Prussian camp was almost within gunshot. From the Grauer Koppe, Prince Charles commanded Frederick’s path of retreat to Silesia through Trautenau; and he was also in a good position for attacking the Prussians on their right flank. The country was hilly and heavily wooded. The Grauer Koppe

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afforded the only good point of view. Frederick had not yet discovered his danger.

Prince Charles had 25,700 infantry, 12,700 cavalry, 38,400 in all, against Frederick’s 16,000 infantry and 6500 cavalry, a total of 22,500. Conscious of his strength and of his favourable position, it was the intention of Prince Charles, in accordance with the spirit of Maria Theresa’s commands, to attack the Prussians early on the morning of the 30th. But a large part of his army, which formed his right flank, had not reached, on the previous evening, a sufficiently advanced position to be able to co-operate instantly with the left on the Grauer Koppe, and the centre in front of Burghersdorf. This would not have deterred an enterprising commander, but Charles’s ad­visers, Generals Lobkowitz and Konigsegg, put forward objections. They argued that the enemy was caught in an unfavourable position, and would be forced to retreat, without a battle. The orthodox military opinion of the day regarded a battle accepted as a confession of defeat in the art of manoeuvre. In a letter to his brother, of the 27th September, Prince Charles complained, ‘ I do not find a single one who desires a battle; I say this to you alone, whose good wishes for us I know, but I must confess that this makes me furious.’ 1 The result was that the early surprise attack on the Prussian right, which could hardly have failed, was abandoned, and the Austrians waited for the Prussians to break camp and retreat.

Frederick had once more been outmanoeuvred. He had not expected Prince Charles to advance, and when he heard that a move had been made he mistook its direc­tion. He remained at Staudentz from the 19th to the 30th September, with a small army, in a weak position, and did not take the necessary precaution of placing a force in possession of the dominating Grauer Koppe. Owing to these grave mistakes he found himself faced by an army of great numerical preponderance, in a strong tactical position, while the only practical road of retreat was under the complete command of the enemy. Much has been

1 Austrian General Staff3 op. cit., vol. vii. p. 579.

138 THE LIFE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT

written in praise of his decision to attack, as a sign of his remarkable ability. In truth it was not until he became convinced that retreat was impossible, that he gave orders for the attack.1 That it should have been directed on the Grauer Koppe has also been cited as an example of marvellous perception, although the importance of that position was so obvious that no commander, even of the most ordinary calibre, could hav