Emperor Frederick II

“ It may seem strange, but it is true, that when the emperor Frederick II., a philosopher, a statesman, a very original legislator, took to writing poetry, he could only copy and amuse himself with absolute puerilities. ”

“ King Frederick William IV had a mind which appeared incapable of appreciating matters of greater importance than the etiquette of Courts and the prescriptions of mediæval heraldry. As we know, during the last years of his life his intellect was clouded much in the same way as was that of King George III of England. King Frederick’s brother and successor, the old Emperor William, possessed remarkable strength of character combined with little capacity or intellect, as Bismarck very frankly explained, both to his creature, Busch, and in other recorded expressions of opinion. ”

“ The answer is that Freytag’s conception of the emperor’s character was hopelessly erroneous. He is obliged to confirm his title to be considered the originator of the idea of a German Empire, but he attributes it to a mere love of pomp and ceremony, a passion for Court millinery. The plain truth is that few monarchs have been simpler in their personal tastes than the Emperor Frederick; the etiquette, the monotony, and the restraint of Court life bored him, and he was never so happy as when he could escape to the congenial society of savants, artists, and writers. ”

“ With this army—forty-nine thousand strong—Frederick was to advance, by one short day’s march, upon Iglau, where the Austrian garrison amounted to but ten thousand men.
In the mean time, on the 24th of January, Charles Albert, King of Bavaria, through the intrigues of the French minister and the diplomacy of Frederick, was chosen Emperor of Germany. This election Frederick regarded as a great triumph on his part. It was the signal defeat of Austria. Very few of the sons of Adam have passed a more joyless and dreary earthly pilgrimage than was the fortune of Charles Albert. ”

“ Poland, ever in turmoil, was at this time choosing a king. The emperor advocated the claims of August of Saxony. France urged Stanislaus, a Polish noble, whose daughter had married the French dauphin. War ensued between France and Germany. Frederick William became the ally of the emperor. An army of ten thousand men, admirably equipped and organized, was upon the march for the Rhine, to act with the emperor against France. The Crown Prince was very eager to join the expedition, and obtained permission to do so. ”

“ Then in August 1167, in the midst of the struggle in Italy, came the pestilence which destroyed the imperial army in Rome, and drove the emperor as a fugitive across the Alps. After this humiliation Frederick remained for six years in Germany. He was fully occupied in restoring order in Saxony, in the diocese of Salzburg and elsewhere; in adding to his hereditary lands; in negotiating for a better understanding with France and England; and in reminding the vassal states, Hungary, Poland and Bohemia, of their duties towards the Empire. ”

“ In this year Prussia obtained from the Emperor the long-coveted title of kingdom; and the monarch, as Frederick I., took his place among European sovereigns. He died in 1713, and was succeeded by the prince-royal, Frederick-William. The character of the deceased monarch was, long after, given with epigrammatic contemptuousness by Frederick II.
"In person short and deformed, with a haughty manner and a commonplace countenance, violent from temper, mild from carelessness, he confounded vanities with acts of greatness, and was fonder of show than of utility. ”

“ In reviewing the life of the Empress Frederick as a whole, it must never be forgotten that the Emperor William was not expected to reach, as in fact he did, an extraordinary old age. After the Franco-Prussian War, everyone of any intelligence, from Bismarck downwards, attached great importance to the Crown Princess’s views and feelings; they believed that she had established a commanding influence over her husband, and that the moment he succeeded to the throne she would be the real ruler. ”

“ The King of Poland demanded the whole Austrian succession, in virtue of the right of his wife, who was the eldest daughter of the Emperor Joseph, elder brother of Charles VI. The King of Spain claimed all the Austrian possessions, in consequence of his descent from the wife of Philip II., who was daughter of the Emperor Maximilian. The King of Sardinia hunted up an obsolete claim to the duchy of Milan. But for the embarrassment into which these claims plunged Maria Theresa, Frederick would hardly have ventured to invade the province of Silesia. ”

“ The first half of the thirteenth century furnishes additional chapters in the old story of the fight between emperor and pope. Frederick II, the present incumbent of the imperial throne, is one of the most picturesque characters of the Middle Ages. He is a man of extraordinary versatility; master of many languages, including Greek and Arabic, patron of the arts, himself a poet, and what perhaps is most remarkable of all, considering his [6] scholarly proclivities, an advocate of the use of the vernacular out of which is developing a new Italian language. ”

“ But of deep insight, still less of great constructive power, there is little trace.
In freedom from illusions, however, Frederick surpassed some rival statesmen. This was abundantly illustrated at the very outset of his reign. He saw, as Charles VI. could not, that the claim of the Emperor to be lord of the world rested on no firm76 basis. Early in 1737 he had written: “If the Emperor dies to-day or to-morrow, what revolutions will come to pass! Every one will wish to share his estate, and we shall see as many factions as there are sovereigns.” ”

“ Frederick deprived him of the crown, and sent him to Apulia, where he died a few years afterwards. The emperor was obliged to employ two years in [93] restoring order in Germany; he after that returned into Italy by the valley of Trento, and arrived, on the 16th of August, 1236, at Verona with three thousand German cavalry. A senate of eighty members, nobles and Ghibellines, then governed that republic; Frederick, by his address in managing men, engaged them to name Ezzelino captain of the people; this committed to him at the same time the command of the militia and the judicial power ”

“ Under these circumstances, it was evidently impossible for Frederick to retain Silesia unless he could again rally France and other powers to his aid. It was always easy to rouse France against England, its hereditary foe. Thus influenced, Frederick, early in the spring of 1744, entered into a new alliance with France and the Emperor Charles Albert against Maria Theresa. The two marriages which he had so adroitly consummated constrained330 Russia and Sweden to neutrality. ”

“ Nevertheless, in the War of the Polish Succession against France (1734–1735) , Frederick William remained faithful to the emperor’s cause, and sent an auxiliary force of 10,000 men. The peace of Vienna, which terminated the war, led to a reconciliation between France and Austria, and so to a further estrangement between Frederick William and the emperor. Moreover, in 1738 the western powers, together with the emperor, insisted in identical notes on the recognition of the emperor’s right to decide the question of the succession in the Lower Rhine duchies. ”

“ They are as dangerous to your majesty as to others. I can conceive of no remedy against them but this. Prussia and Austria must join frankly in protest and absolute prohibition of them.”
“I have nothing more at heart,” Frederick replied, “than to stand well with Austria. I wish always to be her ally, never her enemy. But the prince sees how I am situated. Bound by express treaty with her czarish majesty, I must go with Russia in any war. I will do every thing in my power to conciliate her majesty with the emperor—to secure such a peace at St. ”

“ In Germany itself internal order was established by a strict appliance of the existing laws against those who broke the peace, fresh orders for its observance were issued, and in Frederick the robber nobles found a most implacable enemy. The cities, too, flourished during this reign. The emperor attached them to himself by granting to many of them the very liberties which, by a strained interpretation of his imperial rights, he withheld from the cities of Lombardy. Yet, notwithstanding his policy, in these directions the German nobles appear to have been enthusiastically devoted to Frederick. ”

“ Frederick the Third was almost eighty years old now. He had given up the government of the country to his son, and had retired to his palace at Linz, where he pursued his "studies," as he called them, and which he fondly imagined them to be, though to-day his pursuits would make a boy of average intelligence smile broadly.
When Frederick was selected to be the emperor of Austria he thought over the matter for eleven [Pg 158] weeks before he could make up his mind to accept the honor thus proffered him. He never has been called a wise or a worthy ruler; quite the contrary, indeed ”

“ The war-cries of the two opponents, however, became eternalized as factional names in the struggle of Frederick's successors against other foes. For generations whoever upheld the empire was a Waibling, and whoever would attack it, on whatsoever plea, a Welf. Frederick, having established his power in Germany, attempted to assert it in Italy as well; and so the strife passed over the Alps and became that of Ghibelline against Guelf, in Italian phrase, of emperor against pope, of monarchy against democracy. ”

“ She might have captured a big estate with him.” I further expressed the opinion that the death of the Emperor Frederick had saved us from an evil future, and in particular from English influence on the foreign policy of Prussia and of the Empire, and from an estrangement with Russia. “Yes,” he rejoined; “he was in favour of the Orleans, used his influence for a daughter of Nemours, was on the side of Poland, of Denmark, and against the war of 1866,—always in favour of what fell in with the views of the English.” ”

“ When I assumed the reins of government owing to the early death of my father, the generation of the grandson, as I have already remarked, followed upon the generation of the grandfather, which meant that the entire generation of Emperor Frederick was overleaped. This generation, through its dealings with Crown Prince Frederick William, was imbued with many liberal ideas and projects of reform which were to be carried out under the direction of the Emperor Frederick. ”

“ In general he continued his father’s policy, and when he died in 1357 was succeeded by his son, Frederick V., who, after the death of his uncle Albert in 1361, became sole ruler of Nuremberg, Ansbach and Bayreuth. Frederick lived in close friendship with the emperor Charles IV., who formally invested him with Ansbach and Bayreuth and made him a prince of the empire in 1363. In spite of the troubled times in which he lived, Frederick was a successful ruler, and introduced a regular system of public finance into his lands. ”

“ Of an active and adventurous temperament, he fought under the emperor Maximilian I. in 1508, and afterwards served the Habsburgs loyally in other ways. He worked to secure the election of Charles, afterwards the emperor Charles V., as the successor of Maximilian in 1519; fought in two campaigns against the Turks; and being disappointed in his hope of obtaining the hand of one of the emperor’s sisters, married in 1535 Dorothea (d. 1580) , daughter of Christian II., who had been driven from the Danish throne. ”

“ THE GREAT ALLY September 8, 1906
On this date the Emperor and his four sons dedicated a monument to Frederick the Great on the site of his famous bivouac at Bunzelwitz. [243] In the evening he addressed a banquet in Breslau, in which he took up especially the services of the Silesians to the crown. He particularly recalls the support they gave Frederick William III in 1813, at the lowest ebb of that King’s fortunes. Divisions of patriotic volunteers, “free corps,” were organized in the province, who, not being Prussians, could not serve in the Prussian line. ”

“ Not that one of them thought of acquiring the throne for himself; they did not resist the election of a Catholic emperor as such, but they wished to guard against the resumption of the combination between the Austro-Spanish power and the prerogatives of the imperial crown. At first their eyes fell upon Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, whom they would by this means have for ever detached from that power. The Elector Frederick controlled the jealousy which, as Elector Palatine, he felt for a branch of the same house, and went to Munich in order to prevail on his cousin to consent to this arrangement ”

“ Frederick’s enemies derisively called his little army the “Potsdamer Wachtparade” [the “Potsdam Guard’s Parade”] ! Well, he showed them what he could do at the head of it! And in later times likewise the “Potsdam Guard’s Parade” fittingly showed the way to every one who tried to cultivate too close an acquaintance with it. This obelisk of northern granite is erected in memory of that time. A memorial to “Fredericus Rex, the King and Hero,” to be emulated by us all in working with unabated strength to the end that we may be ready to strike in any emergency. ”

“ Frederick the Great and the Emperor’s great-uncle Frederick William IV were particularly gifted on the artistic side. The present Emperor, whose versatility is amazing, has taken a particular interest in things literary and artistic, and has himself occasionally assumed the rôle of creative artist. ”