Frederick II of Prussia

“ Frederick, in his great contest, was assisted by an English, Hessian, and Hanoverian army, as well as by English subsidies; but, making full allowance for the value of these auxiliaries, it must still be admitted that great genius and courage were required to enable a King of Prussia to resist the combined forces of France, Austria, Russia, and Sweden. Frederick effected this, and his conduct deservedly obtained for him the name of "Great." ”

“ If Frederick feared not God, neither did he regard man. Far from being dazzled by the array of sceptres marshalled against him, he determined to strike before his foes could form.
With the first breath of spring he despatched three royal princes and the Duke of Bevern against four several points in Bohemia. “If those false attacks have so far succeeded as to cover the King of Prussia’s real intention,” writes Mitchell on April 18th, “I may venture to say that His Prussian Majesty is upon the point of executing one of the boldest and one of the greatest designs that ever was attempted by man.” ”

“ In general, however, Frederick was as gifted a tactician in politics as in war, and in both he knew how to profit by experience. Compared with his handling of France in his early years, his handling of Russia from 1762 to 1779 shows an advance as marked as that of his guardianship between Mollwitz and Leuthen. The circumstances of the age favoured a policy of opportunism for Prussia. Dexterity, not depth, was profitable, and Frederick therefore earned handsome rewards—Silesia, East Frisia, and West-Preussen. ”

“ They show the future Emperor Frederick in a new light—no longer as the liberal constitutionalist, the firm admirer of England’s free polity, but as the champion of the divine right of the Hohenzollerns, with a splendid vision of a united Germany under the military protection of Prussia. At the same time there is that qualifying sentence in which the Crown Prince refers to the plan of a coronation at Berlin almost as if he and his wife had been driven to recommend it as the only solution of the King’s difficulties regarding the oath of allegiance. ”

“ Through varying fortune Frederick's military genius enabled him in the two ensuing years to wrest victories from the Russians at Zorndorf and from the French at Minden, though his capital was taken by the Russians and was subjected to three days' plunder. In 1761 the English, owing to the death of George II, withdrew their subsidies to Prussia; but Frederick's straits were somewhat relieved in the following year, when Elizabeth of Russia died and Peter III, her successor, in his few months' reign made peace with Prussia. ”

“ England alone was on his side. Russia had joined the coalition through anger of the Empress Elizabeth at Frederick's satire upon her licentious life; France had joined it through hostility to England; Austria had organized it from indignation at Frederick's lawless seizure of Silesia; the army raised to operate against Prussia numbered several hundred thousand men.
For years Frederick fought them all single-handed, with a persistence, an energy, and a resolute rising under the weight of defeat that compelled the admiration even of his enemies, and in the end gave him victory over them all. ”

“ War would thin his regiments, soil his uniforms, destroy his materiel. He hated war. But his army caused Prussia to be respected. If needful, he could throw one hundred thousand of the best drilled and best furnished troops in Europe, like a thunderbolt, upon any point. Unprincipled monarchs would think twice before they would encroach upon a man thus armed.
There was but one short war in which Frederick William engaged during his reign of twenty-seven years. That was with Charles XII. of Sweden. It lasted but a few months, and from it the Prussian king returned victorious. ”

“ Regardless himself of comfort, insensible to fatigue, dead to affection, he created perhaps the most potent military machine earth has ever known. Prussia was an armed camp. The king prized his soldiers as a miser prizes his gold coin, and was as unwilling to expose them to any danger as the miser is to hazard his treasures. ”

“ Prussia had always been regarded as one of the lesser European states, Austria and France as the chief powers. Russia now proved herself of equal weight with the greatest, so that even the genius of Frederick began to fail against the enormous odds which crushed him down. His land was laid waste, his capital seized by a sudden attack and held for ransom. He was saved by the death of the Russian Empress; her son and successor, an admirer of Frederick, promptly changed sides in the war. By degrees everyone abandoned it but Maria Theresa ”

“ Nature had endowed him with a bold and aspiring genius. He had a consciousness of strength, combined with a belief that he was a chosen instrument appointed by fate to perform a definite work: the raising of Prussia to the first rank in the German empire.
When we see Frederick's ideal of a despotic personal government, with a divinely appointed ruler leading his country to greatness, independent of ministers and advisers,—it is easy to recognize the model which is being studied by a certain young ruler in Europe to-day! ”

“ That literary creation is the highest achievement of man, and that next to creation stand patronage and culture; that religion is superstition; that the enlightened man is he who views with calm not only the rubs of fortune but also the frailties of mankind—such were the abiding traces of Frederick’s education. The King, as may readily be believed, did not fail to remark something of this and to loathe it. He leaped to the conclusion that a boy who preferred French to German, and flute-playing to parades, was a monster who would ruin Prussia. ”

“ The King of Prussia had an army of two hundred thousand men under perfect discipline. The Old Dessauer was dead, but many veteran generals were in command. It was manifest that war would soon burst forth. In addition to the personal pique of the Duchess of Pompadour, who really ruled France, Louis XV. was greatly exasperated by the secret alliance into which Frederick had entered with England. The brother of the Prussian king, Augustus William, the heir-apparent to the throne, disapproved of this alliance. ”

“ Not only were the Goliaths of his own dominions impressed into the service, but big men in all parts of Europe were coaxed, bribed, or kidnapped by Frederick's recruiting officers. No present was so acceptable to him as a giant, and by the gift of a six-footer more than one prince bought his everlasting favor. Rough, brutal tyrant though he was, Frederick William was an able and energetic ruler. He did much to consolidate the power of Prussia, and at his death in 1740 left to his successor a considerably extended dominion, and a splendid army of 80,000 men. ”

“ Frederick had now France only for an ally. But France was seeking her own private interests on the Rhine, as Frederick was aiming at the aggrandizement of Prussia on his Austrian frontiers. Neither party was disposed to make any sacrifice for the benefit of the other. Frederick, thus thrown mainly upon his345 own resources, with an impoverished treasury, and a weakened and baffled army, made indirect application to both England and Austria for peace. ”

“ The king, who gave enlightenment and freedom of thought to his people, is dead! King Frederick is dead! A shadow darkens the sun of this first morning of the new era. This shadow will soon become a lowering cloud, and night and darkness will sink down over Prussia. ”

“ He even increased its numbers by forcing the vanquished Saxons into the ranks. Above all, he won security for the western flank of Silesia and a safe base from which to attack Bohemia.
But all this was purchased at a great price in material and moral strength. Prussia was still a Power which had to ask herself whether she could bear a second or a third campaign. To raise new taxes was difficult if not impossible. Frederick, it might almost be said, paid for the war out of his own pocket with the help of his allies and of the enemy. ”

“ England also, alarmed in view of the increasing supremacy of France, was so anxious to detach Frederick, with his invincible troops, from the French alliance, that the British cabinet urged Maria Theresa to make any sacrifice whatever that might be necessary to secure peace with Prussia. Frederick,313 influenced by such considerations, buried the illustrious Austrian dead with the highest marks of military honor, and treated with marked consideration his distinguished prisoners of war. ”

“ But in three weeks Prussia can be across the frontiers and upon the throats of its enemy. Some countries have a longer sword than Prussia, but none can unsheath it so soon.”
Public opinion was then much less potent than now; still it was a power. Frederick had two objects in view in again drawing the sword. One was to maintain possession of Silesia, which was seriously menaced; the other was to enlarge his territory, and thus to strengthen his hold upon his new conquest, by adding to Prussia the three important Bohemian principalities of Königgratz, Bunzlau, and Leitmeritz. ”

“ In Berlin the superb monument of the Great Frederick is instinct with a different spirit. Raised high above the throng, the King seems to gaze with his inscrutable mask-face at the astounding works of his successors. At the base of his lofty pedestal are stationed generals and civilians of renown, numerous enough almost to confute the Cassius who should infer of Frederick’s Prussia that there was in it but one2 only man. The statue none the less suggests the truth. Between monarch and people there was ever a great gulf fixed. ”

“ As the spring opened the allies had in the field such a military array as Europe had never seen before. Three hundred thousand men extended in a cordon of posts from the Giant Mountains, near the borders of Silesia, to the ocean. In the north, also, Russia had accumulated her vast armies for vigorous co-operation with the southern troops. All the leading Continental powers—France, Austria, Russia, Sweden, and the states of the German Empire—were combined against Prussia. England alone was the inefficient ally of Frederick. Small sums of money were loaned him from the British cabinet ”

“ It is true that now, as so often before, Frederick underrated the firmness of the Queen. He was further disappointed by the unyielding attitude of Augustus, who possessed a dangerous patron in the Czarina. But England, the paymaster of the coalition, had no stomach for a war of vengeance against Prussia. To her the Austrian alliance was merely an investment. It would be profitable only if it produced hard fighting against her real foes, the French. ”

“ The question of alliances was still unsettled on February 19th, when Frederick again left Berlin for the scene of war. Prussia might be doomed to act alone; her safety lay in her own right hand. New armies were set on foot, but a skirmish at Baumgarten, in which he narrowly escaped capture, proved to Frederick that the Austrians were moving and that his own troops were not all that could be desired. Nor was the Prussian strategy above criticism. The Old Dessauer, the father of the army, held up his hands in horror at the dispositions of Schwerin. ”

“ Men crushed down by despair were met by men leaping into the air for very gladness.”
As we have mentioned, the Russian general had such a dread of Frederick that he did not dare to pursue him. In his report of the victory to the Czarina Charlotte, speaking of his own heavy loss of over eighteen thousand men, he writes, “Your majesty is aware that the King of Prussia sells his victories at a dear rate.” To some who urged him to pursue Frederick, he replied, “Let me gain but another such victory, and I may go to Petersburg with the news of it myself alone, with my staff in my hand.” ”

“ The year after Frederick’s marriage, the year 1734, was of high importance in his career. The war of the Polish Succession had broken out between France and the Empire, and Prussia fulfilled her obligations by sending an auxiliary force of ten thousand men to serve on the Rhine under Eugene. In this campaign, which proved inglorious, Frederick played the part of an eager novice, dogging the footsteps of the aged hero and copying even his curt manner. ”

“ They demanded the entire surrender of the city, and that the authority of Frederick, the King of Prussia, should be recognized instead of that of Maria Theresa, Queen of Austria. All their local laws and customs were to be respected, and they were to be protected in all their rights and privileges. Their own garrison should guard the city. No Prussian soldier should enter the gates with other than side-arms. The king himself, in taking possession of the city, should be accompanied by a body-guard of but thirty men. ”

“ For a century Prussia had seldom departed from a policy of thrift and autocracy at home84 and opportunism abroad. Would she now abandon it? Frederick’s early measures showed that he intended no sweeping changes in domestic politics. We may therefore postpone an examination of the system which he there pursued. For us he is at present only the lord of ninety thousand of the best-drilled troops in the world, entangled in no alliances and hampered by no fears. ”

“ There Frederick, who had just written to Belleisle a letter full of encouragement, sold his allies for his own profit. It was agreed that after a sham siege of Neisse the Austrians should evacuate Silesia, and that Prussia should become neutral in fact though not in show. To Neipperg, whose army would now be free to act against the French in Bohemia, Frederick gave wise counsel for the campaign. “Unite all your troops, then strike home before they can strike you.” If the Austrians should succeed, Frederick might join them; if not, he would be compelled to look to himself. ”