Frederick II

“ In Italy his path seemed strewn with disasters, and even in Germany he obtained no very brilliant success. But if he failed, his was one of the most magnificent failures in history, a failure which did not prevent him from handing on his power almost unimpaired to his son. With all his faults, Frederick remains the noblest embodiment of mediæval kingship, the most imposing, the most heroic, and the most brilliant of the long line of German princes, who strove to realise the impracticable but glorious political ideal of the Middle Ages. ”

“ After losing fourteen thousand men in killed, wounded, and prisoners, forty-five cannon, and twenty-two flags, Frederick was compelled to order a retreat. His magnificent regiment of guards, one thousand in number, picked men, undoubtedly the best body of troops in the world, was almost annihilated. The loss of the Austrians was about nine thousand men. They were so accustomed to be defeated by Frederick that they were equally surprised and delighted by this dearly-earned victory. ”

“ Yet there was no very great or essential dissimilarity between the condition of Germany under Frederick III and that of the France of the Armagnac and Burgundian feuds. The elements of political life were in each case the same. There was a monarchy whose great history was still remembered even in the days of its impotence and ruin. There was a real sense of national life, a consciousness so strong that it could bend even the selfish instincts of feudal nobles into cherishing an ambition wider and more patriotic than that of making themselves little kings over their own patrimony. ”

“ Would Frederick II. prove himself more enlightened?
We see with amazement that he did not. A prince who was accounted clever, who had spent the first decade of manhood in pondering on high politics, who revered the memory of the Great73 Elector, and followed the fortunes of England with keen interest—how could such an one ignore what the movement of the times and the course of after events seem to point out so clearly? Among his first acts was the establishment of a new department of manufactures. ”

“ Thou knowest the chances of war. The life of kings is not more regarded than that of private people. I know not what will happen to me.
“If my destiny is finished, remember a friend who loves thee always tenderly. If Heaven prolong my days, I will write to thee after to-morrow, and thou shalt hear of our victory. Adieu, dear friend; I shall love thee till death.
Frederick.”
It is worthy of notice that there is no indication that the king sent any word of affectionate remembrance to his neglected wife. ”

“ The emperor Frederick II. himself stands out as the type of the one tendency; Innocent III., Francis of Assisi and Dominic, in their various degrees, are types of the other. Frederick himself, of course, was Italian rather than German, akin to the despots of the Renaissance in his many-sided culture, his tolerant scepticism and his policy of “cruelty well applied.” The culture of which he was the supreme representative, that of Italy and of Provence, took a more serious shade when it penetrated into Germany. ”

“ On the 18th of January, 1742, Frederick visited Dresden, to confer with Augustus III., King of Poland, who was also Elector of Saxony, and whose realms were to be increased by the annexation of Moravia. His Polish majesty was a weak man, entirely devoted to pleasure. His irresolute mind, subjected to the dominant energies of the Prussian king, was as clay in the hands of the potter.
“You are now,” said Frederick, “by consent of the allies, King of Moravia. Now is the time, now or never, to become so in fact. Push forward your Saxon troops. The Austrian forces are weak in that country. ”

“ Frederick divided his retreating army into two columns. One, led by the young Leopold, was to retire through Glatz. The other, led by Frederick, traversed a road a few leagues to the west, passing through Königgratz. It was an awful retreat for both these divisions—through snow, and sleet, and mud, hungry, weary, freezing, with swarms of Pandours hanging upon their rear. Thousands perished by the way. The horrors of such a retreat no pen can describe. Their very guides deserted them, and became spies, to report their movements to the foe. ”

“ Through night and storm, almost without sleep and without food, drenched and chilled, he was galloping over the hills and through the valleys,244 climbing the steeples, fording the streams, wading the morasses, involved in a struggle which now threatened even the crown which he had so recently placed upon his brow. Had Frederick alone suffered, but few tears of sympathy would have been shed in his behalf; but his ambition had stirred up a conflict which was soon to fill all Europe with the groans of the dying, the tears of the widow, the wailings of the orphan. ”

“ It is instructive to observe how such a critic and apologist finds no need to condone, as though it were reprehensible, the action of Frederick II as an ally of France in the course of his Silesian Wars—and the designation of the wars is at once almost Frederick's condemnation and his defence—between 1740 and 1745. He sees in Frederick's action ground for praise for consummate skill; he claims for him political judgement almost unique. Frederick began the war on his own account against Austria, and without the help of France. ”

“ The victory of Frederick was one of the most memorable in the annals of war. The Austrians lost in killed and wounded ten thousand men. Twenty-one thousand were taken prisoners. This was a heavier loss in numbers than the whole army of Frederick. The victors also took fifty-one flags, and a hundred and sixteen cannon.
As the king cast his eye over the blood-stained field, covered with the wounded and the dead, for a moment he seemed overcome with the aspect of misery, and exclaimed, “When, oh when will my woes cease?” ”

“ But his reign was the rough, strong bridge which led to a Frederick the Great, and the reign of the Great Frederick was that other bridge which led to a powerful and dominating kingdom of Prussia,—from which was to spring a new German Empire!
If Frederick William was a tyrant of the most savage sort, on the other hand he organized industry, finance, and an army. If he was a miser in his family, he brought wealth and prosperity to his people. If he beat and cudgeled his own son for playing the flute, he left that son a kingdom and an army which were the foundation of his greatness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There were nearly thirty thousand men, infantry and cavalry, thus assembling under the banners of Frederick for battle. They were in as perfect state of drill as troops have ever attained, and were armed with the most potent implements of war which that age could furnish. The king was visibly affected by the spectacle. Whether humane considerations touched his heart, or merely poetic emotion moved him, we can not tell. But he was well aware that within a few hours not merely hundreds, but thousands of those men, torn by shot and shell, would be prostrate in their blood upon the plain ”

“ In this terrible emergence, the queen, resolute as she was, was almost compelled, by the importunity of her counselors, to permit Sir Thomas Robinson, who was acting for England far more than for Austria, to go back to Frederick with the offer so humiliating to her, that she would surrender to him one half of Silesia if he would withdraw his armies and enter into an alliance with her against the French. ”

“ FREDERICK AND PRUSSIA AFTER THE WAR The monarch who had borne the burden of seven campaigns—a burden of which his ten great battles formed but a trifling fraction—might well have been pardoned for appropriating to himself some share in the repose which his labours had won for Prussia. Even if it is difficult to couple the thought of Frederick with that of repose, it might at least be expected that after a triumph of defence hardly surpassed in human history he would delight his army by praising their achievements and his people by accepting their plaudits. ”

“ At length Prince Charles, having lost nine thousand in dead and wounded, seven thousand prisoners, sixteen thousand in all, sixty-six cannon, seventy-three flags and standards, beat a retreat. Rapidly his bleeding and exhausted troops marched back through Hohenfriedberg, entered the mountain defiles, and sought refuge, a thoroughly beaten army, among the fortresses of Bohemia. Frederick remained the undisputed victor of the field. Five thousand of his brave soldiers lay dead or wounded upon the plain. Even his stoical heart was moved by the greatness of the victory. ”

“ I prepare myself for every event. Fortune may be kind or be unkind, it shall neither dishearten me nor uplift me. If I am to perish, let it be with honor, and sword in hand.”
Frederick was, with great energy, gathering all his resources for a decisive conflict in his fortresses along the banks of the Neisse. ”

“ He drained bogs, planted colonies, established manufactures, and in every way encouraged the use of Prussian products. He carried with him invariably a stout rattan cane. Upon the slightest provocation, like a madman, he would thrash those who displeased him. He was thoroughly an arbitrary king, ruling at his sovereign will, and disposing of the liberty, the property, and the lives of his subjects at his pleasure. Every year he was accumulating large masses of coin, which he deposited in barrels in the cellar of his palace. ”

“ The demands of Frederick William were not unreasonable. As he commenced the brief campaign, which began and ended with the siege of Stralsund, he said: “Why will the very king whom I most respect compel me to be his enemy?” In his characteristic farewell order to his ministers, he wrote: “My wife shall be told of all things, and counsel asked of her. And as I am a man, and may be shot dead, I command you and all to take care of Fritz, as God shall reward you. ”

“ A king who carries in the one hand an all-conquering sword, but in the other a blessed olive-branch, and is the arbiter of Europe for peace or war.”
Frederick, having obtained all that, for the present, he could hope to obtain, deemed it for his interest to attempt to promote the peace of Europe. His realms needed consolidating, his army recruiting, his treasury replenishing. But he found it much easier to stir up the elements of strife than to allay them. ”

“ Though Frederick had no scruples of conscience to prevent him from seizing a portion of the domains of Maria Theresa, his astonishment and indignation were alike aroused by the rumor that England, Poland, and Russia were contemplating the dismemberment of his realms. An army of thirty-six thousand men, under the old Duke Leopold of Dessau,51 was immediately dispatched by Frederick to Götten, on the frontiers of Hanover, to seize upon that Continental possession of the King of England upon the slightest indication of a hostile movement. ”

“ Their wings of foragers and skirmishers were widely extended, so that the hungry army swept with desolation a breadth of country reaching out many leagues. Though the Austrian army was traversing the friendly territory of Bohemia, still Prince Charles was anxious to leave behind him no resources for Frederick to glean. Frederick, with his army, pressed along, following the wide-spread trail of his foes. The Austrians, with great skill, selected every commanding position on which to erect their batteries, and hurl back a storm of shot and shell into the bosoms of their pursuers. ”

“ 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’s484 heavy artillery, each piece drawn by twelve horses, could not be brought forward through the bogs, and the entangling woods, and over the rugged heights. Though the Prussians fought with all the energies mortal valor could inspire, and though the king flew from post to post of peril and of death, animating his troops by voice and gesture, and by his own reckless courage, it was all in vain. Hope soon died in all hearts. ”