King Frederick William I of Prussia

“ What use has Prussia for such a sovereign? No, Frederick William would not, could not die! His son should not reign in Prussia, destroying what his father had built up! Never should Prussia fall into the hands of a dreaming poet! The king was resolved, therefore, that no one should know he was ill; no one should believe that he had any disease but gout; this was insignificant, never fatal. A man can live to be eighty years old with the gout; it is like a faithful wife, who lives with us even to old age, and with whom we can celebrate a golden wedding. ”

“ Whatever may be thought of the manner of this refusal, or of its immediate motives, it was in itself wise, for the German empire would have lost immeasurably had it been the cause rather than the result of the inevitable struggle with Austria, and Bismarck was probably right when he said that, to weld the heterogeneous elements of Germany into a united whole, what was needed was, not speeches and resolutions, but a policy of “blood and iron.” In any case Frederick William, uneasy enough as a constitutional king, would have been impossible as a constitutional emperor. ”

“ Men abhor the thought of a vacuum created by their own disappearance. The self-abnegation of a Washington is as much rarer as it is wiser than the augmented industry of an aged Louis XIV. Yet the sketch that has been given in this book of the all-embracing activity of the King, who nominated even the sergeants and corporals in an army of 200,000 men, and allowed no branch of his civil hierarchy the least real independence, suffices to show how improbable it was that an ordinary prince could put himself in Frederick’s place, and how fatal it would be to the Government if he did not. ”

“ He was a man of singularly handsome presence, not without mental qualities of a high order; he was devoted to the arts—Beethoven and Mozart enjoyed his patronage and his private orchestra had a European reputation. But an artistic temperament was hardly that required of a king of Prussia on the eve of the Revolution; and Frederick the Great, who had employed him in various services—notably in an abortive confidential mission to the court of Russia in 1780—openly expressed his misgivings as to the character of the prince and his surroundings. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Frederick William had to surrender half his dominions, and what remained to him was exhausted by French exactions and liable at any moment to be crushed out of existence by some new whim of Napoleon. In the dark years that followed it was the indomitable courage of Queen Louise that helped the weak king not to despair of the state. She seconded the reforming efforts of Stein and the work of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in reorganizing the army, by which the resurrection of Prussia became a possibility. ”

“ This gave the new king much popularity with the mass of the people; while the educated classes were pleased by his removal of Frederick’s ban on the German language by the admission of German writers to the Prussian Academy, and by the active encouragement given to schools and universities. But these reforms were vitiated in their source. In 1781 Frederick William, then prince of Prussia, inclined, like many sensual natures, to mysticism, had joined the Rosicrucians, and had fallen under the influence of Johann Christof Wöllner (1732–1800) , and by him the royal policy was inspired. ”

“ The recruiting officers of Frederick William, mortified and chagrined, with many apologies released the embassador of the emperor.
As we have mentioned, the agents of the King of Prussia were45 eager to kidnap tall men, in whatever country they could find them. This greatly exasperated the rulers of the various realms of all sizes and conditions which surrounded the Prussian territory. Frederick William was always ready to apologize, and to aver that each individual act was done without his orders or knowledge. ”

“ Prussia did not succeed in obtaining any concessions of territory from the alarms of the Allies, and the dismissal of Hertzberg in 1791 marked the final abandonment of the anti-Austrian tradition of Frederick the Great. For, meanwhile, the French Revolution had entered upon alarming phases, and in August 1791 Frederick William, at the meeting at Pillnitz, arranged with the emperor Leopold to join in supporting the cause of Louis XVI. But neither the king’s character, nor the confusion of the Prussian finances due to his extravagance, gave promise of any effective action. ”

“ King Frederick William, who did so much for Prussia, had many personal eccentricities that highly amused Europe. Imbued with patriarchal instincts, he had his eye on everybody and everything. He treated his kingdom as a schoolroom, and, like a zealous schoolmaster, flogged his naughty subjects unmercifully. If he suspected a man of possessing adequate means, he might command him to erect a fine residence so as to improve the appearance of the capital. ”

“ As for Saxony itself, it is true that if war must come, which Podewils regarded as dubious, Prussia derived much strength from her possession of it. But Frederick’s treatment of Saxony removed all possibility of escaping not only from a war, but from war upon the scale that he professed to expect. The spectacle of the suffering King inflamed all his enemies. As an exile in Warsaw Augustus was a more valuable ally to Austria than he could have been in Dresden. He made it absurd for Frederick to pose as the defender of German princes against the Hapsburg. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Your majesty will, can, and must do this; God has given you not only the power, but the intellect and strength. Your majesty will change many things and inaugurate new measures. The old times must give way before the new era. I saw that the first time I looked into my young king's eye—in that bold eye in which is written a great and glorious future for Prussia; I understood that we, who had served the sainted king, might not appear worthy or young enough to carry out the purposes of the royal successor of Frederick William. I waited, also, for my dismissal ”

“ To him the German princes still looked for investiture, for arbitration, and for promotion, and if a State desired to exercise its troops, who was so likely as the lord of the long Hapsburg frontiers to be at war? King Frederick William might reasonably hope that the Power which had given his father the crown, which had led Prussians to victory before Turin, and which had permitted him to keep conquests in Swedish Pomerania (1720) , would reward his devoted61 service by favouring his pretensions to inheritance on the Rhine.
Though a forceful squire, as a statesman the King lacked imagination. ”

“ His Romanticism in no way interfered with his fulfilment of his duties as a good citizen. In his capacity of Government official he was zealous, conscientious, and steady—one of the men who do their duty and are guilty of no extravagances, and whose position is consequently assured. His republicanism was short-lived, and he is only saved by his naïveté from the charge of servility. He calls Frederick William and Louisa of Prussia "ein klassisches Menschenpaar;" in the revelation of these "geniuses" he sees an omen of a better world. Frederick William is, he says, the first king of Prussia ”

“ From the very first the crown aggrandised the Hohenzollern dynasty. It consecrated their ambition, enlarged their horizon, and gave them, as the Lord’s anointed, a new claim upon the devotion of their subjects. The Order of the Black Eagle, which for two centuries has been the coveted prize of service to their state, signalised the coronation of Frederick I.
The Great Elector and the first king of Prussia have this in common—that whatever may be thought of their achievements it is difficult to mistake the men themselves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It would soon be proved whether the Prussian troops were indeed as brave as they were handsome, or whether Europe was right in thinking that Prussia would pay dear for the presumption of her King.
Frederick realised the importance of the crisis. For two days, it is said, he could neither eat nor sleep. On April 8th he wrote to his brother and heir, Prince Augustus William, bidding him farewell if the next day should be his last. In that event he commended to his care four of his friends, “those whom in life I have loved the most,” as well as two of his servants. ”

“ Those new Kings of Wurtemberg and Bavaria, that Grand-duke of Baden, were only vassals and servants of the Emperor of France, who had first given, and then PERMITTED them to wear these crowns.
King Frederick William needed no such crown. A genius stood at his side and breathed with a heavenly smile into his ear: “It is better to die in an honorable struggle for freedom than to live in splendor and magnificence, but with a stain on your honor.” ”

“ The King of England marked the small esteem in which he held the untried and obscure Elector by pressing upon him the hand of his niece, a princess of the fugitive and bankrupt House of the Palatinate. Frederick William’s relations with Poland, the suzerain of whom he held Ost-Preussen, show yet more clearly how slight was his power at his accession. When the Lutherans of Königsberg threatened riot because a Calvinist was chosen to preach the funeral sermon of George William, the Elector did not blush to solicit the Papist King, Wladislaus IV., to admonish these unruly Protestants. ”

“ Some were mercenaries, some deserters from the enemy, some keen fighting men who were glad to serve in the finest army in the world. Many had been kidnapped or pressed or tempted into the Prussian service by false promises or admitted when their own countries were too hot to hold them. Frederick’s directions to Prussian commanders for the march are based on the assumption that many of the men will desire to run away. When in time of war some of the peasants volunteered, the astonished King asked what finer deed the Romans of old had performed. ”

“ Frederick, who sought death in vain, was borne from the field by a party of his own hussars. Amid the chaos he wrote a terse note in French to inform his capital that the274 game was up. “My coat is riddled with balls; two horses were killed under me; it is my misfortune to be still alive. Our loss is great; not 3000 men out of 48,000 are with me. At this moment all are in flight and I am no longer master of my troops.”
The King’s first thought was that he himself was crushed and that therefore Prussia was ruined. ”

“ Prussia under Frederick was practically one vast camp. Every social class had a military function to perform. The King was commander-in-chief and paymaster-general. The nobles formed the corps of officers. Some of the peasants were called on to bear arms while the rest laboured in the fields to produce the necessary supplies of food. The burghers, who have been styled the commissariat department of the army, armed and clothed the troops, and helped to provide funds with which to hire the foreigners of whom half the army was composed. ”

“ After the fall of Prague Frederick lay in the centre of Bohemia, a kingdom walled in by a quadrilateral of mountains. He held the north-eastern gates which led into Silesia. The south-western led into Bavaria, and through them the army of Alsace was soon to enter. But at the head of nearly139 80,000 men the King was vastly stronger than any single force that could be brought against him and his communications with Prussia were safe. There was therefore much to be said for a simple defensive policy. ”

“ They were face to face with Frenchmen, of old the scorners of the German race, which they were wont to conquer by their arms and to corrupt by their example. Now these invaders were laden with the spoils of Thuringia. Insolent and infatuated, they were too proud to see among themselves defects which were patent to Prussian eyes. It was little wonder that Frederick’s veterans shared the ardour of their King. “The spirit of the soldiers was remarkable,” noted Mitchell when they came to Leipzig. ”