Frederick the Great

 

 

 

Frederick's Personal Qualities

When, in 1746, Frederick returned to Berlin from the second Silesian War, people acclaimed him "the Great" for the first time, and soon Europe joined in this accolade. However, many of his contemporaries called him "Frederick the Unique," which expressed admiration mixed with a certain bewilderment at his complex personality. His many-sided and paradoxical nature was perplexing. This complexity explains the conflicting interpretations of his personality, though some of them must be adjudged mere political legends. Frederick was a highly sensitive, originally even perhaps sentimental, human being. There was much in him that drew him to an esthetic and contemplative life. At the same time, he was driven to action that would impress people around him. This quality proved to be his strongest trait. The eminent German historian Friedrich Meinecke has rightly stated that the future ruler in Frederick was developed earlier than the philosopher. Though it is true that Frederick wished to work for objectives that would stand up in the light of philosophical reflection, his boldness as a statesman often carried him over the hurdles that philosophy placed in his way. Philosophy to him was a means for gaining fresh strength and seeing himself and his activity as part of a more comprehensive order of natural and historical events.

One of the earliest reasons for the conflict between Frederick and his father had been his belief in the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, and even as an enlightened philosopher in his later life he remained a strict determinist. This determinism reflected the force in his nature that enabled him to continue his father's work and suppress in himself much of his adolescent self-conceit and idle playfulness. The young king was not without vanity, which Bismarck considered one of his chief characteristics, and, as the events of 1740 demonstrated, had strong gambling instincts. But from the beginning he was determined to identify himself entirely with his royal position's objective tasks. He chose an ascetic life. The pleasant summer palace "Sans Souci," which he had built for himself between I745 and 1747 in the neighborhood of Potsdam, was quite small and never saw any luxurious court life. Once Frederick became king, he set up a separate household for his unloved queen, whom he very seldom saw thereafter. Women did not play any role in his life, with the possible exception of his sister, Wilhelmina of Bayreuth.

As crown prince, Frederick imbibed Christian Wolff's philosophy. In his later years, he tended to prefer Locke. But the main influences that formed his thought came from France, to such an extent that Frederick became a virtual foreigner in Germany's intellectual development. Bayle, Voltaire, and d'Alembert were foremost among the authors who attracted him to the contemporary philosophy of France. With them he rejected all metaphysics, although he retained a general faith in God or a supreme providence, whose traces could be found in the general laws ruling nature and the universe. Human reason, however, was considered capable of raising man to the level of full humaneness (humaniti or Humanitdt) and of making him master of his life. If principles of reason were applied to social life and the chaos that resulted from the unregulated passions and prejudices of the past removed, happiness could rule the world. Inevitably, the fragmentary nature of the individual was felt in this philosophy, as were the limitations of human cognition. Life was short, and though the philosophers knew about primary laws, they were unsure about the secondary causes of events. But, by irony and wit, an enlightened mind could rise even above these baffling questions. This philosophy's secular character made its believers immune against being deflected from the pursuit of their own happiness and that of their fellow men. In philosophy, science, history, and art a philosophical mind was able to depict the beauty and truth of the universe which the individual might enjoy.

The growth of the French language and literature gave Voltaire and his contemporaries the faculties to express these new ideas succinctly and brilliantly. What they lacked in depth, they gained in breadth and in their intimate relation to the practical life of the individual and society. They captivated the exuberant thinking of the young Frederick completely. Here was the rebirth of the glory of the Augustan age, a world of clarity and perfection as well as a challenge to the present generation's moral will. Frederick himself became a French philosopher pouring out his thoughts in a stream of writings on philosophy, politics, and history and in a flow of poetry. None of his writings, with the exception of his two historical books, Histoire de mon temps and Histoire de la guerre de sept ans, could be considered an important contribution to scholarship or art, and the same holds true of the music he composed. They were, however, testimony to his active personal response to everything he learned and to his deep love for things of the spirit. He succeeded in drawing Voltaire to Berlin and Potsdam for three years, from I750 to 1753. Although Voltaire's personal intrigues against Maupertuis led to a sharp rupture of relations, the king and Voltaire renewed their correspondence in later years. Every French writer who might fall out with the French government was sure of a refuge in Prussia, and the Prussian presses would even publish philosophical treatises with which Frederick disagreed. In 1744, the Academy was reorganized as the Acadimie des Sciences et Belles Lettres, and Maupertuis was persuaded to accept its presidency. Many other French scholars and writers of higher and lesser rank became members of this institution, whose publications were in French. The Berlin Academy became an outpost of France's scholastic civilization, according to the wishes of its founder, who surrounded himself in Sans Souci with a group of educated men, among them many Frenchmen, Italians, Scotsmen, and Germans, with whom he liked to spend his few leisure hours in lively conversation ranging from the loftiest subjects of philosophy and the arts to gay banter.

On the negative side, Frederick shared with his French philosophers the rejection of all historic forms of Christian religion. In his Political Testament (1768), he called it "an old metaphysical fairy tale, full of miraculous legends, paradoxes, and nonsense." He warned his successor not to allow "saintly charlatans" to gain influence. Another time, he defined theologians as "animals without reason." In the conflict "between Geneva and Rome" he declared himself to be neutral; Wittenberg he did not care to mention. Frederick was not certain whether religion would ultimately disappear. In general he recommended not giving offense to the religious feelings of the masses. "The state does not have to care what metaphysical image is in a human brain." Under Frederick's government churches were treated with cool toleration, which sprang from this indifference.

It is unnecessary to add that Frederick was not moved by any of the traditional religious justifications of kingship, nor, on the other hand, by a mere dynastic conception of monarchy. He accepted the contract theory, according to which the prince was originally elected by the people for the protection of their security and prosperity. Such a contract had laid in his hands absolute power, which, however, had to be used wisely for the benefit of the people or, as one may paraphrase it, nothing was to be done by the people, but everything for the people. As Frederick formulated it, probably in analogy to terms used by Bayle and Fénélon, the prince was only the "first servant of the state." Actually, this often-quoted expression was not entirely novel as a definition of the prince's dudes. One could arrive at similar statements from a strictly Christian concept of monarchy. In Frederick's mouth it meant a denunciation of the "proprietary" state, and at the same time was closely connected with his belief that wisdom was to be found in the philosophical laws and moral ideals the Enlightenment preached. Here a dilemma arose that was to constitute an almost continuous theme of Frederick's meditations. Philosophy taught him that the ultimate aim of a policy directed by reason ought to be the advancement of human welfare. Right laws would create human happiness. But power alone could afford security in a world so largely dominated by ambition for power. Therefore even domestic government had to assume as its major task the production of military power for defense. The impact of international conditions upon interior politics was bound to limit the progress of welfare.

Welfare and Power

Frederick wrestled with the conflict between welfare and power all his life. In his conscience it presented itself as a problem of the conflict of individual and political ethics. In the years before his accession to the throne, he had believed himself able to refute Machiavelli's teachings that a prince could only act in accordance with the interests of Ws power, and that this raison d'état overrides all considerations of law and ethics. In his treatise of 174o, best known under the title of Anti-Machiavel given to it by Voltaire, he attempted to demonstrate the applicability of the moral law to all, or at least almost all, circumstances of politics. But his own actions in 174o and thereafter were not controlled by this moral philosophy nor even completely by the interest of the state. They were motivated largely by a passion for glory. After the first two Silesian wars, Frederick subordinated personal ambition to the demands of a rational policy, but utilitarian rather than moral grounds prevailed in his political thinking. The relative limitation of his policy's acquisitive aims came from the realization of the weakness of his own state within the European system of states. On the other hand, this weakness was an additional reason for disregarding law. Prussia could not afford to leave the initiative to others, or, as Frederick expressed it, in certain circumstances she had to "dupe" others before being duped herself. His decision to march into Saxony in 1756 was the most important act of such a defensive raison d'état. Frederick did not begin the Seven Years' War in order to conquer a new province. But had he succeeded in defeating his enemies decisively, there can be no doubt that he would have added Saxony to his own dominions.

At that stage, Frederick declared self-interest to be the ultimate moving force of politics. In self-seeking ambition he saw the only bond in the association of nations. Otherwise states would prefer to five in isolation. Thus, full contrast was reached to any ideal of a European community, which had been one of the constitutive forces of the European order and its consciousness of law through the Middle Ages. This ideal had lived on among both Catholics and Protestants through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was paradoxical that the Age of Enlightenment, with its strong cosmopolitan feeling among the educated people, should have banned any deeper European loyalties from politics. But the very rationalism that helped create the new cosmopolitan faith in humanity turned the states into separate machines of power to be run according to technical rules. Mercantilism strengthened this political insulation and cut the ties between the nations. It is true, however, that the rulers could carry out their policies without hatred and look at each other somewhat like competing businessmen in a free economy. In the eighteenth century, it was possible to civilize even war itself and begin to define its codes. It also was unnecessary to work up a feverish national sentiment. In war, patriotism was aroused, and agnostic monarchs unblushingly spread religious slogans, which had not lost their appeal with the common people. But in times of peace, despotic governments did not consider ardent patriotism a healthy attitude. Patriotism should be cultivated in peacetime only as a "mild passion," Frederick's minister Hertzberg declared.

The Prussia of Frederick 11 developed the principles of eighteenth-century power politics to their highest logical perfection. But it was the monarch alone who knew and practiced the game of power in accordance with its rational rules. If in following raison détat the prince had to violate treaties or disregard ethical norms that were binding on private citizens, he could be morally excused, provided he acted in the interest of the state. Frederick had to admit that statesmen often enough did not execute a policy in harmony with the interests of their states. The Franco-Austrian alliance of 1756 was a shocking example of such an irrational policy. It made him more skeptical than before about the nature of man and the adequacy of the doctrine of state interests for the explanation of history. But at the same time, self-denying service for the state assumed an even higher value. The idea of the state for Frederick was something highly abstract and cold as marble. It could be suspected that "state" was nothing but a hypostatization of the absolute king, much the same as Frederick William I's pretension that he served the "king of Prussia." However, this is not entirely true. To be sure, the state was not the people, of whom Frederick was quite unable to think as an organically growing community, but it was no longer exclusively identical with the dynasty or king. The state was a task of suprapersonal character to be performed by all classes. The king never forgot the duty to humanize the government to the highest degree compatible with outward security. In practice, this did not permit many reforms, because wars were costly, and to the end of his life Frederick believed that Prussia could not measure up to the great powers, England, France, Russia, and Austria, and had to make up for her external weakness by special efforts. In the conflict of power and humanitarianism, the latter had to take the back seat, but Frederick never lost sight of his humanitarian responsibilities. In his later years he was even more conscious of these responsibilities than in his youth.

The Seven Years' War

FREDERICK'S CONCERN WITH foreign affairs was always uppermost in his mind. In I756, it led him into the action by which he hoped to break up his enemies' alliance before it was capable of attacking him. This aim was not reached, and a struggle opened which required superhuman courage, resourcefulness, and endurance. Dresden was captured, and Frederick also captured the encircled Saxon army after beating off a supporting Austrian army at Lobositz (October 1756). Saxony was occupied, and all during the war the rich country was exploited to fill the Prussian king's coffers. But Frederick displayed shortsightedness in judging popular sentiment when he enrolled the whole Saxon army of 2o,ooo men without their officers in the Prussian army. Whole units brought additional bad news. A Russian army under Apraxin broke into East Prussia and defeated a Prussian corps. The loss of Prussia seemed imminent, and it could not be foreseen that Apraxin would withdraw upon receiving a false report of the czarina's death. Even more alarming were the events in Germany. The English had failed to re-enforce their army in Hanover, against which the French moved 100,000 men in the summer of I757. The English army, composed Of 45,ooo Hanoverians, Brunswickians, and Hessians, was under the command of the duke of Cumberland, a son of George 11. Beaten at Hastenbeck on the Weser, it retired to Stade on the lower Elbe, and the duke was persuaded to conclude the Convention of Kloster Zeven with the French commander, the Duc de Richelieu, on September 8. It provided for the dispersal of the Hanover army and left the country to French control, consequently as a possible base for action against Prussia. Another French army under Prince Soubise was detailed to co-operate with the forces mobilized by the emperor against the violator of the German peace. From Thuringia, the armies were supposed to carry out actions against Magdeburg and Leipzig.

Frederick marched against this allied group and, with 20,000 Prussians, routed the 5o,ooo French and Germans at Rossbach, on November 5, I757- Hurrying to Silesia, he found his troops there in a grim situation. The chief fortress protecting Lower Silesia, Schweidnitz, had fallen into Austrian hands, and after a victory over the Prussian army the Austrians were able to make their entry into Breslau. Frederick restored the morale of his defeated Silesian troops and, with 35,ooo men, attacked an Austrian army twice as strong at the village of Leuthen, west of Breslau, on December 5, 1757. His old stratagem, the oblique battle order, by which he held back one of his wings and threw himself with great force upon a single wing of the enemy, was executed to perfection. Napoleon remarked that this single battle would have sufficed to make Frederick immortal. Silesia had to be evacuated by the Austrians. Daun returned to Bohemia with only 30,000 men.

Frederick's victories made a tremendous impression on Europe. Not only the Empire's ill-trained troops but also French elite regiments had been beaten in a few afternoon hours, and the small Prussian army had proved superior against a mighty coalition. The battle of Rossbach awakened much admiration, in places even jubilation, in Germany. The alliance with France was most unpopular in the Empire, and obviously the military prowess of the Prussians was well liked. The litterateurs in Paris also applauded loudly. Inept French generals had been jeered often enough in France, but now the praise for the foreign victor was an expression of the contempt in which the brainless French rulers were held.

The greatest enthusiasm was displayed in London. On the night of Frederick's birthday, the city was illuminated. Methodists and other devout people hailed Frederick as a new Protestant hero. William Pitt, in his earlier career a staunch opponent of Continental entanglements, discovered the usefulness of Continental diversions. He advised the king to withhold ratification of the Convention of Kloster Zeven and to strengthen the Hanover army for new fighting. Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, a Prussian officer and brother-in-law of Frederick, assumed command and proved himself a masterful strategist. He managed to tie down the large French army which France continued to send into Germany every year. This diversion aided England in her colonial wars. Frederick, for his part, was relieved from French threats against his western flank. He would have liked to see an English naval squadron in the Baltic Sea as a demonstration against Russia and Sweden. England was unwilling to enter into Baltic conflicts, but though Frederick's war contributed only indirectly to England's war against France, Pitt was willing to support it with the largest English subsidy ever paid to a Continental ally. On April 11, 1758, England and Prussia signed an agreement in which they pledged themselves not to make a separate peace. Prussia was to receive four million thaler ( f 570,000) in annual subsidies and remained free to choose her own military objectives.

Prussian Reverses

THE POPULARITY WHICH Frederick had gained in Germany after Rossbach made it possible for him to replenish his forces through recruitment in Germany. Once more, in early 1758, he wanted to launch a campaign of great strategic possibilities. Again, as in 1742, Moravia was selected as the theater of operations. But the offensive bogged down at the fortress of Olmütz. Laudon endangered Frederick's communications with Silesia, and in July, 1758, Frederick had to retreat from Moravia. He bitterly complained that he had lost his superiority, and this proved perfectly true. From now on, he conducted only sorties against the foe who at any given moment was most threatening. In the summer of 1758, the Russians presented the greatest peril. A Russian army under Count Fermor had crossed into East Prussia in the first days Of 1758. On the same January 24 when the Londoners had placed lights in their windows, the magistrates of Königsberg had to pay homage to power of the state. The growth of the population and economy was to feed the expanding army and war treasury. Frederick had managed to conduct twelve years of war without running up more than a negligible public debt. In 1740, the state revenues had been 7 million thaler, and 10 million had been in the war chest left by Frederick's father. In 1786, Prussia collected 23 million in revenues and maintained a war chest Of 54 million. It was as amazing as some of his most brilliant military victories that Frederick proved able to finance the Seven Years' War, although at times income from taxes dwindled to almost nothing owing to the occupation of most provinces by the enemy. To the actual war cost of around zoo million thaler English subsidies contributed z6 million. The major part of the funds was extracted from occupied Saxony and Mecklenburg. Out of these unhappy states, 50 million and 8 million were exacted, respectively. Meanwhile, internal payments were cut to a minimum. The Prussian state officials were paid in promissory notes to be cashed after the war. Internal loans could not produce much, and Frederick was finally driven to coin bad money and pass it off not only on his own subjects but also on Poland and on neighboring German states. It was a rather desperate means of war financing, but it gave Frederick sufficient cash just at a time when he resisted the importunities of Lord Bute for political concessions to Austria. Although the consequences of these malpractices in coinage were not easily overcome after peace had been made, Frederick had money left in 1763 to begin at once the restoration of Prussia. It was understandable that on the basis of his experiences Frederick considered the accumulation of a war chest imperative, although he was not unaware of the deflationary impact that the hoarding and sterilization of money was bound to have on the economy. However, it is true that the chances for capital investment were limited so long as rigid mercantilistic laws prevailed.

"Old Fritz"

THE POWER OF THE STATE was the lodestar of all of Frederick's policies and autocratic management the method for the realization of his aims. This autocracy extended to every corner of the government and was exercised in a most personal manner. The king, who seemingly moved simply and easily among all classes of the people, actually was a world apart from them. The sensitive man had maintained his own courage and determination under the enormous strain of the Seven Years' War, which also demanded great physical endurance. The tragic emotions of his beloved Racine, the Stoic philosophers, and Lucretius comforted him in hours of defeat as well as victory. But he grew more skeptical and contemptuous with regard to man. In his testament, he expressed the wish to be buried on the garden terrace of Sans Souci close to the graves of his little French greyhounds, which he liked to spoil. His relationship with the French Enlightenment became more distant in his later years. The materialism of a Helvetius or a Holbach was to him the recrudescence of a particularly ugly metaphysics, and the signs of democratic thought that appeared among the young French writers annoyed him.

"Old Fritz," as the Prussians named him, was a lonely person among his people. He did not wish to make personal friends among his officers and officials. Rather, he wanted them to obey and do their assigned duty meticulously and with dispatch. Frederick was distrustful not only of their intelligence and industry but also of their integrity. In general, he believed that the members of this maudite race were moved chiefly by their desire for personal advantage and that a system of penalties interspersed with occasional premiums was the best way of keeping them on their toes. Frederick no longer knocked out the teeth of his officials nor beat them up, as his father had done. But his acid vituperadons were equally wounding, and he was as quick as his father in sending officials to the Spandau prison. No doubt, there were cases of corruption. The days of feudal spoils were still in living memory, and officials served for starvation wages. But it is questionable whether abuses were really widespread. There is plenty of evidence that the number of officials and officers who took their duties with a deep sense of moral responsibility was great, and this sense of responsibility was much more than outward conformity with higher orders. Religion, whether of the orthodox-pietistic or enlightened variety, was a potent force in Germany, and Frederick knew little about such sources of loyalty.

Planting fear and trembling into the hearts of all subordinates produced automatons galore but not men of strong character and selfreliance. This was true even with the king's officer corps, which enjoyed more royal respect and attention than any other group in the state. But Frederick failed to replace Field Marshals Schwerin, Winterfeldt, and Keith, who met death in battle in the early years of the Seven Years' War, by officers of his own training. In Seydlitz and Ziethen, the Prussian army possessed cavalry generals of the highest talent and bravura. What was missing, however, was a group of generals fit for high command. There was nothing Frederick's generals feared more than being selected as leaders of detached armies. As a matter of fact, none of them ever did well in such a position, and, at least in some cases, this was due to Frederick's interference. Only one general was a born captain of war like Frederick; that was his younger brother Prince Henry (1726-1802), who resembled the king in education and thought as well as in the desire for recognition. This highly gifted, unhappy prince, who was obsessed by a consuming jealousy of his elder brother, was in a position to gain more independence, or at least distance, from Frederick than men of lesser birth.

Frederick was not unmindful of the necessity for training officers who were experienced in higher tactics. In the years after 1763, he attached a group of young staff officers to the quartermaster-general's staff and he himself taught them tactics. One of these officers, Baron von Steuben, was to become one of the chief organizers of the American army. But this training was discontinued after a few years. The king also attempted to raise the very low general educational level of the officer corps. Courses were introduced for junior officers. A small number of gifted cadets were brought together in an elite school, the "academy of nobles," in Berlin. But at best these efforts could have borne fruit only after a long period of time. Moreover, technical education was not the real answer to the weaknesses of the Prussian army, which were caused by the mechanical enforcement of rules and the suppression of the initiative of the individual. Frederick was greatly dissatisfied with the showing of the Prussian army during the war of 1778-79, but his dissatisfaction only served to make him an even tougher taskmaster in the subsequent years.


Source: Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany: 1648 - 1849 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966)