Two Silesian wars, episodes in the eight years of general turmoil produced by the Austrian Succession question, had now been brought by Frederick to a fortunate end. The Hapsburgs once more possessed the Imperial crown, but the Hohenzollerns were masters of Silesia and their days of vassalage were over.

The course of history has shown that by gaining Silesia Prussia enabled herself to become in time the principal German state. From this time onward, the Teutonic elements in the Hapsburg realm became more and more outweighed by the rest, until in 1866 Austria, as a Power whose political centre was Buda-Pest, was finally expelled from Germany. In 1745, it is true, the full significance of the transfer of Silesia was felt rather than understood. But it was felt strongly enough to prevent Frederick from deluding himself with the vain belief that Austria would be easily reconciled to her loss, or that she regarded the Peace of Dresden as more sacred than the Peace of Berlin. The Queen, it was said, could not behold a Silesian without tears. Her156 spirit was so high that she is believed to have thought seriously of becoming her own commander-in-chief, and her resources grew greater with every year of peace.

Frederick’s task of holding what he had so lightly seized in 1740 therefore grew no less difficult as time went on. He had good reason for remaining constant to the principle which he professed at Dresden: “I would not henceforth attack a cat, except to defend myself.” His policy, as he wrote in his Testament of 1752, was to maintain peace as long as might be possible without lowering the dignity of Prussia. “We have drawn upon ourselves the envy of Europe by the acquisition of Silesia,” he confessed. “It has put all our neighbours on the alert; there is none who does not distrust us.” The ink of the Treaty of Dresden was hardly dry ere new plans were mooted to blot it out. The attitude of Russia towards the victor was menacing, that of Poland defiant, and it was easy to see that Austria and Saxony had an understanding with the Northern Powers which boded him no good.

Frederick was, however, no longer a novice in diplomacy and he knew his own mind. Evading all efforts to tempt him back into the whirlpool of war, he watched its successive phases till the Peace of 1748. He saw the Queen turn her energies to Italy, while the Sea Powers, who could not maintain themselves in the Netherlands without her aid, hired troops in the only market open to them and brought 35,000 Russians to the Rhine. But the value of this new factor in the politics of Western157 Europe had not been tested when the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was patched up. Then the exhausted combatants entered upon the task of reconstruction, in which Frederick had more than two years’ start of them. To him the peace brought a guarantee by all Europe of the treaty by which he held Silesia.

Imperfect as it was, for it settled no great question, the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle gave pause to the armed strife of Europe for eight years. Prussia therefore enjoyed a full decade of rest before 1756, when the third and greatest of her struggles for Silesia began. She dared not put off her harness, but she stood at ease. After the peace her army still numbered 135,000 men. But the crowned commander-in-chief had now a leisure unattainable in time of war. His excuse for deserting his ally at Dresden was that he wished to enjoy life and to labour for the good of his subjects. Now his opportunity had come. It would be strange if a reign of less than six years had destroyed the ideal which Frederick championed in his early treatise on kingcraft. Prussia and Europe might well expect that he would be, like the great-grandfather of whom he wrote the words, “as great in peace as in the bosom of victory,” and that he would apply his untrammelled power to remedy whatever defects his enlightened insight might still discover in the Prussian State. Frederick the Warrior had cleared the way for Frederick the Reformer. Ought not Prussian history in the fifties to be a story of regeneration?

The King himself, however, practically omits the record of this decade from his history of the reign.158 He assigns as the reason that “political intrigues which lead to nothing deserve no more notice than teasing in society, and the particulars of the internal administration do not afford sufficient material for history.” His great English admirer holds that this routine work in itself was eminent, that “one day these things will deserve to be studied to the bottom; and to be set forth, by writing hands that are competent, for the instruction and example of Workers,” but that “of Frederick’s success in his Law-Reforms, in his Husbandries, Commerces and Furtherances, conspicuously great as it was, there is no possibility of making careless readers cognisant at this day.” Carlyle then explains that the visit of Voltaire to Frederick and their quarrel is one of the few things perfectly knowable in this period and the only thing which the populations care to hear.

The following chapter of this book is written in the belief that readers of the story of Frederick may well demand, above all else, whether he is justly termed “The Great,” and if so, in virtue of what achievements? Unless we are willing to answer that the title is his of right because he seized Silesia and held it against great odds, these questions compel us to enquire into his home administration. We know well that the ruler is strong only because he wields the collective strength of his nation, and that his chief task is to render the nation stronger and to improve the machinery by which its strength is collected and exerted. A great ruler is one who, when the difficulties which he had to contend with are taken into account, is perceived to have accomplished159 much more in the performance of this task than could be expected from an ordinary man. If we find that Frederick improved the lot of his subjects in a remarkable degree, or that he invented beneficial institutions, or devised a system by which the future of government in Prussia was assured and progress made easy, then we shall have to concede to him a right to the title of Great other than that which conquest may confer.

It is of high importance to ascertain at the outset of the enquiry how far Frederick was free to act as he pleased and to what extent he was fettered by constitutional or social ties. His whole manner of life, indeed, was such as to suggest the most complete freedom. From the moment of his father’s death he was master of his people and of his policy as few European potentates have ever been. Autocracy as well as diligence is stamped upon even the externals of his everyday existence. Though his stature was not quite five feet seven inches, his ablutions, when performed at all, slight and few, and his dress of the shabbiest, no one ever suggested that his presence lacked kingliness. He usually wore an old grey hat of soft felt, a faded blue uniform smeared with the snuff in which he indulged immoderately, and boots which through neglect were of a reddish colour. But his bearing, stern and caressing by turns, his clarion voice, and his glance which, as a contemporary owned, nothing could resist, made him the cynosure of whatever company he was in. The absence of the customary trappings of royalty rendered the King of Prussia less formidable to the160 poor, whom he patronised, while it marked his contempt for the official and middle classes, whom he sometimes allowed to kiss the skirts of his dirty coat.

Frederick, it need hardly be said, was fully conscious of his own superiority to his subjects in birth, address, and talent. During his incognito visit to Strasburg in 1740, Marshal Broglie remarked the contrast between Frederick and Algarotti on the one hand and the awkward Germans of the party on the other. The vivacity of the King’s circle was almost all imported from abroad. Many years later the French philosopher d’Alembert stated that Frederick himself was the only man in Prussia with whom it was possible to hold conversation as the word was understood in France. The man who by right of birth was absolute ruler of Prussia had some reason to believe that he was also the greatest poet, historian, philosopher, critic, administrator, legislator, statesman, captain, and general in his dominions.
SANS-SOUCI. CARYTID FRONT.

There is perhaps no more conclusive proof of his wisdom than that his consciousness of this unique endowment did not cause his home policy to become tyrannical and his foreign policy grandiose. From the second fault he was saved by his keen eye for realities, which taught him that, as he confessed, Prussia was playing a part among the Great Powers without being in fact the equal of the rest. That he never became a tyrant, was probably due in part to natural humanity and in part to the philosophy which was his pride. He was often harsh towards his subjects, but he proclaimed that his duty was to make them happy and he never shed their blood.161 His threats to execute his ministers were mere insults. But philosophy did not check one evil to which he was inclined by nature and impelled by situation. Nothing short of human sympathy could have mitigated his contempt for the populace, which gathered strength with years. “My dear Sulzer,” he replied to an educational theorist who urged that men were naturally inclined to good, “you do not know that curséd race as I do.” “It is more probable,” he held, “that we sprang from evil spirits, if such things could exist, than from a Being whose nature is good.” As he rode through the streets of his capital on one famous occasion, he came upon a group of the discontented staring at a seditious cartoon. “Hang it lower down,” was his scornful order, “so that they need not strain their necks to see it.”

To the service of those whom he termed the rabble, none the less, Frederick devoted a great share of a life of incessant labour. Every day, Sunday and week-day alike, was parcelled out so as to contain the greatest possible amount of work. “It is not necessary that I should live,” wrote the King, “but it is necessary that I should act.” He toiled for the State and for himself, and, with the exception of regular visits to his mother and Madame de Camas, he admitted few social claims upon his time. His Queen never even saw his favourite home, Sans Souci, which he built in the park at Potsdam in 1747. She knew so little of his affairs that she gave a party at Sch?nhausen while he was lying in extremis. The consideration which he denied to her162 he did not give to others whose title to it was less strong. As he grew older, he curtailed even the short time that he had been wont to spend in his capital, and divided the bulk of the year between seclusion at Potsdam and the inspection of his provinces.

His habit was to rise at dawn or earlier. The first three or four hours of the morning were allotted to toilet, correspondence, a desultory breakfast of strong coffee and fruit, preceded by a deep draught of cold water flavoured with fennel leaves, and flute-playing as an accompaniment to meditation on business. Then came one or two hours of rapid work with his secretaries, followed by parade, audiences, and perhaps a little exercise. Punctually at noon Frederick sat down to dinner, which was always the chief social event of the day and in later life became his only solid meal. He supervised his kitchen like a department of State. He considered and often amended the bill of fare, which contained the names of the cooks responsible for every dish. After dinner he marked with a cross the courses which had merited his approval. He inspected his household accounts with minute care and proved himself a master of domestic economy. The result was a dinner that Voltaire considered fairly good for a country in which there was no game, no decent meat, and no spring chickens.

Two hours, sometimes even four, were spent at table. Occasionally the time was devoted to the discussion of important business with high officials, but in general Frederick used it to refresh himself163 after his six or seven hours of toil. He ate freely, preferring highly spiced dishes, drank claret mixed with water, and talked incessantly. He was a skilful and agreeable host, putting his guests instantly at their ease, and, by Voltaire’s account, calling forth wit in others. After dismissing the company he returned to his flute, and then put the final touches to the morning’s business. After this he drank coffee and passed some two hours in seclusion. During this period he nerved himself for fresh grappling with affairs by plunging into literature. In the year 1749 he produced no less than forty works. About six o’clock he was ready to receive his lector or to converse with artists and learned men. At seven began a small concert, in which Frederick himself used often to perform. Supper followed, but was brief, unless the conversation was of unusual interest. Otherwise the King went to bed at about nine o’clock and slept five or six hours. In later life he gave up suppers, but continued to invite a few friends for conversation. He then allowed himself rather more sleep. In his last years he lost the power to play his flute and with it, apparently, the desire to hear music.

The sketch which has been given of Frederick’s daily life suggests that whatever his power might be, it was not subjected to the interference of others. At Potsdam there was no place for the ordinary influences which were brought to bear upon Kings. Frederick would not endure the presence of any woman, and, strictly speaking, he164 had no courtiers. His intimates were not politicians, but wits and men of letters, for the most part of foreign birth. Even those who accused him of hideous vices admitted that he never suffered his accomplices to have the smallest influence over him. Eichel and the two other secretaries who worked with the King every day were slaves rather than counsellors. They lived in such seclusion that, according to the French ambassador, Eichel was never seen by any human being. During Frederick’s last illness, he forced their successors to attend him at four o’clock in the morning, so that the few weeks that might yet remain to him should be serviceable to the State. One of them fell to the ground in a fit, but the King merely summoned another, and went on with the business. Through their hands passed Frederick’s correspondence with his ministers, whom he rarely saw. “In his orders of two lines,” grumbled a subordinate, “he announced no reasons.” He was of course obliged to listen to the ambassadors of foreign Powers. As though to avenge himself for this, he tolerated no suggestions from his own. He desired spies rather than advisers, and often chose men of inferior intelligence to fill high diplomatic posts. On every hand we find tokens that Frederick looked to his own breast alone for inspiration in the exercise of his power.

To realise how unfettered was the authority that Frederick wielded we must consider the peculiar structure of the society over which he ruled and of the machinery by which he ruled it. Frederick’s165 Prussia was a state which just a century of strong monarchical rule had manufactured out of a number of Hohenzollern fiefs. Its basis still remained feudal. There were few social classes, and strong barriers separated class from class. The career open to a Prussian was strictly limited by his birth. Between town and country the law reared a dividing wall, unseen but impassable. Townsmen alone were allowed to become manufacturers, merchants, and civil servants. They paid a special tax, the “Excise,” levied on the articles which they consumed. They had magistrates of their own choosing, a relic of the municipal independence which the Great Elector had broken down.

To the countryfolk, on the other hand, the King looked for his army. They were divided into two great classes; the nobles, who alone might become officers, and the peasants, who were still serfs tied to the estates of their lords. The nobles enjoyed exemption from ordinary taxes and paid only a small feudal rent to the Crown. Upon the shoulders of the peasants fell the heavy burden of the “Contribution,” a direct payment in money. Neither they nor the nobles might become craftsmen or engage in commerce. The barrier which separated the two classes of countryfolk was as firm as that which separated both from the dwellers in towns. New patents of nobility were rarely granted by the King, but all the children of a noble were nobles. Even the soil was divided into noble-lands and peasant-lands, and neither class might acquire the portion of the other.

166 It is easy to see that this system of rigid class division was unlikely to ensure to every Prussian the career for which he was best fitted. In Frederick’s eyes, however, it possessed two supreme merits, and for the sake of these he was willing to make it eternal. It provided a gigantic army and it contained no germ of opposition to the Crown.

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.

It was possible to entrust to foreigners so great a share in Prussian wars because the framework of the army was of iron. The native half of each regiment was drawn from a particular locality. It consisted of peasants led by the lords whom they had been accustomed from infancy to obey. The regiment was ruled in a fashion almost patriarchal by a commander who gave it his own name. Under this system esprit de corps became a passion, and none knew better than Frederick how to turn it to good account. To the army “Prussia” was a name which within the memory of their fathers had been arbitrarily assigned to the dominions of the elder branch of the House of Hohenzollern. Where national167 patriotism was in its infancy, local patriotism was all the more intense, and it was by playing upon this that Frederick, the Father of all his lands, called forth many marvellous feats of arms.

But the King, though he fostered profitable sentiment, was far too wary to trust to it over much. He had other expedients for attracting nobles to the colours and for keeping the ranks full. He withdrew his royal favour from those of noble birth who were so unpatriotic as either to avoid his service or to leave it in a few years. The social arrangements which have been outlined above were yet more powerful in securing a supply of officers. The nobles were numerous, poor, and brave. They must find some career, and what other lay open to them? When Frederick’s father began to impress cadets, many parents even tried to prove that they were not of noble birth. But with them, as with many other classes of the discontented, firm government in the long run brought cheerful obedience. “The King’s bread is the best,” became their maxim. Frederick marked his appreciation of their worth by rarely giving commissions to men of lower rank. It was not the least of his gains that he thus acquired military authority over the most influential class in his dominions.

He made sure of the common man by stern discipline. Although the Prussian members of each regiment were bound together by social and local bonds, by no means all of them were willing to fight for the King. They were conscripts, not volunteers, and they were released only when they became unfit168 to serve. Not a few deserted to the enemy under stress of war. The foreigners who were their comrades under arms were a varied host. 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.

His standing remedy against disintegration was “to make the discipline so stern and the punishments so severe that the men would learn to fear their own superiors more than the enemy.”

    “The punishments were barbarous,” writes Professor Martin Philippson. “Thrashing was customary. Imprisonment, sharpened by all kinds of chastisement and torment, was not rare. The most terrible of all was running the gauntlet, in which the offender was stripped to the waist and forced to run from twenty to thirty times through a living lane of hundreds of soldiers armed with rods, while the officers looked to it that every man laid on lustily. Hundreds of wretched men gave up the ghost under these tortures.”

Yet of the rank and file it may be said with more confidence than of any other section of Frederick’s subjects that they loved the King.

169 Enough, perhaps, has been said to suggest that where classes were so sharply divided there was little likelihood of any national resistance to the Crown and that the Prussian military system gave Frederick a peculiar authority over two great sections of his people. A further source of power consisted in his enormous wealth. In every province the Crown possessed vast domains amounting in all to nearly one-third of the soil of Prussia. The result was that Frederick was lord of innumerable peasants and by far the greatest capitalist in his dominions. To him the nobles looked for help in time of dearth, while the townsmen expected him to bear the initial loss of new industrial enterprises. His domestic policy was directed towards the maintenance of this position. For him the notion of taxes fructifying in the pockets of the people had no charm. His ideal was that of subjects paying the greatest possible amount of taxes to be administered by the head of the State. Under his father’s rule the limit of profitable taxation had already been reached, but Frederick was able to make the collectors stricter than before. Though no spot in the Mark or Pomerania or Magdeburg was more than twenty miles from a border, the frontiers of his straggling dominions were watched with a vigilance which became proverbial. An Italian priest, whom he begged to smuggle him through the gate of heaven under his cassock, professed that he would be charmed to do so, provided that the search for contraband were not so keen as in Prussia. Liberty of commerce and remission of taxes were not among the ideals of a170 King who claimed to direct all the economic activities of his people.

The Prussian clergy had less power than the moneyed interest, and less desire than the landed interest, to oppose or influence the will of the King. His absolutism was favoured by the fact that in his dominions several jealous churches existed side by side, and that he alone could be the umpire in their disputes. His own point of view was perfectly clear. He valued pastors because they taught their people to obey their superiors and not to rob and murder, as, in the King’s opinion, they would do if unrestrained. If the pastors accomplished this duty with reasonable success they might, without fear of his displeasure use any ritual or proclaim any doctrine of which their congregations approved.

Frederick regarded the Protestant teaching as far more useful than the Romanist, but was determined to protect each in the enjoyment of its rights and privileges. He professed himself willing to build mosques for Turks and heathen if they would people the land. He was the official head of the Lutheran Church, whose clergy then, as always, preached the divine right of Kings. The King for his part usually jeered at their faith only in private. At times, however, he allowed his contempt for their observances to appear. When several congregations appealed to him to condemn a new hymn-book he despatched a refusal, and added with his own hand, “Everyone is free to sing ‘Now all the woods are resting’ and more of such stupid nonsense.” In the same spirit he answered the clergy171 of Potsdam who begged him not to block out the light from their church, “Blessed are they which have not seen and yet have believed.”

Frederick’s relations with his many papist subjects ran all the smoother because the contemporary Popes were as a rule too much engrossed by troubles within their own flock to engage in unnecessary aggressions. His treatment of the papists in his hereditary dominions was always carried out in the spirit of his answer to the monks of Cleves. Though hardly meritorious in the eyes of the Holy Father, it was too upright to give reasonable cause of offence. Near the royal palace in Berlin rose the Hedwigs-Kirche, a temple modelled on the Pantheon at Rome and built by the heretic King for the use of Romanists.

In the conquered provinces, however, a more difficult problem confronted him. The Romanists, who formed the bulk of the population of Upper Silesia and were powerful even in Breslau, could not be expected to accept with pleasure the head of an alien church as their supreme lord. The Prussian confiscation of one-half the net revenues of the conventual houses and at a later date the disgrace of Cardinal Schaffgotsch were measures dictated by needs of State, but not on that account less unwelcome to the Church. The papists of Silesia, particularly the clergy and the Jesuits, long continued to hope for the restoration of Hapsburg rule.

Even in Silesia, however, Frederick’s policy of impartial firmness disarmed his religious opponents in the end. While his neighbours were expelling the172 Jesuits from their dominions and confiscating the............