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. Relaxation for himself and courtesy towards others were, however, equally distasteful to the King. He slunk into his capital by back streets and thus frustrated the preparations of the citizens to express their loyalty and joy. Yet in the darkest moments of the war he had been devising plans for the improvement of Prussia and he hardly waited for the peace to be signed before plunging into a rapid career of reform. After Kunersdorf, while his despair was gradually giving place to hope and hope to confidence, he was not too absorbed in strategy to lay to heart the defects which302 he observed in the schooling of the peasants near the Spree. The weeks which passed while his envoy at Hubertusburg was harvesting the fruits of the war were spent by Frederick in planning reforms for the army which had proved its matchless quality through all the seven campaigns.
His first desire was to get rid of those helpers whose services he had accepted only because of pressing need. Twenty-one free battalions had been raised and had proved immensely serviceable. Now the King bade two-thirds of them go their ways without reward. His learned friend and servant, Colonel Guichard, upon whom in consequence of a dispute about the battle of Pharsalia he had inflicted the name Quintus Icilius, appealed to him to repay to his officers part at least of the money which they had spent from their own pockets in enlisting their men. “Thy officers have stolen like ravens,” replied the King; “they shall not have a farthing.” Still more ungenerous was his treatment of a section of his army whose only fault was their lack of noble birth. During the long war many students and schoolboys of the citizen class entered the army as volunteers and received commissions. In the hour of triumph they were ruthlessly sacrificed to Frederick’s principle that his officers, save perhaps among the garrison regiments, must belong to the caste of nobles. Prussians who had served him in his extremity must submit to be cashiered, while foreigners of rank were enlisted to atone for the dearth of natives whose pedigrees satisfied his requirements.
At the same time the army as a whole was303 wounded by harsh criticism and harsh reforms. This, like much of Frederick’s conduct, may be ascribed to the contempt for mankind which experience only increased, and to the almost inevitable effect upon himself of the unbridled absolutism described in the sixth chapter of this book. “Dogs, would ye live for ever?” he shrieked at his men in the crisis of one of his fights. He was forced to confess that, as his strength became less and the number of his subjects greater, he could not hope to look into all affairs of government with his own eyes. Yet he shrank more and more from creating an official or a system in anywise independent of his own immediate control. In 1763 he therefore appointed inspectors of cavalry and of infantry in every province and endowed them with wide powers of supervision of the officers and all that they did. This measure, it need hardly be said, roused the utmost bitterness among the regimental staff, which had hitherto enjoyed a great measure of independence on the sole condition that the King was satisfied with the results of its work. It was the more distasteful for the very reason which made it acceptable to Frederick—that the new inspectors were appointed at the royal pleasure without regard to seniority. The chief officer of a regiment, who had been wont to rule it like a patriarch, was now subjected to the control of a rival, perhaps his junior, who did not resign his own command and could favour it as he pleased.
The captains, too, suffered in pocket from another unpopular reform. They had hitherto received from the treasury the full wages of every man on the304 muster-roll of their company. In time of peace, however, the native-born soldiers spent nine or ten months of the year on furlough without pay. Each captain defrayed the cost of recruiting foreigners for his company out of what he received and pocketed the balance. Now, at the moment when war ceased, Frederick cut off this source of income. By retaining regiments of special merit on the old footing he insulted the rest, and by graduating according to his opinion of the regiment’s efficiency the trifling allowances paid by way of compensation he cast a slur upon the professional honour of officers and men alike. The King paid his officers ten thalers a month and their pensions depended entirely upon his caprice. Many captains were thenceforward unable to resist the temptation to falsify the muster-rolls so as to receive pay for soldiers who did not exist.
The King’s despotic power, however, enabled him to make light of military discontent in time of peace. He resolved to keep up an army of 150,000 men, to drill it as it had never been drilled before, to educate the officers, to review all the troops every year, to build new fortresses, and to establish stores of money and munitions sufficient to enable Prussia to enter at a moment’s notice upon a war of eight campaigns. It is a highly significant fact that in Frederick’s secret estimates for the future struggle the annual contribution of Prussia was set down at 4,700,000 thalers and the sum to be extorted from Saxony at 5,000,000. The balance of the 12,000,000 thalers, which was the price of a campaign, must come from the royal accumulations. Frederick’s own expenses305 were only 220,000 thalers a year. At the close of his reign, when the total revenue of the State was not quite 22,000,000 thalers, the treasure amounted to more than 51,000,000, a sum fully five times as great as that which he had inherited from his father.
Frederick was compelled by his past to stand to arms all his life through. With advancing years he became more lonely and more subject to disease. In 1765 he lost his sister, the Margravine of Schwedt, and next year the aged Madame de Camas, whom he always called Mamma. His old friends died one by one and the French wits had vanished. His brothers, Henry and Ferdinand, were often estranged from him by his bitter words. Yet to the end of his life he prided himself on his cheerfulness between the attacks of gout and he permitted no disease to interrupt his labours. These were devoted first, as we have seen, to making the land secure from attack by means of the army, and also to guarding it from famine by methods which may next be considered. Close on the heels of these essential duties came tasks of fresh development and reform, the acquisition of West-Preussen in 1772, and new endeavours to uphold Prussian prestige against the House of Hapsburg.
It is of course impossible to calculate exactly the damage which a country suffers in time of war. Moral gains and losses count in the long run for more than material, and no statistics even of material losses are truly satisfactory. As between one Prussian province and another, however, a rough comparison may be made by means of the growth or306 decline of the population. Silesia and the lands east of the Oder had naturally suffered most, since, in addition to their quota of soldiers slain, they had long endured the presence of invading armies. In Silesia the numbers fell by 50,000, about one in twenty-three, but further north, in the districts in which the Russians had encamped, the proportion was nearly five times as heavy. Frederick’s own estimate was that one-ninth of his subjects had perished.
The loss of property had undoubtedly been very great. The conscience of the age forbade massacre, but was lenient towards pillage and devastation. But the King surpassed himself by what Carlyle terms “the instantaneous practical alacrity with which he set about repairing that immense miscellany of ruin.” So far as the material losses sustained by individual Prussians could be ascertained, they were set down by the careful hands of royal commissioners and mitigated by royal gifts. The King had at his disposal depreciated coin to the amount of nearly 30,000,000 thalers, the sum which had been accumulated to pay for the eighth and ninth campaigns. This more than sufficed for the needs of the army and the repayment of the trifling loans, less than five and a half million thalers in all, that Frederick had contracted during the war. With the residue and with the surplus revenues of the State the King set to work to prevent a single one of his subjects from falling into absolute ruin. His doles were graduated not by any standard of abstract justice, but by the rule that the minimum amount of307 help should be given that would serve the purpose of the State. Many towns had paid ransoms to the enemy to avoid being sacked. That of Berlin, two million thalers, was repaid out of the treasury, but Halle received less than one-sixth of what it claimed, and in the majority of cases the burghers were left to bear the loss themselves.
In the country districts, however, there was less power of recuperation than among the comparatively wealthy towns. According to Frederick’s opinion, it was therefore necessary that the State should make it possible for nobles and peasants alike to resume their normal duties. The spare horses from the army, to the number of 35,000, and many rations for man and beast from the magazines were at once distributed to the most needy. Officials allotted to the peasants wood to rebuild their houses and sums of money to assist the work. Their rents were remitted for a time, and oxen, cows, sheep, meal, and seed-corn were supplied to them free of charge. The State reaped its reward in the rents and taxes which speedily flowed into the royal coffers, as well as in the rapid growth of population.
While the King was thus doling out relief to a great part of his subjects, he indulged in a singular extravagance which has been the subject of much criticism and conjecture. Though he inequitably threw upon the people the expense of restoring the coinage, though his subjects were sending him sheaves of petitions for aid, though he was of all monarchs the least addicted to pomp, none the less, three months after peace had been signed he began308 to build a third palace at Potsdam. The astonished Prussians believed that the cost was 22,000,000 thalers. If no more than one-tenth of this was actually expended, the King lavished on a superfluity more than one-third of the sum that he assigned to the restoration of the land.
Those who insist that he did nothing without a motive of State may find it in his desire to convince foreign Powers that it was dangerous to attack a nation which could afford luxuries while its enemies were deep in debt. Other conjectures are possible. Frederick loved to indulge the hope that the Sciences, which had visited Greece and Italy, France and England, in turn, might settle for a while in Prussia, and the new palace, like the salary paid to Voltaire, might be regarded as a sacrifice at their altar. The claims of the new Prussian industries, especially the manufacture of silk, which was largely used in adorning the interior, may have induced the King to provide an artificial market in this way. Frederick’s Versailles, however, remains to this day both a monument to his absolutism and an enigma.
THE NEW PALACE AT POTSDAM.
Absolutism and diligence are still the hall-marks of all his measures. The military reforms, the work of restoration, and the attention paid to the arts taxed him but lightly when compared with his labours for the development of the agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and finance of his dominions. No sooner was the war at an end and the work of restoration set on foot than Frederick began to pour forth a flood of edicts for the regulation and advance of every department of national life, and to309 engage in incessant labours of inspection to see that they were carried out.
In promoting agriculture he was guided by principles with which we are already familiar. His prime rule was still to increase the number of tillers of the soil and to make them safe against starvation. He therefore continued to bring in colonists from far and near, to drain marshes, to reclaim wastes, and to build new habitations. It is computed that at the close of his reign one-fifth or one-sixth of his subjects were immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. Besides a knowledge of husbandry and handicraft which in many cases surpassed that of the Prussians, the aliens brought with them substantial additions to the material wealth of the land. The official inventory of their belongings, though incomplete, shows that 6392 horses, 7875 head of cattle, 20,548 sheep, 3227 pigs, and upwards of 2,000,000 thalers in money were thus added to the capital of the nation.
To provide for the accommodation of the recruits to his army of agriculture, the King applied every art of government to bring new land under cultivation and to increase the fertility of the old. The superior enlightenment of Prussia was attested by the curt refusal of Brunswick and Hanover to co-operate in works of drainage. No site for a farmstead was to be left vacant and in the forests—so ran the decree—“no place where a tree can stand, unplanted.” The sterile nature of the soil challenged the unwearied industry of the King. Many centuries before blotting-paper came to be known,310 Brandenburg was nicknamed “the sand-box of the Holy Roman Empire.” Thousands of acres had to be set with bushes to prevent its surface from being blown over the neighbouring fields.
“I confess,” wrote Frederick to Voltaire, “that with the exception of Libya few states can boast that they equal us in the matter of sand. Yet we are bringing 76,000 acres under cultivation this year as pasture. This pasture feeds 7,000 cows, whose dung will manure and improve the land, and the crops will be of more value.”
The spectacle of the royal philosopher writing to Voltaire about manure and walking almost daily from Sans Souci to his turnip-field is a visible proof of Frederick’s devotion to this branch of his stewardship. He was wont to speak with authority as the leading agriculturist of the realm. Here, as elsewhere, his breadth of view often enabled him to discern the best product or practice in other lands, and his command of resources to transport it to his own. Having once attained his object by teaching his subjects to produce an article at home, he imperatively forbade them to import it from abroad. The full reward of his policy would be reaped when Prussia began to supply it to other countries in exchange for gold and silver.
A single instance of the minuteness and imperiousness with which the King applied this policy to agriculture may be cited from Professor Koser’s history of the reign. The Berlin egg-market was still dependent on foreign supply. In 1780 a royal hen-census showed that there were 324,175 hens in the311 Electoral Mark and that 36,300 more were required to meet the demand for eggs. “What will it matter,” asked the King, “if every peasant keep ten or twelve more hens? Their food does not cost much; they can pick up most of it in the straw and dung of the farmyard.” Prohibition of the import of foreign eggs followed. This caused the market price to rise and the ministers............