The chief significance of the Peace of Hubertusburg for Prussia was not expressed in any of its clauses. The signature of the treaty implied that Europe renounced the endeavour to deprive her of the rank among the Great Powers which she had arrogated to herself in 1740. Their survival of the great ordeal conferred a new consequence upon Frederick and his State. “Frederick himself,” Mr. James Sime happily says, “acquired both in Germany and in Europe the indefinable influence which springs from the recognition of great gifts that have been proved by great deeds.” The brief sketch of his domestic labours that has been given in Chapter X. suggests that he was not lacking in the energy which was needed to maintain this influence and to derive full profit from it. The history of his dealings with foreign Powers during the latter half of his reign is the story of how this was done.
JOSEPH THE SECOND.
AFTER THE PAINTING BY LISTARD.
From the moment at which he signed the treaty down to the day of his death, Frederick felt that Austria was still his enemy. Joseph II., the eldest son of the Queen, who was unanimously elected323 Emperor in 1765, had learned politics from the King of Prussia. He desired nothing so much as to restore the immemorial pre-eminence of his House by a sudden blow at its upstart rival. Frederick, who had spies everywhere, was soon acquainted with the ambitions of the restless youth. For the present he could place some reliance on the pacific influence of the Queen and more on the emptiness of the Austrian treasury, but he was none the less compelled to make it his foremost task to thwart successive Hapsburg schemes of aggrandisement.
His security was the greater, however, because the Peace of Paris of 1763 reconciled France and England as little as the Peace of Hubertusburg reconciled Austria and Prussia. Frederick, it is true, was still treated with coldness by the French, who clung to their alliance with the Queen, and he was resolved never again to trust an English ministry. With a rare access of spite, indeed, he condemned the charger which he had named after Lord Bute to be yoked with a mule and to perform humiliating duties in his sight. But though neither of the Great Powers of the West was his ally, their latent hostility was still too incurable to permit them to unite against him.
On the remaining Great Power, therefore, the well-being of Prussia depended. The Seven Years’ War of the future, which Frederick was always labouring to avert by means of elaborate armaments, was improbable if Russia stood neutral and impossible if she became his ally. From 1763 onwards the Russian alliance was the prize for which he strove. He had324 to surmount the obstacle that as sovereign of Ost-Preussen he was the natural enemy of the Russian designs upon Poland. But Austria, on the other hand, besides being interested in Poland, was the natural enemy of the Russian designs upon the Turk. Frederick might reasonably hope that by humouring Russia to the extreme limit which the interests of his State permitted, he might establish a good understanding with her to the prejudice of the more formidable empire in the south.
Catherine, whose throne was far from secure, seemed at first resolved to shun a new connexion with the ally of her murdered husband. Early in October, 1763, however, her neighbour, Augustus, died, and the stress of the election to the throne of Poland compelled her to seek the aid of some foreign Power. France, Austria, and finally the Russian faction in Poland all disappointed her, and she feared a hostile combination between Prussia and the Turk. On April 11, 1764, therefore, Frederick’s desire was gratified. He bound himself to aid Catherine in upholding the existing constitutional anarchy in Poland and in Sweden, and received in return the coveted Russian guarantee for Silesia. Then, by means of force and corruption, Stanislaus Poniatowski was installed as King of Poland (September 7, 1764). “God said, let it be light, and it was light,” was Frederick’s congratulation to Catherine. “You speak and the world is silent before you.”
In accommodating himself without undue humility to the flighty humours of his imperious ally, and in appropriating for Prussia most of the benefits of325 the compact, Frederick showed that experience had taught him much. The state of Polish and Turkish affairs gave to the Eastern Question of that day two storm-centres which threatened wide and immediate disturbance. Frederick, who was deep in his labours of restoration and reform at home, desired above all to keep the peace. This imposed upon him tasks of the utmost delicacy. He had to prevent the formation of a Northern league which Russia desired, to cow Austria by means of the Russian alliance, to follow with the closest attention the turbulent course of politics in Poland, to keep Austria from acquiring influence there, to check the military ardour of the Turk, and to hinder a rapprochement between Austria and Russia. During more than four years (April, 1764-October, 1768), he was able to stave off war, and when at last France induced the Turks to attack Russia, he found himself liable only to pay an annual subsidy of less than half a million thalers. In 1769 the alliance was prolonged till 1780.
The war between Russia and the Turks seemed to Frederick a pitiable display of incompetence. “To form a correct idea of this war,” he wrote, “you must figure a set of purblind people who, by constantly beating a set of altogether blind, end by gaining over them a complete mastery.” But the triumph of Russia, however achieved, threatened to kindle the general conflagration which he dreaded. It was clear that if left to herself she would make conquests, and Austria was on the alert for compensation. The Hapsburg claims might possibly be satisfied at the expense of the Turk, but this326 resource was of no avail to furnish the compensation which Prussia herself would not forego. Frederick cast longing glances towards West-Preussen, but could not bring himself to believe that Russia would consent to an acquisition which would add immensely to the power of a rival state. He therefore feared that the knot would yield only to the sword.
At this crisis the King twice met Joseph II. face to face. At Neisse, in August, 1769, little save a personal introduction was effected. Frederick professed to be charmed with the beautiful soul and noble ambitions of the young Emperor, while Joseph reported to his mother that the King talked admirably, but betrayed the knave in every word he spoke. At the second meeting, which took place in Moravia in September, 1770, Frederick spared no effort to captivate Joseph and Kaunitz. He donned the Austrian uniform of white, though he smilingly confessed that his mania for snuff made him too dirty to wear it. He extolled the Imperial grenadiers as worthy to guard the person of the God of War. He made Laudon sit beside him, saying in graceful allusion to Hochkirch and Kunersdorf, that he would rather have General Laudon at his side than be obliged to face him. After sacrificing to the vanity of the Chancellor by listening for an hour to a monologue on political affairs, he won his heart by posing as a grateful convert to his views.
WENZEL ANTON, PRINCE VON KAUNITZ.
AFTER THE PAINTING BY STEINER.
The result was that Frederick was able to offer Catherine the joint mediation of Austria and Prussia to end the war. The offer was not accepted, but it proved that the two foes were not irreconcilable.327 The mere hint that Austria might compete for the Prussian alliance was enough to raise its value at St. Petersburg. It became clear, too, that only the fear of Prussia was preventing Austria from interfering on behalf of the Turk. Urged on by his brother Henry, who had just returned from the Russian capital, Frederick determined early in 1771 to take the risk of offending Russia and provoking Austria to war, in order to net his profit from this advantageous situation ere it changed.
In the summer of 1770 Austria had drifted, half involuntarily, into an occupation of Zips, a portion of the territory of Poland which was almost surrounded by her own, and of some of the adjacent districts. Frederick now seized upon this, though the Queen was willing to draw back, as an excuse for pressing upon Russia a plan which he had promulgated under an alias at an early stage in the war. On February 1, 1769, he had suggested to his ambassador at St. Petersburg
“that Russia should offer to the Court of Vienna Lemberg and the surrounding country in return for support against the Turks; that she should give us Polish Preussen with Ermland and the protectorate over Danzig; and that she should herself incorporate a suitable part of Poland by way of indemnity for the expenses of the war.”
The plan of dismembering Poland because the Turks were defeated was, as Frederick knew full well, distasteful to both of the Powers whose complicity he desired. Russia was strongly opposed to328 any aggrandisement of Prussia to the eastward. Austria, besides being averse to the aggrandisement of her rival in any quarter, preferred any lands to the Polish and any method to that of naked force. Yet the King, while professing that he was an old man whose brain was worn out, secured the co-operation of Russia within a year (15th January, 1772), and of Austria less than eight months later.
The triumph of his diplomacy was enhanced by the fact that he would have been completely foiled if Austria had consented to join Russia in dismembering the Turk. As it was, he was permitted to enjoy the spectacle of the Queen struggling with her conscience and upbraiding herself, her Chancellor, and her son. She complained that they had aimed at two incompatible objects at once, “to act in the Prussian fashion and at the same time to preserve the semblance of honesty.” The prospective additions to her domains were to her odious, since they were “bought at the price of honour, at the price of the glory of the monarchy, at the price of the good faith and religion, which are our peculiar possession.” “She is always weeping, but always annexing,” sneered the triumphant King.
On August 5, 1772, Austria signed the Treaty of Partition. By agreeing upon their demands the three Powers had accomplished the hardest part of their enterprise. The strength of Poland had been wasted by the anarchy which Russia and Prussia had studiously conserved. Since 1768, Romanists and Dissidents had been engaged in a bloody and desolating war in which Russia, the protector of the329 Greek Church, played the decisive part. No party among the Poles still retained sufficient energy to oppose in arms the claims to Polish provinces which, in order to save appearances, were formulated by the Powers. Frederick even put forward a double title to Pomerellen, alleging that it had been wrongfully alienated by the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1311, and that if he as suzerain consented to overlook this irregularity, he would still be entitled to the province as heir, since 1637, to the elder branch of the House of Pomerania. He claimed Great Poland as heir of the Emperor Sigismund, who had pawned it to the Teutonic Order, from which the Poles had wrested it by force. The remainder of his share was due to him as compensation for the loss of the revenues of these two provinces for so many centuries.
The Polish statesmen had no difficulty in refuting such nonsense as this. But King Stanislaus was convinced that true patriotism dictated obedience in order to save what remained. France and England were too intent on their own affairs to interfere by force. Hence a mixture of persuasion, bribery, and the presence of 30,000 soldiers was sufficient to procure the unanimous acquiescence of the Diet after six months’ negotiation (September 30, 1773). The Austrian ambassador was astonished at the trifling sums for which the nobles sold their votes. His Saxon colleague lamented that they shamelessly laid upon the gaming-tables the foreign gold with which they had just been bribed.
Frederick’s share of the spoil amounted to more330 than sixteen thousand square miles, and in 1774 he was able quietly to filch two hundred additional villages from Poland. Long before the Diet consented to the cession he had inaugurated Prussian rule. In June, 1772, he made a triumphal entry into his new province. He gave out to all and sundry that no one could envy his good fortune, for as he came he had seen nothing but sand, pines, heath, and Jews. “It is a very good and very profitable acquisition,” he wrote to Prince Henry, “both for the political situation of the State and for its finances.” Men said that without Danzig, which along with Thorn remained Polish, West-Preussen was but a trunk without a head, but the King was full of schemes for partitioning the trade of Danzig among his own ports. Voltaire, finding him deaf to his exhortations to free the Greeks, lamented that the harbour of Danzig lay nearer his heart than the Pir?us.
Soon the poverty-stricken land echoed to the untiring march of Hohenzollern progress. The contempt which the King openly expressed for “this perfectly imbecile set with names ending in ki” was apparent in all his dealings with the privileged classes. His treatment of private estates as well as of provinces seemed to warrant the Poles who added the word Rapuit to the Suum Cuique which they saw inscribed beneath the Prussian eagle. The local officials were simply dismissed from office, and their lands appropriated at the cost of a trifling compensation. Though Frederick bound himself to respect the existing rights and property of the Roman331 Catholics, the bishops and abbots likewise lost their lands, but in their case an allowance amounting to nearly half of their previous incomes was conceded. Upon the nobles a tax of one-quarter of their net revenues was imposed, but Protestants were entitled to a discount of twenty per cent. In the hope of cleansing West-Preussen of its Polish inhabitants, the King went so far as to favour the purchase of noble lands by German peasants. Strict watch was kept on the frontier for Polish immigrants who might try to enter the country.
The common people, however, could not but gain from the introduction of that policy of developing all the resources of the land which formed the Hohenzollern ideal of domestic government. Slavery was abolished and serfdom regulated. New waterways were dug. Colonists were brought in by thousands. Prussian soldiers scoured the country in search of gipsies, tramps, and begging Jews. Toleration, justice, and education were established where all three had been far to seek. The peasants and townsmen were subjected to the Prussian system of taxation, which laid upon their shoulders a burden heavy indeed, but steady and not beyond their strength. Soon the royal revenue from West-Preussen amounted to more than two million thalers a year.
But for a timely revival of energy in her royal House, it is not impossible that Sweden, like Poland, would have been the poorer for the Russo-Prussian alliance. In 1769 Catherine and Frederick had pledged themselves to maintain anarchy in Stockholm as well as in Warsaw. Should the existing332 constitution be modified, Russia would take up arms and Frederick’s contribution to the war was to be the invasion of Swedish Pomerania. It is easy to imagine that with Russia and Prussia in cordial agreement and France and England embroiled or apathetic, a war with Sweden might have resulted in the annexation of Finland and the remainder of Pomerania by the allies. In 1772, however, young Gustavus III., the son of Frederick’s sister Ulrica, delivered Sweden from the trammels of her constitution by an unlooked-for coup d’état. Russia, which was still hampered by the Turkish war, was unable to wage war against the revolution, and Frederick, who for once was taken by surprise, grudgingly accepted the apologies of his nephew.
The remainder of Frederick’s life was dedicated to the defence of the position that he had already attained. He was determined to do nothing that could prejudice his cause in a future struggle with Austria. He therefore looked on while Russia and Austria despoiled the Turk in 1774, while England and her Colonies fell to blows in the next year, and while France joined in the fray in 1778. His private opinion, indeed, was that the country which could commit its destinies to a Bute could hardly fail to be in the wrong. He blamed the English both for political and military folly—for beginning a terrible civil war with no settled plans or adequate preparations, for underestimating the enemy’s force, for dividing her own and for trampling upon the rights of neutrals. But he avoided with the most scrupulous care any action that could give off............