Establishment of the Berlin Academy of Sciences.—Religious Toleration.—A Free Press.—Sternness of the young King.—Domestic Habits of the King.—Provision for the Queen-mother.—Absolutism of the King.—Journey to Strasbourg.—First Interview with Voltaire.
The conduct of Frederick the Second, upon his accession to the throne, was in accordance with his professions. The winter had been intensely cold. The spring was late and wet. There was almost a famine in the land. The public granaries, which the foresight of his father had established, contained large stores of grain, which were distributed to the poor at very low prices. A thousand aged and destitute women in Berlin were provided with rooms, well warmed, where they spun in the service of the king, with good wages, and in their grateful hearts ever thanking their benefactor. He abolished the use of torture in criminal trials, not forgetting that he himself had come very near having his limbs stretched upon the rack. This important decree, which was hailed with joy all over Prussia, was issued the third day after his accession.
Very vigorous measures were immediately adopted to establish an Academy of Sciences. The celebrated French philosopher Maupertuis, who had just obtained great renown from measuring a degree of the meridian at the polar circle, was invited to organize this very important institute. The letter to the philosopher, written by the king but a few days after his accession, was as follows:
“My heart and my inclination excited in me, from the moment I mounted the throne, the desire of having you here, that you might put our Berlin Academy in the shape you alone are capable of giving it. Come then, come, and insert into this wild crab-tree the sciences, that it may bear fruit. You have shown the figure of the earth to mankind; show also to a king how sweet it is to possess such a man as you.
“Monsieur De Maupertuis, your very affectionate
“Frederick.”
192 On the 22d of June a complaint was made to the king that the Roman Catholic schools were perverted to seducing Protestants to become Catholics. Frederick returned the complaint with the following words written upon the margin:
“All religions must be tolerated, and the king’s solicitor must have an eye that none of them make unjust encroachments on the other; for in this country every man must get to heaven his own way.”
It is a fact worthy of mention, as illustrative of the neglect with which the king had regarded his own German language in his devotion to the French tongue, that in these three lines there were eleven words wrongly spelled.
But the good sense of the utterance, so rare in those dark days, electrified thousands of minds. It drew the attention of Europe to Frederick, and gave him wide-spread renown.
Under Frederick William the newspaper press in Berlin amounted to nothing. The capital had not a single daily paper. Speedy destruction would crush any writer who, in journal, pamphlet, or book, should publish any thing displeasing to the king. Frederick proclaimed freedom of the press. Two newspapers were established in Berlin, one in French and one in German. Distinguished men were selected to edit them. One was a noted writer from Hamburg. Frederick, in his absolutism, had adopted the resolve not to interfere with the freedom of the press unless there were some gross violation of what he deemed proper. He allowed very bitter satires to be circulated in Berlin against himself, simply replying to the remonstrances of his ministers, “The press is free.”
Such were the measures adopted during the first week of Frederick’s reign. He soon abolished the enormously expensive regiment of giants, and organized, instead of them, four regiments composed of men of the usual stature.32 Within a few months he added sixteen thousand men to his already large army, thus193 raising the number of the standing army of his little realm to over ninety thousand men. He compelled his old associates to feel, and some of them very keenly, that he was no longer their comrade, but their king. One of the veteran and most honored officers of Frederick William, in his expressions of condolence and congratulation, ventured to suggest the hope that he and his sons might continue to “occupy the same posts and retain the same authority as in the last reign.”
“You will retain your posts,” said the king, severely. “I have no thought of making any change. But as to authority, I know of none there can be but what resides in the king that is sovereign.”
The Marquis of Schwedt advanced to meet the new-made sovereign, his face beaming jovially, and with outstretched hands, as in the days of their old companionship. Frederick, fixing his cold eye steadfastly upon him, almost floored him with the rebuff, “My cousin, I am now king.”
General Schulenburg, trembling in memory of the fact that he had once, in court-martial, given his vote in favor of beheading the Crown Prince, hastened from his post at Landsberg to congratulate the prince upon his accession to the throne. To his extreme chagrin and indignation, he was repelled by the words, “An officer should not quit his post without order. Return immediately to Landsberg.”
As an administrative officer the young sovereign was inexorable and heartless in the extreme. Those who had befriended him in the days of his adversity were not remembered with any profusion of thanks or favors. Those who had been in sympathy with his father in his persecution of the Crown Prince encountered no spirit of revenge. Apparently dead to affection, and oblivious of the past, the young sovereign only sought for those agents who could best assist him in the work to which he now consecrated all his energies—the endeavor to aggrandize the kingdom of Prussia. Poor Doris Ritter received but a trivial pension for her terrible wrongs. Lieutenant Keith, his friend and confederate in his contemplated flight, who had barely escaped with his life from Wesel, after ten years of exile hastened home, hoping that his faithful services and sufferings would meet with a reward. The king appointed him merely lieutenant colonel,194 with scarcely sufficient income to keep him from absolute want. Perhaps the king judged that the young man was not capable of filling, to the advantage of the state, a higher station, and he had no idea of sacrificing his interests to gratitude.
Ten years later the king made poor Keith a present of a purse of gold, containing about seven thousand dollars, under circumstances which reflected much credit upon the donor. In the following quaint style Carlyle records the incident:
“The king did a beautiful thing to Lieutenant Keith the other day—that poor Keith who was nailed to the gallows, in effigy, for him at Wesel, long ago, and got far less than he expected. The other day there had been a grand review, part of it extending into Madame Knyphausen’s grounds, who is Keith’s mother-in-law.
“‘Monsieur Keith,’ said the king to him, ‘I am sorry we had to spoil Madame’s fine shrubbery by our man?uvres; have the goodness to give her that, with my apologies,’ and handed him a pretty casket with key to it, and in the interior 10,000 crowns.
“Not a shrub of Madame’s had been cut or injured. But the king, you see, would count it ￡1500 of damage done, and here is acknowledgment for it, which please accept. Is not that a gracious little touch?”
One wretched man, who had been the guilty accomplice of the Crown Prince in former scenes of guilt and shame, was so troubled by the neglect with which he was treated that he hanged himself.
Frederick, as Crown Prince, had been quite methodical in the distribution of his time, and had cultivated rigid habits of industry. Now, fully conscious of the immense duties and cares which would devolve upon him as king, he entered into a very systematic arrangement of the employments of each hour, to which he rigidly adhered during nearly the whole of his reign of forty-six years. He ordered his servants to wake him at four o’clock every morning. Being naturally inclined to sleep, he found it hard to shake off his lethargy. The attendants were therefore directed, every morning, to place upon his forehead a towel dipped in cold water. He thus continued to rise at four o’clock, summer and winter, until an advanced age.
A single servant lighted his fire, shaved him, and dressed his195 hair. He always wore the uniform of his guards, and allowed only fifteen minutes for his morning toilet. He did not indulge in the luxury of slippers or dressing-gown, though occasionally, when ill, he put on a sort of linen wrapper, but even then he wore his military boots. Only on one day in the year did he appear in silk stockings, and that was on the birthday of his neglected wife, when he formally called upon her with his congratulations.
The ordinary routine of the day, when not absent on travels or campaigns, was as follows: As soon as dressed, one of his pages brought the packet of letters. The number was usually very large. He employed himself in reading these letters till eight o’clock. By a particular style of folding, he designated those to which no reply was to be returned, those to which there was to be an immediate reply, and those which required further consideration. At eight o’clock one of the four secretaries of the cabinet entered, took the three parcels, and, while the king was breakfasting, received from him very briefly the character of the response to be made.
At nine o’clock Frederick received one of the general officers, and arranged with him all the military affairs of the day, usually dismissing him loaded with business. At ten o’clock he reviewed some one of the regiments; and then, after attending parade, devoted himself to literary pursuits or private correspondence until dinner-time. This was the portion of the day he usually appropriated to authorship. He was accustomed to compose, both in prose and verse, while slowly traversing the graveled walks of his garden.
He was particularly fond of dogs of the graceful greyhound breed, and might often be seen with book and pencil in his hand, in the shady walks, with three or four Italian greyhounds gamboling around him, apparently entirely absorbed in deep meditation. A page usually followed at a short distance behind, to attend his call. At twelve o’clock he dined with invited guests. As quite a number of distinguished men always met at his table, and the king was very fond of good living, as well as of the “feast of reason and the flow of soul,” the repast was frequently prolonged until nearly three o’clock. At dinner he was very social, priding himself not a little upon his conversational powers.
196
FREDERICK IN THE GARDEN.
In pleasant weather he took a long walk after dinner, and generally at so rapid a pace that it was difficult for most persons to keep up with him. At four o’clock the secretaries brought to him the answers to the letters which they had received from him in the morning. He glanced them over, examining some with care. Then, until six o’clock, he devoted himself to reading, to literary compositions, and to the affairs of the Academy, in which he took a very deep interest. At six o’clock he had a private musical concert, at which he performed himself upon the flute. He was passionately fond of this instrument, and continued to play upon it until, in old age, his teeth decaying, he was unable to produce the sounds he wished.
After the concert, which usually continued an hour, he engaged197 in conversation until ten o’clock. He then took supper with a few friends, and at eleven retired to his bed.
To his mother he was very considerate in all his manifestations of filial affection, while, at the same time, he caused her very distinctly to understand that she was to take no share whatever in the affairs of government. When she addressed him, upon his accession to the throne, as “Your Majesty,” he replied, “Call me son. That is the title of all others most agreeable to me.” He decreed to her the title of “Her Majesty the Queen-mother.” The palace of Monbijou was assigned her, where she was surrounded with every luxury, treated with the most distinguished attention, and her court was the acknowledged centre of fashionable society.
He seems ever to have treated his nominal wife, Queen Elizabeth, politely. For some months after the accession he was quite prominent in his public attentions to her. But these intervals of association grew gradually more rare, until after three or four years they ceased almost entirely.
Frederick, under the tutelage of his stern father, had not enjoyed the privileges of foreign travel. While other princes of far humbler expectations were taking the grand tour of Europe, the Crown Prince was virtually imprisoned in the barracks, day after day, engaged in the dull routine of drilling the giant guard. After the death of his father he did not condescend to be crowned, proudly assuming, in contradiction to some of his earlier teachings, that the crown was already placed upon his brow by divine power. He, however, exacted from the people throughout his realms oaths of allegiance, and in person visited several of the principal cities to administer those oaths with much pomp of ceremony. The Danish envoy, writing home to his government respecting the administration of Frederick, says,
“I must observe that hitherto the King of Prussia does, as it were, every thing himself; and that, excepting the finance minister, who preaches frugality, and finds for that doctrine uncommon acceptance, his majesty allows no counseling from any minister; so that the minister for foreign affairs has nothing to do but to expedite the orders he receives, his advice not being asked upon any matter. And so it is with the other ministers.”
On the 12th of June, but a fortnight after his accession, Frederick198 wrote from Charlottenburg to Voltaire, who was then at Brussels, as follows:
“My dear Voltaire,—Resist no longer the eagerness I have to see you. Do, in my favor, whatever your humanity allows. In the end of August I go to Wesel, and perhaps farther. Promise that you will come and join me, for I could not live happy nor die tranquil without having embraced you. Thousand compliments to the Marquise” (Madame Du Chatelet, the divine Emilie). “I am busy with both hands—working at the army with one hand, at the people and the fine arts with the other.”
It would seem that Frederick was not very willing to receive, as his guest, the divine Emilie, who occupied so questionable a position in the household of Voltaire; for he wrote again, on the 5th of August, in reply to a letter from Voltaire, saying,
“I will write to Madame Du Chatelet in compliance with your wish. To speak to you frankly concerning her journey, it is Voltaire, it is you, it is my friend that I desire to see. I can not say whether I shall travel or not travel. Adieu, dear friend, sublime spirit, first-born of thinking beings. Love me alw............