Pictures of German Life in the XVIIIth and XIXth Centuries Volume Ii Part 2

Thus he grew up surrounded by spies, who conveyed his every word to the King. With a richly gifted mind and refined intellectual yearnings, he needed that manly society which would have been suitable for him. No wonder that the youth went astray. The Prussian pa.s.sed for a very virtuous court in comparison with the other courts of Germany; but the tone towards women, and the carelessness with which the most doubtful connexions were treated, were there also very great. After a visit to the profligate court of Dresden, Prince Frederic began to behave like other princes of his time, and he found good comrades among his father's young officers. We know little of him at this time, but we may conclude that he was undoubtedly in some danger, not of being ruined, but of pa.s.sing the best years of his life amidst debts and worthless connexions. It certainly was not the increasing displeasure of his father that unhinged his mind at this period, so much as an inward dissatisfaction that drove the immature youth more wildly into error.

He determined to escape to England; how his flight miscarried, and how great was the anger of Colonel Frederic William against the deserter, are well known. With the days of his imprisonment in Kustrin, and his residence at Ruppin, his education began in earnest. The horrors he had experienced had called forth in him new powers. He had borne all the terrors of death, and the most bitter humiliation of princely pride. In the solitude of his prison he had reflected on the great riddle of life,--on death, and what was to follow after it. He had perceived that nothing remained to him but submission, patience, and quiet endurance.

But bitter corroding misfortune is not a school which develops good alone: it gives birth also to many faults. He learnt to hide his decisions in his own breast, to look with suspicion on men and use them as his tools, to deceive and cajole them with a cold astuteness which was foreign to his nature. He flattered the cowardly, mean Grumbkow, and was glad when he gradually won the bad man to his purposes; he had for years to struggle warily against the dislike and distrust of his hard father. His nature always resisted this humiliation, and he endeavoured by bitter scorn to atone to his injured self-respect; his heart, which glowed for everything n.o.ble, saved him from becoming a hard egotist, but it did not make him milder or more conciliatory, and when he had become a great man and a wise prince, he still retained some traces of narrow-minded cunning from this time of servitude. The lion had at times not been ashamed to scratch like a spiteful cat.

Yet he learnt during these years to respect some things that were useful--the strict economical care with which his narrow-minded but prudent father provided for the weal of his household and country.

When, to please the King, he made estimates of a lease; when he gave himself the trouble to increase the profits of a demesne by some hundred thalers; when he thought that the King spent more than was fitting on his favourite fancy, and proposed to him to kidnap a tall shepherd from Mecklenburg as a recruit,--this work was undoubtedly in the beginning only a burdensome means of propitiating the King; for Grumbkow had to procure him a man who made out estimates instead of him, and the officials and exchequer officers gave him hints how, here and there, a profit was to be made, and he always jested about the giants, where he could venture to do so. But the new world in which he found himself, gradually led him on to the practical interests of the people and State. It is clear that the economy of his father was often tyrannical and extraordinary. The King was always convinced that his whole object was the good of the country, and therefore he took upon himself to interfere in the most arbitrary way with the possessions and affairs of private persons. When he commanded that no male goat should be driven with the sheep; that all coloured sheep, grey, black, and mixed, should be entirely got rid of within three years, and only white wool should be permitted; when he accurately prescribed how the sample measure of the Berlin scheffel--which, at the cost of his subjects, he had sent throughout the country--should be locked up and preserved, that they might not be battered; when, in order to promote the linen and woollen trade, he commanded that his subjects should not wear the fashionable chintz and calico, threatening with a fine of 300 thalers and three days in the pillory, all who, after eight months, should have in their house any cotton articles, either nightgowns, caps, or furniture,--such measures of government appeared certainly harsh and trivial; but the son learnt to honour the shrewd sense and benevolent care which were the groundwork of these decrees, and he himself gradually became familiar with a mult.i.tude of details, with which otherwise as a prince he would not have been conversant: the value of property, the price of the necessaries of life, the wants of the people, and the customs, rights, and duties of life in the lower cla.s.ses. He had also a share of the self-satisfaction with which the King boasted of this knowledge of business. When he himself became the all-powerful administrator of his State, the incalculable advantage of his knowledge of the people and of trade became manifest. It was owing to this that the wise economy with which he managed his own house and the finances of the country became possible, and that he was enabled to advance the agriculture, trade, wealth, and education of his people by incessant care of details. Equally with the daily accounts of his kitchen he knew how to test the calculations concerning the crown demesnes and forests, and the excise. His people had chiefly to thank the years in which he was compelled to sit as a.s.sessor at the green table at Ruppin for his power of overlooking with a sharp eye the smallest as well as the greatest affairs. But sometimes what had been so vexatious in his father's time happened to himself: his knowledge of business details was not sufficient, so that here and there, just like his father, he commanded what violently interfered with the life of his Prussians, and could not be carried out.

The wounds inflicted upon Frederic by the great catastrophe had scarcely been healed, when a new misfortune befell him as great almost in its consequences as the first. The King forced a wife upon him.

Heartrending is the woe with which he strove to escape the bride chosen for him. "I do not care how frivolous she may be, as long as she is not a simpleton, that, I cannot bear." It was all in vain. With bitterness and indignation did he regard this marriage shortly before it took place. Never did he overcome the effect of this sorrow, by which his father ruined his inward life. His most susceptible feelings, and his loving heart, were sold in the roughest way. Not only was he made unhappy by it, but also an excellent woman who was deserving of a better fate. The Princess Elizabeth of Bevern had many n.o.ble qualities of heart; she was not a simpleton, she was not ugly, and might have pa.s.sed well through the bitter criticisms of the princesses of the royal house. But we fear that, if she had been an angel, the pride of the son, who was subjected to the useless barbarity of compulsion, would still have protested against her. And yet this union was not always so cold as has been supposed. For six years did the goodness of heart and tact of the Princess succeed in reconciling the Crown Prince to her. In the retirement of Rheinsberg she was in fact the lady of his house and the amiable hostess of his guests, and it was reported by the Austrian agents that her influence was on the ascendant. But her modest clinging nature was too deficient in the qualities calculated to fix the attachment of an intellectual man. It was necessary for the sprightly children of the house of Brandenburg to give vent to their excitable natures by ready and pointed humour. The Princess, when she was excited, was as quiet as if paralysed, and she was wanting in the easy grace of society. This did not suit. Even the way in which she loved her husband, dutifully and submissively, as if repelled and overwhelmed by the greatness of his mind, was little interesting to the Prince, who had adopted, together with French intellectual culture, not a little of the frivolity of French society.

When Frederic became King, the Princess soon lost the very small share she had gained in her husband's affections. His long absence during the Silesian War finally alienated him from her. More and more distant became their mutual intercourse; years pa.s.sed without their seeing one another; an icy brevity and coldness are perceptible in his letters; but the high esteem in which the King held her character maintained her outward position. His relations with women after that had little influence on his inward feelings: even his sister of Baireuth, sickly, nervous, and embittered by jealousy of an unfaithful husband, became, for years, as a stranger to her brother; it was not till she had resigned herself to her own life that this proud child of the House of Brandenburg, aged and unhappy, again sought the heart of the brother whose little hand had once supported her when at the feet of the stern father. The mother also, to whom King Frederic always showed the most marked and child-like reverence, could partic.i.p.ate little in the feelings of the son. His other sisters were younger, and only inclined to make a quiet _Fronde_ in the house against him; if the King ever condescended to show attention to a lady of the court, or a singer, these were to the person concerned full as annoying as flattering.

Where he found beauty, grace, and womanly dignity combined, as in Frau von Camas, the first lady of the bedchamber to his wife, the amiability of his nature appeared by his kindly attentions to her. But, on the whole, his life received little sunshine from his intercourse with women, for he had experienced little of the hearty warmth of family life; in this respect his soul was desolate. Perhaps this was fortunate for his people, though undoubtedly fatal to his private life; the full warmth of his manly feelings was almost exclusively reserved to his small circle of confidants, with whom he laughed, wrote poetry, philosophised, made plans for the future, and latterly conferred with upon his warlike operations and dangers.

His life at Rheinsberg, after his marriage, was the best portion of his youth. There he collected around him a number of highly-educated and cheerful companions; the small society led a poetic life, of which an agreeable picture has been bequeathed to us by those who partook of it.

Earnestly did Frederic labour to educate himself; easily did his excited feelings find expression in French verse; incessantly did he labour to acquire the delicacy of the foreign style; but his mind also exercised itself upon more serious things. He sought ardently from the Encyclopaedians, and of Christian Wolf, an answer to the highest questions of man; he sat bent over maps and plans of battles; and, amid the _roles_ of his amateur theatricals and plans of buildings, other projects were prepared which, after a few years, were to agitate the world.

Then came the day on which the government pa.s.sed from the hands of his dying father, who directed the officer who was to make the daily bulletin to take his orders from the new military ruler of Prussia.

What judgment was formed of him by his political contemporaries we discover from the character drawn of him shortly before by an Austrian agent of the Imperial Court:--"He is agreeable, wears his own hair, has a slouching carriage, loves the fine arts and good eating, would wish to begin his government with some _eclat_, is a better friend of the military than his father, has the religion of a gentleman, believes in G.o.d and the forgiveness of sins, loves splendour and refinement, and will newly arrange all the court offices, and bring distinguished people to his court."[12] This prophecy was not fully justified. We will endeavour to understand other phases of his character at this time. The new King was a man of fiery, enthusiastic temperament, quickly excited, and tears came readily to his eyes; with him, as with his contemporaries, it was a pa.s.sionate need to admire what was great, and to give himself up to pathetic, soft moods of mind. With tender and melting tones he played his adagio on the flute; like other honourable contemporaries, it was not easy to him to give full expression in words and verses to his inward feelings, but pathetic pa.s.sages would move him to tears. In spite of all his French maxims, the foundation of his character was in these respects very German.

Those have judged him most unjustly who have ascribed to him a cold heart. It is not the cold royal hearts which generally wound by their harshness. Such as these are almost always enabled, by a smooth graciousness and its suitable expression, to please their entourage.

The strongest expressions of antipathy are generally combined with the heart-winning tones of a sentimental tenderness. But in Frederic, it appears to us, there was a striking and strange combination of two quite opposite tendencies of the spirit, which are usually found on earth in eternal irreconcilable contention. He had equally the need of idealising life, and the impulse mercilessly to destroy ideal frames of mind in himself and others. His first characteristic was perhaps the most beautiful, perhaps the most sorrowful, that ever man was endowed with for the struggle of life. He was undoubtedly a poetic nature; he possessed in a high degree that peculiar power which strives to transform common realities according to the ideal demands of its own nature, and to draw over everything about it the pure l.u.s.tre of a new life. It was necessary to him to decorate with the graces of his fancy and the whole magic of emotional feeling the image of those he loved, and to adorn his relations with them. There was always something playful about it, and even where he felt most pa.s.sionately he loved more the embellished picture of others, which he carried within him, than themselves. It was with such a disposition that he kissed Voltaire's hand. If at any time he sensibly felt the difference betwixt his ideal and the real man, he dropped the real and cherished the image. Whoever has received from nature this faculty of investing love and friendship with the coloured mirror of poetical dispositions, is sure, according to the judgment of others, to show arbitrariness in the choice of their objects of preference: a certain equable warmth which bethinks itself of everything suitable appears to be denied to such natures. To whoever the King became a friend, in his way, to him he always showed the greatest consideration and fidelity, however much at particular moments his disposition towards him might change. He could, therefore, be sentimental in his sorrow over the loss of such a cherished image as was only possible for a German of the Werther period. He had lived for many years in some estrangement from his sister von Baireuth; it was only in the last year before her death, amidst the terrors of war, that her image as that of a tender sister again revived in him. After her death he felt a gloomy satisfaction in recalling to himself and others, the heartfelt tenderness of this connection; he built her a small temple, and often made pilgrimages to it. Whoever failed to reach his heart by means of poetical feelings, or did not stir up in him the love-web of poetry, or who disturbed anything in his sensitive nature, to him he was cold, contemptuous, and indifferent,--a King who only considered how far the other could be of use to him; and he threw him off perhaps when he no longer needed him.

Such an endowment undoubtedly may have surrounded the life of a young man with a bright halo; it invested the common with variegated brilliancy and pleasing colours; but it must be united with much good moral worth, feeling of duty, and sense of what is higher than itself, if it is not to isolate and make his old age gloomy. It will also, even in favourable circ.u.mstances, raise up the bitterest enemies, together with the most devoted admirers. Somewhat of this faculty prepared for the n.o.ble soul of Goethe bitter sorrows, transient connexions, many disappointments, and a solitary old age. It was doubly fatal for a King, whom others so seldom approach on a dignified and equal footing, to whom openhearted friends might always become admiring flatterers, unequal in their behaviour, now servile under the courtly spell of majesty, now discontented censurers from a feeling of their own rights.

With King Frederic, however, the yearning for ideal relations, this longing for men who could give his heart the opportunity of opening itself unreservedly, was crossed in the first place by his penetrating acuteness of perception, and also by an incorruptible love of truth, which was inimical to all deceptions, struggled against every illusion, despised all shams, and searched out the depths of all things. This scrutinising view of life and its duties was a good shield against the illusions which more often afflict a prince of imaginative tendencies, where he has given confidence, than a private man; but his acuteness showed itself also in a wild humour which was unsparing in its remorselessness, sarcasm, and ridicule. From whence did these tendencies arise in him? Was it Brandenburg blood? Was it inherited from his great-grandmother, the Electress Sophia of Hanover, or from his grandmother--that intellectual woman, the Queen Sophia Charlotte, with whom Leibnitz corresponded on the eternal harmony of the world?

Undoubtedly the rough training of his youth had contributed to it.

Sharp was his perception of the weaknesses of others; wherever he spied out a defect, wherever anything peculiar vexed or irritated him, his voluble tongue was set in motion.

His words. .h.i.t both friends and enemies unsparingly: even when silence and endurance were commanded by prudence, he could not control himself; his whole spirit seemed changed; with merciless exaggeration he distorted the image of others into a caricature. If one examines this more closely, one perceives that the main point in this was the intellectual pleasure; he freed himself from an unpleasant impression by violent outbursts against his victim; he had an inward satisfaction in painting him grotesquely, and was much surprised if, when deeply wounded, his friend turned his weapons against him. In this there was a striking similarity to Luther. Undoubtedly the club blows dealt by the great monk of the sixteenth century were far more formidable than the stabs which were distributed by the great Prince in the age of enlightenment. That it was neither dignified nor suitable was a point for which the great King cared as little as the Reformer: both were in a state of excitement as if in the chase, and both, in the pleasure of the struggle, forgot the consequences; both, also, seriously injured themselves and their great objects, and were honestly surprised when they discovered it. But when the King bantered and sneered, or maliciously teased, it was more difficult for him to draw back from his unamiable mood; for his was generally no equal struggle with his victim. Thus did the great Prince deal with all his political opponents, and excited deadly enmity against himself; he jeered at the Pompadour, the Empress Elizabeth, and the Empress Maria Theresa at the dinner table, and circulated biting verses and pamphlets. That bad man, Voltaire, he sometimes caressed, sometimes scolded and snarled at. But he also treated in the same way, men whom he really esteemed, and who were in his greatest confidence, whom he had received into the circle of his friends. He had drawn the Marquis d'Argens to his court, made him his chamberlain, and member of the Academy; he was one of his most intimate and dearest companions. The letters which he wrote to him from the camp during the Seven Years' War are among the most charming and touching reminiscences that remain to us of the King. When he returned from that war, his fondest hope was that the marquis would dwell with him at Sans Souci. A few years afterwards this delightful connection was dissolved. But how was this possible? The marquis was the best Frenchman to whom the King had attached himself; a man of honour and of refined feeling and cultivation, truly devoted to the King. But he was neither a remarkable nor a very superior man. For years the King had admired him as a man of learning, which he was not; he had formed to himself a pleasant poetical idea of him, as a wise, clear-sighted, safe philosopher, with agreeable wit and lively humour. Now, in the intercourse of daily life, the King found himself mistaken; a certain sentimental tendency in the Frenchman, which dwelt upon its own morbid hypochondria, irritated him; he began to discover that the aged marquis was neither a great scholar nor a man of strong mind; the ideal he had formed of him was destroyed. The King began to quiz him on account of his sentimentality; the sensitive Frenchman begged for leave of absence, that he might travel to France for some months for his health.

The King was deeply wounded at this touch of temper, and continued, in the friendly letters which he afterwards wrote to him, to quiz this morbid disposition. He said, "That it was reported that there was a _loup garou_ in France; no doubt this was the marquis as a Prussian, in his invalid guise. Did he now eat little children? This bad conduct he would not formerly have been guilty of, but men change much in travelling." The marquis remained two winters instead of a few months: when he was about to return, he sent the certificate of his physician; probably the good man was really ill, but the King was deeply wounded at this unnecessary verification from an old friend, and when the marquis returned, the old connection was spoiled. Yet the King would not give him up, but amused himself by punishing his unconfiding friend by pungent speeches and sharp jests. Then the Frenchman, most thoroughly embittered, demanded his dismissal; he obtained it, and one may discover the sorrow and anger of the King from his answer. When the marquis, in the last letter he wrote to the King before his death, once more represented, not without bitterness, how scornfully and ill he had treated an unselfish admirer, the King read his letter in silence. But he wrote sorrowfully to the widow, of his friendship for her husband, and caused a costly monument to be erected to his memory. Such was the case with most of his favourites: magical as was his power of attracting, equally demoniacal was his capacity of repelling. But it may be answered, to any one who blames this as a fault in the man, that in history there is scarcely another king who has so n.o.bly opened his most secret soul to his friends, like Frederic.

Frederic II. had not worn the crown many months, when the Emperor Charles VI. died. Everything now impelled the young King to play a great game. That he should have made such a resolution was, in spite of the momentary weakness of Austria, a sign of daring courage. The countries which he ruled counted not more than a seventh of the population of the wide realm of Maria Theresa. It is true that his army was superior in number to the Imperial, and still more in warlike capacity; and, according to the representations of the time, the ma.s.s of the people was not so suitable as now to recruit the army. Little, too, did he foresee the greatness of character of Maria Theresa. But in his preparations for the invasion the King already showed that he had long hoped to measure himself with Austria; he began the struggle in a spirit of exaltation that was decisive of his future life and for his State. Little did he care for the foundation of his right to the Duchy of Silesia, though he employed his pen to demonstrate it to Europe. The politicians of the despotic States of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries troubled themselves little on such points. Whoever could give a good appearance to his cause, did so; but the most improbable evidence, the shallowest pretences, were sufficient. Thus had Louis XIV. made war; thus had the Emperor carried out his interests against the Turks, Italians, Germans, French, and Spaniards; thus had a portion of the advantages gained by the great Elector been marred by others.

Just where the rights of the Hohenzollerns were most distinct--as in Pomerania--they had been most wronged: by none more than the Emperor and House of Hapsburg. Now the Hohenzollern sought for revenge. "Be my Cicero and prove the justice of my cause, and I will be the Caesar to carry it through," wrote Frederic to his Jordan after the entrance into Silesia. Gaily, with winged steps, as to a dance, did the King enter upon the field of his victories. Still did he carry on the enjoyments of life, pleasant trifling in verses, intellectual talk with his intimates upon the amus.e.m.e.nts of the day, on G.o.d, nature, and immortality; this converse was the salt of his life. But the great work on which he had entered began soon to have its effect on his character, even before he had been under fire in the first battle; and it afterwards worked on his soul till his hair became grey, and his fiery enthusiastic heart became hard as iron. With the wonderful acuteness of perception that was peculiar to him, he observed the beginning of this change. He reviewed his own life as though he were a stranger. "You will find me more philosophic than you think," he writes to a friend; "I have always been so, now more, now less. My youth, the fire of pa.s.sion, the desire for fame, nay--to conceal nothing--even curiosity and a secret instinct, have driven me from the sweet repose which I enjoyed, and the wish to see my name in the newspapers and history have led me away. Come here to me; philosophy maintains her claims, and, I a.s.sure you, if it were not for this cursed love of fame, I should think only of quiet comfort."

And when the faithful Jordan came to him, and Frederic saw this man, who loved peaceful enjoyment, timid and uneasy in the field, the King suddenly felt that he had become an altered and a stronger man than him whom he had so long honoured for his learning, who had improved his verses, given style to his letters, and was so far superior to him in knowledge of Greek. And in spite of all his philosophic culture, he gave the King the impression of a man without courage; with bitter scorn the king shook him off. In one of his best improvisations, he places himself as a warrior, in contradistinction to the sentimental philosopher. Unfair, however, as were the satirical verses with which he overwhelmed him, yet he soon returned to his old kindly feeling. But it was also the first gentle hint of fate to the King himself: the like was often to happen to him again; he was to lose valuable men, true friends, one after the other; not only by death, but still more by the coldness and estrangement which arose betwixt his nature and theirs.

For the path on which he had now entered was to add strength to all the greatness, but also to all the one-sidedness, of his nature. And the higher he raised himself above others, the more insignificant did their nature appear to him; almost all who in later years he measured by his own standard were little fitted to bear the comparison. The disappointment and disenchantment he then felt became sharper, till at last from his lonely height he looked down with stony eyes on the proceedings of the men at his feet. But still, to the last hour of his life, the penetrating glance of his brooding countenance was intermingled with the bright beams of gentle human feeling. It is this which makes the great tragic figure so touching to us.

But now, in the beginning of his first war, he still looks back with longing to the quiet repose of his "Remusberg," and deeply feels the pressure of the vast destiny before him. "It is difficult to bear good fortune and misfortune with equanimity," he writes. "One may easily appear to be indifferent in success, and unmoved amid losses, for the features of the face can always be made to dissemble; but the man, his inward nature, the folds of his heart, will not the less be a.s.sailed."

He concludes, full of hope: "All that I wish is, that the result of my success may not be to destroy the human feelings and virtues which I have always owned; may my friends always find me such as I have been."

At the end of the war he writes: "See, your friend is a second time conqueror. Who would, some years ago, have said that a scholar in the school of philosophy would play a military _role_ in the world--that Providence should have chosen a poet to upset the political system of Europe?"[13] So fresh and young were the feelings of Frederic when he returned in triumph to Berlin from the first war.

He goes forth a second time to maintain Silesia. Again he is conqueror; he has already the quiet self-confidence of an experienced General; lively is his satisfaction at the excellence of his troops. "All that is flattering to me in this victory," he writes to Frau von Camas.[14]

"is, that by rapid decision and bold man[oe]uvres, I have been able to contribute to the preservation of many brave men. But I would not have one of the most insignificant of my soldiers wounded for idle fame, which no longer dazzles me."

But in the middle of the struggle the death of two of his dearest friends occurred, Jordan and Kayserlingk. Touching are his lamentations. "In less than three months I have lost my two most faithful friends--people with whom I have daily lived, agreeable companions, estimable men, and true friends. It is difficult for a heart so sensitive as mine to restrain my deep sorrow. When I return to Berlin I shall feel almost a stranger in my own Fatherland, isolated in my home. It has been your fate also to lose at once many persons who were dear to you; but I admire your courage, which I cannot imitate. My only hope is time, which brings all things in nature to an end. It begins by weakening the impressions on our brains, and only ceases by destroying ourselves. I now dread every place which recals to me the sorrowful remembrance of friends I have for ever lost." And again, a month after, he writes to a friend, who endeavoured to comfort him: "Do not think that the pressure of business and danger distracts one's mind in sorrow? I know from experience that it is unsuccessful. Alas! a month has pa.s.sed since my tears and my sorrow began, but since the first vehement outburst of the first days I feel as sorrowful and as little comforted as in the beginning." And when his worthy tutor, Duhan, sent him some French books of Jordan's, which the King had desired, in the latter part of the autumn of the same year, he wrote, "The tears came into my eyes when I opened the books of my poor departed Jordan, I loved him so much, and it is very painful to me to think that he is no more." Not long after, the King lost the friend also to whom this letter was addressed.

The loss of his youthful friends in 1745 made a great wrench in the inward life of the King. With these unselfish, honourable men died almost all who made his intercourse with others happy. The relations upon which he now entered were altogether of another kind: the best of his men acquaintance only became the intimates of some hours, not the friends of his heart. The need of exciting intellectual intercourse remained, indeed it became even stronger. For there was this peculiar characteristic in him, that he could not exist without cheerful and confidential relations, nor without the easy, almost unreserved, talk which through all the phases of his moods, whether thoughtful or frivolous, touched lightly upon everything, from the greatest questions of the human race to the smallest events of the day. Immediately after his accession to the throne, he had written to Voltaire, and invited him to come to him. Voltaire came, at the cost of much money, for a few days to Berlin; he gave the King the impression of his being a fool, nevertheless Frederic felt an immeasurable respect for the talent of the man. Voltaire appeared to him the greatest poet of all times,--the Lord High Chamberlain of Parna.s.sus, where the King so much wished to play a _role_. Ever stronger became Frederic's wish to possess this man. He considered himself as his scholar; he wished his verses to be approved of by the master. Among his Brandenburg officers he languished for the wit and intellect of the elegant Frenchman; there was also much of the vanity of the Sovereign in this: he wished to be as much a prince of _bels esprits_ and philosophers as he had been a renowned General. Since the second Silesia war his intimates were generally foreigners; after 1750 he had the pleasure of seeing the great Voltaire established as a member of his court. It was no misfortune that the bad man only remained a few years among the barbarians.

It was in the ten years from 1746 to 1756 that Frederic gained an importance and a self-confidence as an author, which up to the present day is not sufficiently appreciated in Germany. Of his French verses the Germans can only judge imperfectly. He had great facility as a poet, and could express without trouble every mood in rhyme and verse.

But in his lyrics he has never, in the eyes of Frenchmen, entirely overcome the difficulties of a foreign language, however carefully they may have been revised by his intimates; indeed, he was wanting always, it appears to us, in that equal rhetorical harmony of style which in the time of Voltaire was the first characteristic of a renowned poet, for we find commonplace and trivial expressions in splendid diction, together with beautiful and pompous periods. His taste, too, was not a.s.sured and independent enough; he was in his aesthetic judgment rapid in admiring and short in deciding, but in reality far more dependent on the opinions of his French acquaintance than his pride would have admitted. The best off-shoot of French poetry at that time was the return to nature, and the struggle of truth against the fetters of old _convenances_, This was incomprehensible to the King. Rousseau long appeared to him an eccentric poor devil, and the conscientious and pure spirit of Diderot he considered as shallow. And yet it appears to us that in his own poems, and especially in the light improvisations with which he favoured his friends, there is frequently a richness of poetic detail and a heart-winning tone of true feeling which they, especially his pattern Voltaire, might envy him.

Like Caesar's "Commentaries," Frederic's History of his Time forms one of the most important monuments of historical literature.[15] It is true that, like the Roman General and like every practical statesman, he wrote the facts as they were reflected from the mind of one who took part in them; all is not equally appreciated by him; he does not do justice to every party, but he knows incomparably more than those who were at a distance, and enters, not quite impartially, but at the same time with magnanimity to his opponents, into some of the innermost motives of great occurrences. He wrote sometimes without the great apparatus that a professional historian must collect around him; it therefore happens that his memory and judgment, however authentic they may be, sometimes leave him in the lurch; finally, he wrote an apology of his house, his policy, and his campaigns, and, like Caesar, he is sometimes silent, and interprets facts as he wishes them to be brought before posterity. But the open-heartedness and love of truth with which he deals with his own house and his own doings, are not less worthy of admiration than the supreme calm and freedom with which he views events, in spite of the small rhetorical flourishes which belonged to the taste of the time.

Equally astonishing as his fertility is his versatility. One of the greatest of military writers, an important historian, a facile poet, a popular philosopher, and practical statesman, also even an anonymous and very copious pamphlet writer, and sometimes journalist, he is always ready for everything: to portray with his pen in the field whatever fills, warms, and inspires him, and to attack in prose and verse every one who irritates or vexes him, not only Pope and Empress, Jesuits and Dutch newspaper writers, but also old friends if they appear to him lukewarm, which he could never bear, or threaten to fall away from him. Never--since the time of Luther--has there been so contentious, reckless, and unwearied a writer. As soon as he puts pen to paper he is, like Proteus, everything, sage or intriguer, historian or poet, just as situation required, always an excitable, fiery, intellectual, and sometimes also an ill-behaved man; but of his kingly office he thinks little. All that is dear to him he celebrates by poems and eulogies: the exalted precepts of his philosophy, his friends, his army, his freedom of faith, independent inquiry, toleration and the education of the people.

Victoriously did the mind of Frederic extend itself in all directions.

Nothing withheld him when ambition drove him on to conquer. Then came years of trial, seven years of fearful, heart-rending cares; the period when the rich soaring spirit undertook the most difficult task that was ever allotted to man; when almost everything seemed to fall from him which he possessed for himself, of joy and happiness, hopes and egotistical comfort; when everything charming and agreeable to him as man was destined to die to him, that he might become the self-denying Prince of his people, the great official of the State, the hero of a nation. It was not with the l.u.s.t of conquest that he this time entered upon the combat; it had long been clear to him that he had now to struggle for his own and his kingdom's life. But so much the loftier grew his resolution. Like the storm-wind, he wished to break the clouds which gathered on all sides round his head. By the energy of his irresistible attacks he thought to dissipate the storm before it burst upon him. He had hitherto been unconquered; his enemies were beaten whenever he had fallen upon them with the irresistible instrument in his hand--his army. This was his hope, his only one. If this well-tested power did not fail him now, he might save his State.

But in his first encounter with the Austrians, his old enemies, he saw that they also had learnt of him and had become different. To the uttermost did he exert his power, and at Collin it failed him. The 18th of June, 1757, was the most fatal day in Frederic's life; he found there what twice in this war tore the victory from him: that he had too little estimated his enemies, and had expected what was beyond human powers of his valiant army. After being stunned for a short time, Frederic roused himself with fresh energy. From an offensive he was driven to a desperate defensive war: on all sides the enemy broke into his little country; he was in deadly struggle with every great Power of the Continent, the master of only four millions of men, and a conquered army. Now he proved his generalship by the way in which, after his losses, he retreated from the enemy, then pounced upon and beat them, when they least expected him, by throwing himself now against one, and now against another army, unsurpa.s.sed in his dispositions, inexhaustible in his expedients, and unequalled as leader of his troops. Thus he maintained himself, one against five, against Austria, Russia, and France, each one of which exceeded him in strength; and at the same time against Sweden and the German troops of the Empire. Five long years did he struggle against this enormous preponderance of power,--each spring in danger of being crushed by the ma.s.ses alone, and each autumn again in safety. A loud cry of admiration and sympathy echoed through Europe; and among the first unwilling eulogisers were his most violent enemies. It was just in these years of changing fortune, when the King himself was experiencing the bitter chances of the fortunes of war, that his generalship became the astonishment of all the armies of Europe. The method in which he arrayed his lines against the enemy, always the quickest and most skilful; how he so often, by moving in echelon, pressed back the weakest wing of the enemy, outflanked and crushed it; how his newly created cavalry, which had become the first in the world, charged upon the enemy, broke their ranks and burst through their hosts,--all this was considered everywhere as a new step in the art of war, as an invention of the greatest genius. The tactics and strategy of the Prussian army were, for almost half a century, the pattern and model for all the armies of Europe. Unanimous was the judgment that Frederic was the greatest commander of his time, and that before him, throughout all history, there had been few Generals to compare with him. That smaller numbers should so frequently conquer the larger, that when beaten they should not dissolve away, but, when the enemy had scarcely recovered their wounds, should be able to re-encounter him as before, so threatening and so disciplined, appeared incredible. But we not only extol the generalship of the King, but also the clever discretion of his infantry tactics. He knew well how much he was restrained by the consideration of magazines and commissariat, by the thousands of waggons full of stores and daily necessaries for the soldiers which must accompany him, but he also knew that this was his safest course. Once only, when after the battle of Rossbach, he made that wonderful march into Silesia, forty-one German miles in fifteen days, being in the greatest danger, he advanced through the country, as other armies do now, supporting his men by the billeting system. But he immediately returned to his former wise custom.[16] For if his enemies should learn to imitate this independent movement, he would certainly be lost. When the country militia of his old province rose up to withstand and drive away the Swedes, and valiantly defended Colberg and Berlin, he was much pleased, but took care not to encourage popular warfare; and when his East Friesland people rose of their own accord against the French, and were severely handled by them, he roughly told them it was their own fault, as war ought to be carried on by soldiers, and that tranquil labour, taxes, and recruiting were for peasants and citizens. He knew well that he was lost, if a popular war were excited against him in Saxony and Bohemia. This very narrow-mindedness of the cautious General with respect to military forms, which alone made the struggle possible, may perhaps be reckoned as one of his greatest qualities.

Ever louder became the expression of sorrow and admiration with which Germans and foreigners watched the death struggle of the lion beset on all sides. As early as 1740, the young King had been extolled by the Protestants as the partisan of freedom of conscience and enlightenment, against Jesuits and intolerance. When, a few months after the battle of Collin, he so entirely beat the French at Rossbach, he became the hero of Germany, and there was a burst of exultation everywhere. For two centuries the French had inflicted the greatest injury on the much-divided country; now the German nature began to oppose itself to the influence of French culture, and now the King, who had so much admired Parisian verses, had as wonderfully scared away the Parisian General. It was such a brilliant victory, the old enemy was so disgracefully overthrown, that it rejoiced all hearts throughout the Empire; even where the soldiers of the Sovereigns were in the field against King Frederic, the citizens and peasants rejoiced secretly at his German blows. The longer the war lasted, the firmer became the belief in the King's invincibility, so much the more did the self-respect of the Germans rise. After long, long years, they had at last found a hero, of whose warlike fame they could be proud, who would accomplish what was almost more than human. Numberless anecdotes about him circulated through the country; every little trait of his composure, of his good humour and friendliness with the soldiers, or of the fidelity of his army, flew hundreds of miles; how, when in peril of death, he played his flute in his tent; how his wounded soldiers sang chorales after the battle; how, he had taken off his hat to a regiment--he has since been often imitated in this,--all these stories were carried to the Neckar and the Rhine, printed and listened to with glad smiles and tears of emotion. It was natural that the poets should sing his praises; three of them had been in the Prussian army, Gleim and Lessing as secretaries to the General in command, and Ewald von Kleist, the favourite of a young literary circle, as an officer, till at last he was struck by a ball at Kunnersdorf. But still more touching to us is the faithful devotion of the Prussian people; the old provinces, Prussia, Pomerania, the Marches, and Westphalia, had suffered indescribably from the war, but the proud pleasure of having a share in the hero of Europe made even the most inconsiderable man forget his own sufferings. The armed citizens and peasants for years marched to the field as militia-men. When a number of recruits from Cleves and the county of Ravensberg, after a lost action, fled from their banners and returned home, they were denounced by their country-people and relations as perjured, expelled from the villages, and driven back to the army.

There was no difference in the opinion abroad. In the Protestant cantons of Switzerland as warm an interest was taken in the fate of the King as if the descendants of the Rutli men had never been separated from the German Empire. There were people there who became ill with vexation when the King's affairs were in a bad state.[17] It was the same in England. Every victory of the King excited in London loud expressions of joy; houses were lighted up; pictures and laudatory poems were sold in the streets; and Pitt announced, with admiration, in Parliament every new act of the Great Ally. Even in Paris, at the theatre and in society, the feeling was more Prussian than French. The French jeered at their own Generals, and the clique of Pompadour, which was for the war, could hardly, as we are informed by Duclos, appear in public. At Petersburg the Grand Duke Peter and his adherents were so Prussian that at every loss sustained by Frederic they secretly mourned. The enthusiasm reached even to Turkey and the Great Cham of Tartary; and this respectful interest outlasted the war in a great portion of the world. The painter Hackert, when travelling through a small city in the middle of Sicily, received fruit and wine from the magistrates as a gift of honour, because they had heard that he was a Prussian, a subject of the great King to whom they wished to show honour. Muley Ismail, Emperor of Morocco, caused the crew of a vessel belonging to a citizen of Emden, which had been carried off by the Moors to Magador, to be released without ransom; he sent them newly clothed to Lisbon, and a.s.sured them that their King was the greatest man in the world; that no Prussian should ever suffer imprisonment in his country, and that his cruisers should never attack the Prussian flag.

Poor oppressed spirit of the German people, how long it had been since the men betwixt the Rhine and the Oder had felt the pleasure of being esteemed above others among the nations of the earth! Now everything was transformed by the magic of the character of one man. The countryman, as if awaking from a fearful dream, looked out upon the world and into his own heart. Long had they lived lethargically without a past in which they could rejoice, or a n.o.ble future on which to place their hopes. Now they found at once that they had a portion in the honours and greatness of the world; that a King and his people, all of their blood, had given an aureola of glory to the German nation--a new purport to the history of civilised man. Now they had all experienced how a great man could struggle, venture, dare, and conquer. Now labour in your study, peaceful thinker, imaginative dreamer; you have learnt during the night to look abroad with smiles, and to hope great things from your own endowments. Try now what will gush from your heart.

Whilst the youthful strength of the people fluttered its wings with enthusiastic warmth, what, meanwhile, were the feelings of the great Prince, who was incessantly contending with enemies? The enthusiastic acclamations of the nation bore only feeble tones to his ear; the King received it almost with indifference. In him everything was calm and cold; though, undoubtedly, he had hours of pa.s.sionate sorrow and heart-rending care. But he concealed them from his army; the calm countenance became harder, the furrows deeper, the expression more rigid. There were but few to whom he occasionally opened his heart; then, for some moments, the sorrows of the man, which had reached the limits of human endurance, broke forth.

Ten days after the battle of Collin, his mother died; a few weeks later, in anger, he drove his brother August Wilhelm away from the army, because he had not carried on the war with sufficient vigour.

This Prince died in that same year, of grief, as the King was informed by the officer who reported it. Shortly afterwards he received the account of the death of his sister of Baireuth. One after another his Generals fell by his side, or lost the King's confidence; because they were not able to come up to the superhuman requirements of this war.

His old soldiers, his pride, the iron warriors who had gone through the test of three severe wars--they who, dying, still stretched out their hands to him and called upon his name--were expiring in heaps around him; and those who filled up the wide gaps which death incessantly made in his army were young recruits, some of good material, but many bad ones. The King used them, as he had done the others, with strictness and severity; but even in the worst subjects his look and word inspired both bravery and devotion. But he knew that all this would not avail; short and cutting was his censure, and sparing was his praise. Thus he continued to live; five summers and winters came and went; the labour was gigantic; he was unwearied in planning and combining; his eagle eye scrutinisingly scanned what was most distant and most trivial, and yet there was no change and no hope. The King read and wrote in his hours of rest, just as before; he made his verses and kept up a correspondence with Voltaire and Algarotti; but he was resolved all this must soon come to an end, a short and quick one. He carried with him, day and night, what would free him from Daun and Laudon. The whole affair of life sometimes appeared to him contemptible.

The disposition of the man, from whom the intellectual life of Germany dates its new era, deserves well to be regarded with reverence by Germans. It is only possible to give some idea of it by the way in which it breaks out in Frederic's letters to the Marquis d'Argens and Frau von Camas. Thus does the great King speak of his life:--

"1757, _June_.--The only remedy for my sorrow lies in the daily work I am obliged to do, and in the continual distractions which the number of my enemies occasion me. If I had died at Collin, I should now be in a haven where I should fear no more storms. Now I must navigate on a stormy sea till I have discovered in some small corner of earth, that good which I have never yet found in this world. For two years I have been standing like a wall in which misfortune has made its breaches.

But do not think that I am becoming weak; one must protect oneself in these unfortunate times by bowels of iron and a heart of bronze, in order to lose all feeling. The next month will decide the fate of my poor country. My calculation is, that I shall save or fall with it. You can have no idea of the dangers in which we are, nor of the terrors which surround us."

"1758, _December_--I am weary of this life; the Wandering Jew is less driven about hither and thither, than I; I have lost all that I have loved and honoured in this world; I see myself surrounded by unfortunates whose sufferings I cannot aid. My soul is still filled with the impression of the ruin of my best provinces, and of the horrors which a horde of barbarians, more like unreasoning beasts than men, have practised there. In my old age I have come down almost to be a theatrical king; you will acknowledge that such a situation is not sufficiently attractive to bind the soul of a philosopher to life."

"1759, _March_.--I know not what my fate will be. I will do all that depends upon me to save myself; and if I am worsted the enemy shall pay dear for it. I have lived, during my winter quarters, as a recluse; I have my meals alone, pa.s.s my life in reading and writing, and do not sigh. When one is sorrowful it costs one too much in the long run to conceal one's chagrin incessantly, and it is better to bear one's trouble alone than to bring one's vexations into society. Nothing comforts me but the violent strain, as long as it lasts, which work requires; it drives away sorrowful ideas.

"But ah! when work is ended, then gloomy thoughts become vigorous as ever. Maupertuis is right: the amount of evil is greater than of good.

But it is all the same to me; I have nothing more to lose, and the few days that remain to me do not disquiet me so much that I should take a lively interest in them."

"1759, 16_th August_.--I will throw myself in their way, and have my head cut off, or save the capital. I think that is determination enough. I will not answer for the success. If I had more than one life I would resign it for my Fatherland; but if this stroke fails I hold myself at quits with my country, and I may be allowed to take care of myself. There is a limit to everything. I bear my misfortunes without losing my courage. But I am quite determined, if this undertaking fails, to make myself a way out, that I may not be the sport of every kind of accident. Believe me, one requires more than firmness and endurance to maintain oneself in my position. But I tell you openly, if any misfortune happens to me you must not calculate upon my outliving the ruin and destruction of my Fatherland. I have my own way of thinking. I will neither imitate Sertorius nor Cato; I do not think of my fame, but of the State."

"1760, _Oct_.--Death would be sweet in comparison with such a life. If you have any sympathy with my situation, believe me I conceal much trouble with which I do not grieve or disquiet others. I regard death like a Stoic. Never will I live to see the moment which would oblige me to conclude a disadvantageous peace. Either I will bury myself under the ruins of my Fatherland, or, if this consolation appears too sweet to the fate which pursues me, I will make an end of my sufferings as soon as it is no longer possible to bear them. I have acted, and continue to act, according to this inward feeling of honour. I have sacrificed my youth to my father, and my manhood to my Fatherland. I think, therefore, I have acquired the right to dispose of my old age. I say it, and I repeat it--never will my hand sign a humiliating peace. I have made some observations upon the military talents of Charles XII.,[18] but I have never considered whether he ought to have killed himself or not. I think that, after the taking of Stralsund, he would have done wiser to annihilate himself; but, whatever he did or left undone, his example is no rule for me. There are people who learn from prosperity. I do not belong to that cla.s.s. I have lived for others; I will die for myself I am very indifferent as to what others may say concerning it, and a.s.sure you I shall never hear it. Henry IV. was a younger son of a good house who achieved his good fortune; it did not signify much to him. Why should he have hung himself in misfortune?

Louis XIV. was a greater king, had greater resources; he got himself out of difficulties well or ill. As regards me I have not the resources of this man, but I value honour more than he did; and, as I have told you, I guide myself after no one. We calculate, if I am right, 5000 years since the creation of the world; I believe that this reckoning is far too low for the age of the universe. The country of Brandenburg has existed this whole time, before I did, and will continue after my death. States are preserved by the propagation of races, and as long as this continues, the ma.s.ses will be governed by ministers or Sovereigns.

It is much the same whether they be rather more simple or rather more clever; the difference is so little that the ma.s.s of the people scarcely discover it. Do not, therefore, repeat to me the old answers of courtiers; self-love and vanity cannot entirely alter my feelings.

It is not so much an act of weakness to end such unhappy days, as it is cautious policy. I have lost all my friends and dearest relations. I am to the last extent unfortunate. I have nothing to hope; my enemies treat me with contempt and derision, and in their pride are prepared to trample me under foot."

"1760, _Nov_.--My labours are terrible, the war has continued during five campaigns. We neglect nothing that can give us means of resistance, and I stretch the bow with my whole strength; but an army should be composed of arms and heads. Arms do not fail us, but heads are no longer to be found; if you would only give yourself the trouble to order me some of the sculptor, Adam, they would serve me as well as those I have. My duty and honour keep me steadfast; but, in spite of stoicism and endurance, there are moments when one feels some desire to give oneself up to the devil. Adieu, my dear Marquis, may it fare well with you, and pray for a poor devil who will betake himself to that meadow where the asphodels grow if the peace does not take effect."

"1761, _June_.--Do not count upon peace this year. If good fortune does not abandon me, I shall get out of the business as well as I can; but next year I shall still have to dance on the tight-rope and make dangerous bounds when it pleases their very Apostolical, very Christian, and very Muscovite Majesties to call out, 'Jump, Marquis!'

Ah, how hard-hearted men are! They tell me, 'You have friends.' Yes, fine friends, who cross their arms and say, 'Indeed, I wish you all happiness!' 'But I am drowning--hand me a rope!' 'No, you will not drown.' 'Yet I must sink the very next moment.' 'Oh, we hope the contrary; but, if it should happen, be a.s.sured we would place a beautiful inscription on your tomb.' Such is the world. These are the fine compliments with which I am greeted on all sides."

"1762, _Jan_.--I have been so unfortunate throughout this whole war, with my pen as well as with my sword, that I do not believe in any fortunate occurrences. Yes; experience is a fine thing. In my youth I was as ungovernable as a young colt, that gallops about the meadow without bridle; now I am as cautious as an old Nestor: but I am also grey and wrinkled with care, and weighed down by bodily suffering; and, in a word, only good enough to be thrown to the dogs. You have always admonished me to take care of myself; show me the means, my dear friend, when one is hauled about as I am. The birds which one delivers to the wantonness of children, the tops which are whipped by those little monkeys, are not more tossed about and misused than I am now by three furious enemies."

"1762, _May_.--I am pa.s.sing through the school of patience; it is hard, tedious, terrible, indeed barbarous. I only help myself out of it by looking on the universe in general, as from a distant planet There everything appears to me infinitely small, and I pity my enemies for taking so much trouble about such trifles. Is this old age, is it reflection, is it reason? I regard all the events of life with far more indifference than formerly. If there is anything to be done for the welfare of the State, I can yet apply some strength to it; but, between ourselves, it is no longer with the fiery vehemence of my youth, nor the enthusiasm that then animated me. It is time that the war should come to an end, for my preachings become tedious, and my hearers will soon complain of me."