The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Xii Part 47

When the Princess was excited, she grew quiet as if paralyzed; she also lacked the easy graces of society. The two natures did not agree.

Then, too, her manner of showing affection toward her husband, always dutiful, and subordinating herself as if under a spell and overwhelmed by his great mind, was not very interesting for the Prince, who had acquired, with the French intellectual culture, no little of the frivolity of French society.

When Frederick became King, the Princess soon lost even the slight part which she had won in her husband's affections. His long absence in the first Silesian War gave the finishing stroke to their estrangement. The relations of husband and wife became more and more distant. Years pa.s.sed when they did not see each other, and icy brevity and coolness can be perceived in his letters to her. Still the fact that the King was obliged to esteem her character so highly maintained her in her outward position. Later, his relations with women influenced his emotions very slightly. Even his sister at Bayreuth, sickly, nervous, embittered by jealousy of an unfaithful husband, was estranged from her brother for years; and not until she had given up all hope of life did this proud member of the House of Brandenburg, aging and unhappy, seek again the heart of the brother whose little hand she had once held as they stood before their stern father. His mother also, to whom King Frederick always showed excellent filial devotion, was not able to occupy a large place in his heart. His other brothers and sisters were younger, and were only too much disposed to hatch obscure domestic conspiracies against him. If the King ever condescended to show any attentions to a lady of the court or of the stage, these were in general as disturbing as they were flattering for the persons in question. When he found intelligence, grace, and womanly dignity united, as in Frau von Camas, who was the Queen's first lady-in-waiting, he expressed the amiability of his nature in many cordial attentions. But on the whole, women did not add much light or splendor to his life, and the cordial intimacy of family life hardly ever warmed his heart. In this direction his feelings were dried up. This was perhaps fortunate for his people, it was undoubtedly fatal to his private life. The full warmth of his human feelings was reserved almost exclusively for his little circle of intimates, with whom he laughed, wrote poetry, discussed philosophy, made plans for the future, and later discussed his military operations and dangers.

His married life in Rheinsberg opens the best period of his younger years. He succeeded in bringing together there a number of well educated, cheerful companions. The little circle led a poetic life of which those who shared in it have left a pleasing picture. Frederick began to work seriously on his education. The expression of emotion easily took for him the form of conventional French versification. He worked incessantly to acquire the refinements of the foreign style.

But his mind was also busy with more serious matters. He eagerly sought answers to all the highest questions of humanity in the works of the Encyclopedists and of Christian Wolff. He sat bent over maps and battle-plans, and, along with parts for the amateur theatre and architects' sketches, other projects were in preparation, which, a few years later, were to arouse the attention of the world.

Then the day came when his dying father laid down the reins of government and told the officer of the day to take his orders from the new commander-in-chief of Prussia. How the Prince was judged by his political contemporaries we see from the characterization which an Austrian agent had given of him a short time before: "He is graceful, wears his own hair, and has a somewhat careless bearing; likes the fine arts and good cooking. He would like to begin his rule by something striking. He is a firmer friend of the army than his father.

His religion is that of a gentleman: he believes in G.o.d and the forgiveness of sins. He likes splendor and things on a large scale. He will reestablish all the court positions and bring the n.o.bles to his court." This prophecy was not fully justified. We seek to understand other sides of his nature at this time. The new King was a man of fiery, enthusiastic temperament, he was quickly aroused, and the tears came readily to his eyes. Like his contemporaries, he too was pa.s.sionately eager to admire grandeur and to give himself up to tender feelings in a poetical mood. He played adagios softly on his flute.

Like his worthy contemporaries, he did not easily find, in prose or poetry, the full expression of his feelings; pathetic oratory stirred him to tearful emotion. In spite of all his French aphorisms, the essence of his nature was very German in this respect also.

Those who ascribe to him a cold heart have judged him unfairly. It is not cold hearts in princes which give the most offense by their harshness. Such hearts are almost always gifted with the art of satisfying those about them by uniform graciousness and tactful expression. The strongest utterances of contempt are generally found close beside the pleasing tones of a caressing tenderness. But in Frederick, it seems to us, there was a striking and unusual union of two totally opposite tendencies of the emotional nature, which elsewhere are engaged in an unending struggle. He had in equal degree the need to idealize life for himself, and the impulse to destroy ideal moods without mercy in himself and in others. This first peculiarity of his was perhaps the most beautiful, perhaps the saddest, with which a human being was ever equipped in the struggles of earth. His was indeed a poetic nature. He possessed to a high degree that peculiar power which endeavors to reconstruct vulgar reality according to the ideal needs of its own nature, and covers everything near with the grace and light of a new life. It was a necessity for him to make over with the grace of his imagination the image of those dear to him, and to adorn the relation to them into which he had voluntarily entered. In this there was always a certain kind of posing. Even where he had the most ardent feelings, he was more in love with the glorified picture of the individual in his mind than with the real personality. It was in such a mood that he kissed Voltaire's hand. As soon as the difference between the ideal and the real person became unpleasantly perceptible, he let go the person and clung to the image. One to whom nature has given this temperament, letting him see love and friendship chiefly through the colored gla.s.s of a poetical mood, will always, according to the judgment of others, show caprice in the choice of his friends. The uniform warmth which treats with consideration all alike seems to be denied to such natures. To any one to whom the King had become a friend in his own fashion, he always showed the greatest attention and a.s.siduity, however much his moods changed at particular moments. He could become as sentimental in his sorrow over the loss of such a friend as any German of the Werther period. He had lived for many years on somewhat distant terms with his sister in Bayreuth, and not until the last years before her death, amid the terrors of a burdensome war, did her image rise vividly again before him as that of an affectionate sister.

After her death he found a gloomy satisfaction in picturing to himself and others the cordiality of his relations with her. He erected a little temple to her and often made pilgrimages to it. Toward any one who did not approach his heart through the medium of a poetic mood, or incite him to poetic expression of his affection, or who touched a wrong note anywhere in his sensitive nature, he was cold, contemptuous, and indifferent--a king who only asked to what extent the other person could be useful to him; he even pushed him aside when he could no longer use him. Such a character may perhaps surround the life of a young man with poetic l.u.s.tre and give brightness and charm even to common things, but unless it is coupled with a high degree of morality, a sense of duty, and a mind set upon higher things, it will leave him sad and lonely in later years. In the most favorable cases it will make bitter enemies as well as very warm admirers. A somewhat similar disposition brought to Goethe's n.o.ble soul heavy sorrows, transitory relations, many disappointments, and a solitary old age. It becomes doubly momentous for a king, before whom others rarely stand with a.s.surance and on equal terms; for his most sincere friends may yet turn into admiring flatterers, unstable in their bearing, now constrained under the moral spell of his majesty, now, under the conviction of their own rights, fault-finding and discontented.

This need of ideal relations and longing for people to whom he could unbosom himself without reserve, worked at cross purposes with Frederick's penetrating discrimination, and his uncompromising love of truth, which was a deadly enemy of all deception, impatiently resisted every illusion, despised shams, and sought for the essence of things.

This scrutinizing view of life and its duties might well offer him protection against those deceptions which oftener annoy an imaginative prince, who gives his confidence, than a private individual. His acuteness, however, showed itself also in savage moods as unsparingly, sarcastically, and maliciously destructive. Where did he get this disposition? Was it Brandenburg blood? Was it an inheritance from his great-grandmother, the Electress Sophia of Hanover, and his grandmother, Queen Sophia Charlotte, those intellectual women with whom Leibniz had discussed the eternal harmony of the universe? The harsh school of his youth certainly had had something to do with it. His insight into the foibles of others was keen. Wherever he saw a weak point, wherever any one's manners annoyed or provoked him, his ready tongue was busy. His gibes fell unsparingly upon friend and foe alike; and even where silence and patience were demanded by every consideration of prudence, he could not control himself. At such times his soul seemed to suffer some strange transformation. With merciless exaggeration he distorted the picture of his victim into a caricature. On closer examination the princ.i.p.al motive here also appears to be pleasure in intellectual production. He frees himself from an unpleasant impression by improvising against his victim. He makes a grotesque picture with inner satisfaction and is astonished if the victim, deeply offended, in turn takes up arms against him. His resemblance to Luther in this respect is very striking. Neither the king nor the reformer cared whether his behavior was dignified or seemly, for both of them, excited like men on the hunting field, entirely forgot the consequences in the joy of the fight. Both did themselves and their great causes serious injury in this way, and were honestly surprised when they discovered the fact.

To be sure, the blows with the cudgel or the whip which the great monk of the sixteenth century dealt were far more terrible than the pin-p.r.i.c.ks of the great prince in the age of enlightenment. But when a king teases and mocks and sometimes pinches maliciously, it is harder to forgive him for his undignified behavior; for he frequently engages in an unequal contest with his victims. The great prince treated all his political opponents in this way, and aroused deadly enemies against himself. He joked at the table, and put in circulation stinging verses and pamphlets about Madame de Pompadour in France and the Empresses Elizabeth and Maria Theresa. Similarly, he sometimes caressed, sometimes scolded and scratched his poetical ideal, Voltaire; but he also proceeded in this way with people whom he really esteemed highly, in whom he put the greatest confidence, and whom he took into the circle of his intimate friends. He brought the Marquis d'Argens to his court, made him chamberlain, member of the Academy, and one of his nearest and dearest friends. The letters which he wrote to him from the camps of the Seven Years' War are among the most beautiful and touching records that the King has left us. When Frederick came home from the war it was his fond hope that the marquis would live with him in his palace at Sans Souci. And a few years later this charming relation was broken up in the most painful manner. How was that possible! The marquis was perhaps the best Frenchman that the King had brought into his circle, a man of honor, with fine feelings, fine education, and really devoted to the King; but he was neither a great character nor an especially strong man. For years the King had admired in him a scholar--which he was not--a wise, clear-sighted, a.s.sured philosopher with pleasing wit and fresh humor; he had in short set up an extremely pleasing, fanciful image of him. Now, in daily intercourse, Frederick found himself mistaken. A lack of robustness on the part of the Frenchman, causing him to dwell with hypochondriac exaggeration on his poor health, annoyed the King, who began to realize that the aging marquis was neither a great genius nor an intellectual giant. The ideal which he had formed of him was destroyed. Now the King began to make fun of him on account of his weaknesses. The sensitive Frenchman thereupon asked for leave of absence, that a sojourn of a few months in France might restore his health. The King was offended by this ill-humored att.i.tude, and continued his raillery in friendly letters which he sent him. He said that it was rumored that a werewolf had appeared in France. This was undoubtedly the marquis, in the disguise of a Prussian and a sick man, and he asked if he had begun to eat little children. He had not formerly had that bad habit, but people change a good deal in traveling. The marquis, instead of a few months, stayed two winters.

When he was about to return, he sent certificates from his physicians.

Probably the worthy man had really been ill, but the King was deeply offended by this awkward attempt at justification on the part of an old friend, and when the latter returned, the old intimacy was gone forever. The King would not let him go, but he took pleasure in punishing the renegade by stinging speeches and harsh jokes.

Finally the Frenchman, deeply hurt, asked for his dismissal. His request was granted, and the sorrow and anger of the King is seen from the wording of the order. When the marquis, in the last letter which he wrote the King before his death, represented to him again, and not without bitterness, how scornfully and badly he had treated an unselfish admirer, Frederick read the letter without a word. But he wrote with grief to the dead man's widow telling her of his friendship for her husband, and had a costly monument erected for him in a foreign land. The great prince fared similarly with most of his intimates. Magic as was his power to attract, he had demoniac faculties for repelling. But if any one is disposed to blame the man for this, let him be told that hardly another king in history has so unsparingly disclosed his most intimate soul-life to his friends as Frederick.

Frederick had worn the crown only a few months when the Emperor Charles VI. died. Now everything urged the young King to risk a master-stroke. That he determined upon such a step was in itself, in spite of the momentary weakness of Austria, a token of bold courage.

The countries which he ruled had perhaps a seventh as many inhabitants as the broad lands of Maria Theresa. True, his army was for the time being far superior to the Austrian in numbers and discipline, and according to the ideas of the time, the ma.s.s of the people was not then in the same way as today available for recruiting purposes. Nor did he fully realize the greatness of Maria Theresa. But even in the preparations for the invasion the King showed that he had long hoped to measure himself against Austria. In an exalted mood he entered upon a struggle which was to be decisive for his own life and that of his State. He cared little at heart for the right which he might have to the Silesian duchies, and which with his pen he tried to prove before Europe. For this the policy of the despotic States of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had no regard whatever. Any one who could find a plausible defense of his cause made use of it, but in case of need the most improbable argument, the most shallow pretext, was sufficient. In this way Louis XIV. had made war; in this way the Emperor had followed up his interests against the Turks, Italians, Germans, French, and Spaniards; in this way a great part of the successes of the great Elector had been frustrated by others. Just where the rights of the Hohenzollerns were the plainest, as in Pomerania, they had been most ruthlessly curtailed, and by no one more than by the Emperor and the Hapsburgs. Now the Hohenzollerns sought their revenge. "Be my Cicero and prove the right of my cause, and I will be your Caesar and carry it through," Frederick wrote to Jordan after the invasion of Silesia. Gaily, with light step as if going to a dance, the King entered upon the fields of his victories. There was still cheerful enjoyment of life, sweet coquetry with verse, and intellectual conversation with his intimates on the pleasures of the day, on G.o.d, nature, and immortality, which he considered the spice of life. But the great task upon which he had entered began to have its effect upon his soul even in the early weeks, even before he had pa.s.sed through the fiery ordeal of the first great battle. And from that time on it hammered and forged upon his soul until it turned his hair gray and hardened his fiery heart into ringing steel. With that wonderful clearness which was peculiar to him, he watched the beginning of these changes. He even then viewed his own life as from without. "You will find me more philosophical than you think," he writes to his friend. "I have always been so--sometimes more, sometimes less. My youth, the fire of pa.s.sion, the longing for glory, and, to tell you the whole truth, curiosity, and finally, a secret instinct, have forced me out of the sweet peace which I enjoyed, and the wish to see my name in the gazettes and in history has led me into new paths. Come here to me. Philosophy will maintain her rights, and I a.s.sure you that if I had not this cursed love of fame, I should think only of peaceful comfort."

When the faithful Jordan actually came to him and the King saw the man of peaceful enjoyment timid and uncomfortable in the field, he suddenly realized that he himself had become another and a stronger man. The guest who had been honored by him so long as the more scholarly, and who had corrected his verses, criticized his letters, and been far ahead of him in the knowledge of Greek philosophy, now, in spite of all his philosophical training, gave the King the impression of a man without courage. With bitter derision Frederick attacked him in one of his best improvisations, contrasting the warrior in himself with the weak philosopher. In however bad taste the ridiculing verses were with which he overwhelmed Jordan again and again, the return of the old cordial feeling was just as quick; but it was the first gentle hint of fate for the King himself. The same thing was to befall him often. He was to lose valuable men, loyal friends, one after another; not only by death, but still more by the coldness and estrangement which arose between his nature and theirs. For the way upon which he had now entered was destined to develop more and more all the greatness, but also all the narrow features, of his nature, up to the limit of human possibility. The higher he rose above others, the smaller their natures inevitably appeared to him. Almost all whom in later years he measured by his own standard were far from able to endure the test, and the dissatisfaction and disappointment which he then experienced became again keener and more relentless until he himself, from a solitary height, looked down with stony eyes upon the doings of the men at his feet; but always, even to his last hours, the piercing chill of his searching glance was broken by the bright splendor of soft human feelings, and the fact that these were left to him is what makes his great tragic figure so affecting.

During the first war, to be sure, he still looked back with longing to the calm peace of his "Remusberg," and felt deeply the exaction of the tremendous fate which had already involved him. "It is hard to bear with equanimity this good and bad fortune," he writes; "one may appear indifferent in success and unmoved in adversity, the features of the face can be controlled; but the man, the inward man, the depths of the heart, are affected none the less." And he concludes hopefully, "All that I wish for myself is that success may not destroy in me the human feelings and virtues, to which I have always clung. May my friends find me as I have always been." And at the end of the war he writes: "See, your friend is victorious for the second time! Who would have said a few years ago that your pupil in philosophy would play a soldier's part in the world; that Providence would use a poet to overthrow the political system of Europe?" This shows how fresh and young Frederick felt when he returned to Berlin in triumph after his first war.

For the second time he took the field to a.s.sert his claim to Silesia.

Again he was victorious. He had already the calm confidence of a tried general. His joy at the excellence of his troops was great. "All that flatters me in this victory," he wrote to Frau von Camas, "is that I could contribute by a quick decision and a bold manoeuvre to the preservation of so many good people. I would not have the least of my soldiers wounded for vain glory, which no longer deceives me." But in the midst of the contest came the death of two of his dearest friends, Jordan and Kayserlingk. His grief was touching: "In less than three months I have lost my two most faithful friends, people with whom I had lived daily, pleasant companions, honorable men, and true friends.

It is hard for a heart that was made so sensitive as mine to restrain my deep sorrow. When I come back to Berlin, I shall be almost a stranger in my own fatherland, lonesome in my own house. You too have had the misfortune to lose at one time several people who were dear to you. I admire your courage, but I cannot imitate it. My only hope is in time, which can overcome everything in nature. It begins by weakening the impressions on our brains, and only ceases when it destroys us utterly. I antic.i.p.ate with terror visiting all the places which call up in me sad memories of friends whom I have lost forever."

And four weeks after their death he writes to the same friend, who tried to console him: "Do not believe that pressure of business and danger give distraction in sadness. I know from experience that that is a poor remedy. Unfortunately only four weeks have pa.s.sed since my tears and my sorrow began, but after the violent outbursts of the first days, I feel myself just as sad, just as little consoled, as at the beginning." And when his worthy tutor, Duhan, sent him at his request some French books which Jordan had left behind, the King wrote, late in the autumn of the same year: "Tears came into my eyes when I opened the books of my poor dear Jordan. I loved him so much, it will be hard to realize that he is no more." Not long after the King lost also the intimate friend to whom this letter was addressed.

The loss, in 1745, of the friends of his youth was an important turning point in the King's mental life. With these unselfish, honorable men almost everything died which had made him happy in his intercourse with others. The intimacies into which he now entered as a man were all of another kind. Even the best of the new acquaintances received perhaps his occasional confidence, but never his heartfelt friendship. The need for stimulating intellectual intercourse remained, and became even stronger and more imperative, for in this too he was unique; he never could dispense with cheerful and confidential companions, with light, almost reckless conversation, flitting through all shades of human moods, thoughtful or frivolous, from the greatest questions of the human race down to the little events of the day. Immediately after his accession he had written to Voltaire and invited him to his court. He had first met the Frenchman in 1740 on a journey near Wesel. Soon after, Voltaire had come to Berlin for a few days, at heavy expense. He had even then impressed the King as a jester, but Frederick felt nevertheless an infinite respect for the talent of the man. Voltaire was to him the greatest poet of all times, the master of ceremonies of Parna.s.sus, where the King himself was so anxious to play a part. Frederick's desire to have this man in his train became stronger and stronger. He regarded himself as his pupil; he wished to have all his verses approved by the master; among his Brandenburg officials he pined for the wit and spirit of the elegant Frenchman, and finally, his vanity as a sovereign was concerned--he wanted to be a prince of the _beaux esprits_ and philosophers, as he had become a glorious leader of armies. After the second Silesian war his intimates were mostly foreigners. After 1750 he had the pleasure of seeing the great Voltaire also as a member of his court. It was no misfortune that this unworthy man endured for only a few years his sojourn among the barbarians.

During these ten years, from 1746 to 1756, Frederick acquired literary independence, and that importance as a writer which is not yet sufficiently appreciated in Germany. As to his French poetry, a German can only judge imperfectly. He was a facile poet, who was easily master of every mood in metre and rhyme, but from the point of view of a Frenchman, he never completely overcame in his lyric poetry the difficulties of a foreign language, however diligently his confidants revised his work. He even lacked, it seems to us, the uniform rhetorical spirit, that style which in Voltaire's time was the first mark of a born poet. The effect of beautiful and n.o.ble sentiments, in splendid phraseology, is spoiled by trivial thoughts and commonplace expressions in the next line. Nor was the development of his taste sufficiently a.s.sured and independent. In his esthetic judgment he was quick, both to admire and to condemn; in reality, he was much more dependent upon the opinion of his French acquaintances than his pride would have admitted. What was best, moreover, in French poetry at that time--the return to Nature and the struggle of the beauty of reality against the fetters of an antiquated conventionalism--remained to him a sealed book. For a long time he looked upon Rousseau as an eccentric vagabond, and upon the conscientious and accurate spirit of Diderot even as shallow. And yet it seems to us that there often appear in his poems, especially in the light improvisations which he made to please his friends, a wealth of poetical detail and a charming tone of true feeling, which at least his model Voltaire might have envied.

Frederick's history of his times is, like Caesar's _Commentaries_, one of the most important doc.u.ments of historical literature. True, like the Roman general, like all practical statesmen, he stated facts as they are reflected in the soul of a partic.i.p.ant. He does not give due value to everything or full justice to everybody, but he knows infinitely more than is revealed to one at a distance, and he wrote of some of the motives underlying the great events, not without prejudice, yet with magnanimity toward his opponents. Writing at times without the enormous reference material which a professional historian must collect about him, he was occasionally deceived by his memory and his judgment, though both were very reliable. He was, moreover, composing an apology for his house, his politics, his campaigns; and, like Caesar, he sometimes ignores facts or interprets them as he wishes them to go down to posterity; but his love of truth and the frankness with which he treats his house and his own actions are no less admirable than his sovereign calm and the ease with which he soars above events, in spite of the little rhetorical embellishments which were due to the taste of his time.

His many-sidedness is as astonishing as his productiveness. One of the greatest military writers, a historian of importance, a clever poet, and at the same time a popular philosopher, a practical statesman, even a writer of very free and easy anonymous pamphlets, and sometimes a journalist, he was always ready to take up his pen for anything that inspired him and aroused his pa.s.sions or enthusiasm, or to attack, in verse or prose, any one who provoked or annoyed him--not only the pope and the Empress, the Jesuits and the Dutch journalists, but also old friends if they seemed lukewarm to him,--which he could not endure,--or if they actually threatened to break with him. Never since Luther has there been such a belligerent, relentless, untiring writer.

As soon as he put pen to paper he was like Proteus, everything: sage or intriguer, historian or poet, whatever the situation demanded, always an active, fiery, intellectual--sometimes also an ill-mannered--man, with never a moment's thought of his royal position. Whatever he liked he praised in poems or eulogies: the n.o.ble doctrines of his own philosophy, his friends, his army, religious liberty, independent investigation, tolerance, and popular education.

The conquering power of Frederick's mind had reached out in all directions. When ambition inspired him to victory it seemed as if there were no obstacle that would check him. Then came the years of trial--seven years of terrible, heartrending cares--the great period, in which the heaviest tasks that ever a man accomplished were laid upon his rich, ambitious spirit, in which almost everything perished which was his own possession, joy and happiness, peace and selfish comfort; in which also many pleasing and graceful characteristics of the man were to disappear, that he might become the self-sacrificing prince of his people, the foremost servant of his State, and the hero of a nation. No l.u.s.t of conquest made him take the field this time; it had long been plain to him that he was fighting for his own life and that of his State. But his determination had grown only the stronger.

Like the stormwind he purposed to dash into the clouds which were collecting from all sides about his head, and to break up the thunderbolts through the energy of an irresistible attack, before they were discharged. He had never been conquered up to this time. His enemies had been beaten every time he had fallen upon them with his terrible instrument--the army. Herein lay his only hope. If his well-tried power did not fail him now, he might save his State.

But in the very first conflict with his old enemy, the Austrians, he saw that they, too, had learned from him and were changed. He exerted his strength to the utmost, and at Kollin it failed him. The 18th of June, 1757, is the most momentous day in Frederick's life. There happened on that day what twice more in this war s.n.a.t.c.hed victory from him--the general had underestimated his enemy and had expected the impossible from his own brave army. After a short period of stupefaction Frederick arose with new strength. Instead of an aggressive war, he had been forced to wage a desperate war of defense.

His foes attacked his little country from all sides. He entered upon a death struggle with every great power of the Continent, master of only four million men and a defeated army. Now his talent as general showed itself as he escaped the enemy after defeats and again attacked in the most unexpected quarters and beat them, faced first one army and then another, unsurpa.s.sed in his dispositions, inexhaustible in expedients, unequaled as leader of troops in battle. So he stood, one against five--Austrians, Russians, French, any one of whom was his superior in strength, and at the same time against the Swedes and the Imperial troops. For five years he struggled thus against armies far larger than his own--every spring in danger of being crushed merely by numbers, every autumn free again. A loud cry of admiration and sympathy ran through Europe; and among those who gave the loudest praise, although reluctantly, were his most bitter enemies. Now, in these years of changing fortune, when the King himself experienced such bitter vicissitudes of the fortune of war, his generalship was the astonishment of all the armies of Europe. How, always the more rapid and skilful, he managed to establish his lines against his opponents; how so often he outflanked in an oblique position the weakest wing of the enemy, forced it back, and put it to rout; how his cavalry, which, newly organized, had become the strongest in the world, dashed in fury upon the foe, broke their ranks, scattered their battalions: all this was celebrated everywhere as a new advance in military art, and the invention of surpa.s.sing genius. The tactics and the strategy of the Prussian army came to be for almost half a century the ideal and model for all the armies of Europe. It was the unanimous opinion that Frederick was the greatest general of his time, and that there had been few leaders since the beginning of history who could be compared with him. It seemed incredible that the smaller numbers so often conquered the greater, and even when defeated, instead of being routed, faced the enemy, who had hardly recovered from his injuries, as threatening and fully equipped as before. Today we praise not only the field operations of the King, but also the wise prudence with which he handled his supplies. He knew very well how much he was limited by having to consider the commissariat, and the thousands of carts in which he had to take with him the provisions and the daily supplies of the soldiers; but he also knew that this method was his only salvation. Once, when after the battle of Rossbach he made the astonishing march into Silesia--one hundred and eighty-nine miles in fifteen days--he, in the greatest danger, abandoned his old method. He made his way through the country as other armies did at that time, and quartered his men upon the people. But he wisely returned at once to his old plan. For as soon as his enemies learned to imitate this free movement, he was certainly doomed. When the old militia in his ancient provinces rose to arms again, helped to drive out the Swedes, and bravely defended Colberg and Berlin, he accepted their a.s.sistance without objection; but he took pains not to encourage a guerilla war; and when his East Frisian peasantry revolted independently against the French and were severely punished by them for it, he told them with brutal frankness that it was their own fault, for war was a matter for soldiers; the business of the peasants and citizens should be uninterrupted industry, the payment of taxes, and the furnishing of recruits. He well knew that he was lost if a people's war in Saxony and Bohemia should be aroused against him. This readiness, indicative of the cautious general, to restrict himself to military forms, which alone made the contest possible for him, may be reckoned among his greatest qualities.

Louder and louder became the cry of sorrow and admiration with which Germans and foreigners watched this death-struggle of the lion at bay.

As early as 1740 the young King had been praised by the Protestants as the champion of freedom of conscience and enlightenment, against intolerance and the Jesuits. When, a few months after the battle at Kollin, he completely defeated the French at Rossbach, he became the hero of Germany. A glad cry of joy broke out everywhere. For two hundred years the French had done great wrong to the divided country; now the German national idea began to revolt against the influence of French culture, and the King, who himself greatly admired Parisian poetry, had effectively routed the Parisian generals with German musket b.a.l.l.s. It was such a brilliant victory, such a humiliating defeat of the hereditary enemy, that everywhere in Germany there was hearty rejoicing. Even where the soldiers of a State were fighting against King Frederick, the people at home in city and country rejoiced at the blows he dealt in good old German fashion. And the longer the war lasted, the more active became the faith in the King's invincibility, and the higher rose the confidence of the Germans. For the first time in long, long years they now had a hero of whose military glory they could be proud--a man who accomplished what seemed more than human. Innumerable anecdotes about him ran through the country. Every little touch about his calmness, good humor, kindness to individual soldiers, and the loyalty of his army, traveled hundreds of miles. How, in danger of death, he played the flute in his tent, how his wounded soldiers sang chorals after the battle, how he took off his hat to a regiment--he has often been imitated since--all this was reported on the Neckar and the Rhine, was printed, and listened to with merry laughter and tears of emotion. It was natural that poets should sing his praise. Three of them had been in the Prussian army: Gleim and Lessing, as secretaries of Prussian generals, and Ewald von Kleist, a favorite of the younger literary circles, as an officer, until the bullet struck him at Kunersdorf. But still more touching for us is the loyal devotion of the Prussian people. The old provinces, Prussia, Pomerania, Brandenburg, and Westphalia, were suffering unspeakably by the war, but the proud joy of having a share in the hero of Europe often lifted even humble men above their own sufferings. Citizens and peasants took the field as militiamen again and again for years. When a number of recruits from the province of Cleves and the county of Ravensberg deserted after a lost battle and returned home, the deserters were declared perjurers by their own fellow-countrymen and relatives, were excluded from the villages and driven back to the army.

Foreign opinion was no less enthusiastic. In the Protestant cantons of Switzerland there was as warm sympathy with the King's fate as if the descendants of the Rutli men had never been separated from the German empire. There were people there who were made ill by vexation when the King's cause was in a bad way. It was the same in England. Every victory of the King aroused wild joy in London. Houses were illuminated and pictures and laudatory poems offered for sale. In Parliament Pitt announced with admiration every new deed of the great ally. Even at Paris, in the theatres and salons, people were rather Prussian than French. The French derided their own generals and the clique of Madame de Pompadour. Whoever was on the side of the French arms, so Duclos reports, hardly dared to give expression to his views.

In St. Petersburg, the grand duke Peter and his party were such good Prussians that they grieved in secret at every reverse of Frederick's cause. The enthusiasm penetrated even to Turkey and to the Khan of Tartary; and this respectful admiration of a whole continent outlasted the war. When Hackert, the painter, was traveling through the interior of Sicily, a gift of honor of wine and fruit was offered him by the city council because they had heard that he was a Prussian, a subject of the great King for whom they wished thereby to show their reverence; and Muley Ismail, the emperor of Morocco, released without any ransom the crew of a ship belonging to a citizen of Emden, whom the Berbers had brought prisoner to Mogador, sent them in new clothes to Lisbon, and a.s.sured them that their King was the greatest man in the world, that no Prussian should be a prisoner in his land, and that his cruisers would never attack the Prussian flag.

Poor oppressed soul of the German people! Long years had pa.s.sed since the men between the Rhine and the Oder had felt the joy of being esteemed above others among the nations of the earth! Now by the magic of one man's power everything was transformed. The German citizen, awakened as from an anxious dream, looked out upon the world and within to his own heart. Men had long vegetated quietly, without a past in which they could rejoice, without a great future in which they could hope. Now all at once they felt that they, too, had a share in the honor and the greatness of the world; that a king and his people, all of their blood, had given to the German national idea a golden setting, and to the history of civilization a new meaning. Now they were experiencing the struggles, ventures, and victories of a great man. Work on in your study, peaceful thinker, fantastic dreamer! You have learned over-night to look down with a smile upon foreign ways and to expect great things of your own talent. Try to realize, now, what flows from your heart!

But while the youthful power of the people shook its wings with enthusiastic warmth, how did the great prince feel who was struggling ceaselessly against his enemies? The inspiring cry of the people rang in his ears as a feeble sound. The King heard it almost with indifference. His heart grew calmer and colder. To be sure, pa.s.sionate hours of sorrow and heart-rending cares came to him over and over again. He kept them hidden from his army; his calm face became harder, his brow more deeply furrowed, and his expression more rigid. Only before a few intimates he opened his heart from time to time, and then for a moment the sorrow of the man who had reached the limits of human possibilities broke forth.

Ten days after the battle of Kollin his mother died. A few weeks afterward he drove in anger his brother August Wilhelm from the army, because he had not been strong enough to lead it. The next year this brother died "of sorrow," as the officer of the day announced to the King. Shortly after he received the news of the death of his sister at Bayreuth. One after another his generals fell by his side, or lost the King's confidence, because they were not equal to the superhuman tasks of this war. His veterans, the pride of his heart, hardened warriors, seasoned in three fierce wars, who, dying, stretched out their hands toward him and called his name, were crushed in entire companies about him, and what came to fill the broad gaps that death incessantly mowed in his army were young men, some good material, but many worthless. The King made use of them as he did of others, more sternly, more severely. His glance and his word gave courage and devotion even to the inferior sort, but still he knew that all this was not salvation. His criticism became brief and cutting, his praise rare. So he lived on; five summers and winters came and went; the work was gigantic; his thinking and scheming was inexhaustible, his eagle eye scrutinized searchingly the most remote and petty circ.u.mstances, and yet there was no change, and no hope anywhere. The King read and wrote in leisure hours just as before; he composed verses and kept up a correspondence with Voltaire and Algarotti, but he was prepared to see all this come soon to an end--a swift and sudden one. He carried in his pocket day and night something which could make him free from Daun and Laudon. At times the whole affair filled him with disdain.

The letters of the man from whom Germany dates a new epoch in its intellectual life deserve to be read with reverence by every German.

When you find him writing to Frau von Camas, "For the last six years I have felt that it is the living, not the dead, for whom one should be sorry," if you are shocked by the gloomy energy of his determination you must beware of thinking that in it the power of this remarkable spirit found its highest expression. It is true that the King had some moments of desperation when he longed for death by the enemy's bullet in order not to be forced to use the capsule which he carried in his pocket. He was indeed fully determined not to ruin the State by living as a captive of Austria; to this extent what he writes is terribly true. But he was also of a poetic temperament, a child of the century which so longed for great deeds and found such immense satisfaction in the expression of exalted feelings. He was, to the bottom of his heart, a German with the same emotional needs as, for instance, the infinitely weaker Klopstock and his admirers. The consideration and resolute expression of his final resolve made him freer and more cheerful at heart. He wrote to his sister at Bayreuth about it in the momentous second year of the war; and this letter is especially characteristic, for his sister also was determined not to survive him and the downfall of his house; and he approved this decision, to which, by the way, he gave little attention in his gloomy satisfaction at his own reflections. The two royal children had once secretly recited, in the house of their stern father, the parts of French tragedies; now their hearts beat again in the single thought of freeing themselves by a Catonian death from a life full of disappointment, confusion, and suffering. But when the excited and nervous sister fell seriously ill, Frederick forgot all his Stoic philosophy, and clinging fast to life with a pa.s.sionate tenderness, worried and mourned over her who was the dearest to him of his family.

When she died, his poignant grief was perhaps increased by the feeling that he had interfered in too tragic a manner with a tender woman's life. Thus, even in the greatest of all Germans born in the first half of the eighteenth century, poetic feelings, and the wish to appear beautiful and great, were strangely mingled with the serious realities of life. Poor little Professor Semler who, while under the deepest emotion, still studied his att.i.tudes and worked over his polite phrases, and the great King, who in cool expectation of the hour of his death, still wrote of suicide in beautifully balanced periods--both were sons of the same age, in which pathos, which had not yet found worthy expression in art, luxuriated like climbing plants about the realities of life. But the King was greater than his philosophy. In reality he never lost his courage, nor the persistent, defiant vigor characteristic of the old Germans, nor the secret hope which a man needs in every difficult task.

And he held out. The forces of his enemies grew weaker, their generals were worn out, and their armies were scattered. Finally Russia withdrew from the coalition. This, and the King's last victories, turned the balance. He had won. He had not only conquered Silesia, but vindicated its possession for his Prussian kingdom. But while his people rejoiced, and the loyal citizens of his capital prepared a festive reception for him, he shunned their merrymaking and withdrew silent and alone to Sans Souci. He said that he wished to spend his remaining days in peace, living for his people.

In the first twenty-three years of his reign he had struggled and fought to maintain his power against the world. Twenty-three years more he was destined to rule peacefully over his people as a wise, stern patriarch. He guided his State with the greatest self-denial, though with insistence on his own ways, striving for the greatest things, but yet in full control even of the smallest.

Many of his ideas have been left behind by the advance of modern civilization--they were the result of the experiences of his youth and early manhood. Thought was to be free; every man to think what he pleased, but to do his duty as a citizen. He himself subordinated his comfort and his expenditures to the welfare of the State, meeting the whole expense of the royal household with some two hundred thousand thalers; thinking first of the advantage of his people and last of himself. His subjects, in their turn, he felt should bear cheerfully whatever duties and burdens he imposed upon them. Every one was to remain in the station in which birth and education had placed him. The n.o.blemen were to be landholders and officers; to the citizens belonged the towns, trade, manufacturing, instruction, and invention; to the peasant, the land and the menial work. But in his sphere each one was to be prosperous and happy. Equal, strict, ready justice for every one; no favors to the highborn and rich--rather, in case of doubt, the humble should have the preference. To increase the number of useful men; to make every activity as profitable and as perfect as possible; to buy as little as possible abroad; to produce everything at home, exporting the surplus--these were the leading principles of his social and economic theories. He exerted himself incessantly to increase the acreage of arable land, and to provide new places for settlers. Swamps were drained, lakes drawn off, dikes thrown up. Ca.n.a.ls were dug and money advanced to found new factories. At the instigation and with the financial support of the government cities and villages were rebuilt, more solid and sanitary than they had been before. The farmers' credit system, fire insurance societies, and the Royal Bank were founded.

Everywhere public schools were established. Educated people were brought in from abroad; the government officials everywhere were required to be educated, and regulated by examination and strict inspection. It is the duty of the historian to enumerate and praise all this, if also to mention some unsuccessful attempts of the King, which were inevitable owing to his endeavor to control everything himself.

The King cared for all his lands, and by no means least for his child of sorrow, the newly won Silesia. When he conquered this great district it had a few more than a million inhabitants. They realized vividly the contrast between the easy-going Austrian management and the precise, restless, stirring rule of Prussia. In Vienna the catalogue of prohibited books had been larger than at Rome; now bales of books came incessantly from Germany into the province, reading and buying were astonishingly free, even printed attacks upon the sovereign himself. In Austria it was the privilege of the aristocracy to wear foreign cloth. When the father of Frederick the Great of Prussia had forbidden the importation of cloth, he had first of all dressed himself and his princes in domestic goods. In Vienna no office had been considered aristocratic if it implied anything but a nominal function; all the actual work was a matter for subordinates. A chamberlain stood higher than a veteran general or minister. In Prussia even the highest born was little esteemed if he was not useful to the State, and the King himself was a most exact official, who watched and scolded over every thousand thalers saved or spent. Any one in Austria who left the Catholic Church was punished with confiscation of property and banishment; under the Prussians anybody could leave or join any church--that was his own affair. Under the imperial rule the government had been, on the whole, negligent if it had been forced to occupy itself with any matter; the Prussian officials had their noses and their hands in everything. In spite of the three Silesian wars the province grew to be far more prosperous than it had been under the Empire. Up to this time a hundred years had not been sufficient to wipe out the visible traces of the Thirty Years' War. The people remembered well how in the cities the heaps of rubbish from the time of the Swedish invasions had lain about, and between the remaining houses there were patches of waste ground blackened by fire. Many small cities still had log houses in the old Slavic style, with thatched or shingled roofs, patched up shabbily from time to time. In a few decades the Prussians removed the traces not only of former devastations, but also of the recent Seven Years'

War. Frederick laid out several hundred new villages, had fifteen good-sized towns rebuilt in regular streets--largely with funds from the royal treasury--and had compelled the landed proprietors to restore several thousand farms which they had abolished as individual holdings, and install upon them tenants with rights of succession.

Under the Empire the taxes had been lower, but they had been unfairly distributed and had fallen chiefly upon the poor, the n.o.bility being exempt from the greater part of them. The collection was imperfect, much was embezzled or poorly applied; relatively little came into the imperial treasury. The Prussians, on the contrary, divided the country into small districts, appraised every acre of land, and in a few years abolished almost all exemptions. The outlying country now paid its land taxes and the cities their excise duties. So the province bore the double burden with greater ease, and no one but the privileged cla.s.ses grumbled; and with all this, it could maintain forty thousand soldiers, whereas formerly there had been in the province only about two thousand. Before 1740 the n.o.bility had lived _en grand seigneur_.

All who were Catholic and rich lived in Vienna. Everybody else who could raise enough money betook himself to Breslau. Now the majority of landholders lived on their estates, the poverty-stricken n.o.bles disappeared, the n.o.bility knew that the King honored them if they looked after the cultivation of the land, and that the new master showed cold contempt to those who neither managed their estates nor filled civil or military positions. Formerly lawsuits had been endless and expensive, hardly to be carried through without bribery and sacrifice of money. Now it was observed that the number of lawyers decreased, so quickly came the decisions. Under the Austrians, to be sure, the caravan trade with the East had been greater; the people of the Bukowina and Hungary, and also the Poles, turned elsewhere and were already looking toward Trieste; but in place of this, new manufacturing industries arose; wool and textiles, and in the mountain valleys a flourishing linen industry. Many found the new era uncomfortable, many were really incommoded by its severity; but few dared to deny that on the whole things had been greatly improved.

But another thing in the Prussian system was astonishing to the Silesians, and soon gained a secret power over their minds. This was the Spartan spirit of devotion on the part of the King's servants, which appeared so frequently even among the humblest officials; for instance, the revenue collectors, never popular even before the introduction of the French system. In this case they were retired subaltern officers, veteran soldiers of the King, who had won his battles for him and grown gray in powder smoke. They sat now by the gates smoking their pipes; with their very small pay they could indulge in no luxuries; but they were on the spot from early morning until late at night, doing their duty skilfully, precisely and quickly, as old soldiers are wont to do. Their minds were always on their service; it was their honor and their pride. For years to come old Silesians from the time of the great King used to tell their grandchildren how the punctuality, strictness, and honesty of the Prussian officials had astonished them. In every district headquarters, for instance, there was a tax collector. He lived in his little office, which was perhaps also his bedroom, and collected in a great wooden bowl the land taxes, which the village officials brought into his room monthly on an appointed day. Many thousand thalers were entered on the lists, and were delivered, to the last penny, to the great main treasuries. The pay too of such a man was small. He sat and collected and stowed in purses until his hair became white and his trembling hands were no longer able to manage the two-groschen pieces.

And it was the pride of his life that the King knew him personally, and if he ever drove through the place would silently look at him from his great eyes, while the horses were being changed, or, if he was very gracious, give him a slight nod. With respect and a certain awe the people looked upon even these subordinate servants of the new principle, and the Silesians were not alone in this. Something new had come into the world in general. It was not a mere figure of speech when Frederick called himself the foremost servant of his State. As he had taught his wild n.o.bility on the battlefield that it was the highest honor to die for the Fatherland, so his untiring, faithful care forced upon the soul of the least of his servants in the distant border towns the great idea of the duty of living and working first of all for the good of his King and his country.

When the province of Prussia was forced, in the Seven Years' War, to do homage to Empress Elizabeth, and remained for several years incorporated in the Russian Empire, the officers of the district found means nevertheless to raise money and grain for their King in secret, and in spite of a foreign army and government. Great skill was used to accomplish the transportation. There were many in the secret, but not a traitor among them. In disguise they stole through the Russian lines at the risk of their lives, although they knew that they would reap small thanks from the King, who did not care for his East Prussians at all. He spoke contemptuously of them, and showed them unwillingly the favors which he bestowed on the other provinces. His face turned to stone whenever he learned that one of his young officers was born between the Memel and the Vistula, and after the war he never trod on East Prussian soil. But this conduct did not disturb the East Prussians in their admiration. They clung with faithful love to their ungracious lord, and his best and most enthusiastic eulogist was Emanuel Kant.

Life in the King's service was serious, often hard--work and deprivation without end. It was difficult even for the best to satisfy the strict master; and the greatest devotion received but curt thanks.

If a man was worn out he was likely to be coldly cast aside. There was work without end everywhere: something new, something beginning, some scaffolding of an unfinished structure. To a foreign visitor this life did not seem at all graceful; it was austere, monotonous, and rude, with little beauty or carefree cheerfulness. And as the King's bachelor household, his taciturn servants, and the submissive intimates under the trees of the quiet garden, gave a foreign guest the impression of a monastery, so in all Prussian inst.i.tutions he found something of the renunciation and the discipline of a great busy monastic brotherhood.

For something of this spirit had been transmitted even to the people themselves. Today we honor in this an undying merit of Frederick II., for this spirit of abnegation is still the secret of the greatness of the Prussian State, and the final and best guarantee of its permanence. The artfully constructed machine which the great King had set up with so much intelligence and effectiveness was not to last forever; twenty years after his death it broke down; but in the fact that the State did not perish with it, that the intelligence and patriotism of the citizens were able of their own accord to establish under his successors a new life on a new basis, we see the secret of Frederick's greatness.

Nine years after the close of the last war which was fought for the possession of Silesia, Frederick increased his domain by a new acquisition, not much less in area, but thinly populated--the Polish districts which have since become German territory under the name of West Prussia.

If the King's claims to Silesia had been doubtful, all the ac.u.men of his officials was now needed to make a show of some uncertain right to portions of the new acquisition. About this the King himself was little concerned. He had defended before the world with almost superhuman heroism the occupation of Silesia. This province was united to Prussia by streams of blood. In the case of West Prussia the craft of the politician did the work almost alone, and for a long time the conqueror lacked in public opinion that justification for his action which, as it seems, is given by the horrors of war and the capricious fortune of the battlefield. But this last acquisition of the King's, though wanting in the thunder of guns and the trumpets of victory, was yet, of all the great gifts which the German people owe to Frederick II., the greatest and most abounding in fortunate consequences.

Through several hundred years the Germans had been divided and hemmed in and encroached upon by neighbors greedy for conquest; the great King was the first conqueror who again pushed the German boundaries toward the east. A hundred years after his great ancestor had in vain defended the fortresses of the Rhine against Louis XIV., Frederick gave the Germans again the explicit admonition that it was their duty to carry law, education, liberty, culture, and industry into the east of Europe. His whole territory, with the exception of a few Old Saxon districts, had been originally German, then Slavic, then again won from the Slavs by fierce wars or colonization; never since the migrations of the Middle Ages had the struggle ceased for the broad plains east of the Oder; never since the conquest of Brandenburg had this house forgotten that it was the warden of the German border.

Whenever wars ceased the politicians were busy. The Elector Frederick William had freed Prussia, the territory of the Teutonic Knights, from feudal allegiance to Poland. Frederick I. had boldly raised this isolated colony to a kingdom. But the possession of East Prussia was insecure. It was not the corrupt republic of Poland which threatened danger, but the rising power of Russia. Frederick had learned to respect the Russians as enemies; he knew the soaring ambition of Empress Catherine, and as a prudent prince seized the right moment.

The new territory--Pomerelia, the _voivodeship_ (administrative province) of Kulm and Marienburg, the bishopric of Ermeland, the city of Elbing, a portion of Cujavia, a portion of Posen--united East Prussia with Pomerania and Brandenburg. It had always been a border land. Since the early times people of different races had crowded into the coasts of the Baltic: Germans, Slavs, Lithuanians, and Finns. From the thirteenth century the Germans had made their way into this Vistula country as founders of cities and agriculturists: Teutonic Knights, merchants, pious monks, German n.o.blemen and peasants. On both sides of the Vistula arose the towers and boundary stones of German colonies--supreme among them the magnificent city of Danzig, the Venice of the Baltic, the great seaport of the Slavic countries, with its rich St. Mary's Church and the palaces of its merchant princes; and beyond it on another arm of the Vistula, its modest rival, Elbing: farther up, the stately towers and broad avenues of Marienburg; near it the great princely castle of the Teutonic order, the most beautiful architectural monument of Northern Germany; and in the Vistula valley, on a rich alluvial soil, the old prosperous colonial estates: one of the most productive countries of the world, protected against the devastations of the Slavic stream by ma.s.sive dikes dating back to the days of the Knights. Still farther up were Marienwerder, Graudenz, Kulm, and in the low lands of the Netze, Bromberg, the centre of the German border colonies among a Polish population. Smaller German towns and village communities were scattered through the whole territory, and the rich Cistercian monasteries of Oliva and Peplin had been zealous colonizers. But in the fifteenth century the tyrannical severity of the Teutonic order had driven the German cities and landowners of West Prussia to an alliance with Poland.

The Reformation of the sixteenth century won the submission not only of the German colonists but of three-quarters of the n.o.bility in the great republic of Poland; and toward 1590 about seventy out of a hundred parishes in the Slavic district of Pomerelia were Protestant.

It seemed for a short time as if a new commonwealth and a new culture were about to develop in the Slavic East--a great Polish State with German elements in the cities. But the introduction of the Jesuits brought an unsalutary change. The Polish n.o.bility returned to the Catholic Church: in the Jesuit schools their sons were trained to proselytizing fanaticism, and from that time on the Polish State declined, conditions becoming worse and worse.

The att.i.tude of the Germans in West Prussia was not uniform toward the proselytizing Jesuits and Slavic tyranny. A large proportion of the immigrant German n.o.bles became Catholic and Polish; the townsmen and peasants remained for the most part obstinately Protestant. So there was added to the conflict in language conflict in religious creed, and to race hatred a religious frenzy. In this century of enlightenment the perse