As an illustration of the manner in which the official historians of Prussia have narrated the history of the dynasty, it is instructive to compare the following character-sketch of the successor of Frederick the Great with the idealist portrait of Treitschke (“Germany History,” vol. i.), who would make us believe that Frederick William II. was a paragon of all the private virtues.
I.
Frederick the Great’s base tolerance produced dissolvent effects. Not proceeding from respect of religious beliefs, it engendered contempt for them. As, apart from the curb of religion, the new society of Prussia had no tradition of social morals to rely upon, corruption entered in and consumed it. The King’s scepticism took possession of his subjects, who translated it into deeds. It was good “form”; everyone in Berlin took it up and conducted himself accordingly. The leaven of licence and sensuality which mars all the literature of the century fermented without let or hindrance in those coarse souls. An immature civilization had overstimulated imaginations and senses without abating the brutality of the primitive passions. In Prussia people lacked the delicate taste, the genteel habits, the light wit, which in France qualified the depravity of the age. A heavy dissoluteness was paraded in Prussia. Officials, the gentry, women, all fed their minds on d’Holbach and La Mettrie, taking their doctrines seriously and applying them to the very letter.
Add to this that in the newly built Prussian capital society, utterly artificial as it was, an improvised amalgam of incongruous elements, was predisposed, so to speak, to dissoluteness. Berlin swarmed with army men who had no family life and whose whole day was not occupied with military duties. Men of letters, adventurers of the pen and of the sword, attracted by Frederick’s reputation and reduced to intrigue and all sorts of expedients for a living; a nobility, very poor, very proud, very exclusive, weighed down by royal discipline and thoroughly bored; a bourgeoisie enlightened, enriched, but relegated to a place of its own; between these groups, separated one from the other by etiquette or prejudice, a sort of demi-monde where they met, chatted and enjoyed themselves at their ease, the foyer of “French ideas,” the hub of affairs and intrigues—Jewish society, the richest and most elegant in Berlin. With the marvellous pliancy of their race the Jews had assimilated the new civilization and took their revenge from the political exclusion of which they were the victims by bringing together in their salons all the intellectual men in Berlin, all the attractive women, all desirous of liberty and freed from prejudice. Such was Berlin in the days of Frederick.
II.
One of the finest cities in Europe, wrote Forster in 1779; but the Berliners! Sociability and refined taste, he found, degenerated in them into sensuality, into libertinage (he might almost say voracity), freedom of wit and love of shining in shameless licence and unrestrained debauch of thought. The women in general were abandoned. An English diplomat, Sir John Harris, afterwards Lord Malmesbury, had the same impression: Berlin was a town where, if fortis might be translated by “honourable,” you could say that there was not a vir fortis nec femina casta.
If you consider that outside Jewish homes money was scarce, and that temptations are all the stronger the less means you have of satisfying them, you can see why in many minds disorder of ideas and corruption of morals opened a new wound, the most dangerous, in sooth, and the most repugnant in nations—venality. Mirabeau, in his “Secret History,” indelibly recorded all the vices of ce noble tripot, Berlin. On this head his famous pamphlet is a picture in violent colours, but true nevertheless. Cynicism there seems merely local colour. “‘Rottenness before Ripeness’—I am very much afraid that must be the motto of Prussian power.... What cannot money do in a house so poor?”
III.
It required Frederick’s hand of iron to set in motion these complicated springs, to regulate the unwieldy machine, keep together these elements collected with no little ingenuity and ready to go to pieces. But that hand was weighty and hard. There were signs, in the upper classes at all events—the only classes then taken into account—of a sort of muffled revolt against this implacable disciple. Besides, the Prussians entertained queer illusions as to the future. Frederick had deceived his subjects just as he had deceived himself regarding the durability of his work. They did not understand to what an extent their power was the personal power of their King. Proud to the point of infatuation of the rôle he had made them play, they imagined it was their own doing, and that Frederick’s soul would survive in them. They expected from a new reign the same glory abroad, the same security at home, the same relative prosperity, with a yoke less rough and a discipline less severe, not understanding that the very roughness of the yoke and the severity of the discipline were conditions necessary to the duration of the work. The mercantile protective system, which had built up industry; the administration of taxes, which poured money into the State coffers; the economy, which immobilized this money in the treasury, hampered and irritated all who wished to work and trade, all who reflected on the natural conditions of commerce and industry; but it was these things alone that enabled the poorest Government in Europe to be better armed than the richest, and to keep in the van. In a word, people wanted the spring to relax, and failed to see that to slacken the spring meant annihilating the State.