When the Great Elector died he was succeeded by his son Frederick, who was very eager to be called king. He attained this great object of his life in the year 1700; but, because he was a spendthrift and a lover of empty display, he did nothing to advance the interests of his country. After him reigned another Frederick William, who had some talents and did the business of his state very well, but was a thoroughly wicked fellow, and was, indeed, next door to a madman. Nevertheless he was the first Prussian king to set himself the task of making his kingdom strong enough to take its place among the European Powers. Carlyle calls him the "drill-sergeant of the Prussian nation."
Statue of the Great Elector in Berlin.
The present Kaiser is devoted to the memory of his ancestors, and does everything in his power to make the Prussians believe that they owe everything to the Hohenzollern sovereigns. Berlin is full of statues to these princes. In one of the avenues of the chief park there is a row of statues to all the rulers of Prussia. Of the Great Elector, who was the real founder of Prussia, and whose statue is shown above, the Kaiser has said, "He has stood before me as the example of my youth." He is also a great admirer of Frederick the Great, and has imitated some of the worst features of that monarch.
Photo, Exclusive News Agency.
This Frederick William stinted himself and his family of food and clothing, in order to keep up an army of 60,000 men, and he drilled them so well that they were the best troops of the time. The great desire of his heart was to possess a brigade of giants, and his agents scoured all the countries of Europe to find big men. He would pay almost anything for men over six feet, and it is said that he gave £1,200 for an Irishman who was more than seven feet high. These Potsdam[30] Guards were his passion; he hoarded his money like a miser on most things, but he spent it lavishly on buying tall men for his army.
Some day he hoped to send these huge fellows into the field, and see them drive the whipper-snappers of other nations before them. But he was so proud of his giants that he hated the thought of risking their lives in battle, and while he lived they never saw any harder service than sham fights in the fields round Berlin.
When King Frederick was gathered to his fathers, his son, one of the most remarkable men who ever lived, came to the throne. When you are grown up you will, if you are wise, read his life as Thomas Carlyle[31] wrote it. Here I can only touch very lightly on his character and the work which he did for his country. He is known to history as Frederick the Great.
One of the Potsdam Guards.
Probably no boy had ever so hard an upbringing as Prince Frederick. Macaulay tells us that "Oliver Twist in the parish workhouse and Smike at Dotheboys Hall were petted children when compared with this wretched heir-apparent of a crown." This is, perhaps, an over-statement; but there is no doubt that the boy spent a very hard and loveless boyhood. His father was a rough, bluff man, who thought that the whole business of life was to drill and to be drilled. He loved to drink beer, smoke strong tobacco, play cards, hunt wild hogs, and shoot partridges by the thousand, and he despised all the arts and graces which make life sweet and beautiful. Carlyle tells us that the young prince was nourished on beer soup, and that every hour of his life he was taught to be thrifty, active, and exact in everything that he did. His very sleep was stingily meted out to him. "Too much sleep stupefies a fellow," his gruff old father used to say. So little sleep was the boy allowed to have that the doctors had to interfere for the sake of his health. He had no money of his own until he was seventeen, and then he was provided with eighteenpence a month, and made to keep an exact account of all that he spent.