Nine years after the conclusion of the last war, which led to the retention of Silesia, Frederic increased his kingdom by a new acquisition, not much less in number of miles, but with a scanty population: it was the district of Poland, which has since passed under the name of West Prussia.
If the claims of the King on Silesia had been doubtful, it required all the acuteness of his officials to put a plausible appearance on the uncertain rights to a portion of the new acquisition. The King himself cared little about it; he had, with almost superhuman heroism, defended the possession of Silesia in the face of the world; that province had been bound to Prussia by streams of blood; but in this case, political shrewdness was almost all that had been required. Long, in the opinion of men, was the conqueror deficient in that justification which it appeared was only given by the horrors of war and the accidental fortune of the battle-field. But this last acquisition of the King, which was made without the thunder of cannon or the flourish of victory, was, of all the great gifts for which the German people had to thank Frederic II., the greatest and most beneficial. During many hundred years the much-divided Germans were confined and injured by ambitious neighbours; the great King was the first conqueror who extended the German frontier further to the east. A century after his great ancestor had in vain defended the Rhine fortresses against Louis XIV., he again gave the Germans the emphatic admonition, that it was their task to carry laws, education, freedom, cultivation, and industry into the east of Europe. His whole country, with the exception of some old Saxon territory, had been won from the Sclavonians by force and colonisation; never since the great migration of the Middle Ages had the struggle for the wide plains on the east of the Oder ceased; never had his house forgotten that it was the guardian of the German frontier. Whenever the struggle of arms ceased, politicians contended. The Elector Frederic William had freed the Prussian territories of the Teutonic order from the Polish suzerainty. Frederic I. had brought this isolated colony under the crown. But the possession of East Prussia was insecure; the danger was not, however, from the degenerate Republic of Poland, but from the rising greatness of Russia. Frederic had learnt to consider the Russians as enemies; he knew the high-flown plans of the Empress Catherine; the clever Prince knew how to grasp at the fitting moment. The new domain—Pommerellen, the Woiwodschaft of Kulm and Marienburg, the Bishopric of Ermland, the city of Elbing, a portion of Kujavien, and a part of Posen—united East Prussia with Pomerania and the Marches of Brandenburg. It had always been a frontier land; since ancient times people of different races had thronged to the coast of the Northern Sea: Germans, Sclavonians, Lithuanians, and Finns. Since the thirteenth century, the Germans had forced themselves into this debatable ground as founders of cities and agriculturists; orders of knights, merchants, pious monks, German noblemen, and peasants congregated there. On both sides of the Vistula arose towers and boundary stones of the German colonists. Above all rose the splendid Dantzic,—the Venice of the Baltic, the great sea-mart of the Sclavonian countries, with its rich Marien-church and the palaces of its merchants; behind it, on the other arm of the Vistula, its modest rival Elbing; further upwards, the stately towers and broad arcades of Marienburg, where is the great princely castle of the Teutonic Knights, the most beautiful edifice in the north of Germany; and in the luxurious low-countries, in the valley of the Vistula, were the old prosperous colonial properties, one of the most favoured districts of the world, and defended by powerful dikes against the devastations of the Vistula. Still further upwards, Marienwerder, Graudenz, Kulm, and in the low countries, Netzebromberg, the centre of a strip of Polish frontier. Smaller German cities and village communities were scattered through the whole territory, which had been energetically colonised by the rich Cistercian monasteries of Oliva and Pelplin. But the tyrannical severity of this order drove the German cities and landed proprietors of West Prussia, in the fifteenth century, to annex themselves to Poland. The Reformation of the sixteenth century subdued not only the souls of the German colonists, but also those of the Poles. In the great Polish Republic, three-fourths of the nobility became Protestants, and in the Sclavonian districts of Pommerellen, seventy out of one hundred parishes, did the same. But the introduction of the Jesuits brought an unhealthy change. The Polish nobles fell back to the Roman Catholic Church, their sons were brought up in the Jesuits' schools as converting fanatics. From that time the Polish State began to decline; its condition became constantly more hopeless.
There was a great difference in the conduct of the Germans of West Prussia with respect to proselytising Jesuits and Sclavonian tyranny. The immigrant German nobles became Roman Catholic and Polish, but the citizens and peasants remained stubborn Protestants. To the opposition of languages was added the opposition of confessions; to the hatred of race, the fury of contending faiths. In the century of enlightenment there was a fanatical persecution of the Germans in these provinces; one Protestant church after another was pulled down, the wooden ones were burnt; when a church was burnt, the villages lost the right of having bells; German preachers and schoolmasters were driven away and shamefully ill-used "Vexa Lutheranum dabit thalerum" was the usual saying of the Poles against the Germans. One of the great landed proprietors of the country, Starost of Gnesen, from the family of Birnbaum, was condemned to death, by tearing out his tongue and chopping off his hands, because he had copied into a record from German books some biting remarks against the Jesuits. There was no law and no protection. The national party of Polish nobles, in alliance with fanatical priests, persecuted most violently those whom they hated as Germans and Protestants. All the predatory rabble joined themselves to the patriots or confederates; they hired hordes who went plundering about the country and fell upon small cities and German villages. Ever more vehement became the rage against the Germans, not only from zeal for the faith, but still more from covetousness. The Polish nobleman Roskowski put on a red and a black boot: the one signified fire, and the other death; thus he rode from one place to another, laying all under contribution; at last, in Jastrow, he caused the hands, feet, and finally the head of the Evangelical preacher Wellick to be cut off, and the limbs to be thrown into a bog. This happened in 1768.
Such was the state of the country shortly before the Prussian occupation. Dantzic, which was indispensable to the Poles, kept itself, through this century of decay, from the rest of the country; it remained a free State under Sclavonian protection, and was long adverse to the great King. But the country and most of the German cities energetically helped to preserve the King from destruction. The Prussian officials who were sent into the country were astonished at the wretchedness which existed at a few days' journey from their capital. Only some of the larger cities, in which German life was maintained by old trading intercourse within strong walls, and protected strips of land exclusively occupied by Germans,—like the low countries near Dantzig,—the villages under the mild government of the Cistercians of Oliva, and the wealthy German districts of Catholic Ermland, were in tolerable condition. Other cities lay in ruins, as did most of the farms on the plains. The Prussians found Bromberg, a city of German colonists, in ruins; it is not possible now accurately to ascertain how the city came into this condition;[[21]] indeed the fate of the whole Netze district, in the last ten years before the Prussian occupation, is quite unknown. No historians, no records, and no registers give any account of the destruction and slaughter with which that country was ravaged. Apparently the Polish factions must have fought amongst themselves; bad harvests and pestilence may have done the rest. Kulm has from ancient times preserved its well-built walls and stately churches, but in the streets the covered passages to the cellars projected over the rotten wood and the fragments of brick from the dilapidated buildings; whole streets consisted of such cellars, in which the miserable inhabitants dwelt. Twenty-eight of the forty houses of the great market-place had no doors, no roofs, no inhabitants, and no proprietors. In a similar condition were other cities.
The greater number of the country people lived in circumstances which appeared to the King's officials lamentable; especially on the frontiers of Pomerania, where the Windish Kassubes dwelt; the villages were a collection of old huts, with torn thatched roofs, on bare plains, without a tree and without a garden; there was only the indigenous wild cherry-tree. The houses were built of wooden rafters and clay; going through the house door, one entered a room with a large hearth, without a chimney; stoves were unknown; no candle was ever lighted, only fir chips brightened the darkness of the long winter evenings; the chief article in the miserable furniture was the crucifix, and under it a bowl of holy water. The dirty, forlorn people lived on rye porridge, or only on herbs, which they made into soup, or on herrings, and brandy, in which both women and men indulged. Bread was almost unknown; many had never in their life tasted such a delicacy; there were few villages in which there was an oven. If they ever kept bees, they sold the honey to the citizens, as well as carved spoons and stolen bark; and with the produce, they bought at the fairs, coarse blue cloth dresses, with black fur caps, and bright red handkerchiefs for the women. There was rarely a weaving-loom, and the spinning-wheel was unknown. The Prussians heard there no national songs; there were no dances, no music, nor indeed any of the pleasures which the most miserable Poles partake of, but stupidly and silently the people drank bad drams, fought, and reeled about. The poor noble also differed little from the peasant; he drove his own rude plough, and clattered in wooden slippers about the unboarded floor of his hut. It was difficult, even for the Prussian King, to make anything of these people. The use of potatoes spread rapidly, but the people long continued to destroy the fruit trees, the culture of which was commanded; and they opposed all other attempts at cultivation. Equally needy and decaying were the frontier districts with Polish population; but the Polish peasant preserved, in his state of poverty and disorder, at least the vivacity of his race. Even on the properties of the greater nobles, such as the Starosties, and of the crown, all the farming buildings were ruined and useless. If any one wished to forward a letter, he had to send a special messenger, for there was no post in the country; indeed, in the villages no need of it was felt, for a great portion of the nobles could not read or write, more than the peasants. Were any one ill, no assistance could be obtained but the mysterious remedies of some old village crone, for there was no apothecary in the whole country. Any one who needed a coat, did well to be able to use a needle himself, for no tailor was to be found for many miles, unless one passed through the country on a venture.[[22]] He who wished to build a house, had first to ascertain whether he could get labourers from the west. The country people still kept up a weak struggle with hordes of wolves, and there were few villages in which men and beasts were not decimated every winter.[[23]] If the small-pox broke out, or any other infectious illness came into the country, the people saw the white figure of the pestilence flying through the air and settling down on their huts; they knew what such appearances betokened; it was the desolation of their homes, the destruction of whole communities; with gloomy resignation they awaited their fate. There was hardly any administration of justice in the country; only in the larger cities were powerless courts. The Starosts inflicted punishment with arbitrary power; they beat and threw into horrible jails, not only the peasant, but even the citizens of the country towns who rented their houses or fell into their hands. In their quarrels amongst themselves they contended by bribery, in any of the few courts that had jurisdiction over them. In later years, even that had almost fallen into disuse, and they sought revenge with their own hands.
It was indeed a forlorn country, without discipline, without law, and without a master; it was a wilderness, with only a population of 500,000 on 600 square miles—not 850 to the mile. And the Prussian King treated his acquisition like an untenanted prairie; almost at his pleasure he fixed boundary stones, or removed them some miles further. And then he began, in his admirable way, the culture of the country; the very rottenness of its condition was attractive to him, and West Prussia became, as Silesia had hitherto been, his favourite child, that he washed and brushed, and dressed in new clothes, sent to school, controlled, and kept under his eyes, with incessant care like a true mother. The diplomatic contention about the acquisition still continued, but he sent a troop of his best officials into the wilderness; the districts were divided into small circles; the whole surface of the country valued in the shortest time, and equally taxed; and every circle provided with a provincial magistrate, a judicature, a post, and a sanitary police. New parishes were called into life as if by magic; a company of 187 schoolmasters were introduced into the country; the worthy Semler had sought out and drilled some of them. Numbers of German artisans were hired, machine and brick makers; digging, hammering, and building began all over the country; the cities were reinhabited; street upon street arose out of the heaps of ruins; the Starosties were changed into crown property; new villages were built and colonised, and new agriculture enjoined. In the course of the first year after taking possession of the country, the great canal was dug, three German miles in length, uniting the Vistula by means of the Netze with the Oder and Elbe; a year after, the King had given directions for this work, he saw loaded boats from the Oder, 120 feet long, passing from the East to the Vistula. By means of the new water-wheels, wide districts of country were drained and occupied by German colonists. The King worked indefatigably; he praised and blamed; and, however great the zeal of his officials, they could seldom do enough for him. In consequence of this, the wild Sclavonian tares, which had shot up, not only there but also in the German fields, were brought under, so that even the Polish districts got accustomed to the new order of things; and West Prussia, in the war after 1806, proved itself almost as Prussian as the old provinces.
Whilst the grey-headed King was creating and looking after everything, one year passed after another over his thoughtful head; all about him was more tranquil, but void and lonely, and small was the circle of men in whom he confided. He had laid his flute aside, and the new French literature appeared to him insipid and prosy; sometimes it seemed as if a new life sprouted up under him in Germany, to which he was a stranger. Unweariedly did he labour for the improvement of his army and the welfare of his people; ever less did he value his tools, and ever higher and more passionate was his feeling of the great duties of his position.
But if his struggles in the Seven Years' War may be called superhuman, equally so did his labours now appear to contemporaries. There was something great, but also terrible, in the way in which he made the prosperity of the whole his highest and constant object, disregarding the comfort of individuals. When, in front of the ranks, he dismissed from the service with bitter words of blame the Colonel of a regiment which had made a great blunder at a review; when, in the marsh lands of the Netze, he calculated more the strokes of the ten thousand spades than the hardships of the labourers, who lay, stricken with marsh fever, in the hospital he had erected for them; when be overstepped in his demands what the most rapid action could accomplish,—terror as of one who moved in an unearthly element mingled with the deep reverence and devotion of his people. Like Fate, he appeared to the Prussians, incalculable, inexorable, and omniscient; superintending the smallest as well as the greatest things. When they related to one another that he had endeavoured to control Nature also, but that his orange-trees had been frozen by the last spring frosts, then they secretly rejoiced that there were limits even for their King, but still more that he had borne it with such good humour, and had made his bow to the cold days of May.
With touching sympathy the people collected all the sayings of the King in which there was any human feeling that brought him more into communion with them. So lonely were his house and garden, that the imaginations of his Prussians continually hovered about the consecrated spot. If any one was so fortunate as to come into the neighbourhood of the castle on a warm moonlight night, he would perhaps find open doors without a guard, and he could see the great King in his bedroom, sleeping on his camp-bed. The scent of the flowers, the night song of the birds, and the quiet moonlight were the only guards, almost the whole regal state, of the lonely man.
For fourteen years after the acquisition of West Prussia, did the oranges of Sans Souci bloom; then did Nature reassert her empire over the great King. He died alone, only surrounded by his servants.