Before the reign of Louis XVI. can be described, it is necessary to glance at the career of Frederic the Great, and the condition of the various European states, at a period contemporary with the Seven Years' War—the great war of the eighteenth century, before the breaking out of the French Revolution.
References.—For a general view of the reign of Louis XV., see the histories of Lacretelle, Voltaire, and Crowe. The scheme of Law is best explained in Smyth's Lectures, and Anderson's History of Commerce. The struggles between the king and the Parliament of Paris are tolerably described in the History of Adolphus. For a view of the Jansenist Controversy, see Du Pin's Ecclesiastical History, Ranke's History of the Popes, Pascal's Provincial Letters, and Stephens's article in the Edinburgh Review, on the Port Royalists. The fall of the Jesuits has been admirably treated by Quinet. James has written a good sketch of the lives of Fleury and Choiseul. For the manners of the court of Louis XV., the numerous memoirs and letters, which were written during the period, must be consulted; the most amusing of which, and, in a certain sense, instructive, are too infamous to be named.[(Back to Contents)]
CHAPTER XXIII.
FREDERIC THE GREAT.
Frederic II. of Frederic William. Prussia has won a name which will be immortal on Moloch's catalogue of military heroes. His singular character extorts our admiration, while it calls forth our aversion, admiration for his great abilities, sagacity, and self-reliance, and disgust for his cruelties, his malice, his suspicions, and his tricks. He had no faith in virtue or disinterestedness, and trusted only to mechanical agencies—to the power of armies—to the principle of fear. He was not indifferent to literature, or the improvement of his nation; but war was alike his absorbing passion and his highest glory. Peter the Great was half a barbarian, and Charles XII. half a madman; but Frederic was neither barbarous in his tastes, nor wild in his schemes. Louis XIV. plunged his nation in war from puerile egotism, and William III. fought for the great cause of religious and civil liberty; but Frederic, from the excitement which war produced, and the restless ambition of plundering what was not his own.
He was born in the royal palace of Berlin, in 1712—ten years after Prussia had become a kingdom, and in the lifetime of his grandfather, Frederic I. The fortunes of his family were made by his great-grandfather, called the Great Elector, of the house of Hohenzollern. He could not make Brandenburg a fertile province; so he turned it into a military state. He was wise, benignant, and universally beloved. But few of his amiable qualities were inherited by his great-grandson. Frederic II. resembled more his whimsical and tyrannical father, Frederic William, who beat his children without a cause, and sent his subjects to prison from mere caprice. When his ambassador, in London, was allowed only one thousand pounds a year, he gave a bounty of thirteen hundred pounds to a tall Irishman, to join his famous body-guard, a regiment of men who were each over six feet high. He would kick women in the streets, abuse clergymen for looking on the soldiers, and insult his son's tutor for teaching him Latin. But, abating his coarseness, his brutality, and his cruelty, he was a Christian, after a certain model. He had respect for the institutions of religion, denounced all amusements as sinful, and read a sermon aloud, every afternoon, to his family. His son perceived his inconsistencies, and grew up an infidel. There was no sympathy between father and son, and the father even hated the heir of his house and throne. The young prince was kept on bread and water; his most moderate wishes were disregarded; he was surrounded with spies; he was cruelly beaten and imprisoned, and abused as a monster and a heathen. The cruel treatment which the prince received induced him to fly; his flight was discovered; he was brought back to Berlin, condemned to death as a deserter and only saved from the fate of a malefactor by the intercession of half of the crowned heads of Europe. A hollow reconciliation was effected; and the prince was permitted, at last, to retire to one of the royal palaces, where he amused himself with books, billiards, balls, and banquets. He opened a correspondence with Voltaire, and became an ardent admirer of his opinions.
In 1740, the old king died, and Frederic II. Accession of Frederic the Great. mounted an absolute throne. He found a well filled treasury, and a splendidly disciplined army. His customary pleasures were abandoned, and dreams of glory filled his ambitious soul.
Scarcely was he seated on his throne before military aggrandizement became the animating principle of his life.
His first war was the conquest of Silesia, one of the richest provinces of the Austrian empire. It belonged to Maria Theresa, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, daughter of the late emperor of Germany, whose succession was guaranteed by virtue of the Pragmatic Sanction—a law which the Emperor Charles passed respecting his daughter's claim, and which claim was recognized by the old king of Prussia, and ratified by all the leading powers of Europe. Without a declaration of war, without complaints, without a cause, scarcely without a pretext, from the mere lust of dominion, Frederic commenced hostilities, in the depth of winter, when invasion was unexpected, and when the garrisons were defenceless. Without a battle, one of the oldest provinces of Austria was seized, and the royal robber returned in triumph to his capital.