“The new monarch, who assumed the crown with the title of Frederick William, not with that of Frederick II., to the utter consternation of the court dismissed nearly every honorary official of the palace, from the highest dignitary to the humblest page. His flashing eye and determined manner were so appalling that no one ventured to remonstrate. A clean sweep was made, so that the household was reduced to the lowest footing of economy consistent with the supply of indispensable wants. Eight servants were retained at six shillings a week. His father had thirty pages; all were dismissed but three. There were one thousand saddle-horses in the royal stables; Frederick William kept thirty. Three-fourths of the names were struck from the pension list. For twenty-seven years this strange man reigned. He was like no other monarch. Great wisdom and shrewdness were blended with unutterable folly and almost maniacal madness. Though a man of strong powers of mind, he was very illiterate. ‘For spelling, grammar, penmanship, and composition, his semi-articulate papers resemble nothing else extant,—are as if done by the paw of a bear; indeed, the utterance generally sounds more like the growling of a bear than anything that could be handily spelled or parsed. But there is a decisive human sense in the heart of it, and such a dire hatred of empty bladders, unrealities, and hypocritical forms and pretenses, which he calls wind and humbug, as is very strange indeed.’
“His energy inspired the whole kingdom, and paved the way for the achievements of his son. The father created the machine with which the son attained such wonderful results. He commuted the old feudal service into a fixed money payment. He goaded the whole realm into industry, compelling even the apple-women to knit at the stalls.
“The crown lands were farmed out. He drained bogs, planted colonies, established manufactures, and in every way encouraged the use of Prussian products. He carried with him invariably a stout rattan cane. Upon the slightest provocation, like a madman, he would thrash those who displeased him. He was an arbitrary king, ruling at his sovereign will, and disposing of the liberty, the property, and the lives of his subjects at his pleasure. Every year he accumulated large masses of coin, which he deposited in barrels in the cellar of his palace. He had no powers of graceful speech, but spent his energetic, joyless life in grumbling and growling. He would allow no drapery, no stuffed furniture, no carpets in his apartments. He sat upon a plain wooden chair. He ate roughly of roast beef, despising all delicacies. His dress was a close military blue coat, with red cuffs and collar, buff waistcoat and breeches, and white linen gaiters to the knee. His sword was belted around his waist. A well-worn, battered triangular hat covered his head. He walked rapidly through the streets which surrounded his palaces at Potsdam and Berlin. If he met any one, he would abruptly inquire, ‘Who are you?’ When his majesty took a walk, every human being fled before him, as if a tiger had broken loose from a menagerie. If he met a lady in the street, he gave her a kick, and told her to go home and mind her children. If he saw a clergyman staring at the soldiers, he admonished the reverend gentleman to betake himself to study and prayer, and enforced his pious advice by a sound caning administered on the spot. But it was in his own house that he was most unreasonable and ferocious. His palace was hell, and he the most execrable of fiends.”
And now we will turn this unlovely picture of the bearish Frederick William to the wall, while we examine a portrait of the young Fritz, afterwards Frederick the Great.
In the palace of Berlin, on the 24th of January, 1712, a small infant opened its eyes upon this world. Though small, he was of great promise and possibility, “and thrice and four times welcome to all sovereign and other persons in the Prussian court and Prussian realms in those cold winter days. His father, they say, was like to have stifled him with his caresses, so overjoyed was the man, or at least to have scorched him in the blaze of the fire, when happily some much suitabler female nurse snatched this little creature from the rough paternal paws, and saved it for the benefit of Prussia and mankind.”
Then they christened this wee fellow, aged one week, with immense magnificence and pomp of ceremony, Karl Frederick; but the Karl dropped altogether out of practice, and Frederick (Rich in Peace) became his only title; until his father became king of Prussia, and Fritz stepped into the rank of crown prince, and subsequently became the most renowned sovereign of his nation, and took his place in the foremost rank of the famous rulers of the world.
Frederick William had married, when eighteen years of age, his pretty cousin, Sophie Dorothee, daughter of George I. of England. Little Fritz had an elder sister, named Wilhelmina. There were several younger children afterwards, but our story mostly concerns Fritz and his sister Wilhelmina, for whom he showed greater affection than for any other person.
Frederick William was very desirous that Fritz should be a soldier, but the beautiful laughing Fritz, with his long golden curls and sensitive nature, was fonder of books and music than of war and soldiering, which much offended his stern father; and so great was his abhorrence of such a feminine employment as he esteemed music, that little Fritz and Wilhelmina must needs practice in secret; and had it not been for the aid of their mother, the Queen Sophie Dorothee, they would have been denied this great pleasure. But the music-masters were sent to the forests or caves by the queen, and there the prince Fritz and Wilhelmina took their much-prized music-lessons. But one day the stern king found Fritz and Wilhelmina marching around together, while the laughing prince was proudly beating a drum, much to his own and sister’s delight. The king was so overjoyed at this manifestation of supposed military taste in his son, that he immediately called the queen to witness the performance, and then employed an artist to transfer the scene to canvas. This picture still hangs upon the walls of the Charlottenburg Palace.
When Fritz was but six years old, a military company was organized for him, consisting of about three hundred lads. This band was called “The Crown Prince Cadets.” Fritz was very thoroughly drilled in his military duties, and a uniform was provided for him. An arsenal was built on the palace grounds at Potsdam, where he mounted batteries and practised gunnery with small brass ordnance. Until Fritz was seven years of age, his education had been under the care of a French governess; but at that age he was taken from his lady teachers and placed under tutors. These tutors were military officers of great renown.