During these ten years, from 1746 to 1756, Frederick acquired literary independence, and that importance as a writer which is not yet sufficiently appreciated in Germany. As to his French poetry, a German can only judge imperfectly. He was a facile poet, who was easily master of every mood in metre and rhyme, but from the point of view of a Frenchman, he never completely overcame in his lyric poetry the difficulties of a foreign language, however diligently his confidants revised his work. He even lacked, it seems to us, the uniform rhetorical spirit, that style which in Voltaire's time was the first mark of a born poet. The effect of beautiful and noble sentiments, in splendid phraseology, is spoiled by trivial thoughts and commonplace expressions in the next line. Nor was the development of his taste sufficiently assured and independent. In his esthetic judgment he was quick, both to admire and to condemn; in reality, he was much more dependent upon the opinion of his French acquaintances than his pride would have admitted. What was best, moreover, in French poetry at that time—the return to Nature and the struggle of the beauty of reality against the fetters of an antiquated conventionalism—remained to him a sealed book. For a long time he looked upon Rousseau as an eccentric vagabond, and upon the conscientious and accurate spirit of Diderot even as shallow. And yet it seems to us that there often appear in his poems, especially in the light improvisations which he made to please his friends, a wealth of poetical detail and a charming tone of true feeling, which at least his model Voltaire might have envied.
Frederick's history of his times is, like Cæsar's Commentaries, one of the most important documents of historical literature. True, like the Roman general, like all practical statesmen, he stated facts as they are reflected in the soul of a participant. He does not give due value to everything or full justice to everybody, but he knows infinitely more than is revealed to one at a distance, and he wrote of some of the motives underlying the great events, not without prejudice, yet with magnanimity toward his opponents. Writing at times without the enormous reference material which a professional historian must collect about him, he was occasionally deceived by his memory and his judgment, though both were very reliable. He was, moreover, composing an apology for his house, his politics, his campaigns; and, like Cæsar, he sometimes ignores facts or interprets them as he wishes them to go down to posterity; but his love of truth and the frankness with which he treats his house and his own actions are no less admirable than his sovereign calm and the ease with which he soars above events, in spite of the little rhetorical embellishments which were due to the taste of his time.
His many-sidedness is as astonishing as his productiveness. One of the greatest military writers, a historian of importance, a clever poet, and at the same time a popular philosopher, a practical statesman, even a writer of very free and easy anonymous pamphlets, and sometimes a journalist, he was always ready to take up his pen for anything that inspired him and aroused his passions or enthusiasm, or to attack, in verse or prose, any one who provoked or annoyed him—not only the pope and the Empress, the Jesuits and the Dutch journalists, but also old friends if they seemed lukewarm to him,—which he could not endure,—or if they actually threatened to break with him. Never since Luther has there been such a belligerent, relentless, untiring writer. As soon as he put pen to paper he was like Proteus, everything: sage or intriguer, historian or poet, whatever the situation demanded, always an active, fiery, intellectual—sometimes also an ill-mannered—man, with never a moment's thought of his royal position. Whatever he liked he praised in poems or eulogies: the noble doctrines of his own philosophy, his friends, his army, religious liberty, independent investigation, tolerance, and popular education.
The conquering power of Frederick's mind had reached out in all directions. When ambition inspired him to victory it seemed as if there were no obstacle that would check him. Then came the years of trial—seven years of terrible, heartrending cares—the great period, in which the heaviest tasks that ever a man accomplished were laid upon his rich, ambitious spirit, in which almost everything perished which was his own possession, joy and happiness, peace and selfish comfort; in which also many pleasing and graceful characteristics of the man were to disappear, that he might become the self-sacrificing prince of his people, the foremost servant of his State, and the hero of a nation. No lust of conquest made him take the field this time; it had long been plain to him that he was fighting for his own life and that of his State. But his determination had grown only the stronger. Like the stormwind he purposed to dash into the clouds which were collecting from all sides about his head, and to break up the thunderbolts through the energy of an irresistible attack, before they were discharged. He had never been conquered up to this time. His enemies had been beaten every time he had fallen upon them with his terrible instrument—the army. Herein lay his only hope. If his well-tried power did not fail him now, he might save his State.
But in the very first conflict with his old enemy, the Austrians, he saw that they, too, had learned from him and were changed. He exerted his strength to the utmost, and at Kollin it failed him. The 18th of June, 1757, is the most momentous day in Frederick's life. There happened on that day what twice more in this war snatched victory from him—the general had underestimated his enemy and had expected the impossible from his own brave army. After a short period of stupefaction Frederick arose with new strength. Instead of an aggressive war, he had been forced to wage a desperate war of defense. His foes attacked his little country from all sides. He entered upon a death struggle with every great power of the Continent, master of only four million men and a defeated army. Now his talent as general showed itself as he escaped the enemy after defeats and again attacked in the most unexpected quarters and beat them, faced first one army and then another, unsurpassed in his dispositions, inexhaustible in expedients, unequaled as leader of troops in battle. So he stood, one against five—Austrians, Russians, French, any one of whom was his superior in strength, and at the same time against the Swedes and the Imperial troops. For five years he struggled thus against armies far larger than his own—every spring in danger of being crushed merely by numbers, every autumn free again. A loud cry of admiration and sympathy ran through Europe; and among those who gave the loudest praise, although reluctantly, were his most bitter enemies. Now, in these years of changing fortune, when the King himself experienced such bitter vicissitudes of the fortune of war, his generalship was the astonishment of all the armies of Europe. How, always the more rapid and skilful, he managed to establish his lines against his opponents; how so often he outflanked in an oblique position the weakest wing of the enemy, forced it back, and put it to rout; how his cavalry, which, newly organized, had become the strongest in the world, dashed in fury upon the foe, broke their ranks, scattered their battalions: all this was celebrated everywhere as a new advance in military art, and the invention of surpassing genius. The tactics and the strategy of the Prussian army came to be for almost half a century the ideal and model for all the armies of Europe. It was the unanimous opinion that Frederick was the greatest general of his time, and that there had been few leaders since the beginning of history who could be compared with him. It seemed incredible that the smaller numbers so often conquered the greater, and even when defeated, instead of being routed, faced the enemy, who had hardly recovered from his injuries, as threatening and fully equipped as before. Today we praise not only the field operations of the King, but also the wise prudence with which he handled his supplies. He knew very well how much he was limited by having to consider the commissariat, and the thousands of carts in which he had to take with him the provisions and the daily supplies of the soldiers; but he also knew that this method was his only salvation. Once, when after the battle of Rossbach he made the astonishing march into Silesia—one hundred and eighty-nine miles in fifteen days—he, in the greatest danger, abandoned his old method. He made his way through the country as other armies did at that time, and quartered his men upon the people. But he wisely returned at once to his old plan. For as soon as his enemies learned to imitate this free movement, he was certainly doomed. When the old militia in his ancient provinces rose to arms again, helped to drive out the Swedes, and bravely defended Colberg and Berlin, he accepted their assistance without objection; but he took pains not to encourage a guerilla war; and when his East Frisian peasantry revolted independently against the French and were severely punished by them for it, he told them with brutal frankness that it was their own fault, for war was a matter for soldiers; the business of the peasants and citizens should be uninterrupted industry, the payment of taxes, and the furnishing of recruits. He well knew that he was lost if a people's war in Saxony and Bohemia should be aroused against him. This readiness, indicative of the cautious general, to restrict himself to military forms, which alone made the contest possible for him, may be reckoned among his greatest qualities.
Louder and louder became the cry of sorrow and admiration with which Germans and foreigners watched this death-struggle of the lion at bay. As early as 1740 the young King had been praised by the Protestants as the champion of freedom of conscience and enlightenment, against intolerance and the Jesuits. When, a few months after the battle at Kollin, he completely defeated the French at Rossbach, he became the hero of Germany. A glad cry of joy broke out everywhere. For two hundred years the French had done great wrong to the divided country; now the German national idea began to revolt against the influence of French culture, and the King, who himself greatly admired Parisian poetry, had effectively routed the Parisian generals with German musket balls. It was such a brilliant victory, such a humiliating defeat of the hereditary enemy, that everywhere in Germany there was hearty rejoicing. Even where the soldiers of a State were fighting against King Frederick, the people at home in city and country rejoiced at the blows he dealt in good old German fashion. And the longer the war lasted, the more active became the faith in the King's invincibility, and the higher rose the confidence of the Germans. For the first time in long, long years they now had a hero of whose military glory they could be proud—a man who accomplished what seemed more than human. Innumerable anecdotes about him ran through the country. Every little touch about his calmness, good humor, kindness to individual soldiers, and the loyalty of his army, traveled hundreds of miles. How, in danger of death, he played the flute in his tent, how his wounded soldiers sang chorals after the battle, how he took off his hat to a regiment—he has often been imitated since—all this was reported on the Neckar and the Rhine, was printed, and listened to with merry laughter and tears of emotion. It was natural that poets should sing his praise. Three of them had been in the Prussian army: Gleim and Lessing, as secretaries of Prussian generals, and Ewald von Kleist, a favorite of the younger literary circles, as an officer, until the bullet struck him at Kunersdorf. But still more touching for us is the loyal devotion of the Prussian people. The old provinces, Prussia, Pomerania, Brandenburg, and Westphalia, were suffering unspeakably by the war, but the proud joy of having a share in the hero of Europe often lifted even humble men above their own sufferings. Citizens and peasants took the field as militiamen again and again for years. When a number of recruits from the province of Cleves and the county of Ravensberg deserted after a lost battle and returned home, the deserters were declared perjurers by their own fellow-countrymen and relatives, were excluded from the villages and driven back to the army.
Foreign opinion was no less enthusiastic. In the Protestant cantons of Switzerland there was as warm sympathy with the King's fate as if the descendants of the Rütli men had never been separated from the German empire. There were people there who were made ill by vexation when the King's cause was in a bad way. It was the same in England. Every victory of the King aroused wild joy in London. Houses were illuminated and pictures and laudatory poems offered for sale. In Parliament Pitt announced with admiration every new deed of the great ally. Even at Paris, in the theatres and salons, people were rather Prussian than French. The French derided their own generals and the clique of Madame de Pompadour. Whoever was on the side of the French arms, so Duclos reports, hardly dared to give expression to his views. In St. Petersburg, the grand duke Peter and his party were such good Prussians that they grieved in secret at every reverse of Frederick's cause. The enthusiasm penetrated even to Turkey and to the Khan of Tartary; and this respectful admiration of a whole continent outlasted the war. When Hackert, the painter, was traveling through the interior of Sicily, a gift of honor of wine and fruit was offered him by the city council because they had heard that he was a Prussian, a subject of the great King for whom they wished thereby to show their reverence; and Muley Ismail, the emperor of Morocco, released without any ransom the crew of a ship belonging to a citizen of Emden, whom the Berbers had brought prisoner to Mogador, sent them in new clothes to Lisbon, and assured them that their King was the greatest man in the world, that no Prussian should be a prisoner in his land, and that his cruisers would never attack the Prussian flag.
Poor oppressed soul of the German people! Long years had passed since the men between the Rhine and the Oder had felt the joy of being esteemed above others among the nations of the earth! Now by the magic of one man's power everything was transformed. The German citizen, awakened as from an anxious dream, looked out upon the world and within to his own heart. Men had long vegetated quietly, without a past in which they could rejoice, without a great future in which they could hope. Now all at once they felt that they, too, had a share in the honor and the greatness of the world; that a king and his people, all of their blood, had given to the German national idea a golden setting, and to the history of civilization a new meaning. Now they were experiencing the struggles, ventures, and victories of a great man. Work on in your study, peaceful thinker, fantastic dreamer! You have learned over-night to look down with a smile upon foreign ways and to expect great things of your own talent. Try to realize, now, what flows from your heart!
But while the youthful power of the people shook its wings with enthusiastic warmth, how did the great prince feel who was struggling ceaselessly against his enemies? The inspiring cry of the people rang in his ears as a feeble sound. The King heard it almost with indifference. His heart grew calmer and colder. To be sure, passionate hours of sorrow and heart-rending cares came to him over and over again. He kept them hidden from his army; his calm face became harder, his brow more deeply furrowed, and his expression more rigid. Only before a few intimates he opened his heart from time to time, and then for a moment the sorrow of the man who had reached the limits of human possibilities broke forth.
Ten days after the battle of Kollin his mother died. A few weeks afterward he drove in anger his brother August Wilhelm from the army, because he had not been strong enough to lead it. The next year this brother died "of sorrow," as the officer of the day announced to the King. Shortly after he received the news of the death of his sister at Bayreuth. One after another his generals fell by his side, or lost the King's confidence, because they were not equal to the superhuman tasks of this war. His veterans, the pride of his heart, hardened warriors, seasoned in three fierce wars, who, dying, stretched out their hands toward him and called his name, were crushed in entire companies about him, and what came to fill the broad gaps that death incessantly mowed in his army were young men, some good material, but many worthless. The King made use of them as he did of others, more sternly, more severely. His glance and his word gave courage and devotion even to the inferior sort, but still he knew that all this was not salvation. His criticism became brief and cutting, his praise rare. So he lived on; five summers and winters came and went; the work was gigantic; his thinking and scheming was inexhaustible, his eagle eye scrutinized searchingly the most remote and petty circumstances, and yet there was no change, and no hope anywhere. The King read and wrote in leisure hours just as before; he composed verses and kept up a correspondence with Voltaire and Algarotti, but he was prepared to see all this come soon to an end—a swift and sudden one. He carried in his pocket day and night something which could make him free from Daun and Laudon. At times the whole affair filled him with disdain.