Frederick the Great and the Rise of Prussia

by William Fiddian Reddaway

Frederick had fainted. It was the duty of the chaplain to pass straight from the dead offender to the living, and to exhort him to repent. But nature made this royal order of none effect. The prince, when he came to, could only stare dumbly at the gloomy pall which draped the body of his friend. At two o’clock some citizens brought a coffin and bore away the corpse, but Frederick could not withdraw his gaze from the place of execution. All that day he took no food. At night he passed from delirium into a second swoon—then fell to raving anew. When morning broke he declared that Katte was standing before him. But the very violence of his emotion made the reaction swift. On the same day he told the doctor that he was well and asked him for a certain powder. Next day, after much talk with the chaplain on matters of religion, he learned from him that Katte’s fate was not to be his own. Nine days later he made peace with Grumbkow, who came at the head of yet another Commission to exact an oath of strict obedience to the King, and to open the prison doors a little wider. Before Christmas he was reported to be “as merry as a lark.”

The conduct of father and son during this crisis is peculiarly worthy of attention because each was his own counsellor, and because Frederick never again lay under a scrutiny so searching. In the summer of 1730 the King reaped all that he had sown during his son’s boyhood. He found in his heir a youth whom he distrusted and despised but could not get rid of. He therefore began the task anew and inaugurated a second education sterner than the first. He had slain his son’s friend, not, as he professed, “that justice should not entirely leave the world,” but that he might, in spite of past failures, fashion an heir after his own heart. The loyal father of the dead man found consolation in viewing his loss as a sacrifice to this design. That this, which he believed to be indispensable to the welfare of Prussia, was the leading motive of the King’s policy, grew clearer as his outbursts of wrath against his son became less frequent and less fierce. It inspired Frederick also with a leading motive—to beguile his father into believing that he had his way.

His first education made him a rebel; his second, a hypocrite. Katte’s death had taught him once and for all that life would be tolerable only if he gained his father’s confidence. To this end he applied every art which a fertile brain could devise and an unscrupulous actor could practise. He exhausted the language of contrition for the past. He promised full amendment for the future. He sent letters, as many as his father would consent to receive, and the burden of all was that he was indeed a new man, a second Frederick William, adoring the things that he had burned and burning those that he had adored. The new Frederick is interested in tall soldiers, his father’s hobby, and longs to put on the uniform which he had been wont to call his winding-sheet. He relishes theology and after argument abandons what his father calls “the damned heresy” of predestination. He professes to find pleasure in the work of the estates committee and informs his father with ecstasy that the rent of some royal domains can be raised. He tries to propitiate the King of Prussia as Philip of Spain tried to propitiate the English people, by pretending to a taste for beer. Even his opinion of his own family has swiftly changed. He now pretends to realise that his mother is a mischievous intriguer; to be content that his sister shall abjure the throne of England and marry an obscure Hohenzollern of Baireuth; to desire that his father may live to see his children’s children grow up around him. Finally he receives at the hands of Frederick William a regiment and a wife and withdraws into the marshy solitudes of Brandenburg to make the best of both.

It is the duty of Frederick’s biographer to mark from Frederick’s point of view the stages of this second education. The first period lasted rather more than two and a half years, from November, 1730, to June, 1733, and therefore roughly corresponds with the period of residence at an English university which is usually enjoyed at the age at which the Crown Prince had then arrived. This course began and ended with a crime. Katte was done to death for a military offence which a tribunal representing the most sternly disciplined army in the world had declared not to be death-worthy—though their commander-in-chief and king demanded another verdict. A fortnight later, that is, on November 20, 1730, Frederick was admitted as a humble participant in the proceedings of the local Chamber of War and Domains—to assist in duties which he privately styled the work of brigands. He was to study agriculture under the Director, Hille, and in general to survey the foundations of the Prussian State.

He was still a close prisoner living at Cüstrin under the heavy cloud of the King’s displeasure. At Christmas he fell ill and his father wrote on the margin of a report which told him of it: “If there were any good in him he would die, but I am certain that he will not die, for weeds never disappear.” He was forbidden all books save bible, hymn-book, and Arndt’s True Christianity, a work of devotion dear to humble believers in many lands. Geometry and fortifications were classed as “amusement” and forbidden, along with cards, music, dancing, summer-clothing, and meals outside the house. Again, as in the early days of August, Frederick William entrusted him to the care of three nobles. These were to refuse to converse with him on any subject save “the Word of God, the constitution of the land, manufactures, police, agriculture, accounts, leases, and lawsuits.” Such a scheme of education, aimed at compounding a king out of a recluse and an attorney, it is hardly necessary to discuss. We hardly know whether to think the King a simpleton for imagining that he would be obeyed, or a fool for continuing to issue minute directions if he knew that he would not. What is certain is that Frederick’s household revelled in forbidden gifts, diverted itself as best it could, and pressed unceasingly for further freedom. One pleasure, as Frederick William knew in his heart, sweetened his son’s captivity,—in exile he was at least safe from the sight of his father.

The first dawn of forgiveness took place on August 15, 1731, the King’s forty-third birthday. Then Frederick received his father in his shabby lodging, kissed his feet, listened to his reproaches, confessed once more that it was he who had led Katte astray, and finally received the royal embrace before all the people. Soon came permission to engage in the practical study of agriculture, attended by an increase of liberty and even of amusement. The King still imposed restrictions upon Frederick’s reading and ordered him to sing hymns. He was never to be alone or to speak privately to anybody, especially to any girl or woman. Within a fortnight of his father’s visit he had begun his courtship of the young wife of Colonel von Wreech.

The remaining months of the year 1731 brought Frederick great pleasure and a heavy blow. He grew in favour with his father, who in November summoned him to appear for a short time at Berlin and at last promised to restore to him his rank in the army. But at the same time he lost his sister. Wilhelmina was forced by her father into an unhappy marriage with the Margrave of Baireuth, a humble cousin whose title to the favour of his bride was that by accepting him she propitiated her father and freed herself from a still less bearable suitor. Elated by the progress of his own fortunes, Frederick seems for the moment to have been insensible to her trouble and to his own loss. By the King’s order he paid his sister a visit. But he treated her coldly when they met, broke off the conversation abruptly, and walked into the room to which her husband had courteously withdrawn. “He scanned him for some time from head to foot,” writes Wilhelmina, “and after addressing to him a few words of cold politeness he withdrew.... I could not recognise that dear brother who had cost me so many tears and for whom I had sacrificed myself.” Frederick’s standard of behaviour towards his social inferiors was however revealed by other incidents at this time. His tutor, Hille, was a man of the middle classes. In his official position he received reports from a Landrat, or Sheriff, who was of noble birth. A reference by Hille to these reports drew from the Crown Prince the remark that it was singular that a nobleman should render account to a man of the middle class. Next year he wrote to Grumbkow that his daughter was “without charms and without ancestors.”

ELIZABETH CHRISTINA OF BRUNSWICK.

FROM AN OLD PRINT.