Frederick the Great and the Rise of Prussia

by William Fiddian Reddaway

Most of the territorial profits made by European Powers during the years 1713–1740 were made at the expense of Charles VI., either as head of the Hapsburgs or as Emperor. As it became certain that he would have no son, he grew more and more reckless in sacrificing the welfare of the Empire to that of his House. The future of his heir was indeed precarious. For there was not and never had been an Austria in the same sense in which there was an England, a France, or a Spain; that is, a well-knit nation, preferring ruin to dismemberment. “Austria” meant the dominions of the elder branch of the House of Hapsburg just as “Prussia” under Frederick I. meant the dominions of the elder branch of the House of Hohenzollern. In the case of the Hapsburg agglomeration, however, the subjects were too many, too miscellaneous, and too rich for the work of a Frederick William to be possible. Germans, Hungarians, and Italians were only the chief among a motley crowd of races which had come under the sceptre of Charles VI.’s ancestors and which he strained every nerve to hand down to his daughter undispersed.

The method which Charles selected was to proclaim that his dominions were one and indivisible, and descended to a female heir if no male were forthcoming. This he did by the famous Pragmatic Sanction, a document which for fifteen years, from 1725 to 1740, was the pivot of European politics. From State after State Charles purchased a guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction, which amounted to an undertaking to recognise his daughter, Maria Theresa, as heir to the Hapsburg dominions. For this he yielded to Spain broad lands in Italy, for this he sacrificed commercial prospects to the sea-powers England and Holland, for this he consented that Lorraine should pass from Germany to France, for this he followed Russia into a Turkish war which cost him great tracts on either side the Danube. For this, too, he committed what was perhaps the most dangerous of all his blunders. He played fast and loose with a time-honoured ally, and estranged the King of Prussia.

Ever since the Peace of Westphalia had given them freedom to make alliances where they would, the policy of the Hohenzollerns had been to maintain a good understanding with Austria. It might, indeed, happen, as after 1679, when Louis XIV. hired them, that some other course became so advantageous that for the moment they adopted it. In general however, the Emperor had most to give. To him the German princes still looked for investiture, for arbitration, and for promotion, and if a State desired to exercise its troops, who was so likely as the lord of the long Hapsburg frontiers to be at war? King Frederick William might reasonably hope that the Power which had given his father the crown, which had led Prussians to victory before Turin, and which had permitted him to keep conquests in Swedish Pomerania (1720), would reward his devoted service by favouring his pretensions to inheritance on the Rhine.

Though a forceful squire, as a statesman the King lacked imagination. He was master of the finest soldiers in Europe, yet he dared not vindicate his claims to Jülich-Berg without the help of the Emperor, and he could not understand that the Emperor might be reluctant to help the master of the finest soldiers in Europe. Such was, however, the truth. The rise of the Hohenzollerns had long been watched at Vienna with not unnatural jealousy. Even against the Turk Prussians were but sparingly enlisted. The gift of the crown had been hotly opposed and bitterly regretted. When Frederick William cried, “The Emperor will have to spurn me from him with his feet: I am his unto death, faithful to the last drop of my blood,” it was already a Hapsburg maxim that a new Vandal kingdom must not arise on the shores of the Baltic.

The statesmen at Vienna valued the Prussian alliance enough to employ Grumbkow and the Austrian ministers at Berlin to hoodwink Frederick William. As we have seen, they lavished pocket-money and sacrificed a bride in the hope of securing ascendancy over his son. But they blundered greatly when to please England and thereby to further the Pragmatic Sanction, they bade the King break off a marriage which all the world knew was fixed for the very next day, and they blundered still more when to please France and Holland with the same end in view they withdrew the promise of supporting him in Jülich-Berg. In 1732 Frederick William, for the only time in his life, met Charles VI. face to face and the truth with regard to the relations between Hapsburg and Hohenzollern began to dawn upon him. All his life he had been the vassal of an Emperor whom he had imagined as a German overlord, heir to the dignity of the Cæsars, who when the time was ripe would look with paternal complacency upon the Prussian claims. The vision faded and revealed a rival monarch, pompous, contemptuous, and shifty. The shock of disillusionment was terrible, but before his death he saw clearly. Once, it is said, he pointed to Frederick with the words, “There stands one who will avenge me.” It is certain that with failing breath he warned his son against the policy of Vienna.

Thus, even supposing that Frederick’s view of politics had been no wider than his father’s, that he had come to the throne resolved merely to keep up a great army and to win Jülich-Berg, he would none the less have possessed remarkable freedom of action. In foreign politics he was fettered by only one great treaty, that of Berlin (December, 1728), by which Prussia undertook to maintain the Pragmatic Sanction. But it was possible to contend that this agreement, which was made in secret to secure the Emperor’s assistance in Jülich-Berg, became void in 1739, when Austria entered into conflicting engagements with France.

Circumstances, too, were favourable to Frederick’s liberty. The very existence of the Pragmatic Sanction, a violent remedy against dissolution, was a guarantee that Austria would be harmless for years to come. If Charles VI. and his heir were loath to uphold Prussia on the Rhine, they would be very unlikely to risk their own existence by taking up arms against her. In other quarters Prussia had little to fear. Hanover, the parvenu electorate which lay like a broad barrier across the direct road from Berlin to the West, had become a dependency of England in 1714, and therefore was not dangerous. Whatever might be the wishes of George II., it was certain that Walpole would not spend blood and treasure to maintain the House of Pfalz-Sulzbach, Prussia’s rival in Jülich-Berg, at Düsseldorf. The Dutch, it is true, felt themselves menaced by a Prussian garrison in Cleves, but their course had by this time become that of a mere cock-boat in the wake of Great Britain. France alone remained to be considered, and France, with a frontier fifty leagues from Berg, was guided by a Walpole of her own, Cardinal Fleury, now nearing the close of his eighty-seventh year. If then Frederick elected to make Prussia more considerable among the Powers of the West by pressing his claims to Berg he could fling his sword into the scales of justice without great fear that a stronger hand would turn the balance against him.

Adventure in the Rhine countries had much to commend it to the young King. His House undoubtedly possessed some title to Berg, and it had been the secular policy of the Hohenzollerns to forego no claim without arguing to the death. The busy and fertile Rhineland was a gold-mine in comparison with the sterile Mark. Frederick, as an enthusiast for the higher civilisation of the West, might well feel drawn towards a duchy which lay more than half-way along the direct line from his capital to Paris. And, greatest merit of all in the eyes of a dynasty of merchants, Berg was eminently salable. The Rhenish duchies were like good accommodation-lands in the midst of thriving farms. Many rulers would always be glad of them and their price would therefore be high.

But the arguments against staking all on Berg were also strong. A statesman trained between the Elbe and the Oder could hardly be unaware that Prussia’s heritage in the West was a mere windfall and that by interest as by situation she belonged to the system of the North. Her natural outlook was towards the Baltic, which formed the only free road between her centre and her eastern wing. It was by foregoing lands on the Baltic that she had gained rich bishoprics to the westward in 1648. Baltic Powers, Poland, Russia, and above all Sweden, had steadily influenced her politics since the advent of the Great Elector. History and geography alike seemed to beckon young Frederick to the sea. Let us therefore cast a glance at those among his neighbours whom he had to take account of, whatever plan he might devise.