Frederick the Great and the Rise of Prussia

by William Fiddian Reddaway

In the early years of the eighteenth century other competitors put to sea. Under Peter the Great, the new land Power, Russia, struggled to become maritime, though her horizon, as yet, hardly extended beyond European waters. But in 1722 the Emperor Charles VI. made his port of Ostend the headquarters of a new Imperial East India Company, and England, France, and Holland joined in an outcry against German competition. Nine years later they were appeased. The Hapsburg sacrificed the future of his House to its past. To purchase guarantees of the Pragmatic Sanction he withdrew his support from the Company, which none the less was able to maintain itself for more than sixty years.

If then the tide had set so strongly towards distant continents that even conservative ill-knit Austria was swept along with it, we may well ask, what of Prussia? The history of our own time makes the question more pertinent. North Germany has shown beyond dispute not only that she can now build ships, a fact which proves little or nothing as to her powers in the past, but also that she can fill them with brave and skilful seamen, whose character only many generations of worthy forefathers could create. These forefathers were the Prussians of Frederick’s day, poor, fearless, and docile, living on the borders of the Baltic, speeding and welcoming its fleets at Memel, at Pillau, at Colberg, and above all at Stettin. Why, it may be wondered, was Frederick blind to the signs of the times? Why did not he at the very outset of his reign hasten to employ the power of the Crown, which Frederick William had raised so high, to equip a Prussian Baltic Company, a Prussian West Africa Company, even a Prussian East India Company?

Never was the political situation more favourable to such an enterprise than when Frederick grasped the reins. No neighbour could enforce a veto upon Prussian maritime enterprise. Poland was in the last stage of impotence and decay. Russia, who might form a good customer, was not yet equipped for conquest. Austria could not afford to offend a German ally. Sweden had lost her sting and her province of Pomerania was a hostage at Frederick’s mercy. The Sea Powers would view the enterprise askance, but they too had given hostages to Prussia. If England played foul, the master of eighty thousand men could overrun Hanover in a fortnight and the Dutch would think twice ere they provoked the lord of Cleves. Of all Powers Denmark, the surly janitor of the Baltic, was perhaps the best able to injure Prussian commerce with impunity, but the heir of the Great Elector might be trusted to find a way with Denmark. Thus Europe seemed to invite Prussia to follow the destiny which nature prescribed, and which led to wealth. Firmly governed, armed to the teeth, learned, Protestant, and rich, she might have pursued her old opportunist policy on the mainland with full confidence that the future would bring her wider boundaries and yet greater strength.

In an earlier generation and with smaller means the Great Elector had perceived that the true path for Prussia lay across the seas. Balked of Stettin, he strove to make Pillau and Memel his London and Amsterdam. His little Armada of ten frigates attacked the Spaniards with success. In a humble way there began to be Brandenburgish West Indies, and in 1683 Fort Great-Fredericksburgh was built upon the Brandenburgish Gold Coast. But the Great Elector’s son and grandson lacked either his firm hand or his imagination. While Frederick I. was squabbling with the Dutch about armchairs, the Dutch were driving his subjects from West Africa. Frederick William, the apostle of domestic economy, was impatient of flunkeys, universities, and colonies, the several extravagances of his father and of his grandfather. Would Frederick II. prove himself more enlightened?

We see with amazement that he did not. A prince who was accounted clever, who had spent the first decade of manhood in pondering on high politics, who revered the memory of the Great Elector, and followed the fortunes of England with keen interest—how could such an one ignore what the movement of the times and the course of after events seem to point out so clearly? Among his first acts was the establishment of a new department of manufactures. He commanded the head of it to take measures for improving the condition of existing industries, for introducing new ones, and for bringing in foreign capital and foreign hands. Why did he not at the same time establish a department of marine? Why did he wait till East Frisia fell to Prussia before making even a half-hearted effort to win profit from the sea?

A partial explanation may lie in the fact that Frederick lacked the inspiration drawn from travel. The stupid fears of Frederick William that his son would become too Frenchified in his life or too Austrian in his politics had closed to Frederick the doors of the best school of his time. Who knows how much profit the Great Elector brought to his State from his education in Holland, or Peter the Great from his journeys in the West? Save at Danzig, Frederick had hardly seen with his own eyes the dignity which commerce might create. Save for two stolen days in Strasburg in the first months of his reign, a secret visit to Holland in 1755, and a meeting with the Emperor in Moravia in 1770, he was fated never to gain fresh knowledge of what would now be foreign lands except at the head of his army.

Again, Frederick’s political economy was unfavourable to Prussian commerce. At Cüstrin he learned from Hille that the only trade by which a country can profit is that which adds to its stock of gold and silver. His father had carried this idea to its logical conclusion. He had seized the precious metals and locked them up. Like a timid farmer who thinks that the bank will break, he had hidden in his cellars the hoard which represented the economies of a lifetime. Frederick therefore found a treasure of more than twenty-six million marks, at a time when the weekly wage of a common soldier hardly exceeded one.

It seems clear that a policy of hoarding could be wise only when war was in sight. In time of war that Government would be happiest which had most coined money with which to pay its troops. But in time of peace not even Frederick William could take a breed from barren metal by keeping it locked up. Profit could be drawn from it in either of two ways. The coined metal might be spent to advantage, so that the State bought something, such as a school, or a farm, or a flock of sheep, which would in the future be worth more than the sum laid out. Or it might be lent to citizens who would pay for the use of it and establish with its aid some business which might be taxed. By locking up the surplus funds of the country, however, the King stifled commerce at the birth. Frederick did not detect the fallacy, and Germany waited till the nineteenth century for her commercial rise.

Though nimble-witted and fond of philosophy, the King was hardly profound. His lector, the Swiss de Catt, tells a significant story of his first discussion with a singular stranger on a Dutch vessel, whom he did not suspect to be the lord of Prussia. Frederick, he says,

“tried to prove that creation was impossible. At this last point I stood out in opposition. ‘But how can one create something out of nothing?’ said he. ‘That is not the question,’ answered I, ‘the question is, whether such a Being as God can or cannot give existence to what has yet none?’ He seemed embarrassed and added, ‘But the Universe is eternal.’ ‘You are in a circle,’ said I, ‘how will you get out of it?’ ‘I skip over it,’ said he, laughing; and then began to speak of other things.”