Frederick the Great and the Rise of Prussia

by William Fiddian Reddaway

FROM A STEEL ENGRAVING.

The plea that Silesia was necessary to Prussia, that the existence of Prussia could only be prolonged or her people safeguarded or fed if Silesia were hers, may be dismissed at once. Necessity is the usual pillar of a claim to extend the area of dominion over lands lately rescued from barbarism. The Law of Nations declares that, when under such conditions two civilised states desire the same territory, one may further its claim by showing that without this addition the territory which it already has would be rendered worthless. But what might give a good title to Fashoda would be absurd if applied to Breslau. Frederick had himself investigated the subject nine years before when studying under Hille at Cüstrin. He then concluded that Silesia did Prussia commercial injury by exporting to her goods at lower rates than the merchants of Brandenburg could afford to take. This state of things, he and Hille thought, demanded a protective tariff. It could not by any stretch of imagination dictate or justify the annexation of a province. Nor from a military point of view was there imperative necessity for acquiring Silesia. It was no doubt desirable for Prussia that she should avert future danger by thrusting a wedge between Saxony and Poland, and that more than one-fifth of the road from Vienna to Berlin, by way of Breslau, should be in Prussian hands. But no Prussian could maintain in 1740 that if Glogau and Breslau remained Austrian his state would be imperilled in the same sense as the German Empire would have been imperilled if Metz and Strasburg had remained French in 1871, or as the British Empire would be imperilled to-day if Pretoria and Johannesburg were still in hostile hands. The plea of hereditary right, not that of necessity, was put forward by Frederick as the basis of his claims. In 1740 the latter would have seemed equally absurd in law and in fact.

The second question, Was it right for Prussia to attempt to acquire Silesia for her own profit? may seem to have little claim to discussion by Frederick’s biographers, because considerations of right and wrong counted for little with Frederick himself. There seems to be no evidence that Frederick either in his public or private life practised the stale hypocrisies of truth and morality. What it seemed to him profitable to do, that he did; what it seemed to him profitable to say, that he said. “If there is anything to be gained by being honest, let us be honest; if it is necessary to deceive, let us deceive,” are his own words. In the case of Silesia, his avowal to Podewils, who urged that some legal claim could be furbished up, is sufficiently explicit. On November 7th the King writes: “The question of right (droit) is the affair of the ministers; it is your affair; it is time to work at it in secret, for the orders to the troops are given.” Two days later he received the news of the death of the Empress of Russia, which was worth more to him than a thousand title-deeds. Russia had no clear rule of succession, and usually fell into anarchy at the demise of the Crown. Frederick could therefore strike southward with confidence that his flank was safe.

The question, Was it right? has, however, a deeper historical interest than that involved in the biography of a king of Prussia. Frederick’s indifference to all right renders it unnecessary to reflect in his case upon the spectacle of a good man cheerfully doing evil in the service of the State—of Sir Henry Wotton setting out with a jest “to lie abroad,” or of Cavour exclaiming, “If we did for ourselves what we do for Italy, what scoundrels we should be!” But it is to be borne in mind that in 1740 it was impossible to lay down with certainty the duty of a state towards its neighbours. The standard of right and wrong for states in their dealings with one another was not yet fixed. Nearly a quarter of a century later it was possible for Frederick to write, “The jurisprudence of sovereigns is commonly the right of the stronger.” But Maria Theresa was taught that sovereigns must rule their peoples as branches of one Christian family.

Hitherto the old idea that a state was the property—the estate—of the king had not lost all its influence. Even in England, which was already the leader of the world in politics, the dynasty elected by the nation had great weight in determining foreign policy. Without the knowledge of any Englishman, William III. had committed England to the partition of Spain, and in defiance of most Englishmen George II. was soon to commit her to the defence of the Pragmatic Sanction. But if England was not yet wholly free from the ancient notion, much more did Austria and Prussia, bundles of Hapsburg and Hohenzollern lands, resemble the estates of their rulers.

From this two consequences followed, vital in that day, almost incomprehensible in ours. It was, in the first place, a maxim universally accepted among the rulers of the Continent that the inhabitants of a province had little or no share in choosing their overlord. They might possess rights, even the right not to be divided between several lords, but they could be sold or exchanged or given away by one overlord to another without their own desire or even consent. This maxim was accepted to the full by both Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns, whose fortunes had been made by the union of family estates, and who never hesitated to barter those estates to advance their own fortunes. Thus the fact that a province would be happier under an overlord who professed the same religion with itself would, according to the ideas prevalent in 1740, afford no good reason for change. Religious oppression by a ruler, it was universally admitted, entitled other rulers to interfere. But religious differences between ruler and ruled gave no such right.

In so far, then, as States still resembled estates, the relations between them varied according to the personal character of their kings and princes. The nation ruled by an honourable king observed its engagement strictly, at whatever inconvenience to itself. If a State evaded its engagements the king’s honour was held to have been tarnished. Unfortunately for Europe, this theory had been shaken, if not shattered, by the reign of Louis XIV. The Apollo of France, the cynosure of the Christian world, the king who was the very fount of honour and in person the very pattern of chivalry, had in his dealings with the Dutch and the Germans shown himself a kinsman of Machiavelli and of Bismarck. His conspicuous severance of political from personal morality shook the faith of the world, and in the corrupt generation which followed Louis XIV. and nurtured Frederick even the standard of personal morality sank low.

At the death of Charles VI., therefore, men were perplexed about the source of law as between State and State. It seemed no longer sufficient to trust in princes, and yet what new code could be set up? Frederick’s attack upon Silesia struck a deadly blow at the remnant of the old system. His whole career was to influence the new profoundly.

In answer to our two first questions it would therefore appear that the attack upon Silesia was not dictated to Frederick by hard necessity, and that, tried by the old standard of honour between princes, it was clearly wrong. The third question—Was it wise?—is of a different order, for it is far from certain that the wisdom or folly of Frederick’s act has been sufficiently tested by time. A safe step towards the truth, indeed, is to examine the international situation and calculate Frederick’s chances of success, as a statesman would compute them from the facts which lay before him in 1740. First of all, however, we must account for the fact that Frederick, who was only the third Hohenzollern to wear a crown, found himself in a position to assail the dynasty which had held for centuries the foremost place in Germany.

The House of Hapsburg, perhaps to a greater extent than any other of the ruling families in Europe, lay under the spell of its own past. This was due in part to its native pride and sluggish blood, in part to its long association with the oldest and most dignified institution of the Christian world—the Holy Roman Empire. From 1438 onwards the descendants of Rudolf of Hapsburg had been chosen in unbroken sequence to fill the office which entitled its possessor to style himself Lord of the World. The radiance of old Rome had gilded Vienna for so long a time that it seemed to have transfigured the race that reigned there. Thus the Hapsburgs grew proud with a pride which no other House could rival, and no Hapsburg was prouder than Charles VI., the Anglo-Austrian candidate in the War of the Spanish Succession. His pride was fatal, for it banished him from the world of fact. He could never comprehend how Europe could leave off fighting to make him King of Spain, nor how the King of Prussia, who served him with towel and basin as Grand Chamberlain of the Empire, could cherish aims and aspirations which conflicted with his own. Pompous ceremonies and parchments made up so large a part of his own life that he came to believe that they expressed realities. Hence he made the cardinal error of his life. He committed the future of his House to the Pragmatic Sanction. Domestic economy was beneath his notice. While Frederick William was crying out because his son’s tutors permitted an item “for the housemaids at Wusterhausen,” to appear in the accounts, dishonest stewards were debiting the Emperor with twelve buckets of the best wine for the Emperor’s bath and two casks of old Tokay for Her Majesty’s parrots. When Charles VI. died the treasury was almost empty; the army seemed to have passed away with Prince Eugene; the ministers were blunderers of seventy and the sovereign a woman of twenty-three.