Frederick the Great and the Rise of Prussia

by William Fiddian Reddaway

To realise how unfettered was the authority that Frederick wielded we must consider the peculiar structure of the society over which he ruled and of the machinery by which he ruled it. Frederick’s Prussia was a state which just a century of strong monarchical rule had manufactured out of a number of Hohenzollern fiefs. Its basis still remained feudal. There were few social classes, and strong barriers separated class from class. The career open to a Prussian was strictly limited by his birth. Between town and country the law reared a dividing wall, unseen but impassable. Townsmen alone were allowed to become manufacturers, merchants, and civil servants. They paid a special tax, the “Excise,” levied on the articles which they consumed. They had magistrates of their own choosing, a relic of the municipal independence which the Great Elector had broken down.

To the countryfolk, on the other hand, the King looked for his army. They were divided into two great classes; the nobles, who alone might become officers, and the peasants, who were still serfs tied to the estates of their lords. The nobles enjoyed exemption from ordinary taxes and paid only a small feudal rent to the Crown. Upon the shoulders of the peasants fell the heavy burden of the “Contribution,” a direct payment in money. Neither they nor the nobles might become craftsmen or engage in commerce. The barrier which separated the two classes of countryfolk was as firm as that which separated both from the dwellers in towns. New patents of nobility were rarely granted by the King, but all the children of a noble were nobles. Even the soil was divided into noble-lands and peasant-lands, and neither class might acquire the portion of the other.

It is easy to see that this system of rigid class division was unlikely to ensure to every Prussian the career for which he was best fitted. In Frederick’s eyes, however, it possessed two supreme merits, and for the sake of these he was willing to make it eternal. It provided a gigantic army and it contained no germ of opposition to the Crown.

Prussia under Frederick was practically one vast camp. Every social class had a military function to perform. The King was commander-in-chief and paymaster-general. The nobles formed the corps of officers. Some of the peasants were called on to bear arms while the rest laboured in the fields to produce the necessary supplies of food. The burghers, who have been styled the commissariat department of the army, armed and clothed the troops, and helped to provide funds with which to hire the foreigners of whom half the army was composed.

It was possible to entrust to foreigners so great a share in Prussian wars because the framework of the army was of iron. The native half of each regiment was drawn from a particular locality. It consisted of peasants led by the lords whom they had been accustomed from infancy to obey. The regiment was ruled in a fashion almost patriarchal by a commander who gave it his own name. Under this system esprit de corps became a passion, and none knew better than Frederick how to turn it to good account. To the army “Prussia” was a name which within the memory of their fathers had been arbitrarily assigned to the dominions of the elder branch of the House of Hohenzollern. Where national patriotism was in its infancy, local patriotism was all the more intense, and it was by playing upon this that Frederick, the Father of all his lands, called forth many marvellous feats of arms.

But the King, though he fostered profitable sentiment, was far too wary to trust to it over much. He had other expedients for attracting nobles to the colours and for keeping the ranks full. He withdrew his royal favour from those of noble birth who were so unpatriotic as either to avoid his service or to leave it in a few years. The social arrangements which have been outlined above were yet more powerful in securing a supply of officers. The nobles were numerous, poor, and brave. They must find some career, and what other lay open to them? When Frederick’s father began to impress cadets, many parents even tried to prove that they were not of noble birth. But with them, as with many other classes of the discontented, firm government in the long run brought cheerful obedience. “The King’s bread is the best,” became their maxim. Frederick marked his appreciation of their worth by rarely giving commissions to men of lower rank. It was not the least of his gains that he thus acquired military authority over the most influential class in his dominions.

He made sure of the common man by stern discipline. Although the Prussian members of each regiment were bound together by social and local bonds, by no means all of them were willing to fight for the King. They were conscripts, not volunteers, and they were released only when they became unfit to serve. Not a few deserted to the enemy under stress of war. The foreigners who were their comrades under arms were a varied host. Some were mercenaries, some deserters from the enemy, some keen fighting men who were glad to serve in the finest army in the world. Many had been kidnapped or pressed or tempted into the Prussian service by false promises or admitted when their own countries were too hot to hold them. Frederick’s directions to Prussian commanders for the march are based on the assumption that many of the men will desire to run away. When in time of war some of the peasants volunteered, the astonished King asked what finer deed the Romans of old had performed.

His standing remedy against disintegration was “to make the discipline so stern and the punishments so severe that the men would learn to fear their own superiors more than the enemy.”

“The punishments were barbarous,” writes Professor Martin Philippson. “Thrashing was customary. Imprisonment, sharpened by all kinds of chastisement and torment, was not rare. The most terrible of all was running the gauntlet, in which the offender was stripped to the waist and forced to run from twenty to thirty times through a living lane of hundreds of soldiers armed with rods, while the officers looked to it that every man laid on lustily. Hundreds of wretched men gave up the ghost under these tortures.”

Yet of the rank and file it may be said with more confidence than of any other section of Frederick’s subjects that they loved the King.