Frederick the Great and the Rise of Prussia

by William Fiddian Reddaway

Enough, perhaps, has been said to suggest that where classes were so sharply divided there was little likelihood of any national resistance to the Crown and that the Prussian military system gave Frederick a peculiar authority over two great sections of his people. A further source of power consisted in his enormous wealth. In every province the Crown possessed vast domains amounting in all to nearly one-third of the soil of Prussia. The result was that Frederick was lord of innumerable peasants and by far the greatest capitalist in his dominions. To him the nobles looked for help in time of dearth, while the townsmen expected him to bear the initial loss of new industrial enterprises. His domestic policy was directed towards the maintenance of this position. For him the notion of taxes fructifying in the pockets of the people had no charm. His ideal was that of subjects paying the greatest possible amount of taxes to be administered by the head of the State. Under his father’s rule the limit of profitable taxation had already been reached, but Frederick was able to make the collectors stricter than before. Though no spot in the Mark or Pomerania or Magdeburg was more than twenty miles from a border, the frontiers of his straggling dominions were watched with a vigilance which became proverbial. An Italian priest, whom he begged to smuggle him through the gate of heaven under his cassock, professed that he would be charmed to do so, provided that the search for contraband were not so keen as in Prussia. Liberty of commerce and remission of taxes were not among the ideals of a King who claimed to direct all the economic activities of his people.

The Prussian clergy had less power than the moneyed interest, and less desire than the landed interest, to oppose or influence the will of the King. His absolutism was favoured by the fact that in his dominions several jealous churches existed side by side, and that he alone could be the umpire in their disputes. His own point of view was perfectly clear. He valued pastors because they taught their people to obey their superiors and not to rob and murder, as, in the King’s opinion, they would do if unrestrained. If the pastors accomplished this duty with reasonable success they might, without fear of his displeasure use any ritual or proclaim any doctrine of which their congregations approved.

Frederick regarded the Protestant teaching as far more useful than the Romanist, but was determined to protect each in the enjoyment of its rights and privileges. He professed himself willing to build mosques for Turks and heathen if they would people the land. He was the official head of the Lutheran Church, whose clergy then, as always, preached the divine right of Kings. The King for his part usually jeered at their faith only in private. At times, however, he allowed his contempt for their observances to appear. When several congregations appealed to him to condemn a new hymn-book he despatched a refusal, and added with his own hand, “Everyone is free to sing ‘Now all the woods are resting’ and more of such stupid nonsense.” In the same spirit he answered the clergy of Potsdam who begged him not to block out the light from their church, “Blessed are they which have not seen and yet have believed.”

Frederick’s relations with his many papist subjects ran all the smoother because the contemporary Popes were as a rule too much engrossed by troubles within their own flock to engage in unnecessary aggressions. His treatment of the papists in his hereditary dominions was always carried out in the spirit of his answer to the monks of Cleves. Though hardly meritorious in the eyes of the Holy Father, it was too upright to give reasonable cause of offence. Near the royal palace in Berlin rose the Hedwigs-Kirche, a temple modelled on the Pantheon at Rome and built by the heretic King for the use of Romanists.

In the conquered provinces, however, a more difficult problem confronted him. The Romanists, who formed the bulk of the population of Upper Silesia and were powerful even in Breslau, could not be expected to accept with pleasure the head of an alien church as their supreme lord. The Prussian confiscation of one-half the net revenues of the conventual houses and at a later date the disgrace of Cardinal Schaffgotsch were measures dictated by needs of State, but not on that account less unwelcome to the Church. The papists of Silesia, particularly the clergy and the Jesuits, long continued to hope for the restoration of Hapsburg rule.

Even in Silesia, however, Frederick’s policy of impartial firmness disarmed his religious opponents in the end. While his neighbours were expelling the Jesuits from their dominions and confiscating the estates of the Church, his doors stood open to the fugitives and the original settlement of the relations between Church and State remained unvaried. It must not be forgotten, too, that the King of Prussia was the patron and paymaster of a vast number of ecclesiastics of all creeds. This fact finds illustration in one of the practical jokes which he played upon his needy friend Pöllnitz. Although he had already changed his religion in hope of a lucrative marriage, Frederick tempted him by hinting that a rich canonry in Silesia was vacant. Next day, as he expected, Pöllnitz came to tell him that he had again recanted and was now eligible for the post. The King replied that the appointment was already made, but that he had still a place of Rabbi to dispose of—“Turn Jew and you shall have it.” With the same cynicism he exhorted and often compelled the clergy to practise apostolic poverty. “We free them from the cares of this world,” he wrote to Voltaire after a sweeping measure of confiscation, “so that they may labour without distraction to win the Heavenly Jerusalem which is their true home.” It is not surprising if Carlyle is justified in stating that under Frederick “the reverend men feel themselves to be a body of Spiritual Sergeants, Corporals and Captains, to whom obedience is the rule and discontent a thing not to be indulged in by any means.”

If, then, it is vain to look either to any class of society or to the military or ecclesiastical organisations for a possible check upon Frederick’s absolutism, the remainder of our quest must be confined within two fields—the Judiciary and the Executive. It is idle to imagine parliaments in Frederick’s Prussia. His ancestors had freed themselves from the privileged assemblies which grew up in the several provinces under the feudal system. To this day his successors upon the Prussian throne reject the claims of their subjects to what William II. stigmatised as “the freedom to govern themselves badly according to their own desires.” Nor was the absence of parliament atoned for by the influence of public opinion. Society at Berlin occasionally ventured to mark its disapproval of the King’s action. It was, however, a narrow caste, which lacked even the wit to temper despotism by epigram. The King, though he endowed his capital with many handsome buildings, took little pains to conciliate its inhabitants by living in their midst, and on occasion did not scruple to play upon their stupidity. “In 1767, the King found the public at Berlin inclined to tattle on the chance of another war. To turn their attention he immediately composed and sent to the newspapers a full account of a wonderful hail-storm stated, though without the smallest foundation in fact, to have taken place in Potsdam on the 27th of February in that year. Not only did this imaginary narrative engross for some time, as he desired, the public conversation, but it gave rise to some grave philosophical treatises on the supposed phenomenon.” (Mahon.)

Many despotisms have, however, been tempered by the judicial system of the nation or by the established machinery of administration. We, therefore, turn finally to the judges and civil officers of Prussia for some check upon Frederick’s power. But we find that in the department of law he was as absolute as in any other. His subjects were no longer entitled to carry their suits to the Imperial courts, and the King at once supplied the deficiency, and kept his judges under by making himself in person an accessible and swift tribunal of final appeal (1744).

In this connexion the case of Miller Arnold is of world-wide celebrity. A miller living near the Polish border was condemned by his lord to be evicted for persistent non-payment of rent. He appealed to the chief court of the province for restitution, alleging that another noble, who afterwards bought the mill, had deprived him of water by restoring a fish-pond higher up the stream. When the court decided against him, he availed himself of the privilege of petition which Frederick accorded to all his subjects. The King deputed one of his colonels to investigate the matter in company with a member of the provincial court. The colonel reported in favour of Arnold, but his colleague upheld the previous decision. The King, convinced that his colonel was in the right and that a poor man was being robbed of his livelihood by a legal quibble, ordered the provincial court to make a fresh enquiry. This second investigation only served to confirm their previous view of the case, though an expert in drainage was of opinion that the fish-pond really restricted the flow of water to the mill. They declined to alter their verdict and Frederick ordered the judges at Berlin to revise it.

The judges obeyed and revised the depositions with great care. Once more sentence was pronounced against Arnold. Thereupon the King determined to make an example of those who in his name oppressed the poor under form of law. He summoned before him the Chancellor and the three judges at whose door he supposed the guilt to lie. To the Chancellor he addressed six words only: “March, thy place is filled already.” The three judges were first rated like malefactors and then flung into the common gaol.