Frederick the Great and the Rise of Prussia

by William Fiddian Reddaway

The captains, too, suffered in pocket from another unpopular reform. They had hitherto received from the treasury the full wages of every man on the muster-roll of their company. In time of peace, however, the native-born soldiers spent nine or ten months of the year on furlough without pay. Each captain defrayed the cost of recruiting foreigners for his company out of what he received and pocketed the balance. Now, at the moment when war ceased, Frederick cut off this source of income. By retaining regiments of special merit on the old footing he insulted the rest, and by graduating according to his opinion of the regiment’s efficiency the trifling allowances paid by way of compensation he cast a slur upon the professional honour of officers and men alike. The King paid his officers ten thalers a month and their pensions depended entirely upon his caprice. Many captains were thenceforward unable to resist the temptation to falsify the muster-rolls so as to receive pay for soldiers who did not exist.

The King’s despotic power, however, enabled him to make light of military discontent in time of peace. He resolved to keep up an army of 150,000 men, to drill it as it had never been drilled before, to educate the officers, to review all the troops every year, to build new fortresses, and to establish stores of money and munitions sufficient to enable Prussia to enter at a moment’s notice upon a war of eight campaigns. It is a highly significant fact that in Frederick’s secret estimates for the future struggle the annual contribution of Prussia was set down at 4,700,000 thalers and the sum to be extorted from Saxony at 5,000,000. The balance of the 12,000,000 thalers, which was the price of a campaign, must come from the royal accumulations. Frederick’s own expenses were only 220,000 thalers a year. At the close of his reign, when the total revenue of the State was not quite 22,000,000 thalers, the treasure amounted to more than 51,000,000, a sum fully five times as great as that which he had inherited from his father.

Frederick was compelled by his past to stand to arms all his life through. With advancing years he became more lonely and more subject to disease. In 1765 he lost his sister, the Margravine of Schwedt, and next year the aged Madame de Camas, whom he always called Mamma. His old friends died one by one and the French wits had vanished. His brothers, Henry and Ferdinand, were often estranged from him by his bitter words. Yet to the end of his life he prided himself on his cheerfulness between the attacks of gout and he permitted no disease to interrupt his labours. These were devoted first, as we have seen, to making the land secure from attack by means of the army, and also to guarding it from famine by methods which may next be considered. Close on the heels of these essential duties came tasks of fresh development and reform, the acquisition of West-Preussen in 1772, and new endeavours to uphold Prussian prestige against the House of Hapsburg.

It is of course impossible to calculate exactly the damage which a country suffers in time of war. Moral gains and losses count in the long run for more than material, and no statistics even of material losses are truly satisfactory. As between one Prussian province and another, however, a rough comparison may be made by means of the growth or decline of the population. Silesia and the lands east of the Oder had naturally suffered most, since, in addition to their quota of soldiers slain, they had long endured the presence of invading armies. In Silesia the numbers fell by 50,000, about one in twenty-three, but further north, in the districts in which the Russians had encamped, the proportion was nearly five times as heavy. Frederick’s own estimate was that one-ninth of his subjects had perished.

The loss of property had undoubtedly been very great. The conscience of the age forbade massacre, but was lenient towards pillage and devastation. But the King surpassed himself by what Carlyle terms “the instantaneous practical alacrity with which he set about repairing that immense miscellany of ruin.” So far as the material losses sustained by individual Prussians could be ascertained, they were set down by the careful hands of royal commissioners and mitigated by royal gifts. The King had at his disposal depreciated coin to the amount of nearly 30,000,000 thalers, the sum which had been accumulated to pay for the eighth and ninth campaigns. This more than sufficed for the needs of the army and the repayment of the trifling loans, less than five and a half million thalers in all, that Frederick had contracted during the war. With the residue and with the surplus revenues of the State the King set to work to prevent a single one of his subjects from falling into absolute ruin. His doles were graduated not by any standard of abstract justice, but by the rule that the minimum amount of help should be given that would serve the purpose of the State. Many towns had paid ransoms to the enemy to avoid being sacked. That of Berlin, two million thalers, was repaid out of the treasury, but Halle received less than one-sixth of what it claimed, and in the majority of cases the burghers were left to bear the loss themselves.

In the country districts, however, there was less power of recuperation than among the comparatively wealthy towns. According to Frederick’s opinion, it was therefore necessary that the State should make it possible for nobles and peasants alike to resume their normal duties. The spare horses from the army, to the number of 35,000, and many rations for man and beast from the magazines were at once distributed to the most needy. Officials allotted to the peasants wood to rebuild their houses and sums of money to assist the work. Their rents were remitted for a time, and oxen, cows, sheep, meal, and seed-corn were supplied to them free of charge. The State reaped its reward in the rents and taxes which speedily flowed into the royal coffers, as well as in the rapid growth of population.

While the King was thus doling out relief to a great part of his subjects, he indulged in a singular extravagance which has been the subject of much criticism and conjecture. Though he inequitably threw upon the people the expense of restoring the coinage, though his subjects were sending him sheaves of petitions for aid, though he was of all monarchs the least addicted to pomp, none the less, three months after peace had been signed he began to build a third palace at Potsdam. The astonished Prussians believed that the cost was 22,000,000 thalers. If no more than one-tenth of this was actually expended, the King lavished on a superfluity more than one-third of the sum that he assigned to the restoration of the land.

Those who insist that he did nothing without a motive of State may find it in his desire to convince foreign Powers that it was dangerous to attack a nation which could afford luxuries while its enemies were deep in debt. Other conjectures are possible. Frederick loved to indulge the hope that the Sciences, which had visited Greece and Italy, France and England, in turn, might settle for a while in Prussia, and the new palace, like the salary paid to Voltaire, might be regarded as a sacrifice at their altar. The claims of the new Prussian industries, especially the manufacture of silk, which was largely used in adorning the interior, may have induced the King to provide an artificial market in this way. Frederick’s Versailles, however, remains to this day both a monument to his absolutism and an enigma.

THE NEW PALACE AT POTSDAM.