Frederick the Great and the Rise of Prussia

by William Fiddian Reddaway

CHAPTER XI
FREDERICK AND EUROPE, 1763–1786

The chief significance of the Peace of Hubertusburg for Prussia was not expressed in any of its clauses. The signature of the treaty implied that Europe renounced the endeavour to deprive her of the rank among the Great Powers which she had arrogated to herself in 1740. Their survival of the great ordeal conferred a new consequence upon Frederick and his State. “Frederick himself,” Mr. James Sime happily says, “acquired both in Germany and in Europe the indefinable influence which springs from the recognition of great gifts that have been proved by great deeds.” The brief sketch of his domestic labours that has been given in Chapter X. suggests that he was not lacking in the energy which was needed to maintain this influence and to derive full profit from it. The history of his dealings with foreign Powers during the latter half of his reign is the story of how this was done.

JOSEPH THE SECOND.

AFTER THE PAINTING BY LISTARD.

From the moment at which he signed the treaty down to the day of his death, Frederick felt that Austria was still his enemy. Joseph II., the eldest son of the Queen, who was unanimously elected Emperor in 1765, had learned politics from the King of Prussia. He desired nothing so much as to restore the immemorial pre-eminence of his House by a sudden blow at its upstart rival. Frederick, who had spies everywhere, was soon acquainted with the ambitions of the restless youth. For the present he could place some reliance on the pacific influence of the Queen and more on the emptiness of the Austrian treasury, but he was none the less compelled to make it his foremost task to thwart successive Hapsburg schemes of aggrandisement.

His security was the greater, however, because the Peace of Paris of 1763 reconciled France and England as little as the Peace of Hubertusburg reconciled Austria and Prussia. Frederick, it is true, was still treated with coldness by the French, who clung to their alliance with the Queen, and he was resolved never again to trust an English ministry. With a rare access of spite, indeed, he condemned the charger which he had named after Lord Bute to be yoked with a mule and to perform humiliating duties in his sight. But though neither of the Great Powers of the West was his ally, their latent hostility was still too incurable to permit them to unite against him.

On the remaining Great Power, therefore, the well-being of Prussia depended. The Seven Years’ War of the future, which Frederick was always labouring to avert by means of elaborate armaments, was improbable if Russia stood neutral and impossible if she became his ally. From 1763 onwards the Russian alliance was the prize for which he strove. He had to surmount the obstacle that as sovereign of Ost-Preussen he was the natural enemy of the Russian designs upon Poland. But Austria, on the other hand, besides being interested in Poland, was the natural enemy of the Russian designs upon the Turk. Frederick might reasonably hope that by humouring Russia to the extreme limit which the interests of his State permitted, he might establish a good understanding with her to the prejudice of the more formidable empire in the south.

Catherine, whose throne was far from secure, seemed at first resolved to shun a new connexion with the ally of her murdered husband. Early in October, 1763, however, her neighbour, Augustus, died, and the stress of the election to the throne of Poland compelled her to seek the aid of some foreign Power. France, Austria, and finally the Russian faction in Poland all disappointed her, and she feared a hostile combination between Prussia and the Turk. On April 11, 1764, therefore, Frederick’s desire was gratified. He bound himself to aid Catherine in upholding the existing constitutional anarchy in Poland and in Sweden, and received in return the coveted Russian guarantee for Silesia. Then, by means of force and corruption, Stanislaus Poniatowski was installed as King of Poland (September 7, 1764). “God said, let it be light, and it was light,” was Frederick’s congratulation to Catherine. “You speak and the world is silent before you.”