the king patronizes literary and scientific men.—anecdotes.—the family quarrel.—birth of frederick william iii.—rapid recuperation of prussia.—the king’s tour of observation.—desolate aspect of the country.—absolutism of frederick.—interview between frederick and d’alembert.—unpopularity of frederick.—death of the king of poland.—plans for the partition of poland.—intrigues of catharine.—interview between frederick and the emperor joseph.—poland seized by russia, prussia, and austria.—the division of the spoil.—remorse of maria theresa.—indifference of frederick to public opinion.
there still remained to frederick twenty-three years of life. he now engaged very vigorously in the endeavor to repair the terrible ravages of war by encouraging agriculture, commerce, and all useful arts. he invited the distinguished french philosophers helvetius and d’alembert to visit his court, and endeavored, though unavailingly, to induce them to take up their residence in berlin. they were both in sympathy with the king in their renunciation of christianity.
there are many anecdotes of frederick floating about in the journals whose authenticity can not be vouched for. the two following are doubtless authentic. frederick, as he was riding through the streets of berlin, saw a crowd looking upon a picture which was posted high up on a wall. he requested his groom to see what it was. the servant returned with the reply, “it is a caricature of your majesty, seated on a stool, with a coffee-mill between your knees, grinding with one hand, and picking up the beans which have fallen with the other,”
“take it down,” said the king, “and hang it lower, that the people may not hurt their necks in looking at it.”
the crowd heard what he said. with bursts of laughter they tore the caricature in pieces, scattered it to the winds, and greeted the king, as he rode away, with enthusiastic shouts of “our fritz forever.”
the crown prince frederick had married the daughter of the duke of brunswick. she was a very beautiful, proud, high-spirited woman. her husband was a worthless fellow, dissolute in the extreme. she, stung to madness, and unrestrained by christian537 principle, retaliated in kind. a divorce was the result. the discarded princess retired to the castle of stettin, where she lived in comparative seclusion, though surrounded with elegance.
frederick the great, ?t. 59.
upon one occasion she ordered a very rich silk dress directly from lyons. the custom-house dues were heavy. the custom-house officer detained the dress until the dues should be paid. the haughty princess, exceedingly indignant, sent an order to him to bring the dress instantly to her, and she would pay the538 demand. as soon as he entered her apartment, she snatched the dress from his hands, and with her open palm gave him two slaps in the face, ordering him immediately to leave the house175
the officer drew up a statement of the facts, and sent it to the king, with the complaint that he had been dishonored in discharging the duties intrusted to him by his majesty. the king sent the following reply:
“to the custom-house officer at stettin. the loss of the excise dues shall fall to my score. the dress shall remain with the princess; the slaps to him who received them. as to the pretended dishonor, i entirely relieve the complainant from that. never can the appliance of a beautiful hand dishonor the face of an officer of customs.”
frederick, with his own pen, gives the following account of this family quarrel, which resulted in the divorce of the crown prince and elizabeth:
“not long ago we mentioned the prince of prussia’s marriage with elizabeth of brunswick. the husband, young and dissolute, given up to a profligate life, from which his relatives could not correct him, was continually committing infidelities to his wife. the princess, who was in the flower of her beauty, felt outraged by such neglect of her charms. her vivacity and the good opinion she had of herself brought her upon the thought of avenging her wrongs by retaliation. speedily she gave into excesses scarcely inferior to those of her husband. family quarrels broke out, and were soon publicly known. the antipathy which ensued took away all hope of succession. the brothers of the king, henry and ferdinand, avowed frankly that they would never consent to have, by some accidental birth, their rights of succession to the crown carried off. in the end, there was nothing for it but proceeding to a divorce.”176
within three months after the divorce, the crown prince, anxious for an heir, married, on the 18th of april, 1769, the princess frederica louisa, of hesse-darmstadt. a son was born to them, who became frederick william iii.
539 under the energetic administration of frederick, prussia began, very rapidly, to recover from the desolation which had overwhelmed it. the coin, in a little more than a year, was restored to its purity. in the course of two years frederick rebuilt, in different parts of his realms, fourteen thousand five hundred houses. the army horses were distributed among the impoverished farmers for plow teams. early in june, 1763, the king set out on a general tour of inspection.
“to form an idea,” he writes, “of the general subversion, and how great were the desolation and discouragement, you must represent to yourself countries entirely ravaged, the very traces of the old habitations hardly discoverable. of the towns some were ruined from top to bottom; others half destroyed by fire. of thirteen thousand houses the very vestiges were gone. there was no field in seed, no grain for the food of the inhabitants. sixty thousand horses were needed if there were to be plowing carried on. in the provinces generally there were half a million population less than in 1756; that is to say, upon four millions and a half the ninth man was wanting. noble and peasant had been pillaged, ransomed, foraged, eaten out by so many different armies; nothing now left them but life and miserable rags.
“there was no credit by trading people even for the necessaries of life. there was no police in the towns. to habits of equity and order there had succeeded a vile greed of gain and an anarchic disorder. the silence of the laws had produced in the people a taste for license. boundless appetite for gain was their main rule of action. the noble, the merchant, the farmer, the laborer, raising emulously each the price of his commodity, seemed to endeavor only for their mutual ruin. such, when the war ended, was the fatal spectacle over these provinces, which had once been so flourishing. however pathetic the description may be, it will never approach the touching and sorrowful impression which the sight of it produced.”
the absolutism of frederick placed all legislative, judicial, and executive powers in his hands. he was law-maker, judge, and executioner. the liberty, property, and lives of his subjects were at his disposal. he could call others to assist him in the government, but they were merely servants to do his bidding.
“during the war,” writes frederick, “the councilors and ministers540 had successively died. in such time of trouble it had been impossible to replace them. the embarrassment was to find persons capable of filling these different employments. we searched the provinces, where good heads were found as rare as in the capital. at length five chief ministers were pitched upon.”
the rich abbeys of the roman catholics were compelled to establish manufactures for weaving damasks and table-cloths. some were converted into oil-mills, or “workers in copper, wire-drawers, the flaxes and metals, with water-power, markets, and so on.”
while on this tour of inspection, the celebrated french philosopher d’alembert, by appointment, met the king at geldern, and accompanied him to potsdam. d’alembert was in entire sympathy with the king in his renunciation of christianity. in 1755 d’alembert had, by invitation, met frederick at wesel, on the rhine. in a letter to madame du deffand, at paris, dated potsdam, june 25, 1763, d’alembert wrote:
“i will not go into the praises of king frederick, now my host. i will merely send you two traits of him, which will indicate his way of thinking and feeling. when i spoke to him of the glory which he had acquired, he answered, with the greatest simplicity,
“‘there is a furious discount to be deducted from said glory. chance came in for almost the whole of it. i would far rather have written racine’s athalie than have performed all the achievements of this war.’
“the other trait i have to give you is this. on the 15th of february last, the day of concluding this peace, which is so glorious to him, some one said to him, ‘it is the finest day of your majesty’s life.’ the king replied,
“‘the finest day of life is the day on which one quits it.’”177
helvetius, another of the distinguished french deistical philosophers, was invited to berlin to assist the king in his financial operations. to aid the mechanics in berlin, and to show to the world that the king was not so utterly impoverished as many imagined, frederick, on the 11th of june, 1763, laid the foundation of the sumptuous edifice called “the new palace of sans souci.”
541 frederick, though now at peace with all the world, found no nation in cordial alliance with him. he had always disliked england, and england returned the dislike with interest. the duchess of pompadour, who controlled france, hated him. maria theresa regarded him as a highway robber who had snatched silesia from her and escaped with it. frederick, thus left without an ally, turned to his former subject, now catharine ii., whom he had placed on the throne of russia. on the 11th of april, 1764, one year after the close of the seven years’ war, he entered into a treaty of alliance with the czarina catharine. the treaty was to continue eight years. in case either of the parties became involved in war, the other party was to furnish a contingent of twelve thousand men, or an equivalent in money.
on the 5th of october, 1763, augustus, the unhappy king of poland, had died at dresden, after a troubled reign of thirty years. the crown was elective. the turbulent nobles, broken up into antagonistic and envenomed cliques, were to choose a successor. catharine, as ambitious as she was able and unprincipled, resolved to place one of her creatures upon the throne, that poland, a realm spreading over a territory of 284,000 square miles, and containing a population of 20,000,000, might be virtually added to her dominions. carlyle writes:
“my own private conjecture, i confess, has rather grown to be, on much reading of those rulhières and distracted books, that the czarina—who was a grandiose creature, with considerable magnanimities, natural and acquired; with many ostentations, some really great qualities and talents; in effect, a kind of she louis quatorze (if the reader will reflect on that royal gentleman, and put him into petticoats in russia, and change his improper females for improper males)—that the czarina, very clearly resolute to keep poland hers, had determined with herself to do something very handsome in regard to poland; and to gain glory, both with the enlightened philosophe classes and with her own proud heart, by her treatment of that intricate matter.”
in the court of the czarina there was a very handsome young pole, stanislaus poniatowski, who had been an acknowledged lover of catharine. though catharine had laid him aside for other favorites, she still regarded him with tender feelings. he was just the man to do her bidding. by skillful diplomacy she542 caused him to be elected king of poland. that kingdom was now entirely in her hands, so far as it was in the power of its monarch to place it there.
this, however, stirred up great strife in poland. the nobles were roused. scenes of confusion ensued. the realm was plunged into a state of anarchy. frederick, being in cordial co-operation with the czarina in all her measures, instructed his minister in warsaw to follow her policy in every particular. it has generally been supposed that frederick was the first to propose the banditti division of the kingdom of poland between prussia, russia, and austria by means of their united armies. this is not certain. but, whoever may have at first made the suggestion, it is very certain that frederick cordially and efficiently embarked in the enterprise.178
poniatowski was elected king of poland on the 7th of september, 1764, and crowned on the 25th of november. he was then thirty-two years of age, and the scarcely disguised agent of catharine. two or three years passed of wars and rebellions, and all the usual tumult of this tumultuous world. in august, 1765, the emperor francis died. he was at innsprück, attending the marriage festivities of his second son leopold. about nine o’clock in the evening of the 18th, while sauntering through the rooms in the midst of the brilliant gala, he was struck with apoplexy. he staggered for a moment, fell into the hands of his son joseph, and instantly died.
joseph, the oldest son of maria theresa and francis, by the will of his mother became emperor. but maria theresa still swayed the sceptre of imperial power, through the hands of her son, as she had formerly done through the hands of her amiable and pliant husband. the young emperor was fond of traveling. he visited all the battle-fields of the seven years’ war, and put up many monuments. through his minister at berlin, he expressed his particular desire to make the acquaintance of frederick. the interview took place at neisse on the 25th of august, 1769. his majesty received the young emperor on the grand staircase of the palace, where they cordially embraced each other.
“now are my wishes fulfilled,” said the emperor, “since i have the honor to embrace the greatest of kings and soldiers.”
543 “i look upon this day,” the king replied, “as the fairest of my life; for it will become the epoch of uniting two houses which have been enemies too long, and whose mutual interests require that they should strengthen, not weaken, one another.”
there were dinner-parties, and military reviews, and operas to beguile the time. the interview lasted three days. the king and the emperor often walked out arm in arm. frederick wrote:
“the emperor has a frankness of manner which seems natural to him. in his amiable character, gayety and great vivacity are prominent features.”
under cover of these festivities important political matters were discussed. the question of the partition of poland arose, and arrangements were made for another interview. soon after this, frederick sent to catharine a sketch of a plan for partitioning several provinces in poland—russia, prussia, and austria each taking a share. “to which petersburg, intoxicated with its own outlooks on turkey, paid not the least attention.”179 the second interview, of five days, commenced on the 3d of september, 1770, at neustadt, near austerlitz, which has since become so famous.
the prince de ligne, in a long letter to stanislaus, king of poland, gives an interesting account of several conversations which ensued. in this narrative he writes:
“i forget how the conversation changed. but i know that it grew so free that, seeing somebody coming to join in it, the king warned him to take care, saying that it was not safe to converse with a man doomed by the theologians to everlasting fire. i felt as if he somewhat overdid this of his ‘being doomed,’ and that he boasted too much of it. not to hint at the dishonesty of these free-thinking gentlemen, who very often are thoroughly afraid of the devil, it is at least bad taste to make display of such things. and it was with the people of bad taste whom he had about him, and some dull skeptics of his own academy, that he had acquired the habit of mocking at religion.”
the king was not a little vain of the keen thrusts he could occasionally give the clergy. in a letter to marie-antoine, electress of saxony, dated potsdam, may 3, 1768, he, with much apparent complacency, records the following witty achievement:
544 “it is a pity for the human race, madam, that men never can be tranquil. but they never can be any where. even the little town of neufchatel has had its troubles. your royal highness will be astonished to learn how. a parson there had set forth in a sermon that, considering the immense mercy of god, the pains of hell could not last forever. the synod shouted murder at such scandal, and has been struggling ever since to get the parson exterminated. the affair was of my jurisdiction, for your royal highness must know that i am pope in that country. here is my decision:
“‘let the parsons who make for themselves a cruel and barbarous god be eternally damned, as they desire and deserve; and let those parsons who conceive god gentle and merciful enjoy the plenitude of his mercy.’
“however, madam, my sentence has failed to calm the minds. the schism continues, and the number of damnatory theologians prevail over the others.”180
the king could be very courteous. he gave a dinner-party, at which general loudon, one of the most efficient of the austrian generals, and who had often been successfully opposed to frederick, was a guest. as he entered the king said,
“general loudon, take a seat by my side. i had much rather have you with me than opposite me.” mettez vous auprès de moi. j’aime mieux vous avoir à c?té de moi que vis-à-vis.181
catharine was at this time engaged vigorously in a war with the turks. frederick, by his treaty with the czarina, was compelled to assist her. this ambitious woman, endowed with extraordinary powers, was pushing her conquests toward constantinople, having formed the resolve to annex that imperial city to the empire, and thus to open through the straits of the bosphorus and the dardanelles new avenues for russian commerce.
count von kaunitz, an able but proud and self-conceited man, was prime minister of the emperor of germany. his commanding mind exerted quite a controlling influence over his imperial master. kaunitz records the following conversation as having taken place at this interview between himself and frederick:182
545 “these russian encroachments upon the turk,” said kaunitz, “are dangerous to the repose of europe. his imperial majesty can never consent that russia should possess the provinces of moldavia and wallachia. he will much rather go to war. these views of russia are infinitely dangerous to every body. they are as dangerous to your majesty as to others. i can conceive of no remedy against them but this. prussia and austria must join frankly in protest and absolute prohibition of them.”
“i have nothing more at heart,” frederick replied, “than to stand well with austria. i wish always to be her ally, never her enemy. but the prince sees how i am situated. bound by express treaty with her czarish majesty, i must go with russia in any war. i will do every thing in my power to conciliate her majesty with the emperor—to secure such a peace at st. petersburg as may meet the wishes of vienna.”183
singularly enough, the very next day frederick received an express from the divan requesting him, with the aid of austria, to mediate peace with russia. the turks had encountered such reverses that they were anxious to sheathe the sword. frederick with great joy undertook the mediation. but he found the mediation far more difficult than he had imagined. catharine and maria theresa, so totally different in character, entertained a rooted aversion to each other. the complications were so great that month after month the deliberations were continued unavailingly. maria theresa was unrelentingly opposed to the advance of russia upon constantinople.
thus originated with the empress catharine, one hundred years ago, the idea of driving the turks out of europe, and of annexing constantinople to her majestic empire. from that time until now the question has been increasingly agitating the courts of europe. every day, now, the “eastern question” is assuming greater importance. the following map very clearly shows the commanding position of constantinople, and the immense strength, both in a military and a commercial point of view, it would give to the russian empire.
meneval, private secretary of napoleon i., records that, in one546 of the interviews of the emperor with alexander, the czar offered to co-operate with napoleon in all his plans if the emperor would consent that russia should take constantinople. the french emperor replied, after a moment’s hesitation,
“constantinople! never. it is the empire of the world.”
map of the east.
there can be but little doubt, however, that the bosphorus and the dardanelles will ere long be in the hands of russia. “i know that i or my successors,” said the czar nicholas, “must547 have constantinople. you might as well arrest a stream in its descent from a mountain as the russians in their advance to the hellespont.”184
there was a famine in poland, and the famine was followed by pestilence. a general state of tumult and discord ensued. maria theresa had gathered a large army on the frontiers of hungary to watch the designs of russia upon turkey. availing herself of this disturbed state of poland, maria theresa marched her troops into one of its provinces called zips, which had once belonged to hungary, and quietly extended her boundaries around the acquisition. catharine was much exasperated by the measure.
the czarina had, about that time, invited prince henry, the warlike brother of frederick, to visit her. they had met as children when the czarina was daughter of the commandant at stettin. henry was received with an extraordinary display of imperial magnificence. in the midst of this routine of feasting, balls, and masquerades, catharine one day said to henry, with much pique, referring to these encroachments on the part of maria theresa,
“it seems that in poland the austrians have only to stoop and pick up what they like. if the court of vienna has the intention to dismember that kingdom, its neighbors will have the right to take their share.”185
frederick caught eagerly at the suggestion, as the remark was reported to him by his brother. he drew up a new plan of partition, which he urged with all his powers of address upon both russia and austria. the conscience of maria theresa was strongly opposed to the deed. catharine and kaunitz were very greedy in their demands. circumstances assumed such an aspect that it was very difficult for maria theresa to oppose the measure. at length, through the extraordinary efforts of frederick, on the 5th of august, 1772, the following agreement was adopted:
russia took 87,500 square miles. austria received 62,500. the share which fell to frederick was but 9456 square miles. small in respect to territory as was frederick’s share, it was regarded, in consequence of its position and the nature of the country, equally valuable with the other portions.
548 “frederick’s share,” writes mr. carlyle, “as an anciently teutonic country, and as filling up the always dangerous gap between his ost prussen and him, has, under prussian administration, proved much the most valuable of the three, and, next to silesia, is frederick’s most important acquisition.”
in carrying out these measures of partition, which the world has usually regarded as one of the most atrocious acts of robbery on record, resort was had both to bribery and force. the king of poland was the obsequious servant of catharine. a common fund was raised by the three powers to bribe the members of the polish diet. each of the confederate powers also sent an army to the polish frontiers, ready to unite and crush the distracted people should there be any forcible resistance. thus the deed was accomplished.
maria theresa was a devout woman, governed by stern convictions of duty. her moral nature recoiled from this atrocious act. but she felt driven to it by the pressure brought upon her by her own cabinet, her powerful and arrogant prime minister, and by the courts of prussia and russia. while, therefore, very reluctantly giving her assent to the measure, she issued the following extraordinary document:
“when all my lands were invaded, and i knew not where in the world to be brought to bed in, i relied on my good right and the help of god. but in this thing, where not only public law cries to heaven against us, but also all natural justice and sound reason, i must confess never in my life to have been in such trouble, and i am ashamed to show my face. let the prince (kaunitz) consider what an example we are giving to all the world, if, for a miserable piece of poland, or of moldavia, or wallachia, we throw our honor and reputation to the winds. i see well that i am alone, and no more in vigor. therefore i must, though to my very great sorrow, let things take their course.”186
a few days afterward, in an official document, she writes: “i consent, since so many great and learned men will have it so. but long after i am dead, it will be known what this violating of all that was hitherto held sacred and just will give rise to.”187
549 frederick had cultivated a supreme indifference to public opinion. not believing in any god, in any future retribution, or in any immortality, and regarding men merely as the insects of an hour, like the myriad polyps which, beneath the ocean, rear their stupendous structures and perish, his sense of right and wrong must necessarily have been very different from that which a believer in the christian faith is accustomed to cherish. in allusion to this subject, he writes:
“a new career came to open itself to me. and one must have been either without address or buried in stupidity not to have profited by an opportunity so advantageous. i seized this unexpected opportunity by the forelock. by dint of negotiating and intriguing, i succeeded in indemnifying our monarchy for its past losses by incorporating polish prussia with my old provinces. this acquisition was one of the most important we could make, because it joined pommern to east prussia, and because, rendering us masters of the weichsel river, we gained the double advantage of being able to defend that kingdom (east prussia), and to draw considerable tolls from the weichsel, as all the trade of poland goes by that river.”
the region thus annexed to prussia was in a deplorable state of destitution and wretchedness. most of the towns were in ruins. war had so desolated the land that thousands of the people were living in the cellars of their demolished houses.
“the country people hardly knew such a thing as bread. many had never tasted such a delicacy. few villages possessed an oven. a weaving-loom was rare; a spinning-wheel unknown. the main article of furniture in this bare scene of squalor was a crucifix, and a vessel of holy water under it. it was a desolate land, without discipline, without law, without a master. on nine thousand english square miles lived five hundred thousand souls—not fifty-five to the square mile.”188
with extraordinary energy and sagacity frederick set about developing the resources of his new acquisition. houses were built. villages rose as by magic. marshes were drained. emigrants, in large numbers, mechanics and farmers, were transported to the new lands. canals were dug. roads were improved, and new ones opened. one hundred and eighty-seven school-550masters were sent into the country. every where there was plowing, ditching, building.
“as frederick’s seven years’ struggle of war may be called superhuman, so was there also, in his present labor of peace, something enormous, which appeared to his contemporaries almost preternatural, at times inhuman. it was grand, but also terrible, that the success of the whole was to him, at all moments, the one thing to be striven after. the comfort of the individual was of no concern at all.”189
the weal or woe of a single human polyp was, in the view of frederick, entirely unimportant in comparison with the great enterprises he was ambitious of achieving. for this dismemberment of poland frederick was severely assailed in a book entitled “polish dialogues.” in answer to a letter from voltaire, he wrote, under date of march 2, 1775:
“the ‘polish dialogues’ you speak of are not known to me. i think of such satires with epictetus, ‘if they tell any truth of thee, correct thyself. if they are lies, laugh at them.’ i have learned, with years, to become a steady coach-horse. i do my stage like a diligent roadster, and pay no heed to the little dogs that will bark by the way.”
