the first task of the student of frederick’s life-story is to rid himself of the idea that the solitary king was either wholly original or wholly free. to seize silesia, to quarter poland, to rival austria, to humble france, each was no doubt a feat which no prussian ruler before him had dared to attempt. yet in each of these, as will presently be shown, the hand of the living was at once nerved and guided by the dead. from his house frederick inherited his might, to his house he turned for inspiration in the use of it, and to it he dedicated his conquests. he who would appreciate frederick must first survey the road trodden for three centuries before him by the hohenzollerns from whom he sprang.

“why should i serve the hohenzollerns?” bismarck is said to have exclaimed. “my family is as good as theirs.” it was the complaint of the yeoman against his fellow who has saved money and bought the lordship of the manor.

the early history of the state now called prussia is chiefly the record of a thrifty family—the hohenzollerns. since the year 1415, when the overlordship4 of the sandy tract lying between the middle elbe and lower oder and stretching across their banks was conferred upon him by the emperor for cash down, frederick of hohenzollern and his descendants had remained lords of brandenburg. from nuremberg, where frederick had been burggrave, they had brought with them the vital energy and business ability of successful townsmen. so poor was their new estate that for many generations relaxation would have meant ruin. there was therefore no temptation to depart from that policy of adding field to field which is the natural law of the industrious countryman. whether from native superiority or from greater need, the hohenzollerns were usually a little wiser than their neighbours. with the aid of a family statute of 1473, which made primogeniture the rule of succession for brandenburg, they avoided the consequences of that custom of equal inheritance which has been the bane of germany. by careful watching of opportunities, by windfalls, by purchase, and by covenants for mutual succession on failure of heirs made with neighbours whose lines died out, the domain of the rulers of brandenburg was in two centuries increased fourfold. when the thirty years’ war broke out and the modern history of prussia began, the head of the hohenzollern family, who had long since become one of the seven electors of the empire, held sway over an area almost as great as that of ireland.

of the territories by which the original mark of brandenburg had been augmented, two were of special importance. in 1525 east prussia had been5 acquired. this province, which throughout this book will be called by its german name of ost-preussen, was richer by far than the mark, the kernel of the hohenzollern possessions. it had an important city, k?nigsberg, for its capital and a coast-line on the baltic. it constituted the domain of the old order of teutonic knights, permanent crusaders whose task had been to spread the faith and civilisation of their fatherland among the heathen slavs. but the baltic lands had all submitted to the cross, and the knights became in their turn the objects of a religious mission. early in the sixteenth century, the doctrines of the reformation penetrated the minds of their high master, albert of hohenzollern. he turned for counsel to luther himself. in a celibate order which had no more heathen to convert, the husband of the nun catherine bora could see only a standing defiance of the laws of nature and of god. by his advice ost-preussen was “secularised,” that is, taken from the service of religion to form a hohenzollern estate, and in time (1618), though still submissive to the suzerainty of poland, it was added to the main body of the electoral dominions. the hohenzollerns thus became distinguished from the mass of german princes by ruling territories to which the empire had never possessed any claim. ost-preussen was to them on a small scale what england became in 1688 to the house of orange, or in 1714 to the house of hanover. their policy acquired a new breadth and a new weight. hitherto provincial, it became more and more cosmopolitan, and commerce with the baltic lands and england began to6 hint to the lord of pillau and memel that his future lay upon the water.

a makeweight to ost-preussen, which would prevent the centre of gravity of the hohenzollern lands from shifting eastwards, was found in 1609, when the family inherited cleves, mark, and ravensberg in western germany. this acquisition, made on the very eve of the thirty years’ war, was accompanied in 1613 by the conversion of the elector, john sigismund, from the lutheranism which his grandfather, joachim ii., had established in 1539 to the sterner and more militant creed of calvin. this meant that at the very moment when all germany was taking up arms for the greatest religious war of modern times, the court and people of brandenburg were hopelessly at variance with one another. a calvinist prince ruled a lutheran people, and the new elector, george william (1619–1640), “of christ-mild memory” but the weakest of his line, proved to be a puppet in the hands of schwarzenburg, his romanist prime-minister. under such guidance did brandenburg, ill-knit and ill-armed, become the battle-ground between swede and hapsburg in their struggle for faith and empire.

what brandenburg suffered in the terrible decade 1630–1640, between the landing of gustavus adolphus in germany and the accession of the great elector, can never be fully calculated. the state was rudderless, defenceless, and poor; the combatants on both sides brigands, whom years of license had habituated to every kind of cruelty. what passed could be described by no more patently truthful eye-witness7 than andreas rittner, the cheery burgomaster of tangermünde, a little town on the elbe with a royal history of its own. in his pages may be traced the swift descent of the afflicted people through every depth of misery down to despair or even annihilation. the invaders—it mattered little whether swedes or imperialists—exacted in endless sequence contributions, lodging, forage, and loot, drove off the cattle, broke up the coffins of the dead, laid waste the land, and hunted down the inhabitants. the mischief was only increased by the feeble efforts of the home government to call out and support a militia. the maddened peasants turned guerilla. food failed, for who could sow or reap? men fed on carrion, even, it was whispered, on human flesh, and soon pestilence seized on persecutors and persecuted alike.

anarchy and degradation brought forth torture. the name of the swedish drink attests the cruelty of the degenerate deliverers of germany. “they laid men awhile upon the fire,” writes rittner,

“baked them in ovens, flung them into wells, hung them up by the feet, fastened thumb-screws upon them, drove sharp spikes under their nails, bound round their heads so tight that their eyes started out, gagged them and sealed their mouths. matrons and virgins were oft-times put to shame. husbands must often leave their wives and wives their husbands, parents their children and children their parents, even on the bed of sickness, for they were powerless to save them from abuse, and sometimes when they came back they found nought of them save some few bones, for all else had the dogs mangled and eaten up.”

8 not less graphic is the story told in stone in some of the tormented cities. round the giant church, spared by the swedes to uphold the lutheran faith of which it was then the temple and by the imperialists for the sake of the roman faith which they hoped to establish anew within its walls, there may be seen the tombs of many generations of citizens. those of the sixteenth century are covered with quaint adornment and graven with artistic skill. then, as war sweeps over the land, the series is broken, to be resumed after many decades with a rude clumsiness which shows that wealth and art had fled from brandenburg together.

though it would be rash to assume that any single part of the mark may be regarded as typical of the whole, there seems to be no reason to call in question the dictum of frederick the great, that his ancestors needed a century to repair the damage of the thirty years’ war. this great task was confided to a youth of twenty years, an only son, yet no favourite of his father, the elector george william, whom he succeeded in 1640. frederick william, known to history as the great elector, was the great-grandfather of frederick the great. by common consent he is reputed the founder of the glory of the house of hohenzollern in modern times. he found brandenburg prostrate and threatened with dissolution. it is from the low-water mark of these earliest years, when he with reason bewailed difficulties greater than those of david or solomon, that the progress of his state is to be measured and his own achievement thereby understood.

9 he found his exchequer empty, his palace half-ruined, the court seeking safety and even sustenance at far-off k?nigsberg, the austrian papist, schwarzenburg, supreme in the state, the mark trampled underfoot by alien hosts. how should an open country like his, the highroad between sweden and austria, be delivered from the endless war? even if, by miracle, a peace could be devised, which calvinists and lutherans could both accept, what prospect, nay what possibility existed that territories so ill-compacted as his could be welded into a single, solid state? all the needful bonds of union seemed to be lacking. what common tie of blood, of faith, of speech was there strong enough to bind together cleves and brandenburg and ost-preussen, units gathered by the chance of recent history into one hand but dissevered by hundreds of miles of alien soil and by chasms of sentiment still harder to bridge over? the constituent parts of frederick william’s domain were in 1640 dissimilar in race, in history, and in interest. they had no desire for closer relations; they had not even a uniform calendar; their only common political aim seemed to be to flout the elector, who was the bugbear of them all.

even were he to make himself master of the centre, dangers clustered thick on either wing, while behind the polish problems of the east and the netherlandish problems of the west a seer might have discerned the double peril that encompasses modern germany. peter the great and his russia lay yet in the womb of time, but richelieu and his france were in the10 full flood of successful ambition. thus the organiser of a north german power must work while his horizon was already darkening. in grasping the lands which formed his birthright the great elector was defying, though as yet he knew it not, two of the greatest forces of modern times. hohenzollern rule on the niemen was to become a challenge to russia and to the slavic advance, while the hohenzollern lord of cleves must ultimately reckon with the belief of frenchmen that the rhine is the boundary designed by nature for their state.

frederick the great.

after the painting by christian wolffgang.

during the first critical years of his rule, however, the plans of the great elector were of the humblest. striving for existence rather than for empire, he was not too proud to beg for help in every likely quarter. among our own state-papers are to be seen his letters suing for petty favours which charles i., so long as diplomacy would serve, was very willing to grant. the king of england marked the small esteem in which he held the untried and obscure elector by pressing upon him the hand of his niece, a princess of the fugitive and bankrupt house of the palatinate. frederick william’s relations with poland, the suzerain of whom he held ost-preussen, show yet more clearly how slight was his power at his accession. when the lutherans of k?nigsberg threatened riot because a calvinist was chosen to preach the funeral sermon of george william, the elector did not blush to solicit the papist king, wladislaus iv., to admonish these unruly protestants. to this end he bade his minister at warsaw “make humble request to his majesty11 that his majesty would in friendly—cousinly fashion let it please him to send a letter to our chief councillors (but as if his majesty had been informed of this from other quarters and not from us) and thereby to order them to reprove and repress this folly of the unquiet theologians.... it will perhaps be best if you solicit this work only after the departure of the diet.” the request was made and granted, and the minister instructs the elector how he may palm off the document as a mandate approved by the diet behind whose backs it had been obtained.

where charity was to be looked for, frederick william was not too proud to beg. but of all powers the least likely to be charitable was sweden, whose armies had for nearly ten years been fighting solely for material compensation. to sweden therefore the elector offered money and was allowed to purchase that deliverance from the war which was essential to all his plans (1641). he could now begin the task of his life—to reduce all his provinces into dependence upon himself and to render brandenburg, augmented and centralised, a formidable military power.

during forty-eight years (1640–1688) he pursued the old hohenzollern policy of family aggrandisement. his success has earned him the title of the great elector, and the place of the first hero of the prussian state. yet he is remarkable chiefly for his commercial instinct, imbibed perhaps during his education among the dutch, the neighbours to whom he always looked for example and alliance. on12 occasion he could display the soldierly instinct of his race, but in time of peace he was hardly a heroic figure. with domestic virtues specially to be praised in a monarch of that time he combined a weakness for strong drink which damaged his health and temper. he took pride in being abreast of the times, reverenced london and amsterdam, and was ready to haggle with foreigners for preferential rates. he wrote a good commercial hand, planted cabbages in his garden, and hammered out verses which with a little doctoring might have graced the poet’s corner of a provincial newspaper. he was a thrifty householder, save when he deemed it necessary to keep up his position by building a massive palace or giving a pompous feast. a convinced protestant, he welcomed serviceable huguenots to his capital with more good-will than serviceable papists. it is not impossible to believe that as a german patriot he took favours from the emperor with more inward pleasure than from louis xiv. in what dr. prothero terms “the ocean of recognised mendacity which we call diplomacy” he floundered without either repugnance or great success. he spent his life in unifying his dominions and made a will which if carried into effect would have dismembered them at his death. that a man of this stamp is designated great suggests that he was not only diligent but that he was also fortunate in the conditions under which he lived and worked.

in his early years he owed much to the weakness and insignificance which have already been described. what rival state was thrown into the shade if brandenburg13 was allowed to grow? thus, at the close of the thirty years’ war, the hohenzollern line received indulgent treatment. their claim to pomerania was admitted for the eastern half of the duchy. the western half was indispensable to sweden, but the rights of the elector were bought up at the price of more valuable ecclesiastical lands scattered between the mark and his possessions in the west. the bishoprics of halberstadt and minden and the reversion of the rich archbishopric of magdeburg were given to brandenburg, whose part in the war had been contemptible, by the great peace of westphalia, the fundamental pact of modern europe. yet its sacredness was so little appreciated by the elector that a few years later he would have renewed the war, had not outraged germany held him in.

the peace of westphalia had bestowed upon brandenburg and other german states a gift of more value than many bishoprics—the gift of independence. in outward show frederick william was still a vassal of the emperor. he continued to be one of the seven electors who chose the head of the holy roman empire and honoured him with lowly homage. in virtue of his hereditary office of grand chamberlain it was the duty of the elector of brandenburg, prescribed by the golden bull of 1356, to appear at solemn courts “on horseback, having in his hands a silver basin with water, and a beautiful towel, and descending from his horse, to present the water to the emperor or king of the romans to wash his hands.” as a german prince,14 moreover, he had still to look to the emperor for investiture, leadership, and advice. but his right to determine the creed of his subjects, which the peace of westphalia confirmed, and the right to choose allies outside the empire, which it expressly granted, were inconsistent with real vassalage. the gift of these admitted brandenburg to a place in the commonwealth of nations. the elector had become undisputed master in his own house. soon his horizon expanded far beyond the bounds of germany. europe, nay more, as his colonial ventures were to prove, the wide world lay open to the hohenzollern. both at home and abroad he could strike with a freer hand. but his power, though irresistible in brandenburg, was made respectable in europe only by years of toil. hence the home policy of the great elector was as straightforward as his foreign policy was tortuous. to beat down all competing authority, to establish an armed autocracy, to develop to the utmost all the resources of the state—such was the plan which the great elector designed, which his son and grandson perfected, and the fruits of which frederick the great enjoyed.

by steady pressure, by force, and at times by fraud, the great elector guarded the future of the hohenzollern power against the danger of obstructive provincial parliaments. to make the men of cleves, brandenburg, and ost-preussen feel themselves brethren was indeed beyond his power. but he ruthlessly suppressed the institutions which symbolised their mutual independence of each other and15 of himself. carlyle, the great panegyrist of coups d’état, thus describes one example of

“his measures, soft but strong, and ever stronger to the needful pitch, with mutinous spirits. one bürgermeister of k?nigsberg, after much stroking on the back, was at length seized in open hall, by electoral writ,—soldiers having first gently barricaded the principal streets, and brought cannon to bear upon them. this bürgermeister, seized in such brief way, lay prisoner for life; refusing to ask his liberty, though it was thought he might have had it on asking.”

the great elector’s chief legacy was, however, the prussian army. the ruler of mere patches of the great northern plain, “a country by nature the least defensible of all countries,” he girdled it laboriously with a wall of men. in an age when france alone possessed a large standing army, this obscure german prince raised his force from a few garrisons to a host some twenty-seven thousand strong, well drilled and well appointed.

the lord of brandenburg now became a condottiere of ever-increasing reputation. his regiments brought security to his dominions and gold to his exchequer. in every european struggle their aid was welcome. on the frozen lagoons by the baltic and on the shores of torbay, on the torrid plain of warsaw, and in the vine-clad valley of the rhine—everywhere the men of the mark approved themselves good soldiers and punctual allies. in 1660 the great elector netted his profit from the northern war by receiving ost-preussen free from polish suzerainty. the heroic moment of the whole reign16 came, however, in 1675, when all the threads of the elector’s policy—ambition, vengeance against the swedes, military creation, domestic organisation—guided him to the stricken field of fehrbellin. while playing his part in the west as a member of the coalition against france, he learned that the swedes, his hated neighbours in pomerania, had been hurled upon his domains by their patron louis xiv. he straightway turned his back upon the rhine and stalked silently across germany to rescue his helpless people. his troops had been beaten by turenne and exhausted by the long struggle with rain and mud. yet he dared to overrule his generals and to strike straight at superior forces trained in the school of gustavus and posted with a river in their rear.

the bold move succeeded. in a hand-to-hand struggle, amid bogs and dunes, brandenburg was saved by its chief. at the crisis of the fight he put himself at the head of a wavering squadron, and with one wild charge shattered the swedes and their prestige together. the result of fehrbellin was that brandenburg took rank as the first military power of northern europe and that the land had rest for many years.

fehrbellin forms a conspicuous landmark on the road to hohenzollern greatness, but it is separated by no great interval of time from a double demonstration of the insignificance of brandenburg when confronted with states of the first order. the emperor flatly refused to admit the claim of the elector to portions of silesia. the king of france dashed17 from his lips the cup of triumph over the swedes. in an age when rivers were of even greater value than at present, the great waterway of brandenburg was the oder. ere she could draw full profit from the oder, stettin, with its splendid harbourage and strong strategic position, must be wrested from alien hands. at fehrbellin hope sprang up that the time was come. with all the tenacity of his nature the great elector clung to the task. in 1677 stettin fell, after enduring one of the most desolating bombardments in history. before the close of 1678 the swedes were driven from all western pomerania. they descended upon ost-preussen, but frederick william set at naught the winter cold and his own infirmity, hurried from cleves to the vistula, put his troops on sledges, and dashed at the enemy across the frozen sea (january, 1679). the triumph of the elector was complete, but at the peace of s. germain (1679) he was compelled to surrender all his conquests at the behest of louis xiv.

in spite of some failures, however, frederick william by dogged perseverance accomplished enough to justify his reputation as the founder of the prussian state. he is still a force in germany. frederick the great and all the later hohenzollerns of renown have paid homage to his memory. william ii. embittered the downfall of bismarck by applauding a drama which represented the great elector deposing schwarzenburg, the hated counsellor of his father. throughout prussia the imperious features of the little hero of fehrbellin are as familiar to the people as his deeds.

18 with the death of the great elector in 1688 the age of iron gave way to the age of tinsel. frederick, who ruled in his father’s place for a quarter of a century (1688–1713), was a prince who prized culture above character and strove to imitate in his provincial court the splendours of versailles. from time to time, though less often than in other royal lines, the business instinct of the hohenzollerns fails, and of such a lapse frederick is an example. despising the domestic labours of the great elector, he was captivated by those ceremonious shadows which the german nation is always wont to pursue. frail, even maimed, since childhood, he developed a passion for pageants, robes, and titles. he could not endure the promotion of his equals to rank higher than his own. if the dutch statthalter rose to be william iii. of england and the duke of brunswick-lüneburg to be elector george of hanover, might not he himself, as master of the best troops in germany, also claim to rise? when in 1696 he was about to visit william of orange at the hague he declared that he could not consent to sit upon an ordinary seat while an armchair was placed for the king. the interview therefore was accomplished standing, and when william returned the visit he found armchairs of equal dignity set for the elector and for himself.

seldom has a ruler’s weakness done better service to his state. brandenburg was shielded by its poverty from the ordinary fate of german states whose rulers tried to copy the profusion of the kings of france. frederick, moreover, had not the force19 of will to break with all the traditions of the great elector. he continued to take part in every struggle as an auxiliary, but in none as a principal. his country thus enjoyed the glories of war without its penalties. it was under the command of prince eugene, austria’s greatest general, that brandenburgers helped to overthrow the french before turin (1706). and since a large army is the most splendid trapping of monarchy, frederick made his army very large. he inherited 27,000 men, he bequeathed nearly 50,000 to his son.

the climax of his reign was reached in 1701, when he prevailed upon the emperor to make him king of prussia. in a double sense it may be said with truth that he owed his crown to his weakness. it is generally believed that the chief motive which prompted him to sue for it was vanity. for months he could think and speak of nothing else. when at last the imperial license came, the enraptured elector quitted berlin in midwinter and spent twelve days in moving with a pompous train to k?nigsberg. there, with every detail of ceremony that his imagination could suggest, he placed the crown upon his head. it is doubtful whether a more sober ruler would have prized a throne as he did, and doubtful too whether the emperor would have consented to the elevation of a prince less obviously feeble. but frederick had carried on without reserve the old hohenzollern tradition of standing well with the head of the german world. he had even given back to austria the territory of schwiebus, which the emperor had assigned to the great elector in settlement20 of whatever claim the hohenzollerns possessed to portions of silesia. now he was prepared to uphold the hapsburg cause in the war of the spanish succession. what harm could there be, the emperor may well have asked himself, in promoting a vassal so devoted as this?

forty years later, austria had bitter cause to rue the error of her chief. from the very first the crown aggrandised the hohenzollern dynasty. it consecrated their ambition, enlarged their horizon, and gave them, as the lord’s anointed, a new claim upon the devotion of their subjects. the order of the black eagle, which for two centuries has been the coveted prize of service to their state, signalised the coronation of frederick i.

the great elector and the first king of prussia have this in common—that whatever may be thought of their achievements it is difficult to mistake the men themselves. of the second king, frederick william i. (1713–1740), the father of frederick the great, the exact opposite is true. his life-work, the establishment of the royal power “like a rock of bronze,” is patent to all. he himself, on the other hand, was a mystery to his own children. his most gifted admirer, carlyle, sets out to paint a prophet and ends by portraying something very like a madman. his theory of his own sovereign office was as mystical as his practice of ruling was simple. he regarded himself, it has been said, as the servant of an imaginary master—the king of prussia—under whose eye he lived and worked. baser princes looked on their royalty as a privilege to be enjoyed. to21 frederick william it was a duty calling for endless toil. he struggled to check every detail of government with his own hand, as though prussia were a single manor and he the squire. a french critic (lavisse) thus portrays him wrestling with his ever-multiplying tasks:

“have we not too many officials,” the king enquires. “could not several places be merged into one? we must see if some of the officials cannot be put down. why is not the beer so good everywhere as at potsdam? in order to have wool we must have sheep. now in prussia there are nearly as many wolves as sheep. quick, let me have a minute upon the destruction of wolves. how comes it that the salt tax has brought in less money this year than last from the district of halberstadt? the number of officials has not diminished, has it? they must have eaten as much salt as last year. there must therefore be fraud or waste somewhere. the superintendent of the salt department must be warned to manage matters better than he has done of late. can it be that my subjects buy salt in hanover or poland? every importer of salt must be hanged.”

his violence was and still is notorious. he flung plates at his children, caned his son in public, cudgelled the inhabitants of his capital, and flung the judges down-stairs. he forced his queen, the sister of the english king, to drink to the downfall of england. he vilified everything french, and insulted the british ambassador so seriously that he conceived himself bound to leave berlin. yet he kept prussia at peace steadily enough to earn for himself the reputation of a mere bully whom the emperor could lead by the nose.

22 in spite of the contradictions of his character, however, the broad principles of his reign are clear. having stripped the state of the veneer of luxury with which frederick i. had disguised its poverty, he took up and developed further the ideals of the great elector. he made the royal power absolute in the state, and increased the army till a population of about two and a half million souls supported the unheard-of number of 83,000 men under arms. these were drilled to such a pitch of perfection that macaulay could say that, placed beside them, the household regiments of versailles and st. james’s would have appeared an awkward squad. yet this mighty force was used for little save to secure the frontiers of prussia and the rights of all german protestants. in territory the “sergeant king” gained only from the wreck of sweden part of the prize which the great elector had grudgingly relinquished at the behest of louis xiv.—the mouth of the oder and with it the islands of usedom and wollin, and western pomerania as far as the river peene (1720).

prussia

after the congress of vienna,

1815

in the home department, on the other hand, frederick william i. made a conspicuous advance from the point reached by his grandfather. he showed the same military zeal, the same practical insight, the same determination to set to rights with his own hand whatever in his dominion was governed amiss, the same contempt for higher education, the same benevolence towards the persecuted of other lands who might be made useful to prussia. but he showed also a power of grasping and of simplifying the whole system of administration such as few rulers23 have ever possessed. his great edict of 1723 removed friction from the working of the prussian state. thanks to this, his son frederick found the organisation described in the sixth chapter of this book—a machine of government answering to every touch of the royal hand. he found at the same time a firm tradition in favour of thrift, diligence, and activity in the steersman of the state. we have traced the growth of prussia to 1740; let us now turn to the story of the prince who in that year linked her fortunes with his own.