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FREDERIC THE GREAT."

EDINBURGH REVIEW, APRIL, 1842.]

THIS work, which has the high honour of being introduced to the world by the author of "Lochiel" and "Hohenlinden," is not wholly unworthy of so distinguished a chaperon. It professes, indeed, to be no more than a compilation; but it is an exceedingly amusing compilation, and we shall be glad to have more of it. The narrative comes down at present only to the commencement of the Seven Years' War, and therefore does not comprise the most interesting portion of Frederic's reign.

It may not be unacceptable to our readers that we should take this opportunity of presenting them with a slight sketch of the life of the greatest king that has, in modern_times, succeeded by right of birth to a throne. It may, we fear, be impossible to compress so long and eventful a story within the limits which we must prescribe to ourselves. Should we be compelled to break off, we shall, when the continuation of this work appears, return to the subject.

tentatious and profuse, negligent of his true interests and of his high duties, insatiably eager for frivolous distinctions, he added nothing to the real weight of the state which he governed; perhaps he transmitted his inheri tance to his children impaired rather than augmented in value, but he succeeded in gaining the great object of his life, the title of king. In the year 1700 he assumed this new dignity. He had on that occasion to undergo all the mortifications which fall to the lot of ambitious upstarts. Compared with the other crowned heads of Europe, he made a figure resembling that which a Nabob or a Commissary, who had bought a title, would make in the company of Peers whose ancestors had been at tainted for treason against the Plantagenets.

The envy of the class which he quitted, and the civil scorn of the class into which he intruded himself, were marked in very significant ways. The elector of Saxony at first refused to acknowledge the new majesty. Louis the Fourteenth looked down on his bro ther king with an air not unlike that with which the count in Molière's play regards Monsieur Jourdain, just fresh from the mummery of being made a gentleman. Austria exacted large sacrifice in return for her recognition, and at last gave it ungraciously.

The Prussian monarchy, the youngest of the great European states, but in population and in revenue the fifth amongst them, and in art, science, and civilization entitled to the third, if not the second place, sprang from an humble origin. About the beginning of the fifteenth century, the marquisate of Brandenburg was bestowed by the Emperor Sigismund on the noble family of Hohenzollern. In the sixteenth century Frederic was succeeded by his son, Frederic that family embraced the Lutheran doctrines. William, a prince who must be allowed to Early in the seventeenth century it obtained have possessed some talents for administra from the King of Poland the investiture of the tion, but whose character was disfigured by duchy of Prussia. Even after this accession the most odious vices, and whose eccentriciof territory, the chiefs of the house of Hohen- ties were such as had never been seen out of a zollern hardly ranked with the Electors of Sax- madhouse. He was exact and diligent in the ony and Bavaria. The soil of Brandenburg transaction of business, and he was the first was for the most part sterile. Even round who formed the design of obtaining for PrusBerlin, the capital of the province, and round sia a place among the European powers, altoPotsdam, the favourite residence of the Mar-gether out of proportion to her extent and graves, the country, was a desert. In some population, by means of a strong military or tracts, the deep sand could with difficulty be ganization. Strict economy enabled him to forced by assiduous tillage to yield thin crops of rye and oats. In other places, the ancient | forests, from which the conquerors of the Roman empire had descended on the Danube, remained untouched by the hand of man. Where the soil was rich it was generally marshy, and its insalubrity repelled the cultivators whom its fertility attracted. Frederic William, called the Great Elector, was the prince to whose policy his successors have agreed to ascribe their greatness. He acquired by the peace of Westphalia several valuable possessions, and among them the rich city and district of Magdeburg; and he left to his son Frederic a principality as considerable as any which was not called a kingdom.

Frederic aspired to the style of royalty. Os

* Frederic the Great and his Times. Edited, with an (ondon 1842.

Introduction, by THOMAS CAMPBELL, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo.

keep up a peace establishment of sixty thou sand troops. These troops were disciplined in such a manner, that placed beside them, the household regiments of Versailles and St. James's would have appeared an awkward squad. The master of such a force could not but be regarded by all his neighbours as a formidable enemy, and a valuable ally.

But the mind of Frederic William was so ill-regulated, that all his inclinations became passions, and all his passions partook of the character of moral and intellectual disease. His parsimony degenerated into sordid avarice. His taste for military pomp and order became a mania, like that of a Dutch burgo master for tulips; or that of a member of the Roxburgh club for Caxtons. While the en voys of the court of Berlin were in a state of Such squalid poverty as moved the laughter of foreign capitals; while the food placed be

fore the princes an: the princesses of the | brats. If he saw a clergyman staring at the blood-royal of Prussia was too scanty to ap- soldiers, he admonished the reverend gentlepease hunger, and so bad that even hunger man to betake himself to study and prayer, loathed it-no price was thought too extrava- and enforced this pious advice by a sound gant for tall recruits. The ambition of the caning, administered on the spot. But it was king was to form a brigade of giants, and in his own house that he was most unreasonaevery country was ransacked by his agents ble and ferocious. His palace was hell, and for men above the ordinary stature. These he the most execrable of fiends-a cross beresearches were not confined to Europe. No tween Moloch and Puck. His son Frederic head that towered above the crowd in the ba- and his daughter Wilhelmina, afterwards Marzaars of Aleppo, of Cairo, or of Surat, could gravine of Bareuth, were in an especial manescape the crimps of Frederic William. One ner objects of his aversion. His own mind Irishman more than seven feet high, who was was uncultivated. He despised literature. He picked up in London by the Prussian ambas- hated infidels, Papists, and metaphysicians, sador, received a bounty of nearly 13004. ster- and did not very well understand in what they ling-very much more than the ambassador's differed from each other. The business of ' salary. This extravagance was the more ab- life, according to him, was to drill and to be surd, because a stout youth of five feet eight, drilled. The recreations suited to a prince, who might have been procured for a few dol- were to sit in a cloud of tobacco-smoke, to sip lars, would in all probability have been a Swedish beer between the puffs of the pipe, to much more valuable soldier. But to Frederic play backgammon for three-halfpence a rubWilliam, this huge Irishman was what a brass ber, to kill wild hogs, and to shoot partridges Otho, or a Vinegar Bible, is to a collector of a by the thousand. The Prince-Royal showed different kind. little inclination either for the serious employments or for the amusements of his father. He shirked the duties of the parade-he detested the fume of tobacco-he had no taste either for backgammon or for field-sports. He had re-. ceived from nature an exquisite ear, and performed skilfully on the flute. His earliest instructors had been French refugees, and they had awakened in him a strong passion for French literature and French society. Frederic Wil

It is remarkable, that though the main end of Frederic William's administration was to have a military force, though his reign forms an important epoch in the history of military discipline, and though his dominant passion was the love of military display, he was yet one of the most pacific of princes. We are afraid that his aversion to war was not the effect of humanity, but was merely one of his thousand whims. His feeling about his troops seems to have re-liam regarded these tastes as effeminate and sembled a miser's feeling about his money. He loved to collect them, to count them, to see them increase; but he could not find it in his heart to break in upon the precious hoard. He looked forward to some future time when his Patagonian battalions were to drive hostile infantry before them like sheep. But this future time was always receding; and it is probable that, if his life had been prolonged thirty years, his superb army would never have seen any harder service than a sham fight in the fields near Berlin. But the great military means which he had collected, were destined to be employed by a spirit far more daring and inventive than his own.

contemptible, and, by abuse and persecution, made them still stronger. Things became worse when the Prince-Royal attained that time of life at which the great revolution in the human mind and body takes place. He was guilty of some youthful indiscretions, which no good and wise parent would regard with severity. At a later period he was accused, truly or falsely, of vices, from which History averts her eyes, and which even Satire blushes to name-vices such that, to borrow the energetic language of Lord-Keeper Coventry, "the depraved nature of man, which of itself carrieth man to all other sin, abhorreth them." But the offences of his youth were not Frederic, surnamed the Great, son of Fre- characterized by any peculiar turpitude. They deric William, was born in January, 1712. It excited, however, transports of rage in the may safely be pronounced that he had received king, who hated all faults except those to from nature a strong and sharp understanding, which he was himself inclined; and who conand a rare firmness of temper and intensity ofceived that he made ample atonement to Heawill. As to the other parts of his character, it is difficult to say whether they are to be ascribed to nature, or to the strange training which he underwent. The history of his boyhood is painfully interesting. Oliver Twist in the parish workhouse, Smike at Dotheboys Hall, were petted children when compared with this wretched heir-apparent of a crown. The nature of Frederic William was hard and bad, and the habit of exercising arbitrary power had made him frightfully savage. His rage constantly vented itself to right and left in curses and blows. When his majesty took a walk, every human being fled before him, as if a tiger had broken loose from a menagerie. If he met a lady in the street, he gave her a kick, and told her to go home and mind her

ven for his brutality, by holding the softer pas-
sions in detestation. The Prince-Royal, too,
was not one of those who are content to take
their religion on trust.
He asked puzzling
questions, and brought forward arguments
which seemed to savour of something different.
from pure Lutheranism. The king suspected
that his son was inclined to be a heretic of
some sort or other, whether Calvinist or Atheist
his maj. sty did not very well know. The or
dinary malignity of Frederic William was bad
enough. He now thought malignity a part of
his duty as a Christian man, and all the con
science that he had stimulated his hatred.
The flute was broken-the French books were
sent out of the palace-the prince was kicked,
and cudgelled, and pulled by the hair. At din

ner the plates were hurled at his head-some- | midst of the sandy waste of the Marquisate. times he was restricted to bread and water- The mansion, surrounded by woods of oak sometimes he was forced to swallow food so and beech, looks out upon a spacious lake. nauseous that he could not keep it on his sto- There Frederic amused himself by laying out mach. Once his father knocked him down, gardens in regular alleys and intricate mazes, dragged him along the floor to a window, and by building obelisks, temples, and conservawas with difficulty prevented from strangling tories, and by collecting rare fruits and flowers. him with the cord of the curtain. The queen, His retirement was enlivened by a few comfor the crime of not wishing to see her son panions, among whom he seems to have premurdered, was subjected to the grossest indig-ferred those who, by birth or extraction, were nities. The Princess Wilhelmina, who took French. With these inmates he dined and her brother's part, was treated almost as ill as supped well, drank freely, and amused himMrs. Brownrigg's apprentices. Driven to de- self sometimes with concerts, sometimes with spair, the unhappy youth tried to run away; holding chapters of a fraternity which he callthen the fury of the old tyrant rose to madness. ed the Order of Bayard; but literature was his The prince was an officer in the army; his chief resource. flight was therefore desertion, and, in the moral His education had been entirely French. code of Frederic William, desertion was the The long ascendency which Louis XIV. had highest of all crimes. "Desertion," says this enjoyed, and the eminent merit of the tragic royal theologian, in one of his half-crazy let- and comic dramatists, of the satirists, and of ters, "is from hell. It is a work of the child-the preachers who had flourished onder that ren of the devil. No child of God could pos- magnificent prince, had made the French lansibly be guilty of it." An accomplice of the guage predominant in Europe. Even in counprince, in spite of the recommendation of a tries which had a national literature, and wich court-martial, was mercilessly put to death. could boast of names greater than those of It seemed probable that the prince himself Racine, of Molière, and of Massillon-in the would suffer the same fate. It was with dif- country of Dante, in the country of Cervantes, ficulty that the intercession of the States of in the country of Shakspeare and Milton-the Holland, of the Kings of Sweden and Poland, intellectual fashions of Paris had been to a and of the Emperor of Germany, saved the great extent adopted. Germany had not yet House of Brandenburgh from the stain of an produced a single masterpiece of poetry or unnatural murder. After months of cruel sus- eloquence. In Germany, therefore, the French pense, Frederic learned that his life would be taste reigned without rival and without limit. spared. He remained, however, long a pri- Every youth of rank was taught to speak and soner; but he was not on that account to be write French. That he should speak and pitied. He found in his jailers a tenderness write his own tongue with politeness, or even which he had never found in his father; his with accuracy and facility, was regarded as table was not sumptuous, but he had whole- comparatively an unimportant object. Even some food in sufficient quantity to appease Frederic William, with all his rugged Saxon hunger; he could read the Henriade without prejudices, thought it necessary that his chilbeing kicked, and play on his flute without dren should know French, and quite unneceshaving it broken over his head. sary that they should be well versed in German. The Latin was positively interdicted. "My

and, more than that, I will not suffer anybody even to mention such a thing to me." One of the preceptors ventured to read the Golden Bull in the original with the Prince-Royal. Frederic William entered the room, and broke out in his usual kingly style.

"Rascal, what are you at there?"

"Please your majesty," answered the pre ceptor, "I was explaining the Golden Bull to his royal highness."

When his confinement terminated, he was a man. He had nearly completed his twenty-son," his majesty wrote, " shall not learn Latin; first year, and could scarcely, even by such a parent as Frederic William be kept much longer under the restraints which had made nis boyhood miserable. Suffering had matured his understanding, while it had hardened his heart and soured his temper. He had learnt self-command and dissimulation; he affected to conform to some of his father's views, and submissively accepted a wife, who was a wife only in name, from his father's hand. He also served with credit, though without any opportunity of acquiring brilliant distinction, under the command of Prince Eugene, during a campaign marked by no extraordinary events. He was now permitted to keep a separate establishment, and was therefore able to indulge with caution his own tastes. Partly in order to conciliate the king, and partly, no doubt, from inclination, he gave up a portion of his time to military and political business, and thus gradually acquired such an aptitude for affairs as his most intimate associates were not aware that he possessed.

His favourite abode was at Rheinsberg, near the frontier which separates the Prussian dominions from the duchy of Mecklenburg. Rheinsberg is a fertile and smiling spot, in the

"I'll Golden Bull you, you rascal!" roared the majesty of Prussia. Up went the king's cane, away ran the terrified instructor, and Frederic's classical studies ended forever. He now and then affected to quote Latin sentences, and produced such exquisite Ciceronian phrases as these:-"Stante pede morire," -"De gustibus non est disputandus,"-" Tot verbas tot spondera." Of Italian, he had not enough to read a page of Metastasio with ease; and of the Spanish and English, he did not, as far as we are aware, understand a single word.

As the highest human compositions to which he had access were those of the French writers. it is not strange that his admiration for those writers should have been unbounded. His

ambitious and eager temper early prompted |larly those which are written with earnestness, han to imitate what he admired. The wish, and are not embroidered with verses. perhaps, dearest to his heart was, that he might It is not strange that a young man devoted to rank among the masters of French rhetoric literature, and acquainted only with the literaand poetry. He wrote prose and verse as ture of France, should have looked with profound indefatigably as if he had been a starving veneration on the genius of Voltaire. Nor is hack of Cave or Osborn; but Nature, which it just to condemn him for this feeling. “A had bestowed on him, in a large measure, the man who has never seen the sun," says Caldetalents of a captain and of an administrator, ron in one of his charming comedies, "cannot had withheld from him those higher and rarer be blamed for thinking that no glory can exceed gifts, without which industry labours in vain that of the moon. A man who has seen neither to produce immortal eloquence or song. And, moon nor sun, cannot be blamed for talking of indeed, had he been blessed with more imagi- the unrivalled brightness of the morning star." nation, wit, and fertility of thought, than he Had Frederic been able to read Homer and appears to have had, he would still have been Milton, or even Virgil and Tasso, his admirasubject to one great disadvantage, which would, tion of the Henriade would prove that he was in all probability, have forever prevented him utterly destitute of the power of discerning from taking a high place among men of letters. what is excellent in art. Had he been familiar He had not the full command of any language. with Sophocles or Shakspeare, we should have There was no machine of thought which he expected him to appreciate Zaire more justly. could employ with perfect ease, confidence, Had he been able to study Thucydides and and freedom. He had German enough to Tacitus in the original Greek and Latin, he scold his servants, or to give the word of would have known that there were heights in command to his grenadiers; but his grammar the eloquence of history far beyond the reach and pronunciation were extren.ely bad. He of the author of the Life of Charles the Twelfth found it difficult to make out the meaning But the finest heroic poem, several of the most even of the simplest German poetry On one powerful tragedies, and the most brilliant and pccasion a version of Racine's Iph géme was picturesque historical work that Frederic had read to him. He held the French original in ever read, were Voltaire's. Such high and his hand; but was forced to own that, even various excellence moved the young prince with such help, he could not understand the almost to adoration. The opinions of Voltaire translation. Yet though he had neglected his on religious and philosophical questions had mother tongue in order to bestow all his atten- not yet been fully exhibited to the public. At tion on French, his French was, after all, the a later period, when an exile from his country, French of a foreigner. It was necessary for and at open war with the Church, he spoke him to have always at his beck some men of out. But when Frederic was at Rheinsberg, letters from Paris to point out the solecisms Voltaire was still a courtier; and, though he and false rhymes, of which, to the last, he was could not always curb his petulant wit, he had frequently guilty. Even had he possessed the as yet published nothing that could exclude poetic faculty-of which, as far as we can him from Versailles, and little that a divine of judge, he was utterly destitute-the want of a the mild and generous school of Grotius and language would have prevented him from be-Tillotson might not read with pleasure. In ing a great poet. No noble work of imagination, as far as we recollect, was ever composed by any man, except in a dialect which he had learned without remembering how or when; and which he had spoken with perfect ease before he had ever analyzed its structure. Romans of great talents wrote Greek verses; but how many of those verses have deserved to live? Many men of eminent genius have, in modern times, written Latin poems; but, as far as we are aware, none of those poems, not even Milton's, can be ranked in the first The prince wrote to his idol in the style of a class of art, or even very high in the second. worshipper, and Voltaire replied with exquisite It is not strange, therefore, that in the French grace and address. A correspondence follow. verses of Frederic, we can find nothing be-ed, which may be studied with advantage by yond the reach of any man of good parts and industry-nothing above the level of Newdigate and Seatonian poetry. His best pieces may perhaps rank with the worst in Dodsley's collection. In history, he succeeded better. We do not, indeed, find in any part of his voluminous Memoirs, either deep reflection or vivid painting. But the narrative is distinguished by clearness, conciseness, good sense, and a certain air of truth and simplicity, which is singularly graceful in a man who, having done great things, sits down to relate them. On the whole, however, none of his writings are so agreeable to us as his Letters; particuVot IV. 64

the Henriade. in Zaire, and in Alzire, Christian piety is exhibited in the most amiable form, and, some years after the period of which we are writing, a Pope condescended to accept the dedication of Mahomet. The real sentiments of the poet, however, might be clearly perceived by a keen eye through the decent disguise with which he veiled them, and could not escape the sagacity of Frederic, who held similar opinions, and had been accustomed to practise similar dissimulation.

those who wish to become proficients in the ignoble art of flattery. No man ever paid compliments better than Voltaire. His sweetened confectionary had always a delicate, yet stimulating flavour, which was delightful to palates wearied by the coarse preparations of inferior artists. It was only from his hand that so much sugar could be swallowed without making the swallower sick. Copies of verses, writing-desks, trinkets of amber, were exchanged between the friends. Frederic confided his writings to Voltaire, and Voltaire applauded, as if Frederic had been Racine and Bossuet in one. One of his royal highness.

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ric's wit enabled him often to show his malevolence in ways more decent than those to which his father resorted. and to inflict misery and degradation by a taunt instead of a blow. Frederic, it is true, by no means relinquished his hereditary privilege of kicking and cudgel

performances was a refutation of the Principe | prince could be about the efficacy of his army. of Machiavelli. Voltaire undertook to convey But this anxiety never degenerated into a mo it to the press. It was entitled the Anti-Machi-nomania, like that which led his father to nay avel, and was an edifying homily against rapa- fancy-prices for giants. Frederic was as thrifty city, perfidy, arbitrary government, unjust war about money as any prince or any private man -in short, against almost every thing for which ought to be. But he did not conceive, like his its author is now remembered among men. father, that it was worth while to eat unwholeThe old king uttered now and then a fero- some cabbages for the sake of saving four or cious growl at the diversions of Rheinsberg. five rix-dollars in the year. Frederic was, we But his health was broken, his end was ap-fear, as malevolent as his father; but Frede proaching, and his vigour was impaired. He had only one pleasure left-that of seeing tall soldiers. He could always be propitiated by a present of a grenadier of six feet eight or six feet nine; and such presents were from time to time judiciously offered by his son. Early in the year 1740, Frederic Williamling. His practice, however, as to that matter, met death with a firmness and dignity worthy of a better and wiser man; and Frederic, who had just completed his twenty-eighth year, became King of Prussia. His character was little understood. That he had good abilities, indeed, no person who had talked with him or corresponded with him could doubt. But the easy Epicurean life which he had led, his love of good cookery and good wine, of music, of conversation, of light literature, led many to regard him as a sensual and intellectual voluptuary. His habit of canting about moderation, peace, liberty, and the happiness which a good mind derives from the happiness of others, had The character of Frederic was still very im imposed on some who should have known perfectly understood either by his subjects or better. Those who thought best of him, ex-by his neighbours, when events occurred which pected a Telemachus after Fénélon's pattern. Others predicted the approach of a Medicean age-an age propitious to learning and art, and not unpropitious to pleasure. Nobody had the least suspicion that a tyrant of extraordinary military and political talents, of industry more extraordinary still, without fear, without faith, and without mercy, had ascended the throne.

differed in some important respects from his father's. To Frederic William, the mere cir cumstance that any persons whatever, men, women, or children, Prussians or foreigners, were within reach of his toes and of his cane, appeared to be a sufficient reason for proceeding to belabour them. Frederic required provocation as well as vicinity; nor was he ever known to inflict this paternal species of correction on any but his born subjects; though on one occasion M. Thiébault had reason, during a few seconds, to anticipate the high honour of being an exception to this general rule.

exhibited it in a strong light. A few months after his accession died Charles VI., Emperor of Germany, the last descendant, in the male line, of the house of Austria.

Charles left no son, and had, long before his death, relinquished all hopes of male issue. During the latter part of his life, his principal object had been to secure to his descendants in The disappointment of Falstaff at his old the female line the many crowns of the house boon companion's coronation, was not more of Hapsburg. With this view, he had promul bitter than that which awaited some of the gated a new law of succession, widely celeinmates of Rheinsberg. They had long looked brated throughout Europe under the name of forward to the accession of their patron, as to the "Pragmatic Sanction." By virtue of this the day from which their own prosperity and decree, his daughter, the Archduchess Maria greatness was to date. They had at last reach-Theresa, wife of Francis of Lorraine, succeed. ed the promised land, the land which they had ed to the dominions of her ancestors. figured to themselves as flowing with milk and No sovereign has ever taken possession of honey, and they found it a desert. "No more of these fooleries," was the short, sharp admonition given by Frederic to one of them. It soon became plain that, in the most important points, the new sovereign bore a strong family likeness to his predecessor. There was a wide difference between the father and the son as respected extent and vigour of intellect, speculative opinions, amusements, studies, outward demeanour. But the groundwork of the cha-trian monarchy. England, France, Spain, Rusracter was the same in both. To both were common the love of order, the love of business, the military taste, the parsimony, the imperious spirit, the temper irritable even to ferocity, the pleasure in the pain and humiliation of others. But these propensities had in Frederic William partaken of the general unsoundness of his mind, and wore a very different aspect when found in company with the strong and cultivated anderstanding of his successor. Thus, for example, Frederic was as anxious as any

a throne by a clearer title. All the politics of the Austrian cabinet had, during twenty years, been directed to one single end-the settlement of the succession. From every person whose rights could be considered as injuriously af fected, renunciations in the most solemn form had been obtained. The new law had been ratified by the Estates of all the kingdoms and principalities which made up the great Aus

sia, Poland, Prussia, Sweden, Denmark, the Germanic body, had bound themselves by treaty to maintain the "Pragmatic Sanction." Tha: instrument was placed under the protection of the public faith of the whole civilized world.

Even if no positive stipulations on this subject had existed, the arrangement was one which no good man would have been willing to disturb. It was a peaceable arrangement. It was an arrangement acceptable to the great population whose happiness was chiefly con

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