Frederick the Great

by Nancy Mitford

  This analysis shows that, like Louis XV, Frederick was uninterested in the world outside Europe. He also wrote the celebrated Anti-Machiavel to show that armed aggression is immoral and honesty the best policy for a ruler, sustaining the argument with such vigour that even Voltaire thought he had gone too far.

  Frederick had never been strong, and at Rheinsberg he had his first serious attack of the disease which was so soon to kill his father. It took the form of appalling internal cramp; he thought he would die. He said it came from thickened blood in the little veins at the bottom of the stomach causing the bowels to contract so that, instead of performing their worm-like action, different parts of them tightened, filling with wind and pressing on the diaphragm. Two months later he was still shaken, and thereafter he was never really well again.

  In May 1740 Frederick William was dying at Potsdam. His torments were atrocious; sleep was out of the question. His bed was covered with carpenter’s tools; night and day he made little wooden boxes; the hammering could be heard in the town. He was in a frightful temper, hitting out to right and to left. He said he expected to scream with laughter in the tomb at the mess Frederick would make of everything. When it seemed that he was sinking, Frederick was sent for and he galloped over from Rheinsberg. But on his arrival at Potsdam he saw a crowd outside the palace, and there was his father, up and dressed, inspecting a smithy he was building for an English blacksmith. Frederick was slightly unnerved; if he went to his father unexpectedly he generally received a few blows; but the King opened his arms and Frederick burst into tears. Then they retired into the palace and Frederick William expounded his views on foreign policy. He said there would always be more to lose than to gain by war with Russia; that Austria would never willingly allow the expansion of Prussia and that France should be played off against England. Never start a war light-heartedly, he said, it doesn’t always stop when you would wish it to.

  Frederick and Wilhelmine wrote to each other most feelingly at this time; there is no doubt that they felt both affection and pity for their father. He was very much interested in his own approaching death. He spoke of his funeral: ‘Naked I go—well, not quite naked, I shall have my uniform on’; and he asked that they should sing ‘Fight the good fight’. He ordered his horses to be brought into the courtyard and told the Old Dessauer to choose one. That Prince, blinded by tears, did so. ‘But he’s no good at all—you must have this one.’ Finally: ‘I die happy to leave such a worthy son and successor.’

  The dead King’s face was a mask of torture.

  7. The Throne

  Frederick left Potsdam at once for Charlottenburg.

  That night, Knobelsdorff galloped over the wooden bridge at Rheinsberg. ‘Get up, Bielfeld; the King is dead.’ Bielfeld sleepily replied that he had heard this before and that Frederick William always recovered. ‘They are embalming him; he won’t recover from that.’ Bielfeld, in getting out of bed, knocked over a table on which he kept some small change. He began to pick it up—Knobelsdorff said, ‘Funny bothering about the ha’pence when it’s going to rain ducats!’ A lady-in-waiting was sent to tell the new Queen, who appeared looking beautiful in a black and white négligé to receive the homage of the little court. Then they all dashed to Charlottenburg. Here the Queen was given a note from her husband telling her to go to the palace at Berlin ‘since your presence is still necessary. See nobody.’ The separation had virtually begun, although for the next few years the King and Queen sometimes stayed under the same roof and he always took her with him when he went to Rheinsberg. But in 1744 he gave Rheinsberg to his young brother Prince Henry and Wusterhausen to Augustus William; presently he built himself Sans Souci which the Queen never saw. She confided in nobody, and her behaviour was so perfect that it is impossible to know what really happened; she had evidently not expected so sudden a break. At the beginning of their marriage Frederick’s letters to her were chatty, affectionate and intimate; they ended ‘I pray you never to forget me’, ‘I belong to you’, or ‘I am yours most tenderly’. But after his accession they became shorter and colder and ended as one would to the barest acquaintance or even a tradesman. She lived in the palace at Berlin during the winter and at Schönhausen in summer, receiving all the honours due to a Queen. The foreign diplomats told their governments that any politeness to her was well received by Frederick. She is said to have become disagreeable. ‘Bonjour, Madame, et bon chemin.’

  Frederick to Algarotti: ‘My fate has changed—I await you with impatience—don’t leave me to languish.’ Keyserling, too, wrote to him saying, ‘Come quickly’. The new French minister, Valory, says that Keyserling was often closeted with Frederick for hours on end, Frederick forbidding him to go near the window as he did not want him to be seen and talked about.

  There was to be no coronation, superstitious oil or other mumbo-jumbo. At Berlin Frederick took the oath on the balcony of his palace and remained there for half an hour, gazing at his people, deep in thought. He had to go to Königsberg to receive homage and attend essential ceremonies. When Frederick I was crowned there he took 1,800 carriages and 30,000 horses. Frederick II had no escort. He went in a small travelling carriage with Keyserling and Algarotti. During the journey he slept on Algarotti’s shoulder—they called themselves Auguste and Mécène. And then to work. He immediately sent Truchsess as minister to Hanover (where Uncle George had gone to be in at Frederick William’s death) and Camas, the husband of his ‘Maman’, to Paris. He told the former to make a great deal of Camas’s appointment. ‘Say, as though you were jealous of him, that he is one of my intimates and has certainly not gone to Paris to string beads.’ Camas was to tell Cardinal Fleury that the new King would soon set Europe on fire. Fleury was a man of peace who, with the co-operation of Sir Robert Walpole in England, had succeeded in settling several European disputes during the last few years.

  Frederick knew where he was going. There was no improvisation: every step he took had been carefully prepared. He kept all his father’s officials, even those whom he suspected of having advised severity after the desertion. He would probably have kept Grumbkow had he not recently died from the effects of his carousal with Augustus the Strong. There was no rain of ducats for his Rheinsberg friends, but they received appointments according to their worth. Good Jordan became ‘respectable inspector of the poor, the sick, orphans, lunatics and modest dwellings’; Keyserling was A.D.C. and colonel of a cavalry regiment; Frederick William’s old friend Schwerin became Commander-in-Chief and Count Heinrich von Podewils First Minister, with nothing much to do, as Frederick intended to govern himself. His only political confidant was his father’s Chef de Cabinet, Eichel, a mysterious person about whom little is known. For the rest of his life he never left Frederick and never had a day off; he arrived in his office at 4 a.m. He was devoted to Frederick, who could do no wrong in his eyes. The ambassadors never saw him. Life at Berlin was always to be difficult for them because there was nobody with whom they could intrigue, no possibility of bribery, and nobody, except invisible Eichel, who knew more than they did themselves. Frederick used to say that, as his horse carried him and all his ministry, anybody wishing to know his secrets would have to corrupt it. Queen Sophia Dorothea retired to her own little palace, Monbijou, where Frederick visited her every day when he was in Berlin, but he never discussed politics with her and she had no influence whatever.

  Duhan was recalled from exile by a letter in Frederick’s own hand, and in due course was made Director of the Liegnitz Academy. ‘You ask about your functions: they are to draw your salary, to love me and to be happy. Your faithful pupil, Fédéric.’ The philosopher Wolf was also invited to return. The Berlin Academy, founded by Frederick I and shut as a measure of economy by Frederick William, was reopened and Frederick asked the French philosopher Maupertuis to come and be its President. The father of Katte was made a Field Marshal. The Potsdam Grenadiers were reorganized—the officers remained and the regiment was always to be noted for its splendid-looking men; some of the
brighter giants, such as the Irish Kirkman, became palace servants, but the tallest, most cretinous, were disbanded; the roads of Europe were covered with huge weak-kneed loons trying to find their way home.

  Torture of civilians was abolished. Frederick, perhaps because he had so much of it to bear, always hated the idea of inflicting pain. He thought the habit of torturing prisoners before execution ‘a horrible and very useless cruelty’. Somebody once asked him why he never wore spurs: ‘Try sticking a fork into your naked stomach and you will soon see why.’ The flogging of soldiers, however, was considered essential to prevent desertion, and it continued. (It was used in all European armies except the French.) All religions were tolerated and a few years later Frederick built a Roman Catholic cathedral in Berlin. The press was given total freedom and there was no censorship of books. ‘I do what I like, and the people say what they like.’ He was fanatical on the subject of freedom of expression—more fanatical as he got older. He thought it was one of the things that really mattered. As there was a shortage of food after a cold summer the granaries were opened and wheat was sold at a reasonable price. Most of these measures were put into effect in one week; Frederick thought that each day seemed twenty-four hours too short.

  When Voltaire heard of these liberal and enlightened doings he wrote to Frederick as ‘Your Humanity’. The meeting for which Frederick so greatly longed was imminent. In July 1740 he left Berlin for those outlying parts of his kingdom which were in the Rhineland; he arranged to join Voltaire either in or near Brussels. He spent a few days at Bayreuth but his visit there was spoilt for Wilhelmine by the presence of the despised Ansbachs—Frederick naughtily making more of Louise than of Wilhelmine. She was in a melancholy mood just then; having come to love Bayreuth and to appreciate his many good qualities she had found out that he was infatuated with one of her ladies. Very soon husband and wife were friendly again but this was a bad moment and Frederick’s teasing cast her down. When she was sad she had a sure resource, the study of French literature. That and music were ever the consolations of Wilhelmine, of Frederick and, when he was grown up, of their much younger brother, Henry.

  On leaving Bayreuth Frederick and Algarotti decided as a joke to go incognito to Strasbourg. It was the only time the King ever set foot on French soil; the venture was not a success. His alias, ‘Comte Dufour, a nobleman from Silesia’, was unconvincing because of the large suite he brought with him. Maréchal de Broglie, the governor of the city, very nearly had him arrested as a suspicious character. Soon Frederick was recognized by the uncle of one of the giants and the cat was out of the bag. Broglie sent to ask the King if he wished to be received with the honours due to him or if he would rather remain incognito. So Frederick went to call on Broglie; the two men seem to have disliked each other thoroughly, and this was to have unfortunate consequences. Frederick accepted Broglie’s invitation to go to the play but then he changed his mind and left Strasbourg in a hurry. Feeling that he had behaved in a stupid, boorish way he fell into a great rage against the French race and nation. He wrote to Voltaire describing his adventure in terms more than insulting to Broglie and the other officers whom he met at Strasbourg. It was the first time he had written such a letter to Voltaire, though later one of his ways of teasing him was to be by denigrating everything French.

  At Wesel Frederick fell ill. It seemed pointless to travel as far as Brussels, so he asked Voltaire to meet him in his Duchy of Cleves. Voltaire arrived there on 11 September, under a harvest moon. Frederick wrote to Jordan: ‘I have seen that Voltaire whom I was so curious to know but I had my fever upon me and my brain was as confused as my body was weak. One needs to be in good shape to keep up with him—his table talk is so dazzling that you could write a brilliant book simply by recording it.’ Voltaire says in his memoirs, ‘I became fond of him; he had wit and charm, and besides he was a King.’ It is doubtful if he ever had much real affection for Frederick; but the King could be useful to him. The two men enjoyed each other’s company because they laughed at the same things, but after this first meeting, which lasted for three days and had a honeymoon quality, there was always an uneasiness between them.

  Voltaire was not the only French philosopher who went to see Frederick during this journey. Maupertuis, now at the height of his fame, was at Wesel. Four years ago he had gone to Lapland, to measure a degree of longitude; he came back with the interesting news that the earth is flattened at the poles; thereafter he was known as the ‘Flattener of the Globe’. He was a tall, handsome, pompous man of forty-two—joli garçon, Frederick said, though not such good company as Algarotti—and he appeared to be a great friend of Voltaire’s. He had been—perhaps still was—the lover of Voltaire’s mistress Mme du Châtelet and in truth Voltaire had a well-concealed hatred for him. However, at this time he made a great case of having recommended him to Frederick as President of the Berlin Academy.

  Frederick had not only gone to the Rhineland to meet philosophers; he had business. He owned a small enclave situated in the middle of a principality administered for the Emperor by the Bishop of Liège. His few subjects there were not very fond of joining the Prussian army or of paying Prussian taxes and the Bishop seemed to encourage their bad citizenship. Frederick intended to put an end to this nonsense. He sent 2,000 soldiers to the Bishop with an ultimatum composed by the peace-loving Voltaire, who had become quite over-excited by his new friend’s display of force. The Bishop complained to the Emperor, who wrote a furious letter to Frederick about the unheard-of violent doings in the Reich. Frederick observed that Charles VI was only the ghost of an old idol; he neither answered the letter nor received the Emperor’s envoy, but he suggested to the Bishop that he might like to buy the property in question. The Bishop did so and the matter was settled without further reference to Vienna; Frederick got a comfortable sum in ready cash with which to improve the equipment of his army. It was generally felt that the lion cub had shown his teeth, and Frederick’s neighbours began to wonder what his next move would be.

  They had not long to wait.

  8. Check to the Queen of Hungary

  Frederick was still far from well and still had a recurring fever when, in October 1740, Wilhelmine visited Berlin. She had not been there, nor seen her mother and younger brothers and sisters, since her marriage in 1732. She was horrified to find Frederick looking so ill. On the 20th his treaty with the Bishop of Liège was signed and then he took his sister and some friends to Rheinsberg for a rest; he had a high temperature and they were all worried about him. During the night of the 25th Fredersdorf woke him up with the tremendous news that the Emperor Charles VI was dead. It was like a magic medicine; Frederick’s temperature went down at once and another sort of fever took possession of him.

  26 October 1740

  My dear Voltaire,

  The most unexpected event in the world prevents me from chatting as I would like to. The Emperor is dead. My pacifism is shaken . . . My affair with Liège is wound up but the new situation is of far greater consequence for Europe; the old political system is in the melting-pot; Nebuchadnezzar’s rock is about to crush the statue of the four metals and destroy everything. I am getting rid of my fever because I need my machine to take advantage of these circumstances . . . Adieu, dear friend, never forget me and be sure of the tender esteem with which I am your very faithful friend. Fédéric.

  After three hundred years of Imperial power the Habsburg family was now no more. Charles VI, having lost his only son, was survived by two daughters. He had succeeded his brother Joseph I, who had also had two daughters, and there was no male Habsburg left. Their hereditary lands were subject to the Salic law and women could not inherit them. The Emperor Leopold, father of Joseph and Charles, as though he had foreseen the situation which now arose, had entailed the succession on the daughters of Joseph before those, as yet unborn, of Charles, should the brothers die without male issue; but as soon as Charles became Emperor he changed this compact in favour of his own daughters. His fixed idea in lif
e was that the elder, Maria Theresa, should succeed him and that her husband should be elected Emperor. He made enormous sacrifices in order to get an agreement to this effect, known as the Pragmatic Sanction, ratified by the German Electors and the Great Powers. Prince Eugene, now dead, used to tell him that the signatures he so eagerly canvassed were quite worthless and that all Maria Theresa would need to consolidate her position was 100,000 highly trained soldiers and a full treasury. This was more than Charles VI could achieve but, before he died, he had collected all the necessary signatures for his Pragmatic Sanction except that of the Bavarian Elector, Charles Albert. He was the husband of the Emperor Joseph’s younger daughter and himself had the best hereditary claim to the purple through a Habsburg great-grandmother.

  At the death of Charles VI, Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria, became Queen of Hungary; her husband, Francis of Lorraine, was Grand Duke of Tuscany; they counted on the German Electors to make them Holy Roman Emperor and Empress and on the other European princes to recognize the fact according to their promises. Maria Theresa, now aged twenty-three, was beautiful in a doll-like way—perfect complexion, golden hair, dark blue eyes and white, regular teeth; her demeanour was royal with a deceptive look of calm stupidity. She was neither calm nor stupid; besides a keen native intelligence, she had energy, courage, tenacity and a talent for making other people do their work. Her education had been extremely sketchy; she spoke most of the European languages, including Latin in which to communicate with her Hungarian subjects; but she had no knowledge of affairs and, oddly enough, she had never learnt to ride. She was without a sense of humour and during her lifelong struggle with Frederick, whom she never met, she probably minded his jokes and teasing and brazen lack of hypocrisy more than his aggression. Her husband, Francis, was as typically French as she was German. His mother was the daughter of Monsieur, Louis XIV’s brother, and of Madame, whose letters from Versailles are such a joy. In them she often bewailed the unhappiness of her daughter with the adorable but unfaithful Duke of Lorraine; with such a father and his Bourbon blood Francis was not bred to be a good husband. He was brought up at Vienna and from an early age he charmed not only his future bride but also Charles VI, whose letters to him show how completely he had taken the place of the dead son. There was never any question of another husband for Maria Theresa, in spite of the fact that the head of the House of Lorraine was by no means a brilliant match for such a personage. He counted as royal, but only because one of his ancestors had been King of Jerusalem. The Austrians are conscious of these things. Francis, like his wife, was ignorant of politics but he had a talent for finance.