No More Learning

(2) There are large streams, collected or dammed in
good beds for the formation of canals, especially at the
times when the snows are melting, or during the
periods of the heavy rains.
In order that the undertaking may cost us nothing,
a Company might be formed, wherein we would be
represented by an Agent, and to which we would sub-
scribe a quarter of the funds; this Company would
make the necessary advances for the Canals, and for
this purpose it would have the use of the wood for a
period of . . . years.
As there are valleys which are situated at too great
a distance from these canals, the woods there should
be burnt out, and villages built on the clearings, which
would soon be peopled, since the land will be excellent
for pasture, and the inhabitants would find plenty of
occupation in the regular felling of the wood which
will be established, and in the upkeep of all the canals.
We believe this project to be good, Sire, because,
8
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? 114 The Confessions of
however weak may be the Navy of our Kingdom, it
will be able to obtain thereby a great deal of wood, and
even for export to France ; which would be a matter
of great importance to our dominions, since by this
means we open up a very considerable source of
exportation and of revenue.
MEMORANDUM OF THE POSTAL SERVICE TO THE KING
We have no suggestions to make concerning the Ad-
ministration of the Postal Service, because, all things
considered, it is good in our Kingdom. The only
transaction which we would beg of you is to place this
department under the Excise, since you would then
gain yearly at least the amount of the tax-farmer's
profit. You are the better able to do this, that the
department is a well-equipped machine and not liable
to much change. Moreover, the same employes
would serve under the Excise, and the general manage-
ment can be left to the present official.
Your Postal Service is in the hands of six tax-farmers
and a dozen subordinates (partners).
livres.
The tax-farmers each make at least 60,000 livres,
which for the six amounts to 360,000
The 12 subordinates each make 15,000 livres
or together 180,000
In all 540,000
From this amount we must take that of 140,000
to wit: --
livres.
For the General Manager 60,000
Four Directors-General attached to
the Excise Office 80,000
There remains as profit to Your Majesty. . 140,000 400,000
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? Frederick the Great 115
POST-HOUSES
The Postal Service is divided into two branches:
Letter-Posts and Post-Houses.
The Post-Houses are onerous to us, and the Letter-
Posts are not so advantageous as they should be. We
have, therefore, to find a means of improving con-
ditions in every respect.
The Post-Houses are a burden to us, because they
involve for all the Post-masters salaries exception
from Poll-tax, and qualification for compensation in
case of accident, and because no profit accrues to us
therefrom.
Let us now examine the reasons which led my father
to institute this arrangement.
Vanity was the principal reason. He believed that
it appertained to the dignity of a king to have public
posts established in all parts of his kingdom. He did
not regard these establishments as existing only for
the distribution of letters, but much more for giving
greater facilities to the nobility and to wealthy com-
moners for the display of pomp.
The following are the arrangements which we have
made in this matter : --
(i) We have taken an exact survey of all the roads
in the Kingdom ; and after a complete and very minute
enquiry, having found four hundred posting-routes
which are hardly ever used by carriages or coaches,
we have reduced them to one stage-horse and three
saddle-horses each.
(2) As our intention is to revive a branch of industry
in our Kingdom, we desire, so to speak, to force every-
one to use the public conveyances, and to this end we
are reducing the remainder of the posts to half the
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? ii6 The Confessions of
number of horses, and at the same time doubling the
cost of posting to everyone except our ordinary and
extraordinary couriers, our Ambassadors, our Gen-
erals, and our Agents, on Royal business requiring
expedition.
By these two regulations, the Post-masters will no
longer be surcharged, and the couriers, being paid
double by the public will certainly profit, to an ex-
tent which should enable us to take from them ex-
emption from Poll-tax, and to reduce their salaries
by one-half.
That is the scheme, and this is the manner in which
it should be of use to us and to the public.
To us, because it is certain that upon two
thousand Post-masters, we should gain
livres.
through diminution of salaries, about 100,000
and through rescinding their tax-exemption 300,000
making a total of 400,000
With regard to the Public: We presume that
there are yearly 4,000 persons to whom posting
is rather a matter of appearances than of necessity;
these 4,000 persons will save, one way and another, livres.
at least 72 livres each, which makes in all the sum of . . 288,000
These same 4,000 persons by traveUing in the
public conveyances will benefit the drivers and the
innkeepers to the extent of at least 30 livres each,
making in all 120,000
Making a total of 408,000
We would observe to Your Majesty that the public
service will in no way suffer, since upon all the fre-
quented routes we shall leave the posting well enough
equipped for no loss of time to be occasioned.
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? Frederick the Great 117
STAMP OFFICE AND REGISTRATION OF DEEDS'
After a labour of some length, and the com-
pilation of an abstract of all the registers of the
past year, we have arrived at some measure of
information as to the amount brought into the
revenue by each Controller, and we have found
that, all told, these tax-farmers raise an amount livres.
of 4,000,000
of which four millions they spend : livres.
^ Given to us 2,200,000
In Salaries 400,000
Extraordinary Expenses 200,000
Advances at the rate of 5 per cent. . . 80,000
3,280,000
Profits 720,000
We shall oblige each individual Receiver to
bring us the same sum that he brought to the
Farmers-General, paying it direct and free of
cost of sending, and we will give him a third more livres.
salary; which might make a stmi of 150,000
We shall nominate further four Directors-General
at a salary of 25,000 livres each, in all 100,000
And 12 Inspectors-General at 6,000 livres each 72,000
Leaving for the King 322,000
livres.
By this operation, we gain, in the first place 720,000
Of which, in order to ensure a thorough service,
we spend out 322,000
Leaving a balance for us of 398,000
STAMPED PAPER
Throughout our dominions during the
past year there have been sold 16,000,000
sheets of stamped paper, yielding, at i sou livres. s. d.
the sheet, the svun of 800,000
* Frederick's addition is hopeless.
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? ii8 The Confessions of
livres s. d.
The Tax-farmers have paid us 200,000
The 16,000,000 sheets of
paper have cost them, livres. s. d.
at 4 deniers the sheet. . . 133,333 6 8
For Stamp, at i denier
per sheet 33,333 6 8
Distribution at 2 denier
per sheet 66,666 13 4
Advances of about 400,000
hvres at 5 per cent 20,000
Office and Extraordinary
Expenses 50,000 303,333 6 8
Remains to the Farmers-General 503,333 6 8
MODUS OPERANDI (Schedule)
Every year there are manufactured in
one of our mills 16,000,000 sheets of paper
at 3 deniers the sheet, amounting to the livres. s. d.
sum of 100,000 o o
These are stamped at i denier per sheet 33,333 6 8
(3) In every Province we establish a
General Dep6t in the ofBce of the Registrar-
General of the chief town, who is responsible
for the distribution. We allow him to
charge i denier per sheet; those who distri-
bute after him being allowed to charge 2
deniers per sheet, the total cost amounts to
3 deniers per sheet, in all 100,000 o o
Making a full total of 233,333 6 8
By this you will see that by selling our paper our-
selves, we shall make, at 2 sous a sheet, 566,666 livres
13 sous 4 deniers.
But, as our principal object is for the Public to gain
as well as ourselves, it shall not be sold at more than
I sou the sheet, and thus the Public will profit by the
transaction to the amount of 141,660 livres, and we
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? Frederick the Great 119
ourselves to the amount of 425,000 livres, instead of
the 200,000^ livres which the tax-farmer gives us.
CUSTOMS-DUTY ON FOREIGN GOODS
The Tax-farmers in this department raise every livres.
year the sum of 1,200,000
They hand over to us 400,000
So that there remains to them 800,000
The object of these Customs was to impede foreign
trade, so that the money should not leave the Kingdom,
and to oblige the inhabitants to dress in material
manufactured in the Kingdom. By degrees luxury
has increased, and money has become more plentiful,
so that it has become really expedient to manufacture
these same goods in the country.
We have manufactures of every description. The
owners of these factories have the deepest interest
in impeding the sale of foreign goods. Why, then,
should we not come to an understanding with them as
to the matter of Customs Dues ? The following is the
action which we have taken in the matter.
We have had an exact Abstract of the different goods
which come into the Kingdom each year made, as well
as of the duties which are collected upon these goods.
From this enquiry it appears that our Tax-farmers
receive at least
livres.
On Silk materials, Ribbons and the like 400,000
On Cloth and other woollen goods 400,000
On Cloth of Gold and of Silver, and on Gold and
Silver jewellery 200,000
On Iron and Steel goods 100,000
And on Copper and Tin goods 100,000
Making a total of 1,200,000
' The arithmetic is again faulty.
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? 120 The Confessions of
Having made this Abstract, we have proposed to all
the Manufacturers to pay us, direct and free of all
Charges, the sum of 600,000 livres; and we have
promised them, in the name of His Majesty, a Law,
forbidding, under the most rigorous penalties, anyone
soever, whether of His Majesty's subjects or a for-
eigner, bringing into our realm any goods for which
there are factories established in our dominions; and
we have given them permission to carry this law
into effect themselves and through their accredited
agents. And in order to prevent any confusion in the
matter of the payment of the 600,000 livres, we have
put a tax upon every species of manufactured goods:
to wit: --
livres.
All Silken Manufactures, Materials, Ribbons,
and the like 2,000,000
All Manufactures of Cloth and Other Woollen
Goods 200,000
Gold and Silver Goods and Jewellery 50,000
Copper and Tin Goods 50,000
In all 2,300,000
All the manufacturers have agreed to this pro-
position, and therefore we gain 200,000 livres, but it
is impossible to estimate the benefits which we shall
confer by this arrangement, in the first place, because
money will no longer be taken out of the country,
and secondly, because our subjects will profit to the
same extent by each other as the foreigners formerly
did by them.
OCTROI DUTIES IN THE TOWNS
We leave unaltered the established Octroi duties in
the Towns, upon commodities and goods of which we
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? Frederick the Great 121
have made no mention. They are just and necessary,
because it is through them that trade contributes to
the upkeep of the State. But we propose that each
town should compound these dues. We know, more
or less, by the Abstract of the Registers of these
districts how much they can afford to pay, so
that we should not be liable to any injury by this
arrangement.
My father, after having examined the Scheme
for this new Administration, followed his own
opinion on the subject, and continued to collect
the Subsidies upon the basis of the Land-Survey
register, and allowed the local and general receivers
to continue.
To simplify the administration of all these
taxes, payment of toll was permitted at the town
gates on tobacco, coffee, tea, chocolate, sugar,
wheat, flour, spirits, beer, liqueurs, and generally,
on all the necessities and luxuries of life.
For this purpose he established in every town
an Excise Office, the staff of which, in large
towns, consisted of a Receiver, a Cashier, a Super-
intendent, an Inspector, and ten clerks, and in
small towns, of a Receiver and two clerks. He
then formed Departments, over which he placed
Commissaries.
To ensure respect for his employees, he gave
them honoiirable social rank, which made it pos-
sible for him to insist on their taking lower salaries,
and being content with modest profits.
With regard to Salt, he undertook the manufac-
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? 122 The Confessions of
ture of it himself, distributing it at his own cost
and expense.
The Stamping of Documents was a Department
which he considered too delicate for his interfer-
ence. He would not even touch that of Stamped
Paper.
As regards the Forestry scheme, he adopted it
more or less as it stood.
This new source of revenue only brought him in
a profit of two millions.
And it was only by putting the interior of his
house in order that he placed himself in a position
to pay his debts. It is true that he introduced
into it an order so economical that it could not
be improved upon.
So long as I have had any money I have never
thought about my finances. It is only since this
War that this subject has claimed my constant
attention.
I should like to continue further with you the
Memorial of the Council of my father, but circum-
stances do not permit of my doing so, and I have
not time to enter into such long and minute par-
ticulars; in the meantime, this is what I myself
have done:
I have suggested to all the Commissaries of the
Department to compound with all the towns. I
have instituted a reform amongst all the Tax-
collectors, and I have lowered their commission
by one-half per cent. ; all this will bring me in
about 20,000,000 livres.
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? Frederick the Great 123
Secondly, I have found means to establish the
poll-tax in those provinces which were the least
overburdened, on the pretext of equalizing the
impositions for payment of contributions. This
little ruse will bring me in about 400,000 livres a
year.
ARMY
livres.
By retrenching five men per com-
pany, I make a yearly gain of 1,000,000
On the 2 sous which I deduct from
each soldier for commissariat bread,
I save 600,000
On hair powder and lodging 720,000
On Clothing 800,000
On Riding Hacks 180,000
On Staffs, Governments and Com-
mands 300,000
In all 3,600,000
When I was certain of economizing 6,000,000
a year, I began to think of paying off my debts,
and this is how I do so :
livres.
Reckoning everything, I am in
debt for 100,000,000 ;
the point is how to settle for this
amount.
To this end, I borrow from the
Dutch, in four years, at 4 per cent. ,
the sum of 74,057,500
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? 124 Confessions of Frederick the Great
I add to this sum that of my livres.
savings 24,000,000
and with the two I repay the 100,000,000 livres*
of my debt.
When this transaction is concluded, I shall take
out another loan of 60,843,025 livres, at 3 per
cent. ; I shall add to this amount 12,000,000
livres of savings; and I hope that in two years
I shall find myself in a position to repay the
74,057,500 livres. ^ In this way, by the year 1771,
I shall only owe, by the reduction of the interests,
the sum of 60,843,025 livres. The subjoined table
will afford you proof of this.
If there is no War in 1771, what will become of
all these Repayments? That is the moment, my
dear nephew, for which I am most earnestly
looking, in order to introduce into my realm a
new kind of currency.
I intend to circulate among the public a certain
amount of paper; if this is taken up, I shall
increase the amount; and if it is not taken up, I
shall withdraw it, rather than allow it to become
depreciated. I shall try this experiment several
times, and I am firmly convinced that in the end
money (specie) will become (a glut? ) and the
paper will take its place (or will rise? ).
This transaction is a very delicate one, for,
strictly speaking, paper has only a momentary
and uncertain vogue. But it is very useful when
one knows how to make good use of it.
^ The king's arithmetic is again unintelligible.
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? 126 Confessions of Frederick the Great
If I can once succeed in launching it properly,
I shall attempt the plan of repaying the loans
partly in coin and partly in paper; and then,
in three years I shall be able to extinguish the
60,843,025 livres.
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? The Life of Frederick the Great
By
Heinrich von Treitschke
127
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? ? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-08-05 01:02 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/loc. ark:/13960/t5h99vc8g Public Domain in the United States / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us
? The Life of Frederick the Great
By
Heinrich von Treitschke
FREDERICK WILLIAM'S reign fell in the mis-
erable, Boeotian, idea-less age of the Peace of
Utrecht; the small tricks of Fleury, Alberoni, and
Walpole governed European politics. The upright
Prince was helpless amid the cunning intrigues
of the diplomatists. With old-German fidel-
ity he held to his Kaiser, wanted to lay swords
and pistols in the cradles of his children, in order to
banish foreign nations from the Imperial soil.
How often, with the beer- jug of the Fatherland in
his hand, had he cried out his ringing: "Vivat
Germania, Teutscher Nation! " Unsuspecting by
nature, he now had to experience how the Court
of Vienna, with its two ambitious neighbours,
Hanover and Saxony, would come to a secret
understanding on the division of Prussia, and how
they would then help the Albertiners to the crown
of Poland, deliver Lorraine to the French, and in
his own home stir up discord between father and
son, while they at last treacherously tried to wrest
from him his right of succession to Berg and
Ostfriesland.
9 129
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? 130 The Life of
So for his whole life he was pushed backwards
and forwards between enemies and false friends;
only at the end of his days did he see through
Austria's cunning, and admonish his son to avenge
a betrayed father. But at foreign courts it was
said that the King stood continually on the watch
with his gun at full cock, without ever letting it
go ojEf ; and when occasionally a latent fear of the
sentry at Potsdam overcame the other Germans,
they were cheered by the sneer: "The Prussians
won't shoot as quickly as all that! "
But the sneering was silenced when Prussia
found a ruler who, by the happy practical sense
of the HohenzoUerns, with a sense of the possible
united the daring and clear vision of genius.
The bright sunshine of youth illuminates the
beginning of the Frederician period, when at last,
after much faltering and trepidation, the obstinate
mass of the benumbed German world got on the
move again, and the mighty contrasts which it hid
measured themselves in the necessary struggle.
Since the days of that Lion of the Midnight Sun
Germany had had no picture of a hero to whom
the entire nation could look up with awe; but he
who now, in proud freedom, as once Gustavus
Adolphus had done, strode through the middle of
the Great Powers, and forced the Germans to
believe again in the wonder of heroism, he was a
German.
The mainspring in this mighty nature is the
ruthless, terrible German directness. Frederick
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? Frederick the Great 131
gives himself as he is, and sees things as they are.
As in the long row of volumes of his letters and
writings there is not one line in which he attempts
to extenuate his deeds, or to adorn his own picture
for posterity, so his statesmanship, even if it did
not despise the small arts and ruses of the age as
means to an end, bears the stamp of his royal
frankness.
As often as he draws his sword, he announces
with candid exactitude what he demands from
the enemy, and lays down his weapon only when he
has reached his goal. From the moment that he
awakes to thinking, he feels himself glad and
proud that he is the son of a free century, which,
with the torch of reason, shines in upon the dusty
comers of a world of old prejudices and lifeless
traditions; he has the picture of the Sun-god,
who climbs up through the morning clouds, victo-
rious, on the ceiling of his gay Rheinsberger Hall.
With the bold confidence of an apostle of en-
lightenment, he approaches the apparitions of
historical life, and tests each one, to see how it
will stand the judgment of a penetrating intellect.
In the severe struggles of the various States for
power, he notices only realities, and esteems only
force cleverly used with presence of mind. "Ne-
gotiations without weapons are like music without
instruments," he says calmly, and on the news of
the death of the last Habsburg, he asks his advis-
ers, "I give you a problem to solve; when one has
the advantage, shall one make use of it or not? "
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? 133 The Life of
The swaggering impotence which poses as power,
the senseless privileges which make a show of
historical right, the faineants, who mask their
helplessness behind empty platitudes, could never
find a more arrogant contemner; and nowhere
could this inexorable realism operate so cleansingly
and disturbingly, so revolutionarily, as in the great
fable of the (Holy) Roman Empire. Nothing
could be more pitiless than Frederick's derision of
the holy Majesty of the Kaiser Francis, who is
toddled round on the apron-strings of his wife, and
(a worthy King of Jerusalem) executes lucrative
contracts for the armies of the Queen of Hungary :
nothing more fierce than his mocking of "the
phantom" of the Imperial army, of the conceited
futility of the minor Courts, of the peddling formal-
ism of "these cursed old fogies of Hanover," of
the empty pride of the estate-less petty feudal
nobility {Junkertum) in Saxony and Mecklenburg,
of "the whole breed of princes and peoples in
Austria" -- "who bends his knee to the great
ones of this world, he knows them not! "
In full consciousness of superiority, he holds out
the healthy reality of his modern State beside the
shadowy conceptions of the Imperial Law ; a sullen
ill-nature speaks from his letters when he lets "the
pedants of Regensburg" experience the iron
necessity of war. Frederick fulfils in the deed
what the wrangling publicists of the past centuries,
Hippolithus and Severinus, have attempted only
with words; he holds the "fearfully corpse-like
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? Frederick the Great 133
face of Germany" up to the mirror, proves before
all the world the irretrievable rottenness of the
Holy (Roman) Empire.
Well-meaning contemporaries may have blamed
him, because he delivers up the time-honoured
community to ridicule; posterity thanks him,
for he brings truth to honour again in German
politics, as Martin Luther once brought it in
German thought and faith.
Frederick had appropriated that severe Pro-
testant view of German history and Imperial
politics which had prevailed among the freer in-
tellects of Prussia since Pufendorf and Thomasius,
and then, with the embittering experiences of his
tyrannized youth, cultivated them further, rigor-
ously and independently.
In the rising of the Schmalkaldener, in the
Thirty- Years' War, in all the confusion of the last
two centuries, he saw nothing but the unceasing
struggle of German freedom against the despotism
of the House of Austria, which governed the weaker
princes as slaves "with an iron rod, " and left only
the strong free to do as they chose. Not without
arbitrariness he arranged the facts of history
according to this one-sided view; one-sidedness
turned towards light and life is, after all, the privi-
lege of the creative genius. To bring the old
struggle to a victorious end seemed to him the
problem of the Prussian State. In his younger
years he remained still true to Protestant things:
he prized the glorious duty of the house of Bran-
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? 134 The Life of
denburg " to promote the Protestant religion every-
where in Germany and in Europe, " and remarked,
full of displeasure, in Heidelberg, how here in the
old dominions of our Church the monks and priests
of Rome again carried on their existence.
Even afterwards, when he estranged himself
from the Church, and disdainfully condemned the
mediocre parsons' outlooks of Luther and Calvin,
from the height of his self-sure philosophical out-
look, the conviction remained alive in him that his
State, with every root of its being, belonged to the
Protestant world. He knew how all the accom-
plices of the Vatican worked secretly for the anni-
hilation of the new great Protestant Power; he
knew that his human ideal of religious toleration,
the right of the individual to attain salvation in
his own fashion, was possible in the first place only
on a footing of Protestantism; he knew that in
new and worldly forms he was carrying on the
struggles of the sixteenth century, and above his
last work, the outline or sketch for the German
Princes' League {Fiirstenhund) , he wrote the ex-
pressive inscription: "After the pattern of the
rules for the League of Schmalkalden. "
The earliest of the political writings of Frederick
preserved for us show us the eyes of the eighteen-
year-old boy already turned to that sphere of
political life in which he was to unfold his highest
and most characteristic powers -- the question of
higher politics. The Crown-Prince examined the
position of his State in the world, found the situa-
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? Frederick the Great 135
tion of his divided provinces heavily imperilled,
and, still half-joking and in high spirits, drew up
bold calculations as to how the remote provinces
were to be rounded off, that they should no longer
find themselves "so lonely, without company. "
Only a short time, and the unripe youthful pro-
jects returned as deep and mighty purposes ; three
years before his ascension to the throne he already
saw, with the clairvoyance of genius, the great
path of his life lying open before him :
It seems [so he writes] that Heaven has appointed
the King to make all preparations which wise pre-
cautions before the beginning of a war demand.
Who knows, if Providence has not reserved it for
me to make a glorious use of these war-means at
some future time, and to convert them to the realiza-
tion of the plans for which the foresight of my father
intended them ?
He noticed that his State tottered in an untenable
position midway between the small States and the
Great Powers, and showed himself determined to
give a definite character to this anomalous con-
dition {decider cet etre) : it had become a necessity
to enlarge the territory of the State, and corriger
la figure de la Prusse, if Prussia wished to stand on
her own feet and bear the great name of Kingdom
with honour.
From generation to generation his ancestors had
given the House of Austria faithful military service,
always conscientiously disdaining to profit by the
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? 136 The Life of
embarrassments of her neighbour; ingratitude,
betrayal, and contempt had been their reward.
Frederick himself had experienced heavily in his
oppressed youth "the arrogance, the presumption,
the disdainful pride of this bombastic Court of
Vienna"; his heart was sworn to hatred against
"the Imperial gang, " who with their crawling and
lying had estranged his father's heart from him.
His untamable pride sprang up when, at the
paternal court, there was no cold refusal forth-
coming to the presumptions of Austria: he wrote
angrily that the King of Prussia should be like the
noble palm-tree, of which the poet said: "If you
wish to fell it, it lifts its proud crest. " At the
same time he followed with a watchful eye the
dislocation of power in the political system, and
had arrived at the conclusion that the old policy of
the balance of power of the States of Europe had
wholly outlived itself; since the victories of the
War of the Spanish Succession it was no longer the
opportune time to battle with Austria and England
against the Bourbons.
The policy now was to lift the new German State
"through the f rightfulness of its weapons" to
such a degree of power that it might maintain its
independence against every great neighbour, even
against the Imperial House.
So the much misused expression "German
freedom" received a new, nobler meaning in Fred-
erick's mouth. It no longer meant that dis-
honourable minor-princes' policy, which called on
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? Frederick the Great 137
foreign countries for help against the Kaiser and
betrayed the boundaries of the Empire to the alien ;
it meant the uplifting of a great German Power,
which would defend the Fatherland in east and
west, but of its own free will, independent of the
authority of the Empire.
For centuries it had been the rule that he who
was not good Austrian must be good Swede, like
HippoUthus a Lapide, or good French, like the
princes of the Rhine-League, or good English, like
the kindred of the House of Guelph; even the
Great Elector, in the frightful pressure between
superior neighbours, could only maintain an in-
dependent position from time to time. It was
Frederick's work that beside both those equally
ruinous tendencies, the veiled and the unveiled
foreign lordship, a third tendency should arise,
a policy which was only Prussian, and nothing
further ; to it Germany's future belonged.
It was not the method of this hater of empty
words to talk much of the Fatherland; and yet
there lived in his soul a sensitive, gruffly-rejecting
national pride, grown inseparably with his authori-
tative self-reUance and his pride of birth. That
foreign nations should play the master on German
soil was to him like an offence to his personal
honour and the illustrious blood in his veins,
which the philosophical King, naive as genius is,
still prized highly.
When the astonishing confusion of German af-
fairs occasionally drove him to an alliance with
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? 138 The Life of
foreigners, he never promised the foreign Powers
a sod of German land, never let them misuse his
State for their purposes. His whole life long he
was accused of faithless cunning because no treaty
or league could make him resign the right of decid-
ing for himself.
All the Courts of Europe spoke with resentment
of the travailler pour le roi de Prusse; being used
of old to govern the life of Germany, they could
scarcely grasp that at last the resolute selfishness
of an independent German State was again opposed
to their will. The royal pupil of Voltaire had
begun for the German State the same work of
emancipation as Voltaire's rival, Lessing, accom-
plished for our poetry.
Already in his youthful writings he condemns in
sharp words the weakness of the Holy (Roman)
Empire, which had opened its Thermopylae, Alsace,
to the foreigner; he is angry with the Court of
Vienna, which has delivered up Lorraine to France;
he will never forgive the Queen of Hungary for
letting loose the wild pack of hounds, those orna-
ments of the East, the Jazygiens, Croatians, and
the Tolpatschians, on the German Empire, and
for the first time calling up the Muscovite barbari-
ans to interfere in Germany's domestic affairs.
Then during the seven years his German pride
and hate relieves itself in words of furious scorn.
To the Russians, who plunder the peasants of his
new mark (province), he sends the blessing: "Oh,
could they only submerge themselves with one
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? Frederick the Great 139
spring in the Black Sea, headlong, the hindmost
last, they themselves and their memory! " And
when the French overflow the Rhineland, he
sings (in the French language, it is true) that ode
which reminds one of the ring of the War of
Liberation :
Bis in seine tiefste Quelle,
Schaumt der alte Rhein vor Groll,
Flucht der Schmach, dass seine Welle
Fremdes Joch ertragen soil !
(Down to his deepest spring,
The old Rhine foams with rage,
Curses the outrage, that his waves
A foreign yoke must bear. )
"Prudence is very inclined to preserve what one
possesses, but courage alone knows how to ac-
quire" -- with this voluntary confession Frederick
betrayed in his Rheinsberger days how his inner-
most being forced him to quick resolution, to
stormy audacity. To do nothing by halves seemed
to him the first duty of the statesman, and of all
imaginable resolutions, the worst to him was -- to
take none. But he showed his German blood in
that he knew how to restrain his fiery impetuous
activity at the outset with cold, calm calculation.
He who felt the heroic power of an Alexander in
him, assigned himself to achieve something lasting
in the narrow circle in which Fate had placed
him.
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? 140 The Life of
In war he now and then gave rein to his fiery
spirit, demanded the impossible from his troops,
and failed through arrogant contempt of the enemy :
as a statesman he preserved always a perfect
moderation, a wise self-restraint, which rejected
every adventurous plan at the threshold.
Never for a moment was he duped by the
thought of breaking loose his State from the de-
cayed German community ; the position of being a
State of the Empire did not cramp him in the free-
dom of his European policy; it preserved for him
the right to have a finger in the destiny of the
Empire ; therefore he wished to keep his foot in the
stirrup of the German steed. Still less did it oc-
cur to him to reach out for the Emperor's crown
himself.