Frederick the Great
King of Prussia from 1740 to 1786 / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Frederick II (German: Friedrich II.; 24 January 1712 – 17 August 1786) was the monarch of Prussia from 1740 until 1786. He was the last Hohenzollern monarch titled King in Prussia, declaring himself King of Prussia after annexing Royal Prussia from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772. His most significant accomplishments include his military successes in the Silesian wars, his reorganisation of the Prussian Army, the First Partition of Poland, and his patronage of the arts and the Enlightenment. Prussia greatly increased its territories and became a major military power in Europe under his rule. He became known as Frederick the Great (German: Friedrich der Große) and was nicknamed "Old Fritz" (German: der Alte Fritz).
Frederick the Great | |||||
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Reign | 31 May 1740 – 17 August 1786 | ||||
Predecessor | Frederick William I | ||||
Successor | Frederick William II | ||||
Born | (1712-01-24)24 January 1712 Berlin, Kingdom of Prussia | ||||
Died | 17 August 1786(1786-08-17) (aged 74) Potsdam, Kingdom of Prussia | ||||
Burial | Sanssouci, Potsdam | ||||
Spouse | |||||
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House | Hohenzollern | ||||
Father | Frederick William I of Prussia | ||||
Mother | Sophia Dorothea of Hanover | ||||
Signature | |||||
Military career | |||||
Service/ | Prussian Army | ||||
Battles/wars | Tree-like list
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In his youth, Frederick was more interested in music and philosophy than in the art of war, which led to clashes with his authoritarian father, Frederick William I of Prussia. However, upon ascending to the Prussian throne, he attacked and annexed the rich Austrian province of Silesia in 1742, winning military acclaim for himself and Prussia. He became an influential military theorist, whose analyses emerged from his extensive personal battlefield experience and covered issues of strategy, tactics, mobility and logistics.
Frederick was a supporter of enlightened absolutism, stating that the ruler should be the first servant of the state. He modernised the Prussian bureaucracy and civil service, and pursued religious policies throughout his realm that ranged from tolerance to segregation. He reformed the judicial system and made it possible for men of lower status to become judges and senior bureaucrats. Frederick also encouraged immigrants of various nationalities and faiths to come to Prussia, although he enacted oppressive measures against Catholics in Silesia and Polish Prussia. He supported the arts and philosophers he favoured, and allowed freedom of the press and literature. Frederick was almost certainly homosexual, and his sexuality has been the subject of much study. Because he died childless, he was succeeded by his nephew, Frederick William II. He is buried at his favourite residence, Sanssouci in Potsdam.
Nearly all 19th-century German historians made Frederick into a romantic model of a glorified warrior, praising his leadership, administrative efficiency, devotion to duty and success in building Prussia into a great power in Europe. Frederick remained an admired historical figure through Germany's defeat in World War I, and the Nazis glorified him as a great German leader prefiguring Adolf Hitler, who personally idolised him. His reputation became less favourable in Germany after World War II, partly due to his status as a Nazi symbol. Historians in the 21st century tend to view Frederick as an outstanding military leader and capable monarch, whose commitment to enlightenment culture and administrative reform built the foundation that allowed the Kingdom of Prussia to contest the Austrian Habsburgs for leadership among the German states.
Frederick was the son of then-Crown Prince Frederick William of Prussia and his wife, Sophia Dorothea of Hanover.[1] He was born sometime between 11 and 12 p.m. on 24 January 1712 in the Berlin Palace and was baptised with the single name Friedrich by Benjamin Ursinus von Bär on 31 January.[2] The birth was welcomed by his grandfather, Frederick I, as his two previous grandsons had both died in infancy. With the death of Frederick I in 1713, his son Frederick William I became King in Prussia, thus making young Frederick the crown prince. Frederick had nine siblings who lived to adulthood. He had six sisters. The eldest was Wilhelmine, who became his closest sibling.[3] He also had three younger brothers, including Augustus William and Henry.[4] The new king wished for his children to be educated not as royalty, but as simple folk. They were tutored by a French woman, Madame de Montbail, who had also educated Frederick William.[5]
Frederick William I, popularly dubbed the "Soldier King", had created a large and powerful army that included a regiment of his famous "Potsdam Giants"; he carefully managed the kingdom's wealth and developed a strong centralised government. He also had a violent temper and ruled Brandenburg-Prussia with absolute authority.[6] In contrast, Frederick's mother Sophia, whose father, George Louis of Brunswick-Lüneburg, had succeeded to the British throne as King George I in 1714, was polite, charismatic and learned.[7] The political and personal differences between Frederick's parents created tensions,[8] which affected Frederick's attitude toward his role as a ruler, his attitude toward culture, and his relationship with his father.[9]
During his early youth, Frederick lived with his mother and sister Wilhelmine,[9] although they regularly visited their father's hunting lodge at Königs Wusterhausen.[10] Frederick and his older sister formed a close relationship,[9] which lasted until her death in 1758.[11] Frederick and his sisters were brought up by a Huguenot governess and tutor and learned French and German simultaneously. Undeterred by his father's desire that his education be entirely religious and pragmatic, the young Frederick developed a preference for music, literature, and French culture. Frederick Wilhelm thought these interests were effeminate,[12] as they clashed with his militarism, resulting in his frequent beating and humiliation of Frederick.[13] Nevertheless, Frederick, with the help of his tutor in Latin, Jacques Duhan, procured for himself a 3,000 volume secret library of poetry, Greek and Roman classics, and philosophy to supplement his official lessons.[14]
Although his father, Frederick William I, had been raised a Calvinist in spite of the Lutheran state faith in Prussia, he feared he was not one of God's elect. To avoid the possibility of his son Frederick being motivated by the same concerns, the king ordered that his heir not be taught about predestination. Despite his father's intention, Frederick appeared to have adopted a sense of predestination for himself.[15]
At age 16, Frederick formed an attachment to the king's 17-year-old page, Peter Karl Christoph von Keith. Wilhelmine recorded that the two "soon became inseparable. Keith was intelligent, but without education. He served my brother from feelings of real devotion, and kept him informed of all the king's actions."[16] Wilhelmine would further record that "Though I had noticed that he was on more familiar terms with this page than was proper in his position, I did not know how intimate the friendship was." As Frederick was almost certainly homosexual,[17] his relationship with Keith may have been homoerotic, although the extent of their intimacy remains ambiguous.[18] When Frederick William heard rumours of their relationship, Keith was sent away to an unpopular regiment near the Dutch frontier.[19]
In the mid-1720s, Queen Sophia Dorothea attempted to arrange the marriage of Frederick and his sister Wilhelmine to her brother King George II's children Amelia and Frederick, who was the heir apparent.[20] Fearing an alliance between Prussia and Great Britain, Field Marshal von Seckendorff, the Austrian ambassador in Berlin, bribed the Prussian Minister of War, Field Marshal von Grumbkow, and the Prussian ambassador in London, Benjamin Reichenbach. The pair undermined the relationship between the British and Prussian courts using bribery and slander.[21] Eventually Frederick William became angered by the idea of the effete Frederick being married to an English wife and under the influence of the British court.[22] Instead, he signed a treaty with Austria, which vaguely promised to acknowledge Prussia's rights to the principalities of Jülich-Berg, which led to the collapse of the marriage proposal.[23]
Katte affair
Soon after his relationship with Keith ended, Frederick became close friends with Hans Hermann von Katte, a Prussian officer several years older than Frederick who became one of his boon companions and may have been his lover.[24] After the English marriages became impossible, Frederick plotted to flee to England with Katte and other junior army officers.[25] While the royal retinue was near Mannheim in the Electorate of the Palatinate, Robert Keith, who was Peter Keith's brother and also one of Frederick's companions, had an attack of conscience when the conspirators were preparing to escape and begged Frederick William for forgiveness on 5 August 1730.[26] Frederick and Katte were subsequently arrested and imprisoned in Küstrin. Because they were army officers who had tried to flee Prussia for Great Britain, Frederick William levelled an accusation of treason against the pair. The king briefly threatened the crown prince with execution, then considered forcing Frederick to renounce the succession in favour of his brother, Augustus William, although either option would have been difficult to justify to the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire.[27] The king condemned Katte to death and forced Frederick to watch his beheading at Küstrin on 6 November, leading the crown prince to faint just before the fatal blow.[28]
Frederick was granted a royal pardon and released from his cell on 18 November 1730, although he remained stripped of his military rank.[29] Rather than being permitted to return to Berlin, he was forced to remain in Küstrin and began rigorous schooling in statecraft and administration for the War and Estates Departments. Tensions eased slightly when Frederick William visited Küstrin a year later, and Frederick was allowed to visit Berlin on the occasion of his sister Wilhelmine's marriage to Margrave Frederick of Bayreuth on 20 November 1731.[30] The crown prince returned to Berlin after finally being released from his tutelage at Küstrin on 26 February 1732 on condition that he marry Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Bevern.[31]
Marriage and War of the Polish Succession
Initially, Frederick William considered marrying Frederick to Elisabeth of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, the niece of Empress Anna of Russia, but this plan was ardently opposed by Prince Eugene of Savoy. Frederick himself also proposed marrying Maria Theresa of Austria in return for renouncing the succession.[32] Instead, Eugene persuaded Frederick William, through Seckendorff, that the crown prince should marry Elisabeth Christine, who was a Protestant relative of the Austrian Habsburgs.[33] Frederick wrote to his sister that, "There can be neither love nor friendship between us",[34] and he threatened suicide,[35] but he went along with the wedding on 12 June 1733. He had little in common with his bride, and the marriage was resented as an example of the Austrian political interference that had plagued Prussia.[36] Nevertheless, during their early married life, the royal couple resided at the Crown Prince's Palace in Berlin. Later, Elisabeth Christine accompanied Frederick to Schloss Rheinsberg, where at this time she played an active role in his social life.[37] After his father died and he had secured the throne, Frederick separated from Elisabeth. He granted her the Schönhausen Palace and apartments at the Berliner Stadtschloss, but he prohibited Elisabeth Christine from visiting his court in Potsdam. Frederick and Elisabeth Christine had no children, and Frederick bestowed the title of the heir to the throne, "Prince of Prussia", on his brother Augustus William. Nevertheless, Elisabeth Christine remained devoted to him. Frederick gave her all the honours befitting her station, but never displayed any affection. After their separation, he would only see her on state occasions.[38] These included visits to her on her birthday and were some of the rare occasions when Frederick did not wear military uniform.[39]
In 1732, Frederick was restored to the Prussian Army as Colonel of the Regiment von der Goltz, stationed near Nauen and Neuruppin.[40] When Prussia provided a contingent of troops to aid the Army of the Holy Roman Empire during the War of the Polish Succession, Frederick studied under Prince Eugene of Savoy during the campaign against France on the Rhine;[41] he noted the weakness of the Imperial Army under Eugene's command, something that he would capitalise on at Austria's expense when he later took the throne.[42] Frederick William, weakened by gout and seeking to reconcile with his heir, granted Frederick Schloss Rheinsberg in Rheinsberg, north of Neuruppin. At Rheinsberg, Frederick assembled a small number of musicians, actors and other artists. He spent his time reading, watching and acting in dramatic plays, as well as composing and playing music.[43] Frederick formed the Bayard Order to discuss warfare with his friends; Heinrich August de la Motte Fouqué was made the grand master of the gatherings.[44] Later, Frederick regarded this time as one of the happiest of his life.[45]
Reading and studying the works of Niccolò Machiavelli, such as The Prince, was considered necessary for any king in Europe to rule effectively. In 1739, Frederick finished his Anti-Machiavel, an idealistic rebuttal of Machiavelli. It was written in French—as were all of Frederick's works—and published anonymously in 1740, but Voltaire distributed it in Amsterdam to great popularity.[46] Frederick's years dedicated to the arts instead of politics ended upon the 1740 death of Frederick William and his inheritance of the Kingdom of Prussia. Frederick and his father were more or less reconciled at the latter's death, and Frederick later admitted, despite their constant conflict, that Frederick William had been an effective ruler: "What a terrible man he was. But he was just, intelligent, and skilled in the management of affairs... it was through his efforts, through his tireless labour, that I have been able to accomplish everything that I have done since."[47]
In one defining respect Frederick would come to the throne with an exceptional inheritance. Frederick William I had left him with a highly militarised state. Prussia was the twelfth largest country in Europe in terms of population, but its army was the fourth largest: only the armies of France, Russia and Austria were larger.[48] Prussia had one soldier for every 28 citizens, whereas Great Britain only had one for every 310, and the military absorbed 86% of Prussia's state budget.[49] Moreover, the Prussian infantry trained by Frederick William I were, at the time of Frederick's accession, arguably unrivalled in discipline and firepower. By 1770, after two decades of punishing war alternating with intervals of peace, Frederick had doubled the size of the huge army he had inherited. The situation is summed up in a widely translated and quoted aphorism attributed to Mirabeau, who asserted in 1786 that "La Prusse n'est pas un pays qui a une armée, c'est une armée qui a un pays"[50] ("Prussia was not a state in possession of an army, but an army in possession of a state").[51] By using the resources his frugal father had cultivated, Frederick was eventually able to establish Prussia as the fifth and smallest European great power.[52]
Prince Frederick was twenty-eight years old when his father Frederick William I died and he ascended to the throne of Prussia.[53] Before his accession, Frederick was told by D'Alembert, "The philosophers and the men of letters in every land have long looked upon you, Sire, as their leader and model."[54] Such devotion, consequently, had to be tempered by political realities. When Frederick ascended the throne as the third "King in Prussia" in 1740, his realm consisted of scattered territories, including Cleves, Mark, and Ravensberg in the west of the Holy Roman Empire; Brandenburg, Hither Pomerania, and Farther Pomerania in the east of the Empire; and the Kingdom of Prussia, the former Duchy of Prussia, outside of the Empire bordering the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was titled King in Prussia because his kingdom included only part of historic Prussia; he was to declare himself King of Prussia after the First Partition of Poland in 1772.[55]