Frederick II, the Great, King of Prussia

FREDERICK II, the Great, King of Prussia. - Born in Berlin on 24 Jan. 1712, died at Potsdam on 16 Aug. 1786. The firstborn son of King Frederick William I and of Sophia Dorothea of Hanover, rigidly educated in a soldierly fashion against his own nature, which inclined to art, especially music, and generally to the refinements of French Enlightenment culture, in bitter conflict with his father to the point of an attempted flight (1730), he bowed to training in the civil and military administration, secretly cultivated his literary-philosophical inclinations (among other writings, the Antimachiavel) and succeeded his father on 31 May 1740. After a few tentative measures that were already indicative of his governing directions (abolition of torture, toleration of Catholic schools), the problem of the Austrian succession overtook him with the death of Charles VI (Oct. 1740). Reviving old Prussian claims, he took advantage of it to occupy Silesia by surprise, to ally himself with France and to abandon it when the Peace of Berlin of July 1742 assured him possession of Silesia. But little persuaded of Maria Theresa's definitive renunciation of that province, in Aug. 1744 he resumed the war in Bohemia; poorly seconded by the French allies, he at first gathered few fruits, but then, recovering and having achieved notable successes over the Austrians and their Saxon allies, he was able at the Peace of Dresden to confirm the terms of the previous one (Dec. 1745). There followed 11 years of peace, which F. devoted first of all to the reorganization of Silesia, which, among other things, presented the problem of a largely Catholic population, toward which F. showed himself tolerant; then to the administrative organization of the State, especially to municipal organization. Other reforms touched the financial administration, the bringing under cultivation of marshy areas of the Oder, inspired in the field of commerce and industry by mercantilist criteria. But the most profound reform was that of the administration of justice, brought about especially by the minister Coccei.

Also belonging to these years of peace are the cares given by F. to the embellishment of the capital and of Potsdam, to cultural institutions, the favor shown to men of letters especially French ones, such as Maupertuis, and that singular friendship of his, soon spoiled, with Voltaire. Having already in 1744 united East Frisia to his domains, thanks to contestable hereditary rights in which he knew how to forestall Hanover by a narrow margin, F. viewed with suspicion the rapprochement between Austria and Russia, between Austria and France, and the relations between France and England becoming critical again, whereby, in the event of war, Hanover would easily have fallen into French hands. To forestall that eventuality, F. concluded with England the Convention of Westminster (Jan. 1756), to which France responded by concluding with Austria the Treaty of Versailles (May 1756) which overturned the positions in the relations among the great European powers. Convinced that he was threatened by an Austro-Russian plan of attack, he believed he could avert it by opening hostilities first and throwing himself upon a lesser ally of his enemies, Saxony (Aug. 1756), and thereby beginning the so-called Seven Years' War. Having forced the Saxon army to surrender, he found himself against a preponderant coalition (Austria, Russia, the Empire, France, Poland, Sweden), to which he could oppose only England, which for the moment gave only subsidies and not troops, and some lesser German prince. In the first encounters (Kolin, etc.) F.'s situation seemed desperate: but in Nov.-Dec. 1757 his military genius shone forth in the harsh defeats inflicted on the French at Rossbach and on the Austrians at Leuthen. But too great was the disparity of forces: F. held out thus for four more years, now and then giving some tremendous mauling to the Russians or the Austrians (Zorndorf, Aug. 1758; Torgau, Nov. 1760), but also receiving some (at Kunersdorf, Aug. 1759, the gravest defeat of his life, which drove him to despair for a moment; at Liegnitz, Aug. 1760). Even amid the scant concord among the confederates against him, his fate seemed sealed, after the new English ministry of Lord Bute cut off his subsidies, when the death of the tsarina Elizabeth (Jan. 1762) and the accession to the throne of Peter III, an admirer of F., gave him prospects of nothing less than an alliance with Russia, which did not fully come to pass because of the rapid replacement of Peter by the tsarina Catherine; but it gave him breathing room to inflict still harsh blows on the French and Austrians and to gain the Peace of Hubertusburg (Sept. 1763) which assured him what he possessed and placed Prussia among the great European powers. The 23 years of peace that followed served above all to heal the deep wounds of the war and to continue the work of administrative, economic and financial reform of the State according to the previous criteria, which were moreover the common ones of princely Enlightenment. Singular was the favor shown by F. to the Jesuits after their expulsion and suppression, employing several of them in teaching at the University of Breslau. But his passion remained foreign policy, more than ever during the complications of the Polish situation, from which, at the prompting of Russia promptly seized upon, he drew the profits of the first partition of Poland (Febr. 1772); as later (1777-79) from the complications of the successions in Bavaria he reaped, not shrinking even from the risks of a brief war in Bohemia, besides the inheritance of Ansbach and Bayreuth, the advantage that Bavaria should not go to swell the Habsburg domains; and when, a few years later (1785-86), Joseph II still dreamed of enriching himself from that quarter, F. opposed to him the formation of a league of German princes which sufficed to make the Habsburg recede from his plans.

Ernesto Sestan