Frederick the Great

  Frederick William’s policy over the marriages never really changed, though sometimes, probably to stop his wife’s nagging, he seemed more or less agreeable to them. He was always ready to send Wilhelmine to London, but never wanted an English wife for Frederick. Grumbkow had put it into his head that a rich English princess at Berlin, where everybody was so venal, would have too much power. If Frederick William really believed this, he had little understanding of his son’s nature. George II, on the other hand, always said (and stuck to it): ‘Both marriages or neither.’ While George I was alive there seemed to be some hope for Wilhelmine, but in 1727 he died. Frederick William’s lifelong bête noire, George II, infuriated him by making away with his father’s will. There had almost certainly been a legacy to Sophia Dorothea, but she never got a penny. The cause of the English marriages was not helped by this.

  The various ambassadors at Berlin reported all these things to their sovereigns; they also mentioned the fact that Frederick looked wretched, pale, worried and old; the poor little persecuted boy was an object of interest all over Europe.

  *Frederick William had already taken a good part of Western Pomerania from the Swedes—the rest was to become Prussian only in the general European settlement of 1815.

  2. The Unhappy Family

  In 1728 it was announced that Frederick William would pay a State visit to Dresden. The Elector of Saxony was also King—Augustus II—of Poland, having been elected by the Polish aristocrats in 1697. It was necessary for the King of Prussia to be on good terms with his neighbour because he was obliged to cross Polish territory when he wanted to visit his duchy of East Prussia, but lately the two Kings had had differences which had flared up over the kidnapping of a Saxon giant. However, this state of affairs suited neither of them and Augustus sent Field Marshal Flemming to Berlin with words of peace and an invitation to Frederick William to go to Dresden for the carnival. Flemming’s visit was a success—Frederick William, who had been particularly gloomy of late, quite cheered up; Mme Flemming, a fashionable beauty, was kind to Wilhelmine, did her hair for her in the latest manner, and advised her about her clothes. The invitation was accepted.

  Augustus was a poor ruler but a picturesque character. His physical strength was so exceptional that he is known to history as Augustus the Strong. It was said of him that he was Lutheran by birth, Catholic by ambition (the Poles were violently Catholic) and Mahometan in his habits. He led an extremely jolly life with a harem of beautiful women whom he collected just as Frederick William collected giants; when he died he left a legitimate heir and 354 bastards. Among his descendants were Louis XVI and George Sand. Historians look with no good eye on Augustus the Strong and his son Augustus III who between them reduced the rich State of Saxony to penury in order to satisfy their craving for works of art. Beautiful Dresden under their rule was the most civilized town in the Empire.

  Frederick William could not allow his virtuous Queen to visit such a court, much as she would have liked it, but there was no reason why he should not take Frederick, who was now grown up. The Prince had set his heart on going. He craved the great world which he knew only from books and the colourful imagination of Sophia Dorothea. She was really as ignorant of it as he; the French and English bourgeoisie led more amusing lives than this daughter, wife and sister of kings and her children. Frederick William decided against taking Frederick and set out for Dresden without him. So intense was his disappointment that Wilhelmine thought her brother might fall dangerously ill; she asked Count von Suhm, Augustus’s minister to Berlin, if something could not be done. Suhm was very fond of Frederick: he wrote to his master who, as he rather wanted to see the interesting boy, begged Frederick William to send for him. Augustus always put Frederick William in a good temper, no doubt because of his great geniality. (‘The ever-cheerful Man of Sin,’ Carlyle calls him, ‘gay eupeptic Son of Belial’.) So Frederick William not only sent for Frederick but told him to order himself a new coat and tidy liveries for his servants. Father and son lodged with the Flemmings and stayed for a month. Visitors from all over the Empire came for the carnival; every effort was made to amuse them. Frederick saw his first play and, even more thrilling, his first opera; there were balls and entertainments of all sorts. The little Crown Prince found himself treated for the first time as a grown-up person: people talked to him seriously and seemed to be interested in his ideas. Indeed, after a dinner-party where the conversation had turned on philosophy, the Prince signed a letter to Wilhelmine Fédéric le Pfilosophe [sic]. Frederick William’s temper remained good, although he realized that Frederick was cutting a better figure than he in high society. His drunken boisterousness was out of place at Dresden; he had various misfortunes such as bursting his breeches when dancing with more energy than grace. Augustus’s easy manners smoothed everything.

  But he could not resist one joke at Frederick William’s expense. After dinner, he took his guests to see some rooms in the palace. They were praising the decoration when a curtain was suddenly drawn disclosing a naked woman on a bed. Frederick William was startled into saying that she was very beautiful; but then he rushed from the room and, dragging Frederick with him, left the palace forthwith; he sent Grumbkow to tell the King of Poland that if this sort of thing was going to happen he would pack up and go home. Augustus hurried round to see him and apologized, and the visit continued in cheerful vein. Now Frederick was not as much displeased as his father by what they had seen. He had been making eyes at Countess Orzelska, Augustus’s favourite mistress, who happened also to be his daughter and who was in love with Count Rudorfski, another of his children by one of those vaguely Turkish ladies with whom the eighteenth century abounds. As Frederick was a pretty young fellow, Augustus foresaw further cause for jealousy, so he made a bargain with him: he was to abandon Countess Orzelska, and Augustus would give him the naked woman instead, an arrangement which suited Frederick, who finally enjoyed both ladies. Very probably he had never yet had a chance to make love, since he was not allowed to be alone night or day; in this respect he profited by his visit to Dresden.

  Too soon the delightful month came to an end and with it Frederick William’s good temper. On their return the Crown Prince seemed more on his nerves than ever; to make matters worse the whole family now went to Wusterhausen. This favourite hunting-lodge of Frederick William’s was the abomination of his wife and children. It was small, they were all on top of each other, gloomy and uncomfortable. The only decent room was used as a tabagie. There was a smelly moat into which the members of the tabagie sometimes threw Gundling when he and they were very drunk (once they forgot that it was frozen over and he bounced most amusingly on the ice). Two bears and four eagles were tethered on the drawbridge, all in a perpetual bad temper, and Frederick William’s A.D.C.s had to get past these creatures as best they could several times a day. In this horrible atmosphere, so different from that of Dresden, Frederick subsided into black boredom. When he could get away from the watchful eye of his father he wrote endless screeds to a new friend, Lieutenant von Borsch: ‘mon cœur vous adore . . .’ and so on. He told him that the days were so terrible at Wusterhausen that, when each was over, he would like to erase it from his memory as if it had never been. He also wrote to his father, a pathetic note begging him to stop hating him so cruelly; he received a very dusty answer in the third person. Hoping to soften Frederick William he loudly and embarrassingly at a dinner-party told Suhm of his great love for his father—pretending to be drunk he threw himself at Frederick William’s feet and covered his hands with kisses. Frederick William was delighted to see him for once behaving like a man—in other words, drunk—but nothing changed. He began to knock his son about systematically—the cane was busy, there were kicks and blows and hair-pulling, all, to add to the humiliation, in front of servants and officers.

  Back in Berlin Frederick told Rothenburg that he thought of escaping, to France or England. Rothenburg reported it to his government and was told to put him off at all costs; the arrival
of the fugitive Crown Prince in France would have been most embarrassing. The boy looked ill. He became as thin as a rake; doctors spoke of consumption. But Wilhelmine thought that imposed chastity after the delights of Dresden was the cause: ‘He was dying of love’, she wrote. Whatever the reason, he soon fell desperately ill and seemed really to be dying. Frederick William was overcome with remorse; he hugged and kissed his son, trying to make up for his behaviour at Wusterhausen. ‘We don’t know how much we love our children until they are ailing.’ The Queen, the doctor and Frederick himself tried to prolong this happy state of affairs by pretending that he was critically ill long after he was convalescent. At last, reassured, Frederick William went off on a visit to East Prussia and his entourage breathed again. He told Finckenstein that he could allow Frederick a little more recreation, though he must not sin against the laws of God and the wishes of his father, and must still be watched by day and by night.

  The absence of the King was a happy time. The Queen gave parties and musical soirées. Frederick was always there, as good as gold, playing duets with his sister—his flute was called Principessa, her lute Principe; the two young creatures with their angelic looks presented a touching appearance. But the rest of the time he was running wild. His governors had little control over him now; the watching by day and by night was almost impossible to enforce. He had two boon companions, Lieutenants Keith and Hans Hermann von Katte; the three of them were said to have been extremely debauched. Wilhelmine hints that he picked up a disease at this time which worried the doctors and infuriated Frederick William when he found out about it. Keith (no relation of Lord Keith) was a deplorable fellow of Scotch origin, up to any shady business. Katte was a very different sort of person. He belonged to an old, well-connected family; his sister was married to a Bismarck and his aunt was Melusina von der Schulenburg, Duchess of Kendal, the mistress of George I. He was the grandson of a field marshal and the son of a general whose house was decorated with guns taken at Ramillies. Like Frederick, Katte loved music and reading; French was his language and conversation his greatest joy. He was an atheist. (Later, under terrible circumstances, he denied this, saying he had pretended to be one in order to be fashionable.) He was extremely ambitious, though his love for the Crown Prince was genuine. He had charming looks; his fair smooth hair, tied with a black bow, was admired for two hundred years at Wüst, where he is buried, until it was stolen by an English tourist.

  On Frederick William’s return the horrible family scenes began again: tears and terror. He soon saw that Frederick and Keith were up to no good, and packed off the Lieutenant to his regiment in Cleves. Frederick and Wilhelmine retaliated by teasing their father in many a subtle and unkind way. Gundling was now replaced at meals by a fervent pastor who read and commented on religious texts. The children pretended to think him irresistibly funny, maddening Frederick William by exchanges of naughty looks and repressed giggles. Frederick William, in agony from gout, was often in a wheel-chair, in which he pursued them with even greater fury than usual. Plates, crutches and other objects flew through the air—he caught Frederick and nearly strangled him to death. At meals he made him sit at the bottom of the table, where often he got no food at all; the Queen had to send for ‘a box of cold fowls’ with which to nourish the boy. Frederick William said: ‘You needn’t think I shall soon treat you better—on the contrary I shall get worse and worse.’

  A marriage in the family, of Princess Frederika Louise, aged fourteen, to the Margrave of Ansbach, who was not much older, made hardly any impact at the court where Frederick and Wilhelmine were the centre of attention. Louise was always the least favourite among her singularly united brothers and sisters. She and Ansbach hated each other.

  Frederick’s two governors now resigned, either because they were revolted by the scenes they were forced to witness, or because they felt they had no longer any control over the Prince. Frederick William replaced them by Colonel von Rochow and Lieutenant Count von Keyserling.* The latter was a curious choice since on the face of it he was the sort of person whom Frederick William loathed, a highly civilized young man whose tastes were those of Katte and Frederick himself; indeed he became Frederick’s great and adored friend. Frederick William thought he was alert. His great complaint against Frederick at this time was lack of alertness. He told Rochow that the Prince liked only lazy, effeminate pleasures; he rode bent double, made faces and grimaces, hung his head between his ears and looked like an old rag. And then he was so dirty and so dreary. Rochow must try and make an officer and a gentleman out of this poor stuff.

  The return visit of Augustus the Strong brought a short respite to the unhappy family. Sophia Dorothea received him in Frederick I’s beautiful rooms at Charlottenburg and in her own little palace of Monbijou; he was carried to her in a splendid sedan-chair because two of his toes had just been amputated; in spite of the pain he stood for a long time talking to her. She was in her element—at last she had a chance to show that she knew how to hold a court. The provincial Berliners were astounded by the clothes and general luxuriousness of Augustus’s followers. Frederick William and his courtiers were always dressed in field uniform; they looked like sparrows beside the gorgeous Saxons. The daughter-mistress was there, and her affair with Frederick was resumed. According to Wilhelmine they managed many a secret rendezvous. Wilhelmine herself was thrilled by the compliments which Augustus showered upon her; she only realized later that this ancient widower of fifty-eight was considering her as a possible bride. As always when Augustus was there the atmosphere was agreeable; the visit went off perfectly. When it came to an end he was greatly missed.

  Now that both the children were of marriageable age Sophia Dorothea was more than ever set on the English marriages. Her confidant was Sauveterre, the new French minister, and she told him everything, even what the King said when they were in bed together. He naturally wrote it all to Versailles, adding that he was amazed by the clumsiness of her démarches. Frederick thought himself madly in love with Princess Amelia, whom he had never seen, and he wrote touching letters to her mother.

  Meanwhile, Seckendorf and Grumbkow, rolling in Austrian gold, were working hard against the marriages. Reichenbach, Frederick William’s minister at the Court of St James’s, was in their pay and his dispatches were dictated by them. (When this fact came to light it greatly amused George II.) Frederick William tried to stop Sophia Dorothea’s nagging by pretending that he was waiting to hear from London; but then he stole a few Hanoverian giants and refused to give them up, to the detriment of his relations with George II who riposted by kidnapping a Prussian officer and rudely crossing Hohenzollern territory, on his way to Hanover, without a by-your-leave. George I had always sent a civil message on these occasions. Suddenly England and Prussia were on the verge of war, to the delight of other powers. The Pope prayed in public for war between these two heretics, while the Emperor was far from displeased to see his powerful vassals at sixes and sevens. Seckendorf did all he could to fan the flames.

  Frederick, now Colonel of the giants, marched them to the Hanoverian frontier; he was congratulated by his father on the perfect order in which they arrived. The two peppery brothers-in-law had second thoughts, and the storm in the teacup subsided as quickly as it had blown up. Frederick marched his giants back to Potsdam.

  He was more and more determined to escape. He confided in Wilhelmine, who was horrified—she knew too well that such a venture would have dire repercussions for her and the Queen. One day she saw a beautiful young Frenchman in her mother’s ante-room—Frederick in his escaping clothes. Frederick William, who had an uncanny instinct for knowing what his son was up to, told Rochow to keep a very strict eye on the Prince. The boy was now seriously in debt. His pleasures, whatever they may have been, were costing money, and so was the library of books and music that he was accumulating. Frederick William suddenly ordained the death penalty for anybody who lent money to royal minors.

  The musician Quantz now came into Frederick’s lif
e; Sophia Dorothea induced him to go to Berlin from Dresden and he stayed there until his death in 1773. He was a composer and wrote a musical classic, On playing the Flute; he also improved the flute, which was a primitive instrument at that time. Frederick was greatly assisted in his music by Quantz, and he now began to have secret musical evenings in his own apartment. He liked to put on a beautiful embroidered robe, have his hair fluffed up, and then, looking, he thought, thoroughly French, settle down to a few hours of delight. Somebody was always posted to cry cave in case Frederick William should appear. One evening Katte dashed in to say that the King was upon them. Frederick just had time to tear off his robe and hide it; the others seized flutes and music and crammed themselves into a cupboard used for firewood. When the King loomed and saw Frederick’s hair he smelt a rat (or possibly a Katte—he had his suspicions about the relationship between the two boys) and began to search the room. He soon found the robe and stuffed it into the fire. Then he came upon some French books and while huffing over them he forgot to look in the wood cupboard. He sent off to the town for a bookseller, told him to take them away and get what he could for them. (The bookseller kept them and lent them to Frederick whenever he wanted them.) Quantz and Katte shuddered to think what a narrow escape they had had—Quantz had been especially frightened because his coat was red, a colour which had the same effect on Frederick William as upon a bull.

  Early in 1730 King George II seemed to be reconsidering the marriages. He sent Colonel Sir Charles Hotham as a special envoy to treat of this matter. Hotham, the head of an ancient Yorkshire family, was one of those agreeable English soldiers who so often succeed abroad. Foreigners are amused to find out that what seems at first sight the real John Bull is civilized, knows how to behave, and talks perfect French. When the Prussians knew Hotham better they were amazed, even impressed, by his knowledge of the arts and literature and also of specialized subjects such as hydraulics, agriculture and engineering. All this was unexpected in a Yorkshire squire. Hotham was welcomed with open arms by the Queen and her children. He took a fancy to Frederick: ‘There is something so charming and engaging in the Prince and one day he will be somebody. One hears nothing but good of him.’ Even Frederick William liked Hotham at first. He took him off to Augustus’s army manœuvres, where there was a typical display of Saxon extravagance, ending with a dinner for all the soldiers, who sat at miles of trestle-tables gorging themselves on beef and a cake containing five hundred eggs and a ton of butter, which had to be cut up by the regimental carpenters.