Titans of History

A man who gives battle as readily as he writes an opera … he has written more books than any of his contemporary princes has sired bastards; he has won more victories than he has written books.

Voltaire, 1772

The outstanding soldier-statesman of his age, the paragon of gifted kingship, Frederick the Great prefigured Napoleon. The most enlightened monarch of his day, Frederick was an aesthete and lover of the arts—an accomplished writer, composer, flautist and wit. Famed in his youth as a philosopher prince, on acceding to the throne in 1740, at the age of twenty-eight, this apparent milksop astonished Europe’s crowned heads by becoming the most formidable ruler of the age.

With his typically wry wit, Frederick once declared that he had infected Europe with warfare just as a coquette infects her clients. Introspective and self-critical, Frederick’s analysis and planning were always immaculate, his quick mind the first to seize the advantage on the battlefield. His martial qualities inspired in his formidably well-trained army the utmost respect and loyalty, despite the horrific privations his campaigns put them through. When Napoleon reached Berlin twenty years after Frederick’s death, he paid homage at Frederick’s tomb. As he entered, he declared to his men: “Hats off, gentlemen! If he were alive, we would not be here!”

Frederick waged war to serve his state’s interests, but he was never militaristic. He deplored war’s effects and he abhorred hypocrisy. At other times he could be firmly pragmatic: “If we can gain something by being honest, we will be it; and if we have to deceive, we will be cheats.”

In 1740 he boldly and ruthlessly invaded Austria’s rich province of Silesia, unleashing almost twenty years of savage warfare across central Europe, but he kept the territory. Europe’s hypocritical old guard was quick to share in the spoils when Frederick initiated the partition of the increasingly anarchic Poland. “She weeps, but she takes,” Frederick wryly commented of Empress Maria Theresa when she took her slice of Poland.

The man who refused to wear spurs because he thought them cruel to horses abolished torture within days of coming to the throne. He banned serfdom in all his new territories, and in an age when capital punishment was decreed for stealing bread, the famously liberal Frederick signed only eight or ten death warrants a year. He once reprieved a father and daughter from the death sentence for committing incest on the grounds that one could not be absolutely sure about the girl’s paternity. The atheist Frederick’s religious tolerance extended to welcoming the Jesuits to Prussia—a sect that crowned heads all over Europe were trying to expel.

The first of Europe’s enlightened despots, Frederick was tireless in fulfilling his self-designated role as the first servant of the state. Every day he forced himself to rise at 4 a.m., ordering his servants to throw a cold wet cloth in his face if he seemed reluctant. Even such an early start as this barely gave him time to do all he wanted. At his court, which he filled with artists, writers, musicians and philosophers, he practiced the flute four times a day, held concerts after supper, conducted a vast correspondence with philosophers and statesmen, wrote poetry, and administered the affairs of state.

His endurance was as striking as his luck. He was prone to fits of depression and despair, but he never gave up. “Fortune alone can deliver me from my present position,” he declared at one point during the Seven Years’ War (1756–63). The timely death of his inveterate enemy Empress Elizaveta of Russia in 1762 brought about a volte-face in foreign policy as his ardent admirer Peter III came to the Russian throne. Having teetered on the brink of total annihilation early in the war, Prussia emerged triumphant from it.

Frederick’s insecurity may well have been instilled in him by his miserable youth. His father Frederick William I’s contempt for his son was famous. “What goes on in that little head?” the austere, violent, volatile Frederick William would demand suspiciously of his “effeminate” son, whose lifelong love for all things French directly contravened his father’s orders. Matters came to a head when the eighteen-year-old Frederick tried to flee his wretched existence. After he was caught and imprisoned, his best friend (and some say lover) Hermann von Katte was executed outside the window of his cell.

Prussia may have grown in grandeur but Frederick did not. Toward the end of Frederick’s life, a visiting dignitary encountered an elderly “gardener” at the Sanssouci summer palace and had a friendly chat. Only later, when he was introduced to Prussia’s king, did he realize who he had been talking to.