1786 against it were not only deprived of their commissions but degraded to the condition of common soldiers! Such an application of tyranny, however it may extenuate its demerit, does not diminish our dread and abhorrence of it. 1786 PRUSSIA. FREDERIC, though his strength was exhausted by continual exertion of mind and body, and he was broken down by infirmities, did not relax from a constant attention to affairs of state, or from those labours by which he had been endeavouring, during a reign of above forty years, to promote the prosperity of his realms. These, in tranquil periods, when his mind was not engaged in schemes of aggrandizement, or in the means ofadvancing the dignity of his crown and increasing its weight in the scale of Europe, were his chief employment. In the measures adopted by him to promote the commerce of his subjects he had to struggle with the disadvantages inherent in a despotic government, and with the prejudices which are rivetted into the mind of a despotic prince. But he was indefatigable in his attention to this object: and it must have afforded him particular satisfaction to close his labours for the welfare of his dominions with a treaty of amity and commerce, concluded at this time with the American states, by which a participation of all the commercial privileges enjoyed by the most favoured nations was mutually granted to the subjects of each, power, during the term of ten years. a His health now rapidly declined: yet he went through the routine of public business till the sixteenth day of august, on the eighteenth, a complication of disorders put a period to his life in his seventy-fifth year. Were the fame of heroic achievements, however acquired, the most desirable object to which a prince could aspire, "could the big war make "ambition virtue," Frederic must be considered as the most fortunate as well as illustrious monarch of his age; as he not only was endowed with signal talents talents for the attainment of it, but the circumstances of his life, and the occurrences of the age in which he lived, afforded him the most favourable opportunities of displaying them, and gratifying his ardent passion for military glory. He succeeded to the crown at an age when his understanding, matured by experience and enriched by study and reflection, as well as the strength and energy of his mind, prepared him to enter upon those arduous enterprises in which his daring spirit sought occasion to exert itself. The disputed right of Maria Theresa to the dominions of the house of Austria supplied him with specious grounds for taking the field against her as a claimant on the duchy of Silesia.-That princess refusing to acknowledge his right, he maintained it by force of arms, and obliged her to yield to his pretensions by the treaty of Breslaw in 1742, and to confirm him in the possession by that of Dresden in 1745. Moreover, when the empress queen would have recovered the duchy by means of a powerful alliance in 1756, we have seen him defending his conquest, by an astonishing display of valour and generalship, against the united forces of Austria, France, Russia, and Sweden; and, after achieving a series of the most splendid actions and experiencing the most extraordinary turns of fortune, bringing the war to a conclusion by the treaty of Hubertsburg, in 1763, which again secured him in that valuable acquisition.—It would have been happy for his memory had he been as upright and generous as he was brave.-After admiring his patience of fatigue, his personal courage, his fortitude of mind, and all those essentials of magnanimity which could be displayed in the field, after we have contemplated him as the companion and patron of men of science and learning, and as himself a proficient in several branches of the belles lettres, it is with regret that we are forced to view the dark shades with which his social and political character is sullied. His moral actions few men will attempt to vindicate: religion he did not profess: and his injustice, oppression, and rapacity towards the neighbouring powers are notoriously manifested in his transactions respecting the unfortunate Stanislaus king of Poland.—But as a sovereign, whatever was the principle of his actions, whether ambition or a sense of the obligations which that high station laid upon him, the measures of his government bear the stamp of a great and enlightened, mind. No absolute monarch was ever more attentive to the prosperity of his realms. He appears to have considered himself VOL. III. Ꭰ 1786 1786 himself as a person placed at the head of the state to defend its territories and promote its welfare; and the revenue of the crown as a property to be employed for the same purposes. He neglected no means for the improvement of his dominions. By an unlimited toleration, by premiums, by grants of privileges, by the encouragement of manufactures and commerce, he filled his towns with artists and manufacturers. Agriculture was the object of his peculiar attention, and in which he succeeded in an eminent degree. Many extensive districts which he found at his accession in their original state, aut silvis horrida aut paludibus fœda, he caused to be drained and cultivated; and, having built villages throughout, he thus converted dreary wastes into productive and well peopled countries.* And, that he might give his subjects every advantage which can be enjoyed under a despotic government, he caused the various systems of laws to be reformed and digested into a regular code; and laboured to prevent oppression in the magistrates by an uniform attention to their conduct, and by being every ready to redress the grievances of those who were injured by them. Upon the whole, although we cannot but be sensible of his faults and detest his vices, yet candour obliges us to acknowledge, that in him the Prussian states lost an active, wise, and beneficent sovereign; the Germanic body an able protector; and Europe a vigilant guardian against the ambitious enterprises of the Bourbon allies and the two imperial courts: and the house of Brandenburg will ever have reason to respect his memory as the monarch who completed what the great elector Frederic William begun, in raising his dominions from wretchedness and obscurity, and Count de Hertzberg, in his Dissertations, read before the Royal Academy at Berlin, gives an account of all the means employed by Frederic the Second for the improvement of his dominions. Among other articles, he informs us that he has rebuilt or founded 539 villages and hamlets in his different states.-The same statesman assures us that the king had expended 40,000,000 crowns, in the course of twenty years after the peace of Hubertzberg, in building villages, draining morasses, clearing waste lands and bringing them into cultivation, establishing manufactures in different places, and other means of improving his territories and enriching his subjects.— In his specification of the sums expended in the New-March, he says, that, over and above 3,200,000 crowns, which he had disbursed in such improvements, he had expended a million of crowns in making dykes and repairing the banks of the rivers Netz and Warta; by which he had drained above 50,000 acres of excellent land, on which he afterwards established colonies.Hertzberg's Dissert. 138. 174. 178. 191. and placing the house of Brandenburg on a level with the first powers in Europe. This monarch's person, which was very thin, was not advantageous. But his countenance impressed respect; his eagle-eye was a faithful representation of his penetrating mind, and, although it was capable of being softened into kindness, its natural character was discernment, animation, and fire. He was succeeded by his nephew, FREDERIC WILLIAM THE SECOND, Son of prince William Augustus, then forty-two years of age. This monarch came to the throne with all the advantages to be derived from a full treasury and the best disciplined army in the universe; from the improvements which the late king had made in his dominions, and from that respect in which he was held among the European powers. His majesty himself was not known to have the accomplishments of a statesman; his uncle having been prevented by mistrust from admitting him to his councils. But he had distinguished himself by his military conduct in the Bavarian campaigns: and his subjects were prepossessed in his favour by the mildness and condescension which he had discovered in his demeanour.* b Segur's Frederic William, 1. 22. 24. b The Mr. Wraxall thus describes this monarch, as seen by him in the year 1777. "He is just "thirty-three years of age, full six feet in height, and of a vigorous frame: in his early youth he was of a thin habit, but he now inclines to corpulency. His countenance, open, gracious, and engaging, indicates more beneficence of heart, than it expresses superiority of mind. His figure, "far exceeding the proportions of ordinary men, may be termed athletic, and almost herculean. "If he were habited in the skin of the Nemæan lion, he would convey no inadequate idea of the son of Jupiter and Alcmena. Formed for a camp, more than a drawing-room, he has the frank "and martial air of a soldier, rather than the polished manners of a prince. Of a robust constitu❝tion, and inured to hardships, he has been, from his childhood, little accustomed to the luxury, "which frequently in other countries surrounds persons of royal birth. Bred in the school of "Potzdam, under the severe and continual inspection of the king his uncle, he has practised the 66 most implicit obedience. Early taught to defend the crown, which is one day to descend to him, "he has passed through all the subordinate military ranks, up to that of major-general in the "Prussian service, which he now holds. The discipline to which every other officer is subjected "suffers no relaxation for the heir apparent. He dares not absent himself from his duty, or be "remiss in its discharge, without incurring the highest resentment of his sovereign, displayed in "the most public manner. Every morning, in winter, no less than in summer, he is to be found on the parade, before the palace at Potzdam; nor can he even leave that place, except by stealth, to visit Berlin, unless by express permission from the king. Few princes, who are probably des "tined to reign, have been treated in their youth with so much rigour. 66 "If the heir to the crown is by no means endowed with the abilities of Frederic, nor of prince "Henry, his two uncles; he is, on the other hand, admitted to possess a solid and enlarged under“standing.. 1786 1786 The court of Berlin, on this event, was divided by the partisans of prince Henry, the king's uncle, a strenuous partisan of France,* and those of count de Hertzberg, the late king's minister, a man of talents, of a warm, resolute temper, who, from his rivalship and personal dislike of prince Henry, espoused the cause of Great Britain and the stadtholder, and, as the opponent "standing. His mental qualities are certainly neither brilliant nor imposing; but, they are far "from being inadequate to the arduous situation which he is by and by to occupy."-Wraxall's Memoirs. 1. 237. 66 * Segur speaks in very high terms of this prince." Prince Henry, the king's uncle," says he, an enlightened statesman and a skilful general, loving peace and ably conducting war, expected to possess great influence over the mind of his nephew, whom he had superintended and often "consoled in the retirement to which he was doomed by the severity of the late king. But he "did not dissemble his views: he hazarded too soon the display of a credit which he had not "obtained; his pride did not sufficiently accommodate itself to that of the monarch, who dreaded "as much the appearance, as he felt the necessity of being governed."-[Segur. 1. 32.]—Mirabeau, describing the state of the court of Berlin at the instant of Frederic the Second's death, says, "that prince Henry is in the greatest uncertainty as to what will or will not happen under the "approaching reign. He is extremely afraid of the influence of monsieur de Hertzberg, who is "continually at Sans Souci, more so than he wishes to appear, though he discovers his feelings very evidently.-Hertzberg has openly thrown himself into the English interests: but notwithstanding the flattery of Ewart, and his secret intrigues have made great advantage of the disrespect shewn to Hertzberg by the French ambassador, yet I believe that his principal reason for "joining the English interests was, that prince Henry, his implacable enemy, is the avowed and "zealous advocate for the French interests; hence monsieur de Hertzberg is led to imagine that "the only means by which he can make himself indispensibly necessary is by uniting firmly with "the contrary interests, in support of which he clothes himself with the stadtholder's skin."— [Mirabeau's Memoirs. 1. 77.]-After being informed of the political bias of prince Henry on the authority of these writers, it will not, perhaps, be uninteresting to the reader to be made acquainted with some features of his private character and that of his royal brother upon the authority of Mr. Wraxall. "In many particulars of their life and disposition, even in their very "defects, the similarity between the two brothers is striking. Like Frederic, prince Henry is "destitute of male or female issue. Like him, too, the prince is not of an amorous complexion, nor happy in his domestic connexions. Both pass a great portion of their lives in retreat, little seen except by the persons who compose their household, and constitute their ordinary society. "The prince was married in 1752, to Wilhelmina, daughter of Maximilian, landgrave of Hesse "Cassel; but they neither, eat, speak, meet, nor cohabit together. She is, nevertheless, not only an amiable and pleasing woman, but possessed of a superior understanding. It certainly is not in "the royal family of Prussia, that examples of conjugal union or felicity can at present be easily "found. Such is the alienation, which subsists between prince Henry and his wife, that he has "always, when at Berlin, a separate table; but he resides, during the far greater part of the year, "at his palace of Rheinsberg, near the borders of the duchy of Mecklenberg Strelitz. It is there "that he is to be seen and studied, not in the capital, where he rarely remains more than three "months, from january till april. Though little consulted or employed by Frederic, at present, no one doubts that if circumstances of danger or difficulty should arise, his abilities would again "be called into active exertion."-Wraxall. 1. 251. 66 |