founded the bank of Berlin; and strove by every means in his power to restore the ruined trade and commerce of his kingdom. But his ignorance of sound commercial principles, together with his intermeddling with the private enterprises of his subjects, rendered many of his schemes not only futile, but mischievous.
In 1772 Frederick became an accomplice in the greatest political crime and blunder of modern times—the first partition of Poland. It is even alleged that he was the originator of the infamous project. He received as his share of the spoil, all Polish Prussia, and a part of Great Poland as far as to the river Netz, with the exception of Dantsic and Thorn. In 1778 the death of the duke of Bavaria, without issue, led to the renewal of the contest with Austria, which laid claim to the duchy. Frederick on this formed an alliance with Saxony, and entered Bohemia at the head of one hundred and twenty thousand men. But the dispute terminated without a battle by the treaty of Teschen in May, 1779, by which Austria abandoned her pretensions, and Franconia was incorporated with the Prussian kingdom. In 1785 the Emperor Joseph, son of Maria Theresa, having formed a plan to obtain Bavaria in exchange for the Low Countries, Frederick, alarmed at the proposal, organized the famous confederation of the German princes, entitled the "Fürstenbund," which completely frustrated the project. This, which is usually regarded as the masterpiece of Frederick's policy, was one of his last public acts. He died at Sans Souci on the 17th of August, 1784, in the seventy-fifth year of his age, and the forty-seventh of his reign, bequeathing to his nephew and successor, Frederick William, about ten millions sterling, an army of two hundred thousand men, and a kingdom nearly doubled in size.
Frederick was undoubtedly one of the most remarkable men of his age. He aspired to be both a great king and a great general, and succeeded in attaining these objects of his ambition. His military talents entitle him to a place in the foremost rank of great captains. As a ruler, he displayed abilities probably not equalled, certainly not surpassed, by any European monarch who was born to a throne. Under his sway order was strictly preserved throughout his dominions, property was safe, torture was abolished, the blessing of cheap and speedy justice was secured to all classes of his subjects, remarkable freedom of speech and of writing was permitted, and all sects in his dominions, except the Jews, enjoyed perfect religious liberty; everybody, he declared in his own pithy manner, should attend to his own soul as he pleased. His management of public affairs was characterized by unremitting activity, energy, promptitude, vigilance, and rigid economy in every department, and especially in his own private expenditure. With all this, his government was essentially despotic; he tolerated no will in the state but his own, and was his own sole minister. His great fault as a ruler was his incessant intermeddling not only with the public functionaries, but with all classes of his subjects in the management of their private affairs. His interference with the decisions of the judges was peculiarly mischievous, and in several well-known instances led to a flagrant violation of justice. His financial measures were based on the erroneous notions of his day, and often laid most oppressive burdens upon his subjects. His main dependence both in promoting commerce and raising a revenue, was on prohibitive duties and the establishment of monopolies, the profits of which he shared with the contractors, who, as the celebrated Helvetius had the courage to tell him, were allowed the privilege of robbing the people, on condition of allowing the king a certain share of the pillage. In his transactions with other sovereigns he showed himself a shrewd negotiator, but rapacious, faithless, and utterly unprincipled. No treaties or obligations could bind him when his personal interest was at stake. One of his biographers affirms that his natural disposition was soft, affectionate, and open; but that the tyrannical and cruel treatment which he received from his father hardened his heart and soured his temper, taught him dissimulation and reserve, and rendered his character as described by Voltaire, polished and hard as marble. It is certain that from the time he ascended the throne he exhibited an irritable temper, an imperious spirit, and a harsh and cruel disposition. He behaved with signal ingratitude to those who, at great risk and suffering, befriended him during the life of his father. He treated his nearest relatives with coldness and heartless indifference, his friends with great harshness, and many of the persons employed in his service with signal injustice and cruelty. He showed habitually a selfish disregard of the feelings and claims of those around him, and even took a malevolent pleasure in the infliction of degradation and suffering. Unfortunately for himself as well as for those under his sway, the grave faults of his character, natural and acquired, were not subdued or modified by the restraints of religious principle. Like Voltaire, he was not only an infidel but a scoffer; though he had a very imperfect knowledge of christianity, the absurdity of all systems of religion was a frequent and favourite topic of discussion at his table, and both his conversation and his letters abounded in profane sarcasms and sneers at sacred things. His conversation was lively and his manners pleasing, and when he wished it, captivating. He was fond of literature and of literary society, but his own attainments were limited to the belles-lettres and moral sciences. He knew almost nothing of the classics, or, indeed, of any foreign language except the French, to which he was so partial that it was constantly spoken at his table, and all his works, both in prose and verse, were composed in that tongue. He wrote an immense number of bad verses, and even the best of his poetical effusions seldom rise above mediocrity. His prose works are greatly superior, though probably few even of them would have survived apart from his character and position. In addition to the "Anti-Machiavel" he wrote "Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg;" the "History of his Own Times;" the "History of the Seven Years' War;" "Memoirs from the Treaty of Hubertsberg to the end of the Revolution of Poland;" "Military Instructions," &c.—(Life of Frederick the Great, by Lord Dover; Frederick the Great, by Thomas Carlyle; Essay on Frederick the Great, by Lord Macaulay.)—J. T.
Frederick William II., King of Prussia, nephew and successor of Frederick II., was born September 25, 1744. His father. Prince Augustus William, second son of King Frederick William I., was a general in the army, and at the beginning of the Seven Years' war commanded the left wing of the Prussian troops, but being unsuccessful in the retreat of Collin, died of grief in 1758. Frederick William then came under the immediate care of the king, who declared him heir-apparent to the throne, and appointed some of the most learned of Prussian savans his teachers, among others Professor Beguelin and Von Launay. The young prince, however, made little progress in his studies; in consequence of which he fell into disgrace with the king, who, on one occasion, even refused to see him, exclaiming in his bitterness—"Vous n'êtes pas mon neveu." It was only some years after that Frederick William—owing chiefly to his personal bravery at the battle of Neustädtel, in the Bavarian war of succession—again secured the favour of the king. Frederick William ascended the throne, August 17, 1786, under most favourable auspices. Prussia had taken rank among the great powers of Europe; had a thriving population, a well-filled exchequer, and a large and thoroughly disciplined army. Such resources in the hands of a truly great king might have raised Prussia to a noble position; but Frederick William was only capable of employing them for paltry ends and petty objects. His first act was to declare war against an old and faithful ally of Prussia, the Dutch republic, for no other reason than that a sister of his, the consort of the prince of Orange, had been insulted by some anti-Oranians. This war being checked at the commencement by the interference of the northern powers, the king concluded a somewhat ridiculous alliance with the sultan of Turkey, guaranteeing the integral existence of the Ottoman empire against Austria and Russia, and even sending an army for the purpose to the frontiers of Bohemia. The breaking out of the French revolution, however, speedily diverted the king's ambition into another channel. On the 7th of February, 1792, the treaty of Berlin, concluded between Austria and Prussia, engaged Frederick William to send an army into France for the reinstatement of the Bourbons; and in June of the same year the Prussian forces passed the French frontier under the command of the incapable duke of Brunswick, who, by his absurd threats against the French nation, raised from the soil of the republic those invincible battalions which made France for twenty years the terror of Europe. Frederick William personally joined his troops a few weeks after their entry into France, arriving just in time to see their first defeat, and withdrawing soon afterwards as hastily as he had come. The peace of Basle, August 5, 1795, ended this struggle in the west, and allowed the king to carry his arms into an opposite quarter of Europe. In secret concert with Catherine II. of Russia, he stealthily and suddenly sent an army under General
