Frederick the Great By Giles MacDonagh Weidenfeld and Nicolson 436 pp, £25 in UK
After his death, Frederick (Friedrich) II of Prussia was logrolled as a pan-German patriot, and generations of German schoolchildren had to memorise the names and dates of his most famous battles. Carlyle, always on the lookout for Nordic heroes, canonised him in a multi-volume biography which is still spasmodically readable. More recently, however, he has been fashionably acclaimed as the founder both of Prussian militarism and of the reactionary nationalism associated with his Hohenzollern descendants. All these viewpoints seem rather gross simplifications of a complex, remarkably intelligent, cultured man, who was nevertheless a ruthless practitioner of Real- politik. Frederick's reputation as a soldier has overshadowed his achievements in other fields. He was, undoubtedly, an outstanding commander in the field, but as this very lively biography shows, he was equally great as a ruler and civil administrator, and he left Prussia - up to then a semi-feudal society - an economically prosperous nation, with a good judicial system, a corruption-free bureaucracy, and a tradition of devoted service to the state.
Like Alexander the Great, Frederick owed much to his father, but it was a double-edged debt which shaped his life both for better and for worse. Frederick William was a brutal, able, immensely hardworking ruler, with the manners and appearance of a country squire, who brought up his family in spartan simplicity. His hobby was soldiers, and he built up the famous "regiment of giants", for which his agents collected or kidnapped tall men from all over Europe. He bullied and humiliated his eldest son intolerably, so that, at 18, young Frederick decided to take refuge in another country. He was caught while fleeing, however, was sentenced to fortress detention and forced to witness the judicial decapitation of his friend and accomplice, Lieutenant Hermann von Katte. Frederick served out his detention, and was astute enough to worm his way back into his father's favour. From him he learned the capacity for hard, exact work, administrative discipline, and business capacity which marked his own rule later in life. To please his father further, he married a sweet-natured but insipid girl, the daughter of a duke, though they had no children and it is uncertain if the marriage was even consummated properly.
Frederick's sexual preferences were always ambivalent, and late in life he developed a notably misogynistic strain. As Crown Prince, he built up a cultured circle of friends at his castle at Rheinsberg, and was a busy patron of the arts, but when he succeeded his father as king in 1740, the underlying steel soon showed. He invaded Silesia, a territory ruled by Maria Theresa of Austria, and in the rivalries between France, England and Austria he showed himself adept in changing sides and keeping his European options open. Nevertheless, the Austrian Empress did not forgive his seizure of one of her richest provinces, so when Frederick had good reason to think that a coalition of Austria, France, Russia and Sweden was preparing to invade Prussia and reduce it to nullity, he took the initiative by striking first. This was the beginning of the so-called Seven Years' War, which earned him the title of "the Great".
Even for those with no taste for battles, the fight he waged against three great powers was an epic one. Though he suffered some heavy defeats, he kept his hard-pressed armies in the field, moving them about at astonishing quickness, and won some of the most remarkable victories in European history. At Rossbach, he routed a French army inside a few hours, then immediately marched north to defeat, at Leuthen near Breslau, an army of Austrians and Saxons which outnumbered him more than two to one. Yet in the end he faced inevitable defeat by sheer numbers, and was saved from collapse mainly by the death of his most inveterate enemy, the Czarina Elizabeth, which brought Russia out of the coalition and led to a compromise peace. The strain of the war on small, under-populated, relatively poor Prussia was enormous; Frederick ended with an army composed mainly of mercenaries, while Prussia's trade and agriculture were ruined and much of the land lay untilled. Those who think of him purely as a soldier should consider the energy, tenacity and hard economic sense with which he restored his country to health and stability. Though Frederick was certainly an autocrat, by the standards of the time he was an enlightened and progressive one, a product (insofar as it suited him) of the Age of Reason. He abolished judicial torture, gave the Prussian press considerable freedom, encouraged industry and even attempted to abolish hereditary serfdom - though with limited success. Frederick also gave Berlin an opera house and many fine new buildings, and besides being a patron of music, was an excellent performer on the flute and composed music. He attracted respected figures of the European intelligentsia to his Academy of the Arts and Sciences, bought Old Master paintings, was knowledgeable (and opinionated) about architecture, and wrote lavishly, both in prose and verse. His verse, written in French (he despised German as a literary language, and rarely spoke it), is no worse than that of other minor poets of the time, while his prose style is clear, elegant and reflects the often hard lucidity of his mind.
The King's wit was famous, though often bitingly malicious, and the conversation around the dinner table at Sans Souci, his palace in Potsdam, was internationally famous - though, typically, the company he chose was usually an all-male one. The private man is enigmatic and often contradictory - at times humane, far-sighted, prudent, civilised, at other times bitchy, devious, cynical, misanthropic. He had few real friends and his relationship with Voltaire, whom he patronised and invited to Berlin, was a chronicle of tragicomedy. He virtually sequestered his unfortunate wife, and the only women for whom he showed lasting affection were his mother and his elder sister, Wilhelmina.
Frederick remains, however, one of the outstanding men of a remarkable century, with one of the keenest political intellects Europe has ever produced, and the practical sense to match it. The debate on him, very probably, will never end. The man whose ambition was to be remembered as the Philosopher-King was in practice a ruthless pragmatist, just as the king who gave unstinting, lifelong service to his people was also the aggressive general who spent the lives of thousands on the battlefield.