throne, probably because Wenceslaus refused to fulfil a promise to give him his sister Anna in marriage. The danger to Germany from the Hussites induced Frederick to ally himself with the German and Bohemian king Sigismund; and he took a leading part in the war against them, during the earlier years of which he met with considerable success. In the prosecution of this enterprise Frederick spent large sums of money, for which he received various places in Bohemia and elsewhere in pledge from Sigismund, who further rewarded him in January 1423 with the vacant electoral duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg; and Frederick’s formal investiture followed at Ofen on the 1st of August 1425. Thus spurred to renewed efforts against the Hussites, the elector was endeavouring to rouse the German princes to aid him in prosecuting this war when the Saxon army was almost annihilated at Aussig on the 16th of August 1426. Returning to Saxony, Frederick died at Altenburg on the 4th of January 1428, and was buried in the cathedral at Meissen. In 1402 he married Catherine of Brunswick, by whom he left four sons and two daughters. In 1409, in conjunction with his brother William, he founded the university of Leipzig, for the benefit of German students who had just left the university of Prague. Frederick’s importance as an historical figure arises from his having obtained the electorate of Saxe-Wittenberg for the house of Wettin, and transformed the margraviate of Meissen into the territory which afterwards became the kingdom of Saxony. In addition to the king of Saxony, the sovereigns of England and of the Belgians are his direct descendants.
There is a life of Frederick by G. Spalatin in the Scriptores rerum Germanicarum praecipue Saxonicarum, Band ii., edited by J. B. Mencke (Leipzig, 1728–1730). See also C. W. Böttiger and Th. Flathe, Geschichte des Kurstaates und Königreichs Sachsen (Gotha, 1867–1873); and J. G. Horn, Lebens- und Heldengeschichte Friedrichs des Streitbaren (Leipzig, 1733).
FREDERICK II. (1411–1464), called “the Mild,” elector and
duke of Saxony, eldest son of the elector Frederick I., was born
on the 22nd of August 1411. He succeeded his father as elector
in 1428, but shared the family lands with his three brothers,
and was at once engaged in defending Saxony against the attacks
of the Hussites. Freed from these enemies about 1432, and
turning his attention to increasing his possessions, he obtained
the burgraviate of Meissen in 1439, and some part of Lower
Lusatia after a struggle with Brandenburg about the same time.
In 1438 it was decided that Frederick, and not his rival, Bernard
IV., duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, was entitled to exercise the Saxon
electoral vote at the elections for the German throne; and the
elector then aided Albert II. to secure this dignity, performing a similar service for his own brother-in-law, Frederick, afterwards
the emperor Frederick III., two years later. Family affairs,
meanwhile, occupied Frederick’s attention. One brother,
Henry, having died in 1435, and another, Sigismund (d. 1463),
having entered the church and become bishop of Würzburg,
Frederick and his brother William (d. 1482) were the heirs of their
childless cousin, Frederick “the Peaceful,” who ruled Thuringia
and other parts of the lands of the Wettins. On his death in
1440 the brothers divided Frederick’s territory, but this arrangement
was not satisfactory, and war broke out between them in
1446. Both combatants obtained extraneous aid, but after a
desolating struggle peace was made in January 1451, when
William received Thuringia, and Frederick Altenburg and other
districts. The remainder of the elector’s reign was uneventful,
and he died at Leipzig on the 7th of September 1464. By his
wife, Margaret (d. 1486), daughter of Ernest, duke of Styria,
he left two sons and four daughters. In July 1455 occurred the
celebrated Prinzenraub, the attempt of a knight named Kunz von
Kaufungen (d. 1455) to abduct Frederick’s two sons, Ernest
and Albert. Having carried them off from Altenburg, Kunz was
making his way to Bohemia when the plot was accidentally
discovered and the princes restored.
See W. Schäfer, Der Montag vor Kiliani (1855); J. Gersdorf, Einige Aktenstücke zur Geschichte des sächsischen Prinzenraubes (1855); and T. Carlyle, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, vol. iv. (London, 1899).
FREDERICK III. (1463–1525), called “the Wise,” elector of
Saxony, eldest son of Ernest, elector of Saxony, and Elizabeth,
daughter of Albert, duke of Bavaria-Munich (d. 1508), was born
at Torgau, and succeeded his father as elector in 1486. Retaining
the government of Saxony in his own hands, he shared the other
possessions of his family with his brother John, called “the
Stedfast” (1468–1532). Frederick was among the princes who
pressed the need of reform upon the German king Maximilian I.
in 1495, and in 1500 he became president of the newly-formed
council of regency (Reichsregiment). He took a genuine interest
in learning; was a friend of Georg Spalatin; and in 1502
founded the university of Wittenberg, where he appointed Luther
and Melanchthon to professorships. In 1493 he had gone as a
pilgrim to Jerusalem, and had been made a knight of the Holy
Sepulchre; but, although he remained throughout life an
adherent of the older faith, he seems to have been drawn into
sympathy with the reformers, probably through his connexion
with the university of Wittenberg. In 1520 he refused to put
into execution the papal bull which ordered Luther’s writings
to be burned and the reformer to be put under restraint or sent
to Rome; and in 1521, after Luther had been placed under the
imperial ban by the diet at Worms, the elector caused him to be
conveyed to his castle at the Wartburg, and afterwards protected
him while he attacked the enemies of the Reformation. In 1519,
Frederick, who alone among the electors refused to be bribed
by the rival candidates for the imperial throne, declined to be a
candidate for this high dignity himself, and assisted to secure
the election of Charles V. He died unmarried at Langau, near
Annaberg, on the 5th of May 1525.
See G. Spalatin, Das Leben und die Zeitgeschichte Friedrichs des Weisen, edited by C. G. Neudecker and L. Preller (Jena, 1851); M. M. Tutzschmann, Friedrich der Weise, Kurfürst von Sachsen (Grimma, 1848); and T. Kolde, Friedrich der Weise und die Anfänge der Reformation (Erlangen, 1881).
FREDERICK, a city and the county-seat of Frederick county,
Maryland, U.S.A., on Carroll’s Creek, a tributary of the Monocacy,
61 m. by rail W. by N. from Baltimore and 45 m. N.W. from
Washington. Pop. (1890) 8193; (1900) 9296, of whom 1535
were negroes; (1910 census) 10,411. It is served by the Baltimore
& Ohio and the Northern Central railways, and by two
interurban electric lines. Immediately surrounding it is the
rich farming land of the Monocacy valley, but from a distance
it appears to be completely shut in by picturesque hills and
mountains; to the E., the Linga ore Hills; to the W., Catoctin
Mountain; and to the S., Sugar Loaf Mountain. It is built
for the most part of brick and stone. Frederick is the seat of the
Maryland school for the deaf and dumb and of the Woman’s
College of Frederick (1893; formerly the Frederick Female
Seminary, opened in 1843), which in 1907–1908 had 212 students,
121 of whom were in the Conservatory of Music. Francis Scott
Key and Roger Brooke Taney were buried here, and a beautiful
monument erected to the memory of Key stands at the entrance
to Mount Olivet cemetery. Frederick has a considerable
agricultural trade and is an important manufacturing centre,
its industries including the canning of fruits and vegetables, and
the manufacture of flour, bricks, brushes, leather goods and
hosiery. The total value of the factory product in 1905 was
$1,937,921, being 34.7% more than in 1900. The municipality
owns and operates its water-works and electric-lighting plant. Frederick, so named in honour of Frederick Calvert, son and afterward successor of Charles, Lord Baltimore, was settled by Germans in 1733, and was laid out as a town in 1745, but was not incorporated until 1817. Here in 1755 General Braddock prepared for his disastrous expedition against the French at Fort Duquesne (Pittsburg). During the Civil War the city was occupied on different occasions by Unionists and Confederates, and was made famous by Whittier’s poem “Barbara Frietchie.”
FREDERICK AUGUSTUS I. (1750–1827), king of Saxony, son of the elector Frederick Christian, was born at Dresden on the 23rd of December 1750. He succeeded his father under the guardianship of Prince Xavier in 1763, and was declared of age in 1768. In the following year (January 17, 1769) he married Princess Maria Amelia, daughter of Duke Frederick of Zweibrücken, by whom he had only one child, Princess Augusta (born June 21, 1782). One of his chief aims was the reduction
