Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/774

738 FREDERICK [OF PRUSSIA. His first care after the war was, as far as possible, to enable the country to recover from the terrific blows by which it had been almost destroyed ; and he was never, either before or after, seen to better advantage than in the measures he adopted for this end. Although his resources had been so completely drained that he had been forced to melt the silver in his palaces and to debase the coinage, his energy soon brought back the national prosperity. Pomer- ania and Neumark were freed from taxation for two years, Silesia for six months. Many nobles whose lands had been wasted received corn for seed ; his war horses were within a few months to be found on farms all over Prussia ; and money was freely spent in the re-erection of houses which had been destroyed. The coinage was gradually restored to its proper value, and trade received a favourable impulse by the foundation of the Bank of Berlin. All these matters were carefully looked into by Frederick himself, who, while acting as generously as his circumstances would allow, in sisted on everything being done in the most efficient manner at the least possible cost. Unfortunately, he adopted the French ideas of excise, and the French methods of imposing and collecting taxes, a system known as the Regie. This system secured for him a large revenue, but it led to a vast amount of petty tyranny, which was all the more intolerable because it was carried out by French officials. It was con tinued to the end of Frederick s reign, and nothing did so much to injure his otherwise immense popularity. He was quite aware of the discontent the system excited, and the good-nature with which he tolerated the criticisms directed against it and him is illustrated by a well known incident. Riding along the Jager Strasse one day, he saw a crowd of people. " See what it is," he said to the groom who was attending him. " They have something posted up about your Majesty," said the groom, returning. Frederick, riding forward, saw a caricature of himself : " King in very melancholy guise," says Preuss (as translated by Carlyle), " seated on a stool, a coffee-mill between his knees, dili gently grinding with the one hand, and with the other pick ing up any bean that might have fallen. Hang it lower, said the king, beckoning his groom with a wave of the finger; lower, that they may not have to hurt their necks about it. No sooner were the words spoken, which spread instantly, than there rose from the whole crowd one uni versal huzzah of joy. They tore the caricature into a thousand pieces, and rolled after the king with loud Lebe Hoch, our Frederick for ever, as he rode slowly away." There are scores of anecdotes about Frederick, but not many so well authenticated as this. There was nothing about which Frederick took so much trouble as the proper administration of justice. He disliked the formalities of the law, and in one instance, " the Miller- Arnold case," in connexion with which he thought injustice had been done to a poor man, he dismissed the judges, con demned them to a year s fortress-arrest, and compelled them to make good out of their own pocket the loss sustained by their supposed victim, not a wise proceeding, but one springing from a generous motive. He once defined him self as " 1 avocat du pauvre," and few things gave him more pleasure than the famous answer of the miller whose wind mill stood on ground which was wanted for the king s garden. The miller sturdily refused to sell it. " Not at any price 1 " said the king s agent ; " could not the king take it from you for nothing, if he chose 1 " " Have we not the Kammergericht at Berlin 1 " was the answer, which became a popular saying in Germany. Soon after he came to the throne Frederick began to make preparations for a new code. In the year 1749-51 his grand-chancellor, Von Cocceji, a man of wide knowledge and solid judgment, finished "The Project of the Corporis Juris Fridericiani," which was afterwards made the basis of a legal system drawn up by the grand-chancellor Von Cramer a system that came into operation in 1794 under Frederick s suc cessor. Looking ahead after the Seven Years War, Frederick saw no means of securing himself so effectually as by cultivating the good will of Russia. In 1764 he accordingly concluded a treaty of alliance with the empress Catherine for eight years. Six years afterwards, unfortunately for his fame, he joined in the first partition of Poland, by which he received Polish Prussia, without Dantzic and Thorn, and Great Poland as far as the Netzefluss. Prussia was then for the first time made continuous with Brandenburg and Pomerania. Frederick would have run great risks had he refused to take part in this arrangement ; but it was none the less a shameful violation of international law, the full penalty for which has perhaps not even yet been paid. F [The emperor Joseph II., being of an ardent and impul sive nature, greatly admired Frederick, and visited him at Neisse, in Silesia, in 1769, a visit which Frederick returned, in Moravia, in the following year. The young emperor was frank and cordial; Frederick was more cautious, for he detected under the respectful manner of Joseph a keen ambition that might one day become dangerous to Prussia. Ever after these interviews a portrait of the emperor hung conspicuously in the rooms in which Frederick lived, a circumstance on which some one remarked. "Ah yes," said Frederick, "I am obliged to keep that young gentleman in my eye." Nothing came of these suspicions till 1777, when, after the death of Maximilian Joseph, elec tor of Bavaria, without children, the emperor took posses sion of the greater part of his lands. The elector palatine, who lawfully inherited Bavaria, came to an arrangement, which was not admitted by his heir, the duke of Zwei- briicken, afterwards King Maximilian I. of Bavaria. The latter appealed to Frederick, who, resolved that Austria should gain no unnecessary advantage, took his part, and brought pressure to bear upon the emperor. Ultimately, greatly against his will, Frederick felt compelled to draw the sword, and in July 1778, crossed the Bohemian frontier at the head of a powerful army. No general engagement was fought, and after a great many delays, the treaty of Teschen was signed on the 13th May 1779. Austria received the circle of Burgau, and consented that the king of Prussia should take the Franconian principalities. Frederick never abandoned bis jealousy of Austria, whose ambition he regarded as the chief danger against which Europe had to guard. He seems to have had no suspicion that evil days were coming in France. It was Austria which had given trouble in his time ; and if her pride were curbed, he fancied that Prussia at least would be safe. Hence one of the last important acts of his life was to form, in 1785, a league of princes (the " Ftirstenbund ") for the defence of the imperial constitution, believed to be imperilled by Joseph s restless activity. The league came to an end after Frederick s death ; but it is of considerable historical interest, as the first open attempt of Prussia to take the lead in Germany. Frederick s chief trust was always in his treasury and his army. By continual economy he left in the former the im mense sum of 70 million thalers ; the latter, at the time of his death, numbered 200,000 men, disciplined with all the strictness to which he had throughout life accustomed his troops. He died at Sanssouci on the 17th August 1786 ; his death being hastened by exposure to a storm of rain, stoically borne, during a military review. He passed away on the eve of tremendous events, which for a time obscured his fame ; but now that he can be impartially estimated, he is seen to have been in many respects one of the greatest figures in modern history. He was rather below the middle size, in youth inclined