Möllendorf into Poland, and took possession of a territory of eleven hundred geographical square miles, annexing it to his kingdom under the name of West Prussia and South Prussia. Vain was the protest of the Polish diet of Grodno; vain the armed resistance of Kosciusko and his volunteers. The "third division of Poland" became an accomplished fact; Russia, Austria, and Prussia securing to each other the ill-gotten conquest. Frederick William died a few years after, November 16, 1797. Though he considerably enlarged its territory, Frederick William left Prussia in reality less strong than he found it—the prestige of the army had been utterly destroyed, and the public treasury, emptied of the many millions left by the Great Frederick, had been burdened with an enormous debt. Frederick William, however, cannot be said to have been a really bad ruler, but is more correctly described as a weak and aimless king. He accomplished some important public works, promoted agriculture, encouraged industry, built fine roads, and founded schools and seminaries; but in all these matters, as well as in his military fancies, he obeyed the impulses of his flatterers and favourites rather than his own good judgment. His moral life, too, was a most reprehensible one; he filled the Prussian court with such shameless and open profligacy as perfectly recalled the period of Louis XV. He was twice married; first, in 1765, to Princess Elizabeth of Brunswick, from whom he was divorced in 1769; and secondly, a few months after the dissolution of his first marriage, to Princess Louise of Hesse-Darmstadt, who bore him four children, viz., Frederick William, his successor; Prince Ludwig, who died in 1796; Prince Henry, who turned Roman catholic, and died at Rome in 1845; and Prince William, who died in 1851.—F. M.
Frederick William III., King of Prussia, eldest son and successor of the preceding, was born at Berlin, August 3, 1770. His earlier years were spent under the care of his great-uncle, Frederick II., and subsequently his education was directed by the count von Bruhl, a man of great experience and superior attainments. The course of instruction through which the young prince passed was a complete innovation in the mode of educating heirs-apparent to the Prussian throne, inasmuch as it was not merely military, like that of all the preceding sovereigns, but chiefly of a philosophical and humanatory nature. The young prince's first public entry into society occurred in August, 1791, when he accompanied his father to the diplomatic conferences of the German powers at Dresden. In June of the following year he joined the Prussian army on the frontiers of France, forming, on his way thither, in the old city of Frankfort-on-the-Maine, his first acquaintance with Princess Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, to whom he was married on the 24th December, 1793. This union is generally believed to have had a very great influence on the character as well as the acts of Frederick William, and to have imparted to him much of that clearness of view and fortitude of mind which he afterwards displayed. Frederick William ascended the throne November 16th, 1797, and in the spring of the following year visited, in company with the queen, the principal towns of Prussia, in order to obtain personal insight into the affairs of the country. The effects of this tour of investigation were soon apparent in a series of decrees, abolishing monopolies of all kinds, reducing taxation, and redressing the financial disorders of the government. The king himself began to set the example of a wise economy by reducing the expenditure of his household to the narrowest limits, uprooting, at the same time, the full-grown wantonness of the court of his predecessor. Remembering the sufferings through which Prussia had recently passed, Frederick William III. would have gladly remained neutral in the struggle of the great European powers against France; but the political circumstances of the period did not allow him to carry out this policy. The treaty of Basle, concluded by Frederick William II., gave Prussia a short respite from war; but the subsequent peace of Luneville, of February 9th, 1801, which took the Rhine provinces from her, compensating her with territories in Westphalia and on the borders of the Elbe, laid the foundation of new dissensions, in consequence of which, and of a personal visit by Czar Alexander I. to Berlin, the king was induced to join the coalition against France. The battle of Austerlitz, however, speedily checked any demonstration on the side of Prussia, and the separate treaty concluded by Count Haugwitz, which gave Hanover to the king, seemed a good guarantee of peace. In April, 1806, however, when Frederick William was on the point of taking possession of Hanover, England entered her protest and followed it up with a declaration of war. The following August brought an arrangement of this dispute, which eventuated in the king's retaining Hanover, and once more making war on France. But this again proved most disastrous to Prussia. The French army advancing with unheard-of rapidity, defeated the troops of the king in a series of encounters at Saalfield—where chivalric Prince Louis of Prussia found his grave—at Jena, and Auerstadt; and at the end of a few months Frederick William, driven to the extreme northern confines of his realm, had to thank the courageous intervention of his queen, who had a personal interview with Napoleon, that he was allowed to retain even a fraction of his hereditary dominions. As it was, the conditions of peace contained in the treaty of Tilsit, July 9, 1807, reduced Prussia to less than one-half of its former size, degrading it to the insignificance of a minor German state. But nothing daunted by this fearful downfall, the king had no sooner resumed the business of government than he earnestly set to work to heal the miseries of war, and to resuscitate commercial enterprise within his dominions. By advice of his patriotic ministers. Stein and Von Hardenberg, a series of wise decrees, proclaiming free trade, giving a new constitution, abolishing the privileges of the nobility, and ordering the domains of the crown to be employed for purposes of public utility, followed each other rapidly, and in the course of a few years the king had the happiness of seeing his small country rapidly arrive at a state of general welfare. This happiness was only clouded by one sad event, the death of the noble and heroic Queen Louise, who expired July 19, 1810. Prussia was still enjoying peace when, a few years after, Napoleon having decided on his Russian campaign, demanded an auxiliary army of thirty thousand men from the king. Notwithstanding his intimate friendship with Czar Alexander, Frederick William was obliged to comply with this demand, and all he could do in furtherance of his own views was to put the corps under the orders of General York, an officer well known for his anti-French sentiments. The succeeding months justified this appointment, for no sooner was Napoleon in retreat from Moscow than York, December 30, 1812, made a treaty with the Russian commander Diebitsch, securing the safety of the Prussian troops. Frederick William, in an order of the day of March 11, 1813, ratified this treaty, and by a further proclamation of March 17, called his people to arms against French tyranny. Volunteer bands now arose with great rapidity, and before the lapse of three weeks the king was able to take the field. The first events of the war were slightly unfavourable to the Prussians, the young recruits being unused to discipline; but they improved in a very short time, and after a number of sanguinary battles in which they bore an honourable part, the French frontier was gained by the allies, and Paris occupied, March 30, 1814. In the month of June following, Frederick William, in company with Czar Alexander, paid a visit to the British metropolis, where he was received with great enthusiasm, and returning thence to his own country, made his solemn entry into Berlin on the 7th of August. He subsequently went to Vienna, to take part in the great congress of nations there assembled, and having actively promoted the formation of the so-called Holy Alliance, and directed, from a distance, the movement of General Blucher and his corps, which led to the decisive battle of Waterloo, he returned on the 19th of October, 1815, to his capital, and three days after celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of the reign of the house of Hohenzollern in Brandenburg. By the treaty of Vienna, the kingdom of Prussia not only recovered lost territory and population, but, as compared with what it was at the beginning of the French wars, obtained an increase of both; and Frederick William henceforth employed his time in the consolidating into one homogeneous state the various acquisitions thus fortunately made. Prussia now consisted of a territory of above five thousand geographical square miles, with a population of twelve millions; which, before the death of Frederick William, had increased to upwards of fifteen millions. The first care of the king was to subdivide Prussia into ten provinces, each with a governor, or ober-präsident, at its head, and thus to allow considerable play for local administration. This being accomplished, the army was reorganized, and the "Allgemeine Wehrpflicht," that is, the duty of every man to serve in the army, was made a fundamental law of the state. In all these arrangements the king went to work in the most liberal spirit, which was only deficient in a single object, the political liberty of
