History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great

Summary

Carlyle's History of Friedrich II of Prussia is the longest work he wrote and the one that cost him most: well over a decade of reading in German archives and memoirs, two journeys to Germany to walk the battlefields, and a long struggle with material he often called dreary. It appeared in six volumes between 1858 and 1865 and is divided into twenty-one Books, which the Project Gutenberg transcription attached here publishes as twenty-one separate volumes plus an appendix. The history opens with a 'Proem' that pictures the old king riding about Potsdam in a snuff-stained blue coat, 'a King every inch of him, though without the trappings of a King', and admits that Carlyle's hope of presenting this 'Last of the Kings' as an example to his own age is not high. Books II and III then go back eight centuries to tell how the Hohenzollerns came to Brandenburg and built a state out of sand and marsh. Books IV to X are the story of Friedrich's youth under his father, the drill-sergeant king Friedrich Wilhelm I: the failed 'Double-Marriage' scheme with the English court, the crown prince's attempted flight in 1730, the execution of his friend Lieutenant Katte before his window at Cüstrin, and his slow rehabilitation at Cüstrin, Ruppin and Reinsberg, where he wrote to Voltaire and composed the Anti-Machiavel. Books XI to XV cover the first five years of the reign: the accession of 1740, the sudden seizure of Silesia after the Emperor's death, Mollwitz, and the two Silesian Wars within the wider War of the Austrian Succession. Book XVI, 'The Ten Years of Peace', includes the building of Sans Souci, Cocceji's law reform, and the comic and bitter story of Voltaire's stay at Potsdam. Books XVII to XX narrate the Seven Years' War campaign by campaign, from Lobositz, Prague, Kolin, Rossbach and Leuthen to the near-destruction at Kunersdorf in 1759, the long endurance of 1760-62, and the Peace of Hubertusburg in 1763. Book XXI, 'Afternoon and Evening', treats the rebuilding of a ruined country, the Partition of Poland, the Bavarian War, the Miller Arnold lawsuit, the League of Princes, and finally the king's last illness and death on 17 August 1786. Carlyle tells all this in his most idiosyncratic manner: present-tense narration, invented commentators such as Dryasdust and Smelfungus, long extracts from sources, scorn for 'pedant' historians, and sudden passages of great tenderness. He admired Friedrich as a ruler who did the work in front of him and thought that admiration a needed rebuke to his own talkative century. Readers need to distinguish his narrative, which is often careful and well sourced, from his judgments, which excuse the seizure of Silesia and the Partition of Poland more readily than many historians have. Selected Books, especially IV-VII and XIX-XXI, are a manageable and rewarding way into the work.

Plot or Argument

• Proem and the old king at Potsdam (Book I)

  A portrait of Friedrich in old age, followed by Carlyle's complaint against 'Dryasdust' historians and his doubt that his age, expecting 'no Kings of any sort', will learn from this one. Friedrich's birth in 1712 and his parents and grandparents follow.

• Brandenburg and the Hohenzollerns (Books II-III)

  Eight centuries of background, from the Wends and the margraves of Brandenburg to Burggraf Friedrich of Nürnberg, the Reformation, the Great Elector, and the first King in Prussia.

• Apprenticeship and the Double-Marriage (Books IV-VI)

  The crown prince's harsh education under Friedrich Wilhelm I, the Tobacco Parliament, and the long diplomatic scheme to marry Friedrich and his sister Wilhelmina into the English royal house.

• Flight, court-martial and Katte (Book VII)

  The failed escape attempt of 1730 during the journey to the Reich, the king's fury, the court-martial, and the execution of Katte at Cüstrin while the prince is made to watch from a window.

• Cüstrin, Ruppin and Reinsberg (Books VIII-X)

  Repentance and rehabilitation through work in the war-and-domains office, marriage to Elisabeth Christine, regimental duty at Ruppin, the happy years of reading and music at Reinsberg, the correspondence with Voltaire, and the death of Friedrich Wilhelm in 1740.

• Taking the reins and the Silesian Wars (Books XI-XV)

  Accession reforms, the first meeting with Voltaire, the resolution to seize Silesia after the Emperor's death, Mollwitz, and the shifting European war that ends with Prussia holding Silesia after the Second Silesian War.

• Ten Years of Peace (Book XVI)

  Sans Souci, law reform under Cocceji, the Voltaire visit in three acts with its quarrels and its 'tragical' afterpiece at Frankfurt, and the diplomatic signs of a coalition forming against Prussia.

• The Seven Years' War (Books XVII-XX)

  Campaign by campaign: Pirna and Lobositz; Prague, Kolin, Rossbach and Leuthen; Zorndorf and Hochkirch; the catastrophe of Kunersdorf and the loss of Dresden; Liegnitz, Torgau and the camp of Bunzelwitz; Russia's change of sides; and the Peace of Hubertusburg.

• Afternoon and Evening (Book XXI)

  Repairing a ruined Prussia, the Partition of Poland, the Bavarian War, Miller Arnold's lawsuit, the League of Princes, and the last Silesian review in the rain that led to Friedrich's final illness and death.

Characters

• Friedrich II (Frederick the Great), King of Prussia 1740-1786; subject of the history

  Flute-playing, French-writing crown prince turned soldier-king; Carlyle's hero of veracity and work, shown also in his sarcasm, solitude and ruthlessness.

• Friedrich Wilhelm I, King of Prussia 1713-1740; Friedrich's father

  Thrifty, pious, violent drill-master of the army and the state, whom Carlyle treats with surprising sympathy as an honest, inarticulate builder.

• Wilhelmina, Friedrich's elder sister, later Margravine of Baireuth

  His closest companion in youth; her memoirs are one of Carlyle's main, and often distrusted, sources.

• Hans Hermann von Katte, Lieutenant and friend of the crown prince

  Accomplice in the planned flight, beheaded at Cüstrin in November 1730 by the king's order.

• Voltaire, Correspondent and guest

  The crown prince's literary idol, later a difficult guest at Potsdam whose departure ends in arrest at Frankfurt.

• Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary

  Friedrich's great opponent, whose inheritance he attacks in 1740 and who leads the coalition of the Seven Years' War.

• Prince Henri of Prussia, Friedrich's brother and general

  Able commander whose march of fifty hours in 1759 helps save the situation after Kunersdorf.

• Daun and Loudon, Austrian field marshals

  The cautious and the daring Austrian commanders against whom most of the later campaigns are fought.

• Christian Gottlieb Selle, Physician in Berlin

  Doctor called in during the king's last illness, whose short case history Carlyle praises for exactness.

• Dryasdust and Smelfungus, Carlyle's invented commentators

  Comic personifications of pedantic historians and of Carlyle's own grumbling voice, used to argue with his sources.

Lessons

• The son who survived his father

  Books IV-X show a father who beat and humiliated his heir, a son who tried to flee, and a king who killed his son's friend to teach obedience; yet Carlyle also shows reconciliation, work and a measure of mutual respect by 1740. The story raises hard questions about authority, obedience, repentance and the line between discipline and cruelty.

  • What does Friedrich Wilhelm want his son to become, and what does he fear?
  • Carlyle leaves commentary on Katte's execution 'to the reader'. What judgment would you give, and on what grounds?
  • How does Friedrich's work at Cüstrin change his relation to his father?

• Kunersdorf and the will to go on

  In August 1759 the Prussian army broke at Kunersdorf, and Friedrich, Carlyle reports, begged his soldiers not to forsake him and wished for a ball to strike him. The following books show him recovering by persistence rather than brilliance. Carlyle values endurance in defeat above victory, which students can test against Scripture's teaching on perseverance and on the limits of a king's strength.

  • How does Carlyle make the reader feel the collapse at Kunersdorf?
  • Is Friedrich's endurance in 1759-1762 a virtue, stubbornness, or both?
  • What does Psalm 33 say about a king saved by the multitude of an host, and how does that bear on this story?

• Silesia and Poland: admiring without excusing

  Carlyle defends the invasion of Silesia in 1740 as the recovery of old Hohenzollern claims and treats the Partition of Poland as the end of a hopeless anarchy. Many historians have judged both as plain acts of power. Students should first state Carlyle's case fully, then weigh it against the claims of treaty, law and neighbourly justice.

  • What reasons does Carlyle give for Friedrich's resolution at Reinsberg to take Silesia?
  • How does his account of Poland's condition shape his view of the Partition?
  • Can a historian admire a ruler's competence while condemning particular acts? Does Carlyle?

• Justice for a miller

  Miller Arnold's lawsuit in Book XXI shows the old king overturning his judges for what he believed was a poor man's wrong. Carlyle privately inclines to the king's side, yet he reports that Berlin society disagreed and that after Friedrich's death a higher tribunal found the miller's claim of damage unproved. It is a compact lesson in a ruler's duty to justice, the danger of acting on partial information, and the value of independent courts.

  • Why did Friedrich intervene in the miller's case?
  • What does the case show about the strengths and dangers of personal rule?
  • Compare this episode with Cocceji's earlier law reform in Book XVI.

• The death of a working king

  The last chapter follows Friedrich through asthma, dropsy and sleeplessness to his death in his chair, supported by a valet. He calls his clerks at four in the morning because his remaining time 'belongs not to me, but to the State'. Carlyle finds the death 'stern and lonely'; Christian readers may also ask what is missing from a death without any recorded turn to God.

  • What details does Carlyle choose to show Friedrich's character in his last months?
  • Why does Carlyle call the death appropriate to the life?
  • How does this death compare with deaths described in Scripture or in a Christian biography you know?

Context

Friedrich II (1712-1786) turned Prussia into a great power by seizing Silesia in 1740 and holding it through three wars against Austria and its allies, while also reforming law and administration and corresponding with the French philosophes. Carlyle wrote a century later, after the 1848 revolutions and while Prussia was rising toward German unification under Bismarck. His history argued to a British public that strong, truthful rule mattered more than parliamentary talk.

Composition

Carlyle chose the subject around 1851, travelled in Germany in 1852 and again in 1858 to see sites and battlefields, and worked from printed German sources, memoirs, the Oeuvres de Frédéric, and many minor authors he cites by page. Volumes I and II appeared in 1858 and the final volumes in 1865. The Gutenberg set (#2101-#2122) divides the text by its twenty-one Books and adds an appendix.

Reception

The work sold well and was admired for its portraits and battle narratives; it brought Carlyle honour in Germany. Critics then and later objected to its length, its manner, and its worship of power. Its afterlife includes a documented episode in April 1945, when Goebbels read passages about Friedrich's rescue in 1762 to Hitler in the Berlin bunker; historians treat that as evidence of how hero-histories can be used, not as a key to Carlyle's intentions.

Comparisons

• On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History

  The 1840 lectures name the 'Hero as King' in Cromwell and Napoleon; nearly twenty years later Carlyle tests that theory on a single ruler at full documentary length, and the result is more troubled and less confident than the lectures.

• The French Revolution: A History

  Both histories use present-tense narration and invented voices, but The French Revolution watches a society dissolve while Friedrich shows one being built and held together; Carlyle ends Friedrich's life with Paris already busy with the Diamond Necklace and 'Chaos' again 'big'.

• Instructions for His Generals

  Friedrich's own 1747 military instructions give his voice directly; set them beside Carlyle's narratives of Mollwitz or Leuthen to see how the king thought about the campaigns Carlyle describes.

• The Prince

  At Reinsberg the crown prince wrote the Anti-Machiavel, published with Voltaire's help in 1740, months before he invaded Silesia; Carlyle's Book X and Book XI invite students to test Friedrich's early critique of Machiavelli against his first acts as king.

• Candide: Or Optimism

  Voltaire's 1759 satire, written after his bitter departure from Potsdam, opens with Candide forced into the Bulgar army and beaten by drill-sergeants; Carlyle's account of the Voltaire visit in Book XVI shows the friendship behind the joke.

• The Age of Voltaire

  The Durants give a modern synthesis of Friedrich's Prussia within the Enlightenment, useful for checking Carlyle's judgments on Silesia, Voltaire and the Partition of Poland.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• How the Proem's portrait of the old king frames everything that follows.
• Carlyle's invented voices (Dryasdust, Smelfungus, Sauerteig) and when he uses them to argue with sources.
• The father-son story of Books IV-X and how it shapes the king Friedrich becomes.
• How Carlyle justifies the invasion of Silesia and the Partition of Poland, and what he leaves out.
• The difference between battle narrative and battle glorification in Books XVII-XX.

Key terms and names

Hohenzollern

The dynasty of Brandenburg-Prussia, whose rise from Nürnberg burgraves to kings Carlyle traces in Books II and III.

Double-Marriage project

The plan, pursued for years in the 1720s and 1730s, to marry Friedrich and Wilhelmina to an English princess and prince; its collapse drives the crisis of Book VII.

Silesia (Schlesien)

Rich Habsburg province on the Oder seized by Friedrich in 1740 and kept through the Silesian and Seven Years' Wars.

Dryasdust

Carlyle's name for the pedantic, unimaginative historian who buries facts without understanding them.

Sans Souci

'Without care': Friedrich's small summer palace at Potsdam, built in the peace after 1745, where he spent much of his later life.

Peace of Hubertusburg

The 1763 treaty ending the Seven Years' War in Central Europe and leaving Silesia to Prussia.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What does Friedrich look like and wear in the opening portrait of Book I, and why does Carlyle begin with the old king rather than his birth?
2. Comprehension What happened to Katte, and where was the crown prince when it happened?
3. Comprehension What did Friedrich do at the Silesian review of August 1785 that led to his final illness?
4. Interpretation Why does Carlyle spend two whole Books on Hohenzollern ancestors before Friedrich is grown? What argument does that background make?
5. Interpretation How does Carlyle make the reader feel the difference between Leuthen and Kunersdorf?
6. Interpretation In the Voltaire chapters of Book XVI, is Carlyle fair to Voltaire? Point to his tone as well as his facts.
7. Big Question Can a ruler who seizes a neighbour's province be a model of duty and truthfulness, as Carlyle claims Friedrich was?

Faith Connections

• Psalm 33:16-17 (Scripture)

  'There is no king saved by the multitude of an host': read beside Kunersdorf, where the finest army in Europe dissolved in an afternoon and Friedrich was saved chiefly by his enemies' delay.

• Ephesians 6:4 (Scripture)

  'Provoke not your children to wrath': a test for Friedrich Wilhelm's treatment of his son in Books IV-VII, and for Carlyle's sympathy with that father.

• 1 Kings 21 (Scripture)

  Ahab's seizure of Naboth's vineyard offers a biblical frame for Miller Arnold's lawsuit and for the larger question of whether a king may take what borders his land.

• Machiavelli, The Prince, and Friedrich's Anti-Machiavel (Great Conversation)

  Friedrich condemned Machiavelli in 1739-40 and invaded Silesia in December 1740; students can ask which book better describes the king Carlyle portrays.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Carlyle argues that Friedrich, formed by a hard father and a harder apprenticeship, became a king who saw facts truly and did the work they demanded; that this veracity, more than genius, carried Prussia through wars against much larger powers and rebuilt it afterward; and that an age turning from such rulers toward talk and ballot-boxes should study him, even though Carlyle doubts it will.

Rhetorical device: present-tense narration. In Book VII Carlyle writes that Katte 'is on the road towards the Rampart of the Castle, where a scaffold stands', placing the reader at Cüstrin in the moment rather than at a historian's distance.

Debate: Resolved: that Carlyle's admiration for Friedrich makes his History less trustworthy as history.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Carlyle reports Katte's execution and then says the reader 'himself shall supply' the commentary. Supply it: using Book VII, argue whether Friedrich Wilhelm acted as a just king, a cruel father, or both, and what the episode did to his son.

Comparison with On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History: In the lecture on 'The Hero as King' Carlyle defines the Able-man who should rule. Compare that definition with his portrait of Friedrich in the Proem and in Book XXI, and argue whether the long history confirms or complicates the theory.

Medical Lens

The history is not a medical work, but its two royal deathbeds and its battle narratives give useful material for the history of eighteenth-century medicine as Carlyle read it in printed sources. Friedrich Wilhelm I's long decline is described in the language of gout and dropsy; Friedrich's own last year follows Selle's printed case history through asthma, dropsy, erysipelas and sleeplessness. Carlyle notes the king's distrust of doctors, his self-doctoring, and his rich diet. The visit of the Hanoverian physician Zimmermann is dismissed, and Carlyle's remark that Zimmermann's 'hypochondrias' later deepened is a period judgment. Any modern diagnosis of either king is a reading, not a fact.

• Book IX (1734): Friedrich Wilhelm's illness after the Rhine campaign

  The king falls ill on his journey home, returns to Potsdam weak, and is described as wrecked by gout and 'falling to dropsy'; Carlyle notes the effect of this on the crown prince.

  Aging Senescence Death Dying
• Book X, Ch. VIII (Death of Friedrich Wilhelm, 1740)

  The old king's last winter: chills after a party, alternating bed and wheeled chair, and his death in May 1740.

  Death Dying
• Book XIX, Ch. IV (Battle of Kunersdorf, 1759)

  The rout of the Prussian army and Friedrich's despair; the scale of the losses is a starting point for discussing eighteenth-century battlefield casualties.

  WAR Wounds Death Dying
• Book XXI, Ch. IX (Friedrich's Last Illness and Death)

  The rain-soaked review at Gross-Tinz in August 1785, fever, a suffocation fit, gout, then asthma and dropsy; Selle's treatment and pamphlet; Friedrich's self-doctoring and diet; months sleeping upright in a chair.

  Physicians Doctors Sleep Insomnia Aging Senescence
• Book XXI, Ch. IX (Zimmermann's visit)

  Carlyle's sardonic account of the physician Johann Georg Zimmermann, summoned from Hanover, and his remark that Zimmermann's own hypochondrias later deepened.

  Physicians Doctors Hypochondria
• Book XXI, Ch. IX (night of 16-17 August 1786)

  The valet Strutzki holds the dying king on his knee for over two hours so that he can breathe; death at twenty minutes past two.

  Nursing Caregiving Death Dying

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Make a timeline wall of Friedrich's life (1712-1786) with one card per Book of Carlyle's history, each card carrying a date, a place, and one sentence of Carlyle's own wording.

• Fiction

  Write the morning of 6 November 1730 at Cüstrin from the point of view of Chaplain Müller, using only facts Carlyle gives in Book VII.

• Essay

  Carlyle calls Friedrich the 'Last of the Kings' and doubts his age will learn from him. Using the Proem and Book XXI, explain what lesson Carlyle hoped his readers would draw and judge whether it is a lesson worth learning.

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation between Voltaire and Friedrich at Sans Souci in 1751, drawing on Book XVI, about whether a philosopher-king should make war.

Further Reading

• History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great, Thomas Carlyle

  Attached Gutenberg set #2101-#2122; read Books I, VII, XIX and XXI first.

• Memoirs of Wilhelmine, Margravine of Bayreuth, Wilhelmina of Prussia

  Carlyle's chief, and often criticised, source for the family quarrels of Books IV-VII.

• Frederick the Great: King of Prussia, Tim Blanning

  Modern scholarly biography that can be used to check Carlyle's narrative and judgments.

• Frederick the Great: A Military Life, Dennis Showalter

  Military history of the campaigns Carlyle narrates in Books XII-XX.