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.

Top 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

Verified Quotes

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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.