Frederick II., OF PRUSSIA, surnamed 'THE GREAT,' born at Berlin, January 24, 1712, was the son of Frederick-William I., and of Sophia-Dorothea, daughter of George I. of Great Britain. His early years were spent under the restraints of an irksome military training and a narrow and unsympathetic system of education, against which not only the natural restiveness of youth but also the more liberal tastes implanted by his mother rebelled fiercely but vainly. At the age of eighteen the prince made an unsuccessful effort to escape to the court of Great Britain. His father saw in this attempt an act both of political rebellion and of military insubordination, and, influenced perhaps by the desire of saving the glory and acquisitions of his house from one whom he considered an unworthy successor, would have punished Frederick with death, had it not been for the intercession of the emperor. As it was, the prince was ordered into close confinement at Küstrin, while his confidant, Lieutenant Katte, was beheaded before his eyes. Frederick recognised that submission was inevitable. He threw himself with nervous alacrity into the military and civil duties with which he was after a time entrusted, while his letters to his father of this period are couched in almost servile terms. He won his final restoration to favour when in 1733 he dutifully accepted the bride chosen for him by his father—the Princess Elizabeth-Christina of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, 1715–97). From 1734 Frederick resided at Rheinsberg, where he held a kind of small literary court, and devoted his leisure to the study of music and French literature, for which he had a keen and lasting admiration. He corresponded with Voltaire (who afterwards, in 1752, visited Berlin), and studied with much sympathy the 'philosophical' doctrines which were to play so important a part in the century. There is no doubt that he now began to nourish schemes of political ambition. Even before he came to the throne he clearly perceived that, if the House of Hohenzollern was to play an adequate part in European politics, its possessions must be consolidated and extended; before he died the area of Prussia was doubled, and, notwithstanding the temporary eclipse under Napoleon, the foundation of Prussia's greatness was laid. Hostile critics assert that Frederick's prevailing motive was mere selfish dynastic ambition; they point to the fact that all his wars were aggressive, and that in every case he struck the first blow; they reproach him with unpatriotically encouraging the interference of France in the affairs of Germany for his private ends, and they taunt him with his contemptuous neglect of German literature and language, which last he could scarcely speak, and certainly could not spell. But there is no doubt that the terrible struggle of the Seven Years' War left him, if it did not find him, with a true appreciation of the solidarity of his own and his people's interest; he assuredly did not spare himself in their service; and his measures and reforms, harsh and autocratic as many of them now appear, were undertaken with a single eye to the national good. The rise of Prussia under Frederick really rendered possible the union of Germany which his critics accuse him of retarding, but which could never have been effectually carried through under a dominant Austria, haughty with centuries of imperial tradition.
On May 31, 1740, Frederick became king; and in the following October the accession of Maria Theresa separated the crown of Austria from the imperial diadem. Frederick, in possession of an admirably drilled army and a well-filled treasury, seized the opportunity. Reviving an antiquated claim to Silesia, he entered that province (December 1740) before his formal declaration of war reached Vienna, defeated the Austrians at Mollwitz (April 1741) and Chotusitz (May 1742), and, having concluded an alliance for fifteen years with France, forced Maria Theresa to yield him Upper and Lower Silesia by the Treaty of Breslau in June 1742, which closed this first Silesian war. The second Silesian war (August 1744 to December 1745) left Frederick with still further augmented territories, and the reputation of being one of the first military commanders of the day. The next eleven years were years of peace; but Austria was not yet reconciled to the loss of Silesia, and Frederick's energetic internal reforms were coloured by the expectation of renewed war. In 1756 the third Silesian war, better known as the Seven Years' War (q.v.), began. Frederick anticipated attack by himself becoming the aggressor, and during all this momentous struggle—one of the most remarkable of modern times—displayed a courage, a military genius, and a power of resource both in victory and defeat which justly entitle him to the name of 'the Great.' At the Peace of Hubertsburg (February 15, 1763), he had not only maintained his territory undiminished, but he had also added a tenfold prestige to Prussia and to Prussian arms. Jealousy of Austrian aggrandisement continued to influence his policy. In 1772 it induced him to share in that dishonest act, the first partition of Poland, which added Polish Prussia and a portion of Great Poland to the Prussian crown. In 1778 it led him to take arms in a brief campaign, which ended in the acquisition of the Franconian duchies. And one of his latest political actions was the formation of the 'Fürstenbund,' or League of Princes, which was the first definite appearance of Prussia as a rival to Austria for the lead in Germany. Frederick died at Potsdam, August 17, 1786, and was succeeded by his nephew, Frederick-William II.
Frederick, like Richelieu and like Bismarck, when foreign war ceased turned his immediate attention to the internal affairs of his kingdom. He was an able administrator at all periods of his reign, and not the least remarkable of his feats was his carrying on all his wars without incurring a penny of debt. He regarded himself as, in his own words, the first servant of the state; he was his own prime-minister in a very literal sense, for his cynical suspicions of human motives induced him to interfere directly in things great and small. His conviction of the immaturity of his country explains the discrepancy between his theoretical writings on government and the scant amount of liberty he granted to his people. He considered himself responsible for the good of his people, and he justified his arbitrary actions by his good intentions and his keener insight. As already remarked, Frederick's domestic legislation was influenced by what he believed to be the military requirements of the time; Prussia under him was governed as one huge camp. He endeavoured to increase the population—i.e. the supply of soldiers, by a system of 'planting colonies,' by lending his war-horses to plough the peasants' land, by distributing military stores, and by temporary remission of taxes in certain provinces. But he did not carry the enfranchisement of the peasantry to such an extent as to injure or offend the nobility, whom he required for officers. With a view to providing treasure for future wars he fostered woollen and other manufactures by a high protective tariff; but he made himself unpopular by the introduction of the French excise-system, known as the Regie, and the temporary inflation of his revenue was attended with later disastrous commercial results. During Frederick's reign, however, the country rapidly recovered from the ravages of war, while the army was raised to a strength of 200,000 men. Frederick was essentially a just, if somewhat austere man, and the administration of justice under his rule was pure, though he himself had his usual cynical distrust of his judges' integrity; the press enjoyed comparative freedom; and freedom of conscience was promoted. Though Frederick was himself a voluminous writer on political, historical, and military subjects, he had no sympathy with nascent German literature, a fact on which the latter is perhaps to be congratulated. The spirit of the century went faster than Frederick; had he lived he would not have understood the logical outcome of his philosophie doctrines in the French Revolution. His works, written wholly in French, have been published in thirty-one volumes under the auspices of the Berlin Academy (Berlin, 1846-57), which in 1878 also undertook an edition of his Political Correspondence.
The chief authorities for the life of Frederick are, besides his own Œuvres and Correspondance, and the official publications of the Prussian Archives, Preuss's Friedrich der Grosse (4 vols. Berlin, 1832-34); Carlyle's History of Frederick II. (6 vols. Lond. 1858-65); and Droysen's Friedrich der Grosse (2 vols. Leip. 1874-76), being part v. of his Geschichte der Preussischen Politik. Numerous monographs upon special epochs in his life or special phases of his character have also been published. The leader of the hostile school of criticism is O. Klopp, in his Friedrich II. von Preussen und die Deutsche Nation (Schaffhausen, 1867). Rigollet, in his Frédéric II. Philosophe (Paris, 1875), gives us a French view of the king; as does the Duc de Broglie in Frédéric II. et Marie Thérèse (1883). There is an English translation (1877) of Kugler's History of Frederick the Great, with 500 illustrations by the artist Menzel, who in innumerable publications illustrated Frederick and his times. See also Colonel Brackenbury's little Monograph (1884), and Herbert Tuttle, History of Prussia under Frederick the Great (2 vols. New York, 1888).