History of Friedrich II of Prussia, vol 1 | Page 8

outward details of Friedrich's Life- History;
though as to organizing them, assorting them, or even putting labels on
them; much more as to the least interpretation or human delineation of
the man and his affairs,--you need not inquire in Prussia. In France, in
England, it is still worse. There an immense ignorance prevails even as
to the outward facts and phenomena of Friedrich's life; and instead of
the Prussian no-interpretation, you find, in these vacant circumstances,
a great promptitude to interpret. Whereby judgments and
prepossessions exist among us on that subject, especially on Friedrich's
character, which are very ignorant indeed.
To Englishmen, the sources of knowledge or conviction about Friedrich,
I have observed, are mainly these two. FIRST, for his Public Character:
it was an all-important fact, not to IT, but to this country in regard to it,
That George II., seeing good to plunge head-foremost into German
Politics, and to take Maria Theresa's side in the Austrian-Succession
War of 1740-1748, needed to begin by assuring his Parliament and
Newspapers, profoundly dark on the matter, that Friedrich was a robber

and villain for taking the other side. Which assurance, resting on what
basis we shall see by and by, George's Parliament and Newspapers
cheerfully accepted; nothing doubting. And they have re-echoed and
reverberated it, they and the rest of us, ever since, to all lengths, down
to the present day; as a fact quite agreed upon, and the preliminary item
in Friedrich's character. Robber and villain to begin with; that was one
settled point.
Afterwards when George and Friedrich came to be allies, and the grand
fightings of the Seven-Years War took place, George's Parliament and
Newspapers settled a second point, in regard to Friedrich: "One of the
greatest soldiers ever born." This second item the British Writer fully
admits ever since: but he still adds to it the quality of robber, in a loose
way;--and images to himself a royal Dick Turpin, of the kind known in
Review-Articles, and disquisitions on Progress of the Species, and
labels it FREDERICK; very anxious to collect new babblement of lying
Anecdotes, false Criticisms, hungry French Memoirs, which will
confirm him in that impossible idea. Had such proved, on survey, to be
the character of Friedrich, there is one British Writer whose curiosity
concerning him would pretty soon have died away; nor could any
amount of unwise desire to satisfy that feeling in fellow-creatures less
seriously disposed have sustained him alive, in those baleful Historic
Acherons and Stygian Fens, where he has had to dig and to fish so long,
far away from the upper light!-- Let me request all readers to blow that
sorry chaff entirely out of their minds; and to believe nothing on the
subject except what they get some evidence for.
SECOND English source relates to the Private Character. Friedrich's
Biography or Private Character, the English, like the French, have
gathered chiefly from a scandalous libel by Voltaire, which used to be
called Vie Privee du Roi de Prusse (Private Life of
the King of Prussia) [First printed, from a stolen copy, at Geneva, 1784;
first proved to be Voltaire's (which some of his admirers had striven to
doubt), Paris, 1788; stands avowed ever since, in all the Editions of his
Works (ii. 9-113 of the Edition by Bandouin Freres, 97 vols., Paris,
1825-1834), under the title Memoires pour servir a Vie de M.
de Voltaire, --with patches of repetition in the thing called

(italic) Commentaire Historique, which follows ibid. at
great length.] libel undoubtedly written by Voltaire, in a kind of fury;
but not intended to be published by him; nay burnt and annihilated, as
he afterwards imagined; No line of which, that cannot be otherwise
proved, has a right to be believed; and large portions of which can be
proved to be wild exaggerations and perversions, or even downright
lies,--written in a mood analogous to the Frenzy of John Dennis. This
serves for the Biography or Private Character of Friedrich; imputing all
crimes to him, natural and unnatural;--offering indeed, if combined
with facts otherwise known, or even if well considered by itself, a
thoroughly flimsy, incredible and impossible image. Like that of some
flaming Devil's Head, done in phosphorus on the walls of the
black-hole, by an Artist whom you had locked up there (not quite
without reason) overnight.
Poor Voltaire wrote that Vie Privee in a state little
inferior to the Frenzy of John Dennis,--how brought about we shall see
by and by. And this is the Document which English readers are surest
to have read, and tried to credit as far as possible. Our counsel is, Out
of window with it, he that would know Friedrich of Prussia! Keep it
awhile, he that would know Francois Arouet