Augusta (1719–1772), daughter of Frederick II., duke of Saxe-Gotha, a union which was welcomed by his parents, but which led to further trouble between father and son. George proposed to allow the prince £50,000 a year; but this sum was regarded as insufficient by the latter, whose appeal to parliament was unsuccessful. After the birth of his first child, Augusta, in 1737, Frederick was ordered by the king to quit St James’ Palace, and the foreign ambassadors were requested to refrain from visiting him. The relations between the two were now worse than before. In 1745 George II. refused to allow his son to command the British army against the Jacobites. On the 20th of March 1751 the prince died in London, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He left five sons and two daughters. The sons were George (afterwards King George III.), Edward Augustus, duke of York and Albany (1739–1767), William Henry, duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh (1743–1805), Henry Frederick, duke of Cumberland (1745–1790), and Frederick William (1750–1765); the daughters were Augusta (1737–1813), wife of Charles William Ferdinand, duke of Brunswick, and Caroline Matilda (1751–1775), wife of Christian VII., king of Denmark.
See Lord Hervey of Ickworth, Memoirs of the Reign of George II., edited by J. W. Croker (London, 1884); Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George II. (London, 1847); and Sir N. W. Wraxall, Memoirs, edited by H. B. Wheatley, vol. i. (London, 1884).
FREDERICK WILLIAM I. (1688–1740), king of Prussia, son
of Frederick I. by his second marriage was born on the 15th
of August 1688. He spent a considerable time in early youth at
the court of his grandfather, the elector Ernest Augustus of
Hanover. On his return to Berlin he was placed under General
von Dohna and Count Finkenstein, who trained him to the
energetic and regular habits which ever afterwards characterized
him. He was soon imbued with a passion for military life, and
this was deepened by acquaintance with the duke of Marlborough
(1709), Prince Eugene, whom he visited during the siege of
Tournai, and Prince Leopold of Anhalt (the “Old Dessauer”).
In nearly every respect he was the opposite of his father, having
frugal, simple tastes, a passionate temper and a determined will.
Throughout his life he was always the protector of the church and
of religion. But he detested religious quarrels and was very
tolerant towards his Catholic subjects, except the Jesuits.
His life was simple and puritanical, being founded on the teaching
of the Bible. He was, however, fond of hunting and somewhat
given to drinking. He intensely disliked the French, and highly
disapproved of the imitation of their manners by his father and
his court. When he came to the throne (February 25, 1713) his
first act was to dismiss from the palace every unnecessary official
and to regulate the royal household on principles of the strictest
parsimony. The greater part of the beautiful furniture was
sold. His importance for Prussia is twofold: in internal politics
he laid down principles which continued to be followed long after
his death. This was a province peculiarly suited to his genius;
he was one of the greatest administrators who have ever worn the
Prussian crown. His foreign policy was less successful, though
under his rule the kingdom acquired some extension of territory.
Thus at the peace of Utrecht (April 11, 1713), after the War of the Spanish Succession, he acquired the greater part of the duchy of Gelderland. By the treaty of Schwedt, concluded with Russia on the 6th of October, he was assured of an important influence in the solution of the Baltic question, which during the long absence of Charles XII. had become burning; and Swedish Pomerania, as far as the Peene, was occupied by Prussia. But Charles XII. on his return turned against the king, though without success, for the Pomeranian campaign of 1715 ended in favour of Prussia (fall of Stralsund, December 22). This enabled Frederick William I. to maintain a more independent attitude towards the tsar; he refused, for example, to provide him with troops for a campaign (in Schonen) against the Swedes. When on the 28th of May 1718, in view of the disturbances in Mecklenburg, he signed at Havelberg the alliance with Russia, he confined himself to taking up a defensive attitude, and, on the other hand, on the 14th of August 1719 he also entered into relations with his former enemies, England and Hanover. And so, by the treaty of Stockholm (February 1, 1720), Frederick William succeeded in obtaining the consent of Sweden to the cession of that part of Pomerania which he had occupied (Usedom, Wollin, Stettin, Hither Pomerania, east of the Peene) in return for a payment of 2,000,000 thalers.
While Frederick William I. succeeded in carrying his wishes into effect in this direction, he was unable to realize another project which he had much at heart, namely, the Prussian succession to the Lower Rhine duchies of Jülich and Berg. The treaty concluded in 1725 at Vienna between the emperor and Spain brought the whole of this question up again, for both sides had pledged themselves to support the Palatinate-Sulzbach succession (in the event of the Palatinate-Neuberg line becoming extinct). Frederick William turned for help to the western powers, England and France, and secured it by the treaty of alliance signed at Herrenhausen on the 3rd of September 1725 (League of Hanover). But since the western powers soon sought to use the military strength of Prussia for their own ends, Frederick again turned towards the east, strengthened above all his relations with Russia, which had continued to be good, and finally, by the treaty of Wüsterhausen (October 12, 1726; ratified at Berlin, December 23, 1728), even allied himself with his former adversary, the court of Vienna; though this treaty only imperfectly safeguarded Prussian interests, inasmuch as Frederick William consented to renounce his claims to Jülich. But as in the following years the European situation became more and more favourable to the house of Habsburg, the latter began to try to withdraw part of the concessions which it had made to Frederick William. As early as 1728 Düsseldorf, the capital, was excluded from the guarantee of Berg. Nevertheless, in the War of the Polish Succession against France (1734–1735), Frederick William remained faithful to the emperor’s cause, and sent an auxiliary force of 10,000 men. The peace of Vienna, which terminated the war, led to a reconciliation between France and Austria, and so to a further estrangement between Frederick William and the emperor. Moreover, in 1738 the western powers, together with the emperor, insisted in identical notes on the recognition of the emperor’s right to decide the question of the succession in the Lower Rhine duchies. A breach with the emperor was now inevitable, and this explains why in a last treaty (April 5, 1739) Frederick William obtained from France a guarantee of a part, at least, of Berg (excluding Düsseldorf).
But Frederick William’s failures in foreign policy were more than compensated for by his splendid services in the internal administration of Prussia. He saw the necessity of rigid economy not only in his private life but in the whole administration of the state. During his reign Prussia obtained for the first time a centralized and uniform financial administration. It was the king himself who composed and wrote in the year 1722 the famous instruction for the general directory (Generaldirektorium) of war, finance and domains. When he died the income of the state was about seven million thalers (£1,050,000). The consequence was that he paid off the debts incurred by his father, and left to his successor a well filled treasury. In the administration of the domains he made three innovations: (1) the private estates of the king were turned into domains of the crown (August 13, 1713); (2) the freeing of the serfs on the royal domains (March 22, 1719); (3) the conversion of the hereditary lease into a short-term lease on the basis of productiveness. His industrial policy was inspired by the mercantile spirit. On this account he forbade the importation of foreign manufactures and the export of raw materials from home, a policy which had a very good effect on the growth of Prussian industries.
The work of internal colonization he carried on with especial zeal. Most notable of all was his rétablissement of East Prussia, to which he devoted six million thalers (c. £900,000). His policy in respect of the towns was motived largely by fiscal considerations, but at the same time he tried also to improve their municipal administration; for example, in the matter of buildings, of the letting of domain lands and of the collection of the excise in towns. Frederick William had many opponents among the nobles because he pressed on the abolition of the old feudal rights, introduced in East Prussia and Lithuania a general land tax (the Generalhufenschoss),
