“I confess that I perceive in the answer a conflict between greatness and humiliation to which I can never agree. The answer is like the declaration of a man who has no stomach for fighting and yet wishes to seem as if he had. There were only two solutions, either to reply with noble pride, with no evasions in the shape of petty negotiations whose real value will soon be recognised, or to bow ourselves under the degrading yoke that they wish to lay upon us. I am no subtle politician to couple together a set of contradictory threats and submissions, I am young, I would perhaps follow the impetuosity of my nature; under no circumstances would I do anything by halves.”
Close observers held that a change of king would be followed by a change of policy and that Frederick was likely to attempt great things. What these would be no one, with the possible exception of the young King himself, had the least idea. What in the opinion of the present writer they should have been is sufficiently indicated above. What they were, will be shown in the following chapter.
At first, for all his determination to lose no time, the results of his accession seemed but small. No human being could maintain that he was swayed by his affections. Though Duhan, Keith, and Katte’s father received some measure of compensation for their sufferings, Frederick’s behaviour towards those concerned in his early struggles emboldened the wits to say that his memory was excellent as far back as 1730. His Rheinsberg friends expected to share the spoils of office. They were disappointed in a way that has reminded Macaulay of the treatment of Falstaff by Henry V. Frederick was as masterful as his father. The aged Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, who had created the Prussian army, and the aged General von Schulenburg, who had risked all rather than condemn Katte to death, were humiliated by royal reprimands. Grumbkow, with whom he had corresponded for more than eight years in terms of affectionate intimacy, might have caused him a moment’s embarrassment, but he had just died—“for me the greatest conceivable gain,” the King assured his sister. He broke up his father’s useless and costly regiment of giant grenadiers, a measure which Frederick William had himself advised, but he increased the effective strength of the army by nearly ten thousand men. At the same time he sounded, more clearly even than his ancestor George William, the note of religious toleration for which Brandenburg had been honourably distinguished in the time of her greatest peril. “In this country,” he instructed his officials, “every one shall get to heaven in his own way.”