The conduct of father and son during this crisis is peculiarly worthy of attention because each was his own counsellor, and because Frederick never again lay under a scrutiny so searching. In the summer of 1730 the King reaped all that he had sown during his son’s boyhood. He found in his heir a youth whom he distrusted and despised but could not get rid of. He therefore began the task anew and inaugurated a second education sterner than the first. He had slain his son’s friend, not, as he professed, “that justice should not entirely leave the world,” but that he might, in spite of past failures, fashion an heir after his own heart. The loyal father of the dead man found consolation in viewing his loss as a sacrifice to this design. That this, which he believed to be indispensable to the welfare of Prussia, was the leading motive of the King’s policy, grew clearer as his outbursts of wrath against his son became less frequent and less fierce. It inspired Frederick also with a leading motive—to beguile his father into believing that he had his way.
His first education made him a rebel; his second, a hypocrite. Katte’s death had taught him once and for all that life would be tolerable only if he gained his father’s confidence. To this end he applied every art which a fertile brain could devise and an unscrupulous actor could practise. He exhausted the language of contrition for the past. He promised full amendment for the future. He sent letters, as many as his father would consent to receive, and the burden of all was that he was indeed a new man, a second Frederick William, adoring the things that he had burned and burning those that he had adored. The new Frederick is interested in tall soldiers, his father’s hobby, and longs to put on the uniform which he had been wont to call his winding-sheet. He relishes theology and after argument abandons what his father calls “the damned heresy” of predestination. He professes to find pleasure in the work of the estates committee and informs his father with ecstasy that the rent of some royal domains can be raised. He tries to propitiate the King of Prussia as Philip of Spain tried to propitiate the English people, by pretending to a taste for beer. Even his opinion of his own family has swiftly changed. He now pretends to realise that his mother is a mischievous intriguer; to be content that his sister shall abjure the throne of England and marry an obscure Hohenzollern of Baireuth; to desire that his father may live to see his children’s children grow up around him. Finally he receives at the hands of Frederick William a regiment and a wife and withdraws into the marshy solitudes of Brandenburg to make the best of both.