here myself, not sparing my health with the constant fatigue and long journey. But on my arrival here I find the army idle, because the artillery promised by you has not come, and when I asked your Vice Admiral Segestet about it, he replied that it could not be given without your particular order. I am greatly at a loss to understand why these changes are made and why favorable time is thus being wasted, from which, besides the loss of money and to the common interests, we shall gain nothing except the ridicule of our enemies. 1 have always been, and am, ready to help my allies in everything that the common interest demands. If you do not comply with this request of mine to [send the artillery], I can prove to you and the whole world that this campaign has not been lost by me, and I shall then not be to blame if, as 1 am inactive here, I am obliged to withdraw my troops, because on account of the expense of things here it is a waste of money, and I cannot endure being dishonored by the enemy.
Peter's letter did no good; the Danish artillery continued to batter at Bremen, not Stettin. In this frustrated mood, Peter left the army at the end of September 1712 to return for the third straight autumn to take the waters at Carlsbad. On the way, passing through Wittenberg, he visited the grave of Martin Luther and the house in which Luther had lived. In the house, the curator showed him an ink spot on the wall which supposedly dated to the moment when Luther had seen the Devil and thrown his inkpot at him. Peter laughed and asked, 'Did such a wise man really believe that the Devil could be seen?' Asked to sign the wall himself, Peter chidingly wrote, 'The ink spot is quite fresh, so the story obviously is not true.'
Traveling to Carlsbad, Peter also passed through Berlin and called on the elderly King Frederick I of Prussia and his son Frederick William, the Prince Royal. 'The Tsar arrived here last Tuesday at seven p.m.,' wrote a member of the Prussian court.
We were in the tabiage [smoking room] when the Field Marshal came to inform the King, who asked me how the Tsar had been received in Dresden. I said that although the King [Augustus] was absent, all sorts of honors had been offered to him, but he had accepted nothing and had lodged in a private house. His Majesty replied that he would likewise offer him everything. . . .
The Tsar went to the palace and going up the private staircase surprised the King in his bedroom playing chess with the Prince Royal. The two Majesties stayed half an hour together. Then the Tsar looked at the apartments in which the King of Denmark had stayed, admired them, but refused to occupy them. A supper was given by the Prince Royal, there being eight at the table besides the Tsar, who allowed no toasts, ate though he had already supped, but did not drink. . . .
Yesterday the Tsar went to the King in the tabiage, put on a fine red coat embroidered with gold, instead of his pelisse, which he found too hot, and went to supper. He was gallant enough to give his hand to the Queen, after having put on a rather dirty glove. The King and all the royal family supped with him. . . . The Tsar surpassed himself during all this time. He neither belched, nor farted, nor picked his teeth—at least I neither saw nor heard him do so—and he conversed with the Queen and the Princesses without showing any embarrassment. The crowd of spectators was very great. He embraced the King for goodbye, and, after making a general bow to all the company, went off with such long strides that it was impossible for the King to keep up with him.
Five months later, on his way back to Russia, Peter again passed through Berlin. King Frederick I had just died and the twenty-five-year-old Prince Royal now sat on the throne as King Frederick William I. 'I have found the new King very pleasant,' Peter wrote to Menshikov, 'but cannot decide him on any action. As far as I can understand from two reasons: first, because he has no money, and second, because there are still here many dogs of Swedish heart. The King himself is unskilled in political matters and when he asks his Ministers for advice, they help the Swedes in every way. . . . The Court here is not so grand as it was before.' As for joining an active alliance against Sweden, the new King of Prussia said that he needed at least a year to put his army and finances in order.
The lifetime of Peter the Great and the rise of Russia also saw the emergence of a new, highly disciplined military state in North Germany, the kingdom of Prussia. It sprang from the electorate of Brandenburg, whose ruling house, the House of Hohenzollern, had descended from the Teutonic Knights. Its capital, Berlin, was still only a town in Peter's day, with a population in 1700 of 25,000. Its people were Protestant, frugal and efficient, with a capacity for organization, a willingness to sacrifice and a belief that duty was the highest call. Other Germans— Rhinelanders, Bavarians, Hanoverians and Saxons—though of Brandenburgers as semi-feudal, less civilized and more aggressive than themselves.
The weakness of the state was geographical. A product of dynastic marriages and inheritances, it was scattered in unconnected fragments all across the Northern European plain. Its westernmost territory, the duchy of Cleves, lay on the Rhine near the point where the great river flows into Holland; its easternmost fief, the duchy of East Prussia, lay on the Neman, over 500 miles east of Cleves. The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the Thirty Years' War, had left the state of Brandenburg with gloomy prospects. It was cut off from the sea. It lacked natural resources; because of its poor soil, it was called 'the sandbox of the Holy Roman Empire.' Its countryside had been ravaged and depopulated by the constant passage of foreign Protestant and Catholic armies. In 1640, however, the ancient House of Hohenzollern, which had ruled Brandenburg since 1417, had produced a remarkable ruler, the Elector Frederick William. Although his territories were scattered and impoverished, he dreamed of a new Hohenzollern state which should be independent, united and powerful. Frederick William, who came to be called the Great Elector, created the machinery which was to raise Prussia to the front rank of European states. He organized an efficient, centralized government with a disciplined civil service, a postal system, a graduated income tax. And by 1668, after forty-eight years as ruler, the Great Elector had given Brandenburg, which had a population of only one million people, a modern, standing army of 30,000 men.
The Great Elector's descendants built faithfully on his foundations. By 1701, the power of the Prussian state had grown to the point that the Great Elector's son Frederick was no longer content with the title of elector. He wanted to be a king. The Emperor in Vienna, who awarded such titles, was reluctant; if he made Frederick a king, then the electors of Hanover, Bavaria and Saxony would also want to be kings. But in this case the Emperor had no choice. About to enter what he knew would be a long and difficult war with France (the War of the Spanish Succession), he badly needed the Prussian regiments which Frederick was only too happy to rent to him—if he could become a king. The Emperor bowed, and on January 18, 1701, Frederick placed a crown on his own head in Konigsberg to become King Frederick I of Prussia.
He was succeeded in 1713 by twenty-five-year-old King Frederick William I, who became the friend and ally of Peter of Russia. Even more single-mindedly than his father or grandfather, Frederick William I set as the unique purpose for the Prussian state the achievement of maximum military power. Everything was bent toward it: a sound economy which would support a larger army; an efficient bureaucracy which would make it easier to collect taxes to pay for more soldiers; an excellent system of public education which would create more intelligent soldiers. In contrast to France, where national wealth was poured into public architectural grandeur, Prussian buildings were constructed exclusively for military purpose: powder mills, cannon factories, arsenals, barracks. The King of Prussia's goal was a professional army of 80,000 men. Yet, despite this waxing military power, Prussian diplomatic policy was cautious. Like his father, Frederick William I coveted new territories and new seaports, but he did not rush to seize them. Prussian troops fought in Hapsburg imperial armies in Flanders and Italy, but always under contract; Prussa itself was never at war. In its dealings with the participants in the Great Northern War, which raged around its frontiers, Prussia was especially careful. During all the years that Charles XII was marching back and forth in Poland, Prussia remained neutral. Only after Poltava, when Sweden had dropped to its knees, did Prussia join Hanover to declare war and pick up the spoils.
In his personal life, Frederick William I was a curious and unfortunate man. Eccentric, homely, apoplectic, a martinet, he hated everything his father had loved, especially everything French. Frederick William despised the people, the language, the culture and even the food of France. When criminals were hanged, the King first had them dressed in French clothes. On the surface, Frederick William was a plain Protestant monarch, a faithful husband, a stodgy, bourgeois father. He stripped his court of frills, selling most of his father's furniture and jewels and dismissing most of his courtiers. He fell in love with and married his Hanoverian first cousin, Sophia Dorothea, the daughter of the future King George I of England. He referred to her as 'my wife' instead of 'the Queen' and his son as 'Fritz' instead of 'the Heir to the Throne.' Every night, he ate dinner with his family.
What spoiled this pretty domestic scene were Frederick William's violent rages. Quite suddenly, he would flare out brutally at his children or anyone near him. Triggered by small, harmless remarks or even looks, he would begin to swing his wooden cane, hitting people in the face, sometimes breaking their noses or teeth. When he did
