The Rise of Prussia | The Life & Times of Frederick the Great

Hey! Little content warning for ya, I don't usually have these but we're gonna be talking about some serious domestic abuse based on sexual orientation here and also suicidal ideation just a little bit, so if that's gonna stir up some bad memories or you just don't wanna deal with that right now, you can skip ahead to this timestamp and just watch the fun parts where we talk about columns of men shooting each other over dirt. This is the second Frederick II I've talked about on this channel, ain't that neat? Frederick II of Prussia was the son of Frederick William of Prussia and the grandson of George I of England on his mom's side, ooh I am just full of trivia. Now Frederick's parents had some pretty different opinions about parenting. When his mother learned that her eldest daughter was being physically beaten by her tutor every day, she hired a different tutor. Frederick's father preferred to do the beating himself. The boy will become a man, a manly man's man, we'll teach him the art of war and statecraft and nothing else! Yes sir, your majesty, sir! So we will skip the bible study, yeah? Have you lost your mind? You think a king should have no morals? Well of course, sir, but you said we were only to educate him in matters of- I meant he should have MY morals! But none of that humanity's artsy fartsy cockamamie! Alas, as young Frederick came of age, it was all too clear he had a taste for cockamamie. You know, people often ask me how I came to be such a sophisticated gentleman. Let me tell you, it took me years of study. Not just anyone can butt heads with Aristotle and Descartes on top of knowing everything about politics and mastering the art of war. But you know what was easy? Learning new languages with Babel. By practicing short, 10 minute interactive lessons I became free to travel the world. I was exposed to new cultures. I learned to taunt my enemies on the battlefield. Each lesson is designed by a real language teacher and it shows in the way you're exposed to new words, not just through drilling them, but seeing them as part of other lessons before they're directly taught to you. It's even helped my pronunciation. You'll never be as talented as me, but if you want to seem as smart as I am, start speaking a new language in three weeks. Click the link in the description to get 65% off your subscription and a 20-day money-back guarantee. Consider it another of my great public works. Was that Portuguese earlier? Flawless, ain't it? Sir, that's the King of Sweden. He loved music and literature and learning about foreign cultures and he had to learn it all in secret. His Latin tutor got him a secret collection of poetry, Greco-Roman classics, philosophy, 3,000 volumes in total. What kind of life are you living where you can have 3,000 volumes of literature lying around and keep them a secret? But that wasn't Frederick's only secret. When he was 16, he became close with a 17-year-old errand boy in service of the king. Very close. When the king heard this rumor, he separated the two of them to opposite ends of the kingdom, sending Frederick to the king's remote hunting lodge to repent for his sins, and sending his errand boy to a remote outpost near the Dutch border. And it doesn't seem like Prussia should have a border with the Netherlands, Prussia's borders were wild, like what even is this? Anyway, it's not long until Frederick becomes intimately involved with a young officer, and this time they're serious. Frederick's dad was a monster, who frequently beat and humiliated his son. The crown prince was ready to leave everything behind. He and his lover were gonna run away to England together with the help of a few friends, until one of those friends got cold feet. He confessed everything to the king, and fell to his knees begging forgiveness. Frederick's father is furious. He charges everyone involved with treason, because, y'know, these were military guys who were about to desert to a foreign kingdom. If you were not my son, I would kill you for that little stunt. If you were not my father, I wouldn't have tried. As your father, I would strip your titles, burn your inheritance, leave you naked in the streets of Berlin. But as a member state of the Holy Roman Empire, that would be… challenging. So instead, you will watch what you've done to him. What? Wait, whoa, that is, like, seriously dark, tell me you wouldn't actually- OH MY GOD WHAT Frederick supposedly fainted before the killing blow. He was thrown into prison for three months. He wasn't permitted to return to the capital until he submitted to a marriage arranged by his father. Hello, wife. Nice to make your acquaintance. Is that how you speak to a woman you are really, really attracted to? Uh, hey, sweet cheeks, nice body you have going on there. Frederick told his sister he wanted to kill himself. I suspect there were two people keeping him alive. One was his sister, Wilhelmina. She suffered the same sort of abuse growing up, so she became Frederick's oldest ally, and they were each other's best friends for the rest of their lives. And secondly, father be damned, Frederick had met a guy, and they bonded while he was in exile. He was hired as Frederick's valet and later rewarded with an entire private estate and an incredibly close relationship with the future king for two decades. They were totally doing it. Frederick's father finally bit the dust in 1740, and quite conveniently for us, Frederick laid out exactly what kind of ruler he aspired to be. He finished writing a book countering Machiavelli in 1739, and his friend Voltaire, yes the incredibly famous and quippy French philosopher Voltaire, published it anonymously in 1740. Basically the argument boiled down to, hey, sometimes being an asshole backfires on you and you know it wouldn't kill the king to stop being an asshole for 5 seconds! Frederick lived by the creed that the king's authority was absolute, but instead of, the He believed the king was the kingdom's first servant. And so he brought in a bunch of new reforms, high tariffs because mercantilism was all the rage, a pinch of religious tolerance, a sprinkle of human rights. The ultimate irony was that despite his progressive domestic policies and his love of literature and music and poetry and men, he actually was really talented in the military just like his father had hoped. And wouldn't you know it, that's a really useful thing for a Prussian king, because what's that old quote from Voltaire? While many states have an army, the Prussian royal army had a state. So much as an army with a state has famously been described as being an army with a state. Some states have an army, the Prussian army has a state. He quickly puts it to good use, because Frederick was not the only young monarch to come to power in 1740. He wrote to the newly crowned Maria Theresa of Austria. Hey, doll, I got a deal for ya. What are you doing? You know, a lot of people are looking at a woman taking control of Austria and thinking you're easy pickins, but you know what I see? A tall, attractive glass of water, who needs my protection. So hand over Silesia, and I'll keep you safe from all the kings out there who want to steal your land. Frederick invades Austria to take their land, and after a resounding victory in 1741, the floodgates were opened. France wants land, Bavaria wants to be the new Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick agreed to a ceasefire and then he invades again so Maria Theresa can't beat the others and then take Silesia back. It was a mess for the Austrians, but for Frederick this war was all it took for him to become known as Frederick the Great. Which would've been super awkward if he ruled for another 30 years as a total loser, but he filled those shoes perfectly. First though, he comes back home and is begrudgingly reunited with his wife. Not that he disrespected her, but this marriage was the epitome of a beard. You could probably count on one hand the number of times he saw his wife in a year. Birthdays and ceremonial occasions, that's it. He left her a palace and told her never to visit him in court. Frederick's relationships with guys like his valet was something of an open secret, but during his life and for years after his death people would say things like, no he was a war hero, of course he had no appetite for men. He had a wife, you know. I heard from his doctor he was simply impotent. Scarred down there from a procedure gone wrong, you know. Hi, I'm the doctor who did that procedure. Uh, no he was perfectly healthy. Ahaha, well he wasn't, you know, wasn't gay. He was a misogynist, that's it. He never had children because he just really hated women. Even Voltaire knew what was going on. He actually moved in with Frederick in 1750, but it turns out best friends don't always make the best roommates, even if you're living in a palace. Voltaire insulted some of Frederick's friends, so Frederick placed him under house arrest. After he's let out, Voltaire is like, dude that's a little intense, and leaves. Then it turns out, Voltaire stole a bunch of Frederick's poems that were actually these catty diss tracks on other European leaders, so this fight between roommates turns into an international incident when Frederick tracks down Voltaire and arrests him at the border, takes the poems back, then Voltaire writes these letters across the continent crying, HELP HELP I'M BEING OPPRESSED I'M GOING TO DIE IN THIS PRISON. Then when he gets back to France, he publishes a memoir with whole chapters dedicated to how much Frederick likes dudes, and Frederick is all absolutely ridiculous, I love my wife Eleanor very much. In public. While in private he's desperately trying to do everything he can to pull it off the shelves in France. It's fine, they're friends now. Well, they're both dead now, but they became friends again. Oh yeah, so picture this. 1762, George Washington is defending against Native American attacks, Spain and Portugal are duking it out in South America, and India is dealing with the third in a series of Franco-British proxy wars. Why? Well much in the same way the First World War began because of a Serbian gunman, all this began because Frederick and Maria were fighting over this little nugget of land again. But things were different now. After the last time Freddie inadvertently convinced a large portion of the world to start killing each other, France was a bit miffed not to get the Austrian Netherlands like he'd hoped, and Austria was a bit miffed at Britain leaving her out to dry. So Maria Theresa made friends with France and Russia to prepare for a war to retake Silesia, since both of her allies had their own reasons to want to kick Prussia out of the Great Powers Club and send Frederick back to the kids' table with, uh, the King of Denmark and whatever those losers in Italy were doing. Frederick didn't like Britain bankrolling the Russian armies sitting at his border, so he made a deal with King George to protect his German holdings in exchange for Britain, you know, not doing that anymore. So in like 10 years, everyone in Europe just played musical chairs with their alliances. And Britain was a powerful ally, don't get me wrong, but Frederick was still surrounded by a triple alliance of France, Austria, and Russia building up troops for an invasion. So in 1756, to avoid giving them the advantage of the first strike, Frederick bites the bullet and lights the powder keg, invading, uh, Saxony to avoid being surrounded. Although Frederick's tactics were brilliant, or so I'm told, yeah he was still surrounded and outnumbered, Britain was having a whale of a time over in the colonies telling France to stop hitting itself, but they proved to be of no help in Europe. Frederick was faced with a war on three fronts. Make that four fronts, Sweden smelled blood in the water and called to ask if it was too late to join. Here we enter Frederick's Blue Period. In 1758, his sister Wilhelmina died, which threw him into depression, and then by August 1759, half of his army was wiped out, Frederick himself has only narrowly escaped death, and then France, Austria, and Russia bicker over supplies and strategy and end up doing nothing for the rest of the year. Great success! And then, everyone just gets bored and goes home! It started with Britain, who'd taken all of France's lunch money and dipped, which like, not cool bro, but Maria's allies would prove just as disappointing. Elizabeth of Russia died and was replaced by the biggest Prussian fanboy, you have never seen a world leader adore someone else's country so much. This man, Peter III, he was literally quoted as saying he would rather have been an officer in the Prussian army than Tsar of Russia. He signs a peace deal with Frederick, giving up all of Russia's gains and handing over a small army, and I bet you the only thing going through his head was oh my god I got his autograph! Ah, poor boy was dead in six months. Sweden just got bored, France was in the corner crying, and Spain was playing Charlie Brown football with Portugal. That left Prussia and Austria to settle things mono-a-mono, and one mono's army was a lot tougher than the others. And result for Prussia? Status quo antebellum. Their economy was crippled but hey, so was everyone else's, whoopee! But you know whose economy really suffered from the Seven Years' War? Well yes, France was the biggest loser by far, but Poland of all places got hurt pretty bad, and they weren't even in the war. When Frederick invaded Saxony, he discovered they had somehow gotten their hands on some old Polish coin stamps, which Frederick then took for himself to start a counterfeit ring. He made his own copies of Polish coins using cheaper metals and secretly traded them in Poland for legitimate currency. Over the course of the war, this little operation made over two times Prussia's annual revenue, and Poland was left with a shitton of coins that were worth 75% less than what they were supposed to be. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as it's more properly known, was viewed by the rest of Europe at this point as less of a country and more of a resource. That's why when Austria and Russia were about to go to war over the shifting balance of power, Frederick reached out to say, Hey, if it isn't my two favorite dames! You two mare muffins look like you're in a pickle! You know I think I see a way we can all be winners here! Let's not fuss over the Balkans, that house of horrors just ain't worth it! How else do you expect us to balance this out? Just take Poland! You, my little mutton chop, can take this land, and you, kitty cat, take this land over here, and for being so helpful, I'll just take this little commission over here. No, Frederick, you can't just take Poland. What about you, honey bunches of oats? Naturally, I wanted this to be a three-way operation, but we could do it together. On second thought, maybe a little Poland wouldn't hurt? That's the spirit, hotcakes! It was the beginning of the end for Poland, and the middle of the beginning for Prussia? Or the end of the beginning, depending on how you look at it, this would make a lot more sense if it were like the second video in a trilogy about Prussia, I dunno, maybe I'll do Bismarck next, no promises. Frederick went to war with Maria Theresa for a third and final time before she died. He honored her throne and her womanhood, giving her his greatest respects, and recalling that despite constantly being at odds, he never considered her his enemy. Everyone in the crowd must have thought it took a lot of guts for him to say that, given how much he hates women. Maria's ghost probably flipped him the bird. His remaining friends began to pass away, and despite being in his 70s, Frederick would still get up before dawn and fuel himself with 8 cups of coffee a day laced with mustard and peppercorns to take charge of his kingdom. But in those few moments of respite, he spent his time in the quiet company of his greyhounds. It was hardly the life he'd imagined sitting in a prison cell 50 years earlier. All he wanted now was to be buried in the vineyard of his home, next to his dogs. And then one morning, he died sitting in his armchair. And the bastards put him in the dirt next to his father until 1991!