Borussian historiography condemned the Empire for failing to provide the framework for German unity. Historical interest focused on what made Prussia distinctive, not what bound it to a seemingly moribund, anachronistic feudal relic and little appeared in print beyond a few specialist studies of Prussia's involvement in aspects of the imperial constitution.Footnote 1 The treatment of Prussia's place in the Empire emains largely unchanged, despite the revival of Prussian history after German reunification in 1990, and the Borussian assumption that the Hohenzollern monarchy already acted as a fully independent great power meets little challenge. Above all, Prussia's policy towards the Empire is interpreted purely as a violent disregard for the norms of imperial politics, exemplified by Frederick II's invasion of Habsburg Silesia in December 1740, a mere seven months after his accession.Footnote 2
The more positive historical interpretation of the Empire that emerged since the 1960s has dispelled the myth of it as a moribund shell, hindering German national development. However, it has concentrated on imperial institutions and the territories of the south and west that needed the protective framework of the constitution more than their larger northern and eastern neighbours. These territories were overshadowed by the growth of Austria and Prussia during the eighteenth century that reduced them to a ‘third Germany’. Prussia naturally remains part of the story, but largely on the periphery, either as the villain largely responsible for the Empire's demise in 1806,Footnote 3 or separate from its political culture which has been claimed recently as the basis for the first true German nation state.Footnote 4 The history of Austria has also found it hard to escape from the concerns of nineteenth- and twentieth-century national history, but the association of the ruling Habsburg dynasty with the imperial title has ensured continued interest in its relations with the Empire during the eighteenth century.Footnote 5 The only important development has been to sketch the notion of Frederick II as an ‘anti-emperor’ (Gegenkaiser), using his influence within Protestant Germany to rally opposition against Joseph II during the second half of his reign.Footnote 6 The general consensus is that Frederick had little interest in the Empire until ‘the poacher had turned gamekeeper’ after the Bavarian succession crisis (1777–9) when he switched from trying to undermine the constitution to using it to block Joseph II.Footnote 7
This article will argue that the Empire assumed a place in Frederick's strategy very soon after his accession and that his engagement with it was far broader than posing as Protestant champion or using his influence within formal institutions. The first section will establish what he knew of the Empire's constitution and what he thought of it, while the second identifies the purpose of his involvement in imperial politics. The remaining four sections examine how he sought to achieve his goals, concentrating on aspects of Prussian policy that have been underestimated in the past. These methods involved activities outside the formal constitutional framework, but still within the spirit of the Empire's political culture.Footnote 8 They were broadly similar to those of his contemporaries amongst the imperial princes, though they differed in both the scale and the intent to which they were employed.
Dynasticism was foremost amongst these methods as will become clear in the second half of this article. While the Habsburgs are often depicted as marrying their way to an empire, discussions of the rise of the Hohenzollerns generally stress material and strategic factors. It is not the intention here to belittle the utility of these explanations, but to add the continued significance of dynastic strategies to Prussian policy. This will necessitate some dense description to unravel and reveal the extent and complexity of the Hohenzollerns' relationship with other families within the Empire. Dynasticism represented a web of human kinship, material interest, and emotional attachments that get lost in the standard focus on power politics that relies on official diplomatic correspondence and state papers for its principal sources. For this reason, Prussia's relationship with the Empire can only be understood by widening the perspective from Berlin to include the smaller German courts.
I
There was nothing in Frederick's education or early experience calculated to instil a love of the Empire or its constitution. Prussian influence had grown in Westphalia, parts of northern Germany, Swabia, and Franconia under his grandfather, Frederick III/I (r. 1688–1713), but declined once his father, Frederick William I, became king in 1713. Though generally depicted as loyal to the emperor, Frederick William often pursued an independent course, notably during the first half of his reign, but suffered repeated setbacks as Emperor Charles VI favoured Prussia's rivals, Hanover and Saxony.Footnote 9 Accordingly, Frederick William advised his son he should respect the emperor, but not trust him.Footnote 10 His instructions from 1722 for his son's education stressed religion, examples from Hohenzollern history and that of related Protestant dynasties in Hanover, Brunswick, and Hessen, plus the general outline of European development over the previous 150 years. This syllabus excluded both Habsburg history and instruction on the imperial constitution. Indeed, Frederick William forbade the teaching of Latin and fired a tutor who had defended it on the grounds it was necessary to understand the Empire's fundamental charters.Footnote 11
Frederick acquired some practical experience and got to know several important figures when he travelled with his father to Dresden in 1728, as well as on their extended tour of central, southern, and western Germany in 1730 that became infamous for his failed escape attempt.Footnote 12 The crown prince also went to Wolfenbüttel for his arranged marriage to Elisabeth Christine von Braunschweig-Bevern (1715–97) in 1732, and accompanied the Prussian contingent serving with the imperial army on the Rhine two years later. Three months after his accession, Frederick embarked on another tour, visiting his Franconian relations, and thence via Hessen-Darmstadt to the Rhineland, returning through Wolfenbüttel. Thereafter, his direct contacts were limited to another trip to Franconia in 1743 and two journeys across northern Germany in 1751 and 1755 to visit East Frisia that had been acquired in 1744.
Thus, he had a general sense of the Empire and its topography, but little acquaintance with the Catholic, Holy Roman elements that still defined the constitution and certainly no grasp of its intricate detail. The institutional context of Hohenzollern external relations reflected the subordinate place assigned to the Empire. The Prussian foreign ministry emerged after 1714 and was placed on a permanent footing in 1728 when it was divided into two departments, one under the king's personal supervision that dealt with other European states, the other under ministerial control handling relations with the Empire. This functional separation of imperial and European affairs was not unusual and simply replicated Habsburg practice; what made it significant was that the imperial department was the junior of the two. Its inferior status was entrenched by Frederick's decision immediately on his accession to assume exclusive personal responsibility for external relations, reducing his foreign minister to a ‘glorified royal messenger’, whilst leaving imperial affairs as the only area handled by his officials.Footnote 13 The change was reflected linguistically by the adoption of French for internal correspondence between Prussian diplomats and Berlin. This formed part of Frederick's conscious effort to lift his state to the level of a first-rate European power, and reflected his admiration of French culture and Enlightened thought. The Empire was not incompatible with the Enlightenment, as demonstrated by its influence on reforms in the Catholic ecclesiastical territories from the 1760s. Nonetheless, to Frederick the web of imperial laws appeared an obstacle to rational, progressive government.Footnote 14 The fact that German remained the language of Prussia's relations with the Empire fitted Frederick's view of its seemingly parochial politics.Footnote 15
Linguistic distinctions lengthened the emotional distance between Frederick and the Empire, as well as limiting his oversight of imperial policy. He admitted to his first foreign minister, Heinrich Count Podewils (1695–1760), that he lacked the knowledge to handle imperial affairs. While he continued to dictate the general direction, he relied on Podewils and his successors, notably Karl Wilhelm Finck Count Finckenstein (1714–1800) and Ewald Friedrich Count Hertzberg (1725–95) to work out the all-important details.Footnote 16
II
Frederick II was the first fully self-confident Hohenzollern king. His grandfather only obtained the title half-way through his reign and died before it was recognized by any major power outside the Empire. Frederick William I was a domestic monarch, acting regally towards his own subjects, but less confidently in external relations. His son felt the equal of any European monarch and presented himself on a European, not a German stage. This is most apparent in his 1752 Political testament that opens the section on external relations by emphasizing Prussia's exposed, scattered territory amidst hostile European powers. These are then discussed in turn according to Frederick's assessment of their military potential and perceived antipathy toward him. The Empire appears late in the sequence as just another European country of minor significance.Footnote 17
Frederick regarded the ‘anachronistic and bizarre imperial constitution’ as something alien to both Prussia and his own Enlightened persona.Footnote 18 Brandenburg's place as an electorate is scarcely mentioned in his writings that offer no systematic analysis of Hohenzollern rights in the Empire. He followed his own educational experience in his advice for his successor by omitting the imperial constitution from the syllabus. This contrasts with the education of a typical imperial prince. Frederick was responsible for the young Duke Carl Eugen of Württemberg (1728–93, r. 1737) and his two brothers who stayed in Berlin in 1741–4, but had little to say about the Empire in his written advice when the prince went home. The Württemberg privy council had, however, devised its own programme of instruction, including works by the duchy's prolific expert on imperial law, Johann Jakob Moser.Footnote 19 Where Frederick does comment on imperial institutions, it is invariably in derogatory terms: ‘The Reichstag in Regensburg is but a shadow of what it once was. Now it is just an assembly of lawyers for whom form is more important than content. A representative sent by a prince to this assembly is like a court hound who barks at the moon.’Footnote 20
The Empire's component territories do not escape criticism either. In his Anti-Machiavel tract written in his final year as crown prince, Frederick introduced a theme he would develop later.Footnote 21 The imperial cities, already dismissed as timid and weak in 1739, were scarcely mentioned after 1740. Nonetheless, he correctly identified their decline, along with that of other lesser territories like the imperial counties and abbeys, as contributing to the emperor's loss of authority. Such weaker elements were not viable without the Empire and co-operated with the emperor provided he did nothing to endanger its tranquillity.Footnote 22 They did not feature in Frederick's calculations, partly because he thought primarily in power political terms and only had a vague understanding of the constitutional mechanisms by which such individually weak territories might exercise collective weight. He also thought they were in terminal decline as dynasties died out and land became concentrated in the hands of the surviving families.Footnote 23 Only towards the end of his reign did he appreciate their potential as allies within his Fürstenbbund (League of Princes) which was opened to the weaker ecclesiastical princes as well as the more powerful secular ones.Footnote 24
The latter were already condemned in 1739 as morally corrupt, vain petty potentates who squandered what little credit and resources they possessed on indigent luxury. Above all, Frederick railed against their alleged mercenary character: ‘their alliances had to be purchased: no money, no German princes!’.Footnote 25 In fact, his claim that, apart from under Frederick I, ‘Prussia has never taken subsidies from anyone’ was wholly erroneous.Footnote 26 His comments were woven into the later myth of German petty despotism (Kleinstaaterei) that persists today, but was deliberately fostered by the king to distance Prussia from the mass of middling princes whom it had only recently left to join Europe's crowned heads. The critique of the princes' thirst for subsidies stems partly from his own frustrations in dealing with them, especially as his tight fiscal autarky meant he could not compete with France, Britain, or even Austria in offering financial inducements to secure alliances. His jaundiced view was endorsed by later, equally partisan nationalists, who likewise failed to discern the princes' predicament as a changing international order eroded their status and influence.Footnote 27
Frederick's general conclusion was that the Empire was incapable of autonomous action. For him, it had sunk to an object, acted upon by malevolent external forces keen to seize parts of it. Britain wanted Osnabrück, Mansfeld, Mecklenburg, Hamburg, and Bremen to enlarge Hanover. Frederick predicted, not entirely correctly, that it would lose interest in further German possessions once George II died.Footnote 28 France wanted the Rhineland, Denmark coveted Holstein and Hamburg, but Austria posed the biggest threat. Fear of Austria permeates all Frederick's comments on the Empire and stems partly from resentment inherited from his father over Habsburg duplicitous handling of Hohenzollern claims to Jülich and Berg.Footnote 29 The primary reason was, of course, his own invasion of Silesia that incurred lasting Habsburg enmity. His historical writings stress that the unbroken line of Habsburg emperors since 1438 raised the danger of imperial ‘despotism’ if they mastered the princes and subordinated the Empire to direct rule.Footnote 30 He remained ever conscious of the fate of those who had opposed Habsburg ‘tyranny’ in the past, especially the Saxon elector crushed at Mühlberg in 1547, and the elector Palatine defeated at White Mountain in 1620. Austria was tenacious and would never relinquish possessions without a fight.Footnote 31 He probably realized how close his own victory at Mollwitz in 1741 had come to being another Mühlberg, particularly as he had fled the field believing all was lost.
Expressions of concern become more frequent in later writings where he discusses Joseph II. In his reflections on the period 1763–79, he argues that Joseph was influenced by French history.Footnote 32 France had become a great power by asserting supremacy over formerly autonomous provinces and he believed the emperor intended the same in the Empire, arguing Joseph not only planned to annex Bavaria, but to assert claims to Württemberg and use this as a bridge to the Rhine where he would recover Alsace and Lorraine. A consolidated Empire under Habsburg domination would make Joseph the most powerful monarch in Europe.
III
Such deductions determined Frederick's imperial policy and its relationship to his wider ambitions. He articulated a theory of a dual balance of power, whereby the internal equilibrium within the Empire helped sustain that in Europe.Footnote 33 He believed the imperial equilibrium was sustained internally by the princes' mutual animosity and externally by great power rivalry. All participants desired aggrandizement, but would oppose any such growth amongst their rivals. Frederick's version of the balance theory remained pragmatic, and certainly did not amount to faith in a self-regulating system of international relations as some authors have suggested.Footnote 34 It did represent the – perhaps subconscious – continuation of a key element of imperial political culture that saw the Empire as a corporate structure in which the emperor shared power with the princes as imperial Estates (Reichsstände). Frederick's version was simply a rather crude development of views expressed by Protestant publicists in the later seventeenth century that ‘princely liberty’ was the necessary counterpoint to Habsburg might.Footnote 35
Since this liberty was expressed through and was safeguarded by the imperial constitution, Prussian policy had to be directed towards sustaining the existing framework. This established common ground between Prussia and the lesser princes, since Frederick recognized that their status and autonomy depended on the Empire's survival. As he advised his young ward, Duke Carl Eugen, ‘security from the ambition and power of your neighbours only exists for you as long as the system of the Empire survives’.Footnote 36 In turn, the princes could assist Prussia by preventing the feared Habsburg tyranny.
Thus for Frederick, the Empire remained an enduring fact of political life. He never seriously contemplated radical revisions to its structure. Despite his opposition to the Habsburgs, he did not consider displacing them as the imperial dynasty, though there was repeated speculation that he might stand for election.Footnote 37 Neither did he favour removing the emperor altogether, rejecting French plans in 1745 to federalize the Empire along the model of the Swiss Confederation.Footnote 38 He did compile a long list of potential acquisitions: Mecklenburg, Ansbach, Bayreuth, Jülich, Berg, all claimed by the Hohenzollerns, as well as the purely strategic targets of Saxony, Bohemia, Swedish Pomerania, and Polish Prussia.Footnote 39 Whereas operational planning routinely envisaged at least the temporary occupation of Saxony, Frederick remained cautious about taking permanent possession of any additional land by force, fearing it would precipitate the international war he sought desperately to avoid, especially after 1763. For example, he declined an offer from the mentally ill Margrave Friedrich Christian to cede Bayreuth in 1763 in return for a Prussian pension so as not to jeopardize peace with AustriaFootnote 40. His preferred method of acquisition through inheritance chimed perfectly with established imperial political culture.
The idea of secularizing the ecclesiastical principalities was floated in 1742 as a means of providing his then ally, the weak Emperor Charles VII, with sufficient resources to sustain Wittelsbach imperial rule, so that he would mollify Austria by renouncing claims to the Habsburg succession. The proposal blew up in his face, provoking a backlash amongst the imperial Estates that undermined Prussian security by alienating Charles VII's supporters.Footnote 41 Secularization was considered briefly during the Seven Years War (1756–63) in order to forge closer ties to Hanover, but had been abandoned by 1762 as Frederick began to appreciate the value of preserving the ecclesiastical principalities provided they were not controlled by Habsburg clientele. He discovered he could extend his own influence by fanning the ecclesiastics' fears that the emperor was no longer the best guarantor of their autonomy. Joseph II played into his hands by attacking ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the early 1780s, driving many prince-bishops towards Prussia's Fürstenbund.Footnote 42
Perhaps most fundamentally, Frederick did not favour partition, even when this was belatedly offered by Joseph II in March 1778 as a way to avoid war over the Bavarian succession.Footnote 43 He recognized this would not solve the underlying problem of Prussian security, since Austria would simply grow stronger as well. His preferred option was constitutional stasis to stabilize the imperial equilibrium and deny the emperor any chance of seizing German resources or mobilizing them against Prussia. Stasis was difficult to achieve, since he did not want Prussia to be bound by the constitution he was seeking to sustain. He needed to enhance Prussia's privileged position within the Empire to widen his freedom of manoeuvre without losing the opportunities to manipulate the constitution through representation in imperial institutions and general influence amongst the imperial Estates. Stasis was also threatened by Prussia's potential allies among the middling secular princes. While their autonomy required the Empire's survival, each one wanted to adjust the existing system to his own advantage. For instance, the landgrave of Hessen-Kassel and the duke of Württemberg both wanted electoral titles that would erode the traditional hierarchy of status by diminishing the exclusivity of the electoral college. Lesser princes, such as Leopold III Friedrich Franz of Anhalt-Dessau (1740–1817, r.1751) wanted to reform imperial institutions to prevent both Prussia and Austria from dictating affairs.Footnote 44
IV
Frederick struggled to reconcile these conflicting interests and to portray his actions as legitimate and rally support within the Empire. The first two years of his reign forced him to adjust how he presented himself to the Empire. Though his grandfather had acquired a royal title in 1700, Frederick was not the only German ruler with a separate kingdom beyond imperial jurisdiction. The Hanoverian and Saxon electors were kings of Great Britain and Poland respectively. Whereas these were established monarchies whose political gravity pulled their monarchs away from imperial politics, Prussia itself was relatively small and sparsely populated. Most of Frederick's lands lay to the west across northern Germany within the Empire. His European standing depended on enhancing the collective distinctiveness of these possessions and strengthening their association with the Hohenzollern royal title. This in turn compelled him to redefine his relationship to the emperor and Empire.
His first aggressive act involved the dispute over the lordship of Herstal, acquired by Prussia in 1732 as part of its inheritance from William III of Orange. Herstal was also claimed by the bishop of Liege whose protests at Hohenzollern rule emboldened the locals to ignore Prussian authority. Frederick William I had already tried to sell it, but the bishop refused to pay for what he regarded as rightfully his. The case was typical of the many territorial disputes within the Empire that dragged through the imperial courts. Impatient with what he saw as a petty squabble, Frederick II sent a regiment to occupy Herstal in September 1740 and the bishop duly paid up. The disputed territory fell within imperial jurisdiction, but Frederick dispensed with reference to any presumed constitutional rights, referring instead in his public manifesto to the issue as a matter of honour.Footnote 45
Constitutional issues became more important once Frederick attacked Silesia, because the ensuing War of the Austrian Succession (1740–8) drew in other German rulers. Charles VI's death in October 1740 was followed by an imperial interregnum as the Bavarian elector, Charles Albert, opposed the candidature of Maria Theresa's husband, Francis Stephen, as the next emperor. Frederick seized the opportunity to enhance Prussia's already privileged position within the Empire by trading support for Charles Albert in return for concessions. It had been customary since 1519 for the electors to oblige the successful candidate in each imperial election to issue specific constitutional guarantees known as an ‘electoral capitulation’ (Wahlkapitulation). Frederick broke ranks with his fellow electors who wanted to preserve their corporate distinctions and sided with the princes who had long campaigned for a voice in these negotiations. Some of these princes, notably the dukes of Wolfenbüttel, were linked by dynastic and other ties to Prussia. Frederick's main motive, however, was to incorporate demands in the electoral capitulation that would weaken the imperial office should Francis Stephen be elected. The fact that he failed to get his way demonstrated the resilience of the established structure.Footnote 46
Charles Albert nonetheless granted extensive concessions in return for Prussian support on 4 November 1741.Footnote 47 These went a long way to securing parity with the Habsburgs as archdukes of Austria by giving Frederick equivalent privileges, including powers of ennoblement, the right to receive investiture of all lands at once instead of seeking it for each separately, various ceremonial distinctions, and complete exemption from the jurisdiction of the imperial courts over Prussian subjects. Desperate though he was for Prussian support, Charles Albert delayed delivering these promises once he had been elected, recognizing they weakened his position as emperor. Nonetheless, the process was completed by 1750 when his successor, Francis I Stephen, sanctioned the final element. Prussia remained part of the Empire and even Frederick formally acknowledged subordination to Joseph II after his election as emperor in 1765. The imperial courts could still judge cases involving Prussian disputes with other imperial Estates, while Prussia remained obliged to contribute men and money to the Empire's system of collective security and conflict resolution – and indeed delivered these in the 1790s. Nonetheless, Prussia's status had been significantly improved and more closely matched Frederick's own sense of his majesty.Footnote 48
V
Distinctiveness did not entail withdrawal from imperial politics. Frederick regarded Bavarian imperial rule after 1742 as essential to Prussian security and supported Charles VII to prevent Austria regaining its position in the Empire. Once Austria recovered the imperial title in 1745, Frederick adjusted his policy to frustrate Francis I's efforts to rebuild imperial authority by presenting it as ‘despotism’. Frederick's chosen vehicle for both policies was an alliance of friendly princes. Alliances were an established element of imperial politics as princes and other imperial Estates agreed to collaborate on mutual political, dynastic, or confessional goals. Such co-operation generally took the form of ‘correspondence’ entailing loose agreements to work together in imperial institutions, especially the regional subdivisions known as the imperial circles (Kreise), or at the central imperial diet (Reichstag). Collaboration did not necessarily undermine the Empire, because many alliances were directed at sustaining or reforming parts of the constitution, notably the system of collective defence.Footnote 49 Such projects were inimical to Frederick's purposes, compelling him to base his alliances on a generally narrower convergence of specific confessional or dynastic interests.
Having failed to form one through the Kreise in 1743, he opted for a narrower group of armed principalities in the Fürstenunion (Union of Princes) with Bavaria, Hessen-Kassel, and the Palatinate in May 1744. This was presented as upholding the imperial constitution, while his manifesto of August 1744 justified Prussia's renewed entry into the war as restoring peace and order in the Empire.Footnote 50 Such arguments served several purposes. Frederick might be cynical in private, but he was prickly when his public reputation was at stake and wanted to present his actions as correct and just. A semblance of conformity with the imperial constitution also eased the task of rallying princes to his project. The ideal of upholding the Empire's public peace represented the moral high ground and offered weaker princes some chance of defying the Habsburgs without immediate adverse repercussions.
After the Fürstenunion's demise in 1745, Frederick relied primarily on dynastic ties rather than a formal alliance, as will become clear. These ties intensified around 1748–52 when he joined France to block the Hanoverian project to have the young Archduke Joseph elected King of the Romans, or successor designate. A number of important princes agreed to oppose the scheme, but were not grouped into a formal alliance. Frederick was left exposed when France reversed its alliance and joined Austria in 1756, because the majority of princes followed suit.Footnote 51
He also found it difficult to harness the lobby group of the Protestant princes, known as the corpus evangelicorum. Borussian historiography long associated Prussia's ‘historic mission’ to unite Germany with the Hohenzollerns' commitment to Protestantism, the majority faith in what became the ‘little Germany’ once Catholic Austria was excluded in 1866. Recent studies have also drawn attention to the benefits of Prussia adopting the stance of Protestant champion within the Empire.Footnote 52 Such a role was, however, very difficult to play and could constrict Prussia's options as Frederick discovered. The corpus evangelicorum occupied an ambiguous position under the imperial constitution that allowed the outnumbered Protestant imperial Estates to exercise certain rights to safeguard their religious interests against the Catholic majority in most imperial institutions.Footnote 53 Both Saxony, leader of the corpus, and Hanover, its other principal member, were Austrian allies, while the unilateral intervention of some of its members in religious disputes in Hohenlohe-Waldenburg (1750) and Wied-Runkel (1755) lacked secure foundation in imperial law.
Prussia's true objectives diverged sharply from the Protestant view of the Empire as a mixed monarchy safeguarding the corporate rights of the three legally sanctioned Christian confessions (Lutheranism, Calvinism, Catholicism). Indeed, Protestants dominated the debates on the imperial constitution and its potential for reform during the eighteenth century, advocating strengthening the legal and institutional safeguards for ‘German liberties’. These calls had assumed a confessional character during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries when the Catholic Habsburgs posed the chief threat to this interpretation of liberty. Frederick's own actions helped transform this situation by the mid-eighteenth century when a militarized, aggressive Prussia appeared to many a far greater danger than Austria.Footnote 54 Frederick kept a low profile, avoiding his two predecessors' mistakes of narrowly favouring Calvinist over Lutheran causes and instead carefully cultivating the image of a good Protestant, reliable without stirring controversies that might alienate Catholics and drive them into the arms of Austria. He acted as guarantor for Protestant rights in Württemberg (1744) and Hessen-Kassel (1754) after members of their ruling dynasties converted to Catholicism.Footnote 55
Prussia compromised its Protestant credentials by attacking Saxony (1756) and Mecklenburg (1757) at the start of the Seven Years War. Frederick repeated his strategy of the early 1740s, seeking an alliance of friendly princes to neutralize the Empire and so provide security for his exposed western provinces and allow him to concentrate on fighting Austria in Saxony and Bohemia. This was completely unrealistic. Despite their desire for peace, most princes were genuinely shocked by Prussian aggression. Austria skilfully disguised its war of revenge as a police action intended to restore the public peace. It was assisted by its alliances with France and Sweden, respectively Catholic and Protestant guarantors of the imperial constitution, that undermined Frederick's efforts to present the struggle as a religious war.Footnote 56 He was unable to prevent Austria mobilizing the imperial army after January 1757. However, Austria played into his hands by insisting the Reichstag also place Frederick under the imperial ban. This was essential to Habsburg plans to dismember Prussia, since under the ban, Frederick would forfeit his possessions. It was more than most princes were prepared to accept and, encouraged by Hanover, many rallied to Frederick's call to prevent Austria tabling the motion. Together with his Hanoverian and Hessian colleagues, the Prussian representative bullied Saxony into supporting this position by threatening to deprive it of leadership of the corpus evangelicorum in November 1758. Thereafter, Prussian propaganda gained the upper hand as more princes became disillusioned with Austria's high-handed management of the war.Footnote 57 By 1761 Prussia was able to use the corpus evangelicorum to insist on the participation of all imperial Estates in the peace negotiations; again a ploy both to win sympathy and attack imperial prerogatives.Footnote 58
The confessional element in Prussia's imperial policy declined after 1763 as Frederick sought to detach the minor Catholic and ecclesiastical Estates from the Habsburg clientele. As the Bavarian succession crisis loomed in the later 1770s, he returned to his tactic of 1742–3 to neutralize the Empire through a Kreis Association, or inter-regional alliance of the minor territories within the formal constitutional framework. As in 1756, this was intended to protect Prussia's western provinces from potential attack from the Austrian Netherlands and allow Frederick to concentrate his forces to defend Silesia. The scheme ran cross-purposes with the growing desire of the weaker territories for an alliance to promote constitutional reform. Princes and ministers in Anhalt-Dessau, Münster, Weimar, and similar smaller territories proposed reviving imperial institutions to withstand manipulation by either Prussia or Austria. Frederick was obliged to block Joseph's exchange of Bavaria for the Netherlands by invading Bohemia in 1778, albeit with Saxon support. The limited war achieved its objective and improved Prussian standing in the Empire as defender of the status quo. However, Frederick felt increasingly vulnerable after 1780 when his Russian alliance expired, removing the mainstay of his security since 1764. Russia sided with Austria and assisted Joseph's efforts to rebuild Habsburg clientele.Footnote 59
Again Frederick was saved by the Habsburgs' mistakes, notably Joseph's assault on ecclesiastical jurisdiction and other measures in the early 1780s that appeared to substantiate Prussian claims of imminent imperial despotism.Footnote 60 Frederick was able to hijack the minor princes' reform proposals and establish a narrower alliance with Saxony and Hanover in July 1785 to which the others were invited to join. This Fürstenbund had limited potential, because Frederick's intention of blocking Austria only indirectly coincided with the desire for reform. His successor abandoned it in favour of a British alliance in 1788.
Frederick's death in 1786 came before the tensions inherent in the Fürstenbund became too obvious. Far from representing a late conversion to the cause of national unity, the league simply continued the king's existing policy of creating devices to frustrate Habsburg imperial management. The pamphlet war over the Fürstenbund between Prussia and Austria viewed it purely as a struggle between emperor and princes, but the dispute raised wider interest in the Empire's fate, linking it to new concepts of nation. Frederick's posthumous elevation to the pantheon of nationalist heroes indicates his success in presenting Prussian objectives as identical with wider imperial interests.Footnote 61
VI
Frederick's rather cold relations to his wife and relations belies the fact that he was a consummate dynastic strategist. Dynasticism overlaid and reinforced the web of legal rights underpinning the Empire and related its ruling families to European royalty. Dynasticism could shrink geography, providing influence in distant regions, as well as establishing claims to potentially valuable land. It lay at the heart of the Hohenzollerns' own rise to power, since they acquired Prussia itself through inheritance rather than conquest, and it provided an important means of attracting talent and resources, and to advance influence within imperial politics. Dynasticism constituted a central element in Frederick's imperial policy from the outset and was used to underpin his other methods by expanding the number of influential people bound by at least some loyalty or dependency on Prussia. Family connections provided additional channels to the very heart of territorial governments and the opportunity to influence their behaviour within the empire, as well as opening access to their resources.
Relations from Ansbach, Bayreuth, Wolfenbüttel and Württemberg predominated among the fifty-four imperial princes and counts serving as regimental commanders between 1713 and 1786 (see Appendix). They generally commanded regiments either originally provided by their family, or which had recently transferred to Prussian service. Such assistance proved particularly valuable in 1740–5 which saw the largest sustained augmentation of Prussian strength between 1713 and 1786. Native recruits were used to form nine of the sixteen new field infantry regiments (nos. 32–8, 42–3) and seven of the nine garrison regiments (nos. 5, 6, 8, 9–11, 13).Footnote 62 The latter were fleshed out by Austrian prisoners of war, but recruits from the Empire helped complete the field regiments (especially nos. 44 and 45). Field regiment no. 33 was built around former garrison regiment no. 4 that in turn derived from the Anhalt contingent to the imperial army that had been taken over in 1736. Hohenzollern subjects predominated amongst the fifteen new cavalry regiments, though Austrian prisoners and deserters formed a significant proportion of the hussars. The remaining personnel (approx. eight regiments) came directly from the German territories, and assumed an importance greater than their numbers. Many were already trained soldiers rather than raw recruits, while their transfer to Prussian service compromised the princes who provided them and prevented them from assisting the Habsburgs instead.
Frederick benefited from widespread disillusionment with the Habsburgs in the last years of Charles VI. Many princes had supplied troops to Austria in its wars 1733–9 and had received neither the promised political rewards nor full payment of their considerable expenses. As Austria discharged its auxiliaries in 1739, these princes were left with larger armies than they could afford. Württemberg and Wolfenbüttel already opened talks to transfer several units before Frederick's designs on Silesia became known by when it was too late to pull out.Footnote 63 Wolfenbüttel provided the new infantry regiment no. 39, while Württemberg transferred a dragoon regiment (no. 12) and two foot units (nos. 41 and 46). Members of the Württemberg ducal house acted as colonels of all three regiments in the 1740s, including Dowager Duchess Maria Augusta (1706–56), the only woman ever to hold such a rank in Frederick's army.Footnote 64
The troop transfers were part of a wider strategy to counter Prussia's loss of influence in the two decades preceding 1740 and to extend it into the traditional Habsburg sphere of southern Germany. This involved an intensification of relations with the junior Hohenzollern branches ruling Ansbach and Bayreuth in Franconia, as well as reactivating ties cultivated over the previous two reigns with Württemberg, the largest principality in Swabia. As the following will also indicate, Frederick sought additional ties to Hessen-Kassel and Hessen-Darmstadt in western Germany and to the northern territories of Mecklenburg, Holstein-Gottorp, the Ernestine Saxon duchies, Anhalt, and Wolfenbüttel. These were all solidly Protestant dynasties of distinguished pedigree, but with relatively modest regional influence.
Relations with Ansbach and Bayreuth were exceptional since they involved attempts to acquire these lands through inheritance pacts. Neither branch was particularly enthusiastic about a Prussian take-over, but had been bullied into agreeing it by Frederick I. Austria was alarmed at the prospect of Prussia acquiring the two margraviates since this would give Berlin the opportunity to paralyse one of the most effective and supportive Kreise. Charles VI obliged Frederick William I to renounce the inheritance treaty, but Frederick exploited subsequent Ansbach dissatisfaction with Austria to secure another in 1752 allowing for the mutual inheritance of both branches, with all territory passing to Prussia on the death of the last survivor. These arrangements were not realized during Frederick's lifetime and he was not above sending punitive expeditions into Franconia to bully his relations during the Seven Years War. Nonetheless, the treaty provided the basis for Prussian annexation in 1792 when the last margrave abdicated in return for a pension during the brief Austro-Prussian rapprochement at the start of the French Revolutionary Wars.Footnote 65
Involvement with Württemberg illustrates how quickly Prussia could become entangled in the often tortuous internal politics of the lesser courts where competing groups and individuals tried to use its involvement for their own ends. Frederick was drawn into the struggle between Dowager Duchess Maria Augusta and the duchy's privy council after 1740. She eventually obliged him to back her efforts to persuade Charles VII to declare her eldest son, Carl Eugen, of age in 1744. A marriage was arranged for him with Frederick's niece, Elisabeth Sophie Friederike (1732–80) in an effort to sustain Prussian influence after the young duke left Berlin.Footnote 66 Once back at home, Carl Eugen wriggled free from both Frederick's and his mother's influence, balancing Prussia with a new French alliance in 1752. The political reorientation matched the deteriorating relations between the duke and his new wife and their separation coincided with Carl Eugen's move towards Austria at the start of the Seven Years War.
Ludwig Eugen (1731–95, r. 1793) matched his elder brother's moves, resigning his Prussian command in 1749 and transferring to French service. He later followed his brother by serving as a volunteer in the Austrian army 1757–62.Footnote 67 The link to Prussia was maintained only by the youngest brother, Friedrich Eugen (1732–97, r. 1795) who replaced his mother as colonel of the dragoon regiment in 1749 and cemented closer ties by marrying another of Frederick's nieces, Friederike Sophie Dorothea of Brandenburg-Schwedt (1736–98) in 1753. Unlike his mother and siblings, he actually served with his regiment, but tried to resign in June 1755 when Frederick promoted another colonel above him to general. Frederick responded to Carl Eugen's appeals on his brother's behalf and made him a general towards the end of 1756, probably in a futile attempt to influence Württemberg against an Austrian alliance. Not only did Friedrich Eugen distinguish himself as a cavalry commander during the Seven Years War, but his twelve children extended Frederick's range of dynastic options.
They were first employed to strike back at Carl Eugen who had remained allied to Austria since 1757. Their prospects of inheriting Württemberg advanced as Carl Eugen failed to produce legitimate heirs, while their cousins from Ludwig Eugen's unequal match were excluded from the succession.Footnote 68 To advance the interests of the sons of his Württemberg general and Schwedt niece, Frederick ignored appeals from his Bayreuth niece, Friederike, Duke Carl Eugen's estranged wife. The Prussian king intervened ostensibly to effect a reconciliation 1763–6, but in fact to achieve the opposite so that Carl Eugen remained without legitimate issue. Frederick then promoted Friedrich Eugen's children to stop Carl Eugen cutting a deal with Austria during his dispute with his Estates 1764–71. Prussia guaranteed their rights to inherit Württemberg on 14 January 1767, followed by Denmark and Hanover. However, the Württemberg brothers became uneasy at falling too far under Prussian influence. Friedrich Eugen used the excuse of his war wounds to travel to the Wildbad spa in Swabia where he was reconciled with his brother in July 1768. He subsequently left Prussian service to become governor of the Württemberg enclave of Mömpelgard in 1769, eventually becoming duke in 1795 after his brothers' deaths. Friederike was also able to turn the tables on her Prussian uncle. She exploited Frederick's desire to maintain the pressure on Carl Eugen to obtain Prussian assistance in compelling her wayward husband to raise her meagre allowance in 1767.Footnote 69
Friedrich Eugen continued to accept Prussian patronage for his children after 1769. His eldest son, Friedrich Wilhelm (1754–1816, r. 1797), assumed command of the family's Prussian dragoon regiment in 1769 and was married to a Wolfenbüttel princess in 1780 to keep him within the Hohenzollerns' dynastic orbit.Footnote 70 Friedrich Wilhelm's siblings were regarded as useful pawns in Frederick's wider strategy of cementing his Russian alliance of 1764 when this came under strain in the mid-1770s. Sophie Dorothea's marriage to Grand Duke Paul in 1776 helped reinforce the future tsar's pro-Prussian sympathies. The match established connections to Russia that were to serve Württemberg well during the upheaval of the Revolutionary era, but brought less lasting benefit to Prussia.Footnote 71 Carl Eugen was determined to renew his Austrian alliance as the impending extinction of the Bavarian Wittelsbachs rekindled his hopes of an electoral title.Footnote 72 Negotiations led to the marriage (1788) between another of Friedrich Wilhelm's sisters, Elisabeth (1767–90) and the future Emperor Francis II, though this potentially significant move was cut short by her early death. Blamed by Frederick for Württemberg's pro-Austrian drift, Friedrich Wilhelm left Prussia in December 1781 to become a Russian general.Footnote 73 Though two younger brothers remained in Prussian service, Württemberg refused to join the Fürstenbund.
Frederick also sought closer ties to Hessen-Kassel, Württemberg's principal rival for a new electoral title and a former dynastic partner of the Hohenzollerns. Relations had cooled around 1730 when the last Hessian prince left Prussian service, but Frederick concluded a new alliance in March 1743, backing the landgrave's electoral ambitions in return for the promise of 800 men for the Prussian army to be delivered once the new title had been secured. Hessen-Kassel joined the Fürstenunion of 1744, but Charles VII's death in 1745 severed the link. Ties were renewed in 1752 by the marriage of Frederick's younger brother, Prince Henry (1726–1802), to the landgrave's daughter, Wilhelmina (1726–1808). Her brother, the future Landgrave Friedrich II, entered Prussian service in 1756 and later married one of Frederick's Schwedt nieces.Footnote 74
Meanwhile, negotiations were opened with the Lutheran Hessian line in Darmstadt that had long sought to supplant its Kassel cousins and had conflicting claims to Hanau that both had inherited in 1736. The Darmstadt hereditary prince, the future Landgrave Ludwig IX, already admired Prussian militarism and was keen to supply troops in 1742. He entered Prussian service along with his brother Georg the following year, but their father was reluctant to abandon decades of collaboration with the Habsburgs and reverted to an Austrian alliance in 1745. He was rewarded by the grant of unlimited exemption from imperial jurisdiction by a grateful Emperor Francis I in 1747 when Prince Georg left Prussian service. Ludwig stayed on, but even he had to resign in 1757 when his position became incompatible with his father's pro-Austrian stance.Footnote 75
Nevertheless, Frederick regarded the Darmstadters like the Württembergers as a dynasty friendly to Prussia, but not so closely associated with it to arouse suspicion. Both families perfectly fitted his strategy of reinforcing the shaky Russian alliance with dynastic matches. He was particularly pleased with the marriage between Ludwig IX's daughter, Wilhelmine (1755–76), and Grand Duke Paul in 1773. It was her early death that necessitated the 1776 Württemberg match. The Darmstadters performed another vital service that Frederick was personally unable to provide: Ludwig IX's other daughter, Friedrike Luise (1751–1805), married the future Frederick William II and safeguarded the Hohenzollern succession by producing the future Frederick William III in 1770.Footnote 76
Both the Württemberg and Hessian houses married Frederick's Schwedt relations. This junior Hohenzollern line was founded in 1689 when his grandfather assigned two Brandenburg districts to support his half-brothers. Though they lacked the political rights of imperial princes, their kinship with the Hohenzollern royal house made the Schwedts attractive potential marriage partners. They represented safe partners for royal Prussian princesses or other Hohenzollern relations, since marriage within the same kinship group prevented rival dynasties acquiring claims to the family's territory.Footnote 77 Their primary advantage, however, lay in extending the pool of potential partners a Prussian monarch could offer prospective German allies. For example, Henrietta Marie (1702–82) was married to Hereditary Prince Friedrich Ludwig (1698–1731) in 1716 as part of Frederick William I's strategy of consolidating ties to Württemberg.Footnote 78 The marriage of their daughter, Luise Friederike (1722–91), to Duke Friedrich of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1717–85, r. 1756) in 1746 fitted Frederick's plans as well. Prussia had claims on the duchy since Frederick I's own marriage to a Mecklenburg princess in 1708, while Frederick William established a military presence there in 1733. Frederick intervened to settle the duke's long-running dispute with his Estates in 1755, having meanwhile incorporated the former peacekeepers as part of his military expansion from 1741.Footnote 79
Many of these soldiers had originally been raised by Holstein-Gottorp and Frederick took the opportunity to forge closer links with this well-connected north German dynasty. Gottorp Prince Georg Ludwig assumed command of a Prussian regiment in 1743, though not the former Holstein one that went to his Darmstadt namesake (see Appendix). Whilst still in Prussian service seven years later, Georg Ludwig married a princess of Holstein-Beck whose relations were also Prussian generals and were themselves distant relations of the Schwedts.Footnote 80 Relations with the Gottorps were strengthened in 1744 when Frederick's sister Louisa Ulrica (1720–82) married Adolf Friedrich (1710–71), then Protestant prince-bishop of Lübeck, but from 1751 king of Sweden and also cousin to the ill-fated Tsar Peter III. This match secured the friendship of the Swedish crown toward Prussia at a time when the monarchy was overshadowed by the powerful Swedish Estates. Frederick did little to help his sister whose coup failed in 1756. She remained well-disposed toward Prussia but could not prevent the Estates siding with France and Austria in the Seven Years War. Her political role ended when her son, Gustav III, ended his country's Age of Liberty with another, this time successful, coup in 1772.Footnote 81
A Schwedt connection was also involved in the transfer of soldiers from the Ernestine Saxon duchy of Eisenach in 1740, but the duke's successor terminated the arrangement a year later in protest at Prussian recruiting methods.Footnote 82 Frederick established more lasting contacts in neighbouring Gotha, notably with the duke's wife who became his chief confidante after the death of his sister, Wilhemine, in 1758.Footnote 83 Frederick intervened on her behalf in Gotha's dispute with her Meiningen relations 1746–8, as well as backing her husband's demand to be involved during a regency in neighbouring Weimar 1748–9. In return, Gotha transferred trained soldiers and additional recruits after 1746, and followed Prussia in allying with Britain-Hanover in 1756.Footnote 84
Eisenach hostility to Prussian recruitment was echoed in neighbouring Anhalt-Dessau that had been one of the Hohenzollerns' closest German allies and was also intertwined through Schwedt marriages.Footnote 85 The ‘Old Dessauer’, Prince Leopold I, assumed command of his father's Prussian infantry regiment (no. 3) in 1693 and rose to a field marshal under Frederick I. A close confidant of Frederick William I, he continued to advise his son after 1740 and won the battle of Kesseldorf that clinched victory in the Second Silesian War. His five sons all became Prussian generals. Two died in middle age, while Prince Dietrich resigned in 1751 due to ill-health and disillusionment with army life, and also to act as regent for his nephew, Leopold III. The latter also held general's rank and was colonel of the family regiment after 1752, but resigned six years later in protest at Prussian demands. His half-brother was Heinrich Georg von Berenhorst (1733–1814), a noted critic of Frederican militarism. The Anhalt regiment was entrusted to a distant relative from a cadet branch of the Bernburg line that saw military service as one of its few options to sustain princely status.Footnote 86
Growing distance with the Anhalts left the Bevern branch of the Wolfenbüttel Guelphs as Prussia's principal dynastic partners in the second half of Frederick's reign. This was not surprising since his own wife was the sister of Duke Carl I Wilhelm (1713–80, r. 1736) who in turn married Frederick's sister Philippine Charlotte (1716–1801).Footnote 87 However, the Wolfenbüttel family avoided the Anhalts' overly close connection with Prussia and sought, like the Württembergers, to balance Hohenzollern influence with ties to other dynasties. Their strategies reveal that they, like other German princely families, saw nothing inevitable in Prussia's rise and had no intention of pinning their hopes entirely on Hohenzollern patronage. The Beverns had initially attached themselves to Austria and the double marriage of 1733 with Prussia had been engineered by Vienna to keep Frederick William within a Habsburg orbit. Though the Prussian army provided suitable careers for his brothers and sons, Carl I refrained from accepting command once he became duke of Wolfenbüttel in 1735 (see Appendix). Their presence in the Prussian army was balanced by Carl's younger brother, Ludwig Ernst (1718–88), who served with the Austrians and Dutch. Meanwhile, another brother, Anton Ulrich (1714–74), continued the family's Russian ambitions, marrying Empress Anna's niece in 1739. It was only when these came to an end with Elisabeth Petrovna's coup in 1741 that the family was obliged to accept closer ties to Prussia.Footnote 88
Just as Frederick linked the Württemberg troop transfers of 1741–4 to a dynastic match, he arranged the betrothal of his brother August Wilhelm (1722–58) to his own sister-in-law, Louise Amelia (1722–80), when the Wolfenbüttel regiment entered Prussian service in September 1740. The marriage was celebrated two years later and would have brought another Wolfenbüttel queen of Prussia had August Wilhelm not died prematurely. The link was renewed in 1765 when August Wilhelm's son, the future Frederick William II, took Carl I's daughter Elisabeth Christine Ulrike (1746–1840) as his first wife. The marriage fulfilled neither Frederick's nor his nephew's expectations and was dissolved in 1769 and substituted by a Darmstadt match (see above). Frederick regarded his Wolfenbüttel relations, like the Württembergers and Darmstadters, as reliable partners to cement ties to other states.Footnote 89 Prussia remained the Wolfenbüttels' main partner despite overtures from Britain's Hanoverian dynasty from 1755. As with Württemberg and Anhalt, however, the family sought greater distance after the Seven Years War. In 1764 Carl II married George III's eldest sister, Augusta, while his uncle, Ferdinand, resigned his Prussian command two years later. Wolfenbüttel supplied auxiliaries to Britain during the American Revolutionary War (1775–83), whereas Prussia recognized the colonists' independence.Footnote 90
VII
Frederick's interest in the German princes extended to their leading servants and subjects. Frederick I was very successful in attracting German nobles into Prussian service, and they formed 22 per cent of Prussian colonels and generals between 1650 and 1725. This proportion was maintained after 1740, after a slight decline during the second half of Frederick William's reign when Prussia had lost influence in the Empire. Germans made up the bulk of the ‘foreigners’ who in turn represented 20 per cent of generals 1740–56, rising slightly during the Seven Years War, before dropping to 17 per cent for the rest of Frederick's reign. The proportion of imperial princes declined more sharply from 9 to 5 per cent as the Anhalts and other dynasties turned their backs on Prussian service.Footnote 91 There were never more than sixteen princes serving as regiment commanders at any one time. This total was reached in 1756, as a result of the troop transfer in the early 1740s, and Frederick's intensification of dynastic ties. The number fell to seven by 1786, the same as in 1740, but now a much smaller proportion of the total since the army had grown from around 57 regiments to about 107. The total officer corps meanwhile expanded from 3,116 to 5,511. Of the 689 officers above the rank of major in 1786, 203 were ‘foreigners’ (i.e. largely Germans). These came predominantly from the lands of Frederick's dynastic partners. Of the 413 officers of all ranks serving in the eight units of the Magdeburg infantry inspection in 1771, 270 (65·4 per cent) were direct Hohenzollern subjects, while of the rest, 124 came from the Empire, largely neighbouring Thuringian territories, Saxony or Mecklenburg.Footnote 92
Entry into Prussian service was facilitated not only by the Hohenzollerns' own dynastic ties, but the kinship of the individuals themselves. For example, Count Franz Carl Ludwig of Wied-Neuwied (1710–65) who became a Prussian general was related through his mother to the Burgraves of Dohna, a prominent Prussian family.Footnote 93 Like the princes, lesser nobles rarely attached themselves exclusively to Prussia and relations could find themselves on opposing sides. Christoph Friedrich (1710–94), of the Saxon baronial family von der Gablentz, entered Württemberg service in 1734 and rose to the rank of lieutenant general. He commanded the baggage of the Württemberg contingent with the defeated Austrian army after the battle of Leuthen (1757), yet his brother was the Prussian commandant of Schweidnitz. Similarly, of the seventeen adult male baron Riedesels alive in 1756, two served in the Austrian army, while Johann Volprecht (1696–1757) was a Prussian general and Johann Hermann (1740–85) later became Frederick's representative in Vienna.Footnote 94
Prussian service held certain attractions, not least because, as kings, the Hohenzollerns could ennoble. Frederick obliged Charles VII to recognize these titles as valid throughout the Empire in his treaty of November 1741. Charles VII also rewarded the Prussian field marshal Samuel Baron Schmettau (1684–1757) by making him an imperial count. Thanks to its extensive possessions, Prussia enjoyed the right to propose as many candidates as the emperor to fill vacancies at the Reichskammergericht. Frederick generally selected men from friendly Protestant territories in contrast to his father who had favoured his Westphalian subjects.Footnote 95
However, outsiders always faced stiff competition from indigenous nobles, because there were not enough military and civil posts to employ their sons. The development of army and government families with extended traditions of sons following fathers further restricted access. Of the 895 men who had held general's rank by 1791, 67 came from just seven families.Footnote 96 Natives also dominated the civil administration which, in any case, totalled no more than 3,000 positions of all kinds. Foreigners were employed in the diplomatic service, but again Frederick relied mainly on his own subjects.Footnote 97 His reluctance to maintain a large court contrasted with the Habsburgs whose magnificent establishment in Vienna provided the hub of their extensive clientele network.Footnote 98 Prussia's rivalry with Austria also deterred many from entering its service. Senior Prussian officers stood no chance of obtaining the relatively well-paid posts in the imperial (Reich) general staff. There was no overlap between Prussian and imperial appointments between that of the Old Dessauer as imperial field marshal in 1734 when Prussia was still allied with Austria, and the Revolutionary Wars after 1792 when the two powers again co-operated.Footnote 99
Austro-Prussian rivalry affected individual careers and significantly influenced life-choices. Picking the ‘wrong’ side could entail serious repercussions and it was not always possible to guess how events would turn out. One example was Friedrich Samuel Baron Montmartin (1712–78) from a family of Huguenot refugees that had settled in Thuringia. He followed his father into the service of the Bayreuth Hohenzollerns, rising to privy councillor in 1741. He worked to favour Prussian interests, both in securing imperial approval for Carl Eugen to be declared of age, and assisting to negotiate the Bayreuth marriage that Frederick hoped would tie Württemberg to Prussia. He transferred to Gotha service in 1748 at the point when Frederick was intervening in the disputed Weimar regency. However, he switched his allegiances to Austria, ignoring his instructions as Ernestine Saxon representative at the Reichstag to cast their votes in favour of Habsburg directives 1749–56. Though dismissed, Austria compensated him with elevation as imperial count in 1758 and engineered his appointment as Carl Eugen's chief minister where he played a significant role in settling the dispute with the Württemberg Estates in a manner suiting Vienna.Footnote 100
Montmartin's dismissal from Gotha service had been engineered by another Prussian agent, Christoph Dietrich von Keller (1699–1766). From the Württemberg patriciate that dominated the duchy's Estates, Keller had risen under the pro-Austrian Duke Carl Alexander and worked to safeguard Austrian interests during the regency for Carl Eugen's minority (1737–44). As a reward, he was ennobled by Charles VI in 1737 and, together with his elder brother, bought a knight's fiefdom (Rittergut) in Thuringia. He lost Austria's favour later that year when he sided with the Estates when Dowager Duchess Maria Augusta appeared to lose influence. Entrusted with finding someone to relieve the duchy of its expensive army, he opened negotiations with Prussia in September 1740, exceeding his instructions by agreeing not only to transfer an existing infantry regiment, but another 2,000 recruits.Footnote 101 He kept his post, because the regency government was now too deeply committed to pull out and increasingly relied on him for advice. He also renewed ties to Maria Augusta, who likewise pinned her hopes on Prussian support, and played a significant role in sending the three Württemberg princes to Berlin in December 1741, as well as negotiating a new alliance on 31 January 1744 that forbade the duchy from supporting Austria and obliged it to provide more recruits to Prussia instead.Footnote 102 Returning from Berlin in 1745, he fell foul of Carl Eugen's efforts to distance himself from Prussia. Though he remained nominally in Württemberg employment until 1758, he had already transferred to Gotha seven years earlier where he intensified ties to both Prussia and Hanover. He retained discrete contacts to the Württemberg Estates and secretly promoted their case against the duke.Footnote 103
Gotha supplied another of Frederick's key agents in imperial politics. Gustav Adolf Gotter (1692–1762) came from the small Ernestine duchy of Altenburg and studied at Halle and Jena before entering Gotha service in 1716. He was one of those to benefit from the Prussian king's powers to ennoble, being made a baron (1725) and count (1740), as well as the first commoner to receive the Order of the Black Eagle, created in 1701 to mark Frederick I's coronation. These rewards were in return for advancing Hohenzollern interests. He made an ideal agent, because many minor territories chose him to represent them in Vienna rather than go to the expense of sending their own diplomats. For example, he represented Württemberg 1732–7 that gave him the title of privy councillor which he retained until 1755 despite being based in Berlin from 1740 where, among other things, he directed the Prussian opera.Footnote 104
VIII
Prussia's interest in the Empire did not diminish with Frederick's accession. Despite his distaste for the imperial constitution, Frederick swiftly appreciated its significance to his goals of security and international recognition. Certainly, relations with the imperial Estates remained secondary to diplomatic and military engagement with Austria and the other principal European powers. Nonetheless, the Empire remained more than an arena in which Austro-Prussian rivalry was played out. The imperial constitution offered a means to neutralize threats to Prussia's more vulnerable provinces and a framework to constrain Habsburg ambitions, while ties to minor German dynasties offered avenues to maintain or improve relations with Europe's major monarchies that were likewise bound within the elite kinship of the Christian old world. For this to be effective, however, Frederick had to engage in all aspects of imperial politics and not just representation in formal institutions.
Prussia's relations to the Empire do not fit a simple linear model with one becoming steadily stronger as the other declined. While Prussia was growing more powerful as it emerged as a distinct European power, its degree of exposure to international threats varied across the period. Meanwhile, the Empire was not in terminal decline as its political development remained open to several possible paths, including that of reform as promoted by the lesser princes. Prussia's growth was also relative to that of its German rivals in a manner that can be measured during Frederick's lifetime. At the time of his birth (1712), the smaller and medium principalities still played a major role in imperial politics. Prussia's international standing was roughly on par with Bavaria, Saxony, or Hanover, while smaller principalities like Cologne or Münster were still considered potential allies of major powers. As Frederick entered middle age at the close of the Seven Years War the gap had widened. Prussia had successfully made the leap to join the ranks of the great powers, leaving other imperial princes far behind. Two important developments accompanied this transformation. A new political discourse emerged that related international standing more clearly to real power, resources, and strategic location.Footnote 105 This helped marginalize other German territories, contributing to the declining significance of the Empire as an autonomous factor in international relations. The second factor was the crisis following Charles VI's death in 1740. Deprived of the imperial dignity whilst fighting for dynastic survival, the Habsburgs were forced to define a more distinctly Austrian identity setting them more clearly apart from imperial institutions.
The shifting balance is reflected in changes in Prussian imperial policy. Like his grandfather and father, Frederick had both supported and opposed the emperor. Throughout, however, all three displayed relative consistency in how they sought to influence events in the Empire. Frederick significantly improved on his two predecessors' efforts to extend Prussia's privileged position within the constitution, securing important concessions in return for backing Charles VII. These enhanced Prussia's status relative to the Habsburgs in their capacity as archdukes of Austria and so contributed both to Frederick's standing within the Empire and his presentation of himself and family as truly ‘royal’. Frederick likewise took full advantage of Prussia's formal influence within the constitution, at least once he acquired a better understanding of it after some initial mistakes. Above all, he went to considerable lengths to develop an extensive clientele, not only amongst the imperial princes, but also their servants. He renewed and extended ties that had been allowed to lapse or had broken during his father's reign. These brought tangible results in the form of recruits and political support, especially prior to 1756. The policy of constitutional immobility that evolved around 1743 was applied consistently across the remainder of his reign. While more coherent than that of his predecessors, it also had its limits when his preference for stasis clashed with the wider desire for imperial reform. Frederick remained unwilling to abandon the role of leader of a reactive, essentially negative opposition to a largely mythic threat of Habsburg ‘despotism’.
Appendix: imperial princes and counts serving as Prussian regimental commanders, 1713–1786
- D
dragoon regiment
- FM
field marshal
- FML
lieutenant general
- FZM
Feldzeugmeister (junior field marshal)
- G
garrison infantry regiment
- GdI
general of infantry
- GdK
general of cavalry
- GFM
general field marshal
- GFWM
major general
- GM
major general
- GL
lieutenant general
- GWM
major general
- IR
infantry regiment
- K
cuirassier regiment
- SIR
ex-Saxon infantry regiment (the units pressed into service 1756–7)
All generals ranks refer to Prussian ranks unless otherwise stated.
