Frederick the Great

LEADING personality among the enlightened despots of the eighteenth century, Frederick the Great is a worthy subject of study for this modern French historian, who achieves an unusual and pleasing combination of scholarship with charm and liveliness of style. M. Gaxotte is sufficiently master of his material to trace with an unerring hand the complicated diplomatic background of Frederick’s greatest ordeal, the Seven Years’ War. But he also shows us der alte Fritz as a human being, imperious and paternalistic, supervising every detail of the administration of his kingdom, quick to seize every opportunity to grab an additional bit of territory, yet animated by the spirit of Voltairian skepticism. His annotations on state documents make amusing reading. When the pious folk of Valangin asked for the recall of a pastor who did not believe in the eternity of hell, Frederick scribbled down: ‘If my subjects at Valangin want to be eternally damned, I have no reason to complain of it.’ The comical episode of Frederick’s patronage of and quarrel with Voltaire is well described. The shadow of Frederick the Great, a German national hero even though he despised the German language, lies over Hitler’s Third Reich, and M. Gaxotte appropriately ends the book with a date in 1933, when Hitler proclaimed his Third Reich before Frederick’s coffin.

W. H. C.