Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/776

 F II E D E R I C K [OF PRUSSIA. the army in the Rhine country which was making war with France. In 1793 he married the Princess Louise, daughter of the duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. She be came a highly popular queen, and thoroughly deserved the affection and respect with which she was regarded. Simple and unostentatious in manner, she was of a refined and gentle disposition, yet endowed with a quick and keen in telligence, and with an heroic spirit which the greatest disasters could not break. Her husband s character was not nearly so interesting. He was rather dull and slow ; but he had a sincere desire for the welfare of his people ; was capable in emergencies of undertaking a great enter prise, and allowed himself to be freely influenced by the loftier impulses of his wife. When he succeeded to the j throne he at once removed the principal grievances due to j the weakness of his father, and called to his aid capable and honest ministers. By the treaty of Lune&quot;ville, in 1801, he was obliged to concede to Napoleon his territory on the left bank of the Rhine ; but he received some compensations. In 1805 he was brought for a short time into conflict with England for accepting Hanover from Napoleon in return for certain concessions. Up to this time he had remained at peace with France ; but the formation of the Confedera tion of the Rhine in 180G filled him with alarm and in dignation, and, giving way to a sudden impulse, he de manded that all French troops should forthwith quit German soil. The result was the battles of Jena and Auerstiidt, followed by those of Eylau and Friedland ; and on July 9, 1807, he had to sign the treaty of Tilsit, which deprived him of half his kingdom. Early in the war he had been obliged to leave Berlin with the queen, and not till the end of 1809 were they able to return. In 1810 the queen died. Mean while, under the guidance of the great minister Stein, who was succeeded by Hardenberg, he had begun thoroughly to reorganize the state; while, through the ex ertions of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, the army, in which the traditions of a past age had survived too long, was raised to a state of high efficiency. The king was forced in 1812 to conclude an alliance with Napoleon, and to aid him with an auxiliary corps in his expedition to Russia; but seeing the disastrous retreat of the French from Moscow, Frederick William appealed to the country to undertake a war of liberation. In due time the appeal was followed by the battle of Leipsic and the battle of Waterloo. After the conclusion of peace he laboured sincerely, with the aid of competent ministers, to undo many of the evils caused by the confusion of the previous years ; but he forgot that in his time of need he had promised to set up a constitutional system of government. He only instituted (1817) provin cial estates ; and after the July Revolution he proved him self an uncompromising and bitter opponent of liberal ideas. He died on the 7th of June 1840. See W. Halm, Fricdrich Wilhdm III. und Louise (2d ed., Berlin, 1876); Duncker, Aus der Zcit Fricdrichs des Grosscn und Fricdrich Wilhclms III. (Leipsic, 1876). FREDERICK WILLIAM IV. (1795-1861), king of Prussia, the son of Frederick William III., was born on the 15th October 1795. He took an active part in the War of Liberation, and in 1814 spent some time in Paris, in whose museums and picture galleries he acquired a warm love of art. On returning to Berlin he cultivated his artistic tastes under the guidance of Rauch and Schinkel, receiving at the same time instruction in jurisprudence and finance from Savigny and other distinguished teachers. He married Princess Elizabeth of Bavaria in 1823, but had no children. As he was known to be cultivated, intelligent, and generous, high hopes were formed respecting his reign ; and these hopes were fostered by his first acts as king, for he conceded greater freedom of the press than had been allowed under his father, granted an amnesty to political prisoners, and invited to his capital some of the leading writers and artists of the day. He soon, however, disappointed popular expectations. He was a lover rather of large phrases than of great actions, being very willing to benefit his subjects, but on condition that they should accept what he offered them as the gift of an absolute ruler. In 1847 he assembled at Berlin a united diet, made up of representa tives of the provincial diets established by his father, and created intense discontent by proclaiming that he would not allow a constitution to stand between him and his people. The revolutionary movement of 184S took him wholly by surprise, and he was so alarmed that he not only promised to institute parliamentary government, but placed himself at the head of the agitation for the unity of Germany. When, however, in 1849 the national assembly at Frank fort offered him the title of emperor, he declined it. He formed an alliance with Hanover and Saxony for the pur pose of creating a new German constitution, and summoned a national parliament atr Erfurt. Austria insisted on the old Frankfort diet being re-established, and for a time war appeared to be imminent. Ultimately, by the treaty of Olmiitz (1850) Austria prevailed. In 1850 the Prussian constitution was proclaimed, but it was interpreted in a narrow sense, and under the reactionary ministry of Manteuffel some of its most essential provisions were soon changed. In 1848 Neufchatel had been incorporated with Switzerland. Certain royalists having attempted in 1856 to secure it again for the king of Prussia, they were seized by the Swiss authorities and accused of high treason. After some angry negotiations they were given up, and Frederick William then formally resigned all claims to the country. On his way back from Vienna in the summer of 1857 he I had a stroke of paralysis in Dresden ; in October of the same year he had a second stroke in Berlin. From this time, with the exception of brief intervals, his mind was clouded, and the duties of government were undertaken by his brother William, who on October 7, 1858, was formally recognized as regent. The king spent the winter of 1858- 59 in Rome, where his health occasionally improved, but when he returned to Berlin in November 1860, his end was seen to be near, and he died at Sanssouci on the night of January 2, 1861. See Vanihagen von Ense s Blatter aus dcr PrenssiscJicn Gcschichtc (5 vols., Leipsic, 1868-69); and Bricficcchscl Fricdrich Wilhclins IV. mit Bunscn (Leipsic, 1873). FREDERICK I. (1369-1428), elector and duke of Saxony, surnamed the Pugnacious, eldest son of Laudgraf Frederick the Severe of Thuringia and of Catherine countess of Henneberg, was born at Altenburg, March 29, 1369. On the death of his father in 1381, he and his two brothers succeeded to the inheritance under the guardianship of their mother, but were compelled to grant a portion of it to their father s two brothers. The death of one of their father s brothers in 1407 occasioned a renewal of the inheri tance dispute with the remaining brother, and an amicable settlement was not arrived at till 1410. Previous to this Frederick had distinguished himself in wars against the Lithuanians, Hungary, and King Wenzel of Germany ; and having in 1420 collected an army against the Hussites, he was for a time so uniformly successful, that in 1423 the emperor Sigismund, in recognition of his valuable services, created him elector and duke of Saxony. With these honours, however, Sigismund also laid upon him the whole burden of the Hussite war ; and the result was that, by an overwhelming defeat at Aussig in 1426, nearly all the Saxons capable of bearing arms were either killed or placed hors de combat. Frederick did not long survive this disaster, dying at Altenburg, 4th January 1428. The university of Leipsic was founded by Frederick in 1409. See life by Spalatin in Alencke s Scriptorcs rcrum Germ. ; and life ! by Iforn, Leipsic, 1733.