Great Fred for the coffee table
T. C. W. BLANNING
Frederick the Great Nancy Mitford (Hamish Hamilton 80s)
It would be difficult to write a dull book about Frederick the Great. He lived for seventy-four years and for most of them was the initiator or victim of violent action. Even his childhood was more intensely miserable than most, the combination of silly mother and brutal father giving him the worst possible start. At the age of eighteen he attempted to escape from the ogre-like King Frederick William only to be recap- tured, imprisoned and then forced to witness the execution of his accomplice, friend and suspected lover Lieutenant Katte. flautist, poet, historian, correspondent of Voltaire, enlightened reformer and military genius, Frederick has something for everyone. Repeatedly he appears as the central figure in a series of historical tableaux: as the impetuous young king who six months after his accession marched with his legions to take Silesia from Maria Theresa, as the hero at bay in the Seven Years War, defending successfully his spoils against the combined might of Russia, France, Austria and most of the German princes, as the wily diplomat in old age, taking West Prussia from Poland in the first partition and making the aggres- sive Joseph n look foolish. Despised by his father as an effeminate aesthete, Frederick made the 'sand-box of Europe' a major power.
This is splendid material for a popular historian and Miss Mitford seizes the op- portunity with both hands. As the biographer of Louis )(iv and Madame de Pompadour, she is well-equipped to describe the aristocratic atmosphere of the Prussian court, and, as she also reminds us, there is no more agreeable and fruitful environment for intellectual work than a well-run country house'. The narrative rattles along at great Pace. as anecdote succeeds anecdote and a host of greater and lesser characters scurry across the stage: the bluff 'Old Dessauer', the over-sexed Augustus 11, the irascible Voltaire, the slimy Algarotti and so on. Miss Mitford has a remarkable gift of infusing real life and individuality into even the most peripheral of Frederick's coterie. There are many splendid examples of Frederick's celebrated wit; for example: 'Frederick had the gift of never forgetting a face. He knew hundreds of his men by sight and knew all about their behaviour both during and between battles. "Why is that excellent soldier in irons?" "He was found com- mitting bestiality with his horse." Fool—don't put him in irons, put him in the infantry." ' The style is polished, imaginative and witty, although occasionally Miss Mitford's exuberance threatens to get
funny' or 'extremely jolly' and the descrip- tion of the painter Pesne as 'a dear' are rather difficult to take. The scores of illustrations, selected by Joy Law, are both beautiful and relevant.
In part the merits of the book are responsible for its limitations. So much at- tention is lavished on Frederick's personality that there is little space left for his policies; there is a great deal about the court but little about the country, its people and what Frederick did or did not do for them. We are told of his mighty feats but not how they were made possible; indeed the book must be one of the few on eighteenth-century Prussia not to mention the General Directory. The great law reformer Samuel von Cocceji makes only a brief appearance, playing a minor role in one of Voltaire's squalid finan- cial transactions. Yet one should not be too pedantic about a work which has no pretensions to historical scholarship: it should be read, enjoyed and not taken too seriously. It is one for the coffee table, not for the library.
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