282 FINAL YEARS AND IMMORTALITYintellectuals and the political commentators. For many years yet the
memory of Frederick was a matter of awe and fascination for the
ordinary public, and it was for a receptive audience that the veteran
j.W. von Archenholtz penned his Geschichte des Siebenjahrigen
Krieges in Deutschland (1791), a compound of unpedantic history
and personal recollection.
The Frederician age was abruptly terminated in the years 1806-7,
when the Prussian forces went to their defeat at the hands of
Napoleon Bonaparte, and the army and people suffered a near-total
collapse of will. This new soldier-sovereign was in the habit of passing
a number of not very well informed comments on the generalship of
the old king. He doubted, for example whether the 'oblique order' had
ever really existed. Frederick's observations on Napoleon, if we can
imagine such a thing, are perhaps of more interest, and they had to do
with his grasp of the potential of the French nation, and its respon-
siveness to leadership. The Europe of the ancien regime was familiar
with the notion that despised French soldiers, if commanded by
somebody like Frederick, would have been capable of great things
(Guibert, 1778, 129-30; Warnery, 1788, 235; Archenholtz, 1840, I,
115-16). As early as 1743, writing to Voltaire, Frederick scored a
prophetic hit that was more impressive, because better considered,
than Rousseau's famous statement about something remarkable com-
ing out of Corsica. He expressed his liking for the French nation, and
added:
Broglie and others more incapable still have to some extent
tarnished its ancient splendour. Yet this is something which
may be restored by a king who is worthy to command that
nation, who governs with wisdom, and who gains the
admiration of the whole of Europe.
A prince like this will find it a task worthy of his talents to
make good what other people have damaged. There can be no
glory greater than that which is acquired by a sovereign who
defends his subjects against their embittered enemies, and who
proceeds to change the face of affairs and compel his foes to
come to him to beg for peace.
I would be prepared to express my humble admiration for
what this great man may do. Nobody among the crowned heads
of Europe will be less jealous of his achievements. (15 September,
Oeuvres, XXII, 140)
Inside Prussia, after the disasters of 1806-7, Old Fritz seemed to
have died twice over. In historiographical terms the breach in con-
tinuity ran very deep, for the Romantics, the Neo-Classicists and the
Nationalists were inclined to associate the memory of Frederick with