CHAPTER EIGHT
Final Years and Immortality
If we except Catherine of Russia, Frederick entered the 1780s as the
single figure of heroic stature on the stage of Europe. Maria Theresa
had died on 29 November 1780, but Frederick could find no satisfac-
tion in his victory of physical survival: 'She did honour to her
throne and to her sex. I waged war against her but I was never her
enemy.'
Free of the restraints which had been exercised by his mother,
'Monsieur Joseph' now sought every opportunity to exalt the Aus-
trian state at the expense of Prussia. In 1781 he made a defensive
alliance with Catherine, finally killing off the already moribund
Prusso-Russian connection, and in 1785 he negotiated for an ex-
change of the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria. Frederick was once
again faced with the immediate prospect of a new and hostile
Catholic superpower arising to his south. This time, instead of
resorting to war, he enlisted the support of Saxony, Hanover and a
number of the smaller states of the Empire in a Fiirstenbund, or
League of Princes, which was constituted on 23 July 1785. Joseph
thereupon saw fit to abandon his scheme. The Fiirstenbund was in no
way the precursor of a united Germany, for it was conceived in the
narrow interests of Prussia, and made effective only through the
indirect support of the French, but it ensured that Frederick lived out
his days bathed in the sunset glory of a pan-German hero.
Frederick's health had actually improved for a time after he
returned from the war of 1778-9. He resumed the strenuous routine of
the reviews and manoeuvres, and he called in on Zieten whenever his
journeys took him near Wustrau. 'It was most agreeable to see how
that great man, who was now into his seventies, used to travel in his
snow-covered coach to visit his... servant, casting aside the burden
of his years and dignities' (Blumenthal, 1797, 586).
The last occasion on which Frederick presided over the grand
Silesian manoeuvres was in August 1785. The Duke of York, Lord
Cornwallis and more than two dozen other British officers were
present as guests, as well as their old opponent the Marquis de
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