HIGHWAY 26 – THE CREATION OF THE MILITARY PRUSSIAN MACHINE
Military Rulers Who Built the Machine:
At this time in the 1700s it was called Brandenburg-Prussia. Here is the human story of the start of how Prussia became the military power of Central Europe in the 1700s.
Prussia was an alliance of local communities called principalities with the leadership of Frederick William. This Frederick was the father of the man known today in our world as Frederick the Great. The man who it is said made the world shiver when they heard the Prussians were coming. This father was very militaristic and trained his son, the Frederick before he, in the military arts. But the son in his youth did not really get off on causing death by using armies and horses.
This was 1730 and the son thought he had better things to do. The son hated organized religion too. He was a renaissance man who enjoyed poetry and music. His father disagreed and Frederick with a friend tried to run away to England and become a man of enlightenment.
Frederick Jr. and his friend got caught trying to leave Prussia. His father, Frederick William, sentenced them to death. Dad beheaded the friend in Frederick’s presence. Dad then threatened his son with execution. He had once before strangled Frederick Jr. because Frederick Jr. had refused to sign the Rule for Order of the law for the right to succession of Prussia that would provide that on Frederick Senior’s death the son would succeed to the rule of the land.
The father left his son in prison so he could learn that his path was to follow Dad. Dad died in 1740 and Frederick became Frederick the Second. Still at this moment a man of art, Frederick wearing his renaissance hat built Berlin into a leading academic city.
Frederick the Second was a corresponding friend of Voltaire and really viewed his ruling role as a contract with his subjects, with himself as first servant of the state, duty bound to promote wellbeing and security. But he knew truth and that truth was that many a Pharisee and Sadducee wished to take control of his enlightened land so military was needed to protect his reign. Frederick with the taste of power ended up becoming an aggressive warrior for lands to control.
Frederick the Great, as he was to become, had absolute power and as we know absolute power corrupts.
He needed an army and an army needed work. So either you employ the army to attack others or they will attack you. That is what armies do for a living. They attack and attack to kill. The first attack to change the balance of power in Europe was of an area we call Silesia. He won his land of Prussia Silesia from the Hapsburgs of Austria-Hungary.
Frederick the Great was a Hohenzollern and he did wish to have a safe, secure and productive kingdom for his future descendants to rule just as his Dad had wished too. Silesia gave him this with its mineral deposits for wealth as well as the people to double the population of those he so decided he could now rule.
Frederick the Great tasted blood and became the cannibal who liked the taste of blood, which is what all killers really are. They are cannibals. He now lived to kill so he could own & control the survivors of those communities his death march destroyed.
The Great turned his back on Voltaire and all others that he shared moments of intimacy discussing how he was the man who would rule and really care for his fellow man. He was to be the enlightened leader. He was different. Yes, he was different until he got the power.
Absolute power corrupts us all.
This essay is excerpted from Steven Machat’s Highways of Man. Learn more about the book at StevenMachat.com.