Wen | against the north
01 The Troubles of Young William
In the political history of China and the West, there is no shortage of monarchs who are extremely poor and extravagant, who stand at the pinnacle of power and glory, and exert their ambitions and desires to the extreme. In the face of the temptations of this absolute power, few emperors or kings were able to control their desires within a certain range. If so, then he must be able to make a lot of achievements.
This was the case with Frederick Wilhelm I, monarch of the Kingdom of Prussia (also translated as Friedrich Wilhelm I). He lived in an era when the Western Reformation was in full swing, and William I himself was influenced by the Calvinist religion that prevailed in Europe at that time, and when he became king, he brought such a religious consciousness formed in his youth into political practice and achieved certain results.
When William I succeeded to the throne, the internal and external environment changes were quite subtle. Externally, Sweden, the military power that had been in turmoil and stirred up the political landscape of Europe, tended to decline, and its hegemony had been challenged by rising stars such as France and Tsarist Russia, and whether the Kingdom of Prussia could take advantage of this hegemonic transfer to further expand its power became the primary question of Prussian foreign affairs.
(The Prussian army is launching a charge)
Since we want to expand abroad, the more the army and money, the better. However, after William ascended the throne, he discovered that his predecessor king had left him not much. Compared with the French and others who dispatched more than 100,000 troops at every turn, the Prussian army had only more than 40,000 troops, and the tactical ideas and guns were outdated and needed to be updated.
In addition, Prussia's finances were also stretched because of the wayward profligacy of the previous king, the financial officials in the central part of the Kingdom of Prussia wanted to increase taxes, and they always encountered passive resistance from the local Junker military aristocracy, and the citizens of the city were also hostile to the government's tax increase plan, so whether it was the combat effectiveness of the army or the supply of money, the Kingdom of Prussia had a big gap with its neighbors.
02 Military development is a priority
William himself saw it in his eyes and was anxious in his heart, he was a person who lacked the joy of life, not only did he not like music or painting, but he also did not allow his son to be involved. When the Crown Prince (later Frederick the Great, who would later dominate Europe) failed to escape against his father's pressure, William, in order to warn the Prince, went so far as to execute his friend who was covering his escape, despite his objections.
William had studied the contents of Protestant Calvinism, and was quite touched by the content of asceticism and pietism, and according to the research of relevant scholars, William was also influenced by the Neo-Stoics popular in the Low Countries, and was more convinced of asceticism. However, if this were the case, William would probably become a figure like Emperor Wu of Liang in the Southern Dynasty, that is, not doing the right thing and leaving the country to fend for itself. William, on the other hand, had a sense of distress in his heart, and in his view he had to integrate Calvinist asceticism and piety into the governance of the state in order for Prussia to stand out among the German states. Therefore, he quickly threw himself into specific government affairs.
First of all, he discarded all the extravagant pomp and circumstance in the past court, and then rectified the bureaucratic system, appropriately reduced the salaries of some officials, and reduced government expenditures as much as possible. As for the money saved, he invested in the expansion of the army and the manufacture of weapons.
It is reasonable to say that if a country develops a single military force, it is likely to lead to the development of the country's economic system lagging behind or even collapsing, but William does not believe in this evil, he would rather spend money on the army than invest in other aspects, such as national education and social security, although there was also development in this period, but on the whole it is still standing still. At that time, the monarchs of other European countries increased the investment of relevant funds in order to develop culture and education, and William himself was reluctant to approve the money for the purchase of books for the Berlin Library, and in the end he could not face it, so he gave four or five tales, so that it was rumored to be a joke at the end of the street, and in his private vault, there were as many as ten million tales. Contrasting the two, who does he not cut?
03The result and cost of cutting the door
There were still too many places for the country to use money, and William could not always be like an iron rooster, so he proceeded from the policy of relaxing the conditions for immigration and allowing Protestants and Jews fleeing religious persecution to invest in commerce and handicrafts in the Kingdom of Prussia. Coincidentally, the French Bourbons, which were manipulating the political situation of The German division at that time, just drove out about 20,000 Protestants, and when these expelled people left, they also took money and technology with them, and dedicated them to the Prussian kingdom that accepted them. Therefore, although William himself pursued a military-first development strategy, the country's economy did not take a sharp turn.
Under William's command, the army of the Kingdom of Prussia gradually doubled from its original forty thousand to eighty thousand. In addition, William selected a group of junker nobles who were easy to control and established his own officer training corps. These Junker nobles were able to make their fortunes by being loyal to the king. Their presence also played a role in the king's balance on the expansion of the aristocratic clique. However, when it came to the question of how to reward them, William seemed to be a bit of a scrooge. In the end, William still chose to give the other side the privilege of controlling the land and serfs, rather than paying for it himself.
However, the Junker aristocracy was divided internally, and they were no longer an obstacle to the king's power, but evolved into the king's thugs to suppress the revolts at the bottom and invade the outside world.
How to feed so many soldiers, how to feed the bureaucratic system that supports the operation of the country, this is also a big problem, William's reduction of the treatment of civilian officials to subsidize the army has caused dissatisfaction among many bureaucrats within the government, and William's approach is nothing more than using the discipline of the army to discipline the bureaucracy, or perfunctory with words and preaches such as loyalty to the king.
But after the turn of the army itself, this method was not so good, and although William appointed a chaplain to instill the soldiers the idea of loyalty to the monarchy, the harsh training and meager treatment still led to the emergence of a large number of deserters. When this happens, other European monarchs may resort to killing a hundred people. William, on the other hand, was different; in his view, man was wealth, and he preferred to transfer these men to the most dangerous and mortal infantry rather than destroy the lives of the other side at once. Later, William's "frugality" actually developed into the service of all death row prisoners in the army. Of course, the king did this not out of humanitarianism, but on the basis of "usefulness" to weigh it.
William's reputation for slamming the door soon spread throughout Europe, and it is not difficult to understand the slow development of cultural undertakings in Germany during this period. However, another consequence of William's slamming of the door was to provide his successors with a large and effective army.
When William's son Frederick the Great succeeded him, he immediately relied on this armed force to seize Silesia in Austria, and after that, William's military policy was actively continued, and Prussia also participated in wars such as the partition of Poland, except for a brief setback in the Napoleonic Wars, Prussia has always been the kingdom of the German states second only to Austria in strength and status. Bismarck, the "Iron-Blooded Prime Minister", was able to defeat France in 1870 to complete the great cause of unification, which can be traced back to Frederick William I, who "cut the door to home". This is probably something that even William himself did not expect.
(Establishment of the German Empire)
bibliography:
Sebastian Hafner, Prussia without Legends, Peking University Press
Ding Jianhong, General History of Germany, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Press
(german) Blaubach, History of Germany, The Commercial Press
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