Frederick William I (German: Friedrich Wilhelm I.; 14 August 1688 – 31 May 1740), known as the Soldier King (German: Soldatenkönig), was King in Prussia and Elector of Brandenburg from 1713 until his death in 1740, as well as Prince of Neuchâtel.
Born in Berlin, he was raised by the Huguenot governess Marthe de Roucoulle. His political awakening occurred during the Great Northern War's plague outbreak in Prussia, leading to his challenge against corruption and inefficiency in government. He initiated reforms, especially in the military, doubling the Prussian Army, and increased the officer corps to 3,000. A believer in absolute monarchy, he focused on state development and financial reorganization, imposing taxes and stringent regulations on public servants. He made efforts to reduce crime, corruption and centralized his authority during his reign of 27 years, cementing Prussia as a regional power.
Despite his effective rule, he had a harsh nature, exacerbated by his health issues. He engaged in colonial affairs, but prioritized military expansion over colonial investments. His notable decisions included selling Prussian overseas colonies and the foundation of the Canton system, as well as the conquest of the port of Stettin.
His death in 1740 marked the end of a reign characterized by military and administrative reform. He was succeeded by his son, Frederick the Great.
Frederick William was born in Berlin to King Frederick I of Prussia and Princess Sophia Charlotte of Hanover. During his first years, he was raised by the Huguenot governess Marthe de Roucoulle. When the Great Northern War plague outbreak devastated Prussia, the inefficiency and corruption of the king's favorite ministers and senior officials were highlighted. Frederick William with a party that formed at the court brought down the leading minister Johann Kasimir Kolbe von Wartenberg and his cronies, following an official investigation that exposed Wartenberg's huge-scale misappropriation and embezzlement. His close associate August David zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Hohenstein was imprisoned at Spandau Citadel, fined 70,000 thalers and banished subsequently. The incident exerted great influence on Frederick William, making him resent crime, corruption, wastage and inefficiency and realize the necessity of institutional reform. It also became the first time he actively participated in politics. From then on, Frederick I began to let his son take more power.
His father had successfully acquired the title of king for the Duchy of Prussia for which he had paid the high price of 2 million ducats to Emperor Leopold I, 600,000 ducats to the German clergy and 20,000 thalers to the Jesuit order. In addition, Frederick was obligated to provide Leopold with 8,000 soldiers for the War of the Spanish Succession. To demonstrate his new status, he had the Berlin Palace, Charlottenburg Palace, and Königsberg Castle doubled in size and furnished at considerable expense. However, in doing so, he had largely ruined the state's finances.
On ascending the throne in 1713, Frederick William therefore dismissed his father's corrupt "Cabinet of Three Counts". He worked persistently to reorganize the finances that had been shattered by his father, furthermore to enhance the economic development of his far-flung countries and to build up one of the largest and best equipped and trained armies in Europe. He would expand the Prussian Army from 38,000 men in 1713 to 80,000 in 1740, with an average of 1 out of every 25 Prussian men serving in the military.He expanded military obligations for the peasant class while replacing mandatory military service among the middle class with an annual tax, and he established schools and hospitals. The king encouraged commerce and farming, reclaimed marshes, stored grain in good times and sold it in bad times.
Frederick would also work to expand state income. He increased excise taxes, both on domestic and foreign goods, as well as subjecting the Prussian nobility to a land tax. He dictated the manual of Regulations for State Officials, containing 35 chapters and 297 paragraphs in which every public servant in Prussia could find his duties precisely set out: a minister or councillor failing to attend a committee meeting, for example, would lose six months' pay; if he absented himself a second time, he would be discharged from the royal service. In short, Frederick William I concerned himself with every aspect of his country, ruling an absolute monarchy with great energy and skill.
The king also took an interest in Prussian colonial affairs. In 1717, he revoked the charter of the Brandenburg Africa Company (BAC), which had been granted said charter by his father to establish a colony in West Africa known as the Brandenburg Gold Coast. The king was unwilling to spend money on maintaining either the colony or the Prussian Navy, preferring to utilise state revenues on enlarging the Royal Prussian Army. In 1717, Frederick William sold the Brandenburg Gold Coast to the Dutch West India Company.
In 1732, the king invited the Salzburg Protestants to settle in East Prussia, which had been depopulated by plague in 1709. Under the terms of the Peace of Augsburg, the prince-archbishop of Salzburg could require his subjects to practice the Catholic faith, but Protestants had the right to emigrate to a Protestant state. Prussian commissioners accompanied 20,000 Protestants to their new homes on the other side of Germany. Frederick William I personally welcomed the first group of migrants and sang Protestant hymns with them.
In 1733 he began building the Dutch Quarter in Potsdam, where he invited talented Dutch craftsmen to settle.
Frederick William intervened briefly in the Great Northern War, allied with Peter the Great of Russia, in order to gain a small portion of Swedish Pomerania; this gave Prussia new ports on the Baltic Sea coast. More significantly, aided by his close friend Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, the "Soldier-King" made considerable reforms to the Prussian army's training, tactics and conscription program—introducing the canton system, and greatly increasing the Prussian infantry's rate of fire through the introduction of the iron ramrod. Frederick William's reforms left his son Frederick with the most formidable army in Europe, which Frederick used to increase Prussia's power.
Although a highly effective ruler, Frederick William had a perpetually short temper which sometimes drove him to physically attack servants (or even his own children) with a cane at the slightest perceived provocation. His violent, harsh nature was further exacerbated by his inherited porphyritic disease, which gave him gout, obesity and frequent crippling stomach pains. He also had a notable contempt for France, and would sometimes fly into a rage at the mere mention of that country, although this did not stop him from encouraging the immigration of French Huguenot refugees to Prussia.
Frederick William died in 1740 at age 51 and was interred at the Garrison Church in Potsdam. During World War II, in order to protect it from advancing allied forces, Hitler ordered the king's coffin, as well as those of Frederick the Great and Paul von Hindenburg, into hiding, first to Berlin and later to a salt mine outside of Bernterode. The coffins were later discovered by occupying American forces, who re-interred the bodies in St. Elizabeth's Church, Marburg in 1946. In 1953 the coffin was moved to Hohenzollern Castle, where it remained until 1991, when it was finally laid to rest on the steps of the altar in the Kaiser Friedrich Mausoleum in the Church of Peace on the palace grounds of Sanssouci. The original black marble sarcophagus collapsed at Burg Hohenzollern—the current one is a copper copy.
Relationship with Frederick II
His eldest surviving son was Frederick II (Fritz), born in 1712. Frederick William wanted him to become a fine soldier. As a small child, Fritz was awakened each morning by the firing of a cannon. At the age of 6, he was given his own regiment of children to drill as cadets, and a year later, he was given a miniature arsenal.