Frederick William II
Frederick William II took two thirds of what remained of Poland and is remembered mainly for not being his uncle. He inherited from Frederick the Great in 1786 a state with the best army in Europe, a full treasury and a reputation for enlightened severity, and he was temperamentally the opposite of the man who built it. He was sociable, religious in a mystical way, surrounded by favourites and morganatic wives, and a serious musician - Mozart and Beethoven both wrote for his cello, and Haydn dedicated quartets to him. He reversed the tone of the previous reign fast. A religious edict in 1788 required clergy to teach orthodox doctrine and a censorship edict followed within months, both aimed at the rationalist theology his uncle had protected. Kant was ordered to stop writing about religion. In 1792 he joined Austria against revolutionary France, and the allied advance on Paris was turned back at Valmy by a cannonade rather than a battle. He lost interest in the war quickly because a larger opportunity had opened in the east. Prussia took Danzig, Thorn and Greater Poland in the second partition in 1793, and Warsaw and Mazovia in the third in 1795, which erased Poland from the map for a hundred and twenty-three years. To free his army for it he made peace with France at Basel in 1795, abandoning his allies and conceding the left bank of the Rhine. That bought Prussia eleven years of neutrality and cost it the coalition's trust. He died in 1797 leaving a treasury in debt, an enlarged and unassimilated Polish population, and a son who met Napoleon at Jena nine years later.
- Lived: 1744 CE – 1797 CE
- Nationality: Prussian
- Roles: head_of_state, royalty
