Prussia's Soldier King docked officials six months' pay for skipping a meeting
Frederick William I inherited a treasury his father had drained on palaces and a royal title. He answered with relentless thrift, a rulebook of 297 paragraphs for civil servants, and an army that more than doubled, until roughly one Prussian man in every 25 wore a uniform.
Born in Berlin on 14 August 1688 to King Frederick I and Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, he was raised at first by a Huguenot governess, Marthe de Roucoulle. His political awakening came when plague during the Great Northern War exposed how corrupt and incompetent his father's favourite ministers were. Joining a court faction, he helped topple the chief minister Wartenberg after an investigation revealed massive embezzlement; one associate was jailed at Spandau, fined 70,000 thalers and banished. The episode left him with a lasting hatred of waste and graft.
There was plenty to fix. His father had bought a crown for the Duchy of Prussia, handing Emperor Leopold I 2 million ducats, German churchmen another 600,000 and the Jesuits a further 20,000 thalers, and he also owed the emperor 8,000 troops to fight over the Spanish throne. He then doubled the size of three royal residences, including Charlottenburg, and wrecked the finances.
Taking the throne in 1713, the son sacked the so-called Cabinet of Three Counts and got to work. The army grew from 38,000 men to 80,000 by 1740. Peasants shouldered heavier military duties, while the middle class could pay an annual tax instead of serving. He raised excise duties, imposed a land tax on nobles, drained marshes, built schools and hospitals, and stockpiled grain in good years to sell in lean ones. His regulations for officials ran to 35 chapters: miss a committee meeting and lose half a year's salary; miss another and be dismissed.
Colonies held little appeal when the same money could enlarge the army, and he refused to fund a navy either. In 1717 he revoked the Brandenburg Africa Company's charter and sold the Gold Coast outpost to the Dutch West India Company. He also took the port of Stettin and created the Canton system of recruitment. Harsh by temperament and worsened by poor health, he died on 31 May 1740 after 27 years, leaving the throne to his son Frederick the Great.
Source: Frederick William I of Prussia
