FREDERICK-WILLIAM III., OF PRUSSIA, the son of Frederick-William II., was b. in 1770. He early took part in the administration, and, on his accession in 1797, he at Once dismissed the unworthy favorites of the preceding reign, and accompanied by his beautiful young queen, Louisa of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, made a tour of inspection through the numerous provinces of his kingdom, with a view of investigating their con dition, and contributing to their local and general improvement. But although Frctl erick-William was well intentioned, and in his moral and domestic relations his conduct was exemplary, he lacked the dignity and force of will to cope with the difficulties of his position. By his efforts to maintain an attitude of neutrality in the great European struggle that bad been excited by the wars and victories of the French, he awakened the distrust of all the great anti-Gallican powers of Europe, and disappointed the petty German princes, who had looked upon Prussia as their protectress against foreign encroachments. Napoleon's promises of support and friendly intentions soon changed with honorable and self-seeking policy, which was rewarded by the acquisition of Hildesheim, Paderborn, and Munster, which added nearly 4,000 sq.m. of territory, and half a million of inhabitants to the kingdom; but at length the repeated and systematic insults of Napoleon, who despised Frederick-William while he professed to treat him as a friend, roused the spirit of the nation, and the king saw himself obliged, in 1805, to agree to a convention with Russia, the real object of which was to drive Napoleon out of Ger many. Again the treachery of Prussia led her to make a new treaty with France, by which she consented to receive the electorate of Hanover, and thus involved herself in a war with England. The insults of Napoleon were redoubled after this fresh proof of Frederick-William's indecision. The Prussian nation, headed by the queen, now called loudly for war, and at the close of 1806, the king yielded to these appeals. Hostilities began without further delay; but the defeat of the Prussians at .Jena, Eylau, and Fried land, compelled their unfortunate monarch to sue for peace. The Prussian army was annihilated, and the whole of the kingdom, with the exception of a few fortified places, remained in the power of the French. By the intervention of the emperor Alexander of Russia, a peace was concluded, known as the treaty of Tilsit, by which Frederick William lost the greater part of his realm, and was deprived of all but the semblance of royalty; but although for the next five years he was a mere tool in the hands of Napo leon, who seized every opportunity of humbling and irritating him, his spirit was not subdued, and his unremitting efforts at this period of his life to reorganize his enfeebled government by self-sacrifices of every kind, endeared him greatly to his people. The
disastrous termination of Napoleon's Russian campaign was the turning-point in the fortunes of Prussia; for Although the French emperor was victorious over the Prussians and Russians in the battles of Liitzen and Bautzen, which were fought soon after the declaration of war which Frederick-William had made against France, to the great joy of his people, in 1813, the allies were soon able to renew hostilities, which were carried on with signal success, until they finally culminated in the great battle of Leipsic, in which the Prussians, under their geu., Blucher, earned the greatest share of glory. The peace of Vienna restored to Prussia, almost all her former possessions, while the part taken by the Prussian, army under Bliicher in gaining the victory of Waterloo, by which Napo leon's power was finally broken, raised the kingdom from its abasement. From that time, Frederick-William devoted himself to the improvement of his exhausted states; but although before the French revolution of 1830 Prussia had recovered her old posi tion in regard to material prosperity at home and political consideration abroad, the king adhered too strictly to the old German ideas of absolutism, to grant his people more than the smallest possible amount of political liberty. He had indeed promised to estab lish a representative constitution for the whole kingdom, but this promise he wholly repudiated when reminded of it, and merely established the LancIstande, or provincial estates, a local institution, devoid of all effective power. His support of the Russian government in its sanguinary methods of crushing revolutionary tendencies in Poland, showed his absolute tendencies, and his dread of liberal principles. Frederick-William was more than once embroiled with the pope, on account of his violation of the concor dat. He concluded the great German commercial dengue known as the Zoliverein (sec GERMANY), which organized the German customs and duties in accordance with one uniform system. He died in 1840.