The first to remind Frederick William of his promise were the inhabitants of the Rhenish provinces. Early in 1818 the inhabitants of Coblenz presented an address to the king in which they humbly established the justice of their demand on the ground of the 18th Article of the Confederative Act, and the edict of the 22nd of May 1815. The king professed to be "justly iodignant " at their temerity.
He told them that—" Ho who reminds the king, who has voluntarily promised a constitution, of his word, manifests criminal doubts of the inviolability of his word, and anticipates his decision on the right time of its introduction; a decision which ought to be as free as was his first promise; " and with this wretched quibbling the pious monarch contrived to satisfy his conscience. Of course "the right time" never came, and though the king lived for five-ancttwenty years, and the country was peaceful and flourishing, he never made an effort to fulfil the promise made with every character of solemnity to the people, who had done so much for him and had suffered eo much from his vacillating, feeble, and time-serving policy.
While Frederick William thus evaded his promise to grant con stitutional liberties to his subjects, he did what he could to check the spirit of liberalism in other parts of Germany ; and he was especially active in restraining the liberty of the press, and putting down the secret societies among the students in the universities, especially the society called 'Burschenschaft,' the object of which was the gradual regeneration of Germany, and the political independence of the whole nation under one government. In 1820, and in the following years, the continental kings held successively the congresses of Troppau, Laibach, and Verona, where measures were taken against the political movements in Italy and Spain, and here again Frederick William showed that he hated representative constitutions in those countries no less than in his own. Prussia was astonished and indignant at this conduct in a king who owed his crown and his glory, nay his very honour, to promises of political liberty. Between the reactionary and the liberal party the king was wavering for some time, with his accustomed want of decision in complicated matters, till he fell in with the Protestant pietists. From this time the spirit of the Prussian government became what it is now still more, a sort of Jesuitical despotism, dressed in the smooth garb of piety and philosophy. He adopted despotic measures of a most revolting character. One of the most glaring instances of tho spirit in which his government was carried on was the forced union of the Lutheran and Reformed churches, or the introduction of the now agenda,' as it was gently called, a violation of the liberty of conscience which in another age would have led to a religious war. The persecutions by which Frederick William's government attained their object were number less, but there i3 no space here to dwell longer upon the subject. Contemporary with this ecclesiastical reform was the establishment of the Landstande; or provincial estates, a sort of middle-age repre sentation of the people in each province, but not a general representa Lion of tho whole nation.
Small as the political liberties of Prussia were, and vexatious as the military system was which reigned throughout the whole administra tion, a period of fifteen years was eufficieut for Frederick William and his councillors to raise Prussia again to the rank which she occupied among the powers of Europe previous to the battle of Jena. In her
exterior relations Prussia behaved with prudence and generally with dignity. The object of Frederick William was to make Prussia power ful, and he succeeded. Peace was the great object he had constantly at heart, and he maintained peace even through the dangers occasioned by the French revolution iu 1830. Though averse to the principles of the French Revolution, he contented himself with keeping the French within France, by declaring that he would make common cause with Austria and Russia against her from the moment the French made their cause a European one by continuing to revolutionise Europe through her emissaries. He had to experience the dangers of the French Propaganda in a riot at Aix-la-Chapelle, which was the first and also last outbreak of a plot to revolutionise the Rhenish pro vinces. But while adopting towards France a passive policy, he was ready enough to assist Russia in crushing revolutionary principles iu Poland. During the last Polish revolution he not only supplied tho Russian army with provisions and military stores, but allowed the Russian generalissimo, Field-Marshal Paskiewicz, to cross the Vistula on the Prussian territory, which enabled him thus to attack Warsaw and to put down the insurrection. A great number of Polish subjects of Frederick William, having joined the army of their brethren in Russia, were severely when they returned to Prussia after the fall of Warsaw.
Towards the end of his reign Frederick William committed an act which created a great sensation in Europe, by arresting and imprisoning the archbishops of Cologne and Gnesen, for instructing the Roman Catholic priests to withhold their sanction from marriages of Roman Catholic women to Protestant husbands, in violation of the concordat of 1820 between Pope Pius VII. and Frederick William III., by the terms of which the issue of mixed marriages was to follow the religion of the father, unless the parents agreed otherwise. The affair was only settled at last between the pope and the present king in such a way as to leave no doubt that Frederick William had acted imprudently as well as unjustly in this matter. His policy iu promoting the material welfare of his subjects was wiser, and never were the trade, manu factures, agriculture, and navigation of Prussia in so flourishing a condition as towards the close of his reign. Ho attained his object in a great measure by concluding the great commercial league with most of the other German states, the plan of which .was originally conceived by tho minister of finances, Mr. Von Maassen, and which is known under the name of the Zollverein.' Broken down by the infirmities of age, Frederick William III. died after a short illness on the 7th of June 1810. lie was twice married. By his first wife, Louisa of Alecklenburg-Strelitz, he had four sons, the eldest of whom is the present King Frederick William IV., and three daughters. His second wife was Auguste, countess von Ilarmeh, created Princess of Liegnits, with whom he was united in 1824 in morganatic marriage, and by whom be bad no issue.