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Updated: June 8, 2025
The first step is taken. My 'Anti-Machiavel' is in press. I will tread under foot this monster of knavish and diabolic statecraft, and all Europe shall see that a German prince is the first to break a lance against this Machiavel, who is making the people the slaves of princes. By his vile principles, he is moulding princes into such monsters that all mankind must curse them."
Prince Frederick laughed aloud. "Well, I think my most worthy cousin, Ernest Augustus, of Saxe-Weimar, will understand this allusion, and in gratitude for my giving his name to posterity in my 'Anti-Machiavel, will unravel the mystery, and inform the world how it is possible, with the annual income of four hundred dollars, to keep a retinue of seven hundred men, a squadron of one hundred and eighty, and a company of cavalry; if he is capable of accomplishing this, without plunging into debt, he is certainly my superior, and I could learn a great deal from him.
"When we both left Cleve," 14th of the month, Wednesday last; 18th is Sunday, in this old cobwebby Palace, where I am correcting ANTI-MACHIAVEL, "and you took to the right," King, homewards, got to HAM that evening, "I could have thought I was at the Last Judgment, where the Bon Dieu separates the elect from the damned.
Critical persons consider the present step as directly opposed to certain maxims in the ANTI-MACHIAVEL. There is a short Piece of the kind to come out to-day, by way of preface to a large complete exposition, which a certain Jurisconsult is now busy with. This is the beginning of my Gazette; can only come out twice a week, owing to the arrangement of the Posts.
A King's Accession is always a hopeful phenomenon to the public; more especially a young King's, who has been talked of for his talents and aspirings, for his sufferings, were it nothing more, and whose ANTI-MACHIAVEL is understood to be in the press. Vaguely everywhere there has a notion gone abroad that this young King will prove considerable.
Yet the King of Prussia, the Anti-Machiavel, had already fully determined to commit the great crime of violating his plighted faith, of robbing the ally whom he was bound to defend, and of plunging all Europe into a long, bloody, and desolating war; and all this for no end whatever, except that he might extend his dominions, and see his name in the gazettes.
This is Voltaire's account of the Visit, which included three "Suppers," all huddled into one by him here; and he says nothing more of it; launching off now into new errors, about HERSTAL, the ANTI-MACHIAVEL, and so forth: new and uglier errors, with much more of mendacity and serious malice in them, than in this harmless half-dozen now put on the score against him.
Voltaire's ostensible errand was, To report progress about the ANTI-MACHIAVEL, the Van Duren nonsense; and, at any rate, to settle the Money-accounts on these and other scores; and to discourse Philosophies, for a day or two, with the First of Men. The real errand, it is pretty clear, was as above.
"As to Friedrich himself, who of course says nothing of the ANTI-MACHIAVEL in public, he privately, to Voltaire, disowns all these editions; and intends to give a new one of his own, which shall be the right article; but never did it, having far other work cut out for him in the months that came. But how zealous the worlds humor was in that matter, no modern reader can conceive to himself.
The actual Hero-Kings were long used to be silent; and the Sham-Hero kind grow only the more desperate for us, the more they speak and profess! This ANTI-MACHIAVEL of Friedrich's is a clear distinct Treatise; confutes, or at least heartily contradicts, paragraph by paragraph, the incredible sophistries of Machiavel.
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