CURIOUSLY, discussion of Anti-Machiavel is often omitted from those works dealing with the life and times of Frederick the Great and many of his biographers prefer to dwell upon his family background and various military campaigns. The same holds true for many of Machiavelli’s own biographers.

First published in September 1740, shortly after Frederick had ascended to the throne, the book is a chapter-by-chapter refutation of Machiavelli’s The Prince and was originally written in French. One reason for Frederick’s choice of language, as well as his strong determination to expose the claims of his sixteenth-century counterpart, may have been due to his close association with François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), better known as Voltaire. The two men had first established contact in 1736, after Frederick became aware of Voltaire’s good standing as a leading Enlightenment historian and philosopher.

After exchanging a series of letters over the course of the next four years, by which time Frederick had produced his Anti-Machiavel, in September 1740 they finally made one another’s acquaintance at Schloss Moyland, a neo-Gothic castle based at Bedburg-Hau in the district of Kleve. Two years later, in 1742, Voltaire visited Rheinsberg Castle for two weeks and, that August, met Frederick again in the spa-city of Aix-la-Chapelle (Aarchen). Consequently, due to the increasingly cordial relations between them, Voltaire was dispatched to Sanssouci by the French government and given the important ambassadorial role of determining the nature of Frederick’s plans in the wake of the First Silesian War.

It was also in the Summer of 1740 that Voltaire, now residing at Huis Honselaarsdijk, a Prussian residence in the Hague, took it upon himself to extensively revise Frederick’s text. Working in conjunction with the Dutch printer, Jan van Duren, Frederick and Voltaire eventually produced a combined edition. Frederick also sent Francesco Algarotti to London to handle the publication of Anti-Machiavel in English. Naturally, the fact that Frederick had now become king meant that the book was an instant success.

Voltaire did not always find himself in agreement with Frederick II’s ideas, particularly those pertaining to matters of religion. In a letter sent to Frederick himself, dated January 5th, 1767, he said of Christianity that it

is assuredly the most ridiculous, the most absurd and the most bloody religion which has ever infected this world. Your Majesty will do the human race an eternal service by extirpating this infamous superstition, I do not say among the rabble, who are not worthy of being enlightened and who are apt for every yoke; I say among honest people, among men who think, among those who wish to think.

Aware that he was now reaching the end of his life, Voltaire added:

My one regret in dying is that I cannot aid you in this noble enterprise, the finest and most respectable which the human mind can point out.

The Frenchman’s forthright opinions about the dangers and intolerance of religious violence, as well as his increasing disillusionment with Frederick II’s ability to bring about the necessary reforms during his reign, had previously led Voltaire to revise certain aspects of his philosophy and this led to the publication of his most famous work, Candide (1759), a novella which includes a discussion of personal responsibility.

Although Frederick himself was rarely able to live up to the ideal of the benevolent ruler, his Anti-Machiavel essentially rests upon the kind of morality that Machiavelli himself lacked. The main thrust of his argument concerns the idea that statesmanship can take a benevolent and conscientious form, a notion that was – for the time – totally in keeping with the principles of the Enlightenment. By insisting that a ruler must have a strong sense of duty towards his subjects, Frederick believed that Machiavelli’s habitual ‘immorality’ would lead to the gradual corruption of the common people.

Like, in other words, begets like.