28. The King Who Balked at Nothing to Get His Hands on Super Tall Soldiers
Frederick William drilled and trained his Potsdam Giants every day, and liked to show them off to foreign dignitaries to impress them. When he felt depressed, he cheered himself up by holding a parade of his super soldiers, “preceded by tall, turbaned Moors with cymbals and trumpets and the grenadiers mascot, an enormous bear“. When he fell ill, he had them march through his bedroom past his sickbed. He often painted them from memory. Aware of that passion, the emperors of Austria, Russia, and the Ottoman Sultan sent him tall soldiers to encourage friendly relations. However, although the giants made the king happy, many of them were unhappy – especially those forcibly recruited. Tall men who did not want to join the Potsdam Giant were simply kidnapped. Not just in Prussia, but across Europe.
One such was James Kirkland, an Irish giant who stood 7 feet 2 inches, who was hired as a footman by Prussia’s ambassador in London. It was a ruse: Kirkland was sent to a Prussian ship moored in Portsmouth, where he was seized, bound, gagged, and sent to Prussia. The king even tried to kidnap an unusually tall Austrian diplomat. In an attempt to make his tall soldiers even taller, he stretched them on racks and supervised the painful procedure as he ate lunch. He eventually gave up after too many died. He also turned to eugenics and tried to breed super soldiers by pairing his giants with tall women. When the king died in 1740, the regiment had 2500 men. His successor Frederick the Great did not share his father’s passion for tall soldiers, and promptly dispersed most of them to active combat units.
