THREE:
THREE:Take it down, said the king, and hang it lower, that the people may not hurt their necks in looking at it.
THREE:The exigency demanded the most decisive action. Frederick promptly gathered his army, and dashed across the Moldau, resolved, with the energies of despair, to smite down the troops of Prince Charles; but no foe could be found. For four days he sought for them in vain. He then learned that the Austrian army had crossed the Moldau several miles north of him, thus cutting off his communications with Prague.Frederick, finding that he could not rely upon the Saxons, sent to Silesia for re-enforcements of his own troops. Brünn could not be taken without siege artillery. He was capturing Moravia for the King of Poland. Frederick dispatched a courier to his Polish majesty at Dresden, requesting him immediately to forward the siege guns. The reply of the king, who was voluptuously lounging in his palaces, was, I can not meet the expense of the carriage. Frederick contemptuously remarked, He has just purchased a green diamond which would have carried them thither and back again. The Prussian king sent for siege artillery of his own, drew his lines close around Brünn, and urged Chevalier De Saxe, general of the Saxon horse, to co-operate with him energetically in battering the city into a surrender.305 The chevalier interposed one obstacle, and another, and another. At last he replied, showing his dispatches, I have orders to retire from this business altogether, and join the French at Prague.
TWO:There was an institution, if we may so call it, in the palace of the King of Prussia which became greatly renowned, and which was denominated The Tobacco College, or Tobacco Parliament. It consisted simply of a smoking-room very plainly furnished,46 where the king and about a dozen of his confidential advisers met to smoke and to talk over, with perfect freedom and informality, affairs of state. Carlyle thus quaintly describes this Tabagie:
TWO:Count Von Kaunitz, an able but proud and self-conceited man, was prime minister of the Emperor of Germany. His commanding mind exerted quite a controlling influence over his imperial master. Kaunitz records the following conversation as having taken place at this interview between himself and Frederick:182Frederick, under the tutelage of his stern father, had not enjoyed the privileges of foreign travel. While other princes of far humbler expectations were taking the grand tour of Europe, the Crown Prince was virtually imprisoned in the barracks, day after day, engaged in the dull routine of drilling the giant guard. After the death of his father he did not condescend to be crowned, proudly assuming, in contradiction to some of his earlier teachings, that the crown was already placed upon his brow by divine power. He, however, exacted from the people throughout his realms oaths of allegiance, and in person visited several of the principal cities to administer those oaths with much pomp of ceremony. The Danish envoy, writing home to his government respecting the administration of Frederick, says,