He used to say that he would reserve for himself ten thousand crowns a year, and retire with the queen and his daughters to Wusterhausen. There, added he, I will pray to God, and manage the farming economy, while my wife and girls take care of the household matters. You, Wilhelmina, are clever; I will give you the inspection of the linen, which you shall mend and keep in order, taking good charge of laundry matters. Frederica, who is miserly, shall have charge of all the stores of the house. Charlotte shall go to market and buy our provisions. My wife shall take charge of the little children and of the kitchen.
The marshal glanced his eye over the document, and retired, overwhelmed with confusion. Thus ended the alliance between Prussia and France. Each party, writes Frederick, wished to be more cunning than the other.69
FORE:On the 3d of October the vanguard of this army, three thousand strong, was seen in the distance from the steeples of Berlin. The queen and royal family fled with the archives to Magdeburg. The city was summoned to an immediate surrender, and to pay a ransom of about four million dollars to rescue it from the flames. The summons was rejected. General Tottleben, in command of the advance, erected his batteries, and at five oclock in the afternoon commenced his bombardment with red-hot balls. In the night a re-enforcement of five thousand Prussians, under Prince Eugene of Würtemberg, who had marched forty miles that day, entered the city, guided by the blaze of the bombardment, to strengthen the garrison. Tottleben retired to await the allied troops, which were rapidly on the march. In the mean time, on the 8th, General Hülsen arrived with nine thousand Prussian troops, increasing the garrison in Berlin to fifteen thousand. Frederick was also on the march, to rescue his capital, with all the troops he could muster. But the Russians had now arrived to the number of thirty-five thousand. The defenses were so weak that they could easily take or destroy the place.
FORE:At last, about nine, somebody brought word that my brother had changed his route and gone to Culmbach, there to stay overnight. I was for setting out thither. Culmbach is twenty miles from Berneck. But the roads are frightful, and full of precipices. Every body rose in opposition. And whether I would or not they put me into the carriage for Himmelkron, which is only about ten miles off. We had like to have got drowned on the road, the waters were so swollen. The horses could not cross but by swimming.It is probable that the suspicions of the king were excited, for suddenly he sent Lieutenant Keith to a garrison at Wesel, at a great distance from Berlin, in a small Prussian province far down the Rhine. The three had, however, concocted the following plan, to be subsequently executed. Immediately after the return from Mühlberg the king was to undertake a long journey to the Rhine. The Crown Prince, as usual, was to be dragged along with him. In this journey they would pass through Stuttgart, within a few miles of Strasbourg, which was on the French side of the river. From Stuttgart the prince was to escape in disguise, on fleetest horses, to Strasbourg, and thence proceed to London. Colonel Hotham, who had accompanied the Prussian king to the camp of Mühlberg, was apprised of all this by his secretary. He immediately dispatched the secretary, on the 16th of June, to convey the confidential intelligence to London.
ONE:My situation forces me, he said, to give them this trouble, which they will not have to suffer long. My life is on the decline. The time which I still have belongs not to me, but to the state.
TWO:
Frederick immediately and publicly denied that he had ever entered into any such arrangement with Austria, and declared the whole story to be a mere fabrication. Having by the stratagem obtained Neisse, and delivered Silesia from the presence of the Austrian army, he assured the French of his unchanging fidelity to their interests, and with renewed vigor commenced co-operating with them in the furtherance of some new ambitious plans.War between Prussia and England might draw all the neighboring nations into the conflict. There was excitement in every continental court. The Pope, it is reported, was delighted. He prays, says Carlyle, that Heaven would be graciously pleased to foment and blow up to the proper degree this quarrel between the two chief heretical powers, Heavens chief enemies, whereby holy religion might reap a good benefit.During the previous summer, the philosopher Maupertuis, after weary wanderings in the languor of consumption, and in great dejection of spirits, had been stricken by convulsions while in his carriage at Basel. He had lost favor with the king, and was poor, friendless, and dying. His latter years had been imbittered by the venomous assaults of Voltaire.
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