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ONE:Upon the accession of Frederick the Second, as officers were dispatched through the realm to exact oaths of allegiance, the Herstal people, encouraged by the bishop, refused to acknowledge fealty to the new king. Frederick was now in the district of Cleve, in the near vicinity of Herstal. He sent the following very decisive summons to the Prince Bishop of Liege, dated Wesel, September 4, 1740:Augustus, King of Poland, called Augustus the Strong, was a man of extraordinary physical vigor and muscular strength. It was said that he could break horseshoes with his hands, and crush half-crowns between his finger and thumb. He was an exceedingly profligate man, introducing to his palaces scenes of sin and shame which could scarcely have been exceeded in Rome in the most corrupt days of the C?sars. Though Frederick William, a stanch Protestant, was a crabbed, merciless man, drinking deeply and smoking excessively, he was irreproachable in morals, according to the ordinary standard. Augustus, nominally a Catholic, and zealously advocating political Catholicism, though a good-natured, rather agreeable man, recognized no other law of life than his own pleasure. TWO:At just twenty minutes past two oclock the breathing ceased, the spirit took its flight, and the lifeless body alone remained. Lifes great battle was ended, and the soul of the monarch ascended to that dread tribunal where prince and peasant must alike answer for all the deeds done in the body. It was the 17th of August, 1786. The king had reigned forty-six years, and had lived seventy-six years, six months, and twenty-four days.
Maecenas suscipit imperdiet nisi ac hendrerit. Nam congue felis ac massa rutrum pulvinar. Donec sodales eros sed efficitur mattis. Integer tincidunt, felis a placerat maximus, eros nulla dapibus dui, at facilisis enim odio at velit. Aenean dictum eleifend mi sit amet luctus.
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ONE:Not a soldier appeared to oppose the invaders. The Prussians seized, in an unobstructed march, all the most important Saxon towns and fortresses. The King of Poland and his court, with less than twenty thousand troops, had fled from the capital up the river, which here runs from the south to Pirna, where they concentrated their feeble army, which numbered but eighteen thousand men. Frederick, with his resistless column, entered Dresden on the 9th of September. The queen had remained in the palace. The keys of the archives were demanded of her. She refused to surrender them. The officers proceeded to break open the door. The queen placed herself before the door. The officers, shrinking from using personal violence, sent to Frederick for instructions. He ordered them to force the archives, whatever opposition the queen, in person, might present. The queen,406 to avoid a rude assault, withdrew. The door was forced, and the archives seized.Soon after this, Colonel Hotham, having received a gross insult from the king, demanded his passports. The English embassador had presented the king with a document from his court. Frederick William angrily threw the paper upon the floor, exclaiming, I have had enough of those things! and, turning upon his heel, left the room. Colonel Hotham, a high-bred English gentleman, could not brook such an indignity, not only to himself, but to his sovereign. The passionate king had scarcely left the apartment before he perceived the impolicy of his conduct. He tried to make amends. But Colonel Hotham, justly regarding it as an insult to his court, persisted in demanding his passports, and returned to London. The Crown Prince in vain begged Colonel Hotham to remain. Very properly he replied that the incivility was addressed to his king, and that it was for him only to judge what satisfaction was due for the indignity offered. TWO:The heir to the Russian throne was an orphan boy, Peter Federowitz. The Russian court was looking around to obtain for him a suitable wife. Fredericks commandant at Stettin, a man of renowned lineage, had a beautiful daughter of fourteen. She was a buxom girl, full of life as she frolicked upon the ramparts of the fortress with her young companions. Frederick succeeded in obtaining her betrothal to the young Prince of Russia. She was solemnly transferred from the Protestant to the Greek religion; her name was changed to Catharine; and she was eventually married, greatly to the satisfaction of Frederick, to the young Russian czar.The Austrians retired to Dresden for winter quarters. Frederick was left in the field which he had won. Gradually he withdrew to his old camping-ground at Freiberg, where his troops had been cantoned the previous winter. On the 10th of November, 1760, he wrote from Meissen to the Marquis DArgens at Berlin:
Donec sodales eros sed efficitur mattis. Integer tincidunt, felis a placerat maximus, eros nulla dapibus dui, at facilisis enim odio at velit. Aenean dictum eleifend mi sit amet luctus. Maecenas suscipit imperdiet nisi ac hendrerit. congue felis ac massa rutrum pulvinar.
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ONE:Look at the queen, then, she added, and you will cease to reproach me.But a few days after his return, Lord Hyndford, who had followed the king to Berlin, met his majesty in one of the apartments of the palace. Frederick, struggling to conceal the emotions with which he was agitated, said to him, TWO:Fully conscious that the respect which would be paid to him as a European sovereign greatly depended upon the number of men he could bring into the field of battle, Frederick William devoted untiring energies to the creation of an army. By the most severe economy, watching with an eagle eye every expenditure, and bringing his cudgel down mercilessly upon the shoulders26 of every loiterer, he succeeded in raising and maintaining an army of one hundred thousand men; seventy-two thousand being field troops, and thirty thousand in garrison.2 He drilled these troops as troops were never drilled before.Never mind, said the king; it is a cheap price to pay for escaping an attack from Pandours in the rear, while such a battle was raging in front.
Donec sodales eros sed efficitur mattis. Integer tincidunt, felis a placerat maximus, eros nulla dapibus dui, at facilisis enim odio at velit. Aenean dictum eleifend mi sit amet luctus. Maecenas suscipit imperdiet nisi ac hendrerit. congue felis ac massa rutrum pulvinar.
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ONE:While on this march he wrote from Madlitz, under date of August 16th, to Marquis DArgens, at Berlin: TWO:The next morning they learned that Lieutenant Katte had been arrested. All the private papers of Fritz were left, under Kattes charge, in a small writing-desk. These letters would implicate both the mother and the daughter. They were terror-stricken. Count Finckenstein, who was in high authority, was their friend. Through him, by the aid of Madam Finckenstein, they obtained the desk. It was locked and sealed. Despair stimulated their ingenuity. They succeeded in getting the letters. To destroy them and leave nothing in their place would only rouse to greater fury the suspicion and rage of the king. The letters were taken out and burned. The queen and Wilhelmina immediately set to work writing new ones, of a very different character, with which to replace them. For three days they thus labored almost incessantly, writing between six and seven hundred letters. They were so careful to avoid any thing97 which might lead to detection that paper was employed for each letter bearing the date of the year in which the letter was supposed to be written. Fancy the mood, writes Carlyle, of these two royal women, and the black whirlwind they were in. Wilhelminas dispatch was incredible. Pen went at the gallop night and day. New letters of old date and of no meaning are got into the desk again, the desk closed without mark of injury, and shoved aside while it is yet time.
Integer suscipit imperdiet nisi ac hendrerit. Nam congue felis ac massa rutrum pulvinar. Donec sodales eros sed efficitur mattis. Maecenas tincidunt, felis a placerat maximus, eros nulla dapibus dui, at facilisis enim odio at velit. Aenean dictum eleifend mi sit amet luctus.
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ONE:About the middle of January, 1729, the king went upon a hunt with his companions, taking with him Fritz, who he knew detested the rough barbaric sport. This hunting expedition to the wilds of Brandenburg and Pommern was one of great renown. Three thousand six hundred and two wild swine these redoubtable Nimrods boasted as the fruits of their prowess. Frederick William was an economical prince. He did not allow one pound of this vast mass of wild pork to be wasted. Every man, according to his family, was bound to take a certain portion at a fixed price. From this fierce raid through swamps and jungles in pursuit of wild boars the king returned to Potsdam. Soon after he was taken sick. Having ever been a hard drinker, it is not strange that his disease proved to be the gout. He was any thing but an amiable patient. The pangs of the disease extorted from him savage growls, and he vented his spleen upon all who came within the reach of his crutch or the hearing of his tongue. Still, even when suffering most severely, he never omitted any administrative duties. His secretaries every morning came in with their papers, and he issued his orders with his customary rigorous devotion to business. It was remarked that this strange man would never allow a profane expression or an indelicate allusion in his presence. This sickness lasted five weeks, and Wilhelmina writes, The pains of Purgatory could not equal those which we endured.I represented to him that perhaps it was not altogether prudent to print his Anti-Machiavel just at the time that the world might reproach him with having violated the principles he taught. He permitted me to stop the impression. I accordingly took a journey into Holland purposely to do him this trifling service. But the bookseller demanded so much money that his majesty, who was not in the bottom of his heart vexed to see210 himself in print, was better pleased to be so for nothing, than to pay for not being so. I could not avoid feeling some remorse at being concerned in printing this Anti-Machiavelian book at the very moment that the King of Prussia, who had a hundred millions in his coffers, was robbing the poor people of Liege of another, by the hand of the privy counselor Rambonet.35 TWO:There were nearly thirty thousand men, infantry and cavalry, thus assembling under the banners of Frederick for battle. They were in as perfect state of drill as troops have ever attained, and were armed with the most potent implements of war which that age could furnish. The king was visibly affected by the spectacle. Whether humane considerations touched his heart, or merely poetic emotion moved him, we can not tell. But he was well aware that within a few hours not merely hundreds, but thousands of those men, torn by shot and shell, would be prostrate in their blood upon the plain; and he could not but know that for all the carnage and the suffering, he, above all others, would be responsible at the bar of God.
Maecenas suscipit imperdiet nisi ac hendrerit. Nam congue felis ac massa rutrum pulvinar. Donec sodales eros sed efficitur mattis. Integer tincidunt, felis a placerat maximus, eros nulla dapibus dui, at facilisis enim odio at velit. Aenean dictum eleifend mi sit amet luctus.
