Colonel Chasot, exceedingly chagrined, rode directly to the king, and inquired, Did not your majesty grant me permission to invite my friend to the review?
The king was fond of children; he liked to have his grand-nephews about him. One day, while the king sat at work in his cabinet, the younger of the two, a boy of eight or nine, was playing ball about the room, and knocked it once and again into the kings writing operation, who twice or oftener flung it back to him, but next time put it in his pocket, and went on. Please your majesty, give it me back, begged the boy, and again begged: majesty took no notice; continued writing. Till at length came, in the tone of indignation, Will your majesty give me my ball, then? The king looked up; found the little Hohenzollern planted firm, hands on haunches, and wearing quite a peremptory562 air. Thou art a brave little fellow. They wont get Silesia out of thee? cried he, laughing, and flinging him his ball.194Suddenly dashing the tears away, he issued his swift orders, and, mounting his horse, galloped to Prague, where he arrived Sunday evening. The next day the siege was raised, and the besieging troops were on the retreat north into Saxony. The whole army was soon rendezvoused at Leitmeritz, on the Elbe, about thirty miles south of Dresden. Here Frederick awaited the development of the next movement of his foes.
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General Neipperg had now left Neisse; but he kept himself so surrounded by clouds of skirmishers as to render his march entirely invisible. Frederick, anxious to unite with him his troops under the Prince of Holstein Beck, advanced toward Grottkau to meet that division, which had been ordered to join him. The prince had been stationed at Frankenstein, with a force of about eight thousand, horse and foot; but the Austrian scouts so occupied all the roads that the king had not been able to obtain any tidings from him whatever.On the 20th of January, 1745, Charles Albert, the unhappy344 and ever-unfortunate Emperor of Germany, died at Munich, in the forty-eighth year of his age. Tortured by a complication of the most painful disorders, he had seldom, for weary years, enjoyed an hour of freedom from acute pain. An incessant series of disasters crushed all his hopes. He was inextricably involved in debt. Triumphant foes drove him from his realms. He wandered a fugitive in foreign courts, exposed to humiliation and the most cutting indignities. Thus the victim of bodily and mental anguish, it is said that one day some new tidings of disaster prostrated him upon the bed of death. He was patient and mild, but the saddest of mortals. Gladly he sought refuge in the tomb from the storms of his drear and joyless life. An eye-witness writes, Charles Alberts pious and affectionate demeanor drew tears from all eyes. The manner in which he took leave of his empress would have melted a heart of stone.The king had made many efforts to force his son to surrender his rights of primogeniture, and to sign an act renouncing his claim to the succession of the Prussian throne in favor of his next brother. His only answer was, Declare my birth illegitimate, and I will give up the throne. But the king could never consent to fix such a stain upon the honor of his wife.
