- THREE:Upon reaching the neighborhood of Landshut, the king was surrounded by a troop of two thousand Protestant peasants. They begged permission of him to massacre the Catholics of those parts, and clear the country of them altogether. This animosity arose from the persecutions which the Protestants had suffered during the Austrian domination. ONE:There was no credit by trading people even for the necessaries of life. There was no police in the towns. To habits of equity and order there had succeeded a vile greed of gain and an anarchic disorder. The silence of the laws had produced in the people a taste for license. Boundless appetite for gain was their main rule of action. The noble, the merchant, the farmer, the laborer, raising emulously each the price of his commodity, seemed to endeavor only for their mutual ruin. Such, when the war ended, was the fatal spectacle over these provinces, which had once been so flourishing. However pathetic the description may be, it will never approach the touching and sorrowful impression which the sight of it produced.Dr. Moore gives the following account of a surprising scene, considering that the king was an infirm and suffering man seventy-three years of age: GET AWESOME FEATURE LIST
- THREE:We are alone, Fritz replied, and I will conceal nothing from you. The queen, by her miserable intrigues, has been the source of our misfortunes. Scarcely were you gone when she began again with England. She wished to substitute our sister Charlotte for you, and to contrive her marriage with the Prince of Wales.In the presence of monarchs, of lords and ladies, of the highest dignitaries of Europe, the young heir apparent to the throne of Prussia, beautiful in person, high-spirited, and of superior genius, was treated by his father with studied contumely and insult. Every thing was done to expose him to contempt. He even openly flogged the prince with his rattan. It would seem that the father availed himself of this opportunity so to torture the sensibilities of his son as to drive him to suicide. Professor Ranke writes: ONE:The kings desire always was and is that every body, be he high or low, rich or poor, get prompt justice. Wherefore, in respect to this most unjust sentence against the miller Arnold, pronounced in the Neumark, and confirmed here in Berlin, his majesty will establish an emphatic example, to the end that all559 the courts of justice in the kings provinces may take warning thereby, and not commit the like glaring unjust acts. For let them bear in mind that the least peasant, yea, what is still more, that even a beggar, is, no less than his majesty, a human being, and one to whom due justice must be meted out. All men being equal before the law, if it is a prince complaining against a peasant, or vice versa, the prince is the same as the peasant before the law. GET AWESOME FEATURE LIST
- THREE:The British court was frantic with rage. Frederick had a strong army on the frontiers of Hanover. The first hostile gun fired would be the signal for the invasion of that province, and it would inevitably be wrested from the British crown. The lion roared, but did not venture to use either teeth or claws. England was promptly brought to terms. It was grandly done of Frederick. There was something truly sublime in the quiet, noiseless, apparently almost indifferent air with which Frederick accomplished his purpose. ONE:It is not the king that I love in him; it is the man. If I considered the dignity and the power of the king, I should only seek to keep myself at a distance from him. But the qualities which are personal to him, both of the heart and of the head, they attach me to him for life, without reserve and without fear.26 GET AWESOME FEATURE LIST
THREE:To his friend Jordan, who was also in Breslau, he wrote:
THREE:
THREE:Again he writes, under the same date, to the Marquis DArgenson:
