Days of Peace and Prosperity.The Palace of Sans Souci.Letter from Marshal Keith.Domestic Habits of the King.Fredericks Snuff-boxes.Anecdotes.Severe Discipline of the Army.Testimony of Baron Trenck.The Review.Death of the Divine Emilie.The Kings Revenge.Anecdote of the Poor Schoolmaster.The Berlin Carousal.Appearance of his Majesty.Honors conferred upon Voltaire.
Such were the measures adopted during the first week of Fredericks reign. He soon abolished the enormously expensive regiment of giants, and organized, instead of them, four regiments composed of men of the usual stature.32 Within a few months he added sixteen thousand men to his already large army, thus193 raising the number of the standing army of his little realm to over ninety thousand men. He compelled his old associates to feel, and some of them very keenly, that he was no longer their comrade, but their king. One of the veteran and most honored officers of Frederick William, in his expressions of condolence and congratulation, ventured to suggest the hope that he and his sons might continue to occupy the same posts and retain the same authority as in the last reign.
ONE:Let him learn arithmetic, mathematics, artillery, economy, to the very bottom; history in particular; ancient history only slightly, but the history of the last hundred and fifty years to the exactest pitch. He must be completely master of geography, as also of whatever is remarkable in each country. With increasing years you will more and more, to an especial degree, go upon fortification, the formation of a camp, and other war sciences, that the prince may, from youth upward, be trained to act as officer and general, and to seek all his glory in the soldier profession. You have, in the highest measure, to make it your care to infuse into my son a true love for the soldier business, and to impress on him that, as there is nothing in the world which can bring a prince renown and honor like the sword, so he would be a despised creature before all men if he did not love it and seek his glory therein.
TWO:It is perhaps not strange that Frederick should have imbibed a strong feeling of antipathy to Christianity. In his fathers life he had witnessed only its most repulsive caricature. While making the loudest protestations of piety, Frederick William, in his daily conduct, had manifested mainly only every thing that is hateful and of bad report. Still, it is quite evident that Frederick was not blind to the distinction between the principles of Christianity as taught by Jesus and developed in his life, and the conduct of those who, professing his name, trampled those principles beneath their feet. In one of his letters to Voltaire, dated Cirey, August 26, 1736, Frederick wrote:
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ONE:Frederick was endowed with brilliant powers of conversation. He was fond of society, where he could exercise and display these gifts and accomplishments. Frequent suppers were given at Sans Souci, which lasted from half past eight till midnight. Gentlemen onlylearned menwere invited to these entertainments. Frederick was not an amiable man. He took pleasure in inflicting the keenest pain possible with his satirical tongue. No friend was spared. The more deeply he could strike the lash into the quivering nerves of sensibility, the better he seemed pleased with himself. It was but a few years ago, she wrote, that this territory wore the most pleasing appearance. The country was cultivated. The peasants looked cheerful. The towns abounded with riches and festivity. What an alteration at present from such a charming scene! I am not expert at description, neither can my fancy add any horrors to the picture. But sure even conquerors themselves would weep at the hideous prospect now before me.
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TWO:The ordinary routine of the day, when not absent on travels or campaigns, was as follows: As soon as dressed, one of his pages brought the packet of letters. The number was usually very large. He employed himself in reading these letters till eight oclock. By a particular style of folding, he designated those to which no reply was to be returned, those to which there was to be an immediate reply, and those which required further consideration. At eight oclock one of the four secretaries of the cabinet entered, took the three parcels, and, while the king was breakfasting, received from him very briefly the character of the response to be made.
FORE:While these coronation splendors were transpiring, Frederick was striving, with all his characteristic enthusiasm, to push forward his Moravian campaign to a successful issue. Inspired by as tireless energies as ever roused a human heart, he was annoyed beyond measure by the want of efficient co-operation on the part of his less zealous allies. Neither the Saxons nor the French could keep pace with his impetuosity. The princes who led the Saxon troops, the petted sons of kings and nobles, were loth to abandon the luxurious indulgences to which they had been accustomed. When they arrived at a capacious castle where they found warm fires, an abundant larder, and sparkling wines, they would linger there many days, decidedly preferring those comforts to campaigning through the blinding, smothering snowstorm, and bivouacking on the bleak and icy plains, swept by the gales of a northern winter. The French were equally averse to these terrible marches, far more to be dreaded than the battle-field.
FORE:As has often been mentioned, the carnage of the battle-field constitutes by no means the greater part of the miseries of war. One of the sufferers from the conflagration of the city of Cüstrin gives the following graphic account of the scene. It was the 15th of August, 1758:
FORE:Go, my sister, go; Sweden waits you, Sweden wishes you.My children, I could not come to you sooner, or this calamity should not have happened. Have a little patience, and I will cause every thing to be rebuilt.
FORE:
FORE:Still it is evident that the serpent was in this Eden. Carlyle writes: An ardent, aerial, gracefully predominant, and, in the end, somewhat termagant female, this divine Emilie. Her temper, radiant rather than bland, was none of the patientest on occasion. Nor was M. De Voltaire the least of a Job if you came athwart him in a wrong way. I have heard that their domestic symphony was liable to furious flaws; that plates, in presence of the lackeys, actual crockery or metal, have been known to fly from end to end of the dinner-table; nay, they mention knives, though only in the way of oratorical action; and Voltaire has been heard to exclaim, Dont fix those haggard, sidelong eyes on me in that way!mere shrillness of pale rage presiding over the scene.549 Frederick had cultivated a supreme indifference to public opinion. Not believing in any God, in any future retribution, or in any immortality, and regarding men merely as the insects of an hour, like the myriad polyps which, beneath the ocean, rear their stupendous structures and perish, his sense of right and wrong must necessarily have been very different from that which a believer in the Christian faith is accustomed to cherish. In allusion to this subject, he writes:
FORE:There came, in those weeks, one of the Duke of Gloucesters gentlemen to Berlin. The queen had a soiree. He was presented to her as well as to me. He made a very obliging compliment on his masters part. I blushed and answered only by a courtesy. The queen, who had her eye on me, was very angry that I had answered the dukes compliments in mere silence, and rated me sharply for it, and ordered me, under pain of her indignation, to repair that fault to-morrow. I retired all in tears to my room, exasperated against the queen and against the duke. I vowed I would never marry him.
TWO:I was shut up in my bedchamber, where I saw nobody, and continued always to fast. I was really dying of hunger. I read as long as there was daylight, and made remarks upon what I read. My health began to give way. I became as thin as a skeleton from want of food and exercise. One day Madam De Sonsfeld and myself were at table, looking sadly at one another, having nothing to eat but soup made with salt and water, and a ragout of old bones, full of hairs and other dirt, when we heard a knocking at the window. Surprised, we rose hastily to see what it was. We found a raven with a morsel of bread in its beak, which it laid down on the sill of the window so soon as it saw us, and flew away. Tears came into our eyes at this adventure. Our lot is very deplorable, said I to my governess, since it even touches the creatures devoid of reason. They have more compassion for us than men, who treat us with so much cruelty.During all the day of Wednesday weeping friends stood around the bed, as the lamp of life flickered in its socket. Every moment it was expected that the emperor would breathe his last. At two oclock the next morning the spirit took its flight, and the lifeless clay alone remained. The grief-stricken empress closed the eyes of her departed husband, kissed his hands, and was carried out more dead than alive. Thus ended the male line of the house of Hapsburg, after five centuries of royal sway. The emperor died on the 20th of October 1740, in the fifty-sixth year of his age.
TWO:I represented to him, continues M. DArget, that the house of Austria would never, with a tranquil eye, see his house in possession of Silesia.Quite unexpectedly, the latter part of January the virulence of the kings complicated diseases of gout, dropsy, and ulcers seemed to abate. Though but forty-seven years of age, he was, from his intemperate habits, an infirm old man. Though he lingered along for many months, he was a great sufferer. His unamiability filled the palace with discomfort.
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TWO:Grumkow gathered up his papers, and, with his associate officials, departed, probably meditating upon his own prospects should the Crown Prince ever become King of Prussia. The next day, September 5, the captive was taken from the castle of Mittenwalde, and sent to the fortress of Cüstrin, a small and quiet town about seventy miles from Berlin. The strong, dungeon-like room in which he was incarcerated consisted of bare walls, without any furniture, the light being admitted by a single aperture so high that the prince could not look out at it. He was divested of his uniform, of his sword, of every mark of dignity. You will have passports for the post-horses, and whatever else you may ask. I hope to see you on Wednesday. I shall then profit by the few moments of leisure which remain to me, to enlighten myself by the blaze of your powerful genius. I entreat you to believe I shall always be the same toward you. Adieu.
TWO:At half past three oclock on Friday morning, Frederick, with his whole army, was again upon the march. He swept quite around the eastern end of the Russian square, and approached it from the south. By this sagacious movement he could, in case of disaster, retreat to Cüstrin.
Strasbourg began to echo with the fame of this foreign count. But the next morning, Thursday, August 25, as Marshal Broglio was walking on the Esplanade, a soldier, who had formerly201 been in the regiment of the Crown Prince at Potsdam, and who knew the Crown Prince perfectly, having seen him hundreds of times, but who had deserted and entered the French service, came to the marshal, with much bowing and embarrassment, and assured him that Count Dufour was no less than the King of Prussia.But no sooner did Frederick get an intimation that Austria was contemplating this enlargement of her domains than he roused himself to prevent it with all the vigor of his earlier years. It was a very delicate matter; for Charles Theodore, the elector, and his nephew August Christian, heir to the electorate, a young gentleman of very illustrious pedigree, but of a very slender purse, had both been bribed by Austria secretly to co-operate in the movement. The reader will be interested in Carlyles account, slightly abbreviated, of Fredericks skill in diplomacy: Frederick.You are a cowardly deserter, the father exclaimed, devoid of all feelings of honor.
TWO:CHAPTER XXI. BATTLES AND VICTORIES.
