ONE:CHAPTER XX. THE RETREAT.
TWO:The reader will bear in mind that the camp at G?ttin, menacing Hanover, was acting in co-operation with Fredericks ally, France, and that forty thousand men had been sent from France to the aid of those Prussian troops. Frederick now, entering into secret treaty with the enemy, while still feigning to be true to his ally, was perfidiously withdrawing his troops so as to leave the French unsupported. His treachery went even farther than this. In the presence of Lord Hyndford, the representative of England, he informed the Austrian general minutely how he could, to the greatest advantage, attack the French.
ONE:In the mean time Dr. Villa reached England. In conference with the British cabinet, the members deemed it very desirable, at all events, to effect the marriage of the Prince of Wales with the Prussian princess. The main consideration was that it would tend to detach Prussia from Germany, and secure its alliance with England. It was also a good Protestant match, and would promote the interests of Protestantism. The king desired this marriage. But he was inflexible in his resolve that both marriages should take place or neither. The Prussian king was equally inflexible in his determination that, while he would consent to one marriage, he would not consent to both. Colonel Hotham, a man of good family and of some personal distinction, was accordingly sent, as envoy extraordinary, to Berlin, to make new efforts in favor of the double marriage.
TWO:FREDERICK AND LINSENBARTH.
ONE:A bomb bursting in the room could scarcely have created a greater panic. Katte and Quantz seized the flutes and music-books, and rushed into a wood-closet, where they stood quaking with terror. Fritz threw off his dressing-gown, hurried on his military coat, and sat down at the table, affecting to be deeply engaged with his books. The king, frowning like a thunder-cloudfor he always frowned when he drew near Fritzburst into the room. The sight of the frizzled hair of his son kindled the paternal wrath into a tornado pitch. The king had a wonderful command of the vocabulary of abuse, and was heaping epithets of vituperation upon the head of the prince, when he caught sight of the dressing-gown behind a screen. He seized the glittering garment, and, with increasing outbursts of rage, crammed it into the fire. Then searching the room, he collected all the French books, of which Fritz had quite a library, and, sending for a bookseller near by, ordered him to take every volume away, and sell them for what they would bring. For more than an hour the king was thus raging, like a maniac, in the apartment of his son. Fortunately he did not look into the wood-closet. Had he done so, both Quantz and Katte would have been terribly beaten, even had they escaped being sent immediately to the scaffold.
TWO:Soon after this an event occurred very characteristic of the kingan event which conspicuously displayed both his good and bad qualities. A miller was engaged in a lawsuit against a nobleman. The decree of the court, after a very careful examination, was unanimously in favor of the nobleman; the king, who had impulsively formed a different opinion of the case, was greatly exasperated. He summoned the four judges before him, denounced them in the severest terms of vituperation, would listen to no defense, and dismissed them angrily from office.BATTLE OF CHOTUSITZ.
